See this previous post for a communication to any who would join me in writing.  For a thought on David Lynch, see this article.  And see this article to read the story from the beginning.  Meanwhile…

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They had to get out of there.  They’d both been burned by the witch.  But they couldn’t make themselves leave just yet.  They had to clear the air.  Blasfemia and the corsario glared at each other, slumped against the walls of the Leveret.  At least they had gotten a change of clothing for Blasfemia, so the ship could be cleaner – at least, until the homunculus needed its diaper changed.

The little creature sat in nearly the same position as Blasfemia, back against the wall, but it was looking back and forth between its two new giants.  Cora hadn’t been lying that it was her most perfect creation.  The thing barely looked deformed at all.  Inhumanly proportioned, like some aesthetically pleasing large-headed doll, with cornsilk hair neatly combed away and cloched with a net of pearls.  Her moony silver eyes were the very image of Cora’s own, but the strawberry blonde lashes were thicker and longer, almost cameline.  Her most unnatural trait were the several small horns protruding from her skull, shaped like larger rose thorns.

Neither of the giants regarded her at all, piercing each other with savage hatred.  At last, Blasfemia lost the staring contest, and opened fire.

“You little bitch!  What did you do to us?  I was going to take this nasty little thing to my sister, no question.  No fucking question.  I didn’t need a motherfucking hex.”

“She called it a geas.  Isn’t it enough that I got one too?  Why do we need to fight about it?  This just gives us more of an impetus to get the job done and part ways.”

“I’ll give you a fucking impetus, you ugly-ass kitty cat duende motherfucker.  As soon as we’re done I’m gonna pop your big eye like a grape.”

“Thanks for that.  Thanks a lot, you unthinkable bastard.  Now I’ve got pain if I don’t serve your venal whims, and mutilation or death to look forward to as my only reward.  This is going to be so much fun.  What a way to go.  What a way.”

“What do you expect of me?  You rat me out to the witch queen and get me fucking geesed on, and I’m just gonna say ‘bygones, bygones’?  But I feel ya.  I never wanted to kill nobody that wasn’t mean to my sister, so it’d be pretty fucked up if I kill you.  I’m heated, alright?  I’m fucking heated.”

The duende motherfucker covered its face with its paws and let out a deep sigh.  Suddenly the hands dropped to its stomach, and it lurched at the waist.  “Oh no.  It’s starting.  I feel sick because I’m not getting you there fast enough.  This is terrible.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, alright.  I’m sorry I took you captive.  Here.”  She helped it up from the floor, and took it to the pilot seat.  “You get us off Corazon 2 and I’ll make sure Ombunculita doesn’t bust open her weird head.”

The corsario nodded, glad they’d cleared that up, but more glad the illness subsided as soon as it touched the Leveret’s controls.  The astronave clambered upright, dropped its wings, and kicked off into the sky.

Blasfemia held the little shitter in her own approximation of Cora’s technique, but with all arms folded under the seatbelts.  She called out to the pilot, “At least when we get outside the ice, the Church won’t have the balls to hunt us down.”

“You’re probably right.  Hell, maybe I’ll like it out there.  Did I tell you, the astrocielo around Dio 6 was my home?  I had a nice little house on Michael’s heel.”

“No shit.  Well, if I’d known you then, maybe I’d kill the pope nice and easy, like in his sleep or something.  Prob’ly woulda been less raw for the big man.”

“Still would’ve done it, then…  Does that mean the pontiff was personally cruel to your sister?  To Josefina?”

“I’m not gonna talk about it, but yes it does.  Are you starting to put it together?  Remembering the right news shows?”

“I don’t watch tele.”

“That’s a good fucking idea.”

They spent almost all of their flight time in astrocielo, far now from the disaster she’d made of Dio 6.  Changing diapers wasn’t any worse than the last time she’d done it, and mercifully the creature she’d dubbed “Ombunculita” had a much smaller and slower digestive system than a human infant of the same length – her body was proportioned a bit more like that of an adult.

Out of morbid curiosity, she gave the thing soft little squeezes and pokes to feel out its anatomy.  She looked well-formed enough at a glance, but the joints in the leg were very soft.  Any structure must have come from cartilage too flimsy to support her weight.  Still, she could crawl with her arms.  Maybe she could be potty trained, and Cora was just too much of a light touch to make that work?

When Blasfemia squeezed Ombunculita’s little body, she smiled and made coy looks, like “oh no, don’t tickle me.”  Blasfemia tried to minimize the creature’s stimulation, but at the height of her excitement, she almost looked like she was laughing, and made a creepy wet noise in her throat.

Still too disgusting.  Blasfemia felt ill.

The corsario was alone with its thoughts, leaning back in the pilot seat, wondering at what would come next.  Cora has said Josefina was outside the Wall of Ice.  Never had the spirit imagined it would try to fly through that particular stretch of space.  Unbelievable.  It could already see hints of the thing, past the nearest string of stars, reflecting their lights with glint and sparkle.

In some barely comprehensible epoch of the past, when the Stars of Weal were being consolidated under the Church, the Wall of Ice had been created.  Nobody could imagine how, so they waved away the question as “the Will of God.’  The corsario had its doubts.

The Wall of Ice was a feature of the astrocielo – an absolute impossibility in long space.  It was an orb of ice, incredibly thick but hollow in the middle, that held all of the Stars of Weal, and many uninhabited planets and stars besides.  Outside the Wall, the nearest inhabited worlds were considered “heathen,” with a reputation for irreligion, heresy, and misfortune.  It was taken as the Will of God that the Stars of Weal were all so pleasant to live around.  Heathen worlds were too cold or too hot or radioactive – never quite right.

As such a construction was impossible in long space, one had only to travel in that realm to bypass it – as if it was nothing at all.  But the long space corresponding to the thickness of the wall took nearly a year to travel at the best subluminal speed – impossible without a ship large enough to hold vast resources.  Some centuries ago, a few heathen worlds had tried to wage that war, to no avail.  There were too many ways to intercept and destroy them, for a side backed by the Celestial Hierarchy itself.

On the other hand, it was much easier to get out than to get back in – presumably what Josefina had somehow achieved.  The Stars of Weal only cared about keeping heathens out, so they focused monitoring efforts on the outside of the wall.  If you could find a weak enough area – one with hollows in the ice – you could get through a lot faster by slipping in and out of long space along the way.

Unsanctioned traders and radicals had developed a map of such routes, updated whenever possible, as the geography of the unstable substance was subject to change.  Did the corsario have a copy of the map?  Of course it did.

Any given route was possibly outdated, no longer good, due to cryological or astronomical events, or shifting security activity on the outside of the wall, where one had to emerge.  In judging the best one, you had to consider how likely it was to be outdated, and how dangerous that would be if it turned out to be true.

Well, it thought, if we run out of food, Blasfemia can eat the homunculus and I.  Maybe drink her own pee for a few months.  It laughed darkly.

“What’s up, Capitan?”

“We’re close.  This passing isn’t close to stars that might melt the ice, change its shape – but also not too far from Borland 1.  Downside, proximity to a Heathen World means security.  They have dogs.

“I never thought about the Wall of Ice much.  If the Church really made it, I’d sure like to break it.”

“As you will.  I think the Leveret is small enough to slip notice.  Based on the alternatives, I’m betting this is the route Josefina took.  Improves our odds of not getting stranded ’til we die.  Are you ready?”

“Yes I am.”

“¿Y Ombunculita también?”

“Sì.”

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