A Time and a Place

by Joe Mahoney

  “I guess.”

  We swooped low over a golf course featuring impeccably manicured greens and golfers in tacky pants.

  “Well why didn’t you say so?”

  “I didn’t think you’d understand.”

  “Silly bird,” she said. “I understand perfectly.”

  She didn’t, of course. There was no way she could—she was just humouring Sky. But that was okay. I decided I liked having her around. It’s nice when people don’t give up on you just because things happen to get a little strange.

  I was worried about Humphrey. Worried I might not find him. But even more worried that I might not like what I found. Humphrey’s consciousness would be trapped inside another seagull without the resources Iugurtha had thoughtfully provided me. Whereas I could converse easily with other seagulls, Humphrey would be little better than a mute. He would almost certainly be an outcast, or worse: trapped inside his seagull host with no way out, no way of expressing himself, and no way of signalling which seagull was his prison.

  Rise and I searched every beach and port on the island’s north shore to no avail. By the end of the day, exhausted, we took shelter under a pier to replenish ourselves.

  After a brief repast of fresh trout, Rise asked, “Sky, why are we doing this?”

  “I told you, I’m trying to help a friend.”

  She was distressed, I could see.

  “Do you still think you’re someone else?”

  It was a fair enough question. Was I in fact someone else, or was the truth more sinister? What if Sky was mentally unbalanced and I was the manifestation of his madness? Was I a human being who thought he was a seagull, or a seagull who thought he was human? Was Sky crazy, or was I?

  I pushed such thoughts aside. “You think there’s something wrong with me.”

  Rise performed the seagull equivalent of a nod. “I’m just concerned, is all.”

  “I’m okay, Rise. Really I am. This will all be over soon. What about you? Are you all right?”

  “No,” she said. “But that’s not the same question as will I be all right. And I will.”

  “Sky will be all right too,” I said.

  “Oh Sky,” Rise said.

  Seagulls can’t hug. But they can stand very close together.

  We resumed our search early the next day, speaking with as many seagulls as we could, inquiring of each whether they knew of any gulls behaving oddly. In time our industriousness paid off.

  In the village of Bedeque, not far from Summerside, a gull spoke of a member of its flock becoming disoriented after eating a crab. Afterward the gull in question couldn’t remember any of its flock, friend or foe. It developed a host of bizarre mannerisms, such as trying to pick up food with its wings. It couldn’t speak properly, conversing instead by means of a squawk so disturbing that it frightened other seagulls, especially the young. Shortly afterward, the seagull disappeared. It hadn’t been seen since. Its friends and family feared the worst. Not a single member of the flock had eaten crabmeat since.

  Not long after hearing this story, in a church parking lot in Seven Mile Bay, Rise spotted a seagull trying in vain to pick up a discarded baked pretzel with it wings. As we watched, the gull finally grasped the pretzel in its beak. Just for an instant the baked good bore a striking resemblance to a particularly plump cigar. The seagull looked my way. We made eye contact. I felt an instant shock of recognition. Although physically the gull didn’t resemble Humphrey in the least, the way it held itself identified it as Peter Aquinas Humphrey as surely as if it had squawked the doctor’s name aloud. It was Humphrey all right, and every bit as badly off as I had feared.

  Rise watched fascinated as Humphrey struggled with the pretzel. “Is it him? Your friend?”

  “It’s him all right; I’m sure of it.”

  “What’s wrong with him? Did he hurt his head?”

  “It’s grief,” I told her, indulging in a fiction not far removed from the truth. “He lost his mate. It completely did him in. He hasn’t been the same since.”

  I figured Rise could relate to that. And I hadn’t lied, strictly speaking. There was just more to it, was all. If I told Rise the whole truth she would think that Sky was even crazier than she already did, and I didn’t want to burden Sky with that.

  “We could take him home with us,” Rise suggested. “A little time on our beach would straighten him out.”

  I needed to take Humphrey home all right, but first I needed to find the gate. I didn’t know quite how to explain this to Rise. Seagulls didn’t have words for gates, or books, let alone what this gate in particular was actually for. “There’s something we need to find first.”

  “What?”

  I struggled in vain for some way to describe it.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You can’t tell me.”

  I dipped my head sheepishly.

  Rise flapped her wings briefly, furiously, before drawing them up close to her body. “When we find this thing, do you promise to come home?”

  If we found the gate and I could still make it work then Sky would be free to return to his home, and I mine. If not, then I would have little choice but to return to Sky’s home with him, and share his life. Either way someone should be going home with Rise.

  “I promise,” I told her.

  Humphrey gave up on his pretzel and began trying to tell me something. Alas, neither Rise nor I could figure it out.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” I told him.

  He squawked again. Although the meaning of the squawk wasn’t clear, the emotion conveyed was crystal clear: Humphrey was frustrated. It wasn’t difficult to see why. He hadn’t managed to eat much of his pretzel. His feathers were ruffled and he was bleeding under his right wing. Very likely he was hungry, exhausted, and scared. It seemed to me that if I didn’t get him back to his own body soon he’d waste away to nothing and take his seagull host with him.

  Humphrey gave up his earnest squawking and took up a game of charades. Hastily running back and forth, waving one wing wildly, he managed to communicate to Rise and me that we should follow him. I could see no reason not to oblige him: despite his odd behaviour there was probably nothing wrong with his mind, and there was a chance he knew the whereabouts of the gate.

  We set off with Humphrey awkwardly leading the way. Humphrey expended an absurd amount of energy trying to stay in the air, but he managed. Looking down to get my bearings, I could not help but admire the beauty of my native home. Red dirt beaches hemmed the island as far as I could see. Banking north, we passed over fields of potatoes, corn and strawberries, each field delineated by a thin green line of trees. Ditches along the road sprouted purple and pink lupins.

  Had I come through the gate around here somewhere? I’d been close to water, but where exactly I could not say. What if somebody had found the gate already or it had tumbled into the water?

  “Wihawear!” Humphrey squawked, the utterance just barely recognizable.

  And then I felt it: a barely perceptible tingle, hardly recognizable as anything other than a shiver brought on by a draught of cold air. Humphrey executed a wobbly circle, allowing me time to register the sensation for what it was: an affinity for the gate. I realized that I had been feeling the sensation in one form or another ever since Mind Snoop.

  Humphrey banked toward a scenic rest stop where he performed a frankly ill-considered dive. His descent quickly deteriorated into a wing-flapping mess. A hippopotamus could have made a better landing. Not that my three-point landing was much better (one of the points being my beak). In stark contrast, Rise descended beside us like a butterfly on a wisp of cotton.

  “Is it here, the thing you’re looking for?” Rise asked.

  A Volvo station wagon swung into the parking lot.

  “It’s close,” I told her, watching a family get o
ut of the station wagon.

  There was a man, a woman, and a boy who looked to be about seven years old. While his parents fussed over a baby in the backseat, the boy ran to the railing. The view was magnificent: lush green fields and trees, puffy white clouds suspended over water that sparkled like diamonds. It held the boy’s attention for all of three seconds before he climbed over the railing and began picking up stones and throwing them at us. We scrambled to get out of range. I had a bad feeling. Sure enough, the boy’s attention shifted once more, this time to an object lying in the tall grass at the edge of the parking lot. There it was: the book.

  “Humphrey,” I said. “We need to get it before the boy does.”

  Halfway through my sentence, Humphrey was airborne.

  “What?” Rise asked. “Get what?”

  “The thing that’s going to get us all home.”

  Her eyes told me that she didn’t understand. She followed me into the air anyway.

  The boy’s father had clued into his son’s whereabouts. He called out to him but the boy was intent on the book. He picked it up and held it aloft and shouted something back to his father.

  The father started toward his son.

  The shadow of an angry bird loomed over the boy. The boy clutched the book to his chest and ducked. Humphrey swooped down at him exercising about as much control as a cardboard box plummeting from the sky. He missed by half a mile. No sooner had the boy straightened up than Rise strafed him, pecking his head on the way by. The boy cried out and flung his arms up into the air. The book fell into the long grass.

  I touched down not far away and prepared to open the gate. Humphrey and Rise circled for another pass. If I timed it properly, and Humphrey summoned enough control, he would be able to dive straight through the gate. There was a chance that Rise would come through as well but it was a chance I would have to take.

  The father reached his wailing son and put an arm across his shoulders. Spying the book on the ground, he reached down to pick it up.

  “Iiuuuuaaaa!” I squawked, and was struck immediately by a horrible truth: I could not say “Iugurtha” in gull. If I couldn’t say “Iugurtha,” I couldn’t open the book. Before I could contemplate a future of fish, feathers and filth, the father spoke, reading the cover of the book:

  “Iugurtha.”

  He stepped back in wonder as the gate erupted into being before him.

  Mentally I flipped pages as fast as I could. The father took a halting step forward. Humphrey and Rise were well into their descents but I had yet to find the right page. It was happening too fast, and yet, not fast enough. I felt a pang—there was no time to say goodbye to Rise. She wouldn’t understand why I was saying goodbye anyway. The important thing was that she would be there to greet Sky when he came to.

  “Not until I have the right page!” I shouted at Humphrey.

  Then, “Go!” when I thought I had it.

  Humphrey went, and I followed, flinging my consciousness toward the gate.

  The transition was instantaneous.

  I found myself standing in a parking lot looking up into the eyes of a man badly in need of a shave. The eyes were blue, bloodshot and familiar, which wasn’t surprising considering they belonged to someone with whom I was intimately familiar, one Barnabus J. Wildebear.

  The person I inhabited glanced down. I caught a glimpse of gorgeous bare legs beneath a yellow sundress. They looked good, those legs, which wasn’t all that surprising either considering I had jumped into the mind of one Sarah Frey.

  I checked a rising tide of panic. What in blazes was I doing here?

  I remembered all too well the conversation Sarah was having with my former self—Sarah was leading me toward Mind Snoop. I caught a flicker of recognition in my old self’s eyes. I remembered thinking at the time that Sarah and I had connected on some deeper level. What a fool I had been. That wasn’t it at all—I had just sensed my presence in the woman. It was sad, if not a little pathetic. Wake up, I wanted to say. There is no love for you here. Only pain. But I had not said it then so would not say it now.

  Sarah’s thoughts and feelings were flitting through her brain at the speed of light. I did my best to shut out her thoughts, appalled by this despicable (if unintentional) invasion of her privacy. But a few were simply too strong, too fascinating, too awful to resist taking one tiny little peek before directing my gaze elsewhere.

  Poor man, she was thinking, feel sorry for his nephew. . . nothing we can do . . . could be bad could be really bad

  he likes me I know . . . I like him too, but not that way. . . mustn’t let myself get too close . . . gonna have to use him . . . no choice in the matter . . . small price to pay. . . Mind Snoop mouth hurts darned canker sore . . . Ansalar in trouble . . . spreading to Earth . . . cats doomed . . . sure wish I could help them . . . well best get on with it —

  “Walk with me?” she said, and hooked her arm in the arm that had once been mine.

  It hurts to be inside the mind of someone trying to deceive you.

  The gate had never been far away, sitting at the edge of my consciousness, waiting for me to tear myself away from Sarah’s thoughts. I needed to go back, to collect Humphrey and take us where we were supposed to go.

  He has kind eyes, she thought as I left.

  Which is something, I suppose.

  I retrieved Humphrey from where I had inadvertently left him suspended inside the gate. We staggered out almost in unison. By now I did not have much confidence in my control over the gate—there was just so much I didn’t know about it. So I wasn’t particularly surprised when yet again the gate failed to take me where I wanted to go. This time, instead of taking us to Humphrey’s patient, it deposited us back at the beginning of everything, in Ridley’s room.

  I had almost forgotten about my cold and my leg. The physical sensations returned in a tidal wave of misery. The abrupt transitions through the gate didn’t help much either. I groaned and sank to one knee like a penitent before an altar. The way Humphrey steadied himself on one of the scientist’s consoles suggested that he wasn’t much better off.

  Before me the floorboards were splintered and cratered where I had damaged them before entering the gate. Rainer and his people hadn’t moved much since my departure. It looked like we had arrived seconds after my disappearance through the gate. Despite this, Rainer’s soldiers surrounded Humphrey and me almost instantly. I did not take this display of aggression personally. They needed to be prepared for anything that came through the gate. And I had a pretty good idea what they were up against now.

  “Tell your men to stand down,” I told Rainer. “We’re not a threat.”

  Rainer nodded. The nod consisted of a single downward thrust of his chin. I took that to mean that he agreed with my order, but in fact he wasn’t nodding at me. His tactical team snapped into action. I heard two muffled pops and felt a sharp pain in my chest. Evidently he concurred with me on one point.

  “Quite right,” I heard him say just before I passed out. “Not much of a threat.”

  XV

  Ansalar

  I battled my way to consciousness but immediately regretted it. My sore throat had not improved a whit and now I was terribly congested. I felt achy all over. My skin felt oddly sensitive to the touch. To top it off, there was a metallic taste in my mouth, as if I’d just eaten a bowl of copper shavings, and not particularly tasty ones. I took that to be a side effect from Rainer’s tranquillizer dart, a memory that brought a frown to my face as I wondered why in the name of all that was holy Rainer had seen fit to tranquillize me. I had done nothing to deserve such treatment. Of course, I had done nothing to deserve a sore throat or an ungrateful nephew or the death of my sister, either—evidently deserving didn’t enter into it.

  Before prying my sleep-encrusted eyes open I had a strong suspicion that I was no longer at home. The bed was a dead giveaway,
the mattress as hard as stone with at least two lumps digging mercilessly into my back. There are no uncomfortable beds in my house—I have slept in them all just to make sure.

  Opening my eyes, I confirmed my suspicions. I was in an unfamiliar room featuring a décor heavy on nautical motifs. Objects like sextants and miniature sailing vessels populated limited shelf space. A raunchy painting of Nautilus cavorting with several well-endowed mermaids hung crookedly on one wall. A single porthole ringed in bronze adorned another.

  “Hello, Mr. Wildebear.”

  “Sebastian?” He was no longer on my wrist. Though no speakers were visible in the room his voice was right in front of me. I remembered giving him to the cab driver Jack Poirier.

  “At your service,” he said.

  I struggled to my feet and limped to the porthole. It was difficult to see anything beyond the dirty glass. “Am I in a boat?”

  “It’s not a boat. You’re at Ansalar, home of Casa Terra.”

  “Are we underwater? It looks like we might be underwater.”

  “We are.”

  “No kidding. How long did it take to get here?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Where is here exactly?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Oh come on, tell me something,” I insisted, though I wasn’t particularly optimistic, having been down this particular road with Sebastian once before.

  “What would you like me to tell you?”

  I thought about it. “If we’re under water, how deep are we?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “I won’t tell anyone, promise.”

  “Okay. We’re approximately two kilometres under water.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. I told you I can’t tell you that. Why do you persist on interrogating me?”

  “I take it your security protocols are working. Is that why Rainer sedated me, so I wouldn’t know where Ansalar is?” Had the man not heard of blindfolds?