by Joshua Cook
The counselor had suggested they make a spinner, like one of those used in a children’s board game, and have it point to various foods he’d never tried. They could use it to pick what to eat. Cendan had found the idea ridiculous. Nevertheless, compromise was important, and he’d let Jasmine pick a variety of menus out for him to go over instead.
He thought about the night she’d left. The fight started over one of the normal stupid things that couples argue over—in this case, it was over the toothpaste cap. He’d left it off again, but it wasn’t a big deal to him. She thought that was gross. The discussion turned into a minor argument, and then, as frustrations and irritations were uncovered, a full-blown yelling match. She’d gathered a few things from his place and left that night, and he hadn’t seen her since.
That night, he had gotten into his car and driven to the coast. He’d found a fairly out-of-the-way little beach and sat there all night and into the next morning, staring at the stars and wondering why he had once again sabotaged a perfectly good relationship. Maybe if he’d been more willing to open up a little, things would had been different.
Back in the present, he eyed the stack of menus and for once, resolved to try one. This day had been strange enough why not just make it a complete oddity? He reached out and took the menu on top, and his other hand found its way to his pocket, gripping the key he had kept there all day. For a second, everything in the room came into focus, and he stood outside himself, seeing himself clearly.
Why was he holding the key? Hadn’t he put it back in its place on his desk? No, no he hadn’t. Why not? He needed it with him. Two warring factions of thoughts crowded his mind—one, his patterned life, created to give himself stability; the other, newly awakened but powerful, the one that had been with him since the incident in the kitchen. His breath caught for a second, and then with a large exhale, he shook himself and read the paper menu in his hand.
Instantly, he got a chill. What kind of day was this? Why was he doing these things? For some reason, he couldn’t stop himself from acting so out of character. More disturbing was the unbidden thought that he didn’t want to stop himself—that was what scared him more than anything else.
All his life, he had been controlled, controlled by himself, but controlled nonetheless. He’d controlled, filtered, and processed every action, thought, word, and emotion before carrying it out. When he was young, he’d learned the hard way that a lack of control could be bad for him. He had let his passions run wild before, and it had always ended in disaster for him and anyone else involved. Learning to control them, his emotions, his frustrations with other people’s lack of ability to understand him—had been one of his hardest lessons in life. Lessons that usually involved him running too hot and ending up with more than a few bruises from the fights he’d gotten himself into. Control had come with age, and he extended that control to every aspect of his day-to-day existence.
In a single day, a single event, really—his control was showing cracks, and large ones at that. But he didn’t stop them from spreading, and that puzzled him even more. He fought the urges he was having to do something different, something new. Decisions needed to be based on logic and facts. Emotions were fine, in the proper time and place, but they couldn’t overwhelm him.
How could a single event, the neighbor’s daughter getting bitten, change everything for him? Cendan kept feeling this pull, however; this need to go and do something—it was decidedly not what he would do in a normal day. The menu in his hand, the one he had just picked up, was to a nearby Japanese place. He hadn’t ever eaten there. He wasn’t even sure if it was still around. He considered forgetting this whole thing, getting in his car, and getting soup at his normal place—same soup, same sides, and one of the three tables he ate at.
Before he could really think about it, Cendan was sitting in his car, backing out, and heading to a place exactly three-point-two miles away called the Red Orchid. He was also feeling strange. Part of his mind was telling him to stop, go back home, and stop acting this way. Oddly though, he ignored it because the rest of his mind was focused on everything around him—the way the seat felt under him, the slight discomfort where one shoe had been tied a bit too tight, and the heaviness on his right leg where the key still sat in his pocket.
The key. Why was it still in his pocket? Thoughts of the key sort of slid away in his mind, forgotten as he drove on autopilot. It was a detached sort of driving, half-following the GPS directions and half-navigating from memory. That screaming part of his mind knew that this was also a bit odd as he’d never been to the Red Orchid before.
A short time later, Cendan pulled up in front of a small Japanese restaurant. It was strange that he hadn’t really been aware of this place before, he normally took stock of everything around him. He had never understood why others didn’t. Knowing where he was in relation to everything else in the world made sense. It helped him avoid certain problems and obstacles in life. The realization that there was a whole building he hadn’t noticed was, in fact, rather annoying.
Cendan sat in the car, hesitating. He didn’t want to eat here. He wanted to go home and get this day behind him. Tomorrow, he could get back into his routine. After all, the routine worked. It was nice, safe, and predictable. This odd feeling of lack of control, this wasn’t him. This wasn’t who he was. His fingers brushed the key in his pocket through his pants leg. Suddenly, as if to end the mental back and forth, he opened the car door and got out.
Once he was out of the car, the arguments in his head stopped. An imagined echoing boom snapped Cendan back to the present. Cendan took a deep breath. For the first time since the run, he felt one hundred percent himself. Get back in the car, go home. Cendan turned to his car and had his hand on the handle when he heard his name.
“Cendan?”
Cendan’s head jerked up. He knew that voice, but how in the world had he ended up here, at the same time as her? Who knew how many restaurants were in his town, and this was the place he chose? At the same exact time as the ex-girlfriend, who had put those menus in his kitchen in the first place?
And there she was, Jasmine Watabi.
Chapter Two
She was as beautiful as he remembered. Her father was Asian; her mom, as she had put it once, “A Canuck with a taste for travel.” Jasmine’s jet black hair hung loose, the same way it always did. How many times had he tucked that hair behind her ears? She watched him with blue-green eyes, wide in surprise, but something else was there, something hard? No, not hard—resolute.
He realized he hadn’t said anything in response, and a quiet minute passed as he tried to puzzle out how she was there. “Uh... Jasmine? What are you doing here?” The once screaming part of his mind gave him a mental smack. She was hungry, of course. She ate Japanese food, so why not go there? And she’d picked the menus out, so she must have known the place.
“I should ask you the same thing, Cendan. You don’t like Japanese food, or at least, you didn’t before.” She gave a look to her companions, one he couldn’t read. Only then did he notice she was with two other people. Two men were with Jasmine, one older and taller, with sharp-edged features. He wasn’t smiling, in fact, the man appeared confused, and more than a little worried. The other man appeared to be slightly younger than Cendan, with a semi-inane grin on his face. Cendan took one glance at him and knew, that a guy spent a lot of time saying things like “Oh, wow,” and “Cool, man.”
“I uh, got hungry and figured I’d try something new,” Cendan replied. He left out the part about the menu, and the fact that he hadn’t been able to stop himself from driving there.
“You? You wanted to try something new?” Incredulousness crept into Jasmine’s voice. “You hate new things.”
“Well… I’ve changed,” Cendan replied. That wasn’t exactly true, today had just been really different.
Jasmine nodded. “Okay, then. Care to join us?”
The reaction from her companions was swift and strong. The older man with
the sharp-edged face turned to Jasmine as if she had said the most surprising thing he’d ever heard. The other man did a double-take, his smile fading and giving way to a shrug. The smile failed to return to his face.
“Yeah, sure,” Cendan replied. Why had he said that? No answer came to him. That fuzziness had returned, it felt as though he were being pushed into something and he couldn’t say no.
The only reaction from Jasmine was slight widening of the eyes. She hadn’t expected him to say yes. Before she could say anything else, he turned to his car to lock it, he had put the car keys in a pocket. Instead, his hand strayed to the large metal key that he’d had with him all day. Without thinking, he pulled it out of his pocket. It felt heavier than normal. And in contrast to the warm air around it, it was cool to the touch.
He heard a deep intake of breath behind him, but he couldn’t focus on it. His fingers felt slippery, and the key fell from them, landing on the ground with a thud, with none of the expected clang of falling metal.
“Careful,” a voice said behind him. Cendan turned to see Jasmine and the two other men watching him and the key, their faces betraying their shock. Jasmine looked at him as though he were a complete stranger.
The older man was the one who had spoken. His eyes were glued to the key on the ground. He was rubbing a large ring on his left hand, a ring with a ram’s head done in three dimensions, with horns and all.
“Sorry?” Cendan said. “I don’t know why I had that in my pocket, I normally keep it at home on my desk, and I just couldn’t seem to put it back today…”
“Because you can’t,” the older man answered. His voice was gravelly. “You were meant to come here, and you were meant to find us.” He paused for a second. “Or we were meant to find you, I am never sure of the order of those things.”
“Cendan, come inside with us,” Jasmine cut in. “I’m having a hard time believing this, but… let’s just go inside and I’ll explain or really, we will explain.” Her hand reached out for him. Cendan stared at it and then bent down to get the key. The moment he touched it, a thrill shot down his arm, and he gasped.
Turning back to Jasmine’s outstretched hand, Cendan nodded. He only knew two things at this moment, one, he wasn’t in control of the situation, and two, regardless of anything else, he knew that he needed to go with her. He felt like he was standing outside himself again, watching himself take the large metal key and place it in his pocket, his hand following it and gripping it firmly. He felt nervous, unsettled. This wasn’t a branch he wanted to go down, but he was powerless to stop it.
Waves of nervousness and fear froze Cendan. What was all this? Belong with them? What the hell did that mean, and who were the other two people? Jasmine had always kept her life outside their relationship private, very private. Sweat formed on his hands, clammy in the cool evening air. Cendan forced himself to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Something unusual was going on with him, something that Jasmine seemed to be involved in. Despite their breakup and lack of contact since, he did trust her. He had to go and see what this was all about.
The restaurant was sparsely populated with customers—only about six tables were in use out of thirty. The smells were unidentifiable to Cendan for the most part. He tried to focus on his surroundings to ground himself. Faint odors of citrus and seafood wafted over to him. The floor felt clean beneath his shoes, but he could feel the slight give of a floor that had seen a lot of use. Everything was dimly lit, the colors of the natural wood and bamboo broken up only by the large swatches of brilliant red fabric. On each table stood a single red orchid, a real one, too. Cendan studied one, compelled by his love of gardening. The flower was in good shape. Someone knew their stuff.
The staff greeted Jasmine by name. She must have eaten there often enough. They were quickly shown a table that was semi-hidden behind a partition—as close to a private room as the place seemed to have.
No one said anything for a minute, with Cendan unsure of what to say, and the other three giving each other glances and a slight shrug here and there. It was almost comical if that day hadn’t been so damned weird. Finally, the older man cleared his throat and nodded.
“First off, let me introduce myself and the others. My name is Marcus Wheeldon. You already know Jasmine. And over there is Sal Boren.” Sal gave Cendan a slight nod of the head and flashed a quick smile. “And from what Jasmine said, your name is Cendan? Cendan what?”
“Cendan Key,” he answered.
Marcus stared down at the table for a second before continuing. “Cendan, I’m going to tell you something. A story, if you will. Please just listen, don’t answer, and hold your questions until I’m done, okay?”
Cendan nodded, though he felt guarded. It had been such a strange day, adding one more level of weirdness wasn’t going to change anything. Before Marcus could continue, however, a waiter appeared with a large pot of hot tea. Each of them was poured a cup, as Jasmine spoke to the waiter in Japanese, pointing to each of them in turn. Cendan could only assume she was ordering for them.
When the waiter left, Marcus took a long sip of his tea and stared into the cup. Silence ruled the table, and just when Cendan was going to prod the man to continue, he began to speak.
“I’m going to tell you a story that will seem hard to believe, so bear with me. Have you ever made a loud noise in a place with an echo? A cave? Music hall? Heard the sound reverberate back to you slightly different, fainter, maybe even distorted a bit, but the same sound? Now expand that out to the creation of the world. It doesn’t matter how you think the world was created, but know that creation, it made an echo—an echo that exists to this day.”
Cendan didn’t say anything though his mind was going quickly.
“This echo is much like here,” Marcus went on, “but with a few main differences—one, there are no humans there, and two…” Marcus shifted in his seat. “Two, on this echo, magic is real.”
Cendan almost burst out laughing Magic? What was that, Jasmine’s attempt at a bad joke?
“I know that sounds silly, but it’s true. Magic is real there. Magic guarded by and used by a creature called the Slyph. The Slyph has one goal, one thing it wants more than anything—to join our world with hers, to the utter ruin of us all.” Marcus rubbed the odd ring on his hand again.
“We...” he said, gesturing at the others, “we are Bridgefinders. We work to stop the Slyph and its creatures from joining the two worlds.”
Cendan smirked. Marcus had already made a mistake in his story. “You said this echo was uninhabited, and now there are creatures there?”
“No, Cendan, I said there were no humans there. I didn’t say it was uninhabited. Every story you’ve ever heard about fairies, trolls, goblins, gremlins, sprites, elves, giants… all of them, there’s a bit of truth in them, because all those things and more come from this echo.” Marcus locked his gaze onto Cendan. “And you, Cendan, are a Bridgefinder, too.” Marcus held up his ring and glanced at the others.
“Your key... that key is a focus. Where it came from, I don’t know. Until today, I would have sworn up and down that we had all the remaining focuses safely stored away, at least the ones we can control…” Marcus trailed off.
Sal spoke up for the first time. His voice was clear, but deeper than Cendan had expected. “Cendan, did something happen today? We are trying to figure out why all of a sudden a new Bridgefinder appeared out of nowhere. One reason could be you had an intersection with something of the echo, and that jolted things into place.”
Cendan stopped smirking. That girl, that little girl, her screaming about a little evil man, that feeling of threat and malice in his kitchen—an involuntary shudder came over him at the memory of that evil feeling.
“There was something, wasn’t there?” Jasmine asked. “I can see it on your face. Tell us what happened.”
Cendan spoke, voice tight with nervousness. “Today, I went for a run. On the way back… across the street, a little girl had been bitten by s
ome wild animal. But as she was being brought into the ambulance, I heard her say that an evil little man had bitten, her not an animal. After talking to an officer there, in my kitchen, this... Feeling of dread, evil, hatred gripped me. Until I held this...” Cendan pulled the key from his pocket. “Ever since then, this day has gotten progressively stranger until now.”
Cendan watched all three nod at each other with various levels of disgust. Marcus’ expression hardened as he spoke. “Grellnot. That damn thing. Had to be Grellnot.”
Cendan didn’t know what a Grellnot was but based on the way the people around the table were reacting, it wasn’t anything good. “What’s a Grellnot?”
“Not a what. It’s a who. Grellnot is…” Marcus trailed off, struggling to find the right words.
Sal broke in. “Grellnot is half-goblin, half-gremlin, and partially, sort of, one of us.”
Marcus turned on him. “It’s not one of us!” He smacked his hand down on the table, silencing the place beyond the screens.
Sal shrugged. “No, it’s not one of us, but the only reason the damn thing exists is because of one of us.”
“I don’t want to get into whatever squabble this is,” Cendan said. “Just tell me what you think is true, and we can go from there, okay?”
Cendan kept still, but he was dumbfounded by what these people were saying. And the one person here he thought he knew was part of this? It made no sense. Echo worlds? Magic? Strange creatures? Nonsense. His logic told him to excuse himself and walk away from these people. But… he couldn’t. Why was that?
Marcus sighed. “To explain what Sal said, we need to give some background. So bear with me.” Marcus held up his ring finger. “This is my focus. This ring, along with my talent, allows me to find and close the Bridges that form between our world and the echo world. Jasmine and Sal have their own focuses. Without a focus which is different for each person, our abilities are greatly weakened and diminished. Your key—that’s a focus. How it came to you and where it came from, I don’t know.”