Mall of Mâvarin, Part Seven

I realized last week that this serial is a total spoiler with respect to both books. Oh, well--too late to worry about that now!

The story so far:

Part One: Cathy and Carl Salazar are on their way to high school in Dewitt, NY when their uncle and guardian, Jamie Barrett, suddenly starts behaving strangely. After referring to the twins by odd names and promising to pick them up later in the carriage, Uncle Jamie looks confused--but denies that there's anything wrong.

Part Two: Cathy and Carl tell their friend Randy about their Uncle Jamie's words. Randy seems to know (or at least suspect) something about it, but delays telling them what it is. When Cathy mentions that Randy rolled the r in the word "trrust," Randy looks frightened and rushes off.

Part Three: Cathy notices that some of her teachers are also behaving strangely. Even she experiences odd thoughts and memories as the day wears on. At lunch, Randy tells Cathy and Carl that the impressions of another life that people are receiving are tied in with dreams he's had about a country called Mâvarin, in which Cathy and Carl are Queen Cathma and King Carli. Randy has begun writing down the dreams in story form. Randy's main worry is that in the dreams, he's a monster. Carl suddenly remembers what kind of monster Rani Fost is in Mâvarin: a tengrem.

Part Four: Carl starts to remember a life in Mâvarin, and Cathy soon realizes that the same is happening to her. Randy, who hasn't confided in anyone else but Mr. Stockwell, the psychology teacher, is deeply worried that he is turning into a tengrem. Cathy and Randy hope to discuss the situation further with Mr. Stockwell, but the teacher is absent. However, he has left a note for Randy that implies that Mr. Stockwell also remembers another life--as Fayubi the Seer, Mâvarin's royal mage. Carl insists that Randy should come along to Shoppingtown Mall with the twins after school.

Part Five: Cathy, Carl, Randy and Uncle Jami are increasingly overwhelemed by memories of Mâvarin as they approach Shoppingtown. Inside they meet Fabian Stockwell, who tells them that that the source of the influx of otherworld memories (and spirits of their other selves?) is somewhere in the mall. Randy may hold the key to restoring their identities--but Randy has gone feral, his tengrem instincts aroused by the sight of rabbits in a pet shop.

Part Six: Carl tries to talk to Randy while Fabian rushes off to find something that will help Randy think like a human. Ultimately, however, it is the arrival of Randy's creative writing teacher that distracts him from his hunting instincts. In this world she is Sheila Crouse, but in Mâvarin she is Rani's former mentor, Shela Cados. Fabian returns from J.C. Penney with a necklace that he claims will help Randy to think like a human. They all go upstairs, followed by other mall-goers, where they find a miniature castle. In front of it sits a man with a book, half-surrounded by police and mall security guards. Cathy approaches the man with the book, and asks whether he's responsible for "all this."

Part Seven: The Man With the Book

“That’s hard to say,” the man replied. “Why don’t you tell me what you mean by ‘all this.’”

“Don’t trust him, Your Majesty,” said the older policeman, who came striding over with Fabian and Sheila. “He’s a mage,and not at all forthcoming with information. I’d arrest him if I thought it would help.”

The man with the book looked surprised to hear the words “Your Majesty,” and annoyed with the description of himself. “On the contrary,” he said. “I’ll be happy to provide what answers I can, if you’ll just give me a little time to work out what they are.”

“See what I mean?” said the policeman. “He’s stalling.”

Cathy looked more closely at the policeman. It seemed odd to see him wearing a cotton uniform instead of one of silk. “Wil? Is that you?” she asked.

The man who looked like Commander Wil Masan grimaced. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Maybe this guy knows the answer, but I don’t.”

Cathy turned back to the man with the book. “Please tell us what you do know about this. Maybe we can work out the rest from there.”

The alleged mage sighed. “Look, ‘Your Majesty,’ I still don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know who you people are, or what you think I’ve done, but I’m having my own problems here. All I did was follow Toujours Chez Moi between worlds, only to discover that my castle was miniaturized, and most of my magic was gone.”

“What world were you in before this one?” Randy asked.

“I don’t know that it had a particular name, other than ‘the world’ or Earth,” the man said. “Most of them don’t. The country was called Mâvarin.”

Fabian waggled his eyebrows at the man. “You came here through a portal from Mâvarin?”

The man shook his head. “Not through a portal. I’m my own portal. Usually I’m drawn between worlds involuntarily, and my home follows after. This time Toujours Chez Moi disappeared on its own, and I tried to catch up with it. Clearly, though, something’s gone wrong somewhere. I don’t live in a pint-size castle.”

“But who are you?” Carl asked. “You still haven’t said.”

“Oh! Sorry, but you didn’t ask until just now. I’m called Joshua Wander. Josh for short. Pardon my impertinence, but who are you people? You don’t look like royalty, and this is hardly the setting for people called ‘Your Majesty.’”

“That’s true,” Cathy said. “If this were Mâvarin, we wouldn’t be dressed as high school students, which is all my brother and I are in this world. But all day we’ve been remembering another world, in which we’re the king and queen of Mâvarin.”

“Really!” said Joshua Wander. “That’s very interesting. I suppose that explains your acceptance of the concept of alternate realities.”

“Are you saying you had nothing to do with what’s happening to us?” Carl asked.

Josh shrugged. “I wouldn’t go that far, but I certainly didn’t do anything to you deliberately. I’ve traveled between worlds at least a hundred times over the past several decades, and nothing like this has ever happened before. Well, except for the first time, and that was a special case.”

“What happened then?” Randy asked.

Josh grimaced. “I was inhabited by the spirit of the woman I loved, who had just died,” he said. Fabian looked startled. “Not the same thing at all, really,” Josh continued sadly.

“So you have no idea how this happened,” said Carl.

“The only thing I can think of is that there’s something about these two particular worlds that makes them vulnerable to bleed-through from other realities. Either that, or there’s something in the spell I used that I don’t know about. As I said, I usually travel between worlds involuntarily.”

“May I see the spell you used?” Fabian asked.

Josh looked surprised. “Whatever for? That’s nothing you can learn from it. It’s in an unknown language that resists translation.”

“Nevertheless, I’d like to try,” Fabian said.

“Has your transformation progressed so far, Fabian, that you have the requisite knowledge?” Sheila Crouse asked.

“I believe so,” Fabian said. “I have been in this mall longer than the rest of you, soaking up my other self.”

Joshua Wander handed over the leather book. “All right, but be careful with it. A friend of mine wrote it out for me, many years ago. I still don’t understand it all, but losing it would be a major inconvenience.” He pointed out a particular page, marked with a Pavone’s Pizza napkin. “This is the spell, here. It’s sort of a multidimensional ‘find’ spell.”

Fabian looked at the page and nodded. “You’re right,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s exactly what it is.”

Welcome to Mâvarin (info on the books and characters)

Past installments of this and other past fiction are on the sidebar.

Mall of Mâvarin, Part Six

I'm in danger of catching up with my handwritten draft here. I'd better get writing!

The story so far:

Part One: Cathy and Carl Salazar are on their way to high school in Dewitt, NY when their uncle and guardian, Jamie Barrett, suddenly starts behaving strangely. After referring to the twins by odd names and promising to pick them up later in the carriage, Uncle Jamie looks confused--but denies that there's anything wrong.

Part Two: Cathy and Carl tell their friend Randy about their Uncle Jamie's words. Randy seems to know (or at least suspect) something about it, but delays telling them what it is. When Cathy mentions that Randy rolled the r in the word "trrust," Randy looks frightened and rushes off.

Part Three: Cathy notices that some of her teachers are also behaving strangely. Even she experiences odd thoughts and memories as the day wears on. At lunch, Randy tells Cathy and Carl that the impressions of another life that people are receiving are tied in with dreams he's had about a country called Mâvarin, in which Cathy and Carl are Queen Cathma and King Carli. Randy has begun writing down the dreams in story form. Randy's main worry is that in the dreams, he's a monster. Carl suddenly remembers what kind of monster Rani Fost is in Mâvarin: a tengrem.

Part Four: Carl starts to remember a life in Mâvarin, and Cathy soon realizes that the same is happening to her. Randy, who hasn't confided in anyone else but Mr. Stockwell, the psychology teacher, is deeply worried that he is turning into a tengrem. Cathy and Randy hope to discuss the situation further with Mr. Stockwell, but the teacher is absent. However, he has left a note for Randy that implies that Mr. Stockwell also remembers another life--as Fayubi the Seer, Mâvarin's royal mage. Carl insists that Randy should come along to Shoppingtown Mall with the twins after school.

Part Five: Cathy, Carl, Randy and Uncle Jami are increasingly overwhelemed by memories of Mâvarin as they approach Shoppingtown. Inside they meet Fabian Stockwell, who tells them that that the source of the influx of otherworld memories (and spirits of their other selves?) is somewhere in the mall. Randy may hold the key to restoring their identities--but Randy has gone feral, his tengrem instincts aroused by the sight of rabbits in a pet shop.

Part Six: Lost at the Mall

“Rrabbits,” Randy agreed. He panted hungrily.

“Rats. He’s gone,” Cathy said. “Carli—I mean Carl—do you think you can get through to him?”

Carl grimaced. “I’ll try,” he said.

“I’ll be right back,” Fabian said. The schoolteacher-mage sprinted off toward Penney’s, of all places, leaving the others standing with the half-feral teenager.

“Randy, listen to me,” Carl said. “Never mind the rabbits. You don’t need them.”

“Hungrry,” Randy said. “Food.”

“There’s better food than rabbits,” Carl said. “Wouldn’t you rather have pizza?”

“No. Rrabbit. Chase. Catch. Fun.”

“You can’t catch a rabbit, Randy,” Cathy said. “You’re human. You’re not fast enough.”

Randy just whimpered again.

“If this were fiction, I would call your friend’s condition an obvious metaphor for alienation and adolescent hormonal activity,” said a voice behind them. Cathy turned. Randy’s creative writing teacher stood there, professionally attired in a blue dress and yellow belt. Despite Ms. Crouse’s dark hair and complexion, Cathy now recognized her as Shela Cados, the twins’ and Rani’s selmûn mentor. “I would also find selmûn dialogue to be annoyingly stilted,” she added. She did not smile at the self-criticism.

The teacher’s arrival served to distract Randy from his fascination with the rabbits. “Shela!” he said. “How did you know to come here?”

“As I drove toward Syracuse after school,” the teacher explained, “I became aware that my otherworld memories and perceptions grew more intense in the vicinity of Shoppingtown. It seemed reasonable to investigate.”

“Does that mean that if we got far enough away from here, we’d feel like Americans instead of Mâvarinû?” Jamie asked.

“I suspect that it would merely retard our mental transformations, not reverse them,” said Sheila Crouse. “It would not solve the underlying problem, or help other people who are affected by this. Eventually, everyone on the planet who has a Mâvarinû counterpart might find it difficult to function in a technology-based culture.”

“That’s assuming we all forget how to Google and so on,” Carl said.

“That is not the only issue,” Sheila said. “There is also the question of sanity. These unlikely memories may threaten the mental health of some people, and cause the institutionalization of others, whether they need psychological treatment or not.”

“Speaking of which, here comes Fabian,” Carl said. The psychology teacher could be seen hurrying back from wherever he’d just been.

“I doubt that a psychiatrist can solve my prroblem,” Randy said. “Much less a psych teacher.”

“You may be surprised,” Fabian said. He was a little out of breath. He held up a J.C. Penney shopping bag. “I have something here that should help.” He opened the bag and extracted a string of chunky white plastic beads. “I know that this doesn’t look like much, but I bought it from Barry Ramirez.”

“Who is Barry Ramirez?” Cathy asked.

“He works in the jewelry and watch department at Penney’s. You know him as Barselti.”

Now that Fabian mentioned it, Cathy did remember Barselti. He was Li Ramet’s brother, a transformation mage who also did some undercover work.

Randy looked doubtfully at the necklace. “And this is supposed to keep me from becoming a tengrem? It’s not even made of real stones.”

“You’re not a real tengrem,” Fabian said. “These beads are to keep you from thinking like one.”

Randy shrugged, and slipped the necklace over his head. It disappeared beneath his Yellow Submarine T-shirt. He took a deep breath. “We’ll see,” he said. “I think…I think I feel a little better.”

“You sound better,” Carl said. “What now?”

“We find the source of the problem, and we deal with it,” Cathy said. The others all looked at her. “Somehow,” she added.

“Well, as long as you have a specific plan,” Carl said.

“This way, I think,” Fabian said.

The mage-school teacher led them upstairs to the main floor of the mall. Large numbers of people were going in the same direction, most of them without shopping bags in their hands. Many of them appeared to be deliberately following Cathy and Carl. Cathy thought she saw the Tilen brothers in the crowd, dressed in contrasting Hawaiian shirts, and Suri Pelch, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, looking around him in fear and wonder. Cathy practiced her smile of royal assurance as she walked on.

The nexus of the mall was a small open area, where concession carts were seasonally pushed aside to make room for Santa Claus or Easter Bunny photo operations. Today the carts were displaced by something else entirely: a tiny blue castle, perhaps twenty feet high, like the central landmark of a miniature gold course. A middle-aged man with dark, curly hair, wire rim glasses, a pointed hat and an outfit that was more Hogwarts than Mâvarin sat cross-legged in front of it, reading intently from a thick book with a brown leather binding. Half a dozen police officers stood nearby, in animated discussion with a man in a gray business suit.

Cathy approached the man with the book, followed by Carl and Randy. This drew the immediate attention of the police. One of them reached out to prevent a younger officer from trying to deter Cathy from reaching the guy in the wizard outfit.

The man looked up from his book.

“Hello,” Cathy said. “Are you responsible for all this?”

Welcome to Mâvarin (info on the books and characters)

Past installments of this and other fiction are on the sidebar.

Mall of Mâvarin, Part Five

The story so far:

Part One: Cathy and Carl Salazar are on their way to high school in Dewitt, NY when their uncle and guardian, Jamie Barrett, suddenly starts behaving strangely. After referring to the twins by odd names and promising to pick them up later in the carriage, Uncle Jamie looks confused--but denies that there's anything wrong.

Part Two: Cathy and Carl tell their friend Randy about their Uncle Jamie's words. Randy seems to know (or at least suspect) something about it, but delays telling them what it is. When Cathy mentions that Randy rolled the r in the word "trrust," Randy looks frightened and rushes off.

Part Three: Cathy notices that some of her teachers are also behaving strangely. Even she experiences odd thoughts and memories as the day wears on. At lunch, Randy tells Cathy and Carl that the impressions of another life that people are receiving are tied in with dreams he's had about a country called Mâvarin, in which Cathy and Carl are Queen Cathma and King Carli. Randy has begun writing down the dreams in story form. Randy's main worry is that in the dreams, he's a monster. Carl suddenly remembers what kind of monster Rani Fost is in Mâvarin: a tengrem.

Part Four: Carl starts to remember a life in Mâvarin, and Cathy soon realizes that the same is happening to her. Randy, who hasn't confided in anyone else but Mr. Stockwell, the psychology teacher, is deeply worried that he is turning into a tengrem himself. Cathy and Randy hope to discuss the situation further with Mr. Stockwell, but the teacher is absent. However, he has left a note for Randy that implies that Mr. Stockwell also remembers another life--as Fayubi the Seer, Mâvarin's royal mage. Carl insists that Randy should come along to Shoppingtown Mall with the twins after school.

Part Five: All Roads Lead to the Mall

Uncle Jamie pulled up in the Saturn, driving slowly. “I’m not sure I should be driving you at all today,” he told the twins as they climbed in, Cathy in front, Carl in back with Randy, “let alone to Shoppingtown. I’ve felt very strange all day. Hi, Randy.”

“I think…I think we have to go to the mall anyway,” Randy said slowly. “All of us.”

“You changed your mind?” Carl asked.

Randy nodded. “I still don’t want to go, but I have a feeling it’s important.”

“Shoppingtown is important?” Cathy asked. “Why?”

“I don’t know why, but it is.”

“Then let’s go, and find out why,” Carl said.

They were soon on Genesee Street, heading for Erie Boulevard. It was supposed to be only a five minute drive, but Uncle Jamie was stopping at every intersection, peering in all directions, his brows creased in concentration. “Am I going in the right direction? I feel lost. I don’t know whether I’m going to Shoppingtown or the Greedy Sparrow.”

“I keep looking for the Palace,” Carl admitted.

“And the River,” Randy added.

“Stop it, all of you. We’re not in Mâvarin,” Cathy said. “We don’t even know for sure that it exists. This is the way to Shoppingtown, in Dewitt, NY, in the real world. When we get there, I think you should come in with us, Uncle Jamie, just as Randy said.”

Uncle Jamie put the car in park at the Genesee and Erie red light. He looked around, at Cathy and then at the two boys. “Will one of you please tell me what’s happening?” he said.

“We’re turning into the people in Randy’s dreams,” Carl said.

“Why? How?” Uncle Jamie’s voice was close to panic. “Who could do such a thing, and why would they bother?”

“We don’t know,” Cathy said.

“I don’t understand it,” Randy said. “If my newest memories are current, Mâvarin barely has any enemies these days. Even if someone from Mâton wanted to cause trouble, why would they go after the people we were this morning? We’re nothing to them.”

“What if the people in Mâvarin are turning into us, as we turn into them?” Cathy said. “Queen Cathma and King Carli could be in the Palace right now, thinking about blogging and homework, and starting to forget their own lives.”

“Are we really forgetting anything, though?” Carl asked. “Or are we just remembering their lives, and our lives too? And if the same thing happens to the real Carli, who’s to say that knowledge of trig and American History won’t be useful to him someday?”

“Trig will never be useful,” Randy snorted—almost literally. “Not to him, and not to us.”

Uncle Jamie laughed. “I used to say that about algebra.”

“And do you use it?” Carl asked.

Uncle Jamie shrugged. “Once in a while.” He pulled into the Shoppingtown lot, and parked on the lower level by Kaufmann’s. “Okay, we’re here. Now what?”

“We go in, I guess,” Cathy said.

Before Cathy got her seat belt unbuckled, Uncle Jamie was there, holding the car door open for her. Their eyes met for a moment. Uncle Jamie shuddered a little, probably in belated recognition that he was treating her like royalty again. Cathy tried to smile reassuringly at him, but said nothing.

Together they made their way through the lower level of Kaufmann’s, with Randy leading the way through menswear and the juniors department. The colors of this year’s fashions struck Cathy as odd, even more unnatural than the sought-after dyes that only a few mages (and Rani’s mom) could produce. The mannequins were almost frightening, the fluorescent light too bright. Cathy was relieved to see the large squared opening that led from Kaufmann’s into the mall itself.

Fabian Stockwell stood there, waiting for them.

“I’m glad you’re all here,” the psychology teacher said. He was dressed almost normally for a J-D teacher, but for once he wasn’t wearing a selection from of his collection of silly ties. His wrinkled, kind face had the same worried expression that Fayubi often wore when things were going badly. “The spell—or whatever—that’s affecting us emanates from this mall. Perhaps together we can find out what to do about it.” Mr. S. smiled. “It also gives me a chance to keep an eye on you, now that you’re in trouble yet again.”

“Hey, this isn’t our fault,” Carl said.

“It seldom is,” said Mr. S. “But there are always choices to be made, no matter where—or who—we are.”

“Yes, but who are we?” Cathy asked. “Am I Cathy, or Cathma? Are you Mr. Stockwell the psych teacher, or Fayubi the Seer?”

The man shrugged. “Logically, I have to be Fabian Stockwell. That is the name that goes with this world. But logic seems to have gone on vacation today. There is no rational explanation for all this, short of admitting the existence of magic. And since Fayubi’s life is predicated on magic, I may have to play the role that goes with that name. Meanwhile, though, as long as we’re not in class, you may as well call me Fabian.”

“Yesterday, you told me…you said you didn’t believe in magic,” Randy said.

“That was before I remembered the forty-five years Fayubi has spent practicing it,” Fabian said.

“But that’s in Mâvarin, not here,” Cathy said. “There can’t be any such thing as magic in Central New York in the 21st Century, can there? Not in this version of reality.”

“In theory, no, there can’t,” said Mr. S. “Not under normal circumstances. But modern astronomy and physics strongly suggest the existence of other universes, and even the possibility of travel between them. We may be remembering an alternative universe that’s as real as this one, the magic from which is somehow leaking through into our world.”

“And turning me into a tengrem,” Randy said morosely. Cathy noticed that his voice was rougher and deeper than it had been earlier in the day.

Fabian frowned. “Randy, you’re human. You’re going to stay human.”

“Yeah, well, don’t—don’t count on it,” Randy growled.

“He may be human, but something is certainly affecting him,” Jamie said. “Are you sure the magic you were talking about can’t really change him physically?”

“Pretty sure,” Fabian said.

“And the source of the magic is somewhere in this mall?” Jamie asked.

“Apparently,” Fabian said.

“Does that mean that somewhere in this mall is a portal into Mâvarin?” Cathy asked.

“Not that I’ve found so far,” Fabian said. “But maybe.”

“We need to find that portal, if there is one,”Jamie said. “It’s probably our only way home.”

“Technically, we are home,” Fabian said. “Fabian Stockwell lives about three miles from this mall. Carl and Cathy are high school students, not royalty. Randy Foster is neither a tengrem nor an apprentice mage, although he does seem to be developing some of the same abilities and disabilities as Rani Fost. You, Jamie Barrett, are not the Royal Stablemaster, nor the former mayor of Liftlabeth. Fayubi and Cathma and the rest are other people, regardless of what we think we remember.”

“Are you sure?” Cathy asked. “These bodies are home, but who are we really? Am I Cathy, with Cathma’s memories, or the spirit of Cathma, in Cathy’s body, or am I just Cathy after all, and suffering from delusions or false memories? I mean, we could all have been hypnotized or drugged or mindpushed—I mean brainwashed.”

“It’s an interesting question, isn’t it?” Fabian said. “I’m guessing that there’s been an actual influx of spirit from the other world, possibly reciprocated as our own spirits leave us. Either way, our synapses have been working hard today, making new connections to encode these memories of another world. Once they are stored in long-term memory, we will all remember Mâvarin until death or Alzheimer’s takes us.”

“Spoken like a true psych teacher,” Cathy said.

“Some of each, actually,” Fabian said cheerfully. “Once all this is resolved, if ever, I hope that Fabian and Fayubi will have learned a lot from each other.”

“How are we going to find out exactly what’s wrong, and how to fix it?” Carl asked. They were well into the lower level of the mall now, across from Pet World, vaguely headed toward J. C. Penney. Around them, shoppers in normal 21st century clothing turned to stare at the two men and three high school students, who were outwardly no different from anyone else.

“Randy’s the key, I think,” Fabian said. “If we can stabilize him mentally, he should be able to reach into the Infinite between worlds, and get everyone’s spirits back where they belong.”

“That’s asking a lot,” Carl said. “Have you noticed the way the other shoppers have been pointing and staring at us? I bet half the people here are part Mâvarinû now, enough to recognize us as Carli and Cathma. And Rani—Rani! I mean Randy! Snap out of it!”

Randy had stopped in front of Pet World, and was staring at the rabbits on the other side of the glass. He whimpered. Carl groaned. “Great,” he said. “It would have to be rabbits.”

Past installments of this and other fiction are on the sidebar.

Welcome to Mâvarin (info on the books and characters)

Mall of Mâvarin, Part Four

For the record, I'm 17 pages into this in the master Word document, with 7 1/2 pages of handwritten draft not yet typed.

Is anybody reading this? I didn't get any comments on Part Three.

The story so far:

Part One: Cathy and Carl Salazar are on their way to high school in Dewitt, NY when their uncle and guardian, Jamie Barrett, suddenly starts behaving strangely. After referring to the twins by odd names and promising to pick them up later in the carriage, Uncle Jamie looks confused--but denies that there's anything wrong.

Part Two: Cathy and Carl tell their friend Randy about their Uncle Jamie's words. Randy seems to know (or at least suspect) something about it, but delays telling them what it is. When Cathy mentions that Randy rolled the r in the word "trrust," Randy looks frightened and rushes off.

Part Three: Cathy notices that some of her teachers are also behaving strangely. Even she experiences odd thoughts and memories as the day wears on. At lunch, Randy tells Cathy and Carl that the impressions of another life that people are receiving are tied in with dreams he's had about a country called Mâvarin, in which Cathy and Carl are Queen Cathma and King Carli. Randy has begun writing down the dreams in story form. Randy's main worry is that in the dreams, he's a monster. Carl suddenly remembers what kind of monster Rani Fost is in Mâvarin.

Part Four: Monsters and Memories

Randy and Cathy both stared at Carl. His eyes were closed, and he was trembling.

“How do you know that?” Randy asked.

“You told Del who you were, when he saw the tengrem in the cave,” Carl said. “I kind of remember it, like something in a dream.”

“You’ve been dreaming of Mâvarin too?” Cathy asked.

“I don’t know,” Carl said. “I don’t usually remember my dreams.”

“All right. Now I’m officially worried,” Cathy said. “Have you told anyone about this, Randy? I mean before now.”

“Are you kidding? ” Randy said. “It’s tough enough, being one of only three African American kids in this whole school, not liking hip-hop and not having any black friends. I don’t want to be the weirdo with the dreams, too. The only people I’ve told are my Mom, Mr. Stockwell and now you two. Ms. Crouse knows about the stories, but not about the dreams.”

“What did Mr. Stockwell say?” Carl asked.

“He made me tell him how long I’ve been having the dreams, and how I feel about being a tengrem in them. I asked him if it was a metaphor for being different from everyone else, and he said, ‘not necessarily.’”

“Sure sounds like one to me,” Cathy said.

Randy shrugged.

“Listen, Uncle Jamie said we could go to the mall after school,” Carl said. “Want to come?”

“Uh, sure. If I haven’t turned into a tengrem by then.”

“You’re actually worried about that, aren’t you?” Cathy said. “Rani, there’s no such thing.”

“Now you’re doing it,” Randy said.

“Doing what?”

“Calling me Rani. It’s all rright. You can call me that if that’s what feels natural to you.“

Cathy shook her head. “I don’t know why I did that. I think I’m just rattled by all this.”

“You don’t remember anything?” Carl asked her. “Doesn’t any of this Mâvarin stuff seem at all familiar to you?”

“No, of course not,” Cathy said, but a moment later she realized it wasn’t true. It did seem familiar, like a movie seen long ago. “Well, a little,” she admitted. She probed for a specific memory, beyond the general sense of déjà vu she was feeling. “Randy, is Mr. Stockwell in your dreams under another name?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Is he called Fayubi? Fayubi the Seer?”

Randy nodded. “That’s rright.” Randy shuddered at the sound of the half-growled word. “Listen, guys. Do my eyes look any different to you? Do you see any yellow in them?”

Cathy stared into Rani’s—Randy’s—eyes. “No, they’re perfectly normal, except that you look scared to death.”

The fear in Randy’s face shifted into sudden anger. “I have a rright to be frightened.”

“Try to calm down,” Carl said. “You know it won’t help if you get upset. We’re on your side.”

Randy took a deep breath. “I know. Thanks.”

“Listen, Mr. Stockwell’s class is next,” Cathy said. “Do you mind if I talk to him with you about this after class?”

“All rright, but let me do the talking to start with,” Randy said. He grimaced again. “I don’t want to tell him everything until I have some idea whether he’s likely to believe us.”

“Or experiencing the same thing himself,” Carl said. “He probably is. I wish I could be there, but the science wing’s nowhere near my next two classes, and I can’t afford to skip either one.”

“Again, you mean,” Randy said with a smile.



Mr. Stockwell was not in class. The substitute, Mr. Dupree, announced that Mr. S. had gone home sick at lunchtime. “Is there a Randy Foster here?” he asked.

Randy raised his hand. “Here.” Sitting beside him, Cathy could hear her friend’s overly careful pronunciation of the letter R, but nobody else seemed to notice.

Mr. Dupree nodded. “He left this for you. He said it was an extra credit assignment.” Whispers erupted in the class as Mr. Dupree handed an envelope to Randy. “That’s enough!” he told the class. “Unless you’d all like a pop quiz on transference and sublimation.”

The students’ groans were followed by the taking of attendance. As Mr. Dupree droned out the names, Randy quietly opened the unsealed envelope, took out the one page note, and set it down where Cathy could read it too:

Randy (or should I say Rani?):
I’m pretty sure that what you’re worried about is
physically impossible here. Stay in control, and don’t
panic. I have some assimilating of my own to do, but
I’ll be back to help you later today. – FS

Randy picked up his pen and wrote at the bottom of the note: “He knows.”

Other than Carl’s report that Ms. Ramirez kept staring at him during band class, and Randy’s similar report about Ms. Crouse, there were no further incidents before school let out at three. Randy tried to back out on his agreement to go to Shoppingtown with the twins, but Carl wouldn’t let him. “We need to be together, in case anything else happens,” he insisted. “And if your mom’s affected by all this, she’s right there for us to check on.” Randy’s mother was an assistant manager at J.C. Penney.

“That makes it worse,” Randy said. “And what about Mr. S.? How will he find us with the help he prromised?”

“The man who wrote that clearly knows more about our situation than Mr. Stockwell normally would,” Cathy said. “If he’s becoming Fayubi, he’ll find us.”

Welcome to Mâvarin (info on the books and characters)

Use the sidebar to get to previous installments of this, the Joshua Wander serial, and Mâvarin-related fiction.

Mall of Mâvarin, Part Three

I'm posting this a little early because I have other plans for Saturday night's entry in Musings.

The story so far:

Part One: Cathy and Carl Salazar are on their way to high school in Dewitt, NY when their uncle and guardian, Jamie Barrett, suddenly starts behaving strangely. After referring to the twins by odd names and promising to pick them up later in the carriage, Uncle Jamie looks confused--but denies that there's anything wrong.

Part Two: Cathy and Carl tell their friend Randy about their Uncle Jamie's words. Randy seems to know (or at least suspect) something about it, but delays telling them what it is. When Cathy mentions that Randy rolled the r in the word "trrust," Randy looks frightened and rushes off.

Part Three: Madrigals and Stained Glass

By midmorning, Cathy was convinced that whatever had caused Uncle Jamie to speak of carriages and royalty was affecting other people as well. Her choir teacher, Ms. Carroll, had departed from her usual lesson plan of Bach, Beethoven and Beatles to lecture on the music of the Middle Ages. The class included both a mandolin demonstration and an impromptu performance, by the entire music department faculty, of a madrigal Ms. Carroll claimed to have written that morning.

Cathy’s trigonometry class, which followed music, offered up a variation of the same weirdness. Mr. Watanabe conducted the class the same way he always did, but somehow it seemed even more irrelevant than usual, and harder to follow. Cathy’s mind kept wandering, and she repeatedly caught herself sketching the carriage Uncle Jamie had mentioned. The third time she noticed this, Cathy gave in and completed the sketch. She was no artist, but somehow she knew what the overall shape ought to be, the size of the wheels, and how far from the ground the driver’s seat should be. There might be no such thing, but Cathy nevertheless had an exact image of the thing in her mind, and a compulsion to get it onto paper.

Gym class was reasonably normal, with boring soccer as usual. It was a little frustrating, though, because she felt as though her body was letting her down somehow. Cathy remembered being stronger and faster and thinner than she seemed to be today. She wished the class would do something more interesting than soccer, like archery (which they typically were exposed to one day a year), or maybe swordsmanship.

Swordsmanship? Where had that thought come from?

“Okay, Randy, spill it,” Carl said, when the twins convened with Randy at lunch. “What is your take on all this? My shop teacher riffed for fifteen minutes this morning on the virtues of stone architecture, and spent the rest of the class teaching us about stained glass windows. Mr. Cheney was glaring at me all through Physics class for no reason, and I caught myself glaring back. What the heck is going on?”

Randy looked around the cafeteria before answering. They were the only students at that end of the long table. A few people at other tables seemed to be looking at them, but the room was so noisy that they could not possibly have heard Carl’s question. “I don’t know what’s going on, or why,” Randy said. “But I think it has something to do with a story I’ve been working on.”

This made no sense at all to Cathy. “A story? All this weirdness is being caused by you writing a story?”

“No, but it’s related. Look at this.” He pushed aside his bag lunch and opened his spiral notebook to a page near the middle, covered with black ink and marked with a large paperclip. Cathy leaned over and read,

“King Carli looked at all the papers on the table before him, and wished he was off with Rani instead. So far, being a teenaged king of Mâvarin wasn't much fun.”

“That doesn't prove anything,” Cathy said. “You’re a Lord of the Rings and Narnia fan, and you spend way too much time fantasy gaming. Naturally you’d think in terms of kings and other fantasy characters. But naming the characters after you and Carl is awfully Mary Sue of you, don’t you think? Couldn’t you come up with more original names?”

“Like a queen named Cathma?” Randy asked.

“You’re kidding,” Carl said.

Randy shook his head. “No, I’m not. See? There she is on page five.”

“Well, it’s still no big mystery,” Cathy insisted. “All you did was base the characters on people you know, and just change the names a little. Carl Lee to Carli and Randy to Rani isn’t exactly a stretch.”

Randy shook his head. “Except that I didn’t start with the names Carli or Cathma, and I didn’t start writing this stuff down until I’d been dreaming about it for several days in a row. In the first two dreams, those characters were called something else, before they found out they were royalty.”

“But you knew they were based on us, didn’t you?” Carl asked. He pointed at himself with a baby carrot for emphasis.

“Well, yeah,” Randy admitted. “They originally worked in their uncle’s stable, just as you do.”

“Then I don’t see anything all that mysterious about it,” Cathy said. She took another bite of bad cafeteria taco before continuing. “You knew they were based on us, so, consciously or otherwise, you changed their names to be like ours.”

“You’re forgetting about Uncle Jamie,” Carl said. “He doesn’t know anything about Rani’s dreams, but for a moment he talked as if he were a character in one of them.”

“He’s not the only one,” Randy said. “I’ve heard some pretty strange things today. And you just called me Rani.”

“I did, didn’t I?” Carl said musingly. “It felt perfectly normal, as if I’ve been calling you that all my life.”

“It felt rright to me, too,” Randy said. “Oh, man. I rreally don’t like where this is going.”

“Why are you talking like that?” Cathy asked. “It almost sounds as if you’re growling.”

“I know it,” Randy said. “I didn’t tell you. In the dreams, Rani is…I am…I’m a monster.”

“What kind of monster?” Cathy asked. “You mean like Godzilla or Predator or something?”

“He’s a tengrem,” Carl said.

Scroll down or check the sidebar or Part One and Part Two. Other past fiction is on the sidebar, organized by category.

Welcome to Mâvarin (info on the books and characters)