The Cauldron

by Jean Rabe

  “Ah, Esbiorn, I believe that when the universe was like you—young and impressionable—it was smooth like a lake on a windless day. And as it aged, its various features became more organized … planets whirling around suns, stars gathering themselves into clusters. Millions of stars, Esbiorn.”

  “One hundred billion in this galaxy,” Carl/Esbiorn said.

  In the folds of his mind, Carl could smell the tallow of the candle at Esbiorn’s small desk, and the mustiness of his stone-walled room, the coolness of the floor against the balls of his feet.

  Where had he gone after working for Tycho? Where and when had he been before that?

  Carl dismissed the memories of the astronomer and searched through the recesses of his mind, people and places, unbidden images coming to the fore—an elephant, two, three, and horses, pretty girls in colorful costumes, march-like music coming from a calliope. His senses wrapped around the calliope music, the smell of sawdust, the whistle of a ringmaster, the belly laughs of clowns.

  The screams of clowns.

  The shrill screams woke Tina and Petey. They were in her trailer, curled around each other on a narrow bed, the sheets damp from the heat of their bodies. The clowns in the neighboring trailers were hollering, one of them pounding on the door.

  “Wake up, Petey! Fire! Wake up!”

  Petey struggled into his jeans as Tina dropped an overlarge T-shirt over her. They tugged each other outside into what could have passed for the pits of hell. Flames were everywhere—animals and people, the clowns who’d alerted them running through the smoke. Some carried buckets. An acrobat tried to control a frightened camel.

  “Started at the blacksmith’s!” a juggler shouted as he stumbled past.

  Petey’s eyes smarted, and he rubbed at them with his free hand; the other was wrapped around Tina’s trembling fingers. Through the smoke he saw people spilling out of the mess hall where they must have been eating an early breakfast. If it was dawn, he couldn’t see it for the rosy haze of the fire.

  “We have to get out of here,” Tina said in Ellen’s voice.

  “C’mon.” Petey knew the winter headquarters grounds by heart. He didn’t need to see things clearly to find his way. If the fire had started in the blacksmith’s shop, they would head in the opposite direction to safety.

  The fire was as colorful as the tents and decorations he and Tina hurried past. Panicked, they had not bothered to look for their shoes. Bits of gravel and slivers from poles chewed into the bottoms of Petey’s feet, but he didn’t let the pain slow him. The air was desert-hot, despite it being winter, and it was filled with so much sound that Petey was practically deafened. The cries of animals and people, the crack of the fire spreading from canvas to canvas to wood and across brittle grass. Faintly, he listened to sirens.

  “No.” Petey stopped. He couldn’t just run. That would be selfish. They weren’t terribly far from the cat barn. It also contained the tanks for the seals and hippos and the quarters for some of the elephants. He had to help save the animals. “This way. We’ve got to get Freida out.”

  Flames licked up the side of the horse barn, fed by hay and straw, too engulfed to try to enter. He could smell burning flesh and pictured the beautiful pale horses dying. Past that was an office building, made of brick it was so far not touched by the conflagration. The adjacent circus wagons were not so fortunate. Petey had helped repaint ten of them; he knew they would be a total loss.

  Tina kept pace, hopping over tent posts and discarded tools, reaching forward even as he did, fumbling with the catches on the cat barn, covering her face and trying to breathe. Within heartbeats they had it open. The smoke had seeped in somewhere, and the world was hot, gray, and angry and filled with the sounds of terrified animals. The stench from burning flesh and the fire was oppressive. The catches on the cages were oven-hot, but Petey and Tina worked them open and stepped aside as the great cats bolted. Then they released the elephants.

  The animals thundered away. Petey and Tina started on the seals next. They would give their last measure trying to save as many animals as possible. Then he would pull her through the icy fog—and take the hippos with him—when there was no more hope, whisking all of them away to another life.

  As Ellen and John.

  Carl remembered where he’d seen Ellen’s picture in the newspaper; in her pretty circus costume, she’d been listed as one of those lost to the great fire of 1940, her body never recovered. Except she hadn’t been lost, he’d saved her.

  He could still hear the cries of the animals and the crack of the flames.

  As clearly as he now heard thunder and the angry patter of rain against his window.

  Through it he heard pounding on his bedroom door.

  Carl’s eyes snapped open, and he shook off all thoughts of Tycho and the divine bear and the stars and elephants.

  Carl’s scalp tightened. “Jerrah?”

  No response, but with the lightning flickering continuously, he saw the knob move, saw the door shift as it was pushed against the bolt.

  “Jerrah?” He cleared his throat. “Is that you?”

  Still no response.

  The knob rotated half a turn and held still.

  Carl went softly to the door and pressed his ear against the thin panel. Nothing was audible over the storm that still lashed the cabin.

  “Jerrah?” Had the “it” come back?

  He pressed his ear against the door again. Still nothing. “Jerrah, is something wrong?”

  The knob turned sharply again, and the door rattled against the bolt, startling him back from the door, but whoever was there said nothing.

  “Jerrah?” he repeated. “Is that you? Is something—”

  “Wrong? Yes, something is wrong,” Jerrah said, her intonation eerily flat. “Something is definitely wrong. I cannot open this door.”

  “You told me to lock it,” Carl said.

  “I did? Well, unlock it. Open this.” It certainly was Jerrah’s voice, but it came muffled through the door. The nightstand was still against it, and Carl saw the knob continue to twist and turn and the wood shake as she pounded on the wood. “I said open this.” A pause. “I need to talk to you.”

  “It’s late, Jerrah. We both need to sleep.” He paused. “How about I drive you to the bus stop in the morning?”

  “Open this door,” she repeated. “Open it now. I want to talk. That is all. Talk.”

  “I can hear you fine from where you are,” Carl answered.

  There was quiet for a few moments, just the sounds of the storm intruding. Then came a loud “wham!” that shook the door and rattled the nightstand. Jerrah had found something heavy and was using it to try to batter the door down. Maybe one of those metal-legged kitchen chairs, Carl thought. The hinges groaned and pulled with a second “wham!” Jerrah was going to defeat the door.

  Carl looked to the bed, thought about pushing it against the door. Then he looked to the window. In the pale yellow light from the overhead bulb the rain resembled shimmering snakes racing down the pane.

  Another “wham!” this one splintering some of the door, and Carl raced to the window and struggled with the latch. The window caught as he tried to open it; too much paint had been applied around the edges too many times, acting like cement. He finally worked it up just high enough so he could squeeze out when the nightstand fell over and the door broke open. Jerrah stood in the frame, eyes wide and pupils enlarged, lip curled up and head cocked at a funny angle. It was an expression Carl had never seen on her before and one that he might have thought comical, like out of some bad horror movie. Except it genuinely terrified him.

  “Come in,” Jerrah said. “You will get sick out there in the rain.” After a moment she straightened her head. “Just want to talk.”

  “I’ll bet.” Carl saw a knife in her hand. Too late, she tried to put it behind her back to hide it. “I’ll bet you just want to talk.” He slipped the rest of the way out the window.

  “Come back!”


  He’d not put on his shoes, and the gravel base around the exterior of the cabin bit at his feet through his thin socks, reminding him of his flight from the burning circus. The rain came at him sideways, almost hurtful in its intensity. A helluva storm for a helluva night, he thought, as he backed away from the window and hoped … what … that the dark would hide him from Jerrah?

  Carl’s heart thrummed, and the headache he’d lost in his sleep returned full force. His throat tightened and his mouth went instantly dry—despite all the water everywhere.

  “Water.” He’d considered rushing to the lodge and waking Ellen, having her call the police. But instead he ran toward the lake, his ungainly gate slowed by sticks and rocks that jolted him with pain. The ground trembled in time with the thunder’s rumble, and he thought he heard Jerrah hollering at him, but he wasn’t sure.

  He wanted to see if she was chasing him, but he didn’t want to waste a precious second turning around to look. Carl could see shapes, but barely, trees looking like ink smudges against a charcoal backdrop that brightened momentarily when flickers of lightning shot through it. But he knew where the lake was, straight ahead from his bedroom window, and within heartbeats his feet were slapping against the sand. Then the water was swirling around his ankles and his knees, and his pace was slowed by the push of the lake and the muddy bottom that grabbed at him.

  He slogged out farther, until the water reached waist-high, then he turned and looked to the shore, drawing ragged breaths and holding his side that ached from his burst of exertion.

  Jerrah was on the shore, knife in front of her, the blade glistening silver from the water and lightning flashes.

  “Come back!” she shouted. She said something else, but her voice was lost in a boom of thunder. She made no attempt to come into the lake after him. In fact, she stayed well back from the edge of it.

  She looked small, rain plastering her hair and clothes to her like a second skin. Her posture reminded Carl of a zombie from one of the B-movies he’d seen at a matinee. She motioned with her free hand.

  “You will get sick,” she called.

  “And I’ll get dead if I come out of the lake,” Carl muttered. Louder: “Jerrah! Snap out of it!” It, he thought. The ‘it’ she’d mentioned had come back, hadn’t it? Louder still: “Who are you?”

  Jerrah edged a foot closer and shuddered when lightning and thunder jarred the ground.

  “Who are you?” Carl repeated.

  “I am not Jerrah,” the figure said.

  ***

  Chapter 32

  Shipkeeper

  “If you’re not Jerrah, then who the hell are you?” the man in the lake hollered. “And what do you want with me?”

  The shipkeeper detected the tremor in the man’s voice. The lightning flashes showed the fear on his quarry’s face, and more than fear. Anger? Disbelief? Confusion? For so stoic a race, Elthorans often had a difficult time reading emotions.

  Was this truly the legendary Delphoros?

  No. It was the pitiful Delphoros.

  The man looked small in the water, hair flat against his head, rain pounding him, drops ricocheting against the surface all around. How could the Bright One be so terrified of a slip of a woman with a knife? Frightened enough to risk the deadly lake? It was far more dangerous than the weapon.

  “Delphoros,” the shipkeeper pronounced in a voice so low it could not reach his quarry. “You are he, the Bright One.”

  Even though Delphoros had instantly lost his exalted status in the shipkeeper’s eyes, he was nevertheless incredibly powerful. Too powerful to be allowed to live. When the lightning had flashed its whitest yet, the shipkeeper saw his quarry’s yellow eyes. That alone wasn’t convincing enough. But coupled with the other information, the navigator’s study of the energy surges and Melusine’s research, there was no longer a trace of doubt. Too, the shipkeeper just felt the closeness of the other Elthoran.

  Perhaps the time on this world had changed Delphoros … made him pathetic, shaped him into this … thing … that stood in the lake. Weak of spirit like this world’s beings. But still too powerful.

  The shipkeeper cursed himself for not taking Delphoros by surprise. He hadn’t counted on the door being locked, and he hadn’t picked through his host’s mind soon enough to know that Jerrah had warned Delphoros of the coming threat. He’d intended to slay Delphoros before he could escape through otherspace, and now the shipkeeper would have to take another approach, one not so primitive and elegantly simple. He should have used the ship’s weapons, but that would have alerted Melusine, who would have objected, and likely the energy disturbance would have given Delphoros time to act. Younger and stronger than he, Melusine could have stopped him. Would she have engendered a mutiny?

  Perhaps he could still use this Jerrah vessel for the task of eliminating Delphoros. He would have to be a little more clever. The shipkeeper probed deeper through Jerrah’s thoughts now, examining the scattered threads and discarding the bits that had no bearing on the current situation, trying to find something he could use.

  A love of loud rock music and saxophone riffs. Worthless.

  Cravings for cheese and chocolate, pizza and spaghetti. Irrelevant.

  A random thought surfaced: colorful silk scarves. She liked them, and received them for birthdays and Christmas. She had so many in her drawer at home that she worried she wouldn’t be wearing the right one when out to a dinner or a movie … the one her companion of the day had gifted her.

  He discarded the drivel.

  Her mind was so … he searched for a word and settled on basic. Her drives and ambitions were insignificant, and her plans for the future essentially non-existent. If he left her mind with lasting damage, it would be no loss to her or this world’s society.

  Thunder rocked the ground and the shipkeeper bent his borrowed knees in response. The wind howled. Storms were rare on Elthor; the rain was gentle and sporadic there, never as angry as this hellish display.

  “What do you want?” the man in the lake bellowed between booms. “Don’t just stand there. Talk to me, damn you!”

  The shipkeeper looked over Jerrah’s shoulder to the dry safety of the rustic cabin they’d fled. He desperately wanted to go back there, away from all of this water. Perhaps he should withdraw his mind and retreat to the ship. He tipped the face up, squinting into the driving, hateful rain. He moved her mouth, as if to say something, but nothing came out that he tried to vocalize. Jerrah’s vocal chords were not capable of reproducing the subtle sounds of the Elthoran language that he thought he might use on Delphoros. And so this body would force him to continue to speak like these lesser beings. He made an odd motion with her head, as if trying to rid himself of a stiff neck; in truth he just wanted to whip the hair out of her eyes so he could see better. He gripped the knife handle tighter.

  “It’s coming down in buckets out here,” the man—Delphoros—shouted. “You’re looking to the cabin? The roof is gonna start leaking. Those cabins weren’t built for this kind of weather. Let the wind yank a couple of those shingles off and there will be a waterfall in the kitchen. And you don’t like the rain, do you? Or maybe you just don’t like water.”

  The shipkeeper kept his gaze on the cabin. Even with a leaking roof it would be safer.

  Finally, the shipkeeper turned back toward the lake. “I only want to talk.”

  “Great. Tell me who you are first … since you’re not Jerrah.”

  “That is not im—”

  “I said … who the hell are you?”

  The shipkeeper lowered Jerrah’s gaze, meeting his quarry’s and studying him as much as he could given the conditions. He took a step forward. It wasn’t his body—that was on the ship overhead. So it would not be his body stepping into the lake after Delphoros-who-called-himself-Carl. It would be the body of the woman called Jerrah, and if she drowned the shipkeeper would not suffer for it. His mind would be released back to the ship. He would meld with another—surely there were other simple
souls nearby—and come at Delphoros again and again until the deed was finished.

  Another step and the shipkeeper stopped. It wasn’t his body, but it was his terror of the lake that paralyzed him; he was not capable of taking this form closer.

  “I am not Jerrah,” he said finally.

  “Yeah, we’ve already established that,” the man returned. “You’re the ‘it’ that’s been bothering her, right? You’re not some schizophrenic slice of Jerrah, are you? You’re something else entirely. You’ve possessed her. Right out of an old movie, you’ve possessed her.”

  The shipkeeper cocked his borrowed head. “I am a keeper.”

  “Great. A keeper of what? Nightmares and knives?”

  When the man waded out deeper still, the water well up to his chest, the shipkeeper closed his borrowed eyes and clamped the jaws together so tight he felt pain. It was an interesting, unpleasant sensation, and he let it go on for several moments before relaxing.

  “A shipkeeper, Delphoros.” He practically shouted to be heard above the storm. “You know what a shipkeeper is.”

  “I do, huh?”

  “I have come to rescue you, Delphoros.”

  “Rescue? You’re going to rescue me with a knife?”

  “I have come in answer to your distress call.”

  The man in the lake shook his head and sputtered. “Distress call? Delphoros? What the hell are you talking about?”

  I am not wrong, the shipkeeper thought. This is Delphoros. “You have forgotten yourself,” he called. “Forgotten who you are and where you came from.”

  The man said something, but the words were lost in the boom of thunder. Something rattled, branches scratching against the cabin’s roof.

  “I just want to talk.” The shipkeeper made a show of dropping the knife. There was still another in Jerrah’s back pocket, and it would suffice if he could lure Delphoros close. Perhaps he did not yet have to give up on the simple approach.

  “What do you want to talk about? What’s so important that you have to wake me up in the middle of the night? And bring a knife with you no less.”