Sheila glanced up at me and then back at Penarddun’s hand. Reluctantly, she stepped forward. His eyes found hers as she placed hers atop his.
Instantly I felt something shift inside me, as if a dam had opened. The world blurred and darkened and then I heard a voice in my head.
You have come.
“Well, um, yes. Yes we have.” I cleared my throat, paused, and continued with all the professionalism and reverence I could possibly muster.
“Good sir, it is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance, although I deeply regret these circumstances. May I ask how are you still alive?”
Sheila glanced up at me disapprovingly. I shrugged.
“As graceless as a Grey,” I muttered.
After a moment, a flurry of images flooded my brain, images of the past, of Paleolithic life, and I knew that the being we were dealing with was truly ancient. I could also tell that he was sick, and in terrible pain. I looked over the medical apparatus and noticed now that the translucent tubes, even the heart monitors, were all tinted blue. I’d overlooked that fact when I’d entered the medical building. The flesh around his mouth and cheek hadn’t receded; it had been eaten by the very devices that were supposed to treat him. It all began to make sense: Penarddun was somehow being consumed by this apparatus, and the blue hue suggested the culprit to be none other than the Trickster’s sibling, Wetiko. This was why Dr. Harvey Killian had tried to keep us away. He hadn’t wanted us to see the damage his master had inflicted on the Forever Man.
“How can we help you?” asked Sheila.
Help... her.
More images flashed through our minds, of a young girl with black hair and piercing eyes. She looked so small and fragile, a leaf about to be caught up in an oncoming storm. Behind her was the ominous visage of the dark god of progress, his phantasmal clutches getting ever closer to her. She needed help...
“This girl... is she a helper, an emissary of yours?” I asked, but then quickly corrected myself. “No wait, that’s not right. No, she must be an emissary of the Trickster.”
A tiny smile crept onto Penarddun’s face. I was getting warmer.
“Quite right then. Sheila said when you arrived in town you spoke of the destruction of a great cycle. This girl, she’s crucial in somehow protecting the Time of Change, isn’t she?”
Sheila interjected, “Declan, what are you talking about?”
“The Time of Change... it’s a moment, a ritual if you will, in which one spirit, be it the Mother, Wetiko, or the Trickster gives way to the next, continuing the cycle of this world. Emissaries are those human envoys who are meant to ensure that such times come to pass. This girl we’re being shown... I think she’s one of these chosen for such tasks.”
Yes.
I glanced at Sheila, barely suppressing my pride in having deciphered the Forever Man’s intent to this point.
“So what’s wrong?” asked Sheila. “What is it about this girl?”
The images returned, showing an immense and ancient array of cogs and clockwork resembling the Earth and its seasons, spinning and churning, moving from painted vistas depicting natural disasters to storybook sketches of burgeoning civilizations. These “ages” were rotated through over and over again until the gears somehow became stuck, disabled. Glowing blue debris was jammed in one of the gears, preventing them from turning and bringing about the next season.
“Of course,” I mused. “I think this man’s captors are somehow consorting with the spirit of hunger, Wetiko, to prevent the next Time of Change.”
“What can we do?” asked Sheila, who now appeared entirely receptive to the circumstances being presented her.
The images shifted and took on a darker tone. We found ourselves on a flat, snow-covered plain, surrounded by the carcasses of dead ships. Two men materialized next to us: Penarddun and another creature, a tall dark figure with the face of a raven who wore a shadowy cloak that seemed to stretch into nebulas, galaxies and dimensions I couldn’t begin to comprehend. Ten feet tall at the shoulder, the raven creature stretched a hand over the world, expectant. After a moment, a blue energy raced up from the ground to meet the creature’s hand. Sparks flew and the hand withdrew, curling in frustration. Once more, the raven creature stretched out its hand and once more blue energy flew up to meet it. This time the hand curled into a fist and slashed through the air. Finally it withdrew, vexed by the outcome of its efforts.
The last image we were shown was of the raven creature, small and hollow now, trudging into the snow. Penarddun watched it go, but did not follow. Instead, he turned southward, passing through a cave on his way to civilization, with a book clutched in one hand. I recognized the book instantly. It was the Book of Emissaries. I felt my eyes widen to their limits.
“The book.... Penarddun must have parted company with the Trickster to come south, to help this girl, this... emissary.” I said to Sheila. “I think he means for her to have it.”
“What exactly is this book and how is it supposed to help?” she asked.
“Something I’ve been chasing for many years, an ancient tome that contains a full accounting of Times of Change, past, present, and future. It tells the tales of how the cycles can and must be initiated. Although I don’t know all the details I do know that if it falls into the wrong hands, the cycle could be halted indefinitely, or perhaps, forever.”
I paused to make direct eye contact with Sheila before I continued. “I have sought this book for many years, and researched it for even longer. So I do not exaggerate when I tell you that it would spell certain doom for our world if this book fell into Wetiko’s hands. This girl and the contents of this book appear to be the only means we have of re-initiating the cycle of spirits. We can’t afford to lose either.”
Sheila and I stared at each other across the wheezing body of the Forever Man.
“I didn’t know,” she said quietly. “He was frantic, he was raving.”
“I know,” I said. “The question is, why?”
“Why what?”
“Why was he raving? He doesn’t seem to be raving now.” Indeed, though he’d been communicating with words and images, they were being projected directly into our minds. He hadn’t spoken a word since we’d arrived. “And where is the book?”
Penarddun’s grip on my wrist changed. Suddenly he was standing on a rocky crag overlooking the mine. From this angle I could see that the darkness which inhabited the mining pit was in fact a rippling blue energy. Penarddun’s eyes darkened and he drew forth the Book of Emissaries from underneath a poncho of caribou hide and pressed it to his chest. The book began to glow a soft yellow colour, and that glow transferred itself to Penarddun’s arms, legs, and face. Glowing sigils appeared on every inch of his skin, written tightly enough that there was very little room to spare. The book itself disappeared, as if it had been absorbed into his body.
I was snapped away from this image as the real Penarddun spoke for the first time: he’d begun to utter a nonsensical string of words from several different languages. I was able to identify variants of Ur, Mayan, Farsi, Cantonese, and several other dialects as a different section of his skin lit up with every spoken syllable. He lit up like a digital sign on a street corner, the kind that alternates between showing the time and the temperature.
“He’s filled himself to the brim,” I said, looking up at Sheila. “He wasn’t raving; he simply can’t speak. Every neuron in his mind was used to store information from the Book of Emissaries, every inch of his skin holds words from its pages. In order to prevent Dr. Killian and Wetiko from getting a hold of the Book of Emissaries, he absorbed or, for lack of a better word, ‘downloaded’ the text into his own body, displacing much of his own consciousness. That’s the purpose of all this equipment. Wetiko is trying to drain Penarddun not of his life, but of the book. Penarddun is fighting this withering process, but he can’t survive it, not for long.”
Penarddun’s eyes closed once and then opened again. I’d guessed right.
&nbs
p; “Can we reverse the process?” I asked him.
“What good will that do? Dr. Killian will get the book,” Sheila pointed out.
“Not necessarily. We could take it and deliver it to the emissary – this girl, whoever she is. She can then use it to perform her duty in bringing about the next time of change.”
“I have a detachment to run. I can’t just drop everything to search for a girl we saw in a dream.”
“ – a vision.”
“A vision then. Fine. Look, I believe in this stuff, if I didn’t I would never have contacted you in the first place. I knew there was something curious about this man when I first met him and despite all the new information you’re telling me now, I feel somehow as though I already know all of this. Were I any average person, I would have probably started the eye-rolling long ago, but I’ve seen and heard some amazing things in these past twenty-four hours and yet I believe them all. Somehow I can feel its truth. It’s just that I do not have the resources to either arrest Killian for this or launch a nationwide search. The limits of my belief far exceed the limits of my badge, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll search for the girl,” I said, surprising myself with the depth of my conviction. I felt like I was nearing the end of a quest I’d embarked on years ago. Somehow, this girl, this black-haired teenager was the crux of it all. We needed to help her however we could. “Did you recognize the cave we saw in the vision? Would you know where to find it?”
“I can probably use our satellite system to narrow down the options. I can figure it out. But you forget, Killian will never let that happen,” Sheila said grimly.
“We can stop him. Right here.” A plan had begun to form in my mind, a long shot for certain, but it just might work. I gently released my grip from that of the Forever Man’s and began to search the medical bay, opening cabinets and rummaging through them. I found what I was seeking next to a microwave that was part of a small kitchenette.
I returned to Penarddun with a telephone book that was ten years out of date, which I placed on his chest. I met his gaze. “Do you understand?”
He looked at the book and then at the medical apparatus that surrounded him. One arm disappeared into a cast-like structure. His legs were both severed and he had open sores all over his body. It must have been a painful, wretched existence. His gaze returned to me and he nodded. Then he closed his eyes and tilted his head backwards. The runes on his body began to glow.
“I don’t understand,” said Sheila. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going to slip Wetiko a bloody mickey.”
“What?”
“A poison pill, my dear. Wetiko and his gluttonous lackeys will never know what hit them. We’ll take the book out of Penarddun and replace it with something not quite as pleasant to digest.”
To her credit Sheila caught on immediately. “You’re going to let Penarddun be eaten.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen,” I said grimly, stepping back as the Forever Man began to glow. I nodded at him. “He will.”
Words and symbols began to snake across Penarddun’s ruined body, golden letters from a dozen alphabets, glyphs long lost to time. The glow brightened and then brightened again. I heard shouting coming from outside the building and the door began to rattle. Obviously the glow under the frame had been noticed.
Quickly, I grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and shoved it under the door handle. It wouldn’t hold for long, but hopefully the men outside would need Killian’s approval before breaking it down, and I was pretty sure he’d want to oversee that kind of operation himself.
Suddenly, Penarddun shouted. Golden text leapt off his body and flew together in a ball of light just above his chest. In a flash it had formed itself into the Book that I’d spent most of my life searching for. I took it reverently, feeling the leather spine and embossed symbols with my fingertips.
The door thumped, and I could hear Killian’s voice bellowing orders outside. We needed to finish this now. There was no telling how much of a barrier my fire extinguisher would prove to be.
“Wait,” cried Sheila as I placed the telephone book on Penarddun’s chest. “Are we sure about this?”
The answer came from a surprising quarter. “Yes.” Muffled by the facemask, Penarddun’s voice was ancient and tired, like waves cresting on an empty beach. Freed from the weight of the Book of Emissaries, he had found his voice. “The Trickster can help to defeat Wetiko but only the emissary can convince him that humanity is worth it.... find her... find...”
Before he’d finished speaking a golden glow surrounded the phone book and his skin began to fill with names and numbers. Soon the book was consumed by the light and disappeared. Penarddun closed his eyes and relaxed his body. I heard a hungry purr from the medical apparatus as it began to writhe and tighten around the body of the Forever Man, devouring both the book’s information and his life force, without any resistance. Within seconds, he was gone.
The machinery went quiet. We were afforded one moment of silence before the battering on the door resumed.
“He was a fascinating man,” I murmured. “I had so many questions...”
Sheila blinked and then looked up at me. “Do you think he’s in a better place at least?”
I remembered the Forever Man’s face, a face worn by duty, by suffering and by time. “Perhaps when you’ve lived as long as he did, death is something of a new and welcome adventure.” I shoved the Book under my coat and made my way to the door, followed closely by Sheila.
“What if it didn’t work?” she asked.
“We’ll soon see,” I admitted, as I removed the extinguisher.
The door collapsed inwards almost immediately and rough hands grabbed us, dragging us into the polar night. Halogens high above us lit up what had only a few minutes ago been a relatively abandoned area of the mine. Now it was choked with men in hooded parkas and snow pants. At the centre of the group stood Dr. Harvey Killian.
“Let me take care of this,” said Sheila. She drew a badge from a zippered pocket which she held before her like a shield. She kept her other hand on her gun holster. “Clear the way, please. This is a legal investigation based on probable cause. Any questions can be directed to the RCMP detachment in Rankin Inlet.”
I followed close behind as she wended her way through the surprisingly docile crowd. Despite Wetiko, despite the Book of Emissaries and the Forever Man, she was still a police officer. Only one man failed to step aside in the face of her badge: Harvey Killian. He wore a blue parka with the hood done up so that the only thing visible was his golden framed glasses. It could have been my imagination, but I thought I detected a faint blue glow behind those frames. Was our plan working? Was Killian absorbing our poison pill?
Robbed of our forward progress, the miners closed in around us. I was jostled from behind and then from the side. We faced a wall of parkas.
I wondered if my faith in my own cleverness might finally be the end of us. Killian was certainly Wetiko’s creature and we had no idea who among the miners also bore his taint. All of them? None of them? The answer to that question would decide our fate.
“Stand down, Killian,” said Sheila. “Or I’ll arrest you for unlawful confinement.”
He reached up and unzipped his hood, revealing his closely cropped grey hair, wind-burned cheeks, and salt-and-pepper beard. A glove came off and then his bare hand removed his glasses so he could look us both in the eyes. He opened his mouth and said: “C. Terrian 867-555-9862.”
The miners looked at one another quizzically.
I grinned. It was working.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Killian, I didn’t quite catch that.”
He frowned and cleared his throat. “Albert Albus 867-555-3245.” A look of alarm crossed his face.
It is possible that I imagined the flash of golden light that appeared at his throat when he spoke, but I breathed a silent prayer of thanks for Penarddun’s sacrifice.
“Well,” said Sheila, “Th
at’s very interesting, Dr. Killian. But I’m afraid we’ll be going now.”
When we left him he was still bellowing at his miners, who milled around in confusion, awaiting instructions that made more sense than a phone number.
••
Streetlights lit up Rankin Inlet two hours later when we pulled into the parking lot at the station. I’d spent much of the journey leafing through the Book of Emissaries with reverence. Here at last was the culmination of years of research, but to my dismay I found that it was missing pages. Why would Penarddun go to such lengths to bring us half a book? I was baffled.
We got out of the Durango and Sheila walked me into the station. “Are you still going to go after the girl?”
“I believe so, yes,” I said. “From what I’ve learned, she might be an Emissary, perhaps one who could help us defeat Wetiko once and for all.”
“It’s a big country. Finding one girl in the middle of it is going to be tough. Do you have any idea where you’ll start?” she asked me.
I didn’t. The Book held no clues, which made sense because it had been written long before Penarddun’s escape from the North. Suddenly, I felt a sharp point of heat near my chest. Curious, I dug it out of my coat just in time to see a red glow fade from the dark leather. Was it trying to tell me something? It was then that I realized what should have occurred to me long ago; Penarddun had left me a clue after all. “The book is missing pages,” I said, half to myself, half to Sheila. “Maybe it contained so much information that a mere mortal, even one as long-lived as Penarddun himself, was unable to absorb it all. However, if I retrace his path I might be able to locate them. Perhaps, like following a trail of breadcrumbs, I might find the cave and the girl at the end of it all.”
“Sounds like a long shot,” she said wryly.
The Book of the Emissaries: An Animism Short Fiction Anthology Page 25