by Robert Bevan
“Do you know me?” she asked.
The last remnants of her fear evaporated entirely when she saw a man dressed in a comically oversized blue shirt, yellow and blue striped leggings, and a large, red, floppy hat, complete with a giant green feather sticking out of the top, materialize out of thin air about forty feet away from her. She took a protective stance in front of the wolf before she even considered why she was doing it. Her hand, she was surprised to find, was wrapped around the handle of her sickle. Were these the battle reflexes her dad claimed to have developed in Vietnam? How would she have acquired battle reflexes?
Whoever the man was, he didn't appear to have seen Katherine yet. He didn't appear to be able to see at all. He was stumbling around with his eyes closed. Katherine moved closer, keeping close to the trees. She wasn't exactly hiding behind them, but she was keeping the option open. When he finally opened his eyes, Katherine recognized the icy blue shine at once..
“Chaz?” she asked.
“Kat,” answered her boyfriend. “Is that you?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are we? Why are you dressed like Conan the Barbarian?”
“Huh?” said Katherine, and paused for the first time to look at what she was wearing. Her clothes were entirely made of leather. Not the shiny black leather you buy at the mall, but dull brown leather that gave you a crystal clear reminder of just where leather comes from. It was stitched together with what looked less like thread and more like rope. She shrugged. She'd worn worse. “Why are you dressed like you couldn't remember if the parade you were going to was for Mardi Gras or Gay Pride?”
Chaz looked down at his own clothes. “What the fuck?” Then he looked back up at Katherine. “What happened to –“
Katherine gasped. “Look at your arms! You’re skinnier than me.”
Chaz wrapped the fingers of his left hand around his right bicep. The tip of his middle finger nearly touched that of his thumb. “This can’t be –“
The wolf peeked its head out from behind the tree Katherine was standing next to.
“What the fuck is that?” shouted Chaz.
The wolf growled and bared its teeth at Chaz. Katherine, who had momentarily forgotten it was there, was briefly startled again, but logic had time to interfere this time. If it meant to hurt her, it would have done so long before now.
“Stop it,” she said to the wolf, and the wolf immediately stopped growling and sat down. She knelt down and reached a tentative hand out to touch it.
“Kat,” shouted Chaz. “Are you fucking nuts? That thing will rip your arm off!”
“He's friendly,” said Katherine. She let the wolf sniff her hand, but she still had to resist jerking it back when it licked her fingers. She patted it on the head, and it closed its eyes with obvious gratitude. “I think...” she paused, not having a clue as to why she felt this way. “I think he's mine.”
“You think he's yours?” asked Chaz. “Do you remember going to the pet store and buying a fucking wolf?”
“Do you remember going clothes shopping at the Ladies Big and Tall shop?”
“No,” said Chaz, with more than a hint of panic in his voice. “And I don't remember walking into the woods, and I don't remember dating a girl who wore antlers on her head. What's going on here, Kat?”
Katherine stopped petting the wolf and felt the top of her head. Sure enough, there were antlers up there, worked into the leather hood. She lowered the hood, and in doing so her hands brushed against her ears, which she discovered were pointed at the tops. “What happened to my ears?” she shouted. “What's wrong with my ears?”
“They're pointed.” He put his hands up to his own ears, which were normal enough. His hands went from his ears to his shiny golden hair. “When the fuck did I grow hair?”
“It has a very nice shine and bounce,” said Katherine, still feeling the points on her ears. “I wouldn't have pegged you for a blond.”
“I'm not,” said Chaz. He paused to think. “At least I wasn't.” He lifted up his shirt until he found the top of his pants. He pulled the front of his pants forward and looked down. “Holy shit! I guess I am now.”
“What happened to us?” asked Katherine. “Where are we?”
“I don't know how it happened,” said Chaz. “But don't you think it's pretty obvious where we are?”
“Obvious?” Katherine shouted back at him. “No, Chaz. I don't, as a matter of fact. I'm wearing antlers on my head, my ears are deformed, and I've got a pet wolf. No obvious explanation for any of that comes to mind.”
“We're in the game.”
“What game?”
“Creatures and Caverns,” said Chaz. “The game your brother and his friends were playing.”
“This is how you play?”
“Not conventionally, no.”
“Then how do you know-”
“It's the only explanation as to why you're now an elf, and I'm a... what the fuck am I anyway?” He looked down at his clothes again, pivoting his waist around to get a fuller view.
“You've got something on your back,” said Katherine.
“Huh?”
“A broken guitar or something.”
Chaz found the leather strap around his front and pulled the object up over his head, knocking his floppy hat off. “It's a lute,” he said curiously. Why would I be... oh no.” He turned to the sky and shouted. “A fucking bard? Really?”
“Chaz!” Katherine hissed, “Keep your voice down. We don't really know what's going on here. What's the matter with you? What the hell is a bard?”
“A musician,” Chaz whined back at her.
“What's wrong with that?” asked Katherine. “You're a musician anyway.”
“You'll see what's wrong with it if we're attacked by ogres or something, and the best thing I can do is sing them a song.”
“So you're a bard, and you play music,” Katherine attempted to organize her thoughts. “And I'm an elf. What does an elf do?”
“Elf is a race.”
“Hold on a second. I'm not white anymore?” Katherine looked at her hands. They looked longer and more slender than usual, but they were white enough. Hell, they were whiter than the hands she was used to.
“Not that kind of race.”
“So what race are you then?”
“I'm human, as far as I can tell.”
“So other races aren't human?” Katherine asked suspiciously. “Do people play this game in the north?”
Chaz closed his eyes in exasperation. “You're thinking about races the wrong way.”
“I'm trying to think of them in a post Civil War way.”
“I'm not talking about skin color,” said Chaz. “There could be black elves or Chinese dwarves or Mexican gnomes or whatever.”
That sounded more racist than anything she'd ever heard before, but she was willing to give Chaz the benefit of the doubt. He had a couple of black friends, after all, and she had to admit that there was a lot that she had no idea about right now.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “So you're a human, but you're also a bard?”
“Like I said. Human is my race. Bard is my class,” he explained. “Just like you might have a guy who's a Jew, but he's also an accountant, or a guy who's black, but he's also a janit-”
“Chaz!”
“Oh shit, sorry.” Chaz said. “That came out wrong.”
“For fuck's sake,” said Katherine. “I get it. Just stop talking. So your class is like what? Your job?”
“Something like that.”
“So what's my class?” she asked, looking at the sickle she was still holding. “Farmer?”
“My guess would either be ranger or druid.”
“Why?”
“I'm trying to remember,” said Chaz. “It's been a while since I've played.” He thought. “You seem to be a woodsy type. Leather and antlers and all that shit. You're in tune with nature.”
“But I hate nature,” argued Katherine. “I got so pissed off at my dad
that time he took us camping instead of to the beach on our vacation.”
“Look deep inside yourself,” said Chaz. “Right now, do you really hate nature?”
“Yes,” said Katherine. “I do. It's dirty, and smelly, and full of bugs and spiders and shit.”
“Okay,” said Chaz. “If you hate nature so much, why don't you rip this little sapling out of the ground?”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“It was a returgical question. I'm challenging you to rip this tree out of the ground right now.”
“What's the point?” asked Katherine. “This is stupid.”
“Fine,” said Chaz. “Then I'll do it.” He stepped toward the sapling, and was met with the point of Katherine's sickle at his throat. “Jesus Christ!” he said, putting his hands up.
“Oh my god, I'm so sorry,” she said. She lowered her sickle and Chaz backed away. She leaned against a tree, and her hand involuntarily caressed the bark. “I guess I really do love nature.”
“Well,” said Chaz. “That settles that. You're either a ranger or a druid.”
“I don't know what either of those are.”
“I think a ranger is just a fighter who likes to live in the woods or something,” said Chaz. “I remember he has a favored enemy. Is there any sort of creature or race that you feel a particular hatred for?”
“Are you asking if I'm a racist?” asked Katherine. “Are you sure you're not a ranger?”
Chaz lowered his head. “I guess I walked right into that one.” He thought some more, running a hand through his shiny golden hair. “If you're a druid, you should be able to use magic. Can you use magic?”
“Sure,” she said. She grabbed the wooden medallion hanging from a chain around her neck. It had the image of a tree carved into it, the leaves composed of clusters of tiny emeralds. She pointed it at the ground and said “Canis Lupus!” A gray wolf suddenly came into being on the ground where she had pointed her medallion.
“Jesus!” said Chaz.
“Holy shit!” said Katherine. “How did I do that?”
“You’re asking me?”
“I can do fucking magic!”
The wolf looked around, looked up at Katherine, briefly regarded the other wolf, and then vanished.
“Kind of disappointing really,” said Katherine.
“What are you talking about?” asked Chaz. “That was fucking awesome. What else can you do?”
Katherine held her medallion in one hand. With the other, she reached into a small pouch on her belt and pulled out a bit of glowing moss. She held it up and looked at it for a moment, and then placed it at the top of her sickle. “Luminus!” she said, and a sphere of light glowed on top of the sickle.
Chaz shrugged. “That's pretty cool too.”
They watched the light for a few seconds, waiting for it to vanish like the wolf had, but it continued to glow. It wasn't particularly useful right now, in the middle of the day. In fact, if they weren't in the woods right now, but rather out in the open sunlight, it's likely they would barely be able to tell it was working at all. It would probably come in handy if they had to travel at night.
Katherine waved her sickle around. The light remained attached to the top of it. “Well, I guess this one's going to stick around for a while,” she said. “So what can you do?”
“I can play this,” said Chaz, holding up his lute. “And I guess I can sing.”
“Okay,” said Katherine. “Play me something.”
Chaz took a couple of test strums on the instrument. Pretty soon, his fingers took over and plucked the strings more quickly and elegantly than Katherine thought possible. The song wasn’t one that Katherine was familiar with, but she had to admit it moved her.
“I didn’t know you were that talented,” said Katherine.
“I’m not,” said Chaz. He stopped playing and looked closely at his hands.
“What was that song?”
“I don’t know. It just came to me.”
“It was really good,” said Katherine.
“Thanks.”
“Seriously,” she said. “It was amazing. I think if you wrote some lyrics for that, you could get a recording contract or something.”
“You think so?”
“Excuse me,” said a voice that made both Chaz and Katherine start and scream.
Katherine tightened the grasp on her sickle, and Chaz throttled the neck of his lute, brandishing it like a weapon. They both turned toward the direction the voice had come from and didn’t see many likely candidates for a source. A large black bird stared back at them from a low branch of a nearby tree.
“I’m sorry,” said the bird. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I saw your light and heard your music. That was lovely, by the way.”
“Thanks,” said Chaz.
“I um...” said the bird. “I don’t suppose that either of you are named Tim.”
Katherine responded immediately, not caring in the least little bit that she was talking to a bird. “What do you know about Tim? Where is he?”
“I’m sorry,” said the bird. “I don’t understand a word you are saying.”
“What do you mean you don’t understand us?” Katherine shouted back at the bird. “We’re speaking the same language!”
“Er...” said the bird. “What’s the best way to put this?” He flapped his wings and shook his head. When he spoke again, his speech was slower, louder, and very carefully articulated. “I’m sorry. I don’t speak your language.”
“I think he’s fucking with you,” said Chaz.
Katherine was growing more and more frustrated. This was her only clear opportunity to find information about her missing brother, and to find out what the hell was going on. “Listen, you stupid fucking bird,” she said, more slowly and deliberately than normal, but not to the extent of which the bird had spoken to her. She was, however, speaking much louder than he was. “We’re both speaking English!”
“I’m sorry,” said the bird. “I haven’t had the ability to speak for very long, you see. I only know the elven language, so if either of you know that, I would be very grateful if you could-”
“Do you know elven?” Chaz asked Katherine, interrupting the bird.
“I don’t think so,” said Katherine. “What’s elven?”
“The language of the elves.”
“Why the fuck would I know the language of the elves?”
“Because you’re an elf.”
One of Katherine’s hands involuntarily went back up to her ear, feeling the point on top. “Oh yeah,” she said. “Maybe I do. I mean, I must if I can understand what it’s saying, right?”
“Makes sense to me,” said Chaz.
“Then how do I speak elven?”
“I don’t know. Maybe try a British accent?”
“What difference would that make?”
“We’re in a game world,” said Chaz. “When people play these games, they aren’t expected to actually learn all of the languages that their characters know. Sometimes they roleplay it by using different accents to represent different languages.”
“Those people will die alone.”
“Give it a try.”
“Why don’t you give it a try? You could understand it.”
“It’s not my brother we’re looking for.”
“You know what?” said Katherine. “You really are a piece of shit.”
Chaz had no response to this accusation.
“Fine,” said Katherine. I’ll do my best.” She looked at the bird. The bird was looking back expectantly and impatiently. “G’day, matey.”
Chaz cringed. “That was more of a cross between Australian and pirate.”
“Talk to that bird right now or you’re going to be wearing that fucking lute.”
“Fine,” said Chaz. I’ll have to warm up first.” He looked at the bird. “I am Arthur, king of the Britons.”
“King of the who?” asked the bird.
“The Bri- Wait, is
that a serious question?”
“It worked!” said Katherine. “You’re talking to it.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, Your Majesty,” said Ravenus to Chaz. “I was just looking for-”
“I’m not really a king.”
“Well then that’s a very odd way to start a conversation.”
“I’m not really a king,” Katherine repeated, trying to get a fix on the accent.
“I wouldn’t have suspected so, Miss... Tim, is it?” the bird asked hopefully.
“No,” said Katherine. “Tim is my brother.”
The bird turned to Chaz. “I thought you said your name is Arthur.”
“No, it’s not. I was just-”
“So you’re Tim then?”
“No. I’m Chaz.”
“Then who the fuck is Tim?” The bird spread his wings and ruffled his feathers in frustration.
“Tim is my brother,” said Katherine. “This is Chaz, who is not my brother.”
“I’m her boyfriend,” said Chaz.
“Let’s not get carried away,” said Katherine. “My name is Katherine. We’re looking for Tim.”
“I’m Ravenus.”
“You know,” said Chaz, “I wouldn’t mind grabbing something to eat either.”
“We’ll get some food later. Right now we’ve got to find Tim.”
“Right,” said Ravenus. “I was told to look for him at the campsite. That’s about a quarter of a mile that way.”
“How do you know Tim?” asked Katherine.
“I don’t,” said Ravenus. “He’s a friend of my master.”
“Who’s your master?”
“Julian.”
“Who the hell is Julian?” Katherine murmured to herself. Then she remembered that there was a player in the Chicken Hut who she hadn’t met before. A guy who had come with Cooper. “Does Julian hang around with a couple of other guys?”
“Yes,” said Ravenus.
“Do you know what their names are?” she asked, not wanting the bird to just agree to information that she was feeding it.
“Hmm...” said Ravenus. “I don’t recall exactly. Julian introduced them to me once, but they don’t speak elven, and I wasn’t paying much attention. I want to say Wiggles and Jing-Jing.”