Time's Dark Laughter Part 28

She came closer to him. "And you've got some things I admire," she said, her voice somewhat huskier than she had planned.

He suddenly wanted to touch her. It was a feeling he had rarely experienced under any circ.u.mstances, and never with a Vampire. He reached out and put his fingertips against her cheek, drew them down her neck, along the cleft between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s; measured and fondled the tense weight of her breast in his palm.

Her eyes closed briefly, and when they opened, she pulled him to her, drew his slight body in to the ma.s.sive warmth of her own, wrapped her wings around them both, tore open bis pants, pulled him deep inside her, felt his heat, his heart against her heart, his rapid respirations on her cheek, their mingling sweat, his hands all over her and urging; she put her lips along his throat, licked him there, began to shake . . . when through his teeth, he whispered, "Please ... no blood."

This only made her tension more exquisite, though. She brought her mouth up to his mouth, kissed him hotly, grazed his inner lip against her razor tooth, and delicately lapped the drop of blood that formed there.

Around them, meteors fell and sulphur bubbled, but they were unaware of anything beyond the canopy of her wings, inside of which they lost themselves, tumbling, in timeless delight.

The liberated Humans spent the time together, constructing a large, unsinkable log raft. Wanting to get as far from the City as possible, they decided sailing south along the coast was the safest way. They were thin, wasted, bitter people. They worked together, but without speech; and somehow, without cause.

Only Jasmine kept a completely lonesome vigil-over the child. She sat beside the dwindling creature, soothing her sometimes, trying to prevent the child from biting her tongue when the seizures were bad, listening to the occasional rantings; mostly, just watching. Keeping her as comfortable as possible in what were clearly her final hours.

Once, Jasmine had a vision. She saw a woman approach-a white-haired woman who looked very like Jasmine herself, only much older, and somehow without substance. This Doppelganger walked with broken steps from person to person in the camp, her hands outstretched, weeping, wandering. No one else seemed to be aware of her. "Help me, I beg you," the vision whimpered. "My name is Jezebel, and I've gone to h.e.l.l."

She looked toward Jasmine, at last, and recognition flickered across her drawn face. "This is the end, then, for you and me-I am your death, and you are mine."

Then the alter-image hobbled off-lost, crying, aged, bereft of hope or friend. Somehow this intangible old crone unsettled Jasmine more than had any of the preceding horrors. Like a nightmare without meaning, it choked her still; like a precognition of doom, it flashed dimly in the corner of her soul's eye, and was gone.

Finally, on the seventh day the child had a long, agonal spasm of opisthotonus-her back arched, almost to breaking, in a long, taut bow; her muscles locked rock-hard in that position: her mouth stretched down in ferocious grimace; her breathing all but stopped. This was the beginning of the end.

Gravity itself increased slowly; the atmosphere became dense. The Great White Birds, which had been circling for days, fell out of the sky, suddenly unable to fly. The largest of the Earth's animals fell to their knees-their legs no longer able to support their huge frames-and could not rise again. Everyone felt newly, heavily burdened.

The sun took a long time setting, as the Earth slowed on its axis of rotation, then finally ground to a complete halt after the sun was down, to leave the huddled creatures stranded in a long, cold night.

It seemed to last for days, this longest night. The sea could be heard rus.h.i.+ng away from the sh.o.r.e, leaving bare, wet beach many miles deep. The Earth roared and cracked and heaved, and almost ripped apart under the strain of sudden stillness. Mountains exploded, and the ground turned to steaming mud. The promontory of land on which the animals cl.u.s.tered was thrust up at an acute angle, like a shelf over the shattering world.

Then the child's pulse became thready and weak; her blood pressure fell. So the atmospheric pressure fell, and the air became lighter again-though thunderstorms speared the sky with lightning, rain, and frenzied wind, and the frothy air screamed as if it were being torn and tortured.

Until finally, the child's back broke under the opistho-tonic stress, and she breathed easier for just a minute, as her respirations became shallower and shallower. And suddenly the sun rose again: only, it rose on the horizon below which it had just set; and then it continued to rise. For the Earth was rotating, now, in the opposite direction; rotating so the sun rose an the opposite horizon from that where it had always risen; and would likewise set over the opposite sh.o.r.e.

And so the animals stared in horrified fascination at the sun rising in the east.

In the east!

The sun, that most reliable and stately of all timepieces, which had always and ever-to every animal's memory and to every Scribe's history-risen in the west and set in the east, now was rising in the east; and would, if allowed to continue on this unholiest of courses, set in the west!

Set in the west, over the ocean.

The ocean. Josh and the others were suddenly aware of a mounting roar to the west, and looked toward the sea. In the glimmering distance, the ocean was returning-with a vengeance. A churning wall of water, hundreds of feet high, was approaching with a speed that left little time for contemplation.

Josh bent, momentarily, over the child: she was dead. At the end of this long, seventh day of her illness, she had her final rest. Before anyone could grieve or cheer over this information, the ground lurched at the first impact of the wave smas.h.i.+ng into the cliffs to the west. Josh fell. Isis crawled into his lap and clung to him, trembling.

Suddenly Ph6 and Aba grabbed them up-Josh, Isis, Paula, Jasmine, OHie, and Rose-grabbed them and flew interlocked, as high as they could, balancing this enormous, clumsy load, falling and hanging on hi two huge armfuls. They were hovering at about a hundred feet, struggling to stay aloft, when the water began rus.h.i.+ng below them, carrying the remaining survivors in all directions.

A torrential wind came with the wave, and it wrenched Phe and Aba apart. Ph6 was left holding only Paula. Aba carried Jasmine, Rose, Ollie and Josh, to whom Isis still clung. The Vampire siblings tried to join hands again, but the winds buffeted them and tore at their wings, and it was all they could do just to stay in the air.

The Humans' raft could be seen churning along the crest of the wave; various creatures were variously buoyed along or dragged under by it. The noise was deafening, the winds cyclonic. Phe and Aba were tumbled farther and farther apart, until soon they were almost out of each other's sight.

Aba, in addition, was having difficulty staying airborne. The great weight he was trying to carry dragged him down, continually closer to the rus.h.i.+ng water. And the nearer he came to the surface, the worse the winds became, which made it even more difficult to fly. Only twenty feet above the tide, his wings began to tire.

"I can't make it!" he yelled. He lost more alt.i.tude. Twelve feet over the cras.h.i.+ng waves, the spray whipped their faces like needles.

Josh looked frantically around for the derelict raft; empty, it bobbed and plunged, too far to reach in this monster current. Isis dangled like a wet rag, her mind blank with terror. Jasmine looked for debris to cling to, and Rose was simply glad, now, that Beauty wasn't here, that he was safe and dry in a fortress of ice.

Ollie was furious. After all he had gone through-to survive, to save Josh, to learn how to feel-after all this, to die for nothing! To die hi a storm, after all his years on a pirate s.h.i.+p, to die in a storm caused by a spoiled child! And to drag down Aba with him, Aba who had opened his eyes to gentleness and love and calm reason- No! He would not. At least he would not die for nothing. At least, after all this, he could die saving his brother Joshua, who had once risked so much saving him. He could die repaying his debt to Aba-the poet-Vampire who even now was willing to lose his life to save this ragged band of Humans.

And anyway, wasn't the raft around here somewhere?

With this thought, he pulled his hand free, fingered the raw, empty scar in his chest, and jumped into the thundering swells. He was quickly sucked under, and lost to sight.

Now lightened of his load, Aba began to climb again; and with new hope came new strength to his wings. He gained alt.i.tude slowly at first, then more rapidly as the winds loosened their grip on him. Soon he was high enough to glide, with an occasional flap to regain elevation.

He circled the area half an hour, looking for Ollie, for Phe, for Paula. Finally, his heart leaden, he gave up, and flew due east, into the rising sun.

CHAPTER 21: The Garden.

THERE were major shocks and aftershocks for weeks: eventually the tide found its new level, after eating up the old coast. The weather took months to really calm down; but long before that, the air got sweet, and everything had the feel of beginnings.

Aba had landed, finally, at night, in an area of high, rumbling ground overlooking what was once the southeastern Terrarium-though the entire land ma.s.s had s.h.i.+fted so drastically during the cataclysm that it was impossible to say where in the world they were now. The five of them- Aba, Josh, Jasmine, Rose, and Isis-slept for two days without stirring. Finally, they stretched, breathed easier, and surveyed their domain.

It was an exotic garden of sorts. Strange, odoriferous blossoms filled storm-bent trees, or were strewn about the thick gra.s.s. Fruit vines sporting sweet, dripping globes of riotous color twined over mossy stumps. There were ferns, too, and nut trees; a stream that meandered to a nearby misty glen; ponds, hills; vegetables of curious description, plump tubers, leafy fronds. Most of the flora consisted of items no one had ever seen before. And it all looked somehow untarnished.

"A garden of earthly delights," said Jasmine. It was unfathomable to her, yet somehow inevitable, this turn of events. She accepted it with the equanimity she had learned, over the centuries, to accept things with; still, she knew she would puzzle over its meaning for centuries to come.

Strange, uncertain animals-creatures previously unknown-roamed here, too. They seemed for the most part quite tentative about the environment, and left Joshua and the others to themselves, to spend the days exploring the wondrous new place; and the nights sleeping dreamless sleep.

Some of the new animals were terrifying, though, and put a strained, jumpy edge to existence. One day Josh came running into camp with a hot sweat on his face, whispering "Run! Under cover, quick!" Close on his heels could be heard a thundering of hoofs.

Just as they were all hidden away in the hollow of a huge broken tree, the bizarre creatures stormed into the clearing. They were unbelievably tall, thoroughly unreal. They were quadruped, their legs six or seven feet high. Short tails and short muscular bodies, with short yellow fur covered in irregular brownish blotches. And their necks! Their necks were another seven or eight feet long, sticking straight up, as if gruesomely stretched by some mad force. Their heads were triangular, bearing odd little horns. They looked around wildly, ate a few leaves from the tops of the trees, pawed the ground with dangerously sharp hoofs, and finally ran off again.

Jasmine, Josh, and Rose crawled out of hiding, shaken.

"What was thatT whispered Rose.

Josh just shook his head.

"More of the child's dreamwork, I suppose." Jasmine sighed with relief at the departure of the scary weird creatures. "I just wish she'd been a bit less surrealistic with her inventions."

After about a week, Aba prepared to leave. He was rested, but hungry-he hadn't had any red cells for many days-so he had to get looking for a harem. He wasn't hopeful, after the flood, but he would do what he could. Also, of course, he wanted to search for Paula, and Ph6.

After that, he didn't know. Maybe fly up to Lev's den to see if anyone there had survived; maybe come back. Certainly, he would visit.

Josh and Rose, after a hidden, mysterious conference, presented Aba with a two-pint flask of their blood- dripped in from cuts they had made in their wrists-to sustain him on his journey.

"It's a going-away present," said Josh.

Aba was too moved to reply. He hugged them all, and then they bared necks to each other. Without a word, he flew off to the northwest.

And then there were four.

Over the following days, Jasmine, Josh, and Rose rested, collected themselves, and marveled at the newness of their new world. Isis simply played in it. They were imbued with a combination of wonder and terror that filled every waking moment for quite a long time, pulling their emotions in flagrant disarray. It was wild, exhilarating, disorienting; hilarious, horrifying, and grandiose. It was all of this, and somehow quite sad.

They were sure they would never get used to the sun rising in the east and setting in the west-it was just too unnatural. Too unearthly. As for the rest-the bizarre new creatures and plants, all de novo creations of the mutant child's fevered dreams-they gradually adopted a wait-and-see att.i.tude. Some animals seemed dangerous, of course, and these were to be avoided; others were clearly too silly to worry about.

At one point a reticent, obviously harmless, black-and-white smooth-furred, hoofed, four-legged animal with big saggy eyes and big saggy teats wandered near their camp, and said, "Moooo." Josh walked toward it, but it s.h.i.+ed away. He spoke to it, but it only answered in its odd, one-word language.

"I've never seen anything like that before," said Josh. "lxok at how it cowers when I try to go near it."

"Then let's call it a Cower," said Rose.

And so they began to name all the heretofore nonexistent animals who happened through. The tiny bird with the needle beak, whose cellophane wings hummed as they vibrated, Josh called a Hummingbird. The funny little scale-plated yellow-tan long-nosed reptile Rose called Armored-yellow. Of the ridiculous four-legged, mangy, brown, braying herbivore with two humps on its back, Jasmine said: "That thing looks like it came late to its own creation." So they laughingly named it a Came-late, which later got squeezed into Camelate, and much later shortened to Camel.

All this strangeness, all this unknown. It felt like the rebirth of Time and the world. It left them balanced precariously between great swings of mood: grief, loss, emptiness, one minute; hope and awe the next. They mourned Ollie and Beauty; they rejoiced the destruction of the City. They planned expeditions to go search for their missing loved ones; yet when it came to the actual leaving of this new garden-land, they found themselves limp of spirit- somehow unable finally to pick themselves up and go.

For somehow, something always came up to make them postpone the return to the old land: one of the new pet animals would get sick; Josh would discover a hole in bis pants that needed mending; Rose would find she lacked some herbs they might need on a long trip; Isis would disappear for a day.

It was Jasmine who told them finally they didn't have to leave.

"Don't go anywhere," she said to them one night as they sat drinking around a small fire. "I hereby give you permission to stay here forever."

"What do you mean?" asked Josh. "What are you talking about-permission?"

"Well," Jasmine expounded, "on the one hand, you obviously feel guilty about Ollie's sacrifice jump into the drink-about leaving him, and Beauty, to fend for themselves, all alone. On the other hand, you're understandably exhausted-emotionally, I mean. You've been on a marathon adventure, and you need to just withdraw a little now-take some time, absorb everything that's happened and seems to be still happening. There's nothing you can do for them now, anyway-either they're okay or they're not. Later on, you'll have years to find out-and to find them, if they're to be found. It's what I've always tried to teach you: when there's nothing to do, do nothing. It used to be, Joshua, when there was nothing to do, you'd do anything. You've learned a lot lately, I think, but sometimes you still need someone's permission to do nothing, just to relieve you of that last little burden you're laboring under, when you feel that something has to be done. So listen to me now: nothing has to be done. You don't have to go anywhere. You have my permission to stay right where you are, for as long as it's good."

Josh looked uncertainly at Rose; uncertainly, she nodded.

"I feel a lot calmer, already," said Josh.

Jasmine settled back. "Peace may yet come to us all."

So the three of them and Isis spent many long weeks in peaceful contemplation hi the garden. Josh later wrote extensively in his journal, describing in detail the grand adventure that had led them so variously to this sylvan place, and setting down, as he was able, the nature of his experiences and perceptions during his fusion with the child's consciousness.

Rose resumed her old love of tending plants, nurturing the land. She no longer l.u.s.ted after the Plug, or even thought of Josh as The Serpent: now he was Josh, and she was Rose; and this was their garden. And for the first time in many years, she was content.

To Jasmine, this was the greatest of all adventures. New plants and animals in a new land, on a new Earth; maybe even a new universe. She read Joshua's journal and asked him hundreds of questions about the meaning of Time and s.p.a.ce, as seen through the child's eyes, and he answered her as he could, and they had long dialogues into the perfumed night.

Isis, meanwhile, found ten million new things to explore and play with. She naturally a.s.sumed this wondrous playground had been designed expressly for her, and graciously accepted the gift She spent the nights prowling after shadow monsters, running rodents to ground, or giddily skittering through the branches on some enterprise of profound moment.

During the days, under the warm smile of the rolling sun, she slept.

EPILOGUE.

AND so they lived. They named all the new animals they discovered, and cultivated the plants. Gradually, some of the old animals began to appear-Horses, and Bears, and Spiders, and such-though few could speak words, as they used to. Many of the old creatures were never seen again- Satyrs, Accidents, Harpies, Elves; and only the occasional Vampire would fly by, high in the clouds, usually heading south.

Aba never returned. Whether he found Ollie, or Phe and Paula, was not known; nor was their fate learned.

And though, in the back of their minds, Josh and Rose always listened for Beauty's hoofbeats to rise in the distance, that joyous sound never came. Later it was discovered that the geography of the area was so changed that the Mosian Firecaves could no longer be located. The whereabouts of the City of Ice, and of Beauty, remained one of Time's dark secrets, until much later still.

Josh and Rose had seven children, whom they named Can, Able, Will, Dawn, Hope, Lon, and Fey. And because there was no choice but to interbreed, among them they begot grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so on- all of whom lived through their own tragedies and comedies, about which many stories have since been told.

Jasmine took long solitary trips into the wilderness, having numerous adventures, quests, crusades, and such. But she always returned to Josh and Rose, to share her experiences, and to weave tall tales around the fire to their children.

The religion of Scribery-as such-died. Josh kept his daily journal, though; and became a great storyteller. The stories of his life and struggles, pa.s.sed on from generation to generation, became legendary. It was a new world, but Josh never wanted his progeny to forget the trials and conquests and friends of his youth.

The stories changed and evolved over the years, of course; but even so, long after he died, people still spoke of the tune when animals could talk; of the evil snake-headed Queen who once fixed Joshua with her stony gaze; of the young bride, Eurydicey, taken across the River Sticks to the Nameless City guarded by the three-headed Dogs; of the lost city of Atlantis, dead beneath the waves; of Satyrs and Vampires, Dryads and Dragons and ANGELs and Centaurs and the island of s.h.i.+pwrecks where Joshua once found love with a Selkie whose name was the sound of waves cras.h.i.+ng in a sun-filtered grotto; of the fourfold path of the Cognons, Hedons, Cidons, and Deitons, whose souls rested in their PINEAL center; of Popes and Kings and Doges and the upright trident symbols of the Ba.s.s water people; of Scribes and the Word; of mes.h.i.+ng fingers in the Sign of the Plug, and how that symbol came to be a gesture of prayer to The Serpent; of The Serpent himself, who came to live in this garden; of the bird-child and how she died, and how what she knew lived again in Joshua, the Scribe and Serpent; and what the bird-child said, and tried to understand; and of her seven-day illness that was the creation of this new world, when it rained fire and the Earth stopped and the sky split and all the new animals appeared. And, after the deluge, how Josh and Rose came to live in the garden of Jasmine.

And had many further adventures, about which many journals were kept, many stories told.

About the Author.

James Kahn lives in southern California, where he practices medicine, dallies, trifles, and broods. He is currently working on the final volume of The New World Trilogy.

About the Ill.u.s.trator.

Jill Littlewood works as a calligrapher for the County of Los Angeles. In addition, she recently received funding from the National Geographic Foundation to ill.u.s.trate the anatomy of Argentivas Magnificens, a five-million-year-old bird that, with a wingspan of twenty-four feet, is thought to be the largest bird that ever flew.

end.