The Truth of Things Unseen

Gintas and Taliette walked together through the gardens. Gintas put his arm around her shoulders, the way her father never had. In his free hand, he twirled a pry bar.

"Tools of the trade," he explained, without really explaining.

They came to a wall. He produced a key, opened a heavy steel gate and together they entered a hidden garden. Passion flowers scaled the walls like princes on the tower. Little birds sang in a gilded aviary. The honey scent of roses was thick in the warm evening air.

In the middle of the round enclosure was a large flat stone like a grave slab.

"I’m going to show you something now, something hardly anyone else knows. The reason I’m so rich. It's a secret, you understand? You must never disclose this."

"Looks like a rock to me," she said. Voice cool. Don't even look at him.

"Yes, my dear, it's what's under the rock that counts."

Grunting with effort, Gintas used his pry bar to lift the edge of the stone. Despite herself, Taliette couldn't help leaning in to try to see. She stayed behind him out of view, so he wouldn't see her peeking. He got his fingers under it and heaved, wiry muscles straining, until it pivoted and fell backwards on the lawn.

Underneath, there was nothing but soil, worms, and a few scuttling centipedes.

"It’s dirt," said Taliette, disappointed. "Are you a farmer or something?"

“No, my dear, I am not a fucking farmer.”

“You sell bugs?”

She stepped forward and went to stand in the rectangle where the slab had been.

"Don't." Gintas held her back, but her heart held her back more firmly.

"You have to have the right eyes. Look for what isn’t there. You’ll know it when you see it."

"What will I see? It’s just a bunch of worms."

"Look harder."

"What am I going to see, smaller worms?"

"Just look, please."

Gintas was watching her very closely now. She felt the force of his attention on the side of her head as she gazed into the dark brown rectangle of earth. There was something unsettling here. A movement behind the curtains in an empty room. A knife placed carefully in the middle of a hallway. Footsteps in the attic when no one is home.

She concentrated on the feeling, but it retreated before her, like shadows before a lantern.

"This is stupid, there's nothing there."

"Don't try to see it," said Gintas. "You have to catch it unawares. Just looking at it makes it go away."

"What is it, ghosts or something? There's nothing there. Oh..." and just like that, she saw it, and it was as though she could never not have seen it.

"There’s a missing piece".

He was nodding at her now, smiling. "A missing piece of what?"

It was a hole, but not a hole in the ground. It was like something folded sideways, and the world creased up around it. Now that she knew it was there, she wondered how she had ever missed it. It was as plain as day.

"It's like I can see it, but I can't look at it. Like when you look away from the sun, and you can still see the green shape of it, but you can't look at it because every time you do it moves."

"That’s good," he said carefully. "What should be there?"

"There should be a rock and a bit of old tree stump. It’s missing. It’s like there’s a hole, but not a hole in the ground. Like someone’s just taken a knife to the world and cut a bit out."

Gintas was smiling at her, pleased, and a touch of something else. Relief? She was his little investment, after all. He had paid good money for her.

"That’s very good," he said. "Most people never see them. Jessamy took more than a week. I had a feeling you would be good at it. Your mother could always see them."

Taliette resisted the urge to shiver, thinking of her mother, maybe looking down at this very spot, so many years before.

"Did she stand here?" she asked, and there was a strange feeling inside, like a tingling.

"Just there, a little to the left."

"How well did you know my mother?"

"Before she died, she made me promise to take care of you."

"So you bought my heart, and made me your slave?"

He looked at her sharply. "There are many ways to take care of someone."

"And this is yours?"

He sighed. "Sometimes the greatest freedom is found in willingly giving up a piece of one's freedom to another. You were a slave before I met you though you didn't know it. A slave to tradition. A slave to marriage," He pronounced the last word with a sort of a snarl. "Your father would have sold you to some foppish lordling who would have wasted every little piece of you and that would have been the greatest shame."

The empty place rippled in time to his words as though it agreed. It had no shape, no colour. I was not black or grey, and yet it was there. It was the outline of a place that was not, and could now not ever have been.

Taliette kept her expression neutral, she prowled around the edge of it, inspecting it from all sides, trying to ignore the sense of creeping dread that she felt when she looked at it.

"I offered you permission," he said. "I know how the world works. I can make things happen. This is how we make things happen."

He put his hand into his pouch and pulled out her heart. It pulsed in time with the beating of the tear in the weave. "I'll break the binding right now if you want. I mean it, I've got plenty of money. I'll hire someone else for the mission."

"Then why don't you?" she snapped back. "Why me?"

"Because I don't want second best. I want Leola's daughter. We were good friends. Very good. She was a woman who could do things too, but she chose marriage instead and your father ruined her."

He held the stone out to her on the palm of his hand. She didn't take it. Instead, she pulled a cane from the flowerbed.

"What does this thing do?" she asked, prodding at the empty surface with the stick. The no-place resisted, then as she applied pressure, the tip of the cane sank in just a little, like thick tar.

"Careful," said Gintas. "Don't touch it. It's not exactly safe."

She pulled on the cane but it wouldn't come out. It remained stuck. She yanked hard but it remained.

"They only go one way," he explained. "Once something goes in, it can't come back out again. There's only one direction inside." He took the cane from her and snapped it. The broken tip disappeared into the ground.

"Do people get stuck?" she asked.

"You can't fall in unless you can see them. You'll have to be extra careful now. We've marked all the ones in the grounds with yellow ribbon."

"Wait, there are more of these?"

"Oh yes, they're everywhere. Now you've seen this one, you'll find them all over."

She stared at the thing, letting the information sink in.

"In your study?"

He watched her through narrowed eyes. "My, you're a sharp one, aren't you? I'll have to watch you."

"What do you do with it?"

"You crawl inside, and if you're lucky, it takes you somewhere else."

"Somewhere else like..?"

"Oh, not far, usually. This one comes out again on that wooden platform near the top of the wall."

"It's a tunnel?"

"It's a Way, but the lads here call it a Mousehole. This is just a little one I keep for practice. It's easy, really, provided you've got the body for it. You have to be thin and flexible, or you'll get stuck. You'll do fine. See the wooden platform? I’m going to meet you up there."

A little scaffold was built against the wall. The stones in that section were a different colour and less regular than the rest of the wall, as though they were part of something older.

"It comes out up in the air?"

"It's not a hole under the ground, remember. It's a tear in the weave. It comes out where it wants to."

Something he had said was nagging at her. "If you're lucky?" The words sent a delicious little shiver down her back.

"Please don't be under the illusion that any of this is safe, my dear."

She met his stare and held it. He was pretending to be bored, but she could see his eyes gleaming. She had to press her lips to suppress a little quirk that was forcing its way into the corner of her mouth. There was only one possible reason why he would show her all this. She composed her expression, eyes half closed, the barest hint of a pout. Untouchable.

"You want me to go in there?"

"Yes. Are you ready?"

She shrugged. "Sure, why not."