The Thousand Year Beach

by TOBI Hirotaka

  Anna, Donna, and Luna were also at the table, busy at lacework. The triplets hunched identically, working their needles at blazing speed. Jules still could not tell them apart.

  The most skilled Glass Eye users in the entire Realm were all at Jules’s table.

  One of the triplets picked up her little glass and tossed back her drink.

  “So, Donna” Jules said. “What do you think? Any problems in the lace I wrote?”

  “And why should there be, sonny boy?” Donna widened her eyes, already magnified by her glasses, and grinned. “I’m very impressed. This pattern had never occurred to me before, but it’s a pretty one. Easy to knit, too. Of course, what really matters is how it performs …” She put her index finger to her chin and tilted her head. “I’m not a smarty like you, so that’s beyond what I can calculate. Have to use it to find out. But you did get one thing wrong. The most important thing, in fact.”

  “I did?”

  “I’m Anna, not Donna.”

  The other two looked up and snickered. Jules cocked his head. He had to admit that they looked identical to him.

  The sister sitting to Anna’s left spoke up.

  “Let me teach you how to tell us apart, Jules,” she said. “Anna’s the one who’s good at making jam. Pickles are Luna’s specialty. And the best at making pâté, and also jam and pickles, is me—Donna.”

  The three of them began to argue like sparrows, praising and denouncing each others’ abilities in this field and that. All while keeping their knitting needles in motion.

  “I don’t know who’s the best at what,” said Jules, shaking his head, “but I doubt that would be much help telling you apart anyway, Donna.”

  “Eh? I’m Luna,” said the triplet he was sure had identified herself as Donna just moments ago, surprise in her face.

  Many old photographs were on display in the hotel lobby. One photo was of the triplets in their youth. There they were at seventeen, each escorted by a different man, all three as beautiful and charming as cheerful as fairies.

  Those days still seemed to linger in the three of them as they laughed before him now. In fact, they looked as bewitching as ever.

  They had remained unmarried for family reasons. Their mother had become bedridden from a young age, and they had a younger brother weakened by illness.

  Today, their little house had been set upon and devoured by the Spiders.

  Their fine, cozy work space, the aromatherapy salon that had served as a meeting place for the elderly, their mother and brother—none had been saved.

  “Still not finished, Yve?”

  Felix Carrière had come to the table. There was a restless irritability in his piping voice. He rubbed his thin, fox-like face nervously with his palm. His frizzy red hair swayed like tufts of corn silk.

  “No? Denis is waiting. The deputy mayor too.”

  “Almost done, Felix. Just a little longer.”

  Yve tried to placate her younger husband with a smile, hands never stopping. Felix was a tailor and a customer of Yve’s lace since her youth, long before they became man and wife.

  “You have to stop dithering and get it done. If it isn’t finished, it’ll cause a chain of other problems later.”

  Everyone knew this already. Jules, leaning on Julie, glared at the little man, with his pointy nose and weak chin and lined forehead. Jules’s own mood worsened as he listened to Felix speak, getting caught up in the older man’s irritation.

  “I’m sorry.” Instead of arguing, Yve offered another smile, this one saying Even I can’t believe how slow my hands move.

  It was a mystery to Jules what Yve saw in Felix.

  “Come on, don’t do this to me,” Felix said. He sighed heavily. “Just unbelievable. How many hours is this going to take? You aren’t slacking off at a time like this, I hope?” His nose and eyes were red and he fidgeted restlessly. So he was drunk. At a time like this.

  “She’s just got a bit more to go,” Jules put in, unable to help himself. “Don’t rush her.”

  Felix blinked at him. “Was that addressed to me, Jules?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “All right. Remember this.” Felix leaned closer to Jules’s face, thrusting his hand into his apron’s breast pocket. It was a tailor’s apron, with many pockets and a large pair of scissors slipped into it. “I can take a scolding from a kid. You ever blow across an empty bottle? That hooting sound? Yeah, that’s what kids sound like when they complain like that. You’re happy to bitch about what adults do, but that’s only because you can’t do anything yourself yet.”

  Jules gave up on the conversation. Beside him, Julie let out a pointed hoot. Jules had done his job, Yve was doing hers. Who, she was asking, was the child here?

  Felix couldn’t even see that much. Perhaps satisfied that he had told Jules what was what, he walked over to the counter. He was hoping for another drink.

  “Sorry about that, Jules,” said Yve. “Now, is this coming out okay? Take a look.”

  Jules took a glance at her lacework and said, “It’s perfect.” Yve had pushed her skills to the limit to realize the delicate net of loops, and the result was exquisite. Jules had been watching closely the whole time to make sure that the program he had worked into these loops had no bugs.

  “Take a look at ours, too,” said one of the triplets. “Too late to reknit it all now anyway.” Their work was much plainer than Yve’s, but perfectly executed within those bounds. The quality of the workmanship was also remarkably consistent across the three of them.

  Yve’s tablecloth, even closer to completion, was still spread over the large table. Lace knitted from Spider silk hung from the edges in places, and there were some intentionally unfinished areas too.

  The door to the casino burst open and things suddenly became boisterous. Ten or so of the fishermen clumped into the room in rubber boots, bringing with them a reassuring air of indomitability.

  Anne and the others were back.

  “Jules! Where is that little slave driver?” she called with cheerful acerbity, voice booming like a man’s. She was a head taller than even the grizzly crew that surrounded her. “Ah, there you are. On Yve’s tit, are we?”

  Jules blushed. Yve’s mild face and ample proportions did give her a motherly air. Over by the counter, Felix looked displeased, but elected not to remonstrate with Anne, slouching forward over his glass instead. Anne, of course, ignored him entirely and approached the table.

  Even simply walking toward him, she was magnetic—the epitome of fearlessness.

  “Nice work, Jules. You’re something else,” she said, ruffling his hair and smiling. Her full upper lip, the same color as the rest of her skin, was pulled back slightly from her teeth. Her eyes, turned up at the corners, were as wide and blue as the morning sky. Against the bronze of the rest of her body, they sparkled like blue diamonds.

  “I guess I am.”

  Anne laughed. “‘I guess I am,’ he says! You hear this kid? Destined for greatness, and no mistake. Don’t worry. Everything went as planned. We ran it around the whole thing, just like you said.”

  “Thank you.”

  Anne sat herself down beside him with a thump. “Get over here, you ugly mugs,” she called to the other fishermen. “Come take a look at Yve’s lace. It’s come out amazing.”

  Among the fishermen, there was only one who was as tall as Anne. That young man approached her now.

  The man who was to have battled Jules on the chessboard that night.

  The man who lent Anne poetry.

  The man whose voice alone had pulled a singing teacher out of her panic.

  Julie sat up straighter. Jules could feel her eyes softening from his seat next to her.

  José van Dormael sat quietly down beside Anne.

  There were eight of them sitting around the table n
ow.

  Denis Prejean appeared through a different door, accompanied by Charles Bernier. Between the two of them they carried a large leather trunk. It was a modified version of the sort of giant case that a harness maker might fashion for sea travel. They stepped gingerly, lips pressed thinly together. Finally they reached the table and put their load down on it, sighing as one.

  “Opening it now,” said Bernier solemnly, and flipped open the trunk’s latches.

  He removed some shock-absorbent padding to produce a smaller box from within. When he opened this and pulled aside the glossy fabric covering its contents, the room gasped. It was the Crystal Chandelier.

  The Crystal Chandelier was an oval Glass Eye more than thirty centimeters long. No Eye of comparable size had ever been seen before or since. If the world could be said to refer to the Realm, then the Crystal Chandelier was the biggest Glass Eye in the world.

  Would comparisons to a flat-cut diamond help to convey some part of its form, its transparency, its frozen gleam? It was so beautiful that it might have drawn in all the light in the room, luring in the rays with its bewitching appeal. Every one of its countless cuts was perfect, and no matter what sort of light shone on it from which direction, both light and stone were only rendered even more beautiful.

  They carefully lifted the Crystal Chandelier from the trunk and placed it on the table. It reflected the candlelight so brightly that it seemed to be another flame. Jules wondered what you might see if you peered into the stone. The light and sound, the emotions and sensations that leapt in through its thousands of cut faces—how would they be transformed and woven together, tied into singularities and then undone once more? Not even Jules could simulate that in his mind. It would be a dance of vast proportions, an elegant and sharp intersection of the most challenging steps.

  Yve had told him something about Glass Eyes long ago. “You can’t know everything that’s inside them,” she had said, “any more than you can know everything that happens in a person’s brain.” If the Glass Eyes were brains, then the Glass Chandelier was surely the brightest of them all. An intelligence of light woven by cut and clarity.

  “There,” Yve said with apparent relief. “I’m finished. Felix, the lace is finished!”

  “It’s finished?” Felix leapt to his feet. “Denis, it’s finished! Yve’s done it. She’s finished.” He swayed on his feet as he bragged to the manager.

  “We’re almost there, then,” said Denis, acknowledging Felix’s words absently as he rubbed his bald pate.

  The Crystal Chandelier was placed atop Yve’s lace. The lace that Julie had knitted was draped over the top, and then the two pieces of lace were deftly knotted together in a few spots.

  Next, three smaller Eyes were carried in to sit atop the lace the triplets had made.

  The Father of Flame was an amber Eye with a slightly viscous texture and fire at its core—not a reflection of the fireplace but what appeared for all the world to be a real ember within the Eye. The surface of the Father of Flame was only slightly warm to the touch, but the right user could persuade it to externalize its fearsome heat—to use it to change the temperature of the outside world.

  Snowscape was a stranger beast. A perfect sphere of stunning transparency, it enclosed a snowy landscape, a night scene complete with house and raging blizzard. It looked exactly like a toy snow globe. The chill within Snowscape could be externalized as a strongly directional beam, or as weather. Like the Father of Flame, it had rare offensive capabilities, and these two Eyes were arranged on either side of the Chandelier.

  The third Eye was like a black pearl fifteen centimeters across. Not many Eyes could boast of such size. It was called the Black Grid. Its powers were largely unknown, but it had been adopted at Yve’s suggestion.

  The lace on which the three new Eyes rested was connected to the Crystal Chandelier’s lacework.

  “Is everything else in place?” asked Bastin.

  “Ready and waiting,” Anne said cheerfully. “We also inspected the place where the stones are going to be kept. All looks perfect. Those damn Spiders can come whenever they like, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Be careful what you wish for. I’d prefer they didn’t come at all.”

  Denis rubbed his head, his careless gesture releasing the tension that Anne’s thoughtless remark had introduced. After today’s experiences, how many had expected to smile again? Denis had that sort of personal magnetism, and Anne knew it. She stood up at once and bowed her head to him.

  “My apologies,” she said.

  “All right,” said Jules, rising to his feet. “We have to wake up the Chandelier. And then we have to teach it the ropes. This is where things get hard.”

  Bernier stared in admiration at the twelve-year-old boy who had just risen to his feet with an All right. The boy was a genius. His stamina was nothing to sneeze at, either.

  Bernier recalled the events of the afternoon.

  After Julie had lent her Glass Eye to Bastin, Jules had proposed an eye-popping plan. That plan had been adopted, and at three in the afternoon preparations had just begun when the Spiders recommenced their attack.

  They had not been in their nest in town as those at the hotel had supposed. Instead of traversing the Catwalk, where police officers stood guard, the Spiders had crossed the mountains, pouring over the towering ridge to fall on the east bay from above.

  The hotel had set watchmen, but word of the sudden offensive arrived far too late. Sixteen Spiders attacked the summer homes on the slopes. The hunger rolled over the cluster of elegant buildings like an avalanche, obliterating them in the blink of an eye. The large cottage where the refugees of schooling age had been gathered, the groundskeeper’s office in the gardens that had been opened up to the smaller children—it all disappeared without a sound. There was not even time to scream.

  Not satisfied with laying waste to the beautiful summer-home district, the Spiders descended farther and made jet-black holes of the sanitariums and the elderly refugees within those buildings. Finally, when they were almost at the hotel and its marina, they were met by the Mineral Springs’ vigilance committee.

  Standing at the head of the committee were Anne and her younger fishermen.

  Everyone knew by then that Anne had taken down a Spider with a harpoon and two knives. Nobody had managed to re-create her feat, but the story still held an important lesson: the Spiders could be damaged by objects from within the Realm.

  The Spiders were, in all likelihood, from elsewhere. The likes of their hunger had never been seen in the Realm before. If not for Anne’s reckless act, it would not have been clear whether they could be damaged by rocks or fire or harpoons—physical objects—at all. And, of course, the Spider’s carcass she had brought to the hotel was another, even more important success.

  The clash at three o’clock ended with the Spiders just barely held at bay.

  This was, first of all, because Anne had kept the committee’s morale and confidence high.

  Then there were the tactical lessons Julie had shared. Eyes capable of powerful reflections and transformations had been removed from their display cases in the VIP room. Those rare and precious Eyes with offensive capabilities saw the light of day as well. Legendary stones like the Father of Flame and Snowscape were entrusted to carefully selected users. There were many Eye users among the refugees who had come to the hotel. This was no coincidence. It had been difficult for anyone who could not make use of a nearby Eye to survive at all. In any case, before the battle Bastin had ordered that the experience preserved within Cottontail be transmitted to the other Eyes as well.

  Most encouraging of all had been what the Spider’s carcass had taught them about their enemy’s true form.

  According to the dissection carried out by Dr. Biott, a veterinarian, the Spiders appeared to be relatively simple Realm objects—single-purpose tools without advanced decisi
on-making capabilities like the AIs. Their basic code he thought likely to share the same roots as the little maintenance Spiders, and their functionality was limited to a handful of simple commands. The hunger that Julie had sensed was one of these, and seemed to be a method of removing things from this Realm and sending them to another. In other words, the people who had already disappeared might still be alive in another Realm. This alone had multiplied morale several times over. Knowing what they were up against, the warriors wielded their strength differently.

  Anne’s superhuman performance and the Eye strategy both hit the mark. The other Eyes absorbed Cottontail’s knack for bringing down Spiders without difficulty, making them much more effective on the battlefield. Once the staggering power of the Father of Fire or Snowscape had weakened them, the Spiders were helpless before the AI’s harpoons. Once half their number had fallen, they paused, then turned back. And in this way the clash by the marina, though a very close thing, came to an end, and the residents of the Realm were permitted to live another day.

  “You think the Femme Fatale business will work?” asked Bastin, standing beside Denis.

  “That’s Pierre’s department,” said Jules. “He must be almost—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, Pierre Affre entered the casino. He was a long, thin man in a sleeveless black T-shirt. Wrapped around his left wrist was a thick chain. Pierre was just two years older than Julie, but he knew a lot about Eyes. As a user, he was far from expert, but his grasp of their classification and other minutiae was impressive.

  “You took your time, Pierre,” teased Anne. “Got you in her claws, did she?”

  Femme Fatale was the most famous piece in this museum’s collection. Shaped like a peanut shell, it contained a miniature room in which a most alluring woman dwelled.

  “Nah, she’s not my type,” said Pierre, hiding his bashfulness so poorly that the whole room fell about laughing.

  “Yve, give it a try.”

  Yve grinned. She ran her fingers over the edge of her lacework with a sensitive touch, like someone playing the clavecin.

  The Crystal Chandelier lit up in an instant, as if someone had hit the on switch. A shaft of light came from just one of its cut faces. It was brighter than the fireplace, and it swept the casino like a lighthouse beam.