“I’ll be a whisper away.” Caleb kissed the top of Tuija’s head and vacated to the hall. Caleb’s foot creaked on rotted floor boards, as he searched for more detritus for the fire, or a dry spot where he and Tuija could bed down. His father’s old study was preternaturally dry, a brittle collection of desk and shelves fitted with manuscripts, ancient tomes, scrolls, Caleb stroked his finger over a jade foo dog - one of a pair - which guarded an ornately carved box.
Stasis, alone in the dark. He remembered the spot at the doorway, where he’d stop as a child, knock on the wall beside the cavernous opening with his father bent over some old script or paper where he wrote homilies to present at the small cathedral a breath away. Raynar Einridsen’s absence clung to his son’s back.
‘You could, ya know, call? Jussayin.’ Icarus’ voice warbled soft out of Caleb’s pocket. Caleb dusted off his hands and fought the urge to crack the sigils, open the box.
“How in the worlds?”
‘Sure, GPS shows you at the Hallowes, think I don’t know the sound of dry on damp feet? Only dry room in the house is your Dad’s study ‘cause magic and I got his number I could patch you through, Deimos and Phobos? Tweaking enough ya might need him.’
“That bad, huh?” Through the corridor, Caleb hissed at the ruin of his childhood kitchen, antiquated by human standards, half the implements which weren’t trashed belonged behind a glass case. Yet, Icarus’ voice was for once, welcome. The breeze stroked his cheek with marigolds and lavender, the herbaceous lilt of hyssop peppered into the air and Caleb sought out the mint-like leaves and purple flowers of the herb.
‘Tortured Lochagos Atropos for days, we know what she’s got, Hestia’s priestess is with old Sal. If this Stana bitch goes after any more Folk, I don’t know how to keep the intel contained. You got hours, maybe days and the entire Truce will be down your throat. I’d say it’s time to call in the backup. Ya want Lou? I can… I can send ya Lou and his squad. Hit up Izanami, she’s got some devotees on the flip side of life could step up.’
Bent on his haunches, Caleb took a folding knife from his pocket and cut a bundle of hyssop at the base. “Yeah, kid. Any contacts you got, I need a 4-1-1 on Stana’s location at all times, there were some crazy Fae with her. Think Sera could shake some vines?”
‘You want my girlfriend to poke her nose back into Fae business?’
“The Changelings have got to know something. Figured their Princess might still have an ear to the buds.”
‘I’ll ask her, but I ain’t putting Sera in danger, not for you not for anybody. She’s stayin’ on the firm side of not in the line of fire, here with me.'
“Thanks, Icarus.” The moon cast grey light and stark shadows on the overgrowth. Rising from his perch, Caleb folded the knife back into his pocket and looked to the echo of warm firelight in the house. “You think you could find someone for me?”
‘Yeah, kinda what we were… we were discussing me using like… every discrete contact to find this Stana chick, right? I thought… heh… hoh boy do we have wires crossed or…’
“Yes, no, kid… Icarus. Someone other than Stana. Off the books, not a word to anybody. Not a soul, not even Sera or Lou.”
‘… Jesus, there’s someone worse out there?’
“Ule Bjørnsen, used to run the Grout Market.” Silence caved in the connection, a lingering disease which compounded the shudder to Caleb’s heart as he watched the Carpenter carve bark off his lover’s face from a break in the windowpane.
‘Don’t ask me for that. Not that.’
“Tuija’s desperate, I’ve got to…”
‘No! You don’t have to try. You hunt down this Ule guy, what? Leave the rest of us? Tuija’s the closest person to a mother my Seraya has left, and you wanna what, get me to find a dude who can… what?’
“Calm down. I just want to talk.”
‘No, you want to leave. Is being a Fae so bad you wanna exit stage right from the people who love… well not you, sorry but I don’t love you, dude, I mean you rock some serious socks, but Tuija, now there’s a…’
“Icarus.”
‘… I mean, I never met my mother so I don’t know what she was like, but Grandma Dite is kinda the best most loving person in the universe cause of the whole… being love… thing, and yet Sera is all Dono and Tuija are her Pub Parents and that makes you like, her… like… but…’
“Icarus, stop. Focus on Stana, we’re not doing a damn thing until this mess is fixed. Backburner Ule. Even if I don’t go after him for Tuija’s sake…”
‘Which you will.’
“… if someone got out of the Truce, I need to know how he did it before it becomes endemic.”
‘… damn it.’
“What?”
‘That makes too much sense for me to boil down to panicked crazy talk and a pamphlet on So Your Lover’s A Tree… I was halfway through that thing, even made pictures. Little… little sticker book…’
“Halfway, huh? What, Tuija’s was already done?”
‘Sitting on my desk, under…’ Icarus’ lips smack-popped on the connection, the rustle of items in bulk and a timid squeak piqued Caleb’s ear as he leaned against an old oak with a view of the cathedral and the parsonage. ‘… an astounding amount of things. When did I collect these things? What are… these things… gee do I never clean in here? Like… do I have access to a cleaning lady? Oooh bad timing, ya know, ‘cause Stana was a cleaning lady and now she’s a murderous god-killer in training trying to emancipate Midgard from the Realms and oh hey! Tuija’s picture book! Sera drew those pictures, ‘cause I never got the whole root systems right and hey, do you know that there’s like two kinds of hyssop that have totally different scientific names? True story! I can read you all about it…’
Caleb glanced at the sky with a bemused glint to his eyes, sure Icarus Areides might be older than him by thousands of years, but the kid was perpetually twenty. A congregation of mighty wings fluttered in his periphery, and the Judge snapped his gaze to a multitude of eyes and wheels.
“Do the thing, find the bitch and Icarus? Thanks for helping Tuija. Caleb out.” Yanking back to his feet, Caleb kept his hands open as he stared at the wings and wheels and eyes. They churned and burned into his mind, a terrifying dissonance incongruent with the reality of Midgard. Angelic, as disconcerting as the fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions to a physics student who hadn’t mastered the first three. Theosians were the billow on the mountain top. The breath in the names of God creating hurricanes with their whispers. They were fire and light and astonishment defined in a legion of eyes and wings and wheels. Utterly confounding, when seen in the limited dimensional space humans and other such Folk knew as their reality. “Mika?”
“Be afraid.”
“Well that’s a different line than usual.”
Excerpt from @Char
Char & Ash
The Book of Knowledge is gone. Someone is trying to kill gods.
The charred bodies of Mystic Folk are found intertwined on a beach in Dover. Secured by Ares’ Kopis Industries, Judge and executioner Caleb Mauthisen is brought in to find the perpetrator before they can perfect the failed ritual to kill gods.
Caleb was born for woe. Child of a traitor-god, and left on the Altar of the Axis Mundi as an infant, Caleb became the Judge of Mystics, both peace child and executor of the Mystic Truce. Peace Treaty and Ceasefire, the Truce relies on Caleb’s interconnected state as outcast to keep the myriad Mystic Realms in line. But, Caleb isn’t satisfied.
He whispers quandaries of freedom and new life with his cursed Mystic War-Veteran lover Tuija, while they search for the murderer and the one link to the past, which could free them both forever.
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