“You don’t speak Naryan,” he said. “Nor any other language I recognize.”
“You can tell?” I said.
“It’ s my job to notice things,” he said. “Where are you from?”
“I don’t know where it is from here,” I said. “But it is a world called Luna, or Weĉjo—”
“Hessoa is a very old myth,.”
There’s some places that just make you afraid to be in.
The club definitely qualified. My stomach trembled as I sat in the parking lot outside.
The name was not printed on the outside, and the anxieties started there.
Well, of course you could tell from the people going inside that it was obviously the place.
The anxieties continued, of course, with the people going inside.
There’s no way I could go inside, really. This was the point where I generally gave up, turned around, and drove home.
I shut my eyes, and breathed.
There was a knock at the passenger-side window. I opened my eyes and a supremely unattractive older man was there, cigarette in his mouth.
I reached out and locked the door. He got the hint and moved on.
That is not going to be me, I am not going to be that—
I looked at the door of the club again and more absolutely unattainable and mystifying people were going in.
I gave up, turned around, and drove home.
The part that bothered me most was the dreams.
The dreams weren’t mine.
Now, a lot of the random thoughts that flicker through a sleeping person’s mind are indistinguishable from the white noise to me—those thoughts are off limits, I guess.
But when the sleeping mind puts together something like a narrative—a chain of thoughts, not just scattered ones—those I pick up. Whether I wanted to or not, at least within a certain range, the dreams of a living mind spread out like tentacles, stretching out, latching on, draining into me.
And I felt bad about it, because to the waking mind, those things are personal. Sure, some people share their dreams—but even if they don’t self-censor, they do fail to remember.
It’s weird how coy the sleeping mind is with the waking one when it’s so brazen in its broadcast.
Not to mention, dreams can be some pretty weird stuff.
What do you do on rainy days?
When it was just me, well—there were a lot of games of pool in the student center when there were people, and a lot of sitting outside watching it when there wasn’t anyone.
Today was a day for sitting outside, and I watched students go back and forth, fending off the weather as they rushed between classes.
I sat back, ignoring the groan of the chair under me. Rainy days are sleepy days. I know I slept till evening, when thunder started rolling in as well…
As darkness accumulated I gave up on the rain and went home to sleep.
I woke up in my own house.
So, someone knew where I lived.
So, they’d probably gotten somebody out.
So I hoped.
They’d left me a pot of water, which I was grateful for—I ached all over and didn’t feel like getting up at all.
But I wanted to know what happened. Maybe they were still here?
“Hello!” I called out.
It was the same older maccan from the northern circle that came in from my front room.
“I was, ah, appreciating your art.” The hesitation was clear, even through the magic that made his speed seem slower.
It does seem to have that effect on people. It makes people think.
I hope so, anyway. It’s hard to read emotions at half speed.
Sometimes it gets to be too much, and you just have to take a break.
It’s all right if they see that you have to go out back to collect yourself, to keep yourself from crying.
They say it’s understandable, though they don’t actually understand the reason.
Some people’s fates just can’t be improved, however hard you try.
You know who they are.
And some days they all come in together.
It’s hard to take.
Not crying is actually the easy part—there’s one easy fix, which is to find a target.
Sadness is holding on to pain.
But sadness with a target is anger.
So I took a break, sometimes, to be properly angry. There was a dumpster behind the shelter that had many a dent in it from my bad days.
Usually I made sure there was no one around before taking out my frustration. I thought I had that day, as well, but while I was waling away at the dumpster a soft voice came, saying, “Excuse me, miss?”
The act of putting pen to paper was always a comfort. Of course I had a laptop, and most of the work done at the station was digital, but this was important enough that I made sure to make room for a notebook in my meager personal items weight allowance.
I had filled the notebook over halfway already, so I was trying to ration out the experience. I was getting used to the computer for homework, for taking notes, and for writing stories—though that last was a tough one. You get used to the speed you write, and the way your thoughts go faster, piling up behind the pen, waiting to come out, ordering themselves appropriately before it’s their turn to come out. And then you sit down at the computer, the thoughts come at the same speed, but it’s slower than you can type, so you constantly feel you’re working yourself dry, reaching for the next word—and then when it comes it may not even be the right one—well, that’s how it went for me, anyway. My remedy was to try thinking faster, and sometimes that worked… well enough for first drafts, anyway.
So the last things that still went in my notebook were the journal entries; things I didn’t want just anyone to see over my shoulder. As far as my friends were concerned, I wrote in code; of course explaining to them about dragons and their languages was out of the question, and elaborate lies would only be asking for trouble.
Anyway, today was a journal day, and as usual there was really only one thing to write about: the boy.
Besides being king, Frontarius was also proficient in theoretical magic, his skill being in determining the ebb and flow of magical currents, knowing where the potential for power was greatest.
He travelled the sea for many years, seeking where the highest peak of magical power in the world might be.
After much travelling he found an ice field where the peaks seemed highest—we know where it is, it is called the steps of Frontarius—and from each peak he found a higher and still a higher after that, till he finally found his summit.
And at that point the nightmares gathered.
The true panacea.
After finding I could walk again easily, I committed that page of the book to memory. If the unknown alchemist had made any other impossible discoveries, we could figure them out later, when I had translator access—for now, the allcure would be enough.
“I suppose there’s an easy way out from here?” I asked Munk. “Possibly some kind of giant-sized exit?”
Munk started walking along the shelf. I followed.
By one wall there was, in fact, a spiral staircase leading down—had the giant had normal-sized assistants?—leading down to another door like the one I’d come through, and then the golem was leading me through those infernal endless passages again.
This time, of course, there was no pain and no fatigue; I felt I could walk a good long time. So it probably seemed a good deal less time than it should have before Munk led me out of the halls of illuminated stone and into a dark room in what turned out to be a basement of the university library.
And then there was Internet.
I forwarded the formula to the professor first, of course.
And then I posted it on the alchemy metanetwork. I didn’t bother explaining—not yet—I needed to get this out as fast as possible.
People were dying, after all, and they didn’t have to be.
There were already confirmations being posted before I left the library.
“I think it’s gonna be a good day, Munk,” I said.
The triage started almost immediately—as fast as the doctors could be convinced. The alchemical principles, of course, were rock-solid, but without an understanding of them the panacea might as well be snake oil to them at best, or possibly harmful or fatal at worst.
But it happened, and we changed the world.
All worlds.
Since that day, though, I never saw another kelvin, not even in those undertunnels when we went back for the rest of the giant alchemist’s discoveries.
Blake landed on the library roof, folding his wings and crouching down so I could slide off him more easily.
The big red gryphon rolled over on his back, and after various stretches of various limbs he had changed himself back into a big red kangaroo.
I sat next to him, resting a paw on his belly, and looked down into his eyes.
He looked back, and then through me, up at the stars behind the dome. I rolled over on my back next to him, looking up likewise.
“I’m sure we don’t belong up here,” I said.
“Just because you’re not supposed to do something doesn’t mean you don’t do it,” Blake said. “It means you think about whether doing it is worth the consequences.”
I laughed. “You’re trying to corrupt me.”
“Not at all,” Blake said. “Just reminding you that you have the power of choice. Even if the consequences are dire, you can choose to risk them—a ‘Keep Out’ sign is not an impenetrable force field. So what are the consequences of being caught up here that are so dire anyway? What’s the scenario you imagine?”
“Well, for trespassing we might go to court…” I said. “Might be a fine, or even jailtime. A blemish on my public record.”
“That’s a worst case,” Blake said. “Isn’t it more likely that, say, someone might find us and say, ‘Hey kids, you don’t belong out here, come back inside,’ and we do? Or that we don’t get found at all?”
“You are trying to corrupt me,” I said.
“Only a little.” He turned to face me, resting one heavy arm on my chest.
And he moved his arm lower, his paw passing my stomach. “Maybe about… this much?”
He squeezed playfully.
“In a public place?” I said.
“Ah, but it isn’t public,” Blake said. “There’s a Keep Out sign. This place is private for the many who allow a piece of cardboard to be stronger than their willpower, when it should take a good deal more.”
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