When we awoke and shuffled around the chantry Tuesday morning, I noticed that Nathaniel hadn't arrived in the night, but our resident garou had turned up after all. I was beginning to get concerned over Nathaniel's absence, but I figured he was a big boy and could take care of himself.
We looked like a rather bedraggled lot that morning - Cab in particular looked exhausted, and Daedelus looked rather troubled. I grabbed a bowl of Wheat Chex and rejoined Dog and Mary in my bedroom as they watched the "Today" show. After finishing breakfast and taking a shower, I sent Mary off to wash up. I retired to the library and spent the rest of the morning there investigating the finer points of understanding and manipulating the patterns of reality.
When I broke for lunch, Cab was sitting in the living room, still looking tired, and confused. When I asked what was bothering her, she looked at me for a moment as if considering something, then asked what I knew about dreams. I said that I knew dreams sometimes carried weight, and that as Dreamspeakers we both knew how important they could be. She nodded, then invited me to sit down. She explained the dream she had had the previous night.
I mulled this over for a few minutes, then excused myself to sit in the quiet of the library. Through the doorway, I heard Cab telling her dream to the others in the chantry. I thought about the parallels between the different scenarios in the dream - it was a fair guess that the ball was the weather machine, and that we were the children and the dog. So who was the wolf-headed snake? Master Porthos? I thought on this, and decided that that wasn't the case. Then perhaps the wall of flame represented Porthos? Yes, that seemed right. So, that left the sleepwalker and the wolf-headed snake to be identified. Considering the obvious, I wondered if the sleepwalker represented a sleeper. No, that didn't seem right at all - far too direct. So. Where did Forteau belong in all of this? Maybe he was the wolf-headed snake. I was troubled by the implications of this, but after further thought, I doubted that connection.
Several hours had passed while I was mulling the dream over, and I decided it was time for a break. When I walked back into the living room, they were still discussing dreams, but this time, it was a dream that Daedelus (a virtual adept, of all people) had had. I wandered into the kitchen and made a turkey sandwich, then back into the living room. Daedelus showed me the symbols he had seen in his dream - the symbols of three spheres, and an elemental symbol. I ignored the conversation around me as I munched on my sandwich and stared at the symbols. First, I had to decide how to read them. After turning the paper this way and that, I finally decided that the paper should be held in such a way that the symbols read, from left to right: Earth, Life, Chaos, Correspondence.
Great. What the hell did this mean? My first thought that this had something to do with the weather machine. Then I remembered Daedelus saying something about raw chaos and the destruction of Kasee's house, and decided that this had nothing to do with the weather machine. More likely, I thought with increasing certainty, it had something to do with how the house was destroyed.
I had finished my sandwich long ago, and the living room was quiet. Daedelus was staring off into space, as was his wont. Renee was looking intently at the paper on which Cab had written her dream. Eric, Kasee, and John weren't around. I got up for a drink and, sitting down again in the living room, explained what little of the dreams I believed I understood. We kicked around a few more ideas, and went to bed around 11 PM.
I woke up around 8 AM on Wednesday. After the usual morning routines - breakfast, wait for showers, etc., we decided to go to Pullen Park, where the party to "bless" the weather machine would take place the next evening. Daedelus took his motorcycle to the park, while I stepped sideways at the chantry and walked the thirty minutes there.
For a change, it was a sunny day, both in reality and in the Umbra. There were still no sign of spirits in the Umbra and, looking sideways into reality from the Umbra, I saw that there were no birds or squirrels or any of the usual background creatures anywhere near the park. This was really bad - something big was coming, and the nonparticipants were clearing the area so they wouldn't get hurt. The park looked pretty normal, except for the absence of life, and after poking around a bit, I went back to the chantry.
I passed the afternoon reading one of Jane Yolen's picture books to Mary, with Dog dividing his attention between us and the soundless television, which was showing some weird country version of "American Bandstand." I grabbed a quick dinner and, after admonishing Dog to keep an eye on Mary, joined the others to head to Crabtree Valley Mall. John mumbled something about getting there by other methods and left a little before us.
We got to the mall around 8 PM. We parked on the second level of the south parking garage, just outside the Food Court. Walking in, we saw Betsy and four other gothpunks sitting at a table off to the side. There was no sign of Ogre. Daedelus wandered over to the arcade, and in a moment he and Ogre joined us. We pulled a table closer to the goth group and said hello. Betsy looked around nervously and suggested we go someplace a little less public, away from any cameras.
We followed them through the mall. Kasee, hopping along on her crutches, started to get left behind until Ogre went back and picked her up bodily. As we walked, I looked the goth crew over - they were all quite young, certainly not a one of them over the age of 18. Looking closer, I scrutinized their patterns, and something clicked with what I had been studying back at the chantry and I realized that it would only take a slight push here or there to alter the flow of quintessence through their patterns. Hmm - this was an interesting development, one that I would have to explore later.
We left the Food Court, went down a set of stairs, and turned right. Just past the Waldenbooks on the left was a little alley that usually leads back to service entrances, offices, and the like. Betsy led her group down this alley, and we followed. I was a bit taken aback when they came to a wall and just walked through it. Daedelus seemed particularly disturbed by this, until Renee walked up to the wall slowly and put her hand through it. Shrugging, she stepped forward, followed by Daedelus with his hands in front of him like a sleepwalker, then Eric, Cab, and myself (Ogre had been carrying Kasee when they stepped through the wall).
Stepping through the wall, I saw that the hallway continued on, then turned. At the end of the corridor was a stairwell, which, Daedelus muttered, should lead to a boiler room. We went down the stairwell, through a door, and into a gothpunk's wet dream.
The room was roughly fifteen by twenty feet, and had the requisite blacklights, posters from "The Crow," Nine Inch Nails, and Ministry. There was a few mattresses scattered about, and several beanbags. Betsy flopped onto one of the mattresses and introduced the other teens in her group: Terry, a fellow who really bothered Kasee since he had no aura, Mark, who wore a trenchcoat and white face makeup, Kim, a very young looking girl with dyed black hair and a sallow complexion, and Travis, a skinny, stringy looking guy, not quite as pale as the others, but close. Looking closely at Travis, I was surprised to see that he was a sleeper, but his presence with the group was explained by the adoration that filled his face whenever he looked at Betsy.
The rest of the events of this day and the next will be explained in detail in the upcoming short story, "A Crisis of Conscience," appearing on this website sometime before 17 November, 1996.