by Lou Aronica
Now, alone in her room, Becky was finally able to test out her theory. About six months after Dad had moved out, Mom bought Becky a new bedroom set with a queen-size bed. Rather than just giving her old bed away, Mom asked Dad if he wanted it and he took it. It was certainly a step up from the ratty one Lisa had given him when he moved in here, even if it was only a twin. The thing about the bed that mattered now, though, was that they had created all the Tamarisk stories in this bed. Night after night, they added new adventures to the legend of Tamarisk. As strange as it seemed—though, really, how much stranger could anything be than what had already occurred?—Becky thought it was possible that this bed might be a “portal” of some kind to Tamarisk. She read that kind of stuff in fantasy novels all the time, and she was in this bed the one time she met with Miea.
Becky sat on the edge of the bed and went through the process in the same way she had every night since last Sunday. She closed her eyes and began to dim her memories of the day. Right after beginning, she heard the toilet flush in her father’s room and needed to start over. As silence returned, she was able to concentrate completely on the darkness. She darkened the pizza dough and Johnny Depp and the intentionally lame song Al had sung at the top of his voice this morning. She darkened Lonnie’s last-minute plea to come to the party and the text she’d gotten from Cam Parker saying that he was going to be there as well. She moved deeper into the darkness until it was entirely black and then called up the image of Tamarisk, of the palace, of Miea’s face.
And she felt a tug. This was new, different from the sense of falling she’d had last Saturday night and much more of a sense of motion than anything she’d had since. It was like what happened when you drove through one of those automated car washes—all of a sudden you just got pulled along like you were on a track. Becky was definitely moving now, faster, though she still wasn’t sure where she was headed. She still had the images of Tamarisk in her mind and she dared not open her eyes for risk of losing the connection.
Gradually, sounds of footsteps and distant voices and activity replaced the silence. Still, she kept her eyes shut. Then the pull stopped while the sounds became more insistent.
“So you’ve decided not to abandon us after all.”
Becky opened her eyes.
To find herself in another world.
Miea had nearly stopped expecting Becky to arrive, the excitement and optimism of the beginning of the week replaced, methodically, by the diplomatic squabble with the Thorns, labor unrest within the Carpenters’ Guild, and even discord on her own staff over the replacement of Sorbus’s second assistant. Looming over all of it was the encroachment of the blight, claiming more vegetation daily. Thuja’s team was not the least bit closer to discovering a cause or a solution. How foolish did the confidence she expressed a week ago seem to him now?
Miea had finished the day’s appointments, and her secretary had just left her office. Remarkably, she didn’t need to be anywhere this evening, a quirk of her schedule caused by the illness of a visiting dignitary. Miea wasn’t exactly happy that a viral infection had afflicted the mayor of Cosmas, but she was relieved for the opportunity to take dinner in her chambers and then perhaps go to bed early. Rest would be good for her, if she could find some.
She had one last document to review. As she read, she felt the air in the room shift, as though someone had walked into her office unannounced. She looked up to find Becky sitting on her couch, eyes closed, and face rapt in concentration.
“So you’ve decided not to abandon us after all,” Miea said jovially.
Becky opened her eyes and scanned the room dazedly. She looked at Miea and smiled broadly. “I did it.”
“It seems that you did.”
“It’s gotta be the bed. Wow, this gets more bizarre all the time.”
Miea had no idea what Becky was talking about. Regardless, the sight of the girl caused Miea’s heart to lift. “It’s good to see you again, Becky.”
Becky had not stopped smiling. “It’s great to see you as well. Is this really Tamarisk?”
“You’re really here.”
“Unbelievable. So all of it is real.”
Miea walked over to Becky and touched her on the shoulder. “All of it. Would you like me to show you around?”
“Yeah, I’d love that.”
At that moment, Sorbus stepped into the doorway. “Your Majesty, if you don’t need anything more from me tonight, I’ll be leaving.”
“Have a good evening, Sorbus. By the way, before you go, I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine. This is Becky.”
Sorbus bowed slightly toward Becky and said, “It is a pleasure to meet you, miss.” Miea could tell from Sorbus’s expression that the girl’s presence confused him; he probably wondered who she was and how she could have gotten into this part of the palace without his knowledge. Miea appreciated his concern, especially after the little episode with the vice chancellor’s son. She would tell him about Becky tomorrow and hope that Sorbus would believe her. She didn’t want to have the conversation now, though. Right now, she wanted to take her special guest on a little tour.
There was so much here that was just as Becky had imagined it. And so much more that was beyond imagining. If someone had told her a couple of weeks ago that she would be strolling through a fantasy land with a princess—sorry, queen—she made up when she was a little girl, Becky would have smirked and said she was a bit old to believe in magic. But doing it was totally different from pretending to do it, and if this kind of thing didn’t amaze you, you were in bad shape.
An intricately laid mosaic of multihued polished wooden tiles lined the corridors from floor to ceiling. Becky remembered the wood came from a tree called a plumas. The idea for it came when she misunderstood a project her father had been working on. Back then, she thought he could do anything with the trees he genetically engineered and she thought it would be fun if he made one that came in rainbow colors. She remembered being a little disappointed that he couldn’t do anything that dramatic, but if he wasn’t able to do it in real life, she could still do it here.
The people Becky and Miea passed along the way bowed to the queen and offered Becky puzzled looks. They couldn’t possibly know who she was, could they? Maybe they looked at her strangely because of the way she was dressed, though she really wasn’t dressed all that differently from them. In the early years of the Tamarisk stories, Becky dressed the characters in ornate clothing, very medieval, reminiscent of the Renaissance fairs she’d gone to every summer with her parents. In the year before she stopped creating these stories with her father, she changed her mind, deciding that Tamarisk would be a much cooler, much more contemporary place if everyone dressed in brightly colored nylon outfits, something like the warm-ups the UConn women’s basketball team wore. Even Miea was dressed casually now, though the queen got to wear a special iridescent weave that was only made by one artisan in the territory of Odoric. Anyway, in jeans and an Abercrombie T-shirt (hadn’t she taken this stuff off before she went to bed?), Becky didn’t think she looked out of place here, even if it was obvious that people saw her as an outsider.
They made a left turn and went through a doorway outside. Becky received an immediate sensory barrage. The colors were almost physically overwhelming. Of course, there was blue everywhere—Becky thought having blue leaves in Tamarisk rather than green was a fun twist—but so many other colors were totally new to her. Was this what aquamaroon looked like? Could that lemon-tangerine-melon bloom be the color she named juce? And what would you call the color of the flower over to the right, the one that seemed at once dark green, jet-black, and midnight blue?
As dazzling as the colors were, though, the sounds were even more amazing. Becky heard the deep bass rumbling of some animal nearby—maybe a mariton or a morongo. The rustling of the leaves in the wind had a percussive quality to it, almost like the playing of several musical triangles at the same time. Birds trilled in very deliberate patterns while some pounded
with their beaks in a complex rhythm. There was shuffling, rustling, chirping, squeaking, and staccato notes, all coming from places she couldn’t identify. And all of it seemed to be in sync and in tune. The result was something that seemed nearly symphonic, as though nature in Tamarisk performed one huge, endless concert. She never would have thought of this. Sure, she and her father came up with “voices” for the animals they created, basing many of them on musical instruments. But they never thought about tuning them together. Only one sound seemed to be off, something she could just barely hear in the distance. It was flat and sad. Was this something that sounded right to the citizens of Tama-risk? Did they even realize what their world sounded like?
Then there was the smell. Raspberries and chocolate. Two of her favorite smells in the world. The scent wasn’t ultradistinct, but it was definitely there, just as she designed it. Becky wondered if an alien visitor—wow, she was actually an alien in this world— would have a similar explosion of the senses upon arriving in Moorewood. What would her hometown smell like or sound like to someone who’d never been there—or anywhere on Earth—before?
Without realizing it, Becky had stopped walking, feeling more than a little bit dazzled. How many new things could she absorb at once?
“Is everything all right?” Miea said, drawing Becky out of it.
“Everything is very all right. There’s just so much to take in.”
“I suppose you’ll need to come back often, then, to make sure you get every bit of it.”
Becky connected with Miea’s smiling eyes. “Yes, I guess I will need to do that.”
They continued through the garden and walked to the edge, which overlooked a large glade that served as an entrance to a forest on one side and a long hill on the other. At the end of the hill was a town. Tamarisk City. While Becky had been very particular about the naming of everything here, she kept the name of the heart of Tamarisk simple in honor of New York City. They were very different places—Tamarisk City was busy but small—but they were both the center of their “kingdoms.”
Becky watched a furred creature, one she couldn’t place, hop three times and then take flight. It joined other birds in the Tamariskian sky, including something that looked like one of the huge passenger gulls she’d named waccasassa. There was wildlife everywhere out here, trudging along on cloven hooves, springing forward on long, elastic legs, rolling and tumbling to get to its destination. She was certain she could be entertained for hours simply watching this scene play out.
Becky heard Miea take a few steps away from her and she looked in her direction. The queen moved near a dense bush and extended her arm. Becky saw what appeared to be a feathered snout poke out from the bush to sniff the queen’s arm. Then it pulled back and Becky heard scurrying from inside the bush. A moment later, the snout was back, followed by the elongated body of a hoffler, the feathered lizard Dad had invented years ago. The hoffler walked onto Miea’s arm and then up her shoulder, nuzzling her neck.
“A friend of yours?” Becky said.
Miea laughed. “I’m not sure I’ve ever met this particular hoffler before, but they’re all very affectionate once they realize you aren’t a mohonk intent on making a meal out of them.”
Becky walked up to the hoffler and touched its snout. The animal pulled back instinctively, but then sniffed Becky’s hand and rubbed the side of its long face against it.
“Now it’s a friend of yours, too,” Miea said. Becky couldn’t help but chuckle, petting the hoffler on the top of the head.
Eventually, they went back into the palace through another door. Miea showed Becky her main conference room with tufted walls and wispy-yet-sturdy furniture made of winema (another of her father’s inventions). Then she took her to a smaller room where the most essential meetings of the palace took place. A shell-like material that reminded Becky of fish scales covered the curved walls. The furniture was carved from a black-brown-green stone known as malheur.
“This is a very serious-looking room,” Becky said.
Miea looked at her gravely. “Very serious things happen in it.”
“Do you use it often?”
“Much more than I would like to.” Miea made that statement sound especially grave, but she didn’t say anything more about it.
After this, they went to Miea’s chambers. Some of the touches Becky remembered putting in the princess’s room were here—the inordinately high chair crafted in foamy payette, the portrait of Miea as a baby painted in extremely rare cibola dyes, the guessing board, a game whose rules changed every time you played and revealed themselves incrementally as you made each move. So was some of the furniture she’d designated for the king’s and queen’s chambers (which she supposed these actually were), including the chest-of-three-dozen-drawers and the comforter stuffed with the down of the elegant seney. Beyond this were knickknacks and furnishings Becky couldn’t recognize, including a large model of a tall bridge and numerous pictures of people Becky guessed were Miea’s parents.
They settled in the anteroom and one of the queen’s aides knocked on the door. Miea greeted her and then turned to Becky.
“I was just about to have some dinner. Would you care to join me?”
“Just something to drink, thank you. I already had dinner tonight.” It dawned on Becky that it couldn’t be the same time here as it was back home if Miea was just having dinner now and it was still light out. Maybe Tamarisk was in a different time zone (did that even make sense?) or maybe time ran entirely differently here.
Miea told the aide what she wanted to eat and then sat back in the sofa across from Becky. “What did you mean before when you said, ‘It’s gotta be the bed’?”
Becky leaned forward in her chair. “I tried so many times to get here in the last week. I thought I wasn’t concentrating enough or that I’d forgotten part of what you told me to do.”
“Or that what I told you to do wasn’t correct in the first place.”
“No, I really didn’t think that was possible. It had to be something I was doing wrong. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t get here. Then an idea popped into my head. When I met you in that place, wherever that was, I was in the bed at my father’s apartment. I only sleep there on Saturday nights. I thought maybe it had something to do with the bed or the apartment or, I don’t know, the paint on the walls. And you know what? It worked. I don’t think I did anything else differently, but this time it worked.”
This seemed to make Miea happy. “I really was beginning to wonder if you’d decided against coming.”
“No, no, no, no, no. Not at all. I was getting pretty frustrated, if you want to know the truth.”
“I’m so glad you made it now. I felt like we were . . . only beginning when we met out in that other place.”
“Me too. And, man, if I had missed out on this, I would have been missing out on a lot.”
Miea glanced around the room then with an expression that seemed slightly melancholy. The queen’s aide came back then with some sort of salad for Miea. She handed Becky a cup of lukewarm scarlet liquid. Becky sniffed at it carefully and then took a sip. The taste surprised her. Though the liquid was the consistency of water, it produced a thick, almost syrupy sensation on her tongue. It danced across her taste buds with a cinnamon-y/salty/spicy flavor. Definitely nothing she’d ever tasted before—and she wasn’t at all sure how she felt about it.
“Do you like the barritts?”
“Mmm, just like Mom makes at home,” Becky said with a grin.
Miea smiled at her. “I guess we have a lot to learn about each other.”
Becky took another sip. She could imagine enjoying this. “And about each other’s worlds.”
Miea took a bite of her salad. “You say you sleep in the bed at your father’s on Saturdays. How often do Saturdays come?”
Becky remembered that all the days had different names in Tamarisk, though she’d decided there should still be seven in every week. “Once every seven days.”
&
nbsp; “So we’ll hopefully get to visit at least that often, then.”
I wish there was some other way to get here . “Definitely then, if it’s okay with you. And maybe—” she hesitated, knowing how much of a challenge this was going to be “—there might be a way for me to spend more nights at my father’s so I could spend more time here.”
Miea put her salad down and said, “I would welcome that.”
How, exactly, do you plan to pull this one off, Beck? “Then I’ll definitely see what I can do. I’d love to—”
Becky felt a sudden pull, almost as if someone had grabbed her from behind. She reflexively closed her eyes and the pull continued. So this is what dirt feels like around a vacuum cleaner. When she opened her eyes again, she was glancing up at the ceiling of the bedroom in her father’s apartment.
What happened? Where did Tamarisk go?
Becky shut her eyes and tried to darken and send herself back, but she never felt any movement at all. Eventually, she turned onto her side and stared at the window in her room. Had she short-circuited or something? Did she need to reboot? What was Miea thinking about what just happened?
The taste of barritts was still on her tongue and she longed for the opportunity to finish her cup. Another night. She would definitely get back there another night. She was sure of it.
Becky closed her eyes and revisited Tamarisk in her thoughts.
Going there once a week was definitely not going to be enough.
Gage watched in wonder, spirit full, imagination approaching bliss. The bridge held, joining two worlds that were separate but not separated.
Surprise rarely came to Gage, but it manifested now. This was an extraordinary use of a gift. A maximal use of a gift. A potent reminder of the vitality of possibility, of the potential of imagination to reach beyond imagining. Gage centered on this thought for several long moments and felt the embrace of a warm wave. That, too, was exceedingly rare.
