"In this chapter, we establish how everyone at Leidenfrost Manor is spending their time. Then, after Gabriel mentions that the phones have stopped working, news from outside arrives in the form of Agent Saint and her team. The world beyond is on the brink of an apocalypse, as a multitude of unchecked monsters begin their rampage and revenge.
As to Silverbell, Agent Saint recognizes her and is surprised to see her, because she had already helped her return home. Since it never happened, Agent Saint suspects that the veil between worlds is weakening.
Penelope and Persephone follow strange music into the mists between worlds. Cory sees them do so and tells me and I rush after them. I manage to find them in the Golden City, where masked revelers are celebrating the arrival of the Hooded God. We learn that the god will release everyone from life upon arrival, and could arrive at any moment. The city is like a shifting maze, with staircases that defy gravity and buildings of impossible geometry.
Just when we realize we cannot escape, Silverbell finds us and leads us along an unseen alleyway, back to our own world, just as the celebrations of the city become as agonized screams of terror that then fall silent."
I wrote in my notes. I had started to compile a volume of the things I had seen and done. I did not yet know my role in all things, nor how much of a story there would be by the end, but I did know it had reached a point where I could see I did indeed have a role in a much larger story. I thought it was over, and had no idea it had only just begun.
It is true that those things happened, but my indulgence of words has grown significantly over the span of time I have seen since those days. And as before, I shall compose it as an adventure, an episode, in the style of my thoughts and perceptions of those days, except it is about this time that I became aware of my daughter's abilities, and so there is more to this chapter than perhaps there would be if I had written it then. I shall now, from hindsight, tell the full story, and know in my words what she knew, at least as it pertains to the Hooded God and the events of the Golden City that we participated in, merely by our intrusion.
First of all, consider that this might be too horrifying of a perspective, and that you already know the important parts of the chapter. Secondly, consider I shall again visit the preliminary stages of my daughter's developments in magical abilities in further chapters. Finally, consider that in this one episode, I have cheated and told the story from my own concepts that I have now, and not with the mystery that shrouded my perceptions on that day or even as I reflected and wrote about what had happened.
Everyone in Leidenfrost Manor was living quietly and knowingly that all our peace and tranquility was each moment a blessing. Instead of boredom, there was a kind of absorbing of the atmosphere of orderliness.
We spent our time gardening and husbanding wild chickens we'd caught. We build a corral and managed to lure sheep and cows and pigs into it, building pens and learning how to care for them. The woods were full of stray farm animals, and danger. I thought I saw an ettercap, and mentioned it to Silverbell, who said again:
"White Nettle, this is revenge." And she'd spit, a glistening and oddly bitter smelling droplet that was sticky and would become like an amber. These she hung around the windowsills on spider's threads she would politely harvest for her uses. She had assured me that the spiders in the manor were under her spells and would never scare anyone, let alone bite. In exchange, they were promised nobody would harm them when they were discovered, nor wipe away their hidden nests.
Dr. Leidenfrost was our leader, administered to everyone's requisitions and in exchange we had an economy of freely exchanged favors, everyone contributing their handy skills and talents to our common comfort and security. She often told me I was her inspiration or asked me for advice or just confided her insecurities to me. As her spouse, I was her singular support, except when she picked on Isidore. Anyway, our family flourished and we also had a village, and that flourished too.
Gabriel and Clide Brown were the only ones who really got out and saw the collapse first-hand. The rest of us stayed near the house and grounds. We farmed and crafted and just lived our lives in peace.
Gabriel reported to us what they had seen, but it was often the lack of information that conveyed the most impression that I had, that there was nothing out there. There were no more phones at some point, but there's no sense in correlating that with the arrival of Agent Saint's party. They had promised they would come, but we had lost contact with them much earlier. I think the point was that they couldn't call us and tell us they were coming, but even before there were no phones there was no phone service. Slightly different problems.
It was easy to lose contact when there was no phone service, no signal. You couldn't just dial someone's number, you needed a switchboard. For a while there were smaller phone companies, scavenged from the wreckage of civilization. What I really should say is that the months, the years, had passed the last of such attempts at rebuilding a civilized society.
Agent Saint had my brother and nephew and Detective Winters with her. It was a very joyful reunion, as I had not seen any of them in a long time. They had many adventures and assured us they had come from the same world I had, and thus Agent Saint's reaction to Silverbell is so significant:
"I am surprised you are not in Fairy Land" Agent Saint told her.
"White Nettle destroyed the spokes of the wheel of worlds. You know this is all there is, and think, where you come in, that is where White Nettle took me key, dressed in your eyes. It is her glamor, that you thought she was Silverbell. But I am me, right here. And you should see what she has done to my home. Ettercaps everywhere! It is an atrocity!"
"And that is what I learned, along the way. So, it is true. My abilities, they have faded somewhat." Agent Saint told us.
"Why is that?" Dr. Leidenfrost asked her teasingly. My wife was aware of Agent Saint's virginity, and that it was apportioned to her ability of prophecy.
"I bathed in the House of Jher. I assure you it was not my first choice for resolving that adventure!" Agent Saint blushed.
We had no idea what she meant, and I'll tell you later what we learned when she explained it to us. It was not as erotic as it sounds, but never-the-less Agent Saint felt tainted by the whole experience right to her very soul and it affected her confidence in her ability to have visions of the future. Mostly, because she had learned the secret of how visions were born.
I was hoeing a patch to plant carrots, beets and potatoes when Cory came and landed on the scarecrow in the tall wheat near me, behind the oak fence. He squawked in alarm, and I stood up, he had my attention.
"What is it?"
"My Daughters have followed piping into the mists lingering!" Cory said clearly. I had no idea what he had just said.
"Are you talking about Persephone and Penelope?" I asked "In danger?"
"Follow me, my Lord!" Cory flew off as a crow flies and I had to scramble over fences and traverse wheat to get to his mist and piping.
Indeed, a sweet bagpipe sound was emanating from the mist and the stuff was like a thick white smoke, and I could see nothing in it.
"What is this?" I asked Cory.
"My Lord will need a staff, pouch and wife-stone of sorcery, as he has with a word he knows." Cory glanced at me.
"I only need my friend." I held my arm for my crow.
"Then take the kit for his sake." Cory flitted to my arm and looked me in my eye, causing me to flinch at the dark depths of his soul. I could see the specter of death reflected behind me, and recalled well not to look him in his beady little eye when he tilted his gaze at me so.
"Esc." I charmed my kit to my person. After a moment my staff, with its runic carvings like wormed bark, my flax pouch full of cantrips, the emerald of Circe around my neck, all began to feel real again, instead of away from me. The relics were real, but their otherworldly properties left them in dreams, unless I called them to awaken in my hands.
"My Lord knows a very clever spell." Cory complimented.
"It's nothing compared to someone who can craft such as this." I held up Circe's emerald. "I'm an amateur."
"I think my Lord is past amateur, even if he must learn much before becoming skilled in magic." Cory judged me. "I've seen my Lord cast spells with proper effect on a number of occasions. What happens when an amateur casts spells?"
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"Well, I suppose I could have gotten it wrong. I did that much more often than got it right." I realized. "These are mine, though, it feels right to have them by my side."
"So it is." Cory agreed.
We walked into the mist, stalling no longer. I did feel a sense of urgency that I am not mentioning in contrast to our conversation and preparations. There was also a current of underlying terror, for ourselves, despite my valiance at going in there to rescue my daughters, I admit I hesitated, so great was my fear of that unknown mist and the uncertainty that they could even be rescued at all.
I actually ignored those feelings, in favor of a confused and distracted focus on the precise thing at-hand. That-is, until we stepped into that musical white fog.
We walked right through it, like a curtain, and it was gone. We were alone in a crowd of masked revelers. They wore many costumes, mostly with huge frilled collars and masquerade-styled domino masks, most of them grotesque and bejeweled. The crowds were dancing and partying like puppets, repeating their motions endlessly and without meaning.
We moved among them, and I looked around at the adobe buildings, adorned in paper lights and lit by strange stars and a sky that looked too low somehow. The shifting sands around the city formed strange pillars, swirling like dust devils in one place.
Around them, the buildings shifted and twisted as though contorted through a lense. Cory said that when he looked away and looked again they would shift. With Circe's emerald I needed not look away for the effect to transpire. I watched as the streets and alleys and facades shifted places as though mere illusions, their colors bleeding and shimmering into position past each other, trading places almost instantly. It happened in the blink of an eye, and I could see how it watched the eyes of everyone, with a thousand eyes of its own. A spell with eyes, I was fascinated.
When nobody was looking, it would change any section of the city that was unobserved. In this way, there was no escape from the ever-shifting maze. Everyone who was in the city could not escape. I saw through the magic to its roots, that somehow all of this was happening in one single instant, the spark of an even greater magic.
I could not see what it was, I was somehow repelled from looking at the source of the enchantment. I felt it in my soul, somehow depleting me just for looking at it. And I couldn't see it anyway, so I looked away. I exhausted the emerald of Circe, concealing myself from its gaze as it looked back at me, and saw only a humble reveler, no different than the others. At least I hoped that is all it saw.
"What is this place, my Lord?" Cory clicked in Corvin.
"It is the clutches of something that is - keeping it this way." I described what I had seen, as best as I understood it.
"What have we here?" Cory asked a reveler in a crow mask. To my astonishment she responded to him, saying:
"I am unpaired, or I was. Would sir dance with me, and be my match in the festivities?" She asked.
"Could you help me find two missing girls? They are like me and have no mask." I said to her.
"I am Ysildra. Dance with me, play with me, there is no time to waste before the Hooded God releases us all from life. We are to rejoice!" Ysildra tried to embrace me but our bodies were like smoke mixing, untouched by the other.
"We're not quite here yet." I sighed in relief. "Maybe they aren't either. Maybe we can escape."
"My love, what are you?" Ysildra looked perplexed and disturbed. She took off her mask, her eyes watering. "You're not for me, are you?"
"I'm sorry, but I am not for you. Could you help me anyway?" I asked.
"I still love you. I will try to help." Ysildra promised. She seemed to be struggling to break free from her position, and after she walked away, shifted blurrily back to where she was and tried again, then she was walking beside us.
"We must, to the chapel, away. They might baptize you before the image of the Hooded God." Ysildra told me. She tried to take my arm, but her hand passed through my elbow and I saw this frightened her and hurt her feelings, for it struck a tear from her.
"I can't do that. I've got to find my girls." I told her.
"See that?" Ysildra pointed to something. I gazed but saw nothing.
"What are we looking at?"
"It is like a princess with wings and glowing and tiny. She flits from place to place, obeying the corners and not the passages. She knows her way, hard to spot her." Ysildra told me.
"Does she see us?" I asked.
"I don't think so, we are in the shadows, my lover, and how we sit still amid the chaos." Ysildra gazed at me with broken longing, like she had waited a thousand lifetimes for me and only to be denied. Perhaps she had.
"How can we get her attention?" I asked.
"There is something about you than makes you, unseeable." Ysildra told me.
"Then how do you see me?" I asked her.
"I do not." Ysildra said, tears running across her cheeks as she painfully confessed. "I only feel you, and how it feels, I know you by that sensation. And how I hear you, for I bow to your will, my love." Ysildra knelt.
I took off the emerald. "Now you should see and hear me."
"I do. And even more beautiful." Ysildra told me. "And to feel the touch of the Hooded God will be an even sweeter desire, as soon as the stars swing round and round again, to the beginning of the song, endlessly repeated."
"Yeah, we are trying to get out of here before that happens." I said.
"Leave the Golden City?" Ysildra looked confused and almost like she would laugh, it was absurd to her. She stood and danced a little, unable to hold still for very long.
"Lord!" Silverbell flew up to us.
"I'm glad to see you, Sylvia. I can't solve this maze." I told her.
"It is easy. You follow me now." Silverbell told me. We followed her, Ysildra in tow and located the girls.
Oddly enough, I sometimes remember finding the girls and then meeting up with Silverbell. Sometimes we met Ysildra only as we left. There were times I recall finding our skeletal remains on the streets of the dead city, the only ones without party hats. Part of the magic was a timelessness, a lack of sequence, the rules of time and space meaning only the whim of the Hooded God, dreaming in madness of a conquered city he couldn't touch, trapped forever.
The girls were fascinated, and with her eyes glowing my daughter Penelope spoke to me saying:
"Father, this is the sum of all those dreams I had of your adventures." Penelope told me, with her left eye glowing purple and her right eye glowing gold. Her voice sounded too old for my little girl, and I realized she was not as I had last seen her. She and her sister had wandered the aeons, and their minds were only intact through their respective natures.
I considered that death had already tasted Persephone. Persephone lived with the blessing of a powerful goddess, her life belonging to a living energy that had sworn her into existence. Whatever happened to her had to become a part of that charmed reality, obeying the narrative of the goddess. Wandering an enchanted maze was not dangerous for her, merely satisfying the curious compulsion of her patron.
Penelope was far more complicated. She was born with the capacity of her mother for intelligence and logic and my ability to cultivate magic and the secrets of our old world. This adventure had demonstrated what she was capable of. She had harnessed the magical energy she had needed to shield herself and her sister, by instinct. Even with that commendable achievement, she had activated the depths of her soul to reinforce her sorcery. Her oldest and wisest part had risen from her timeless self and kept her safe from the endless darkness, the shifting sands, the realm of the Hooded God.
We reached the center of the maze, its exit. The white fog was like a bubbling gruel on the surface of a sloped building. Colored smoke issued from its chimney. Cory flew through it, clicking for us to follow quickly.
Persephone knew the sound of the crow when he did that and ran after him. Penelope looked at me and I saw the oldness in her eyes fading, her scowl leaving and her normal face returning. Then she followed her older sister through. Silverbell left me there.
I looked at Ysildra. "Thank you."
"I would come with you if I could." Ysildra hid her emotions. She trembled. She knew I was leaving and instead of throwing herself at me, she tried to make it a sweet goodbye.
"You'd be welcome. I appreciate your friendship. I'm not sure we would have made it through this without you."
"Yes. You're welcome. Just go, I think. Please." Ysildra's eyes were watering, but she refused to blink and cry, she was holding back her heartbreak. "I had to love you. I'm glad you were worth me being the wheel of this city. You know, like a third wheel, but out of everyone."
"I don't see why. You're so beautiful, and you've proven to be the kind of person anyone would want for a friend." I told her honestly. I knew she'd live in hell, so it was the least I could leave her with.
"Would you have kissed me goodbye, if we could touch?" Ysildra asked me. I thought about it and nodded.
"Sure, I would. My wife would actually be disappointed if I told her this day ended with me refusing to kiss you at the end on account of her. She's very romantic."
"Then, tell her to receive my kiss, on my behalf." Ysildra said, her voice sounding a little high, and then she started crying and turned and fled.
I was free to go, so I did.
"The stars are weird, in that place." Penelope told me when we were home. She sounded normal again. I forgot the sorceress who had resided in her, protecting her. She was no different, yet somehow changed. It was because she knew, or thought she knew, what she was capable of.
"Don't go into places like that." I admonished her.
"Why not, it's what you do!" Penelope protested. I'd never seen her tween before and I was a little startled. Then she frowned and apologized. "I'm sorry, Dad. I heard the music. It sounded alright."
"It's fine." I shrugged. I'd realized she was just as scared as I was that we'd never escape.
I went and found Silverbell where she was drawing a map of the city in some spilled sugar.
"What can I help you with?" Silverbell asked me.
"I wanted to thank you for coming in after us." I said. "And saving us."
"I made that look easy, I bet." Silverbell kept playing with the sugar. She stopped and looked at me. "The Hooded God wanted you there."
"Why is that?"
"I think it was personal." Silverbell told me. "See this?"
I looked at the sugar. I saw nothing but an elaborate maze.
"No, what am I supposed to be seeing?" I asked.
"It is a pattern. I recognized it right away. That's how I made that rescue look easy. It is hard to explain." Silverbell told me.
"Give me a try." I said.
"Well, when White Nettle took Fairy Land, it was the maneuver of an opportunist. This is because the four pillars that compose the world are gone. It's like when Mum brings out the projector and slide show. Slides atop each other, like worlds, smeared into one world. Hmmm, maybe I am not explaining it right?"
"I get it. The pillars kept the world layers separate. They're gone and the worlds are as one world, self-collapsed." I said.
"Sort of." Silverbell frowned. "Anyway, the point is that something else is like that here. With no place to go, this Hooded God needs to be known, to exist. It is in their collective consciousness, the fabric of their world. The Hooded God is nowhere else, this pattern, it is its mind, do you see how the streets form the canals of dreaming?"
"I don't see that. It is something you are familiar with that I've never heard of." I said.
"Well, nevermind that. Think - is there anyone who you would forget, who cannot die, who exists between worlds, outside of time, as a mere thought, a dream?" Silverbell asked.
I realized she was talking about Aureus and I thought about anything else and said: "Nope."
"That's good. Let us then leave this pattern as so much spilled sugar, and forget what it spells out. All for the better." Silverbell scattered the sugar by swirling her wings.