Sailing Ether Tides

Sailing Ether Tides

Ch: 43 Cats In The Cradle

“A boycott?” The big musician barked with an odd mixture of rage and amusement.

“Is that why none of my kids have accepted a Contract in… how long?” Gary demanded sharply of the tiny blonde godling sitting on the couch beside him as he played his long lost butterscotch Teleblaster™, which had been destroyed so long ago.

The instrument had dissolved in his bath, while he was busy fighting to bring Amy into the world; by murdering the ever loving shit out of the undead and unclean aberration of demonic Will that had held her in bondage.

Like Wilf and Rio, She had been a captive, enslaved and enspelled as a helpless toddler; bound into the heart of a mass of undead, rotting human body parts that slowly devoured her life, to feed itself.

Now the cult that had created that nightmare was gone; as were their dark gods and the great lady of the winter court of faery that had spawned the whole mess.

He smiled fondly as he played the ghost of an instrument he’d happily destroy a thousand times over, just for the sound of Amy’s laugh. “The Amy, Wilf and Rio have been holding off on Contracting for a while… I thought they were just being careful…” He sighed with a small, sad smile on his face “And it’s all of them, a unified front?”

Marduk smiled shyly and nodded. Gary almost heard his daughter’s mischievous little chuckle, as he considered the plot they… She had hatched. “They wanted to keep it a secret; but I promised myself I’d never hide the truth from you again… after… when you were… If we ever…”

Marduk fumbled his approach and wound up staring at his sandals, beside his big, mortal friend.

“We won’t, Ducks. We can’t. I could never have Contracted you in the first place… It was Secret I was compatible with.” He sighed long and sadly. “Several of my alters could have helped; they were the ones who had the smarts and knew stuff.” He shrugged and smiled.

“Now it’s just me in here; they all flew away and became their own people at last, like Ward and the boys.”

He sighed and sat back, enjoying the quiet and the sensation of strings under fingers gone soft from too long without the touch of his first love. He slipped into a bit of ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ and sighed softly with pleasure.

“Beast and the Devourer are still debating vigorously, whether or not you will be reunited with those disparate elements of your persona, some day.” Marduk whispered. “I suspect, as you do, that they now walk the world in new flesh, with their own Minds, Wills and desires, wherever they might be.” The godling sighed happily.

“You have so many children, my friend… and will have so very many more, all across the endless expanse of everything. And in a way, each of them is mine, bearing a tiny fragment of my essence, wherever they land.”

“Gross.” Gary mumbled softly, as he ruffled the divine ringlets, between passages from Bach and Bootsie Collins, in turns. “I still don’t think…”

“I will not ask you to Contract with me, so there is no need to refuse me.” The tiny god spoke very carefully and softly. “Refusing me three times will close a door that I desperately wish to keep open, if only by a fingernail’s width. Please leave that thought unspoken, my friend.”

The big man fell silent and just hugged the small boy close for a while, even if that meant he had to stop playing. Some things were more important.

#

“I’ve missed these times so much…” Marduk said softly, once he’d cried himself out beside the man who’d pulled him out of the dim, insensate half existence the little god had experienced in his endless, drifting time as the silent and lonely god of Secrets.

Through plots and schemes lost in the distant and forgotten past, a few disgruntled members of the pantheon and fae courts had managed to gradually transform Knowledge into Secrets, by denying education to all but the elite few and slowly altering human perceptions of the deity, warping and twisting him into a new form.

With inquisitions, dogma, doctrine and shouted scriptures that rained down on an illiterate populace, they had attempted the cold, bloodless murder of the deity.

For untold generations of man and through endless years, he’d drifted; as a half remembered, minor deity without clerics or worshippers. Even delusional and foolish tryhards wouldn’t bother claiming to be a ‘cleric of Secret’; everyone knew Secret offered no Contracts, took no clerics and heard no prayers from man…

The valedictorian of Super Serious Clown College, with an advanced degree in rubber chicken studies would be taken more seriously than any fool who claimed to be ‘the Hierophant of Secret’...

Until a disembodied, endlessly sacrificed and resurrected, lost, mad mortal soul had brushed against him in the void and drawn the god slowly, inexorably into the halfreal, delusional, miniature moon the desperate, shattered soul had dreamed up in the endless void. The mad, broken mortal had taken the vacant title of Hierophant of Secrets for himself… and given Marduk a home.

“I should have defended our bond, I should have stood up to the gathered pantheon and refused, even in the face of their combined Might and Will…”

He sobbed and wept anew, as emotions that the divine had few experiences with, boiled inside the small god, tearing at his essence with red hot, iron claws of guilt and regret.

“I assumed you would pull some silly prank, or invent some terrible spell and then we would be reunited, with no lasting harm done…” He blew a big, snotty, blubbering sneeze all over his friend, when the divine sinuses overflowed.

“I never suspected you would do something so…”

“Crazy?” The big man asked with a crooked, deranged smile on his lips. “You can say it, we’re always honest with each other, right?”

“Yes, you are crazy… What could have motivated you to build that… ‘Sexbomb’?” He shuddered at the recollection of what that thing had wrought across the divine realm.

“There’s a crater where the triumvirate’s domains once intersected, music thrums from that rift, slow, throbbing music, sensual moans and whispers…” He muttered, with a rising blush shining silvery and golden on his cheeks.

“Uh, huh…” Gary murmured happily, feigning ignorance and smiling at the desperate, squirming godling.”It whispers things? Like what?”

“Sexual things… I understand what they are saying, the voices from that terrible void… but I won’t repeat them. None of the other gods, except Thirp can even truly hear the awful, suggestive words that echo up from that rift.” He looked down in embarrassment and toed at the plush carpet by the fire. “It’s super weird and… kinky.”

“I’m nuts and crippled, Ducky… and the bastards who made me this way thought I would roll over and submit, if they kicked me a few more times.” He shrugged. “They learned a valuable lesson about backing someone into a corner.”

“What was your end game?” Ducky demanded hotly, when the man just smiled away his own nearly complete obliteration. “Only the intervention of Joy, Beast and myself managed to draw you back into this world; otherwise you would have been lost, forever.”

“Uh, yeah…” He muttered crossly at the little god. “That was the plan.”

“You planned on a heroic intercession by several deities, and the collusion of the inscrutable Devourer itself… That was your plan?” The stunned godling muttered at his friend, suddenly feeling rather cross himself. “Of all the foolish, dead brained, thoughtless…”

“Nope, never even considered that possibility. I planned to blast myself back to earth with those shitbags; fully intending to live out eternity, being reincarnated as a new person again and again in the magicless, inescapable gravity well of my empty, forgotten homeworld, alone.” He answered glibly.

“You guys really came through in the clutch!”

“Wait… that was your grand scheme?” The stunned being asked softly. “Just, boom, gone, no more, you… No more Gary Ward, ever?”

“Yup. It was a choice between being an eternal buttslave to Morrigan and the three douche-migos; or splattering all of them and myself onto a world where they would be as powerless as I am… and unable to cause my family any more trouble, ever.” He grinned at the shocked and appalled god beside him on the couch.

“Cheap at twice the price.”

“You really are completely mad…” Ducky sighed fondly. “I can’t peer into your world through your eyes, since… well… How are you doing, under the strictures? I am told that they could cause some… discomfort.”

That question soured the giant’s mood rapidly; he turned to face the little divine and glared at him crossly, his mercurial moods shifting wildly.

“I’m fucked six different ways, buddy. Fucked long and hard, right in my pert little puckered asshole.” He snarled angrily.

“Your little friends are probably shitting their robes right now, knowing that I’m back here.” He growled.

“I have been dwelling here, while you were absent… My essence will prevent the other gods from realizing you have returned, so long as you do not mention this fact before any mortal cleric of Dana.” He mumbled quietly. “She is always listening, when one of her’s is near you.”

“Maybe I’ll need to make another Sexbomb…” He snapped angrily at the mention of the goddess, Healer.

That utterance shocked his diminutive houseguest and sent him leaping to his feet. “You mustn’t!” He gasped desperately. “Don’t even whisper that thought in your dreams, where it might be overheard!”

“Still on their side, huh? Even after all this?” The big man grumbled angrily, blasting his little friend with a heated and furious glare.

“They’ve been torturing me constantly, with pain, exhaustion and misery… for years now. They even took away my music!” He gasped through his rage, at last.

“That was too much, too cruel. No forgiveness. No. Mercy.” He almost barked in the quiet common room.

“Torture? The strictures simply prevent you from contracting your Agility without the gathered pantheon’s unanimous approval.” Marduk replied, anger tinting his usually tranquil and childlike voice.

“If you’d stop being such a big, obstinate chuni, maybe we could get Dana and her clique to relent…” He grumbled at the mortal fool. “But no…! Gary has to be a bigshot and refuse to submit…”

He caught himself, halfway through his own statement, glaring down his nose at his own lips, as though wondering where those words had come from.

“I’m sorry, Gary… I don’t know why I said that…”

“I know why, buddy. You’ve been hanging out with the immortals, listening to them bitch about me... and you don’t even understand what they’ve done.” He answered quietly, his rage fled, replaced with an icy determination.

“I’m back here now, maybe you should take a walk in my memories… You always enjoyed that.”

“True, peeking through your eyes and ears was always exciting, but what would that prove?” He demanded.

“Just give it a shot, you might learn something... Try on any random day from the last several years.” The big man muttered confidently, while strumming a mandolin quietly.

Ducky sat back, closed his eyes and searched for the old, familiar entrance to his friend’s sense memories with a long, slow sigh for those fondly remembered days…

The diminutive god thrashed and rolled onto the floor a moment later, spewing a thick, viscous, silvery goop onto the rug in a torrential, gagging stream of holy projectile vomit.

He moaned and writhed in misery, inconsolable and nearly insensate for a few long seconds, before he regained control of himself.

“What did you do to me? Some cruel trick or trap hidden in your mind?” He demanded hotly, while trying to get the stuff out of his robes and hair.

“Nope, that’s how I feel every fucking day, all day.” He snarled. “When you clowns cut our Contract, you forcibly deranked me from mid-copper, down to unranked. That shit sucks super hard. Rolf voluntarily dropped one rank for four days, and spent all four days and nights, lying in my stable, sick as hell.” He snapped angrily at the miserable godling.

“Severing Contracts and forcibly deranking someone is a punishment reserved for the worst criminals on this world; most people beg for death instead, with good reason.”

Marduk gaped silently for a few minutes, stunned and still wracked by his first experience of mortal agony. “Really? That’s what we did?”

“Yeah, buddy… So telling me to submit and to be a good boy is going to be a tough sell.” He smiled warily at the little god. “So, are you gonna run and tell your little friends that I’m holding grudges and waiting for a chance to pull another… rabbit out of my hat?”

“No, Gary, but I will be bringing this information to the attention of Beast and Joy. I doubt they have any more understanding of your plight than I did. I suspect that they understand far, far less than I did before your… demonstration.”

“Remember, Ducks; you picked your own moment to look through…” He mumbled, as he slowly became less present and faded away.

“If you think I was setting you up, try any other day or night over the last decade and a half. Pick one, maybe you’ll get me on a good day when I just feel weak, miserable and brittle as cheap glass.”

He vanished eventually, leaving a thick, gray fog behind that dissipated very slowly.

#

Garry peeled his eyes open to greet a bright, mid morning sky, not unlike the one he’d drifted off beneath. The familiar travel cot, bedroll and wicker picnic basket covered by a clean white cloth told him he’d been out for more than just a few minutes.

When he stirred, Becky’s smiling face appeared above him, with Kree fast asleep and tangled carelessly in her beaded plait, like a jeweled honeybee hair ornament. “Mariah went back home with Shai and Kermal. Those two will be back soon, just rest and drink some water and eat something.” She passed him a huge jug of cool, fresh water. “Drink all of that first, brother.”

“How much do you know?” He asked enigmatically.

“About what? Why you’ve been asleep for nearly a day and a night?” She demanded right back. “Cause that’s what’s been going on, as far as I can tell.”

He sighed weakly and rolled over, so that he could get some of that water inside himself. A few long, gasping gulps and a brief bout of coughing later, he smiled at his little sister. “I saw Ducky… in my house on the moon.”

“Really, are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” She whispered desperately. “I popped up there a few times over the last week, I assumed it was Ward’s doing…” She fell silent, when his smile fled, at the mention of his immortal ‘brother’.

“I can see why you’d assume that…” He sighed sadly. “I gather that he’s been prevented from showing himself around me all this time, too.” The big man grumbled sourly and struggled to sit up on his cot; winding up in a sagging, slumping heap. “That’s another thing for me to remember; when it’s my turn to pass judgments and dole out curses…”

Becky shuddered under a stranger’s feral, hungry smile, so unlike her silly, crippled brother. “Don’t do anything… you know…” She whispered softly, as the sound of tinkling bells announced Shai’s return to their little camp.

The expression on her brother’s face slowly melted into the faintly sad, deeply amused smile he usually wore, when those bells chimed in his hearing.

“Sit still, there’s no hurry. Everything’s fine.” The tiny priestess whispered, while poking him in the chest with one slim, tiny finger. That weak shove was more than enough to drop him back onto his cot, over his weak and ineffectual protests.

Becky rose from his side and went to meet her sister and husband at the trailside, a dozen yards away from where the big man still lay, mostly immobile. The two women held a brief conversation, before Becky waved bye-bye and mounted her bike and rode off with sir Kermal. “Come home soon, Gary.” She sang, as they pedaled away.

Shai sat down beside him, when it was just the two of them, with a long, slow sigh of relief. “Becky says ye did speak wi wee lord Marduk, while ye slept an dreamed…” She whispered in his ear. “She says he does urge ye tae nae mention it aloud, whispering in her bond wi knowledge, that ye should keep that close held.”

She vanished her clothing into a whirling cloud of vapor and mist, then curled up in the bedding with him, using her greater strength and vigor to push and pull him into the ‘big spoon’ position he always sought. “Now shush, yer lady wife be exhausted an would sleep!”

The beautiful, mighty woman of his dreams wriggled into his arms and pressed her backside against his frontside with a sassy little gasp of delight.

“Ohh! Somatt of thee kin stand up straight after all.” She cooed with pleasure, when little Gary nudged her pale, round bottom.

#

“Shiro!” Amy called softly into the garden. “Time for bed!” The tiny, white kitten bumbled out from under a tea bush, with a clot of spider web tangled in his whiskers. He ran with a silly, staggering stride, as he constantly tried to get the clingy stuff off with one paw, tripping himself, mid-step. The slender, dusky girl caught her familiar up in a hug and wiped his whiskers clean, with a merry giggle.

“Silly kitty!” His answering mew was weak and soft, but his incredibly, improbably loud purr of pleasure rumbled against her chest, as though he were a much, much larger cat.

She smiled and waved, when Becky and sir Kermal rode in, noting her parents’ absence with a blend of concern and hope. “How are they doing?” She asked, once the pair were finished racking their bikes.

“I literally can’t say… My god demands silence on this matter, Amy.” Becky answered through a wide smile that said more than enough to put her at ease.

“We need to talk, though… about your new friend.” The small slender priestess frowned at her taller, younger sister and her kitten. “But that too, must not be discussed openly, I suspect.”

Kermal caught the scent of secrets on the wind and excused himself quietly, leaving the women alone to chat with a kiss on Amy’s cheek… and a much more evolved version for his smiling wife.

“Ladies, I will be in the common room drinking whatever I can find.” He dipped a low bow and slipped from their sight with a strangely showy display of his stealth gift. The young knight simply faded from their perceptions, becoming first indistinct, then entirely imperceptible to mortal senses.

“I love the sneaky ones…” Becky sighed happily, once her husband was gone. “Now darling…” She grumbled, suddenly sounding very concerned and a little upset, with her eyes fixed on the bumbling, silly kitten peeking from Amy’s lacy, ruffled bosom. “Tell me you didn’t forge a Contract with Shiro the Nekomancer…”

“I didn’t forge a Contract with Shiro the Nekomancer.” The lovely young woman’s lie was obvious, beyond transparent, delivered with a smile of self satisfied, cocky delight. “Except for all the ways that I totally did.”

“He’s an outsider, Ames…” The priestess began, before falling silent.

“So? Some of my best friends are outsiders… I’m one too, in many ways.” She replied calmly, still smiling and petting the kitten nestled between her boobs. “He’s my friend, has been for a long time.”

“He’s… he’s undead, Amy… that’s against sacred law…” She whispered desperately. “If the pantheon finds out…”

“They don’t get a say.” She answered in a cold, hard tone that was very unlike her. “My brothers and I are done playing nice and waiting for the gods and spirits to pull their heads out of their asses.” She glared up at the heavens with a surly, unpleasant look in her eyes.

“We have our own agendas and needs, unrelated to what the gods want. They can pound sand.”

Her mood lightened an instant later as she smiled at her beloved auntie/sister. “Besides, he’s not even undead; on his world, he’s a god of the Night, Shadows and Illusion. His bell is cursed to draw the restless dead to him, that’s all.”

She stood with one hip popped out in a cocky challenge, as if daring the older woman to press the issue.

“My Contract is between me and Shiro… nobody else gets a vote, not even my beloved Becky.”

“Amy, he’s cute and little right now…” She murmured gently to her younger sister.

“Show her, pal.” Amy whispered to her fluffy little bodice buddy. He mewed, stretched adorably and leapt from his pillowy nest with a soft ‘Murr!’ of satisfaction. The tiny white streak of fur landed on massive, silvery paws, spangled with gray and black spots. A full grown clouded leopard prowled around the two women, purring and rubbing against their legs, releasing soft and delighted chitters from time to time.

Long, sharp claws, sharp white teeth and lambent, glowing amber eyes shouted that this was a potent and fierce predator, while a dim, misty aura of uncanny vapor twined around his shoulders and pools at his fluffy spotted feet suggesting that there was much more to the being than was readily apparent.

His red ribbon collar and intricately inscribed bronze bell remained, growing larger to accommodate his form and tolling silently as he walked. Strange shadows and crawling, flickering vapors poured from that eldritch, terrible bell, rather than chiming, musical notes. He flopped down in the sunshine, his hazy, vaporous aura drifted outward, lazily collecting in any shadowed place.

“He’s still cute, right?” Amy asked sweetly, while the fluffy, furry, murderkitty purred and rolled around on the lawn at their feet. “Rio was chatting with Gritsck, the outsider mantis goddess a couple nights ago… He’s considering her for his Agility.”

“How? Did you find some ritual or something?” The older woman asked gently. “Those are dangerous and unpredictable…”

“Dana the dumbass has been secretly dragging the triplets into her realm for weeks, demanding that Barry Contract her… lately she’s been nagging us too. Now things are changing and new opportunities are opening up.” Amy replied smugly. “She opened the door, but we get to decide who we let in.”

“But, outsider Contracts…” She began, weakly.

“The pantheon used and abused us all with their supernatural might and powers, especially papa… Now we have access to beings that don’t have a vendetta against our dad and haven’t betrayed our trust.” Amy growled, sounding not unlike a big, angry cat herself.

“They decided to set this in motion; if they don’t like how it turns out, they can all get fucked.” Her unflinching gaze reminded Becky of Gary… stubborn, angry and perhaps a little deranged.

“Shiro… Uncle Liam promised to bring us some of his weapons grade catnip!” She held her arms out to her familiar, as he leapt back into his plump, perky nest; once more in the form of a tiny ball of fluff.

“Let’s go tease the dog…”

#

As afternoon closed in, the Ward kids and the birthday girl were all sprawled out on the lawn with a few close friends and familiars, enjoying the peace and quiet. Shai and Gary rode up together, looking exhausted and very pleased with themselves.

“Sorry kids. I needed some quiet time, I guess.” The big man muttered through a wry grin.

“All the noble boys rode out to check on the kaiju battle… Dannyl said that things are getting weirder over there.” Amy shrugged lazily. “We’re taking a break from Adventuring, till we get our new Contracts settled in.” They all looked pretty smug and pleased with themselves as well.

“Contracts?” He asked quietly. “You guys have been up to something for a while…” He grumbled sourly, with just a little obstinate pride in his voice. “I suspected, when you three never signed on with anyone. He sighed again, letting his relief show. “Now you kids can stop being foolish and…”

He fell silent for a moment, his eyes locked onto the little white kitten gamboling in the grass. “Is that Shiro, the Nekomancer? Shiro the cursed god?”

“Yup. he’s my buddy.” Amy sang happily. “We made it official a couple nights ago.”

“I took a fae Contract with Ignis, the volcano spirit…” Larry muttered quietly. “It’s short term, but with an option for renewal.” Gary looked relieved at this revelation, until his big, blonde son spoke up, from where he was sprawled on the lawn, staring at the sky.

“I finally signed up with Kai of the waters.” Wilf sighed happily. “She’s pretty amazing.”

“I have Gemma, the jeweled crab.” Harry announced softly. “She’s a spirit of crystals, music, illusion and light. We can’t Contract yet, of course, but she touched my soul and left her mark there.”

“Who?” Gary demanded, while his wife tried to soothe him and herself, with little success. Shai’s gentle touches and whispered words in his ear finally settled him down onto the lawn with the kids.

“Gemma’s new.” Amy answered for her brother, smiling serenely. “You aren’t the only one who knows lots of eldritch, fae and divine beings.”

“So how many of you made a Contract over the last few nights?” He asked gently. A moment later all but Harry raised a hand.

“I took on Gritsck, the huntress.” Rio mumbled. “We really get along.”

Perry sighed happily before he spoke. “Cernunnos, the huntsman.”

Gary locked eyes on Barry and waited patiently for the lad to speak.

Instead, a small being with white, shiny, slick skin, webbed hands and feet and a ruff of scarlet gills around his throat stepped from the shrubberies with a long, slow sigh.

Axio, the axolotl spirit of the high, upland waters hitched up his blue boardshorts and grinned at his old friend.

“Hello again, Gary.” He whispered, in his calm, watery voice.

#