The Best of All Possible Worlds

by Richard D. Parker

  High Tarina Nystrom caught sight of the High King as he moved about the dance floor, in his arms the top female of the games, the Lady Elin. She glanced down at the young man whose eyes followed the pair closely.

  “Elin will undoubtedly attain the rank of Tarina in time,” Nystrom added. “She’s already expressed an interest in staying on to continue her studies. Someday she will make a fine teacher…a fine leader.”

  ‘And perhaps a fine Queen,’ the High Tarina thought. ‘Yes, Elin might be the key to winning Arnot’s loyalty and oh, what children the two might yield!’

  “She’s a fine fighter,” Arnot said simply, meaning it. His affection for the Cassinni girl was well known by now. Their encounter after the kata match could not be kept secret for long. The entire island was now talking about the pair.

  “You will stay then?” Nystrom pressed as the dancers inside the hall came to a stop and applauded the musicians. Almost immediately both Gwaynn and Elin began to look about for Arnot. The High Tarina’s time alone with the young man was nearly over and she wanted to elicit a declaration from him before she lost him completely.

  “I will consider it,” Arnot answered and the High Tarina’s heart fell. Suddenly the doors sprang open and Avigail came rushing out onto the balcony.

  “There you are,” she said to Arnot after bowing slightly to the High Tarina. “I need to talk with you alone.”

  “Doesn’t everyone,” Arnot answered with a laugh. He took the High Tarina’s hand in his and kissed it softly. “I will think on what you have said,” he added then went with Avi, who was pulling on him impatiently.

  “Avi!” Arnot complained as she pulled him back into the Grand Hall. The music was playing once more. Their parents were now dancing together, smiling and laughing. The twins moved about the perimeter of the room both eyeing their mother and father. Feelings of guilt swept through Arnot, but Avigail was caught under Galen’s spell, like a fish in a tide pool. Abashed Arnot glanced about for Elin but did not see her and his feelings of guilt increased.

  “It’s time Arnot…you promised!” His sister demanded and Arnot’s heart jumped in his chest.

  “But Avi…” Arnot protested as she pulled him across the large dance floor and out the main doors of the hall.

  “He can’t wait any longer,” Avi hissed. “You know it as well as I do.”

  Arnot said nothing. He knew she was right. Last night he dreamed of Galen’s death, his head coming apart like a dropped melon. He shuddered slightly at the thought. The dream had been so real.

  “But shouldn’t we tell them goodbye,” Arnot added as they stepped out into the night, and Avi knew he meant their parents.

  Avi shook her head sadly and continued to pull on her brother, and they descended the grand staircase at nearly a run. Avi hated the thought of just leaving, but she also knew that any delay would be disastrous. Mother would surely try to talk them out of the attempt but what her father would say she couldn’t be sure. He’d visited the Far Lands himself and so might sympathize. In her heart this was not truly goodbye for she had great confidence that once they reached Galen he could help them return if that is what she wanted.

  There was a celebration going on in the Grand Square for those not able to attend the formal banquet, and as Avi and Arnot forced their way through the crowds they were stopped and greeted by numerous attendees, all wishing them well. Many of the partygoers however, were content with just reaching out and touching the famous twins for luck and good fortune. Finally, however, the two reached the outskirts of the city and once free of the crowds they began to hurry toward the river, neither aware that they were being followed.

  They crossed the river at the main bridge stopping only to greet the watchman who was unlucky enough to guard the way on this night of all nights. As they continued to move through the darkness Avi’s knee began to loosen and her limp all but disappeared. The camp for the students of Noble was completely deserted and the two were utterly alone. They could have stopped anywhere and achieved complete privacy but still they weaved through the tents until they were outside their own. Avi ducked inside and retrieved four large bags.

  “Food,” she said and handed a set to Arnot. “And clothes…and these,” she added and pulled two sets of kali out of one bag. She handed one set to Arnot, who took them with a gleam in his eye. “Hurry! We still have to talk to Lynn before we go…we need to hurry!” Avi added, clearly anxious as if every second they delayed was critical.

  “We’re truly going then?” He asked as he strapped the weapons around his waist.

  Avi nodded her eyes wide with fear and excitement.

  “Going where?” A voice inquired from out of the darkness and though Avi’s heart fell, her expression hardened. They were leaving; no one was going to stop them.

  Arnot spun and caught sight of Vio and N’dori. The two women walked out of the shadows and quickly approached them.

  “Come Arnot…make a bridge for home,” Avi said ignoring her former teachers. She was done with Noble. They had little power over her now.

  “Home?” Vio asked, very confused. ‘Why would the twins sneak off and go home?’ It didn’t make sense. Their parents were here. The celebration in their honor was even yet going on. Avigail might not appreciate the crowds screaming her name, but Arnot was not the type to skip out on such lavish attention.

  N’dori however only smiled and let out a soft, almost sad chuckle.

  “So you are leaving?” The older woman asked.

  Avi wanted to ignore her, but nodded instead. She wanted to be gone and was surprised when she moved forward and gave the woman a fierce hug.

  “Thank you for everything,” the girl whispered.

  “Leaving?” Vio interrupted, still confused. “Leaving? Why are you leaving?” She asked the pair though she was gazing at Arnot. He tried to hold her eyes, but found he couldn’t and instead found himself looking at her feet.

  “We’ll be back,” Avi insisted. “This isn’t goodbye,” she added quickly and felt just a bit of shame for the lie as she broke away from the old Solitary.

  N’dori laughed again.

  “Arnot make the bridge,” Avi commanded and he closed his eyes and began to concentrate. They decided day’s prior that he would be the one to take them home in order to save Avi’s strength. From the castle they would gather their horses and move to Northpoint. She would be the one to take the lead on opening the bridge between worlds…if it was even possible.

  N’dori laughed again as she felt the power of Arnot’s projection. The boy had grown strong under her tutelage.

  “No, this is not goodbye,” N’dori said. “We’ll be coming with you…if the bridge can be opened.”

  Arnot faltered for a second. That was his worry, as well as his hope. Avi was confident she could create the bridge between worlds, stating that Galen had shown her how.

  “I can do it,” Avi insisted with more confidence than she felt. Arnot ignored them all as part of him moved out across the island and then out to sea.

  “Do what? What bridge?” Vio asked and reached out and took a firm grip on N’dori’s hand.

  The Solitary looked over at her former student and smiled. “They plan to cross over.”

  Vio’s eyes went wide. “To the Far Lands?”

  N’dori erupted with laughter. “No…” she answered when she finally got control of herself, “over to Galen’s world.”

  Vio’s mouth and the bridge to the King’s Island opened at the exact same instant.

  N’dori smiled and peeled Vio’s hand from her arm. “Are you coming?” She asked and without hesitation followed Avigail through the bridge and into the massive courtyard of Rosethorn Castle.

  Vio watched as they crossed instantly through miles of space and for a brief moment was too stunned to move.

  “Are you coming?” Arnot asked, his eyes now open, and Vio had to marvel at the young man’s control. He’d learned much over the last year.

  “Yes…ye
s, I’m coming,” she stammered and was surprised that her knees felt weak as she moved forward. When she got closer she reached out and took a hold of Arnot’s arm for support. He smiled and together they stepped through the bubble and onto the King’s Island.

  “And just why are we at the castle?” N’dori asked with a grin.

  Avigail smiled. “We’ve come to see Lynn, to see if she’d like to go with us…it being her home and all.” Vio gasped, the magnitude of situation finally hitting her. She tensed slightly as the nearby guards rushed forward but relaxed when they snapped to attention, recognizing the young prince and princess.

  “We’re here to see Lynn Hothgaard,” Avigail said impatiently to the guards as she marched past them, leading the others across the courtyard and into the main keep.

  Avi led the group quickly up a flight of stairs and down a pair of wide corridors before coming to another set of stairs, narrower than the first. They moved up three more flights before heading down a long hallway. The walls were lit with torches and lined with a myriad of tapestries. Moments later Avigail was pounding on a solid oak door like a prisoner desperate to escape her cell.

  Seconds later a muffled yell came from the far side of the door, which was quickly yanked open.

  “This better be damned…oh, M’lady,” Captain Low Hothgaard said, stumbling over his words, very surprised. “I thought you’d be on Noble.”

  “Er…we were,” Avi answered and N’dori laughed. “Is Lynn here?”

  “Yes…yes, she’s feeding the baby,” Low answered and had to move quickly out of Avigail’s way or be run into. Arnot and the rest of the entourage followed.

  Avi was very familiar with the rooms, having spent a good deal of her childhood playing and fighting with Arnot in them. She moved through the outer room and into one of the back bedrooms. Lynn Hothgaard, formally Lynn Doyle was sitting in a rocker, the top of her dress was open and little Mabry was nursing.

  “Sweetheart! Come in! Come in!” Lynn exclaimed with a bright smile as she caught sight of Avigail.

  “Avi!” a little boy of seven yelled excitedly and launched himself from the floor and into her arms.

  “Hello Brock,” Avigail greeted and pulled the boy up and gave him a tight hug. She twirled him once and then twice as the boy giggled. Lynn’s smile turned to a look of curiosity as Arnot and the Tarinas entered the bedroom. Moments later Edmond, Lynn’s eldest at twelve, wandered in to see what all the commotion was about. He made to wrestle a moment with Arnot before kissing Avigail on the cheek.

  “Hey Bub,” Lynn greeted Arnot and he smiled. Lynn was the only one to call him that and had since he was just a baby. When he was younger he found it slightly embarrassing but now he thought it endearing, even more so now that he was about to leave. “Did you win?” Lynn asked and Arnot’s smile told her all she needed to know.

  “Of course,” he answered.

  “What’s all this about?’ Low asked as he followed them in. He nodded to N’dori and Vio. He remembered them vaguely from the Just War, though his memory was helped by the colors lining their pants and capes, signifying that they were from Noble. The room was far from small but it suddenly felt very crowded.

  Arnot rolled his eyes and Avi hesitated, suddenly shy. “We’ve come to ask Lynn if she’d like to go home,” the princess finally got out.

  “Home?” Low and Lynn asked as one. The couple smiled at one another as Mabry, their young daughter, pulled back from her mother’s breast to get a better look at the visitors.

  Everyone paused for a long moment. “We’re…we’re going to open a door to Old Earth,” Avi finally told her, “to your home.”

  Lynn stared at the young girl not truly grasping what was being said, but then thoughts of St. Louis and her former family filled her head.

  “What?” She asked, though she understood very well now.

  “We’re going to open a bridge to your home,” Arnot told her as he dropped to his knees and began to tickle Mabry, who giggled joyously.

  “But why?” Lynn asked.

  Avigail took a deep breath before continuing. She glanced first at her Uncle Low, who was frowning at her and then back to Lynn. “For Galen. We’re going to find Galen.”

  “Dawkins?” Low blurted. N’dori laughed, Vio gasped and Avigail nodded.

  “But why?” Lynn asked again.

  “He’s calling me,” Avi tried to explain. “He was my…our guide in the Far Lands,” she continued and Vio gasped again. “He needs me. He’s calling us.”

  “We thought,” Arnot began from his place before Lynn, “that if we were going to Old Earth we should ask you to come with us.”

  Lynn stared down at Arnot for a moment and once again nostalgia for her old life, for her mother and brother, for televisions and cars, for cell phones and movies, and for baseball…the Cardinals, flooded into her consciousness. For a moment she felt a great desire to go with them, but then Mabry smacked her bare breast and rocked forward and latched back onto her nipple. Lynn’s eyes moved from Edmond to Brock and then up to Low, her husband, her Captain and her love. The desire to return left her almost immediately.

  “I am home,” Lynn finally said, and happily meant it. Those first few years in the lands of the Inland Sea were hard, only the twins made life bearable, but she’d been on the King’s Island for seventeen years now. She had a husband and her own babies…this was home. The thought of raising her three children back home in St. Louis, with the crime, the drugs and the everyday dangers struck her suddenly as appalling, no matter the technology.

  “I am home,” she repeated then stood and moved toward Low. She gave him a quick kiss and then pulled Mabry from her breast and handed her to him. Lynn pulled up her top and then moved back to Avigail.

  “You mean to do this?”

  Avi nodded again.

  Lynn said nothing and just moved past the girl and over to her large wooden wardrobe. She flung open the doors and pulled the very bottom drawer open and took out a small white bundle.

  She was smiling as she moved back to Avigail and handed her what she was carrying. Avi took it and instantly knew what it was. It was the shirt Lynn wore when she came to this world; the white shirt with the small red birds on the front, the St. Louis Cardinal’s shirt. Lynn’s most prized possession. Along with the shirt was a pair of shorts…jean shorts.

  “Wear this,” Lynn said softly. “It will help you fit in…and if you ever come back let me know how the team’s doing.”

  Avigail nodded, desperately holding back tears, but N’dori just laughed.

  “Go on,” Lynn insisted. “Try them on. You’re not much younger than I was when I first changed worlds,” she coaxed. “And you’re about my size…at least before I started having babies.”

  Avi flushed, slightly embarrassed, but also honored and after a moment’s hesitation she excitedly pulled her robes from her body, uncaring who watched. Less than a minute later she was clad in a pair of skimpy jean shorts and a slightly large baseball jersey.

  “How do I look?” She asked the shocked group standing before her.

  “Wonderful!” Lynn answered, and as Avigail did a little spin Tarina N’dori softly laughed once more.

  †

  “I can feel it,” N’dori commented as she held open the bridge to Northpoint. It was not a long journey to the end of the island so N’dori had little doubt she could open the bridge without compromising her strength. At first Vio wondered at the comment, but then she felt it as well. The air was sharp here and she could sense not only the surrounding lands, but something odd as well, something alien, something elsewhere.

  “He needs us…we have to go,” Avi cried once she was through the bridge. She was clearly close to panic. “If you both help us it should be easy,” she added. N’dori smiled wryly but nodded in any case and closed her eyes. Together the two began to gain enough power to project.

  Arnot moved alongside his sister though his heart was pounding fiercely in his chest. He did not
want to go…he was afraid, afraid not so much for what they might find; but instead of never being able to find his way home. Even though his fear was growing, he closed his eyes and began to use his own power to aid his sister.

  “This can’t be,” Vio stammered again, suddenly apprehensive, but she was also very curious. Her knees grew weak and every instinct in her body told her to run away, but instead she stepped up to N’dori and joined in the process of projection.

  Moments later there were eight of them in the field, four living bodies and four ethereal copies...like old film negatives.

  “I can feel it! I can feel it!” Avigail’s wispy projection shouted and N’dori nodded, her eyebrows raised in surprise. She did not truly believe the four of them had the power needed for such a bridge, but she grabbed Avigail with one hand and Vio with the other. Avi looked over at her brother’s projection. His face was taunt but determined. She took hold of his hand and he glanced at her and made an attempt at a smile.

  “We need to move out away from our bodies,” Avigail told them all and together the four began to move forward. It was easy at first but as they pushed farther out into the field it grew steadily more difficult. It felt to Arnot as if their projected bodies were being repelled by some unseen force. Still they struggled forward, Arnot falling a bit behind, weakened by his recent Traveling.

  “Come on!” Avi yelled, pulling at his hand and Arnot struggled to keep up and then quite suddenly they all felt it, the world beyond. They were at the cusp; the thin line between elsewhere and home. Avi stubbornly pulled them all forward and Arnot felt as if the very air was clawing at him, stretching the skin of his face, pulling at the hair on his head and arms. Each step was a struggle.