Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The porters had taken one of the canoes but left much of the food. Their note, apologetic, described their fear at seeing the dazzling lights in the sky, the men from their village that had not returned from the far north.

“I suppose I cannot ask you to come any further with me, then,” Tiris said. “I had planned and prepared for this eventuality, to seek the Dreaming Moon in the farthest north alone.”

Farciya was silent a moment. “I will accompany you, she said in time.

“Why?” Tiris said. “I release whatever hold I, as your employer, may once have had on you.”

“When you came upon me, I had long tired of the dreamlands as I had once tired of waking life, many years ago. I had begun looking for ways to pass beyond, into the Next Dream, the Dream-to-Come, the Deepest Dream. But surrender is not my way.”

“You came here to die,” Tiris said, shocked.

“I would accept success, and life, just as I would accept perishing in the attempt.”

Farciya let her words hang over the last refuge for a time.

“Why do you seek the Dreaming Moon?” she said. “I have unburdened myself to you unbidden; to pay me the same tribute is the least I can ask.”

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“This is the last refuge,” Farciya said. “North of here, there are not, nor have there ever been, aught but the occasional hunter or lost soul, and they wander at their peril.”

Tiris looked at the rude hut, with sod stacked upon its sides as insulation against the northerly winds. “How long before we stop seeing trees we can burn?” he asked, casting a glance at the firewood that had been cut and stacked at the hunter’s hut.

“Not far, now. You can already see how short and stunted they are. First we will leave them behind, then we will lose use of the rivers as they turn to ice, and finally we will break upon the rocky shores of Farthest North. I only hope that what you seek is there.”

“What is north of that?” said Tiris.

“Frozen water. Snow and ice, with polynyas. A tortured nightmare landscape from which there is no return.”

“Surely there is land beyond it,” Tiris said. “Somewhere, somehow.”

“Some have sought it,” Farciya replied. “None who set foot on that ice have ever returned.”

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Tiris had convinced only two of the remaining porters to accompany him north with Farciya. The other two took the bloody canoe, from which the sound-haunts had torn their compatriots, and portaged east, toward a river that would bring them to the Silver Sea and home.

Farciya insisted on paying them their full wages, and Tiris did not object. Supplies meant for ten would last four far longer.

They cached everything that could not be carried by burying it and then continued to sail north. Farciya warned that soon nighttime would desert them as they entered the lands where the sun is eternal and the night is even more so. It would behoove themes finish their travels before the long night began, for not even she knew what horrors emerged to tread the dreamlands in perpetual blackness.

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When reached I then the farthest north
The sun did stand on end
A dozen orbs in glit’ring robes
To the horizons did descend
Behind them all, looming bright
The Dreaming Moon I did behold
Upon it then I did alight
Lightly, briefly, in repose

Tiris closed the book. “I found that in the Chronicles of Ad Dakhla, in the great libraries of the City of Brass,” he said. “They are some of the last ravings of Le Aaiun, Lady of the Dead River, and it is my belief that the describe another route to the Dreaming Moon.”

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Some hours later, one of the porters’ canoes reappeared, drifting downstream. Farciya, along with the four remaining in the other canoe, were able to bring it in to shore. Of the inhabitants, there was nothing but bloody stains, but the tools were intact.

“How are we supposed to return if that awaits us?” Tiris cried.

“We will follow the Silver Sea coast,” Farciya replied. “It is normally far more dangerous to take that route.”

Tiris did not respond. Instead, he segregated himself away from the camp and began taking sextant readings of the setting sun, which he compared to notes and drawings in a small notebook. The surviving porters were soon grumbling about their employer’s lack of empathy, and Farciya was of the same mind.

“We have decided,” she said, approaching Tiris at his work. “Unless you tell us what, exactly what, we seek here in Harbiyyah, we will go no further.”

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“We must be very silent through here,” Farciya said, pointing at a pair of obsidian pillars, the bones of dead volcanoes, that rose on either side of the river flowing north.

“Why is that?” Tiris asked, looking down at the riverbank. The porters he had hired were busily packing up their camp and preparing the canoes to take them further into the trackless Harbiyyah.

“For the next hundred leagues, the riverbanks are infested with ganeni, the sound-gaunts, the seekers of shrieks,” said Farciya.

“I take it from their names that they do not react well to intruders.”

“They cannot be seen in any but the strongest light, they move fast, swim fast, and home in on any loud noises like a pack of wolves. They will rip us from our boats and devour us until the river runs red, for the rare travelers and beasts that stray through here are their only sustenance, and it may be aeons before their next meal.”

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The settlement was warm in the sun, but the thick sod walls and low-slug roofs spoke of harsh winters to come. Every home was one with its barn, the animals occupying the lower levels so that when the snows came there would not be far to go for meat, eggs, or milk.

Farciya returned from speaking with some of the dreamlanders. “This is as far as the road will take us,” she said. “I have hired some porters and canoes, which we can use to travel up the rivers and lakes to the north.

“Good,” Tiris said. “You’ve done well.”

“Now perhaps you can tell me where we are going,” said Farciya.

“I have already said. We make for Harbiyyah.”

“Harbiyyah is a vast region, not a city,” said Farciya, exasperated. “That is like saying you are going to the sea. Can you be more specific?”

“Not right now,” said Tiris, airily. “But it will, I think, become clear with time. If more payment will help smooth things over…?”

“It will indeed,” Farciya said. “I have traveled the northern wastes extensively, but going nowhere in particular…well, that is particularly expensive.”

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“I have reviewed the great books, written by hand, on the subject of the Dreaming Moon and fabled Vloles. Ad Dakhla‘s transcriptions of vanished Le Aaiun. The lamentations of Køs, as set down by Hawza Lemseid. Others that few would recognize and fewer have read.”

“I do not need an accounting of the contents of your library,” Farciya said. “I simply need to know why you wish to travel the frozen wastes of the Harbiyyah with me as your guide.”

“That much is simple,” replied Tiris. “I believe that there is another way to the Dreaming Moon and fabled Vloles to the far north, and I wish to reach it.”

“Why?”

“Why is not part of the price. Only how, and if.”

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“FEDERATE,” Jerry said. “Friends of EDucating Everyone About Their Errors.”

I scribbled that down, making sure to note his inflections. “For the record, you’re quoted in last week’s paper as saying to Dr. Taylor that, quote, ‘he’d better watch himself because mob justice goes both ways.'”

Jerry smiled and nodded enthusiastically, slipping his thumbs into his belt loops. “I am happy to confirm that,” he said. “And, I might add, it seems that my prediction came true.”

I cocked my head. With no mask, Jerry’s face was open for reading, and there was no guile that I could see. He was genuinely tickled pink that Jerome Taylor was dead. “Off the record, now,” I continued, “aren’t you worried that people might associate your clear glee with seeing him gone to…?”

“What, that I killed him?” Jerry leaned to one side and spat on the pavement. “I was happy when they got Saddam Hussein, but I wasn’t anywhere near Iraq. Taylor was hoist by his own petard. You familiar with ‘for whatever one sows, that will he also reap?'”

“Galatians 6:7,” I said.

“Quite so, quite so,” Jerry chuckled. “You a man of faith, Mr. Plummer?”

In fact, I knew that chapter and verse because it always sounded to me like the name of a science fiction film; one finds what little escapes one can in stultifying Baptist Sunday school. “I have faith in a lot of things,” I said. Then, quickly turning the question around: “What do you have faith in, Jerry?”

Jerry seemed to swell visibly at the question. “I have faith in eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I have faith that, despite all this noise, the town and university won’t turn their backs on their heritage. And I have faith that rabble-rousing outsiders like Taylor will get their just desserts in this life or the next.”

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“Here’s your welcome package,” CJ said, handing me a manila envelope, her eyes inscrutable over her mask, which had a pattern of raised stylized fists on it.

I spilled the contents onto the table, poking at each in turn.

“Press pass from the local paper, dues statement from the Mississippi Private Investigators Association, receipt for a small business license in town, union card, and an employee ID.” CJ lingered over the latter. “If anyone asks, you’re helping Dr. Wander with forensics work, drilling Mayan teeth he imported from the Yucatan to see what kind of corn they ate.”

I gathered all the cards into a little stack in my hands and spread them out like playing cards. “Very useful,” I said. “But I have to ask: of all the strings you pulled to get this, how many were less-legal?”

“As far as you need to know, this is all above-board,” said CJ. “We don’t have many allies here in town, but those we do have are a resourceful bunch.”

I nodded, and folded with my hand of miscellaneous cards, setting them back down. “What kind of support can I expect from the union?”

“We’re more of an aspirational union, Mr. Plummer,” CJ said. “We have no collective bargaining rights in this state, the university administration refuses to acknowledge us, and the townies see us as a bunch of communist agitators from Berkley. Union folks will talk to you or they’ll answer to me, but don’t expect a strike on your behalf or hired goons at your back and call.”

“Clearly not,” I said. “If you had goons, your guy might still be alive.”

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