C. E. Murphy - No Dominion - A Garrison Report

“Breathless!” She put a hand over her chest, smiling. “But breathless from exertion, not coughing. I feel younger here. Is that usual?”

“The spirit worlds reflect our perceptions of ourselves.” Hes was still frowning at the sky. “We need to return. I have to do what I can to mitigate this creature’s escape.”

A beanstalk curled up outta the ground and stretched for the yellow sky.

All three of us stood there staring at it a minute. Annie rocked back on her heels to get a better look as it shot up toward through blue clouds an’ reached toward the low red sun. It wasn’t green itself, kinda yellowish an’ ugly, but nothing had the right colors down here anyway, and it looked healthy other than being the wrong color. When we couldn’t hardly see the top anymore, Annie said, “Am I right in believing that this journey is essentially…well, all about me?”

Hes, gaping like a fish outta water, snapped her mouth shut and nodded, but her gaze went right back to the beanstalk.

Annie, all business-like, dusted her hands together, said, “Well, then, I believe this should be taken as a hint,” and started climbing the beanstalk. Hes and me scrambled after her. The ground fell away faster than it shoulda, partly ‘cause the beanstalk was still growing and partly ‘cause the world and distances were all stretched outta proportion. Then we broke through the sky and for half a second I got a glimpse of our world, but we were just passing through. We busted through that sky, too, straight into a place where the air was thinner an’ the sky a lighter shade of blue.

Cold wind wanted to knock us off the beanstalk, but Annie kept climbing, even when we shot past mountaintops. After what felt like about a day, we got to the top of the stalk, where it curled up and under an’ all around, with broad leaves big enough to hold us all. When Hes and me caught up, Annie was already sitting on one, knees tucked up and arms around ‘em as she looked out over the whole wide forever.

I guessed if the Lower World’s horizons were too close, the Upper World’s were too far away. It all bent out around us like we were on some other planet, somewhere bigger’n Earth and twice as old. The beanstalk had outgrown the mountains, an’ the mountains were taller than sense could make ‘em. There wasn’t much besides mountains poking up through thin clouds. There was blue below us, way below, but it looked like sky, not like water. Light didn’t bounce off it, just got softer the further away it fell. In some places the mountains just stopped, falling away into cliffs that disappeared into mist, too, and no matter which way I looked the sky was cool thin blue.

Way off in the distance there were things riding the updrafts. Birds, I guessed, though I couldn’t figure the size of ‘em if they were visible from so far away in a world this big. Joanne had seen a thunderbird here, even brought it back to the Middle World with her, but I’d been in the hospital and hadn’t seen the damned thing. She’d said it was big, though. Big enough to throw her around, and she wasn’t no featherweight.

A rush of bugs came up the beanstalk, about a thousand walking sticks that took my mind right off the birds. If they were hungry the beanstalk was gonna fall to ‘em, but they didn’t look interested. Instead they scrambled over Annie, who insteada shrieking like I expected, put her arms out and let ‘em run over her. They just about buried her, lining up side by side on her arms and in her hair, all of ‘em trying to get a look into her eyes. She just waited, until finally I got the idea they didn’t find what they were looking for, and left her alone.

Surprising thing was, they came to me. Did the same thing, too, climbed all over and stared at me until I started shivering. Then they all left but one, and it sat on my shoulder. Took me a minute to realize maybe that made sense, ‘cause Jo’s last name, her real last name, the one she didn’t use, was Walkingstick, not Walker. I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from knocking the bug away, and took a look at Hester. She was big-eyed and looking as sweet as I’d seen her yet, like maybe there was some little bit of kid at Christmas left in her after all. I wanted to know what the devil was happening, but I was kinda afraid to ask.

The wind started taking on shapes, like clouds blowing in and making figures in the sky. I caught glimpses the same way I had in Annie’s spirit quest: a whole herd of horses came running at us, parting around Annie and thundering on across the sky. They scared up a flock of fat birds ‘bout the size of chickens, their wings clattering as they flew off. Some other critters were more distant, harder to name, but I saw the one that finally came to her clear as day. A big fella, a white-tailed stag that walked outta the sky as just a few wisps of cloud an’ walked right into Annie and never came out again. Took me that long to figure out we were on another spirit quest after all. I shot a look at my shoulder. The walking stick was gone.

“All right.” Annie’s voice was real loud and clear, a shock after hearing nothin but the wind for so long. She got up, the beanstalk leaf bobbing with her weight, and she flung her arms wide. “Come and get me, you son of a bitch.”

The goddamned sickness, the first dark thing I’d seen up there in the Upper World, came outta nowhere and slammed back into Annie’s chest.

We woke up in the sauna, Annie coughing and unable to get a breath of the hot air. I picked her up and took her out in a couple long steps, crouching outside in the cool air and never letting go while she coughed herself ragged. Hester came out behind us, so worried I could feel it rattling off her. The sky had turned to twilight while we were inside, an’ the last light slipped away before Annie could breathe again. She turned her face against my chest an’ said, real quiet, “If you could come back tomorrow, Miss Jones? I’m very tired now, and I suppose we still have to try to find who set this illness on me.”

“I’ll come around ten,” Hester promised, an’ left without going back through the house. I picked Annie up again and brought her inside, put her on the couch, and went to make tea.

When I came back into the living room she was on her feet, looking out the window at the dark lawn. “Annie? You all right, sweetheart?”

“I spent my adult life watching people deny the truth.” Her reflection was in the windows, faint ‘cause there weren’t many lights on inside. Made her look like a ghost, already fading. I started toward her an’ she shook her head, almost a shiver, like saying stay away . I guessed a fellow could take offense, but I’d been married to the lady a long time. It just meant she was thinking aloud, not hardly talking to me at all, and that if I got too close she’d start feeling self-conscious and clam up. I sat down, listening insteada crowding.

“Mostly about illness, of course,” she said. “Promising themselves or each other that this wasn’t it, this sickness wasn’t going to finish them off. Promising if they got out of there, they would change their lives for the better. A few of them were right, even when they were lying to begin with. They beat the odds, and walked out. Some of them even went on and changed their lives, or other peoples’ lives, for the better. Not many, though. But that isn’t the point.

“The point is I’ve been thinking about that ever since I started feeling poorly. About how people deny the truth that’s in front of them. I suppose I’d seen a lot of it by the time we got married, and by the time I caught the fever I…well, I suppose I believed in what I saw more than in what I thought I knew. And I accepted that. I started believing there was a kind of magic in the world. I never questioned it again, which I suppose made a difference in my life. But now I’m standing here with an illness growing inside me, something that someone apparently chose to plant in me, and I can’t help but wonder, Gary. What would have happened if I had denied it all in the first place? Would this thing not have come into me? If I had refused the world it represents, would it have lost interest? You say your future flashes suggest I’m a target because you love me, but that makes me quite the helpless victim, and I dare anyone to call me that to my face.”