{Quest is a work in progress
any references to actual persons are a reflection
of the character(s) and NOT the author}

 

Quest

 

 

Stranger than fiction

 

 

Charlie Funderbaugh sat in his 1989 Toyota Corolla finishing his cigarette and listening to the end of the first track of the Infectious Grooves disc.  There were a few things he managed to enjoy these days, good music and the fine sounding, self-installed stereo in his car, and a cigarette every so often.  He tried not to think about the fact that his best friend had once told him that he could set his watch by the schedule he unconsciously made of smoking.  ‘Every fifteen minutes,’ Talos had said on a number of occaisions.

Another of the things Charlie enjoyed was reading.  Many people claimed to be voracious readers.  Charlie didn’t claim any such thing.  Yet if there was such a category, he fit it.  Maybe he was just an escapist.  That was what he often said when people asked why he enjoyed reading so much.  In his mind though, loving to read was an absolutely commendable thing, the type of thing one really shouldn’t have to defend or explain.

He finished his cigarette, shut off his car and walked through the parking lot of the strip-mall he was in at present.  This particular strip mall always perturbed him.  As he walked between cars, he remembered yet another reason why.  There was just no room to walk, or park, as was often the case.  This particular little strip mall hosted a number of rather popular stores.  On the side he was on was Car Toys, some strange sort of market, a Quiznos (or Queasenos as many of his friends referred to it), Barnes and Noble, and Whole Foods.  Whole food and B&N were two of the biggest draws, that and the Sony Theater, also in this lot.

Still, complain though he might, all three of those particular places drew something he appreciated.  Very lovely, youthful ladies.  He loved to look at lovely things.  He supposed that was one of the reasons he’d come to Boulder in the first place.  There was no shortage of lovely things in Boulder, Colorado, and that is a fact.

He pulled open the side door to Barnes and Noble, then another set and was in.  If someone who knew him had seen him in the parking lot, there would have been no mistaking his destination.  Charlie wasn’t much for soloing movies, and his car stereo sounded just fine as it was.  It wasn’t likely he was headed for Whole Foods, as he was a pepperoni pizza eater (that pretty much says it all there), and he was one who was wont to call the nearby sandwich shop queasenos himself.

So, there he was, standing in the entrance of B&N, gazing about with an expression somewhat like a young person at a fair.  His eyes were slightly enlarged as he turned his gaze from one end of the large bookstore to the other.  He adjusted his glasses as one of those lovely young ladies walked by, then skirted the bronze statue in his way, and headed through the “bargain” section.

Bargain, he thought to himself.  More like the book-pound.  “Oh someone, please take me home, I promise not to stain your carpet, honest…” he imaged the often oversized books saying as he glanced at their covers.  The exciting world of fungi caught his eye briefly and he sniffed.  Some of these books looked like they would weigh upward of ten pounds and were about the size of a TV-dinner tray.  He had the amusing thought of buying three of them (“three for $15.00 – today only”) and putting them together with a few long wood screws to make a table.

Suddenly the corridor between the books opened onto  the Barnes and Noble main street…  It was like a wide boardwalk, spotted with islands of books, made attractive by signs or cardboard advertisements.  “The latest from author ‘such and so’” they cried.  He noticed a few he was familiar with for some reason or other.  The old books of those authors at the top of the display, the one advertised all the way at the bottom, virtually unnoticable if you were standing close enough to actually read the covers.

These he bypassed as well.  He continued beyond the fiction section, and beyond the myths section and hung a sharp right as though by instinct into the Science-Fiction/Fantasy section. 

“What a joke,” he said.

“What’s that?” asked a girl of about twelve from where she was inspecting some paperback.

Charlie fixed her with a curious stare.  “What do you read, Sci-Fi or Fantasy?” he asked her.

“Fantasy,” she said unnassuming, looking back at the cover of a Janny Wurtz book.

“Alright.  Don’t you think it’s assinine that they put Sci-Fi and Fantasy in the same section?  As though they are even remotely the same thing.”

“I know!,” she answered emphatically.  “I mean, they’ve got entire hallways of Romance and even Teenage Romance, but these two are somehow inseparably linked… like Siamese twins or something.”

Charlie sniffed distainfully in the general direction of the arrangers of books and turned to the first of the section.  A ‘New Releases’ sign hung above the large hard-covers and oversized paperbacks.  Charlie always started at the new releases section.  He received the SFFA newsletter via E-mail, but didn’t usually read it unless something important shouted out to him in the ‘table of contents’ section at the top of it.  Therefor, the new releases section was his method of planning for those paperbacks he’d be buying later. 

Except under special circumstances, Charlie never bought hardcovers.  They were too big, too heavy, and generally too hard to comfortably handle while he was in bed reading, which is almost exclusively where he read.  Of course, the spines of a hardcover and the way in which they were bound allowed the reader usually to open the book fully, even on page three-hundred fifty of a seven hundred page book.  Paperbacks loved to spit pages at you when you did this, forcing the reader to hold the book at a right angle and turn it with every page.  This was very tiresome to a reader like Charlie, who often had one hand occupied with a beer while the other held the book.

“Look at that,” he mumbled, “Ol’ Stephen Donaldson’s got a new one out.”

“I don’t like him,” said the twelve year old, which brought an instant and inappreciative sigh from Charlie.  Shopping for books was a rather personal thing for him.  Being rushed say, by the antics of a twelve year old in one’s viscinity, always ended up in a poor buy due to lack of adequate thought in one’s choices.   He hoped she didn’t prattle on.

“Why not?” he said in surprise after a moment, having realized she was ‘dissing’ Donaldson.

“Too wordy.  It’s all about the deeper meaning,” she said as though she knew the answer to the universe, which was, of course, 42 for those who have paid any attention whatsoever.  “Then when it comes down to the deep meaning, it’s empty and hops about the subject.”

“Pah!  You’re just much too young.  I take it you’re talking about the Covenant series, egh?”

She nodded, her twin, lengthy pigtails curling as she did so.

Charlie stepped down the isle and picked up two books.  “Read those.  I bet you’ll like them very well,” he said with a knowing smirk.

She took up the two volumes.  “Mirror of Her Dreams,” she said, then the other, “A Man Rides Through.  Never saw these.  My dad’s got the whole Thomas Covenant series.  I couldn’t even get through the first one.”

“That’s because you’re a Dragon Lance reader.  Easy meat.  Read Jordan, read Tolkien.  Heck, for you, I recommend LeGuinn, or the Pern series’.  Don’t get me wrong, though.  I like those others a lot, but it’s a mood thing.  When you want to get serious, get into serious authors.  David Eddings will rock your world.”

“Hey, thanks, mister,” she said and left the section carrying away the two Donaldson books.

Heh! thought Charlie.  Another mind reached.

Now, with the section to himself, Charlie began a liesurely scan of each and every row in the Sci-Fi Fantasy section.  Charlie used to be like that girl.  Used to choose only certain authors.  Actually, he’d started on the Tarzan series as a kid of no more than ten-years-old.  From there it was the semi-surrealism of Piers Anthony.  It was perhaps unfortunate that the first half of David Eddings’ big series had glared at him after that from the “Popular” and “best seller” racks he used to peruse as a kid.  One taste of Eddings’ High Fantasy and everyone else paled by comparison.

He’d spent years since looking for High Fantasy that could even come close… be entertaining on a level that could approach to the bootstraps of a writer like Eddings, but found a lot of trash and imitators.  To this day, he thought with a shake of his head, there had been no high fantasy to compare, he thought. 

Yet one didn’t necessarily have to read only that.  There was always other fantasy.  In fact, dark fantasy was rather enjoyable at times.  Still, Charlie longed for a taste of evil dark enough to infect his dreams at night, even wake him up sometimes, in his selection of fantasy.  With the amount of new female authors in the fantasy section though, evil seemed to take a side-bar to adventure and magic.  Yet there was one, Barbara Hambly.  There was definitely darkness there.  Charlie didn’t even bother to compare her with McKiernan, since both were equally dark and menacing.

Charlie rather enjoyed shopping for books.  He’d come across titles he’d read years ago and remember the stories in a flash at the sight of the covers.  Yet there were so many new fantasy authors out there.  He’d been reading fantasy for about 20 years, and just couldn’t keep up.  Of course, that stint with the ‘literary canon’ when he was in college hadn’t helped much.  After six solid years of multiple books in a night, Charlie had gone back to the fantasy section and found that he had a LOT of catching up to do.

It didn’t help that fantasy authors were getting a lot of acclaim these days either.  Robert Jordan, quite possibly the best fantasy writer of the modern world, owned the fantasy genre spotlight.  Unfortunately Charlie had read the entire 8 books in two weeks time, a total of roughly 5600 pages, and was forced, like the rest of the fantasy reading world, to wait anxiously for the next of the WOT series to arrive.  He knew he’d read it in a day or two and then be in total withdrawal for a while as he sat back to absorb it, disdaining to read anything else. 

“I swear that guy made a pact with the devil,” he mumbled. 

J. K. Rowling was another of these.  Sure, she wrote under the guise of a ‘children’s book author’.  HA!  On a whim, after hearing so much hype about the Potter books on CNN, Charlie had bought Potter’s first year.  The very next day, he bought the rest of the series up, and had them all for lunch.  Her name must be right next to Jordan’s on the Hell Spawn Publishing Co.’s six hundred and sixty six page contract. 

Charlie looked with longing on the Donaldson section.  Too bad he’d already read them all.  Next was Eddings… same story.  Fiest too.  Then there seemed to be a whole gigantic section of the alphabet with which he just wasn’t familiar (barring Jordan, of course).  There were many notables in there.  And many names Charlie was familiar with, but had never checked out.  This section was ripe for a new book purchase.

Yet, suddenly he found himself at the M’s, having declined to pick any of those up.  H through M, excepting Hambly, whose books he’d already devoured, and Jordan, seemed amazingly lacking in series books.  Charlie was one of those for whom a single fantasy story just wasn’t enough.  There had to be that suspense between books that kept him asking ‘what’s happened to hero X?’.  That’s what had killed Piers Anthony for him.  Not enough thread between the tales.  Of course, Charlie realized this severely stunted his fantasy collection.  But today he wanted to pick up a new author of series fantasy.  A couple had caught his eye so far, yet he continued on.

There had to be the right mixture.  Some authors were absolute machines.  Some of them in a few years had put out a collection to rival Stephen King.  Now… sure the shelves were inundated with their names, but… Stephen King writes a book and it’s all over the place.  The radio, the television, the best seller lists, the freakin’ movies… These others write that much and Charlie passes them by.  Stephen King, a great author, has duds.  These others who appeared – at least in Charlie’s perception – overnight, must have a lot of those.  Eventually Charlie knew he’d start on them.  But a gigantic series was similar in effect on him as a single book story.  They were just… daunting.

Charlie rounded the M section to where it continued on the other side where the westerns and the Sci-Fi/Fantasy books glared at each other from opposite sides of the isle.  There was a man there, crouched low and with an outstretched finger scanning the lower rows of the next shelves over, much as Charlie himself was wont to do.  What struck him was the way the man was resting his entire weight on his feet, flat-footed and perfectly balanced.  Finishing the row he was on, the man, dressed in black leather like a biker, stood slowly and effortlessly.  His knees didn’t crack and pop like Charlie’s would in the same situation, and he seemed almost fluid in that common motion.

He stood now gazing at the top row of the next shelf, balanced on the balls of his feet, with his hands clasped behind his back.  He stood almost strangely erect, though it seemed to Charlie as though this posture were absolutely natural to the man, whose face was turned away from where Charlie stood.  Charlie was so engrossed in gaping at this figure that he didn’t even notice when his head had turned toward him and he spoke.

“Which of these is real?” the man asked in a rock-solid voice.  It wasn’t a deep or loud sort of voice, but there was a sort of power in it that forced Charlie’s eyes to widen.

“Huh?” he asked in befuddlement.

“Some of these are real.  I’m trying to decide which of them it is.”

“What do you mean?  Real?”

“Well…” the man said, stepping a bit closer to Charlie, standing of roughly equal height to him.  “I’ve travelled places like these, and know at least a few of them.  I’m curious to know what others are real.”

“But this is the fiction section,” Charlie argued.

“Fiction?  No no.  Some of these are obviously mere dreams,” he said, picking up one of the many Conan the Barbarian titles with a smirk of amusement, “but others are actual accounts.”

“You’re daft,” said Charlie with a humored grin.

“Then why are you smiling?”

Charlie bit his lip.  He had been smiling, he knew it.  But he was smiling because laughing outright at the man might bring his psychotic mind to some unwholesome thought.  “Well…” he said thinking quickly, “if these stories were real, why would people read them?  They could go live them and save themselves eight bucks.”

The man laughed at him.

In scoffing angrily, Charlie suddenly realized that the man’s leather shirt eerily resembled a tunic.  He also noticed a scar on his cheek that ran from his temple to just below his cheekbone, ending at a dimple in that roughened skin from the broad smile he wore at the moment.  “What’s funny?” he asked.

“You,” said the man, reaching to pick another book off the shelf.  Charlie noted that his arm was rather muscley, though overall he was fairly thin.

“What?  Why am I funny?”

“You people are so disbelieving… yet you are compelled to read this…” he said, holding up Lord of the Rings.

“You people?  What people?”

“You and everyone else, excepting these few on these shelves who have lived the tales about which they’ve written.  I bet you’ve read quite a few of these stories,” said the leather clad man with a scrutinous gaze.  “Don’t some of them strike you as more real than the others?”

Charlie’s gaze narrowed.  He knew he’d never make a good decision about what book to buy now, distracted by this madman.  “Of course some are better than others.”

“Some are more than better than others.  It’s as though there is no comparison, I’d imagine,” said the stranger.

Charlie had to agree with this.  He had just been thinking the same thing not five minutes ago.  He continued to stare at the man wordlessly.

“You still disbelieve me?  Are you looking for a particular tome, then?”

“No.  I’m looking, that’s all.”

“Well, let me help you, then.”  The man grinned at him almost wickedly.  “I shall pick for you an adventure I know to be true, and you read it.  You meet me back here in one week, and we will discuss your new outlook.”

He scanned the shelves around them before he found one and pulled it out.  “The Darkness Overcame.  This one is a tragic tale, but very very real.  Take it.  If it is not as good as the best of these you’ve read, then you will tell me so, I’m certain, when we meet here at this time next week.”  With that the strange, leather clad man nodded firmly once and disappeared behind the Westerns in the direction of the café.

Charlie looked at the book in his hands.  The Darkness Overcame, by X. M. Prilonis.  “Cool initials,” he mumbled and turned the book over.

 

When Prox finds himself awakening to an alien world he can hardly believe his misfortune.  A plague on the land, a mighty dragon bent on a vendetta against a nearby castle, and an ugly princess whose fallen for him.  Prox is forced to join a quest to slay the dragon, saving the realm, and yes, the ugly princess too.

Yet this is only the surface of Prox’s troubles. 

How he’s managed to get to this place, and whether he can get out again become increasingly important as his quest begins.  How much time does he have here?  Can he survive the journey itself?  And what happens when he returns to his world after his harrowing journey into the dragon’s lair?

 

Charlie took the book to the counter.  Based on the cover art and the synopsis on the back cover, he knew he’d never have picked this book to take home.  But with such a hearty review from the leather stranger he was convinced that it was at least worth a try.  Besides, it was marked 25% off in a great green and white sticker affixed to the front cover.  What was a couple of bucks, anyhow?  If it turned out to be as good as the stranger claimed, it would be worth it.

After he’d gotten home and fixed some supper and watched a bit of Extreme Machines on The Learning Channel – the space shuttle was the topic - he headed upstairs to bed.  He opened all the windows in his bedroom, set his alarm, flipped on his small reading lamp and threw the gigantic pillow made by his grandmother when he was a baby onto the bed.  Once undressed he settled himself on to the bed and took up the book.

He always liked to read the author bio, get a feel for the folks he was reading.  Apparently Mr. Prilonis had fallen ill during the scribing of this book, and succombed to a rather strange disease shortly after its completion.  He shrugged and turned to the first pages.

 

Minding my own business, I was hiking through a field in the middle of the mountains one-day when I stumbled onto a tunnel of sorts.

 

“Aargh!” Charlie groaned.  “First person.”

 

The tunnel, more an irrigation ditch, I guess, lead down into the ground at a gentle slope.  It was fairly clean and well-lit, though what it was doing here, I certainly couldn’t guess.  Eventually my curiosity overcame me, and I stepped into it.

 

Though the beginning was not quite world-class, by the second page, Prox’s adventure into the tunnel had hooked him.

 

 

Lowess

 

Lowess Celtin was not looking forward to going home tonight.  Her life was one of loneliness, though she knew that was her own fault.  She had once enjoyed the company of lots of friends, and was carefree and even, and though the description now seemed strange to her, a bit wild at heart.  She’d met her husband young, disbelieving the tales of how marriage could go awry.  But that was what had happened nonetheless.

She had fallen in love with another man a couple years into her marriage, though it just never occurred to her that she’d fallen out of it with her husband.  In fact, it never occurred to her that she might never have loved him in the first place.  But after meeting Bryce, it certainly did.  Bryce made her laugh, touched emotions in her that she didn’t know where there to be stroked.  He was charming and provocative.  He kept her interested with talk unlike anything her husband would ever have thought of.

Lowess was by no means a fool.  She was very smart, and was a woman of means of her own.  When her marriage had fallen apart, and John had learned of Bryce, things turned very sour indeed.  She’d moved from Pierstown to Lentsville, across Otsego Lake where she bought a little house off of Bowen Rd.  She had been slowly buying the “Bookstore on the Hill” from the bank after Mr. Prilonis’ death a couple years ago, which was how she found out about the house on Bowen hill, overlooking the lake.

It worked well for her.  Her backyard was Bowen Hill, and she walked up a short flight of steps she had made to the rear of the bookstore, where she would sit mornings by the little spring, named the Hartspring, after madame Hart, who’d owned this land over sixty years ago.  It was just about as wide as a person as it gurgled into a circular pool, which ever spilled its sides and meandered through her garden toward the lake.

Her affair with Bryce had hardly lasted much longer than the divorce proceedings with John.  Though he didn’t seem the philandering type, Bryce had found someone else.  Either at her prodding, or eventually getting tired of juggling two women, Bryce had decided to cut Lowess loose.  Sometimes her little house and bookstore on the other side of the lake seemed very far removed indeed.

It was just coming to be Fall in the Appalachians, and the tourist season almost over.  Business was falling off already, as the late travellers settled for the larger towns of Cooperstown and Springfield, rather than venturing down to the lake-shore.  Thankfully the drive along Highway 33 from Glimmerglass to Cooperstown was still fairly full of campers from the park.  It meant the quiet beautiful Autumn was coming very soon indeed.  To Lowess though, it meant silence and loneliness and her own thoughts.

In April this year, Lowess had decided to buy one of those fancy, stainless steel machines with an Italian name to make espresso for her customers.  It had been a wise move.  The nearest espresso was at least six miles down the road in Cooperstown, and folks found as often as not that they’d rather not have any as drive there and attempt to find parking.  The machine had managed to pay for itself over the summer, though it did little to pay Betsy’s way, the woman who manned the whirring, steam-breathing beast during open-hours.

That was the hardest thing about the coming of Fall.  Business would drop steadily in the coming days, and book sales would fall as well…  Lowess mused that the term Fall was an apt one for this time of year in her little corner of the Appalachians.  Betsy had been showing her how to use the espresso machine all Summer during slow times.  She was a student at Utica, and would be leaving to live there soon enough.

She’d left early today, Betsy.  As six o’clock came and went, Lowess found herself out front making espressos by the handfull.  She’d made enough to cover the sales of at least three hardcovers in tips alone since three.  Perhaps next Spring she’d have to think about building an add-on for the espresso…  but “The Bookstore and espresso shop on the Hill” was far too long a name, mused Lowess. 

Right at six-thirty young Randy Jensen came across the road with her sandwich.  Randy was an espresso junkie, and his shift started at Harrison’s Market at six.  At six-thirty on the nose every day he brought her a bite to eat, in exchange for a “Triple Shot Mocha”.  Today was no different.

“’Afternoon Ms. Celtin,” he said, those young, mischievous eyes sparkling.  Lowess knew this one was trouble with the ladies from that look in his eye.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Jensen,” she quipped.

“Oh please,” he batted a hand at her, “I’m no Mister… you call me Randy everyday… why today did you call me Mr. Jensen?”

“Well…” she said, mirroring his mischievous look with a flash in her eyes, “Why do you insist on calling me Ms. Celtin?”

“I just, uh…”

“Call me Lowess, Randy.”  She took the sandwich from him.  “Afterall, you’re not so young that the two of us couldn’t date, you know.”  She hardly believed she’d said that.

“Oh!  Uh,” Randy’s face positively burned with embarassment. 

“Don’t worry, Randy, I’m not going to ask you out.  You’re trouble with the girls, that much I can see.”

Randy grinned a wicked sort of grin, his dark red hair framing those blue eyes.  He would be very handsome indeed, Lowess thought, if it weren’t for that perma-scowl he seemed to wear.  Kids these days all seemed mighty pissed off at something.  No one knew what that might be, but here was the evidence nonetheless.

The shiny Lacrimae Rerum espresso machine finished heating up the grounds and began to emit the thick black substance Randy loved so much.  Both of the twin steamer cups filled to the top with espresso shots as Randy looked on in silence.  The thought that he just might be giving thanks to his god of coffee struck Lowess as funny and she laughed.

“I suppose you want the extra shot, too?” she asked him as she poured the first three of the four shots the machine had made into a cup for him.

“Of course, Ms…. er… Lowess.”  His bedimpled grin was another reason she knew he was trouble with the local ladies.

She poured the fourth shot in atop the chocolate, already melted by the hot, black, liquid energy, and then spun the dial on the milk steamer, where it had now churned the milk to a foamy head.  She poured milk into his cup, then dabbed a bit of foam on top as well.  “Whipped cream?” she asked reaching benath the counter for the ‘Redi-whip’ canister.

“No… that stuff is just messy… get’s all over your face, you know,” he said before his eyes narrowed at the sight of the canister in her hands.  “But I’ll buy that from you,” he grinned with a hopeful look in his eye.

It took her a moment to catch on before she fixed him with an ireful glare.  “I don’t think so, Randy.  This isn’t what you think it is, anyhow,” she said, leaning on the canister to glare at him.

“Whatever you say, Lowess.  You see that cartridge there?” he pointed at the canister attached to the cream can.  It read “NO₂ – Food Grade”.  “That’s nitrous oxide.  It may not be as pure as what the dentist uses, but it has the same effect.”

She scoffed, but that was mainly to hide her shock.  “Why would you want to breathe in something you knew was a lower grade than what you really want?”

“It’s like this,” Randy began, drumming his fingers on the counter top, “You know when you buy ‘immitation’ bacon bits at the store?  It’s called immitation because it doesn’t pass the FDA’s regulations on what bacon is… there is bacon in it, just not enough.  You still eat them, though, don’t you?”  He nodded self-satisfactorily at her.

“Oh go away!” she said half in scorn half in jest.  “You kids!  If you’re not careful, I’m gonna talk to Gertie over there and tell her not to let you buy cough syrup even!”

Randy cocked a rather arrogant, and suggestive eyebrow at her, then waved and crossed the street sipping his quadruple mocha.

She shook her head.  “Kids just know too damn much.  No wonder they’re all pissed off,” she said to herself, peeling back the saran-wrapping on her sandwich.  Chicken salad.  “Thanks, Randy,” she said to herself, taking a bite still pondering his peculiar behavior.

While she ate her sandwich she cleaned up the espresso maker just as Betsy had showed her.  Betsy, a very thorough young lady, had made a checklist about this.  “If you let it get all gunked up, you’ll ruin it, then you’ve wasted all that money,” she’d admonished one night after she’d left early and Lowess had forgotten to clean the machine.  It was easy to clean, with all those stainless steel parts.

It was about seven by the time she finished with that and walked around the divider that separated the steaming espresso machine from the delicate books.  Sunset was nice in the old bookstore.  The rear wall had a few windows in it that overlooked both her house and the lake down the hill.  The reddish sunset was blinding through the windows just now, setting the dark wood around the shop glowing with life.  With few customers today, Lowess had very little upkeep to do in the shop.  She closed out her till and batched-out the credit card machine, re-shelved a couple of books that were out of place, and walked into the back office.

If the shop itself was glowing in the sunset, the back office seemed afire.  The walls were panelled in oak, the doorway was oak, her floor was a hard maple or something, and her oaken rolltop desk and chair stood right in the pool of liquid fire that streamed hotly through the large windows on the western wall.  She closed the top of the desk and took her book down from its top then opened the back door, set key to lock, and faced the seemingly changed light of the sunset.

The red was much more white without the diffusion of the windows of the shop.  The ancient and gigantic oak that shaded the south-eastern side of her house from the highway seemed to step right out of any number of storybooks.  It’s broad arms stretching out over her little patch of lawn and beauty bark near her bedroom, glistening in the sun as though it were morning and they were swathed in dew. 

The lake below seemed perfectly angled to blind her from where she took a seat at the wicker love-seat she’d long ago placed next to the hartspring.  The sun struck it now with that reddened tinge that set sparks glimmering on its mostly flat surface.  Part of the reason she had Randy bring her snacks about this time was that it was difficult to stand in her westward facing kitchen at dusk, the sunset and it’s reflection from Lake Otsego together blinding through the bay window over her sink.  Also, she preferred to sit up here anyhow, reading by the last remaining light of the day before retiring to her living room to either continue or turn on the television, where she often fell asleep.

The spring babbled with its soothing voice from right next to her.  Part of what she loved about this spring is that since it constantly babbled and softly churned its surface, mosquitos chose not to nest there.  It was quite clear too, lacking much vegitation, though some clung about it’s edges below the surface.  It always amazed her to peer into its depths as she did now.  The hartspring had no bottom that she could discern, and of course, she’d never ventured to find out its depth. 

She shifted her position in the wicker seat then, and gasped as her book seemed almost to leap from her hands to ploomp right into the hartspring.  “Damn!” she cried, fretting for the now hopelessly damaged hardcover of E. R. Eddison’s A Fish Dinner in Memison.  It had been a Ballantine’s first edition too… a valuable book, also the final one of three and she’d only just started it.

She crouched down on the damp grass and peered into the deapths of the hartspring.  She didn’t see the book anywhere.

 

 

The ‘book club’

 

Charlie was anxious to go back to Barnes and Noble to find the strange character who’d turned him onto one of the most fascinating books he’d ever read.  He’d finished it two nights ago, and hadn’t managed to get the tale out of his thoughts in that much time.  It was his hope that this odd biker fellow would suggest another book to him, and continue to do so until Charlie could recognize books of this most excellent quality for himself.

He sped out of his Gunbarrel office as fast as his feet could carry him and hopped into his car.  The day he’d met the fellow had been a slow day at the lab, and he’d been there early.  Today had not been so slow, and he was off by a few minutes already.  Boulder traffic was a bear at the best of times too, but now it was rush hour.

He started the engine of his Corolla, the stereo came to life under the hard rythmic beats of Henry Rollins, which only fueled his urge.  He had a breif moment of calm as he drew out a cigarette and struck his lighter.  The calm shattered though as the full force of the A/C in his face repeatedly snuffed his light until he frustratedly had to shut it down.  Finally, stoagie alight, A/C back on, and window rolled down full, and the drums urging him again, Charlie threw the Corolla into first and hopped the short curb in front of him, ignoring the dull clank of his U-joints hitting cement, and sped off around the lot, opposite the Printed Page and toward Serrano’s Grill.

Drumming on the steering wheel with is thumbs he pulled up behind a car waiting for the traffic to lull enough that she could make the same left turn he would… a longish wait it was too.  Apparently the light out on 63^rd and the light on Lookout Rd had gone green at the same time, because a steady stream of cars came from both directions.  When the girl in the 70’s topless bronco finally pulled out, he rode her bumper.

“Everyone else is an asshole everyday, I can do it once,” he chanted as the car coming upon his bumper fast honked.

He wasn’t able to get around that slow-moving bronco until Jay Road, where he hardly slowed to take the thirty-degree turn toward the Diagonal Highway.  He was lucky at the light on the highway that he was a small car.  Anything even a couple inches longer than his would have had to get stuck behind the train that was coming even as he drove over the tracks, the crossing arm descending toward the roof of his car.

When he was safely beyond the tracks and the light changed, he started across the highway, instantly seeing that it was full of cars.  Well, he thought to himself, it’s the long route for us, he patted the dashboard affectionately.  He punched it and second gear quickly topped out as he wove right around the turn-lane cars and bounced lightly across the westbound side of the highway, continuing his way down Jay Road.

Luck was with him.  The light at Jay and 28^th was green to him and he rounded the corner like a formula one racer, speeding back the direction he needed to go.  Again, the light at 28^th and Iris was green for the turn lane, and he turned eastward, back the way he’d come, then hung a quick right onto 30^th.  It was a straight shot down 30^th to B&N, and took him less than 2 minutes, despite a red light and the 30 mph speed limit.

Barnes and Noble was mildly busy as he paused with a smile to hold the door for the highly attractive brunette hippy girl behind him.  She smiled for him as she passed, her long, billowy patch-dress flowing as she did.  He shook his head with a grin and crossed the bargain books section to the advertisement highway, and across that to the fantasy section.  The section was no more than four rows wide, and a quick check told him that this stranger was not there.  He shrugged with a casualness he didn’t feel, and quickly made his way through the empty N through W section, where he lined up for the Starbuck’s counter.

Now, it had been a long time since he’d lived in Seattle and entered his first Starbucks.  In truth it had been somewhere in the neighborhood of ten years.  But the following conversation he heard distinctly.  “Starfucks… didn’t they know that this place would be nicknamed that when they started.  What the hell is a Starbuck anyway?” said a guy to his shrugging girlfriend in line ahead of him.

Charlie tapped the girl’s shoulder, and she turned around as her boyfriend continued to eye the Frappaccino menu.  “Hey, uh…” he said with a smile, she was another cute one, he couldn’t help but notice.  “Starbuck is the name of Captain Ahab’s first mate in Moby Dick,” he said quietly.

“Really?” She said, eyeing him while twirling the long curly strand of dusky hair in her hand.  She gave him an incredible smile, then turned back to her boyfriend.  “I thought everybody knew that Starbuck was Captain Ahab’s first mate,” she said, giving him the OK sign with her fingers behind her back.  Charlie laughed quietly to himself as the tall boyfriend turned to glare at her in total stupefaction.

“Who?” he said with surprise coloring his voice. 

“Why, Captain Ahab,” she told him, “from Moby Dick.”  She turned nonchallantly back to the menu board as he continued to glare at her, now in suspicion as though he thought she’d made it up.

The pair of them left still discussing who Captain Ahab and Starbuck were, and Charlie could see that she was getting herself into sticky situation until she said, “I can’t believe you don’t know Moby Dick.”  That, as they say, was that.  He was still chuckling as he ordered his ‘iced triple grande mocha’ in perfect Starbuckese.  The tip of a dollar twenty went far toward getting him that fourth shot as well.  He walked away sipping it.  Starbuck’s may not be the best coffee there was, but you had to award them consistency.

Stepping down from the raised platform of two steps and looking up from his mocha toward the fantasy section, which he was about to start his ritual search through for new series authors, he saw the stranger, looking through the pages of a thin book.  His look was complete, Charlie noticed.  He still wore what looked to be the same leather leggings and a leather coat this time.  His long dark hair, curly, Charlie could tell, was bound in back in a loose pony-tail.  He wore his face clean shaven, which is how Charlie was able to see the myriad scars like a little topographical map on his face.  One of those seemed more recent, and looked like it was burned across his nose, the angriness of it’s red quality superficially hidden beneath a dark tan.

“Greetings,” Charlie said to him, leaning agains the bookshelf, which got him a dark look from a worker passing in the isle beyond.

“Ah!” said the stranger, and even in so short a word, Charlie discerned an odd accent.  “So you’ve come back.  Did you like the book?”

Charlie scrutinized the hardened gaze of this man, who dressed like he must be Charlie’s age.  The look in those eyes spoke of an age beyond his though, along with the small, hardly noticable wrinkles around them.  “I did indeed,” he admitted.

The stranger did not look surprised in the least, in fact, he turned back to the page he’d been looking at when Charlie had greeted him. 

It took a moment for Charlie to work up the nerve to speak to him again, as the stranger seemed fairly engrossed in his reading.  “Do you have another one to suggest?”

“Hmmm,” the stranger’s voice came like a growl.  “No.  But I have a reading group that may.”  The words ‘reading group’ coming from that hard-lined jaw sounded like it wasn’t even english to Charlie.  It was, of course – or he’d never have understood them.  But it sounded almost as though the man had never conceived of such words, let alone of their meaning before.

“A reading group?” Charlie asked, more because he wanted to hear the words with meaning than for any need of clarification from the stranger.

“Yes,” he said.  “We’re meeting in about a half-hour.  Would you like to come?”

Charlie thought about this for a moment, gazing into the rough face of this peculiarly dressed man.  It was some time before he became conscious of the man looking back at him, and he stammered to apologize… or speak… or something.

“Ah,” said the man quickly, before Charlie could speak.  “Please, forgive me.  My name is Deker,” he said a smile coming to those stern, thin lips.  He reached out a hand, and Charlie made to shake it.  He never touched Deker’s hand though, instead finding his thick, sinewy forarm in his clasp through the leather of that jacket.  He looked down in surprise to find Deker clasping his own forearm in the same manner.  It was not an unheard of custom, of course, to shake another man’s forearm… it’s just that the only place Charlie had ever heard of it being done was in the fantasy tales he read.

“Uh… Charlie,” he replied, his gaze returning to those cold, amber eyes.

“Well met, Charlie,” Deker said with a smile that was genuine, if odd looking on his stern sort of face.  “Well, have you an… automobile?” he said with a questioning glance.  It was another term that sounded unbelievably foreign out of Deker’s mouth.

“Yes,” Charlie replied with a queer look on his face, which Deker did not seem to notice.

“Shall we go then?  We are meeting in a place called Gunbarrel.  Know you this place?”

Charlie nearly laughed when the inflection hit his ears like something out of a bad fantasy-adventure movie, but kept his calm – such as it was, and nodded.  Something cold and wet dripped over his fingers then, and he suddenly remembered the full mocha he still held in his left hand.  “Uh… follow me,” he said and started back toward the side-entrance of the store, even as he mumbled to himself, “I guess.”

Three cars vied impatiently for Charlie’s spot as Deker seemed to have some sort of difficulty with the door handle.  When he finally did get in, and sat awkwardly in the passenger seat, Charlie pulled his seat belt into place and waited for Deker to do so before starting the car.  In his beffudlement about this situation, he totally forgot about the Rollins CD in his stereo, which suddenly sprang to life, shocking the hell out of Deker as a particularly dark and disonant set of power cords wove between sinister drum beats.

“Sorry about that, Deker,” Charlie mumbled turning the volume down as quickly as he could from 20 to 8.  Sensing that someone waiting behind him in their cars was about to honk, Charlie backed quickly out of the parking space before even taking out a cigarette.  He proceded from there to manuver the parking lot with his left knee as he drew and lit a cigarette and rolled down his window in a flurry of motion, feeling Deker’s eyes on him the whole time. 

As they waited at the awkward exit from the little shopping center, waiting for three lanes of traffic to either be absent or slow enough for Charlie to zoom across to the left-hand turn lane at the corner of 30^th and Pearl less than forty feet away, Deker’s head turned continuously about, not looking, but listening.

“You like it?” Charlie asked, moving to turn the stereo up again, noting himself the sweet quadraphonic sound of the drums in particular as he did.

“I like it,” said Deker with perfect calm, even as his hand shot out and grabbed Charlie’s wrist.  “But I like it at this volume, if you please,” he said with a wan smile.

Charlie chuckled.  Even at volume 8, which was at least 10 clicks below where he ever got it alone, the woofers in the rear deck pushed enough force to feel in your back.  And though the passing traffic generally drowned out the sound of the mids and highs, the whole of the music could be heard otherwise.  “No problem,” said Charlie, easing through traffic while eyeing the oncomers so that he knew they saw him crossing the wide street. 

It was Charlie’s lucky night for traffic too, because he was able to squeeze through the yellow turn signal and onto Pearl Street without any further delay.  “Can you guide me, man?  I actually live in Gunbarrel, so if you can give me the general area…”

“Do you know the Gunbarrel Technical Park?” said Deker, at which Charlie’s eyes widened, though he was looking out his window at the moment, so Deker didn’t see.  The Gunbarrel Technical Park was in Charlie’s back yard.

“Oh… uh… Nautilus Court, right?”

Deker nodded as Charlie turned sharply onto the Foothills Parkway on-ramp.  Deker held on as if for dear life at this point, and gaped wide eyed as the Corolla sped up to fifty five.

“Er…” Charlie said, “does my driving bother you?” he asked.  Charlie was a pretty good driver, in his estimation, and he hadn’t even gone so fast around that corner that the centrifugal force moved them much. 

“Oh,” said Deker abruptly.  “No, I’m just used to a higher vehicle,” he said.  “It seems we are moving extremely fast so low to the ground.”

“Ah,” Charlie smiled.  “SUV driver, egh?  Yeah, I used to drive a van.  It does take a bit of getting used to.”

They sped along as Foothills became Diagonal, leaving no less than five car lengths between the bumper and the car in front of him.  Yet true to Boulderite style, the car behind him was so close that it’s grille was hidden beneath Charlie’s back seat in his rearview.  The Audi A4 sped up and zipped around him, never actually completing the lane-change as it swerved in front of Charlie again.  Immediately the bright brake-lights came on and the A4 swerved right again onto a 15 mile an hour off ramp.

“Dumb mother fucker!” Charlie yelled, surprising Deker.  “Did you see that?!  Why did he have to pass me to slow down and exit within a hundred yards?  That’s just stupid!” Charlie cried, shaking his head in surprise.

“It was strange, wasn’t it,” Deker said, his eyes still a bit wide at Charlie’s series of outbursts.

They turned onto Jay road and headed toward 63^rd, hanging a left toward the Technical Park, which was one street past Charlie’s own street to home.  “Up here, right?” Charlie asked just to be sure.

“I don’t know.  I have never come this way before,” said Deker, peering ahead to the left, the opposite way of the Technical Park.  Indeed he seemed surprised when Charlie turned right onto Nautilus Drive, but he nodded quickly.  “Yes, this is correct,” he said as they came to the T where the drive met the court.  “It is to the right,” Deker said.

They drove around the next corner and still Deker didn’t say to stop.  They continued a ways until all the buildings were behind them and there was just a field ahead, and some horrid looking condos beyond that.

“Turn here, into this area,” Deker said, and Charlie obeyed, hanging a right behind the last building on Nautilus Court and driving past a bay of loading docks.  Charlie was amazed at where they were.  This was the very building he used as a guide for when the power went out.  If this building’s power was out as well as his, that meant all of Gunbarrel was dark, including the street lights and signals.  Just ahead, around the backside of the building were a couple cars.  To the left was the first of the Twin Lakes that gave Charlie’s neighborhood its name, and there were a couple people standing over there.

“Park here, next to these others,” Deker told him.  They got out, and headed toward the group of three others that were waiting beneath the eaves of a tall deciduous tree that Charlie could see from his kitchen window and back porch. 

“Greetings travellers!” called Deker as Charlie mumbled to himself ‘Travellers’?  “Are we ready to embark on yet another journey?”

A young blonde haired, shifty eyed fellow wearing very sturdy clothing, including a carhardt jacket and levi’s, which was odd, as it was no less than eighty-five degrees today, stepped up.  “David and Jenna aren’t here yet,” he said, then curiously shaded his eyes and looked westward at the sun, which still hung above the mountains yet.

“Well, we are early, of course,” said Deker.  “Here is another for our group,” he said then, wrapping one of those strong arms around Charlie’s shoulder.  “This is Charlie.”

“Matt,” said a tallish, red-faced guy, his dark hair cropped fairly short but looking as though it were growing out.  Charlie shook his hand, taking note of Matt’s long horseman’s jacket of oilskin and sturdy leather workboots beneath the cuffs of his levi’s.

“I’m Sprig,” said the next guy, who was about Charlie’s general build, which is to say average height with a slight paunch.  Sprig wore patchwork courduroys and a large woven poncho of sorts, with a hood that remained hanging down his back at the moment.  Charlie shook his hand as well.

“And I’m Johann,” said the blonde lad that had spoken before, taking Charlie’s hand in his much smaller one.  Charlie felt strong callouses on his palm, and instantly figured him for a construction worker, given his choice of clothes.

Charlie felt a bit odd in his knit shorts and tee-shirt, though that lasted a mere moment, as the others quickly sought the shade again.  A car pulled up at that moment, it was a Mercedes SUV, Charlie saw beneath his shaded eyes.  As the silhouettes of a man and woman approached, Charlie tried to make out their faces.  It wasn’t until they were less than fifteen feet away that his jaw dropped for a split second.  It was the Moby Dick couple from the Starbuck’s line.  Though he hadn’t noticed it in the bookstore, both of them were dressed a bit warmly for the day as well, like the others.

“Hey!  Captain Ahab!” the girl, presumably Jenna, said with a grin of surprise to find Charlie there.  “I had him goin for a while, but had to explain it eventually,” she confided in him as her boyfriend, David approached, looking confused until he put it all together.  David was a bit taller than Charlie, but unlike Matt bore a considerable bulk as well.  Rich college types, thought Charlie looking momentarily past David to his silver Mercedes.

“Jenna. David,” said Deker, “This is Charlie.  He’ll be joining us tonight.”

“How exciting!” Jenna said with a mischievous spark to her eyes.

“So… uh… what do you all do in this book group?” Charlie asked, a bit confused by the odd assortment of folks around him.

“Book group?”  Surprise was plainly evident in Johann’s voice.  “He’s back to using that one again, egh?”

Charlie gaped at him in confusion.  “You’re… not a book group?” he said with an accusatory glance at Deker, who was taking a seat on the ground.

“We’ve a few minutes left,” Deker’s rough voice said as he looked out over the western mountains again, guaging the sun, it seemed.  “I’m sorry for the subterfuge, friend Charlie.  But in truth this is not a reading group.” 

To Charlie’s ear, Deker’s accent seemed to get thicker and thicker with each word.

“That’s right,” said Sprig.  “This is an adventure group,” he said flatly.

“Well…” Matt argued, “It’s more like a danger group.”  The shiftly look in his face was a bit shocking to Charlie, who suddenly felt rather foolish indeed.

“Yes,” said David.  “Plenty of danger.  But if Deker’s picked you, you must  be right for the job,” he said with a scowl as though he didn’t believe that.

“Danger…?  Job…?” Charlie was muttering.

The sun was starting to dip below the tips of the western peaks now, making seeing the group a bit easier.  Jenna was looking at Charlie with something between amusement and empathy it seemed.  As though she wanted to explain, but enjoyed his ignorance all the same.  “David,” said Deker in the sudden quiet, “Get your bag.”

David jogged swarthily back to his Mercedes and from the hatch took out a bag that was big enough to fit Charlie inside.  It looked like it might already have a body inside it though, as Charlie watched David heft it slowly over his shoulder with both hands and walk as though beneath a considerable weight back to them.  Whatever was in the bag couldn’t have been a body though, Charlie realized, as the bag held it’s form rigidly.

As he approached there was a dull clang coming from the bag with each step, and Charlie turned to Deker just in time to see the man looking south at the waxing quarter moon that hung right over Charlie’s townhouse.  Charlie could see his patio set from where they stood, and a wash of relief came over him that if anything weird happened, at least he could run home.

“Let’s go,” Deker said firmly, and the lot of them began walking around the rim that flanked the water’s edge toward another stand of leafy trees and some brush.

When they reached the brush, Deker stepped into it, parting it a bit with his hand so that Johann could catch it and follow, and so on through their line until at last Charlie stepped over a decomposing log and into a clearing that was almost large enough for the seven of them.  He gaped at the items David was pulling from that giant canvas bag of his.

The first item was an unstrung bow that was at least five feet long, the next a quiver of arrows only slightly shorter.  These the big man handed to Johann, who immediately set his body weight to the bow and struggled to string it.  Next to come out of the bag was a… a sword.  Charlie considered himself somewhat of an amature sword enthusiast, but this was no show piece David was handing to Sprig.  The blade was some three feet long, and the handle long enough for a single hand.  Charlie was so surprised at this site, that he didn’t notice at first the belt that David also handed him, which Sprig immediately wrapped around his waist, then sheathed his sword in a soft leather scabbard attached to it.

“Hurry now, there is little time left,” Deker’s voice said out of the fog of Charlie’s thoughts.

Charlie didn’t notice anything further until David tossed a heavy leather bundle to him, followed so quickly by an inch thick staff that it hit him in the forehead before he caught it with an ungrateful look at David.  “Put it on,” David growled at him, nodding to the leather bundle in his hands.

Holding the staff in the crook of his arm, Charlie let the leather thing unroll.  It was some kind of smock.  It was split from the hem nearly to the waiste, and the attached upper section had a deep V cut, threaded with a leather thong.  Charlie shrugged, deciding this was sort of exciting, and bunched the thing up in his hands, then pulled it on over his head.  The body part had what seemed like sleeves, but were really just flaps that hung from his shoulder to his wrist, as long as he held his arms down at his sides.

As he looked down at himself, he thought he didn’t look quite as stupid as he’d have thought, wearing what was essentially a leather dress.  Then he noticed a bundle of strings lying between his feet, and he picked them up. 

“They’re for the arms,” Jenna’s voice whispered in his ear, a bit more softly than he thought David might approve of.

“It’s time we got moving,” Deker said abruptly as Charlie gathered up his staff, which had two bits of leather attached as hand-holds on either side of the mid-point, and immediately he was following behind Jenna as they pushed a bit further through the brush.  Though the shadows were darkening their bushes, Charlie cast one last look back at his house, which he could still make out, the kitchen windows glistening in the sunset and took a deep breath.  Then he began to hear loud splashes nearby and Deker’s voice split the cricket song all around them.  “Have a care, people.  Try to be a bit quieter,” came his hoarse whisper.

Charlie turned back in time to see David jump into a puddle just past Jenna and sink past his head as though he’d just jumped into a swimming pool.

 

 

 

The Heartspring

 

Lowess stretched out a hand and ignoring her blouse-sleeve plunged her hand through the surface of the spring.  She swished it about, and to her extreme surprise did not feel the watery resistance she fully expected.  Instead, she felt a sort of musty air, damp, but definitely not water.

“What the hell is this,” she said, her cheek pressed to the grass as she looked off into nowhere, trying to determine what she was feeling.  She pulled her hand out of the hartspring.  It was hardly wet.  Her blouse sleeve had a soaked ring around her bicep, but other than that seemed as though it had merely been in a short, misty rain, rather than plunged a foot and a half into a spring.

She pushed her hand into the spring again, and again felt the air on the other side and she cursed in frustration.  She pulled her arm out again, and just to make sure she wasn’t going crazy, splashed at the surface of the spring.  Water splashed all over her skirt as she cursed herself for an idiot.  She was so surprised at her dry hand that she hadn’t thought to splash away from herself.

Again she plunged her hand through the spring, and again found nothing on the other side but damp air.  Finally she got up on her knees and with a hand bracing herself on either side of the spring inched her nose closer and closer to the surface, trying to see if she could see anything at all.  Water.  That was all she saw.  She screwed up her face in confusion and frustration, feeling whine coming on.  Then she glanced around her to make certain no one was watching, and plunged her whole head through the surface of the hartspring in her backyard.

Her body followed.

As though her hands slipped on the sides of the pool, despite the firm grip she knew she had, she suddenly found herself falling through the water.  That was just what it was too.  It was as if there were only a half inch of water, and on the other side…

A torchlit, stone-walled room.

She fell into a crumple on the hard stone floor.  She jumped up quickly and turned around to face where she thought she’d come from, though instead of falling on her head from above, she’d fallen on her chest as though she’d come from a perpendicular angle.  She gasped at her own reflection.  She stood looking at herself in a mirror roughly the size of her hartspring.  She stared for a long time into the mirror, at herself, mostly dry though looking as though she’d just run from her car to the grocery store in a heavy rain. 

It was so utterly quiet in that room, she noticed right away.  She turned about and looked around the room she was in and saw several other objects.  Many mirrors hung on the walls, spaced evenly about the room, which had a peculiar, haphazard sort of shape.  It wasn’t square, or rectangular, but was irregular.  Some walls were short, some long.  She counted six of them, but found no doorway as she rounded the room, half in fear, half in fascination. 

The mirror she had come through was unmistakable.  It was the only one that was just that size.  In a moment of fright, forcing herself to understand that somehow she had plummeted from her hartspring to that mirror and to this floor from there, she ran back to it, and stopped staring into it.  Hoping for all she was worth, she held up her hand flat before her, watching it shake uncontrollably with a queer sort of detachment.

“Please work…” she muttered, then again.  She chanted it like a mantra before finally gathering enough will to move the hand.  In her fretting, she thrust her hand forward, fingertips first much too fast, and began crying as soon as her fingers crumpled against smoothe glass.

It had hurt a bit, but not too much.  Yet her hope that it would give was crushed into despair as her fingers crunched into the glass and bounced back.  She sunk to the floor in a heap and cried.  And she cried.  Eventually there was nothing left to cry, and so she sobbed dryly, glaring at the mirror as though it would feel her spite for it.

She had no idea how long she sat there sobbing.  At one point she realized that the room was silent again, and hadn’t even noticed she’d stopped sobbing to herself.  She still glared into the mirror, not seeing herself, or even anything else that it reflected, but just sat there, slowly losing her sanity as if it were like sand falling through a handful of it, seeping out until there was nothing left to hold onto.

Sometime later her eyes moved dryly in a small circle, still somewhat focused on the mirror before her, and with a cry of terror she saw faces reflected in it.  She leapt up, and faced five people who stood across the chamber from her, watching her with expressions as surprised as hers.

 

 

Illusions

 

“What the fuck?” Charlie stammered as Jenna approached the puddle without stopping.  With a little hop as though she were eight years old and about to splash in the puddle, she flew out to the center and plunged in, to disappear beneath the surface of the puddle.  “What the fuck?!!!”  Charlie nearly screamed.

“Quickly now, Charlie.  Time is almost run out.  You must go.  I assure you it is safe,” Deker pressed, a hand resting calmly on Charlie’s shoulder though his voice gave credence to his words with a tinge of anxiety.

Charlie gawked at the puddle.  It was no more than and inch deep, two at the absolute most.  Fresh muck swirled about where Jenna’s small feet would have landed, if Charlie wasn’t losing his mind.  He must be losing his mind, he thought, as he cast a fearful glance back at Deker, who nodded kindly to him. 

“Go, lad.  Go now, lest we miss our chance,” Deker assured him with a pat on his shoulder.

Charlie somehow knew of a sudden that if he didn’t go, Deker was going to push him, though the hand rested lightly on his shoulder.  It came like a flash of insight.  What the hell?  He thought.  What’s the worst that could happen?  My feet will get wet.  He thought, mustering up his courage.  He prepared to hit the bottom of the puddle, lest he sprain and ankle, and leapt forward.

And landed roughly on his back with a grunt of expelled breath.  He couldn’t breathe, and his eyes were blurry as he tried to see what was happening.  Then hands were pulling him to his feet, and his lungs ached for a breath of air, which he was able to draw as he found himself hunched over with his hands on his knees.

“That happened to me too,” came Johann’s voice from next to him.  “Give it a second, it’ll pass,” he assured.

There was a quiet gasp from across the room.  Across the room?! Thought Charlie, even as he looked up and saw that in fact he was in a room.  But it was no ordinary room by any standards.  The walls were made of stone, arranged like brickwork, though they were about the size of his head each.  Golden light danced along the very textured surface, and Charlie looked to see torches hanging in sconces on the walls.  “What in the Hell?!” he muttered.

Then there was another gasp, and he looked again across the room and saw the source.  A blonde-haired woman, a couple years older than Charlie, stood as though frightened out of her mind, wringing her hands and backing toward the wall.  She bumped it and seemed surprised.  A round mirror hung right next to her on the wall, reflecting Charlie and his group.  Behind them was a much larger round mirror, and Deker stood right behind Charlie with a look of surprise on his face.  He appeared to be looking at the blonde-woman across the way.

“Are you alright?” he called across the room in a forcedly gentle voice to the woman.

She stammered and her eyes darted about as she realized he was talking to her.  “Uh… yes… I… I think so,” she said, inspecting herself as though looking for abrasions.  “Yes,” she said with more conviction.  “Yes I’m fine.”  Her gaze passed over each of them.  It was a crazed sort of look, and when her eyes met Charlie’s he decided she looked exactly like he must.  “What is this place?  How in the world did I get here?”

“Bookstore on the Hill?” Deker said, and the woman gasped, obviously recognizing that phrase.

“Yes… but…”

Deker nodded.  “It’s been a while since anyone’s come through there.  Are you the new owner?” he asked her, still in that gentle voice.

She laughed then.  It was an eerie laugh, thought Charlie.  Here before him stood a very handsome woman, who looked like she could be the owner of a bookstore, but the streaks on her red, puffy-eyed face and the disjointed tones of that laughter set his teeth on edge.  What had happened to her? he thought, but knew the answer without even thinking.  The same thing that happened to you, whatever that is.  He thought dryly.

Deker walked slowly over to the woman, holding his hands out before him like one might if they were entering a lion’s cage at the zoo.  He made soft, cooing sounds and ssshhhing sounds, which seemed to only frighten the poor woman even more.  She made no move of any kind, but the look in her eyes was one of complete terror as Deker approached her.  Charlie found himself thinking that he couldn’t blame her, finding that hardened face coming at you, especially as fucked-up as she seemed to be, would be pretty damn traumatizing.

Charlie could just make out Deker’s face in the mirror next to where she stood and his mind suddenly began to race at the image of his fierce determination.  It all started to come together.  Wherever he was… wherever they were… Deker is from here.  That’s why he was so bizarre during their car-ride.  And if Deker is from here, that means he knows very little about the real world, despite the fact that he apparently travels there with some kind of frequency.

“Stop!” he said quickly, as Deker was just about to touch her.  Her face showed complete terror.  Deker turned his head slowly back toward Charlie with surprise on his face.

“Stop?” he asked, curious.

“Please.  She’s scared to death.  You’re going to frighten her even more,” he said, and Deker saw in Charlie’s eyes that he knew Charlie had put a few things together.

Charlie approached the pair of them slowly, his eyes searching her face as her gaze swung ponderously over to him.  The look in her eyes seemed calmer, though that could actually just be his wanting to see that, he reminded himself.  Deker took a step back, and the rigidness of her shoulders relaxed a bit.

Charlie himself stopped a few steps from her and smiled as warmly as he ever could.  “You and I are in the same situation,” he said softly.  “My name is Charlie.  Charlie Smiggen,” he said, purposefully forcing himself not to extend his hand.  “What is your name?”  He cringed as it sounded to him like he were talking to a child.

“L… lo… Lowess,” she stammered, her eyes fixed on him now.

“Lowess,” he said, tasting the name on his own tongue.  “That’s a beautiful name.”  Her eyes softened a bit, but whether at his words or at the softness of his voice, or even at his distance, he couldn’t tell.  “Lowess,” he said then paused, not sure where to go from here.  “Lowess, I’m not sure what’s going on here either,” he said with an accusatory glance at Deker, “but you are perfectly safe.”  He laughed, not exactly sure of that statement himself, but recovered quickly.  “The only reason I can even think straight is because these people led me here… they seem like alright folks to me,” he said without glancing back at them.

“Am I right by guessing you came here on accident, Lowess?” he asked, taking a cautious step forward. 

Lowess nodded.

“How long have you been here?”

“I… I don’t know,” she said, the panic starting to rise in her throat again as she choked on the words.

“This,” he said turning slightly to Deker, “is Deker,” he told her.  “Deker lives here,” he said, hoping it was correct.  “He seems to know about this place.  Was he right?  Do you own a bookstore, Lowess?”

She didn’t speak and Charlie hurried to continue.  “I love books,” he said, managing to attain a conversational tone.  “I read mostly fantasy, myself.  I met Deker in Barnes and Noble’s fantasy section as a matter of fact,” he told her with a chuckle, seeing plainly now that Deker hardly fit in a Barnes and Noble.  His clothes alone were odd enough.

“Yes,” she said suddenly.

Charlie just raised his eyebrows hopefully at her, hoping she would continue.

“I own it,” she said, though it seemed she was saying it for her own benefit, rather than his.

Then it was as though something broke in her, and she started tripping over her own tongue, explaining what had happened.  It came so fast and furious that Charlie was barely able to keep up.  It was plain however, that she had come through some kind of pool, a spring she called it, and landed here in complete surprise, and what must have been utter terror.  As suddenly as it began, she stopped talking and just gaped at Charlie with great round eyes… they were very lovely, thought Charlie, who then cursed himself for thinking it.

He held his arms out wide.  It was likely Sprig’s custom to give hugs freely, judging from his dress, rather than Charlie’s, but Lowess looked so small and helpless at that moment, that the instinct just came to him.  She stepped toward him as though controlled by remote, looking quite shocked herself to find herself doing so.  Then she rushed toward him, and he wrapped her up in a tight embrace in which he tried to imbue a sense of solidity, a sense of rightness and comfort.

He just held her there, and after a while very slowly and gently stroked her hair.  It was the most fatherly thing he could think of at the moment.

He was aware of Deker’s voice, then the shuffling of feet and the sounds of the others moving, then the room was quiet again.  Still holding Lowess tightly, Charlie began to realize that he was drawing strength and familiarity from her as much as she from him, and he nearly started out of his shoes.  In truth, he realized, he was just as freaked out as she was, only he’d managed to keep it together in the company he was with.  Then Deker was speaking again.

“Alright, then?” he asked, his voice full of concern that seemed odd coming from him.

Charlie loosened his embrace about Lowess’s back, and for a second thought she wasn’t going to let go.  Then she let her arms slack a bit, and he put his hands on her shoulders and held her at arms length, gazing into her face.  Without thinking he wiped at her mascara-darkened cheek with a gentle thumb and she sniffed.  She was embarassed, he could see, and he let her go, thinking, thank God a normal emotion, and sighed contentedly.

He still held her gaze a moment, and nodded encouragement, at which she smiled.

“Wow,” she said with a nervous smile hidden beneath her lowered gaze.

That was not quite what Charlie expected, but he didn’t say anything.

“Would you like to have a seat, Charlie?  Lowess?” said Deker with actual compassion, and Charlie began to think he’d misjudged the man.

Wordlessly the two of them sat against the wall, it’s solidity a bizarre sort of comfort, and watched as Deker sort of… hunkered down before them.

He looked first to Lowess, who did not return his gaze, then when he’d decided she was all there, smiled at Charlie.  “Charlie was right, Lowess.  You and he are in a very similar position.  He knows as much about this place as you do, though his mind seems very quick indeed.  He’s managed to reason out a few things.

“You have stumbled upon what we call a portal,” he said, checking each of their expressions as he spoke.  “There are only a few of them between our world and yours,” he said very slowly, cautiously, Charlie thought.  “This place is called Temparae, just as your world is named Earth.”  Deker’s expression showed that he was surprised they hadn’t interrupted yet.  “This realm is Salishem.  Right now, you are in a hidden chamber created by the ancient wizards that once resided nearby.  Why they made this chamber is not known, and what it does has only recently been discovered by my clan, who live on the steppes nearby to here.”

Charlie felt about as stable as Lowess had been only a minute before, and just stared goggle-eyed at the gruffe-looking man before him, the torchlight casting eerie shadows across his face.  He nearly jumped out of his skin when Lowess’s hand stretched out and grabbed his forcibly.  But she didn’t even look at him when his head spun around to her.

“Charlie,” said Deker, “I brought here for a reason.  I wouldn’t necessarily say I sought him, but rather that he sought me, if unknowingly.”  Charlie didn’t even try to think about that.  “The truth of the matter is that Johann, David, Jenna, Sprig and Matt – like you Charlie – come for the adventure.  For them it is like a dream come true to come to run about in Temparae, and that is just what it is for us for them to come.  I can’t explain it, but they bring with them powers that are lost here… powers of spirit, of mind, and powers of sheer observation from your world of Earth.

“You have already shown me Charlie that you more than double the reasoning powers of any of them… or perhaps even all of them together.  That ability on Temparae is the equivalent of tangible power.  Lowess, I do not know if you will want to come back to us here, but for tonight you should accompany us.  We will care for you and watch over you and be your companions this time.  And if you choose to come back, we could do the same.”

“I… I can go back?” she asked timidly.  Her hand released Charlie’s and felt up the wall until it touched the glass of the mirror there, which she them knocked soundly on.  “No…” she said with an awful tone of defeat, “It is solid, see?” she said as though accusing Deker.

“M’lady,” chuckled Deker, “the portal can only be used during the light of both the sun and moon.  If one or the other is absent, the portal is merely what it appears to be.”

Her jaw dropped.  “If I had stuck my head in that spring ten minutes later I would’ve just gotten wet?” she cried, and though he didn’t know her at all, Charlie recognized the force of anger in those words.  Still, he thought, it was the first complete and coherent sentence she’d spoken.  Deker nodded in answer.

“Well I’ll be damned,” she said with a very lucid glance at Charlie.  “I think I’m supposed to be here then,” she told them.  “The way I came here… the circumstances…” her words trailed off into what Charlie was relieved to see was healthy thoughtfulness.  “Amazing…” she uttered after a moment.

“There is another thing you should know.”  Deker stood smoothly from his hunker, and crossed his arms on his chest, looking down at where they still sat with their backs against the wall.  “We will be spending several days here together before you go back,” he held out a hand to stay their protests, and the look in his eye held their tongues for them.  “Time is skewed along the line of the portals.  Though a day here feels like a day on Earth, in reality, a day spent here is only about one hour where you are from.  The effect is the same in the reverse.”  He stayed their words, now fueled by very confused expressions, again with a hand held before him.  “The conundrum is without explanation.  But it is so, regardless.”  He nodded at them once.  “I will leave you a moment to think this all out for yourselves,” he said, then turned and passed through solid stone and disappeared.

Lowess and Charlie looked at each other with rather dazed expressions.  Charlie didn’t much want to think anything through at the moment.

“What a thing to spring on a person unawares,” Lowess said, apparently having reclaimed her thoughts as her own.

“You’re telling me!” he agreed.

“You mean… they didn’t tell you?  I mean, before you came here?”

He scoffed, but smiled at her to assure her it wasn’t meant to be aimed at her.  “Hardly.  They threw this at me,” he plucked at the leather body of his smock, “said ‘put that on’, then led me to a puddle in the middle of a thicket.  They all jumped in and appeared here.  I thought I was going insane,” he said, chuckling until she spoke.

“I think I was there for a while,” she said with a very distant voice.

Charlie groaned inwardly.  “Yeah, well,” he managed, “I’ve got maps in an out of insanity.  I’ll let you borrow them if you ever need again,” he said with a supportive smile.

She laughed.  It was the most delightful sound Charlie had ever heard.

“Charlie,” she said, turning to him and taking his hand up again in hers, “Thank you.”

He began to protest, but she planted a kiss full on his lips that held his tongue, and would have for a long while to come, if she hadn’t spoken just after.  “You were very kind.  It was nice of you.”

He looked away, unable to accept that wide-eyed, almost girlish stare she was giving him.  It had been some time since a woman had looked at him that way.  Worst of all, he realized with a jolt, is that she wasn’t even aware she was doing it.  The better portion of that look was residual from her temporary insanity and terror.

He stood up to avoid that look, and what thoughts it drew from his mind, and turned to inspect the wall that Deker had just walked through.  Solid stone.  It was just as solid as any of the others as he walked over to face it directly.  He walked around to the side, never taking his eyes from it, then to the other.  He put his face up against the wall next to him, it was solid, he was sure, he’d put his hands on it.  As he looked down the wall like a gunsight, he could see exactly where the actual wall ended and the false wall began.  He gasped and stepped back.

The wall was as solid as any.

He put his face back up to the wall again, and looked down it.  There.  It seemed to sort of shimmer.  It was as though he were looking down a sun-baked roadway, except instead of  the whole wall shimmering, it started exactly… there…

It still wasn’t very apparent.  Every time he blinked he lost sight of it.  Only after he’d gazed at it a moment was he aware that it shimmered.

Suddenly he realized that Lowess was standing exactly across the wall from him, looking as though she was mirroring him, staring straight into his eyes.  He focused on her, but she wasn’t actually looking at him.  She appeared to see the wall shimmering just as he had.

“Interesting,” she said, standing up straight and facing the false wall.

She put her hand out and made as though to run her fingers along it.  The whole of the wall rippled at her touch, and the pair of them gasped. 

“Cool,” Charlie muttered.

She continued to swirl her hand about in what otherwise appeared to be solid stone, and they both looked around it and could easily define its edge.  A rectangular section of the stone about two body-widths wide and stretching from floor to ceiling was warbling at her touch.

“Jeez,” Charlie said with a grin, “If you can do that to stone, you’d better not touch me,” he laughed.

She faced him suddenly, just gaping at him.  It was but a split second before she’d turned back to the wall again, causing him to doubt the surprise and mystification he’d just seen in her eyes.  The arm that stretched to swirl the stone before her though seemed more taught, self-conscious even.  Then she stepped through it.

For a bare moment, Charlie thought he could see her through it.  It had seemed like a shadow lurked in the stone.  But he blinked and it was gone.  He gaped at the solid stone wall unlike any other in the room.  He was about to follow, when a strange thought occurred to him. 

“The torchlight,” he said aloud, his voice sounding very small in the stone room.

He backed away from the wall and took in the walls around it together, and nodded satisfactorily to himself.  The torchlight danced along the stone on all of those walls.  But on the false wall, it was fixed.  It was a near perfect illusion.  The warmth of the light, the shadow that should be there… everything was perfect.  But as the torchlight danced along the walls right up to the false section, it suddenly stopped.  He chuckled to himself.  Maybe it was just his realization that it was false, or his revelation about the torchlight, but suddenly that part of the wall looked two-dimensional.  Flat.  The stonework looked like a very good artist’s drawing to him now, but did not look real anymore… not at all.

He stepped through it.

 

 

 

Temparae

 

On the other side was a wide, green vista.  The eight of them now stood on a slender, stone platform overlooking a horse-shoe shaped valley walled by mountains very similar in feature to those of Boulder.  Between the bluff, grey, red and tan slabs of stone on either side was the green pasturelike valley, a wide, slow-moving river cutting through it’s center.

“It’s beautiful,” muttered Lowess.

“It’s like my backyard,” replied Charlie.

“Not even,” said Matt.  “Unless you live in the National Forest or something.”

“Alright,” amended Charlie, “but it’s very much like Colorado, even still.”

Gazing out at the panorama before him, Charlie was suddenly taken by an odd feeling, or so it seemed to him at the moment.  The valley before him stretched perhaps ten miles from side to side, and straight out from his vantage point seemed to go on forever until it broke free of the binding hills and became what looked like a broad plain in the distance, but that was much too far for his eye to ken.  A breeze was dancing about the long grasses below him, where a few trees stood, bracing against it’s force.  No… that wasn’t right. 

Even as he looked on Charlie felt as though he were witnessing something very very special.  Of a sudden he could see how one large tree standing alone on the plain stood not bracing against, but stretching toward the wind.  Like a giant hand made for such a thing, the tree shimmered with it’s leaves in the modest gust, it’s boughs stretched wide to catch the wind itself.  Though he’d never thought as much in his entire life, Charlie could now see that the tree wanted the wind, yearned for the wind’s caress.  Just now, as the wind touched its boughs, he saw it for what it was… delighting in the joy and the dance of the wind in it’s boughs, caressing it even as it was itself caressed.

“Holy Shit!” cried Johann of a sudden.

Charlie whirled about, hearing his explative, and found the lot of them, even Lowess staring wide-eyed at him.  He caught Deker’s eye for just a moment, but in that bare moment saw Deker’s expectations, his hopes, his wildest fantasy come to life.  Then Deker looked down as a smile crept into the corners of his mouth like a stalking cat, and he nodded to himself.

“Jesus Christ, man!” shouted Sprig.  “That was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” he said, dancing in little circles and hugging himself with a great grin splitting his unkempt beard.

Charlie looked back to Lowess, who’s eyes were wide with an unspeakable wonder as she stared at him.  It was too much, and he had to look away.  His gaze found the plain below, and he yearned for the vision he’d seen a moment ago, of the tree reaching for the wind.

“Oh no you don’t,” said Deker, suddenly grabbing his arm.  “I think we’ve seen enough for now, Charlie.”  Charlie met his gaze and the power of it nearly dropped him to his knees.  There was something there.  Deker knew something.

“What is it?” he asked the man, gaping in surprise at his comrades, most of whom still gaped at him. 

“There’s no easy way to tell you this, Charlie.  But…” Deker stared upward at the grey rock of the cliff on which they stood for a moment.  “Remember all that I’ve told you since we arrived here.  And know, Charlie, even as I do… even as we all do, that you are a conjuror of remarkable power.”

As if Deker’s face were made of ice and Charlie’s gaze were a hot iron, his eyes slid from that visage and back out to the plain, where the sun cast it’s golden rays of warmth through the valley.

Deker clutched Charlie’s chin in one rock-like hand, and forced him to look back.  The determination in the stony-faced man was like a pain that shot right through Charlie, and he winced to see it.  “Here,” said Deker firmly, gritting his teeth as he said it.  “Here you have a power you do not have back on earth.  Here your power is Conjuring, just as Johann’s is sneakery, and Sprig’s is weaponry.  David is a warrior, true enough, and dear, sweet Jenna is a cleric.  Matt is a magician, Charlie.  You are a Conjuror.”  As he spoke Charlie glanced around at whomever Deker mentioned, and the names he gave them fit them like gloves.  With a sight he’d never imagined, like some kind of bizarre sense of clarity, he knew it all to be true.  More than that, he could see it in them all.

“How…?” said Charlie weakly as his knees gave out and he suddenly found himself sitting on the stone of the ledge with his legs splayed out haphazard.

“Dude!” cried Sprig, still dancing about crazily, “We saw it!  We saw that tree fucking loving the wind!  Oh my God it was beautiful!”

“What?!” Charlie cried, half-remembering himself what he’d seen in the tree out there. 

“You conjured it for us to watch, Charlie.  Though you don’t yet know how.  We saw it even as you did.  That is how I understand conjuration works, though I’ve never met a conjuror in my entire lifetime.

Again, Charlie’s gaze slid off of Deker’s face, that stony determination mingling with a weird sort of hope was just too much for Charlie.  His eyes found Lowess.  That wide-eyed wonderment still lit her face like the sun would if they were not shadowed under the eave of their perch.  That face was beautiful.  In shock at this thought, Charlie reigned in his errant eyes, but could not force his gaze away from her.  As with the others he could see something in her… something beyond her simple appearance, something within her. 

“You,” he said softly a note of confusion in his voice.  “You… you can feel the trees… the earth… the wind…”

With every word her already gaping eyes seemed to grow wider yet.  Until finally she looked around herself at the valley below.  One of her hands brushed the stone wall next to her, and she jumped from it.  Then, curiously, she stretched that hand out again, and felt the rock.  Charlie could see it happen.  Her hand felt the rock, but so did her body.  He could see it wind through her even as she closed her eyes to the sensation.

“Druid,” said Deker in a tone of amazement.  “And you have another gift, Charlie.  You can see.  It’s been a thousand years since a man with those two powers walked Temparae.”  Suddenly Deker himself dropped to the stone and sat peering in amazement out at the plain below.  “A powerful man you are, here, Charlie.  Powerful indeed.”

Then there was a strange noise… a crackling.  His eyes sought the source of that sound and saw Lowess standing by the stone wall, still feeling it in that strange way that told him she was not just touching it.  In her right hand, though that hand itself didn’t seem to notice, the very air came to life and sparked.

A second later Lowess held in her right hand a ball of orange flame, that danced there as though it were a baseball she was holding, except that her hand was essentially limp at her side, and the ball did not obey gravity.  Thank God for that, thought Charlie, because if it did, it would fall to the ground and roll straight at him, probably catch him on fire.

Trying very hard to ignore this very peculiar phenomenon, Charlie forced himself to look up at Lowess’s face.  It was blissful.  Her expression.  Bliss.  She seemed so at peace that it took him a moment to realize what he was seeing.  She didn’t know she made the flame… did not even know it was there, with her eyes closed, and her mind open to her surroundings that way.  Then again, maybe she did.  

The hand moved, and the flame with it.

“Lowess!” he cried and here eyes popped open.  The flame went out in that instant.

He could see the question on her face.  He could see it, and answered that question without thinking.  “Yes Lowess,” Charlie said, “You really did make that flame… We all saw it.”

“I…” she looked around in surprise, “I thought… I thought I was just…” confusion washed over her expression.

“Thought you were what?” asked Deker, that tone of frank concern creeping back into his voice then.

“Well,” she said as though in a stupor, “I was feeling the stone.  The air.  And I wanted to touch it… knew I could.  The flame was the first thing I thought of…” she stammered, her words chopped by her sheer wonderment.

Suddenly Deker was standing and pacing the small ledge, his hand rubbing at his chin so that Charlie thought he might just rub the skin right off.  No one said a word, but just watched him.  “David,” he said suddenly, turning to him, then taking in the others of the group, excepting Lowess and Charlie.  “If I’m right, and if we can do it, we may just be able to forgo the three day hike to Kenelwith.”

“What?!” cried the group, excepting Charlie and Lowess, in surprise. 

“How?” David asked, his voice seemingly overflowing with warrior-ness… or that was how Charlie saw it just then.  David was a strong, strong man, and had the grace of a cat even as he did something so small as turn and follow Deker’s paces.

“You all remember meeting Trei, right?  He was a druid.  There are things that druids can do…” he said breifly looking up at Lowess, who looked to be trying to fit that name to herself as if trying on a dress at the store.  “One of the things that druids can do is teleportation.  I think our friend Lowess has it in her to do it.”

“What?!” cried Lowess and Charlie, as the others turned to gape at her.

“Lowess,” Deker said, coming toward her, that comingling determination and hope striking his hard face oddly again.  “There is a city at the other end of this valley, just around that hill,” he said, pointing toward the other end of the valley at the northern finger of the mountains.  Charlie just knew it was north.  When he thought about it, he realized that the sun was low in the sky behind them, and it was afternoon in the plain.  Therefore, logically, that left-hand finger of the mountains was north.  Yet he knew that he’d known as much before he reasoned through it.

Deker took up a slender stick and walked Lowess over to a corner of the perch, where some dirt had been able to settle out of the wind.  He drew in the dirt.  Charlie watched in fascination as Deker traced an outline.  In the foreground an arch bridge over a gap he was just drawing.  And just beyond it was a cluster of triangular roofs.  Deker suddenly looked at Charlie and grinned like a boy as Charlie looked at the drawing, half realizing Deker was looking at him. 

Deker continued to draw.  Beyond the bridge over the river stood a small village.  Beyond the village rose a stout wall, and beyond the wall a few towers peaked over it’s perimeter.  Then as Deker finished his very rough, stick-like sketch, the image came to life.  Charlie saw what the man drew, and it suddenly looked like the false stone wall to him.  It sketched itself out in remarkable detail as he watched, but had that two dimensional feel to it, just like the false wall of stone had. 

“You see it, Lowess?”

“I do…” came Lowess’s very surprised sounding voice. 

“Keep looking.  Get the feel of the place.  Feel the earth there, feel the river, feel the stone of the city wall.  Feel it Lowess and know it.”

Charlie looked up at her to see her face, and found her turning to him of a sudden.  Deker sighed.  It was an exasperated sound.  Charlie knew it was directed at him.

“What?” he asked defensively.

“You had conjured the image for us, Charlie… and it was perfect too.  When you broke your concentration, it disappeared.”  Deker just gazed at him, and Charlie thought he could feel the man’s disappointment in him.  “Was it enough, Lowess?  Can you still feel Kenelwith?”

Lowess’s eyes seemed to un-focuss for a moment, then focused again.  “I can.  I can feel it.”

“Everone, gather around,” Deker said and Charlie was suddenly buffetted by the rest of them coming to stand very near.  “Lowess,” he said very seriously.  “Take us there.  Take us to Kenelwith.”

Charlie glanced in surprise at the conviction of that tone, half thinking to himself that Deker had suddenly gone mad, but when he focused on the man’s face, he saw behind him.  He gaped around the lot of them, and blinked in utter shock.

Charlie’s feet stood not on hard, grey stone, but in long, dry grass.  The wind whipped at them all as they all looked around.  Charlie could hear them all cheering and congratulating Lowess, but he gaped below them and saw the very image of Kenelwith that he had conjured on the perch, only in reality.  It was the exact same spot.  The very perspective Deker had drawn that had allowed Charlie to conjur the image of the real town just down the hill from where they now stood.

“Woah…” he said, and his voice held the bitter-sounding ring of total bewilderment.  Just to his left, to the west, was the finger of the mountains they had seen from the opposite perspective only seconds before.  The bulk of the valley was hidden behind it’s girth, which stood about five miles from where they were.  A slender blue line wound it’s way northward from the mountains, and Charlie followed it all the way to where it was bridged less than half a mile from where they stood.  Behind the bridge stood the village.  Behind the village stood the wall.  Peeking over the wall were several towers streching toward the sky with a grace that spoke of craftsmanship unlike anything he’d seen on earth, with the possible exceptions of Antoni Gaudi, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

As he stood gaping, he became aware of the others walking down the slope toward the river and the town beyond, and he followed after them.