Poppins’ Return

Chapter 14 – Awakening

“Hello, lover,” said my nemesis with a slightly Irish accent. “Surprised to see me? Certainly at least part of you knows how to greet a lady,” she said looking down at my lap. It never even occurred to me that she spoke English. As usual, I was frozen, both in fear, and by some powerful magic that was seemingly bound with my very soul. She came closer, and I could smell her scent. Its intoxication filled my nostrils and caused my already racing heart to skip a beat. I could watch her; my eyes being the only aspect of my anatomy not held immobile; but was helpless to stop her has her hand reached out and lightly caressed my shaft.

“You almost got away from me, silly human. But now I’m here to finish what we started, and this time, your tramp protector will not be bothering us.”

When I realized that she was speaking of Marly, anger and fear infused my face as I fought to move, speak, kick, anything. What did she mean? Where was Marly?!!

“That’s right, little man,” she continued, stroking me lightly. I could see the glow from lines of magic forming even with her gentle touch. “Your sweet beloved is even now being taken to her own doom. I wanted her for myself, but the dryad made me give her over as payment for her services.”

Anger and hatred were replaced by panic. I had to do something. I had to get to Marly!

“No. You can’t save her. X’carin is feeding her to her tree,” the faerie answered as if reading my mind. “And you’re the prize anyhow, love. You didn’t know that, did you? She never told you how important you really are. Which makes it all the more sweet to take you.”

Moving like a specter in the blue light of my monitor, Bazerith slid up onto my lap, her thighs reaching around my hips and waist as she joined me in the chair. I knew that she was certain death, and that I would be powerless in her lustful grasp, but I couldn’t help but be aroused as her warm body moved up against mine. I cursed myself for my lack of control, and tried to think of discomforting events in my life in an effort to still my own passions.

“Relax to your fate, lover,” she urged, her hands smoothing over my chest. “You can’t resist what you want so badly…”

Her web of light seemed to grow up from her center and engulf us, much like it had the last time we had been intimate. She smiled, and reached down into my lap. I could do no more than gasp as her warm sheath settled over me. Bazerith let out a deep breath of pleasure as she took me fully inside her.

“I wonder what Marly would think of your weakness? Do you think she would feel betrayed if she knew that you were making love to me right now?” The other’s words were like fire to my moral, and my heart sank. Marly was my only hope for escape, my own lust was betraying me now.

“That’s right… let go, Mark. You’re mine, and no one is going to save you this time.”

Slowly, the faerie began to rock her hips atop me, drawing me in and out of her depths in a rhythm so painfully gradual that it was hard to tell one beat from another. She was warm, and slick, and erotic in the extreme. I knew that I couldn’t resist her in the end, but I held back and fought anyway.

“It was said that you might have been the one to bring back the Tuatha dé Danann… Such arrogance. Soon you will be taken into me, and that rumor will be ended.”

Back and forth. Back and forth.

“Even Marly never really believed in you. She lacked the dimension to put together the pieces of that little puzzle, and she will pay for that shortsightedness with her very life.”

Back and forth… What had she said? Back and forth.

“I hear that being taken into a tree is an experience in pleasure that is second to none. Perhaps you both will die in bliss, yes?”

Back and forth. Back and forth… I could feel myself getting near to my limit. In a few moments I would no longer be able to hold back and would release my seed into her. When that happened, my soul would be sucked away, leaving my body an empty shell. Death.

But something that Bazerith had said had caught my attention. Deep down in my brain, where there was still active resistance, a realization was born. It traveled around in my cortex until it picked up more solidification, and then burst forth with almost enough force to send me over the edge. Had I been able to talk, I would have yelled, “That’s IT!”

Bazerith looked startled for a moment, but continued to pump her hips against mine, deepening the rhythm.

Could it be that simple?! It took every ounce of concentration I had to push myself into the semi-conscious dream state that Marly described as Imaging. Instantly I was falling towards the metal sphere of my psyche. I found the tiny opening and moved inside, like I had on many occasions since my first experience with Marly in the park. Always, I was unable to make the remaining pieces of the metal puzzle fit together on any of the visible sides. Try as I might, they just wouldn’t connect. But Bazerith had mentioned dimension, and that got me to thinking that perhaps I wasn’t looking at all the whole puzzle. It took me a moment to get the perspective, but suddenly I was able to roll the object and the floating pieces in three dimensions. The puzzle wasn’t flat.

A whole new level of complexity had manifested itself to me now, and I grabbed the nearest free-floating piece and began spinning and shifting it, looking for a way to make it fit… And damned if I didn’t find one. I snatched another piece, and another. Quickly, the puzzle was coming together. And like most puzzles, the more you had completed, the easier it was to finish.

And then my sphere seemed to shake and moan, as if the whole of it was being ripped from its foundation. The spell! Frantically, I snapped the last of the pieces together just as everything went blank for a second. When consciousness returned, the sphere was gone… And so was the spell.

For one panicked second, I thought that I had come and that my soul had left me. But I could feel it, and I relaxed again. Then I looked up and realized that everything was different now. Suddenly, a whole new world of time and space was available to me, and it was manifesting itself as a series of visible paths through parallel universes. It was amazing!

About this time, Bazerith realized that her spell had somehow been broken, and she hissed and jumped off my lap, scooting backward and assuming the position of a cornered animal.

To me, the whole scene was a collection of possible paths. I could clearly see a large number of them converging. I could see that the faerie was going to jump at me in a radical and potentially lethal attack. I could see the outcomes of her jump as they shifted and twisted with each second that passed. At last, a point was reached where the paths converged and Bazerith had jumped into the air at me. I quickly selected a path that did not abruptly fade out (probably with my death), and headed for it. I was almost unaware of what my body was doing, and had Marly not explained non-linear space-time with me, I would have been lost.

Someone standing on the outside, in “real-time”, would have seen something like this:

As Bazerith jumped back, I stood up from the chair. A few seconds later, the faerie launched herself at my still form with arms extended to no doubt rip my head off. And she would have done just that except for the fact that I wasn’t there. I had stepped to the side and with the slightest of touches, sent her body flailing off in another direction. Bazerith never took her eyes off me, which was her mistake. If she had been watching where she was falling to, she might have seen the edge of the bed post and pulled away in time. Instead, she hit the solid frame at an angle. Her own weight snapped her thin neck sharply and cleanly, and her limp, lifeless body crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

I was shocked. It was several minutes before I was able to understand what had just happened. I hadn’t planned on killing Bazerith, and some part of my being was regretful that it had come to that. I knew that I would justify it in the end, but it didn’t make me feel any better about murdering a female, even in self-defence.

When I stooped for a closer look, I saw that what used to be the body of the faerie was now just a pile of quickly dissolving leaves and sticks. Even as I watched, the leaves crumpled into dust and scattered into twirling vortexes around my room, and then were gone. The last remnant of Bazerith was the soft, barley audible tinkle of a tiny bell.

Standing, I took a deep breath and thought hard on how I was going to save Marly.

When in doubt, call in the troops. Still somewhat stunned, I grabbed my pants and thought about what I could do. Marly was in serious shit. If what Bazerith had said was true, then she might already be dead. I didn’t have time to figure things out. I remembered what my lover had told me about faeries knowing when you were thinking of them, so I pictured in my head the first faerie that came to mind. I thought her name, and tried to project a feeling of urgency and desperation. I projected my thoughts out into the world, visualizing them reaching across time and space. In other words, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.

A few seconds later, there was a soft knocking at my window and I jumped off the floor. I shivered when I saw an obviously nude female form standing on my balcony. Could it be her? So soon? I went closer to the window and carefully peered outside. It was Ananha.

“Mark, are you alright?” She asked as I let her in. I blushed, having been so recently intimate with the enemy. The faerie picked up on my emotions and her face reflected my embarrassment and sorrow.

“By the Tree, I’m so sorry Mark.” She gathered me up in a warm hug and led me to the bed. For a second, I thought that she was going to greet me “fully” and started to panic. But she smiled and sat down next to me.

“The important thing is that you’re safe,” she continued. “And Bazerith is no longer a threat?”

Sighing, I explained the whole situation. Ananha’s brows rose up when I explained the part about putting the pieces together, then again when I mentioned X’carin.

“So the legend is true…” She said quietly while looking through the floor.

“What legend? I didn’t understand what she meant by that. Marly said that I was important, but nothing about the Tu… Tooth…”

“Tuatha dé Danann,” she finished for me.

“Yeah. What is that?”

The Tuatha dé Danann was a race of humans that were masters of magic and the Fae. They composed the actual human domain before they mysteriously disappeared. It was rumored, that one day, they would return. And for many centuries, it was felt that Marly’s clan was that manifestation. But, none of her group could produce male offspring with the gift. But now…”

“You think that she and I can?”

“It’s possible Mark.”

I let that sink in a moment.

“Look, legend or not, I have got to find Marly.”

She sighed. “You have to understand, that she may already be dead. If X’carin has her, then we don’t have much time.”

“Then let’s DO something! Where would she take her??”

“It’s not that simple Mark. The dryads are feared for a reason. They’re not just stronger and faster than us faeries… They have powerful magic at their disposal that would make fighting one of their race akin to suicide.”

“I don’t care! I can’t just sit here and let her die. I HAVE to do something, with or without your help.” I was standing now, and I’m sure that I looked about ready to pop. “At least tell me where I can find X’carin’s tree, or whatever Bazerith called it, and I’ll go there alone.”

She regarded me through slitted eyes. “You mean that, don’t you? You would take on the dryad alone?”

“Damn right. We’re wasting time,” I replied.

She smiled. “I just wanted to be sure of your resolve, Mark. Come on,” she said, taking my hand and urging me to the window.

“Where are we going,” I asked as I pulled on a shirt.

“To get more help. We’re going to need it!”

I suppose that if Ananha had told me how we were to travel, I might have balked. As it was, she floated us down to the ground and headed me into the forest where she stopped briefly in front of a large oak tree. Being a complete idiot, I guess I figured she had a horse or some other means of travel stashed nearby. When she took my hand and literally walked INTO the tree, I just about shit my pants. Before I could object to this impossibility, we were falling, or rather floating weightless (which is really the same thing) in a world that made me think of all the really psycho sci-fi flicks I had ever seen. It was like a Star Wars hyperspace jump coupled with an Escher drawing. Everything was everywhere, and “up” was whatever direction you happened to be looking. I started feeling sick to my stomach almost immediately, but then it was over.

When I stopped blinking, I saw that I was standing in a very different part of the forest. Then I blinked to clear my eyes again and it sunk through my skull that it wasn’t the forest in back of my house at all.

“Holy shit…” I commented.

“Sorry about the disorientation. I thought a tree-jump would be hard to explain.” Ananha was still holding my hand and leading me off towards a dim light.

“You can say that again. Did we just do what I think we did?”

“Walk through a tree into a different place?” She asked.

I nodded.

“Yup. That’s about the gist of it. Here we are,” she replied, stopping at edge of a large circle. I recognized the patterns in the earth from the smaller versions I had used on occasion in Marly’s room. Only now, they looked very different. Now I understood what I was seeing. It was damned peculiar, and I let go of my guide’s hand as she continued forward and then stood there staring at the ground in awe.

“What’s wrong Mark,” she asked me.

“The faerie ring… My god! It’s so complex…”

“You… understand it…” she questioned me slowly, drawing out each word.

“Sure! I mean, sort of. I see how it works, if that’s what you mean. Look here for example,” I said kneeling. “This configuration controls the field, and I assume that this grouping over here acts as a stabilizer of sorts.” I was pointing to various characters and lines etched into the ground. What was once just a collection of foreign symbols and such, had suddenly become as obvious as my native tongue. It was a computer program.

Actually, I should digress a bit. When I say that it was a computer program, I don’t mean in the sense that it could ever be entered into a machine. I’m talking about a set of instructions created to control an environment. A physical computer uses C++ or Assembly or some other high-end language to allow humans to interface with the system and “program” the computer to do something. This was the same thing. The collections of symbols and lines were instruction codes to control the “system.” I could clearly see all the basic fundamentals of modern-day programming languages in those ancient hieroglyphics. There were if/then statements, loops, variables, constants and input functions. It was all right there in plain…er…magic? I scratched my head, realizing that I understood what I was looking at, even though I had never seen half of those characters ever before. It was shockingly intrinsic.

“This is amazing,” I continued, walking carefully into the ring for a better view of one section. “This bit here controls what can come in, like an htaccess file on a UNIX web server.” I was so caught up in the thrill of understanding, that it never even occurred to me that Ananha wouldn’t have any idea what an htaccess file was, let alone UNIX or any other reference to modern-day technology. I went on for a few minutes, rambling now and again, until finally someone touched my shoulder. When I noticed and looked up, I let out a squeak and jumped up like I had been bitten on my arse. Floating in the air next to me was a tiny glowing figure that appeared to shift and crawl as though it wasn’t completely solid or stable. All around it buzzed a thousand bits of light. I had never seen a sprite before, but I knew without a doubt that the entity before me was exactly that.

“Excuse me, Master Mark,” said a soft and pleasant voice from the direction of the glowing malestrom of light. “I think I speak for the all when I say that there are other, more pressing matters.”

I was dumbfounded. Shaking my head, I looked around to see what she meant. There were no less that twenty members of the Fae standing in that circle, from a half dozen races. I was so distracted by the ring that I had failed to notice them.