Prologue: In Death

Byndii stood on the edge of the bridge, the wind whipping her hair around her face. She looked to the dark waters of the churning river below. The tears on her face had long ago dried, and she was steeled to her task.

She had left a note. “Gone to get milk.” Such a normal thing to do. They wouldn’t worry for a while yet.

She had been preparing for this for days. Moving clothes, collecting cash, since she couldn’t use a card. Making sure they had no idea at all.

Poor Marck. He would be so upset. But she made sure he wouldn’t feel too alone. She removed the ring from her finger and put it in the compartment over the handlebars of the motorcycle where she kept it while riding so it wouldn’t get damaged. He would find it there.

She mounted the bike and moved it back along the bridge to the road. She put on speed, spewing gravel. When she reached just the right spot, she slammed the brakes hard, leaving skid marks all the way to the edge. Then she clambered back off the bike and stood once more staring into the water below. It would be so cold.

The wind was now lashing her with the rain that had been plaguing the city for days. The perfect cover-up, that rain was. She put the bike into gear, and revved the engine, then pressed the gas with a toe. With one last roar of defiance, it leapt gracefully off the edge of the bridge, tires spinning as if in slow motion. It broke the surface with a splash that could barely be heard over the rushing wind and driving rain. They would never know she hadn’t been on it when it fell.

Marck was long past tears. She had been here just yesterday; it seemed, laughing at his jokes, avoiding his kisses. But now he would never see her again. Not even as a dead and lifeless corpse. The police said her body had been swept away by the current, torn to shreds by the sharp rocks. Never to be seen again.

He hid in the room they would have shared in the apartment they had bought together, holding the one piece of her he would ever see again. The ring. Her ring. The one he gave her when he proposed and she said yes and made his dreams come true.

The memorial was tomorrow. Not really a funeral, since there was no body. He would go and see all the people who had known her, had loved her, would miss her. But they would forget over time. He would never forget.

The casket was brown maple, stained dark. Her picture was on top. She was glowing, smiling, laughing; her green eyes so prominent. There were flowers around it. The only spots of color in the room, the flowers and her eyes.

He didn’t listen when the other speakers told stories. He barely even registered what he said himself. But the two lone figures in the back listened.

He saw them, and did not recognize them. A man and woman. The woman kept her head down, a handkerchief to her nose. He wanted to speak to them, so he looked for them at the reception after the service. But they were nowhere to be seen. He continued on in a daze, registering only the jade pin on the shirt of a lady, the glass tie pin on a businessman, the gloves of the woman in the back; all the same color as her eyes.

And that would be how he remembered her, laughing, smiling, green eyes sparkling.

Byndii listened to them speak. They said so many things, superficial things. But when Marck came, his words struck deep to her heart and she ached for him. Her father held her elbow tightly throughout and reminded her that she could not go back now.

They left after the service, so they did not take the chance of her being noticed. She was not so sure she had done the right thing now. But there was no going back.

She watched Marck from a distance. He did not do the things she remembered him doing. He was quiet and subdued; he rarely left the apartment. When he didn’t buy bread for a few days, she climbed the stairs to the top floor of the building and peeked into windows.

That was when she decided to act.

He would do it. He had to. He could no longer stay here without her. And if he did it, he would be with her again.

He held the knife in his trembling hand, wishing she was here for comfort instead. He placed the knife on his wrist, pressing against his skin, the blue vein showing through.

“Please don’t.” He ignored it. He had heard her voice so many times in the last weeks. “No, Marck…” That was the first time she had said his name, though. He looked up sharply. The knife clattered to the floor.

She was standing there, in front of him, just as she had looked when he saw her last.

“Byndii….” He reached out to touch her hair. She flinched away. He recoiled as though burned; why wouldn’t she let him touch her? She gave a wry smile.

“You wouldn’t want to make the landlady clean up all that blood, now would you?”

“Byndii, why did you go? Why? I miss you so badly. Why can’t I come be with you?” He gazed imploringly at her face; there was sadness in it.

“I left because I had to. And I miss you every minute of every day, just to know I can’t be with you anymore.” She looked at her feet. “And you can’t come to be with me that way. Ever. I will never forgive you if you do. I would know. And it would break my heart,” she whispered the last sentence. Marck reached out again to brush her face. She drew back, and he felt only air.

“At least let me touch you! I would give so much just to feel you in my arms again! Please, please, just once?” the tears were catching in his throat, the ones that wouldn’t come before. She looked so forlorn.

“No, I can’t.” She also looked on the verge of tears. She backed away, still staring at him, but before she vanished into the dark shadows of the room, she blew him a kiss.

Marck felt the scalding hot drops of wet as they rolled down his cheeks. He would never forget, never, and treasure that one imaginary kiss always. And he would wait to come to her, but do it gladly when the time came.

He cried until he could not take a breath without pain and his eyes were red and swollen. He finally got to his feet and looked for the knife to replace it in the kitchen. But no matter where he looked, it was gone.

Chapter 1 – Naked

Once upon a time, in a place neither here nor there nor far, far away, but somewhere in between everything, there was a girl. This girl had been around for some ninety-odd of our Earth years, and had had many of our normal earth experiences. However, when the fact that she was growing older at a much slower pace than her friends, lovers, and mother, she staged her own death in a rather gruesome fashion and moved to this place.

Her father had lived on the other side of the place, until he met her mother. They married, and upon the girl’s conception, he was banned from his homeland forever. Unable to fit in either place, the girl made a life for herself in between. She was highly regarded for her skills and was know widely.

Our story begins there, in the Edges, sandwiched in time and space between Faerie and Earth. With the girl, who was having a rather trying day….

“Why these people are so incompetent is beyond me,” Byndii grumbled. The wind whistled by her ears as she sped along the back alleys on the small green and silver motorcycle she preferred as a means of transportation.

She exited her current alley and mounted the sidewalk. She honked the tinny air horn at a few people she knew and swerved around a few she didn’t. As she neared her destination, she had to slow due to the crowd that had gathered. This was the purpose for the installation of the horn in the first place. Byndii brought her palm down hard on the button.

“Police! Out of my way! Move it! Police coming through. Move!” She made a slow weaving progress through the conglomeration to the center.

The cause of the disturbance was very obvious once the milling masses were no longer obstructing her view. The body of a young man was spread-eagled on the pavement in front of the Grand Theatre in a large puddle of dark blood. Byndii looked away so she wouldn’t be sick. Uniformed officers were swarming over the scene. She parked the bike just inside the spell barrier and pulled her goggles down to hang around her neck. She spotted the police chief and strode purposefully over to him.

The chief’s name was, ironically, Watson, and Byndii never passed up on an opportunity to remind him of this fact.

“Gruesome,” she observed.

“Yeah. Human, about twenty-five, Terran time. His boyfriend put in the call. But his memory of the thing’s been erased. And with his own power, Sucked it right off him and spit it back out. Just added to how twitterpated he was to begin with, and we can’t track the power signature.” Watson rubbed a hand over his face.

“Twitterpated?” Byndii asked with raised eyebrows. Watson gave her a stony glance.

“As far as we can tell, it’s The Hound again,” he said, doing his best to ignore Byndii’s scathing smirk. This made Byndii replicate Watson’s exasperated gesture.

“What did he leave?” Watson produced a small baggie with a piece of bloodstained paper inside. Byndii took the bag from his hand and read the handwritten message.

He should not be here.

He should not be about.

He should not be here

When your mother is out!

“Cat in the Hat,” said Byndii under her breath.

“Sorry?”

“The Cat in the Hat. It’s a children’s book. Written by a man under the pen name of Dr. Seuss. Terran literature. Fits the profile.” Byndii handed the bag back.

“That was what we needed. Now we can hand it over to the special investigation team,” said Watson, looking incredulous.

“Elementary, dear Watson. You couldn’t have just asked me when you called?” asked Byndii.

“Was it really that traumatic?”

“My dear Watson, there are some lines you should not cross. And dragging me away from the little time I had to take a nap is one of them,” said Byndii in an admonishing tone. But she grinned. “Unless there is something else that you just can’t do on your own, I’ll be off.”

“Go, you harpy, and may you be more pleasant next time I see you.”

“Me? Pleasant? You should know better by now.” Watson waved his hand over his shoulder at her as he went to go break the news to his team.

There’s more than one reason I’m not in a uniform.

Byndii swung a leg over the motorcycle’s seat and pulled up her goggles again. She revved the engine and resumed the yelling about police coming through.

Once clear, she opened the throttle and sped away.

The Edges, as they are called by their long-term residents, have long populated legend and folklore. Wonderland, Never Never Land, The Land of Nod, Oz; all are other names for the Edges. They can be reached by way of near-sleep, mental trance, and the effects of some, usually illegal, drugs. Because of their in-between nature, the Edges can be reached from anywhere, but you never really know where you’ll end up once there. Unless, of course, you use a Set-portal and buy a ticket.

Byndii pushed open the door of the Bicycle’s Anything diner and wove her way between the mismatched tables and chairs placed helter-skelter about. She slid onto the barstool at the counter that she always sat at. The vinyl cushion was mended with duct tape that Byndii had scrounged from one of her more recent visits home, and it swiveled on a slant. She continued the motion of her slide until her head was resting on her elbows and her nose touched the worn wooden counter. She reached out without looking and tapped the antique dome bell sitting near her head.

When there was no response, she tapped it with more vigor and accompanied it with a muffled yell.

“Barkeep! Barkeep! Get over here or you’ll be losing custom!” she continued the rigorous pummeling of the bell until her hand smacked down on the counter. She lifted her head and met the cool blue eyes belonging to the man who had swiped the bell from under her hand.

“Sandy. How lovely. I thought I heard your dulcet tones.” Byndii gave him a half-glare.

“GiGo, I realize that my mother made a critical mistake in naming me, but you don’t have to rub it in. Will you stop calling me that?”

“As soon as you will call me by my given name, I will call you by yours.”

“Yeah, well. I can’t say yours. And GiGo fits you better anyways.” GiGo glanced sideways at her and placed a steaming mug of coffee with a large swirl of whipped cream on top in front of her. “I put garbage in, and you give me garbage out. That’s the beauty of our relationship.” She raised the cup to her lips and watched him over the rim.

GiGo was not overly tall, but out-height-ed most human males. Because he was an elf, rare in the Edges. The trademark ears showed through his short blonde hair. Perched upon his nose were small, wire-rimmed glasses, Edge-magic wreaked havoc with the perfectly tuned machine that was a body, especially the eyes. His clothes were of the sort of hodge-podge ensemble that came of mixing cultures. An Earth tee shirt over Faerie trousers and boots. The ever-present gold medallion swung from the leather thong at his neck.

He never will tell me what it’s for.

Byndii set the now-drained coffee mug on the counter in front of her and fixed her gaze on a drip of frothy liquid sliding slowly down the outside.

“What garbage shall I be entitled to today?” asked GiGo, shelving glasses behind the bar.

“Take your pick. Whiny ladies who would do better to ask a psychiatrist about their problems than me, small children with vicious wild animals stuck in trees, murder…”

“That would explain the bloody bandages on you arm. I thought you liked getting cats out of trees. Easier and more rewarding for your labors than what you normally get, I seem to recall you saying.”

“Well, when the cat in question is a Familiar that would rather be left alone, I tend to come away the worse for wear.”

“Aaahhh,” said GiGo knowingly. He refilled the mug and added a red candy cherry to the top. Byndii picked the cherry off and put it in her mouth, feeling the sugar dissolve on her tongue. She closed her eyes.

“I need a nap. I told you Dad sent me a message, right?”

“No, I don’t believe you told me. And I’m afraid I would miss the significance of the missive, since I know scant little about this ‘Dad’ of yours,” said GiGo, an air of snooping in his voice.

Byndii had told him very little of her previous life. Parents included. Her father had been a half-elf. He was on a sight-seeing tour of the World when he met Byndii’s mother. But Byndii’s birth had caused strife, because in her creation, her father was banned from his home forever. It had made for a very traumatic life.

“And you will know little else. Other than I thought you should know my mother died. So when I randomly break down and become a gelatinous weeping mass, you can offer me the proper sort of consolation.” GiGo said nothing, but placed another candied cherry on top of the whipped cream. Byndii stared at it.

“The way to a woman’s soul is through her stomach,” said GiGo sagely.

“You may be the only person who is able to get me to bare my soul naked, but it has nothing to do with your food.” Byndii licked the cream off her fingers.

“Of course,” said GiGo conversationally. A man walked up to the other side of Byndii’s stool. He was short and had messy black hair. There was nothing remarkable about him at all, even his species was indeterminable at a glance. He pushed a pair of large glasses up his nose as he approached. He handed a completed take-out order form to GiGo.

“I need a name for this,” said GiGo, looking it over. The man looked a little startled.

“I am Sam,” he said after a moment. GiGo wrote it down and handed the paper through the window to the kitchen. One of the people, a vampire, presumable, called for more blood. GiGo moved off to attend to it.

Byndii moved her attention to the other patrons of the diner. There were elves and nymphs and demons; vampires, werewolves and goblins. Unlike many places now, Bicycle’s Anything attracted custom from all species. With the growing human population, more and more people were making their restaurants and clubs exclusive. Humans tended to feel more comfortable with their own. And there was resentment towards them for it.

Sam got his food and stalked out of the diner, not attracting any attention at all. Byndii’s attention was drawn by a couple at one of the smaller tables. A pretty girl sat next to a boy who seemed very content to have her there. They held hands under the table and leaned their weight against the other. Byndii stared emotionlessly at them, absorbing their every movement, the murmur of their voices.

Soon the girl wasn’t there anymore and the boy’s face had changed, his hair become redder, his eyes bluer, the melody of his laugh more familiar. And he was talking to her. Calling her the pet names she loved, teasing her playfully. And then his face blurred, so she could no longer tell what the features were, his voice was fuzzy, and then he was altogether gone, replaced instead by an image she had always hoped to forget.

His face was ashen, solemn. He was dressed in a black suit, his hair neatly combed. He was standing over a casket, closed for the absence of a body. The flowers piled atop it were the only spots of color, save for the green of the eyes of the girl in the picture amid them. A familiar girl, one she had seen every day of her life.

Because the girl was her.