Forest of Dreams

by Bevill, C. L.

  It couldn’t be located near Cheyenne Jr. because of the logistical problems involved with it. That was one of the main issues with having a two-person security system. Ariel had talked about it briefly. Back in the olden days they relied on two people who had been cleared to initiate the process. The two people received a code through secured communications, presumably from the place we were headed, then they opened the safes in the one room. They retrieved the two keys and went to another room to use the keys there. Finally, they extracted a firing mechanism, which was taken to a third place and then used to detonate the whole works, whereupon the world would say buh-bye.

  God, how many nasty little secrets like Cheyenne Jr. was the world keeping in its coffers for some distant rainy day?

  Light landed on my ear again and sang, “Humans are weird.”

  “You ain’t just whistling Dixie, sweetheart,” I remarked and Light said, “Huh?”

  “I need to stop,” I said. My thigh was healing up, but the muscles wanted to lock up like tension cables being drawn into a spool. If I didn’t get off Bitey now and again, I would fall off, and it wouldn’t be pretty. I would writhe on the ground in a mass of agony, and the firefly pixies would burst a gut laughing at me.

  “Again?” Light protested. “The sisters need action!”

  “The sisters can hunt for butterflies,” I sang. “I also saw a hummingbird earlier.” There was a whoop of unrestrained joy from the pixies both inside and outside of the birdcage.

  For some reason hummingbirds were to the firefly pixies what the great white whale had been to Captain Ahab. They were determined to take down one of the “Fast-Flying-Blurry-Bird-But-Not-a-Bird”s. They all zipped away at top speed, eager to kill the errant beast of pixie legend.

  Did I mention how much I loved the firefly pixies?

  Horse stopped just past where the washout ended, and we followed him without issue. The horses needed to be watered, and there was a small waterfall that filled up a rock basin on the side of the road and then spilled downhill to parts unknown. I stretched out my legs while the two regular horses cooled off. Horse looked around and sniffed carefully.

  “What did you mean, Horse?” I asked.

  “Something new,” he said. “Something I haven’t smelled before. Smells gamy. Smells big, too.” He wiggled his ears and then twitched his nose. “My nose is almost as good as my ears. I’ve got a sense of…what does Meka call it? Foreboding. I like that word. It’s a big word for something that’s giving me the shivers. I read one of your books called a Webster’s Dictionary. Very good book.”

  “Where?”

  Horse twitched his nose again in the direction we were headed. There wasn’t a surprise about that. If several of Theo’s people had vanished here, there was a reason for it. I was just sorry I didn’t have a few more of the bigger new animals with us. The Big Mama’s would have been nice. So would Zach’s phoenix. I would have taken just about anything once Horse said something big and foreboding.

  Meka stopped near me and offered me his canteen. It wasn’t Steve’s bota full of red wine, but it was clear, cool, and tasted like no kind of bottled water I ever had. When I was done I looked at him and asked, “Regret it?”

  “Coming with you?” Meka asked. “No, it’s worth it. Doing the right thing is always worth it, but I think we’re going to find some heavy stuff somewhere in these mountains.”

  “Psychic stuff?” I handed the canteen back to him. He closed it and slung it over his shoulder.

  “No, common sense, but Horse says that he smells something, then he smells something.”

  “Smells a little like death,” Horse added helpfully, chomping at some grass on the side of the road.

  That was great. Something big, gamy, and deathy. I was always up for a challenge, especially since I couldn’t run away.

  “Wish we had a few more people or new animals,” Meka said. “Or both.”

  “Won’t be long,” Horse said.

  I waited, but Horse wasn’t exactly being helpful. He’d taken the closedmouthed-approach page out of the firefly pixies’ playbook. “Won’t be long before what?”

  “Before we have a few more people and new animals,” Horse said. “This grass sucks. It’s got a bitter taste to it.”

  “You mean someone’s coming?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Horse said. “I’m going up the hill a bit. The pixies say there’s a meadow there. Lots of butterflies and grass. There are hummingbirds, too, but I don’t want those.”

  Meka shrugged. “I’ll let the horses get their fill of water and then join you.”

  “Who is coming?” I asked Horse.

  Horse meandered off without answering me. I took that to mean that he wasn’t concerned or that he didn’t know.

  “What is it about new animals?” I asked Meka.

  “They’re not human,” Meka said. “That’s what it is.”

  I dismissed that with a roll of my eyes and limped forward. “I’ll look ahead and see if anything’s up.”

  “Don’t go too far,” Meka said.

  “Not too far,” I agreed. I didn’t need the crutch anymore, but the leg was still lagging behind the other one. Walking more would have helped, but I didn’t have time to walk it out. The bomb under the mountain wasn’t going to wait for me to heal completely.

  “That wound is okay, right?” Meka asked. “I worry about infection.” He shuddered, and I knew it was because he did worry about infection.

  “Yes, mother,” I said to Meka. “I checked it this morning and it’s fine.” I turned my head and went down the road.

  So who was coming? Probably Landers. How had he known where we were? By asking Meka, but Meka wouldn’t have mentioned that. No, I answered myself, by talking to Horse, the big closemouthed otherworldly ungulate. That was why Horse wasn’t too freaked about running into something big, bad, and smelly. He knew backup was coming and coming fast.

  I stopped to stretch and admired the view. It was an old road, the asphalt was chipping away, and seedlings started to part its cracks. In a hundred years it would be gone, and no one would even care that a road had been here. Perhaps some distant hunter would use its path or a group of new animals might be inclined to find a good spot to feed. Who knew?

  One side of the road was the cliff that had been chipped away to make the road. The other side fell away into a valley with a twisting blue river below. A layer of clouds danced along the far ridge and twirled in silent response to a windy music I could not hear. It was oddly peaceful for the moment, and nothing was threatening me. If I had waited in Colorado, I might have talked Landers around, but there was the whole Zizi-not-seeing-squat thing. It made me want to check again now to see what she was or wasn’t seeing, except that I didn’t have a handy operational cellphone.

  So to speak. Landers? I thought, relaxing my shoulders, studying the broken chunks of asphalt at my feet. Landers, I need to explain.

  Then he was there, all around me, pressing me back without a physical body. Yes, Landers was still annoyed with me, but it wasn’t an unreasonable anger. It flowed over me and around me and pushed down at me. It was that same maleness I got from him with a hint of exasperation slightly discoloring him. I get it, he thought back. Zizi told us. We put it together.

  Time is running out, I thought. The image of a giant hourglass popped into my head. Only a few grains of red-colored sand remained in the upper glass bulb.

  Landers’s answer was a growl that resonated in his mind.

  Can you ask Zizi what she sees now? I thought instead of trying to placate him.

  She’s back at Sunshine, Landers’s thought was an arrow, sharp and penetrating. It’s almost impossible to talk to her when she’s inside a bubble.

  But you talked to me.

  That was different. I can’t explain why it is, but it is.

  That didn’t exactly help. Can you keep trying? What Zizi sees might help me make decisions.

  There are others I can ask to talk to Zizi,
ones who aren’t inside the bubble and who can pass the message along, Landers thought. It might take a few hours.

  I thought about Horse and the firefly pixies who didn’t seem particularly alarmed. I think that’s okay.

  It’s not like I have a choice, Landers thought bitterly.

  You wouldn’t have let me go, I thought.

  There was another snarl in my head. Landers didn’t want to admit that I was right. You’re wounded. You just got out of a prison cell. For God’s sake, can’t someone else do it?

  I’m not sure if they can, I answered honestly. Then if I had been really honest I would have added, Not sure if I would have let them, either, but I didn’t add it.

  Landers didn’t have an answer for that, and I couldn’t make it clearer.

  Finally I thought, Horse tell you where we are?

  Yes.

  Are you here to help?

  Yes.

  Horse says there’s something big and bad coming up.

  Figures. If something important is happening, then big and bad is obligated to happen. I could hear the wry humor in his thoughts. Then Landers turned serious. You’ll wait for us.

  It wasn’t a question. I can’t wait. We’ll have to make due.

  Is it that close? Whatever it is that’s going to happen?

  If you talked to Zizi, then you already know the answer. If I can’t get these code things, then perhaps you can. I didn’t want to push reality at Landers because I could feel equal shades of regret, anger, and desperation in him. After all, who wanted to know that the world could end at any time?

  We’re coming hard. I think maybe 70 miles away.

  I walked forward, stepping over a fallen tree and pausing as I got a whole new look at the valley beyond. I couldn’t think for a moment because of what I was seeing. 70 miles, uh, that’s good. I think.

  What’s wrong? came Landers’s insistent thought.

  The words to answer him didn’t readily come to me because all I could do was stare. The valley floor split asunder, and the walls curled around our destination. I’m not sure how I knew it was our destination, although it was doubtful that it could be anything else.

  I didn’t see a building, but my eyes could follow the road as it made its descent down into the valley. I couldn’t see where the road stopped, but I had an idea that it ended right at the edge of the black forest of gigantic trees sprouting upward in a tremendous grove of darkness. It was a great murky splotch on the face of the planet that exploded for miles in a southerly direction. The bark looked like pitch from my vantage. The tops were gargantuan drops of shadowy paint that had been dropped from a pronounced distance. The trunks and roots bent and bowed in odd ways, reaching out with twisted talons for prey that was just out of its reach. One couldn’t see more than a few yards inside their gnarled grouping.

  The building that I was headed for was inside that titanic deathly grove.

  Oh, butterfly’s butt, I thought.

  Chapter 21

  Lulu Enters the Shadows

  The Present – The Dark Grove

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Meka said from nearby. He stared down the valley at the exact thing that had stopped me cold in my tracks. “I ain’t never seen anything like that.”

  I ain’t never seen nothing like the grove, either. It gave me the willies just looking at it from a significant and healthy distance. It was clear that the sea of dreams had come this way, too. It had rolled over the earth and left magic in its wake. It had left a forest of dreams, or rather, a forest of nightmares. The place radiated menace outward in an unmistakable fashion at the same time it radiated otherworldliness.

  Its phantasmagorical nature made me think of Bansi. He was a man, (I thought he was possibly a man) we’d met outside of Sunshine and later in D.C. He was also possibly more magical than all of the rest of us combined. He had a certain interest in technology and magic as it came together. He’d also had an interest in the District ending. What had he said? “A sea of dreams that rolled over the world. The seas came and next, the mountains will drift, taking it all back, and only the very special will remain to see what will happen next.”

  There had also been something about the gods of technology. “Do you think that when the new technology began in the form of electricity and telephone, lights and computer devices, that they did not have their own gods? Technology, you see, is borne of magic, just as everything in this universe. Did you ever wonder if there was a Big Bang? Consequently, did you ever wonder what was there before the Big Bang, because surely there couldn’t have been nothing?”

  What would the apparent god have said about this forest of dreams? Let’s just say I wasn’t ready for that answer.

  “We’re going there,” Meka said. The tall man rubbed his chin in uncertain manner.

  “Yes, but you don’t have to come,” I said. I wanted him to come with me, but I wasn’t going to make him.

  Lulu? came Landers’s insistent thought. Lulu, what’s wrong?

  Nothing’s wrong exactly, I thought back. It’s just a very large…forest. I pictured the warped, abnormal branches, each larger than any of the redwoods in California. The darkness was gravy poured over it all. Whatever lived in there was likely the cherry on top. Something there was ancient and hungry. It made me shiver inwardly.

  What is that place? Landers had to be seeing it from the images in my head. The tone of the voice in my head was equal parts awe and horror.

  Oh, that’s where I have to go, of course.

  We’re coming, he thought unrelentingly. Those thoughts were unyielding as if he was coming to save the princess from the tower where a beast zealously guarded her. However, I wasn’t a princess, and I didn’t know what kind of beast was waiting for me, for us.

  Meka shrugged, never looking away from the immense configuration. “I don’t have anything better to do,” he said. “I’m sure Horse will be thrilled.”

  We both heard a distant disgruntled nicker and knew Horse had heard everything.

  Once we got a little closer to the dark grove, the situation became somewhat different. I could tell the firefly pixies were slightly unnerved. If I had to guess, I would have said it was because they hadn’t run into this particular thing before. They fluttered around my head and stared into the darkness. Typically, they preferred the nighttime, but the place in front of us was saturated in blackness that had nothing to do with a lack of sunshine.

  “Light,” I sang, “do you know anything about that place?” I waved at the gloomy stand.

  “The sisters don’t like this place,” Light sang back. Her eyes never wavered from the blackness in front of us.

  The sisters didn’t like a lot of places. They hadn’t liked Cheyenne Jr., and look what had happened there. I hadn’t listened then, but that has changed.

  “I don’t have a choice about this,” I sang back.

  “It’s funny how much Lulu reminds us of Sophie,” Light sang. I glanced at her, and she was gazing resolutely at me now. I felt the heat bloom in my cheeks.

  “What does it mean when humans turn that shade of pink?” another pixie sang.

  “One of them told the sisters it was because they felt silly,” another one sang with a little giggle at the end.

  “Humans are weird,” I sang back. “We’re all butterfly butts.” The firefly pixies liked to be secretively insulting. When someone ticked them off, they got inventive with their invectives.

  “Light,” I sang. I stopped and used her full name. “Flies-Like-a-Bird-in-First-Morning-Light,” I sang, “everyone is depending on this, all of us, including every one of your fledglings, all of our children. Every bit of life hinges on me going in that place—” I pointed into the blackness with one hand— “and getting what I need to get.”

  Light bared her teeth at me. I couldn’t tell if she was truly amused or merely making a gesture. “The sisters know.”

  “We’re going in,” I said.

  Light nodded. “We’re going in,” she sa
id in English. It sounded odd and like little clinking bells when the pixies spoke in English. There was a flourish of silver toothpicks as they came out in preparation for our great deed.

  “Meka?” I asked.

  “Me, too,” he said. He had a hand on the hammer inserted through his belt. Somewhere he’d found a real live war hammer. It wasn’t much larger than a regular hammer that someone would have gotten from Sears, but it had a pointy spike on the top and was made of blackened iron. The hammer end was bumpy so as to make more damage in the enemy’s armor or whatever it was hitting. The claw part was definitively spike-like, adding to the whole “war hammer” ideal. I suspected he’d hit a cosplay store in the Denver area, but hey, if it worked, who was I to complain?

  “Horse?”

  Horse whinnied. “I bet there’s no grass in there. It’s stagnant and dead. There’s probably bugs in what grass there is.” He shook his mane. “We should be quick.”

  Meka stared into the shadows. “Lulu,” he said hesitantly, “I can’t help but think of all the things that vanished.”

  I glanced at him again. I didn’t know much about Meka except that he’d always acted for the good of his friends. I knew that he had never stabbed anyone in the back. He didn’t lie, and he never shirked on his duties at Sunshine. He also didn’t like to talk about his past before the change. I didn’t think that life was anything good. I suspected that Meka had had a hard life. For some people the change had been a very good thing. I think Meka was one of those people. One day I would buy him a beer and tell him what a twat I had been before the sun had risen on that long ago day. (And for some time after the change, for that matter.) I would hope that he might share his story, too, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

  Meka sighed. “All the people vanished and left their clothes, their jewelry. Watches, rings, shoes, all of it, lying in place where they were when it happened.”

  I nodded.

  “So they went away,” Meka said. “Then there were a few other places that vanished. Bridges, towns, buildings. Sometimes whole cities. You remember that fella who told us about that town in Canada. There wasn’t anything there anymore.” I remembered. There were several stories like that. I’d heard someone say that half of New York City was gone. “All those things are like peoples’ clothing and watches. It doesn’t make sense. Flesh and blood gone, but nothing manmade. But then, all this manmade stuff is gone, too.”