The Nothing: A Book of the Between (6 page)

Unable to drag herself forward any farther, she stretched out her free hand, pushed with her toes. Miracle of miracles, her fingers brushed against something solid. Wriggling forward, she pressed her whole hand against wood. A door. She could feel the energy running through it and her heart convulsed in a beat of hope.

“Open,” she gasped with the last of her strength.

The door sprang ajar. Through eyelids scrunched up almost closed, she glimpsed grass and blue sky. So close, and still so far away. Her fingers twitched, but her arm refused to move any farther. Digging her toes into the dirt behind her, she managed to lever herself forward a couple of inches. So close to the door was she that she could feel the warmth of sunlight through the blowing dirt.

Another push with her toes. And then she was through to the waist, her legs still out in the dust storm, her cheek pillowed in grass. Sand blew in around her through the open door, but she wasn’t about to close it and shut Zee and Callyn out of a place of refuge.

Tears streamed from her eyes, obscuring her vision. Sand clogged her nose and mouth and throat, setting her to spasmodic coughing and gagging. Still, she managed to crawl away from the door and into blissful quiet.

Sunlight shone down warm and gentle. The grass was soft and cool. When the coughing eased a little, Vivian sat up and pulled Poe into her lap. He lay limp and still, but he was breathing. Vivian cleared the sand from his beak and smoothed his feathers. She tried to look around for water, but her eyes kept tearing up and she couldn’t see.

Which made her question the vision that came through the door a moment later.

It looked like a moving sandcastle more than anything else. One of those fantastic sculptures made during festivals. A man, arms twined around the extended neck of a dragon, and behind that a Giant, supporting the man from behind, one hand on the dragon’s back. And then the man dropped to hands and knees, coughing. The dragon shook itself and sand swirled up and around like a snow globe before settling down into the grass.

“Zee!” Vivian cried, running toward him as fast as her unsteady legs would take her.

He tilted his head up at sound of her voice, the tears from his watering eyes creating channels through the dirt caked onto his face. It would be a while before he could speak, she knew, having just been through the same process.

His two companions had fared better. Godzilla seemed unbothered by the dust, other than a dulling of his scales. He’d wandered off, sniffing at things, investigating. Probably looking for food, Vivian thought with a little shudder. Remembering her own kills as a dragon repulsed her now. Callyn dusted off her clothing with her big hands, considerately stepping well away from the humans so the resulting small dust storm wouldn’t affect them again. The Giant looked more like a stone sculpture than ever.

“I hardly dared hope you’d find the door,” Vivian croaked.

“The dragon found it,” Callyn said. “Neither of the two of us could see, and Zee was fading. You’ll want to look to his wounds. The dirt will have been driven into them.”

Vivian was already on her knees beside him, investigating. The laceration on his side, even though it was protected by a shirt and somewhat sheltered from the wind, was covered with a fine layer of dust. As for the wide-open wound on his arm, it was packed full of dirt. The healing scars on his face had been abraded until they bled, making a darkly red mud on his cheek.

“We need water,” she said. “This has got to be cleaned before it starts to fester.”

“I’ll be fine,” Zee gasped before another fit of coughing took him. “We can’t stay here.”

“We can’t go out there, either.”

The door stood open, and all that was visible through it was murky brown.

“There is no water in this world,” Callyn said, turning in a slow circle. “At least not close by. Only grass and one lone tree.”

At the words, the thrum of familiarity ran through Vivian like a plucked cord and she remembered. She stood, and looked across the wide field to where a single oak tree spread its branches wide. A swing hung from one long, low branch.

“I know this world,” she whispered. It was the first Dreamworld she’d ever visited, when she found a box of dreamspheres in her grandfather’s cabin. He’d rescued her, talked to her, given her the penguin pendant.

And he was currently waiting in a purgatory just for Dreamshifters, waiting for her to save him and the others. She sighed. Zee was right. Even if it was safe to stay here, they couldn’t linger. There was too much at risk. But neither could they go back out into the Between, not so long as the dust storm raged. Looking wistfully into the distance at the swing which had given her such great pleasure on a long-ago afternoon, she turned back to her companions.

“It’s dangerous to stay here. But we can’t survive traveling through that again for a bit. We all need to rest. I’d say we set up right close to the door. If something starts going wrong with the Dreamworld, hopefully either Poe or I will have warning and we’ll have time to get out.”

“If not?” Zee rasped, making his eyes worse by trying to wipe his face with his sand-coated hands.

“Then that’s the end of it,” she answered. “There’s nothing else to be done.”

“I don’t like it.” Callyn stood at the open dream door, looking out. “Don’t you have some way to take us directly from one world to another?”

Vivian slid down flat into the cool grass, feeling the blissful stretch and release of tense muscles at rest. Every crack and crevice of her skin itched from the sand. Her face burned as if from hours unprotected in full sunlight.

“From one world into another? Not that I know, not without a dreamsphere.”

“And from the Between?”

Vivian sighed and opened her eyes, peering up at the Giant through a distorting film of tears. “I might be able to do it from the Between. Where did you want to go?”

“Home.”

“You said they’d kill you.” Giving up on the idea of rest, she pushed herself back up to sitting and peered up at the Giant.

“They will.”

“You’re not making sense,” Vivian said.

Zee started to say something, coughed again. He fumbled at his waist for the canteen that hung there and began to wipe it down in the grass. “If they’re going to kill you, I don’t hold much hope for our safety.”

“My life will stand for yours.”

Vivian’s skin crawled with something more than sand. “What are you saying?”

“The Between is too unstable for much travel. I’m not confident I can get you to the Sorcieri. The Queen has maps and knows the secret doors. You could travel more quickly and safely.”

“Let me get this straight. We go to your kingdom and the Queen has you killed but helps us?” Zee said. “Why doesn’t she kill us, too?” He opened the canteen and passed it to Vivian. She took one long, blissful swallow and passed it back.

“The laws are very clear. A bond of my life for yours will be honored.”

“And then she’s under some sort of obligation to help us?” Vivian scrubbed her hands in the grass, trying to remove the grit, watching Zee take what looked like little more than a sip of the precious water before putting the lid back on.

“She is only under bond not to harm you.”

“So, she might be no help at all.”

Poe stirred, stretching his neck, but his eyes didn’t open. Vivian stroked his dusty feathers and looked up at Zee. He nodded once and opened the canteen, pouring a little water onto the sand-crusted beak. Poe’s eyes opened and he shivered all of his feathers, upright in an instant. He looked both indignant and embarrassed, and immediately began preening, as if he had no other concern in the world.

Vivian felt a surge of relief, directly followed by the weight of responsibility and decision. They were all still alive, but that was touch-and-go. There was no question about what was going to happen to Zee if she didn’t get those wounds cleaned. Poe needed a lot of water.

She started to run her fingers through her hair by force of habit, and stopped. It was stiff with dirt, knotted beyond repair. “There’s still a chance of getting to the Sorcieri without taking you to a sure and certain death?” she asked Callyn.

The Giant nodded, the movement sending a little runnel of sand cascading off the top of her head. “A chance. But we can’t stay here.”

“Agreed.” A restless itch inside her body that had nothing to do with her irritated skin made her twitch. She got to her feet, watching as Poe stopped preening and lifted his head. Godzilla, running away from them across the grass, stopped so short, his legs tangled. A low hissing sound escaped him as he spread his wings and launched himself in lopsided flight back toward the door.

“Run!” Vivian shouted, grabbing Zee’s hand and tugging.

“What is it?” He had planted his feet, was reaching for his sword.

“Now, Zee!”

This was not the time to stand and fight. She could only trust that he would follow her as she launched herself into motion, scooping up Poe as she ran. The dragon careened over her head, alighting just in front of the door. She could feel the vibrating thud of Callyn’s footsteps. But where was Zee?

Turning to look was nearly her undoing.

At the edges of the horizon, the world was ending. Not just changing or crumbling into dust and ruin, but truly ending. Physics said that what she saw was not possible, that matter might change form but not be completely annihilated. But the darkness dissolving field and grass and sky was a nothingness so vast and profound, it trapped her mind like a fly in amber.

Her feet slowed and stopped, watching with a sick fascination. The world of grass and sky was smaller now, surrounded by the abyss. The oak tree vanished as she watched, crown first, then the trunk and leaves, the swing, the grass and dirt and roots.

Zee’s hand caught hers and dragged her out of inertia and back into motion. Once she was moving forward again, her vision constricted down to tight little clips. Godzilla landed in front of the gate. Callyn thudded past, bent forward at the waist, arms swinging. Poe began to slip from her grasp and she was unable to catch him, her other hand caught in Zee’s iron grip.

All the time, her feet had to keep moving, to keep from toppling over as Zee towed her ever faster forward to stay ahead of the coming void. She managed to get a hand under Poe and hoist him back upward. The light dimmed as the sky above them was consumed. Zee increased his speed.

Vivian’s heart thudded. Her chest burned with every breath. They were close, though. Godzilla slithered through and faded into storm. Callyn bent double to fit, blocking out the Between as she squeezed herself through a doorway far too tight for her frame. So close now, she could smell the dust. Wind reached in through the door and dust puffed up out of the grass with every step. Then Zee planted his feet and shoved her through ahead of him, just as the Between heaved and shivered and turned itself inside out.

T
HEY
WERE
through the door but far from safe.

The blowing sand was no longer the greatest threat. The void where a world had once been wanted to be filled. Sand and wind and any loose matter changed course, no longer whirling about in a random wind but flowing straight through the open doorway and into the nothingness on the other side.

Vivian staggered away, clinging to Zee’s hand, throwing her weight forward to break the suction. Still it dragged her back, her unmoving feet digging a trench in the sand beneath her feet. Zee came with her. Poe began to slip out of her tenuous grasp. Inch by inch, she felt the sliding feathers. He struggled and wriggled, which only made it harder to hold him, and then he was gone, snatched by the wind.

“Poe!” she screamed, but her voice, too, was lost in the vacuum, sucked away into nothing.

Her feet were yanked out from beneath her. She clung to Zee as to an anchor, while the great vacuum inexorably sucked her in. Her hand slipped. Zee tightened his grip but he wasn't going to be able to hold her. Again the vacuum stole her voice as she screamed. Her hand slipped away and she was free flying toward the dark.

Instead, she bumped up against something solid and stuck there. Zee banged up against her an instant later with an elbow to her solar plexus that stole the last of her breath. Still the suction continued, squeezing her between Zee and whatever was blocking the door. The object was large, solid, but with some give to it. It was also alive, shifting position to block the opening more completely.

Callyn’s voice came to her ear as if from a distance. “I can’t hold much longer. You’ll have to close it.”

Right. She was the Dreamshifter. But closing this door, with that cosmic vacuum on the other side, was a thing she didn’t know how to do. Closing a dream door was usually easy—reach for the knob, give a little push, let it latch into place. But this? She wasn’t sure if the door even still existed.

The bulwark that was Callyn lurched an inch to the left, giving way to the relentless suction. Zee shifted his position a little, flattening his body to ease the pressure of his shoulder against her rib cage. There was no sand in the air anymore, but there seemed to really be no air, all of it sucked away. It didn’t help that her face was smothered somewhere in Callyn’s midriff. An effort to move, to at least turn her head, proved futile. She was pinned between two immovable bodies.