The Land Beyond Summer is posted for entertainment purposes only and no part of it may be crossposted to any other datafile base, conference, news group, email list, or website without written permission of Pulpless.Comtm.
Copyright © 1996 by Brad Linaweaver. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER FIVE
UNSYMPATHETIC MAGIC
The door to the porch was standing open, and Wolf entered
the house just in time to see Clive and Fay vanish. Just as
quickly Wolf turned tail and was out the door in a flash of fur
and doggie tonenails making a tic-tac staccato on the asphalt
driveway. Kitnip had chosen this moment to reappear and the two
animals collided in a most unbecoming way.
Naturally the cat recovered her dignity first, but before
she could withdraw, a long white hand thrust out and grabbed her
by the tail. It was Mom. Except that neither animal had been
confused by the interlopers who simply didn't smell right. But
Fay and Clive had still been around and there was still food, so
why leave? Pets are notoriously practical about such matters.
While the Mom person was busy subduing Wolf with her other
hand, an opportunity presented itself for Kitnip to use her
claws. She made a nice, long scratch deep in the flesh of the
upper arm. Ungratifyingly, there was not a drop of blood; nor
did the woman show any pain. Instead, she got mad and Kitnip
might have wondered if this had been a wise expenditure of one of
her lives. Mom let go of Wolf, who wasted no time making a run
for it. Meanwhile, Kitnip was being swung through the air.
Dizzy though she was, Kitnip managed to bite Mom but fangs
were no more effective than claws had been. Mom got the cat by
the scruff of the neck and that was that. Meanwhile, Dad had
joined his erstwhile mate and elected to chase after Wolf,
running at a speed much greater than the real Dad had ever shown
himself capable.
"Well," said Mom, not even out of breath, "I think this one
needs her nails clipped, and then a very special bath."
"You mean the liquid that gives ringworm and bald patches?"
asked Dad, dragging Wolf back as though the German shepherd
weighed no more than a lapdog.
"And then maybe we'll feed her on hair balls after that,"
said Mom, shaking Kitnip in her fist.
"I've got plans for this one, too," said Dad, glaring at
Wolf. "But we must wait until he tells us what he wants.
Somehow I don't think that was his doing just now."
Mom was surprised. "Wouldn't he take them so he could
replace them, like us?"
Dad shook his head: "Then why not take the animals as well?
And I thought the real children would be with us for some time
yet. Let's play it safe. We'll lock up these two and wait for
instructions."
"From the TV?"
Dad was already at the door and gesturing for Mom to follow.
"However he decides," was the only reasonable answer. Wolf and
Kitnip were unceremoniously dragged into the house and tossed in
the basement.
***
The room disappeared. Fay had been looking down toward
her sneakers when she opened the letter. The first thing she saw
was brightly colored stone under her feet. And she was standing
at a slight tilt. She almost lost her balance but Clive caught
her.
Clive had been looking at a picture of the Gurney family
from happier days, hanging on the wall over by Dad's broken CD
player. (Dad had commented bitterly that if he'd been more
interested in the other kind of CD, the kind that meant
Certificate of Deposit, they wouldn't be in the mess they were in
now.) When the picture vanished Clive saw a gigantic marble
statue of a man standing in the distance. It was too far away
for him to make out the features but close enough to recognize
its martial aspect; the figure held a sword pointed straight over
its head.
"Where are we?" asked Clive.
"Grandfather wasn't kidding about his powers," whispered
Fay.
They took inventory of their new situation for which task
they were well situated, high atop a gigantic mound of stone. It
was big enough to be considered a mountain but its smoothness
suggested a hill. Wherever they were, it seemed to be midday
and visibility was excellent under a startlingly blue sky. The
only other time Clive could remember a sky like that had been
when his parents had taken him to see a historic mining town in
Colorado when Fay was only a baby.
Fay was first to see the volcano, if that's what it was. It
was about the same distance away as the statue but down another
quarter of the circle as they turned slowly around. Everywhere
they looked there were marvels, but the volcano was in a class by
itself because of what it was doing. It was erupting in complete
silence. And yet this was not its most arresting feature. The
contents of the eruption were not rocks and lava but giant
bubbles with bright lights shining inside. These objects rose to
a point directly above the mountain before exploding (also
silently), making flashes of light as they disappeared.
"Everything Grandfather told us was true." Clive sounded
miserable.
"No, you mustn't think that," answered Fay quickly. "I will
never believe anything he said about Mom and Dad, no matter how
much magic he has now."
"You didn't believe he had magic the day he told us!"
"You didn't either!"
Fay could usually talk herself out of a bad mood. Clive
envied her this ability; but when she got herself all worked up,
she could carry her brother along with her. This was no time to
bicker, with the world they knew vanished only minutes before.
They took in their surroundings as slowly and carefully as
if one sudden movement might shatter this strange world, or
themselves, into a million pieces. They were at the very apex
of the smooth hill of stone, a hill descending so gradually that
it looked perfectly safe to traverse.
The hill was four different colors, each making up one
quarter of the circle. At first glance, these sections appeared
to be painted, but the colors were natural to the rock, even
though they were separated by perfectly straight lines. Fay
straddled green and yellow. Clive was off to her side, completely
in a zone that was red. The remaining color was pure white.
At the axis where the lines met was an ornate telescope,
covered in gold and silver bricabrac, and appearing to be
something out of a Jules Verne book. Its base was firmly anchored
in the rock itself at the exact center of the stone mountain.
Clive looked through the telescope first. It was pointed at
the statue. He couldn't believe what he was seeing, but it made
a kind of demented sense. "You gotta see this," he said,
gesturing to Fay. She did ... and found herself gazing on the
stern, solemn, angry face of Grandfather, chiseled out of a great
amount of white marble. Back home, he would have considered such
a statement of vanity to be more money that it was worth, no
matter the choice of subject.
The telescope could be turned a full 360 degrees to get the
whole tour. Clive decided to let Fay take the first long turn.
He was shaken by the face on the statue, and although he wouldn't
admit it to her, he felt his sister was probably more qualified
than he was to understand what was happening. She'd had the
dreams.
Quite a lot could be seen with the naked eye, but for the
few landmarks to be studied, the telescope was indispensable.
Each color extended beyond the hill to a vast plateau below. The
hill was ringed by trees, and these spread out to make a great
forest. Where the white section ended, the trees were covered in
snow and ice, except for the ones that stood up like grey
splinters, dead husks with naked branches. The only place with
snow was the white section.
The red section led into a part of the very strange forest
where the trees had leaves of many different shapes and sizes, as
well as dozens of colors. They were gold and red and orange and
brown, and all kinds of combinations. Some of these leaves were
falling from the branches but no sooner did one go than it was
replaced by a new leaf, usually of a different color.
The remainder of the wood was marked off where the green and
yellow sections ended. Here the trees were covered in bright,
green leaves. There were birds singing and chirping in the
branches. They sounded like normal birds -- at least the birds
one might notice back home.
Fay studied a small river dividing the two sections, but
from this distance at least, there didn't seem to be much
different about these two areas of woodland. Once she got over
the surprise of the segregated sections, where different kinds of
weather were cut off from each other as by a force field, she
was most fascinated by the large objects dominating the horizon.
For this task, the telescope was indispensable.
The giant statue was where the white woods ended. The
volcano marked the end of the green section. As for the other
two, the red section was watched over by what could only be
described as a titanic totem pole. With the aid of the
telescope, Fay could make out details of exquisite birds and
animals, and human faces, up and down the length of a column of
wood that must be nearly two hundred feet high and yards wide!
At the base of the column there was an ornate Victorian house,
with a door made of the same wood as the pole, and covered in
carvings as well.
But an object even stranger than the volcano was reserved
for the yellow section: it appeared to be a giant glass cocoon,
or beehive, reflecting its surroundings back at the viewer
instead of being transparent. Fay could tell that Clive was
becoming impatient for his turn but she was frustrated by the
absence of any knob or adjustability to the eyepiece. The range
was too limited to satisfy her curiosity. Beyond the large
objects on the horizon, there was very little she could make out.
There was a yellow fog hanging over much of the landscape past
that point. She had seen that fog before.
"Here, Clive," she said, appreciating how smoothly the
telescope swiveled on its mount. He eagerly lowered his face to
the eyepiece. Yet none of the oddities she had witnessed could
compare to the most remarkable aspect about the place. It hit
her like a slap in the face. More than anything else, what
proved to Fay that she was no longer on earth, was the absence of
the sun! There was no cloud anywhere. There was no sun. Which
left the problem: where was the light coming from?
Nothing cast any shadows. That took a bit of getting used
to. She tapped Clive on the shoulder and let him in on her
latest discovery. He didn't believe her at first, but the matter
was quickly settled when she asked him about the light. She was
just about to conclude that her brother was being dense (one of
her bad habits) when he came through like gangbusters.
"Do you suppose," he began earnestly, "that the bubbles from
the volcano provide the light? They look like little suns when
they pop."
Suddenly they felt a wind, and with it came the sound of
chimes. Fay began to shake, but the wind was warm and pleasant.
She had a terrible thought: if Grandfather had come here after he
died, did this mean that they were dead, too? Did this place
have a name they weren't supposed to say in school? Even though
she was younger, she often felt older than her brother. She
decided to keep this idea to herself.
Fay bent down and picked up the envelope. When the
blackness had come out, she had felt paper inside. Now seemed a
good time to double-check. Sure enough, there were two pages
inside. The first was hand written with a flowing penmanship
that was beautiful and as easy to read as if it had been typed.
"What does it say?" asked Clive.
She read it aloud to him. She was a good reader.
Dear Fay and Clive,
Please forgive the unorthodox method by which I have reached
you. If you are reading this page then the transition has
already taken place. You are on the Mound of Seasons, the center
of a shrinking dimension. The fate of your world is tied to what
happens here, as are millions of other worlds.
Malak is reborn from a member of your family, and he has
stolen your parents because he needs them for a sacrifice when
the moment is right. There is no walking away from the blood,
dear ones. You are tied to them and tied to him; on your heads
falls the fate of more than I can possibly relate in a letter.
He Who Was Your Grandfather and is now Malak, the Dour One,
is at war with the Seasons. He hates them all, even Winter,
although he once pretended to prefer it, and now has his fortress
there. Most of all he hates Summer which is why he chose this
time of your year for the attack.
As Fay read and Clive listened, they were both too intent on
the matter at hand to notice a subtle change in the color of the
white statue dominating the Winter region. The sword was turning
darker, and as this happened, a wind started up and blew at the
young Gurneys. This was no ordinary wind but came in a narrow
shaft of air, as if an arrow had been loosed at them.
Your parents were replaced with creatures called Slaks.
Eventually he would have replaced you, as well, but not until you
had performed certain tasks for him on earth. By bringing you
here ahead of schedule, we've caused him a problem and given you
a chance. The most important thing is that you should come to me
at my house; it is the only house in the Land of the Seasons, and
you can see it at the far end of Autumn by using the telescope
you will find waiting for you. I cannot come to you because....
Fay would have read more but at that moment the shaft of
wind struck. It was the coldest wind Fay had ever felt, but it
just grazed the tips of her fingers, discoloring them with a
blue-grey frost. She didn't let go of the letter. The words on
the page changed color, from their original black to grey and
then a white that could barely be discerned, before falling to
shatter into a thousand shards against the hard rock surface
below. The last two words to fall were: Mrs. Norse.
"I want out of here," said Clive.
Fay screamed once. "Oh, what are we going to do now?" she
moaned, and started shaking. Clive put his arm around her and
tried to let his mind go as blank as the sheet of paper in her
hand.
"Wait," he had the presence of mind to say, "check the other
page."
It had not been affected, but it was no communication from
Mrs. Norse. It was a love poem Dad had written to Mom the first
year of their marriage:
"Honey, I don't pretend that this rhymes or scans, but I
passed poetry in college and this is the best I can do."
TO MY GIRL
When the end of the rainbow leads not to pots of gold,
Other treasures may fill to vaulted ceilings a woman's soul;
If worldly woes squeeze today's happiness from an open heart
still dreams of hope replinish passion from old love's dart!
The world is too much with us, eroding lives with distance;
Life becomes an aching trap when beauty forgets its radiance
We long for Eden before the Fall, sin untasted on the tree;
You are all that ever matters, more than words could ever be
Oh, to grind our fears to bread on which to feed laughter,
That tribulations are digested as we are happy forever after
Good faith is man's aspiration and woman's armor, her sheen
For in the end, happy memories are all a prince of fools may
set before his Queen.
Fay read it. Clive wore a critic's expression throughout
the experience. "I wonder why Mrs. Norse sent us this," she
said.
"I wonder why it wasn't messed up by the wind, too," he said
with a touch of regret. "We better do what Mrs. Norse said. At least we got that much from the letter." He held out his hand to
help, expecting her to favor her weakened ankle.
"Clive!" she cried out. "I didn't notice until now.
There's been so much happening. My ankle is fine. It's like I
never sprained it."