Jigsaw World (21 page)

A few moments later, the four and the animals
were around a table set up in the courtyard discussing the trip
that they took. They all agreed that there was something that they
all took away from the trip, a sense of connectedness that they
were carrying with them that began, or at least intensified, on the
ride.

The Herald had an old man that served as a
combination Butler, maid and secretary to good old Harry, and he
had set the group up with beer, coffee, tea, pie and some sort of
small red meat game creatures that had evidently been grilled on a
charcoal grill. Tom suspected that it was squirrel, but it might
have been small Nutria or some other small mammal. Hell, it could
have been Pekingese or some other small dog breed. As long as they
didn’t come for Bailey, Tom was okay with it. Good food.

One of the points of discussion was the
resistance that the group felt on the journey. The other was the
feeling that had been growing in them that the mission was finally
doable, meaning that they now felt that they would be able to find
the Place of Beginnings, if someone gave them the means to travel
where they needed to, and once there, they would be able to make
the repairs that were needed.

The group understood that the resistance that
they felt was caused by the world wide collective mind that fought
to maintain the world in its Status Quo. It did not want to change,
regardless of the damage that was being done by the flawed format.
They had been cautioned by the powers that be that it would be a
long and slow process of firm pressing against the resistance. The
group could agree with that concept, now with the experience that
they had accumulated. They knew that it would indeed be slow, and
they innately felt that they would succeed in changing the setting
on reality.

The group spent several hours at that table,
with the conversation growing louder and more energetic with the
hours, and the spirit of the four climbed to the highest that it
had been at for the duration of their time together. By somewhere
close to the midnight hour, the words had turned from social and
informational concerns, to the area of ardor, and so after a time,
the two couples gravitated toward the bedrooms that had been
grudgingly provided to them. Another two hours or so of acrobatic
exercise ensued, before the arms of sleep took them into its loving
embrace.

******

Tom opened his eyes. Mostly his head was under
the covers, and in his field of vision he saw two objects. The
first object was the shapely left leg of the Lady Karla, which
established that she must be snoring yet in the bed next to him, in
some perverted reversed position. The second object was the furred
and inquisitive face of a well dog washed possum. Tom’s best bet on
the thoughts passing through that marsupial head was that he was
trying to determine whether Tom’s nose was an edible
appendage.

Tom noted that he seemed to be the earliest
rising amongst the company, and thus it fell to him to prepare the
breakfasts and the coffee every morning. This was a deplorable
state of affairs, and it went against his two most important and
normally strict philosophical rules. First, try to never awaken
before the crack of noon, and secondly, never do for others when it
is possible to get them to do for you.

Shoving the leg, the animal and the covers
aside, he grudgingly evicted his body from the bed, and lurched
slowly down the hallway leading to the kitchen. He was amazed when
he arrived to discover that Vera had already arrived, and she had
made the coffee, and had also cooked up a large plate of perfectly
cooked bacon. Beside the bacon was a good supple of pancakes to use
as bread.

“
Good morning, Vera.” Tom said.
“Did you tire Markus out last night?”

“
Yeah, I think that he had to tag
team with his host personality.” She joked. “Nice guy, but no way
he can handle me by himself!”

“
You see our hosts yet?” Tom
continued. “Maybe we got lucky today, and they decided to go out
and do the mission themselves, and let us relax for a
change.”

“
I saw the Herald just a minute
ago.” She replied. “Looked like he had just come in from a night on
the town. You think he has a girlfriend, or maybe
boyfriend?”

Tom chuckled. “It’s a tossup. Where is the
Markus now? Time's wasting, as they say.”

As Vera prepared her response, a shadow floats
across the floor and into the seat across from Tom. A second or so
of waiting yields the form of the Sorcerer sitting in the chair,
stabbing a piece of bacon and a pancake with a fork. Karla wandered
through the door just as this occurred, and the noise down the
hallway suggested that they would shortly be visited by Markus.
Vera nodded to Tom, her response to his question shortened by
events.

“
Hey, Tom, I think the possum just
took his leave of our company.” Karla said. “I saw him heading off
into the woods a few seconds ago. It looked pretty final to
me.”

“
Just as well. I don’t remember
where, but I have been getting memory flashes of cooked possum, and
how tasty the fat to lean ratio is. I am afraid his association
with us would not have ended well for him.”

The ever enigmatic Sorcerer looked up from
where he had finished off his repast. “I figured out what was
puzzling me about you and her.” He said as he looked at Tom and
Karla. “You didn’t exactly fit the typical draftee for this sort of
task. You are Watchers, but you aren’t Walkers, or any of the
specialized talents that are usually tapped for this sort of
thing.”

“
So what are we, then?” Tom asked.
“I’ll go for interdimensional millionaire laypersons of
leisure.”

“
Something more rare.” The
Sorcerer said. “You and Karla are Aspects. That is why you seemed
to fit, but also didn’t fit the profile.”

“
Aspects of what, pray-tell?” Tom
asked.

“
You are Aspects of a universal
Truth.” He replied. “What made the gods weren’t that they had
unusual powers, but that their powers fit their personas, and also
pointed out to all that saw the same principle in the universe.
When one saw Yama, he said ‘There walks death’. It is obvious that
Tyr is war. You two are the male and female parts of the same
Aspect. It is a little more subtle than death. It is Death at the
hands of Vengeance upon the field of Battle.”

“
It seems a little wordy to me.
Can we shorten it to something like ‘Divine Justice’ or something
like that?” Tom quipped.

“
I would be willing to rename it
something like ‘Damn Idjiot and Sweet Stuff’. It is kind of hard to
categorize you two, since death, murder, and most of the other
killing related words are already spoken for. I have told you two,
now you can think up a suitable description.” The Sorcerer
continued. “Put some thought into it. You wouldn’t want to be
confused with the Cool aide guy.”

Finally, The Herald came strolling into the
kitchen, dressed in his Italian suit with an air of superiority
about him. He looked at the group and prepared to pontificate. Tom
delayed the inevitable for an additional moment or so by handing
him a cup of coffee.

“
Okay people, we have a weighty
task ahead of us today.” The Herald said. “At least, Vera and
Markus do. Tom and Karla can watch, or just kick back
today.”

He went on to tell the four of them what was
supposed to happen that day, with the Sorcerer occasionally chiming
in with a tidbit of information or explanation. This was to be the
beginning of the search for the remaining two cosmic tools, the
Book of Eternity and the Seed of Creation. Each couple would be
invested with a directed shadow walk to search for and recover the
two tools.

He went on to relate the theory about the
origin of the tools. According to legend, the tools were devices
created by a species that had been labelled by the name of ‘The
Travelers’, a species of unknown origin that had apparently used a
partially mechanical method to explore the alternate worlds. The
Asgardians claimed in a family story that one of their ancestors
had met a Traveler, and described ‘him’ as a bipedal creature, but
definitely not a primate. He apparently had scaling like a reptile,
a domed skull like humans, with some sort of horns that were not
well described on their heads. The general impression of the
description was that the Travelers resembled nothing if not the
universal description of ‘The Devil’, except that there was no
sense of any evilness to the description. Maybe the devil if he was
a rational scientist type of thing.

Whatever the Travelers were, they left a few
tools around, probably lost in shadow. The tools were able to make
changes to shadow according to their programming. The Stone was
able to alter a worldline at any midpoint, regardless of the causal
sequence that created the timeline. The Staff was able to both
separate and meld worldlines as needed, while the Book caused an
intrinsic change in the reality of any given locale, making it
more real
in some fundamental way. The longer it stayed in an alternate
world, the more that world would be centered in a cloud of shadow
worlds cast from it. The Seed would do something similar to the
Book, but it actually made a shadow world develop like wildfire if
the Seed was present.

The two mentors would invest Markus and Vera
with the power to walk in shadow to one of the two tools and back
again. That was the compulsion laid upon the spell, that one of the
tools is the only destination. The Sorcerer suggested that the
process was sort of like the process of Dowsing for the tools while
shadow walking.

The Sorcerer also stated that he had taken the
liberty of extending the compound into shadow, so that now there
was far more of the compound than there used to be. In other words,
it was a whole lot bigger on the inside than on the outside, like
the Tardis. Tom thought that the Herald didn’t look all that happy
with the change, but he didn’t speak out on the subject.

Like at the Sage’s house, the shadow walk
would be started by going through a door and down a hall. Unlike
that trip, this would be a trans-dimensional walk, but it wouldn’t
be a trip through time down the mouth of a wormhole. According to
the old guys, the changes would come into the world around them at
the rate that their minds dictated. It would be in their
hands.

It was still morning, and for psychological
reasons, such workings as these were best done at or around sunset.
According to the impeccably equipped Herald, sunset was due on that
day at 6:47. The two of them suggested that they all reconvene at
6:30 to start the mission. The four of them drifted out to sit at
the court table for a couple of minutes.

“
I still think that the old guys
should go do these tasks themselves.” Markus said. “Let them do
this shit, and we can spend our days committing acts of sex and
gluttony.”

“
I agree with you.” Tom agreed.
“But you can no more get these old mystics out doing the work than
you can get the politicians to go fight the wars they
start.”

The four of them discovered that they were all
on the same page in this regard, but they also thought that someone
had to fix things. The deciding factor was that none of them really
trusted anyone else to do it right, so they were stuck with it.
Just as they reached that conclusion, there was a shimmery patch in
the air in front of them, and what looked to be a normal guy
stepped into view.

None of the four recognized him, or could
determine where he had come from. Was he a friend, or was he a
danger? They didn’t know. Tom was just about to get up and go
introduce himself when Bailey came dashing out of the compound, and
hurled himself at the man in a leap. Tom instantaneously decided
the man was a foe, since he trusted Bailey’s sense in these
matters. All doubt was removed when the man drew a large dagger and
stabbed the dog.

Tom did not remember how it came to be, but
from that instant when the dog was stabbed, he remembered nothing
until he came to himself, holding the now limp and unconscious man
up with his left hand as he probed deep within the torso with his
right hand. He withdrew his bloodied hand with the man’s heart
beating in it, and tore loose the arteries attaching it to the
body. He threw the heart away, let the body drop, and then he
kicked it as hard as he could on the back of the head.

“
Bring me a shovel and a machete
from the RV.” He said as he settled down beside the dying dog.
Bailey was still breathing, but he was having trouble with it. One
of his lungs was obviously punctured. Under these circumstances,
there could be no saving of him. The dog had been a good companion,
and Tom would stay with him as he died, so that he would not die
alone.

After about twenty minutes, Bailey finally
took his last breath, with all of them looking on. When he was
gone, Tom arose and used the machete to hack the man’s body into
small pieces, which he threw one by one into the pond for the
catfish to eat. When he was finally finished with that, he picked
up the shovel, and started to dig a grave for the dog beneath a
nearby honeysuckle shrub.

By about 12:30, the tasks were done. Karla was
hovering close to Tom in order to comfort him, while Vera and
Markus seemed to be a bit frightened by recent events. Tom went
over to the RV and grabbed a fifth of Scotch to help to turn his
frown upside down, and after a time, the others joined him in
sipping this fine whiskey.