by Bryan Davis
Nathan slid his shoe along the glass. It felt real enough, hard and smooth. As before, music filled the air, a sweet combination of perfectly blended, yet unidentifiable instruments. If all of this was just a vision, it had any virtual reality game beat by light years.
Gesturing with a curled finger, Francesca walked alongside the flowing mist. “This way.”
Nathan hustled to stay at her side. “This leads to the vision stalkers,” he said. “I've been here before.”
“But you're not here now.” She flashed a grin, that little grin he loved so much on the ten-year-old version of this young lady. “The stalkers won't give us any trouble as long as we stay quiet. They can't see us, so once we get to their domain, we will be able to go wherever we wish.”
She marched quickly along the path, her violin and bow swinging with her gait. Nathan followed, glancing at his own violin as he rushed past the surrounding mist. It was so strange. Somehow he was still playing the Vivaldi duet in the Earth Yellow bedroom. He still felt the passion of the melody as he subconsciously stroked the vibrating strings, yet he carried that same violin now within a virtual reality world he had recently visited in concrete reality. But which reality was the real reality?
He shook his head and hurried to catch up. He had to push the weirdness out of his mind and concentrate on Francesca's instructions. She was a girl on a mission, and he had to figure out what this was all about.
After going through the bank of fog, they emerged into the enclosed mirrored circle with the images of earth emblazoned on the walls. At least one new jagged trail marred the crystal surface, a path of green that stretched between Earth Blue and Earth Yellow. The room seemed darker this time, as though the lights had been turned down for the evening. A gentle song played in the air, the now familiar nondescript vowel sounds, creating a soothing, repetitive chant. Nathan took in the lullaby-like melody. Maybe it was nighttime here, and most of the people had gone to bed, or whatever they did to rest.
Even in the dimness, most of the room's features were still visible. As before, the triangle of supplicant domes sat at the center of the terrazzo floor, but this time, no white-haired stalkers crowded the glass enclosures. One man walked around the periphery, but he neither paused to look within a dome, nor slowed his pace as he passed by.
As the man approached, Francesca took Nathan's hand and let out a quiet “Shhh.” The stalker slowed for a moment and angled his head as if listening. Then, with a slight shrug, he continued his march until he reached an open door in one of the mirrored walls and disappeared inside.
Francesca whispered, “Remember, they can hear us.”
“Have you seen the supplicants?” Nathan asked, pointing at the domes.
“Yes. I wasn't sure if they'd be dangerous, so I didn't try to contact them.”
“They're not dangerous.” Nathan strode up to the closest dome and gazed inside. Scarlet sat with her legs crossed and her head bowed. Her chest expanded and contracted in a steady rhythm. In her sleeping posture, eyes closed without a hint of tension or wrinkle, she seemed peaceful … angelic.
Just as Nathan poised his knuckles on the glass to knock, Francesca tugged on his sleeve. “No time for afternoon tea. I have to show you the violin.”
He paused and pulled back his hand. She was right. He'd have to visit Scarlet later. He glanced at the red-clad girl's lovely face again and sighed. If there ever would be a “later.”
Francesca crept noiselessly around Scarlet's crystal prison until she reached the place where it abutted the next dome. She stepped over the point of intersection and into the small, curved triangle in the midst of the three abodes.
Nathan followed, peering into the other domes as he joined her. In the one to his left, another female sat in Scarlet's posture, a younger girl with long blonde hair that draped her pale yellow dress. To Nathan's right, a male teenager also slept, copying the pose of the other two.
Nathan slid closer. The boy, about his own age, seemed troubled, though he never opened his eyes. With dark hair in wild disarray, he cringed every few seconds, as if suffering through a nightmare.
Turning back toward Scarlet, Nathan let his gaze wander to the wall beyond her dome. The image of Earth Red towered above, blemished with shapeless clouds of orange and purple hovering over the points of injury inflicted by the other worlds. As he slowly turned to take in the entire vision, Earth Blue moved into view behind the boy's dome, and Earth Yellow behind the other girl's.
Francesca knelt and set her finger on a glass-panel inset in the terrazzo beneath their feet. The same size and shape of a door, the panel reflected the ceiling above as well as the top edges of the surrounding domes. Nathan swept his fingers over the mirror-like glass, but they didn't appear in the reflection, nor did their bodies. They were like ghosts in this place, able to haunt but unable to cast a shadow.
She moved her finger along a row of seven nickel-sized lights set in the glass, evenly spaced across the center. Looking up at him, she whispered, “Watch and listen.”
As the misty world's background lullaby continued to play, the lights on the panel alternated between white and red, as if responding to each note of the song. He knelt with her and concentrated on the tones. There was a pattern, a definite code. When the third light from the left flashed red, he pointed at it. “Middle C.” He then moved his finger to the first light. “That's an A, one octave down from middle A.”
She grinned. “That's my son! I knew you'd figure it out.”
“I figured out that it's a code, but that's about it.”
“It's a musical combination to get through this door.” Francesca touched each light in turn. “You have to produce a perfect A – B – C, and so on for each light, but the octaves change every time I come. I just have to listen until I pick them all out.”
“Not very secure, is it?”
“It's not as easy as it sounds.” She lifted her violin and bow. “I have to be fast and accurate.”
“What happens if you get it wrong?”
“You don't want to know. Let's just say you'd hear enough dissonance to make Shostakovich proud.”
Nathan frowned. “Very funny. I like Shostakovich. Mom and I always argued about his music.”
She smiled and winked. “Just watch for approaching stalkers. When I play, anyone around will be able to hear me. We'll have to hurry, because the glass only stays open for a few seconds.”
Nathan scanned the room. No one was coming. “Let's do it.”
She lowered her gaze to the floor panel and played A through G at various octaves, so fast that her fingers seemed to blur. From left to right the lights flashed to red, then back to white. She played the string of notes again, and the lights flashed blue in the same order. Finally, on the third run, the lights flashed yellow, then faded to black.
The panel's reflective surface melted away. Now just a section of transparent glass, the doorway revealed a stairwell descending into darkness. Francesca stood and set her foot over the highest stair. Her gym shoe sank into the glass. “Let's go,” she said as she descended into the clear gel. “We don't want to get stuck.”
A movement in the distance caught Nathan's eye. The stalker they had seen earlier was heading their way. As he pushed his shoe into the goop, he tapped her shoulder. “Someone's coming.”
Francesca quickened her pace, holding her nose as her face sank through. By the time Nathan had descended to waist level, she had submerged completely. As soon as he dropped below the surface and broke through into normal air, he looked up through the still-transparent door. The stalker climbed into the triangle area and stared quizzically at the glass panel. He laid a hand on the surface, his fingers splaying as he pressed down, but nothing passed through.
Walking on tiptoes to silence his shoes, Nathan held his breath. If the stalker couldn't see or hear them, maybe he would just go away.
The four-foot-wide staircase twisted in a steep spiral, eventually descending into complete darkness. After at
least thirty more steps, Francesca whispered, “We're almost there. You still with me?”
“Right at your heels … I think.”
“Okay. Here it is.” Her hand touched his chest, halting his progress. “It's another door,” she said, “but it's upright and not transparent, and it always uses the same code as the other one. When it opens, just look. Don't step through or it'll be the longest step you ever took.”
“Gotcha.”
She played the seven notes again three times, pausing about a second between each run. A glow appeared around a rectangular shape, making the outline of the doorway easy to see, and the glow seemed to eat away at the edges, shrinking the door toward the center. Light filtered into the steep corridor, illuminating Francesca as she kept her violin poised in playing position.
“Take a look,” she said, nodding at the doorway. “They call this place Sarah's Womb, but I haven't figured out why.”
Touching the side of the opening to keep his balance, Nathan leaned out. An enormous chasm yawned below with rocky cliffs on each side, interrupted about a hundred feet down by a wide ledge that encircled the cylindrical chamber. That ledge seemed to be the lower level's floor, a floor that had collapsed in the center, leaving a circular pit. A single step would send them plunging through its jaws and into a black void.
He looked up. A jigsaw pattern of semitransparent glass, the floor of the misty world, provided filtered light. A shadow crossed the glass, drifting slowly from one side of their ceiling to the other, a vision stalker on patrol.
Nathan grabbed a rocky protrusion at his side and held on. Danger lay below and above, and both directions looked like dead ends. Literally.
8
SARAH'S WOMB
Francesca pointed into the chasm with her bow. “The violin your mother mentioned in her vision is down there. The strings are stretched across this chasm. The only way down is a basket tied to a rope.” She reached out with her bow and touched one of two ropes dangling in front of them. She then pointed at a pulley protruding from the rocky foundation above the outside of the doorway. The rope looped over it, and a large knot kept it in place. “I pull the basket up, get inside, and lower myself down, but there's only room for one of us.”
“But we're right over the chasm,” Nathan said. “What do you do, swing until you can get to the side?”
“Exactly. But it's pretty safe.”
“Safe?” Nathan peered down again into the seemingly bottomless pit. “You gotta be kidding!”
She laughed. “It isn't easy, but it's safe. I slipped once and fell out of the basket. I kept falling for a long time but never hit bottom. I just snapped out of the vision. Since we're not really here, I guess we can't be harmed physically.”
“Then why are we worried about the stalkers hearing us?”
She poked herself in the arm. “I said we can't be hurt physically. They have other ways of hurting us.”
“When does the vision end? When we stop playing?”
She nodded. “But time passes a lot faster here. We're not even to your solo yet.”
“Yeah. It's kind of weird, but I knew that. I still feel myself playing the piece.” He looked down at the chasm once again, this time trying to focus on the shapes within the darkness. The violin strings, like four shimmering golden ropes, spanned the hole in the floor underneath their door. The basket swung lazily over the strings, as if pushed by a gentle draft. “I'll go first,” he said. “Then I'll lower you down.”
Nathan grabbed the rope just below the knot and pulled the basket to the top. Rectangular and made of dense wicker, it looked like a gondola from a hot air balloon, only smaller, barely enough room for one rider. The rope led into the passenger compartment and through a hole in its floor, apparently secured underneath with a knot big enough to keep it from popping out. He gave the base a nudge with his foot, making it sway. It seemed sturdy enough, but riding in it could prove to be a wobbly adventure.
Still hanging on to the rope on the knot side of the pulley, he climbed in, straddled the rope holding the basket, and descended, letting the rough, intertwined hemp slide bit by bit through his hands. Knowing he couldn't get hurt made the job easier. Still, friction warmed his skin, then burned, but not enough to make him let go. When the knot passed through his hands, the one that held the rope in place at the pulley, he knew he was about halfway down. It wouldn't be long now.
Finally, the basket stopped. The knot lodged in the pulley again, signaling that he had arrived at the right level. He pulled on the rope and gave the basket a shove with his body, then repeated the process until he swung back and forth several times. Again, pain burned his hands as the rope bit into his palms. He tried to blow on his skin, but it didn't help. Maybe Francesca was wrong. Maybe they could be hurt here. After all, she was a visitor, too. The mysteries of these visions had to be deeper than what appeared to the eye.
When the basket finally landed on the ledge, he jumped out and began pulling the rope again to lift the basket back to Francesca. He let the excess rope add to a coil that already rested on the ground near his feet. Coming out from the bottom of the coil, the rope led to the wall where it was tied to a thick iron hook. The whole system seemed primitive, but it worked.
After Francesca climbed into the basket, Nathan lowered her, feeding the rope hand over hand. When the knot lodged at the pulley level, he dug his heels in to keep his balance. Then, pulling on the rope and letting it run through his hands, he made the basket swing. When it finally came close enough, he grabbed the side and pulled Francesca to safe ground. As soon as she disembarked, he noticed a long pole with a shepherd's crook on the end. Apparently that was how the stalkers reeled in the basket, but it was too late for that now.
Francesca pointed with her bow. “That way.”
Just as she was about to march ahead, Nathan grabbed her elbow and pulled her back. “Wait a minute. Let me check this place out.”
He gazed in the direction she had pointed. Just as it had appeared from above, the ledge curved into the dimness, creating a full ring around the void. The entire chamber was really a circular pit, with a rock-encapsulated stairway dangling over the middle like a stony finger reaching down to pluck the strings, their path downward from the stalkers' abode.
A glow emanated from narrow gaps at the edges of the ceiling. The ceiling and the walls didn't quite meet, allowing the gaps to reveal the lower arcs of three earths on the sides of the upper chamber. From this angle, the fissures between the planets seemed deeper, making the entire wall appear fragile.
A faint cracking sound echoed from above. A few shards of glass tumbled through the gap and down to the floor. As soon as the shards struck the stony surface, they melted into a crystal rivulet that coursed in a meandering path toward the dark pit. When the liquid spilled into the void, the entire chamber rumbled.
The ground quaked, shaking so hard, Francesca fell backwards. Nathan crouched at her side and hugged her close as the quake roared on. Fragments from the edge of the pit broke away and tumbled in. The basket tipped over the side and swung across the strings. With every jolt, the precipice inched closer, threatening to swallow them into its violent yawn. But they couldn't move, not without risking a tumble into the void. The basket suddenly plunged. Rope reeled off the coil until it tightened against the wall hook with a dull twang.
Soon, the last crystalline drop disappeared into the pit, and the trembling slowly eased. Nathan rose to his feet and helped Francesca to hers. Neither said a word. She ran her hand up and down his arm, her eyes wide. Her expression said it all. The danger was greater than she had thought, and the more wounds inflicted on the interdimensional fabric, the worse the danger would get.
“Okay,” he said. “Let's go.”
With the pit to her left, she walked near the edge and halted where the first golden string crossed their path at knee level. The other three strings lay beyond it, each separated by a gap of about six feet. Well to their right, the strings coiled around brooms
tick-sized dowels anchored to the stone floor. Underneath the strings, a polished black layer of wood acted as the fingerboard for this enormous violin.
She stepped over the first string and sat down on the second. It seemed to carry her weight without a problem.
Nathan ran his finger along the closest string of gold. As thick as rope, it pushed a tingling sensation through his still burning skin. So this was the place his mother described. During her visions, she tried to play a tune, obviously pizzicato since she didn't have a bow, but the strings were too far apart. She would have had to lunge from one string to the other, probably leaping over one or more strings between each plucked note, while still maintaining perfect rhythm.
No wonder Francesca needed his help. With two people it would be a lot easier, one person manning two strings, and no leaping required. But what was the point? She had said the strings spanned the celestial wound. Would playing the music repair it?
Gripping the string, he pulled it up an inch or so. Plucking it would be no problem, but would the sound alert the stalkers?
“Have you tried playing it?” he asked.
She nodded. “But I have no idea what I'm supposed to play.” She bounced her weight up and down on the string. “And I can play only four notes, because I can't press a string down. Even if I were heavy enough, I couldn't pluck the string while I'm pushing on it. And every time I play a note, the ground shakes like it did a minute ago. It's impossible to keep your balance.”
Nathan pushed all his weight on the string and pressed it firmly against the fingerboard. He was heavy enough, so Francesca could play while he pushed, but she'd still have to jump around from string to string like a maniac. Still, maybe only four notes were necessary. Mom didn't mention having to push the strings down during her vision.
