Halfling Human ( The Dragon's Egg Trilogy, Book One)

By James Burkard

Shadrathe is Lord High Necromancer of the Darkway. He has awakened an ancient, alien evil on the planet Ahtwan and brought it to earth. Now American soldiers are on Ahtwan fighting an unholy, secret war for possession of the planet.
Mat Matterson is an artist living a quiet life in 1960’s Oregon. He knows nothing of secret wars, alien evil, or necromancers of the Darkway. Even if he did, he wouldn’t believe it or want any part of it. The only problem is he doesn’t have a choice. He’s not completely human and he's bound by blood and magic to the Dragon's Egg, a lost talisman of enormous destructive power; and he doesn’t have a clue.
His mother was a creature of magic, a shape-shifting Arein warrior and the last of her kind. She wore a human body and married Mat’s human father. Before she died in childbirth, she hid Mat’s halfling nature in a human form, and he grew up believing he was human.
His mother left him only an old wedding photograph with a cryptic message bequeathing him her “pride and curse”, the Dragon's Egg. Mat never got any Dragon's Egg and never knew what to make of the letter until a strange compulsion drives him to buy an egg-shaped piece of junk jewelry in a second-hand store.
Suddenly, he finds his life being hijacked and thrown into the crosshairs of Shadrathe’s secret war where nothing is what it seems, and everyone wants that piece of junk jewelry. ...Including Leaira, a beautiful, mysterious woman who claims the Dragon's Egg belongs to her and threatens to kill Mat to get it, but instead they fall in love as they flee across two worlds pursued by police, FBI, helicopter gunships, black adept wizards and their succubus lovers, and all the demonic creations of an extinct alien race.
Even though she loves him, Leaira tries to steal the Dragon's Egg and is lost in a gateway to Ahtwan. Later Mat falls through another gateway and is rescued by Kron the Simple; a telepathic, twenty ton, slightly psychotic, blue dragon with the attitude of a rock star and a penchant for practical jokes. He’s also a great healer and seer although these gifts are often erratic and seldom under his control.
Recently, Kron has been having horrific, prophetic visions; a black snarl of bloody time lines of possible futures in which Shadrathe sweeps across the multiverse laying waste to everything and establishing an empire of darkness without end.
In only a handful of possible futures does a strange, halfling hero wielding the Dragon’s Egg, cut through the knot of dark futures and release the Light Way; but each time he succeeds, he is betrayed by the corrupting power of the talisman that turns him into something infinitely worse than Shadrathe.
In only one possible future does he even come close to success but that timeline is so unsubstantial, so uncertain as to be almost nonexistent. The only thing that is certain is that Kron’s destiny is bound to this halfling’s. Together they must try to defeat Shadrathe, otherwise there is no hope at all.
Mat wants nothing to do with any of this. All he wants is to get his life back the way it was before. But there’s no way back, and with Kron’s help he confronts the secret of his halfling nature and fights the ferocious, untamed power of his magic aspect for possession of his body and the corrupting power of the Dragon's Egg for possession of his soul.
In the end he becomes not only a creature of almost mythic proportions but also a freakish outcast, a Darktime halfling abomination, hated and feared and the last hope of humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Burkard
• Release date: Jan 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9789198007008

James Burkard

Writing is like jumping off a cliff blindfolded and trusting that you will land safely. At least that’s the way it is for me. When I started to write “Halfling Human”, I had no idea where it was going, what characters would appear, or how it was going to end. I had only a vague desire to combine my life-long interests in spiritual development and cutting-edge science in a science fiction action thriller. The whole book sprang from that initial desire, and when I started writing it, I tried to let the book go wherever it wanted to go. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. It is a constant battle to let go of the need to be in control and to just jump off that cliff and let the story take you where it will.What it comes down to is an act of faith that the story already exists in some unmanifest form and my job is to work together with it to let it come to expression, kind of like Michelangelo who said that he did not create those sublime statues but only removed the marble from around what was already there. For me “removing the marble” consists of ignoring or trying to shut down all those clamoring voices of self-doubt and criticism in the back of my head that want to be in complete control; analyzing and judging every word, telling me this or that isn’t good enough or this isn’t the way the story should go or OH MY GOD, WHAT WILL THE READERS, PUBLISHERS, AND CRITICS THINK!I have to constantly say to myself; screw the readers, screw the publishers, and screw the critics. They have nothing to do with this, the process of writing, because in the end that is only between me and the spirit of the book. When it’s done, the publishers, readers, and critics can have their say, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t care about their opinion, but if I have been true to the spirit of the book, then on one level their opinion really doesn’t matter.I realize this way of writing sounds a bit mystical, even anthropomorphic; as if the book is a living thing or spirit that has an independent existence, like those ancient spirit muses who inspired old time writers from Homer to John Milton. In the beginning, this also bothered me because it was so at odds with the rational, analytical approach to writing I had been taught.You know what I mean; you make a plot outline of each chapter so you know exactly where you are going and what each character will do next because you already have built up character profiles and there is very little room left over for the unforeseen, spontaneous surprises. Then after you have all your soldiers in place, you can begin the battle of writing your book like any good general in control of everything and moving his troops according to plan. I know that there have been many excellent works of fiction written in that way, but it seems such a boring, plodding process to me.I love writing the way I do because, like the reader of any good novel, I never know what is going to happen next, like when a minor character, who I think is only going to have a walk-on part, suddenly develops a life of his own and runs away with the story, taking it in a whole new, unexpected direction. When this happens, all the armchair critics, sitting in my head and feeding on my self-doubt, begin screaming, “This wasn’t planned! This isn’t where the story was going! If you let him do this, it’ll ruin the book!”For years, these critical voices made it difficult for me to trust myself or the process even though time and again it worked out and above all gave me intense pleasure and satisfaction. Then, I came across a book by Stephen King called “On Writing” in which he compares the way he writes to an archeologist who discovers a little piece of bone sticking out of the ground (the initial impulse or idea for a story) and as he uncovers that bone, he trusts that it will connect to another and that finally he will uncover a complete skeleton. The idea being that the skeleton or book, like Michelangelo’s statue, already exists buried there and it is the writer’s job to uncover it.Reading King’s book was a watershed experience. I realized I wasn’t the only one who wrote like this. It gave me faith in the way I was working, and I soon discovered that there were many others working in the same structureless, yet strangely structured way. One of the oddest examples is Minette Walters, the “Queen” of the British detective novel. Some years ago, I saw a documentary that followed her through one year of writing a crime novel. The interesting thing was that by page one hundred and six she still did not know who the murderer was! This was mind blowing. I’d always assumed that writers of detective stories wrote in the same logical, analytical way as their detectives worked to solve the crime by uncovering clues and red herrings that had been carefully placed beforehand. But this wasn’t the way Minette Walters worked.So the question is what is happening here? How do those creative writing classes that, teach structured outlines, conscious character building, and writing about things that you know about or have personal experience of, explain a phenomena where the writer has only the vaguest idea of what he is going to write about and no idea of what he is going to uncover along the way and yet still ends up with a highly structured, well plotted story?They will probably nod sagely and point to James Joyce and mumble something about stream of consciousness and the subconscious as if that explained everything when in reality it explains nothing because nobody knows where thoughts come from in the first place, let alone whole novels of thoughts.Now wait a minute, you’re going to say, everyone knows thoughts come from the brain. While it is true that neurophysiologists have discovered that certain areas of the brain are active in different kinds of thought processes, they still have no idea where an actual thought comes from. In fact, a group of young, radical neurophysiologists have theorized that thoughts don’t come from the brain at all, that it is just an interface receiver like a radio or TV, picking up impulses from somewhere else. They theorize that this somewhere else is what physicists call the quantum field which they define as an infinite, eternal, non-place, existing outside of space and time, containing unlimited potential energy, and is the source of everything that exists or could possibly exist, and to top it all it interacts with human consciousness and is therefore itself somehow conscious.This quantum field is beginning to sound a lot like what saints and mystics down the ages have called the realm of the spirit or even the mind of God, and with quantum theory it seems that modern science has curled back on itself and bitten its own tail only to discover that what it is biting into tastes suspiciously like religion.In any case, these young neurophysiologists have no time or appetite for religious implications and instead remain strictly scientific, theorizing that all thought results from a material meat mind interfacing with this non-material quantum field out of which the original seed thought springs. This seed is then filtered through the meat mind receiver which, like a badly tuned radio, distorts it with the static produced by the individual’s unique biology and personality, for example; disease, traumas, beliefs, needs, likes, dislikes, etc.However, it is not only individual thoughts that are waiting to be expressed but whole books of thoughts, an infinite number of books about all possible and impossible worlds that are waiting on the far side of material reality for someone to give them expression. And that bring us back to “Halfling Human.” and the strange, structureless structured way it was written.If quantum physics and the theories of radical neurophysiologists are anything to go by, then the way “Halfling Human.” was written and the way scores of other books are written is not so crazy after all. In fact, by trying to shut down the personal critical filters that say what a story should or should not do, we are, hopefully, making it easier for the story to come to fuller expression even though I must admit there is also a great deal of conscious editing and polishing that goes on afterwards because a story never makes it unblemished through the distorting filter of my meat mind.When I wrote “Halfling Human” I was driven by the desire to write a science fiction thriller that combined spirituality and cutting-edge science, and by and large I think I succeeded. I believe that “Halfling Human” represents the spiritual future of a new type of science fiction that walks the wild side of quantum physics into the spirit realm of mystics, saints, and shamans.

Book preview

1

Prelude

It was raining hard as Mat drove the pickup across town to the party. The headlights gleamed off the wet asphalt, the metronome click of the windshield wipers lulled him, and the hiss of the tires on the rain-slick street made a soothing counterpoint. He felt muscles unknotting as his body relaxed. It had been a very strange day, and the party could be just the reality check he needed.

It would be open and informal, mostly artist like himself and university types. Dave and Jenny Bates were both artists, he a sculptor and she a weaver. They managed to combine their talents in beautiful, complex ways. Their last exhibit had been such a big success that they were determined to celebrate in style. The party could go on for days, and that would suit him just fine, he thought.

Without warning, a fat little man dressed in a rumpled, black tuxedo raced out of a side street, in front of the pickup. He looked neither left nor right as he splashed through the intersection. His eyes bulged with blind terror and his short legs pumped like pistons. His hair was matted with mud and leaves and his white shirt was torn and bloody and a shirttail flapped out behind him.

No, not a shirttail! Mat thought an instant before he slammed on the brakes. The pickup skidded into the intersection and stopped as the little man rushed down the dark, tree lined tunnel of the side street.

A moment later, another figure swept through the intersection in pursuit. Mat's first impression was of an angel with hair like spun silver and the pale, naked torso of a beautiful woman. But as it flew through the glare of the headlights with its purple veined wings only inches above the hood of the truck, he caught a glimpse of a bulbous, insect-like abdomen that narrowed into a long, serrated stinger. Before he could get a better look, the apparition dove down the side street and was gone.

He slammed the pickup into gear and stepped on the gas. He had to go after them. After all that had happened today, he had to know if they were real or if he really was going crazy. In his excitement he let the clutch out to fast, and the engine stalled. You just had to get a stick shift, didn’t you! he muttered as he frantically turned the ignition. The truck coughed into life, and he pulled away fast, skidding around the corner. He gripped the steering wheel convulsively and forced himself to slow down.

The street was lined with the usual two-story wood-frame houses. Carefully, he scanned the sidewalks and lawns but saw nothing unusual. After about a quarter of a mile, the street ended in a busy thoroughfare, and he pulled over to the curb and killed the engine. For long time he sat listening to the rain pounding on the roof of the pickup and the cooling engine ticking over. When he finally pried his fingers off the steering wheel, his hands began shaking so hard he was forced to grab hold again. What was happening to him? he wondered. That thing he just saw couldn't be real, could it? He thought of the morning newspaper headlines, and the brutal murders that had been taking place in town. What did Alec call it? An unholy monster... something evil loose in this town... Was that what he had just seen?

More likely, it’s just another billboard hallucination down the short road to insanity, he thought. There had been enough of them today, reality bent out of shape like that little man with his shirttail flapping out under his tux. Only it wasn’t a shirttail was it? His mind tried to shy away from that, but he pulled it back. Come on, he told himself, if we’re going down this road, the least we can do is look at the billboards along the way.

It wasn’t a shirttail was it? It was a real tail, bushy, white, and flicking back and forth with fear. As long as we’re looking, what about the horns? Oh Christ! He forgot about the horns! When the little man turned his head and looked behind him, Mat was sure he saw two small devil horns sticking out of his matted, plastered down hair.

That’s enough! he thought. I don’t need to know anymore. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the cool, hard circle of the steering wheel and listened to the rain and the harsh rasp of his own breath. So, what was he going to do now? He couldn't sit here all night. For a moment, he thought about turning around and going home, but after what he had just seen, the prospect of spending the night alone in his apartment was as appealing as road kill.

Maybe Alec was right and he should just go to the party. What he needed most right now was not to be alone. He needed people around him, he needed to talk and drink and dance, maybe flirt a little and try to forget for while. As far as he could see, he had no other options, and the irony of it all was, the day had started out so promising. He had finished the painting. It was the best thing he had ever done, a masterpiece, granted a very bizarre masterpiece but still....

2

Curiouser and Curiouser

The gun barrel blue dragon wheeled out of the sky and came roaring towards him. It had a long golden mane and wings the color of blood. Its scimitar claws were poised to rip through this canvas dream and its eyes were the eyes of a defiled Kewpie doll, insane with pain and loss.

A green skinned, demon warrior stood astride its shoulders. He was short and squat and wore only ragged blue jeans and an old army field jacket that flapped open over his bare chest. His head was thrown back in a wild scream, and his long red hair whipped and twisted like flames in the wind. His face was a tattooed riot of colors that transformed his wide, flat features into a nightmarish bird of prey. In his right hand he swung a blood-stained battle-ax, and in his left, he held out an egg-shaped crystal that burned in his palm like a miniature sun.

Behind him the sky was a purple bruise stabbed with jagged mountain peaks like splinters of black glass. Above the mountains, the ghostly face of a beautiful young woman shimmered in the twilight like a luminescent cloud. Her lips were slightly parted in an ambiguous Mona Lisa smile, and her eyes were shaded with sorrow.

Mat threw down his brushes and stepped back. He eyed the painting critically. It was good, probably the best thing he'd ever done. On the other hand, he'd never done anything quite this bizarre before. He wondered what dark corner of his psyche dredged it up. It was too real, too detail perfect, not at all like a dream or fantasy. Just looking at it sent shivers down his spine. It was as if he had photographed the damn thing. No, it was more real than that. It was as if he'd opened a door into another world, and could feel its icy winds blowing through his studio. Yeah, and the next thing you know, I'll be shoveling dragon shit off the floor, he thought and picked up a brush and scrawled his name, Mat, in a corner of the canvas.

As he stepped back, he was overcome by a sudden attack of vertigo. For a moment, he felt as if he was sliding sideways out of his body and reached out to steady himself against his easel. Just then, the painting began reproducing itself into infinity, like a mirror reflecting its own image. He pushed away and staggered over to an old wing chair he kept in the studio and sat down. After a moment, the attack passed, and he looked around and wondered, what was that all about?

Glancing up, he noticed that the overhead lights were still on even though morning sunlight streamed through the high Victorian windows. Once again, he’d worked all night, caught up in a creative frenzy so intense that he forgot he turned on the lights when it got dark and then forgot to shut them off again when it got light. He had been forgetting a lot lately, forgetting appointments, meals, sleep, forgetting everything except the painting. Maybe that was what was wrong. He’d been pushing too hard.

But now, it's done, it’s finally done, he thought gratefully. At the same time, he wondered a little at his reaction. Usually when he finished a painting, he felt happy and satisfied with a job well done. Today, he felt only relief, like a horse when the saddle is finally removed after a long, hard ride. Maybe all this workhorse needs is a long rest, he told himself.

The only problem was he didn’t feel tired. In fact, he felt wide-awake, energized, his senses hyper alert. He could almost feel the walls of his studio wrapped around him like skin prickling at the faintest touch of shifting air currents. His nose wrinkled at the heady, aromatic tang of drying oil paint. Through the roar of early morning traffic on Eleventh Street, he could clearly hear the buzzing of a blue bottle fly against his window.

After a while, he became aware of another sound, a faint high-tension electric hum that kept getting louder. He cocked his head and looked around trying to localize the sound, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere, and as it grew stronger, it seemed to be wearing away at the fabric of reality. Things in his studio were growing transparent and starting to fade. He could already see right through his box of paints and discarded palette. Soon, he could even see through the wall of his studio and into another room, a room that shouldn't even be there because he was up on the second floor and there was nothing beyond that wall except the outside of the house.

A young woman stood in that room with her back to him, looking out of a window. She was tall and slim and wore a short, flower print, summer dress. Her long corn silk hair fell across her shoulders in soft ripples. Mat thought he recognized her, but that was impossible because that woman existed only in the painting he'd just finished. She was a figment of his imagination compounded of a few dabs of color brushed on canvas. She could not be real. ...If only she would turn around.

At first, she seemed unaware of his presence, but then, suddenly, her back stiffened, and she actually began to turn. As she did, the walls of his studio began to reform, superimposing themselves on the other room. Desperately, he tried to catch a glimpse of the girl's face through the thickening overlay of his studio, but the other room was quickly fading into the walls and a moment later was gone.

Shit!! He exploded in frustration and looked around. Everything was back to normal except that high-tension hum had grown and taken on a deep, throbbing beat that boomed against his chest and entrained with his heartbeat. What the hell was going on? Was he going crazy? Had he finally worked himself into a nervous breakdown? His mind felt as clear and rational as ever. He didn't feel crazy.... for whatever that was worth.

In the background the sound changed subtly, took on a slow rock and roll beat that gradually picked up speed like an express train leaving the station. He started feeling restless and jittery, his feet tapping time. Finally, he couldn't sit still anymore and jumped up and began pacing back and forth while the girl in the painting smiled at him enigmatically.

The beat took on a wild, syncopated counterpoint, and suddenly he was riding the rails with the raunchy amphetamine rhythms of Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild driving him faster and faster back and forth across his studio. He felt like a caged animal with a maddening itch to be free. In a flash of insight, he saw how that itch had been there for weeks, driving him to paint his way out of the cage, driving him harder and harder. Now, the painting was finished, but the itch was still there, and was driving him crazy! The room was to small, the walls closing in. He had to get out!

As he rushed across the room, he felt a strange sense of déjà vu. He had been through this before but couldn’t remember where or when, and right now, he didn't care! All he wanted was to get out! He pulled his old army surplus field jacket off the hook, threw it over his shoulders, and yanked open the door.

A wave of relief hit him as he ran down the front stairs. He was free! Free at last! He started to laugh, but instead lifted his head and gave a ferocious, animal roar of triumph. Where the hell did that come from! He wondered and was so surprised he almost stopped in his tracks, but the momentum of his headlong rush drove him stumbling out the front door, across the veranda and onto the lawn. Out on the street, cars passed by unheeding.

He tried to pull himself together, but even though he'd left the studio, the music hadn’t left him. It was still there, pounding through his body. He paced restlessly like a caged animal. He couldn't stop. He had to keep moving. He decided to check on the other animal just for something to do and headed around to the back of the house.

The other animal was a big yellow tom called Murphy. He belonged to Mat's friend and landlord, Alec Dawson, a retired Anthropology professor. Mat took care of Murphy whenever Alec was away. The cat’s food bowl was on the enclosed back porch and hadn't been touched. Mat figured Murphy had gone missing in action, trying to scratch a tomcat itch of his own, so he gave the bowl a snappy military salute and headed downtown, moving fast. He had an itch of his own to scratch.

His body was bopping to the psychedelic beat of a rock and roll band that only he could hear. He had high fidelity, stereophonic sound blasting through his head, lighting his fire and taking him higher. He began giggling uncontrollably as he watched his legs stretching out before him like Plastic Man eating up the distance between him and some final destination. That there was a final destination, a focal point to this madness, he did not doubt. The music that sang through his body sang with the promise of satisfaction, a place where all itches would be scratched.

He was downtown now. Cars and people were flickering by like an old-time movie unwinding too fast. Wherever he was going, he was taking the shortest, fastest route, cutting diagonally across parking lots, jay walking busy streets, and slipping down alleys. Across the street he saw the Salvation Army Store and headed straight for it. When he first hit town, he'd visited it a lot. In fact, most of his furniture came from there, but it had been months since he’d been back.

He stood hesitating before the plate glass door. Before he decided to push it open, he found himself inside and moving up the aisles. Well, why not? I'm only along for the ride, he thought and suddenly saw himself laid back on an acceleration couch in his head watching the world go by on two eyeball shaped TV screens. It was so hilarious he started giggling again. Out of the corner of his eye, he registered the cashier sending a suspicious look. Flick, and she was gone as his head turned from side to side like a radar antenna with a pre-programmed search pattern. There was a flash of red light up by the counter. His eyes locked on, and he homed in.

In a cardboard box of junk jewelry, he found an egg-shaped crystal on a finely wrought gold chain. The crystal glowed with a pulsing red light. It looked just like the crystal in his painting. As he approached, the glow grew to a quick pulsing flash that strobed in time to the music beating through his body.

The crystal grew into blood-red sun and he closed his eyes and basked in its warmth. As he did, the music inside him changed and became the long, slow push of oceans of blood through his veins. Slowly, he opened his eyes, and the stone pulsed quietly like a living heart. Without thinking, he reached down to pick it up, and a weak electric shiver ran up his arm. He held the stone in the palm of his hand and looked at it closely, fascinated by the fine violet veins that twisted through its depths.…

That will be twenty-five cents, sir,

Wha...? Mat found himself standing in front of the cashier. He could not remember how he got there. Only a moment ago he had been admiring the crystal egg.

That will be twenty-five cents, the cashier repeated.

Oh yeah, sure. Mat said absently and handed her a dollar. On the counter between them lay a cheap red glass egg on a tarnished goldplated chain. The egg was scratched and dull and about the size of a robin's egg. He scooped it up together with his change and shoved it all in his pocket.

Weird, really weird, he thought, but for the first time in months, he felt halfway normal. The driving, restless madness was gone and even the music was silent. He shook his head in wonder as he pushed through the plate glass door. The morning sun glared off the pavement. Shoppers hurried by. On the corner a traffic light changed and a line of cars drove by. He leaned back against the wall beside the Salvation Army store and looked up at the morning sun. He closed his eyes and bathed in its radiance and felt at peace with himself at last.

He thought of that other sun he had just held in his hands and reached in his pocket and took out the egg. It felt warm and alive in his closed fist. Slowly, he uncurled his fingers. The egg lay quiescent in his palm, just a cheap piece of chipped glass on a tarnished chain. Than it began to glow with a slow pulsing light that followed his heartbeat, and filled him with a pleasant sense of warmth and power.

With each pulse the light intensified until it grew into a flaring incandescent star. He glanced around uneasily, but it was as if he was locked in his own little bubble of space-time, and no one passing by on the busy street seemed to notice anything, no one except for a young woman in a light flower print dress standing beside a mailbox, across the street and watching him with wide-eyed fascination. She was tall and slim and had corn silk hair. and he was sure that she was the girl he had seen in that other apartment. This time though, he could see her face and it was, as he suspected, the face in his painting, the same finely drawn oval of austere perfection, cool, aristocratically reserved, almost severe. But the fullness of her lips and the look of unreserved wonder and longing in her eyes made a lie of all austerity.

His eyes became twin telescopes that showed him every detail of that hauntingly beautiful face. He saw the fine sickle shaped scar across her high cheekbone, a pale blemish against her golden skin, he saw every golden pore, every strand of hair, every fleck of green jade in her eyes. Then, their eyes locked and time stood still. Between them the egg burned fiercely in his outstretched hand.

Strange memories flowed through his mind: Her mother was dying. She ran through endless crystal corridors. Her father stood before the door to her mother's chamber. He shook his head sadly. She ran to him... The gyre hawk wheeled suddenly. The wind blew through her long hair. She felt the great bird tense when it sighted its prey. It folded its wings and dove. The earth rushed at her... She was in the garden with Refsnu. The old wizard was trying to teach her the twenty-three ward spells, but he was in a playful mood, and animals kept hopping and flying out of the sleeves of his robe. She laughed uproariously and clapped her hands... In the same garden years later, the earth prisoner smiled approval as she finished assembling a Kalashnikov assault rifle... It was her eleventh birthday, and she was making the traditional pilgrimage to the oracles of Mount Revelation, but in the volcanic caverns beneath the mountain, the Three Sisters wove their dark spells of treachery...

The flow of memories ended abruptly, and Mat staggered against a mailbox. His legs felt rubbery, and he had to hold onto the mailbox to keep from falling. Across the street a bearded man wearing blue jeans and an old army field jacket sagged against the wall of a building and slid to the pavement. He had bronze skin, a prominent hooked nose, and straight black hair. His incongruous blue eyes were filled with wide-eyed amazement.

My South Seas pirate, his grandfather had called him affectionately. He thought of his childhood on the family farm in upstate New York and his grandparents who raised him after his mother died. His father had been a seaman and jumped ship to marry a native girl. They had lived together in the islands for three years. Shortly before Mat was born, they left on a tramp steamer bound from Singapore to Seattle. En route, his mother died in childbirth, and his father took the baby back to the family farm to be raised by its grandparents.

A few months later his father was murdered in a back alley mugging in Norfolk. The only thing he left Mat was a faded photograph of a tall blonde-haired man in a seaman's cap with his arm around a pretty native girl. Mat still had the picture. Looking at it, he could see that his bronze skin and black hair had come from his islander mother, but his startlingly blue eyes and hooked nose came directly from his father's Scandinavian ancestors. His grandfather had been right, he did look like a pirate, and the beard he wore only served to emphasis this.

Mat smiled at the thought, and then with growing horror, he realized that the man across the street was himself. He moaned in disbelief when he looked down at the body he now wore and the long graceful legs beneath a short, flower print dress. There was an instant of vertigo, and he closed his eyes against the spiraling rush of darkness. When he opened them again, he saw the young woman with corn silk hair leaning drunkenly against a mailbox across the street. Her jade green eyes were large and frightened. She put a fist to her mouth to stop from screaming and turned and staggered away. Mat tried to call her back, but all that came out was a dry, croaking sound.

Hey man, you okay? a passer-by asked uncertainly.

Yeah, thanks, he said hoarsely as he pushed unsteadily to his feet. The girl had better control of herself and was even trying to run.

Hey, wait! Mat yelled as he wheeled drunkenly across the busy street. Brakes screeched and horns blared.

Goddamn wino, get out of the way! a truck driver yelled.

Mat didn’t notice. The only thing that mattered was catching the girl and finding out what was going on. He watched her dash around the corner and disappear from sight. He had better control of his body now and ran after her. He skidded around the corner and stopped to scan the street. She was nowhere in sight. He started running again, pushing and elbowing his way through the morning crowd. After a few blocks, he was forced to give up. She was gone... or maybe she had never been. Maybe he really was crazy after all.

It was then he realized that he still had the egg clenched in his fist. Hesitantly, he opened his hand. He was holding a piece of cheap red glass on a tarnished gold-plated chain. He stared at it, willing it to change, to glow, to burn, but nothing happened. Finally, he just shoved it back into his jacket pocket and headed home.

3

Lost Worlds

As he got further from the center of town, the traffic thinned out. Offices and stores gave way to two story wood frame houses set back from the street on wide green lawns. Walnut tree and maples lined the streets. Up ahead he saw the mailman making his rounds while across the street a lawn mower motor roared into life. A couple of college kids sped by on ten speeds. The solid everyday reality of Friday morning on Eleventh Street made everything that had happened seem totally unreal. Once again, he wondered if he was cracking up. Things like this just didn't happen in the real world, at least not in his real world.

Or did they? ...Whoa now! Wait just a minute!!

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as vistas of lost memory began to open inside him. How could he have forgotten? He had been living here nine months and never once questioned how he got here or why. It just happened. He never saw anything strange in it until this moment. It was like waking from a long dream.

Nine months ago, he lived in San Francisco and thought he had it made. His career had finally taken off. He was the new golden boy, the darling of the West Coast art scene. Critics around the country were beginning to sit up and take notice. He exhibited in New York to rave reviews. It was said that if he continued to develop, his name would be up there with Pollack, Picasso, and Van Gogh, heady stuff for an ex-marine who never finished college and had only been painting professionally for five years.

He wasn't complaining though. He had everything he wanted and couldn't seem to do anything wrong. He was even engaged.... JILL!! What had become of Jill? They should have been married by now. Yet he hardly ever thought of her anymore, and when he did, it was like thinking of someone he had known years ago, a long-lost love, the pain and scars of their parting healed and all but forgotten. But it had only been nine months. How could he have forgotten when he had loved her so much?

She was intelligent, beautiful, and sensitive, the wealthy daughter of an old San Francisco banking family. He could see her now as he saw her that last morning, sitting up in their bed, her eyes filled with pained bewilderment, watching him pace the room like a caged animal.

The restlessness had been riding him for days, building like slow torture that never let up. It felt as if he was living on the edge of a thunderhead, the air super-charged, primed to explode at any moment. It got so bad he could no longer paint. His nights were broken by terrible fever dreams that drove him twisting and turning into wakefulness, panting with fear, his body slick with sweat. And Jill, poor Jill, tried desperately to help, but despite everything she did, the restlessness kept building, taking on the terrible inevitability of an avalanche.

At last he fled into his studio. He knew it was futile, that there was no escape, but what else could he do? He looked around. His work was stacked against the walls, an unfinished painting on the easel, all mute, static ... meaningless!! Before they sang to him in color, their forms danced intricate compositions. Now, they filled him with revulsion. He felt his life dead-ending in a narrow back alley of his mind.

Then the music started, a crazed rock and roll band, wailing through his head, fueling his restless despair with its frenetic energy. He paced back and forth faster and faster, picked up a brush... MEANINGLESS...!! He threw it against the wall, and all his pent-up hopelessness and frustration suddenly exploded into a whirling dance of destruction that rock and rolled through his studio smashing paintings, throwing frames, breaking furniture, howling like a madman, spinning like a dervish, a mad genie of destruction laying waste to all that he had worked so hard to build up.

Jill came into the studio and cried out and tried to stop him. Instead, he turned on her with unreasoning violence. I've got to get out, don't you see? he screamed. I feel trapped, my life is meaningless! I have to get out! Get away!

She put her arms around him and tried to calm him. Yes, we'll go away, she soothed. You've been working too hard. Just you and me. And her arms felt like steel clamps closing around him, tightening and locking, trapping him in their embrace.

Leave me alone! he screamed and tore her arms from his body and pushed her away. She stumbled back and fell to the floor. For a moment, she stared up at him in shocked disbelief, her arm raised in a tentative gesture of supplication. Then, her face shattered into tears.

He hardly noticed. Blinded by despair and driven by restless madness, he spun around looking for a way out. Rock and roll music trip-hammered through his mind. He caught sight of the front door, and it loomed like salvation. Smashing aside his easel and trampling his latest painting underfoot, he rushed for the door as if all the demons of hell were snapping at his heels.

His pickup was parked by the curb. He tore open the door, jumped into the driver's seat, and left a smoking, screaming trail of rubber down the middle of the street. The next nine hours were a mad amphetamine odyssey of on-ramps, cloverleaves, and freeways drag-stripping northward. He kept to the passing lane, his foot heavy on the gas pedal, cars sliding away behind him in a rainbow blur of steel. The broken white lines on the asphalt rushed towards him and disappeared beneath his wheel. White line fever drove him ever northward past the turnoffs for Sacramento, Edmonton, and the Oregon border.

Grant's Pass... He remembered stopping for gas, hopping with impatience, willing the gasoline to flow faster. Then, he screamed back onto the freeway with a full tank and the accelerator pushed into the floorboards. Grant's Pass rushed away from him in the rearview mirror, disappearing at the speed of light to the muffled roar of his V8 engine.

It felt so good to be on the move again that he stuck his head out the window and hooted like a lunatic. Then he sank back into the driver's seat and began singing accompaniment to the strutting, thumping, Rolling Stones classic, that couldn’t always get what it wanted, that was stomping through his head.

The sun crossed the sky and was just setting when he saw the turnoff for Eugene, Oregon. Without thinking, he wrenched the steering wheel over and swung into the breaking lane, sliding onto the off ramp and gliding down into the town. The street lights were just coming on, glowing softly in the gathering darkness. As he drove up and down the quiet tree lined streets, he felt the madness draining away and a wonderful sense of peace and completion filled him. He felt like a storm-wracked traveler cast up on some foreign shore, an explorer in a land of dreams. The pickup seemed to float in a sea of tranquility. Even the growl of its V-8 engine seemed muted, slipping softly through the twilight and into evening. The moon came up, and he found himself cruising through moonbeams cut by the shadows of over-arching trees.

He drove across town at random with no particular destination in mind. At least that was what he thought until he saw the house standing on the corner of an intersection. It was a two-story, Victorian, wood frame structure from around the turn of the century. As he rolled up to the stop sign, the moon broke free of the surrounding trees and hung full and heavy above the house. In the moonlight its high peaked gables, narrow windows, and gingerbread carvings turned to silvered glass, and the whole structure shimmered insubstantially as if it only partially existed in this world, an outcropping of enchantment, from the far side of fairyland.

He stopped the pickup and stared in wonder. In that instant he knew that this was what he had been looking for without knowing it. Never before had he felt such an absolute sense of belonging. Beyond all sense and reason, he knew that here was an end to restless, driving madness, here was where all the tangled roads of his life finally met, here was a door home, whatever that meant and wherever that might be.

After a while he put the truck in gear and rolled slowly across the intersection. He parked in front of the house and noticed a wooden sign nailed to a stake driven into the front lawn. An old oak tree cast its shadow over the sign and he had trouble reading it, but he had a feeling about what it would say, it was a feeling of rightness, of circles closing. He jumped out of the pickup and walked over to the sign. APARTMENT FOR RENT. Right on, he grinned, Right freaking on! And he pulled the stake out of the ground and carried the sign with him up onto the wide front porch.

4

Artists and their Dragons

Mat broke through the surface of memory gasping for air like a diver who has been down too long and gone to deep. He looked around uncertainly. Eleventh Street was still there, etched sharp and clear in the morning sun. Its hard-edged reality almost bruised his eyes. How long had he been standing there? Not long, he thought. The mailman was still making his rounds down the street, and the kids who had passed him on their ten speeds were just turning the corner at the end of the block. Not much had changed as far as he could remember, but he didn't think he would ever be able to trust his memory again.

Down the street on the opposite corner he could see the house where he had lived these last amnesiatic nine months. The place had seen better days. It had been built as a parsonage back in the late eighteen-nineties, but the church it served had long since disappeared. Now, the paint was pealing from the clapboards, the millwork was cracked and broken, and the roof sagged. In the harsh morning light it looked very little like the shimmering, silver glassed enchantment of his lost memory. In fact, after that first night, he never saw it that way again. He was not even aware that it could look like that until today.

In the distance, he saw a taxi turn down the street, and pull up in front his house. A moment later, an elderly, gray haired man climbed out. Even though it was high summer, he carried an umbrella hooked over his arm and wore a heavy tweed suit and an old, formless, tweed hat. Mat felt a deep sense of relief.

Professor Dawson! ... Alec! he called as he ran across the street. After the weird events of the morning, he desperately needed to talk to someone, and Alec was his best friend, someone he could trust, someone who would listen and understand. Besides, this was right up his alley. Alec had a doctorate in anthropology specializing in the study of primitive and ritual magic. He also had a degree in psychology and was a recognized authority in the fields of occult phenomena and para-psychic research. Finding answers to the weird and inexplicable was what he did.

He had retired from his academic position at a prestigious eastern university about a year ago, and for reasons of his own, moved into this dilapidated house on the far side of the continent. Despite this, his opinions and expertise were still sought-after commodities, and he was frequently called out of town to lecture at international symposiums or act as a consultant on various research projects. From chance remarks that he let drop, Mat suspected that some of these projects were military, and at least one had a connection with a top secret installation that Rathe Industries was building for the government in the high deserts of Eastern Oregon.

About a week ago, Alec had been called out of town again. Whether to the deserts of eastern Oregon or to New York or London, he did not say. He never did. And Mat was used to him disappearing for weeks at a time without any other explanation than vague grumbling about government timetables, red tape, and research grants. Mat missed him when he was away and always looked forward to his return, but never as much as today.

Professor, am I glad to see you! He shouted as he ran up to the cab.

Alec finished paying the driver and turned and smiled good naturedly, Ah Mat, it's good to see you too, my boy, The sun flashed off the old man's steel rimmed spectacles, and he blinked nearsightedly as he shook Mat's outstretched hand. He was not much over five feet tall with a slight almost delicate build. His sharp, precise movements and the way he cocked his head when he talked gave him a quick, bird-like appearance.

I hope that you have been keeping yourself busy, he said as he turned to pick up his bags.

Here let me help you. Mat offered. Alec usually traveled light taking only an overnight bag and a locked attaché case. This time, though, Mat was surprised to see a large aluminum suitcase also standing on the pavement.

Yes, I suppose I do need some help with that, the Professor said, But be careful, please.

Mat tried lifting the suitcase. It weighed well over fifty pounds. What have you got in here, gold bullion?

Alec shook his head and just smiled. It's good to be home, he said as he walked to the front porch. I'm getting to old for all this running around.

In the downstairs hall he stopped and fished out the keys to his apartment. In the old days, when the house was still a parsonage, this door probably opened directly into the vicar's study. The room still retained some of yesteryear's prim propriety in the dark, walnut wainscoting and the high, narrow, Victorian windows. But prim propriety was having a tough time of it these days.

Bizarre, Polynesian devil masks, garishly colored, aboriginal, bark paintings, and complex tantric mandalas now hung on the walls while African fertility statues, Indian medicine pipes, shaman drums, and sacrificial knives were scattered around the rest of the room which was already awash in a sea of books, newspapers, magazines, and scientific journals. Some of these were piled neatly on the high bookcases covering one wall while others stood in tottering stacks on tables and chairs. Many lay in fallen heaps across the floor. A few were carefully set aside with bookmarks or propped open to pages crammed with handwritten notations in their margins.

Alec was not only a great scholar, he was also a major junk food addict, and the room was sprinkled with an eclectic collection of Styrofoam cups, empty milkshake cartons, and take home boxes from Mac Donalds, Dunkin Donuts, and the local pizzeria. Long ribbons of computer printout snaked across the room and tied the whole lunatic package together. Even though it looked like total chaos, Mat knew there had to be some method in the madness. Alec seemed to know exactly where everything was and could instantly put his finger on whatever he needed.

At the far end of the room, a pair of heavy, sliding doors stood slightly ajar. At one time, they probably opened into a sedate Victorian sitting room. Now, it housed an orderly array of chemical and electronic equipment that was part of Alec's private lab. In contrast to the study, it was always neat, orderly, and spotlessly clean.

Mat had spent many happy hours in these two rooms talking with Alec about everything from witchcraft to quantum physics. Sometimes, they even experimented with occult or esoteric techniques that were supposed to enhance sensitivity to paranormal phenomena. At first, Mat approached these experiments skeptically, treating them as nothing more than sophisticated parlor games. He even allowed himself to be hypnotized a couple of times just for the hell of it. Although nothing of a paranormal nature ever came out of these experiments, he did begin to notice changes in his everyday life. He seemed to have more energy and focus, and the mood swings and savage depressions that regularly plagued him gave way to a constant even keel.

When he mentioned this to Alec, the old man suggested some meditation techniques that might also help. He even suggested slight beneficial changes to his diet. To his surprise, Mat noticed a change almost immediately. The techniques seemed to unlock well-springs of creative energy and inspiration he never knew he had. He was convinced that they were responsible for the unbroken wave of creativity he had been riding for the last six months.

His paintings gained new depth and intensity, and the galleries and critics, who had turned their back on him and called him crazy when he cut his ties with San Francisco, were once again knocking on his door. Even private buyers made the long drive up to Eugene to look at his work. It all seemed too good to be true, and after what happened this morning, he was beginning to wonder if maybe it was.

He put the professor's bag down just inside the study door. Look, he said, I know you just got home, but there are some things I would like to talk to you about if you have a minute.

Alec turned, cocked his head, and gave Mat a quick, penetrating look. Something wrong, Mat?

Mat shrugged. I wish I knew.

Alec smiled, Well, I could use a cup of tea. If you just give me five minutes, I will be right up.

Great, I'll put the kettle on.

Mat's studio was right above Alec's study, and the door from the upstairs hall opened directly into it. The room was light and airy. Canvases were stacked neatly along the walls. His easel with the painting he had finished that morning stood in front of the high windows. He walked over and looked at it as if to reassure himself that it was still there and real. Then, he bent down, and studied the girl's face. Yes, it was her even down to the little sickle shaped scar across her cheekbone. He reached into his pocket and took out the chipped glass egg. It bore little resemblance to that blazing red crystal in the painting. But it had..

He shoved the glass egg into a pocket in his jeans and hung his jacket on the hook by the door. Then he walked thoughtfully across the studio and into the living room. This was a later addition to the house and the ceiling followed the slope of the new roof. It had probably been built as an extra adjoining bedroom and like his studio, had a door opening onto the hall. He had no need of an extra door and had put an old chest of drawers, compliments of the Salvation Army, in front of it.

In fact, the whole room was done in late, post-modern, Salvation Army, honky tonk. There were a couple of comfortably worn overstuffed chairs, a battered mahogany coffee table, and an old sprung sofa upholstered in a garish pattern of pink chrysanthemums on a lime green background. The sight of it made most people wince, but Mat loved it. He had placed it beneath the skylight where the ceiling followed the slope of the roof so that he could lie there and watch the clouds go by.

The kitchen was in a little alcove off the living room. It had large round window, set in a gable in the end wall, where it caught the morning sun. Mat filled the teakettle with water and set it on the hotplate. Going through the simple ritual of making tea calmed his nerves, and he began to whistle tunelessly as he took down a can of Lapsing Souchong. It was the professor's favorite tea, and he had also developed a taste for it.

A moment later, Alec knocked on the studio door, Hello, anyone home?

Yeah, come on in! Mat yelled as he put the tea can back on the shelf and went into the studio.

Alec came in with the morning newspaper sticking out of his jacket pocket and Murphy riding on his shoulders. The professor and his cat were an absurdly mismatched pair. Mat could not help grinning every time he saw them together. Alec was a dignified gray-haired scholar, fine boned and correct. In his tweeds he was the epitome of academia. Murphy, on the other hand, was a large, gray-striped alley cat. Draped over the professor’s shoulders, he looked like an outrageous Elizabethan fur collar and a rather moth eaten one at that. Murphy had only one ear and his body was spotted with bare patches of scar tissue from countless close encounters with other toms. Mat reached up and scratched the cat gently behind the ear. Murphy opened one eye, regarded him benignly for a moment, then closed it again and began to purr hoarsely.

He was waiting for me on the back porch, Alec explained.

Mat shook his head wonderingly. I haven't seen him around for the last couple of days, but he always seems to know when you get home.

How is the painting coming along? Alec asked nodding at the easel.

Come and take a look, Mat said. He never let anyone see his paintings before they were done and the illusion he was creating, complete. Painting was a very private business, and he did not want another person's consciousness getting mixed up in it until it was done.

Is it finished? Alec asked, obviously taken by surprise. Murphy stopped purring and opened one eye to see what was going on.

Yeah, I worked on it all night and just finished this morning. I'd like to know what you think.

I would be honored, Alec said and stepped over to the easel. A hiss of surprise escaped his lips when he caught sight of the painting. Involuntarily, he stepped back and adjusted his spectacles.

Mat