The Tozer

Chapter Five, Summer 2037

Myles’s first dream on the floating planet rolled into action like an abstract slap.

He was with Langley sitting around a campfire. Color was there too, smiling and laughing along with Marshall who had a blindfold on and was next to a different girl he’d never seen before. And Mariah! They were just missing Pretty and Blink, their Leader and their Pilot.

The dream had life to it, unlike the feeble, swimming dreams he had in the past. “Langley?” He asked, knowing Langley couldn’t hear him. “Where’s Pretty?”

“You’re just going to ignore me?” Mariah said, offended.

Myles was startled; he thought the dream, though dipped in reality, was inanimate. 

“Mariah? You’re in my dream and awake?”

“What are you talking about? This is my dream,” Mariah said.

“You lived through the mirror right?”

“Of course!”

“Mariah, we made it!” Myles stood from the log he was on and ran over to her. “Mariah!”

“Myles, is that really you?” She asked as she was bowled over by Myles’s hug.

“Yes! Holy shit, I didn’t know when I would see you next!”

“Atlas is teaching me dreamscoping and it looks like, after a bunch of experimenting, it finally worked,” She looked behind her. “I thought he was going to join us.”

“I did,” A voice said from the campfire.

` Myles turned his head and saw that boyish face with the wise, sparkling eyes. Atlas. The name struck him like he’d heard it many times before. Like returning to school after all summer; the same school, same area, but somehow new.

“You’re Atlas?” Myles said.

“Are you Myles Willis?”

“Did Mariah tell you about me?”

“She did, but I believe we met before that,” Atlas said. “I wasn’t looking for you, but we met all the same.”

“I was younger. Why did you find me, anyway? I’m thinking it wasn’t random.”

“I need your help,” Atlas said.

“Why didn’t you contact Pretty?”

“Who is Pretty?”

“The Leader,” Myles said. “How much do you know?”

“Only your name, your fraise, and that you can help me. Help all of us, really,” Atlas said.

“Is that right?” 

“Myles, these dreams are scant. The connection could break at any instant. You’re the only way any of us can leave this planet and in return for helping you adapt to this planet, I am wanting you to include me in your crusade to leave.”

“You helping us?” Myles said, looking at Mariah.

“I’m teaching and protecting Langley and Mariah until you arrive at Stablefield. That’s where we are now.”

Myles’s face brightened. “We’re close-!”

The dream flickered,

Myles was awakened to Color’s tarp rattling and shuffling. She looked over at him and smiled, “Morning; You snore loudly when you’re on your back, and you were muttering.”

“No! No, no!” Myles said, scrambling to his knees. His head went dizzy, “Fuck! No!”

She had stopped folding the tarp and looked at him strangely. “Myles?”

 He stood, his face so stoic it could have been carved into Mount Rushmore. “I saw Mariah, our Clairvoyant, in a dream. Do you know a guy named Atlas?”

Color shook her head. Her eyes shone as round and bright as a doe, waiting for him to keep talking.

“Fuck, when will I get used to being this high up?” He grabbed his water and took a drink.

“Myles, what happened? What did you see? What was she doing?”

“I saw her, talked with her, and she’s alive!” His eyes were watering, but he knew he wouldn’t cry. “She’s at Stablefield. So is Langley. Marshall looks like he made a friend and was wearing some blindfold for some reason. It might be a metaphor or some weird dream shit. Color, I didn’t see Pretty or Blink. Are they dead?” 

“It doesn’t sound like it. You wouldn’t have asked like that if you thought they were dead.”

“We need to go now.” Myles said, hastily folding his tarp. “We gotta go.”

“We need to eat.”

“That too. That first, probably,” Myles agreed.

“We’re on the clock now, huh?”

“We want to get there as fast as possible if that’s what you mean.”

She tossed her backpack and tarp down, hanging on to her spear. She tossed it and caught it to inspect the tip. She gave him one look and darted into the woods. Myles had never seen someone sprint with as much finesse or speed as her; not forty seconds later, she was back with two “Coneys?” She had them in her hands.

“How did you do that?” Myles asked.

“Part of it was luck, the other part was experience in the woods and knowing how to spot rabbits, and the last part was me being able to throw a spear and knives with perfect accuracy every single time.”

“Why do you call them ‘coneys’?”

“The Lord of the Rings,” she tossed them on the ground and grabbed several sticks, leaves, and tinderbox. “I read the books and that was what Samwise Gamgee always called them. I know they’re rabbits or bunnies, but ‘coney’ sounds so fitting when you’re fixing to eat them.” 

“So you can read pretty well if you read all of the Lord of the Rings.” Myles started looking for thicker sticks to make a spit and a stand.

“Well, I heard people read it to me more than I read it.”

“Your Aunt?” He found several pretty good ones. Ah, and there was a stick shaped just like a slingshot that could hold up the other end.

“Yup, and the Elders.”

“Huh,” Myles shook his head. “You speared those two rabbits so fast. Still not over that.”

She chuckled.

Between the two of them, they created the fire, cooked the rabbits, ate (these two were skinnier, drier), and were on the road looking for another spot to refill their water all under two hours.

“Okay,” Myles started when they began walking. “What’re all the fraisers? This is something I should probably have asked a while ago.”

“Oh, my goodness, I never explained them to you. I feel so bad now. Okay.” She took a deep breath and smoothed her white hairs back, knuckles tapping into the spear strapped to her back.

“There are four fraiser types; you already know two: prophets, who have cool mental powers and can see the future and stuff, and hushes, who have complete muscular control. Then there are minders and hangers.”

“Start with hangers,” Myles said. 

“Okay, hangers can fly. They swoop around and can carry things while they fly too. Hannah used to carry us around for fun which is part of why I don’t get scared of the Ledge. I’ve jumped off a couple times with Hannah down below to catch me. The last time I did it, I fell probably halfway to the water because Hannah kept missing my hands. We got in trouble for doing that once her parents found out.”

Myles furrowed his brow. “Speaking of flying… When I first got here, I saw this massive floating bubble of water above the trees. What was that?”

Color’s jaw dropped, just like when Myles told her he was a prophet. “A ‘floating lake’?”

Myles shrugged. “More like a floating puddle; it was pretty small.”

“They’re water that picked itself up and started floating around. Usually it has to be really salty so that there are enough minerals to pick up all the water, but wow, those are really dangerous and easy to drown in. The water sucks you right to the center and doesn’t let you swim outward and you die. Was there a dead person or two in the floating lake?”

“No, heavens no, just a few small rocks.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes, that was a floating lake. Alright, back to fraiser types… minders can move rocks with their mind. They’re handy on the stone boats. Some of the older ones can move whole islands to different levels in the air. I heard that one fraiser killed a whole ton of Cavs by putting them on a rock and shooting them up into the air. Or he just made it drop to the ocean and they got eaten.”

“Don’t people live on the surface?” Myles played that question back in his head. “Hmm, like, do they live on the ocean down there?”

“We call it Below, and no, because of the struellas. Does your planet have struellas or call them by another name? Large snakes and turtles?”

It was Myles who was shocked now: “There are sea serpents and giant turtles?”

“Big enough to split entire seaborne ships,” Color nodded.

“Oh my gosh, they’re down there right now?”

“Yup,”

“Amazing. Okay, minders, they control stuff with their mind.” Myles was nodding.

“No, not just any stuff, only rocks. And when you’re little, you really got to practice to get good. All minders can throw redrock really well, but not so much the others. You have to practice with other rocks like marble or sedimentary or… I don’t know many rock names.”

“Okay… cool. That’s all they can do?”

“It’s pretty handy in this time since rocks are what we live on.”

“Right, right, I get that. Okay, the last fraiser type?”

“Minders can also control metals if they’re really good,” Color said. “I’ve never met one yet, but they sound awesome. They can shape it with their bare hands and into really intricate shapes and delicate structures. They can make a handful of arrowheads just by holding them and thinking about it; the metal listens to them. Kind of like how hushes’ bodies listen to them, the air listens to hangers… I don’t know what listens to prophets.” She laughed. “Oh, but minders can’t shape or meld silver or copper. Enichi told me that copper was too electric or interacted with electricity and was like holding fire to a minder, and then silver has always been a mystical metal to them. But that’s all the fraisers. You understand them better when you meet ‘em.”

“Hm,” Myles listened to every word, thinking. “Interesting. I wonder what the rest of the Astronomers are?”

The two fraisers continued chatting, mostly Myles making dumb jokes, Color laughing, and both watching the scenery change around them. Their walk was as hurried as Myles could manage without starting to breathe like a bellows. Eventually the trees stopped and opened to a large overgrown field. 

Myles and Color stopped as they stood along the field, gazing at the anomaly before them. Rocks, boulders, some as big as sheds, others the size of cows, some, just pebbles. They bumped slowly into themselves like giants sluggishly bludgeoning each other.

“Huh,” Myles said, shrugging his shoulders. “These rocks float.”

“It’s a tozer,” Color said through a grin. “Wanna go check it out?”

Myles looked at her, unsure. “You see how they’re colliding with each other? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Not if you’re with me. Watch!” She tossed her backpack and spear aside and swishh was in the field. 

Myles craned his neck, watching the white hair bob through the tall grass toward the tozer. He looked back at the rocks, floating peacefully but powerfully along through the air, most of them large enough to crush a whole school bus. He swallowed, grabbing Color’s spear and backpack.

“Color!” He trudged through the grass with less grace than the hush and stopped a dozen yards from the foot of the tozer. There was Color, jumping, flipping, laughing, among the rocks. Though her movements were far quicker, she always had to be alert; danger literally surrounded her from every angle. She could float around the tozer just like the rocks. Soon she was fifty feet in the air, riding the smaller rocks above. 

“Myles, do you see how it works?” Color said.

Myles took another look. What was he missing?

“They all spin in a circle, even though they run into each other. They only collide when they’re going up or when one is moving around the circle faster. They don’t collide in the center, so you can float up without being in danger of getting squished as long as you’re smart.”

“Still looks dangerous as hell,” Myles called up to her.

“Oh, it is; people die in these. They’re like super slow-moving rock tornadoes that take a while to die down.”

“Oh,” Myles put down her backpack, spear, and his own backpack. 

Color floated down to the ground again surrounded by swirling rocks. “You don’t have to come in; it’s pretty dangerous.”

“Just for a few seconds, maybe. What’s it like at the top?”

Color grinned, “It’s really amazing. You can see for miles up there. Wanna see?”

“Hell yeah,” he stepped into the gravitational hiccup and felt his arms float up, weightless, to shoulder-height.

“Whoa, easy there. And if you start to feel motion-sickness right here, step out and throw up, don’t go up there. It’s not fun to float around with the puke.” Color said.

“Nah, I don’t get motion-sickness. I don’t puke easy.” He was fascinated with his arms. He looked up at the rocks. 

“Whoa,” the stones were swirling around like he was at the bottom of a tube looking out. There was an almost perfect circle of sky directly overhead. He and Color stood watching, staring like they were on an excellent hallucinogenic trip.

“I want to jump straight up, but I don’t want to kill myself,” he said.

Then he felt Color grab him around the waist, coil her legs, and spring straight up into the center of the rocks.

“WhaaAAAA,” was all he managed to say before giddy laughter involuntarily left his mouth. He was flying! His body was weightless! Look, the trees! He was at eye-level with them now.

Color let go and they floated around the rocks, falling as fast as feathers. He was slightly aware of her chin locked over his shoulder.

“Why do we fall slightly, but not the rocks?”

“Must have something to do with us not being rocks.” He could feel Color’s mouth move on his shoulder as she spoke.

Myles couldn’t stop smiling. He looked below him at the long drop, “Oh, jeepers and creepers.”

“Laughers and weepers,” Color finished, looking down with him. “What a fun thing to say.”

Myles looked around again, putting his hands on some of the rocks surrounding them. “This isn’t too hard.”

“Nope. This is a calm tozer too; some of the rougher ones are wider and fling rocks around faster and not in as good a circle as this one.”

“And then they just drop all at once?”

“No, gravity slowly puts the rocks down. We’re safe right here.”

They were still falling slowly, Color’s arms neatly around his waist.

“Can we sit on a rock?”

Color grabbed Myles bicep and swung him around, then put her feet on a rock and sprang up again toward a boulder the size of a california-king bed. She grabbed the edge and Myles floated right next to her down onto the rock. As they sat, about as heavy as two sheets of paper, the rock lowered just slightly before continuing its slow, circular plight.

Up here was like being on the Ledge as far as mighty views went. Clouds painted the sky and horizon, some were even fidgeting with the land a few miles off. The fraisers could see over most of the trees now; there were hills, valleys, plains, a parking lot wildly out of place, another neighborhood far to the left of where they were going,

He felt that tickle in his brain again and saw that little descriptive vision, though this one felt sturdier. Like he was incrementally learning how to read again; he could recognize the feeling and make more sense of it. “We need to go to that neighborhood,” Myles pointed.

Color looked at where he was pointing. “That’s a little out of the way, don’t you think?”

“I think I had a vision of some bikes in someone’s basement.” He looked at her, grinning. “Know how to ride?”

Thirty minutes later, they’d found the neighborhood, walked through the broken front door, located both the basement and bikes, and hauled them outside.

“Tires are really flat, shit.” Myles said. “Looks like the gears are working, and they have mountain tires so we won’t have to worry about blowing any of them… fuck, these are dusty and gross. Man, I need to stop swearing.” His brow furrowed, “I don’t know why I said that.”

“Hm,” Color shrugged knowingly.

Myles acknowledged the look. “Wait what’s that supposed to mean? I don’t like that… little sound you just made.” Then he looked down the neighborhood’s street. “Wait, we’ll probably need a bike pump… maybe I can find it with my prophesying.” He tried to conjure some kind of outreach, some kind of image, but nothing showed.

“Oh well,” He said as they kept asking.

The fraisers entered the basement, walked the bikes to the garage, and put the kickstands up. 

“Hey, look. No prophesying required,” Myles said as he spotted a bike pump behind a stack of adhesive rolls.

“What psychopath keeps a million white rolls of stickers?” Myles said, working the pump onto Color’s bike.

Once Color’s bike tires were inflated, she jumped on and started biking. Myles began fixing the pump onto his bike tires. She was unbelievably good, spinning on one wheel, wheelies for as long as she wanted, standing on the front handlebars as it rolled, and she even knew how to use the front brakes properly.

Myles finally pumped both of his own tires up when the idea struck him. He stuck the pump into his backpack with the very top sticking out. Then he pedaled toward Color who was trying to go as slow as she could without using the handlebars. She grinned showing slightly yellowed teeth as wide as he’d seen her grin yet. “I’ve never biked before! This is so much fun.”

Myles shook his head in disbelief, “You’ve never biked before?”

“No, but I’ve heard enough about them to know how they work. I’m so happy I’ve finally had the chance; I wouldn’t have known how much having air in the tires affects the ride.”

“Uh, Color?” Myles said.

“Yeah, Myles?”

He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, “Uh… on behalf of… the Astronomy Club of Winton, Pennsylvania, I, the Sage of said club, Myles Willis, would like to offer you a chance at initiation to become an Astronomer.”

Color’s eyes popped like ping-pong balls and she rode right next to him. She hugged him laughing, “I accept!”

He hugged her back and chuckled, “Great. We’ll do the first step now and the second one tonight.”

“I don’t believe it, I can actually become an Astronomer!”

“Follow me,” Myles said, pedaling along the street.

Color sidled up alongside him, her back facing the handlebars, but still pedaling forward. 

“Show ooooofff,” Myles said. 

“Jealousssss,” Color sneered.

“Okay, see that curb and how it’s flat and really long?”

Color easily passed all of the biking challenges Myles threw at her, no matter how difficult or long the curb she was to ride. Eventually, he was having her ride curbs that were twice as long, curved, and damn near impossible to ride, but she accomplished the tasks all the same.

“You’re having too much fun. Alright, you pass that part of the initiation.”

“What’s the other one?”

“I’ll let you know tonight.”

“Once I’m in, can I initiate people?”

“You can only recommend; Pretty and I are the ones who can initiate anyone because we’re the leaders.”

“I thought you said Pretty was the Leader? Are you a co-leader?”

“Second in command.” Myles nodded. “Whenever Pretty doesn’t know what to do, he looks to me. And if I don’t know what to do, it goes to a vote, but that’s only happened twice I think.”

They traveled on their bikes, only stopping to refill their water-bottles and eat berries and even some apples from a hidden tree that Myles detected. The apples had a citrus aftertaste and a thicker peel. Once dusk was upon them, they decided to rest for the day. 

“We’ll make it there by tomorrow,” Myles said. “We traveled so much further than walking today.”

Color nodded, “This is so much better than walking.”

They tossed their tarps down, Color hugged Myles goodnight, and they wrapped themselves up.

A few minutes later Color asked: “Wait a second, what’s the final part of the initiation?”

Myles started laughing. “Whoops. Uh,” he looked up at the tree they were under. He was already wrapped up so nicely and didn’t want to move. Then he started inching himself along in his tarp-roll until he was under the stars. “Come on over here and look up at the stars.”

Color followed Myles’s method of movement and squirmed like a worm fresh out of the garnered soil, until she and Myles were adjacent to each other.

“I see the stars now,” she said.

“Great. Do you like the stars?”

“Yes, I love the stars.”

“How many constellations do you know?”

“I know the Big Dipper and Scorpion and the Orion Belt and where the North Star is.”

“I know all of those, but do you know the Bees constellation?” Myles asked.

“What’s the B’s?”

“See all the stars? It’s one big swarm of bees and that’s the whole constellation,” Myles said this through a smile. 

“What’s a ‘bee’?”

Myles dropped his smile. “You fucked it all up.”

Color rose partially to where her head was above his. She was smiling as usual. “Seriously, what is it?”

“It’s a bug, like a mosquito or a fly, but they move in swarms.”

Color nodded for a few seconds and then began to laugh, “The Bees!” And she laid back down.

Myles smiled “But anyway, here’s the last question for you: What do you like about the stars?”

Color’s eyes were on the stars, but Myles wanted to see how she’d react. Her lips rubbed together; Myles noticed she did that when she was thinking. A few seconds later, she answered:

“In my village the four of us, Mason, Flint, and Hannah and I, would sometimes get into a lot of trouble and get yelled at for not doing chores or not doing things well. Flint and Hannah especially, because they’d get told off by their dads and by Enichi the elder. But it was usually all of us who got in trouble together. Sometimes Flint would cut himself and Mason and I would stop him if we found him in time, but usually on the days where we felt the worst, we would just… go to the Ledge at night because none of us could sleep, and sit watching the clouds and what stars we could see.

“I remember this one night in particular,” she inhaled shakily, “we’d gotten in trouble for not doing chores and instead were playing Hunter and Hunted in the woods and were going to have to make up for it somehow and we didn’t know how. We were all stressed even though it was just Flint’s and my fault mostly,” She sniffed. “But that night, Hannah and Mason came to my Aunt’s hut and snuck into my room. I didn’t want to get up, I just wanted to be left alone. It was an awful day, and I was on my cycle, but Mason just gently picked me up anyway, blanket and all, and carried me all the way to the Ledge and we sat there all four of us and looked out at the sky.

“The sky was so clear and dark. Not a cloud or other landmass in sight, the only thing you could see was the water down Below and the stars like a million little pieces of broken glass. They were all sharp and just beautiful, all laid out there. I’m not sure why, but being with them and just… watching the stars, not saying a word… it was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had. I wish there was a word for a moment like that.”

Even though she still technically needed to play a few arcade games with them, he said, “That was the best answer I’ve ever heard…Welcome to the Astronomy Club, Color.”

Color sighed a happy sigh, “I’ve never been in a club before.”

“In the next few days you should be meeting the rest of the Astronomers,” was the last thing Myles said before he and Color fell asleep under the stars.