Penult

by A. Sparrow

He seemed lost, tacking aimlessly back and forth over the far end of the strand. Ubaldo hopped on his wasp and took off. When Tigger spotted them in the air, he immediately made a beeline over to us. On arriving, he hovered low over the beach, using the stiff and steady the sea breeze to help keep him aloft with minimal effort. He refused to land, maybe still spooked by the root quakes.

  Ubaldo came back down and together we tried to encourage Tigger to descend but it was no use. The poor dragonfly seemed really agitated. He had some goop stuck to his huge compound eyes, partially obscuring his vision. I could also see a crack in his hind femur and some singe marks on his abdomen. I feared the worst for Urszula.

  More falcons appeared at the bluffs. This time there were four.

  “This is not good,” said Ubaldo, keeping his eyes on the sky as he climbed back into his saddle. “We must go now. Before they come.”

  I hesitated. I still kind of wanted to stay and see if Urszula came back or not. Maybe, find out what happened to her. It didn’t matter to me if the falcons came after me or not.

  In fact, the more I thought about it, the less I cared about what happened to me anymore. It had been a while since I had held such a strong death wish, but the feeling was building again. To hell with life. Maybe enough was enough. Or maybe I was coming to terms with my inability to deal with the ricin percolating in my real body back in Wendell’s car.

  Of course, the idea of suicide no longer had the allure it did back in those Florida days when I thought it meant relief from the burden of existence. Now I knew it just made for a change of scenery—continued existence in another form, in a potentially even less desirable place.

  “Come! We go now! Call your Tigger.”

  Grudgingly, painfully, I dragged my butt off the sand.

  I looked up at Tigger drifting in the wind. “Um, Tigger doesn’t usually come when I call.”

  What the hell? I give it a shot, clapping my hands and whistling. “Here Tigger! Tigger-tigger-tigger!”

  The dragonfly did not react one bit to my call. He just faced out to sea and bobbed in the wind, his membranes rippling in the air currents.

  Ubaldo glanced over at me and did a double take. He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward.

  “What is that on your arm?”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “The black.”

  I lifted my arm. Lobes of utter and absolute darkness were spreading slowly across the skin of my forearm. These were not stains, not transparencies, but voids as dark as the gaps between stars.

  “Am I … is this … fading?”

  “No. This is not a fade. It means you are dying. On the other side.”

  “Fuck!”

  “You are not dead yet or you would be gone. But the transition is coming. You are becoming a shade.”

  “A shade? What the fuck’s that? Where the hell do shades go?”

  He shrugged. “Many places. Lethe. Avernus. And of course, the Deeps. Depending on the state of your soul.”

  Two of those names were news to me.

  “These other places, are they better? I mean, better than the Deeps?”

  “No. Avernus is not good. Lethe, at least you have some chance. Avernus, never. Avernus is doom.”

  “Oh, bloody hell.”

  Ubaldo’s eyes suddenly swarmed with purpose. He shifted back and slapped his hand on the front of his saddle “Come now! Sit here. You ride with me on Sophia.”

  “But … why bother?” I said, the defeatist in me taking full control of my psyche and abandoning what few shreds of ambition and hope I had left.

  “We will take you up. High. Get you away from the core!”

  Chapter 68: Above

  While dragonflies have powerful flight muscles, evolution had supercharged the wings of wasps. It was the difference between a World War II fighter and an F-14. Sophia accelerated upward, generating G forces on our bodies worthy of a rocket launch. I felt myself slipping in the saddle. I clung so desperately to the saddle’s loops that my fingers ached.

  The air was frigid on my naked skin. Ice crystals stung as we hurtled through the frozen mists. Frost collected in my stubble.

  Tigger gamely came alongside and tried to keep up, but he was a low altitude cruiser and Sophia kept soaring to heights no dragonfly could tolerate. Tigger fell back, dropping down to just below the few puffs of cloud that graced the sky.

  The extreme altitude gave me a new appreciation for symmetry and beauty of the road systems and urban networks of Penult. Nestled in a broad valley among the hills was a sprawling metropolis worthy of Paris, Rome or Tokyo. Loomis was a mere hamlet by comparison. The larger city seemed relatively unscathed by our root quake.

  Ubaldo had Sophia level off at an altitude that seemed to me like overkill. We must have been far above the height of the glaciers over Frelsi. My breathing quickened as each breath seemed barely adequate to oxygenate my body.

  The blackness seeping through my limbs had not spread much since we left the beach. I took some solace in knowing that my death was not all that imminent. We had time. But that time was also a problem.

  Sophia could only generate so much heat from her flight muscles. She would only hold out so long in these freezing temperatures before her cold-blooded organs began to fail. And even warm-blooded creatures like Ubaldo and I were at risk of hypothermia if we stayed up here too long, especially since neither of us had much left of our clothing by this point.

  None of this seemed to bother Ubaldo.

  “This is good,” he said, smiling smugly. “I am certain the core does not reach us here.”

  “Baldo, it’s freezing!”

  “No worries. I can handle it.”

  “Listen. It ain’t happening. Not any time soon, anyhow. Maybe we should go back down.”

  He wrinkled his brow. “But … you have the black.”

  “I know, but ricin kills slowly, they tell me. Let’s go down. A little bit, at least. For a little while? Warm up a bit?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t mind to wait. But … okay.”

  He scraped his heels against Sophia’s side and she dropped like a meteor, catching me off-guard and nearly leaving me behind as I had loosened my grip on the saddle loops.

  We plunged to a level to just below the lowest layer of clouds where the temperature was much more moderate. My skittish dragonfly gladly joined us, tailing Sophia the way he had often done with Lalibela. If only Tigger could speak. He could tell us what had happened to Urszula and Lalibela.

  There was a lot of activity in the sky now over what remained of Loomis. A large number of bulky and slow flying contraptions were landing and taking off from every flat and rubble-free space in the ruins. I couldn’t tell if they bringing relief supplies or evacuating souls. Maybe both?

  “How are you feeling now?” Ubaldo said, glancing over his shoulder. “You should check yourself again.”

  I held up my hand and it was the weirdest mosaic. I was a calico cat. Patches of normal skin were now interspersed with black blotches and transparencies. I was not only dying. I was dying and fading.

  “Holy shit!”

  “What’s wrong? Is it happening? Should we go back up?”

  Before I could answer him, I was whisked right out of his world.

  ***

  I faded off right to the back seat of Wendell’s Bentley. We were on the road again, weaving around tourist buses and Sunday drivers along the shore of Loch Ness. The strangest sense of déjà vu struck me queasy. This was the same road we had taken after my rescue from the basement of Edmund’s church. I had been in bad shape then, as well, on the verge of death, but oodles better than how I felt now.

  After a time, we turned away from the lake on a road that rose through a pass in the hills. I felt beyond horrible. There was a pain in the pit of my stomach and a nausea that no amount of dry heaving could relieve. Acid splinters jabbed at my every joint. My head throbbed harder than my worst hangover ever.

  “He’s back,” whispere
d Jessica.

  “Is he? Cool,” said Wendell, peeking up into the rear view. “How’s he doing?”

  Jessica squirmed around in the front seat, her expression grave.

  “Not so good.”

  “Yeah, well ricin will do that,” said Wendell. “As quick as it’s happening, looks like they weaponized it. Some kind of quick-release formulation. Hang on. We’re almost there, kid.”

  “Guys. I was told this might be treatable.” My voice was ragged. I practically coughed the words.

  “Pfft. Who told you that?” said Wendell.

  “My friend. Olivier. He said the toxin could be neutralized, the way we transform paper … and wood ... stuff.”

  “That’s different,” said Wendell. “We’re talking molecules here, kid. Individual molecules.”

  “I know, but … could you … do you think you could help me?”

  Wendell swerved onto the shoulder and pulled up next to a clump of wind-sculpted fir trees. He loosened his shoulder belt and twisted around in the seat. Jess was already staring at me. She seemed stoic enough, but a stray tear had snuck out of her left eye and clung to her cheek.

  “Kid. You’re grasping for straws. Get over it.”

  “Why can’t you help me?” I said, my voice cracking. “You’re a master too.”

  Wendell’s eyes lost their focus. He seemed to be searching something. His mind? His soul? The Singularity? When his gaze returned, so did a frown.

  “Kid. This ricin stuff. No matter where they injected you. It’s spread. If we had tried something right after, maybe there would be a chance. But by now it’s all diffused.”

  I clamped my eyes and did some searching of my own. I took inventory of every weird twitch, pang and ache afflicting my body. I homed in on the specific areas being affected. I could feel how things worked, even at the cellular level. My self-awareness went far beyond any normal perceptions of my body functions, but as I had feared, my consciousness failed to gain on purchase on anything tangible. I might as well have been trying to tackle a greased pig with soapy hands.

  And so, in desperation, I prayed. To no one and no thing in particular. I didn’t expect an answer, but somehow my outreach found its way to a familiar place that I had come to realize is always within and around me, the countless mingled souls of the Singularity.

  It was the first time I had ever made contact with it while awake and without the presence a tapped-in soul to serve as a medium and guide. It understood immediately what I needed, and endeavored in good faith to show me what I sought to learn.

  It took no time at all to deliver a response. I tried to understand what it was telling me but the knowledge proved both cryptic and elusive. Like a crucial word hovering just beyond the edge of consciousness, on verge of retrieval, but never reaching my lips.

  What Olivier had told me was true. The poison could be neutralized. And the Singularity knew exactly how to get it done. I could sense that it knew. It knew that I knew it knew and it was trying every way it could to convey the information to me. I could sense its frustration alongside my own. As we strained to understand each other, a dark cloud shoved its way into the transaction and I felt myself growing faint, losing touch with the Singularity, life, everything. Even the roots kept their distance.

  ***

  When I woke, we were back on the road, with the lake shore still on our left. We had not gone very far. I had not been unconscious for very long.

  “He’s awake again,” said Jess, kneeling in the passenger seat, her chin propped on the head rest.

  Wendell looked up into the mirror again. “Hey man. Before you blink out again, I meant to ask you. How’d things go with the raid? Did you all make it ashore … with that … thing?”

  “Yeah,” I said, all breathy and subdued, my tone as neutral as if I were describing an episode of taking out the trash. “We took down a city … maybe three.”

  “Three? Really? That’s … brilliant!”

  “City?” said Jessica, confused.

  “We took casualties. One of them … was Urszula.”

  Wendell took a deep breath. “Well, that’s a damned shame. That girl never liked me. For good reason. But I liked her. That girl had a lot of spunk. You have to admire that.”

  “What are you two talking about?”

  Wendell glanced over at Jess. “Don’t you worry about it, sweetie. This is not a place a nice girl like you will ever have to worry about. Though, who knows, you could be Penny material.”

  Jessica looked offended.

  “I will have nothing whatsoever to do with those so-called Friends.”

  “Oh, I’m not talking about the Friends of Penult,” said Wendell. “I’m talking about Penult. The Erelim and their minions. Nobody lives forever, sweetheart. No guarantee you end up where you’re expecting unless you’re one of those who manage to engineer something.”

  “From what I hear from James, this afterlife business is sounding awful sketchy to me,” said Jessica. “At this point, if there’s no chance at Heaven, I think I’d rather my soul just vanish into nothingness.”

  “Wouldn’t we all,” said Wendell, snickering.

  “Do you think there is a Heaven?” she asked.

  “Not for souls as imperfect and damaged as ours. Hate to break it to you, sweetheart.”

  “Eh. I knew it was a long shot. So where do you think James will end up this time?”

  “Depends,” said Wendell. “You’re not up near any glaciers, are you James?”

  “No. But … I was flying.”

  “Flying?”

  “Yeah. On the back of a wasp.”

  “How high?”

  “Well, we were pretty high at one point. But I made Ubaldo come back down. Below cloud level.”

  “And then you faded? While you were up in the air?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re fucked.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What do you think’s gonna happen when you go back.”

  My head was too foggy to think straight. “I don’t know. What?”

  “What’s wrong?” said Jessica.

  “He’s got no chance. He’s gonna get sucked into one of the lower realms.”

  “Like H-hell?”

  Wendell frowned. “Well, not exactly. I mean, there’s no one place that’s Hell per se, but there’s all manner of realms that qualify, from what I hear. Hot ones. Cold ones. Dark ones. Empty ones.”

  Jessica buried her face in the headrest. I stretched out my arm and touched her shoulder.

  “Hey Jess. It’s cool. I’ve already been to one and come back. I can handle … whatever comes my way.”

  “It’s just … such a waste. So unfair. You don’t deserve to die. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I interfered. I got in the way of what the big shots wanted done. It was inevitable.”

  “Well, aren’t I an accessory then, too? I mean … I helped you. Why aren’t they coming after me?”

  “They don’t care what anyone does on this side. That’s not their business.”

  “It’s just … so unfair.”

  Her tears began to dribble. I intended to say something reassuring but a wave of nausea rose through my innards and forced me to clam up. But I locked eyes with Jessica and showed her that I wasn’t worried one bit about what was coming. And it worked. Her face firmed up and her tears went dry.

  Everything was going to be okay. I really did feel that. It helped knowing from experience that nothing in this universe was permanent, or irreversible.

  ***

  The road Wendell took veered from the Loch, following a river valley into the village of Drumnadrochit. Where the A82 took a sharp right to cross a bridge and resume its traverse of the Loch shore, Wendell went straight, keeping to the river and a wide valley of alternating wood lots and fields.

  I could barely keep my eyes open, but I forced myself to stay alert. Everything was so pretty here. So green, all of it. If this was the last place I ever
saw of this earth, it was not a bad image to take away. It would have been a wonderful choice, had it been a choice.

  We came to an area with plowed fields alternating with meadows framed by strips of forest. Wendell pulled into a dirt track lined with lupines and daisies. He used no GPS but he seemed to know exactly where to turn. How long had he known of Izzie’s whereabouts?

  The track took us a little farm house with wide clapboards and outbuildings made of stone, with roofs of cedar shake. The front walk was lined with rose bushes and holly.

  Wendell stopped the car behind a weathered and rusted Fiat. A stout, older woman with frizzy white hair tied back in a green bandanna emerged from behind a trellis holding a pair of hedge clippers. She looked puzzled to see us, as if she were not used to receiving visitors riding gleaming vintage Bentley Arnages.

  “Can I help you? Are you lost?”

  Wendell said nothing. He just sat there with his elbow propped on the open window. He deferred to Jessica, who stepped out of the car and offered her hand to the woman. I remained slumped in the back seat, struggling to stay upright. At this rate, with my head all muddled and the discomfort building in my body, I was almost ready to give up and leave this world.

  “Hello,” said Jessica. “How do you do? We are … well some of us, happen to be friends of Isobel’s. We heard she might be staying with you?”

  The woman’s quizzical smile disappeared, replaced by a steely glare. She clutched the shears to her bosom and stepped back. “You’re not from that so-called church? You’re not Sedevacantists, are you?”

  “Oh no, ma’am. Not at all. My name is Jessica. Isobel stayed with us for a time in Wales.”

  The woman’s eyes popped wide.

  “The goat farm! You’re from the goat farm!”

  “Jess!” A door slammed and Isobel dashed off the porch and down the flagstones of the walk. She barreled into Jessica, hugging her tightly. When she looked up she spotted me in the back seat.

  “James?”

  She peeled away from Jessica and came over to the window. I smiled gamely but weakly.

  “You look horrible! What happened?”

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Partly, I didn’t know what to say and partly my throat wouldn’t cooperate.