by Jaxon Reed
Which, she thought, was an appropriate tailoring metaphor.
Their attitude bordered on arrogance, but that word did not really do the Texans justice. It was more . . . supreme confidence. As if each Texan knew that if they had to fight a multi-front war and take on two world powers at the same time, they could do it. Again.
A country like that could send men to the moon, if they wanted to. In fact, their President recently announced that goal would be accomplished by the end of the decade.
Supreme confidence. Yes that was the term for it, she decided.
The supremely confident Texan smiled at her as she approached him.
“May I help you?”
“I’m here to see Louie.”
Her face fell.
She said, “Louie is not available, I’m afraid. His son Nathaniel runs the shop now. He has for the last several years. Nobody has asked for Louie since . . . well, since I’ve worked here anyway. Nathaniel handles everything.”
The Texan nodded, as if he knew this.
“Louie is here, though. He’s in the back talking with Nathaniel. Let him know an old friend is out front waiting for him, please.”
This flustered the receptionist.
“I . . . If he is here, he must have come in through the back, I did not see . . .”
“He’s here.”
The man turned to inspect some mannequins wearing the latest suits, as if fully confident she would do what he asked her to do.
So of course, she did it.
At the very least, going into the back for a moment would humor the fellow she thought while heading that way.
Much to her surprise, the Texan was correct. In the back room, Louie sat in a chair speaking with his son. Both men looked at her when she walked in.
“Oh! Mr. Friedman, you are here. There’s a man out front asking to see you. I tried to tell him Mr. Frie— you’re son runs the store now, but he insisted on seeing you. I didn’t even know you were back here.”
Louie and his son exchanged glances.
The older man grabbed his cane and rose stiffly from the chair, his joints protesting their age.
“Well, then. Let us go see what this is all about, shall we?”
He walked into the front of the shop followed by the other two.
The man studying the mannequins turned and smiled.
Louie said, “Mr. Strickland!”
“Hello, Louie. Crazy what passes for a suit these days, huh? But hey, it’s the Sixties. It only gets stranger from here on out. The Seventies are worse, in my opinion. Horrible leisure suits, vinyl and bell-bottoms. Ugh. Is this your son? Hi, I’m Rick Strickland, an old friend of your dad’s.”
-+-
An hour later, Rick finished his tale. The receptionist had been sent home and the shop closed for the day as Rick caught up the old tailor and his son on what had transpired so many years ago.
“I remember reading about the bombing of Le Grand Menhir Brisé,” Nathaniel said, sipping on a fresh cup of tea. “The French are still miffed at the Texans for it.”
“It wasn’t their fault,” Rick said. “The fae cast spells, releasing the bombs by magic. It was all in an effort to disrupt us, to thwart our rescue attempt. The planes showing up when they did was bad timing, that’s all.”
Nathaniel nodded. He said, “Yeah. For everyone else it remains a mystery, like the Angels of Mons in the first war. Nobody can really explain what happened there, either. But your version makes sense.”
Louie looked at his son and sought to bring the conversation back to the matter at hand.
“So, the coffin . . . the container holding your friend . . . it is due to reappear at the menhir soon?”
Louie had aged considerably in the years since the war. That was well over a decade ago, and the man approached 80 now.
Whereas before he looked like a Jewish Ben Franklin, Rick thought, now he looked like a . . . much older Ben Franklin. The wisps of hair lining his scalp were all white, the wrinkles on his face much more pronounced.
“That’s right,” Rick said. “The last time, 85 fae showed up. We’d like to have some help this time, and reduce their numbers even more. It would be nice if we could wipe them all out.”
Nathaniel rubbed his nose and glanced at his father.
“Dad, we can’t do this. You have told me time and again how bad the Fae of Eden was. And there’s 85 of them now? They’re just like him, maybe worse?”
Rick said, “Well, truthfully we don’t know how many will show up this time. Maybe more, maybe less. We killed a lot of them. But not all of them. That’s where your help comes in.”
“Yes, but what you described them doing to you and your friends . . .”
Nathaniel sat back in his chair, his tea forgotten for a moment.
He said, “I believe that you are an immortal, resurrected person. You’re here, and you were with Dad a short while ago in your personal timeline even though it’s been more than a decade for him. I can accept all that. But, if we take on the fae with you . . . well, none of our guys are immortal.”
“That is an issue,” Rick said nodding. “But we’ve got ways around it. I helped fight one back in my first life, too. And, just as things were getting hairy, I was whisked away to safety. I found myself back at Headquarters, safe and sound until the fighting was over. Likewise, our friend in the French Resistance was taken away before the bombs started raining down that day. I think we can provide safeguards for your people, too.”
Father and son traded glances again.
Louie said, “I don’t see how we can refuse the man who killed the Fae of Eden for us, son.”
Nathaniel nodded, if somewhat reluctantly.
Louie looked back at Rick and his old eyes lit up with a youthful passion.
He said, “We’ll help you, Mr. Strickland. Our organization is the oldest of its kind in the world. Even though you took out our archenemy at the start of the war, we still exist. Fathers pass down secrets of the fae to their sons in each generation. And our members will be more than happy for the chance to fight an army of fae appearing in our world, even if only for a few moments.”
He smiled, and the wrinkles on his face moved up with the motion.
He said, “We’ll help you kill as many fae as we can.”
-+-
A woman knocked on the door of an apartment in Paris. How she got past the locked entrance on the street, if anyone bothered to wonder, was a mystery.
But she was here now, knocking.
A little girl answered the door, opening it wide and staring up at her.
“Bonjour. What’s your name?”
“My name is Nancy.”
The little girl’s eyes grew big.
“My name is Nancy, too!”
“I know! You were named after me.”
“I was?”
“You were. Go find your father and tell him I’m here.”
Little Nancy abruptly slammed the door in her namesake’s face.
The older woman smiled and waited patiently.
A moment later, the door opened again and Pierre stared at her in shock.
“Nancy! It is you!”
“May I come inside? We need to talk.”
-+-
A couple hours later, the girls were asleep in their beds and Cait assured Nancy no one was eavesdropping. The story she had to tell was not something she wished anyone to overhear, particularly little girls.
Pierre listened intently.
When she finished he said, “So, they have your friend?”
“Yes, Pierre. That is what happened the night the Texans bombed the monolith. Which wasn’t their fault, by the way.”
“Forgive me for being skeptical,” Sherri interrupted. “But, how do we know any of what you’ve told us is true?”
“Sherri!” Pierre said, looking shocked. “How can you say that? She hasn’t aged a day since I saw her last.”
Sherri smiled and said, “That proves nothing, I wan
t to see something definitive. If you are who you say you are, prove it.”
“Sherri!”
“No, she’s right, Pierre. If I were in her shoes, I’d be skeptical too. Cait? Open a door home.”
A vertical sliver of blue-green light appeared in the kitchen, growing wider.
Sherri’s eyes stared in wonder as a room filled with wildflowers appeared before her eyes, with sunlight streaming into the kitchen.
Nancy pushed her chair back.
She said, “Well, come on. You can’t ask for proof and not experience it. I’ll show you the Wildflower Room.”
She walked through the dimensional doorway and turned around, making a beckoning motion.
Sherri stood up and hesitantly walked forward. She put a tentative foot inside the door, then stepped all the way through.
Pierre hurried after her.
Inside, they looked around in astonishment.
Nancy said, “The room is just a moment in time, in a field full of wildflowers. They change, depending on the alternates we’re using, although daisies are the default. Since we’ve been jumping to a wide variety of worlds lately, I think Cait is just leaving it on daisies.”
She walked down the path a bit, then out in the open field.
“Come along. I’ll let you touch the wall and you’ll better understand how it’s not really a pasture, it’s just a room. A very special room, capturing a moment in time, but still only a room.”
Dumbfounded, the couple followed her off the path and into the daisies.
-+-
Bing! Bong!
A young boy answered the front door and stared at two strangers on the front porch.
Rick said, “Howdy! Is your mother home?”
He nodded and stepped back.
“Come in. I’ll go get her.”
Rick and Angela stepped inside the cool, air-conditioned ranch home. The floor was tiled and there were tasteful painting on the walls showing Western scenes, such as fields of tumbleweeds and galloping wild horses.
“Mom! Someone’s here to see you!”
Angela Dorn Vickers walked around the corner, not quite knowing who to expect.
She stopped in shock, staring at the couple standing in her foyer.
“What . . . what are you two doing here? What’s going on?”
“Hi Angela,” Nancy said, giving her a hug.
Rick smiled and said, “We are about to go have some fun. And we thought in light of your past, you might like to join us.”
“Don’t let him fool you,” Nancy said. “It hasn’t been fun at all. We got buried under a ton of dirt. Some friends of ours got bombed. Others were sent into outer space. It could be very dangerous.”
“But we’re going to keep it safe for you and everyone else,” Rick said in an assuring tone.
“Everyone else? What’s going on?”
Nancy said, “Let’s talk.”
Angela brought her two friends, who had not aged a bit in twelve years, into the living room.
They brought her up to date on what had happened, and what was going to happen soon.
11
A white deux chevaux automobile pulled up to the historic site’s gate, and a small man exited the passenger side.
Pierre glanced at the small structure housing a guard . . . well, not a guard. More like a docent.
Absently he wondered if other sites on other worlds in other Frances had guard houses for their version of Le Grand Menhir Brisé.
The man came out of the little structure and Pierre flashed his ID badge.
He said, “We are having to close you down the rest of the day as a matter of national security. Nothing to be worried about, just an exercise. Is anyone in the park at the moment?”
“Non. The last tourists left five minutes ago.”
Pierre nodded. He knew already what the answer would be, but he felt like asking was necessary. It made things seem normal. The man would be shocked to know what Pierre already knew.
“That is very good. I am going to ask you to leave the premises, too.”
“Sure. But, what’s going on? An exercise you say?”
“Oui. We want to be ready to meet any possible threats of terrorist activities in this area. We do not want to take the chance that anyone gets hurt while our boys are conducting their exercises.”
“Of course, of course. Just let me get my lunchbox.”
In a matter of moments, the fellow drove off in his own vehicle.
Pierre noticed with disgust the man drove a German car. He could have at least chosen something Italian, or even Texan, Pierre thought.
But the little Frenchman bit his tongue as the car crawled down the road and out of sight.
He opened the passenger door to the Citroën and pulled out a walkie-talkie.
“The entrance is secure. Move in when ready.”
He heard static, followed by two clicks on the other end.
Pierre climbed back in with the driver and said, “Let’s go.”
The little car puttered into the park.
A moment later the first of three large troop transports followed after them.
The last one stopped on the way in at the gate. A soldier jumped out. He took up a position inside the guardhouse, intent on preventing anyone else from entering.
The trucks came to a halt at the end of the paved road, close to the four large boulders. Sergeants jumped out and barked orders. Within minutes, three large groups of soldiers stood in formation in front of Pierre, their officer out front. Everyone faced the broken menhir.
Pierre spoke up so his voice would carry to the back row.
“What you are about to see today will be . . . unbelievable. I do not ask you to accept it. I do ask that you help defend the people who will be fighting these monsters.
“You all have special ammunition, and my office has supplied you with additional weaponry. Our enemy is vulnerable to iron. The purer the iron, the more effective it is. Remember that.”
The officer acknowledged his comments for the group.
Pierre smiled as the officer directed his men to preselected locations around the site.
A few would find themselves walking away to different sites, through mysterious doorways opening in thin air.
Nancy walked up to Pierre. She had been serving as his driver.
She said, “Why are you smiling?”
“Because I told them to ‘remember that.’ But after this, they will remember nothing. Cait will make sure of that, non?”
Nancy nodded, smiling, the breeze blowing her hair around.
“We’ll do a mass memory wipe, yes. Almost certainly.”
“Why didn’t you wipe me and the others after the war? You know, curiosity has been burning me up ever since. Like, where does Folgers coffee come from? Things like that.”
“We got pulled away,” Nancy said, her smile growing into a grin. “We can wipe you too, if it’ll make you feel any better.”
“Non, non. I am happy with my memories, merci beaucoup.”
“Folgers is very common on many alternates. Yours has deviated significantly from the path most others take. So, you don’t have that brand of coffee for some reason.”
“Ah. I see. Of course. My wife, she was not convinced by the coffee can. Thank you for taking us into your special room.”
Nancy smiled in acknowledgment.
She said, “The tour bus should be here soon.”
As if on cue, they heard the grinding of gears and the roar of a diesel engine.
A bus groaned to a stop behind the troop transports. Its door opened and Rick stepped out, waving at them. He headed their way, quickly followed by a long line of fathers and sons and grandsons.
They all met Nancy and Pierre, gathering around in a large arc.
Rick waved a hand and said, “These are The Fighters.”
“Feyterz,” Louie said in Yiddish.
“Right. And, uh . . . they’ve been around a very long time.”
&nb
sp; “Our traditions go back to Moses,” Louie said. He smiled at Nathaniel, standing beside him.
Nancy said, “We sincerely appreciate your group introducing us to the idea of iron undersuits. It has made all the difference. I wish we had it hundreds of years ago.”
All the men in the group beamed in pride.
“It is our honor,” Louie said. “And we in turn thank you for defeating our archenemy.”
They were distracted when a vertical blue-green sliver of light appeared off to one side.
It quickly grew wider and Darius stepped out, carrying a dozen spikes and spears over both shoulders.
He nodded his greetings to everyone and stepped out of the way. Angela followed him, her hands full of bags filled with iron spheres and more spikes, then Jason stepped out with Niko and Toya. Everyone had two or three bags full of weaponry.
Angela dumped her cargo and hugged Pierre. Niko and Toya began the task of distributing weapons to everybody.
At last, when the men were properly equipped, Jason asked for their attention.
“Alrighty. Let’s get everybody into position.”
-+-
The sun began its downhill trek in the sky.
A retired married couple out for an afternoon drive in the countryside turned down the road to Le Grand Menhir Brisé. They were turned away at the gate by a polite young man with a military style crew cut. The old couple drove off.
The afternoon wore on.
At last the sun dipped beneath the horizon, casting the landscape in dim twilight.
Near the broken stone base, the largest of the four boulders, something shimmered. It shifted from the ethereal into solid reality.
A black oblong container appeared, soaking up what little light remained around it. It resembled a giant egg, big enough for a person, with the ominous presence of a coffin.
Eight black slits appeared in the air, quickly growing wider, and a phalanx of fae stepped out, spells at the ready.
Crackles of yellow lights shifted between their hands, highlighting clear gray bodies.