Chapter 38: Chapter 38

Maya “Joe!” shouted Maya, sitting up in bed. Ka leapt up in horror, eyes wide, wondering what was going on.

“What what what?” he demanded, blinking heavily.

“That’s why I kept having the ogre dream!” Maya cried. Every part of her agreed, including the gift. She could feel it move in unison with her life force, truly in unison for the first time.

She felt peaceful somehow, just for a moment it felt like the multiverse was on her side for a change. She almost grasped the concept of fate, but let that one go just as fast.

Maya was on her feet, suddenly desperate to act, to finish it. She hurried getting dressed, shouting at Ka to get up too.

She skidded into the kitchen, where Ellie and Ke were sitting drinking orange juice.

“She took it from him,” she told her bemused audience animatedly. “Maya said, she took it from him, that’s what she said to you, right?” she addressed Ka, who nodded slowly, having caught up with her.

“And coherence is a normal part of your morning repertoire?” asked Les sarcastically, sidling past Maya towards the coffee pot.

“Joe, a woman stole his gift and gave it to Maya two. It was always Joe. It’s been leading me there. We’ve got to go to ogreland and save him,” she spoke rapidly but the blank looks remained on her friend’s faces.

“The old dude in ogreland that Maya dreams about. She thinks he is the person the gift belongs to, and that by returning it to him, she can save herself and Maya two,” Ka informed them eloquently, and they all went ‘ah’ and nodded in comprehension.

“So how do you know it’s a guy from a dream?” asked Rob, somewhat sceptically.

“It’s within me, it was always within me, the gift always wanted to go home, the blob told me. We’ve got to go and get him, I know where he is, he’s in ogreland,” she implored, desperate to make them understand.

“We’ve got to go to work,” Rob sighed heavily. “We can’t afford that kind of a loss, missing a whole day’s filming.”

“Tis true,” Les concurred. “Shame, hunting ogres was up there on my bucket list.”

“Well, I’m free,” Ellie grinned broadly. “I already called in sick.”

“Where’s Brian?” asked Ka, noting Ellie’s elated demeanour.

“He left earlier,” Ke smiled knowingly.

“Oooh,” Maya teased Ellie. “Had fun did we?”

Ellie just smiled broadly and looked firmly into her orange juice.

“We’re going to need weapons,” a still half asleep Ka wielded a kitchen knife with a maniacal grin.

“Not that one, that’s my best carving knife!” cried Les, spilling his coffee with the shock of it all.

Sometime later, armed with Les’s beloved kitchen knives, torches, a hammer and a couple of bottles of bleach, Ellie’s idea to squirt in their eyes; Ellie, Ke, Ka and Maya traipsed through a portal into the filthy round mud hut.

They looked by torch light around the squalid conditions Joe had been living in, to find the otherwise pitch black hut deserted.

“What do we do now?” whispered Ellie. Since no-one knew the answer to that, Maya opened a portal to the other side of the wall and they filed through, still brandishing their pseudo-weapons, turning out their torches to not draw attention to themselves.

They emerged into a partially starry night, cloud cover obscuring most of the stars. It left little light to see by, and their waited in silence for their eyes to adjust.

The Ka’s moved away from the side of the hut to get a better look of the area.

“Light, up there,” they hissed at Ellie and Maya, who moved next to them to see.

It looked like lit branches, the way the red orbs were bobbing around. They started towards it, using more mud huts in the village as shelters as they crept through the seemingly deserted camp.

They were at the edge of the settlement when it happened. The caterwauling came from behind them, and a hideous great ogre aimed an enormous bat at them. They split, the bat falling in between them, and Maya opened a portal that they ran through holding hands, with Maya following up the rear incase anything happened that shut the portal and separated them.

“What the...” Ka and Ke were breathing heavily, crouched on their hands and knees on Les’s living room floor.

Ellie didn’t look too impressed as she shook her head, still clutching her bottle of bleach.

“So what now? I’m happy to go and wait in the hut for Joe to return, it’ll be safer for you guys to stay here,” Maya told a disbelieving audience.

“Bollocks,” said the Ka’s, Ellie nodding in agreement.

“If he’s out, he’ll be returned soon as the rest will need to guard the village,” Ellie surmised.

“We vote lying in wait,” the Ka’s grinned, back on their feet, sharing a knowing look.

“Okay, if you insist,” sighed Maya, secretly grateful for their assistance. She went and switched her hammer for a knife, now knowing what she was up against.

“Just let me stick my head around,” asked Maya, rhetorically, finding nothing but pitch blackness. She switched on her torch to find nothing there but the inside of Joe’s hut.

She motioned to the others to follow and walked through into the prison, followed closely by her companions. They immediately switched off their torches, Ka flashing his on the toilet bucket so they didn’t kick it.

They flattened out to the wall so they didn’t cross anybody’s path and waited in the cool night air for the prisoner to return.

It felt like forever before the tree trunks were rolled away from the entrance of the hut and soft foot falls sounded quietly on the soft mud floor. They waited until the trunks were returned to their places before turning on the torches.

They found at the end of their torches’ beams a very surprised old man, with long white hair and an equally long beard, stood there looking as dirty as the floor he was standing on.

“Hey,” said Maya softly, as she approached him. “We’ve come to save you, you need to come with us.”

Joe walked towards them, eyes narrowed against the torchlight, as they heard the trunks being rapidly removed. With no time to spare, Ka and Ke each got one side of the startled old man, and dragged him through the portal back to Les and Rob’s.

“Come, sit down,” said Maya as she ushered the newcomer into a chair, noticing the smell had accompanied them from the hut, attached to the man.

Joe blinked a lot and looked around as best he could while his eyes adjusted to the light.

“Where are we?” he finally spoke, with a voice that hadn’t been used in a long time.

“Earth,” Maya advised him gently, not really knowing what else to say. Did he mean street name? City? Planet? Universe?

“Left or right mirror?” he asked unexpectedly.

“How is that defined?” asked Rob, having just walked in through the front door, Les in tow.

“In a mirrorverse like this, it is which side the heart is on,” Joe struggled with the words, and Ellie immediately ran to get him a glass of water.

“Left,” said Maya and Ka.

“Right,” said Ellie, Les, Rob and Ke together.

“This is our universe, remember?” Les laughed.

“Right is William’s world,” sighed Joe.

“You’re back early?” Maya asked of the new arrivals.

“They can hold up without us, we needed to meet this Joe,” Les grinned broadly, eyeing up the old man.

“Look, before you talk any more, here’s water, I’m going to make you food, and someone will pour you a nice warm bath and get you some clean clothes. Do you need a doctor? Are you hurt or sick?” Ellie fussed over him, and he met her gaze with his clear blue eyes.

“Am I dead?” he wondered, tasting the water before finishing the glass in one go.

“Far from it,” Maya told him. “We’ve come to save you. I’m Maya, this is Ellie, Ka, Ke, Rob and Les.”

The old man’s eyes watered as he smiled a weak smile and downed another glass of water.

Sometime later, after food, a hot bath, clean clothes and a haircut -provided by Les, who was a hairdresser before he went into movies- Joe looked like a new man. Ellie was surprised at the lack of lesions or sores that one would have expected from always wearing the same clothes and rarely bathing.

They were all sitting around the kitchen table, watching Joe shaking his head and smiling at his luck. Eventually it was Maya who brought it up.

“I feel pulled to you,” she told the old man.

“I know. When you came before, I couldn’t understand why I felt drawn to you, then when I realised it was too late. Why did you bring me here? It’s yours now.” There wasn’t a hint of malice in the way he said it, just a simple statement.

“That wasn’t me, that was my mirror. Her soul is in great pain, your gift was forced on her and it fractured her soul, then she forced it on me.”

He contemplated her for a moment, as the others in the room faded away, making it feel like just the two of them talking.

“How was it taken from you?” asked Maya gently.

After a long pause, Joe sighed.

“To explain, I must tell you my whole story, and it isn’t pleasant. It isn’t for innocent ears like yours, this fate should never have befallen you.

“I was born in a place called Catastaea, on a not too different planet to yours, though less developed. It was a world of knights and castles, princesses and damsels. Of dragons and fortresses, peasants and mud huts. I was privileged, born a prince, my elder brother Andaray in line for the throne. The people of Catastaea age slowly, I was ninety two Earth years when I reached puberty and developed the gift.”

“You were ninety two at puberty?” Les interrupted incredulously. Rob shook his head at Les, rolling his eyes.

“After all you’ve seen of late, you’re questioning ?” Rob’s incredulity superseded Les’s by some way.

“Guys,” interrupted Maya impatiently. Both Les and Rob then looked at Joe expectantly for the story to continue.

“Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but we once worked out that I was born in the Earth year 1439,” Joe chuckled, waiting for the fallout.

“Why not?” said Ellie unexpectedly. “Why should all creatures age at the same rate? They don’t here.”

It was amazing watching the transformed Ellie become something somehow less broken than the one they had first encountered. Admittedly, she bore little resemblance to Maya’s Ellie in her choice of words as well as subject, but there in the core was the same person, the same light that shone from Ellie and lit up the room.

“Hang on,” Les took the bait. “You’re over 500 years old?”

“For my sins,” Joe replied heavily. “I explored the multiverse, but my heart was always at home, where I spent most of my time. I had a wife and two children.”

He stopped and put his head in his hands, breathing heavily before continuing.

“I was a knight, I led our army into battles with neighbouring clans, they were always seeking control of our kingdom. It was a beautiful life, apart from the bloodshed. You have fairy stories about lands like ours, brought to you by travellers.

“In 1818 Earth time, I met William. He was someone that understood my gift, I thought he understood me. We remained friends and I continued my life on Catastaea.

“A century or more later, I had been wandering with William when I returned to find the whole kingdom devastated. The enemy had attacked in force while I was away. They had left no-one alive, not my wife, children or brother, who by then was the king.”

Joe sighed heavily, returning his forehead to his hands before continuing.

“I lost it. I killed them all. I went and stole weapons from advanced worlds and went to the enemy and exterminated them all.”

They all sat in silence, drowning in the horrors this apparently gentle man was recounting. He cleared his throat and continued.

“I had listened to the Spectrals when they told me not to take weapons in to my world that did not belong there. Not to upset the balance. They threatened me, in their way. I didn’t arm my people against the... no, I won’t say their name.

“I didn’t stop at them. I killed all those we had ever fought before going to our mirrorverse and killing them all there. I tortured some, slayed the rest. Women, children, everyone.” He paused for a moment while the gravity of his words began to sink in.

“I have had so much time to reflect on what I did. I know I deserved my fate.”

“Is that why you didn’t escape?” asked Ellie gently, after a short silence.

“I deserved it.” Joe said with a finality that no-one challenged.

“How did you end up there? Who took your power?” pressed Maya, needing answers.

“I was on the run from the Spectrals when William caught up with me using a tracker. William was slowly insinuating himself into many worlds in many universes, seeking power. I was broken and his plan of multiversal domination appealed to my rage against the multiverse.

“His sidekick Brecht was as lethal as William, and we three worked together dominating as many planets as we could.

“On one planet, there was a woman called Sylvia. She had power in her world, she was well connected and very rich. William charmed her, but it was I who fell under her spell. I don’t know how she found out you can steal a power, I didn’t even know it was possible.

“She asked me to take her to an isolated place in an uninhabited planet to spend some time alone. Once there, she begged me to take her to the astral plane, and that’s where she did it. Took my power and went, leaving me on the planet you call ogreland. They found me, and the rest you know.”

Joe’s body sagged as the tears started flowing. They didn’t know what to say or do, so they sat in silence until the old man was finished. Once he had composed himself, Maya felt that she could wait no longer.

“Joe, there’s something I need from you,” she bent down in front of him as he wiped away the last of his tears. “I need to take you to the astral plane and give you your power back. It’s stolen and killing me.”

She knew she was being too direct for someone as vulnerable as Joe. It also occurred to her that he could still be exceptionally dangerous as he had already committed mass genocide many times over, but then he’d had plenty of time to repent. She hoped he’d repented.

“Anything for you,” he murmured, looking up at her briefly before returning his gaze to the floor.

Maya could see that Ka had massive reservations on letting her go anywhere with that man, but she had to. She had to try. In the long run, she had only eternal torment to lose.

“But you’ll return us to our universe after, right?” asked Ka, eyeing Joe warily.

“Of course, anything for this woman,” he looked at Maya, and shame filled his eyes.

“I have one more question,” Rob started. “Are the Spectrals evil?”

“Only if you are. They try to maintain balance in the multiverse, prevent massive changes to universes being made by travellers,” Joe replied in a slightly muffled, nasal tone.

“Come on,” said Maya gently, and guided him into the lounge, where they seated themselves comfortably on the sofa while she pulled him out to the astral plane. Maya had learnt her lesson on vacating her body in an uncomfortable position the previous night.