Chapter 14

Up until this point, it had not occurred to Warren that he was entirely hopeless to return to his former life. He had been told that his family was dead, yes. He had accepted that they were gone and that he was embarking on something new. But the first glimpse of that new moon, that intriguing and frightening moon, had told him that not only had his circumstances changed, but the whole of the world, even of its history, had developed into a intensely different scene.
His paradigm had been pressed and attacked, but the moon had shattered it. This was a new world, and it could be utterly foreign to him, moreso perhaps than a casual visit overseas. What had happened differently in this place? His mind drifted to some of the simple, momentous events of history. Had Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. given his famous, “I Have a Dream” speech…or in that case, had he been assassinated? And had John F. Kennedy been killed? Had he been President? Who indeed was President? And of America…had it fought any wars at all? More? Had WWIII occurred? Even smaller questions pressed his mind: had his parents married each other in this history, too? Was there another Warren (with or without that name?) walking around?
And all this had been opened to his mind by the moon. And therefore, he had little success in looking away from it. Not to mention it gave him an excuse to lean against Sofi’s side—which he noted was an action she didn’t protest. While Warren certainly had a newfound respect for Sofi, in the few quiet moments he had, his thoughts drifted to her—he thought of her smile; he imagined her eyes gazing into his own. And naturally he wondered if she thought the same of him. But had you asked Warren if he were in love with her, he would have denied it vehemently. Which might have only proved the point that he found himself attracted to her. And so relished this quiet, semi-intimate moment with her, staring twofold out the window at strange moon in a foreign night.
When Old Fred slowed to a stop and announced their arrival at the second waypoint, no one immediately answered him. Warren slept, head tilted straight back. Ali had curled into a ball in his lap, next to his elbow. Sofi’s head rested on Warren’s shoulder—a fact which no one in the vehicle mentioned for days. Old Fred had weighed his options: startle them all awake with a blare of the horn or just exit the vehicle, hoping the sound of his door closing and a small breath of fresh, cool air would get the job done. Prudence led him to attempt the latter, and it paid off.
Sofi woke first and blushed immediately at her predicament. She looked at the waking Warren, pulled her hair behind her ears and over her shoulders, and straightened in her seat. She took in a breath and held it, closing her eyes for a second. Then she touched Warren on the shoulder. “We’re here,” she whispered to him.
He awoke from dream to a dream. He blinked several times and yawned, stretching behind his head. “Thanks,” he mumbled as she exited the vehicle. He looked at Ali in his lap. “Alright, wake up, girl; time to go to bed.” She quivered as he slid his hand underneath her belly and relaxed in his grip. “There we go,” he said and slid out the door into the mild night.
Fredric was already carrying a load of equipment into the place, so Warren followed him. Trent busied himself in the first room, ordering supplies to different sections of the house. When Warren and Ali waltzed in, Trent pointed to a hallway. “Down there, first right is where you’ll sleep. Take an air mattress,” he said, gesturing towards a pile of inflatable pads. “Blankets should come in soon, so come back for one,” he winked and scurried to help a soldier unload a tangled mess of wires and equipment from his arms. Warren picked up a mattress and found a nice corner in the room, next to the window (where he could still see the moon) and began inflating his pad. And these were no cheap air pads either, he noticed. These probably ran upwards of a hundred apiece, he guessed, as it hadn’t been so long since he had browsed an outdoors shop.
Just as he had finished inflating the pad, on which Ali was now sniffing and pacing, Warren noticed a moth beating against the window, straining to find the light. He watched intently, as if drawn to the plight of the bug as it slid across the pane left and right, searching for an entrance. And just as soon as Warren saw that the window was cracked open and stood to remedy the situation, the moth found the gap and fluttered inside.
But then, to Warren’s bewilderment, the insect veered sharply away from the bulb in the ceiling and alighted on his pad, his wings flattened outwards and swaying slightly. It’s front antennae twitched as it spun ninety degrees to face Ali, who had noticed the intrusion and had scampered up to the moth. She sniffed at it, whiskers trembling. Warren kneeled and studied the moth’s movements as it crawled towards Ali. Warren gave her a warning. “Don’t even think about it.” Ali turned her eyes to Warren, blinked at him, sneezed, and sat back on her rear legs. Then she turned her attention back to the insect.
“Warren, do you have a blan…” Sofi called from the doorway, but lost her words when she saw the spectacle before her. For a moment no one spoke or moved. Then Sofi tried again. “What are you…?” she tried to ask.
“I’m not sure…it’s just this moth…” Warren attempted to reply. Sofi sauntered in, squinting at the scene.
When the moth stopped moving, Warren blinked. He looked to Sofi, to Ali, then back to the bug. It had simply frozen—its wings were as still as the glass surface of a pond on a summer night. Even its antennae held their position. But that didn’t seem especially extraordinary—not compared with what happened next.
Warren swore that his bleary eyes were not seeing things; Sofi would have dismissed the events altogether, had it not been for the damaged, green moon shining outside the window. But when a wave a color crept over the moth, turning it a golden brown from the pale gray it had been before, Warren could help but point it out. “Sofi! Did you…?”
“Uh huh!” she whispered back, entranced by the occurrence.
Ali seemed the only living thing in the room that wasn’t surprised. She ambled up to the moth and, to Warren’s absolute horror, plucked off a wing and promptly ate it. Before he could stop her, she then snatched the whole of the moth and devoured it before their eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing found its way out. Instead, he gazed into Ali’s radiant black eyes and thought he suffered a heart attack when the rat twitched her nose and spoke.
“Hello Warren,” Ali said in a cheerful, soprano voice and blinked. Warren’s eyebrows made a slow journey up his forehead and Sofi’s hand again found its way to her mouth. “I have received this gift, that I may aid you.” Ali clasped her front paws together and bowed slightly. “Do not be troubled, Warren, and look on me as your servant and friend.”
While Warren floundered in amazement, a light of suspicion had grown in Sofi’s eyes. She found her tongue and spoke to Ali. “The demon sent you,” she accused.
Ali shook her head and twitched her whiskers. “No, it was the Mar who sent me to Warren that they might track him; I was ignorant then and searched only for pleasure and security. In this, I thank you, Warren for your generosity. I owe you much. But it was the ‘demon’ who gave me the ability to communicate with you. Its gift is precious, as is the message he gave me to deliver to you.”
Sofi narrowed her gaze. “Which is?” she demanded.
“The reason why you are where you are,” Ali ventured, and scratched at her cheek with her foot.
“And what is that, Ali?” Warren questioned.
“At your first waypoint, the Mar surrounded you, led by the demon Maghalis. In your analogy of the universe, Sofi, you compare histories to paths in a garden and waypoints as the places where those paths intersect, do you not?” Ali reasoned. Sofi could only nod. Ali continued, “Then at the last waypoint, you thought to switch paths in order to follow your plotted journey to St. Barthe’s in western Florida, correct?” Sofi didn’t reply, but Warren found himself nodding in agreement. “Well you must realize that that waypoint was not a crossing between two paths, but three. For sake of analogy, imagine your two paths met at a bridge over a third path. The Mar decided simply to create a hole in the bridge and ‘drop’ you into an entirely different path than you expected.”
“The pink globes,” Warren deduced. Ali nodded.
“Then Maghalis just moved his ship into position to ‘catch’ you.” Ali blinked and waited for her words to sink into the minds of her audience. Then she began again, “Now, my benefactor is an ally of Maghalis, but not necessarily a supporter. What Maghalis intends for the futures of the universe seems much to risky to our unnamed friend and thus he will attempt to undermine the demon in any way he can.”
“Wait,” Sofi interjected. “What are Maghalis’ plans?”
Ali looked at her paws. “That I cannot say, for it was not planted in my mind. But the intentions of our friend is quite clear. He will aid you in any way you can; but know that if you reveal his objectives to Maghalis or the Mar, you will lose that trust forever. But why you would find that option appealing, I don’t know. It would be absurd to refuse this generous offer. For it was he that ‘lifted’ you back onto your chosen path before the waypoint closed. It will take the Mar some time to mobilize and navigate to the next possible waypoint converging with this path. This is the most important news I bring you: you have at least 16 hours before the Mar will arrive on scene, and this waypoint closes before that time. However, if you enter the waypoint, they will be able to close on you within two hours of your departure for your next waypoint. Either way, our benefactor has given you a slight edge on your enemy. If nothing else, thank him for time for a good night’s rest.”
Sofi nodded and turned to Warren. “If we have 16 hours, we might be able to find an alternate route for a couple waypoints and increase our lead. I need to talk to Trent about this, but you. You get a blanket and get some rest.” Then she stooped and held out her hand. “Ali, will you come with me?”
“Certainly,” she said and scurried to the outstretched palm. Warren followed the two out. Once in the main room, Trent tossed him a blanket and a pillow. He caught both, watched as Sofi motioned Trent over, whispered to him, and then called Livingstone over as well. Warren turned to head back to the room, as the discussion evidently was not going to involve him. He slipped through the doorway, threw his pillow to the floor and watched the three shadows flicker on the floor in front of him as they moved to another room.
Warren rolled onto his back and kicked the bottom half of the fleecy blanket into place. He adjusted his pillow, closed his eyes and tried to process everything that Ali had told him—or even the simple fact that Ali had spoken to him. As he adjusted to the silence, he heard the muffled voices from the discussion taking place next door. They weren’t quite audible, so he tried not to focus on it. What was the point of straining to understand anyway? At the moment he probably understood more than Trent or Livingstone did.
But the voices, which had began in a hush, grew in volume, until Warren found it nearly impossible not to listen. Livingstone had been speaking when Warren decided to open his ears completely and eavesdrop.
“And you don’t believe this demon has some ulterior motive for ‘aiding’ us?” he was asking. “Even if Maghalis controls the Mar, you don’t believe this one has no influence at all, do you? Listen, demons hate demons as much as humans. But for a demon to betray a demon in the name of helping a human? That’s unheard of. I wouldn’t trust him if he were standing over my burning body with a bucket of water.”
“I know it doesn’t make any sense that a demon would aid us, but he has. We can’t overlook that fact. We would all be locked in some demonic prison, waiting to be chopped into tiny bits for some horrible experiment right now if it weren’t for his actions,” Trent retorted.
“Yes, true. But imagine if he had some ambush planned and Maghalis got the jump on him; he frees us, gains our confidence, lies to us about the time we have, and lures us into his own trap—take the credit for our capture for himself. He might even gain enough influence to seize control of the Mar from Maghalis. I don’t care what he’s done for us, I will not trust the devices of a demon.”
“But don’t you think he risks much by giving us this information through Ali?” Sofi asked.
“Certainly not. He knows his quarry. We wouldn’t dare negotiate with Maghalis—he knows that. He assumes that we will take his charity in good faith and uphold our end of the bargain…until he smashes the deal and destroys us himself. As much as we hold that humanity is not completely bereft of the power to do good, we must understand that demons are not on the same plane. They are corrupt thoroughly and are not capable of a good action. Not to say that their actions might lead to good, just as the growth of a weed in the garden might give the gardener cause to uproot it and churn the soil to make a fine place to plant a flower. But no. make no mistake, these demons are masters of deception, and I, for one, will not trust them. Any of them.”
“You seem to know much of the universe, o wise and masterful Oscar,” answered Trent, dripping with sarcasm. “You don’t trust anyone—so what would you know of trust? Why should we listen to you condemn what you have never known? I don’t care what the demon’s intentions are; I care about his actions. He has aided us, that much is certain. And it seems that he would like to continue to do so. We were in a tight spot, but now we have some room to work with. If we accept his future help, we are not relegating ourselves vulnerable to him. We would accept his information as we would any outside source, treating it according to protocol and comparing it to our own research. We can be as ready to terminate our agreement with him as he might be to do with us. Just because he might be playing us, doesn’t mean we can’t pay him back. The opportunity here of an ally within the enemy is too great to pass up—even if he’s only a momentary ally. I say we cross check his information with whatever the boys have found by morning and make our plans accordingly.”
“May I say something?” Sofi interrupted with a much quieter voice. Apparently the two didn’t object. “I don’t like the idea of trusting a demon any more than you do, Oscar. And I realize the aid he has already given us, Trent. But let us look at our situation. From what we’ve found already, signs indicated that another waypoint for them to merge with this path was fairly distant, at least not within twenty hours or so from our departure from the Denver waypoint, right. Well that seems to fit with his information. So I agree with Trent that we should finish some comparative data analysis in the morning; but I also think that we should watch our steps and be ready for anything. Is this reasonable?”
Warren imagined both nodding when no replies came. He listened for a moment and heard nothing more. Then a knock on the door frame caught his attention, Sofi peeked in. “I brought Ali back,” she said, winking with a slight smile. She bent to the floor and set Ali down, who scampered to Warren’s mattress and curled up next to it. “Good night. Sleep well,” she whispered and closed the door before Warren could reply. He yawned and stretched.
“Well Ali. I guess I’ll see you in the morning, girl.”
“Likewise, Warren,” she squeaked and nestled herself into a little ball of gray fur in the shadows.Warren looked back up and out the window. There hovered the decimated moon, and despite the strangeness of the glow, the dustiness of the air, the absurdity of his situation, Warren sighed and fell asleep, thinking of Sofi snuggled up against him, arm around his waist, her chin on his chest.