Freya
could not stop thinking about the sword. She had left it behind in the mad rush
to get away from the DFO. It was possible, of course, that it had survived –
though only if the fires had not warped or melted the blade.
But
as of yet, there was no real plan for how to go back. She had brought it up
with Azjar, but he had only meekly shrugged, just as much in the dark as she
was. They had gotten that strange blue man to his people, and the djinn had
been accommodating, but Freya’s questions were numerous.
Tessa
had called the djinni “Mr. Flow,” which sounded like the name of a jazz
musician. She gathered that that was not his real name, but Tessa had still not
explained just who he was or why he came to them.
Someone
had made a supply run back to Towatki to get human – what the djinn called
“jengu” – groceries, but Freya did not understand why they had not gone back
with them, to return to Arizradna and talk to law enforcement.
Is this one of those times when you need to
act on your own?
Even
over a week later, Freya felt like she was in a daze. She wanted to go back.
She wanted to call home and reassure her family that she was fine. Already they
would be worried sick about her, maybe even mourning her. But Tessa and Jack
were acting as if the crisis had never ended. They were hiding out, laying low.
Who the hell are these people?
She
worried about the sword – not so much because she cared about it as a family
heirloom (though she did) – but because she had utterly failed to show the kind
of valor in battle that would be expected of her.
She
was certain that her parents would not come down too harshly – none of them had
ever been in a real battle. Freya came from the soft south of Sardok, untouched
by the monsters in the north. “National Pride” per se had fallen out of favor
long ago in Sardok, at least in its most explicit expressions. But there was
still a tradition that valued the arts of the warrior, if not the application
of those arts.
The
sietch was comfortable – surprisingly cool for people who had always lived in
the deserts. Freya had heard of the djinn before, but it only occurred to her
now that she had never seen one, even in photographs, before Mr. Flow had
arrived at the observatory. She could almost imagine that she had heard they
had all died out, though perhaps that had been an exaggeration. Kapla Furnace
was not large, exactly, but it was large enough to feel like a real location –
not some tiny town out in the countryside that served more as a hub of commerce
for farmers than a real home for anyone. Kapla felt like a home. There were
children who left the sietch in the morning to go to school in one of the other
buildings. There were shops built into the sietches – in fact, if one squinted,
the whole place might look like a shopping mall, but there wasn’t the same
attempt to present itself as sterile.
She
had spent the days there exploring the various sietches. The inner-most ones
were actually connected by tunnels, but as one pressed out to the exterior
buildings, they became more isolated.
Freya
spoke with a woman named Yakka, whose Standard was broken and heavily accented,
who indicated that this structure was typical of a Furnace Village – the
furnace at the center provided power, and new buildings would be constructed in
radiating shells as the village grew.
Freya
asked if the old Djinn Cities had been built in a similar way, but Yakka grew
quiet and shrugged, claiming not to know and then taking her leave.
“Admittedly,
that’s a little odd,” said Azjar, after she told him. “Maybe it’s a taboo to
talk about the cities?”
Freya
sat down in a comfortable chair in their apartment’s living room. “I really
know barely anything about them. I mean, they seem perfectly nice. Frankly
they’re more hospitable to us than we deserve.”
“Well,
we did save one of their people. I imagine that would earn us some good favor.”
“Have
you called home?”
Azjar
frowned. “No. I should.”
“I
haven’t either. That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Do
they even have a phone here? “
Freya
gave it some thought. They could clearly communicate between the sietches, but
there had not been anything like telephone lines leading there. The day they
had arrived was now coming into clearer focus. They had been exhausted and
thirsty when they arrived. Kapla Furnace Village had appeared out of the desert
like some strange mirage.
Freya
had the disturbing thought that this was all an illusion, and that she was
dying of thirst in the desert. She took a deep breath, felt the wall next to
her as carefully as she could, taking note of its texture and the distinct
smell of mild incense covering up some sort of cleaning solution.
If
this was a hallucination, it was a particularly effective one.
They
had driven so far out, though, and over so many days, and when Freya thought
back, she realized that they could not have had any water with them. Their
panicked flight out of the DFO had been so rushed.
She
brought this up with Azjar.
“Hm.
That is strange,” he said.
“Strange?
That’s miraculous, isn’t it?”
“We’re
in the Sarona Desert now. I think it will behoove us to think in less strictly
logical ways,” said Azjar as he yawned and finished off a piece of baklava he
had been working on for several minutes, a treat that the djinni man named
Chaffi, who Freya understood to be Councilor Marada’s secretary or assistant,
had brought for them.
“Less
strictly logical ways?” asked Freya.
“It’s
different here. In Ganlea, things are more solid, more… rational or something.
My people have always had a kind of reverence for the Desert, because it’s not
just a desert. It’s… our tradition is that it’s the heart of the universe. The
Path of Aeoes shoots right into it, as if reality itself is radiating out of
it. And if that’s really what is happening, then maybe the Desert’s version of
reality isn’t exactly fully formed. It’s like the soft skull of an infant.”
“Is
there evidence for all of that? That theory?”
“It’s
not a theory. It’s a myth. But it’s one that holds up pretty well.”
That
night, Freya went to bed, still unsatisfied. She resolved to bring it up with
Tessa in the morning. It was time to go home. She wanted to put all of this
madness behind her.
As
she slept, she heard a phone ringing. She awoke in the strange bed, in the
strange room. She knew immediately that it was wrong. There were no windows,
and the bed was tucked away in the corner of the room.
She
stood up, now realizing that this was a dream. The phone continued to ring, but
she still couldn’t determine where it was. She thought herself forward, as one
does in lucid dreams, and she came swiftly out of the room and into a cavernous
space. There were strange blue people out there who wore sunglasses despite the
fact that she could see the night’s stars out through the great glass ceiling
of the building.
The
ringing did not grow louder, yet somehow she was certain that she was coming
closer to it. The dream logic suggested it, and she was willing to see this
through. She climbed the stairs up toward the door and walked forward. It had
to be a dream, because the sky was almost a bright purple, and a million
million stars glittered above her. The Path of Aeoes was so bright that it looked
like a solid tower made of cloudy white glass, extending up into the cosmos.
Below
the purple sky, the ground was orange-brown. It was beautiful, the way you
would illustrate the desert night in a children’s book. It was dark, but
somehow the darkness seemed only a function of the colors around her – her
vision did not feel impaired at all.
She
walked forward, the Path of Aeoes acting as her compass as she left the village
behind her. The ringing grew no louder, but clearer, and now there were strange
shapes in the sky. They could have been letters or symbols, or maybe they were
actually far-away planets, or celestial spirits high above.
The
land was incredibly flat, so it was quite strange that the phone took her by
surprise.
Yet
there it stood, a telephone in a narrow, door-less booth. The booth was
illuminated with a terribly bright light, and the receiver was positively
rattling with the ringing.
Freya
stepped forward, and as she walked into the light surrounding the phone, she
suddenly felt the intense rain that was falling. Mere seconds within the light
and she was drenched. She ducked into the phone booth, shivering at the cold.
She
picked up the receiver and held it to her ear. “Dad?”
“No.
Not Dad,” said the voice on the other end.
“You’re
right,” said Freya. “This is just a dream. I need to call you when I wake up.”
“You
misunderstand,” said the voice. “This is not a dream.”
The
next thing she knew, Freya was in a rather uncomfortable cot. The air was hot
and dry, and her skin was sore and sunburned. She seemed to be in a rough
canvas tent, and she was grateful to find a big bottle of water next to her on a
metal crate that served as a nightstand.
The
water was hot and tasted bitter with sediment, but it did the job as she downed
what must have been a liter in a single extended quaff.
“Ok,
good, you’re up.”
A
man was standing in the tent – he must have been in there when she woke up, as
she didn’t think he could have come through the tent’s entrance without her
seeing him.
The
man had sandy brown-blonde hair and a thick lair of stubble. He was dressed in
a long duster. He looked a bit thin.
“You
scared us. We’re glad we found you before you died of dehydration. There’s more
water where that came from. Sadly not cold, though. This operation is a bit
bare-bones, if you’ll forgive me.”
“Where
am I? I need to get back to… uh… Kap… Kapla Furnace Village.”
“Soon.
Once you’re rested up and healthy. Chaffi here will be able to bring you back
there,” he said, indicating the blue man standing next to him with dark
sunglasses. She recognized him from Kapla. “…And once you agree to help us out.”
Freya’s
eyes widened. She suddenly felt dread coursing through her veins. “What… what…
what…”
“Take
a breath,” said the man with the sandy-blonde hair.
“What
do you want from me?”
“We
need you to bring your friends here.”
(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2015)
