The marriage was held on that same beach, not one hundred feet from where the couple had first consumated their relationship. The shack was a wreck. The tender tide which had washed it clean had turned savage and beat at the foundations, of what was left of the house. He felt pretty similar to how that house looked right now. He glanced left, and saw the shy smile of his girlfriend poking out of the veil. The wind whipped sand round their feet and the water was rising to run between their bare toes. The vicar in front of them looked mightily uncomfortable, his shoes clearly not right for the location. He pronounced them, and they kissed in front of the magnificent ocean.
In the background, outside of the pursed lips and trembling touch, the sun set and Russell wondered if he would still be here were it not for the second heart beating in his wife's womb.
Time passed.
He had no idea what to do. Lester had said that Melanie was dead, that there was no chance that she was alive. Russell had no desire to stay in this iron prison any longer. His eyes traced the huge outline of the portal, three rusted tubes tumbling and twisting around each other wound over the top of the door as a frame. Around them, everything was metal and cold to the touch. Everything was cold here, even the biting air, even the artificial sun, even the beating ground, even the people, even the corpse of his daughter.
Should he go back?
Could he go back?
What would he do if he tried to go and found the guilt too much? What if his heart stopped out of sheer lack of respect? It had no reason left to beat except to push tired blood round his arteries carrying his worn body through the shell that was his life. The light bathed him with responsibility and he could feel the metal buckle beneath his feet every time he tried to walk away from them. When the mug had broken,
The mug she bought for me
It was just one less reminder of Juliet
'Worlds best dad'? Something like that, anyway. She didn't even wrap it herself.
Maybe when Melanie broke it would be just one less reminder of Juliet. He saw her face crack in half and felt himself bleed when he touched her face. Tears dribbled down his cheek and he couldn't leave. He looked up at the vortex, and steeled himself. Then he turned around, and back facing his safety net, walked forwards into the darkening night. He had a deathly responsibility, to see his daughter one last time before her face was swallowed into the earth.
“Nothing is ever easy. Nothing is ever free,”. She hummed to herself and bent over the washing-up, layered with suds and muck. Juliet had heard of women who envelop themselves back in the 1950's, who wear all the right clothes and get their hair in curlers and wait for their husband every night with a hot meal and a wet, willing mouth, but she didn't go in for that shit herself. Why the hell she was doing it was beyond her. She looked back in time and saw that house and wondered where it went wrong, or if it even did. When you marry a man like that, is this the best things can be? Did she settle too soon?
Washing-up provided lots of opportunity for self-depreciation like this.
Sebastien grabbed a beer from behind the bartenders back, leaning up on the greasy glass tabletop to snatch a metal-tipped bottle of scum from the shelf. He didn't particularly like stealing, but they hadn't had decent work in a long time, and this was the only way he was going to get drunk tonight. The bartender never noticed anyway. At this time of night the moon-lamp hung directly overhead and the glare from the tables made it impossible for the old geezer to see anything except his cataracts. Sebastien looked up and admired the moon. This was termed an 'open-air' bar, but it was more like a hole with stinking booze and hunks of metal where people sat and drowned their sorrows in swill. The beaten metal beneath them was bent with years of stomping boots and broken tempers.
The denizens of this corner of town were of the roughest sort – this is where they used to come for the hard jobs, back when they still got jobs. This is where they picked up Dresden and his buddy, Reno or something. Reno talked even less than Dresden, which was saying something. He smiled over at Dresden as he made his way back to his table. Dresden nodded his approval and looked back down at his concoction. Sebastien had had bad experiences with that booze – one time he had challenged Dresden to a drinking match and after three sips of the fuel Dresden drank he was paralytic on the floor, face beet-red and shouting abuse at people who wouldn't help him stand. It had taken a long time to tempt him back to drink after that, but there as nothing else to do in the evenings.
He sauntered back to the hump of curved metal that was their table, and sat down straight in between Lester and a fantastic brown-haired curl with a woman waifed underneath called Belle. She looked like you could snap her like a twig, but Sebastien knew from experience she'd been trained by redwoods and evergreens and you didn't snap twigs like that. Her bark was coiled sinew that she flexed menacingly as her eyes narrowed as Lester continued with his story.
“What the hell do you mean, you left him?!”
“We had no choice!”
She stood up, mercilessly imposing on the testosterone counts of all the men around her.
“What,” she repeated coldly, “The HELL do you mean, you left him?”
“Don't start this shit, Belle, the guys not worth it.” Lester muttered into his drink.
Belle looked imploringly out into the night, scanning the gleaming horizon.
“If we hurried...” she murmured.
“If we hurried, what?” Lester barked. “Listen, we can't go after him!”
“And why the hell not?” She rounded on him, slamming his drink to the ground. The glass shattered everywhere and Lesters drink started pooling into the ruts in the ground.
Lester had had enough at the threatening of his drink. He stood up, nose to nose with Belle. “Because I have goddamned important business to be getting on with!”
“You have unfinished business wandering those hills!”
“All thats wandering those hills is a waste of space, Belle.”
“And what about that poor girl, Lester? You said she was dead?!” She implored.
“I didn't kill her! It was that stupid guys fault
She wrinkled her nose. “As if that's important! Don't you care at all, Lester?”
“Not about him! I don't care one jot about that man. Belle, what I care about is this island! I am trying to save the world! Can't you,” and here he motioned for all around to hear him, “cant any of you dullards appreciate this? I'm not paying you to complain about how I work!”
Sebastien smiled wryly. “Lester, you're not paying me at all.”
“You shut up! Your payment is in your training.”
“What about us, Lester? Where's my last pay-check? Hell, where's my last three?”
Lester slammed his fist down on the table. “Shut up, all of you. If money means that much to you then I'll pay you once I've got this problem fixed. After all, if we don't fix it then there won't be anywhere to spend your stupid money.” And with this, he walked off down the hill to sulk.
Sebastien and Belle looked at each other, wryly. Lester had been getting more and more like this as time passed, more devoted to his cause of 'saving the world'. Lord knows they find out how he intended to do it. Lester had spent far more time exploring the island than even this team combined; he had seen things and knew things they didn't. Which didn't exactly excuse him, Sebastien thought glumly, as he saw Lester throw a loose spring at something wiry down the hill, but it helped. After all, if he was as clever as he emphatically believed and he secretly suspected, then keeping him around was definitely a good idea. Nevertheless...
“I don't care what he says, Belle. I want to go find that guy and help him find his daughter. After all, its only Lester who says that he's dead...” Belle sat down and considered Sebastien for a moment, before shoving him hard off his stool onto the ground. “You big softy!” she called down at him, as Sebastien spluttered to his knees. “Nevertheless,” she continued. “You're right. We can't have him wandering around this place, he could get killed by an Ironbeak.”
“Or worse,” Sebastien agreed as he got back on his stool. “But how do we persuade Lester?”
Belle smiled dangerously. “I have my methods,” she husked at him, and winked. Sebastien thought, internally, that this could go badly wrong.
Nevertheless..
Russell was struggling badly. He had been walking barely an hour before everything had gone wrong. He had blisters from wearing damned slippers – though he didn't think it would have been appropriate to wear boots around the house, a change in apparel when (or if) he got home was a necessity. You never know when a portal will open and swallow your daughter into a parallel universe where everything is made of metal. Not only that, but he was hungry. He scolded himself for thinking thoughts like this, thoughts of himself when his daughter was apparently dead on the ground somewhere in a rust-bucket of a valley across the island, but he really had no choice because if he starved then he wouldn't be able to find his daughter anyway.
He looked around him, and really looked at where he was for the first time in about an hour of aimless wandering. He had followed a path from the door (he refused to call it a vortex in his own head, door sounded much less stupid and made the thought of walking through it a lot easier), that slab of blackened twisted metal, right. It had taken him on a winding path around the slab and down into what looked disturbingly like a forest. Wires criss-crossed not only the floor but the ceiling, in a thick carpet that looked like matted black fur. It was cold to the touch and slippery to walk on. Russell sniffed and almost gagged – a smell of acrid petrol fumes filled and burned his nostrils. Wrinkling his nose, he moved forwards. Along the end of the passage of hanging wires he was surprised and a little dismayed to find a break in the corridor – the tunnel broke off two ways, and Russell could go either left or right. He strained to remember which way Portside was, took an educated guess and headed left. Behind him, something skittered across the path and back into the folds of wires. Russell would have done well to notice this.
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