7:12
Kim
Kim’s lips moved on the opening line of Poe’s Hey Pretty. Sounds came out. And then were just gone.
It should have bothered her, losing pieces of herself like that. But so much of her was already gone. What were a few words?
“What’s she saying?”
“Singing. She’s singing.”
“What’s she singing?”
“Like I know?”
“Yes. That is exactly right. Like you know. Because that is what you do. It’s what your good for. So do it.”
There was a long pause into which Kim interjected the next line of the song.
“It’s just a song. I think you broke her.”
“Good. Then we can try again.”
The Pulse came. She barely twitched. She definitely didn’t stop pouring herself out into the air. The still silent air, hungry as she was, consuming her song.
*
Siobhan didn’t wait to see if Gwen would do what she was asked. Of course Gwen would. She sidled over to Dan and explained her plan to he and Prairie. They both nodded and then Prairie peeled herself from Dan’s side and let the rush of the wind propel her towards the door. Siobhan started to follow her, her back to the group, so her first indication that something was odd, or odder if you would, was Ben proclaiming loudly, “What the shit fuck is that?”
Siobhan whipped around to see a sheet of water pour from the roof of the tunnel in front of the fire dogs who had stopped their forward motion, creating a space about ten feet wide between them, Dempsey, and Ivan into which the water poured. It didn’t hit the ground, but instead started forming several vaguely humanoid shapes, like the water was pouring into translucent molds.
First it formed flowing skirts, the bottoms of which lapped the earthen floor in a fluid dance. Then waists, torsos, and sinuous arms shaped themselves in the void. Necks next, then faces of inhuman beauty with rounded features, full lips and searching eyes. Last came hair, flowing from the head and down to mingle with the fluid lines of the lower forms.
The water was a murky green, the color of a river rather than the sea, and its surface rippled with faint white striations indicative of a soft current. Water bugs skittered over the surface, forming v-shaped wakes that broke the line of ripples. Obscuring the sandy cores of them were leaves and twigs, deadfalls through which small fish swam. The surface of one of the figures skirts broke as a frog poked its head out of the depths and released a burping gronk.
They were all together the most stunning and heart-stopping creatures Siobhan had ever witnessed. But she wasn’t given long to gawk at them, for the three river beings bent at their willowy waists, placed their sinuous hands to the floor, and released a flood of water with enough force to thrust Dempsey back into Abe as it hit his large shield.
Ivan, with his lighter shield managed to retain his feet, but Dempsey was thrown from his feet and sent tumbling in the wash of water. Abe wriggled against the sweep of water and crooked their arm around Dempsey in a lifeguard hold that kept his head above the water. The water picked the two of them up and flung them to smash into the side wall with force enough to almost rip Dempsey from Abe’s hold. It was the advantageous use of the ink on their arm, slithering down to loop around Dempsey’s torso fully that kept them together.
Rather than losing force as it rolled, the thrust of water picked up power, getting deeper so by the time it hit Gwen and Patti it crashed into their thighs with force enough to knock them from their feet. They went tumbling back towards the door, impelled by the current. Bracing his legs to keep his feet, Dan reached back and curled his left arm around Siobhan, pegging her to his side, and reached out his right arm to snag Patti as she drifted past. At first they both pulled against his arms, challenging his delts, but then they got their feet under them and pressed against the current, maintaining their position with the help of Dan’s arms.
“Guess we found water!” Patti hollered over the sound of the water and the wind. Diving her hand into the water she yanked Sass out of their house. The wet mouse trembled in her palm, pitiful, its fur damped down emphasizing the shake of its small frame.
“Yep!”
“Think its trying to kill us?”
“Don’t know.”
Carefully placing Sass in her cleavage, Patti cocked her head and looked intently in the general direction of the water creatures. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“I can’t hear anything over the water and the wind!” Siobhan yelled from Dan’s side. “How are you hearing anything?”
“Maybe I’m not hearing it with my ears!”
“Okay!” Siobhan frowned. “Does that mean something?”
“I don’t know!” Patti hollered back.
Siobhan tapped on Dan’s forearm. “Let me go! I need to get to the door!”
Dan released Siobhan and the current instantly lifted her from her feet, sending her surging towards the door. Right where she wanted to be.
Abe swam slowly towards Dan and Patti, dragging Dempsey behind them. Dempsey’s shield created drag, slowing their progress. The water swirled around them, jerking the shield so Dempsey had to put his effort into retaining it instead of helping Abe move forward. The look on his face said the shield was more valuable to him than his own breath and damned if he was losing it. So, Abe struggled on, arm looped around Dempsey while his remained looped in the shield.
Once they were within yelling distance of Patti and Dan, which in this wind was about three feet, they slowed and looked down at Dempsey. “The current is weaker here. Can you stand?”
Dempsey lifted his shield high out of the water, the effort to pull it from the current clear on his face, then dug his legs under himself and pushed to a wobbly stand. Abe released their hold on Dempsey as Dempsey rose so they weren’t dangling off his neck and adding to the weight he had to lift.
The water snatched at Abe. They swam hard against the current and it seemed they’d fight their way out of it but the the river beings looked, smiled, and suddenly the gush of water was twice what it had been. Dan saw all this as he was focusing on the creatures while straining his senses to hear the sound Patti referred to. Since he was looking that way he was able to reach out his left arm and snag Abe as they tumbled past in the current.
“Gotcha.”
Abe dug their fingers into Dan’s forearm and looked up at him. “Thanks.”
“Yep.” Dan stared at the river beings and the current they were kicking up. “We should do something about that.”
Abe looked at the beings too. “What?”
“Not sure.”
Patti continued to lean on Dan’s arm, using the support so she could focus on what she was hearing rather than on maintaining her feet’s connection to the ground. The water lapped at her, slapping her torso and rocking her into Dan’s side. The rhythm of the impact settled into her bones. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. Her Magick took that rhythm and wove it around the discordant sound that kept teasing at her, resolving into something that wasn’t quite a song, yet had about it the feeling that it should be. Or could be. Huh.
“Patti? Uh?” Abe asked, almost too quiet to hear over the wind and the rhythm of the water. “Are you doing something?”
Patti whipped her head around to look across Dan to Abe. “Huh?”
Abe shifted their attention from Patti to the sky, or really up since they were in a tunnel and all, their eyes narrowing as they looked at the air creatures. They weaved and danced among and around each other, twining and unwinding and releasing gusts of wind that whipped the surface of the water as they did so. One separated from the others, snapping their ribbon fingers out to snatch something from the air and weave it around itself as it twisted and twirled in a corkscrew pattern. Abe squinted, craning their neck to look hard at that specific air creature.
“Does it have-”
The rest of their question was cut off by Siobhan hollering loud into the wind. “We can’t get the door to open!”
The river beings bent as one, resting their hands on the surface of the water, their graceful motions in contrast to the violence they released. The water bulged, a wave starting where their hands touched and swelling outwards to snatch up Ivan, Dempsey, and Ben who were closest to them and sending them tumbling. The force of the wave only intensified as it moved. By the time it hit Dan, Patti, and Abe it picked them off their feet like they weighed less than a twig.
Dan kicked upwards, keeping his head above the water. Next to him Patti and Abe were doing the same. Hanging off Dan’s arm, Patti clasped a hand over Sass and flung her wet hair out of her eyes. Despite their combined efforts they were swept up on the water and washed back along the tunnel. Gwen appeared to have given up on fighting the current. Instead she was swimming with strong strokes for the glass door and she was making good time. Dan considered releasing his grip on Patti and Abe to let them swim but then he looked at Sass, trembling against Patti’s chest, and thought better of it.
Instead he tightened his arms around Patti and Abe. “Gonna turn. Then kick for the end of the tunnel.”
“Does it-” Patti panted, churning the water with her kicks while Abe and Dan did the same. Even with Abe and Patti pulling him down slightly, Dan was able to keep his shoulders and head above the waterline. Abe had slid their face down into the water so only their eyes and the dripping mop of hair was above it. Patti thrust her chest up, bobbing with each kick of her legs, keeping Sass mostly above the water. Because they were so close their words weren’t immediately snatched by the air, letting Dan hear Patti’s question just fine. “Feel like the tunnel got longer?”
“Yep.”
Abe lifted their head to take a breath, apparently catching the last of Patti’s question. They bobbed their head under then came back up with force enough to turn their head towards Patti. “The tunnel is shifting.”
“Why?”
“I,” head bob in and out of the water, “don’t,” another bob, “know. Wall!”
“See it.” Dan said, slowing his kicking and nudging Abe forward so they did a soft turn to smack up against the wall next to the door with their backs, which could take it, instead of their faces, which probably could not. A bulge of water, more a hump than a wave, smacked into them, lifting them from their feet and throwing them against the wall.
Gwen fetched up against the other side of the door, near Prairie, and braced her hands against the wall to act as jounce bumpers so when the water hit her she bent her elbows softly to take the hit then pushed back when the water receded slightly. In this way she was able to talk a whole lot better than Dan who was busy trying to figure out where his breath had gone after the last toss against the wall.
“What’s wrong?” Gwen raised her voice to be heard over the wind and the slap of the water.
Prairie braced her arms against the door, swaying with the next belch of water, then looked at Gwen. “The door won’t open.”
Dempsey came skid stepping in with the next push of water, using his shield in front of him like a rudder to direct himself to a stop next to Gwen. He turned sideways, giving the water less surface to push against.
“What are we doing?” He yelled to Siobhan.
“Trying to open the door. It’s not working!”
Ivan came sliding up, his back to the group, his feet making uneven purchase on the floor of the tunnel as the water bumped him back by increments. “What’s wrong?”
“Door won’t open!” Siobhan yelled back. “Here!”
She grabbed Patti’s shoulder and dragged herself over to the wall Patti, Dan, and Abe were being smashed into. Patti wriggled her shoulders, bumping Dan’s hip with her own to nudge him over and make room for Siobhan. Dan reached his arm out, bracketing both Patti and Siobhan with it and holding them hard to the wall so they were more rocked than buffeted by the continued belches of water coming from the river beings.
Ivan slid backwards with the water, his back jostling the door just as Ben came slipping and sliding back to join the group, several steps before the earthen creatures that had followed him in their slow inexorable way, narrowing the tunnel so the funneling water rose and washed around Ivan’s waist, which put it somewhere around Prairie’s chest. Ben spun around, letting the thrust of the current carry him until he dug to a stop inches from Prairie.
“Here,” he yelled over the wind and the water, “I’ve got you!”
He dug his hands under Prairie’s armpits, lifting her so she was clearing the water at around waist-level and in less danger of drowning if the funnel got tighter and the water higher. His actions seemed guided by some force outside of himself as that’s exactly what happened.
A big belt of water came washing down the tunnel, hitting Ben’s back like a big trout or salmon or some big fish that hit like a mallet. Because that’s how it felt, like he was a croquet ball, whacked by a mallet, lifted up and smacked into Prairie who in turn smacked into the wall. He managed to retain his hold on her, keeping her above the water which now rose to lap below Ben’s shoulder blades.
Dempsey lifted his shield over his head and looked at Ivan tinkering with the door. “Anything?”
“No.” Ivan’s mouth firmed on a hard line. “Either The House is messing with us or the mechanism broke. Can’t say. But it isn’t responding. Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“You got that thing I gave you?”
“Which thing.”
“The thing that would work here maybe?”
“Oh,” Ben nodded. “That thing. Yeah. Here, grab Prairie.”
Ivan looked into Prairie’s eyes, all soulful like. “You okay with that?”
“Me not drowning or being bashed into the wall?” Prairie wrinkled her nose. “Yes. Yes. I’m fine with that.”
“Cool. Cool.” Ivan gingerly closed his hands around Prairie’s rib cage, lifting her higher than Ben was able to and leaving Ben’s hands free to rummage in his jacket. Its being wet and clingy and heavy because it was wet made his search longer than normal but eventually he grinned and pulled his hand free of the inner pockets.
“Got it.” He tightened his grip on the small brass key he extracted as a wave of water washed against his back and smacked him into the wall face-first. Now the water level was at his armpits. It was steadily rising. Holding his hand high he passed the key to Ivan.
“No keyhole!” he yelled as a finger of air swept out to bat his words away.
Despite the wind’s attempt to silence him it seemed Ivan heard because he yelled, “I know. It’s a long shot! We need to get out of here!”
“Tell me about it!”
Patti watched this exchange with a slight frown. Her gaze followed the wind creatures ribbon finger as it snatched Ben’s words away. She could almost, not quite-
She turned her head to look at Abe and Dan. “Can you see that?”
“See what?”
“For a second I thought I saw the wind lift Ben’s words from his mouth. Is that a thing?”
Dan lowered his brows and looked in that direction. “Could be.”
“Could-”Abe cut off as a wash of water slapped into their open mouth. They started treading water, arms moving lazily at their sides, bobbing with the wash of the water as it inched incrementally higher. Dan turned and frowned.
“Can I?” He held his arm out in Abe’s direction, managing to keep it from connecting with their torso despite the current and the rising water’s pushing against him.
Abe eyed the arm, then nodded. Once Dan had Abe held up against the wall they slowed the movement of their arms so they just bobbed lightly between the wall and the bar of his arm.
“What were you saying?” Dan prompted
“Could be for sure.” Abe turned their attention to the wind creatures writhing and spinning and dancing on the air, like some depictions of Eastern dragons Dan had seen in cartoons. Or maybe more like those dragon kites, twisting and twirling their lengths around each other before unwinding and drifting lazy patterns on the air.
A quick look forward down the tunnel showed the water beings holding their spot with the fire dog-things standing firm behind them, their spark nimbuses causing the tunnel walls to glow and dance and obscuring the length of the tunnel behind them. The earthen creatures had halted their forward movement so the water no longer rose though it did continue to bulge and belch in choppy waves which rose high enough to splash Abe and Patti in the mouth.
Dan looked down the length of his left arm, past Patti, to Siobhan. “You good?”
Siobhan curled a hand around Dan’s wrist, a particularly aggressive water lap sending her rocking on her feet. “Good as I can be.” She followed the direction of Abe’s stare, narrowing her eyes on the drifting air creatures as if she could pick them apart with her mind. She lifted her voice to be heard. “What are you looking at?”
“The air is playing with something.” Abe jerked their chin up, their gaze shifting as they followed the flow of the air creatures.
“What?” Siobhan hollered back.
“I can’t tell. I can see a flow of potential but it isn’t forming anything. Dan, can you see what they are playing with?”
“How?” Dan pitched the question so it only carried to Abe next to him. Abe responded in kind, leaning in to whisper slash yell in Dan’s ear, loud enough to carry to him, not so loud that the others could hear more than that they were talking. “You have to open your Magick. It will see for you, if you let it.”
Dan shifted his attention from the air to Abe. “What?”
Abe tightened the grip of their left hand on Dan’s arm, freeing up their right to wave it in emphasis. “Okay. When you see a tree, you aren’t just seeing one tree. You are but you’re also seeing a hundred trees. A thousand trees. What it means to be a tree. What people think a tree is.”
“Huh?”
“I’m losing you, aren’t I?” Abe cocked their head and screwed their mouth to the side in thought. “I’ve never explained this to someone else before but when Dempsey told me about your word and I started thinking maybe it was a Word I tried to figure out how to explain this kind of Magick. Remember that part in Peter Pan when Tinker Bell is dying and people have to say they believe in fairies?”
“Yeah.”
“Tinkerbell doesn’t have the ability to exist until people say they believe. Its the same for a tree. Or a bunch of words being tossed around in the air. And you have a better chance than most because you have Hope.”
Dan shifted his attention along the length of his arm, stopping at his splayed fingers along Abe’s shoulder. He curled his fingers into Abe’s arm, flexing his hand to call the word into stark relief. “This is Hope? ”
Abe nodded. “I think it is.”
“It’s just a word.”
“Is it?”
“But Hope exists. It isn’t on my hand.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not a copy. Actual Hope?” Dan heard himself, well, repeating himself but his brain was having a time grasping the slippery concept Abe was explaining. It was almost there, real close to in reach, but not quite.
“I think it is.”
Dan flexed his fingers back away from Abe’s shoulder, curving them back so he could look better at Hope writ large on his knuckles. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Believe. It picked you for a reason.”
“So, all that?” Dan tapped his fingers against Abe’s arm where the ink hid beneath the sleeve of their cassock. “Picked you?”
“Yes. Pretty cool, huh?”
Dan turned his attention back to the wind creatures whipping around above them. “How does this work?”
“Hmm,” Abe focused on the air creatures too. “That’s hard to say. What works for me might not for you.”
“What works for you?”
“I look but I don’t look at what my eyes are seeing. I look for what’s in-between. With my Magick.”
“In-between?”
“Have you ever relaxed your eyes and seen stuff you normally don’t see? Like dust? Or pollen?”
“Yeah.”
“Try that?”
Closing his eyes Dan clenched the muscles in his legs and then his arms and then his chest, until he was a solid mass of knotted muscle and intent. The more he tightened his muscles, the more he relaxed his mind, until his head felt like it wasn’t part of his body. Like it was drifting above it, a balloon on a short string held tight in the grip of a five-year old his first time at a fair. Only when he was shaking with the strain did he open his eyes and cast his attention out like a sieve net. The everyday sluiced through the holes of it, filtering away. And what was left was…
“Damn. It’s a sentence.”
“I was hoping you would. I can only see the potential of what it is, but your Magick is making it into words.” Abe’s words had a dreamy tone, as if they were taken by the beauty of what they were seeing. Or maybe that was just Dan projecting, having Abe feel the whimsy that was a childish giggle pushing at the base of his throat. He thought he’d known his Magick but this… Damn.
“Uh, so!” Patti yelled into Dan’s ear. “You know I’ve been hearing something?”
“Yeah.”
“I think that’s it! At least that’s where its coming from.” She must have been enhancing her voice with her Magick because it was real easy to hear her. She didn’t have to yell at all. “Maybe the fluctuations in the sound and how it keeps disappearing and coming back are because the wind is doing something to it?”
“Okay.” Dan nodded, looked to Abe. “Abe?”
Abe craned their neck to look at Patti and yelled, “It makes sense!”
Dan looked at Patti. “What if we do that thing-”
“The Wonder Twins power thing?”
“Yep.”
“How’s it work? Do we need Prairie to help us?”
Dan frowned. Considered. Looked up at the air again, then back to Patti. “Maybe Abe?”
“Because they can see it?” Patti nodded. “Makes sense! How?”
“How what?” Abe hollered. The wind whipped their hair around, thrusting their bangs back so Dan could see their brow creased in confusion. “Wonder Twin powers?”
“A few of us have combined our abilities before. Prairie to guide us to see the world in here. Dan to change it. Me as a bridge.” Patti explained quickly. “We’re thinking maybe since you can see whatever maybe you can be the guide?”
“Huh.” Abe tilted their head to look at the air creatures. “Something new.” Then they swung their gaze back to Patti. “How does it work?”
“No idea. It just does? Prairie saw the thing and that helped Dan see it.”
“Dan should be able to see it himself.”
“I can.”
Patti considered this. “Then that’s two eyes seeing. That’s cool. Can you, I don’t know, touch it? I think that’s what you did before, right?”
“Sec.” Just then one of the wind creatures dove from the air and jetted past them, close enough that Dan could reach out and snatch at the letters spiraling around the ribbons that made up its body. His fingers definitely contacted them, but they flowed through, pulled away again by the capricious wind creature.
“Damn!”
Next to him Abe had their fingers on the air, an equal look of frustration transforming their rounded features “Darn!”
“Nothing?” Patti bit her lip, her gaze following the movement of their hands though she clearly couldn’t see what they did.
“It’s there, but not.” Abe said. “Usually I can just call potential to me, but-” they broke off on a ‘hmm’.
“How about this.” Taking a centering breath Patti reached out with her Magick, focusing on the discordant song she’d been hearing. It was too broken to make it out so she couldn’t put lyrics to it, but she could pick up the shattered rhythms, pouring them out of her and into the air. Her voice lifted, forming the notes with her voice, and as she did so Abe gave an excited gasp.
“It’s-” they stopped to smile all gentle and sweet. “I think it’s working.”
As the air creature, it seemed to be the same one though it was hard to tell because they were homogeneous in their androgyny, did a flyby Dan reached up and snatched something from it.
“Patti. Give me your arm.”
Without stopping her scatting, Patti thrust the arm closest to Dan out. He made a winding movement around her arm and as he did so she saw a trail of letters form.
Whoa, she thought.
“Keep singing.” Abe hollered into the wind.
Patti did. As the letters Dan wrapped around her arm spiralled over her sleeve, darting for her exposed wrist, she kept scatting. As the words hit her wrist, splashed against the skin, then flowed into her, she kept up the recital of sounds. Then words formed in her brain or her Magick or were written on some combination of the two and she could hear them. She sang about building shadows and the things she feared.
Familiar words. A song she knew. She shifted her tune to reflect the tune crawling from her subconscious to wind around the lyrics Dan had yanked from the sky.
Abe snatched something from the sky, a laugh bursting from them.
“Patti?” At their scream, and without losing focus on the music building inside of her, Patti reached to push her wrist in Abe’s direction.
“Dan?” Abe yelled, “It’s still ink for me. Touch it?”
Dan stopped searching the air for the next sentence dancing around the air creatures, and touched the dark mass pulsing in Abe’s hand. It immediately uncoiled into a string of words that started drifting back into the air. Abe made a spooling gesture with their fingers and the words flowed around their hand. Then they brushed their fingers over Patti’s wrist so the words flowed into Patti. The words resonated inside Patti, finding a place in the flow of sound slowly building in her mind.
Dan and Abe continued to liberate pieces of the Song from the air, letting each flow into Patti. Her Magick arranged them into an order that quickly resolved in her mind. She found herself anticipating the addition of each section they grabbed. The clamor of the Song inside of her and the continued flow of her scat, along with the continual rush of the air and the lap of the water, served to drown out the activity by the door. Patti had no attention for anything besides the Magick and the Song forming within her.
Even though her brain figured out what it was before Dan and Abe had captured all the lines of it, Patti still let it form on its own, organic and pure. Only after the last line sank into her skin, snapped into place within the rhythm, did she open her mouth. What poured out was not her voice. She could hear that, even over the thunder of her heart and the rush of the Magick pouring from her. It was Kim’s voice and the sound of it stopped everyone’s voices around her until it was only Patti and Kim’s voice and the Magick laced through it swelling through the tunnel.
Abe, eyes wide, raised their head in a fast snap. “That’s not Patti’s voice,” they whispered, their gaze skewing from Dan to Patti and back to Dan.
“No. Kim’s.”
“Is that normal? Does Patti usually do that?”
“No.” Dan focused on Patti. As she sang the river beings stood up. The water stopped buffeting the group. Then it started receding. It was hard to tell because of the uneven lighting in the tunnel but it looked like the water beings diminished with the flow.
The light from the fire dogs dimmed, fading into the darkness deeper down the tunnel. There was a shushing sound, barely audible above the flow of water and the play of Kim’s voice through Patti, as the earthen creatures stepped back and melted into the walls. The air creatures were the last to go, giving one last playful spiral around the group, ruffling hair and pulling at damp clothing. With a final caress of long ribbon fingers, the creatures drifted back towards where the fire dogs glow still faintly illuminated the tunnel deep back.
The song continued to emit from Patti’s mouth as the water pulled back.
The water rushed for a point halfway between the door and the water beings, then there was a rushing sound combined with a pop like a vacuum seal releasing. The flow of the water increased immensely, pulling at the group so they had to fight to retain their feet and not be pulled along with the current.
The water sloshed for the point, the ripple flow of it matching the cadence of Patti’s Song. When the water level dropped to around the ankle, Ben shoved away from the wall and sloshed forward.
“Careful!” Siobhan called.
Ben turned to flash her a rogue’s grin. “Always.”
Dan shook his head. “Never.”
Ben’s sloshing added to the rhythm of the Song playing off the tunnel walls. Patti had looped back to repeat the reference to architects in the song when Ben stopped and looked down.
“There’s a hole! And-” he paused, then continued, “a staircase. One of those winding metal ones.”
The water had receded enough that it wasn’t more than a puddle, offering no real resistance to Ivan’s feet as he rushed forward. The rest of the group, except for Dan and Patti, sloshed in that direction.
Patti continued to sing. Dan leaned in to confirm her eyes were not focusing, but instead were looking at something only she could see. He shifted his arm, curling it around Patti’s shoulders, and guided her after the others. She went without resistance, the sound of her Song chasing a few steps ahead of them.
“Going in!” With no more warning than that Ben stepped into the hole. His head lowered in increments as he took the stairs, his face rotating into view as he followed the corkscrew of the staircase. Dan just reached the hole in time to see Ivan roll his eyes and start down the stairs after Ben.
Siobhan glanced back, meeting Dan’s eyes. “Guess we go down.”
“Yep.”
Prairie edged to the lip of the hole and looked down. “They didn’t really leave us any other options.”
With that she took the first step, rapidly descending behind Ivan. Then Gwen took the step, followed by Siobhan. Dempsey behind her hesitated at the lip of the hole, prodding the first stair with his boot. His face took on a look of concentration then settled into one of confusion. “Abe?”
Abe moved forward to look at where Dempsey was prodding. “Its a construct.” They shrugged, then waved vaguely around the tunnel. “As real as the rest of this.”
As if this settled it, Dempsey cast a quick glance around the tunnel then started down the stairs. Abe shoved the damp mop of their hair back from their eyes, cast a quick look at the stairs, then the hole and the earth around it, then at the walls of the tunnel, their expression a mix of glee and curiosity, before giving a shrug and following Dempsey.
Dan looked at Patti. She was still absorbed in the Song, her eyes not focusing. Dan carefully maneuvered her in front of him, prodding her down into the hole. Her feet moved down the stairs, likely some primal part of her recognizing the need for the action even as her higher functions were seized within the Magick driving her.
The walls of the hole were maybe two feet from the metal. Not so much to crowd, but definitely not enough to maneuver in. Small particles sparkled and shimmered in the dirt, providing enough luminescence to see the stairs directly beneath their feet but not much else.
“Hey Pretty,” Patti sang, the sound of Kim’s voice winding and weaving through the corkscrew of the black metal staircase, “don’t you want to take a ride with me, through my world?” Dan followed behind Patti, a hand on her shoulder in case she needed guidance down the curve of stairs. Maybe it was because of that contact that he felt the Song shift, a subtle ripple that struck the metal of the stairs and made it vibrate to its tune. That wasn’t.. right. How could a single person’s voice make metal vibrate?
As Patti shifted into the next line of the Song, he felt the stair under his foot shake. One moment the stair was firmly under his foot. The next? Gone.
Dan’s eyes went wide. He dug the fingers of his right hand into Patti’s shoulder and flung out his left to grab the rail of the staircase.
“Dan?” Patti’s cried out, voice rich with confusion.
“Grab the railing!” he snapped, sucking in a hard breath as her weight shifted, no longer yanking at his wrist.
General cries of confusion, outrage, and fear flowed up from deeper down the stairs. Ben’s “Fuck!” echoed weird in the dark space, almost like it was coming directly from the wall.
Dan thrust his arms out, elbows bent, and braced his weight on his forearms to stop himself from falling straight down through the staircase. For a second he hung there, legs dangling over the void, then impetus kicked it and he started sliding forward. He pulled his knees up so that when he collided with Patti he had a slight buffer to absorb the force. She still cried out, her voice choking off as the air jetted from her lungs with the impact. Dan’s eyes widened as she flew forward. Her abdomen slammed into the curved rail. It stopped her from falling or slamming head first into the wall but she wouldn’t be singing any time soon if the rush of her breath leaving her was anything to go by.
It was actually advantageous she ended up draped over the railing because that meant she didn’t have to grab the rail and hang on like Abe was doing just below her. With a flick of their right wrist they released ink, sending it to wrap repeatedly around the metal rail so they dangled on a thread of dark ink, like a cartoon character at the end of a runaway kite. Dan couldn’t see any further than Abe but he guessed everyone was somehow dangling from or draped over the railings since there were no cries of fear from anyone to indicate someone had fallen.
Dan curved his elbows down to brace his weight and keep himself from sliding further.
He leaned to the side to look at Patti’s face. “You okay?”
Patti hung, her head dangling down with her hair flopping forward into the void. “Could be better,” she wheezed.
Below them Abe climbed hand over hand up the line of their ink until they could grasp the railing with their left hand.
“Abe? You?” Dan called.
“Wow!”
Well, that was an answer, he guessed.
Abe curled both of their hands around the railing and pulled themselves up to curve their abdomen over the pole. Shifting slightly they looked up past Dan towards the rim of the hole some solid ten feet above them. “Not sure that’s the way out.”
Shifting his weight a little on his arms, Dan grunted agreement.
“Hey,” Abe called down the hole.
Dempsey called back “Hey!”
“What are we doing?” Abe called back.
“Can’t go up. Go down?”
“How?” Dan pitched his voice so Dempsey could hear.
“We let go.”
Dan had to strain his voice to hear Patti. Her tone was low, breathy, like she was still feeling the effects of her diaphragm ramming the rail. “What?”
The longer part of hair at the top of Patti’s undercut flared when she tossed her head so she could look at Dan. “We let go.”
And with that she planted her hands on the railing, pulled herself up, and dived head first into the small space between the staircase and the glowing, shimmering wall. Instinctively Dan shifted, throwing out a hand to catch her, but she was already gone.
Sounds of distress echoed up the stairs, marking her passage. Giving himself no time to consider the ramifications of it, though it went against his nature, Dan swung his weight over to the railing and threw himself after Patti. Logic said with his superior weight he’d catch up with her quickly, potentially smashing into her, so he braced himself for impact. It never came, instead the tunnel widened, flaring out so that when he did catch up to Patti he didn’t hit her, but instead fell in beside her.
She twisted midair, like she’d done it a hundred times, so her face was pointing up tunnel and she was able to look at Dan. It shouldn’t have worked. Logic and science and, damn it, truth said it shouldn’t have worked. They shouldn’t be falling at the same rate of speed. She shouldn’t have been able to maneuver in the tight space, which, of course, wasn’t that tight any longer.
It was like the tunnel Alice fell into in her Adventures. Unreal. Not tied to the rules of logic or science or truth. But, they were in The House, so what could genuinely be expected?
The wind of their falling yanked her hair up in a wave, obscuring the top half of her face. It was clear by the whipping of it in his ears that there would be no talking as they fell. All Dan could do was relax into the weirdness and trust that they’d land safely.
And that the others would follow.
Enter The Woods 