Awakenings (14 page)

“Where exactly is this ‘other’ world?” Cat asked.

“We’re all part of a complex multiverse; countless universes that exist side by side on cosmic platforms called Branes. A good metaphor would be an onion. Each distinct universe is a thin layer of the onion, only slightly different from the next layer closest to it. At the core is the source of all, for lack of a better term,
magical
energy. The energy dissipates through the multiverse through veins and arteries extending outward. The outside of the onion is dry and hard because the farther one gets from the core, the fewer in number, and smaller, these channels become, until you reach the outer realms, where no magic exists at all. The universes at this extreme are stark and operate on pure scientific principle.”

“You’ve been there?” Seth asked sarcastically.

Lelani noticed Cat became more distant the more she explained. Talk of other worlds did not boost her confidence.

“No one has ever gone to the edge of the multiverse,” Lelani said. “Even our scholars are not sure about what constitutes life in those regions.” She checked on Cal. Only a ghost image of the runes remained. If the spell did its job, Lelani could leave Cat’s skepticism to Cal. The runes needed time to work, though. She continued her story.

“Between the core and the outside of the onion is a universe where magic and science are in perfect balance. We call it the Prime Meridian. Aandor exists halfway between the Prime Meridian and the center of the multiverse, thus magic exists in abundance. Earth exists halfway between the Prime Meridian and the outermost universe. Magic is sparse here. Where we use sorceries, enchantments, transmogrification, and so forth to manipulate our environment, you use physics, chemistry, and genetic engineering. In the end, each of us is manipulating our environment to suit our needs by whatever means available.”

Cat and Seth were silent. Even Bree looked captivated by the tale.

“What an amazing story,” Cat remarked.

“Well, it’s a lot more original than thinking you’re Napoleon Bonaparte,” Seth added.

“Excuse me?”

“So show us. Pretend I’m from Missouri. Show me your horse’s ass.”

Cat watched intently. Despite the crudity of Seth’s request, Cat wanted to see it, too. Lelani knew she was losing the woman’s trust to Seth’s cavalier attack.

“It’s not that easy. There are limits to what…”

“Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. I’m just asking you to be yourself,” Seth said. “Horse lady from an alternate universe. Or crazy woman missing from an asylum.”

“Catherine, please believe you can trust me,” Lelani said. “Take as an assurance the fact that I have saved you and your family tonight.”

“I know. It’s the only reason I’ve gone along this far, but … don’t … I … I think … I should get Cal to a hospital.” Cat looked to Seth for support after she said this.

It was all unraveling.

“I can get arrested for what went down tonight,” Seth said. “I’m not going anywhere near where there are other cops. If he dies, they’ll pin two cop murders on me on top of fleeing the scene. I have to look after my own ass.”

For once, Lelani was grateful for Seth’s selfish nature.

Seth stood up and headed for the door. “Maybe Red can take you to the hospital on her flying carpet.”

As Seth passed them, a hand sprang from the couch and grabbed his wrist. In a grave whisper, Cal MacDonnell said, “Show them.”

Cat cupped her husband’s flushed, drenched face as he struggled to open his eyes. They were white with fever. “Cal,” she pleaded.

Seth tried to break the grip. “Show them what?” he asked.

Cal looked at Lelani through cloudy eyes.

“My lord,” Lelani said, “magical energy is in short supply here. My illusion has a high power cost. I…”

“Show them,” he whispered one last time. He passed out again.

Cat stroked her husband’s face, trying to revive him. Cal slept peacefully in her embrace.

Seth had difficulty breaking Cal’s grip. “Jeez, this guy’s stronger asleep than I am awake.”

“It takes a considerable amount of magical energy to create an illusion such as the one I’ve been maintaining,” Lelani explained. “I have a finite amount of energy with me, and I should be saving it for the mission ahead; however, I understand why a leap of faith on your part is too much to expect.”

Lelani reached into her shirt and pulled out an amulet hanging from a silver chain about her neck. She took it off. Then she said, “
VATRAS ETRUS MEHA AEODIN.

“Would you hold this for me,” she asked Bree, handing her the amulet.

She felt nothing. She wasn’t changing form; the energy field that altered photons around her now dissipated. Her legs vanished and in their place were the limbs of a thoroughbred. The area behind her, clear only moments ago, was now filled with the hindquarters of a horse that was bigger than a pony but smaller than a police horse. Cat froze. Seth’s cigarette dropped, his mouth agape. Bree was smiling.

“I told you she was a horse-lady.”

CHAPTER 9

WE’RE A HAPPY FAMILY

Cal MacDonnell saw white. No, that wasn’t right. He experienced white—an ever-expanding, inestimable, infinite whiteness. Not the color of a complete spectral blend, but instead, an abyss; the absence of all matter and energy—the universe had been drained … a page sans ink. He turned; white behind him. He looked up; white above. He looked down; white below, and what’s more, no
him
. He held his hand up … nothing.
Where am I?
He was sure he said it and yet the sounds, not sounds, reverberated in the void. It was not resonance as he remembered it. Cal yelled, uncertain he’d made a noise. A minute, an hour, nothing could be measured. He simply was, yet wasn’t.

“This is your past,” said a voice behind him.

He turned, and standing there like a cutout was a young girl, no more than ten, barefoot in a blue velvet dress with white lace trim. Her dark blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She looked almost like his daughter, Brianna.

Where am I?
Cal asked again in the soundless voice. He wasn’t sure if she heard him.

“I told you, this is your past. Don’t you have ears?” The girl considered him for a second. “Oh, sorry. You understand me, though, don’t you?”

Cal nodded, or thought he did. His sense of self was a strange sensation, like the phantom limbs of an amputee.

“Good.”

You look familiar.

“I’m your sister, Meghan.”

I don’t have a sister.

“I just said you did. In fact, you have two. I’m the one you like best. Do you remember my nickname?”

No.

“Oh boy. Uphill all the way, I see. Please, look over here,” she said, holding out her hand.

There was a dot in the distance. He drew closer to it, or it to him. It was an optometrist’s eye chart, except the pyramid of stacked typescript was no alphabet Cal had ever seen. The letters reminded him of Sanskrit.

I can’t read it.

“Did I ask you to read it?”

On the right of the bottom-most line of the chart, a tiny character turned red and began to squirm and wiggle. It leapt off the diagram and ran around them aimlessly in search of something.

“That rune is one of the details,” Meghan said. “Very unorganized lot, the details. They’re always getting lost.” She put her fingers to her lips and issued a sharp whistle. The rune ran up to Meghan and studied her. Meghan thrust out her thumb like a hitchhiker and motioned to the right with quick jabs. It hopped into the empty air only to stick in the center of whiteness. It twisted and expanded like a bead of red ink dropped into a bath, then transformed into a black swirl. The swirl grew around them until they were enveloped in darkness. The air changed—humid and wet like summer in a swamp.

Where are we?

“Ground zero.”

A violent slash of lightning cut the world open from sky to ground. Bright light emanated from this tear in the universe. Cold emanated from the light, an odd sensation for one lacking corporal form. Cal tried to remain still but a powerful force pushed him toward the light. He threw his phantom arms out to the sides, hoping to find a brace in the darkness. His head plunged through the phenomenon first and emerged from a thicket. He glimpsed a world of madness on the other end—freezing cold, bright, a world populated by giant heads. Two flesh-colored mountains framed him. He clung with all his strength but the force was too strong. Giant hands came toward him …

“That’s enough of that,” Meghan said.

Suddenly, Cal was standing in a room with stone walls, paintings, velvet draperies, furniture, a library, and a massive stone fireplace with two midwives assisting a woman on a bloody bearskin rug. The eye chart, minus one rune, hung over the fireplace.

Meghan walked to the fireplace.

“No one should have to go through that twice in one lifetime. Recognize the screaming woman on the rug?”

Is this another weird dream? I don’t have time for this. I have to get back to … Erin. Oh my God, Erin is dead. I have to …

“You have to stick with the program if you hope to get your marbles back. So, this would be our mother. That’s you putting her through hell.”

Mother? Yes. I remember. Where’s…?

“Father’s three rooms away with Uncle Ian, wearing a hole in a very expensive Verakhoon rug. Men can’t handle childbirth. That’s the one constant in the universe. Not so cute smothered in blood and jelly, are you?”

I was at my daughter’s birth.

“I wouldn’t brag about it in Aandor. Men and women have specific roles here. I’ve often begged Father to teach me fencing like he taught you and Laurence—but my job is to breed sons and the occasional daughter for some lovely, noble fat cat. I wouldn’t even know which end of a sword to hold if it weren’t for you. Remember our lessons…”

… In the stables, before supper. You had a great parry, but a lousy thrust.

Meghan beamed with pride. She addressed the eye chart. “Am I good or what?”

His mother and the midwives disappeared with a shimmer.

Cal studied the room. He’d been here before. Outside the tall arched windows lay the whiteness.

Where’s the world?

“Listen to you … concerned with the world when you haven’t even figured yourself out yet.”

The scene changed. On a divan before the same great fireplace frolicked a young man and a woman, barely dressed. Cal recognized the lad as himself at fifteen. The girl was a few years older.

“Remember her?”

Loraine. She worked in the kitchen.

“Not the only place she worked.”

She ushered in my manhood a week before. On this day, though …

“… On this day, you made a very important decision. It defined you.”

“Loraine, stop,” whispered young Cal. The girl sat up. Her large smooth breasts bounced enticingly before him.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “There were no reservations when you took me the first time in the gardener’s shed; or the servant’s pantry the day after. Am I no longer appealing…?” Loraine lowered a nipple to his lips. Young Cal suckled it, drawn in by the pink bud’s exquisite sensuality. Then he lifted her off him. He sat up and covered himself with a blanket.

“It’s not that. You’re lovely. It’s just—I’ve seen how lust draws men away from decent things—makes them spend their time and fortunes on decadent pleasures.”

“My little lord’s been spending nights in town, I see,” she said. “Have I competition?”

“No, that’s not it. I am very fond of you, Loraine, but I do not love you.”

“Little lord, my legs part for you as winter parts for spring. I don’t care who else you bed, and you don’t have to spend anything to have me. Someday I’ll be wed to the cook or the valet or the stable master, or if I’m lucky, a bejeweled, fat merchant, and I can look back on these days with a smile.”

“Loraine, someday you’ll be wed, and to have been used … to think of another over your own spouse … that does not sit well with me. Your husband should be your world, as my father is to my mother, as I will someday be to my wife.”

“You mean Godwynn’s child? You’d deny me for a girl you’ve only met twice? I doubt her blood has even flowed. She is a child.”

“I’m resolute in this.”

Loraine gathered her clothes and stormed to the exit. “Your father was a much better romp than you, anyway.” She slammed the door.

“Somehow, I can’t picture Father servicing the female help.” It was a different voice that said this—a young lad of about twelve years, with sandy hair and green eyes. He wore a black tunic with gold trim and pantaloons. He didn’t belong in the scene as Cal remembered it. “Personally, I think the slut was lying.”

Laurence?

“At your service.”

Where’s Meghan?

“You mean the Pest? Her tour is done.”

Pest. Yes, that’s the nickname we gave her.

“Making progress, bro.”

The runes on the bottom line of the eye chart were all gone, and the slightly larger ones on the next line were beginning to move and turn red. Outside the window, the whiteness had been replaced by rolling fields. A mountain distorted by distance loomed in the background.

“That’s our piece of Aandor out there. Eight hundred acres of rolling fields (and one village), hitched to a minor, yet respected, noble title. The next eighty thousand acres, and the mountain, belong to Lord Godwynn. A bit of a tight ass, but he sires hot daughters. I’m hoping to get one myself.”

It’s coming back.

“It’s the runes. We’re rebooting your head. All this history is scrambled in there.”

There are no computers in Aandor. We don’t use words like “reboot.”

“We’re not in Aandor. We’re in your brain, and everything in here is fair game to get you up to speed. Meghan and I are just coopted memories augmented by the spell to walk you through your life. But there’s not enough self-awareness yet to manifest your self-image. The third will help you do that.”

Is he the ghost of Christmas future?