Once again I woke up in a large, soft bed. It looked like another medieval New York hotel sort of room like the one I’d woken up back in Kelsavax, but differently styled in black and about four kinds of purple. As usual, the only exception to the color décor chosen was the white air moss and luminescent lichen mix growing decoratively on the ceiling.
“Hey, chica, you awake now?” Jason’s voice asked.
I turned my head and saw him sitting in a padded black chair beside me.
“My eyes are open, aren’t they?” I teased him a little, surprised to hear how my voice cracked in my reply. I cleared my throat.
He frowned, then helped me to sit up, plumped some purple pillows up behind me, and then took off the cover of a tan colored ceramic cup and gave it to me. “You’ve been talking in your sleep, so I wanted to make sure.”
“Really? What did I say?” I asked, sipping at the clear, warm, mushroomy broth inside. It definitely soothed my insides all the way down to my stomach.
He waved the question away. “Nothing important. Just bits and snatches from conversations you seemed to be having in your dreams.”
“Huh. I wonder if I’ve slept-talked before or if this is new?”
“After all we’ve been through the last while, would it be so surprising if it was new?” he replied, smiling.
That reminded me forcefully of what I had been doing before I blacked out. I handed him back the cup and peeked under the neckline of the long, thin black shift that was presently serving me as a nightdress. I looked clean, whole, and unscarred. “So, how long have I been out?”
“Long enough,” Jason sighed. “And by that, I mean I have no idea. I can’t tell time down here from the lichen stuff that these loco Under-elves use. But I’ve been here at least twice. Everybody in our party has been sitting here in shifts so that you wouldn’t wake up alone.”
My heart melted from gratitude at the thoughtfulness of my friends, and I smiled. “Thanks for that,” I said, leaning over to give him a peck on the cheek.
He turned his head at the last minute so that we kissed instead, turning it into a longer one than I had planned. I didn’t mind.
“But really,” I said when the kiss was over, “What has been happening?”
Jason said, “After much yelling and much dissection of the words of the rules as they had been laid out for the fight, and of the rules for similar ‘discussions’ in the past, High Priest Canalis was judged the winner.”
I was relieved. “But what was the yelling about?” I asked with curiosity. “I remember lots of shouting going on around me before I went night-night.”
“That was because you took Dool off the table with you,” Jason replied. “Most ‘discussions’ seem to be one or the other of the combatants either trying to kill the other straight out, or to get one opponent to fall off la mesa without the other leaving it, too. But it was quite clear that you did it deliberately though it left the field undefended. It was argued that it was a fighting tactic you had employed, and the no-holds-barred rule was in your favor to do that. But the saving grace was that Dool’s hands and feet were on the floor while none of yours were, either then or when you fortunately returned to the table. That in the end was the clincher—going back to the table without touching the floor.”
“So what happens now?”
A blinding flash of silver flooded the room briefly, and when our eyes cleared of spots, Alveo, dressed in her silver layered robe, stood at the foot of my bed.
“What would you like to have happen?” the goddess asked.
Jason and I exchanged a swift glance at her question, then belatedly bowed to give her the respect she was due.
“Ultimately I’d like to go home. I miss my family and my friends. And my cat.” I smiled.
Jason didn’t say anything, and Alveo looked inquiringly at him. He sighed. “That’s a tougher question for me.”
I was badly surprised. I’d just been assuming that Jason wanted to go back to New York City, but his words didn’t sound like it.
“Though I miss the modern world, I don’t really belong there. I have no identity papers that say I can belong.”
That smacked me in the face. I’d forgotten that Jason was “outside the system,” as he’d once described it to me. No legal birth certificate, no social security card, and he belonged to a street gang. True, they weren’t a violent gang, but they still lived outside of the law. And all the skills that Jason had put to use so handily for us had had their basis in that lifestyle.
“If that were changed, would you go back?” the goddess asked.
Jason’s and my mouth’s both dropped. Could she really affect stuff on the human side? I wondered.
“Si, in a heartbeat!” Jason said, his face lighting up.
Alveo smiled at him in return. “Then it is clear where you belong. Unfortunately I cannot change your life by making you accepted,” Jason’s face fell, “but I can give you the means by which this can be accomplished. Or rather, remind you that you have already taken steps to do that yourself.”
Jason looked confused for a minute, and his face lit up again. “The jewels and coins!” he said with excitement. “I forgot about those!” Seeing the perplexed look on my face, he said, “Remember back in Jodron’s and Descora’s apartment after we’d released Emalai from her cage? When I found those bits of treasure lying about?”
“Oh, yeah!” I said, catching his excitement, but then my excitement dampened. “Jason, you can’t just walk into a pawn shop and think to get a good price for them. They’ll swindle you, and maybe report you to the cops on top of it, thinking they’d been stolen in some heist.”
“I do have someone I can go to who won’t cheat me too badly,” he began confidently, but then stopped. “Sin, you’re right. Some of those pieces would be beyond what I could reasonably expect to have turned into cash,” he said heavily.
Alveo said, still smiling, “Would it be all right if you found them as buried treasure?”
I leapt out of bed, excited again. “Jason! That solves everything! We can get a little treasure box, put all that stuff in it, and then after burying it somewhere we can ‘find it’ again. Sure, you’ll have to turn some percentage of it over to the government as a finder’s fee, but the rest you can keep free and clear!”
Alveo waved her slender, chalk white hand, and a battered and dirty box appeared on the lavender coverlet of my bed. It looked strong, like it could withstand the ages, but also old and abused—the perfect thing that treasure buried a long time ago might be found in. I picked it up and found that it already had some heft to it. Intrigued, I shook it, and was rewarded with the sound of things moving around inside of it.
“I thought I would add to it,” Alveo smiled. “As a thank you for all the work that you, Lise, have done for Me.”
“I’ll have more than enough to start a new life,” Jason said. “I can go buy identity papers…” but I shook my head at him, interrupting him.
“No. I have a better idea. You have amnesia. You don’t know who you are. And since you don’t have any police records anywhere, the government can’t match you up with anything. So they’ll have to make you papers. Like you’re in the Witness Protection program or something. And–oh!” I said as another idea occurred to me, “What if we play this off like you rescued me from some crazy kidnapper? That would explain my disappearance AND you could be hailed as a hero!”
“I kind of like that,” Jason admitted, “But we don’t want to go too far with the story, do we? I mean, I’m a hero who happens to find a buried fortune too? Kinda stretches the imagination, don’cha think?”
“Well, we can hold off on the treasure for a little while,” I said. “The main point is being a hero and all, and getting a new identity because of amnesia, is that it makes you part of society in a way you couldn’t be before. Plus, you’ll be getting money from TV and magazine interviews, probably, so you can live on that until it’s safe to go looking for the strongbox.”
Jason caught my hand. “Don’t you mean ‘we’ mi amor?” he said, his brown eyes holding mine.
I blushed. “We’re both underage back home. So it can’t be ‘we’ until I’m eighteen.” I then said a little softer, in response to his mute plea, “but then it can be.”
Jason caught me up in a passionate kiss as Alveo, instead of flash-papering her way out of the room, faded away into silver shadows instead.