Thank you again to all my reviewers! pixievix, this wasn't out ASAP (sorry), but I hope the wait wasn't too torturous—and that this chapter makes up for it. :D Elementals, so I'm in-depth, huh? Cool. I'm trying to stay inside Lizzie's head, which can be a mightily chaotic place at the moment, so I'm glad to hear I'm still in there, somewhere. And, Joe, it's good to hear from you again.I suppose I can overlook your absence since you were on vacation and all (I actually was too). :) As for the intensity, I'm delighted you thought so. That's what I was going for...plus it's a kick to write. This chapter should lighten things up a bit.
I did mention this story would be odd, didn't I? And so—in the grand tradition of the Shakespearean pastoral comedy (to lend it some credibility)—here's chapter five.
Chapter 5: Bubble Universe
Birdsong woke her. She fought against it for a while, eyes still closed, trying to ignore the joyful, raucous trills and chirps. They were so loud, though, and before Lizzie could sink back into sleep she found herself wondering if perhaps she'd left a window open. She didn't think so; the weather had been nice lately but still a bit too chill at night for opening windows.
One of the birds launched into a particularly enthusiastic aria, then, and Lizzie frowned, reaching for the covers and rolling away from the sound.
But her hand didn't find sheets.
And as she turned, her cheek didn't brush smooth pillowcase. Something soft and damp tickled her skin instead. She snuffled a little as it feathered against her nose, realized the air smelled more of wet earth and greenery than warm cotton.
Eyes still closed, she reached a hand to the space beside her head, lowering it slowly. Cool, soft points prickled her palm first, bending easily then sliding between her spread fingers. She formed a tentative fist, felt the wet squeak, tugged, heard the unmistakable rip of grass tearing free.
Her eyes flew open and, sure enough, that was grass in her hand. In fact, all she could see was grass, tall, unruly spears of it, right there in front of her face.
It's a dream, she told herself, rising on one elbow. Just a dream.
But for a dream, it was uncommonly vivid. She was lying in a forest meadow, ground awash in tall grass and waves of brilliant, blue-violet flowers. Here and there, lichen-mottled stones and sun-bleached spines of fallen branches rose like islands from the greenery. The clearing was ringed with trees, mostly large ones with great, fat trunks and a sprawling tangle of branches, but closer to the center of the meadow grew smaller, gnarled trees, more like the crab apples Lizzie had climbed as a child. It was a clear morning, the sky cerulean overhead, pale sunlight slanting low through breeze-ruffled leaves, not yet bright enough to really warm the earth or—Lizzie noted the grey wisps of mist curled deeper into the forest—burn off all its moisture.
Yes, very vivid for a dream. Very real, too. She shivered as a finger of wind chilled her ankles. Absently, she tugged the hem of her skirt over the bared skin...
Skirt? Lizzie struggled to her feet, very nearly tripping over the hem of said skirt.
"What the hell?" she shouted into the quiet.
This was not what she'd been wearing yesterday. Instead of jeans and a van Gogh print t-shirt, she was wearing some kind of dress. She picked at the fabric. It was heavy but soft, and as Lizzie fiddled with it, she realized the dress was made of two parts. The bottom part was white, long-sleeved, and cut close to her skin from the low, square neckline to just past her hips, where it fell in loose folds to the tops of her feet. The top part seemed little more than a wide strip of maroon cloth with a hole in the middle for her head. It was a bit more elegant than that, of course, with a neckline that mirrored its counterpart and red laces up the sides from hip to arm. Still, Lizzie couldn't help thinking of it as rather an exalted apron.
She twisted a little, took a few steps, twirled, attempting to get used to all the extra fabric, all that new weight. After a few tries, she found she could manage fairly well without tripping.
Not that it mattered, of course. Because this was a dream.
But if it were a dream, why was she thinking so clearly? Why was she able to feel the cool breeze, the warming sun, the damp of the earth beneath her slippered feet? Why couldn't she wake up?
Maybe she just needed to tell herself to wake up.
"Come on, Lizzie," she murmured. "Wake up now. Time to wake up." She tried pinching her skin. "Ow!" Okay, so despite all those TV shows she'd watched, all those books she'd read, pinching herself did not prove she wasn't dreaming.
Right?
She drew a deep breath. Okay. Don't panic. How else could she wake up? She'd tried telling herself this was a dream. She'd tried telling herself to wake up. What else was left? Dying?
The breath hitched in her chest. Actually, that wasn't a bad idea. In dreams, you always woke up before you died. Especially in falling dreams...
Ooh. Falling. Lizzie looked at the trees around her. All those lovely trees. Most of them were too hard to climb, or too short to really fall from, but there was one that looked to be a likely specimen. Balling some skirt into her fists, she started toward it.
It took several tries to heave herself onto the lowest branch—she hadn't climbed trees in years and never had she done it with so much fabric tangling her legs—but once there, the climbing went much easier. She even found herself settling into a sort of rhythm, transferring the skirts smoothly from one hand to the other as she crawled higher and higher.
About halfway to the branch she'd chosen as her jumping place, the breeze picked up, gusting enough to sway the trunk lightly and tug insistently at both her hair and her dress. She had to stop every other branch to rearrange her grip on the skirts or pull hair out of her face. It was then she realized just how much hair she had: although she'd kept it long since eighth grade, never had it been all the way to her waist, and never had it been quite so thick. Part of the dream, she told herself, then mumbled, as she once more smoothed a wave of it out of her eyes, "I could kill someone with this stuff." She chuckled, imagining her hair pulled into a thick whip of a braid. Not a bad weapon of choice—like Indiana Jones. Gritting her teeth she began climbing again, this time humming the Indiana Jones theme song.
Who knew she'd be so giddy when about to commit dream suicide?
At that moment, the wind took its chance to snatch the skirts from her hand and wrap hair across both eyes. Reflexively, she reached one hand to the dress and one hand to her hair, regaining control of both just in time for the tree to give a particularly strong lurch, sending her free-falling to earth.
It was terrifying in the moment after the shock wore off, so terrifying she couldn't even find her voice. Why had she decided to do this? She hated falling, almost enough to keep her from going on roller coasters. Yet she'd only remembered this now?
She was falling, falling, scream thick in her throat, and then she wasn't falling anymore.
"Oof!" All the air huffed from her lungs, and Lizzie fought against the urge to throw up.
It was dark. It was dark! Did that mean she had woken up?
No. It simply meant her eyes were closed.
Slowly, she eased them open.
Green, trees, meadow, some men, and—she turned her head a little—Tudgeman!
"Greetings, fair maiden!" he said, then turning to the other men grouped around him, "You see, my brothers, I have indeed learned to catch anything, even something as heavy as a millstone, in my left hand." Lizzie took in the men's astonished faces then realized that Tudgeman was actually holding her, his left arm underneath her back with his hand curved rather uncomfortably high on her leg. She jumped out of his grip, twitching her skirts back in place, satisfied when the tail end of her hair lashed against his face.
"Ick, Tudgeman!" she cried, "I didn't want you to catch me, you idiot." Never mind that in the last few seconds of flight, that was exactly what she'd been praying for. "That was the only way for me to wake up! And, I swear, if you're saying I'm as heavy as a millstone...!" She let the threat dangle, narrowing her eyes in that death glare that had worked so well on Gordo last night.
"Alack, no, fair maid!" Tudgeman protested, bowing. "Though I do not quite understand what you mean by this 'tudge-man,' nor why you would wish to wake up when you seem quite awake to me, I must say that you were not heavy at all, dear lady. Nay, you were light as a feather! I was merely explaining to my brothers the extent of my gift. Catching you required but the merest fraction of my ability." He offered a gallant, sweeping bow and Lizzie realized suddenly that while he looked like Tudgeman, his hair was longer and the clothes not at all right. He wore bright green trousers, tall black boots, and a loose white shirt, its sleeves billowing from beneath a thigh-length tunic of heavily embroidered emerald silk, small stones glinting from the fabric. She glanced briefly at the other men. They wore different colors, but the style and opulence of the clothing remained the same.
"Uh, uh," she stammered, trying for a curtsy, "yes, I apologize. I'm rather lost and you look a little like someone I know."
"Do I, indeed?" The man who looked like Tudgeman appeared delighted. "Well, fair maid, you are certainly welcome to travel with us! My brothers and I are on a quest of sorts, you see. We are rather new to these surrounds ourselves and traveling companions are most agreeable."
"Especially when they're ladies," added one of the brothers, this one in red trousers and tunic.
"Aye," agreed a brother in blue, "we don't see many ladies on the road."
A brother in orange sniffled a little. "Reminds us of our mum. And our nanny. And the ladies in waiting."
"We miss them," chimed a brother in yellow.
"But maybe you can be our mum," orange jumped in again. All the brothers clamored to agree.
Lizzie looked from one eager face to the next. They looked fairly harmless, but, well, she really just wanted to wake up. Maybe if she could get them to leave she might be able to scrounge up enough courage to climb the tree again. Or maybe she'd just wake up on her own. "Uh," she tried a half-smile. "I, uh, don't think that's a good idea." Every face fell. "I just, uh, I, um..." she reached for an excuse. "I don't cook!" Yes! Surely they wouldn't want a woman who couldn't cook traveling with them! "I just, I can't cook. At all."
"Neither can I," came a voice from the midst of the brightly colored brothers, a rather familiar voice. Lizzie frowned, angled her head for a better view. The brothers shuffled and shifted and from behind their very tall forms appeared a shorter one. He was dressed in brown trousers, brown boots, loose grey shirt beneath a dark green tunic. His hair, like hers, was longer—she hadn't seen it that long since Rome—but it was unmistakably him, unmistakably Gordo.
The name leapt to her tongue, relief leaving her arms and legs tingling—Gordo would know what to do—but then she remembered Tudgeman. She'd thought this man in green was he, but she'd been wrong. What if this wasn't Gordo?
Whoever he was, he was talking again. "I told them I couldn't cook, but they've agreed to let me come along anyway, so long as I help with what I can. I think you should come too, Lizzie. It might be the only way we have of getting home."
'Lizzie'? 'Home'? Her heart jumped, thudded against her chest. Did that mean he knew who she was?
"G-Gordo?" she asked, voice shaking. "Is that you?"
A smile flickered on the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, Liz. It's me."
"Oh, thank God!" she cried, nearly tripping over her skirts as she rushed at him. His arms came up a moment after hers had clinched around him, holding tight as she buried her nose into his shoulder. "I'm so glad you're here, Gordo."
Before he could reply, Tudgeman's twin clapped his hands, exclaiming, "You are acquainted? Splendid!" Lizzie reluctantly released Gordo, feeling his own grip drop away. Together they turned to face the brothers. "You will, of course, travel with us now. I'm sure if you are lost as Sir Gordo is, we can help both of you as easily as one."
"Yes, yes, travel with us," urged a brother in white.
"You don't have to cook." Yellow again.
"We'll teach you to cook!" a brother in purple offered.
Then all of them fell to pleas and whines and big, eager eyes. Lizzie looked over at Gordo, saw his faint grin and the questioning tilt to his eyebrows, and nodded. If Gordo was going, so was she.
Immediately, everyone was laughing, hooraying, slapping one another on the back.
"Wonderful!" the Tudgeman brother cheered. "Then let us continue walking. I shall tell you all about our quest and you shall tell us all about you! Firstly, let me introduce myself. I am Saturday, the youngest of my brothers. We are all named for days of the week, you see, with my eldest brother—he's the one in violet—named Sunday. And that one, over there in yellow, is Monday. He's the second eldest..."
*********#######*********
"We're in a fairy tale, Lizzie," Gordo announced some time after blue brother Wednesday had pulled a large loaf of bread and a lump of cheese from a tiny pocket on his tunic. Saturday had finished his explanation of the brothers' quest some hours ago, and having answered all his questions, Lizzie and Gordo were allowed to drift to the back of the group. Struggling to keep up with the others despite shorter legs, and in Lizzie's case far more skirt than she was used to, the two were at least able to talk about the current, er, predicament.
Swallowing her last bite of cheese and bread, Lizzie squeaked, "A fairy tale?" She wanted to say she didn't believe Gordo, but Saturday had caught her one-handed and then there was Wednesday's quaint little lunch-in-pocket trick. She'd seen it with her own eyes. Denying that was as useful as denying they were walking in this forest. This dream forest? She frowned. Okay. Bad example. "Are you saying this has something to do with that project we were working on?"
Gordo shrugged. "I don't know what I'm saying. All I know is that this is one of the fairy tales I read last night. Seven brothers on a quest to save a princess from an evil sorcerer. Each brother has a special gift—far-seeing spectacles, a sleep-inducing fiddle, the ability to pick anyone's pocket, I knew all of them before they even told me!"
Lizzie drew a long breath, wrenching her skirts up higher as she stepped over a fallen log. They walked a few more steps before she finally said, "So this isn't a dream." It was barely a whisper. "I was hoping this was just a dream and I could wake up."
Gordo didn't answer immediately, and Lizzie could feel his gaze on her, though she didn't turn to meet it. "It might be a dream, Lizzie—"
Lizzie shook her head. "No. No, if this were a dream, then I wouldn't be here. I never read this fairy tale. So if this is a dream, then it's only your dream, and I'm afraid I've got too many of my own thoughts to agree with that idea."
"Maybe it's a shared dream?" Gordo offered.
She snorted. "Like a mind-meld? I don't think so."
"Was that 'mind-meld' I heard come out of your mouth?" Gordo laughed. "Did Elizabeth McGuire actually make a Star Trek reference? Tudgeman would be so proud."
Despite herself, she felt a smile tugging at her mouth. "I like Star Trek," she grudgingly admitted. "Not the old ones, only Next Gen."
"And you call them 'Next Gen'!" Gordo crowed, jumping up and down as he walked. "Why, Liz, you Trekkie, you!"
He was insufferable. Eyes narrowing, Lizzie turned and stopped walking. "Maybe this really is a mind-meld. Maybe this isn't stuff from my head at all. Maybe it's all you, David Gordon, infusing my mind, filling it with sci-fi nonsense!"
Gordo laid gentle fingers along the sides of her face. "My mind to your mind," he intoned, then laughed as he continued walking. "And you love that sci-fi nonsense, admit it," he tossed over his shoulder. Growling, Lizzie balled her skirts into her arms and ran to catch up.
They walked in silence for a few more minutes before Gordo spoke again, "No, this can't be a shared dream." There was something in his tone that made Lizzie look up. His brow was furrowed, mouth drawn down. "I mean, I don't know a whole lot about the phenomenon, but I think to share a dream your minds have to be pretty close. After last night, I think yours was a galaxy away from mine."
Lizzie stumbled a little at the mention of their fight. Since she'd woken up in this place, she hadn't had more than a moment's worth of thought about it—at first because she'd been too confused and then because she was so happy to see him. But it was there, in her mind, now, somehow fresh and raw and at the same time old, as if they'd fought months ago.
She didn't know what to say. Should she apologize? Wait for him to apologize? She certainly wasn't ready to talk about what had been bothering her lately. At the thought of it, a dim echo of the anger flushed her face. No. She definitely didn't want to explain. At last she settled on, "Yes. We were pretty distant last night."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him nod. "Okay. So no shared dream. What does that leave? A bubble universe?"
"A what?"
Gordo chuckled. "A bubble universe." Lizzie turned to see him scrub a hand through his hair. "Wow. Never really thought I'd be in the position to actually explain it." His mouth settled into a rueful line. "Um. This is much more Jon and Larry's area than mine. I was just listening in on them one day. Let me see." He paused and Lizzie recognized the concentrated fold to his forehead. A smile itched at her lips; for as long as she could remember, she'd loved listening to his mind work itself through an idea.
At last he cleared his throat and brought his hands palm-to-palm, fingers steepled. "Well, there are actually several variations on the bubble universe theme. At its most basic, it's the idea that, somehow in the creation of, well, everything, many universes were created—ours only one of them. Some of these universes would be very close to our own, with similar physics, similar particles, similar existence, while others would be vastly different and thus either filled with a very foreign sort of life or incapable of supporting life at all. The universes would probably also have a different flow of time, some running faster in comparison to ours, some running slower.
"The reason they call them bubble universes is because you can conceptualize each universe as a soap bubble, floating among other soap bubble universes in some...netherplane. Some people theorize that the soap bubbles could collide or that wormholes might connect them, allowing people to transport between them."
Lizzie nodded. "So you're saying that," she snorted a laugh, "that, somehow, we've managed to fall through a wormhole or something to this universe." It was kind of a cool idea, but...well, how absurd was it that they were trapped in a fairy tale universe?
"Possibly," Gordo shrugged. "I mean, most of this is really theoretical. And then, of course, what are the chances that only you and I found our way here? And why here? Why not just another universe where, I don't know, you and I never met o-or live in the Bronze Age or something. It's pretty damn coincidental, if you ask me."
"Divine intervention?" Lizzie offered.
"It's as good a theory as any I've come up with." He sighed. "I guess in the meantime, we just go with the flow—"
"—And keep an eye out for wormholes!" Lizzie cast a smirk in his direction, waited for his answering smile before throwing her arms wide and calling, "Let us boldly go where no eleventh graders have gone before!" The moment was rather spoiled as she tripped over the hem of her dress. She growled as Gordo caught her arm and helped her regain her feet. "I hate these things!" She gave the skirts a furious shake. "As soon as I find what passes for an outlet mall in this blasted forest, I'm buyin' some decent pants!"
Gordo laughed. "Aw," he said, helping her over a moss-slick cluster of rocks, "I kinda like the dress. You're quite the medieval princess in it—Tudgeman would be in Middle Earth heaven if he were here."
It was Lizzie's turn to laugh. "Have I told you how very, very glad I am that you're the one here, Gordo?" Still, the compliment warmed her, and as her feet met earth again and Gordo relinquished his hold on her elbow, she had to admit there was something about this place, about his clothes and that longer hair, that suited him as much as, if not more than, Tudgeman.
****
end of chapter 5
chapter notes:
I didn't delve too deeply into bubble universe mechanics, but if you're curious, here's where I found my little bit of info: w w w (dot) reocities (dot) com (slash) capecanaveral (slash) hangar (slash) 6929 (slash) h_kaku2 (dot) h t m l