“I know we have to find Steven,” Alicia said to him, “but don’t you think you should rest a little?”
“We’ll rest when this is done. In our own reality, which we’re not sure this is yet.” He trudged through the sand toward the only reality he’d known for days. Reluctantly, his family followed.
“Not home.” Burnfingers Begay brushed sand from his pants and sleeves. “Hot enough, but the palm trees do not belong. Arizona has plenty of beach. Just no ocean.”
Wendy laughed and Alicia smiled, but not Frank. His sense of humor was stuck on another reality line. He wouldn’t laugh again until his family was back together and Burnfingers Begay and Mouse and Niccolo Flucca and the Anarchis and Chaos had all been jammed back into the unimportant corner of his mind where they belonged.
The motor home balked when he started the engine. It jerked forward, hesitated, balked again. The exhaust pipe spat water and dead fish all over the pristine beach. Gritting his teeth, Frank kept trying it until the engine cleared. By the time they pulled into the northbound lane of the narrow road, it was running smoothly again.
The terrain was a patchwork: emerald outcrops of dense vegetation consisting of palms, ferns, and brilliant flowers alternating with barren fields of rough dark lava. As the road crossed a narrow spit that extended out into the ocean, they came into view of a towering active volcano. It reminded Frank too much of the first stop on their odyssey through alternate realities.
Mouse’s reaction was very different. “The place!” she declared excitedly. “The marker. The smoking harbinger. Very soon now, very soon.” She was standing between his seat and Alicia’s, staring intently forward.
Soon they were driving along a thin strip of road with ocean on one side and sheer cliffs on the other. Rocks lying in the road kept Frank glancing nervously at the plant-choked wall of stone on their left. The road had been sliced from the sheer rock at great expense, yet no one seemed to use it. Since leaving the beach they hadn’t seen another vehicle, another sign of life.
“Wherever we’re going we’d better get there soon,” he muttered. “I don’t know how it’s lasted this long, but we’ve about run out.” He indicated the fuel gauge. The digital readout rested on empty. “We’re down to emergency gas, if there is any. Must be, because we’re still goin’.”
“There! Turn there!”
It threw Frank for a moment because it was so rare that Mouse shouted. He hit the brakes harder than was necessary, then crept forward until they reached the turnoff she’d indicated.
The steep, narrow dirt track occupied a cleft in the rocks. Concealed as it was by thick ferns and other growths, it was all but invisible from the main road. He would have driven past it a hundred times without suspecting its presence. Reluctantly, he turned into the opening. It was barely wide enough to admit the motor home. Occasionally the metal sides scraped rock.
Tropical flora closed in around them. It was as if they were traveling down a long, green tunnel. At times the ferns packing the open space in search of scarce sunlight were so thick they completely blocked the windshield. Frank had to drive slowly and by feel, praying there were no sharp dips or unexpected bends or drop-offs ahead. Soon the road itself disappeared. They continued to advance up the streambed, which had cut the canyon. A trickle of water ran down the center, disappearing between their wheels and reemerging in their wake.
After half an hour of driving across terrain that the motor home had never been designed to handle, the tunnel opened onto a much wider but equally steep-sided canyon.
Walls of volcanic rock towered hundreds of feet above the canyon floor. In places they were nearly vertical. Everywhere was dense vegetation. It looked like films Frank had seen of New Guinea or the South Pacific, though there was no reason to believe they were anywhere in either vicinity, or even on the same reality line where such familiar places existed.
Mouse stood close by, nodding and murmuring incomprehensibly to herself. In the absence of further instruction he kept going.
The streambed filled up and became more like a road again, silt muting the bumps and bounces. The squeaking, complaining suspension gave every indication of failing utterly at any moment.
They topped a small rise in the middle of the canyon valley. Ahead, the by now awesome walls enclosing them on all sides came together. Almost. Where they nearly met, a thin sliver of sky showed clearly. Everything ended at that place. Or extended from it, Frank thought. The canyon, the vegetation, the little stream, even the sky and sunlight all angled toward that narrow passage.
Mouse sighed heavily. “There it is.”
“There what is?” he asked tiredly.
Her smile was wider than ever. “The Vanishing Point.”
18
HAVING COME SO FAR the hard way, they all sat and stared for a long time. Even the motor home seemed to idle easier.
“What happens when we get there?” Wendy finally asked, breaking the silence. “Do we vanish, too?”
Mouse brought herself back from some faraway place to smile at Wendy. “No. It is the insubstantials that disappear at that place. Space, time, reality: that’s what a vanishing point is all about. It’s where everything goes when it’s not here, a place all its own, at once a part of yet outside the real cosmos. It’s the focus of real and of time.”
“What do we do when we get there?” Alicia wondered.
“It is where the Spinner lives, weaving the fabric of reality. Presently it lies uneasy, as does reality itself. By soothing it we shall regulate its spinning and thereby restore reason to the worlds around us. I will sing to it and it will be healed.” She paused. “At least, that is what I hope will happen.”
“Then we’d better hurry and get there.” Frank resumed his cautious advance up the streambed.
Ever since they’d left the beach, strange muted sounds had been coming from the vicinity of the rear bedroom. Now they were joined by a sharp metallic odor. He had to speak without taking his gaze from their path, but he couldn’t restrain his curiosity any longer.
“What’s goin’ on back there? Where’s Burnfingers?”
Flucca piped up from his seat halfway back. “Working, I think. In the bedroom.”
“Working on what?” Alicia’s nose wrinkled as she inhaled the acrid odor. “Smells like something’s burning.”
“Ask him what he’s doing,” Frank snapped.
Flucca slid off his seat and headed rearward. The door opened slightly at his call. Frank could see him whispering to Burnfingers. After a couple of minutes the door shut and Flucca came forward.
“Some kind of ceremony he’s into. Says he can’t be disturbed. He’s not burning anything up.”
“Well, if he’s not doing anything dangerous then I guess it’s okay,” Alicia said dubiously. Frank grunted. If Burnfingers was up to something peculiar they could hardly stop him by force.
The stink from the back grew worse as they climbed the gently sloping, rapidly narrowing valley. Once Wendy tried to peek in on Burnfingers, only to discover that he’d locked the door from the other side. Frank wasn’t thrilled with all the secrecy. What did they know, really know, about Burnfingers Begay, anyway? He’d confessed to madness. Was he going to try and prove it somehow?
He tried to concentrate on the road and ignore whatever was happening in his bedroom. It wasn’t difficult, given the congeniality of the surroundings. Exotic blooms and brilliantly hued growths of every description crowded close around the streambed. Orchids hung from trees and insects darted in and out of trumpet-shaped blossoms the color of children’s laughter. Vines wore coats of tiny purple flowers. In its way the valley was the exact antithesis of the first alternate reality they’d stumbled into. Instead of fire and brimstone they drove past crimson and yellow blooms.
Wendy spoke up excitedly. “Look, Mom: hummingbirds!”
Frank took his eye off their course long enough to spot the tiny, metallic-hued creatures as they darted among the leaves and branches like winged crystals. In a short while they were enveloped by them. It was like driving through a giant beehive, so sonorous was the beating of thousands of wings. He’d never heard of hummingbirds living in dense flocks.
But as the little fliers drew near it wasn’t their myriad colors that provoked murmurs of awe from the occupants of the motor home. That was reserved for the ones who rode them.
They were people, or human, anyway. Though little larger than a thumbnail, each was perfectly formed in every detail. They clung tight to hummingbird reins and secured their feet in hummingbird stirrups. A few carried harps and other miniature musical instruments. Frank wondered how they could hear them over the beat of so many wings. They were almost too tiny to think of as little people. He could see them talking to one another in voices that were less than squeaks.
It took him a moment to realize that they weren’t talking. They were singing, and Mouse was singing with them. She’d opened a window and her face was against the screen. He could see her lips move but, strain as he might, could not overhear a single word.
Only when she straightened and rejoined them did Alicia ask the question. “Who are they? They’re precious!”
“They wouldn’t think so.” Dozens of hummers and riders were darting back and forth in front of the glass. “This is their home. They live on the tip of the Vanishing Point. We’re related a little, because they, too, are musicians. For them a ballad lasts only seconds, a cantata a few minutes, an epic less than one of your hours. They’ve sung like that since the beginning of time. They cannot share with others because their music is as intense as their lives. Too much for people like us to handle.” She turned and gestured back the way they’d come, back down the streambed.
“The other inhabitants of this land suspect their existence and have told tales about them for centuries. Most people do not believe in the tiny ones, which suits them well. They like their valley the way it is. Visitors, even friendly ones, would despoil it and interfere with the music.”
“What land are you talking about? Where are we, anyway? Besides close to the Vanishing Point, I mean.”
“What lies behind us no longer matters. All that matters is what lies ahead. Have a care from now on for what exists beyond reality.” She lowered her voice. “The crucial time approaches. We must be careful lest this changes, too.”
“This?” Alicia was all but nose-to-nose with a dozen hummers and their exquisite, perfectly formed riders. They hovered outside her window, easily keeping pace with the motor home. “This couldn’t change. This is too beautiful.”
“It is exactly that, which is why so few people have seen it. But there are no absolutes in the cosmos, Alicia. Truth and Beauty exist because people invent them. When a tree falls in the forest it makes a sound whether anyone is present to hear it or not, but it is not beautiful unless someone is there to look upon it.”
