This is apparently a dream I had on 11/27/2007. After waking, I immediately wrote it down. I have included the entirety here, without changes.
Once a terror
to the civilized world, determined to reap in power from all corners for her
own pleasure and unkind purposes, Ursula Shal'ingra now stood alone -- or,
rather, staggered on her feet, barely able to stay upright. She didn't
have more than a minute or two to live, and she knew it -- and, just as
importantly, he
knew it, the one who stood just across from her, not with her, but watching, to
make sure she was wholly defeated and died as she should.
He didn't particularly want her to die; he had just wanted her to stop, and
there was something of pity in his eyes, now that the fire of fury had
faded. But he didn't come forward to save her; she hadn't expected him
to, not after what she had done. Even if he had offered, Ursula would never
have accepted, not knowing the alternative.
And not
knowing what she knew about last possibilities, a last ability that even he
knew nothing about.
She smiled.
"What are
you thinking?" he asked.
"I am
thinking," she replied, her smile growing, "that I know something you
don't know. And that in this, not even you can stop me."
"What are
you doing?" he was alarmed now, and started forward -- as if that would
help him! "Listen to me, Ursula, please -- you're done here!
Just let it end!"
"What do
you think I'm going to do? Blow up the world as a last stand?
Unleash a plague the likes of with these pathetic people have never seen?
How would I do that?"
"Tell me
what you're doing!"
The smile
broke into a laugh as a rush of emotion surged through Ursula, even as
tears streamed down her face. She could feel everything fading, moving
away. But he had defeated her, so she would give him one last hint:
"Look for me in the Forgotten Place," she gasped in between laughs
and then crumpled, the last of her breath leaving her, and was dead.
The lone man
stood and looked down at the corpse, no more powerful or beautiful or memorable
than any other corpse, then leaned down and closed the eyes. "What
did you do?" he whispered to it, and then turned and strode swiftly out of
the hall, his heels clicking delicately on the marble floor and echoing
hollowly about the facades and pillars along the wall. He did not look
back, and when he left, there was no sound in the hall for a long time.
There was a
mysterious fire in the palace that night, and the ancient structure burned
until it was nothing more than a husk. No one had bothered to put out the
fire until it began to threaten to spread. As the people living near
said, they didn't know who had started the fire, but it was a good job, and the
site would be perfect for a new cemetery, because none but the dead would go
there.
-- -- -- -- -- --
Time passed, as it does, oblivious to the pain and joy it causes, and some of
the wounds that Ursula had scored were healed and faded with hardly a scar, and
other emergencies rose and fell and rose again, and life went on, and what had
happened was merely History.
But one man did not forget, and even as he traveled from one place to another
to help and heal and save, he kept his eyes open and searched and listened and
made careful inquiries about something known as the Forgotten Place. And
eventually, as Ursula had known he would, he found it.
While not the most
unlikely of places, the town of Mossag was not exactly exciting. It was
home to about a thousand people and crouched humbly next to the sea, often cold
and windy but always with the lonely sort of stark beauty which can be so
frequently found in such places. The people of the town were of two
sorts: those who kept the town going -- the merchants and fishermen and
shopkeepers, a hard-working, steady bunch with no imagination and no romantic
notions; the other sorts were precisely the opposite -- poets and writers and
historians and musicians who came to the out-of-the-way Mossag for peace and
inspiration as they toiled. No one came to this place for vacation or
built houses along the sea for pleasure -- or if they did, they abandoned those
houses within a few days and never ventured back. This was not a place
for leisure or careless pleasures or parties.
He walked along
the beach, the wind and waves so loud against his ears that any lesser sounds
emanating from the sounds were blanked out as thoroughly as if they had never
existed at all. There was no else on the beach, and therefore no one to
see him take a slender vial of clear liquid out of his pocket as he reached the
edge of the water. Not bothering to shed even his boots or the heavy coat
which protected him from the wind, the man walked out into the waves, carefully
bracing himself so that he was not knocked over, and swam out until his feet no
longer touched the sand and he bobbed helplessly in the waves, his head barely
above water, and completely numb from cold. It was a wonder that he
hadn't already been pulled until and drowned; he must have been amazingly
strong swimmer. Still, even he couldn't possibly last much longer.
Carefully holding the vial above water, the man uncorked it and swallowed the
contents in one gulp before careful replacing the vial in his coat pocket and
letting the waves push him down.
Under the water, the waves were much less violent, and the spray didn't hurt
his eyes when he opened them to look around. There wasn't much to see as
yet; sand, some small, distant creatures, shells. Glancing all about him
to make sure he was alone, he carefully inhaled, slowly, filling his lungs with
oxygen even as his nose sucked in water. A very strange feeling, he
decided, but not an entirely bad one. As long as he breathed long and
slow breaths, and didn't descend into greater pressure too quickly, he
should be fine.
Slowly
circling down – and sorting out his twisted coat as he went – he continued to
concentrate on his breathing. The vial’s
liquid had not been to allow him to breathe but to warm him, and it would only last a few hours, and was
so strong that if he had been anything but freezing when he had taken it, he
would have ended up as so much burnt roast.
The breathing underwater . . . that
was just a knack. Anyone could do that,
so long as he knew how.
He swam steadily away from shore and down until he had reached the sand again,
still curiously devoid of life although the water around him held the
occasional fish, little more dared venture in these parts. And he was
here to find out why.
It had been just a hint, the story which had lead him here. The native
people weren't ones for telling stories, but their fishermen had fallen upon
hard times these last two decades, as if the fish were afraid to come in these
parts. Conversely, sharks were uncommonly common and it was dangerous for
anyone to enter the water within two miles of the town. People had
disappeared, children and adults alike, and very, very few had made it
back. Daniel Magram's boy had returned, had been rescued by his
uncle. But the uncle had drowned, and the boy . . . well, there was
always a boy like that, wherever you went. Thirty years old, and he
hadn't spoken a word for fourteen years. And Lisa Hawkin had come back,
only to run away at sixteen and marry a traveling salesman and never
return. Things happened.
He recognized the touch.
He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, only that it would be obvious
when he found it, as such things so often are.
It was getting darker now, as the day moved into late afternoon and he swam
deeper into the sea, but even so, the black rectangle caught and held his eye
and he moved swiftly towards it, still breathing in the careful, steady way
that allowed him to stay alive down here. It wasn't long before he had
drawn level with the spot and could see it clearly. It was very odd
indeed: in the sand a black triangle fifteen inches by twenty. It was a
hole -- or not solid -- but the hole seemed to lead to nothing; it was a
rectangle of nothing.
Or, more likely, it just looked like one. He reached back in his coat and
pulled out the vial which he floated gently in the direction of the hole so
that it slowly sunk through.
Nothing happened for several minutes and then the vial was pushed back up
through with a note attached to it on peculiar, brown paper. Come in, the note
said. You will not be
harmed. I have been waiting. -- U.S'i
Come in. Well, he remembered Ursula, didn't he? A note was a
contract and could not be broken, but that didn't mean that it didn't have a
trick behind it. And much as he didn't like the idea of his legs sticking
out for any shark to come by and snack on, it was better than leaving his luck
to Ursula. Lying on the sand -- or floating as close as he could to it --
he touched the black rectangle with two fingers and the reached through and
gripped the rock behind to steady himself as he pulled his head and shoulders
down into the hole. This is what he saw:
The blackness
was no thicker than light and gave way to a greyish cavern about twenty feet
deep which spread out as it went so, although the top was no bigger than the
rectangle, the base diameter was about ten feet. Creatures lined the sides, far too large to
fit in the tiny spaces they inhabited, although they did so without apparent
difficulty, and some seemed to have even become part of the rock as the years
passed – far more, apparently, than had passed elsewhere. But with Ursula, that wasn’t really surprising,
nor were the strange mutations which almost all the creatures seemed to have
suffered; very few now bore any resemblance to their original state, human or
non. There were two exceptions to this:
one was Ursula herself, the other a girl of eleven or twelve dressed in attire
that hadn’t been in fashion for more than a century, even in such a put-away
place as Mossag who looked up at him with wide, curious eyes.
“Hello,
Ursula,” the man said; “you’re looking transparent today.” And she was.
A shadow – ah, ha – of her former self, Ursula sat wraithlike on a
twisted stone creation at the very base of the cavern, so stubbornly rooted to
it that it was doubtful she could
leave it.
“Pleased to
see me again?”
“Enlightened. I had so
wondered what you meant by your last words.
Very mysterious, I must say.
‘Forgotten Place.’ Clever.”
“I told you
that you couldn’t stop me. Look at you –
you don’t even dare enter my domain!”
“No, I
don’t. Putting myself in your power,
being forever trapped here, no doubt – not my idea of fun.”
Ursula
laughed. “As I said, clever. You always were clever. You know the laws of this place, then?”
He shook his
head: “No. Would you care to tell me?”
Ursula
considered this carefully for a moment.
“I will tell you the answer to your question in return.”
“For?”
“I don’t
suppose you would accept total submission and slavery to me? No?
Very well. Tell me about the
sunlight above, then.”
He stared at
her for a moment, and narrowed his eyes, thinking. “You must have been down here a very long
time.” He watched her reaction
carefully. “Very well, I accept your
bargain. This is what I tell you about
the sunlight above: the day is a cold, crisp one with clouds obscuring much of
the sky, but even the shadows have some warmth and when one finds a spot where
they break and turns one’s face to the sky, a tingling warm flush hits one’s
face and a freshness touches the nose with a pure warmth. Bright light strikes the eyes, whitish yellow
light filtered through many levels of cloud and air and atmosphere, but it too
burns where it hits, a clean, almost pleasant burning. The light is never just light but heals and
greets and is beautiful and of a kind unlike another. It is uplifting and cheerful and washes away
pains, if only one lets it, and is thing foreign to anything of this world –
for it is not of this world, but travels far to get here. This is the sun today and the sunlight above
us now.”
A curious
change had flowed over Ursula as he spoke, an almost tangible wistfulness which
cooled the water and tingled the arms and for a moment, it almost looked like
sunlight struck her upturned face. The
effect faded with his words, but not quite all of the peace left Ursula’s
face. She nodded at him.
“Yes,” she
said; “that is what it is like. And now
I will fulfill my part. Here are the
rules: none who come in may leave unassisted.
Another may pull they out from the outside so long as they themselves do
not enter fully, but only within twenty-four hours. After twenty-four hours here, none may leave
without my permission as per the balance of power.”
“And you?”
“I do not
leave.”
“And she?” he
looked directly at the little girl crouched by Ursula’s side.
“This? This is Jane.
Do you like her? You can’t have
her; she’s been here with me far too long.
Say hello, Jane.”
“Hello, sir.”
“Hello,
Jane. Do you like it down here?”
Jane turned
her gaze downward but did not speak again.
“Don’t even
try it,” Ursula warned. “She’s mine and
you know it. This is my domain – my demesne – and my rules. She is mine.
You see? You cannot kill me after
all. You dare not even enter.”
“Yes,” he
agreed. “You’re right. I can’t touch you, not in here. But I’ll remember.”
“I’m sure you
will.” Ursula laughed at him and
continued laughing even when he had withdrawn entirely from the cavern and swum
away. “I’ve won.”
But she
hadn’t, not really; it was only a matter of time.
-- -- -- -- --
--
The next time
the man visited Mossag was nearly two years later, and the town was an uproar
of fear and worry and hopelessness. When
he inquired why, the answer was simple: a girl had gone missing, one Sally Lee. She was six years old and had last been seen
fifteen hours ago, but had a nasty tendency of homing in on the sea. And worse, she had been seen to develop the
early stages of under-water breathing and might decide to try it out. . . .
He had more
than a nasty suspicion; he had a nasty almost-certainty. “Fifteen hours? Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m
sure! Do you think anybody doesn’t know
the story by now?”
He
shrugged. “I just asked because I think
I might be able to get her back.” At the
man’s dubious look: “No promises. But I,
too, have a certain talent for breathing underwater and believe I know where
Sally went. But I need a few things if I
am to bring her back – and quickly; there isn’t much time.” The other looked
him over suspiciously for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll take you to the Lees and they can
decide. Come along, then.”
He was lead to
the Lee cottage and left there to deal with the family alone, but he didn’t
really mind. He had far too much
practice with this sort of thing and knew how to go about it – and a child’s
safety was far more important than his personal discomfort. He knocked without hesitating and smiled at
the dumpy blond woman whose otherwise pleasant face was strained into worry
lines. “Good morning,” he greeted her. “I think I might be able to find your
daughter, and soon – but there are a couple of things I need first, to bring
her back safely. May I come in?”
Forty-five
long minutes later, several hundred townsfolk were crowded on the narrow beach,
shivering together against the wind, to watch the crazy man walk into the sea
in the middle of winter with only two vials of clear liquid to protect him. The man ignored them, except to politely
refuse any offers to hold his coat, and waded into the sea, just as he had done
two years previously. He had also
refused any offers of help, especially in the form of alcohol, claiming that it
only gave the illusion of warming one while it did the opposite. No one had really believed him, but he had
been steady.
Now the
townsfolk watched, but not for very long.
The stranger was as good as dead, walking into the sea like that. Brave, though. He would be toasted later in the local pub
and no doubt talked about in fireside stories for a month or two. . . .
Unless he came
back, of course. With the Lee girl. But that was hardly likely, even for
mysterious travelers, and he hadn’t looked like a wizard.
Meanwhile, the
man was swimming to where he remembered the black rectangle of nothing to
be. The water currents pushed him off
course a bit, but even so, he found the place with minimum of fuss. He hesitated only a moment – would Ursula
know he was here? – before pushing his head down into the cavern.
There was no
time for caution; quite the opposite, when Ursula had the balance of power in
her own demesne. Almost before she had
turned her head up to see who had disturbed the water, he had reached down and
grabbed the arm of a young girl with her mother’s golden curls, and pulled her
out into the freezing ocean.
“Sally,” he
said in a calming tone, holding her struggling – just as she had been taught to
do, if ever a strange man grabbed her.
“Sally Lee, listen to me! You
need to drink this, all right? Or else
you’ll freeze to death. And keep
breathing, slowly. You know how, Sally.
Sally opened
her mouth to answer and he took the opportunity to uncork the vial and, his
finger keeping the contents inside when in the open water, shove it in her
mouth and force her to swallow. When he
took his hand away, Sally opened her mouth again, this time to scream, but
before she had even started, she blinked and the open mouth expression turned
into one of surprise. “I’m warm,” she
said – or as close she could, underwater.
It had quite a few more “glugs” in it, but wasn’t incomprehensible. It was a knack.
“Yes. Now, why don’t we swim back to see your
parents? They’re very worried about you,
Sally.”
“All right,”
Sally agreed, although she ended up clinging to him far more than swimming on
her own, and was falling asleep in his arms by the time they reached the beach.
Little more
than twenty minutes had passed when they arrived, and at least half the
townsfolk were still there – gaping in amazement, save for the thankful parents
who rushed up to him gushing their gratitude.
“Take good
care of her,” he told them. “Your
daughter has a great deal of talent, and should be trained.”
Trained? But by whom?
“I’ll speak to
you more later, but I have some unfinished business – the reason why I came
back to Mossag in the first place.
Please excuse me.” And, to the
shock of all present, he turned and walked back into the sea and disappeared
beneath the waves.
“I should have
known,” Ursula snarled, crossing her withered arms. “Why is it always you? Don’t you have anything better to do than
come down and bother me? I’m not doing
much harm here – don’t you have bigger fish to fry?”
“Yes,” he
answered honestly. “That’s why I came
back. I need to borrow Jane.”
Ursula stared
at him incredulously. “You think I’m
going to do you a favor after you steal my property? I’ve thought you many things, but never a
fool.”
“She wasn’t
yours; by your own rules you had no claim on her for another eight hours. In any case, it’s not a favor I’m asking you
for. My quest benefits you as much as it
does me.”
“Oh?”
“Do you
remember Ossic Ringe?”
“So?”
“So he’s back,
and looking for revenge – against you as much as me.”
Ursula frowned
and then, in a habit of days long passed, flipped her hair and shook her
head. “I’m not helping.”
“But he hates you!”
“Lots of
people hate me. Sometimes I’ve even
thought you did. But he can’t touch me
in here, and I have no plans to leave.
In any case, I quite fancy the idea of him killing you. Poetic justice, you might say.”
“Ossic’s work
isn’t exactly what I would call poetry.”
Ursula
shrugged. “It was creative, though, you
have to admit that. Very clever.”
“If you like
that sort of thing.”
Ursula grinned
at him – or at least, showed her teeth.
“Well, I’m not helping you. And
you can’t have Jane.”
“I just want
to borrow her. What do you think, Jane?”
he turned to the girl, who now must have been about fourteen years old, and
looked surprisingly healthy. “A little
break, get to see some of the world?”
“She can’t go
without my permission, and I’m not giving it.”
“It does sound
interesting,” Jane said hesitantly, “but there would have to be a time limit,
wouldn’t there? And an equal trade?”
“I see you’ve
been training her,” the man told Ursula wryly, looking Jane over
thoughtfully. “An equal trade? What do you think, Ursula? What is worth three weeks deprived of Jane
worth to you?”
“Come down
here, and I’ll whisper it to you.”
“Very
funny.” He snorted. “It would be valuable to her education,” he
offered. “Another point of view, if you
will.”
“You fool –
you can’t mean that you would teach her during that time? Teach her the kind of things I want her to
know?”
“The kind of
thing that would be useful.”
“Propaganda?”
“Haven’t you
conditioned her against that kind of thing, yet?”
Ursula
beckoned Jane close and spoke softly to her for several minutes before turning
and looking up at him. “Do you agree to
return her within fifteen days?”
“Fifteen! Not twenty-one?”
“I prefer
fifteen. Do you agree?”
He barely
hesitated: “I agree.” The binding of the
agreement settled about his temples loosely but weightily and he saw Ursula
flinch slightly under the same. “Well,”
he said when the agreement was in line, “not to stay and chat. Come along, Jane. You won’t need anything.”
“I don’t have
anything,” she informed him tartly, and swam up far enough that he could grasp
her hand and pull her up.
“Keep her safe
and remember – fifteen days,” Ursula reminded him one last time. He nodded and disappeared back outside, Jane
following closely.
It was close,
but fifteen days later, Jane arrived back at the Forgotten Place. She looked dubiously at it and then back at
her companion. “I don’t want to go in,”
she told him.
“I must honor
the agreement; you know that.”
She
nodded. “Yes, I do know. But I don’t like it. Couldn’t you just pull me out again after I
go in?”
“You have been
there more than twenty-four hours.
There’s nothing I can do . . .” he trailed off thoughtfully. “Although . . . no. Go back for now. But I’ll come back to visit, all right? I promise.”
“All right,”
Jane whispered, then shot him a sharp look.
“I’ll hold you to that. And no
returning in fifty years. Visit soon.”
“When I
can. There are many things that need
doing.”
“I’m sure
there are.” Jane sighed and, without a
backward glance, dove down into the Forgotten Place.
The man
watched her go and returned to the town.
He quite liked the town. If ever
he were to settle down, this would be a nice place. Maybe some day, when he was too old to do
anything but sit and write his memoirs . . . but no; he would never live that
long. Ossic had been taken care of, but
there were always plenty more who would kill him as soon as he slipped up, if
not before. He couldn’t afford to settle
down – or, at least, not for more than a week or two before his death. Still.
He stayed near
Mossag, though, and trained little Sally when he could, and occasionally
visited Jane who became more and less like Ursula the longer she stayed. And often as he visited, he couldn’t help
notice one very important fact: the sharks were around more and more these
days, so much so that it became very dangerous for him to swim down to the
Forgotten Place.
And then he
had an idea – and what an idea it was.
‘Balance of power,’ Ursula had said.
She had more power than anyone there, but by a balance of numbers . . .
And that was
how he found himself treading water next to the Forgotten Place, dangling a raw
steak over the hole, baiting shark after shark to dive in until there were none
left above (except one rather useful one who seemed oddly intelligent and had
wisely fled to less dangerous parts).
Then he waited twenty four hours and returned to stick his head into the
cavern.
“Hello,
Ursula,” he said.
“You!” she
shrieked at him, and as she did, the sharks surrounding her, carefully kept at
bay, began thrashing and upsetting their invisible bonds. “You distracted me!” she gasped in horror. “You’ve given control to the sharks – aah!”
one of them snapped at her.
“Please,”
Jane, who was by this time nineteen, begged.
“Please, Ursula, they’ll kill us!
We need to leave! You’re
permission – we can get out and they all the sharks will be stuck down here!”
“I can’t
leave; you know that!”
“Yes you can –
please!”
“I can help,”
he offered, “and give you twenty-four hours head start to free Jane.”
Ursula glared
at him. “Did you plan this? The two of you?”
“No,” he
answered frankly. “Just me. But I think it was a rather good idea.”
“I –” but
there was no time for Ursula to think it over or spin it her way. “Twenty-four hours! Now move, girl!”
“Was that
wise?” Jane asked afterwards, when they had swum to shore. “Letting her go free like that? Won’t she just cause trouble again—and try to
get back at you?”
“Sure,” he
agreed; “along with everyone else. But
she’s weak for now and . . . well, what’s one more enemy? It’ll be all right.”
“Oh.” Then, “And what of me?”
“What do you
want?”
“I want to
stay with you. I could be useful –
Ursula really did teach me all those years; I know lots.”
“I already
have an apprentice.”
“Please!”
“Don’t you
have a home? And original home?”
Jane shook her
head. “I’m an orphan – or so I’ve been
told. Anyway, Ursula took me out of my
time; I can’t go back.”
He looked
carefully at her.
“I could help
with Ursula,” Jane offered, desperately.
“No. Not if she was like a mother to you. But we’ll see.”
“Is that a
‘yes’?”
“We’ll
see. That is all.”
The important
thing was, to never get too grounded. A
young apprentice, an older hang-along?
Those two would do well together, learning from each other. And Ursula was loose again and so many
others. When evening came and his coat
had dried enough, he took it up again and moved on, carefully lighting a fire
too close to the carpet before he closed the door behind him.
