they didn't seem to be in any great hurry. they took their time, chattering and laughing as they went, sufficiently entertained by one another's company that they didn't even glance down the slope towards the women.
At last the mist closed around them and they were gone. "Horrible," Phoebe said softly.
"I've seen worse," Testa remarked, and started up the slope again, with Phoebe still clinging to her arm.
There was a subtle ebb and flow in the mist around them now, which became more pronounced the higher they climbed. "Oh my Lord," Phoebe murmured, pointing to the ground. The same motion was visible underfoot: the grass, the dirt, even the rocks strewn around, being pulled by some force further up the mountain, and then released, only to be plucked up again seconds later. Some of the smaller pebbles were actually rolling uphill, which was odd enough, but odder still was the way the solid rock of the mountain responded to this summons. Here, close to the threshold, it hadn't cracked, it had softened, and was subject to the same motion as mist, dirt, and grass.
"I think we're getting warmer," Testa said, seeing the phenomenon. This was the same extraordinary sight she'd witnessed at Buddy Vance's house: apparently solid objects losing faith in their solidity, and bending out of true. The Vance house had been a maelstrom. This was not. It was a gentle, rhythmic motion (Tidal, Raul quietly observed), the rocks being coaxed rather than bullied into surrendering their solidity. Testa was still too traumatized by Lucien's death to be in any state to enjoy the spectacle, but she could not help but feet a twinge of anticipation.
they were close to the door-, she didn't doubt it. A few yards more, and she'd have sight of Quiddity. Even if the doped singer was right, and there were no wonders to be found on the shore, it would still be an event of consequence, to see the ocean where being was born.
Laughter erupted somewhere nearby. This time the women didn't stop climbing, but instead picked up their pace. The motion of mist and ground was more urgent with every yard they covered. It was like an undertow, tugging at their feet and ankles, and though it didn't have sufficient strength to overturn them yet, it would only be a matter of time, Testa guessed, until it did.
Ifeel a little strange, Raul said.
"Like how?"
Like-I don't know-like I'm not quite secure in here, he replied. Before she had a chance to quiz him further on this, a particularly powerful wave passed through ground and air, parting the mist in front of them. Testa let out a gasp of astonishment. It was not the mountaintop unveiled before them, but another landscape entirely. A sky of roiling colors, and a shore upon which the waters of the dream-sea threw themselves, dark and foamy.
Phoebe let go of Tesia's arm. "I don't believe it," she said. "I see it, but I don't@'
Tesla "Amazing, hub?"
Hold on to me.
"What are you talking about?"
I'm losing my grip.
"So what else is new?"
Tesla! I mean it! He sounded panicky. Don't get any closer.
"I've got to," she said. Phoebe was already three strides ahead of her, her eyes fixed on the shore, "I'll be careful." She called out to Phoebe. "Slow down!" But her request was ignored. Phoebe hurried on as though mesmerized by the spectacle ahead, until without warning the motion in the ground escalated, and she was thrown off her feet. She went down with a cry loud enough to rouse anyone within a twenty-yard radius and had difficulty getting back onto her feet.
Testa stumbled to her aid, the earth and air increasingly p agitated, as if stirred up by their very presence. She grabbed hold of Phoebe's arm and helped her to her feet, which was no minor task.
"I'm all right," Phoebe gasped, "really I am." She looked round at Tesia. "You can go back now," she said.
Listen to her, Raul said, his voice quivering.
"You've done everything you can," Phoebe went on. "I can make it from here." She threw her arms around Tesla. "Thank you," she said. "You're an amazing woman, you know that?"
"Take care of yourself," Tesla said.
"I will," Phoebe replied, breaking their embrace now, and turning her gaze and her body towards the shore,
"I meant what I said," Tesla called after Phoebe.
"What's that?"
"I wasn't@'
She didn't have time to finish, distracted as she was by a figure who appeared on the shore ahead of Phoebe. He was, of all the creatures she'd seen at work and play here, the most authoritative; a fleshy, imperious individual, with sly, hooded eyes and a dozen or so small gingerish beards sprouting from his cheeks and chins, each teased and twirled so they resembled horns. In one hand he carried a small staff. The other he was using to lift up his voluminous robes, allowing three children-identical to one another and to the laughing child Phoebe and Tesla had encountered on the slope below-room to play tag between his bare and spindly legs. He was not so diverted by their frolics, however, that he didn't see the women in his path, and by the look on his face it was plain he knew they were not part of his retinue.
Instantly, he raised a shout, "Gamaliel! to me! Mutep! to me! Bartho! Swanky! to me! to me!"
Phoebe turned and looked back at Tesla, her face a picture of despair. The shore lay ten strides from her, at most, and now the way was blocked.
"Duck!" Tesia yelled, and pointed Lourdes at the man in the robes. He raised his staff the same instant. There was energy skittering about it, she saw, gathering coherence It's a weapon! Raul yelled. She didn't wait for proof. She simply fired. The bullet struck the man in the middle of his belly, lower than she'd aimed. He dropped his robes and his staff, and let out a cry of such shrillness she'd thought maybe she'd mis-sexed him. The children's giggles turned to shrieks, and they raced around him as he tottered forward, the cry still coming between his tiny teeth.
One of the children pushed past Phoebe, ignoring or indifferent to the gun, yelling, "Somebody help Blessedm'n Zury!"
"Go!" Tesla yelled to Phoebe, but the order got lost in the din of Zury's agony and the children's shrieks. 'the niist didn ;t mute the cacophony, it served as a roiling echo-chamber, the tu mult gathering so much power it made the soft ground shudder. w By the panicked look on Phoebe's face it was plain she as too confused to take advantage of the chance while she had it. Yelling to her again, Tesia started through the shallows to press her on her way.
Nofarther! Raul was yelling in her head. I can't hold on.
He wasn't alone in this. The assault of noise and motion threw Tesla's senses into confusion. Her sight seemed to fly ahead of her, drummed from her skull, and for several sickening heartbeats she was looking back at herself from the very threshold between Cosm and shore. She might have been claimed completely, but that Phoebe reached out for her, and the contact brought her sight to heel.
"Get going!" she yelled to Phoebe, glancing towards Zury. He was in no condition to protest Phoebe's departure. He was bent double, puking up blood.
"Come with me!" Phoebe hollered.
"I can't."
' I'You can't go back that way!" Phoebe said. "They'll kill you.
"Not if I'm-2' Tesla-? Raul was yelling.
"Quick. Go on, for God's sake!"
Tessllaa-?
"All right!" she said to him, and pushed Phoebe from her, down towards the shore.
Phoebe went, wading through a swamp of softened rock.
Tesssilaaa "We're going!" Tesla said, and turning from Phoebe started back towards solid ground.
As she did so there was a moment of utter disorientation, as though her sanity suddenly fled her. She halted in midstride-her purpose, her will, her memory-gone from her in a blaze of white pain. There was a blank time when she felt nothing: no pain, no fear, no desire for self-preservation. She simply stood teetering in the midst of the tumult, Lourdes slipping out of her hands, and lost in the tidal ground. Then, as quickly as her wits left her, they returned. Her head ached as it had never ached in her life, and blood ran from her nose, but she had sufficient strength to continue her stumbling journey to safe ground.
There was bad news ahead, however, and it came in four appalling shapes: Gamaliel, Mutep, Bartho, and Swanky.
She had no strength left in her limbs to outrun them. The best she could hope now was that they not execute her on the spot for wounding Zury. As the hammerer closed upon her, she glanced back over her shoulder, looking for Phoebe, and was pleased to see that she had crossed the threshold, and was gone.
"That's something," she thought to Raul. He made no reply. "I'm sorry," she said. "I did my best."
The hammerer was within a stride of her, reaching to seize her arm.
"Don't touch her," somebody said.
She raised her spinning head. The somebody was striding out of the mist, carrying a shotgun. It was pointed past Tesla, towards the wounded Blessedm'n.
"Walk away, Tesla," the shotgun wielder said.
She narrowed her eyes, to better make out the face of her savior.
"D'Amour?"
He gave her a wearily wolfish grin. "None other," he said. "Now, do you want to just walk this way?"
The hammerer still stood within striking distance of Tesla, plainly eager to do her damage. "Move him," D'Amour told Zury. "Or else."
"Bartho," the Blessedm'n said. "Let her pass."
Whining like a frustrated dog, the hammerer stepped out of Tesla's path, and she stumbled down the slope to where D'Amour stood.
"Gamaliel?" Harry said. The black stick-man turned his seared head in D'Amour's direction. "You explain to the Brothers Grimm here that I've got sights on this gun that can see through fog. You understand what I'm telling you?" Gamaliel nodded. "And if any of you move in the next ten minutes I'm going to blow the old fuck's head off. You don't think I can?" He took a bead on Zury. Gamaliel whimpered. "Yeah, you get it," he said. "I can kill him from a long way down the hill with this. A long, long way. Okay?"
It wasn't Gamaliel who spoke, but his obese brother.
"O-key," he said, raising his fat-fingered hands. "No shoot, o-key? We not move. 0-key? You not shoot. 0-key?"
"O-key do-key," D'Amour said. He glanced round at Tesla. "You fit to run?" he whispered.
"I'll do my best."
"Go on then," D'Amour replied, slowly backing away.
Tesla started off down the slope, slowly enough to keep D'Amour in view while he retreated from Zury and the brothers. He kept retreating until he could no longer be seen, then he turned, and raced down to join Tesla.
"We got to make this quick," he said.
"Can you do it?"
"Can I do what?"
"Pick Zury off in the fog?"
"Hell no. But I'm betting they won't risk it. Now let's get going."
It was easier descending than climbing, even though Tesla's head felt as though it were splitting. Within ten minutes the fog ahead of them brightened, and a short while after they stumbled into the bright summer air,
"I don't think we're out of trouble yet," Harry said.
"You think they'll come after us?"
"I'm damn sure they will," he said quickly. "Bartho's probably making crosses for us right now."
The image of Lucien flashed into her head and a sob escaped her. She put her hand to her mouth, to stop another, but tears came anyway, pouring down.
"They're not going to get us," D'Amour said, "I won't let them."
"It's not that," Tesia said.
"What is it then?"
She shook her head. "Later," she said, and turning from him started on down the slope. The tears half-blinded her, and several times she stumbled, but she pushed her exhausted limbs to their limits, until she made the relative safety of the tree line. Even then she only slowed her pace a little, glancing back now and again to be certain she hadn't lost D'Amour.
At last, with both of them gasping so hard they could barely speak, the trees began to thin out, and a mingling of sounds came drifting up towards them. The rush of Unger's Creek was one. The murmuring roar of the crowd was another. And the thump and blare of the town band as it led the parade through the streets of Everville was a third. "It's not quite Mozart," Tesla thought to Raul. "Sorry." Her tenant didn't reply.
"Raul?" she said, this time aloud.
"Something wrong?" D'Amour wanted to know.
She hushed him with a look, and turned her attention inward again.
"Raul-?" she said. Again, there was no answer. Concerned now, she closed her eyes and went looking for him. Two or three times during her travels he had hidden from her in this fashion, out of anger or anxiety, and she'd been obliged to coax him out. She took her thoughts to the divide between his territory and hers, calling his name as she went. There was still no response.
A sickening suspicion rose up in her.
"Answer me, Raul," she said. She was again met with silence, so she crossed over into the space he occupied.
She knew the instant she did so that he'd gone. When she'd trespassed here on previous occasions his presence had been all-pervasive, even when she hadn't been able to make him speak to her. She'd felt his essence, as somet ing utterly unlike her, occupying a space which most people lived and died believing theirs and only theirs: Their minds. Now there was nothing. No challenge, no complaint, no wit, no sob.
"What's wrong?" D'Amour said, studying her face.
"Raul," she said. "He's gone."
She knew when it had happened. That moment of agony and temporary madness at the threshold had marked his departure, her mind convulsing as he was ripped out of it.
She opened her eyes. The world around her-the trees, the sky, D'Amour, the sound of creek and crowd and band EVERV"ILLE 377 were almost overwhelming after the emptiness where Raul had been.
"Are you sure?" D'Amour said.
"I'm sure."
"Where the hell did he go?"
She shook her head. "He warned me, when we were close to the shore. He said he was losing his grip. I thought he meant-"
"He was going crazy?"