“Shhhhh,” Sill’s smoky voice whispered in the perfect dark. “Don’t wake the sleepers. They guard this shortcut. To wake them is to die.”
Tia slowed to a crawl in the negative space between worlds. She kept her eyes focused on the narrow, gray line vibrating at her feet; she sensed to veer off to the dark would be to wake Sill’s sleepers, and they were of the Angers, perfect 5x distillations of your most obvious nightmare.
“The door we want is just ahead,” Sill said, the ember in his pipe their guiding light.
The door was outlined in a pale, gray skyline, naked twigs poking their arms inside the darkness out natural curiosity. Beyond was as an amber carpet of autumn leaves, unmoving, like a Zen garden. Strobes in the sky lit up, the crack of thunder following afterward, a stern P.S.
“Where are we?” Tia asked, surprise riding her tongue.
“Pine Bluff,” Sill toked, “isn’t it obvious? You were born here in Jefferson Hospital, why would this not be?”
“I don’t understand,” Tia said, walking out of the twillen door into subdued day. She was surprised to find herself in a courtyard; the space was carpeted in sharp reds, off-oranges, spider browns. Leaves, autumn, underfoot. To her left, yards away, a procession of people shuffled their way towards a seated figure, a figure dressed in vibrant orange. The courtyard held tall naked oaks at bay, forests of them. Corraled in by a somber graveyard-gray wall of stone perforated by stretches of black iron fencing, the long, narrow yard was home to one blood-red maple, its arms stretched starkly toward the iron-gray sky above.
“That’s Lady Autumn,” Sill said. “We have to get in line, present ourselves properly. Don’t ask questions, just be you. You’re still in town, so you will be welcome.”
“This isn’t Pine Bluff,” Tia’s eyes bounced between the distant orange figure and the acres of bare, stark oak trees outside the cemetery fence line.
“Don’t be silly,” Sill sighed, “it’s just a part of town you ignored all your life. Just because you can’t see the corners of this place doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Remember the odd dirt mound out by K-mart? This is in between your house and that mound. Humans, it seems, are really bad at dimensional-gazing. Poor myopic race.” The little mushroom laughed as Tia nodded silently. She was a good human, she understood visions, portents.
“Are this townspeople?” She asked, suddenly thinking of the little Sunbeam girl that used to swing just above Harding and Main. Whatever happened to her, Tia thought. So blond. So happy. Swiss.
“Yes,” Sill answered, “the gifted who know of Her Majesty.”
“Lady Autumn?”
“Yesssssssss,” Sill nodded, blowing out a rather long plume of mushroom smoke from his pipe.
“I see.” She giggled.
“For the first time?”
“Yessssssssss,” she mocked.
In front of her was a man with a guitar, wearing a baseball cap. His face was happy. Just like a pumpkin. A pumpkin proud of All Hallow’s Eve. A troubador by spirit, she sensed. And though she longed to talk to him, to find out where he lived, what he liked to strum about, sing about, he was next at the throne of Lady Autumn.
Decked out in a dress of bright orange oak leaves, the strawberry blond mistress smile a benevolent smile, hands pressed into each other just above her breasts, as if in open-eyed meditation, as if in prayer. Hazel eyes shooting to the troubador, Tia could feel Lady Autumn’s gaze, its cosmic import, its benevolent aim.
“I’m not afraid anymore,” Tia muttered aloud.
“Of what?” Sill said impatiently, his gaze on Autumn a worrisome regret.
“Dying in the accident.”
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……..next update….soon….as in by the week’s dying breath.
