There Will Be Lies (30 page)

It’s tall, that’s the first thing I notice. The spire, obviously, but also the whole structure. And it’s all black, like if someone took a Disney castle and dipped it in tar. Bats wheel around the towers, and there are slits for arrows, and crenellations. In front of the castle, on the lawn, is some kind of glass structure, like a pagoda, a little crystal palace, and it might be a tomb or it might be a green house, it’s impossible to tell from here.

And from the castle, all the time, so that you can just assume from here on in that it is a loud, loud and everpresent backing music, comes the sound of crying, the Child, weeping and weeping for help, a ghastly sound now that we’re so close, filling the air all around us, as if the castle itself is inconsolable, sobbing. The noise sends daggers of pain into me, hooks.

It is terrifying.

The castle is terrifying.

But not quite so terrifying as what lies before it.

That’s
the moat? I say.

Yes.

I goggle at it. It’s, like, two thousand miles deep and this time I’m not exaggerating. I can’t even see the bottom. And stretching over it is a thin rope bridge, like in fricking
Indiana Jones
or something – just planks roughly held together to form a surface, and two ropes to hold on to, and some of the planks are broken, and a two-thousand-mile drop, and there’s like algae dripping from the rope because the whole ‘moat’ is all misty and creepy and
did I mention the two-thousand-mile drop
?

You have to be kidding, I say.

I don’t kid, says Mark.

Yes you do, you did that whole hilarious joke about the snakes.

Oh, yes. Well, I’m not kidding now. We cross, and you kill the Crone.

Simple as that.

Yes.

Mark, that was
sarcasm
.

I know. It just wasn’t funny.

I sigh. But even when he’s being like this, it’s so nice to
talk
to someone for once. A friend. Someone who isn’t my mom.

To hear his voice.

I can’t, I say. I’m scared. Suddenly all the challenge and mocking is gone from my voice, I can hear myself how it’s trembling – this is new to me, because I never heard anything before coming to the Dreaming. I didn’t know that your own voice could betray you.

You don’t need to be afraid, says Mark.

I don’t? Just look at it. I’m a teenage girl. I’ve never done anything. My mother or the thing that said it was my mother kept me at home all my life.

He smiles. You’re not just anything, he says. Thousands of years ago, people did not think of themselves as individuals. They said that all their ancestors lived in them. I know – I was there.

So?

So you are not just a teenage girl. Remember what Eagle told you. You are a billion years of ancestors, in one person. Every living thing can trace a lineage right back to the start of life, to when the first bacteria fell to earth in stardust.

So? I say.

So? says Coyote. So now, think of all those who were never born,
because a mouse was stepped on by a dinosaur, or an ape who could walk on two legs was eaten by a lion. But not you. Every one,
every single one
of your million ancestors, whether they were amoebas or mice or, finally, apes, survived long enough to have at least one child.

OK … I say, unsure.

So every generation that goes into your genes is a generation of fighters, of survivors. And all those millions of lives are in you, in your blood, and do you think they would have baulked at a gap in the ground, and a bridge? No. They would look at you and they would be ashamed.

Well, that’s a bit much, isn’t –

You are descended from warriors, says Mark. An endless parade of warriors. You have been alive for a billion years, an unbroken line of DNA. You will not be defeated by a ditch.

I feel my heart stirring despite myself. No, I say. I can hear the crying of the Child, louder than ever now, wafting over the chasm, from the castle on the other side, and I think to myself: All those times I had that dream and it always stopped before I could pick up the kid, before I could comfort her, and this time that is
not
happening.

I am going to cross that bridge and I am going to get that child if it kills me, and I am going to hold it tight and tell it that it never needs to cry again.

Tell me again, says Mark. I won’t be defeated by a ditch.

I look at him, but he isn’t smiling. I won’t be defeated by a ditch, I say.

Good, says Mark. In that case, you first.

Oh, no way, no –

In case the wolves are still following, he says.

Oh, right. Yeah.

I step towards the bridge.

Wait, says Mark. I turn to him and he takes a step towards me, then puts his arms around me and hugs me. It’s the first time we’ve touched, properly. I gasp. Not for the obvious reason. Because it’s not a boy holding me, or a man, whatever, it’s something else. It’s Coyote.

I remember him saying, I’m older than the world. And standing here with him, like this, our bodies touching, I can feel it – it’s like holding the stars in my arms; like touching the moon. Time slows down and it’s crystal clear, like ice. I close my eyes, and everything becomes inside, not outside, the universe turns inside out, like a sock. All is just the interior of my mind, the body that is also a god, contained within the span of my arms.

I pull away and stare at him. You’re not a person, I say, and for the first time, I really understand that it’s true.

No, he says.

Thank you, I say. Thank you for that.

I mean it: I feel like I have breathed in stardust from just after the Big Bang.

How do I know all this? I say. I mean, I’ve barely read any Native American myths. But this is happening inside my head, right? So how do I know?

Places have a long memory, says Coyote.

But I’m not from this place, I’m from Alaska.

You are not from here. But you are here. In Arizona. And Arizona remembers.

Why Arizona?

He sighs, but not angrily. All places remember, he says. Arizona just happens to be where you are.

This is not clearing things up, I say.

He shakes his head. I am Coyote. It is not for me to clear things up. It is for me to break things, and make them into something new.

Right, I say.

You know, he says. Since you mentioned books. I’ve told you before, when I was Mark, but you should really go to college. Plenty of places offer interpreters. For people like you. To take notes for you, in class.

It’s surreal, him saying this, when we’re in the Dreaming by a, well, by a
massive ravine
.

Uh … OK, I say.

You need to think about the future, he says. But right now, you must go. Go. There is no more time.

And I do, because there’s something in his voice that makes me. I look back at him, then I walk towards the bridge and then on to it, and it sways and oh this was not a good idea. I cling on to the ropes on either side, my hands sweaty. I inch out over the vast drop, moving super, super slowly, taking tiny little baby steps.

Slow down, says Mark. You might slip.

I turn and give him a withering look.

See? he says.
That
was sarcasm.

I ignore him and continue to make my way across, trying to ignore the pulsing black depth of the chasm below me. After a while, I find that I’m stepping a little easier, and the other side is getting closer and closer. Soon I’m halfway across.

Oh no, says Mark from behind me.

I turn, and I see what he has seen.

Everything happens very fast.

Wolves pour on to the rope bridge from behind us, then just
flow
along it towards Mark, a grey flood of teeth and claws. Mark turns to me. Go, he says. This time, I will stand.

You can’t –

This is not a discussion. Run.

He turns back to the wolves, and despite myself, as the first of them barrels into him, I find myself moving backwards and away from him, towards the castle. Jaws snap – and close on thin air, as Mark twists and ducks, then powers up, sending three wolves tumbling over the side. They disappear before I see them hit anything.

But more of them fall on him, then, and there are hundreds more behind …

Go
, shouts Mark. Just remember, you’re an adult. You’re not –

But his voice is cut off as a wolf barrels into him, and he focuses on grappling with it.

I start to turn, as I do so I see Mark fall –

No –

He isn’t falling, he’s shrinking into himself, and dark red fur bursts from him, and he is Coyote, leaping at the wolf before him,
teeth closing on its throat; blood sprays wildly, like a water hose turned on. More wolves press in on him then, worry at him, there is snapping at ankles and noses and more blood flies and Coyote takes the eyes from another wolf with a swipe of his claws and batters another with his head; it scrabbles at the planks and then plummets, and –

Now
, says the voice in my head, as Coyote finally disappears, buried beneath a moving blanket of grey.

Tears in my eyes, I turn and run, the rope bridge swaying beneath me, no longer seeing the horrific abyss below me.

Until …

I am maybe twenty feet from the other side, the castle walls rising from a dead black lawn. The crying of the Child is very loud now. Very loud.

I slow down. I can see the glass structure on the grass in front of the castle more clearly now. It is maybe thirty yards from me. I can see that it is a little palace, I was right, complete with towers and flags fluttering in the breeze, only they are not flags because they are made of glass too, the fluttering is an effect of the shifting clouds over the moon, the whole thing is made of glass, shimmering in the starlight.

Glass walls, sloping glass roof, glass buttresses.

And inside …

Inside is a child. Sitting on the grass, facing away from me, is a tiny child, no more than two years old. It is shaking, racked with sobs, and I realise that this is the source of the crying, this is the Child, sitting in a prison of glass.

Hey, I call. Hey, I’m here.

The Child stops crying for a second, then starts again.

Hey! Kid! Hey!

Slowly, still crying, the Child shuffles around to look at me.

The breath turns to stone in my chest.

It is the child from my dream, the girl, the exact one, from the dream I have had over and over since I was a child myself, the one that sits in the hospital waiting room, crying for someone, anyone,
me
, to come and pick it up. I stare at it, at her, horrified – but at the same time, I kind of knew, I always knew, that it was going to be.

I knew the first time Mark mentioned a child.

I’m coming I’m coming I’m coming, I say, and I launch myself forward, the Child had stopped crying for a second when it saw me but now her pudgy little arms are reaching out towards me, stiff with need, and she is crying again, screaming really, the sound like an icicle in my heart.

Then I stop dead, the crying echoing in the canyon all around me, pressing in on my skull, as if it could burst my brains.

I can’t go any further.

I’ve come so far and the child is
right there
, the child from my dreams, the Child Mark wants me to save, that Coyote wants me to save, and I can’t get there.

I can’t get there.

In front of me is a six-foot gap in the rope bridge, further than I could ever jump, where there are no planks.

I look at the hole, and below it the yawning vacancy of the chasm.

I could try to hold on to the rope and haul myself along it, hand by hand, but I know I don’t have the arm strength.

I’m going to have to jump.

I stand there, hesitating, and then I sense the air shift behind me, and I turn and see the wolves coming, the pack streaming towards me.

Mark, I think.

In front of me, the Child’s arms are still outstretched, as if straining to reach me, across the thirty yards that separate us, across the glass walls of its prison. Her cries echo against the rock walls.

There’s no time to think – I give myself as much of a run-up as I dare, then I sprint to the edge and jump –

for a moment I am in free fall; weightless –

then my forearms land on the planks on the other side and my fingers find a hold and I swing there, panting.

I glance back and see the wolves stop – not quick enough; the momentum of the pack pushes two of them off the side and down.

Ha, I think. You just try to –

The ropes spanning the gap, the ropes green with algae, snap.

My part of the bridge is still attached to the other side, but now I’m the weight of a pendulum; now I’m swinging
fast
towards the rock wall of the moat. There’s ten feet of bridge between me and the side, and I know the formulas to give you the speed and the force, (Mom) taught me them, but there isn’t exactly time to work them out, and when I hit the rock I hit it hard, and it smacks the breath out of me.

I dangle there, for a second, then the plank I’m holding snaps, and I fall.

My hands windmill, looking for purchase; I am maybe screaming but I can’t hear it past the rush of air. Little trees and weeds and patches of ivy whip at me as I plunge down and then –

Crunch. I hit a hard branch, a thick one, and I manage to get my arms around it in like a headlock kind of move, and cling to it. I see that it’s a tree, jutting out into the air. It’s strong; it will hold me.

But that might not help.

I look up. No – I didn’t fall that far. I can see the top, maybe fifteen feet up. And there are handholds too – little crevices in the rock, and other branches and roots; things I could cling to.

It’s just …

If I fall, and I don’t snag something again, I will die.

I hang there, cursing silently. Then I try to reach up for the next handhold I can see; a root snaking out from an earthy crack in the rock, forming a loop. But my hand trembles – I can’t do it. I’m too scared, and too tired.

I’m stuck.

There’s a bottomless drop below me, and a hard climb above me. And I’m no climber, and if I make a mistake, it’s the end.