Angel Fall (5 page)

Tori bent down. “Oh, look, he’s awake. He’s so cute. Can I pick him up?”

The woman nodded.

To her surprise she discovered that he was light as a feather. “He doesn’t weigh anything. Poor little guy. I wonder what happened to your parents.”

“His what, his what?”

“His parents. I think I saw them on the plane.”

“
Those were not his parents.
” The words were so cold that the mist around her eyes turned into glittering crystals. “
Never…ever speak such things again.
”

Instantly Tori felt like burying herself under the blankets. But then the frightening look vanished and the old woman sighed, “Forgive me. Do forgive me. I’m tired and that turns my brain to rocks. How were you supposed to know? Indeed, you couldn’t even. It’s just taken so long. But at least he’s with us now.” A great weariness seemed to come over her as she sensed the girls’ lingering fear. “Half to death, I’ve scared you. Now your heads are filled with questions that you’re afraid to ask.” She paused and looked out over the water. “My dear young women. Both of you…all two of you…you haven’t known me long, but trust me, please, in spite of how I sound. Outsides change, but insides—never. You must get to know me inside, because we will be together for a while.”

Amanda stared off at the endless horizon and shivered. Okay, maybe there was just a chance that she wasn’t dead and all of this was real. “Don’t you think they’ll be out looking for us? I mean, after the plane crash and everything.” She couldn’t keep her voice from trembling.

“Looking for us? Oh, they’re looking for us, looking everywhere. But we’re well hidden. Hidden where their eyes can never see.”

“What do you mean?”

There was another pause, and then the woman turned toward her. “Amanda. Manda-Manda, what if I should tell you strange things? New things. Things a girl from Earth has never heard. The truth. Questions answered. And it might as well be now. The large plane, the one from Boston. It didn’t crash by itself. I told it to. Just me. Alone.”

“What?”

“Crash. Unpleasant word. Let’s say unscheduled landing in the ocean. Something else. A small but important detail. Don’t be disturbed, but it isn’t one of your oceans. It’s one of mine on a slightly different world.”

“You mean…we’re not on Earth?” Tori’s eyes were wide. “We’re on…another planet?”

“Another planet. Yes. Exactly, precisely other. Look up.”

Both girls stared at the sky. Above them a pale sun was setting, and above it there were stars. A sun and stars together. Tori gulped and her lower lip began to tremble.

“Now, don’t be afraid. You’re safe, so very safe with me. Did I not tear the twilight to come to you? And did I not call the Wind? It blew and blew and carried us away. Too old to do it now—not as young as then—aging with my world, and so it ought to be.”

“Who are you?” Amanda was staring at her with hard eyes.

“Who?”
The woman spoke softly and smiled. “Not just who, but
what
. What and what and what. The Watcher of two girls from the mornings they were born. Who? Many names. Names on names. But only one that matters. On Boreth, I am
Bellwind
.” As she spoke her name, the mist around her sparkled like a thousand tiny diamonds, and from far away there was a whispering echo as though something unseen had heard and answered. Suddenly the dog began barking joyously, and they all turned to look.

In the distance fog was rising from the ocean, growing in billows like heavy smoke from a giant furnace beneath the sea. And it was moving toward them. As it drew nearer, a vague shape began to form. What they saw was an island made of mist. Cloudy cliffs and dim forests drifted in the haze. Before they knew it, the fog was all around them and they found themselves entering a river of shadows.

Bellwind rose and beckoned. The girls joined her at the front of the raft. Tori stared down at the baby in her arms. As they drifted in the stillness, he was changing. His skin took on a gentle pearl-like hue, and in his hair there were flecks of gold. He was even more beautiful than before, but now there was something wild about him, as though a flower from another world had begun to bloom. He sat, pulling at her sweater, gurgling just as any baby would. Yet, in him, there was mystery and strangeness.

Tori looked up. Bellwind was smiling at her. But the ancient face was not the same. It was her eyes. The silver coverings that had made her appear blind had vanished. Tori was staring into the loveliest eyes that she had ever seen, filled with pale blue mist. And as she stared, from deep within the shadow island, a haunting voice began to sing.

H
eartbeats.

Clanging.

Sounds without meaning.

Slivers of light and pain.

Alex’s eyelids flickered open…then shut.

More than anything, he didn’t want to wake up. But the very act of willing himself to remain asleep was so annoying that it only awakened him further. And the more awake he grew, the more he knew that everything was wrong. To start with, his whole body ached, even his hair. And his mouth—it tasted like he’d been sucking garbage all night.

More aggravating awareness.

He was lying on something cold and clammy, and it was
moving
…rolling back and forth…in the most stomach-churning way. And every time it rolled, it made a nasty sound.

Roll-slosh…Roll-squish…Roll-slosh.

He forced himself to crack open one eye. It was a very brief experiment. The lids were stuck with mucus and the light made his head swim. Which didn’t do one thing for his queasy stomach. His aggravation grew to anger.

What was going on here?

He opened his eyes and stared up into a dark blue sky. He hated camping, so he couldn’t think of one good reason why he should be sleeping outdoors. Then he began to realize that the sky wasn’t right. A pale sun was setting and above it there were stars. Sunlight and stars do not go together.

He groaned and turned his head, and the sky vanished. Two feet from his nose bulged an inflated rubber wall. With a great effort he lurched into a sitting position, which made his stomach want to leave his body. He was alone in a huge life raft. He rubbed his eyes. His head was splitting. How in the world had he gotten here?

Then, the terrible memory.

Shrieking wind and noise…

A roaring explosion.

Their plane had broken apart.

Alex forgot the weirdness of the sky and the ache of his body. Amanda and Tori…where were they? Desperately he scanned the horizon. And then he knew the truth. The plane had crashed and he was the only survivor. His sisters, the last people who mattered to him in all the world, were gone. In the agony of his imagination he saw them struggling, screaming, slipping away in the wreckage. And he saw himself in the raft, unconscious, floating off to live while they drowned. Alex shrieked and kept on shrieking until his voice was a rasping croak. Then he sobbed until there were no tears left and all that remained was a black stillness in his heart.

Alone.

Left alone.

First by his parents and now his sisters. If there was a God, He was hideously evil. Far better to die than to go on like this. And so Alex sat, staring at nothing, willing himself into a trance of the dead. In this state he might have remained for many hours but for one unpleasant reality: thirst. His mouth was so dry that his tongue felt like sandpaper. Try as hard as he could, not a drop of saliva would come. He remembered stories about people who had died of thirst in the middle of the ocean—about how your mind could play tricks on you, making you see weird mirages, like rows of ice-cold drinking fountains, squirting water. No ghost drinking fountains yet, but they couldn’t be far off.

An hour passed and his desperation grew. He tried to think of other things—anything to take his mind off the agony. But it always came back to one thing. He wondered how long it would take to die. How much would he have to suffer? And after he was dead, how long would he float before someone found him? He felt for his wallet. Gone. They wouldn’t even know who he was. Just a pile of rotting bones. They’d probably use his skull in some dental school for students to practice drilling. And that would be his reward for brushing every day. But the thought of brushing made him remember sloshing water in his mouth. He swore that never again would he waste a delicious mouthful of tooth-water spit. And the more he thought about tooth-water spit, the more it forced him into a desperate decision.

Why should he die of thirst when he was sitting in the middle of an ocean? People said you weren’t supposed to drink ocean water, but if you were going to die anyway, what did it matter? Besides, salt’s not so bad. Crawling to the edge of the raft, he dangled his fingers in the cool darkness.

How deliciously wet it was.

How good it would feel on his cinder-block tongue.

Suddenly he couldn’t stop himself. Cupping his hands, he bent over the side and drank. And with the first swallow, he cried out in shock.

It wasn’t salty.

The water was as sweet as a mountain spring.

His mind reeled. Oceans were always salty.

But that was as far as he got before thirst took control.

Alex stuck his face in the water and began to drink. And the more he drank, the more wonderful it tasted. He cursed himself for suffering needlessly. Gulping as fast as he could, he sucked it down until his stomach was so full it wouldn’t hold another swallow—until he felt like a bloated whale. Gasping for air, he was about to pull himself back into the raft, when he opened his eyes and looked down into the depths below.

The ocean was even darker than the sky and nothing should have been visible. But something
was
visible. Many fathoms down, a mass of glowing light was moving. At first, it looked like a school of luminous fish, shifting back and forth. Then the glow changed to
fire
.

As Alex stared, the floor of the ocean cracked open. Huge fissures appeared, spewing out red-hot lava. To his amazement, a shape was beginning to form. It looked like a massive head, with a face of unearthly coldness. Eyeholes, ringed with flame, stared up at him. A mouth of jagged teeth the size of mountains hung open as though in a watery scream. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t real. But then the mouth twisted wider, and out of it came a rumbling groan that exploded in a gigantic bubble. With a yell, he lurched back into the raft as stinking gas burst all around him.

It was then that the illness struck. A terrible spasm wrenched his stomach, and he began to heave. He kept on heaving as the raft twisted and plunged through steaming mountains of ocean that crashed around him. He puked until every drop of water that he had drunk had been expelled. Then almost instantly the sickness passed, and the ocean settled back into a glassy calm.

For a long time Alex lay with his cheek pressed against the clammy rubber, wanting to be dead. But the only way to accomplish that would be to drown himself. And the thought of jumping into the ocean—straight down to the “thing” at the bottom—was even more horrible than staying alive. He let out a miserable sob. So the decision was made, he would drift until his skull was ready for the dental school.

For some reason the thought of turning into a soggy skeleton brought back the unpleasant memory of his grandfather’s funeral. What had the minister talked about, “The great ocean of eternity”? Could that be where he was, floating in a raft on an ocean that went on forever? But that would mean that he was already dead. He told himself that it just couldn’t be true. But where was the proof? His stomach gave a slight residual lurch. Was vomiting proof? Was it even possible to vomit after you had kicked off? He doubted it. Unless, of course, an eternal cycle of thirst, drinking, and puking was punishment for an evil life.

An ugly idea.

He decided the proof of his current status must come from outside his body. But where?

The sky? Earlier there had been a sun…and now there were stars. At the funeral all the minister had talked about was water. The “ocean” of eternity. A sun and stars must mean that you were on a real world. And that would mean that you were alive. Suddenly Alex wanted to see the stars, in fact, was desperate to see them. Struggling to roll over, he looked up…and almost stopped breathing.

Instead of the stars, he saw
the Mountain
.

In all the time he had been drifting, he had been so miserable that he had never imagined actually going somewhere. But he had been going somewhere. As he sat up, what he saw made him forget everything else. Looming above him in the starlight was the silhouette of a mountain so gigantic that it took up half the sky, and behind it rose the knife-edge of an eerie rust-red moon.

Something told him that what he was seeing now would make every other mountain in the universe look like an insignificant pile of rocks. Alone it stood in its forbidding vastness, like a Mighty King towering over the world. And in the moonlight, around the summit, hung a faint red mist like a crown of blood.

As Alex stared transfixed, inside him grew feelings that he had never known before. Smallness. Insignificance. Overwhelming awe. And from those feelings came a strange desire; no, a hunger. He had never worshiped anything in his life. But without knowing it, at that moment,
worship
was what he wanted to do. He hungered to fall down before the mountain above, to prostrate himself in the shadow of its vastness and never rise again. Instead, all he could do was tremble, knowing that such a mountain had never existed on the world in which he was born. Sinking back, he let the vision sweep over him. Even his thirst seemed unimportant now. All that mattered was drifting…and seeing…and feeling.

But then, in a single instant, everything was gone—the Mountain, the moon, even the stars, and he was engulfed in total darkness.

R
ed moonlight turned the mist crimson as the raft carrying Amanda and Tori drifted up the river of shadows. Around them was a forest of such ghostly splendor that it seemed to live on the edge of dreaming. The current took them past hazy banks dappled with soft ferns, beneath the smoky hair of dangling willows, and through clusters of blossoms that drifted like little clouds. In the ancient trees they could see the gnarled and gentle faces of old men and women nodding, whispering…then fading as they passed. And always the strange, lovely voice sang on. As the island drew them deeper, more voices joined it, some deep and rumbling, others clear and high. Through it all, Bellwind knelt at the front of the raft with her arms outstretched and her face shining. “The trees. My very trees. Do you hear them? I have missed their voices for so long.” As the girls looked up at her, for the first time they saw how beautiful old age could be, how strong and filled with joy.

Night settled more deeply and the trees grew luminous. As they drifted beneath a rock draped with vines, a rain of mist fell on Amanda, making her skin glow. She looked at Tori who was still holding the baby. A circle of shimmering moss had settled in her hair like a starry crown. For a moment she wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a lovely creature of the forest who Amanda feared might dissolve away.

Bellwind looked down at them and knew what was happening. The island had taken them in its arms. The peace that entered Amanda and Tori that night would remain with them always. During all the terrifying things that were to come, they would never forget the singing trees and the misty river that had whispered love into their hearts.

The girls were almost asleep when the raft floated around a bend and entered a lagoon bathed with moonlight. On the bank stood a strange house, and from the roof rose a tower so high that its top was lost in the clouds. Bellwind gazed at it. “Home…my home. Finally, finally, I am back home.” As they drifted nearer, the girls saw that the house was covered with gables—little boxy projections with windows and miniature roofs that stuck out in the oddest ways. Not a single one was like another. There were tiny balconies and lattices and frosted glass windows with candles burning inside. It reminded Amanda of an old Victorian cottage.

The raft came to rest against a little pier, and Bellwind wiped her eyes. “Forever and goodness, what a journey. But getting—arriving—home is always the best part. Which goes to show that I wouldn’t make a good travel agent, because I’d only sell one-way tickets back to where you came from.”

Stepping onto the pier, she walked up a little path toward the cottage. Then she stopped and looked back. The girls weren’t following. “Well, come-come along. Don’t be shy. Do you want to spend all night out here when there are good beds inside? Now, that would be immeasurably strange for girls from the outlying limits of the universe, the very suburbs of Chicago. And bring the baby with you. I’d ask our friend the dog to join us, but I’m sure he has other obligations.” As though in answer, the dog jumped from the raft and splashed off into the woods.

Amanda and Tori stared at each other…and at the pier. The pier was the problem. It seemed entirely too misty to hold anything up. It was true that Bellwind had stepped on it, but she could do a lot of things that no one else could. Solemnly Tori turned to her sister. “You first, you’re fatter. If it doesn’t break with your weight, it’ll be okay for me and the baby.”

“Oh, really?”

“I didn’t say
fat
. I said
fat-ter
.”

Bellwind cleared her throat. Giving Tori a dirty look, Amanda began crawling up onto the foggy wood. First an arm. Then a leg. Finally her whole body. To her relief, it was solid. “It’s okay. Come on.”

Holding the baby against her shoulder, Tori climbed out, and then the girls followed Bellwind toward the house. Stepping onto the porch, the old woman smiled, walked forward, and promptly vanished. There wasn’t any door; where one should have been there was a solid wall of blue bricks. Amanda ran her fingers over them. Definitely real and hard. “So, what are we supposed to do now?”

“Come in. That is precisely, exactly what you’re supposed to do.” It was Bellwind’s voice, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“Uhhh…we can’t seem to find a door.” Amanda had hardly spoken the words when the old woman’s head appeared above them, sticking straight through the wall like a mounted hunting trophy. “You don’t need doors to get into my house. Doors-barriers-barricades are to keep things out. And there’s nothing to keep out here. Not on this island. It belongs to me. Just walk through any place wherever you choose. Naturally, the porch is recommended. For instance, and thinking about the possibility, if you walked in under that gable over there, you’d knock over my bookshelf. Immeasurably not to be recommended.” Bellwind’s head looked so peculiar that the girls laughed.

Amanda tapped on the wall. “You mean…just pretend like the bricks aren’t here?”

“Who said anything about pretending? Was such a word ever, mostly never, mentioned? Pretending, imagining, and such and such, take thinking. And some things you just have to
do
. That, precisely, and consequently, is the trouble these days and why walking through bricks is a lost and dying art. But such will not be the case with you. Come into my house this very instant.” With that, her head vanished and the girls were left staring at the place where it had hung.

Tori gulped. “You first.”

“No way. You’re
skinnier
. You could slide between the bricks like a little worm.”

They heard Bellwind clear her throat again. With a grimace Tori reached toward the wall. When she touched it, both were amazed to see her arm vanish to the elbow. Then she felt someone take hold of her hand and before she knew it, both she and the baby had been pulled inside. Amanda watched her disappear and then heard her yell, “Hey, you’ve gotta see this.”

Closing her eyes, Amanda walked forward. When she opened them again, she found herself in a most unusual room. The inside of Bellwind’s house was much larger than it appeared outside. The room the girls had entered was long and narrow and at the center stood a spiral staircase with a huge banister that wound upward into the shadows. But what was so wonderful was the furniture. It looked as though it had come from garage sales and swap meets all over the universe. Not that it was dirty or trashy. Everything was very clean and in perfect order. But it was a stacked and jumbled kind of order. And no matter where they looked, they saw odd things.

Against one wall stood a huge coatrack made of plumbing pipes bent and twisted like the limbs of a tree. Hanging from them were rusting pieces of junk automobiles that had been reshaped into medieval armor. There was a breastplate with old radio knobs and a helmet with a turn signal on the visor. Beside the coatrack sat a moth-eaten love seat with blinking Christmas tree lights stitched into the upholstery. Relaxing on it were a Victorian dress flowing with ripples and ruffles, and a stiff Victorian suit with a watch fob hanging from the pocket. They were frozen in place as though the bodies that had worn them had simply disappeared. Near the love seat hung a gigantic wind chime made from ten thousand pieces of gaudy costume jewelry. Next to that huddled a pile of crates that looked like a musical instrument. It had a keyboard with little hammers that tapped on three hundred soft-drink bottles filled with different amounts of orange soda.

But the strangest decorations were above the fireplace. There, side by side, hung seven antique picture frames. All were huge and deeply carved with overlays of gold. And all were
empty
. In each frame there was nothing but dark blue glass. Amanda would have asked about them if she hadn’t been more interested in Bellwind herself. The old woman was ensconced in an overstuffed chair upholstered in living moss. She had taken off her shawl and was wearing a long dress covered with real flowers. On a little table in front of her sat a tray laden with peanut-butter sandwiches and hot cocoa. Two smaller chairs were waiting for her guests.

“Come, sit down entirely and immediately, and gather yourselves to eat. I don’t suppose young women from Earth like hot cocoa.”

The young women from Earth assured her that they did. The food was delicious, and as they ate, Amanda and Tori began to relax and ask questions. “Where’d you get all this cool junk?” Tori licked peanut butter off her fingers.

“Oh, I’m a collector. Garages sales, swap meets, flea markets, there isn’t one in the universe that escapes my attention. But I’ve gotten choosy—picky-picky—as the years have passed. Space is limited. Not much room left for treasures. So sad.”

“Why don’t you throw some of it away? Then you’d have plenty of room.”

Aghast, Bellwind stared at Amanda. “Throw it away? Get rid of it? My sweet but most insensitive young friend, how, in a hundred worlds, could I throw away such infinitely priceless feelings?”

“Feelings?”

“Do you think I bought all this junk because I like the look of it? Feelings. Feelings. Those are what matter. Every single piece in my house is stuffed, stacked, jammed with them. Why, right here in this room, in this very place beyond all others, is the most complete set of feelings ever assembled. A thing isn’t anything until someone has glued a feeling on it. And if the glue is strong enough, they stick like bugs in amber. What kind of feeling do you like, excitement? Just stand next to my gym shoe collection.” (Not far away a hundred old gym shoes hung nailed to the wall.) “And musicy thrills? What can compare with the healthy slurp of thirsty people? Wait until you hear my soda bottles. Oh, do not be mistaken. No, indeed, young ladies. True feelings are hard to find. And there are plenty of fake ones on every world. But you can tell the frauds in a minute. They’re the ones that hang around old TV sets. Fake feelings cranked out to make you think they’re real so they can sell you more fake things. And who would waste a dime on any of those?”

The old woman took them on a tour of her living room. They found that what she had said was true. Each piece had a different feeling attached to it. Their favorite was the old love seat, the way it whispered words like “sweet dumpling cakes” and “I’ll kiss your ruby lips forever.” When Amanda asked about the frames, however, the only answer she got was vague and sad. Something about old friends who had gone away. And beneath the frames was the only place where they weren’t allowed to stand.

But Bellwind was so merry that it didn’t seem to matter.

The evening ended with buttery toast and misty marmalade that tingled on their tongues. Then the girls snuggled up in soft chairs while Bellwind played her “bottle-odeon.” That’s what she called the boxes with the keyboard and the bottles of orange soda. It made a gentle, haunting sound, not at all what they had expected. And while they listened, they couldn’t imagine ever being thirsty again.

Whether it was the music, the overstuffed chairs, or their overstuffed stomachs, soon both girls began to feel very drowsy. Amanda saw Tori nod off, and it wasn’t long before her eyelids grew extremely heavy. The harder she tried to keep them open, the heavier they grew. Bellwind was singing something silly about the plants that covered the island and a costume party they had each year. Amanda wanted to listen, but the words became more and more indistinct until everything melted into a dream.

In the dream, strong arms gently lifted her and carried her up a staircase. And for a moment she was a little girl again with her daddy carrying her off to bed just as he had done so long ago. Amanda didn’t wake up until much later. Not until everything that was about to happen had happened.

And when she awoke, the whole world had changed.