Volume One: The Road Out
Chapter Three
Verse Four: Walking the Witch Road
Marion was out, not unconscious, but certainly not lucid. He stared into the distance and didn't react to anything Maia or Harley said or did. Maia poked his cheek, pulled his ears and, even blew on his eyeballs during a bathroom stop at a rest station. Marion mumbled occasionally, but responded to nothing either Maia or Harley attempted. Fitzroy was semi-lucid, but focusing was clearly difficult for him and he spent most of the journey with his head down and his hands over his ears trying to block out what he could. Harley drove in silence and Maia fidgeted in her seat uncomfortably until she finally couldn't hold her questions in anymore.
"Mr. Walker."
"Call me Harley, Maia."
"But aren't you the Walker?"
"I don't know. "
"But how can you not know? You're supposed to save us from this stuff."
"I still don't understand any of this. Marion's getting dragged off to fractured version of Narnia, but stuff is still happening in this world like we're in the Matrix and it's glitching."
"I've seen the Narnia movies. But what's the Matrix?"
"Never mind, I don't want to give fate ideas at this point. Fitzroy? How are you doing?"
Fitzroy didn't look up, "It hurts. I can't think, because it hurts."
"Okay, just hang in there then. I won't bother you unless you need me. You hear me?" Fitzroy nodded and Harley kept speaking, "Maia, I need you to listen and then you need to help me understand. We are currently running for our lives for magic secret agents much less amusing than the ones on television, they have murdered your mother, seem to be working for your father and have framed us for both the murder and your kidnapping. In retrospect, I suppose we are kidnapping you- at least legally. In any case, The big bad agent man has zapped Marion and your brother. Marion is off further in la la land than normal, he can't hear us even if he is conscious. And your brother is halfway loopy. In other words, it's just us left navigating this insanity, and I barely know anything. Marion had the visions. Marion met your parents. Marion saw the agents way before I did. So, since you seem to know more than I do, but I'm stuck being the adult here, I need you to bring me up to speed as best you can so that I can keep us alive and free. Agreed."
Maia looked at Fitzroy and Marion and then nodded, "Okay. He said he had to tell me a story and he said it was a true story and that I would understand it when I heard it and I would feel it in my bones and stuff and I really did and. I. I."
"let's keep the sentences down to a reasonable length so you can breath. Don't worry, I'm listening, and I am not going anywhere. I'm right here."
"Okay. We talked to the Witchdoctor."
"And who is the Witchdoctor? I keep hearing you mention him."
"He's in the story and he said he's just like you only at a different point in the story, and he told me the story and he said that the story is what everything is about."
"I'm getting lost Maia. I'm honestly not sure what I'm hearing. But I've heard Marion talk about the idea that we're part of some story in a kind of big mythology sense, so if this Witchdoctor fellow told you 'the story', you should probably start there."
"Okay. He said stories were magic, and they were spells. And every story started with an incantation or something else. Like 'Once upon a time' and stuff like that. he said his stories were older and newer than 'once upon a time' stories and that his stories started with 'Long ago in the future', and they did that because stories were timeless, and they were wheels or circles and stuff like that."
"You're losing me again Maia. Just tell me the story, and I'll listen."
"Okay. Long ago in the future, time was a wheel that turned. No end and no beginning. Then the rebel child broken the wheel and flattened it into a line."
"He flattened the wheel into a line? What does that mean?"
"The witchdoctor didn't say."
"I'm sorry, keep going, I'm listening."
"And he said the line must last forever, just like the wheel had been forever. But wheels are forever because they connect to themselves and roll. Lines must end. And so the rebel child became the False King and maintained the line by stealing from others to lengthen the line."
"Okay, that sounds a lot like what Marion was talking about, keep going, this is sounding similar."
"But the more he stole, the less remained and it seemed the line would end anyway. And now everyone was part of his line, because he had stolen and beaten and taken from everyone and made them part of his line. And so if the line ended, everything ended. And then storyteller told the Princess of the False King a secret, that the wheel could still last forever, and she needed to make the line back into a wheel if everyone was going to be okay. And so the Princess told the Prince and they ran away with the Storyteller and travelled the Witch Road to the Shadowlands and they found the story of the wheel and they rebuilt the wheel and the story rolled forever."
"So, If I'm hearing you and Marion correctly, then you're the Princess and Fitzroy is the Prince and your Dad is the Fake King."
"The False King."
"Right, and we're the Storytellers. What I don't understand is that Marion was told that your mom was the Storyteller, and you said that the Witchdoctor is the Storyteller. How can they all be the storyteller and Marion and me all still somehow be the storyteller?"
"I don't know. The Witchdoctor didn't say. But when I saw the other places like the Dreamer," She nodded towards Marion, "I saw my dad like a monster onion, all layers and he was only one part of the onion and it was like he was one layer. So maybe it's like that stuff kind of maybe?"
"Well that still leaves a lot I didn't hear answers for, like who the Bone Man is or who the Witchdoctor is or what it means when people call Marion and Me the Dreamer and the Walker, but it's something. So if I heard correctly, the False King- your Dad- broken the story somehow to make it do what he wants, but the story doesn't work that way and so everything will fall apart if somebody- you apparently- doesn't fix it. Did I hear you correctly?"
"I think so. Do you know what we need to do? You're the Walker, you're the storyteller."
"I don't know. I hadn't heard any of this a week ago. This is all news to me. A week ago, my life was normal except for my crazy best friend, but we've known each other for so long that was part of my normal. This is not part of my normal. Life is kind of like jazz music. There are variations, everyone is kind of making it as they go along, but there are rules. This is all new. Part of me wants to say that this has no rules, but it does, and I can hear the patterns when they show up a second time. I can hear the style and quirks and preferences. This is still jazz, but it's a whole different set of rules. And unlike Jazz, not knowing the rules could do more than ensure a bad performance. If we don't figure out how to play this new music, it's going to kill us, or worse."
"But the Witchdoctor said you would know."
"He did, huh? I guessed he forgot to tell us that."
"Then what do we do?"
"Right now, we run. And we pay attention, listen for every clue that people drop who know more than us. I don't like this, but we have to trust the crazy, because that's what all of this is going to sound like until we learn how this jazz needs to be played."
"So you do know what to do."
"No, I know how to cope. I know how to survive. That's what I do. Other people play. I endure."
"You mean, people don't beat you?"
"I don't let them beat me. The world try to beat you, every day. I don't let it. Neither should you."
"You are the Storyteller, aren't you?"
"I imagine I have to be, don't I?"
Harley went back to driving silently, and before too long he could tell Maia had fallen asleep. Harley could here her breathing turn even and a quick look into the rear view mirror confirmed what he had heard. Harley smiled and continued to drive with his goblin load of passengers. Maia, for her part, found herself standing in a deep expansive blackness. The air felt impossibly cold and yet she didn't mind the cold. Spreading out from her position was a vast spreading spider web, and Maia could see vibration running along the strands of the web. And in the darkness, a voice spoke to her.
"Little mother has arrived. I greet you little mother. You are not all here yet. And so I suspect that this is just an introduction and not your initiation into this new cycle. It have been a long time since I have been free to weave my web in the circles we once drew. It has been a long time since the great Serpent arced across the sky to celebrate the rain and danced with your hero. It has been too long since the Storytellers coaxed the embers to life and told the story so that the Phoenix might resurrect itself from the telling. We have waited for you, little mother. We have missed you."
"Who are you? This stuff is scary and big and I don't understand any of it." Maia said to the voice in the darkness.
"I am the weaver, the keeper of tales. As the Storytellers tells the tales through their connection with the firebird, so too does the First Mother use the stories to connect the people to the earth through her understanding of my webs. This is what was written in The Infinity Network and the Midnight Archives, this is what will be written. Long Ago in the Future Mystery was. The Song began with the Birth Cries of this universe and the heat and expansion that are the hallmarks of birth. This was the Primal Time. The Song began to sing of lights in the darkness and the Void was lit by the first fires of the first stars. And so Fire and Void became companions. This was the Star Time. Next the Stars began to age and die and the Song began to sing of twilight and end times. This was the Elder Time. And then the Stars went out and the greatest of the voids, black holes in the night were all that remained. And the song began to sing of exits to other places and hope for escape. This was the Void Time. And then all went quiet and the Song rested and the song sang the only thing left to sing, silence. This was the Quiet Time."
"Okay, this is crazy and stuff and I'm not a mother. I'm just a kid who's got no mom, and I don't understand this."
"You are not a child. You are older than the road you travel upon, and older than the city you have fled. And although you have lost a mother today, you are a mother to all."
"I don't understand any of that stuff. How can you be telling the truth?"
"None of this is fact. All of this is true. This is story and story is the archive of all knowledge, the network upon which we interact with the world, the book from which we read our part. But I will make an offer of my good faith. I am the weaver of stories and of webs, and there is a web stretched across the path you travel, waiting to snare you. it is not one of my webs, and you would do well to avoid this trap. Now wake."
Maia snapped awake and startled Harley as she blurted out her warning, " It's a trap! I had a dream about a giant space spider, and he said there's a trap on the road or something."
Harley nearly drove the Goblin off the road as they came over a gentle crest and as the van stood on the high ground the landscape of rolling grassy hills spread out in all directions in ochre and brown and gold. He peered out at the road meandering into the distance. A flash of white light, like the flash of a camera caught Harley's attention and his expression changed as he strained to look down the highway.
"That looks like a road block. I course it does. I can practically hear the sirens. Now what? Take a random dirt road and hope for the best doesn't sound like a good option. I don't want to head deep into some rural backwater."
"Yes," Fitzroy's voice rose weakly from the back seat, "There's a little turn off on the right coming up right now. The cattle guard and the open gate, take it. Now!"
Harley saw the cattle guard just in time to hit the brakes and swerve across the rattling grate into a farmer's field of some sort on a dirt road that was probably used to deliver food to various pastures.
"Okay Fitzroy, I've just charged off road. How did you know that was there? And do you know where we should go next?"
"Yes, and Yes. Because I can see the Witch Road. It hurts, because both worlds are overlapping. But because they're overlapping, I can see the Witch Road. I can get us to the Witchdoctor."
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