The Night Shifters (25 page)

“Well – you sort of
remind me of the Cheshire Cat...”

“Wrong! But you’re
getting closer.”

I wracked my brain
for anything else Voice could be besides Voice, but I couldn’t come
up with a thing. “I give up. If you want me to know, you’re just
going to have to tell me.”

“I’m the Chorus!”
she said, brightly.

“
The
what
?”

“The Chorus!”

“You’re the
Chorus.”

“
I’m
the
Chorus. The famous one from the Greek plays.
In
Lysistrata
, I’m the
one who says:

‘Save Athens and
all Greece

From Lunacy and
war,

For that, O maid,
is what

They’ve seized your
temple for.’

“
And
in
Medea
, I’m the one who
says:

‘Did you hear, Zeus
and Earth and light, how sad a lament she sings, the sorrowful
wife?’

“
And
in
Oedipus
Rex,
I’m the one who
says:

‘For the day
ravages what the night spares – ‘

“
And in that
Woody Allen movie,
Mighty Aphrodite
, “I’m
the one who says:

‘I can’t keep a
lookout for you while you steal files! I’m the leader of the
Chorus!’”

“
Wow,” I
said. “So – now you’re the
entire
Chorus?”

“I am for this
story.”

“This isn’t a
story! This is my life!”

“Story, life –
whatever. Around here, there’s not a whole lot of difference.”

I sort of
remembered the plays she was talking about – and when she mentioned
the Woody Allen movie, her scene played itself in my memory. “When
you helped Woody Allen in
Mighty Aphrodite,
you were some middle-aged guy. You don’t sound like him
at
all
. “

She sighed,
impatiently. “That’s why they call it
acting
.
Anyway, you’re getting the
real
me.”

The real Voice
sounded young, I pictured her as a girl. But I still couldn’t see
anyone. She couldn’t be more than a few feet away, yet when I
scanned the park from all directions, I saw nothing but patchy
grass and skinny trees.

“
You can’t
see me,” she said. “I think you’re not really supposed to. I’m
shouldn’t even be talking to you. I’m supposed to be talking
about
you to the audience.”

“Who’s the
audience?” I asked, suddenly very self-conscious.

“Well, that’s the
point – there really is no audience in the City of Night, just a
bunch of interested and semi-interested parties who can sometimes
see you from a distance. Just like you can sometimes see them. I
sort of ended up here the same way you did. I used to get a lot of
work, but now even Woody Allen doesn’t call me. And let me tell
you, it’s not easy to go from being an important and necessary
element of a story to being nothing more than a clever literary
trick. So I hang out here and make my comments to Night Shifters.
At least they take me seriously.”

I wished I could
sit on the edge of the walkway so I could gaze at the stars and
chat with Voice about her plays, but I didn’t want to see the
claw-finger-thingees again, so I began to stroll along the walkway
instead. “Voice – what were you before you were the Chorus?”

“Nothing.”

“Seriously?”

“What were you
before you were Hazel?”

“A zygote.”

“Oh,” she said.
“You mean – was I born like you were?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

I wondered how I
could phrase the next question without sounding dumb. I decided I
couldn’t. “So if you weren’t born, why do you exist?”

“People thought me
up.”

“Which people?”

“Probably the
Greeks, originally. Or at least, they’re the ones who gave me my
formal shape.By the time the Big Three came along, I had a form and
consciousness.”

“The Big
Three?”

“Aristophanes,
Euripides, and Sophocles.”

The stars that
shone in the Night sky were the same stars those ancient Greeks had
gazed upon when they penned their plays. It was an amazing thought.
“But how can people make you real just by thinking you up?”

“I admit, in the
Waking World, I’m just a literary device. But the Waking World
isn’t all there is to the universe.”

“So – somewhere in
the Universe, everything anyone ever thought up is real?”

“
I wouldn’t
go
that
far. You have to have a talent for
it. J.R.R. Tolkien used to call it
sub-creation
. He said it was what God does, only on a much smaller
scale.”

“But Tolkien’s
Middle Earth is all make-believe.”

“
No – all of
those creatures exist somewhere, he’s not even the one who
originally made them up – though his vision of what they were like
was so powerful, it changed them. Look at it this way: even if
you’re just talking about the Waking World, people make things real
all the time. They design a house, and then they build it. They
compose a symphony, and you can listen to it. People
dream
stuff first – and then they make it
happen.”

“
People
dream
things
, not – gods and
elves and choruses that turn into real people.”

“
Remember
where you are,” said Voice. “The Night Shifters wouldn’t have
anything to shift if it was all make-believe. This really would be
just a dream, and you would have awakened by now. In the world you
came from, people make things because they’ve dreamed them first.
But those same people affect this realm too. They
do
make gods and elves and choruses. If we become
self-aware, we take on a life of our own, we can be independent.
I’m not the only person you’ve met here who started out that
way.”

I assumed she meant
the Masked Man. He said he was the Nameless God. Maybe being
faceless was how he maintained his independence from the people who
dreamed him up. In fact, he had said as much. I thought he was
talking about me when he said he didn’t want to be controlled, but
maybe it wasn’t about me at all.

And in fact, maybe
the Masked Man wasn’t the only one she meant. It was hard to
imagine that Camilla and the Car King might have been children
once, even a very long time ago...

“You’re thinking
too hard again,” said Voice.

“Sorry. There’s
stuff I’m afraid to say out loud.”

“That’s wise.”

I came to the end
of the walkway, at the edge of the park. The adjoining
neighborhoods still looked sort of familiar. They had taken on a
little more of the Night glamour, though not as much as they had
possessed when Nostradamus had lured me to his creepy swim party
under false pretenses. Still, I would have enjoyed walking through
them all those years ago when I was a restless kid. They seemed
more likely to deliver real mystery, even adventure – though I
hoped I wouldn’t have to punch any more Girl-killers. One of those
guys per lifetime ought to be enough for anyone.

“I wonder if I can
find my house again,” I mused.

“You can try.”
Voice sounded optimistic.

“Maybe I can even
make it more like the house I always wanted it to be.”

“Sub-creation,” she
reminded me. “You could have done that even in the world you came
from. You know, bought some paint, laid some tile.”

I stepped into the
street. It was paved with the old-fashioned river rocks. “Voice –
am I a Night Shifter?”

“Sort of.”

“Just sort of?”

“Yeah. And sort of
something else, too.”

“
Sort
of
what
else?”

“I don’t want to
say. You’re still becoming that sort-of-something-else-too. I don’t
want to mess it up for you.”

“Is it something
good?”

“Yes.”

“Then I won’t ask
again. I’ll just try to become.” I walked into the street, heading
for the nearest corner. Halfway there, I felt a rush of wind at my
back.

“Look out!” warned
Voice.

And something
pulled me off my feet. Suddenly I was rushing through the air
backwards, at what felt like 100 miles per hour.

* * * * *

Something had
me fast around my middle, and the wind blew me over so I was
regarding the speed-blurred world past the tips of my
fingers
and
my toes. It was
really uncomfortable. At that angle, I couldn’t squirm loose or see
who had hold of me. I couldn’t catch my breath either, to plead
with my captor to slow down.

So I just waved in
the wind like a wet noodle. It was one of the least dignified
positions I’ve ever been in. That didn’t seem like an accident,
someone was definitely trying to make a point. I would have been
mad if I hadn’t been so out of breath, not to mention so utterly
freaked out.

Who could do this
to me? Who would have the power? I couldn’t see a car or a
motorcycle, and I couldn’t hear one either. Sir John would never
have been so rude, and the Masked Man wouldn’t have treated me like
a noodle. I doubted Nostradamus could have reached this velocity,
and Camilla was too ladylike. Blue would have wrinkled her nose at
the thought of touching my dusty catsuit.

That left the Car
King. But where was his car? Maybe it was one of those quiet
electric models...

Pretty soon the
blurry houses on either side of the road gave way to rocks and
trees – and not long after that, the road itself disappeared, and I
was flying backward through wild countryside. The trees grew
thicker, until I began to worry that I would smash into a trunk or
a sturdy branch. But the leaves didn’t even brush my face, somehow
I missed every obstacle. We crossed over streams, and finally flew
over that big, scary river that I feared might be named Styx. The
water was so dark, I wondered if it was water at all. Maybe it was
pure Night.

Suddenly I glimpsed
ground again, but it was strange and mossy, graced with tiny
luminous flowers. Before I could decide if they were pretty or just
weird, I was swallowed by an immense cavern. I thought that might
mean my journey was at an end – but I continued to fly backward
through an endless system of luminous caves and tunnels, some of
them barely big enough to accommodate me, others so gigantic,
someone could have flown a jetliner through them.

Are we going all the way to the center of the earth?
I wondered. It sure felt like it.
But just when I thought we would end up in a lake full of magma, we
stopped.

I say
we
because my captor became apparent as soon as
we landed in a heap on the floor of a cavern, me on top and him on
the bottom. His arms tightened around me and his white hair pooled
on the polished surface under us. He said nothing while I gasped to
catch my breath.

“You can fly?” I
asked at last.

He laughed, and I
bobbed up and down with each exhalation. Finally he said, “Add that
to the Endless List of Things You Didn’t Know, Hazel.”

“Okay,” I said,
agreeably. “And I’ll add another thing. Why did you leave the
party? Wouldn’t you rather associate with the other
mucky-mucks?”

“No need to write
that one down.” The Car King sat up, pulling me with him. “I’ll
tell you why, and I’ll show you why, and you’ll have absolutely no
doubts about it.”

“Hooray,” I said
without enthusiasm.

“Oh come now.” He
spoke so close to my ear, the warmth caused an unfortunate reaction
in my knees. “Don’t you like my home? Is it too dull for you?”

Not by a long shot.
In fact, I felt overwhelmed by it, couldn’t quite figure out what
was solid rock and what was tree root. Everything seemed to shine
with its own light, but not brightly, sort of like a silver
twilight. The floor might also have been stone or petrified wood.
But it looked inlaid too, an odd and gorgeous blend of nature and
nurture. It suited him as well as Camilla’s tree suited her, and
the Masked Man’s house, and Sir John’s study.

And what
had
my
house looked like? Broken, dirty,
ruined. Maybe I could redeem it if I got the chance.

And maybe the
Car King would see to it I
never
got the
chance.

“I wanted you to
see my home.” He lifted me and set me safely on my feet – then
seized my wrist. Fortunately it wasn’t the one that was attached to
the still-throbbing hand that had punched the Girl-killer.

His suit had
morphed into something more arcane; every bit as elegant, but more
like something you’d see on an inhabitant of Tolkien’s Middle
Earth. The fabric might have been silk, but maybe spiders wove
those strands instead of caterpillars.

“I thought you
liked to conduct business in your car.” I avoided looking directly
into his eyes; his glare still had considerable impact, way more
than Owner’s.

“
Cars
,” he corrected.
“They’re useful when dealing with citizen’s of post-industrial
societies. Come along.”

He didn’t yank on
my wrist, but when he started to walk, I was obliged to keep up
with him. I couldn’t help gawping at his caverns, they really were
gorgeous. We entered a hallway that featured tree-root beams and
crystalline walls.

“Wow,” I couldn’t
help saying.