Between Floors Read online

  I started walking again; there wasn’t much else I could do. If I was dreaming, I didn’t know the right way to wake myself up, and if I wasn’t dreaming, I had to try and get out some way. There wasn’t much of a feel of Between about the place, either. It didn’t have that sense of stuff hiding just below the surface, or of things just unseen. You know, that kinda crawling feeling that stuff is moving in the corners of your eyes whenever you look away; the one that makes you hunch your shoulders and scratch your cheek.

  Maybe this was what it felt like to go mad.

  I squinted at the far end of the hall. There was something huge and rectangular hanging there—a blueprint that was probably of the building I was in, with a big button sticker on it that I could just make out to read you are here. It had a title on it, too, but it was too small to read.

  Right. That’s where I was going. End of the hall. Maybe I could figure out where I was, and if this was a dream. If it was a dream it probably didn’t matter where I was, but if it wasn’t—hang on. Too confusing. Whatever this was, I wanted to know where I was.

  So I kept walking.

  I walked for a long time. Maybe an hour or two. The hallway never got any shorter in front of me, but it never got any longer behind me, either. I would have given up sooner, but it wasn’t like I had anywhere to be, and if it comes to a choice between a boring dream and a nightmare, I’ll take the boring dream every time. If it was a dream. The floor still felt pretty real beneath my feet, and the cool air made the inside of my nose too dry.

  I stopped eventually and sat down with my back against one of the hallway walls. It was solid against my back, too, and very cold; opposite me was one exactly the same. White, smooth, and cold. Just a wall.

  Hang on, though. Was it really a wall?

  I looked at it suspiciously.

  It looked like a wall. But then, stuff that looked like itself in the human world was very often different depending on how I could see it Between, so that was no guarantee it was really a wall. Actually, I was getting to the point where I didn’t know if walls were really walls, or whether they were actually hedges, or whatever they were Between and Behind, and I just couldn’t see them properly.

  If it only depends on your point of view, what’s actually the truth?

  I stared at the wall, wondering about that, until it occurred to me that no matter whether I got an answer to that particular question or not, it wouldn’t help me right now, so I went back to basics. I narrowed my focus on that wall, trying to see it differently—trying to see it as anything else other than a wall—and for a split second there was a flicker to it, like an old VHS that had been watched one too many times.

  “Not a wall, then,” I said. I’d wasted a couple of hours walking. If this was real, maybe Zero would have noticed my absence at the house by now. If it was a dream, all I’d done was bore myself for a couple of hours. I didn’t ever remember a dream being this long, though. I was pretty sure I would have remembered something as long and boring as walking for two hours.

  I turned my head sideways and gazed at the wall that wasn’t a wall, and after a while it seemed like it might not be so shiny and hard as it had been. Or perhaps as if in its other form, its Between form, it wasn’t really something solid at all.

  “Looks like mist,” I said to myself, ignoring the question of whether Between and Behind existed in dreams. I’d never dreamed them before, but my dreams weren’t exactly the measure of normality before now, either. I reached out to touch the sudden cloudiness, and there was a sensation of cool dampness beneath my fingers.

  At first it was a springy sort of cool dampness, but when I said persuasively to it, “You’re actually mist, you know,” it became ethereally cool and damp, and my hand passed right through.

  I stepped through it quickly before it could change its mind—before I could think about what I might meet once past it, too. Lucky for me, it wasn’t anything dangerous; just a white, bare room with nothing but some sort of modern art at the centre of it. There were no doors, and no windows.

  Great. First I was in a hallway with no end, and now I was in a room with no doors.

  Someone sighed. It was a familiar sigh, and I was already looking around when Athelas’ voice said, “Ah, you’re back again.”

  It wasn’t modern art in the centre of the room. It was Athelas.

  And when I say he was in the centre of the room, I mean the centre. Not just in the centre of the floor, but in the centre of the space itself, suspended in mid-air by nothing like a magician’s assistant, his back to the floor and his chest to the ceiling. His head dipped toward the floor as if he were unconscious despite the sigh and the speech, and even his legs dangled a little lower than his torso.

  I took a step toward him, swallowing, and wondered how it was that he was hanging from nothing. It wasn’t nothing, though; as I moved closer, there was a kind of glitter to the space beneath him, filaments dancing on the air behind him.

  No, not behind him—through him. Filaments of glass or spiderweb, piercing him in a million different places from beneath and emerging on the other side as if they suspended him from the ceiling.

  Oh man.

  I really hoped this was a dream.

  “What—” I stopped, and swallowed again, because I thought I might throw up. “What happened to you, Athelas?”

  Athelas’ head lolled to the side until he was looking at me through the strands around him, eyes cold and shadowed. “What are you doing here again?”

  “What do you mean, again? This is the first time. Actually, I’m not even sure I’m here. I think maybe I’m dreaming.”

  Athelas gave a groaning sort of laugh and said, “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

  It took my breath away, because I could hear in his voice that he really did regret it—at least halfway.

  “That’s flamin’ rude!” I said resentfully. “I make you tea and everything!”

  That made Athelas laugh again, and I wished he hadn’t, because it sounded painful.

  “They’ve done a much better job on you this time,” he said.

  He was looking at me now, and I wished he wouldn’t do that, either. He didn’t even blink; just stared at me through slit eyes of a grey that was too light and depthless to belong to a human. I’d seen him look at other Behindkind that way, but never me.

  “Don’t glare at me,” I said, and my voice didn’t shake. I was pretty sure it was a dream. Like, sixty percent. “I didn’t do this to you.”

  He pulled in a rough breath, and that scared me, too.

  “Ah, they’ve certainly put some effort,” he murmured. “Shall I kill you, I wonder?”

  I was pretty sure he was talking to himself and not me, and I didn’t like getting too close to him while he wasn’t paying attention to me—he looked like he was just on edge enough to hurt me if I surprised him. So I said, “I’m gunna try to get you down from there.”

  Athelas laughed under his breath, looking at me through slit eyes. “I’ll kill you,” he said.

  “What the heck is your problem?” I demanded. “What are you gunna kill me for? I’m trying to help you!”

  “Really?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I wanted to call him something nasty, but I was afraid that if I did, he really would try to kill me. Anyway, I don’t think human insults really work on Behindkind. Maybe I can ask JinYeong about Behindkind insults—he probably knows enough of ’em.

  “Who knows?” said Athelas, and he laughed again.

  It had a sticky sound to it, and I wondered exactly where those filaments were passing through his body. Nowhere good, by the sounds of it.

  “Well, I’m trying to help,” I told him, stepping carefully around all the filaments. I didn’t want to think what they’d do to him if I accidentally touched one of them. “What are these things?”

  “A very textbook way to go about information gathering,” Athelas said, turning his head back to the ceiling. “H
ow disappointing. Your methods were just beginning to seem more interesting. If you think to disarm me by asking questions to which you already know the answers, you’ll find yourself very much mistaken.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Don’t be helpful. You’re the one who’s in a pickle, you know. I could just leave you here.”

  His head whipped around so quickly that it made me jump.

  “They are moonlight,” he said, and laughed again. “They came for me by moonlight, and now hell bars the way.”

  “That’s the opposite of helpful,” I said. To myself, I muttered, “Don’t know why fae can’t just say what they mean.”

  “Life is so boring when everyone says what they mean.”

  “Yeah? How’re you finding life at the moment, then?”

  Athelas looked back up at the ceiling, and I was instantly regretful. Even if it was a dream, that was a horrible thing to say to him.

  “Sorry,” I said gruffly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “So difficult, isn’t it, Pet? Minding one’s tongue.”

  “Some days more than others,” I said, making another circle around him. The filaments might have been moonlight, for all I could see how they worked, or how on earth I was supposed to get him out of them. It made me think of a less fiery but significantly more torturous Brunhildan funeral pyre. “We’re not gunna have any Valkyries shrieking at us when we get you off those things, are we?”

  “So ignorant,” sighed Athelas. “Didn’t I tell you they’re moonlight? Valkyries would have killed me at once—this rig is not meant for death, but torture.”

  “I know,” I said, and there was a snubbed sound to my voice.

  “Dear me, are you crying? I’m sure she wouldn’t have done that.”

  “No,” I said, and cleared my throat. I was probably going to have to touch those things. I needed to know how strong they were, and how much connection they had with Athelas.

  Again, those grey eyes came to bear on me, light and almost unbearable. He said, “It’s not very original of you.”

  I wiped my eyes so I could see the filaments more clearly. I didn’t want to touch them too roughly. “You actually think I’m not Pet, don’t you?”

  If he thought I wasn’t Pet, who did he think I was?

  Ah heck. He thought I was one of his torturers. Dead cert. No wonder he’d said he would kill me!

  “Didn’t I say that this rig is for torture?”

  “Who the heck am I, then?” I demanded, wiping away a fresh swell of salt-water from my eyes. “If I’m not myself, I wanna know. I usually dream as myself.”

  I put out a hand to the filaments, and my fingers glittered with salt-water just like the filaments glittered with moonlight. When I touched one, the lightest breath of contact, Athelas groaned deep and harsh.

  I snatched my hand away. “Right,” I said, and there was a cold wetness all down my cheeks. “This is gunna take a while.”

  “Take your time, Pet,” he gasped, and laughed. “I’ll wait on your convenience.”

  “Stop laughing,” I said, pushing away tears. “It’s weird and scary.”

  “If you don’t want me to laugh, you should work on your interrogation tactics,” said Athelas. “You were much better at this the first time—at the first, I really believed you were the Pet. Killing you helped with that.”

  “What do you mean, killing me?”

  Athelas smiled at me, all steel and ice. “I’m sure you remember as well as I. You died quite swiftly, but I don’t think it was painless.”

  “But you said before that you wished you’d killed me, not that you’d done it!”

  “Indeed.”

  It made no sense. But it didn’t stop me saying resentfully, “Why’d you kill me? What did I ever do to you?”

  “Why should I not?”

  “If you believed it was me, why kill me?” Something sour and acidy ate away at my stomach.

  “You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I care for the pet,” Athelas said. “You are, of course, free to carry on your interrogation in any way that seems good to you. I’m a captive audience, after all.”

  For some reason, that made me smile. Athelas was even lecturing his torturers—the fae really did believe themselves superior to everyone. “You saying it’s torture to talk to me?”

  Athelas closed his eyes. “Of a sort, I suppose. You’ll notice I did not refer to it as effective torture.”

  “Are those threads really moonlight?”

  “It’s good policy for a torturer to know his or her own equipment,” said Athelas, without opening his eyes. “There’s nothing more terrifying than a torturer who knows what he’s capable of.”

  “If I try to take them out, will they all hurt you as much as they do now?”

  “Oh, at least that much! There’s nothing like moonlight for piercing where it shouldn’t pierce. Just ask your little shifter friend.”

  “I thought you could heal,” I said. “Can’t you heal yourself?”

  The ghost of a smile passed over Athelas’ face. “You have a certain knack, don’t you? Such an innocent way of putting your finger on sore spots! I wonder how they knew about that?”

  A horrible thought seared my stomach and burned its way up my throat. “Do you mean you’re healing all the time, and those things—those things are—they’re—”

  “Always healing, always injured. A really very charming method of torture; something I would deign to use, myself. Did I not say a torturer should know his own equipment? You are unconvincingly ignorant.”

  For a couple of minutes, I thought I might actually be sick. I crouched close to the floor with my legs pressing into my stomach and chest, one palm flat against the cold floor, and concentrated on breathing.

  When I looked up again, Athelas was still smiling at me with his head in that same, uncomfortable twist; a curious smile that was something more like a smile I was used to seeing from him.

  “Yes, that would bother the pet. Shall I tell you some other things that would bother her? We’ll play a game—two lies and a truth. You decide which is true and which is false. Convince me with that borrowed face that you really are the pet, and perhaps you’ll get some information out of it.”

  “Just wait until I get you back home,” I told him. “I’ll put some of JinYeong’s blood in your tea or something. And I won’t buy the expensive tea you like! I’ll go back to giving you supermarket tea, and you’ll just have to make do! Why can’t you speak without making a riddle of everything?”

  “You—she—” he stopped, and seemed surprised. “Dear me. I seem to be having some difficulty. I believe I know how Zero feels at last.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I asked anyway. “What are you talking about?”

  “How did you get to know that about her?” Athelas’ head turned again, and this time his grey eyes were steel. “Did you get her? I’d swear you couldn’t get through my lord, so you must have taken her by stealth.”

  “Nobody got me!” I said. “I’m right here. You. Can. See. Me.”

  “Yes,” said Athelas, and he turned his face away. “Leave now, while you can.”

  “After I’ve rescued you.”

  There was no way I was going to leave him suspended in moonlight that pierced him through every time he healed; not if I could do anything about it. I went back to the threads, hoping that I could see them as something else, or convince them to be something else.

  “I really wouldn’t bother,” said Athelas. “I’ll only kill you.”

  I didn’t look up into his eyes again. I was too afraid of what I would see there. So I kept going on the threads of moonlight, trying to see them as something different, or feel them as something different. They were Between stuff, after all. There had to be a way of seeing them differently to make them be something different.

  Athelas would have to understand if I rescued him, wouldn’t he? He’d have to understand that I was me, and that I wasn’t pretending to be
anything. I had a very strong feeling that things I did in this dream—if it was a dream—might be able to have some impact on real life, just like things done Between could impact Behind or the human world. And if that was the case, freeing Athelas in a dream might also help free him in real life.

  I wanted to do what I could, no matter how much Athelas mocked, or laughed, or cut with his words. None of my three psychos were very good at using words for anything other than bare bones communication or elaborate mocking, but we were linked until they finished their business and until I got my house back. I wasn’t going to let any of them die if I could help it. They were my psychos.

  So I reached for the strands of moonlight again, steeling myself against the shuddering gasp from Athelas as I touched them, and felt them, hard and resistant, between my fingers.

  Moonlight, my eye. They were something a lot more substantial than that.

  “You’re moonlight,” I said to them. “Why aren’t you acting like it?”

  Hang on. Hang on.

  Moonlight was just reflected sunlight, right? And sunlight could be waves or particles.

  “You should stop moving so much,” I said to the solid strands of moonlight. “Why do you want to work so hard? There’s no need to be making yourself a wave as well as a particle. Why don’t you try just being particles?”

  The moonlight glittered, and it seemed to me that it grew just a little bit less solid. I reached out a finger to stroke one of the strands, lightly and painlessly, and my finger passed right through it, sending a shower of glittering particles to the shining floor beneath us. The blue, bloody patch in Athelas’ shoulder, where it had pierced just a minute ago, welled with the heaviness of blood and sank a little.

  Athelas opened his eyes for the first time in a very long while, and said raggedly, “Interesting. Is it really to be a rescue?”

  “That’s the point,” I said. I nearly added, You ungrateful, twisty Behindkind, you! but I’d said something unforgiveably awful to him already.

  “Of course,” said Athelas, his eyes a glitter of steel before they closed again. He turned his head back toward the ceiling. “I almost forgot. Do let me know when you’re finished, won’t you?”