“She must have been quite a storyteller,” I said, impressed.
“She was. But it’s her technique we need to emulate. If we can tell the God of Fire a good enough (and long enough) story, maybe he’ll postpone his takeover of the Cloud for a while. At least long enough to hear the end of it.”
“Could be,” I agreed. “And with luck he’ll never hear the end of it. Are you that kind of storyteller?”
“Not at all. I can’t even remember fairy tales well. I remembered Scheherazade only because she’s my ideal woman, savvy and sexy.”
I sort of viewed Harriet that way. “You?” I asked the hen.
“No way. I know what I know, but it’s not human fiction.”
I sighed. “So it must be up to me.”
“It was always up to you, dear,” Harriet said, smiling.
I had never regarded myself as much of a storyteller, but there was something about the way she phrased it that motivated me to try my best. “Okay, a communal dream featuring forbidden love involving the elemental gods, to get them interested and keep them interested. Plenty of action, mystery and magic along the way. Grade B movie stuff. I can animate the male character and Harriet can animate the female character so as to be halfway realistic, and Henrietta can set up the stage, costumes, lights and such. Like an extemporaneous play or a movie being filmed on location. Maybe the real he-man God of Fire has a thing for the luscious soft Goddess of Water, and she likes him too, but he can’t approach her lest his heat vaporize her and her moisture douse him. Yet maybe if she freezes into solid ice she can withstand his heat long enough, and if he clothes himself with a thin cushion of air, like maybe a cold condom—”
“Are you still awake?” Sydelle asked, startling me; I hadn’t seen her coming. “The Fire Tornado is accelerating and will be here all too soon. You can’t dawdle longer.”
“Uh, sure, we’re getting on it,” I said, disgruntled. “Maybe if you use a sleep spell on us, we’ll be on our way to talk with the gods.”
“Immediately,” she agreed, lifting her hands over us.
“One detail,” Henrietta said. “I just scoped the gods. The current Fire God is female, and the current Water God is male.”
“Oh, shi—” I swore.
Then we slept.
Chapter 24:
Flying
I awoke, as it were, and found myself standing in a field of grass, holding Harriet’s hand, with the hen perched on my shoulder.
“Where are we?” asked Harriet.
I took in our surroundings. We were in a wheat field that spread far and wide...and flat. Gone was the hill upon which sat the great palace—and gone was the creepy forest within which was Sydelle’s tree home.
“I don’t think we’re on the Cloud anymore,” I said.
“Then where?”
“A dream within a dream.”
“Like the movie,” she said.
“Maybe,” I said, turning, noting that the field seemed real. In fact, I could feel wind on my skin and the sun on my face. “Except this is no movie, and we’re really here. Wherever here is.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” said Harriet. “Maybe all that matters is finding our goal.”
“The fire god,” I said.
“Or the fire elemental.”
“Is there a difference?” I asked.
“Not sure,” said Harriet. “Either way, these are powerful entities.”
“Maybe not as powerful as we think,” I said. “They do, after all, need us to dream their worlds into existence.”
“Good point. So how do we find this fire bitch?”
That was, of course, the million dollar question. “I had assumed we would just dream ourselves to her.”
“We assumed wrong.”
We both scanned our surroundings, which were tranquil at best, with no hint, even in the far distance, of anything that might be the realm of the gods or elementals. Of course, I also didn’t know what such a realm would be like. For all I knew, we were standing in the middle of it, although I doubted that.
“Let’s puzzle it backwards,” I said. “The only way to reach the gods was via a dream within a dream.”
“True,” said Harriet.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Harriet. “Maybe it’s safer in dreams? Maybe there’s less of a chance to die or be hurt by these beings?”
“Or maybe this,” I said, and raised my free hand. Almost immediately a white dove appeared. It flew off immediately.
“Magic tricks?”
“The magic trick was just a test.”
“A test for what? And since when did you know magic? And where did you get that dove?”
I grinned and released her hand. I next raised mine high, closed my eyes, and a moment later a bald eagle appeared in the air above me. It screeched loudly, shot us an irritable look, and flapped its powerful wings. The downdraft blasted us, whipping our hair in a frenzy. Henrietta, still on my shoulder, squawked as she was almost blown off. Then she flew down to the ground, evidently feeling safer there.
“What’s happening?” asked Harriet. “Why are you doing this? How can you do this?”
“We can only find the gods in a dream within a dream because,” and I snapped my finger and something close to a mythical griffin appeared in the grass before us. It was massive and muscular and about as frightening as they came. Except, of course, I had secretly commanded it to be docile and helpful.
“Because why?”
“Because we can control the dream.”
“I don’t understand. I mean, I think I do—”
“Then watch.” I turned to the massive griffin, who was sitting in quiet repose in the tall grass. “Take us to the gods,” I commanded.
It nodded and ducked its head down. I took Harriet’s hand and led her and Henrietta to the waiting creature. Harriet, I noted, was visibly shaking. “Do not fear, my dear. You are safe.”
“But how do you know?”
“Do you trust me?”
“I-I do. Yes, of course.”
“Then come on.”
I helped her up onto the creature’s muscular back. I took hold of the lion’s mane along its back, as Harriet settled in behind me, holding me tightly around my waist. Her touch was intoxicating, to say the least.
Once we were on, the creature beat its massive eagle wings, and soon we were off the ground. Higher and higher we rose as the creature flapped its powerful wings. I heard Harriet laughing behind me, or was she crying?
Laughing, you dolt, came her thoughts, as words were nearly impossible due to the thunderous wind created around us.
Soon, we were soaring high above the wheat field, to parts unknown.
Chapter 25:
Love
In moments we were over rugged mountains, then a lake, then a desert. Oops, I hoped that baked expanse wasn’t where we were going.
But of course it was, because it was the nature of fire to burn things up. Yet since this was our dream, I reached out with my mind and modified it to become a more compatible landscape that only looked burnt from afar. Up close it was a pleasant array of brown flowers surrounding a fiery castle that wasn’t actually burning.
Oh, for fiddle sticks! the Goddess of Fire’s thought came. You are clothing me in a ludicrously tame image.
Contact! “It gets worse,” I said, knowing that it was my thought that counted, not my drowned-out words. “We puny mortals would be incinerated by your mere visage, O scintillating creature, so we have to tame it down so we can survive it.”
“What corn,” Harriet muttered. “Watch out it doesn’t pop in your face.” She projected a picture of popcorn being heated over a fire.
There was the sensation of laughter. Interpretation is everything.
I remembered reading a vintage Superman comic in my childhood, sort of a history of comics sampler, wherein a magic little man with an unpronounceable name was slated to marry the king’s daughter. “Her face
would stop a clock!” he protested. “What!” demanded the king, royally incensed. “I said her face makes time stand still,” the man said quickly, relieving the tension. Same thing, but a different slant. It could make a difference.
I think I like you. What a pity you’re not a god. There was a background swirl of smoky passion.
“Sorry about that,” I said, and to an extent, I was.
“Oh?” Harriet thought sharply.
“If I were a god I’d be less subject to illicit suggestion,” I said quickly.
“Responded the peon to the king’s challenge, saying the same thing.”
She had me there.
There was another waft of smoke. I like you too, mortal female.
That quickly stifled Harriet.
We glided in for a landing in the brightly lighted courtyard. I reached out with my mind again and toned it down to a pleasant glow.
O, bother.
“The effulgence of your mere premises threatens to overwhelm us,” I said. “It has to be damped down, lest we be too awe-inspired to manage a productive dialogue.”
“Mancrap,” Henrietta muttered. “Spread it on your garden; it will make your flowers grow.”
We dismounted and walked toward the main entrance, the hen perching on my shoulder again. The stairs here were our size; we were no longer in Giantland. That was a certain relief, overshadowed by awareness of the realm we were in. The gods, masked as they might be by my smothered dream imagination, were nevertheless wholly beyond our ken.
More smoke. I definitely like you.
“Don’t forget that the actual premises are nothing like your picture,” Henrietta warned.
Neither is my nature.
But my vision of those premises and her nature enabled me to function. I knew I was walking along the edge of a fire pit I dared not look at directly.
I decided to change the subject. “Henrietta, are you aware of how Joe and Carl are doing, back at the farm?”
“I am. Not well. They are trying, but there simply isn’t time, because of the temporal differential. They are still approaching the rogue dreamer.”
“So we have to handle it ourselves?”
“Yes.” I had feared as much. The burden of saving the Cloud was on us. If we messed up, everything was lost.
Harriet squeezed my hand supportively. I appreciated her gesture, but it only backed off my foreboding without abolishing it.
We came to a landing, then to what might be a ballroom or a royal audience hall. But even my stifling couldn’t entirely restrain it. The floor was clear diamond over a deep fiery caldera, the walls were scintillating ruby, and the ceiling—
Oh, my! It was the Fire Tornado, seen from below and inside.
Yes, mortal. This is closer to my real appearance.
For the moment I was tongue-tied. “Uh, we come to—to—”
“To offer you fabulous stories,” Harriet said. “To divert you from your eternal boredom.”
I have no need of stories, the Fire Goddess protested, her whirling cone of flames brightening dangerously. I would prefer to have an entire world, populated with real people (albeit manufactured in dreams) playing out their lives before me for good, ill, and mixed, with none of the stultifying certainty bequeathed by crafted stories from the old guard.
Oh shi—fertilizer, I thought. Our prime offering had been summarily anticipated and dismissed. Generating an entire world of individual people was surely beyond our capacity. Even in imagination, we would still have to define each one.
“You haven’t lost,” Henrietta said. “Provided you accept her counter offer.”
“Counter offer?” I asked blankly.
The fowl knows. There is one part of your fantasy that is true. Perhaps that is what guided your mind. I am in love with the water elemental, the God of Water. It has been an enduring frustration because of our opposite natures. Your conjecture that he might convert to ice for the occasion is intriguing, but there is no way he could remain ice in my presence, and certainly not with his stalactite in my supremely hot core. He would vaporize before touching me. If I attempted to cool sufficiently to avoid that, my animation would expire; I would, as you conjecture, be doused.
Worse and worse. She had seen me coming (as it were) and seen the fallacy of my notion. What, then, did I have to offer?
“Us,” Harriet said. “If we let the gods enter our minds and use our bodies to make love. We would not destroy each other.”
And there it was. Obviously the gods could enter our minds; they did so just to communicate. If that presence expanded to take over our bodies, they could indeed have sex—or make love. The cushioning of the dream within a dream might make it feasible.
But there were some complications. I looked at Harriet. “But would—” I began.
“Yes I would,” she said, blushing. “To save the Cloud.”
“And would we be able to—to watch?”
“To share,” she agreed, blushing worse.
So we would be making love too, though not controlling it. Of course there would be other times for us, if Harriet agreed.
Her cheeks were positively burning. That was answer enough. “But would we ever get back our—”
We would not want to occupy your bodies for longer than necessary, the Fire Goddess thought. They are tiny and stultifyingly limited. Only for this brief act would it be worthwhile.
We were making progress. “How often?”
“Once a month,” Harriet said before the Goddess got a more generous notion. “For an hour at a time.”
Agreed. Thus expediently was it done. The Cloud to endure as long as the arrangement continues.
Which meant indefinitely. We had won the reprieve. “Now about that approaching Fire Tornado,” I said.
That is a detail. Unfortunately there are limits to even godly powers. Once a manifestation has been loosed, it can’t be recalled.
“But that means—” I started.
“That the Cloud is still doomed,” Harriet finished.
Not necessarily. You creatures of imagination have merely to dream up a way to abate that problem. We gods lack sufficient innovation, but surely you can do it. We have confidence in you.
“Yes, that’s what you’re here for,” Henrietta said. “To convert the dross of the situation to gold. As I do with objects. Your objects are the Fire Tornado and the Cloud. That seems straightforward.”
Yes, a mere detail.
And it seemed it was up to me to work out that detail. “I will do my best,” I said, despairingly.
Chapter 26:
Consummation
They were all looking at me expectantly, as if my agreement to try meant that the answer was at the verge of presentation. Instead my creative mind was blank. I needed time to think—more time than we were likely to have. What was I to do?
Right: I stalled. “Let’s have a picnic!” I said.
Harriet and Henrietta stared at me, not fooled. But the Fire Goddess came to my rescue. Yes, let’s. Just let me put on something appropriate. A swirl of fire appeared in the air above us, coalescing into a vaguely human form as it descended. A nude woman form.
“In clothing,” Harriet snapped.
“Oh. Of course,” the figure agreed verbally. Clothing appeared—and promptly burst into flame and drifted away in smoke.
“Maybe if you cooled off a tad,” I suggested.
“Ah.” The fiery figure turned flesh colored as it floated above us, with very nice legs. Clothing reappeared: shoes, skirt, blouse, gloves, this time not burning. “Like this?”
“That’s great,” I agreed, looking up appreciatively.
“With underwear,” Harriet said.
Panties appeared, and the blouse filled out as if a bra had been added beneath it. “So?”
“Down here,” Harriet said tightly.
The figure dropped to the ground, depriving me of my view from beneath. Ah, well. “Pleased to meet you, Fire,” I said formally.
Sh
e took my hand, and she wasn’t burning but did remain hot in more than one sense. Maybe the glove was insulating. “Ditto.” Then she turned to Harriet. “But you are the one I really want to get to know.”
“Me?” Harriet asked, faintly surprised.
“To be sure your persona is compatible, when I have my tryst.”
“Oh.” Harriet looked out of sorts. “Yes, of course.”
“And Jack should get to know Water,” Henrietta said. “For similar reason.”
“Uh, yes,” I agreed, now feeling as out-sorted as Harriet looked. The God of Water would have to enter my body to do his part. “We should invite him too.”
Fire lifted a hand. A spark flew from a finger, evidently a signal. And just like that another figure appeared, this one watery. In moments he shaped up as Fire had, and joined us fully clothed and looking human, with a head of hair the color of surf. I kept silent about my annoyance as Harriet eyed his well endowed body before he added the clothing. “Water, I presume?” I inquired.
“The same,” he agreed.
“You know, if the two of you can form images like this, maybe you could—” Harriet started.
“No,” the two said almost together. Then Water continued. “We may appear to be similar to you in this guise, but we are actually made of our elements.” He drew off his glove, which I now realized he was wearing, and water poured out of his sleeve. After a moment he put the glove back on and the flow stopped. “We are unable to mesh in this form.”
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