CHAPTER FIVE

  Exaltiture

  I

  “‘Night, Mom.”

  “Good night, honey.”

  Wilburn listened to his mother’s footsteps descending the staircase. He heard her stamp into her boots, and then a squeal of hinges followed by the soft clunk of the door closing. Mom had gone to talk to Gramma where Wilburn couldn’t overhear, because she wanted to ask questions about Dad… questions that might have nasty answers. Mom was worried that Dad might have done bad things, and that he, Wilburn, might do bad things too if he found out… or something like that. Mom’s logic was confusing, partly, Wilburn sensed, because Mom herself was confused—very confused—and also scared, and… sad. She didn’t want Wilburn to know this, and in truth he wished he didn’t. But he knew. Just as he knew that Mom was currently feeding carrots to Thoralf, and that Thoralf was enjoying them immensely. How he knew these things, Wilburn didn’t know, nor did it occur to him to wonder.

  He lay on his back, rubbing the worn flannel fabric of Toukie’s wing between his thumb and forefinger. It was a habit he’d developed in the cradle. The stuffed toucan was his oldest friend, a zeroth birthday gift from Gramma Totkins, who had been Mom’s mom before she died. Wilburn couldn’t remember her at all, but Mom retold the story every time she sewed a fresh patch on Toukie’s wing; the hole was always in the left wing, because Wilburn was left-handed, and always in the same spot, where his forefinger and thumb met automatically. He wished Mom had a Toukie of her own tonight. She needed it. The habit was so wonderfully relaxing. It was like scratching an itch without the itch. So soothing… so… comforting… so… Wilburn yawned.

  II

  Wilburn found himself standing at a crossroads. In the center was a weathered signpost with four arrows labeled in shimmering silver script. Mom had taught him how to read, and Wilburn fancied he was getting pretty decent at it. These signs, however, stumped him. He couldn’t quite tell if the lettering was moving or not. At first glance it looked ordinary, but the longer he squinted at it, the more inscrutable it grew. Lettering...? Actually no, not from the alphabet he knew. More like runes, brutal, jagged symbols... or rather... flowing, loopy symbols? He began to suspect this wasn’t writing after all, just nonsense scribbling, put there as a joke. And then he noticed something strange. When he stopped trying to read the signs, their meanings became obvious. The arrow pointing right said Higher Astral, while the arrow pointing left said Lower Astral. This meant nothing to Wilburn. As far as he could see, neither road slanted up or down. Indeed, nothing whatsoever distinguished the four roads other than the signpost; the stones that paved them were identical, and the landscape was featurelessly brown in all directions. Even more disorienting was the absence of a sun in the cloudless blue sky. Whichever way he turned, his shadow landed straight behind him, and the signpost cast no shadow at all.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  …Deja vu…

  A memory tickled the back of Wilburn’s mind. He had the oddest feeling he’d been here before. But where was here? He frowned at the signpost. The road in front of him was labeled Open Dreamspace, and the sign pointing behind him said Real Life. And then it clicked. This very afternoon, after he’d passed out from kinerg… kineter… whatever Gramma Fark had called it—too much flying—he had visited this crossroads in a dream. Of course, he only knew it was a dream in retrospect; he hadn’t at the time, although he probably should have guessed in light of the word Dreamspace being printed on the signpost. So he was having the same dream all over again, was he? Lame. But as he thought about it, he realized he didn’t actually remember what had happened in the first dream. He had been here, yes, but... then what? Which road had he chosen?

  For some reason, the memory wouldn’t come. It was right there on the tip of his brain… but no. Annoyed, Wilburn decided to try Open Dreamspace, because Real Life sounded boring to him, and the Astrals sounded even boringer. The instant he stepped forward—it occurred to him—this was exactly what he’d done before. Okay, but then what? Where had the road taken him? It was exceedingly vexatious, for he knew that he remembered now; part of him did. The memory was inside him, but something was blocking him from accessing it. He felt toyed with, taunted… watched. But there was nobody around to do it.

  The only sound was the soft slap of his bare footsteps on the stones. Nothing changed as he proceeded. He began to wonder how much time had passed. It was almost as if none had. But surely it had been at least an hour... He felt like he was going nowhere. The landscape remained utterly barren. The road never curved, never rose, never fell. The only indication of his progress came when he looked back over his shoulder and could no longer see the crossroads or its signpost. It was the same view as in front of him, with the addition of his crisp black shadow. And then—Wilburn didn’t know quite how it happened—he was standing on a mountaintop.

  “WOOO-WEE!” he shouted, dizzy from the sudden altitude. His voice echoed with perfect clarity over the vast range of snowcapped peaks jutting before him. He laughed as avalanches tumbled down ravines whose floors were lost in purple shadow. And his laughter triggered still more avalanches, none of which could touch him, for his was the highest peak of all, perhaps the highest point in the world. A perfectly good sun was shining, he was pleased to note, and his bare feet weren’t even cold, despite the knee-deep snow in which he stood. “This is more like it!” Wilburn called, to no one in particular. More like it, the mountains echoed, like it, like it, like it…

  Wilburn wished, though, as he often did in Real Life, for a friend, someone to share this with. Not Mom—not that Mom wasn’t fun to play with on occasion, but you could never say things like, Last one there’s a stinky butthole! in front of her unless you wanted to solve math problems. And not another kid either. Wilburn knew a few kids from down in the village, and, on the whole, he preferred Mom’s company to theirs. No, if he was honest with himself, what he wanted most was for Toukie to be real, as in alive. It had been easy to believe when he was little; Wilburn wasn’t quite sure when belief had turned into pretending, but lately even that had become difficult.

  He lifted a hand to shade his eyes. There was a dark dot in the sky. And it was quickly growing larger. It was heading straight toward him. It was a bird. He could see its flapping wings now. Oddly small wings for such an oddly fat bird… with such a large, banana-shaped head… It couldn’t be. Or wait—perhaps it could it be! Open Dreamspace, he remembered. Did that mean wishes came true here?