Chapter 5
1792 Words
5
“Hmm. I gained more weight than I thought.”
I twisted around and gaped at the figure behind me. Standing there decked in the clothes of my grandfather was a young man on the good side of forty. His short sandy hair glistened in the bright sunlight and his handsome features still held the bloom of youth. He held up the waist of his pants as they tried to slip down to his ankles. The wooden box was still tucked under his arm.
I struggled to climb to my shaking legs and looked him up and down. “G. . .Grandpa?” I stuttered.
He looked up and sheepishly smiled at me. “In the flesh, pumpkin. The young flesh, that is.”
I pointed a shaking finger at him. “B-but how? Who? Where?”
“Time differences with a touch of magic, me, and the Shifting World, as I told you before,” he answered me in his dictionary-like manner.
I shook my head and furiously blinked my eyes. “This has to be a dream. It just has to be.”
“If only that was true, pumpkin,” he agreed as he tried to take a step forward. The box fell from his arm and clattered to the ground. “Drat.” He bent over, and in doing so lost the grip of his pants. They slid down and revealed his polka-dotted boxers.
“Let me take that,” I insisted more out of habit than any acceptance of the weird situation.
He sighed. “I suppose some things never change. Even as a young man I find my self struggling to balance life.”
I stooped and scooped up the box. The bolt and bee stared back at me. Now the fun little colors weren’t so funny. I took a deep breath and looked sternly at my young grandfather. “Now, tell me everything that’s going on. Everything.”
“I suppose I do owe you that much, if only so that we may survive this world,” he mused as he swept his eyes over the field. “This is the Shifting World, or rather a part of it. The portal between worlds is through there.” He pointed at a large tree nearby. It was a perfect replica of the one back home. “The trees have joined souls, so anyone can use it to travel to our world. Your grandmother and I did so many times before your father was born, though the last time we went was about forty-four years ago.”
I gestured to his person. “And. . .and this?”
“Time passes differently in this world. For every year that goes by in this world, a year and three-quarters passes in ours. Excluding leap years, of course, when it’s a full two years. Here that brings about a rather festive season where-”
“But that doesn’t explain how you got younger,” I persisted.
He smiled. “Time is ruthless, especially in this world. It demands you look your age, and in this realm I would only be a young seventy-four.”
“That is not young!” I argued.
He chuckled. “Perhaps not in our world, but in this world it’s not uncommon for even humans to live past two hundred.”
I ran a hand through my hair and shook my head. “This is. . .this is just nuts.” I glanced down at the box held in my other hand. I grasped the sides in both hands and thrust it at him. “What’s in here?”
“Some rather important trinkets,” he revealed as he pulled out a key from his pocket. He held the opener to me. “Now that we’re here you can open it.”
I took the key and after a few moments of trying to get my shaking hand to work I succeeded in inserting the key. The lock sprang and dropped onto the ground. I took a deep breath and opened the lid.
Inside was a purple velvet interior, and on that surface lay a few cheap-looking medallions along with a dog whistle. I blinked at the contents before I looked up at my grandfather. “This is it?”
He turned his nose up and sniffed. “Those are rather valuable items in your hand.”
I drew out the dog whistle and held it up between two fingers for him to see. “A dog whistle?”
“Actually, that item you hold is a summon flute, a rather rare and miniature flute,” he told me.
I set the whistle back in the box and lifted up a square medallion that hung on a chain of gold. The border was ringed in gold and the faces were a glistening silver. On the front face was etched a lightning bolt, and on the back was a tornado. “And this?”
He took the medallion from me and smiled fondly at the object. “My first medallion. That’s how I received my nickname here.” He drew the chain over his neck and the medallion fell into place over his chest. His fingers danced over the bolt insignia and he chuckled. “So long ago. So many adventures.” He cleared his throat and looked up at me. “On that note, you shouldn’t refer to me as ‘Grandpa’ or ‘grandfather’ in this world. Storm Sage, or merely Sage, will do.”
I blinked at him. “Why should I call you that?”
He puffed out his chest a little and nearly lost his pants again. “I happen to be a rather famous individual in this world, so any family connection to me may endanger both of us. You should also call your grandmother ‘Bee.’ That is-” he scanned the horizons and frowned, “-when we catch up to those hog hijackers.”
“Why do they want Grand-” A look of warning from my grandfather stopped me. “Why do they want Bee?”
He shook his head. “I can’t say, but she has rather a unique ability with animals, hence the summon flute.” He furrowed his brow. “I wonder if the fools realize she can control far fewer animals without the focus the flute gives her.”
My shaky legs became downright wobbly. I clutched my head and slowly sank down onto my knees. My grandfather turned back to watch me sink.
“Jane!” he cried out as he dropped after me. He grasped my shoulders and looked over my face. “You’re pale. Is it the sun?”
I bowed my head and snorted. “The sun, the grass, this whole world existing at all!”
He clasped my chin between two fingers and raised my eyes to his. A soft smile spread across his lips. “Whatever happens I’m sure you’ll be fine. You are the granddaughter of the Great Storm Sage and the Beastly Bee, after all.”
I blinked at him. “‘Beastly Bee?’”
He chuckled. “A rather amusing nickname your grandmother peddled a very long time ago.”
I nodded at the medallion that hung around his neck. “So that thing really controls storms?”
“Creates and controls,” he corrected me.
“Can. . .can I see you do that?” I asked him.
He stood and shook his head. “We wouldn’t want to catch unwanted attention. Besides-” he hoisted his pants up again, “-we have more important matters to which to attend, like finding an appropriate pair of pants and Bee.”
I climbed to my feet and looked around. A primitive dirt road passed by ten yards from where we stood and stretched to southward and northward. “It shouldn’t be too hard. They had only a few hours head start.”
“In our world, yes, but in this world several days have passed since they came through,” he reminded me as he looked around. “There!” he shouted as he stumbled forward. He stopped a few feet from the road and stooped to pluck a small blue object from the grass. I hurried up to him and saw that he held my grandmother’s hair comb in his palm. He pursed his lips and glanced in either direction. “Which way?” I heard him mutter.
“Can’t you use your tracking skills?” I suggested.
He shook his head. “No. There’s been a rain since they passed through here and a little bit of cart traffic. We’ll have to guess and hope it’s the right way. Here, hold this.” He handed me the comb and walked into the middle of the road.
I looked down at the comb and pressed the item tightly between my cupped hands. “Grand-Sage?”
“Yes?” he replied without looking at me.
“What’ll they do with. . .with Bee if she can’t help them?”
My grandfather’s back stiffened and his voice was flat. “They’ll kill her.”
I bit my lower lip to keep it from trembling. My fingers pressed hard against the teeth of the hair comb. I shut my eyes to stop the tears of fear. That’s when I heard her. My grandmother.
“Let go of me!” My eyes shot open and there was a woman in the hold of two of those brutish porcine. She wore the same flowered dress as my grandmother and had the same spunk as she thrashed and dug her heels into the dirt. “Let go or I’ll bite you!” she warned them.
I whipped my head to my grandfather and pointed at the group. “Grandpa! They’re right there!”
He raised his head from his search of the road and blinked at me. “Pardon?”
Gargan stopped at the lead of the group and turned to sneer at my grandmother. “Will you be quiet?”
“They’re right there!” I repeated before I rushed the porcine who held Bee. I aimed my shoulder at the nearest one and rammed my body into his.
That is, if I hadn’t gone completely through him. I stumbled and twisted around to fall butt first onto the road. The scene continued to play out.
My grandmother glared right back at Gargan. “Don’t you use that tone on me, young man! I have friends in high places!”
He chuckled. “I’m sure you did, but not anymore. How long have you been out of this world? Nearly seventy years? Even here that’s a stretch of decades.”
Sage came up to me and knelt by my side. His worried gaze was ever on me. “Are you okay, Jane?”
I shook my head as a sly smile slipped onto my grandmother’s lips. “I warned you.” She pressed lips together and whistled a sweet, chirpy song.
A flock of black birds rose from the nearest thicket of trees. They flew high into the sky in an arch. At the apex they pressed their wings close to their bodies and dive-bombed the porcine. The pigs waved their hands madly in the air to repel the attack of beak and claw as the screeching birds tore at them.
“Shut her up!” Gargan called to his minions. One of the men knocked Bee upside the head. She dropped limp in their grip and hung there. The song ended and the birds scattered. “Now let’s hurry up,” Gargan ordered his men.
The pair of porcine dragged my grandmother between them in the northerly direction. Her head lolled to one side and her comb fell where my grandfather had found it near my feet.
The scene and all its players vanished. I was again alone with my grandfather, or had I always been alone?
- Writer
