Midnight Wonders

3.1.1. Fresh Fruit From the Garden

He fell. There was no floor beneath him, and nothing in front of him, so as his arms flailed, he was helpless. Emptiness rushed around him, he was falling down, and he was tipping forward, but he had not stumbled and now he was falling.

The darkness stopped abruptly and light entered from below. He drifted downwards and landed on his feet.

He stumbled.

Luc caught his breath and balance. His clothes and hair settled down with the breeze, and he blinked quickly at the sudden brightness. There was noise in the distance.

He was standing on a path surrounded on both sides by a green field that faded into tall forests. The grass was longer than outside, and greener; or perhaps that was just the light. It was brighter here, unless the darkness had made him forget the day outside.

Luc looked up. The sky was...there was no sky. It was a crystal mirror, shaped like a dome that stretched off into the distance. Great hanging lights, like chandeliers, hung from the odd ceiling, and at the center of the dome was the largest one. The artificial suns hurt to look at as much as the real one did.

He wondered if night came, in this strange land in the green hill. (Under the green hill?) Who would come round to turn out the lights? Who would turn them on again in the morning? Was there any way to tell the time? He was glad it was summer and his students would not miss him if he stayed in this land long to look for Cora.

He looked down the path. It was long and narrow and winding. He looked behind him. There was more path. He wondered where he had come from, if the ceiling had just opened a little hatch for him to fall through. He wondered where the man was.

The path seemed to lead to civilization. There were bright colors and wispy smoke and faint sounds.

Luc followed the path.

It led him to a market. It was larger than the markets he was used to outside; he looked through the aisles and could not see the end. The stalls were of every size and shape and color. Ribbons and streamers tied to poles seemed to defy gravity and wave in a nonexistent wind. Around him, he heard the clink-clank of coins tossed onto stalls, rolling on the ground as prices were urgently bargained. It was all in English. That surprised him.

People brushed past. They were wearing clothes that were soft and light and beautiful, that glittered under the yellow light. He felt the fabric slide across his hands like the touch of a feather. Hair, long and straight and short and curled and blue and brown and everything, was plaited with colorful ribbons and dripping in lovely trinkets of glass and flowers and crystals.

It was very crowded. He didn't know how he was going to find Cora here.

Luc went up to one of the stalls. The woman behind the stall was young and beautiful, with skin impossibly smooth and rosy. Her hair was tall and curly, laced with strings that hung beaded at the ends. She was selling small apples on strings.

"Hello," he began.

She laughed at him. He froze, bewildered, and she laughed again. "How odd you look! Did you lose your wardrobe?"

Luc looked at her, then looked down at himself. He thought he was dressed rather nicely; he wore the same thing to work every day. A white dress shirt beneath a blue jacket with the school's logo, tucked into black pants looped with a faded leather belt, white socks, graying shoes. And a red tie Cora had gotten for him, because she liked the color red.

But he looked at the woman and saw that she was dressed in thin layers of pale silk that shimmered all the colors in the light, draped over her in a complicated criss-cross pattern. And he remembered the man in his brown tunic and realized that he did not fit in with the dress of either.

"I have lost my sister," Luc told the woman. "Have you seen her? She has red hair, which is very curly, and brown eyes like mine. She looks—"

"I don't know!" said the woman, and laughed. "She didn't buy my apples! You should try one—maybe it'll show you the way." She lifted one of the strings. The apples knocked against each other. They were perfectly round little spheres, and as red as the lipstick Emma wore. There were six of them, tied by the stems, as they glistened as if wet, but there was nothing dripping from them.

"Oh, no," said Luc. He really didn't have the time, and despite having his wallet in his pocket he wasn't even entirely sure that the currency would be legitimate here.

"Try it!" the woman insisted, flicking the string so that the apple at one end hit his hand. He winced and pulled it back.

"I'm all right," he said, grateful that the forward motion of the crowd was already pushing him along like the tide. His feet were already moving, and he left himself be swept off.

He stopped again at one of the less-crowded stalls so he might have a talk with the owner. It occurred to him that perhaps it would have made more sense to visit one of the more-crowded stalls; they likely saw many more people and would have seen Cora if she had been there. But knowing Cora, she would make a point to visit the lonelier stalls, and they would surely remember her. She was difficult to forget.

"Hello," he said, and quickly hurried to say the next part so he would not get laughed at again in the silence, "I'm looking for my sister. Have you seen her? She has red hair, which is very curly, and it's about this long, and she has brown eyes like mine—"

The vendor peered up at him. He was very small, but Luc could not tell whether he was grown or not. He had bright blue eyes the color of the sky outside. "Have I seen her? Have I seen her? Do you think I can see her?" The voice was at once squeaky and scratchy.

"No, not if you can see her, but if you have—"

"Have I?" The vendor seemed upset, somehow. He was selling flowers in long garlands, which had appeared to be made of paper at first, but now seemed to shrivel with the vendor's anger. "Do you think I could have seen her?"

Luc wondered if he had unwittingly insulted a blind person. "I'm sorry. She's...She's very loud, even when she's tired, and her voice is very high and light, and she has an accent like mine—"

"Do you think I could have heard her?" the vendor demanded.

"I..." Luc looked at the vendor, decided it wasn't worth the trouble, and hurried away.