by Paul Neuhaus
I got up out of Elijah’s bed, bloated and miserable. My feet had swollen and my big, fat middle was lagging behind me. Clearly, my daughter wanted to continue napping.
El came out of the master bathroom, leaving behind the sound of a freshly-flushed toilet. “You’re getting up?” he said.
“What was your first clue? The fact that I’m up?” I was cranky, but he was right to ask. I was on doctor-mandated bedrest for the rest of my pregnancy. El was doing everything for me short of carrying me to the john.
“Where’re you going? What’re you gonna do?” Somewhere around month six, my new husband had moved from “doting” to “domineering”. He was acting in my best interests and the best interests of our child, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t getting on my nerves.
“You know,” I said. “I’ve been hearing good things about this whole ‘vertical’ thing, so I thought I’d give it a try.”
“Okay, great, so you’ve done it. Why don’t you—?”
I was going to let him finish, then I was going to say something disagreeable in response. Callie put a stop to all that by kicking me hard from within. “Okay,” I said. “Okay, okay, okay. I think I better sit back down now.” I was winded and embarrassed from the rebuke by my soon-to-be-daughter.
Elijah came over and helped me ease back onto the king-sized bed. “I knew you were a contrarian when I married you,” he said. “See how I’m not making a big deal out of it.”
“You’re a real saint,” I said, but I kissed him back when he kissed me.
“I’m gonna make lunch,” he said and left the room.
As soon as he was gone, I cradled my gigantic belly with my left hand and said to Callie, “You’re gonna be just like me, aren’t you? Which means I’m in for a world of shit.” Callie—short for Calliope, which means “beautiful voiced”—didn’t reply. She was just being cagey.
My life had an odd flow. I took my meals at more or less regular times, but my sleep came in waves, some of it at night, some of it during the day. The only constants were the TV, Elijah’s mother hen routine, and the Arae’s nocturnal visits. Since I was bedridden, there was no chance I was going out of the Westwood home except for doctor’s visits. That didn’t stop the revenge-seeking bird-woman from her appointed rounds. Every night around eleven, the scratching would start at the window and it wouldn’t stop until dawn. Both El and I were so conditioned we barely noticed it anymore. I’m sure that would’ve been disappointing to the Arae had she known. After all, her job was to bedevil us. Despite being immobilized, I wasn’t feeling particularly bedeviled by much of anything. My husband and I were getting along just fine, and I was only a month or so away from delivering what I was told was a healthy baby girl. Whenever there was something particularly inane on the television, I would drift. Most often I found myself wondering why I’d spent so many years burrowed up my own ass. Things between El and I were just fine, and Keri spend evenings with me and we’d have some serious laughs. Jack didn’t visit much, but that was understandable. Hope and Steve had actually hit it off, but not in a creepy way, more in a brother and sister way. I was glad my old friend finally had a companion more like herself.
Everything was going great until the dreams started. Vague, terrible dreams full of rushing wind and faraway voices. At first, I couldn’t identify either the voices or the shapes I would glimpse through the tunnels of cloudy air. In time, I saw the faces of my friends, calling to me, reaching toward me desperately. They were panicked. They were in trouble, yet I couldn’t make out what they were saying or read the intent behind their terrified expressions. One thing I knew intuitively: I was not the cause of their distress. They were calling to me like I was at the bottom of deep well, and they needed my help.
Every time I would wake up with a shout and covered with sweat. Every time, El would say, “The same dream?”
I would say that it was nothing and I would urge him to go back to sleep, but, more and more, it didn’t feel like nothing. Not since the visions became more vivid and I could see faces. Ty, El, Keri, Amanda, Connie, Jack. All of them skinny, dirty and sweaty. All of them desperate. I’d never had a truly prophetic dream in my life, so I doubted this one meant anything, but why was it so persistent? Why was it so upsetting? They needed something from me, but they couldn’t get it across. They couldn’t make me see. They were frustrated (I could sense it), and so was I.
The next time we went to the doctor, I asked him for something to help me sleep and to shut the dreams out. He, being a purist, said, “No, ma’am. You’ll just have to hold tight for another month.” I nodded and smiled. The brave soldier on the outside, the increasingly anxious wreck on the in-.
Finally, the dreams became clear enough that I could make out some of what was being said over the rushing torrents of air. Dream El leaned in and, pleading said, “The Arae! The Arae followed you!” I awoke, gasping for air. Real World El mumbled. I told him to go back to sleep and he did with remarkable quickness. Once he was under, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time: I went to the window next to the bed and opened the curtains. There was the smiling Arae, scratching at the glass, patient as ever. The Arae followed me? What did that even mean? Followed me where? The fact she was dogging my every step was hardly front-page news. If I asked her could she clarify what Dream El had said? Callie kicked me, and I whispered for her to settle down. Momma had some thinking to do. I reached out and lifted the window just enough so there was an inch or two of screen between the Arae and myself. Not enough for her to get her hand through. I decided to take the direct approach. “You followed me,” I said.
To my surprise, the mean little creature spoke right up. “Yes,” she replied.
“Followed me where?”
She cocked her head, looking at me as if I’d lost my mind. Do you not know? the expression said.
“Followed me where?!” I repeated, this time with greater urgency.
“Into the Demizoi,” she answered, and my entire world came crashing down. The demizoi? How? What demizoi? Pan’s pinecone? But the world around me wasn’t like Pan’s pinecone. I took three steps backward and almost fell onto my ass. I was trying to reconcile what I knew and saw with what’d happened before the world had changed. At the Conclave, Prometheus had whited-out the world and, when my vision cleared, I was somewhere else. At the time, it looked as though everyone else had gone with me. What if they hadn’t? What if I was the only one, and I was trapped somewhere? Somewhere where I could be contained; put out of commission? I wanted to throw up. I wanted to lock myself in the bathroom and never come out. What was real and what wasn’t?
I regained some of my composure and retraced my steps back to the window. “You can follow me anywhere, can’t you? Because of your mission…”
The Arae nodded. “Yes. The doomed cannot avoid me. Even with clever tricks.”
I put my chin down on my chest and tried to regulate my breathing. I mostly failed. “Take me back,” I said. “Take me back and I’ll fight you. Without tricks. A fair fight. You’ll have a chance to finish your mission.”
“Come outside,” the monster replied.
I had to descend the steps from the second floor one at the time, scooting on my ass. When I got to the foyer, I stood again and had to grab the bannister when I became light-headed. A short wait brought clarity back to my vision, so I walked the short distance to the front door. I opened it and looked out into the stuffy night. The Arae hovered over the sidewalk that connected the porch to the driveway. I exited the home and walked toward her, being careful with the step down from the porch.
“No tricks?” the creature asked.
“No, no tricks.”
“It will be easy to kill you,” she said. “You are with child.”
I nodded but said nothing. I knew something she didn’t. I closed the distance to her and she did something odd. She lowered her palms to me for me to take. It was almost a loving gesture. I took her hands and the world flashed white around us.
/> We dropped into a field at night. The scene was utterly still. I had no time to process where I was because the Arae immediately yanked me forward. She still had me by the hands and was determined to make use of that tactical advantage. She had surprise on her side, but not physics. I jerked forward, but I didn’t fall. I outweighed the monster by more than double and I quickly repeated what she had done. I planted my feet and yanked, and, since she was tiny, and her bones were hollow, she snapped toward me with so much force her head trailed behind. I let go of her right hand and gave her a hook hard enough to jar her teeth loose. She pulled her remaining hand out of mine and flapped her wings to put some distance between the two of us.
“You said no tricks.”
“That wasn’t a trick. That was street fighting one oh one.”
To my right suddenly, I heard a voice. I looked in that direction, and, in defiance of all reason, there was Pan holding a gladius. He tossed it to me and I caught it. As the Arae watched, I took the sword and jammed it into the soil at my feet. “No tricks,” I repeated to my enemy. Without turning, I said, “Stay out of this, Pan!” Then I rushed forward, and she darted left. I went through the space where she’d been and pivoted on my heel, so I was facing her again. I rushed forward. She darted right this time, I spun, and we were back more or less where we started. I used the evolving pattern to my advantage. I pretended to rush forward but stopped almost immediately. The Arae darted right again, and I went to where she was rather than where she’d been. I grabbed her by the ankles and pulled. Once I had all her weight under my control, I reversed the direction of my arms and slammed her into the dusty ground like a rag doll. All the air came out her body and she laid there for several seconds. I let go of her ankles and tried to race up to where her torso was so that I could fall on it with all my weight. I missed when she rolled to the left. I ended up sliding and throwing up a cloud of dry ground. I looked left and was pleased to see she’d not made a clean getaway the way a non-winged person would have. She was a tangle of feathers, and I stamped out with my left foot so that it landed on her right wing, pinning it to the ground. She didn’t realize what I’d done until it was too late. She rolled too far and almost dislocated the wing I had locked in place. It hurt, too. She screamed loud and it echoed through the empty terrain. She brought up her left hand, rolled her torso back in my direction and clawed my arm. I didn’t even feel it. I was too focused. For the immediate future, I had one thing on my mind and one thing only. I used the fact she’d rolled closer to me, throwing my left leg over her body and sitting down on her stomach with all my weight. Her head snapped back and all the remaining breath in her escaped through her mouth. I didn’t do anything until her head popped back up again. As soon as it did, I leaned forward and took her head in both of my hands and started to squeeze. It was a maneuver I’d done a time or two in the past, but it’d been harder to pull off on those occasions. Right then, I was dealing with a creature who was part human and part bird. Hollow bones. When she felt her skull start to compress the Arae panicked. She clawed at me with her hands and feet both. I ignored the buffeting and the pain with a singular focus. I put all my upper body strength into the task, and at last, the Arae’s head popped, spewing blood and gore and gray matter all over me. Even after the monster was dead, I continued to push until my palms met in the soup that’d been her brain. Finally, it clicked in my own head the Arae was dead and I’d won. I sat up again and looked into the distance. I saw a huge, dark shape that blotted out the purple sky. At its apex, there were lights. But not electric lights. The illumination came from fires and torches. I had an immediate sense of deja vu, but it was too much for me to process right then. My breathing leveled off and my hands went to my stomach. When I felt down there and realized for certain I was no longer pregnant, I collapsed into a violently weeping mass.
Pan came to me, but I could neither understand what he was saying nor care.
I wasn’t pregnant with a daughter named Calliope. I’d never been pregnant with a daughter named Calliope.
I’d slept. I didn’t remember doing it or even how I’d gotten into the pup tent. I woke up with a start and looked around with huge eyes. “What—? What—? What—?” I shouted.
Pan was out of his sleeping bag in seconds and over to where I lay on the other side of the enclosure. “Easy, Dora. Easy. I’m here to help. No one’s gonna hurt you.”
“Where am I?” I said.
The satyr loosened the grip he had on my shoulders. “Look outside,” he said. “Look outside.”
I looked at him first and he nodded reassuringly. I crawled over to the tent flaps and undid the zipper running down the middle. I folded one side back and stuck out my head. The sun was just rising and, in front of me, I could see the Parthenon Restaurant. It was completely deserted—and it wasn’t just due to the earliness of the hour. It looked like it had sat empty for some time. Also, it looked like something was hanging from one of the drive-in roofs. It was too far away for me to make out. I looked to my left and could see the highway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas right where it should’ve been. There were no cars on it at all. In either direction. I noticed too that the colors weren’t ultra-vivid, and the ground wasn’t awash in pine trees. The world I’d reconciled myself to over I-don’t-know-how-long-a-period was no longer in evidence. If my senses could be trusted, I was back in the place I’d been pre-Conclave. “I don’t understand,” I said.
“Look to your right,” Pan said.
I did as he said and was flabbergasted. The dark shape I’d seen the night before was a mountain. It was no Everest, but it was tall nonetheless. I scanned upward toward the top and could just barely make out Grecian buildings and what appeared to be many large birds.
The mountain had not been there before the Conclave of Universal Consciousness.
The mountain was Olympus.
I felt myself growing faint.
My friend poked his head out alongside mine. He was close enough that I could smell his muskiness. “You’ve been inside an artificial reality,” he said gently. “Prometheus did it to take you off the table.”
“How long?” I said.
We looked at one another and Pan hesitated.
“How long?” I repeated.
“Nearly a year,” he said at last.
I’d propped myself up on my own forearms, so I could look out. They almost buckled underneath me. Pan placed a reassuring hand on my bicep. “So… Now I’m back…”
“Now you’re back.”
“How do I know for sure?”
“How do you know what for sure?”
“How do I know I’m back and this isn’t just another artificial reality?”
He blanched. I could tell he didn’t have a good answer.
I quickly said, “Never mind.”
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Wobbly” was the only thing I could think of to say. I didn’t tell him I’d been pregnant back in that other place. I would never tell anyone I’d been pregnant back in that other place. “Do you have a car?”
“I have your car.”
“Where’re the others?”
“Nearby. One of them anyway. We’ve been waiting for you here in shifts just in case you came back. Ty made it, so we could talk to you—although we were convinced it wasn’t working.”
Ty’d sent what I’d taken to be dreams. “The fact you’ve been waiting for me here… It wasn’t strictly for sentimental reasons, was it?”
He started to say something pithy but thought better of it. Instead he shook his head.
I started to crawl through the exit. “Let’s get going then.”
He grabbed me by my left ankle. “Are you ready to go back?”
“Do I have a choice? Besides, is it even safe to be here at the foot of Mount Olympus?”
He nodded, saying, “Can you give me a hand breaking down the tent?”
We stopped at the Joshua Tree Motor Inn and didn’t even have to get out. Elijah e
merged carrying an army surplus duffel bag. He jumped into the front seat of the Pontiac while I remained in the back. Pan was driving. My ex-boyfriend looked into the backseat and smiled a smile with as much relief as joy. He only had one eye. The other was covered by a patch. “Christ,” he said. “I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again.”
I hesitated at first. I had to wash away the idea that the two of us’d been joined in wedded bliss. (Soon I’d have to sit and take stock of just how many of my experiences from the last year were now rendered null. It would’ve been easier to just say, “all of it”, but jumping ahead like that would’ve given me a psychological Charlie horse, I’m sure.) “What happened to your eye?” was all I could think of to say. Not a bad place to start, really.
El put two fingers up to his patch and touched it lightly. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Sometimes I forget. It happened at the battle. There was a battle right after you disappeared.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I wanted as clean an understanding as I could get of what had happened at the Conclave of Universal Consciousness. For me, that event was split exactly in half. There was the real version I’d attended, and the fake version from after Prometheus had zapped the pinecone. What’d happened in the real world after I’d been disappeared? “Wait, hold on. I’m gonna need some help with this. You and I went to the Conclave to rescue Keri. Prometheus raised my magic pinecone, everything went white and—for me—after my vision cleared, the Conclave went on. It just went on inside an artificial reality. What did you see when the smoke cleared?”
Elijah nodded. Apparently, he’d expected my dislocation anxiety. “Everything went white like you said. After my sight returned, I looked over and you weren’t there anymore. Only the pithos was there. Sitting on the ground.”
I experienced a sudden start. “Oh, my gods! The pithos!” I’d just realized I didn’t have it. I’d left it back in the artificial reality. Actually, that wasn’t true: it’d been destroyed back in the artificial reality. Where was Hope? What was Elijah telling me?
