Chapter 16: (No Mans Land)

Russell awoke with a start, and immediately rolled over and coughed up seawater. It spluttered onto a fine dusting of water already around him. He could see that ground nearby had sprung a leak and was sprinkling water around. He was in what looked like a grotto, with a veil of over-hanging wires preventing him from seeing outside. He tried to sit up and moaned as his back split, rushing pain up and down his spine. He twisted a little so he had better access to his back and ran his hand up and down it, trying to find a source of the injury. He was surprised to find that he was topless, but nevertheless found a curved scar running along the small of his back. He traced it with his fingertips and felt blood trickle down him. He winced when he saw a massive throbbing purple bruise on his leg as well, though apart from that he appeared to be uninjured.

All of a sudden, he remembered. He remembered the sinkhole, the ironbeaks, and Lester, and Melanie, and- where had Sebastien and Belle gone? Where, for that matter, was Lester and Melanie? He managed to pick himself up, wincing as he did so, and went towards the hanging wires. He spread them apart, narrowly avoiding being sparked by a plug lounging on the end of one of the wires, and saw a river. He was under an outcropping of what looked like a fuselage – the cliff was studded with port-holes, leaking rivets studded to the outside. Inside the outcropping was filled with water. Russell looked at the river and knew that it was bad. The sides of the river were cracked and broken, like a monsters dry lips, and red with rust. He leaned forwards and poked the edge and it fell in, crumbling away at his finger and slipping into the water. He leapt back, startled, and made sure he was on bronze and not red earth before he continued to look around. He was in a quiet, secluded grove, turned orange by the way the sun filtered through from far above. On either side of him were cliffs, sheer cliffs, with small wires running in and out of them, spindly and weak-looking. He looked closer at one and realised that it was plugged into the cliff. He unplugged one of the wires and the cliff behind him flickered and turned black and white. He unplugged the next one and the river, and rust-red riverbed, became a bleak grey. He played for a while, unplugging various wires across the cliff until he was entirely surrounded by black and white. Only he was coloured in, though to look at his pale cheeks and dull clothes, you almost couldn't tell the difference.

He looked for another wire to pull out, and found a thicker one, leading to three different sockets. He pulled them, and the noises around him disappeared. Where once had been the now-familiar background thumping and grinding, tearing, gentle splashing of water, the clunk of metal against metal, a distinct electric hum, the crunk of pistons, the hiss of steam, the noises of engines everywhere, was nothing. It was like his ears had been taken off when he ripped away those cords. He panicked and checked for his ears, which to his relief were still there, but in his haste he had dropped the cords. They lay there, bundled in with all the cords he had unplugged before. Russell silently panicked, as a brown blur in a sea of iron grey. The sunlight highlighted grey on him as he picked up a plug at random and plugged it into the socket on the cliff. Instantly his ears were filled with a harsh, dissonant buzzing, like a chainsaw at the back of his head. He gasped and the intake of air sounded like the crunch of gravel and the roar of jet engines. He panicked like a mustang and ripped out the missile-launch noises of the plug, and tried another. Nothing happened. There was no sound. He tried to speak, and nothing came out. Two seconds after he closed his mouth his words popped into the air. He gasped and a second a half later his gasp erupted into sound. Experimenting, he muttered a “hello world” to the grove and a second later it appeared. Half a second after he muttered “oh, this is so strange” it happened. Then finally he was in time with his words, and he grinned, because everything was back to normal. He tried to speak again to prove it to himself and found, however, that his words had escaped into the air before his mouth had opened.

The world around him roared around him before he opened his mouth. How did the plug know what he was going to say? He heard the ripping of the plug as it came out before he saw it, or even thought of it. Back in his soundless void, Russell was happy. He didn't like the thought that he had no idea how that plug knew what he was going to say. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and received a sharp poke in the ribs. He opened his eyes and looked down, and saw his daughter, saw his Melanie, looking up at him sternly. His eyes widened and his stomach leapt, and he leant down to squeeze her, but she pushed past him to the cliff. Hands on her little hips, she looked the cliff up and down and then leant down and picked up a wire. She went along all the layers that she could reach, plugging the colours back in. Russells eyes were wide as he saw his daughter at work. She turned to him and motioned something he couldn't understand. She rolled her eyes and plugged the sound back in. It rushed to him as one, all the sounds of the past two minutes rolled into one, like a slap in the face. When it had finished, his daughter said to him, “Lift me up!” and she held her hands high so he could grab her beneath the arm pits and lift her across the cliff. He passed wires to her as she plugged them back in and directed him where to go. As she went she explained to him that you needed to put them in properly, or else she'd let him do it. It was a very delicate operation, she muttered to him through the wire in her mouth. When she had finished, Russell put her down and stared at her.

“What?” She asked.
“How did you know how to plug all the colours back in?” He asked her seriously.
She looked at him quizzically for a moment, then up at the cliff, humming with power and colour, then down at the floor where wires used to be. Then she looked back at Russell. “Well its obvious, isn't it?” She asked him.
Russell laughed and hugged his daughter close. Grinning widely, he looked deep into her eyes. “No, but seriously, Melanie, how did you do that?”
Once again Melanie looked at the wall and then back at him. “Its not difficult, dad!”
Russells mouth hung open. He wondered if he was dreaming.

Lester did say children were special on this island.

On the other side of the sinkhole, Sebastien awoke. He ached all over. What had just happened... what he had just seen, couldn't have been real. Dresden... dead. Lester... his stomach turned over. No. He must've been dreaming. It couldn't have happened. It wouldn't. Lester wouldn't leave him. Lester couldn't leave him. Lester had been his father, his future, his past, his life. If Lester was gone... but it didn't do to dwell on dreams. He dwelt on it anyway. It had been a terrible dream. He had never seen an ironbeak before, and that was one hell of a first meeting. He knew that they normally only lived up in the currents way above the island, where the magnetic flow was strongest. It took a strong pull to bring them down to earth. That Melanie... but of course, he had been dreaming. He had seen her scream and the ground around her had shattered and crumbled and splashed like a cannonball into the ocean. He saw Lester scramble, shriek, pull at the falling floor, snap his fingernails on the rivets, roll his eyes, spit madly, and slip into the oblivion below the island. He saw Russell... do nothing. He hadn't saved Lester. He hadn't even tried. Then... what had happened? He was gone. This sort of thing often happens with dreams. Bits don't make sense, so your brain tries to compensate by inventing explanations. When he awoke, he liked to think that he would be back in his bed. He liked to think that Russell had been a dream entirely – that Belle was unencumbered with the first child on the island for twenty years, that Lester and Dresden were alive and sleeping next to him, even that Belle had never propositioned him on the greasy floor of their local.

He wished away his parents deaths and everything bad he had done in his life, and opened his eyes.

His stomach was a bloody mess. Belle was dripping tears into the wound as she fixed up a bandage around it. As she looked up, she saw that Sebastien was awake and her face broke into a watery smile. “Sebastien!” she cried. “I thought... you too...,” she turned away, blushing, “Not you too...”. Sebastien shuddered. “Then you mean, that wasn't a dream?”
She looked at him.
“They're really dead?”
Her lip trembled, and her face shone with tears, and she nodded a terrible nod, as though it cost her everything she had.

The bottom dropped out of Sebastiens stomach. His mouth hung open, dry. He looked behind him and saw a crater, swimming with sludgy water, bloated fatty corpses floating on the surface. He could see struts and girders and chains and cogs and wheels underneath the island, and he felt sick, like he was looking at a bubonic sore, an open wound, his mother nude.
“Lester!” he whispered at the apocalypse.

He flashed red. His muscles burst at the thought of it. His brain twisted. His tongue fell out of his mouth and flopped on the ground like a disfigured fish and he couldn't speak. Bitter tears stung his eyes but he wiped them away, and turned to Belles shining face.
“He did this!”
Belle said nothing. She bit her lip and looked down.
“He did this! You know he did!”
She said nothing.
“Russell!” He screamed at the sky. “Russell! You bastard!” and he slammed his fist down onto the ground and it crumbled beneath him and fell away and he could see the tide washing beneath the island. His knuckles bled. “Russell did this. He did all of this. He could have saved Lester. He could have stayed at home. He could have not run away. He could have stayed true to his daughter.” He pumped. He throbbed. He felt angrier than he had ever felt before, like his heart was going to grow and grow until it fell out of his mouth and split him at the seams. He threw his fist into the sky and howled, “I'll get you for this, you selfish bastard! I swear, I'll get you! If its the last thing I ever goddamned do!” and then he was on his knees. He beat the floor and cried, angry tears dripping onto the rusting floor.

Russell was walking alongside the river, closer to the dangerous riverside than his daughter, who was beside him. Their hands were clasped tight in each others hands. He felt happy. He looked down at his daughter and smiled warmly, and she looked back and gave him Juliets smile. His wife was looking back at him. He shook his head to clear it and looked back at his DAUGHTER. Back at him looked someone entirely different.

“Russell? Russell!”
Melanie was speaking in exactly same voice. It was completely different. It was slower, and more cautious. “Russell, is that you?” Melanie was staring at him. “Why are you so tall?” Russell looked back at her, very confused. “Melanie? Whats wrong babe?” Melanies face showed confusion as well.
She turned around, and looked behind her, then cocked her eye at Russell. “Melanie?” she asked. “Who are you talking to?”
Russell squatted next to his daughter and looked her up and down. “Whats gotten into you, Melanie, huh?”
“Will you stop-” began Melanie, but then she looked down and gasped.
“Why the hell am I wearing a dress?”
“Don't swear, Melanie! I think those villagers must've dressed you in it.”
Melanie looked angrily up at Russell, and opened her mouth to speak.
Then she stopped. Then she looked down her own top. Then she examined her own arms. Then she ran across to the river and stared intensely at her own reflection.
“What the fuck?” she whispered.
“Melanie!” Russell stormed, picking Melanie up. “You do not-”
“Russell!” interrupted the girl. “I am not Melanie.”
“Of course you are-” began Russell, then he recognised the new cadence of her voice.
Melanie was dropped.
Russell stepped back a few paces, horrified. “Lester?!”