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…

THE END OF ACT ONE.  Hooray for progress?  Less than halfway to where I want to be, with much less than half of my available time remaining…

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Blasfemia had left the corsario alone with Ombunculita.  She could trust to its geas that it would not flee, but was also coming to understand where the duende was coming from, to see it as a person.

She had used the Leveret’s entire supply of utility cord to abseil the sheer and snowy mountain, used one of her shape-changing tools to nail it to stone along the way, then free climbed another ridge to reach the Torre Alucine.

It truly was a ruin.  How could Josefina be inside?  She would have frozen to death in a night.  All of the doors and windows had eroded to gaping holes, no protection from the wind.  Daylight flowed freely through the structure as it seemed completely hollow.  There were no bookshelves or workshops or furnishings – or even stairs.  Had there been wooden structures within, they must have rotted away before history began.

And yet, standing in the stone dust inside the base of the ancient tower, looking straight up, she could see something.  There was an impossible shadow, far above her head – perhaps two-thirds of the way to the pinnacle.  From seeing the outside, she knew there was light pouring in from every opening and crack in the place.  There was no uninterrupted stretch of wall long enough to allow an impenetrable shadow to form, yet there it was.

“Josefina!,” she cried out.  Of course, there was no reply but echoes and wind.  Blasfemia slumped against ice cold and ancient stone, nearly burned by the freeze.  A chill wracked her body, but she didn’t care to fight it.  There was no safe way to scale the inside of the tower – not with the equipment they had to hand.  She could try to free climb it, but the cold would make her hands too clumsy, and at height that would mean death.

“How do I do this?  How the hell do I do this?”

Why the hell would she do it?  That shadow could be nothing but an old piece of stone floor.  The Torre Alucine could be a dead thing, for a dead world.  How would Cora even know that Josefina had made it there?

Blasfemia wedged herself into the corner between the wall and the ground, covered what she could of her body with both of the shawls Cora had given them, and just watched the shadow, pondering.  White light flowed in from all sides, reflected from snow everywhere, and formed a thin haze between her and the shadow.  She could imagine all kinds of details in it.  A stone floor, just luring her to try something dangerous.  A clot of sticks and mud used as a nest by birds of prey.  A giant recreation of Cora’s face, made of flesh like her little monkeys, staring down in cold mockery.

The imaginings made her question it when it first came into view.  A pair of feet emerged from the darkness and slipped back inside it.  Impossible.  Then it happened again, but this time, they remained visible.  Someone was suspended in the air up there, or maybe just dangling their legs through a hole in some kind of floor.

She got up as fast as cold-stiffened muscles allowed.  “Josefina!”

The legs did not move.  Blasfemia lost her mind.  “Yeah, it’s me.  I’m comin’.  I’m comin’ on up.”  She at least had the sense to do warm-ups, whether they could be adequate to the purpose or not.  She stretched and rubbed her legs and arms, twisted every which way at the waist, and threw air punches through the clouds of her breath.  “I’m comin’ on up, hermana!  I’ll be there before you know it.”

She started the free climb, fingers burning from the cold.  Numb, too aggressively pushed into rough crevices.  Starting to bleed before she reached three meters.  Her hands locked up in claw shapes at nine meters, with no sensation at all, and she had to test the grip with her arms every time she moved.  “I’m coming.”

It was a shadow.  Nothing but a shadow.  She didn’t have the flexibility remaining to look over her shoulder at the dangling feet, but above her head she could see more clearly now – there was no substance to it.  Just a void of light.

At about eighteen meters, her body was beginning to fail in every way.  Only bloody will and creeping terror kept her from falling, but she could make no more progress – and it would be a miracle if she could climb back down.

“Josefina!  I’m coming!”

She fell, and saw the feet disappear above her as she tumbled.  But her body didn’t fall right.  She felt like she was jumping into and out of the astrocielo, like she had aboard the Leveret – queasy, with every cell burning – but only in fleeting moments that passed and began again.  The snowblind light flashed and flashed again.

Then quickly, so quickly, she landed in somebody’s arms, somebody who staggered to a knee under the weight, then held her like a child.

Josefina’s long hair fell all around Blasfemia’s face, and she remembered seeing this before on a warm day long ago, feeling safe and right.  But this world was cold and bright, Josie’s cheeks red, her lips chapped.  “Ximura, hermanita, what have you done?”

“Ahh, well… I came to save you.”

“I wanted to be here.”

“I came to see you.”

They embraced.  Josefina said, “Why did you kill him, hermanita?  It’s bad trouble.  So bad.”

“How did you even know about that?”  Blasfemia loosened the embrace enough to look her in those tired eyes.

“I’m a witch.”

“Then you know I couldn’t let his ass live.”  She held her close again.  “Anybody is cruel to you, I’m gonna kill ’em.  I’m gonna fucking kill them.”

“Stop it, baby.  Just be with me.  Calm down.”

Blasfemia’s eyes were crying, but she wasn’t at the point of sobbing.  She squeezed her sister, with the incidental benefit of sinking inside her parka, and getting some heat.  “I will now.  Just… Right now.”

Josefina helped her to her feet.  “You want to borrow my coat?”

“The ship isn’t very far away.  You have any stuff you need to get?”

The question seemed absurd to Josefina, with hands in her parka, wearing warm clothes and winter boots – looking at her little sister squeezed into one of her old dresses and sneakers, draped in loose-knit shawls. “what.”

“Like, upstairs?”  Blasfemia looked up at the void.  It was gone, leaving an unobstructed view of a completely hollow ruin.  Even the pinnacle was full of holes that let in white sunlight.

Josefina pulled Blasfemia halfway into her coat.  “There’s nothing in here but illusions.  I’m done with them, for now.”

Blasfemia smiled and chattered her teeth.  “I feel like I’m dreaming.”

Josefina squeezed her again.  “No way, kiddo.  You don’t know from dreams.”

Back in the Leveret, Blasfemia came in first, and helped Josefina climb inside.  The corsario clapped and Ombunculita copied him – until she saw Josefina.  Tears rimmed her eyes and she held out her little arms.

“Abuela?”

“Oh God,” said Blasfemia.  “That’s one of her little monkeys.  She wanted you to have it.”

Ombunculita trembled like a leaf until Josefina doffed her parka and picked her up.  “She’s precious!”

“The famous Josefina,” the corsario said.

“And you are?”

“Freed from my geas, as is your sister.  I’ll get you three back to a city, and then you’ll never see me again.”

Blasfemia picked up the parka, wrapping it around the front of her body like a blanket.  Time to start healing the frostbite.  “Oh yeah!  I don’t hafta change the diapers no more.  Sorry Josie; if you want that thing, it’s part of the deal.”

Josefina sat on the bench, cradling Ombunculita like a holy mother.  “I can do that.  Um, pilot.  What was your name?”

The corsario laughed.  “Called out.  The game is over.”

Blasfemia said, “You wanted to see how long before I’d think to ask.  Damn, I’m sorry.”

Josefina rolled her eyes at her sister.

“I’m sorry!  Well, what is it, corsario?”

“My name is Umbrifer Leporitem.”

“Corsario it is!”  Blasfemia cackled.

“Pleased to meet you, Umbrifer.”  Josefina was in a very matronly mood.

Umbrifer resumed its chair, but didn’t immediately turn away from its passengers, didn’t immediately begin takeoff procedures to escape this burden.  It was finding an odd beauty in the strange creatures, and then a bad memory crept over its mind unbidden.

At a cargo stop on Laia 4, it had seen Josefina in a papal transmission on the wall-mounted tele.  She was the one they called Beast Girl.  A sucia, famous across the stars for being caught in a disturbing sex film – with duendes like itself.  It grimaced its little cat teeth and turned to face the ship’s controls.

Sorry, Josefina.

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