Then emerging from the shadows came the squat, ugly creature that had crouched at the foot of his bed. He shuddered at the memory.
“This is Steve. He’s a troll. And . . .” She waved her hand, and a humming rose from the building rafters. The slender, milky-skinned creature with silver hair that had hovered over him spiraled gracefully down to the concrete floor, her glistening wings fluttering to rest as she landed. “. . . this is Robin. She’s a fairy. Like me.”
Jack felt a panic overcoming him. He was barely managing to hold it together at the sight of all these creatures surrounding him. This was no experience he could explain away by drugs! There were no swirling colors or melting, undulating objects.
This was mind-melting real!
“Now, we’ll show you something that not a lot of your species have seen,” said Bright, smiling gently. Both senators began to disrobe, ending up as a pair of naked middle-aged people—one a plump, pale woman, and the other a large, hairy man. Both pressed their fingers to their chests.
Their skin seemed to sag off their bodies!
Jack felt his knees buckling, but as he crumpled, he was caught by Mike’s powerful arms and held up. A chair was brought, and he flopped onto it, panting, hyperventilating. He managed to recover himself, remembering the flesh-colored rubbery pile he’d seen in the bedroom. It was some kind of disguise!
Both senators grasped their scalps and pulled upward. Their faces stretched out into distorted caricatures and popped off, dangling down their backs. Now, Senator Bright’s face became the delicate-featured visage he had seen in the bedroom. She removed brown contact lenses, to reveal the hypnotic sapphire eyes he had seen flashing with fear.
And Senator Lee, shed of his flesh, became the hairy, fanged beast that had terrified him that night!
Both continued to strip off their fleshy coverings, Bright narrating. “These are flesh-suits. They’re actually biologically engineered tissues of living cells tailored to our specifications. They allow us to live normally among your race. It was not always so. Before the suits were developed, we had to live in isolation.”
Finally, she was out of the suit, dropping it into a nearby barrel. She was totally, comfortably naked, he noted, with high firm breasts and the other normal female parts—except for the graceful, transparent wings.
Senator Lee, now free of his suit stretched and yawned. He pulled out false teeth, to reveal the fangs that the terror-stricken Jack had feared would rip this throat out that night.
“As you might have surmised, I’m what you call a werewolf.” Again, he stretched his thickly-furred, muscular body and growled in animal pleasure.
Jack leaned forward, rubbing his face with both hands, then shook his head in disbelief. “Okay, you call yourselves Mythicals. But what are you? Where are you from? Senator Bright?”
“Call me A’eiio. That’s the name I’ve taken here. In your language, anyway. We’re from other planets. Many other planets.”
“Why are you here?”
“We’re all exiles. We committed some offense on our planets. We were sentenced to yours as punishment.”
“Sentenced?”
“Our races use your planet as a prison . . . well, to be kinder, a place where we can atone for our transgressions.”
Jack’s mind roiled with questions. He had so many, he was nearly catatonic with curiosity.
“I . . . I . . . really have to process all this. Organize my—”
“Now do you want that drink?” interrupted Senator Lee.
“Yes, please,” Jack replied, with a faint groan. He accepted a tumbler of liquor from Lee’s large, clawed hand and drank it down, thankful for the familiar warm feeling and the comforting buzz. He gratefully took another. He looked up dully at the werewolf. “What are you called? In . . . werewolf.”
“Flaktuckmetang,” is the closest English pronunciation.
“What do they call you for short?”
“Flaktuckmetang. No nicknames, either. Werewolves consider shortening a name as demeaning. The equivalent of shortening their manhood. Cause for a fight. You’d better learn full pronunciations.”
“We know you have a thousand questions,” said A’eiio. “And they’ll all be answered. We want you to stay here tonight. There’s a very comfortable suite here. Steve, Robin, Mike, and Sam will stay with you. They’ll help you with questions. Flaktuckmetang and I have to attend to business. Tomorrow, we’ll take a trip. And we’ll ask you to make a decision.”
“What decision?” asked Jack, taking another grateful drink.
“Whether to become an Ally or not.”
“What’s an Ally? And what’s the alternative? And why do I—”
“Tomorrow,” she interrupted. “You’ll have your questions answered by then.”
The whisper of wings from a large open window interrupted them. A snowy white figure sailed into the cavernous building, its feathered wings spread wide. With powerful strokes, the figure lowered itself gently down to the floor. The creature had the luminous face of a beatifically smiling woman with golden ringlets and wearing a billowing, filmy tunic.
“Ah, here she is,” said A’eiio. “Jack, this is Wendy. She’s an angel.”
• • •
Jack’s hands still trembled slightly, and he had to use both to take a healthy drink of his fourth round. But they were shaking less than before. The alcohol had helped blunt the smothering panic that had shrouded him since his abduction. It didn’t help, though, that he was sitting at a large dining table with an ogre, a pixie, a fairy, a troll, an elf, and an angel. The table was in a large apartment built into the factory floor, where he’d been “invited” to stay the night.
He still found himself transfixed by the sight of the angel, her ethereal presence calling to mind the rapturous descriptions of radiant angelic appearances in the world’s religious texts. Angels had saved lives, changed lives, brought faith to the faithless. And now, one of the hallowed beings was sitting right there at his table! And now he knew it was an alien from another planet!
He took a deep breath, to help the alcohol further its job of steadying him. All the creatures were eating. Well, Mike the ogre was devouring—stuffing handfuls of random foods into his mutant-bulldog face. At least he was making appropriately appreciative grunts. The angel, however, was not eating, but sitting quietly, smiling warmly at the others.
“What’s going to happen to me?” he managed to ask. “What are you going to do?”
Sam paused in the graceful act of daintily transferring morsels of a translucent, golden substance to her mouth. “A’eiio will answer that. She’ll come back tomorrow. We’re just here to answer other questions. We . . .” She paused and wrinkled her nose at him. “You’re staring at us.”
Jack realized his attention had been riveted on the naked pixie, the naked fairy, and most disconcerting, the naked angel. “Oh . . . sorry . . . I, uh—”
“Are you uncomfortable with seeing our . . . parts?”
“Well, we don’t usually go around naked.”
“You creatures are so odd,” said Robin, her wings gently wafting open and closed. “You are ashamed by the natural beauty of your own bodies. You hide them with needless artificial decoration. Very well, we’ll cover, so you won’t be so disturbed.” She left and returned with a towel, which she wrapped around her slim body. Sam put her dress back on, and Wendy the angel wrapped herself in her long, white, feathered wings.
“Better?” asked Robin.
“Thanks.”
“Wanna see my balls?” asked Mike in his gurgly, water-flushing-down-the-toilet voice. He’d paused in his gluttony.
“Not one little bit,” said Jack emphatically.
“Mike is very proud of his balls,” said Robin. “Do you know ogres decorate their balls?
“I do now. Still, I’ll pass,” said Jack as he finished his drink and felt comfortably drunk enough to begin eating. Mythicals were good cooks. The seafood casserole was delicious. He’d have to ask about their talents.
He had so many, many questions.
He asked Robin the fairy, “The name ‘A’eiio’. Does it mean anything?”
“It’s the closest she can come to her name in our tonal language.”
“Werewolves have long names,” observed Jack.
“Not compared to elves,” said Sam, gesturing at the gray-skinned elf, to whom he’d been introduced as Ryan. “His elf name is Cvjmgrowfjhvvglehjhiiorddvmgtohq. Elves pass down their names and add a letter for each new generation.
Cvjmgrowfjhvvglehjhiiorddvmgtohq paused in his eating long enough to make a scritchy-screeching sound, like an excruciating chorus of a badly tuned violin, fingernails on a chalk board, and a cat with its tail caught in a blender.
“Elves prefer not to speak your language. It hurts their vocal cords.”
“Well, the sound he just made would hurt mine,” said Jack. Now that he was full of alcohol and food, Jack felt his fear waning and his journalistic impulse taking over. “Okay, I’ve seen fairies, pixies, angels, trolls, werewolves, ogres, and elves. Are there others?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sam. “Just about all the creatures of your mythology.”
“Goblins, vampires, witches, warlocks?”
“Yes.”
“Leprechauns, mermaids, demons, cyclops?”
“Of course.”
Jack plumbed his memory for more. “Gnomes, satyrs, bigfoot, sirens?”
“All of those, at one time or another. Some served their sentences and were allowed back to their home planets. Others periodically arrive to begin their exile.”
“Now, you’re all kind of shaped like us,” said Jack, waving his arms in illustration. “Why aren’t there any weird Mythicals, y’know, that look like blobs or octopuses?”
“Yes, there are . . . on other exile planets,” said Sam. “Each species chooses an exile planet that that species can more easily blend into.” She laughed a melodic laugh. “But, of course, weird is in the eye of the beholder. It takes some of us quite a while to get used to your peculiar shape.”
“But there have been really different creatures here . . . dragons, sea serpents, and so forth,” said Jack.
“Pets,” growled Steve, running his fork through his scraggly white hair. “Centuries ago, some exiled Mythicals were allowed to bring pets. Bad, bad idea. They escaped.”
“You said you all are exiles. What crimes did you all do?”
There rose a chorus of protestations, each creature declaring its innocence, until Robin raised her hand for quiet. “Of course, none of us deserves to be here. But our justice systems accused us of various violations of our law. Theft, sedition, embezzlement, and so forth.”
“But you’re not violent, right?”
“Well, some species are naturally . . . aggressive, I guess you’d say. Especially werewolves. But we weren’t sent here for violent crimes.”
“Do you have jobs?”
“Sure,” said Sam. “We blend in. Lots of pixies are ballerinas, actresses, spies, queens.”
“Actresses, spies, queens?”
“Yes, for some reason, we enchant your species. It seems to be some chemical attractant. So we tend to be very successful.”
“Are there any well-known women today who are pixies?”
“Well, I don’t want to name any. But you’ve seen them in movies, on magazine covers, in commercials. The ones who just rivet your attention.”
“Ogres are football players, basketball players, bouncers, wrestlers,” interjected Mike.
“Fairies are lawyers, legislators, professors,” said Robin.
“Angels do caring jobs . . . social work, nursing, doctoring, and so forth,” said Wendy.
A scritchy-screech emanated from Cvjmgrowfjhvvglehjhiiorddvmgtohq.
“He says many elves are jockeys,” said Robin. “They also masquerade as kids. They say they’re home-schooled, so they don’t have to interact too much with you creatures.”
The liquor, the food, and the trauma of the day were causing Jack to begin to nod off.
“Let’s get you to bed,” said Sam gently, helping him up and guiding him, stumbling, toward the bedroom.
“So, it wasn’t just the drugs that you gave me that made me so . . . goofy.”
“No,” she said, smiling tolerantly. “You were what you would call enchanted.” She pulled back the covers, sat him onto the bed, and removed his shoes, jacket and shirt.
“You said chemicals?”
She laid him down on the bed, and pulled the covers up. “Something like pheromones. Our race evolved natural substances that just happened to lure your race. You can tell when we’re emitting them. Our eyes turn green.”
“Um . . . are you wearing one of those suits? Are you going to take it off and be some kind of slimy thing?”
“No, this is me.” She took his hand and ran it over the soft skin of her face.
“Yeah, that feels like it’s you.” His eyes were closing. “I love you,” he murmured.
“I know,” she said gently.
“You’re amazing.” His eyes closed. He was asleep.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” she whispered, kissing his forehead and tucking the covers around him.
Jack peered out the window, as the private jet swept over the tan desert landscape and gently touched down on the isolated runway. He was thankful for that. He didn’t need any jostling or bumping. His head had only just cleared of his hangover, after drinking lots of water and eating a good meal on the trip from the capitol to . . . somewhere in the desert. His host didn’t divulge that information. He was not yet trusted. Not until he made his “decision,” whatever that would be.
He allowed himself to daydream about the mesmerizing pixie, Sam, as he watched Senator Deborah Bright sitting across from him, putting away her laptop. And beside her sat her husband, Marc, sliding a sheaf of legal papers into his briefcase.
Jack apologized for his drunken behavior at the embassy reception, and Marc accepted, clapping him jovially on the back.
They exited the plane into the brilliant glare of desert sunlight and the dry heat that sucked the moisture from his nose, mouth, and eyes. He squinted as he scanned the flat, barren landscape stretching into the distance, all around them. The only buildings were a large hangar and a sprawling adobe house. They had explained to him that they were taking him to a central interplanetary transport terminal for the Mythicals. There were locals, for example, on the Brights’ property near the capitol. But they wanted him to experience the full extent of the Mythicals activity on the planet.
Senator and Mr. Bright showed him into the cool shade of the house’s entry hall, and he was invited to clean up in one of the bedrooms. There, he found a change of clothes, sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat, and desert boots . . . his size. They had done this exercise before.
He emerged refreshed from the bedroom to find, not the Senator and her husband, but two graceful fairies. They had shed their flesh-suits, and stood fanning their wings, lifting themselves off the floor and settling back down, as if eager to soar. In deference to Jack’s discomfort with exposed “fairy parts,” A’eiio wore a filmy tunic, and her husband wore a pair of swimming briefs.
Jack stood silent for a long moment, watching them. It was a revelatory moment. These were beautiful creatures, he thought. The world was a richer place because of them, even though his race believed them to be only diverting myths . . . fairy tales.
Marc was now introduced as the fairy E’iouy.
“It’s the closest to your name you can come in our language?” he’d asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “We feel rather badly for you. Your language is rather . . . shall we say . . . un-melodic.”
“We hope you’re rested,” said A’eiio. “We have a trip to make, and you have things to see, a decision to make.”
“Decision? Look, I still don’t understand.”
“You will. You need to see some things first. Then we’ll talk.”
A white off-road vehicle waited
for them outside the house, and it took them speeding across the desert floor for miles, ending up winding along a dusty road into a steep-sided canyon. They passed several other vehicles on the roadside, beside which stood people scanning the horizon, presumably for intruders. Those were other Allies, A’eiio explained.
As they reached a broad expanse of desert surrounded by steep mountains, he saw perhaps a dozen other off-road freight trucks and other vehicles parked around the periphery. The driver eased their vehicle in among them.
A single ogre stood in the middle of the expanse, peering upward. He held up his meaty gray-green arm in a signal, and a menagerie of creatures emerged from the vehicles.
Jack, still sitting in the back seat, experienced a really bad case of the jitters. He really didn’t want to get out to face that weird throng! A flight of fairies emerged from a limousine, fanning their wings and lifting smoothly off the desert floor, raising small dust clouds, soaring in gentle circles overhead. Trolls, werewolves, and elves crowded around the large circle, all peering upward. An angel alighted from a van, spreading her gloriously white, feathered wings.
Then there were creatures he’d never seen before. Gnarled, ugly beings that might be goblins, or perhaps gnomes. Small, elf-looking creatures that weren’t elves. Leprechauns?
A group of perhaps a dozen creatures stood huddled together, in black capes, hoods, and masks, sunglasses covering their eyes.
“Don’t be afraid,” said A’eiio, interrupting his awestruck reluctance. “They’re used to seeing your kind. After all, they live among you. Come on out.”
Jack managed to unfreeze himself and climb out to face the throng. “What are those?” he asked, pointing to the hooded group.
“Poor things,” she said. “Vampires. They absolutely hate sunlight, but it’s a daytime landing, so they have no choice.”
“Landing?”
She pointed upward, where the crowd of Mythicals was staring, and far above them was a hole in the sky. A black dot growing larger.
“ON!” Bellowed the ogre into a radio. “NOW TURN THE LIGHTS ON!”
Abruptly, the dot almost disappeared against the sky, showing a faint white spot that could just as easily have been a wisp of cloud.
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