“This is going to be Sashtun’s first-ever movie, kids. It needs to be something special. Not whatever new movie you’re burning to see. Everyone, what’s the best movie you’ve ever seen?”
The Mural and the Cabinet
part 16 of 21
by Trismegistus Shandy
Thanks to Lucario and Maplestrip for feedback on story ideas, and to Yuki Kitsune for beta reading the manuscript.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
The next morning after breakfast, Kashpur sent both Sashtun and Tashni out to buy many small samples of the trade goods to be found in the city. Sashtun had to avoid anything enchanted, but that still left a bewildering variety of things to consider possibly exporting. He bought small swatches of many kinds of fabric, different kinds of paper, ink, paint, and dye, small bottles of dozens of spices, statuettes and ornaments of various materials, glazed pots and vases, enameled boxes, rings, bracelets, necklaces, combs, fruits and vegetables that Sashtun didn’t remember seeing for sale in the other world, and various small tools.
That evening, after an early supper, he and Kashpur went over the things he and Tashni had brought back, and selected enough samples to fill two bags, carefully wrapping the more fragile items in the swatches of fabric. Then Kashpur opened the portal; Sashtun hefted both bags and stepped through.
No one was in Davey’s room when she arrived. She put her bags down, then went downstairs and found the family at supper.
“Sashtun!” Davey cried, and jumped up from the table to run over and hug her. She wasn’t sure what to do with that; after a moment she put an arm around him as well, then let go.
“Hello, everyone,” she said. “I can leave now if it doesn’t suit for me to stay a couple of days, but I’d better hurry before the portal closes, or I could come back in two days, or four —”
Davey’s parents exchanged looks. “You can stay,” Amanda said.
“Thanks,” she said. “I brought a couple of bags of trade good samples. We can look over them when it’s convenient and figure out what you want to import.”
“Let’s talk about that after supper,” Carson said. “Serve yourself a plate and have a seat, if you like.”
“I just ate,” Sashtun said, pulling up a chair, “but I’ll sit with you... and maybe have a glass of tea.”
“Sure.”
“I’ve learned something,” Carson said as Sashtun sat down, “about the woman who used to live here. Apparently she disappeared just under eight years ago... I’ve got a newspaper article with the exact date; I’ll get it for you after supper.”
“Thank you,” Sashtun said.
“How long was it over there?” Amy asked.
“A bit less than a day. It was two hours after sunset when I returned home, and almost an hour after sunset the following day when I came back here.”
“And that worked out to a little over two days here,” Carson said. “Davey said you went home just before Amanda and I got home from work, though unfortunately he didn’t note the exact time.”
“Neither did I, I’m afraid,” Sashtun said. “But the last time I looked at the clock before the portal opened, I think it was around four... that was probably some time earlier. Davey was showing me his game and we got engrossed in it — it’s fortunate that we noticed the portal opening at all.”
Amy punched her brother in the arm.
“So what all did you do while you were home?” Amanda asked. Sashtun told them about it, which didn’t take long, and then asked them what they’d been doing.
After supper, Carson showed her a copy of an old newspaper article about the disappearance of the woman who had lived there eight years earlier. She had last been seen by one of her neighbors checking her mailbox on March 19. Both of her daughters had talked with her on the phone in the next few days, and had not noticed anything unusual in the way she spoke or what she said. Her conversation with her younger daughter on March 22 was the last time anyone heard from her. No one suspected anything was wrong for over a week; her daughters called her and left messages, but didn’t become concerned until several days passed and she didn’t return the calls. One called a neighbor and asked her to look in on her mother, and the neighbor got no answer when she rang the bell or knocked. Then the daughter, who lived in a distant city, called the local police, who broke into the house on April 4 and found no one at home, and the food in the refrigerator beginning to spoil.
“So,” Sashtun said thoughtfully, “let’s suppose she went through the portal sometime between March 22 and the next time one of her daughters tried to call her — probably a week later. Call it March 25. And today is...?”
“Friday, February 23.”
Sashtun had some knowledge of what order the months of this calendar came in, which seemed to come with knowledge of English as she came through the portal. She wasn’t sure how many days were in each month, though, so she needed Carson’s help to calculate the exact time since old Mrs. Carmichael disappeared: seven years, eleven months, and two days.
“I’ll tell Kashpur when I return home,” she said. “And we can measure the time difference between the sides more exactly as we make more trips back and forth. I brought a pocket watch this time, and I can compare the difference in times with the grandfather clock in Kashpur’s penthouse when I go back. So far we think time is about 2.1 times faster here than back home.”
“So that would be...” Carson typed some numbers into his computer, and said: “3.73 years. Assuming your years are the same length as ours. I’ll let you figure out how many months and days 0.73 years is.”
“Davey told us your year has 365 days in a typical year, with one more in leap years,” Sashtun said. “I don’t think we use the exact same formula for calculating leap years, but I’m pretty sure our years are basically the same length. And the moon, when I saw it out of my hotel window at night, looked like our moon back home, so I think our months are probably the same too.”
“We don’t base our calendar months on the moon’s orbit anymore, but yeah, it sounds like it.”
After that, they went over the trade goods for a while before going to bed. She also returned Davey’s old pajamas that he’d left in Kashpur’s apartment in his haste to return home.
The next day, Sashtun’s hosts didn’t have to go to work or school. She spent a good part of the morning, during and after breakfast, going over the rest of the trade goods with Carson and Amanda, ruling out a lot of things and picking a handful that they might be able to profitably import. Deciding what Kashpur and Sashtun could import to their world was just as hard.
“You can’t just import phones or computers and expect them to work,” Carson explained. “They need a whole infrastructure — electricity generation plants and wires to transmit the electricity to people’s homes, Internet and cell tower infrastructure so they can talk with each other.”
“Besides, when I’m at home, I can’t read English, or even your Arabic numerals,” Sashtun said. “So I wouldn’t be able to read the display, nor would our customers. But is there any simpler kind of machine your people make that doesn’t require being plugged in from time to time, or knowledge of English and Arabic numerals?”
“Yes, there are a number of machines that use replaceable batteries. You could import batteries along with the machines and replace them as needed...”
They discussed several kinds of machine, some of which were redundant with cheap, common magical talismans, but others which seemed likely to be useful.
Later in the day, the whole family took Sashtun out to show her more of their world. They drove for a considerable distance until they reached a bigger city, where they parked and walked around the downtown area for a while, visiting a museum and a couple of historical sites.
The next morning, her hosts were getting ready to go to church. Amanda asked Sashtun if she wanted to go with them.
“Of course,” Sashtun said. She wouldn’t turn down any opportunity to learn more about this world, though she half expected she might have to gently repulse some sort of attempt to convert her.
She showered after all of the children had taken their showers, and got dressed in one of the changes of women’s clothing she’d bought at Walmart. She was one of the last ones to finish getting ready.
On the way, Amanda said: “In case anyone asks who you are, we should probably come up with a name you can use, and some explanation for why you’re visiting with us.”
“I suppose you don’t want to tell people who I really am and where I came from?”
Carson said: “It would be hard to explain and impossible for most people to believe. We’ll have to tell people eventually, but now isn’t the time... What about ‘Sarah’? Would you mind answering to that?”
“It’s as good a name as any, I suppose.”
They drove a few miles to a boxy rectangular sort of building with little ornamentation, not much different from many of the others Sashtun had seen in this world. Once inside, they found seats in one of the back pews, which were cushioned on both seat and back, unlike the seating in churches back home.
In the few minutes between the time they arrived and the time the service started, several people came over and talked with them, and Amanda introduced Sashtun as her friend “Sarah” who was visiting them for a few days. The service started with a song, sung by the congregation and accompanied by a band, mostly playing string instruments; the most interesting thing to Sashtun was that the words to the song were displayed on a screen, similar to the television or Davey’s handheld game system, but far bigger. There was no musical notation displayed, however.
That song was succeeded by someone welcoming everyone to the service, in a way that seemed fairly informal to Sashtun, followed by a short prayer, three more songs, a longer prayer, another song, during which the ushers passed collection baskets, and then a sermon, which lasted about half an hour. It mostly dealt with the virtue of humility, but near the end, there was an abrupt topic shift: the call to conversion that Sashtun had half-expected. Then the congregation sang another song and it was over.
Afterward, the Platts spent more time socializing with various friends, but not very long, pleading that they were going to have lunch with their friend “Sarah” from out of town. They left a few minutes later, and Carson said, “We usually go out to eat after church on Sundays. Do you have any preference about what kind of food you want, Sashtun?”
“No,” she said. “I haven’t been here long enough or tried enough different things to know what else your world has to offer.” She tried to remember the names of all the restaurants she’d eaten at during her stay at the hotel, and listed them, then said: “I’d like to eat somewhere other than those, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, well, that won’t be hard. It sounds like you mostly ate at fast food places, and we usually go to one of the sit-down restaurants either at the expressway exit or in downtown Douglasville.”
The restaurant they finally went to served food a little similar to a Zhevru diner, with many of the dishes on the menu being marked with a little pepper symbol to indicate spiciness, and a predominance of rice and rice noodle-based dishes. Sashtun asked her hosts what they recommended, and ended up getting a noodle dish with chopped chicken and vegetables. During lunch, they talked more about plans for use of the portal. Carson and Amanda still weren’t sure they wanted to run an import-export business out of their home.
“But,” Carson said, “I’ve asked my mother to come visit next weekend. If we can time things so that you and Kashpur can open the portal while she’s here... well, she can go through and stay with you for a day or so and come back ready to tell her friends about our new, ah, retirement community. Maybe one or more of us can go with her — Amanda and I and the kids would like to come, if we can both get the following Monday off work on such short notice, and if your employer can host us or help us find a place to stay the night.”
“You think she might like to move to our world permanently?” Sashtun didn’t like getting older when she came through to this world, even more than she disliked being a woman, but she could see how a really old person would be willing to change sex if it were the price of a rejuvenation.
“Probably not,” Carson said. “But some of her older friends, maybe. And maybe some people they’ll refer to us in turn. There are a lot of details we still need to work out, though.”
“Letting old folks move to the other world permanently would require a lot less back and forth traffic than running an import-export business,” Amanda said, “but most of them will want to send letters to people in our world, at least, even if they never want to come for visits to avoid getting old and feeble again, and that would involve — well, I’m not sure what, since the portal doesn’t translate written documents, and the immigrants to your world wouldn’t know English anymore, right?”
“Somebody like Sashtun could memorize a letter and then come through and write it down,” Davey suggested. “Or one of us could memorize their relatives' letters and go through to write them down in Stasari for Kashpur to forward to the retired people.”
“That could work,” Amanda said, “but it might involve too much coming and going through the portal. I think we want to keep that to a minimum, if we’re going to keep living in the house. Otherwise we’d have to make Davey and Carson Jr. share a bedroom, and —”
“No way,” Carson Jr. said.
“— and we don’t want to do that,” Amanda said.
“I’ll talk to Kashpur about the timing when I go home,” Sashtun said. “What day and time do you think your mother would be ready to come over?”
“Let’s say Saturday morning about ten,” Carson said. “She lives in a retirement apartment up in Woodstock; I’d go pick her up and give her a ride here...”
They talked about the timing, and Sashtun figured out when that would be in terms of her world’s calendar and clock.
When they returned to the house, Sashtun’s hosts decided they had time to watch a “movie” before the portal would open again around suppertime. Carson the younger, Amy, and Davey all immediately suggested different movies, but Carson the elder said: “This is going to be Sashtun’s first-ever movie, kids. It needs to be something special. Not whatever new movie you’re burning to see. Everyone, what’s the best movie you’ve ever seen?”
Each of the kids and Amanda named a different movie. “Now,” said Carson, “which of those do you think Sashtun would have the easiest time understanding?”
They were all quiet for a bit, thinking. Carson Jr. said, “It needs to be something that doesn’t depend on knowing a lot about our history, I guess.”
“Or pop culture references,” Amanda said.
“And I think an older movie would be easier than a recent one. The way movies are filmed has changed a lot over time, and maybe a movie from a long time ago, that was made for audiences who didn’t all grow up watching movies, would be easier for Sashtun to get into than a modern movie with all the frequent jump cuts and shakycam and so forth.”
“Good point, Dad,” Carson Jr. said.
They discussed a different set of movies now, and finally decided on one titled The Most Dangerous Game. “This movie was made in 1932,” Carson said. “Over eighty years ago. Back then, its first audience included a lot of people who hadn’t grown up watching movies constantly from childhood. And it doesn’t need a lot of historical or cultural context, I hope. Anyway, if anything is puzzling you and you can’t make sense of it, say so and I’ll pause the movie and explain.”
They all sat down on the sofa and easy chairs, Davey turned off the light, and Carson started the movie. Sashtun was pleasantly surprised to find that she did understand the story, far better than the novel she’d read the first few chapters of during her first visit to this world. The monochromatic images were a little jarring at first, but she soon got used to them, and the elementality of the plot and characters appealed to her. There were probably nuances she wasn’t getting, perhaps the relations of the different nations or ethnic groups the characters came from, or the customs surrounding hunting in the different characters' cultures, but she was soon gripped by the story and forgot everything else, as she’d only felt a few times when seeing the best of stage plays or reading the best of novels. She forgot Carson’s offer to pause the movie and explain things.
When it was over, and Davey turned the lights on again, Carson said, “Well? What did you think?”
“That was amazing,” she said. “I think we could charge a lot of money for people to come over here and watch movies, if there are many of them as good as that, and — well, as accessible as that for people from my world.”
Carson grinned. “Maybe not. Let’s see how the retirement plan works out before we try that.”
They talked about the movie and about other movies Sashtun might want to see on future visits until it was almost time for the portal to open. Then Sashtun went upstairs and waited in Davey’s bedroom. Carson came with her; he wanted to see her go through.
They continued talking about for a few minutes until the portal opened. Sashtun said a hurried goodbye to Carson and and hurried through it. She had a lot to tell Kashpur about.
If you want to read the whole novel (51,700 words) right now without waiting for the serialization, you can find it in my ebook collection, Unforgotten and Other Stories. It's available from Smashwords in epub format and Amazon in Kindle format. (Smashwords pays its authors better royalties than Amazon.)
You can find my earlier ebook novels and short fiction collection here:
Comments
I am still concerned about the portal
once the secret gets out on our world, bad guys are going to try and take advantage.
Don't worry
Any bad guys entering the portal will end up as girls.
Hugs,
Kimby