Aces and Eights
Part 5: Explanations
When I woke up, I was undressed and
lying in bed. A woman came to my side immediately, and began speaking in a
foreign language. "Sorry," I said, "I don't speak it, whatever it
is."
She nodded and left the room. I felt
my shoulder with one hand, and was surprised by the fact that I did not feel
pain there. I pulled back the blanket and examined myself. There was no wound at
all. Had I been unconscious that long, I wondered?
The woman who had tried talking to
me earlier reentered the room with Luke walking behind her. His condition seemed
to have improved greatly. He was dressed in loose black pants and knee-high
boots. He wore a green shirt. "How do you feel?" he asked.
"Confused."
"Besides that." He dragged
a stool over and sat next to the bed. "Physically, I mean."
"No pain, no teeth marks. How
long have I been out?"
"Off and on for three
days," he said.
"That bite sure felt a lot
worse than . . . hey, wait a minute! I was bitten by a werewolf. That
means--"
"I'm afraid it does." His
mouth formed a devilish grin, then his expression changed to one of concern. The
woman looked at Luke and said something in that same weird language. Luke
answered her and she left.
"So you're a native of this
place." It was a statement.
"Yes," he said. "I
grew up here."
"Where is here, dammit?"
He chuckled. "I knew that one
was coming."
"So how about an answer. I
wrapped the blanket around me and sat up.
"You're in Jidrash, in the
kingdom of Kashfa."
"Kingdom?"
"That's right."
"Why have I never heard of this
place?"
"Because it's not on
Earth."
"Are you trying to tell me that
we're on another planet?"
"Nigel . . . I'm trying to tell
you that you're in another reality, an alternate universe."
I said nothing. There was nothing I
could say. I had seen strange people change into werewolves. Had even fired
silver bullets at them. And I had been bitten by one of the supposedly mythical
creatures and now bore no traces of a wound that should have taken weeks to
heal. If legends held true, I was probably in for a wild night come next full
moon. Luke and I had been transported away from the balcony of my apartment to
this place, Kashfa. If I could not believe all of the things that had happened
to me on the night that I had set out to retrieve Luke's belongings, then my
very sanity was in question. I did not feel mad, so: "You're from another
dimension?"
"Yes, one of an infinite
number. Your home, Earth, is only another among the infinite."
"Then the werewolves were from
another dimension too."
"Right."
"How is it that they, or we,
for that matter, moved from one dimension to another?"
"Magic. They used magic to get
from one Shadow--that's what they're generally referred to as--to another. Magic
in the form of a painting. A card," he reached into a pocket, extracted an
ivory-inlaid wooden box, opened it, "like this one." He extended a
pasteboard card with a detailed painting on it.
"This is you," I said.
"Yes. Stare at it and think
about me. Concentrate . . . focus your thoughts on making contact with me,
through the card."
I looked at him. "You're
serious."
He was. I sighed. "Okay."
Holding the card before me, I did as he had said to do. A minute passed and I
felt ridiculous. Then, just as I was about to stop trying, something happened:
the card got cooler against my fingertips, and there was movement. Startled, I
dropped it.
Luke picked it up from where it had
fallen. "Try it again," he said. "It takes a couple of tries to
get the hang of it."
I took the thing and tried again. It
had done something before, so I did not feel foolish this time. Suddenly, I felt
sure that it would work as Luke had stated. Almost immediately, his picture came
alive and the figure there flowed, changing positions. He grinned.
I looked from the card to Luke and
back to the card. "Amazing. This thing can take me to Earth?"
"No, that one will only take
you to where I'm at. It's good for communication, too." He stood and walked
across the room to the doorway. "Try it."
"How?" I stood, holding
the card before me.
"Just look into the card and
take my hand."
I stared at the image of Luke, who
suddenly seemed to take on further definition. He reached out, and I took his
hand. The color swirl effect was repeated, and then I was standing beside him on
the other side of the room. I walked back over to the bed and sat down again.
"And this is how they got to Earth?"
"Yes. The group who attacked us
got to Earth by tricking me into thinking that they were friends of my mother
who needed deliverance from a tight spot. I brought them through and they
attacked me."
Just then the young woman who had
left earlier returned and said something to Luke.
"Are you hungry?" he asked
me.
"Yes, starving."
He said something else to the woman
and she left. "Lyra will bring you some clothes and show you the dining
room. I'll meet you there and we can talk some more. Okay?"
"That sounds fine."
"Until then . . ." He smiled and walked out.