I held a small stone disk with a spiral of hieroglyphics carved into its face. Flush with the grace from riding the sourdough Ghost, I knew it for the totem of the First Sojourner. The fog of particles took on the shape of the hieroglyphics, and they swayed around me.
I was reminded of the program from the poetry reading at the coffee shop. It called the patterns from my old shower curtain seeds in the language of the gods, seeds that needed only thought to sprout and grow. I pictured the shower curtain from Kaliah’s apartment, and it appeared in the fog before me with all its familiar patterns, patterns that were the key to travel between the stomachs. Avoid the pink polka dots, the program had warned, they lead to the void. Instead, I focused on the argyle, the pattern that corresponded to Crolom, our stomach.
Wait, Zelda said, and then she was sitting at my feet, her fur glistening with vibrant, changing colors. Give me the stone.
Why?
If you do this, you will die, and Craig will be trapped in Blanche’s whorl forever. You may save people now, but Blanche will just come back later and reinfect them. Give me the totem and I will bring Craig back and save as many as I can.
But you’re not a sojourner.
Am I not partly you? I will get the job done, but you must return to the sourdough whorl and free Craig.
A woman blinked into existence in front of me, standing among the supplicants, taller and thinner than my mom, but with the same eyes and nose. She wore what I currently wore, black gloves and a black double-breasted raincoat.
Hurry, Zelda said. Blanche is sending corruptions to stop us. Don’t let them go through the portal with me.
I held out the stone disc, and Zelda took it gently in her jaws. Argyle patterns ran through the fog in front of us, quivering and spinning into a vortex. Blanche and the supplicants blurred and fragmented, then erupted like dandelion seeds blown for wishes. The particles they were once made from were sucked into the vortex, now ten feet in diameter. A larger circle of blue scrill dilated behind it, and Craig peeked his head through and unhinged his maw, stopping short of swallowing the vortex.
Glowing argyle patterns swam through Zelda’s fur like water snakes. As they grew brighter, they multiplied and seemed to seer into and through her body, which blurred. Two more Blanche corruptions popped up beside her. I leapt over Zelda and crashed into them, diverging from the whorl’s path of pain. One corruption tripped and dragged me to the ground with her. I swung my elbows wildly and connected, freeing my arms to latch onto the leg of the other corruption before they could dive into the vortex and Craig’s open jaws.
A stream of glowing, three-dimensional, multi-colored argyle was running from a faint outline of Zelda into the vortex.
Then the graft failed.
The whorl collapsed into a single point, and reality flooded in around it, leaving me dizzy and unsure on my feet. A tenor behind me belted out a high note and held it.
I had left my corruption behind, and I had no idea if Zelda had been sucked into the portal before the graft had failed.
Everything back in reality seemed dull and grey compared to the beautiful fog of the Nexus Whorl.
Blanche/Em curled both sides of her upper lip at me while Blanche/Lonnie lifted his long pole and swung it between the trusses out over the water with Zelda on the end, dangling by her neck, her body squirming, feet dancing in air, eyes bulging. Blanche/Lonnie dropped the pole.
Zelda fell.
I ran to catch the end of the pole, but when I reached the guardrail it was over the edge. As I watched Zelda descend into the rushing water, my arms and legs were grabbed. “Now it’s your turn,” Blanche/Em said.
I love you, Zelda said. I will see you again. Tell Em I will see her again.
Swim to shore, Zelda. Swim to shore.
Please don’t mourn me. I can’t die. I’m already dead. Don’t be silly about this.
Swim to shore!
She did not speak to me again.
I resisted Blanche/Lonnie and Blanche/Warren and was about to break free, but then the opera singers all stopped singing and attacked me. There were too many of them, wrenching, lifting, and pushing, trying to get me over the side.
I wanted to get to my coat pocket, to where there were still remnants of the sourdough starter, but if I let go of the railing, I would be tossed into the flood. Maybe there would be enough time to graft on the way down, I thought.
Then a shimmer of blue appeared in the water between our bridge and the newer, highway bridges. It spread to the size of a square city block and brightened, boiling with texture, bubbling above the water now. Zelda/Craig rose from it, gigantic, awesome, the girth and height of a skyscraper. The swirling scrill beneath her armored plates lit up the dark and overcast day with blue light and reflected off the waterfalls rushing down her body. Trees and roofs and other debris caught in her plates or fell, flipping through the air and splashing back into the rushing river.
I am here, Zelda/Craig said, and her voice boomed through my mind with power and terrible love. Craig’s inscrutable presence was in it.
A loud and deep whirring noise resonated in my ears, tickling the little hairs, as Zelda/Craig spewed blue scrill down on the town of Rio Dell, a thick plume, like a river in the sky. Zelda/Craig swiveled her head, sweeping the plume through the town, down Main Street, leaving all the infected caked in scrill. Zelda/Craig skipped our bridge, swept back around and over the highway bridges, then onto Scotia, blanketing the town in blue snow.
Distracted, the opera singers’ grip on me loosened, and I let go of the railing, retrieved what was left of the sourdough
