“What I remember the most about the farm house,” Nathaniel explained “was a miniature green Dutch cabin dubbed a ‘Weather Wizard.’ There was a thermometer on the front side of the little house. Flanking the thermometer were two rectangular doorways. In one of the doors were miniature twins. If the weather was pleasant, the twins moved out of the door. If the weather was stormy, or had the propensity to be bad, a witch arrived from the other door. My great aunt told me that the device was more accurate than any weather man could have predicted.” Nathaniel sighed. “No matter how many memories are in my head after seven lifetimes, the image of that farmhouse, and the Weather Wizard, holds prominent. Whenever I hear the sound of rain or the rumbling of thunder, I’m reminded of the witch. I’m instantly brought to those days in the farm house and of the photographs. This was before the seventh visit to the Dandelion Sisters and rescuing Annette’s library books, of course.”
“While these memories of yours are nice, Mr. Cauliflower, you may want to be careful how much you recall.” Fiona’s warning was stressed. “We’re in Purgatory. Memories and dreams aren’t safe here.”
“Yes, I know.”
“We can’t stay here, Mr. Cauliflower,” Fiona said worryingly. “I’ve corralled the muses who are ready for the departure to a safer location. We’re waiting on you and Mrs. Slocum.”
“Mrs. Slocum?”
“She’s refusing to comply with my wishes until she’s spoken with you.”
Nathaniel frowned and chided, “Imagine!”
“Mrs. Slocum’s been trying to solve the case of the Thunderstorm Man, and you’ve been rushing her out the door without giving her an honest chance to try.” She put a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder and said “At least talk to her.”
“And say what?” Nathaniel asked. “Everything that’s led to this moment from her previous life is inside that manuscript. What more is there to say?”
“She hasn’t read it, Mr. Cauliflower,” Fiona reassured him. “While you’ve been standing here, staring up at the broken lives of these clients, Mrs. Slocum’s been waiting for you to tell her the story.”
Nathaniel chortled.
Fiona stepped between Nathaniel and the falling pegs. “She read the first page and casually skimmed through the rest.”
Nathaniel kept his eyes on the falling clients as if evading his Head Muse’s statement.
She touched his hand. “Rescue this story, Mr. Cauliflower, as you have the bound library editions in her life . . . and say something to her.”
Nathaniel moved his eyes from the storm to the smooth patch of limestone at his feet. The muses examined the colored pegs as if they were on a carefree grassy knoll watching a classic drive-in movie. Lucas was standing comfortably while leaning back into Icarus’ arms. Harriet was solitarily rigid with her arms folded. Anna Pavlova danced to the drumming rainfall. Mr. Andrews and Mr. Dunbar whispered about the debacle. Prolonged guest and public speaker Edgar Allan Poe was not interested in the storm. His attention was on Annette who had reset her desk, Lite-Brite, swivel chair and dry erase board. The manuscript from Nathaniel’s seventh life rested on the edge of her desk, untouched.
There were two women whom Nathaniel had loved. The first had been Evangeline. The second had been the socially outcast bookworm who he saw before him, whose wedding dress poofed like a melted campfire marshmallow.
The affair with the rescued library books had been merely a sliver of the anonymous tale that had encircled. Nathaniel was warily convinced it was a story, with its overly tattered binding and violent undercurrents, that he could rescue. It was far easier to be condemnatory of Annette’s occasional uncompromising qualities than it was to love and accept, then promptly lose her.
He had about as much desire to go and talk to her as someone might detest walking into work on an early, busy Monday morning but he trudged to her anyhow.
“So . . .” Annette melodiously placated while turning a page of her case files.
“I don’t want to fight,” Nathaniel blurted.
“Who’s fighting?”
Nathaniel, suddenly feeling his blood pressure rise, flared in defense. “There’s that tone again.”
“Tone?” Annette nonchalantly asked. “What tone?”
“That tone. The tone you often use . . . a sort of outwardly conciliatory sing-songy, condescending tone which hints to an assumed unspoken ‘I’m right and you’re wrong.’”
“There’s no argument, Mr. Cauliflower. You admit that I’m right and you’re wrong and we’ll leave it at that.”
“That’s not what I was saying,” Nathaniel countered.
“Oh?”
He removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Alright, fine. You were right. I was wrong. But I have a perfectly good reason, or perhaps reasons, for doing what I did.” He opened his eyes to find that Annette was no longer there. Placing the glasses where they belonged on his face, he turned in search of her. “If you would give me a chance to explain . . .” Nathaniel found that Annette had circled behind the white dry erase board where he was handed three colored pegs. “What are these?”
“The pegs from the three initial violet envelopes: the ones corresponding to the transgendered woman Luanne, Phillip and his glow-in-the-dark stars and Jonas’ father, Thomas Rothchild.”
Nathaniel looked askance.
Annette clarified her request. “We rotated these pegs counter-clockwise. We didn’t rotate them clockwise. We may gain insight as to where Jonas is or, perhaps, where he took them.”
He held them in his hand without responding.
“What?” Annette asked. “I found them in my desk drawer where I’ve kept them.”
“These colored pegs won’t tell you what you need to know,” Nathaniel somberly told her.
Annette poked an index finger to them. “We turn these pegs, we find out where in the timeline Jonas messed things up, and we’ll have him. We’ll return everyone home, close this case and conclude this charade.” She pointed to the falling pegs. “What you see there is a result from six timelines being altered. If we fix those timelines, the colored pegs disappear. Isn’t that how it works?”
“Yes, that’s how it works.”
“So let’s hop to it, Mr. Cauliflower. Put ‘em in the Lite-Brite and rotate them!”
But Nathaniel didn’t “hop to it” as he had been instructed. Nor did he “put ‘em in the Lite-Brite and rotate them.” He dolefully looked at the colored pegs. “The stories that you’re seeking are no longer in the pegs, I’m afraid.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I ‘mean’ is that each of these individuals had a story. That story has been stolen. If we rotate these pegs, we’ll see what once was and nothing more.”
“So you’re saying that to restore their colored pegs we have to re-write their story?”
“That’s right.”
“Then how do we do that?” Annette wanted to know. “The Encyclopedia of Destinies?” She focused on a mountain of overturned books mixed in the junk pile.
“No, the volumes specifically tell a person’s destiny and a moment when a muse is supposed to intervene to make that outcome possible.” Nathaniel picked up a lone volume to prove the information was invalid. “It doesn’t have single moments of a client’s life. It shows particular increments where a muse is able to be inserted. Especially after the initial inspiration – as a fail-safe if you will.”
“A fail-safe?” Annette considered his words. “Inside every colored peg?”
“In case the initial inspiration didn’t take effect like it should have,” Nathaniel told Annette “a muse has a second, sometimes third or fourth, chance to provide the inspiration.”
“So,” Annette turned her eyes to the dry erase board “because Jonas shanghaied these fail-safes and manipulated the storyline, there’s no reason to rotate the pegs. What good is a story without its client?”
Nathaniel frowned. “Precisely.”
“If we were to fi
nd Jonas, rescue the victims, use the fail-safe to reinsert them . . .”
“Mrs. Slocum,” Nathaniel started.
“. . . It’s achievable. We have to figure out where Jonas has taken them.”
“Mrs. Slocum,” he tried to explain but Annette wasn’t paying him mind. “Listen to me, will you?”
Annette spun, enraged at his indecency.
“The afterlife is more than Lite-Brite boards and colored envelopes,” he told her. “When the offices collapsed they landed into a level known as Purgatory, where we are currently.”
Light bulbs flickered on the expansive Cimmerian shade like heated bursting popcorn kernels.
“Purgatory?” Annette caught sight of misplaced illuminated industrial barn lights hanging from the non-existent ceiling. “Those lights,” she pointed upward.
Nathaniel looked at the lights with mounting concern.
“Were they here previously?” Annette asked.
He grabbed her hand and guided her from the hanging lights. She recoiled but Nathaniel was adamant. He called for the muses to gather round Annette’s Lite-Brite board.
“Muses!” Nathaniel told them. “We need to find another hideout. Purgatory is creeping closer. The lights you see,” he explained “will populate in number the longer we linger here.”
“Why?” Lucas asked.
Icarus responded, “After being led through the double doors by the mechanical boatman, I was taken into the Underworld which lies below Purgatory. While I visited the Underworld, I encountered an irresistible woman named Persephone, who led me here to Purgatory for a brief tour. Purgatory,” Icarus’ face was ominous “is a warehouse where damned souls are forced to ship dreams to the living. In the process, their own identities are split until there’s nothing left but a drained armor. It’s a place where a soul’s hopes, dreams and beloved memories are devoured. The longer we stay, more hanging lights will accumulate above our heads until we find ourselves immersed in its inescapable endless warehouse – eaten by its inhospitable void.”
“Maybe some memories are better eaten,” Lucas told him.
Icarus said nothing in response.
Nathaniel found a spare Lite-Brite and held it to his chest. He pocketed the three colored pegs he’d been given. When his hand reached into his pocket, he felt the ridges of the lone glow-in-the-dark star he had taken from Phillip’s inspiration.
“I’m not going anywhere until Cauliflower here gives me answers,” Annette told them.
“Mrs. Slocum,” Nathaniel told Annette. “Remember those three violet envelopes I reassigned to you after orientation? I’ve reviewed them. Prior to you providing the catalysts, I knew how the stories were meant to wrap.”
More barn lights erupted.
“I rotated them as if reading three cherished library books. I know why Luanne was destined for the Christmas ornament. I know why Phillip was preordained for the stars! I can tell these stories to you, verbatim. I can recite to you what I know in hopes that it’ll gain us a better insight into the mind and actions of Mr. Rothchild. If it’s what you really want, I’ll help to repair this story for you.”
Twenty vintage barn lights flickered to life from the ceiling.
“But not here. Not in Purgatory. Maybe Mr. Richardson was correct. Some decrepit memories are best devoured while other important memories, like mine and yours, may determine everyone’s fate.” Nathaniel added these words to his devotion: “I promise.”
Annette, with pistol back in her thigh holster under the fabric of her wedding dress, tucked her case files, including the pictures and numbered violet envelopes, under an arm. She gradually accepted Nathaniel’s hand.
Fiona seized a spare Lite-Brite board to take with them. She also held an uncapped mason jar labeled “In Case of Emergencies.” The Head Muse explained to Nathaniel that the jar had toppled and emptied in the department’s collapse. Though it was normally filled with multiple pegs fashioned for quick escapes, only one remained from the spill. In reaction to these words, Nathaniel gave her a questioning, mistrusting look.
The muses linked hands as if fashioning a group prayer. Nathaniel extracted the orange emergency peg. He inserted it into the face of Annette’s Lite-Brite board rotating it.
Purgatory ignited with a thousand added barn lights.
He looked at his muses, one by one, and to the falling colored pegs beyond them. In the life of Luanne, Nathaniel noticed a shard in which Luanne had been Louis prior to her surgery. Louis studied the features of a small Dutch house with twins in one door and a witch in the other. Though it had been a trinket from Nathaniel’s childhood, he and Luanne had shared memories of the same Weather Wizard. Eventually, everything would be explained to Annette in due course as to how the barometer had passed from his and Jonas’ hands to Luanne’s.
The atmosphere folded and unfolded delivering them from Purgatory’s endangerment.
They were delivered to a derelict moonlit sanctuary decked with overturned pews, shattered stained glass windows and scattered dried leaves.
“I know this place . . .” Annette told Nathaniel.
“Yes, Mrs. Slocum. It’s the sanctuary where you were to have your wedding.” Nathaniel brushed a finger along the edge of pew collecting a thin film of dust. “But it’s also home to an added timeline. It was in this building in my seventh life, many, many years ago, when I had met a young boy named Jonas Rothchild.”
*
Meanwhile, in the same living world, in a study studded with gothic furniture, heavy maroon drapes with gold stitching and an ornately crafted fireplace with flames in the grate, Jonas consulted a shadow-covered object on the mantle.
His hooded apprentice entered the study. “We’re in the sanctuary of the church, like you predicted. What do we do now?”
“We wait for the events to transpire.”
“We aren’t collecting clients?”
“No.” Jonas studied the object. “We need two more individuals to join our humble crowd, and they’ll arrive on their own terms once they’ve uncovered the sanctuary’s clues.”
“What’s the endgame?”
“The endgame?” Jonas looked toward his apprentice. “You want to spoil the surprise?”
“We’ve gone about an awful lot of trouble to ruin six lives. I don’t see where this could lead. What good could come from this?”
The shifting illumination from the flames heightened Jonas’ stern stare. “Ruin? We didn’t ruin these lives. We saved them. Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts; that I’ve plucked you from your own timeline by mistake. You begged me to be a part of this, remember?”
“I’m not having second thoughts,” his apprentice stammered.
“Good,” Jonas spat. “Keep it that way, for your sake. Go back to the sanctuary. Keep an eye on them. And keep your anonymity. Understand?”
The apprentice ducked out of the room leaving Jonas with his thoughts. On the mantle was the barometer from his childhood. He recalled Nathaniel, in the farm house, having showed him the twins and the witch. It had been the Weather Wizard that led Jonas to his occupation as a meteorologist. Parting from the barometer, Jonas touched a photo album from the farm house attic. As he flipped through the pages and surveyed the photos, Jonas mentally peeled personal layers of himself and Nathaniel remembering how they met as children and contemplating where those facts would lead them both in the superseding days.
CHAPTER 17: ASPHODEL
The church had gone into such a state of disrepair that it no longer looked like a dignified place of worship. Instead, it had taken on the role of an abandoned dwelling where the presence of Management had gone through a gnarled metamorphosis resulting in a dilapidated version akin to Heaven’s infamous Rebellious Angel. As the dropping colored pegs rapped on the building’s exterior, gentlemen loosened their bow ties and, in some cases, stripped from their jackets. The women removed their opera gloves and let down their hair, except for Harriet who kept hers in a tightly fastened hair-pinned bun.
Some inspected the fractured stained glass windows while others casually perused dust-covered Bibles and hymnals. And then there were those visibly distracted by whispered conversations.
“It’s a shame that this place had to change so significantly,” Annette whispered to Nathaniel. They were sitting in a cushioned pew near the altar steps. Her eyes soaked in the poor condition of the Nave while Nathaniel focused on the rotted armrest next to him. “How many years in the future are we from my wedding day?”
“This is your wedding day,” Nathaniel said matter-of-factly.
“No. My wedding day is filled with bouquet arrangements of yellow flowers. There were tasteful ribbons and finely-constructed wedding invitations. The carpets were vacuumed and the windows were washed and intact.”
“Not anymore,” Nathaniel sighed as the sound of drumming colored pegs continued. “As the six timelines were destroyed, this is your alternate wedding day. A day without roses. A day without a bride or a groom for that matter.”
“Adam’s not here.”
“No, Mrs. Slocum. He wouldn’t be. This is an alternate timeline. In the alternate timeline, the wedding day didn’t happen.”
“And yet here I am in my wedding dress.”
“We’re in the middle of a paradox, Mrs. Slocum. A limbo between what used to be your wedding day and today.”
“Paradox?”
“This is a parallel universe to what should exist. In this particular universe, which was split from the previous, you and Adam aren’t married. In this universe, billions upon billions of resulting people throughout history are uninspired because the six destroyed timelines. It’s a ripple effect. Somehow, both universes are currently existing at the same time. Out there in time somewhere, you’re wedding day still exists. But it won’t for much longer. If we don’t rescue the timelines, this universe will become our universe.” He shifted in the pew. “It’s difficult to explain.”
Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles Page 25