Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(33)

She curled into his side, her head on his bare shoulder, one leg hooked over his. The beat of his heart was steady and calm under her ear. Soon she trusted his support so totally her body fell lax. She had used up too many of her resources to continue being afraid.

For a short while, seasickness tried to take hold. She couldn’t decide if she would vomit or fall asleep.

With a cranky mutter, she focused and shifted something inside and the nausea vanished. Then her own exhausted body took her away from the whirling dark cabin into a darkness that went much deeper.

Chapter Ten

THE ENTITY WAS one of the great behemoths of Earth.

Born several thousand years ago, its body was carved from a massive sheet of ice that had once covered the northern hemisphere. It was three hundred and seven miles long, a hundred and eighteen miles wide, and nearly a thousand feet deep.

Humans ascribed a feminine gender to it, but the truth was that it had neither a male nor female spirit. Generally, it paid no more attention to the humans that relied upon it for sustenance, skimmed across its surface or played along its edges than a dog paid attention to its fleas.

It was also one of the oldest entities on Earth, and now it was dying. Parts of it already rotted with such cancers as decay and pollution and radiation poisoning, from the Cook Nuclear Power Plant in the southwestern part of Michigan, or the greater Chicago area, or the coastline along the city of Milwaukee in Wisconsin. Careless industrialization was slowly but surely bringing its temperature up to the equivalent of a long-lasting fever that would kill off all its marine life.

Because it was so immense, its death would take several decades or even as long as a century. For now, it lay in its rocky bed under an infinite sky, endlessly shifting throughout the interchanging seasons. It was most asleep during the winter, most awake during the summer, most restless during the greening season.

When it was asked if it would dance with the folk of the air, those stern towering thunder spirits, it accepted with easy pleasure. All creatures danced and mated in the spring. But then it was asked to do something more.

Lake Michigan chuckled to itself at the absurdity of the request. Searching for two tiny humanlike creatures along its vast surface was like looking for a pair of needles in a haystack.

Still, it bore some affection for the person that asked, who, while as tiny as a human creature, was after all at least as old as itself.

They had been friends for a long time.

So it would try.

Chapter Eleven

MARY DREAMED OF a darkness that creaked and shifted, of strong, bare, warm limbs that tangled with hers, and of a queasy stomach that never quite needed to empty, nor did it quite allow her to sink into complete unconsciousness.

At some point, her dream shifted outside, to the wild lash of rain and the tempestuous writhing of the Lake. There seemed something sexual in the commingling of energies, the gushing wetness of the roaring wind and the airy, champagne-like bubbling of the foamy waves.

Thunder rumbled like guttural laughter that echoed across the heavens. The sound intrigued her and drew her out of her body. She left Michael dozing, and traveled through the kitchenette and up the steps to the hatch.

Then she passed through the hatch, for it was only a physical barrier, and she stood on the pitching deck. The corporeal sting of the cold and rain could not touch her, but the storm’s energy was exhilarating, and she raised a hand to it in gleeful salute.

Something vast chuckled overhead. Unafraid, she climbed to the top of the boat’s cabin. Once there she crossed her legs and sat, perching on the roof as light as a thought, while the glow from her energy shone like a beacon in the darkness.

Something was happening. Something was coming. She had roused in response to it. She cocked her head and waited.

It came out of the deep so gently, at first she hadn’t realized it had arrived.

Gradually she grew aware that the boat was cupped like a tiny toy held in colossal hands. A black, archetypical eye, huge as the mouth of a volcano, peered at her from below, and all the foaming water was the creature’s streaming hair.

If she had been awake and in her physical body, she might have lost her battle with nausea. But she was dreaming and quite calm. She stood and moved to the edge of the boat so that she could better study the fabulous creature.

With a careful finger that could have crushed an ocean-faring ship, it tilted the boat to a more upright position.

You aren’t human, it said. It had a pensive, siren’s voice.

No, Mary said. I guess I’m not.

You look like one. That tremendous eye came closer to the water’s surface and regarded her with grave curiosity. The creature said, You are like the other one, my friend. You are older than I am.

I don’t feel very old, Mary told it. She perched on the rail and swung a foot. I think it’s because I’ve forgotten a lot of things.

The entity hummed, the savage euphoria of the storm lingering in its words, I could kill you and your companion.

She shook her head. She still was not afraid, although she probably should have been. You can’t kill us. You could only destroy the bodies we inhabit. Eventually we would come back again.

Why would you come back? The creature sang, its song yearning and mournful. How would you come back?

We have to come back, because our people owe a debt to this world. She leaned forward, caught by the absolute loneliness in that massive black eye. Now that the storm’s dance had been suspended the entity seemed forlorn, eternally sad. She held out a hand to it. We owe a debt to you.