II. The Blessed Event
A bit of a misnomer, actually.
“I can’t eat, I’m too excited!” Agnes cried.
“Try anyway, Agnes,” Will suggested, serving her more scrambled eggs, hot from the frying pan. He went back to steadily cleaning his own plate. “If you don’t eat now, you’ll faint at the altar, and we wouldn’t want that would we?”
“Since you say so, darling.” Eager to please her husband-to-be, Agnes mechanically forked food into her mouth, chewed, swallowed, repeated.
Taita appeared in the kitchen. She sat down at the seat left empty for her. She gave the faintest of nods to Will; mission accomplished. Without comment, she then served herself and started eating determinedly.
“Where were you, Taita?” Agnes asked.
“Just picking a few more fresh flowers for your bouquet,” Taita replied smoothly.
“Oh, thank you!” Agnes gushed. “It looks so perty, I could never have arranged anything so lovely by myself!”
Taita smiled at her. All of the venom had drained out of her during the night. Let Agnes have Will and have her fun. It was only for a few more hours.
Walker, who was sitting next to Taita, asked her, “More ham, Taita?”
“Yes, please.” She held up her plate and allowed Walker to serve her.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Like a rock,” she replied, with a small smile. Whimsically, she wondered what rocks really did when no one was watching.
“Nice weather we’re having.”
“Perfect day for a wedding,” she said.
“It’ll hold until the end of the week,” he said, the hint of a suggestion in his voice.
“That’s wonderful.”
They finished breakfast quickly. Agnes and Taita cleared the table, put the food away, and stacked the dishes and utensils for washing later. Everyone split up to get dressed. Will and the Turner men were all dressed in their best clothes and out milling in the sitting room within the hour. But the door to Agnes’s bedroom remained shut, and for two hours, nothing came out of that room but giggles and the muffled sounds of constant, excited, girlish chatter. The Turner boys passed the time by playing wedding pieces on their instruments. Pa Turner joined in with his ceramic jug. Will just listened and tapped his foot in time. Walker improvised a serenade to a willful, brown-eyed woman, who danced with the wind and sang with the brook and wandered with the stars.
Finally, the door cracked open and Agnes emerged. She was wearing her best white Sunday dress. The sleeves came to her wrists, the dress was long, loose, touched her ankles, and her mother had embroidered every edge with flowers in white thread before she died. Agnes’s short hair was neatly combed and allowed to hang freely, framing her joy-lit face. She wore new shoes and when the sleeve occasionally fell back along her left arm, Will glimpsed a bracelet he was sure belonged to Taita. Agnes wore a thin, airy veil over her face and carried a bouquet of freshly picked meadow flowers.
Taita came after the bride. She wore Agnes’s second-best dress, a light blue gown with light blue lacing rims on the three-quarter sleeves and V-neck. The dress flowed loosely around her and came down to mid-calf, and around the end was a fringe of light blue lace. On the dress’s neck was a silver-cased pearl brooch, an heirloom of the Turner women. The only style in her long brown hair was a burette with a bejeweled bird design, also an old family treasure.
Will and Taita exchanged a single, covert look of wordless understanding: Soon.
“Agnes, you look just like your ma,” Mr. Turner said, his voice thick with emotion and his eyes brimming with tears.
Will knew he was supposed to pretend enthrallment to Agnes, but he was having a hard time not looking at Taita.
“Really?” Agnes threw her arms around her father’s neck and started crying.
“Don’t cry sweetheart, this is your wedding day!”
“I know, but that’s why I’m crying. I’m so happy!”
“You look beautiful, Agnes,” Will told her.
She hugged him and kissed his cheek. “Just think, yesterday afternoon that no-good dirtbag Earnest T. ran out on me and I thought it was the worst day of my life, but it was actually the best day of my life because I met you! And now today we’re going to get married!”
“Of course we are,” he promised.
“Are you happy too?”
“I’ve never been happier in my life.”
“We should start for the church, Pa,” Walker suggested.
“Yes, we should. Agnes, you take my arm. Walker, son, you escort Taita. Let’s go everyone!”
Pa Turner and Agnes, linked arm in arm, walked at the head of the procession. Then came Will and his best men, Walker, Texas, and Ranger. Walker, the oldest of the three sons, proudly escorted Taita on his arm, and Taita didn’t seem to mind.
The wedding party walked briskly and talked excitedly on the path up the gentle hill to the small white church. The wind laughed as it ran past them. The sun smiled, but the clouds hurried across the sky with little heed for what was happening on the ground.
Halfway up the hill, Agnes stumbled. She caught her father’s arm before she could fall, but there was the loud, ominous sound of tearing cloth. “Oh no…”
Everyone stopped and stared at Agnes.
“Oh Agnes, your dress,” Taita murmured, pointing to the three inch tear where the seam near Agnes’s knee had come apart.
“This is a bad sign…” Pa Turner murmured. “A tear in the bride’s dress on her wedding day… it’s a bad omen.”
The Turner boys murmured their assent.
“No, no, it was just an accident, I’m sure!” Agnes protested frantically, grabbing Will’s arm and clinging to him. “It doesn’t have to mean anything Pa! It was just an accident, it was nothing!”
“Maybe not,” Pa Turner agreed reluctantly.
The Turner boys mumbled nervously among themselves. Will and Taita traded raised eyebrows.
“Let’s get on,” Pa Turner said, his eyes nervous. “Let’s get this wedding done before anything else can go wrong.”
As the group crested the hill, Ranger happened to glance over his shoulder and see a man dressed in black and riding on a white horse cut across the road. But he was galloping north to south, so Ranger didn’t remark on it.
They entered the church. The reverend, dressed in a black suit and clasping a worn black Bible, stood waiting for them at the altar.
“Mornin’, Reverend,” Pa Turner rumbled as the Turner’s, Will, and Taita reached the front of the church.
“Good morning, Ike,” the man said. “I heard your daughter was getting married. Where’s Earnest T.?”
“Ran off yesterday,” Mr. Turner growled. “This here is Willie Snipes. Agnes is marrying him instead.”
“That’s too bad about Earnest T. But it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Snipes,” the reverend said, shaking Will’s hand. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” Will replied.
“Well, step right up, let’s get started.”
“You have the rings, Walker?”
“Here,” Walker said, taking them out of his pants pocket and holding them, glittering, in his calloused palm.
“Give them to Willie.”
Will held out his hand for the rings, and Walker dropped them into his palm. At the last instant, Will’s hand tipped, and the wedding bands slid off, clattered on the floor, and skittered a few feet away.
For a long moment, no one spoke, just stared at the two gold bands lying so far away from each other on the floor. The distant sound of galloping horse’s hooves rumbled in everyone’s ears like thunder too near.
“Ah, sorry about that,” Will finally said. He picked up one of the rings. “This one’s okay though.”
Walker retrieved the other ring. “I don’t know about this, Pa…”
“What does it mean, Pa?” Agnes asked in a small voice. She bent her knees slightly so she could reach the ripped seam in her dress. Her fingers nervously tried
to hold the close the hole by holding the two cloth pieces together.
The Turner boys muttered darkly among themselves, casting furtive glances at Will.
“I think I’d better hold the rings,” Ike Turner said, carefully taking both rings in his hands. “Let’s hurry up and do the service. I don’t want to give a third bad omen any more time to show up.”
Will and Taita glanced at each other. They had played two aces, but the Turner’s weren’t backing out, and they didn’t have a third.
“Mr. Turner,” said Will, “I think we might want to reconsider this whole thing… A ripped wedding dress could be written off as an accident, but dropped wedding rings too… It’s my fault, I know, and I’m very sorry, but two bad omens are making me a mite twitchy.”
“Me too,” Taita put in.
“Pa’s right, let’s not wait for a third omen,” Agnes said. She pulled Will to her side, to stand with her before the minister. “We’re true loves and we’re so close to spending the rest of our lives together, I don’t anything to jinx that.”
“Agnes, about that, there’s something I need to tell you before this goes any further –“
“I love you too,” she whispered to him.
“No, you don’t understand, I –“
“Start the service, Reverend,” Pa Turner ordered.
“Now everyone, calm down,” the minister said, opening his Bible. He had a small insert with the text for the service stuck in the book’s pages, and he began to read from it.
Taita felt sick. There was only one option left to her, one chance to stop this. She tensed, waiting for it, gathering her courage.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honorable estate, instituted of God, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church: which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence and first miracle that he wrought in Cana of Galilee, and is commended of Saint Paul to be honorable among all men: and therefore is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God. Into this holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace.”
From the entrance of the sanctuary, the trumpeting of a horse answered him. Everyone turned to see a white horse rearing on its hind legs, ridden by a man in black. The horse screamed defiance a second time and touched his front hooves to the ground. He blew heavily.
“I object,” the rider said quietly. He nudged his mount, and the horse began to walk slowly down the aisle. The rider’s quicksilver glasses glinted a menacing red.
Twined around the rider’s left arm, embedded in his very flesh, a black serpentine creature with cold yellow eyes hissed a soft warning. “This is crazy. I can’t believe I let Quicksilver put me up to this.”
“Not put up. Ordered,” The rider – Ghost, pointed out.
“Terrorizing superstitious yokels is a waste of my time. And my skills. I’m a soldier, I do special operations. Quicksilver knows that.”
“But this is a special operation,” a third voice asserted, seeming to come from the Horse himself.
“Oh it’s special alright, Strider,” Ghost grumbled. “Especially stupid. What does Quicksilver care about a bunch of hillbillies throwing a shotgun wedding?”
“A personal favor to me. If this wedding were go forward, it would disturb a rather delicate, rather important arrangement.” The symbiote hissed to its companions.
“State the reason for your objection,” the minister stammered. “And don’t come any further, I beg you, your horse’s hooves will damage the floor.”
The horse halted immediately, without any cue from his rider.
“That won’t be necessary, Reverend,” Pa Turner said in a low voice, his wide eyes fixed on the black rider on the white horse. “It’s the third omen; it doesn’t need a reason… Sorry Willie boy, but I don’t think this is going to work out. Get away from him Agnes.”
Agnes, terrified by the black rider’s appearance, fled to her father.
Taita, on the verge of shaking to pieces, threw herself into Will’s arms. “Don’t let it hurt me,” she whispered.
“Ah, well, this is an interesting turn of events,” Will remarked, steadying Taita with his hands on her shoulders. Despite his best effort to keep a straight face, he grinned. “No hard feelings I hope, Agnes?”
Agnes just stared at him, the expression on her face a mixture of confusion and fear.
“I suggest you two high-tail it out of here. You stay here much longer, nothing good can come of it,” Mr. Turner growled at Will and Taita.
“We were just leaving,” Will said quickly.
“Agnes, boys, let’s go.” Pa Turner hustled his daughter and three sons down the aisle, taking a wide detour around the horse and rider, and out of the church.
The reverend stared at the dark rider, swallowed, and said, speaking so fast his words collided into each other and bounced off like out-of-control bumper cars, “I’ve got a Sunday sermon to prepare so… just don’t scuff the floors or make a mess. God bless you my children!” He hurried out.
There was a long, awkward silence. Neither Will nor the rider knew what to say. They just stared, neither quite sure of what to make of the other. The horse snuffled quietly and watched Taita with brown eyes that seemed somehow highly intelligent. Or maybe it was just a trick of the light.
“Can’t you two stay out of trouble for even a few months?” the man in black demanded at last.
Shocked, disbelieving recognition dawned on Will’s face. Taita, too, slowly turned and looked at the rider with eyes hidden by quicksilver glasses.
“It’s impossible,” Taita whispered. “Ghost? Is that you? But you’re supposed to be –“
“Dead?” The rider smiled thinly and slid down off the saddle. “Actually, I’m very much alive.”
“But how…”
“It’s a long story. The gist of it is that I was sent to break up this wedding. My boss seemed very keen on it.” He scowled. “Don’t ask me why, he doesn’t explain himself to me.”
“Your boss?” Will asked.
“You’ll meet him soon enough. He’s going to fix your car.”
The horse slowly approached Will and Taita.
“Strider what are you doing?” Ghost demanded.
“I want a closer look at them.”
“No, don’t come any closer,” Taita whimpered, trembling violently.
“Shh, it’s okay, he won’t hurt you,” Will murmured, putting a comforting arm around her shoulder. “He’s just curious.” He gave Ghost a questioning look.
“That horse does what he wants. If I ride him, it’s only because he’s humoring me. Or he’s got orders from the boss,” Ghost said, shrugging and dismounting from the animal.
“Huh. A peculiar animal.” Will held out his palm to Strider.
“You have no idea,” Ghost said dryly.
Strider touched Will’s hand briefly with his nose, acknowledging the man’s greeting. “Oh yes, I know you. We’re all old friends, you and I.” The white stallion gave Will and Taita a measuring look. Strider drew closer and curiously examined Will and Taita, sniffing their hair and nuzzling their hands, checking their pockets for any hidden treats. Taita shrank back against Will, but with his gentle encouragement, she held still and let Strider nudge her.
With a flick of his tail, the horse turned and walked away. He blew his nostrils at Ghost as he passed him. The horse glanced back at Will and Taita. “Those two are going to do some incredible things. And somehow, some world, some when, they will be together. They’ll be very happy with that arrangement. Whether they like it or not.” He snorted and tossed his head. “See you around Ghost. Tell Quicksilver not to mess with them too much. If
he’s going to traumatize them, he had better un-traumatize them when he’s finished.”
“He’s just going to fix their car.”
“Quicksilver never ‘just’ does anything. When he’s done with that car, there will be a few star systems on the other side of the galaxy that will simply not be there anymore.”
“You’ve got something against the boss, Strider?”
“We settled our differences long before you were born, Ghost. It’s not that I dislike your employer. But I know him too well to like him very much.” The horse clopped down the aisle.
“Where are you going, Strider?” Ghost called after him.
The stallion swung his head back over his shoulder and gave Will and Taita one last glance, the glance of a father who had arranged things at home to his satisfaction and was now going on a long fishing trip. He neighed. And then he was gone.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that horse was trying to say something…” Will murmured.
“Oh, he said something alright,” Ghost muttered. “He’s got a very high opinion of his own cleverness.”
“At least it’s gone,” Taita said with great relief.
“Indeed, it’s much less stuffy in here now that his ego’s gone somewhere else.”
“I didn’t hear him say anything,” Will said, puzzled.
“Lucky you,” Ghost grunted.
“Oh I hope not,” Taita said. “That’s the last thing we need – talking horses – it’d be a sign of the apocalypse…”
“Come on, let’s get out of here. Quicksilver should be finished with your car by now. He said he’d bring it up to the church so you two could be on your way.”
“Who’s Quicksilver?” Taita asked.
“My employer.”
“Your employer?” Will arched an eyebrow.
“Like I said, long story.”
As the trio exited onto the front porch of the church, Will saw his car driving up the hill. “That’s my car!”
“Right on time,” Ghost said.
“But the matrix was completely shot, how’d you fix it so fast?”
“I didn’t fix it, Quicksilver did. And Strider was probably right. Quicksilver probably did obliterate a few solar systems in the process.”
The car pulled up in front of the church and stopped. The driver turned off the engine and got out. His silver-framed spectacles glinted in the sunlight.
“That’s your employer?” Will snarled. Instinctively, he shifted in front of Taita.
Ghost nodded.
The driver advanced up the steps. “I see you held up your end, Ghost. Well done,” he said.
Taita looked frightened. Will looked ready to kill.
“Here are your keys, Captain Snipes,” the man said, holding them out. “I suggest you be on your way. You’re a day late getting back.”
Will snatched the keys from Quicksilver’s fingers and gave them to Taita. “Go get in the car,” Will said quietly.
“But –”
“I’ll be with you in a minute. Go warm up the engine.” His tone gave no permission for argument.
Taita gave him a look that promised he would have to answer her later, but she did as he asked.
“You should be thanking me,” Quicksilver said when she had gone. “You have no idea what went into fixing that car of yours.”
Will laughed harshly. “So you fixed my car. And that’s supposed to magically make up for everything else?”
“If you’re referring to that unfortunate incident with Hanson –“
“That, and what you did on Pangea thirty years ago you bastard!”
“That was all a long time ago, Captain. Can’t we let bygones be bygones?”
“Only when your head is decorating a pike where everyone can see it.”
“You aren’t the first to say that, nor the last. And one of these days you’re going to realize what a silly thing that is for you to say to me.”
“That’s a fine line from the guy whose head belongs on the pike.”
Quicksilver’s silver eyes narrowed. “Captain, I am not here voluntarily. I was fully prepared to sit back and watch you marry that girl. But I owed Strider a favor, so here I am, pulling you out of a very awkward situation and performing expensive repair work for free. Regardless, I don’t have to tolerate your insolence. I suggest you and Miss Collins leave now.”
“One of these days, Mortimer, you and I are going to settle up – on everything,” Will said very quietly. He turned his back contemptuously on Ghost and Mortimer and walked quick to the car.
“I suggest you stay away from this valley from now on,” Quicksilver called after him. “I don’t owe that horse anymore favors.”
“One of these days Mortimer!” Will snarled.
He got into the driver’s side and slammed the door. He wheeled the car around in a tight circle, gunned the engine, and sped away.
Epilogue: Loose Ends
No, this is not the part where they’re all neatly tied up.
“I don’t understand any of this, Will,” Taita whispered. She sat with her knees drawn up to her chin and a blanket wrapped around her shoulders to ward off a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.
“Me neither,” Will admitted, keeping his eyes fixed on the road and the pedal to the metal. They sped down the highway, faster than the posted speed limit, not fast enough to escape all the strange things that had happened.
“Why did you make me go wait in the car?” she asked him, her tone suggesting he had better have very good reason.
“So I could threaten Mortimer in private.”
She scowled at him. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m perfectly serious.” Will paused. “And because I don’t want you anywhere near him, and not just because of what happened last fall. Mortimer’s guilty of more crimes against humanity than anyone alive.”
“Pangea?”
“Yes, back when Javis was still running the world.”
“You remember that? It must have been thirty years ago.”
“I was just a kid, but yeah, I remember. Everyone who lived through it remembers.”
“And now Ghost is working for that creep…” Taita chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. “How did he even… get here? Did the Alltradeuins bring him back?”
“If the Alltradeuins got him back, I think I would have heard about it,” Will said.
“But what’s he doing working for Mortimer... He was prepared to give up his life so the rest of us could get home. That doesn’t fit the profile of someone who would work for a scumbag like Mortimer.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know. Did you notice what Ghost always called Mortimer?”
“Quicksilver,” Taita said softly. “And that horse? What did Ghost call him? Strider.” She shuddered. “I could have sworn it was talking, I just couldn’t hear it.”
“Me too. Weird.” Something else tickled at the back of Will’s mind. “I couldn’t tell you how or why, but I think it knew us,” he murmured. “And there was something… something smugly satisfied about him, like he… Oh, I don’t know. Do I sound crazy or what?”
“I’ve seen so many crazy things in the past forty-eight hours that I wouldn’t know normal if it slapped me in the face.”
“Like me getting engaged?”
She nodded and hid a giggle behind a hand.
“You know, it was kind of cool being engaged. It didn’t last twenty-four hours, but it was still cool.” He paused significantly. “I wouldn’t mind doing it again someday.”
Taita blushed. “Oh really?”
“Really.” He smiled slyly. “Know anyone who might be interested?”
“I… I’d have to give that some thought…” She smiled back at him with laughing eyes. “But I think I might know someone.”
Sample of “Pangea Liberation” by Matthew Mangum
Available wherever eBooks are sold, also available in print at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble
Prologue
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“Quick hide,” Marcus bellowed at his young son.
Robert turned from the computer where he had been reading. “But why?”
“Bad men are coming, just go.” Robert Griffin didn’t need to be told twice. Even at the young age of twelve he was beginning to understand the evils of the world that he lived in. Sprinting out the back door, Robert pulled himself up into the thick foliage of the massive tree that overshadowed the modest farm home he had lived in all of his life. He climbed higher and higher, his chest heaving as he made his way to the top branches of the tree faster than he had ever before done.
Wedging himself in a fork of the tree Robert wiped sweat off of his brow and ran his hand through his thick brown hair. He gazed out over the mountain valley with his deep blue eyes and took in the lush forests and orchards as far as he could see. Pangea was one of the few hundred known planets that could sustain human life. It was considered to be one of the most beautiful, and also one of the most politically unstable. It had one large continent which was covered in lush mountains and rolling hills. The rest of the planet was a deep blue ocean filled with so many strange sea creatures that they had never all been classified.
A loud barking voice turned Robert’s youthful face to the road that wound past his family’s fruit farm. A hover truck had stopped and twenty men in stark gray uniforms piled out and quickly surrounded the house. “Break down the door,” the commander called. “Kill them all! They are traitors to our nation and our great High Lord Javis.” With laser rifles at the ready the soldiers kicked in both the front and back doors shattering the door frames. As they rushed in, shots echoed from their high energy weapons. As the squadron of troops left, Robert did his best not to cry out loud as tears streamed down his face. The dictator of the planet Pangea had murdered his family.
A Space Merchant's Tale & A Shotgun Wedding - Two Tales from The Keeper's Universe Page 6