Somewhere in Time

“A day is not enough! I need more time to find her.”

Tommy Wonder, the Butcher in Black, walked the eldritch pine trails of the Whispering Woods, listening, as always, for her name.

Behind him, the Pyramid Ship, Beta-Sol, rested in a clearing, surrounded by curious trees that bent inward to inspect the gleaming golden structure. It towered over the forest, announcing Tommy’s presence in this most elusive section of Faerie, and true to its name, the woods began to whisper.

“Tommy Wonder!”

“Hunter! KILLER!”

“Lover…”

“MURDERER!”

“Chosen One…”

“Lost little boy.”

Tommy ignored the taunts and headed deeper into the forest. He carried no visible weapons and moved lightly, his stylish black boots silent on the dry forest floor. Leaves rustled from his path, moved to action by his steadily growing Arcadian aura. He relished the feeling, listening to the memory of Helena’s voice as she ushered in a tide of music.

A soft harp began to play, plucked to the beat of a distant, heartbeat drum. Tommy’s pace slowed. Though this music was of his conjuring, he was no more in control of it than he was his own heart. His thoughts raced, tracing convoluted paths of memory, navigating the treacherous waters between illusion and reality.

“Spirit of the Whispering Woods, I come before you, humbled in my search, questing for answers,” Tommy began. He ran a hand through his black hair and leveled steel-blue eyes at the canopies above, “I am lost and damned; anchored to my sorrow by chains of servitude. Alpha and Omega- those that keep me as their pet and champion, release me for a day in reward for my victories. I have but a single day to seek my heart, taken from me all those years ago.”

The woods, a living entity as sentient and deliberate as any in Arcadius, rustled in a breeze of its own making. Around Tommy, branches creaked like old men scratching their stubble. He walked on, stepping nimbly between arches covered in ivy, heading deeper into the wood, following nothing but instinct.

Though sunlight had graced the clawed canopy of the darkened forest, it was twilight within. A low mist crept about Tommy Wonder’s ankles, taking the shapes of furled, grasping fingers and wailing faces. He brushed them aside like the specters they were, searching endlessly for Her.

“Spirit of the Whispering Woods, you spoke of me. I sense that you know me. Why won’t you give me the answers I seek?” Tommy insisted.

Ahead, a bubbling brook cut through the scenic woodland, beckoning him forward. Fireflies flitted above the water, which churned over and around large, gray river stones. At closer inspection, Tommy realized they were not stones at all but the skulls of individuals who had been murdered near the river. Each of the skulls bore a large crumbling wound as if they’d been bludgeoned by a sharp rock or object. Several river stones could do the trick quite nicely.

Tommy slowed as he approached the brook. The woods here were open and ethereal, but that was not what gave the obsessed hunter pause. The river, the victims, the stones that looked like perfect killing instruments, it all felt so…familiar.

“What is this?” Tommy Wonder whispered.

‘You know,’ the woods replied, its voice the wind rustling leaves.

Nearby roses, the rich color of red lipstick, unfurled slowly, like lovers waking from a long nap. From their perfect petals, a pink mist emerged, and without meaning to, Tommy breathed it in.

Almost immediately, a shiver shot down his spine, and Tommy gasped. Around him, the world blossomed into startling color, taking the familiar shapes of places he would rather never see again. But there they were, etched into the mist, a history of obsession and bloodshed. The forest showed him who he had been before he’d stepped firmly from the path of humanity.

Tommy watched with bated breath as his younger self led them, kissing their hands and necks, pulling them along with the intensity of his eyes and the allure of his song. The darkness was his ally, the moonlight his only witness, and there, down by the river, where the wild roses grew, Tommy loved them and killed them for their beauty.

The violence, even in memory, was more than Tommy could bear, and he turned from the river, stumbling away until his hands pressed against the unyielding might of an oak. Mind reeling, Tommy turned the images over, inspecting them for falsehood and finding only the cold sting of truth. That had been his life once, cutting the beautiful people from this world, one rose stem at a time, but everything had changed the night he’d met Helena.

“Do you seek understanding?!” Tommy roared, tilting the world in his fury.

Lightning cracked the sky above suddenly, and thunder punched the heavens. Below, breathing heavily, Tommy Wonder narrowed his eyes.

“I have come seeking answers, fair spirit, but know this: I have no issue claiming my prize by force, even if I have to burn you to ashes to get it.”

Only the soft chattering of leaves greeted him. Tommy stilled, chiding himself for his loss of composure. The Spirit of the Whispering Woods was an ancient Arcadian entity. It would not bend to the threat of force. Others had tried and failed.

“I’m acting like my vain protégé,” Tommy muttered.

His back to the oak tree, Tommy closed his eyes and steadied his breathing. He was a hunter, not a lost child. He had come here with a purpose. Now think.

How best to coerce the eldritch forest to do his bidding, to reveal the location of his long-lost love? The brook bubbled on, peaceful despite the carnage it had depicted moments ago, and understanding came to Tommy.

“I need to go deeper,” he whispered, rising slowly.

The Whispering Woods were oddly silent, but Tommy understood. He had searched high and low for Helena, through the bramble and thorns of Faerie, to the Spirit Realm and its court of conceptual love. Yet no matter where the hunt was, Tommy had but a day and Helena was nowhere to be found. Perhaps the answers he sought were not awash in the world, adrift in a sea of sorrow as Tommy had thought. Could the key to his lost love have been with him all along?

With renewed confidence, the Butcher in Black strode away from the river of memory. His song began softly, accompanied by haunting chimes and a flighty piano, building with each word to an impending crescendo. Soft, chunky guitars filled in, rousing the drums and fleshing out the whole, until Tommy Wonder strode the hollows of the Whispering Wood, warping reality with every word.

You were an angel of grace

The cure to my ailments, or so I thought

Now my heart is a furnace, and I burn for you

Why did you leave me that night?

Autumn leaves blowing in the wind

Why didn’t you take my hand?

Left to follow, all alone

One night this I swear

I will find you, and we’ll be together!

I control music, my love

We can dance forever

Throughout all time on the shores of the eternal sea

We will laugh at the stars

Mock the cruel heavens for daring to keep us apart

And fall to sleep

I have slain monsters just to take your hand!

I have killed devils, my soul may be damned

Let the cold in my heart thaw and come to an end

that my burning soul may know peace…

Moved by the outro of the music flooding from the depths of his being, Tommy ran. The trees passed by in magnificent blurs. All of existence became a sensation of movement and heart, of greens and golds that ushered Tommy forward.

He could hear her singing in the distance, just beyond a copse of trees frozen together in a perfect, natural barricade. Tommy slowed, daring to believe. He had run through Spring and Autumn and now approached winter, each more a captured moment in time than a season proper. Nothing made sense, but it didn’t have to. Hope burned like a furnace in Tommy’s soul.

If Helena had come here, perhaps she would be frozen in time. The thought was almost more than Tommy’s heart could bear. It beat against his chest like a prisoner on the walls of his jail cell.

Without slowing, Tommy held out his right hand. A symbol of a curved sword tattooed between his forefinger and thumb began to glow, emanating brilliant green light. Tommy’s eyes darkened, and he clenched his fist around the rapidly materializing hilt of his signature weapon, Anathema.

A mighty, curved sword with the stock of a powerful rifle, Tommy brought it to bear and laid it against his exposed palm. The blade bit into Tommy’s flesh, drawing blood, which fed into the weapon like ammunition. It glowed a rich, dangerous red.

“You are keeping secrets from me,” Tommy Wonder whispered, “But I will never stop.”

With ill intent, Tommy thumbed the trigger. Anathema bucked in his grip, slicing further, and a beam of crimson energy burst from the blade, carving into the steaming trees. The scream of splintering wood pierced the tranquil forest, and darkness followed, blanketing the grove in onrushing night.

Releasing Anathema, the gore-stained weapon fell from Tommy’s grasp and burst into droplets of blood, splattering the dry, dead leaves. Ahead, the frozen circle beckoned, billowing smoke to the heavens. Dancing motes of light entwined and spun, pirouetting within the private circle of trees like tiny ballerinas.

Tommy took a step forward, readying himself for a moment made of dreams, but something stopped him. Not a person, exactly, but a feeling. The forest touched his hand, and a dread shiver shot down the hunter’s spine.

‘The one you seek,’ The woods whispered, ‘She walks the world between, in shade and pale moonlight.’

Tommy Wonder shook his head.

“No, you lie,” he said, “She is here. I sense her. I hear her. What trickery is this, Spirit?”

But something in Tommy shifted. The world between, it had said. A realm of shade and pale moonlight.

Around Tommy Wonder, the woods rustled. The private copse of trees loomed like a phantasmal hallucination.

‘No lies,’ came the voice of leaves and wind, ‘A truth you cannot accept. You KILLED Helena. You butchered the one you love!’

Tommy closed his eyes against the accusation. Strangely, he’d heard it’s like before. It was the one truth he would never accept, no matter how often it was spoken.

Helena had vanished into autumn leaves. She was taken from Tommy. She was the one too beautiful to die, the one destined to calm the murderous urges in Tommy’s heart. He would never have brought her to the river. They’d made music and love in a place where hope went to die. In their short time together, they’d lived well and truly. Tommy would never…

He refused to entertain the notion.

Strengthening his resolve, Tommy leaped across the sizzling threshold, landing in the secluded grove noiselessly. He turned in slow circles, marveling at the winter landscape, the trees little more than trunks and bare branches, the snow drifting lazily to soft powder at his feet. The cold felt good in his lungs, and Tommy began to sing again. Not words this time, but a melody. One that Helena sang when they were young and wild.

Dropping low into a powerful vibrato, Tommy closed his eyes and sang with all his heart. He swayed to the music, losing himself in a song of soft hand drums and encroaching, soul-plucking acoustic guitar. This was the music they had made together, the beauty Helena and Tommy crafted in the secret places of the asylum. It would breach the world between and bring her to him.

His eyes still closed; Tommy shuddered as soft hands entwined with his. A warm, delicate body pressed against him suddenly, and a familiar scent filled Tommy’s mind with the lush intoxication of memory.

“You found me?” Helena whispered.

Tommy squeezed her hand. Terror gripped his mind, a paralyzing fear that if he opened his eyes, Helena would disappear, as she had that fateful day so long ago. Tommy Wonder opened his mouth to speak but found himself breathless. Her hair smelled of vanilla, lavender, and the warm, nameless scent of the person he loved most. Tommy buried himself in Helena’s neck and wrapped his hands around her waist.

This was too good to be true.

“Is it really you?” he whispered.

Helena said nothing. She held him tight, humming gently, filling his world with the sound of her voice. Her fingers brushed Tommy’s scale-armored outfit, observing the changes in his being.

Finally, Tommy Wonder opened his eyes and beheld her. Helena smirked, her blue-green eyes glistening with love and a million secrets. Tommy brushed raven-black hair from her face and laughed.

“If this is a dream, do not wake me,” he said, turning Helena in a slow circle.

She was exactly as he remembered her. Helena wore a simple white dress that flowed and twirled as she danced barefoot, her long legs covered in knicks and tiny scratches. Her body was curvy, enticing, and delicate, and her aura was wild and free. She was the wind that moved his lungs, the tempo of his heart.

Overcome with emotion, Tommy didn’t know what to say. He pulled Helena to him and held her close, cherishing the moment for everything it was worth. Words tumbled from his lips; explanations, excuses, tales of the worlds he’d searched, admonitions of his past failures.

With knowing eyes, Helena listened, nodding intently to his every word. She was a being of effervescent light, radiant and perfect.

And that’s when he saw them.

The motes of light that constructed her being, drawn to her familiar shape by the arcane notes of his song that even now poured from his lips uninterrupted.

Tommy Wonder had conjured her likeness with sound and impressed upon her his wishes and memories. Shocked by the revelation, his song faltered, and with it, so did Helena.

As she had that day, Helena sighed and fell from his arms, bursting into motes of light and dry, dead leaves. She vanished in a strong gust of wind, leaving Tommy alone in the dark grove, encompassed by pain.

Tommy Wonder left the Whispering Woods soon after and returned to the ship Beta-Sol in a fury.

“Schedule my next hunt,” Tommy roared at Alpha and Omega, “I will find her!”