Golden Apples

With a novel nearing completion, polishing and what not, I am once again posting a chapter from a novel that was considered practice by its author.  It is the chapter right after the one posted last week.  It's not bad stuff at all.  In case you're wondering why the author abandoned trying to get it published, it was because he found the plot too complex, the voices lacking, and the escalation of the plot far from consistent.  None the less, some interesting stuff I'd say.  Hope you enjoy. 

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As he fell asleep that evening the events of the day were returning to him and his mind seemed hard pressed to try to make sense of it all. Chipper's psychiatrist, Dr. Gibson once told him that when the mind had many new things to consider, weird dreams should be expected. This night was full of them. First he dreamed about being a wizard and shooting fire balls from the top of his newly found staff. He was shooting at some unseen opponent in the distant sky. It was like a jet fighter game he had played on his computer once, only in this dream he was a wizard with his trusty staff instead of a pilot in a high tech jet fighter. It was obviously just a dream. The sort he thought too weird and too nonsensical to bother sharing with anyone.

Other similarly weird dreams followed that one and Chipper remembered only bits and pieces of them in the morning, but the last of his dreams he remembered in great detail. Like the two others from previous nights, it just suddenly started happening with Chipper seeing and experiencing things as though he was someone else. This time he was seeing things as though he were some girl named Hermie who was in a very different place than Chipper had ever experienced, full of marble and other smooth stoned buildings. At first Hermie was sitting in a room with an elderly man behind a large marble desk. The desk went all the way to floor like an altar.

His gray hair seemed to almost match the color of his skin. Hermie thought it was most unfortunate that her school master was required to wear a white robe. If it were not for his piercing pale blue eyes the gray mass that was his head might be mistaken for a huge collection of dust and lint pouring out of the top of his ever so clean white robe.

“Hermie, I have something that I must tell you.” The man spoke as someone very used to being in a position of authority. “As you know I have been trying to persuade the Guard that they could use your talents.” The old school master reached across the white marble of his desk and picked up a life sized black stone statue of a hand and forearm with a gold metal bracelet extending to its elbow. The bracelet was made to look like the ones warn by the soldiers in the Guard. It was a gift that had been given the school master by Guard officers in appreciation for all of the fine new recruits he had sent them over the years. The fact that he was grabbing it now as he spoke made her think that he must feel a need to emphasize how much influence he has with them. That worried her since he would not need to remind her of such a thing if his efforts had been successful.

“They were very stubborn” he said. “Insisting that they could only use someone with a talent they were well practiced with. They told me that since you would only be mimicking someone else's talent you would always be green at whatever you do.”

“But sir,” Hermie interrupted, “Most members of the Guard don't even have pronounced talents.” Hermie pointed at the statue in his hands. “That's what those gauntlets are for.”

The school master tilted the statue in her direction and shook it at her.

“Hermie! Don't interrupt an elder. You will do yourself great harm if you demonstrate disrespect for authority like that.”

He then put the statue down off to the side and fixed his gaze on Hermie who was a little surprised by his sudden sternness.

“Now let me finish what I have to tell you. I, like yourself was not satisfied with their answer so I took the most unusual step. I addressed the matter to the High Counsel.”

“You went that far for me sir?”

She knew the school master had agreed to help her get placed in the Guard but she had no idea that he would be so determined as to appeal to the very ruling council of the Invee Republic.

“I am very grateful sir”.

The school master shook his head.

“Unfortunately you may change your mind when I tell you the rest. I seem to have made a grave mistake in the process of trying to help you.”

“Sir?”

Concern and confusion combined in her voice.

“In the process of trying to argue that it would be a mistake to simply let your ability to mimic other's sit idle I seem to have caused a different kind of reaction than I was aiming for.  They now see you as something of a threat.”

“A threat sir? Why would they think I was a threat to my own people?”

“Unfortunately Hermie, the High Council has not yet recovered from the death of the royal family. I thought that after these decades had passed they would have but I was wrong. Apparently paranoia lies just a scratch-depth beneath the surface with them and I was foolish enough to provide just such a scratch. They have decided that you must not be allowed to roam freely amongst your fellow invee for fear that you may come upon a talent that could cause great harm. They have instructed the Guard to take you in to their ranks so they can strictly control your every movement.”

“Strictly control? What does that mean?”

“It means Hermie that you will be under constant supervision. You will never be able to go anywhere or do anything without their knowledge or approval.”

“Am I to be treated like a criminal without ever committing a crime?”

The girl began to cry as she spoke.

“What have I ever done wrong?”

“I am so sorry Hermie, but it is not as if you are going to be a prisoner. You will be a member of the Guard.”

The school master got up, walked around his stone desk and placed his hands on her shoulders. “All members of the Guard give up some of their freedom. It will just be a lot more in your case, a lot more, but you will be a member of the Guard.”

He hoped that last part might make it seem much better but Hermie buried her face in his robe and cried into it. His voice then became quiet and gentle.

“Hermie, I could have just not told you and you would have happily accepted the Guard's invitation, but I owed you at least this much, to warn you about what is about to happen.”

As she cried she could see nothing but the darkness inside her clenched eyelids. Her own people feared her as if she was a monster. She wondered if she had enough tears in her for the way she felt just then.

The crying stopped and the darkness gave way to the light of a forested lake shore. A few years had passed. A distant thunder, constant and rumbling, came from the direction of cascades rolling over a distant cliff-line. Hermie was no longer a girl about to graduate from school but a woman.

There was a slight young man standing at the water's edge with long strait white hair and a pale complexion to match. His name was Winter. Hermie thought his near albino appearance to be delightfully exotic from the day she met him and this day he looked quite smart in his black and gold Guard uniform.

He faced the water but he knew where Hermie was without looking her way. Of course he did. That was his talent, knowing. He usually knew exactly where each and every member of the High Council was at any given moment as well, along with many other things that boggled most minds to understand how he could. This day he knew something he actually hadn't for a long time, what he wanted.

“Hermie”, he said without turning his gaze from the lake, “I know what talent you bring to show me today before you even present it to me for my analysis.”

“That mind of yours, Winter's mind”, Hermie responded, “is truly one of the great wonders of the universe”.

“Perhaps at times, but not his time. I know this time because I manipulated the mission.” Winter looked over his shoulder at her.

“I cheated”.

“But, Winter you confuse me. Why would you cheat?”

Winter turned around to face her. He was smiling as his pale blue eyes looked right into hers.   “Because I decided two things a few weeks ago.”

He looked down and smiled and then back at her.

“One is that I love you too much to ever risk you being taken from me. The other is that you and I must leave our homeland and wander the universe together. We must become renegades.”

Hermie's emotions were now just as confused as they were intense.

“I love you too Winter, oh do I ever, but why must we run away and violate our people's most sacred law? We are together here in the guard.”

The Invee's most sacred law was that no invee was to ever leave their homeland – The High Plateau – unless under orders from the High Council. To leave under any other circumstance had a penalty of death, if caught. Those who did for the most part never returned which was punishment enough in Hermie's mind. Others were found and killed by special guard members called 'Rogue Hunters'. Hermie needed Winter to explain what would ever make him feel such an extreme and dangerous action was necessary.

Winter placed his hands gently on Hermie's shoulders, locking his gaze tightly into her eyes. His smile now was gone.

“Hermie, I know what they have been doing here with us, sending you off to mimic different invee's talents and having me guess at them and analyze them. They have been preparing you to become a spy. Someone who will need to take on an identity not your own and maintain it for as long as the mission requires, easily months or even years at a time in some remote place in the universe. I could not endure the thought that you could be sent away from me for so long, and that is exactly what they are planning to do.”

He stepped toward her and embraced her. He then spoke very quietly to her.

“I arranged things so that you would mimic this flying man's talent so that you could fly us both off The High Plateau. Once down there, there is an adept in Tibria that will send us to a rogue world. Then we will be free to be together for eternity”.

“But Winter”, Hermie's voice broke slightly, “what will we do to survive out there?”

Winter placed a hand on top of her head and began to run his fingers through her hair.

“Hermie, with your ability to mimic the talents of others combined with my ability to identify all the who's and what's, very little will be beyond our reach. I've thought it all out. At first we will find talented thieves, I will do that. You will then barrow their talents and use them to steal things they were planning to steal themselves. We then will move on, leaving each thief to take the blame. The thieves will get what they deserve and we will get what we need to survive and then some. We will be like vigilantes of sorts.”

“But Winter we would still be thieves ourselves, criminals. It would be ...”

Hermie looked into Winter's eyes. As she did her reservations vanished. It became clear to her that he was all that mattered to her. Any risk for her to be with him was worth it.

“How could I doubt the mind of Winter? Any life with you is better than anything else. When do you want me to sprout these wings and fly us away from here?”

Winter turned his back to her and said, “The sooner the better Hermie. My manipulations will be discovered sooner or later. We need to be off before they are.”

Then the sound like a tent flap blowing in a stiff wind suddenly came from Hermie's back as she extended her mimicked wings and grabbed hold of Winter. The two lifted into the air. The scene of the lake, the forest, and the cascades along the cliff line began to fall beneath them. The gold and greens of the forest canopy became more like a mass of color than a collection of trees. Hermie clung tightly to Winter at first but as she picked up speed she found that the wind resistance tended to push Winter against her allowing her to rest her arms.

He pointed out a direction for her to fly and they darted off in accordance. Soon they had reached the High Plateau's edge and she swooped down into the clouds beneath it. All became a solid grayish white as the sound of wind rushing past them filled Hermie's ears. Then there was silence and the grayish white gave way to the fine details of a black sphere with geometric patterns carved into its smooth surface. More years had passed. Now Hermie found herself looking into a glass museum display case.

She just needed to reach through the clear glass case as though it were not there, grab the black artifact, and run through a few walls as though they weren't there until she was outside the museum. With the talent she had recently mimicked that all would be simple. Then she would meet Winter at the ship with the artifact and they would be on there way to yet another world, another score completed by the greatest and least known thieves in the universe. It was a typical routine job for them except for one unusual detail. Johann, the thief who's talent she was mimicking risked not being in town when they stole it, and that would spoil their efforts to frame him. He seemed to be quite the spontaneous traveler, so Winter had taken it upon himself to strike up a friendship with the thief and make sure he was entertaining him near the museum when Hermie performed the heist.

Hermie performed her part without complication, as a matter of fact she could not remember if she had passed through three or five walls on her way. These sorts of things were routine and easy for her. The only details that mattered much to her anymore were the details of her moments spent with Winter. As she made her way out of an ally by the museum the bracelet on her left wrist started to vibrate slightly. It was Winter. He needed to talk to her before she got to the ship for some reason. This was very unusual. She lifted the bracelet to her mouth and spoke into it.

“Winter?”

“No time to talk.” Winter's voice came excitedly out of the bracelet. “Johann is an agent of Emperor Kahzmit. He knows what we've done. You must run and save yourself now!”

“Winter?!”, Hermie shouted into the bracelet.

“I can't get away. He will have me soon. Run Hermie, run!”

In the background, she could hear a pounding and then a crashing sound. Then she heard Winter give out an agonizing scream that cut off in the middle. Hermie stopped in her tracks to take in what just happened. After several seconds she threw the artifact down the ally the way she had come. It could be heard bouncing off the ground and then a wall before crashing into some unseen pile of objects in the darkness.

“No!”, she shouted half sobbing. “You can have your stupid artifact. Give me my Winter back! All I want is Winter.”

She leaned over sobbing. A few tears hit the gravel below her. Then she remembered that she was also in danger and needed to run, as Winter asked her to. She ran out of the ally and down the street. She spotted a wooded area just a block away and started to run towards it. Her tears were still flowing and breaths were mixed with sobs as she went. Before she reached the woods she was no longer able to see through her tears. She ran on blindly. Taking sobbing breaths, and saying to herself with words that she could barely fit between them all, “Where will I go without him?”.

She could not see. It was as if her tears were replaced with a dark blind fold. Then suddenly there was light and clearness. Perhaps only a few months had passed this time. Her tears were gone and she was standing in a frilly pink bathrobe in front of a refrigerator, her hand on the door handle.

Now we she was on Earth, a planet forbidden for all invee. She fled to here because she knew it would be the last place anyone would expect her to go, maybe someone else with a different ability but not a mimicker. She would have no invee to mimic on this forbidden planet. All she could do was torture herself by trying to mimic some of the normal folk and in so doing see what abilities they would have if they were invee, what abilities she could not use to save herself. It would only be a matter of time before she would get caught by rogue-hunters or maybe the other enforcers, the torchites. All she seemed to achieve by coming to Earth was to buy herself time, but time for what? It was like hiding down a well with no way to get back out.

Things, however were looking up for her as she stood there in front of a refrigerator. Someone had unwittingly thrown her rope, so to speak. His name was Jeff Proctor, a young archaeologist who sought help translating some unidentified text on some surprisingly ancient European artifacts. Hermie found his plea on the internet and recognized the sample text as her own people's writings. A few email exchanges later she was hired to assist him and a few evenings later she was living with him in his apartment.

The writings were the account of some member of a royal court named Scribner who was sent to hide objects referred to as “golden apples”. To Jeff these golden apples were well known objects of myths and legends, but to Hermie, she knew their powerful reality. The golden apples were what transformed normal humans into magical beings, what her people are, invee. All of the apples were supposed to have been removed from Earth under the same treaty with the Torchites that made Earth a forbidden destination for invee, but rumors abounded that a few had not been accounted for. These writings of Scribner gave Hermie hope that the rumors were true. If she could get these golden apples she could bring out the normal humans' abilities and mimic them. Jeff had provided her a “rope up”.

Becoming Jeff's live in girlfriend just seemed smart to Hermie. He was her way to her goals so it made sense to give him as much reason as possible to keep her with him until she got what she needed from him. This became especially true to her when she discovered what Jeff's ability would be as an invee. He would be a creator, one of the most powerful by far of the invee abilities. A creator is what Kahzmit is, the man who took Winter from her. She could not believe her luck. In Jeff Proctor she found, not only her way off Earth but a way to turn her grief into revenge. Vengeance was now her ultimate goal. There was no reason to leave Earth, to save herself, except to avenge her beloved Winter.

Pulling the door open she grabbed the milk and sniffed it. Her nose wrinkled and the rest of her face started to follow. It had definitely gone sour. The sink was just an about face and half step away so she soon was pouring the smelly liquid down the drain and running the water after it.

As she did this it dawned on her that the sour milk could easily be Jeff some day. Once they leave Earth and he discovers that she is bent on avenging the death of her one true love, he may not want any more of it. When that happens she will have to be ready to quickly mimic his ability and leave him, maybe even kill him. She believed Winter was too good of a man not to be avenged, even if other innocent men must die to achieve it. While she hoped that Jeff wouldn't make that necessary, she was now prepared. Besides, she actually found Jeff to be an annoyingly wimpy man. He couldn't even stand up to his supervising professor most of the time. In a way he was already like that sour milk to her. That she should have to sleep with such a wimp in order to avenge Winter – a man who defied the entire Invee Republic for her love – sickened her.

Hearing the apartment door start to open, she quickly tossed the empty milk carton into the waste can and put on a smile.

“I have good news Love Bunny”, said Jeff, “We will be leaving for Croatia even sooner than we had hoped.” Jeff Proctor, a brown haired brown eyed young man with a thin nose, closed the door behind him. He then walked over to the kitchen counter and placed a small plastic bag down. “As a matter of fact we need to start packing because the plane leaves Lexington in three and a half hours.”

With that news, Hermie found it much easier to smile at the man she had just been equating to sour milk. The image of her beloved Winter flashed through her mind. Vengeance was growing nearer.

“Soon, my beloved Jeff, we will find the golden apples of legend.”

She reached across the counter and grasped the hand he was using to pull prescription bottles out of the bag.

“When you partake of one of those apples you will no longer need those chemicals.”

Jeff stopped and looked Hermie right in the eyes.

“I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing it for you and for my discipline, archeology. My supervising professor has just approved me going on the Croatian pyramid dig but he warned me that anything I may find to support that the mountain is in fact a pyramid will be best kept to myself until well after I earn my doctorate. He says the powers that be are nowhere near ready to accept the existence of human civilizations in Europe predating the Egyptians. I fear he may not have really intended to give me the approval. I think he was counting on me being brought to my senses before I could secure transportation. Why else would he approve of me doing something that he thinks wont help me get my doctorate. We got lucky to get such an early flight. I want to get out of here while he is still technically approving the trip.”

Hermie stepped around the counter and moved close to Jeff. He immediately embraced her. Hermie spoke with the kind of voice one might use to talk to a cute puppy.

“You are such a clever one.”

They kissed for a second or two. Then with her normal voice, “I must get packing. The golden apples and Jeff Proctor's destiny awaits us”.

The alarm by Chipper's bed went off and the dream was done. Chipper's eyes opened suddenly as if he had been awaken by a dowse of cold water.

“Golden apples? Croatia? Pyramid?”, he spoke to himself. “Yuck! I kissed a .. Yuck!”.

Chipper sat up turned his legs so that they dangled over the side of his bed. Another one of those dreams, Kieth said he would have more. He looked at his laptop on the rustic wooden desk across the room. He thought perhaps he could do a search on the golden apples or the name 'Jeff Proctor' but then he noticed the dark brown rock on his bed-stand. Grasping the rock in his hand he held it out in front of him. This time he had something different to do. The stone began to glow red.