Glitch (Scroll Down). I Swear It's Not My Fault!

I created this post just to see whether I could get Part Fifteen to wrap normally on the page by putting a short, simple entry above it. Apparently I can't. Apologies for the inconvenience! - Karen

Mall of Mâvarin, Part Fifteen

For some reason, Blogger insists on putting all the text of this particular post below the sidebar, no matter how much I reformat it. There's no reason for it; it's the same format I've been using every week! I even stripped out the last shreds of html and the two pictures in case it helped. It didn't, so I may just have to put up with it. Unfortunately, I don't have the knowledge to debug the template--the same exact template that worked fine on last week's post,and the ones from many weeks before that.

The synopses of previous installments have gotten out of hand again, so follow the links on the sidebar if you need to read them, either because you're new to the story or to catch up or refresh your memory. Synopses to Parts One through Six can be found at the top of Part Seven. Synopses to Parts Eight through Thirteen can be found at the top of Part Fourteen.

Part Fourteen: Cathma and her friends meet Lee Ramirez, the American who inherited Li Ramet's magical talent for understanding and being understood in any language. With Lee's help, the Americans and Mâvarinû compare notes. It turns out that they all know their situation: Their spirits and consciousness have now been transfered into each others' bodies. Lee confirmed that his counterpart, Li Ramet, is involved, and should arrive soon with the remaining affected people.

Part Fifteen: Inheritance

Josh Wander’s suggestion to return to his castle made a lot of sense, so the Americans-turned-Mâvarinû walked back into the itinerant magician’s great hall, accompanied by the Mâvarinû-turned-Americans. The room looked bigger this time, with chairs that Cathma didn’t remember seeing as Cathy earlier.

The American mall patrons who had remained inside looked relieved to see Cathma and her friends, and astonished to see their counterparts. “Are we in Mâvarin, then?” asked the man Cathma knew as Sen Tilen. “There really is a Mâvarin?”

“There certainly is,” Cathma said. “Go through that door, and it will be Dewitt that seems unreal to you.”

“Hmm. That’s interesting,” said Fabian Stockwell. Cathma knew he was Fabian from the fact that he wore Fayubi’s shapeless blue robe.

“What is interesting?” Cathma asked.

“You’re speaking and understanding American English now. Do you still identify yourself as Cathma rather than Cathy?”

Cathma thought about this. “Well, I do remember Dewitt better in here than I did out there, especially what happened today. But I still feel more like Cathma than Cathy, no matter what language I happen to be speaking. What about you? Are you the mage or the school teacher?”

Fabian laughed. “I guess I’m a mage who thinks he’s a teacher.” He smiled at his counterpart, the one in the American slacks and Tommy Helfiger shirt.

Fayubi smiled back. “That makes me the teacher who thinks he’s a mage. Hello, Fabian. I’m glad to be able to talk to you.”

“As am I. The question is, are you really a mage?”

Fayubi frowned. “What do you mean?”

“As Lee Ramirez told you, I’ve been playing with your toys, and making them work. Do you have magic here as well, or did I inherit your magic along with your body?”

“Hmm. Good question,” Fayubi said. “I did have a vision of your arrival, so I’d have to say that I’ve retained at least some of my magic. Have you had any actual visions since your consciousness completed the transfer?”

“I’ve had several of them,” Fabian said. “It was frightening, the first time, but I quickly got used to seeing things that weren’t there.”

“So what are you saying?” Cathy asked. Cathma was a little startled; she’d been about to ask the same thing. “Are you both mages now?”

“So it would seem,” Fayubi said.

“Great,” Cathma said. “So which of you can divine a way to resolve this problem?”

Fabian and Fayubi looked at each other. “I’m not sure that either of us can.” Fayubi said. “Sorry.”

“We’re not the ones to do it,” Fabian added. “We’re going to need Randy’s help, and Rani’s. And Li Ramet’s of course.”

“What can Randy do?” Cathy asked.

“He can do what I can do, if the tengrem lets him,” Rani said. “It’s an awful lot to ask, though. There must be thirty people in this room, and twenty more out there in what’s left of the mall. Do you really expect an apprentice and a confused high school student to transfer all those minds and spirits?”

“What other choice do we have?” Carli asked.

Rani shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll try though, if Randy will.”

“Where is Randy?” Carl asked.

“He’s coming,” Rani said. “Can’t you hear him?”

Somewhere beyond the open castle door, Cathma heard the distinctive sound of a tengrem’s gallop.

Welcome to Mâvarin (info on the books and characters)

Use sidebar to get to the individual installments of this serial and other past fiction.

Mall of Mâvarin, Part Fourteen

That's another week I've managed to keep this going. I think we're coming into the home stretch now.--Karen

Synopses to Parts One through Six can be found at the top of Part Seven.

Part Seven: Cathy and her friends meet Joshua Wander, an interdimensional traveler who followed his mysteriously shrunken castle from Mâvarin to Shoppingtown. He claims to have no knowledge of the others' predicament, although a policeman who remembers being the Captain of Cathma's Palace Guard is dubious about this. Josh's castle has arrived looking a quarter its normal size, and his magical abilities are severely reduced. As the stranded mage looks through a spell book for answers, Fabian asks if he can look at the spell that brought Josh to Dewitt. Although the spell is written in an unknown language that resists translation, Josh reluctantly hands over the book--and Fabian discovers that he can read it anyway.

Part Eight: Fabian announces that the spell is written in Lopartin, the ancient, magical language used on Mâton. Although the spell's footnotes mention the dangers of two much traffic between worlds, it offers no help for the current problem. Based on a vision, Fabian correctly identifies Josh Wander as a former student of nearly Syracuse University. Josh is astonished (and not especially pleased) to learn that he's "home." Fabian speculates about whether this fact contributed to the leakage between realities, and everyone wonders what to do next. Randy advises everyone to simply "wait."

Part Nine: Randy predicts that something is about to happen that determines what they will do next. He's right. The mall starts to bend and fold itself, and yet there's no apparent damage. Everyone starts running toward Joshua Wander's castle. Josh points out that, having been miniaturized, it's too small to hold much of anyone. Fabian dashes inside it anyway. He reappears in the doorway a moment later, looking a quarter his normal size. He urges everyone to run into the castle.

Part Ten: Fabian convinces everyone to go into the castle, because it's far safer than the mall at the moment. From the inside, sizes seem normal, but everything goes dark as the mall around the castle disappears. Beneath their feet, the castle starts to move.

Part Eleven: Cathy, Josh and friends chat as the castle makes its way between realities, making literary references and feeling more like themselves than they have all day. The castle lands safely. Fabian suggests that they all go see where they've ended up.

Part Twelve: When Cathy, Fabian and the rest emerge from Josh's castle, they become disoriented as the last of their memories of Dewitt fade, buried under their memories of Mâvarin. Before them is a portion of the mall, open to the sky and filled with dazed people. Josh points out that they are now speaking Mâvarinû, but Cathma does not remember speaking any other language, and doesn't quite remember Josh or the events of the day. She asks him to explain again who he is.

Part Thirteen: Joshua Wander explains again who he is and what he knows of the situation. With his borrowed talent for divination, Rani discovers that they are almost completely the spirits of the people from Mâvarin, but in the bodies of the Americans. This means that Randy Foster, wherever he may be, is a tengrem now, rather than Rani Fost. As the displaced people discuss the implications of this, a magic portal opens at the entrance to J.C. Penney, and their counterparts emerge through it. Rani/Randy is not there, but someone unexpected does arrive with the others. In appearance at least, he is former guardman and rogue magician Li Ramet. Rani accuses Li of causing the current situation.

Part Fourteen: Our American Cousins

“Hey, don’t blame me for this,” said the young man with Shela (or Sheila). “I’m Lee Ramirez. The guy you want should be back shortly, once he tracks down the rest of the Americans.”

Carli frowned. “How does Li—Li Ramet, I mean—know where to look for them?”

“Well, most of us were pretty easy to find.” Lee waved to indicate the people with him. “The others here were in your capital city, where you people would normally be. I wasn’t, but of course Li would know where he’d just been.”

“How about the ones who weren’t in Thâlemar?” Carli asked.

“I think Mr. Stockwell helped Li find them. Something about a magic window.”

Fabian Stockwell smiled and nodded, but didn’t speak. Cathma returned his smile before asking Lee Ramirez a question of her own. “If he’s Fabian Stockwell, how did he use Fayubi’s mirror?”

“I don’t know. He just did.”

“And if you’re Lee Ramirez, what language are you speaking right now?”

“English. American English. Would you prefer that I speak Spanish?”

Cathma said, “No, it’s just, how is it that we understand you, and you understand us?”

Lee shrugged. “Magic, I suppose, same as Mr. Stockwell and the window. And I’m the only one. The other Americans don’t understand a word of Mâvarinû, so I have to translate for them. But everyone understands me for some reason, and I understand everyone else.”

As if to prove Lee’s point, Fabian Stockwell spoke, in words Cathma did not understand.

“He says that it’s odd about the languages,” Josh said. “Logically, the knowledge of each language should be stored in everyone’s original brain.” Josh shook his head. “What he doesn’t realize is that magic trumps science in many of these worlds, or replaces it completely.”

“So you do all understand what’s happened to us, right?” Carli asked Lee. “Despite the language problems, you all know who and where you are?”

Cathma’s American counterpart asked Lee Ramirez a question. Cathma didn’t understand Cathy's question, only Lee’s reply to Cathy. “King Carli wants to know whether we know who and where we are.”

Cathy nodded, and said something else in English.

“She says she understands it about as well as anyone could, given the circumstances,” Lee said. “As for where we are, it’s rather hard to miss the fact that we’re not in Dewitt any more.”

“You never were in Dewitt,” Fayubi told him. “If Rani is right, then you’re technically Lee Ramirez in Li Ramet’s body. Cathy Ramirez is Queen of Mâvarin, and Sheila Crouse is a selmûn rather than part Iroquois.”

“Yes, that’s obvious from all the old scars Ms. Crouse has now, that she never had before,” Lee said. He looked around. “Is there someplace she can sit down?”

Sheila said something, and Lee replied, “That’s not the point. We should all sit down.”

“We should go back inside my castle,” Josh said. “There are still a few dozen people from Dewitt in there, and they’ll be wondering what’s going on. Besides, it may help you all with your, um, memories.”

“Fine with me, but where will everyone sit?” Cathma said. “I didn’t see very many chairs in there.”

“I can do something about that,” Josh said.

“Okay, let’s do that,” Lee said. “We should leave a note out here for Li Ramet, though. By the way, he has been to Dewitt before, body and all. That’s how all this started.”

Rani looked at him curiously. “How do you know?”

“I was there,” Lee said.

Welcome to Mâvarin (info on the books and characters)

Use the sidebar on this page to get to the individual installments of this serial and other past fiction.

Mall of Mâvarin, Part Thirteen

I'm going to have to cheat a little bit here, and use a character who has barely been mentioned in the story up to this point. That's the problem with making it up as I go along--I didn't know in Part Three what I was going to need to set up for Part Thirteen! Sorry! I'll fix it in the rewrite, if there ever is one. -Karen

Synopses to Parts One through Six can be found at the top of Part Seven.

Part Seven: Cathy and her friends meet Joshua Wander, an interdimensional traveler who followed his mysteriously shrunken castle from Mâvarin to Shoppingtown. He claims to have no knowledge of the others' predicament, although a policeman who remembers being the Captain of Cathma's Palace Guard is dubious about this. Josh's castle has arrived looking a quarter its normal size, and his magical abilities are severely reduced. As the stranded magician looks through a spell book for answers, Fabian asks if he can look at the spell that brought Josh to Dewitt. Although the spell is written in an language that resists translation, Josh reluctantly hands over the book--and Fabian discovers that he can read it anyway.

Part Eight: Fabian announces that the spell is written in Lopartin, the ancient, magical language used on Mâton. The spell's footnotes mention the dangers of two much traffic between worlds, but offer no help for the current problem. Based on a vision, Fabian correctly identifies Josh Wander as a former student of nearly Syracuse University. Josh is astonished (and not especially pleased) to learn that he's "home." Fabian speculates about whether this fact contributed to the leakage between realities, and everyone wonders what to do next. Randy advises everyone to simply "wait."

Part Nine: Randy predicts that something is about to happen that determines what they will do next. He's right. The mall starts to bend and fold itself, and yet there's no apparent damage. Everyone starts running toward Joshua Wander's castle. Josh points out that, having been miniaturized, it's too small to hold much of anyone. Fabian dashes inside it anyway. He reappears in the doorway a moment later, looking a quarter his normal size. He urges everyone to run into the castle.

Part Ten: Fabian convinces everyone to go into the castle, because it's far safer than the mall at the moment. From the inside, sizes seem normal, but everything goes dark as the mall around the castle disappears. Beneath their feet, the castle starts to move.

Part Eleven: Cathy, Josh and friends chat as the castle makes its way between realities, making literary references and feeling more like themselves than they have all day. The castle lands safely. Fabian suggests that they all go see where they've ended up.

Part Twelve: When Cathy, Fabian and the rest emerge from Josh's castle, they become disoriented as the last of their memories of Dewitt fade, buried under their memories of Mâvarin. Before them is a portion of the mall, open to the sky and filled with dazed people. Josh points out that they are now speaking Mâvarinû, but Cathma does not remember speaking any other language, and doesn't quite remember Josh or the events of the day. She asks him to explain again who he is.

Part Thirteen: Portal

“All right: one more time,” the man said. “I’m called Joshua Wander, or Josh, or even JW. I’m originally from the same version of reality you folks are all from, even if you don’t remember it now for some reason.”

“But—“ Cathma began, but Josh raised his hand to stop her interruption.

“It’s true. Listen, I travel between worlds a lot, often involuntarily. Earlier today I followed my castle to Shoppingtown Mall in Dewitt, NY, where I met you and your friends. You were already half-remembering the lives of your counterparts in this world, but I don’t know the how or why of that. What I do know is that when the mall started to fold up around us, we fled into my castle, which brought us back here. There are a bunch of people still in my great hall, and under the circumstances I think that’s probably the best place for them right now.” He looked at Cathma with an expression halfway between interest and annoyance. “Does any of this sound familiar to you?”

Cathma nodded reluctantly. “It does—barely. So what you are saying is that I’m not really Cathma Selevar at all. I’m really….” She trailed off as she struggled to remember the other name.

“Cathy Salazar,” Fayubi said. “I remember now—as you say, barely. And I’m really Fabian Stockwell.”

“I don’t think so,” Rani said. “I think you’re mostly Fayubi the Seer, in the body of Fabian Stockwell.”

“So we’re who we think we are, but in the bodies of these otherworld people?” Carli asked. “Are you sure?”

Rani nodded. “That’s what the Infinite is showing me. I can sense a little bit of the Americans in each of us, but we’re mostly our Mâvarin selves.”

“Well, if I’m mostly Carli, does it really matter that this is Carl’s body?” Carli asked. “I mean, couldn’t we find the Americans and send them home in our bodies, with no harm done?”

“That would not be an acceptable outcome,” Shela said. “Technically you and Cathma no longer have the parental qualifications to rule Mâvarin.”

“And that’s nothing compared to Randy Foster’s problem,” Fayubi added.

Cathma deduced more than remembered who Randy Foster must be. “What problem is that?”

“Randy Foster is now a tengrem,” Rani said. “And I…I’m not. For the first time in over a year, I’m free of my curse.”

“Whereas Randy Foster now has his worst fears realized,” Fayubi said. “It hardly seems fair to leave him that way.”

Rani bristled. “Oh, but it’s fair to make me a tengrem again? What did I ever do as a human to deserve this?”

“It’s not what you did. It’s who you are,” Carli said. “What little I remember of Randy, he doesn’t deserve this any more than you do, and he wouldn’t know how to cope with it. You do.”

“Sheila Crouse also suffers through no fault of her own,” Shela said. “She now has my infirmity.”

“So what do we do?” Cathma said. “Somehow we’ve got to find our counterparts, and find a way to turn everyone back into themselves. And I don’t even know where we are right now.”

“Well, it’s a little hard to tell, with the mall here and everything,” Josh said, “but I think this is the same place Toujours Chez Moi was the first time I was in Mâvarin.”

“And where is that?” Jami asked.

“Just a few miles outside your city of Thâlemar, but away from the main roads.”

“That’s convenient,” Cathma said. “So we just need to get to the city. Most of our counterparts should be there, because that’s where we were before.”

“We don’t even need to do that,” Fayubi said. He was staring at nothing again.

“What do you see?” Cathma asked.

“They’re coming. All of them.”

“Here? How do they know to come here?” Wil asked.

“We’ll find out soon. Here they come,” Fayubi said. He pointed at a folding metal door in that closed off access to J.C. Penney in the truncated mall. As Cathma watched through the large storefront window, one of the dazed people got up from a plush chair inside the store, and slid the door upward. For a moment she could see the store beyond it, but then a blue haze covered the doorway for a moment. Through the haze came a line of people who had not been in the store at all. Cathma was struck by how odd it was, watching herself walk forward, Carli at her side. Next came Fayubi, and Jami, and Wil, all in their normal Mâvarin clothes. There was no sign of Rani. Last of all came Shela, supported by the one person Cathma had not expected to see, but should have.

“Li Ramet,” Rani said. “Of course. What have you done this time?”

Welcome to Mâvarin (info on the books and characters)

Use the sidebar on this page to get to the individual installments of this serial and other past fiction.

Mall of Mâvarin, Part Twelve

If you read my LiveJournal (and really, hardly anyone does!--you know that I've finally got a handle on this story. At least, I think so. We'll see what happens once I get past the bit I wrote for this week!--Karen

Synopses to Parts One through Six can be found at the top of Part Seven.

Part Seven: Cathy and her friends meet Joshua Wander, an interdimensional traveler who followed his mysteriously shrunken castle from Mâvarin to Shoppingtown. He claims to have no knowledge of the others' predicament, although a policeman who remembers being the Captain of Cathma's Palace Guard is dubious about this. Josh's castle has arrived looking a quarter its normal size, and his magical abilities are severely reduced. As the stranded mage looks through a spell book for answers, Fabian asks if he can look at the spell that brought Josh to Dewitt. Although the spell is written in an unknown language that resists translation, Josh reluctantly hands over the book--and Fabian discovers that he can read it anyway.

Part Eight: Fabian announces that the spell is written in Lopartin, the ancient, magical language used on Mâton. Although the spell's footnotes mention the dangers of two much traffic between worlds, it offers no help for the current problem. Based on a vision, Fabian correctly identifies Josh Wander as a former student of nearly Syracuse University. Josh is astonished (and not especially pleased) to learn that he's "home." Fabian speculates about whether this fact contributed to the leakage between realities, and everyone wonders what to do next. Randy advises everyone to simply "wait."

Part Nine: Randy predicts that something is about to happen that determines what they will do next. He's right. The mall starts to bend and fold itself, and yet there's no apparent damage. Everyone starts running toward Joshua Wander's castle. Josh points out that, having been miniaturized, it's too small to hold much of anyone. Fabian dashes inside it anyway. He reappears in the doorway a moment later, looking a quarter his normal size. He urges everyone to run into the castle.

Part Ten: Fabian convinces everyone to go into the castle, because it's far safer than the mall at the moment. From the inside, sizes seem normal, but everything goes dark as the mall around the castle disappears. Beneath their feet, the castle starts to move.

Part Eleven: Cathy, Josh and friends chat as the castle makes its way between realities, making literary references and feeling more like themselves than they have all day. The castle lands safely. Fabian suggests that they all go see where they've ended up.

Part Twelve: Transposition

Light poured into the great hall as Joshua Wander opened the castle door. Cathy stood up cautiously. “What’s out there? Can you see anything?”

Josh shook his head. “I can’t begin to tell you, and I don’t know where we are. You’d better come see for yourselves.”

Fabian was the first out the door behind Josh, followed by Sheila and Randy, and then Uncle Jamie and Carl. Cathy walked out right behind Carl. She passed the threshold and staggered as chaotic waves of memory swept over her, senseless but insistent. Disoriented, she stood still for a moment, looking around, getting her bearings. Where was she, exactly, and why? Did it have something to do with the odd thoughts and feelings she’d had all day, since dreaming of another world?

And was this, in fact, another world? It was like no place she’d ever seen before; at least, not while awake. Glass walls enclosed incomprehensible rooms, filled with people who sat and stared. Like Market Square on Comerdu, it was full of exotic goods in interesting colors, and open to the sky above. But nobody was buying or selling. It was not even clear whether anything was actually available for sale. In fact, it all seemed beyond comprehension, at least for the moment. Some things looked as though they ought to make sense to her, somehow, but her brain refused to process the information.

Whatever the problem was, she wasn’t the only one affected. Carli stood next to her, his mismatched eyebrows furrowed, slowly shaking his head. Rani was fingering his necklace, and looking rather shocked. There was something strange about the necklace. In fact, everyone looked a little strange, in clothing never before seen in Mâvarin. What was going on?

Fayubi stood a few feet away, his usual look of worry on his face. “Is everyone all right?”

Cathma shook her head. “I’m not sure. Where are we? How did we get here?”

Fayubi smiled gently. “I have no idea, but I’m sure we’ll find out.”

“The last thing I remember clearly is waking up in the Palace this morning,” Carli said. “What is all this? It looks like something out of my dreams.”

“Or nightmares,” Jami added.

Throughout this exchange, a middle-aged man in a funny hat was staring at them and frowning. “Excuse me,” he said, “but are you folks aware that you’re speaking a different language now?”

“A different language?” Carli asked. “Are you sure? Still sounds like Mâvarinû to me.”

“I guess that means we’re in Mâvarin now,” said the man. “I already picked up that language, last time I was here. But back in Dewitt a few minutes ago, you people were all speaking English.”

Rani cocked his head at the man, wearing that look of frowning concentration he sometimes got on his dark face. “Are you saying that before we were here, we were physically in another world, speaking another language?”

“Exactly,” said the man.

“So it wasn’t a dream,” Carli said. “At least, that part wasn’t.”

Cathma struggled to remember the day’s events. It was difficult, because the memories were vague and conflicting. She recalled waking up in the Palace, and the way her life as Queen of Mâvarin had seemed increasing unfamiliar, even unreal, as the day wore on. Buried under that, barely accessible, was the opposite memory. She’d awakened in a house…where? Dewitt, as the man had said? She had ridden in a vehicle that moved astoundingly fast without a horse to pull it, and attended a school with hundreds of people her age—and really, how likely was that? And despite her strange surroundings in this version of her day, she had felt more and more like Cathma as the day progressed. It was these memories that led to the scene before her, not the almost-normal day in the Palace. If she concentrated, she could almost remember the blue castle behind her, and a market that looked like the one before her, except that it had a ceiling, and the people in it had not looked nearly as dazed as the ones she saw now.

“And you, and you, and you were there,” Fayubi murmured.

Fayubi was right. The buried memories of Dewitt, wherever that was, had all the same people and buildings—well, sort of—as the current situation. That meant that…well, she wasn’t quite ready to confront what that probably meant.

Cathma looked at the man with the silly hat. “Please forgive me if I’ve asked you this before,” she said, “but who are you, exactly? What’s your interest in all this?”

The man with the hat groaned. “Here we go again,” he said.

Welcome to Mâvarin (info on the books and characters)

Use the sidebar on this page to get to the individual installments of this serial and other past fiction.