by Peter Plasse
silently passed to Jacqueline who looked more frightened than surprised.
“It’s okay, Jacqueline,” Blake said. “It’s just one of Dr. Easton’s old tricks.
He used to do it in college all the time.” He stood and extended his hand across the
table. “How are you Dr. Easton? It’s good to see you. Nice of you to pop in. I trust
you are well?”
Dr. Easton smiled broadly. Stephanie studied his eyes. In her mind’s eye, she felt the look of them was more like that of someone analyzing her father, rather than that of an old friend smiling warmly at him.
There was an awkward pause while Hemlock and Blake shook hands for a long time, then Jessica spoke. “Please, Dr. Easton, sit down. Let me fix you a plate.”
She went straightaway to the cupboard and in a twinkling had a complete setting before their unlikely guest.
Everybody resumed eating, and it was again silent for a few moments. Jacqueline broke it with, “Hey, I thought you said you were leaving and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.”
“You are right, Jacqueline,” Hemlock replied. “And for that I must apologize, but I am afraid that circumstances are such that I must speak to your father, indeed, all of you, tonight.”
“But we told you that Dad was sick …”
Jessica interrupted. “That will be enough, Jacq’. Your father is feeling better now, and we have to remember our manners.”
Jacqueline stopped talking and looked towards her plate, but her expression clearly said that as far as she was concerned, it was Dr. Easton, not her, that was guilty of bad manners. He was the one who had barged in despite the fact that he knew her dad wasn’t feeling well.
“So, Dr. Easton, what brings you by our neck of the woods?” asked Blake.
There was a brief pause as Dr. Easton considered his response.
Jessica seized the opportunity and jumped in. “Dr. Easton, Blake arrived home from work today an absolute mess. He was, as you can see, pretty scratched up, but beyond that, he told a pretty amazing story about his trip home. Now, in this family there are no secrets. None. So you need to tell us all what is going on. Right now. And for that matter, Blake tells us that, in actual fact, you are not Dr. Easton at all, but rather a wizard who goes by the name of Hemlock Simpleton. Is this true?”
“A wizard,” said Jacq’, “named ‘Hemlock Simpleton’?”
“Hush now, honey,” interrupted Jessica, and fixed a steady gaze on Hemlock. “What is happening is very, very strange, beyond strange really, and we all need to know what is going on. All of us.”
“You are right,” replied Hemlock. “You all need to know, and I am sorry to have to tell you what you all need to know tonight because, as it turns out, there is a window of opportunity before us that will close very soon. But perhaps it would be easier if we all took a little trip. Kids, if you could go anywhere in the world right now or, rather, after we finish this marvelous meal that your mother has prepared, where would that be?”
“Tanta Kendra’s,” Jacqueline replied without hesitation.
Orie and Stephanie remained silent. Each was feeling more than a little anxious about how this stranger than strange day was unfolding.
“Well, Stephanie, Orie?” asked Hemlock.
“Tell you what,” said Orie. “Why don’t you give us until the end of dinner to think about it?”
“Fair enough,” said Hemlock, then, “Jessica, in all of my travels, this is about the best roast beef I have ever had. And the shrimp was marvelous. Marvelous.”
While Hemlock was looking at Jessica, Orie made it a point to make eye contact with Stephanie and flash the stabbing-the-wrist danger sign. Again she acknowledged it by nodding slightly. Jacqueline noticed the exchange and opened her mouth to comment, but was silenced by a harsh look from her brother. To this she responded with a noticeable widening of her eyes. Orie shook his head, “No,” to this, and she regained her composure entirely before Hemlock turned back their way.
The remainder of the meal was punctuated by small talk of school activities and the weather and such. Once the table and countertop were cleared, and the dishwasher loaded, Blake said, “Okay, we have some stuff to talk about. Let’s go out to the back deck.”
“If I could make a request,” said Hemlock, “Can we stay indoors?”
“The acorn thing?” asked Blake.
“Yes,” smiled Hemlock.
“What’s the acorn thing?” asked Jacqueline.
“Hang on to your diapers,” said Jessica.
“Mom, I’m ten years old. I don’t wear diapers anymore.”
Hanz Oratorius Night, Emperor of the Gnome Nation of Vultura, was a busy Gnome. From every corner of his country he was receiving troubling news. He now knew it was only a matter of time before the Trolls conquered his land, and he was writing the orders that would send his entire army underground. Better to let the Trolls think that they had killed them all than to let them do just that.
The Trolls were too many, and too big, and he knew the Gnome army stood no chance against them.
As he signed document after document pertaining to military matters, he wondered why the Trolls had never invaded before. He could remember a time when it had all been tranquil enough. The quill made a busy, scratching sound as he dragged it along the parchment. He formed the words on his lips as he wrote them out, a habit he had had since he was a youngster.
His wife entered the cramped study in which he had ensconced himself. The look on her face said what words did not need to. Things in the Gnome nation of Vultura were bad. They were very, very bad.
Hanz noticed her pained expression and reached for her hand, whispering, “I know, my love. I know.”
“So now what do we do?” she asked.
He put the quill down upon the desktop with one hand, squeezing hers gently with the other, and asked, “What can we do?”
Chapter 4
Orie, Stephanie, and Jacqueline were still up. It was way past their bedtime but, fortunately, it was a Friday. Hemlock had left the night before, but not until he had turned their worlds virtually upside down. The story he had told them all was beyond belief and they were trying to digest it. They were sitting in Stephanie’s room, down the hall from that of Mom and Dad. Typically they would be downstairs with the big-screen TV going and friends over, or at the Friday night social, or doing one of a million things that kids of ten, fifteen, and sixteen might do on a Friday night. Not tonight. All of their friends had been told that they wanted some family time. None had been told that a wizard from another planet had shown up and basically asked if he could borrow their parents for an interplanetary jaunt of unknown duration for the expressed purpose of saving his own race from extinction. Oh, and yes, that he had sought out their parents not just for the fact that they were both medical doctors: he, an Emergency Room physician, she, a Research Doctorate in Genetic Engineering writing yet another landmark thesis on Gene Splicing that she was due to present in Paris, in a few months, in front of the world’s greatest minds in Biophysics, but equally for the fact that both had spent time in the military: he, in Covert Operations, where he had served as an Independent-Duty-Corpsman on a team that had specialized in behind-enemy-lines infiltration for intelligence gathering, and she, in the Naval Undersea Warfare Program, working on the development of systems of underwater military hardware.
Hemlock had made it clear that there was some danger implicit in the mission; so, knowing that they had made a serious commitment to staying in tiptop shape, added to the fact that they each had skills in survival tactics, and the kinds of weaponry used on this other world, they apparently represented Hemlock’s best chance of accomplishing the mission and returning intact.
“I think he’s just crazy,” said Jacqueline. As usual, she was holding one of the many household cats. Around her were perhaps a dozen more, all patiently waiting for her attention. There were around eighteen, all told, and she loved each and every one of them. All had names
she had given them, and all came to her when she called them. She had a way with them that you could not help but notice if you spent any time with her on the farm. In truth, it was the same with all of the animals. The two horses, Johnnie and Mickey, the two dogs, Bubba and Rosie, and the family pet pig, Porky. The others might feed them and groom them, and otherwise care for them in the usual ways that animals need to be cared for, but with Jacqueline you would swear that she could almost talk to them. Most impressive was the way they all went to her. Within moments of her being home she was sure to be surrounded by her animals. Even when she went down to the pastures to take a walk, the two horses would trot to her without her having to call them. It was something to see. “How can he possibly come to our house and expect us to believe he is a wizard. A wizard. Really. You might as well say that …”
“Jacqueline,” interrupted her brother, “please. Let’s not go off on tangents.
This is too important. Let’s start with what we know.”
“Well, first off, we know he lied,” said Stephanie. “He showed up here claiming to be one of Dad’s old Biology professors and then quickly changed his story. Why wouldn’t he say who he was right from the get-go?”
“That is true,” returned Orie, thoughtfully. “Jacqueline?”
“I don’t like him,” she said, temporarily pausing in her scratching of Cinnamon, a pure calico cat with a white splotch on her chest and piercing yellow eyes.
She said it with just the right tone, just the right flavor, and they all broke out in a laugh.
“That may be so, Jacq’, but that’s a conclusion, and it’s too early to arrive at conclusions. What we need to do right now is get together a list of things we know about what is happening, so that conclusions we draw from the facts have the best chance of being the right ones. Savvy?”
“Savvy, Kimo-Sabe,” returned Jacq’.
Again they all laughed.
“Okay then, here’s a fact. When he came, all the cats ran and hid. That tells me they didn’t like him.”
“Jacqueline, that’s not a fact. You need to take more Science …”
“Hold on, Stephanie,” said Orie. “Jacq’, what happens when, say, the FedEx guy comes to drop off a package? I mean a stranger FedEx guy. To the cats, I mean. Do they act the same?”
“Not at all,” said Jacq’. “They might run away for a few seconds, but when I call them and tell them it’s okay, they come right back to me. They know it’s okay because I tell them it’s okay. They can feel that it’s okay. Through me, like.”
“Hmmm,” said Orie. “I know what you’re saying, Steph’. It’s not as solid a fact as, say, he lied, but I’m willing to bet that Jacq’ has something. She knows her animals very well, and if we know he lied, and we believe her animals didn’t like him, it makes me very suspicious of whether this guy is who he says he is, or is on the up-and-up. You know what I mean.”
And so the discussion went until the three of them couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer, and sleep won the eternal battle between the awake and dream states.
Stephanie’s dreams were full of energy, full of imagery in 3-D. As with so many dreams, her thoughts drifted all about. She saw Hemlock as a man who lies, standing with a beggar trying to locate shelter for the night and telling him the wrong directions on purpose because he felt like it. She didn’t know. It was a feeling. Maybe he was on the up and up. Maybe his people were dying, becoming old and with no young being born … Extinction. She agreed it was a terrible thought. But an interplanetary voyage with the distinct possibility of injury or death to her mother and father was a lot, not a little, difficult to grasp, and she could not get behind the fact that it might actually happen. And the story that Hemlock had told them of how his people had been forced to live underground for years, after nuclear war had at last destroyed the ability of the planet’s surface to sustain life, certainly had sounded plausible.
But the promise he had made before he left seemed somehow to clinch it in her mind, that on the morrow he would take them all anywhere, in any century, and they would all experience it as reality. “Holy Moly,” she exclaimed as she sat bolt upright, now wide-awake. If he could do this, he had to be who he said he was.
The unbelievability of his promise had her as charged up as a person can be.
And the veiled promise that if she did this thing or, rather, if her mother and father did this thing, then she could do this other fantastic thing for the rest of her life … It was too farfetched to fully comprehend.
“My goodness,” she thought. They hadn’t even discussed where they wanted to go. Or when in time they wanted to emerge from the travel transducer, or whatever it was called, to explore the world as it was then. At the time of the dinosaurs, at the time of Ancient Egypt and the construction of the Great Pyramids, at the time of the Revolutionary War and the founding of the nation.
And hadn’t he said that the length of stay on this one journey didn’t matter in their time frame? Like you could stay for thirty years, and he would make it like two seconds in the here and now? Yes. She was sure he had said that. She couldn’t wait. And even if her mother and father chose to tell him they could not do this thing, they would still have had the fantasy travel experience of a lifetime.
Any place.
Any time.
For as long as they wanted.
Wow.
She was fifteen now, and beautifully developed as a young lady with an athletic frame. She was blonde. She was stunningly beautiful, and like most stunningly beautiful young people, she would never let you know that she knew it. Her ears were kind of pointy, as were those of her brother and sister, both towheads as well, but all had let their hair grow to cover them, and the grade-school teasing that they had all gone through was a thing of the distant past.
She was sure Jacqueline would go with her mother and father. Orie, she was unsure of.
Would they all choose to go together? It could last for as long as you wanted, and if they were ever in danger, Hemlock would be there to pull them out, and they would all hook up again as a family. What about the time of the ancient Greeks? Could she ask to be a ruling princess? Was that part of the deal? It was all too much to think about. It was too unreal, yet … somehow … real. If he could transport them to any place, any time, he had to be telling the truth. Or did he?
She got up feeling thirsty. She noticed it was a beautiful night, warm, with a light breeze, the kind of breeze that gives you a perfectly sweet caress for just a moment and then flits on its way, off to please another. She decided a glass of water might be nice, and as long as she was up she might as well go to the bathroom. She went to turn on the light, but changed her mind because she had enough moon lighting her way.
In two more steps she saw him.
It was a boy, who looked to be about fifteen or sixteen. He was smiling and did not appear threatening in any way, leaning back with his arms folded against a stuffed chair in the study. He was wearing jeans and a button down light blue Oxford shirt. On his feet he wore new Nike black hightops.
He spoke first. “Stephanie, I didn’t mean to frighten you. My name is Erik. Erik Elijah Fairman. Hemlock has sent me. He knew we would get along. Or at least he thought we would. Could I get a glass of water please?”
She stood, frozen. This was all too strange. Still, he certainly seemed real enough and nice enough. And yes, he was definitely, positively, standing right there … and smiling … and decidedly handsome. His hair was blonde, matching hers almost, shoulder length and pulled back in a ponytail.
She unfroze in a rush of faith the way only young people can do. She decided all at once, right then and there in an instant’s time, that she was going to go for this. And that there was no question that this Hemlock Simpleton guy, wizard, whatever, was absolutely real, that the possibilities for unbelievable fun were infinite, and that this guy seemed sweet, standing there stupidly smiling. But it seemed like such a warm, engaging smile. And she thought she could read sinc
erity in his eyes, which she found somehow reassuring.
“Oh … sure … I guess … regular water? Or a glass of water with ice?”
“Just a glass of water, if that would be okay. And if you wanted to add some ice, that would be superb. But just a glass of water would be great. You know that the water that comes out of your tap is genuine aquifer water, the purest water on your planet. It’s thousands of years old and flows in a vast chain of rivers underground. Good stuff.” He smiled again and took a large drink, smacking his lips in an almost polite way, and ending with the perfect, “Ahhh …”
“Yeah, my father goes on and on about the ultimate coolness of our water all the time, but I noticed you said, ‘Your planet’? I gather from that, that you are not from this one?”
“Correct.”
“Oh this is all too unbelievable,” she said, as she eased herself onto a bench under a partially filled coat rack in the hall. He was now standing directly in front of her.
She suddenly felt the effect of it being 3:00 a.m. She hadn’t slept a wink. Or had she? Well, maybe a wink, but, boy, was she suddenly tired. She needed to lie down. She laid her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.
“Stephanie, here. Take my hand.”
She didn’t know why she did it, but she did. What the heck. She opened her eyes and reached out her hand, taking his. It was warm, but definitely not soft. It was the hand of a boy who was no stranger to hard work. It felt right. And as she began to loll her head back ever so slightly, thinking, “He might even go for a kiss …” she was jolted with a surge of energy that was almost overpowering. Gone was the fuzziness of her mind. Gone was the desire to sleep. She was suddenly razor sharp, the kind of razor sharp that you are right before the tip-off in the championship basketball game. But it was way more than that. She wanted to do something! Something, something adventurous, involving castles and warriors and cool clothes, but had no idea where she had gotten the energy necessary to do it.
