Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“We can only cross the Noctilucent Glaciers at night.” Guide looked over the windswept landscape, her breath misting the air even in the relative shelter of the campsite.

“Why’s that?” Newc asked. “Should be pretty easy, yeah? Just don’t fall and slip?”

“Crevasses.” Guide’s breath misted about her scarf, clinging in laces to the fur of her hood, where tiny icicles had begun to form. “Deep pits of ice, often covered with a thin rind to trick you into stepping on them.”

“I know what a crevasse is,” said Newc. “Mountaineers have ways of dealing with them, yeah? Ropes, poking the snow, all that sort of thing?”

“These are trickier. It’s almost like they want you to fall in.” Guide snorted to herself. “Hell, maybe they do. But the glow only comes from solid ice, from critters that live in it. So we wait.”

As the sun set, and true to Guide’s word, the glacier was soon suffused with a gentle lucent glow, outlining a safe path forward.

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Someone had definitely been there; a fresh path was worn through the brambles, almost like a game trail, and the old greenhouse had been restored. It looked like they’d used cheap acrylic instead of glass, likely taken in a few sheets at a time and caulked into place. A few of the original leaded glass windows remained, either cleaned or repaired with more plastic. They were all fogged over with condensation, blocking any view of the interior.

The old clearing still got plenty of sunshine, and wisps of steam were rising from the old chimney–whoever had been squatting there had somehow relit the old boilers that the 12th Earl had used to keep his botanical specimens warm.

Someone had gone to a lot of trouble, and expense to reactivate the place in secret, but for what? Growing illegal plants to make drugs, perhaps? Maybe methamphetamine?

The caretaker eased the door opened, and then coughed as something extremely bitter popped on his lips and ran down his chin.

Someone had prepared a greenhouse glade filled with a bubble machine, and nothing else. Soapy bubbles pinwheeled through the otherwise empty structure.

“What do you think of my crop, then?” A voice behind the caretaker said. “Best harvest I’ve had, so far.”

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Down a metal beach I went
Onto a rusty shore
A sea of razors there I met
Breaking with metallic roar

To go forward was to die
From a thousand tiny cuts
And yet across the bay I spied
A scattered run of huts

My destination, or so it seemed
Was plainly there in sight
Yet I could not step into the stream
Of rust, of fear, of blight

There was no choice for me to make
No alternate paths appeared
To reach safety I would have to take
The route that I most feared

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Gasping, and still holding the oozing wound in his side, Reginald limped toward the exit. He was sure of it; the way looked familiar, right down to the decorative trellis.

“Reggie, dear?”

Bethany’s footsteps were slow, languid, and every now and then one of her bright white wedding shoes clacked on a hard flagstone.

“Reggie, darling!”

Reginald steadied himself on the trellis just before the exit. “I knew you were a nutter…fifty years ago…” he gasped. “You didn’t snare me so easily then, and you won’t now…!”

He staggered through the trellis, only for a defeated wail to escape his lips. It was’t the exit after all; far from it, he saw more landscaped hedges and more of those damnable white flowers spreading in every direction.

And behind him, in a bridal dress as old as the day he’d left her, Bethany. “I’ve had ages to plan my revenge, Reggie,” she laughed. “I know you so well even after all these years, and I’ve made sure my botanical mazes of white lace and trees aren’t so easy to escape.”

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“Maybe you’ve been out closer to the edge of the Permeables before, but this is different. Things can take on a life of their own left out here.”

Hax gestured at the mirror forest filled with reflective crystals spread out before them. “This isn’t like planting an iron pipe and growing a boiler,” he said. “What caused something like this to sprout up?”

“A mirror and an idea.”

“You’re gonna have to unpack that for me a little,” said Hax.

“Well, the first part is just speculation, but I have the second from a friend that was in the know. Someone left a mirror here once, maybe just to see what it would do, and the result looked to someone passing by like something they’d once seen, maybe a movie or a comic book.”

“What about?”

“About a tree loaded with crystals that could imprison whatever touched them. We best be careful.”

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“Well, you got to realize how easy it is for them pipes to grow out of control,” Ffolkes said. “My system, I have to go in every day in the summer, every other in the fall, with the snips to cut off the little steam pipes as they bud off. It’s easy when they’re that small.”

Moyer looked at the cellar door, uneasily. “You’re saying Jacobi didn’t do that?”

“I kept telling him. Snip them pipes when they’re a quarter inch, before any steam can flow through them, and seal with a spot weld or solder. Easiest thing in the world. Let them go too far and they’ll start growing boilers. ‘Well, maybe I like boilers’ he says.”

“And then one day, he didn’t come back.”

“You let a boiler system grow too much, other things start moving in,” Ffolkes drawled. “You might get a concrete infestation, growing floors where you don’t want ‘em, and that’ll take a jackhammer to pull out. Might even get an electrical system growing on the ceiling, and you know they’d never wired quite right without a little tending. Good way to get electrocuted.”

It was time, Moyer thought, to start considering worst-case scenarios. “What’s the worst you’ve ever seen, or heard of?”

“I heard that up by Grant, when they dug up the old utility building, they found a steam turbine generator,” Ffolkes said. “Never seen it myself. Worst I ever seen woulda been the house on the other side of town, where they yanked it down without digging up the pipes and had no idea anything was wrong until radiators started sprouting two doors down.”

Moyer looked toward the door again. Jacobi, or what was left of him, was surely down there, in a labyrinth of rocks and steam.

And no bets for who had to go in after him.

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“Of course, of course, come in,” the old man said. “Lay your hat down and let me keep you awhile.”

The young soldier set his grey cap on the table. “Thank you kindly, mister,” he said. “Combat’s been mighty tough so far, not at all like they said it was gonna be.”

“I know that, son, I know that all too well,” said the old man. He laid a cup of steaming tea in front of his young guest. “I still have a few musket balls rattling around in me from the last great war.”

“In Mexico?”

“Oh no, son, the last great war, against a country that had half a chance of winning. Mexico was a sick man in an alley and we took his coat. I mean the War of 1812. I was there at New Orleans at twenty.”

Setting down the cup after a long drink, the young soldier looked to his host. “The yanks sure can shoot back, I’ll give them that. What did you think, fighting at New Orleans?”

“Well, I thought I was doing a great thing. Voted for my old general, Andy Jackson, three times. Wasn’t a perfect man–no such thing–but he had his priorities straight.”

“States’ rights,” the younger man said. “Defense of a man’s property.”

He was surprised at the glare he received in return from his host. “Now, I reckon you were barely born when Old Hickory died, but let me remind you of something he once said. ‘If a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.’”

Startled, the young soldier reached for his musket. “What is all this, then?” he said. To his confusion, he found that the weapon was nowhere at hand.

“This is Old Hickory’s vengeance on traitors, enacted sadly too late,” the old man said grimly. He laid the stolen musket upon his table even as the young solider drew a belly knife. He made it barely a few steps, though, before the weapon clattered to the ground along with its bearer.

“Don’t you worry, boy. You’ll still be useful to your rebel friends.”

The old man kicked open the door to the cellar, where the rendering pots were already boiling, the grinder awaiting its cargo eagerly as a puppy, the press ready for shaping soap.

Dragging the body downstairs, he eyed the uniform. Poor condition, but usable as scrap fabric. The rebel commissary agent paid handsomely for all of it, soap to butternut, with nary a question about where it came from.

That left the question of the slouch hat. No one would believe something like that hadn’t come from a soldier, not in those unprecedented times, so the old man kept them as souvenirs. He opened a side closet, the old root cellar, and tossed it into a hillside terrain of hundreds of gray hats

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Naturally, staff were quite forbidden to partake in any of the refreshments, as Lady Greene had a strict composting policy for her vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and cruelty-free soirées.

The cruelty-free part did not extend to the waitstaff, as they worked 8- and 10- hour shifts for each weekly party. And unlike the members of Lady Greene’s household, the waitstaff were provided by an external contractor, so no benefits, no overtime, and no breaks. OmniStaff LLC was a management company for independent contractors who waived basic human rights in exchange for exciting employment opportunities, after all.

Julio had first taken on the work because he was a committed vegetarian himself, and Lady Greene was famous as an international icon of eco-style and eco-cuisine. But whenever he looked at the supplies gathered for one of the parties, it was just depressing. A great, forbidden kale forest loomed in the walk-in freezer, so close but also out of reach.

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It wasn’t until the class had pressed their hands to the canyon walls and had them come away coated with pastel dust that they realized the true nature of the gully.

“It’s chalk,” Agnes said. “It’s all chalk, must be millions of pieces, every color of the rainbow. It’s not the light giving those colors, at all!”

“Of course a teacher would dream up a canyon of chalk,” John muttered, idly pressing chalky handprints onto his uniform jacket. “What’s next, a forest of pointers?”

One of the younger children squeaked in surprise nearby; they had inadvertently pried a piece of chalk out of the canyon wall and caused a collapse, with a landslide developing out of a thousand thousand colorful tubes.

“This place could collapse at any moment,” said Erik. “We need to move through and keep the little ones hands to themselves What was it the rhyme said?”

“Past hills of paper and deserts of slate, through fragile canyons to meet the gate.”

“Right. The only way out is through,” Erik said.

“And when we’ve finished, Teacher needs to take a vacation,” Agnes added. “No one should dream about chalk canyons unless they live in Dover.”

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“Prof. Yōgan Shinobu, from the International University Library of Lava.”

“Constantina-Evangelene Prokopiou, attached to the incident investigation team. You can call me Punkin, though; everyone else does.” Instead of responding to Punkin’s outstretched hand, the professor moved to open a large drawer.

“I was quite surprised to hear that a member of the incident team, even a temporary one like yourself, was coming to see us here,” Yōgan said. The drawer contained hundreds of labeled samples of dark igneous rocks, with notes on their age, composition, and method of collection. “Our methods are more geological, than criminological.”

Punkin opened her case and set down the sample within the tube. “We were hoping you could identify this,” she said.

Yōgan produced a pair of spectacles and examined the sample tube as proffered. “Hmm. Pahoehoe type, certainly, but something is off about the composition. Not enough silicates, perhaps?”

“Are you telling me, Professor, that you can’t identify it?”

“I assure you I can, though anyone who is capable of identifying a lava sample by eye is less a scientist than a magician,” said Yōgan. “But as you can see, our collection is quite comprehensive, and I am certain that the proper tests will show this sample to be quite unusual. Where did you acquire it?”

“Apartment 339, the Regency Apartments West, Chicago, Illinois,” Punkin said. “It filled the room and incinerated its contents, and occupants, in seconds one week ago. The incident investigation team needs to know how, and why.”

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