Prologue – The Beachhead

*Scene 01*  11:00 (The Old Woman Who Was Not)

The old, dead woman watched as the foamy tides cast themselves relentlessly upon the wet sands of the beach, expending the last breaths of their moon-driven energy.

Her body had once had a name, and an identity. She had been called Noadiah, but now that name was lost with the death of the personhood that had quitted the body when it fell into the great fjord and the wounded beast prowling those frigid waters took her under.

Afterward only the image of the old woman remained, and the thing that inhabited her form was nothing like the woman who once was lovingly known by that name.

Before coming to the beach, she’d been in a great stone city. And there she had existed for several years. In the shadows. In the alleys. In the darkness. Waiting for an opportunity to take back something that did not belong to them.

Each day the old woman’s form became more restrictive and weakened. The presence within her, now fully occupying her dissembling remains seethed and chafed in the length of the waiting. Yet it did not dare to show its degree of impatience. Afterall, time was only a construct given to allow humans to experience dispensation. Impatience gave birth to recklessness. And recklessness was a child that should be strangled in its infancy.

The old woman had arrived upon the beach and had taken up residence in the sea caves months before the coming of the beast. She had unwittingly summoned the creature. Or, rather, the thing living inside of her had.

Since the coming of the second quest, she had learned what the Surface Worlders were after. The three virtue stones that would unlock the hidden kingdom. For years her and her sisters had blown through the lands of the Mid-World, seeking the current resting places of the two remaining stones, for she knew the place where the first stone now lay- high in the mountains of the great Stone Wall, where the fire-beast slept until the final time for its re-awakening. The second stone had gone beyond her sight, but she suspected that it had fallen in the possession of The Pan. Its true resting place was unclear, and that bothered her not knowing for sure.

Through swirling about eaves, and hearing tales whispered by firelight, she had at last learned of the location of another, and that breathy intelligence she had whispered across the waves, reaching the sea creature that had given her its present form to walk unnoticed among mankind.

And insinuate herself there near the location of the third and final stone that lay locked within the treasury of the great stone city of Xarm, named after its founder and first monarch. Guarded by fools who did not know what they had in their possession.

No one suspected the old beggar woman who sat day after day in the shadows, wearing tattered rags, with matted hair, and various insects crawling on her form beneath her clothing to keep her company. She’d waited and watched for an opportunity, allowing the lax guards to grow accustomed to her huddled and seemingly innocuous presence. To see her only as a regular fixture of a city impoverished by the mundane and ineffectual. Just another pathetically huddling piece of human debris, skulking in the shadows. She stared out at the world with gray-blue eyes, clouded with cataracts. No one suspected that she might be anything more than she appeared. A blind beggar—seemingly unseeing. Dismissed by the wary guards as only a ubiquitous and harmless shadow to the point that they no longer saw her. And in this guise, she was able to trade the blindness they perceive to be hers for their own.

The Xarmnians never really knew what they had in the inner room of the treasury, to begin with. To them, the stone was just a valuable rock, unique in its large size, retrieved long ago in a time best forgotten, when their ancestors first traveled from a great distance to settle in the surrounding plains of the mountainous valley. Legend had it that this particular stone was dug out from its golden setting, along with two other large stones, and each of these stones was divided among the kingdoms that occupied the region. The Xarmnian Kingdom, the Capitalian Kingdom, and the Middle Kingdom, an alliance formed of the indigenous proto settlements who occupied the plains before the arrival and formulation of the latter kingdoms. The three precious stones were said to have once been the jeweled adornments of a mysterious golden crown capping a pillar that predated all known races of men and other kind occupying the lands of the Mid-World. These separated fist-sized stones were taken from the mysterious pillar stone and, along with the twelve base set mover stones, were used to build the great cities that grew into powerful walled empires.

But the thing inside the old woman knew these stones were much more than they appeared. They were particularly connected to a prophecy of the Mid-World’s future. These three stones were key components to unlocking a multi-dimensional gate and whose opening would bring about a change in the Mid-World and signify the ushering in of a new kingdom age that would supplant everything. A potential future, this occupant of the old woman would do everything in its power to prevent. And when at last the opportunity finally came, she had absconded with the mysterious gate stone, smooth and polished and perfectly round and larger than any other natural stone of its kind.

One evening, the old woman, at last, saw her opportunity. The treasury had been easier enough to enter under distraction than she had ever anticipated, because the sight of her and the groveling denizens like her had grown commonplace within the city. All city guards were ordered to the city walls to track and kill a particularly hated traitor and prevent him from escaping.

In the rush to comply with orders, the posted guard of the treasury failed to notice the old woman’s stick extended into the closing doorway as they rush out to follow the command.

In the evening darkness, they failed to see the old woman’s slinking form, accustomed to blending in with the shadows, hobbling out of the now-closed treasury rooms, with a large smooth stone tucked into the flea-ridden folds of her tattered clothes. They failed to follow her skulking course through the night, out of the city, or tracked her progress for days without food or water, walking through the wildlands toward the seashore, she knew to lay to the eastern edge of the lands of the Mid-World. The incompetent soldiers would not discover the loss of the great and ancient treasure stone for many days, months or even years. They would never conceive of what she intended to do with it. That the great and giant sphere would be cast, as soon as she reached the shoreline out into the Great Sea, never to be found again. And then she would decide, what next to do about the other stones that remained, but first, she must rid herself of this old body and once again walk in the newness of a life stolen from among the lands of the living.

The old woman arrived at last at the beachhead embankment. From atop the edge of one of the many sea-cliffs, she watched the continual march of the waves coming from the distant pumping heart of the ocean, pounding in frothy surf along the seashore, extending far as her old eyes could see.

She thought and raged long and hard about what all had transpired to lead her up to this moment. The insufferable restrictions she has borne living within the decaying mud of the now almost bloodless body. She harshly chuckled to herself, realizing that she had at last gotten the upper hand. That those outworlders would, finally, be prevented from being used as instruments of the Terrible One to bring about the prophesied return of this land’s champion.

If she could not destroy this stone, and she had tried many times along the way, she would do the next best thing. From an outcropping ridge that extended as a tall peninsula into the ocean, she heaved the stone, a giant, sparkling pearl, outward as hard as her frail form would allow and, breathless, she watched as the stone left her hands, arched and descended towards the swirling frothy waters below, only to see, to her amazement, the pearl seemed to punch into the air and ripple the fabric of the Mid-World’s veneer of reality, the seascape undulating and forming concentric circles in the very air and as it passed through the center of this reality, she saw, what appeared to be the great fanged mouth of a massive creature catch the falling pearl through a swirling tear in the air. The massive head and jaws clamped down upon the stone, and its eyes shifted and stared at the old woman’s form standing shakily on the cliff before it.

Something passed between them, and the old woman knew that it was only a matter of time before this terrible beast would be allowed to pass through its mystical portal and meet with her again. She need only wait for its coming and the inevitable people that would follow soon afterward. Twenty-one meddling and clueless Surface Worlders who she had vowed to kill as soon as possible before they could make any further trouble with ancient prophecy non-sense.

She waited for many months, occupying the sea cave on the shore below the overhanging cliffs. At last, the first of the otherworldly travelers came.

*Scene 02* 10:42 (A Meeting of Monsters)

A creature of living darkness emerged from the well of the deep. It had been summoned from the great gulf that separated the world of the seen from the unseen. The beast was given a keystone granting it a metaphysical form reflecting its monstrous nature, allowing it to pass through to a place where the designated one would come to be tested to learn to lead others either by faith or by sight.

The supernatural swords of fire blocking its entrance were briefly parted by the keepers and it was, at last, permitted to enter the hidden world from which it had been ejected so very long ago.  Soon others would emerge from the world of the seen, but this was its opportunity and its singular mission: To kill the desire of the one called to lead.  To stop the opening of the other gate beyond the hidden world to the kingdom without end.  A kingdom called Excavatia.

Like a shooting star, the creature came through a ragged tunnel in the evening sky opening just above the horizon’s edge of the marching sea.  Upon hitting the atmosphere, feathers of smoke peeled from its falling form creating contrails that marked the path of its fiery descent.  Its ponderous bulk plowed into the shoreline with a crash and thunderous clap echoing across the breaks and turns of the seashore cliffs.  The pressure of the impact caused the crawling shallow water to explode into the air, and a large furrow tore into the rising shore, casting a cloud of sand into the air thereafter.

Something huge emerged from the furrowed trench masked amid the falling water and dust, clouded in a loamy patina, sparkling with wetness as if it was newly birthed into this world of sea and lowering sun.

It shifted, undulating in the air, seeming to twist the landscape around it as if bending the light out of its path like a massive, invisible fist moving under plastic.

Its form was translucent, but opaque with the accumulation of sand sloughing off its ponderously moving body.  It lumbered forward and headed towards the open darkness of a sea cave carved by wind, time, and water.  The sea swelled and surged behind it as the rippling, translucent, hulking thing faded into the sea chiseled cavern as deeper darkness enfolded it into its waiting bosom.

An old woman’s voice, coming from somewhere deep within the cave spoke to the newly arrived monster and said, “Welcome to the Mid-World, my prince.  We have waited long for your coming.”

The beast filled the cavern with an even deeper darkness, raising its darkling form to cover the escape route through the entrance to the sea cave.

Words, seemingly formed of rock and evoked from the deep-belly of the land and sea, responded to the woman’s voice, rumbling out of the walls and echoing throughout the recesses of the deep cavern.

“You speak in the language of the original tongue. How come you to know this? And by what power do you recognize me? You have the hinting of human blood about you, but it is not your own smell.”

The monster drew in a sniff that sounded like crashing waves of the sea, “I sense the water and dust within you, and the smell of another Prince of the Dark. Are you a creature of this land, or another place?”

The woman’s voice responded, quavering, “I am a confined spirit of the air, my Prince. The original tongue is native to me. I was given this form through the blood and formation of another. I am your servant and the one who beckoned you with the accursed stone.”

“The traces of water in you, are not of this outer sea. From whence do they come?”

“There is a great and deep river between the mountains, my liege. It is called a fjord. There I was infused by the Beast of the Sea, your kind, along with the killing of the human form that previously bore it.”

“And what of that Prince? How come you to leave your loyalties there and bring them to me?”

“The former Prince of the Waters was slain, my Lord. Its head was taken by fishermen, even as I was present, lurking hidden within its locked jaws. I alone had enough blood left to sustain me.”

The monster seemed to ponder her words thoughtfully for a long moment, and then the bellows of its throat chamber formed an odd popping sound like that of breaking rocks.

“Then, servant, you will be my eyes upon this land, for I move among the shadows and beneath it. The light of this world burns.”

“What is it that you wish of my, my master? I knew you would come, but I did not know for what purpose.”

“There is one of the Ancient Land soon to come to this place. We are to undermine him at all cost, for he, like others before him, seeks the Kingdom that is hidden here.”

“But the stone,…I saw you consume it. Surely, we have disposed of the virtue stone needed to bring the prophecy about.”

“We have only delayed it. The stone is embedded in me. I could not consume it, for its power would send me into Tartarus.”

“You mean it is here still? Not out in The Void?”

“It cannot be lost. The virtue stones are from the altar of The One. They can be contained only for a time, but they answer another’s call.”

“So how are we to prevent the one who will lead another of the stone quests?”

“You will join their company. You will undermine their group, and sow seeds of dissension among them.”

“I have done this before, only with some limited success. Those who knew the form I bear, eventually suspect.”

“Then it is for you, that this charge I give is perfect. Those arriving here do not know the others. They will all begin as strangers without names.”

“Your will is mine, my Lord. I am called Torlah among those who know me by my true form.  I am called Noadiah, but the others who see only the blood form I now wear. And by what name shall I call you?”

“My name is Sheol, for I am the Lord and Master among the many graves of men.”

“So, My Lord Sheol, how shall we begin this deception together?”

“Bring me a sacrifice so that I may feed on human blood. From this, I will give you another form, beside the ashes of the one you now wear.”

The monstrous bulk in the shadows slowly moved aside, allowing the faint graying light from outside the cave to pass around its body. Giving the old woman leave to go to the outside and do as it had commanded her.

*Scene 03* 0:28 (Sea Sighting)

She saw the traveler struggling inside what appeared to be the remains of a rowboat, taking on water, being swamped by the surfeiting waves.  She scowled, trying to get a better look through the old eyes.  When she finally saw the terrified occupant of the small craft, she smiled broadly.

“A little girl”, she thought to herself, “Perfect.”

*Scene 04* 8:56 (The Lifeboat)

The lifeboat had been adrift for at least a full day. The two girls did not know what to do. They had screamed for help until they could speak no more and then they had wept copious tears, growled at each other, snapped at each other and finally consoled each other.  But in all that time, the one terror they did not dare speak of lest by speaking it aloud they make it true-No help would be forthcoming. They were lost at sea. And it would be hours before someone realized they were missing.

Thankfully, there was a small cache of provisions stowed within the bench box of the lifeboat, but it wasn’t much. There were kits for purifying sea water, into potable water but neither of the girls knew anything about how to put the strange items together, or know much about desalination. The items to them were just what they appeared to be: A rag, a silver bowl, a collapsible wooden frame, a small corked vial of blue tablets and a mirror.  They might as well have been the components of an Erector set. There were some dried cracker-like biscuits, that they halfheartedly  munched on, but found them tasteless and hardly satisfying. Neither of them had much of an appetite after their ordeal.

The wind was cold, but the sun overhead threatened with blistering heat. They pulled the tarpaulin cover over the half open area from the front bow to the mid-ship rails and oar stocks and took shade under it. By and by they fell asleep, having little else to do but hope and pray the ship would turn back, and a search party sent out and they would eventually be found before they died of thirst, hunger or exposure.

Sleeping fitfully in each others arms, trying to stay warm as best as they could, they never saw the opening in the sky and sea, and never knew they had drifted through the strange glowing portal out from the open sea of the Surface World into the waters of another world entirely.

It was only a matter of a few hours more, before they were awakened by the rocking and chop of the boat lifting over the swells, and spinning lazily into the deepening troughs between the frothy wave crests, that they knew something was wrong. They could be swamped and capsized if nothing was done to orient the small life boat.

The oars were long and heavy, and up until that moment the girls had been afraid to try lifting them out of their stocks into the row locks. But they had to orient the bow, and water was already pouring over the sides with each dip and pitch of the boat. Shakily they crawled towards the mid-ship bench, weakened from fitful sleep, growing hunger, and a disturbing lack of fresh water.

The darker haired girl rose up, bracing herself by clutching the canvas extending from the transom.  The younger, fair, red-headed girl scrambled towards the bracket holding the long wooden oar on the port side of the boat just as the craft crested a rising wave.
“Land! Land!” the older girl squealed and screamed.

The water and crackling, liquid noises of the waves drowned out the other girl’s words into nonsensical gibberish and squeal. The younger girl lost balance and fell into the sloshing water in the bottom of the boat, bruising her shins and arms.

“Oww! Oww!” she cried, “Help me, Becca!”

“Miray, there’s land over there!” the older cried, trying to steady herself against the pitching boat, “Get the oar! I’ll get the other one.”

“I was trying to, big dummy! And I fell and hurt my legs.”

“Miray, don’t you see?! We are saved! There may be people there who can help us! C’mon!”

With that the older girl, identified as Becca by the younger, bent down and crawled through the sloshing water to the starboard bracket holding the other oar and tugged at the long paddle.

Meanwhile, the younger, Miray, tugged at the oar on the port bracket.

“It won’t come out!” she wailed, gritting her teeth, “Becca, help me! It won’t come out!”

Just then a swelling wave of water poured over the port gunwale, drenching the red-headed girl. She cough and sputtered, shivering from the chill of the water, trying to wipe her eyes, but losing her balance again. The frustration of her circumstance overwhelmed her and she started crying, “Becca, help!”

The older Becca lost patience.

“Quit being such a baby, Miray!”

She had pulled her oar out and laid it across the mid-ship bench. She sloshed past Miray, gripped the port-side oar and jerked upward, but the oar did not come loose. Gathering her legs under her, she planted her feet, and gripped the oar with both hands, just as another wave poured over the side, drenching both Miray and Becca. Becca coughed and sputtered water, gasping for breath, which irritated her and she lashed out angrily at Miray, as if she had caused the wave to hit her.
“Get outta the way, you weakling baby! There is land over there and all we need is to get the oars out and we’ll be able to row towards it without sinking first. Now is not the time to cry!”

“I’m not a weakling baby!” Miray protested through her tears, “Stop being such a meanie! We wouldn’t be out here, if you hadn’t insisted we play pirates!”

“Shut up, you!” Becca turned on her, raising a balled fist at her, “All you ever wanted to play was with your dollies. Grow up, you sissy baby! Ship up or ship out!”

Miray’s faced puckered into an angry pout. She wanted to give Becca a good clout in the mug, but she was much smaller than her, so she bit her lip and reached over to grab the stuck oar with Becca.

“On three,” Becca commanded, acting as if she was the pirate captain she had pretended to be.

“One-two…”

Miray yanked upward and the oar popped loose of its bracket, and she triumphantly cried out, “THREE!”
Becca, expecting Miray’s effort to have joined hers on her own declaration of the word “Three”, lost balance and fell backward into the sloshing water on her buttocks, expelled a loud “Oof!” when she struck the bench seat.

The hard plunk had bruised her tail bone, and she teared up, but bit her bottom lip trying hard not to let Miray see her cry.

“Who’s the weakling baby now?!” Miray snuffled, wiping the salty spray from her eyes and cheeks.

“I’ll get you for that!” Becca growled, turning and rising, reaching for the oar she had freed before.

Just then the boat pitched and spun, angling down another wave, but did not dip to gulp the water at the bottom of the trough. It canted, throwing both Miray and Becca off balance again, and they hung on to the gunwale railings to keep from tumbling overboard. The oar clacked against each other and formed an ‘X’ across the boat.

The boat see-sawed again, and the oars slid to parallel positions, clattering again.

They put the oars in the oar locks and fastened the ends together, so that the oars could be operated in tandem. When the paddles were dipped into the water, the two girls were thrown forward over the mid-ship bench and fell toward the transom and canvas cover.  With a shout of surprise the two girls tumbled head-long into the canvas, tangled together but no worse for the experience.

Becca started laughing, and Miray couldn’t help herself. She never could hold onto a mad for very long, and together the girls laughed at the silliness of their predicament.

“Do you know how to row a boat?” Miray asked.

“I can sing it, but there’s no ‘gently down the stream’ here.”

“Guess not,” Miray wrinkled her brow, “How’re we gonna do it?”

“Don’t know, ” Becca said, rising up off of the canvas tarp, “But we’re gonna figure it out. How hard can it be?”

Two hours of struggle against the choppy sea soon taught them the answer.

*Scene 05* 4:39 (The Xarmnian Scout)

Shihor, a Xarmnian scout, stood high in the stirrups of his saddle, his gaze fixed eastward towards the coastline.  A strong look of displeasure clouded his face from its usual placid and controlled coolness into a darkening and furrowed scowl.

The pulsing flash over the edge of the far eastern horizon and the faint but distance marks on the edge of the lowering sky confirmed his worst fear.  Twenty-one fingers. A year of sevens. The soothsayer had been wrong to placate their concern.

When the first seven years had passed after they had put down the insurgency, they had watched the east with guarded vigilance.  No gray harbinger smoke fingers arose on the horizon-far distant pillars of fire burning somewhere beyond the edge of the sea.

Sentries watched, day and night, stationed on the hillside that formed the sea-side cliffs overlooking the sea for over a year, but no flash of the opening between worlds appeared. No rumors of the otherworlders came from their spies, hidden within the pathetic pockets of resistance operating with what they foolishly believed was secrecy within the outer villages.

When no further signs of the mysterious Oculus had come, they had begun to believe that the trouble with the Surface Worlders and the Prophecy was failing. When fourteen years passed, they had begun to believe that the meddlesome entries were at last over, and they had celebrated their victory with a brutal campaign to pillage those villages who still resisted Xarmnian rule and tribute. Even the commercial city of Azragoth had fallen, and its collapse had demoralized all of the other towns who still believed themselves protected from the reach and might of the Xarmnian Empire.

What was started so long ago, and had to his mind been thwarted, suppressed and seemingly abandoned, was not yet over.  The beings would be back.  The nightmares would become flesh, gristle, and bone, and crawl, swim or fly back into the Mid-World seeking vengeance.

The Pan and its minions had been warned.  An agreement had been reached, or so he had thought.  It was hard to tell with the wild ones, what truly was in their self-interest.

The remote patrol assignment would have to wait.  There was no time to be lost.  He had to ride hard and fast, back to the city of Xarmni and warn the dread monarch.

If they did not put down this potential uprising, it could mean the end of their rule.  The marauder resistance was one thing, but this was quite another.  This involved the supernatural.

He turned his horse towards the westward rise and the purple shadow of the distant mountains beyond it.  He would ride hard throughout the night and so doing would kill his mount, but he would pick up another one in the occupied towns along the way.  Seven days ride.

It had taken nine days to reach the coast in pursuit of the mysterious old blind woman seen to have left the city. Something about her had never seemed quite right, lingering day after day in the alley next to the inner court portcullis. Never once asking for alms, food or water. She wanted something else. Something much more precious to her than those things that would naturally sustain a human life, and he suspected he knew what it was she wanted.

He’d been a fool not to recognize her, sitting there day after day, but then again she was much changed from when he’d last saw her serving he and his men in the Tavern at Sorrow’s Gate.

If the pulsing light on the eastern horizon and the smoky columns in the distance were not indicators enough, the fact of the old woman showing up in the City of Xarmni, should have warned him that an attempt to recover the remaining crown stone would soon be made–provided, Xarmni, still had it in its possession. He had to get to the Treasury to be sure. He would meet with Helmer’s company on the road and then proceed onward.

The horse-flesh under him had served him well in his patrols.  It was a fine and powerful beast.  What a waste, he thought as he clenched his teeth, gathered his reins tightly into his fist and drove hard, cruel spurs into the flanks of the mountain stallion, causing it to rear up and then run for all its might.

*Scene 06* 10:23 (The Sea Witch)

Coming out of the sea cave, the old woman hobbled along the beach towards a rocky jetty. She anticipated that the small craft would soon bump along edge rocks following its current drift and then spin around its promontory point. Afterward, it would be carried back out to sea once it passed the breakers, if it was not smashed to bits along the reefs.  The water was shallow along the northern side of the jetty, and the woman knew she might be able to catch the craft coming along its edge before it reached the deeper southeastern current beyond.

If the girl in the boat was smart, she would simply jump out into the water before coming to the jetty, but she doubted the witless, whining, waif would figure that out.

It was then she spotted the younger girl running down the beach doing her best to follow the craft along the shoreline.  The woman’s grey eyes seemed to light up, as a sinister smile crept along the edges of her lined mouth.

“Two for one,” she muttered, and then climbed out on the rocks of the jetty, knowing that the smaller one would soon reach the edge of the sanded shore and be forced to climb up onto the jetty if she expected to follow the drifting craft any further.

In a frothy rush of curling water, the small vessel soon came within reach of the jetty.  Its keel lightly ground along the sandy bottom in the shallows, before it bobbed and dipped, along a slaloming trough, and arched up into the burbling crest of the wave.  The hull ground along the submerged rocks just below the water level of the mid-tide, but the bewildered girl did not seem to notice.

Leaning forward on a flat rock, the old woman reached out with an impossibly long arm and caught the gunwale of the boat in a viselike grip, jerking the boat partway up onto the jetty.

The girl inside was dark haired, and wide-eyed, her cheeks stained and reddened with tears and panic.  She had not noticed the old woman before now, for she had been looking back at her younger friend running helplessly after her on the shoreline.

She gasped, seeing the old woman who had rescued her and had stopped the craft from going further.  The woman’s face was deeply lined, partially pitted, and her hair was white and gray, flying wildly about her head in its own storm of wind and waves.  She wore dirty rags barely covering her bent and angular body, and her arms were pale and white, like the bare bones of a fish.  Her hands looked knobby and arthritic, but there was no doubt they possessed a strength that belied their appearance as the woman hauled the craft up further onto the rocky jetty.

“Where might you be going, missy?” she croaked.  And the girl gaped, at first, too stunned to answer her.

“I’m, I’m…,” Becca stuttered, trying not to look aghast at the scary old woman, who has suddenly appeared over the side of the boat and was grinning in a way that somehow disturbed her.  A few of the old woman’s teeth were missing, and the gap-toothed grin made her look like something savage and feral.

“That all you got to say to someone who just snatched you from the jaws of the sea?”

“Th-thank you,” said Becca blushing and wincing at the justified rebuke.  “I was just so frightened…”

The crone nodded, “Yes. You were right to be.  Those rocks beyond would’ve cut this boat in half, and the sharks and crabs would be picking pieces of you off the buried reefs just over there,” she jerked her thumb towards the further side of the inlet beyond.

Becca wrapped herself in her arms, shivering at the thought.

“You gonna get out or just sit there quaking?” the woman snapped.  “I could just as easily shove this slip back into the water, if you want to try your luck.”

Just then the younger girl wailing the older girl’s name, “Becca”, reached the jetty and stopped in her tracks, staring up at the raggedy old woman, looking down beyond Becca, towards her.

Becca tried feebly to introduce herself again, “I’m a…”

“Well, miss Ima,” she cackled, “Who’s your late arriving little friend, down there?  Shall we invite her up?”

“Ima?” Becca puzzled and then realized she had rudely not given her rescuer her name.

“Her name’s Miray.  And I’m Becca,” she explained.  “We’re lost.  We fell.  I mean, we were on a ship and the rope slipped and we fell into this boat and drifted out to sea.  No one knows where we are and we need to get somewhere we can let our parents know we’re alright.”

“Are you?” the old woman arched an eyebrow.

“Are I what?” Becca scratched her ear.

“Are you alright?” the woman asked, her tone flat and even, lacking the timbre of sympathy one might expect from such an inquiry.

Becca looked herself over, and apart from a few scrapes and reddening from exposure to the overhead sun, she shrugged.  “Appear to be, now.  But we haven’t had much time to settle in.  Where can we get something to eat around here?”

“Hungry, now?  That’s a good sign, it is.  How about your friend there?  Is she hungry, too?”

Becca looked over the side of the boat and saw enough of a rocky space to crawl out of it and up onto the jetty.  She saw Miray below, hesitating, looking from her to the scraggly old woman.  Her brow furrowed and she called down to Miray, “Don’t be rude!  This lady saved my life.  Precious little you did.  Now come on up here.”

Miray still hesitated, and the old woman commented, “She doesn’t appear as trusting as you, dearie.  But if you two would like to come back with me to my cave, I’m sure we could rustle something up to be eaten.  Would you like that?”

Becca nodded, and glared back down at Miray, motioning her to come up, and gritting her teeth at her, feeling embarrassed by Miray’s reluctance.

“You be nice to her!” Becca hissed.  “She saved me!  We owe her, and if you had pushed the oar into the sand harder, we would not have almost lost this boat!  It is because of you, I had to jump back in to try and get it to stop, you little snit!”

“Don’t call me names, Becca!” Miray huffed, “I’m not as big as you.  I pushed it my hardest!  I can’t drag that boat thing, with the waves pulling it out.”

“Well, your being rude.  Come say hello to this nice lady who saved our boat for us!  And don’t embarrass me!”

Miray started to climb on one of the lower rocks and slipped, skinning her knee, gasping.

“These rocks are slippy.  You come down.  I hurt myself.”

“You’re such a baby!  Can’t do anything!”

“Stop it, Becca!  You’re being mean to me again!”

“You’re embarrassing me!” Becca growled.

“Who is she?” Miray, pointed.

“Don’t point!  That’s rude too!” Becca hissed, then turned back to the old woman who was now closer to her.

“I’m sorry, she’s a little brat.  Don’t mind her.  She will come around.”

Miray was now closer to them, and suddenly she scrunched her nose, and covered it.

Becca turned and glared daggers at her, climbing down from the rocks, balling her fist threatening at Miray.

The old woman followed, smiling once more, with additional teeth filling in the prior gaps, but Becca, back turned did not notice.  “It’s alright, little pretty,” the old woman cooed.  “Your friend here says, she’s hungry.  Perhaps, we can…I can help with that.  You’re welcome to come too, little one.  Aren’t you hungry?”

Miray backed away, still covering her nose.

“Awww.  Not so much, then?  We’ll, I have something you both might like back at the cave where I live.  You are both more than welcome to come to dinner.  But if not, so be it.”

And with that the old woman hobbled off down the beach in the direction of a sea cave that had a partial inflow of water ebbing in and out of it.

Both girls watch the old woman hobble away, unsure and uncertain.

Becca cuffed Miray, when the old woman was far enough down the beach to be beyond hearing.

“Oww!” Miray grabbed her arm where Becca had smacked her.

“You have no sense of manners, do you?!” Becca snarled.  “That woman just help me and you got to be rude to her.”

Miray whined, “I couldn’t help it.  She smells.  And I was taught not to talk to strangers.”

“Strangers?!” Becca guffawed, “This is different.  Here we are the strangers.  And we need shelter and food.  She’s the first person we met her, and you act beastly to her.”

Becca started walking away from Miray following the old woman shuffling along in the distance.

“Where are you going?!”  Miray cried.

“I’m going to her cave.  And YOU’RE not invited!”

“Fine!” Miray stamped.

“Fine!” Becca shouted over her shoulder.

As Becca walked away, Miray sat down and sniffed, trying not to cry.

She muttered to herself, squatting down on her haunches.  “The lady looks scary.  Like a witch.  And Becca, you are mean to me.  You really are a pirate, bossy Becca!”

She pressed her handprint into the partially wet sand and suddenly heard a distant cry.

She looked up, only to see a couple of sea gulls gliding overhead.

She turned back toward the jetty and saw that the lifeboat had slipped off of the rocks and back into the surf, going out to sea.  She whipped around looking towards the sea cave where the old woman and Becca had gone but could see neither of them.

She sighed.  There was nothing to be done but to wait and see what might happen.

And then she heard the scream.

*Scene 07* 12:55 (The Tardemah)

I have walked in two worlds and am guilty of causing deaths in both. (But it was not what you may think.)  My name is Brian.  I’m fairly ordinary.  Nothing special about me.  Few, if any friends.  I keep to myself, because I have to.  I try to stay on my own business and not meddle in the business of others.  People bring drama.  Me?  I am just a one-act play.  People don’t see me.  They just look through, as if I wasn’t there.  And I have learned to do the same.  Avoid eye contact.  Keep your eyes looking away as if you are in your own world and others, are merely shadows.  Stay focused, if you can.

But something happens to you over time.  You drift through life until you fade out and become one of those shadows too.  You shrivel inside and wonder if this is all there is to life.  Existence.  Taking up space, until another can fill your slot.  Then you die, taking up another slot in a graveyard.  Eventually, the fancy box others put you in rots, and collapses in on your remains, crowding you out of your last slot here on the earth.

I don’t get out much.  I’m not missed at parties, simply because I’m never invited.  Oh, sure I might be a brief topic of curiosity, but no more than that.  If even that.  Nothing really mattered.

…until it did.

Someone saw me, and they would not look away.  And that one knew what I needed most.  To matter.  To be a part of something larger than my own shrinking world.  And I was chosen, through no merit of my own to experience… a tardemah.

You may wonder what that is.  And I cannot tell you exactly, but I do know that it partially means a deep, divinely induced sleep.  But it is much more than that.  It turns you into yourself.  Deep…into yourself, far enough to experience another world entirely.

This Surface World we know is far stranger than one might expect.  There are limits to everything.  But beyond those studied limits are possibilities.  (Nonlocality entwined within a parallax time, outside of time.)

And somehow, I was chosen to journey to a world within this one.  Me and about thirteen others.  The fourteen of us arrived together on a beach.  Well, into the water, actually.  Within swimming distance of the beach.  Literally falling out of the sky.

Strange as it may sound, I never left this world.  But, somehow, I was in both places at once.

I have had twenty years to think over what happened and am still not clear on how it works.

Since then, I have learned about quantum entanglement, an idea that even Albert Einstein struggled to explain. In simple terms, separated particles can remain linked, responding as though they are still one. Science observes this on a tiny scale. I began to wonder whether something similar might happen on a much larger scale—an idea that reaches beyond what we can measure and into the realm of faith.

For me, faith offers a way to consider that larger reality: a created universe spoken into existence by the Supreme Being. An ancient text points toward it in a letter to the believers in Corinth.

“So, we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen; for the things which are visible are temporal [just brief and fleeting], but the things which are invisible are everlasting and imperishable.” [2 Corinthians 4:18 AMP]

That verse suggests an unseen, lasting reality beyond our limited view of this temporary world. The Apostle Paul would not have dismissed it, and after what I experienced, neither can I.

Paul also wrote about being caught up to the “third heaven.” He was unsure whether he was in his body or outside it, and he heard things too wonderful to express. I sometimes wonder whether his sense of being in two states at once resembled entanglement, though he understood it through faith rather than physics.

He writes:

“I was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don’t know—only God knows. Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside my body. But I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell.” [2 Corinthians 12:2–4 NLT]

Paul and Einstein may have wrestled with related mysteries from very different directions: Paul with awe before God, and Einstein through mathematics. Thinking about both led me to consider that human beings have physical, inner, and spiritual dimensions. We live in bodies, possess living souls, and have spirits through which we may worship our Creator.

The disciple John also spoke about how believers worship God.

“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” [John 4:23–24 NIV]

How could we worship in spirit unless we were also created with spirits of our own? Paul wrote that those who believe in Christ are made alive after once being dead in wrongdoing.

“…even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” [Ephesians 2:5–6 RSV]

Our spirits inherited Adam’s brokenness, but Christ—the second Adam—made them alive.

We struggle to imagine a place outside time, much less being in two places at once. Perhaps the deep sleep of a tardemah protects the mind by quieting our awareness of one place while we experience another. Biblical accounts describe people seeing, hearing, and responding during such states. Ezekiel, Daniel, Amos, Paul, and others seemed to experience another reality with a vividness much like physical life. That suggests some kind of embodied way of perceiving it.

Moses saw something of God’s presence from the cleft of the rock in Exodus 33. Revelation 19 also speaks of believers sharing in the wedding feast of the Lamb, suggesting a future life that is real and embodied.

Romans 8:19 speaks of a coming apokalypsis—a revealing of God’s children that all creation eagerly awaits.

My own guess is that our physical, inner, and spiritual selves will one day be restored to harmony. Sin separated us from full fellowship with God, but perhaps His glory will again clothe us in light. Then we will no longer need a tardemah to shield us from the shock of seeing clearly and being fully known.

“For now, we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” [1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV]

We all long to be fully known and still completely loved, with nothing to hide and no fear of rejection. That freedom is hard to imagine from this side of the darkened glass.

Yet a tardemah is not always peaceful. In Genesis 15:12, Abram experienced a “horror of great darkness.” Sometimes suffering must be endured for a greater purpose. Christ endured the cross for our ransom, and many disciples suffered for their faithful witness.

In Acts 2:17, Luke quotes Joel: in the last days, old men will dream dreams and young men will see visions. We are not told what qualifies someone for such revelations. God chooses, and He often chooses people the world would overlook.

So I claim no special status for the tardemah that carried me into another world. It humbled me, broke me down, and exposed something in me that I was ashamed to face. The place I entered was deceitful, wicked, and sick, yet something at its center held it together and offered hope of healing and restoration.

If we are honest, we cannot deny what lives in our own hearts.

The prophet Jeremiah recorded these words:

“The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, [I] try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, [and] according to the fruit of his doings.” [Jeremiah 17:9–10 KJV]

What if God allowed you to journey into the land of your own heart? What hidden deceptions would you uncover? What strongholds would need to fall? What enemies might you face while trying to obey the One who sent you?

What fears might stop you? What dangers would threaten you and your companions? What assumptions would you have to release to learn the truth about yourself and your purpose? What control would you surrender in order to trust the One who called you?

I understand only part of it now, but it has shattered many of my assumptions and left me undone. I better understand Isaiah’s response to his vision.

“Then said I, Woe [is] me! for I am undone; because I [am] a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” [Isaiah 6:5 KJV]

My humility did not come all at once. I betrayed others by doing what seemed right to me, only to watch it go terribly wrong. Eventually, I had to leave that rare world. When I awoke from the tardemah, I carried regret and anguish. I knew the experience was real, yet I feared anyone who heard about it—or about what it did to me physically, emotionally, and mentally—would think I was insane.

I won’t deny it.

Part of me wished to be able to put it all behind me and forget it as if it was a bad dream.  For in that other world, I was no better than a fool and a traitor, leading to the deaths of some of my trusted friends there.

It would be easier to dismiss what happened, if I could come to believe it was only a nightmare, but it wasn’t.  I was there.  And I have inexplicable scars on my body to prove it.  Much as I might want to, I cannot deny the truth of it.  And with that truth, came the horror and weight of my guilt that I cannot bear alone and in silence.

I am forced to tell my story, whether it may be believed or not.  For I cannot keep such things in any longer.

The Mid-World exists.  And despite what anyone might say, that place is not somewhere out there.  It is here.  Inside each one of us.  My heartland is a country, in some inexplicable way, joined to the heartland of others. Where a part of me must again face The Truth, and make whatever amends I must to undo the evil I have set in motion and ignored for far too long.

Could I ever get back there?  Coming and going was not something I was in control of.  The passages through to The Mid-World were guarded, for they crossed an unimaginable void where spirits drift.  Some of those entities were at liberty and some were imprisoned.  I do not know how I know this, but I do.

But one night, I eventually reentered the world I had betrayed.  And what follows is what happened upon my return.