NeverSleep

by Brindi Quinn

  Feligo walks with a brisk gait. In contrast, Mael and Techton have always shared a leisurely pace. But even slower than they, is Pedj. He cranes his neck to catch full view of his glimmering surroundings. He pauses to look down covered alleys and beneath swinging bridges.

  A smile lights my face, for his actions make me wonder what reaction my pactor would have, were he awake.

  From his bed of skeletons, I imagine him shaking his head and observing the technology with cantankerousness. I predict a few unimpressed comments and an eagerness to return to the wild. And I would return there with him. I would take his hand, the only hand that may feel mine without enchant, and walk with him from the fallen world of man.

  “Grim? You comin’?”

  I have unintentionally halted, and Pedj has noticed the ceased movement of my shadow. I bob to show that I have heard, and continue on, flying between him and the marching bonemen.

  “Somethin’ wrong?” the ex-zombie pressures.

  As far as danger goes, all is fine. Not that I can tell him so.

  Or mayhap I can.

  Remembering our past exchange, I throw my hands into the air.

  “No, nothin’s wrong?”

  I bob for ‘yes’.

  “Yes, I’m right that nothin’s wrong? Or yes, somethin’ IS wrong? Argh. This is frustratin’, ain’t it!? I feel like you’re the most grounded of anybody and I can’t even get your real opinion on stuff. It’s all gotta go through that guy. What’s is, is how do we know if he’s lying or not?” He drums his fingers along his opposite wrist in thought. “OH! I got it! How’s about this: If he says you said somethin’ what you didn’t really say, you come over and go swoopin’ through me? The chill’ll let me know he’s not tellin’ your words. Twig it?”

  Aye, I twig it, and it is surprisingly practical.

  “To think you were capable of craft all this time. I have long thought you a simpleton, but I reason you might be slightly more than,” I say and laugh. A compliment and a laugh, both of which he cannot hear.

  But at that moment, something happens that makes me question the security of what I know to be true.

  “What was that!?” Pedj gives a jump.

  He is spooked over something. I do a quick flit around his person in search of the threat, but find none. I wait for him to expound.

  “Th-thought I heard a laugh for a skosh, right at my side. Phoo. Creepy. You hear it, Grim?”

  I do not answer him.

  I am frozen.

  He heard a laugh?

  But . . .

  He jumped at the precise moment that I laughed!

  He heard me?

  HOW IS IT THAT HE HEARD ME?!

  Alas, my excitement ebbs as quickly as it comes. It is not possible. We are no longer in the Golden Lands. I no longer exist.

  Woe. Woe and dread.

  Without Awyer to divert with, it is easy to become depressed. What is more, my bond with my pactor feels weaker today. The pull between us is not as strong as it once was. The sleepness takes its toll. I look to him, limp atop his altar, and a petrifying, forbidden thought invades my mind.

  What if . . . the longer that he is under the spell . . . the weaker our pact will become until . . .

  NO!

  I push it from thought.

  In the aftermath, the zombie does not move. He remains put and studies my still shadow upon the ground. He looks at it and then looks to the sun, and then returns his eyes to the ground. I work to see what he sees. Ah. At the sun’s angle, my shadow is nearly perfectly formed. A little elongated, yes, but it is more accurate than usual.

  Pedj sees it too.

  “I didn’t notice, Grim, but you look different than before!” he says, in a flurry. “Not so wispy, you know? And is that your hair? It’s gotten longer, hasn’t it? Lots longer than last I seen you in person!”

  It has? I have not enchanted it to do so, but when I look to my shoulder, I find that he is right. It is longer. Not ‘lots’ longer, but longer. So, too, are my nails pointed and grown. I draw them along my face. Strange. Never have I aged, and yet . . .

  With a shake of my head I will that my nails would revert to short. I enchant my fingertips to become as they were before. If they are growing, it is my duty to groom them.

  But I will leave my hair as it is. My pactor . . . he likes it that way.

  “I’m a little surprised that there aren’t any people out here,” says Techton. “I get that the world is a sort of under duress right now, but this place looks completely cleared out. Shouldn’t there be people sleeping in the middle of the street, halfway home from work? I see cycles lying around, but no riders.”

  Cycles. Those must be the three-wheeled contraptions settled along the street every so often. People use them for transport, apparently.

  “Not really!” Feligo opens his arms theatrically. “It was night here when the disease hit. Few were out of their homes, and those that were, well, I took care of them. The ones I could find, in any case.”

  “You mean you moved them indoors?” Mael trots from Techton’s side to join the Maestro. “You got on carryin’ them?”

  “Of course! It’s my duty to protect the people of Azuria! I could not let them remain outside, vulnerable to rain and looter!”

  Again he speaks of looters. Just what manner of looter does he fear?

  “You carried them ALL?” Mael’s eyes widen. “Musta been a chore!”

  “Well, not all of them, naturally. Only the ones I came across. It would be impossible to search the whole city by oneself. I only hope that if there were any other silvies hiding in the ranks, they did the same for those in their vicinity!”

  “You mean you don’t even know if there were more of your kind in the government?” says Techton.

  “It’s hardly a polite conversational piece! Oh, hello, and what ARE you?” Feligo clicks his tongue disapprovingly. “No, no, no.”

  Techton growls.

  Pedj thinks on it. “Wait, and you knew what homes where whose?” he says.

  “Ur, n-no.” For a fleeting moment, Feligo bares a look of sheepishness before recovering, “I did what any good official would do! I put them wherever I could!”

  “So . . .” Techton raises an eyebrow.

  “When they wake up, they’ll be in a stranger’s bed?” says Pedj.

  “IF they wake up,” Feligo corrects, diplomatically. He is quick to dismiss the subject with another flick of his long hair. “Onward!”

  With that, we progress.

  Passing under an arch leads to a long patch of blue-tinted grass. “Eventually, I’d like to set up agions at all of the plazas to find the people hiding in the city. I’m positive there are others, but since they’re fearful, they remain hidden. As opposed to the Bloődites, who are mostly mancers, we Azurians are mainly simple casters. That said, there are bound to be other silvies hiding here, even if not in the ranks. My cousins live over in Intia Junction. I haven’t gone to see them yet. We never were too fond of each other.”

  “Imagine that,” Techton masks with a cough.

  “Before the war, there were also dozens of mancers mixed into the population, but many of them left when things turned rocky–”

  “You mean when you attacked us for no reason,” Pedj masks with a second cough.

  “And the few who remained surely fled to their homeland by now. There’s no telling how many other – what did you call us, mythics? – Azuria housed.”

  “Before, though, you said you lost most of your men when the sleepness hit,” I say via Techton. “What happened to those who did not fall?”

  “Mm. Yes. Pinnacle was a dark thing. Didn’t know it until then. We parted ways en route to Jiik Anar.”

  Techton darkens over Feligo’s unfavorable handling of the words ‘dark’ and ‘thing’.

  “Then there was Sarasha, a cherub, as it turns out. Can you imagine?! She always claimed to be partially celestial, but it wasn’t until the disease struck that she admitted her fu
ll ancestry. She told me that each major city of the world has at least one cherub stationed there. Her job was to manage the distribution of luck.” Feligo’s head falls in a sigh. “She was a great aid. After she left, I was prone to tripping over useless things more often.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t just clumsy?” Techton scathes.

  “Where’d she go?” says Mael.

  “She went to rejoin her people in the Silverfalls.”

  Silverfalls? Silverfalls . . . The word is vague. Somewhere in the far reaches of my memory, I have heard of a place of splashing silver water and a great tree surrounded in cloud, but . . . my knowledge of the world grows foggier the more deeply for Awyer I feel.

  More and more, separation makes those compromising feelings deepen.

  After the blue-grassed plaza, we come to a place where one dome is suspended upon two others. We travel between the two base sistels, looking upward at the bottom of the third. The dome’s underside is metal, like the rest of it, but has been painted with a juxtaposition of symbols and words I do not understand. One recurring character matches the swirled sigil marking upon Feligo’s armored chest.

  I implore as to the meaning of the mural.

  “Just local kids showing off their allegiance to the crown,” says Techton. “Mostly stuff like for hail of Azure glory, or all the king’s men. Azuria’s a very patriotic city.”

  “I can see why you thought it best to exile yourself, my confidant.” If Techton is anything, he is far from patriotic.

  A good-natured chuckle rasps.

  Each time I hear that sound, I fear it will be the last. “Hold on to yourself, Techton,” I utter, a murmur.

  “Did you say something?”

  “No. It is nothing.”

  Were Awyer awake, he would scold me. Nothing always means something. Techton is not my sphinx, however, and he does not think to question it further.

  After a hearty passing of minutes, we arrive in a portion of the city with neat hedges and polished street posts. Mael points to a contraption sticking from the side of a nearby dome. “What’s is?”

  “It’s an elevator, Lady. See how there’s a track going around the sistel? Basically, you stand on the platform and it moves along the track. Some sistels, like this one, have something on the top. Sometimes a fancy eatery or a private garden. Things like that. Not all of the sistels have elevators on that outside, though. But they all have them inside. They’ll take you to whatever level of the sistel you live on.”

  “How’s it work?” Pedj asks with misgiving.

  “They’re powered by magick, of course.”

  At the end of the street, Feligo makes a sharp left. The new road leads to a cul-de-sac edged by three smaller-than-average domes. In front of each, there is a clean sidewalk lined with shoulder-high hedges blossoming with blue flowers. The flowers are striking from afar, but clam up when approached. Even my presence bids they revert into buds.

  “Sistels 47, 48, and 50,” beams Feligo.

  “What happened to number 49?” Pedj asks.

  “We don’t talk about Sistel 49,” says Feligo, solemn.

  Eyes wide, Mael silently begs Techton for explanation. Missing number 49 is of great interest to the necromancer, for whatever reason, but though she inquires with the eyes of a doe, the witch does nothing more than offer a shrug for an answer.

  “This way!” The Maestro leads his procession down the neat walkway of Sistel 48, but because he does not yet hold my trust, I issue a warning to my confidant before zipping ahead of the rest of them and moving through the wall of the structure. I will survey the dome before they enter, for sign of trap.

  The interior does not offer any hints of malevolence, as the space is completely unlit. The magicks used to light the dome have gone out. It is easily fixable if I can find out where to supply the power. I begin to search the dimness. Directly in the center of the room, there is a large orb set into the floor, the most logical fixture for producing light. Over twice my armspan in diameter, the thing will need quite a bit of power to run. And my power is weaker than I would like. I will not be able to light it on my own. Misfortune! I will not be able to perform an accurate sweep of the premises.

  I move to return to the outside of the dome. I will instruct Techton to stall. I will –

  But moving through the door does not happen as swiftly as when I entered the sistel. When I attempt to flit through the barrier, my body, it feels . . . thick. Though I begin to pass, I become stuck midway, as though I am moving through a sticky mess of putty. It is a trap after all?!

  But no. This is not the work of enchants. Though the atmosphere is heavy with Gold, I sense no malicious enchantment within the air. That only leaves . . . me. I am simply unable to follow through! But why?! Never before have I been unable to pass through a solid partition!

  If moving forward will not work, I have no choice but to return to the dome’s interior.

  Backward from the door, I pull myself. Willing myself to float does little good, so I am forced to rely on something else. I move my legs to resist the door’s captivity. Thinking physically, I pry myself away from the puttied grip of the door, and once I am free, I fall, staggering, backward.

  Something is wrong. I am not entirely light. I do not entirely hover.

  I have experienced this sensation once before. In the Golden Lands, where I was heard and seen by all, I staggered upon two legs, forcibly thrust into the plane of existence. It is not exactly the same as then, though. It differs in that I do not fully rely upon the ground to hold me. I am still halfway afloat.

  In this state, I bob, sickly, alike a kite that cannot gain wind, from ground to air and then again to ground; and when I have not the strength to hold myself up, I sink to the floor, which has also become putty. The betrayalsome thing sucks me in so that my bottom half is melted into the surface of the earth, and there I remain until Feligo opens the door to Sistel 48 and lights my pathetic state for all to see.

  For all to see:

  A figure of speech, used for no sensible reason.

  Because only Techton can see me.

  Or so I think.

  “There’s an intruder!” Sword raised above head, Feligo barrels into the dome, sounding a verbal alarm. “State your business here!”

  Stuck into the floor, I frantically search for the intruder he sees. I detect no one. Within the now-lit dome, there is only the central orb, a spread of velvet-patched couches and polished metal tables, a wall of tiny symbol-marked doors, and an elevator lift at the far end of the room.

  “Grim?” Techton pushes past Feligo. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you on the ground?”

  “I am stuck! I do not know! Something is wrong with my composition. I am between states. Too vague to be real, yet too solid to fly!”

  Feligo appears to have lost the wind from his sails. He lowers his weapon with befuddlement.

  Last to enter the room are the necromancers, and they speak in unison:

  “Grim?!”

  And before I can comprehend what is happening, Feligo adds to the mix, “THAT is your fae?”

  “You can see me!”

  “Not totally,” says Mael. She rushes to my side and takes a kneel. “You’re see-through-ish.”

  “Truly?!”

  “Yeah.” Pedj nods. “And your voice is echoic.”

  “How is this happening?!” I charge, turning my hands over in front of my face with new wonderment.

  Chin in hand, Feligo struts professionally to where I have meshed with the floor. He does an inspective circle around Mael and me, and then he sniffs at the air.

  “The Gold here is thicker than outside. Perhaps that’s to blame?”

  “Oh! Could be!” Pedj’s excitement grows. “In the Golden Place, we could see her, too!”

  Mael puts her hand on my hip without permission. Her fingers slide through my silver skin in a way that is violating.

  “A-ah! Do not touch me, Mael!”

  “Thought I coul
d pull you up, but you’re smooshy. Gotta use magic, ‘stead.”

  “That is all fine, Mael, and I am glad for the offer – I purely do not appreciate you intermingling with my composition like that! It differs from when I move through someone under normal circumstances: I am able to feel you, and it is unsettling!”

  The intrusive girl looks to her hand that is suspended inside of me. “Oh, oka.” She extracts it.

  Much better.

  “Mael,” Pedj babbles with embarrassment. “Sorry, Grim.”

  “Techton, do I appear any differently to you?”

  “Not really,” he says. “Besides being stuck in the floor, that is.”

  “Har, har,” Pedj responds sarcastically, if only to defend my honor.

  An idea comes to me.

  “My confidant, if they are able to incompletely see and touch me, perhaps you – who can see me under normal circumstances – may be able to touch me more than they. If Void and Gold blend, there is a chance that you will be able to meet my flesh with yours and pull me from this position.”

  “Meet my flesh with yours?” Techton shakes his head. “Sometimes, faerie, your lingo isn’t quite right.” He chuckles to himself. “Anyways, if you think it’ll work, it’s worth a try.” He offers me his calloused hand.

  Before taking it, I focus my energy. I will myself to be real. I summon my body to the plane of here and now. May it work. May my body become solid enough for Techton to grasp and the floor to reject.

  Real and solid, I concentrate on the memory of holding my sphinx’s body. I remember the way it felt to effortlessly make contact with his warm skin, skin once racing with veins and power, now gone cold and vacant. I remember the way it used to be.

  Solid.

  Solid.

  Solid.

  “Well, what do you know?” Techton does not wait for me to take his hand. He takes mine on his own. It is as real a contact as when I touch my pactor, only, Techton’s hand is not the hand of a near-death cursee. It is alive.

  The Azurian does not stop there. He pulls me from the clingy ground and buoyantly pops me into his arms.

  “So this is what you feel like in his arms. Light little thing, aren’t you?”