I was bored, and I felt that was unjust. Not because I felt I was being wronged, but because I was in the wrong. As the tram continued to churn through the darkness and Azarias whistled a song, I couldn't shake the uneasiness.
I noticed that Aleksi was tapping his foot, and his expressions were cycling rapidly between different emotions. "Are you okay?" My question woke him from a stupor. "Of course I'm okay. Why wouldn't I be?"
He whipped his head backwards and slammed it hard against the tram wall, startling Azarias and me. "That hurt… I didn't mean to do that; maybe I need to stretch for a second."
He shifted his body like he was going to stand up, but then he didn't stand up. "I can't move my legs… I can't even feel them."
I was about to respond, but then it happened to me too. I didn't have an arm anymore. I looked at the piece of meat attached to my shoulder and could see nothing had changed, but I didn't "have" it; I felt nothing there.
I glanced over at Flox, who hadn't reacted all this time. He was utterly still and staring at the wall. I used my working arm to wave my hand in front of his eyes, but he didn't even blink. When I shoved him and he didn't react, I looked at Azarias in panic.
Azarias was visibly alarmed. "Everyone, start talking and don't stop. Say anything, even if it's gibberish. You need to keep your mind active."
I had learned to listen to him in these situations, so I alternated between reciting the alphabet and counting up from zero. Aleksi did the same, his tone of voice constantly fluctuating with the changing of his expressions. After a second, though, his expressions started calming down, and his legs were released from the paralysis. As for me, I could feel my arm again. I sighed with relief and kept talking as fast as I could.
Flox still wasn't making any noise. Azarias slapped him hard in the face, and there was a loud crack. I winced, hoping no bones had been broken. He blinked lazily while Azarias grabbed his face and shouted, "Start talking, start talking, start talking."
Flox wrinkled his eyebrows and obeyed groggily. His voice cleared up with each word, and he started to panic as he returned to reality. He said to Azarias, "What's going on, and how do you know what to do?"
Azarias shook his head. "It's an old superstition, but it's real here. If we don't keep our minds occupied, the paralysis will be permanent. If this trip is going to be long, the natural method seems like continuous conversation, which makes it harder for the mind to drift than repetition. The problem comes from the other risk: any emotions we feel while communicating could be twisted by the mental effects, leading us to attack each other. Stay to yourselves for now; we can save talking for when we start to get tired."
I wondered how long we might have to stay awake, but shook my head knowing it wasn't worth thinking about. As I counted to a thousand and back down again, my thoughts drifted. I thought of the four we had killed, the prospect of my own death or a fate even worse, about what would happen when we came back, about the other people in the tram, and about why I was doing this at all.
I distracted myself with a lingering question. There were people of varying physical ages in Alavieska, but there were no children whatsoever. I asked Azarias about it, and he said, "Age is said to mean wisdom; thankfully, in this world there's no reason to bring that lie up. There are no elders, other than me, of course."
Then, something else occurred to me.
Alavieska.
That name, when had I first heard it?
I asked Azarias about it. He smiled and said, "Names can't be removed so easily."
The tram wall suddenly started to shake. I slammed into the wall as the floor tilted and the tiny spiders went everywhere. After the shaking subsided, Azarias was cowering in fear. "It's turbulence; I'm terrified of airplanes."
I furrowed my eyebrows, as I had no idea what an airplane was.
A seemingly endless amount of time passed as we fought to stay awake. Finally, the tram shuddered to a halt. I asked Azarias, "How long do you think it's been?" His guess was three days.
He reached up and pushed the hatch open. Above us was an overcast sky. I had the urge to climb out and explore, but first, the three of us had to sleep. The hatch swung shut again.
I woke up not feeling refreshed. The other three were already up.
Azarias volunteered to go out first, and nobody objected. He climbed onto the tram's roof, then signaled for the rest of us that it looked safe.
A dead forest with crisscrossing ash catwalks stretched out beyond the tram platform. The air smelled like chemicals.
There was a platinum umbrella lying on the ground. I picked it up, then looked at the sky. "Is it going to start raining?"
As if in response, sizzling rain fell onto the umbrella. The others ran toward me and joined me under the canopy.
My jaw dropped open as I looked up at the forest. Countless bizarre objects had been awoken by the rain and were dancing around frantically. A plastic bag firing rusted blades, an inverted ladder with electrified steps, a tall hat that spread darkness wherever it flew, a screeching harmonica surrounded in a cloud of lightning. One suddenly shot toward Azarias: a brush dripping with paint. He reached out and caught it an inch from his eye. "I've never been much good at art, but…"
He snatched the umbrella from my hands and dashed forward, forcing the rest of us to follow or die a sizzling death. "What are you thinking? Don't you care about our odds of survival?" I shouted while dodging across the catwalks.
Azarias spun in circles with the paintbrush extended in his hand. It sprayed paint everywhere and coated the sullen trees with colorful hues. The world looked brighter and brighter with each passing second. "This is the first part of our repayment. Do we deserve to act so cautiously after what we've done?"
He was dancing freely. Did he have no fear?
No, he had fear, but he danced anyway, with a purpose.
My clumsy movements as I chased the umbrella's canopy couldn't be called dancing, and were helpless stumbles. I felt better when I saw it was the same for Flox and Aleksi. Strokes of luck let me dodge objects that whizzed around constantly, until a pile of bones collided with me. They stuck to my body and fixed to each other to form an external frame. I didn't question it and kept running.
Finally, the rain stopped, and the Instruments, which I somehow knew were called that, the catwalk had changed color and was now bright orange. I could see the overall layout now that the ash had been washed away. At first I thought the catwalks twisted with no rhyme or reason, but there was something itching at my mind.
I paced between the catwalks, tracing my path on my palm as I went. The others asked what I was doing, but I didn't reply. Some time passed, and I had walked the entire network, wall to wall. We were closed in on both sides, and the walls seemed to be straight as far as I could see. I stared at the invisible message I had written on my palm: "You're hamsters."
"What's a hamster?" I was confused.
Azarias started laughing. "Some cryptic message that is."
As I continued to wonder, a jolt of pain ran up my arm from a drop of rain. Forgetting the umbrella, I sprinted uphill toward a beautiful green forest that began suddenly. The rain didn't seem to fall there, and I felt myself cross an invisible border. I turned around, and the other three were right behind me. We all sighed in relief.
I heard a zip, zip, zip as something whizzed around ahead of us. Another one of those weird Instruments?
My eyes crossed as a giant water droplet headed right for my face. It looked like it was smiling. Right as it was about to splash into me, there was a flash of movement from the side. The drop of water suddenly was a different color. I looked to the side to locate the source of the disturbance.
Aleksi was holding a barrel of oil. He had just thrown it at the droplet, and now it was covered. It couldn't seem to shake the coating off and stopped moving, giving us the opportunity to sprint away.
Dodging plants and animals, we made it to the edge of the forest right as the water droplet broke free from its prison. Then, out of nowhere, the bones that had formed a frame around me started to shake. The plants and animals around me were pulled toward me. Everything got crushed into a mass that churned and wrapped around me like a python. Pain raced up my arms and legs. I was crushed so tightly that I couldn't even scream.