Dust + Ashes, page 24
“Can it be anything?” she asked.
“Perhaps, though it might be easier to start with something small. Something simple and familiar. Draw from your memory, something important to you, the form of which you know well.”
Tia frowned. Looking at the golden threads she held, she was reminded of Sarah’s hair, before she’d cut it short and dyed it dark to better disguise herself from her monstrous family. She’d loved braiding Sarah’s hair, and they’d taken turns trying different styles on each other. Years ago, Sarah had been the one to teach her how to braid using an old ragdoll with black button eyes, a stitched grin, and long, pink yarn locks. As Tia recalled this, the golden threads began to twist in her hands, creating intricate loops and whorls. A three-dimensional shape began to take form: a small body with floppy limbs and a round head. The button eyes were green, the stitched grin slightly lopsided, and the yarn hair was yellow, but otherwise it looked the same as the doll from her childhood.
Holding it, Tia felt a sudden, overwhelming sadness for those lost, happy times. She hugged the doll to her chest and sank slowly to the floor. Her eyes drooped closed. “I want to go home,” she whispered. “I want to stop the Greater for good. I want my family to be safe. I want to go back and be able to protect my reality.”
“Rest now, child,” the Weaver cooed and put a hand on Tia’s shoulder, sounding more like Briz in that moment than the cosmic entity possessing her body. “These powers will tax you, so you must take care not to overexert yourself in this place outside of time and space. We must all take care.”
9th of July 1851
MY LOVE SUSAN,
Several more thieves were accused today; two whites, two blacks, and another of the Chinese were dragged by Graves’ crew to Archie Tillman, our newly elected law enforcer. To my despair, gold was found on their persons and in their meager personal effects, and thus Graves whipped his men into a furor and called for hanging the lot. We had to take fast action to avoid this fate for the guilty men and, for now, Archie is simply keeping them locked up in a prison he’s fashioned in one of the mine shafts.
I must admit it’s a clever idea and one we sorely need. Even Reggie had half-a-mind to condemn the thieves, but I pointed out that we can’t afford to waste lives at this juncture. Two more men have vanished, one from Graves’ camp and one from Mr Lafferty’s, and another man was killed while out with a hunting party. The survivors of the party were shaken by whatever attacked them, though none could provide an adequate description of the fiend, and when we recovered the body of the unfortunate man...
I shall not trouble you with more unpleasant details, but it was indeed gruesome. Reggie performed an autopsy and seemed at a loss by what he described as injuries too precise for either animal or even the most skilled surgeon, no doubt a contributing factor to his wrathful mood of late.
When our mutual friend shared these details with me, I again asked about returning south to hire another company of men. The camp is now large enough that it could easily become a sustainable town if more tradesmen were invited in. But Reggie still fears exposing our location, the bloody man. Production is falling behind, and I told him if we keep losing men or locking them up, we’ll have no one left to work. We have enough gold in the reserve to ensure our security, but I would be nervous to transport even enough to buy the supplies we need without the men to spare guarding such a convoy, and right now, there are only a handful I’d truly trust for such a task, Mr Kang and Mr Thomas among them.
Love,
Ned
Chapter Sixteen
Fabrication
TIA SETTLED AGAINST the same, soft mound of webbing as Mary and slept. She awoke sometime later, confused at first as to where she was, and looked around. The Briz-spider was out of sight. Eddie’s gray, slumped figure was resting against the side of the shipping container across from her. Beside her, Mary was holding the little ragdoll she had created, idly toying with its hair. The woman glanced over, noticing Tia awake.
“You’ve definitely decided to go back?” she asked.
“I don’t have a choice,” Tia replied. “I’ll learn what I can while I’m here, but I can’t just abandon my world.”
“You always have a choice. Go back, stay here... or you can come with me. The Pages could use someone with skills like yours.”
Tia frowned. “I thought you wanted me to go home. You promised Uncle Ray.”
“True. But you can traverse the Between and,” she held up the doll, “do this. Both are incredibly useful abilities.”
“What about yours?” Tia asked. “You made a house vanish. And you punched a hole through an Aranzi’nach’s web to get in here. It wasn’t like magic, though. Or clairy power.”
“No. Not magic or clairy power,” Mary agreed. “There are other realities with their own peculiar evolutions teetering on the edge of destruction. And some that have already been lost...” She trailed off, glancing sideways at Tia. “I wonder—”
A low, sonorous hum interrupted her, and they both glanced up toward the shadows overhead.
“Such that has been lost cannot be re-created,” the Weaver’s voice whispered from the shadows. “Not in the way you desire, Page.”
Tia frowned, feeling a swell of sympathy for the blonde. “You’re like Sarah, aren’t you? A Vessel? But you lost your reality.”
Mary shrugged. “Not exactly, but similar. It’s why I was recruited by the Pages. I’ve experienced utter destruction, so I do what I can to keep the same from happening to other realms of Creation.”
“I’m sorry.”
The woman shrugged again. “Do you still have the card the future me gave you?” Tia fished it from her pocket and held it out, but Mary shook her head. “Hang onto it. If things go pear-shaped once you do get back and the Greater isn’t stopped... If everything starts falling apart, the Pages will need all the experienced fighters we can get. They’ll get you out.”
“But you can’t come with me? To help fight?”
“Not without endangering your reality further,” Mary said. “I told you that. My simply being there, or any of the Pages for that matter, might be the thing that helps the Greater succeed. We’re tugging at threadbare fabric. Once you’re back, I’m afraid you’re on your own.”
The girl stared down at the business card. It felt more like a curse than a gift right then. “Well, crap, I guess.”
“If you are dead set on going back, I suggest you take all the non-time you need to prepare while you have the luxury of it. Make sure you know exactly what you need to keep your anchor reality safe. You might miss it, but don’t be in a rush.” Mary hesitated and looked over at the slumped form of Eddie. “Besides, I don’t think he is.”
“What’s that mean?” Tia asked.
“I’ve been watching him. He was threatened with extra-dimensional prison, but he seems more bummed now by the idea of you dragging him back home. You’d think he’d be more relieved.”
“Yeah,” Tia said. “Especially since he’s been pestering me about it almost this whole time.”
“I could take him off your hands,” Mary offered. “You don’t have to be his jailer. The Pages have facilities for such individuals.”
“They do?” Tia said. Suddenly, Eddie straightened and turned toward them.
“You know it’s rude to talk about someone behind their back,” he said. “Especially when they can hear you. My ears are burning.”
“You’ve been on me to get us back home this whole time,” Tia said. “But you don’t really want to go back, do you?”
“I don’t fancy being a prisoner, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You’re not under the Greater’s influence, or at least you’re not under it as strongly as you are back home,” Tia said. “You’ve actually been... tolerable.”
“Aww. I’m touched, T.” The viel flashed her a rueful grin before his expression grew somber. “I meant what I said. A prisoner is a prisoner, whether in body... or in mind.” He stood up and drifted over toward them, eyeing Mary shrewdly. “What kind of facilities we talking about here? Minimum security or super-max?”
“Considering your affinity, probably super-max. The higher-ups wouldn’t want one of the sasashahar’s fabricants running loose. Sorry.”
The viel made a noise of displeasure. “Can’t say I blame ’em. Pesky fabricants.”
“You hate the Greater,” Tia said. “Don’t you?”
Eddie’s eyes widened. His voice rose slightly. “What? I’m a servant of the Greater. Always have been.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“The answer was implied.”
“But you really hate it,” Tia said, mystified. It was so obvious now. How had she not realized before? “You do. It has to force you to do things, like it tries to with Sarah, because you don’t want to do its bidding. You don’t want to end the world.”
“It never forces me...” There was that uncertainty in his voice, and Tia felt a twinge in her gut. The same feeling she’d come to recognize when someone not-exactly-lied; what he’d said was a complicated, muddled truth. “It doesn’t have to. That’s not how it... we operate. I’ve had to make deals, sacrifices... I’ve given up so much for it, yeah, but...”
He still hadn’t answered the question. Because he does hate it. That was the truth, and he couldn’t outright lie to her. And, she figured, it was worse than that. He couldn’t admit such a thing even to himself because... because he’s afraid. Maybe he wouldn’t be de-evolved like the Lesser, but stripped of his free will, like Sarah so often fought against. So long as he did as the Greater pleased, Eddie could do what he wanted. But go against his creator, even so much as harbor disloyal thoughts, and he’d be made to behave. A de-evolution of the mind, perhaps, rather than body; a stripping away of the man’s self so that the dominating other took control.
How long, she wondered, had he been conditioned to think and speak so loyally of something he truly abhorred, like one of Pavlov’s dogs drooling at the sound of a bell? Such conditioning could only develop after repeated stimuli. How many times had he rebelled even the smallest bit or tested the limits of his creator’s mercy? The idea that he hated the Greater, possibly more than she did, but had to smother such rebellious thoughts before they could consciously coalesce to avoid retaliation horrified her. Because he must have suffered its retaliation repeatedly. He still suffered its threats; he’d admitted as much when speaking of his time in the Rend. He knew the extent of the Greater’s wrath personally and the fear of it was baked deep in him, crystallizing into hate.
She thought back to when she’d caught him trying to destroy Karlsson’s journal. He must have figured it out then, so quick on the uptake as he was, but she only now understood, all the pieces having finally clicked into place: what Tad had told her about Karlsson’s last moments, why he had confused this man for the one who’d hired him in Portland, the tortured Eddie that her mother had seen while they’d been separated in the Rend, and the Weaver’s explanation of the Vessel’s creation cycle...
Tia had come across photos of the Greene family in her research; the resemblance between each of the patriarchs—Eddie, his father, and even his grandfather, all men sharing the same name—were striking. Edmund Reginald Greene had been created by the Greater, a fabricant as Mary had called him, cobbled together from bits of its own essence, but mostly from the wayward human, Edmund Karlsson, who’d been thrown into the Rend as a genetic sacrifice by his friend Reginald Greene. He’d been meant to serve as a solid foundation to the Greater’s Bloodline and the eventual Vessel. But Edmund Karlsson had been a passionate man, caring and devoted to his family, loyal to his friends, but also logical and willing to sacrifice himself to stop the evil that threatened everything he’d held dear. Tia knew this because she knew that man better than anyone alive, and she was suddenly certain those traits persisted within his genetic legacy.
“Edmund,” she said, softly. “You have every reason to hate it. What it did to you, how it created your family, you and Sarah, how it compels you into obedience...” She shook her head. “You’re still your own person. You can still—”
“Don’t,” Eddie snapped. “And don’t call me that.”
“I should take him in,” Mary said, frowning. “To keep him from doing any more harm in your reality. Clearly, he’s dangerous.”
“Yes. Yes, I am.” He held out his wrists, miming for Mary to cuff him. “Let’s go now. Lock me up, Space Cop. Get me away from this brat and the horrible spider monsters.”
Mary looked at Tia as if seeking permission. “He wants to go.”
He should go, Tia thought. He should go and get out of our lives forever. I’ll ask the Weaver how to sever the connection between us and... and... and that was where it fell apart. Because every logical thought in her mind was screaming for Mary to take him away, but in her gut she was certain that would be disastrous. And she had learned to trust her gut instincts, however inane they sometimes seemed.
“I want to stop the Greater for good,” Tia said, rising to block him. “I want to save the world. To save Sarah, and Mom, and everybody. You do too, I know you do.”
“I can’t,” Eddie said. He raised his hands to cover his head, as if shielding it from a psychic barrage.
“You can and you will help,” she said. “You want to save your family. Say it. I want to hear you say it. You’re not being controlled right now, you’re outside the Greater’s influence, so I want to hear you say it.”
“I hate it,” Eddie whispered. He flinched, squeezing his eyes shut as if anticipating a blow. When it didn’t come, he opened his eyes slowly, one after the other, still uncertain. “I do want to help, but...” He bit his lip and lowered his arms. He shook his head. “Not once we’re back.” He balled his fists. “I’m not going to be able to think clearly when we get back. I won’t be,” he swallowed, his voice breaking slightly, “I won’t be my own person anymore. I can’t trust myself. And I might really hurt someone. Again.”
“You can fight it,” Tia said. He didn’t respond. He continued shaking his head, his jaw working. Tia’s anger flared. “Sarah fights it! I’ve seen her. You can, too—”
“I can’t,” he repeated and straightened as he said this, his voice firm, his manner more assured. “I can’t.”
There was uncertainty in his reply, almost a lie, and Tia realized it was fear. He wanted to fight but was afraid to find out what would happen if he did. Afraid of what might happen if he failed.
“So, you’re a coward?” She folded her arms and tilted her head, leveling a cold gaze at him. He glowered and looked away. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not going to have a choice. We’re connected, remember? Where I go, you go, and I’m going back. What will you do then? Just give in again? You’re gonna have to fight.”
Eddie continued averting his gaze, but his expression hardened, the gears turning in his head once more. He will fight, she thought. He just needs to figure out how.
“Are you ready to continue your training?” the Weaver said, and Tia looked up to see it descending toward her. She glanced at her reluctant companion again, but he was trudging back to the shipping container, his expression troubled. Let him stew on it, she thought and nodded up at the Briz-spider.
They practiced. Tia formed random objects from the threads, slowly making them more and more complex. It was a careful procedure, requiring her full attention. Needlework, knitting, and crocheting had always bored her whenever Nana Dora had attempted teaching her, but something in the weaving—the creating—was both calming and exhilarating. It soothed her and exhausted her in a way she hadn’t thought possible. Eventually, a dull, phantom ache began permeating her body. Sensing something was wrong, the Weaver insisted they stop, and Tia knew she had gone too long without rest. This was how their “days” passed.
At Mary’s behest, Tia was first instructed by the Weaver to practice forming food and other basic human necessities. Re-entering reality would culminate the effects of sleep deprivation and malnourishment, Mary explained, causing time sickness. The longer they stayed outside of time and reality, the more care they had to take to mitigate its effects. So, Tia’s first few weavings provided for their physical needs. At first, the food barely resembled food, but it was more for sustenance than flavor and they ate it even when they felt they didn’t need it. As she grew more skilled, Tia wove more elaborate, flavorful meals, and provided more comfortable accommodations, beds and chairs, a table, and new clothing. She began recognizing her limits as these intervals went on, and if she tried to push herself, Mary would step in and insist that she stop.
Early on, Eddie watched these practice sessions with mild interest, falling into the same general schedule as the others, but otherwise he avoided Tia. He kept mostly to himself, though as the intervals passed, his bad mood became more pensive, and he began chatting amicably with Mary to alleviate their boredom while Tia was otherwise engaged in her weaving. They usually debated music (“Which Beatles’ album is best?” “What about The Beach Boys?”) or discussed some other bit of pop culture ephemera (“Which Harry Potter house would you be sorted into?” “Who would win in a fight—Max Rebo or Figrin D’an?”). Occasionally, they stumbled upon subjects that didn’t exist in the other’s home reality, which prompted deeper, fascinated conversations (“You’ve never read any of S. K. Knight’s books? The architect of modern science fiction, who some rightfully called a scientific prophet?!” Mary exclaimed at one point, to which the viel, completely mystified, replied, “My dear, Space Cop, I’ve never even heard of them. Please, go on.”)
Presently, Mary announced it was time for her to leave; summoned away, she claimed, by matters concerning the vaster Web of Creation.
“Wish I could do more to help,” she said and smiled at Tia. “But it seems like you’re getting a handle on the weaving thing. Do you have a plan for saving the world yet?”
