The Rising Tide

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  Santi followed his gaze. “Yeah, I never thought I’d be so nostalgic for a blue sky.” He hugged his knees to his chest. “My familia lived in Mexico City when my mother was a little girl. When one of the Burns killed almost a thousand people in the city, she and her sisters and parents fled to Little Mexico in Vancouver.”

  “I never made it to Vancouver.”

  “It was like the Wild West. So many people moving up from Mexico and the old United States after the Union.” Santi smiled. It lit up his whole face. “It even snowed there when I was a kid, once.”

  “I grew up in Florida.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah.” He picked up a pebble and threw it down the hillside. It disappeared in a clump of glowing grass. “So… what do we do now?”

  Santi shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

  “We could go home. Start out again in a day or two.” Eddy picked a blade of glowing grass. It faded in his hand.

  “I thought this guy was important?”

  “He is.” Eddy wiped his hands on his pants.

  “So maybe heading home isn’t the best idea.”

  Eddy laughed ruefully. “Maybe not. So… we could stay here and call for reinforcements. Or we could walk the rest of the way.”

  “There’s a fourth option.”

  “What’s that?” Did Santi have wings he hadn’t told Eddy about?

  “We could go on horseback. If you don’t mind me putting my arms around your waist.”

  “But we don’t have a horse.”

  For an answer, Santi pointed sideways. “Will that one do?”

  Eddy followed his gesture. “Cassie!” She was trotting over the next hill over, coming toward them, her light chestnut coat blending in neatly with the golden glow of the grass.

  He was on his feet and running toward her before he realized he hadn’t answered Santi.

  “So, is that a yes?” Santi shouted after him.

  “That’s a hell yes!”

  THE MAN sat up, rubbing his head. He was lying on a hay-stuffed mattress in a barn. His head was still fuzzy…. He couldn’t seem to remember who he was or how he’d gotten here.

  The nice people. They had taken him in.

  Things flashed past his eyes—memories?

  A big cavern underground. Women beneath him, with blank faces, as he expelled his need.

  The Preacher. His Master.

  Sometimes, if he sat still enough, if he closed his eyes and let the memories play out, he was rewarded with softer ones. Memories from a time before here. Before this place. When he’d had a mother and a father.

  A brother.

  A white house near the park, where he used to go to play.

  Before the fog had come.

  Sometimes there were more painful memories. Being prodded and poked by sharp things, both outside and in his head. Being strapped down and shown images that made him want to scream. Being reprogrammed. That was the word they had used.

  Now, though, he sat with his back against the wooden wall of the barn, his freshly clean feet on the straw mattress, and a new memory came to him.

  A dark cavern, kneeling next to his Master.

  The man’s eyes closed.

  Cradling him in his arms.

  Dipping into the ground below to connect with her. The goddess.

  The ecstasy that had rampaged through him for a few brief moments, burning away the fog from his mind.

  Then the utter darkness and loneliness as the fog crept back in.

  Not so heavy as before, perhaps.

  He nodded. Things were changing. One of these days, he would remember who he was and how he had gotten here.

  For now, he lay back down, adrift in the fog like a warm blanket, speaking his Master’s name.

  “Davian.”

  MARISSA SLIPPED out of bed, tiptoeing across the floorboards in the narrow space to Danny’s bed. “Danny, wake up,” she whispered, glancing at Delancy’s sleeping form on the other side of the cabin.

  “Whaaaaaat?” Danny groaned, turning over to look at her through bleary eyes. The night ivy cast a silver glow through the window, enough for her to make out the outlines of the room and to see Danny’s face.

  “Shhhhh. Move over.”

  He did as he was told in the small bed, and she crawled in next to him.

  “I need your help.” She spoke softly, directly into his ear.

  “For what?”

  Being this close to him, she was acutely aware of his beautiful body, of his scent. Stay on topic, Marissa. “They found our father.”

  “Gunner?”

  She nodded. “Gunner, Jayson, whatever his name is.”

  “Mari… you don’t want to go anywhere near him. Remember what he did to us. To our mothers.”

  She shook her head. “That’s why I want to see him. I want to know how he did it.” She bit her lip. “I want to know why.”

  He stared at her in the dim light. “Andy and Shandra will never let us go.”

  “I know. That’s why I want to go now. Tonight. They found him at a farmhouse on the Verge. That’s not far from here. We can be there in a day.”

  Danny frowned. He brushed his long brown hair away from his face and rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know….”

  “Look, we can say we’re sorry later, but we may never have another chance like this.” She glanced at Delancy. The girl was still fast asleep. “Remember that day we went into the canyons? There’s one that goes straight down to the edge of the Verge. Andy told me about it. We can take a horse and just enough supplies for a few days.” A lazy grin crossed her face. “And we’d be alone.”

  “We’re not supposed to—”

  She put a finger on his lips. “It’s okay if we just fool around a little.” If Andy and Shandra really didn’t want any relations springing up among the Liminal kids, they would have brought some other kids here, right?

  “Okay.”

  “Perfect. I packed our carry sacks when everyone was at dinner earlier.” She pulled his from under the bed.

  He whistled. “Damn, you are prepared.”

  She tried to shut him up, but she was too late.

  “What are you two doing?” Delancy asked, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes.

  The damage was done. “Nothing. Go back to bed.”

  “You’re up to something….” She glanced at their carry sacks. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

  “It’s none of your business.” Marissa fumed. Why did Delancy have to wake up, tonight of all nights? She usually slept like a log.

  Delancy put her hands on her hips. “Tell me, or I’ll go and get Andy and Shandra.”

  What are you? Five?

  Danny shrugged. “Might as well tell her.”

  “All right.” She slipped off the bed and back over to her own. No sense in shouting out their news to the whole schoolhouse. “We’re going to find Gunner.”

  Delancey hissed. “They found him?”

  Marissa nodded. “Yes. He’s at a farmhouse on the Verge. Please don’t tell Andy and Shandra. Not until we’re gone.”

  “I won’t. I swear.”

  “Thanks.” Marissa heaved a sigh of relief.

  “If I can come with you.”

  Damn. “It was just going to be Danny and me—”

  “I’m so sick of this place. And I’m one of the oldest too. I want to see him.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I want to ask him how he could do those things to us. To our mothers.”

  They never talked about their mothers. The women who had given them up and sent them here.

  “Please?”

  Marissa sighed. “Okay, but we have to go now. I want to have a few hours lead time before they come looking for us.”

  Danny frowned. “I don’t want them to worry. They’ve been so good to us.”

  “I wrote a note.” Marissa pulled out the folded piece of paper, opened it up, and used her charcoal pencil to append the name “Delancy” to it.


  Danny glanced over her shoulder. “You were that sure I’d say yes, huh?”

  Marissa blushed. “I’d hoped.”

  He laughed. “Okay, then, let’s get going.”

  “I have to pack my things.” Delancy got her carry sack out of the closet and started stuffing things into it.

  When she was done, Marissa took one more look around the place she had called home for the last ten years.

  She’d be back. It would only be a few days.

  Nevertheless, a wave of sadness washed over her as she quietly closed the door behind them.

  ANA AND Lex stood in Lex’s valley. The stone tower, a fixture there since Lex had first created the sanctuary, was gone.

  In its place was a wall that stretched up as far as they could see, and out to both sides of the valley. It was a vast mirror, reflecting the other side of the valley and the hillside where the forest took over from the grassy hills.

  Ana reached out to touch it. It was lukewarm, maybe? Mostly it felt like nothing.

  It flowed around her, threatening to engulf her fingers.

  She jerked her hand back and looked at it. Her virtual skin was untouched.

  A ripple extended from where she had been in contact with the wall, spreading up and out like she’d dropped a pebble in a perfectly reflective pond.

  This was the third place they had found such a wall, the first being Ana’s own private world, the Russian countryside of her youth. The second had been Jameson’s world, where a bisected Frontier Station still floated above an unruined Earth.

  What is it?

  I don’t know. Something inside is using a lot of resources.

  Can we get through it?

  I don’t know.

  Lex flashed a wave of distressed red at her.

  They stared at the wall. Ana willed it to go away, to no avail.

  Your hand.

  Ana looked down. Her right hand, the one she had touched the wall with, was becoming transparent. She could still feel it, still flex it, but she could see right through it.

  That can’t be good.

  Chapter Five: Night

  MARISSA LED her companions up out of the valley where the schoolhouse and their little community lay. It was dark out, more so away from the night ivy and luthiel lanterns that lit their home at night.

  Home.

  Marissa glanced back at the valley, fashioned from the wreckage of the mountain that had once held Agartha. In a way, she’d never lived anywhere else but this place—first as Agartha, and now at the schoolhouse. But certainly, Agartha hadn’t been home.

  She sighed.

  “We’ll be back soon.” Danny put a hand on her shoulder.

  Marissa nodded, rubbing her horse’s neck. Mirabelle was a black mare Marissa had worked with since she had been a girl of six years old. They’d decided to walk the horses out of the valley to keep them as quiet as possible.

  Marissa looked up. There were a couple of other patches of light in the arc of the world above, campers or other small settlements.

  She imagined this was what it might have looked like at night from a valley on Old Earth, looking up to see the stars sparkling in the sky.

  Other than when she had been rescued by Andy, Shandra, and the others, she’d never been far from the valley. She didn’t really know what was out there. Well, she knew. Andy had shown them what it was like to visit Micavery and Darlith. But she’d never seen it with her own eyes.

  Two broken slabs of rock formed an A shape over the lone exit to the valley. The countryside around the schoolhouse was ripped up and broken, a maze of dead-end passageways and canyons. It was a legacy of the destruction Andy had visited on Agartha. The rock was black and mostly unadorned, save by moss and the occasional creeper vines that had snaked their way into the mountains since they’d been constructed. “You guys ready?”

  Delancy and Danny nodded.

  Marissa led Mirabelle under the archway, shivering a little as she plunged them into darkness.

  She’d come this way before, a few times when she and Danny had snuck out late at night. What they’d done had never amounted to more than a little groping in the dark. Neither of them really knew what they were supposed to do.

  The others followed her out of the valley.

  After a moment, her eyes adjusted to the dim light put off by the moss that grew wherever water typically ran.

  In some places, the moss was green. In others it shaded more into blue.

  The pathway had been flattened through the broken slabs of rock when the schoolhouse had been built. It twisted back and forth around the larger pieces of rubble, which rose above them in strange silhouettes, framed by the silver light from the spindle.

  When Marissa judged that they’d come far enough from the schoolhouse, she mounted Miri and gestured for the others to do the same.

  They continued on, the air around them still as death.

  She hoped Andy wouldn’t be too mad when she found out that they’d left. They’d taken some supplies, but only enough for a few days. It shouldn’t cause a hardship for the rest of the kids.

  She tried to remember what her father had looked like. Red hair, always serious, but the details of his features eluded her.

  And what had happened to the other man, the Preacher? If there was any justice in the world, he lay dead in some dark, foul place in the pit of the world.

  She resisted the urge to dip into the world mind. Andy and Shandra had said it was too dangerous right now. It was hard not to—touching the mind to see where she was or to check on the world outside, came as easily as breathing. Without it she felt like she’d lost a limb.

  They reached a fork in the trail. There was a whole maze among the wreckage of broken rocks, meant to confuse intruders.

  “To the right.” Danny pointed.

  She nodded and nudged Miri that way.

  “How far until we reach the Verge?” Delancy’s voice quaked a little, and she glanced around at the dark walls that hemmed them in, like little birds searching for an escape.

  “It should only take a couple hours.” Marissa grinned in the darkness. “As long as we don’t take a wrong turn.”

  Delancy yelped.

  Marissa laughed to herself. Delancy deserved that, for forcing her company on the two of them.

  Danny snorted. “Don’t mess with her. It’ll take less than an hour, and we’ve been through here a couple times. We won’t get you lost.”

  “I could just dip a little and find the way….” She trailed her hand across the rock wall on her left.

  “Delancy, don’t!” But Marissa was too late.

  Delancy’s body convulsed as she touched the rock, her whole frame shaking in violent movements as if she’d been shocked.

  Cursing, Marissa slipped off Mirabelle and reached for the reins of Delancy’s horse, Amaro, who was skittering back and forth nervously, trying to figure out what was wrong with his rider.

  Danny followed suit and reached up to grab Delancy, pulling her out of her saddle to safety.

  “Shhh, it’s okay,” Marissa whispered to Amaro, rubbing his neck.

  He tossed his head back and forth and then settled, listening to her soothing voice. “Is she okay?”

  Danny had set Delancy down with her back against the rock. “I think so? She’s shivering.”

  “Here.” Marissa pulled a blanket out of Amaro’s saddlebag and handed it to him.

  They covered her, kneeling next to her.

  “Della… you okay?” Marissa pulled her chin up gently.

  “Soooo coooooold.” She shivered again. “Why was it so cold?” Her teeth chattered.

  “When you dipped?”

  She nodded. “I’ve never felt cold like that.”

  Marissa and Danny exchanged a glance. “Something’s really wrong.”

  “No shit.” Danny sat next to Delancy and pulled her close. “I’ll warm you up.”

  Marissa nodded. Danny was right to do it, to put his warm bod
y up next to hers. It was what Delancy needed.

  She would not be jealous.

  EDDY AND Santi were up early the next morning. They’d shared a light breakfast of pastries and embrew. Sometimes Eddy really missed having real coffee.

  They were ready to go when first light arrived.

  The world around them flared to life, marred only where lightning had burned some of the trees and bushes or left a blackened, dark patch in the grasslands in between. Even those were starting to heal, as the fast-growing grasses took over the dead patches, returning them to a healthy greenish-golden glow.

  They’d managed to pull the tarp out from under the fallen tree, though it was torn in several places. Santi’s horse was another matter. A crew from Micavery would come out to retrieve Snowball, to carry its body off to one of the dissolution pits to be broken down into its component parts.

  Santi knelt next to the horse, his hand on its neck, whispering something that Eddy couldn’t hear.

  When he climbed onto Cassie, sitting behind Eddie, his voice was rough. “Let’s go.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s just hard letting him go. I’ve worked with him since he was a foal.”

  “I know. I feel the same about Cassie here.” Santi’s body was warm against his back. Eddy did his best to ignore that. Nothing could come of it. Besides the fact that Santi didn’t want intimate contact, Eddy had no idea if the man was even attracted to guys. “Hold on.”

  Santi slipped his hands around Eddy’s waist.

  Eddy spurred Cassie down the hillside. “Ever been out to the edge of the Verge?”

  “Not really. I went out a few times to mediate some land disputes, but only mid-Verge. It’s a beautiful country.”

  Eddy nodded. “I’m told it resembles Tuscany… at least Tuscany before the Mediterranean hurricanes began and tore the countryside to shreds.”

  “If Tuscany glowed and spread upward into the sky, you mean?”

  Eddy laughed. “Yeah. There is that.”

  They made it back to the Micavery Road. Out this far, it was still dirt, and the farmers preferred it that way. It made the whole place feel more rural.