One new wall nearly every second, all in red and shades of grey with the occasional stain in yellow or sepia tones. The only ones that lingered were the ones that needed more time to allow blood to seep through cracks or for something to crawl between wallpaper and wall, one corner of the wall to the other.
It was noisy, that rapid-fire deployment of images flickering, shuddering, or folding their way into existence coming with rustling, the sound of paper on paper, with scrapes and the screeches of furniture against floor or other things. At one side of the room, a gramophone played and it was slower to flicker than the walls, but it did shift and move or change from one model to another, always stained, bloody or rusty, damaged or off kilter, often dusty, always an imperfect sound on an imperfect record. Other things were similarly old, a mannequin in the corner that jumped from dressed to half dressed, male to female, bloody to burned to askew, briefly a human torso with bleeding stumps at the neck and shoulders penetrated by a vertical wooden spike, then a mildew spotted dressmaker’s dummy, rocking on its round base from the abruptness of its appearance.
A television was on in another room, turned to a low volume, and it sounded like it was changing channels at random, sometimes after a few seconds, sometimes after a minute, and a good third of those channels were static or distortion, a third were warnings and sirens, and the last third were often coming through a television that was doing the same things as the gramophone. A radio was on somewhere else, doing much the same thing.
Her mouth opened, and she immediately started coughing. The air changed too, smoke-heavy to dusty to other things, moment by moment, none lasting so long she could fully taste it or grasp what it was. She hadn’t picked up on the extent of that until she’d opened her mouth. She blinked bleary eyes clear of what that air had carried to them, and then closed her eyes, trying to stave off the onslaught, and negative images carried out the experience against the backs of her eyelids. She coughed, but the thing she was trying to cough out eluded her throat and mouth and made it futile. She cleared her throat instead.
Two eyes and a mouth. She raised her hands to her face, nails touching flesh. She had nails. Painted nails.
Tashlit sat back in her chair, mouth closed, swallowing a few times to clear her throat because coughing wasn’t working.
Painted nails. Her lips- she was pretty sure she had lipstick on. She’d only worn lipstick once and she had been five or six. The result had been a horror show and one very ticked off older cousin who hadn’t wanted her strict dad to know she owned any makeup.
She wore a corsage of yellow and purple flowers at her wrist and she wore a purple dress with a single strap. She felt like she had seen a dress like this once upon a time, in a magazine or something, and it had made an impression on her, but hadn’t been committed to memory. It might not have been this royal purple.
Her shoes were black heels, her legs bare. She stuck her foot out under the table, heel dangling from her toes, and smiled.
A wall to her right flickered from being on fire to being skin and hair, with a texture that defied normal adjectives. For less usual adjectives, genital sufficed, indistinct in gender but raw, goosebumped, and folded toward the center, framed with coarse hair.
She didn’t care about the fire or the skin wall, or the air she was breathing that smelled like it was mid-transition between burned coffee and gasoline. She ran her hand up her arm, luxuriating in how tight her skin was against her muscle, legs entwining, tongue pressing hard against the roof of her mouth, against teeth. She hugged herself.
In the midst of the visual noise and the actual noise a patch of stillness made Tashlit turn her head. Someone sat next to her at the table, a ten year old child, with waist-length black hair and animal ears, rubbing at her eyes, sputtering. She had a tear painted or tattooed beneath her eye. Her dress was black with white lace.
Tashlit put her hands in her lap with enough force that her dress puffed out at the sides, heels clacking against the floor as she set her feet down, sitting up straight.
The girl, still rubbing at the eye that would have let her spot Tashlit, looked around. Her irises were purple, the pupils vertical slits. She set her eye on Tashlit, paused, and her expression went from sad to a wide smile.
“Heyyyyy,” the kid said. “Tashlit!”
“This is what you sound like!”
“I don’t know where I got it. And same!”
Verona looked down and plucked at the lace. She was wearing elbow length gloves and adjusted them a bit, blinking a few times.
“And the ears,” Tashlit said. “I like the ears.”
Verona touched them. She pulled off the cat-ear headband, gave it some consideration, then nodded like she was agreeing with a statement, and pulled it back on. With one gloved hand, she batted her hair aside. She fixed the purple eyes on Tashlit. “Oh man, I have so many questions. Where do I even begin?”
“There’s time. We can do this again, can’t we? If it doesn’t all go terribly…”
Tashlit looked. Two of the walls were taking a few seconds to melt like hot candle wax. Another smouldered. The floorboards shifted, and in the moment of their transition they looked like they were one quarter wood and three quarters maggots.
“Or even if it does?” Verona asked. She looked around. “So cool. This is cool! We’re hanging out!”
“We are! Did you guys handle things okay, yesterday? The people I’d normally ask were busy. Matthew wanted to look after Edith and John was recovering, Maricica doesn’t like to give straight answers and Rook didn’t participate.”
“The adventure? Dealing with the invaders?” Verona asked. “I’m claiming the credit for the badass play that stopped Bridge.”
“That’s great! What did you do?”
“I think you should ask Lucy, she’ll tell that story better.”
“Yeah. Most of the regulars were tired. I went with Alpeana and then walked back alone. She went on to do her nightly rounds. Only a couple things lurking, we scared them off. It was nice. Breeze blowing through the trees, some animals.”
Verona leaned forward into the table. “That’s cool. I get a chill vibe for you and that sounds like a chill way to spend your evening. I can visualize you in that scene.”
“I work at the vibe.”
“I want to ask you, like, how, but that might get weirdly personal-”
Verona was a very excited ten year old. “I want to ask you so many questions, like, can I help? Is there a way I can help while you’re able to articulate more? Where’s your head at? What were you doing before you came to Kennet? What are you doing with your days?”
“If you get too caught up asking questions you won’t get any answers. There’s no rush. We can do this again. Alpeana can arrange it.”
“Speaking of, is she around?” Verona asked, looking. “Do you do this often with her?”
“Probably but I think she’s-”
Avery, sitting to Verona’s left, coughed, then coughed more as she tried to take a breath.
“-busy getting everyone.”
Verona, now thirteen instead of ten or so, gave Avery a few hearty claps on the back, then kept giving her hard slaps on the back until Avery twisted around and jabbed her a few times in the side and arm.
Avery was wearing a decorated jacket and button-up shirt with a copper-tinted sash and epaulets. An antler pin at her brow kept her hair back at one side, while the other side draped straight down. Her eyes went wide as she took in the room.
“Focus on us,” Verona said. “Put the background in the background.”
Avery nodded, coughing with a fist pressed to her mouth. “I know you guys have talked about Alpeana nightmares, but this is wow.”
“This isn’t Alpeana,” Tashlit said.
“Yeah, no, those nightmares are mean. This is très cool,” Verona said.
“You’re getting me worried about the demesne you might end up making, Ronnie,” Avery said.
“What demesne would you make?” Tashlit asked.
“Oh man. Okay, so I’m a creative type, right? And art, really, is about testing and pushing boundaries…”
“Really worried,” Avery elaborated.
“I’m home!” Snowdrop proclaimed, looking around. “Back in Kansas, now.”
Snowdrop wore a simple white dress, earrings that were little silver opossums with the tails hooked through her earlobes, and she had tiny white flowers in her hair, one over one ear to start but getting more dense toward the bottom, until they were omnipresent.
“You look lovely, Snowdrop,” Tashlit spoke. Snowdrop looked down at herself and startled a little as her earring moved with her head.
“You look like a mess,” Snowdrop said.
“This is such a trip,” Verona said. “Let me try this. Lucy, by the power of nightmares, appear!”
Lucy appeared opposite Verona, with enough force that her chair skidded. Her hands went out to the table for balance, her eyes wide, and then when the table changed, she pulled them away.
Tashlit clapped, cheering, “Woo!”
Others joined in. Verona cackled, which only added to Lucy’s dismay and confusion.
Alpeana stepped out of the smoke behind Lucy, hands on her hips. She pointed a warning finger at Verona.
“Oh aye, good thin’ it were, too. I’ve a heapin’ fankle of work on my plate, I’m daein’ this as a favor tae ye.”
“It’s a party, it seems, was that you?” Tashlit asked.
Alpeana shook her head. She looked over her shoulder, at the wall, in a sudden way that suggested something was tugging at her attention.
“Would you like to join in? Take a break?” Tashlit asked. “You deserve one.”
“Join us!” Verona called out, gesturing. “Don your finery!”
“It’s been so long since we’ve hung out,” Avery added her voice to Verona’s.
“I cannae. A lot o’ folk were disturbed t’day. They need a finer tich tae fin’ their way back tae innocence.”
They need a finer touch to find their way back to innocence, Tashlit mentally translated. If only it were always so easy.
“Good luck,” Tashlit told her.
“Aye. We’ll talk, Tashie. When ye wake, can ye find Rook?”
“Is there a problem?”
“Who knows wit her, lassie? Will ye see her?”
Tashlit nodded. “Yeah. You be safe.”
Lucy was still recovering. She wore a halter-style dress, red, with jewelry matching her earring at her ear, brow, topping her ponytail like its own little tiara, as bangles, as a necklace, and as various rings, including two caps on the fingertips of her left hand, forming clawed tips.
“What in the everfrigging frack?” Lucy asked, wincing at the sensory overload, hands near her ears.
“Focus on us, it amps up the more you pay attention to it,” Avery said.
“You’re saying that like I didn’t just tell you a minute ago,” Verona accused.
“Montague!” Lucy raised her voice. “Is this all you? Are we in your dream? Can you calm the heck down!?”
“I cannot, I’m afraid,” Montague said, his words and tone calm and measured, his voice itself strained and warped, the first two words sounding as if they were spoken through a fan, the latter two sounding much like the television did. He was tall, slender, and what wasn’t clad in an old fashioned suit was a rapidfire, twenty-images-a-second mess of the same effects that distorted the walls, obscuring all skin and hair.
He stepped up to the table, holding a teapot, and poured a glass. The pour from the teapot was briefly on fire, then sludgy, like mud, then billowing with steam or smoke. He set the cup down by Lucy. “This is my experience. Mind, body, and soul, if I have any or all of those things.”
Lucy gave the cup a dubious look.
Tashlit glanced over the table, now set with shifting silverware that changed in the same way the walls did. Plates and saucers, ranging from the stained to the chipped to the outright broken, were layered with cookies, bits of cake, and other treats, all in various ‘Montague’ states of quality.
“I could slow things down, if you’d like,” Montague said. “It might be easier on the eyes and ears but there’s more risk of something creeping in enough to take over the scene.”
“Uhhh,” Lucy hesitated.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll manage it,” he said, pouring a cup and setting it by Snowdrop. He went to the gramophone and adjusted it, and the music slowed down. The rate at which the walls and things changed slowed down as well.
Tashlit did see how the spots of flame were now growing into larger flames in the time that one wall was active, and how smoke found root and started billowing, or darkness crept in. Each effect was like something trying to find its way in.
“There,” Montague said, making a final adjustment. “I’ll keep an eye out. You enjoy the tea.”
“Thank you,” Lucy said.
“Do you want milk instead, Snow?” Avery asked. Snowdrop nodded, and Avery slid the cup and saucer from Snowdrop’s place to her own.
“There’s plenty,” Montague said. “You don’t have to eat or drink, it’s a dream and I take over dreams by being in them. I simply like the ritual.”
“Do you think that ties into who and what you are or is it a hint at who you were before?” Verona asked.
“A little from the first column, a little from the second,” Montague said, setting another cup down by Verona. “A little from the secret third column, which sprung into being out of a need for certain irony, to manage all of this.”
“Is it rough?” Avery asked.
“Is it painful? No, I have no body or nerve endings. Is it tiring? I have no brain. I used to be one thing and now I’m a mess of another and certain affectations help me stay coherent in that. If I’m to be a corruptive ooze that seeps into patterns and processes, I’ll be a gentleman corruptive ooze.”
“A tea party was a fun idea,” Tashlit said, taking her cup from him. “A chance to dress up.”
“Did you pick the outfits, Montague?” Lucy asked.
“You did. Subconsciously.”
“Oh, okay. I was going to say that this felt very observant and on point. You’re setting a really high bar, since I have only tomorrow morning to do what I promised with Avery and Snow’s hair and makeup.”
“Exciting,” Tashlit said.
“It’s awful,” Snowdrop sighed. She picked up a bit of cake with her hand. “I’ll be tied to this loser for the rest of my short life.”
“Are these foods and things safe to eat?” Avery asked, putting her hand on Snowdrop’s wrist and stopping Snowdrop from bringing the food to her mouth.
Montague took his seat. “Safe? It’s a dream, I believe the worst that can happen is that you wake up early.”
“I think Alpeana reinforced the dream,” Tashlit said. “So waking up is harder. She’s good at that.”
“Did she? That’s good to know,” Montague said. “That means the worst that can happen is some brief suffering.”
Snowdrop grabbed Avery’s wrist and began pulling with both hands to get the questionable, morphing cake closer to her mouth. “I’m willing to make that gamble for the first time in my life.”
“This isn’t normal food out of the trash, Snow,” Avery said.
“My first few nights here in Kennet, Alpeana visited me in dreams to chat and question me. She was pretty frazzled,” Tashlit recalled. “Forgot some of the questions she was supposed to ask.”
“What did you do, then?” Verona asked. “Wake up?”
“We hung out. Talked about what we remembered of our families.”
“You have an older sister, right?” Verona asked.
“I have lots of half-siblings, but just the one with my dad. Pretty big mix. Umm, Sabita was odd right out the gate. The way my dad tells it, she looked normal for about five minutes, then a tiny snake slithered out of her nose and onto the beach, and then the floodgates opened.”
“Floodgates?” Lucy asked. “Of snakes?”
“Yeah. Ears, nose, mouth… everywhere. Handful every second. All shapes and sizes. But you know, my dad’s a trooper.”
“How do you breastfeed a baby who leaks snakes?” Avery asked. “Or, sorry, I guess your mom… couldn’t? Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. With a reptile mom- or, well, that’s not right. Our mom is human, just stuck in a body that’s about two hundred feet long, leaks acid from the mouth… she hates that-”
“Understandable,” Lucy said.
“-but we hatched, skipped the baby phase.”
“See, to me, that kind of makes sense,” Verona said. “I suspect babies are Nature playing a dirty trick on humanity. Leaky and noisy and helpless.”
“Bit of a developmental delay,” Tashlit said. “I started walking right away but I was slow with speech and I was behind my classmates for the first few years in school. Mostly my dad was just happy I seemed normal, I think.”
“And Sabita?” Montague asked.
“She went with my mom for a bit, at first, then came home, stayed in the house with dad. Helped him with his work for a while, then got bored with that, tried self-learning some stuff for school, but I think she was really behind by then. She got frustrated. Last I saw her, she was doing a thing as a fortune teller. Travel to a certain island, go to a cave, and there’ll be a woman in the shadows, who’ll tell you what’s to come.”
“How do you learn that?” Verona asked.
“I think she B.S.’s a lot of it. She’s okay, but not great, and you really need great before Others start pointing people in need to you. But she gets enough to trade to dad, dad orders or buys the stuff she needs. I guess she manages. She doesn’t really tell me.”
“I barely know what’s up with my older brother and I live with him,” Avery said. “Siblings are tough.”
“I think Sabita always resented me, she was bitter I got a childhood and she didn’t. I just wanted to be with my big sister and I was a bit jealous she got to go on a long ocean-traveling vacation with mom. At first. Then I just felt bad. When I started changing we had this brief period where we got along so well. It almost made up for how scary it all was.”
“Only briefly?” Montague asked.
“I think she liked that she had stuff to teach me and that was cool, but then the lessons became all about mindset, and how to think about it all, and that was mostly about being bitter. I said no thank you to all that and she started resenting me again. Then I went traveling.”
“To?” Verona asked, and she resembled her ten year old, excited self, interested and brimming with energy.
“I visited other siblings. Our whole deal, I’m not sure if anyone’s explained, Montague, is we’re like the bloodlines of Echidna, or Minos of Crete, or Jormungandr. Sometimes you get a girl who has snakes instead of bodily fluids, sometimes you have a boy with sapphire skin who kills anyone who hears his voice, and sometimes that egg hatches and you have two dragons sharing one mind. Mom found knotted places for them to reside, so you can only find them if you go looking.”
“So you know something about knotted places?” Verona asked. “Because that’s something that sounds like it might be happening here. Some place getting so twisted around by whatever’s going on that it gets cut off from the rest of the world, becomes hard to get to, can be darker or inverted from reality? Is that right?”
Tashlit nodded. “Right.”
“Might be useful,” Verona said. “I’m glad I recruited you. I mean, I was glad anyway, but that’s a bonus.”
“I’m glad you recruited me too. Good timing. I was starting to get tired of wandering, I was looking for something to look for, and a glimmer of light on the horizon got my interest. Except when I got closer, a very cool teenager told me not to go after it.”
“And you listened, which… I really needed someone to listen to me,” Verona said. The smile on her face fell away, and something more serious settled on her expression. Tashlit met that expression with concern. Verona spoke, and forced a bit of a smile. “How did those sibling visits go?”
“They went really well. Really, really well. I was prepared for my visit to some of them to be me checking in, peering in from a hiding spot, and I didn’t have to. They recognized me and they were hungry. So I helped my dragon brothers with grooming and dealt with some colonies of mites that were settling in their scales, took three trips. You could have filled a swimming pool with these little bugs the size of pencil erasers, practically. Um, one of my brothers is a big crime lord in a place knotted enough that someone with a ‘skin condition’ of not having skin gets a pass, and he really knew how to throw a party. He bought me a, uh, dance, and the company of the male dancer for the evening, and… no thank you.”
“I wasn’t ready to appreciate, um, gosh, this isn’t a topic for a tea party, is it?”
“It’s an unusual tea party with unusual tea,” Montague said, sipping from his cup.
“I couldn’t appreciate someone else’s, um, skin, while mine was starting to fall off. I could hide it if I put a few hours into it, back then, but… no. And that knotted place was… dark. There were slaves sold in back alleys and I couldn’t be sure the person dancing for me wasn’t one.”
“Your brother would do that?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t know, and I was worried about what the answer might be. My brother is my brother and I wasn’t strong enough, confident enough, or aware enough of my ability to try overturning the social order in that place or go to war with him if the answer was bad. I’d lose, I’m pretty sure, and I decided to enjoy the good parts and not participate in the bad.”
“Seems common,” Lucy said. “Faerie courts, like with Shellie and Daniel-”
“People getting spirited off to the Spirit World,” Verona said.
Lucy nodded. “And not just in the world of Others. In, like, adult videos and things.”
“More common in the world of Others,” Tashlit noted, thinking back to the places she’d been and passed through. “I think with the lives of many Others being as long as they are, certain mindsets and practices linger. You’d be trying to change the culture of people who’ve been around for centuries, you upstarts. You’ve spent a mere thirteen years on this planet.”
“Are we upstarts?” Lucy asked.
“Tongue in cheek, sorry,” Tashlit said. “I don’t usually have a tongue or cheeks.”
“Aren’t you upstarts?” Montague asked. “You’ve been given a lot of power in a short time. You’ve already challenged a system you’ve known for months and it feels as if you might carry on doing that.”
“Are you saying we shouldn’t?” Lucy asked. “Because man, I am not a fan of a lot of that system.”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t,” he said. “Only that if you found out you couldn’t, you shouldn’t beat your breast and wail in anguish.”
“Can we turn that around?” Lucy asked. “What if we can? Can Others deal with that?”
Avery shifted her seat, giving up on trying to keep Snowdrop from snacking. “We’re looking for help, Montague, we want to make this work, here in Kennet, and we want you guys to feel at home. But we also want things to be better.”
“Big picture better,” Lucy said.
“I don’t intend to stand in your way. Was this why you wanted this meeting?”
“A bit,” Avery said. “We’re trying to find help, allies.”
“You’ve sat down for tea with me, and that makes it hard for me to see you as enemies.”
“It’s a starting point,” Verona said. She lifted her cup. “I’ll drink to that.”
“Really, Ronnie?” Lucy asked.
“It’s only a dream, right?”
Lucy folded her arms. Tashlit drew her eyebrows together. I have eyebrows, even if it’s only in a dream. Yay.
Verona and Montague clicked teacups and then drank.
Verona’s expression twisted, and she turned her head to the side, not spitting so much as she opened her mouth out wide and let the contents dribble out onto the floor.
“You wholly deserved that for trying to show off,” Lucy told Verona, while Tashlit reached out to rub Verona’s back.
“Sorry,” Avery told Montague.
“I’ll take it in the positive, adventurous spirit it was offered,” Montague said, his voice briefly lapsing into feedback squeals for the ‘s’ sounds, before almost disappearing into a crackle. “Much as you’ve done by indulging me here.”
Verona coughed and then laughed a bit. “That’s going to stay with me.”
“It’s good you’re smiling and enjoying all of this, at least,” Lucy said.
“Was yesterday hard?” Tashlit asked. “The Abyss creature?”
“It wasn’t the abyss,” Lucy said. “I’m not sure how much Verona wants to share.”
Verona gestured at Lucy, still hanging her head with mouth open to let all saliva drip down and onto the floor beside her instead of anywhere near the back of her throat. She finished the gesture set with a thumbs up.
“You’re clear to share,” Tashlit translated. At that statement, Verona laughed a bit, then coughed.
“Verona’s going away for a short while,” Avery said.
“No!” Tashlit protested. “You only barely got back!”
“I know, right?” Verona asked, raising her head, making a face for a second as she smacked her lips. “I guess if Tashlit gets a vote, we might have to reconsider my running away plan as a possibilitiy.”
“I’m not sure Tashlit gets a vote.”
“That’s fair, if she does and I don’t,” Snowdrop said, mumbling a bit because she was pulling some long hairs from between her teeth, bottom lip pulled back a bit. The hair became smoke. “I’m not a member of the group.”
“I bet you’d just vote the way Avery does,” Verona said.
“What’s going on?” Tashlit asked.
“My mom usually takes me for a week to ten days every summer. This summer we’re doing it a bit earlier than scheduled, and we’re doing it for longer. Taking a trip, and giving me a break from my dad. But I could run away and camp out somewhere, use practice to keep people from worrying.”
“Can we not rehash this?” Lucy asked.
“Where are you going?” Tashlit asked.
“There’s a lake with a beach my mom likes to go to, she drinks with a bunch of other middle aged ladies and I sit under a beach umbrella and draw. I think it’ll be something like that.”
“What would you do if you had a choice?” Avery asked.
“For a vacation, dribbletits,” Avery said.
Verona snickered at the insult. “I don’t know. Beach is fine. But two or three weeks of beach is a lot.”
“If it’s a long trip you should pay mind to whoever holds influence over the territories you practice in,” Montague told her. “Pay respect to those who hold sway there, ask permission. They’ll almost certainly say yes, and if they say no it’ll be for good reason. A token gift or a token favor will smooth things over if you’re intending to stay or do anything complicated.”
“Really good to know,” Verona said. “Gives me something to do.”
“The whole point of this is you take a break, Ronnie,” Lucy said.
“I was going to ask if you wanted company,” Tashlit told Verona. “I’ve wandered around, and if it isn’t far, I can cover a lot of ground in a day. But if it’s getting in the way of you spending time with your mom…”
“Ehh,” Verona grunted.
“Or taking a break? I wouldn’t want to.”
“That would be great. Hanging out for a while? I think it’s pretty far, though,” Verona said. “The thought is appreciated. Really. I don’t mean, like, I’m not making excuses. It really is so far that you’d spend three or four days walking, could be only a week or so of hanging out, and more days walking.”
“I don’t mind,” Tashlit said.
“Do remember, we have our responsibilities to this town that has taken us in,” Montague said, sipping his tea.
“They can’t really figure out what my responsibilities should be,” Tashlit told him. “I wasn’t brought in for any exact purpose. I was brought in on Verona’s recommendation.”
“True,” Montague replied.
“I don’t know about you guys,” Avery said. “I think I might be on the far opposite side of Lucy on this, but I’d certainly feel better if Verona had company. And protection. You never know what’s going to happen.”
“Someone to keep my head on straight,” Verona told Lucy.
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t feel better. I’d worry a bit that Verona would get super into hanging out with you and avoid solving anything for her dad situation.”
Verona snorted. “Us? You really think we’d go that overboard? Hanging out somewhere off the beaten track from the beach, swimming, sitting and reading magazines and books…”
“Music,” Tashlit said.
“I’ve got tons of Lucy music on my phone. And movies, we’ve got to make Avery watch this crummy, weird 90s animated thing, you should watch it too.”
“I’m down. I’m behind on a lot of movie and TV stuff.”
“I don’t know how you haven’t binged TV hard to kill time, these past few years.”
“Binge? Like binge drinking?”
“You don’t know what binging is? Oh my god…” Verona paused, her expression changing. “Oh my god. You haven’t watched all that much TV and movie stuff. I can show you some of the best stuff and you’re totally unspoiled. You haven’t even been ruined by trailers! It’s a pure and vicarious-for-me viewing experience!”
“Keep in mind that what Verona deems a good and interesting watch is a little off the mainstream,” Lucy told Tashlit.
“Says the horror fetishist,” Verona said. “And the closet romance-movie-watcher.”
“I’m not closeted, exactly, I just don’t broadcast it. I like genres with a lot of conventions and movies that toy with those conventions. Horror and romance are really formulaic. It’s the same with music.”
“I used to like romance movies, but then I got super sick of them really fast all of a sudden,” Avery said.
“We can find you stuff, Avery. Just gotta know where to look,” Verona said.
“And here I was, wondering if you and Tashlit would get off topic if left to your own devices,” Lucy muttered.
“It’s not necessarily a problem,” Montague told her.
“It is if one of my best friends procrastinates on solving things,” Lucy said. “I kind of got the vibe, sorry, getting into more serious stuff…”
“It’s fine,” Tashlit said.
“…That when Avery’s parents and my mom talked to Verona’s mom… um, if it was just my mom, with Verona being Verona and Verona’s mom being Verona’s mom, it would be doable for Verona to downplay things or convince my mom it was less of a big deal than it was.”
“I’m not so sure,” Verona said. “I wasn’t in a downplaying mood.”
“But you could’ve,” Lucy said. “Especially when it got to actually fixing things and making plans. And I think my mom might be really careful about not causing too much fuss, sometimes, and Avery’s parents being there probably really helped, with that.”
“Not making much fuss?” Verona asked. “I guess you got that from your dad?”
“I got it from me, if I’m being generous to myself,” Lucy said She sat back. “From Paul, if I didn’t.”
Tashlit frowned a bit, confused, but she figured she might ask. She could read the mood, and she was used to sitting back and watching.
“What’s your mom like?” Avery asked. “I’ve only heard bits.”
“Is she like your dad?” Avery asked.
“No. Not much like my dad.”
“I think, um, if you don’t mind my saying, Ronnie?” Lucy asked. Verona shook her head. “I remember one time, when we were younger, Verona’s parents were still together, I’d slept over, and it was Sunday. Verona’s mom asked if we wanted to go to church. I said I wasn’t interested and I didn’t believe and she said she wasn’t sure she believed either, you know? But that she saw the church and the church community as a kind of insurance, where you put in the hours and make your face known and they’ll support you if you’re ever in a pinch. That she really liked being able to shop around for a sub-community of people to spend time with. Kid me thought that was the best argument she’d heard for going to church.”
“Not quite good enough to get you to go,” Verona said.
“No, I wanted to watch Sunday morning movies and cartoons. But my point is… that’s how her mom thinks, I think? Maybe even more since the divorce because Verona’s dad isn’t acting as a counterbalance.”
“My dad was a different person when my mom was close and when she was away,” Tashlit said. “Maybe it’s a unique case, guy arguing with a sea serpent that can sink ships, but I feel like he was less set in his ways when she balanced him out. And vice versa.”
“Exactly, yeah,” Lucy said. “Verona’s mom is really set on deep introspection and thinking about how to set up her life. She’s smart and does this, I dunno, calculus? Figuring out her church community, wine drinking buddies, work…”
“She bailed on the church thing,” Verona said, quiet. “She paid her dues by showing up and the community was split on backing her up when she divorced my dad, and she didn’t respect the ones who did, as weird as that sounds.”
“I interpret it as her having it figured out as much as Verona’s dad doesn’t,” Lucy said. She looked at Verona. “Fair? Sorry if that’s TMI.”
“It’s fine, and it’s fair, with a sidenote,” Verona said. It looked like she was going to say something, then didn’t.
“Sidenote?” Avery asked.
“She’s got it figured out and I’m not a big part of that figuring,” Verona said.
Tashlit reached out and put her hand over Verona’s. Verona flashed a smile, but it was quick and halfhearted.
“Do you want or need Tashlit with? For sanity’s sake?” Lucy asked.
Verona nodded, holding her flickering, cracking, stained, burning, crumpled teacup in one hand in front of her. She swished it and it spat fluid with a popping sound, like it was in a microwave that had been put on for too long.
“We can argue for it if it makes it more likely. Pitch it as a duty or responsibility,” Lucy said.
“Could,” Avery said. “We should hit the ground running this morning. Lots to do. I’m really sorry, Montague, we’re not including you in much of the conversation.”
“I’m content to have company,” he said. “Put ritual and the pomp of an adult tea party aside and I don’t have much to contribute. Carry on, please.”
“Is there anything I can help with, tomorrow?” Tashlit asked. “Alpeana said I should talk to Rook.”
“Lucy’s sorting out hair and clothes, I need to do more Finder’s practices and get ready, when we’re doing the familiar ritual and launching into this new Path. I’ve got people to call…” Avery counted out things on her fingers. “If Verona’s open to it, I might have a solution.”
“To the travel issue. Do you want to come, Tashlit? To the familiar ritual, and stand back for the Path? Nicolette is coming, and the way they arranged it, they’re having her enter the Path from one location and they’ll drop her off on another. It might be possible to send you to the lake ahead of Verona.”
“If it’s no trouble.”
Verona smiled. “Now I’m actually looking forward to this. Stopping in to visit Lords or Judges as I enter a new place, possibly getting caught up in hijinks…”
“Please no,” Lucy said.
“It’s a fairly extreme case that you’d get caught up in anything,” Montague told Verona. “In almost every case the powers that control an area will want to keep the peace or refuse entry.”
“Oh well. Hanging out with my friend, watching weird shows and stuff on my laptop.”
“Weirder the better,” Tashlit said.
“Really? That’s a challenge.” Verona cackled.
“A dangerous challenge,” Lucy said.
“To change the topic from weirdness,” Snowdrop said, leaning forward. “I’m eyeing that cake that seems less weird than the rest.”
“Are you now?” Verona asked.
“Easy does it on the Montague confectionaries,” Avery said.
“I’m gonna eat it,” Snowdrop said, sly. She looked to the side. “I don’t think Verona should try.”
“I might have flashbacks of that tea in a year. You want me to eat that cake?”
“No, not at all,” Snowdrop answered, evasive, turning her head aside, giving Verona a sidelong glance. “You have no need to prove your courage and tolerance for the weird.”
“I think this ends in tears,” Lucy said.
“It’s a matter of pride, Lucy.” Verona reached for the little plate with the cake on it. A bubble of black liquid oozed to the top of the hard exterior chocolate layer, in a very organic sort of way. Then it became a strawberry cake a moment later.
“You might be right, except I think the way this goes, someone’s pride is going to get wounded,” Lucy told her.
“Sorry they’re making your cake out to be a bad thing, Montague,” Avery said. “It’s a bit of a dick move, Snowdrop, Verona.”
“It is a bad thing, and I think it’s wholly fitting that guests at a tea party agonize over whether they should partake. Even if it is flipped around.”
Verona eyed the cake. She looked at Tashlit. “Should I?”
“If it’s a matter of pride, I think so,” Tashlit said.
“It is a matter of pride. Like Lucy said, wounded pride, hiyah!” Verona picked up the cake and swept it toward Avery’s lower face.
Avery caught Verona’s arm, stopping the cake from reaching her own mouth.
Snowdrop reached up and began helping Verona.
Avery struggled as her strength warred with Verona’s and Snowdrop’s. “Traitor! Reconsidering the familiar ritual, here!”
“It’s an opossum thing, eating questionable food, perfectly fitting,” Verona crowed. “You’re going to have a little Snowdrop in you after the ritual, and she’ll have a bit of you in her.”
“That’s after, you jerk!”
“You need this more than Verona does,” Snowdrop said.
“I really do!” Verona said.
Lucy stood, chair scraping, and walked around the table. “And I believe in fighting unfairness.”
“No!” Verona called out.
“No no no!” Verona protested, as Lucy started sabotaging her, tickling, then pulling on her arms. “No!”
The cake made its gradual way to Verona’s lower face, then faster as it moved so far away that Snowdrop couldn’t really contribute, except to combat Avery.
Slowly, it smeared on Verona’s face and mouth. The fight went out of her.
“I think there are teeth or something in this cake,” Verona said, face still smeared.
“Very possible,” Montague said.
“One of them just crumbled when I accidentally chewed it,” Verona moaned, spitting. “It’s like a bad nut but a hundred times worse.”
“I believe it,” he said.
“You deserve this,” Lucy said.
“You really deserve it,” Avery said. “Why would you chew?”
The cake on Verona’s face changed. She stiffened.
Then Verona was gone. Lucy straightened, pushed Verona’s chair in, and tidied up the mess of plates and knives in front of it.
“Aw,” Tashlit groaned. “Too bad.”
“You’ll see her soon,” Avery said. “We’ll see about you going with? And have you come to the ritual?”
“I guess we should wake up early and get started. Any idea of the time? Montague?” Lucy asked.
“No idea, I’m sorry. But if you like, I can help you on your way.”
“Sure. I want to check on Verona.”
“Look after Verona, Tashlit?” Avery asked.
The violent imagery of the ever-changing walls and furniture began to speed up, the television getting louder. Over three or four seconds, it all closed in, the empty spaces filling in with more, with junk, with blood and degraded things and things in the process of being ruined.
“One less practitioner in Kennet, then,” Rook said.
Tashlit nodded. She tapped her wrist.
“Temporarily,” Rook amended. “Better than nothing.”
They were at Tashlit’s cabin. Crooked Rook was wearing less than her full regalia, but she still had the multi-layered skirt and the rack on her back with the birdcage hanging on it. Sweat beaded on skin that ranged from dark, cold purple at the broader, flatter parts to a warmer pink and orange-pink in places.
“Not a fan of practitioners?” the Composite Kid asked. His hair was wet- he’d dipped his head into the river a little ways down the slope from the cabin, rinsing off his hands, cooling off.
“I don’t have a lot more than my run-ins with the local three, and word of mouth from Bridge and McKay to go on.”
“You’re lucky to be as free as you are right now,” Crooked Rook told them. Her stick was apparently heavy and had even more impact on the soft, mossy ground with the way she periodically leaned on it. The cage on her back swung. She withdrew calipers from her belt, then adjusted them with a flick of her hand. “To be Other means that we often start on the back foot, off balance and flailing. Have you met Nibble and Chloe?”
“Only Nibble, only briefly,” the Composite Kid said. He frowned as the calipers were brought to his head, chin to the top of the head, then to brow, then to throat.
“They were that. Off-balance. Was it the same for you, Tashlit? When you left humanity behind?”
Tashlit nodded. They weren’t good memories. Her dad being as upset as he’d been had bothered her more than anything else.
“Practitioners have their major rituals and they grow through those rituals. There are moderate and major rituals that improve them. And there are the core rituals they like to do, of Familiar, Implement, Demesne. The Demesne ritual in particular is one I mind, because it means ceding ground, every time, and because it runs against the sect I belong to. But they grow. And we, by similar measure, shrink or are cut down. We are bound, diminished, or made to conform to labels. They often disarm us, or make us subordinate.”
“Does that mean you’re going to let me go?” the Composite Kid asked.
Tashlit tensed, eyes all up and down her body narrowing.
“No. My duties and objectives here are more important.”
“Damn.” He lifted his arm at Rook’s bidding as she measured his wrist. The calipers clicked open and closed by a small fraction as Rook held the calipers over the skin there. She flicked the calipers open, then held them at the heart, closing until they started going that steady open-closed click, much more dramatic than when they’d been at his wrist.
“You’ve walked the path to bring yourself to this point,” Rook said.
Tashlit reached out and touched Crooked Rook’s shoulder. She wasn’t muscular or especially bony, but what was there was very firm beneath the squish of loose skin at Tashlit’s fingertip.
Crooked Rook looked at her, peering over the mask she held sideways over her lower face. Tashlit made a gesture, hoping Crooked Rook would know what she meant. A steeple shape with the fingers of two hands pressing together, over the heart.
“My sect?” Rook asked.
Tashlit nodded, feeling a weird giddiness at how many people here could understand her, then uncertainty because she wasn’t sure how good it was to be pleased with Rook when Others like Alpeana were so keen on her. She didn’t feel manipulated, but she felt like it was very easy to get swept up in Rook’s… everything, and that was dangerous.
“Boxes and box-makers,” Rook said. “Cages and cage makers. What is a home but four walls, a floor, a ceiling? A container we make for ourselves. What boxes do we fit in? What boxes do others put us in, or lock us in? Do you understand the thread running through this?”
Tashlit shook her head. She made L-shapes with her hands and pressed them together to make a square.
“No, the box isn’t the point. That’s fine. If you find yourself understanding what I’m talking about on a fundamental level, you may one day come to me. Perhaps you’ll one day reach out to me to take that realization to its logical conclusions. Our new resident here- you do intend to reside?”
“I guess,” the Composite Kid said. “I’m not sure what happens. They’re going to investigate first. I could go back to the families I’ve been staying with, but they’re a little worried me being there stops them from healing.”
“You’re in a box, child. You’re fluid and you fit yourself to a space. Recognizing this, toying with it, it’s a tool at the very least, and it may even be a necessity for you. You could come to the realization I told Tashlit of a moment ago and decide you wish to move to another space, or adulterate yourself with other fluid things. Those are the games you must sometimes play when the field is theirs.”
Tashlit gestured, waving a finger around, drawing a circle in the air.
“Yes. Practitioners,” Rook said. She turned to the Kid. “You have three years. If you haven’t addressed your situation, the box you’re in will close and the contents will become inert. Playing the sorts of games and tricks with the boundaries and conventions I’ve mentioned will give you much more life. The human aspects of you will give way after fifty-one years. That too can be adjusted, if you truly wish.”
Tashlit reached out, touching Rook’s arm, and Rook didn’t even wait for the gestures before saying, “Yes. By giving up humanity.”
The Kid shuffled his feet, backing up a step. “The people I’m made of obsessed a lot about making those kinds of changes and fixes. I’d worry I couldn’t stop once I got started messing around.”
“There is a stopping point,” Rook told him. She clicked the calipers closed, then slid them into her belt. “That point is when you decide to stop playing games with the rules and get serious.”
Goosebumps prickled along the skin that wreathed Tashlit’s narrow body.
“Is that how I’d get to be a part of your sect?” the Kid asked.
“You wouldn’t need to worry about whether you qualify for at least a hundred and two years,” Rook told him. “Draw the conclusions you must from that.”
“I was going to ask you to help me with things, Tashlit, but if you’re going to keep the practitioner girl’s company for the next few weeks, I’ll have to look elsewhere. Have you talked to Mr. Moss?”
Tashlit gestured, made a ‘phone’ gesture with pinky and thumb, then waved off into the distance.
“Be careful about allowing them to speak on your behalf too often. I won’t stand in your way in this. Be careful. Are they coming here?”
“Then I’ll go before they arrive.”
Tashlit reached out before Rook could depart, touching the woman’s arm again. She gestured, hand flat and facing the sky, waving around, with a shrug, then pointed at Rook.
“Ah. I shouldn’t tell you too much if you’re not helping me. Nor should I tell you too much if you’re staying close to them. Mrs. Edith James is busy recovering from events and for reasons she has declined to share with the rest of us, Mr. Moss is preoccupied with his wife’s well being, and Maricica is still healing from the wound inflicted by the Glamour-drowned boy. My only handler now is Guilherme and he has his own small preoccupations. I’m more or less free to make my moves in the meantime.”
Tashlit gestured, a ‘walking’ motion with two fingers pointing down, eyes narrowing.
“For one thing, I don’t think Matthew and Edith would have allowed our new friend here to make my acquaintance if he was devoting his full attention to running this town. That’s one move. Getting to know him, letting him get to know me. He’s free to make his own decisions after that.”
Tashlit held up two fingers and made a swooshing gesture, ending with holding three fingers up, then another little swoosh and a four.
“Yes. There are second and third moves, Tashlit. I’m not going to tell you, except to say that I want to be in the best position I can when everything unfolds. If you think of this as a game of chess, then those three girls don’t have any idea that they’re playing. They are poised to lose, soundly and thoroughly. As for myself, I don’t plan to lose. It may not be a victory, but it shouldn’t be a loss.”
Tashlit made a gesture, moving an invisible chess piece, then wagging a finger.
Rook’s eyes turned up with a smile hidden by the mask she held in front of her face. “You’re very right. I did say it wasn’t a game. It’s fine. Focus on yourself, first and foremost, Tashlit.”
Tashlit nodded, still wary.
“Shall we?” Rook asked, turning to the Kid.
“Am I just going to get dragged around everywhere by you, today?”
“You could stay in Mr. Moss’s basement with the Lout and Bridge until the girls deign to visit and bind you, if you’d like. Speaking for myself, I’d take the opportunity to get fresh air.”
“Tashlit,” Rook said, turning back to look over her shoulder, mask held up with one hand, stick held firmly in the other. “I’ve told you things about the sect I belong to and the state of things with the girls. I’m not going to threaten you to stay quiet about those details, but you deciding to share it with them in violation of my confidence will change how I see you and address you in the future.”
Tashlit didn’t move or respond.
There was a shout from the trees. Verona’s voice.
If Tashlit had only the two eyes, then her turning her head to look would have meant she would have missed Rook’s departure. As it was, Rook and the Kid disappeared so fast the eyes that remained fixed on them felt fooled.
The girls came down through the trees, Verona and Lucy leading the way for once, holding branches aside and stepping on saplings to let Snowdrop and Avery duck through.
Verona had two goblins with her. Cherry and Snot.
The outfits were similar to what they’d worn in the dream, if simpler. Avery wore a light blue button-up shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow and black pants, hair in a similar style, and a matching pin to the dream. Snowdrop wore a white dress that faded to gray at the bottom, slightly simpler opossum earrings, and silver eye shadow. Her hair didn’t have as many flowers in them and they weren’t all snowdrops. A lot were daisies and longer stems with very small white buds on them. Lucy had done a good job there.
Tashlit pointed to one dangling earring.
“I got so preoccupied making the pin for Avery and the earrings for Snowdrop that I sorta didn’t pack much,” Verona said. “I’m going to borrow some of Lucy’s stuff and my mom’s going to want to take me shopping, I bet.”
Tashlit nodded. She gave Verona a thumbs up.
“Ronnie’s talented when it comes to making stuff,” Lucy said.
Verona smiled. “I’m pretty proud of it. I wanted to contribute more than being like, hey, I found Snowdrop in the first place.”
“I thought I was safe and then you tried to eat me,” Snowdrop muttered. Cherrypop started laughing at that.
“You know, if me becoming a cat is even slightly in the cards-”
“Not even,” Lucy retorted.
“-I should try my hand at actually eating as a cat, shouldn’t I? Weird to think it would be so carnivorous. I might end up eating a lot of potential Snowdrops. Crunching them in my teeth? Hm.”
“Yep, that’s the unfortunate reality,” Snowdrop said. “You’re locked into that, can’t eat a diet of ticks or anything.”
“I don’t think cats can, actually, Snow,” Verona said.
“They’re hard to catch, gotta let them latch on and then squeeze ’em,” Cherrypop said. “Pop, then lick the mess off your hands.”
“Gross, Cherry,” Lucy said.
Avery approached the door to the cabin. “This okay, Tashlit? Might damage it.”
Avery began putting the folded bits of paper in between door and frame.
“Did you pack?” Verona asked.
Tashlit nodded, walked over to the campfire she lit sometimes for the smoke that would scare off the bugs, and picked up her bag.
Snowdrop helped with some of the invitations closer to the ground.
Everything in place. Avery stepped back.
“Got an incantation?” Verona asked.
“Choo choo,” Avery said, tapping her heels together, before leaping forward, using her shoes. She kicked the door right off the hinges, and it flew back into dark void.
“You’re such a dork,” Lucy said.
“It’s awful,” Snowdrop said.
Avery took Snowdrop’s hand and the two of them leaped into the void.
“These things make me so nervous,” Lucy said, leaping.
Verona walked up to the door. Not a running start. Tashlit followed, until they stood at the brink.
The doorway was getting more unstable, fading away.
Verona took her hand, and as a pair, they leaped.
Scenes zipped past them, and there were moments there was enough air resistance that Tashlit’s skin pulled back, a bulldog facing a strong fan.
I’ll tell Verona when we get there. What Rook said.
Avery was shouting something.
Lucy’s shout was louder. “Push each other apart! Careful!”
Something red appeared ahead of them, as they ‘fell’ toward it. A stretch of red, like a sword-
Tashlit pulled on her reserve of strength and pushed Verona away. The force of the push moved her up and Verona down, and the bridge swooped past and behind them.
The vortex or whatever it was pulled them slowly back together.
They hit ground before they reconnected. Tashlit hit solid ground, feet sliding in skin inside shoes as she skidded, dropping to hands and knees. Verona fell and tumbled.
Tashlit took in the station. The platform they were on was something of a stage, overlooking a kind of rest area where an overhanging roof blocked much of the sun. It was ornate, complex, and wrought iron, with gaps that sun shone through, making patterns with the play of light on the tiled floor. Some scarce few people ran down the length of this rest area, into the light. Others were resting or huddled together, talking.
And that light- it was noise and it was activity, in almost the opposite way that Montague’s dream had been. There were two hundred Others out there, mingling, talking, moving, to an accompaniment of train whistles, horns, screeches, stalls, the hubbub of conversation, and the loud, over-coordinated ticking of clocks that loomed everywhere. Even from the rest area, they could see the backside of one clock, sun shining through material and giving a vague shadow-impression of where the clock hands were.
The main concourse had stalls and shops running down the middle, dividing it in two, and each path had branches extending out to the other side, where bridges extended out to nowhere. At least until a train stopped and people filed in, some hopping onto the bridge from a diagonal, one or two dancing, even. There was a small dog balanced on a ball, a man with a fish for a head, and a ten foot tall figure wearing an armless cloak that extended from neck to ground, obscuring his body, child-sized dolls dangling from nooses in a ring around his neck. A girl about Tashlit’s age with a tiger mask looked around and then hurled herself off the edge. There was an audible crack as she hit something on the way down. Some people laughed and others made sounds of sympathy.
All of it over stormy red-and-purple clouds, balloons, and dirigibles. A train station in light, bright colors, occupied by predominantly young Others, poised over an open, wild, dreamlike sky that was more painting than reality.
“Thank you for coming,” Avery said.
“Bit of a field trip,” a boy said. “We lose nothing by being observers, right?”
“That’s the hope,” Lucy said. “That’s a lot of Others.”
Tashlit looked. Some of the people who had been resting or huddling together had approached.
“Tashlit,” Verona murmured, pointing, “Meet Zed, Brie, Nicolette, Jessica, Tymon, Liberty, and Fernanda. I guess Estrella had better things to do?”
“Yeah,” Nicolette said. “She’s said she’ll help some, though.”
“And there’s also Jude, who Verona hasn’t met,” Avery said. “Hi Jude.”
“I had to convince my dad you weren’t trying to beat us to the punch or something when I came.”
“Not the intention. Really, it means a lot that you’d show up,” Avery said. She put a hand on Snowdrop’s shoulder. “This isn’t about the Familiar ritual we’re about to do, but that’s a part of it. This is about attachments, forming bonds, and establishing long-term ties. I’ve been saying for a little while now that I think we need help. We’re willing to make deals if you want to ask for them, but we’d really like your support for what’s coming down the road.”
“You too?” Verona whispered.
Tashlit looked down at her.
Organizing, making moves where the Kennet Others can’t see.
You may have underestimated them, Rook.