IGMS Issue 5 (9 page)

Getting out of my clothes and into the dress was an exercise in frustration and agony. I couldn't make my hurt arm go through the sleeve, and I tore several buttons trying to do up the back. I gave up on the buttons and gathered the awful train -- yards and yards of silk -- under my arm. The straps slipped off my good shoulder, but I kept the dress on, mostly by willpower.

No doubt I looked like a refugee from a lunatic debutante's ball as I reeled back to the alley, cursing my head, my arm, and the godawful dress. I was sure I would be sick before I reached the graffiti-strewn wall. Somehow, I managed to keep head, dress, and stomach under control.

I clenched my eyes shut, reached my hand out -- my train tumbled free -- and marched forward. When I didn't bash into anything, I opened my eyes.

The sun was a pink glow on the horizon, obscured by spreading branches and tree trunks. I cried out in relief and swore as it set off a flare of explosions in my head.

Sunlight piercing through the canopy blinded me. I cursed it too. When I could see again, I was in the hospital's foyer. I leaped for the elevator and pushed the button.

It didn't light.

Then I got mad.

I kicked the closed doors and stabbed the button again. I howled at the unfairness, not caring anymore when the pounding in my skull doubled.

I stomped to the escalators in the foyer. They were shiny, pristine, and unmoving. I plodded up them, fuming. By the time I reached the fourth floor, my legs felt like lead, my vision had narrowed to a blurry tunnel, and the hem of my dress was tattered from catching on the escalator jags.

"Eloy!" I shouted. "Eloy, I'm here!"

He didn't reply, of course. In my dream, he had been at the end of the corridor, behind the very last door.

I hurried to it, hating the tangle of silk that slowed me. My fingers slipped on the knob. I screamed at the door, wrenching and tugging at it until I wrestled it open.

The tableau was the same as in my dream. Eloy lay curled around the recliner, motionless.

"Oh, no." After all that rushing and fury, I went reluctantly to his side. I kneeled, afraid to touch him, afraid he would be cold.

"Here I am," I whispered. "I'm back." I blinked, and tears coursed down my face. "You told me I should be with those I loved, so I came back. I love you."

My throat closed, but I'd said what I needed to say, so it didn't matter. I slumped forward, giving myself over to the heaving, ripping sobs of grief.

"You are hurt," he rumbled.

I gulped and sat up, scrubbing the wetness from my face with my sleeve.

His eyes were open, their beautiful blackness gazing at me. "What have you done to yourself? Is that the dress I gave you?"

I laughed. It didn't come out right and turned into a hiccup. At least my head felt better, although that probably meant I was going into shock.

"Th-the wall w-wouldn't let me in," I hiccupped. "I r-ran into it."

"I see. You do have a knack for making things difficult."

"Th-that's gratitude f-for you."

"Where is the recorder?"

I groped at the folds and layers of silk. "I left it with Luella," I wailed. "I w-woke up so scared, I forgot it."

He pushed himself up and tugged me into the cradle of his arms. "That is unfortunate, but there is no great harm. Don't cry."

Cuddled against him, the knot in my chest eased, and all the pain from my assorted injuries diminished. "I'm sorry."

"I meant that it is unfortunate because if you had taken it with you, it would have opened the portal, and you would not have had to resort to, err --" He plucked at my dress.

I gawped. "Isn't that what you meant the dress for? Like the ring?"

"Not as such. The ring, yes, but it had only the one use, as you discovered. The dress was merely silk and thread, a pretty thing I thought you would like."

"Then how did I get in?"

He burble-rumbled. "This place is a sort of dimension, a prison and a school made for me by my people."

"You're a criminal?"

"I'm a prince, actually. But also something of an aberration. I suppose you might call me a sociopath."

"Did you murder someone?"

"No!" He sounded affronted. "I never acted upon my disdain. But while my affliction was deemed curable with time, I was judged too dangerous to leave free. They were afraid I would bore of an existence of peaceful contemplation. Seeing the sense of it, I agreed to exile and rehabilitation until such time as I could overcome my disease."

"That's what the rooms are for?"

"Yes. And by a quirk of their design, a fissure can open from here to elsewhere, which is how I came to be where you first found me. They form during storms of emotional turmoil -- mostly madness that I have observed. Unfortunately, the complexity of different time flows and the varying atmospheres is hard on me. My excursions had to be limited."

"I'm pretty sure I understand your words, but they're not coming together into any sort of sense."

"The load of your family's dementia opened the way for me, sweetness. All of your family are touched by it, even you."

"You're saying that's how I got through the portal?" I took in the torn, half-on/half-off dress, remembered how I had staggered and ranted in the alley. "You're saying I had to be unhinged to get in."

Eloy roared. He was laughing, the way he'd laughed only once before. I lifted my hands to cover my ears, but it turned out I didn't need to. His laughter didn't overpower me.

"I think I missed the joke again."

"Marry me, my darling, lunatic Annabel."

"Of course I will."

"Do you love me?"

I scowled. "I said I did. We're going to be one of those couples that bicker a lot, aren't we?"

He hefted me into his arms as though I weighed nothing and stood. "It is time for me to return to my people. I am no longer an exile, and this is no longer my prison. You have set me free."

I was suddenly shy. "What will your people think of me? I'm different from them."

"My love, you are indeed different. I hope you will not mind too much." He faced us to the wall, and it became a sheer, reflective surface, the biggest full-length mirror I'd ever seen.

Eloy held a woman in his arms, but not a human woman. She had dusky-indigo skin and hair as blue as the evening sky. Her face was pointed like a fox's, and her eyes were pools of black. She wore an ugly, pink dress that didn't suit her, but even so, she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.

As I gaped, Eloy set her on her feet. I tottered forward, and only when my hands touched the wall, fingertip to fingertip, did I believe it.

"How --"

"It is complicated. May we just call it magic and let it go at that?"

I burble-rumbled.

"You don't mind?"

I laughed. It was a roar. "Mind? I love me!" I threw my arms around him.

"You are also taller," he rumbled, "which will prove convenient."

"It will?"

"Yes, it will." He tipped my head back and kissed me. And I had to agree that yes, it was indeed more convenient.

Secure in the arms of my beloved, I was eager to discover the marvels of a new world, embrace my new people, and most of all, to revel in the madness of love.

This was Janey's garden. Peas and beans climbing over the back fence, corn standing in a crooked row right next to lacy-topped carrots. Pumpkins sprawling in a tangle with the squashes in the corner, bragging up their yellow-gold blooms. Cucumbers, pretending to be all innocent while they hid under the pumpkins' prickly leaves and thought about taking over the unsuspecting herbs in the patch next over. Marigolds bright and gold, buddied up with the tomatoes.

Janey's garden, and ten-year-old Janey sat in it with her eyes squinched nearly shut while the sun baked down on her old, straw hat, and the ice cubes clinked and melted in the glass of lemonade at her side. She was waiting for Mom to finish her phone call.

Janey's back itched where the sweat was trickling down between her shoulder blades. It wasn't as if it'd be less hot for her scratching, but she did it anyway in an absent-minded way. Her dusty fingers, dirt ground into black crescents under each nail, would leave a smudge across the back of her t-shirt. She didn't care. She was watching the back corner, the spot near the biggest pumpkin, and yeah, something moved.

"Rabbit's back again," she said.

Mom was busy. She was watering the roses up against the back porch. Those roses weren't properly part of the garden, but they were pretty, blooming big and soft and yellow up against the wood. Mom thought she was watering the roses, but she was really talking on the cell phone, so most of the water from the hose was runneling off in another direction. If the clients and distributors didn't get their acts together soon, there wasn't going to be anything left on that side of the house but one drowned and sorry-looking apple tree.

"Mom," said Janey, and waved a hand to try and catch her eye. That didn't work. It used to work, before Mom's job went nuts and cut half the people working there, before Dad left, and before Mom had to do twice as much work as before, most of it on the phone. Not that she wasn't good at it. She was. She was a killer, Dad said. She was a wiz on the phone. "Mom," said Janey. "Mom. Mother. The rabbit's come back."

"What's that honey?" said Mom, but at least she turned, so the water could chase off after the artichokes for a while.

"I said --"

"Oh, the rabbit," said Mom. "Don't let him get into the gourds again. You remember last year we . . ." But then the distributor or the client came back on line, so it was just as well Janey did remember reaching for the big orange pumpkins last fall and pulling up one half-eaten shell after another. Mom had more important things to talk about.

Rabbit -- he was a problem they couldn't talk away. They didn't have a dog to chase him, and fat old Tombow was strictly a windowsill cat. Mom had talked about setting traps, but Janey had been creeped out by the idea of picking up dead rabbits and so the traps had never got set and were still sitting in their boxes gathering dust under the kitchen sink. It was Janey's garden anyway, so she got up, scratched at the sweat-prickles in her hair underneath the floppy hat, and walked on over to the back corner, wishing there was such a thing as a scarecrow for rabbits.

Only up close, Rabbit looked too big to be scared by anything made of straw and old socks. He looked too big to be a real rabbit, in fact, when she got right up next to him. He thumped his big hind leg on the ground, then reared up and looked at her. He came almost up to Janey's shoulder, and that wasn't even counting the ears. She didn't remember him being this big the last time she'd seen him, but that had been a year ago, and from the back door besides. How big did rabbits get anyway?

This particularly big rabbit didn't run away. He didn't seem timid. He didn't seem scared. He was brown-furred, and brown-eyed, and his nose and whiskers twitched busily, and Janey really wished she hadn't walked quite so close after all. He wasn't doing anything much, this rabbit. Not yet, but no matter how weird it felt to be staring eye-to-eye with a big rodent, Janey didn't run away, even though the rabbit had these teeth. Bigger than they ought to be, and slightly crooked, but she didn't run. It felt like that would be overreacting, somehow. She didn't want to look like an idiot being chased out of her own garden by a stupid rabbit. Sure he was big, but he was just a rabbit!

Then he started talking. "Janey," said Rabbit. "You're even prettier than I thought."

"Um," said Janey. Don't talk to strangers, was the general rule, but she had to wonder, under the circumstances, if there was some kind of dividing line where the strangeness got so huge you had no choice but to talk. "Thanks, I guess."

"Bigger, too," he went on. "But that's no problem. I like tall girls. Might be a problem fitting the wedding dress, but we can work something out. And the house -- but you'll get used to ducking."