Moon Lake

Joel stepped out of the Capsule and looked back at the gates. Portal travel was not new to him, and this Terminus was odd somehow. Instead of the usual destinations, like Hobart, Nevo Roma, Whitehead, et cetera, there was one entrance labeled “To The Universe” and a number of others with odd names, planets of which Joel had never heard. What’s more, they were arranged alphabetically, instead of by travel time as was more common. He pondered this mystery for a moment, then walked out of the terminal and into the world.

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The inner office was really not much different from the outer one. There was a larger desk, farther back, and a lot of space between the door and the desk.  At the desk sat Alric Ferrin, who deserves some description.

Alric Ferrin has dark hair, slicked back into a ponytail that is caught at the base of his neck in a silver ring, and banded at intervals down his back in black onyx rings. His eyes are dark blue, and he sports a full beard, trimmed close and meticulously shaped.   He is round, but his face and hands are not fat, and his eyes and the fluid nature of his actions betray a life that has not been spent behind desks. He is dressed in a black suit of an antique style, complete with gray waistcoat and silver watch chain. His desk is largely bare, with a slim monitor standing at one corner and a large, blotter pad directly in front of him.

As the party enters he looks up as if surprised, then rises and pulls out a silver pocket watch, checks it, and replaces it in one fluid motion, signifying either extensive familiarity or long hours of practice. To Joel’s eye it looks more like the latter.  “I was expecting one more, but no matter,” Alric says, half to himself.

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Johnny’s Journal: First Entry Aboard the Intrigue

This is my first entry in my official Navigator’s Log.  I am Navigator John Adams Johnson, known to just about everyone as Johnny.  I serve as Navigational Officer aboard the Starship Intrigue, a scout and reconnoissance ship owned by LightWays incorporated, for whom I have worked six months now.  I have served as Second Navigator on three other flights, which were all dull.

Our crew is small, and this mission is strictly off the records. Captain of the Intrigue is Captain Lucian Harris, and this is his sixtieth mission for LightWays in fifteen years. First Officer and Medical Officer is Dr. Edward Stringham, with “Rock” Ingersoll as navigator. We don’t know his real name, and he insists that it is Rock. Nobody pries too deeply.

Our mission is to find a lake on a small planet in the Fourth Cluster of Portals.  Apparently the planet is peculiar because there are only two operating portals to it: one in orbit and one on the surface. All other attempts to build gates in or out have failed…

#####

Oaths administered, and contracts signed for the non-guild members, Alric called Penny into the room and had her give a little more briefing to the party.

“The Maglev trains don’t go to Norwood. The closest terminal is in Riverton, about twenty miles south.  We will book you passage on that train tomorrow, and you should be in Riverton by tomorrow evening. From there it’s up to you how you get to Norwood and the area there.

“Norwood is outside the arctic circle, but only just, so there will be snow; but you should be able to get around, as its local autumn.  Don’t take too long, however. The snows can get mean quickly up there. What kind of gear will you need? Do you have cold weather outfits? Are you set for tents? Probably not yet. There are outdoors recreation stores nearby, Why don’t you all get equipped and meet back here, and I’ll take you to your hotel for the night. Any questions? No? Okay, have fun shopping, girls! You too, boys. Bye!”

The party set off on foot, headed for city center and in dead silence. Nabhan seemed content to not talk to anyone, Scarlett and Joel were wrapped in their own contest of wills versus oaths, and Kendrick was out of his league entirely.

So it was Hazel who opened the conversation. “So, what does all that ‘protect the party’ stuff mean, anyway? What’s a White Blade?”

Joel and Scarlett looked at each other, and Scarlett said quietly, “age before beauty,” and Joel grinned.  He nodded to Scarlett and turned to Hazel.

“How much do you know about life on the other worlds?”

“I know we all came from Earth, but someone learned how to make Portals, and we found a bunch of useful worlds with Portals already on them. Then someone learned how to copy the portals and make them connect to each other over really really long distances.  Now everyone lives where ever they want and the Near-Earth Alliance still runs the show, for those planets that want to listen to them.  But Savlod has always been a neutral planet, so we don’t really pay much attention to what everyone else is doing.”

“You just pay for your Portals and leave it to that?”

“We don’t even do that. The portal is natural.”

“Really? How does that work? I thought the one near Earth was the only natural one.” Kendrick asked.

“I don’t know,” Hazel said with sublime indifference. “Nabhan would know. Nab?”

Nabhan looked uncomfortable for a moment, which in his case meant a deeper-than-normal scowl. “It’s new.  For some reason it only showed up…here. There was a huge flood of scientists and government people in for a few years, and now there’s just a branch office.  Before that portal we didn’t really know about all the other worlds.  We kinda thought we were it.”

“Wait, you mean Savlod is a colony ship planet?” Scarlett asked.

“Maybe. We don’t have any history about it, and nobody really talks about it.  We know about Earth, we know about the First Exodus and the Second Migration, but we don’t have any records of what ship we’re from, or how we got here, or anything, really. We’re just here.  Look, I know this is all weird and strange to off-worlders, and you think we need to find out where we came from and who we are and all that, but when the Portal opened there were a bunch of people who tried to do just that, and they didn’t get anywhere, and we don’t care.  We’re happy here. What more do we need?”

“Anyway, ‘it doesn’t matter where you come from,’” Hazel lilted, obviously quoting. “’What matters is where you’re going.’ And anyway, you never told me about Stars and Blades and all that stuff.”

“And you’ll have to wait a little longer. Because where we are going is here.” Joel said, pointing at the store at which they had arrived, then holding the door for the others.

Hazel actually jumped up and down once or twice, then grabbed Scarlett’s hand and ran inside. “Come on! Let’s go find some coats. And hats. And good tent for us girls to share. And some snow pants…” the rest was lost to Joel and the others as they disappeared into the racks.

“She’s very excitable,” Nabhan said.

“And that’s why you are so devoted to her.” Kendrick observed quietly. “Um, I mean, she’s your sister, obviously. But you’re worried that she’s gonna get into trouble, and you want to protect her. Which um, which is good! You should be very proud…um, of her, and you.” Nabhan just looked at him silently.  Then stalked off into the racks. “I didn’t mean to offend him, Mr. Tucker. I really didn’t.”

“I know that, Kendrick. Call me Joel, by the way. We’ve got a ways to go together, and it’s easier if we can talk like real people.”

“Thank you, um, Joel.”  Joel clapped the large man on the shoulder, then walked over to the tents.

Later that night, after all the gear was stowed and everyone was back in the hotel, they met in the restaurant for dinner. Hazel was wearing a much-too-formal dress, in more-stark-than-usual contrast to her brother. Joel met them at the table they had found and motioned Kendrick over.

“Evening you two,” Joel said as he and Kendrick sat down. “Anybody seen Scarlett yet?”

“She wanted a shower, and said she’ll be down in a few minutes,” Hazel replied, then looked crafty. “But before she gets here, you can tell me all about the White Blades, and she won’t be here to make you stop talking if she doesn’t agree with something you say. You’re free!”

Joel actually laughed at this. “I don’t know that I’d have anything to say that she hasn’t already heard. Really,  my complaint isn’t with the organization itself, or even most of the members.  It’s with some of the leaders. They tend to think a lot about the financial side of the job, rather than the human side. When you get to that point in this career you’re one step below being a hitman.”

“But what is your career? What is it that you people do?” Hazel persisted.

“I guess it wouldn’t be something your planet would really know or normally care about,” Joel conceded. “We’re professional adventurers.”

“People pay you to just, go on trips?” Hazel asked, incredulous.

“Just like Alric is paying us now,” Joel reminded. “After the Second Migration, there were suddenly a number of worlds that needed explored, and a number of places that it was either too risky or too expensive for governments and companies to send their own people into, but they still need information about those places. That’s where we step in. We gather information, collect things, deliver messages, whatever you need done, a White Blade can do it for you. However, while it’s often likely that these little trips of ours will end up in someone getting hurt or killed, the Blades have a rule against taking jobs specifically to kill someone. At least until recently.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means that the Guild has loosened up the rules about what kinds of jobs White Blades can Swear to,” Scarlett said, coming around a corner carrying a drink. “We still don’t take jobs that are specific hits, but White Blades have been known to band together and work on common tactical challenges.  Many clients find it useful to be able to recruit an entire team of well-trained, highly motivated people that can take on challenges and not flinch.”

“In other words, you now accept mercenary jobs,” Nabhan translated, unimpressed. “Or are there other, non-military ‘tactical challenges’ of which I wasn’t aware?” his eyes were hooded.

“Some call it mercenary action, I suppose. At any rate, it was the inclusion of those kinds of jobs that convinced our two-tone friend here to create some competition.”

“It’s not really a competition, Scarlett. We just feel there’s room in the Systems for both our organizations…”

Joel began, but was cut off.

“Do you know how much money the Blades lose to your little experiment every year? Do you?”

“And that’s the other half of the reason. If you’re more worried about the money than the jobs, you aren’t doing the right jobs.  We are out here to enrich human knowledge, and cover costs. It seemed to me like the Blades forget that from time to time, and I designed a little reminder.  I believe in what the Blades do, but something got lost along the way.” Joel responded, then visibly controlled himself. Scarlett, seeing this, bit back the response she was clearly preparing, and sat back in her seat, also collecting herself.

“I um, I don’t mean to be rude, but, well, we’ve never heard of the White Blades on my planet. All we know is the Dark Stars, but they do a lot. I mean a lot of work, and, well, if the White Blades are anything like them, then I’m sure they’re okay in my book,” Kendrick was clearly trying to smooth things over.

“Where are you from, Kendrick?” Scarlett asked, refocusing her attention.

“Tagline. As you might guess from the name, it’s, well, it’s not a big planet. Actually, Tagline is a habitable moon, circling the planet Whitehead. Our name comes from the way we were reported in the explorer’s log. They found Whitehead, said it was okay, then noted that the moon was probably useable too.”

“So now you’re a…what? Tagliner? Taglinsh?” Hazel asked.

“We call ourselves ‘Tagalongs’. We’re not a large planet, and really don’t take ourselves too seriously.” Kendrick replied. Hazel laughed delightedly. “Kendrick the Tagalong! I like it!” Joel suspected that Kendrick was blushing under his beard at this treatment, but he smiled a bit, so Joel didn’t interfere. Anything to bring the shy, diffident man more into the circle was good at this point.

“Scarlett, where are you from?” Joel asked, an entire olive branch in that question.

“I was born on Earth, actually. My parents were among the last to leave. They hoped they could save our home, and they certainly tried. There was still some good on Earth, even at the very end. But it was not to be. The planet was too dangerous, and there wasn’t any real reason to stay, when safety was as close as the nearest portal to Freedom or Nueva Roma or any of the others.

“I thought Earth was too toxic to support life centuries ago,” Nabhan said, mistrusting.

“It’s not easy, but you can still go there,” Joel said. “I’ve been there, once or twice. The atmosphere’s terrible for you, but you can breathe it if you run out of air in your tanks. And there are places that still have some trees, and even a few animals.”

“Mankind has put a lot of work into ‘terraforming’ the new worlds,” Scarlett continued, her heart in her voice. “But at some point, after the earthquakes stop, we need to go back and terraform Terra herself.”

“Terra?” Hazel asked.

“It’s an old word for Earth. ‘Terraforming’ means ‘making like Earth’, which is not just a little ironic.” Scarlett finished. “Anyway, after my parents escaped to Freedom, and found that it was the most government-controlled wreck they’d ever seen, they moved on, Portal-hopping for five years until we reached Hobart. And that’s where I mostly grew up. I only have little memories of Earth, and most of them aren’t very nice.  Anyway.  What about our fearless double agent? What’s your story?”

Joel shifted a bit in his seat. “Not much to tell. I’ve been wandering around longer than most of you have been alive, finding what’s lost, looking for a better place, wondering where to go next, and generally enjoying myself while doing it. It’s a good life.”

“That’s all? That’s all we get from the man who started the Dark Star?” Hazel was incredulous.

“What do your people do? Like, why do you have an organization? As far as I can see, you all take jobs on your own volition, and wander pretty much wherever you please. Why have an organization?” Nabhan growled.

“Well, for starters, it lets people know that we will follow a certain code of conduct.  Members who violate that code are kicked out. Both groups provide training, places to stay on worlds where we have a strong presence, and backup if needed.  Any Dark Star–or White Blade–can call for help and the nearest Dark Star will come to their aid.” Joel explained.

“And this costs you…”

“Five percent. For either organization.  Any job where you wear the patch or get the job because of your membership.” Joel responded again.

“So that means that you’re paying ten percent of your take on this job to organizations?” Hazel asked

“Looks that way. But I don’t mind. It’s never been about the money.”

“So what is it about, Joel?” Scarlett asked.

“It’s about new places. It’s about people. It’s about making our part of the universe better than it was before we got here.  It’s about being places nobody’s ever been before, or solving puzzles that have been a problem for a long time.  I do this because it’s fun.”

“Me too.” Scarlett replied, oddly subdued.

“I’m glad to hear it. We should get along fine.” For some reason Scarlett looked pleased at this last statement.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but we have a long day tomorrow, and it’s getting late. So, um. We should probably all get to bed.” Kendrick said, clearly scared of putting himself out there. Joel immediately stood, as did Nabhan.

“Good advice, Kendrick. Thank you.” Joel said. Nabhan looked at his sister, who in turn looked at Scarlett.

“Go on ahead, boys,” Scarlett said. “We can sleep on the train tomorrow, and we girls have a some things to discuss.”  Nabhan looked like he would argue, but Hazel said “ Go ahead, Nabbie. I’ll be fine. I know my way to my room.”

The entire group held still for a moment, waiting for his response.  At length he just said “all right,” and stalked up the stairs, followed by Joel and Kendrick.

#####

Penny saw them off at the maglev station, as promised. And, as promised, Scarlett and Hazel were quickly asleep, leaning on one another. For some reason the taller Scarlett seemed to be just as attached to her impetuous young friend as Hazel was of Scarlett. For some reason Joel was touched by this fact.

He wasn’t sure what to make of Scarlett.  She talked tough, and took the party line that the Dark Stars were thieves and should die for taking White Blade jobs, but she din’t seem to mean it particularly. Joel wasn’t sure what she was up to, but he did feel that he could trust her.

Kendrick was staring out the window at the scenery, a puzzled look on his face.

“What’s up Kendrick?” Joel asked.

“Well, this planet. It just doesn’t make sense.  I mean, they’ve got great electronics, and most of them work most of the time, but they claim that they have a planetary magnetic field that stops people from building Portals here. Now how does that work?  Also, did you know that they only have portals in Enris? They can’t exist anywhere else on planet.  And there’s the portals they do have in Enris. They’re to planets that nobody’s ever heard of, and apparently the only way to get to them is through Enris. How does that work? I know we don’t fully understand the portals, but there’s something more at work here.”

Joel noticed that when Kendrick was talking about “his” subjects, like machines or tools, he didn’t stutter, didn’t say “um” all the time, and wasn’t afraid of everyone. Of course, when he was talking about machines he didn’t seem too aware that there was anybody else in the room.

Nabhan sat quietly, his face softer than usual once they got out of the city. He was looking at the passing scenery as well, but the look in his eyes wasn’t puzzlement. It was wonder; or delight, or maybe even real, pure joy.  He even smiled a little bit when he looked at Joel, and smiled even more when he looked at Hazel.  These were not your usual party of rough-and tumble mercenaries, and this promised to be an odd trip because of that fact.

Then Joel, too, fell asleep.

Riverton was the end of the line, so there was no chance of sleeping past their stop.  They bustled out, got everything they owned, and then started to look into how they were going to get to Norwood.

“We need a car,” Kendrick said, then remembered. “Oh, that’s right, no cars here.  Well, maybe some kind of wagon or something?” But Hazel was already way ahead of them. “We can ride horses! We can each have our own horse, and there’ll be a pack horse, and that’s what we’ll do!”  She was pointing and nearly bouncing, trying to show the others where they could get horses.  Joel looked at Nabhan. “Do we buy them or rent them?”

“They are available for hire. We don’t need to have our own animals, but Hazel is right. We can use some horses, and cover the distance without worrying about pedal-powered devices.  If everyone knows how to ride, that is.”

“Well, I do,” Joel said. “Me too” chimed in Scarlett. They all looked at Nabhan. “I’m too big to ride one of those things. I’d break his back and he’d throw me to the ground.  I can’t ride one of those, Hazel!”

Informally, Scarlett, Nabhan and Joel gathered while Hazel tried to convince Kendrick that riding a horse was easy.

“What do we do? Teaching Kendrick to ride will slow us down, but we won’t go any faster if he walks the whole way.” Scarlett said.

“I agree,” nodded Joel.  “Nabhan, could we get a wagon, something to carry our gear that Kendrick could ride on?  He could drive the wagon, be seated in it, and not have to get on a horse at all.”

“I’m sure we could find one.  But if he doesn’t know how to ride he won’t know how to guide a wagon either.  There’s still a horse involved.”

“We can tie his reigns to one of our horses, and have the wagon-horse follow.  At least until he gets the idea of how to guide it himself.”

“It’s dangerous. If his horse spooks it could trample the front person, or break the wagon.” Nabhan cautioned.

“True, but what choice do we have? It should only be for a few hours, and then he will probably be okay.”

“I guess. couldn’t we just leave him–”

“No.” Joel and Scarlett said in unison. “Sorry to cut you off, but we don’t leave party members behind. It’s part of the code.”

“Very well. I will go and get us some horses. And a wagon. And a long, long rope.” Nabhan said, walking off.

“Is it just me, or is he different out here?” Joel asked Scarlett as they approached Hazel and Kendrick.

“Hazel told me about that last night. She says he’s a mystic, although I couldn’t tell from what she told me if that’s the name of an order and should be a capital-M Mystic or if she just means that he likes natural things and thinks that they speak to him. At any rate, he likes trees and plants and stuff, and being in the city made him feel cut off from the world.”

“Even a city as small as that?”

“Hazel says that Enris is the biggest city on Savlod, and people from out in the country don’t like it much. She likes everything, of course, but I guess there are a lot of people that wish the portals had never opened up there.”

“I guess that’s the same everywhere. People liked their place better before all you other people showed up and ruined it.”

“Says the man who wants to be out on the frontier his whole life.” Scarlett grinned.

“I didn’t say I disagreed with that way of thinking, now did I?” Joel smiled back.

“Kennie, it’s the easiest thing in the world! Horses are super-nice and they want you to ride them!” Hazel was saying, pulling the large man toward the stables.  Even though he could have lifted her above his head with one hand, he was allowing himself to be towed along.

“But, unfortunately, Kendrick, you won’t be able to ride a horse. We need you to drive our wagon.”

“What wagon?” Hazel demanded. “We don’t have a wagon.”

“We will. Your brother is off negotiating right now. We need something to keep all our gear in, and one little pack horse would be too expensive and wouldn’t hold as much–” Joel was cut off.

“I better go help Nabbie. He’s a terrible haggler; he gets bored too easily and doesn’t bid low enough to start out.” And she was off.

“Thank you, Joel. Or, um, you too, Scarlett.  Thank you for saving me from the embarrassment. Of  crushing a horse, that is. Or being thrown to the ground.”

“Oh, Kendrick, it’s nothing. You didn’t know you would have to be reverting back to barbarism on this planet, and we need you along. Now, come with me and I’ll teach you how to guide a wagon. It’s much easier than riding the horse directly, but you’ll need to know a few things…” Scarlett led Kendrick to the spot where Hazel and Nabhan were waiting, wagon chosen, horses ready.

“Looks like I’ll bring the luggage, then,” Joel said to nobody in particular.

Johnny’s Journal: Fifth Entry

Captain Harris believes we have found the lake, and we have put the ship down in a clearing not two miles from the proposed target. I don’t know why he’s so sure; there’s a thousand lakes in this area, but he says he saw something last night that clinches it.  How he would see something that I didn’t is another mystery. Sometimes I think Captain Harris wastes a lot of our time and fuel, but Dr. Stringham says we should follow him, because he’s our captain, and we should listen to him and strive to make ourselves better people so he can lead us more effectively. Dr. Stringham has always been soft for the captain, even on the old ship that he and I survived together.

That made us close, I tell you! Nothing like being on the wrong side of an exploding grenade to bring a group of people together.  But if he thinks the Captain will get us where we’re going and get us our commission, I’ll follow wild geese all day.

Captain Harris has made a close friend out of Dr. Stringham, and discusses every decision he makes with the doctor before he does it.  I think this is a good thing; if somebody wise says a plan will work I don’t see any reason to doubt him, and nobody on this boat is wiser than the good ol’ doc.

#####

For some reason, there were only four tents.  Joel counted them time and again, and it was just true. It wasn’t until he asked Scarlett if she had seen another tent laying around that he found out why.

“Hazel and I will be sharing a tent, of course.” She replied

“Of course.”

“I like Hazel.  She’s kind, thoughtful, and sees the best in everyone.” Scarlett seemed just a tad defensive.

“And Mr. Ferrin says that these are the qualities she brings that will help us out at some point.” Joel mused. “I don’t know why, but the thought that liking people is a marketable skill makes me happy.” Scarlett just smiled, put the last of her gear in the wagon, and walked to the horses.

“Did you get directions?” Hazel asked her brother, already mounted. She climbed up onto her horse in what appeared to be one smooth motion; Joel and Hazel had a much harder time of it.

“I did, but they’re not very needed. We follow the road that leaves town headed north. It goes to Norwood, and as long as we don’t go to one of the other little towns it visits, we shouldn’t get lost.”

“Sounds good,” Joel said, and they started out. At first, Kendrick was very, very light with the reigns,and the wagon horse would walk in a straight line, even when it was obvious the road was curving.  He seemed to be doing this on purpose. But when Kendrick started to head into a ditch for the fourth time he hauled the reins so hard that it physically turned the horses head.  After that the wagon horse followed the road more carefully, and Kendrick stopped looking so sheepish.

Hazel’s horse was often riderless,as she would tether him to the wagon and ride alongside her large companion, talking to him about–well, everything. Trees along the road, the clouds, her dog back home, her brother, why she thought that it must be nicer here than anywhere else in the known worlds, really anything that came into her head.  Kendrick listened with solemn attentiveness, asking questions where he thought they might help, never once acting bored or uninterested.

Nabhan rode at the front of the company, eyes distant, not seemingly paying any attention to anything happening around them, just watching the  trees go by. Scarlett would ride alongside Hazel, so Joel found himself all alone.  At length he decided to go see what Nabhan was up to, and try to learn a little more about their “mystic” companion.

“So, we never did learn why you and your sister are out adventuring,” Joel tried as an opening.  Nabhan visibly changed focus, his eyes going from incredibly distant to the present over about two seconds.

“That’s true.  Well, it’s not much of a story. We were orphaned–”

“Nabbie! I’ll tell that story! Not you. And I’ll tell it when I’m good and ready. Joel has to work for our tale. If he’s not telling where he’s from, we’re not telling where we’re from.”

“Maybe we can trade campfire stories tonight then.” Joel offered.

“Maybe.  We’ll see.”

That night they pitched tents and looked to getting dinner on. Joel set up the gas stove he had purchased, wishing his small electric range he normally used would work here. But gas was fine. He then started setting out ingredients for a thick stew, since it was something he could cook well and usually went down all right.

“I’m glad you’re cooking, because I sure can’t,” Scarlett said.

“It’s a useful skill,” Joel admitted.

“I mean, I can keep myself alive in the field. But I just never got into making all those seasonings work together, or those sauces.  Fry it and eat it, that’s my way.”

Joel smiled. “I could teach you a few more recipes if you like.”

“Why not? What are you making here?”

“Stew. It’s simple.  Mostly just meat, carrots and potatoes.  I bought a few of these things. Some local plant, which they say works just as well as onions or scallions in dishes like this one.”

“Experimenting with local plants? And here I thought you were smart.” Scarlett said in mock surprise.

“These were in our food last night, and you didn’t complain then,” Joel smiled.

“Well, I never said I was smart” was her reply.

#####

The party camped that night, and the next on the road, and roles were quickly adapted to. Hazel didn’t mind washing up as long as either Scarlett or Kendrick, now called “Kenny” by Hazel and Scarlett and “Ken” by the other men, was helping her, otherwise she tended to get bored and wander off to find someone to talk to. Ken was good at getting tents set up quickly, and Nabhan was better with the horses than anyone else.  Joel found himself elected as camp cook by a unanimous vote, and Scarlett was often his assistant and student, as he was determined to teach her the basics of preparing food that would keep a party happy instead of just alive. By inference, this meant that he was also teaching Hazel to cook one out of every three days.

They also got Nabhan and Hazel’s story in bits and pieces.  It turns out they are orphans, their parents killed by an earthquake six years ago, and that they had been on their own since that time. Nabhan had been studying to be a priest of a local religion, but left the priesthood to take care of his sister, who was not allowed in the monastery, and she had no desire to enter the convent, because, as she put it “I can’t love the world when I’m locked away from it.” Hazel’s love for the world was evident in every action, as she climbed trees, explored caves, examined rocks, fed the horses, talked to people they met on the road, did Scarlett’s hair, and essentially put her heart into everything around her. “Hazel is the holiest thing I know,” Nabhan commented once when Joel was watching her try to catch up with a small mammal that had scurried into the underbrush.

Scarlett was less forthcoming with her life story. What they had heard at the hotel in Enris was just about all she was willing to share. They did learn that her parents were both ecologists, hired by a interplanetary company to analyze and assess worlds to which they wanted to expand, and to help with terraforming efforts on newly discovered planets. However, she was quiet on her own training or life before joining the party here, and would only rarely talk about other jobs she did for the White Blade.

Joel was more open about his past, but only selectively. He was the oldest of three children, his younger brother was a starship captain, his younger sister was a mayor. He one of the first White Blades as well as the founder of Dark Star, and had been on a number of missions for both organizations that had gone amusingly wrong, “not at the time, but now that it’s over and I’m still alive” and shared these stories over the campfire or while riding. He was courteous, and considerate of the women in the party, but expected everyone to pull their weight. This expectation wasn’t ever verbalized, nor were reminders given or even needed. It was simply his quiet, competent way of getting his tasks done and his praise of others who did things well that made everyone want to be equally competent.

While the stretch between the two cities could be seen as wasted time to an outsider it was priceless in pulling the group together.

Five days after setting out from Riverton they reached the walled city of Norwood, something Joel had never seen, but Nabhan assured him was still common on their world.

“Not so much as a protection against human attacks, but there are still dangerous animals out there. And we don’t really want them showing up in our towns.”

“I haven’t seen anything larger than those squirrel things Hazel’s been chasing,” Scarlett said. “What else is out there?”

“I don’t know, this far north, but where we’re from there are large cats that occasionally attack people, as well as some canines and ursids.”

“Is that what you call them?” Scarlett asked, gently teasing. She found that baiting Nabhan was quite a bit of fun.

“We have names for them, but if I told you that people get attacked by lore cats and terrians it wouldn’t mean much to you, would it?” Nabhan was perfectly capable of holding his own. For one or two jabs at least. More than that and he began to get flustered and Hazel had to ask her friend to leave her poor brother alone.

“Ooh, I don’t know what  would do if I ran into a lore cat! What do they do, corner you, then kill you by telling you ancient stories? They sound terrifying.” Scarlett wailed, cowering in mock fear in her saddle.  Ken, who usually stayed out of these things, even grinned a little. But for once it was Hazel who spoke up.

“Actually, they’re called lore cats because people didn’t think they really existed for a long time. Someone would go missing, and all you would find would be a hat or a coat or something, an it would look like it was mauled by a big cat, but we had never found any big cats in the area. So people would say they got eaten by a folklore cat, or even just a folklore. Then when we actually found one of them, the name just kinda became permanent.”

“Wait, how long were they mythical?” Joel asked.

“I don’t know. This was all before I was born. I just know the stories.” Hazel shrugged. Joel had learned that getting her to continue talking about something after she had dismissed it with an “I don’t know” was fruitless, so he let it drop.

“What do they look like?” Scarlett asked. She had learned no such thing.

“They’re big, like, bigger than Nabbie if he stretched out long, and they have long tails. And they’re usually dark, dark gray, kinda purplelish, with stripes of lighter gray, so they hide in shadows really well. Which is why we didn’t find any for a long long time.”

“Also because we’re a lightly populated planet with few research scientists, and even fewer biologists.” Nabhan added gently. He rarely contradicted his sister, but he did occasionally correct her facts.

“Yeah, Maybe.  But I still think that it’s just because they’re really good at hiding.” Hazel replied. She rarely if ever believed that she was wrong, and even more rarely got upset by being corrected. She was also very fond of her brother and was willing to submit to his opinions or correction almost automatically.

Nabhan had commented on this to Joel on occasion. “We had to rely on one another for quite a while. She doesn’t argue with me because she knows that I have only her welfare in mind.”

“It sounds like she relies on you more than vice versa,” Joel commented quietly.

“I suppose it looks that way.  But I would be just as lost without her.  She lightens the dark shadows.”

“What are you going to do when she discovers boys and gets married, Nabhan? Or when you find a wife yourself?”

“I was studying to be a monk, Joel. I have no intention of marrying.  But if she does, well, all I can do is make sure that the man she marries takes as good of care of her as I would myself.  And believe me, there is no star dark enough to hide him if he doesn’t.”

Joel laughed and clapped the stocky man on the shoulder. “That sounds like every older brother in the universe.  I said something similar to my sister.  I’ll tell you what. If it comes to that, I’ll help you hunt the guy down, free of charge.”

Nabhan looked startled momentarily. Then wordlessly shook Joel’s hand in the ageless sign of a deal being struck.

Hazel was making just as many deals. Although she was “probably fifteen, but I think I’m closer to 17” she really didn’t seem to think much about her appearance, although she would spend hours arranging Scarlett’s hair, if Scarlett had allowed her. Hazel was naturally pretty, with shining eyes that seemed to take everything in, flowing hair usually caught back in a pony tail, and a taste for clothing that ran to the richly-colored or jewel-toned, which set off the fair skin of her face and hands to good effect. She was a perfect sylph, at home in the trees and part of them.  She made Scarlett promise that she would be Hazel’s maid of honor, and that she would be Scarlett’s, she promised Ken that she would name the family dog after him, and she assured Joel that if he needed a place to stay when he got old and lonely he could live in a house on Hazel and her husband’s property, and Hazel would cook him good meals every day, because she was “becoming a very good cook, maybe even better than Scarlett, don’t you think? I mean, you’re wonderful Scarlett, but you just don’t have the patience for fine cooking.”

Somehow all these comments exactly failed to give offense, and they all solemnly agreed to her outrageous demands and accepted her promises with the same serious and loving demeanor.

Upon reaching Norwood in the late afternoon they wasted no time in finding an hotel and taking rooms.  They did pause, however, before separating to go to their separate rooms, all in a row on the second floor.  For some reason, going to places where you couldn’t always hear each other was slightly painful.  As usual, Hazel ran out of patience first.

“Look, we all need showers.  And we need dinner.  Let’s go get washed up and meet in the lobby downstairs in an hour. Then we’ll go eat and everything will be fine.  Sheesh you guys, I thought you were adventurers.” And she opened the door to her room (her own for once. For some reason she decided she wasn’t going to share with Scarlett this time) and marched inside.  The others looked at one another, and decided she was right.  They followed suit.

#####

The next morning they met in the hotel restaurant for breakfast and discussed plans. This wasn’t easy, because they didn’t know the town yet at all.  Not that there was a ton to know; Norwood was a village at best, and the “hotel” at which they were staying was also the town’s only inn, restaurant, and (they learned when people in suits started showing up and going to offices on the first floor) town hall.  Hazel, naturally, found this charming, and utterly failed to see how it could be anything else.

Joel and Scarlett wanted to find a library, hoping for information there. Kendrick shifted a little in his seat and said, “that’s probably a good idea. But I don’t do well in libraries. I think I’ll go find a machine shop instead.”

“Okay, Ken. Why?” Joel asked, and the larger man looked down for just a second.

“Well, the wagon needs a few repairs. One tire is soft, and there’s some dents in the frame.” He paused. “Also, if you get in good with other mechanics, they’ll tell you things that they wouldn’t tell an outsider, or write down. Maybe I’ll learn some things that wouldn’t have made it to a library, you see. Um.  I’m sure you can find lots of useful stuff there, and we’ll probably need it. I um, I just thought I could do more good working through the kinds of people I understand better.”

“Ken, you’re a marvel. That’s a great idea.  Do you want someone to go with you?” Scarlett asked, and the larger man blushed a little at the praise.

“Um, no, actually. No, not even you, Hazel.  See, mechanics probably won’t talk much in front of other people that aren’t mechanics.  Also, they can use language that I don’t think your brother would want me to expose you to, miss.” Kendrick seemed to call Hazel “miss” almost as often as he called her Hazel.

“Well, what should I do then?” Hazel asked plaintively.

“Nabhan? Do you have any leads you want to follow up on?” Joel asked. He reasoned that Hazel’s older brother would probably be the best to keep her out of trouble.

“Hazel and I know this world best. We will go into the trees around the city wall and explore, and learn what this part of the world is like.  We may see things that you might miss.”

Joel didn’t really understand or entirely trust Nabhan’s sense of “the trees”, but he didn’t have any better ideas and had learned not to argue out of sheer argument.  “Sounds good. Well, I guess that covers it. Let’s meet back here at dark at the latest.  We can see what we want to do tomorrow from what we learn today.” And with that they parted.

#####

Joel and Scarlett were able to find the Library in a reasonably short time. People in Norwood were friendly and helpful, but not terribly interested in long conversation with outsiders. Walking across the town, Joel found he finally had some time to ask a few questions that hadn’t ever come up before.

“Why is it you have only one name? You were born on Earth, right? Or is Scarlett your first name, and you’ve just never told us your surname?”

“I changed my name to Scarlett some years ago, after I left home.  I didn’t really want to be connected to what my parents were… I just wanted to be my own person.  I didn’t really think I would need a last name. At the time I just thought I would get married and get one that way, but later I realized I kind of liked just being Scarlett, just being myself. And despite what Hazel thinks, marriage isn’t really high on my list of priorities right now, so I don’t think I’ll be adding a name anytime soon.”

“Yeah, I hope I can make it a few years more before senility sets in and I move into Auntie Hazel’s retirement cottage,” Joel agreed.  “So, no chance of finding out what your birth name was, is there?”

“Nope. Sorry.  I didn’t go to all the work to get rid of it just to hand it out and let people get all…, anyway, It’s gone now.”

“Okay. Just asking.”

“You’re not what I thought, Joel Tucker.” Scarlett said, apropos of nothing.

“Oh? And what was what that?”

“The other White Blades talked about you as some moralizing, super-uptight knight-errant, perpetually judging those of us who had to take real jobs to support ourselves.  Not a quiet guy who quietly humors little girls and makes huge mute giants feel like they have a part in decisions.”

“Some people weren’t happy with me when Dark Star started, and they said things. Most of it wasn’t really to hurt me, it was just to keep people from either joining Dark Star or hiring Dark Stars.  I wish I could say I haven’t heard it before, but it’s a pretty old tune now.”

“So what do you do about it?”

“What should I do? I just live the way I always have, do what I think is right and let people make up their minds about me on their own.”

Scarlett was quiet after this for a while. However, if she was going to make any response it was immediately lost as they entered the presence of the librarian.

The sign on the desk inside the small, crowded library read “Mr. Utan” and seated behind a mountain of papers was Mr. Utan himself.  Wild white hair and a flaming red beard framed a pair of monstrous glasses, looking like the dividing line between color and black and white on his face, or a lens that focused all the color on the lower extremity.  His clothing was largely green, which made him look  like a flag, or a holiday decoration.  And it was clear that the entire musty collection of books was centered on his desk. Aisles radiated out from the central pedestal on which his desk sat, and piles of books at the end of each row of shelves lie within the reach of his arms without him ever leaving the raised circle.  His eyes swam in the thick glass of his spectacles, and presently swam up to meet the two visitors.  However, something on his desk must have been pressing, because almost immediately he looked back down, and scribbled some more, opened another book on the top of a stack on the floor at his side, and copied out something there.  Joel and Scarlett stood side by side, watching this in silence for thirty seconds or so, when Joel turned to Scarlett, about to ask her if she understood the “Mr.” before his name, but Scarlett’s eyes were almost as far away as Mr. Utan’s thoughts, searching the shelves, taking in the sights, smiling at the place.  He noticed that her hands were flexing and unflexing, as if she couldn’t wait to get her hands on the books around them.  She noticed his eyes on her and quickly put them behind her. “Books were getting very rare on Earth, and at home we didn’t have many either.  A collection this big is…is…it’s a treasure.”

Mr. Utan looked up, horrified, when she started to speak, but by the end of her declaration, his face had definitely softened into a proprietorial, lofty look of self-satisfaction.

“Indeed, indeed,  I, that is to say, we, the town of Norwood, you understand, have one of the finest collections of leather bound volumes anywhere.  So even poor Mother Earth is low on real books now, you say? Too bad, too bad.  Sad to see so many things lost, so little saved from our cradle, as it were.  We didn’t know what we had, did we? We didn’t appreciate what was around us, and now, well, now I guess we have much more than ever before, don’t we, hmmm? Humans on many worlds, with many plants, many animals, and much more knowledge, and even a measure of wisdom, as we try to keep our new homes cleaner than we did our old one, don’t we?

“Well, I’m sure that’s not why you came to see me is it? Very few people come just to talk about the plight of our books, they just want answers from them.  I’m sure you want some answers as well, don’t you? And why not? What’s the point of accumulated knowledge if you can’t get a few useful answers here and there?”

“There is joy in finding the connections in human knowledge.  There is satisfaction in seeing how the pieces fit together,” Joel answered. Mr. Utan looked startled, then, if possible beamed even brighter. “Yes! Yes! I have often said much the same thing! All these books are part of a great conversation, different people, all talking about the same thing, and if you find the thread, the ebb and flow of the conversation, from author to author, you come closer to understanding that which has eluded them all…but so few people read like that any more. I’m sorry, I don’t know you, are you new in town? Have you come to talk to Dr. Stringham? But he’s gone now, isn’t he? Yes, he left some months ago, I believe. Let me start again. I’m Mr. Utan. How may I help you?” with this he extended his hand to Joel, remembered his manners and extended it to Scarlett, but before she was able to grasp it a look of concern crossed his face, as his eyes flickered like worried brown fishes back to Joel, and, fearing that he had offended him, turned back to him, even while looking concernedly at Scarlett.  Joel grasped his hand warmly and introduced himself as well.

“I’m Joel Tucker, and this–” here he gestured to Scarlett, while releasing the librarian’s hand–”is Scarlett.”

“Pleased to meet you both. I don’t see many off worlders here, and two at once, well, I don’t know that I’ve seen two at once in decades.”

“How did you know I was off world?” Scarlett asked. “I only have one name.”

“Ah yes, but, you see my dear, your name is not one we would normally have taken or given on this planet.  Even this far north we avoid anything that stands or connotes red. Some superstition has grown up around the color, although I myself,” he fingered his beard, “Find it perfectly ridiculous.  It’s just a color, a seventh of the visible spectrum. Anyway a name like Scarlett, beautiful though it is, would never be given to a local child.  And Joel Tucker, well, two names is a dead giveaway.

“But even without all that, you have the marks of free agent guilds on you, and Mr. Tucker has two on him. We have no such guilds on this planet. So you see that I had no problem detecting that you are not local, nor are you just here for a visit, or to add to your understanding of the great dialogue, expressive though your words about it may be.” He beamed again.

“Then no doubt you also know why we are here,” Joel prompted.

“I have my guesses. I’m sure it’s something to do with Dr. Stringham, or that poor boy they found in the cave some months ago.  No doubt you would like to find their ship, or the so-called ‘Mystery of Moon Lake’ that they were seeking.  Well, better you than me, I suppose.  And it shows something about you that you started your investigations here, or at least I’m guessing that you started here, because I’ve not heard news of you yet, so you can’t have been in town long. But as far as either the ship or the lake, I’m afraid I have little to add to what you may or may not already know. There are at least three lakes called ‘Moon Lake’ in the area, and all three are supposed to be haunted, although it’s anybody’s guess as to what would haunt a lake. Dr. Stringham assured me that even if he knew the location of the ship that brought his ill-fated crew here he would not reveal it, as he didn’t want others to die, but the navigator was the only one that knew, and he was quite unable to tell us anything of value by the time we got to him.

“Well, that clears up what I don’t know. Is there something else I can help you with?”

Joel and Scarlett looked at each other for a moment. Scarlett looked at the books all around them, then back at the little man. She said, “You and Dr Stringham seem to have gotten to know each other rather well.  Did he stay here long?”

“Oh no, only a week or two. But he was a thinking man, you see, and spent most of that time in my library.  Said he liked the company of books, and I dare say that I kept him good company as well. He did a fair amount of research here, and was quite interested in our local ways and customs.  Said that medicine paid the bills, but it was people that gave life its zest, and I’m sure he meant people’s thoughts and ways, because medicine is all about people, too, isn’t it?

“At any rate, he would spend hours here, talking to me, reading, researching, and he even helped me re-shelve books from time to time, and updated my indexes every now and again, which I thought was quite decent of him.”

“What was he researching?” Joel asked.

“You know, he never told me specifically. He spent a lot of time in the local books, reading about the customs and rituals of our local villages. You see, even though we are moderately civilized here in Norwood, there are towns and hamlets around here that have slipped a bit farther into barbarism, owing to the lack of contact with the capital and other metropolitan areas.  I think his desk back in the corner–you see, I set up a desk for him, because he was kind enough to want to keep out of my way, saying quite nicely that it would be a shame to interrupt the work I’m doing–where was I? Yes, the Doctor’s desk. I’m pretty sure it’s the same as it was when he left, with me being so busy with my studies, I haven’t had time to re-shelve the books he was using. Perhaps you can get some clues there.  Perhaps further shed light on his studies.  Anyway, his desk is down the sixth aisle, all the way to the wall. If you need any help, please feel free to come back this way, but I do have to get on with my research. None of us are getting any younger, worse luck.  I hope you find…well, I hope you find that your time isn’t wasted in your studies.  Even if you don’t find what you were seeking, perhaps you’ll find what you need.”

The thanked him, and headed down the aisle mentioned. It wasn’t long; maybe twenty-five feet or so, and against the wall was the desk that Mr. Utan had mentioned. It, too, was stacked with books, although the stacks were shorter and all the books were closed, unlike the librarians piled and bookmarked references.

“So we don’t get to see what page it was that sent him packing,” Scarlett said, looking at the neatly piled books.

“No, but we can guess that the books on the tops of the piles are the most recently referenced.  You don’t usually put a book in the middle of a stack when you’re done with it.” Joel replied.

“Hmmm.  Look, there’s dust on everything. Apparently this corner hasn’t even been cleaned recently.  Still, the titles are useful.”

For the most part, the books were what Mr. Utan had said; local customs, burial customs, wedding customs, traditional outfits, fishing methods, and the like. There were a couple of books on the flora and fauna of the region.  Joel cast an eye over all these, trying to get a feel for the shape of the crew member’s research, focussing on the upper books.

“It’s no use,” Scarlett said. “We can’t re-create his train of thought without doing much of the same research he already did. We could be in here for weeks, and even then we wouldn’t know if what we’ve learned from this is what he learned from it.  If only he left some notes.” Her hand strayed to the shallow drawer beneath the main writing area.

“It’s locked.  I wonder…” She trailed off. Nonchalantly she reached into a pocket and pulled out a slim case.

“Lockpicking, Scarlett? Is that what they’re teaching you Blades these days?”

“What would you do?”

“Ask for the key.”

There was a slight click and the drawer slid out an inch or two.

“My way is quicker,” she said and packed her kit back up and it disappeared back into the pocket from which it had come. Inside the drawer there were a few pens, some paperclips, and a few sheets of paper with writing on them.

“These make no sense,” Scarlett growled.  “They’re just scratch paper.”

“Well, let’s see what little things he was thinking about, then.”

The pages had page numbers, sometimes with the referenced book also included, but often just a page number. Words and phrases were scattered here and there.  “Fish, salamander, jewel…what is he writing about?” Scarlett asked.

“This one says ‘Lizard, snow, and phototropism’” Joel responded.  “How are these related to ‘local customs’?”

They spent another hour going through the notes, trying to find the threads the doctor had been following, working on getting acquainted with the books he was reading, the things he was studying, but didn’t make any revelatory discoveries in this time, and decided to head back to the hotel to see how they others had done.

#####

Meanwhile, Kendrick had found his way to a metal shop and inched closer and closer to the tools and workbench, and handed tools over until he was clearly in the same trade.  He didn’t make comments, he didn’t ask too many questions, he just showed interest in the tools and techniques used in the shop.  Eventually he learned that Sten was the owner, and had been a metalworker since age 14, apprenticed to his father and now carrying on the family business. He learned that they did the big work for the town, but that Sten enjoyed the detail work, filigree, and white smithing work far more than the blacksmithing work, which his brother Tor handled.  Kendrick didn’t ask questions about the Lake, or the town, or visitors. He was a visitor, and they knew it. They knew everyone in town, and things that they wanted to share, they would share.  A couple of hours after Ken arrived Sten set the bronze door handle he had been working on aside, and with a look at  Kendrick nodded to a back room. “Here’s where I work on the good stuff,” he said quietly.

Kendrick followed him to the white smithing shop.  Unlike the machining room, this room was clean, with small tools and a forge that was as spotless as a surgeon’s office.  On the workbench, visible only after the work light directly above it was turned on, was a fish.

If a river had somehow washed through the shop, and frozen one of its inhabitants in time directly above the workbench it wouldn’t have looked more real than the bronze fish that was there currently.  Scales gleamed in the dull light. Glassy eyes shone dully, giving the impression of life, but not intelligence, perfectly mimicking the mad, frenzied look of a trout or bass. The single imperfection was the dorsal fin, which was unattached and sitting on the bench beside the the fish on its pedestal.  However, it was clear that, when replaced, the fin and the small area of back around it would fit in without a seam or crack visible.

“If he wasn’t on this stand I’d try to get him to take a hook,” Kendrick said, not sure of the meaning or use of this statue, but sincerely complimenting the craftsmanship. “I’ve never seen the like.”  Sten beamed modestly.  “Is this a hobby of yours, or are you taking orders from your neighbors?”

“We make a few of these every year.  Oh, they’re not all fish, mind.  Some fish, some eels.  I once did an otter, but you don’t get much call for the bigger creatures, and I don’t mind telling you that the effort in getting one of those otters right is far more than the pay I get back.”

“Ah, but I can see you don’t do it for the money,” The large man said softly.  Sten nodded gravely, but his eyes twinkled.

“Then you see better than some of those that have been through here recently.  I’m sure you’re wondering about that find, eh? Wondering why it’s on the bench and not on the fish.”

“I had wondered, but it’s not for me to tell you your craft.”

“That fish is hollow.  We’ll be putting ashes in there before to long. Ashes, and this,” And Sten reached into a cupboard and pulled out a cut green gem, about the size of a pea. Wordlessly he handed it to Kendrick, and wordlessly Ken examined it and handed it back.

“That’s a fine stone, friend.  Some treasure for the next life?” He ventured.

“Well, not exactly.  That’s a soul gem.  Oh, right now it’s just a precious stone, but once the priests get their hands on it and spend some time in the presence of the one who’s passing along it’ll be more valuable than the fish it’s goin’ in.”

Kendrick knew better than to reply when he had nothing to say.  He didn’t know much about priests, or souls, but he could see that this was important, and he attempted to convey this with his eyes and hands.  Quietly he folded his hands in front of himself and stepped back.  Sten watched him quietly, then nodded to himself.

“There have been those as have thought these little gems might be good for trading.  There have been those as have take a few they oughtn’t. You seem to spend time wandering the world.  You see one of those, you’ll know what to do about it.” Sten’s eyes were bright, and piercing, and the conviction in those eyes was infectious.

“I see someone who’s taken what belongs to the people here, I’ll see he don’t profit by it.” Kendrick promised. “And I’ll be sure to keep my hands where they belong, should I come into the presence of more of these.” Sten nodded again.  “I’ll take it as a kindness.” Was all he said.

#####

Hazel skipped along ahead of her brother, examining leaves, following animals, now singing, now silent.  The dark evergreens and the richly colored mosses and lichens perfectly complimented the colors in her dress and eyes, and she disappeared completely into the background when she held still. Nabhan wore his customary gray, and walked along easily and steadily while she bounced, danced and flitted around him.  At length, and for reasons that would have been completely opaque to outside viewers–had there been any–Nabhan stopped and sat on a rock, and closed his eyes.  Without really paying attention Hazel’s constant and erratic motion also stopped moving forward and instead turned into a constant orbit around her stationary brother.

Finally she too stopped running, crawling, and climbing, and sat on a half-decomposed log near her brother.  Pulling at the surface of the log, crumbling pieces of it between her fingers, and humming quietly, she appeared to be listening in some obscure way to the woods around her.  Finally she spoke.

“They really are okay, aren’t they, Nabbie?” She said, looking up at her stock-still sibling.

“They are.  But Ferrin…” He let it hang in the air.

“I don’t know about him either.  He could be nice. But he acts so clever all the time.  Can we tell him?”

“He hasn’t asked.” Nabhan replied, eyes still closed. Hazel nodded once or twice, then she also closed her eyes.

Hazel gasped. “Did you hear it?” Nabhan nodded. “I can tell where it came from…kind of…Can you place it?”  Nabhan tensed up his face in concentration for one minute, two minutes, then replied. “Yes. I know where it happened.”

Hazel nodded, eyes still closed. At length they both grew still, and opened their eyes. “Oh Nabbie, we’ll know the answer! We can take them to the Lake!” He nodded solemnly.

“And then, my sister,” he replied as they stood up and started walking back to town, “Then perhaps they can help us find out who created this world. And why.”

Dr. Stringham’s Journal: Day 6 on Savlod

We have located the lake, and Rock has been providing us with good fish for our meals. Indeed, according to him there isn’t anything else to do. Johnson has been practicing orienteering by day and night, claiming that “if he can’t guide us right planetside, then what good am I?”

Meanwhile, Captain Harris spends all his time with that idiotic sword of his that he picked up on our trip to Reynholm. He’s tried to sharpen the metal blades, and of course none of us really know what to do about the other blade.

I have been in contact with another offworlder who has a place on this planet, and he has also expressed some desire to find the truth of what we seek. (I mean my real goal, not the one that Harris thinks we’re after.) I’ll have to see if an arrangement can be made between us that is mutually beneficial…

#####

Nabhan and Hazel were waiting in the lounge when the rest of the party arrived. As usual, Hazel was vibrating with excitement and leapt up to hug Scarlett as soon as she and Joel walked in.

“Did you have a good time? Were you able to find lots of good things?” Hazel asked as they all sat back down.

“We got a few hints, yes,” Scarlett replied. “How about you two?”

Hazel was suddenly artfully nonchalant. “Well, I don’t know if this is important, but we know where Moon Lake is.”

They were suitably impressed. “Really?” Joel asked. “How did you figure that out?”

“We listened. Moon Lake has been special to a lot of people for a long time. And something bad happened there, something that wasn’t ever supposed to happen.”

Joel looked to Nabhan, hoping for a less enigmatic answer. Nabhan nodded, and said “my sister is right, if a bit inexact. We did go to listen to the woods around this town, and the echoes of a, a very wrong thing are very strong in this area.”

“What’s ‘a very wrong thing’?” Scarlett asked. “A murder? Driving someone crazy? These sound pretty wrong to me.”

“Well, yes and no. I mean, they are reprehensible, but they happen all the time. For whatever reason they are part of the way we as humans act towards one another. They aren’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. What we’re talking about is something that upset the actual order of nature; something that fundamentally changed the way things work around here.”

“A genocide? A mutation, what? What happened?” Scarlett seemed a little testy, perhaps because her search hadn’t had anything like so valuable of results.

“No, it was a murder,” Hazel responded. “But it was a big one. It wasn’t just someone killing someone else. It was someone killing someone who matters more than anybody else around. But we don’t know who died, or who killed them–”

Although it was probably an off-worlder that did the killing,” Nabhan interrupted, but said no more.

“–But we do know about where this happened. We could probably take you all there tomorrow.” Hazel finished.

“Impressive, you two,” Joel complimented. “I wish our search had been as valuable. Ken, why don’t you tell us what you found?”

“Um, I’d be happy to. But, well, can we do it over dinner? I’m a bit hungry right now.”

There was a general consensus that this was a plan with merit and the party went back into the street to find a good place to eat. Here Scarlett had the answer, leading them to a small inn around the corner that she had been told had the best food in town, although she wouldn’t say who told her. They sat and ordered, and Kendrick began his story.

They listened with rapt attention, Hazel more involved in the story than Kendrick himself. She was fascinated at the ease with which he got into the people’s good graces, and was holding her breath as he described the fish urn. The soul gem didn’t seem to surprise her, however, and she simply nodded for him to continue.

Scarlett watched the younger woman–girl, really–during this story. She was fond of the local girl, but that didn’t mean that she fully understood her, or believed everything that she or her uptight brother said. Who knew what things people on this planet thought of as “normal” could kill or imprison an unwary off worlder? Scarlett had never been unwary. Just because she liked someone didn’t means she fully trusted them. Why wasn’t Hazel surprised by the idea of the soul gems? Did she believe in that kind of thing? If it came to that, what is “that kind of thing?” Scarlett knew nothing about these gems, or these urns, or these people. She mentally reminded herself again to keep her eyes and ears sharp and her wits about her, even as she smiled and nodded as excitedly as Hazel.

Joel watched Scarlett watching Hazel and nearly laughed. She was the best “I’m a tough and jaded loner” he had seen in a long time, and he wondered how long it would take her to admit that she genuinely liked Hazel. Joel had already done so. He loved her like a sister. He also loved Scarlett, and Kendrick and even Nabhan. “But then,” he thought, leaning back in his chair, “that’s always been my biggest problem. And it’s been the thing that causes me the most pain.”

Kendrick was getting to the part about promising the metalsmith that he would help him “pay back” the people who had messed with these jewels. Hazel’s little face showed fierce determination, her brother’s showed agreement, although whether he was unconsciously agreeing with his sister or the metalsmith was unclear, and probably unimportant in this instance.

“And that’s when I came back to the hotel. Um, you already know the rest.” The blond giant finished, toying with his napkin, then timidly getting back to the meal that he had barely started, since he’d been talking.

“Hazel,” Scarlett began, her voice thick with “I’m being nice” tones.

“Mmm hmm?”

“Do you know about these soul gems? You didn’t seem all that surprised when Kendrick was telling us about them.”

“Well…I have heard about that sort of thing. We don’t really do that where we’re from, but yeah, it happens. People think that something of value helps the dead across to the other side, I guess.”

“Um. Well, that’s not really what he said. Maybe I didn’t tell it right…” Kendrick said.

“Well, it’s not like payment! Kenny, you did just fine! But, well, you see, people sometimes don’t know how to get across right away, and they need something to hold onto while they’re waiting. So some people give them these gems, so if they don’t know how to get where they’re going, they have a place to stay… see?”

Kendrick’s face said clearly that he didn’t see, not at all. Joel thought he might, but wasn’t sure. At length Nabhan spoke.

“It’s just that, there’s more to a person than walking, talking meat. We’re more than that, right? We have something that lasts longer than our bodies do, something that isn’t created,” something about how he said “created” was odd, “something that can’t be destroyed. And that something is just as much a, a person as the walking-around part. Which means it makes all the same mistakes, or it can, anyway. It can make mistakes just like you or me.

“Only when you make mistakes out there, it’s harder to get it right, because you don’t have any body to get it right with.” Something inside of Nabhan seemed to run out of steam and he finished, “anyway, that’s what I think.”

The others sat quiet for a moment, ingesting this. At length Kendrick rumbled. “I promised I would help if I can. And I will.”

“So will we all, Ken,” promised Joel. The others, he was glad to see, nodded. “But for tonight, it’s time to turn in. Nabhan, Hazel, do you know the actual way to this lake, or just where it is?”

“I know how far it is, and in what direction. The terrain between here and there is unknown to me,” Nabhan said.

“Very well. We’ll take gear expecting to be out of town for a few days, and plan for not being able to find food until we can catch fish from our mysterious Moon Lake. Well, goodnight all.”

######

The next morning was the usual riot of activity as people who aren’t used to traveling light tried to figure out how to suddenly pack everything they needed on their backs. Nabhan was carrying a lot of gear that looked a size or two too small for him, and Kendrick had two tents strapped to his tent. Joel and Scarlett promised that the horses and wagons would only be a hinderance on unknown terrain without known trails. Both of their packs were set and tied long before they party finally set out only a few hours before noon.

Once they were on the road out of town, Hazel had re-settled her pack three or four times, Scarlett had shown her how to use the load adjusting straps, and Kendrick’s pack had been more equitably distributed, they moved along at a fair pace and in good spirits. Hazel wasn’t able to run back and forth as much, being weighed down by a pack a third her weight, but she was still happy, still sang, and still seemed to like to rest sitting on fallen trees just to see what was crawling around inside of them.

Joel spent the morning walking with Kendrick, and, perhaps because he had finally found someone who was as unafraid of silence as himself, Ken began to tell Joel some things about himself. He was the oldest child, he loved his work, but he wasn’t making very much and it was time for him to be a journeyman for a while, maybe. This had the sound of a hastily-assembled story to Joel, but he wasn’t going to say as much.

Kendrick walked easily beneath the weight of his pack, long legs swinging freely and surely. Scarlett and Joel endured their packs with the almost-grace of people who are used to such treatment, if not fond of it. Nabhan wore his stoically and Hazel began, about three hours after they had set out, to wilt visibly under the weight of hers. Seeing this, but also knowing that she had to learn sometime, Scarlett called a halt an hour after it seemed that Hazel would collapse on the spot, just before they had to start heading up a shallow, but long incline. Hazel immediately dropped her pack and went and lay full length on a tree that had fallen probably years earlier, and was asleep almost immediately. Kendrick picked up her pack easily and carried over to where she was sleeping. Nabhan set his pack down next to a rock and slid down to the ground gratefully as well.

“She probably shouldn’t go straight from exercise to sleep,” Scarlett said quietly.

“‘Mnot asleep,” Hazel murmured. “Jus’ resting. Pack’s heavy. Shouldn’t have brought so much food.” She said, eyes still closed.

“You’ll be glad of it tonight, when we make dinner, and tomorrow,” Scarlett replied kindly. “But it’s much easier to carry in our tummies than on our backs, I know.”

“Hmmmm” Was all Hazel said, and was out cold.

Joel stretched out a bit, and said that he was going to see how the hill looked from the other side, and that they would probably stop once they got to the top, or down the other side a bit if there was a good campsite on the lee. Scarlett decided to go with him.

“I’ll stay here,” Kendrick said. “And keep an eye on things.” He gestured to the siblings, both with eyes closed and relaxed. Joel nodded and he and Scarlett headed up the hill.

The climb wasn’t onerous, but it was a little tiring hiking steadily uphill meter after meter, and they were both out of breath when they reached the top. The sun was westering when they summited, and made it hard to see any good clearings without going down. So down they went, until a suitable spot was located.

It was quite dark by the time they got back to the others, but Hazel and Nabhan seemed fully rested and ready to go on. Since it was just a short hike they made good time and even in the dark had camp set up quickly and dinner on the fire with a minimum of fuss.

“So,” Scarlett said when they had settled down to eat. “Do you think we’ll reach the lake by tomorrow night?”

“Perhaps,” Nabhan replied after a moment’s thought. “It’s not far, and this road does seem to be running straight toward it. We shouldn’t have any trouble getting there from the looks of things.”

“It’s getting colder,” Hazel said, leaning on Joel for warmth. Joel noticed a slight tinge of jealousy in Scarlett’s eyes, but only for a moment. He reached back and put a blanket around Hazel’s shoulders, and she snuggled down closer to him and deeper into the blanket until there were only two eyes peeking out.

“Scarlett, It’s this blob’s bedtime. Will you help her get from here to there?”

“Yes please!” came the muffled voice from within the blanket.

“Oh all right. I guess it’s time to turn in anyway. Come on, Thing. Let’s get some rest.” She took Hazel by the hand and guided her into the tent they shared. The men sat around the fire quietly for a few minutes more, until Joel stood up and started lifting the sod back over the fire pit.

#####

The next morning dawned bright and clear as they made breakfast and struck camp. The mornings travel seemed much easier and they made good time, which would have made Joel feel even better if he knew where they were making good time to. Walking is all very nice, but they did have a goal, after all.

There were a number of lakes in the area as well. Most were small, and almost all were river-fed, oxbow lakes. Joel walked with Hazel, asking her about the trees around them; usually with delightfully insane answers. Sometimes she would call them “Uplands Spruce” or “some kind of fir”. Sometimes they were “gregarious” or “lonely”, and she couldn’t be persuaded that there was a difference between the two classes of answers.

Telling stories around Hazel was also an experience. If you were telling her about something that actually happened she would fixate on details that you hadn’t mentioned or places where the action was taking place, instead of the actual story. Once she realized you were making up a story she would usually hijack it and turn it into a tale of walking rocks, or philosophical conversations with clouds, with enough adventure or romance to remind you that she was at least marginally human.

Joel and Scarlett stopped telling real stories in short order.

Near nightfall of the third day out of Norwood, however, even Hazel started listening more and talking less. She had many quiet moments where she would put her hand on a tree, sigh, then go walk close to her brother for a ways. Her mood soon affected the entire party, and they found they were speaking less, as if they were part of a funeral procession. “Its not far now,” Nabhan said that night.

They arrived the next morning, with the sun high in the sky and the clouds bright and cheerful, racing far overhead. The entire party felt… Joyful; not happy, not giddy, but cleansed and at peace. At breakfast Hazel solemnly wove two circlet of flowers, and crowned Scarlett and herself with them. Within the hour they were at the shores of the lake that Nabhan announced was the place, and they set up camp and started exploring.

The lake was almost perfectly round, in the middle of a clearing that sloped downward into the water. The clearing had short grasses and mosses, and was fragrant with the smell of these grasses as they party walked around. Roughly a quarter of the way around the lake from their campsite they found the nearly-disappeared remains of another camp; one that had been hastily struck, but some time ago. The fire ring was knocked apart, but only a few stones had been moved and the ashes and stumps still sat in the center of it. The tents were gone, but a ground cloth still kept plants from growing in a square just a few feet from the fire ring. There were a few other little signs of the previous inhabitants’ hasty flight, but those were the most obvious.

“Looks like we found our crew,” Scarlett said. Joel nodded. Nabhan walked silently around the spot where the groundcloth had been (Hazel had removed it almost immediately) and looked into the distance, “listening” as he called it.

“This might be useful,” Kendrick said, handing Scarlett a small, very old spiral-bound notebook. On the inside cover was written the word “Rock”, but that was all the clue they had as to it’s ownership. Eagerly Scarlett began flipping through the journal, while the others renewed their efforts to see what else the clearing held.

“Well, at the rate he was going, Rock could have kept using this journal for a long, long time,” Scarlett said wryly. “But he gave us an idea as to what we should expect.”

“What do you mean?” Hazel asked.

“Well, here’s a few sample entries: ‘Day 1: Bright. We walked. Day 2: Dimmer. We walked. Might be lost. Day 3: Bright again. Not lost, but probably getting closer. Day 4: Walked, found the lake. Day 5: Probably the wrong lake. Day 6: Right lake after all.’ And so on for a few more pages. For the next couple of days he records the fish he caught, again, nothing too interesting. Hold on, here it gets better: ‘Day 14: Full Moon. Castle appeared.’ Huh. That’s the last entry.”

“That’s all he said? ‘Day 14: Castle appeared’? What kind of stupid entry is that? What castle? How does a castle appear?” Hazel asked.

“He said it was a full moon,” Ken said quietly. They all looked up, trying to see what kind of sky they had, and trying to remember the phase of the moon.

“I think it was new when we got to Norwood,” Scarlett ventured. “Because that night was so dark, but I’m not sure.” None of the others were sure either, so they were left to rely on the expedient of waiting for the moon to rise. Fortunately they had a cloudless night, so the moon would be visible as soon as it came up.

“How long is the lunar cycle here?” Kendrick asked.

“Three weeks. Faster than earth, and we don’t always get the same face. Our moon spins.” Nabhan said.

They waited. They poked around a little more in the abandoned camp, but there really wasn’t much to see, and they all wanted to keep their eyes on the horizon. The sun began to set, turning the light to gold, then to crimsion, and touching Hazel and Scarlett’s flowery crowns with fire.

Finally the moon was visible over the horizon. At first glance, it looked like it was a full moon, but it was definitely waxing gibbous.

They sat down to talk about what to do.

“We probably have four days,” Nabhan said. “ Our phases are shorter, it’s true, but you still have a bit of time until the full moon.”

“What do we do?” Scarlett asked. “We could go back to town, and come back with our horses and wagon, now that we know the route and be back in plenty of time for whatever happens at full moon.

“Do we dare risk it?” Joel asked. “We’re not sure what, if anything, is going to happen, but we do know we want to be here when it does. Do we really want to leave?”

“I don’t,” Hazel said quietly. “I like it here. It feels…safe. And we don’t need all our stuff right now anyway. Let’s see what’s happening here, before we run back and forth for no reason.”

“I agree,” Nabhan said. “We are okay here, we don’t need to overly complicate our lives right now. Let’s settle in a bit, and relax.” Kendrick didn’t voice an opinion.

“Well then, I think we can safely say the vote is to stay here and take things as they come. Three days? Sounds like a little vacation. Still, let’s keep our eyes and ears open and see if we can’t get a few world-famous fish out of the mystery lake between here and there.” Joel said. Almost imperceptibly, everyone relaxed.

The next few days were full of…domesticity. Scarlett and Hazel made a cauldron of sorts out of waterproof canvas and heated some water, then set up a screened-off bathing area. Kendrick and Nabhan spent time together at the edge of the lake catching fish, and Joel and Scarlett cooked them. With daily baths (of a sort) and hot meals twice a day it was almost as good as home, and everyone was alert and waiting when the sun began to set on the third day, the day the moon was supposed to be full.

Johnny’s Journal: Day 14

It happened! Captain has been saying for days that we just needed to wait until the time was right, but I guess tonight it was, because there it was! A castle, just like he’s been saying. It’s amazing, but I don’t have time to tell you about it right now, because we’re going in! Okay, gotta run!

#####

The sun had been down for an hour before the moon came up, and the group was sitting around the fire, dinner over, waiting for whatever was going to happen. Slowly the moon crept up over the horizon, it’s pale light filling the clearing. Clouds raced past, but only just a few, and at last the moon was fully above the mountain and trees.

“Now what?” Scarlett asked, her arm around Hazel.

“Shhhh… Don’t you hear it?” Hazel said back, eyes bright in the moonlight.

“Hear what?” But at that point it was obvious.

There was no wind at ground level, something they had loved while camping there. The lake, which had been a perfect mirror day and night, suddenly became turbulent. Waves and ripples leapt up, all around the lake at the same time, and the sound of water in motion slowly grew to whitewater levels. The waves grew larger and larger as the moon climbed higher in the sky, and when it was directly overhead the sound suddenly changed, from a hiss to the sound of pouring water.

The water was pouring, but upwards, not downwards. As if it were running into some invisible mold, the water rose into the shape of a palace, complete with two spires, a drawbridge, portcullis, and crenelated walls, although who would or could attack such a castle was completely unknown. The light of the moon shone into the water and was refracted into pastel rainbows, dancing in liquid ways through the translucent walls, all dark, velvet black in the dim light.

Nabhan was on his feet, staring in wonder, arms out to his sides. Slowly, step by step, he drew closer, eyes upward, his face a revelation. Joel gently grabbed his arm, and after a moment Nabhan turned to look at him.

“Don’t you see, Joel? It’s perfect. It’s…it’s… There’s something here that is more real than all of us, than all the world. Let me go, no, come with me. We have to see this place.” He walked towards the open drawbridge, a watery bridge resting on the shore of the lake.

Hazel and Scarlett were right behind him, also looking ready to enter the glistening building. Once the castle was complete the noise also stopped completely, so now the night was quiet again.

“Can we, Joel? Can we go in now?” Hazel asked.

“That’s why we came, I guess. Okay, let’s go in. But everyone stay close together, and keep your eyes peeled.”

They started onto the bridge. It wasn’t like water, nor ice, beneath their feet. It was smooth, but completely solid, like marble. The entered a courtyard, complete with a stable and carriage house, then entered the main building. Joel noticed a fish swimming in the wall next to him as the passed through the doorway.

Inside the main building was a grand entryway. To the left and right were many doors, all closed, all made of the same watery material. “I wonder if they open?” Scarlett said. Directly ahead were two grand staircases, sweeping in large curves up to a mezzanine that stretched two-thirds of the way around the main floor, with staircases leading (presumably) to the towers above. The walls were unadorned with paintings, although drapes like waterfalls hung in front of windows that were constantly in motion, like looking through yet another waterfall.

“Where do we start?” Kendrick asked. “And what are we looking for?”

“Let’s see what’s in all these rooms,” Hazel said.

The ground floor was strangely domestic: a kitchen, a bedroom, two bedrooms, a mop and broom, both real and made of normal wood and nylon, but somehow completely dry, stood in a broom cupboard. “How would anything here get dirty?” Scarlett wondered. However, none of the rooms had any people in them, nor any recent signs of habitation.

“Although, who would live here? We just watched this castle build itself out of the lake a few minutes ago.” Joel thought. They decided to try the mezzanine next.

Room after room–and there were twenty-seven rooms on that floor–revealed the same thing: Shelves and cases, pedestals and plinths, full of ornately carved fish, otters, eels, frogs, and other water creatures in brass, bronze, marble, gold and other metals and stones stood in serried ranks, or individually displayed. Most of these rooms were like the main floor: completely devoid of any sign of having ever been visited by a living being before now. However, there were two rooms, near the far left end of the mezzanine, that had seen some action. Here and there the statues had been knocked over, and a few were broken and their ashes spilled out on the watery floor.

“Who would do such a thing?” Hazel gasped.

“Nabhan, is this the ‘very wrong thing’ you sensed?” Joel said.

“No. It happened near here, probably in this building, but this, bad as it is, wasn’t it.”

Kendrick knelt, and tried to scoop the ashes back into the containers, then set them right again. Suddenly he looked more concerned. “The soul gems are missing.” He said, his voice quiet but intense. Scarlett scowled, and Hazel gasped.

They counted twelve smashed urns, and twelve missing gems. All around them in the rooms where the damage had been done, they heard a sound, like the wind in trees, whispering and twisting around them, but they could never see nor feel anything that might be making the sound. Everyone was glad to get back into the hall.

“Well, do we go up?” Scarlett asked. It might have been the light, but she looked a bit scared.

Joel looked around. Once again, everyone was looking to him.

“We go up.”

They went up.

The upper floor in the tower was full of casket-size boxes. Trunks sat on every surface, lids closed but unlocked. Hesitantly they approached one of the boxes, and opened the nearest one. The entire party gasped.

The box was full of gems. They seemed to be glowing in the moonlight, a light, slivery sheen on the gems. They were about the size of peas, and there were hundreds, no, thousands. There were many different types of stones: amethyst, jade, ruby, sapphire, but all about the same size and all polished rather than cut. Without speaking nobody touched the gems, and once they had verified that the casks were all similarly filled they walked back down the stairs, and decided to head up the other staircase.

This room was ransacked. Casks were broken, and gems spilled across the floor. Hazel gasped as if she’d been hurt, and the entire party gathered closer around her. Kendrick’s face clouded, and he stalked into the room.

Joel decided to follow him.

Kendrick righted a box, then scooped up a large double handful of the gems and poured them back into the case. When he picked up the jewels a wind sprang up, then quickly died down again when he put them in the box. They all pitched in, and had the case full in short order. They turned to start on another case, when Hazel stopped, and slowly turned away. She walked around a pile of trunks, then gasped.

The others ran to see what she was looking at. Nabhan got there first, and Hazel turned and buried her face in his chest. They all tried to fit in, and see what she had seen.

There was a pool of liquid on the floor, like mercury, shining in the moonlight. In the center of the pool lie the form of a young woman, probably no more than sixteen or seventeen. They stared in silence, except for Hazel’s muffled sobs.

Then Hazel, too was quiet. She turned around, as if looking for something. The tears on her face also shone in the dark, and she walked, seemingly in a daze, out of her brother’s arms and around another corner.

“That used to be me,” a voice said, and in the darkness they could make out the outline, the glimmer, all right the ghost, of the girl who was still lying dead.

“I don’t like to look at it. I’m not sure you would totally understand, but it’s pretty disturbing.”

“I imagine it would be,” Scarlett said quietly.

Tears were still running down Hazel’s face. Joel put his hands on her shoulders and she pulled them around herself.

“Who are you?” Hazel asked the, well, the ghost.

“I’m not sure, right now, if I’m anybody. I’m a ghost. But I was the princess of this castle. My name was Selene. I guess I still am? Like I said, I don’t really know.”

“What happened to you?” Kendrick asked.

“It was an accident, I think. That is, I don’t think the men meant to kill me. I guess they thought I was a ghost. I wasn’t then, I was a person, like you. Well, not really like you. Look, maybe I better start at the beginning.”

“That might be best,” Joel said. He wasn’t really sure what protocol was when speaking with a ghost girl.

“Should we go downstairs? It’s much more comfortable in the sitting room. Well, it was, I don’t really know what ‘comfort’ means any more, but I remember that I enjoyed the sitting room.” They nodded and Selene said “follow me, then.”

The sitting room had couches made out of water. And end tables made out of what appeared to be actual mahogany. The contradiction puzzled Joel, but there was no denying that the couches were comfortable, and somehow completely dry.

“Well, perhaps I should start over. And probably some introductions are in order, as I don’t know any of your names.” Selene’s eyes were the opposite of normal peoples; her irises and pupils were light gray, like the surface of the moon, while the “whites” of her eyes were inky black.

“I’m Hazel, and this is my brother Nabhan. The very tall man is Kendrick Barnes, and the serious-looking one is Joel Tucker. And this is Scarlett.”

“Two off-worlders, in my castle?” Selene seemed surprised.

“Three actually,” Scarlett corrected. “I’m not from here either.”

“I’m honored,” the ghost of the princess said and she curtseyed.

“We are the ones who should be honored,” Kendrick said, trying to bow while sitting down. “I mean, we’re the ones talking to a princess.”

“Oh, well, it’s just a title. I’m not really royalty. I just live in a big castle, so they call me a princess. Or did, when I lived here. When I was alive. Anyway, I guess I should try again. Now that I know all your names.

“I lived in this castle. It’s kind of a special arrangement. For one, I’m not really…well, I’m not totally human. I don’t know what to call me though. The point is, I live in this castle all the time, even when it’s part of the lake.

“Not now, of course. Now I don’t live anywhere. I guess I haunt the castle now? But that seems so terrible!

“Anyway, when I was alive, I lived here. But only when the moon is full. I slept in the lake most of the time, but for three nights every month my castle comes up out of the water and I would care for it, and accept the Statues, and care for the soul gems, and try to comfort the mourners.

“What are those statues?” Hazel asked.

“They are the urns in which the people of this area inter the ashes and souls of the dead. You see, the soul gem becomes the resting place of the souls of those who don’t know how to get to their rest alone. They stay here, in their statues, for a thousand years. Then we open the statues and store the gems. If they are still lost the gems give them something to hold on to for a while, but they usually find their way out by that point. We store the gems for two hundred years. And then they are sure to be free. This is part of why I only walk for three days a month, you see. A year to you is only a month to me. And even in my relative years I should have lived a long, long life. I have sisters who have lived for over four hundred of our years.

“At any rate, I awoke a few months ago (in my months, you see) and there were four men in my castle. This was a slight surprise, but people often come to visit the statues of their loved ones, so I put on a nice dress and come down to meet them. But they weren’t in any of the rooms on the ground floor, so I started searching the Statue rooms. People usually wait for me here, you see, and I take them to the right statue room. So I was a little surprised. It’s not good manners to go to a statue room without a guide.

“But grief makes people do odd things sometimes, so I didn’t mind. I went up to the statue rooms and started searching for the people. I had checked two or three rooms when I heard the Others screaming and howling. I saw the men come running out of a statue room down at the end of the hall, followed by some Others. They ran up the tower stairs, which only made the Others more furious. I didn’t know what had happened, but it was my job to stop this sort of thing from happening, so I ran up after them.

“In the tower, the men were surrounded by the Others, and…shreds of others, on the floor.”

“Um, excuse me, Princess, but who are the ‘Others’?” Kendrick asked.

“Well, they’re the souls who can’t find the way. They start out looking pretty human, but as time goes by and they lose their memories of what it is to be alive; they get…forgetful. They tend to keep their heads and hands, but they don’t remember to put a body in there, so they start to look like, well, flying heads and hands. They also forget to speak, and so they just yell, or scream…Well, they’re ghosts, you see. We try to keep them comforted and try to show them the way.”

“And I guess I looked like one of them. You see, when I got to the tower, one of the men had a sword, but it wasn’t normal. It had a red glow that was woven into the blade, and it could harm the Others, which is almost impossible to do. I tried to scream for them to stop, and I tried to tell the Others to stop as well, but the man with the sword must have thought I was an Other, because he stabbed me.”

Scarlett and Nabhan gasped. Hazel, who hadn’t really stopped crying, started sobbing anew. Kendrick wrapped his strong arms around her and she held on to one of his arms, but didn’t turn away from Selene.

“I don’t really know what happened next. I woke up the next night, and there was my body, still on the floor, but not where I remember falling. Also, I was now…well, a ghost. I didn’t think I would have this problem; you see, people like me usually just go straight back into the water. But my soul gem had been stolen. I guess those men took it. They took a lot of the gems, you see, so I guess mine was one of them. Without it, I will eventually turn into one of the Others.”

“You don’t know where they went?” Scarlett asked.

“No. I was dying when they left. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no! I didn’t mean…that is…” Scarlett trailed off, but the princess smiled slightly.

“We are seeking the men who did this to you, Princess,” Nabhan said, his voice gruffer than usual. “However we have reason to believe that one of them is dead. One has gone mad. The other two are missing.”

“Oh no! I hope I didn’t make that one crazy!” Selene seemed genuinely concerned.

“Princess, you are guiltless, of course,” Joel said.

“That’s right,” Hazel affirmed. “They did this to you. If Johnny’s the one that stabbed you, he got no better than he deserved.”

“It’s reasonable to believe that if we find out what happened to the crew, we will find out where your soul gem is,” Nabhan said. “Do you have any clues or pointers that could help us?”

“Not really…but if I get close to my soul gem I’ll be able to sense it.”

“Can you come with us, or should we try to bring it here?”

“Well,” Selene started, “I’m not supposed to leave the lake. Actually, when I was alive, I wasn’t able to go outside of the clearing around the lake. But now, well, I’ve been out in the woods a few times now. Also, I don’t go to sleep when it’s not a full moon any more. I just get really really transparent. And I can be awake in the daytime, but them I’m totally invisible and inaudible. I have to say, In some ways being dead is more fun than being alive.” She smiled shyly at this. “But I really shouldn’t leave the lake. People want to see the guardian some times. And until there’s a new one, I’m still it.”

“What about when the full moon ends?” Joel asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, after the three days of full moon, you wouldn’t normally be available anyway, right? So you could come with us and it wouldn’t make any difference. Then we could find your soul gem, and you would be free and the new guardian of the lake could take over.”

“I suppose…” the young ghost seemed tempted by the offer

“Oh come with us!” Hazel said, jumping up and trying to take Selene’s hand, but of course completely unable to do so. “Oh. Sorry about that. I forgot.”

Selene laughed. “It’s all right. It’s nice that you would even try. That kind of makes me feel…real again. Well, I suppose when the moon sets I can come with you. I won’t need any food,” She giggled. “And for the next two nights I can offer you all some good beds and a warm and dry place in doors. Just as long as you get outside before dawn.”

“What happens if we don’t?” Scarlett asked.

“You get an early morning bath.” She giggled again. “This will be fun!”

Joel, Scarlett and Hazel all took rooms in the castle. Nabhan and Kendrick preferred to stay on “solid, dry land instead of solid, dry water” as Kendrick put it.

And that’s what the beds were. The bed was water. There were fish in it. The pillows were water. The comforter over the bed was a thin but surprisingly warm sheet of water. Selene seemed incurious about these scientific impossibilities, as they had been around her all her life. As she put it once, “You are mostly water too, Joel Tucker. But you are dry to the touch.”

They all made it out of the castle before sunrise, but only just. Scarlett carried Hazel out, and made far enough across the bridge to only get wet up to the knees when it suddenly disappeared, all the water draining back out of the castle shape like a drain had been opened beneath it.

“It’s waaaaay to early,” was all Hazel said, as Scarlett put her down on a sleeping bag Nabhan had brought out for her. She was asleep again almost instantly. Scarlett shook her head and stalked off to find some dry clothes.

“How does that work, I wonder?” Kendrick asked, as the last of the water finally settled back into the lake and the castle was gone. “I mean, is the form still there? It’s all solid, but with clearly liquid water inside. But,” He threw a rock clear across the lake. It landed on the far shore with a dull clatter. “That should have passed through the first floor at least.

It seemed there was a ghostly giggle somewhere near them, and the remembered that a ghost had joined the group.

“I’m sure that we could ask Selene.” Joel mentioned.

“I’ll do that tonight,” Kendrick agreed.

“Or ask her right now, and she can answer tonight. But I don’t know how much more information she would have about the process.” Joel replied. “She probably deals with it the same way you and I deal with the fact that gravity works or the portals: It’s probably fascinating and we’re sure there’s a good explanation, but we’re content to know that somebody out there knows how it works, so it doesn’t always have to be us.”

“Actually, Joel, I have a pretty good working knowledge of the man made portals, at any rate. Um, well, at least the mechanical part of the things. I don’t really know why the mechanisms we use work. I um, I just know how to tell which ones are broken. So I guess I see your point, kinda.”

“But you want to be the one who does know how everything works,” Joel said, and Kendrick grinned and nodded. “Some day, my large friend, you’re sure to get all the answers you can handle.”

#####

Three days passed quickly, and soon they were ready to head back to Norwood, for during those three days they realized they didn’t have a more certain target in mind. It was seemingly in passing that they got the only real lead they’d had in days.

“We don’t often die,” Selene was saying. “I had one sister die about twenty of your years ago.”

“You keep talking about your sisters,” Scarlett said. “But you were the only one at your castle.”

“Of course.”

“So…”

“So what?”

“So where are your sisters?”

“Why, they’re in their own castles, in their own lakes, of course!” Selene didn’t laugh at Scarlett, but it was clear that this was only because of her good breeding.

“So, there are other lakes with castles?”

“Naturally. You don’t really think I could take care of all the soul gems in the world, do you?”

“And what are these other lakes called?”

“Any lake with a guardian is called Moon Lake. Well, that’s not all the way true. Some are called Crescent Lake, if their castle is active during the “crescent”s. But they’re mostly Moon Lake.”

“Which explains why we got conflicting stories,” Kendrick said quietly.

“And different locations,” Nabhan added.

“So, there are many ‘Moon Lake’s, all full of gems, all guarded by one of your family–”Scarlett began.

“Are they all connected? Do you get to see your sisters ever? How do you talk to one another?” Hazel interrupted. She had grown fond of having someone her size around, even if there was a drastic age difference.

“We can occasionally move from Lake to Lake. But it’s not really like there are waterways between all the lakes. Well, I mean, there’s the aquifer, and at some level all lakes are connected there. But we travel via the moon when we want to visit. Which means I can only visit my full moon sisters. The crescent girls and I haven’t ever met.”

“Other gems…” Joel was musing. His eyes met Scarlett’s.

“If you were a jewel thief–” she began.

“And you found lightly-guarded hoards of gems–” Joel continued. Nabhan looked up at them, as did Hazel. Even in the dim moonlight, Selene seemed more pale than normal as the implications of what they were saying sunk in.

“We have to warn my sisters,” she said urgently.

“Where’s the nearest Crescent Lake?” Joel asked.

“Not far. To the east. My sister Lua lives there.”

“Will she be able to get the word to the other Crescent Lakes?” he asked. Selene nodded.

“We’ll go there then. We can find the ship these thieves came in later. For now let’s try to keep them from doing this sort of thing again. They all agreed.

Lua was not all that much like her sister. Her eyes were normal, if very very dark, but the whites were white at least. Her hair was short and raven-black where Selene’s was long and white. Of course, Lua was also still alive.

Although they had never met, the sisters recognized each other immediately, and Lua cried as she learned what had happened to Selene. She kept trying to hug Selene, and eventually Hazel stood in, hugging Lua in place of her sister.

“Of course I’ll tell the others,” Lua cried. “But what about your kind? What about the Full Moon girls? I can’t speak with them normally.”

“We have almost three full weeks, and they’re out of danger during those weeks,” Selene answered. “Hopefully we’ll know something more by then. Perhaps you could ask a mortal to carry a message to one of my sisters, just in case.”

“I’ll do that. But, dear Selene, what are we going to do? How can we protect ourselves? None of us are stronger than you, and we have no weapons.”

“Draw up your bridges, and don’t let them down for people you don’t know,” Joel suggested. “Be aware. Selene was taken unaware and unprepared. If you’re prepared you should be okay.”

“Yes, yes of course,” Lua said. “But I’m still so frightened. I never thought our castles would have to be strongholds. Oh, dear sister, what if you aren’t the only one that’s been attacked? What if this has already happened to others?”

“It hasn’t.” Nabhan said, startling the group.

“What do you mean, Nabhan?” Scarlett asked.

“I was able to find Selene’s lake because I could feel a, a wrongness from there. I could tell that something terrible, something unimaginable had happened. You guardians aren’t supposed to die, at least, not like this. I have been meditating for half of an hour each night before I sleep, seeking with my senses, trying to find any more sources of wrongness. I haven’t found any.”

“But they could have happened anywhere in the world! Can you really sense things all over the planet?” Selene asked, clearly not comforted.

“But we don’t have any Moon Lakes, Selenie,” Hazel said. It had taken her almost three days to figure out how to attach her favorite postfix to the princess’s name. “When we die, we just get buried in the ground and that’s it.”

Neither Selene nor Lua were able to deal with this revelation for a few minutes. “That’s it? But who guides your Others? Who helps you get to the next world? How can you sleep knowing you could get lost between here and there?” Neither Hazel nor Nabhan had a good answer for these questions. The off-worlders correctly deduced that their input would not be valuable at this point. Nabhan and Hazel tried to explain that they had never known they had a problem until they came here. At this point the princesses tried to figure out where all the lakes they knew of were. Scarlett pulled out a holographic projector and displayed the world, and they touched it in each spot where a moon lake was situated.

Eventually they were able to identify almost two hundred lakes. They were situated in a band about a ten miles wide all around the globe, just outside of the Arctic Circle.

“Do your lakes freeze in the winter?” Joel asked.

“No. They’re geothermal lakes–naturally heated. We stay nice and warm all winter long.” Lua replied. Indeed, her lake seemed to be steaming a little in the cool autumn air.

“So we have a series of lakes serving a series of communities in a band around the world.” Scarlett said. “Actually, a very narrow band, as it turns out. Even so, how did Captain Harris decide to camp out at Selene’s lake? What drove him there, instead of here, or to some other lake?”

“If only we knew more about what they had been thinking,” Hazel said.

“And where Captain Harris died, if he did,” Joel said.

“And what happened to the other two,” Nabhan agreed.

“So where does that put us?” Scarlett asked.

“Right back at square one,” Joel said. The others agreed.

“Well, not quite,” Selene said. “You see, there are two things I can sense. One is my soul gem, but all I can tell about it right now is that it’s far enough away that I can’t tell you which direction to go to get to it. The other, I think, Is the sword that killed me.”

The entire group was shocked by this announcement. Lua clung tighter to Hazel. The two of them began to cry afresh.

“Oh, don’t cry for me! I’m fine now, and I’ve never been so free. If I wasn’t dead, dear Lua, I never would have met you.”

“But still…” Lua sobbed.

“You know where this sword is?” Scarlett interrupted.

“I think so. I can’t tell you how, exactly. They say that the people who become Others do so because they have something left here, something unfinished or undone. Maybe the sword has to do with that something for me.” Selene said.

“Where is it?” Scarlett asked again. Joel was wondering idly about her behavior. She was usually quite diplomatic, or at least civil. But for some reason she had been brusque with Lua since they walked into the clearing.

“It’s not far from here. Back towards my lake a ways, but more northward. I think we could get to it in two days, maybe three.”

“Joel, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re not going to make it that long on the food we have, and we need a few other supplies as well. It might be wise of us to go back to town first, then set out and find the sword.” Scarlett suggested. Not as a group vote, not as general council, just one on one with Joel.

“I see your point. What do you all think?” Joel asked, quite deliberately. There were general nods, and they agreed to set out back to Norwood in the morning.

Johnny’s Journal: 20th Entry

(Editor’s Note: Johnny stopped putting dates in his journal after the his entry on the 14th day of their mission. All entries after this time are referred to by the apparent breaks in entries.)

Harris died today. The shining wall got him. He thought that sword. He used it, and the wall went away. Stringham told him it would work, told him that he needed it to work, or else we would all starve.  Rock is gone. Don’t know where, don’t know why. Don’t know how we’d fly the ship, even if the shining wall wasn’t surrounding our ship.

Stringham told Captain to send me in to the ship, to make me try to get through the wall. We’ve all tried; one at a time, at night, all together, in the light, it doesn’t matter. The wall pushes back.

Harris kept pushing. The shining was all around him. The lights hit him, struck at him, snarled at him, bit him.  He bled, he got bruised, but he would not go back. When the lights piled up on top of him he crawled.  Eventually he fell flat, and the wall tumbled him back out, and went quiet again. It’s silent when you aren’t trying to get through it, and it doesn’t even look like anything is there.  But it killed Harris. It judged him. It judges us all. All because of what he did. Because of what Rock did.

Now it’s just me and Stringham, and Stringham wants me to try to get through the wall. Says it will let me through because I didn’t support Harris.  Says I was a traitor, but that’s good, because Harris was evil. Says if I think I’m pure enough I can get through, it won’t judge me the way it did him. Stringham says he’s too tainted, because he loved Harris like a brother, but he didn’t cry when Captain died. Just looked at him. He won’t cry if I die.

But I won’t’ die. I’m leaving. I stole the sword Harris used. I can stay safe, and I can get away. The judgement can’t follow me, not with the sword. I will be safe again.

#####

Having a companion that was unable to be seen or heard except at night necessitated a few changes in the group’s habits.  Now instead of meeting in the mornings around breakfast to plan the day’s activities they met at night, after dinner.    Also, they had to find a place to meet where the fact that there were six people at the table, but only five walked in or out wouldn’t be noticed.

They also had to deal with the problem of having absolutely no idea where to go next.  Finding the lake had been much easier than they had expected, but it didn’t get them any closer to knowing what had happened, or where the Intrigue was, or even who was still alive.

“So where was Johnny found again?” Scarlett asked as they tried once again to decide what to do the next day.

“By some hunters outside of town.” Nabhan said, dully.  This was worn ground, and nobody was at all confident that any of the answers would have changed between last time and this time.

“But wait,” Selene said. “Where outside of town? What was there?”

The others sighed a little.

“The cave where he was found was pretty well picked over,” Joel said quietly.

“Or was it?” Hazel asked. “We don’t know that.  We don’t know if they actually looked through his belongings.  Maybe he left something behind! Oh, maybe Johnny had a soul gem, and the guilt made him crazy!” She enthused. “Not that it would have been your fault, Selene.  He did it, and it would have been back on him.”

“Like the tell-tale heart,” Scarlett muttered.

“What?” Hazel asked.  Scarlett looked up. “Like that story, the tell-tale heart.” Blank stares from the others. “By Edgar Allen Poe? Haven’t any of you heard of it?” More blank stares. Scarlett explained the story, the man who killed another man and buried him beneath the floorboards, and the eventual insanity and confession because of the unending heartbeats.

“So it was the man’s own heart beating in his ears that caused him to go crazy, you see, not the person he’d killed.”

The group was horrified.

“This is an Earth story?” Nabhan asked. “Maybe it was better we left.”  Scarlett bristled, and was preparing a retort when suddenly Selene giggled.  Her hand was held to her other wrist and she was smiling. “I still have a pulse!  Why would I still have a pulse?” She grinned quietly to herself, no longer paying attention. The others relaxed. The thought of death wasn’t quite as frightening with Selene around.

“Well, if nobody has any better ideas I say we try to find this cave tomorrow,” Scarlett said.  “We aren’t making any progress here.  Maybe Selene, or Nabhan, can pick something up there.”

“Or me,” Hazel said.

“Or Hazel,” Scarlett agreed.

#####

They decided to take the horses and wagon again.  The hunters knew where the cave was and were able to give good directions, after Kendrick talked to them a bit.

“I know who took the soul gems from Moon Lake,” he said as we entered the metalwork shop.  The response was instant.  Shutters were closed and he was escorted back into the whitesmithing workroom.

“How do you know? How do you know what we haven’t found in two years?” Sten was intent, and possibly a little angry.

“We went to Moon Lake–”

“So have we.”

“And we went into the castle of the lake.” Sten was shocked, but held his tongue.  “We saw the body of the guardian on the floor, and we met her ghost.”

Sten was trembling, and tears were welling in his eyes.  “She told us about the night she was killed, and we promised to find the killers.  Admittedly, we were seeking them anyway.”

“What do you need from us?” Sten asked, then his face clouded. “You didn’t take any of the gems? You wouldn’t…”

“Man, no! We tried to fix some of the damage, put some spilled gems back into the chests. We didn’t touch a single intact statue, nor a single gem in a closed case.  And we definitely didn’t take a gem with us.”

Sten’s eyes searched Kendrick’s for a few moments, then he relaxed again. “I can see you are telling me truth.  So, back to my first question. What do you need from us?”

What they needed was directions, some gear, but not much else.  By common consent, the party didn’t really want any extra members, as keeping Selene’s secret felt essential.  The next day they started out for the cave.

“So what are we going to do in this cave? I mean, Joel and I. You know, the normal people.” Scarlett said.  She was acting a bit waspish again.  “Those of us that can’t mystically sense other people’s tracks or the essential wrongnesses of the universe, that is.”

Hazel rode up close to Scarlett and slid her hand into her friend’s.  “Oh Scarlett, you’re not normal! You’re the exotic woman from distant, long-forgotten Earth, whose past is shrouded in mystery and secrets! And you have great hair.”  But even this didn’t seem to lighten the tall woman’s mood.

#####

It wasn’t hard to tell that they had found the right place. The cave was surrounded with a picket of sharpened sticks, pointing outward, some fallen over, and all different lengths. Across the door of the cave was a wooden door of the same design; that is to say, none at all. Three slats of rough-hewn wood were lashed together with some very bright and very frayed rope, presumably some of the last stocks of the Intrigue.

“Well, this is it,” Kendrick said.

“Yep.” Joel said. Nobody seemed to want to go in. Hazel and Nabhan tied up the horses, Scarlett busied herself with the wagon. Joel, seeing all this, fingered the Dark Star patch on his shoulder and went in. Naturally, the others followed close behind once he had entered.

The cave was low, only about seven feet high at the highest point, and roughly oblong in shape, but very pointed at the ends. It its widest point, the cave was about ten feet across. Along one wall was a sleeping bag, which clearly hadn’t been used in months, and some rudimentary shelves had been carved into the sandstone behind this. There was a roll of old clothes at the head of the sleeping bag, no doubt Johnny’s pillow.  There was a fire pit at the other end of the cave, and random bits of food, bones, and fur were scattered around the fire. A rudimentary hoop bound with inexpertly cured leather and woven about with more lengths of frayed rope and leather threaded with beads and feathers hung in the center of the cavern, presumably a curse net or dream catcher.

“Well, he stayed at least a little sane,” Scarlett said, inspecting the cave from the door.

“What do you mean?” Nabhan asked.

“There’s no, ah, latrine inside the cave.  Presumably he dug that outside. Important health concern there.” Nobody seemed impressed.

They filed a little more into the cave, but still huddled like a group of tourists.  At length Nabhan said, “we’ll learn nothing standing here,” and headed for the sleeping bag.  The others seemed to snap into gear as well and headed for the various other areas.  Hazel took one look at the fire pit, with the bits and pieces of animal hair and bones, and turned slightly green.  Scarlett, seeing this, said “why don’t you look at those shelves he carved?” Hazel nodded gratefully and turned her back on the ashes.  Scarlett sighed and steeled herself to take on the task.

Meanwhile Joel was looking through the pillow pile.  It was mostly the kinds of clothing you would expect on a spaceship: some cotton, some fleece, but mostly high-tech fibers to help the intrepid explorer stay comfortable in any weather.  Whatever colors they had originally been were now lost under a thick layer of dirt, and in some cases, mud.  Still, he was able to find a few marks of a personality here and there. For example, the mission symbol patches were all missing, either torn off or cut completely out of the material, leaving gaping holes, on the sleeves or the chest of the shirts and jackets in the pile.

Nabhan rolled up the sleeping bag, and stared hard at the place it had been. Almost idly he brushed his fingers through the dirt beneath it a few times, his eyes far away.  Hazel turned and caught his eyes once, and something seemed to pass between them, a sort of acknowledgement.  Nabhan began digging.  Scarlett happened to have turned and seen this little exchange, and snorted, turning back to the fire pit.

Hazel was looking at the shelf, rummaging through the items there.  There were bits of equipment from the Intrigue, but most of the things were hand made. A mass-produced pocketknife sat next to a flint dagger. Here was the case from a first aid kit, but it was full of leaves and lichen. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to any of the collection there, and it was more than a bit disconcerting to Hazel. It was like looking into a diseased mind.  But none of the others had stopped, so she kept looking.

“I suppose it might help if we knew what we were looking for,” Scarlett said, her arms covered in black ash to the elbows.

“It probably would,” Joel said, examining a tunic that was definitely hand made. It had a mission patch sewn to it, which was odd. “This is odd,” he said aloud. “Usually he removes these patches. But he clearly made this shirt, and he sewed a patch to it.  Why would he do that?”

“I think I might know,” Scarlett said, her face tight. She pointed at the fire pit.  Joel came over. Hazel resolutely stayed at the shelves, and Nabhan was busy digging.

“What am I looking at?” Joel asked. Scarlett just pointed again, drawing a circle around the far side of the pit with her hand in the air.

At first Joel didn’t understand what was special about that area.  It was littered with scraps of fur, bone, cloth, wait, now, cloth was different.  Cloth was something new.  Then he saw. There weren’t just bones, there was a skeleton, and there wasn’t just random fur around it, there was no fur near it.  The skeleton was probably a young bear or some similar predator, and around the upper body were a few more scraps of cloth, which, when you looked at them right, looked more like a home-made tunic. Near the skeleton was a patch of cloth, silvery on the back, that turned out to be the mission logo.

“He dressed it up…” Joel began.

“Then he…he…made a sacrifice out of it. He killed it, Joel. Probably at the stake.” Joel nodded grimly.

“Why?”

“To atone for his sins,” Nabhan said, still digging.

“What do you mean?” Scarlett asked. She had been building a very dramatic moment, and didn’t like Nabhan ruining it for her.

“He dressed them up as either himself, or members of his crew and killed them instead of himself. Some kind of sacrificial offer.”

“But why? To what end? Why would he need to kill?” Scarlett seemed more shaken up than Joel would have thought.

“Perhaps he needed to cover his part in something, or still felt guilt for Selene’s death.  If it were night, and we had a good picture, we could ask her if this was the person that killed her. Until then, let’s keep looking, but more away from the fire pit.” Scarlett nodded and walked over to the dreamcatcher.

“I think I found something,” Nabhan said.  He dug the dirt around a long shape in the ground, and with some effort was able to pull it up to the surface.  Brushing the dirt from it, he revealed a box, roughly two feet wide, four feet long, and only a few inches deep. It was also made of hastily-assembled pieces of wood, but also had a metal clasp that showed some signs of attention in its design.

“A coffin?” Hazel said, then, “No, it’s too small.”

“Maybe it’s a coffin for a snake,” Scarlett said. Kendrick, who had been reaching for the clasp, froze at that point, and slowly put his hand back at his side.  Nobody else seemed to want to open it.  They stood in a circle around it, nobody moving for a moment until Scarlett said testily, “All right, I’ll open it.” And she knelt and flipped the clasp.

Inside the box was lined with a silvery material, which looked to Joel’s eyes like part of a dress uniform. Laying in the folds of material was a sword unlike any he’d ever seen.

The blade was woven–there was no other way to say it–out of two different types of metal and…something else. Bronze and steel wrapped around each other, and amongst them ran a stream of fire-red sparks of light, constantly moving, flowing from hilt to tip and back, endlessly. In places the stream of light was the edge of the blade, as the plaiting moved back and forth across the width of the blade.  It was unimaginably beautiful, the silvery lining around it reflecting the red light. And yet there was a feeling, an aura about it that told the party that there was no way you would want to touch it.

Without speaking, Scarlett reached out and took the hilt.  Slowly she lifted the sword, and the firelights danced even faster at her touch. Holding it up at arm’s length, she smiled, and the firelights danced in her eyes. “I could use a weapon like this!” She breathed.  Quickly she ran through a few practice swings, thrusts, feints, parries. Finally she stopped, breathing heavily, and smiling widely.  “This,” she said at last, “This is a fine weapon.”

Beneath the silvery material there was a sheath for the sword.  She quickly belted it on and slid the sword home. Hazel looked slightly sickened. “Are you really going to use a dead man’s sword?”

“Why not? And anyway, Johnny isn’t dead, but he definitely can’t use a sword right now.” She seemed lighthearted, flippant.

“Shouldn’t we give that to Mr. Ferrin?” The younger woman asked.

“Perhaps. When we get back to him, we can see if he wants it.  Until then, we may as well put it to good use, should we get attacked.  No sense having something like this tucked away in a box.” She was actually stroking the pommel as she spoke.

“I have to agree with my sister,” Nabhan said. “That sword doesn’t hold any great benefit for us, and I don’t know that we should have someone using it, if we don’t know what it does.  It could be dangerous.”

“Of course it’s dangerous! It’s a sword.  But as long as I’m the one holding it you’ll all be fine. We’ll all be just fine.”

Kendrick and Nabhan turned to Joel. “Well?”

“Well what? We should probably take it with us. Scarlett knows how to handle a sword, so it’s a little protection, should we need it. I trust her.”

Scarlett, who had been staring into space, her hand on the hilt of the sword, suddenly turned to look at him, eyes fully present. “You do?”

“Of course. I trust you.”

She turned away again.

“I don’t know if this is useful,” Hazel interjected. “But I think I found something else.  I think I found a journal.”

“Where?” Joel asked.

“Just here on the shelf. It looks like a journal, little short entries, dates, that sort of thing.”

They gathered around.  It was indeed a journal.  Or rather, a log.  Originally it was the flight log for the navigator of the Intrigue, but Johnny had clearly put it to different uses near the end.

“What’s in here? Twigs, mud, there’s a bug on this page! What was he doing?” Hazel said, flipping through it.

“Going mad.” Kendrick said quietly.  They looked around a little.  Suddenly the cave didn’t seem like such a great place to stay.  The sun was setting behind the mountain behind them, and the light faded.

“We should build a fire,” Kendrick suggested.

“Yes. But not in here,” Hazel insisted.  They all glanced briefly at the fire pit, and headed in silence out the door, to set up camp in a clearing not far away.

######

Selene was little more than a shimmering outline that night, as the moon was full, and thus she was “as far from real as I can get.” The fire was dug in deep, partially to keep the light from drawing unwanted attention, partially to make her as visible as possible in the dark.  They set up a lantern and thumbed through Johnny’s entries in the flight log.

“I don’t like this,” Hazel said. “It’s like talking to a dead man.”

“Yes.  That just gives me the shivers.” Selene said. She might have been grinning. It was hard to tell.

“Oh, Selene! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean… well, you’re different.” Hazel stumbled over herself in her haste to apologize.

“It’s okay. I understand.  In a way, it’s nice to know you don’t think of me as a ghost. I never knew I would have friends after I died.”

“I hope I’m so lucky,” Joel commented.

“That’s all very nice, but what are we going to do now?” Scarlett interjected.  “We’ve seen the cave, and Johnny was crazy. Great.  So what? Where do we go now?”

Nabhan had been reading somewhat more seriously.  “We have two options: One, we can try to go backward from what he says here and try to find the ship ourselves, or we can try to find one of the other two shipmates.”

“Two?” Selene asked.

“Of the four men that attacked you, we know that the captain is dead, and the navigator went crazy, and lived in that cave over there.” Hazel explained. None of the living looked at the cave at all. “That leaves two: the doctor and the mechanic.”

“The question is which would we follow?” Scarlett said.  She seemed antsy, ready to run, and full of energy.

“We know a few things about the doctor, and maybe with Johnny’s story we can fill in some clues that were missing from the papers we found back in the library.” Joel suggested. Why don’t we get a little sleep tonight and see what we can figure out from our dear deranged cave dweller in the daylight?”  This seemed like a good plan to everyone involved, so they turned in.

Scarlett awoke the next morning feeling bright and alert. She put on her pants and form-fitting top, then a leather vest over that.  Since the weather was turning cold she added her long leather overcoat, made sure that the White Blade patch was firmly affixed to the shoulder, and crawled out of the tent.

She strapped on the sword, taking comfort once again in its heft, its sweet weight and the way it felt for all the world like a part of her.  Walking to the fire pit she found a fire already burning, and Nabhan sitting in front of it, reading the journal. “Good Morning, Nabhan,” She said. He nodded, eyes still fixed on his reading. After a moment he set the book aside and looked up. “Good morning.  Did you sleep well?”

“Sure did.  You’re up early.”

“Yes. I wanted to find out what was in this journal my sister found yesterday.  Also, my sleeping spot was less than comfortable. I tree decided to grow a few new roots right under my back while I slept.”

“I’ve met trees like that,” Scarlett agreed. “So, have you learned anything from our crazy friend here?”

“I’m not sure. I know a bit more about what happened at Selene’s lake, from the mortal point of view.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.  It appears that we have travelled in the exact wrong direction, if we’re seeking the Intrigue first. Or not. It’s really hard to tell, because Mr. Johnson seemed to spend a lot of time traveling in spirals, so his directions are hard to follow. At any rate, he gave a possibly accurate measurement of time between when they were last at the ship, and when he got here.”

“Does he say anything about…the fire pit in the cave?”

“I do not know. I’m not yet that far in his remembrances.  I will keep you updated, though.”

“You do that.” Scarlett wandered off.  Nabhan may be a bit uptight, but he was okay. Sure, he babied his little sister quite a bit, but hey, you’re gonna get that from big brothers. He was a good guy to travel with, and he would get the job done. What more could she really ask?

One by one the others got up. Since they had started extending the hours after dark they spent talking and planning they didn’t usually break camp all that early, and people generally arose when they thought there was a  chance that a fire was already burning and they wouldn’t have to help all that much with breakfast. Scarlett said hi to everyone as they got out of bed, and was glad to see that there was no sign of the ghost girl. Still, she knew she was always around.  And she was still useful, so Scarlett decided to bide her time.  There was no need to go quickly.

After what passed for breakfast that morning the party gathered around Nabhan, who was finally done with the Navigator’s Log.  He refused to talk about it during food time, which cast an unusually somber mood over the meal. Finally Joel said “Okay Nab, I think we’re all done, and we’re not going to be happy until you let us know what you found, so spill. What’s in that journal?”

Nabhan shifted slightly, and said “Where to begin? For one, I know, sort of, where the Intrigue is.  For another, I know what he was doing with those tunics and those animals in the cave.  None of it’s very pretty, but I think I can give you a coherent picture of what happened, More or less.”

They were quiet, and intent.  As much as he tried to keep his usual demeanor, but it was clear that Nabhan was enjoying the attention.

“All right. We’ll start on the day after Selene was killed.  The four members of the crew were scared beyond reason, but it seems that two of them decided to take some soul gems and run, rather than just running.  They got as far from the clearing as they could that night, slept a little, then set out in the morning to get back to their ship.

“However, when they reached the Intrigue they weren’t able to approach the ship any closer than about ten meters.  It appears there was a ‘Shining Wall’ around it.  He never really explains what that is, except that it was able to hit, howl, bite…it’s not a nice wall. They camped near the Intrigue for five days, getting information, testing the strength of the wall, seeing if it had weaknesses, if it could be distracted in one direction or another, all sorts of things.

“Eventually they came to see it as a kind of judgment on them for killing the Castle Girl…that is, for killing Selene. They never found out her name, and Johnny called her the castle girl when he referred to her at all.  Captain Harris, who was wielding the sword, determined that the wall was his fault, and decided that it was his duty to get through it.   Eventually, one day he took his sword, put on a heavy jacket that was supposed to be armored in some way, and tried to march right through the wall, no stopping, no turning.

“It beat him to pieces.  Johnny describes the lights in the wall as screaming, and biting, and piling up on top of him. Once the captain was finally unable to move he was pushed back out of the perimeter.  Doctor Stringham pronounced him dead on the spot.

“It’s about this point that Johnny gets pretty hard to follow. He came to distrust the doctor, and the engineer had long since abandoned the crew.  Johnny doesn’t know where he went, and is incurious.  With the death of the captain, Johnny began to feel that the judgment would pass to him, so he ran away. He kept notes of how far he traveled, but in saner moments suspected that he was traveling in circles, or at least spirals.

“He eventually found the cave and set it up with his “ghost protections”.  The fence is supposed to keep larger spirits out, and the dreamcatcher was supposed to entangle the ones that are small enough to get inside the cave.  But he felt that even this wasn’t enough.  He felt that the “judgement” wanted blood, and that unless he wanted it to be his blood he would need to find a way to offer up sacrifices.  So he made outfits to symbolize his guilty crew members–and himself–and put them on animals. Then he killed them with the sword and burned them in his fire pit.”

The others were aghast.  Nabhan looked regretful, then continued. “There’s not much more. At least, not much more that makes any sense.  He was sure that some kind of bug was a spy, and he killed all of those kinds of bugs he found. He kept a number of them in this book, and destroyed a bunch and put their shells in other trees around the woods. He hated the trees, hated the animals, did two or three more sets of sacrifices, well, and went crazy.  The ‘shining wall’ haunted him, and he claims he saw it everywhere he went.  He holds Captain Harris completely responsible for what happened, and feels that his torture at the hands of the shining wall was unjust and unfair.  He spent a lot of time writing about bugs.  That’s really all I have to report.”

Silence reigned for a full ten minutes.  Finally Joel spoke up.

“Do you know, that is, did Johnny know, where the doctor went?”

“He knew that the Doctor had ‘friends’ on the planet, but he wasn’t able to follow him, and even while he was tracking the doctor he was trying to hide from the ‘judgement’ that he was sure was following him.”

“Wait, the Doctor knows people on Savlod? How is that possible?” Scarlett asked.

“It may not be,” Nabhan admitted. “Remember that Johnny was paranoid and going insane. Half of what he says may be complete nonsense. The other half almost certainly is. Still, it’s all we have to go on.”

“Do you think we could find the ship, based on his directions?” Joel asked.

“It is possible, if unlikely.  He kept fairly clear distance logs–probably because he had some measurement device–but directions are often given as ‘away from judgment’ or ‘closer to the source of the enemy’s powers’.  Occasionally he is a little clearer, but not often, and not much.”

“I understand. However, as you said, it’s all we have to go on.  So Nabhan, do you think you could find a route back to the Intrigue using Johnny’s journal?”

Nabhan was silent for a few moments. Quietly Hazel stood up and walked over to him, and put her small hand in his.

“I believe that, with the aid of Johnny’s notes, I could find a route back to the Intrigue.” Joel got the sense that he wasn’t being told everything.  But he had bigger things on his mind just then.

“We have something else that needs done as well,” Joel said. All eyes turned to him again. “We need to find out what happened to the Doctor, and more importantly, who took Selene’s soul gem.  I have a feeling that finding one will find the other.  But we don’t have time before the snow flies to do both.” He breathed deeply.  This went against his training, but he believed it could be made to work.

“That’s why I suggest we split up.  We need to cover a lot of ground quickly, and we can be twice as effective this way.”

There was a stunned silence from the group.  People looked down, or at distant trees, and nobody would meet anyone else’s eyes. Once again, it was Scarlett that spoke up.

“I call Hazel.”

Joel smiled.  “Fortunately, that’s roughly what I was thinking.  Scarlett, Nabhan, and Hazel, you should try to find the Intrigue, while Kendrick, Selene and I look for the Doctor.”

The stress, not very evident before, visibly drained out of Hazel and Nabhan when it became clear that they wouldn’t be separated.  “Of course, we’ll need to wait until tonight to ask Selene.” Hazel said.

“Why wait for a ghost to tell us what to do?” Scarlett asked nonchalantly.

“Because she can probably help us find her soul gem, and is the only native of this part of the world. She may have a lot to tell us about what we can expect in this area.  Besides, we aren’t going anywhere tonight anyway.”

They spent hours talking about the logistics of dividing gear, getting back in contact when they had–or hadn’t–completed their tasks, food distribution, and many other things.

“I fully approve of your plan, Joel, and would be delighted to accompany you and Kendrick.” Selene said, as she became visible next to Hazel on the log upon which she was sitting.  “Although I will miss you, Hazel.”

“Oh Selene! I’ll miss you too!”

“Joel, I have been wandering a bit today, and there are things I have seen that may help us find what we are looking for.  Unfortunately, none of my sisters are awake right now, but if we are still traveling when they are awake I can guarantee you lodging in almost any direction. However, there is another town not far from here that has a lot of people who are well-dressed and prosperous, and perhaps they are gem dealers? I don’t really know how this works.

“Oh, and Scarlett, if I read the notebook the same way Nabhan did, there is a town near the route the navigator took, I think you may find some clues there.” Scarlett nodded and pulled out her globe.  Selene pointed out the town and they were able to track the route.

The next morning dawned bright and clear, and they packed up with heavier hearts than usual.  All except for Scarlett, who seemed excited, and would catch herself singing from time to time. Finally the packs were all packed and stowed, and the site was clean. It was time to split up.

The two parties lined up across the clearing, Joel and Kendrick heading north, Scarlett, Nabhan and Hazel heading south.

“Well, I guess this is goodbye,” Kendrick said, and reached out a hand to Nabhan. Hazel instantly hugged him, and even Scarlett put an arm around his shoulders.

Hazel then hugged Joel tightly, then ran to her horse.  Joel shook Nabhan’s hand, and took Scarlett by the hand in a grip known to the White Blade.

“Remember your oath,” he said to her. “Bring us all back together safe and sound.”

“Of course. I’m not a child. I’ll protect them with my life.”

“Bring you back in one piece as well.”  Scarlett had nothing to say to this.  Instead she put her free hand on his other arm, smiled, and turned away.  The threesome mounted up, and quietly rode off.

“Well, I guess we better go as well,” Joel said to Kendrick. “Princess, if you get tired of walking, you can ride on my horse. He hardly even seems to notice.”

Dr. Stringham’s Journal: 21st entry after planetfall.

Johnny has run off as well. He took Harris’s sword, and made only the most precursory attempt at getting through the shining wall.

I have my questions about that “wall”.  Naturally, I don’t believe what Johnson and Harris thought! The idea of some kind of mobile “judgment” following us around is just too idiotic.  Why would this “Judgment” decide that all it needs to do is keep us from our ship and that’s good enough? It just doesn’t fit together.

However, there are other possible causes for the phenomena that they call the “wall”.  But I don’t have the time or the equipment to put these to the test. However, I have made contact with my off-world friend, and I believe he will be able to  help me get what I need to get our ship back. And now that the rest of the crew is out of the way, he and I can use it to finally get off of this planet and start doing something useful with our time.  That’s the beauty of these Mark IV’s: you can fly one with just two people, if you know what you’re doing.  And my friend knows exactly what he’s doing…

#####

Joel liked riding with Kendrick. That isn’t to say that he didn’t miss Hazel, Scarlett and the others, he did.  But sometimes it was nice to hear your own thoughts instead of Hazel’s. Kendrick clearly felt no need to fill the quiet spaces with the sound of his own voice, which suited Joel to the ground right now.  They rode for most of the day, talking only occasionally and quietly about things around them, and often letting long periods pass in which they said nothing at all.

That evening as they were making dinner in their camp, Kendrick actually asked an open-ended question.

“So why me?”

“What’s that?”

“Why did you pick me to go along with you? Why not Nabhan and Hazel?”

“So you think I couldn’t have picked Scarlett?”

“And you definitely couldn’t have split up the siblings.  So why did you choose me instead of them?  I don’t know what real use I am to you until we get that ship back, and they’re the ones doing that.”

Joel smiled.  “Don’t sell yourself short.  You can get people to tell you things that they wouldn’t tell me in a thousand years, because they never even know you’re looking for information.  You keep your cool, and you’re good with things that require lots of dexterity.  These are useful traits. Besides, I always like to make sure I have a big guy to hide behind when things get rough.” They both laughed.

“So, how do you think the others are faring?” Kendrick asked.

“I’m sure they’re fine. Why do you ask?”

“Well, Scarlett doesn’t always seem to be the most…stable person.  She could get them into trouble.  Um, no offense meant.”

“I know what you’re saying. But I think she’s invested enough in Hazel to want to keep her safe, and she knows how important Nabhan is to Hazel, so I don’t think she’ll risk him either.”

“Hmmm.  So she’ll only be risking herself.”

Joel looked across the fire at the large man. Not for the first time he found himself re-adjusting his thinking about the crew’s mechanic.  He didn’t say much, but what he said was often worth listening to.

“Still waters run deep,” Princess Selene said, setting a ghostly hand on Kendrick’s shoulder, and apparently reading Joel’s thoughts.

“Nah. These things are just obvious,” Kendrick said.

“Oh, I don’t think even Scarlett would know some of this about herself.” Selene refuted.

“Well, people don’t always see themselves entirely clearly,” Kendrick said quietly.

Joel sat back and listened to the two of them.  It wasn’t a likely pairing, if pairing it was. But he couldn’t deny that the dynamic of his little party was immaculate.  They got along, they complimented each other both in abilities and temperaments, and they were all able to do what they were meant to do.  Internally, he very much hoped that Scarlett was getting along as well with the polar-opposite siblings.

Kendrick and the princess’s conversation wound down, and Joel was able to jump in.

“Princess, do you know where we’re going, really?”

“No, not entirely. We’re mostly just heading for the nearest large town and looking for information.”

“It’s pretty slim.”

“It is. But…”

“But what?”

“Well, there’s this feeling, something where my heart was, something that tells me we’re headed the right way.  I can’t explain it or assure you that it means anything, but there it is, all the same.  Does that make any sense?”

“Not a lot. But I’m talking to the ghost of a water spirit, so I can accept that.” Joel said.

“You think that’s rough, you should try being the ghost of a water spirit.” She replied, with the ghost of a smile.  She was definitely getting more visible again.  And she was also, Joel was surprised to see, wearing a different dress. How exactly a ghost changes clothes he wasn’t sure, but he also wasn’t going to ask.

“I’ve done some scouting around, Joel,” Selene said.  “Being completely invisible has some perks.  There are no lakes of our kind nearby, so I can’t tell you much, but the people in this area are not what you are used to.  They don’t have a train line anywhere near them, and they don’t visit outside their villages very much either.  They don’t seem to know that there are people on other worlds, either.”

“Not even Earth?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to actually speak to anyone.  But it might be wise if you both forgot your last names for a while.”

“Thank you. We will,” Joel promised.

“I have a question, Princess,” Kendrick said.

“Yes?”

“Where did you come from? Um, that is, there weren’t sprites like you on Earth, so you’re not transplanted like we humans are.  You’re actually from this planet, aren’t you?”

Selene’s face was hard to read, possibly because it was still not much more visible than a fine mist.  She didn’t answer for a long time, and Kendrick said, “I mean, not that it’s important. Um, you are very nice and do a fine service for the people around here.”

“Oh, Kendrick, no! I’m not offended.  I just wasn’t sure how to answer right away.  You’re very observant. A lot of people kind of think that someone must have brought us along, because we look like humans and all that. But you’re right. We weren’t brought with the humans, and some of the older guardians remember the day the humans came.” She stopped.

“But, if there weren’t humans here, how–that is–why do you look like, well, like us?”

“We didn’t, that is, the guardians back then didn’t.  They were just..awarenesses. They didn’t make the castles we make now, either.  We built those later.  If they wanted to look around, they would just raise up the surface of the water, or try to go free for a short period. Which doesn’t work, by the way. Once we leave our lakes we start to dry up. It’s uncomfortable at best and kills us at worst.  But the oldest ones remember the first human towns being built between awakenings, in areas all over.”

Now it was Joel and Ken’s turn to try to figure out what to say. Joel finally asked, “So, the human villages appeared during your dormant periods?”

“That’s what they told me.  They went to sleep, and the next night–which is a month later, of course–there were towns.  Just like they are now. Why?”

“Just like they are now?” Kendrick asked.

“Yes.  Guys, what is it?”

“It’s just not possible, Joel. Nobody builds that fast, I don’t care who you are.”

“I know.”

“What do you mean?” Selene asked again.

“Princess, Joel and I are from human worlds.  We have both seen towns get started, and get built.  It doesn’t happen in a month, or even a year.  Towns grow and change and get built up over years, as people move in and adapt to fit the town, and adapt the town to fit them. So, Norwood has always been about the same as it is now?”

“About. I mean, I’ve never been there until…after, but it’s always looked the same, and we always have about the same number of people brought to the lake every year.  The mayor, sometimes a librarian or two, every once in a while a shopkeeper or some other person in town, but mostly it’s just the same folks.”

Now they were really confused.  “You mean, that town buries a mayor every year?” Joel asked, incredulous. “It seems like nobody would want the job, if you’re not going to live for more than a year.”

“Well, it’s the Mayor’s job, so he just does it.  I’m sure that he doesn’t like dying any more than I did, but it doesn’t really affect him the same way. I mean, he’s usually back to work pretty quickly.”

“So, he dies, and he’s back to work pretty quickly?”

“Well, yeah.  So?”

Long pause.  “Princess, that’s not how most people work.  Will you be back quickly?”

“I would have been, if someone hadn’t stolen my soul gem.”

“But what about all that ‘thousand years in a tower’ stuff?”

“Well, I told you. That’s really only for extreme cases, or people who really didn’t want to come back. For the most part, I just store the statues, and people come back from there when they’re ready. But if your soul gem is missing, how are you supposed to come back?”

Another long pause.  Then Selene said, “Wait, are you guys saying that when you die, you don’t come back?”

“Nope, we sure don’t.  Dead is dead for most people.”

“Then why…what…I thought the people around here were just normal people.”

“So did we.”

“Joel, what is this place?” Kendrick asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

Suddenly sleep didn’t seem like the best idea.  The thought of going to sleep just seemed impossibly wrong somehow.  The three of them sat around the fire, not talking.  Joel and Kendrick staring in the fire, Selene looking at the two off-worlders, possibly looking confused.  The thought of these fragile creatures going into danger on her behalf, it just wasn’t…it wasn’t to be borne.  The princess hadn’t really lived anywhere but her lake until, well, until she died.  But she knew what loyalty meant, and these people had been nothing but loyal to her.  She determined right there and then that she was going to be just as loyal to them.  She wasn’t sure how, but she knew she would do what it took to keep them safe. After all, they only had one life to live. She didn’t have that problem.

#####

After another day of travel the small group found their way to a town. Like Norwood, it was walled, and like Norwood it was beautifully clean.  The differences ended there, however.  The houses were thatched instead of shingled, and they were low wooden buildings, instead of tall stone.  The people too were shorter and looked out from beneath almost universally blond hair at the strangers on horses that had suddenly walked into town.

There was another major difference: This town had a giant white marble tower on a hill at the east end of town. Norwood’s east end was completely tower-less.

Neither Joel nor Kendrick was able to get so much as the name of the town from the people they passed.  The first information they were given was the location of an inn, and even that was only delivered in a furtive point up the street and then the informant went indoors and closed the door and windows.

“Selene was right. Not the most welcoming place on earth.” Kendrick observed as they rode slowly toward the inn.

“I get the feeling that we’re not in the rich part of town, and there may be some class distinctions here.  Let’s ride toward that fairly obvious landmark over there and see what we find.  Maybe these horses are scaring them off.”

“Or maybe it’s the fact that two of them standing on each other’s shoulders would only come up to my shoulders,” Kendrick observed dryly.

“That could be it, too.”

They got closer to the tower, but the houses never changed much. Oh, there were a few stone buildings in the middle of town, but they were mostly official places, like town hall or the police station.  They were pleased to find an inn near the city center as well, two stories high, and also built of stone.

“If we can’t find concrete or steel, stone works.” Joel said. Kendrick nodded. “We still have a lot of stone on Tagalong as well.  Sometimes piling up rocks is just easier and more sturdy.”

The innkeeper was very different from the people out in the town.  His face was deep brown, and the hair that was still gamely holding on around his balding head was as well. He wore a thick mustache, and smiled broadly when they entered.

“Welcome, welcome friends! You’ve had a long trip, no? And the longest part was between the gate of town and the first person who would say so much as one word to you, face to face, no?  Well, you’re in Stavro’s Inn now, so the quiet time ends here.”

While he was speaking he was also shaking their hands, making a slight motion that sent two houseboys to care for their horses and bring their luggage inside.  Seamlessly he had them in two rooms on the second floor, told them when dinner would be served, modestly quoted the rates for room and board, gratefully accepted their payment, promised them that they would find their stay extremely comfortable and peaceful, and as long as they wanted to stay they would be like Stavro’s family. And then he left them, standing at the top of the stairs, as he headed back down to the kitchen to “make sure that dinner is the finest you’ve ever had. Not so good food on the road, no? Well, Stavro will make sure you eat well tonight!”

“Well that was unexpected,” Joel said.

“It’s like discovering a fish swimming along beside you when skydiving” Kendrick agreed.

“Well, since we’re here, and fully paid for, I’m going to go take a shower.  I’ll see you downstairs at dinner. If I don’t get there before Stavro does, I’ll just say ‘good night’ now.” Joel said. Kendrick laughed and let himself into his room.

Stavro had several people come to the inn for dinner, so the men had some moments of privacy once their food had been served. The princess was there, but since Stavro kept coming back to the table to make sure that everything was “as good as mama made it, maybe better” she hid in a plant next to the table.

The whole dining area was a bit hard to deal with.  The tables had candles on them, and electric lights above them. And red-and-white checked tablecloths. It was as “Italian” as could be made to stick, given the rest of the town, and indeed the rest of the inn.  The food was undeniably excellent however, so they didn’t complain.

“I would like to ask Stavro how he got here,” Joel said.

“Not at the end of the meal,” Kendrick said. “We’d starve before he got done telling us. Ask tomorrow night, when he brings us our food. Then at least we have a chance of survival.”

“I could follow him around a bit tomorrow,” Selene said.

“Maybe.  What I would really like is to find out about that tower,” Joel said. “Maybe we can take a stroll after dinner and see what we can see up there.”

“Nope,” Kendrick said.  Looking at Joel’s expression he said, “I read the little brochure in my room. Apparently there’s a city curfew. And a visitor curfew. The city curfew is one hour after sunset, but the visitor curfew is ten minutes before the sun is down.”

“Hmmmm.  I guess we should have expected an authoritarian government, given the people we spoke to on the way in.”

“It’s not that,” Selene said. “There’s not a real strong government here.  The mayor is also a banker, and I haven’t seen any uniformed police.  But there also doesn’t seem to be a lot of crime either.”

“Um, Princess?  How do you know what things like bankers and mayors are? I mean, you only see people at the lake, right?”

“Well, yes, but remember that people visit me to visit the statues of their loved ones. And they talk to me. Sometimes that’s all they come for.  You learn a lot by being there when people want to talk.”

“Oh, well, that makes sense. I mean, I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“I’m not insulted, silly.”

Joel kept a straight face watching Kendrick deal with being called “silly”, but it was touch and go, and he was glad that Stavro had appeared just them to “tempt them into some delicious dessert! Stavro, he makes some of the finest desserts anywhere, all by himself.”

After Stavro left Joel said, “Selene, will you see if you can find out how to get into that tower? I can’t explain it, but I can’t help but be drawn to the one major building in this place.  If you can tell us who owns it and why that would be a big bonus.”

“You don’t want me to follow Stavro around?”

“Perhaps some other time.  He’s interesting, but not much more than a curiosity. We’ve got a soul gem to find, and, as always, we’re here to find out more about what happened to the other men on that scouting mission.”

“Alright Joel.  I’ll see how close I can get. Maybe even get inside. What will you two be doing tomorrow?”

“The same thing,” Joel admitted. “But we’ll all be using different approaches.  We’ll see who gets what we’re looking for first.”

The next morning was not the most profitable time Joel had ever spent.  He decided that the simplest way to learn more about the tower was to simply ride toward it. However, he was stopped about forty yards out by a tall white wall, surrounding the tower and its grounds. He rode all the way around the wall, but never found a door or gate or anything that suggested people passed through the wall ever.  Here and there he could see that the land on the inside of the wall was immaculately cared for, filled with beautiful flower beds, fountains, and topiaries so freshly shaped you could shave on their edges.  Joel tried to find someone who could tell him how to get into the wall, but nobody would so much as show their faces around him.

Finally he rode away from the tower, back towards Stavro’s inn, hoping that Kendrick had had better luck.  Even though it was only one or two in the afternoon the shadows were getting long, and he didn’t want to risk getting jailed for breaking curfew without cause.

Kendrick walked in just as the sun was setting, an hour or two later. He took of his coat and said “If it’s okay, we’ll talk at dinner. I’m freezing, and I need a shower and some time to warm up.”

“Sure. See you then.”

Dinner was slightly more subdued than the previous night, with even more people in the Inn, and Stavro busier than ever. Kendrick’s mood hadn’t improved significantly when he came down to the table. He ordered tersely, and sat silently until his food arrived.  Joel was beginning to wonder how and if he should try to break the ice and get the reports started when Princess Selene appeared.

“I’m very sorry Kendrick” she said. He merely grunted.

“I couldn’t think of any other way I could warn you.  It was the best I could come up with on short notice.”

“It wasn’t pleasant.”

“I won’t do it again.”

Kendrick was silent for a moment, but eating furiously. Finally he said, “No, you’re right. You might very well have saved my life.  If you need to…to that again, don’t hesitate.” He fell back into eating. He seemed to be doing everything with extra energy, almost savagely.

“I suppose one of you will eventually fill me in,” Joel said.  The princess turned her head sharply toward him.  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Um, I came across Kendrick as I was coming back from the tower.  He had been talking to some people, and was still talking to one of them.  Well, I could see some things he couldn’t. Some people were hiding around the corner of a building, with clubs.  They weren’t trying to hide from me, because of course they couldn’t see me. Anyway, they were waiting for Kendrick. And after what you told me the other day, well, I couldn’t let them harm him.  But it was daytime, so I couldn’t make enough noise for him to hear me.  So…” she looked down at her folded hands for a moment.  “So I went inside his head and told him.  He was able to beat them, so that’s good, right?  But I guess the experience was frightening, and not very fun. I’m really sorry!”

“I understand. It’s just hard to accept that we’re so…so permeable.  That you could just move into my being like that, and that I had absolutely no defenses, no way to stop you. I mean, I don’t mind you, Princess.  Although it would be nice to think that some part of my soul is my own, but if you can get in like that, who–or what–else can do that to me?  I really don’t want to think about it.  It’s just too much.”

“O-okay. I understand,” the princess concluded.  They all sat in silence for a few moments. She turned to Joel. “What did you find out?”

“Very little. I was able to ascertain that there’s no gate in that wall around the tower, but the grounds inside the wall are beautiful and obviously somebody lives in there.  Nobody I spoke to would so much as say ‘hi’ to me, so I wasn’t able to find anything out that wasn’t right in front of my eyes. What about you? Were you able to get inside the tower?”

“Yes, although I can’t tell you anything too interesting. The floors I visited were completely dark and silent.  I wasn’t sure if darkness would be a problem for me…now, but it turns out it is.  I can’t see in pitch black any better than you can.  Since I can’t really feel the walls or floors or anything it made it hard to figure out where I was, where the stairs were, all that.  Anyway, I know that the tower has an empty space up the center, and there are stairs running up that central atrium. I tried a lot of the lower floors, but they were all as dark as the first floor.  But something is in the tower.  I heard something moving around in there.  I don’t know what, though.  Whatever it is, it didn’t need the lights.”

The next day they decided to try again. Before bed, Joel asked Selene to follow him that day instead of Kendrick.  But, much like the day before, they got next to nowhere.  There were no ways in that they could find, and nobody would talk to them. Anywhere.  Sunset got close, and Joel started to notice the nervous looks people were giving him. Finally an old lady yelled at him.

“What are you doing, you fool? You wanna bring the Collectors down on us all? What did we ever do to you? Get indoors! And hope that you’re in time!” She shoo’ed him away, then went into her house, shut the doors, barred the windows, and basically hid as hard as she could hide.

Joel related this little adventure to Kendrick when they met for dinner, and he said that he had a similar experience.  However, neither of them could make heads or tails of it, and Stavro was absolutely unwilling to talk about “specteres and ghosties.  Not in Stavro’s house, never!” So they were left pretty much in the dark, and went to bed, unsettled once again.

Which should have helped them become aware of the Collectors before they got collected. Sadly, it didn’t work that way at all.  Neither Joel nor Kendrick so much as stirred before they were seized, tied up, and carried bodily down the stairs and out the back door of Stavro’s Inn.  Joel couldn’t see the face of his captor, as he had been slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. All he could tell was that he was being carried by someone who was immensely strong and large. There were two other dark shapes that he could make out moving alongside him, between them they were carrying a still-struggling Kendrick. Joel felt just a little insulted that he only warranted one captor, but he had to admit that they knew their business.

They ducked into an underground tunnel, the entrance of which looked like any other building in that part of town, but beyond the door was simply a staircase which descended shallowly with broad, wide steps.  When they got to the base of the stairs they discovered (well, Selene discovered. All Joel and Kendrick could see was the shoulders of the people carrying them.) that they were in a warren as complex as the city above them.  Tunnels branched off in all directions, with buildings, torches, streets and a seemingly much active nightlife than the city above.  The men were carried through this for roughly ten minutes, before the sound of rushing feet came up behind them, and they heard shouts of anger and surprise. They were thrown to the ground, and wriggled to get free and see what was going on.

The dark garbed men who had been carrying them were being beset by a quartet of men in gray.  They fought with swords, but arrows from somewhere in the shadows testified of a fifth member of the party. The new attackers routed the captors, and all but one ran after their prey.  The last member of the group, the archer, came to Joel and Kendrick, cut their bonds and said “You are free. We should return soon, but we must stop those men from harming anyone else. Please wait here.” And then he ran into the gloom after his companions.

Kendrick and Joel waited for ten, then fifteen, then twenty minutes. Finally Selene caught up to them and said, “Oh I’m so sorry! I was out scouting around, and I didn’t know you were in trouble until I saw you being carried past me.”

They explained the situation, and she went ahead to follow the rescuers, and to find out why they hadn’t returned.

Again Joel and Kendrick waited for ten, twenty, thirty minutes, an hour, two.  Finally Selene returned, and Joel realized that, as tense as he was, he seemed to have fallen asleep.  He shook himself and focused on the translucent Princess.

“I found the gray men. They’re all dead, but so are the ones who took you.  But that’s not all. I found a door into that tower. I know because I went up into it, and it was that atrium I told you about. I know how to get in.”

The tower door wasn’t far, only about two hundred yards.  It was also not overly fancy: a wooden door, bound with gold-inlaid iron and a simple doorknob.  The door swung open at their touch, and the room inside was brightly lit with electric lights, or at least lights that didn’t seem to be using any form of combustion.  On pedestals on either side of the hall were objets d’art, sculptures, statues, urns, vases, and the like. They were each individually lit, with a small plaque beneath them explaining their origin.

“So we’ve discovered the secret underground entrance to…a museum?” Joel wondered aloud.

“Not just any museum,” A voice from behind them said in pleasant, conversational tones. “This museum is a collection of the master works of every great artist this world has ever known.  It’s a gathering place for all the culture, beauty, and wisdom that has been collected on Savlod since the beginning of time.  And it is also my home. I welcome you, Joel Middleton Tucker, and you, Kendrick Barnes, and even you, Princess Selene, to my home.”

If he had expected his appearance to shock and surprise his visitors, he must have been disappointed. Some effort had gone into the planning and execution of his outfit.  A white suit, thinly pinstriped in black set off a black silk shirt, open at the collar.  A silver chain held a symbol that neither Joel nor Kendrick recognized. He leaned casually on the stair rail leading up, a flower in his outstretched hand.

He gave them a moment to take in his appearance. Casually he sniffed the flower, then placed it in a vase holding more of the same.  “My name,” he said, “is Ty Creed.”

If he had expected his name to have had an impact on his visitors, he must have been disappointed.  “How did you know who we are?” Kendrick asked. “And how did you know our full names?”

If he was disappointed, Ty Creed was very good at hiding it. “I have known about your little group for a while now, and have to tell you that I have some small interest in the success of your venture.  Although I wouldn’t say that Mr. Ferrin and I are partners in any traditional sense of the word, we do try to keep in contact with one another and often pass information back and forth. When Alric told me that he was going to hire a crew to find the Intrigue I was pleased and offered to help pay expenses.  So while I may be, in a loose sense, paying for your room and board, you need not feel beholden to me in any way.  I am simply here to learn more about the world around us.”

“To which you are as foreign as we are,” Kendrick said, mistrust evident in his voice.

“I am indeed.  As is, I believe, Alric Ferrin.”

Joel didn’t really trust Mr. Creed any more than his companion, but he was at least better at being diplomatic.  “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Creed.  Please, forgive us for coming unannounced into your home like this.” Ty’s sardonic smile conveyed his obvious amusement at his guest’s discomfiture. So Joel decided to play that role up.

“I admit, we have been seeking a way into this structure, as we had some hunch that…something of interest may reside here. A belief that, it appears, has been borne out.  But we had hoped to get permission before entering.  As it was we were in some distress, and a bit lost.”

A look of concern, no less plastic than the look it replaced, appeared on Ty’s face. He asked them for details of the attack, feigned interest in the fate of both the attackers and the rescuers, and listened with pretend suspense to their tale of finding the entrance to his home.  No one was fooled by his little show, and he knew this, but persisted in putting it on nonetheless.  At the end, however, the party was no more sure that he was–or wasn’t–the instigator of the attack, or simply aware of such occurrences.  He pretended to digest what he had heard, and appeared to make a decision.

“My friends, it is unsafe for you to be out in the streets, especially the under-streets, at a time like this. I therefore offer you my hospitality and a place to rest and recover from what has occurred.  If you will please follow me,” and he gestured up the stairs.

The atrium was as Selene had described it: on each floor was a half-circle of walkway. At either end was a staircase, one leading up to the next floor, which circumscribed the opposite side of the tower, one leading down to the lower floor.Also at either end of the platforms were doors, presumably leading into the rooms around the atrium.

Ty Creed led them up three flights of stairs and opened the door. Joel, usually good with directions, found he had no idea which way they were facing, which presumably was part of the reason for this design.  Passing through the door they found themselves standing on rich red carpeting, with tapestries hanging on the walls and curtains between them. The walls themselves were of a dark, rich wood with a slightly lighter wainscoting.  Next to the door from which they had come was an elevator.

“Forgive me, the elevator doesn’t work.  I’ve meant to have someone come look at it, but who can afford repairmen? That to one side, there is no one in this village with the skills to do the job.”

He walked with them around one fourth of the arc of the place, and opened a door in the outside wall. Through the door was a sitting room, and through still other doors they could see beds.

“I will leave you here for now, while I arrange to have your assailants questioned,” he said obsequiously.  I hope you will be comfortable here, and I also hope to see you at dinner tonight.  To reach the dining room simply follow the hall back the way we came until you reach the end. The dining room is in the outer wall. I have one other guest staying here at the moment–that is, one other guest who might be persuaded to join us–and I trust the conversation around the table tonight will be…engrossing.” With that he backed out, closing the door behind himself.

“I don’t believe a word that guy says,” Kendrick growled.

“Neither does he,” Joel agreed.

“How did he know who we all were?” the princess asked, partially to herself.  “I mean, I know he says he’s connected to that Alric Ferrin guy who hired you, but that just didn’t seem any more true to me than, well, than anything else he said.” The two men nodded their agreement.

“Besides which, that wouldn’t have let him know who you are.” Joel reminded her.

“Who do you think his mystery guest is?”

“And did he mean he had others?”

“Would it be Mr. Ferrin?”

Questions floated around for a while, but answers were in short supply. At length they decided to simply get cleaned up and ready for dinner.  Quite unintentionally, Joel saw Princess Selene change dresses.  She walked up to a mirror, looked at her reflection, and her dress rippled and shimmered into something completely different. She looked at the new design for a moment, then changed it for something else.  After three or four more she found one she was happy with and turned around. “There. I like this one.”

The one she liked was black with silver shot through it in small, droplet-style paths. Joel simply nodded his head once and held out his arm.  She laughed and rested her hand on his and, being sure to stay in perfect sync, walked with him down the hall.  It was only slightly disconcerting to Joel that he felt absolutely nothing when she placed her hand on his.

######

They arrived at the dining room just as Ty Creed was sitting down.  The room was painted white, with black tile flooring and a huge wooden table dominated the center of the room.  There were seats enough for fifty, Joel guessed, but Ty Creed and a portly man sporting a close cropped brown beard and rimless glasses were the only people seated there.  Places were set for three more people, a bit odd considering the princess’s current state.

Ty looked up, and stood courteously as they entered.  The other man nodded his head, but did not rise. He seemed more interested in the wine in his wineglass than the new arrivals.

“My friends, welcome, welcome! I am so glad you could join us.” Creed said.  His every word and act was elegant and refined, but his eyes spoke of his displeasure.  “Won’t you please sit down? We are just now expecting the soup course.”

And four servants did bring in four bowls of soup. They were apparently completely identical: identical in height, weight, uniform, and blank white masks covering their entire faces.  Wordlessly they set the soup down in front of the living guests and departed.

“You’ll forgive our staff, Princess,” Creed said, sitting and placing his napkin on his lap. “They are not sure how to cook for a person who can’t eat.”

She nodded, not feeling up to the task of responding to such a comment. “That’s quite all right. I haven’t been hungry as of late.”

Again, Ty Creed’s smile was sardonic, and he turned to his other guests. He chatted with Kendrick about the world of Tagalong, even managing to tell a few jokes endemic to the planet.  He discussed the Dark Star with Joel, debated intelligently and well over matters of internal and foreign policy for both the White Blade and the Dark Star, and basically made sure that they knew that he knew everything there was to know about them.  Throughout all of this the bearded stranger sat quiet, eating, listening, examining the wines that came and went, but never so much as acknowledging the human existence of his fellow diners.  His responses were no different than if he had been watching them on television. Finally, about the time the desert cart arrived, Ty pretended to remember that he had not introduced the party to his other guest.

“But where are my manners?” He asked urbanely.  “Allow me, dear friends, to introduce Doctor Edward Stringham, of the starship Intrigue.”

At this, Dr. Stringham seemed to notice that he had company for the first time. Pushing his glasses farther up his nose he peered at them each in turn, and started visibly when he saw Princess Selene.

“But what is this? Tyson, I enjoyed the show, but to see these people in real life… When did they arrive? Why would you let them into my presence?” He seemed to remember that he actually was in the presence of other actual humans, and regained his composure.  “How do you do, gentlemen?” His eyes specifically avoided the space where the ghostly princess sat.  Neither Joel nor Kendrick made any motion to shake his hand or respond directly to the doctor.

“Ty, what is he talking about? What show? We’ve been sitting face to face with this man for the better part of an hour, and he’s been completely non-responsive until just now. What’s going on here?”

“I wish I could help you, Joel.  I fear that the poor doctor has been a bit–shall we say–unhinged as of late. No doubt his unfortunate encounter with the princess has something to do with it.  Perhaps not. I fear that he is hard to follow in conversation at times. And at other times he is a sharp and skilled orator.  It’s something of a mystery.” Ty’s polished manner showed signs of almost tragic concern for the still befuddled doctor, but his eyes sparkled. He had made the first move, and now he was watching to see how Joel would respond.

“It is indeed a tragedy, when one of so great a mind falls in this way,” Joel responded, eyes locked.  “Still, it’s one of the risks we take when we travel between the stars.  I once heard a story of a man who…” and Joel launched into a well-known legend, the story of the man who lost his soul in the portals, and emerged half insane and without remorse, while his soul still traveled from portal to portal.  The tale was as old as man’s first steps out of his own solar system, yet Creed listened with all appearances of fascination.  Not even his eyes betrayed any hint that this tale was not new to him.

At last Joel finished his tale and Ty stood, thanking them for the company and the stories.  He bade them sleep well, and ushered the now-once-again bemused doctor through the door that the waiters had used.

#####

They returned to their suite, tired, stressed, and definitely not feeling safe.  “That was their ship’s doctor? He’s a halfwit. If that.” Kendrick said.

“This might be me stating the obvious here, but I don’t think that Ty Creed guy is telling the truth.” Selene said, flopping down onto (actually, Joel noticed, into) a sofa.

“He definitely isn’t.  And he knows it, and he’s certain he’s clever enough to let us know it and still win whatever game it is he’s playing.”

“You mean he wants us to know he’s lying to us?” Kendrick asked.

“Not only that, he wants us to know that he knows we know he’s lying to us.  He’s playing mind games with us, and we don’t even know what the rules are or what the goal is.”

“You’re making my head swim, Joel. Stop it.”

But Joel was only half-listening. “He’s set us up. He has Stringham in his pocket somehow, and he wanted us to know that.  And he believes that Stringham either is or has a prize that is good enough to make us play the game, instead of just trying to get out of the tower with our skins.”

“I already lost mine,” Selene said absently.

“Hm,” Joel said, still not really listening.  Then his eyes got wide. “You did, didn’t you? Did you recognize the doctor as one of your murderers?”

“I think so. If he was there, he didn’t have the glasses, but I remember the round face and the beard. But honestly, I don’t remember a lot about that night, and I didn’t get a good look at them anyway.”

“So we really only have Creed’s word that this man is Stringham.  Unless we can find a way to talk to him alone, and get him to answer a few questions.” Joel mused.

“I could probably find a way,” The princess said quietly, and Kendrick shuddered.  “There’s gotta be a better way” he said.

“Was it really that bad?” Joel asked. But Ken wasn’t talking.  “Let’s find out. Princess, I want you to do to me what you did to Kendrick. Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”

She looked uncertain for a moment, then said, “Okay Joel.  Here goes.” And leaned forward until her face was just in front of his.  Then she put a hand on either side of his head and squeezed.

Joel felt, well, it felt like a wind on the inside of his head. Like there was motion and turbulence inside of his…not his skull, it wasn’t a physical feeling. To assure himself of that he reached up and put his hand to his temple where the princess’s forearms was still immersed in him. She faded, and disappeared. The turbulence inside his head lessened, but was replaced by the feeling of someone being in that space behind his eyes.  He was aware of the constant flow of his loquacious self still telling him all the things it was so good at telling him, carrying on the internal monologue of his life, but now there was a sense of another presence.  “Princess?” He thought.  A…not sound, because again, it was internal. But there was the whisper of a thought from somewhere else.  Fighting the rising panic, Joel repeated “Princess Selene? Can you hear me? I didn’t understand your last response”

“Keep thinking…find my way…very different exp….” He got bits and phrases, but it was like a ghost of an idea on the wind. But he got the point, and kept “talking” to her in his thoughts. At length he felt her voice, as clearly as his own thoughts say “There. I found you. You are a very complex person, Joel Tucker!”

Joel’s lack of response was eloquently conveyed to her, as she was inside his head.  She laughed a little. “I think I will be able to find you easier, next time.  This isn’t at all like Kendrick’s mind.  He was like a wide plain, with complex trees and figures. You’re more like a city.”

“This is a very different experience,” Joel thought back. Though his eyes were open and he knew he was looking at the door of their chamber, he could on some level see the city of his mind when Selene described it. The thoughts passing back and forth were more than just words, apparently.

“Can you see what I’m seeing?” Joel thought to her.

“Kind of. I can find it, but I’m not really in your conscious brain. I think I’m actually in your subconscious. Or not, I don’t know.  All I know is that my external stimuli–sight, sound, et cetera–are your internal landscape. Well, thought-scape. But your most conscious thoughts are flying around above me, bright and starlit.  It’s really hard to explain.”

But Joel got an edge of the idea.  He saw thoughts speeding across the sky, the ground beneath him flat gray, the buildings around him garish, mis-matched, and somehow all connected.  He couldn’t tell you how he knew the thoughts above him were thoughts; they didn’t really look like anything.  It was a dream landscape, unconnected and packed with more meaning than should normally fit in such a place. The image faded, however, and he was still staring at a wall.

He decided to try one more thing. Standing up, he walked around, picked things up, even ate a few bites of an apple.  He could focus, even when Princess Selene was in there.  It wasn’t easy; it was like his entire body had gone numb, but he could do it.

There was only one thing left to try.  He steeled himself for it. Suddenly the princess’s voice was saying, quietly, “You don’t have to try it. There will probably never be a situation in which I need to control your body.”

“But what if there is?” he thought back.  “We need to be prepared for every possibility.”

“If you’re sure…” she replied.  He physically nodded.  The line between the internal and external worlds was getting thin indeed. “Then try to release your will. It’s probably best if you sit down.  I don’t know how this will work.” Joel sat back down and rested his head on the back of the couch, and tried to release his will, to completely forget he had a body.

What happened next depends on who you ask.  To Kendrick, who had been watching with sick horror this entire time, Joel had been staring at the wall, eating a bit, and nodding at nothing. For all he knew the princess had been in control this entire time.  So when Joel sat back down he hoped that he would shortly see the princess again and this whole sick idea would be behind them.  Instead, after a moment or two, Joel, or rather, Joel’s body, stood up, looked around, and walked toward him.  But it wasn’t Joel’s walk.  None of the mannerisms were Joel’s, and when he spoke it was a strange, lilting voice that came out.  “Kendrick, don’t worry. Joel asked me to try this, and I will stop as soon as I go sit back down. But I needed to know if I can talk. I don’t sound at all like Joel, do I?”

This was too much for Kendrick. Silently, he went into his bedroom and closed the door.

From Joel’s perspective, he tried to release his will, to completely forget he had a body.  And suddenly he didn’t.  There was a brief struggle, as subconsciously he resisted, but he consciously fought back, and let go.  He was adrift, in the dark, with no sight, no sound, no smells, no feelings.  He fought back the panic and tried to breathe deeply, without lungs.  He tried to close his eyes… this was getting stupid.  He had no body.  He needed to be able to interact, as Selene had done.  He looked–without his eyes–and saw the “city” he had seen before.  He concentrated a little more, and a body appeared around him. It wasn’t his body; that was outside. It was a golem: putty-gray and featureless. But it would do to give him a frame of reference while he explored inside his own head, currently being run by someone else.  All of this happened before Princess Selene opened his eyes; or in the space of roughly two seconds.

From Selene’s perspective, the building in which she was standing suddenly closed in around her, and became her.  There was a rushing sensation, a brief moment of falling as Joel fought to keep control, then a sudden snap as she was in control. New sensations flooded her.  Her mind knew how to control a body, remembered what hands and feet and eyes felt like, but that had been the body of an immortal teenage girl, and the differences were staggering.  Joel’s mind wasn’t fluid, flowing, and connected, like hers. Instead, she found that he thought in boxes, discrete thoughts occupying discrete space, and she had to shift from one to the next.

Different hormones in the blood changed her perceptions of the world around her.  She found herself feeling edgy, tense, hunted, although her surroundings were placid.  This was not her world.  She looked up, and stood.  She walked over to Kendrick, and again, this body didn’t walk right.  The muscles were powerful and well-toned, but they didn’t move the way she wanted them to.  Still, she had to try, had to see what she could do. She approached Kendrick, smiled and said “Kendrick, don’t worry. Joel asked me to try this, and I will stop as soon as I go sit back down,” her voice was odd, and once again she felt her vocal cords fighting her. Still, she continued. “But I needed to know if I can talk. I don’t sound at all like Joel, do I?”

She wanted to go tell Kendrick it would be okay, that things were fine. Joel’s body was completely unconcerned with this, however.  She got a glimpse of how much work it took for Joel to override the fierce, vicious impulses of this body, and how much self control it took for him to be the kind and considerate person he was.  She shuddered, but only internally. The body was used to being reigned in, and wasn’t surprised at this internal turmoil.

“Princess Joel” made her way back to the couch and sat down.  She closed his eyes and tried to find Joel.  He found her, eagerly, and she eased herself out of control.  Instead of going back to the “city” she just moved out of his body, until she was standing next to him.  There was a brief sensation of being two people at once, then a few moments where her spirit body attempted to readjust to being, well, to being Princess Selene instead of Joel Tucker.

Joel’s breathing slowed, then returned to normal.  He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “That was an experience,” he said, shaking his head.  He stood, walked around, and seemed the entire time to be getting everything put back where he thought it should be. “You re-arranged things,” he said, smiling slightly.

“What do you mean?”

“My thoughts are all mixed up.  It’s hard to focus.  But! We both made it out safe, and now, if we need to, we know that that will work. Thank you, princess.”

“No, Joel, thank you.  I understand the trust you put in me, and I am honored. I promise I won’t take you over again without your permission, and only to take care of you.”

Neither of them quite knew what to say after that.  The stood, looking down at their feet for a moment.

“Good night, Joel.”

“Good night, Princess.” He said, and went into his room.  She stood in the common area, not needing sleep, and not sure what to do with herself for the hours until Joel re-awoke.