The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Focus Pocus

Previously: "The One Who Might Be Your Girlfriend" 

"I'm thinking I don't want to go to a party," you tell Sydney. "I'm thinking I wanna—"

You want to say I wanna hang out with you, just the two of us, someplace. You can't bring yourself to go that far, though, so you come out with the next best thing: "I'm thinking I wanna go looking for that other ley line. I mean, the other focus or whatever it is of that—"

You pull up short as a grin breaks across Sydney's face.

"Sure, we could do that," she says. "You said last night it was romantic." You gasp, and she laughs. "I thought we could go to Catherine's first," she continues, "then go looking for the other focal point. But I like your idea better. It might take us all night to find it." She squeezes your thigh. "Which could be fun."

You stifle a sudden case of the hiccups.

* * * * *

So, is it fun looking for that other focal point? In one way it is, for you've got Sydney with you, and she teases and goads you as you tramp around brambly lots trying to get a bead on the focal point. She calls you her "pack mule" because you carry all the gear while she traipses along with arms swinging freely; and once—when she pretends to take fright of a rustling in the grass—she leaps upon your back and insists that you carry her back to the truck. You stagger and fall a couple of times, but it's worth it to feel her satiny legs about your waist, and her soft arms about your shoulders. You're not sure, but you think you catch her sniffing at your cap a couple of times.

In another sense, though, it's no fun at all, for you have to drive up and down lots of streets, dismounting and remounting your truck, and using the gyroscope and the sextant to see if the line is brightening as it nears its other focus. You start by exploring the empty spaces between Saratoga Falls proper and Acheson, which means you have to hike in and out of rough ground thatched with tall, spiky grasses, and lay down in the weeds to sight along the sextant. Before long, your pants are a mess of burrs and stickers and other trash.

But track it down you do, finally, inside a yard enclosed by a high stone wall, long after the sun has set and the stars have peeped out.. Sydney snorts at a whitewashed wall whose crest rises higher than the crown of your head. "It figures someone would've built a house over it," she mutters.

You walk around the wall a couple of times, snooping for a way to sneak in or over it, before stopping at the single wrought-iron gate that pierces it. You peer through its closely space bars at a large house, two stories tall at least, that's shaped like a shoebox. The outside lights are off, and no lights show in any of the windows, so it's hard to make anything out.

"It doesn't look like anyone's home," you say. "Wanna take a chance on going in?"

"Go in there?" a voice sounds directly behind you. "Are you out of your fucking minds?"

You and Sydney whirl, bumping into each other. The speaker jumps back a foot. "Whoa," he exclaims. "Sorry I scared you guys. 'Chuptoo?"

He's a buff-looking dude in a t-shirt and athletic shorts. His eyes glint under his brows; and even in the deepening dusk his hair gleams with golden highlights. His teeth sparkle inside a wide grin.

Your jaw works but your tongue doesn't, so Sydney makes the retort: "Minding our own business," she snaps.

The guy hoots. "Oh, classic comeback. Next time try 'Your mother wears combat boots' or 'Pull the other one, it's got bells on'. No, seriously, you weren't gonna climb that wall, were you?"

"Maybe we live here," you tell him.

"Leave the snappy rejoinders to your girlfriend, champ, at least she can lay her tongue on one that makes sense. And now I'm wondering why you don't just tell me to fuck off." He cocks his head. "It's well within your rights. It's well within anyone's rights."

You look at Sydney. She looks back at you. The guy arches his eyebrows, and his grin widens. "Repeat after me, kids," he says. "Fly you the freaking fu—"

Then he gasps, as though punched in the gut, and bends to brace his hands on his knees; his face screws up and he inhales sharply a couple of times. When he looks up again, it's to peer at you narrowly.

"Well, consider it said," he sighs as he straightens with a grimace. "So I'll fuck off now." He turns, but he half-glances back at you as he walks away. "Drop me a postcard if you find the focal point of that ley line you're trying to track down," he says.

Your eyes bulge, and he's halfway to the corner of the wall before you can react.

Buy Sydney finds her voice first. With a cry she springs after him.

* * * * *

After a confused colloquy the decision is made to adjourn to The Crystal Cave (the stranger's idea) where "cards can be put on the table" (his words again). You and Sydney take the lead in your truck; half a block later another truck swings in behind and follows you into town.

"Of all the fucking luck we both pick tonight to trip over that ley line," the guy chuckles after you're settled at a table. ("Mercury," he said, indicating the card that decorates it. "Conducive to talking," he added as he pulled out a chair.). He leans back now, one brawny arm slung over the back of the chair while with his free hand he fiddles with sugar packets. His eyes—very blue—dart between you and Sydney as he suppresses his smiles. You couldn't tell in the dark how old he was; now you see that he's not much older than you if he's actually not the same age. He still has a summertime tan, and his hair, which curls slightly over his ears and eyebrows, is even more sun-soaked than Sydney's.

His story? He's been trying to find and trace the same ley line that you found. "Been after it since hitting town at the start of summer," he says, "and it's the first one I've been able to get a solid lead on." He shakes his head. "I've been sniffing and scratching at every decayed aura between here and the Great Lakes. 'Course if I had toys like yours it would'a been a lot easier. Where'd you pick 'em up?"

Sydney's "toys," he goes on, are how he knew you were looking for ley lines. Tramping along, using his "inner ear" to follow the ley line, he spotted the two of you bending over her instruments. After you went around to the gate he snuck up and took a peek through the sextant (which you'd left positioned along the track of the line) and saw the line manifesting.

"So I came around to say 'Howdy'," he concludes. "Introduce myself, see if maybe you'd be up for a partnership." He flicks a finger between you and Sydney. "Are you two together?"

He's been doing almost all of the talking, so the sudden thrust of the question leaves you and Sydney babbling incoherently. The guy shows his teeth. "Cool, from the uncoordinated answer I take it you're not. That's awesome." A lecherous light creeps into his eye as he studies Sydney; the same glint turns contemptuous when he glances at you. "So if I picked you up it would be a casual trio and not a three-way."

You're nearly strangled by your own outrage, but Sydney answers for the both of you. "And what would you bring to a partnership?" she demands.

"My inner ear." He tugs at an earlobe, and you can't miss the bulge in his bicep as he does so. "Not to brag, but it brung me to the same spot as you two without your fancy toys.

"Also, my instincts," he continues. "Like, if I hadn't stopped you from going in through that gate, you'd now be looking at the gaping hole where your guts used to be and wishing that someone—preferably a good-looking, blonde-haired son of a bitch with very blue eyes"—his grin almost reaches his ears, and his eyebrows waggle—"had stepped in to stop you."

You snort.

"And—again, not to brag—my experience and education, which is of a sort you've not likely received as part of your early twenty-first-century American public school education." His tone turns insolent. "If you ran into an ettin, could you contain it with the ceremony of Shay-ibn-tell-Amath?"

"What's that?" you demand.

Sydney grips your knee under the table. "If we're going to be partners," she says, emphasizing the if, "we can start by exchanging names. I'm Sydney and this is Will."

"Nice to meet you, Sydney-and-Will. I've been traveling as Dee since materializing on this arc-second of the material torus. But my star-name is Exekutantatzeh-Jakintsu-Orus-Amon."

"Star name?" Sydney says. You can practically hear her eyebrows cinching up with skepticism.

A ripple of light runs through the guy's hair. "Yes," he says. "In Lemuria we go by our star-names."

* To accept Dee as a partner: "The Man from Lemuria" 
* To reject his offer: "Of Wardrobes and Ley Lines" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"