Rattled and confused, I left the bluffs behind. I half-believed I should have let those spikers impale me. That would have sent me straight to the Deeps. Didn’t I keep telling myself that was where I wanted to be?
But somehow it seemed important for me to get there on my own terms, preferably with a round-trip ticket, though I wasn’t sure such a passage was possible anymore, even though the Dusters seemed to have managed. I guess I also wasn’t quite ready to cut my ties with that place called Earth, despite what the darkness in my heart tried to sell me.
A million puddles and rivulets saturated the plains, but though landscape was too porous to harbor any actual lakes or ponds. Green shoots and rosettes were sprouting up everywhere, many with flower buds ready to burst. This place was going to look spectacular once the rains stopped and everything blossomed.
I traced a meandering path along the drier creases of land that crisscrossed the flats, detouring around the few small pits I encountered. I worked my way towards that heap of wreckage I had spotted earlier.
It was perched on the rim of one of the larger sinkholes. The whole mess looked like the aftermath of some battle. But it couldn’t have been Dusters. They tended to obliterate objects down to their elemental particles with their spell craft, as Bern and Lille discovered with their first attempt at building a cabin up top. This looked like the work of Frelsians.
I didn’t remember seeing any man-made structures on the surface before. Before our raid on Frelsi no one would have dared build anything in such an exposed location. This wreckage suggested that it still was not a wise choice.
As I got closer, I recognized the distinctive alternating arrangement of faux cedar shakes sheathing the flattened walls. Lille and Bern had used that pattern in every cabin I had ever sat with them for tea from Luthersburg to Frelsi.
My stomach clenched. Suddenly, I worried for Bern. It struck me, though, that even though the parts of this cabin lay in a heap, it was an orderly heap. Things were sorted into piles: thatch here, walls there.
A thick but leafless tree thrust a limb out over the sinkhole, dangling a system of pulleys and rope. And then, out of the pit clambered Bern, all spry and vigorous apart from his usual limp. He was too absorbed in his work to notice my approach.
“Hi,” I said, when I was only about ten feet away.
Bern stumbled back, tripping over a beam, pointing his cane at me like it was a laser cannon, which it was, sometimes.
“Oh my Lord!” He clasped one hand to his chest and lowered his cane. “Don’t you ever surprise an old man like that! You just might give an old man a boost into the next world.”
Bern regained his footing and hopped down from a pile of unbundled thatch. A huge grin spread across his face as he came over and hugged me. “Long time no see,” he said. “But that’s good news, right? Life must be treating you well.”
“Not really,” I said. “I just got deported.”
“Oh. Well, that was to be expected. But I presume you’re healthy again … in the earthly sense, I mean? Certainly, your soul is still a basket case. Aren’t we all?”
“Yeah. Well. I’m all patched up. No permanent damage. Just some aches.”
“So you’re going back home, then?”
“Home? I’m not sure what that is,” I said. “I don’t think I have one. I almost think of this place as a home.”
“That’s absurd,” said Bern. “No home of mine has demons that patrol the sky on the backs of insects the size of horses, and carnivorous worms that could best an elephant in a tug-of-war. Not mention, now that it’s wet season, it rains more than Scotland.”
