Jigsaw World (36 page)

The group spent the next few hours enjoying
themselves, and then they drifted by ones and by twos off to their
beds, to put the parentheses of sleep around the sentence of the
day.

******

Whispers are borne on the winds in his dream.
The whispers are hers. She has been in each of his dreams ever
since the first connection between them. His dreaming mind ponders
the fact that their waking minds are always connected at some
level, but in dreams they are almost one being.

He opened his eyes, knowing that she was
opening hers at the very same time, and they would be staring into
each other’s eyes in the next instant. He watched her pupils dilate
as she focused on his eyes. He knew that his pupils were doing the
same.

It was hard to do or think something that she
was not expecting, so he impulsively reached out and started to
tickle her, which she did not expect. He was compensated with a
giggle from her. He followed that up by caressing her back, then
pulling her to him for a very heartfelt kiss and hug.

Tom looked over to the alarm clock. It told
him that they had awakened at the crack of noon, which he thought
to be a much more civilized hour to wake up than this ten o’clock
or before bullshit. They had stayed up late celebrating the end of
the task, and so they had not really slept that long, not even a
full eight hours.

It was time to go out and face the world, even
if doing so was above and beyond the duty of any hero such as they
were. He felt around in the back of his mind, to find that Karla
was in agreement with his sentiments in all respects of these
concerns. It was time to see what the group had cooked up either to
eat, do or entertain them.

Tom and Karla were intrigued by a certain
fluidity to the walls and floors on their short walk to the
kitchen. They could feel that it was originating in their own
minds, and it felt like with a little effort, they could possibly
change their surroundings to be some other place by force of will.
Even as they walked the last few steps into the kitchen, their
minds were busy analyzing this new aspect to their
powers.

The breakfast this morning was a group effort,
and consisted of just about every Breakfasty thing one could
imagine, eggs in several forms, including omelets, toast and
biscuits and pancakes, waffles, sausage, bacon, steak, hash browns,
jam and jelly, English and other muffins, and a wide selection of
doughnuts for the hard to please. Karla and Tom grabbed plates and
filled them to overflowing.

They were greeted by an extraordinary sight
when they took their plates out to the courtyard table. Everyone
was settling there, and the table was now four tables side by side
to accommodate all of the people, food and other items that needed
space. To one side, somebody had set up the large flat screen
television from the house in a wireless arrangement, and it was
currently running one of the best news channels.

As Tom ate, he watched the various events both
large and small, and nowhere did he see any sign of the sort of
monstrous underpinnings of them that was the signature of the old
worldline. It would appear that the new consensus reality had a
large degree of scientific rationality as its
underpinnings.

Tom tried to get into the television news, or
the party atmosphere, or just the small talk that was passing for
conversation this ‘morning’. He was distracted by an odd sort of
mental echo. Yesterday, he was alone in his head, except for the
very welcome presence of Karla. Today, it felt like his mental area
had expanded. Everyone around him was leaking thoughts that he was
hearing, and he could tell that this was happening to Karla,
too.

The limits of this sensation were well
defined. Anyone within a 75 foot radius of Tom was leaking thoughts
to him and Karla. Everyone outside of that circle was silent. The
problem was that this circle was very slowly getting bigger. What
would happen when the circle contained the State, the Country, or
the world?

***Let’s go for a walk***
He suggested to
Karla.

***Okay***
She replied.

They got up and slipped out of the courtyard,
over the drawbridge, and started walking down the side of the road.
At the first gravel road that came up, they turned off of the paved
one, and started a leisurely stroll under the trees. The voices
were mostly absent now, but each time they came alongside an
occupied house, a new voice would be muttering in the
background.

***Focus on muting the noise. The circle is getting
bigger***

Slipping into a meditative state gave them the
tools they needed to put a lid on the level of interruption that
the new empathic noise was bringing them. After about thirty
minutes of wandering slowly around, they succeeded in making the
voices non-distracting, although they never entirely went
away.

They finally got to the river bank, and they
sat down for a moment or two of rest. The setting was peaceful,
with reeds and thrushes growing in the shallows and on the bank of
the river, the birds singing and the cicadas making that sound they
make. Everybody was outside the circle, and so their heads were
silent. They should have known that it would not last.

The air next to them started to shimmer, and
then the trees that could be seen in that direction were gone,
replaced by a rather strange scene, one of a rain slicked rocky
path, and a storm tossed ocean in the distance. There were still
trees to be seen through whatever sort of window this was, but they
were oversized ferns now, something like what one would expect to
see in the Permian.

***Let’s go through, and see if this is a real place, like I
think it is***

They got up, and dusted their clothes,
clutched hands, and then they stepped through the shimmering
‘mirror’ and into the scene they had seen. The rain was a little
colder than they expected, and the smell of the salt sea was not
quite as salty as they expected. There was something making all of
the expected forest noises in the foliage, even birdsong and
squeals and croaks and such, all without a bird or other animal to
be seen.

As they stood there on the rocky trail (what
made a trail?) experiencing a world unlike their own, a large slick
skinned amphibian of some unknown kind moved out onto a nearby
rock. It was four or five feet long, roughly lizard shaped, and it
seemed totally unafraid of them.

As they watched the animal relaxing on the
rock, the clouds parted briefly to reveal two moons in the sky,
neither of which was Luna, but one was almost as big. They enjoyed
the sight for a few more minutes as they pondered the implications
of this ability of theirs, and then they stepped back through the
mirror.

They turned around and began the journey back
to the compound. As they approached the inhabited areas once more,
they found that they were much better at controlling the disruptive
aspects of the contacts, and they discovered that the circle of
contact had now expanded to about two hundred feet or so. In due
course, they arrived back at the compound.

As they entered the courtyard, they discovered
that most of the group had plans to travel to places to which they
had been invited. Tyr and Heimdall were hot to return to Asgard,
where they wanted to check in with Odin. Cernunnos and the Herald
were ready to go to the Ur city, and Markus and Vera were going to
go with them.

Veritasia and Arpad were going to go stay with
the Seer for a short visit, before striking off into shadow on
their own to one of the many havens that Arpad knew in shadow. The
Sorcerer and Tom had spoken about Tom and Karla being shown around
shadow by the Sorcerer for a little while, before striking out on
their own.

The Sorcerer was talking to Tom and Karla
about the particulars of the trip when the Seer strolled up to
them. “I noticed that Tom and Karla are developing an ability akin
to my cave access powers, except that they don’t need to anchor
them to a locality like my cave, but rather they can anchor it to
their own bodies.” The Seer said. “That is a very handy skill, and
I think that they should come with me for a little while until they
master it.”

They talked for a bit longer, and it was
finally determined that the Sorcerer, Tom and Karla would go with
Veritasia and Arpad to stay in the Seers cave for a little while,
while everyone that needed to obtain the training they needed.
After that, the Sorcerer would show Tom and Karla a bit of Shadow,
before they struck off on their own.

Charlie was looking quite comfortable on the
couch in the parlor, reading a book and eating an apple. He was
planning on staying with the Sage in the house for a good while
longer, basically until the somewhat naive Sage got tired of him
sponging off of him, and kicks him out.

The first to leave was Tyr and Heimdall,
walking out toward the road, and already working the Shadows. They
waved as they started to move in Shadows, so that the last sign the
group has of them is a visual of their wave, and then a shimmer in
the air, into which they seem to vanish.

The next party that took its leave was the
group going to the First City, the odd figure of Cernunnos and his
Herald, with Markus and Vera in their company. From what Tom had
been told about the First City, they were in for a very strange and
interesting time. In that place, Cernunnos was actually one of the
more human seeming citizens.

It was not in Cernunnos’s nature to do
anything the normal way, including traveling in Shadow. He summoned
an odd looking gateway, which consisted of an almost invisible
globe shaped vehicle which engulfed the whole group that would
travel to the First City. Once they were inside, the globe lifted
itself off of the ground and began to rise toward the sky. As it
did, it and its passengers began to fade away, so that by the time
it had risen to about two hundred feet, it was no longer to be seen
at all.

Finally, it was time for Tom’s party to travel
to the Seer’s cave. The six of them said their farewells to Charlie
and the Sage, and then the Seer raised his staff and caused the
crystal at its head to flare in the now familiar way. In front of
the group, the air shimmered and then an image appeared of a
cave.

They were looking out of the mouth of the
cave, as though they stood in the middle of the first antechamber
of the cave already. The Seer instructed the others to do as he
did, and then he stepped forward into the image. The others stepped
forward as well, to find themselves to be in the antechamber of the
cave that they had seen.

“
I have set the doors in this cave
to open to whatever you most desire at the moment you open it.” The
Seer said. He walked to a nearby door and flung it open. “For
instance, this one now leads to Honolulu beach, on a totally
uninhabited Hawaii. Let’s all go there for a few
moments.”

With that said, the Seer strode through the
door, and into the sunlight of a sparkling Pacific beach location.
Everyone else trooped out right behind him, and Tom for one found
it an almost irresistible vista to visit. The sound of sea gulls
and waves, the smell of clean ocean spray, the feel of wet sand
under his feet; This was definitely a welcome addition.

Thirty minutes later, everyone was lounging in
lawn chairs at the edge of the ocean surf, sipping the drinks of
their choice while talking, except for the two girls, who were
industriously swimming in the ocean. The Seer was interested in
talking to Tom about his powers and about his destiny.

“
Can you show me a little about
how your power manifests?” The Seer asked. Tom decided that it
would be less trouble to get it over with than it would to stall,
so he concentrated for a moment and caused a ‘mirror’ to image the
compound that they had just left that morning. Next, he summoned
the killing shadow to advance upon and kill a nearby coconut crab.
The crab fell out of the tree with a satisfying thump, but the
shadow also sapped the life out of the tree that the crab was
in.

The Seer gave Tom a few pointers about the
manipulation of his powers, which he actually found to be of use,
as did Karla, when she emerged from the waves. The afternoon was
spent on the shore, practicing their powers, and getting a little
more training in the traditional Shadow Walking process as
well.

When the sun threatened to set on that
pristine beach, the Seer led the party back to the cave to settle
in. It took everyone several hours to get used to a form of housing
that literally, with the slightest intention, could go on forever,
with an infinite number of doors to go through to an infinite
number of different places.

Finally, everyone settled into the cave life,
and they spent the next several days proportioning their time
between long philosophical conversations, learning new factoids
about several subjects, and practicing their powers, and having a
sort of eternal party. It was all very entertaining, and
fun!

There came a day, perhaps three weeks later,
when it was finally time to depart. Veritasia and Arpad were off on
one of their incessant Shadow Walks. Tom had discussed the
possibilities with the Sorcerer of Hait, and they had mutually
determined that it would be better for the two of them to create a
pocket universe to live in, instead of just finding a suitable
worldline.