She gazed at him for a few beats before saying, “I don’t think I have a clue what all that meant, but I hope I’ll figure it out.”
He laughed uproariously, and she giggled in response.
“In time, you will understand all,” he assured her.
She thought of another question. “What about the Rasta… David Carver? What about him? How does he fit in to all this?”
The robed man closed his eyes for a second, and a flicker of sadness passed over his face. “Such a gifted individual, so blessed. More than many. It hurt so very deeply to watch as he lost sight of his connection. Once he did, he cut himself off from everything and everyone, and he became isolated, alone. Just his ego and his work. And his work, shall we say, had repercussions for a man with no connections in his world.”
“He lost sight of his… connection,” Deanna repeated slowly.
He boomed laughter in response. “I never lost sight of him, though!”
Something about the robed man’s explanation of Carver made Deanna think of her dream, and the tiny sun over the statue that had become her. Was it a warning of some kind?
“But… you’re saying I am queen of my world, or I should be. Wouldn’t that make me no different than him? Ego-driven?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No, my Lady, there is a balance. You must understand you are responsible for all that you experience, but there is another force working with you. Let’s call it the great mystery. It responds to you, and your connection to it makes you stronger.” He paused and considered his next words. “One might say that you have been the polar opposite of your Rasta Man for most of your life. Always seeking connection, never acknowledging that you have the power to rule your world. Perhaps that opposite polarity created a vacuum that drew him to you. Perhaps your destinies are intertwined, and he was meant to find his way to your world so that you can save each other. Perhaps your two worlds collided to form a new world, a better world.” He paused, and grinned. “Or, perhaps you are just insane, and he is just a crazy, homeless man, and this is all in your head.”
She searched his face for answers, but saw only the benevolent amusement that seemed to radiate from him at all times. “Do you know?” she asked him. “Do you know which it is? Do you know what’s real and what isn’t?”
“YES,” he answered emphatically. “I know that it all depends.”
“On what?”
“On what YOU know, my Queen,” he said, resting a hand on top of her head.
“I’m not sure if you’re the most ambiguous person I’ve ever met, or if everything is just simpler than it seems. Or both.”
Again, the wide, infectious grin flashed. “Definitely both, my Queen. Whenever there are two possibilities, the answer is always ‘both.’”
Deanna found herself chuckling and shaking her head, though she could not really explain her amusement. She just felt so… happy, walking down the street with him.
“Do you have a name?” she asked. “I feel like I should be able to call you something.”
“You just did,” he said. “You described me as ‘You,’ and we both knew you meant me. You may continue to call me ‘You.’ It will suffice.”
She giggled. “That’s not really a name.”
“I’m not really a person, so it fits for now,” he answered lightly. “Perhaps, in time, we will figure out another name for me.”
She looked at him, then, with a long, considering, appraising look. “You’re not, are you? You’re not a person. You’re really some kind of divine connection. This is real. This isn’t just me being crazy.”
As she stared at him, she noticed his robes looked less like the bedsheets she had originally taken them to be, and more like fine silk. The staff she had thought was a fallen tree branch was actually carved with intricate symbols and seemed to pulse with energy. He looked more like a mystical being than like the homeless man she had originally taken him to be.
The robed man… You… glanced down at himself and grinned. His eyes closed for a moment in apparent ecstasy over the transformation of his clothing. “Ahhh,” he murmured. “The lady begins to understand.”
She returned his grin. She still really didn’t understand everything You said, but she was beginning to accept that he was real, and that she was not insane. If that was the case, she might also have to accept that he was right about her being responsible for her own experience, and queen of her world.
It was a good feeling, that acceptance.
David
David rode his motorcycle down the long stretch of road, enjoying the feeling of the ocean breeze on his skin. He felt more alive, more aware then he had in a long, long time.
After a while, though, he became aware of a feeling that something was missing. He could not put his finger on it, but something just didn’t feel right. This glorious ride felt… incomplete. Almost… false.
He pulled over, onto the beach, and sat on his idling motorcycle, staring at the waves. Something stirred in his memory, and he tried to identify it. He stared vacantly at the waves crashing to the shore, willing the memories to identify themselves.
After a time, he lifted his gaze to the horizon. He watched that quiet place where the ocean met the sky for a long while, not thinking, just observing.
Somewhere in the tangled web that was left of his mind, something clicked, and he said aloud, “Damn.”
He suddenly realized that this place, this motorcycle, as lovely as they were, were not his. They were not, in the truest sense of the word, real.
He got off his motorcycle and walked toward the ocean, wondering how to get to another place, a more real place. He had found himself in new places all the time, without control, for a very long time. This time was different, though. This time, he wanted to go to a specific place; he wanted to go to HIS place, wherever that may be. He wanted to intentionally walk between worlds, rather than being thrown around like a leaf on the wind. He needed to find some connection between this place and his own place, his own home, even though he could not remember where that home was or what it was like.
As he walked toward the ocean, he noticed a long sandbar that extended, just under the water, for as far as he could see. It seemed to present itself as the best option for his next path, so he took off his worn, tattered shoes, and walked out onto the sandbar.
After he took a few steps, he suddenly flashed to a scene in which he was looking up at a tall man who looked lovingly at him and said, “You are always safe, my Queen…. As long as you choose to be.”
Just as suddenly as it came, the image disappeared. David fell down on the sandbar, disoriented. Then, he gazed out at the horizon, picked himself up, and marched onward.
He didn’t know what he had just seen or who the man had been, but he knew he had to find him. He knew the man hadn’t been behind him, on the road, so he must be somewhere ahead. Grasping that thought, the most solid certainty he had felt in many, many years, David marched forward with a sense of determination he had not thought it was possible to feel at this stage in his life.
Deanna
They walked toward her apartment in companionable silence. Deanna felt more lighthearted than she had in quite some time.
When they reached her apartment, though, she felt a moment’s panic. “What’s going to happen now?”
“Whatever you like, my lady.”
“You’re going to go away, though?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Only in this form. You can always find me if you reach inside.”
She bit her lip, nervously. “I don’t want you to go. I feel safe with you.”
“You are always safe, my Queen… as long as you choose to be.”
She smiled despite herself, nodded, and said, “I had a feeling you’d say something like that.”
He shrugged. “I only speak the truth,” he said, then bent over and kissed her forehead. She felt his warm lips press against her head, and then, in an instant, he vanished.
And
she was alone again.
Realizing time was of the essence, she ran into her apartment and put on the warmest sweater she could find, with jeans, several pairs of socks, and boots. She put her warmest winter coat over all of that, with a hat, a scarf, and gloves. She looked around for her phone, to no avail, but found a pack of cigarettes, which made her happy. She grabbed her wallet, purse, and sunglasses, then ran back outside, and down the street, with no real idea of where she was going. She was just going AWAY, away from anywhere she thought Steven and Larsen would look first. Despite the comforting words of the robed man, she did not yet feel ready to face them; she did not feel confident in her ability to take control of the situation.
After she ran a few blocks, she sat down on an arbitrary bench and lit a cigarette while she tried to collect her thoughts and form a plan. She knew she should keep moving, but at the same time – why? To go where? They would be able to find her anywhere, wouldn’t they?
“And yet,” she thought, “they can’t seem to find the Rasta Man.”
That thought, at least, was encouraging. If they couldn’t find him, maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t be able to find her, either. Maybe, if she could figure out why the chance encounters she had had with him were important, she could figure out how to get them off her back.
The last time she had thought about the Rasta Man, before all of this mess, was at the laundromat. She had pictured him riding his motorcycle down a highway someplace warm and beautiful, and the thought had made her smile. Even now, as she sat on the bench, she smiled at the mental picture.
“The last place I really saw him, then, was in my imagination,” she thought.
It was an intriguing notion. A day ago, she would have thought nothing of it, but she had just taken a stroll down the street with some kind of embodiment of connection. Anything, it seemed, was possible.
“And I’m the queen of my world,” she murmured. Then, she closed her eyes and began to release her thoughts, embracing her connection to the divine, as she endeavored to return to that memory.
Eric
Eric sat in front of four separate monitors, studying them all as data scrolled past.
As John walked by, he glanced at the monitors and said, “Well, she’s gone, did you happen to notice that while you were examining her molecules and whatnot?”
“Of course,” Eric murmured. “I think she’s back in Woodford, but she kind of disappeared once she got there.”
“Don’t you think you should tell your buddy the General what’s going on?”
Eric paused and glanced at John before answering, “I’m not sure.”
“I mean….he’s gonna know soon, anyway. Get the brownie points, bro.”
“I’m…. not sure,” Eric repeated.
“Oh, what,” John said casually, “you mean because of how he’s turning all evil about this waitress chick?”
“You’ve thought so, too?” Eric’s voice sounded grateful.
“I mean, yeah, bro. I watched some of his ‘interviews’ with her. And now he wants to erase her brain? What the fuck is that shit?”
“I’ve been really perplexed by his reasoning,” Eric blurted, relieved to get it off his chest. “I understand he wants to find Carver, but this is… odd.”
“Odd? I was considering buying him a Darth Vader mask to accessorize his turn to the dark side.”
Eric snickered, then frowned. “I was kind of hoping it was just me.”
“Nah, bro. Anyway, how did she ‘kind of’ disappear once she got back to Woodford?”
“Don’t really know. She was there, then she wasn’t.”
“Maybe there’s something funky going on in that town. Carver was there, Steven found her there, and Larsen started going all evil…. Weird stuff, for sure,” John observed.
“Yeah. I…..” Eric trailed off and stared at his shoes.
“Did you have something to add to that, or was ‘I’ really your main, take home point there?” John asked drily, after waiting fruitlessly for Eric to finish his sentence.
“I might have… there could… I thought maybe I saw….” Eric stammered, then trailed off again.
“I have no idea where you’re going with this, bro, but I’m riveted. Let me know when you think you can make it to the end of the sentence.”
“I-think-I-saw-Carver’s-energy-signature-in-the-waitress’s-molecular-scan-yesterday,” Eric told his shoes in one long breath.
“Like…wait. Like, her energy output is the same as his?”
“No, hers was hers, and her molecules were all normal, but his energy might have been flickering around in her molecular structure for a second.”
“Did you actually smoke crack before this happened?”
Eric snickered in response, then shook his head.
“I don’t know what that could even mean, bro,” John said, incredulously. “I feel like we have to tell the General, ‘cause I just have no clue.”
“Yeah, but… I’m not sure,” Eric repeated, hesitantly.
“Right, the evil.” John sat down heavily in a chair next to Eric and stared vacantly at the monitors, then said, “Well, shit.”
Eric nodded morosely, and the two of them sat quietly in their confusion, watching a never-ending stream of apparently useless data scroll by on the monitors.
“We’re gonna have to strategize a bit before we talk to the General,” John said, and Eric, having nothing else to say, stared at his shoes.
Steven
Once Steven had spent what seemed like a fairly long time marinating in his anger, the door to the cell opened, and General Larsen entered, whistling. When he saw Steven sitting alone on the cot, his whistle ended abruptly.
“She stole my Broom,” Steven explained, flatly.
“Oh, dear,” Larsen answered, with feeling. “How did she know how to use it?”
“Because you really just have to push a button?”
“But the focus, the direction… she couldn’t know how to REALLY use it. Odds are, she’s back in Woodford. That’s the only place her little mind would have been thinking of. Chin up, boy, we’ll find her.”
Steven nodded mutely, his mind still occupied by the many ways in which Deanna was clearly a bad person.
Larsen pulled out his Wand and tapped away at the screen for a moment. Suddenly, he paused and looked up sharply. “Why didn’t you use your Wand to brief me before I came in here?”
Steven blinked in surprise. “Honestly, sir, I was so mad I didn’t even think about it.”
“I see. And how long did you sit here, being ‘mad’?”
“I’m not really sure. Twenty minutes? Thirty?”
“I see. So, for roughly half an hour, Miss Flanagan has been on the run and neither you nor the techs felt the need to make me aware of the situation.”
Steven’s knee began to shake. “Well…yes, sir, I suppose that’s true.”
“Does that seem like it was the best course of action, in retrospect?”
“No, sir. I suppose I let my anger overrule my sense of logic.”
“Indeed. Well, let’s go see what John and Eric’s excuse is.”
They left the cell and walked through the empty testing room, down the hall to John and Eric’s private lab, which was a fairly chaotic room full of computers and devices in various stages of development. There were a few band posters on the walls that John had hung, which, in combination with the general mess, gave the little room a similar ambience to the bedroom of a fourteen year old emo boy.
Whenever Steven had previously visited the techs’ lab, he had found Eric working at one computer and John sitting across from him, more often than not playing video games or listening to music. This was not the case today. The two techs sat side by side in front of a computer that had four monitors set up, with data scrolling down each one. Neither of them were looking at the monitors, though. They both stared at Steven and Larsen. Eric wore a look that could only be described as fear, whereas John had an air of forced nonchalance
.
“Oh, hey, guys,” John greeted them casually.
Although Steven sensed there was something going on with the techs, he felt it would be better to stay quiet and let Larsen take the lead. After all, if he had alerted Larsen to the situation as soon as it occurred, everything would probably be made right by now.
“Gentlemen. I assume you’re aware that Miss Flanagan has left us?”
“Yes, sir, we know she’s back in Woodford maybe but she keeps disappearing,” Eric quickly mumbled to his shoes.
“And did you think at any point that it might be a good idea to alert me to this situation?”
Nobody said a word. The silence was so heavy, Steven thought it could be described as crushing.
“Gentlemen, that was a question. Which implies that it requires an answer.”
John and Eric glanced at each other, then Eric looked back to his shoes, apparently for their wise counsel. Steven had never felt so awkward on someone else’s behalf. He was therefore relieved when John started talking, though his relief died out quickly when he understood what the tech was saying.
“Well, the thing is, General… the thing is… you know when Anakin kills all those kids in those godawful new Star Wars movies, and it doesn’t make any sense? Like, he thinks the Jedi are corrupt and he has to protect his wife and kid, but then he just randomly kills a bunch of kids, and you’re kind of like, what the fuck? It’s kind of like this waitress chick is your bunch of little kids.”
There was a moment’s silence as everyone attempted to process this, then Eric told his shoes, “We want to be taken off this assignment, sir.”
March Forth (The Woodford Chronicles Book 1) Page 12