“Just wait Carleton,” the woman said as Kendel paused, unsure how to answer. “He’s probably got a concussion. Let’s take care of this first,” she told her companion as her hand pulled Kendel’s fingers away from his head.
He sat patiently and silently while she tended to him, as his mind began to whirl through an increasingly scattered number of thoughts.
He seemed to be back in his own time, in his own country, but that was all he was sure of. The accents of the two people helping him were extremely southern drawls. He couldn’t imagine why he would be in the south. If he had been sent back to his own world, it seemed that it could only be so that he could fetch Flora.
And if that was the case, why hadn’t he simply been sent to Los Angeles, he wondered.
How much time had passed since he’d saved Liza and left the world, he wondered? Time that passed in one place seemed to be the same pace as time that passed in the other world, he thought. That meant that he’d been gone for maybe a month or so. That meant that he’d been missing for a month. That meant that probably everyone thought he was dead.
Everyone except Flora, hopefully. If Liza had passed his message along, Flora would know. Even if Liza didn’t pass his message along, he wondered if Flora would suspect.
“What?” he asked as he realized the others were talking to him.
“What’s your name?” the man asked him.
If he gave his real name, he would eventually be identified as a dead person. If he made up a name, he might forget it.
“My name’s Kendel,” he answered. Just a first name would be safe to give he decided.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“We’re just below Wolf Rock Cave in Kisatchie National Forest,” the man replied.
“I’m not sure how I got here,” Kendel answered. He paused, then decided to ask. “What state are we in?” He had to know, but he was afraid to find out. Wherever they were, they were a long way from Flora.
“Louisiana,” the woman answered slowly, and Kendel sensed that the couple had doubts about his state of mind.
“Can you call someone for me?” Kendel asked.
“Yes!” the woman jumped enthusiastically at the chance to do something. “I have my phone. The signal’s kind of weak, but the call should go through. Who should I call? Your mom?”
“No,” Kendel said quickly. He paused and thought about how to reach Flora. He didn’t have her phone number memorized – he counted on his phone to take care of that. And she wouldn’t be listed in any place available to the public. But Jane might.
“Could you call the Esteemed Success Talent Agency in Los Angeles and ask for Jane Majenski?” he asked.
There was silence from his two rescuers. He wondered if they were staring at one another, deciding how to respond to such an off-the-wall request.
“Esteemed Success Talent Agency?” the woman asked slowly.
“Yes please,” Kendel answered.
There were several long seconds of more silence, and then the woman spoke. “I’d like to speak to Jane,” she paused, “Majenski,” she drawled out the syllables one by one.
There was another pause.
“My name is Mary Grace Hebert,” the woman spoke. “I’m trying to reach Jane for a friend of hers, Kendel. He’s fallen down a hillside and is injured. He said to call her.
“Yes,” Mary Grace said a moment later. “His name is Kendel,” she paused, “what’s your last name Kendel?” she asked.
“Tell her it’s Kendel from Bedford, Flora’s friend. I’ve just come back,” he tried to calculate the best answer to give that wouldn’t get rejected.
Mary Grace paused, then repeated the description.
“Yes. Yes. Yes, this number will be fine,” Kendel heard Mary Grace’s end of the conversation. “Thank you.
“She said she’ll get hold of Jane and then get back to me,” the woman answered.
Kendel sighed, wondering if a return call would happen immediately, or in a while, or not at all.
The man cleared his throat.
“Were you two here for a reason? Am I interrupting something?” Kendel asked, suddenly aware of the situation his rescuers found themselves in.
“We’re just out for a hike,” the man said.
“It’s no trouble,” Mary Grace added.
“They may not call back right away,” Kendel advised. “Jane can be hard to get hold of. If you want to go on and hike, go ahead, and you can come back to see me if she calls.”
“Maybe we could just go up to the cave,” the man suggested.
“We can’t leave him here?” Mary Grace said indignantly.
“Go on,” Kendel advised. “I feel bad about spoiling your walk in the woods.”
“We’ll only be gone ten minutes,” the man said confidently.
“We’ll be right back. Shout if you need anything,” Mary Grace added.
Kendel heard the sound of the boots of his new companions start ascending stairs, but within twenty seconds, he heard a phone start playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
“Yes, I did call about a boy named Kendel. No, this isn’t a joke. He’s right here,” Kendel heard steps clattering back down the steps to the cave, and his heart started to pound.
“Kendel, here’s the phone for you,” Mary placed her phone in his hand, and he whipped it to the side of his head.
“Hello Jane?” he practically shouted. “Jane, it’s Kendel. I’m back!” he spoke rapidly.
“What? Oh,” he said as the woman at the other end of the line said that she was Jane’s assistant. “Yes, I can prove it. Any question Jane has, I can answer,” he replied.
He listened to the question the woman asked.
“Jane told Flora to slap me just before Jane closed the door of the limo. It was so the paparazzi wouldn’t chase me,” Kendel answered. “Because of the picture in the hospital, the one where I kissed Flora.”
“The what?” he asked when the next question was delivered. “Oh, Janelle, the reporter who was running cross country. She worked for the Picker Press,” he answered.
“Hold for what?” he asked as the woman on the line paused the call.
“What? Jane? Jane! Jane, it’s Kendel!” he said excitedly. “I’ve been sent back,” he replied. “I was there for a month. Shaiss took me right out of the river. How’s Flora?” he asked.
Chapter 23
“Flora said you didn’t die,” Jane told Kendel. “And I more than halfway believed her but hearing you on the phone like this is amazing. Where are you?”
“I’m in Louisiana, in a forest, by a cave,” Kendel answered.
“That is singularly unhelpful information,” Jane replied.
“These nice people found me in the forest. I fell down a hill and passed out. Jane,” he passed for a moment. “I’m blind. I had an accident in the other place and I can’t see now.”
“We’ll get a doctor for you right away,” Jane began to assemble in her mind a list of the actions she needed to take. She was good at solving problems, and Kendel was delivering multiple problems that would pose a challenge to address, but she was confident in her abilities.
“I’ll call your mother for you,” Jane began.
“No!” Kendel answered sharply. “Does she think I’m dead?” he heard one of his two rescuers give a low whistle as they overheard the question.
“Ah, yes, that is inconvenient,” Jane agreed. “Do you want me to come get you, and what do you want me to do with you?” she asked.
“I want to see Flora,” Kendel answered. “I think they sent me here to get her and take her back with me to Miriam’s land.”
Jane paused as she considered that issue. Flora was just getting over the pain of Kendel’s disappearance a month earlier, and the actress had lamented that she hadn’t gone with him to the magical land. Jane had no doubt that Flora would go with him if invited, but she didn’t know if it was the right thing for the young actress to do. Jane had gotten Flora to go on
a date with an architect the week before, and the pair were scheduled to have a second date that very night.
“Listen, let me start to get some things taken care of,” she told Kendel. “Let me speak to the woman you’re with. Yes, Mary Grace, if that’s her name.”
In a matter of minutes, Jane found out what the nearest town was with a hotel, and promised to arrange a room reservation for Kendel to stay at the hotel if Mary Grace and her husband would drop him off.
And an hour later, Kendel was in a room at the Travelers Guesthouse Suites and Cozies in Leesville, Louisiana, courtesy of Jane’s expense account.
“We’re here with him. He’s in Room 302,” Mary Grace told Jane’s assistant.
“Yes, there are restaurants right around here, and I’m sure there’s Grub Hub,” Mary Grace assured the woman.
“My name? Mary Grace Hebert,” she answered. “My address? Why do you need that? Oh, you don’t owe us anything. We just did what anyone would have done if they found him. It’s like the Bible says – we practically lived the Good Samaritan story today,” Mary Grace said.
“Are you sure there’s nothing else? Okay then, best wishes. Call me if you need us to come see him. We only live an hour from here,” she said, then finished the call.
Mary Grace and Carleton left Kendel with their phone number written down, and without asking too many impolite questions about him, although they talked about him throughout their ride home and all the next day with their friends.
Kendel stumbled around his room and found the bathroom, then stumbled out with a towel wrapped around his waist to answer the banging at his hotel room door. A bemused Grub Hub driver delivered fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and a sweet iced tea, which Kendel consumed voraciously, then returned to the bathroom so that he could take a hot shower with soap and shampoo, then he soaked in the hot water while he let his mind wander through the past and the present.
Jane had promised to send someone to get him. She hadn’t said Flora, so he assumed it wouldn’t be Flora, and it might not be Jane herself. She might send some lackey from her agency to find him, and then take him back to Los Angeles.
Which would have to mean renting a car and driving; he had no identification, so he wouldn’t be able to fly. Unless Jane charted a jet, he realized.
But did it make sense for him to go to Los Angeles to see Flora, he asked himself as he let the scenario unfold in his mind. If he wanted to accompany Flora back to Miriam’s land, he would have to go back through the cave he had just exited from, Wolf Rock Cave. Which meant that he and Flora needed to be in Louisiana together, not in Los Angeles. Unless Shaiss had some other plan for them to move across the boundary between the worlds, but Shaiss had complained about the difficulty of taking just Kendel, so it didn’t seem likely she would carry both of them now.
Kendel would have to discuss everything with Jane and Flora when he had a chance, to explain his reasoning. He turned off the hot water and dried himself with a towel, then went back to his bed and lay down, after he fumbled around and found the remote control for the television.
His mind wandered back to his departure from Miriam’s world. He hoped Fontaine was safe. He wanted to believe that Dwad and Waxen and Gayl were probably safe; it seemed that the evil things that had been hunting had been hunting for him, not them, and they had found him at the cave entrance, almost in time to put an end to his life.
If Waxen and Gayl delivered their spring water back to Lumen’s palace, then Kendel understood that King Ardur would return to consciousness and health, and he wondered what would happen then. Kendel was supposed to find Agata and convince her to return to Lumen; which apparently was going to mean that Kendel and Flora were going to have to find Agata and Parker to advise them to go back to Four Borders, and Kendel wondered how that meeting was going to proceed.
The phone in his room rang, making him jump. It was odd, so odd, to answer a phone that was connected to the wall, he though as his hand fumbled on the table next to his bed and picked up the bulky handset.
“Hello, is this Kendel?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yes,” he answered shortly. “Who is this?”
“I’m Megan. I’ve been assigned to come to Leesville to meet you; are you in Travelers Guesthouse Suites and Cozies, Room 302?” the woman asked.
“I’m in New Orleans. I can be there in just a few hours to pick you up and bring you back here,” Megan suggested. “Then I can take care of you.”
“I’ve been thinking Megan,” Kendel began cautiously. “Maybe it would be better if I just waited here, and you brought Flora to me. That would make our next trip easier.” He paused and held his breath, anxious to know how his proposal would be received.
“Bring who?” Megan asked.
“You know, Flora, Flora Greene,” Kendel explained.
“I don’t know anything about that. No one mentioned Ms. Greene to me. They just said to take care of you,” Megan spoke with very clear dictation as well as a drawl, enunciating what she hoped Kendel would understand.
“Could you call Jane back and tell her I suggested Flora come see me instead of me going to see her?” Kendel proposed.
“I’ll call her while I’m on my way to see you, to get her reaction,” Megan seemed noncommittal. “Maybe she has a better plan. Stay put, and I’ll see you soon.” The call ended.
Kendel took three tries to place the phone back in position to hang it up, then lay propped up against his pillows and tried to understand what was going to happen. Megan was just carrying out an assignment, and didn’t really know the whole story, he decided.
He sat and stewed, barely aware the television was playing something while he tried to make sense of what to do next.
He decided to see if he could still expand his awareness of the world around him, as he had done in Miriam’s world. He focused within himself and found the blue and green energies lying in quiet hibernation within, still present, but much less active than they felt while he was in the other world. It was probably a matter of there being no green sun for Earth to circle around, he decided.
Then he focused on his own awareness of the world, preparing to free that awareness from his physical body and let it go out to explore elsewhere, as he had learned to do in his rushed effort to save Elline.
And that’s when he stopped, as he realized he didn’t have a staff with him any longer. He no longer had the walking stick that he had used as a focal point for releasing the energy. He had no memory of when he had lost the staff. It had presumably been in the cave when he had been fleeing for his life. He didn’t have the staff with him at any point from the time Mary Grace and Carleton had woken him up.
But he didn’t need the staff to send his spirit out to investigate the world, he knew. He didn’t truly need it to use the power he held, for that matter. His fight with Marcus had demonstrated that.
He focused again and tried to move his consciousness outside his body.
He succeeded. He felt his awareness float above his body, and he smiled at the success. It was a good achievement to have in the modern world, and all the better, given his blindness. It at least gave him a way to know something about the world around him.
He directed his awareness to go through the wall of his room and into the adjacent room, where he sensed nobody present. He floated on through the room and its wall to the next room over, where a woman and a child were calm and distracted, probably watching television, Kendel thought. He reined his movement in and began to explore in the opposite direction, only to find that his other wall was an exterior wall, where there was nothing beyond the end of the building. Across the hall he ventured and found two men lying calmly in their beds, perhaps watching television, or perhaps scrolling through their phones – he couldn’t tell what they were doing, but they were distracted and complacent.
He pulled himself back into his body, satisfied. It was something that was impossible to imagine, and impossible to describe. He wouldn’t have believed any
story about such a thing in his modern world if he hadn’t done it himself, and it made him wonder about the things he had always dismissed in the past as fake and false and impossible to believe.
He grew drowsy and fell into a light sleep on the comfortable bed until there was a knock on his hotel room door.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Kendel, this is Megan. May I come in?” a woman’s voice asked.
Kendel thought for a moment about trying to extend his use of the blue and green powers to open the door, but then thought better of the matter because he had no idea of how to do it. He stood up to slowly find his way to the door. He paused and let his awareness examine Megan, she seemed to be honest and focused, but not particularly focused on him. So he opened the door and let the girl come into his room.
Chapter 24
Megan was a relatively new staff person for Esteemed Success Talent Agency, a Louisiana native hired to work in the small satellite office the agency had established to handle the talent in the New Orleans market. A recent college graduate with a degree in business marketing, she wasn’t familiar with the agency’s work in Los Angeles except in a perfunctory way. But she knew that Jane Majenski was a partner, and a call from a partner’s associate was a rare assignment for Megan, so she had excused herself from the traditional family Sunday dinner and driven the four hours to get to Leesville to pick up Kendel.
Her instructions were to pick him up, take him back to New Orleans, and place him in a nice hotel where he could have room service and care until she received further instructions. The directions led her to assume that she was picking up a client who had a certain degree of self-sufficiency and social prestige. Instead, when Kendel opened his door, she found a teenager who looked just one step up from a wild child raised in the bayou.
She discovered that he was blind, and he had next to no luggage, just a small backpack. He was young, so young that she doubted that even the Bourbon Street bars would serve him, and he seemed withdrawn, uninterested in talking much during their long ride, once she answered his questions about Jane and Flora Greene.
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