Folded into the lotus position

Aj dreamed

ten billion dreams.

"I know where we're going now," Aida gasped when they finally slowed to a walk, their breathing labored. "I just don't know why."

"Finally." Fallon shook his head as he clutched at his side. "I feared you a true barbarian and my task utterly impossible."

"Barbarian? You're the ones wearing armor stolen from a museum, waving knives, and shooting arrows at people. Where the hell are you from?" Her mind drifted to the novels her grand-niece forced her to read. "Or... when?"

Focused on finding footing in the dark, it took him a moment to reply. "That is a story from another verse."

"A verse of what?"

"Indeed." He glanced back, chuckling. "Clever. And of 'where' and 'when' besides. Most often 'who', 'how', and 'why' accompany of necessity."

The hint of levity quickly subsided. "What sort of response might we expect from the local authorities you mentioned? Hired Keens from Ink? Striders? Mancers of some particular Lineage?"

"I don't know what any of that nonsense means, but I'd expect a couple SUVs packed full of pissed-off cops with shotguns."

They stared at one another across some unknown, vast cultural barrier. He shook his head, grumbled to himself, and stomped off.

Though she burned with questions, the resumption of their forced march consumed the next interminable stretch of night, offering opportunity to do little more than suffer.

Each shift of carrying position twisted Aida's bent spine, compressed her gut to make each breath a struggle, or put excruciating pressure on this joint or that. Atop it all, full-body aches and jabs of nausea flavored the mix courtesy of the flu she'd only partial overcome. What started painful made fast progress towards intolerable.

Eventually, Feral's impressive strength began to wane, the woman's breathing growing labored as a horse ridden to a lather. Their pace and progress slowed as the night wore on, their only break a brief stop to relieve themselves in a field before pushing on. Fallon seemed oblivious to Feral's dark looks whenever he complained about the weight of his small leather pack.

Dawn's light set the wheat heads aglow when they finally emerged from a final field and discovered woods slowly overgrowing a crumpled farmhouse's gray-bleached boards where it nestled near a river bend.

Feral dropped Aida unceremoniously into the tall grass edging the wheat field, air whistling through the slit in her mask, chest heaving, sweat streaming down her brow. As she collapsed to the grass, Aida noticed the scabbed-over tear in the woman's left ear for the first time. Someone ripped an earring out?

Fallon rested his elbows on his knees nearby, breathing heavily. Every now and then the morning breeze carried the distorted warble of a distant siren.

At least Aida's guess as to their destination proved accurate. "This is where I was born, why we chose that nursing home. Figured I might as well end near where I started."

Memories welled up through heavy veils of time, restoring the collapsed buildings, cutting back the tall grass, and populating the area with extended family plus dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, horses, mules. "Why did you bring me back here?"

Movement in her peripheral vision.

Aida turned as a dark-skinned woman emerged from the field, her white hair pulled into a tight spiraling bun at the back of her head. Like Feral, she wore leather armor, slatted skirt, and a bone mask, but unlike Feral she carried a recurve bow in one hand. The other hand jabbed insistently behind her, darting and contorting in some form of sign language.

Fallon waved his hands and shook his head while saying some version of "slow down" in the other language.

When it became clear the two of them would be at it for a bit, Aida rolled over to take in the farmhouse again, immediately spotting a third bone-masked figure slipping through the trees beyond it: a tiny slip of a blonde shorter even than hunchbacked Aida. Unlike the other two, this woman wore some version of the ghillie suits Aida's son used to wear bow hunting, the camouflage shading the woman's silhouette into the leafy shadows. Squinting offered no more detail beyond a set of pale, blue-gray eyes studying Aida back.

The bow woman, whom Aida arbitrarily labeled White Spiral when it became clear no introduction was forthcoming, raged at Fallon as much as the limitations of sign language allowed. Whatever the source of her angst, Fallon talked quickly, hands raised in a placating gesture.

White Spiral stepped close to him, palm thrust forwards in the universal sign for payment.

He shook his head, waved his hands, and stepped back. By his gestures, the blame for White Spiral's anger lay in the countryside behind them, Aida, or both.

Clearly not having it, White Spiral grabbed his collar and butted her face against his.

Prying himself from her grip, he smoothed his rumpled scrub top and spoke in a tone expressing anger and command, his arm motions indicating the river glade behind the farmhouse.

He turned his back on White Spiral imperiously, tossing his pack to the ghillie-wearing woman as she emerged from the trees. Aida mentally dubbed her Ghillie.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Turning to Aida, Fallon switched back to English. "Intolerable woman, that. Not my fault nothing works here as it should. Come, let us leave this verse behind that we may speak of another more favorable. Where's our Valeer? Ah, here he is."

What Aida had pegged as the murmuring susurration of the river grew louder until she resolved it instead as a flow of muttering in their liquid language.

The source of said babble stumbled into view from the trees: a pale, gaunt, glassy-eyed man whose brown hair fell in a ratty veil of tangles. Fingers writhing, his hands rubbed the tattered, sack-like garment crudely covering him. His eyes drifted and darted. He spoke without cessation, talking to no one in particular so quickly and constantly that Aida wondered when he breathed.

"Who is he? Did you call him Valeer?"

"Valeers are the keys and kite strings connecting us from where we now drift back to the hands that first released us into the winds." Fallon seemed proud of his poetry, repeating it in the other language while glancing around for affirmation. Feral offered him the same offensive gesture she'd thrust at White Spiral, who still glared at him. Ghillie had disappeared off somewhere, the Valeer babbled to a tree, and Aida had no idea what Fallon meant.

"Rubes." Fallon sighed as he took the Valeer by the arm and guided him into the wood.

Aida opened her mouth to request a translation for his cryptic poetry but trailed off when some species of giant dragonfly alighted on Fallon's shoulder.

In a single deft motion, he snatched it and bit its head off, the crunch between his teeth making Aida gag. Fallon clearly liked chewing it little better, face puckering as he tossed the insect's body aside.

Her stomach grumbled. Any thought of requesting food to try out on her delicate stomach vanished; if that was snack time she didn't want to ask about breakfast.

"I hope that's not what we eat now." A memory tugged. "Was that a six-eyed dragonfly? I saw one like that before."

“Even they don't work.” Fallon frowned, lost in thought. Turning south, he scanned the fields, head tilting. Faint sirens. "It seems they track us, we need make haste."

He stared at Aida as though it was her fault then turned away, shouting orders.

"I didn't tell you to assault Gloria and shoot at Tim!" she yelled at Fallon's back as he took the Valeer's arm and led him back into the trees. A droning sound caused both to startle and stare agape at the sky as a prop plane buzzed into sight on the horizon.

"If you've got a boat or something hidden back there, now's the time to get going." Aida gestured at the plane. "That spotter's going to lead them right to us."

White Spiral kicked Feral to get the still-prone woman's attention, gesturing angrily for Feral to pick Aida up. Feral replied with a gesture Aida translated to the middle finger. After a brief but intense exchange of sign, White Spiral shook her head and stomped over to Aida.

An involuntary whoop burst from Aida's lips as White Spiral leveraged Aida onto her shoulders. Snorting and grunting, White Spiral rose to her feet, staggering slightly on the dew-slicked grass before finding solid footing.

Feral dragged herself to her feet and fell in behind, arching her back and rolling her shoulders between glares at Aida. They stepped over what remained of the barbed-wire fence her uncle put up as much to contain an always-exploring, boundary-pushing child-Aida as for the animals. A laborious walk down a densely-overgrown finger of land formed by the winding curve of the river led them to... it.

At first impression, the strange growth jutting amid the cottonwoods resembled a fusion between a ram's horn and a man-sized rose thorn. It stabbed skyward at a sharp angle to half-way to the tree tops. Mere proximity gave Aida the heebie-jeebies and looking at it made things worse. Closing her eyes didn't help; an allergen of the mind that made her brain itch.

The Valeer gazed at it reverently, his mutters growing louder, faster, more insistent as he pulled free of Fallon.

White Spiral lowered Aida to her feet and held her around the shoulders. Ghillie emerged from the woods to help support Aida on the other side. Aida clutched her toiletry kit to her chest like a lifeline.

"Valeer, listen! Do you hear me?" Fallon parted the man's dirty locks and waved his hand in the Valeer's face. "The verse of the Black Court."

"He speaks English?"

"Valeers understand all tongues equally, which is to say barely." Fallon snapped his fingers several times in front of the Valeer's face. "The Black Court!"

For the first time, the Valeer fell silent. When he resumed, rhythm and rhyme tilted the cant of his gibberish.

"All tongues? Also, what is the Black Court? And is that thorn... thing supposed to take us somewhere?" An errant thought threw a new frame on the situation like a focus pull in a movie. "You're not going to stick bolts in my neck, electrocute me, and turn me into some sort of Frankenstein monster are you?"

The Valeer shambled to the thorn, his endlessly-rubbing hands caressing its spiraling base as though it were a loved one presumed dead until that moment. He stroked it like a cat and patted it like a dog but in a vaguely rhythmic way. Mutters shifted to a chant or mantra. Aida's eyes watered. Her tongue tingled. She looked away before she threw up. It would be blue from the cake again, she realized, feeling suddenly a million kilometers away from yesterday's birthday party.

"It is a Thorn," Fallon said by way of explanation, his phrasing implying a capital "T". He frowned. "What is a Frankenstein?"

"Never mind. I just hope there's not a horde of townsfolk with pitchforks and torches waiting somewhere nearby." She paused. "I can't believe I didn't think to ask this yet, but why me?"

"Which what? You speak nonsense." Fallon's frown deepened. Shaking his head, he barked another command. Everyone clustered closer about the Thorn. "'Why you' is because I follow orders."

Aida glanced at the Thorn, instantly regretting it. Light bent strangely around the it, distorting everything and giving the thing a sense of throbbing motion and growth. Its curl expanded like an overstretched metal slinky to slowly envelop them. A wave of vertigo made her grateful for White Spiral and Ghillies' arms about her.

"Whether we go elsewhere or perhaps it comes to us, I remain uncertain even after several passings." Fallon winced and swayed, clearly struck by the same swimming sensation that overwhelmed Aida. A hangnail, but all over her body. Her skin suddenly fit worse than usual. Analogies failed to pin down this unique new form of discomfort.

"Some think the Vale is always here and only the Valeers can see it, only they can peel it apart so we can enter."

"What's the Vale?"

"You are being absurd. Of course you know what it is. The Place Between, the Valley of Thorns?" His mouth hung open. "Surely no one could be so ignorant as to not know about the Vale?"

"Guess again, Bucko. Absolutely no idea what you're talking about."

"The passage will only offer further discomfort and unpleasantness. I offer you the opportunity to never suffer the experience." His look became hopeful. "If you wish to stay here, say so now and forever for we shall never return."

She'd forgotten she could choose to stay. Conflicted, she looked about the forested river bend. Everything lay gilt with sunlight, the river's burble muffling the approaching police sirens. Fond, sad thoughts of her grand- and great-grandnieces, and -nephews floated in wave of nostalgic memories.

"Decide quickly, it is close now," Fallon said, voice tight. "Only a moment more."

"This world has moved on and left me behind," Aida said, surprised at first as the words spilled from her lips, but growing more certain as she spoke. "I'm a bad memory here at best, a burden at worst. I'd rather go now while I actually get a choice. Even if I survive this flu, one of my cancers will eventually come out of remission and do for me. Wherever we're going and whatever this is, you're not dragging me this far just to ditch me here."

The Valeer looked at her then, eyes clear as if seeing for the first time. As the last word of his chant died all sound likewise ceased. He smiled and, in that moment of unexpected, intense connection, Aida saw a hint of the person buried somewhere deep within.

"So this Vale place we're going to, what's it like and how will we know when-"

The question died on her lips as everything shifted and they exploded into a non-Euclidean hell where colors went to die.