Minerva Wakes

by Holly Lisle

  “And I’ve said I don’t know. There aren’t all that many Weirds. Even so, I don’t think it’s likely the one would be chasing both of you — but I could be wrong. In any case, they’ll be out in force trying to find her, I suspect.”

  “Why her? They know where I am.”

  Birkwelch had his back to Darryl. The dragon foraged through the fridge, not bothering to pull his nose out to answer questions. Darryl guessed from the vigor of the dragon’s search he must be scrounging for beer. “Because—” Thump! Thunk! Rattle! “— she’s in their world. Their power—” Thump, crash, wham! “Dammit, who drank the last beer?!”

  “Keep it down. Dad’s still asleep. And you did.”

  The dragon slammed the refrigerator door shut and turned to glare at him. “You sure?”

  “Yes. Now you were saying... She’s in their world and their power—”

  “Oh, yeah. Their power is concentrated over there. They have allies. And they know the countryside. They can all shapeshift, you know. Makes it easy for them to get around — and for them to blend in.”

  Darryl remembered his meetings with Cindy, and shivered. “They can look like anything?”

  The dragon’s alligator grin spread wide. “Scary thought, isn’t it? Well, they have some limits. They don’t seem to imitate inanimate objects very well. And their appearances have to match their actual sizes fairly closely.”

  Darryl thought about that an instant. “So the cat with Minerva isn’t a disguised Weird?”

  “Not a chance.” The dragon walked to the pantry and started digging through it. “A Weird can’t make itself that small. Besides, the eyes aren’t right.”

  “They all have those green eyes?”

  The dragon shoved things around on the shelves and turned to Darryl with a disgusted snort. “You people don’t have any Pop-Tarts or Twinkles or anything. Everything you’ve got in here has fiber — and vitamins — and shit like that.”

  “I was trying to lose weight. The eyes, Birkwelch.”

  “Yes. They all have green eyes. But they can hide them behind sunglasses when they’re dealing with anyone who knows what to look for.”

  “That seems obvious.”

  “Nah. Eyrith’s a pretty sunny place sometimes. Lots of the inhabitants wear sunglasses.” He grinned again. “I do every once in a while.”

  Darryl closed his eyes and tried to keep from imagining the dragon wearing sunglasses. “The mind boggles.”

  “Let’s go to Hardee’s or McDonald’s or someplace and get some high-fat, high-cholesterol food with flavor.”

  Darryl shook his head. “The funeral is today, and I don’t want to go out. I want to watch the mirror so I can see when Minerva wakes up again.”

  The dragon propped his foreleg on the kitchen counter and drummed his talons on the imitation wood-grain surface. “She went through a lot last night. She probably wont wake up until after the funeral’s over. You might as well eat breakfast.” The dragon held out his other foreleg and jingled the keys to his Miata. Darryl realized he had no idea where the dragon was hiding the car. “I’ll drive.”

  “No, thanks. I’m going to get some writing done, I think.”

  The dragon’s yellow eyes went wide, and Darryl fancied the bright blue hide went a few shades toward the pastel. “On second thought, I think I’ll wait around. I can get something to eat after the funeral.”

  “What?!” Darryl felt like hitting the dragon with a frying pan. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “No.” The dragon skinned his muzzle back to expose sharp teeth. “I don’t.” Birkwelch looked agitated. His wings partially unfurled, and his rilles stuck straight out around his face. Darryl thought this made him look like a giant periwinkle.

  “I’m just going to write her heading in the right direction to find our kids — the fastest way possible. What could go wrong with that?”

  The dragon shuddered. “I don’t know. Something.”

  Darryl wasn’t going to let himself be deterred. He’d been stuck with passive watching too long — he refused to feel trapped and helpless anymore. He ran up the stairs to Minerva’s sewing room. First he checked the mirror, but obviously Minerva was still asleep. All he could see in it was himself. I’ll make things easier on her when she wakes up, he decided. He sat down in front of the Selectric and typed:

  Minerva woke with warm sunlight on her face, and the cat curled up beside her. She felt well-rested, and good. Things were going to be all right — somehow she knew this. Darryl loved her. She was sure of that.

  She hiked, going in the direction she instinctively knew was right. The cat stayed with her. The two of them came upon a road, and a friendly native offered her a ride in his truck. He was going in the direction she needed to travel, and she knew without doubt that he would not hurt her. She accepted the ride.

  Darryl looked at that passage. It didn’t seem like much — the writing was stiff and dull. But this wasn’t an attempt to be the next Neil Simon or Tennessee Williams. This was an attempt to save his wife and kids. The dragon said to keep it simple. And Darryl had seen the magical wind blow the Weird heaven only knew where. The magic worked.

  One thing was missing, he noted. He read over the text again, just making sure, then added a final line.

  Murp went along for the ride.

  The doorbell rang. He ran down the stairs, and unlocked and opened the door. His mother, brother, and sister-in-law waited on the other side.

  “Morning,” he said. “Um-m-m-m-m... I’m not really ready for company.”

  His mom didn’t seem to have heard a word he said. She charged through the door and hugged him, then stepped back to look at him. “You have such dark circles under your eyes, sweetheart,” she said. She stroked his face once, then stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. “You don’t look like you slept a bit. I really think you would sleep better at our house.”

  Stan’s wife, Paula, was staring at him. “You look awful,” she said. “Your eyes are all baggy and bloodshot, and your skin is just so waxy.”

  Thanks, Paula, he thought. You’re still the sweetheart I always remembered. “I woke up pretty early this morning,” he said.

  Stan said, “I hope you and Minerva had the sense to put wills together. If you didn’t have a will, the state will take half of everything you have. You could end up losing this house if you didn’t. And did you remember to get everything out of your safe deposit box before the people at the bank found out she was dead? Otherwise, all your assets are going to end up frozen and the government will clean you out.”

  “I had other things on my mind, Stan. But I’ll manage.”

  “You can’t afford to get sentimental at a time like this,” his brother said. “You have to keep your head on straight... you have to be cold and efficient. I would be if Paula died.”

  “So would I,” Darryl muttered and walked away.

  “Let me fix you something nice for breakfast. I’m sure you haven’t eaten right this morning,” his mom called. “I took one of your father’s suits to the cleaners for you — they did it overnight for me and came in this morning just so I could pick it up.” He could hear rattling sounds from his kitchen. “Don’t you think that was thoughtful of them?”

  “Yes, Mom,” he agreed.

  Stan and Paula had cruised out into the greatroom. His dad came down the stairs and wandered into the kitchen, holding his head.

  “Give him some of this,” Birkwelch said, and handed Darryl a one-ounce medicine cup filled to the brim with something green.

  Darryl remembered his own headache, and handed his father the cup. “For the headache,” he said. “Drink it fast — it’s awful.”

  His father gulped it down, made a pained face — then suddenly smiled. “That’s great stuff. What is it?”

  “Peabody’s Headache Elixir,” Birkwelch said. “From my world.”

  Darryl gave him the name, then said, “It’s an off brand. Kind of hard to find.”

  “Tha
nks.” His father looked ten years older than he had a week ago. This business would kill him if Darryl couldn’t make everything all right again.

  He wanted to tell them, She’s still alive. The kids are still alive. I’m going to bring them back. But he couldn’t. There was absolutely nothing he could say that would help. He couldn’t even tell them he believed things would get better. How could he say that to parents who thought they’d lost their daughter-in-law and their only grandchildren?

  Minerva’s parents must be even worse off than mine. They didn’t lose an in-law. They lost their only daughter. And Keith, Minerva’s brother, had to be devastated. He and Minerva had always been close.

  I’ll make it up to all of you, Darryl promised silently. I’ll find a way, and I’ll bring them back. I won’t screw up this time.

  He ate the breakfast his mother fixed. He understood she needed to do something for him — and there was so little she could do. He wore the suit they’d brought over. He let them drive him to the church when it was time. They needed to feel they were helping him, and after doing the magic and seeing there was something he could do to change things, he was stronger. He wasn’t helpless anymore. He could allow them to feel needed.

  He felt strong up until the moment he walked into the church and saw her there — lying in that damned casket with her eyes closed, and her hair soft and perfect, and her cheeks pink. He hadn’t seen her since the emergency room — and in the ER, she’d looked like a stranger.

  She didn’t look like a stranger anymore.

  He felt the shock of recognition slam into his belly — nausea and loss and anger at being abandoned. She was gone, the kids were gone, and he was alone. How could she do that to him?

  At his side, the dragon said softly, “Steady, Darryl. This is the show for the family. It isn’t the real thing, and don’t you forget it.”

  Darryl inclined his head slightly — enough for the dragon to see and no more. Minerva was not the body in the casket. She wasn’t.

  He sat in the pew, forcing himself to remain detached, while the organ played, and the minister spoke, and various friends got up and talked about what a wonderful person Minerva had been. He did not let himself think of what was happening in front of him. Instead, he twisted his wedding band and thought about what he would write next — how he could phrase the words that would bring his family back.

  In the limousine on the way to the interment, he rode alone. The dragon was, mercifully, absent. Both his family and Minerva’s were in other vehicles. His brother and sister-in-law had offered to ride with him, but he’d quickly refused. Minerva’s brother hadn’t yet spoken to him.

  At the grave site, he noticed that people seemed to split their attention between the casket and him. From time to time, he would catch someone glancing at him. The expressions were — educational. He saw pity, curiosity, and suspicion. The last from a number of the women who’d worked with Minerva.

  They think I killed them, he realized.

  The thought made him sick. He wasn’t perfect. He’d screwed up his life all by himself. But he’d loved his family: all of them. He would have done anything to be on the other side of the mirror with them. He would have given anything to go back to the moment he decided it was more important to stay at work feeding his ego than to go home.

  He refused to be led away when the minister finished the rites. He sat, watching two strangers winching the metal box that contained his wife’s body down into the ground.

  He cried in spite of himself — cried in complete silence, with his arms wrapped tightly across his chest and tears burning furrows in his cheeks. She’s alive, he told himself. That isn’t her.

  He only wished he really believed himself.

  His in-laws’ house, when he got there, was already full of people. Minerva’s mother spread trays of food on the kitchen table and along the counter. Neighbors came in a steady stream, carrying dishes covered with tinfoil or pots full of flowers. They hugged Mrs. Wilson, his parents, each other. They eyed him warily.

  Minerva’s father sat on the couch, trying to hold himself together in front of all the strangers. Minerva’s brother’s kid sat next to him, stolid and gloomy, kicking the couch rhythmically with his left foot. Minerva’s brother watched Darryl, his face cold and distrustful. Along the far wall of the dining room next to the fireplace, the nurses and ward secretaries and office personnel who’d known Minerva gathered, eating off paper plates and discussing the latest hospital disasters; they fell silent as he moved in their direction, and watched him pass — still silent.

  Then one of the ward secretaries, a large black woman named Margaret, broke from the group and came over and hugged him. “This is not the end for her, Darryl,” she said. “You’ve got to believe she’s on the other side now. She’ll be all right — and you’ll see her again some day.”

  Darryl nodded solemnly. “I know I will, Margaret. I couldn’t live if I didn’t believe that.” He hugged the woman, and she returned to the circle of hospital employees.

  He walked on. Behind him, he heard one of the women say, “I can’t believe you talked to him, Margaret. I still say he murdered all of them.”

  Margaret said, “You can’t judge people by appearances, and you can’t decide about them by what you hear everybody else say. The good Lord will judge that man. It isn’t your place.”

  He kept walking. He didn’t want to hear more.

  People patted him on the back. They said things, but nothing they said registered. He moved in a daze, speaking without knowing quite what he said. But he couldn’t really hear them. The noise around him became like the rush of the ocean’s waves — steady, pulsing white noise. He walked away from all of it. He needed to be alone.

  He went into the bathroom and stared in the mirror.

  Once again, he could see the world through Minerva’s eyes. He pressed his face against the glass.

  “I love you, Minerva,” he whispered.

  * * *

  Barney climbed out of bed and peeked out a dirty window of the house. The sun was up and there were no clouds in the sky — but everything outside looked dull and hazy anyway. All the trees in the front yard were dead, the grass was brown and ugly; Barney couldn’t see anything alive outside the window — except the worm-monsters.

  They crowded around the steps, waiting. They were a lot uglier in the daylight than they had been in the dark. He wrinkled his nose; the worm-monsters were a gross gray-pink, and their tops gleamed with an oily sheen. Their bottom halves weren’t shiny — they had pebbles and bits of grass and dead leaves stuck all over. In their blobby shapes he saw dark spots which he guessed might be eyes. The biggest one had a few mangy patches of red hair sticking out of its back. But they looked to Barney about as solid as Jello — and not nearly as pretty.

  He felt sorry for them. He thought he wouldn’t like to be a worm-monster.

  “What are you doing?” Jamie asked.

  Barney turned away from the window and looked at his brother. Jamie sat up in the bed, rubbing at his eye with a knuckle.

  “Just looking,” Barney said.

  “They still out there?”

  “Yep.” Barney turned back to the window and watched the worm-monsters some more.

  Jamie climbed out of the bed and walked around the room. He looked into the tall wardrobe, then walked into the main room, and found the bathroom. When he came back, he was staring into the center of a little clear ball.

  “Look at this,” he said, and handed the ball to Barney.

  Carol rolled over. “Let me see, too.”

  Barney looked into it, and stared, fascinated. It was a living scene — a house, and a family of funny-looking people. They were running back and forth, tossing a white ball with a string on it to each other. The place in the picture was pretty — there were lots of flowers and the grass was green and the trees had lots of tiny leaves on them that trembled in the breeze.

  And even though the people were funny-looking, Barne
y still thought they looked happy — they looked like a nice family. A mom, a dad, lots of kids. There were nine people in the scene.

  “The ball they played with was right next to that,” Jamie said. “I wonder why they left.”

  The scene finished playing, and the inside of the glass ball went dark for the briefest of instants. Then the moving picture began again.

  Barney handed the ball to Carol and sat on the floor, thinking. The Unweebil had ruined this place — he could feel it. The same magic that built the towering clouds they were running away from also left the stink in the air here, and killed the trees, and wore out the ground.

  Had it scared the people away?

  Barney got up and went outside, out with the worm-monsters. He looked at them, and felt their sadness, and their confusion — and he felt their hope. They didn’t know what they were, or who they were, but they saw something when they looked at him that triggered memories.

  He looked at the awful blobs. There were only six of them. He wondered, with a sick feeling in his stomach, why there weren’t nine. He sat on the bottom step and rested his hand on the slimy skin of the monster nearest him.

  “You’re people,” he told it. “You have to ‘member you’re people. You forgot — but now you gotta ‘member.” He closed his eyes and pictured the scene he’d watched in the little ball, and he imprinted that clear, bright scene in the muddy mind of the worm-monster. “You’re in there, aren’t you? You’re one of those people.”

  He felt its confusion, and then its sudden shock of recognition. Then he felt its shame, and its despair.

  “Don’t feel bad,” he told it. “It’s not your fault. The Unweebil did this — but he won’t hurt you anymore. You remember who you are now, don’t you?”

  Yes, it thought. I’m people. I remember.

  “Good. Now you gotta find all the rest and make them know they’re people, too. We gotta go or the Unweebil will get us. But you do that, okay?” Barney concentrated on a little, tiny magic that would fix his order in the mind of the worm-monster. It would remember, and it would make the other worm-monsters remember, too.