Aeolia

4: Unconscious

They traveled together for two days through the monotonous evergreens before the land changed. The imposing trees thinned suddenly into a sparse gray meadow. The woman was glad. She had always loved those dark woods as a child, but now they served only as a reminder for the life she was running from.

     She wanted to see new lands. New, gorgeous, enlightening, foreign lands.

     But when her feet touched the new terrain, something shuddered through the woman's stomach again.

     Oh, ow—ow—she doubled over suddenly, a sharp pain in her side. She felt a swelling in her veins and glanced down with glazed eyes to see faint black rivers running through her arms.

     What was in her?

     Oh, ow—ow.

     The songbird screed and flew to her. Its cry sent a shower of shattered rock tumbling into the grass and weeds underneath them.

     "No," the woman choked. "I'm okay." She must have walked too long without eating, and it was getting to her now. But still she had no appetite.

     She straightened and motioned to the bird, and they walked on. She kept her eyes on the ground, folding her arms. In this meadow, heather curled from the dead grass like frozen smoke. The woman saw curious raises and folds in the earth, almost like a system of tunnels ran below.

     She felt sick.

     The occasional white snag tree, and the furrows in the heather, swayed before her eyes. Exhausted, the woman laid gingerly in the grass. She felt an electric pricking as the pale blades serrated her skin.

     The bird was piping and screeching above her head, and from its beak poured a deep red melody, twisting like frantic dancers' ribbon.

     She closed her eyes and the reeling stopped. She fell into an opaque sleep.

     With this, a nightmare began to slither through the grass towards her, flicking its tongue. It relished the flavor of fear seeping from the earth.

     The songbird shrieked and darted back and forth in the air, trying to warn the woman. It didn't know exactly what the threat was, but it felt as if it had seen it before. The creature was long, snaking, and black.

     But the woman could not be warned. She was already far, far away. She was dreaming now of a strange land with tall, ghostly trees that bore stars for leaves.

     It was always dusk in this forest, the day perpetually hanging on the hinge of twilight. The darkness never came, but it loomed there—like a mountain that neither the wind nor the rain could ever change.

     She was alone in a high, high canopy. She had stars threaded through her hair. Gentle rain whispered as it fell from the unseen sky. The trees went up forever.

     She sighed and breathed in the wet air, a smile on her face. In the leaves, something began to stir.

     Wait. What was that she heard? It was almost like a slithering.

     She sat up and held her breath.

     A cold wind swerved through the trees. She dug her roots into the branches and clung there. She waited. She heard nothing more, save for the rustle of wind and rain. With the unfamiliar sound gone, her head began to swim.

     Her eyes grew damp with memory.

     The sound began again, but her ears were indifferent.

     Guns, fire, screams. The sky grew darker as she remembered.

     She remembered the faces of the men who had shot her mother. She remembered her father, her strong father, falling to his knees, begging for the bullet. She remembered the starvation they granted him instead.

     She remembered drinking tepid water and living on food rations. She remembered her mother hustling her past the overpopulated gallows on their way to the school. She remembered lectures on rope and bullets in class, and dropping to the floor for invasion drills.

     Unbeknownst to the miserable woman, her dream had been tainted by the essence of nightmares.

     The form it harnessed was a long, thin viper with scales that flashed opalescent in the light of the stars. It was the creature that slithered in and out of dreams and waking life—for it could travel into the unconscious while its body stayed in the real world.

     The Viper flicked its tongue and twisted through the branches.

     It advanced through the grass while the bird sang out a cacophony of warnings. Clashing colors shimmered in the air. As the warnings went unheeded, the colors dripped and merged together. The bird collapsed next to the woman, ensnared. The Viper slipped in and out of their dreams.

     The bird dreamt of its home. It dreamt of sweet bells vibrating through the air. It dreamt of fluttering leaves, a teasing wind, and a dewy sunrise illuminating the dawn clouds. It dreamt that it was there in the limbs of a tree with its mother. She plucked feathers from her breast and cooed gently.

     The Viper flicked its tongue once more.

     Without warning, the songbird's mother began to shriek. Her eyes dilated and bloomed dark. A thin gray line jutted along each side of her open beak.

     Stitchmarks.

     Her wings folded, her body struck with paralysis. But even as she grew still, her shrieking song continued. When her pupils started to shift back and forth like clockwork, the song changed. A hissing voice spoke through her. Her body gave a sudden violent contortion and the words became clearer.

"Sky is dark, air thin
Tangled breath and brick—"

     She broke off with a lurch and fixed her mechanical eyes on the horizon.

     The gray songbird fell from its perch.

     Mindless now, it tumbled through the limbs and leaves  until it hit the earth. Its mind coiled itself into a spiral. A hiss lingered in its ears.

     Its mother remained statue-still on the branch and spoke again.

"Falling, flinching
Shaking, bone-cold
Colorless dark."

     The young bird quivered on the forest floor, as a quiet river ran by.

     In the meadow, the sky darkened. The sun retreated into the low hills beyond, taking the last glow of color with it.

   Finally, the night came. The moon rose above a whitewashed world. It clung to the sky in fear. If it didn't hold on, it might fall into the wasteland beneath.