1
She was in the dining room again. Her eyes grew wide. Awestruck, she slowly turned to her right.
“Gamma felt moo-pooshdu,” Carter babbled.
“What in the actual fuck?!” Fiona said, then looked down at her body and began giggling hysterically. “Was that a dream?”
“Yes! But also no. It is a real place and your body really was there, Fiona, but Svargaloka is similar to a dream in many ways,” Quint said.
“You’ve been holding out on me!” Fiona smiled and her eyes danced while she looked from Pip, to Quint, and then to Putnam. They all laughed then, all but Carter, and as Fiona turned to look at her husband, all joy fled from her, and with it, her laughter.
2
Quint glimpsed what still lay on the floor of the dining room: a black, rectangular, reflective shape. “Well,” he said, “something will have to be done about that.” The others looked first to Quint, then in the direction Quint was looking—the Eraser. I’m afraid to even touch it, Quint thought. What if the same thing happened to him?—Or Fiona? What effect would it have on the sesnickie?
“I’m not fucking touching it,” Pip sent as if responding to Quint’s thoughts.
“We have to do something with it before we go,” Quint said. Just then the door to the kitchens opened and a very short man walked in. Pohsib Werdna burped, blinked, and went up on tip-toes simultaneously, then came down off his toes and began walking toward the Eraser side of the table. Pohsib was bald with a very round head, big lips, a mustache, and eyes that had a light to them reminiscent of either the highest form of human liberation or the most desperate form of madness. He was four foot tall and did this burp-blink-tip-toe tick combination every fifteen to twenty clicks.
“Hey, Big Quint! What’s the difference between a baby and a salad?” Pohsib said. Quint hadn’t the slightest clue.
“Most people don’t get angry when you toss a salad!” said Pohsib, now sporting a wry smile. Everyone stared at the man as he made his way to the Eraser.
“Hello, Pohsib. The potato soup was delicious! Thank you! We didn’t eat it all though, for poor young Leslie turned into a bug and now lives in Carter’s brain,” Quint said.
Pohsib Werdna was the cook. He told shitty jokes as compulsively as he burped, blinked, and rocked up on tip-toes. Pohsib wore an eyepatch sometimes and Quint thought this might just be for effect—though the man did have several strange and rare ailments, so the eyepatch could be serving some medicinal purpose. Quint made a mental note to ask about the eyepatch when there weren’t so many shits on his shitlist. Quint loved Pohsib and went to him when he became baffled in the face of a problem. Quint also couldn’t stand him other times—he was confusing, to say the least, with moments of completely lucid wisdom coming upon him like a fit, then leaving as quickly as if nothing had ever happened.
“UHHH!” Pohsib burped as he looked down at the Eraser. He gave it a good long stare and then said, “Aw, Quint! You shouldn’t have! You darling! You bleached asshole eating mother-fucker!” He then picked up the Eraser and walked back into the kitchen with it tucked underneath his arm. Quint could hear him singing now. “Oh, Martha, be my heart, be my light in the dark! Oh, Martha you’re so fiiine, wanna eat yo apple piiiieee!”
Quint slowly made his way to the kitchen door, and the others, seeing what he was doing, followed suit. Quint opened the kitchen door, trying to be quiet, as the others looked over his shoulders at what was happening. Pohsib Werdna was singing his apple pie song while cutting up peeled apples on his new, black, reflective cutting board, the Eraser. Quint slowly retreated into the dining room with the others.
“Does he know? I mean … does he know that he won’t be affected by it? Is he fucking with us?” Fiona asked.
“We may never know. ‘Sib is either saving the universe right now or he really needed a new cutting board. For all we know he might get sucked in—or whatever it was that happened to Leslie. I think, however, regardless of his intentions, we’ve found ourselves a test subject—and a competent one. Pohsib has gotten me out of quite a few jams. Though I’m not entirely certain it was intentional when he did,” Quint said. “My gut tells me to trust him with it.” Quint slowly closed the kitchen door.
“That one is a mystery to me as well,” Putnam said, closing the door to the kitchen behind him. Fiona looked at Putnam as he spoke, but when he turned to look at her, she turned her head away.
She did this often when she was around Putnam. At this point, it seemed to Quint that she did it more out of habit because of her initial distrust of phase-shifters. Fiona was fond of Phildrious, and he adored her in his own reserved way—he was her teacher in the blade and they spent an awful lot of time together because of it. Fiona had become obsessed with her wéy, or sword art, since coming to the Manor House and discovering the curved blade in the armory. Her dynamic with Putnam was just hard to change after three years of resorting to it.
“So … how did that work? Getting out of Svargaloka, I mean. Was that a thrumming?” Fiona asked.
Quint moved toward the dining room table and took his seat, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “The process of getting out doesn’t actually involve the Inner Vibrations. Svargoloka is more dreamlike, even, than Dandelion itself, which runs very close to other potential realities. When you’re in Svargaloka, you … can access different realities,” Quint said, waving a hand, his brown knitting into a frown. They’d wasted enough time already. “That is essentially what the door is.”
Fiona chewed a fingernail then went and took her seat next to Carter. Carter and Leslie, Quint thought. That has to be strange for her. I wonder how much the two minds share. Quint looked from Pip to Fiona, to Putnam; they were exhausted—it was getting late: 32 of the ninth cycle on the great grandfather clock. Quint could feel the frying, crispy tension behind his eyes that preceded either intense fatigue or highly energetic madness. Maybe some sleep and then we will begin this business, Quint thought.
“We won’t be back for some time,” Quint said aloud, not realizing he’d spoken his thoughts until he saw the others looking at him. He pulled out six small jelly cylinders from his inside breast pocket. “‘Perfect-rest, it’s sleep at its best, turning thirty tiks into eight cycles since DG72,’” Quint quoted. “Those trader ads always make me feel a little sick, but what they’re pushin’ always makes me feel a little better!” He handed out the perfect-rest jellies. “At least you know what the product does from the get-go. We need to be rested and we need it to take the least amount of time so we will all have to take these before sleeping. Please meet in the common room thirty tiks after you wake up with a small bag of personal belongings—no fluff please—and whatever weapons of your choice from the armory, Fiona. We are packing for travel, but we need to pack light. Travel cloak, two changes of clothes, boots, maybe pen and paper? A book? Putnam, please pack more Sly Grass when you grab my belongings. Pohsib, I know you’re listening. Will you please pack us food that will keep and bring it to the common room in sixty tiks?”
“Fuck—UHHH—you,” Pohsib said from the kitchen in between belches.
“Ah, ever the charmer. Oh, and Phildrious, we will need my Endynas Worth,” Quint said.
Putnam gave the smallest glance to the book that sat on the table still. Necrolore and Merrilore. Phase-shifters and their superstitions, Quint thought.
“Yes, Master Quint. I’ll see you in sixty tiks.” And with that, the phase-shifter left the room through the kitchen door—Putnam’s chamber, like Quint’s office, was through a door in the Cleverly Named Hallway which lay on the other side of the kitchens. Fiona popped her perfect-rest gummy into her mouth and gave one to Carter who chewed his, then they both stood up and she escorted him out of the room into the hallway with their bed chambers.
Quint winked at Pip and they both took their perfect-rest as well and followed behind the others toward their rooms. “Goodnight Pip, hope your dreams are less of a trip than reality has been.” Pip purred and sent Quint an image of the red-cloaked figure. “I know … Leere. Why would someone be dressed as the beast though? Is it the Eraser you think?”
Pip sent something like: “Beats the pilgrim shit out of me.”
Quint laughed, thinking of the pilgrim shit that spilled out of Rakshasa’s backsides so long ago on the Plains of Petunia to the south. Escape oppression to oppress others. Serves ‘em right to shit water for a sixty mile stretch, Quint thought.
“If that … thing—whatever it was that did this to Carter—really did turn Leslie into a bug six months ago—“
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“It did. I saw, Quint,” Pip sent.
Quint raised his hands as if to say he was unarmed and came in peace.
“Alright, fine. But how did it get through the barrier? Only those who are approved by the house, the forest and Pohsib can get through.”
“Someone had to let it in. I don’t even want to think of that right now,” Pip sent.
“You think Leslie?” Quint asked.
“I … don’t know. He was acting very strange. We shall speak more on it later,” Pip sent, then left the dining room.
Leere …
It was so silly to be thinking about the mythological figure. He had many names … The Hate’s Seventh son, The Forgotten One, The Empty One, Void, Vanitas, Tomhet, Leegheid, Vuoto, Vazio—but most commonly, Leere. Whatever you called him, you just hoped it wasn’t ‘the guy standing next to me,’or ‘neighbor,’ or ‘the guy who turned my friend into a psychic parasite and made my other friend mentally handicapped.’ Quint shivered. Fairy stories. The Hate’s prophesies are nothing but fairy stories.
3
Fiona awoke after thirty tiks, along with Carter who immediately began babbling. Any respite from the reality she now lived in was quickly dispelled by that babbling. Fiona was always amazed at the effects of the perfect-rest; thirty tiks of sleep felt like eight cycles. Her first time using it had been with Carter when they were traveling on honeymoon. They had decided they wanted to go on a trip without the sesnickie, though they did have Pip Move them to the nearest town, Tissington, just outside the Shadow Wood. Carter had suggested they bring the perfect-rest along so they could travel faster. That was just under two years ago.
Carter … she thought, looking over at her babbling husband. They’d made it all the way to the cloud city where it was said the moon was bigger than anywhere else on Dandelion. They never went into the Cloud Tower, nor did they even get close. They’d gone far enough into the city to see its floating streets that were held up in the sky by some ancient thrumming, dangle their feet off the edge, and sit with each other. Fiona had said she was scared. He had smiled and she had put her head on his shoulder as they looked up at Dandelion’s gigantic moon. “Don’t look down,” he had said to her.
Don’t look down, she thought. It was exhausting, to try and mean it, knowing that she could not. She hadn’t looked down for a year with him, and then a bit longer after that, she had still not looked down. But he changed. He’d become totally consumed with the vibrations after that year of not looking down. After four months of not so much as a moment of eye contact or a brush of physical affection, Fiona had looked down. What she had seen was painful, but preferable to the husk she had been holding onto, sharing her time with.
She tried all the tricks to get out of the feelings, throwing herself into her sword art—or as Putnam called it, her ‘wéy.’ She’d tried the other six pillars of Ken-Phae besides wéy (or at least she thought she’d applied the other pillars. Putnam would probably have something to say about whether she’d applied any of the pillars of Ken-Phae to her problem), she’d sat in contemplation in the meditaz, she’d talked with Pohsib and he’d only told her a dead baby joke; she’d read books in the common room and the extended library on grieving and loss—then taken them all behind the lonely tree and burned them (she hadn’t told Quint about this last, who would surely have lost his shit. He was very cheap, after all). Nothing helped. Nothing made it go away or helped her swallow it and it seemed she was just going to have to carry this with her—feel it. Coming to that conclusion had brought with it the most desolate feeling of isolation and desperation. She was living with the death of her passion, too guilty to give it up now that he was handicapped.
There was no one else that could feel this with her the way that she did. No one would want to even hear it. They would think her cold and inconsiderate. They’d ask her why she couldn’t try at least. They’d say love was a choice. Maybe they would be right. Perhaps Carter would see how absent he had been during the time when he still had control of his brain, if they could just get the bug out.
She thought that maybe if she could cure him of the mantra scramble, he’d wake up and be … him again. Like it used to be. They used to laugh together in the field of stargazer lilies outside the Manor House. They would make fun of everyone else together. He was her best friend.
But what if he didn’t wake up? What if he was the same?
Well then … she told herself. Then you will be free to do as you please. But first you have to try.
She sniffed, then got up and began getting clothes out of a dresser, putting them into a small brown leather bag with a long strap. She opened the closet and saw her wedding dress hanging there with her other dresses.
She frowned at the white gown, then brought out first her traveling cloak, then Carter’s, both a dark forest green. She grabbed her brown thrummer’s belt which hung over the rod in the closet. Fiona loved her belt. Carter had given it to her for her birthday two years ago. He’d had a little sesnickie fang engraved right in front of the place where Fiona’s sword hung.
Fiona touched the engraving, then lifted the belt to her nose and inhaled. That watery, smokey smell filled her nostrils. It made her think of trees and hiking, of ropes stretched tight, of rivers babbling by and dead things coming back to life.
She lay the belt and the cloaks on the bed and grabbed some clothes off the floor. She buttoned up a white, long-sleeve shirt and tucked it into soft green pants. The pants she tucked into black leather boots that came halfway up to her knees, then she put her belt on, which she pulled tight around her waist. The belt made a pleasant creaking noise as she tightened it that reminded her of loose floorboards. There was something about the tightness that wound her up and gave her energy. It was almost like the tighter everything clung to her body, the better she was able to cling to life and the better she herself was held together. Putting on an outfit that fit well was like psychological armor.
Fiona threw her cloak over herself then set to helping Carter get dressed in the same color scheme that she wore, the main difference being the thrummer belt; Carter had no use for one any more. He was never too much of a difficulty for her, moving when she asked, helping when she directed him to pull a shirt off or pants up.
She put the cloak around him and went to the brown bag sitting by the dresser.
After putting a few candles, some paper, and two pens into the bag, she slung the strap of the bag over her left shoulder, letting the pouch rest on her right side just under the belt, touching her hip.
According to the clock on the wall, it had been forty-five tiks since Quint had dismissed them which meant she had fifteen tiks left.
“Come on,” she said to Carter gently, and they walked out of the room and into the hallway, Carter babbling all the way. Once out of their room, they turned right, walked through the dining room, then the kitchens. Fiona waved at Pohsib and gave a wary glance at the Eraser which had a block of cheese sitting atop it. They walked through the door on the other side of the kitchen into another hallway. There was a gold-plated sign hanging on the wall across from the kitchen door which read:
WELCOME TO:
The Cleverly Named Hallway
(Or ‘The Clever’ for short)
Beneath this sign were several notes stuck to the wall that said things like:
There’s a walking walrus in the ice cream room that may or may not be hostile.
The wooden room hasn’t had rain in too long and it is on fire, AVOID AT ALL COSTS!
Peep show room only available to those willing to allow consenting adults to look at other consenting adults naked.
This last was written by Quint and was aimed directly at Fiona. He was referring to when the peep show room was added—he and Leslie had gone to give it a peep. Fiona couldn’t stop herself and had run in after to berate them.
The doors in The Clever were sometimes portals to other places. In the peep show room for example, the door on this side was actually the bathroom door of a strip club in Harrentree about three-hundred miles away.
Fiona walked down the never-ending Cleverly Named Hallway, past the wooden doors with their gold-plated names until she came to one labeled ‘Armory.’ She opened the door and walked in. It was a large, wooden room with no windows. The wood floor had a certain buoyancy to it, though, for training purposes. The walls were decorated floor to ceiling with weaponry: swords in their sheaths, whetstones, transmogrifiers, cylindrical transmogrifier cartridges, disco freeze cans, axes, shields, staffs, body armor, knee pads, elbow pads, and a whole section of wall dedicated to phase masks.
No disco freeze. Low vibrations? No thanks, Fiona thought.
The phase-masks varied but one did stick out to her. This mask was the Leere mask, which looked like a goat’s skull with twisted horns coming down each side of the face. It gave Fiona the chills. This fairy tail thing … but the Necrolore and Merrilore was for children. Fiona had certainly enjoyed the book, but to believe this beast of legend had made her husband the way he was now … She moved her eyes to the weapons instead. Leave stories where they belong, in books.
She grabbed the sword she’d been using for two years—a curved, single-edge blade; Putnam called it a wéy-shin. The handguard was golden; the hilt and sheath were both black with golden sesnickies wrapping around them. She reverently pulled the blade out, looking at her eyes in the reflection of it, then slid it back in.
Twenty transmogrifier cartridges, and the transmogrifier itself, were all added to her stock, first by loading up her belt, then by dumping the rest in her sack. The transmogrifiers gave her the creeps when she touched their leathery grips. Made from Rakshasa flesh. It was still hard for her to believe the things existed. When she’d read about the creatures in books or Quint had told her of them, they had seemed more mythical beast than reality, like something from the Fisher King books she loved so much. Quint said it was right that the transmogrifiers were made, and it was good to support the Drakes who made them. After all, the Drakes had been enslaved by the Rakshasas two-thousand years ago when the Rakshasas had come to the planet.
Rakshasas continued to terrorize the Drakes at every turn, so the Drakes hunted them. Buying transmogrifiers supported the Drakes who kept Dandelion mostly safe from Rakshasas. Still … couldn’t they have put steel or cotton around the grip so they weren’t so skin-like?
She grabbed four phase masks on a whim: two Deva-tar-ta masks, one decrepit old beggar mask, and the Leere mask. She put these in her bag as they were quite flexible and flesh-like, then took Carter’s hand to guide him out of the armory.
They arrived in the common room with a few tiks to spare so Fiona grabbed a book at random off one of the shelves.
A beginner’s guide to the Sesnickie
By Peter H. Christencrombie
Quint walked into the common room followed by Putnam and Pip. Fiona absently put the book in her sack then closed it up tight using the two buckle straps attached to the top flap of the bag.
“Everyone ready? Alright then, here’s the plan,” Quint said. “Fiona? Me, you, and Carter will be Moving on Pip to the Endynas Valley—that is, as far as we can travel by way of sesnickie and Moving. The entire area around the Tower Of Tones for three miles has a thrumming—or should I say, thrummings—that make Moving in and out of that radius impossible. We will walk through the Endynas Valley, through the Forever Forest, and—hopefully—into the Tower of Tones.”