Moon Dreams (The Jeremy Moon Trilogy Book 1)

by Brad Strickland

  Jeremy stared at Sebastian. “When did I invest in a sporting-goods company?”

  “It's a new account. And I'd already paid for the Porsche, and there was some left over. It's a good return, believe me, especially after I analyzed their demographics and showed them—”

  “You can't do that!”

  “I did it.” They stopped at a red light on Peachtree. Sebastian chewed his lip. “Look, if you don't send me back, here's a proposition. Nobody at the office is to know about it, but on the side I've set up a little consulting outfit. I need somebody good to run the place. Just front for me, really. If you wouldn't mind being my cousin, it's a great opportunity. Say forty K to start, then—”

  “You bastard!” Jeremy laughed. “You love it, don't you? And you were the great magician!”

  “No so great.” Sebastian turned right. “I'm going over to Techwood, okay? Less crowded in the middle of the day.”

  “Fine.”

  “I wasn't so great. I could do the magic, but it never felt good, you know? But this, God, what a kick. And it's so easy! People just don't see how easy it is when you learn a few angles. So, what do you think? Would you run the consultancy for me?”

  “No. I'd hate it.”

  “Then I have to go back?”

  “You got it.”

  Sebastian pulled into a parallel parking spot on a side street. “There's something else you should know. Now, don't get mad.”

  “What is it?”

  Sebastian looked long and hard at him, then blurted: “You're marrying Cassie on Sunday. Then you're off for two weeks’ honeymoon in Vail.”

  Jeremy went dead cold inside. “That's why you have so much in your checking account. My account, damn it! We'll just have to call it off.”

  “Four hundred guests. You're supposed to pick up Mom and Bill at Hartsfield, five o'clock Friday.”

  Jeremy stared at his own image. “You don't love her.”

  Sebastian swallowed and averted his gaze. “I didn't know what love was until I met Cassie,” he said quietly. “You can believe it or not, and to hell with you.” After a long silence he added, “I have no magic left. I'm burned out. What will I do back in Thaumia, assuming they let me live?”

  For ten minutes they sat there. Then Jeremy cursed. “Come on. We have to get back to the apartment. That's where the spell will work. Wait, though. Stop at Rich's. You'll have to get back to Peachtree and turn south—”

  “I know where Rich's is. What do you want there?”

  “A backpack of some kind.”

  They drove to the department store, and Jeremy bought a bright blue nylon knapsack for twenty dollars. Then, back in the car, he said. “Home. But not right away. Take Ponce de Leon east to Highland, then north.”

  “What's there?”

  “Bookstores,” Jeremy said. “Mark's first, then all the way up to the used textbook store near Emory. What's the matter? Don't you read fantasy and science fiction?”

  “I read Fortune,” Sebastian said.

  Kelada came into the Great Hall, and behind her Nul stumped in on his crutches. “Is it happening?” Kelada asked Barach.

  “It is beginning.”

  “I want to see him,” Kelada said, her voice cold. “I want him to know what he caused.”

  “Give me ten simi alone with Sebastian,” growled Nul. “Bandages and all.”

  “Look.”

  In the center of the star a golden mist coalesced, shimmered, shrank—and became a man. “Well,” he said, hefting a strange blue package. “The spell I put on it actually worked. The knapsack came through whole.”

  Kelada ran forward, and Nul whooped, waving his crutches so hard he almost fell on his face. Laughing, Barach picked up the cloak Jeremy had discarded early that morning and went to throw it over the shoulders of the naked, bearded man. It was hard work, for first he had to pull Kelada away. The man put his hand on Barach's shoulder. “You still have one pupil, old teacher.”

  For once in his life Barach could not speak. Nul had clumped over to the knapsack that the traveler had dropped. “What in this?”

  “Stories, little friend. All the stories I will write. After all, my magic may not last forever.”

  Nul had opened the pack. “Pretty pictures,” he said, looking at the covers of compact paper-covered books. “Writing strange. You can read this?”

  But Kelada had thrown her arms around him again, and for the moment, at least, Jeremy was not able to reply.

  Afterword: Of Thaumia and Its Magic

  In writing the tale of Mage Jeremy Moon and his quest to destroy the mirrors created by his dark double, I have dealt already with the world of Thaumia and have told of many of the ways this world differs from the Earth. Still, any world is commodious enough to contain more than can be kept between the covers of any single adventure, and there may be a few readers interested in knowing more about the alternate universe of Thaumia, its origin, and its relation to our universe. While not exhaustive, this afterword may help explain some riddles that would trouble an analytic reader. In any case, it does not further the story of Jeremy's experiences in Thaumia (that must wait for another tale), but it does shed a bit of light on the reality in which those experiences happened.

  First let's consider the origin of the plural universes. Kelada, admittedly unschooled, was by no means uneducated (there is a difference, even in Thaumia). Her account to Jeremy, though not couched in the academic phrases beloved by magi and full professors, was correct in its essentials. Back at the beginning of things (or rather before, since without space there could be no time), at the commencement of the Big Bang, the cosmic egg which contained all that was to be burst open, not like a real egg to hatch one chick but rather like the bud of an incredibly complex flower. From the multidimensional point which was the origin of all universes, and which the Thaumians know as the Between, petals burst in many different dimensional directions. Each petal comprises one universe.

  Now, our universe received a great amount of what we call energy and only a little of what the Thaumians call mana (we'd know it as magic). As a matter of fact, our universe is energy and space—nothing more, if one excepts the minute quantities of magic that fill the interstices and are hardly noticed in our day-to-day life. All matter is simply solidified energy, energy standing still in one place for a short time. This book is energy, the chair you're sitting in is energy, and you are energy. This is all a much more verbose way of saying what a wise and gentle mage of our own world once said much more succinctly: E = mc2.

  In the Thaumian universe the reverse obtains: there magic is the primary stuff of creation (though energy does exist there as magic does in our own universe). There, should Tremien or one of his peers enunciate it, the equation would be expressed as M = mc2. Or maybe not, for the speed of light is a function of physical law, and physical laws are unique to their own universes. There is a universe, for example, where the speed of light is in our terms about twelve miles per hour. The inhabitants of one world on the outermost fringes of a galaxy there only began to see other stars about a week ago. Prior to that time, the sky had been dark except for their sun (actually an image of what their sun was like 19.41 years ago, since it takes that long for its light to reach them). They still don't know what to make of these new lights popping into their sky, and rather regard it as a celestial fireworks display. But they do think it is very pretty, and they stand outdoors through most of the night now, gasping “Ooh!” as a new star appears and occasionally bursting into spontaneous applause at the debut of a new red giant. But this is in another place, so back to Thaumia.

  Thaumia is full of potential magic, just as our world is full of potential energy. Here we must use physical means to liberate and use energy: muscles swing a bat that sends a ball over a distant fence; gasoline unites with oxygen to drive pistons that move a car; friction warms a match and produces combustion. In Thaumia, mental energies can release magic and use it to do work. However, the user of magical energies must
be very certain of what he or she wishes to accomplish. You would not (I hope) attempt to cook a steak by inserting one end of it into a light socket. On Thaumia an untutored person attempting to use magic is in exactly the same position. Thus the three-stage ritual of using magic-formulation, visualization, and realization—really is just a safeguard against unhappy accidents.

  The Thaumians, with their study of the mind and its influence on magic, have learned more than we about the earliest blossoming of the universe. It is true that the Between unites all universes still, like the heart of the flower in my metaphor. It is also true that the Between is both finite and infinite (Earthly logic does not apply here) and that conditions of existence in this primal place are different from anything found anywhere else in all the universes. We visit it in our dreams, and it is literally such stuff as dreams are made on. However, all the dreaming races of all the other inhabited worlds of our reality (and there are billions upon billions of them) also visit the Between, and the same holds true for all the other unthinkable numbers of universes and their inhabitants. As it happens, though, there are harmonies within discord. Earth and Thaumia are examples of that.

  Earth and Thaumia, first of all, inhabit neighboring universes. Both planets were formed, each by means peculiar to its universe, at exactly the same relative time (simultaneity is possible between universes, though not within our own universe), occupy the same relative amount of space, and have on them the same forms of life. There is an unusual sympathy between these two sister planets, one that creates conditions that do not otherwise exist.

  For one thing, it is very clear that in the past there were more “windows,” either intentionally created or spontaneous, through which traffic between worlds was possible. The humans on Thaumia are genetically identical to the humans on Earth; in fact, they are descended from common ancestors. The fact that the human population of Thaumia currently stands at seven hundred million indicates that the Thaumian ancestors came from Earth, and not vice versa. The same is true of many plants and domestic animals: horses, dogs (rare in Thaumia but they exist), cats, cattle, chickens, swine, a variety of wheat the Thaumians call sheaf, and dozens of other food crops and useful trees all came to Thaumia with human colonists. The major colonization presumably occurred during the Neolithic period, since except for only a few fairly clear-cut examples, the languages spoken on Thaumia bear only remote resemblances to such ancient Earth tongues as primitive Indo-European.

  Certainly there were succeeding exchanges (perhaps the mischievous pika people, once much more numerous, ventured into Europe in the Middle Ages and earlier, planting the seeds for legends about the wee folk, bogles, goblins, and pucks), attested to by the presence of Asian, African, and Native American strains of plants and animals; however, these movements must have been smaller ones, and the Earthly folk taken into Thaumia were assimilated, their languages lost (though any inventions they carried in their heads or their hands might have survived and spread). Sad to say, in our time the exchanges seem to have ceased, except for very rare and exceptional cases like Jeremy's. No authentic cases of changelings, for example, have been reported in something over two hundred years.

  The Thaumians by now have their own culture, history, and literature, and a little of it came out in this story. One note on the language: it is, like English, a language primarily of nouns and verbs, but the syntactic order is different. By a minor enchantment Jeremy acquired the language intact and spoke and thought it without effort, so until he actually noticed what he was saying and thinking, he believed himself to be speaking and thinking in English. This is not surprising. You, for example, are not aware of your own breathing—well, now you are.

  Anyway, a book written in the Thaumian language would be fascinating but would sell only to people who had a table with one short leg. I have accordingly translated all the speeches and thoughts, and indeed all the place-names where it mattered, into English. To give you a few examples of the Thaumian equivalents (and I must pause to note that on Thaumia, too, there are many distinct languages and language families; the primary one used in the book is Presolatan, and from this tongue all the examples are taken): Whitehorn really is Duap, a worn-down combination of duli, cone, used also to refer to the horns of cattle, and aphin, white; Haggenkom is a version of the Presolatan Sregukivi, literally “witch's vale.” Ivi, however, is an antique word, with no one using it except the scattered population of Lofarlan in the far northwest. Originally it meant a small hollow on the side of, or at the base of, a hill, but as the Hag's influence grew, the word grew to encompass her devastation. Furthermore, the ending has worn off the word, which should really be ivirn. The closest analogue of the word in English is the almost obsolete Old English term coomb; the Witch's Valley becomes, in my version, the Haggenkom.

  Some peculiarities of our tongue have their equivalents in Presolatan. Nul, who naturally spoke Pikish as his native tongue, had some trouble with niceties of Presolatan involving articles, declensions, and linking verbs, and so, sensibly, he ignored them when he could. None of these existed in Pikish, and it was a chore for him to have to recall them. The quibble he engaged in with “longtooths” and “longteeth” as alternate plurals is genuine and neatly paralleled by the tooth/teeth singular and plural in English. The name of the beast in Presolatan, however, was krasibor, “fang-cat.” Two of the beasts would be called krashibor, while two common cats would be called kresh. The liberty taken in translation was not great, and, I hope, conveyed something of poor Nul's problem in learning a strange language.

  Perhaps it should be remarked in passing that one indication of a migration of Europeans to Thaumia in prehistoric times may be found in the name of Nul's people. In his language they called themselves pwyktwa, which simply means “the people.” The humans who first encountered them called them something very like piksa, with a short “i.” This looks a great deal as if it comes from the Indo-European root pik-, “black” (we can see a modern descendant of this root in the English word “pitch"). The term must have been purely descriptive at first, referring to the dark fur of the pika; however, the sound of the Pikish word, coincidentally echoing the human one, no doubt assured the survival of “pika” as a name for the creatures. Whether or not the term bears any relation to the much later English “pixie” is unknown.

  Much more remains to be told of Thaumia: Jeremy, for example, had almost no contact with the genuine wild animals of the countryside, for the travel spells got him past the wilderness areas. He would have been astonished to see some of the forms of animal life, since they parallel most of the fabulous beasts of Earth (more accidental cross-world leakage in times past, no doubt). One exception, of course, lay in Jeremy's numerous encounters with the vilorgs. However, since the vilorgs had been radically changed by the Hag's magic, forcibly evolved from the large, lethargic, subsentient amphibioid creatures they originally were, they hardly count. From all indications, the Hag's first experiments with them created exceptionally strong, malignant, and feral creatures. By the next generations, those Jeremy encountered, the vilorgs had become tamed and were almost totally dependent on the Hag's will for their own decisions.

  Another problem left unresolved in the present story, of course, is the fate of the Great Dark One and his subsequent moves against the magi. For he did find a way of continuing himself, with devious and evil intent, and his next actions were subtle, determined, and pointed in many ways directly at Jeremy. But since Jeremy knew no more at the conclusion of his adventure with the mirrors than you do (actually rather less since you've read this far in the Afterword), all that was best postponed.

  Jeremy failed to discover many other facts about Thaumian life during his first half-year there: he never really learned much of the complicated system of government, the religious sects of the planet, or the economic system and its total lack of advertising. But then he was at first fully occupied with the problems of the moment. He learned much more as time went by, and while it would be too much to s
ay that he and Kelada lived happily ever after, they certainly did live interestingly ever after.

  However, the account of that belongs not here, but in other songs, other tales, and other books.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1988 by Brad Strickland

  Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

  ISBN 978-1-4976-1125-2

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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