“We believe so,” says Reen.
“How the fuck can you know that?” I say.
“Observation,” says Reen. “Although of course we would like them back.”
“And what would they like?”
“We can’t know that,” says Reen.
“Exactly,” I say.
“Is it possible to release them?” asks Eva. “Whoever set this up must know how to stop it.”
Reen sets forth on a spiel about agreements and decisions and difficulties which I cease to listen to after about three seconds.
It’s darker now and you’d think the Tenties would be harder to see, but they’re not. Maybe I’m just getting used to the whole thing, but they seem to be glowing. Eva takes a few steps towards them, but Reen pulls her back, which is educational to say the least.
“Be careful,” he says. “You don’t want to be caught.”
“So you could just walk in?” I say. “Ask them how they’re doing yourself?”
“In theory,” says Reen. “Although the timing would have to be perfect.”
I can see that Eva would like to run and jump, but Reen’s keeping a steady grip on her arm. She’s not resisting, which is possibly a good thing, but I’m not sure that I like the way this is panning out.
“And of course, says Reen, “you’d be stuck too. And without the protection the Trocarn have. It would be excruciating for a human. Too long and you’d die.”
It’s possible the fact that Eva is not entirely human has eluded him. At least she has the sense to keep quiet about it. And it seems that Reen, tentacle T-shirt or no, is getting bored.
“Do you need somewhere to stay?” he asks again. “I mean, you’re new to Barlewin.”
“No,” I say, “we’re good.” Unfortunately at the same time as I’m brushing him off, Eva is saying yes, that would be wonderful.
“I know a decent place,” says Reen.
And before I can protest, he and Eva are walking away from the poor Time Locked Tenties and further up into the better-lit sections of the High Track. I watch them for a moment, then bow to the inevitable and say a mental goodbye to the beings in the dome. At least, I figure, we know where they are.
It’s possible Reen is leading us up the garden path in more ways than one, but probably not. It don’t seem his style. And to be fair, Eva probably does need to rest. I can see what looks like a staircase up ahead: the elusive staircase number 1. My thoughts turn to food. Perhaps this place Reen knows has something better than biscuits and cheese; they were good and all, but they only really amounted to a pre-dinner snack. The night has cooled to the point where I could even contemplate hot food. And a bath. Clean clothes would be nice. Or at least dry ones. I’m deep in my fantasy of warm and dry when a body rushes past me. Eva. The surprise stops my brain for a moment.
“No,” says Reen, but we both know that’s a futile gesture. And we both know where she’s headed and what she’s about to do.
“Now’s your chance to find out just how happy they are,” I tell him.
He looks at me as if I’m mad and I half expect him to grab me and stop me following her. But it seems he don’t really care what choices I make. And then we’re both off running. Reen, presumably, to stop Eva. Me too, I think. I’m running like a mad man; I can feel my various aches and pains announcing themselves with every step.
Reen is ahead of me. He’s close to Eva. He reaches out a hand, touches her, but she moves away from him. But it’s a sideways move, not into the Tenties’ dome, so I guess he’s stopped her after all. Reen bends over a little to catch his breath, but he’s still got an eye on Eva. She don’t move. She’s looking at me. I’m still running, but I’m truly buggered, so I slow and walk the last few steps, largely concentrating on not sounding like some kind of steam-powered elephant in its dying moments.
“Coming?” she asks. Which, after all, is the question I knew she was waiting to ask.
And we step into the dome together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Green Jay
AS SOON AS we step through the dome, we are surrounded by the Trocarn. They are very different in this form, but I do not mind if they envelope me. They are like the memories of the Trocarn I knew: T-Lily, Rose-Q and the ones who tended to me in the early days, ones whose name I have forgotten, or did not think to ask. I can see the Crow beside me. Poor Brom, it was brave of him to follow. He will not want the Trocarn to touch him, but he must allow it if he is to survive. I think he knows that. But he does not appear to be enjoying himself. His face amuses me.
No-one has spoken yet. Their bodies are not made for speech any more. They are fluid and flowing, more like vines than anything else. Although they are not just plants, they are animal as well. I feel emotions as they embrace me, emotions I suppose they wish to transfer to me to convey their state of mind. It would be easy to drift here, locked into a chemical oblivion. I see that the Crow has closed his eyes, and it occurs to me that we may never leave. I close my eyes and let myself drift for a while. It is good to feel so refreshed. Untangled. Whole. It is good to stop running.
But I force myself awake before I float away completely. I cannot succumb. I feel my hair and the dragonfly is still there. I wonder if the Chemical Conjurers are monitoring it, if they know what we have done. It may be that our only hope is that they pull us out of here. Or that Blue Jay finds us. Blue Jay seems a long way away now. Too far, too distant.
I have a question. If the Trocarn can travel through space, surely they can get out of Time Lock? I wonder how long it has taken them to achieve this form, why they have chosen to adapt rather than escape. Why they have chosen to surrender. There is no way to ask. Or perhaps there is and I do not know it. If I allow it, I am sure they will make me more like them. I could ask my questions, mesh with them, learn their answers and their reasons. I would be so far from Olwin Duilis that she would be no threat to me anymore. But I would also lose myself.
There are moments when the world outside lights up. Perhaps it is the time nets searching for us, perhaps just different lighting. But the world outside is blurry, hardly there. We are inside a strange, alien cave. The pull of the Trocarn is too strong, and I sink into it once again. I am so glad to have found them and I hope they can feel it in my skin.
Crow
SHIT, BUT THIS is good. I was weirded out at first, too slow to stop the tendrils finding me. Too half-hearted when I tried to tear them off. Because the thing is, once you’re settled in, you’re doing fine. There’s no nausea, no sense of tangling with the universe and losing. It’s all just fine. Which is dangerous shit, and I should know, but that don’t stop me from melting in. The real me would not want the Tenties wrapped around me. I mean, I never let them touch me even when they looked vaguely human. But it’s too late now. They’ve got me. Not even sure how long we’ve been here.
Not that I should be complaining. Whatever stupid impulse made me jump into the dome with Eva, I regretted almost before I was completely in. You’d think I would know enough about this Time Locked shit to not voluntarily put myself through this. It’s just that that Reen bloke was so annoying. And after all, this is what we came for. Save the Tenties and all. Though it appears very much as if they didn’t particularly need saving, thank you very much.
Eva’s a little way away. I can still see her, but I can’t touch her. She seems to be drifting too, and I can’t say as I blame her. She’s used to the Tenties, after all. She pretty much needs whatever it is they’re pumping into us. It’s a shame not to be able to talk to them. Scrap that: it’s a pleasure not to be able to talk. And though I’m well aware it would be wrong to drift along like this for too long, it’s nothing if not pleasant.
I feel a scratch on my wrist. The dragonfly has detached itself from Eva’s hair and flown over. A reminder to wake up, I’m guessing. It puts two dainty feet on my phone, wakes that up too. Not quite sure who it wants me to contact, or what it wants me to say. Perhaps it’s trying to tell me to get out
of there. I’m going to be very pissed off if it activates a shift back out of Time Lock, leaving me on the cold outside and Eva in here with the Tenties. I brush it away, and it humours me slightly by sitting on the back of my hand. Thing is, I don’t want to hurt it. It’s as if it was alive, which of course it’s not. Just a tiny machine sent to both save and annoy.
The outside world is indistinct, to say the least. Every now and then, there’s something bright. Too bright, I’m thinking, but whatever it is, and it’s probably the time nets, it don’t seem to be able to get inside the dome. So it’s safe and snug here, and impossibly floaty, except that the bloody dragonfly is scratching at my hand again, preventing me from drifting off. Just what I need, an insect sponsor, but it’s right. I can’t stay too long in Tentie land. Though they’re not really Tenties any more, more like vines. Friendly triffids. I’m not completely sure where one vine stops and another begins. Maybe they’re all joined.
The thought that I’m up here on the High Track, passing, albeit briefly, though the land of the Barleycorn King and the prophets and whoever else likes to hang around up here, makes me smile. I wonder if anyone walks through us by mistake. Though of course that’s impossible, seeing as we’re not really here. The mind-boggly shit starts again. Best to abandon that train of thought.
I think about a way to get over to Eva. By the look of her, she’s sure as hell not coming to me. It’s not that far, just far enough that I can’t stretch out and give her a kick. I try unwinding myself from the tendrils, but that’s about as effective as telling the dragonfly to piss off. And so I lurch myself into the middle of them all, as if I was wading through a particularly nasty river. It’s slow going—incredibly slow going, considering she’s not that far away—but finally I’m close enough to be able to touch her.
I stop. I let her be. She’s happy.
But unless we want to live out our lives in here, we’re going to have to go. And I’m damned if I’m going looking for Eva all over again just because she exited Tentie land at a different time to me. That, and Mac would never forgive me. I hope to hell he’s tucked away safely with Guerra, if such a thing can be contemplated, and not trying out his own schemes to find us. Because, as mean as Guerra can be, Mac is probably better off just staying put. Acting as a kind of hostage. I can’t see Guerra doing too much damage. Though who am I kidding? Guerra’s more than capable of getting someone else to kick the shit out of you. He usually has the sense to only do it when he thinks it’ll do some long-term good, but that’s about all the restraint he’s got. It’s the notion of the Barleycorn King that’s got me all sentimental. And I don’t know why. He’s the one that threw me down the stairs.
The thought occurs to check my phone, and perhaps that’s what the dragonfly was trying to tell me all along. Because there’s a message. No name. Which could mean anything. Could even mean Eila. I tap on the screen to open it. It’s Mac: Olwin here. Eva safe? There’s more, but a tendril curls around my wrist. Either the Tenties are trying to read my message or they’re just being particularly friendly.
The Tenties are more than just a tangle of vines now. Shapes appear. Almost human shapes sometimes. I give them time because they’re probably trying to communicate, but I wish they’d hurry up. It takes a while before they coalesce into something that resembles human. In fact I’m reminded of Kolb and Lona, though that could be the green tinge more than anything else.
I seem to have been released from the tendrils. And, at least for the moment, I feel just fine. I deliberately don’t want to think about what they’ve pumped into me. Eva is released too, although she looks less than completely alert. To be honest, she looks as if she is dreaming.
“You have brought us Green Jay,” the shapes say, the both of them together. Which is disconcerting, but then not so long ago I was hoping they would speak.
“We were worried,” I say. Which is about as lame a reply as you can get. How to articulate the fact that the Tenties’ predicament is quite possibly all my fault and that while I probably can’t do anything about it I feel the need to try? That, and let’s be honest, I’m a victim of my own poor impulse control.
“This is the best place for her,” they say.
“I think she’d like to return,” I tell them. Because for all this Sleeping-Beauty thing they’ve got going on, the princess was, after all, waiting for the kiss.
“She won’t survive,” they say.
“You sure about that?” I ask. Because, unlike the Tenties, I’ve had the privilege of seeing her museum greenhouse and her acolytes and, let’s face it, a mountain of graffiti that looks just like her.
“Olwin Duilis wants her returned.”
“Yes, I know, Guerra too, but the fact is, she wants to go back. Eva. Green Jay, or whatever you call her.”
“It is not going to work,” they say. “Not for her.”
“You can’t keep her here forever,” I say. “I mean it’s impressive and all that you’re living in permanent Time Lock, but don’t you want to get out?”
“We were not wanted.”
It’s way beyond my abilities to articulate the capacity of the human race to get rid of the very things they should have kept. Let alone the tendency for the milder humans to let the fuckers get away with a wide variety of crap. “That’s not true,” I say. “There’s people out there with pictures of you on T-shirts, drinking out of cups with tentacles. They want you back. You’d be like rock stars if you came back.” Which, once again, is supremely lame. Do Tenties even know what rock stars are? But I never asked to be a diplomat. Though perhaps, to be fair, I cast myself in the role when I jumped into the dome.
There’s a great silence, which I, as usual, feel the need to fill up. “Perhaps one of you could come with us. Just one. See what it’s like. Take the lay of the land. Scout it out.” There’s a tendril around my wrist and I know it means shut up, so I do. And we wait. It’s very peaceful. Very floaty.
Very fucking boring.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Green Jay
I KNOW THAT what I’m seeing is a dream. I know, but it seems so very real. Kolb and Lona—only it is not them—are taking me, showing me different places. It is always Barlewin. I can never escape Barlewin. They show me my greenhouse, they show me the High Track. They take me on a walk through the marketplace. We watch the big screen. And always there are people like me. People like them. That is, not people, not completely; part person, part plant, part Trocarn. Because, and I did not realise this before, Kolb and Lona have more of the Trocarn in them than I first thought. And I understand, though I remember it is a dream, that this is true outside of this dome.
We walk through the crowds and we are unremarkable. There is no flinching away if we touch someone by mistake, no making room so there is no chance of contact. It is wonderful, but it makes me want to cry. They are showing me this to comfort me. Comfort me for what? What has happened that is filling me with sadness?
The person I long for is Blue Jay. I try to tell them, in this dream. But he is never there, wherever we go.
And at last they take me to the farm. I do not want to go, but I know I must. And there is part of me that wants to look, the way you want to look at something decaying and old. You want to face it in all its awfulness.
We walk under the water tower. The opening at the bottom is closed and the ladder looks crumbly and unsafe. I want to climb in, look around for Blue Jay, but we keep walking. We are in the gardens now. There are no plastic covers the way there were last time. Instead the plants grow green and free. There are people in the house; I see them through the windows, but they do not come out to us and we do not knock at their door. Instead we continue to the shed.
I do not want to go. I pull at Lona’s arm. I plead with Kolb.
“You must,” they say.
“But I’ve already looked,” I tell them. And it is true, though I can’t remember when or why.
“Do you remember?”
No, of course not. But
I cannot say that. My feet keep walking even though the rest of me wants to turn, wants to run. My head is full of fizzing and I want to stop, but I know that I must. I must.
We are at the door. Lona opens it and Kolb goes in. Lona smiles. She knows I am scared; she is gentle, understanding. But terrible. She holds the door open for me. She insists.
I walk in. It is not so awful. Just a shed. Dim and dark, hard to see clearly, but there is nothing here to terrify. It smells of the earth and of must. A few of Olwin Duilis’ memories bubble up, but I let them free, they cannot trouble me here, in the dream. I see tools and containers. Everything is neat and orderly. And Kolb. He is at the end of the shed. Not far, but so far away. By the bench.
There is something on the bench. A body. Mine. Of course. I am so calm. So calm as I walk. I see my hair, fuzzy, unkempt, falling out in patches. My eyes are closed but my mouth is open. There is no red on my lips. My skin is a greying green. There are places where it has fallen away, where it is bruised and wrong. I see the faint marks of the cut that Blue Jay made in my skin, on the underside of my left arm. It has healed. It was made a long time ago. Too long.
I do not run. I look and look and look and make myself understand. I cannot survive. However long I manage to live, it will come to this. There is no Blue Jay.
“There is us,” says Lona.
And I don’t know if that’s enough.
Crow
THE DRAGONFLY BUZZES at my wrist. I’ve been trying to look outside, mostly ’cause I’m completely bored with what’s happening inside. Kolb, Lona and I have come to a stalemate. In that they’re not speaking, and my diplomatic prowess, crap under the best of circumstances, is all used up. I notice there are tears on Eva’s cheeks. So the Tentie drug heaven possibly has a downside. Which is good to know.
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