The Jekyll Legacy by Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Seven Home for the Hellish Days

Victorian alchemy meets modern science and magic.
What could possibly go wrong?

If you don’t change direction,
you may end up where you’re heading.

 — Lao Tse, (c. Sixth Century BCE)

 —

“We’re home,” Mrs. Lanyon beamed as the five found themselves back in the family living room. “But how? Who was that?”

“A Dark God, of course,” Akcuanrut answered as he settled himself into Dr. Lanyon’s favorite lounge chair with a tired groan. “The Dark Gods have very strong magic, and they obviously saw this as the most effective way to prevent us from returning the Heart to the safekeeping of the College of Wizards.”

“I wonder why he returned us here,” Dr. Lanyon mused.

“Who cares? We’re home again and I’m sure ready to get my old body back. Which backpack was it in?” Rhea’s eyes danced from centaur to centaur as she waited for one of them to tell her where the Jekyll formula was.

“What happened to the saddlebags?” Selene asked. They were missing.

“Never mind,” Rhea responded cheerfully, “we’ve got more of the formula upstairs. I know I left some in — the lab. Oh heck, the Lab!” she screamed and ran upstairs.

“Turn off the TSP device while you’re up there, Rhea. It’s the yellow switch….” Dr. Lanyon trailed off as he realized the girl was already out of sight, and probably also out of hearing range. “I’ll ask her when she comes down,” the centaur muttered to herself, daunted by the notion of climbing the staircase, or even walking through the doorway, since it seemed awfully small, like Alice’s doorway into Wonderland. Fortunately, the bottle labelled “DRINK ME” was just upstairs.

“Hmmm, it’s nice to be home, isn’t it, dear?” Mrs. Lanyon sighed as he tiredly shifted hooves. “I can’t wait to get into a warm bath and get a good night’s sleep.”

“Me too,” Selene chimed in, dropping into a sprawl on the couch. “I wonder what I’m going to tell my parents when I get home.”

“Why the truth, dear. What else?” Mrs. Lanyon responded. “But please sit like a proper lady, Selene, dear.”

“But I’m not a lady, or at least I won’t be when Rhea gets back here in a few moments.”

“Actually, that’s not true, Selene, although I didn’t have the heart to disabuse Rhea of her ‘hasty’ jump to a false conclusion. We haven’t whiled away a fortnight on our quest, dear, and you know we have to wait out the full period to avoid all possibility of harm. So for now, please humor me, dear. It’s unseemly for a young lady to sit with her legs akimbo like that.”

Selene sighed and changed position after a wistful glance up the stairs. Where was Rhea already, she wondered.

Dr. Lanyon had other priorities. “I’m going to turn on the television set. I wonder how long we’ve been gone and what we’ve missed?”

Dr. Lanyon carefully maneuvered around the coffee table to reach it. Turning it on, he flipped to the cable news channel. Seconds later all conversation except the muted sounds of the television stopped as Rhea dejectedly dragged herself back into the living room.

“The lab — everything in it that wasn’t bolted down, great-grandfather’s journal, all my vials of the formula — gone. It’s like a tornado hit up there — a TSP tornado. It’s just an empty room.” Her shoulders slumped,, and it looked like she was trying to hold back tears. “Even the TSP device is gone,” she said despondently.

Mrs. Lanyon hissed in shock while Dr. Lanyon slid her hand into her wife’s but said nothing. It was unclear who was most comforted by the action.

Rhea slumped to the couch and Selene glided to her side and put an arm over her shoulder to comfort her. “It’s not that bad, Rhea.”

“Whaddya mean ‘not that bad’?”

“We’re all alive.” Suddenly Selene’s eyes closed as she realized what she’d just said. “All of us but D’lon-ra, that is.”

“D’lon-ra,” Rhea whispered. “What a horrible way to die.”

“His death was for a noble cause,” Akcuanrut offered. “The survival of a world, maybe many worlds. He will be remembered in song and story forever, when I get back.”

“But we’re stuck like this,” Rhea wailed, although it wasn’t clear whether the emotional display was for her body or the lost hero.

“Maybe I can change you back,” Akcuanrut opined, “although I’m not exactly sure how the spells might change between the worlds.”

Rhea glared up at the wizard. “You could have changed us back at any time and you didn’t? Why the heck not?”

“Herbert Lanyon the Seventh, you know I will not accept such language in my home.”

“Sorry, Mom, but why did he leave us like this if he could have changed us back?”

“For your safety,” Dr. Lanyon interrupted before Akcuanrut could respond.

“Hunh?”

“For your safety, Rhea. You were a fit and healthy young man, but how much did you know about swordplay?”

“Come on, Pop. You know my sport is football.”

“That’s exactly correct, Rhea. You are — er, were — a quarterback. What skills would you have brought to the quest we just completed had you still been a football player? Could you have thrown a touchdown pass to your wide receiver and taken down Na-Noc? Thrown the ‘Hail Mary’ pass to trick him into fumbling his defenses?”

“I…. Ah… Oh, heck,” Rhea glanced over to her mother for support, but she seemed to be assiduously watching the television. “That’s not the point. We shouldda been given a choice.”

“Rhea, Rhea, Rhea,” Dr. Lanyon tsked. “What choices were there? We barely survived. Look how often the skills that you and Selene brought to our group made the difference between life and death.”

Rhea puffed up a bit as she listened to her father. “Yeah, I guess so. But where did we get those skills anyway?”

“I can answer that,” Akcuanrut chimed in. “There are some rules of magic that remain constant across worlds, and the Law of Similarity is one of them.”

“Dad!” Rhea whined. “What the he… heck is he talking about?”

“Oh, Rhea,” Dr. Lanyon heaved a huge sigh. “Sometimes I despair for your continuing education. May I?” The female centaur deferred to the wizard who gestured his permission.

“Can you state the Laws of Thermodynamics, Rhea?”

“Of course. The First Law is….”

“That’s all right, Rhea. You don’t have to recite them, merely recognize that they exist.”

“Why?” Rhea pouted prettily. “Where are you going with this?”

“Well, science has rules. The Laws of Thermodynamics are just one example. Magic obviously has rules as well.” Dr. Lanyon glanced at the wizard for confirmation and Akcuanrut smiled back in agreement. “But the rules of magic are different from the rules of science. I think one of the rules of magic is that function follows form.”

“Correct, O Lady Centaur,” the wizard spoke formally, then nodded. “And a very neat manner of putting it. I love the way you people think.x”

Selene scratched her head, “Isn’t that backwards? I thought it was form follows function.”

“Normally it would be,” Dr. Lanyon paused. “No, I misspoke. Here, on this world, where science rules, the hypothesis would be ‘form follows function.’ Thus, a pair of scissors would be shaped with a sharp edge in order to be able to cut paper. Does that seem clear?”

Both women nodded.

“On Akcuanrut’s world, where magic rules, it’s the exact opposite so function follows form.”

“Fine, but if the lecture’s over, Dad, I still don’t understand what the heck you just said.”

Dr. Lanyon threw her hands up and her wife stepped between the two before his husband began to lecture again. “Let me try, dear.”

Without waiting for a response, Emily began. “It’s like right and left, yin and yang….”

“Yeah, I get it, Mom. They’re opposites.”

“Right, dear, but magic and science are true opposites.”

“So what’s with the function follows form?” Rhea whined.

“It means mean that because you had the form of a barbarian woman from your stupid movie, you started to think and act like the barbarian woman from your stupid movie, including her stupid outfit, Dumbo,” Selene had interrupted, then scowled and sprawled on the couch, taking Mrs. Lanyon’s regular place when watching the television.

Rhea scowled back at Selene, considering the beautiful intricacies of shape and form inherent in the image of her dagger sticking out of Selene’s back. Then, she complimented herself on her superhuman self-control as she grudgingly decided not to put her thoughts into action.

“What are we going to do with the Heart of Virtue?” Dr. Lanyon asked, trying to change the subject before there was actual bloodshed.

“That’s a good question.” Akcuanrut tapped his chin in thought. “I don’t know much about this dimension, but we’ll need someplace safe until I’m sure that you are free of continuing danger. Then, I will simply take it with me.”

“The safe in the lab should be perfect, Dear,” Mrs. Lanyon spoke up. “Assuming it’s still there of course.”

“Of course, Dear. That’s the ideal spot, although we might also think about putting in the safe deposit box at the bank, but how are we going to get it there?” Dr. Lanyon made a broad sweeping movement to display her equine half.

“Whoa up a moment,” Rhea smiled at the dour looks on her parents’ faces. “He’s a wizard. He said he could change us back. Let him change us back and then he can take the Heart wherever he wants.”

All eyes were on Akcuanrut.

“Unfortunately, I can’t do that here.”

“Why not? You are a wizard, aren’t you?”

“I am a great wizard, in my own world, but here a poor one. There’s little magic left in this world.”

“Of course. The magic. That’ why I felt out of sorts.” Mrs. Lanyon’s expression made it clear that he agreed with his husband. “In the other world, I felt a constant flow of energy that I could tap, but here it’s barely a trickle.”

“So we’re stuck?” Rhea’s hands went to her mouth in shock. “What are we going to do? What will Selene tell her parents?” She stopped a minute. Something was wrong, something she’d said. “And why are we still calling her Selene?”

“Slow down, Rhea,” his parents laughed. “We are what we are. Centaur or human, scientist or wizard, it doesn’t matter. We’re alive and a family; we will survive no matter what form we happen to have.”

“Great, I’m a babe. You’re both half horse. That’s it?”

“Does it matter all that much you’re female instead of male? I would think your father and I would have much more reason than you to be upset, we changed sex and we changed species  — to one that doesn’t even exist on this world except as fantastical fable and myth. In this world we’re as unique as the Heart of Virtue. Just think what some people would do to us, were they to discover our existence.”

“Well spoken, Emily, and your point is well taken. As to Selene’s parents, we should probably call them over and explain to them personally. Our families have been close for so long, and we have a family history of contact with strange phenomena, so I’m sure that they will understand and help.”

While the Lanyon’s were talking, Akcuanrut dragged the plastic wrapped Heart of Virtue over to his seat and opened it. One glance inside and he quickly interrupted the others. “It is gone!”

“Huh? What’s gone? Don’t you dare tell us the Dark Gods have the Heart of Virtue after all this.”

“No. The Heart is safe,” he said, “if you can call such a dangerous object safe. Na-Noc, on the other hand, is missing, or what was left of him, which is troubling.”

“So the Dark Gods probably kept him back in the other world, right?”

“They could not possibly have kept him. He was too close to the Heart, and directly under its malignant influence. The Heart would have kept him in hopes of making further mischief.”

“What’s that mean?” Rhea asked.

“The Heart has very strong magic and intelligence of its own,” he said, “even stronger than the Dark Gods now, because they poured a lot of their own natural power into its creation in hopes of gaining an advantage over the forces of Light by concentrating the power of many Gods within a narrow compass. That is why we need to destroy it, if we can, or contain it if we cannot. By the physical actions of others it can be moved, but mere magic can have little or no effect on it. When the Dark God said that we could have it, he was only bluffing. He had no actual power to control the Heart, which would have subsumed him as easily as it corrupted Na-Noc if he’d tried. Keeping it was not his choice, unless he wished to fight both us and it at the same time, and he we have had the fight of his life if he’d won, both the Heart and he have a natural affinity, both being of the Dark, so his weaknesses are well-known to the Heart, and the temptations the Heart would use to wear down his resistance more alluring. Eventually, he would have succumbed.”

“You mean Na-Noc fell out and is now a slimy puddle on the rug somewhere?” Rhea snorted in a very unladylike manner.

Akcuanrut didn’t answer, but it was clear that he doubted the truth of Rhea’s assessment of Na-Noc’s absence.

“So, what you’re telling us is we’ve got a missing blob of evil creeping around somewhere?” She threw up her hands. “Let’s remember to bring along an empty mayonnaise jar the next time we go searching for him, Okay?”

The wizard nodded. “Exactly, although I’m not exactly sure what ‘mayonnaise’ might be, a jar of some sort would have been very handy, provided the top could be fastened very tightly.”

“Okay folks,” Rhea said nervously. “I think it’s officially time for a brief psychotic break. Who’s first?”

“Rhea, dear, let’s do try keeping focused on helpful thoughts,” Mrs. Lanyon chided his volatile son or daughter. It was difficult to say which side of the equation she was leaning towards, despite her loud and constant protestations. “I would think our first considerations would be to get the Heart of Virtue to a safe place and then figure out how we’re going to survive until we can return to our original forms.”

“I thought we agreed on locking the Heart in our safe?”

“Yes, dear, but you and I are not designed to go up or down stairs right now. Rhea will have to do it.”

“Sure. Okay. Give it to me.” In an instant she was gone. Moments later, she returned to find everyone laughing.

“What’s so funny? A gal could get paranoid here.”

Taking several gulps of air, Selene regained enough control to explain. “We were worried about being able to move about in this world, but that won’t be much of a problem, at least tonight.”

Selene pointed to the television set. The noon news was on, showing the date and a group of costumed kids.

It took a few moments for it to sink in, at least for Rhea; the kids were carrying decorated bags, and the date was obviously October Thirty-First — Halloween.

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved