Whistlestop (6 page)

The door to the kitchen opened and an
odd creature walked into the room. It was about three feet tall
with a large head and oversized oval green eyes. It was wearing a
green outfit reminiscent of Robin Hood and carried a staff. It
smiled at the two sitting at the table, and then jumped through the
air and landed in the center of the table and laughed. “My, my,
it’s good to see you both again, my darling friends.”

“
Blessings on your house,
Jeremiah Beetleweed Mosscatcher,” Jeremy smiled.

“
And on yours, Lord Jeremy
Davis Iron-Heart, Knight of Winterpast,” the creature
responded.

“
Do I know you?” Lynn
squeaked.

The elf bowed deeply and said, “Most
beloved and precious Lady Lynnette Constant Truth, Princess of
Asterpast, it is an honor to be in your presence again.”

Jerry and the emperor appeared on a
vast desert, stretching to the horizon in three directions, and
ending at a high mountain range far ahead of them. Jerry sat down
on the hot sand to catch his breath and senses. One second ago, he
had been standing in his son’s bedroom, and now he was somewhere he
had never seen before. “A man’s first experience in the fold can be
disorienting, Lord Winslow,” the emperor said. “How do you
feel?”

“
Is this place
real?”

The emperor laughed out loud and
smiled down at him, and then kicked at the sand. “It seems pretty
real to me, Jeremy.”

“
Please call me Jerry, and
how should I address you? I do not want to be disrespectful, if
everything you have said is true.”

Karl offered his hand to Jerry and
then pulled him to his feet. “Thank you for asking, Jerry. You and
I will have a unique relationship. When it is just you and me
alone, you may call me Karl. If there are others nearby, I prefer
Your Majesty or Lord Emperor, and I will call you Lord Winslow. Is
that satisfactory?”

“
Of course, Karl. If I may
ask, where is this place?”

“
The home world of your
family, of course. This is the Plain of Dreams to the west of the
Mountains of Light. The Valley of Thrace is just over those ridges.
This planet is known as Winterpast.”

“
I have to say that it’s
not much to look at,” Jerry reasoned.

“
I must claim some
responsibility for that, and I do apologize, but sometimes war does
terrible things to people and their worlds. When the trehbor
acknowledged this as the home of the Knights of Winterpast, forces
of the empire attacked with zeal, and what you see now is the
remains of what used to be.”

“
Karl, I don’t understand.
If they were the Knights of Winterpast, wouldn’t it be obvious this
was their home?”

“
Jerry, come and walk with
me to the east and I will try to explain. I know it is difficult to
understand clearly as this is all new information.” The two men
began to walk in the direction of the mountain range. The Emperor
of the Universe explained that his home world was in another plane
of reality, where physics were based on three entirely different
dimensions of space. Since there are ten spatial dimensions and
each reality required three, there were forty-five possible three
dimensional realities in the universe. Each of the realms of
reality was very different. Some were small and densely populated,
while others, like the Empty Realm, were massive and virtual voids.
It was also believed there could be other realities that utilized
more than three spatial dimensions, although those were not
accessible by three dimensional beings like humans. As the Empire
of Axis grew, it first conquered its own realm, and then moved into
adjacent planes where its power would be overwhelming.

Eventually, new forces arose to defend
those realities from the empire. The most successful factions were
the Elves of Whistlestop and the Knights of Winterpast. The empire
began to lose territory and the emperors and their families began
to fear for their own lives. An imperial scout ship made the jump
from the Axis plane to a new, yet unnamed reality, where they
encountered dozens of large, heavily populated planets, and
relentless attacks from the knights. The scout ship was shot down
by the knights and crashed into the Forest of Thrace. The sole
survivor of the crash was a young lieutenant named Karl Galantine,
who was nursed back to health by the wives of the Trehbor of
Thrace. Once he was well, Karl escaped the palace and returned to
the wreckage of his ship where he was able to make a distress call
to the Axis plane. A dozen heavy starships jumped to the new plane,
now called the Pastoral Realm, where they rescued Karl and
kidnapped most of the wives and children of the trehbor.

Although Karl was horrified by the
actions of the emperor, most of the women and children were
slaughtered. Every few days, the head of a new victim was sent to
the trehbor, demanding he reveal everything he knew about the
knights. He held out for a long time, but eventually he could take
no more blood on his hands and relented. One hundred starships
appeared in orbit over Winterpast and began to bombard the cities
outside the Valley of Thrace until no structure was left standing.
Only one of the trehbor’s family members was returned to him, his
infant son, Duncan. The trehbor could not live with what the empire
or he had done and hanged himself, leaving his six-month old son to
replace him as trehbor.

Ten years later, when Karl Galantine
was crowned Emperor after a bloody coup; he vowed to reform the
empire and even traveled to the Temple of Light to beg for
absolution for what his predecessor had done. When he arrived at
that most sacred site, he found it deserted. He left a ton of gold
to help fund the temple and left Winterpast, never to
return.

They reached the top of a small rise
and could see the remnants of a small city on the banks of a dry
river bed. Blowing sand had reclaimed most of the city, except for
a small hillock covered in bright green grass, where a crystal
obelisk stood, shining in the midday sun. “This is the city of
Winslow, the home of your father and grandfather,” the emperor
said. “Come along, I want to show something to you.” He headed down
the slope in the direction of the grassy hill. Jerry followed close
behind him.

“
Why did you kill the cat,
Jeremiah?” Jeremy asked.

The elf frowned and sat on the table
top. “You know better than to use such terms, or have you forgotten
the old ways?”

“
What are you two talking
about?” Lynn asked.

Jeremiah popped to his feet and
stepped over to Lynn and kissed her forehead. “My dear Lady, please
let me clear this matter up with my former friend. I guarantee that
I will answer your questions in due time.” He walked over to Jeremy
and rapped him on the head. “Would you care to reconsider the
phrasing of your question, Lord Jeremy?”

“
Jeremiah, it’s been so
long since we left Winslow. Perhaps I have forgotten the old
ways.”

“
Please do your best to
remember now.”

The old man furrowed his brow and
closed his eyes, digging deep into his mind for memories of the
world he had been taken from when he was just a boy, not much older
than his grandson now. “It’s not coming to me, Jeremiah,” he
groaned after a minute or two.

Jeremiah sighed heavily, and then
removed a small backpack from his shoulders. He pulled the top open
very wide and reached around inside. The pack was quite small, but
somehow the elf’s head and shoulders were inside rummaging around.
After a moment, he extracted his head and was smiling broadly as he
began to extract the hilt of a long sword. By the time it was fully
out of the pack, the blade was about three feet long. The hilt was
gold with a leather pad for the handgrip. The blade shone like a
sun, even inside the kitchen. “Does this ring a bell?” Jeremiah
asked.

Jeremy stood and took the hilt of the
sword and examined it closely. “This is the Demon-Slayer, my own
sword! You’ve been saving this for me all this time?” As he stood
admiring the blade, leather and steel armor began to appear on the
man’s body. After a minute, he was fully dressed for
battle.

“
You look much better now,
Knight of Winterpast,” Jeremy noted. “How is your memory
now?”

“
What in the world are you
wearing, Dad?” Lynn asked.

Jeremy laughed and said, “Perhaps you
should look in a mirror yourself, milady.”

She looked down and saw she was
wearing a formal gown covered in pearls and lace. Glass slippers
adorned her feet. “I’ve got to be hallucinating!”

Just then, little Jeremy burst into
the room wearing a uniform similar to his grandfather, followed
closely by Lilian wearing a long hooded robe. “Mommy, look what
happened to my clothes!” He froze when he saw their peculiar
outfits and the elf standing on the table. “Jeremiah, you came
back!”

The elf bowed deeply and said,
“Blessings on your family, Master Winslow.”

Little Jeremy bowed and replied, “I
believe the term is blessings on your home, Jeremiah Beetleweed
Mosscatcher.”

“
With all due respect
Master Winslow, this house is cursed, which is why I am here,” the
elf replied.

“
Cursed? What does that
mean?” Lynn asked.

Jeremiah motioned toward the windows
with his arm and replied, “See for yourself, milady.” She rushed
over to the window and looked into her backyard. Ten large beasts
were standing shoulder to shoulder at the edge of their yard. Each
wore black leather and steel armor and carried a large battleax.
“And there are more all around the house.”

“
We can take them,
Jeremiah!” Jeremy exclaimed, holding his sword over his
head.

The elf shook his head slowly from
side to side and said, “Now is not the time for heroics, old
friend. Even if we could dispatch them, the risk to the lady and
your grandchildren is too great. The Empire of Axis has found you,
and now your lives are forfeit if we do not flee.” A battleax
crashed through the window, narrowly missing Jeremiah’s head and
slammed into the kitchen wall. The force of the impact knocked
glasses and dishes off their shelves and to the floor in a loud
crash. Jeremiah put his hand out and said, “Please place your hands
on mine quickly now!” The monsters were now pounding on the walls
and door. They could hear the front door break open. The others put
their hands on Jeremiah’s. The five flattened into a sheet, though
they could see the monsters rushing into the kitchen, axes over
their heads. The sheet shrank into a line, then a dot and
disappeared. The house exploded in a massive fireball, blowing
broken furniture, burning lumber and chunks of the monsters all
over the neighborhood. Within seconds, the remains morphed into
more earthlike animal carcass parts.

“
Karl, how does this small
hill stay green and trimmed?” Jerry asked.

“
We erected this memorial
to the knights who were slain here by my predecessor. The hill is
fed by an underground aquifer that was extended to this spot for
that purpose. The grass is a special species that only grows to
this height and is remarkably long-lived. I know it isn’t much, but
I had to do something.”

“
How many knights died
during the empire’s campaign to destroy Winterpast?”

Karl sat on a stone bench and looked
up at the obelisk. “I don’t think we will ever know that, Jerry.
The knights came from many cities and villages, and I don’t know if
there was ever a census or list of names. Also, at least two were
spared by escaping, perhaps many more survived as well.”

“
You mean my father and
grandfather,” Jerry noted. The emperor nodded. “So potentially,
there could be hundreds or thousands of knights still out there,
lost in the universe.”

“
That would seem unlikely,
although I cannot rule it out,” Karl replied. “If the number was
high, I would have expected them to still be fighting us. It is
more likely that only your relatives survived.”

“
Why did the emperor kill
my grandfather?”

“
From what I understand,
the soldiers discovered a trace of the carrier fold that took your
grandfather and father to the Empty Realm.”

“
So, this folding leaves
trails in the fabric of space?”

“
Normally no, however, in
this case, it was your Great Uncle Moab who sent them to Earth.
When the guards killed him, the trace was still on him. They simply
followed it to your planet.”

A confused look crossed Jerry’s face.
“I was born on Earth many years after they left Winterpast. If they
followed some trace, wouldn’t they have been there almost
immediately?”

“
Jerry, I don’t know. What
I told you is what I have learned since taking the throne. Perhaps
those reports were in error. Either way, it all happened long
before I was emperor.”

“
I’m sorry, Karl. I don’t
mean to imply that you’re lying or anything. I was just
wondering.”

“
Let’s put that past us,
Jerry. I think we’ve been here long enough and I would like you to
visit my palace on Axis. I will be better able to teach you folding
there.” Jerry did not answer. His attention had turned to a line of
figures wearing long hooded robes that was rapidly approaching the
obelisk. He was surprised he had not seen them before. “Jerry, did
you hear what I just said?”