Hokum

A Goat Named Jed

3

With a lot of careful guidance from Jack, Amber finished crafting his holster. She was happy with her work, and it gave her ideas for further product lines in her shop. This excited her a little, knowing that her new idea would have been inspired from an entirely different world. The idea, however, didn’t excite her nearly as much as Jack himself did. There were so many things about him that captured her intrigue and caused her primal urges to exert themselves. She did what she could to keep those urges concealed because, after all, it just wasn’t ladylike to be forthcoming about these matters. Still, After Jack redressed in his now dry clothes, she took maybe a little too long fitting the holster to his torso, letting her fingers linger in places that they really didn’t need to in an attempt to familiarise herself with his form.

It wasn’t just physical appeal, though. The whole exotic outlander thing was also super intriguing. She didn’t necessarily believe his story, but somehow the sense of adventure the story brought with it was exhilarating and welcome in her mundane life. So she chose to go along with things for the time being. Besides, he and she were in fact fugitives now, leaving not many other options but to get along.

There was also the Chilli’s interest in Jack. The interest the dragon had was likely a different type of enthusiasm than Amber had for the man, but it somehow served to validate her own sense of attraction for him. Despite all those self assuring reasoning’s, it really was extremely odd to witness the Chilli’s interaction with Jack, and it just kept getting more odd by the minute.

Before leaving Amber's basement to commence their Journey, the Chilli left her roost on the barrel in favour of Jack’s shoulder. Perched like a pet bird.

A Goat Named Jed

2

‘I don’t know what a phone or an airfield is,’ said Amber with a small smirk, picking up on his sarcastic tone, ‘but we are talking about the King and his Workers. They have means beyond common folk.’ She paused, and added, ‘Royal Magic. And one should not forget, the other guard posted in town has a direct channel to the Preeminent.’

‘Of course he does….’ Jack sighed. He didn’t bother to pursue the matter.

Amber placed the next leather cut-out on the stack of other pieces she had cut. She pushed the stack neatly aside, looking at Jack from the tops of her eyes as she did so. His mind seemed a million miles away, maybe even a little scared.

‘We’ll be fine,’ she said, ‘the labyrinth of tombs can take us quite some distance before we need to surface. I am very proficient in illusion. Stick with me and they won’t catch us.’ She looked at the Chilli. ‘And don’t forget, we have a dragon as our friend now, any attack on us will need to be carefully reconsidered.’

Jack looked at the Chilli as well, she was nestling down to sleep again.

‘I’m not really worried about that,’ he said, giving Amber a slight smile, ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine. I’m just a little unclear about the situation. And a little concerned about other things.’

‘What other things?’

‘I haven’t heard from my people yet.’

‘But they are far from here?’ She questioned him, showing the same confusion he had displayed for her a few minutes beforehand.

‘We have our ways,’ he said with a wink, before his expression became sober, ‘but they are taking far too long. Something’s wrong. They would have contacted me by now if they could. The fact that they haven’t is… bothering me.’

A Goat Named Jed

1

‘You are here now, and experience is the best way to learn,’ said Amber, as she leaned back in her chair and started working on Jack’s holster again, as if nothing out of the ordinary was taking place.

‘Well, that is true,’ Jack glanced around at the grotto, ‘but we are kinda stuck here at the moment.’

‘Not for long. The Preeminent of the Kings Legion will have received word of the guard’s death already. A deployment of Sleuth Soldiers will arrive in Greenfalls soon enough. Then it will only be a matter of time before they convince one of the residence to tell them where we are hiding. I say we have a day, probably less, before we need to move on.’

Jack considered this, brow furrowing with thought as he watched Amber cut the leather.

‘Just… hold up.’ He shook his head as if attempting to ward off a delusional thought. ‘How far is the King and his Preeminent from here?’

‘Five to seven days by foot,’ said Amber, glancing up from her work, ‘one or two days by horse or carriage, under best conditions.’

Jack was very confused by this. His brow furrowed sharply. ‘You just told me they would be here in town within a day. How? And how does one in this day and age manage to send word to someone so far away so quickly? You got a phone hiding around here or something? An airfield nearby?’

A Goat Named Jed

Part 8

A Catacomb

A Goat Named Jed

10

‘Something,’ Amber repeated the word like it may have had meaning for Jack that it didn’t have for her.

There was a moment of silence, during which Jack and Amber gazed at each other and the Chilli just remained still, head cocked, something like a statue while she waited for more.

‘I do have a question,’ said Amber, as though she needed permission.

Jack nodded, ‘Go ahead.’

‘On my world. Here,’ She placed one hand firmly on the table to make sure he knew what here meant - as apparently Jack’s story was a lot for her mind to deal with, ‘There are different provinces and lands, where people speak different ways. They are languages. Each language is different.’

Jack smiled, knowing where she was going with this.

‘And it looks to me like you would – ‘

Jack cut her off by saying, ‘I know, it is odd that I speak your language when I come from so far away.’

‘Yes,’ said Amber, seemingly pleased that he knew what she meant.

He told her, ‘Where I come from, technology is more advance, and that goes even more so with the, uh, organisation I work for. The organization has discovered breakthroughs in many things, with a little outside help, and one of those things was overcoming language barriers. I won’t get into details, though. No offense, but I doubt you would understand.’

Amber appeared to accept this, quietly. And again they had a moment of silence.

‘So I guess it’s your turn,’ said Jack, ‘tell me what you can about this place.’ He glanced at the Chilli, still staring back at him. ‘And don’t leave out the part about the dragons,’ he added.

A Goat Named Jed

9

Amber was looking glum now. She turned her face away uncomfortably. Cleared her throat again, but didn’t say anything. Meanwhile the Chilli had woken from her sleep. She remained puffed and seemingly comfortable on the barrel, but now had her head askew, slightly cocked. Listening.

Jack continued, ‘Over the following few years the handful of survivors did what they could to rebuild a new society. And they succeeded to a point. But it was obviously a lot different to what it used to be.’ He thought for a moment, scratching his cheek as if casually recalling the result of a football game, then added, ‘Three main groups of people rose; Those that attempted to establish a new world order, Those that sought to destroy any effort made by the new world order, and then there were those who wanted little to nothing to do with either. But I cant really call the third group an actual organisation. They consisted of all different types of people. Basically those who lived free of any authority influence. Adventurers. Wonders. Bandits. Hunters. A lot of smaller subcultures formed as well. In the shadows. The world became a dark place.’

‘And what about you, Jack?’ said Amber, her voice notably breaking with feeling for his plot, ‘Which group do you belong to?’

‘None of those I mentioned, actually.’ he told her, sitting back in his seat, dropping his hands to his lap, and turning his look to the Chilli that was gazing back at him, ‘I became part of a different organisation. A small covert group who have…. Uh, how do I put this?’ He thought for a moment, turning his eyes back to Amber. He said, ‘We’ve been looking for… something.’

A Goat Named Jed

8

It was a little strange. After slapping Jack, Amber settled back into her chair again, apparently now composed with her hands coupled in front of her on the table.

‘So anyway…,’ said Jack, as the sting in his cheek faded, ‘now you know a little more about my world. Happy to oblige.’

Amber tired to keep composed, though the discomfort of what she had done started to play on her. She wriggled a little in her chair. She cleared her throat in a pleasant, ladylike manner.

‘You said “When you were a boy”,’ she said, ‘so things have changed?’

‘Ah, yes, they have.’ Jack remembered there was more to what he was going to say. ‘The world I described was the way things were. The world I knew as a boy started changing when I was in my late teens. First came a virus. Uh…’ Jack revised the word ‘virus’ in his head, realising, especially by the curious frown on amber’s face, that it wasn’t a word she was exactly familiar with.

‘An illness,’ he clarified, and continued, ‘It came up fast. Killed a lot of people. And suddenly the world was a different place. Aside from killing a great number of people, it caused a great depression. The world’s economy crashed. Soon a famine had gripped the world. Then a war broke out. It was a war like no other. Lasted only a few weeks.’ Jack paused, clearly unsettled by the memory. ‘Millions more people died. Billions, actually. The world I knew as a child was left in ruins.’

A Goat Named Jed

7

‘Ohhh boy…’

Jack realised he had opened a can of worms and couldn’t hope to explain things easily for Amber, her mind just wasn’t ready for it. Or is that not fair of me? He asked himself.

‘No, I don’t mean magic,’ he said, ‘although, from my own point of view, far as I can tell from the many places I’ve seen, magic is really nothing more than areas of science yet unexplored. So I guess you could look at it like that, sure.’

Amber seemed disappointed by this, and slightly confused by Jack’s use of the word science. She asked, ‘And the stars?’

Jack stared perplexed at her for a long moment before replying. ‘At night, when you go outside, and look up into the sky, what do you see?’

‘Lights left by the gods,’ said Amber, as if Jack had asked a stupid question, ‘A greater light to rule the day, lesser lights to rule the night. They are also more than just that. They are symbols, or icons, left as a type of reminder. Bodies of worship. We do not forget they watch over us.’

Jack frowned, more curious than mocking. ‘So all those little twinkling lights in the sky…?’

‘Marks of the many lesser gods, of course,’ she told him, ‘the larger marks, like that of Semlin’s Sphere, have been left by the greater gods, like Semlin himself.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘for my own people, all those little lights in the sky are called stars. Some of us believe they were created by God, or gods. But I think at this point everyone agrees that they are suns. Burning balls of gas. Just like the light that rules the day, only the stars - the other suns - are so far away they we see them as small twinkling lights we call stars. I haven’t seen your night sky, yet,’ Jack added, ‘But I’m guess the Sphere you mentioned would be something like what we call a moon. Basically a large round chunk of dirt in orbit of our planet.’

‘Planet….’ Amber wondered at this word, in a way that someone might scrutinise an adult using bad language around children.

‘Yes, planet.’ Jack told her. ‘that is what I mean by “my world”. My world has its own sun. Earth, our planet, spins and goes around the sun. The moon goes around the Earth. Every star in the sky is another sun, countless miles away, and many of those suns have other planets going around then. A few of those other planets have life on them, just like yours, or mine.’ He paused, and concluded. ‘I am from a different planet, near one of those small twinkling lights you see in the night sky.’

Amber Glared at Jack for a long silence, and then suddenly reached across the table and slapped him.

‘Blasphemy!’

A Goat Named Jed

6

Jack said, ‘My name isn’t actually Jack, and my job doesn’t permit me to divulge my true identity. I can’t tell you a lot about the specific task I perform for the company I work for. But that can depend on what i learn about any given world. In other words, I can’t at this point tell you much about why I’m here. But I guess I can tell you some things about my world.’

Jack paused while Amber leaned forward, her elbows on the table, eyes narrowed with intrigue.

‘When I was just a boy,’ continue Jack, ‘my world was…’ he thought about the best word to use, but shaking his head he seemed dissatisfied with the result, saying, ‘…extravagant.’ He paused a little longer to better arrange his thoughts, then added, ‘My world was massive. Billions of people. Cities with buildings as tall as mountains. We had vehicles that moved faster than anything you would have, powered by engines. Machines, you might call them. Some of these vehicles could fly, others were able to reach the moon, even the stars in the sky. It was an era of advanced communication. Information. Convenience. My people, we…. We had these devises called computers. We could use them to find out anything we wanted to know, anything at all, to a point, and just at the touch of a button. We could communicate instantly with anyone, no matter how far away they were. We even developed small handheld devices that we could carry around with us to make this even easier.’

‘Wait,’ Amber stopped him there, raising one hand with a small wave, her face epitomizing fascination. ‘You mean things other than normal senses? Instruments of magic? And what do you mean by… stars?

A Goat Named Jed

5

‘How smart are these things?’ said Jack, returning to Amber and taking a seat across from her at the table.

‘Chilli’s?’ she asked, ‘Or dragons in general?’

Jack thought about this. ‘Uh… Chilli’s, I guess. How about both? And how many breeds of dragon are there, by the way?’

Amber looked up from her work, placing down a knife she was using to cut a pattern from the leather.

‘You really aren’t from around here, are you?’ she said and requested, ‘Why don't you tell me about where you are from, the truth this time, and then tell me why you are here…, then I’ll tell you about this place.’

‘I guess at this point, that sounds about fair.’

He shifted his eyes sideways and she watched him carefully, taking note of the slight changes in his expressions as he gathering his thoughts, carefully working up the words to tell her....