by Hondo Jinx
“Well, that’s nice to hear,” Brawley said, “and for my part, I feel very attracted to you. And very protective. Hell, I don’t even know you yet, but I already love you. Makes no sense, but there you have it.”
Now Sage was beaming. “It does make sense, Master! In fact, this is an extremely well-documented phenomenon. When a power mage binds a psi mage, their affections are both instantaneous and eternal. Our psionic bonding joined our deepest selves without the clumsy fumbling of traditional courting or the parceling together of some societal and emotional contract. As soon as our energies intertwined, I loved you, and I will love you until I die. Those emotions will only grow from this moment, as will your dominance and my submission.”
Brawley considered that for a moment. She was right. He could feel that in his bones and also in his blood, his heart, and every fiber of his being. But one thing still felt wrong. “Good to know, darlin, but how about you stop calling me Master, okay? That feels a little weird.”
“Okay,” Sage said, pinkening again. They were silent for several steps, then she said, “May I still call you Master when we are being intimate?”
“Whatever turns you on.”
“You turn me on. Your power and the power you give me. I was born with a high psi score, and I’ve worked hard to perfect my technique, thereby maximizing the effectiveness of Seeker skills and reducing the energy expenditure required by each psionic action. But I’m not boiling over with potential like Nina and you.
“When you and I bound our energy, we boosted Nina all the way to 157, which means there are fewer than two hundred psi mages in the entire country more powerful than she.”
“Wow.”
“Yes. I can’t help but envy her power, even though envy is an absurd abomination in light of the Truth. But power like Nina’s would be such an advantage in unraveling the mysteries of the universe. That is what I do, day after day. I squeeze every bit of juice from each point at my disposal, ceaselessly chasing the great mystery.”
“Don’t you get tired of it?”
She laughed, sounding incredulous. “Not at all. In fact, I curse sleep because it robs me of time I might otherwise use to delve more deeply into truth.”
“Sounds like I’ve hitched my wagon to a bona fide nerdy girl.”
That made her smile. “The nerdiest. And I couldn’t be happier. You’ve given me so much power, which is wonderful, but you are wonderful, too, a mystery unto yourself. As is Nina. I am excited to explore both of you. And your penis is unusually large, adding to my physical pleasure.”
Brawley laughed.
“Why do you laugh?” Sage asked. At this point, he couldn’t tell whether she was serious or yanking his chain.
“Nothing,” he said. “You’re just going to take some getting used to is all.”
“Did I say something wrong? If so, I apologize. I know that my social skills have suffered over the years, but—”
He silenced her with a kiss, which the blond beauty returned eagerly.
“Darlin, you didn’t say anything wrong. I’m glad you’re happy. I’m happy, too. You’re interesting and beautiful. I’m tickled that you’re my woman.”
“I enjoy your colloquialisms,” she said. “I am also ‘tickled’ to be your woman. It is exciting. Of course, you are a power mage, so I am literally bound to adore and obey you, but many power mages down through history were cruel and made their psi-spouses incredibly unhappy.”
A disturbing question drifted across his sunny thoughts. “This power mage thing, it’s not going to change me, is it?”
“Of course it will change you.”
“I’m not talking about opening strands and doing psionic shit. I mean, am I still going to be me? This shit isn’t going to turn me mean or something, is it?”
She looked thoughtful for a second, staring at him as they walked. “There is much darkness in you, psi-husband. Darkness that will grow in step with your power. Your future lies at the edge of oblivion. The only light I see is fire. The only sounds I hear are the crackling of flames, the screaming of your enemies, and the soft patter of blood raining down.”
Brawley said nothing, taking a second to let her twisted prophecy settle in.
“You will kill many people,” Sage said, “but you will not mistreat me. Nor will you mistreat Nina.”
He relaxed a little. “That’s good to know.”
“As to your future psi-wives,” Sage said, “I cannot yet say. There are too many variables at play, not the least of them being your cloak, which interrupts your connection to the Latticework. And of all the variables in the universe, love remains one of the least predictable. The whims of the heart are most unsatisfyingly quantum in nature.”
“Yeah, you are definitely going to take some getting used to,” Brawley said. He didn’t understand everything that Sage said, and it was all strange to him, but his curiosity was burning brighter than ever. “As to those future psi-wives, we’ll just see. I’d like a chance to get to know my first two before I even think about adding others.”
“Understandable,” Sage said. “But you must add others. You are a power mage. You need to locate five additional women to open your remaining strands and teach you the ways of their orders. Aren’t you excited?” Her voice thickened with awe. “I would be so curious to experience everything.”
“I am curious,” he said. “But apparently, once I bond with a woman, it’s forever. And not just for me. For her, too. And for you and Nina. That’s asking a lot from all of you.”
“Yes,” she said, “but you will also be rewarding us. Each time you bond with a new woman and open another strand, your existing wives will experience a permanent boost in power. If the pattern holds true, you will boost our psi score around 2% each time you take a psi-wife. Once you open your seventh strand,”—she paused for a second, blinking rapidly—“Nina will have a psi score of 173, making her one of the most powerful psi mages in the nation. My own score will be 158, making me more powerful than all but around twenty Seekers across the nation. That might be enough….” She trailed off, sounding awed again.
“Enough for what?”
“To know the Truth, of course. Oh, it would take many years and much work, but I am undaunted by the challenge. There are different schools of thought within our order, but I believe that with the proper skills, requisite time, and sufficient power, a Seeker could grasp the ultimate, all-encompassing Truth. My life’s goal is to understand the Latticework in its entirety, all at once.
“I want to know all things, past and present, simultaneously, and to grasp their interrelation with such perfection that I will be able to extrapolate all things to the end of time, predicting anything and everything with absolute precision and certainty, solving the mysteries of the universe—time, space, existence, everything—and using these answers to solve the great question upon which all unknown matters are but facets: the Truth. Every problem solved, every question answered, every possibility chased out to its conclusion, all of it at once, everything relative to everything else, none of it meaningful without the whole.”
“That’s quite a goal,” Brawley said.
“Yes,” Sage said. “It is the butterfly effect writ large, a goal hinged upon the notion that at its base, the universe is orderly.” She laughed. Bitterly, it seemed to Brawley. “But I am also engaged in a philosophical conundrum, because knowing all things would, ironically, mean knowing only one thing, the Truth; and to know one thing without relevance to other things is to know nothing. Beholding the Great Truth would simultaneously sate and destroy my curiosity. There would be nothing left to discover. Even my discovery itself would be part of the whole. There would be no celebration, for my own consciousness would likewise disappear into the Great Truth.”
Brawley whistled. “That’s the heaviest shit I ever heard. You might want to pump the brakes before you get to the end.”
Sage laughed. “I do like you, psi-husband. Very much. And speaking of pumping brakes, I am loo
king forward to traveling in your RV.”
“Wait, how did you—” but Brawley didn’t bother to finish. How did she know about his RV? She was a Seeker. They just knew shit. He didn’t understand how it all worked, but he was looking forward to learning to use his yellow energy. That would be sweet. Unless, of course, he had visions of impending doom. If he did, would those truths be set in stone, or would he have a shot at altering his would-be future?
“I grew up in an RV,” Sage said. “My parents were both Seekers, and they wanted to see and experience everything. They homeschooled me, and we traveled all over the Western Hemisphere.”
“That must’ve been something. I barely made it off the ranch as a kid.”
Sage nodded. “We saw a lot and learned a lot. Since I have an eidetic memory, I remember all of it.”
“Does that mean you remember everything?”
“It does. You will, too, soon enough. It’s one of the first things you will learn as a Seeker. Memory, analysis, danger sense, detecting falsehoods, reading auras, touching the Latticework. These are the fundamentals of our Order. But until my strand opened at sixteen, I really didn’t care about any of this. My parents were dedicated to seeking the truth, so I was terribly lonely as we drove from place to place.
“I wanted to be around other kids. I wanted to try school. And because I did not at that point have an eidetic memory or abilities like my parents, I felt stupid. Most frustrating of all, however, was my inability to glimpse the future. No child likes to be controlled 24/7 by her parents. But it is maddening when you are locked in an RV with two Seekers. They would say, ‘Don’t do that, Sage, or this will happen.’ And it drove me crazy, not only because I was a kid, trying to find my way in the world, but also because they were right. Every. Single. Time. It was father knows best and mother knows best rolled together and multiplied by infinity. And meanwhile, I just wanted to have some random fun.”
As a man who had always valued his independence above almost everything else, Brawley reeled back from that notion like a horse from a brushfire. “That must’ve been torture.”
“It was,” Sage said. “Then, one morning shortly after my sixteenth birthday, I woke before first light. I felt strange. Very awake and very curious. My parents were still sleeping. Moving quietly, I slipped from the RV.
“We were parked in the desert. Dawn was breaking to the east, just beyond the mountains, bronzing their purple peaks with the first light of day. Everything was so vibrant. The sights, the sounds, the smells. I crouched there in my thin nightgown and scooped up a handful of grit and let it sift away between my fingers, counting the individual grains with an effortless speed and accuracy like nothing I had ever experienced before that moment. And suddenly, discovering the exact number of grains in that handful seemed to me the most important thing in the world.”
“How many were there?”
“Seven thousand eight hundred and twelve,” she said without hesitation. “More than the number of stars we can see with the naked eye. But no sooner had I completed my calculation than I was gripped with new compulsions. I set off, counting my steps as I trekked across the desert toward the nearest ridge, which I scaled.
“Near the top, I discovered a cave. A part of me had known it would be there, I realize now. And inside the cave, I found this.” She extended her wrist, drawing his attention to a simple leather bracelet and an understated pendant of rough-cut gray stone.
“What is it?”
“Petrified wood,” Sage said. “The remains of a gingko tree that first broke from its seed 212 million years ago. In 1786, a seven-year-old Navajo child named Chooli discovered the petrified tree and carried this piece into the cave, where she hid it from her brother. She visited the cave three times but eventually forgot all about the petrified wood as other prizes seized her imagination.
“If you like, I could tell you all about Chooli’s life, as well as the life of her family members, and their ancestors. I could give you the names, addresses, and phone numbers of her living descendants, though none of them have ever heard of Chooli, who was frankly not a significant person, historically speaking.
“Except to me.” Sage rolled the pendant between her thumb and forefinger. “Because when I first examined this petrified wood, I knew nothing. I thought it was stone. But I was consumed by curiosity. I knew nothing about it or the cave or Chooli. I only knew that I needed to know. It took months of intense study beneath the instruction of my parents for me to unravel the mysteries of the petrified gingko.”
“That’s how it all started, huh?” Brawley said.
“The old me died that day in the desert. I used to be such a fool. A pretty little fool wracked by loneliness. I could have been seeking the Truth, but I just wanted to have fun.”
“There are worse sins,” Brawley said.
“Yes, I know that now,” she said, and gave his hand a squeeze. “Especially since meeting you. In fact, having spent much of my day pining for you, I can’t help but feel a little sad to remember the hopeful, desperate girl I used to be. I even feel sorry for her.”
“You’re still her.”
“No. She is gone.”
“Bullshit. You’re still her. And you’re also still Sage the super nerd.”
She laughed. “That is a remarkably Seeker-ish thing to say, husband. I just don’t feel like her anymore. Which is sad, I suppose, because she would have loved you.”
“Correction,” Brawley said, pulling her into him. “She does love me. And so do you.”
“I won’t deny it, husband,” Sage said. Then she squeezed his hand and pointed to a strip of small shops. “We have arrived. Prepare to meet the most powerful Seeker in the Florida Keys.”
14
The Third Eye, the colorful yet faded sign read. Curios sold. Fortunes Told.
An addendum in less faded script announced, Walk-ins Welcome.
A second later, another addendum appeared, this one bleeding through the main sign in blocky psi script: PSI MAGE DISCOUNTS.
The Third Eye was a long, narrow shop lit only by the diffuse sunlight falling through the smudged plate glass. Near the door, four battered chairs were pulled into a rough circle around a steamer trunk, atop which a short pedestal held a murky crystal sphere the size of a bowling ball.
The rest of the shop was a dusty firetrap packed with knickknacks and bric-a-brac, no rhyme or reason to any of it beyond a layer of united dust.
An ancient woman emerged from a side room, walking with a cane.
A loose and colorful gown of tie-dyed silk draped her emaciated frame, and her considerable shock of frizzy white hair was pulled back in a haphazard ponytail, making her look like an ancient hippie, an affect exacerbated by the large peace sign pendant dangling on a silver chain from her scrawny neck. Hazel’s hands were gnarled with arthritis, and behind the thick lenses of her wire-rim glasses, her rheumy eyes were, in fact, brownish-green in color, making Brawley wonder if her name was a coincidence or if a Seeker parent had foreseen her eye color and named her accordingly.
“Hello Hazel,” Sage said.
Hazel blinked several times, looking back and forth between them. “Hello Sage,” she said, and her rheumy gaze paused on Brawley, looking him up and down. “And hello to you, young man. I knew you were coming today. Both of you.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am, I’m—”
“No,” Hazel interrupted. “Don’t tell me your name. That is for later. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Sage, to uncover his true name?”
“Partly,” Sage said.
“And you’re in love,” Hazel laughed.
Sage blushed again. She looked very cute, and Brawley felt another surge of affection. “I am.”
“With him, I suppose?”
“Yes. With him… and with another.”
“And another?” Hazel chuckled. “What interesting lives you young people lead.” Then the old woman’s eyes narrowed. “Sage, you’ve changed. You’ve become more powerful.
Far more powerful, in fact.”
“Yes,” Sage said, “but please do not delve into my development yet, Hazel.”
The old woman blew a raspberry. “Secrets. Speaking of which, I have thus far honored the cloak you placed around your friend here. Shall I continue to do so or may I peek behind the curtain?”
“You may examine him shortly,” Sage said, “but first, I would prefer to explain a few things.”
Hazel frowned. To Brawley, she said, “Speech is so tiresome when you’re my age. So slow and fraught with misinformation.”
The old Seeker sighed and said to Sage, “I will endure your explanations, dear, but first humor an old woman and give her the chance to rest her weary bones. Especially if you insist on talking.”
Hazel hobbled to the front of the store, locked the door, and flipped the sign from open to closed. “A woman is going to stop here in seven minutes, wanting advice on her love life, which is destined, by the way, to repeat itself over and over in a dissatisfying pattern that will one day be made all the more dissatisfying by her eventual understanding that she is the common denominator connecting all of these unsatisfying relationships. She’s a deeply boring person filled with unrealistic expectations and a deep sense of entitlement. I’ll be glad to miss her attempt at a walk-in consultation.”
Hazel’s cane tapped the floor as she passed Brawley and Sage and headed toward the back of the store. “Realizing the shop is closed, the woman and her girlfriends will go get ice cream instead, and that will give her more pleasure than I could have offered. Then she and her friends will climb back aboard their cruise ship and never return to Key West. Well, she won’t return. But one of her friends, Brenda, will return in a few years with—”
Hazel’s voice was lost as she passed with a rattle through a beaded curtain at the back of her shop and hobbled out of sight.
Brawley and Sage followed. Beyond the curtain, they passed into a short hallway with a door on each side. Hazel went straight ahead and opened a door onto a sunny alcove paved in mossy cobblestones and ringed in tropical plants spangled with colorful flowers. The space was circular, no more than ten feet in diameter, and hedged in by buildings and trees, the latter of which swayed in the breeze, dappling the intimate courtyard in an unsteady chiaroscuro of shifting shadows and sunlight. The soft wind breathed easily overhead, but here on the ground, the air was still, surprisingly cool, and redolent with sweet flowers.
