Aisling

by Nicole Delacour

  “I don’t even want to know what sort of water is in there,” Jess retorted.

  “None at the moment, but see that.” He gestured back some ways where water came down from nowhere and collected in a thin mirror-like layer where the waterfall might have stood. “You haven’t had something to drink in a while.”

  “Fine.”

  Jess snatched the canteen from his hands and trudged to the strange fount. Unscrewing the cap, she held it beneath the rush of water. Her fingers tingled as though an electric current ran through the water. Still, she held fast until it was filled. Jess drank deep before shoving it back under shutting it only once it was full again. Turning with an opened arm gesture in an attempted appeasement, she slung it about her shoulders before the floor caught her eyes. Below, people were stacked upon each other forming the stone. Further along she could see the shaft; however, it was a good ways further down.

  “We stand on some of the most ancient Aisling, or we stand on nothing but the will of God,” he whispered. Kilpeni’s golden eyes stared out into the breach where nothingness spread beyond even the furthest horizon.

  The reply that slipped out sounded moronic, but it was all she had left in her to say in response to ease the weight of what was to come. “Should there be a ceiling?”

  “It says more there is a floor than there ever was a ceiling. The shadows were created by exposing the dead, so a new layer of ancients was laid to rest upon them. Clouds have more faces than most earth,” the Aisling explained.

  As the corners of her lips fell, Jess reached out into the emptiness of space. “There’s nothing there. I’m not guessing when climbing down and falling like some moron.”

  She took a few steps back and ran forward leaping. Long arms wrapped around her waist. Pulling her against his chest, Kilpeni slammed her back against the ground. A swift knee to the groin was his only reward. Groaning more from shock than equivalent pain, he stared down at her in frustration.

  “What were you even thinking‽” He glowered down at his core world counterpart.

  “You were supposed to have the answers, but you didn’t. Now, I’m supposed to trust you again? Yeah right. If this shortcut down the rabbit hole isn’t my well-deserved mental break, then you can bet I sure as shit won’t waste time listening to some Mad Hatter more concerned with what time tea is than with getting me home. We’re up here.” She pointed down below them. “You say that’s the ground. Sure, why not? But then again – if so, why not take a shortcut to the ground? It isn’t like we’ve got to worry about normal physics,” she retorted pushing him away and standing up.

  The worlds fluttered over his skin. Explaining had never been his strong suit mainly as there had so rarely been anyone to explain to. Searching for a response, Kilpeni watched her stand. They stood upon such ancient Aislings that neither of their eyes could see what was to come. Jess wasn’t strong. She pretended and diverted, but innate fortitude wasn’t among her virtues. This was why he’d requested the boy from outside Fadwa or even the girl in the nomadic group in northern Mongolia. Whatever the Compass had seen in Jessica Gould couldn’t compare to the traits those children would have brought now. Perhaps the boy wouldn’t have hid him as well. Maybe the Mongolian girl would have been too far from an overlap when the time came. There was no way to determine how Jess would adapt to the second. As best he could tell, she had remained as obstinate as ever. At the worst, Jess would break.

  Kilpeni walked within arm’s reach of her. If she leapt again, he feared missing he might miss. There was a chance her lower limb bones would be shattered after the leap. He had no better idea about whether he would be able to walk away from that type of a landing either. Aislings were bound by their core world wards. The last time he had been between wards, he had not needed to stretch himself so far. Even when he hunted back when the stones were first created, he hadn’t taken a risk so great. Any big risk would be best avoided. They could not afford for either of them to die. If she died, he would begin to waste. It was possible that due to her presence in the second dimension he would lean towards madness if he failed to remind himself of his connections to her. Jess would be left unprotected if he died.

  “If we aren’t going to jump, how do you suggest we get down? We fell backwards into here if you remember,” she pointed out scuffling around searching for any downwards tunnel.

  “We fell into a weakness between the dimensions where the forces split allowing a section to balloon like a pocket universe,” Kilpeni informed her tersely not even bothering to assist.

  “Time And Relative Dimension In Space?” Jess joked. “Like a T.A.R.D.I.S.?”

  “This isn’t a fandom,” Kilpeni retorted darkly. “This is real life.”

  “Seems about as legitimate – pocket dimensions, living shadows – honesty.” She sighed and crouched down to lay a hand upon the invisible force that held them up when her eyes told her they should be falling.

  Kilpeni shuffled his foot over the dead and wondered how far he had come to be face to face once more with a core world citizen. He wanted to compare it to all those years being spoken to through water and mirrors. The reality was far bleaker. Face to face with Jess, he couldn’t help wonder how he’d missed her transformation into the woman before him. When the Compass had chosen her, he’d believed she’d at least be a safe haven. Calm and content – that had been his promised life. Jess wasn’t either. Fighting against her anonymity, she’d been exhausting, but he’d adjusted.

  Unhinged and desperate for answers, she was a monster of mythical proportions. Worse still, he had no answers to give her beyond those he already had. In the second dimension, functionality didn’t exist. Utility – perhaps. All aspects of the second dimension were organized and built by the slumbering ancients. While the core world had elements and molecules, the second was a construct. It had been built specifically for protection and separation between the core universe and the outer dimensions. There was also a risk the looser physics would further loosening her already strained sanity.

  “Jessica,” he called, and she huffed before gruffly replying.

  “What?”

  Kilpeni sighed crossing his arms. Concentrating on the task ahead, he attempted to explain. “Movement isn’t as difficult. If we want to get down, I can carry us even if there is a floor.”

  Dark circles cradled her eyes, but a spark burned in them. Like dying coals, her dark gaze burned into him wavering between fighting heat and exhausted surrender. Her eyes flickered to the nothingness beneath their feet. With a sigh, she said, “You should have just said that.”

  “I don’t know how well I’ll be able to carry you. You can’t stretch like shadows or reflect like light. I think, perhaps, the reason you were transported has more to do with increased mobility than the necessity of your presence. Without a core world tie, I should be able to stretch further and move more freely through the second. Though – I’ve never truly had the experience to be certain of how much easier or harder this will be.” He reached towards her, but Jess backed away from his outstretched arms.

  “I’m not too prepared to trust you with my life after you decided sticking those stones in that stupid box was a good idea.” She held her palms out facing him watching Kilpeni cautiously.

  “The Compass told me they would be safe. I had no idea what his intentions were, but I can promise that this will be for the best.” Kilpeni laid a hand upon his chest speaking with the utmost sincerity. Jess glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as she had when he was nothing more than a reflection in the water. “Please, Jess, trust me. I have done my best to keep you safe. If the Compass needs us to find the stones, know that -.”

  She held a hand up silencing him. “My life isn’t important to you. That’s been made abundantly clear. Your end goal is the stones. Don’t bother lying to me.”

  Recognizing this was one of those moments when a person looked to another for encouragement, Kilpeni found he was completely unprepared to do so. His body charred
as black letters blazed up his arm: Got a point stop. Might as well get on with it stop. Jess read the letters quicker than he could and frowned before Kilpeni could hide the marks from her. Though she had seen them already, he curled his shoulders folder hunching over his arm. The black letters faded, and Jess studied the second dimension crouching to tap at the ground which was invisible beneath their feet.

  “I swear I won’t let go, Jess. Please, come here,” Kilpeni called offering Jess an open hand. A single eyebrow rose in response to his command. “I’m going to get us down.”

  “Fine,” she grumbled. Moving close enough that he could reach out, Jess flinched when he touched her. “Once we’re out of this room, the mode of transport better not be hugs.”

  Not seeing the point in responding to her, he stretched his legs through the ether down into the tunnel far below. He encompassed her in a shield made of his skin and tore his way through. Tumbling towards the ground like an elevator with torn cables, they plummeted towards the false earth below. Within the folds of a transformed shadow, Jess held tightly burying her face in Kilpeni’s neck. Kilpeni stretched out all around her upwards and down, but she could still feel his hands on her back. The tension in his neck pulsed like a heartbeat. Clenching her eyes shut, she ignored the rush of blood in her veins.

  When her feet tapped the ground, she opened her eyes. Kilpeni stepped back, turning away from her. A white light shined above them silhouetting the Aisling and shrouding him in shadows. In the contrast, the slope of his neck woke an ache inside her. Jess gritted her teeth and forced her eyes away recognizing the loneliness she had refused to name for months. Everyone had an Aisling. They had their shadow, but hers didn’t belong to her. Hers was a lie. This sort of lie tore worlds down when the true epiphany struck. Sniffling, she blinked back tears. This wasn’t the venture she had wanted. There wasn’t a train to a magical boarding school or a somewhat mad alien inviting her on an adventure. Surrounded by sleeping corpses, Jess resolved to make her circumstance one the Doctor would have been proud to hear.

  Kilpeni watched as emotions flickered over her face. “Are you okay?” he asked softly when she searched madly around.

  “I’m fine,” she mumbled, studying the forms about her. Bodies formed the tunnel out from beneath the waterfall stirred at the sound of her voice. “God, I thought you were exaggerating. Those really are people.”

  Faces stretched across the dirt. Her fingers flexed at her side. Reaching out, she ran her fingers over a nearby cheek. Though the texture was the same as the cavern back on Earth, the face stretched then shrunk around her hand. It twisted beneath her fingers. Stunned, Jess froze until Kilpeni tore her hand away.

  “We can’t afford to wake them. The second dimension was built upon sleepers not corpses,” Kilpeni whispered. Against her warm skin, his touch transmitted only cold.

  “Are all the dimensions like this? How many are there anyways?” She crouched to study the walls more carefully.

  “Eight that we know of with ten stones split from here to the eighth. I couldn’t even rightly guess where the extra three would be assuming, of course, that there isn’t any left in the first. Wait.” He held up a hand as he finished pulling himself back into his humanoid form. “Only nine.”

  “Nine?” she asked.

  Avoiding eye contact, he replied, “Could be eight?”

  Mouth slightly agape, she stared at Kilpeni with wide eyes. “Ten. There were ten stones. We talked about the number of stones.”

  “You couldn’t count them. You weren’t able to describe them or perceive them fully – likely eight with maybe one extra in some dimension. One lost to pass them through to you; another to pull you here.” He tapped his forehead with his pointer fingers. “If only you were a bit more useful in this area!”

  “Thanks,” she grumbled. Her lip curled as she rolled her eyes. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I have no knowledge on whether or not any of the stones were shattered upon transference between the core and second dimension. Honestly, everything has been theoretical until this point. There could be anywhere between eight and ten. We don’t even know how many we’re looking for.” He sighed, waiting for a response from the Compass to give him a better idea of what he was facing. When no answer came, he strode down the tunnel out from behind the waterfall. “Let’s go.”

  “So, we have no idea how many we’re looking for? There could be any number in any of the dimensions, but we’re assuming at least one per dimension, right? Maybe there aren’t any in some. How would we even know? I mean, how do we know where to find it? Do we have some sort of detector? Radar? Box that goes ding? Anything? Do they leave some sort of disaster in their wake?” Jess’s questions were endless. Her voice carried in a dangerous way through the tunnel.

  “It would be best if you whisper until you can control your volume,” he informed her with a gentle smile, but Jess glared in response. “You might wake the older ones. Considering they’ve never been woken, one can only assume it would end in disaster. The foundation of the second could crumble.”

  “I might wake them? Maybe they’d actually be useful. Maybe they would actually have answers regarding the things they were supposed to protect,” she retorted though she heeded his warning and kept her voice low despite its bite.

  “They know nothing. There’s not a face here who would have been awake to see the stones being formed let alone what brought the Compass to make them. I was the last to add my core to the mix. I sealed them into being as Carthage burned,” Kilpeni told her. His voice lowered with each phrase.

  Centuries past, he had stood on the mount and watched the city burn. His comrades beside him and a battle raged at their feet – the flames burned across the lines of his memory. Never again. That had been the silent oath between them. Never would the core burn for the failings of the Second. There would not be a day a year or thousand hence from Carthage’s blaze when another towering city of men fell because the Aisling had not performed their duty. Far below their watchful eyes, younger Aisling stretched. Flames tossed them to and fro. Light tore them apart, and their blood-mimicked hands clawed and slashed each other into severed specters. Corpses buried the living in darkness leaving nothing in either world untouched.

  Some on the mount had screamed, but the Compass had held them tightly together within a shield made from his core and Set’s. The burning hands brushed and fell away like water. Wave after wave, the hoard had smashed against them like a tsunami. Kilpeni had not considered their faces then. He did not think of them now. His mind’s eye turned to the face with which Set had died. Kohl-lined eyes, dead long ago, bore into his center. The fire spread, and Set had been too close. Though he had tried to drag him to safety, the Compass had stayed his hand. Flaming tongues had erupted, flowering like a cursed bloom. Even in his final breath, Set remained stoic. Torn through the shield, a new stone appeared. In that moment, Kilpeni remembered soft whispers and the exhaustion which had never left Set since Itzal’s death. Itzal – who had fallen on a sword made of his own flesh so a parasite could not claim him. The world had emptied all around him. Eons of knowledge but he could not save a single one.

  Stepping back, Kilpeni let his gaze fall to the ground. Aisling did not get caught up in memories or sentiment. Aisling were warriors – soldiers called to arms since birth. The sneer upon Jess’s face told him she either hadn’t noticed his emotional lapse or didn’t care.

  “If I have to sit through another word of your egotistical drivel, I’ll scream loud enough to wake faces you’ve never seen,” Jess informed him. Crossing her arms over her chest, she glared up at him though he avoided meeting her glower. “You did nothing but create a weakness that I’m having to clean up. You failed, Kilpeni. Seriously, you’re like some trumped up caped crusader more concerned with being a good little automaton than actually dealing with the massive crap pile you’ve built up here. Hang up the cowl, Moron Man; the world’s better off without you
.”

  Kilpeni was right to be concerned. The old ones stirred. They stretched in the endless wave of them who reached up in a forest before shivering to different human and animal faces. Their shattered memories blended into near-dreams. Each flash of was and had been shifted over the surface of their skin. Rarely was anything strong enough to stir them, but a core world dweller naturally shook the foundation of the second. Though it had been built to protect them, the all consuming qualities of their electric essence fought against the dimension’s emptiness. Across the vast, Jess’s voice echoed. Whispers breathed from sleeping mouths.

  “How do I explain this to you?” he asked himself. No Aisling needed to learn this, and many years had passed since he’d last had to try to explain the workings of the second to a ward. “I can feel them like that wizard boy could feel the pieces of that snake man’s soul.”

  Jess quirked an eyebrow at him. “Well then, Mr. Potter, where to?”

  Kilpeni’s eyes traced the invisible horizons and washed over the bodies stretched to encompass where his eyes could not see. “South.”

  “I don’t suppose that whatever threw them about was considerate enough to keep them in the same tiny island of area like the horcruxes?” she asked, walking a bit faster to keep up with his determined pace. “We can’t get too far quickly unless you’re able to turn into a car.”

  “Could – but speed wouldn’t be the issue.”

  The area opened up into the forest with stones shimmering with faces, and bodies stretched as trees. “This is so disturbing. So, speed isn’t an issue. What is?”

  “Stretching is common. It won’t attract the wrong sort of attention, but more transformations, especially something as nosy and obvious as a car, would definitely get the wrong sort interested in what we were doing,” Kilpeni said.

  “Great, even the Golden Trio got to use magic to pop around. How do you suggest we get however far south we need to get.” She fidgeted fixing weaving wisps of hair back into the braid. Her eyes traced the trees where leaves shimmered with fingers.