“I suppose not,” I admitted. “I mean, it’s a feeling you have that you recognize, but it isn’t necessarily predicated on logic.”
“The way souls are attuned to things—at least, this is the theory that the elven priests taught me growing up—is that it happens when the exchange of magic is associated with a sacrifice of some sort. Some kind of selfless act.”
“So when you healed me, you were risking what exactly?”
“My family, my father’s acceptance, everything. The idea that I’d try to heal someone, a human who’d been stabbed by the Blade, meant I’d accepted the notion that the chosen one might be a human. It violated the elven dogma. So yes, it was a sacrifice. Even as when you were stabbed, you were trying to save what you thought was a poor damsel in distress.”
I laughed. “Yeah, what was I thinking?”
“I’m proud of you, though.”
I shrugged. “For what? I haven’t done much. I’m stumbling through all this.”
Layla shook her head. “When B’iff showed you how to travel the ley lines, it had to be frightening. To go inside a ley line? Your body consumed by magic?”
I pressed my lips together. “Yes and no. I mean, it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I suppose, insofar as the unknown is always a little frightening, it was. But it was also thrilling.”
Layla tilted her head. “Thrilling in what way?”
“It was like being steeped in Earth’s magic, feeling my connection to the Earth. I don’t know if any human being has ever felt so alive, not since God made Adam from the Earth itself and breathed life into his nostrils.”
Layla smiled. “I don’t know the story of Adam and Eve, but your god’s breath in the story, the breath of life, I think it was Awen. Literal or metaphorical, who knows? I think what your Bible is talking about is the magic of the Earth.”
I continued kneading the ball of Layla’s foot with my thumbs. “That might be true. I mean, it’s magic, what you call Awen, that you said changed New Albion from a dead planet to a living world. It might be that the magic we use, the magic we’re wielding, is akin to the breath of life. I mean, if you read Genesis, it’s God’s breath—his words—that called everything that exists into being out of nothing. That’s sort of what it feels like when I’ve used magic. Sure, I don’t have a ton of experience with it, but it feels more than natural. It feels supernatural.”
Layla shrugged. “Semantics, maybe? I mean, who are we to define what’s natural and what’s supernatural? Seems to me that folks use the word supernatural to label things they don’t understand. Things their science can’t explain.”
“So you’re suggesting that the supernatural is natural?”
“Think about it,” Layla said. “Even your doctors can’t heal the way you can with magic. A pill or vaccine just uses what’s natural to the body. It encourages the body to do what it’s already capable of doing. Set a bone, the same thing. Sew up a wound. You get my point.”
“I understand that,” I said.
“Who are you to say it wasn’t just as natural as the magic the body uses to heal itself? I mean, a thousand years ago, if you gave someone an antibiotic, it would seem to them every bit as magical as your spell. Simply because people don’t understand the mechanisms, whether they are medical or magical, it doesn’t mean it isn’t natural. I believe magic is anything but supernatural. Awen is the most natural thing in existence.”
“I think I agree with you. Don’t get me wrong; I’m probably guilty of another heresy by admitting it. But what the hell? They’re kicking me out of the church anyway. If I look at the Bible with an open mind, I see how even our scriptures could embrace something like that. Call it the breath of life. Call it Awen. Either way, from a biblical perspective, it makes sense to me.”
Layla pulled her foot off my lap, sat up next to me, and kissed me on the cheek. “Why are you so different than everyone else?”
I shrugged. “What do you mean?”
Layla explained, “Most people, humans and elves alike, are so wrapped up in their viewpoint, religion, politics, whatever, that they won’t even consider thinking outside the box. They take other ideas, other ways of perceiving the world, as threats rather than challenges to deepen their points of view. I mean, if I wasn’t still reeling from realizing I’d been taught a load of crap and lied to my whole life, I don’t know that I’d be open to hearing an elven giant like B’iff tell me things weren’t the way I thought. Or fall in love with a human.”
I smiled. “I love you too, Layla. Sometimes it takes brokenness to see beauty. We have to see the walls of dogma that have imprisoned our minds knocked down, or at least cracked before we can see past them.”
“No one has ever made me feel more beautiful.”
“Is that because you’re broken?” I asked.
“Stop talking,” Layla said as she leaped on my lap, straddling me.
I didn’t object as she pressed her lips to mine.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
No cowboy boots this time. I picked up a pair of soldier boots from the army surplus store. Scuba cowboy was gone.
Enter the incomparable chosen-by-prophecy kick-ass warrior.
Besides the boots, I had a Kevlar vest, camo cargo pants, and a red headband. Just call me Reverend Rambo.
The sight of me would make Hector quake. He’d tremble in fear in his Birkenstocks while wetting his skinny jeans. At least, those were the closest things I could imagine that compared to the elvish clothing he sported. The last time I’d seen him, he looked like he’d stepped out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog, except he was wearing a shirt. I never understood why they put so many shirtless dudes in a catalog meant to sell clothing. Seemed counter-productive.
I surveyed myself in the mirror and puffed up my chest. Yeah, I wasn’t in great shape, but in these clothes, I looked like what might have happened if Schwarzenegger and Stallone ever had a baby and Jean-Claude Van Damme was their midwife. Don’t visualize that. Bad choice of metaphor, but you get the idea.
The paragon of manly manliness. I was testosterone personified. At least, that was what I was going for. Then Layla saw me and started laughing.
My heart sank.
“What?” I asked.
“Are you serious?” Layla’s eyebrows were halfway between her face and the ceiling.
“I look badass!”
“Uh-huh.”
“This doesn’t turn you on?” I flexed my right bicep, then turned and flexed my ass cheeks.
Layla shook her head. “You’re cute.”
“Cute?” Care Bears were cute. My Little Ponies were cute. Kittens, good Lord, kittens were cute! Me, dressed to the hilt in clearance items from army surplus, cute?
“Yeah, it’s cute.”
I sighed. “I was going for, you know, the look of a warrior about to save the world.”
Layla shrugged her shoulders. “Jeans and a t-shirt would have been fine.”
I stared at Layla blankly. “Jeans and a t-shirt. Tell me, on New Albion, do you go to battle in jeans and t-shirts?”
“Well, no,” Layla said. “But we don’t have blue jeans there, and our shirts are a bit more flourished.”
“I bet you don’t even wear whatever casual dress entails on New Albion when going to battle.”
“Of course we don’t,” Layla said. “We wear armor. But we’re not going to battle, Caspar. We’re trying to pull off a prisoner exchange. Agnus for the fake Blade.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I flexed again in the mirror.
Layla laughed. “Maybe after you spend a little more time in the gym.”
“Pssshhh. Who needs the gym when you’ve got camo?”
“Plus,” Layla said, “you look like you’re going to war in the Amazon. Shouldn’t you be prepared for water?”
“Nope,” I said. “You’re the one who said it. As far as Hector knows, all we’re hoping to do is swap for the cat. If I’m in a wet suit, he’ll know something’s up.”
/> “And GI Joe won’t be suspicious at all.” Layla chuckled.
“Again, I have to ask. How in the world do you know GI Joe but not Star Wars? Your selective absorption of Earth culture is curious.”
Layla shrugged. “Can’t take streaming services with me back to New Albion. I scored a bunch of old VHS tapes and an old television. It was a couple of years ago. I brought them back, and come to find out, the tapes included every episode of GI Joe ever made.”
“How in the world did you manage to watch that stuff without electricity?”
Layla shrugged. “I rented a generator and brought it back, too. And plenty of gasoline.”
“I’m guessing you never returned the rental?” I asked.
“Yeah, I suppose I’ve accumulated quite the fee at this point, but they accepted a cash deposit. Silly humans.”
I chuckled. “It’s been so long since I watched GI Joe, I can’t even remember much about it. I know I was a fan as a kid, though.”
“The best part was the lessons at the end of every episode. We learned a lot about Earth culture from those.”
I smiled. “I’m sure you did. Don’t talk to strangers. Just say no to drugs. Don’t litter.”
“Yeah.” Layla laughed. “That pretty much sums them up. But our military also studied them for tactics.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me. It’s GI Joe, not Sun Tzu’s Art of War.”
“Not even Clausewitz,” Layla said. “We’ve had those texts for some time. But now that I think about it, I’m not sure they were studying the cartoons for tactics we could use against the orcs. They were probably trying to learn a little about what Earth armies were capable of.”
I laughed. “Well, thankfully, if they were using GI Joe cartoons as a reference, they’re pretty far off from the truth.”
“Could you at least lose the headband?” Layla asked.
“What? This is badass!”
“No, it isn’t. It looks ridiculous.”
“Well, what are you wearing?”
“A hoodie and sweats.”
“Hot,” I said.
“Not too bad, actually,” Layla said. “They breathe well.”
“No, hot as in…never mind.”
“I knew what you meant,” Layla said. “And for what it’s worth, you’re a lot hotter in jeans than camo cargos.”
I sat down on the couch. “You want to know the truth?”
Layla sat down next to me and put her hand on my knee. “What is it?”
“I’m scared as shit.”
Layla nodded. “Understandable.”
“I mean, I’ve spent most of my adult life preaching comfort to people who lost loved ones. I told people their dead relatives were in a better place. To be apart from the body is to be with the Lord. I’m not saying I don’t believe that, but when you’re facing death, when it’s looming over you, it’s scary no matter how much faith you have.”
“So you’re afraid to die?”
I scratched the back of my neck. “Yes and no. I mean, I’ve always said I’m not, but that was when death was in the distant future. It was before all of this when I was going through the motions, preaching every week, then spending my nights alone in my apartment with Agnus. But now, it’s different.”
“Why is that?” Layla asked.
I blushed. “This is going to sound corny as hell.”
Layla giggled. “I can deal with corny.”
“Meeting you, it’s like I have a reason to live. When I think about death, it isn’t going into the great beyond that scares me. It’s the prospect of losing whatever opportunity we might have together. The whole idea that we just met, that things are moving so quickly but that it might all be taken away by some bullshit prophecy? If I’m honest, I’m not just scared. I’m pissed.”
“Pissed at the prophecy?”
I shrugged. “At the prophecy. At God. At myself for wasting so much of my life until now. At a lot of things.”
Layla slapped me on the knee. “Then screw the prophecy.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“You heard me. Screw the prophecy.”
“How do you even do that? I mean, is there a certain position?”
Layla snorted. “I’m not speaking literally, smartass.”
I smiled. “Better to be a smartass than a dumb ass, I always say.”
“Very true. But I’m serious, Caspar. Who cares what the prophecy says? You’re the one who told me that any prophecy can be interpreted in a bunch of ways.”
I nodded. “That’s true.”
“Then be yourself, Caspar. Drop the commando shit. That isn’t you. You do you. If you are the chosen one, it seems to me that someone, a god or whatever, actually chose you. I mean, that’s what being chosen means, right? And if that’s the case, you should believe the answer to all this is already inside you. You have everything you need to do this. You just have to look, and as you always say, when the opportunity presents, do the next right thing.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I had to admit, I was more comfortable in my jeans and t-shirt. I didn’t feel quite as badass, but maybe that was not what was needed. As Layla had said, if I was the chosen one, it presumed that someone—I’ll just call him God since it adheres most closely with my personal worldview—selected me as opposed to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the one to fulfill the elven prophecy.
Fuck dogma. Fuck prophesy. Fuck it all. Eleven. Human. Whatever. Yes, I realize that’s the trifecta of fucks. But do I give a fuck? No.
I was going to get my cat back even if it killed me, but fuck death, too. I wanted to live, and what was the point of rescuing my cat just to croak? That was irresponsible pet ownership.
We couldn’t see the full moon yet, but the sun was setting. In a matter of hours, if not minutes, the gateway between our world and New Albion would open.
I had the Blade of Echoes in my pocket. Layla told me I should hold it while she swapped the replica for Agnus. Thankfully, the Blade was well-wrapped in cheesecloth. Yeah, I might be the only person in the universe who could survive a cut by the Blade, but I didn’t want to inadvertently castrate myself, either.
The truth of it all is, despite what I might have said, I didn’t want to die because Layla’s soul was attuned to mine. It was one thing to allow myself to die, but I couldn’t allow her to die.
With all these f-bombs, I was probably due for a meeting. Usually, a case of the “fuck its” meant getting my ass to AA before I drank. But this time, it was a little different. I’d just had enough.
Too many people telling me I just had to accept bullshit.
Church dogma. Elven dogma. Prophecies.
Sure, it was Layla who’d introduced me to the elven prophecy, but she’d been duped, too. She’d been fed an elf-spun version of the prophecy, but there was another interpretation, maybe more interpretations that I didn’t even know about. The elven giants, it seemed, were less committed to a particular interpretation of the prophecy. They were so flexible that, unlike the elves, they allowed all their people to read translated versions of the prophecies.
B’iff in particular didn’t seem to be committed to any particular prediction. The only thing he was certain about was that the chosen one defined by the prophecy was me. What that meant, he didn’t know. Layla didn’t know. But the prophecy seemed to suggest I was destined to die, and since I’m not the son of God, I was quite sure my death would be a done deal, irreversible, straight to the grave, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred bucks.
Maybe it was foolish to bring both the Blade of Echoes and the replica, but Layla had the replica. She’d make the exchange. It just made sense. She was better trained to fight back once B’iff showed up. If B’iff showed up to beat me down, there’d be no struggle. If he pretended to struggle to fight me, Hector would know it was a ruse. But if he and Layla fought, well, she could hold her own for a little while. Long enough for Hector to take his chance and flee through the portal with what he’
d assume was the genuine Blade. We thought about leaving the genuine Blade behind. I mean, I could have put it in a safe deposit box or something. Hector wouldn’t be able to get it without pulling an Ocean’s Eleven-style heist.
But there was a chance that Hector would get wise to what we were doing. He might figure out that the Blade was fake, even if he rushed to bail through the portal with the Blade of Echoes.
And if that happened, despite his supposed commitment to elven dogma and the respect of animals, he wouldn’t give us Agnus. At best, he’d take my cat through the portal with him. Since New Albion didn’t have Bumblebee Tuna, he might as well be consigned to hell.
Hopefully, we wouldn’t need it, but I had the real Blade in my pocket just in case.
There were a couple of half-rusted old boats with pontoons suspended over the water where the Meramec and Mississippi met. I didn’t know the story behind those boats. I’d never been here before. I’d never had any reason to be. But they were strange.
Layla, however, was familiar with the surroundings. After all, her job had been to travel between worlds to research the suitability of our world for what she thought was a possible settlement and what her father saw as suitable for conquering.
“You’ve got the Blade, right?”
I nodded. “You do, too?”
She nodded back.
“Whatever happens, Caspar. I know we haven’t known each other that long, but I love you.”
“I love you too, Layla.” I smiled. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d told anyone that since my ex. It felt good to finally give my heart to someone else, no matter what our fate might be.
As we approached, I saw a figure on one of the rusted boats. He had Agnus in his arms.
“Casp!” Agnus shouted the moment he saw me. “About time, you son of a bitch!”
I chuckled. “At least we know he’s still himself.”
Layla grinned. “Told you he’d be fine. Probably mildly traumatized, but he’ll get over it.”
Who Let the Dogma Out (The Elven Prophecy Book 1) Page 21
