The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (103 page)

This was a new thing,
something just discovered by happenstance. It was the beginning of
the explanation of how he’d been able to survived these first few
days in the Melded World - calm the mind and then cast his
consciousness outward, and listen, smell, taste, feel…

At first, it was merely
his heartbeat and his muffled breathing, snowbound as it was. Ever
so slightly, it became something else, something without form. It
was something that grew. As it did so… understanding came with it,
comprehension, a knowing on a level very few could imagine. He
could
see
the
snow, each infinitesimally small, individualized crystalline shape.
He could feel them exist and then melt from the intensity of his
mental gaze.

A moment later, he was
beyond them, delving deeper into ice, frozen dirt, then loamy soil
insulated from the cold by its depth. Next came the huge stones,
great slabs of granite deposited false-eons ago by forces that had
never existed in this place. Finally, he could feel the bedrock,
its massive weight pushing back against the pervasiveness of his
mind as if it possessed a will of its own and didn’t want him to
invade its’ privacy. Yet, in the end, he was stronger. His will was
greater. He could manage things mere rock could not. He could fit
through the seams and the cracks, find the weak points that, up
until now, only ageless water had the capacity to penetrate. He
used these newfound methods to forge on, to trudge through the
thick morass of metamorphic rock, formed long ago in the bowels of
the earth, but copied here. He pushed further and further, with
every ounce of his will until simply… the rock was no longer
there.

It is a space, a chamber
within the rock itself?

He pulled his head from
the snow, sending it in every direction about him. His eyes were
wild, a deranged smile upon his face. He moved a few steps forward
and to his left, his feet somehow able to traverse the treacherous
terrain without falling, let alone slip. He moved awkwardly now,
like a lizard, jerking this way and that, his movements incredibly
fast, his expressions coming and going so fast they lasted for
merely a fraction of a second. Yet, they were too vivid, strange,
like he was a character actor playing some ridiculous
loon.

He, though, was still of
one mind…
find Andrew!

It was then he saw it,
spewing sedately from the ground, warmer than the world about it,
seeping its way through tons and tons of rock. It was there one
moment and gone the next, as the wind seemed to snatch it away with
ferocious intent. Because it was warm, it had melted away most of
the snow and ice that, without its’ presence, would’ve covered the
tiny crevasse between the boulders, sealing the way between the
rocky strata farther below. He stopped in mid-motion as if “paused”
in place, rooted, stuck. His eyes were scrutinizing every wisp and
bellow spewing forth from the earth. He smelled each waft, each
puff, as they formed about a trifecta of jumbled stones. His mind
was rejoicing at the sight, the fragrance, the comprehension of
its’ structure.

Smoke!

He smiled as wide as his
face would allow.
They are below me, man,
in a cave just as I knew they’d to be.
He
is safe!
He is safe from all of you pinché
mamones, you mother putas!
Andrew is safe!
He is with his amigos!

He stood up straight, his
entire form becoming more human than it had looked only second ago.
His quest fulfilled. His mind shifted to other, more pressing
matters. Now that he knew where the children were and knew they
were safe, he had others matters to attend.

Now, it is time for you
fuckers to dance with me!

The thought had just
crossed his mind when it literally “popped” into existence no more
than twenty feet from where he stood. The sight of it shocked him
to stillness.

It was a flower. Only it
was unlike any flower he had ever seen. It stood nearly fifteen
feet tall, beautifully colored – bright, as if painted. Though the
wind was fierce, dominating the land, he could smell the
intoxicating saccharine of its’ nectar. He, though no insect or bee
or like creature, was still attracted to the fragrance. He
shouldn’t have been able to detect its’ scent, but he
could.

He was
changing.

He turned his head to the
side, considering the unlikely plant, gazing over the long thorns
growing along the stalk. It was a strange growth. It was a flower
devoid of leaves or any other typically offshoots. Merely, it
sprouted directly from the snow-covered ground.

He frowned and took a step
toward it.

Before he could move, a
thorn streaked from the stalk of the flower, taking him in the
center of his belly, a long, tenuous cord attached.

He was shocked. The flower
had attacked him!

He glanced down, not
surprised that he felt no pain. His mind was growing faster with
every passing hour. He could do things before he realized
what
he was
doing.

He was curious to see the
middle of him was now indistinct, as though it was only
half there
. His tattered
clothing and abdomen looked opaque, shifting and fluctuating
between solidity and some sort of wispy fog.

It’s like Star Trek,
pendejo
, he chided himself.
Only you can stop being ‘beamed’ at
will.

He took a step back and
the massive thorn fell to the ground.

It lay there for a few
blinks of an eye before it suddenly jumped of its’ own accord and
retracted back into the flower at an astonishing rate. Within
moments, it was embedded back into the stalk like nothing had
happened.

Juan pointed at the huge
plant. “Go to sleep,” he said loudly.

It was a
command.

An instant later, he was
gone, vaporized, not unlike the billowing smoke rising from the
ground. Juan Ibarra was becoming something onto himself - new,
terrifying and
entirely
of the Melded World.

In his wake, the flower’s
petals closed, buttoning up tight until it resembled a new-grown
bud, sealed shut. It had gone to sleep.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

A Melded Thing:

Day Three, Saturday, 3:30
pm…

She had waited as long as
she could. When she looked down at her watch and it read a little
after two in the afternoon, she’d nodded to herself. She had waited
long enough. She’d crossed garage, now fairly clean due to her
efforts over the past twenty-four hours, and had snatched two of
the energy bars from their battered box. She ripped one of them
open and ate it fast as she could. The second one, she had forced
herself to eat at much slower pace, making herself taste the
chocolate and honey and the various nuts and grains comprising the
bar. She told herself if she ate it at a normal pace, she could
actually make herself believe she was having a decent meal and not
something she’d repeatedly eaten since she had arrived in this
wild, desolate place days ago.

She remembered she had
peered into the box when she’d finished her mid-day ration and was
unsettled to see only eight of the energy bars remained. Though she
had stayed within her plan, her daily ration, she was still going
to have nothing to eat by the end of the day on Sunday, and if the
storm didn’t let up…

She didn’t know what she
was going to do.

That was an hour and a
half ago. Already, her stomach was beginning to knot and clench in
her abdomen, wriggling at her, conveying she wasn’t getting enough
nourishment. She bit her lips with worry as she glanced around the
garage for something; anything she could find to assuage her
predicament, knowing it was futile. She had done so a thousand
times in the past few days.

Over the course of the
last twenty-four hours, she had moved nearly all of the stuff she
wasn’t going to use and piled it as high as it would go along the
base of the garage doors. Since they didn’t have a rubber guard at
the bottom, the wind, being so strong, was pushing air and snow
underneath it at an alarming rate. Once she had blocked the gap
between the doors and the concrete of the garage floor with the
debris left behind by her parents, the snow had gathered behind the
bags of junk and other debris. Within minutes, she was effectively
sealed off the outside elements. Once more, her sanctum grew
tolerably warm from the fire she had going. She had kept it up
constantly within the largest of the beat-up bowls she had
scavenged when she’d first sorted through the contents of the
garage. She had to in order to keep the cold at bay.

She had moved her sleeping
area and the large metal pot to a more central location, but kept
her other supplies away, closer to the only exit. She didn’t want
trip over anything every time she got up to pee in the middle of
the night. The idea of falling down onto the hard concrete floor as
she waddled, half-awake seemed rather unpleasant. The fact she had
to use one of the large plastic bins her mother had filled with
scraps of material as her toilet was bad enough. Adding injury to
that insult was best avoided in her book.
At least the material had its uses, right?

She sighed heavily and
shuffled over to sit down among the many pillows and scraps of
cloth she had forged into her bed. She placed the tarp she wore
evenly around her so she could contain as much body heat near her
skin as possible. Her eyes drifted into the blue-green flames
emanating from the fire log she had ignited. Its’ lazy, fluttering
and flowing fire danced before her eyes. She watched for a few
minutes as its’ surface blackening about an inch, a necessary
process, allowing it to give off heat.

Driven by great need, she
asked herself again and again how she was going to find something
to eat, something solid, or warm, to fill her belly and make the
cramps go away. Where?

Crap, what the hell am I
going to do?

Even though she knew the
answer, she asked the question nevertheless, hoping there’d be some
detail she had overlooked. Maybe there was something in the garage
she’d missed. Maybe, if she just scouted around outside, within
eyesight of her temporary dwelling, maybe there was something out
there that was edible. It was worth a shot, right?

The wind shrieked as the
thought crossed her mind. She knew there was nothing out there.
Everything was frozen solid or buried waist high under the snow.
There was
nothing
out there. This was the reality she would have to face. She
would have to wait until the storm abated. She couldn’t take on
step out there until the wind and the cold weakened, became less
severe. There was no way she could survive out there long, minutes
maybe, if that…

I’ll just have to pray the
storm will weaken before I run out of energy bars. I will pray
every hour on the hour for God to make the storm pass. Maybe, He
will give me a chance, even a slim one. Maybe He will help me find
something, anything, to eat. I will pray. I promise to be good. I
will do
everything
right, like I’m supposed to. I will live the right kind of
life. I will be a good person. I will give back. I will do whatever
it takes! Just please, help me. I need food.

Yes, yes, I will do it. I
will pray -.

That was when she heard
it.

A sound that hadn’t come
from her and it hadn’t come from the fire. It was a foreign. That
shocked her into immobility, because it hadn’t come from within the
garage. Rather, it had come from outside, just on the other side of
the door. It had been brief, tentative, a pawing of sorts. Maybe it
had come from the tips of someone’s fingernails as they scratched
at the base of the wooden barrier barring the entrance to the
garage.

Oh my god, is someone
caught in the storm?
was
the thought as she leapt to her feet, her hand
coming to her mouth.
They’d be half frozen
by now, covered in frost bite, almost on the verge of death. Oh,
how horrible!

She took a few steps
toward the door when it came again, two -
no! -
three distinct knocks at the
bottom of the door, harder, a bit more insistent.