Chapter #51Call of the Constellations by: Seuzz   "Pshaw!" Kali snorts. "You surprise me, Will." She gives you a pitying glance, and looks back down in the notebook, flipping back and forth between the page that has the sigil and the page that shows an English translation you'd made anyway, apparently comparing them.
"How?" If she's surprised at you, you're equally surprised at her dismissive response.
She glances at her watch. "I have to meet my client at two, so I haven't time to fully explain. For now, let me just say that you have nothing to worry about. I am quite pleased to see this, both for what it shows me and for the fact that you have shown it to me." She smiles a little. "It's not every teenage boy who would show this to a relative stranger. Dreams such as this are quite normal at your age, aren't they?"
You blush. Yes, a dream about yourself, sharing a hot bath with a girl who looks like Chelsea Cooper, would be quite normal. "It's not that," you retort. "But the fact that I wrote it out like this." You tap the sigil.
"Yes, I know," she says indulgently. "You've nothing to worry about there, either. That's something we will have to talk about this evening. You can answer me one question now, though. Are you good with languages?"
"Foreign languages? Not really. I took a semester of French when I was a sophomore. I didn't do good at it."
"I see. Yet you are quite adept at this sort of language."
"What does it mean?"
"It means several different things, and there are several different things about it that mean several different things. I can't answer you if you're not more specific. But I really must run. There is a game on my laptop, Call of the Constellations, that I'd like you to try out, though."
"For my training?"
"Yes, but I think you'll find it diverting on its own." She smiles again, squeezes your hand, and departs.
* * * * *
Her reassurances notwithstanding, you're jumpy the rest of the afternoon. Partly, of course, it's because you're bored. You haven't been outside her apartment, even into the hallway, since your arrival, and you're beginning to feel a little claustrophobic. You're feeling bored and lonely.
So it's with a gasp of relief and delight that you answer the phone at around five and hear Joe's voice on the other end. "How's it going?" he asks. "What have they been doing to you?"
"They had me do some meditation thing last night," you say. "That's all, so far." You tell him about it, and at the way you wound up in the kitchen. "They made it sound like I actually levitated myself in there."
"That's 'cos probably you did," he laughs. "Wait, are you serious?" You tell him about it again, and specifically what Miko had said about "open windows" and "flying sorcerers." He lets out a low whistle. "Jeezum Crow! Oops, I shouldn't cuss. But that's really fuckin' impressive if you levitated your first time."
"Is that normal?" you squeak.
"For you, probably. Frank was always telling me that he wanted to tie you down. Oh, I heard from him. He's gonna be with Dad a few more weeks, and then we'll see what happens."
"How about you, how are you doing?"
"It's party central with him finally out of the way. If I know Dad, though, that won't last long, so I gotta make the most of the hay and the girls while the sun's shining." He laughs again. "Oh, but how are you getting along with Miko?" he asks, turning serious.
"I dunno. It's like she doesn't need her sword to draw blood. I think Kali's trying to keep me safe. I, uh, well I told her a few things, just between us--" You fall silent; you don't want to tell Joe that you shared confidences with her that you hadn't shared with him. "She also hid that mask for me."
"Good. Look, don't get the wrong idea about Miko. She's awesome, but yeah, she keeps you off balance. And if you're already floating around under the ceiling, it means she's doing her job. Oops, someone's at the door. But listen, if you wanna send me emails and stuff, keep me posted on what's going on, I'd love to hear. Fuck, I wish I was there with you."
"I wish you were too. Oh, speaking of email, did Kali--"
But your voice is drowned out on the other end by an explosion of noises: hooting and hollering and cheering. "Listen, I gotta go," Joe says. "But send me an email. Pictures of you getting high--" He guffaws. "Anything! Later, bro!" he chirps, and hangs up.
So you put the phone down too and return to the laptop and the suspended game. The very name Call of the Constellations had told you it would be some Stellae-oriented thing (though you'd momentarily hoped it might contain a little Cthulhuian mischief), and it's a highly abstract thing. It has a certain mesmerizing, Tetris-like charm, though. The game generates colored dots of various hues, and, while playing against a timer, you have to connect them to each other using chains drawn from a pre-set toolbox of shapes. Connect enough of them in the right way, and they collapse into singularities that themselves can be connected to other dots or singularities while unlocking additional and more useful shapes. You're not sure how good you are, but by your sixth game you've racked up a high score of 5000.
Nor is it so subtle that you can't see the purpose behind it. By the time you've lost your sixth game, you've noticed that those connective chains are forming very elementary sigils, and the higher you get in the game the more complex the sigils become. It's clearly a training instrument.
And once you've spotted the pattern, you're able to bust through the ceiling. On your eighth game you crack 65,000 points in only ten minutes. What challenge there had been begins to pall.
* * * * *
"Did you tell Joe your high score?" Kali asks over dinner. "I'd like to have seen his face."
"Kid could stand a little humiliation," Miko says.
"Is he good at it?" you ask.
"I think his high score is somewhere around ten million," Kali says. "It's a beginner's tool, and I don't think he's played in awhile. Try some of the others. I doubt Constellations will hold much challenge for you for very long." You notice Miko giving you a quick, dark glance.
After dinner, they lead you through another meditation exercise, with much the same results, though this time you don't seem to "drift," and you don't feel as strung out afterward. That's good, because Kali puts on the lights and directs you back into the chair. "I said we'd talk, child," she says. "And so we shall.
"Joe has already explained to you the basics of the Stellae, and of our connection to the planets. Like Joe, I have Arbol as one ousiarch, and like Frank, Miko here has Malacandra as one of hers. Our other ousiarchs are Perelandra and Catilindria, respectively."
"Joe mentions ousiarchs. What are they, exactly?"
"You might call them a 'governing intelligence' associated with each planet. By the way, the planets themselves--the astronomical bodies composed of rock and gasses--don't really signify. Their influence is not material in nature; it's not a matter of gravitation or radiation, but of the intelligences associated with them. At some point you'll take a seminar with John Reilly, and he can explain." You must have made a face at the idea of a "seminar," for she chuckles. "If anyone can make it interesting, he can.
"But back to us. We are the ones training you because our gifts are ideal in the circumstances. You would be joining us at a relatively late age. It's not just that we would be teaching you. It's that we would be stimulating your growth as well."
"Pruning you back, too," Miko says. She's taken out some nail clippers, and seems to emphasize the point by snipping at a nail.
"I hope a manicure is the worst thing you give me," you weakly joke.
"Me too," Miko says, and it doesn't sound like a joke.
"You're already showing exceptional promise as a student," Kali says. "The meditation exercises, the game this afternoon." She pauses. "Your dream journal." You glance again at Miko, and you can tell by her expression that Kali has told her about that.
"Look, I told you I already studied that stuff with Blackwell," you say. "So it's not like it's new to me."
"Of course. That's why you shouldn't be disturbed that you wrote it out in the form you did."
"It was kind of a show off thing to do, though," Miko says.
"I wasn't trying to--!" You sigh and look away. "That's what scared me. That it came out like that when I wasn't trying."
"But it's normal under the circumstances," Kali says, and she glances briefly at Miko. That makes you tense, for it suggests that Miko's reaction might be closer to yours: freaked. "We've been stimulating you, and slight prodigies such as that shouldn't be unexpected."
"I don't understand this 'stimulation' thing you keep talking about."
"You're a bit like a plant, child. Our presence--Miko's in particular--is bit like having rich nutrients--fertilizer, if you like--sprinkled over you."
Oh, is that why it always feels like she's shitting on me, you think.
Kali seems to read your thoughts, for she reaches across to gently touch your knee. "This is all very new to you, I know. You have to trust us, that we know what we're doing. Trust goes both ways."
You twitch a little. That she feels like she has to say that they "trust" you suggests there is always the capacity for "mistrust" on their side as well.
An hour later, as you're preparing for bed, there's a sharp knock at the door, and Miko comes in without asking permission. She closes the door and stares at you levelly. "If there's anything you've told Kali you haven't told me directly, I want to hear it," she says.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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