As before, paragraphs in blue are my own and the ones in black belong to my fellow author, the blogger known as akh who writes
http://akh-wonderfullife.blogspot.co.uk/
The story continues:-
Trader was getting annoyed. Could he not have even a few millennia off without the whole of creation teetering? All he wanted was a little time for himself, a little time to be free to know the things he did alright. After all, he’d paid his dues hadn’t he? It seemed that everybody wanted him to be what they wanted him to be and he was never happy when he tried to fake it. Just why in the world would anybody want to put chains on him? But it appeared that they did. Hadn’t he begged, stole, and even borrowed throughout this whole existence of his – which was for ever – and wasn’t he stealing this whole train of thought right now, or at the very least borrowing it? No, how could the Supreme Being beg, steal or borrow anything? Surely it was his to beg, steal or borrow anyway – after all he’d created it, he’d created everything… hadn’t he? And that was the kernel of the problem… he was beginning to suspect that he wasn’t actually THE Supreme Being after all. He was beginning to suspect that there may be others and that he wasn’t working in the glorious isolation he’d assumed. Firstly, there was the Artist. Trader had known about the Artist for some time, trillions and trillions of years really. Not that a year was a sensible measure of time; if there was such a thing as time and even he - who hade created it – wasn’t fully decided yet. It wasn’t a mystery to him obviously, but he hadn’t yet made a decision about the physics of it all. No, not quite yet. He had and did quite liked Einstein though and might allow him to be proved right in the end. Alternatively he might dispense with physics altogether, or allow Lionel Ritchie to become a leading physicist and make any new laws he choose – maybe he’d forget all about gravity and let everybody dance on the ceiling. Oh what a feeling that would be, turning upside down and not holding back. Even Trader might end up finding it hard to keep his feet on the ground… Yesiree – he really did like to ball it, come on everybody clap your hands… everybody have sense… it is love now. NO! This had to stop. Someone or something was messing with his mind, interfering with his thought patterns - he didn’t even like music, in fact he hated it. Music hadn’t been one of his best creative moments; but once it was out it just seemed to roll on and on. Perhaps it was the Artist? No, he didn’t really think that it was the Artist… and if not him then it had to be some other Supreme Being or Beings. Yes, some other or others. In recent times he’d heard them in the static, phasing in and out of the white noise, coming through in the gaps in the cosmic echo, some presences clearer than others - one very clear indeed. Or was it one? Sometimes it sounded like there were three of them, three so intertwined that in reality they were one – a kind of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost only real and rather than that particular trio more Mother, Daughter and Something Else. He didn’t know how he knew about them, he didn’t know what that Something Else was, but he had a feeling that they were very old – maybe even older that he was himself and if that were the case… No, he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of other Supreme Beings, but he could live with the idea of the Artist; he and the Artist seemed to be very similar in many ways. But this other thing… Picking up his battered suitcase, the one that was covered in peeling stickers from all over the universe, Trader sighed a weary sigh. All he’d wanted was some time to himself, maybe just a few millennia, perhaps full retirement, but now he knew that he was going to have to step in to help again. Everything was at stake, absolutely everything and if he got this wrong that’ll be it, everything would be gone and they’d be no chance of anything again because everything would never have happened – not even Trader himself. Oh well, he’d thought himself alone and now it seemed he’d been alone with this other inside his mind and inside his dreams. Sometimes it was almost as if he’d seen it pass outside his door looking for someone, something, was it him that it was looking for? He knew that if they ever met he’d be able to see it in his or her eyes, see it in the smile, it would be all he’d ever wanted and his arms would open wide, and it would know just what to say, and it would know just what to do, and he’d want to tell it so much. I love you. BLAST! There it went again, controlling his thoughts, inside his mind, inside his dreams. BLAST! BLAST! BLAST! This had to stop. Trader reached to the hook which hung suspended midair, took down his battered Fedora, firmly placed it on his white-haired head, and slammed the door shut behind him. Time to hit the road; “Feets don’t fail me now.” he thought as he dispersed into the saffron coloured air not sure if this was his own thought or somebody else’s…
The whistle came out of the darkness. Trader wondered quite where he was. It felt like an empty Metro station deep underground in some city or other, but it was both cleaner and filthier than any of the ones that he had ever been in before, and there was nobody there, not even a busker to play those dreadful tunes and demand that he threw whatever coins he had into an open violin case, or a styrofoam cup intended for that purpose. The atmosphere made Trader feel felt a little uneasy, like he had been locked in after midnight, but also felt strangely as if the place had always been like this. The polished surfaces of the utilitarian white ceramic tiles attached to the tubular surfaces of these institutional tunnels reflected and distorted what little light there was, bouncing it off in all directions and creating dark shadows in corners where there really shouldn’t be any. The mournful monotone which resembled a familiar melody which, somehow, managed to be both really annoying and yet still lodge itself into the brain like an icepick, drifted from somewhere within this labyrinth of tunnels, carved, he suspected, by the sheer hard manual labour of thousands of long-forgotten and seldom-considered navvies from a bygone age, whose ghosts seemed to be reaching out to him from the darkness to remind him of what they had made. “What was that tune...?” No wonder he didn’t like music. It got to him in ways that he still failed to understand and reminded him of things that he’d much rather forget, and he was surprised to find a wet trail running down his left cheek which had obviously come from the corner of his own eye. He paused for a moment to wipe the tear away, and flicked it from the end of his finger into one of the shadows. In another life, another reality, that fallen teardrop thrown into a forgettable corner might have suddenly sprouted into a Diabolic of some kind and doubtless would have sprung at him and caused him to wrestle for his very existence. Trader tensed for a moment in anticipation, but nothing came at him out of the darkness, no foe launched itself at his throat ready to gain some kind of meaningless retribution for long-forgotten crimes and he relaxed a little. Instead there was just that incessant whistling coming from one of the tunnels, curling around in the darkness like a snake looking for some prey to strike out at. It felt like a slightly jazzy, slightly bluesy melody as arranged by a psychopath, the discord and disharmony pitched at just right note to make his eardrums tingle unpleasantly. Trader looked at the various tunnel entrances that all seemed to meet at this junction. It seemed very clear to Trader that there was a choice to be made here, a crucial decision of some sort, as if there were many possible paths but only one right one to be chosen. It seemed that someone was trying to send him a message, and he wasn’t all that fond of the method of delivery. The eerie whistling seemed to be calling to him, like it was the calling of some tempting Siren, and his feet no longer seemed to belong to him as they were drawn towards one particular opening to his right. If his feet were ever going to fail him, they really couldn’t have chosen a better moment. He tried to convince himself that he’d seem some movement in the darkness, something almost imperceptible which had drawn his attention, but he knew that he was fooling no-one, not least whoever it was who was lurking in the darkness, as he found himself unwillingly approaching them. This was unsettling. Unnerving. A Supreme Being never really felt the need to feel any fear, a Supreme Being was supposed to be the one dishing out all of the fear. Fear was something that he’d created for them to feel, but the icy fingers that were running up and down his spine like the hands of a cheap masseuse told him that some tables were in the process of being turned. He flicked a coin (where had that come from...?) to the broken busker who now sat at the tunnel’s entrance having been brought into wretched being by one of the odder corners of his own imagination, who then saluted in grateful response and departed swiftly upon his wheeled platform into the shadows with a swift and ironic “God bless you, sir!” leaving him all alone with the shadowy figure in the Italian silk suit and the snap-brimmed hat who stepped out of the darkness, but failed to show Trader its face, a face which was still hidden by the gloom and the black shadow that fell across where Trader expected a face to be. Suddenly there was a swift movement from a hand, and a small object was flying towards him. Trader snatched at the air and caught whatever it was in his own hand. He unfurled his fingers and found a jet black chess piece sitting upon his palm like a stain. The King. Why did it have to be the King? That really could not be a good thing. He looked up. The other figure was closer now, the brims of their almost matching hats just millimetres apart, almost eyeball to eyeball with him, or they would have been, if he could have made out any eyes. Instead, he did get the impression of a set of perfect ivory teeth glinting as they smiled and whistled two more short shrill notes which troubled him on some deep level which he had never known before. Then the teeth parted, and a taunting feminine voice said just two words that made him tremble with fear: “Wrong choice.”
They arrived in a tumble and clatter, spewing out on to the spotlessly clean wooden boarded floor and just managing to avoid the precisely arranged army of bottles that spread out in all directions around them. Max landed last, and as he came through he thought he heard a whistle in the stretching nothingness behind him; turning he looked into that nothing… “Was there anybody there?” For a second and in the distance he could have sworn that he saw something like a battered old doll tumbling through the intricate grey emptiness of the Slip, but then you could never be sure with the Slip – reality was different when you were inside it. Anyway, he was out of it now and nothing had followed him through and here they were at the Wadenclyffe Tower and it looked as though the work was progressing nicely. The Arrangement stretched all around them; each bottle perfectly balanced, colours subtly ordered, distance between exact – no nearest to here. It looked at least half finished, maybe more, but it seemed that work had come to a standstill. It was bound to happen, no one of them had all of the pieces of the Arrangement – only collectively could it be completed and Max was just hoping that they had all the players. You never knew with these things. One twist of a bottle cap out, a fraction of a millimetre away from skew, a label with one tear too many and it simply wouldn’t work… and it really had to work. Jessica and Jeremy were already at it, carefully picking their way to one of the piles of unplaced bottles that stood in each corner of the room. Lee was making his way to another already lost in the immensely long equation that had begun to unravel once again in his head. He was mumbling as he picked up a bottle and twisted the cap… Fizzzzzzzzzzzz. “Peach butterfly five hundred and two; Turquoise orangutan twenty seven; Brown cantaloupe one thousand and ninety six” It was all coming back to him. Max smiled as he saw the three of then so engrossed in their work. He too had a part to play; only he didn’t know what it was yet. Well, he could wait, he was sure that it would all reveal itself in the fullness of time, Max was used to waiting for purpose. Max began to whistle a little ditty that he’d picked up somewhere although he really couldn’t remember where. A strange little thing with an Irish lilt or was it a Bhangra? No wait, it sounded a little like the opening music to a cowboy movie Max had once watched. What was it called… the good, the bad, and the ugly? Max stopped whistling, but the whistling didn’t stop, it continued and not only did it continue, but became louder even though it didn’t seem to be coming from within the tower but from somewhere outside of it. With a flash of clarity Max remembered where he’d heard it before, it had been only a few minutes ago when they were falling through the Slip – this had been the whistle that he’d thought he’d heard as he came through; but thinking back Max now realised that it had followed them all the way. “Who was the whistler?” Max wondered; realising that he was about to find out as the air immediately above his head began to glow a rich burnt orange. Jeremy, Jemima, and Lee didn’t even bother to look up as another figure came tumbling out of the air to land in a pile beside Max. “Ouch, that hurt.” said Trader, slowly getting to his feet and retrieving his hat from the floor. “Hello Max, I’ve brought you something.” Reaching down he undid the clasps of his suitcase and lifted up the lid… “More bottles Max and I think that you might be needing these.” Max looked at the six bottles which lay in various states of dustiness and distress within the interior of the case. They were like no bottles Max had ever seen before; not glass, not plastic, not crystal, but transparent and shimmering with an ever-changing spectrum of colour. The bottles seemed to tremble as the colours moved, wave after wave, across their shiny surfaces. No wait… they were moving, tiny ripples passing across whatever material they were made from. They were alive. Suddenly the whistling started up once more and out of the air fell an object. It landed amongst the bottles, the whistling stopped, and the bottles became still. There was no mistaking the red hair or the tiny wings as the doll began to scream…
Trader was not happy. Being thrown through the Slip, the same bloody Slip that he himself had forged over breakfast as the Big Bang was still giving some serious thought as to what it would like to be when it grew up, had been somewhat ignominious, and he really had not liked it. Who the hell did this “Artist” think he was anyway, to go about playing with the lives of intelligent creatures and treating them as if they were mere toys, and just the playthings of the Gods? That kind of thing should only be left to the experts, Beings who really knew about the subtlties and delicate balances that such things involved, not young upstarts developing a God Complex and looking for ways to gain control of everything for themselves just as he once had. Just as the pride needed to be led, and the old guard had to be swept away on a wave of furious ambition, firm leaders were formed on the battlefields, and forged in the cauldron of war. Had he not himself swept across the plains of Sephalim with an army at his back? Had he not taken the initiative and seized the Pentathorp Gap by his own guile and cunning? Had not his own small fleet of dirigibles taken on and sunk the mighty Armada of the Fourteenth Day? Had he not emerged the victor, carrying the severed head of the War Chief of the Hetupsi upon his upon sword and presenting it to his youngest daughter as proof of his right to rule earned from trial by combat? Who was this young Whippersnapper anyway, tossing him aside like the joker in a pack of playing cards and flinging him into the maelstrom over something so banal as a game of chess...? This self-satisfied smug second-rater who was no better than one of those over-glorified winners of a televised job interview disguising itself as entertainment when it came to integrity, humility and self-awareness. He dusted himself down and looked again at Max. Dear old Max, his old pal and latest best mate. Even Max, with his vastly inflated lifespan, couldn’t really conceive of just how many eons he’d just spent tracking down those six pieces of the puzzle which he had hidden in case of emergencies, six individually useless objects of the sort that might look as insignificant enough to be just the sort of thing that might be left over when you put some furniture together, but which, when brought together, reached a critical mass and became the cornerstones of something so wonderful and so powerful that this “Artist” would come to wish that he’d never picked up that stick and begun scratching away in the dirt. Of course, there was the slightly tricky matter that he had now retrieved them and brought them all together in one place where they would be oh-so easy to find, and there was the slightly nagging suspicion that this was what the Artist had wanted him to do all along, but surely even he wasn’t that devious...? If only he could think. The shrieks and whoops of joy that were coming from that rag doll as she had a long-delayed reunion with some her old friends were becoming unbearable, and sounded like a whole roomful of middle-aged aunts who’d just found a new shoe and handbag shop on their way to a concert by some reformed boy band, and had decided to celebrate the occasion with several bottles of cheap Chardonnay. Her screeches were making his ears itch almost as much as that wretched whistling had. Why couldn’t he think any more? The rag doll had somehow rendered his six bottles inactive, almost as if the soft fabrics were acting like packaging to protect them during a long journey, or functioning like some kind of soundproofing substances used for dampening energy, but then the doll also seemed to absorb and deaden sound. There was certainly no echo in the room, just the shrieking of that wretched doll which seemed so pleased with itself. Hadn’t it seen itself in a mirror lately? He needed to think... He must be able to think... What use was having absolute power if you couldn’t think clearly enough to use it? Eventually he snapped, “Will you just shut up?” he bellowed, and an awkward silence fell. Even Lee stopped his mutterings to look up, and the children just stared across at him, their limbs paused in mid air as if he was directing them in some bizarre game of “statues”. It took him a moment to realise that they were looking through him, behind him, and then he heard the whistling again, that strangely worrying tuneless melody which was so memorable and yet instantly forgettable, drifting across and through the air and coming from directly behind him. Very slowly, and with almost infinite caution, he turned around.
Of course the Artist had known all along. Just where did those others think that they were coming from? A single Supreme Being? A single Supreme Being, his metaphorical arse. The Assassin in him chuckled; “How many had he killed to date?” Well, maybe not killed, but certainly dissipated to such a far flung extent that there would be no getting them back together in a hurry. Ten? Eleven? He tried recalling their names and found that he could only bring six to mind: Sandiartinatrer, Crawian, Moondust – she had been something of a poseur, Telin the Terrible (and yes he had been terrible but only because he stank), Sammyymmas, and She who must remain without name – although everyone called her Penelope. Perhaps he’d never known the others by name at all, he couldn’t remember. That was the thing about carrying the Weight around with you, it made you forget things. The Weight was firmly tucked inside his jet black robe, well; it has seemed like a good idea at the time - a black hooded robe seemed suitable for either of his personalities, both Artist and Assassin. Annoyingly, he was often mistaken for Death and whilst there was no actual being called Death he supposed the title suited him as well as any other – names were such insignificant things. It was what you were like inside that counted. He chuckled again; his inside was not that much different from his outward appearance – as black as Serpiant rock. Had he always been like this? He couldn’t remember. Reaching for the Weight he stroked the rippling surface of the glass-like container. It quivered beneath his touch, beginning to whistle softly – the seventh of seven, the master key. “Yes Trader, not six after all, seven not six, you miscalculated; you never were anything more than a gifted amateur.” The Artist reached into the pocket of his cowl and took out a black sharpie. He loved these modern drawing instruments, so much handier than a brush and pallet and so much more portable than even a creation tablet. Pulling the lid off the sharpie with a pop The Artist began to draw, tracing an outline on the air itself – a squiggle here, a scribble of shade there, and… (can you tell what it is yet?) a door appeared before The Artist’s very eyes. He stepped through his hand-drawn portal expecting to emerge in his tower on Pharious. Yes, he knew that a tower was something of a cliché, but there wasn’t much else to be had other than towers on Pharious. Oh, there were caves, but The Artist wasn’t a cave sort of SB, preferring to leave that to the Eldritch and Old Ones and there were plenty of them around. Besides he’d made the tower very comfortable; taps that would serve either wine or water – he’d chuckled at that when he plumbed it in, a helter-skelter staircase – wheeeeeee – even a cheese room. The Artist loved cheese, couldn’t get enough of it and seemed to spend far too much of his time creating new ones. His latest was a creamy, yet crumbly, softly scented white made from the milk of the miniature llamas of Praxos. Yum-yum - he could hardly wait to get back home and sample a sliver. Odd, when he thought about it he didn’t seem to be such a dark chap after all. Wait! Something was wrong. He should have stepped through the door and into the kitchen where his cheese wire awaited him on his kitchen table ready for him to pick it up and get garrotting. Instead he was falling, falling, falling - and it was dark. The Artist had always hated the dark and left a light on in the hall outside his bedroom when he went to sleep. This was dark as pitch – just like that bloody Serpiant rock and hadn’t his robes been a lilac-mauve once upon a time, didn’t he have another in pink and didn’t he remember once having a tan? The Artist clutched at the bottle hidden deep inside his robes and remembered what he was supposed to; he was the Dreaded, the Evil of Evils, Samsul, Dergruean, Devourer of Souls, The Artist, The Assassin, he’d never worn lilac in his life and as for a tan… Pah! He hated the sun. He rubbed the bottle like a magic lamp, the whistling getting louder and louder as he tumbled and tumbled towards a tiny light that had appeared within the blackness, up, then right, in front, then behind, down, and then left, the bottle exhaling a strangely worrying tuneless melody which was so memorable and yet instantly forgettable, whistling that tuneless melody which was so memorable and yet instantly forgettable… forgettable… forgettable… forgotten, as he tumbled on and on, the dot becoming a round white star, then a sun, then a huge white blinding hole until he fell through it and landed on the dusty floor with a grunt, a crash, a whistle, and a tinkle of breaking glass…
The Artist had forgotten all about the guile and cunning that it had taken to seize the Pentathorp Gap, but Trader had never forgotten. Whilst it hadn’t been the kind of plan that you could get away with twice, that had been part of its charm, so even he was surprised when he managed to get away with it for the third time. Tweaking a slight curve into reality here, and plucking the strings of history there had made a particular pen appear in a particular pocket at a particular time. All it had needed was a concurrent thought from the host about something that seemed totally inconsequential and the trap was set, the trigger poised to strike, and a few coins paid to the cheese-masters of the delphinium vats on Praxos was more than enough to get a quick atomiser full of essence of llama cheese to trigger a memory. The real trick - he hesitated to use the term “art” for obvious reasons - was in getting the wheels and cogs of the universe to turn at precisely the correct rate for everything to come together at exactly the correct moment. Otherwise he would just have been a memory transformed into a smudge on the ground leaving nothing behind him but a faintly cheesy odour. This, of course, hadn’t been all that it had taken to seize the Pentathorp Gap, but it had been a start, although, in that instance, the scent required had been from exactly the slightly faded begonias the Warlord remembered from her Aunt’s house as a child, and the pen had been an atomic level duplicate of the fabled Sword of the Planetree Comet, but the result had been much the same, give or take a couple of thousand severed limbs. Trader tucked the atomiser back inside his sleeve. You never knew when a whiff of finest cheese might come in handy. In some of the places he’d been to, it might even have been useful as a deodorant, but those weren’t any places that he had any urgent plans to be returning to in the near future. He turned back towards where the others were still standing, frozen and looking at him. Okay, so he had cheated just a little. Freezing the time flow just to make sure that he had the right moment wasn’t necessarily the wisest thing to do and took an awful lot of energy, but with someone like the Artist to deal with, you always had to make triply sure that it was you that had the upper hand. He clicked his fingers and time started flowing again, slowly at first, and then speeding up until it reached terminal velocity. He smiled at the confusion of his companions who continued to stare at him as if they were still frozen as they tried to work out quite what had just happened and indeed whether it had actually happened at all. The Weight continued along the parabolic curve that he had prescribed for it centuries earlier (with a slight tolerance built in for chaotic blips) and caught it with a hand that still smelt slightly of the chemical signature of that particularly fine cheese. Planning was everything, of course, and he prided himself on being a true master of the art. If he had ever paid any heed to the more insignificant beings whose lives he toyed with, he might have remembered the old adage about “pride” and what it tended to come before, but the thoughts of humans, despite what they tended to believe, largely passed him by. This meant that he was as surprised as anyone when the Artist plunged through the ceiling above him, knocking him to the ground and shattering the Weight on the stone floor. For a moment, after they both scrambled about on the floor trying to regain what was left of their respective dignities and poise, the two ancient foes regarded each other suspiciously, like a pair of gunfighters looking for that first fatal twitch from their opponent, each of them trying to calculate what the next move was and quite how much manipulation of the past would be needed for one or other of them to gain the upper hand. Behind them, however, the twists and turns of their little game were becoming increasingly irrelevant. From within the remains of the shattered glass vail, a purple cloud was forming which began to coalesce into a vaguely female shape. In between the breaks in the cloud which were roughly where they eyes would have been it it had been human, two piercing shafts of sunlight burst through, slightly above a third where a mouth might have been. In as far as it could, the cloud smiled, and a delicate, sing-song voice emerged from it that seemed so incongruous that it simply couldn’t help but seem slightly sinister and sent a shiver of pure fear through everyone who ever heard it. “Hello again, Max” it said, “I’ve missed you...” The cloud floated across to where Max was standing. Trader and the Artist exchanged a look. It was all very well them fighting for supremacy, but to just be ignored by this... this... thing was far more than either of them was prepared to accept. They both moved as if they were about to say something, but a slight gesture from what might have looked like a finger silenced them, which was exactly the sort of thing that they really weren’t used to at all, and, if they had been able to, they would have both sulked and perhaps shattered a trillion lives or so. Instead they could only watch and witness as the cloud whispered something into Max’s ear, before announcing to the room in general that it really was about time that they released her sisters from their six bottles. Max took one step towards the case, and without thinking about it in advance and giving the game away, vanished into the Slip. The cloud spun around in fury, picked up the rag doll in frustration and flung her at the bottles which she, naturally, bounced harmlessly off. Turning around, the cloud’s eyes fell once more upon the helpless pair of “Supreme Beings”, knowing full well that they would do what she asked. She asked. They did.
“Here we go again,” thought Trader, “another one to contend with.” The cloud woman goddess thing raged and swirled around him as he fruitlessly tried to beat her away with a pine branch that he’d made to materialise in his left hand. The Artist was sitting on the floor hopelessly staring at his robes which had turned from black to lilac, and Max had bloody disappeared again. “Typical!” The purple fog swooped towards the Artist who had started crying, weeping into the lilac material of the robes and babbling on about needing cheese. Trader liked the Artist’s lilac robes, the colour suited him. Trader lifted the branch and tried to waft the purple cloudy her away from the Artist who had stopped crying and was staring at the tornado of colour whirling around him. The Artist tried to speak but all that came out was a croak, he tried again and in a whisper managed: “No, I don’t want to, don’t make me, I really don’t want to.” At the end of his stilted sentence his mouth, instead of closing, remained open. The purple whirled and whipped increasing in speed with each rotation and then flew into the Artist’s open mouth, disappearing foot by foot inside him until it was gone. The Artist closed his mouth and looked around the room. “What a difference to see through eyes instead of that vaporous nothingness.” He lifted the edge of his robe and rubbed it between his fingers, “Ah, what it is to feel reality beneath my fingertips once more.” The Artist stood and it was as if he had gained a foot or two in height, his body seemed more elastic somehow, seeming to flow almost like smoke. “Uh, oh.” Trader murmured, “What have we here? Nothing good for me I’m sure.” Trader remembered his battles with the Artist; thinking back they’d been quite fun. As Supreme Beings went they were actually pretty evenly matched, but he didn’t think that was going to be the case now. In a flurry of purple the Artist flew towards him, purple smoke and flashes of violet-blue electricity bouncing off every surface he touched, every part of his body expanding and contracting as if he were made of rubber. “It’s her, not him.” Trader said. “Obviously.” He replied. “But where is the Artist?” “Somewhere in there I guess.” It was always like this in times of stress for Trader, he always began to talk to himself. Actually it was more that just talking, it was conversing, almost as if he had two personalities. “Perhaps you do.” He said, and then replied:”But wouldn’t that make me mad?” “Not necessarily. But you probably are.” “But that makes you mad too.” “Fraid so, but that’s the least of our worries… LOOK OUT!” A long purple sheathed arm reached out and grabbed Trader around the throat, the sheath was made of glimmering electricity and where it touched Trader’s throat and neck it began to smoke. “That hurts.” He said. “It can’t do. We don’t feel pain.” “Well we do now,” he replied to himself. Trader began to panic as the grip on his neck tightened like a noose, his sight starting to blur, his breath beginning to falter. “This can’t be right, we don’t need to breathe, but I find myself gasping for air.” “Perhaps we are dying.” “Don’t be stupid we can’t die, dissipate but never die.” “Well it feels like death to me.” Trader slumped to his knees, his face beginning to turn purple, his tongue protruding from his slack-faced mouth as Max appeared from nowhere clutching an old glass lemonade bottle in his hand. The bottle was dusty, a green marble squeezed inside its neck, the white china flip top of the bottle open and ready for whatever came next. “Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi.” Max shouted at the top of his voice holding out the bottle in front of him, the neck directly pointing towards the Artist. “Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi.” He repeated. The Artist began to lose his mantle of purple fire as the grip around Trader’s neck began to loosen. “Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi.” Purple smoke began to float from the Artist’s mouth and move towards the bottle. “Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi.” The Artist slumped to the floor releasing Trader as he did so, his arm returning to its previous length. “Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi.” The last of the purple mist disappeared into the bottle as Max flipped the ceramic lid and made tight the wire contraption that held it firm. “The genies back in the bottle.” He said as he carefully placed the bottle on the ground. Max walked over to where Trader and the Artist lay entwined in the dust: “How sweet,” Max chuckled, “they look like a pair of sleeping babies”. Trader came too first. “That was a close one wasn’t it?” “Yes it was. Thank goodness Max turned up when he did.” Trader turned towards Max. “What exactly was that phrase you used? The one that enticed that smoke thing back in the bottle.” Max smiled, “Just something I picked up on my travels.” “Yes, but what was it?” Max’s smile grew even wider. “I’ve no idea, it’s written on the back of the bottle. I think it may be the ingredients of its contents. Some kind of cola drink probably.” The Artist opened his half vacant eyes, looked goofily up at Max, smiled a crooked, childlike smile, and enquired in a dreamy, simpering voice: “Do you have a little cheese about you mister?”…
They arrived in a tumble and clatter, spewing out on to the spotlessly clean wooden boarded floor and just managing to avoid the precisely arranged army of bottles that spread out in all directions around them. Max landed last, and as he came through he thought he heard a whistle in the stretching nothingness behind him; turning he looked into that nothing… “Was there anybody there?” For a second and in the distance he could have sworn that he saw something like a battered old doll tumbling through the intricate grey emptiness of the Slip, but then you could never be sure with the Slip – reality was different when you were inside it. Anyway, he was out of it now and nothing had followed him through and here they were at the Wadenclyffe Tower and it looked as though the work was progressing nicely. The Arrangement stretched all around them; each bottle perfectly balanced, colours subtly ordered, distance between exact – no nearest to here. It looked at least half finished, maybe more, but it seemed that work had come to a standstill. It was bound to happen, no one of them had all of the pieces of the Arrangement – only collectively could it be completed and Max was just hoping that they had all the players. You never knew with these things. One twist of a bottle cap out, a fraction of a millimetre away from skew, a label with one tear too many and it simply wouldn’t work… and it really had to work. Jessica and Jeremy were already at it, carefully picking their way to one of the piles of unplaced bottles that stood in each corner of the room. Lee was making his way to another already lost in the immensely long equation that had begun to unravel once again in his head. He was mumbling as he picked up a bottle and twisted the cap… Fizzzzzzzzzzzz. “Peach butterfly five hundred and two; Turquoise orangutan twenty seven; Brown cantaloupe one thousand and ninety six” It was all coming back to him. Max smiled as he saw the three of then so engrossed in their work. He too had a part to play; only he didn’t know what it was yet. Well, he could wait, he was sure that it would all reveal itself in the fullness of time, Max was used to waiting for purpose. Max began to whistle a little ditty that he’d picked up somewhere although he really couldn’t remember where. A strange little thing with an Irish lilt or was it a Bhangra? No wait, it sounded a little like the opening music to a cowboy movie Max had once watched. What was it called… the good, the bad, and the ugly? Max stopped whistling, but the whistling didn’t stop, it continued and not only did it continue, but became louder even though it didn’t seem to be coming from within the tower but from somewhere outside of it. With a flash of clarity Max remembered where he’d heard it before, it had been only a few minutes ago when they were falling through the Slip – this had been the whistle that he’d thought he’d heard as he came through; but thinking back Max now realised that it had followed them all the way. “Who was the whistler?” Max wondered; realising that he was about to find out as the air immediately above his head began to glow a rich burnt orange. Jeremy, Jemima, and Lee didn’t even bother to look up as another figure came tumbling out of the air to land in a pile beside Max. “Ouch, that hurt.” said Trader, slowly getting to his feet and retrieving his hat from the floor. “Hello Max, I’ve brought you something.” Reaching down he undid the clasps of his suitcase and lifted up the lid… “More bottles Max and I think that you might be needing these.” Max looked at the six bottles which lay in various states of dustiness and distress within the interior of the case. They were like no bottles Max had ever seen before; not glass, not plastic, not crystal, but transparent and shimmering with an ever-changing spectrum of colour. The bottles seemed to tremble as the colours moved, wave after wave, across their shiny surfaces. No wait… they were moving, tiny ripples passing across whatever material they were made from. They were alive. Suddenly the whistling started up once more and out of the air fell an object. It landed amongst the bottles, the whistling stopped, and the bottles became still. There was no mistaking the red hair or the tiny wings as the doll began to scream…
Trader was not happy. Being thrown through the Slip, the same bloody Slip that he himself had forged over breakfast as the Big Bang was still giving some serious thought as to what it would like to be when it grew up, had been somewhat ignominious, and he really had not liked it. Who the hell did this “Artist” think he was anyway, to go about playing with the lives of intelligent creatures and treating them as if they were mere toys, and just the playthings of the Gods? That kind of thing should only be left to the experts, Beings who really knew about the subtlties and delicate balances that such things involved, not young upstarts developing a God Complex and looking for ways to gain control of everything for themselves just as he once had. Just as the pride needed to be led, and the old guard had to be swept away on a wave of furious ambition, firm leaders were formed on the battlefields, and forged in the cauldron of war. Had he not himself swept across the plains of Sephalim with an army at his back? Had he not taken the initiative and seized the Pentathorp Gap by his own guile and cunning? Had not his own small fleet of dirigibles taken on and sunk the mighty Armada of the Fourteenth Day? Had he not emerged the victor, carrying the severed head of the War Chief of the Hetupsi upon his upon sword and presenting it to his youngest daughter as proof of his right to rule earned from trial by combat? Who was this young Whippersnapper anyway, tossing him aside like the joker in a pack of playing cards and flinging him into the maelstrom over something so banal as a game of chess...? This self-satisfied smug second-rater who was no better than one of those over-glorified winners of a televised job interview disguising itself as entertainment when it came to integrity, humility and self-awareness. He dusted himself down and looked again at Max. Dear old Max, his old pal and latest best mate. Even Max, with his vastly inflated lifespan, couldn’t really conceive of just how many eons he’d just spent tracking down those six pieces of the puzzle which he had hidden in case of emergencies, six individually useless objects of the sort that might look as insignificant enough to be just the sort of thing that might be left over when you put some furniture together, but which, when brought together, reached a critical mass and became the cornerstones of something so wonderful and so powerful that this “Artist” would come to wish that he’d never picked up that stick and begun scratching away in the dirt. Of course, there was the slightly tricky matter that he had now retrieved them and brought them all together in one place where they would be oh-so easy to find, and there was the slightly nagging suspicion that this was what the Artist had wanted him to do all along, but surely even he wasn’t that devious...? If only he could think. The shrieks and whoops of joy that were coming from that rag doll as she had a long-delayed reunion with some her old friends were becoming unbearable, and sounded like a whole roomful of middle-aged aunts who’d just found a new shoe and handbag shop on their way to a concert by some reformed boy band, and had decided to celebrate the occasion with several bottles of cheap Chardonnay. Her screeches were making his ears itch almost as much as that wretched whistling had. Why couldn’t he think any more? The rag doll had somehow rendered his six bottles inactive, almost as if the soft fabrics were acting like packaging to protect them during a long journey, or functioning like some kind of soundproofing substances used for dampening energy, but then the doll also seemed to absorb and deaden sound. There was certainly no echo in the room, just the shrieking of that wretched doll which seemed so pleased with itself. Hadn’t it seen itself in a mirror lately? He needed to think... He must be able to think... What use was having absolute power if you couldn’t think clearly enough to use it? Eventually he snapped, “Will you just shut up?” he bellowed, and an awkward silence fell. Even Lee stopped his mutterings to look up, and the children just stared across at him, their limbs paused in mid air as if he was directing them in some bizarre game of “statues”. It took him a moment to realise that they were looking through him, behind him, and then he heard the whistling again, that strangely worrying tuneless melody which was so memorable and yet instantly forgettable, drifting across and through the air and coming from directly behind him. Very slowly, and with almost infinite caution, he turned around.
Of course the Artist had known all along. Just where did those others think that they were coming from? A single Supreme Being? A single Supreme Being, his metaphorical arse. The Assassin in him chuckled; “How many had he killed to date?” Well, maybe not killed, but certainly dissipated to such a far flung extent that there would be no getting them back together in a hurry. Ten? Eleven? He tried recalling their names and found that he could only bring six to mind: Sandiartinatrer, Crawian, Moondust – she had been something of a poseur, Telin the Terrible (and yes he had been terrible but only because he stank), Sammyymmas, and She who must remain without name – although everyone called her Penelope. Perhaps he’d never known the others by name at all, he couldn’t remember. That was the thing about carrying the Weight around with you, it made you forget things. The Weight was firmly tucked inside his jet black robe, well; it has seemed like a good idea at the time - a black hooded robe seemed suitable for either of his personalities, both Artist and Assassin. Annoyingly, he was often mistaken for Death and whilst there was no actual being called Death he supposed the title suited him as well as any other – names were such insignificant things. It was what you were like inside that counted. He chuckled again; his inside was not that much different from his outward appearance – as black as Serpiant rock. Had he always been like this? He couldn’t remember. Reaching for the Weight he stroked the rippling surface of the glass-like container. It quivered beneath his touch, beginning to whistle softly – the seventh of seven, the master key. “Yes Trader, not six after all, seven not six, you miscalculated; you never were anything more than a gifted amateur.” The Artist reached into the pocket of his cowl and took out a black sharpie. He loved these modern drawing instruments, so much handier than a brush and pallet and so much more portable than even a creation tablet. Pulling the lid off the sharpie with a pop The Artist began to draw, tracing an outline on the air itself – a squiggle here, a scribble of shade there, and… (can you tell what it is yet?) a door appeared before The Artist’s very eyes. He stepped through his hand-drawn portal expecting to emerge in his tower on Pharious. Yes, he knew that a tower was something of a cliché, but there wasn’t much else to be had other than towers on Pharious. Oh, there were caves, but The Artist wasn’t a cave sort of SB, preferring to leave that to the Eldritch and Old Ones and there were plenty of them around. Besides he’d made the tower very comfortable; taps that would serve either wine or water – he’d chuckled at that when he plumbed it in, a helter-skelter staircase – wheeeeeee – even a cheese room. The Artist loved cheese, couldn’t get enough of it and seemed to spend far too much of his time creating new ones. His latest was a creamy, yet crumbly, softly scented white made from the milk of the miniature llamas of Praxos. Yum-yum - he could hardly wait to get back home and sample a sliver. Odd, when he thought about it he didn’t seem to be such a dark chap after all. Wait! Something was wrong. He should have stepped through the door and into the kitchen where his cheese wire awaited him on his kitchen table ready for him to pick it up and get garrotting. Instead he was falling, falling, falling - and it was dark. The Artist had always hated the dark and left a light on in the hall outside his bedroom when he went to sleep. This was dark as pitch – just like that bloody Serpiant rock and hadn’t his robes been a lilac-mauve once upon a time, didn’t he have another in pink and didn’t he remember once having a tan? The Artist clutched at the bottle hidden deep inside his robes and remembered what he was supposed to; he was the Dreaded, the Evil of Evils, Samsul, Dergruean, Devourer of Souls, The Artist, The Assassin, he’d never worn lilac in his life and as for a tan… Pah! He hated the sun. He rubbed the bottle like a magic lamp, the whistling getting louder and louder as he tumbled and tumbled towards a tiny light that had appeared within the blackness, up, then right, in front, then behind, down, and then left, the bottle exhaling a strangely worrying tuneless melody which was so memorable and yet instantly forgettable, whistling that tuneless melody which was so memorable and yet instantly forgettable… forgettable… forgettable… forgotten, as he tumbled on and on, the dot becoming a round white star, then a sun, then a huge white blinding hole until he fell through it and landed on the dusty floor with a grunt, a crash, a whistle, and a tinkle of breaking glass…
The Artist had forgotten all about the guile and cunning that it had taken to seize the Pentathorp Gap, but Trader had never forgotten. Whilst it hadn’t been the kind of plan that you could get away with twice, that had been part of its charm, so even he was surprised when he managed to get away with it for the third time. Tweaking a slight curve into reality here, and plucking the strings of history there had made a particular pen appear in a particular pocket at a particular time. All it had needed was a concurrent thought from the host about something that seemed totally inconsequential and the trap was set, the trigger poised to strike, and a few coins paid to the cheese-masters of the delphinium vats on Praxos was more than enough to get a quick atomiser full of essence of llama cheese to trigger a memory. The real trick - he hesitated to use the term “art” for obvious reasons - was in getting the wheels and cogs of the universe to turn at precisely the correct rate for everything to come together at exactly the correct moment. Otherwise he would just have been a memory transformed into a smudge on the ground leaving nothing behind him but a faintly cheesy odour. This, of course, hadn’t been all that it had taken to seize the Pentathorp Gap, but it had been a start, although, in that instance, the scent required had been from exactly the slightly faded begonias the Warlord remembered from her Aunt’s house as a child, and the pen had been an atomic level duplicate of the fabled Sword of the Planetree Comet, but the result had been much the same, give or take a couple of thousand severed limbs. Trader tucked the atomiser back inside his sleeve. You never knew when a whiff of finest cheese might come in handy. In some of the places he’d been to, it might even have been useful as a deodorant, but those weren’t any places that he had any urgent plans to be returning to in the near future. He turned back towards where the others were still standing, frozen and looking at him. Okay, so he had cheated just a little. Freezing the time flow just to make sure that he had the right moment wasn’t necessarily the wisest thing to do and took an awful lot of energy, but with someone like the Artist to deal with, you always had to make triply sure that it was you that had the upper hand. He clicked his fingers and time started flowing again, slowly at first, and then speeding up until it reached terminal velocity. He smiled at the confusion of his companions who continued to stare at him as if they were still frozen as they tried to work out quite what had just happened and indeed whether it had actually happened at all. The Weight continued along the parabolic curve that he had prescribed for it centuries earlier (with a slight tolerance built in for chaotic blips) and caught it with a hand that still smelt slightly of the chemical signature of that particularly fine cheese. Planning was everything, of course, and he prided himself on being a true master of the art. If he had ever paid any heed to the more insignificant beings whose lives he toyed with, he might have remembered the old adage about “pride” and what it tended to come before, but the thoughts of humans, despite what they tended to believe, largely passed him by. This meant that he was as surprised as anyone when the Artist plunged through the ceiling above him, knocking him to the ground and shattering the Weight on the stone floor. For a moment, after they both scrambled about on the floor trying to regain what was left of their respective dignities and poise, the two ancient foes regarded each other suspiciously, like a pair of gunfighters looking for that first fatal twitch from their opponent, each of them trying to calculate what the next move was and quite how much manipulation of the past would be needed for one or other of them to gain the upper hand. Behind them, however, the twists and turns of their little game were becoming increasingly irrelevant. From within the remains of the shattered glass vail, a purple cloud was forming which began to coalesce into a vaguely female shape. In between the breaks in the cloud which were roughly where they eyes would have been it it had been human, two piercing shafts of sunlight burst through, slightly above a third where a mouth might have been. In as far as it could, the cloud smiled, and a delicate, sing-song voice emerged from it that seemed so incongruous that it simply couldn’t help but seem slightly sinister and sent a shiver of pure fear through everyone who ever heard it. “Hello again, Max” it said, “I’ve missed you...” The cloud floated across to where Max was standing. Trader and the Artist exchanged a look. It was all very well them fighting for supremacy, but to just be ignored by this... this... thing was far more than either of them was prepared to accept. They both moved as if they were about to say something, but a slight gesture from what might have looked like a finger silenced them, which was exactly the sort of thing that they really weren’t used to at all, and, if they had been able to, they would have both sulked and perhaps shattered a trillion lives or so. Instead they could only watch and witness as the cloud whispered something into Max’s ear, before announcing to the room in general that it really was about time that they released her sisters from their six bottles. Max took one step towards the case, and without thinking about it in advance and giving the game away, vanished into the Slip. The cloud spun around in fury, picked up the rag doll in frustration and flung her at the bottles which she, naturally, bounced harmlessly off. Turning around, the cloud’s eyes fell once more upon the helpless pair of “Supreme Beings”, knowing full well that they would do what she asked. She asked. They did.
“Here we go again,” thought Trader, “another one to contend with.” The cloud woman goddess thing raged and swirled around him as he fruitlessly tried to beat her away with a pine branch that he’d made to materialise in his left hand. The Artist was sitting on the floor hopelessly staring at his robes which had turned from black to lilac, and Max had bloody disappeared again. “Typical!” The purple fog swooped towards the Artist who had started crying, weeping into the lilac material of the robes and babbling on about needing cheese. Trader liked the Artist’s lilac robes, the colour suited him. Trader lifted the branch and tried to waft the purple cloudy her away from the Artist who had stopped crying and was staring at the tornado of colour whirling around him. The Artist tried to speak but all that came out was a croak, he tried again and in a whisper managed: “No, I don’t want to, don’t make me, I really don’t want to.” At the end of his stilted sentence his mouth, instead of closing, remained open. The purple whirled and whipped increasing in speed with each rotation and then flew into the Artist’s open mouth, disappearing foot by foot inside him until it was gone. The Artist closed his mouth and looked around the room. “What a difference to see through eyes instead of that vaporous nothingness.” He lifted the edge of his robe and rubbed it between his fingers, “Ah, what it is to feel reality beneath my fingertips once more.” The Artist stood and it was as if he had gained a foot or two in height, his body seemed more elastic somehow, seeming to flow almost like smoke. “Uh, oh.” Trader murmured, “What have we here? Nothing good for me I’m sure.” Trader remembered his battles with the Artist; thinking back they’d been quite fun. As Supreme Beings went they were actually pretty evenly matched, but he didn’t think that was going to be the case now. In a flurry of purple the Artist flew towards him, purple smoke and flashes of violet-blue electricity bouncing off every surface he touched, every part of his body expanding and contracting as if he were made of rubber. “It’s her, not him.” Trader said. “Obviously.” He replied. “But where is the Artist?” “Somewhere in there I guess.” It was always like this in times of stress for Trader, he always began to talk to himself. Actually it was more that just talking, it was conversing, almost as if he had two personalities. “Perhaps you do.” He said, and then replied:”But wouldn’t that make me mad?” “Not necessarily. But you probably are.” “But that makes you mad too.” “Fraid so, but that’s the least of our worries… LOOK OUT!” A long purple sheathed arm reached out and grabbed Trader around the throat, the sheath was made of glimmering electricity and where it touched Trader’s throat and neck it began to smoke. “That hurts.” He said. “It can’t do. We don’t feel pain.” “Well we do now,” he replied to himself. Trader began to panic as the grip on his neck tightened like a noose, his sight starting to blur, his breath beginning to falter. “This can’t be right, we don’t need to breathe, but I find myself gasping for air.” “Perhaps we are dying.” “Don’t be stupid we can’t die, dissipate but never die.” “Well it feels like death to me.” Trader slumped to his knees, his face beginning to turn purple, his tongue protruding from his slack-faced mouth as Max appeared from nowhere clutching an old glass lemonade bottle in his hand. The bottle was dusty, a green marble squeezed inside its neck, the white china flip top of the bottle open and ready for whatever came next. “Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi.” Max shouted at the top of his voice holding out the bottle in front of him, the neck directly pointing towards the Artist. “Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi.” He repeated. The Artist began to lose his mantle of purple fire as the grip around Trader’s neck began to loosen. “Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi.” Purple smoke began to float from the Artist’s mouth and move towards the bottle. “Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi.” The Artist slumped to the floor releasing Trader as he did so, his arm returning to its previous length. “Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi.” The last of the purple mist disappeared into the bottle as Max flipped the ceramic lid and made tight the wire contraption that held it firm. “The genies back in the bottle.” He said as he carefully placed the bottle on the ground. Max walked over to where Trader and the Artist lay entwined in the dust: “How sweet,” Max chuckled, “they look like a pair of sleeping babies”. Trader came too first. “That was a close one wasn’t it?” “Yes it was. Thank goodness Max turned up when he did.” Trader turned towards Max. “What exactly was that phrase you used? The one that enticed that smoke thing back in the bottle.” Max smiled, “Just something I picked up on my travels.” “Yes, but what was it?” Max’s smile grew even wider. “I’ve no idea, it’s written on the back of the bottle. I think it may be the ingredients of its contents. Some kind of cola drink probably.” The Artist opened his half vacant eyes, looked goofily up at Max, smiled a crooked, childlike smile, and enquired in a dreamy, simpering voice: “Do you have a little cheese about you mister?”…
Tamarra had a
headache. It could have been because the Rag Doll she was still trapped in had
been flung headlong into what looked like, to all intents and purposes a case
of mixed bottles of wine. It could have been because she had now spent some
considerable amount of time being quite literally “woolly-headed”. It could
have been because of the thoughts of “cheese” and “fizzy pop” were reminding her
of a million realities full of people and their migraines. It could even have
been because the doll’s unblinking stare was just so damned painful. She’d
never really experienced much in the way of headaches before. Her kind were
supposed to be immune to pain, but she’d tried to be as sympathetic as she
could to those she had briefly loved throughout her lives, although she had
never previously understood what it was that they had been complaining about.
She did now, of course, but it was far too late. Maybe, if she ever got out of
this mess, she might go back and visit some of them, back in the days before
she had come to despise them for their human weaknesses and finally consumed
them just to shut them up. It was they way of things, the natural order, how things
just had to be. The irony of her now having been consumed by this plaything,
this toy… and a second-hand toy at that, did not escape her, despite the fact
that escape itself was still at the forefront of her mind. It would be tricky
to achieve, she realised, being unable to move her arms and legs and being
totally dependent upon the whims of others to get her around. She didn’t feel
as if she was much of a looker, either. Despite being the only toy in the room,
Jeremy and Jemima didn’t seem to have even noticed she was there, lying on the
floor from where she’d bounced off the six bottles, so there was little hope of
managing to persuade Jemima to help her to get about and see something other
than the rainbow of glass in front of her. She looked again, and suddenly
realised where her headache was coming from. It was the frustration of having
the answer at the tip of her mind and not being able to tell anyone. It was so
obvious! Were these so-called “supreme beings” so dense that they couldn’t
grasp that, with the addition of the purple sister to the other bottles, they
had the entire spectrum of absolute power at their disposal, to disperse
throughout the entire universe and shape one single reality in the form they
chose? The cloud was chaos, but it was chaos under control. There would be no
more variables, no more “free spirits” no more… creatures like herself. She
attempted to frown, but the blank woolen face refused to move. “Great!” she
thought. Once she had been able to bend and shift entire time-streams on a whim
and now even the slightest facial tick was beyond her. She looked across at
where Max was holding the final piece oh-so carefully in those huge hands of
his that she suddenly missed so very much. Had he heard her crying out to him?
She hadn’t been certain. Trader had winced, of course, but Trader was always
functioning on a higher plane than Max. Poor, dear, sweet Max. He never had
understood how insignificant he really was, he never saw the bigger picture.
Yet here he was, solid, safe, dependable Max. Always stepping in at the last
moment and saving them all. She had once considered naming him Nick as a
nickname and looked forward to explaining to him that it was because he always turned up in the nick of
time. Her daydreaming meant that it was a moment before she realised that Max
had, as he had so many times across their star-crossed lives, picked her up.
Wh… what was going on…? Max had placed the final bottle in the case with all
the others, had looked around for something to help stop them rattling about
and was busy stuffing her (and not in a good way) into the corner of the box.
The final indignity of being reduced to being merely packing material was far
too much for her and the rage overwhelmed her. She blinked. Darkness fell for a
second and when she opened her eyes, both she and the case were somewhere else.
“Well” she mused “For better or worse, wherever I am I got away…” It was worse.
The head of Puppet turned around and her eyes looked at her with a curious
intensity. “Mummy…” she said. “I know, Dear” her mother replied, as the
convertible sped across the desert leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.
One moment the box had been there, the next it was gone – vanished, it seemed, into thin air. Max called to the others, asking them if they had seen where the box had gone, and of course they hadn’t, either too engrossed in the arranging of bottles, looking for cheese or, as in Trader’s case, arguing with himself. Poor Trader he really was losing it; and talking of losing it – just where had that box gone? Max remembered putting the seventh bottle, the one containing the purple smoke woman, carefully into the box with the others, then stuffing in that awful dirty doll to stop them rattling around. Max didn’t want them to break. He didn’t know exactly what part they had to play in all of this, none of them would until the Arrangement was complete, but he was very sure that it would be important. The clank and chink of bottles being exactly arranged to a thousandth of a millimetre tolerance continued all around him. They were all hard at work, all engrossed in the pattern of the Arrangement – Lee, Jeremy, Jemima, Emma, Flavia, even Frankie had picked up a deep green bottle and stood to one side trying to work out how and where to place it. Max glanced towards the Artist who was gazing at an incredibly detailed facsimile of Botticelli’s Venus, etched and scored on his ankle. Was it a copy or was it the original? Max wondered. Maybe Botticelli had borrowed it from the Artist, allowing the Assassin into his mind for a while as he painted - Artist or Assassin… it was all one and the same. Max frowned; and there was something else… looking closer at the image of Venus, so demurely standing inside her perfect shell surrounded by her perfect flowing hair, Max was perfectly reminded of Tamarra. Wait! The doll! That ugly, filthy raggedy doll - as he’d picked it up an image had flashed into his mind for an instant, an image of Tamarra, Tamarra locked inside a room and looking out through the windows, looking at him, imploring him to what? Help? “She’s in the doll.” Trader suddenly exclaimed. “What do you mean she’s in the doll?” Trader replied. “She’s trapped inside the doll and now that woman has her and the seven saints, and she and her daughters are off on their travels again.” “What woman? What daughters?” Trader questioned himself. “I don’t know. Sharkle or Starkle and her daughters, Pipple and Pupple or something or other - I don’t know. I should, but I don’t.” Trader stamped his foot; “I should, but I don’t.” “Sparkle and Puppet and Poppet.” The Artist replied. “You mean Sparkle and Puppet and Poppet - the Mother, the Daughter and Other One - Sparkle, Puppet and Poppet - the Chance family - the Driver, Passenger and the Travelling one - the Three - Jantanza, Farnafi, Katardanzi - not Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi – the Three – JFK - now where’s that cheese?” Max shuddered, realising that the Artist and Trader were right. He should have known; the signs had been there all along – the whistling, the doll - it all added up... and Max had delivered Tamara and the seven saints directly into their hands. What a fool he had been, what fools they’d all been – even Trader and the Artist. They’d known about Sparkle and her daughters all along, Frankie had even met them. But as always with memories of the Three the moment you looked away they no longer existed – the memories or whatever it was that the Three represented - erased by some deep magic or simply repressed for protection by their subconscious minds. Yes, even Supreme Beings and angels had a need for the shelter of the subconscious. But now – probably, no certainly, due to something the seven saints had invoked – they were all remembering. It wasn’t a good memory either. Max turned to Frankie: “Come on Frankie, get your coat. I’m going to need your help.” And somewhere far away in Tumbletown, Rosalina heard the sound of an approaching limousine…
One moment the box had been there, the next it was gone – vanished, it seemed, into thin air. Max called to the others, asking them if they had seen where the box had gone, and of course they hadn’t, either too engrossed in the arranging of bottles, looking for cheese or, as in Trader’s case, arguing with himself. Poor Trader he really was losing it; and talking of losing it – just where had that box gone? Max remembered putting the seventh bottle, the one containing the purple smoke woman, carefully into the box with the others, then stuffing in that awful dirty doll to stop them rattling around. Max didn’t want them to break. He didn’t know exactly what part they had to play in all of this, none of them would until the Arrangement was complete, but he was very sure that it would be important. The clank and chink of bottles being exactly arranged to a thousandth of a millimetre tolerance continued all around him. They were all hard at work, all engrossed in the pattern of the Arrangement – Lee, Jeremy, Jemima, Emma, Flavia, even Frankie had picked up a deep green bottle and stood to one side trying to work out how and where to place it. Max glanced towards the Artist who was gazing at an incredibly detailed facsimile of Botticelli’s Venus, etched and scored on his ankle. Was it a copy or was it the original? Max wondered. Maybe Botticelli had borrowed it from the Artist, allowing the Assassin into his mind for a while as he painted - Artist or Assassin… it was all one and the same. Max frowned; and there was something else… looking closer at the image of Venus, so demurely standing inside her perfect shell surrounded by her perfect flowing hair, Max was perfectly reminded of Tamarra. Wait! The doll! That ugly, filthy raggedy doll - as he’d picked it up an image had flashed into his mind for an instant, an image of Tamarra, Tamarra locked inside a room and looking out through the windows, looking at him, imploring him to what? Help? “She’s in the doll.” Trader suddenly exclaimed. “What do you mean she’s in the doll?” Trader replied. “She’s trapped inside the doll and now that woman has her and the seven saints, and she and her daughters are off on their travels again.” “What woman? What daughters?” Trader questioned himself. “I don’t know. Sharkle or Starkle and her daughters, Pipple and Pupple or something or other - I don’t know. I should, but I don’t.” Trader stamped his foot; “I should, but I don’t.” “Sparkle and Puppet and Poppet.” The Artist replied. “You mean Sparkle and Puppet and Poppet - the Mother, the Daughter and Other One - Sparkle, Puppet and Poppet - the Chance family - the Driver, Passenger and the Travelling one - the Three - Jantanza, Farnafi, Katardanzi - not Santanza, parnafi, ratardan, zi – the Three – JFK - now where’s that cheese?” Max shuddered, realising that the Artist and Trader were right. He should have known; the signs had been there all along – the whistling, the doll - it all added up... and Max had delivered Tamara and the seven saints directly into their hands. What a fool he had been, what fools they’d all been – even Trader and the Artist. They’d known about Sparkle and her daughters all along, Frankie had even met them. But as always with memories of the Three the moment you looked away they no longer existed – the memories or whatever it was that the Three represented - erased by some deep magic or simply repressed for protection by their subconscious minds. Yes, even Supreme Beings and angels had a need for the shelter of the subconscious. But now – probably, no certainly, due to something the seven saints had invoked – they were all remembering. It wasn’t a good memory either. Max turned to Frankie: “Come on Frankie, get your coat. I’m going to need your help.” And somewhere far away in Tumbletown, Rosalina heard the sound of an approaching limousine…
The car was
old. Not ancient enough that it might be considered to be a “classic” or a
“museum piece”, merely old. It had been built in the early 1960s and, whilst it
had had a few years of fairly undistinguished service, it had never become
anything like as iconic as some of the others that rolled off the production
line that day at the Lincoln division of the Ford Motor Company. One other
vehicle produced that day had become “famous” or rather “notorious” for being
the car in which a President was gunned down, but that was not this one. This
Limousine left the factory and went on to have a short life of undistinguished
service before being cruelly sidelined by events so unpredictable that they
were almost the purest example of having no control over your own destiny, if,
of course, an inanimate lump of metal could ever be said to have control over
such a thing. This Limousine suffered the consequences of an unfortunate series
of events. This Limousine was shunted unceremoniously off to the sidelines
because of what happened in another car of similar styling. This Limousine had
been purchased as part of a huge batch by the very same government department
on the very same day as that other, better known, instantly iconic vehicle, but
the fickle finger of fate had left it sitting alone in a dark garage gathering
dust that day as the “back-up vehicle”, the “Plan B”, whilst, just a few miles
away, destinies were being shaped and a nation’s new future forged by the
collision of hot lead with human tissue. Because of that moment, the destiny of
this particular car was altered too. The gathered dust started to be untroubled
by the polishing cloth of its designated driver, and was allowed to gather even
more until a thick layer of grey and brown hid its deep black lustrous finish.
The dark corner of the official garage in which it sat was quietly ignored
whilst newer, safer vehicles were bought and brought into service. The open top
Limousine was no longer the vehicle of choice for visiting dignitaries in those
troubled times. They preferred to hide themselves in the dark confines of a
closed vehicle, away from the people behind the bullet-proof glass and armour
plate and, under the circumstances, who could really blame them? So, like many
of its fellow vehicles, the car was allowed to be quietly forgotten and sat
unmourned and unloved until another administration calculated its budget and
counted up its pennies and realised that it might be able to save a few of them
by selling off the fleet and cutting down on its parking needs, and so the car
was wiped down and auctioned off in a government sale. A person might have
resented such an act, but a car could only suffer such indignities with a
steely silence. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t ever seen any action. Several stains
on its seats and floors were testament to the steady stream of undistinguished
senators and aides and underlings and interns, as well as all the starlets and
harlots who had passed across its upholstery across the years and disgraced it
with their presence. The car was old. It had seen a lot of service and, to be
fair, a lot of servicing. Perhaps that was why it needed to be quietly
pensioned off. It had become an embarrassment, a sad reminder of scandalous
events that needed to be filed away and hopefully forgotten in an age where
past political indiscretion or skeletons in the closet could wreck a man’s
ambitions. Instead the car moved on through its long life, passed from pillar
to post by many owners, some more careful than others, until it could be found
hurtling far too fast along the two lane blacktop through the baking desert on
a long and sweateringly hot afternoon. The car was old, far too old to be
treated in such a way. Its pistons were worn from long years of overuse, its
gaskets were leaky and in need of some attention, its tyres were worn and its
plugs needed a good clean. It was, essentially, an accident waiting to happen,
all it needed was to throw a rod or leak one too many drops of its drops of
precious oil and it would be all over, and the long indistinguished career of
the car not chosen for Presidential duties that long-ago morning would have
ended, not in a blaze of glory, or in a motoring museum, being pampered and
preened by those who come to love such things, but ignominiously by a roadside before
being hauled away as so much scrap metal. The Gods really do sometimes just
roll the dice and see what happens, and sometimes their master plans unfold
exactly as they predicted they should, even when the events are seemingly
completely random acts of chance. Trader, the Artist and all the others lived
such meticulously planned lives that they could never accept that there were
such things as random acts of chance, of course. Someone, somewhere was always
behind everything that happened, no matter how inconsequential or improbable
those things might seem to be to the casual, less informed observer. So it was
for the State Trooper who pulled up and parked his motorcycle at the scene of
the incident just moments after it had happened. He looked across at the
burning wreck, and at the remains of the tyre on the highway, and the black
trails of rubber on the tarmac leading to the tangled mess of once proud metal.
“Just another tragic, senseless accident…” he thought, not knowing quite which
part he was playing in the great game going on all about him. He took off his
helmet, looked at the scene and shook his head sadly at what he thought was the
senseless waste. He did not know yet that the investigators would soon conclude
that the car had been completely empty when it left the road so suddenly, and he
would never know anything of the pitched battle fought with the two women and a
doll that had finally taught itself how to move again. The State Trooper would
live the rest of his life in total ignorance of all of it, and, after all, as he would later think as he tried to reason
the mystery out for himself when he sat down later that day to start writing
his report, “The car was old…”
Link to Part Eight: http://m-a-w-h-writers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/blog-tag-1-part-8.html
