Forged in Fire

by J. A. Pitts

  I tried to brush her hair from her eyes, but her hair didn’t move. It was strange, though. I could feel her when I touched her, but inside, like an emotion.

  She didn’t react outwardly. Total bummer. I’d totally hoped for one of those Patrick Swayze Ghost moments.

  Now that I’d figured out how to move, I explored the apartment. I could see places I didn’t know existed before my eyes had opened in the astral form, but I didn’t have X-ray vision or anything.

  Not much different from the real world, only everything remained black and white. As I thought about it, I don’t think things were black and white the other times I’d gone astral. Maybe it was the tea. I’d have to look into that as well.

  The bedroom was just like the rest of the house. I poked around, looking for secrets, but beyond the box of toys Katie kept beneath the bed the room was pretty blasé. I turned to leave, but something behind the bed caught my eye. I could barely make out a shadow of a door behind the headboard. There was no door there in the real world. Perhaps it was the memory of a door.

  I floated above the bed and examined it. I’d traveled between solid objects on other walkabouts, so I figured I could probably put my hand through the wall where the impression of the door was. I had a feeling the door had been in that space long before the apartment had been built. An older building, then. It had a presence beyond its physical existence. I had no idea how I knew that. It just felt right, ya know?

  The apartment on the other side of that wall should be a mirror image of this one, and it had been vacant for a while now. I pitied anyone who moved in there. Katie and I tended to get a little rambunctious. The occasional hollering and banging about.

  The thought made me all tingly. It was strange. I was definitely a little turned on despite the fact that I had no physical body that could react at this moment. Spiritually aroused, I guess.

  I reached for the doorway, feeling a bit of a daredevil.

  I pushed my hand into the wall to the right of the doorway, and it felt like I was trying to push through oatmeal. Thick and viscous. I could do it, but it would take some effort. Next, I tried the doorway. There was more resistance than when I moved through the open air, that’s for sure. The space wanted to be a doorway, so it was easier, if that makes any sense.

  I leaned my head forward next, pushing through to see the other side before I committed my entire being. I’d been able to pull my hand back with no problems. As I slid across the threshold something odd happened. Unlike crossing from the living room to the bedroom, this had a different feel.

  A sucking sensation pulled me sideways into the wall. I fought it, struggling against the force. I flung my arms out, grabbing either side of the narrow gap between the wall, and halted my forward motion. My mind raced back to Skella and her description of the sideways. This was it, in the raw.

  The sideways was not the narrow point between the walls. Instead, it was a whole wide world. A world full of sharp angles and crystal. If I flowed against those shards that made this new world, I knew my spirit would be shredded. Danger, my mind screamed. This is not where you want to be.

  I redoubled my efforts to pull away and felt myself moving a fraction of the way out of the slipstream. Clear your mind, Beauhall, I thought to myself. Keep your head and will yourself out.

  I was locked in a balance, part of me being pulled forward like taffy, the rest held back in the real world.

  Something tiny scuttled across the crystalline landscape—a many-legged thing with pincers half the size of its body. Crap. A wave of spindly, many-legged creatures swarmed over the distant hills. And, following in their wake, came the mack daddy of eaters. Skella’s warnings had not done it justice. My mind flashed to Shelob from Lord of the Rings, but even that beast paled in comparison to this monster. Here was a predator on par with the dragons, only this creature had only one thought: eating. I could feel its hunger washing over me in great putrid waves. I might have started screaming.

  The slipstream pulled at me as I struggled, losing strength and hope. “Help me,” I whispered. I could do no better than that.

  “Fool!” a voice blasted into my psyche. I looked around, and a streak of light sped toward me. I had no idea who or what it was, but there was color there, a golden glow that was warm and welcoming.

  “Get back,” the voice echoed across the crystalline world. I was shoved back across the threshold.

  I woke screaming. The eater had been nearly upon us. Yet, somehow, I was free. I knew who the other was. The second he touched me, I knew.

  Katie was at my side, her arms wrapped around me, shushing me. I stopped screaming but shook in her arms for a long time. I kept muttering his name. She couldn’t understand me.

  “It’s okay,” she kept saying. “You’re safe. I’m here.” Over and over until I stopped shaking and could think straight.

  “It was him,” I said, urgently. “I need my phone.”

  She sat back, shocked as I launched myself from her and snatched my phone from the counter. I dialed and danced around impatiently while it rang.

  “Come on, answer.”

  Finally, Skella picked up. “What the hell?” she asked. “I gotta sleep sometime, geez.”

  “It was Gletts,” I shouted into the phone. “He just saved me from an eater.”

  “What?” she asked, obviously not awake. “Gletts, what?”

  “I was going walkabout,” I explained as slowly as my pounding heart would allow. “There’s a doorway here, old and barely a memory. I tried to go through it and got sucked into the sideways.”

  Katie gasped behind me, her hands over her mouth. “Holy shit,” was all she could say.

  “That’s bad,” Skella said. “How’d you get out?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. I was being drawn into the vortex, pulled into the world of crystal and sharp things. Eaters began to flock toward me, mostly small ones, but then I saw this monster.” I shuddered thinking about it. Katie went and took a blanket from the couch and draped it over my shoulders.

  “It was horrifying,” I whispered. “It wanted to devour my spirit.”

  “Yeah,” Skella said. “That is what I warned you about.”

  “Gletts saved me, Skella. Seriously. He called me a fool and pushed me back across the threshold. He was a streak of golden light. You’ve gotta tell Unun. She’ll know what it means.”

  Skella was crying. Not deep sobbing or anything, but I could hear it in her voice. “Thank the maker,” she said, her voice thick. “I’ll go now. I’d about given up hope. If he’s in the sideways maybe we can draw him home.”

  The line went dead and I turned to Katie, pulled her to me and let her warmth settle me. “Come on,” she said, pulling me to the nest of blankets on the floor. “Lie down with me. Let me hold you.”

  So we lay together, our bodies intertwined, and I just let her presence soothe me. Here was safe; here was home. I fell asleep in her arms and dreamed of crystal worlds.

  Thirty-two

  Julie was finishing the last of her breakfast dishes when there was a knock at the door. She dried her hands on a dishrag and grabbed the cane that leaned against the counter. She’d been using it less and less, but she was afraid to be without it. Okay, to be fair, she was just afraid. The killing out at Mary’s place had her on edge. She’d come back to the apartment for a night, just to get some space, but she’d be going back later in the day.

  “Just a minute,” she called as the knocking persisted. “Hold your horses.”

  When she got to the door, she looked through the peephole. It was a woman, but the distortion was too severe for her to tell who. She opened the door and was stunned at the woman in front of her.

  Here was a proper lady, dressed in a fine flower-print dress, white gloves, and even a small hat that sat atop her flowing blond hair. She had the most beautiful blue eyes. Julie knew who this was immediately. There was no doubt this woman was Sarah’s mother. Same eyes, same mouth, set and stubborn. Her whol
e face said she was stubborn and worried all at the same time. Julie almost laughed, the look was so familiar.

  “May I help you?”

  “You’re older than I thought,” the woman said.

  Julie winced a little. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We do tend to age. You’re Sarah’s mother, right?”

  Mrs. Beauhall blinked rapidly then nodded once, curtly, producing a half smile. “Well, since we already seem to know one another. I assume you are Katie.”

  Julie couldn’t help but laugh. Here stood Sarah’s mother, and she not only knew that Katie existed, but assumed that she was Katie … and Sarah’s lover to boot.

  “Oh, Mrs. Beauhall,” she said after a moment. “I’m Julie, Sarah’s…”—she almost said boss, but that relationship had been on hold since May—“… a friend of Sarah’s,” she finished.

  Mrs. Beauhall looked confused. “I take it Sarah is not here?”

  “No, she’s,” she paused. Was it her place to tell this woman anything about her daughter? She waved her hand. “Likely at work. You know Sarah, always off somewhere.”

  “Are you her lover then? Has this Katie moved along? This is Sarah’s place. You live here as well, I presume.”

  “Please come in,” Julie offered, stepping aside. “It’s not as sordid as all that.”

  Mrs. Beauhall did not move, but Julie could see the conflicting emotion on her face.

  “Mrs. Beauhall. If you’d like to come in, I’ll make some tea and we can chat,” Julie offered.

  The decision clicked into place. It was just exactly like watching Sarah. “Yes, that would be nice,” she said and crossed into the apartment. “Please call me Meredith.”

  Thirty-three

  Skella called us just after her morning shift change and arranged to bring us back out to Vancouver. We got to Stanley Park and set up in the healing lodge before I had my first cup of coffee. Unun was excited to hear the news I had and a little worried not only that Gletts was roaming down our way in spirit form but also that he had somehow crossed over into the sideways.

  “Probably using the shortcut to get to Sarah’s place,” Skella offered. “You know he’s in love with her.”

  Unun nodded, her lips pressed together tightly.

  “He saved her,” Katie added. “I’m glad he took the risk.”

  “Let us prepare,” Unun said in response. “I would know what you can learn.”

  We set up for the walkabout. I took one of the empty pallets and sipped the tea. Unun prepared it this time, whispering words in a language I didn’t know.

  “Elvish,” Katie said, in awe. “She’s wishing you a safe journey.”

  Skella was shocked. “You can understand her?”

  “Some of it. I’ve studied it for years, but it’s more like Latin to me. No one really speaks it.”

  Skella said something in Elvish, grinning.

  Katie was thrilled.

  I fell asleep with Katie and Skella making small talk in Elvish and Unun hovering over me, her eyes tired and shining.

  The transition was much quicker this time. I sat up, away from my body, and floated upward to a standing position. All around me the world was beautiful. Unlike our apartment, where the only color was in the connection between Katie and me, here everything glowed with light. There were connections between each of the others in the room, a kaleidoscope of emotion and love.

  I walked around, enraptured by the way every object resonated with energy. How had I not seen this the other times? Was it because here things were handmade with loving care? More natural than the cold, machine-made world I lived in?

  Katie glowed the brightest, of course. I loved her. I could see the connections the others in the room had to one another, various mingling of colors and intensity of light. After a minute I was able to adjust my vision to tone down the overwhelming spray of colors and see the world a little more basically. The colors were there if I wanted to see them. It was like looking at those 3-D illusion pictures where if you screw your eyes just right you can see depth in a flat picture. Like that.

  Gletts had a silver tether flowing from him—a wispy thread that snaked upward and through a large mirror that hung on one wall. He was in the sideways right now. Others had tethers as well, some strong, like Gletts, while some were more threadbare. I willed myself around the great room, examining each of the fallen. There were several dwarves in the back, tended by the elves and visiting dwarves. I recognized them from the battle. They’d taken up arms to protect the elves, unlike some of their brethren. Those who had abandoned the elves to their fate were mostly dead, in any case.

  One of the dwarves, a burly young man with a braided red beard and rosy complexion, had the weakest tether of them all. He had no desire to stay here, I realized. His tether was straining, being pulled on the other end. The only reason he had not moved on was the anchor two dwarf women had to him. They had their hands on him as if he were going to float away.

  I brushed the tether with my hand, and I could feel the pull between them. He yearned to move on to the next place, a happier place. Opposing this was the love of two women—a mother and a sister—trying desperately to keep him with them.

  I could feel the tether like a braided cord in my hands. The yearning was so strong on the far end that I knew I could pluck the three remaining strands, breaking the tether, freeing the man’s spirit to go onward.

  But the women held him so tightly, I couldn’t do it. It was not my place. The tether would unravel on its own before too long. That much was obvious.

  I drifted onward, looking at the others. Some had the strength to return, while some were lost, wandering in places where no return was possible.

  I moved back to the mirror where Gletts’s tether flowed and looked through into the crystal world. There were no eaters that I could see, only a plane of clarity and beauty corrupted with the webs of discord.

  Gletts had gone into the sideways, and not for the first time, I was sure. He couldn’t be lost; he could follow his tether home. Why was he dithering? He should be back here by now.

  I placed my hand on his tether and felt it was strong. At my touch, a pulse ran in both directions, one to his body, and one through the mirror.

  I glanced over. His body arched for a moment, as if an electrical charge had gone through him, and then he settled again. Back into the quiet state he’d occupied for weeks.

  The other pulse had gone into the mirror and disappeared. Would he feel that on the other end?

  Skella was watching me through that mirror, her eyes full of wonder. She waved at me, smiling, and Katie looked confused at her side. Skella touched the mirror, causing its surface to waver, and suddenly Katie could see me as well. She looked back from my body to where I stood just behind her, and she turned.

  “I can’t see her,” Katie said. “Except in the mirror.”

  “I can,” Unun said. “She is a spirit, is she not? It takes practice to see one such as she.”

  Unun dripped several drops of honey against my lips, and I felt a tug back to my body. “Come home,” she said to me. “Let us talk properly.”

  I allowed myself to flow back to my body, willing the walkabout to end, which it did. I sat up feeling refreshed and a bit sad. I could hear the dwarf women crying on the other side of the chamber.

  “He is so desperate to move on,” I said to Unun, who looked at me with her ancient eyes. “They’re keeping him here, causing him grief. They should free him.”

  “They will let him go soon,” she said quietly. She helped me to my feet. “Let us go back to our house, have some tea, and discuss the ways of the world.”

  Katie took my hand as we walked out of the house. “That was so cool,” she whispered to me, squeezing my hand. “What was it like?”

  “Beautiful and sad,” I told her. “It’s different here. Alive. Our apartment is cold in comparison. Inert.”

  Her face fell, and I wished I hadn’t told her. “Maybe we should move,” I said. “Find a new
place, one where we aren’t over a gun shop, you know?”

  That brightened her. “That’s probably it,” she said, emphatically. “Too many items of destruction between us and the earth.”

  We walked through the village, hand in hand. Part of me was content to just be with her and part of me missed the vibrancy of the “other.”

  Thirty-four

  Frederick Sawyer paced along the trails of the Alpine Rock Garden. Most of the flowering plants were dormant, but the rhododendron had a few straggling blossoms. They would be gone by the time winter actually arrived. He checked his phone for the time. Mr. Philips had arranged to meet him well over an hour ago. It was not like his most able servant to be late for any meeting or obligation.

  A group of schoolchildren entered the Bellevue Botanical Gardens led by a wiry, gray-headed volunteer. They cackled and tittered in their childish ways, each a nattering bundle of energy and optimism.

  They did not bother him. Unlike some of his kind, he saw children as beneficial parts of society. And, on occasion, a sometimes snack.

  He chuckled to himself. He had not eaten a child in nearly a hundred years.

  Perhaps he would visit the Yao Garden portion. It would take the children a while to reach that section of the grounds. Besides, he quite enjoyed the Japanese maples.

  Forty-five minutes later the children had made their way to where Frederick sat. He wanted to enjoy their antics, but the absence of Mr. Philips had become too much to bear. His ire had risen to the point that several of the closer children began to move away, whimpering.

  The tour guide watched him as if he had done something. He rose from his seat and walked briskly to the gift shop. There, he dropped two fifties into the donation box and strode out to his waiting car.

  Mr. Philips had never failed to show. Frederick was beside himself. What could have possibly detained him? He dialed Mr. Philips for the seventh time and slammed his phone closed when it went to voice mail. “Damn it,” he growled.