They Key Between Stranger Realms - Day Fourteen

On this dark morning, I wake with a fright. The sun has yet to rise, yet I am unburdened by the haze of dreamy sleep. The walls of the concrete abode feel more like a lie as the mornings pass, and I begin to wonder if this was the stranger realm all along. I’m not sure about time, but I know that I don’t want to waste any of it. I need to find Clovis.

Here in the ordinary realm, there is one place I’m almost certain he’ll be. I walk to the thrift shop down the street. It has yet to open, but the hermetic man waits, bag half full and ready to gather new trinkets.

“Hey!” I call to him through the dimness of early morning.

He panics, grabs his bag, and starts to run away.

“No, wait!” I beg, chasing after him.

In the flurry, I grab a hold of his bag’s strap. It falls off his shoulder, spilling over onto the rockery. Dawn shines across the array of artifacts, and I spot the ring that reminds me of Leon.

“Where did you get that?” I ask.

And before I hear his answer, I am pulled into the stranger realm.

“Go away!” the sorcerer threatens at the gate of his tower.

My horse grazes in his yard. So, this is where he ran off. Leon is not here, but he is not far. In the chaos of the sorcerer’s threats, I try to recall where I last left this time. That is right. The sea pancake. Leon is guarding it in the forest. I wandered just off the way, following his hunch that the sorcerer in the tower nearby might have something to help us … do what?

***

“We need to make it fly,” Leon said.

“Why?” I laughed at the imagination of the runaway king.

“It appeared from the pool, yes?”

“Seems so.”

“The pool seems like a portal … like the one that took the queen.”

He looked at me as if I knew. But I did not recall that tragedy, not yet.

“Perhaps I can travel to her through the pool,” he suggested.

“How would you do that?” I asked, hesitant at the thought of sending him off into the ether.

“The ray belongs in the ocean, not the pond,” he observed.

“So if we return it to the sea, you believe it will re-open the portal here in the pond?” I guessed.

“Perhaps. And if so, I can use the portal to find her,” he said with guarded hope.

He mourned his sister. And although I did not remember her, I knew there was an unhealed wound from her severance waiting to re-open. He wanted to join me at the tower. The sorcerer would be more likely to help a king. But we knew he could not leave the forest. If the portal were to open, miraculously, while I was away, he needed to be there. He gave me his ring instead, a token to show the sorcerer it was important business.

“Clovis!” I call to the sorcerer through the gate.

He stops his clamoring and palms his chest, face paling.

“Did she send you?” he asks.

And I know that he means Harmony, the Oracle.

“No, King Leon did. It is important business,” I say, showing him the ring.

“How did you know my name?” he questions.

“This is not the first time we have met,” I admit.

My steed, Bootstrap, must have recognized my voice as he trots over to nuzzle my hand for treats.

“So he is yours?” the sorcerer guesses.

“Are you not concerned about what I said?” I ask.

He shrugs and opens the gate for my passage.

“We have not had an interloper in this realm for a long time, perhaps ever. It was bound to happen eventually.”

Strange, he knows about interlopers, but he does not yet know me.

I leave Bootstrap grazing and follow Clovis up the winding staircase to the top of his tower.

“What do you need?” he asks.

“I need to understand the passage between realms,” I say bluntly.

“I am afraid you can only find those answers for yourself,” he remarks. “I have never known.”

I sigh.

“Why did the king send you?” he wonders.

“There is a manta-ray. We need to make it fly, or float at least.”

“Why in this strange realm would you want to accomplish that?”

“To send it off the cliff. It is too heavy as is,” I answer.

“I might have something to do the trick, but what will you offer in return?”

I huff. He wants to bargain, of course. I look out the window at Bootstrap, grazing happily, unbothered by the chaos of our flight from the vengeful knight. The sea calls to me. Soon, I will not need his speed.

“Where is your horse?” Clovis once asked in a time of future past.

“You can keep my horse,” I say. “His name is Bootstrap, and he loves beets.”

Clovis squeaks and then nods as if a fair offer.

“Pour it over the creature. It will be weightless for a few minutes,” he instructs, handing me a bottled potion.

“Only minutes?” I ask.

“Do you want a miracle or not?”

“Yes,” I sigh.

Yet, I am consumed with fear. If I have only a few minutes to get the ray to the cliff side, there will not be time to return to the pond and say farewell to Leon. That is how it was, how it had always been. I had to accept it.

Clovis hands me the bottle, and I look at the ring in my palm. Leon’s ring somehow made it to the ordinary realm, and Clovis found it there. I need to return it to him before he drifts away. Saying goodbye to Bootstrap, something unsettling gnaws at me. The last time I saw this tower, there was a cataclysm tearing through the sky above.

The gaps are swelling with answers. I close my eyes and picture the unfoldings. I will return to Leon, give him the ring, make the ray weightless. Alone, I take it to the cliff side. And just as it is plummeting seaward, just as Leon is hopefully reuniting with his sister, I am throwing myself off the cliff to escape Justice’s wrath.

Merry the merman saves me. Then, I go with Justice willingly to protect his family. The lyre betrays me, or I betray myself in the prison where the knight accepts the truth. And then she lets me go. I plummet again into the sea, find myself a cast-away on the beach, meet Garfield, then Marina. Then, I return to the merfolk caves. So much time had passed, but Merry and his folk still welcome me home.

But something drew me inland, back to the tower where I met Clovis again and we collaborated with the Oracle about the fate of the realm. What was it? Why did I return?

It was a guilt, nagging, demanding that I mend it. For in this moment, outside the sorcerer’s tower bidding farewell to my loyal steed, I began to finally piece everything together. I had unwillingly yet undoubtedly created a hole in the ether. It was me, The Key Between the Stranger Realms, who caused the cataclysm.

It was just a solitary, inky cloud in the sky then. Now, as time shifts and whirs, I am returned to the latest point of our meeting. It has grown into a gaping, dark whole, hungry. My realization, my transcendence is tearing this realm apart.

***

Hello, wanderer.

We have finally reached a point in this series where things are starting to make more sense! Stay tuned for the next chapter soon. Meanwhile, you may enjoy to read some of my poems in the collection Queen of the Gulls.

The photo I took is from one of the most spectacular hikes I've done in Oregon. I like to imagine this is something like what the stranger realm looks like.

xoxo, for now,

-your friend, ruminating