An Outworlder's Path

Bear with me as I craft my part in the tale...

Hide and Seek

When I was a very young boy something awful happened in my neighborhood. Or maybe it was something good too. Such judgments get harder and harder to make as I get older. You see, I read a lot and I watch lots of movies. I play games that are meant for just me and I play games that are meant for many players at once. My imagination literally runs wild. It's a problem really, but that's all just details about me. The point is, I can't really discern between reality and fantasy any more. When I was a very young boy something awful happened in my neighborhood.

We were all playing hide and seek in Mitchell's backyard. That's not his real name, of course. What happened was terrible for his family and I don't want to cause them any more pain if this is ever read. This will be true for almost all the names I use here. It was Mitchell's birthday and we were playing hide and seek. He had a big yard and it was all fenced in with that tall stockade fencing. You know the type that just tells your neighbors you don't really want to know them? Our parents were partying up on the deck that jutted out from the back of the house. It was the middle of summer and there was a grill and a game on a TV just inside the house. The older kids had gone elsewhere because what teenager wants to hang out with five to seven-year-olds not to mention adults?

Mitchell had just turned seven. His dog, Sasha, was excitedly chasing us around and always giving Mitchell's hiding spot away. I think he was getting frustrated. Mitchel's younger sister Amy was there with us. Josh was the oldest, having turned seven at the beginning of summer. Greg and his little brother James were there also and my cousin Kylie. I had a crush on her then, but that's besides the point. And then there was Christian Goodfreid. That's the only name I'm not going to fake. We all liked Christian. Well maybe that's just the way I want to remember it. I liked him because he was that sort of kid that wanted everyone to be having fun and he was quick to break up fights.

The game went on as dusk settled over us. The yard was overshadowed by tall pines in the next yard and there were lots of places to hide because Mitchell's yard was the biggest one on the block. You could get under the deck, or between the bushes at the house. His dad had built him a fort in one corner of the far back of the yard and that had bushes all around it too. The garage had a shed on the back of it which we could get into though we weren't really supposed to. There were four trees you could climb and one of them was one of those dense willow-like trees where you could hide under the bowing branches and be completely hidden. That hidden space was one of our most prized places because parents never really went under that tree. There was also a long bank of forsythias running the length of the yard. In full bloom you couldn't really see through them so there were perhaps a half-dozen places to hide in there. And of course there were obstacles of the child-like sort throughout the yard. There was a plastic closet-like thing that Mitchell and Amy were supposed to keep their yard toys in but never did. It was a bland tan color with a fake shingle roof colored dark green. There was one of those turtle sandboxes that they still make to this day and it's shell-cover was leaning against the fence in the back. A bike, an overturned aqua-colored kiddie pool, a swing-set with only one swing and a tetherball pole rounded out the yard as a playground. And of course there were a handful of discarded squirt-guns, all empty now because too many parents had been soaked and the water spigot had been shut off.

We were playing hide and seek and Kylie was the seeker and I hated when she was the seeker because she always found me first. My go-to place was usually the fort. I think I adored the thing because my dad was "out of the picture" so I probably envied Mitchell. But on that night I thought I was being clever and I dove into the toy closet that was standing inconspicuously against the side of the garage. I tore out a few sand-pails and a bent whiffle-bat and crawled into the lowest compartment then pulled the door almost closed. Through the crack I could see the back portion of the yard where Mitchell was hiding behind the cover to the turtle sandbox and Amy and Christian were looking about frantically. Kylie only had to count to the arbitrary sum of fifty.
I braced myself so that I wouldn't giggle in anticipation of winning with my best hiding spot yet. But then my heart dropped as Christian leapt back into my view and lifted the empty kiddie-pool and threw himself underneath. That spot was going to win. I just knew it. And sadly I wasn't wrong.

Sasha found me first but she didn't count and I couldn't be certain that Kylie was on her tail so I stayed right where I was. I thought of little Lucy Pevensie hiding in the wardrobe in the spare room. For years after this terrible day I told myself that I was hiding in a sort of wardrobe in a game of hide and seek so naturally Lucy's game would come to mind. I did enjoy my grandmother reading me those books, and helping me to learn reading with them. Still, in my adulthood and with my all too overactive imagination I now wonder if the wardrobe jumped to my mind simply because I was in a sort of closet or if some other force was acting on me.
Outside I saw the kiddie-pool shudder and lie still. This, I thought, must have given Christian away and I saw hope for another three seconds before Kylie tentatively pulled open the door and looked at me with a big grin.
"Gotcha, Simon!" she laughed and skipped away. Some woman, not my mother, laughed loudly from up on the deck. Then Sasha tried to get behind the turtle-shell with Mitchell and it fell over.

"Gotcha, birthday-boy!" Kylie sang even as Mitchell complained about the unfairness. I climbed out of my place and just sat there waiting. Josh was found standing on the window-sill of the shed, apparently too scared to move and caught in mid climb to the roof. Amy was in the bushes by the fort. James tried to lay down in the dangling leaves of the willow-tree but his kangaroos were poking out. Kylie found Greg in the forsythias and still she was tossing around for Christian. By this time I was bursting, because I was probably the only one who knew where he had hidden. As much as I was bummed that Kylie caught me again, and as much as I envied Christian's good thinking, I was still a good sport and I wouldn't tell. Not even when Kylie gave up and called for him then asked the rest of us.

I said: "You gotta find him!"

I have spoken very few words to Kylie since that day. I regret that I was being a bit of a booger at that moment, but in retrospect it's me that carries the greater burden. Because I do not doubt my eyes even though everyone else doubts my word.

Much later in life I read a book about children who did battle with a monster from outside the world that liked to terrorize and steal children away, and I gushed over the reckoning they finally got to have with that monster when they were much older. I'm now older than they were when they had their reckoning. I never saw a monster, and no one ever really believed me. But the truth is, Christian hid under that pool and when Greg finally lifted that pool he wasn't there. I had thought perhaps he'd fallen asleep, but my dismay turned instantly to fright and I do not know why. I didn't know why then but I think I know now.

All thoughts of Lucy and magic wardrobes vanished from my mind. I told everyone right away that that was where Christian hid. I had seen him do it from my own hiding spot. No one else saw him do it. Kylie went to the grown-ups. I remember little things from the chaos that followed. I remember every adult asking me and every other child the same questions. I remember most of them disregarding my vehement assertion that Christian had gone under the pool. I remember the police that eventually showed up never asked me a single thing. Most of all I remember that I had never before and have not ever since felt so utterly alone. And then Sasha came and sat with me. I think I was crying. I think Christian's father had yelled at me but I don't remember.

None of us stayed friends after that. Not really. Our parents distanced themselves and us from the whole thing. I moved to another town in the state and saw no one but Kylie for a long time and her I saw only at large family things. And as I said, we didn't really talk. In my second year of college I met a girl and I asked her out for coffee. She agreed and we were talking in the shop when she mentioned her last name. My whole world twisted into anxieties. It was Amy, Mitchell's younger sister. We talked for another ten minutes with me in a stunned daze. Then I reminded her of Christian. I think I needed to talk to her or anyone about it. And then we got quiet. She said it was nice to catch up with me and then we never spoke again.

Therapy. That's what my first long term girlfriend suggested. She lived with me for seven months and though I didn't keep some bizarre shrine to Christian in my closet I opened up about what happened. Then, after I told her, it was like I couldn't stop talking about it. As if the mere act of unburdening to her had somehow brought her into the fold of we who still cared about missing Christian. She saw it differently and though she humored me for a while in the end it was me bringing the sad day up in conversation that set her off down a path to breaking up with me.

So I got a therapist. And while he heard everything I said, he didn't really hear me. I think we had covered five sessions when I asked him if he'd look into the disappearance. That's more or less when I fired him. He told me that the sessions were about me and healing and accepting and blah blah blah. And I was rather ashamed to realize that this guy didn't even think about me or what I'd said outside of our weekly hour. I'm alive. I function on a day to day basis. I saw what is quite possibly the world's worst magic trick. It's effect on me was profound. And I have spent more pro bono hours working it out than this guy has ever spent paid hours for any of his clients. It's about healing, he said. Acceptance. I could have punched him. It's about answers!

A few more years passed and I found myself playing an on-line game. I enjoy the social distance it affords while still being social. And when I'm not endlessly bemoaning the loss of a childhood friend - which is actually most of the time - I enjoy action adventure games where swords and magic and other such things mediate life rather than concepts such as jobs and popular culture.

Ahh but I am quick to stray from the topic. Perhaps it's better to say that I'm veering from it. You see, like everyone else in the world, I'm terrified of the unknown. And I got the most surreal dose of it and for a time I thought I was going mad. Now I'm just struggling to get it down on paper like it's fiction.

I was playing this game and I was being a wallflower in a social venue called a tavern. There were people coming and going, role-playing and teasing each other. And I was only watching and reading. Maybe I was waiting to see something else amazing happen. Maybe I've been waiting all this time. But then a toon strode into the tavern and it was a male toon with armor and a sword and a shield in hand and he emoted looking around the room. Do I need to explain emoted? I mean this is an exercise for me only so I guess not.

Off topic again. I was checking the description his player had written for him when he walked straight up to me. I was already feeling a little weirded out for some reason and it was taking me right out of the mood to role-play. My fingers twitched on the mouse and I was already convincing myself to walk out of the tavern so I could politely log off from the game. I told myself the player behind the toon was just going to be like so many others in these games: quick to engage and turn the conversation into some drama where they are the main character in what is theoretically a public place.

And then the toon with the name Cryspin Gottfrey said: "I did hide under the pool."

He said something else but I was too busy turning off my computer to read it.

I did not play that game again for weeks. What I did do was work over time a lot and drink the rest of the time that I wasn't sleeping. Everything in my life suffered but for a while I didn't think about Christian and I certainly didn't think about the on-line foolishness. But as is always the case, the body and the mind and most assuredly the spirit reject the farces of our behaviors. I composed myself over a few days and went back into the game. Cryspin Gottfrey was waiting for me as if I'd never left.

"I don't have answers for you, Simon," he said. "I didn't have a choice but I wouldn't come back now even if I could."

"WHATHEHELL!" I tried to shout at him through fiber-optic connections and indeed I upset my dog yelling for real.

"Please don't hurt anymore. There's so much to be done and I do good work now. I do good work. I hope you do too." Then he left; vanished in plain sight this time. And I checked. That name was not in the character registry. And then I cried.

So now I think about Lucy Pevensie and magic wardrobes and other worlds a lot. I wonder about people who simply vanish from our lives. I reflect on this in light of popular belief and I've come up with this: Heaven just seems so wasteful. There is so much to be done and so few good people to do it. I don't hurt so much now. Maybe it was just some psycho stalker who knew just enough about me, but if it's an out from the hurt I'll accept that Christian is gone and Cryspin lives somewhere doing good work. Indeed, I did accept it and now I'm healing. Now I'm ready to do good things.

 

How could it be that tough-as-nails-Lydia should find herself bereft and broken hearted and over her adopted brother of all people? She wrapped her shawl more tightly around her as the evening wind coming off the western sea gave the first autumn chills to the Spiritwood. She had not bothered to cover her head and so her dirty-blonde hair blew about her face hectically as she paced up and down the shore as if expecting someone at any moment. But she was alone in all of Britannia now and that had a deal more to do with chilling her than the coming cold months.

Away across the channel the bustling town was settling down and the first windows were shining with candle or lantern light. Behind her the quieter, pleasanter wooded village she called home was nigh ready for bed. And above her the sun was gone, turning the sky over to the visible turnings of Trammel and Felucca who were almost bright enough when they both claimed the sky to blot out the stars just like the sun. Tonight was one of those nights.

And of course beneath her...

Beneath her a venerable father and a beloved mother slept. Aidan Gottfrey had put food on the table for the first twelve years of Lydia's life, but early scourges sent by that dread demonness, Minax had robbed him from her. Then two years later Laura, a virtuous woman devoted in particular to Spirituality, passed on from illness. At fourteen this loss might have broken Lydia, but there were good people here in Spiritwood, and of course there was Cryspin.

Lydia frowned and vainly kicked at an exposed bit of rock, hoping to send it tumbling into the surf. Unsuccessful, she returned to pacing. He came to them from the healer, Fediwyn who had been mostly tight-lipped about from where the orphan boy had come. Seven years old and full of heart and wonder like no orphan that ever was. Lydia had been seven then too and they were for these past sixteen years thick as thieves. Cryspin had never troubled Aidan or Laura and they loved him dearly. He honored them by learning farming and carpentry and even a little smithing, but Lydia knew his heart was that of a ranger. He wanted to roam and sleep under trees and be a woodsman. She knew his heart.

When father had died Cryspin did not spare a thought for his wanderlust. He instantly found ways to bring coin in. And when mother died he did not cleave to any reserved thoughts of heading out into the world. He talked to the guard captain and they handed him, a fourteen year old boy, a great halberd and a tabard and said stand the morning watch at the docks. And Cryspin had done.

Lydia rubbed at her eyes. She had hardly been idle but care of hearth and home had fallen to her. Somehow she made it all work and was to gain the reputation of a shrewd head of household and the last woman in town you wanted to cross. She never needed Cryspin to chase off unwanted suitors or shake his fist at cheating merchants. She was, herself, a force to be reckoned with. But when the day was done and the home was warmed with a fire and the smells of stew or roast or pies it was all done, she knew, for the Gottfrey's. Hard work for Lydia. Honest work for Cryspin. And they were still young. Cryspin was not unknown to the girls on the island hereabouts. And by sixteen, Lydia had turned away two kindly barons with designs on her household and pastures.

"Bloody Sheriff!" she cursed.

Fediwyn had never remarked overly much on where Cryspin had come from. And though seven when he came, Cryspin never seemed to have a sense of it himself. Father had either learned nothing or told nothing but mother had wheedled just a small bit from Fediwyn and Lydia and Cryspin has spied on this conversation. The Sheriff, Fediwyn had said, brought the boy. When mother had asked after this fellow Fediwyn had warned her away. Best you and yours not be involved with such as he; a hard man who does bloody work in service to Britannia; a cold man who uses up good folk in service to a higher calling.

To children these words were full of wonder and mystery. What sort of hero adventurer might this Sheriff be that he had rescued an orphan and brought him to a good home? But few things were ever learned and Cryspin was less interested than Lydia. Truth is it was always so much more important who they were anyway.

Then one morning she laid out the rugs on the branch of the old maple and told Cryspin to beat them and lug them back in. And of course he agreed but then went off to his watch without doing it. When he did not come home Lydia went straight into the village and nearly kicked in the tavern door. He was not a drinking sort of man, but she knew he could get carried away laughing and story-telling with the other men. The men all looked at her in shock and shame and none would answer her about Cryspin save that she should seek the guard captain, Old Garmont. Old Garmont was a score of years her elder but when he saw her coming for him she swore he aged another ten and sorely thought of fleeing.

"Now, Lydia - " he bagan but she cut him off.

"Where is he?! Just what is going on!?" The old brickhouse of a man slumped his shoulders and looked as sad as a pauper.

"I don't know where he is. He was out on the dock, carrying on. I saw him from my bench. I saw a heavily cloaked man ride out onto the dock. It was one of them adventurer folk, I think. His horse was all smoky and wind. A real sight I thought. He stopped and had words with Cryspin and then they were gone. Just gone." He sagged a little more if that was possible. "There was no boat. They didn't ride out together. I looked over to Covy to remark about the strange horse and when we both looked back there was no one on the dock. We've been searching since a glass past noon."

"That long!?" Lydia thumped him on the shoulder. "That's hours now and none have come to me and said my brother's gone?" She had railed at the old man for an hour rather than faint, or cry or demand another search. It would be a cold day in the Stygian Abyss before Old Gormont crossed Lydia Gottfrey again.

She knew where she had to go. She knew but her broken heart told her she also knew there was naught to be done. A cold man who uses up good folk in service to a higher calling. So she paced the shoreline for some hours before and after sunset until the fire in her heart rekindled to a furious blaze and she stumped across the village and pounded on his door.

"Lydia, I cannot help you," the old healer moaned from within. "I am sorry."

She pounded harder and harder. "Did you know this would happen? Did YOU?"

Fediwyn opened the door and hobbled back before she could possibly assail him directly, but she merely loomed in the door. "I think I did but hoped it would never be," he admitted. "Come in."

"No. Where has he taken him?"

"I am not in the counsels of such as the Sheriff." He rubbed his face, clearly as grief-stricken as she, though she cared not.

"Why has this happened? Is he dead?"

"I... You can't..." Fediwyn shook his head. "The only thing you can be sure of is that Cryspin went of his own free will. The Sheriff would only force the hand of someone evil. We both know Cryspin is a virtuous man."

"I do not believe Cryspin left without speaking to me!" she warned. "There's something you're not telling me."

"I know nothing for certain, girl. I hear rumors. Not about Cryspin but about things this Sheriff might care to know about. And I think..." He trailed off and shook his head again.

"What? What aren't you telling me?"

"Only that Cryspin may be better off than we. He went of his own will but it is unlikely he was given any other choice than that."

"What do you mean better off?"

"Oh Lydia..." He seemed to wither. "We are small people cast into the mix of terrible great times. You will not know what this means, but a ghost ship ran aground not far from Britain. Across its deck was writ the name Exodus. Very soon, I fear, you... we all will have reason to be thankful your brother has gone on."

 

The wind stirred into a storm of razor-like gusts that made even these most ancient and stoic trees groan. The child of the forest listened rather than start and peer around. Wind did not often trouble the heart of Primeval and eyes were less to be trusted than ears anyway. All was silent in an instant. The wood returned to its placidity like a river rock settling more firmly into its muddy socket. The child hugged herself tightly with her eyes shut and wished herself to be anywhere in Primeval but here and now.

When the wishing profited her nothing she finally opened her eyes and stood her naked self up from her nesting between the roots of her father-tree. Absently she lifted her mighty arbalest and slipped herself through the strap as a more human sort might throw on a night-shirt. There were times for modesty but Primeval knew nothing of that and so she chose to honor the greater truth of the forest around her rather than the distant and alien concerns of mortals who yet lived far away. In any case, the intruder, though having the appearance of a man, was anything but that.

In the glade beyond the bole of the mighty tree she saw two figures. One she could hear. His heart was strong, steady; its anima rippled through the life of the forest and the forest sank is spiritual roots into it. He was a man, young and by all appearances entirely and peacefully unconscious. The other she knew, a thing out of time and world-spaces. He, if such a word could encompass the truth, had no heart beat, no breath, no anima. The forest had only purchase upon him that soil has on the very deepest of mountain roots.

"Sheriff," she said in his tongue. She did not like to hear him speak in her own. The other acknowledged her presence by holding up one hand to stay her intrusion. From the depths of his helm he was looking into the pool. She looked where he looked but saw nothing of interest. Sacred waters did not jump and leap with color or magic. She turned again to the sleeping man so casually laid out in the emerald ferns surrounding the pool as if he had simply thrown down for a nap.

"Another for the slaughter?" she mused.

Ally, the forest sighed and she took it for the warning that it was, unnecessary though it was.

"Wrong's need righting, but first Mnemosyne is due her price."

The child of the forest turned to regard the waters again. "You would move this one by Mnemosyne? Passing odd for a walker of winds."

The Sheriff did not immediately contrive to answer her. She knew all too well that his awareness tracked along paths she could not fathom. Indeed, any answer he might deign to give would hardly sate her curiosity. So she returned her attention to the sleeping man. He was young, she thought. Maybe twice twelve springs. That was still young for men. He had a sort of kind face and she thought it perhaps lacked the lines of a man with guile or deceit in him.

"Another soldier?" she posed, not really expecting an answer.

"Student," the cipher murmured from the edge of the pool. She took that in and frowned.

"But not yours. No, you don't teach." She drew near to the boy man and hunkered down by his side. He was dressed in rough spun clothing, a chain hauberk and a simple tabard over that all. Gently she brushed some of his hair from his brow and then withdrew suddenly, sucking air in sharply over her gritted teeth.
"A mortal of the Prime? Here?"

"Briefly," the Sheriff responded in that tone that said he was done talking to her. It mattered little, she supposed. She laid a hand against the young man's face and breathed a gentle prayer-song of well-wishing. No person tapped by the Sheriff was like to know anything but hardship. She was living proof herself.

And yet in the touch she felt as part of a circle completed between Primeval, the man and herself. What was it that coursed through them in that moment? She could not lay her finger upon it. Simple goodness, yes, but something more.

Vessal, Primeval breathed.

Yes, she could sense that. But all young mortals are thus. That did not explain the resonance she felt in her lingering touch upon his cheek. "What are you?" she whispered. "Where are you bound?"

The young man stirred slightly under her attentions but did not awaken. Nevertheless there was a shimmer of a reflection of a conscious thought in a becalmed and silenced mind.

"Three over eight," she mused. "Fracture?" She frowned as pieces of a puzzle were made from bits of conversations and fragments of lore half-recalled in an endless span of ages. The puzzle was not whole; not nearly. And yet there was something there. Memories of worlds gone cold and rumors of cataclysmic collisions and people lost in the terrible voids between forgetful gods tantalized her imagination.

"Oh, Sheriff," she smiled. "If this is what I think it is, I am honored."

In answer the other turned and grabbed the young man by the ankle and hauled him into the pool, as usual, without any indication that her words mattered to him. Mnemosyne swallowed them both and the child dare not follow. Therein would the waters that traversed the many worlds wash the memories from the living and the dead on their journey through the cycle. She hoped that the young man would come out whole, that Lethe would not reveal that his experiences were like clothing alone; that everything good would wash away.

"And a new adventure begins," she laughed up into the cathedral of trees. For the Sheriff may move a body hither and thither but never does he force the hand of the virtuous.