Earthly Worlds

by Billy Wright

  She looked out into the night, listening to the music of the night creatures, frogs and crickets and gods knew what else. “Could be it’s this place. I keep wondering when the Tin Man is going to jump out.”

  “Which means we should be on the lookout for a wicked witch, right?”

  “At least we haven’t dropped a house on anybody yet,” she said, “so we’ve got that going for us.”

  “But those creatures might come back tonight. Maybe they’ll be riding flying monkeys this time.”

  They chuckled at that. He rubbed his eyes again.

  Seeing this, Liz said, “It’s my turn to keep watch tonight. You need some rest, or else you won’t be any good if those critters do come back.”

  He couldn’t argue with her. “You know you’re amazing, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” Her grin lit up the night. “But wherefore comes this burst of husbandly appreciation?”

  “I just said to you one of the strangest sentences ever spoken out loud, and you took it in stride, like I said I was going to the grocery store.”

  “It would be weirder for you to actually go to the grocery store.”

  He chuckled at that. He hated grocery stores, maybe because he’d three times been accused of shoplifting in Mesa Roja’s biggest supermarket. Twice they had been wrong.

  She said, “You’re right, though. That was a strange sentence.” Pulling her feet out of the water, she hugged her knees and sighed, looking back at their children falling asleep in the firelight. “Now, you go get some sleep before you pass out and fall in the water. I don’t think I could drag you out. I’ll wake you if there’s trouble.”

  ***

  Following the human family into the Borderlands between the Penumbra and the Light Realm made Jorath profoundly ill, like feeling poison coursing through his blood, infusing his bones, coating his tongue, making him dizzy, sapping his strength.

  Fresh wariness gave him pause after last night’s disastrous attack. Jorath had not yet pinpointed their nature, but the humans had protectors. Those protectors had destroyed enough of his goblin lackeys that the rest had been routed, and refused to venture from their burrows again even under threat of death.

  And now the man had somehow found a way to channel the Source tides and alter the landscape itself. The ripples and undercurrents had felt like Jorath was losing his footing in a sudden riptide. It could not have been a purposeful event, but he saw now why the Master was so interested in this human. Stewart Riley had power. If he ever came into that power, he would make a formidable enemy.

  It was time to tamp that power back down where the man could not reach it, to bury it again under everything that prevented him throughout his life. Anger, desperation, worry, tedium.

  Jorath meditated on this, sitting cross-legged in a tree across the stream from the glow of the campfire crackling among the stones. The woman sat in the entrance facing out into the night, vigilant.

  Jorath sent probing tendrils from his mind, visible only to someone with a similar ability, across the distance, reaching for the man’s mind. Even in sleep, Stewart’s mind was disquieted, and this disquiet created the chinks that allowed Jorath’s tendrils to slip within. The tendrils wormed inside and drank deep of thought and memory and conveyed the essence of them back to Jorath.

  Oh, but there was delicious Darkness in this man, almost in equal share with the Light. The balance might still tip to either side. With enough Darkness, the man would open himself to the influence of the Master. But the man knew of the Darkness and kept it shackled with a will of steel, so much so that his family might not even know of it. But shackles could be weakened, even broken. And if released, that Darkness would breathe freedom. There was no Darkness in the other three humans. Stewart often depended on their Light to keep his Darkness in check. Setting it loose in him might drive a wedge between them, help tip the balance. Then he would belong to the Master.

  Jorath took this knowledge flowing into him, reshaped it with his own will, and reversed the flow.

  ***

  Stewart was eight years old, and his life was pain and fear.

  Older boys chased him across the schoolyard where other kids were playing soccer, and no one cared. He fled off the school grounds, but still they chased him. And when they caught him, they pushed him down, kicked him, stole the pack of watermelon-flavored Bubblicious he had skimmed from his lunch money to buy. The leader’s name was Jed, and he tore the package of gum open and shared the pieces with his buddies while Stewart lay on the ground feeling tiny and helpless.

  Fury sparked within him.

  He jumped back to his feet, and the fury built him a bigger body until he stood twice the height of his tormentors, with muscles like a professional wrestler. He seized Jed and another boy by their skulls and slammed them together. The boy who had kicked him in the belly, he kicked onto the roof of a nearby house. The fourth boy broke and ran, but Stewart brought him down by flinging Jed at him.

  He smiled in satisfaction.

  In this larger size, he fit in perfectly with the high school football team, and he wanted the quarterback’s beautiful girlfriend, but he could not remember her name because her curves and smile and breathtaking eyes fogged his brain. His arms lengthened and he bent down to chase her on all fours like a gorilla. She ran, but he caught her, reached for her tentatively, longingly, but she screamed and slapped him, and this angered him again, but the blow so surprised him all he could do was watch her run away in her cheerleader skirt, a vision of petal-soft legs and flying hair. But when she looked over her shoulder to see if he was pursuing, there was only terror in her eyes.

  So he trudged through the back alleys of town so no one would see him this way.

  The moment he walked through the front door of his foster home, his foster mother started screaming at him how stupid and ugly he was, so he roared at her in fury. She shrank in size by a third, her face and hair turning ghost white. She fled out the back door. Then his foster father charged at him, calling him a monster, flailing at him with a wire coat hanger bent long and thin. The wire lashed across his face, his arms, leaving bright red welts. It hurt a lot. He grabbed it in mid-swing, ripped it out of the man’s hand, and grabbed the man by the throat. The man’s legs flailed and his hands clutched Stewart’s thick wrist. Stewart carried him outside and threw him into a pile of burning leaves. Then he went back inside, took the pan of lasagna out of the oven and ate most of it. He shared a little with three foster siblings, who were all very grateful.

  Then he went to work cleaning out piles of cattle manure from the barns at the feedlot, but he stepped into a watery, waist-deep hole, and the noxious slurry filled his rubber boots, soaked through his jeans, and mired his feet in place. He was stuck. In a small motorboat, Mr. Richards rode out to him, screaming at him the whole way, the propeller splattering manure in all directions behind him. But it wasn’t really Mr. Richards; it was a scarecrow made of moldy straw and sun-bleached tatters, with a face as blank and empty as a burlap bag, but shrieking vitriol nevertheless. Stewart tried to reach him, but couldn’t. The manure held him fast, and worse, he was sinking. He tore his feet out of the boots and slogged through the manure swamp. The manure was too thick for Mr. Richards to maneuver his boat. Stewart seized the boat and flipped it upside down. Then he stomped the scarecrow down into the bottom of the waist-deep manure and held the creature there until it stopped squirming.

  Covered head to toe in oozing stench, he shambled onto dry land like some swamp monster made of mud and cow dung. The cheerleader was there with her quarterback boyfriend, and they both laughed at him.

  “You don’t know me!” he yelled at her.

  Then he wiped the poop from his face, and ran on all fours for the rock quarry that was right over there, where the crystal-clear water could wash this manure and stench off him. He jumped into the water, but the swimmers screamed in fear and chased him with kayaks and beat him with paddles. So he climbed out, scrambling up the sheer, sto
ny cliff face to gesticulate at them with a long, misshapen arm, roaring like King Kong.

  When he reached the cliff top, two little monkeys were up there crying, “Daddy! Daddy!” They were so cute, so precious, so he scooped them into his arms, but they shrieked in terror, biting and clawing as they wriggled free and fled. They flung rocks at him as he cried with rage and hurt.

  His flesh burst into flames, but not flames that burned him. They were flames that burned everything and everyone around him. The little monkeys squealed and fled from the blaze of heat that set the nearby grass alight.

  He found the cheerleader and her quarterback boyfriend kissing on the hood of his Camaro.

  The cheerleader looked surprised. “Stewart!”

  The quarterback boyfriend sneered at him. “This isn’t Halloween, loser.”

  But then the gorilla torch-beast grabbed him, listened to him scream as his flesh burst into flame, crisping and sizzling and—

  “Stewart!”

  Something grabbed his arm and he flung it off as if it were a doll.

  Except that it was a doll.

  “Dad!”

  “Daddy!”

  “Stewart!”

  A chorus of terrified voices.

  A beautiful little doll in a delicate dress of lace and silk.

  But as she struck the stone wall of their campsite, she bounced off it like an acrobat and sprang upon him, wrapping her cold, hard legs around his neck, seizing his ear with one hand like a tiny monkey’s claw, squeezing, pinching, twisting. In her other hand was an obsidian needle poised to plunge into his right eye. The doll’s cold, cobalt gaze drilled into his left eye, a finger’s breadth away, her cherubic face chilling in its blankness. But in those eyes, those quite living eyes, he read a single intention.

  If he made another move, the doll would blind him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Stewart froze, blinking in confusion.

  The orange glow of the fire’s coals glimmered in the doll’s polished eyes, eyes that were at once cold blue glass but somehow full of intelligence.

  “Stewart, what’s happening?” Liz’s voice, close to panic, was nearby but the doll’s blank face filled his vision.

  The point of the needle hovered, just out of focus, an inch from his eye.

  The hot, pulsating rage of his dream began to fade, but slowly. He wanted to seize the doll and smash it against a boulder, but he didn’t dare. The thing was too fast.

  “What do you want?” he said, holding stock still.

  But the doll didn’t speak, its face a porcelain mask.

  “Daddy, you were scaring us,” Cassie said.

  “Yeah, you sounded like a monster,” Hunter said.

  “Stewart, I think the doll is protecting us. From you.”

  He gasped as his stomach filled with lead, steel cables cinching around his chest, cutting off his breath. “Oh, no.” It came out as whispering wheeze. “What did I do?”

  Liz’s voice quavered. “Uh, you were yelling, and grabbing handfuls of grass like you were tearing something to shreds, waving your arms and...”

  “Daddy, you almost knocked me into the fire,” Cassie peeped, on the verge of crying.

  His mouth fell open as the nausea of self-loathing washed over him. The fury of the dream, the vividness of it, the fun of it, slashed an open wound in his psyche. He had enjoyed destroying his tormentors. He had reveled in the freedom of letting the shackles of propriety and civilization fall away to release the ferocity of righteous retribution for all the wrongs he had suffered. In his childhood, there had been so many. Liz and the kids had soothed those, let him bury those old hurts, but it was as if something had shaken up a soda bottle, disturbing all the sediment of long-buried wrongs, and uncorked it. But it released acid and fire.

  The uncertainty in Liz’s voiced cinched his chest tighter. If she ever for a second thought he would hurt the children, it would kill him.

  His voice cracked, “I’m so sorry, Cassie baby, I was having a terrible dream. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Even as he said the words, he clenched his teeth at the tears of guilt. He hated violence against women or children, hated anyone who committed such acts, so the mere thought of hurting her, even accidentally, filled him with such shame and guilt he wanted to die. “I would never hurt you! Any of you!”

  “Please don’t hurt my daddy!” Cassie said. “He didn’t mean it!”

  But the doll did not move. The needle’s point did not waver.

  Then an unfamiliar voice spoke, a small voice. “That’ll be quite enough now, lassies.”

  The doll on Stewart’s face eased back. Its expression had not changed, could not change, but it released him and did a back flip onto the ground between his knees. Quick as a blink, the needle disappeared somewhere within its dress.

  But then he saw the second doll, poised behind his back to thrust a needle into his kidney. His mouth went dry. If he had threatened the children even the slightest bit more, those dolls would have taken him out.

  With preternatural speed, the dolls scuttled away to stand between him and Cassie, quiescent, but wary.

  The new voice came from a small figure standing in the entrance of the circle, a little man in a scaly, emerald-green waistcoat, fists on his hips, one eye narrowed as he surveyed the scene. His waistcoat glimmered in the light of the coals, the same color as the fish’s scales. He stood about knee high and wore a top hat set at a jaunty angle. Mutton-chop sideburns adorned his bulbous, rosy cheeks.

  With a blink of surprise, Stewart realized he’d seen the little man before. In Gramm’s storage unit.

  The four of them stared.

  The little man sighed and rolled his eyes. “Aye, aye, get yer ganders and then get over it.” He waved his hand.

  The rapid succession of strangeness hit Stewart like hammer blows, but he could focus on only one thing. He wiped his eyes. “Cassie, I’m so sorry.” He held out his arms.

  She didn’t hesitate to run into them and hug him. Hunter still eyed him warily, however, his eyes still full of fear that was not from killer ninja dolls or the little man Stewart would swear was a leprechaun. Something in Stewart had terrified his son, and the shame steamrolled him again.

  As he got to his feet, lifting Cassie with him, still hugging her tight, kissing her soft cheeks, he felt the attention of the dolls freshly focused on his every move, ready to strike in an instant. Cassie clung to him, assuaging some of the awfulness swirling in his belly, but not all of it.

  “Who are you?” Stewart said to the little man.

  “Should I have ye call me Seamus or Paddy or Darby or something other kind of cliché?” the little man said with a smirk.

  “Is one of those your name?” Hunter asked.

  “No, laddie. My name is not for you. But how about ye call me...” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “How about ‘Bob’?”

  Cassie asked, “Are you a leprechaun?”

  “My people are called that in various parts, aye.”

  “You sure do look Irish,” Liz said.

  “Now let’s not be hasty,” Bob said with a wink. “Call it an affectation, a style choice, like changing your underclothes.” A snap of his fingers caused a quick swirl of mist around him. When the mist dissipated, he stood before them wearing a sparkling robe of green silk brocade with a circlet of silver stars around his neck. His skin had gone from rosy-cheeked paleness to the color of coffee. With another snap, he wore the buckskins and beads—also emerald green—of a Native American, with long black hair and weathered red-brown features. With another, an emerald-green kimono embroidered with golden thread to look like fish scales, with two tiny swords thrust through his sash. With a final snap, he returned to his original appearance. “Depends on me mood, it does, and the spirit of the moment. My people do get around.”

  Cassie asked, “Do you know Peaseblossom and Cobweb?”

  “My kinfolk they are,” Bob said with a smile. “They told me all about you, my dear.”


  Cassie blushed and nuzzled Stewart’s neck.

  Stewart said, “So, uh, Bob. What are you doing here? We have a lot of questions.”

  “So I’d reckon. Apparently, I’m here to be referee.” Bob gave the two dolls an arched eyebrow. The dolls lowered their heads in unison. “Fairer to say, perhaps, I’m here to help ye with all the things ye don’t know. Which amounts to mostly everything. And just in the nick of time, it seems. Ye got yerselves a dark elf on your trail.”

  “Aren’t elves the good guys, like in Lord of the Rings?” Hunter asked.

  “Not these fellows, boyo. Chief henchmen for the Dark Lord, they are. Nasty as they come and twice as cunning.”

  “So, you’re here to protect us,” Liz said.

  “‘Protect’ might be too strong a word. ’Tis not within me power. But steering you away from him, that I can do.”

  “Is he the one who wrecked my truck, laid the traps?” Stewart said. “Brought the coyote-riding creatures down on us?”

  “What kind of creatures?” Bob asked.

  Hunter said, “Ugly little guys, about this big, with spears and crossbows. A whole pile of them.”

  “Oh, dear me.” Bob frowned and looked worried.

  “What is it?” Stewart asked.

  Bob’s voice grew ominous. “This dark elf, he brought power with him, if he can summon Dark creatures into the Penumbra. Baron Tyrus must want you all in the worst way. And he sent him a dark elf to do his dirty work. He’s out there right now, probably watching us, perhaps listening. I cannot cipher what he’s up to but I can feel his presence. Like a vulture breaking wind.”

  “So what do we do?” Stewart said, holding Cassie close.

  “The sooner we get ye out of the Borderlands, the better,” he said.

  “And go where?” Stewart asked.