The Apprentice Journals E-Book

J Michael Shell

• Herausgeber: Dog Horn Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 402

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

From the slaver land of Tara to the shores of Ginny's Beach, ride the mag lines with Spaul and Pearl as they do their best to deal with fickle Elementals, as well as their growing — and dangerous — love for one another. Dangerous because, as they learn from the "Fierae" — the Lightening Elementals — Love is Above the Rules.

Leseprobe

The Apprentice Journals

By

J. Michael Shell

The Apprentice Journals

Published by Dog Horn Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 J. Michael Shell

Contents

IBlitz

IITerrae and Innkeepers

IIITwo Carolines

IVTool’s Treasure

VSpaul’s Treasure

VIThe Coming and Going of Fargus Macreedy

VIIFargus’ Gift

VIIITool’s Warning

IXThe Tara Road

XParty of Four

XIBirth of a Wild Thing

XIIScorched Dawn

XIIIStrangers at the Beach

XIVBye-Bye, Love

XVGood-Morning, Starshine

XVIStormy

XVIIMotherchild Reunion

XVIIIThe First Queen of Ginny

XIXFalling Star

XXGrandpappy

Epilogue

Author’s Note

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I

Blitz

Speaking to Fierae Elementals is probably one of the most difficult things I do. I haven’t met many other Apprentices, but the few I’ve found in my travels say the same thing. All I want to do when I’ve finished one of those momentary conversations is eat and then sleep. I say “momentary,” because talking to the Fierae takes exactly as long as a bolt of their light stays in the air before it sounds its thunder and separates. The ancients called those bolts “lightening.”

“Blitz” is what they called the Fierae in another of those ancient languages. I like blitz much better than lightening. It’s more to the point. To look at the Fierae, in creature time with creature eyes, most people would say they are very to the point. If you stand between them when they’re joining, the point will be that you don’t exist anymore. The Fierae will char you crisp in a nannysecond, and not even notice that you were there. If they did notice, they’d fry you anyway.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Finished Apprentice who taught me was Thirest. I can’t tell you how many times he told me to explaineverything! He’d say, “You have to remember, Spaul, that the people you keep your journal for will have forgotten the Apprentices and majicking and everything. They won’t know shite-all about fug-all. Tell them every detail, so they can find an Apprentice again, because if they don’t, they’re fugged.”

Thirest had a dirty mouth, but he was right. When the Apprentices are gone, World is fugged. Look what happened to the Ancients. They hadn’t talked to the Elementals in so long that the Fierae, the Naiadae, the Terrae and the Zephrae simply forgot they were there. Then something the Ancients were doing with their Teck started warming World and tickling the Elementals, until they began having huge parties all over the place. When the Elementals get together and throw a shindig, watch out! We still get them, but they know we’re here now (because of the Apprentices), and try to keep it down. Still, they have trouble understanding our fragility, and if you get caught in one of their hooplas, you can get hurt. Or dead. “Dead,” the elementals simply do not understand, so don’t expect any sympathy. The best you’re likely to get is, “Oops, we didn’t see you there.”

Of all the Elementals, the Fierae are the most fun to talk to. If you take a typical elemental get together, say a hurrakin, the Fierae are going to be the life of that party. They will also be very beautiful and sensuous. How could they not be? But, of course, you don’t know anything, so I guess I’d better explain that, too. Thirest was right when he said this journaling isn’t easy. But, who knows, what I’m writing now could save World someday if the Apprentices really do die off. The Fierae, what the ancients called lightening, are nearly asleep most of the time.

The reason they are asleep is that they spread themselves very thin as Charges. When they are Charges, they live in the air and the ground. Even asleep, they are conscious, and manipulate World’s elemental flow so that a male Fierae Charge and a female Fierae Charge will meet. Male Charges usually prefer to hang out in Air, and females in Land, but they will change places once in a while. The Fierae you see, that bolt of light, is actually two Fierae engaged in love. When I was a New Kid, Thirest used to tell me that thunder is the two of them saying, “Ooey, that feels good!” Of course, that’s just a children’s story, but if you ever do talk to the Fierae, you’ll find that they make a lot of very satisfied sounds. The thunder, however, isn’t one of them. Thunder is an explosion of sound that occurs when something incompatible with the dimensional fabric of World momentarily exists in it anyway. Actually, the light you see, that bolt, is the Fierae expressing physical love. I can’t help getting excited every time I see the flash of two Fierae loving. Especially if it’s one of those long, drawn out bolts that seems to stand there and pulse. Yowza!

In order to talk to the Fierae you have to speed up, because you can only talk to them just before, and while, they are joined. Remember, when they’re Charges they’re thin and sleepy. But when they wake up to join, they’ll chatter at you, tell you tales, gossip, reveal ancient wisdom from Jess knows when, and all the while they’re going at it—sizzling and crackling and totally embraced. Fierae live to love. If you aren’t careful when you’re talking to them, you’ll get caught up in the sheer eroticism of it and join them.

So that you’ll get an idea of how to converse with the Fierae, I’ll tell you about the last time I talked to Blitz. I gave them the name Blitz (that Ancient word for Fierae) and they liked it, so it stuck. There’s no saying their actual names, you’d have to have fire for vocal chords and smoke for a tongue to be able to say them.

Blitz is only truly Blitz when those two particular Charges join. Fierae will join with any Charge that comes along, but often two of them develop an affinity for one another and start manipulating World’s flow so they can meet up again. If they get separated into different directions of flow, it can take them decades to arrange another meeting.

The two Charges that are Blitz have managed to stay in one another’s vicinity for quite some time now. They’ve joined half a dozen times in the last couple of years, which is practically monogamy for the Fierae. Don’t get me wrong, any female Charge will join with any male Charge if they get close enough. They can’t help it. Having joined with them, I know why they can’t help it. Thirest told me that if I did it once the temptation to do it again would be overwhelming every time I talk to them, and he was right.

He also said creature loving was like pain compared to what the Fierae experience. I can’t confirm or deny Thirest on that account, as I have yet to try the creature version. When I do, I know it will be with a girl. Some Apprentices are said to prefer sex with their own gender, but the thought of that doesn’t appeal to me. Girls, on the other hand, appeal to me very much, but I’ve avoided it thus far. Thirest said it can be dangerous to do it, but it could also be dangerous to never do it. He’s dead now, so the next time I visit his bunker I’m going to have to read what he wrote about that in his journal. That’s probably the only subject he didn’t teach me about in great detail.

It was about six months ago, during a summer party some Elementals were having, when I last talked to Blitz. Just before dark I heard a distant roll of thunder. I could already smell that a storm-party had started somewhere and was on its way. I had my tent in a pasture by a stream. It was a very beautiful place, and I’d been there for a couple of weeks. You might think that’s unusual for an Apprentice, but it really isn’t. We travel out of necessity, but sometimes give in to the urge to stay for a little while in a pretty setting.

We travel because we have to find as many Apprentices as we can, make sure they’re journaling, see if they’ve noticed any New Kids. Thirest said I was the newest Apprentice he knew of, and I was twenty-three at that time. As soon as I became a full Apprentice I quit aging, so I still look twenty-three. Thirest said I’d get tired of it and start to age again, but so far that hasn’t happened. Honestly, though, if Thirest said it, it’s probably just a matter of time. As for how old I am actually, I couldn’t tell you. When I stopped aging I stopped keeping track of the years. If I had to guess I’d say I stopped about a decade ago. They say the Ancients gave every year a name or a number, so they could keep track of that sort of thing. I’ve even heard people say they named and numbered the days back then. That’s a little far-fetched, but if it is true, no wonder the Ancients perished.

Anyway, there I was by the stream, sitting on my little folding stool, when I heard that storm coming. Out in the middle of the field, which was completely flat, stood a huge sycamore tree. It was so big, and so alone in that field, that I had several times gone over and asked it how it came to be there all alone like that. It never did answer me, so I quit asking. But when I heard the storm coming, I marched right back over to that tree. “You’ll talk to me now, I’ll bet,” I told it, patting it hard on its trunky flank.

After giving the tree a hug, something the last enlightened Ancients are rumored to have done, I sat against it and began clearing my thoughts. With that party coming, a Land Charge would surely climb the sycamore tree looking for an Air Charge to join with. Sure enough, as soon as the waves flattened on the sea of my mind, I could hear a Charge up in the tree, chittering. “They come they come they come,” it was saying.

“Do you know of Blitz?” I thought to her. It turned out to be a female Charge, as most ground Charges are.

“They come they come they come they come…”

“DO. YOU. KNOW. BLITZ?” I tried again.

“Spaul!” she said, finally hearing me. “You are in the tree?”

“You’re Blitz!” I said, astounded that I had once again found at least half of my old friend.

“Spaul!” she said again. “You are in the tree?” I hadn’t answered her question, and until I did, no other communication would occur. Fierae, even when they are Charges, leave nothing unfinished. They are very linear beings.

“I am in the tree,” I answered. “We are both in the tree.”

“Tree says, ‘I like my lonely meadow. Please don’t let this Charge kill me,’” girl Blitz told me.

I laughed at that, and could tell Blitz was laughing also. “Tell tree not to stand tall in a meadow while the Fierae party!” I said, and Blitz laughed so hard I saw sparks on that sycamore’s leaves.

Charges are sleepy most of the time, but not when they’re aroused by a party. It was a big storm that was coming, too. My Charge friend in the sycamore was very animated. She’d be jumping the first Air Charge that showed up. “Is Blitz also in Air?” I asked.

“Blitz stretches to me even now,” she answered. “You have thrice the time you need to avoid your killing.”

That wasn’t good. Fierae are notorious for overestimating how fast we humans can move. Somehow, I kept my mind-sea calm long enough to tell her, “I will converse with you!”

“Join!” she invited, as I got up and ran like helluva.

By the time I got seated on my little stool, I figured I had about a minute to speed myself up enough to go speak to Blitz. I calmed my sea again, and felt that little jolt that comes when you disconnect from your body. I have to admit, though, I’m getting very good at it, and almost immediately ramped up my vibration enough to come hurtling out. I was back at the sycamore—minus my gross-body, of course—in a flash. Now I had all the time in World, and took in the beauty of being at this speed. The tree was very alive, pulsing with lines of life flowing up and down it like fast honey filled with shiny metal stars. Blitz was up in it sparking and crackling with intense excitement. “How long since Blitz has joined with Blitz?” I asked her.

“Half a trip around the Ball,” she told me.

“That long, eh? You probably can’t wait, can you?”

“Of course I can,” she told me. “How could I not?”

Uh oh. I had asked a silly question, and now she’d asked me a question about my silly question. I needed to extricate myself from this conversation or it would be all we’d talk about throughout their entire joining. “I also can imagine no way in which you could not wait,” I said. “Time moves, waiting is inevitable. Upon further pondering, I am sure that you can wait.” Hopefully, that would do.

“I can wait. Will you wait also and join with us?”

“I will wait,” I told her. “And I will speak with you. I am undecided as to whether I will join.”

“You will join,” she said. “I will bet!”

“You might be right, and I will not bet,” I told her.

Thirest had warned me, sternly, not to gamble with the Fierae. There is only one currency that humans possess which interests them, and that is our light-bodies themselves. If you gamble and lose to the Fierae, your body will sit without you wherever you left it until it rots. “All I know is, they’ll join with you and take you with them as Charge when they separate. You won’t come back,” Thirest had told me. “I don’t know what it is they do with your light-body, but I don’t want to find out.”

“Human’s never wager anymore,” missy Blitz said.

“Have you ever wagered with an Apprentice?” I asked her.

“Oh yes, when the first of you spoke to us, after we’d stepped on the invisible ones. Those who lost are still with us. Those who won are here also.”

“You mean, win or lose you take our light-bodies?” I asked, more than a little unsure if I’d understood her correctly. Fierae cannot cheat. Everything, for them, must proceed precisely as specified.

Girl Blitz laughed and said, “I love the impossibilities you speak, Spaul. So cute, you human. Those who lose are with us because they lost and their choice was none. Those who won are with us because their choice was two, and they chose us. Their choice is still two, they can coalesce their light bodies again, but they do not. They choose us still.”

“Could I speak to one of those who gambled with you?”

Again she laughed. “So cute so cute. We are speaking. I can speak, you can speak, they can speak. Those who lost have no choices, but you could speak to them. Those who won have choices, and could choose speech with you. Do you see my answer?”

“I see it,” I lied. If I told her I didn’t understand, her further explanation could take up most of the joining, and I didn’t want that. When Blitz joined, I wanted to hear some stories. I also knew I might join with them. Oh, who am I kidding, my body was sitting right next to a cool stream I could wash in. I’d known all along I was going to join.

It was going to be another short while before the Air Charge Blitz arrived, so I looked out over the meadow. As speeded up as I was, I could see all the life moving in pulsing lines through everything. Even the stones had fingers of light pushing through them, though it was slower than in the growing things. The only lightless thing in the whole panorama was my body, sitting there by the stream. It looked like a cutout in the fabric of light that was everything else. It’s actually a little scary to see your body like that, devoid of life and time and connection to everything else. But it would only be that way for a few seconds. For me, of course, speeded up in my light-body, those creature seconds were passing incredibly slowly. Then I heard Blitz, up in that sycamore, start chanting almost maniacally, “He comes he comes he comes he comes…”

I could feel it, too. Suddenly he was close enough, and I watched as those two jumped toward each other. What a magnificent sight! Above us, a glow appeared in a cloud. Then the top of the sycamore seemed to stretch upward in a burst of light and color. A solid line of dense white light ran alongside of the tree to the ground, as if girl Blitz was stretching a foot down the side of the sycamore to touch her toe to the meadow. Even speeded up, those two racing toward each other was quick, and if I’d blinked I’d have missed it.

There is a moment, just before those two touch—when they are each outstretched, desperately and violently engaged in getting to one another—that you can actually see their faces for just an instant; searingly beautiful faces that are etched with the pain of still being half a nannysecond apart, and the anticipation of their imminent blinding ecstasy. When those two faces met, the kiss that followed produced my old friend Blitz, whole and wide-awake.

“We are one!” that most beautiful voice cried out.

Blitz’ voice sounds like a billion dragonfly wings humming over a lectric river. It is male and female at once, but it is a single voice speaking in two-part harmony. “You are magnificent,” I said, meaning the word “magnificent” with all my heart. I was already being pulled into their joining, but I resisted.

“You will join, I will bet!” Blitz said, with so much passion and seduction that I had to sail my mind-sea to keep from joining immediately. Finally, I regained control and said, “I promise to join later. If I join now I will miss the radiance of your stories and the intoxicants of your voice.”

“So cute, cute, cute. Ahh, we would have you with us, Spaul. Wager with us, we would have you or give you us, either way. So cute cute, human.”

“I cannot wager with the likes of the Fierae,” I said. It was my standard answer. The Fierae will always offer to wager, at least once, while you’re with them. Don’t do it. “I am but a puny human,” I added.

For some reason Blitz always laughed when I said the “puny human” part. “Cute cute cute, but not puny,” they’d say through their laughter.

“Tell me about the Ancients!” I enthused. “Tell me how you know about the Ancients!” There were a billion stories I wanted Blitz to tell, but even speeded up, this tryst wouldn’t last forever. Also, if I joined with them, as I’d intended to do before all was said and done, it would be at least a month before I could speak with the Fierae again. Even if I didn’t join, it would take me a week to recover just from the conversation. And on top of all that, the odds of my finding Blitz and Blitz meeting again were not good. How the three of us had managed to meet six times (this was the sixth) in two years was simply unphathomable. Each time we met the ecstasy of being together increased.

“Ahh, Ancients!” the voice of Blitz moaned, filled with crackles and frizzy sounds. “The invisible ones! Tremendous gatherings we arranged over them, never seeing, they were invisible. Over the Great Pool the Zephrae bore us, and the Naiadae jumped up from their heavy depths and joined World’s twirl. Even Terrae joined, traveling on the Zephres from the great red desert. The sand the Terrae inhabited frictioned us, and we were so awake, joining from cloud to cloud, from cloud to Water, illuminating the depths.

“This party we took to Land, so we could join with the Terrae in earth and tree. But we found earth where the Terrae would not dwell—hard, angular earth. We found sand broiled into glass, and the metals of Land grown up into dead trees—metal trees that no Elementals would inhabit. These things we crushed as best we could. World had no use for them, and we did our best to wipe them out. It became a game!”

“Where were the Ancients?” I asked.

“Invisible!” Blitz replied. “And they were in the dead earth and glass and metal trees. The Naiadae coalesced, and beat at them in rain, but they were like dead granite cliffs. Then the Naiadae swelled the Great Pool, with the Zephres at their backs, and drove it to shore in walls higher than tree upon tree upon tree. It was riotous fun, this game, and we played it all over World while years and years spun around the Ball! They were invisible, and crushed beneath the weight of that game!”

“But how did you find out about the Ancients, the invisible ones, if you never knew they were there?”

“Long, long after the dead earth and metal trees ceased to rise, the first of your kind came—the first Apprentices. When they realized us, they said their kind had once inhabited the dead earth and metal. This we still do not understand. Your kind inhabits creature. ‘Yes,’ they told us, ‘and within creature, we inhabited the dead earth and metal.’ So cute cute, human. Creature cannot inhabit! It is inhabited!” Blitz laughed at that in almost a scream of ecstasy. “Ahh, Spaul, come to bed,” they cooed. “We would share this squeal of passion with you! We would drink yours!”

That was pretty much all I could stand. What happens to me when I join with them doesn’t translate into words. But when it was over, I took my weary body and laid it down in the stream.

II

Terrae and Innkeepers

That night, after I finished washing my exhausted body in the stream, I packed up and left my meadow home. I’d intended to sleep first, but I didn’t have enough to eat. You need to eat a lot even if you just converse with the Fierae. Joining with them completely empties you (in more ways than one). Unfortunately, food wasn’t the only thing I was short of. When I had everything rolled into my pack, I checked and found that my little leather aytiem had not so much as one coin or piece of gold in it. Normally, this would not be a problem, and I could just contact the Terrae and have them push me up a little lump of gold or silver from Land. But I was really exhausted, and was going to have to add to that exhaustion by walking two klicks to a little village I knew. Usually, any tiny trick that proves you’re an Apprentice will get you anything that’s available, free. But I knew my bag of tricks would be as empty as my aytiem by the time I walked two klicks carrying my pack. I didn’t even have the energy to float it along beside me on World’s mag lines.

There was nothing else for me to do but try and contact the Terrae right then and there, before I left the meadow. I lay down on my stomach (hoping getting close would help me majick in my depleted state), legs and arms spread wide, and tried to calm my mind-sea. It was choppy in there, and I couldn’t seem to tame those whitecaps. Normally, Terrae are the easiest Elementals to contact, because they pack themselves densely into Land. Oh sure, they bubble up into trees and grass, even rocks, anything that grows or is of-Land. But down in the deep dirt they just snuggle up against one another and cuddle. They’re so thick down there that they barely need to move to push up a hunk of gold or a precious gem. Of course, a lot of them work together to excavate like that. Still, they hardly even know they’re doing it.

I could not connect. Sweat was soaking me again, and I wasn’t even sure I could get back up off the ground. Then something extraordinary happened. Out near the sycamore, which was still about half-alive, I noticed the crackle and hum of a Charge running across the ground toward me. I could see it like little bolts of Fierae dancing through the grass. When it arrived, I heard it say, above my choppy mind-sea, “So cute cute, human, all love-tired, all Fierae loved. I command these Terrae for my lover cute, little Fierae human.”

Almost immediately, two pieces of gold, about the size of robin’s eggs, came pushing up out of the ground like shiny boils on the skin of Land. “Thank you,” I said aloud, but the Charge was gone and spoke no more to me.

I was absolutely flabbergasted. Never had an elemental contacted me. I’d never even heard of such a thing. Oh, they’ll be happy to communicate if you contact them, but for a Fierae elemental to actually move toward me and speak, not to mention command the Terrae to scavenge me up a tidy sum of gold, well, it was beyond unheard of. How could that Charge even tell I was there? Once I was back in my body, it shouldn’t even have been cognizant of me. Could it be The One Certainty?

Oh, that’s right, you won’t even know about that, will you? The One Certainty is the very first thing every Finished Apprentice teaches his New Kid. It goes like this: “Life is in all, power is in life. All power abides by World’s rules, except love. Love is above the rules.”

That’s the long version you learn as a New Kid. If you ask a full Apprentice what The One Certainty is, he’ll tell you, simply, “Love is above the rules.”

Lying in that meadow, flat on my face, looking at those two little orbs of gold, I was just too exhausted to cogitate on it anymore. After slowly managing to get to my feet, I picked up my little treasures and put them into my aytiem. Then I started the grueling, two-klick walk to Smith’s Village, which was actually just an inn and a few outbuildings owned by a man named Smith. The reason he could make a living with his inn, was because it sat very near the Interred State of Ninety-five, which was once a big road for the Ancients to travel up and down the Infinite Eastern Shore. Apparently, they had some kind of Land boats they made with their Teck that they sailed on wheels over their hard seas of road. Here and there you can actually see pieces of the dead, black earth they made that road out of.

At that time, I was probably three quarters of the way down in the South of the Infinite Eastern Shore. Of course, it isn’t really infinite, it’s just called that. It ends way, way up north, and down by the Southern Edge, where it supposedly keeps going right into the swampy mess called the Florida, then into the Atlanta Sea (which the Elementals call The Great Pool).

You have to remember, this was several months ago, almost half a trip around the Ball, and I’d just started my travels north. I’ll know when I’m actually in the North because I’ll cross Mason Dicksin’s Line. The Line is really just a wall of rocks that is almost as ancient as the Ninety-five. Supposedly, somebody (apparently named Mason Dicksin) built it shortly after the Elementals threw their big parties and stepped on the Ancients. It’s still there, but it’s so low now you can step right over it. Why Mason wanted to build a wall between North and South, once practically everybody was dead, remains a mystery. Maybe he just didn’t have anything better to do.

As I walked toward the village of Smith, I tried again to calm my mind-sea. My pack was getting heavy, and if I could just find one little mag line, one tiny thread of World’s force, I could let it shoulder my burden. I just couldn’t do it. Blitz had simply rode me too hard and wrung out my wet. That’s an Ancient saying. Thirest taught me hundreds of them, but I can’t recall him ever explaining what they meant. I try not to use the dirty ones, like “Fug you, and the horse on the road to the inn.” I know horses don’t exist anymore, but Thirest told me what they looked like. “And people fugged them?” I asked him.

“All the time,” he told me.

When I finally made it to Smith’s Village, I had just enough strength left to plop down at a table and say to Smith, who waited on me himself, “Food!” Then I rolled one of those little gold balls out of my aytiem and handed it to him. “Keep it coming,” I added.

“Yes suh!” he answered, all big-eyes and smiles. “You gonna want a bed?”

“Think that nugget’ll cover me?” I asked, smiling back at him.

“For about a week!” he answered absently, ogling the gold he held between his fingers. Then he realized what he’d told me and said, “Well, three days at least. We can haggle it out later. You lookin’ hungry.”

“You have no idea,” I answered.

“Got a couple girls for rent if you like. They’re in the kitchen, but I can clean ‘em up and haul ‘em out if you wanna have a look.”

“Actually,” I told him, “I’m a little oversexed right now. I need some rest.”

He laughed at that and said, “Hey, do you know what one Ancient said to the other Ancient?”

“What?” I asked. I must have heard a zillion different punch lines to that joke, but his surprised me.

“There’s no rest from the Fierae!” he smiled.

“Don’t I know it,” I chuckled.

It was actually nice not having Smith know I was an Apprentice. People almost always start falling all over themselves to please you once they find that out. And they’ll give you anything they have. One time I was at an inn, which was also near the Ninety-five, but way down near the Southern Edge. Forgetting to fill my aytiem isn’t something new for me, and as I was finishing my third plate of stew in that inn, it dawned on me that I had nothing to pay with. I walked out into the yard of the place for a quick chat with the Terrae, and just as a fist sized hunk of silver came pushing up out of the ground, I noticed that the innkeeper was watching me out of his kitchen window. “Shite,” I said. There’s quite a few people holed up down near the Florida at the Southern Edge, and I didn’t want to have to go through a bunch of that adoration everybody heaps on an Apprentice. “Keep it quiet!” I said to him, as I walked back into the inn.

Well, no sooner did I sit back down to finish that excellent plate of gator stew, then Mr. Innkeeper comes marching out of his kitchen with a very presentable daughter in tow. “Free for the night,” he announces, smiling. “If you like her, you can keep her,” he added.

Thirest had given me vague warnings about creature love, and I just wasn’t ready to take on anything new right then. Plus, I’d been with Blitz not two weeks earlier, and was still pretty played out. Not wanting to seem rude, or cast aspersions on his daughter’s looks, I said, “You know, I was just over in Kingstree, and a set of twins just wore me out.”

Without so much as a nod or a wink, he spun around and ran back to his kitchen. One second later he was dragging another daughter to my table. “Here,” he told me. “Try ‘em both.”

At this point I motioned for him to come close so I could whisper. “Some Apprentices prefer sex with their own gender,” I said, which actually wasn’t a lie, and was also common knowledge. The lie was in the implication that I preferred sex with my own gender.

Looking rather downcast, the innkeeper dragged his two girls back to the kitchen. I thanked Jess he didn’t have a son.

The fried squirrel and rice at Smith’s inn was even better than the gator stew at that inn down near Kingstree. Smith served it with applesauce, and some kind of very doughy bread. “It’s tater-bread,” he told me, when I asked him about it. His wine was very sweet and fruity, and that, he told me, was made out of something called scupnogs. “Ain’t never heared tell of scupnogs nor tater-bread?” Smith asked me. “You comin’ from north of the Mason?”

“Nope,” I told him. “I’m heading up to the Line. I’ve mostly been living in the Lizzy-Anna Purchase, One-Mizzippi, and along the Southern Edge.”

“Ain’t no scupnogs in the Purchase?” he asked, as if the very idea was unthinkable.

“Not that I know of,” I told him, “and I’d definitely remember drinking wine this good.”

When I said that he hooked his thumbs through the sospensors he had holding up his pants and said, “Wanna look at them girls, now?”

“I want to look at a bed,” I answered, adding, “an empty one.”

“Suit yerself,” he said. “Guess I can give you the room with the small bed.”

I ate and slept at Smith’s inn for three days. I don’t know who he had cooking, but Smith’s food was some of the best I’d ever eaten. One night he plopped down a plate covered by a huge slab of meat that had been fried hard in a skillet, but was still bloody and red on the inside. “That there come off a cow!” he said proudly. I ate the whole thing and was amazed at how much of my energy it seemed to restore. Bloody red meat from a cow! I was going to have to remember that.

On the fourth morning since I’d arrived, after a breakfast of scrabbled eggs and skillet cakes, I announced that I was leaving. Smith had taken quite a liking to me, probably because I was full of compliments that were all sincere. “Reckon I owe you some change,” he said, carrying a sack over to me.

“I think we’re even,” I told him. “I ate like a pig.”

“Yeah, but you never even jazzed up my girls. Take this,” he said, thrusting the sack at me.

I looked inside, but wasn’t sure what I was seeing. When I gave him a quizzical look, Smith said, “Them’s hushpuppies. Cornmeal and milk and onions and eggs, fried in bacon fat. They say the Ancients that lived in these parts couldn’t go a day without ‘em. Yer headin’ into Two Carolines now and the food up there is gonna be a bit strange for a gent like you. Specially if yer hikin’ the Ninety-five. Swampy damn place, with blue crabs and mush-rats scuttlin’ ‘round all over the place. Them hushpups’ll stay fresh for a week, and you can still eat ‘em for a week after that. So if them Caroline’s boys ain’t got nothin’ looks fit to eat, you just stick with old Smith’s pups.” Then he gave me a pat on the back, and opened the door for me. “If you make it to the Line,” he called after me, as I headed toward the Interred State, “Bring me back a stone off it!”

“Absofugginlutely!” I called back.

III

Two Carolines

How the Ancients came up with the name Interred State of Ninety-five is anybody’s guess. “Maybe because it’s made out of dead-earth,” Thirest had told me once, when I’d asked him about it. “The Ancients put their dead in bunkers and called that ‘interred.’ I think ‘Interred State’ just means dead. Maybe the Ninety-five part is some kind of measurement of its length. Or maybe it was the number of their Skyshaper Villages that it passed through.”

Thinking of Thirest now, reminds me that I was thinking about him as I started up that long trail north, heading away from Smith’s. If I ever do get this journal caught up, and I will, I’m never going to let it get behind again. Thirest was right, you forget too much if you don’t keep up with it all the time.

I was walking right on top of the Ninety-five, thinking of Thirest, when I found a black chunk of it. Sure enough, no Elementals at all, not so much as one tiny Terrae dwelled in it. You don’t see much of that dead, black earth as you walk the Ninety-five. The only way you can really tell you’re on it is that things grow differently right over it. Mostly small, hearty things, like weeds, and no trees at all take root there. Why, I wondered, did the Ancients build everything out of dead stuff? Where did they even get dead stuff? The Fierae said they had dead metal and dead earth, and sand turned into glass. There’s plenty of glass in the windows of inns, and even some people’s houses. There are people who know how to make it, but who would ever think to build giant villages of it that reach up toward the sky?

Other than the chunk of black road I was holding, glass was the only other dead thing I’d ever seen. Elementals won’t live in glass. Thirest once told me you could actually trap an elemental if you surrounded it with glass. If you kept it in there long enough, it might even die. “Why?” I’d asked him, and I could feel myself tearing up at the thought of trapping or killing an elemental. “Why would anyone do that?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it, Spaul? What were the Ancients thinking?” he said, noticing my tears and showing me the smile he always wore when he wanted to say, “I love you.”

Thirest only said those words to me once, the day he died. All the rest of those years, from the time they figured me for a New Kid, and handed me over to him when I was five years old, he used that smile to say it. But as he lay there dying, six weeks before I started up the Ninety-five, he’d said it. For a while after he died I wondered what he’d meant by it. Though he’d only used those three words, I wondered if more words were hiding behind them. I wondered if he was saying, “I have always loved you,” and then I started to think he might have been saying “I have always wanted to love you, and now it’s safe to say that.”

I don’t know why I was thinking about Thirest like that. I guess because I’d been with him pretty much all my life, and felt like I deserved to know everything. I never saw him pursuing creature love with anybody, girl or boy, and figured he just considered it too dangerous. He almost never discussed those things with me, either, but when he did that word, ‘dangerous’ always came up at least once.

Why was I thinking so much about Thirest? Because I was missing him. He’d told me not to. He’d said it was all right to remember him, but missing him was like saying he no longer existed. I promised myself to work harder at stopping those feelings I was getting, those feelings of ‘missing.’ But right then, I wasn’t doing a very good job and tears started crowding my eyes. I looked up, with that black chunk of dead earth still in my hand, and said, “I love you, too, Thirest.” I’d always loved him.

I couldn’t have hiked more than a dozen klicks that day. Though I was feeling stronger (and I give credit for that to bloody cow meat) I was still weak from that tryst with Blitz. Even so, laying out on my blankets that night (the weather giving me no reason to set my tent) I felt just a little shiver of desire when I heard a distant rumble of thunder. I smiled, and whispered, “Is that you, Blitz? Wait for me.” I’m sure it was just my sleepy eyes playing tricks, but I thought I saw a spark or two in the trees above me.

The next day I hiked further than the day before. By the third day I could once again summon a mag line to carry my pack. After that, I was making twenty klicks a day at a leisurely stroll. Apprentices very rarely hurry when traveling. If you see an Apprentice struggling to get somewhere, go the other way, because wherever he is going, some kind of az-kicking majick is likely to occur. Thirest had me hurrying with him once when he heard a rumor that some men in the Purchase had found one of the Ancients’ Land boats. He was pretty worked up about it, and sparks were actually flying off of him as he marched, with me following, the twenty klicks or so to where those men were supposed to be. He was also talking to himself, sometimes majicking (I knew because clouds were gathering and following us), and sometimes just cussing. The only thing he said that I could actually make out was, “I’ll gollam bury them in it!”

It turned out that Land boat was a toy you could hold in the palm of your hand. Thirest didn’t want me to see it, but I did and noticed that it had four little wheels. It was just a toy, and didn’t seem dangerous to me, but Thirest held it in his palm, glared at it, and we both watched it melt and drip onto the ground. “Gollam Ancients,” he swore, as he started marching back the way we’d come.

By the fifth day since Smith’s, I knew I had to be in Two Carolines. It was getting swampy, just like Smith said it would. I even saw a mush-rat, and talked him into letting me eat him. As I sent him away from his flesh, he asked me, “Will I be a mush-rat again?”

“More than likely,” I said, which was probably the truth, but who knows. He seemed so dejected by that answer that I called to his light as it left, “But you could come back as an eagle!” and, who knows, that might have been true, too.

With one thought to the Fierae, I got a nice fire going. I’d skinned the mush-rat, and skewered him onto a green stick of hickory. Mush-rat isn’t bloody red cow, but I was getting tired of Smith’s hushpuppies. Don’t get me wrong, they were good, and I could also see myself using little pieces of them to catch brimlets and perch, so I wasn’t discarding them by any means. But Thirest always said a growing Apprentice needs some meat once in a while, and the mush-rat wasn’t going to miss that body. He’d be into something else before he knew it. “Thanks again,” I said to his flesh anyway, before I took the first bite. “That was right neighborly of you.”

The day after the mush-rat, I met my first fellow travelers coming the other way. It was an old man pushing a little dog in a one-wheeled barrow. “Yowza!” he called, when he saw me coming with my pack floating alongside. Since that surely clued him in that I was an Apprentice, I didn’t try to hide it. In fact, I reached out with a little thread of mag line, and plucked the dog out of the barrow. I could see, even from a distance, that its back legs hung limp and useless. Apparently that was why it was being wheeled.

I drew on the line and brought the dog to me. It was a scruffy little mutt, white with black spots, big, soulful eyes, and droopy ears. When the old man got to us I said, “G’morning.”

“Yowza!” he repeated. “You a ‘Prentice, ain’tcha?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “And as an Apprentice, I’d advise you against eating this little fella. He could have a disease, which might be why his legs don’t work. I could check it for you if you like, but it’ll take a few minutes. You’d probably be better off with a nice, fat mush-rat, anyway. They’re very accommodating around here.” I was being glib, I knew, but I felt good, and for some reason I was happy to see another person.

“Ain’t disease, Missuh ‘Prentice,” he told me, “him got kick by a muley. I don’t eat him no how, he a friend. He named Rummy. I named Tool.”

“Well,” I said, holding out my hand for Tool to touch, “I’m Spaul, and if damage is all that’s wrong with Rummy, I’ll fix him for you.”

“You fix ol’ Rummy?” he exclaimed. “Hear that you l’il sheet-eater, Missuh ‘Prentice gonna fix yo’ feets!”

“C’mon,” I told Tool, “we’ve got to get off top of this Ninety-five before I can fix him.”

“Sho ‘nuff,” Tool replied.

When we were off the dead road, I found a rock and used it to dig a hole big enough to fit the back of Rummy’s body. Then I buried him. He looked really funny with his head and front paws sticking up out of the ground. Tool laughed and said, “Look like he just growed there, like a dog-weed”

“Okay,” I said. “Now be quiet a minute while I talk to the Terrae.”

Tool sat on the ground and closed his mouth tight. I put my hands on either side of Rummy, and calmed my sea. It took less than a minute to explain to the Terrae what I wanted. When I opened my eyes and lifted my hands off the ground, it was starting to shimmer, and a little whirl of Zephrae played around Rummy, kicking up dust. Apparently, they’d heard me talking to the Terrae and had decided they wanted to help. Whatever. I’d let them figure it out. “It’s going to take a few minutes,” I told Tool, “but you can talk now.”

Tool jumped up, went over to his barrow, and returned with an old, brown liter jug he’d had in there with Rummy. “Got corn?” he asked me, holding up the jug.

“No, I don’t,” I answered him.

“Do now!” he laughed.

Tool’s “corn” turned out to be some kind of ethnyl. Smith’s scupnog wine carried about fifteen percent ethnyl. Tool’s corn carried about ten percent of something other than ethnyl. The first pull I took off the jug stole my breath, and Tool laughed as I tried to start breathing again. “Good, ain’t it?” he said.

“Too gollam good,” I said, surprising myself with my own foul language.

“Come home,” Tool told me. “Two klick west. Give you a jug fo’ fixin’ Rummy.”

Speaking of which, I thought, he ought to be done. I looked over to where the little dog was buried, and called, “Hey! Rummy! Get outa that hole!”

Watching the little dog frantically digging and kicking himself out of the ground had me and Tool and the ethnyl inside us laughing to beat all helluva. When he finally got out, Rummy came running, and jumped so high into Tool’s arms that he almost went over his shoulder. “He fix!” Tool yelled, with the dog in his arms. “You come home, Missuh ‘Prentice. I kill a yard bird, cook him with yam! Give you corn. You sleep in a bed dis night! Ain’t dat somethin’, Rummy fix!”

“Well,” I said, “just keep him away from that muley, and he’ll stay that way.”

“Thanky, Missuh ‘Prentice. Thanky.”

“Call me Spaul, and you should really thank Land,” I told him, bending down and patting the ground. “Thank Air, too,” I said, waving my hand around over my head. “I think it helped.”