Doris Piserchia by Spaceling

Author:Spaceling
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-07-06T14:25:09+00:00

13

The Indian led me through D. She didn’t even bother to look back at me so the outlandish shapes I assumed remained my secret. We moved so fast toward the end of our journey that I couldn’t say what color rings we penetrated or what dimension we finally landed in.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that the place was Earth but what was the difference when it looked more alien than any place I had ever been? We were on a red butte that looked down on flat prairie so far away nothing moved or stirred on its surface. The boiling sun peered over the morning horizon like a sore eye while the wind snored like a drunk as it worked its way through trees and scorched brush. In every direction the world was burned and awesome, scarlet and fierce, drugged with loneliness and neglect “Who needs D with this around?” said Lamana as she stood on the edge of a cliff and grinned at the sun. “When I was little I wouldn’t ring travel and screamed at the top of my lungs every time somebody tried to get me near one. My mother brought me up here on my eighth birthday. In her opinion the first and best ring travelers were Indians. She left me here and told me not to come home unless I did it by stepping out of D directly in front of our house. I was up here six months.”

Lamana showed me where to find water, what roots, herbs and fruits were edible and then she startled me by waving goodbye and walking away. All that night I waited for her to return but she didn’t and by morning I realized I had become the subject of some Indian experimenting or something.

The sun almost became a person to me during those days, a domineering parent who never let me out of sight except at night when his companion, the gurgling wind, took over. There was a therapeutic feature on the butte which I never positively identified other than to suspect that it might be the total isolation of the place. I had food, water, sun, wind, my thoughts and a disinclination to do anything but loiter on unbelievably high ledges and stare at the scenery.

It took me a week to climb down to the second line of bluffs where I found more of the same emptiness. It was a spot where only the past existed, the present not really being used yet. Nothing so hollow could be real.

I woke up one night when the wind was unusually feeble, disturbed by rustling sounds and a smell that was bad enough to gag me, but sleep quickly captured me again and subdued the memory until the next afternoon. Going back to the place where I had made my bed, I inspected rocks and ledges for marks or prints and found a few spots where outflung brush seemed to have been broken by the passage of something.

Not until I saw the lummox did I actually believe she existed.

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