Place of the Heart, Part 2 of 3 Charlotte was his first thought on waking. He had dreamed of her, of the night they had stood side by side at her window and she had wanted to walk outside in the moonlight. That night Meier had not acceded to her suggestion that they slip down the stairs and out the back door; why risk waking the household with their passing? He scooped her into his arms and leapt out the open window, landing smoothly despite the added burden. Charlotte had been pleasantly shocked at his gallant audacity, and they had strolled together beneath the moon. But in Meier's dream, there had been no moonlight, and they had walked in a place Meier had never seen before -- an overgrown wilderness, not the well-trimmed lawns of the Elbourne estate. And the dream segued, as dreams do, from the comfort of Charlotte at his side to the comfort of earth beneath his feet, and presently he could see the bare earth, rich and crumbly and fertile, and he burrowed into it and felt its embrace... She had wanted him to live, and she had wanted him to be happy. At the moment the two options seemed mutually exclusive. But Meier remembered his dreams so seldom, and this one seemed so vivid and eloquent: surely there was some truth in it. Charlotte's estate was on another world, but this world was a vast wilderness -- everywhere outside the dome. Meier reflected dryly that it wasn't just a wilderness; it was a jungle out there. Not literally; the climate was moderate, perhaps even a little cool. But all the area he had seen was a mass of thick forest, mature hardwoods in full leaf literally as far as the eye could see, even viewed from above the great dome itself. Had it always been thus? Had a portion of the great forest necessarily been destroyed when the city was constructed? Even if so, the planet certainly had forest to spare, and the dome was a thing of beauty, if more fragile than its makers evidently realized. But was there no earth here? Or rather, was it all thick with roots, none exposed where a vampire could dig his fingers into it? Something about the forest made Meier want to savor its texture and scent, revel in the warmth beyond warmth that earth of any temperature offered when it sheltered his kind. It had been a long time since Meier had touched earth other than that of the "shrine" at the city's heart, and he found himself suddenly longing for it with a kind of homesickness. The ship had exits other than the docking airlock, and Meier made his way to one, unconcerned that it opened well above the treetops. * * * In his circling Meier spotted a break in the canopy. On closer inspection, it proved to be the site of a giant windfall: a great tree that had toppled over, probably in a storm. Its roots had covered -- now had uncovered -- an area much wider than his wingspan. The torn earth was still somewhat moist from the previous night's rain. Meier alighted on it, then knelt and drove his fingers in. How to describe what the earth was like for a creature that thrived on its touch? Meier hadn't realized how grief and frustration had left him tense yet drained until that refreshment flowed through him. He sank further with a happy sigh, eyes falling shut in release. The earth seemed to draw him down, and Meier acceded, stretching out flat with no regard for his clothing or his dignity, cape spreading about him. For some minutes he was in an almost sleeplike state, lost in the earth that succored his nature, and perhaps this was why it was only upon opening his eyes that he realized he was not alone. Except for his slowly widening eyelids, Meier remained unmoving. What gazed down at him from beside the roots of the great tree was unlike any Earth animal he had ever seen. It was large -- certainly taller than his own height, and greater in bulk as well. It stood on two feet, though the white expanse of its belly suggested it would be equally at home on four. Most of its fur was gray: the eyes were large and round in a short-muzzled face with short upward-pointing ears. Meier tried to compare the creature to something in his previous experience and tentatively decided that it looked like a grossly overinflated squirrel, sans bushy tail. Meier couldn't tell whether it found him particularly interesting or simply had a naturally wide-eyed gaze, like an owl. At least it didn't seem inclined toward aggression; Meier didn't particularly feel like scrapping with a large, furry animal, not in this peaceful place. Even while reflecting how incautious it was, he let his eyes fall shut again. When he opened them at last, the creature was gone. Meier did stare at that. He should have heard its coming or at least its going; his ears could detect the movements of much smaller creatures. Yet this huge being had come and gone, silent as a ghost. Meier briefly considered the possibility that he had been hallucinating, but discarded the thought; he doubted he would have imagined _that_. And if he had imagined an intruder, he probably would have found its presence annoying at best; more likely threatening. This creature had simply been ... _there_, like the forest. It had belonged, like the rain. Meier closed his eyes again. The rain, the vines, the breeze, the very earth: what else had the city's dome shut out? Had he never discovered the dome's breach, he might not have found all this either, nor ever seen the peaceful wide-eyed creature. Why think of it as peaceful? Meier could not answer this; it simply seemed true, like all the rest. Meier once more let his eyes fall shut, and above him the stars turned their paths through the sky. The horizon was growing lighter when Meier at last retired to his coffin. He had separated himself from the earth with mixed feelings; lying there, he felt as if he had somehow come home again. He had considered burrowing underground for the day but decided against it; there were too many unknowns on this strange planet. And that day he dreamed again -- of the comfort of the earth, and of Charlotte at his side. He had gained her trust the night he scooped out a grave for her pet, concealing the little hole under masses of periwinkle. Later Charlotte had told him she wanted flowers on her grave too, especially if they would grow there. Meier had thought the periwinkle was primarily for concealment -- no one in the household had been particularly sympathetic to Charlotte's grief. "It's not just that, Meier," she had told him. "When we put flowers on graves, we do it in memory of the dead, but it's out of feelings for the hearts of the living. When someone dies, it leaves an empty place. When we put flowers on a grave, it's a way of filling that ... filling that emptiness with something beautiful until something else can grow naturally in its place. Don't you think it would be wonderful if flowers grew there naturally? I don't know why more people don't plant flowers on graves, so they can grow there all the time. Meier --" she looked at him suddenly "-- you'll put flowers on my grave, won't you? Maybe ... maybe even plant flowers there...?" "Charlotte, you'll live for so many more years --" "But I want to be buried in a beautiful place, someday. Where there are flowers and trees and sunshine..." Meier woke with the echo of her words in his ears. He preferred not to contemplate sunshine, however Charlotte might have loved it. But there was certainly no dearth of trees on this planet, and surely where trees grew there would be flowers. "Is that what you want?" he asked as he gazed at her cold, placid features. "You dreamed of living here with me just as you dreamed of being buried in a beautiful place. At least I can make that second dream come true. If I can bear to part with what remains of someone I've loved so deeply." That was the worst of it, Meier reflected as he lay on the earth again. The experience lacked the novelty that had given it spice the previous night, but it was still pleasant to lie on the earth, even that of an unfamiliar planet. Meier could feel the difference now, in some indefinable way. Perhaps the magnetic field differed, or the gravitational pull, or perhaps the lifeforms here had evolved along totally different lines from those on the planet where he had lived all his long life. The place was alien, if only in subtle ways. Would Charlotte have found it beautiful? Meier thought so. The canopy seemed unbroken -- indeed, Meier started his perambulatory exploration at the foot of the great fallen tree because he didn't particularly care to try descending anywhere else. But the branches that blocked his flight also blocked sunlight from the understory; there was very little undergrowth, and Meier often found it easy to imagine that he was not out of doors but in a great hall with a leafy roof and rough-hewn columns, the floor carpeted with leaves. The Vampire King himself could not boast a castle so extensive as what had grown here; what king might claim such a domicile as this? Meier pulled aside a mass of cable-like vines and recoiled as clouds upon clouds of yellow and brown fluttered aside, up, away, a few right over his head. They were moths, huge moths, their wings brown and yellow and not far from silent. As the mass of them dwindled, Meier realized he had come upon a grassy clearing, and the moths had been thronged about the great gray creature he had seen the evening before. It was sitting up like a bear, hind legs extended before it, and its ears twitched up attentively as it looked across the clearing. "I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to intrude," Meier said reflexively, before he realized how foolish he sounded -- apologizing to an animal. And the creature in fact seemed to expect no apology; it bared its teeth in what certainly looked like a grin, then motioned downward, toward something near its side. Moved as much by curiosity as compliance, Meier crossed the soft grass to stand near the creature -- and recoiled again, for the object of its attention was a small, clear spring. Running water! Meier had no desire to be near even such a small amount of it. But the creature rose to its full two-legged height -- a good head more than Meier's own -- and motioned toward the spring, and Meier hesitantly drew close enough to peer into the water. It was very clear, and the current was not too strong. The bottom was common earth and rocks and ... "A shellfish," Meier realized, and murmured the words aloud. The creature responded with an "Awwwww" and bent over to dip a great paw into the water. One claw very deliberately extended and tapped the shell, and it slowly opened to reveal a mass of pink muscle and a tiny pale globe -- a pearl. Meier watched, fascinated. This was not the normal response of a shellfish to a tap on its carapace; that much he was sure of. Was it magic? Mesmerism? Or -- ? Meier's first thought was that the great creature sought a shellfish dinner; his second, that it had chosen an innovative method of pearl harvesting. The creature stirred the water, swirling a paw around the shellfish so that the pearl trembled and then was lofted out. It lay still on the mud for a moment, and then the claw-tips closed about it like pincers and lifted it out as the shellfish drew shut again. The creature turned toward Meier and stretched its mouth, baring great, square teeth in an impossible smile, then extended the pearl toward him so it nearly touched his chest. Meier did touch his chest. "For me?" "Awwwwp," the creature confirmed. Meier extended his hand a little uncertainly -- had he understood? -- and the creature pressed the pearl firmly into his palm. It gave the pearl a gentle tap with a claw-tip, then gestured aside and up. Meier's gaze followed the gesture; the city dome was visible over the trees. The creature pointed to the pearl, to the dome, to the pearl, and then to the dome again. "You want me to take the pearl to the city?" Meier asked. The creature closed Meier's hand around the pearl as if to be certain he wouldn't lose it. "I do accept it. I wish I understood you." Not knowing what else to do, Meier half-bowed in acknowledgment and thanks, then looked from the pearl to the dome and back. "Awww," the creature observed, perhaps favorably impressed with Meier's efforts. It crossed the clearing, looked back with another impossible smile, and seemed to vanish into the forest. Intrigued, Meier followed. What had seemed trackless understory was now manifestly a path, and the creature paused on it to turn back and smile again. Curiosity truly piqued, Meier strode along after the great furred form. The forest seemed to open about them, and small moths fluttered up from the nearly silent leaves to crisscross their paths in blurs of gray, then vanish beyond the trees. Time had ceased to exist. There were only the quiet sounds of the forest and the two sets of footsteps: the great gray form padding along with speed and hush that should have been impossible for its size, and Meier with a vampire's grace and dignity in its wake. Meier wondered if he had been in a trance; he hadn't been aware that he or the great creature had stopped, but they were standing at an edge of the forest -- and beside the dome. Bushes grew thick here, thick all about -- but on the side toward the dome, the leaves were crumpled and yellow. A great claw stroked the length of one so gently it never moved; when Meier reached out to echo the gesture, a sprinkle of leaves floated down to join their graying companions on the ground nearer the dome. There was a zone of emptiness about its pallor. "The dome kills them," Meier said softly. It made sense; whoever had placed the city here would not have wanted tree roots unseating the foundation, or branches poking through the city's skin. Something had breached that dome in one place anyway, but for the rest, it still produced whatever substance or radiation kept the vegetation in check about it. The creature picked up one of the leaves, balancing it on a claw tip for a moment before it fell again. "It is a shame they die," Meier allowed. "But I can't undo this ... I can't control the dome." Through all this he had held the pearl in his fist, and he opened his hand to look at it again. The creature once more pointed to the pearl and then the dome. "They're connected." His companion meant as much, but Meier followed it no further. "My mother had a pearl tiara," Meier said absently. "She had a lot of jewelry, but I always especially remembered that. I saw her wear it only once. There was a great meeting of Nobles when I was still very young; too young to really understand. But the ladies were all so beautiful in their finery. She let me hold her tiara while a servant adjusted her hair, and I asked her what it was made of. She told me, 'They're pearls. Shellfish make them for us. Most gems come from the earth, which serves us with many kinds of them. But among living creatures, only shellfish honor us this way.'" Meier frowned pensively. "I'd never thought much about it. I've never seen where pearls come from before. The little animals make them..." Unconsciously, his hand closed about the pearl again. * * * He was still gazing at the pearl when he sat by Charlotte's side shortly before sunrise. It had been a night of strange events. He didn't know what to make of the creature he had encountered. Surely it spoke a language, even if not one he could understand. It had been very concerned about some connection between the pearl and the city dome -- but what? Would Charlotte have understood it better? He thought of an old vampire who had told him a number of stories that had scandalized his father: forbidden myths of the Nobles' descent, old human ballads that turned their bright mirror on an impossible world. There had been a tale of a pearl who was not a pearl, a city that was not a city, and eternal life of a sort the Nobles barely deigned to sneer at. But the only clear detail that Meier could remember was a place where flowers bloomed all about the pearl... * * * Meier did not recall his dreams of that day, but the stuff of them must have coalesced in his mind. Charlotte was a thing of earth, not a porcelain doll to be hauled about like a child's toy. He had lost her when she lost her last breath; cryogenic preservation of her body was a sham that dishonored her. Her memory lived in his heart, and was he not also a creature of earth? As he had found comfort lying in it, so would she. After instructing the computer to initiate the process of thawing Charlotte -- he would carry her to her grave as the body of his beloved, not an elaborately attired icicle -- he asked for information on pearls. Meier found that his attention wandered when he tried to listen to the ship's synthesized voice, and it displayed the information on a screen. Shellfish didn't simply produce pearls as part of their life process; a pearl resulted from the introduction of foreign matter. The shellfish would coat a grain of sand or a chip of rock with layer on layer of nacre, covering over the foreign matter with the stuff of its shell. <<The pearls that we treasure are irritants to the creatures that are their hosts,>> Meier reflected. <<Even a layer of nacre doesn't stop it being an irritant; the creature adds more and more as long as it's there. Shellfish can't spit things out, and we exploit their weakness...>> It would take twenty-four hours to restore Charlotte to room temperature. Meier spent most of the night performing an aerial survey, trying to find that glade where he had communed with the great gray creature and received the gift of the pearl. He had thought he had an excellent sense of direction, and it had to be nearby; he and the creature had simply walked to the dome from the clearing. But although Meier could find the great fallen tree where he had sought comfort in the earth, he never saw another cleared place. All around the dome was unbroken forest. Whatever his own feelings about sunlight, Meier knew it was humans' rightful milieu, and Charlotte had loved it; she should lie under the open sky. Very well; if he couldn't find the clearing from the air, he could retrace his steps on the ground. If he had reached it once, he could once more. Meier was still telling himself that well into the next evening as he bore Charlotte's form through the magnificent woodland. He had walked to the opening where the great tree's roots were exposed, and had taken what he was sure was the same direction -- now for much longer. The gray understory seemed endless, more endless than the grandest of castles among the Nobility. A vampire might rule a castle. But who ruled a world? Meier stopped in the trackless woodland and gazed at Charlotte's face. What would she think of this? Couldn't he at least find a place that was green? Who would know where the green places were on this planet? The great creature. This was its -- his? -- world. He mourned his dead too, if his reaction to the poisoned bushes near the dome was any indication. Surely he would understand if he knew -- Meier also wanted to do right by the dead, if he could only find the way. "Where are you?" Meier asked softly. "Charlotte would delight in the place where I saw you last. What must I do to let her rest there?" His shoulders drooped. "Where are you, friend?" <<Friend. Why did I call that animal "friend"?>> But the world subtly, silently shifted, and a great brown-and-yellow moth blundered into Meier's face, so he sputtered and blinked and stumbled backward a pace -- for with Charlotte in his arms, he couldn't readily brush it away. No sooner was his vision clear than another moth flew toward him, and another, and another, until the world was a mass of moths that danced blindingly about him. But they had presaged the great creature two evenings before, and Meier stepped forward into them. Three paces later the moths had vanished, and Meier stood at the edge of the little clearing -- alone. Meier stood blinking in wonder at the impossibility of it. He could hear the spring where he had seen the shellfish. There was grass -- not dead leaves -- under his feet. And where grass grew, the good, welcoming earth lay beneath. Meier gently laid down Charlotte's form and dug his claws into the soil. He had kissed that cold cheek and pressed his own into it, had felt the surrounding earth like open arms, like a waiting home ... but for Charlotte only, creature of earth though he was. He could not bear to watch her vanish into that final darkness but averted his eyes to the earth-mound that rapidly dwindled beneath his hands as he filled in what he had dug. At last he knelt at the foot of the grave and let his gaze travel up its length. He had heard no sound, but there stood the creature, its great eyes solemn. The two held silence for a long moment before Meier said, "I hope you don't mind. Charlotte ... should rest in a green place under the sky. Here in your world." "Awww," the creature assured him. Meier had not noticed before, but it bore a sprig of green in its claw-tips -- the one delicate part of that great furred bulk -- and it bent over and carefully pressed this into the head of the earth mound. "Thank you," Meier said softly. He felt a little embarrassed that he hadn't thought of adding plant life and wondered if the creature's gift was confirmation that there were no flowers in this place; even honoring the dead, the creature brought not flowers but... Meier stared. The sprig was moving in the windless night -- no, it was _growing_. Shoots emerged, and leaves unfurled from them, and the shoots branched and multiplied, the leaves grew thick and hid the bare earth, rolling like a wave along the length of the mound until it was as green as the green all about it. And then tiny gems of purple appeared and unfolded: blossoms of periwinkle, like those on the grave he had dug for Charlotte's pet sparrow on the night she first truly spoke with him. Meier simply froze. The periwinkle runners edged into the grass, their growth slowing to a halt as green met green mere inches from his knees. At last -- with great effort -- he extended a trembling hand toward them, but stopped short of contact. If it was an illusion, it might be fragile as a soap bubble -- and even if it was only an illusion, Meier could not bring himself to shatter it so nonchalantly. Unhesitatingly the creature stooped and plucked a blossom-tipped runner. Meier watched, his amazement growing -- if that was possible -- as it came to his side and bent down to extend a tiny bit of miracle. Meier at last found his tongue and the power of motion. With a murmured "Thank you" he carefully extracted the sprig from those claws that dwarfed his own. He had thought himself alone on this planet, had thought the City of the Night his only refuge. But here was both companionship and comfort, in the wilderness outside the city walls. The realization freed something within him, and unthinking he pressed his face into the silky gray fur that was suddenly so close and so soft, so welcoming and so much warmer than his tears. * * * End part 2 of 3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------