“I know lots of things, Solomon. Many people do.” HuanJen seemed a bit unfomfortable. “I think you know me better than you admit. You can trust me.”
“Yes, I suppose I would.” Dell nodded. “I suppose …”
“Now, if you were possessed by a person who wanted to embarrass the Travelers, reveal information, how hard would it be to trick that haunt? To contact someone that would seemingly be dangerous, to know too much, but you could trust … and one that in its anger it may not see the danger in?”
“What an interesting theory. You have many tonight. You seem to think I’m very clever.”
“Yes, I do.”
Dell looked down at the floor.
“It’s hard, isn’t it, having friends and relations and doing what we do,” HuanJen asked sincerely.
Dell didn’t answer.
“Jade and I discussed it as well. That’s why she’s at Sanctum. She needs to find how things cohere …”
“They don’t usually, HuanJen. I should never have involved you, you …”
“Are your friend. And the one most likely the haunt would let you summon as I tend to get into trouble. Friendship should not be something that should have limits. That’s a matter for trust, Solomon.”
Dell smiled. “Trust. I’m very bad at trust, HuanJen. I am paid to be suspicious.”
“You’re here.”
“True,” the Head Rancelman noted. “So, what are we doing this evening?”
“I have several amusing films on tape.”
“No DVD player yet?”
“We haven’t had the budget for one.”
Dell looked at his beer. He was talking to a man who had exorcised him of possession. Who knew of the lost city. Who knew …
… enough that it was fairly obvious he could be trusted.
“Do you have any mustard? Good mustard. Not of that crap from Kopeck’s.”
“Actually, yes. Mrs. Kline next door got some when she was at Piscion. She dislike Kopeck’s as well. Says they have too much control of the condiment market.”
Dell smiled. “Well, things are looking up already …”
DARK NIGHT
My name is Jade Shalesdaughter. I’m one of the Vulpines - you know, the fox-people that always have to get explained to the new dimension-travelers. We’re probably easier to explain than the less common and weirder folks that wander between worlds. We’re the training wheels of introducing people to the genetic engineering people get up to.
I’m also currently on Sanctum. The Holy World. The place of all those religious colonies between worlds. Yeah. It’s sort of hard to explain. Harder to explain than me.
So, let’s try and explain this from the beginning.
I came to Xai, the Crossworld, the place where a lot of Portals come together. I figured anything was better than Colony, and it’s a pretty nice place. I may not live like I did at Colony, but I have a life.
Anyway, I ended up working for HuanJen. Yeah, if you’ve been to Metris you may have heard of him, he had a few brushes with fame awhile back. Taoist Magician-Priest from the Order of Sanctum. Nice guy - and, well, you can’t knock the work. The guy gets his hands into all sorts of interesting stuff - hell, the day I met him I got to see an exorcism up close and personal.
Well, one thing led to another and ended up his apprentice - I mean, you know, why sit around and stew in your own neuroses when you’ve got some guy raised in a religious order ready to teach you. Huan’s a bit odd, but you really won’t meet a nicer guy. I wanted to be more - or less, if you want to get Zen about it. I think I’m allowed to be Zen.
Well, then after I started getting into herbs and meditation and the Compendium Esoteric, we ended up dating. Yeah. While I lived with him (hey, it was part of the job), we ended up involved. Sometimes I’m surprised it didn’t happen faster he has … he’s got something about him. He lets you be you. I guess he got taken for granted a lot, but I couldn’t take him for granted.
Well, we went through a lot. I mean, the guy’s hardcore Guild Esoteric, and the Xaian Guild of holy men and women and the like gets involved in a lot of stuff as it is. But we stuck together. He stuck with me, me with him. It wasn’t perfect, but then again the not perfect stuff made it perfect.
But you know, when your boyfriend is teaching you meditation to balance your spirit and you end up fighting possessed historians atop the Xaian center of government, things get kinda weird. I mean …
Hell I didn’t know what I meant. We had a lot of stuff happen. And so he recommended I go to where he came from, Sanctum, and take time to think.
This isn’t a typical relationship, if you’re playing a long at home.
The first day I got to Sanctum, I settled in at the Order. Where Huan came from. OK, where he was raised. His dad was a member and just abandoned him, which didn’t sit well with a lot of people there. I got treated pretty nicely, even if I was “HuanJen’s girlfriend.”
It’s a weird place, The Order. Imagine a city, but so built into the hills and valleys and riversides and forests that you can’t see it, that you can barely conceptualize it. It’s … harmonious, really. Screw your average Feng Sui hack, this was the real stuff.
The Order is Taoist. Yeah, it’s hard to define, and they don’t do much of a job of it either. Chinese mysticism from several alternate Earths, all centered around the great Unnamable, the Tao, and how one achieves harmony with it, with creation. It’s sort of backwards really - half of what they teach is more an undoing, not a doing. Yeah, there’s alchemy and mysticism, and herbology, but also a lot of stuff of getting back to … the Center of things, and it’s not a straight path.
Which is probably my problem. I’ve kinda wanted straight paths lately.
OK, it’s the second day. I got settled. Found where the libraries are, where the food is, where it all is. I even got some nice robes - they’re these yellow things that are a lot like Huan’s “professional outfit”, all decorated with yin-yang symbols and some rune for immortality. Comfortable, but I can’t say it works with me. It’s the green eyes, and the yellow just doesn’t work with them - and the yellow robes and my black fur make me look like some mutant bee.
And …
… see, I don’t have any instructions.
My problem is I’m not sure what to do, what’s going on. Huan suggested I came her to think, so I did, and now all I can think is “what the hell am I supposed to do?”
See, I’m not sure what to do. I mean, what’s normal for relationships? What’s normal for me? HuanJen keeps talking about how there’s no “have” or “must,” but though I can get it intellectually, I don’t know what he’s talking about intuitively.
What’s next for us? For me?
I mean will Huan and I be good parents? Garnet’s pregnant and I know she and Slate will do great. Christ, I’m not sure I can measure up to Slate, and that’s vaguely depressing.
Or am I going to be a good mystic? I mean I like it. I figured out M’s identity. There’s … I dunno. I like knowing how things go. And I like helping people. And all bullshit aside, I like having a feel for the Big Picture.
And I should meditate. Huan’s got me doing a lot of stuff from what he calls the “Reform Age,” the Golden Flower, some stuff developed from Sanctum, and all that. You can talk all sorts of fancy crap about meditation, but the goal is basically two fold - get yourself focused and then let you examine your mind until you understand there’s no boundary between you and everything else.
Then you just are.
It SOUNDS simple. Huan can explain all sorts of things, but it doesn’t mean they WORK right away. The blueprint doesn’t become the gizmo.
I spent the entire day thinking like this in the library, sometimes even doing some reading. It didn’t help.
So today I’m gonna try meditating.
Now what Huan’s got me doing is simple really, just balance my breath and then … well you sorta watch your mind. The idea of course is that you eventually are calm an
d reach some great mystic understanding. He says you can sort of spontaneously “see” that you’re a phenomena, a happening, and then you’re at peace.
Well, I cna’t even focus. I mean, I want to go DO something, not sit on my ass in one of the halls or in my quarters. There’s this big Taoist thing of “Doing by Not Doing” but whatever it is I’m not doing it right. Or not not doing it right.
Yeah, I know. I’m not sure what the hell I am doing. And that’s the problem, only I’m not sure where it all fits in.
This is what I get for hanging out with HuanJen. For a simple guy, he can lead you around and make your life vastly complicated.
I wander around the compound a lot. Some people seem to notice my distress. They talk like HuanJen. Sometimes I want to cry, and I think it’s because I miss him.
I’m wondering where I am here. Some of me thinks I could be happy as his wife, but also there’s being his apprentice, and …
… I don’t want to be small. I feel that way now.
I’m more upset today. I mean angry. It’s like someone’s trying to force off the top of my head. I got a lot of energy and it’s almost all turning into anger. I can feel the answers, but …
I’m not finding any answers. And I want to do something, make it work. Get it right. I keep thinking there’s something.
I consider talking to Scribe. Scribe’s a guy Huan and I had to hide here, when the poor bastard got his head filled with all sorts of dangerous information about the Guilds of Xai. Poor guy isn’t even finished with puberty, but Huan got him placed here, so he can have a future, help people, and because frankly you don’t fuck with the Order. There’s a reason the professional muckety-mucks are called Magician-Priests or Magician-Priestessess - there’s some real power weilded here.
Only I weild jack shit. Some intuitions, some ability to resist posession, some brewing herbals … I dunno, not bad for as long as I’ve been with HuanJen. But … I don’t know. No dumb little wife, and I’m not a perfect mystic, and …
What bugs me about things is, damn it, I may not be the most perfect of mystics, but … sometimes I get it. I’ve FELT it, seen things, felt everything just COHERE. And I don’t have it now, and … it is so depressing.
Screw this.
Tomorrow I’m going outside of the Order. Huan even packed me a survival kit. I’m gonna just … I dunno. Go away from even here and think for awhile.
This isn’t going to help. This is going through the motions.
So I’m sitting outside of the Order. It’s hard to know when you’re outside, but you kinda know. There’s something you feel in your mind.
And I’m sitting by a stream. The folks who founded the Order were fond of running water, and there’s a lot around. Yeah, there’s a plumbing system, but they were pretty careful in arranging it so the local streams are usually clear.
So here I am.
Sitting.
Not doing anything.
You know, what was it, nearly two years ago, I just wanted out of Colony. Colony, our self-made prison. Colony from where we were dealers in truths and lies. Colony, where we’d turned the misfortunes of world to our advantage. The Vulpines. Thorsten’s creations, his superior men and women, doing nothing.
There was something more than that. And I came to Xai. And I worked with Haun-Jen, he let me into his life, I let him into my heart. There is more …
… and I don’t know what I’m doing.
I know when I don’t think about it, and when I think about it, it falls away. It’s all incoherent in my head. And I’m worried. I don’t want to loose it, loose anything. I have it all. ALL. A place, a man who loves me, a sense of the Big Picture … and it turns to mist when I try to hold it.
… and now it falls apart in my head.
I have seen the divine, seen wonders, seen amazing things and here I sit in a stupid robe in front of a stream watching the water flow, worlds away, and I’m miserable. I should be happy, and I’m not. I should be …
… I don’t know.
I crack open the survival kit. Huan suggested camping out, and why not? It’s got everything he’d figure I’d need - some ration packs, some paper, a copy of the Tao Te Ching, and …
I find a letter. It’s Huan’s handwriting. He’s got this kinda weird style, half-flowing, half anal-retentive perfect lines.
… and I feel like he’s behind me. He’s got these moments of knowing things, even if he fully admits he was pretty lousy in divination class. But I can feel him. I think I feel the part of him that touches everything as well as the part that touches me.
He knew I’d get frustrated, go out. He knows me, but not in an invasive way, well, not usually. He knows me and accepts me …
“Dear Jade.
I was quite sure you’d take some time to go out if you got too frustrated. I know what it is like, I have been there.
We all wonder what we are, where we fit in, and as I have tried to remind you, we are as we are. There is no separate Have, no separate Must, we are. Have and must are feelings, sensations, just like high and low, hot and cold. We have to be naught more than we are.
But it is hard to express. It is hard for me to comfort you, and some things must be done on their own.
But I can say I have been there. My education at The Order whas chaotic, and many times I had seen more, felt the Tao, and then lost it. It happens. We are not perfect.
But we are as we are.
You are fine, dearest Jade. You are fine. What you experience is just part of what people who take our path experience. Highs and lows, ups and downs, but we can remember that high and low, up and down, complement each other, and turn on one Pivot.
I have faith in you. I await your return.
Love,
HuanJen”
He went through it.
He didn’t tell me, exactly, not that I’d have listened. But he went through it. Here. Alone. An oddity among the order, studying whatever he wanted, that polite little boy no one really took responsibility for.
How many …
… Rake faced it. He was in a war and something blew another guys hemet straight into his skull, and messed up his speech - or the truama did. And he made it, he reached out and just …
… and Brownmiller. I know his story. He was in an accident and just reached out, and sort of put himself away, and found his god …
… and everyone out there at Guild Esoteric. There’s that point where you keep touching the Big Picture. And you keep reaching until you’re there.
… and M, the leader of Guild Esoteric, the embodiment of the Guild itself, us embodied. Calmly living life to life.
And HuanJen.
He made it. The worst part of this, of this confusion, was feeling alone, unique. But I’m not.
I looked out at the stream, flowing.
All this, all the pain, the questions, they … are part of things. I am part of things. Myself …
… something teeters on the edge of my mind.
I close my eyes, and lt my breathing become regular. Mind on breath, breath on mind. Thought skitter around my head - and they’re part of everything too. Just the way we’re part of everything. The way we in the Guild became part of M.
And whatever I’m doing is what I should do …
… and he knows.
And I am who I am.
… and he is too.
And I don not have to be anything. I am. No one is dictating to me. Nature runs its course. Water on land, clouds in the sky.
I can’t expect a paradise, expect everything to be perfect, because there isn’t any perfection. Perfection just makes you miserable trying to have it. Perfection is pure hell, a noose that we use to trap ourselves with the promise we’ll be happy LATER.
I open my eyes, and look down at the letter.
I am.
I spend an hour sitting there, being.
And it is time to leave Sanctum.
I didn’t have to come here of course, but I thought I had t
o. I don’t have to do anything, but you keep thinking you do.
And it’s time to go home. To where I want to be because I know I want to be. And to where I’m in love with someone because it’s what I feel. And where I look to the Tao and the way of things because it’s what I do.
And I go back to Xai, the where-we-all-go.
GRATITUTE
May 19, 2001 AD, Xaian Standard Calendar
I was having lunch with my sister. This was not something I had planned on. The core of our relationship is not seeing each other too much.
My sister Jade and I have not always gotten along, and since we moved to Xai, it seemed our relationship was more strained. Perhaps without Father or the life of Colony to dislike, our problems with each other were enhanced. Certainly I had done enough to upset her, though those times seemed to be passed. Still, we were cautious, even if things have changed.
In fact, since she had come here, she had changed over time, and I had to admit that it was likely due to HuanJen. I still do not comprehend him, but his influence on her is undeniable.
My sister. Lover to an Exorcist. Future Magician-Priest of the Order, the Taoist mystics of Sanctum.
The little girl who used to spy on people at the center of Colony and get tapes of movies Father didn’t want us to see and wished she could talk to Mother. Sometime the year difference between us turns into a huge gap.
And now, she sits in front of me, eating a soup and salad in Mekzine’s Diner, telling me about her world.
“Sanctum was very interesting,” she says, her words filled with other meanings. Black-furred Jade, always mysterious, even when she doesn’t intend to be.
“Interesting?” I ask, taking a bite of my sandwich.
“Very,” Jade smiles, “I got a lot of thinking done. I feel better.”
She assumes I keep track of things like I used to. And that of all our group of friends, I am as informed as anyone else. I am not. I rely on Garnet for that as she, my dear wife, seems to keep track of everything.
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