Grassy pastures on the hill’s crest lay bathed in a cool, silvery light, the scent of dew rising beneath the full, enchanted moon. There, animals and children of all ages dreamt in placid adoration of she, the woman-child, of she, the goddess incarnate. Joyous blessings they prayed for all who would lead her safely along the path, knowing well that the whole of nature was her entourage.

She paused beside the mirrored twilight pools, feeling the evening breeze brush against her skin, while the scent of night-blooming flowers mingled with the damp earth beneath her feet. And there, she could feel the mounting fever from above as it sent out its pulsating cry, a frenzy that crackled in the night air like a thousand castanets.

And ahead... the final leg of her journey awaited. It was a journey she would have to walk alone through a garden of purging firestones. For so it has always been that when souls traveled to the grand map room of all life paths, they­ must first be cleansed in the garden of fire.

As she followed the path of the firestones a glowing warmth began to rise within her, awakening her remembrance of the eternal. And as her internal flames rose higher, she could feel the throes of her earthly life begin to melt away, layer after layer, melt away until her soul was at last laid fully bare to the outer world.

Free now and naked under the sky, she basked a moment longer in the purging glow of the firestones, then passed beyond to the entrance of the sacred temple of the heights.

Two maidens with fawnlike grace danced out to meet the raven-haired child goddess as she appeared at the gateway of the hilltop pasture. They brought a plain white garment to adorn her. It was a long, free-flowing robe, and it glistened with a shimmering iridescence when they placed it lovingly upon her shoulders. She smiled and bowed in thanks for their gracious gift, then entered the circle to exchange warm greetings with all who awaited her. An urn filled with sweet smelling flowers was given to her, then set aflame by a burning pebble from the firestone garden. Fragrant smoke arose from the urn, and she carried it before her as she circumambulated the ring of her devoted brethren. Thrice circled and cast to ward off the outer darkness, she glided back to the middle of the circle and inhaled deeply to center herself for the oncoming ritual.

With arms outstretched she began to spiral in place, invis­ibly touching hands and fingers with the children of all, beckoning for them to dance with her to the rhythm of the night’s magic.

Her vibrations enlivened them, and one by one, the children of all began to dance and their feet began to weave magic. Easily at first, they danced along the path of eternity’s clock, moving with slow deliberation, as though a great human turbine was being powered into motion. Synchronously they danced at times, independently at other times, but always they danced to bring more and more life into the circle, filling it with whirling and spiraling and pirouetting through the air. And as the tempo rose to a fevered pitch, the world outside of the circle gradually became a blur, blurred until it vanished altogether, and was left behind.

From the Family of whirling dancers, one male pilgrim stepped forward and knelt before the child goddess. He carried a bright silver bowl that had been filled with nectars from the twilight pools, and he offered it up to her.

The child goddess brought her dancing to a pause and accepted the silver bowl. Such an acceptance was a blessing, and­ the pilgrim bowed deeply to her.

She raised the bowl of twilight nectars up to the sky with one hand and then circled it from above with a series of swirling incantations from her free hand. Then with eyes closed, she­ focused on the overhead sky and let her inner energies stretch out to touch the heavens above. Soon it would come. Soon she would again join with her spiritual kin of eternity... and she awaited that oncoming link to form.

The air above the bowl of nectars began to thicken like porridge, as it gradually spiraled into an air of transformation. The spiraling air took on a grayish... no, it took on an aura that contained no particularly discernable hue at all, yet at the same time, it seemed to convey every known hue in the full panorama of colors. Vague became the form of the bowl, soon losing its physical pattern altogether, and appearing as a maelstrom of scintillating lights. An instant later the lights transformed themselves altogether, and the vague cloud of lights reformed into a shining sword of silver, jeweled of hilt, and riding firmly in the hands of the child­ goddess.

She lowered the sword’s hilt down to her waist, meditatively touching its point to her forehead. She held the meditative pose for but a moment, then extended the sword tip out toward the circle of still spinning dancers. Then she herself began to twirl in place. She whirled easily at first, then­ gradually faster to match the tempo of the ring of dancers. Faster still she spun, and she spun... faster until her spiraling motion was no more than a blur. She raised her sword higher and higher as she spun faster and faster and faster and then suddenly stopped.

Then, from high upon her toes she extended herself, stretching the point of her sword as far up into the night sky as she could, as though she was trying to plunge it deep into the heart of the moon. She threw back her raven hair and screamed out in silent passion to the ruler of the night—to her celestial sister.

And in a flash, her promised connection flowered in a single wave of magic. From out of the moon a brilliant ray of silvery light descended and illuminated her entire body like a magnificent, midnight­ sun upon the hill’s crescent.

Lunar radiance burst forth and surged upward from the glowing child goddess, overflowing from her until it showered outward across the ethereal circle of her Family. Drawn in by the intoxicating lunar glow, the children of all pulled together into the circle’s center, converging like moths to a flame, blending until they united into one mass of blinding light, one merging of sight and sound... one divine experience.

The chimes of eternity began to ring, at first as softly as the breath of the night’s wind, but then more. The voices of the bells grew quickly louder and louder and soon began to rage...

_________________________________

End of Chapter

Look forward to new chapters each Tuesday and Friday at 9am

Yep, there’ll always be lessons and quoteables for those who need the words. Take the last idea, for example, the one reminding us of how circular and full-service our relationship with eternity can be. It came from a collection of ponder-worthy ideas that were taken from the “Riddles of the Dyierulan” (dee‑air’‑u-lon) and shared with The Family.

As for me? I am Veyos, (Vay’-oze). I am the keeper of life’s stories. I know every story and riddle in the Dyierulan collection—quite well—and as such, I get the double pleasure of watching my children bring them to life, and then I get to tell you new stories of how they applied them. This is a story about a love adventure between two children from that Family, and a friendship they shared with the Dyierulan civilization from the farthest fringes of the universe. So, grab yourself a nice warm blankie, and curl up to share this story with me.

* * * * * * * *

Back in the days when The Family still walked the lands and sailed the waters, it was common for them to ransack through the collection of memories left behind by the Dyierulan—digging in to them for any tidbit that might yield a scrap of understanding. One notion they kept returning to was this: eternity is like a banquet.

Conundrous? I should say so.

But then, when the founding voice of the Universe’s earliest community spoke—even so much as a “peep”—they listened. And when they listened, they didn’t just hear… they took it deep, and tried to squeeze out whatever meaning might be hiding inside.

“A banquet… yea…” they’d hum, almost like a chant.

And before long they’d be off and running with it, imagining eternity as something that fed upon itself—renewing itself, over and over… well, forever. Light feeding on the darkness, the world of awakeness giving new life to dreams, all of it circling in the same endless exchange.

With a pleased smile, they would say, “how else are ya gonna keep life movin’?”

Now, they didn’t actually know anything about entropy—or even that thing we call perpetual motion—at least not in any formal sense—and they wouldn’t have had much use for the words even if they did. But the seeds of those ideas were there, planted by the Riddles of the Dyierulan, and that was enough to keep them curious.

So they worked at it in their own way.

They’d clear out their everyday think-spaces, make room where there had once been clutter, and gather themselves together as a true Family—loosening their grips on the day-to-day world until, little by little, that outer noise fell away. When they reached that place, they could join their minds and let the riddles open on their own terms.

Some did so easily.

Others… not so much. Those were the ones that took time—unwinding slowly, like something that had to be digested before it could be understood.

…like this story.

Up until now, it couldn’t seem to resolve it-self. You see, it came to a temporary end thousands of years ago—sorta went into hibernation. But on this very morning, as prophesies foretold, the story reawakened, and resumed its telling, right where it left off.

It was like most mornings in this spring place. The first copper fingers of sunlight stretched out from the port of Nassau, devouring the darkness in their path. In the west a solitary cloud dropped noiselessly into the maw of the horizon beyond Morgan’s Bluff, leaving a clear and glistening canopy of blue.

A fishing trawler named The Coral Mist lay anchored in a tide row of Sargasso weed, and as the sun’s crystalline reflec­tions frolicked over the sleepy Caribbean waters, they painted an Argentine glow across her hull.

From high above the royal blue waters of the Tongue of The Ocean, two sea gulls, followed by a distant third, glided lazily into view. Their heads swayed pendulously while they flew, attention rolling from one side to the other, so they could scan the shallow layers below for their first morsels of the morning.

As they neared the Coral Mist the largest gull’s attention suddenly riveted to a darting motion in the water. With a casual twisting of his wing the gull veered sharply to the left and ascended into a gradual spiraling pattern, studying... method­ically maneuvering his position into peak advantage.

The graceful body of the sea fisher arched forward, and in one fluid motion, the gull tucked his wings to his side and plunged ocean ward, cleanly parting the surface of the transparent waters. A moment later the sea fisher reappeared, bobbing and clutching in his beak a young kingfish that writhed in vain for a freedom it would experience never again.

His two flight partners burst into an envious cacophony of shrieks and squawks as they watched the sea fisher flutter away with the kingfish. He’d spotted the Coral Mist and was winging his way to the trawler’s radar dome, imagining a breakfast in private.

But his gluttonous companions had no plans of losing him and beat their wings furiously to remain aflank of the trophy winner.

The youngest of the gulls fluttered to rest on the chromed ridges that ran bow-ward from the radar dome. Although still brown of feather with slight tufts of chick down, the youngest gull had already become adept at the con-worthy ways of begging, and he stared up at the still wriggling fish with as much of a pathet­ically desperate expression as he could muster, quietly opening and closing his bill in a well-rehearsed plea.

The father gull was pensive as he looked down upon the younger gull. It was a bit early for playing dominance and withholding games, and the older gull was touched by his son’s begging. So, with a grunt of resignation, he chomped tearingly into his catch, until the head of the kingfish separated from its body, and fell down onto the bow, where the younger gull lunged ravenously for it.

The mother gull had been watching from a higher perch on the trawler’s yardarm. She wore a stoic mask over her impatience, but once the youngster had seduced his share of the fish, the mother’s mask dissolved. She hopped from the yardarm down onto the radar dome and raucously attached herself to the tail of the fish. A tug‑of‑war erupted and in seconds the kingfish was devoured from sight.

The trophy winner smirked challengingly at his mate. Okay, he might allow her a few bits of his catch, but he was damned if he was going to share his roost with her, and he instantly raised his wings to flap at her while prancing in a semi‑circle. His scare tactics grew more menacing until his sparring partner at last gave up and returned to her perch on the yardarm.

The victor glared mockingly up at his mate, jeering at her with snickering caws as he pranced on with his little wing-flapping dance.

She was easily provoked though and hurled back her own barrage of squawking insults. The youngest of the gulls looked upon the fracas with pleased familiarity. It was a typical way of spending gull time, and in a wink, he joined in and made a three‑way squabble of the screeching and bawling and flailing of wings.

Down on the deck, dreaming only of silencing the far away bedlam of birds, lay Hansen. He lay semi‑conscious on a make­shift bed of deck cushions that had been hastily thrown together in the midst of last night’s tequila stupor. Hansen jerked his army surplus blanket up above his head, exposing his entire body to the cool morning air.

“Squawk, squawk, squawk!” tormented the gulls.

“Why me?” Hansen struggled in his dream. The mixture of morning chill and gull chaos pulled at him until awakeness was at hand. He tried to burrow his face into the army surplus blanket, but as his body swiveled, the deck cushions skidded too far apart, and his stomach, uncontainable by his double-extra‑large T‑shirt, spilled out onto the damp wooden decking and shocked him into head-splitting consciousness.

“Squawk, Squawk, squawk!”

Hansen twisted onto his side and tugged the blanket down over his face. Then, propped on one elbow, he tried to focus in on the screaming gulls, but snapped his eyelids back together when the sunlight from above the radar dome flooded into them.

With blind anger Hansen bellowed up at the birds: “Say, would you sonza bitches shut that ding blamed racket up!” But the gulls were oblivious to his wants and carried on with their squawking.

Hansen seethed at the gulls’ indifference to him, and he clenched his teeth until his varicose face began to swell. He stretched a hand out spread‑fingered to shield his eyes from the sunlight and squinted up at the gulls. They were about to get a piece of his mind, he cursed, but as he began to inhale deeply for a second outburst, the female on the yardarm extended herself fully, and with a convulsive gesture lifted her tail and shat aft into a sudden gust of wind.

“I said SHU...!...oogh, illeh...ptah!”

Hansen spat gull shit across the deck and glared up in dumfounded disbelief at the pack of brazen birds. “Ptah... ptooie!” he spat again.

Hansen was livid, enough so that the gooey bird shit covering his purple face began to fry like griddlecakes. He mopped his forearm across his mouth and gasped at the river of green and white slime now dripping from the front of his chin and sweat-crusted T‑shirt. Hansen was really pissed now, and his eyes began to bug out in lunatic rage.

“You dirty... sonza...!” he howled again. And with a whip-snap, he flung his army blanket against the instrument panel and staggered to his feet to charge for the opening to the fore cabin. On his second stumble though, he tripped over a near empty tequila bottle and kicked it across the deck, scaring the Hades out of the still feuding sea gulls. The gulls sprang into the air and began beating their wings maddeningly toward the northbound safety of Chub Cay.

Hansen leapt down to the cramped fo’c’sle and stretched across Mac to search for the shark rifle in the starboard gear pocket. Mac groaned in his sleep and muttered something unintel­ligible as Hansen latched onto the gun case and snatched it out. An instant later Hansen was back on deck, peeling the old carbine from its leather case, and hurriedly stripped the bolt back to inspect the shell chamber.

“Loaded...ahh-right!”

With a thump from the butt of his hand, he jammed the bolt back into the carbine and flipped the safety switch to “revenge” position.

Hansen was bleary eyed as he struggled up onto the motor housing to scan for the sea gulls. They were nearly forty yards away and fluttering fast by the time he spotted them. He hoisted the rifle to his shoulder with spring like speed, sighted down the barrel, and squeezed the trigger…

“Boom!” the carbine obeyed.

Hansen jerked the bolt out and back, jettisoning the empty cartridge across the deck.

“Shit!” he scolded himself.

He jammed the bolt back into the rifle, indexing the next round in the chamber, and raised the carbine back to his shoul­der. Once again, Hansen deliberated down the sights of the rifle, much more intensely this time, and squeeeezed...

“Boom!” the gun roared again.

As Hansen slowly lowered the gun from his shoulder a visible sneer formed at the corners of his mouth. He harrumphed trium­phantly as one of the gulls toppled end over end into the ocean. He pulled the bolt back less frantically this time and ejected the spent cartridge across the deck. It landed at the feet of Mac, who was charging angrily up the fo’c’sle stairs.

“What in the hell’s going on out here?” Mac screamed at the now gloating Hansen.

“Sea gulls...hate them damned things!”

The largest of the sea gulls looked back long enough to cast a doleful glance on his brown‑tinted son who lay lifelessly on the water’s surface. But stopping to lament was beyond good sense, and the gulls raced on, reducing their size to mere specks in Hansen’s vision.

Mac stomped across the deck to where Hansen still stood on the motor housing and demanded his rifle. “Asshole!” he snapped, wrenching the gun from Hansen with a quick jerk. “Gimme that thing! You wanna have the marine patrol out here on our asses again?”

“Aw, come on, Mac,” Hansen whined. “The ding-blamed bird shit all over me...whuddam I s’podda do?”

Mac eyeballed the carbine angrily and jammed it back into its leather case, convinced its care could never be entrusted to the likes of Hansen. He glanced warily at his long-johned friend with the torn pooper flap, then trudged back to the overstuffed fore cabin, filling the entire doorway as he stepped through sideways.

Mac, as Hansen called him—actually Jack McKenzie—was still a brute of a man at fifty, hauling around nearly two hundred and sixty pounds on his big-boned frame. His hanging cheeks and drooping eyes likened him much to a rosy-faced bulldog... rosy from years of dedication to rum and tequila. Mac maintained a graying flat top that only approximated horizontal when he sloped his head to the right, which was most of the time.

Mac lumbered back onto the deck and plopped down in the navigator’s chair. He cast a look of dill amusement at Hansen, then sighed heavily. He desperately needed to let the morning unfold slow enough so as not to overwhelm his still throbbing, hung-over head.

Mac had been partners in crime with Jack Hansen ever since their navy days. They had become so attuned to each other over the years that there were few differences between them anymore... well... except for one obvious one. It was a police-blotter fact that Jack and Jack weighed within one pound of each other. The quirk was, Mac towered over Hansen by six and three‑quarters inches. But once you got beyond the Laurel and Hardy exteriors, you would see birds of a feather.

Hansen labored to bend over to pick up the army blanket he’d thrown against the control panel but gave up and instead wadded it into one of the deck lockers with his foot. Bending over was for more important things, like the tequila bottle he’d spotted under Mac’s chair. Down he squatted, popping the second button free from the seat of his long johns, and uncapped the bottle. Still stooped, he swigged greedily until his face puckered.

“Last hit... ya want it?”

Mid-yawn, Mac snapped his fingers for the bottle. As Mac reached for the bottle though, his expression came to life from the sight of bird shit still crusted from forehead to chin on his friend’s face, and he began to snicker.

“Friggin’ birds!” Hansen cursed again. He crossed his eyes and made an accordion of his brows, ridiculously trying to see his forehead. Then with a satisfied sneer: “At least that is one bird whose white-washing days are... I’ll guar-awn-tee!”

Mac shook an oily rag at Hansen. “You want this, or are you thinkin’ about startin’ a new fashion trend for the rest of your friends?”

“You mean like you…?”

Hansen glared as Mac harrumphed and sucked down the last swallow of tequila, then lobbed the bottle into the galley, missing the garbage bucket by a couple of feet.

Seagulls were still in control of Hansen’s mind. “Remember all the gulls we used to find caught up in them lobster traps?”

Mac scanned his thoughts for a moment until the memory clicked, and his expression quickly rotted into a prune. “Mm-hm, I remember... too well. That was back in the days when we had our own boat. We barely had that boat paid for when you got it confiscated!”

“Me... eee!”

“Yea, you. You were the one who claimed that the little boat coming at us was just one of your dope running buddies. Buddy—right. It was a ding blamed U.S. Fish n’ Game cop! Us with no license, three thousand undersized crawdads. Yea, I remem­ber... asshole!”

“Hmmph,” Hansen grunted defensively. “You’re all-ways trying to pin that one on me.” Hansen tried to grin in self‑­defense but wasn’t fast enough to escape the playful backhand Mac smacked against his tummy. It caused the fat man to wince.

Hansen needed a change of subject. “My brain still feels like putty from last night.”

“Hmmph...”

“Say, we got any of them aspirins left?”

“Oh, my gifted friend, you know there hasn’t been an aspirin on this boat in over two weeks.”

“Umm.” Next detour: “Think you could handle any food yet? Don’t know ‘bout you, but I’m starving.” Hansen knew food always worked on Mac, and he moved back in to set the hook: “Anything left in the box besides pork and beans?”

“Nah, that’s about it—that and that stale johny bread.”

Hansen disappeared into the hold and returned with the last of their sea rations. He hopped up onto the chair across from Mac and twisted so his fanny could ooze into the cracks and over the edges. Usually, Hansen chuckled whenever he manned the co‑navigator’s chair; he laughed because the co-navigator’s chair hadn’t so much as one control in front of it. Now though, there were no chuckles. Hangover, you know. There was only a silent shoveling in of cold beans and stale johny bread.

“Coral Mist!” shouted a voice from the ship‑to‑shore radio. It startled both men. “This is the Tradewinds...calling the Coral Mist.”

Mac speared the microphone from the receiver and barked into it: “Yea, this is the Coral Mist. Come on back Tradewinds.”

“Hang on a minute, Coral Mist,” said the voice from the radio. “I got a call for you. Lemme patch you through.”

“Jack, is that you?” It was Buzz McKenzie, Mac’s brother.

“Yea, Buzz. Go ahead,” Mac shouted.

“Where in the heck are you guys?”

“We’re out on the far edge of the reef.”

“I tried callin’ you all last night but couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“Yea, I know. We decided to stay out here all night. Didn’t think to turn the radio on till it was almost morning.”

“How come?”

“How come we were out here all night or how come we didn’t have the radio on?”

A moment’s silence conveyed Buzz’s impatience. “Why didn’t you just punch the coordinates into the Loran and forget it?”

“Umm...we would’ve, but the Loran’s still broken down.”

“What do you mean...? Still broken down?” There was another moment of silence. “I suppose the head’s still broken down, too?”

“Jeez, Buzz, we’ve been really busy lately.”

“What about the running lights? Ya know, I loaned that trawler to you two jack-offs to go down there and book some charters or something. But all you idiots are doing is bumming around, turning my boat into a floating junk pile! It’s a wonder the radio even works.”

“Look, Buzz, there’s no problem. We’re gonna take care of all-ah them things.” Mac paused a second to flash a silent, open-mouthed grin at Hansen. Hansen pinched his lips together to stifle his own laugh. His belly jiggled like a cement mixer.

“Hey, Buzz,” Mac started again. “Did you get through to that guy yet?”

“Of course. Why do you think I’m calling?”

“Well...?”

“He said to get some pictures of that thing, and he’d show ‘em to some guy at this archive place up here in Miami. Said if they looked legit enough, there’d probably be some kind of a reward in it for us.”

“Did he say how much?”

“No, but they got some pretty big reserves—you know, grants ‘n stuff. I’m sure it’ll be more than you’ve got right now.”

“Yea, you’re probably right,” Mac droned, unconvinced. “Buzz, we took some pictures with that little camera yesterday. I’ll send them up to you as soon as we get back into port.”

“Got anything else?”

“Nah, that’s about it.”

“Say Jack, how about getting my boat fixed, huh?”

“You bet, Buzz. Over and out.”

Mac fumbled the microphone back into place, switched the set off, then leaned back to scratch his stubbled chin problematically; looked sideways at Hansen. “Whaddaya think?”

Hansen hacked out a guileful laugh. “Hmmph. Maybe we’ll make enough to pay off Pops for the fuel; maybe even be able to run a dive ad up on the mainland again. But...” he sniggered, his pirate’s grin coming to life: “It’s like you say: First, we go back down there with that wrecking bar; find out what’s behind that door. If it is some kind of an old tomb or some­thing... if it is... well, you know it’s gotta be filled with all kinds of gold and treasure and shit.”

“Yea, and ol’ Buzz and that archives guy can...well, we’ll just get them their cuts later on. They can trust us.” Mac smacked Hansen on the belly again and both men gyrated into howls.

A plate of beans and two belches later: “Inspired yet?”

“Pertineer...” Hansen stepped from the co‑navigator’s chair to the railing and snaked his way around the windshield to the trawler’s bow. As he held onto the tubular rail with one hand, he opened his fly with the other and began relieving himself. “Hey, Mac...when are ya gonna fix the head anyway?”

Mac hopped down to the deck and plodded aft to the pile of heaped up diving gear.

Hansen crawled back around the windshield, still fumbling with his long-john opening and ruminating on the head issue. “I mean...um, well you know, Mac, it’s always such a drag when you really gotta go...”

“Ya know what you oughta do, Spud? You oughta save up all that shit you’re always bellyachin’ about, and when you get back to port, you can pack it into a bunch of shotgun shells. You could use ‘em to shoot at the sea gulls. Who knows, maybe you could finally get even with ‘em.” Mac beamed with pride over his scatological brilliance.

“Ass‑hole!” Hansen muttered.

Hansen struggled into his still wet swim trunks, then wrestled with his wetsuit top. The job of stuffing his entire stomach inside the zippered flap was agonizing, and he groaned under the labor of it. Finally, stuffed, and winded, he plopped onto the motor housing to count the two remaining tanks.

“Whaddawe got left...one tank each?”

Mac smiled artfully at his friend’s math skills. “Here ya go,” he grunted, and jerked Hansen’s tank onto the motor housing.

Hansen buckled the air tank to his buoyancy control vest, then slipped his arm into the vest’s left arm hole.

“Help me get this other arm in here, will ya, Mac?”

“How many times do I have to show you? Just do it like this.” Mac stood facing his buoyancy control unit and slid both arms through the vest. Then he flipped the entire unit over his head until it dropped neatly into place on his back. “Like so.”

“You know I can’t do that. This wet suit is too damned tight. If I had one my size...”

“I don’t think they make one in your size. You need to get moving on that diet you’re always bellyachin’ about?” Mac grabbed his buddy’s arm and twisted it back through the buoyancy control vest’s other arm hole.

Hansen cinched the vest tight around his stomach and stood beside his towering friend, tap jabbed Mac twice on his stomach. “Keep it up. You still have me by a good pound.”

But for the zillionth time, Hansen’s weight joke didn’t raise a smile, and Mac deadpanned: “How about gettin’ your whale ass over the side. We got treash-ah to haul.”

“Hmmph...” Hansen finished gearing up and dropped onto the side rail to adjust his mask before flipping backwards into the water. A second later he bobbed back to the surface and fumbled his mask up onto his forehead.

Mac dangled a wrecking bar over the rail. “Better blow that thing up a little more or you’re gonna sink like a rock when you grab this bar.”

Hansen grunted, “Uh‑huh” through his mouthpiece, then pressed the air valve on his vest to inflate it like a balloon. Mac handed the pry bar down, then hurdled the rail, trouncing Hansen’s face with a small tidal wave as he splashed in.

Both men released the air from their buoyancy control regulators and slowly submerged into the blue depths. Within seconds Mac appeared face to face with Hansen and held up a questioning circle with his thumb and index finger to ask if all was right. Hansen nodded, returned the signal.

Fifteen feet down, the world of coral brains burst into a rainbow of soft roses, blues, yellows, and greens. Patches of brilliant red fire coral grew here and there, decorating the brains and the proud antlers of staghorn coral.

A sandy trench ran along the bottom, like a canyon winding through cliffs of coral, and Hansen settled into it. As always, there was need to stop for a moment so his senses could adjust to the breathtaking grandeur of the reef. Parrot fish in bright reds, yellows and blues swam lazily through a garden of yellow and violet sea fans, while shimmering peacock flounders co-vegetated with the trumpet fish. Finger-sized blue tang fish and African pompano ornamented the ledges and hollows throughout the canyon.

From the bases of the brain coral masses, dozens of whip-like lobster antennae waved from their pocketed hiding places. Bundles of black and purple sea urchins, with their razor-sharp spines, lay on the sands around the bases of the coral heads, serving as unwitting sentries for the pocketed lobsters. A small ray wing-dipped into the canyon and then glided out across the myriad of formations.

Mac eased down beside his friend and grinned at the sur­roundings. This was their retreat, their womb. It was the one place left where they could feel safe enough to let down their guards, the one place left where there were no warrants out for them. It was home. Mac gestured to the wrecking bar his partner was carrying, then tapped himself on the chest while shrugging his shoulders. Hansen nodded yes and foisted the bar onto Mac.

Out through the coral canyon they swam for nearly five minutes. As they rounded a wide curve they came upon a large grouper ruffling its scales so a group of yellow gobies could groom it of its dead skin and micro-cooties. Another time the two Jacks might have rousted the bathing fish, but this time adventure lay ahead, and so they finned wide of the grouper and passed it undisturbed.

Mac pulled his air gauge to his mask—still nearly forty minutes of air remaining.

Around two more turns they came to the end of the canyon, as well as the edge of the coral reef. Beyond lay a vast blue eternity known as the Tongue of the Ocean, an ocean void that dropped more than a mile down into the watery depths. They stared hypnotically into the abyss, awed for a moment by the thrill of adventure that lay ahead, then turned to each other. Mac floated his hand out horizontally and then curved it down­wards to the right to map out the path they would be taking. Hansen gave the nod of a semi‑willing conspirator, and the journey beyond the edge of the reef began.

Twenty feet down from the reef’s edge they came upon an immense sheet of rock that extended awning-like from the face of the wall. And below the awning... easily the oldest mystery Hansen and Mac would ever see in their lives. It was a door—a large oval door made entirely out of stone, and leading away from it in a semi-circular sweep was a trio of steps that had been carved into the bedrock. The steps were all covered in silt that came from thousands of years of neglect, and at the bottom they emptied out into the blue abyss.

This was the structure they had come back to explore!

A series of frightening chills shuddered through both men as they looked up the stairs to the oval door, as though this door of stone might be hiding more spooks behind it than any haunted house door they could ever dare to imagine.

It gave Mac the willies, and he shook himself to ward off the fear, and then swam to the oval stone to begin studying it. Somewhere on its outer ring there had to be a crack or a groove or something, a place where he could jam his wrecking bar.

While Mac studied, Hansen floated motionlessly, staring at the door with frightened lust, trying to imagine what might lay beyond. ‘It’s got to be an old tomb or something,’ he dreamed, ‘or an ancient pirate’s cave, or...’

Meanwhile, Mac finally hatched a plan, but one he alone would not be able to pull off. He needed a little extra oomph, a little extra ballast to force the pry bar into a crack along the left side of the stone, and he waved at Hansen until he snapped out of his daydream. Soon the two were grunting against the pry bar with all their summonable strength, until alas, they gave up. It was the stairs; they were simply too slick to get enough pushing traction on.

Something about opening this door was feeling more and more forbidding. Perhaps a few more shakes and a bit more studying. Mac focused on the three steps sweeping out from the door and began scraping some of the sediment from them. It appeared as though the stairs had been pieced together, mosaic-like, and Mac scraped until he exposed a series of narrow grooves in them, enough to make his next strategy obvious. It seemed reasonable to pound a couple of the lead rectangles from their weight belts into the grooves and use them to get a bit more traction. And that’s just what they did. A moment later the wrecking bar was jammed back into the door crack, and together again they strained on the pry bar until, at last, the oval stone began inching its way out of its recess in the wall. When enough space appeared behind the oval door, Mac jimmied the pry bar above the top of the door, searching for its leverage peak, and began nudging away at the door. At first the door only lay there like any obstinate rock might, barely teetering at all. But gradually its rocking grew greater, and the door finally fell forward, skating down the stairs until it struck a boulder, careened to the right, and then tumbled out of sight down the cliff-like decline.

Fantasies flared as the two divers raced for the doorway. The opening was narrow and disappeared quickly into darkness, scarcely even wide enough for even one of them to enter. So, Mac snatched the flashlight from Hansen’s waist kit and elbowed his way into the lead exploring position. Once in though, he quickly came upon another obstacle to the passage. It was a second door, oval like the first, but made entirely out of a bronze-like metal. Some sort of inscription was embossed onto the door, and Mac scraped away at it until it became visible—visible but totally alien to him. He puzzled over the inscription for about a minute, and then finally shrugged in resignation. Whatever it was, it was stumping the hell out of him, and he backed out of the hole so Hansen could come have a look.

By the time Hansen backed out of the opening, he was equally as baffled by the metal door and its inscription. He hadn’t a clue of how to deal with it.

Mac did though. He’d already cooked up a scheme for breaking through the door and was anxious to pantomime the gist of it to his friend. He made a series of pounding lunges with an imaginary wrecking bar and then pointed menacing­ly into the opening.

Whatever sense of civic responsibility Hansen might have had to preserve this potentially invaluable artifact, it was quickly overruled by his lust to discover the inevitable treasures that lay beyond. He nodded an anxious yes to his friend and formed a circle with his thumb and forefinger.

Mac checked his air gauge again; held up ten fingers first, then five. Hansen eyed his own gauge and nodded back, agreeing on the fifteen minutes of remaining air.

Mac waved Hansen out of the way and disappeared into the opening with the wrecking bar and flashlight and began hammering away at the door. Mac’s hammering was loud—piercingly loud, and Hansen tried moving down the stairs to escape the sharp ring, but it wasn’t far enough away. Finally, he swam up onto the lip of the awning rock and covered his ears to block out the shrill ringing.

Soon the clanging of the wrecking bar came to an end, and with new dreams of treasure, Hansen pushed free of his awning perch. As he moved though, he sensed a sudden shifting motion in the rock awning, and as he backed away to study the overhanging structure, he could see a crack developing at one end where the rock awning interfaced with the vertical wall, and it was spreading rapidly across the awning’s full length.

Horrified, Hansen pivoted downward. Mac was still headlong in the cave opening, and he kicked savagely to reach him. But just as he came almost to within a body length of the opening, the entire overhanging rock broke free from the wall and plunged straight down. It rumbled with a loud though water-muffled explo­sion as it fell and triggered an avalanche of tumbling rocks that thundered down through a mushroom cloud of silt into the blue depths.

The sudden crash of the rock awning generated such a sudden and violent current, it threw Hansen backwards like a rag doll, and nearly shocked him unconscious. And as he floated, trembling in numb, uncontrollable terror, he stared dumbly into the cloudy depths below. It had been a wipeout, a total wipeout. The crash of the awning had leveled virtually everything below it, leveled it even with the top of the now demolished stairs: The bronze door, the cave structure, the works... Mac! Hansen suddenly panicked. Mac could not possibly have survived the avalanche, and tears began to gush from the fat man. No... not his Mac! His Mac had been essentially every-thing to him: His father and mother, his brother, his friend, his savior... his most bestest partner in crime of all times.

Now what? Somehow in the midst of his anguish, Hansen happened to notice his air gauge and gasped. His air was nearly at zero, and if he didn’t get moving for the trawler at once he would be up shit’s creek just like... His mind began turning cloudier than the silt below.

‘What about Mac? What am I going to tell Buzz?’ he sobbed irrepressibly to himself. ‘Aw fuck Buzz! What am I going to do with myself? What am I going to do?’

Tears were still streaming out of Hansen when he reached the anchor site and began pulling himself up the nylon cable to the boat. He was not more than a few pulls up the anchor line though, when a queer sort of buzzing noise began to rattle in his head, a buzzing noise that moved down his body and made him twitch all over with tingly spasms. The buzzing grew stronger and stronger, and began to shake and pull at him, pull as though he was being sucked in a deadly undertow current. The current grew so strong that Hansen had to hold desperately onto the anchor line lest he be swept into the jaws of...

And then it happened. A quick, prophetic communi­cation spoke to Hansen in his next to last moment among the living, and it somehow brought a calm sense of peace and sur­render to him. It said: ‘This force, this current that is pulling at you so relentlessly... this force cannot even begin to convey the smallest hint of the monster that is about to come!’

Hansen gulped futilely, and his life passed before him in one little firefly-sized flash.

And as the next titanic shock wave surged through the waters, it tossed the abandoned trawler about with such an uncompassionate vengeance, that in a solitary snap, it tore the harpoon like anchor free from its mooring, and speared those deadly anchor points up through the chest of Hansen, then dragged his lifeless body along in the wake of the Coral Mist—a scene too reminiscent of Captain Ahab’s final accursed sleigh ride to Nantucket.

______________________________

END OF CHAPTER

Look forward to new chapters each Tuesday and Friday at 9am

“You ain’t foolin’ me-eee, not this time,” Emory muttered back. He closed his eyes and tried drifting out again so he could reconnect with the child-goddess of his dreams, but try as he might, neither sleep nor dream would return. The alarm clock had already done its damage.

Emory huffed a sigh of dejection. His dreams came so rarely, that is, he remembered so few of them, and he didn’t want to lose this one—especially not this one. This one was too... too special! But even as he fought to savor the last few remaining glimpses of his dream, he could feel the details slipping away, disappearing­ into the recesses of his mind.

“E‑mo‑ry...” a melodic voice sang up and down the scale.

“I’m up,” Emory groaned.

“It’s twenty till, Emory. If you want a ride to work, you need to get moving. I still have to drive all the way back over to school... Emory?”

The voice belonged to Boblou, Emory’s roomie. Boblou was nearly always first out of bed in the morning, and as usual, he was cheerful. At six-forty in the morning though, his brand of cheerfulness was... well, it‑ wasn’t exactly contagious.

“Emory...!”

“I’m comin’, already. I’m comin’!” Emory unglued his eyes and squinted across the bedroom to the crack at the bottom of his door. Two shadowy traces under the narrow door slit told him that Boblou was still lurking outside, waiting to step up his ranting if Emory didn’t show some immediate signs of life. He reached for his stereo and gave the turntable’s dust cover a little extra rattle as he fumbled the cuing arm onto a record, then glanced back over at the door crack. It worked. Boblou’s shadows slowly withdrew and vanished down the hall.

Emory slunk back into his floor bed and affectionately looped an arm around one of the legs of the Steinway Grande that he slept beneath. His eyelids sagged under their own weight and sleep nearly returned. But the instant Ingrid Haebler burst forth from the surrounding stereo speakers, hammering out her jaunty rendition of Mozart’s Je suis Lindor, Emory’s eyes popped open like jack-in-the-boxes. He listened to the piano piece with a conductor’s intensity, straining to hear the flurry of 128^th notes that were about to play. Haebler’s finger magic fascinated him, and he imagined himself playing some of the measures that had always challenged him.

He swatted the turntable’s “off switch” and kicked clear of his tangle of covers. Getting out from beneath his piano was always a helluva maneuver. It meant crawling out through the threaded maze of stereo equipment, wire harnesses and piano legs. Soon though, he was clear of the electrical jungle and swatted a stack of dirty clothes off his piano bench. Once seated, he flipped the keyboard cover open and mentally rehearsed for a moment before stretching out with flexed hands. He finger-walked through the first eight measures in Je suis Lindor, then skipped ahead to a rapid tempo portion of the piece. He stumbled along, missing note after note, then grimaced at his latest flub mimicking the passage. But it wasn’t just about getting it right; it was about the connection, the thrill of trying. “Someday,” he mused, letting his fingers linger on the keys, feeling their cool surface beneath his touch. This piano was more than just wood and strings—it was a piece of him, the one thing that made everything else fade into the background..

A yawn later, Haebler ebbed into silence.

The sun was just beginning to trickle into Emory’s hovel of a bedroom, and his eyes wandered amongst the fallout until they came to rest on a picture of his late mother. “Look at this pigsty,” he imagined her scolding. He could still see her shaking her crooked finger at him, and he scrunched his nose up into his forehead to mock his mother’s mouthing of “peeg­-sty.”

“Nyea, nyea, nyea... nyea, nyea, nyea,” he back-talked at the picture. Having a picture to sass back was better than nothing, he supposed, even though the imagined voice was probably right about his mess. Emory braved another look at his room, then blew out in resignation. Seemed like his room was always in some advanced stage of anarchy, and most of the solutions for cleaning it always called for evicting his piano, but ummm...

He snuffled as he recalled the day he beer-bribed Sniggley and Rhondo into helping him haul his piano up from Pacifica to the tiny apartment in the Sunset District he would be sharing with Boblou. It was a preposterously insane time, carting the massive sections of a grand piano around town, all by three people who were scarcely sober enough to even stand, much less figure out how to put the damn thing back together again once they wrestled it up the two flights of stairs. ‘Nah, after all that trouble, bullshit! The piano is here, and here it’s gonna stay!’

‘Perhaps a new resolution,’ Emory speculated with his inner voice. ‘Yea: Like… how about… hence forth I will keep this room in better shape, and... and... yea, right! This is my room, and I’ll do with it as I damn-well please!’

Emory gazed back up at his mother’s picture and sassed her with renewed impudence: “Nyea, nyea, nyea... nyea, nyea, nyea!”

Now afoot, Emory squeezed between the keyboard and the wall until he reached the bedroom door. The clock in the hall read ten minutes to seven. “It’s ten to seven,” Boblou announced cheerfully from the kitchen.

Emory sighed. Boblou worked at keeping a step ahead of him in the minutia of clock matters, making himself sort of a har­binger for the obvious.

“Mm-hm,” Emory droned impassively. “Quick shower ‘n I’ll be ready.” Moments later Emory reappeared in the kitchen, fully dressed, but with his light brown curls still dangling in unruly tangles. He gulped the dregs of the Minute Maid and dropped into a kitchen chair across from his roomie. Boblou was pouring through his class notes, while semi-engrossing himself in the morning newscast.

Emory: “Test today?”

Boblou nodded silently but held a hand up to keep Emory at bay while he finished his train of thought. A moment later Boblou glanced up: “Yea, electronics at nine; that’s why I have to get out of here so soon. I need to look my notes over one more time before the test. Spring break starts tomorrow. If I smoke this test I won’t have to come back and kill myself on the final.”

“So, you have decided you’re going to graduate then.”

Boblou smiled and shook his head from side to side.

“No? Poly-Sci that much better than electronics?”

But Boblou only shrugged.

“How’s your old lady gonna handle you changing majors again? What’s this now, the fourth or fifth time? Nobody can be that gullible. I mean, hasn’t she figured out yet that you’re just not into working?” Emory huffed; shook his head. “Sure, wish I could get away with a paid vacation like that.”

Boblou shrugged philosophically: “Actually she wasn’t that hard to convince at all. Ya see, mom under-stands that a guy needs to have a well-rounded education. When I called and told her I was going to combine my backgrounds and go into law, specializing in computer and electrical patenting, she was in heaven. She couldn’t get on the phone quickly enough to pester the old man for some more school bucks. And...,” Boblou trailed off, pausing to grab an envelope from his note pile to wave in Emory’s face, “...voila!”

“Let’s see that,” Emory sputtered, snatching the envelope from Boblou. It was a check, and when Emory saw its size, he winced and twisted his head with an incredulous moan. “Pheeew! I can’t be-lieve your old man. I woulda had to work almost a year for that tightwad Bernie to make that kind of bank.”

“Why doncha dig into some of that inheritance of yours. You’ve got enough of it...”

“You know that’s just for rainy days…”

“Whatever. As for me—law’s the new game. Now whaddaya think of my new major?”

Emory’s head wavered in metronome-like disbelief.

“Besides, Poly-Sci is fascinating. Ya know, I finally got into reading Marx’s Manifesto. I mean, you wouldn’t be-lieve all the socialized trends in this country that come di-rectly from Socialism, from pure Communism, to Social Security, welfare, and on and on. Take, for example...,” he rambled in dissertational mode.

Emory’s attention drifted from Boblou to the radio just as the newscaster repeated one of the lead stories:

“Seismic activity… in the waters near one of the largest islands in the Bahamian Island chain…”

The words seismic activity lingered in his ears.

A strange sensation moved up his spine. His chest tightened, as if something had taken hold of it, and the air in the room felt heavier, almost thick. He blinked, trying to steady himself, but the kitchen seemed to dim for a moment before coming back.

Then the dream returned.

At first it came in pieces. The hill. The circle. Her.

More followed. The firestones. The dancers turning in a slow, steady rhythm. The faint sweetness of something burning in the night air. She stood at the center of it, calm and radiant, as though everything around her belonged to the same living pattern.

The offering. The bowl.

And its transformation to… the sword!

Light gathered and drew inward, pulling everything toward a single point. Emory tried to hold the image in place, to keep it from slipping away again, but it wouldn’t settle.

Something was wrong.

A chill crept into the scene, subtle at first, then spreading. It didn’t belong there. It moved against the rhythm, dulling the light and pressing in from the edges.

The circle tightened. The movement faltered.

And the light began to give way.

Emory pulled back sharply, and the vision broke apart before it could go any further.

“...and so,” Boblou continued with the astuteness of a Stepford robot, unaware of Emory’s departure from his talk, “the antagonistic charade against the inherent values of Communism that our government engages in, becomes infinitely more absurd in the wake of the facts.”

“I see what you mean,” Emory lied.

Boblou smiled with merriment at Emory’s storm of a hairdo. “Lookin’ to sell a lot of used cars today, are we?”

“Um.” Emory caught the look and moved to the hall mirror to rake his fingers through his sandy tangles.

Boblou appeared beside him with a fine-toothed comb and began parting and furling the lip line of his black trimmed mustache. Boblou gave himself a big wink and grinned over to Emory. “Let’s ride, paison.”

Boblou jockeyed his van through Golden Gate Park to the Nineteenth Avenue turnoff. He had more than enough time to drop Emory off in South San Francisco and be back to school before nine, but still, kept glancing impatiently at his watch. “Ya know, I can’t figure Bernie out. You’d think your own stepfather would at least let you use one of the cars from his car lot. It couldn’t possibly be putting him out that much.”

“Sorry ‘bout bumming all the rides from you,” Emory apolo­gized meekly. “I oughta have time to fix my car on Sunday.”

“No, that’s not it. You’re welcome to a ride any time. It’s your old man. That guy is just too way out of line. If you weren’t working for him, it might be different. But hey, what kind of a slob owns a used car lot, and won’t even fix his own kid up with a ride? I’m tellin’ ya, that guy has his head stuck a little too far up his own ass.”

They drove on wordlessly for several more lights before Emory parted the silence. “I think Bernie means well,” he began with uncertainty. “He just can’t seem to understand why I live the way I do, you know, the music part. He’s always hated music, ever since my dad got run over by a drunk after playing that bar gig down in San Jose. And then after mom...”

“You don’t have to get into all that. I get it...”

“If you did, you’d give him a break. He’s really not that bad. It’s just that for Bernie, playing gigs will always mean bars and drunks and crazy dreams that never do anything but turn sour. And he swears he’s never going to do anything that’ll put me in the same situation my dad ended up in.” Emory paused to sort his thoughts. “Ya see, he’s got this weird loyalty to mom and even dad’s memory that makes him want to pro-tect me from music. So, I guess in his own weird little way, Bernie really does care about me.”

“You’re right about one thing: It does sound pretty weird.”

As they passed San Francisco State, Emory said: “Ya know, sometimes I think about going back to finish school. I don’t have all that many classes left to go. Maybe I could pick up a teaching credential or something...” Emory’s speech became a dispirited and unconvincing mumble. “I don’t know, I’m just not cut out for selling used cars, especially for Bernie.”

“Any chance of Bernie helping you out with some school bucks?”

“Huh!” Emory grunted. “He said he’d pay my whole way, but only if I loaded up on business courses.”

“What about for your music classes?”

“Humph!”

Bernie’s logic always amused Boblou, and he hummed with a muffled laughter of droll pathos. Then to his inner voice, the one he always called Bob-1:

‘Whaddaya think, Bob-1?

Bob-1: ‘Let it go for now. We’ll bat it around a little later.’

‘OK,’ Boblou thought back.

Emory: “I don’t know, maybe the whole idea of ‘me in music’ is just silly. My heart hasn’t been in my music in so long that it doesn’t even make sense to play anymore.”

Emory looked heartsick for a moment, and Boblou nearly began to coddle, but quickly rejected the impulse.

“I remember my music classes:” Emory went on, “They were so boring, they drove me crazy. Some-times I got a little something out of them, but hardly ever. Even the classics started sounding fake and hollow. And that stuff we’re gonna play this afternoon... I mean, yuk­! We ought to bury that shit! It has absolutely nothing to say and nothing to play.”

“Maybe so,” Boblou countered, “but they’re all ya got going right now, and if you don’t make ‘em work pretty quick, you’re gonna suck what little morale the band has left and piss it away! Burpy’s about fed up with the band; so is Muffy; and don’t forget about me: I have to keep going over to that garage every night to run the sound board when I’ve got homework I’m supposed to be doing, and I’m blowing’ it. And for what? For you? Hell, you’re so down in the dumps all the time, you’re just suckin’ all the life out of the band.” Boblou paused for a moment, long enough for Emory to shoot him a wounded look. The look was enough to make Boblou add a little padding to his words: “Look, Emory. I’m sorry. I know it smarts, but hey, you’re not stupid; you know what’s happening. We’ve always been best buds. I wouldn’t dump crap like this on you if it didn’t need to be done.”

“No, you’re right. I have been pretty down lately. Maybe it would be better if I just dropped out of the band for a while and gave the other guys a chance. If I’m not inspired, why waste everybody else’s time?” Emory’s spirit sunk even further.

“Humph” was about as close to consoling as Boblou wanted to get right now. “Why don’t we see how things go this afternoon. Who knows? Maybe your luck’ll start changing.”

Moments later: “By the by, did you tell Bernie about your audition this afternoon yet?”

“No, not yet.” Emory finally managed a smile, albeit a sheepish one. “I thought I’d wait until just before noon to spring it on him, sort of a mental health bonus for me. I don’t need him pissin’ ‘n moaning’ at me all morning. Same with tomorrow’s.”

“You’re probably right. Careful of that guy... Remember that line—no rest for the wicked? He’s that guy”

“You mean, no rest for the witless!”

Both smiled.

Emory: “We’re pretty early. Can ya drop me off at the donut shop, so I don’t have to hang out looking at all his junkers? Hmm?”

Boblou nodded.

Emory weighed his thoughts for a moment and decided to take a chance: “Last night I had... probably the most beautiful dream I think I’ve ever had.”

Boblou gave a suspicious sideways glance to his friend.

“There was this girl in my dream who was like some sort of a fairy goddess or something.” Emory’s voice slowly softened to match the tempo of his dream.

“Oooh,” Boblou crooned. “The ol’ nocturnal emissions routine, eh?”

“No, it wasn’t anything like that!” Emory scowled, trying to dim Boblou’s hopes for a provocative story. “Well, maybe she was in the raw, but it was only for a second. I mean, there wasn’t any funny stuff going on...” Emory hedged, suddenly feeling an unexpected twinge of embarrassment.

“Uh‑huh...?” Boblou needled, unconvinced.

“Nooo, dummy. It was about this magical ceremony going on under a full moon, and it was really high up on top of a big hill.” Emory tried to convey the serenity of his dream, but he could see by his friend’s amused expression that it was futile and best to let fade. There was little chance his dream could do any better with his roomie than to get distorted into smut and trampled in the translation. He was dismayed that his dream was touching on a level of communication that he and his friend had never shared, and for now at least he would protect his dream. “So, I guess that’s about it,” he ended abruptly.

“That’s it? Humph. For a minute, it sounded promising... Oh well…”

But Emory remained protectively silent, and so Boblou offered, “Okay, okay, I get it; it’s not that kind of dream…. Hmm?... Donut shop, end of the line,” Boblou announced cheerfully. “See you at around twelve thirty, paison.”

“Hey, Boblou, thanks for the ride, and good luck on your test.”

“Mm-hm, not a problem.”

* * * * *

See you Friday at 9am

And as the golden chain ascended farther, starlight fell upon its whirling crystals and reflected a magnificent burst of color out into the surrounding night. The color bursts swirled in a shimmering dance, forming rainbowed circles that pulsed outward like smoke rings. They grew stronger and stronger, flashing their messages across the heavens, bridging out of view.

At the peak of its ascent the golden chain became an overwhelming sight; its shimmering shroud of colors tightened into an intense maelstrom of blinding light. The scintillating whirlpool raged in silver-white, drawing inward until a tight column of frenzied incandescence began to form.

Then the chain began to descend—more slowly than gravity would allow, as though it were a feather drifting upon unseen currents. As it neared the earth, the glowing column folded in upon itself, the random blaze of glitter gathering, condensing… changing.

Deep within the core of the light, something darker began to appear.

The transformation continued, vague at first—like an image forming on a photographic plate—then slowly, steadily, defining itself.

The radiant column touched down, feather soft upon the sand.

The light dimmed…

and something within it was beginning to take form—

Seven days earlier.

Something’s been building.

This doesn’t start at the beginning.

It starts with something that shouldn’t be possible.

Tuesday.