Dumb Luck

by J G Jerome

  I agree, “She is more special than most people will ever realize. I am honored that she calls me her man.”

  L’ric says, “The final introduction is L’liana.” The waif bows to me. “L’liana is here for different reasons. She is my great, great grand-daughter; however, she is here because she cannot seem to control herself to not abuse her powers. If she cannot get herself under control. She will never leave this community.”

  L’liana drops her head in shame as she blushes a bright red up her neck, face, and the ‘tips of her ears.

  I look at L’liana as I speak to L’ric, “My initial impression is that she is precocious and witty. I suspect that she will meet expectations when she decides it is important to her and not a moment before. Once she makes that decision, I am certain she will amaze you all.”

  L’liana continues to look towards the floor, but her blush has been replaced by a shy smile.

  Then I ask L’ric, “L’ric, you’ve not introduced yourself. Would you please? Apparently you are the leader here?”

  L’ric asks, “Certainly, Lord Jack. I am the leader here by default, as I’ve been here for the longest. Before I retired, I was the Champion for the Lady of the West. The Lady of the West is the elven equivalent of the queen of all the western hemisphere of our planet. There is also a Lady of the East that holds dominion over Europe, Asia, and Oceania.”

  “Thank you, L’ric.”

  L’ric asks, “Jack, would you please tell me about your family, who you are, and how you came to be here?”

  I smile that he finally called me ‘Jack.’ “Okay, L’ric. I come from a mix of French, German, and Irish heritage to the best of my knowledge. I grew up in eastern Kansas. My parents both worked in Topeka, the capital city, but we lived on a little five-acre place in the country outside a small town. My grand-papa Jerome lived on the old family farm nearby, so I grew up working on a farm caring for animals, gardening, and as I grew older, putting up hay, fixing fence, and slaughtering animals. I used to love to go hunting with my grand-papa. Even when I was too young to carry a weapon, he showed me how to look for signs of animals, how to stalk, how to sit still patiently for as long as needed, how to listen to nature to know what is happening nearby. He taught me to care for what is mine - people and property. He taught me to have uncompromising standards for behavior - mine and for those around me. My parents were openly affectionate towards each other, and they taught me to love. I learned from my dad that you treat ladies like the rare treasures they are. My mother gave me a love of music, and I learned the basics of music from her.”

  I take a breath to think about where to go next as Trina caresses my knee gently. “I played sports in high school. I tried them all, which in my school was football, basketball, wrestling, and track. I wasn’t particularly great at any of them, but I had decent basic athletic ability. I also tried a variety of different interests in school. I tried martial arts, debate, drama, music, and photography. Martial arts, music, and photography were the ones that stuck longterm. I got along well with pretty much all the different cliques, but kinda coasted along the boundaries rather than finding myself as a part of a group.”

  “I went to the closest state university, which was in Manhattan, Kansas studying liberal arts. I went to army ROTC, summer camps for the 2nd & 3rd summer of my college years, and graduated with a history degree, a handful of computer classes, some basic foreign language skills, and a 2nd Lieutenant’s commission in the US Army. I had almost every tactical artillery job that a junior officer could have, but I also got involved in some anti-terrorist work as a Captain. I got a master‘s degree while I was in the army in information systems; so, when I left I went into Information Technology for an insurance company in Phoenix. I worked for a number of insurance companies across the country focusing on a mix of technical and project management roles. About seven years ago, I got a call from a former employer to come help them out on a contract. That was the opportunity that led to me starting my own company. I liked Arizona from when I first got out of the army; so, I made my base of operations here to fly around the country.”

  I pause for a minute. L’ric looks like he’s about speak. I hold up a palm to forestall him as I prepare myself to talk about the painful part. “I had a younger brother. He was five years younger than me, so I didn’t share high school or college with him. He worshipped me as only a younger brother can, and I adored him. It became obvious early on that he was brilliant. He tested nearly genius in all the tests and was a savant in math and science. He went to MIT on an academic scholarship for physics. His sophomore year, Scotty was in Cambridge walking back to his dorm from a convenience store an early Friday evening. Visibility was terrible as it was raining heavily, and the normal Friday parties had been ongoing for hours at that point. Another student was inebriated and driving back to his frat house. Scotty crossed at the walk complying with the signal, but the car didn’t stop for the red light. He hit Scotty at almost 60 mph. The car crushed his body; he was dead on impact.”

  I pause for a moment. “My army unit was preparing to redeploy back home at the end of the first Iraq war when I got the news. My commander would not release me to go on leave to make funeral arrangements, but my parents said they wanted to do it. They flew to Boston with the intent to claim Scotty’s body and make the arrangements. They called headquarters and left information about flights and hotels before they left. We loaded my unit up the day my parents landed and flew back to Germany. When we got back to the headquarters, there was no information; so, I called their hotel. They hadn’t checked in. I called the morgue only to discover they never showed. I finally convinced my commander to let me take leave. I was able to catch a military hop back to Hanscomb Air Force Base in Massachusetts and then buses and taxis to the Cambridge police department.”

  I have to stop for a deep calming breath before continuing. “There I learned that my parent’s rental car was t-boned by a cement truck. Dad had died immediately. Mom survived about three hours in the hospital without ever waking up. I made the arrangements for all three bodies to fly back to Kansas, and had the funerals there so all our friends and family could be there. It took me years to properly process all that grief. It is still difficult to talk about.”

  Another deep breath is in order, “I stayed a soldier for several years, and I think it was the anti-terrorist work that finally made me care enough to have relationships again. Seeing other people suffer tragic loss resonated in me. In some cases I got vengeance for them. In other cases, I chased down monsters and kept them from hurting others. I caught many of the monsters, but one managed to get away. That failure still haunts me.”

  “After I got out of the army, I found that normal work seemed sleepy in comparison. After about six months in my first civilian job, I got a lucky assignment to work on some technically difficult problems. The challenge of being heads-down digging through computer logic kept me engaged, and eventually my experience leading people made me a natural to transition to project management. As I already mentioned, my experiences eventually led to me starting my own company. I now have three employees, and if I get these contracts I’m working on, I will have to bring at least one more on. Maybe two.”

  “I was in Hartford meeting with a prospective client when I met Myra Nessus on the plane home. We struck up a friendship, and she subsequently introduced me to Trina. As we were driving Myra to Sedona, we were attacked by the Green Knight of the Summer Court and seven confederates, one of which was Prince Corwyn of the Summer Court. We killed them all, and that is how I managed to pick up the three relics. Eventually we delivered Myra to her office, and Trina has kindly been driving me around looking for a property where I can build my home ever since. That is how I came to be at your door.”

  Trina speaks up, “Honored hosts, may I interject?” L’ric nods and indicates assent with a broad hand motion. “When I met Jack, I noticed he had green eyes. He had just been kissing Myra at the time. Later, when we were getting into the
car, I noticed he had what I would call ‘hazel’ eyes. Several times today I have seen his eyes turn green, and in a few cases they began to glow - making love to Myra in the car, when we were in battle with the Summer court knights, our battle with an assassin, and when L’ric targeted me. I’ve heard that mortals’ eyes sometimes appear to have changing color based on lighting and emotion. I’ve never heard of a mortal with glowing eyes. Can you explain that?”

  L’ric raises his eye towards O’ren.

  O’ren nods, picking up the lead. “Well, your inferred assumption is correct. Mortals eyes don’t glow. Changing color like you described among pure humans is also extremely rare, even if only where the shades change from blue to green to grey, etcetera. The truth is there are very few if any pure humans on the planet. Over the millennia since our people arrived in this dimension, we and the Fae have interbred with them frequently. However, our communities are fairly insular; and therefore, there is very little human genetic code among Fae or Elf populations.”

  He shakes his head, “I apologize. I digress. More to the question you are asking, I can explain what you are observing. The reason Lord Jack’s eyes glow is that he really isn’t a mortal. We have known of and followed his family for generations. They are the last remaining significant bloodline of the Green Lord. All other known families have been more heavily diluted. The only reason they exist at all is that roughly every 500 years, the Elven dynasties have socially engineered relationships that would create offspring with higher concentrations of Green Lord genetic material. Rather than use ‘the Green Lords’ genetic code’ all the time, we coined the term ‘Verdic genetics.’ Our goal was to try to create several families of offspring with at least 25% Verdic genetics. The closest we reached was during the reign of Charlemagne. In Charlemagne’s court, there were a variety of families that had Verdic genetics in excess of 10%, but there was one family where the father was roughly 18% and the mother was 16%. They had two children, a son and a daughter. The daughter was sold into a political marriage, and her line dwindled to the point where our abilities were unable to detect significant Verdic contributions. In the son however, the genetic dice rolled a winning combination delivering all the Verdic potential from both parents. This young boy with 43% Verdic contribution became a squire, a knight, a leader, and a husband. He was the knight on whom Roland, as in Chanson de Roland, was based. His actual name in Frankish was Railand. Incidentally, the tale written by the ‘Norman bard,’ Turold, mentions the ‘Fairy Queen Morgan le Fay giving Hector’s armor to Roland.’ The Summer Lady at the time was named Morgan, and she did gift Railand some of the armor relics after about two weeks of bedroom acrobatics. She gave him the shield, helmet, sword & dagger. Her knights recovered it all upon his death. The Norman bard that wrote the tale, Turold, was named T’rold at his birth; he was Elven.”

  “So, where were we? Oh yes, so Railand had 43% Verdic genetic contribution. He was really the last Green Lord; although, he had no benefit of coaching from his predecessors, had no apparent powers, and my people were unable to make him understand what that meant. He remained fixated on being a ‘holy knight’ until his death, with one exception. His friend Ol’veria, another of us, would regularly bring young married ladies of high Verdic content to his bed for breeding. They would go back to their husbands who were none the wiser there was a Green Lord’s child in his wife’s womb. One of my people’s more manipulative and less illustrious moments in history. However, as a result Railand did accomplish one of the goals of a Green Lord quite well. He eventually married a young woman with 19% Verdic genetics. They had eleven children, all of which had over 25% Verdic genetics. Your grandfather Gerard was one of our biggest hopes when he moved to the US from Brittany just before the Nazi’s invaded France. He had 12% Verdic heritage. We were despondent with his decision to leave, but it turned out for the best. He is the only Verdic survivor from Europe after the war. We managed to engineer a situation for him to meet a lovely young Irish girl in Chicago with 8% Verdic heritage. Your father and your mother had 10% & 12% respectively. Your mother also brought Elven heritage with her. Your younger brother was our great hope after your grandfather. Scott was another Railand, he inherited all the Verdic genetic code from each of your parents, and all of your mother’s Elven code. You on the other hand appear to have inherited about half of what Scott did. We measured you at 11% Verdic and 5% Elven when you were born. We gave up hope that you would advance the line as you showed little interest in anything other than working. Then you were engaged, but to a woman that was as close to purely human as any around. And here you show up demonstrating indicators of powers. Inconceivable, really.”

  Gobsmacked isn’t strong enough to describe how I’m feeling at the moment. I can’t think. I can’t move.

  Trina asks, “So the shining green eyes mean he is this ‘Green Lord?’ What does that mean?”

  O’ren responds, “Well, the Green Lords were here when the Elves arrived. Humans were here too, but think more neanderthal and Homo erectus types of humans. The Green Lords looked essentially like modern humans. It’s more than the eyes that turn green. The glowing green eyes only happens if the individual has the ability to wield the powers. The powers of creation. Healing, fertility, genetic manipulation, accelerated growth are the powers we have documented. Also the powers of physical manipulation of creation. Binding, sleep, moving limbs, etc. They tend to draw people to them. Women are drawn to Verdic males. Verdic females don’t do the same if they are bonded to a Verdic male, otherwise they will find a mate with an optimal mix of strength, nurturing, intelligence, wisdom, and virility. It’s as though they have a genetic predisposition to nurture their broods to healthy adulthood. Traditionally, brood is the correct term as most ancient Verdic females had ten or more children almost without fail. Their bodies healed and recovered quickly from childbirth; so, there were no long-term effects for Verdic mothers. The wear from raising so many children was also mitigated by the common practice of Green Lords having multiple wives in a family, and even more concubines. An average person of 50% or greater Verdic genetic heritage would live for 500 to 1,500 years. The last Lord of the Verdic dynasty ruled for 1,200 years, and he was 700 when he took over from his father. He was exceptional.”

  Trina says, “You make them sound like gods.”

  O’ren shakes his head emphatically, “No. Just like Elves and Sidhe, they are very long lived compared to humans. They are not immortal. I suspect many of the gods of myth are based on individuals who were Green Lords or Verdic beings that were not directly in the Green Lord’s court. As you can imagine, they created many children of many different mixes of races - there are likely many hybrids. The only reason they aren’t the predominant race is that the Sidhe were rabid about killing them for many millennia.”

  I finally bring myself to speak, “Durec said the Green Lords were powers of ‘wild magic and powers of creation.’ He said more like elven or brownie powers than Sidhe.”

  O’ren nods, “That may well be. As a sentient relic, Durec may know more about it than I do. Any of the Elven that ever stayed in a Verdic court for any appreciable amount of time would always swear loyalty to the Lord and refuse to add to our histories. Every single one. The Elven community has always declared its loyalty to the Green Lord, but we maintained separate courts - much like the Goblins do with the Unseelie.” He indicates towards Trina. “The Verdic power to inspire loyalty is very strong. Everything we have learned, we have learned by observing from the outside or from short visits to the Verdic court. Do you know how Durec was created, Lord?”

  I say, “Jack. My name is Jack.”

  O’ren, “Certainly Jack. Do you know?”

  “I do.”

  “Will you share that knowledge? I have suspicions, but it is pure speculation.”

  “No, I will not share that knowledge, O’ren. Furthermore, I encourage you to keep your speculation to yourself. The truth is too dangerous to share with anyone. I would forbid you to speak of
it if I had that power.” My eyes are piercing into him. Trina is squeezing my knee hard, and L’liana looks as though she has seen a ghost.

  O’ren nods. “Jack, I think you do have the power to forbid it. If my speculation is correct, the answer is too horrible to contemplate. I have not spoken of it to anyone else and will honor your request for the rest of my days,” he says with a bow. He looks at his two apprentices demanding, “Your vow to never mention this topic again on your souls!”

  They look at each other and then to me, “We swear to O’ren and the Green Lord as O’ren asked it. Thus mote it be forever.” Their eyes flash purple as they say the last part, and I felt a basso pulse through my body.

  I sag on my pillow. I hear Trina gasp, and then she is leaning over me wrapping her arms around my shoulders.

  I see her knees pressed into my right leg as she squeezes me. “What have you done to him?” she cries. “Undo it or I will slay you all!”

  I grab her arms quickly and sit up. “Shhhh, Trina. I’m okay. They did nothing to harm me. Please apologize to our hosts.”

  She ducks her head but won’t release me. “I apologize for confirming your poor opinion of my people. I don’t know what came over me. I can’t bear the thought of you harming him. He has become precious to me very quickly.”

  I wrap my arm around her and gently pull her into my lap. She settles in with her arms around my shoulders and her face in my neck. I whisper to her, “I love you too, Darling.” She rewards me with a little squeeze.

  I add to the room, “My apologies for acting so wimpy. Today has been one shit twinkie of a surprise after another, and I feel like I’ve eaten a whole box. I let it get me down, which had a much more powerful impact on my dear Trina than I anticipated. I am sorry.” They smile indulgently at the ‘shit twinkie’ metaphor. I guess they got it.