#26
AI-assisted content.
TDBB: Interlude 3.26
The van came out of the green like a toy. The metal beneath it showed rust, the front bumper hanging at an angle that scraped the road when the weight shifted. The side mirrors were gone entirely, leaving naked stalks that wobbled and clicked.
Vines had wrapped the undercarriage at some point and torn free, leaving gouges in the frame that whistled when the speed climbed high enough. The rear doors had lost their latch and they swung and banged against the shell, held by a single chain that someone had threaded through the handles.
It drove anyway. The engine knocked and caught and knocked again, and the wheels found the highway line and held it, carrying the wreck past the last of the choked streets and into open road where the green fell back and the sky showed grey and wide above.
Inside, Harley Quinn had her hands at ten and two, her grip on the wheel tight and hard, keeping it straight against a pull that dragged toward the shoulder. She was whistling a bright tune that skipped notes and found them again, her head bobbing with the rhythm while her eyes stayed fixed on the road ahead. Green flashed across her irises, faint, regular, a pulse that came and went with the beat of her heart. She smiled, the smile unwavering as the van shuddered.
"Road trip," she said, and the words came out sing-song, matching the whistle. "Road trip, road trip, road trip."
The passenger door opened and Ivy folded herself through the gap. She settled into the seat and pulled the door shut behind her, the latch clicking once and then failing, the door bouncing open an inch before she caught it and held it with her palm.
Harley turned her head, the smile widening, the green flash brighter in her eyes as she looked at Ivy and then past her, toward the side mirror that was not there.
"Oh, Ivy," she said, and her voice carried the lilt of someone reciting a script they found pleasant. "Did Mister J manage to get on board?"
Her eyes went to the empty stalk where the mirror had been, searching the nothing it showed her, and then back to the road, the compulsion holding her gaze forward even as her mouth kept moving.
"Keep driving," Ivy said, and she leaned back against the seat, her hand still pressed against the door to keep it closed. "We're going without him."
Harley's brow creased, the green flickering. "But Mister J--"
"We have his permission," Ivy said, and the words came out flat, the pheromone command woven through them. "Remember?"
The words hung in the air between them and Harley's hands relaxed on the wheel, the smile returning, the green settling into a steady pulse. Then her eyes went to the rearview mirror, and her face changed.
"Yaaahh!"
A panicked cry tore out of her, and her hands left the wheel entirely, reaching toward the passenger seat while her body twisted away from the road. The van lurched toward the shoulder, tires screaming against the line, and Harley's fingers clawed at empty air.
The roof above them had torn open, and something large dropped through the gap and hit the rear bench with a force that made the whole frame groan and sway. Toph landed in a crouch, her hands finding the seat, her weight rolling with the impact as the van bucked and fishtailed, the rear end breaking loose and swinging wide.
Harley had forgotten the wheel entirely. Her arms extended toward the passenger floor, fingers grasping, and she yelled over the noise of the engine and the wind and the banging chain.
"Quick! Hand me my mallet!"
Ivy grabbed for the wheel with her free hand, her other still holding the door, and she threw her weight against the pull as the van veered toward the ditch. The engine roared, the frame shook, and Toph looked up from her crouch, her blind eyes white and wide in the sudden light, her mouth pulled into a grin that showed teeth.
Harley saw the eyes and her scream cut short, replaced by a higher note, a squeal that climbed and broke as she redoubled her grasping, her body folding toward the floor.
"The big one," she gasped, and her hand closed on something beneath the seat, a shaft of wood that she pulled free with a grunt of effort. "I need the big one, Ivy!"
The mallet came up, impossibly long, the head a cylinder of metal that should not have fit in the space it had occupied. Harley swung it in an arc that cleared the cabin and struck the roof frame with a clang that dented the metal, the vibration running through the whole shell.
The van was beyond control. Ivy's hand on the wheel could not correct the spin, the rear end coming around, the front following, the world outside becoming a blur of grey sky and green verge and the dark line of the road. The engine screamed, the wheels locked and released, and the van tilted toward the ditch with a weight that would roll it, would tear the frame and scatter the occupants across the road.
Toph's hand found the floor, her fingers pressing through the torn carpet to the metal beneath, and she reached down through the shell, down through the frame, finding the connection where the van's belly scraped the road's surface. She pulled, and the road answered, the stone and earth rising in a curve that met the van's trajectory, a ramp of packed soil that lifted the wheels and carried the momentum upward instead of into the ditch.
The van hit the curve and rose, the frame tilting, the world going sideways as it rode the arc Toph had shaped. It came down on the inner slope, tires finding purchase, and the momentum carried it into a spin that turned once, twice, the centrifugal force pressing them all against the shell, Harley's mallet dangling from her grip above her head, Ivy's hand torn from the wheel, Toph's fingers still pressed against the floor.
The spin slowed, the van rocking on its springs, and it came to rest at the bottom of the curve, nose pointed back toward the road, engine still knocking, one rear door hanging open and swinging on the chain.
Silence, except for the tick of cooling metal and the wind through the torn roof.
Harley hung half out the window she had fallen against, her upper body draped over the frame, and she vomited onto the grass outside. She pulled herself back inside and sank against the door, the mallet still in her lap, her eyes closed, her face pale beneath the makeup.
Toph sat up from her crouch, her hand leaving the floor, and she swayed once, her head tilting, her grin fading and returning wider.
"That was fun," she said, and she laughed, the sound carrying over Harley's groaning. "Let's do it again."
Harley's eyes snapped open. She looked at Toph, at the blind eyes, the grin, the teeth, her body pressing back against the door as if she could push through it.
Ivy straightened in her seat, her hand finding the wheel again, her breath coming in controlled pulls. She looked at Harley raising her mallet for a swing, and she reached out, her fingers finding Harley's shoulder, the touch light, the pheromone command woven through her voice when she spoke.
"Calm down."
Harley shuddered, her eyes staying wide and fixed on Toph's blind eyes.
Ivy looked out the window at the curve of earth that had caught them, the ramp already settling, the grass growing over the disturbed soil. She looked back at the van, at the torn roof, the dangling door, the mallet in Harley's lap, and she shook her head once.
"We're lucky the van didn't get damaged," she said, and her eyes went to the scrapes along the side, the rust showing through the paint, the angle of the bumper. "More than it already was."
She turned to Harley, her expression settling.
"Your road trip ends here, Harley. Go back to Gotham."
Harley's hand dropped from her mouth. "But-but-but," she stammered, and her eyes went to the road behind them, toward the green and the smoke and the city they had left. "Mister J--"
"No," Toph said, and she leaned forward from the rear bench, her arms folding across the back of the passenger seat, her chin resting on her forearms. "We should keep her."
Ivy turned, her brow drawing down. "What?"
"She was the one with the funny clown," Toph said, and her grin widened, her head tilting toward Harley. "Good for entertainment."
Harley's face changed, the fear momentarily forgotten, a grin pulling at her mouth that matched Toph's in brightness if not in menace.
"That's right," she said, and she sat up straighter, the mallet shifting in her lap. "I'm fun to be around!"
Her eyes met Toph's and the grin froze, the fear returning in a rush that made her body pressing back against the door, the mallet rising between them like a shield.
Toph laughed, the sound loud in the confined space, and she slapped her thigh with one hand, the other still draped over the seat.
"See, Ivy?" she said, and she leaned closer, her blind eyes finding Harley's face with an accuracy that made the other woman flinch. "She's hilarious."
Ivy looked from Toph to Harley and back, her expression softening, the corners of her mouth pulling in a way that suggested she knew exactly what kind of trouble Harley could bring.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked.
Toph was not listening. She had turned her full attention to Harley, her chin still resting on her arms, her voice dropping into a register that carried genuine curiosity.
"Do that thing again," she said. "The one where you--" she paused, her head tilting, searching for the words. "The one that goes up and down. I watched you and your clown do it on that rotating metal thing. Do that one."
Harley looked at the curiosity in the blind face, the eagerness that held no threat, and she swallowed once.
"You can see with those eyes?" she asked, and her voice came out careful.
Toph grinned again, opening her eyes wider and showing her teeth. Harley squealed, her body twisting as she balanced her mallet.
Hahaha.
Toph laughed, amused. "Now do the thing where you stand and start spinning."
Harley looked at Toph with a nervous smile that became a chuckle. "You want to see the hammer spin."
Toph nodded rapidly.
"Okay, you two," Ivy said, and she turned back to the dash, her hand finding the ignition, her vines reaching down to wrap the wires and coax the engine back to life. "We need to keep moving."
The engine caught, knocked, steadied. Ivy's vines found the steering column and guided the wheel, her body turned in the seat to face the road, her other hand gesturing toward the block they had left behind, the earth rising to clear a path through the grass and back to the highway line.
The van rolled forward, Harley retreating to the rear, her body finding the space of the cabin, the mallet spinning in her hands, her voice rising in a stream of commentary that mixed explanation with demonstration, the words tumbling over each other as she showed Toph the hammer toss, the balance walk across the seat backs, the voice that could shift from squeal to growl in the space of a breath.
Toph watched from the roof frame, her feet swinging, her laughter mixing with Harley's performance, and Ivy drove, the green falling behind while the road opened ahead.
-0-
The bayou breathed slowly, heavy air resisting the wind that blew across water that has not moved in years. Duckweed covered the surface in a carpet so thick it looked like ground, and the cypress stood in their slow decay, their knees breaking the water in shapes that might have been limbs once, might have been something that walked.
A ripple passed through the duckweed, and no splash came before it. The water parted, the vegetation dividing, and a mass rose from below, towering, woven from the matter of the swamp itself, vines and moss and the pulp of trees that had fallen and been absorbed. Fireflies gathered, drawn by the warmth, or the presence, and they swarmed in a halo around two eyes that opened, red, glowing, the color of blood held to light.
He stepped onto the bank, his foot sinking into the peat, and where it pressed, orchids burst from the mud, bloomed white, withered, and fell to dust in the span of a breath. The sound of his movement was the sound of wet leaves grinding against stone, of roots tearing through earth that had been undisturbed since the last age turned.
"You walk upon the surface of things," he said, and his voice carried the weight of tectonic plates, of continents drifting apart. "You measure in concrete, in borders, in centuries. How brief. How fragile."
He moved through the cypress, the fireflies following, the halo shifting and reforming around his head.
"Long before your ancestors crawled from the mud to name the stars, there were the Parliaments. The true architecture. Not gods, though you would name us so. The foundational elements given voice. The Parliament of Trees, governing the Green, the collective soul of everything that reaches for light. The oxygen in your lungs. The food on your tongue."
His hand rose, the fingers woven from lily pads and the fibrous hearts of reeds, and he touched a cypress trunk. The bark shuddered, the sap moving faster, the tree groaning in a frequency below hearing.
"And we are not alone."
He turned, the fireflies scattering and regathering, and he looked toward the north, toward the cities and the stone and the places where the green had been torn.
"The Parliament of Stones anchors the crust. The Parliament of Waves churns with the tides. The Red pulses, the blood-web of animal life. For ages, a balance. A symphony of eating and being eaten, of growing and rotting. Agonizing. Delicate. Held."
His hand closed into a fist, the vegetation compressing, sap running between his fingers.
"The balance has tilted."
He walked, each step raising the orchids and killing them, the cycle repeating, birth and death in the space of a stride.
"The Green is restless. I feel it from the deepest roots to the highest canopy. A cold tremor. Something has torn at the edges of our tapestry, has reached into the soil and pulled at threads that should not be touched."
His head turned, the red eyes finding a direction, and the fireflies clustered thicker, the halo brightening.
"The rival Parliaments hunger. The Grey, the fungi, the mold, the creeping rot that belongs in shadow, seeks to choke the light, to turn the world into a silent, moldering tomb. The Parliament of Limbs pushes its beasts too far, carves the forest to feed an insatiable, red appetite. They forget that without the leaves, the lungs of the world collapse. They forget that the Green holds the soil together."
He stopped, standing in the center of a clearing where the cypress had fallen and rotted, where the new growth was thin and the old growth had become grey and soft that ate rather than reached.
"They think the Green is weak because we endure the winter. They think we are passive because we grow slowly."
His fist opened, the vegetation unfolding, and he raised it toward the sky, the red eyes brightening until they matched the fireflies, until they outshone them.
"They are wrong."
He lowered his hand, and the swamp around him went still, the insects quieting, the water ceasing its slow movement.
"I am Alec Holland no longer. I am the hand that strikes from the undergrowth. I am the thorns that defend the rose. Once again, the earth calls, and as Guardian of the Green, I must rise."
He stepped into the water, the duckweed parting, the mass of him sinking until only the eyes remained, two red points in the dark, and then they too were gone, and the bayou breathed again, slow, heavy, waiting.
Thanks for reading. I also have advance chapters if you want to read ahead.