Standing near the room where Stefan was imprisoned, Rosario remained calm while she racked her brains trying to find a way out of that situation. She was also worried sick about Franziska, who was now by herself in a strange town. The mayor had said she was as visible as Stefan, so Rosario couldn’t help but look towards the town. He noticed it.

“Are you concerned about your daughter?”

Rosario cursed inside for having drawn attention to Franziska, but it was too late now. She nodded. “You said she looked like us and Stefan, so I thought it would be easy to see her, but there are so many shapes overlapping, I can’t distinguish anything past the first row of houses. How can you make out anything like this?”

“It’s by no means easy. I’m more accustomed to it, but even I can’t see her.”

Rosario didn’t exteriorize anything but felt relieved, and hoped Franzi had thought of going to the smithy to get help. Still, the mayor’s words seemed odd. “Mr. Cornwell, then how did you spot us two days ago? We were not near the town; we were far out in the mountains.”

“I happened to be in the area,” was his response, as his gaze went from the town back to the crystal hunter. “But please, there is no need to be so formal. Anyway, regarding your girl, the guards will soon find her and bring her here. She will join her brother, and you can reunite with them later. As I said before, all I need is for you to stay put.”

Rosario didn’t know what to say. Was that all he wanted from them? To stay calm in a cell? She didn’t believe him. It wasn’t like she could escape from one anyway, so why did he bother telling her? It all sounded like insanity to her but, at the same time, there was something different about how everything, even words, felt after she stepped into the place under the white sky. Cornwell snapped her out of her thoughts.

“Forgive me for asking this directly, but have you really never seen the Convergence until today, Ms. González?”

“No, I hadn’t,” she responded, looking at him straight in the eye. “And you can call me Rosario, if you want.”

They stood in silence for a moment until he chuckled. “Very well, Rosario. I apologize for not believing you. The thing is, I have seen many completely forgo their rational mind after witnessing only a fraction of it. You seem to handle it extraordinarily well.” Rosario worried she had missed something before. Was he talking about the place under the white sky? “Perhaps it has to do with your high affinity with the Convergence,” he continued, “but then, I am surprised this did not translate into you stepping into it. Same with the children. You three share the same affinity after all.”

“What do you want from us?” Rosario was losing her patience.

“Only for you to not get in the way of what I’m about to do. I don’t think it will be too hard for you to comply now that you’ve seen it.” He paused again, as if a new possibility had occurred to him. “I know I have bothered you enough, and I cannot expect your trust, but if you would like to, I’m willing to be of some guidance; I would hate for someone with such an affinity to get lost in the Convergence, and I believe people like us are the only ones who still have a say in what’s coming.”

She should have dismissed his words altogether, but couldn’t bring herself to do so; truth was, there was something about this strange reality that made her want to stay and get lost in it. She clenched her fists. What nonsensical thoughts were those? Still, his offer was possibly her only opportunity to learn something about this situation. She lost her line of thought when a ghostly human figure walked into a room just above Stefan’s cell and was now sitting at a desk, writing. From his clothing, he was probably a guard, and he looked almost fully transparent except for something very distinguishable near the neck. She recognized it as one of the maggots of the monster plant below the keep, the ones the mayor had called offshoots.

“Is that from the monster in the cellar?”

Cornwell nodded. “I’ll take it as a yes. Maybe we can start with this.”

He again placed a hand on her shoulder, and both were now one floor above, behind the man who had no clue he wasn’t alone in the office. Once again, Rosario felt her balance slightly off. She didn’t know how to explain it, but they hadn’t appeared there: they had moved, but in a way she didn’t know how to express in words.

The mayor walked towards the man at the desk and invited her to take a closer look. “You see, the creature you saw in the cellar, and the one you killed at the power facility, are from a very particular species endemic only to this region. I learned about it some years ago, when a local who researched mutated species mentioned it; he called it paractus. Anyway, this plant can produce little parasites that are meant to infest animals. These animals later help the paractus by feeding it and dispersing its seeds. A fascinating life cycle! But I digress. You see, one problem that beings not attuned to the Convergence have, is that you can’t control them. Basically, if you’re not part of the Convergence, I cannot reach you through it. But mutated life forms, on the other hand, are a part of the Convergence as much as we both are.”

He made a gesture with his hand, and the man with the parasite on his neck stood up and began walking down the hallway, then up two flights of stairs and onto a large balcony that overlooked the courtyard. The mayor and Rosario followed him, and once they stood behind the man, after another movement of Cornwell’s hand, he stepped on the handrail.

“What are you doing? Stop!” screamed Rosario in disbelief. The mayor halted the last movement of his hand, and the man stood still. While Rosario couldn’t hear a sound of what happened in the physical world, she understood from his body language that the man had regained control of himself, managed to climb down the handrail, and was now standing disoriented, probably shocked after suddenly finding himself in that situation.

Cornwell watched her intently.

“You are controlling people through the parasite…” muttered Rosario, at the same time she remembered the monster artichoke at the power plant, the terror in the kids’ voices as they were being shot at while trying to leave the road blocked by a fallen tree, and the impact left by a gunshot so close to the passenger seat. The anger she had repressed the day before resurged, flooding past all caution. “Did you order the people at the power facility to attack us yesterday?” She found herself asking without any control over it.

The mayor hesitated before speaking, but she barely noticed it. “I’m afraid that was an oversight on my part—”

“Oversight?” Rosario’s fury exploded in a way she didn’t know was possible, as if a strong wind had slammed open a window and threatened to rip everything into shreds. She was standing in water, perhaps near the shore, because she could feel the waves rising as the storm closed in. But then the window closed, and Rosario gasped as if she’d been held under water. She thought she saw Cornwell take a step back as he extended a hand towards her, but she wasn’t sure. It had happened so fast that she wasn’t sure if the outburst or his reaction had been real.

The mayor cleared his throat and continued before she could question the situation. “If you let me elaborate, I had that specimen of paractus planted there so it could take care of unwanted visitors, but other than that, I let the plant do its regular life cycle.” He shook his head. “Its helpers detected your presence, and this triggered its survival mechanism, making them come after you, especially after you attacked the plant. When I tried to stop the infested humans, it confused their nervous systems, and I lost all control over the offshoots. My intervention over the Convergence in the area also caught you and made you pass out. Thankfully, your son reacted well to the situation, and you escaped unharmed. I deeply apologize for the damage I caused.”

Rosario felt disgusted, but bringing it up would not help. “When you say unwanted visitor, you mean you were trying to hide the monster forest, is that it?”

“You are correct.”

“Shouldn’t the town know about it?”

The mayor stepped closer and put a hand on her back as he pointed towards the southwest, where the mountains that marked the entrance to the Valley of the Simme were visible in the distance. In the blink of an eye, they were now standing in the clearing where Rosario and the kids camped the day before, near the entrance of the road tunnel where they found the red crystals. A half-day journey in a split second. Rosario thought it would have affected her balance in a more dramatic way, but even if she still couldn’t explain how it worked, it seemed she was getting used to it.

Through the Convergence, Rosario could see the tire marks her camper left in the clearing through the shape of the crushed vegetation. The box with emergency supplies was where she left it. The rockfall blocking the tunnel, which had seemed impenetrable, now resembled a sheer curtain, and the tunnel behind it appeared as open as it would have been before the rocks blocked it. Even the ground under her feet, seemed like an arbitrary line drawn by her mind, and she looked ahead to avoid vertigo.

Just like everything inorganic she had seen so far, the mountain itself was semi-transparent, but the behemoths growing over it were not. She distinguished their long roots, extending deep into the mountain, encircling large boulders, nesting inside small caves, and reaching into the road tunnel through cracks in the concrete. The monsters the siblings had told her about were also there: a network of morsus, and a patch of dust roses.

She looked around and noticed the dark behemoth with the red crystals; it was rather small for a behemoth, but had a large root system. A few other identical behemoths grew nearby.

The mayor walked towards the tunnel, and Rosario followed. She expected to feel resistance or at least something as she passed straight through solid rocks and pieces of concrete, but just like when she tried to touch Stefan, it didn’t cause her any physical sensation at all. Inside the tunnel, however, she didn’t dare approach the roots of the behemoths; what would happen to the trees if she touched them? Trying to touch Stefan before had hurt him badly, and the mayor’s attempt to reach her through the Convergence had given her horrible headaches.

“Go on, order them to move,” said the mayor, pointing at the roots Rosario was still looking at. “You did it yesterday, after all.”

She gave him a puzzled look. What did he mean by that? She looked around and noticed the emergency exit door past the patch of dust roses. There was a large root there; the children had told her it had broken through the ceiling just as they were trying to open the door, conveniently giving them more time to escape. The mayor couldn’t possibly mean that she had done it?

Bill Cornwell then looked up, past the mountain and towards the white sky. “And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth,” he recited.

“What?”

“You kids didn’t have to study the scriptures in school, didn’t you? I wasn’t a fan of it, but those were different times,” he shrugged. “It has been a solitary path since I began walking in the Convergence, and my mind often tries to rationalize what it sees here. That verse I mentioned describes this situation quite well, if you ask me.” He looked back at her and walked closer. “God created mankind and gave them authority over all other species of His creation. Some say it’s an allegory for us humans having a more developed reasoning, and I used to think that made sense. But now I believe perhaps whoever wrote it could also step into the Convergence, and that’s what they were referring to.”

Rosario was lost for words, so when he made a pause as if expecting her to add something, she spoke without thinking. “I… already understood you are controlling people using the parasites from the plant under the keep. So now you’re telling me others can also have this power.”

The mayor looked disappointed for having to explain it himself. “Yesterday, after your kids wandered inside the cave and you waited outside, the creatures that live here attacked them. If you allow me to conjecture, the emotionally charged moment put you very close to the Convergence; you were able to perceive their predicament and manipulate a behemoth to protect them, although you seem to have forgotten about it.” He ended with a long, questioning look.

“I... remember passing out, but that’s all,” she responded after a moment. “It’s the truth!” Rosario insisted, more to herself than anything else.

The mayor paced around the tunnel. “Your rational mind probably rejects the Convergence. It’s only normal, but your ability to reach into the Convergence is still there, and by not accepting it, you’re at the mercy of your emotions. You probably noticed it before, at the manor.” He stopped and put a hand on his chin. “It’s only a guess, but considering the children remain oblivious, I may be at fault here for bringing you an unconscious awareness of the Convergence, when I tried to talk to you two days ago. As a being of the Convergence, you will now be drawn to it regardless of what you do, and your body will suffer for it unless you accept the change.”

Before Rosario could say something, he extended a hand towards the root of a behemoth. With a gesture similar to the one he used to control the infested man at the manor, he made the root of a behemoth retract, causing part of the tunnel to collapse.

Rosario instinctively ducked and put her arms over her head, yet the ghostly boulders passed through her without a sound. The mayor looked at her, even more displeased than before.

*****