Star Harbor Nights

She thought she had just about succeeded in drifting off when suddenly her eyes snapped open. The world around her had gone quiet. All the thoughts of the others had simply... fallen away. All she could hear was the music, a strange, haunting siren song. She shrugged off her bed covers and got to her feet.

Her room was suffused with an odd dancing purple glow, like she was walking through a lava lamp. On the stairs, the amethyst light faded out only to be replaced by a blue-green luminescence that grew in intensity as she approached the bottom of the stairs, and the entrance to Amy's room.

A cool breeze drifted out from there, carrying the song with it. Allison followed the song in. Her room mate lay, perfect and naked and beautiful, spread-eagled atop her covers. Her long, green hair... far longer than Allison remembered... was laid out beneath her like a blanket. She floated atop it, serene and cool. Rippling patches of light shimmered all along the walls and ceiling, with shadows of fish wriggling here and there as well. It was as though Amy's body was a pool of clear water illuminated from within. The song, too, seemed to emanate from somewhere within her sleeping form.

Allison stood beside the bed, not daring to breath. She reached out to touch the bare skin of her stomach, knowing with the strange and certain knowledge of a dreamer that when she did, her fingers would break the surface and her hand would dip into that cold, tranquil beauty.

As her hand approached, disconcerting ripples appeared in the sleeping woman's skin... fast moving, circling shapes skimming just below the surface. Gone was the sense of sublime peace. In its place was something ancient, predatory, and dangerous. There were monsters in these uncharted depths. The sleeping Amphitrite made a little snorting noise. Allison glanced over to see her lips briefly curling into a snarl, and when she did, something leapt up and bit her hand.

The bite was like ice, and the cold feeling began to spread up her arm. There was no heat anywhere in the room, nothing to ward off the cold. She backed out through the open door, and felt a hot breeze on her back. She turned to look out across the open living area, where the brothers Ford and Beau were spending the night on couches.

The living room was dark, but she could see everything in perfect detail in the darkness.

The wind was coming from Beau. He was straddling the chest of a naked blonde girl, the two of them somehow comfortably contained on a couch that was far too narrow from front to back to accommodate the activity in which they were engaged. The girl had an almost cartoonish hour glass figure, big hips and ass with a tiny waist and stomach and then breasts that she might have been able to squeeze into a G cup... a generic wet dream sent straight from central casting, no doubt.

Allison watched them going through several different positions like a tape being fast-forwarded, though Beau's mind kept slowing down as he neared a climax. It was strange, but also strangely familiar... a bit like watching porn while bored. He also kept coming back to the first position she'd seen, thrusting himself into the midst of that blow-up doll chest. It seemed like a particular fantasy of his. It seemed it was just a fantasy, though... Allison could tell that the angle wasn't quite right, as he would know if he'd ever done it for real.

Or watched as much porn as she had.

Allison watched, feeling a powerful heat emanating from the two of them and chasing away the chill that had settled over her. She drew closer, holding up her hands as if to warm them before a blazing fire. Something happened to the light; it washed out, became gray.

She was suddenly in between two rows of book shelves. Was this the Owlery, the Wisdom sisters' Nebula City bookstore? Probably not. The shelves were metal, and the lighting was fluorescent. That didn't really fit the cozy image she had of the place... but then, neither did Beau and his dream girl, making out on the floor in front of her. The girl was topless. On the floor beside them was a cream-colored sweater and a bra of truly architectural proportions... a detail that Beau's mind probably would not have invented to support the existence (so to speak) of his fantasy girl.

Allison realized she had stepped out of Beau's dream and into the memory that had inspired it. She also realized that the impossibly built girl was not only possible, but a reality... and that she could be nobody except "Clever" Claire Clevenger, the Wisdom sisters' foster child.

Emphasis on child... Allison reeled with the uncomfortable realization that she'd been ogling a fantasy involving a seventeen-year-old girl.

The tableau before her was considerably tamer, but now that she knew the context, it was harder to look at than the hard core stuff had been.

In the memory, it was only Beau's hand between her breasts, but Allison still felt compelled to shout at him, you idiot, she's only seventeen! Don't screw up your life over this. Keep it in your pants for a few months and you'll be golden. She felt the words forming in her head, she felt her mouth moving, but no sound came out. Of course... she was in his memory, and he didn't remember her being there, much less saying anything. She repeated it anyway, focusing her mind like she would to deliver a telekinetic punch. Maybe the message would linger somehow.

"...feels nice," Claire said. "But, just... go slow. I'm kind of..." She gave a little yelp and her head jerked back weirdly, her legs twitching. "I'm a little sensitive."

"I'll try, but slow's not exactly my specialty," Beau said. His voice was sharper and clearer than hers had been. It also sounded deeper and more resonant than Allison remembered. "'sides, you asked me here, remember?"

"Because I wanted to talk about... eeh! I wanted to talk about Athena and Minerva," Claire said. "I really think they're in danger. This whole Dummy Corporation thing just sounds really sketchy, and I just know something's up with that Drosselmeier guy, and they never came back after Athena went to meet him and Minerva went to Rhyme, and..."

"You worry about the silliest things," Beau said, his hand trailing down her stomach towards the unbuttoned top of her jeans.

Why was Beau so quick to dismiss Claire's concerns, Allison wondered? They sounded reasonable... and from what they'd learned since then, were pretty much on the mark. Beau had to know how smart she was supposed to be.

"Please stop that," Claire said, shivering and twitching in an odd mix of pleasure and agitation.

"If you're sure you want me to."

"No, but if you don't, I'll seize and start thrashing around and you'll be caught here with a semi-conscious, semi-clothed underaged girl," Claire said.

"Oh, that is never going to happen," Beau said. "Everyone's eating dinner right now. Who else even uses the library at night except a big ol' brain like you?"

"Students with classes during the day, and students cramming before their evening classes... and then there's the librarians... and honestly, you're the one who's got everything to lose here and I really kind of like you so please stop."

Listen to her, Allison thought/shouted. She's smarter than you are. Listen to her.

"Absolutely nothing would happen to me," Beau said with a sigh. "But, I'll do anything to please a lady."

"Anything?" Claire asked, reaching for her bra.

"Then..." Claire began, very slowly, drawing the word out before plunging ahead at even faster than her usual breakneck speed, "you wouldn't mind running out to California to talk to Mindfyre about this in person?"

"No, I wouldn't mi... what?"

"I tried calling her but she won't talk to me," Claire said, slipping her arms through the shoulder straps... which looked like they belonged to a safety harness of some sort. That was true, too, Allison realized. Why had she been so quick to dismiss Claire's concerns? "If you run straight there, it shouldn't take more than two or three hours, and that should convince her that you're serious and you can tell her what we know and we can find out what else she knows and... stupid bra, can you get the back?"

"You don't ask much of a guy, do you?" Beau asked.

"It's just the hooks, it's hard for me to reach..."

"No, I mean, running to California and back for you," he said. "I've... well, I've run between home and here a few times during break, but other than that, I've never really done the whole cross-country thing."

"But you could do it," Claire said pleadingly. "It's within your endurance levels."

"How much do you know about those?" Beau asked with a sly grin.

"If you do this... I won't say no again," she said. "I won't make you wait, and I won't stop you even if my brain feels like it's going to explode and you won't have to stop, even if I have a massive seizure and swallow my tongue you can keep right on going, which honestly is probably the only way I'm not going to die a virgin..."

"Okay, okay," Beau said, holding up a hand. "I'll do it. And I'll wait until December. I'm not going to have the girl I l... ike giving it up before she's ready for some kind of quid pro quo."

"Seriously? I mean, I know you've been staring at my chest for weeks, and I've been watching you watching me, but we just really met today, and I don't know if I made the best impression falling over myself like that, and..."

"Seriously, Claire," Beau said. "I've known a lot of girls that were worth staring at, but I've never met anybody like you before."

"Oh, well, statistically, there isn't anybody like me," Claire said. "And probably won't be for another thirteen thousand, five hundred, and seventy-two years. I've done the math. That's not to suggest that someone like me will be born exactly that far in the future... that's just the point at which the probability approaches certainty. It could be sooner, or later, or never."

"Uh, yeah, that's exactly what I meant," Beau said.

Allison took a step backwards, and the scene dissolved. She shook her head to clear it, and movement caught her eye. In the corner of the living room, Ford was running across an open field of wheat. He wasn't moving at superspeed, he was just running. There was a sense of boundless joy and freedom there... he wasn't running to win a race, or to save a life. He was just cutting loose. Perversely, Allison felt more like an intruder watching this moment than she had seeing Beau's fantasies and his tryst with Claire.

She turned away, and immediately became aware of the open door on the other side of the sitting area, which lead to the spare room. Minerva was sleeping there. Allison felt pulled towards it by a feeling not like the heat that radiated from Beau, but a desperate sort of warmth, like embers of a fire that glowed red hot but had to be constantly fanned and fed or they'd disappear.

The lights in the room were earthy and low. There were shadowed figures all around the room; men, women, and sexes in between. They flickered in and out of existence, faceless figures in a bewildering amount of sex acts with a like number of images of Minerva, who was always in a position of receptive submission to them. Her face wore the same mask of pain, shame, and stubborn resolution each time she appeared. Some of the image pairs came and went in a single moment. Others lingered longer, or re-appeared throughout the room. There were three sets that seemed frozen in time, draped in billowing white sheets that only allowed the vaguest suggestion of the scenes they obscured.

Allison stepped towards the nearest of the cloaked figures, reaching out for it.

"I'm not letting you see what's under the sheets," Minerva said behind her. "I'm not sure what'll happen if you try to lift one up, but probably nothing pleasant."

"You can see me?" Allison asked.

"Lucid dreaming," she said. "Comes along with the family wisdom... another reason I usually let Athena carry it. When I'm sleeping, I'd prefer not to remember what I've done while I'm awake, and when I'm awake, I'd prefer not to remember what I did while I was asleep."

"I never imagined you to be so..."

"Submissive?"

"Prolific," Allison said.

"We keep our sex lives out of the press," Minerva said, a little sadly. "Athena and I. That's the lesson we learned from our mother's life."

"None of your partners have faces."

"None of them mean anything."

"Why so many, then?"

"Because it takes an awful lot of nothing to fill up a void," Minerva said. "But this isn't what you're here to see."

"I'm here to see something?" Allison asked.

"I think so," Minerva said. "Universal wisdom talking again. I'd... I'd rip off all those sheets myself and let you see everything if it meant I didn't have to show you what I'm about to show you, but it doesn't work that way."

“What is it?”

“You’re going to go see my sister… going to go see Rhyme,” Minerva said. “You’ve already made up your mind about that. But you’ll never get anywhere with her… you’ll never get out of it intact… if you don’t understand where she came from. How she got to be the way she is.”

“Amy says she was born wrong.”

“Amy was scared very badly as a little girl,” Minerva said. “Watch.”

The light in the room went weird and gray again, and then Allison was standing in a large, opulent room of marble and stone, watching a scene unfold in silent black-and-white. There were four girls, three about ten or twelve and one much younger. She recognized two of them immediately. As children. the twins had looked even more alike than they did now... though one of them was floating off the ground. The other girl bore an unmistakable resemblance to them, but did not share the uncanny similarity. Allison realized she was looking at Pallas Wisdom, the little girl who had since grown up to be the psychotic villainess, Rhyme.

Even more shockingly, the younger girl, who she was dragging by the hand, had a distinctive shock of blue-green hair, the only spot of color in her vision. She was seeing a piece of Amy's... Amphitrite's... childhood.

"This is the day our parents died," the adult Minerva said in her ear. "Athena inherited our mother's powers, which also invested her with the queenship. We always knew it would be her, on some level."

The girls were clearly arguing about something.

"Pallas wanted to destroy the fountain of youth. She thought the Amazons would never understand our loss unless they had to face their own mortality," Minerva said, translating the silent scene. "It's only when I look back now, with the burden of wisdom, that I realize she was acting out of grief. If I'd let Athena handle things, with her new wisdom... well, I didn't."

Pallas started to yank Amphitrite towards the door. Minerva shouted and shoved her, and she went sailing into a column. Sound came rushing into the scene with the crack of the young body hitting the marble.

"And that's how I learned I'd inherited my father's powers," Minerva told Allison. "We honestly never saw that coming. We still don't understand how it happened. It somehow got caught up in the transference spell on the powers of the queen? In the same day, I lost my parents and almost killed my sister.

"I killed her! I killed her!" the young Minerva shrieked, even as Pallas proved her wrong by moaning.

"I'll get the healers," Athena said.

'No!" the young Minerva shrieked. "They'll think I..."

"She doesn't have a lot of time, Minerva."

"Considering how advanced Atlantean healing arts are, it might be hard to understand my fear," the adult Minerva said. "But sororicide... even attempted sororicide... is the only capital crime in Amazonian society. They make no exceptions for royalty. The execution method involves a pit full of scorpions... evoking the Eumenides, the Furies... and can take hours. Everybody in the valley is required to bear witness, including children. It only happened once in my lifetime... but it made an impression."

"If you had your father's powers, wouldn't you have been invulnerable to the scorpions?" Allison asked.

"I was twelve," Minerva said.

"You can take her to the fountain," the younger Minerva said. "You can move faster than the wind now. You can take her there and heal her with the water."

"Do you know what that could do to her?" Athena asked. "If I use too much, it could drive her mad. The healers can..."

"You have the wisdom now... I know you won't use too much."

"It might take 'too much' to heal her, at this point," Athena said.

Minerva just stared at her, silently pleading. Allison saw clearly in her expression that Athena, newly chosen bearer of the universal wisdom, knew she was about to make a monumentally wrong decision, and was making it anyway, out of love. She bent down and carefully lifted Pallas's broken body in her arms, straightened up, and then was gone.

Both Minervas collapsed to the floor, sobbing.

Allison stepped back out of the memory, expecting to find herself back in the guest bedroom of her apartment. Instead, she was on the edge of a pasture, standing a faded green wooden fence. There was a woman, long-legged and lanky, sitting on the fence post. She was dressed in black denim, with black feathery hair. She tilted her head to the side, looking at Allison out of one eye.

"Uh, hello," Allison said. "I think I... fell out of a dream. Do you know where I am?"

"Dreams can be tricky to hold onto," the woman said, holding out a long, sleek black plume. "It's important that you remember what you've seen tonight."

"Who are you?"

"I was sent to make sure that you remember, because... well, I forget exactly why," the woman said. She extended the feather towards Allison. "But this is a feather from my uncle Memory, so that you'll never forget."

"Is your uncle an elephant?" Allison asked, reaching out to take the feather. She thought that she did, but then it was simply gone. Had she put it somewhere?

The woman laughed.

"No, he's a..."

The light rippled and went gray again, and then became painfully bright and red. She could feel the bed sheets, and knew she was back in her bed. The light was red because it was filtered through her eye lids. She opened them... and gasped.

Her room had gone all white again, as it had been in the dream she'd had at work. The man in the top hat and the backwards coat was sitting on the edge of her bed once more.

"Hello, Alice," he said again.

His melty, droopy features oozed and rolled back upon themselves, like a video of a burning candle being rewound. The face which came into focus was not unhandsome, but possessed of an added level of sinisterness brought about by the heightened sense of reality it now carried about it.

"Who are you?" Allison asked, feeling dread settle upon her chest like a heavy weight. "How are you doing this?"

"I'm afraid it's my time to ask questions," he said. "Do you know what you're dealing with? Are you prepared for what's coming? And how is a raven like a writing desk?"

"How... what?"

"Ravens. You've been talking to ravens," he said. "Conspiring. But no matter... I'm not here to fight, dear Alice, but to aid you. You're currently heading into grave danger, and that's completely unacceptable. I have plans for you, you see... plans that preclude your imminent mortality. But I can go places no one else can go, see things no one else can see... I know what you're up against, and I can give you warning."

Allison stared. Everything else in the room was white, but for her and the stranger... and a few tiny toys on a high shelf. No, they weren't tiny... just very far away. As she stared, they came zooming into focus, or she went rushing towards them. It was hard to tell. But suddenly, she was in a dark room, surrounded by toys that were suffused with a sickly green glow. In front of her was a child's play table, set with an elaborate miniature Victorian tea set. A girl in a dress sat at one end of the table. The other chairs were occupied by various toys and dolls, including a large sock monkey that made Allison's flesh crawl.

"Hello, there," the girl said in a venomously sweet voice with the faintest trace of a British accent. "Welcome to my tea party."

"Who... who..." Allison stammered. "Who are you?"

"My name is Molly," she replied. "Do you want to play?"

Allison woke up with a scream.