Agnes wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
“And… let us remember that the further back we go, the more dangerous our interference becomes, no matter how well-intentioned. Not to be callous, my friends, but everyone we have seen is long since dead. At this juncture, we cannot know what we are dealing with in the here and now.”
The women nodded. Bess gave the bearded man a soulful look, giving the suggestion of something radical, yet likely to be dismissed. She took a chance for the greater good. The bearded man, to their surprise, approved.
“Why, yes… if your spirit guide Arrienne is asking you to make contact, we might do well to hear from an impartial observer. Perhaps she might know the significance of what we were shown.”
Bess nodded, then closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed down, and soon, she spoke. She opened her eyes as she did, which now appeared much darker.
Greetings, Henry.
“Hello, Arrienne,” replied the bearded man. Agnes said nothing.
(Humorously) And hello to your acolyte.
Agnes gave her a sad smile and a small wave.
You have projected your collective consciousness outward and found yourself in unfamiliar territory. I have more than a passing familiarity with the “time” and “place” you have just visited. For Agnes’s benefit, when I say things like “time” understand that I am speaking in your terms, not in mine.
Agnes nodded.
What you saw indeed concerned the same entity, known to you as Tobias. I know of that entity by other names, with greater intimacy. But at that “time”, he was Tobias, and I was a fisherman on the river Tigris. I wasn’t a very good fisherman (laugh), but my skill at thievery often filled in the gaps from my fish harvest rather nicely. In those days, it was beneficial to be proficient in multiple disciplines. (Smile.)
Henry, the bearded man, laughed merrily. Agnes smiled and said nothing.
Henry was correct when he said history is written by the victors. This Tobias you have become familiar with is not written of in your history books. And perhaps most of interest to you, his death was never recorded. This was not due to his lack of notoriety.
Henry gave a bit of a start. “Hum!”
In fact, Tobias was quite noteworthy for a very particular skill. He could replace the... atoms of one thing with the... atoms of another. Bear with us. Bess does not have a sufficiently scientific vocabulary, and we are making do with what we have. As you now know, that skill was coveted by the king, who forced Tobias to create water to feed his immense gardens. Under extreme circumstances, he could modify the air itself, as it is not, as you may know scientifically, “nothing”. It was preferable for him to modify things of equal measure to what he intended to produce.
Agnes sucked in her breath.
Henry, your acolyte (humorously) has a similar grasp of this skill, but to a much lesser extent. (Eyes wider, turning to Agnes.) If you are to resort to the use of paper currency, it is best that you provide a better cause for the effect.
Agnes turned pink. Henry turned to her in amazement. “Agnes! What have you been up to?”
Agnes mouthed “I’m sorry” but did not elaborate. Bess/Arienne turned to face Henry once more.
Your acolyte has also learned clumsily that since “time” has more to do with banal Earthly concepts of cause and effect, it is possible to circumvent such formalities and choose to be another place, at another time. This is how it came to pass that she was reunited with her brother without following (humorously, again) proper procedure.
Henry chuckled. “She is aware.”
Bess/Arienne leaned forward and addressed them intently.
You must remember that the universe works the same way for everyone.
Henry nodded approvingly. “We will remember.”
(Emphatically) In every interaction, there is a choice.
More approval. “Wise words, oh ho, wise indeed!”
I leave you to your studies.
Agnes gasped. She had hoped for more. Henry did not seem as shortchanged. Bess’s eyes brightened a bit and her breathing returned to normal. Henry stroked his beard thoughtfully, then he turned sharply to Agnes.
“Agnes! Tell us what you have been up to! I thought I had made it clear that there were to be no secrets kept from each of us.”
Agnes bowed her head in shame, then reached into her knit bag. She produced a fresh white rectangular eraser.
Henry raised his eyebrows. “Eh? I’m afraid I do not follow.”
Agnes looked up at Bess, who was given an approving wave by Henry. She returned with a saucer, and a glass of water. She handed both to Agnes. She placed the eraser in the saucer, laying it down lengthwise. She held the glass of water over the saucer, and before doing anything else, she gave an imploring look to Henry, who motioned for her to continue.
“Gold is needed here,” she said aloud, which would normally have broken house rules. Agnes poured water in a slow trickle over the eraser. Water splattered in all directions, then settled at the bottom of the saucer. She focused intently on her efforts, and to her mentor and fellow student’s amazement, the white eraser was soon replaced by a bar of gold, equal in length, width, depth… but not mass. Agnes stopped pouring water and set the glass aside. She held up the saucer for Henry and Bess to inspect.
Henry picked up the gold and was amazed at its relative heft. “Is it… pure?”
Agnes shrugged. She didn’t have the ways and means to test its purity, but assumed it was.
Henry’s face reddened. “Agnes! I did not bring you into my care to inspire you to engage in such… fraud! After all you have learned, what carnal needs can you possibly have that require obscene amounts of wealth to collect? Cease and desist at once, or I will expel you from our Order.”
Agnes wept and nodded, burying her face in her hands. Bess was kindlier. She made a reproachful face at Henry, who relented, slightly.
“True indeed, Bess, perhaps I was too hasty. Truth is what is needed here, and we shall have it. Agnes, have you been hoarding gold?” Agnes shook her head, and sniffled. “Have you been laying up a store of riches in some other fashion? Bank accounts? Safe deposit boxes?” Agnes shook her head. “Do you have any objection to my keeping this?” Henry held up the tiny ingot, which gleamed in the light. Agnes shook her head. Henry seemed satisfied. He rose to his feet, amid creaks and groans.
“Ah, yes. Well! That will be enough of that. We have much to sort out regarding the whereabouts and intentions of this Tobias. Let us retreat, and you both shall return as scheduled. And Agnes, no more alchemy.” He waggled the ingot at her and slipped it into his coat pocket.
Agnes nodded.
It was getting late, and despite the dearth of inquiries into her whereabouts and activities, it was best to maintain an adherence to a reliable schedule. They waved their goodbyes to Henry, who saw them off with jovial laughter and well wishes. He shivered a bit while seeing them off from the front stoop.
Soon, Bess was backing slowly and deliberately out of the driveway. Henry watched them through the window, grateful for the warmth of the manor. He reached into his coat pocket and studied the ingot.
“My, my, Agnes, who has been teaching you such things?”
CHAPTER 32: OVERTIME
Night had fallen across the east coast, and while the masses tended to meander toward home, some remained at work with no intent of leaving the office for several more hours. Such was the case of one office bearing the name of Jacqueline Morris-Winstead.
Jacqueline sat at her desk, reviewing unanswered emails. Her assistant replied to the fluff as often as possible. Sometimes Jacqueline would intervene for that personal touch. Let them know the president is a real person, and not just a name at the top of the org chart, she often counseled her mentees at leadership conferences. Especially for milestone anniversaries. She had a template for such occasions, but she tried to work in a special personal message to break up the form letter look and feel. That’s what the recipient was going to r
emember most anyway, not the boilerplate stuff.
One such email was a request from the CTO of a prospective high-dollar client for some technical data, within certain parameters, as even she was not at liberty to divulge business-critical information, no matter the reason. The message concluded with “I hope you had an enjoyable trip and a Merry Christmas.” She balked a bit, preferring “a happy holiday”, which is how she would have phrased it, and she did.
Hello Brent -
Thank you for your kind words. Yes, Richardson and I drove out to see my parents, and the rest of my family. We take turns each year. I hope you had a happy holiday as well!
I will reach out to our Technical Director to compile the information you are
She tapped out the remainder of the message, inserted her default signature, then pressed SEND. One down, seven hundred to go.
The drive home from visiting her side of the family had been uneventful, with one notable exception: she had to remind Richardson that the twins needed mobile wi-fi for their new laptops, which resulted in an unplanned trip to an electronics store to resolve the oversight. Millie and Monroe complained about the delay but were soon distracted by a display of ARCTURUS Ultimate Augmented Reality games. The console and four titles soon found their way into the trunk, as well as peripherals to attach to their laptops. The twins were fine after that. Richardson seemed to brood a bit afterwards, but he made a mistake, pure and simple. He lightened up eventually.
Jacqueline’s work load lightened up a bit after the holiday. It wasn’t strictly due to the traditional slowdown in operations between December 25th and January 1st. Phillip had asked her to excuse herself from his advisory board. They were going in a different direction, he said, with deepest regret, and for the good of all parties concerned it was best to part company and focus on other initiatives. He wished her luck with her future endeavors.
Someone like Gracie would have summarized this development like so: “Phillip’s wife was getting suspicious.” Not so with Richardson, and Jacqueline aimed to keep it that way.
Officially, and for the record, she was focused on pressing concerns with her own enterprise, which meant late nights gutting out meeting after meeting, steering the ship, and charting a bold course clear into the Third Quarter.
And as Special Adviser to not one but two thriving companies, her time was a precious resource that would have to be tightly managed to avoid critical pieces falling through the cracks. People were counting on her. People like Phillip.
Richardson didn’t have a direct line of communication with him and was content to receive regular updates from Jacqueline whenever they had some face time. She would ease herself away from that commitment, slowly and steadily. She had to ensure Mercurio-Atlan was heading in the right direction and all the pieces were in place. That took careful strategic planning, making sure everyone had their marching orders and was keeping their eye on the ball. They’d need some big wins to build confidence and leverage their core strengths to achieve greater heights and capitalize on their success. That would take lots of time and effort. No sacrifice was too small, or too great.
Unofficially, she didn’t want to get home too early.
Jacqueline tried not to dwell on the details, but in a manner of speaking she was being unfaithful to Richardson—not by choice. Mercurio-Atlan was a start-up company in the way that children born to billionaires were scrappy underdogs. Phillip’s father, the legendary CEO behind such firms at Mercer Finite Industries and HoloConnecTric bought a promising mid-sized business called Atlantic Confederated Union, LLC and spun it off into a venture tailor-made for his oldest son.
While plotting out the finer details of what the new company did and how it might break new ground and disrupt conventional market wisdom, Phillip took note of Richardson’s firm, namely due to his attention-getting work on an initiative with the Small Business Administration and decided to make a play for the firm. Jacqueline was a loose end, and a leak risk in terms of accidentally—or intentionally—tipping off her husband as to the imminent takeover of his firm. Jacqueline was certain Richardson’s position by way of assimilation into the ranks of Mercurio-Atlan was very secure, if for no other reason than his fame resulting from the SBA deal. She could afford the loss of her special adviser position as a sacrifice to the greater good: her friend Phillip would gain the prestige of overseeing a larger player in the market, Richardson would gain security and possibly upward mobility because of the takeover, and Jacqueline would be remembered as a key ally, which she could leverage at some later time.
All she had to do was keep her mouth shut for a few months.
CHAPTER 33: AS INSTRUCTED
Marc found the Magic Dragon shop tucked between a tattoo parlor and Falafels to Go. The store was dingy and cramped. A wall of t-shirts anchored the store on one side. A series of glass cases and shelving were stocked with every sort of water pipe imaginable. A hand-lettered and worn sign taped to the inside of one of the cases declared the water pipes were offered to anyone who wanted to enjoy their tobacco safely and responsibly.
Wink wink, nudge nudge, he thought.
He wandered past the displays and worked his way around a long-haired man browsing through a standalone rack of tie-dyed shirts. He held one up and beamed. “Killer ‘dye, man!” Marc nodded his approval.
Rock tapestries lined the walls all along the top edges, and at one point he realized that they billowed down from the above him, tacked into the dusty and water-stained drop-ceiling panels. He smirked at the sight of one he hadn’t seen since college: The album art from the Idyllwild Sessions LP by Purple Hayes. A buxom naked nymph with butterfly wings stared innocently outward, cradling a toadstool in her hands, which in turn rested on her lap. “Far out,” he muttered.
Toadstool and wizard figurines were stuffed randomly in-between items, on top of shelving units, or on the floor. He stepped gingerly around a gnome sitting on a toadstool smoking a long-stemmed pipe, relieved he didn’t accidentally kick it over.
At last, he found the incense. He pulled his shopping list out of his coat pocket and tried to find all three scents, as instructed. He found two of the three and started to panic when the one that led him to this store didn’t seem to be in stock: sandalwood. He glanced nervously over at the sales clerk, who was ringing up the long-haired man from earlier. He held up a brilliant blue tie-dyed t-shirt, removed the hanger and tossed it behind him. A box of plastic hangers clattered noisily.
“Right on, man, this is a good one,” said the clerk.
The man laughed in that laid-back way that Marc was never quite capable of achieving, even in college. He waited for the sale to close, capped off with an elaborate handshake. “Be safe,” the clerk said.
“Definitely,” the long-haired man replied. He nodded at Marc on the way out.
Marc carried two packs of incense and three holders to the register. The clerk gave an easy smile and looked at the sale. “Find everything you need?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m looking for something else.”
The clerk’s eyes shifted around, checking if anyone else was in the store.
“Looking to relax, or something more interesting?”
Marc raised his hand dismissively, yet apologetically. “Not like that. I’m looking for sandalwood.”
The clerk looked at the incense packets and frowned. “Huh.”
“Problem…?”
“Not at all, man, I probably got that back here someplace. I know we definitely got some in last week.” The clerk rooted around piles of stock, and pulled some drawers open, shutting them quickly after checking each one. He dug around a plastic shopping bag hanging on a hook and made a triumphant sound. “Aha! I probably should put these out there before I forget again.”
Marc gave a sigh of relief.
The clerk punched buttons on the cash register. The buttons made a shrill beep every time they were pressed. The clerk shouldn’t put 10-key entry on his resume, Marc thought. The clerk see
med to be stuck looking for the 7. Finally, there were three more beeps.
“Anything else?”
“That’ll do it.” Marc tried to be casual.
“19.78.”
“Good year.” Like he knew. He handed the clerk a twenty.
“Out of twenty. So that’ll be… uh… here, just take the quarter. Close enough, right?”
“Sure thing.”
The clerk tore off the receipt and stuck it on top of the incense. “Let me get a bag for you.”
Marc scooped the items off the counter. “No thanks. Save it.”
The clerk looked up from under the counter. “You sure?”
Marc headed for the door. “Yep. Have a good one.”
“Be safe.”
Tiny brass bells hanging from a thin chain tinkled as he pulled the door open and stepped out into the chilled air.
Bells! Marc cursed the oversight.
This was going to involve another stop. Marc fumbled for his keys with one hand and unlocked his car doors. He put the incense and holders on the floor of the back seat and shut the door. He got into the driver’s side and fired up the engine.
He decided to aim for the nearest mall. There had to be a glass shop in there that didn’t involve wizards and toadstools, he hoped.
CHAPTER 34: AWKWARD
The drive home was rather chilly between Bess and Agnes. Bess barely said a word most of the way back, not that the uninitiated would have known. It would have appeared to anyone else that they traveled in complete silence no matter their mood.
Agnes had a visceral sense as to why. She could turn things into other things, as Bess’s spirit guide Arrienne had said, to a limited degree. She couldn’t make a giant golden pyramid house with an attached three-car garage, but she could turn a small object into pure gold, if she so desired. For her purposes, that was enough.
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