Suddenly he seemed very interested in the selection of tea. “Get reading,” he said. “And choose well.”
He silenced Jack’s retort before it could start forming in his head with a sharp look, and they both fell to reading.
Good god, it’s endless, Jack thought, perusing dense palette descriptions and serving suggestions of myriad artfully-named teas.
The gentle tinkling became the screech of claws on a blackboard to his tortured ears. It was hard to see straight, let alone read. Yet amongst the menu’s items, his eyes fixed on one close to the bottom, leaping out from the blur to grab him by the lapels.
Autumn Jasmine: a charming infusion of Jasmine and Ginger, with adventurous notes of sarsaparilla, white chocolate cookies, and a hint of spring-time Minnesota.
Jasmine and Ginger… his grandmother’s house had always smelled like that. Sarsaparilla: the thought of it brought flashes of his father cracking open a few beer cans in their darkened living room, his flabby face illuminated by the blue glow of the TV. Those flashes gave way to the sight of half a white chocolate cookie in his lunch box one spring… back then, they had lived in Minnesota.
There had been a post-it stuck to the cookie: Don’t get beat up again. Love Mom x
Guess I know what I’m having. At least, what I’m meant to have. Christ, I sound like a loon.
Jack shivered as a rush of something cold passed by. The primal sense that told somebody they weren’t alone piqued, and cloth rustled close over his right shoulder.
“Does anything catch your eye, perchance?” sighed a smooth and musical voice.
Jack caught a squawk of surprise between his lips, just.
A tall man dressed in an extravagant purple coat stood over them, lurking between their shoulders and peering at the menu with a critical aloofness. He turned his eye on Jack, revealing an aquiline face studded with enormous bushy, grey eyebrows that extended up in rigid shafts almost to his hairline. “Ginger? Sarsaparilla? Strange, wouldn’t you say? Almost like it was made for you.”
His eyes twinkled, not encouraging nor frightening, somewhere lost between friend and foe. Jack started as, for an instant, his irises might have illuminated in a flash of violet. The Man in Purple winked.
Barry’s rumble struck up from the other side of the man’s head. “Stop being an arse and sit down.”
The Man in Purple’s eyes narrowed in an instant. “You should not be here, Kaard,” he said, staring blankly.
“Well we’re here.” His voice was rough cut as ever, but the slightest edge of uncertainty—almost pleading—crept into it. “I need your help.”
“I talk with whomever I must. I council those who are meant for it. You are not among them.”
The Man in Purple straightened, once again loomed at their backs. Jack could sense his hand resting upon the back of his chair, delicate yet enormous, radiating waves of weirdery that threw Jack’s divining rod into another retarded spiral. He fought dizziness, watching Barry closely.
“I’m not leaving until I get answers. This world is on the bloody knife-edge.”
“That is not my concern.” The Man in Purple’s voice throbbed with unearthly bass. “I swore neutrality long ago. The Web takes no sides.”
“Don’t give me that horseshit! Highcourt is hanging by a thread. You can swear all the oaths you like, you’ll always be one of us.
“Anyway, nobody can find this place unless they need to, so don’t look at me like I snuck in the back door with the cat. I need your help, and you’re bloody well going to give it. I’m not leaving until I get what I need, even if I have to smash every teeny weeny cup and saucer in this joint.”
Jack sensed the slightest shift, and risked turning his head.
The Man in Purple stared at Barry with the remnant of that harrowed gaze. Slowly, the light crept back into his eyes. Perhaps they flashed violet once more—trying to see straight in here was like trying to hold onto a wet bar of soap; Jack couldn’t quite grasp any single moment, fluid and undulating, as though everything might suddenly melt and reform.
The Man in Purple flickered his eyelids and gave the slightest bow of acquiescence, then lifted a hand and signalled to the counter, pointing to the table.
Jack leaned across to Barry and whispered, “Kaard?”
“It’s his name,” the Man in Purple said airily, straightening his jacket and stepping around the table.
“One of them.” Barry cleared his throat. “I went through a phase.”
“Thought he needed a more fantastical title.”
Barry sent a tiny shake of the head in Jack’s direction; keep your trap shut.
Jack was all too willing to oblige.
The Man in Purple sat with one leg crossed over the other, slouching back, eyeing them both anew. “So.”
Barry visibly relaxed and laced his fingers in front of him. He suddenly looked very tired. “Please, please, keep the crap to a minimum.”
The Man in Purple didn’t move, nor give any indication he’d heard, just stared.
“You knew it was Harper that would be here, didn’t you?”
Again, nothing.
“I’ll take that as a yes. And you knew that I’d be sent alone?”
The Man in Purple arched a brow.
Barry scowled. “I’ll take that as another yes. So that means I’ve been shafted by my own side, and the brass have already written this world off.”
A dumpy waitress dressed in a flowing summer dress and apron appeared beside the Man in Purple, a silver tray held above one shoulder. Taking a nod from him, she sprang into action, placing three steaming teapots and a plate of fresh muffins before them, sliding them into place with the skill of an Olympic curler.
Jack wasn’t surprised to receive a heady waft of ginger, and notes of white chocolate. “You must be joking,” he muttered despite himself.
“I never joke about tea,” the Man in Purple said. “Try it.”
“I’m fine.”
The fate of the world in our hands, and he wants me to try the tea.
“Try it,” Barry said distractedly, ignoring Jack’s gape of surprise. “Can we get on with it?” As he spoke, he set a mug more like a tankard before him and poured from his own teapot. Jack smelled peat, and fiery notes of something warming. He suspected whiskey.
Barry made a show of pouring from a height, holding the lid fast to the pot with a daintiness that made him look ridiculous. He drank slowly with his pinky raised, working his mouth, tasting deliberately.
All the while he kept his eyes fixed on the Man in Purple.
Jack followed suit hurriedly, pulling his pot towards him and copying Barry’s little ritual. He reeled when the taste hit him, morphing and evolving as it made the trip from his lips to his throat, rolling velvet waves that shot up into his brain and teased out ribbons of memory, sharp and vivid as the day they had been laid down.
The cookies on the tray as his Mom pulled them from the oven. His Dad’s lined face, lit up by the set—Letterman interviewing Robbin Williams. Then he was running, out on the soccer field in PE class, taking a ball to the face as Cathy O’Brien watched with her friends, giggling and pointing.
She had been his crush all through high school. He hadn’t thought about Cathy in years. Yet now he could have drawn every detail of her face on his napkin.
The Man in Purple watched them both critically, eyes narrowed. Jack put his cup back on his saucer, swallowing and making an effort to let it all show on his face. He guessed that was the point.
The Man in Purple considered him, then smacked his lips and nodded. Suddenly his cold air evaporated and his face illuminated into a radiant, goofy sheen. Clapping his hands, he sat forward and set to his own pot, performing the same ceremony, tasting and savouring.
Barry and Jack waited, and Jack struggled with internal screaming pleas for answers. Judging by Barry’s tightening jaw and twitching fingers, a similar war waged in his own head.<
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Finally, the Man in Purple sighed deeply. “You’ve been royally screwed, my friend.”
“You don’t say,” Barry said. “I’m no match for Harper.”
“If you had a scrim of brain matter left”—he eyed Jack with an expression that said doubtful, then rounded on Barry—“you’d get out of dodge before things get ugly. Highcourt may really fall this time. They could use you. But this is a fool’s errand.”
“Hey!” Jack cried. “You can’t just leave us. We came here for your help, not—”
Barry cut a hand through the air and Jack fell silent, mouthing wordlessly.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’ve never run away from a job. Impossible odds are my speciality.” A note of pride crept into his voice, his nose slightly upturned.
The upturn vanished just as fast as it had come when the Man in Purple muttered, “Your track record says otherwise.”
Barry’s face twitched. He pressed his index finger onto the table, glowering. “You want to drop playing nice? Fine. Just tell me what I have to do so that I can get away from this creep-show.”
The Man in Purple said nothing. The angle of his teacup, poised halfway to his lips, alone, brought Jack out in chills.
They sat there glaring at one another for a few seconds, seconds in which the absurdity of it cut at Jack like a hot knife. Before he knew what was happening, he had jumped forward to plant his hands on the table, ignoring Barry’s protests. “Look, all I wanted to do was go home and veg out today, but all I’ve had is crazy after crazy. This guy appears in a blizzard and tears apart my bookstore, okay. He kidnaps me and hauls me off to fight a demon in a three-piece suit. Fine. I suddenly realise I have magical powers to home in on anything that would drive a normal person nuts. Okie dokey.”
He gritted his teeth, seething through them, red spots dancing before his eyes. “But I am not going to be told that my entire planet is being thrown down the plug hole by some trussed up dandy in a fucking tea shop! Now are you going to help us or not?”
The Man in Purple’s enormous frizzy eyebrows raised, half vanishing into his thatch of glossy hair, and he looked at Barry. For a moment his teacup hovered, trembled, the contents beading on the rim.
Then he huffed. “I like him.”
Barry stared back, blinked once. “Yeah, he’s okay.” A pause. “You’re not an idiot. You know how important this world is. It’s a piece of shit, sure—”
“Hey!” Jack started, but Barry ignored him.
“—but it’s a pressure point we can’t let them press. If we lose this fight, it could be the start of the last big crash that tears All Where apart.”
The Man in Purple took another sip of tea, and drew a long breath through his nose. “You shouldn’t be here,” he muttered under his breath, as though to himself, looking between them. “I’m a mediator, not a bloody spirit guide.”
“Funny, you could have fooled me.”
“Must you make a habit of antagonising those from whom you seek help?”
“When it comes to you, absolutely.”
Jack took a gulp of tea and stifled a coughing fit, half blinded by the intensity of flavour saturating his pallet. It was all he could do to keep from senseless screaming.
They’re debating the fate of the world over a mug of Earl Grey and taking cheap pot-shots. Do I laugh or cry?
The Man in Purple tapped a finger on the table. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I got that. I am here.”
“You are.” The Man in Purple addressed Jack. “What’s he told you?”
“Enough.”
“Doubtful. If you only knew...”
“Knew that I haven’t a hope in hell of getting out of this with my marbles, let alone my life? That if this gets any weirder then I’ll be singing my merry way through a very early retirement?” He checked himself. “That if I turn and run, something bad is going to happen? I don’t understand. I don’t. I don’t have a clue what’s going on, and I’m on the edge of holding it together. But for all his crap,” he glanced at Barry, “I don’t think he’s a liar. I feel it. We’re in trouble. Will you help us?”
The Man in Purple remained impassive momentarily, then nodded. “You found your way here. I couldn’t turn you away if I tried. I’m bound to help those who reach my doors.”
Jack slumped. “Then why all the song and dance?”
“You were right when you said you don’t understand—most importantly, you fail to grasp the magnitude of the scales that are about to tip; the long ages for which the status quo has stood. There’s no going back from this.”
“That’s bull.” Barry leaned back in his chair and threaded his fingers along the great tear in his oxblood jacket. “Here’s your balance. They’ve already set us on the path. Those scales, that precious balance of yours? It’s a lie. They’ve already set things swinging.”
The Man in Purple finished his tea, wiped his lips delicately, then sat forward and steepled his fingers. “You’ve made your point, Kaard.” He glanced at Jack one last time. Jack thought he caught a note of apology somewhere in that eternal blank stare.
Then he nodded, as though to himself, and he began speaking in a voice altogether foggier, and undulating and threaded once again with that same strange bass.
“We live upon a Web, the web of All Where. Infinite worlds, woven into a single tapestry spanning the fabric of reality. Most form connecting threads, right beside one another for all the eternal distance between them. But some worlds are different, nodes to which these threads converge, preserving the structure of all the worlds to which they are connected, and, together, the stability of the Web.” The Man in Purple nodded to Jack. “You are right about Kaard: he does not lie. Your world is one such node, and it has been earmarked for a one way ticket to crazy town by some very unfavourable creatures.”
“Why us? Why this world instead of others?”
“Because it is but one drop in an ocean, but even the great tending powers of All Where cannot stretch so far. Some worlds slip between their—our—” he nodded between himself and Barry, “fingers.”
“He’s trying to say we plum forgot about you,” Barry said.
“Perhaps not so simply, but close enough.”
“I don’t understand. What good does it do, destroying this place, if we’re so unimportant and forgotten?”
“It is not the destruction of this place that matters, but the subsequent imbalance it will create in those to which it is connected. You see, the universe is a place of laws of conservation, balance, and physical absolutes. Nothing can breach them, no power, no hand-wavey voodoo. The laws are the laws. The biggest ally of both the light and the dark has always been one in particular: cause and effect. If something goes awry here, things must do so elsewhere, and so begins a wave of entropic decay that may propagate forever on.”
“We’ve seen it happen before. They’ve been trying to turn things for the worse for… a long time.” Barry scoffed at his own words, as though a long time could never encapsulate the breadth that he described.
Jack’s divining rod piqued, and he felt, not understood but felt, some distant twinge of exactly what Barry did mean, and found his mind reeling away from a great well of enormity, memories of countless lives and battles and losses.
“It’s been slow,” Barry continued, “and we got careless. You have to understand that Highcourt isn’t the gatekeeper. We’re not all powerful, and we don’t have a clue what the hell’s going on in terms of the big picture. We’re just messengers, soldiers, part of a hierarchy that has so many rungs, we don’t have a clue what lies at the top.”
The Man in Purple cut across him. “But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Highcourt has already failed. The Web is sick. Whether by some secret malice or the slow encroach of many an unseen meddling, they have kindled a sickness in everything. We had power once, far greater than we have now. We saw so far, stood so tall. No longer. Our power
s are waning. Our best have fallen over time.”
“I thought you couldn’t die.”
“I do not speak of death. I speak of falling.”
Jack shuddered as, behind the tea shop, in his mind’s eye he caught a glimpse of something white, human in form but divine in nature, winged, and terrible. Again his mind recoiled from the image, ensconcing itself in a protective ball.
He had no idea what he saw, but he knew it was not meant for him, nor perhaps even Barry or the Man in Purple; for they seemed to have sensed something strange in the air, shifting uncomfortably, as though Jack were a speaker picking up a screech of electronic feedback.
“Fine,” Jack said, clearing his throat. “Great. So what? I don’t see what this has to do with stopping Harper.”
The Man in Purple straightened his coat, recovering from his shuddering reverie. “One last stretch of purple prose, and we shall arrive at our destination. I shall tell it as it is written in the Solstice Scrolls, our most ancient, sacred texts.” His eyes glazed. “All Where is endless, timeless. Levels higher and lower, forward and back, and between. Silken strands interwoven in perfect harmony, the tapestry of all reality. Each place touches another, leading forever on, and all converge upon the blessed Beacons.”
He pointed through the window, at Manhattan, which seemed to Jack a light year distant. “In sets of seven, the blessed Beacons gather; seven threads coming together on chosen Earth, seven threads that hold up as many worlds. Seven Beacons connected to elsewhere. Host Earths, No Man’s Land, backwater and base. Yet in hands conniving and impure, even blessed things may do great evil. For each Beacon has a purpose: some are Conduits, some are Prisons, some Exits, and some are Doors that must remain forever, forever, sealed.”
He spread his hands, as though in apology for the archaic tongue. “That is what’s written.”
Jack worked his jaw, easing a mouthful of cotton. He jostled upon his seat, feeling both their gazes on him. “Scrolls? Like some kind of freaky bible?”
“I suppose you could say that,” the Man in Purple said.
Barry grunted. “Don’t be fooled, there’s one thing my life has taught me: there ain’t any such thing as sacred in All Where. There’s scrolls, I know that much. From way before our time.”
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