Cloud Country Page 7

  Saru walked on, following the river of grass, feeling a comfort as the soft blades tickled her bare feet. The grass moved in strange ways, not the straight bend back and forth at the mercy of wind, but winding and dancing in slow curves like falling silk. The blades pecked and massaged her feet, lingering, caressing, and became thicker as the river widened ever more, to form now an ocean of grass, so broad it no longer served to aim her in one direction or another. She kept on straight, in slow, deliberate steps, feeling like some fairy queen with the grass her subjects, and her lovers the moon and sky. The grass was now so thick it writhed around her shins, shivering up and down with each step, light kisses and gentle touch, rising and melting away in tandem with her steps so that it seemed to give her strength and ease her passing rather than impede.

  The moon was right overhead—she could feel the warmth of its rays—when she found John. He was naked and still, legs together, arms outspread, head back, eyes closed, drinking in the moonlight. His skin shimmered as though it too were partly light, and he seemed taller, stretched, like a tree. The grass had wrapped itself in strands to his navel, and she saw that it merged with his skin, the tips entering him seamlessly, fusing with veins, beating softly, feeding him or drinking from him, or she did not know what. The grass tickled up at her legs, more kisses, probing for an entrance, or an invitation, but she walled it off with a hard thought, a stiff awkwardness like a teenager tensing at an unwanted touch. The grass took the hint and receded.

  John opened his eyes and smiled at her. He stretched and shook like a tree in the breeze. The grass around his legs slid out of his veins and away, leaving no mark or scar or clue they had ever been together.

  “Hello,” he said—or did he? Had his mouth moved? It seemed to her that human sound would be unpleasant here, loud and out of place, and his words came to her through the breeze, or ricocheted among the lights, or whispered up from the grass.

  “Hi,” Saru said. She was angry at him for some reason, but it was hard to remember why.

  “This,” John gestured to the moon grass. “Is Tess. Tessenesszbeth.”

  “Yes,” Saru said, though she understood that was not the name the chimera used for herself, and merely the crude linguistic contrivance of the humans who had first felt her stirrings, mashing together the sounds that could best approximate her pattern. Tessenesszbeth was a being that could not fit in the shoebox of words, could not be illuminated in the bonfire of every word in every human tongue. Names were tricks, tools that humans used to cut, and carve, and bludgeon ideas into the neutered stupor of their comprehension.

  “Tess is like Ben,” John said. “She is a chimera of the Gaespora. Tess is fond of humans. She will protect us.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Listen,” John said.

  Saru listened. Quiet. Nothing. She found her gaze drawn up again, to the tyranny of the moon and stars. And then she heard the song, a quiet song, a very sad song, the song of a single violin with broken strings, of dying flowers and loved ones melding with the earth, of grief tears, and friendships dissolved by time, and fists shaken at the sky, and hollow oaths, and the wrathful misery of impotence. It was so faint she could not hear it in whole notes, so faint that as soon as her brain caught and spooled the sound it was gone, so it could not be remembered or spoken or sung by her own lips. She shivered, cold, and rubbed her arms. John’s smile was bright as the moon and so sad, he was crying, the tears running in silver trickles down his face, the grass rising up to comfort him.

  “You hear,” John said. “It is the song of the Gaespora.”

  “Yeah it’s…very sad.”

  “And very beautiful.”

  “Sure,” Saru said. But she couldn’t say one way or another. The song was already gone. A lost note or too echoed in her skull and nothing else. Her anger was returning, and her worries, and the concerns of a fugitive.

  “Look, we need—”

  “Listen,” John said, cutting her off. He closed his eyes and the grass wrapped around him, and he swayed like a tree again. Saru watched and listened, but nothing new occurred. Her stomach growled. A knot of grass formed next to her, wrapping into a vine that sprouted what looked like an albino pear. The pear wagged in front of her, an offering.

  “No thanks,” Saru said, swatting the pear away. The pear plant disintegrated and a new one sprouted, this time with what looked like a banana.

  “Really, I’m not hungry,” Saru said. And I’m damn sure not eating some random magic fruit.

  The grass to the right of her parted to reveal a thin and winding creek. The water was clear and beautiful, sparkling as it caught the moonlight. A vine dipped into the water and a leaf sprouted to cup the water and bear it up to her lips. Saru’s throat grated with dryness, her swallowing rough and throbbing. The water looked so sweet, so pure.

  “Again, no thank you,” she said, swatting the leaf away. The droplets of water splashed into the air and dissolved into moonlight before hitting the ground. Saru took this as a vindication of her decision.

  “Hey,” she called to John. “Hey!”

  “List—”

  “No!” she said. “You listen. I can’t stay here. I can’t live here. I don’t want to be a tree.”

  “We’re safe here,” John said. The vines withdrew. His face frowned into normal sadness, away from the artsy sadness of dead unicorns and fantasy pathos. “We have everything we need.”

  “No,” Saru said. “We don’t. How about a magazine? How about a feed or some playing cards? How about something to do!” she yelled down at the grass. No plants sprouted. No video-game offerings. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

  She put her hands on her hips, firm with decision. This was where they parted ways. She couldn’t stay here. John could. He was happy. She couldn’t drag him away. John seemed to realize it too.

  “If you ask…” he said.

  “No,” Saru said. “Stay here. Be happy or whatever. Make lots of meaningful decisions.”

  “Are you sure you will not reconsider?” John asked. “If you could bring yourself to listen…”

  Saru shook her head. John nodded.

  “I want to give you something,” John said. He aimed his left hand at the grass and gestured up. A single vine sprouted and swayed in front of him. He brought his right hand to his forehead and a look of concentration crossed his face. Slowly, he drew his hand away from his forehead. A ghostly white thread followed the motion of his hand, and he teased it free, body shivering with the effort. He spun his hands in a glacial motion around one another, twining the pale thread from his skull with the pale thread of the vine, wrapping and weaving the two together, tighter and tighter, until the vine tugged free of the earth, and the two threads formed a spinning circle that shrank into the palm of John’s right hand. He beckoned for Saru to approach and she did.

  “What is it?” Saru asked, mesmerized by the spinning circle.

  “It is a glane,” John said. “It is like the flower you wear in your hair. This will strengthen your connection to me, and, by extension, the Gaespora.”

  “And why do I want that?” Saru asked, annoyed. “It’s just more bullshit for me to deal with.”

  “The glane is a prop for your mind. A physical mnemonic. It allows you to store and access information that is otherwise dispersed throughout the chaos of your chemical memory. The glane gives you control. The information in this ring will allow you to hear the voice of the Gaespora more clearly. It will allow you to see hidden things and use what gifts the Gaespora can offer. It will allow you to find me again should the need arise.”

  “It’s a weapon?”

  “It is a tool. The glane brings your connection from the unconscious to the conscious. It transforms the somnambulism of human default into deliberate action. Will you accept my gift?”

  The ring dropped into his palm. He held it out to her. Saru took his hand, feeling the ring, running her finger around the edge. It felt strange, like the caress of the grass, and t
he feeling spread beyond her fingertips, branching through her whole body.

  “But if I put this on,” she said. “I can never take it off.” She tore the white flower of the Slow God from her hair and crumpled it, tossing it away. “I’ve torn that thing out a hundred times and it always comes back.”

  “It returns because your action is not deliberate. If you truly sought to banish the Slow God from your mind you would destroy the flower. If you truly sought to banish the Gaespora you could remove this ring.”

  Saru stared at the ring.

  “And this isn’t gonna fuck with me in any way? It won’t give away my position or let ElilE track me or control me?”

  “No. The fears you express are not possible. If they were, they would be realized by the margin you share already. The glane gives you control.”

  It was crazy and stupid and an unnecessary risk, but for some reason Saru trusted John. He’d been the only one of any of these mystical alien bastards to talk to her with anything approaching honesty. And who knew? Maybe there was a power there. Maybe there was something she could use in that little ring. And as much as she hated to admit it, the idea of being closer to the Gaespora was a comfort.

  “What the hell,” Saru said. She picked up the ring from John’s palm and slid it onto her left ring finger. Her head moved automatically, turning with a force beyond her control to lock eyes with John. His eyes were wide with shock.

  “Oh,” Saru said.

  “Shit,” John said.

  “Oh shit,” said a voice that was both of them and neither.

  Pain! And color and sound and pain! Saru’s organs twisting into knots, swelling and popping and writhing, skin ripping and splitting, skull shattering, brains become slobbering afterbirth. Pain and sound, and all the voices of Earth—newborn cries, cum screams, death rattles, swords thrust into skin, clanging shields, gunshots and cannon booms, screeching cars, wolf howls, snorting pigs, grunting lovers forced and receptive, wind and racing skies, crackle of flame and pain! The twisting of guts and wrung-out stomachs, skin stripped and stretched to dry in the sun, teeth chomping on sinew and fats, stuck gristle. Then the vast relief of slightly less pain, the greatest feeling in the world, receding, receding, and gone, the blissful forgetfulness that allowed hot stoves to be touched again and again, and knives to be drawn in anger to spill ever more death.

  All was black, her vision, her every point of contact with the world now changed. She flew around the blackness a spectator, looking down and inward like a God, the petri-dish, outward-box narrowness of her flesh form forgotten. She felt herself swirling, twisting, wound and bound into the shape of the ring, so she was the ring and she rested upon John’s finger. She sensed that John was on the same ride, and he was bound too as a ring upon her finger, and they were bound together. It was clear that with all his knowledge of aliens and Gods and forces beyond her ken, that he was an ignoramus and a novice, playing with powers he did not understand. His harmless twisting of grass, the sharing of a trinket, was an act of mortal transformation, implications too great and terrifying to fully digest. And in that black nothingness, Saru—what recognizable part of her remained—wanted to laugh, demanded her lungs and her body back, so she could belt out a laugh at the cosmic inevitability of fucking up.

  6. Fine Company

  Someone was shaking her. Her eyes shot open and the stuff—light, that’s what it was called—streamed in, and the light brought along information that her brain turned into a shape: John, John, the bastard! And a tickle in her ear, the fibers inside of her were rattling, and her brain turned the tickle into a sound. Was that thunder? It sounded like thunder. It was a crash that was like crystals falling from the sky, ballroom chandeliers dropping and shattering, and all the aristocrats waltzing in a frenzy, spurred on by the roar and pretty dropping bits of light—lightning. What was she doing again?

  There was a pain throughout her body and her head, a pounding that was weak compared to the pains she’d known. And then a pain in her stomach squeezed the air from her lungs, and belatedly she realized how necessary that air stuff was. Her arms jerked back and she bent over, and hot liquid gushed from her mouth. This was another familiar sensation—vomit. She was vomiting. Her mind walked back through her proud vomit history, hair dangling in toilet bowls in bars and apartments and sometimes gutters or the middle of the street if it happened to be a self-declared holiday. She’d vomited in basements and jails and fancy offices and paper bags and once in the middle of sex, right over the poor bastard’s face. She’d panicked and punched him, and knocked him out cold, because that’s what she would have done if he’d barfed on her. And then, with a mix of regret and can’t-hold-it-in-laugher, she’d grabbed her clothes and snuck out of his apartment. When had that happened? What was she doing again?

  The last of the hot, once-vodka stew made its way up her throat and out her mouth, completing its portion of the adventure. Saru wiped her mouth and stood straight. The world stopped spinning. Her eyes drew the light into more shapes, and she saw she was standing in a desert, in a ring of dead grass, and that bastard, John, was standing next to her.

  John looked pretty badly beaten up—bruises and cuts across his face, dry streaks of blood across his arms and legs and chest and belly. Saru looked at herself and discovered she was equally torn and bloody, a patchwork of cuts across her skin, and when she moved it caused highways of sun-crusted blood to crack and dribble fresh. There was a throbbing in her tooth, and when she poked it with her tongue it nearly made her throw up again. She could feel a crack in the molar, feel how it was split to the root, and it sent waves of nausea back down to her stomach. John was eyeing her with something between wariness and apology.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, voice cracked and hoarse. Saru wondered how long they’d been lying out there, unconscious, baking in the haze. She didn’t remember John’s skin being so red, or hers, for that matter. It hurt like burning.

  “Save it,” she croaked. She wanted to spit but she didn’t have the moisture. Her head was swimming; she couldn’t think. Sense trickled in. It wasn’t his fault. He was an idiot, just as much caught up in this bullshit as she was.

  “I didn’t, I don’t, I thought…” he was yammering. His eyes were wide and his lip trembled. He looked like he would cry if he had any moisture to spare.

  “Let’s just get back to the plane,” Saru said.

  There was a mound of silver on the horizon that she guessed was the oil station, and she started wincing her way over. The sand was hot and burned her feet. She tried to hop, but it caused the crust of her cuts to sting, and so she wound up half hopping, half limping, half dragging herself along. She looked back after about ten feet and saw John was following, dazed, shuffling, automatic. He looked like a wild hermit, or a crackhead. It was clear the pain of his physical state wasn’t getting through whatever mental bull hickey he was stuck in. Her own brain wasn’t doing much better. Everything felt weird, like her skin was too tight, and she didn’t have enough arms, and thoughts were coming from places like her eyes and her feet and the sky, and her brain was just there as a routing station, sending them to whatever dangling body part was in charge of whichever stupid thought.

  “Come on!” she called back to John, but it came out like a whisper. She stopped and waited for him to shuffle next to her, and then whisper-yelled it again in his face. He just looked at her, blank. She wanted to slap him.

  “John? You there, buddy?”

  “What’s the point?” he asked, looking past her, to some imagined person who cared. “Why bother?” He sat down, but Saru grabbed his arm and leaned back before his ass could touch the ground. They hung there like a suspension bridge.

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” Saru hissed. “There’s no way you’re going to drag me out into this desert and put magic rings on my finger, and then give up just because it didn’t turn out the way you thought.”

  John smirked up at her. Her grip slipped and he fell, laughing, to the ground. His la
ughs came like the croaks of some demon frog, and they enraged her. She kicked at him with her bare feet, and he shielded himself clumsily, laughing harder.

  “Yeah! Laugh it up, asshole! Laugh it up!”

  Saru screamed and kicked him in the face, and he dissolved in laughter, rolling onto his belly and pounding the ground with his fists. It seemed his laughter echoed, bounding off the distant hills, vibrating the air, shaking the world around him. The sky was growing dark and the air chilly. She kicked him harder—I’ll kick out every fucking laugh you got, buddy.

  “You don’t get to give up!” Saru screamed. “I didn’t want to come here. I don’t give a shit about this place or Tessynixibitch or your fucking space war or whatever the fuck you’re doing!”

  Thunder boomed from the sky, a blast that startled her to a crouch. Wind tore across the desert and whipped the dust into a frenzy, so it stung their cuts, and gagged their mouths, and grated against their eyes. Black stains of shadow dripped across the horizon. The thunder roared louder. Saru scrambled to her feet.

  “Shit,” she tried to say, as the dust dove into her mouth, and she spat and coughed. She yanked John to his feet and slapped him in the face, and ran towards the pile of silver in the distance. She still held his hand, but it only took one good yank for him to follow and race ahead of her, and then she growled and sprinted after. The sky was growing darker and darker, and there was something infuriating about his naked ass—the ass that had gotten her in so much trouble—floating tauntingly a few feet ahead.