The Place of Good Medicine
The snow was pouring down now, like white portions of a disintegrating sky, and Walter Bearsarm strode through its deep accumulation like a Goliath, with his Rocshell shield strapped about his left forearm and Eaglesbreath bursting from his right fist to slice the cold air with the power of a god’s curse. He could face anything so long as he had these friends at his side, even the ultimate evil that had been becoming progressively clearer as the days passed.
Walter Taylor lived in two worlds. In what he called the’Outside,’ where the Girl lived, he was at odds with the reality as perceived by all of its small, blind inhabitants; they never saw the dragons that he slew or the shapeless monsters that teemed in the very air that they breathed, and they were so frail that he had to tightly rein his actions so as not to break them in even the most common of actions, yet they treated him as the unfinished product. He didn’t like this world, with its unintelligible flow of events, and the half-life that he spent in it was nothing more than a respite from the much more acceptable existence on the “Otherside”, where things were as the gods had decreed that they should be.
In this “Otherside” reality, the beasts of antiquity yet lived to provide to men the blood contest that inspired true breath and heart surge, and the people reacted as real men and women. They fought when they had to, killed and died in the proper way, loved and were loved to the heights of all passion. Everything was as it should be!
There was a long period of time when Walter had been free here, in this comparative heaven, existing as a man for practically all of each day and night, and even when he was forcibly drawn back to the chaotic Outside, it was seldom for longer than the time that was required to prick one of his arms with their ridiculously small swords, which allowed him to escape once more across the separating boundary. Then the Girl had taken him from that place on the Outside and kept him by delicate bonds in that strange land for almost half of every day. He could have fought her, of course, (it would have been a struggle of no actual interest to him, since she was so small and weak, just as they all were), but he sensed that her all purposeful determination to convert him to one of the Outside inhabitants had at its conception a love for him. He thought that she was his sister.
But now the status of his lives was dramatically inverting. The lusty reality of the Otherside still remained as powerful as ever, with its monsters to be slain and women to be loved, but slowly the situation was mutating on the Outside, as well, and a terrible danger worthy of his muscle and sword was growing by the day. As he stood in the raging blizzard on a field of nothing but whiteness for miles in any direction, Walter could just begin to see the beast that was materializing over there, and, man-sized, brown, and filled with a crimson rage originating in a human soul, it was like no monster that he had ever encountered in all of his warfare.
“Aye, it be a god-angered demon that deserves no place of living in any of the worlds known as possessing man,” commented his friend Konrad, who stood next to him in the driving snow. “I feel that nothing but evil awaits the man who faces that monster on the Outside.”
Walter nodded. “I am to be that man.”
One of his wives, Ola, was with the men, swathed in the skins of the animals that Walter had killed. “My wish is that you would remain with your true kind, my Lord, and never return to that place of the senseless tongues.”
For a brief instant, Walter considered this alternative, which he knew that he could accomplish if he chose to, then he tasted what was to come, the battle, the greatest challenge that he could ever hope to face, and he knew that the goddess Destiny had been specific in her selection. He smiled like the rising of the sun. “I shall go there again and pursue this creature so that we might try arm against arm, fist to fist. Eaglesbreath,” he waved the glistening sword, “shall taste its blood.”
“We have faced many dangers together, Walter Bearsarm,” said Konrad. “But I cannot travel between the worlds as do you; I will not be at your side to offer my steel against the enemy.”
Walter clapped his shoulder. “So must it be. There is a Girl on the Outside, and she is my responsibility. This hideous devil will have her heart and entrails unless I am there to protect her, so I go. Who am I, my friend?”
“Walter Bearsarm!” cried the other.
“What have I killed?”
“The Kwangshi Dragon has fallen before your blade, and the Great Beast of the Red Mountain gave its neck to your hands! The Green Elf, the Troll, the Flying Snake, all and more have you dispatched from one life to the next!”
“And how many times have I turned my back to a danger or walked away from a death one hundred times my size?”
“Never!”
“Aye, and not today!” Walter slapped his long sword against his shield in defiance of anything that could be hurled against him. “I welcome the beast and gladly accept the challenge!”
The wavering dark vision on the field of snow seemed to respond to the call and grew, for a moment, sharper and more in focus so that all three of them could make out its insane rage and terribly beautiful fangs and claws. Ola cried out and buried her face in her husband’s chest. Konrad grunted and spat a rusty-colored stream into the snow.
But Walter Taylor Bearsarm only laughed all the louder as the passions which had so long lain imprisoned in his heart began to burn with the wild radiance of anticipation.
Dorothy Taylor felt lighter than she could remember since before her parents had died. It had nothing to do with her job, which was a definite improvement over the position she had held at the PR firm, or the fact that she was finally making enough money to begin to hope that she could someday move out of the stifling city to, if not a home of her own, then some sort of suburban settlement that would give her room to breathe once in a while. What had lifted her spirits to such a peak was the acceptance as an experimental psychological case of her big little brother. After reviewing his records, the team of government supported psychiatrists and specialized doctors had agreed that the boy’s mental condition was unusual enough to warrant intensive study and, perhaps, treatment with a revolutionary new technique which had proven to be of exceptional success in related, if not similar, cases.
It was actually possible that Walter could lead a normal, modern life if he responded to the treatments!
She had spent all afternoon packing the bags that the two of them would be taking to the Institute of Natural Sciences and Research (yes, even that had worked out: her new bosses had allowed her to take off the week to be with Walter while he was undergoing the complicated examinations, and the Institute, a sort of scientific clearing house funded by the government, had the facilities to board them during that time), and though the drive north would take several hours, she didn’t want to tranquilize Walter against the ride in case the doctors wished to begin their examinations that same night. It was Sunday, December 11.
When she walked into his room and found him sleeping peacefully, Dorothy experienced one of those times when she wished that their sizes were reversed so that she could carry him gently to the car and allow him to snooze through the long journey, but (she laughed to herself) who would have the problem then?
“Walter,” she said softly, poking at his massive shoulder. “Wake up, Walter.”
Usually, he came reluctantly from his dreams, where he fit so well with the unreal reality, but today he seemed to rise out of the depths of his subconscious with a readiness that bordered on zeal. His dark green eyes opened without blinking, and he stared into Dorothy’s face with the crackling intelligence that she had always known her brother possessed, no matter what his actions seemed to say of his mind to others. “Lass,” he said. “It is a good day, and when we meet, that will be a night for the legends to soar in endless wonder through the skies. That will be a good night.”
Predictably, Dorothy had no idea whatsoever as to the meaning of these theatrical statements, but she saw that he was excited about something and knew from experience that Walter excited was an awesome spectacle. She needed help to load the heavy luggage, and at over seven feet in height and more than three hundred pounds in weight, he could almost lift the apartment building on his wide shoulders, but directing his actions to her needs could be quite tricky. “Would you like to go on a trip, Walter? Upstate?”
He sat up, and the bed groaned in agony. “Aye, I have a journey to undertake, and my destination lies to the north, in a cavern of many recesses,” he answered.
Oh boy, she mentally flinched, he’s got something hooked in his imagination. “Why don’t you come with me?” she asked carefully. “I’m going north.”
“Your place of arrival?”
She didn’t want to call it a hospital, and the Institute of Natural Sciences and Research would mean nothing to him, so she compromised. “It’s a place where wise men and women live and help people with problems.”
“Doctors?” he asked quickly.
“Um … yes, but they won’t hurt you like those others. I promise, Walter!” She was referring to the time he had spent as a drugged puppet in the mental institution and had no way of realizing that this same time was remembered as something of a stay in paradise by her brother. His swift comprehension of her delicately worded sentence had come out of eagerness rather than concern.
“I would return to those doctors, Lass, could I but take you with me.” He reached out and gently rubbed her cheek. “However, all of that, whether it is to be or not, must wait until I partake of the challenge that awaits me in the place of good medicine.”
“Where?” she asked.
Walter dipped into the murky hints that had been provided by his visions of the confrontation with the creature. “It is … a cavern, twisting upon itself and with many offshoots for weaker men and their works. These men are doctors, of both the mind and the form and they will have in four nights an awful curse among them. I must go there, and it would be best if you did not follow.”
A kind of eerie chill swept over Dorothy. “…a cavern … with many offshoots … doctors of both the mind and the form (body) …” That almost sounded like a description of the Institute, with its five main buildings and numerous labs and conference rooms. And the doctors there were psychiatrists as well as physical experts; she had even heard that that kook, the Moon Murderer, was going to be observed and evaluated there sometime this month to see if he were fit to stand trial, so it could really be described as a place of good medicine in both senses. But she had never mentioned any of this to him.
“How did you know about this place, Walter?”
He laughed, loudly and without inhibition. “The gods sometimes favor those who are to meet extraordinary enemies with the blessing of a vision. I have seen mine.”
“Yeah,” muttered Dorothy, rubbing her forehead. “That’s where I’m going. Why don’t you come with me?”
“Aye,” he said, still laughing. “It is meet. I will join you.”
Hope, she told herself, it’s always the last quality in the box, and by this time next week, everything could be on its way to the kind of life I … no, the kind of life Walter deserves.