Allie & Micah

With a little difficulty, Allie and Micah clambered aboard the Karkouros’ back with their stuff, and at Allie’s behest its many legs carried them over the grassy knolls in even, smooth strides that reminded Micah of a millipede, its broad back almost gyroscopically stable in the center.

The shrine vanished from view, and the Fortis Mountains were left even further behind them, barely visible anymore. The plains seemed to roll on forever, and Micah began to fall into a meditative state watching the landscape go by.

Every so often Allie pulled out the map from her bag, making sure they were still on the right track, and, if needed, she would nudge the Karkouros gently on the neck to alter its course appropriately. They continued in this way for several hours, while the sun stayed at the same height in the sky, having already reached the peak of its ascent.

They agreed to each rest while the other kept watch for the remainder of the trip, and so Micah found himself awake while Allie slept in a ball near the creature’s back end. He sat leaning against its plated neck — it didn’t seem to care in the slightest — and lost himself in thought.

Here I am, a man in a world not made for men.

The Fortis mountains were a distant, purple maw on the horizon at this point, and the Karkouros traveled swiftly over sweeping, wide dells in the land as it bore them into Hyperborea.

I am here, he confirmed to himself, engaging his senses to try to ground the giddy sense of surreality that threatened to take over his mind.

There was the sound of the beast’s legs skittering over rocks and grass, and the far-away calls of an unknown animal. There, the smell of dead leaves and soil, and a strange smell like licorice that seemed to come from the Karkouros. Here, the smoothness of the carapace under his fingers.

It’s starting to feel real. I’m here.

He paused.

When we get to Gaillard, am I just going to go back to my old life?

He was unable to stop himself from thinking, What a waste.

After a couple hours, he traded places with Allie, but he found himself unable to sleep, lying on his side with his eyes still open.

As they approached a river, finally Allie slowed the creature and paused to study a plot of land before them, nestled in a nook made by a standing cliff that sheltered the riverbank.

She dismounted and said, “Pretty sure this is it.”

Their path lay across the river, probably only twenty feet wide, and on its other side the hydro-wheel of a mill circled lazily in the water’s current.

The mill lay on an acre that also held a hovel and some patches of scrawny crops, soaking in Nibiru’s light and held up by supportive cages.

Allie stood on the sloping bank of the river, watching the small farm intently, as if waiting for a specific signal or sign of life. Finally, she turned to Micah and said, “I’m pretty sure there’s someone home,” and began moving carefully down the slope, sword swinging at her hip.

He followed her down onto the stone bridge crossing the river. It had low, sturdy barriers along its sides, and when Micah looked over the edge down into the river below, he couldn’t guess its depth, but its current appeared to be gentle.

In the greenish water, Micah saw the head and torso of a woman -- a fay, he reminded himself -- green-skinned and drifting in the water’s mild course. Her naked breasts came closest to the surface of the water, not quite breaking its edge, and he was taken aback when she waved to him, a sweet smile on her face. Her eyes had no whites, only uniformly dark pupils that may have been dark green, but he wasn’t sure if it was an effect of the water or not.

“Micah?”

Allie’s voice caught him off guard; Micah glanced at her and then back at the fay, but he caught only what might have been a bare leg slipping back into the darkness.

“Spooky,” he muttered, and then crossed the bridge to catch up with Allie, who was almost to the front door of the shabby cottage.

She rapped twice, a hollow sound on a well-weathered door. He heard a shuffling from inside, and Allie gave him a shrug before the door was opened by a withered, age-spotted hand. It belonged to the oldest person Micah had ever seen; his eyebrows were so long he could have braided them, and his wrinkles were inundated with all the woes and worries tethered to a long life.

Even his clothes seemed as antique as he was; they hung off of his hunched frame and had faded more or less to the color of the soil long ago. The hair on his head was scraggly and apparently given free rein to grow as wildly as it pleased. Only his bright green eyes seemed young, and when they landed upon Micah, they crinkled so much as to obscure the irises. Then he turned his eyes to Allie, and, almost imperceptibly, they widened, and then squinted, and then widened again with a shock of realization.

“By the gods,” he exclaimed, though Micah did not know this was what he said, as the words were Cotidean. The old lodger leaned forward from the doorway to look to the left and right, panning for any other individuals that might have been watching.

“Come in, come in,” he gestured vigorously with his wooden, knobby cane, showing them into the humble home. Immediately Micah could smell herbs and earth, a warm, cozy fragrance, and he had the impression of a cluttered but organized space; every surface but the kettle-laden pipe stove was laden with books and various odds and ends of machinery, rocks of all sizes, candles, parchment, and writing peripherals.

The old lodger lingered to shut the door after them and leaned heavily on the cane as he nudged it closed. Then he swept around to face them, resting his cane against the wall and simultaneously rising from his hunched stature to an unnerving height.

This was the only word Micah understood in the conversation that followed: “Aeliana?”

When she nodded, he swept her into a bear hug.

“Gaahyaht,” Allie mumbled, her face muffled in rags.

“I didn’t think to see you again,” Gaillard said, letting her go. He drew back from her and looked her up and down. “But this cannot be. It’s been only two years since last we met, but you are not the child I bid goodbye.”

“Two years?” she repeated, as the mage tangled a hand in his wild hair and pulled it right off, revealing a head of short, dark brown hair. He put his hand over his mouth and tugged; his aged face came away like a latex mask and he discarded it on the table. He wiped away the age spots on his hands and neck with his sleeve, and shook his head, as if clearing the act from his mannerisms. Underneath the disguise, Gaillard looked to be only in his forties, though as Micah looked closer, his countenance was still defined by the weight of experience, his features sharp and shrewd. He had a close-trimmed dark beard and a large nose that provided balance to his face, and his green eyes, still youthful, were fighting a losing battle against mirthful crows’ feet invading on the sides, and thick, expressive eyebrows from the top.

“I’ve been in the Overworld over a decade now, Gaillard. I’ve only returned to Sidhe just this sun-cycle.”

“Ah. I see. I suppose then your timing is not only fortuitous, but miraculous, given the unpredictability of the Grey.” He shuddered. “Awful place.”

“What’s with the outfit?” she asked, gesturing to the mage’s discarded face.

“I needed something to put on and forget about, but even glamors have their limits to a perceptible eye.”

“Are you in hiding? Have you been here in Hyperborea since I left?” she asked, then added, “I would have let you know I was coming, but I didn’t have any curios with me.”

“I’ve been between here and Atlantis, performing certain errands,” he answered with a frown. “You haven’t heard anything about what has been happening there, I would guess?”

“You’re the first person we’ve spoken to. Oh! Right. This is my companion, Micah,” she said, gesturing to the human, who heard his name among the Cotidean words and turned his attention away from a curious set of concentric metal rings that floated a half foot in the air above a small table, rotating inside of each other on a common axis.

“Micah, this is Gaillard,” she introduced the mage to Micah, in English. The former focused on Micah for the first time since they had entered the cottage. His eyes seemed to look very deep into him, and the mage’s nostrils flared as he realized what Micah was.

Micah could detect the sharpness in Gaillard’s next question to Allie.

“You brought a human with you? Priapus’ sake, Aeliana. Why?”

“He has been a close friend to me in the Overworld for many years. Yesterday -- or, I guess yesterday for us -- we were both attacked. First by a dockalfar and her drake, and then by an infrar.”

This last word lingered in the air between them, achieving a dramatic effect. Allie dipped her hand under her jacket and fished in her pants pocket for the pouch of the assassin’s teeth, then tossed it onto the table beside them. The teeth tumbled out of the bag and across the deeply-etched, rough surface of the table, settling into the grooves and reflecting the light like scattered black pearls. Allie’s house key, now orphaned, was underneath the bag. She plucked it from the pile and stared down at it before her eyes clenched shut.

“An infrar came to my home while Esmere was there, and she self-ignited under the influence of his Vision, went up in a bonfire right in front of my face. We… we’ve just come from the shrine.”

Tears escaped the prisons of her closed eyes, and her voice cracked as a hard knot formed in her throat.

“Gaillard, Essie is gone,” she said, and the wave of grief she’d been repressing surged forth as would a tsunami through a surf break made of paper. Her hands paused helplessly in the air for a second as she realized she wasn’t going to be able to box it all up again, and then they moved to cup her face as she surrendered to the wave. She turned to Micah, who put an arm around her shaking shoulders.

Gaillard picked up one of the teeth, holding it up so that the light of one of the candles hit it directly.

His face paled.

“Allie, I’m so sorry about Esmere. I can’t believe they would have sunk so low to use and send infrer. I was half-convinced they had died out in the Nidafjoll.”

Allie detached from Micah, sniffling heavily through a stopped up nose. She swiped at her wet face with the rough sleeve of her jacket.

“It’s already done. I have to figure out what comes next.”

“I have an idea, if you’ll permit,” said Gaillard, then “but first, let me give Micah something to allow him to understand.”

Allie nodded, then turned to Micah, who looked concerned for her.

“Are you okay? He’s not giving you shit, is he?”

“No, he wants to help. He’s going to give you some magic that will help with the language barrier, I think.”

“Really?” he said, his face brightening a modicum. “No catch, or weird devil’s pawn shop loophole?”

“He wouldn’t,” Allie vouched for the mage.

“You know,” said Micah as Gaillard stood in front of him and squared his posture, putting his hands on Micah’s shoulders, “I had really hoped that the first magic I had forced upon me was succubus sex magic.”

Allie couldn’t help giving a snuffly chuckle.

The mage looked deeply into Micah’s eyes, maintaining a level of eye contact that was immediately uncomfortable, and Micah had a deep, uneasy urge to break the connection but did not, trying to just focus on how green Gaillard's eyes were.

After forty seconds that felt like equivalent minutes, Gaillard finally blinked and then put his hands over Micah’s ears, muffling ambient noise. The mage’s hands seemed to have no temperature at all.

Gaillard removed his hands, and looked at the human with mild, inquisitive expectation.

“How does that sound?” he asked in Cotidean, but to Micah’s ears, it was as clear and easy to understand as if he had spoken in English. Micah started, putting a hand to his ear as if he might feel something changed there.

“How did you do that?” he answered, and was equally surprised that Cotidean words left his lips even though the preceding thoughts had been in English.

“Whoa,” he exclaimed, and then smiled with a rush. “Cat. Dog. Fire. Science.” With each word he chose, its translation was instead what left his mouth, and even though he did not recognize the words semantically, they were nonetheless comfortable and rolled off his tongue as if he had spoken Cotidean for years.

“I have placed a magicept in you that allows you to understand and speak languages you have heard. It’s probably not a perfect match, but it may serve you well here,” explained the mage.

“Incredible. A magicept -- I heard Allie say that word before, I think. Is that a unit of magic, like a spell?”

Allie smiled knowingly, glancing to the mage to see how he reacted to Micah’s inevitable inquisition.

“That’s...complex. I’d be perfectly happy to discuss magic with you, but right now -- well, not now.” Gaillard turned back to Allie. “Now, back to the thing. If you’re at a loss as to what to do now, then you’re in luck. Atlantis could absolutely use you both. After you and Esmere fled, Atlantis fell quickly to pieces,” he explained, frowning. “In the resulting upset and power vacuum, the dockal alberich Xander took over, or at least, took the city in the name of Saguenay. He put Drexel in charge of the city as a figurehead.”

“Drexel?” Allie echoed, digging around in old memories for the name, “My father's archiater?”

“The very same,” the mage sighed, and paused. His eyes could not disguise unmistakable pain as he went on, “They established their own military force and didn’t change much at first, but they have somehow over time reduced the city and populace to ruins. Danica, myself, a few others from your father's court -- we refused to acknowledge him or give him liege, and before we knew it, executions were being served. We went into hiding. Nothing in that city is like what you knew.”

Allie’s eyebrows knit tightly together.

“Is someone doing something about it?”

“There is a burgeoning resistance underground, its members growing, but they are making little headway, uninspired and unorganized. They need a leader.” He smiled at Allie. “They have been lacking someone like you.”

Her head was shaking before he had even finished the sentence.

“No. No, I -- I’m not a leader, Gaillard.”

“Why?” The mage’s voice was incredulous, because in truth he couldn’t fathom another reason for her unexpected visit.

“I wouldn’t be useful to them like this. I’m not anybody anymore, let alone a princess, or a leader. I was in the Overworld for so long that my magic is weaker than a vegan with cancer. My fighting skills are probably crap, too.”

“Allie, the Vanguard needs you. You have no idea what Atlantis is like now. Your father’s people -- your people now -- are suffering, more than you could imagine, and the only ones capable of resisting them need--”

Allie’s face cycled through pain, a sickly flash of fear, cowardice, and then finally a flare of anger, to disguise her terror at the prospect. Micah could see the exact moment coming when she interrupted him, “What could I possibly have to offer them? I’m not the person I was supposed to be. They would never consider themselves ‘my people’, not after I left them to this. I can’t bear the weight of all these people -- I would be crushed under the pressure of saving them, and worse, they would fall for having relied on me!”

Micah realized her outburst wasn’t directed at Gaillard, not really, but were thoughts she had already been harbored, for possibly years. “I have no drake, no magic, no chance…” she trailed off, her anger losing steam as she sat in a spindly chair and buried her face in her hands. Grief and fear had drained her of hope.

Micah put his hand on her shoulder and looked at Gaillard, who seemed to be musing, his gaze on the pair.

“Will you at least go with me to see the city? If you still don’t wish to help, I’ll send you back to the Overworld, help you go back into hiding, no further questions. Just, please, come see our efforts and for what we are fighting.” His voice was soft.

Allie nodded after a long moment.

Gaillard loaned them new clothes, dark rough neutrals that replaced their jeans and comparatively brightly-colored shirts.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have shoes to replace...those,” Gaillard said, eyeing Micah’s desert boots. He looked vaguely confused by them, as if he expected them to be familiar, but they were just past the edges of his experience, the product of another world’s design senses. “But likely no one will look close enough to notice.”

They prepared to leave.

“Hold on while I let them know we’re coming,” Gaillard said, pulling a pouch from his robes.

He pulled the tie on the pouch and dumped its contents on his table: a dozen irregular, crystal dice spilled from inside.

Micah leaned in and look at them as Gaillard began turning them over to read the small, illegible inscriptions on several of the gems, which had as many as fifteen facets apiece. They were pinkish in color and had a polished shine to them despite their crude cut.

The mage arranged four of them in a particular way that had no order or sense to Micah’s eyes. He straightened, put his left index finger to one of the stones, and the entire group of crystals began to glow for a second -- then it was over, and Micah felt slightly underwhelmed.

Gaillard began replacing his fake liver spots on his hands and neck, but nothing else happened with the stones, to Micah’s disappointment. In the process of completing his elderly disguise with not a thought to the stones, Gaillard noticed Micah staring at them warily.

“Curios,” he explained, then swept them back into the pouch -- along with a couple black teeth -- except for one curio, which he handed to the human with a newly-mottled hand. “They resonate with unique frequencies that cause sister sets to imitate the initial set. We use them to communicate across distances.”

Up close, the stone had a rose pink hue, and the tiny characters on it seemed to be etched in ash.

He passed it back to Gaillard.

“Gaillard,” said Allie, “I didn’t mention earlier, but Micah needs to go back to the Overworld. He only came here out of necessity, but he still has a life back home.”

Micah suddenly felt both their attentions focused on him, and he flushed as he realized that despite his prior decision to stay for Rex, he was deeply conflicted. He looked away from them and simply said, “I’m still figuring that out. I may stay. I… I want to stay.”

Gaillard gave a small nod, his face not betraying his recognition of the man’s inner conflict.

“I can get you back, if you so choose. Most of my magical items of that nature are in the compound under Atlantis, so you will have some time to decide.”

The mage finished up, and, after they had eaten and shouldered their supplies, the three set off from the cottage, crossed the river, and headed in the direction of Atlantis, almost in the same direction they’d come from but angled to the north, along the river.

The Karkouros, left on its own, had either wandered astray or its essence had dispersed without Allie present to command it.

The hills were gentle and the land amenable to their travel as they made their way back to Ogygia, and even though traveling on foot was slow, Micah appreciated the chance to look at the orange-lit landscape at a slower pace while he munched on a piece of purplish fruit whose soft white inner flesh smelled sour but tasted sweet.

Gaillard kept up a steady chatter about his farm, keeping the conversation innocent of anything but the most mild of topics. Allie was mostly silent, watching the grass ahead of them and ruminating in a way Micah recognized.

After twenty minutes, Allie found a gap in Gaillard’s one sided-conversation to ask, “Do you know what happened to Alestair?”

The mage heard her but was quiet for a few seconds.

“We lost track of Alestair in the chaos of the coup. I’m sorry. I wish I had more information.”

Allie accepted that with equal quietude and let the topic lie.

The sun began sinking a couple hours later, but before it could fully leave the sky, the mage pulled a small, silver apparatus with an eyescope from his travel cloak. He fiddled with its dials for a second before lifting it to gaze at the sky through the piece, swinging out a little mechanical arm from the base to measure the angle between Nibiru and a cluster of reddish stars against marked notches on the gears.

He finished and suggested they stop and rest for the night.

Amid a cluster of hills there was a small overhang that provided some protection on one side, and they stopped there while Allie gathered dry branches from a sparsely-treed glen nearby, which she made into a little tent and surrounded with stones from the feet of the hills. Gaillard bent down to the construct and blew gently into the tented sticks, but his breath was hot flame that immediately caught the kindling afire and was soon crackling merrily.

“Now, Allie. You say your magic abilities have withdrawn, but I’ll venture to guess that you practiced little while in the Overworld,” started the mage, not looking at her but using the last light of the retreating sun to dig in a cloth carry-sack and remove dry bread, a small selection of vegetables from his farm, and a chunk of mysterious meat wrapped in thick paper. “I don’t say that to shame you, but merely to suggest that if you are here, I think it would be prudent to take it up again.”

“What would you have me do?” Her tone was unreadable, neither encouraging nor condemning his suggestion. She was evaluating the sincerity of his advice, half-suspecting he was subtly working on persuading her to join the resistance despite her protest.

“Minor effort all day is better than concentrated bursts every once in a while, especially when it comes to developing your magicepts,” he answered, unwrapping and spitting the meat on a small hook and suspending it from his staff, which somehow stood perfectly at an angle to allow it to cook over the fire. “Over time you should attempt bigger and more complicated magicepts in order to increase your capacity, but start small for now. I seem to remember you having an affinity for light magic, like your father. Since it doesn’t require an actual physical manifestation like a miniature sun, go ahead and try to make your fingertips glow.”

So while he continued cooking the vegetables and meat -- which now smelled like fragrant pork belly, and was making Micah’s mouth water -- Allie focused on this task, staring at her fingers in concentration while nothing happened, as if she were simply memorizing the minute details of her hands.

Micah watched her carefully to see if he could glean some insight to the process of performing magic, but the results of her efforts were disappointing to both of them.

He turned his attention instead to the trio of moons that had risen in the sky to replace the sun, wondering how astronomically advanced the Sidheans were.

After they had eaten and their appetites were sated by the bread and aromatic meat, Micah lay on the ground and rolled up his cloak to form a makeshift pillow. Before turning over, he asked Gaillard, “Can you teach me some things tomorrow?”

The mage smiled; the man’s earnestness was apparent even as his fatigue began to pull him under the cover of sleep.

“We can talk about it on the morrow.”

Soon Micah was dozing solidly.

Allie and Gaillard talked away into the mid-night, and then followed suit.