Book 3: Sound And Fury

  Ch 14 Moon River

  Gary opened his eyes in an old familiar dream… The one where he was master of the Madman’s Moon. Once, he had truly been the master of that surreal domain of endless meadows and forests. Ephemeral and only somewhat real, the smaller lunar body faithfully trailed after the golden orb of Beast’s Moon, as it sailed across the night sky… It always followed a weird and erratic path, never sensibly or sanely as a proper moon should. Just like he himself did; always weird and erratic to the core…

  Everything came rushing back as he opened his eyes fully, taking in the mural of a springtime sky above the bed; locked in deepest night. Thunderheads roiled and crackled on the horizon, rumbling their discontent over his storm tossed sea, far below the windows.

  While he y there, taking it in and breathing deeply of the power that had been his, a warm and cuddly form nded in the bedding beside him.

  Shai stirred as she appeared in their shared world of dreams once more, awaking with a long stretch and a yawn. “Lad?” She mumbled groggily. “Why do we wake already…?”

  “We’re not awake, love… we’re home at st.” He sighed, while stealing a kiss on her earlobe. “Now get up, before Thirp or Ducky barge in on us…”

  “Sorry, Gary. I already ‘barged in’ on you. Please pay me no mind.” Marduk mumbled. “It’s very dark, I shan’t see your courtship and mating activities at all…!”

  “Ducks… We love you, but that’s not cool. You’ve been hanging out with the dryads too much, I think.” Gary grumbled, as he manifested his usual drab brown and gray workman’s garb onto himself with a minor flex of his Will. While he dressed, Gary felt Marduk vanish from the still darkened bedroom.

  He slowly brought the lights up, by causing the moon to rise in the mural on the ceiling, brightening the room. “We should have quite a few guests outside tonight…” He whispered in Shai’s ear, as she struggled to get her act together.

  The thought of guests in her home, wandering around un-hostessed and possibly under-snacked… that got her up and moving quickly.

  “Fie… We must make haste, none can say what they might get up to! Foolish boy, stay close to my side at all times… At all times, mind thee!”

  She had him on the stairs in a trice; her Fool gleefully pretending to stumble down the steps; in a pce where he controlled… everything. He fell down the first flight and nded in a graceful spin that carried him the rest of the way downstairs and to the garden door, wearing a stupid grin of triumph.

  Together, they stepped into the abandoned, overgrown and thorny garden, bringing life back to the drab and dreary pce it had become. Blossoms and new growth erupted as they emerged into the strange mixture of sunlight, starlight and moonlight that impossibly lit the world of dreams.

  The mad, doomed musician had unconsciously forged a domain of his own from his own soul’s excesses and impossibilities, while lost in the empty void for untold generations of man, on the pnet far below. Now they once more stood on the almost completely real world of dreams he’d created… and been banished from.

  From every bower, hedge and shade tree, Garies emerged, stepping into the strange pce and gaping at the odd and entirely too impossibly perfect garden.

  Star appeared less surprised than many, while Gandree seemed only slightly put off by the situation, having each experienced something suspiciously simir recently.

  More and more of the people from the waking world arrived, as did a nearly unending stream of dimly lit haunts, bearing his likeness in infinite variations.

  Hazy and made of shadowstuff, they avoided contact with the more real beings; while also refusing to interact with them, no matter how hard the living Garies tried.

  Ghnash just gloated and capered like an asshole, jeering at his brothers and holding Sabrina’s hand tight, since she seemed really on edge among so many humans.

  Daisybelle anchored the queen’s other hand, helping her keep her remaining cool. She was struggling around so much weirdness and so many creepy Garies.

  “Hush and rex, auntie Sabbie… Our boys are right there, see? Here come our hosts… try to ignore the tall-bnd-man… He’s extra extra weird.” She confided, just a little too loudly.

  “Thanks, Daze… I love you too.” Gary grumbled mildly at the chipper little green girl. The musician shot a saucy wink at her beau, Gandree who was standing nearby looking a bit nervous.

  “Rex, kid. Nothing here will hurt you… just don’t stare into the sky too much. Oh! And don’t invite anything from outside, in.” He grinned a mad and crooked smile at his young friend. “I love this pce.”

  The dwarf d followed his hosts, dragging Daisybelle along as they strolled along. The two pairs of lovers walked, arm in arm through the renewed garden, watching life return as they passed. The huge bck bees and jeweled wasps had returned, along with the other technicolor, cartoon wildlife that usually romped among his trees and pntings.

  Eponna’s herd was already drawing visitors, as were the numerous pools, hot springs and beaches. Garies spread out from the house on the hill in a tide. They flooded down the hill in a swarm; all the faces from the garden by the ke… and so many more.

  “The gods fled when they felt me returning to this pce… Understandable, considering our history.” He murmured in Shai’s ear.

  “Eponna and Ducky are here, Thirp of course… a few other friends as well.” He sighed a little sadly. “Most of the pantheon and fae got out fast.”

  “Many of your friends departed temporarily, in order to give you some… privacy for your homecoming. If your doors remain open to them, they will return, I’m certain.” Marduk said calmly, as he stepped from around a corner and reappeared a moment ter, dressed in a divine approximation of a farmer’s homespun workwear.

  Beneath a straw hat woven from the elysian fields, banded in ribbons of shimmering samite, Marduk’s radiant curls swayed around his abaster face. He wore a ‘fnnel shirt’ that looked too soft to actually exist in a material universe, tucked into a pair of well fitted ‘jeans’.

  His ‘dungarees’ were of finest white linen, with cuffs wreathed in golden knotwork that trailed the ground behind his heels. Golden sandals peeked from beneath those exquisite embroidered knots, revealing impeccably groomed toes.

  “Agriculture is also Knowledge, Gary!” He huffed, when the musician spotted his ‘work gloves’ of white goatskin, tucked behind his belt of golden braid and giggled a little.

  “You once made several very ornate garden tools for members of the horticultural society in Wheatford…” The god sniffed in outrage at the mortal’s amused reaction to his attire.

  “I fail to see where you find room to mock me… Considering your own history with gilded and bejeweled trowels.” Marduk, divine bearer of all mankind’s Wit and Wisdom scolded his weird friend through a smile that looked unsustainable; it threatened to eat the little god’s entire face.

  “Consider also, your pce in the order of the universe and prostrate yourself in my presence, mortal!”

  Gary swept the tiny god up in an enormous hug and gave him a squeeze. “It’s good to be back, you divine pain in my ass.”

  “It’s good to have you back… you heretical, impious wretch.” Ducky mumbled from somewhere in there. Shai had to get in the scrum too, followed by at least one additional Gary, who jumped into the mix because it ‘looked like fun…’.

  The Prince of Cups was somewhere near middle age, with smile lines deeply etched into his sun darkened face. The man was lean and a little feral looking, making his age impossible to guess. He was older than he seemed by either several decades or centuries, that was certain.

  “I have not the faintest clue what’s going on, but this pce is awesome!” He chortled, from deep in the hug. “I’ll be skulking in your shadow for a while, until I can make sense of this!”

  “Careful…” Mariah warned gently, once they finished squeezing Ducky. “Gary’s shadow is tricky, uncle Cups.”

  “Just a figure of speech, my dear. My talents lie elsewhere.” The cheerful, sunbrowned man whispered happily. “Many of my brothers practice the arts of magery and py with shadows… I am but a simple hunter and fisherman.”

  “Sure, buddy… I’m just looking for a friend who’s being shy.” Gary mumbled distractedly, his eyes scanning the garden, seeking someone.

  “Anybody have a clue as to why Thirp is hiding from me?”

  “Sweet Thirp is currently struggling with some personal entanglements and issues.” Marduk replied in a very bnd and calm tone; one that made Gary even more curious about what was happening with his divine friend.

  Mariah picked up the vibe and shut him down hard. “Gary… Thirp deserves privacy and has more than earned your trust.” A cruel smile spread over her tiny, cherubic, beautiful face. “If you upset Thirp… I’ll tell Shai.”

  “Sweety, Shai’s right there…” Gary compined weakly, as familiar knuckles embraced his earlobe in a comfortingly uncomfortable grip.

  “And she knows I would never do anything to hurt Thirp’s feelings…” He moaned as the smith woman’s iron hard fingers twisted just a little.

  “Good d.” She murmured sweetly.

  “Fascinating…” Cups mumbled, delight evident on his face. “They really have you tied up in knots!” The man’s face paled under his tan, when Shai’s baleful gaze fell on him fully.

  “Me husband hae the good sense tae listen tae his womenfolk… As such, he still lives. Ye could learn from his example, ere ye find an early grave fer yerself.” Her voice was soft and warm, like the bottom of a freshly dug grave in deepest winter… and just as welcoming, beneath the permafrost yer.

  “Betimes, find a pot of tea and a tray of cups on yonder buffet, on the other side of that hedgerow. Off with thee… and fetch some cakes as well!”

  “Yes, mistress Shai…” Cups gasped, his throat suddenly feeling parched.

  “There’s no buffet table over there, Shai…” Gary mumbled, once the fellow was out of earshot.

  “Aye, ‘tis uncharitable and cruel of me, I know.” She nded a kiss on her Fool in their brief moment of almost privacy. Marduk was used to it by now, while Gandree and Daisybelle were just going to have to deal with it, if they wanted to come along.

  The little knot of family found their way into the deepest, darkest backwoods of the garden, where things got a little wild and unruly. “This is where she hangs out… She remade this pce to reflect her homeworld.” The musician remarked idly, while they strolled among the dense trees and undergrowth. “She already knows we’re here to see her, so let’s just wait a minute…”

  As the master of the pce spoke, a small primate with Gary’s face and a bulbous, bright red backside swung through their clearing, high up in the boughs. The little beast sped by, hooting and gibbering something that was not any kind of speech, but felt like a direct insult, aimed at each listener’s ears.

  “Was that little jerk dressed like a hotel bellboy… in assless pants?” Gandree asked, while struggling to restrain his furious dy love, who was dead set on murdering the horrid monkey creature at any cost.

  “Yeah, they appear in all kinds of costumes… mostly male stripper costumes. Cops, lumberjacks, that kind of thing… but always with their bright red butts hanging out. Thirp hunts them to satisfy her prey drive.” Gary murmured quietly. “It always bothered me just a little that they look like me…”

  “Small, arboreal primates are a favored prey on my homeworld.” Thirp’s voice sang from the deep woods, sounding calm as usual, but with a deeper warmth.

  “They look like you because they are crafted from your essence… and because Dj-NotGary thought it would be amusing. He was correct; it is deeply entertaining, hunting you through these woods. You have always been very special to me, Gary Ward.”

  “Thanks, I guess…” He mumbled, as his cheeks reddened visibly, even in the forest’s dimness.

  “I am currently unable to appear before you, for personal reasons, my friends.” Thirp whispered softly, from her hiding spot.

  “It’s cool… I just wanted to make sure you were ok.” Gary mumbled, sounding a little nonplussed.

  “I’m terribly sorry… but please… I will seek you out when I can.” She sang, her voice pleading and a little sad.

  A much subdued Gary returned to the more poputed sections of the garden and inn, as the golden orb of Beast’s moon rose to dominate the sky, alongside the pnet below… or above… or something.

  “Ye need not worry for dy Thirp… Whatever has her entangled in her web is no doubt a matter of great import.” Shai insisted. “She would nay miss yer homecoming, elsewise.”

  “I’m just being a baby… let’s go find the rest of the kids.” Gary sighed.

  /

  “Nub nub…” Ghnash insisted, standing on a garden table to address the crowd. “This is more than a dream, but not entirely real… There are a few divines, fae and other spirit entities roaming around, along with this legion of shadows.”

  More and more dark, formless and shadowy Garies continued to appear, stepping from shady bowers, narrow paths in the hedges and even climbing out of the baths. They appeared when and where no one was looking directly, walked among the living men and women for a while, then stepped out of sight. The figures constantly appeared and vanished just as mysteriously, disturbing a few of the less experienced Garies in the group.

  “They are just unformed fragments of us… lost in the recesses of his mind and soul.” The goblin soothed his restless herd in his most calming voice.

  “You are making my Sabrina upset, with all your waffling on… Oh, finally! Here’s the Fool now!”

  Just like that, Gary found himself thrown to the wolves by his new friends.

  “Everybody shut up.” He said firmly, after a few initial seconds of unbridled chaos and absolute idiocy. “Don’t bother the shadow Garies… they have their own things to do. Likewise the bees and bugs in this pce. This dreamworld is my soul, I suppose… our soul… Man! This is all kinds of complicated.”

  “Here we go again!” Someone jeered… probably Wheel of Fortune.

  “That’s enough out of you…” Someone else rumbled nearby, quashing the troublemaker. “I haven’t fought him yet… But Hermit said to listen to the Fool. After that I’ll decide whether to do what he says.”

  “Has anybody seen Hermit?” Gary asked the nearby Garies and got shrugs all around. “Oh, well. He’ll be fine. We have a little more ground to cover before morning… and my divine friends were hoping to meet with some of us.”

  /

  Hermit awoke in that mist forest again, though now the mist was a thin, feeble thing, drifting in tattered shreds. His human body and senses were back, at once familiar and strange after so long.

  “Lord Aclintherios?” He called into the uncannily well star-lit, misty woods.

  “I am not he…” A sweet, rich and very female voice called to him from the woods. “I am of his lineage and a member of his pantheon, but also of the pantheon of your brother’s prime world, where your body currently sleeps.”

  A pale, slim and graceful young woman stepped out of the foliage, dressed in a closely fitted gown of spiderweb ce that ended just below her knees. “To be clear… You are perfectly safe and I have no wicked designs on you…”

  She jumped a little on that st statement. “I bit my tongue… How oddly and poorly designed.” She compined sweetly.

  “I’ve never taken on a fully human guise before… though I did possess your brother a few times. The human body is very challenging to operate, despite its paucity of appendages!”

  “Lady… Lady Thirp?” Hermit asked softly, as the scent of citrus blossoms and sweet jasmine drifted on a warm breeze from the beautiful, pale woman.

  Her hair shone in the starlight, bright white and luminous, drifting on that breeze. The zephyr that failed to stir the mist around her, yet carried that intoxicating scent of a well tended garden in midsummer.

  “Indeed… I am a friend and confidante of your brother… and a patron goddess of many of his kin. My human name is Thirp, the Spinner in Darkness, Webmistress of the Endless Void… and so much more silliness as well.”

  She sighed in a way that drew his gaze to her modest bosom, chastely lurking in the cy folds of her gown.

  “My lord Aclintherios is simply the Spinner of Fates… He seems to delight in giving me new and ever more eborate titles. I suspect your brother’s influence there.”

  “The Fool?” He asked, unconsciously stepping closer to the woman who seemed so desperately familiar; as if he’d known her for years. “How could he possibly interact with a being of such…”

  “Bigness?” Thirp offered. “The Fool taught me how to find comfort beneath wimsey's feeble umbrel. When reality’s storms grow too severe we can shelter under deliberately bad grammar, silly puns and portmanteaus.” She smiled in a way that suggested she was figuring the facial maneuver out on the fly…And was objectively doing very poorly at it.

  Her expression warmed his heart, despite the way she bared her teeth and closed one eye almost entirely.

  “It helps, does it not? The silliness?” She asked softly, as he became distracted by the thick white shes around her big, dark eyes.

  “Yeah… I think it does help… Lady Thirp.” He muttered, while realizing how close he was standing to the slim, delicate woman in silver spider silk ce.

  “I have you at a disadvantage, Hermit.” She whispered, stepping back a half step, creating a few inches of space between them. “I have known your brother since shortly after he arrived here… I can confidently say that I am one of his oldest friends. Since you and he began as the same man…”

  “I am not the Gary Ward you know, madame.” Hermit replied, his voice slightly less warm than a moment before. “I am my own person and emphatically; I am not him.”

  “Forgive me… This is deeply challenging on several levels.” Thirp whispered. “I am deeply and inextricably entwined with the Fool and his family… And he is deeply connected to you, through the bonds that all of your kin share.” She blushed a pale rosy color and inched a little closer.

  “I’ve heard you calling me… through the void. Calling out through the connection I share with him… and you.” She murmured, her lips nearly brushing his throat.

  “We are fated to be close, you and I… Lord Aclintherios saw it the night he first noticed you. While I was still a mortal priestess of his cult, he saw and set my own path to intersect yours.”

  “If he has that power, why didn’t he do anything to help me?” Hermit demanded a little sourly. “Those first few years were really awful.”

  “You are only now a part of my lord’s faithful… He could not touch you then.” She answered a little sharply. “I am only now able to appear before you, since you are in my Gary’s home and have received my entreaty from the Star.”

  She sniffed prettily… and then seemed surprised by the act. “Oh, that expresses the emotion I’m feeling perfectly! Lovely!” She sniffed again, experimenting with disdain and irritation. “I’ll remember that one!”

  “Lady Thirp?” Hermit asked gently.

  “Just Thirp, my friend… Just Thirp, please.” Her voice was so soft as to be almost inaudible, if it weren't for the eerily quiet forest. “I am currently struggling with certain… realities and… phenomena that lie outside your control, so I will part from you now. Please, allow me to visit you when I can… if you would…”

  A pleading note hid in her voice, just under the surface, but he felt the tug and draw of whatever it was, deep inside his chest. “Very well. When you can, you may call on me, dy… Miss Thirp.”

  She slipped back into the undergrowth and vanished in silence, until her voice rose again a few moments ter, addressing someone else. “Fig! And Cherry too! Invading my privacy is not the act of friends, dies!” She scolded her unseen voyeurs. “If I catch you peeping and snooping when I go to visit his dreams, I will be very cross!”

  “But Thirp… we’ve watched most of his daytime TV memories already…” A female voice rang out boldly. “I need romance, drama, forbidden love and secret affairs! Is his cock as nice as Wards?”

  “Fig…!” Thirp exploded with outrage, as their voices faded.

  “Oh, there you are!” Gary’s own voice sang out from behind him, as his own hand nded on his shoulder. “We’ve been searching all over for us!”

  “Are you… the Fool?” Hermit asked, still disoriented and befuddled by being in human form, in addition to all the other confusing things he’d been handed a moment ago.

  “Yeah, that’s me.” He sighed, sounding world weary and a little amused. “You’re in my dream world right now, so you have a human form… it’s cool, bro.” He expined unnecessarily and soothingly.

  “We’re all getting together to discuss the real reason the gods and cosmic powers haven’t popped us like a pimple for being so annoying al’ time.” He winked and chuckled at Hermit, as he dragged him off toward the house on the hill.

  /

  “It all became clear in the millisecond after I touched off the SexBomb?…” Gary sighed to the swarm of him-selves that were gathered around.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” Wheel of Fortune called from the mob. “You can’t just say ‘SexBomb?’ and move on like that!”

  “Sure I can… I’ll never expin how it was made or reveal any of the secrets of its craft. So, anyway I touched off the SexBomb? and wiped a whole bunch of immortals out with one big, moist, explosive orgasm that jizzed them into the ether… as mortal souls.” He finished, unsatisfactorily.

  “I promised Beast and the Devourer… I actually like those two.”

  “Kiss-ass to the core.” A soft, sweetly melodic voice of birdsong and insects whispered on the wind.

  /

  Countess Tawny joined her husband on the patio, te in the evening, as the Garies vanished to wherever they had found a bed or a bower under the shrubberies to sleep.

  “Ah, Tawny!” Liam called out happily. “Our old room is waiting…”

  “Really, even with so many of… him… Yet, they held our room for us?” The golden priestess asked softly, as she hugged her strong, compact, reliable count.

  “Shai wouldn’t hear a word about it.” He shrugged his double armful of deliciously soft, gentle and warm wife. “You know how she gets.”

  “Most of the Garies are at least part-time adventurers.” Amy yawned massively around her statement, while knuckling her eyes. “They can handle camping in the yard on a summer night. I’ve got a full house too, so does Rio. That means we’re all crammed into Wilf’s pce with the goblin royals and the spider… and I’m too tired and amped up to sleep.”

  “Me too...” Becky murmured sleepily. “Where does Gary stash his duskmoon pollen? I think we should leave them all alone tonight.”

  “Hsst!” Dannyl sputtered his not even slightly subtle warning to the whole crowd. “There’s a priestess of Healer, right there!”

  “Very funny, little brother. You know very well that the duke and my husband, both worked very hard to stifle the temple of Healer’s ridiculous crackdown on fae dust. The goddess has officially rescinded that prohibition, effective immediately.” Tawny muttered just a little crossly at the young trouble-maker.

  “When confronted, dy Dana finally admitted that the Twelve Duchies wide, ‘Holy War on Dust’ was just a ploy to harass Gary, personally. To think a goddess would behave so appallingly…” She took a deep breath and sighed softly.

  “I’d thought so much better of her.”

  “Hurt people, hurt people.” Amy said quietly. “Someone hurt Dana really badly, I think. Let’s raid papa’s secret dustbin and go to bed.”

  /