“I want to ask him something. Things are—are weird for me right now. I need to talk to someone who knows the way things work around here, and I thought he might know how to help me,” I told Angus as we approached the barrier. I prepared to cross over, but he grabbed me by the shoulder. I turned to face him, irked that he had the nerve to touch me.
“Listen, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re kind of an idiot—”
“
Excuse me?”
“I was going to say—” he shouted over me, “—I was going to say an idiot about the way things run here. We all are when we first get here! It’s not your fault. I’ve been here since I was a kid, and I’ve seen things, some not-so-nice things, happen to nice young ladies like yourself. Things that were easily preventable. Arthur’s a strange sort of guy. So could you shelf your pride for a day and let me come with you to see him?” he requested.
I considered this, then turned up my nose. “I think I can manage on my own, thanks,” I said and took another step.
“Well, if you say so.” He turned and headed in the other direction. “But you’re going the wrong way.”
I stopped and looked down at Felix, who affirmed with a nod that Angus was right. I swiveled back around.
“All right, show me the way,” I instructed without apology and Angus laughed again, that high, airy sound.
“Ah, so she’s not a lost cause, Aodh! We’ll have to work on that attitude, though,” he said with a grin, gesturing for me to come near him. I did so reluctantly. “Well, we can walk, but that’ll have us tromping through everyone else’s garden. You generally want to steer clear of Poe’s. That’s a rule around here. Not even Stella goes there.” Before I could ask who Poe was, he raised his hand. “So generally, we like to take the airways. This is your garden, missy, so would you kindly do us the honor?”
“Of?”
“Make something that can fly,” he said, looking skeptical I didn’t think of this myself.
I heard Felix, walking near my ankles, give a murmuring laugh and I narrowed my gaze at the two of them. Aodh remained silent and frozen behind us, observing. Turning my eyes on him, I focused on thinking of something that could get us airborne and decided a magic carpet would work as well as anything. I willed it into being, and it materialized in a swirl of golden fragments. I took command and sat down cross-legged at the front, Felix slinking up under my arm until he rested on my thigh. Angus sat down behind us, chuckling under his breath.
“Isn’t your familiar coming?” I asked and Angus shook his head.
“He’ll be there when we get there. Aodh isn’t like the others. He lives inside of things. He’ll be inside the walls, listening,” Angus reassured me. I didn’t quite know what he meant by this. “Now fly us up past the reaches of your garden and we’ll be able to look down on the City.”
I did as he said, gripping the edges of the fine Persian rug and lifting us off the ground. We climbed aloft, going higher and higher, until the trees became toy models and we pierced through the boundary that was the ceiling of my garden.
It was a very different view of Unreal City. I had to send the carpet to a staggering height to see it all, and discovered that this world was flat. Each garden was a segment on a disc, with what looked like a white spoke in the center of them all. The City rotated at an almost imperceptible pace, surrounded on every side by a field of stars. I marveled at the sight.
“Who owns this place up here?” I was so caught up in my wonderment I’d forgotten to be rude to Angus.
“No one. It’s a free-for-all in the airway. I can even drive now, watch,” Angus said and the carpet lurched forward without my command. We fought over control of it for a moment before he relinquished it to me, chuckling as if he found it all very amusing. I scoffed at his light-heartedness. The poisonous feeling the corpse on campus had left me with hadn’t faded, and kept my foul mood going strong.
“So, blondie, how is it that you came to find that spirit of yours?” Angus asked me as we swooped over the various gardens. I could see Blanche’s, and in it some hundreds of feet below I saw her playing in the meadow.
“He found me. He said he’d been following me...why were you following me, Felix?”
My familiar moved his shoulders in what looked like a shrug. “I look for those who seem to want to leave this world the most. You were reeking of misery.”
His answer didn’t please or satisfy me, but it sent Angus into another round of snickering.
“Why do you care anyway? How did you come to be here?” I turned the focus to him. I drifted over an urban garden that must’ve been Angus’s since it neighbored my own, then a swampy garden with a bayou I presumed belonged to Mama Stella.
“Ah, for the love of—you’re
still
going the long way
.
Well, we’ve gone too far now…Let me drive,” he complained. I gave him a dirty look, but allowed him control of the carpet. “As for me, I sort of stumbled into this place. I live out in the highlands, and when I was lad, I went wandering out too far one day and got lost inside of a wood. Aodh was there, and I talked with him a while. I kept going back, and eventually he offered me the
deal
. I was too young to think twice, and now—now well, I don’t know anything else but this life,” he said, sounding almost sorry.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Isn’t this place a dream come true?” I asked with genuine confusion.
Angus gave a dry, barking laugh. “It’s as much a blessing as it is a curse. You’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure,” he said cryptically, then made a noise of interest and pointed downward. “That there’s Ranjit’s garden. He’s also a bit of a rotten soul. You’ll probably want to stay away from there, too.”
Angus flew low so I could see. This garden was submerged in water, and under the waves I saw a connecting series of structures that appeared similar to diving bells. In the water, a creature that looked like a cross between a dolphin and a goat swam around an illuminated window, lashing its tail about and shaking its horned head. On its sides were patches of light that were evocative of the markings of the bioluminescent fishes of the deep sea.
“He’s your classic megalomaniac. Fancies himself a king, and ‘governs’ a realm that I’m certain Caligula would find a touch distasteful. He’s dirt poor on the real side of things, however, though he’ll hardly admit it,” Angus commented with the air of a tour guide passing a famous sight-seeing spot.
Zooming past Ranjit’s sea, we passed a village that looked like a Mexican pueblo with beautiful hanging lanterns lighting the street-ways in an array of vibrant colors.
“The woman who stays there is hardly ever in, but I think her name is Jezebel. Not sure, really,” Angus said without interest, pushing us onward over a barren garden that was mostly blanketed by clouds streaming with electricity.
At last we arrived at a garden with gray skies and a massive tower stretching up to meet us. We circled it on our way down, landing at the bland entranceway. The plants, ground, trees, and front of the building were nondescript and appeared to be bleached of color. Angus stepped off the carpet gingerly and left it lying in front of the steps leading up to the tower. I followed, craning my neck to take it all in.
“And
this
,” Angus sighed, “is Arthur’s library.”
We scaled the steps without speaking. Any hint of a cheery mood Angus had been trying to inject into our interactions was wiped away when we pushed open the front doors. The doors were functional—no attempt at ornamentation, like something you’d find at an airport, and with all the charm of a DMV. Inside, I was surprised to find much of the same atmosphere. Quiet rooms padded by concrete or plastic walls, grey, coarse carpet with unimaginative neutral designs. Fluorescent light bulbs lit the room, creating a washed out, industrial look. The smell of paper and glue hung in the air.
We glanced in the first room off the entrance. It was packed, every available space filled with books, each shelf catalogued according to standard library protocol. The reference books were on this floor, and two book-lined hallways led to more rooms that looked the same. At the very end of the main cavernous hall with its silent compilations of histories, facts, and stories, was an olive green elevator.
Angus walked to it and pressed the button, then stepped back and rocked on his heels. Felix and I joined him and waited, and I sensed the energy of Aodh’s spirit approaching. He was sidling through the pages of the books, down through the wooden shelves, and up into the walls. I could see him sometimes, always with the twin blue lights—sometimes in the lights overhead, sometimes gleaming in the golden foil on the covers of the books.
We boarded the elevator, no one daring to break the humming quiet of that stifled space. After the doors closed and we were faced with a choice of 140 different floors, Angus asked the ceiling, “Aodh, which floor is he on? Can you tell?”
“Thirty-seven,” came an electrical response from the elevator speaker—Aodh, speaking through the faux sound-system of this construct.
Angus stabbed the button with his pointer finger and it shot upward, making my stomach go woozy. My ears filled with pressure then popped as we came to a bobbing halt at floor thirty-seven. The doors sprang open with a cheerless little
ding
and Angus led the way out with Felix trotting behind him, his tail high in the air. I stalked out behind them, keeping my shoulders straight and my head high. Whoever this Arthur was, I didn’t want him to see that I was discomfited by his colorless world.
We rounded a grouping of shelves to see a stocky little man with glasses lying on a leather fainting couch, his head resting on a pile of what looked like dictionaries. His arms were folded across his chest, and a few inches above his face floated a book. With a nod of his head, the page turned on its own.
He must have heard us coming, and drawled something in an accent that sounded Russian, not bothering to look up. The man’s hair was a patchy, graying blond, and his pale face had splotches of red on its paunchy cheeks. Bright blue eyes shone behind his glasses, and dark red lips slick as liver curled as he spoke.
“Just coming to ask a few questions, Arthur,” Angus interrupted in a voice I assumed he meant to sound light-hearted or casual, yet came out sounding anxious.
The bespectacled man looked up with little interest, caught sight of Felix and me, and sprang off the couch. He flew into a panic, lifting the voluminous coat he wore and spinning around in place. As he turned, his whole body changed shape, stretching out, getting taller and leaner in seconds. His hair grew long, sleek, and lustrous. When he faced us again, he looked decades younger: his features were sharp, delicate, and breathtakingly handsome. His clothes were smart, elegant and fitted, and thin half-moon glasses sat on his nose. The eyes, however, had remained the same: that cold, startling blue.
“Of course, Angus, you are welcome here at any time,” he said, his reedy voice transformed into a deep, arresting tone saturated in affected kindness.
However attractive he appeared now, the knowledge of his true appearance disturbed me. I wish he would’ve stayed ugly.
“May I present Sarah, our newest addition? She’s the one who’s got all the questions, actually,” Angus said, swooping out of the way and waving his wide, bony hand in my direction.
Arthur’s eyebrows lifted and he eased over to me, both hands extended. He took my unoffered palm in his and closed his fingers around it.
“Welcome, dear girl. Welcome to the Unreal City. How many times have you been here now?” he asked, warmth and lust vying for control in his voice. A wave of revulsion trickled down my spine.
“Um, two,” I grunted and extricated my hand from his, resisting the urge to wipe it on my pants.
“And what is it that you’d like to ask me? I’d be happy to oblige, my dear,” Arthur continued, waving Angus and I toward a pair of seats that he drew out of thin air.
Tentatively we sat down and Felix curled his tail around my foot, standing at attention between Arthur and me. The librarian pulled his couch closer to the chairs with a curl of his fingers and assumed a lounging position on it. He looked at me expectantly.
I had no idea how to begin. The pressure from the anticipating ears of Angus, Arthur, and, from the walls, Aodh, made me freeze up. I looked away from their faces and down to Felix for help, realizing I had no idea how to phrase my predicament or why I’d thought it would be a good idea to come here.
Eventually I decided that I’d better just explain what happened to both of them. Though I felt exposed explaining the death of my sister and my happening across the corpse on campus to complete strangers, it felt cathartic to say it out loud. Angus’s face contorted in pain when I got to the poignant moments of my story, and though I tried to always police my emotions, seeing him react made me want to cry. Arthur’s face, however, remained still and unfeeling during the entire duration of my tale. When I’d at last finished, he rubbed his chin and thought for a moment.
“I am not sure what it is you’d like me to tell you, Miss Sarah,” Arthur said at last.
I looked blankly at him. “Well, I don’t know either, to be honest. I just find it all very—odd. It seems like a bit too much of a coincidence, don’t you think? I just don’t want to be that kind of idiot that ends up dead because I let everything just happen around me,” I tried to explain, starting to feel embarrassed that I’d even come here in the first place.