Sailing Ether Tides

Sailing Ether Tides

Ch: 40 Don’t Call Me Frankenstein

In a hazy, steamy, dreamy, summer celebration by moonlight, anything can happen. When the attention of the divine becomes fixed on an event, a strange alchemy can result, loosening old preconceptions and relaxing some rigidly held ideas…

Or, at least, that was how Jaspreet explained to duke Abed Mubarak, how he and his family wound up sleeping in a leafy bower beneath a willow tree. She’d whispered her excuses in his ear when he woke, jostled by her escape to answer nature’s call.

Cozy blankets and fluffy pillows, balanced against the soothing night sounds of the moonlit garden created a lovely night’s rest… In the mad witch’s garden; rather than in their admittedly less comfortable chambers in the count’s palace.

A warm and tranquil half hour later, Abed sighed a little as he wriggled from beneath his blissfully sleeping children, headed for the jakes as well.

Nearby in a cozy little nook behind a hedge, stood a small, clapboard hut with an ill fitted door. Weathered and long unpainted, its purpose was revealed by the sickle moon crudely sawed in the door planks.

With a forlorn sigh, the duke stepped into the shithouse and found… a simple, clean and hygienic chamber with a pit toilet and a basin with running water, lit by a magical glowstone set in the ceiling.

Since it lacked the usual stench, the duke dared a glance into the abyss. At the bottom of the pit lay a grayish felted mass… some kind of roots or filaments. The only smell was of clean damp earth and forest mushrooms.

Mubarak had ridden on campaign and lived the traveling life before; these facilities held no terrors for a well traveled lord of the realm. With the confidence of a warrior born, he dropped his trews and prepared the morning’s ducal decree.

A high pitched, startled scream of fright sent the doves winging into the predawn light, while Jaspreet sipped her tea on the patio with Gary and Shai. “Perhaps I should have warned Mubsie about the bidet function in your silly outhouses…” She wondered idly aloud.

“Sounds like he’s discovered it for himself.” Liam yawned, with a very sleepy looking Tawny leaning on him, half draped over his shoulder.

“Where do you keep the coffee mugs?”

“In your hands, bro.” Gary mumbled through an annoying smirk. When the count looked down at his suddenly full hands, he had a simple ceramic coffee mug dangling by the handle from every finger on both hands.

“It’s good to be home… brother.” He sighed, while he deposited first the double fistful of mugs on the table, then his still mostly sleeping wife onto a cushioned porch swing nearby.

“Good to have you home… both of you.” He sighed happily. It’s kinda like old times, as long as she and I don’t talk about religion or politics.” He mumbled, with a glance at the sleepy priestess on the swing.

“It’s kinda weird that all the kids are still asleep.”

#

A tiny blond lad with delicate features and long perfect ringlets of golden hair stood before Dana, Healer of Wounds and her subordinate deities, smiling and prowling around the way a cat might stalk a slow moving bug.

“I didn’t make these stupid rules, you all did…” Marduk swaggered up and down the line of divinities, his gold and ivory instructor’s baton tucked under his arm as he scolded Healer’s contingent. “You all prattled on and on about how important these rules are… and now you’ve broken them yourselves!”

“Clearly this was unintentional and no harm has been done…” Caduceus wheedled and protested weakly in his mistress’ defense.

“Perhaps we can compromise…”

Marduk’s sneer of wicked delight at the predicament his rival divines found themselves mired in offered little hope there. The situation seemed to have brought out the worst in the deity most closely aligned with humanity, and of the gods the closest to the ‘Ward Problem’ that had occupied much divine gossip and speculation of late.

“Your ill considered and ethically suspect actions drew all of these mortals here against their express desire and will… You are acting at the utter limits of the law already, Dana.” The smallest deity snapped ferociously at his much larger and more luminous sister.

“I have not broken any law by demanding my due from these mortals and fragments!” She insisted, while trying to ignore Harry’s presence at the front of the little group.

“Really? That’s where you want to go with this?” Marduk had a lot of disappointment and dissatisfaction in his voice; before unloading just a little anger on the fuming and indignant divinity of healing. “That you also snatched up a mortal child into this place before his fifteenth turning of the seasons is even more troubling. That is explicitly taboo. Now you wish to avoid censure by the council…” He smiled up at the taller deities, with the small cluster of human children standing defiantly behind him.

“I am not Contracted to any of these mortals, nor did I summon them here. If you would bargain, bargain with those you have wronged… Particularly, the one you have taken unlawful advantage of, before he is ripened.”

“Hey now! Nobody touched my…!” Harry began to protest, before Amy stifled him with a harsh whisper.

“Shh, she screwed up by bringing you here… We have extra leverage now.” Amy spoke in his ear using her gift, even though the goddess probably heard anyway. Divines were super annoying that way.

“Oh, oh, no! The mortals must slip back into their mortal dreams…” Dana waved at the gathered kids, as if willing them to vanish back whence they’d come; only to give up after a few moments of futile effort. She turned away from the kids without another word, to address her divine colleagues.

“Really, I remember mortals being much more tractable and obedient!” She complained, not realizing that they were all still quite present and listening.

“They seemed barely awestruck and hardly humbled. I really wish I knew some itching rash curses that would work on them…”

“Lady Dana… They are still here.” Ducky called through his smuggest smile of divine schadenfreude, which meant weapons grade, ballistic, bunker buster smug, coming in over the far horizon to devastate the target.

“Bother and nuisance!” She spat as venomously as she could, while glaring what she certainly believed were daggers at the gathered teens. Their mother’s mildest stare of general disapproval packed more punch any day of the week.

The hushed gabble of excited teen voices fell silent, as Marduk raised his hand. “Youv’e stepped in it, now you must make this right, before you track it everywhere, sister Dana.” His smile widened even more, staggering the lesser beings behind the goddess of Healers. “Before Joy sees the mess you’ve made.”

Marduk turned from the gathered divinities and smiled up at the kids, all of whom towered over him.

“Some of you already know me, for the others, I am Marduk, god of man’s Knowledge and a friend of your family.” He held his skinny arms wide and whispered softly, almost plaintively:

“Please, bring it in…”

While the Wards and Marduk hugged it out, Dana stood by and fidgeted awkwardly.

“Seriously, what are they doing? I don’t get it.”

Her followers all looked on, speechless and just as mystified by their bizarre behavior.

“That seems unsanitary… he’s going to have mortal essence all over him.” Hygeia, mistress of cleanliness whispered in distress.

#

As they embraced the blonde child god, piling on until he was buried in a mass of human forms, a translucent wall of divine force shimmered into being, dividing the group of mostly mortals on the plateau from the immortal clique.

“Children, you are going to stroll over to that precipice and leap off together… please link hands firmly and don’t let go. Please, strut a little if you would…” Marduk winked at the kids, when everyone was huddled up.

“Dana has been intolerable for a while now and we should really serve her up a little harmless discourtesy while we make our exit.”

“Uh… jump off?” Harry asked nervously, while trying to hide his discomfort from the immortal beings watching from beyond the tiny god’s shimmering barrier.

“It’s fine.” Barry murmured quietly, just in case; despite Marduk’s construct of divine Will. “Just watch what happens when you land… there’s something hidden in that moment…”

“Ohh, my, yes…!” Marduk bubbled and squeaked suddenly, as he walked them to the edge. “Never mind all that… just know that it is perfectly safe.”

Harry and Barry cocked a pair of matching suspicious eyebrows at the small deity, but Amy, Wilf and Rio smiled, kissed the being and took the boys’ hands with absolute confidence in the little god child… They shrugged at each other and followed, clutching Larry and Perry in a long line. At the edge, they did a shifty little shuffle step, squatted in unison and leapt over the side with a chorus of excited whoops and one mildly terrified scream.

“You could have at least bared your bottoms at her…” Marduk’s voice followed them down, as they plunged through the fluffy white vapor and into the dark, gray, swirling sea of clouds below.

Hand in hand they plummeted down for what seemed a significant amount of time, free fall wise. Without warning they punched through the cloud layer, streaking face first at a tiny green and blue ball, hanging in the endless star strewn night sky. Beyond lay the larger, golden orb of Beast’s moon and their own world, far below… just as it was depicted in uncle Dannyl’s paintings.

The teens were moving too fast to speak, too stunned to formulate words and too excited to do more than experience the strange sensation of plowing face first into their father’s old haunt. All seven kids crashed down into a meadow of wildflowers near the standing stones, blasting a massive crater in the world.

Rather than clots of turf, soil and shattered body parts exploding into the local area; the world itself deformed, stretching and bending, displaying an elasticity that made Amy giggle.

“Jello world!” She gasped, while they bounced around on the ripples and waves that jiggled through the formerly solid surface.

“That’s what I said!” Barry gasped, as everything wobbled and shimmied for an extended period of not exactly time.

The effect carried on and on, shimmying to a stop without any sign of actual disturbance to the local area. Trees and bushes never even rustled their leaves, while jewel tone insects buzzed about heedless of what the kids were experiencing.

They were still giggling wordlessly and rolling about when a portly, smiling man in a loose, rumpled suit with a pencil mustache and a bowler hat stepped out of the shrubbery and smiled silently at the little crowd.

“Fats?” Amy gasped desperately, her own smile beaming out across the meadow at the stranger wearing their father’s face… and yet not. “Is that you, Fats?”

He didn’t answer; instead, a man in skin tight red leather with his face painted white with a crimson star painted over one eye and a third of his features stepped out of the trees. Others appeared, dressed strangely and smiling from behind their father’s face in near endless variations.

“Starman? Dio? Ozzy…” She fell silent when a man in short velvet pants, a brocade coat and ruffled shirt nodded his powdered wig at her. “Deus? Master Amadeus… You’re back?!” That opened the floodgates, as Wilf and Rio joined Amy in leaping into the crowd of strange men.

“Who’re all these dudes?” Harry asked his three older brothers, since their elders were busy.

“Dunno…” Barry shrugged eloquently. “I guess they’re ok.”

“These are some of your family’s oldest friends and beloved ancestors… in a way.” Plumeria, the elder plum dryad whispered, as she stepped out of the forest.

“These are the memories of your father’s… influences, I suppose. They were and are a very large part of who he is.”

“Are they ghosts?” Harry asked, sounding a little excited.

“No, certainly they are not. Think of them as reflections of his earliest and most formative memories… Once, your father could manifest them into the world to aid him, sadly he has lost that ability.” She paused and stroked her chin, much as their mother did, when thinking on something consequential. “At least for now.”

“What does that mean, auntie Meria?” Larry asked cautiously, as more and more people kept appearing from the bushes.

That was when Ishmael and Sarafina, the son and daughter of duke Mubarak came pelting onto the field, riding double on a blue pony with a mane of glittering rainbows and hooves of gleaming silver that chimed like bells, playing a liquid, danceable tune.

“This is the craziest dream ever!” The pretty, dark haired, dusky skinned girl shouted gleefully when she spotted her newest playmates.

“You aren’t just dreaming, mortal children.” Their mount whinnied merrily, as she galloped up to the Ward boys and the nearby mass of clamoring… whatever they were.

“Amy and the boys are in there, getting mauled right now.” Harry offered to the newcomers, with a wan smile. “Maybe they know what’s going on.”

#

“Clueless, totally clueless.” Amy sighed, when the press of indistinct, yet profoundly individual caricatures of the same man receded. Gradually they wandered off into the impenetrable mist and vanished, one by one until only Starman, Deano and Fats Waller remained, standing near the kids as they greeted more visitors.

An immensely tall, deeply tanned man with a massive rack of antlers growing from his brow stepped into the clearing, accompanied by a host of lean and rangy wolfhounds and held his arms out to Wilf.

“Nunnos!” The big lad burbled joyously as he scampered off to wrestle with the hounds of the wild hunt, under the dryads’ trees.

“Wilf’s checked out… Let him go, he needs this.” Amy muttered with a little wistful sigh.

“The major deities… and the divines most closely associated with your family are pretending that they are unaware of these events.” Cernunnos spoke softly, in a voice of the wind whispering in empty boughs and fallen leaves skittering over the forest floor.

“A certain goddess has made a grave and terrible error and committed a crime against a mortal child… something explicitly taboo in this realm since time immemorial.” When the huntsman smiled, he displayed some very sharp, carnivorous teeth.

“More troubling still, since certain events in this very realm, what has been done is forbidden across all the realms where the divine and mortal may interact.” The antlered god’s hungry, predatory smile grew even more ravenous and pleased.

“So, the goddess of Healing broke the law by pulling Harry here?” Larry asked quietly.

“Yes, and by dragging all of you here before your time… a day here or there, even a few weeks early and no one would notice, but to address all of you as a group is a violation of tradition at least; even without Harry’s presence.”

“I get the feeling we shouldn’t talk about this in the waking world… like, at all.” Amy said firmly. “Our plans are almost ripe… I don’t want anyone blabbing about our boycott where grownups could hear, especially our folks.”

She turned to the huntsman and smiled sweetly.

“Just how badly did she screw up with this boondoggle?”

“Dana is going to have to do some very careful negotiating to avoid the baleful gaze of entities not to be trifled with.” He answered solemnly.

“Now, children, off you go back to mortal sleep, while we… Wait…?!” Cernunnos paused, halfway into his wicked, gloating chuckle and began counting mortals. “Are there two more of you here? Two extra?!”

That was the last thing they heard, before they began waking into the ‘real’ world.

#

Jocomo and Gary parted, with the bigger man limping on a stunned ankle and perilously off balance. A shrill, trilling whistle interrupted Joco’s follow-on attack that would have driven the musician to his knees in a manner more embarrassing than painful.

“Switch!” Ivy shouted, causing the participants to change opponents.

“Good game…” He gasped, as Joco gave him a shallow bow… very, very shallow; before he went off, seeking more challenging prey in the garden melee.

Gary swished his training staff around in a few showy forms, while Gabbie squared off with the giant weirdo. She held a pair of gently curved swords, one a handspan shorter than the other. They were leather wrapped, split bamboo of course, no one was dying in the garden, that would ruin the party.

They traded courtesies, bowing one to the other, as they eyed each other off for signs of weakness or vulnerabilities. Gabbie smiled in a way that felt a little predatory and eager, while Gary found his mouth suddenly rather dry.

The empress stalked across their little patch of greensward like a panther on the prowl, the points of her training swords dancing over the tips of the grass, while her feet moved in a mesmerizing pattern.

Slowly, but strangely swiftly, she charged across the lawn, her feet gliding in the fabled ‘Ghost Step’ technique from imperial lore and legends.

Through careful and disciplined body control and with long, exhaustive hours of dedicated training; practitioners could sweep across the battlefield as though they were restless spirits. The strength, endurance and skill required were considerable, but she moved deceptively quickly and with incredible stealth.

“Ohh Shit!” He blurted, his staff spinning as he scampered back, losing ground and granting her radiance the initiative. She swayed and danced around his thrusts and swipes, wherever his staff was striking, she was just a little way over there, busily kicking his ass.

She poked and prodded him incessantly, rather than striking painful blows. If he left his left hip exposed, she would step in and give him a forceful, gentle shove with her point, sending him spinning away.

Likewise. He dropped his shoulder once, just once. She hooked the gentle curve of her shorter blade down his collar, running its raspy, suede cover down his spine intolerably.

Once her point was lodged in his shirt, behind his sash; she jumped on his back, with her feet digging into his kidneys and rode him for ten stumbling steps. She steered him with the hilt of the weapon tucked down his collar and the point, which was firmly lodged between his buttcheeks. Gabbie whooped and hollered like a rodeo girl, until he collapsed onto the grass, looking sick and a little confused.

“Whahappened?” He burbled, face down on the turf.

“I’ve been training with Jocomo, little brother.” She answered smugly, before crossing swords with Becky a few seconds later. He shambled off to the loser’s patio; where there were snacks, coffee and tea… and no one was hitting anyone with anything. He collapsed onto a chair and started gnawing on a scone, wishing he had the energy to pour the tea.

He felt his kids stirring and romping down from their rooms, all of them, thundering down the stairs in a wild herd of chaotic, giddy feet. They skidded to a stop at the front doorway, looking out on the swirling combat on their lawn.

Becky and Gabbie were teamed up now, trying to get an angle on Shai, whose paired blades spun in an impenetrable lattice of wood and leather. Wherever and whenever one of them took the initiative, she would spin away, to more fully engage the other… Except when she would surge forward, meeting aggression with immovable opposition. Her ever shifting tactics, stance and forms were constantly stealing the rhythm and flow of the battle, leaving her foes on the proverbial and often very literal ‘back foot’.

Gabbie leapt a small hedge, flying at her larger opponent from behind, while Becky pressed the attack, head on.

The red haired swordswoman dug in her bare heel and pivoted, coming back at the startled monarch before her blades could get in position. She shoulder rushed the empress, throwing her off balance and back over her hedge onto a freshly tilled garden bed.

Shai stepped forward, her longer and shorter blade deftly switching hands, in a mysterious, twinkling blend of her storage gift and masterful sword handling.

Becky caught three more inches of weapon than she was expecting to face, right in her shoulder. While the smaller woman went spinning across the lawn, the giantess skipped over a muddy garden bed, leading with her shorter blade, while Gabbie was still trying to find her footing in the wet soil.

“Ooo… that’s messy.” Amy remarked to the radiant ruler of countless souls, who had her face in the mud and was sputtering with a fine blend of outrage and laughter.

That brought Jocomo over, his swords spinning in counterpoint to his steps, making his actual movements confusing and abrupt. Shai whooped with feral excitement and charged at her new foe, leading with both points forward in an aggressive stance.

Joco spun and whirled his blades, trying desperately to batter her points aside to get inside her considerable reach advantage. Instead, she closed her trap, with a lithe twist of her supple body, she swept under his high guard on the left and slipped her following foot between his two, fast moving sandals. Her double thrust at both his face and groin were enough distraction to put the small, muscular assassin on his ass.

“Well played, Joco…” She gasped, with both of his swords lodged firmly in her tummy, folding her nearly in half over her foe.

“Call it a draw…” The smaller warrior moaned, his backside planted among the root vegetables, feebly clutching at his groin. “I think I landed my shallots on a rutabaga.”

Ivy’s shrill whistle cut the air of the bright morning, calling all the grownups to stop playing and wash up, before second breakfast… or was it brunch?

“You guys slept late…” Gary remarked mildly, as they trooped into the baths and got clean.

“We had too much to dream last night. We went into overtime.” Barry answered with a grin.

“I sense… something on you… on all of you. A recollection of something familiar.” He whispered. “Whatever it is you kids are up to; play it safe. That’s all I ask.” Barry smiled and nodded, which was not exactly a firm agreement, but Gary decided that was as good as it was going to get.

#

“Regardless of the outcome of your misdeeds, the Ward children will continue their boycott of the entire pantheon until their demands are met.” Marduk spoke firmly to the gathered divines, catching each of them by the eye individually, as he addressed the small group.

“They will continue to refuse to Contract with any of us, until we withdraw our strictures and curses.”

The small deity sighed dramatically and gazed at the bubble strewn sky of madness above them. “Moreover, their return to the Fool’s Moon suggests that our time of leisure in this marvelous playground might end, should we continue to insist on this silly and counterproductive course.”

“You just want your favored pet released to work chaos and madness on the mortal world again.” Dana sniffed angrily. “Your own self serving motivations are plain to see!”

“You can barely maintain your avatar in this place, yet you would lecture me on self serving motivations? Your own inner conflicts are doing more harm to you than he ever would.” He almost sneered at the Healer, his voice thick with barely controlled emotions.

“And yet I did not bring them here, not in all the lonely mortal nights and days I’ve spent here, waiting.”

He pointed to the haunted inn on the heights, lurking there on its pinnacle in grotesque abandonment. “That is where I wait… because you all wanted to play games with my favored cultist.”

“What it did is unforgivable!” Dana shrilled into the sky, her form shimmering and warping as her fury conflicted with her essential nature.

“No, what the triumvirate and Morrigan did was unforgivable.” Ducky answered coldly, quenching her rage in the rush of his own cold, calculated anger. His divine essence poured out over her, dominating the goddess’ strained and unfocused being. “Yet he has forgiven them… not for their sake, for they are far beyond anyone’s reach, but to aid the cleansing of his own soul.” Marduk eyed the deities one at a time, fixing each with his lambent, radiant stare in turn.

“If we would learn this lesson… the lesson of humility; perhaps the loss of our kin will not be wholly in vain.” He sighed a long and weary breath and looked down… or up at the mortal world spinning in the … whatever.

“Consider that, as we re-examine our divine pact of vengeance and curses, laid on a mortal who was made into this terrible thing… by those who were destroyed by their own mad creation.”

#