Aur Child

Tieri-Na knew that time moved faster in the virtual world. What seemed to be weeks or months in here could be minutes or hours in the physical world. Conversations that lasted hours here were a blink of an eye out there. This, Tieri thought, might be a good thing. Before she learned about this, she had worried that all the time she spent here would cause so much suffering to her sister Sann-Na and Uncle Rik-Na. But now, she took solace in the fact that she hadn’t been away too long.

But there had been so much waiting. Years living in this small mountain village. Many months before that hiking through her conjured forests. Countless days studying archival materials and of course, those magical escapades with Calliope. She had wasted what seemed like months sulking on her own after the separation with Calliope. And most recently, after her warning from Digambar, she had whiled away weeks waiting for Freyja to make her next move. “Wait until we know what they’re after …and what to give them,” was the advice from Digambar. Then, they would finalize the plan on how to free Tieri. So, Tieri waited. It all hinged upon the appearance of Kjell-Tors. Now, the familiar figure, recognizable to her just as easily through stands of pine and birch, the man she had known since her childhood, presented itself striding into the village as if he had lived there all his life.

Tieri silently watched Kjell-Tors approach in her direction. What a clever scheme for Freyja, she thought. He would be received as a familiar confidant in this miserable place. A relief to her after all this time on her own. And to send an exosoul in his body to Sann-Na. She would know nothing of it. She would trust him. Tieri must find a way to frustrate those plans. And she must be careful in her conversations here with Kjell. If she hadn’t been warned, he might have just got her to give up the critical facts Freyja needed. That wasn’t likely now.

“Kjell-Tors,” she said in the traditional passive tone of a forest hail, “would you walk past me without any gesture of greeting?”

Kjell-Tors stopped and snapped his head up from apparent musings. His face swept away all introspections to expose a broad, bearded smile. “Tieri!” he said, with a spin, stepping excitedly towards her. Before she had a chance to react, he engulfed her in a warm embrace. Tieri’s first genuine embrace for too long. “You are here!” he said. “Apollo said so, but I haven’t seen you anywhere.”

Tieri could not deny the lure of this deception. Her body tingled upon contact with the man she had spent countless hours with as a child – exploring the forests, hunting squirrels with their bows, getting into more trouble than they could get out of. They had been infamous among the Tors clan for sneaking around that village, playing clever pranks, and attempting word tricks with anyone they could trap. They had been so close for so long that most villagers considered the pair destined to pledge themselves to one another.

Tieri-Na held him at arm’s length and smiled back into his beaming, vigorous eyes. She felt his arm to make sure he was really there. She recalled those years of intense joy as bosom buddies. Innocent and unstoppable, the two children never imagined they would want anything else. She had loved him like a brother in those days. And she never forgave him for courting Sann-Na.

She realized that she was still holding onto his arm with a fierce grip. Earthsense reminded her that they were indeed both there, but only virtually. She winked at him with that subtle signal they had used countless times in their youth. He started with confusion but gave the requisite smirk of playing along. Then, she pressed her lips to his with all the passion she could conjure.

Kjell-Tors pushed her back, stammering, “What? What is this?”

“It’s a miracle you’re here, Kjell. I have been so alone!” And again, she stole an enthusiastic kiss from him as she wrapped her arms around his massive shoulders.

“I … I don’t understand,” he muttered, as they stared into one another’s eyes with foreheads pressed together. “Perhaps this place has done the same to you as it has to me?”

Tieri frowned. That was unlikely.

“It’s just that I thought I might never see you again. But you’ve come for me. For us to be together is all I’ve wanted since I got here. It matters not if on Earth or here. We pledged ourselves to one another. And now, we can fulfill that pledge here. Together. Forever.”

Once again, before he could speak, she pulled him towards her and extracted another amorous kiss. Kjell’s face could not disguise his confusion. He managed to break away a third time.

“But Tieri, we’re not …” he began, but he stopped speaking. He stood there frozen with his mouth open where he had formed his last word. Tieri saw his expression: like trying to catch the distant call of a cuckoo through the early summer trees. She could have expected that strange reaction, because it was the first time Kjell had ever been engaged in a descant. Tieri now employed that skill taught to her by Calliope to speak with him in private.

“Don’t speak, Kjell. Just listen to me.”

But this was not enough. In that silence, she heard that other flow of communication that would otherwise never escape the skull of another. But Calliope had taught her well. She had learned to sense and hear those thoughts. The very same thoughts that undoubtedly Freyja and Apollo and any other Guest might hear if they were not hidden from eavesdrop. With the slightest twitch of her forehead, she presented the question to Kjell by which he might unwittingly obscure his thoughts from others.

“Do you wish others to hear your thoughts at this moment?” she asked him in descant.

The man’s head bobbled confusedly at this silent intrusion to his mind, yet the answer was clear. In a stuttered croak, he spoke the word whose thought served as a proverbial switch only flickable from the inside.

Tieri willed her words freely to Kjell yet her face remained fixed in the pantomime of a loving stare. She saw Kjell’s mouth open reflexively in his apparent shock.

“They are listening to everything we say. They hear your thoughts without willing them not to. They watch us right now. Freyja, Apollo, they’re using you to bait me, to trick us into revealing information about Sann-Na. They are hunting her, Kjell. All we can do to protect her is tell them nothing. Or, more than that, we must confuse them. Fill them with lies that they believe to be truths. Can you do that? For her? Nod your head, Kjell”

He did so.

“But how can you speak like that?” he said, incapable of willing the descant.

Tieri responded to him likewise, with a second wink, “You can talk to me, my love,” she said. “Tell me how you feel.”

This time, Kjell’s smirk was accompanied by cognition. A thrill of excitement shot through Tieri’s spine. This might work, she thought to herself.

“I …I’ve said so much already,” Kjell replied. “So much I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s ok, I forgive you, dear.” She petted down the frazzled locks on the side of his head. “How could you know we would ever be together again. But tell me,” she continued, “what have you been doing here? You’ve met the stewards? What have you spoken about? How did you get here?”

Kjell looked around. She had managed to hide his thoughts, but she knew him through and though. He always struggled at first in their charades to get his bearings and fit his role. He would be thinking how to act the part. He would know what he’s already said is acceptable to repeat, to fill her in, and he would fumble to avoid revealing anything new. His thoughts were hidden, if only he could manage not to speak them.

“I was following your sister. She was with an outlander. They trekked up to the caves of giants with a large box concealed in a bag. They went in and came out. I went in afterwards to see what they had been up to and….”

“...and the door shut behind you,” interrupted Tieri.

“Exactly!” Kjell said.

“Is Sann-Na safe?”

“I believe so. Last I saw, she was racing from the cave on skis. She was furious with the outlander.”

“What about the outlander, Kjell?”

“He’s from the southern continent, is what he told me and Lars. I …I think he’s been trapping people in here. I told Freyja and Apollo that.” A small flicker came to his eyes, “You know them, right? The stewards?”

She smirked. He was now playing along nicely.

“I know them, yes.”

“Yeah, well, I told them how Farfar Tors said I should follow them.”

Tieri-Na looked skeptically at Kjell-Tors, “Are you so confident to trust our captors?”

Kjell paused for a moment.

“Well, what else could I do?”

“I’ve told them nothing, myself. Just enough at first to get my bearings here. We have no idea what they’re doing, Kjell. They take us here and then what? Why? They tell us nothing. Why should I trust them?” She said these things in a bold voice as much for the stewards to hear as for Kjell.

“But Apollo seems like a good guy. And,” he said with a quirk in his head and the lifting of one eyebrow in the expression that Tieri knew was always a precursor to mischief, “if they’re listening all the time, then they already know that we’re pledged.”

Her lips tightened. She shook her head in dramatic fashion.

“What’s done is done, I guess.” She sighed.

“And,” he used his fingers to count off more facts he had revealed, “they also already know that Lars-Tors and I met them on the ice. And they already know their names, thanks to my big mouth,” Kjell grimaced with that old expression of a seasoned trickster.

He continued counting his disclosures, “And they already know you two are sisters.” He leaned in closer to her and spoke in a quieter voice, “I may have also told them that you’re both couriers.”

She punched his arm in an act of affront and said, “You are an idiot. Do you ever shut up?”

Then, he leaned over her and whispered, “You’re the fool who revealed that we’re pledged!” He winked at her and kissed her fervidly. It was clever. Planting false seeds. Stomping over the tracks. It was something they might have cooked up once before, albeit more innocently. She could at least reward this attempt at obfuscation by playing along for a moment. Or, perhaps, enjoying the moment.

But, as usual, Kjell took the scene too far. She firmly pushed him back and said in a whisper, “There’s no time for that anymore. We must be careful what we say to them. You haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

Kjell licked his lips. The haziness faded from his eyes. “Tracking a pack of utahraptors with Apollo,” he said, resuming a less intense subject. “We downed three of them. You can’t believe how sensitive their noses are. We had to eliminate our scent, or we would never have been able to approach the pack. We used powerful bows. It was amazing.”

Tieri listened attentively. Boring as this might be, it was good, she knew, to dilute the data. Digambar had taught her that as well.

“We just left them there!” Kjell continued, full of energy to relate this experience. “It was wild. Those creatures, they’re unbelievably smart. Can you imagine, killing them for sport?”

From his pocket, he extracted the enormous claw of one of those creatures and held it out for her to see. Tieri took it into her hand and pressed the sharp tip of it with her finger.

“It’s not real, Kjell. None of this is real. You and I aren’t real. It’s all a virtual construct. An approximation. They’re powerless. You know that, right?”

Kjell nodded. “Apollo told me something like that too. He said it’s all just a best guess of what things might be like.”

“Yeah, best guess for a civilian compound facilities manager, not a …” Tieri searched for the words Calliope had taught her, “Cretaceous paleontologist.” But it didn’t matter, because Kjell had had no idea what that meant.

“So,” she said, “you’re enjoying yourself here?”

“Well,” Kjell shrugged his shoulders, “there are downsides,” he said. “The earthsense is difficult to adjust to.”

“Yeah, well, that fades over time,” she said.

“Honestly, I don’t notice it much anymore. It just comes as a surprise sometimes.”

“Yes, once in a while, there can still be surprises here,” she said.