Hokum

A Goat Named Jed

10

‘Something,’ Amber repeated the word like it may have had meaning for Jack that it didn’t have for her.

There was a moment of silence, during which Jack and Amber gazed at each other and the Chilli just remained still, head cocked, something like a statue while she waited for more.

‘I do have a question,’ said Amber, as though she needed permission.

Jack nodded, ‘Go ahead.’

‘On my world. Here,’ She placed one hand firmly on the table to make sure he knew what here meant - as apparently Jack’s story was a lot for her mind to deal with, ‘There are different provinces and lands, where people speak different ways. They are languages. Each language is different.’

Jack smiled, knowing where she was going with this.

‘And it looks to me like you would – ‘

Jack cut her off by saying, ‘I know, it is odd that I speak your language when I come from so far away.’

‘Yes,’ said Amber, seemingly pleased that he knew what she meant.

He told her, ‘Where I come from, technology is more advance, and that goes even more so with the, uh, organisation I work for. The organization has discovered breakthroughs in many things, with a little outside help, and one of those things was overcoming language barriers. I won’t get into details, though. No offense, but I doubt you would understand.’

Amber appeared to accept this, quietly. And again they had a moment of silence.

‘So I guess it’s your turn,’ said Jack, ‘tell me what you can about this place.’ He glanced at the Chilli, still staring back at him. ‘And don’t leave out the part about the dragons,’ he added.

A Goat Named Jed

9

Amber was looking glum now. She turned her face away uncomfortably. Cleared her throat again, but didn’t say anything. Meanwhile the Chilli had woken from her sleep. She remained puffed and seemingly comfortable on the barrel, but now had her head askew, slightly cocked. Listening.

Jack continued, ‘Over the following few years the handful of survivors did what they could to rebuild a new society. And they succeeded to a point. But it was obviously a lot different to what it used to be.’ He thought for a moment, scratching his cheek as if casually recalling the result of a football game, then added, ‘Three main groups of people rose; Those that attempted to establish a new world order, Those that sought to destroy any effort made by the new world order, and then there were those who wanted little to nothing to do with either. But I cant really call the third group an actual organisation. They consisted of all different types of people. Basically those who lived free of any authority influence. Adventurers. Wonders. Bandits. Hunters. A lot of smaller subcultures formed as well. In the shadows. The world became a dark place.’

‘And what about you, Jack?’ said Amber, her voice notably breaking with feeling for his plot, ‘Which group do you belong to?’

‘None of those I mentioned, actually.’ he told her, sitting back in his seat, dropping his hands to his lap, and turning his look to the Chilli that was gazing back at him, ‘I became part of a different organisation. A small covert group who have…. Uh, how do I put this?’ He thought for a moment, turning his eyes back to Amber. He said, ‘We’ve been looking for… something.’

A Goat Named Jed

8

It was a little strange. After slapping Jack, Amber settled back into her chair again, apparently now composed with her hands coupled in front of her on the table.

‘So anyway…,’ said Jack, as the sting in his cheek faded, ‘now you know a little more about my world. Happy to oblige.’

Amber tired to keep composed, though the discomfort of what she had done started to play on her. She wriggled a little in her chair. She cleared her throat in a pleasant, ladylike manner.

‘You said “When you were a boy”,’ she said, ‘so things have changed?’

‘Ah, yes, they have.’ Jack remembered there was more to what he was going to say. ‘The world I described was the way things were. The world I knew as a boy started changing when I was in my late teens. First came a virus. Uh…’ Jack revised the word ‘virus’ in his head, realising, especially by the curious frown on amber’s face, that it wasn’t a word she was exactly familiar with.

‘An illness,’ he clarified, and continued, ‘It came up fast. Killed a lot of people. And suddenly the world was a different place. Aside from killing a great number of people, it caused a great depression. The world’s economy crashed. Soon a famine had gripped the world. Then a war broke out. It was a war like no other. Lasted only a few weeks.’ Jack paused, clearly unsettled by the memory. ‘Millions more people died. Billions, actually. The world I knew as a child was left in ruins.’

A Goat Named Jed

7

‘Ohhh boy…’

Jack realised he had opened a can of worms and couldn’t hope to explain things easily for Amber, her mind just wasn’t ready for it. Or is that not fair of me? He asked himself.

‘No, I don’t mean magic,’ he said, ‘although, from my own point of view, far as I can tell from the many places I’ve seen, magic is really nothing more than areas of science yet unexplored. So I guess you could look at it like that, sure.’

Amber seemed disappointed by this, and slightly confused by Jack’s use of the word science. She asked, ‘And the stars?’

Jack stared perplexed at her for a long moment before replying. ‘At night, when you go outside, and look up into the sky, what do you see?’

‘Lights left by the gods,’ said Amber, as if Jack had asked a stupid question, ‘A greater light to rule the day, lesser lights to rule the night. They are also more than just that. They are symbols, or icons, left as a type of reminder. Bodies of worship. We do not forget they watch over us.’

Jack frowned, more curious than mocking. ‘So all those little twinkling lights in the sky…?’

‘Marks of the many lesser gods, of course,’ she told him, ‘the larger marks, like that of Semlin’s Sphere, have been left by the greater gods, like Semlin himself.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘for my own people, all those little lights in the sky are called stars. Some of us believe they were created by God, or gods. But I think at this point everyone agrees that they are suns. Burning balls of gas. Just like the light that rules the day, only the stars - the other suns - are so far away they we see them as small twinkling lights we call stars. I haven’t seen your night sky, yet,’ Jack added, ‘But I’m guess the Sphere you mentioned would be something like what we call a moon. Basically a large round chunk of dirt in orbit of our planet.’

‘Planet….’ Amber wondered at this word, in a way that someone might scrutinise an adult using bad language around children.

‘Yes, planet.’ Jack told her. ‘that is what I mean by “my world”. My world has its own sun. Earth, our planet, spins and goes around the sun. The moon goes around the Earth. Every star in the sky is another sun, countless miles away, and many of those suns have other planets going around then. A few of those other planets have life on them, just like yours, or mine.’ He paused, and concluded. ‘I am from a different planet, near one of those small twinkling lights you see in the night sky.’

Amber Glared at Jack for a long silence, and then suddenly reached across the table and slapped him.

‘Blasphemy!’

A Goat Named Jed

6

Jack said, ‘My name isn’t actually Jack, and my job doesn’t permit me to divulge my true identity. I can’t tell you a lot about the specific task I perform for the company I work for. But that can depend on what i learn about any given world. In other words, I can’t at this point tell you much about why I’m here. But I guess I can tell you some things about my world.’

Jack paused while Amber leaned forward, her elbows on the table, eyes narrowed with intrigue.

‘When I was just a boy,’ continue Jack, ‘my world was…’ he thought about the best word to use, but shaking his head he seemed dissatisfied with the result, saying, ‘…extravagant.’ He paused a little longer to better arrange his thoughts, then added, ‘My world was massive. Billions of people. Cities with buildings as tall as mountains. We had vehicles that moved faster than anything you would have, powered by engines. Machines, you might call them. Some of these vehicles could fly, others were able to reach the moon, even the stars in the sky. It was an era of advanced communication. Information. Convenience. My people, we…. We had these devises called computers. We could use them to find out anything we wanted to know, anything at all, to a point, and just at the touch of a button. We could communicate instantly with anyone, no matter how far away they were. We even developed small handheld devices that we could carry around with us to make this even easier.’

‘Wait,’ Amber stopped him there, raising one hand with a small wave, her face epitomizing fascination. ‘You mean things other than normal senses? Instruments of magic? And what do you mean by… stars?

A Goat Named Jed

5

‘How smart are these things?’ said Jack, returning to Amber and taking a seat across from her at the table.

‘Chilli’s?’ she asked, ‘Or dragons in general?’

Jack thought about this. ‘Uh… Chilli’s, I guess. How about both? And how many breeds of dragon are there, by the way?’

Amber looked up from her work, placing down a knife she was using to cut a pattern from the leather.

‘You really aren’t from around here, are you?’ she said and requested, ‘Why don't you tell me about where you are from, the truth this time, and then tell me why you are here…, then I’ll tell you about this place.’

‘I guess at this point, that sounds about fair.’

He shifted his eyes sideways and she watched him carefully, taking note of the slight changes in his expressions as he gathering his thoughts, carefully working up the words to tell her....

A Goat Named Jed

4

The Chilli was watching Jack intently. She watched as he was lying on the bed and asking questions. She watched as he got up and skirted himself in a small blanket Amber provided. She watched as he took a drink of water from the bottle in his bag. But she watched him with even greater intrigue as he unloaded the Glock of its magazine, the bullet from the chamber, and placed the gun on the table for Amber to take a better look at. And then the chilli just kept on staring as Amber took measurements of Jack’s bare torso in order to design a holster for him. Things were getting very uncomfortable.

Amber had taken many of her tools and leather products down into the basement in order to work on Jack’s holster while the three of them were in hiding - and she did just that, carefully drawing out an outline for her first cut of leather as Jack stood and had a staring contest with the Chilli. The first time he had stared into the creatures eyes they had made a special connection – if you want to call it special – in which Jack had shared the creatures feeling and notions of its thoughts before he passed out, and peed himself, apparently. And yet, the connection they had had apparently resulted in very little, as Jack had received no information as to why the Chilli was following him. Nothing. And now, staring into the Chilli’s eyes again, there was no more connection being made, no weird affect at all, just the standard dark, animalistic depth that could be expected of any animal’s gaze.

Eventually Jack had to ask, in quite the demanding tone, ‘What do you want from me?’

In response, the Chilli broke eye contact with Jack. It looked instead at the towel wrapped around Jacks waist, then looked at Amber working on Jack’s holster at the table, and then it moved. It stepped off the rim of the barrel, walked on its two legs to the center of the barrel top, then shrunk down as if it were collapsing in on itself like an accordion. It placed its penny-size clawed hands on its now popped belly. It was getting very comfortable. It nuzzled its face beneath one wing in preparation to sleep.

Jack grumbled, ‘Fine, just ignore me then.’

A Goat Named Jed

3

‘Secondly….’ Jack introduced his next question.

Amber nodded patiently.

He gave a furtive glance to the Chilly, and addressed the question to Amber. ‘Why are we in…’ he looked around at the room to try and better guess the situation, ‘A basement, with that… Chilli?’

‘You’re a fugitive.’ Amber was quick to respond.

Jack stared at her, as though expecting a much needed better explanation.

‘Well, technically we all are now.’ She said in a way that suggested it wasn’t such an uncommon thing to say, ‘It started with the Chilly, who killed the town guard.’

Jack nodded, listening.

She added, ‘But it was apparent that the Chilli’s behaviour has something to do with you, and that made it look like you were involved, and that means they will be after you as well.’

He continued staring expectantly at her, saying nothing.

‘And now I’m aiding and abetting a criminal,’ she concluded, ‘and that makes me a fugitive too.’

Jack considered all this. Somehow, it all seemed reasonable enough.

He asked, ‘Where are my clothes?’

‘In the next room,’ she told him, ‘drying by the fire.’

‘And where are we?’

‘Beneath my shop.’

‘And that’s safe from being found?’ Asked Jack.

She said, ‘I lived my entire childhood without ever knowing this place was here. It will do for now.’

He now looked directly at the Chilli, who seemed comfortable enough just listening in.

‘And how about… this?’ Asked Jack. ‘Are we, you know, safe from being frozen to death then shattered into pieces?’

The chilly let out a low whining noise, similar to that of a small whimpering dog.

Amber seemed vague about her reply, saying, ‘As far as I can tell, sure.’ She shrugged.

‘One more question,’ said Jack.

‘Of course.’

‘Are there any sheets, blankets maybe? Or any clothes at all I can wear till my own clothes are dry?’

A Goat Named Jed

2

Jack stared at the Chilli for a while. She stared back. He stared at Amber for a while. She stared back. He then looked around the space for a while more. The three of them were the only ones there.

‘I have a few question.’ He said.

‘Absolutely,’ replied Amber.

The Chilly cocked her head as if to pay closer attention to what Jack had to say.

‘Most important question first,’ said Jack.

‘Sure!’ Amber seemed eager.

He asked, ‘Are you giving me a sponge bath?’

‘Not exactly.’ She glanced at the sponge in her hand, then the bucket, then back at Jack.

‘Not exactly?’ He asked, giving her a pointed look.

‘I was sponging you down, but I finished a while ago. Now I’m just watching you.’ Her eyes darted to his penis, then back to his eyes. ‘You have a decent sized one.’

The Chilly cocked her head to the opposite side, maybe trying to figure out what Amber meant, or maybe she was aiming for a better angle by which to assess Jack's appendage.

‘Uhh… well, thanks. I Guess.’ Jack said.

Amber smiled pleasantly. ‘You are welcome.’ She dropped the sponge in the bucket.

A Goat Named Jed

1

Jack was waking up again, only this time there were no horse breathing over his face, no sounds of surrounding forest, no indication he was outside at all. What he did smell was the must of mould again, like that of the inside of Torn’s basement, which is where he thought he was before opening his eyes. But no, he was not back in Torn’s basement. As he lifted his head, blinking several times to clear his vision, he found himself in a different underground grotto. Maybe a cave. Smaller, less kept, damper, a little darker, as it was lit only by two candles at the foot of the extremely uncomfortable bed he was on. He was also very cold.

‘Where the hell are my clothes?’ Were the first words to pass his drowsy lips, as he caught sight of Amber standing nearby, a cloth in her hand. A bucket on the stone floor next to her.

‘I had to remove them,’ she replied, seeming quite wistful about it, ‘You peed your trousers when you fainted.’

Jack regarded his nakedness, regarded Amber with a flat expression. He was just about to ask why she hadn’t bothered to go the extra mile and change him into fresh clothing, or at least covered him with a blanket, but then found a more pressing topic of conversation when he spotted the Chilli perched on the edge of a barrel on the far side of the room.