Алан Дин Фостер - To the Vanishing Point

"What’s goin' on back there? Where’s Burnfingers?"

Flucca piped up from his seat halfway back. "Working, I think. In the bedroom."

"Working on what?" Alicia’s nose wrinkled as she inhaled the acrid odor. "Smells like something’s burning."

"Ask him what he’s doing," Frank snapped.

Flucca slid off his seat and headed rearward. The door opened slightly at his call. Frank could see him whispering to Burnfingers. After a couple of minutes the door shut and Flucca came forward.

"Some kind of ceremony he’s into. Says he can’t be disturbed. He’s not burning anything up."

"Well, if he’s not doing anything dangerous then I guess it’s okay," Alicia said dubiously. Frank grunted. If Burnfingers was up to something peculiar they could hardly stop him by force.

The stink from the back grew worse as they climbed the gently sloping, rapidly narrowing valley. Once Wendy tried to peek in on Burnfingers, only to discover that he’d locked the door from the other side. Frank wasn’t thrilled with all the secrecy. What did they know, really know, about Burnfingers Begay, anyway? He’d confessed to madness. Was he going to try and prove it somehow?

He tried to concentrate on the road and ignore whatever was happening in his bedroom. It wasn’t difficult, given the congeniality of the surroundings. Exotic blooms and brilliantly hued growths of every description crowded close around the streambed. Orchids hung from trees and insects darted in and out of trumpet-shaped blossoms the color of children’s laughter. Vines wore coats of tiny purple flowers. In its way the valley was the exact antithesis of the first alternate reality they’d stumbled into. Instead of fire and brimstone they drove past crimson and yellow blooms.

Wendy spoke up excitedly. "Look, Mom: hummingbirds!"

Frank took his eye off their course long enough to spot the tiny, metallic-hued creatures as they darted among the leaves and branches like winged crystals. In a short while they were enveloped by them. It was like driving through a giant beehive, so sonorous was the beating of thousands of wings. He’d never heard of hummingbirds living in dense flocks.

But as the little fliers drew near it wasn’t their myriad colors that provoked murmurs of awe from the occupants of the motor home. That was reserved for the ones who rode them.

They were people, or human, anyway. Though little larger than a thumbnail, each was perfectly formed in every detail. They clung tight to hummingbird reins and secured their feet in hummingbird stirrups. A few carried harps and other miniature musical instruments. Frank wondered how they could hear them over the beat of so many wings. They were almost too tiny to think of as little people. He could see them talking to one another in voices that were less than squeaks.

It took him a moment to realize that they weren’t talking. They were singing, and Mouse was singing with them. She’d opened a window and her face was against the screen. He could see her lips move but, strain as he might, could not overhear a single word.

Only when she straightened and rejoined them did Alicia ask the question. "Who are they? They’re precious!"

"They wouldn’t think so." Dozens of hummers and riders were darting back and forth in front of the glass. "This is their home. They live on the tip of the Vanishing Point. We’re related a little, because they, too, are musicians. For them a ballad lasts only seconds, a cantata a few minutes, an epic less than one of your hours. They’ve sung like that since the beginning of time. They cannot share with others because their music is as intense as their lives. Too much for people like us to handle." She turned and gestured back the way they’d come, back down the streambed.

"The other inhabitants of this land suspect their existence and have told tales about them for centuries. Most people do not believe in the tiny ones, which suits them well. They like their valley the way it is. Visitors, even friendly ones, would despoil it and interfere with the music."

"What land are you talking about? Where are we, anyway? Besides close to the Vanishing Point, I mean."

"What lies behind us no longer matters. All that matters is what lies ahead. Have a care from now on for what exists beyond reality." She lowered her voice. "The crucial time approaches. We must be careful lest this changes, too."

"This?" Alicia was all but nose-to-nose with a dozen hummers and their exquisite, perfectly formed riders. They hovered outside her window, easily keeping pace with the motor home. "This couldn’t change. This is too beautiful."

"It is exactly that, which is why so few people have seen it. But there are no absolutes in the cosmos, Alicia. Truth and Beauty exist because people invent them. When a tree falls in the forest it makes a sound whether anyone is present to hear it or not, but it is not beautiful unless someone is there to look upon it."

Frank tried to drive around a good-sized rock, failed and winced as a tire kicked it up under the chassis. "Just so long as you’re right about us being close. I’m tired of ending up on highways to nowhere."

Mouse nodded ahead. "We are almost there. Thanks to you, Frank Sonderberg, I think everything is going to be all right."

He glanced back toward the rear bedroom. "If Charlie doesn’t burn us down or blow us up first."

"He’s talking to his yeibichais."

"What?"

"His spirits, his gods. I’ve known for some time he’s not alone back there. They’re all working on something together. He doesn’t want you back there because he knows you couldn’t handle what you might see. I gather it’s a very sensitive business."

"So you don’t know what he’s up to, either?"

She shook her head. "I trust Burnfingers Begay. He’s an unusual man, besides being a Traveler."

It was harder than ever for Frank to keep his mind on his driving. "Hardly enough room back there for two people, let alone a bunch of gods."

"There are large gods and small gods, and the proportion of them has nothing at all to do with physical size. I think Burnfingers’s gods are very big indeed."

The canyon walls closed in around them until for the second time that day there was barely enough room for the motor home to pass between them. The narrow passage was suffused with an eerie, slightly orange sunlight. Vines and orchids, ferns and palms vanished, leaving only the cold stone. Frank edged the motor home forward, finding he missed the comforting hum of the birds and their riders. This was a place where a song was needed, even one he couldn’t hear.

There was a sharp spang as the sideview mirror on the passenger side was snapped off by protruding rock. Frank cursed, corrected imperceptibly to the left. Alicia rose to put a comforting arm around her daughter, who didn’t like enclosed places.

If they wedged themselves in here, Frank told himself as he sweated the drive, they’d never be able to back up.

Overhead, the walls of the canyon towered hundreds, maybe thousands of feet toward the sky. Then suddenly they opened up, parting, literally falling away on both sides. Frank breathed a sigh of relief as they rolled out onto a wide, flat plateau covered with bright green grass and inch-wide yellow flowers. He decided the latter were close cousins to dandelions.

"Stop," Mouse quietly instructed him. "Stop here."

Frank put the motor home in park, turned to look back at the cleft from which they’d emerged. Surely it was far too narrow to have passed the Winnebago. At the far end of the slit of a canyon the light was faint and hazy. It was like looking toward another world.

"This is it," Mouse was saying. "We’ve done it. We’re here." She strode past Wendy and her mother to open the door. Frank hastened to follow.