by Rio Youers
The water washed the blood and grime from her body. She finally emerged close to a waterfall that reached to some dizzying height and fell as white as milk. Valerie swam beneath it into a cave where large-winged moths glowed brightly. She wept with happiness.
* * *
The sun was three times larger and offered a softer warmth. It didn’t sink to the horizon but faded gradually, until it was almost transparent. Concurrently, the moon brightened like a slow lamp, so huge she could count the craters.
She slept beneath a tree with softly swaying fronds, and woke in the morning with birds all around her. They chirruped and warbled, then hit the sky as one, a terrific, colorful blur.
I can do that, too, Valerie thought.
She learned to fly.
* * *
Counting sunfades, it took six days to learn, and then she only managed short distances. On her first attempt, she leaped from a high ledge over the river, arms out, and hit the water with a delighted squeal. She tried again and again, and eventually the time between leaving the ledge and hitting the water grew longer, only by a second or two.
And then three. And then four …
At some point—maybe on her thousandth attempt—she went up, not down.
She tried from the ground, running with the wind, thinking she’d catch it like a kite. And she did. Her bare feet thumped over grass and soft earth, then they were pedaling at nothing but air. The wind grabbed her beneath the arms and lifted her. She soared over fields and streams and came down on her feet still running.
The fact that she had to learn how to fly, and that it took time, proved beyond all doubt that this strange and beautiful world was every bit as real as the America she had left behind. In a dream she would’ve flown without having to think about it.
“This is home now. It’s home and it’s God to me.”
She was slumped over a boulder, enjoying its warmth and vibration. The land didn’t speak to her, as such, but sometimes she felt its voice through the rocks and trees.
Home, the boulder agreed.
Nor was it a hallucination or state of mind. She was here. Her physical body had left the nightmarish room above the White Lantern, just as if she’d stepped out the door. Valerie sometimes wondered how long the animals had spent looking for her—if they’d shouted at or attacked one another, or perhaps taken their frustrations out on the fat little restaurateur. In the end, it didn’t matter. She was here and she wasn’t going back.
* * *
Valerie had been there at least a month but perhaps as many as three when she noticed the tiny split in the air. It didn’t flash like a coin. It was dull, like a smudge. She treated it like she might a lump on her breast: ominous, potentially terrifying, but perhaps, if she ignored it, it would go away.
It didn’t.
The split grew until she could see through it. There was no blue sky on the other side, only yellowing sofas and bloodstained floorboards—things she was all too familiar with.
It started to pull.
Valerie tried to run, but it was like trying to run from the moon. She tried to fly, but that only put her closer to the split. She even dived into the lake and swam to the bottom, thinking it couldn’t possibly get her there. The split followed, though. She looked up and there it was, hovering just beneath the surface.
It lengthened to a rift. She used a vine to tie herself to a tree—wrapped her arms around the trunk and held on.
“It’s trying to take me. I won’t let it.”
Find your way back to us.
“I don’t want to see the animals. I don’t want to be back in that room. Hold me, tree. Hold me.”
We’ll always be here.
She fought with all her new strength—for days, it seemed—but to no avail. The rift had a gravity she could not defy. The vine frayed, then snapped. She clasped the tree until her fingernails split, pulling thin strips of bark away.
This is your world. We’ll always be waiting.
“I don’t know if I’ll find my way back.”
There’s a way.
“Tell me.” She snagged a branch and held it desperately. “Please.”
That’s for you to discover, the tree said. But know this: there’s always a price to pay.
She experienced that hypnic jerk again, falling into the sky, in through the rift, and she screamed the whole way. The last she saw of her breathtaking world was the ivory trees and mountains beyond, then she was staring up at the lantern, swaying gently in a current of warm air.
* * *
She landed in a puddle of blood—from one of her wounds, she assumed. But no, it smeared the insides of her thighs. This was menstrual blood. Her first period in years.
I’m a woman again, she thought. I am me.
Valerie got to her feet and started looking for the split in the air. She checked the lantern, the walls, the gaps between the floorboards. She looked behind the pictures and underneath the sofas.
“Need … get back.”
There’s a way, the tree had said.
She believed this. One hundred percent. And she soon realized that she was wasting her time looking for a tiny split. What she wanted was an entranceway. Something arched and full of light.
It wasn’t in this room.
She staggered to the window, threw her face against the glass, looked across the Hackensack to the Meadowlands and Manhattan skyline beyond. It was out there. Somewhere. It could be a portal on the ocean, like the Bermuda Triangle, or a gateway buried among ancient ruins.
“Where do I start?”
A voice in her head said, At the end of pleasure.
She fell to her knees and wailed, covering her eyes with both hands. And she might have convinced herself it was a dream, if only to save her sanity, except she still had fragments of bark beneath her fingernails and could smell the trees on her hands.
The wind chimes played their hollow music. A familiar horror rolled through Valerie. Would it be the ox with a baseball bat? The rabbit with the picana? They don’t know I’m here, she thought. I’ve been gone for months, they—
The door opened and the restaurateur waddled in carrying a bowl of steaming noodles with two chopsticks pushed into them. He looked at her, saw the blood between her legs, and shouted something in Mandarin, perhaps outraged that he’d have to scrub it clean. Regular blood and piss and shit … that was all fine. But menstrual blood! He shouted again, pushed the bowl of noodles across the floor toward her, and walked out. The door slammed and locked behind him.
At no point did he appear surprised to see her. He’d brought her food, for God’s sake.
“I didn’t go anywhere,” she whispered, then smelled her hands again. The aromas—pepper, citrus, bark—were distinct enough to bring more tears to her eyes. She examined her wounds. Her bruises had faded and many of her cuts had scarred over. Had they healed like this before she went away? Valerie didn’t think so, but couldn’t say for sure.
She huddled in the corner, trying to find a scrap of rationality in an irrational situation. In the end, she clung to the thin plausibility that time moved differently between the two worlds. A week over there could be ten minutes here.
And with this came the realization that it didn’t matter anyway. The only thing she needed to focus on was finding a way back.
But first, she had to get out of this room, which wasn’t a problem. Not anymore. She believed she could burst through the reinforced glass and land softly on the ground thirty feet below. But breaking out wasn’t enough. She had to leave a mark on this world if she hoped to escape it. And she would start by making those fucking animals pay for what they’d done to her.
She grabbed the chopsticks from the bowl of noodles. Would the restaurateur remember that he’d brought them this time? Probably not. She crawled back to the corner, where a strip of the baseboard had come away from the wall, exposing rough brickwork beneath.
Valerie rubbed tip of the first chopstick back and forth against the bric
ks, turning it slowly.
She sharpened it to a point.
* * *
Pace had shared a theory at the end of his life that had stuck with Valerie, although she’d never bought into it: that the White Skyway might be accessible through a person, as opposed to an object or place. People have incredible amounts of energy, he’d said. More than in any inanimate object or geographic location. It stands to reason that the way to Glam Moon exists in someone who has been torn apart, like you … or someone with an exceptional gift.
“Tell me more about your sister’s world.”
Shirley sat up and blinked her wide blue eyes. She’d been resting her head on Valerie’s shoulder, comfortable enough to drop into a light doze. Valerie had listened to her steady breathing while watching the fire burn.
“You mean her garden?” Shirley asked. Her hair was adorably mussed on one side.
“Yes, her garden.”
“It’s her fantasy world. She doesn’t talk about it much. I do know that she built it herself. A tree here. A flower there. Like Minecraft, I guess—”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Oh. Right.” Shirley shrugged. “It’s a videogame. You can create whatever you want. And Edith has created this world inside her mind. It’s deep enough for her to disappear into for hours at a time.”
“Is that so?”
“She’s been working on it for … I don’t know, six or seven months. Since before Mom died, anyway.”
Valerie looked at the window, still streaked with rain. The sky beyond was a soup of dark clouds. The thunder had stopped, at least.
“Put another log on the fire.”
“We’re all out.” Shirley got to her feet. “I’ll bring some in.” She crossed the living room, opened the front door, and stepped outside. Valerie whimpered and slipped one hand inside her robe. She cupped her breast and felt her heart drum through it. Shirley returned a moment later, her arms loaded with wet firewood. Rainwater glistened on her skin and her clothes were damp.
“Good girl.”
Shirley dropped the firewood onto the hearth. “It might be too wet,” she said, but Valerie said to go ahead, put a log on—it would burn. Shirley did what she was told.
“And take your clothes off. My goodness, you’ll catch a cold.”
Shirley peeled off her damp pants and T-shirt and lay them in front of the fire. She sat beside Valerie again. Valerie used the blanket they’d huddled beneath to wipe the rainwater from Shirley’s face.
“There…”
“Thank you, Mother Moon.”
“Is your underwear damp?”
“It’s fine.”
“Okay.”
The log on the fire hissed and gushed a pearly white smoke. It caught soon enough, though. The flames were long and yellow.
“Six months,” Valerie said. “I find that hard to believe.”
“What?” Shirley looked perplexed.
“Nobody can build a world that quickly. Not even in their minds.”
“Oh.” Shirley nodded, catching up. “Edith.”
“Yes … Edith.” Valerie had removed her hand from her breast but still felt the thump of her heart. “Do you think she found a world that already exists, and that she thinks is her own?”
“Like Glam Moon?”
“Perhaps.”
“I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose.”
“How often does she go there?”
“Most days.”
“Why?”
“It’s an escape.” Shirley had taken the blanket and wrapped it around herself. Rainwater dripped from her hair and flashed down her face. “You probably won’t believe this—it’s totally weird, I know—but Edith was born with an unusual condition. It’s kind of a family secret, and I’m pretty sure my dad—”
“Forget your dad. Tell me.”
“She’s psychic,” Shirley said at once. “She has this … this extra energy inside her brain that is constantly tuned in to a psychic frequency. Most of the time it doesn’t bother her because she filters the information, but when she’s asleep and her brain is recharging … that’s when the premonitions happen. Sometimes they’re pretty bad.”
Valerie stared at the fire, thinking that a girl—an exceptionally gifted girl—with access to the psychic universe could just as easily connect to a parallel world.
“Sometimes they’re terrible,” Shirley continued, lowering her eyes. “She saw the attack on my mom’s school, but it was too late to save her.”
“Poor little soul.”
“She doesn’t remember any of it.” Shirley shook her head and wiped rainwater from her cheeks. “Anyway, before that, my parents had brought in this psychic lady. Calm Dubisch or Dubois. Something like that. She taught Edith the garden trick. And now Edith uses it as a shelter from the bad things, but also to escape a world without Mom.”
“It’s a place of healing.”
“Maybe,” Shirley said. “All I know is that she doesn’t wake up screaming anymore. And she doesn’t need me, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“I used to be her shelter,” Shirley replied. “She would climb inside my mind to hide from the bad things inside hers. It didn’t bother me to begin with, but as I got older … well, I just didn’t want her there anymore.”
Valerie drew a deep breath into her lungs. “Let me get this straight: she created a pathway from her mind to yours…”
“A link, yeah. A telepathic link.”
“A bridge.”
“I guess.”
“And did you ever…” Valerie trailed off. Her palms were sweating. Her heart was off the leash. “Did you ever climb into her mind?”
“No.”
“But your minds were connected. A bridge goes both ways. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
“I think so.”
Valerie stood up, wincing as the joints in her knees and ankles popped. She paced the living area, deep in thought, and settled in front of the fire.
“Your sister is obviously quite exceptional,” she said, keeping the tremor from her voice. “A very special young lady.”
This struck something inside Shirley. She sprang to her feet. “I’m special, too.” Tears welled in her eyes, then ran down both sides of her face, bigger than the raindrops.
“Oh, sweet girl, I know.” Valerie went to her, tugged the blanket away, and pulled her close. “I think you’re amazing.”
“Edith always gets the attention.”
“Oh, baby.”
They huddled like lovers in the fire’s glow, Shirley with her wet face nestled in Valerie’s neck, Valerie with one hand on the curve of Shirley’s lower spine.
“It’s okay.” Valerie kissed the top of her head. This vulnerable, malleable girl. “I value you. Never forget that.”
Shirley nodded and sniveled.
“And you know something: there may come a time when you need to show the world how special you are.” Valerie fought back tears of her own. “You think you can do that?”
“Yes,” Shirley replied. She looped her arms around Valerie’s waist. “I know I can.”
25
Martin had been away from the mainland for six weeks but it felt much longer. Everything was more abrasive than he remembered, beginning the moment he climbed into Nolan’s truck. The fake-pine smell of the air freshener hit the back of his throat and lodged there, mingled with nauseating wafts of oil and gas. It was thirty-eight degrees outside and raining, but he opened the window a crack and didn’t close it until they reached Syracuse.
“Today is Sunday,” Nolan said. “I’ll drop you at the RTC, and pick you up at two o’clock on Friday afternoon. Repeat that back to me.”
“The RTC,” Martin said. “Two o’clock, Friday afternoon.”
“That’s Black Friday, as in the day after Thanksgiving.”
“Jesus. Thanksgiving.” Martin shook his head. “That totally wasn’t on my radar.”
“You’re in a Ha
lcyon state of mind,” Nolan said.
He was right, and it wasn’t just the smell of the air freshener or the fact that a major public holiday had slipped his mind. Martin spent the drive to Syracuse with an agitated knot in his chest. There was more traffic than he remembered. The trucks were bigger and noisier, and they coughed thicker clouds of exhaust into the atmosphere. His unease didn’t let up once Nolan had dropped him at the RTC. The suburban chorus—even on a Sunday—sounded like an orchestra warming up. People, like the vehicles they drove, moved faster. They stared straight ahead or down at their smartphones. There was nothing free about their range of movement; they could have been on treadmills.
Martin sat on a bench, trying to adjust to the noise and bustle. The fact that he felt this way—and after only six weeks—was as disconcerting as it was improbable. A Halcyon state of mind, Nolan had said, which was another way of saying a Mother Moon state of mind. She had indoctrinated him by way of her rules, methods, and language. A subtle and effective form of brainwashing.
* * *
He’d considered using Jimmy’s internet to conduct his research, but that would only encourage questions he didn’t want to answer. The library was a better option. It wouldn’t take long to get the information he was looking for. Providing everything checked out, he could then gatecrash the family Thanksgiving, and assure them that life on Halcyon was everything he’d hoped it would be.
Time was on his side. Five full days. He burned the first hour walking to the downtown core, acclimating to the change of pace while trying not to look like he’d recently arrived from some alien planet. The rain picked up mid-afternoon, sheeting down in icy drops. Lightning crackled in the west and thunder rumbled. His stomach did, too. He ducked into the nearest bar to get out of the rain and grab a bite to eat. He had $112 in his wallet, untouched since arriving on the island.
The bar was called Ump’s—a sports-themed establishment with more TVs than windows. Martin had lived in joints like this during his college days, but to his Halcyon state of mind it was uncomfortably overdone. He actually walked out, but the rain—hitting the sidewalk in ropes—drove him back inside.
