Landing, by Joseph Rienstra
Written June 5 - July 8, 2003

Presumed lost, then found

Marie Mouchet popped out of the dumbwaiter shaft grinning. Her braids and giant yellow bows thudded against the ceiling, and she landed on the bed.

"Papa!   Maman!" she cried, tugging on their sleeping hands.

She climbed onto the huge breathing mountain of flesh that was her father, and buried her hands in his savage black beard to tickle his chin.

"Papa! Papa!"

Her mother smiled without opening her eyes.

Papa grunted sleepily and lifted her with his index finger.

"Mrraugh... Mon petit cabbage head. You make such a lot of noise..."   he rumbled, then slept again.   She bounced giggling off his belly onto mother, who sighed and sat up.

"Marie, you must show me something?" Madame Mouchet asked, taking Marie's hand.

"Oui, maman!" Marie and her yellow bows orbited at arm's length, propelled by youthful antigravity.   "The world, maman!"

Madame Mouchet stood at the bedroom window, her back straight, her dress immaculate despite nine hour's sleep, her mouth smiling the eternal, sad, gentle smile.   Before her was endless space.   Far above roiled faint purple nebulae, and below a flock of inexperienced stars conversed in vaporific tones.   The interstellar air flickered coolly with streams of telegossip, tiny red fish, saffron butterflies and a baby dragon, serpentine like an orphaned waterfall.   But all this went unnoticed:   before them shone a planet, exquisitely round, with undulating iridescent oceans, fissured mountains, softly blown forests, and chrysolite deserts.

Marie clung to Madame's dress in awe.   "It is beautiful, mama!   Can I go down?"

"Later, Marie."

Marie leaned over the balcony and fell, catching herself with a foot. "It is a long way down, maman."

"Who knows where you would land?"   Madame Mouchet retreated from the neon glow of space creatures and stars.   "I will be in the chapel, Marie.   Run along and play."


Behold the Mouchet Castle sailing in emptiness:   exalted spires silhouetted against the moon;   bridges and keeps toned from stone like music, and shingled in scalloped burgandy and cobalt;   indigo tapestries hung in halls staffed by punctilious, electroplated servants.

In the centre soared the vaulted ceilings of the Great Hall, an eternal starlit twilight pierced by a single silver staircase, which Marie spiralled down, and bounded across the black and white chess floor.

Marie ricochetted through the castle's vertical labyrinth of stone and metal, a vernal flash through predawn numbness.   Deep in the foundations she found the crimson-robed aerial mages, whose power propelled the castle through the interstellar void.   She paused respectfully outside their circle to listen to the hypnotic chant and stammer.

When the mages paused to imbibe violet nectar, Marie tugged on the long sleeve of the the Archmage Draxus.

"Merr Draxus!" she squealed, "I saw the planet!   When do we land?"

Draxus drunk deeply.   "Patience, child," he gasped, wiping the liquid from his sharp white beard.   "There is a time for everything, and landing castles is a rare event."

"I want~" Marie paused, suddenly noticing a ginger thread of magic unravel in the centre of the room.

"What is it, child?" Archmage Draxus' coruscating gaze followed hers, but already the thread had dissolved.

"Magic~" she breathed.

"Nonsense."   Draxus tugged his beard unhappily.   "Effective magic is invisible."

The mages resumed working, and Marie crept up the stairways, her tiny face seeming to float, peering between the balustrades.

She did not see the limpid black eyes that blinked in the darkness, nor the pyridine elf that emerged from those shadows to follow Marie's riant steps among the stairs and arc-boutants.


Monsieur Mouchet sat down at the head of the table, shaking the entire room with his settled bulk.   Various creatures and staff served and ate and talked, while Madame scrutinized her soup with a puzzled expression.   A dark little elf watched her nervously.

Madame turned to the elf with eyebrow raised.   "Alkina?"

The pyradine elf gave a trembling curtsey.   "Madame."

Madame gave the bowl to the elf.   "Alkina, you put brucine in the soup.   Be careful with brucine;   it's poisonous."

Alkina accepted the bowl, her eyes large and watering.   How did Madame know?   Alkina wondered what to say.... "Oh, no!   It is?" or "I'm sorry."   Perhaps she should drink the soup immediately: the Doomlight Assasins Guild would kill her if they heard of her bungling.   Instead, she curtseyed again and left in glum silence.

She rested in a side passage, silently cursing herself and everything.   She was so ashamed!   She had been locked in a castle drifting in outer space for a week with her victims, and all of them still healthier than she.

She heard hurried footsteps and shrunk into a doorway.   Little Marie flashed past, and one of her yellow bows smacked the elf in the face.

Alkina unhappily listened to the disappearing echoes, then suddenly abandoned the poisoned bowl and gave chase.

She murmured the Elder's words as she ran: "Do not waste time, Alkina... 'Too late' are words meant for clients."


Alkina's body, toned by years of ruthless training, began to pant and stumble as she followed Marie.   Marie always took the most difficult paths outside the castle, running along narrow ledges, jumping from statue to buttress to windowsill.   The endless space and stars far below spoke in hollow tones to Alkina, but Marie followed her own music.

Marie paused to peer inside a window, and saw Monsieur and Madam Mouchet wrestling with a giant tungsten wheel.   The entire castle shuddered as the wheel thudded into place on a spire of amethyst in the centre of an arcane machine in Monsieur's laboratory.

Marie scrambled upwards, towards the flying spires and bridges of the castle, and Alkina struggled after her, clutching desperately to the stones.

*

"Merci, my sweet," puffed Monsieur.   "I could not handle that myself."

"It was nothing."   Madame stood straight and regarded the huge curves of the machine.   "This is a gateway.   Where is the door?"

Monsieur grunted.   "Emotive resonance," he explained with a wave of his hand.   "Instead of a door with edges, you are the fulcrum."

Madame blinked.   "One of those?   But this is mechanical."

Monsieur leaned down to inspect a joint.   "I believe it should work in this universe.   A most interesting universe, this one is."   He lifted up a block of obsidian to inspect the joint's oil cache.

Madame smiled absently and descended counter-clockwise stairways.


The topmost spires bristled with statues and ornamental pillars.   Marie straddled an alabaster unicorn, humming into the ubiquitous sky.

A scuffling sound exposed a little black elf behind her.   "Oh!   Hello!"   Marie smiled.   "Do you want to play?"

Alkina looked guilty and frightened all at once.   "Uh, play?   What do you mean?   Play what?"

Marie giggled.   "Anything!   How about jumping?"   She leaped from the unicorn to the snout of a sea monster six feet away.

Marie looked back, but the elf was lying on the unicorn, hugging it tightly.   Far below, little stars and the looming planet glistened.   "I don't want to play," moaned Alkina.

Marie jumped back to the unicorn and patted the elf.   "Whatsa matter?   You afraid of heights?"

"Not normally," said the elf miserably.

Marie stood on tiptoe on the statue's horn, looking away into endless void.   "There is a lot of down-ness around.   And like maman said, Who knows where you would land?"   Marie heard the elf stirring behind her.   "My Maman's wise, she- whoa~!"

Alkina nudged Marie into endless space, then watched the bright little girl tumble away.

"Wheeeee~!" shouted Marie.   "This is fun!   Come on!"   She waved back at the elf.

Marie wasn't falling!   The elf leaned over farther to watch.   Marie's giant yellow bows were spinning like maple seeds!   She held her arms out, coasting through space like an ice-skater.

Alkina's foot slipped, and she dismounted the unicorn with a shriek.   She plummeted, a lump of blackness in the empty dark.

"Wait for me!" shouted Marie gleefully.


Archmage Draxus was quickly approaching an unplanned turning point in his career. These sudden career shifts were common among spatial mages. At the moment, though, he was blithely orchestrating the mages' spatial manipulations that would land the castle.

Far above their chamber of magic, Monsieur Mouchet was activating his new invention for a test run. Madame sat nearby, listening as the behemoth clanked and whirred a haunting reversible tune. Mouchet connected the primary power supply, and suddenly everything stopped.

Draxus awoke in endless forest, beautiful as imagination, flowers and fruits sprouting from the conceptual matrix. There was no space here, only the self-transforming pathways from tree to tree...