The Altonevers (56 page)

“
Then how’d we get lost?”
she asks.

“
I...ah.”

“
I..I ahhh, hahaha. Cool
nerved mister vault knocker. Cat got your tongue?”

“
No, choking on a Carrot.”
he says.

“
Like I didn’t know the
whole time,” she says.

“
The whole time?” he
scoffs.

“
Since the pigs head hotel
at least, how many times we ran to the platforms dodging the
droppings of the pan-time pigeons. Do you really think I believed
you when you said you can’t read a map of the InterAlto rails? that
you’d been traveling for how long now?” she says.

“
I just wanted you to be
close enough to hear your heart beating,” he says coyly.

“
Yeah right.”

“
To wake up next to you,”
he says.

“
Alright, I’ll take it,”
she shrugs.

“
I'm sorry for being
selfish.”

“
It’s okay, you are
selfish. A vault knocker with a gluttons greed for pilfering and
pleasure, but at least you're pleased with the feeling of having me
close to you. It’s a beautiful sentiment to share,” she says,
beaming at him with a warmth he can feel on his face. His face
that’s failing at fighting a back smile.

“
For being selfish enough
to put you in harm's way. Misleading you into near death and
possible eternal imprisonment, into this perpetual trap of an
existence that is my own.”

“
Oh shut up you,” she says
dismissively “you didn’t drag me anywhere. Thinking so much of
yourself ha. That no one can think for themselves but
you.”

“
Oh please. Remember how
scared you were when you were on the train for the first time, you
fainted, and it was funny. And staying holed up in the hotel rooms,
at your window perch.”

“
Not always hotel rooms.
Some real dives sometimes, mister male provider,” she says and he
rolls his eyes, replying, “you mean living, seeing the different
sides of life instead of staying in soul dulling
comfort?”

“
Well I saved your
life...twice,” she says, showing him two fingers.

“
And how many times have I
saved yours.”

“
From the danger of being
around you.”

“
You didn’t run away, from
me at least.”

“
I didn’t,” she shrugs, “I
ran with you.”

“
That’s right you didn’t,”
he says reaching his arms out to her reaching out to him. Wanting
her embrace in this moment, and wanting it to never end, though in
sorrow of knowing it inevitably will. He yelps, instantly almost
knocked off his feet feeling a sharp painful jolt in his left
shoulder, by a bullet shot from the handgun of a Ribbit standing at
the edge of the pond below. Who lets off three more shots that miss
Cider as he takes the gun from his waist and clips the Ribbits face
with his second squeeze of his finger.

“
Are you okay?” she screams
in horror as she grabs him, turning and falling to sit on the lip
of the fountain.

“
Yeah...are you still
laughing,” he says clenching his teeth and gurgling through groans
of agony and gasping breathes.

“
Of course.”

“
Sorry for this, all this,”
he says.

“
We have to go, C’mon,” she
says, panicking, stepping from the water and pulling him to his
feet, steeling herself to his stricken groans and straightening his
back.

“
Leave me here. Leave me,
and they might not chase you,” he says pushing her away.

“
Shut up!” she cries,
“screw your senseless chivalry. You’re not gonna be a martyr! not
today! and not for me. I couldn’t live with that. Now come on, get
up!” she yells red faced with welling eye's, terrified for his life
more than her own. He nods his head then paces forward as fast as
he can, but stumbles under the agony of his shoulder a few steps
later. Falling faster than she can catch him, he tumbles down the
stout green slope and disappears with a splash into the murky pond
with the faceless Ribbit floating like a lily pad on it’s still
surface.

“
Cider! Cider!” she shouts
barreling down, tripping over her feet and belly flopping into the
pond. She fumbles around the pond on her hands and knees, blindly
sifting the through the silt.

“
Cider!” She shouts again
and again, then starts choking on the water filling her open mouth.
The silt shifts under her knee as she coughs, until she falls feet
first into a sinkhole and disappears into muddy waist high water,
Leaving the surface still like she was never there. Then a second
later she shoots, head first, out of the same body of water.
Coughing in trying to cry out his name, then seeing it’s no longer
raining, or wet at all. The hills are solid masses covered by dry
grass, not wax dripping from continually renewing leaves. He’s
sitting on the embankment with his feet in the shallow pond,
holding his bleeding shattered left shoulder.

“
Where d'ya go Carrots?” he
says through short heavy breathes.

“
Where did I go? Where’d
you go? It doesn’t seem like we went anywhere at all,” she
says.

“
Oh yeah, where’s the dead
Ribbit?” he asks.

“
Good point,” she says
scanning the ponds surface seeing no sign of anything
floating.

“
And we were just in a
storm. It’s dry as a summer day out here,” he says.

“
Is this my Alto? my
home?”

“
I don’t think so,” he
says.

“
Why not? it could
be.”

“
Is there a pond that
people emerge from there?” he asks.

“
No, I mean maybe. There
could be, but I don’t remember there being one,” she says touching
her finger to her chin. Feigning ponderous thought, though actually
remembering very little of her standard.

“
We should keep going,” he
says, standing with a heaving breath of harsh pain. She doesn’t
budge, but stays in place.

“
Anna what’re you doing? we
have to go. now!”

“
No.”

“
What?”

“
No. No I don’t want to go.
I don’t want to go home anymore, I want to stay. To stay with you,”
she cries.

“
We have to go or we’ll
both die, what good is that?” he says and before she can answer, to
give her heart’s response, the barking of hounds spurs her to run,
out of reflex, from the pond to his side. Fighting him to wrap his
good arm over her shoulders, she gives up and they run as fast as
his wound will let them. Distraught, looking disheveled and fleeing
from the trees with dismal chances of escaping the hounds, that he
thinks of as the jaws of Cerberus closing in on the life of his
love. They run through a stretch of four foot foliage and he tries
to sit, but collapses on a rock, then stands. She stumbles past
trying not to knock him over, she vanishes out of thin
air.

“
Anna...Anna,” he shouts
her name, taking a few paces forward and passing through an
invisible veil formed by the interceding of branches when arching
overhead. He reappears under a different arch of interceding
branches in a different place.

“
Anna!” he shouts,
again.

“
Cider?” he hears from a
bush, fifty feet away, that she appears from behind a second later,
waving and biting her bottom lip smiling. She runs to him, then
vanishes from sight through another invisible veil. He runs passing
through the same place though going nowhere, not knowing why, he
falls to his knees in pain and frustration. His shoulder's spilling
blood down the side of his body, as he steps back, and tries
another pass, but still stays in the same place. Writhing in pain,
with his mind boiling in scattered thoughts of panic, racing with
wretched images of her being captured or killed without him or lost
through life as he would be without her. He charges the same space
like a bull seeing red, wildly from all directions until he
vanishes and appears near the edge of the park. He's bewildered,
frantically scanning around him until seeing her sitting on a park
bench behind him, watching as he nearly breaks his neck looking for
her.

“
I waited for you,” she
says standing to her feet, and sliding under his good arm to help
him walk.

“
Thank you,” he says,
relishing the feeling of her body against his. A feeling that's
muddied in knowing the only way to save her life, is to set her
free of him from his fate.

“
There’s a station there,”
he says.

“
Where?” she says, not even
lifting her head to look for it, not wanting to see it, thinking of
it as the staircase that descends to the time of their departure,
the death of their togetherness. When what’s grown between them
ceases in growing and will begin to wither and fade to memory with
no shared passion in the present. She's distraught, inescapably
dwelling in the thought of his death, and her life without
him.

“
Anna,” he groans, “don’t
be fool for me. I never thought I’d want to be away from you, but
what else can we do.”

“
It’s you who’s being a
fool, we can make it if we try. We’ve been on the run for thousands
of days before this, at least.”

“
Don’t you get it. I’m hit,
a sitting duck, we’ll both be lost. You'll be locked away for an
eternity. The only way is to part paths and maybe one day see each
other again, if we can even make it out this,” he says.

“
To leave it to hope,” she
sighs, though submitting, and leading him to the staircase. Each
step forward enflames his bullet shattered shoulder, locking up and
engulfing his spine in severe pain. Though merely a splinter to the
anguish of them parting ways, lost to the other in the infinite
breadth of the Altonevers forever stretching fractal rails of
crystalline amber. Any optimism of their fortune drains from both
their beings with each descending step. The only thing keeping them
moving forward is the horror of having to experience the death of
the other, even worse to have to watch them die.

Taking the last step onto the landing
with no sign of any authorities, they saunter to the turnstile,
that she hops and helps to pull him under. The few people passing
their paths don’t even blink at the bloodied, dirty, disheveled
two, who’re still soaking wet and permeating a sense of desperation
that pours from their hysterically somber expressions. They
continue along the path, staggering through a winding white tiled
tunnel, one of an endless number of Central’s ceaselessly reaching
catacombs of interconnected subterranean InterAlto
stations.

Eventually making their way into a
massive space with night and stars as a ceiling. otherwise in the
shape of a light-years wide rectangle with walls of solid obsidian
that gleam golden iridescence as the eye passes, splashed with
swathes and blots of the colors of all the sunsets ever to be seen
by the infinitely numerous beings born of the Altonevers. Garnet
and silver metal arches crowning every ten foot door, spaced every
six feet from the next, aligned in rows horizontally and vertically
lasting as far as the eye can see, no matter where you are
standing. Each is a doorway to a different set of amber rails
reaching into the depths of forever to an infinite number of plains
of reality, or Altos

“
Where do we go from here?”
she asks.

“
Good question, I dunno. I
mean how could we,” he says.

“
We’ll never find the right
rails to ride,” she says, wanting to give up looking.

“
Ask information,” he
coughs.

“
They’re never
helpful,”

“
Depends what you ask of
them. C’mon let’s go,” he says as she darts her eyes around
rapidly, scanning the scene like a nervous hare trying to see in
all directions at once.

“
Hey. Keep your head down
and keep moving, we look sore enough to the eye as it is,” he
says.

“
But keep my chin up,
right,” she smirks.

“
Yeah, if you can help it,”
he says sharing her sentiment with a flashing smirk of his
own.

“
Over there, there’s an
information desk. I think,” she says.

“
Where?” he asks barely
able to shift his head without hot pain shooting through his spine
and reaching down to his blood soaked socks.

“
Over there, the lights. It
looks like the top of a carousel, that way,” she says, and the two
drift like wood through a lazy stream of people toward a carousel
tent crowned desk. Manned by a bored looking desk clerk, who pops a
bubble of her gum at the sight of strap hangers in need.
Particularly those with questions, more so than that, when they're
disheveled, looking as ragged as the homeless, like the two wily
eyed travelers presently staring at her with a sense of urgency as
their faces.

“
Do you need help with
anything,” the bored clerk asks, reaching for a nail file, and
filing her nails instead of bothering to look up at them for an
answer.

“
Yes, she’s trying to get
home, back to her standard. Maybe you can help,” he says, and the
girl dressed in yellow pops her black gum then sucks it to a snap
as though the question, which to answer is her occupation, is
infringing on her in some way.