Lawrence Schoen - Barsk - The Elephants' Graveyard

Jorl sat, closed his eyes, surrounding himself in darkness as he waited for his perceptions to open. His left ear tingled and he smelled spiralmint. The roiling gold that was his own nefshons appeared to him first, and he willed away his awareness of them. Rather than create the setting of his study where he usually met with Fant and others, he had a sudden urge to move the venue to a re-creation of the polar base, complete with smoldering ash pit. Instead he crafted a duplicate of the simple cabin that contained his physical form. The sleeping platform appeared with him seated upon it. A desk and bench took shape against an adjacent wall. Doors formed where they needed to be but wouldn’t open to anything. Satisfied with the setting, he leaned back and cast his awareness out, grasping for the familiar feel of his friend’s nefshons. He found them nearer than ever before. As he pulled them closer still, Jorl saw another figure also coalesce. An elderly Eleph, Margda, the first Speaker of all, sat next to him in the same position where in the real world the Lutr whose body she had somehow suborned also sat.

Before he could say a word to her, Arlo began to take form directly in front of them.

PIZLO’Seyes had stopped working right. Everything kept fading in and out of focus and had a shimmering nimbus to it. Also, his head wouldn’t stop pounding, like the drum he’d once made from a hollow log he’d found in the Shadow Dwell — which didn’t make sense because no one was beating on it, were they? His stomach felt funny, not like when he hadn’t eaten in too long, worse than that.

He remembered falling, startled off his perch in the closet when that tall man with the horns and musical voice had said Arlo’s name. Had he hit his head? Somehow he was back in the corridor, floating down the length of it, the lights in the ceiling turning on and welcoming him as he passed.

A raspy voice breathed on his ears from above. “Do not squirm, Little Prince. You might make me drop you, and I’ve no wish to see you injure yourself any further.”

He craned his head around and saw a sleek furred face over him, part of a rounded head that vanished into layers of dark cloth.

“Prince? Are you talking to me?”

The face smiled. Words followed. “Do you see anyone else for me to talk to?”

Pizlo swung his head around the other way. Despite his vision problems, he scanned up and down the corridor before realizing the woman hadn’t expected him to answer. It was one of those kinds of questions.

“Sorry. Nobody but Jorl and Tolta ever talk to me. And most new people who see me pretend they don’t.” Despite the earlier admonition, he squirmed a bit, and discovered he wasn’t floating down the corridor — and thus neither was the woman. Rather, she was carrying him in her arms like he was a parcel too big to pack in a bag or carry on your back, which he had to admit he was. The woman didn’t seem like she was going to say anything else, but before he could ask why she was carrying him she breathed out another question.

“If the Fant treat their children this way, it is a wonder any of you grow up to produce another generation.”

Pizlo shrugged, “It’s not all kids. Just me. They don’t like me cuz I’m so different.”

The woman carrying him laughed. “That’s why most people don’t like Fant.”

The corridor came to a tee, branching off with paths to either side and a gate different, but similar, to the ones he had seen before, with a tiny room with a second gate on the other side, and then more corridors. The Sloth moved with an increased confidence and Pizlo wondered if they were still on the station or had crossed over to some other place that made her feel more at home. She stopped at a set of double-doors, but unlike those he’d found at the observation room they did not open at a touch. Instead she shifted him around and raised a hand and made several passes just above the surface of the door. It made him smile, and he imagined her holding an inkstick and writing a request to go inside.

When the doors opened, Pizlo saw a very different space, one that had multiple work stations and desks like he’d seen in Arlo’s old lab, with screens and panels, armatures and lights. There was a smaller room made entirely of glass in one corner, with several work tables and stools and holographic images floating just inside the walls. Off in another corner of the main room lay a pair of beds, raised very high off the floor, with queer-looking diagnostic tools hanging down from above. The woman took her time but eventually brought him to one of these and laid him down. It was surprisingly soft and he yawned.

“None of that, Little Prince. I need to make sure that the bump to your head is the worst of it before you can sleep. Tell me about yourself. What’s your name?”

Now that she wasn’t carrying him, Pizlo could see that she wore robes of dark cloth that shone with bits of glass or crystal here and there. She glittered like her clothes had tens of eyes that watched him from within the folds.

“My name is Pizlo,” he said. “No one’s ever asked me that before. You’re the first person I’ve gotten to tell. What’s yours?”

“I am called Druz. Your people call mine Brady.” One hand moved to a nearby console and with the other she gingerly pressed his trunk down so it did not block her instruments. As Pizlo watched, his face appeared on a display above her console, several times larger than life. A flurry of thin lines in red and green raced across the screen. Some made circles around his eyes, while others turned into strings of glyphs that he couldn’t read.

“Oh. You’re a Lox. I didn’t realize there were two kinds of Fant.”

“Sure. How many kinds of your people are there, Druz?”

“Two, actually, but we’re much more closely related than you and your kin. Ah, your pupils are fine, but according to my database your eyes shouldn’t be red like that.”

“That’s normal for me. I’m the only one on all of Keslo like this. I heard a man from Kelpry once who said it was the mark of evil.” He sniffled once and chewed his lip, then continued. “It … bothered that he was judging me like that, just on account of my eyes, and hadn’t even talked to me or gotten to know me at all.”

Druz continued adjusting the settings on her controls, letting her words drag out as she focused. “You are quite precocious, Little Prince, to be concerned about evaluations of morality at such a young age.”

“I’m six,” he said, his tone making it clear that he wasn’t that young.

She pushed away from the workstation and hovered over him again. “The concussion is minor, and there’s no reason to fear if you lose consciousness. You’ve dislocated your shoulder, and that’s an easy fix. I’d like to treat your hands, but I need to proceed carefully. Your friend, the other Fant, mentioned you had unusual physiology, and I’m seeing that. I need to run some tests. Can you lie here quietly while I work? Maybe you’ll even go to sleep.”

“I guess. I have a lot of stuff to sort through and I haven’t had a chance to do any of that yet.”

“Oh? What sort of stuff?”

“Things Telko told me earlier today.”

“Is Telko another Fant?”

Pizlo laughed and wriggled his trunk. Druz was so funny. “No, Telko’s my fourth moon.” And with that he closed his eyes.

EVERYtime Arlo had been summoned, he’d had his eyes closed when it started. One moment he didn’t exist, and then he did, becoming aware of his own body in a way that wasn’t at all like waking up. The first time, he had opened his eyes and with cold rationalism concluded that he had been summoned and must be dead. Then, and every time since, he endured a wave of regret over his suicide, swiftly followed by recrimination for its necessity.