I climbed the ledge where the lesser tunnels forked. My bare skin rubbed against those scratchy, crawly roots. My nakedness annoyed me, though I had to admit, bare toes were great for climbing here. They really dug into the ropy walls.
Something sparkled in a groove atop the ledge. I plucked it out with my fingernails. It was an earring made of silver and pearl—a humble piece of costume jewelry, the kind of thing that might be sold at a flea market. I wondered if Karla had dropped it. I had nowhere to put it, so I kept it clenched it in my hand.
Remembering her advice, I went left at the branching. The walls were uniformly dim at first, but I soon reached a stretch that danced with enough light to do a disco proud. Blips of light raced along the strands, varying in shape and color and size. I wondered if they carried some kind of Morse code. I wondered what news they transmitted.
I searched for the dull patch in the wall that marked the seam leading to Karla’s chamber. I thought it would be obvious, but it wasn’t this time. When I stepped back and squinted, I spotted a patch where the roots were less neatly aligned than elsewhere, as if they had tidied themselves after being rumpled but hadn’t fallen exactly back into place.
I flattened my hand into a blade and plunged it into the wall. The roots stiffened. It took a severe marshaling of my will to make them part. And when they did, they didn’t just separate, it was like the pod all over again. They withered and crumbled beneath my fingertips. As I shoved my shoulders into the slot and pushed through, I could already see the fibers reconstituting themselves in my wake.
Ten paces through the viny jungle of roots and there it was—Karla’s hooch, with all its gleaming knobs and thorns. I remembered Karla drawing a circle with her finger to make the seams of her hatch appear and disappear. I climbed up the side and traced a person-sized circle. Nothing happened, besides pricking my thumb on a thorn.
I wrapped on the dome with the back of my hand: shave and a haircut, two bits. I leaned back and waited, and waited some more. Nothing.
I knocked again, harder, coming away with scraped knuckles.
“Karla!” I shouted. “You in there?”
Something grumbled in the tunnels, its vocalization rising in pitch like an inquiry.
“Karla?”
A dimple formed on the dome, bulged out into a blister and a hatch popped open. A man with a long face and a beard like a billy goat stuck his head out.
“And what do we have here? A gentleman caller?”
Startled, my toes lost their grip and I slipped down the side of the dome.
“Egads, lad!” said the man, looking down on me. “Weave yourself a loin cloth. Have you no shame?”
There was something wrong with that face. It seemed too grotesque to be human. This was a living caricature of a man, with clown-like tufts of auburn hair, a beaky nose, stark pits below his cheekbones, eyes the pale blue of glacial ice.
He reached down and his bony fingers gripped my blood-slickened hand and he pulled me through the hatch into Karla’s abode.
I crumpled to the floor at his feet. He was tall. Not NBA tall, circus freak tall. He wore a suit of something black and satiny, with a brilliant white shirt and a red bow tie. A top hat and a cane rested on Karla’s table.
He pulled out a handkerchief and daubed at the blood I had smeared on his insanely long fingers. I glanced about the chamber. Several of Karla’s tapestries had been torn down and shredded. Some of the roots that had comprised them had reverted to their native state, inching out of the wreckage like a swarm of caterpillars.
“Who the devil are you?” said the man.
“I’m … James.”
“James?” He narrowed his eyes severely. “James, do you know I am?”
“Um … no,” I said. “Should I?”
“Preposterous! You can’t just barge into places like this without an invitation. You need to come prepared to pay the proper respects.” He leaned in close. “You need to know who you’re dealing with.”
He straightened up and perked his ears. “Ah, here she comes.” He strode across the room, tore down another tapestry and blew a gash in the wall with a swipe of his hand.
Karla stood staring on the other side, a sack slung over her back.
“Luther? What are you doing here? What did you do to my house?” She stepped into the chamber.
“Quality inspection, my dear, and I must say, I am terribly disappointed. These hangings are horrid. I can’t allow them. I must say that is the most awful replica of an historical tapestry I have ever seen. The Battle of Hastings? Really? What made you think this might pass for décor?”
“It is from my memory. I happen to like it.”
“It’s not the topic, your execution is the problem. It looks like a child’s impressions rendered in crayon. You can do better, is all I am suggesting.”
“This is my chamber, Luther. I can decorate it however I want.”
“Run my darlings, run!” he said to the inchworms escaping from the savaged murals lying crumpled on the floor. “Before she weaves you into something even more hideous.” Colored strands turned brown and rough and crawled towards the gash.
“I thought we agreed,” said Karla. “No surprise visits, especially when I am not here.”
“I expected you to be home. Do I not have a right to call on my filial spawn now and then? And what about him?” He extended a bony finger towards me. “Was he expected?”
Karla emptied her sack on the table. There was silverware in it this time, along with a pair of wire-framed eyeglasses.
“Out scavenging again, eh? Like a magpie, you are. Collecting your pretty little baubles, not to mention … interlopers.” His gaze hunted me down and pinned me like a butterfly.
“If you don’t understand why I do this,” said Karla. “You never will.”
The tall man swept his hand in a wide loop over the remnants of the fallen tapestry and it disintegrated into cottony puffs like milkweed seeds. They swirled away in a cloud.
“Get out!” said Karla. “Out of here. Go trash your own palace. Leave my stuff alone.”
The tall man ducked through the gash and turned to face us. “One hour. Bring the interloper to the square. Mandatory assembly … for introduction and … inspection … and if he passes muster … assimilation. But please slap some clothes on the poor lad first.” He reached up and motioned as if to grab an imaginary zipper pull. He brought his hand down and the rip in the wall sealed behind him.
Karla’s had altered her hair drastically. It was long now where it had been shaved close to her scalp, shorter on the side where it had brushed against her shoulder. A large flap of bangs still concealed one eye.
“I am so sorry about this,” she said. “And sorry that you are back.”
“Sorry?”
“Coming back means life is bad. You are not happy. Is just … I wished for you … better.”
“Oh,” I said, remembering the prickly object in my palm. “Here.” I unclenched my hand and displayed the earring. “This is for you.”
“A gift? For me? How nice!”
Her eyes glistened. She came over and pecked my cheek and cooed over the cheap earring as if it were pure platinum set with diamonds.
She looked around the chamber, spotted the kilt I had worn the last time, and tossed it to me.
“You see? I save this for you.”
“Uh. You wouldn’t happen to have a pair of jeans, would you?”
“Ah! Who am I? Your tailor? You want pants. Weave them yourself.”
“Yeah, right. I’ll make do with the dress for now.” I slipped it on and settled down onto a Persian rug with a dense and spongy pile.
Karla rummaged around her heaps of belongings, picked up some crumpled thing that looked like a dust rag and tossed it to me.
“This is your shirt from before. Sorry, it is a bit wrinkled.”
I shook the shirt open, finding it smudged and ripped as well, but that was the least of its issues. One of the slee
ves had migrated to the center of the back and the other arm hole had knitted itself closed.
“How the heck am I supposed to wear this?”
“Oh!” She took it back from me, all embarrassed. “It is shifting. It is not stable. This happens when the Weaving is not firm. Everything comes apart. I am not so strong a Weaver.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I can go without. Not like it’s cold in here.”
She spread the blouse in her lap and ran her fingers over it, guiding the sleeve back where it belonged, mending the tears, rubbing out the dirt. “So how are things with you? Not so good, I expect?”
“Not so good. But hey, isn’t it that way for everybody? I mean, isn’t that why we’re here?”
“True, but after some time, we learn the coping. It makes life easier on the other side. We only need to stay alive.”
“Coping?”
She sat down across from me and brushed her bangs down to cover her left eye more completely.
“Coping. Surfing. They are skills for maximizing our time in Root,” she said. “You seem already to be making progress. You escape your pod and found my house by yourself, no? Or did Luther help you?”
“Nope, it was all me. It was easy this time.”
“I thought so. It is not at all like Luther to intervene. He likes to keep the Reapers well fed, he says. But he does respect those who show … eh … what is the word? Initiate?”
“Initiative,” said. “What’s the deal with him tearing down your embroideries?”
“His is picky about my craft. I don’t know why he cares so much. It is not like we are selling them. What a fool! He thinks I have bad taste. Do you see how he dresses? He looks like the Abraham Lincoln. Bah! I think his aesthetic is kitsch. He should not hold his nose so high.”
“So who is that guy? Is he like in charge of things here or something?”
“Luther would like you to think so. He thinks he is boss of our colony. The place he makes—Luthersburg—it just another big cave. Souls collect here only because it is the first place we see that feels like home. But Bern says there are other colonies, bigger and grander than Luthersburg. Maybe someday we go see.”
She handed the blouse over to me and I tried pulling it on. It was in much better shape now, but it was still a couple of sizes too small.
“It … doesn’t fit. And the buttons are on the wrong side still. And ... uh … can we lose this frilly collar?”
“Ah! I am not your seamstress. I am only trying to help. You want something better, Weave it yourself.”
“Yeah, but … how?”
“Take this shirt and change it. How you like.”
“How?”
“Tell the threads what you want them to be. Make them move and change. They will listen. They exist to serve us.”
“Make—me—a—T-shirt,” I droned.
“No, not like that. With your mind and heart. Remember something real, how it looked and felt in your hands. Pass this to the roots. They will follow.”
What came to mind was my old brown ‘Firefly’ T-shirt with the spaceship ‘Serenity’ silk-screened on the front. That had been my favorite shirt for years until Mom finally intercepted the faded and hole-riddled thing in the wash and put it out of its misery.
I closed my eyes, laid my hands on that wad of cloth and conjured the feel of that shirt fresh out of the dryer. I remembered the hole in the sleeve I had made worse by poking and twirling my finger into it when I was bored.
Something changed in the wad, but not in the way I wanted. I lifted my hands to find a bristly, writhing mass of roots. Instantly repulsed, I fought an urge to cast the whole mess away.
“Keep at it! It is working. You are doing it!”
Could have fooled me, but I took her word for it, and went right back at it, remembering the time I had rescued that same shirt from the Goodwill box, crawling inside with a flashlight after mom decided to get all charitable with my prized possessions.
Things began to happen. The bristly mass flattened and softened. I could feel the fibers divide and merge and weave in and out each other. I kept it all going by keeping the image of that shirt alive in my mind and nudging its properties towards my goal.
When I opened my eyes, everything slowed. Some of the fibers curled and reverted back to roots.
“Don’t look!” said Karla.
I jammed my eyes shut and the process continued until I had a faded brown T-shirt full of holes draped over my hands. The patchy ink on the front of it was barely discernible.
“Wow … I am impress,” said Karla, slack-jawed.
“Dang it. Why isn’t it brand new?” I said. “I wanted a new one.”
“Your feelings must be stronger for the old one.” She reached out and stroked the shirt. “I have to say, I am amazed by the level of finishing. And it feels stable. There is nothing for me to fix. I thought I will need to teach you but you … you already have it. This is very unusual. You are … special.”
I was too busy slipping on the T-shirt to be impressed with her flattery. “Yeah … well, that was a lot of work for a crappy shirt. I think I almost popped an artery in my brain.”
“It will come easier with time,” she said. “You are clearly destined for great things.”
Her voice had taken on this breathy, fawning tone as if she had just discovered I was a movie star or something. It really bothered me. It was like I had become a different person in her eyes. I wanted to tell her to cut it out, that this was James Moody she was looking at, not some dang celebrity.
She passed her hands over the material, not quite touching and the holes in the sleeves patched themselves. The tightness in the shoulders relaxed. “Remember, hands are good for weaving too. Use them to project your intentions. They are an extension of your mind.”
“Will do,” I said, pushing her hands away gently. “That’s enough. I just wanted the holes patched. A little bit of wear and tear is fine. Adds character.”
Karla got off her chair and sat across from me on the rug. “Now I teach you about the surfing,” she said. “Tell me … what is going on in your life? On the other side?”
***
I caught Karla up on everything that had happened to me since the last visitation. It felt weird, saying everything out loud, and having someone listen to the whole thing. Things that had been swirling in my brain all tight and tangled seemed to loosen up. I began to see things that had been obscured before.
“That is all?” she said, when I was done.
“What do you mean that is all? I’ve gotten myself into some serious trouble.”
She rolled her eyes. “The trivia that brings some people here I cannot believe. But … it is your heart … your soul that brings one here. Some people are just more sensitive. Small tragedies are made bigger for them.”
“Small? You think it’s no big deal that both my parents died within a half a year of each other and now I’m in trouble with a bunch of gangsters?”
“Yes. Is no big deal. Compared to some.”
“Jesus! “I’m almost afraid to ask how you got here.”
She shook her head. “You can ask me, but I will not tell you.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It is how it is.” I glimpsed something behind the pits of her pupils that chilled me, a black hole from which all who entered might never return. I didn’t dare press for her story. Not yet, anyways.
“Well, what would you do in a situation like mine?”
She kept touching her bangs, making sure they covered that left eye. “One. Sell the drugs yourself. Two. Go far, far away to some island with no people.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I am serious. That is what I would do.”
“You don’t care that these drugs hurt people? That they wreck some people’s lives?”
“They also give solace. They make some truly hopeless lives tolerable.”
“Yeah, but … only for a little while. And then you need some mo
re.”
“I would kill for one minute with some heroin,” said Karla.
“Say what?”
“I have no access to any solace, other than Root. You have an entire truck full. Consider yourself lucky.”
“It’s probably just cocaine,” I said. “Ain’t gonna do shit to make me feel better.”
“Then I would just sell it, and go away.”
“Wanna come with? You can. I’ll come find you.”
“I cannot.”
“Why not? You’re alive, aren’t you? On the other side?”
“Barely.”
“So, tell me where you live. I’ll come find you.”
Her head tilted down. “You cannot.”
“Why not?”
“Because … it would disrupt … my surfing.”
“What?”
A deep rumble rattled the dome. Man, it was close. And then it was joined by a bunch of lesser, but more musical peals.
Karla smirked. “Do not pee your dress. It is not the Reapers.”
“Then what is it?”
“It is Luther. He is ringing the bells.”
“Bells?”
“He wants us at the square.” An impish smile spread across her face. “Now I get to show you off to my friends. Don’t you dare disappear this time!”
***
She led me through a shaggy, root-lined sleeve much like the one that connected her dome to the tunnels, but it widened and cleared out into a hallway painted canary yellow above, with white wainscoting below. The hall led to a sitting room with a floral print sofa, and a curtained window flanking an oaken door.
“You be careful around Luther,” said Karla. “He does not handle disrespect well. Especially from someone new.”
“So I mouth off, what’s he gonna do? Spank me?”
“I am telling you, you need to be careful. Luther is a Weaver of Weavers. He can weave flesh, souls. And I am not kidding. It is for true. We can get away with some sass because we are like family. He needs us. But you? Is another story.”
I went up to the window and peeked outside. “Whoa!” I said.
A cobbled town square stretched a good hundred yards to a row of buildings that looked like something out of a Bavarian fairy tale, with their dark, geometric timbers contrasting with pale stucco. A massive stone church loomed over them all, its copper-clad steeple gone green with verdigris.
Swallows swooped about the chimneys, hawks hovered high above in a blue sky mottled with puffy clouds.
There was something odd, though, about that sky. The clouds morphed and drifted like real clouds, but there was a texture to them evocative of brush strokes, as if they had been painted onto an enormous canvas with oils.