Paternus

by Dyrk Ashton

  * * *

  Zeke is dragged roughly from the white sea and dropped heavily on the sand. He rolls to his back, coughing, sputtering, mist puffing from his mouth and nose. Fi stoops over him.

  “Jesus, Zeke.” She takes him by the hand and helps him to his feet. He leans on her, legs shaking. Vapor steams from their bodies.

  Zeke jerks his head up, remembering. “Peter...”

  Her lips quiver. She slowly shakes her head, then presses her face to his shoulder.

  Zeke holds her tight, closing his eyes. He’d never have wanted it to happen under such insane, fucked-up circumstances, and he feels guilty for even thinking it, but just having her close, holding her like this, he feels whole.

  Unfortunately, there are more pressing matters to consider. Like the fact they’re lost, alone, and have absolutely no idea where they are.

  The desperate reality—or unreality—of the situation is fully dawning on Fi as well. She breaks their embrace and surveys the bleak topography.

  Over Fi’s shoulder, Zeke sees a disturbance in the misty ocean, a soft effervescence different from the waves. “Fi...”

  She looks to him quizzically. “What?”

  The disturbance becomes a rolling boil. He takes her by the shoulders and turns her toward it. “Look.”

  The area of churning vapor creeps toward them, a shadow moving just beneath the surface. They grip each other tight, holding their breath. The shadow comes within a few feet of the shore, then stops. The roiling subsides, the surface returning to tranquil waves. They breath again, a mixture of relief, loss, and fear.

  Then something erupts from the mist, sending a great spout of sea gushing upward. Zeke and Fi clutch each other harder, shrieking at the top of their lungs.

  Standing there, up to his thighs, is a man, his fists clenched, eyes screwed shut, chest heaving. The surface of his body glows with the same light as the mist, but fades as the vapor flows down his body to rejoin the sea. Long brown hair streams over his muscular shoulders, framing a face with wide-set eyes beneath a thoughtful brow, high cheekbones and strong jawline partially obscured by a thick brown beard that goes to the middle of his powerful chest.

  Fi gawps at the sight. Peter?

  But this is no withered old man. His body is... perfect. The physique of a world-class athlete at the peak of fitness, rippling with muscle beneath smooth mid-tone skin that glistens with moisture. And Fi can see all of it. His tattered baby-blue robe hangs open, leaving nothing to the imagination. If she wasn’t suffering from shock and awe, she’d definitely blush.

  The man suddenly thrusts his fists into the air, raising his face to the sky, and roars.

  Fi and Zeke both shriek again.

  The man’s voice is deep, clear, and very loud. A sound both human and animal. Cosmic. Primal. A trumpeting of giants. The vaporous surface of the sea flees from him in concentric waves and the mist retreats from its onslaught.

  Fi and Zeke stop screaming before he does, and then he is silent. The mist returns to a mere wisp on the wind, the surface of the sea to its incessant peaking and falling.

  Breathing deeply, the man drops his hands, lowers his face from the sky, and opens his eyes.

  Fi breathes in sharply.

  “Whoa,” Zeke exclaims.

  The irises of the man’s eyes churn with color, changing from gray to brown, then red, orange, yellow, gold, hazel, green, blue, indigo and violet. The colors continue to cycle until they finally settle on a brilliant emerald green. And he looks right at them.

  “Fi!!!” he shouts with unrestrained enthusiasm. Fi and Zeke practically jump out of their skins.

  He rushes toward them, arms outstretched, eyes gleaming, the widest of grins on his face. They try to back away, but he’s too fast. The sand doesn’t suck at his bare feet as it did theirs when they approached the surf. He snatches Fi and lifts her high into the air.

  “Fi!” he shouts, exuberant. She squeaks in answer.

  The man spins her around, once, twice, then sets her lightly on her feet and kisses her hard, right on the mouth.

  The odors of rose, jasmine and lavender envelope her senses. She tastes licorice on her lips, feels her face turn pink, her whole body flush with desire. When he lets go, she’s barely able to stand.

  The man whips around, his eyes falling on—

  “Zeke!!!”

  Gaping and helpless like tiny cornered prey, “Uhh...” is Zeke’s lone reaction, his only defense. The man advances on him and places both hands on his shoulders, absolutely elated.

  “Zeke,” he says softly, touching Zeke’s cheek and examining his face. The man moves his hand behind Zeke’s head, fingers in his hair.

  Oh no he isn’t! Zeke denies silently. The man pulls him closer—Oh yes he is!—and plants a forceful kiss on his lips.

  Zeke isn’t sure what a swoon feels like, but this must be it. He tingles from his mouth right down to his toes. He would never have thought you could taste patchouli, ylang-ylang or myrrh, but he does, and it’s unbelievable.

  The man pulls his lips away with an audible smack but doesn’t let go, for which Zeke is grateful because his knees are wobbly weak.

  The look on the man’s face changes from glee to worry. “Are you harmed?” he asks earnestly. He runs his hands over Zeke’s shoulders and arms, inspecting him for injury.

  “Uhhh, yeah,” Zeke hears himself say. “I mean, no!” He squirms and dances as the man gropes his body.

  “Are you certain?” the man presses. “You were not injured in the fall? From the hospital? Into the water?”

  Finally recovering from his swoon, Zeke jumps back, holding a hand out to fend the man off. “I’m fine! Really!”

  The man’s wide grin returns. He looks back and forth between Zeke and Fi, hands on his hips.

  “I’m... okay too,” says Fi.

  “Good!” The man nods happily. “Good.” Then he looks at the ground and is suddenly lost in thought.

  After a long moment, Fi ventures to ask, “Are you?...”

  The man reacts immediately. “Peter! Yes! I’m back! Thanks to you. Both of you.” He looks intently at Fi, as if trying to figure something out. “Especially you. I think...”

  His eyes move back to the ground. “I’ve misplaced my slippers,” he says, wiggling his toes in the sand. And he’s lost in thought once again.

  Zeke gestures to the sea of mist. “Peter... Sir... Where are we?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Memory,” Peter answers absent-mindedly. “World Memory.” He waves a hand aimlessly at their surroundings. "Sands of time, winds of change, peaks of present, sheets of past, etcetera, etcetera.”

  Fi and Zeke exchange looks. Not exactly the answer they were looking for. Peter doesn’t move as Zeke steps cautiously around him to join Fi, then he suddenly looks up.

  “We have to go.” He steps between them, takes their hands in his.

  Fi feels a hot sense of rage rise within her. She yanks her hand out of Peter’s grasp, stepping back. “Wait! Wait a goddamn minute!”

  Peter is taken aback. So is Zeke, but Fi’s sentiments are his, exactly. He pulls his hand away from Peter as well, mostly to show he’s siding with Fi, but also because it feels weird to be standing on a beach holding hands with a dude.

  Fi’s surprised at herself as well, but she isn’t stopping now. “Tell us what the hell is going on?!” she demands. “People are being killed! Our friends are dead, and we want to know why!” She jabs a finger at him, glaring. “And who the hell are you?!!!”

  Her eyes flit over his glorious naked body. She catches herself and looks away. “And, close your robe already, will ya?!”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Mendip Hills 2

  A massive paw-hand swipes branches aside. Bödvar Bjarki, The Bear, squeezes from the hole that’s been his daytime den here in the Mendip Hills of England. He stretches in the cool night air, sneezes, and farts. He wipes the slime from his nose and looks up through the trees, scratching his scruffy neck. All
traces of daylight have left the sky.

  Finally, he huffs to himself. That may have been the longest day he’s ever spent. And that’s saying something.

  * * *

  He approaches the base of the limestone cliff he found last night, checks his GPS one more time. He doesn’t need the device. He easily recognizes the place and can smell the trace of his own scent, but he really doesn’t want to fuck this up. Baphomet and Master Kleron are counting on him.

  He leans the thousand pound hammer against a boulder, draws the enormous broadsword Kladenets from his back and drops it to clatter on the rocks. The rucksack he sets down much more gently. It begins to hum again, but Bödvar decides it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s about to make plenty of noise himself.

  Very soon Myrddin Wyllt, The Madman, will finally be free. Free, and dead.

  * * *

  With a single blow, Kladenets chops halfway through the first of the two ash trees that stand before the rock face of the cliff. Bödvar jerks the sword free, tears hunks from the trunk with his claws, then squeezes behind the tree, braces his back against the stone, and shoves. The wood groans in protest but surrenders with a crack! The tree topples, limbs snapping and scraping against others as it goes, and crashes to the ground. He repeats the process with the second tree, then wrestles the trunks further from the base of the cliff.

  He retrieves his hammer, scans the surrounding forest. A mist carpets the ground, crawling sluggishly down the hill. The moon, still practically full, beams like a bleached skull on black sand. Sensing no presence of troublesome parvuli, he sets his feet and swings the hammer with a fearsome grunt. The conical spike on the head of the hammer hits the rock face like dynamite.

  * * *

  Myrddin Wyllt wakens in the darkness. At least he thinks he’s awake. He thought he heard something, felt a vibration in the gritty stone floor on which he lies. Then it comes again.

  PHOOM!

  Is it possible? After all this time?

  Years, decades, centuries. It has to be. Can it be a millennium? It’s possible. Feels like an epoch. Could he live that long, locked away? Sealed in the cave, he’s had no way to keep track of time. No sunlight or stars, no regular schedule for meals. No meals at all. Just a lick of condensation off the walls now and again, a bit of lichen scraped with his teeth.

  PHOOM!

  Myrddin reaches stiffly from where he lies, feeling for a small pillar of rock that he carved long ago by scraping other rocks against it, just for something to do. In the old Brythonic tongue he croaks aloud, “Perhaps, a little light.”

  PHOOM!

  He taps the stone gently with the tips of his fingers while muttering incomprehensible words under his breath. The stone emits a dim glow. Compared to the void of the cave, it seems bright as the sun. Myrddin squints his crystalline gray eyes, eyes that have lost none of their brilliance in his ages of captivity. His tangled white beard sprawls in the dust on the floor. He peers past the lit stone, through the greasy colorless hair that hangs over his creased and pitted face, toward the far wall.

  PHOOOOOOM!!!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Flowers & Figs 8

  Fi just can’t get used to the sheer helplessness she feels when her feet have no purchase. The electric shocks of adrenaline. The spastic gymnastics of her stomach that accompany each “slip.”

  And they just keep slipping, world after world, a curtain of fog between each. Rain, darkness, sunlight. Forests, deserts, mountains, shorelines, prairies, crowded cities and empty streets, even a raging battlefield, and many scorched and barren landscapes—empty, alien-looking, uninhabitable. A few times they walk for awhile in whatever world they’re in, then slip again.

  After the first dozen slips Peter ceased to utter the word with each, but Zeke says it every time, under his breath. “slip...” “slip...” “slip...”

  They received no satisfactory explanation from Peter after his miraculous transformation back on the beach. “World Memory,” he called it. Said something about it being “everywhere” but they were “between” worlds so they were able to perceive it “somewhat directly.” Whatever the hell that means.

  Peter assured them he’d explain more later but insisted they leave the place right away, stressing that “Friedrich was not wrong when he wrote, ‘when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.’” Then he took their hands and a step and said “slip” and they were gone. The only other thing he told them was that when they “slipped,” as he called it, they weren’t traveling in time, as Zeke speculated, but shifting dimensions to other earths, “incompossible worlds,” spun off from the original earth, their world, due to conditions of “contingent possibility” and events that spawned “incompatible futures.”

  Fi thinks she’s going to throw up.

  Peter pulls them up short in a familiar city with a partly cloudy sky and steady breeze. Fi checks street signs and store fronts. She recognizes them all. It even smells like it should. Not a good smell, but welcome nonetheless. She never thought she’d be glad to be back in downtown Toledo.

  She turns to Peter. “Were we lost?” But he’s gazing at Zeke in what can only be described as pure wonder.

  Zeke hasn’t noticed. He’s busy surveying their surroundings, also realizing they’re back. He checks the sky. Early to mid-afternoon, he’d guess. He catches Peter staring at him.

  “What?” he asks.

  Peter doesn’t take his eyes off Zeke, but he answers Fi first. “Yes, Fi. I was a bit disoriented, I must admit. I’ve never recovered from a patermentia so quickly and am still a little groggy.”

  “A ‘pater’-what?”

  “It’s just a term,” Peter offers in explanation. “Something the condition is called by those who know me. An affliction I suffer from time to time. Entirely debilitating and impossible to prevent.”

  Fi wants to press him further because he doesn’t seem capable of answering a question without spawning a dozen more, but his full attention is back on Zeke.

  “Zeke,” he asks, “what did you just do?”

  “Uhh...” It seems to be Zeke’s response of the day. “Nothing?”

  “I did not make that last slip. I did not bring us here.” He looks into Zeke’s eyes as if trying to find a splinter or a bug. “You did.”

  “I did?” Zeke flusters in denial, “No I didn’t!”

  “It wasn’t Fi,” Peter insists. “I’d be able to tell. Have you ever done this before?”

  “I don’t even know what we were doing, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never done it before.”

  “Hmm...” Peter stands motionless and silent.

  Zeke frets under his shrewd gaze. Does he ever blink?!

  Finally, Fi says, “Hey, Peter.”

  He focuses entirely on her. “Yes, dear?”

  Fi’s eyes widen. In that moment, with those words, Peter sounded just like her Uncle Edgar (but without the English accent), which brings something to mind like a sharp blow—she grabs Zeke by the arm. “I need to call Edgar! And we should call the police!”

  She shoves her hand in her pocket. Her clothes are mostly dry after their plunge into the waterhole while slipping away from the hospital, but when she pulls out her phone, water drips and the screen is badly cracked.

  “Is it in service?” Peter queries.

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “Good.”

  “Wha?—”

  “We could be tracked.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes... way.”

  Zeke shakes water out of his phone. “Mine’s trashed.”

  “In fact...” Peter takes both their phones and drops them through the grate of a storm drain.

  “What the hell!?” Fi exclaims. Zeke emits a short involuntary laugh at the absurdity of Peter’s actions. Fi scowls at him too.

  Peter is unaffected. “You said they didn’t work.”

  “Yeah,” Fi complains, “maybe, but—”

  “Right,” Peter interrupts
. He glances up the street.

  A group of middle-aged women exits a neighborhood restaurant amidst peals of laughter. They’re all dressed up in their Sunday best, clutching fancy hats against the wind, gripping faux designer handbags.

  “Wait here,” says Peter.

  Fi is about to protest, not only because she doesn’t like to be told what to do and she’s mad about her phone, but also because Peter looks ridiculous in his bare feet and frayed baby-blue robe—though at least now it’s closed in front and tied—but Peter shouts first,

  “My dear ladies!” He approaches boldly. Their reactions range from surprise to contempt.

  Fi and Zeke can’t hear what Peter is saying, but apparently it’s disarming, even charming, because in short order the women are smiling and conversing with him. He says something to one of them that actually makes her blush. She reaches into her purse and hands him her phone, giving him a lingering pat on the hand.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Fi remarks. Zeke just shakes his head.

  Peter gives Fi a wink, which incenses her for some reason, then steps to a recessed doorway out of the wind. The women giggle amongst themselves.

  “Who do you think he’s calling?” Fi asks.

  “I don’t know,” Zeke answers distractedly.

  After a minute, Peter finishes a call and dials another number. Fi pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. Her fingers hover close to her lips.

  “Zeke, what did you do?” she asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How can you do... what he does, that slipping thing?”

  Zeke rolls his eyes. “I didn’t know I was doing it, if I even was. Honestly, I have no idea.”

  Fi grunts in frustration. When she looks back to Peter he’s returning the woman’s phone with an extravagant bow. The woman blushes again and her friends laugh.

  “Hey!” Fi shouts, but Peter’s already hurrying back. “I wanted to use that. I need to call my uncle!”

  “Not now,” he responds coolly.

  Fi glares at him. “Look, Peter, or whoever you are. My Uncle Edgar is going to hear about what happened at the hospital, if he hasn’t already. And his dog was there and might have gotten hurt. He’s going to freak!”