Not the prettiest things in creation, Raul remarked.
That was an understatement. Each displayed a particular foulness, which fact was emphasized by the way they hung upon each other's shoulders, like brothers in grotesquerie. One was surely the thinnest man alive, his black flesh pasted over his sharp bones like tissue paper, his gait mincing, his eyes fiery. At his side was a man as gross as the first was wasted, his robes, which were pale and mud- or bloodspattered, like his brother's, open to his navel. His breasts were pendulous, and covered in bruises, the source of which was a creature that resembled a cross between a lobster and a parrot-winged, clawed, and scarlet-that clung to his tits like a suckling child. The third member of this quartet was the hammerer. He was the most brutish of the four, with his iron shovel head and his bullish neck. But he whistled as he went, and the melody was sweetly lilting, like an Irish air. On his right, and closest to the woman, ran the runt of the litter, a full head s orter the hammerer. His skin was the color of bile and had a clammy gleam to it, his scrawny form full of tics and stumbles. As for his features, they were testament to calamitous inbreeding, eyes bulging, chin receding, his nose no more than two slits that ran from between his eyes to just above his twisted mouth.
they didn't seem to be in any great hurry. they took their time, chattering and laughing as they went, sufficiently entertained by one another's company that they didn't even glance down the slope towards the women.
At last the mist closed around them and they were gone. "Horrible," Phoebe said softly.
"I've seen worse," Testa remarked, and started up the slope again, with Phoebe still clinging to her arm.
There was a subtle ebb and flow in the mist around them now, which became more pronounced the higher they climbed. "Oh my Lord," Phoebe murmured, pointing to the ground. The same motion was visible underfoot: the grass, the dirt, even the rocks strewn around, being pulled by some force further up the mountain, and then released, only to be plucked up again seconds later. Some of the smaller pebbles were actually rolling uphill, which was odd enough, but odder still was the way the solid rock of the mountain responded to this summons. Here, close to the threshold, it hadn't cracked, it had softened, and was subject to the same motion as mist, dirt, and grass.
"I think we're getting warmer," Testa said, seeing the phenomenon. This was the same extraordinary sight she'd witnessed at Buddy Vance's house: apparently solid objects losing faith in their solidity, and bending out of true. The Vance house had been a maelstrom. This was not. It was a gentle, rhythmic motion (Tidal, Raul quietly observed), the rocks being coaxed rather than bullied into surrendering their solidity. Testa was still too traumatized by Lucien's death to be in any state to enjoy the spectacle, but she could not help but feet a twinge of anticipation.
they were close to the door-, she didn't doubt it. A few yards more, and she'd have sight of Quiddity. Even if the doped singer was right, and there were no wonders to be found on the shore, it would still be an event of consequence, to see the ocean where being was born.
Laughter erupted somewhere nearby. This time the women didn't stop climbing, but instead picked up their pace. The motion of mist and ground was more urgent with every yard they covered. It was like an undertow, tugging at their feet and ankles, and though it didn't have sufficient strength to overturn them yet, it would only be a matter of time, Testa guessed, until it did.
Ifeel a little strange, Raul said.
"Like how?"
Like-I don't know-like I'm not quite secure in here, he replied. Before she had a chance to quiz him further on this, a particularly powerful wave passed through ground and air, parting the mist in front of them. Testa let out a gasp of astonishment. It was not the mountaintop unveiled before them, but another landscape entirely. A sky of roiling colors, and a shore upon which the waters of the dream-sea threw themselves, dark and foamy.
Phoebe let go of Tesia's arm. "I don't believe it," she said. "I see it, but I don't@'
Tesla "Amazing, hub?"
Hold on to me.
"What are you talking about?"
I'm losing my grip.
"So what else is new?"
Tesla! I mean it! He sounded panicky. Don't get any closer.
"I've got to," she said. Phoebe was already three strides ahead of her, her eyes fixed on the shore, "I'll be careful." She called out to Phoebe. "Slow down!" But her request was ignored. Phoebe hurried on as though mesmerized by the spectacle ahead, until without warning the motion in the ground escalated, and she was thrown off her feet. She went down with a cry loud enough to rouse anyone within a twenty-yard radius and had difficulty getting back onto her feet.
Testa stumbled to her aid, the earth and air increasingly p agitated, as if stirred up by their very presence. She grabbed hold of Phoebe's arm and helped her to her feet, which was no minor task.
"I'm all right," Phoebe gasped, "really I am." She looked round at Tesia. "You can go back now," she said.
Listen to her, Raul said, his voice quivering.
"You've done everything you can," Phoebe went on. "I can make it from here." She threw her arms around Tesla. "Thank you," she said. "You're an amazing woman, you know that?"
"Take care of yourself," Tesla said.
"I will," Phoebe replied, breaking their embrace now, and turning her gaze and her body towards the shore,
"I meant what I said," Tesla called after Phoebe.
"What's that?"
"I wasn't@'
She didn't have time to finish, distracted as she was by a figure who appeared on the shore ahead of Phoebe. He was, of all the creatures she'd seen at work and play here, the most authoritative; a fleshy, imperious individual, with sly, hooded eyes and a dozen or so small gingerish beards sprouting from his cheeks and chins, each teased and twirled so they resembled horns. In one hand he carried a small staff. The other he was using to lift up his voluminous robes, allowing three children-identical to one another and to the laughing child Phoebe and Tesla had encountered on the slope below-room to play tag between his bare and spindly legs. He was not so diverted by their frolics, however, that he didn't see the women in his path, and by the look on his face it was plain he knew they were not part of his retinue.
Instantly, he raised a shout, "Gamaliel! to me! Mutep! to me! Bartho! Swanky! to me! to me!"
Phoebe turned and looked back at Tesla, her face a picture of despair. The shore lay ten strides from her, at most, and now the way was blocked.
"Duck!" Tesia yelled, and pointed Lourdes at the man in the robes. He raised his staff the same instant. There was energy skittering about it, she saw, gathering coherence It's a weapon! Raul yelled. She didn't wait for proof. She simply fired. The bullet struck the man in the middle of his belly, lower than she'd aimed. He dropped his robes and his staff, and let out a cry of such shrillness she'd thought maybe she'd mis-sexed him. The children's giggles turned to shrieks, and they raced around him as he tottered forward, the cry still coming between his tiny teeth.
One of the children pushed past Phoebe, ignoring or indifferent to the gun, yelling, "Somebody help Blessedm'n Zury!"
"Go!" Tesla yelled to Phoebe, but the order got lost in the din of Zury's agony and the children's shrieks. 'the niist didn ;t mute the cacophony, it served as a roiling echo-chamber, the tu mult gathering so much power it made the soft ground shudder. w By the panicked look on Phoebe's face it was plain she as too confused to take advantage of the chance while she had it. Yelling to her again, Tesia started through the shallows to press her on her way.
Nofarther! Raul was yelling in her head. I can't hold on.
He wasn't alone in this. The assault of noise and motion threw Tesla's senses into confusion. Her sight seemed to fly ahead of her, drummed from her skull, and for several sickening heartbeats she was looking back at herself from the very threshold between Cosm and shore. She might have been claimed completely, but that Phoebe reached out for her, and the contact brought her sight to heel.