Chalice of Life

by R. A. Rock

  “The Omahk?” Jayde said, her dark eyes suddenly widening. “Are you from the university?”

  She rushed into her apartment, leaving the door open.

  “Um, no, wait,” Tess called feebly after her but the human didn’t hear her, so intent on what she was doing. Tess and Finn stayed in the doorway, watching helplessly as she went to a dining-room table covered in papers and gathered several. She spun on her heel by the table and continued talking.

  “I’ve continued studying it and I have even more proof that the Grail is there. I assure you, there’s astronomical proof, a new artifact that was recently uncovered that corroborates my theory and…”

  She searched again, the papers making a shuffling sound, then pivoted to face them, holding up her index finger and smiling excitedly.

  “I had a seismologist come out and take readings. He thinks that there may be caverns under Omahk. He’s still working on the calculations and he’ll get back to me by next week. It might be a cave system.” She sounded as if she was trying to keep herself from hoping too much. “Or maybe tunnels. To hide the Grail.” She shivered, thrilled at the thought. “That ancient humans made.”

  “Or a Faerie King,” Finn muttered.

  “Shush,” Tess said under her breath. “We have to seem like normal humans. Don’t mention Faeries or she’ll never help us.”

  She rushed back over to them, brandishing the papers.

  “I just need a small grant to get started and I’m sure once I have the proof that there are definitely caverns under there, additional funding will come in. I feel certain that I can—”

  Finn held up his hand, interrupting her. “We’re not from the university.”

  Jayde’s face fell. “You’re not? Well, why did you let me go on and on? I told you everything and you never even stopped me…” She trailed off. “Oh. Right. I didn’t give you a chance to get a word in edgewise. My Kookum always tells me to think before I speak." She pronounced it koo-kum. "Let other people talk. And take a breath when I’m telling people something. But I was just so excited when I thought you were from the university.”

  The petite human was crestfallen, and Tessa felt bad for her.

  “I thought maybe you were coming to give me my job back.”

  She beckoned to Tess and Finn and they came into the apartment, closing the door. Jayde dropped down on the couch, the picture of dejection.

  There were several bowls with spoons in them on the coffee table, as if she had finished eating and left them there. Tess spotted mostly empty bags of chips on the table and some takeout containers. There were what looked like clean clothes piled up on one chair as if she had done laundry and then hadn’t had the energy to put it away.

  But even though it was untidy, the smell in the apartment was lovely compared to the stink in the hall because the place was clean. All the windows were open and the wind was blowing through. Underneath that, Tess could smell a sweet scent that she didn't recognize but quite liked.

  Tess glanced around at the walls and saw that there were pictures of Jayde with a woman who she looked exactly like, except that Jayde’s skin tone was darker. Her mother, no doubt. There was another collage of Jayde with an older woman. Maybe a grandmother, Tess guessed.

  And on one whole wall were pictures of Jayde and her search for the Holy Grail. One of the earliest pictures was of her with a homemade chalice constructed of paper and painted gold, which she held up triumphantly, her smile missing a couple teeth.

  Another picture was of Jayde as an older child in front of a display showing all about the Grail. Then there followed various photos of archeological digs and awards won at university. Her Master’s Degree and Ph.D were at the top of this wall in places of honor.

  Whoa, Tess thought. This woman is seriously obsessed with the Chalice. Then she gave a little smile. Jayde seemed like her kind of woman—laser focused, unyielding, and bound to get what she set her sights on.

  “We’re sorry to hear that you lost your job at the university,” Finn said, and Tess thought she’d let him take point on this.

  Jayde’s face became suspicious again.

  “Don’t look at me like that. You’re all over the inter—” Finn paused.

  “Trap?” Tess whispered, trying to help.

  “Intertrap,” he said confidently.

  Jayde looked confused.

  “Inter… mesh?”

  Jayde shook her head.

  “You’re all over the computer,” Finn said, changing tack. “We goggled—”

  “Googled,” Tess corrected.

  “We googled you. It tells all about you getting—” He stopped, his eyes cutting over to Tessa’s. “About you resigning from your job.”

  “Oh,” Jayde said, understanding sweeping over her face. “You mean the internet.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” Finn said, hitting his thigh. “You’re all over the internet. So don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m a weirdo.”

  “You don’t know what to call the internet,” she pointed out.

  “Fine, “Finn said. “You probably have a point. English isn’t my first language.”

  “So what do you want, then, if you’re not from the university?” Jayde asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Finn leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

  “We want to help you find the Holy Grail.”

  Jayde blinked and sat back. Then she pressed her lips together, angry.

  “That’s not funny. Are you some kind of pranksters? Is this one of those shows?”

  She started looking around the room, as if searching for something.

  “What?” Finn said, scowling. “No. This isn’t a joke. We want to find the Holy Grail as badly as you do.”

  Her forehead crinkled and she frowned. “I swear if you’re trying to make one of those stupid videos to post online, I’ll…”

  Tessa watched as Jayde’s hands formed into fists. She was breathing fast—furious at them because she thought they were making fun of her.

  This was not going well.

  “We’re not making a video.” Tess blurted the words out and Jayde looked at her, narrowing her eyes. At least Tess was pretty sure they weren’t making a video. But she wasn’t quite certain how the technology for that worked, so she wasn’t a hundred percent confident that they weren’t.

  Oh, what did it matter? They just needed to convince Jayde that they weren’t shysters. She swallowed a smile at the funny word that popped into her mind.

  “We believe that the Grail is not in the middle east.”

  “Why?” Jayde asked.

  “Because we have some new information that has never been discovered before.” That was true. She needed to be as honest as possible without mentioning magic. Or the fact that they were Faeries from another realm.

  Jayde perked up at her words. “New information?” she repeated as if she barely believed it. “About the Grail being here in North America?”

  “Yes. We were hoping we could work together. We’ll tell you what we know. You show us the Omahk and tell us what you know.”

  Jayde didn’t quite look convinced but Tess could tell that she would not be able to resist the desire for more information about the Holy Grail and its whereabouts.

  “What do you say?” Finn said, tilting his head to the side in that charming way he had.

  Tess ignored it but she glared at Jayde when the charm seemed to work on her. The other woman never looked her way for an instant.

  Is this wench attracted to Finn?

  Uh no. That’s not allowed.

  Tess reminded herself that she had screwed things up. That Finn had dumped her. Stupid English expression. And anyways, Finn was way too broken up about—

  “Do you think we could collaborate?” Finn gave Jayde a panty-melting smile. And a wink, for the love of all that was holy.

  Tess pushed down a surge of jealousy. She and Finn weren’t together
. Their Joining was in name only. She had no right to be upset about him flirting.

  “Well…” Jayde said, drawing out the word as if she were still considering it, though Tess knew she had already decided. The promise of new info and Finn’s smile had been enough to seal the deal. “I suppose I could take you out to the site and show you around.”

  That was what she said out loud but Tess heard the subtext loud and clear. Jayde would take them to see the Medicine Wheel. This would give her time to decide whether she could trust them enough to tell them any more of her research.

  “We would really appreciate that,” Finn said, his voice warm. “Can we go now?”

  Tess thought he was laying it on a bit thick. She had already agreed. He could dial back the charm.

  “Now? No.” Jayde laughed.

  Was the woman blushing? Tess thought she would explode. She clenched her hands into fists until she felt her nails digging into her palms so hard it hurt. She unclenched them, reminding herself that they needed Jayde’s help. She probably shouldn’t punch her out. Besides, she seemed like a nice little human and probably didn’t deserve to be punched out just because Finn was flirting with her.

  “It’s in Majorville. That’s almost a two-hour drive from here. It’s already seven. It would be dark by the time we got there. Better to go tomorrow.”

  “Great, what time?” Finn said, being sure to pin her down so she couldn’t wiggle out of it.

  “How about you meet me here at nine?”

  “Sounds perfect,” Finn said, standing up. “Thank you for your time, Jayde. And I hope we’ll be able to work together.”

  He extended his hand and she shook it. As their hands touched, Jayde’s eyes got big as if she had experienced something.

  Uh oh. Jayde had probably gotten a little shock of magic. Tess didn’t know exactly how Faerie magic worked here on the Earthly Realm. She was still trying to figure it out. But from her experience so far, she had noticed that it seemed to work very differently from the way magic worked in Ahlenerra.

  Jayde gave Finn a tiny half smile, looking a little dazed. Tess pursed her lips. Or maybe there hadn’t been any jolt of Starlight and Finn was working his own kind of magic.

  “See you tomorrow, Jayde,” she said, heading for the door.

  Finn followed her but more slowly.

  When they were in the hallway, he gave her a smile she could only describe as happy.

  "I think I need to revise my assessment of humans. That one was very nice."

  "She was," Tess said, taking deep breaths and trying to calm the unpleasant surges of jealousy that were crashing inside her.

  She needed to stop thinking of Finn as hers.

  Because he wasn’t anymore.

  And there was nothing she could do to change that.

  Chapter 25

  Ethan stood up so abruptly he knocked over the chair in his surprise. He picked it up and then went to the window and gazed out at L.A. He couldn’t see any stars since the light pollution made it nearly impossible. But he stared up at the night sky anyway, remembering how bright the stars had been in Ahlenerra.

  He wondered for a moment whether Tess and Finn could see the stars.

  “Are you sure?” he asked

  “Quite sure, sir.” Doyle nodded gravely.

  “Tell me everything you’ve learned,” Ethan said, starting to pace back and forth across his study.

  “The Chalice could be many of the chalices that are referenced in the literature. I’ve catalogued over one hundred of them.”

  “But?” Ethan said, sensing that there was one that Doyle had narrowed it down to.

  “But I have good reason to believe that it is, as I said, actually the Holy Grail.”

  “The one in that movie you made me watch last week?”

  “The very one. And was the film not entertaining, sir?”

  “It was, Doyle. It was.”

  “Precisely.” Doyle rarely had much in the way of expression on his face, but even so, Ethan could sense that he was quite satisfied with himself. “And what a coincidence that we should have watched it just before Tess and Finn showed up.”

  “I’m an immortal being, Doyle. I’m not really down with coincidence.”

  “It was a joke, sir. Sarcasm. Of course it wasn’t a coincidence.”

  Sarcasm was very hard to spot on Doyle, seeing as his face was basically always deadpan.

  “Fair enough. But I don’t think we should get our information about the Chalice from that movie.”

  “Of course not, sir. I have done extensive research of every paper that has ever been written on the subject.”

  “Every single one?” Ethan said, astonished.

  “You know I learned to speed read, sir. And it has been nearly twenty-four hours.”

  “Okay, but still, how did you even get copies of all that stuff?”

  “Your money buys us many things, sir. Including overnight shipping and access to academic resources that most others do not have access to.”

  “Huh,” Ethan said, thinking about that.

  Doyle waved him off. “That said, I believe the Chalice the two Fae are looking for is the Holy Grail. And the very one that the Faerie King hid here hundreds of years ago.”

  Doyle’s eyes sparkled and Ethan was surprised. The man didn’t get interested in much except spreadsheets.

  “You’re fascinated by this stuff, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Ethan, you have no idea,” Doyle said, his voice showing a tiny bit of enthusiasm. Ethan stared. Enthusiasm was completely unheard of when it came to Doyle. “I have always been enthralled by the stories. But to be able to help in the search for the actual magical Chalice that was hidden here by the Faerie King and which is said to confer immortality on he who drinks from it?” He shook his head, closing his eyes, apparently in bliss.

  Ethan gazed at him in shock. He had never seen Doyle so excited about something. Of course, describing him as excited was maybe pushing it. But the word was close enough. This was excited for Doyle.

  “So what makes you think that?”

  “I have discovered the information in an unlikely place.”

  “No doubt.”

  “When I did a search, I decided to include the term folk tales along with many others. The archeological database I was searching gives a small summary of the text.”

  “Which you speed read.”

  “Of course. What I found was a diary of a Jesuit Priest.”

  “What kind of priest?” As the Great Hunter, Ethan knew a lot about the Church, but he couldn’t remember anything about Jesuits.

  “The Jesuits were active in the 1600s throughout what’s now eastern Canada. They came as missionaries, mostly with the intention of saving the poor savages, as they referred to them. The indigenous people were generally not too impressed but many did convert to Christianity.”

  “Yay,” Ethan said, waving his index finger in a circle sarcastically.

  “Well, yes. But you probably remember how people were back then.”

  “I do.” And didn’t he wish he could forget it sometimes.

  “The Jesuits were linguists, learning many of the languages of the indigenous peoples,” Doyle continued in what Ethan liked to call his lecturing voice. “And explorers. They actually ended up preserving a lot of culture and tradition that would have been lost in the later attempt by the government to assimilate them.”

  Ethan made a face and a get on with it gesture. He unfortunately remembered a lot of that very well. It had not been pleasant.

  “They founded schools all across Canada. But what I found most interesting were the meticulous notes they kept on the people they were trying to convert. There was one Jesuit. A layman.”

  He pulled out a sheaf of papers from the breast pocket in his suit and rifled through them. Ethan waited patiently. Doyle would give his full report whether he was patient about it or not. Ethan had learned that in his time with him.

  “His name was Fer
nand Larocque. He came to a place called Wiikwemkoong. The story goes that he married the chief’s daughter. And when the government came knocking, he helped the Ojibway people negotiate their treaty.”

  Ethan sat down and got comfortable, realizing that this wasn’t going to end anytime soon. “Did he?

  “He did. And you know what?”

  “What, Doyle?”

  “They are the only unceded Indigenous territory in Canada.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That they retained all their rights, instead of being swindled by the white man. And that was because they had a white man on their side who cared and spoke the language, who wouldn’t allow the government to swindle them. Or so the story goes, as told by said white man.”

  Ethan was having a hard time coming to terms with this energetic version of Doyle. His friend was downright upset about the way the Indigenous people had been treated.

  “How did I not know you were a history buff?” Ethan asked, blown away by this discovery.

  “It’s something I do in my quiet hours,” Doyle said, visibly calming himself.

  “But we hang out,” Ethan protested. “Outside of work, I mean.”

  “Yes, but you do not have much interest in the past, Ethan,” Doyle said in a considerate tone. “Which is understandable.”

  Ethan was quiet a moment as he realized that Tessa was right about him. He was selfish. How had he never known that Doyle loved history so much? It struck him as wrong that he knew so little about the man who he considered his closest friend.

  Was it true what she said, that it was always about what he wanted? His needs? His desires?

  Ethan was beginning to think that it was.

  “But I am getting off track,” Doyle said, rustling through his papers again as if he was uncomfortable.

  “Does Fernand helping negotiate for the Indigenous people have anything to do with finding the Holy Grail?” Ethan asked without much hope of it being so.

  “No, sir. I apologize. I just thought it was an interesting fact. No doubt, the indigenous people helped the Jesuit too. Providing him with a home and family. Though we cannot know the true circumstances of the situation.”