LJ Idol 10: Week 19: Invitation
The Herald
There is a shadow hovering in the corner.
Julie cannot turn to her head to look but she knows it is there. Just as she knows her hand is at the end of her arm but she cannot move it. She cannot turn her head; she cannot run.
She can breath though,and she can scream.
She does not want to scream but she opens her mouth anyway and begins to to speak in garbled and odd sentences. She is channeling the speech of the masters of the unseen realms that live in in-between spaces by the cliffs and the valleys that are not valleys but roads and the dessert sands. Among doorways and within the dimensions of time.
The shadow descends and they become one and they begin to rise from the bed. They reach the door and stand on the periphery of all things. They step through into the great unknown, the great beyond, the place where here is not there because it was not the here, but the journey.
Julie gasps awake in the light of the afternoon sun streaming in through the holes in the curtains; the dust swirling in the light. Her head aches and she wants to go back to sleep but feels too restless now.
She moves to sit on the side of the bed and slowly rises to her feet. She slips her robe over her shoulders as she walks toward the washroom.
She stops in the doorway suddenly recalling the feeling in her dream with a vivid clarity when she catches her reflection in the mottled reflecting glass above the sink. Then she remembers with vivid clarity cutting her hair with a pair of sewing shears the night before but then she remembers that there is more hash and moves to the window sill where she left it.
She props herself on the end of the cabinet next to the window breathing in a little hair of the dog and trying to recall more of the visions of the night before.
She reaches into the pocket of her robe and retrieves her notebook but instead of making notes she slides out the small cream colored card she’d stuck in the back.
She’s still feeling impetuous, running her fingertips over her scalp recalling the snip of the scissors as her hair fell away. After she rereads the invitation for the tenth time since she recieved it weeks ago she heads back into the bedroom and begins to pack.
She gets to the end of the pier just in time to watch the last airship lift away from it’s mooring and sail into the clear blue sky. She drops her leather case onto the damp boards beneath her feet and sits on it panting and shading her eyes to watch “The Sailing Junkband” get smaller and smaller.
She's walking back to the boarding house when she sees the tinkerer's cart. She looks back up the street weighing her options. She's heard traveling tinkers will sometimes take on passengers and she did go through all the trouble of packing. She decides it's worth a try before giving up entirely.
He is standing beside the caravan holding a flaming torch and working on some gizmo when she approaches with her hood up to hide her unseemly cropped locks.
"Excuse me, I am looking to ride west,” Julie says loudly, akwardly.
He looks up from his work and turns off the torch.
"What reason have yuou to be heading west?" The tinker asks in a watery voice.
"I'd rather not say."
He nods and turns back to his instrument.
"Someone I love is in trouble," she says. "I need to warn them. I am - it’s not safe for me here."
"It isn’t safe for an unescorted lady most places in the twelve kingdoms, I think you will find."
"I can take care of myself."
"Of that I have no doubt. Do you believe one can find what they are looking for by running away?" He shakes his head in response to his own question. "You girl do not know what you seek and so you will never know when you have found it."
"I can’t stay here," she says, it is the truth at least.
"Can you drive a mech horse?" He asks motioning to the steam powered mechanical next to his cart.
"I can learn," she says.
"The truth suits you young miss."
"You know I am older than I look."
"To be sure, but, when you are as old as I am there is naught that surprises ye much."
"So will you take me along?"
The tinker smiles and waves a beckoning hand to her.