The wind was restive, burbling under his wings, swirling spittle from
the oncoming giant, looming black over the water. Sunlight washed over
the coast still, the gull gliding overhead as he did on an afternoon,
keen for a quick meal. The uneasy wind didn't enter his mind, but did
enter his body, tensing and twisting with each abrupt shift around him,
The raw power in the air excited him, his body moving only tiny degrees
from the movement of the wind itself, his mastery of flight entirely at
the mercy of the elements.
There were thin columns of smoke rising along the shore, tiny fires,
and many men moving through the fields and forests. This excited him as
well. Men meant danger, but also food, gluttonous feasts. Without
thinking - he always slipped through the wind without thinking - his
wings cupped ever so slightly, sending him on a long gliding path
northward along the coast, racing with the speed and power of the storm
in his wings, the looming presence rumbling in the distance, walking on
a million black legs across the sea straight at the coast, pointed
needle teeth flickering from the boiling clouds to the waves, and gone
again in an instant. The gull would be long to ground before the storm
arrived. Others would not be so lucky.
--
By the time drops began to land on the dead mens eyes, Gabriel and his
team were already deep in the woods, making their way back to Crabtown,
struggling under their carefully wrapped loads, slipping and stumbling
in the gathering darkness. They didn't know if they were being
followed, so they moved as swiftly as they could through the dense
growth. The branches were cranking up such a din in the wind that there
was no point in stealth. They could barely communicate by shouting over
the roaring wind from a few feet away.
Finally, they had to take shelter in the ruin of a crumbling dreamstone
building, that pale curdled stone that had been warped into so many
fantastic shapes in the Empire of Dreams. They found a corner free of
wind and rain, and set up a watch. A blackened circle in the floor made
it clear that they were not the first to take refuge here. Gabriel
forbid them from setting a fire, for the Bloom had surely found the
dead men on the beach and were hunting them by now. The sound of the
rain whipping through the upper stories of the building, washing in
rivulets down the slime-covered walls from cracks and holes, built up
layer upon layer of liquid sound, the hush of marshaled raindrop, the
gurgle of the drains, the drip of water from stray rusted rebar
thrusting from the pitted walls, the plop and shimmer of puddles in the
inner chambers of the building, splashing down below. They did what
they could to stay warm, and ended sleeping fitfully, except for the
watch set in the outer rooms, colder and wetter than the rest. Soon
Gabriel was alone, surrounded by sleeping forms, crouched near the
precious cargo they had hauled with them. He wouldn't sleep until every
piece was safely in Crabtown. He hardly slept on a mission anyway,
there were too many things to keep an eye on. His clothes were wet,
cold, and clung to him like mounds of dead seaweed. The rain was
slowing, and some weak moonlight filtered in from the gaping rents in
the high Dreamstone walls, rippling through the rusted metal bars
twisted out of their still, stone beds and raised awkwardly into the
air.
Gabriel didn't spend much time thinking about why he drove his men
through this terrible weather, and the danger. He was not a man prone
to reflection. In a few hours it would be day and they would finish
their journey to Crabtown, and he would resume his work. He hardly felt
the cold or the wet. Like a lobster, he didn't even feel the press of
darkness around him. He snatched up his shotgun in an instant when
there was a slow shadow just beyond a deep corner, through a gaping
hole, where rain still flung itself down from the sky. There was
something moving there. His gun was probably the best kept instrument
in Crabtown, lovingly oiled and protected for years, it shone faintly
in the watery moonlight, pointing at the dark opening like a pale, bony
finger. Something was clearly moving, as high up as a tall tree,
something big, small wavelike flickers to each side of it. Gabriel
waited, one eyebrow twitching lazily. It would get closer. Once it was
withing kill range he would take it down. Now, he waited, the slow
press of his breath ticking away the seconds.
It moved closer, pushing through into the building, floating serenely,
turning slightly as it entered, flickering its side fins until the
broad, powerful tail was clearly visible. It was a grouper, larger than
a man, thick lips mouthing the air. The fish moved slowly along the
wall, half a dozen yards above the ground. Gabriel kept the gun
trained on it. He was not a man to let his guard down, even in a dream.
A school of what could have been herring swept across the room, like a
shifting silver cloud. The grouper drifted slowly downward, moving
farther away, difficult to tease out of the darkness.
Gabriel started backward at a shifting among the sleeping men, checking
his instinct to fire. A half dozen catfish worked their way carefully
across the hard floor, intent on something. Gabe turned to follow the
grouper, picking his way between purple urchins and orange starfish.
The clouds cleared, flooding the world in a sea of moonlight. Spats of
foam rocked in the waves high overhead, undulating through the curling
columns of kelp unfurling toward the bone-white orb, splintered and
swollen like a great fungus, larger than life or terror or even the
bones of love, refracted in the waters of the newly arisen sea. The man
who had been on watch stumbled in, "Gabe! What the -- "
"Shut up," he waved him back with a meaty fist, "Watch the supplies. If
they are gone when I get back, you had better be dead." The grouper had
disappeared down a ruined passageway, shot through here and there with
bands of moonlight. Gabriel followed after, ignoring the jellyfish,
minute crustaceans and tiny fish, many glowing faintly with their own
light. A lantern-fish drifted by, dangling light illuminating nothing,
but drawing his eyes irresistibly. The way led down a slope, into the
bowels of the building where the steel beetles once nested. Gabriel's
feet crunched on a thick layer of barnacles, each step deeper into
darkness. He pulled out a small lantern, charged it with a hand crank
for a few seconds, and hung it from his belt. It shed just enough light
to find his way slowly downward. Stranger and stranger shapes moved
just out of sight, drawn by the glow. Flickers of azure, ruby and topaz
were scattered through the darkness, glowing and fading again before
they even registered. The floor leveled out. He was at the bottom. The
weak arc of light around his feet reflected on the gray bones of long
expired urchins, black algae, the dust of a million million diatoms
drifted to their final resting place.
But he was not alone. He became aware of a large creature, invisibly
black, waiting with cold, vast patience. He took a step forward, just
enough to see the faint shape, the bulging head lolling to one side, a
single bulging eye as big as his chest, watching him as closely as he
watched it.
"Is she here?"
The eye was absolutely motionless. Tentacles the size of tree-trunks
uncoiled like an oily halo into the darkness. Breathing valves opened
and shut metronomically, showing the creamy white curves leading
inward, then hiding them.
"I want to see her."
The eye moved almost imperceptibly. Gabriel was visibly agitated.
"I know! You think I don't I, of anyone, don't know? I don't care. I
want to see her." His eyes slid sideways to probe the darker corners of
the chamber. The long, suckered arms continued to uncoil smoothly,
stretching above and behind him. Nothing else moved. Splashes of bluish
light drifted through the chamber, seemingly disconnected from any
source, even from the darkness itself. Eventually, his shoulders
sagged, and he let the gun drop to the ground like a rock in a bucket.
"I want to see her. Just once more." His voice was weary, flat. "I
don't care. I don't care." The eye, the black-and-white of the busy
breathing apparatus, remained impassive. Flashes of crimson whipped
across it's skin in the blink of an eye. Nothing changed. In the middle
distance, back between two thick, square pillars of cement, he thought
he could see the figure of a woman, long dark hair billowing out around
her in the invisible currents of this place. He lunged, into a sudden
midnight cloud of ink, the faint caress of a huge body hurtling away,
stumbled forward blindly until he felt his clutching fingers scrape at
the rotten cement of a dumb column, hunched here at the bottom of all
things. He tore at it, and stumbled on to the next, leaving bloody
fingerprints in the darkness.
When Gabriel returned to the rest of his men, they were all awake, pale
and frightened. The one he had spoken to clutched his weapon with white
fingers, eyes bloodshot from trying to look everywhere at once. The
pre-dawn light painted an old, abandoned building, cheaply built out of
sub-standard concrete, in the last stages of ruin, and nothing else.
"Get the packs together, we need to be in Crabtown by mid-day, or all
hell and the Bloom will be on us." some of them stared dumbly, others
peered back toward the tunnel he had come out of. "Now! How many of you
want to end up on a Bloom spit?"
When they were back to work, he glanced back at the tunnel himself. He
could see the dark form still, floating before his eyes like an
sunspot, burned deep. He resisted an urge to go back. There was nothing
down there now but crumbling cement, dripping rainwater and taproots
slowly plowing up the ruin to their own ends. The night had closed
behind them. He shouldered his pack and picked his way out of the
building to the woods, pudgy eyes sharp to catch any movement in the
shadows, as always. There were other ways into the darkness.