Not a monster. A woman. The tallest woman—the tallest person—Benno had ever seen in his life. What he first mistook for smoke—he realized as it warped and refracted—was a suit of what appeared to be the same reflective black glass as the Gemstoke, and what he’d mistook for blue fire was in fact the woman’s knee-length blue hair, which draped behind her like a cape. She stood with an imperious hip cocked to one side and a wrist bent against the intimidating crescent of the hip. Her age was impossible to determine—somewhere between thirty and sixty—and her orange eyes smoldered in the hallway’s orange light.

She was easily nine feet tall. The top of her head nearly skirted the ceiling as she walked down the hallway—her body awash in a blur of floral wallpaper—her hips swaying with formidable practice. Benno found himself eye-level with the wide mirror of her carapace—his face crisply reflected—and his nostrils filled with an aroma of firewood and lilacs so enchanting that saliva pooled in the ditches of his mouth. He craned his neck back and briefly met her fiery orange eyes before she blinked slowly and looked away.

She surveyed the cracks in the walls and ceiling, then fixed Hermann and Isaac with a displeased look. “What kind of mischief are you dragging our new friend into?” she asked, her voice smoky, lilting and august all at once. Her accent was subtle, and unplaceable.

“No mischief, Edda,” Hermann chuckled. “We were simply running a demonstration.”

“A demonstration?” Edda lifted one meticulously manicured blue eyebrow.

“Yes,” said Hermann. “We wanted to see if it was true. If what you said about the new recruit—Benno, here—was in fact the case.”

“You doubted me?” Edda asked, both annoyance and amusement in her voice.

“No, no. Of course not.” Hermann cleared his throat. “We just wanted to witness it for ourselves. To confirm it for ourselves…”

“And?”

“There is no question.” Hermann indicated the flindering walls. “He is demonstrably impervious to physical harm. At least inside any practical range. I would posit his kinetic resistance is at least an order of magnitude greater than any protective gear in our collection. Of course we would have to run additional tests in a more conducive environment—at your convenience.”

“I think my hand is bruh…broken,” Isaac offered.

“Good.” Edda looked down again at Benno, her full lips, painted dark green, curving into a subtle grin. “I’m glad we’ve confirmed what I already knew.”

“We meant no disrespect,” Hermann said, softly.

Edda turned to Isaac. “Have Gemma fix your hand. You’ll need it for our errand this afternoon.” She turned to Hermann. “And since you saw it necessary to fact check me, I’ll task you with fixing my walls. Make sure it’s done before we leave.”

“Yes, Edda.” Hermann bowed his head.

“Benno and I are going to have a chat. I know he has questions, and the least I can do is attempt to answer them. Does that sound alright, Benno?”

“Yes,” Benno said, meaning to project aplomb—it was about damn time—but instead sounding like a boy to his own ears.

Edda smiled. “Follow me.”

#

She led him to a door marked 000003.

“Please,” she said, opening it and standing aside.

The room was enormous—not a room at all but an entire, sprawling apartment: Polished black marble floors and vascular white marble walls; lavish, richly colored furniture accented by neon blue and neon green and neon red throw pillows and intricately patterned blankets folded over seat backs; a long, sleek, black table lined with bright red upholstered chairs, and an oil painting hanging on the wall behind it depicting an impressionistic scene of a flower garden, every color so poignant that it hurt Benno’s eyes to look at it for long; sculptures on pedestals in the room’s corners, busts of men and women with smooth features, their faces bent in expressions of uncontainable ecstasy; intricate hand-carvings of animals—both familiar and alien—posed in shameless displays of bluster; a floor-to-ceiling shelf filled with books built directly into the wall beside a short hallway; and doors leading to other rooms.

The only thing about the space that confirmed it was even part of the same motel—the Hillstul Inn—was the long window on the apartment’s far side, through which, beating and pulsing in the white sky, was the terrible bleeding Coil.

Benno stood just inside as Edda passed around him and the door drifted silently shut. The smell of firewood and lilacs was intense in here, so much so that as soon as Benno registered it he found it difficult to concentrate on anything else.

Edda sat on a black sofa, crossing one staggeringly long leg over the other and draping her body-length blue hair over her knee. Her glassy armor reflected every angle and curve of the lush, extravagant room, blending her fluidly into the space.

“Sit.” She gestured to a high-backed leather-upholstered chair across from the sofa.

Benno sat.

From behind Edda’s sofa, a shadow stirred, and a large gray cat plodded out. The glass triangle on its collar clinked. It looked at Benno for a moment with orange eyes as it strode silently across the marble floor, then disappeared down the hallway.

“That cat,” Benno said. “I’ve seen that cat.”

“That’s Recipient,” Edda said. “And yes. You would have seen him.”

Benno waited for Edda to go on. When she didn’t, he found himself fidgety in the silence.

“Your mother was a linguist,” she said finally. “Isn’t that right?”

How the fuck do you know that? Benno almost asked, then decided that was a silly question. “Yes.”

“What was her field?”

“Archaeolinguistics.”

“Are you close to her?”

Benno tapped his knee with a closed fist. “She left when I was a teenager. Went off to Egypt and never came back. My dad told me and my brother she met someone else… But for some reason I suspect you know all that.”

“Tell me about your father.” Edda uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “He was also an academic, no? A philosopher?”

“A semiotician,” Benno corrected.

“That’s right.” Edda nodded slowly, peering at Benno in such a way that Benno got the impression he was being tested. “As a matter of fact, I read one of his papers. Not by chance, of course, but during the process of…discovering you. Semiotic Surrogacy I believe it was called.”

Benno had never read the paper—any of them—but was familiar with the theory for which his father had become moderately famous inside certain academic circles: that concepts could detach from their corresponding objects and symbols and reattach to others. Adopting a dog soon after the death of a child attached the concept of the child to the object of the dog. The name of an ex-lover attached the concept of the lover to the symbol of the name. Freud for linguists, Benno’s brother had once called it. Benno called it heady and self-evident.

“I found it quite compelling,” Edda said. “Was he a good father to you?”

“What is this?” Benno asked. “Therapy?”

Edda smiled softly. “Forgive me. Let’s talk about you. You are a scientist.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“I’m not a scientist. I’m just a science teacher. And I’m not even that anymore.”

“I see.” Edda nodded in the same deliberate way. “Whiskey?” She raised her hand into the empty space in front of her and took a glass of whiskey from the air. She leaned forward, her hair spilling like water off her thigh, and handed it to Benno.

Benno tried desperately to conceal the trembling in his hand as he took the glass. He sipped, then stopped. “Wait.” He wiped at his beard where a bit of whiskey had dribble. “You didn’t ask Gemma for it. And I don’t see a Gemstoke in your hand…”

“I built the Gemstoke,” Edda said, reclining. “My version is a bit more… integrated than yours.” She extended a long arm across the sofa’s headrest.

Benno nodded as if he understood.

“I am excited for you to discover all the wonderful things the Gemstoke can provide,” she said. “Besides whiskey.”

Benno felt his face warm.

“I do not mean to embarrass you. I cannot imagine how difficult it has been. There is no judgment from me around a person’s pursuit of solace.”

Benno sipped his whiskey.

“But you do not need my permission,” Edda went on. “For now, I wanted to give you the opportunity to ask me any questions you might have. I know your arrival here was abrupt. That is, unfortunately, how it has to be. So please, while you have my attention. What can I tell you?”

Benno held the glass to his lips. His brain seemed unable to process even a single thought; since his arrival in this place, so many questions had arisen, and so few answers had been given, that now, faced with the possibility of some clarity, he didn’t know where to start.

“I don’t know…” he managed. “I guess… Who are you?”

“My name is Edda Contrejas Loticus Bellacord.”

“And, um… What are you?”

Edda raised a blue eyebrow.

“I mean…” Benno adjusted his weight on the chair. “What do you do? Like for work?”

“Ah.” Edda sat forward, her blue hair falling silently and coiling on the soft, fractal-patterned carpet. “I am an explorer.”

Benno nodded.

“I go forth, my crew and I, and chart uncharted Realms. We make unheralded discoveries and forge new passages into the unknown.”

“Sounds fun,” Benno said, betraying a sarcasm he neither intended nor felt.

Edda’s orange eyes narrowed, and the otherwise unblemished skin creased around her mouth. Then her dark green lips spread into a wide smile, revealing dazzling white teeth, and she laughed. Her laughter, Benno was unsurprised to discover, was so enchanting that he felt light-headed.

“It is,” she said, reclining again. “You’re going to love it.”

Benno tapped his empty whiskey glass. “Well I guess that brings me to my next question. Why am I here? And where, exactly, is here?”

“To answer your second question first:” said Edda. “This is Realm M2D923.01. A remarkably unremarkable place. You are currently inside the Realm’s only structure, a complex I built to house my operations. We call it the Hillstul Inn, named after a place in a book. I chose this Realm because it affords a certain privacy. Nothing lives here except the grass.”

Edda reached out and pulled another full glass of whiskey from the air, which she handed to Benno without breaking a phrase.

“And your first question is simple,” she continued. “You are here because you posses an incredible…”

“Condition?” Benno offered.

“Yes. It is quite unique. And quite useful.”

“Useful to who?”

“To everyone, most of all you.” Edda gave Benno an inscrutable look for a moment before she went on. “You see, for the most part, Realms are accessible through an array of techniques and technologies. My current crew and I can move freely and take—or, rather, can go where we like. The Gemstoke and its adjacent systems permit us travel between Realms, and our collective talents grant maneuverability inside those Realms, by and large, with ease. But there is one exception…”

Benno waited for Edda to continue. But she was silent, staring off across the room at the window, where, beyond, the Coil pulsed over the yellow hills.

“What exception?” he asked finally.

Edda looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was there.

“Does it have anything to do with that?” Benno pointed to the window.

“Let me show you something.” Edda stood in a sudden, fluid motion and strode away.

Benno followed her through a door and into a study. There was a large, circular table in the center, covered in scattered papers on which diagrams and equations were scrawled in careful print. Bookshelves lined the walls. A single chair stood at the table, askew, as if whoever had been sitting in it last—presumably Edda—had leapt up to attend some urgent task.

Recipient lounged on the windowsill, his enormous back leg dangling nearly to the floor. He gazed out at the Coil, which pumped and bled.

Edda leaned back against the table and crossed her arms, her armor reflecting the room’s quiet decor, the bookshelves crisp along the slant of her shoulder. “I’ve spent more hours in here than I care to count,” she said. “My whole life, things have come to me one way or another. Not everything was easy, but I always got what I wanted. For the most part.” She held up a sheet of paper from the table on which a triangle was drawn. In the middle of the triangle was a smaller, upside-down triangle.

Benno peered at it, then shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at.”

“The Realms are discrete spatio-temporal fields,” Edda said, as if that was supposed to clarify. “You might have heard them referred to as dimensions. Countless realities laid out side-by-side, as inaccessible to one another as death from life—without the right tools.

“You were born in one, I was born in another. Together they all look something like a quilt.” Edda held up another sheet of paper, this one covered in dozens of triangles, all touching at their points, each one with another upside-down triangle in its middle. “In their collective entirety, the Realms form the Ensemble. I use the Gemstoke to travel across it, from Realm to Realm, as I please. I have been to hundreds—thousands. I can go anywhere I want, as simple as walking from one room to another. There is nowhere and nothing off limits to me. As I said, one way or another I get what I want…” She set down both pieces of paper. “But there is one Realm I cannot reach. Fittingly, and ironically, it is the only Realm I truly desire to visit…”

Benno held his whiskey at his lips, waiting.

“The Gardens.”

Benno sipped his whiskey.

“A Realm that has only ever been visited once that we know of. There are many unique things about it. One is that the Gardens’ single inhabitant, a creature about which very little is known, is a wish granter.”

“…Like a genie?”

“If that helps you understand it. Whoever sets foot in the Gardens can ask for something—anything—and they will have it.”

Two faces flashed in Benno’s mind.

“But another thing about the Gardens,” Edda continued, “is that, unlike any other Realm we have mapped, no living thing can pass through its external boundary, its rhizome. Not with any method we have derived or discovered.” She indicated the outer triangle with a long, turquoise fingernail. “Not without perishing.”

Benno eyed the triangle, then looked up at Edda. “I see…” He dropped his empty glass, which vanished as it fell. “So that’s why I’m here. You want to use me to get you inside.”

Edda’s orange eyes flickered.

“And then what?” Benno went on. “I’m supposed to make a wish for you?”

Edda’s dark green lips curled briefly into an unreadable expression. “We can both have what we want. But that’s a conversation for tomorrow.”

“And what’s your wish?”

Edda did not answer.

“Well let’s go then,” Benno said. “I’m ready.”

“It is not that simple. Yet another unique quality about the Gardens is that it is… nomadic. Whereas other Realms are fixed at given loci within the Ensemble, the Gardens moves around. Finding it, therefore, is not trivial, and it cannot be mapped. But we have methods to search for it, and we are close.”

“How close?”

Edda drummed her long fingers on the table.

Benno shook his head. “This is all so ridiculous. I’m ninety-nine percent certain I’m hallucinating. Or having an impossibly vivid dream. But even if I’m not…” He trailed off and rubbed his face. “And I can ask for anything? I mean, anything at all?”

“And you will have it.”

Benno thought.

Edda gave him time.

“You said the Gardens were entered once,” he said. “By who?”

Edda ran a hand through the side of her hair—the first unguarded gesture Benno had seen from her. “It was a long time ago,” she said.

“…And?”

“We have an errand to run.” Edda straightened up. “The crew are waiting.”

“Question time’s over, huh?” Benno took a slow breath. “What if I don’t want to? What if I don’t want to run an errand or go to this Gardens or have anything to do with any of this? What if I just want to fuck off? Will you let me leave? Can I just go home?”

“Home?” Edda gave Benno an inquisitive look. “You mean that filthy trailer where you drink and shoot yourself and cry in your bed?”

Benno’s skin crawled at the implication that this woman had been watching him so closely. “The room you have me staying in isn’t much nicer.”

“You can alter the room into whatever nature you choose.” Edda gestured to her study. “But to answer your question: You can return to your Realm and to your trailer if you like. I do not keep prisoners.”

“What about the woman you keep chained in that room? The Haruspex?”

Edda’s grin betrayed a reluctant admiration of Benno’s mettle. “The old lady and I have an arrangement.”

Recipient leapt down from the windowsill, trawled in a circle, and slunk from the room.

“So if I did just want to go home,” Benno said. “How do I do it?”

“Just ask Gemma to take you where you want to go. But before you make any decisions, I ask only that you accompany us on today’s errand. It has nothing to do with the Gardens or anything of that sort. It is a standard day’s work. And I want you to see what we do. I suspect you may take naturally to it.”

Edda pulled another whiskey from midair and handed it to Benno.

He took it and sipped, chewing the whiskey around his mouth. This is insane, he thought, and then nearly laughed out loud. It was insane, but things had already been insane. For seven years things had been insane. Was this whole thing—this Inn, this tall woman with her orange eyes and enigmatic rhetoric, this promise of a magical place, a Gardens, where one’s wishes were granted—was this more insane than being unable to die?

The whiskey ran along his gums.

The Gardens… Insane…

The whiskey trickled down his throat.

But it was something.

Was it real? Did that matter?

He swallowed.

Of course it mattered. And there was no way to know for sure, unless...

He took another swig.

It was something. And if it was... If it was real…

Edda watched him carefully.

He forced his attention away from his suddenly galloping thoughts, and nodded at the window and the Coil beyond. “So what is it?” he asked.

Edda watched Benno. “A reminder,” she said.

“Of what?”

On the collar of her suit, just below where it gave way to her skin, the beating heart reflected, crisp but small, bleeding. “Of where I came from.”