The sun was risen and threatening to drive the clouds away by the time Ali reached the north gate. His heart was pounding, but his breathing had settled back down. He was not even sweating. There were hints and intimations of strangeness trailing in his wake"chimneys spouting flames, perfectly sane shopkeepers speaking in tongues, a magewoman suddenly screaming as if she'd been stabbed"but it wasn't anything he'd had time to think about. Not now. There was only the girl in his arms, and the gate looming ahead. It was north by northwest to the Priestess's Abbey. If Fio was not there waiting, he'd run the whole way if he had to.
While he was running to the gate, the drow, Treemma, was running to the apartment and Fio. Afterward, there was the small matter of gathering supplies, dressing, and getting from WestEnd to the gate. The day had that watery, thin quality to it that promised cold and damp; Fio, she barely noticed it as she tore through the streets, crossing the Westbridge. The spellbox on the bike was a quiet thing, but loud enough to scatter what pedestrians and carts there were out already.
It was a confounding thing, the lack of anything to verify it, but knowing you are you; step and listen for the pattering pulse; were you going the right way' Was there a right way' There was nothing to see. It was like being caught between dream and waking; the dream still there but only the back of your eyelids to see and you can't open them; more pattering pulses over...there in the emptiness.
He pounded up to the gate and paused, sucking in lungs full of air, panting it out in utter nonsense, gibberish, snatches of endearments in three different languages, all of it directed at the unmoving Lirssa. The headlights warned him of Fio's approach, before the noise. The beam of the motorcycle's lights cut up over the rise of the hill like the debut of a new play in the theater district, and there she was.
"Come on, ma petite "toile, s"jour ici..." He looked up as the ambient light brightened, and then bolted toward the sidecar. He was in it, shoving aside the pile of blankets and first aid kits, almost before Fio had time to stop. "Look, bien-aim"e, I know this doesn't make any sense. But go through the gate, follow the track, and listen for the sound of the wind in cedar trees." How he expected her to hear them over the motorcycle's spellbox, he did not explain. He cradled the girl in close against him, stroking down her lank hair.
"Wind in cedar trees...just tell me when we're close." Fio was off as soon as he was settled, swerving to get through the gate at the right angle. The trail was choppy"it was not a proper road"but navigable. It was a surprisingly short ride. Then there was the stone wall clutched by roses cut back for the winter. He touched Fio's arm and pointed toward a wrought-iron gate that was big enough to fit the bike and sidecar. She cut her chin up in a nod and slowed, pulling in through the gate, past the wall with its thorny dependents.
Hardwood trees, naked and proud, stood with their bare branches towards the waking dawn in reverent silence. But the pines and the cedars traded gossip in the whisper, whisper of their needles, passing news along the wind like an airborne herald. The gate stood open, the lamp in the courtyard just flickering out for a day's sleep as the sun crept up the horizon, barely clearing the walls. Digging up a triangle vegetable patch was the Priestess, her hands dirt-black as she began to slowly stand. To a Grecian mind the sound of their approach might have represented the roar of the sea, the Kraken rising from the depths; or perhaps a Hydra, one monster, with at least three heads. To a Roman, perhaps it was the shouts and united oar strokes of the Viking marauders, set to pillage some Celtic settlement.
"Kyrie!" Ali called on sight of her, and clambered out of the sidecar. Fio cut the spellbox, sliding a hand up to splay through her hair and push it out of her face. Swinging a leg over the motorcycle, she dismounted and set the kickstand.
The last of the light from the lamp winked out. In the thin dawn, the Priestess stood statue still. Even silk was silent as the motored monster drew up and separated into human parts. Partly human, that was. "Ali." Chilled palms wiped the dirt free, leaving dark streaks down her skirt. The snake of a braid hissed as she broke the spell of her stillness and approached the horseless chariot.
In the outer world, Lirssa's flesh was stiff and waxy, like cool creek clay. There was dirt upon that cheek and across overly large clothes. The stoic, slow pulse of a heart worked with blood thickened by cold; the proximity of a heat source started its effect by sliced degrees.
He'd gotten his breath back, and was explaining to her, to his wife, to himself. "I found her lying in the city cemetery this morning...I have no idea how long she was there. I think hypothermia and something else?I don't know what, but I was going to put some life into her. As I did with the roses." He'd laid his hands on the roses out by the Abbey's wall, one evening, and thrust his life into them; and they'd burst into bloom, a hundred new buds exploding all at once into joyous fertility. "And just touching her that way stung my hands." He loosened his hold on the girl enough to reveal her face, so cold and still.
Fio sent him a sharp look at that, but held her tongue. And then she got a good look. "Lirssa...not Lisa," she whispered. She knew the girl, by sight if nothing else.
"So we brought her here." There was a naked appeal in his yellow-green eyes; he was not a prince of anything, right then, as Kyrie had teasingly named him. He was just a man, worried about a little girl.
The pulses grew fainter. Maybe she had lost the pattern. Nothing stayed for long. Thoughts came and went, slipping through incorporeal fingers. Maybe she was dead. It was a rather sad thought that this was what dead was like. She didn't like it.
((adapted from live play with Ali al Amat, Fio Helston, Kyrie Elision))
