8. The Cave (Patreon)

Update: unlocked for all patrons.

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Nothingness stretches in all directions. There is a realization of movement, but no reference points to help determine speed or direction. A memory triggers—

One night, Milo was aboard the university’s dirigible. There’d been a special dinner party for the physics students, and while the other guests retired to the salon afterward to talk, he’d fled through the service hallways until he found himself in the engine room. He’d sat with his back against the great motors, letting the chunk and huff of their turning soothe him.

A small balcony gave access to the rotors outside, and Milo eventually went out to look. He found the world all dark. There was a new moon that night, and the stars were all hidden by clouds. He’d stood in the middle of nothing—all the mathematics in his head quiet. The fears and anxieties, the worries and tensions—all felt so far away. And then, down below, the clouds parted to reveal Boston, the city aglow—its streets and thoroughfares lit gemlike with electric lights.

It was the most beautiful thing in the world.

The memory ends and Milo longs to see those lights again. He reaches for their sparkling wonder and finds that a whole universe of stars has been in front of him all this time. At their center is a bridge lit with fairy lights. Long, stretching arches of gold and crimson connect nothingness to nothingness. A warm radiance calls to him, and he flies across the bridge, wondering at the elegance of its construction.

On the other side, he finds himself standing at the edge of a cliff. The ocean roars below. Grasses, newly budded, sway in the wind. A forest covers the land behind him, where the bridge once was.

A woman stands at the edge of the cliff. Her arms are outstretched towards twelve objects hovering in the air. There are pieces of stone and wood, bone and flowers, a small leather pouch, a wooden flute. Her hands move between them, as if she’s operating a machine. Her eyes are open, but she doesn’t see Milo.

She is beautiful in a way he cannot name.

A deep voice speaks. “Do not disturb her, if you will.”

Milo looks around, but there’s no one in sight. “I won’t. Who is she? What’s she doing?”

“She is who she is,” the voice says, “and she’s bringing you back to life.”

“Oh, I see.” Milo ponders the words. “Does that mean I’m dead?”

“Mostly, but not quite.” The voice pauses. “You shouldn’t be here, you know.”

“The lights were so beautiful, and then I was here. Who are you?”

The voice chuckles. “I am a riddle, and not one you’ve solved.”

A soft wind blows through Milo’s hair, hiding among its strands. “This place is nice. It must be a dream.”

“This place is more real than your reality,” the voice says.

“I’m a scientist,” Milo says. “I know all of this is impossible.”

More chuckling. “If you say so, then it will be. Best learn that right now. Otherwise you’ll not survive what’s coming.”

“And what’s that?”

“A storm,” the voice says. “A Calamity of wide-ranging despair and suffering.”

“I can see how you’d be popular with conversation like that.”

Deep laughter. Up in the sky, a leonine figure flies through the air. “If she knew you were here, she’d kick you right out. I should probably do it for her, but I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” the voice says, “this place has defenses and you walked in past them all, uninterrupted. That means something.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. Not yet anyway.” The voice laughs again. “And isn’t that a wonderful thing?”

The woman takes fire from the air and onto her hands, but they don’t burn. She gently blows on it, and Milo is whisked away into another darkness.

###

Hallon slumps against the wall. A pale blue light filters through the snow blocking the cave’s entrance. Cool air flows from a hole she’d dug last night when she realized she was getting light-headed.

She hears the muffled sounds of people yelling.

They’ve found no survivors. You’re safe for now. Rest.

Hallon nods and retreats into sleep.

###

The cave is dark, except for the glow of complex spellwork surrounding Milo’s body. He reminds her of a city on fire. A building under repair. An open wound stitched closed. Hallon wonders if this is what Dr. Frankenstein saw in his monster. She’d argued with Shelley about the doctor’s motivations—

Flutterhead, Hallon thinks to herself. This is no time to be thinking about books. She feels Milo’s forehead—no fever. And no pus oozing from under the bandage. Milo is alive and recovering, but it’d been close. Too close. She’d had to dig out the bullet with her fingers.

Hallon promised Milo that he’d be safe in her company, but he was halfway to dying even before the bullet hit him. That’s a poor way to honor her word. But promises are hard to keep when you’ve lived for hundreds of years. No matter your best intentions—you forget, you slip, you make mistakes. Oh, how she’s tired of making mistakes. Oh, how she’s tired of the tragedies, those that happened and those she’d caused.

She brushes the hair from her face and realizes there are tears on her cheeks. I’m tired.

Eratosthenes joins her and folds his presence around her pain. Then rest.

The memories of her murdered family, of old friends, and old enemies fade as she sleeps.

###

A colony of rusty-green lichen covers Hallon like a blanket. The scent of iron is strong in her nose—strong enough to taste—and she moves the blanket aside to find signs of Eratosthenes’s handiwork within her. His energy circulates through her spirit centers. It swirls around her Place of Power.

Milo wasn’t the only one needing help, Eratosthenes says.

Gratitude fills Hallon, spreading through her like an endless tide. Another day survived, she says, rubbing the gunk from her eyes. How long was I asleep?

Three nights, he says.

“I only remember two.”

You were busy. And exhausted.

“True.” Hallon feels depleted. The fire can sustain her for only so long. Any more and she risks burning out. “Where’s the Green Witch?”

She helped get you settled and then went back home to rest.

“I’ll thank her later. Is anyone nearby?”

None. The soldiers left yesterday. They were upset about not finding your bodies but were needed back at their camps.

“Then it’s time to move on.” Hallon eases out from under the lichen and checks on Milo. She hadn’t noticed before but his big toes poke out from holes in his socks. Otherwise, he’s healing.

Light streams in from the air hole she’d dug. The rest of the cave entrance is covered over with snow. A shovel would come in handy, but she’ll make do without. It won’t be the first time she’d gotten herself out from under an avalanche. “What about food? Is there anything to hunt or forage?”

Nothing until you get past the storm wall. Let me show you.

Hallon’s mind fills with images as she starts to clear the cave’s entrance. The convoys once more travel along the pass. They take their cargo to a factory near the storm wall.

Well, to Eratosthenes it’s a factory, but to Hallon it resembles a fortress. A central fortified building is surrounded by two curtain walls riddled with gun ports. Soldiers patrol the grounds with long-nosed dogs, and an armed dirigible floats permanently overhead. The only factory-like feature is the gray smoke billowing from a string of chimneys.

“Is the blue stone that valuable?”

They call it rethak. It’s supposed to be medicinal.

Hallon shrugs. “Never heard of it. What else?”

A second factory is downslope and uses the steam generated from the first to melt ice into water. The water then flows down an enormous pipeline through a tunnel under the storm wall.

“They’re going to a lot of trouble to make water, especially since they’re surrounded by the stuff.”

Ah, but there’s a twist. Eratosthenes lifts high into the air. The ground recedes rapidly, and the light turns to the pale blue that’s at the boundary between life and dark. It’s a view she never gets tired of. Hanging at the edge of space, she recognizes the planet as earth, but broken into a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces separated by storm walls.

She’s at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, near where Damascus would be. Her puzzle piece is all white and snow. The one just east is green with forest, and the one after that brown with desert.

Eratosthenes flies above the storm wall and drops down into the forest. There are elaborate estates hidden among the pine and cedar. A small town called Barada sits at the base of the mountain range. The pipeline runs through the forest and through another tunnel under a storm wall to the desert on the other side.

Hallon scrunches her face. “The desert piece of the jigsaw looks like the center of a spider’s web.”

Yes, that’s right. The pieces get bigger the farther you go from there.

“Strange. You think something happened in that desert piece?”

I do, but what it could’ve been is still a mystery.

“There are no guardians to ask? Resonances to read?”

Everyone I’ve approached has either run or threatened me. I’m finding that the locals are decidedly unfriendly.

“Hmm… all right. The plan is to avoid the factories and make for the forest. We’ll check out Barada and if it’s safe, resupply.”

And after that?

The light brightens as more and more of the snow is moved aside. A hard crust had formed over the outer later, and Hallon is forced to punch through like a chick pecking its way out of an egg. “After that,” she says, “I’m thinking that the pipeline might lead to something interesting.”

###

Milo’s shoulder throbs. His face feels hot and scratchy. A soldier’s jacket covers him, its brass buttons glinting. Another jacket is folded under his head. Two voices murmur back and forth to each other. One is deep. The other soft, but somehow just as strong. There’s a dull ache behind his eyes. A wave of dizziness passes through him, and one of the voices falls away, leaving the softer of the two.

He groans.

Hallon turns around. “Oh good, you’re awake. How do you feel?” She stands at a cave’s entrance surrounded by morning light.

All his life, Milo has been able to see the mathematics that represent the world around him. Numbers and symbols, equations and calculations—they float into and out of his vision as regularly as air flows into and out of his lungs. The whole world is filled with mathematics. It’s the language the world uses to describe itself. And right now, Milo is dazzled by the geometry of Hallon’s form: the line of the equations that indicate the tilt of her head, the perfect spacing of her eyes from each other and their relationship to her nose, the arc of her mouth—the tips hovering on the edge of curling up. Her mathematics astonish in the same way a thunderstorm does—filling the air with electricity.

Milo tries to bring the equations under control, so that he can have something intelligent to say, but all he has is questions. Where are we? What just happened? Who are you really?

The moment stretches and one of Hallon’s eyebrow rises, just a matter of degrees but Milo understands that those degrees mean something important. Curiosity or impatience maybe.

“Honestly,” he says, desperate for anything to come out of his mouth. “I don’t know.”

The shape of her mouth changes. The lines extend and bend upward into a smile. “That’s all right. There’s nothing wrong with uncertainty. It’s a good friend to anyone wise. How about we get out of here though? At the least, you’ll feel better in the open air.”

Hallon takes his hand and helps him to standing. She’s careful of his shoulder, because—that’s right—he’d been shot. And run faster than he’d ever run before. Escaped soldiers and been rolled over by an avalanche. That’s right—he’d lost his sanity and has no way to determine what’s real and what’s not among the sensory data he’s gathering.

All Milo has is his mind. If that’s gone, then he has nothing.

“Is everything okay?” Hallon looks into his eyes, and the numbers skew in all directions. There’s too much to look at, and it overwhelms him. “Ah, you’re afraid,” she says. “That’s all right too. There’s a lot to be afraid of, but we’ll make it through. I gave you my promise.”

Milo finds himself still holding her hand. He looks down, away from the puzzle of her eyes, and has the clearest and most lucid thought of his life. He would follow this girl—this Hallon Nilsdotter—anywhere.