FIFTY-ONE
Sitting in her private quarters, Payne stared out over the Far Side’s landscape. The rolling green grass and the tulips and honeysuckle reached only so far before they were cut off by a ring of trees that encircled the lawn. Above it all, the arching milky sky stretched from fluffy treetops to fluffy treetops, the lid on the wardrobe trunk.
From personal experience, she knew that if you walked to the edge of the forest and penetrated its shadows, you ended up emerging... right where you entered.
There was no way out, except through the Scribe Virgin’s permission. She alone held the key to the invisible lock and she wasn’t going to let Payne go—not even to the Primale’s house on the Other Side, as the others were allowed to do.
Which proved that female knew well what she had birthed. She was very aware that once Payne got loose, she was never coming back. Payne had said as much—in a yell that made her own eardrums hum.
In retrospect, her outburst had been a victory for honesty, but not the best strategy. Better to have kept that to herself, and perhaps been allowed to traverse to the Other Side—and stayed there then. After all, it wasn’t as if her mother could force her back to the land of the living statues.
Well, at least theoretically.
On that note, she thought of Layla, who had just returned from having seen her male. The sister had been glowing with a kind of happiness and satisfaction that Payne had never felt.
Rather justified the urge to leave here, didn’t it: Even if what awaited her on the Other Side was nothing like she remembered from her small slice of freedom, she would have choices to make on her own.
Verily, it was a strange curse to have been born and yet not have a life to live. Short of killing her mother, she was stuck herein, and however much she hated the female, she wasn’t going to take that trail. She wasn’t sure she’d win in such a conflict, for one thing. For another... she had already disposed of her sire. Matricide was not an experience that held any new or particular fascination for her.
Oh, the past, the painful, wretched past. How awful to be stuck here with an infinite, bland future whilst burdened with a history that was too awful to dwell on. Suspended animation had been a kind gift when measured up against this torture—at least in the frozen state, her mind hadn’t been able to wander and tangle with things she wished hadn’t transpired, and things she would never get to do—
“Would you care for some victuals?”
Payne looked over her shoulder. No’One was in the archway of the room, bended into a bow with a tray in her hands.
“Oh, yes, please.” Payne shook off her moribund musings. “And won’t you join me?”
“I thank you kindly, but I shall serve you and depart.” The maid put the provisions down on the window seat beside Payne. “When you and the king set to your physical conflicts, I shall return to collect—”
“May I ask you something?”
No’One bowed again. “But of course. How may I be of service?”
“Why have you never gone on to the Other Side? Like the others?”
There was a long silence... and then the female gimped over to the pallet on which Payne slept. With shaking hands, No’One straightened the bedding into a precise order.
“I have no particular interest in that world,” she said from under her robing. “I am safe here. Over there... I would not be safe.”
“The Primale is a Brother of stout arm and fine dagger skill. No harm would e’er befall you under his care.”
The sound that drifted out from the hood was noncommittal. “Circumstances have a way of spinning into chaos and strife there. Simple decisions have ramifications that can be shattering. Here, everything is in order.”
Spoken as a survivor of the raid that had taken place in this sanctuary some seventy-five years ago, Payne thought. Back on that horrible eve, males from the Other Side had infiltrated the barrier and brought with them the violence that often existed in their world.
Many had died or been hurt—the Primale at the time included.
Payne looked back out at the static, lovely horizon—and at once understood the female’s thinking, and yet wasn’t swayed by it. “The order herein is precisely what galls me. I would seek to avoid this kind of falsity.”
“Can you not leave when you wish?”
“No.”
“That is not right.”
Payne’s eyes shot over to the female—who was now at work refolding Payne’s modified robes. “I never expected you to say something counter to the Scribe Virgin.”
“I love our dearest mother of the race—please do not misunderstand. But to be imprisoned, even in luxury, is not right. I choose to stay herein and ever will—you should be free to go, however.”
“I find myself envying you.”
No’One seemed to recoil under her robes. “You must never do that.”
“ ’Tis true.”
In the silence that followed, Payne recalled her conversation with Layla by the reflecting pool. Same exchange, different twist: Then, Layla had been the one to envy Payne’s lack of desire when it came to sex and males. Here, it was No’One’s contentment with inertia that was of value.
And ’round and ’round we go, Payne thought.
Turning her head back to the “view,” she regarded the grass with a jaundiced eye. Each blade was perfectly formed, and precisely the right height such that the expanse was less a lawn than a carpet. And the result was not gotten by mowing, of course. Just as the tulips stood in their beds with everlasting blooms upon their slender stalks and the crocuses were perpetually unfurling and the roses were always fat-headed with petals, so too were there no bugs or weeds or disease.
Or growth.
Ironic that it appeared to be all cultivated and yet was attended to by no one. After all, who needed a gardener when you had a god capable of engineering everything to its best state—and keeping it there.
In a way, that made No’One a miracle, didn’t it. That she had been allowed to survive her birth herein and permitted to breathe the nonair, even though she was not perfect.
“I don’t want this,” Payne said. “I truly do not.”
When there was no comment, she looked over her shoulder... and frowned. The female had left as she had come in, without noise or fuss, leaving the surroundings bettered by her careful touch.
As a scream welled inside of her, Payne knew she had to be freed. Or go mad.
Back in Caldwell’s farm country, Xhex finally got a shot to have inside the house when the police left at five in the afternoon. As they walked out, that bunch of blue unis looked ready not so much for a night off, but a week’s vacation—then again wading through congealing blood for hours’ll do that to a guy. They locked everything up, put a seal over the front and back doors, and made sure there was a ring of yellow crime scene tape around the yard. Then they got in their cars and drove away.
“Let’s get in there,” she said to the Shadows.
Dematerializing, she took form smack in the middle of the living room and Trez and iAm were right with her. Without needing to talk, they fanned out, traipsing through the mess, searching for things the humans wouldn’t have known to look for.
Twenty minutes of ooey-gooey on the first floor and nothing but dust on the second left them with a whole lot of nada.
Damn it to hell, she could sense the bodies and the emotional grids that were marked with suffering, but they were like reflections in water—and she just couldn’t get to the forms that were throwing the wavy images.
“You hear from Rehv yet?” she said, lifting one boot and measuring how far up the sole the blood came. Onto the leather. Great.
Trez shook his head. “Nope. But I can call again.”
