Sailing Ether Tides

Sailing Ether Tides

Ch: 42 No Vacancy

Becky and Shai rode out to find the boys, when lunchtime came and went without them. The red haired giantess could feel her boy, tugging at her with the faint traces of the bond they once had; before the gods spoilt everything with their fumbling, cowardice and stupidity… Tracking them was simplicity in itself, since Mariah couldn’t resist playing skyrocket a few times every hour.

Sir Kermal’s music guided them down into the little dell the boys and their insect girlfriends were lounging in. Kermal was in a robe and sandals, while Gary wore not a stitch and was passed out, ass up and face down on a mossy stream bank, snoring peacefully. Shai was off her bike before the smaller woman even realized they’d found their quarry, since she was following behind her much bigger sister.

“He sleeps…?” Shai asked, while propping her bike up against a small hickory tree. “Tis passing rare he lies peaceful like, an dinnae thrash about ferociously.”

Becky wordlessly pointed to an inflamed red welt on the big man’s bare butt. “He’s probably pretty high, looks like Kree got him good.”

“Aye, tis a bonny swollen cheek, but even wi an arse full of venom, he dinnae sleep so, not hardly; an never beyond the walls of home.” She declared firmly and with no small pleasure.

“This be progress at last, or so Marduk an Joy do whisper in me mind.”

The big woman began producing small comforts from her storage gift, or more likely, from her husband’s. The boy’s powers were still there, even if he couldn’t use them himself, Shai had no such troubles when reaching through their bond, so long as she powered the exchange with her own magic…

From the boy, she drew camp chairs, a picnic lunch, Kermal’s clothes and sword, a cunning travel cot and bedroll and a few other small pleasures, establishing a cozy little day camp in the woodland dell.

“Everything’s fine, your dad is actually resting for once…” Becky told her earcuff and collar button, while her sister busied herself. “No, you kids have fun. We’re just going to hang out and let him sleep. If it gets too late, we’ll camp here tonight.”

While Becky was busy keeping the kids from freaking out; Shai had rolled her big cayuse onto his cot and under a blanket. Water for tea was already heating in a portable samovar and the camp stove was smelling pretty good, like toasted bread and wallowbear sausages.

“Feels like the old days…” Becky sighed happily, watching her big brother smile in his sleep. It was the first real smile, without any hidden anger, sorrow or pain behind it that she’d seen from him in a long, long time.

Afternoon, lunchtime and naptime brought Mariah and Kree in for a landing in the cozy camp; but Sasha was enjoying the forest and her new ability to echolocate, entirely too much to come in. She flitted and danced through the trees, with her sensitive eyes completely protected from the burning sun, hidden by a soft silk blindfold.

“Come in when you’re ready, Flutterby. Go, have fun with your friends.” The young knight whispered to his shadowy familiar, when she swooped down from the starlit sky, deep in the evening.

#

“Gary, I’ve been waiting for you…” Marduk whispered gently from behind his bar, where the tiny god was quietly polishing glassware with a soft cloth and a profound sense that he belonged there.

“Ducks…” The big man answered lamely. “It’s been a while.”

“Gods are supposed to respond to any mention of temporal matters and similar complaints, with divine and immortal indifference.” The god of man’s wit and wisdom muttered from deep inside the musician’s collar, where he had appeared through some divine ability, hugging desperately onto the giant bard’s neck.

The little divinity pressed himself close, sobbing softly and briefly silencing the music that had continued to dribble from Gary’s fingers. It swelled back up, his guitar playing on without his hands. Music gushed, thundered, whispered, chimed or trickled at different moments; the key, form and tempo shifting wildly as the musician’s emotions took a cartwheeling tumble into turbulent waters.

The music faded away, as feelings swelled and surged around the pair. They stood, pressed together for a long ‘time’ in the little domain between worlds where they had first met, when they were both very different entities.

Gary drew a breath to speak, only to be silenced by the little blonde limpet’s arms squeezing even tighter, with desperate strength for someone so small.

“Please, can we just stay like this for a while?” He asked, in the voice of a very young and very lost child, who’d just been found at last.

#

Becky and Kermal climbed into their tent with the birthday girl and Kree; leaving Shai curled up with her still blissfully sleeping husband, under the leaves, stars and moons.

His old travel bedroll and cot had hardly been used since he’d discovered and slowly mastered his absurd gifts; most notably his knack for creating a home, whether a humble wayside camp, or a towering, silly, ‘princess castle’ for the simple delight of pleasing his friends, family and children. Crafted from moonlight, sunlight, glamor and his own shattered soul; once, his home had been a breathtaking, sprawling wonder of foolish whimsy.

Now, they lay, curled together under the moons basking in the comforts of shared intimacy, even though the poor fool was so out of it, his wife had been forced to bind his drooling mouth closed with a strip of gauze lest he awake with a sore throat, parched beyond endurance.

“Sweet Shai will kiss unchapped lips when ye finally stir from this slumber.” She murmured, once the soft cloth under his chin closed the boy’s gaping noise hole and silenced his snore.

“Aye, an sleep a mite, mine own self…”

#

The giant moth fluttered down as silence descended on the camp under the trees, her soft, dusty wings making no sound as she clung to a pine tree, overlooking her human friends’ encampment.

She fished out a nugget of maple candy from her shadow, through her bonded companion’s storage gift and sighed happily. The moonlight tonight was particularly excellent, thick and warm, almost sweet and heavy with some potent and undirected magic.

“Nice.” Sasha whispered in a voice only bats and her moth kin could possibly have heard.

#

Few of the guests noticed their hosts’ absence in the busy, chaotic and raucous inn and garden. The baths were full of revelers ‘til well after midnight, while the common room kept jumping even later, following the musical whims of the Wards still under the roof.

The Ragamuffins and their four younger siblings kept a rotating trio rolling through improvisational blues and western swing, until they started running out of gas, unwilling to let the night end.

Finally, around way too damn late, Amy pulled Harry and Larry into a smooth jazz song of bedtime, cobbled together from equal parts ‘Moon River’ and the theme from ‘A Summer Place’.

That landed like a bomb in the crowded inn, sending party people seeking their beds, wherever those might be, or just sprawling out on the couches, settees and comfy futons scattered around the house. Blankets and pillows almost showered down on the sleepy people, crushing them under an awful, comfortable pressure.

“Good sesh.” Wilf mumbled in his sleep, mere seconds after the tired kids collapsed into their shared bed.

#

“What do you mean, Cernunnos? Speak plainly!” Earth rasped and grated in his stony, gravely voice. “I mislike creating a manifest form… I would be done with this.” He grumbled to water, who bubbled merrily at the rocky being.

“It is as I have said, a new light has joined the pantheon! A being of earthen jewels and endless ocean waves; she has taken residence on our plane and has become a permanent part of our pantheon… through means that remain occult.”

Unquiet rumbles and complaints circulated in the gathering when the huntsman paused for effect, displaying a profound lack of concern or interest in the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the thing, but great enthusiasm for the ‘who’...

“We will investigate the matter, but Gemma the jeweled crab has become one of us… permanently. Did I mention that this phenomenon seems to be irrevocable?” He giggled a little and smiled at the glittering, iridescent crab lingering on the periphery, busily meeting her new neighbors.

Her beau, Ignis the formerly dormant volcano spirit, strutted and preened; enjoying his renewed vigor and freedom from the stifling pall of misery that had cloaked his island domain. Equally, he was enjoying showing Gemma around the strange place that the spirits and gods had found to play and frolic in.

“A few young mortal scamps came by and tidied up a mess in my depths…” He draped a driftwood arm around his lady and smiled so happily that the dark runes burnt into his surface glowed and smoldered cheerily.

“I don’t remember their names…” He murmured when pressed on the matter by insistent divines. “You might as well ask me the names of the long dead mortal dust that brought trouble to my home so long ago. They appear and vanish too quickly to pay much attention.”

Gemma remained silent on the means by which she had been summoned, and spoke even less about how she had managed to inveigle herself permanently, into a closed, sealed mortal realm.

“I have no insight, talent or skill with your local sorceries… But I have friends who are well versed in the art.” Was all she would say.

“And where is Marduk, the primary instigator of these troubles?” Dana demanded, conveniently ignoring her own troubling actions for the moment.

“Lord marduk is currently fully occupied with a matter that requires his full divine attention, lady Healer.” The horned man answered firmly with a very warm and self satisfied smile.

#

The Ragamuffins woke together in a tangle, as was often the case on nights like these. Whenever Wilf worked or played himself ragged, exhausting even his nearly tireless reserves of energy, he would squirm and move in his sleep all night, restlessly entangling and re-tangling them into a complex knot of bedding and limbs.

“Rio, lift your right leg as high as you can, Wilf, roll to the left as much as you can manage, I’ll try for the edge and roll out…”

With a soft thump, Amy landed on her butt near the foot of the bed, a few harrowing, struggle filled moments later.

“I miss the imaginary blankets we used to have…” She murmured unhappily, rubbing her bruised rump while the boys squirmed free of their bonds.

“I was hoping to see home again tonight…” Wilf mumbled what the other two were thinking, as they reflected on their individual nights of dreamless, mundane slumber.

“We will. If we stay strong…” Rio said quietly, in a tone of absolute surety. “I know the boys will stay the course.”

“We have some work backed up in the shop… Crafts day?”

Wilf asked eagerly.

“My bike has taken a beating over the last few days… we just serviced Rio’s.” Amy muttered with a cheeky grin at the lanky boy.

He pulled a sour face and rubbed his butt at her. “It still hurts! Tell me, I can take it! Is there a crack down the middle?”

Wilf and Amy groaned and headed down for the waterside, each one silently contemplating the tasks lined up for the day.

The older Ward kids found their four siblings already in Wilf’s workshop, under the big lad’s tall, red roofed home down by the waterside. Wilf’s was similar to Gary’s in so many ways and very different in others; their fathers home was formed from his own shattered soul and mind, of illusion, moonlight, sunlight and the eldritch shadows cast by those disparate and impossible elements.

Wilf’s was a manifestation of his Will and his mortal crafts, wrought with ritual magic native to the realm, but powered by his personal connection to their distant and inaccessible homeworld, Earth.

Magical energy in a wavelength and spectrum that was rare in this realm, flowed through the young Ward boy. His siblings and parents possessed similar internal wellsprings of magic, to greater and lesser amounts and with variable pressures.

Amy was a steady flow, pushing out like a spreading pool of honey from a broken hive. Smooth and graceful, she could work and shape her will more easily than any of her brothers.

Rio gushed and spewed energy forth in geysers that would erupt and then calm, just as swiftly; the violence and energetic nature of his spring gave him a unique talent with the shades of the dead and unquiet spirits.

Wilf pulsed with magic in a subtle thrum, a constant low vibration that was soothing and calming, not unlike the sound of water running over stones.

The energy passed into their living souls through rifts in the etheric veil and could only be directed or used, not halted or captured.

When not actively working spellcraft or using their gifts, the Wards spilled undirected, inchoate and largely harmless magic into the world around themselves, which would quickly and harmlessly dissipate into the local area.

Wilf’s home was a peculiar manifestation; a real, physical structure, built by the mortal hands and crafts of himself, his family and a few close friends. No moonbeams or drifting vaporous glamor would work for the solid, stolid young craftsman.

His home was a real and material house that could be drawn from and tucked away into a private dimension of dreams and fancy that the large, stoic lad never let anyone but his brothers and sisters see… Ever.

Down in his shop, all the tools, devices and workstations were real and physical things; solid, robust and functional. He sat on a high stool at his personal bench working on some small jewel or object, inscribing something delicate, while only half listening to the discussion.

“...things are heating up, we just need to hold out a little longer.” Amy insisted.

“You three have Contracts.” Larry grumbled, his face screwed up in anger, concern and frustration. “We just keep getting pushed around, there’s no upside.”

“I dunno, the jello thing was pretty fun…” Harry sighed happily and closed his eyes, trying to recapture the feeling.

“We’re not going soft, Ames…” Barry grumbled. “We just can’t take it out on the people we’re mad at.”

“Maybe we can…” Wilf mumbled, his eyes still on his project. “I’m working on something… something secret, even from… especially from papa.” His brow furrowed in concentration as he spoke, his tiny Wardco Buzzomatic™ multi tool whirring as he inscribed whatever it was.

#

A towering column of something that was certainly not smoke twirled into the morning sky from the smaller red roofed house, down by the waterside.

Accompanying that massive plume of eldritch fumes, the sounds of industry rumbled and clanged softly across the garden, becoming intolerably loud and disruptive only within a few yards of the jarring, jangling, sealed house of mysteries.

The Ward children were working their arts and were not going to be disturbed by anyone with a lick of good sense.

#

A little before midday, a slightly doughy, round featured, middle aged woman in the uniform of the ducal tax service strolled the last few yards through the clamor and clangor of Wilf’s yard and stepped through the door; blissfully ignoring the ‘Private’ sign hung from the door handle.

Past writhing shadows that swirled and reached tentative, unformed, hands out to her as she walked, through coruscating fields of evershifting colors and slow, thudding, pulsing sensations that evoked the heartbeat of some unfathomably huge beast at rest, the woman strolled downstairs into the heart of madness, with a pleasant, slightly abstracted smile on her face.

Amy wore only brief shorts and a bandeau restraining her breasts, while the boys were in shorts alone, working at their separate tasks, but very much together. Energy and life thundered from their sweaty pores, dampened their hair, and plastered their scant garments to their bodies as though painted on.

Magic of every imaginable frequency, hue, temperature and nature boiled and froze, swirled in low, clinging vapor and whistled through the air in ecstatic, explosive, silent vigor. Colors, sounds, scents, tactile sensations and flavors that should and could not exist clawed at the pudgy woman’s mortal senses with ravenous, animalistic claws, seeking entry into her very soul.

The workshop was drenched in a swirling morass of mingled auras, gifts and magics that should have made any mortal’s skin try to tear away, stagger off their body and crawl into a dark, quiet place, as a single, knotted mass of gooseflesh.

“Hi kids!” She chirped merrily from the foot of the forbidden stairs. “I had the most exciting adventure yesterday!” Kelli smiled at her gathered friends and sighed beatifically.

“I found a huge pile of books and ledgers, it was all census data, crop, lumber and mining reports and monster sighting records, all jumbled up in a mess! It was just sitting there, so I had to start collating and…”

“Can’t hug you right now auntie, I’m all sweaty and gross!” Amy called out from her corner of the workshop, when Kelli paused to take a breath.

“Take a seat, we’ll be done soon!”

A pool of living shadow dribbled from Kelli’s feet, slowly forming into a shadowy, evershifting simulacrum of the cheerful, stout accountant. While her host made herself comfortable and chattered on and on about the exciting paperwork and files she’d stumbled on in count Liam’s palace and how chaotic and disorganized the local lord’s tax records were, or rather, how disorganized they had been.

Kelli made tea at the little kitchenette in the corner by the stairs down and settled in to watch the children work with a smile of absolute pleasure on her wide, honest face, letting their energies wash over her in a tidal wave that should have been intolerable.

Snacks, tea and pleasant conversation carried on, mostly from Kelli’s snug little seat by the stairs, Elli drifted in silence around the chamber, basking in the magical radiations and vibrations that made the house inhospitable to beings more firmly rooted in the soil of her adopted world.

The shadow being swayed and shifted form, seemingly at random under the influence of the emanations and oscillations that shattered reality and reassembled it; if just slightly altered by the Wills, Minds and auras of the kids working around her.

“What are you building, Larry?” She asked in her inaudible voice of eldritch whispers, directly into his aura.

The lad was working intently, carving a small object in wax, intricate and precise, the thing was also a complete mystery.

It seemed to be a tiny half sphere, with several waxen branches and roots springing from it. Larry carefully set his object in an open topped wooden box, before pouring a thick, white mixture over his creation, encasing it in plaster of some sort and setting it aside among several similar boxes filled with white plaster and only a few bits of wax poking up through the slowly curing substance.

“This is called lost wax casting, we’re making jewelry, magical jewelry.” He murmured through the music, noise and chaos.

On a dark desert highway,

Cool wind in my hair

Warm smell of colitas,

Rising up through the air…

‘Hotel California’ rose slowly and sweetly, wringing order from the chaotic morass all around the group; as the boys began singing together, following Amy’s soaring, crystalline lead.

Shadowy musicians stepped from the dark corners of the room, faceless and completely swathed in robes of misty darkness. Their instruments were real and tangible, the shining crafts of their parents’ and their own hands, gleaming in the eldritch light and ringing out in sweet, soul rending harmony.

You can check out any time you like…

But you can never leave…

“I like that song!” Kelli enthused, when the music slowed and became a smooth background melody, floating in the air in a not quite normal way. Larry’s boxes of plaster were in the kiln, slowly curing under very low heat, to let the wax run out of his castings.

Wilf sighed with deep and abiding satisfaction as he began toweling his enormously muscled arms and chest off, and clearing away his projects. He had a small wooden tray padded with cloth holding a number of round beads that glinted and winked at Kelli and Elli, as if calling them over for a closer look. The strange and slightly frightening sensation ended, when he slid a cover over the top of his tray of jewels.

“Inscribed magical monster pearls… don’t touch them, they’re a little cursed.” The big, barely dressed young man rumbled gently at the two women, smiling at them both with affection.

“Once these are finished they’ll be safe, but right now they’re toxic to Elli’s essence.”

Amy was still hard at work, her surging, blazing forge blasting fire up the chimney with every blow of her hammer. Smooth, slim, dusky skinned arms rippled with lean, long muscles, rather than the bunched and corded thews of her big, blonde brother.

She used her whole body with every move, driving a slow building wave of power from her feet, rooted to the floor as if a part of the foundation of the house itself. From her slim knees, up through her swaying hips and rippling up her lithe torso to bring her sledge down with terrible might, shaking reality around her little smithy with each strike of that awful hammer.

Steam hissed and popped ferociously when droplets of sweat landed on her workpiece, flung from a few loose strands of her long, black hair that had escaped her sensible workshop plait.

Shining with sweat and smiling in apple cheeked joy, she shut down her forge and wiped herself down, before catching her conjoined aunties up in a hug.

“We missed you girls!” She cried, and bounced up and down in her friend’s arms.

“So busy and energetic… Whatever are you wicked children up to down here?” Elli asked with matronly disdain for the kid’s attire and sweaty condition. “Is this mischief in the offing?”

“We’re plotting against the gods today… Shh, that’s a secret!” Amy sang merrily, as she put her tools away.

They worked together in comfortable silence, listening to more of their auntie’s tale of her recent adventures in bookkeeping and accountancy.

She explained every detail and nuance with great pleasure, going on and on about the subtleties of waste disposal projections and crop rotation plans. “I can’t believe all that sensitive data was just sitting there in the library, waiting to be accessed!” She huffed over some detail that she seemed to think was important.

All the while, as the dual being of woman and shadow chatted and smiled at her niece and nephews, they moved in quiet camaraderie, tidying up their workings and preparing for the next step.

“Wait… You know about the dungeon? That’s super secret!” Harry asked abruptly. With his hands full of tiny, terribly pointy steel files, picks, probes and rasps. He slipped the jewelers tools into their individual slots in a waxed leather roll and neatly tied it closed, protecting the delicate instruments of his craft from damage in the rowdy workshop.

The kids finished tidying up their workspaces and gathered against the tiled wall near the little kitchenette Kelli had been ruling over as mistress of the snacks.

“Certainly, even were we not confidants of the count and the duke, we would have sussed it out from the records in short order. Only a rift in the veil could allow so many monsters to slip into this world. I would estimate it at phase three, fully open and capable of allowing passage into this realm by beings under S class, perhaps higher, with the correct affinities and abilities…” She murmured abstractedly, since Kelli was once more distracted by the tray of glittering beads… or were they pearls?

Harry walked down the white tiled wall near the kitchen, turning shiny metal knobs that jutted out every two steps or so. Each one stood out from the tiles beneath a conical metal object that dangled from a pipe sticking out from the wall. Water began jetting from the devices as he went down the line, spraying in a steamy torrent from four gushing shower heads drenching the wide, tiled area with a drain in the floor.

“It’s all there in the ledgers, if one knows what to look for. Magical anomalies, monster encounters, hunt records and detailed reports tell the tale of an uncanny breach in your realm’s veil. It’s been active for three years or more.” Elli whispered happily, while the kids helped each other peel out of their sweat drenched things.

“Weird, so you figured that out with just uncle Liam’s books?” Amy asked from the showers, where she and her brothers were busy trying to get the worst of the mess rinsed away.

Poor Rio got some kind of exotic, magical sawdust in his tight, kinky cap of curls and it was devilishly hard to get out. Wilf wound up having to comb his brother’s hair nearly straight for him, before the last, clinging particles would let go.

Heedless of the casual nudity of the bathing kids, Kelli and Elli began to drift in the direction of Wilf’s workbench as well, the shadow being slowly fluttering at her edges, when she approached the covered wooden tray.

Before those soft, pink, ink smudged fingers could touch the little box, Wilf was there; his massive, scarred hand completely engulfing hers in a leathery and unshakeable grip.

“Careful, those are dangerous to Elli right now.” The damp, naked giant whispered, as he gently scooted her back to her seat at the kitchenette table. “There are things that we do that she can’t abide…” The gentle giant murmured to his auntie, who nodded and smiled pleasantly, revealing only a superficial comprehension.

“These are poison to Elli, Kelli. We have to keep them sealed up, ‘cause she will be drawn to the magic of them. They shine, like a colorful, venomous spider in the sunlight… Pretty and interesting to look at, but dangerous to handle.”

“Those are spiders? Gross!” She murmured, an expression of distaste and mild fear scampering across her open smiling face of childlike pleasure; only to be replaced by happiness, when Wilf hugged her close and sighed.

“Well, I suppose they do spin a trap and lure in their prey…” The soggy man mumbled awkwardly, before returning to his shower, already in progress.

Amy flopped down on a vacant chair, dressed in a bright blue bathrobe across from the shadow and the living woman, with a deep sigh of relief. The dark, smiling girl giggled her delight from under a damp towel, draped over her hair and poured a cup of tea for each of them. “We’re gonna piss off some gods with those, just a little.”

#