For years I've sworn I'd write a Vampire Hunter D - Totoro crossover. Well, I've finally done it, but I had to cheat: neither D nor, properly speaking, Totoro appears. I hope I've nonetheless managed to capture the wonder and magic of Totoro's universe. The story takes place in the same continuity as my earlier fanfic, "Meier and Charlotte: A Beginning"; having read the earlier story helps but is not a prerequisite. (It is available at the fanfic page.) Having seen My Neighbor Totoro is also not a prerequisite, but that, too, would probably make the story clearer.
This story is rated G and contains no sex or violence.
==================================================================
Death. It need not be any concern of the vampire-kind, or at least that was what Meier's parents had tried to impress upon him -- Meier's parents, and the contemporaries of his youth. But the vampires he had sported with in those long-ago days were gone, his mother dead, his father departed. And the little life that had sprung up in the darkness of his existence was gone too, snuffed out like a fallen star.
The starship had an efficient A.I.; what it lacked in initiative, it compensated for in thoroughness once it was given an order. They had been in transit for the better part of a day when it occurred to Meier that Charlotte's remains couldn't be allowed to just lie untended, not unless he wanted to watch her putrefy to bones. Numbly, he discussed options with the A.I. and elected cryogenic preservation as the course to adopt at least in the interim, as that would effectually hold her in stasis with the least disruption to her body. Frozen like the coldness of space...
Stasis was an increasingly attractive choice for him as well. The ship was well equipped for a long journey, with books, electronic forms of entertainment, and viewing screens, but these held no attraction for Meier. If Charlotte could have oblivion, he could have it too, at least for a little while, and that was usually the choice of Nobility who traveled into space. After all, what was the loss of weeks or months or years when immortality beckoned?
Consequently Meier had no idea how much time had passed when the warming and freshening of the air in his coffin slowly brought him to consciousness. It took him some minutes of increasing wakefulness to slowly orient himself to his present circumstances. He was not in his castle but in a spaceship, and the events preceding his journey came back in sorrowful fragments. Charlotte was dead like so many of the Nobles, and he was going through the motions of keeping his promise to her -- that he would take her to the City of the Night, where they could be together.
Meier sat up, rubbing his eyes. "Computer, current location?"
"Stationary orbit approximately two thousand kilometers above the City of the Night. Please select a perimeter docking station."
The nearest viewing screen showed a schematic of the city; glowing dots represented the dozen available ports, and Meier touched one at random.
"Selection confirmed. Docking process initiated. Four hours, forty-seven minutes to touchdown. Approximate ETA oh three hundred hours, eleven minutes local time."
"Display realtime."
The schematic was immediately replaced by a view of their destination, the City of the Night and its immediate surroundings. The image was of course partially synthesized: vampires could see in the dark, but their technology was hampered by mundane physical laws; where visible light was insufficient for imaging, it was supplemented by infrared or replaced entirely by radar or sonar. Meier found this sort of reconstructed view very unsatisfying and made his way to the ship's main viewing window, where he could see the City of the Night with his own eyes through its reinforced but extremely clear glass.
What he had told Charlotte about the city was merely hearsay, although among his kind it had been considered common knowledge for millennia. Now he learned the truth of it. It WAS a domed city, exterior pale to reflect back the light of whatever sun shone on this world. The dome was entirely featureless, and Meier's gaze was soon drawn to the surrounding landscape. It seemed to be a vast, unbroken forest, and Meier began scanning it for signs of habitation before mentally giving himself a shake; of course everyone here lived in the confines of the city. The atmosphere might not even be safe to breathe. In any case, what was the point of traveling to the City of the Night only to set up housekeeping in the trackless, artless wilderness?
All the same, there was beauty to the gentle rise and fall of the treetops. The expanse of the planet grew larger and larger, its orientation changing as the ship positioned itself to be received at the docking station. Meier wondered about the history of the landscape, and the domed city. Had its creators deliberately set it in the midst of this greenery, or had the area changed over the millennia? Reports of the City of the Night had described only its interior, not the surroundings. And indeed, why should the Nobility concern themselves with untamed, chaotic nature? They had created magnificent technology to support themselves and fulfill their every need or desire; why would any Noble forsake what pertained and belonged to the Nobility by right?
But it was at the woodlands, and not the smooth, sterile city dome, that Meier gazed as the ship touched down at last.
There was an almost cosmic insignificance in arrival at the City of the Night. Meier delayed entering it for some time; somehow it almost no longer seemed worthwhile. When he finally passed through the airlock joining his ship and the dock, he walked through a long, smooth-walled tunnel and passed beneath an archway into a beautiful but unliving city.
From the first moment, Meier was struck by its deadness. It was utterly silent and still. There was no breeze, no birds or insects. The subtle lighting must have been accomplished by some form of chemical reaction or phosphorescence; there was no hum of electrical power. Only Meier's footsteps, his breathing and heartbeat, resounded in those streets of stillness. Carmila had said she had heard that the city was deserted, but the full implication of that possibility had not struck Meier, and he still found it difficult to assimilate. How could a place be so still? It was nearly as sterile as the space between the stars. At first Meier had wanted to call out with a halloo to see if any would respond, but after a time it seemed almost a sacrilege to think of breaking the silence. So he remained as quiet as he could and all but crept back to the ship when he felt the lethargy that signaled dawn approaching.
When he rose the next evening, he vowed that he would spend the night properly exploring the city, one way or another. Surely not all the Nobles who had come here had departed, or been slain, or withdrawn into stasis. The ship's computer downloaded and displayed a schematic of the city but had no information regarding its inhabitants. It was, however, able to tell him that no other ships were at the docking stations that dotted the city's periphery.
Meier's heart sank at this information. Of course, a ship could have brought several vampires and left some when it departed, but that seemed unlikely. But the notion that he was the only living being in the City of the Night also held an aura of unreality. At the archway where he entered the city proper, he tensed his shoulders, stretched his arms into cape-wings, and leapt into flight, counting on his preternaturally keen senses to pick up any trace of life that might be present.
Meier remembered what he had told Charlotte about the City of the Night: that it was a place of beauty, filled with structures like his own castle but decorated in a rainbow of colors; ornamented with parklike places wherein there grew exotic trees and flowers of every kind. Half of this proved true. It was indeed a city of castles, and some of them were elaborately ornamented. There were fearsome gargoyles in gleaming obsidian, gilded towers -- some even with belfries -- magnificent stonework, sometimes mosaic-like in its use of color and form. Meier couldn't help being impressed; he occasionally slowed and circled to better observe particularly well-appointed buildings. But even in his most rapt fascination it did not escape him that all this beauty was set in a world utterly devoid of life. Not only were there no animate inhabitants -- no Nobles, no humans, no horses or dogs, no birds or insects -- but not even living plants. There were plants, but they were the product of artifice. Some appeared to be real ferns or flowers or trees, but there was no life in them; they had been carefully preserved
[like Charlotte]
like the proverbial flies in amber. Others were in fact works of art, silk flowers and paper leaves. Meier wasn't sure why this left him disappointed. The jewel-like blossoms were the pinnacle of artistic achievement, and it was a vampire's supernatural sensibilities, not his eyes, that told him that the green and gleaming leaves they nested among, or proudly sprang from, had been wrought by Nobles' skills and preserved through Nobles' technology. The same technology had made it possible for him to flee the earth, had created the City of the Night...
In all its sterility and elegant silence.
It was a huge city. Its extent of course dwarfed the castles it contained. It would have been embarrassing to construct a castle that could be described as modest in any way, and just as embarrassing not to give those magnificent edifices room to spare. From end to end or side to side (all the same, since the city was circular in outline) was a lengthy flight. One thing that Meier did early on was find the city's very center. Its heart was a bed of soil, a perfect circle sunk through the pavement of what might have been called a park. Of course nothing grew there, and indeed it was dry as dust, for it was the stuff of vampires' replenishment, earth exposed for the refreshment of any traveler wearied from traversing the city's extent. Meier scooped up handfuls of it and let the dust trickle down between his fingers. Its real benefit to vampires, he knew, was derived not from its touch but from actual contact with or immersion in the substance of a planet. Even standing or sitting on a surface like this could act as a conduit for the mysterious flow that made the earth the Nobles' shelter and comfort.
Meier so wearied himself exploring the city that flight back to his ship seemed an excessive effort. As the buildings were evidently untenanted, there was surely no harm in sheltering in one for the day. His choice was a great gray hulk with rough-hewn foundations that rose up into elaborate towers, truly an earthy-looking edifice. Entering was as simple as walking in the first door he encountered. Had Meier been less tired, he might have enjoyed exploring the hallways. As it was, he made his way to the lowest level he could find and, absent a coffin, wrapped himself in the folds of his cape and curled up in a welcoming corner.
Waking up in a strange place was a bit disorienting; Meier felt almost naked without the familiar confines of his coffin. He also felt a bit like a trespasser, even though there seemed to be no one else to lay claim to the castle. Experimentally, he tried a voice command: "Computer, report."
This was met with the same vast silence as all his other efforts. Surely the castle was not without a central A.I. -- it was unthinkable. Perhaps it was programmed to respond only to certain voices, or certain commands.
Meier explored parts of the castle in desultory fashion on his way to an outlet. There were no furnishings, unless one counted the unlit sconces and chandeliers that lined the walls and dotted the ceilings. Meier made no attempt to look for light sources; he could see in the utter darkness -- though indeed, he reflected, there was little enough to be seen in this abandoned pile of stones.
He left the way he had come in but stopped at the doorway, taken aback at a scent that had been absent the morning before. It was unmistakably water -- rain.
Rain?
Meier closed the door behind him and leapt into flight. Rain in the City of the Night was unthinkable. The Nobility detested water in any form, and particularly moving water, whether a current along the ground or precipitation from the sky. The technology that had created the City of the Night would control its climate in a way that prevented meteorological events entirely. And indeed, the odor was faint -- surely not the result of rainfall from beneath the dome. But the city was sealed off from the planet's atmosphere -- where else could it come from?
A few minutes of following his nose gave Meier the answer. Behind a row of elaborate synthetic espalier-trained trees was -- Meier winced at the sight -- a breach in the dome. Where the gleaming surface touched the ground was a rent -- taller than he, jagged at its darkened edges. And outside in the darkness, rain poured down. Meier hesitantly drew nearer, then leapt back as a sudden gust of wind spattered water into the dome. Meier shook himself like a dog, although what he had met was barely a mist. It didn't matter. He was no more fond of water than any other vampire -- especially water that leapt forth to assault him.
Meier drew his cape around himself and assumed a wary stance at a respectful distance from this horror. How had the dome been breached? And given that it had been, why had repairs not been effected? If the planet's atmosphere was indeed poisonous ... but Meier's senses told him this was unlikely. He was certainly inhaling it and feeling no ill effects. And the hole ... Meier studied it from where he stood, then edged closer when he was sure the wind had slackened. The hole wasn't new. There were vines creeping in at its center, green, living vines -- the first live plants Meier had seen up close and personal on the planet. And they were invading the dome. Surely robots should have repaired it long ago.
Meier reflected then that he had seen no sign of maintenance robots. Their absence was impossible; even products of the Nobles' technology needed to be checked now and then for structural integrity. A structure like the dome would have internal security-type circuitry that would alert a central computer at the first sign of a failure. Or so Meier expected. Did the dome contain no such devices, or was the central computer not functioning? Come to think of it, Meier had seen no sign of computer surveillance or availability the whole time he'd been in the city, which _was_ strange. The Nobles relied on A.I. devices even as human nobility had relied on their servants in centuries past.
Meier watched the rain for a long time with something like morbid fascination. It made him shiver fearfully, and yet there was something powerful about it and ... Meier was surprised to realize that the sound of it was somehow soothing. He rationalized that it was a relief to hear anything after the tomblike silence of the city, but in his heart he knew it was more than that. The rain _belonged_. It belonged on this world, belonged with the plants. However terrible it might be for his kind, it was right to fall. And it did make such a peaceful sound...
When another wind gust hit him full in the face, however, Meier decided it was best to hear the rain at a somewhat greater remove. He took shelter behind the espalier row and shook himself off again, then took wing for "home": his spaceship and, more to the point, its blood synthesizer. (Although surely the city had functioning blood synthesizers; living without them was as unthinkable as living without the computers that operated them.)
After a very welcome breakfast, Meier drew more information from the ship's interface with the city's central A.I. Were there other inhabitants of the city? Were there A.I. contact points? Blood synthesizers? And could the dome wall be repaired before vines started climbing the espalier trees?
The central A.I. concerned itself with demands for its services, not the presence or absence of inhabitants. There had been no such demands for over three hundred years local time. (Closer to five hundred years Earth time.) Meier stared. Three hundred years, or five hundred? The city had been deserted for that long?
He skimmed the protocols for establishing residency, which would enable him to access his chosen castle's blood synthesizer. Raw materials were transported via a complex underground network. One could report damage to one's residence, or even request remodeling, but there was apparently no mechanism for doing the same with the dome itself. It was intended to be self-sustaining and had no provision for failure of its native maintenance mechanism.
Where Meier had hoped to at least achieve tranquillity, he was instead sliding into despair. The Nobles' technology intended to make this place a haven for his kind was crumbling at the edges, and he was utterly, utterly alone. The nearest thing to company available was ... Charlotte, and Meier retired to the side of her cryogenic chamber to gaze at her for what must have been the first time in months. The sight of that beautiful face was not a comfort; it only reminded him how close they had been to realizing their dream, and how it had truly come to nothing. Meier didn't even have the comfort of familiar surroundings. His castle, his lands, his planet were all behind him -- a lifetime away, it seemed in his solitude and helplessness. What would Charlotte have thought of this place if she had lived? Would she have seen only the emptiness and desolation? Would she have been frightened at the breakdown in technology that the breach in the dome represented? Meier certainly was, insofar as it is possible to be frightened when life offers no future prospects and death is at least an avenue to symbolic victory. Many vampires, Meier knew, had succumbed to just such sentiments on Earth as they saw their own race dying, their own futures stretching into a desert eternity. Meier had sometimes wondered why he too had not chosen some final step. Cowardice, his father would have said. But when he had told Charlotte that -- one of the very few times he had spoken of his father -- Charlotte shook her head. "You're not a coward for wanting to live, Meier," she told him. "Humans think suicide is cowardice -- to kill yourself instead of trying to solve your problems."
Meier half-smiled at her. "My father wasn't human, dear."
By that time Charlotte knew him well enough to indulge in good-natured familiarities, and she gave his nose a playful tap with her forefinger. "That doesn't mean he was right. Anyway --" and here she linked her arm into his and drew close to him "-- I don't want you to die, even if you do it being brave. Promise me you won't die, Meier."
"Charlotte, that's a great deal to ask, even of a vampire."
"Then at least say you won't kill yourself. Even if something ... even if something happens to me." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I don't want you to die."
Meier's throat had gone tight even then, and the memory brought him dangerously close to tears.
"And I gave you my word," he told her, reaching out a pale, taloned hand to touch the cold glass that separated them. "I thought I would want to die if you died, and I never dreamed it would happen so soon. But we would both hold it against me if I were to break my word..."
Sunrise found Meier open-eyed in his coffin, wondering what honorable course he could bear.
* * *
End part 1 of 3
* * *
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
* * *
Place of the Heart, Part 3 of 3
Meier was too tired and too awestruck to feel as foolish as he otherwise might have for cuddling a woodland animal like a child with a grossly oversized teddy bear. It was a night of incongruities, and Meier accepted this as unthinkingly as he had the great creature's latest gift. Still kneeling, he regarded the sprig in his free hand, relieved that it showed no sign of withering at his touch. He was slipping it into a pocket when his fingers touched the creature's earlier gift, and this he pulled out to regard once more -- the pearl in his palm, the runner of periwinkle flowing between his fingers. For a moment he thought the very vine in his hand was moving unassisted -- but no, one of those claws was bending it, until the flower at its tip bowed down to eclipse the pearl. Meier looked up, and the creature pointed once more toward the city dome.
"I wish I understood you," Meier said. "I want to -- I truly do. But I am a stranger here. I don't know the language, it seems. I wish you could _show_ me."
The creature responded with another of those impossible grins, then straightened to its full considerable height. It seemed to stand on tiptoe, raised both forelimbs, then slowly moved them down. As if they were indeed wings and that gesture a singly mighty wingbeat, it rose with majestic slowness from the ground. Midway up the trees about it, it paused, rear claws en pointe, arms outspread once more, and seemed to widen its eyes at him.
Levitation! Meier had regarded it with mixed feelings when it numbered among the powers of other Nobles. His scorn for such a pretentious mode of flight was a thin veil for his envy -- flying with wings was a skill he took pride in having mastered, but it was nonetheless no small feat: fatiguing to maintain using a body designed to be earthbound, and with its share of risks and obstacles. Those who could levitate, it seemed, simply wished for flight and flew. But there was no directing envy or scorn at the embodiment of magic when it smiled down at him, and Meier quickly pocketed his treasures and leapt skyward, cape merging to his arms.
Two wingbeats bore him to the height where the creature had hovered, and two more carried him through a dark, intangible tangle. Suddenly he was well above the forest, overflying its dense unbroken canopy.
Unbroken canopy? Meier's wings faltered for a stroke as he stared down, incredulous. There was no sign of the little glade that the stars had gazed upon. It had been swallowed up. Meier swooped and circled, blinking. Change of height and angle made no difference.
"Is it gone?" he shouted to the creature. "Have I lost even her grave?"
Meier's companion responded with a smile and several whisker-twitches, then flipped in a loop-the-loop before gliding forward -- toward the great dome of the City of the Night. Meier followed with more economy of motion and more puzzlement than ever. He had powers that violated what were usually thought of as the laws of physics, but making bits of woodland appear and disappear was another matter. And then he reminded himself: he had found the mysterious glade twice now. Surely a third time was possible.
The dome, already huge, grew larger and larger in their view. Nearly at its edge, the creature performed a pirouette and simply sank down feet first like a cooling hot-air balloon. <<Show-off,>> Meier thought dryly, but the dead zone about the dome gave him space for the angled descent that his own manner of flight permitted. His cape fell free of arms that were arms once more, and he retrieved the pearl and the periwinkle, hoping that they were keys to the puzzle before him.
The creature lifted the pearl from his open hand -- Meier still could not believe its claws were so dexterous -- and pressed it into the dry dirt so only a half-sphere was visible. Meier knelt to look closer. The creature tapped the side of the pearl -- this with astonishing delicacy -- then tapped the city wall in an identical gesture.
"The same thing," Meier murmured, referring to the gesture, and then it dawned on him: "The city and the pearl are the same thing? The pearl ... represents ... ?"
"YAWWW!" the creature enthused, whiskers twitching with the force of its grin. It plucked the periwinkle from Meier's hand and laid it down so the pearl was concealed entirely, then pulled the pearl out from under it, returned it to Meier, and smiled once more.
"And you'd rather there were green things in its place," Meier concluded. "That's ... that _is_ it. The city -- it even _looks_ like a pearl. And it's no more welcome to this planet than a pearl to a shellfish. You would make green things grow in its place if it were gone ... yes. Yes, you would."
The creature returned the periwinkle sprig to Meier as if bestowing laurels on a student who had scored particularly well on an exam.
"Well." Meier rose, expression pensive. "I don't know what you want me to do, now that I understand. The city ... the City of the Night is dead. There's nothing alive in it, and there hasn't been for centuries." He sighed. "There's nothing for me there. Now I'm not sure there ever was. And there's no one else who would miss it. Your woodland ... is very different from our technology. Inferior, most of my kind would say. But they aren't here, are they? And I am. If Charlotte had seen what I have seen --"
Tears threatened again, and after a long moment Meier said, very softly, "I don't know how to undo what we've done."
The creature turned its grin toward the pale wall and whispered, "Yawp." The wall seemed to tremble, and a section of it nearly the creature's size shimmered, then coalesced into grains of white that silently floated to the ground.
Meier stared at the new breach in the wall, then at the creature. "You can do that?"
The grin was as plain as a spoken _I just did_.
"Then do it," Meier whispered at last, and his face fell as he closed his eyes.
But he couldn't help opening them again and raising his head at the creature's great indrawn breath, and at the soaring, reverberating "YAAAWWWP!" that seemed to shake the very earth as it glided over the city dome. The dome's pale skin trembled and grew frosty; the very fabric of the whole structure was a fabric no more, but a mass of particles that glided down. The vista was like a great snow globe, the remnants of the skin coating the buildings and ground with white. And then the buildings themselves followed suit, trembling, shimmering, and slowly slumping into piles of sand. These too grew smooth as bits of dome continued to glide down onto what at last was simply a great white plain. Gazing across it, Meier could see treetops at a distance. It had been a huge city, a huge pearl ... or perhaps a huge tumor.
But now the land could heal.
Meier let his gaze travel the full compass of what had been the great city. There was in fact one remaining irregularity in its horizon -- a single great rocket ship, the one that had borne him here. The silence had been long when Meier's voice broke it.
"That's a hint, isn't it?"
Meier turned to see if he had placed the correct interpretation on this anomaly -- but he was alone.
* * *
The shining dust of the city was like sand; it sank beneath Meier's feet as he made his way across what was now a great circular expanse of desert. Although walking was difficult, he felt no inclination to use his wings but continued to trudge toward what had been the city's heart. He had touched the earth there once; would any hint of what he had seen still remain? At last there was an irregularity in the perfectly smooth surface: a small indentation. Meier felt certain that this marked what had been the earth bed.
<<Then let his be a memorial,>> Meier thought, <<at the grave of the Nobles whose time is past. Let me remember them, offer this at least.>> Digging aside the pale dust, he scooped the earth beneath it into a little mound and wondered -- would it be ungracious use of a gift? Surely not. He retrieved the sprig of periwinkle from his pocket. It was surprisingly fresh, even the tender petals of the blossom undamaged. He carefully sank the stem into the mound. The vampire-kind had no prayers for their dead, no rituals of farewell, but Meier knelt, head bowed and eyes closed, for a long moment, in honor of those who had built the city as a refuge for Earth's children of the night. They had done their best, surely, and he owed them this acknowledgment even though their works had not offered what he sought.
Meier rose, and the breeze that stirred the dust about him moved the sprig so it seemed to bow. Meier bowed in return, then leapt up in flight, cape-wings striking the sand. His wings caught the wind, and he lofted himself up, circling high, high, higher than the dome had ever stood. Above him he could see the sun-touched tops of the clouds; below, the planet outspread, as much a ring of green as a circle of white. Meier looked down to the smudge at the circle's heart -- but in only the time it had taken him to rise above it, what had been a sprig had become a bright patch of green.
Even with dawn so near, Meier smiled.
* * *
Meier could take a hint. But not before taking one last look to seal into his heart what he had brought to this place and what he had left here where he himself could not remain.
Why not take Charlotte back? Earth had been her home as much as his -- more, some would say -- and there he could bury her anywhere he pleased, could visit and honor that grave any way he liked. But coming here and remaining here had been the dream they shared: let it be true, at least for her. The Earth might change, but if ever a spot promised to hold true, it was that quiet place where she now lay -- that place, and the place it held in his heart.
It was the greatest leap of faith Meier had ever taken, greater than stepping into Carmila's long-disused rocket and giving the A.I. the command to take off. He stood in the woodland at what had been the city's perimeter, head bowed, and softly said, "Great One, let me be with her one last time."
The world shifted ever so subtly, and Meier did not open his eyes until he had taken a half dozen paces forward ... and felt grass rather than leaves beneath his boots. It was there, all there: the clearing, the grass, the periwinkle still in bloom. Meier sighed an oddly happy sigh and sat at the foot of the grave. Strange that he could sit here quite content with the realization that the City of the Night was gone, and that he had in effect signed the death warrant of his long-sought goal. If the creature who ruled this world could have wrought that destruction at any time, why had it not done so long ago? Meier could speculate -- and did indeed pursue several trains of thought -- but knew its forbearance would remain a mystery.
He felt only a distant amusement at the realization that he was no less obliged to leave this place than he had been to depart the Earth. He could not feel bitter at the prospect of returning. On Earth he had found Charlotte. It was where he belonged, whatever belonging meant. He would return there soon enough. Or perhaps not; the rocket was old, and (as the City of the Night demonstrated) even the Nobles' technology was not infallible. It might leave him stranded in space, or collide with a meteor and end in a grand silent smash. But just now Meier could not mourn or fear the thought of his passing. A little of the wonder and magic of this place had found a home within him, and would be with him wherever he went. Perhaps it was even to be found on Earth as well. Meier hoped so, for now that he had tasted it, it seemed too rich a thing not to be woven into the fabric of all existence.
End part 3 of 3
Afterword:
About allusions and stuff. The brown-and-yellow moths that I've associated with "Totoro" are regal moths and imperial moths -- or that planet's answer to them. :-) I used them because of their names, but they make great inhabitants of the Totoro universe: their larvae feed on trees, and the adults are huge and fuzzy and quite beautiful. Either species would make a great model for a moth plushie.
The story of the pearl that was not a pearl and spiritual eternal life is a Middle English poem that modern editors have titled "Pearl." It is thought to have been written by the same author as "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and two less-known poems, "Cleanness" (or "Purity") and "Patience."
The creature's one utterance -- "Yawp" (notice that everything it says consists of part or all of this word) is from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself":
"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world."
More information about _My Neighbor Totoro_ is at nausicaa.net. If you haven't seen _My Neighbor Totoro_, it is WAY PAST TIME you did. _Totoro_ is truly a movie for all ages, classic Miyazaki that doesn't hit you over the head with its "green" way of thinking. It is known and marketed as a children's movie, and a particularly quiet and gentle one at that -- some critics have in fact found it TOO quiet and gentle. I'll admit that the first time I watched it I found the beginning almost intolerably slow; my finger was literally headed toward the VCR stop button when the first "little Totoro" showed up. I never got anywhere near the stop button again.
The very long synopsis at nausicaa.net goes into almost absurd detail of the movie's events and (as it warns) does include some spoilers. Watching the movie is probably the best way to make its acquaintance. It has been released on both VHS and DVD in the USA and should be readily available. If you're embarrassed to be seen renting a kids' movie, (a) lie and tell them you're babysitting; and (b) it serves you right. ;-)
While my enthusiasm for Totoro isn't quite up there with my fanaticism for VHD, I'm definitely a big Totoro fan. It is a movie about truths rather than facts, a movie set in literal reality that keeps the fantastic or supernatural at the edges rather than front and center -- and yet the fantastic or supernatural has a supporting role; it's not just a bit player.
One recurring notion in descriptions or reviews of _Totoro_ is that only children can see the Totoros. This is a sensible approach (though not the only workable one) in a movie set in our reality; but the more fantastic the reality, the more visible "magic" can become. I think the underlying truth is that there are times when we all have a need for something outside ourselves, something outside the box we call mundane reality. Children need it more than adults; among adults, artists need it more than accountants. I wanted to write a story about someone who needed and could accept the magic of the Totoros; the D that we know is simply too hard-edged and stoic to fill the bill.
Enter Meier the romantic. I didn't have a way of getting him to the original Totoro's home in Tsukamori forest, but in the movie Meier was last seen headed for a place that left my creativity practically unfettered. It would make perfect sense for the Nobles to have set up housekeeping on a planet with physical characteristics similar to Earth's, but in a way that would minimize the disadvantages of their nature: a structure to keep out sunlight and rain, and otherwise provide environmental control ... in every sense, right down to aesthetics.
And that was all the setup I needed. The magic, like the truth, is out there.