Chapter 7: Way Down Deep
A train to La Mort.
You can't be a real Punk without notebooks and markers and graphite pencils. Said so in all the magazines. If you were real serious about changing the world, you had to start wrecking the world. It's how all great Punks find their calling.
Sadie Crane scribbled in their notebook. They turned those pages into art. Art that really spoke, really said something. Wild shorthand and sketches. World-devouring beasts, foxes with teeth big as skyscrapers, legions of bone warriors and wise old crones. Every sketch was a confession as much as it was fantasy. Every poem was a truth as much as it was story.
Thought: Arcadia doesn't feel like a place anymore. It's not a city in Ru Divine. It's a feeling. It's love and lust and revolution. Bitter. Dry and ashy. But under that, sweet.
It was past midnight. The three were packed like sardines into brown leather chairs. Outside, movement like great darting animals. Inside, fellow passengers snored their heads off.
"You sure we can do this, sunshine?" they asked.
Viola glanced her peepers out the window, entranced by passing landscapes awash in moon glow. She used to take train rides with her sisters and guardians, real long time ago. They visited those god-awful royalist monument things in Ashenelm. That place was sad sad. Old sad. Viola got picked on for making fun of the stupid monument thingies, told if she didn't like it she could stay on the train. But she hated the train, those howling transit beasts. Every time she got on one she was sure it was gonna crash. And what did you even do if the train crashed? Stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye? Die in a pileup of metal and bodies? No thank you.
"Not sure of anything," she admitted. "But I think we gotta."
Thought: She got so smart. She got so cowardly.
The aviator had been drop dead asleep all this time, but now ze jerked awake in hir leather throne and grabbed at the arms for balance. Nothing much to do but sleep. And get nasty looks from other passengers. Ze wasn't sure what that was about. Could it have something to do with the big THE HEADS OF ALL KINGS patch on the back of hir stolen faci coat? Could it be that? It might be that. Viola told hir not to wear that thing. There were fash fucks crawling all over the station. They'd been on high alert since the student protests in Ashenelm. De'afi had rolled hir eyes and told Viola to quit being the hugest goddamn baby.
Viola was daughter of not one or two but three faci officers who wore and pressed their jackets like Saints wore their vestments, but she bit her lip about this kinda stuff. It was no sense arguing with De'afi. And they came to no harm at the station.
"You think birds can hear music?" queried the aviator, half-inside a dream.
"Nah, don't think," the anarchist said back. "They ain't got ears, do they?"
"Don't that beetle," De'afi said.
"Beat all," Viola corrected, her eyes shut tight in frustration.
She felt vulnerable on the train. Their motorbikes were in the big car near the back, out of reach for a fast escape. If they had to run from faci officers, they better be quick. Better leave the bikes.
The anarchist fell asleep, head bowed over their notebook.
Thought: Every night you swallow more of that coal-dark. It won't stop coming. It fills your lungs like pitch and you drown in it. You spot the surface up above, swept in curtains of nothing. The fox sings, you don't know the song. You try to sing back, your lungs fill up a little more and your teeth chatter in the cold. If only you knew the song. If only you could hum the melody. But there's no song. The coal-dark fills your ears like thick fragrant tar. Abakris always said you'd die like this. If the world didn't choke it out of you, he'd do it himself. You shouldn't take things that don't belong to you, Sadie Crane. But nothing belongs to you. Nothing in this damn--
They awoke as if struck and their chest rocked with coughing. Cripes. Damn hell. Morning already? Cuz that didn't feel like they got any sleep.
"What in Creation?" the anarchist bleated indignantly.
The train had stopped.
Three people arrived in front of a house and barn, south end of La Mort. The motorbikes purred like mechanical kittens, freshly delivered from their exile.
They hadn't been stopped at the train station, even as they waited around for their bags and motorbikes to be unloaded. Sadie Crane spotted a dozen or so fash fucks, but they must have had better horses to beat. Or the station was too crowded.
"Damn, wish we had one of them locomotor things," De'afi commented. "Reckon we'd get around faster. And no trains or nothing."
"Those are from Milan and Suzette, right?" Viola asked. "The working cities? That's where they got the locomotors?"
"Think so," De'afi said back.
Thought: You saw a picture once. They look weird. Like they shouldn't be able to move.
Sadie Crane tossed a leg off the motorbike, swiping the dense gritty roadside. They hadn't been this far out from Perant or Alcoast in a spell. Forgot it was this nice.
"Welcome to Paradise," they joked.
Viola straddled the motorbike and laughed.
Thought: You could drink that laugh. For sustenance.
"We're gonna bunk with some people," De'afi said. "Anarchist types. Aviators. Then we get going?"
"I think we should get gone to the homestead first," Sadie Crane proposed. "The guitar, you know."
"Yeah, about," the journalist agreed.
Ze took from hir rucksack a map of the area, rolled up like a sausage. This was the place.
"The skyport," ze said. "Flying machines."
The journalist's eyes turned sun bright. She'd heard of flying machines. Flightless birds chided the skeptics. What use was a flying machine when you could take a ship? Or a submarine? Or even a hot air balloon? Why in All Creation would you add flying machines to that mess? But Viola rooted for them all the same. The first person in Arcadia, Turaq, or Ru Divine to make it across the ocean by flight would go down in all the history books.
Thought: Alive, dead, or disappeared.
They made quick up the narrow path. An enormous barn just inside town limits. Short sprawls of late year crops all over the yard. A little house in close to the barn, a two-floor wood cottage--the roof patchworked in slabs of weatherproofed tin.
A rough-faced adult with a beautiful hooked nose dashed outside. A molar plated gold shone in her mouth and her skin was toned bright sunset.
"You the music makers?" she asked.
"Uh, kinda," the journalist replied.
The person raised two fingers close together in a traditional Shoalian gesture of fond greeting.
A second person emerged from the barn. This one had tight dreads of dark hair braided through with colorful blue, red, and yellow beads.
"Let them in," she said. "Before the wolves come."
She told them her name, it was P'mil. The lady with the beautiful hooked nose was called Maso.
"You guys pilots, like, realy dealies?" Sadie Crane queried.
"Realy dealies, we are," Maso said proudly.
Maso and P'mil led them to see the flying machine. It was a bird, a dragon, the largest machine Sadie Crane had ever laid eyes on their whole entire life. It looked like it was about to get up and hobble to greet them on it's rickety holdings. Its wings were spread, the tips anointed ocean blue. Stationary metal whiskers stuck from the end of its beak.
The other aviators came from behind the flying machine. The snowballish squat one the color of sandstone with short cornrow braids was called Merrick, the other with raven black skin and a bad dye job of neon green curls was called Herahera.
Merrick bounced like her feet had been lit on fire.
"We're gonna be the first!" Merrick crowed.
Thought: She believes that with all her heart. And so do you, come to think. A miracle will happen here.
"You get these things off the ground?" queried Viola.
Merrick came to a stop. As if no one had ever asked something so perfectly entirely sane as Have you ever gotten these things off the ground?
"Seconds--gotta few seconds of air," she defended herself.
The barn was wallpapered over with blueprints like splatters of intellectual brain matter. Torn off notebook pages and dissections of flying machine innards. Stuck up in the mess were cutouts from local and non-local rags. Collaborative letters and adjustments. Sending off blueprints to be shared with their fellow aviators in Arcadia, in Turaq, in Ru Divine.
Thought: You wish you could be a part of this. Biggest event in history of All Creation and you're not even on the radar. You're bystander. A passenger in the stories of other people.
What was wrong with that? A passenger, a bystander? These weren't ugly names. Those were other ways to be.
Merrick spun a wrench in her hand, flecks of rust peeling off the tip.
"We got no bedpans in the house, just the outhouse," Merrick squared. "Sorry. Place was well abandoned when we got hands on it, no indoor plumbing."
Thought: Good to get your hands on places. Before they get haunted.
They were allowed to bunk long as needed. The aviators slept in the barn most nights, so there were lots of empty beds.
Thought: You went out with him almost every night. And Abakris too, if the mood was right. You would stay long moonlit passes in the woods after dark. Your guardians never asked where you'd been the next morning. The Basalt-Eislanes didn't like your guardians and your guardians didn't like the Basalt-Eislanes. They all thought you'd grow out of each other. But instead you grew into each other like tree roots. And now you feel like your limbs have been amputated. You've lost your sense of taste. You want to punch something. You want to ride into the pitch nothing on your motorbike and keep going until you fall off the edge of All Creation. But there's no edge of this spinning ball. There's no look down from where you're standing. Only up, where the stars are fat and bright. The spirits in the soil. You should have been a poet. The jackalopes scream. Don't take things that don't belong to you. It should have been you that night. It should have been you. It should have been you. It should have been
They pushed hard into the waking world. No. No more nightmares. Their life didn't need to be nightmares, you see? They could dream about other things. Ice cream parties. Malted milk candies. Sunflower seeds passed from child hand to child hand over food break in the schoolyard. Banana yellow stickers and the soft hands of a girl. A girl they loved more than could fit in their chest.
The bed space next to their own was abandoned. Viola and Sadie Crane were meant to share, both afraid of sleeping alone for their own unsaid reasons.
They got out of bed, then went and lit themself a lantern.
Their deerskin pack was at the foot of their bed. They'd heard sleeping with a jackalope's foot under your pillow fought off the nightmares. But for reasons that meant nothing to them as of late, they didn't want to do that. They could scarcely sleep with it hung from the bedpost like that. Why in All Creation did they think it was a good luck charm? Just because it could be?
Thought: Old Arcadian rites. It's something to do with old Arcadian rites.
De'afi was sleeping with hir fellow aviators. Sadie Crane let hir be.
Viola'd taken herself to the porch. Sadie Crane swung their lantern up and waited for her to talk, the boards heaving throaty cries under their bare feet.
The trail of her white sleeping gown bunched around her knees, where she'd stuffed it into the waist of her pants. Flat silver buttons like mollusk shells fastened up to her middle. One of the aviators left a pair of worker's pants and boots hung up near the front door. Viola didn't want to to get splashed with shit water, so she took both.
Sadie Crane cleared their throat.
"You sleepwalking, sunshine?" they queried.
"Nope, not tonight leastways," she replied fast.
Thought: So she's been doing it again. Sleepwalking.
"What you doing out here then?" Sadie Crane asked.
"Nothing," the journalist squared. "Thought I saw--"
She didn't finish her sentence. Didn't need to. Her face had this stiffness to it, like she'd said too much with those four words.
Thought: Don't.
They paid their head no mind, just said it plain.
"Sybil," they breathed.
The quiet came down over their heads like a curtain shutting.
"How long you been seeing him?" they pushed.
"Six damn years," Viola despaired.
She couldn't help but miss him. He was made to be missed.
"Ghosts ain't real," said the journalist.
She said it more to herself than to the anarchist. She'd been saying it every day for going on six damn rotations. So what in Damnation was she seeing if not a ghost? Was she losing her head?
Thought: Bad night for this to happen. We're all so on edge.
Little drip-drips of pitch-dark coalesced on the rim of Sadie Crane's vision. They tried not to look.
The drip-drips became rainfall became downpour became rushing river became waterfall. The whole outer boundary of their vision became flooded with coal-dark. Viola was the lone survivor of this deluge. They kept their head still. Breathe breathe breathe.
Thought: Don't look. Never look.
"You think I'm goofing," Viola laughed.
"Nah, I believe ya," the anarchist reassured. "You don't lie about this kinda stuff."
Experimentally, they flitted around to look. The coal-dark vanished. They could never be sure what was really there. Sybil stole that from them.
A jackalope yelled. Joined by siblings, a grand cacophony of scream. It was that kinda night.
"I been hearing them since Sparrow and Finch, the jackalopes," said the anarchist. "What you think that means?"
"Nothing," the journalist insisted. "It don't mean a thing."
"If you ain't got swing," Sadie Crane replied instinctively.
The screaming of the jackalopes got closer. Not much longer now.
They took Viola inside and made her a cup of black rose tea. It was the least they could do. They'd had such a day, such a night. Such a life. It was the least they could do.
End of Chapter 7
But you know where you really wanna check out? The Tunnels of Suzette. It's like a whole other world down there. Like something out of a horror novel. Now, look here. I'm a seasoned spectacle chaser. Been doing it since I was twelve. But down in those tunnels? Lost my way more times than I can count. I swear there's something about the underground. Did you know we've explored more of the ocean than we have of the underground?
--Excerpt from "Way Down Deep: A Traveler's Guide to All Creation" by White Veil