Luther formed the faintest smile and he looked straight at me.
“And so … I’ve always wondered about his fate. I suppose He’s there … somewhere … in the Deeps. He was always one to thrive in challenging environments. There are other paths, other destinations, of course, but let’s assume he has stayed put. So, since you’re going to be prowling the Deeps … I was hoping you could keep an eye out for him. And if you happen to find him, give him this missive. It’s an accounting of his posthumous fame. He’s quite a legend in the dance world these days. His choreography was ground-breaking. Seminal. I bet he would be tickled to know of his legacy. Now, I know the odds of finding him are slim, but if anyone could make a splash in the Deeps, it would be him. What I would give to have him up here to help run my little Kingdom. He’s like Harvald, squared. No, Harvald to the nth!”
He handed me the parchment roll.
“So … his name’s Olivier? Is that all I have to go on?”
“Basil Olivier Oswald Metz is his full name. ‘Boom,’ to those close to him. I know it’s a needle in a haystack proposition. The Deeps are probably brimming with lost souls. But finding him may be easier than you think. This man makes an impression everywhere he goes. People remember him.”
Something bothered me about Luther’s level of obsession with this Olivier guy. “What about … Karla?” I said.
Luther shrugged. “What about her?”
“Aren’t you interested in finding her?”
“Of course. That goes without saying. She’s …. blood. But I know you’ve got that part handled. Now come. Let’s get you to the Deeps.”
He pulled a blunt twig from his pocket and extended it into a long, slender wand.
***
Back outside, we found Bern helping some folks repair the wall of a cottage that had been damaged in the attack. The mantid riders had taken flight and were now specks against the foothills. But Lalibela still circled overhead, riderless.
“Where’s Urszula?”
“Don’t know. She seems to have vanished.”
“Literally?”
“I don’t believe so. But why would you say that? Do you know something I don’t?”
“I brought her back … to life … the last time I faded. To Philadelphia.”
“Holy cow. Philadelphia. Her?”
“Yeah, I know. Weird, huh?”
“Wonders never cease with you, do they boy?”
“And that’s why we call him the Wonder Boy,” said Luther. “We’re going down below, Bern, in case you care to join us. Who knows, it might be the last we see of our friend.”
“You’re taking him down? To the Deeps?”
“He insists,” said Luther. “He’ll find his way there one way or another. Might as well ease his passage, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Of course,” said Bern, a bit stunned and glum. “Your back door beats the alternative. I just wish it was an exit as well as an entrance.”
“Ah, I wouldn’t worry. A boy of his talents should be able to find his way back.”
“I can only hope,” said Bern. He hobbled over to a nook between two cottages and retrieved a cloth bundle. He came over and handed it to me.
“Your sword,” he said.
“Whoa! Thanks! I thought I had lost it.” I unwrapped the blade, which was swaddled in various items of clothing I had woven on previous visits. They were all looking a bit ragged as some of the fibers had partly reverted, but they were more dignified than that filthy blue bathrobe. I discarded the robe and pulled on the jeans and hoodie, almost more grateful to have my old clothes back than the sword.
Once I was dressed, we ambled together to the edge of the sinkhole, which was now ringed by at least six waterfalls, fed by ditches and streams that drained the village.
Luther examined Bern’s crude rope ladder, crinkling his nose. “What kind of dross is this?” He slipped out his wand and expanded the rungs, converting them into an elegant spiral staircase with grooved treads and polished mahogany handrails. Water channeled onto it and dripped on our heads as we descended.
“Ugh! I truly hate this season,” said Luther. “Can’t wait for the droughts to begin. But it benefits the poor souls down below, I suppose. Feeds the springs and all.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind if I come?” said Bern, looking a mite sheepish, atop the staircase.
“Not at all,” said Luther, Glad to have you along, Bernard.”
Bern rolled his eyes and proceeded down the stairs after us. “I spent years trying to find a way out of the tunnels. I can’t believe I’m going back in.”
At the base of the staircase, we splashed into the dark pool that now flooded the rocky shelf where Bern had built his last cabin. Exhalations from the network of tunnels below rippled the otherwise still waters. We waded over to a black slot that gashed the wall of the sinkhole. Here, the stone transitioned to a dense matrix of the root-like fibers that gave this place its nickname.
I tried ducking into the tunnel, but the walls were pinched shut.
“Sorry,” said Bern. “That’s my doing. I sealed them all up to keep my cabin safe from Reapers. Here, let me blast that open.”
“No. Leave it sealed,” said Luther. “An open tunnel is an invitation to attack. We can squeeze through. Can we not? We’re not that chunky, are we?”
I pressed myself into the slot and scraped against the roots. Bern shoved me through. Luther followed and by that time the passage had loosened enough so that Bern breezed right through.
The air changed on the other side of the constriction. We were fully immersed in the thick and dank atmosphere of the tunnels. There was a time I found comfort and refuge in that mustiness, but I just found it oppressive.
A few steps in we rounded a bend, and apart from some trickling rivulets, there was no hint that we were anywhere near the surface or that there could possibly be an exit to this place. The only light came from the flashes and pulses of the roots themselves.
Bern clasped a hand to his chest. “Never thought I would miss this place after being up top. But there are lots of good memories tucked away in these stinky tunnels. I met Lille, here. She changed my life. I’d be in the Deeps myself already, if not for her.”
Bern and I had that much in common. I could have said the same for Karla, but I kept silent. There was no question she had saved from an eternity in the trash bin of existence. Perhaps, that would turn out to be only a temporary reprieve, but not if I could help it.
Funny, how what we were never able to find in the ‘real’ world, we found here, and then we both lost it. At least I was doing something about my loss, as unlikely and desperate as my quest seemed.
But Bern, in many ways, was in a better position. Presumably, Lille was still around, somewhere up there in Frelsi, hopefully unharmed. He wouldn’t need to cross worlds to find her.
The tunnels dried out the deeper we went as the runoff seeped into the matrix of roots, collecting into pools or cascading deep down unseen but thunderous torrents.
The first pods appeared, full of moaning and squirming souls, some pleading, most incoherent. Luther passed beneath them without as much as a glance, as if they were sides of beef in a meat locker. But I had to stop. I wanted to help and give someone the kind of chance that Karla gave me.
“Oh, stop your dawdling,” said Luther. “None of these souls are worth saving.”
“How do you know that?”
“Listen to them. All that whimpering. They’ve given up. Every last one. Not an ounce of spunk or fortitude among them. Believe me, I’ve got an ear for good recruits, and none of these qualify. And even if they did ….”
“You wouldn’t help them?”
“This is an active passage. The Reapers will be by shortly.
“All the more reason to help them.”
He shook his head. “We need to stay on task. I need to get back up to my people. We’ve got patrols to manage, defenses to build.” But then he paused and glan
ced over at me, lowering his voice. “Maybe on our way back, if they’re still here, Bern and I can give them a more thorough vetting. Never hurts to have fresh blood. But not now, for God sakes. We’ve got to get you to the Deeps, boy!”
I was actually beginning to get cold feet. I was still determined to go, but I regretted rushing the process. The potential permanence of the transition ahead of me was disturbing. I would be sealing myself in a world with no obvious exit. Was I ready for that?
And what about Ellen on the other side? Shouldn’t I have first gotten her safely to where she needed to go, instead of abandoning her on the train? What if Sergei was waiting on the other end?
I pressed forward, nonetheless, following behind Luther who took long, confident strides down a winding passage so dark I could barely make out the floor. We came to a crazily illuminated junction of five tunnels. Beads and bubbles of light whizzed along the lengths of roots, their colors changing as bubbles collided and merged, shifting between coral, chartreuse and lapis lazuli.
Luther grinned. “Oh yes, this is the place. We’re in my territory now. My old stomping grounds. The branching becomes more frequent the deeper you go from here. And these messages you see, they converge on the core, sending information on every soul in this existence. I am convinced that the powers-that-be have some connection there, though they have never shown themselves here. Not surprising, I suppose. The Liminality and the Deeps are not exactly showcases of the human soul. We are disappointments to them, all of us. Waste only fit for disposal. Why they bother to monitor us at all, I wonder.”
“They? You’re sure they’re a They? Not a He or a She.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Luther. “A monstrosity of an afterworld like this could only have been designed by a committee.”
“Who’s to say it was designed?” said Bern. “Maybe it just evolved. Spontaneously.”
Luther bobbed his head from side to side. “Nature? Nah? Nature is more orderly and logical. Now, if I was God, I would run this place much more efficiently. I wouldn’t pussy foot with all of these clumsy Reapers and giving people second chances. I would get souls to where they needed to go and that would be that.”
Somehow, I was glad that Luther wasn’t God, no matter how much neater and efficient Root might be. Nazi concentration camps had also been models of efficiency.
As we moved deeper into the network, it didn’t take long to find evidence of Reapers. Their spoor befouled passages where the pods had all been ripped away.
And then a tremble shook the walls. Something big was heaving itself along our tunnel. Growls and groans emanated from the darkness below.
Luther poked his wand into a knotted wall of roots and they spread away from the tip, creating a wide circular opening.
“Let us take a shortcut. There’s a little much commotion for my comfort down this passage.”
We ducked into the opening and into a jungle of unconsolidated roots that formed a patternless mesh. There was no floor, really. We clambered like monkeys through the tangles, cutting across two more passages before finding a tunnel that met Luther’s approval.
With a pass of his wand, the hole in the wall sealed like a sphincter. The fibers re-organized, leaving no sign of our passing.
“Well, that’s certainly nifty,” said Bern. “Wish I could get my cane to do that.”
We strode on down a broad, slick-walled tunnel devoid of pods or rumblings.
“Ah, now we’re talking,” said Luther. “This is the kind of avenue I have been searching for.”
“So … whatever happened to the ‘Burg?” I asked.
“It is still there, I suppose. I hope. Not all of the populace wished to relocate up top. No ill feelings. I wish only the best for those who stayed behind. But who knows what kind of shape it’s in now, though I do hope that they’re keeping it tidy. One needs constant vigilance to keep these blasted roots at bay. Turn your back and they overgrow everything.”
“Why’d you leave?”
Luther looked uncomfortable.
“It was time to go,” he said. “You stay in any one place too long, and eventually it becomes too much like a prison. Even … for the warden.”
The tunnel corkscrewed ever downward. We passed junction after junction. Some led up tunnels befouled with the excrement of Reapers, but there were smaller conduits with walls smooth and pure, their roots all parallel and flowing with those colored beads of light.
“We’re getting close,” said Luther. “I can feel the energy change. Can you?”
I felt nothing but scared. Things were moving way too fast. My heart thumped with the anticipation of entering yet another existence from which I might never return.
I wondered what would happen to me in the world of the living. Would I just blink out? Would I physically die and leave Ellen to have to deal with my carcass on the train? If so, I felt bad for dumping her with the trauma and responsibility that involved, but I had to do this. I was committed, regardless of the consequences.
Lost in my trepidations, I had gotten ahead of Bern and Luther. As I came around a bend, the tunnel seemed to end. The light from the roots grew faint—not much more than the phosphorescence you get from a watch dial. There appeared to be a mound of something blocking our way.
It smelled sickly, like a combination of dumpster juice and porta-potty leakage.
“What the … what hell is that?” said Bern.
I held out my sword to prod it.
Luther grabbed my arm. “No! What the hell are you doing?”
Too late. The point of my blade penetrated the mound. It exploded with a roar, heaving itself up off the tunnel floor. Awoken from a deep torpor, the Reaper bellowed and lunged at us, its flesh-fouled maw open wide, feelers reaching. I stumbled back into Bern.
“Oh my God! That’s a big one,” said Luther.
Chapter 14: The Core
Luther swiped his wand and the tunnel walls came alight, glowing a fierce and ghostly green that revealed the Reaper’s creased and crusty hide. The creature cringed at the light, blinking its half-dozen eyes. This was a full grown beast, with scars on its scars, a veteran of many battles.
It bellowed like a moose, rattling the loose flesh deep in its gullet, and flung itself at us. A spiky feeler came whipping at my head. I ducked and swatted it away with the flat of my blade.
“Step aside!” said Luther, brushing past me.
I stumbled back, knocking into Bern again.
“What does he think he’s doing?” I said.
“Luther … uh … he … uh … he has a way with Reapers,” said Bern. “Kindred spirits, I suppose.“
Luther walked right up to the agitated beast, one palm raised, keeping his wand tucked at his side. He patted its knobby blubber and touched his forehead against the creature’s flesh, cooing something soft and creepy in a language I didn’t recognize, but it sure as hell wasn’t English.
The beast slumped and fell calm, retracting its feelers, lowering its torso to the tunnel floor. It rattled out a long and smelly exhalation like the beginning of a snore.
“You can pass now,” said Luther, softly. “Go on ahead. Slowly. Try not to bump it. Don’t even touch it.”
I pressed myself tight against the curve of the tunnel wall and squeezed through the narrow gap, trying my best to avoid the beast’s warty tubercles. This thing had to be the ugliest, grungiest Reaper I had ever seen. The garish green glow Luther conjured did it no favors. The creatures the Frelsians had domesticated seemed sleek and pretty in comparison.
Bern struggled to follow me through the tight space. He lacked flexibility in his bad leg, and seemed on the verge of losing his balance. I reached a hand out to steady him before he plunged into the thing’s blubber.
“Keep on walking!” said Luther, as we came around the backside of the Reaper. “Put some distance between you and it. Don’t worry about me, I’ll catch up.”
We strode into a darkness that was nearly absolute. I worried a
bout stumbling into another slumbering Reaper. Yet, every step we took triggered a flash of green phosphorescence that persisted behind us leaving a trail of glowing footprints that marked our path.
“Shouldn’t we wait for him?”
“He said not to,” said Bern. “And for good reason. Those Reapers can be unpredictable.”
So I plunged ahead, taking it on faith that I wouldn’t step on a monster or plunge into a bottomless pit. The tunnels grew colder, the footing firmer, the deeper we went.
Something strange seemed to be happening to the gravity. Looking back, our glowing prints seemed to spiral around the entire circumference of the tunnel. Either the tunnels were slowly twisting behind us as we walked or the relationship between up and down kept shifting.
This strange sense of topsy-turviness affected more than our flesh. Something was prying at the glue connecting my consciousness to my body. I felt a weird pressure inside my skull and chest, as if my essence was trying to wiggle out of my heart and squeeze out my ear holes. It was a different feeling from switching worlds. I found it even more disturbing and uncomfortable.
A brilliant white glow grew behind us. Luther appeared, the tip of his wand ablaze like a strip of magnesium. As he came around the bend, his body was leaning at a good forty five degree angle in relation to me and Bern.
That clinched it. What I had noticed was no illusion, the gravity really was all screwy down here.
It made me dizzy and queasy, watching him approach like that, his posture going upside down and then horizontal before coming around to match our orientation. I took a deep breath and told myself that everything was okay, that this was normal.
“It’s surprisingly chilly down here,” said Bern, hugging his arms to his chest.