The Changeling Game, Chapter 55

55.
Forever Your Mermaid

“Are you absolutely sure? Once I do this, there might be no going back.”

In front of Jack, standing on the roof of the ait Meziane house, Izil and Tafrara both looked a little nervous.

Izil nodded first. “I’m sure. I want this.”

“I do, too,” Tafrara said, nodding as well. “I’m sure.”

Jack had to admit that she was nervous, in a way that she hadn’t been since her cousin Rachel had convinced her to act as her understudy for Wendy in the Civic Center’s production of Peter Pan, only to get sick two days before Opening Night. Audrey’s realization that she was about to perform in front of hundreds of people had been almost paralyzing. What she was about to do was every bit as daunting.

She had stage fright.

There were no scripts this time, no directions. No one, to her knowledge, had ever done what she was about to try to do. Where this act was concerned, she was already as close to an expert as anyone alive.

Which, for some reason, made her more conscious than ever that she was just thirteen years old.

For a moment she had to focus on her breathing, the way Ewan had showed her, trying for calm and balance the way he’d taught her in the last few days. Then she reached forward, taking Izil’s and Tafrara’s hands, and closed her eyes.

It was weird to realize that she could still “see” everything around her, just not with eyes. She was all the way in U1 at the moment, but it and Elsewhere both filled her awareness. She could tell what belonged to each world.

We are in both, she thought, focusing on herself, Izil, and Tafrara. They were delineated before her, familiar and yet quite new as she looked at them this way. She felt herself shifting partway into Elsewhere, and felt them moving there too, the quantum frequencies governing their bodies now straddling alignments the way they did for her… the way, she realized, they always had for her since the Incident. We are in both.

Izil’s breath hitched and Tafrara gasped.

Jack opened her eyes.

“Is that…?” Izil had lifted his free hand, pointing upward and to the east.

Jack turned her head and looked.

Floating in the sky, a mere four times as large as any other moon she’d ever seen now that it wasn’t full, Megaluna was a waxing crescent on the verge of becoming gibbous. Its tide would reach the ait Meziane house soon, and they could use the phantom waters that existed in only one world to learn to maneuver between ’verses, controlling which one they belonged to at any moment. They would have roughly an hour and a half before Jack would have to pull them back into U1 to avoid a risk of drowning.

They could do it, she told herself, still feeling the same crazy escalation of the opening-night jitters that had filled her when it was time to sing Tender Shepherd, in front of hundreds of strangers, for the very first time.

“Yeah, that’s Megaluna,” she told them. “What? Oh c’mon, it’s a perfectly good name.” Sighing, she gave them a moment to straighten out their faces. “Right now we’re in both worlds equally. You’ll see things that belong to each world. There’s not a whole lot to see here right now, outside of Megaluna… jeez, really? …because this is a coastal area that’s under the water some of the time. But we’re going to work on moving between U1 and Elsewhere… and telling each world apart.”

“I honestly can’t tell any difference at all,” Takama opined from behind them. “As far as I can see, nothing changed with either of you.”

“Good,” Kyra said. “Looking normal and hiding in plain sight is gonna be pretty important.”

General Toal rumbled a general agreement. He wasn’t at all happy about this development, although Cedric and Takama had finally convinced him of its necessity.

“So,” Tafrara asked after a moment, “now what?”

“Now we go down to the ground level,” Jack said, “and start working with the tide. It’ll be arriving in a few more minutes. The contrast between a wet and a dry world should help you learn how to tell them apart and control which one you’re in.”

It went much faster than Jack expected. But then, although she had never done anything like meditation before she met the Meziane family, they were old hands at it and knew how to control their frames of mind. Within the hour, both Izil and Tafrara had figured out how to transition between universes and began mastering the finer points, passing through walls and making sure their clothes came with them, moving objects back and forth without displacing the air around them… everything that she and Kyra had spent hours or days figuring out by trial-and-error, they absorbed with stunning alacrity.

Everybody had awakened early to make use of Elsewhere’s high tide and watch them float in invisible waters; once it rose enough to fill the top floor of the house, they took a break, realigning themselves completely with U1 and having breakfast.

“Everything is so different now,” Izil commented midway through the meal. “I can still see into Elsewhere. There are fish swimming through this room right now…”

“It’s pretty trippy,” Kyra agreed. “You get used to it after a while. But it does take a while.”

Jack found herself wishing she’d been brave enough to do this with Ewan, when he was still there.

It could have ended really badly if I had, she admitted to herself. We were having a hard enough time controlling ourselves around each other without access to another universe coming into play.

Yeah, Kyra agreed, giving her a sympathetic look. That could have broken both of you. It’s better that didn’t happen.

Maybe, in about five years, she could return and—if Izil and Tafrara hadn’t already reintroduced him to Elsewhere and taught him how to navigate it—she could do it then.

“There will be a few rules,” General Toal said as the meal was ending. “Tizzy and Dihya already have to return all of the souvenirs they acquired from Elsewhere, so an important rule for the two of you,” and he speared Tafrara and Izil with his gaze, “is that you don’t bring back any of your own. Nor do you leave anything straddling universes. Our prior intel indicates that the Quintessa envoy might be able to sense an object that is partly absent from this universe, the way that both girls could sense that about her.”

Both of them nodded, looking sober.

“You are to make no visual or audio recordings of Elsewhere or its inhabitants. There must be no evidence in this universe, whatsoever, that you have access to another. When you are in Elsewhere, you must always have a plausible alibi for where you are in U1. For any trip longer than eleven hours, you must also isomorph back briefly to check in and make sure that your alibi is holding up. I will provide you with special comms to take with you, that won’t be easily traced, so that your check-ins won’t put anything at risk. Make sure, before you do a check-in, that no one in U1 will see or hear, and that nothing will record, your appearance and disappearance. There is no room for error here. More lives than you know depend on what you can do remaining hidden from both the Quintessa Corporation and the Federacy itself.”

Now both Izil and Tafrara looked grim.

“And no further spread of Threshold Syndrome is to occur without my knowledge,” General Toal finished, now making sure that everyone at the table met his gaze for a moment.

They had to wait for the tide to begin receding, and the waters of Elsewhere to drop below roof level, before they could begin practicing again. They first practiced swimming through walls and using partial isomorphs to swim—or, from the perspective of those in U1, levitate—at what would otherwise be crushing depths. Then they practiced transitioning objects to and from Elsewhere, using the various souvenirs that Jack and Kyra had collected before releasing them back to the waters once and for all.

Izil pioneered a way to leave all of the water behind when transitioning back from Elsewhere, his thoroughly-immersed clothing emerging completely dry… something Jack had never figured out how to do, but which she finally mastered right before the tide receded. With the ocean departed, Jack and Kyra taught Izil and Tafrara how to use surfaces in U1 as platforms in Elsewhere, climbing phantom steps and walking through phantom walls without falling through phantom floors, finishing up with the “cricket trick.”

“Now you know everything we do,” Jack told them as the sun dipped toward the horizon. When it rose again, she thought with a pang, it would be time for her to leave. To stop being Tislilel Meziane… possibly forever.

Safiyya and Takama’s parents, along with Lalla, had rescheduled their own departure for the morning-day, just in case Izil ended up needing to go with them after all. As night fell, everyone gathered for one last round of mint tea and conversation in the dining room. It was strangely awkward at first, as they all avoided talking about Jack’s and Kyra’s impending journeys. Neither of them were allowed to share any details about where they were going, even with each other.

Then Cedric began telling stories about Tomlin’s adventures when he’d been a fighter pilot, based on his elder son’s personal confidences, and the awkwardness disappeared for a time.

I’m not going to get a chance to tell Kyra about the Kublai Khan, Jack realized as Cedric told one of the more famous stories about “El Krim’s” battles with pirates along the Sol Track Shipping lanes, when he’d discovered that one cargo hold of a vessel he’d boarded contained a pair of very angry, very hungry shrylls.

“…So he was running as fast as he could,” Cedric continued, “and he said he could feel those things gaining on him, when this door he’d just passed slammed open and three of the pirates who’d run from him earlier burst out, whooping and yelling at him to get down on the floor. At least, that’s what he thought they were starting to say, because suddenly they were screaming instead.”

Jack shuddered. She’d read about how shrylls ate, and had almost experienced it firsthand. “Did he find the kids he was looking for and save them?”

“That he did. The shrylls were still eating those pirates while he got everybody else off the ship and blew it up. The Sirius Corporation was furious—they’d cared more about the ship than the kids—until they learned that it was about to turn into a floating shryll nest. Then they finally admitted he might have had a point…”

Everybody at the table chuckled, although most of the expressions also contained wistful sadness. The murder of Colonel Gavin Brahim Tomlin Meziane—who Jack still found herself thinking of as just Tomlin—was still fresh and painful in their hearts. A variation on the same story had been told during his memorial service by one of his comrades in arms; in that version, he’d led the shrylls away from his companions, and they had all believed that he’d sacrificed himself to save them, until he showed up in the boarded vessel’s hangar with half a dozen children, wearing shorted-out slave collars, by his side, one riding on his back.

Riddick, she thought, might have liked Tomlin. At the very least, they would have been on the same side where the kids he’d rescued were concerned. Her father had told her—had he told her? Or had he just thought about it and she’d somehow overheard?—that there was a highly-classified story, one that nobody in law enforcement wanted the public to know lest they start thinking of him as heroic, about Riddick rescuing a group of children who had been abducted and enslaved—

That sounds just like him, Kyra whispered in her mind.

She supposed Kyra was right. Between the story her father had told her, and her own experience of how Riddick had treated her on the crash planet, he did seem to have a soft spot for kids. He’d told his own story about Johns using some child hostages to catch him, but had refused to go into detail about just what had happened to them. All he would say was that Johns had killed a few of the kids. Imam, who had seemed to know more details about the story, had told her that she was far too young to hear them… even though she was already older than the kids who had suffered them firsthand. It especially galled her, even months later, given that any merc who knew her history might consider her an ideal piece of bait for catching Riddick… and might be a sicko like Pritchard.

The only question left was whether or not those kids’ fates had been worse than what Pritchard had had in mind for her and Kyra.

Why, she found herself wondering, do so many adults believe that keeping kids ignorant about the threats they’re facing protects them?

It was their last night with the Meziane family and Jack didn’t want it to end, but most of them had awakened especially early in the evening-day to take advantage of the arrival of Elsewhere’s high tide. Soon they were saying their good-nights, Jack and Kyra returning to their guest room for one last time.

The room felt strange, missing all of the driftwood, coral and shells… and missing Sebby. It sent a pang through Jack; she hadn’t even left Tangiers Prime yet, and it was leaving her. None of the beautiful blankets and pillows that she and Kyra had bought, to decorate first their apartment and then the guest room, could come with them. Safiyya had said she was going to box them up and store them for the day when she, or Kyra, returned, along with most of the clothing they’d bought that was too distinctive of Tangiers Prime to take with them. The few things that Jack could keep, she had to plan on discarding before returning to her family, walking back into their lives with—at least, as far as anyone could tell—nothing more than the extremely nondescript clothes on her body…

It felt like she was preparing to erase herself. As much as she knew it was necessary, it felt like its own terrible new form of suicide. Maybe Jack had to die as she became Audrey again…

…but why did Tizzy have to die?

Kyra looked every bit as brooding and morose as she felt. They didn’t talk, taking fast showers so that they wouldn’t have to think about who was no longer dancing at their feet. When Jack found herself in the starfield of the Apeiros, she anchored herself there, both afraid of the dreams of loss that might otherwise come to her and not wanting to get dragged into Kyra’s dreams of hunting in the forest with Riddick.

The other little larva no longer dreams of that, the Apeiros told her at some point in the night. It dreams of a world with three suns.

“You’re not talking to her, are you?” Jack asked, equally surprised that Kyra might have initiated conversation with them and worried that they had resumed it without her consent.

No. But it is broadcasting those dreams quite loudly. Seeking companions to play its story out with it. The visions are unusually detailed compared to its other dreams. They seem more like the things we see in your mind.

“They’re from the story I told her, the one you listened to. I shared some of the memories with her, to help her see it all better.”

It loves being there.

“Why do you always say ‘it’ and not ‘her?’” Jack asked.

Should we not? Have we offended?

Jack shrugged. “I keep forgetting how different we are. With humans, we’re given names when we’re born, and most of the time our biological sex is known right away.”

She and Izil had had an interesting conversation, in the wake of the answers he’d given Mommy, about biological sex, gender roles, and variations within them… and he’d given her a book—in file form, of course, for her tablet—to read on her journey home, one he thought might be hard for her to get on Deckard’s World itself. He seemed to think she’d been woefully undereducated on the subject, and she suspected he was right.

You already know if you’re male or female?

“Yes. The ‘other larva’ is named Kyra, and she’s female.”

Noted. And you?

“I’m female too, although sometimes I’ve disguised myself as a male. Males are less… preyed upon…”

Do you have a name?

“I have way too many of those,” she sighed. “I don’t even know which one is really mine anymore.”

Interesting.

“You said your names were stolen from you,” Jack recalled. “How?”

We do not know much about what we become as our hatchings progress. But upon our sixth hatching, once we learned whether we were male or female, there would have been a ritual to give us names. The demons of the darkness prevented it. We have no names except the one you have given us. Is there nothing you would like us to call you?

“I guess…” She sighed, feeling like she was giving into the inevitable. There had been a time when she had been eager to return to this name, to put Jack behind her forever, but now… “I need to go back to being Audrey. You can call me that if you like. Audrey.”

It was weird how her driving goal, when she’d been trapped in the hospital, now felt like a dead end. Part of her wished she’d asked them to call her Tizzy. But that was a name she had to let go of in too few hours.

She would be Marianne for the journey home, and then Audrey for at least four more years… and after that, she had no idea. But she had better get used to being Audrey again.

She woke feeling a strange sense of resignation.

Kyra seemed in slightly better spirits, at least. They even talked a little as they went through their morning preparations… and began setting out the things that they were planning on taking with them.

Jack’s backpack barely contained anything besides her most nondescript clothing, her tablet, and the neurofeedback device when she closed it; it was small enough that she wouldn’t need to check any luggage at either the train station or the spaceport, and what she had would be mostly unremarkable if security went through it. She looked around the room, sighing, and her eyes fell on the binoculars and telescope she’d bought not long before the Spaceport Explosion.

She’d gotten some good use out of them, but she couldn’t take them home with her.

“You want either of these?” she asked Kyra.

Kyra, who had been frowning at her tablet, looked up. “Maybe the binoculars? I can see them being useful where I’m going. But I don’t have space for the telescope. Probably wouldn’t need one, anyway.”

Jack brought the binoculars over, sliding them into their case and setting it next to Kyra’s pack. “They’re yours. I hope you see some cool stuff through them.”

She hoped Kyra saw better things through them than she had, anyway. No more exploding shuttles or levitating corpses, at the very least.

That left the telescope.

It was the last thing she needed to find a good place for. If she simply left it in the room, Safiyya would pack it away for her return. But that felt wrong. It was meant to be used. She wanted someone to get to enjoy it while she was gone, to think of her…

Ewan. She wanted to give it to Ewan.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” she told Kyra after she closed up the telescope and its stand and put them in their case.

Slipping out of their room, she walked two doors down to Ewan’s. She’d leave it in his room for him to find when he next came home.

The door was locked.

For a moment she dithered. Go back? Ask Safiyya to let her in, or to put it in there for her? Or…

She transitioned into Elsewhere, the floor in U1 still firmly beneath her feet, and walked through the door as a phantom. She isomorphed back on the other side, aware that she was taking a liberty that Ewan, himself, might object to. She hoped he wouldn’t, but a small pang of guilt almost overrode the thrill of adventure and discovery she was feeling.

His room was laid out similarly to hers and Kyra’s, but decorated differently. It felt like him. He had a fondness for blues and greens, and most of the furnishings reflected that. There were several paintings on his walls. She wished there was more light to see them by, or that she dared turn on his lights. They looked beautifully done, all in a singular style…

When she walked closer to one of them, she saw that he had signed them, in English and Tamazight, Ewan Zdan.

He was the painter of all these magnificent works that she could barely see.

There was an easel near his bed, positioned to catch the light coming through the French doors leading onto his balcony. She walked closer; this painting, at least, she would be able to look at with more ease.

Her breath caught in her throat as the work came into view.

It was a painting of a mermaid.

The mermaid floated in a sea, arms reaching forward as though inviting someone into her embrace. While the sea was unfinished, mostly sketched out and not yet painted, meticulous detail had been lavished on the mermaid herself. Her strong tail was covered in aquamarine scales that seemed to sparkle; long golden hair fanned out around her and covered her bare torso, hiding her breasts as completely as if she were clothed. That hair looked almost exactly like the wig Jack had been wearing when they had first met. And the mermaid’s face…

It was her face. Even as she realized that, she found it difficult to recognize herself. He had painted her as if she were one of the galaxy’s great beauties. Every feature was recognizably hers, but…

Is this what he saw when he looked at me? She wondered. Ewan’s words, after they had left Elsewhere and were heading home, came back to her.

“…if all one had needed to do, to reach a new world, was take a beautiful girl’s hand…”

He’d only had a single week to create this. Less; they had spent almost every moment of his final Tangiers day in each other’s company. And yet it was so—

She could hear voices in the courtyard below. Soon someone would come up, looking for her and Kyra, if they didn’t go down to breakfast on their own. As much as she wanted to stay and marvel at Ewan’s work, to let the sun rise and reveal all of his artworks to her, she had to go.

Forcing herself to turn away, she walked over to the bed he had slept in. The impulse to curl up on it was hard to resist, but she was already late returning to her room. Instead, she carefully set the telescope case on the center of the bed. She’d written no note, but she hoped he would know who had to have left it for him. Why hadn’t she written a note?

There was paper on his desk, and a pen. She found herself picking up the pen and a small, blank notecard, scrawling a message on it just for him:

Forever your mermaid,
Tislilel

I can’t leave him this, she realized even as she turned to put it beside the telescope. It was the kind of promise that General Toal had forbidden, and she suddenly realized why. If she couldn’t keep it, if the ’verse conspired in preventing her from ever returning, it wouldn’t just be a promise that broke.

She couldn’t be that cruel to him.

The notecard was in her pocket as she slipped back into Elsewhere and left Ewan’s room.