Flash Fiction Friday

The words still echoed in my head. “We will follow your passion.” They battled in my head with the body I was passionate about as that body rushed through brown leaves that had fallen from a million trees.  

We waded through an abundance of leaves. The sky should have been clear through the trees overhead, but the trees looked like they had shed none. Blood red branches covered us; the sky was bleeding red leaves.  

“Concentrate on the male, Eoghan. I can sense he’s near, very near.  There is a disturbance.”

Hurlee stopped, turned, slid his hand through my hair, and pulled hard. My head jerked back, and I’d have fallen on my ass if it wasn’t for Jeb holding on. Hurlee pulled me to his mouth and slid his tongue between my lips. His eyes opened, and the once clear grey brightened into blue.  He pulled harder, and we fell to the ground, Jeb landing on top.

Bright blue light bathed us. I looked up into the face of Hurlee, who was sliding slowly across the trees.  “I found him.”

Rising to my knees, I turned in his direction. It was clearly Ethan standing beneath the branches. His voice echoed, “I love you… always have.” With that he crumpled to the ground, like someone popped a balloon.

I couldn’t run to him fast enough. First Jeb, then Hurlee, tried to hold me back; Jeb with his arms wrapped around me, and Hurlee, who held out his arm to block me.  His strength was considerable. “No, we go together.  This feels wrong.”

Rising to my feet, I grasped Jeb’s hand as he rose. Striding before us, Hurlee led the way with his blue eyes blazing.  We hurried, with Jeb holding me back when I would have run, but when we found Ethan lying in the bushes, his own blue eyes slowly fading to a dark cobalt, I knew there was nothing left to find.  Ethan was gone from this place; even I felt it. 

I fell to my knees. Pink and orange petals dusted his body, and, helplessly, I brushed them from him.  “He was such an innocent in all of this,” I blurted. “All he wanted was to love me.” 

Thinking back on all those times Ethan would pull me into a kiss as I walked in the door, the times he snuck down into the basement and would leave tiny kisses on my neck.  Those stolen moments when we were alone or before Lucy woke up.  Even that first Christmas together when we went out to chop down our own Christmas tree, arriving home exhausted, sweaty and a little sticky from more than just sap.

As I bent to kiss his lips, two strong hands grasped my shoulders. They were not the same grip, but the same strength pulled me away as Hurlee and Jeb shouted “No!” in one voice.

I wanted to say goodbye. How dare they deny me that? “I answer to no one!” I shouted back, my rage rising. Although I felt Jeb grab at me again, I ripped myself away and placed my hand on Ethan’s exposed chest.

The tremor beneath my fingertips was the last thing I expected. The flesh of his body moved, stretched, and formed itself around my hand, pulling me inward. It burned like fire, it hurt, oh, it hurt, it was acid; it was eating me… 

I drew back from the horror, crying out, and the gap in his flesh knit itself back.  

In the distance, the shrieking whine of a wounded animal made me shiver as I backed into Jeb and Hurlee’s arms.  They clutched me and one another, all of us shuddering at the near miss.  I stared at my hand–my miraculously unscarred and unhurt hand–and back at the body on the ground. 

Then I had to turn away. I huddled in their arms, breathing in their scent, feeling the warmth of their bodies. My heart raced in my ears, and I had to work to steady my breath. 

“That–that wasn’t really Ethan, was it?” I asked, a begging tone entering my voice. “This world is a hard place to understand.  But, whatever that was, that was not Ethan, was it?.”

Hurlee shook his head and then nodded.  “At one time, it surely was Ethan. But it is not now and probably has not been for a long time. The creature inside the body of your beloved Ethan has escaped into the woods, and will seek his other half.  His… pull-apart, for want of a better word.”

I looked at Hurlee, and then Jeb, who was nodding. “Pull-apart? What is that, exactly?”

Jeb – my “Fathers”–was behind me. It was comfortable to feel him grow near the small of my back, leaving a million kisses along my shoulders as his hand clasped mine at my waist.  I leaned my head back.  “Do you know… what will happen?”

His lips continued kissing. They felt like a smile had appeared on his lips, but the words out of his mouth told me differently.  “No. I’ve only heard tales that it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world.”

The man in the blue linen robe stood before me, speaking with me through his crystal blue eyes as they gained a cerulean glow. It was like staring at the sky, or at the coolest ocean of Greece; it bathed us in his sensual blue light. His robe fell away and onto my feet; he was without clothes beneath it. 

I couldn’t stop myself. I struggled with Jeb to reach out my hand to him, to bathe in the blue light. Sand whispered under his feet as he moved towards me. Jeb’s lips still pressed against my back as the blue man leaned forward to suck my bottom lip into his mouth, his head tilting back as he gripped it.

Blue energy flowed around us, engulfing us, flooding us with sheet upon sheet of electricity, as though we would get electrocuted. 

The naked man moved closer and placed a hand on either side of my body, sliding over the tops of Jeb’s hands. His breath wheezed in, and his hands dropped away. 

His voice billowed like a willowy wind through my mind.  “Do not resist, it will not work. Up… on your knees for me!” Under its demanding, controlling force, I could not help but obey. But as I moved, I realized it was not meant for me at all.  

Jeb was no longer behind me.  Instead, he stood to my side.  I looked up at the naked man through the blue haze of his energy into beautiful blue skies… and then a roiling pitch of black and a bright white strike of lightning across the sky blinded me as I cringed my eyes shut against it. His hands seized me and moved me as he wished, while the afterimage tattooed itself into my eyelids.   

His body was on top of me. I watched as he entered me, gasping as his lips pressed to mine, sliding lower, lower.  His voice was still whispering through my mind. “Look for Ethan, I can only remain for a moment more… show me his face, the face you see…”

My body holding two forms within it… my eyes closed, the tears trickling down my cheeks as Ethan says something ridiculous. His soft lips searing kisses into my shoulders, down my chest, over my belly, down, down, till he engulfs me.  My fingers snake though his curly blond hair; my hips shudder as I dance against his waist.  He takes in all of me, grasping my ass.  Him pressing in, deeper, then pushing him away, but he holds firm, swallowing and breathing in all of me. He is sliding off, and I can’t help it–I switch positions so that I can enjoy all of him as much as he’s enjoying all of me.  Then she’s walking in as I slowed and she’s screaming and kicking me out of the way…  

Then lost and alone all over again. Blue light seeping away through the cracks in the rock. He removes himself from my skin, flesh parting, skin sliding on skin, as good as any fuck, as sensuous as the time Ethan shoved me against the tree in the rain, ripped my pants down and slammed into me hard, biting the back of my neck and pinching my nipples… 

I came back to myself as Hurlee withdrew from my body.  He was solid above me, his hands cupping my face and wiping away the tears.  

“I’ve found him, because of her.” His eyes were clear now, not a glow in sight.  He blinked twice and hovered mere inches from my lips as he whispered, “We will get him.” 

I shuddered and trembled, asking, “If I hug you, will you slide in again?”  If I was hopeful, I couldn’t tell you, but I waited in anticipation of his answer.

“No, I must concentrate to make that happen. You’re safe, child.”

At the words, I placed a hand on either side of his head and a testing kiss upon his lips. When I pulled away, I saw my Fathers–my Jeb–kneeling beside me.  I watched, dazed, as Hurlee reached over to Jeb, placing a hand on his chin, pulling him closer, and leaving a soft press upon his lips.  

Hurlee bade me rise to my knees, and pulling my face to his, placed another delicate kiss upon my lips. 

Jeb and I moved closer to each other, and I saw him, all of him.  My eyes had been closed to his full body by the clothes he wore. He wore no clothing now. Shaking, I fell into his arms, my hands caressing and gliding over his taut chest, his strong arms. Finally, I rested on his upper body, with his hands in my hair, his fingers weaving in and out and twirling the ends.

Our companions stood beside the rock in blue and brown linen, speaking in whispers. He held up a square piece of glass and they whispered sibilant chants over and around it, kissing it, blowing air across it.  Still more chants as Jeb engulfed me, comfortable and warm, rocking me, soothing me. 

The chants drifted away to a hissing end, and Derwa’s voice echoed in the small space.

“We have the coordinates. Get dressed. We must leave, and time is short.”

Jeb helped me to dress, pulling up my jeans as I fumbled my shirt on over my head. As he buttoned and zipped, he leaned in for a kiss.  “How did it feel?” he asked, his eyes twinkling even in the dimness.

“Like the best sex I’ve ever hand,” I sighed, a smile touching my face even as the dim memory of Ethan faded from the experience.

“I hope I can live up to that,” Jeb said, as he finished buttoning my shirt.

I grinned. “We’ll see… Fathers.”

Turning to Hurlee, we saw that Derwa had already departed. At our raised eyebrows, he nodded. “She is seeking the girl. We feel the male, and he misses male companionship. Come, Eoghan. We will follow your passion.”

There was a knock at the door, Mama turned to open it and in walked two people in robes. One was a course brown, and the other was a blue-grey linen. They covered their faces, all I saw were two figures moving, nearly floating across the room. But that wouldn’t even be a surprise as I’ve already seen so many other odd, strange things today. I felt a strong hand slip under my elbow and looking over my shoulder I noticed Jeb standing right behind me.

He leaned down and whispered. “I’ll be with you the entire time.”

Mama announced, “The investigators have arrived, it’s a name for you to understand.  The rummagers worship the Goddess Aebhel, they are in tune with everything around them, and work in complete darkness. Jeb please take Eoghan to the basement.”

There were quiet whisperings, Mama pointed to my wrist, and both heads rose just enough for me to see in the linen, a pair of iced, almost clear eyes. From the course brown robe were two eyes that were deep dark pits of chocolate.

Mama nodded her head. “Yes, Jeb take them now, the sky is gaining darkness, and they insist they need to prepare before the rising moon hits its peak.”

We turned and Jeb led me down the hall to an opening; I hadn’t remembered seeing, much like all those doors in my basement long ago. Behind me I could hear the soothing of robes upon the floor. I heard a gentle tingle of chimes, and a knocking of wood. We descended the steps into the darkness; it was so dark, I could not make out Jeb before me, if it wasn’t for his hand holding mine, I would have gotten lost. A golden light illuminated an ornate wooden door, and Jeb took me to it. One twist and the door opened to reveal another dark room, with more stairs. Where the golden light was coming from, I did not understand, perhaps the couple behind me had pocket lights. Finally, we came to a large rock formation.

Jeb led me to the center. “Kneel, Eoghan and make sure we clear away everything.”

I reached out with my hands, but felt nothing. “There is nothing to clear away.”

With those words, the golden light illuminated the rock, where thousands of little bugs scurried away from the light. They startled me, turning to look for the source of the light when the woman let her eyelids descend to blacken the room.

Jeb whispered, “It is not appropriate to stare at the rummager, she does us a service, we shouldn’t profane her.”

I lowered my head in the darkness, “I am sorry lovely one.”

There was another voice, a masculine male voice. “Her name is Derwa and I am Hurlee, in moments we will surround you with light, and I will rummage through you to find what is connecting the two of you still. Jeb, you may undress Eoghan.”

“Wait… what?” But the caress of Jeb’s fingers down my shoulder, as he removed my shirt, I believe he left small kisses on my shoulders as his hands worked around my body to unbuckle my belt. “I think I can do this part.” Our hands rest upon one another and it took several minutes before either of us moved our hands.

Jeb moved in front of me, and I felt his soft lips upon my own as he spoke once more. “Soon, Mama… we will be together, till then, I am honored to be here soothing your transition.”

I felt the pants slide down my legs. He’d followed and pulled off shoes and socks and I sit there naked as the day I entered the world. Even in the darkness, I was self conscious.

“I am moving behind you again, Mama.” And it was flesh against flesh, he was planning on riding this through, whatever this was. A man in blue, a woman in brown, her chocolate eyes becoming golden light. What, I wondered did the man in blue-grey have up his robe.

I turned to Mama. This time, she let me, as the scry rippled and clarified to pure, clear water. The stick was clean of my blood, and as I looked at my palm, I could see a drying line across it. It intersected my life line; there would be a scar. 

I looked to Mama, stricken. 

“Mama… that was Ethan. My Ethan.  Why would he run my Mama off the road? I don’t understand.”

She still held my arm, soothing as she looked away.  “Son, that probably wasn’t Ethan any longer. Not by that point.”

“And that wasn’t Lucy? That was her. That was them. He’s still wearing the bracelet I made our freshman year in high school!” I turned away, stifling my anger against a clenched fist.  

“What?”  She finally let go of my hand.

I licked the drying cut on my palm. “I made them leather bracelets, like this one.”  I showed the red leather on my other wrist. It had been repaired several times, with string, yarn, and twine. Finally I had used wire to keep the damn thing on, but now, even that was rusting.

“Them?  You made one for all three of you?  A trinity of bracelets?” Mama’s eyes closed and she sighed. “Son, you are more powerful than you know.”

“Why?” 

“By calling the power of your own soul, you connected the three of you, as a trinity.  But the connection is not as strong as it once was. The longer you leave something, the harder it is to fix it.  I didn’t see the woman wearing one.”

“Yeah, when they left to get married she threw it at me. She told me my fantasies of the three of us were stupid. She didn’t want to remember me.”  She had watched as Ethan stood there with his bracelet in his hand, waiting for him to throw it at me too, but he had shoved it in his pocket and walked out. 

“He might still feel something for you. We might have a chance to find him, or them. But hopefully we’ll find Anya either way.”  Mama walked to the front door as she spoke, and I followed, hanging on her words. “We don’t have all the same skills as others, son. Fathers can call across the universe for other Fathers or tale-tellers. I have to resort to old fashioned calls.”  She chuckled and reached for a tattered old rope, pulled it three times, twice short and one long pull.  “Soon the investigators will arrive.  You’ll meet more of our family, of your family.”

I sensed someone behind me. When I turned to see, Jeb was across the room. His eyes caught mine as he smiled, still looking through his paperwork.  He whispered one word that I read off his lips more than heard. The word was “soon.”

I looked to the faded red bracelet around my own wrist, fumbling with it, caressing it. Then I flipped my wrist over to tear at it, to try to remove it. But the wire caught –  it was hard work, and I struggled. I didn’t want it any more. Ethan and his bitch had run my Mama off the road and into what they’d meant for a fiery death. I had no doubt it was intentional. 

I knew Lucy too well. 

The bracelet suddenly felt like a snake around my wrist, throbbing, compressing. I didn’t want it any more. 

Then Mama placed her hand over it, calming my struggling fingers. “No, son.  Not yet, anyway. I know it hurts – I know you feel his betrayal. But we need you to keep the connection with him, at least. He might not be too far gone.”

I tried to stop my eyes from flooding.  How do I have a man waiting for me, wanting me, whispering “soon” to me, when I’m struggling with the fact that the man I cherished for half of my life might be trying to kill my mother? How can I want to be rid of him if I still kept the reminder of him on my wrist? How could he want to be rid of me if he did the same?  

“Please, I don’t want this on me anymore.” My eyes narrowed down into slits of pain. “Please, I don’t think I can do this, Mama. This is all too new, too soon.  I can’t believe this. I’m in a terrible dream, I’m certain of it.  Please, please, let me wake up.” 

My voice caught on a sob. I knew it was no dream. And Mama confirmed it with her next words. 

“It’s not a dream. It’s real life, son. Now we know that we need to find this Ethan and Lucy, though if I’m right, they’re no longer using those names.  They have Woken Up, my child… and they’ve Woken on the wrong side.”

“She’s alive?”  I said quietly,  looking at Mama and Fathers.

“It’s confusing. It could mean anything, really.”  The old man – Fathers – looked at the book, his eyes going hooded. “Let me…. let me get Jeb in here.”  He closed his eyes, breathing in an odd, slow pattern that wasn’t quite panting and wasn’t quite gasping, with a low humming woven into and out of it. 

A couple of minutes later the door opened and Jeb walked in.  

Jeb was no longer covered in mud. His dark brown hair, freshly washed by the look of it, was standing up like ragweed in the front.  He held a leather satchel, old and worn.  His suspenders were twisted in the back, as though he had dressed quickly.  But the outfit looked lived-in, and with his sleeves rolled up I could just make out a bluish-green tattoo moving up the arm of his bag hand.  “I am here, Fathers. What may I do for you?”

“Son, please search through the library for Anya’s goings-on before and after her… ‘death.’” The quote marks were audible, even though Fathers didn’t make any other indication beyond a slight change in tone.

“Yes, sir.”  Jeb took the satchel to the table behind where Mama was seated and opened it.  Reaching deep inside, he pulled out several sheets of paper.  “Her death was… three years ago, but this doesn’t make any sense, Fathers.  We almost sent the men to investigate, but we had to be cautious at the time, because…” He looked at Mama and Fathers, then at me, before continuing to the elderly man, “Well, you know why.  So we sent no one. I thought you’d made the decision, Fathers, but it looks as though the readers said she was still alive, that she traveled into the woods. It’s hazy. It says she… changed. So she’s here, but she’s not.”

Mama looked visibly shaken, “Oh, dear.”  She got up and moved at a frenzied pace, taking herbs from the walls and water from a pitcher. She poured that into the cauldron set into the wall behind her.

Then she turned to me, a serious look in her eyes. “Give me your hand, son.”  She reached out towards me as though I were already standing in front of her.

“Why?”  I stayed firm, my eyes flickering between Jeb and his sheaf of papers to Mama and her cauldron.

“I need your hand for a blood offering, and your connection to Anya will help.”

“You want me to do… what?” I shook my head no and tried to back away. But Mama was as fast as lightning when she wanted to be. I didn’t realize she’d had the best of me until I was looking down at my hand, grasped in hers.  With her other hand, and with no ceremony, she drew a sharpened willow stick across my palm. I winced, but she did not let go of my hand, instead pressing it to make the blood come.

It rose in little bubbles, which she picked up with the stick on a return pass across my palm.  She put the stick in the boiling water and begin to stir, chanting softly. She pulled me closer to her, and lowered my head to look into the pot.  “With blood and water, wood and flame, we watch the world unfold before us.”  

The water wavered and then darkened. A scry – where did that word come from? – formed on its darkened surface. Somehow, it didn’t seem strange at all, but I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. 

There she was running away from the flaming wreck of the car.  How had she survived it? She limped as she ran, favoring her left foot, but it was clearly her. Her frizzed-out carrot-red hair blew around her in a wind veiled in smoke and ashes. A smile crept to my lips, but then she turned and shook her head as though she knew we were watching her.

And she was gone, running into the woods.  The view pulled back, and we saw that the back of the car was smashed in. It pulled back further, and we saw the front of another car,  a man getting out on one side, and a woman on the other.  They ran after Anya – my Mama. The sun reflected off a white leather bracelet on the man’s upraised arm as he turned toward the spot I’d seen Anya turn.  

It was Ethan.

I gasped and tried to draw back from the scry, but Mama Glenn held my arm so I couldn’t move. I watched, horrified. 

Ethan ran into the woods, followed by a pregnant woman half-hidden by a mousy brown haircut. I knew that woman’s movements like they were my own. It was Lucy. 

“We brought magic to the shores of this new world, hidden magic.  Until your mother stole you away, we had lived for thousands of years unscathed.  Those who killed the Mother of the Glenn and her family rose up and started killing Sisters left and right.  They had been told that another of great power would be born to a Sister, and then you were born. But we never knew for certain. We just felt.”

“So… who am I? What am I?”  

“Impatient.” She smiled. “And you are to be the next Mama Glenn.”

“But, I’m a male.  How can I be a Mama?”  

“Because you are a caretaker, it is only a title. There have been male Mamas when there have been no females around.”

“But I saw tons of women greeting me earlier.”

“They do not have the power you have.”  She reached into my shirt and pulled out the medallion I had made in the minutes before Sunder tapped on the window, a copper wire-wrapped tiger’s eye stone.  “This medallion alone has the power of a family of satyrs.”

It was a lot to take in. “And Jeb?”

She smiled, her eyes sparkling.  “He’s yours.  His title is ‘Fathers’.  He has been waiting for you for a long time now.  And he has talked of the children you will have.  He knows. He will not tell, but he smiles a lot.”

Embarrassed, I asked. “Is sex different in this land?”

She laughed long and hard, an autumn wind blowing through a pile of fallen leaves.  Finally getting her breath back.  “Oh… No, you will not birth your children.  Our families are found families.  This is how you can have two males as partners; your children will seek you out. That is why your sister left when she was twelve.  She was seeking out her found family.  From what Jeb has said you will have a very large family for a very long time.”  

“Okay… and Sunder? Is he a bird?”

I think she smiled. “No. That get-up of his is what he wears to put people off.  He’s a shaman; he knows things before they happen. He’s his own life book.  I hadn’t even told him to rescue you. He just left.”  

I nodded, absorbing it.  “Is my Mama dead?  I know we buried my Pops.” 

Tears fed out of her eyes.  “Yes, they both are.  We can’t sense your mother at all.  That is…” She stared off into the corner of the room, then got up quickly, “Fathers! Come, now!”  

A tall, old man ran in. He had a scraggly beard that made me think of Gandalf.  His skin was worn like leather. He moved stiffly as he knelt before his… wife? 

“Fathers, do you still have Anya’s book?”

He opened his hand and slid his finger along his arm, over and back.  “I do, Mama… it should be…” With that he was gone from my sight.  

I clenched my eyes shut and rubbed them with my fingertips, thinking back on the mud-covered man… would soon be my “Fathers”?  What did that mean? Was it just a title? Or was there more to it?  I shook my head, feeling around for the lump I was sure I had somewhere on my skull.  Maybe Sunder hit me harder than I thought, and I’m just dreaming all this…

“Here it is, Mama. Would you like me to read the last entry?” The old man was back.

She nodded, her lips tight and her eyes worried.

“The trees part for Anya as she moves deeper into the woods…  wait, this isn’t what it said the last time we looked!”  His fingertip moved over the pages to glide up two paragraphs.  “No, this is what it said.  The car slammed into a brick wall.” He put the book down, looking confused. “This is all out of whack. I’m not sure what any of this means. It’s written in gibberish.”

TBC