Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

"I did," she explained, fighting the tears. "But I lost him at the causeway. There were so many people trying to find a way over. One minute he was beside me, and the next he'd vanished. I stayed there for hours, looking for him; then I thought he'd be bound to come back here, to the house, so I came back too—"

"But he wasn't here."

"No."

She started to sob again, and Jude put her arms around her, murmuring condolences.

"I'm sure he's still alive," Hoi-Polloi said. "He's just being sensible and staying under cover. It's not safe out there." She cast a nervous glance up towards the cellar roof. "If he doesn't come back after a few days, maybe you can take me to the Fifth, and he can follow."

"It's no safer there than it is here, believe me."

"What's happening to the world?" Hoi-Polloi wanted to know.

"It's changing," Jude said. "And we have to be ready for the changes, however strange they are."

"I just want things the way they were: Poppa, and the business, and everything in its place—"

"Tulips on the dining room table."

"Yes."

"It's not going to be that way for quite a while," Jude said. "In fact, I'm not sure it'll ever be that way again." She got to her feet.

"Where are you going?" Hoi-Polloi said. "You can't leave."

"I'm afraid I've got to. I came here to work. If you want to come with me, you're welcome, but you'll have to be responsible for yourself."

Hoi-Polloi sniffed hard. "I understand," she said.

"Will you come?"

"I don't want to be alone," she replied. "I'll come."

Jude had been prepared for the scenes of devastation awaiting them beyond the door of Peccable's house, but not for the sense of rapture that accompanied them. Though there were sounds of lamentation rising from somewhere nearby, and that grief was doubtless being echoed in innumerable houses across the city, there was another message on the balmy noonday air.

"What are you smiling at?" Hoi-Polloi asked her.

She hadn't been aware she was doing so, until the girl pointed it out.

"I suppose because it feels like a new day," she said, aware as she spoke that it was also very possibly the last. Perhaps this brightness in the city's air was its acknowledgement of that: the final remission of a sickened soul before decline and collapse.

She voiced none of this to Hoi-Polloi, of course. The girl was already terrified enough. She walked a step behind Jude as they climbed the street, her fretful murmurs punctuated by hiccups. Her distress would have been pro-founder still if she'd been able to sense the confusion in Jude, who had no clue, now that she was here, as to where to find the instruction she'd come in search of. The city was no longer a labyrinth of enchantments, if indeed it had ever been that. It was a virtual wasteland, its countless fires now guttering out but leaving a pall overhead. The comet's light pierced these grimy skirts in several places, however, and where its beams fell won color from the air, like fragments of stained glass shimmering in solution above the griefs below.

Having no better place to head for, Jude directed them towards the nearest of these spots, which was no more than half a mile away. Long before they'd reached the place, a faint drizzle was carried their way by the breeze, and the sound of running water announced the phenomenon's source. The street had cracked open, and either a burst water main or a spring was bubbling up from the tarmac. The sight had brought a number of spectators from the ruins, though very few were venturing close to the water, their fear not of the uncertain ground but of something far stranger. The water issuing from the crack was not running away down the hill but up it, leaping the steps that occasionally broke the slope with a salmon's zeal. The only witnesses unafraid of this mystery were the children, several of whom had wrested themselves from their parents' grip and were playing in the law-defying stream, some running in it, others sitting in the water to let it play over their legs. In the little shrieks they uttered, Jude was sure she heard a note of sexual pleasure.

"What is this?" Hoi-Polloi said, her tone more offended than astonished, as though the sight had been laid on as a personal affront to her.

"Why don't we follow it and find out?" Jude replied.

"Those children are going to drown," Hoi-Polloi observed, somewhat primly.

"In two inches of water? Don't be ridiculous."

With this, Jude set off, leaving Hoi-Polloi to follow if she so wished. She apparently did, because she once again fell into step behind Jude, her hiccups now abated, and they climbed in silence until, two hundred yards or more from where they'd first encountered the stream, a second appeared, this from another direction entirely and large enough to carry a light freight from the lower slopes. The bulk of the cargo was debris—items of clothing, a few drowned graveolents, some slices of burned bread—but among this trash were objects clearly set upon the stream to be carried wherever it was going: boat missives of carefully folded paper; small wreaths of woven grass, set with tiny flowers; a doll laid on a little flood in a shroud of ribbons.

Jude plucked one of the paper boats out of the water and unfolded it. The writing inside was smeared but legible.

Tishalulle, the letter read. My name is Cimarra Sakeo. 1 send this prayer for my mother and for my father, and for my brother, Boem, who is dead. I have seen you in dreams, Tishalulle, and know you are good. You are in my heart. Please be also in the hearts of my mother and father, and give them your comfort.

Jude passed the letter over to Hoi-Polloi, her gaze following the course of the married streams.

"Who's Tishalulle?" she asked.

Hoi-Polloi didn't reply. Jude glanced around at her, to find that the girl was staring up the hill.

"Tishalulli?" Jude said again.

"She's a Goddess," Hoi-Polloi replied, her voice lowered although there was nobody within earshot. She dropped the letter onto the ground as she spoke, but Jude stooped to pick it up.

"We should be careful of people's prayers," she said, refolding the boat and letting it return to its voyage.

"She'll never get it," Hoi-Polloi said. "She doesn't exist."

"Yet you refuse to say her name out loud."

"We're not supposed to name any of the Goddesses. Poppa taught us that. It's forbidden."

"There are others, then?"

"Oh, yes. There's the sisters of the Delta. And Poppa said there's even one called Jokalaylau, who lived in the mountains."

"Where does Tishalulle come from?"

"The Cradle of Chzercemit, I think. I'm not sure."

"The Cradle of what?"

"It's a lake in the Third Dominion."

This time, Jude knew she was smiling. "Rivers, snows, and lakes," she said, going down on her haunches beside the stream and putting her fingers into it. "They've come in the waters, Hoi-Polloi."

"Who have?"

The stream was cool and played against Jude's fingers, leaping up against her palm. "Don't be obtuse," she said. "The Goddesses. They're here."

"That's impossible. Even if they still existed—and Poppa told me they don't—why would they come here?"

Jude lifted a cupped handful of water to her lips and supped. It tasted sweet. "Perhaps somebody called them," she said. She looked at Hoi-Polloi, whose face was still registering her distaste at what Jude had just done.

"Somebody up there?" the girl said.

"Well, it takes a lot of effort to climb a hill," Jude said. "Especially for water. It's not heading up there because it likes the view. Somebody's pulling it. And if we go with it, sooner or later—"

"I don't think we should do that," Hoi-Polloi replied.

"It's not just the water that's being called," Jude said. "We are too. Can't you feel it?"