11:1
Movement. Dark. Movement. Strong arms bracketing the body. Corded strength pressed to the plane of a back and the back of the bend in the noodle of legs that flopped and flowed and drooped.
The low murmur of voices waves against a shore at low tide. Lap. Lap. Lap. The legs – not legs? – and arms – not arms? – maybe wet ribbons of seaweed – flopped and flowed on the current of the sound.
Indistinct words not words. Lap. Lap. The rise and fall of a broad, flat chest under his ear and cheek. A rumble burr vibration comforting and deep, the hum of it a lure dragging him deeper into the dark.
Him.
Him?
Him. A thought like a gossamer scarf drifting on a gentle breeze waved in the darkness behind his eyes, the darkness of his mind. Ben. Him. Ben was him.
Ben?
His eyelids were so heavy. Ben’s eyelids were so heavy.
He repeated the word – name? – as the gossamer scarf flowed over his bones, flowed into his face, the name and the person tied to it seeping into him so the disembodied Him and the Ben coalesced into something vaguely whole.
The word, name, concept felt heavy, an anchor or a hook or roots tying the whole of him together. Or trying. Because the whole of him felt a fuck-ton bigger than the gossamer scarf that reason whispered the word “skin” to describe.
As he breathed the gossamer scarf – skin – expanded, pulsed, too small and too thin to contain the pulsating darkness that rippled and probed and sought to escape the constraints of the scarf, the skin.
Another ribbon, ripple, movement not movement squirmed inside the cocoon of skin, settled somewhere vaguely central, coiled and coalesced into a lump, a core, expanding, contracting, expanding, contracting, driving fluid darkness in a rhythm through the silken, skin cocoon.
And with the pulse of it something electric tripped through the cocoon. Something crackling, fizzing, burning-not burning that demanded something. Something. Something. What?
All he – no Ben – knew was that he needed to do something. Immediately. Or his heart – yes, that lump was his heart – was going to explode. Expand, contract, expand and expand and expand until the cocoon burst and he spilled out into the universe in pulsating waves.
He was pretty sure that was bad. Though it was hard to be sure because the pulse said it would be good. So very good. But, no – NO! If the cocoon burst would it ever come back again? Could it? Something inside the wild surging lump in the center of the cocoon – of BEN – screamed – screamed? Could a lump scream? Did a lump have voice? Or did it just have rhythms?
Butterfly wings unfurled near the lump. Expanded. Inflated. Became silken cocoons within the cocoon that pulsed with their own rhythm. Slower than that of the lump. And the lump responded, slowed, matched its rhythm to the gossamer, pulsating balloons of air and butterfly wings.
With each slower beat of the lump the effervescent energy pulsing from the lump settled, the bubbles contracting in on themselves until the flow of the dark fluid became something thick and slow, calm seas replacing the thrashing foam of a storm.
A new sound entered the stream of lapping waves playing over him. Over Ben. The rise and fall of it settled into something. Into a word. “Careful.”
The vibration in the chest under Ben’s cheek shifted. “Got him. Get the door?”
“Here. He still out?”
A sound, light, lyrical, no rumble, came somewhere from the side.
“Careful,” the sound repeated, “I just got his heart beating on its own. It’s like–” The sound – the voice – trailed off and when it started again it was slower and tasted – no sound – like uncertainty and contemplation. And was that right? Could a voice sound like feelings?
Why did it feel like he knew nothing? And yet knew everything?
“I think his body is remembering what it is to be a body?”
“Huh?”
“It’s the best I can do. There is something very new about his body. It’s like… an infant? The cells aren’t ablated. Or maybe very ablated?”
The voice paused. “And his actual physical form feels new? His heart… I’m not sure it understood how to beat. And do not get me started with his brain. I think, maybe, he overloaded what his brain could handle and it just–” the voice trailed off again.
There was a mikro or three of silence then it picked up the thread. “Expanded? For certain the conduits that handle energy feel new? I’ve felt something similar in those whose conduits have changed to express more energy but usually that’s a gradual thing and I can sense the growth. Like rings in a tree. But his conduits? They have no rings for lack of a better description.”
“What do you think happened?”
“To him?” The question rumbled from the chest Ben was held to.
“Extrapolating? It is possible he became Shadow and had to build a new body. It would explain the lack of cell degradation. Considering some of what ARFA is doing it is possible.”
“More like crazy.” A male voice, deep in the chest so it rumbled.
“We made a world with ARFA. Is this crazier?”
“Yes.” This voice sounded vaguely familiar. So vague. So barely familiar. Like he’d heard it in a dream. Or with different ears? Could someone have different ears?
What were ears? Ears. Things you heard sound with. Yeah, ears, like the one he had pressed to a broad chest that rose and fell with rumbling sounds.
“I’m uncertain if he became Shadow as Sunny suggests. There isn’t enough evidence to be certain but my best guess would be he used his shadows to absorb Grace’s light,” a bright – female his brain offered – voice reminiscent of somewhere they made alcohol tasting of burnt caramel and ash said.
“Has that ever happened before?” the semi-familiar female voice asked.
“Shadow against light?”
“A Null manifesting.”
A female voice, rhythmic as the lap of waves against a shore, played against the ear Ben didn’t have. It matched, or perhaps accompanied, the sound of feet meeting a wooden floor. “I haven’t heard of it and I keep my ears open.”
The arms holding Ben shifted as the shoulders of the person carrying Ben rose on a shrug. “The world is changing.”
“The world is changing,” the somewhat familiar female voice murmured, “Is that good?”
“If this is The Three’s doing?” Somehow Ben heard the capitalization in the unfamiliar male voice, “No.”
“But is it?”
The familiar female – Rapunzel, Ben’s brain supplied, her name is Rapunzel. Suddenly a flush of feeling filled the cocoon – no, the body – of Ben and the lump – no, the heart – surged in the – Ben’s – chest. With it came a flow of information and a deep sense of something. Betrayal? No. Not betrayal but it had some of that in the recipe. Mix. Not recipe. Mix. Why was it so hard to think?
Rapunzel’s voice anchored Ben so the flow of thoughts didn’t sweep him away. He clung to it, and her words, like a lifeline, focusing all his attention on the sounds and the meanings. “Their abilities are evolving from interactions with ARFA. It is possible Grace’s manifestation is tied to ARFA. It occurred within the construct.”
“In here,” the whiskey-rich voice murmured, cutting off Rapunzel’s explanation.
Ben’s ride turned and then the sound of their feet changed, muffled, as they met what was probably a carpet based on the difference in vibrations travelling through their body and into Ben’s.
“Put him down here.” Ben’s back hit a flat surface. The arms holding him receded. “Sirena, take Siobhan into the room next door. Jack, there’s a second bed in there so you can put Ivan in there.”
The mention of the names niggled at the back of Ben’s brain. Why did it feel significant that these strangers knew the names of his friends?
Friends? Yes. Siobhan and Ivan were his friends. Words were starting to make more sense, connecting to concepts like friends. Siobhan and Ivan were his friends. And Dan was his friend. And Abe. Abe was a friend.
There were others. The image of a blond woman, around five-six with fire dancing over her fingers and casting irregular shadows on high-cheekbones and lighting green eyes reflecting equal parts humor and sadness formed in his brain along with a name to attach to the image. Kim.
In rapid order an image of a broad-shouldered woman with a blondish undercut – Patti – a small mouse incongruously sitting on one of those shoulders with paws wrapped in the lengthier part of the haircut formed. Followed by a petite brunette with almost impossibly light blue eyes soft with a gentle expression – Prairie – and an impish woman with light brown waves in her hair and a broad grin – Gwen. Then a giant of a man with head lowered to stare into a messenger bag tucked against his side – Dempsey.
Ben’s brain fixed on the bag. If a brain could frown his would have been. What was it about that bag?
“Fantastic,” a male voice spoke to Ben’s right, interrupting his train of thought. “He’s fucking heavy.”
“The rest of you either find beds or couches for the others.”
There was the interplay of voices overlapping, then the sound of feet traversing from carpet to wood then silence. A few meros later the voices returned.
“I wish we could get shin’s read on this,” the voice belonging to the individual who’d complained of Ivan’s weight said.
Shin? Ben considered that. Shin? Like leg bone? That didn’t feel right but he didn’t have more time to reflect as the voices continued, drawing his attention.
“Slip of the tongue?” This from the deep-voiced man who’d carried Ben.
There was an assortment of responses overlapping at this – at least one sigh and a few groans.
After a mikro, Rapunzel picked up the thread. “We decided to leave them outside of this. Unless or until we need to introduce chaos, Shin is better keeping to their business.”
Shin again. Ben’s brain said it was a name, not a body part, though it was a very weird one. The conversation continued, washing over him, and he struggled to follow it rather than going all over in his brain over less relevant things like why a bag or why a weird name.
“ARFA being in the mix already shifts the paradigm,” the whiskey woman said.
“Well,” Rapunzel said, “blame Them for that.”
A soft hand smoothed over Ben’s forehead. He thought to turn at the touch – perhaps to avoid it or perhaps to lean into it – but when he told his head to move it did nothing. With an internal frown he told his chin to move. Nothing. Same for his shoulders. His arms. His hands. Even his little finger refused the command he sent it to twitch.
Again, his heart surged in his chest and he drew a long but not deep breath because deep was beyond a body that wouldn’t move. His lungs – the butterfly wing internal cocoons – responded to the breath, drawing the oxygen in and pumping it through his veins and yet his chest didn’t rise with the motion. It should have risen with the expansion but no, nope, not a damned thing.
Before the panic could fully seize him and do, well fucking nothing because he seemed to be paralyzed, he cast back to the short meros before when the words from the soft, light, and lyrical female voice explained about his body.
Something about her saying his body felt new resonated in his brain and throughout his still body. Maybe his lack of movement was related to that?
He probed at the thought, like poking at a sore tooth, careful, so very careful. He examined it from several angles, that thought, that nascent thought in his equally nascent body, if the voice was to be believed as an authority and something in his consciousness said it should be, then maybe it was just still as it relearned how to move?
Not that the thought was the most reassuring but any port in a storm or any driftwood to cling to or something-something-be-patient, dickhead, even though Ben somehow knew that patience was not his thing. Drawing breath after breath through nostrils that should have flared with the strength of the inhales but, of course, didn’t, Ben settled the panic in his chest and refocused on the words playing over him.
“They have to be desperate to access ARFA.”
Ben was getting really tired of referring to the voices by their sounds. He pushed all of his focus on movement towards his eyelids. If he could just lift them, get a visual, be able to assess whatever situation he’d fallen into. It became the consuming thought in his mind, drowning out the voices.
He. Just. Needed. To. See.
He focused. Felt the parameters of his eye sockets. The skin lying over the bones. The orbs resting behind closed lids. Envisioned eyelashes lying against under eyes. Tear ducts at the corner of eyes near the broad expanse of the bridge of a nose.
From the darkness orbs formed. Connected to a nerve. Latched onto the brain.
Visualized. Manifested. Remapped the familiar landscape of his face from eyebrows to eyelids to under-eyes to bridge of nose, trailing invisible fingers over and over the space until he could practically feel the bulge of eyes beneath eyelids. And then he thrust all his will at a single eye.
Bitch, move!
With a twitch and another twitch and another twitch the lid raised to half-mast. Bright pink and orange and flashes of white played across the back of the lid and then with a snap and a flare of pain the eyelid went fully to open.
And nothing. Nothing but black and orange and flashes of pink and white.
“Oh.” The female voice gasped.
“What?”
“He opened his eye. Ben, can you hear me?”
Was he blind? WAS HE BLIND?
“Ben, can you blink for me?”
WAS HE MOTHERFUCKING BLIND?
Ben’s lid closed and then he forced it open again. To the same results. Black and pink and orange and white and then the colors resolved and all he saw was black. The eyeball twitched in the socket, shifting back and forth and side to side as he fought to see anything. Like anything. Besides black.
“Ben!” There was a snap in the woman’s voice. “You have to calm down! Your heart–”
Ben’s soul surged against the confines of his body. He flung himself against the cage of it, the hot flush of effervescent blood spilling through his veins demanding movement from a body that was incapable of it.
“Ben!”
A hand slammed against his temple, energy bursting from the point of contact and smashing against the flow of energy in his veins. For a mikro there was a rebellion under his skin, his energy fighting the foreign presence. His head swam, his brain swelled against the constraints of his skull, and his heart swelled against the cage of his ribs. The bones in his paralyzed limbs throbbed as they fought their frozen state.
Then the foreign energy flowed over him, like thick honey, driving his own energy back into his bones and veins and brain matter. One mikro he fought, the next he fell beneath the influence of the other Magick and he knew nothing.
Enter The Woods 