FORTY-FOUR: Where'd you get that cat?

“Where’d you get that cat?” Siobhan said louder leaning back.

“What?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen this large monstrosity sitting at your feet under the table,” Siobhan laughed.

“I haven’t had him long. I don’t know much about him really,” Arous was confused. “We were talking about - ”

“Will he bite?” asked Siobhan.

“No,” said Arous and then smiled. “At least I don’t think so.”

“Let’s find out,” said Siobhan and ducked under the table.

Arous didn’t follow her but tried to look over at Simon. He was looking at her and smiling. She waved.

“I think he’s smiling at me,” said Siobhan.

“At you?” said Arous.

“You’ll have to see for yourself, Arous,” Siobhan said from under the table.

“Oh, him.” Arous ducked under the table.

“Men in grey suits came and picked her up.  They pulled away in their grey car after they waltzed in and danced her out.”

“Did they have mirrored, red-” began Arous.

Siobhan joined her to finish the sentence, “rimmed-glasses. Yes. An elite force of the Spartan Guard, I think. Most people don’t even believe they exist. Somehow they just aren’t noticeable.” She paused and then popped back up top-side.

 “Alippiana, really?” asked Siobhan.

“Yes.”

“Cusp or Bowl?”

“Bowl.”

“Wow. I’ve never met anyone from the Bowl. A few people from the Cusp and further out.  We have a few Idelles from the Sticks. Wow, the Bowl. So tell me – what’s it like? I heard once that if you go to the Bowl you can’t get out. That it’s like a sect or cult.  Did you have to escape?”

“No, it’s not like that.”

“What is it like, silly?” asked Siobhan, then whispered “we have to keep this up a little longer.  Just follow me.”

“Well, it’s like . . .  the Bowl is inside a river, like an island. The river surrounds us like a horseshoe on the north, east and west. To the south is to the bay, a lagoon really and then the sea.   There’s some beach on the south east. White sparkling beach but on the south west there is a swamp and the Mist.”

“Wow.”

“And the air, inside the Bowl is really, wet. This dryness has been hard to get used to; it makes me really tired, weak almost. And, there it’s so heavy with water that hoveh crafts don’t work there. Most new machinery doesn’t,” Arous paused as if realizing something, “I guess, I never realized how much . . . energy that humid air gives me. Breathing it must -”

“How do you get around, I mean – it sounds big.”

“I had a horse – have a horse. And, there are other ways to get around.”

“Like?” asked Siobhan.

“Water porting.  Hoveh engines don’t work but you can port from one body of water to another. And walking.”

“What’s it like?”

“Porting?” Arous asked.

“No, silly. Walking,” she laughed.  Arous thought she was the most wacky person she’d ever met or the most clever.

“It’s like turning into a ghost made out of steam.”

“Walking?”

“No, silly. Porting.”

They both laughed.

“Like Miasmen,” Siobhan whispered.

“Miasmen?”

“Oh, nothing. Just a stupid legend,” her eyes got big and she shook her head. “You’ll have to tell me more about Alippiana another time.”

They were quiet a moment.

“Look,” said Arous, “I may need your help.”

“Oh, right. Look, I think I should be going. Maybe we can meet again,” said Siobhan.

She started to get up. Arous grabbed her hand.

“Please?”

Siobhan leaned down to kiss Arous and whispered: “I will see you again. I have something to give you. Just wait.”

“Please? I don’t know how much time I have,” Arous whispered back while keeping her mouth next to Siobhan’s ear. “My mother said she was in danger. I have to -”

“She is,” she kissed one cheek then moved to the other. “And so are you.”

Siobhan straightened up. “It’s a date. We’ll have lunch one day and I’ll show you around the City.”

“When?”

“Maybe this week. I’ll V-Dot you.  Maybe even have you over for tea. I’m sure Lady Rose would love that.”

            Arous hugged Siobhan.

            “I’ll come see you, I have a lead -”

            “Don’t. I’ll come to you,” whispered Siobhan. “Don’t trust anyone. Especially when they sit in corners and listen to your conversation.  Be sure you’re not followed from here.”

FORTY-THREE: tell me

 “Excuse me, Arous?” Hearing a soft but full alto, she looked up to see Siobhan.  She had a scarf draped over her head and pulled it down so it draped about her neck and shoulders.

Siobhan sat. Arous had nothing to say, no warmth, no trust. She could only remember the ambiguity of their last conversation and the abruptness at which it ended. The bitter crossness that welled up inside of Arous surprised her.  She watched Siobhan’s tapping finger. 

Silence passed between the two girls like the ebbing tide on a summer night.  Siobhan saw an empty cup and poured herself some tea.  They both sized each other up without looking at one another. The girls faced off, hands on hips in the playground of boys and ice cream.

 “So you want to know what happened to you mother,” said Siobhan.  “Well, you won’t find her.  Not alive, anyway.”

She watched the words as they bounced off Arous’ face and their meaning reflected in her countenance. Arous’ skin turned white, then red.

Arous brain stuttered as she looked to the walls and to the floor and the trees, the vines, and her cat for what-exactly-is-this-all-about.  She found none.  Arous looked into the wall of Siobhan’s face to see surprise smiling back at her and then lowering its gaze.  Arous glanced down and began to study the lines in the wooden table.

“I don’t believe you,” said Arous as she looked into the cement mask of Siobhan’s face.

“Good,” said Siobhan, then whispering, “I’m not sure I believe it either. You hear certain things, are told how things are . . .” Arous nodded still staring down and Siobhan took this as a clue to continue.

“I did know your mother.  We worked together, as Starins.  Your mother was a political and social star. But one of the lead Agents at the company we worked for was accused of treason.  Your mother was his biggest Idelle. She went down with him, so to speak.

“She was my mentor.  Took me under her wing.  Showed me how things were done in the business. How to build character, how to build an image, make people want you, want you to be their face.  

“It was my mother’s idea that I become an Idelle, it was what she always wanted.  But it was your mother who made me a good Idelle. 

“Your mother seemed irreplaceable.

“See, the best of us work as sort of political advisors.  We put a face on the MOTA – Members of the Assembly. Every City on each of the Pantaganents have their MOTA. We’re the only City that have Idelles, though other’s are warming up to the idea. Idelles put a face out there that people enjoy seeing. We speak for them, we represent them.   To the rest of the world we are them – we are their face, their image; we are the words out of their mouths and the change they promise to bring. Your mother, Lady Grey, promised that everybody was unique, that everyone had a place. She was also connected to one of the highest, most respected MOTA in the government –.”

Siobhan stopped for a moment and cast a side-ways glance at Simon at the table across from them.

“Look, I don’t want to go a lot of detail. I just wanted to meet you.  Tell you about your mother, but I’ve never seen anyone come back from a HaleSpa. Not someone one who was put there for . . . treason. It’s the only thing punishable by death. They told me I wouldn’t see her again.”

“Who? Who told you?”

“I can’t.”

Siobhan continued in a whisper, leaning across the table.

“I know that she was planning to leave, but I don’t think anyone else knew,” she paused. Arous could hear Siobhan’s voice begin to tremble. “You see, your mother was good at what she did. She was invaluable. She was smart. More than that, she knew.”

“Knew?”

“She wasn’t just an Idelle. I mean, she was, but she went on special . . . assignments.”

“What do you mean?” asked Arous.

“What makes you think she’s not dead?”

“I got an VIH-dot from her less than a month ago, about two weeks.”

Siobhan looked shocked, paled then recovered.

“Where’d you get the cat?” Siobhan said louder leaning back.

“What?” asked Arous.

FORTY-TWO: the Rabbithole

The Rio Luz split the City a third in two flowing from mid-North to Southwest and a boardwalk ran on both the east and west banks of it.  Arous lived east of the river, the same side as Rose House, the same side as the Rabbithole.  The only thing on the west third of the City were parks, museums and three HaleSpas.  The most luxurious HaleSpa was the North one which was surrounded on three sides: wall to the North, river to the east and forest on the west.

Most of the boardwalk on the eastern bank was below the surface of the street as if the river had carved a canal a long time ago that was too deep for itself.

Octavius and Arous walked down the boardwalk on the river.

“It’s odd Octavius.  I learned so much about things in the Bowl but you don’t really know them until you see them.  Like the river here, it seems so dead. Not like, things in it are dead but the Alippiana river, it’s alive.  The river itself is a living thing, a being.”

Octavius shook his head and the bell on the collar around his neck rung, a clear soothing sound.

“I know it’s hard to believe. This Rio Luz, funny but there’s nothing light about it.”

The slight hum of a boat passing caused Octavius to take notice as he paused to look. Every time something caught his attention he slowed his stride as if to meditate on it. 

“Maddening. Do you have to rubberneck at everything that passes by?” 

Octavius trotted to Arous’ right in his red satin collar with tiger-eye rhinestones which matched his brown tabby coat. It gave him a regal look even with the matching satin leash. He’d grown a couple of inches in just the few days she’d had him and flatfooted, the top of his head reached a hair above her knee.

“I can’t believe you’ve grown so much just eating cheese and nuts.  You are a strange kitten. It must be all that cream,” she sighed.  “If Burton’s right, you keep growing and I’ll have to hide you. Don’t get any bigger.”

She had a feeling he wasn’t going to listen.

She walked into the stucco half-roofed building along the boardwalk: the Rabbithole Coffee and V-Dot Shop.  It was a subterranean, a pale-pink faced building further colored by fading light coming across the water of the Rio Luz.

She smiled.

Something about stucco walls and wooden tables with uneven legs made her feel at home though out of place. Paintings of local artists covered the walls and bookshelves filled with old dusty writings filled the vacant spaces.  Nestled in a corner to her right was a small stage adorned by the dueling faces of tragedy and comedy hanging above it. Opposite the stage the threshold led to the outside courtyard.  She walked by the bar and outside. Various ivies crawled up the walls and hung down from the few broken beams that jutted out. She looked up at the night sky.

Arous found a nice table in the corner of the garden of ivy and stone.  As she walked to the table a dog trotted up to her and Octavius.

“Hissshhhhhh!” was Octavius answer to the dog; he puffed up to twice his stature.

“Octavius!  Be nice.” She reached down to pick him up, but thinking better of it, gave him a soft pop on the haunches and pointed to a chair. She patted the golden retriever on the head.  Octavius lay under the table right after he snapped a look at Arous.

Across the courtyard sat the dog’s master who observed the altercation over the rim of an e-reader. 

“Sorry,” said Arous.

“Quite all right.  He’s almost too friendly for his own good.  It happens all the time yet he never learns,” the young man offered.  “Trust me. That was mild compared to previous encounters.” He smiled. “Come, Harry.”

With a sigh the dog returned to lie at the feet of his master, averting his gaze from Octavius. Soon a girl came out to refresh the tea of the guy with the dog, Harry.  The young man was of slight build with sandy hair, almost white.  His light golden skin hosted a sprinkling of caramel freckles across the bridge of his nose.  His blue eyes sparkled as he smiled a warm “Thank you” to the girl topping off his coffee.  The coffee girl sauntered over to Arous’ table.