The Altonevers (52 page)

He sees that it's some of its shades
of orange bare resemblance to the color of her hair. Hiding his
fluster in choosing the one that most closely resembles her, he
gently hands the slender emerald stem of his slip up into her
accepting hands. He's stands enamored in her admiring the
unblemished light like rose of his choice for her.

“
Oh yes. Yes a good choice
is that one, though it doesn’t live very long once it's off its
roots,” the florist says.
The sun
flowering rose lasts only a few seconds more, before it quickly
dulls. The bud dims and flickers then fizzles out like a faulty
light bulb, dropping its petals and wilting to ash falling past her
open palms.

“
Sorry,” he says
apologetically, “for picking one that you could have for such short
time.”

“
It's okay, then it
wouldn't be appreciated for what it is. it would be something
different. Mean something different,” she says.

“
Why? you don't like it?”
he asks.

“
No I do, but it's that you
chose to do it for me that matters more. And your choice was...one
you thought I would like because you like it,” she says smiling
more brightly than before.

“
Well done my boy, but why
did you do it the hard way?” The blurry visioned florist asks with
tilted head.

“
Well then how do you do
it?” he says, and the lilac robed woman shifts her hat about her
head, then answers his question by conducting as though and
orchestra, the stems of the flora to bend and bow to the wobbly
waving of her cane.

“
Why didn't you do that
before?” he asks sourly.

“
Why should've I or should
I have?” the florist replies.

“
What a charming old
woman,” Anna laughs.

“
A deliberate Sphinx I
think,” he says, fruitlessly brushing the pollen powder from his
sleeve.

“
Besides, we really should
be on our way,” she says, to politely ease their way out without
hurting the florist’s feelings.

“
Ach, oh ah, noo, it's no
problem. I think the way you’re looking for is back this way, I'm
sure of it,” she says waving her cane for them to
follow.

“
Got any bread crumbs?”
Cider jokes to Anna while pulling her sleeve.

“
Shh, she's
nice.”

“
Oh ah. It's back this way,
through the back door of the backroom. I think. Either way, this
way follow me,” the florist says turning swiftly on her heels then
sauntering on her lacquered stick toward the growing flow of
bee's.

“
Watch it with those, that
one is carnivorous,” the florist says.

“
Which one?” she
asks.

“
I don't know, I don't see
very well,” the florist says as a few fleshy frog like tongues snap
taut just shy of Anna's flushed peach cheeks. Their feet kick up
puffs of glittering pollen, to lazily float and veil the solid
cedar floor thunking under their six sauntering steps and her
stick. They come to the half opened door of a lightless room, with
bee's streaming in an out and all around them. The florist fiddles
with its polished brass doorknob before tapping it with her walking
stick.

The door creaks open to show a thirty
foot wide, forty eight foot high lustrously surfaced core of an
asymmetrically sundered beehive. Exploded and frozen in place mid
burst with tens of smaller thriving hive fragments suspended in
orbit around it. All formed from a coral colored wax with the
appearance of an aerogel laboriously crafted from the bee's warm
viscous gold glittering wax by generations of buzzing drones. Each
honeycomb is secreting sticky sweet liquid crystalline magenta
dripping down to the tiled ground the hive is hovering over. The
biggest hole in the hive is small enough to be plugged with Anna's
open palm, but she's petrified by the humming buzz of bees buzzing
all around her. Frightened by hundreds of erratically passing
stingers, though entranced by the thick pollen streams they leave
floating in the air behind them, that are encircling the hovering
hunks of hive. The floor is missing every other tile with empty
black rectangular holes in their place instead.

“
Look at that color,” Cider
says.

“
Yeah like the sky when we
were sitting in air waiting to fall,” Anna says.

“
Yes yes. Very nice. Would
you like some more honey, fresh, very fresh,” the florist asks,
then shuffles quickly up to the hive and without a care in the
world she starts repeatedly whacking a fragment almost twice her
own height with her walking stick. Freezing a look of horror over
Anna's face that makes Cider hold his stomach and
chuckle.

“
Oh no, no no, it's okay.
I'm full, but thank you,” she says squeamishly.

“
What?” the florist shouts,
continuing her thwacking assault.

“
We don’t want anymore,
thank you,” Anna says a bit more forcefully.

“
What? it's very good, yes
very good, with Acumen, or cumin, or something,” the florist says,
vigorously continuing her hive shaking.

“
I said no thank you, but
thank you,” Anna says.

“
What? you'll have to speak
a little louder, my ears are filled with wax dear,” the florist
says fluently fencing the floating fragment of hive, and riling up
the bee's to angrily amass in the air around the three.

“
We don't want any more
honey,” Cider says.

“
What? I can't hear you
over the all the buzzing,” the florist says.

“
You’re upsetting the
bee's,” Anna says.

“
Bee's? this batch, no,
this one here, is of vermillion jackets. Very deadly, the defenders
of the rest. Yes they are,” the florist shouts while beating the
hive chunk like a child beats a pinata.

“
Ahh,” Anna says utterly
afraid. Cider turns to her whimper then breaks into laughter in
seeing the backside of her fleeing the flower shop as fast as she
can, with a few yellow jackets chasing after her carrot colored
hair.

“
Ahh! Cider!” She screams
looking back to see the elderly, very nimble for her untold age,
florist valiantly parrying and thrusting her stick through a blue
hornet, easily swatting a yellow, then impaling vermilion out of
the air.

“
Don't forget the
blossoming fruits of the beloved,” the elderly woman shouts as
goodbye to the two in their flight as she fights on.

“
Think she'll be okay?” she
asks.

“
Seemed like she was
winning when I left,” he says.

“
That was a second
ago.”

“
What? you wanna get stung
by a bee the size of your open hand?” he asks.

“
No!” she says. A loud
yell, a battle cry comes from down the hall they've just left,
stopping the two in their tracks. Then a crunch, of the florist
biting off a bee's head, and the swift swiping of her walking stick
whipping through the air returns.

“
I think she's okay, I hear
her stick cutting the air,” Anna says.

“
Good let's go,” he says
swinging the backdoor open.

Into the rain

The door swings opens to a long,
lacquered marble walled hall with a brightly lit square standing a
ways away as the other end. She slams the it closed quickly and
strolls away from the humming of bee's behind them, toward the
strumming of tens of drums rolling under an array of quivering
strings. In passing through the next doorway they enter a big round
ballroom without walls, whose floor is a crystal clear days shades
of rich cyans and lighter blues cut from a single slab of
metamorphic stone. Vertically striped polished onyx pillars are
spaced in a circle around what is a ballroom floor, arching inward
though suspending nothing but the open sky of a hundred stories up.
The ambient of muted citrus colored cirrostratus particles is
ceding to a blank white, while aligning into layers of
electromagnetically drawn webs converging into a massive
mesocyclone to the east. The remaining ambient orange is being
slowly replaced by shades of deepening lapis and
ultramarines.

To the right of the room’s
round floor is a splotch of azurite spilling like a waterfall would
over the edge, and down the face of the gothic gold trimmed
chocolate brown skyscraper. To the left of the room is a couple of
people fashioned from the finest woods. They have strings tightly
strung and spread over the outside of their lavishly lacquered
hollow bodies. They're moving in operatic musings with one another,
filling the ballroom with smoothly flowing orchestral sounds
emanating from the strums and strokes of strings strung from head
to toe over every bend and joint of their bodies. They go about
playfully acting out scenes of a play to the ears and eyes of all
who can hear the undertones, of their to bone grabbing baritone
ballet.
Before them is a group of crystal
clear glass looking people wearing a treasure chest of light pink
and lemon yellow jewels. Appearing to be silhouettes of the sky
swirling blues of the floor, risen and distorted into pairs of
ballroom dancers stepping in sequences and circles. Dancing along
with the other couples in a flawless display of fluidly moving
choreography, as their feet sweep the ground into small waves and
wakes, spiraling around their partners as they spin with their arms
on each other’s shoulders and waist.

“
Let’s pretend,” he
says.

“
Pretend what?” she
asks.

“
This will last forever,”
he says, spreading a smile to her face.

“
What else is there to do?”
she replies though both knowing that it likely won't. He takes her
hand in his and they step into the edge of the circle, she takes a
second, only a second, to watch their movements while they wait for
a chance to jump between the dancers swirling around the floor. She
pulls him into a hop over a wake to wobble, trying not to fall into
the sweeping swirls of fluidly moving sky blue people surrounding
them. Smiling, at seeing her slight overbite while biting her blush
pink bottom lip with her honey eyes are looking up to him, he pulls
her closer, then further away.

“
Come on you can do better
than that,” he says.

“
You’re doing just as bad,”
she laughs.

“
Maybe,” he says, and they
banter and tease instead of caring to keep their balance, mostly
just scuffing the floor while stumbling over each other’s feet.
Taking her hand in his, and a sliding the other around her hips, as
she pressing her chest to his.

“
Stand on my feet,” he
says.

“
So we'll definitely
fall?”

“
Or you'll scream you
mean?” he says. They drift in slow circles for several minutes
unnoticed by anyone around them, and not noticing anything past
each other’s faces. The particle sky deepens to midnight blues,
masking the azures of the floor flowing over the edge the two have
been drifting toward for minutes. Anna puts her arm around his
neck, pulling his head closer to hers. He's lost in the feeling of
having someone so precious to him, and holding her close enough to
share the heat of his body, to share the same air and feel the
others heart beating. Swaying back and forth embracing each other
in the center of a carousel of fluid crystalline blue sky
silhouettes dancing their lives away.

Oblivious to them spilling over the
edge now nearly the same color as the sky, the two are afloat
surrounded by glass people who are spreading and skating through
the air, leaving light bending wakes distorting windows and facades
of a hundred stories up. They're gliding, giddily dancing over the
empty space between the skyscrapers, of seven streets meeting at
the gravitational fringes of a small horizon park. A small square
patch of fall colored field formed by the continuously melting
leaves falling from the tops of trees contorted into waves cresting
toward each other around its flat as a field center.

“
Don't look down,” he
says.

“
Why not? we're on solid
grou..,” she trails off looks down, then jumps up squeezing his
neck to a gargle.

“
Oh, aah!” she screams. Two
hundred feet above the rolling white spheres, space time fog and
the visible currents of ambient particles sweeping around the
crowds of phase shifting peoples superstructures. The two are now
forty feet from the chocolate brick wall and gold trimmed windows
of the hotel they've floated from. She looks down for longer than a
glance, then relaxes her grip, she stands on her own two feet in
the air. Smiling, laughing and hopping up and down, then pulling
him back into their sloppy frolicking attempt at ballroom dancing.
Spinning and jumping like she's walking on air, their bodies glow
when face to face with the fluorescent mineral facades. Sailing
high above the ground, staying gleefully suspended for almost an
hour before they lazily descend while over an undulating street
filled with Central’s ceaseless city traffic.

“
Oh, go to the right?” he
says, and they spin frantically in place out of sync scaring the
hell out of both for several seconds.