It was like we were leaping out of our bodies, only to jump right back into them. We came in fast. All three of us were lifted from a lying position to an upright one, gasping at the suddenness of our arrival. Looking over, I noticed Tasha had brought the axe back with her.

‘Ah, you’re back,’said Chief Dan. He had been sitting with us.

‘Yeah,’ we replied. All of us feeling a little uneasy.

‘Let me get the nurse, and we’ll look you over and unhook you from these beds,’ the Chief said, getting up to find the nurse.

I looked down. There was an intravenous needle in my wrist and a heart monitor on my finger. An oxygen tube ran down from my nose, and the good old catheter was there too. We were all hooked up in the same way.

Once we were unhooked, wobbly at first, we made our way into the main room of the big house where we were greeted by the smell of cooking. As soon as I smelled it I was hungry.

‘Only broth and crackers for now,’ Chief Dan says. ‘You have to break fast’.

We sat down, and all three of us took to the soup like we had never eaten before. They let us have as much as we wanted, and as we ate, the other Chiefs wandered in and sat down with us.

They got the basics out of us, but not the specifics. We were too tired. Not our bodies; our minds. Our minds had been racing for days. We were still in that amped up survival space while we ate, but we came down very quickly, and when we returned to the normal pace, we were exhausted. We couldn’t think.

The Chiefs told us to sleep until we felt rested and we’d talk later. We did sleep. I slept for twelve hours, Tasha for thirteen, and Raven who was still in pretty rough shape, fifteen. The whole time we slept, the Chiefs waited in the Big House. Tara was there too when we woke up.

We explained everything just as it happened. We all had our own story, and the Chief’s wanted to hear each one of them. They wanted to know each of our interpretations on many of the events we experienced together. They also wanted to know what I did before I met Tasha and Raven in the Borderland, and what they did before I arrived. They were curious about time in the Borderland, especially because Raven and Tasha felt they had been in there for years before I went in and found them.

‘Once you forget your past, there is no time,’ Tara explained. ‘Then it’s over. You just exist in the Borderland. Raven and Tasha, both of you were close to being in that lost time when Ethan found you. Engagement in that world was at the expense of your memories. Ethan, you've been affected too. Both of these two worlds now live within you. If you can control these sides of yourselves, you will become ferocious fighters. You will have the killer instinct gained from the Borderland. If you can’t control your two worlds, you will become Mark-Steppers. Tasha, I worry about you the most. Who are you? How do you come to hold the axe?

‘Me,’ Tasha says. ‘I don’t know’.

‘I don’t either,’ Tara shot back, ‘and that never happens with me. Ever! Does it Ethan’?

‘Not that I remember,’ I replied.

‘Where do you come from? Tara asked.

‘Nelson, BC,’ Tasha replied, unsure if that was the answer Tara was looking for.

I have to say, Tasha was looking genuinely confused by Tara’s questions. Having hung out with her, I know she never thought herself to be someone different or special. That’s why we got along with her so well. She was just one of the gang.

Tara looked her over. She was being very introspective, looking at Tasha from one side, and then tilting her head and looking at her from the other. It reminded me of the picture of the old and young lady where you can only see one of them at a time. It looked like Tara was trying to see the two sides of Tasha.

‘We’ll see,’ Tara finally pronounced.

The Chiefs and Tara then held a private meeting in the Big House. We were not allowed to leave. Raven, Tasha and I sat at a table sipping coffee, while they talked. When they came back, they told us to go about our business and say nothing of what happened.

‘Well, what are we going to do?’ I asked.

‘We,’ Chief Dan says, pointing at Chief Bill and Jim, ‘and Raven will examine the burial site and cave. Then we will decide what to do’.

‘Those bodies we found weren’t your people,’ I said.

‘We will honor the dead,’ Chief Dan replied. ‘Now go home. Once we know more, we will tell you. Remember. We keep this to ourselves’.

‘Oh, you’re back,’ Leita said to me when I got back to our cabin. ‘How are you feeling? I was a little surprised when Chief Dan told me you went off on another excursion with Raven and Tasha. I didn’t think you had it in you. My big adventurer, running around in the wilds. It’s kind of sexy’.

‘Well, we left some stuff behind, and had to go back and get it.’ That was the truth, but kind of a lie at the same time too. I decided on my walk over, it was best not to tell Leita what was going on and keep the secret as the Chief’s told us to do. The main thing was, I didn’t want to bugger up her quest. I knew how much it meant to her, and the only way to let her complete it was to exclude her from my quest. Keep her out of my drama. I felt terrible just the same. Lying to Leita was something I promised I’d never do.

‘Well, I hope you’re here to stay. We haven’t been connecting much lately. Doc’s letting me work in the field now, as well with the meditations.

‘I thought you were always working the field’?

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‘I was, but now he’s letting me take the lead with a few people. He sits back and observes, and then we talk about how I handled things afterwards. It’s working out well’.

‘Nice! You’re a team’.

‘Yeah,’ Leita replied, liking the sound of that. ‘We are a team’.

‘I’m glad you’re getting something out of the quest,’ I said.

‘I am,’ Leita replied. ‘Something about this place just feels right. I’m so glad we’re here’.

Now that Tara was out in the open, she was willing to talk to me more often, but I think she found me kind of a pain in the ass just the same, due to the fact she’s a God, and anything Godlike I had about me, I left behind when I entered the quest. Sometimes we had good talks though. One day we were sitting behind the canteen smoking a joint and I said to her, ‘Have you figured out who Tasha is yet?’

‘I have my suspicions.’ she replied.

‘Oh yeah? Who?’

‘The Woman of the Apocalypse’.

‘Who’?

‘The Woman of the Apocalypse,’ Tara replied. ‘She’s the mother of humanity. She flew down to earth on the wings of an eagle and hid after God rescued her baby from the Dragon Satan. When Satan was cast down to earth, he tried to kill her, but failed. She remains hidden on earth. Maybe until now. Maybe she’s just like Grendel’s mother, and showing up now to protect her babies when they need her most’.

‘Who are her babies’?

‘All of God’s children,’ Tasha replied. ‘And possibly 12 very special ones. I’ve always wondered what those 12 stars are all about’.

‘Just tell me who she is,’ I said, not following her at all.

‘She’s a figure from your bible. Revelations 12: The Woman, the Dragon and the Child. ‘Now a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars’. As I said, she comes to earth right around the same time Satan is cast down to earth’.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, with a laugh. ‘First of all, Tasha’s kind of a dumbass, and second she’s given no indication she’s anything special. I can tell. I’m around her every day. There’s no way she’s anything special, except maybe extra hormonal’.

‘That’s how it is when we come to earth,’ Tara replied, being a God herself. ‘We have to grow into our experience, and when our purpose is revealed, we come to understand who we are and what we have to do. You thought when you first approached me, I remembered you. Well I didn’t. You and I are billions of lifetimes away from our last encounter. I had to think long and hard before I remembered who you were.

‘I don’t think Tasha knows who she is yet,’ Tara continued, ‘and I still don’t know for sure she is the Woman of the Apocalypse, but whoever she is, it looks like she’s here to kick some ass, and it’s possible she brought some help with those 12 stars from heaven’.

You know, this is exactly the kind of quest simulation I’d expect from AI. Just a bunch of cut and paste from the internet. You have to know, AI has no imagination. When it comes up with a quest, particularly an unspecified quest, all it’s doing is referencing data from the internet and creating something from that. So it came across a chapter in Revelations, and decided it would make a good adventure. I guess Tasha could be the Woman of the Apocalypse.

The Chiefs and Raven have finally returned from their investigation. They first stopped where we found the bodies of the sunken ship. They dug up every body, wrapped it in blankets, buried it and sanctified the ground of the site. It took them three days. They buried 23 bodies.

When they arrived at the cave, they didn’t see any evidence of the fight we, or should I say, Tasha, Raven and Jack had with the Mark-Steppers and the Griffin. All they found was the carcass of the dead mother Sasquatch and Raven showed them a little makeshift grave where he and Tasha placed Jack before setting off to find me and the other hikers. The Chiefs dug up Jack, wrapped him in blankets, and with ceremony, placed him in the cave so his spirit would guard against the evil that lived within.

The Chiefs spent considerable time examining the cave and where the fighting took place. They paid particular attention to where Jack struck down the Mother Sasquatch. They examined where the axe had been lodged into the Sasquatch’s spine. They were able to identify the strike placed by Jack, but not the strike by Tasha when we escaped the Borderland. Tasha struck from the other side of reality. They said no signs of a fissure was reassuring, and believed the seal between the two worlds had not been seriously damaged, and had healed.

Chief Bill stayed to guard the cave. This left me thinking the Chief’s weren’t completely confident everything was fine. You don’t leave a Chief out in the wilderness without good reason. That’s what I figure.

‘Go on with your lives,’ they said. ‘If there’s any trouble, Bill will deal with it’.

‘Yeah, but Bill doesn’t have Jack’s axe,’ I pointed out.

They looked at me like they were trying to decide how much I needed to know about the world they lived in. In the end they said, ‘Bill will be alright’.

So that’s it. Tasha, Raven and I are keeping our secrets and aside from that, things are returning to normal. We’re starting to turn our focus towards the festival. In spite of everything going on with the Sasquatch, the Chiefs encouraged us to go ahead with it. Perhaps as a distraction.

We kind of had to convince Kate to do most of the planning and organizing for us. How we did this was by doing nothing, and when she found out we were doing nothing, she started freaking out about how there will be health inspectors there and how we are generally fucking up. Our plan worked, and now Kate’s looking after everything; the ticket sales and making sure the million different things needed to get done are getting done in time. She has lots of money to work with. So far, we’ve brought in five hundred grand. That’s 10,000 festival goers.

The band sucks, by the way. We kind of fell apart, if you want to know the truth. They all wanted to play something other than Stairway to Heaven, and I thought that was the first song we should get under our belt, seeing as I already knew some of it.

‘Why don’t we learn something everyone can sing and dance to, like a Credence song,’ they say.

‘Because, if we do,’ I said. ‘We automatically become a cover band. That’s why’.

‘What?’ they all say. ‘You don’t like Fogerty’?

‘Let me tell you something about John Fogerty,’ I say. ‘We all went to his concert not three months ago and what happened? You can’t even hear him because everyone knows every song, and every fan has to sing it.

‘And who was it who thought they could sing every single song better and louder than Fogerty himself?’ I asked, and the boys all turned away and didn’t argue because they knew what was coming.

‘The woman sitting right behind us,’ I said. ‘That’s who’.

No, let me tell you, I get a bad taste in my mouth when you start talking about playing Fogerty songs. Besides, we’re headlining a mostly electronic festival. We need to be singing something a little more current than ‘Proud Mary’, although that song rocks. I think we have to be more indie/techno. Lots of synth. Lots of beat.

Anyway, this is where we left things. Bubba wanders back and picks up the acoustic on occasion, and Raven who already knows how to play about a million instruments sometimes goes back and jams with him. The rest of us have kind of lost interest, due to the fact we suck, no-one wants to practice, and the creative differences I just mentioned. The truth is, I don’t think we’re going to make it as a band in time for the festival, but I still plan to get up and rip some Zeppelin for my fans.