Dreamquake

by Elizabeth Knox

  “What about the poetry?” Rose said.

  “It seems there are two voices,” Chorley said. “One complains, the other seems to be in an ecstasy of anticipation.”

  Grace held the notebook out, and her husband took it. “Dear,” he said, “I do feel that I’m blundering around in the dark. I do feel like a dim-witted dilettante. But I don’t think I’m wasting my time.”

  Tziga added, hesitantly, “What Laura did to you, Grace, and to the rest of the Rainbow Opera’s patrons, she did because I told her to when I wasn’t in my right mind. I don’t trust my judgment anymore, but I do trust Chorley’s.”

  “It may all really matter, Ma,” Rose said. “What we choose to do might make a big difference.”

  Chorley kept his eyes on his wife’s face. “I promised the Grand Patriarch my time in exchange for his telling me where Tziga was. I’m honoring a promise.”

  “Marta knew too, and she chose not to tell you,” Tziga said. “They thought I might not live. And they thought I knew more about the Body and Doran than I did, that I was in deeper with the Body than I was. And they supposed I knew more about the Place, as though it was a deity and I was its prophet. An evil deity, with an evil prophet,” Tziga added, then put a hand over his face.

  Chorley started and hurried to him.

  “It’s all right, Da,” Laura said.

  Chorley said, “You should be resting, Tziga.” They helped him up and walked him slowly from the room. For a time they could be heard making soothing sounds as they helped him up the stairs.

  Rose and Grace looked at each other.

  “You do know I’m not siding with Da against you,” Rose said. “Ma, you’re determined we stop snooping only because you’re afraid we’ll get into trouble. You’re just as sure as we are that the Body is up to no good.”

  “But why does it have to be our problem?” Grace asked.

  “Because we know about it.”

  5

  UST THREE DAYS LATER GRACE FOUND HERSELF PRESIDING OVER A VERY DIFFERENT HOUSEHOLD.

  Chorley came in with an armload of parcels while the girls were having their breakfast. He turned back the cloth at one end of the table and put the parcels down, and Grace laughed as Rose practically climbed over Mamie to grab one and tear it open. Dress patterns and samples of cloth spilled out onto the tabletop, some of the swatches of silk crepe so light that they seemed to skate on cushions of air, speeding across the polished table and onto the floor. Mamie and Rose snatched and tussled. Laura gathered up the dropped swatches and started to hand over the pearls, and pure whites, and oysters, and creams.

  “I’ll look awful in all of these,” Mamie said, with no hint of her usual aloof sarcasm.

  “Oh no, let’s see, there must be something suitable.” Grace got up to join them.

  “I’m going to choose a plain design.” Rose was sorting through the patterns. “Something only I can wear.” She drew herself up to her full five foot ten. “And I am not going to show off my bosom.”

  “At least you have a choice about that,” said Mamie, and crossed her arms over her large breasts, as though hoping to push them back into her body.

  Rose shuffled patterns. “I’m sure we can find something pretty and becoming for you.”

  “But am I becoming?” Mamie raised an eyebrow.

  Grace and Rose nodded earnestly.

  Mamie looked away. “I’m becoming bored.”

  Laura, who had been standing stock-still and staring out the glass doors of the dining room, spun around and said, “Excuse me, Mamie. Could I borrow Rose for a moment?”

  “She’s not mine to lend,” Mamie said.

  Laura grabbed her cousin’s hand and opened the doors.

  “Come into the garden, Maud,” muttered Mamie as the other two went out.

  “What is it?” said Rose, then found herself performing a little hop to avoid tripping over some stones—five of them—that had been laid, in a neat row, on the bottom step of the veranda.

  Laura let go of Rose to push the stones under the step.

  “What?” Rose demanded.

  “I’m sure that’s a sign,” Laura said. She took hold of Rose, led her to the edge of the lawn, and began stooping to peer under bushes.

  “What are we looking for?” Rose said, and began to search too—pausing once to dive into a bush and retrieve a croquet ball.

  Laura continued to work her way around the house. Then she started down the track to the lagoon. She said, over her shoulder, “He won’t be too near the water.”

  A moment later Laura had to double back for Rose, who had stopped following.

  Her cousin pulled at her, but Rose stood firm.

  “Don’t be scared,” said Laura. “He won’t hurt you.”

  “No. No. No,” Rose said, and wriggled to shake off Laura’s grip. But she didn’t make any move to go back up to the house.

  Laura let go and faced Rose. “You wanted to know. This is the only way you are ever going to come near to knowing.”

  Rose said, “I’ve seen it. I can believe my eyes.”

  “You should meet him.”

  Rose could feel the blood in her head—indignation, fear, and fury. She told her cousin, “People don’t meet monsters. No one offers introductions to monsters.”

  “Aren’t you even curious?”

  Rose was quiet, thinking about that. Laura waited, looking so anxious for approval that Rose wanted to smack her. Rose began down the path again. Laura gave a little gasp of relief and darted on ahead, searching the trees. Rose felt she was out walking a silly young dog.

  Laura’s monster was hiding in the filmy gloom under a tall weeping willow. At first it was hard to see, utterly still, and of a dun shade similar to the tree trunk. But when Laura flung the willow fronds aside, it stirred, and the light scintillated on its sandy skin. Rose saw Laura take one of its hands, her fist closing around a big thumb. She drew the monster out.

  Rose backed away as it approached. Laura was between them, her face glowing with love, but the monster was so huge, so competent in its movements, so uncanny, that Rose could not hold her ground.

  “This is Rose,” Laura said to her monster, who continued to look down on the top of Laura’s head, then into her face as she turned back and glowed up at it.

  “She looks so proud of me you’d think she’d made me too,” Rose said. She heard how steady her voice was and felt a little braver.

  Laura laughed. She said to her monster, “Were the rivers and streams a problem on your way back?”

  “It hasn’t rained, and they are smaller,” the monster replied.

  Rose thought that no one could ever mistake that voice for human. It was too dry. There was no moisture, no flesh, involved in it. The sound wasn’t even animal—yet those were words. Rose shivered but continued to stand her ground.

  “Let your cousin go back to the house,” the monster said. “You must have things you need to tell me, Laura.”

  Laura looked disappointed, as if she’d hoped they would all sit down together and have a conversation. She looked at Rose, then back up at her monster. “But the things I have to tell you are about discoveries Rose has made. We think that the Regulatory Body has built a rail line into the Place. We thought that you and I should go look at it, and see where it goes.”

  The monster did not move its eyes. It didn’t glance up at Rose for confirmation, as any person would have. It hadn’t looked at her at all, she was sure. The only indication she had that it knew she was there was that it had spoken to Laura about her. It wasn’t as though the monster was being rude; Rose didn’t feel snubbed, as she would have if a person had treated her this way. She just felt that she wasn’t the monster’s business—that she was so not its business that her existence was minimal to it. “Laura,” she said, “you talk. You make plans.”

  “Am I to set out somewhere?” the monster said, to Laura.“Tonight will be safer than today. Where shall we meet?”

  Laura clutched the m
onster’s arm and pulled. It didn’t lean into her. It was immovable. Her feet slid on the gritty ground till she was pressed against its side. “Don’t go right away,” she said. “You just came.”

  “I said tonight, not today.”

  “You must be tired.”

  “Now you are being silly, Laura.”

  Laura laughed again. She sounded very happy.

  Rose said to her cousin, “I will leave you to give your—sandman—directions.” Then, “He does follow orders, doesn’t he?”

  “Oh,” Laura said, and laughed some more. Then she collected herself and said, “Well, obviously. He’s here, isn’t he?”

  “Here,” thought Rose, “and shouldn’t be. Shouldn’t exist.” But she said, “I’ll leave you to talk.” She backed away from the willow. She kept backing, kept the monster in sight for a time before turning and hurrying up the hill to the house.

  IV

  The Depot

  1

  EN DAYS LATER, LAURA MADE HER RENDEZVOUS WITH NOWN A LITTLE EAST OF THE LAST REGULAR TRAIN STOP AT Morass River. They began their journey, weaving In and out across the border. Inside, they tramped through dry but untouched and upstanding meadows, Nown going before Laura and treading the stalks down. The going was easy. Every few minutes they would stop and listen for signs of other travelers. The trail was deserted.

  As they went, Laura gazed Inland, across the grasslands to a line of low hills, all in graduated shades of beige. Sometimes she turned her eyes toward what she could see beyond the border, an endless haze of meadow that faded away to a creamy sky. Laura knew that if she walked in that direction she would cross back into the green world. But, as she gazed, she began to imagine facing a second kind of Try, in which she would find that the reliable border had vanished, and she’d never be able to get out again. She saw this so clearly that she had to check, to walk toward the border—

  —where she found herself on a path that ran along a bluff above one of the many brilliant blue coves in Coal Bay’s notched curve. The sun was hot and had raised all the perfume of the forest.

  Nown stepped out beside her. Almost onto her, since she hadn’t moved to make room for him. She teetered, and he caught and steadied her.

  A light wind was hissing through the scrub and flax between the track and the coast. The sea was calm, the waves idle and sleepy. But it seemed noisy after the Place. Laura said, “We won’t hear anyone coming along this track. We’ll be caught. And your eyesight is better in there, isn’t it?” She said all this but didn’t really want to go back In.

  “It’s only because there’s less to see that people are highly visible there,” Nown said. “Laura, we’ll make better progress on this side of the border. And if I carry you, then you can listen while I walk.”

  Of course Laura went to sleep in Nown’s arms and didn’t wake till his gait changed. He was stepping from boulder to boulder along a beach heaped with stones ranging from fist-sized to elephantine. “I think I’ll stay where I am for now,” Laura said, and tightened her arms around his neck. “Don’t drop me.” She knew he wouldn’t, said it only to savor how safe she felt.

  Nown said, “I want to beat the tide. To get around that headland before the sea comes up.”

  Laura wondered what it was like for him, stalking along the edge of a sea that was invisible to him except as a hole in the world, a void that gradually came up to engulf the path on which he made his way. She asked, “Does the sea frighten you?”

  “The tide is reliable. And none of these bluffs is too steep to climb.”

  “But doesn’t it unnerve you? Don’t you feel threatened? Don’t you think, ‘What if a big wave comes?’”

  “No,” Nown said. “I don’t know that I have an imagination.” He gripped Laura firmly and vaulted up a rocky spur in several strides, launching himself across gaps lined with kelp and thickly beaded with green-lipped mussels. A high swell pushed into a gap and, white with trapped air, lunged at Nown’s legs. Laura squeezed her eyes closed and pressed her face against his gritty neck.

  By late afternoon they had rounded the headland at the western end of the Awa Inlet. The tide was still high, and they faced a wide sweep of water. Far away across the Inlet was the lacework of a railway trestle across a river. Beyond that they could see the thick forest in the rain shadow at the back of the Inlet and, against the dark hills, the blond stone of the Doran summer house, shining in the low sun.

  “We should go as far as that long bridge over the river mouth, then turn back In,” Laura said. “If I sleep soon, I can be up again before midnight. And I’m sure we can get from the bridge to the house between four and dawn, at your speed.”

  Nown pointed at the water directly below them, at a channel, blue between two submerged sandbars. “What is that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Laura said, looking at it. Then she realized. “Oh, damn—there are two rivers. That’s the Sva going out through the reedbeds way over there. The Rifleman must be hidden behind this headland. I’ve gone past here in the train dozens of times, but it all looks different.” She could see that the water in the channel was moving very fast. Even if they waited for the tide to go all the way out, the river would still be there, pushing against the cliff on the far side of the headland.

  “The channel is a colder nothingness,” Nown said, to explain how he’d picked out the river from the surrounding seawater. “It is even more nothing.”

  Laura said, “The rail line is in a tunnel here. After the tunnel it runs along a ledge above the river and turns onto a bridge.” She pointed at the hill they stood on. “The tunnel runs through this hill, and the bridge must be just beyond it.”

  She knew the view out the train windows very well, the long curve of graded track that passed down a channel of rock roughly formed by dynamite, then chiseled out by the pickaxes of—she now knew—convict laborers. The bridge over the Rifleman was iron, and very strong. It had to be. The Rifleman was a short river, fed by streams draining from a range of rainy mountains. It arrived at the sea swift, chilly, and full. Ten miles farther along the rail line was the other, bleached-ironwood structure, which picked its way across the braided channels and low sandbanks of the Sva mouth. The Sva where it reached the sea was a much gentler river than the Rifleman, its stream hastened only a little as its valley narrowed between the foothills and solitary Mount Kahaugh.

  Laura said, “Put me down.”

  Nown lowered her to the ground, and she leaned against him and stretched and shook her legs to get her blood moving again. Then she took his hand to encourage him and began to scramble up the hill through the scrub, grabbing at the slender trunks of Hebes and brilliant waxed sea laurel. She let go of Nown to haul herself up the steepest part of the slope. She could hear him following her, the foliage making a flinty scraping against his hardened body.

  Laura reached the top of the hill and went on carefully after that, peering till she saw where the scrub abruptly came to an end. She crept forward and arrived at a drop. She craned over and saw the brick buttresses of the tunnel mouth and the railway line twenty-five feet below.

  She turned to Nown. “If we climb down beside the tunnel,we can go along the track and cross the bridge. It’s the quickest route.” Then, “Can you see in the dark?”

  “I don’t know dark, Laura. ‘Dark’ is what you say to explain not being able to see.”

  “Oh,” said Laura. She lay down on her stomach, unscrewed the copper cap of her water bottle, and held the bottle under a steadily dripping fringe of moss. Her arm tired, but she managed to get a drink.

  “I have water,” Nown said, and shook one of the two big skins he carried.

  “I’ll need that later, when we go In.”

  Laura rolled back from the bluff and onto her sandman’s feet. She pulled at his arm to let him know she wanted him to sit. He folded himself carefully into the little space there was, branches snapping as he lowered himself onto them. “I’m going to sleep for a while,” Laura said
. “Please make sure I don’t roll off the drop.”

  He lifted one leg and placed it, crooked, over her body. She rearranged herself, her back to the drop and her head pillowed on his other foot. She said, sleepy, “You know to stay still, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Laura.”

  She closed her eyes and let herself drift off.

  Laura slept for a few hours and woke up, stiff and cold. The sun had gone, and Nown was nearly the same temperature as the air. It was summer, but she had let herself fall asleep on the ground without wrapping herself in her bedroll.

  Though all the sunset color had gone, the sky in the west had a pithy pallor, and there was still enough light for Nown and Laura to climb safely down the bluff onto the track.

  The tunnel mouth breathed at their backs, smelling of wet brick and coal smoke.

  They began on down the long, shallow incline of the track. Both were walking as far from the drop as they could, Laura leading and Nown following. They stepped from tie to tie and built up quite a rhythm, hurrying, only sometimes steadying themselves against a pickax-pockmarked rock of the cliff face.

  They reached the place where the track turned away from the cliff. It ran onto an iron trestle that curved to join the span of the rail bridge. There was nowhere to pause and step off the track. Still, Laura put her hand back to halt Nown. He stopped instantly at her touch, didn’t blunder into her as most people would have. She glanced back and saw him frozen with one foot raised. He looked like a photograph of himself.

  Laura listened to the night. She couldn’t hear the river. The tide was high, slack, and silent. She heard one of the little rain-forest owls giving its two-note cry. She heard oyster-catchers out over the Inlet. She didn’t hear any trains.

  Laura stepped onto the bridge. It wasn’t a very long span, probably no more than fifty yards. It was easier to walk on than the track by the cliff had been; there were girders under the timber ties of the bridge, a firm skin of rivet-studded iron. It was a good surface, and Laura hurried.