April 10, 2008
Most People.
Most people expected a general and a guardsman to be able to fight. The fact that the guardsman in question happened to be a cliff-wight and that the general happened to be a notorious serial killer only enhanced their reputation. Most people forgot that the General could barely use his left hand, and that Ekion had trouble seeing.
Most observant people recognized that Maboroshi was dangerous, too. Anybody who failed to notice the outlines of his hidden sheaths and threatened him anyway quickly learned one other thing about the aide – he could move like a snake. For all that, though, he’d had little formal training, and a skilled fighter could still get the upper hand.
Most people, though, seemed to forget that the king could fight, too. In fact, Heizhan mused as he watched the would-be assassin slip through the window behind Nathan, he was probably the best of them all, at least when it came to unarmed combat.
Heizhan winced as Nathan’s fist connected with the assassin’s ribs, remembering all too clearly how it felt to be on the receiving end of such a blow. The king hit like a mule kicks; Heizhan could hear the unfortunate man’s bones crack from all the way across the room.
The assassin wisely threw dignity to the wind and fled out the window. Nathan calmly returned to his seat.
The Council stared at him in varying degrees of shock. Heizhan could see Arawn in the background, laughing silently.
Most people forgot, the General mused, that the person who’d stopped a certain notorious serial killer, who could hold his own with the best of the Guard, and who had repeatedly avoided death at the hands of a skittish revenant, currently occupied the throne.
The King’s Room.
Arawn stood in the hallway, staring into the depths of a linen closet. Bemused, I wandered over to him.
“What are you looking at?” I asked my twin.
Arawn closed the door and turned to face me, his eyes a puzzled gray-blue. He didn’t let go of the door knob. “This is the low wing of the castle, right?”
“Yes,” I said, playing along. That was usually the best thing to do when Arawn started acting strange.
“Built to add more multipurpose rooms, supposedly. That was just the official excuse, I think.”
“Eh?”
“Why is there a linen closet in the low wing?” Arawn opened the door and stood back to let me look inside.
Blank slate met my gaze. “That’s not a linen closet,” I said.
Arawn shot me a look. “That’s why I keep you around – your brilliance. That’s not stone, either.”
I knew that flecks of irritated orange were lighting up my eyes. “I know that. It’s a root of the World-Tree. I didn’t realize we were so close to it, though.”
“Neither did I.”
“Why…?”
Arawn raised a gloved hand. I fell silent. It was never a good idea to distract him when he was concentrating. Slowly, he stuck one hand through the root and turned to face me again. He was grinning.
“I didn’t know you could do that, did I,” I said flatly, nodding at his hand.
“Neither did I,” my brother said cheerfully. “But we’re about to get some answers.” He drew his hand back out, and I saw that he was gripping someone’s arm.
King Nathan stared up at us, indignation burning in his golden eyes.
“I thought so,” Arawn said with a toothy smile. He let go of Nathan’s arm a moment before Nathan would have moved away. Nathan, still silent, turned his stare on me.
I said the first thing that came to my lips. “I didn’t know you could pass through the World-Tree.”
Nathan sighed, a move perceptible only to those who knew him. “Landwights can pass through the flesh of the Tree, but not its blood. It’s living stone, of a sort.” He turned his blank stare back on my brother. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to figure out why there’s a linen closet in the low wing,” replied Arawn, still grinning. Needling rulers was my brother’s favorite pastime.
Arawn and Me.
“Oh, and you’re now registered at Miskatonic University.”
I coughed, inhaled my tea, and screeched something approaching the word “what” at Arawn. Arawn, the bastard, started laughing. Still coughing, I groped for a napkin, giving him my best “you’d better explain this now” glare.
“Look,” Arawn said between fits of laughter, “you need more background information than I can give you. There are people at Miskatonic who specialize in exactly the kind of stuff you need to know. Besides, the whole valley’s a liminal zone. You’ll be able to interact with them – well, somewhat – and they’re used to dealing with soul wanderers.”
“And from what you’ve told me of liminal realms, the time I spend there will matter a great deal; it’s not like the other soul wanderings where time doesn’t matter.”
“Well, yes. But it’s not really that bad.”
“I’ve read those fairy tales.”
“The Miskatonic Valley’s time has a very regular relationship to your time – it’s faster. An hour of your time is equal to about four hours of Miskatonic time. And besides, I’ve already asked someone to come and wake you if you need it.”
“Who?” I asked. I’d learned to be wary of Arawn’s messengers.
Arawn grinned. “Your cat.”
This time, I didn’t choke on my tea. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “Cats are liminal creatures. They traverse the threshold realms naturally. And you’re one of her humans; you’ll be easy for her to find.” Arawn grinned again, reaching down to rub Abigail’s head. She purred and batted at his hand. “Yes, she’ll find you easily enough.”
The Meteor.
Something fiery streaked out of the sky and struck the ground a few yards away. Instinctively, Arawn held up a hand even as the impact staggered him; after the last of the flame and rock settled, he straightened up and found himself on the very edge of a new crater.
There was something at the bottom.
His curiosity once again overpowering his better judgement, Arawn scrambled down the crater wall. The thing at the center of the crater stirred, and Arawn realized he was looking at a person. He looked closer and swallowed hard; the person just happened to be a beautiful – and naked – woman. Well, Arawn thought, keeping his eyes firmly on the woman’s face, That doesn’t happen every day.
Arawn realized the woman was standing now and staring at him, her hands on her hips. Arawn, his eyes pinking, resolutely pushed all thoughts of her hips out of his mind.
The woman walked – well, staggered gracefully – over to Arawn, saying something in a tongue he didn’t recognize. She reached out and, before he could stop her, touched his bare hand. Arawn’s power snapped out, and he quickly slid his hands up his sleeves, catching the strange woman as she staggered. She shook her head, looking dazed, and muttered, “Well, that’ll teach me to touch strange people.”
The woman’s eyes went wide, and she shut her mouth with an audible snap. One of her hands went to her throat, and her eyes locked on Arawn’s. “What did you do to me? What language is this?”
“My language,” Arawn said. His eyes went pinker. “I didn’t mean to do anything. It just happens.”
“You give people the gift of language?” The woman’s eyes crossed; evidently, the sensation of understanding a foreign language was quite strange.
“Not usually. This is the first time it’s happened, I think. The power just does what it wants to; I can’t control it at all.” It dawned on Arawn that he was starting to babble, so he shut up.
The woman was staring blankly off into the space over Arawn’s shoulder. She turned back to him as he finished talking. “My name is Kaela.”
“I’m Arawn.”
Kaela smiled, which didn’t help Arawn keep his thoughts straight at all. “Well, now that we are introduced and no longer strangers, may I trouble you for some clothes? Mine seem to have burned off during my … landing.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Arawn muttered, trying valiantly to beat back the deepening pinkness. Kaela’s smile broadened. Arawn turned pointedly back towards the crater wall and began to climb. He shook his head. Owein would never let him live this down.
Sitting on a Log in Annwn.
Coming fully aware in the middle of a dream is always disconcerting, especially when it’s not accompanied with the usual wakefulness. I was rather surprised, in a resigned way, to find myself suddenly sitting on a log on top of a green hill, watching a purple sunset.
“It took you long enough. I’ve been trying to pull you over here for hours.”
I twisted around. The Fool stood behind me, looking stranger than usual in the fading light.
“I was sleeping,” I responded testily. I have enough trouble sleeping normally; setting my soul wandering around in the otherworld is not my idea of a restful night.
The Fool graced me with a demented, toothy grin. “You still are, technically. Come on.” He grabbed my arm and dragged me unceremoniously to my feet. “We’ve people to see.”
Grumbling, I shook off his arm and set off after him. It would be another long night.
A Conversation.
“You do realize that you’re as uncanny to us as we are to you.”
I shot Arawn a look over the top of my computer. (He had, once again, shown up without warning.)
Arawn shrugged. “It’s true. This whole world of yours is weird,” he said, poking at my cat. She batted at his gloved finger.
“What prompted this conversation?” I asked.
Arawn waved dismissively. “I’ve been reading your notes.” He grinned at my glare. “I got a friend to pull them out of your computer for me.”
“Some of you are pretty damn weird even by your own standards,” I said, focusing on my game again.
A gloved hand folded the laptop’s screen down gently. “There’s a difference between weird and uncanny,” the Fool said, his eyes burning black.
Our eyes locked; for the first time, I understood what it feels like to be hypnotized.
After what seemed like an eon, Arawn broke eye contact, flipping his braid back with a curse. Abigail, annoyed at the loss of her toy, pounced playfully on his foot. I rolled my eyes.
“See?” Arawn said, tickling the cat. “Full of strange and savage beasts, this world is.”
The Fool and the Rose Queen.
Kathleen always avoided the Fool – which wasn’t all that hard, given how seldom he visited Arkham. Still, he did show up occasionally, and when he did, she avoided him like the plague.
He might be able to fool others, but he couldn’t fool her.
Kathleen rounded the bend on River Park Road, and came face-to-face with the last person she expected to see. The Fool.
He was perched on one of the many boulders that lined this section of the river, precariously close to the rushing water of the Miskatonic. His strange eyes, glowing an unnerving deep green in the twilight, were fixed on Kathleen.
Talia and Roland rounded the bend behind Kathleen, nearly knocking her over. The Fool’s stare never wavered. Kathleen never moved.
The Fool did.
His bare hand slid around Kathleen’s throat, and her entire form wavered, then vanished entirely. A shower of thick, pale yellow liquid – the last of the immortality serum – rained down on the three remaining figures. The Fool vanished just before the serum struck him.
Talia and Roland simply stared, too shocked to move.
Kathleen didn’t mind, really.
On the Arch.
“I figured I’d find you here,” Arawn said. “Do you come up here every day?”
Cain glared at him. The wind, pesky thing, blew his hair in front of his face and ruined the effect.
Arawn ambled up beside Cain and turned to look out over Glass Washington, his hands in his pockets. The mosaic had sunk into geometric abstractions for the evening; far below, the other lights went about their business, ignoring the two figures standing on the Arch. Neither of them spoke for a long time.
Finally, Cain spoke. “I wonder what would happen if I jumped.”
Arawn turned towards him slightly, his eyes glinting green. He said nothing.
“Can we die here? I don’t think anyone’s managed it yet, but I don’t know everything.”
“You still haven’t found yourself yet, have you.” It wasn’t a question.
“It is so obvious?”
“It is, especially when you retain a name you hate.”
“I hate all my names.”
Arawn turned to face the smaller man. Cain’s black eyes remained fixed on the city below.
“You’ve never been able to see yourself as anything other than a born traitor, have you?”
That wasn’t a question, either. Cain refused to answer it. A gloved hand gripped his chin and forced him to look at the other man.
“You’re forgetting the simplest of choices, my friend. This or not this. You don’t want to be a traitor? Choose not to be. You can work on the rest later.”
Cain was doing his damndest to avoid Arawn’s eyes. The Fool raised his other hand and gently brushed back Cain’s red hair.
“You weren’t always a traitor,” Arawn said softly. “In fact, I can remember one life in which you most certainly weren’t.”
Cain straightened, then met Arawn’s now-rose eyes. Hesitation came and went, and then they kissed.
Kaela backed away from Arawn and smiled softly. “I still need to think about things.”
Arawn gave an answering smile that said, I know, and the former Dr. Cain turned away from the man who was once her husband and came down from the Arch.
The Fool watched her light up as she went.
May 29, 2007
Patterns.
“What are you doing?” Kaezia asked, leaning over her father.
Arawn didn’t even blink. “Watching the Tree grow.”
Kaezia looked askance at the sky, then looked back down at her father. “There’s nothing there.”
Arawn chuckled. “Spare me from world-weary ten-year-olds. Lay down.” He patted the ground next to him.
Kaezia flopped down with all the grace of a sack of grain. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“You’re not supposed to look at anything. You’re just supposed to look. Just … look.”
“Um…” Kaezia stared at the sky until her eyes burned. Nothing, just as she’d thought. She reached up to rub her eyes, but her father grabbed her hands.
“If they’re burning, you’re almost there. Keep looking.” Arawn released her hands and tucked his own back under his head.
Sighing, Kaezia kept looking. Her eyes began to water, and her nose began to itch, and just when she was really, really sure she couldn’t take it anymore … they cleared.
And the world was made of branches. They arched above her, they twined around her, they wove through her, and they were growing.
And then she blinked, and she lost it. The world was just the world again.
Her father was looking at her, his eyes a serious brown she’d never seen before. “Remember that,” he said.
Kaezia nodded.
Together, father and daughter went back inside and went about their lives. But in later years, whenever the Queen could never be found, the Fool always knew where to find her – out in the meadow, watching the sky.
