Chapter 32

  Kate

  The lab was large and bright, full of tables and strange machines, drawers and cupboards, sinks and stovetops, refrigerators and freezers. It was big enough for a dozen lab-coated clipboard-wielding scientists, but right now it only had one, plus four large Lepidoptera.

  Kate enjoyed explaining things while she worked. It helped her to focus and not get distracted from what she was doing. It was a challenge: how to elucidate complex concepts in physics to Dr. Heisenberg (the caterpie) or Whiskey (the wallaroo), or one of her friends. In her lab back home, she kept a crowd of stuffed animals for this purpose. She was learning now that speaking to actual people was so much more fun, though they did tend to get into things. The innocent inquisitiveness of the Theians left a trail of scattered papers and disorganized tools all across Kate’s new lab. It was a small price to pay. Not like she knew where anything was supposed to be, anyway!

  It was her and Navi, with Flitch, Thlytri, Shlushluth, and Jan. Jan was Shlushluth’s brother or something, though he was much smaller and dark brown with tiger-like orange and white streaks in stark contrast to Shlushluth’s brilliant white. Jan was chill, unlike the restless Shlushluth, and very much unlike the little Flitch, who was fast becoming Kate’s favorite. Flitch could have fit inside a hula-hoop, wings and all, but she utilized her small size to her advantage by darting everywhere with a relentless hyperactivity. Her voice was a rapid squeak, and it seemed to Kate that she never stopped talking except when Kate herself spoke.

  “I like the way you talk, K-k-kaitlyn!” Flitch proclaimed to the lab, a fluorescent orange-and-green streak along the refrigerators storing chemicals at cool temperatures.

  “It’s j-just K-kate,” she replied as she inspected the labels on the control panel of an unfamiliar boxy machine. It was some kind of scanner, and therefore not likely to be dangerous if she just started pushing buttons. But after another device-of-mysterious-design had jolted her with an electric shock that frizzed her hair everywhere, she had become cautious. However, she was also curious. And a contest between the curiosity and the caution of Kaitlyn Carter was really no contest at all.

  “K-kate,” said Flitch in repetition. “I like it! I like that name! And I like the way you talk, K-kate! W-we sh-should all t-talk like that!” Flitch giggled and came to rest on a polished stainless-steel table, flexing her wings excitedly.

  Kate bit her lip and grinned. “Actually,” she said, “most humans don’t t-ta-t- don’t talk like this. It’s just m-me!” Kate narrowed her eyes and pushed the button that said ‘scan.’ Nothing happened. Or so it seemed…

  “That makes it even b-b-better!” declared Flitch. The butterfly picked herself up from the table and danced across the brightly lit room to where Thlytri and Shlushluth were observing a wall chart that had puzzled Kate. The chart looked like a periodic table in a circular pattern, and it also looked like the circle of 5 th s. She couldn’t read it, and neither could the Theians. Another mystery! She had taken a picture of it and copied it into her notebook.

  “Is it a defect of speech?” asked the watchful Jan, who of them all seemed most interested in the lab and the various uses to which it could be put. His voice, like all the voices of the males, was soft and feathery, muffled in comparison to the piercing voices of the females.

  Kate nodded at him as she placed a mirror on the flat topmost surface of the machine before her. Flitch had earlier found a box of small rectangular mirrors and deposited them at random across the breadth of the lab.

  “Have you tried speaking exercises?” Jan asked.

  Kate grinned at him. “F-for example, (ahem), ‘t-top ch-chopst-tick ch-chops shtop chop t-t-chipst-top-”

  Flitch fluttered around her as they both dissolved into giggles. “I want to try!” Flitch exclaimed. “I do! I do!”

  Scratch paper was within easy reach (more useful scattered about a lab than mirrors, Kate supposed), so Kate took a piece, composed a pencil out of thin air, and scribbled down Isaac’s chopstick tongue twister for Flitch.

  Flitch, to Kate’s surprise, said the phrase easily, with clear articulation. Kate made a mental note to come up with a series of experiments to discover the verbal limitations of the Theians, and she hit the ‘scan’ button again.

  Mirrors. Like a gong, ringing out clear and bright in the emptiness of her mind: mirrors. In an instant, she understood. Of course. Mirrors!

  A white light flashed around the small rectangular mirror lying facedown on the scanning machine. It passed horizontally just like a copy-scanner, then the light rose up vertically and descended again. The machine hummed; lights blinked. A thin beam of energy sprang into brief and mysterious existence in-between a glass eye on the side of the machine and the hexagon hanging around Kate’s neck.

  “Wow!” said Flitch.

  “Mirrors,” whispered Kate.

  “What was that? What happened? Tell me K-kate!” Flitch fluttered this way and that around Kate’s head, tugging lightly at her painted lab coat.

  Kate understood, somehow, without being told. She knew about mirrors now. She knew, more importantly, that she could create a mirror with her medallion and make it stick. She could make a mirror that would not fade when she stopped thinking about it. There was something important there, something deeper, something about how she could do this because she knew mirrors; something about the inverse relationship of knowing and transience. The idea of it moved like a cloud through her mind, and the shadow of it darkened her thoughts, but like a cloud it was beyond her, and it soon moved on without being grasped.

  She became aware that Flitch was talking at her. Nothing unusual there!

  “I th-think…” said Kate, “that’s enough for t-to-today. I have to g- to go t-to S-s-skywater!”

  Kate had already prepared for this. She wore her lab coat, of course, but beneath she had on a sky-blue knee-length dress. (She’d got the idea from Thlytri’s blue wings.) She had made sure to comb her hair into submission, though she knew the wind would mess it up again the moment she stepped outside. Probably (almost certainly) Skywater City would be less windy, so she could comb it down again when she got there. She wore also some new sandals. She missed her old comfortable pair, but one of those had fallen down into the black abyss outside her palace.

  She wanted to look her best for her friends! With a touch of the medallion, she manifested a mirror, taller than her, right up against the wall of the lab. Mist poured out from her medallion and formed the shape, condensed into it, made it real. There it was! And there she was, no trace of a shattered-glass scar on her face. She pushed her big round glasses up her nose and spun around. The lab coat twirled awkwardly. The Theians crowded around to have a look.

  “A mirror!” said Flitch.

  “What else?” said Jan.

  “It’s us!” cried Flitch.

  “Of course it’s us,” said Thlytri. Kate was still no good at reading Theian expressions, but something in Thlytri’s tone of voice made her think the blue-winged butterfly was smiling.

  Flitch landed on Kate’s head like a huge crazy hat. She was surprisingly heavy! “She’s the Mirror God!” said Flitch, laughing and flapping her wings and making Kate’s dark hair fly everywhere.

  The Theians spoke of the Thunder God all the time, but this was the first Kate had heard of a Mirror God. How strange! A god for mirrors?

  With Flitch still perched on her head, Kate seized her nearby bass and marched from the room. “L-let’s go!”

  The Theians followed her in vibrant procession out of the lab and down the corridor to the main hall, the colorful one with the columns and the sky-painted ceiling. The Theians loved this room since it was the biggest one in the palace, not to mention how beautifully it was painted. Several were here already, chasing each other as they weaved about the tall, elegant columns. They had been initially hesitant to take seriously Kate’s open invitation to come whenever they wanted, but that hesitation had not lasted long. Theians, she had already noticed, had scant use for subtext. If she said something was okay, then that was that. Case closed! She had already been hugged by almost every Theian she knew. It was the new craze!

  The flying Theians paused their game when Kate and the others emerged. “Where are you going?” called one of the men.

  “Skywater,” answered Shlushluth. He didn’t speak much, but he had the loudest voice of all the male Theians Kate had heard. Though hushed and feathery, it somehow still filled the big echoey space.

  Mention of Skywater got their attention. Two moths and a butterfly fluttered down and wordlessly joined Kate’s entourage. Flitch began explaining to them all about Kate’s lab as soon as they arrived, especially about Kate making a mirror. Probably, thought Kate, she should make some parts of her palace off-limits.

  Strings of rain glinted outside the big bright front door. This was not the drenching downpour of her first evening, but a soft, steady drizzle. The raindrops pattered at a 45-degree angle onto the colorful stones of the entrance and the slick arc of the bridge. Streams poured in angled waterfalls off of the rooftops and towers, the parapets and windmills behind her. Kate felt an impulse to turn around, climb back up one of the towers, and see for herself what all the turning windmills looked like in the rain. Surely they turned the precipitation into spiraling sprays of water, carried off into the sky by the rushing wind!

  Kate stood in the open doorway, flanked by seven of the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen, and breathed deeply of the rain-scented air, cool and thick. She smelled sweet grass and wet stone and mud. The storm itself had its own scent: huge and dark and aquiver with energy. It was all so exciting!

  She created a waterproof case for her bass, into which she slid her notebook and phone. Then she marched out into the rain.

  She knew the way to the Skywater door; one of the Theians had found it earlier and pointed it out to her. A trail cut through a meadow and up a cliffside to the door, which stood at a scenic overlook.

  Kate materialized a tall walking stick and set out across the bridge. She skipped a little (carefully!) with excitement. She was going to get to see everyone! Jim and Liz and hopefully even Heidi! Everything would be okay as long as they were together.

  The Theians got on the topic of the Thunder God as they followed Kate through the meadow, its green grass buckling in the wind, its blue and yellow pinwheel flowers twirling. The Thunder God, apparently, was the strongest of all the gods. Everyone agreed on that, but opinions differed on whether he was responsible for Theia’s ever-stormy predicament. This made for a popular yet divisive topic of conversation.

  “The gods are dead,” said Aron in the way that one might say ‘water makes things wet.’ Aron had been flying in the main hall; he had big fuzzy pads on his arms and extra-fluffy antennae to which the rain did not stick, and he was beautiful not because of any bright colors but because of the frantic complexity of the greyscale patterns on his wings. The wings were flat now; he crawled along the ground like all the Theians did when outside and not flying. The wind would blow them right away if they tried to stand up like Kate was doing! And even Kate got caught off-balance by the occasional stray gust that grabbed at her flapping lab coat. This was not, Kate thought to herself as she leaned her weight against the wind, a Jimothy-safe world.

  Thlytri piped her disagreement with Aron. “They’ve only been waiting!”

  “The Changing God doesn’t wait,” added Flitch as though eager to make her own contribution.

  “No one ever proved they are dead,” said Shlushluth.

  “We would know if they died, wouldn’t we?” asked one of the new Theians Kate didn’t know, a butterfly whose wings were transparent like dusty glass.

  “How would we know?” asked Flitch.

  “We wouldn’t,” said Thlytri.

  “I don’t think there ever really were gods at all,” said Jan, softly as though in pre-emptive resignation. Sure enough, a general outcry met this blasphemy.

  Kate was content to listen to their good-natured and well-rehearsed squabble. She was content to be there, leading a squad of Lepidoptera through the rain in a pretty field under a stormy sky while colored lightning splintered the horizons. She wasn’t worried anymore about being struck by lightning. That always happened elsewhere.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  They soon came to the path alongside the cliff. It was only a meter across, of slippery dark rock, and it dropped into the same black abyss as the moat around her palace. The wind slackened here, broken by the cliff. Kate hesitated where the grass ended and became the chasm on one side and the sheer slate rock on the other, and a narrow path between.

  Flitch hopped on ahead up the pass, then turned to face Kate. “Are you afraid K-kate?”

  Kate shook her head so that her wet hair whipped around and adhered itself to her face. She struck out up the path as though fearless of the black drop to one side. She did wonder what was down there.

  Flitch zigged and zagged over the narrow path in front of Kate, frequently turning to shower Kate in questions and observations.

  “Your coat looks like wings, K-kate!” (thanks!)

  “What’s that coming out of your head, K-kate?” (hair)

  “Why?” (good question!)

  “What do things look like with your eyes, K-kate?” (…singular?)

  “Are all humans as big as you?” (some are bigger)

  “Like who?” (like my father)

  “Your father?!”

  She told them about Nicholas Carter, her dad. “He was a g-g- a genius! He was g-good at everything he d-di-did.” Flitch asked a lot of questions about Nicholas Carter, and Kate did her best to answer them, even the odd ones like whether he looked like her and how much. (What color was he? How tall? Any wings? How much hair? Were his eyes like hers? His hands?)

  Thinking so much about her dad hit Kate unexpectedly hard as she trekked up the path. Because she knew the answer to every question Flitch asked. His eyes had been like hers, but kinder, wiser, bright and curious. She had loved those eyes. His hands had been strong but soft, his fingers long and deft–able to play piano, to scratch fascinating strings of numbers and symbols in an elegant script, to cover her own hands over the reins of a horse as they rode. To hold her and wipe her tears, leaving faint smears of ink or chalk in their place. She had loved those hands. Her dad had possessed all the curiosity and adventurous bravery of Aunt Becky, his sister, but quite a lot more self-control and compassion. He should be the one getting to explore a new world, not her. He’d be so good at it! He would know exactly what to do with all the machines in her lab. He’d figure everything out lickety-split!

  She stopped answering Flitch’s questions after a while, but the little butterfly didn’t seem to notice; she just shifted from questions to observations that didn’t require a response.

  Kate nearly slipped once, and her heart warmed to see her entire cadre of Theians nearly launch themselves from the cliffside, ready to fly to her aid. But in the end, with only minimal bumps and bruises, she emerged at the top. The entirety of her palace was visible from this vantage. She stood roughly at a level with the lowest towers, and maybe three kilometers distant. The sight gave her a shiver of excitement. That palace was hers. And it was so cool.

  But the path led on, over a small rise. She followed it and found the door only a hundred meters farther. The door stood in a small clearing of dirt carved into the side of a steep hill, and it was surely a scenic view. The landscape swept down from the door and off to the shadowy flickering line of the far horizon. Forests and fields, hills and valleys, lakes and streams, all spread out for miles and miles beneath a spectacular sea of roiling clouds. The distant skies were dark with storm, their colored lightning glinting, but the clouds near at hand piled up and up, impossibly high it seemed, in infinite variation of texture and shade, in countless spectacular shapes, all without ever revealing what lay beyond. It was like a tease, a hint or a promise of some blueness beyond, some light that illumined the clouds from somewhere above and behind, some light which was just barely never allowed to penetrate to the dim landscape below.

  The wind blew, the rain pattered softly on Kate’s wet lab coat, the clouds above churned and roiled and grumbled with far-off thunder, their shapes mysteriously bright and fantastically wild.

  Kate laughed and hugged her bass. Should she play it? If she did, would the clouds turn in response? Yes they would, probably, but something else up there would be listening as well, something that didn’t like her music interfering with the thunder. Storm worms. What did they look like? How big were they? Could one of them swallow up her whole palace in a single bite? And what awful music were they making that Kate could not perceive?

  Kate took hold of her medallion and held it before her, ready to touch it to the door and step through into another place.

  “I want to go with you,” said a voice behind her. It was Shlushluth’s distinctive voice. Thlytri clung to his arm and Flitch danced around Kate’s legs.

  “Me too!” proclaimed Flitch. “I want to go! I do! I do!”

  “Is it all acceptable?” asked Jan, head lowered in respect.

  “Of c-course!” said Kate. “Y-you can all c-come if you want! The m-more the m-me-m-merrier!” With this, she touched the door with the medallion. Light moved around the frame, and it was done. Kate flung the door open and stepped through onto a high place overlooking a sunny city.

  The Theians followed slowly, hesitantly, as though entranced. The sky, Kate realized. It was the sky that fascinated them. They all came: Jan and Thlytri and Shlushluth and Flitch and Aron and the other two whose names Kate did not know. Seven plus Navi, when Kate swung the door shut.

  As though the closing of the door was a cue, Kate’s phone buzzed. She checked it and saw with excitement that Heidi had messaged her. She took a minute to reply while the Theians spread out to investigate this new place.

  HS: .

  KC: Heidi!

  KC: what is it?

  HS: i do not know

  HS: what is heidi

  KC: it’s my friend!

  KC: ;)

  HS: it is me?

  KC: yup!

  HS: you are my friend?

  KC: Of course I am!

  HS: how would you describe me

  KC: um, okay!

  KC: I think you are capable

  KC: and loyal and reliable and caring

  HS: of what am i capable

  KC: of whatever you need to be!

  HS: killing for example

  KC: killing?

  HS: am i dangerous?

  KC: um...well I think so, but not to people you care about!

  HS: could i murder someone in cold blood?

  KC: Heidi! Why are you asking these things?

  KC: Are you okay?

  KC: <:(

  HS: answer the question

  HS: would i murder if i had to

  KC: no!

  HS: if i had to

  KC: I don’t know!!! How would I know that, Heidi?

  KC: please talk to me!

  HS: forget that for now

  KC: I can’t just forget that!

  HS: forget it

  HS: i have five allies yes?

  KC: yes

  KC: no!

  KC: more than five!

  KC: there is Alan Sheppard too, even if he isn’t here!

  HS: who is that?

  KC: don’t be like that! I’m sure he’s trying to do whatever he can

  KC: he loves you, Heidi! He really does

  HS: and is that all

  KC: you also have your angel! Eric told me a little about it

  HS: what did he tell you

  KC: he said it’s a little scary but really strong, with really sharp teeth, and also kind of cute because it loves you too!

  HS: what does it look like?

  KC: ?

  HS: nevermind

  HS: it does not matter at the moment

  HS: are any of you watching me?

  KC: I don’t think so...

  KC: I think someone would have said

  KC: we’re pretty worried about you!

  HS: so you would not know if i was in danger

  KC: ARE YOU IN DANGER??!?

  HS: no

  HS: i am merely asking

  KC: you sound tired, Heidi!

  HS: yes i am tired

  HS: one more question

  KC: shoot!

  HS: not yet

  HS: my question is what does this six sided device with the symbols do

  KC: I think it just represents us

  KC: and it’s like a key for certain things

  KC: and you can make objects with it by holding it and concentrating

  HS: it is not working

  KC: hmm! Maybe it works differently for each of us?

  HS: maybe

  KC: Heidi is something going on?

  HS: does not matter

  KC: it matters to me!

  KC: you can talk to me if anything is wrong, Heidi! I care about you.

  HS: interesting