1

Quint looked at Pip, cocking his head and furrowing his brow. “So?” he said.

“I think … we may want to go to Svargaloka before I discuss it,” Pip sent to everyone in the room.

“Void’s sake, why? Why can’t you just say it now?” Quint said.

“I think hearing what I have to say … it would be best from the place of RIGHT UNDERSTANDING. It may also give us an idea of what we need to do next,” Pip sent. Fiona was looking like she would chew through her finger if she kept biting the nail she’d been gnawing at. “Might want to do a Fishing.”

“You won’t just say?” Quint said.

“I’d really rather it wait,” Pip sent, their eyes looking too big. Quint had rarely seen the sesnickie look this way.

“Ok. Putnam, will you grab two joints, the Fishing deck, and ash trays from my office?” Quint said. Putnam gave a nod and left the room through the kitchen. Quint’s office was just on the other side of the kitchen in the Clever.

2

“I’d like to smoke, Quint,” Fiona said, and Quint raised his eyebrows. Fiona had never asked to join in smoking the Sly Grass before. “What? I want to know what’s going on.”

“The first time can be a bit … much. You’re sure you want it to be tonight? It’s probably not best to be emotionally fragile …” Quint said.

“I am not emotionally fragile,” she interrupted, putting a little more venom into the last two words. She rubbed at her red eyes and Quint tried to share a look with Putnam who didn’t so much as glance in his direction. Typical, Quint thought.

“Alright, Fiona, that’s fine. I’ll be there with you though, so if you have any questions—”

“I’ll be fine, thank you,” Fiona said.

“Pip, will you please send an image of an extra joint and an ash tray and maybe an image of Fiona smoking a joint for added flare?” Quint said. Pip gave a little nod at this. Fiona bit her lower lip and turned her head toward Pip who was still in the corner looking at the Eraser as if it were about to grow teeth and try a nibble at any given occupant of the room.

Quint took the seat in front of him near where Leslie had been sitting earlier. He put his elbows on the shining oak table then put his hands together in a ball that he brought to his lips as if he were trying to blow into them for warmth. He bounced the ball off his lips once, twice, three times—looking from Pip, to the Eraser, to Fiona, to her babbling husband and then to the grandfather clock behind where he sat. The clock read 52.

When the clock struck 55, Phildrious Putnam walked back into the room with three ash trays and three pre-rolled Sly Grass cigarettes. Putnam placed an ash tray near Pip in the corner—as it was clear they were not moving from that vantage point of the Eraser—and a joint next to the ash tray. He did the same for Fiona and Quint. Putnam then stood next to Quint and leaned down to whisper into his ear.

“There is a nasty looking potential above Carter’s head. It appeared there just before Pip returned. It looks … sickly—black and blue. I’m not sure what to make of it,” Putnam said. Quint turned his head toward Putnam.

“Thank you, Phildrious. I will listen to Pip’s story and perhaps that will shine a light on this new addition to the fuckery we have seen thus far,” Quint whispered back as he placed his cigarette into his mouth, looking from Putnam’s eyes, down to his hand, then back to his eyes, raising his caterpillar eyebrows toward the phase-shifter. Putnam smiled at his friend as he turned his forefinger into a flame and lit Quint’s Sly joint. He made his way to Pip, lighting their smoke in the same way, but as Putnam made his way to Fiona, he extinguished his finger and pulled out a book of matches.

Ah, Putnam, Quint thought. My considerate friend. Putnam hardly ever shifted his full form in front of Fiona if he could help it, and in a situation like this, he avoided using a potential close to her.

All were partaking but Carter and Putnam. Carter could smoke, but they didn’t feel it would do anything for the man. Putnam could not smoke. Phase-shifters had an age old superstition about traveling to different realities, or Moving by way of sesnickie: they all shared the belief that if they travelled they would die, just as they believed that the Necrolore was a real thing and if it gained power over the different potential realities, all phase-shifters would cease to exist. Quint thought it was silly, but didn’t press the issue with his friend. He’s entitled to believe whatever hogwash helps him sleep, Quint thought, though he knew that if he truly believed his whole race was at the mercy of some ‘story-taker,’ he would probably lose sleep.

The drug began to take hold in the quiet room and the song of the vibrationalist Sylvester began to play in the heads of all who partook.

3

“Ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh,” the voice sang over the beat in Pip’s head. Pip danced around like they were trying to catch their tail. Pip slid through a hole in the ground right in the middle of where they were dancing. The hole swallowed them up. All was black until the lyrics kicked in.

“Ahh got ta know ya now,” Sylvester sang in all his funkadelic glory, the drums playing a groove that went boom-dig-a-bap behind the various instruments. Pip had never known exactly how this song could play in the same way every time they entered Svargaloka by smoking Sly Grass. They figured the vibration would have been changed by now, or faded with Sylvester’s death thousands of years ago. Every part of the black space that filled Pip’s vision was filled with Sylvester’s glowing face which was outlined in a green line. He smiled wide—almost painfully so—as he sang, affro bobbing back and forth to the beat. Pip kept sliding down the hole, smiling devilishly all the way.

“Ahhm gon’ sing it so loud,” Sylvester sang as his glowing, green-outlined face became the stem of a purple colored flower that rose into the sky. A mushroom grew to Pip’s right and the Jakeereeds began to fly toward Pip with insane grins and beady, squinting eyes. A Jakeereed flew toward Fiona, who sat up against the trunk of a red tree that seemed to visibly breathe. Fiona sat still as though a wasp were hovering around her. The Jakeereed was about as big as a human hand, its belly bulging out slightly, its hair sprouting out in bouncing curls; it was completely naked and flew about with two little wings. As far as Pip had seen, all Jakeereeds were male.

Pip sat at the base of the giant flower that had been Sylvester only moments ago. Pip faced the others—Fiona to the left under the red tree, and Quint to the right under the mushroom that sat by a small pond with water the color of red clay. Jakeereeds buzzed about them enthusiastically. These four landmarks were the western checkpoint of Svargaloka. Traveling to this checkpoint depended entirely on the location one smoked at. From the Endynas Valley west, this is where Pip had always ended up when smoking Sly Grass. The tree, mushroom, the giant purple flower, and the pond sat in the middle of a vast field of red grass. Off in the distance across hills of red and a few more mushrooms like the one Quint sat under, was a forest of daisy flowers that reached as far north and east as Pip could see. The great Daisy Forest. Ah, and there is the Bonjean Beetle, destroying it.

The Bonjean Beetle was like a giant centipede with a triangular head and feet that looked like wheels. Though Pip had never spoken with one, Quint had assured the sesnickie that they weren’t missing out on anything but a never-ending argument. The triangular head was not so much a head as a wire-like triangle with a transparent middle. The thing used the middle part to eat the daisy trees, and once they passed through that triangle, they disappeared. There were many theories on where things that passed through ended up, but Pip was content with believing they simply went to a stomach within the creature somewhere.

To the west of the Daisy Forest sat the fractal fields: moving pale green rock-like things that spanned across the horizon as far as Pip could see like a graveyard.

“Um … Quint?” Fiona asked, still as a stone.

“I see you’ve met your first Jakeereed, my dear Fiona. It won’t hurt you, but it will insist on a few things, that’s to be sure,” Quint said, sitting down in the shade of the large mushroom.

“Jakeereed. Wannawatchamoovee,” the Jakeereed rasped at Fiona. It flew to her left, then her right, then settled in the middle. “Watchamoovee?” It looked her up and down with beady eyes. Fiona did not take her eyes from the thing.

“Quint,” Fiona said through a mostly closed mouth, “what is it saying?”

“Well, it sounded like ‘Jakeereed. Wannawatchamoovee,’ to me,” Quint said, smiling. Fiona widened her eyes in anger and her cheeks flushed, making it apparent that she was in no mood for Quint’s humor right now, all the while keeping her eyes focused on the Jakeereed.

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“The Jakeereeds live in this Svargaloka,” Quint said, gesturing toward one of the little creatures to come over to him. “They are fascinated by beings like ourselves that are able to think so abstractly—that is to say, we are able to construct a self from beliefs and illusions—stories! We are constantly constructing or deconstructing stories about ourselves—to ourselves—throughout the day. When given permission, the Jakeereed can share in our consciousness with us.” Quint blinked his eyes and nodded toward his own curious, buzzing Jakeereed and it went completely still, except for its wings which slowed enough to carry it gently to the ground where it sat in blissful awe.“It is similar to what the sesnickie does when sending images to our minds, but we have to allow the Jakeereed in. Can you feel the pressing of a question on your mind, Fiona? A sort of … presence?”

Fiona hesitated for a moment, then nodded her head one time. “It wants to ‘watch a moovee,’ which means it wants to watch the stories inside your mind. Go ahead—it’s completely harmless,” Quint said. Pip thought Fiona must have listened, because the Jakeereed she had been staring down relaxed down to the ground. Pip and Quint laughed. Fiona still looked tense, which wasn’t helped by the increasing amount of Jakeereeds she attracted.

“Word is spreading. You must have interesting stories, Fiona,” said Pip in a feminine voice.

“Don’t want this!” Fiona said as she stood and backed up against the tree as much as she could. “Quint! Do something! I can’t …” She paused, then looked at the sesnickie. “Pip … your voice … it—it sounds just like …”

“Just like it does in your head? Yes—my voice here sounds the way you imagine it. Though I do not have one, most humans will project a gender onto me,” Pip explained.

“Yeah … to me, you sound like a woman,” Fiona said sheepishly, her face turning a bit red. She then seemed to remember the thirty or so Jakeereeds now sitting at her feet because she continued to attempt climbing up the tree backward. “Quint?!”

“Fiona, you will just have to let them in. Now then. Pip? If you would, please?” Quint said.

Pip recounted the events after they’d Moved from the dining room to follow Leslie; then how Leslie had taken control of the connection and Moved them back in time six months somehow.

“When we arrived in the meditaz,” Pip said, “I immediately was frozen to the spot. I could feel the vibrations that bound me were coming from Leslie. Vibrations … of THE LOW SELF. I don’t know how Leslie accessed them—maybe the Eraser? But they were terrible vibrations and I felt like clawing my eyes out, but I couldn’t move. So I watched as Leslie walked toward Carter. I watched as Leslie was transmogrified into a bug, picked up by that awful, red-cloaked, horned creature—then carried to Carter. And then—”

“Mantra scramble,” Quint said vacantly, staring at the ground in front of him. It was almost a whisper. Fiona’s eyes seemed to darken. “I think for now … Carter and Leslie will have to remain as they are,” Quint said, scratching his beard as he spoke.

Fiona asked, “Couldn’t we try and thrumm the bug out of Carter? At least try?”

“Fiona, I am afraid there are powers at play here that far surpass even what I know about the vibrations. I fear trying anything that may injure Carter, or Leslie, or both. I am sure we could get Leslie out using the vibrations, but I am ignorant to what may happen as a result. We are blind.“ Quint pulled a small, black, rectangular box from inside of his cardigan. “I have a hunch as to what we should do next, but I’d like to use the deck to be sure,” Quint said.

4

Quint saw his frazzled reflection in the pond of red water. After this is over I’ll get a haircut, he thought. This was something he thought frequently, and it was always in the middle of some activity that prevented him from actually getting it cut. It had been years. His age showed in the water. Quint coughed onto the black case of cards. Hard, chesty coughs like a dog barking. It hurt. He looked down at the card case and saw a spot of blood where he’d coughed. Shit.

“Are you well, Quint?” Pip asked. Pip’s voice—which sounded masculine and confident to Quint—brought Quint back to the issue at hand. He smiled up at Pip, then bent down to rinse the case off in the red water.

“Allergies, you know. Coughed up some phlegm is all,” Quint said. Couldn’t be the Thrast. No, never that. Sometimes he wondered if they knew. Quint had told Leslie and Carter about the disease shortly after they’d arrived naked in the field of stargazers, oblivious to the fact that they were naked or where they’d even come from. Quint had felt them both thrumming and felt it his duty to inform them of the risk involved. It didn’t make too much of a difference though really, whether he’d told them or not; once you’d attuned the Inner Vibrations once, you were gambling with Thrast. Some attuned their whole lives and avoided the wretched disease, while others used one mantrum and immediately had black veins running underneath their skin. Some said that attuning the Low Vibrations would increase your chances of getting Thrast, but Quint thought that ‘some’ were simpering ninnies—people liked to throw a moral at everything, even if it had to do with incurable diseases.

Quint knew that Thrast had been cured before, but only when the thrummer had been able to change their entire aura, changing their energies completely to the point of forgetting who they even were before. And again I wonder if that’s why these three children wandered separately into our clearing with no recollection of who they were, Quint thought. Did they have Thrast and this was the only way to stay alive? Leave everything and start over? Quint wasn’t so sure, especially at his age, that it was worth all that.

When Fiona had stumbled upon the Manor House as the boys had, just as naive and oblivious, he’d felt her thrumming as well and had told her of the disease. Quint began showing signs of Thrast four years later. A year and a half now, he thought. He hadn’t told them … there’d been too many other things for them to worry about: Carter trying to find a way to help Fiona with her blackouts, then this whole mantra scramble fiasco …. No, there had not been space for Quint to worry them with one more thorn in their side, so he had let sleeping lilies lie. He had a while yet; the black veins had only started showing through the skin on his easily concealed inner thighs. The coughing could be explained away as allergies for now. For now.

After cleaning the blood from the black case, Quint walked over to Pip with the deck.

“Will you Fish for me, Pip?” Quint said, clearing his throat.

“Of course,” Pip said. Quint handed the cards to Pip and sat down in front of the sesnickie. Pip closed their eyes and drew a card at random from the middle of the deck. They put the card face down in front of them, then opened their eyes and looked into Quint’s. This always gave Quint a strange feeling like the sesnickie was taking something from the depths of his soul. Then Pip flipped the card over and looked at it. The Son. Pip was silent for five tiks. Quint started fidgeting a bit. Fiona was very still, watching Pip, no doubt trying to understand how the sesnickie was doing what they were doing, in spite of her upset and all that had happened. That was Fiona, if her nose wasn’t in a book, she was trying to filch the secrets of life from some other source. That is how she had gotten Putnam to teach her the sword through the art of Ken-Phae.

“This card, The Son, and the mind grooves it took me down, tell me that there is a tower you have come to before, that you will come to again. This tower was a home to you, and your mother is there and waiting,” Pip said.

“That … is what I thought. Thank you, Pip. Alright Fiona, once we get out of Svargaloka, Pip and I will be leaving for a time. And until I have more information … we mustn’t try to use the Eraser on Carter.”

“Um …” Fiona said. “Ok. First, how did you do that?”

“Decide I would be leaving so quickly?” Quint said. “Well, it’s simple really. I’ve spent many years making choices, and now I’ve made another.”

“The Fishing, Quint,” Fiona said.

Yes. I am sure it is driving her crazy not to know, Quint thought.

“This isn’t something you can learn, Fiona. It’s something only sesnickie can do,” Quint said. “You can’t bully me into making Pip show you like you did with me for Putnam.”

“I’m just curious,” Fiona said.

“Just explain it, Quint,” Pip said. “The Woman will wait.”

“Yes, but will the Hate? No matter, I will explain,” Quint said. “It’s like the sesnickie sees the card from this perspective of RIGHT UNDERSTANDING, then is taken down several mind grooves at once. By process of elimination, the sesnickie is able to determine what most likely needs to happen. Take this moment now; everything we can do from this moment forward will have consequences. Those consequences will push us in one direction or the other and then the actions we take after that will have consequences, obviously, and so on. The sesnickie sees all of this.”

Fiona nodded her head. She said, “Can you access the RIGHT UNDERSTANDING? Can I?”

“Yes, it comes with the red grass and beady eyed dream-watchers. And the Bonjean Beetle. Svargaloka pulses with it,” Quint said, putting his hand near his mouth to whisper, “though no-one really likes the Bonjean Beetle.”

“Ok. So if you can access it … then why … are you being such a Voiddamned idiot?” Fiona asked. She kept her mouth in a thin line, her face serious.

“Whoop-whoop,” a Jakeereed said. Another whistled.

Quint squinted at her. “Um … I don’t—”

“We’re going with you,” Fiona said.

“Fiona, I won’t be long, and—”

“If you ignore me, and go anyway, I’ll follow. I’ll find a sesnickie in Tissington and I’ll stop at every little inn and hall asking if anyone’s seen an eccentric, grey-haired thrummer that looks like lightning is attracted to his skull. You don’t really have a choice. We’re coming. Me, Carter, Les—Me and Carter. And I’m sure Putnam as well.”

“I believe we are wasting precious time arguing at this point, Quint. She has every right to come. It’s her husband, after all, that we are trying to mend,” Pip said.

Quint looked out past the fractal fields. Pip could see the stones shifting into differing shapes and sizes even from this distance. “What a sight,” Quint whispered bemusedly. “What a sight. Alright, Fiona. You’ll come. You must stay close to me and listen to what I say. Is that something you think you can do?” She gave him a flat look. “Let’s be about it then.”

5

“Fiona, come here and I’ll show you how to get out of Svargaloka,” Quint said, and he stood up, joints popping. Fiona got up as well and stepped in-between the Jakeereeds, making her way carefully to Quint. The little creatures turned their whole bodies as Fiona went by, still enraptured by the movies of her mind. Quint smiled as Fiona approached.

“Now, there are many ways to get out, and I’m sure there are many ways out that have not yet been discovered. I will show you the way that I created myself, thank you very much. We will be using a mantrum, but along with the perspective of RIGHT UNDERSTANDING that this place provides, it can have more of a hypnotic effect. So you access the RIGHT UNDERSTANDING, focus on one point, picture a wooden door, and repeat the mantrum … ’I need a door,’ over and over in your mind. ‘I need a door,’ let yourself sink into all of it and allow the door to come, ‘I need a door. I need a door,’” Quint repeated. Fiona stared at Quint’s gnarled, fuzzy old ear and repeated the mantrum.

I need a door.

I need a door.

I need a door.

She allowed herself to sink into the feeling.

I need a door.

Quint’s ear began to become wooden and Fiona could see little grains in the wood; she traced them with her eyes.

I need a door.

Everything around her went black as Quint’s earlobe turned into a golden knob and the rest of the ear grew until it was taller than her.

I need a door.

All that was left was the door. Svargaloka left behind, she turned the knob and went through.