Chapter #67To Bed, Twice by: Seuzz   "What work, sir?" you ask the old man.
"There are still many hundreds of golems out there," he says. "Filling the lives they have stolen, waiting. They need managing, to prevent them from getting up to mischief. The girl you were meant to impersonate--" He gestures at Kim's mask, and the pile of clothes beneath it. "She had charge over your high school?" You nod. "Someone should play her part."
"Me, you mean?"
"Yes. As yourself, or in the guise of another."
You think you see what he means. It wouldn't be much different from what the golems themselves had offered you, except for its goal. Instead guiding the golems to take over more lives, you would keep them corralled until they could be changed back.
"Frank and Joe are staying here, to do that," Charles continues. "Your friend James will help as well."
"I should stay and help too," you say slowly. "I started it all."
"You were only a pebble, son," the old man says. "Don't claim more for yourself than you deserve."
"But I should." Vast loathing overwhelms you. You would be surrounded by fakes. Fake friends, fake families.
"You don't have to," Charles says quietly. "In this matter, you should trust your strength. Or your weakness, if that is what you feel. Don't let a nagging and shrewish conscience--an unreliable guide at best--bully you into anything."
"I don't want to take a vacation while everyone else--"
"It wouldn't be a vacation," Charles laughs. "I'd put you to work. And you'd begin your training, even if it didn't feel like it."
Training. "I hardly know what I'm getting into," you say.
He looks at you kindly. "It is late. You've had an exhausting day, and a long party at the end of it. Sleep now, and we'll talk tomorrow." He gives you a key to another room.
* * * * *
You don't get much sleep, actually. Joe wakes you up early--bounding onto your bed and shouting you out of slumber--and drags you downstairs to a grand breakfast. You only listen quietly as he and Frank and James discuss the work to be done in Saratoga Falls. Joe affects keen disappointment when you tell them that you'll probably be leaving town with Charles, but Frank claps you on the arm and says you've chosen well. James's expression is unreadable.
While people are still eating, a man in a military uniform enters and gives Charles a package: the Libra Personae, retrieved from whatever city it had been sent to, and to cheering Charles rises to take it upstairs. He beckons you to follow.
Up in his bedroom he carefully packs it in a suitcase. "Are you ready to go?"
"Sir?" you exclaim. "Now?"
"Long farewells are awkward. You'll see everyone very soon. And it is best to nip regrets at leaving before they take root."
"I'll need to go home and pack," you say, but he shakes his head.
"The boys will do that and send it along. You'll find it waiting, in fact."
"So where are we going?"
"To where I live, eventually. It's a little town no one has ever heard of, up in the Rockies. But we would have to make another stop first."
"What do I need to take with me? A toothbrush?"
He smiles. "Come as you are, Will."
You expect him to lead you out into the hall, but instead he goes over to the bathroom door. It is shut, but instead of opening it he runs his palm over the doorjamb: up one side, across the top, and down the other. Where his hand brushes it, golden lines appear. It's an inscription in some strange but beautiful-looking script.
"Is that a magic door?" you gasp.
"In a sense," he says. "It won't take us to another world, though. Only to a kind of place in back of this one." He opens the bathroom door and steps through.
It is pitch black within. Though he stands only a foot or two inside, you can barely see him. He holds out a hand. "Hold onto me, son. I won't lose you." You grasp him tentatively, and then tightly, as darkness swallows you up.
You walk for a very long time--miles it seems--saying little. The floor is smooth and firm, and you soon lose your fear of stumbling. You can see nothing either, but the phantom lights in your own eyes. From time to time a fear seizes you: Have you lost Charles's hand, and are now gripping onto some horrible thing? Each time you have that thought, though, the old man murmurs something. You can't catch the words, but his voice and tone reassure you.
Finally, a little light appears in the distance. It grows as you approach, and resolves itself into a little pool cast by an unseen source. It falls on and surrounds a low object.
It's a stone bier.
Charles gently presses you onto it. "Lay back, son. It's quite alright. It's a bed, that's all."
You still swallow as you raise your legs to the bier and lay your head back. Charles's expression is gentle and warm as he gazes down on you.
"You will sleep for a bit, Will. You will dream. No nightmares, I'm sure. But I don't know what the dreams will be of. You will wake, as you wake every morning, but refreshed and without weariness, and will feel that no time has passed."
You can't stop a sassy thought from forming. Charles sees your expression, and asks you what it is. Shamed-faced, you tell him, for you don't think you could resist any request he makes of you: "I was just wondering if there'll be flying cars when I woke up."
He does the last thing you'd expect: He bursts out laughing. "No, there will be no flying cars, son. If you wake to find them, you'll know you're dreaming. Ah, me," he says as he recovers himself. "If only everyone who came here had your sense of humor." He twinkles down at you.
"Now, close your eyes, and I will sing to you. It won't be the song we sing for most who come here. It will be my song, and I sing it for very few."
You do as he commands. Briefly you hear your own breathing, and then a soft tune fills your ears. It is sweet and melancholy, like a lullaby. There are words, but you can't catch them, and the melody is also elusive. Your senses rock as you try to follow it, but--
* * * * *
It is dark, but you are not alone. A dim circle is hanging before you, shining faintly. You sense a vacuum about you, and as the circle grows larger you feel yourself pulled toward it, possibly at an immense speed. For it grows larger and larger, filling your vision. It is pocked with smaller circles and dark patches and ridges.
It's the Moon. It is bright now, with a frosty light. You plunge through it, and feel it about you.
And you're not alone. He is now with you, all about you, in the form of a voice, whispering words you can't make out, nuzzling at your ears. His tone is insistent, but filled with a stern tenderness. Thin tendrils touch you, and wrap about you, but loosely. You somehow understand that they cannot bind you, that only you can wrap yourself in them. And you do, spinning yourself up in a light cocoon, cloaking what you now perceive was your own nakedness within the lunar light.
His name is Sulva, you understand.
And then you are in the darkness again. Sulva is still with you, but there is another globe now. It throbs, as though under titanic pressures, laboring and laboring without buckling. It is wrapped in a Stygian cold and darkness, but you sense it is brimming with light and heat, bent over Herculean labors. You plunge through it as well, and now there is another voice, rougher and quicker than the other, speaking quickly and brightly. His name is Kenandandra. Sulva's voice doesn't fade, but joins the other in a kind of murmuring duet.
Your own voice quickens, and you try to join them, though you can't find the words. But you feel them encouraging you.
You're back in the darkness again, but with the other two. You dance in a circle. And then they fade, and you sleep again.
* * * * *
You waken to feel a hand brushing your cheek. "Wake up, son," a voice says. You open your eyes. Charles Brennan is standing where you had last seen him. He holds out a hand.
"Sir?" you ask as you take it. "Is it morning?"
"Yes," he says. "A beautiful morning, too."
You are stiff as you rise, but strength flows from the old man into you, and you hop to your feet. It is still dark, except in this pool of light, but you know there is light elsewhere. Bright light.
You are about to follow when your eye chances on a dim shape just to the side. You peer at it. It's another bier. Aubrey Blackwell is stretched on it. His eyes are closed, and his expression troubled. "He's here too?" you gasp.
"Yes," says Charles. "He also sleeps, and will sleep for a long time yet. His dreams, I fear, are not as sweet as yours were. But he will wake again, to happiness. But come. Have no fears for him."
You take the old man's hand, and he leads you. Far in the distance you see a pinprick of light, like a star. Again, it is a long journey, but the pinprick resolves into a tall, white rectangle, and when you reach it you find a door.
It doesn't lead into a bedroom, though, but into open air. It is very cold. The sky is a powdery blue color, and snow covers the ground. A trail of deep footprints leads to the back door of a small house.
You look behind you, to see the old man close the door to a small metal shed. "Come inside while the cocoa is still hot, son," Charles said. "Joe is getting impatient to open his presents."
"Presents, sir?"
"Yes." He smiles. "It's Christmas morning, Will." You have the following choice:  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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