Summerhill (18 page)

Tek sighed and knelt closer to the water’s edge. His tail lay flat and still against the grass. “I’d know,” he said, almost too quiet for Summerhill to hear.

Sixteen

Insight

Walls went up around Summerhill’s mind as he struggled with the prospect that he might be trapped here on Rydale with this otter named Tekutan. The empty skyscrapers of the World of the Pale Gray Sky cast their long, unending shadows across his thoughts, instilling in him a sense of utter dread and panic. He felt his pulse race and his breath quicken, all while Tek kept still, staring blankly into the limpid water that flowed gracefully by.

Trapped.
As beautiful a world as this was, as much as something about Tek healed that hard-to-define hole in Summerhill’s heart, he couldn’t let himself be stuck here. From within the emptiness of his memories, he could almost feel a desperate scrabbling, some vain attempt to break free from the very concept of confinement.

He tried to reach into that empty hole, into his own amnesia, but there were no secret notes to himself to guide him, no hostesses to chase after, no otter pheromones to pull him along. There was only the endless horizon of empty skyscrapers against a dull backdrop of gray, and the icy feeling of hopelessness that came with it.

Then, somewhere in there, lost amidst the terrified confusion and the memories of imprisonment, was the briefest flicker and fragment of something lost, something from the past, something from before Rydale and Katherine and the
Nusquam
and even the World of the Pale Gray Sky. This was something from
before
, something that proved that there was and had been a before at all, that there had been a Summerhill before the life he remembered.

He seized onto that moment, on that flicker and fragment, and held it still in his mind so that he could examine it in detail. What he found was a simple, tiny seed. From within that seed, Summerhill could hear the ticking of a watch and the beating of his own heart. The seed didn’t exist anymore, not like this—that seed had since become him, had grown into the individual Summerhill now was.

The lost dog hadn’t found a way home, but in its place he had found some minute, imperfect understanding of what he was, who he was and who he used to be. Inside that tiny kernel of self was something that, if he were crazy enough, might be of use in helping to escape imprisonment once again.

Seventeen

Apomixis

Summerhill could only see Tek’s face in the reflection in the water, the rippling flow of the creek masking the otter’s expression. Even so, he could read the otter’s body language with all the familiarity of a long-time lover, though he knew now that he hadn’t been, like he’d once assumed.

“I really do like you,” Tek said, pulling his fingers out of the water, letting his claws hang above the surface, dripping. “I know this is weird to you, and that we just met, but I really do feel like you’d grow to like me back.” He sighed, his small ears folding back.

A small fish jumped out from the water, snatching up a low-flying insect before disappearing back under the surface. “I already like you,” Summerhill assured the otter. “You know that, right?”

“You like me because you don’t have the choice not to.” Tek flicked his paw, shaking off the excess water from his slick fur. “It’s just some fluke of otherworlder biology, not because you actually want to be with me.”

Summerhill stepped closer. He thought about the seed in his memory, the one that had grown into who he was now. “That’s not true.” He smiled just in case the otter happened to look up, which he didn’t. “I think we’d be really good together.” Again, he allowed himself to be awash with those feelings of longing and adoration he’d felt for Tek back in the nevereef.

Finally, Tek did look up, his face a mix of incredulity and sadness. “Yeah. Except for the fact that you can’t get near me and don’t even want to be on this planet anyway.”

“I think there’s a way I can fix that. Do you trust me?” Summerhill asked, taking another step closer. Hints of the otter’s scent tickled the inside of his nose.

Tek’s throat tightened visibly. “If I didn’t trust you, I’d never have done what I did with you.”

The flowers around Summerhill’s feet started to get larger and more vibrant as his mind washed over them. The otter’s scent fueled the dog’s dedication to his mad plan. “Stand up for me,” he said.
This is for him. This is for you. This is for both of you.

With some amount of hesitation, Tek got to his feet. He wrung his webbed paws together, then tried his best to relax, though his posture indicated plenty of nervousness. “What are you going to do to me?” he asked.

Flowers that had been wilting regained their health. Grass that had been trampled underfoot sprang back up. “Just this,” Summerhill said, and he closed the gap between Tek and himself. He set his paws on the otter’s shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed him atop the head, between the ears. After the oily fur tingled against his lips, Summerhill then licked between the otter’s eyes, his tongue moving swiftly.

He welcomed the colors and the music, and then he reached under Tek’s chin, tilted it up, and kissed the otter full and deep on the mouth, their muzzles locking as they both let out matching, passionate whimpers. The hallucinogens quickly shot into Summerhill’s mind, loosening his grip on reality enough for him to do what he wanted to do next.

It took effort to push Tek away from him, but the very yearning he felt was what enabled him to break away. He took several plodding steps backward, then bit down on his own lip, hard. The sensation as he drew blood was too warped from normal to quite be pain, and instead of letting out a squeak of discomfort he let his eyes roll back exultantly. He touched the cut on his lip, held his arm out, and flicked his wrist, sending a single drop of blood down to the ground.

His mind searched the flowers, and in short order he found which one the drop of blood had landed on. The energy from inside him wrapped around that flower, singled it out, and then poured into it. With a twisted sense of concentration that would have been impossible while in a sober state of mind, he kept focus on that flower while also reaching out to the rest of the Rydale flora around him, studying it, learning it, memorizing how it felt, how it resonated, how it formed its own brand of life and beauty.

The flower grew with unnatural swiftness, and then it started to change. Summerhill watched intently, aware that Tek was also staring as the flower folded in upon itself, around that droplet of blood. It grew even larger, transformed into something resembling an orange and purple cocoon, then grew bigger still, half as tall as Tek, as tall as Tek, slightly taller than Tek.

Summerhill called to mind all that his brain and body alike had known of Tek. He pulled together those hazy memories, the impassioned lovemaking, and all the affection, devotion, and inspiration he felt about the otter. He took these thoughts, memories, and emotions and allowed them to combine and coalesce into something more tangible. When they’d been fully gathered, Summerhill then constructed a mirror inside his mind, so that he could look back at himself and direction his attentions.

He took that bundle of thoughts and emotions and separated them from himself. Envisioning his mind and soul as if they were a tree, he made those feelings and memories into a lush cluster of fruit growing out from an outlying branch. With careful thought and precise imagination, he made the fruit inviting, tantalizing and irresistible, much the same way that Tek was.

In the mirror, Summerhill watched himself reach up to pick the fruit that had been placed within reach.

Summerhill and his reflection reached out and brought their fingertips to the mirror, touching that smooth surface, feeling a sense of warmth radiating through to the other side. It was like a different person was looking back into Summerhill’s eyes now, a person into whom he’d placed all his thoughts of Tek—a new individual, a seedling, a scion, a framework into which something else could grow, blossom, flourish.

With a touch of one of Summerhill’s fingers, the orange and purple cocoon split open on multiple axes like a flower blossoming. Closing his eyes, he stepped into it, and then willed it to close back around him. As the cocoon sealed itself back up, Tek cried out, but Summerhill had too much occupying his mind to let himself hear the otter’s words.

On the opposite side of the mirror, behind the other Summerhill, appeared a young girl. Her fur-lined ears flicked and then disappeared, and she offered a smile of sympathy and encouragement to the first Summerhill before the second turned around. The girl reached out to him, then spread her arms, pulling the dog into a reassuring hug.

And then Summerhill’s mind split in half along the border marked by the mirror. Imaginary glass shattered, and the girl and other dog disappeared, leaving only darkness and an urge to scream in agony.

A rush of endorphins and hallucinogenic chemicals flooded Summerhill’s brain anew, giving him a moment’s respite from the pain. It was something tragic and wonderful, at once both painful and necessary, like a parent sending a grown child off into the world. The finality of it had been shocking and brutal; the split was complete, and the other part of him was gone.

The floral construct split open again, this time with violent force. Summerhill was sent tumbling to the ground. Dizziness and nausea gripped his head and his gut. His vision spun with residual colors from having kissed someone he couldn’t quite recall. Unable to either see straight or think straight, he staggered backward and fell to the ground.

Falling onto the ground on the other side of the cocoon was an exact duplicate of Summerhill. He was strewn amidst the wildflowers, his eyes closed, his body covered in nothing but a familiar pattern of reddish, brownish, whitish fur. For several moments, he didn’t move at all, but after several tense seconds, his chest started to rise and fall with slow, quiet breathing.

Summerhill—the first Summerhill—was panting. Exhaustion was like a miasma around him. After watching the cocoon dissolve back into ground, he lifted his head to look up at the short otter-person. “There. I think that’s the solution to our problem,” he huffed, though he couldn’t remember, exactly, what the problem was, or who he was talking to.

The otter-person’s eyes were wide with awe and disbelief. “Summerhill, I...” he said, voice drying out before he could get a whole thought out. “What did you do?”

To Summerhill’s surprise and dismay, the nausea he felt wasn’t going away. The hallucinogenic and aphrodisiac effects had passed, but he was still lightheaded and starting to feel sick to his stomach. “It’s like... with plants,” he stammered. “I split a part of myself off. Part of me that’s full of...” Full of what? Now that he tried to think of it, he couldn’t even remember.

“Did you just clone yourself?” The otter was staring at the naked, unresponsive Summerhill copy crumpled in the grass before him. He reached out as if to touch the unmoving dog, but wouldn’t let his fingertips get closer than a few inches away. “How did you do that?”

“Plants.” Summerhill’s heart was pounding. He felt a painful tightness in his chest. “I control plants.” Thoughts and words came only with great difficulty. “Rydale biota. Biochemistry. Shouldn’t be a problem anymore.” What was Rydale? This was Rydale, yes? Tiny bits of disjointed information tried their best to reassociate themselves within his mind.

The otter—Tek? Wasn’t his name Tek or something like that?—looked back and forth between the two Summerhills before stepping closer to the original. “Are you okay?” The worry in the otter’s voice made Summerhill feel strange, like he should have been feeling concern that he wasn’t. “Do you need help?”