Chapter Twenty Three
“So here's the little lady,” the loud voice said. It was coming from a massive, dark giant. His skin was the color of Margaux's, and his size was impossible. I was still sitting down but he looked like he was at least three times my height and ten times my weight. He had bright eyes and long black ropey hair hanging down out of a plastic round brain bucket which rested upside down on the top of his head.
“Sure am pleased to meet you,” he said, bending over slightly and extending his arm toward me. I don't know why, but my arm also reached out towards his and when our hands met, he grasped mine and lifted me to my feet, where I saw he was merely twice my total height.
“Name's Lars Charles,” he said. “Me and my friends have come to take you home.”
That's when I noticed all the others. At first I thought there were a hundred of them – later I learned there were only thirty nine – and they were all much larger than any people-people I had ever seen, even the females, of whom there were a dozen or so. They all wore the same kind of clothes, black jeans and boots with black jackets with orange writing on it that said “Juice Brothers”, but their faces and skin were all different shades and shapes, as if they had been picked out of a catalog of assorted people-people from around the world, like a collection of random enormous humans.
“This is Marvell,” Lars was saying, “and this is Kinship. This here is Maxzome, and over here we have, but wait. You'll meet the whole gang later. Right now it's time to hit the road.”
“Where are you taking me?” I asked him, and I wondered how it was I was able to ask him that, how I was able to even talk to him because he was a stranger and Marta had instructed me not to talk to them, and certainly all my programming informed me not to ask questions or answer anything but what was being asked of me.
“You'll ride with Kinship,” he said, indicating a very dark woman with a narrow face and eyes like a cat. She stepped forward and bowed.
“It will be my honor,” she said, and from that moment I followed her as loyally and inexplicably as Chumbert followed Midgerette.
Kinship placed me on the back of her motorcycle and wrapped my arms around her waist. Then she tied something around my hands and attached it to her jacket.
“Too tight?” she asked, and I said no. It was not.
“It's to keep you safe,” she explained in her soft low voice. “You being new to this kind of thing and all. Don't want you falling off, you know.”
Then we took off, the whole crew at once, charging up their engines and again the roar of a hundred airplanes taking off at once, only now we were moving, thrilling up the highway. My only worry was I could tell we were going back North, towards the land of Stan and Marta. My mind was racing even faster than the vehicles, wondering where they were taking me and why.
I didn't recognize anything we passed, though I'd walked along the same road all night long. Everything looked different in the morning sun, and when we pulled off the highway and into a parking lot I was glad to see we were still near the sea. It meant there was hope that Midgerette would be able to find me again. Kinship unstrapped me and then lifted me off the bike after she'd dismounted herself, then held my hand tightly as we all marched into the building. A big sign out front said “Motel 6” but Kinship informed me it was no longer that but now belonged exclusively to the Juice Brothers.
“You'll be perfectly safe here,” she told me. “We own this place and guard it around the clock. No one gets in or out without Lars say-so, and Lars don't say-so to no one but us.”
I didn't know what say-so was but I assumed that what she meant was that I was not permitted to leave. It was like I was back in the shed, or in Marta's garage, only this time it was Lars' motel. At least it was a lot nicer than those other places. The building was in the shape of a square around a large interior garden in the middle which was home to many trees and plants, walkways and benches, and even artificial rivers and fountains. Our room was on the second floor, facing the courtyard on one side, and overlooking the ocean on the other.
I say “our room” because it turned out I was to stay with Kinship herself. She kindly let me select which bed I preferred – there were two identical ones – and I picked the one nearest the ocean.
“Good,” she said. “I like to be near the bathroom myself, and from what I hear, you never need that, do you?”
“Sometimes I wash my face,” I said.
“You should try the bath,” she told me. “It's amazing. It'll figure out exactly how you like it, and from then on it will always be that way. Same with the heating on the floor, and the ozone in the air, and, wow, pretty much everything. It lives to please.”
“It?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said with a grin. “This motel. It's practically alive. I call her Ruby.”
“Ruby,” I repeated, as I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. Kinship left me alone for a few minutes while she visited her bathroom, and I listened quietly to the room. I could feel its presence, almost alive like she said. There were unusual vibrations all throughout. I thought I'd felt them downstairs when we were first coming in, but now I felt them ebb and flow all around. There was a web of communication humming about the air. The door was talking to the window, which was talking to the carpet, and the lamp and the chair and the bed, even the blanket on the bed, and they were all talking about me, and talking about Kinship.