Eggs Benediction

November 11, this year
Terciera Island, Azores, Portugal
2:25pm AZOT

“The house buzzes, no?”

George Eversman sets a small cup and saucer on the counter as Loche enters the kitchen. Bacon hisses in a skillet. A pot of water boils, quietly huffing steam. The windows are fogged. Loche sits. He smells the coffee. He can feel tears pressing upward from just below the surface.

“Edwin warm now? Bug asleep?” George says.

Loche’s answer is a slight nod. Confusion and uncertainty cloud his skull. “Yes. He is sleeping.”

“My hands tingle,” George says. “The Rathinalya. First it came from the Eye rising in the water—now it comes from Edwin. Even when he is on the other side of the house, I feel his power. He okay, yes?”

Another nod to some vague notion of okay.

“Are you warming up?”

“Trying.” Loche feels cold. He feels complete helplessness. “You wanted to see me?”

“Busy day already, yes? Edwin… And Albion Ravistelle wants you dead? And wife Helen is his assassin? Sounds like a most unhappy marriage, yes?”

Loche shivers at the thought of Edwin’s body disappearing into a black hole. “She could have killed me many times, I think.”

“Yes, but now she say that you no longer wanted alive. Better dead?”

“Because of my writing—I suppose I could potentially challenge Albion’s plans. But I can’t simply write him out of the story.” Text illuminates behind his lids when he blinks. As does a mirrored eye. “It appears that I must be near death, suffering or completely removed from reality to compose in a way that can change history—change the world.”

George chuckles nudging a strip of bacon in the pan. “What most writers say. The usual excuses, yes?”

Loche thinks of the Red Notebook. He shudders.

“They tried once before, you know?” George says. “To stop the prophecy—to kill you—you and your brother. Your father, William, and Samuel Lifeson, and believe it or not, Albion Ravistelle save you. You children then.”

Loche remembers writing in the Journal about the file box —provided by Albion Ravistelle in Venice, or does Loche recall reading through it? He squints. The memories mix. The car accident—assassination attempt. His entire life outlined and documented by a character he had created.

“Helen we will watch closer now. Talan will go where she goes.” Loche recalls meeting Talan Adamsman before the siege of Mel Tiris. The huge man resembled several gangster film hit men: intimidating bulk, thick neck, dark eyebrows, a jaw forged to fracture fists. Scary. Very scary. “Talan will keep her from harming anyone.”

“I do not think Helen would have killed me.”

“No? Maybe no. He will watch her anyway. Much still ahead for wife, Helen. For mother, wife, Helen. Much.”

George exhales a deep sigh. “And now,” his voice lowers to a solemn whisper, “Edwin—a god walks among us. A god sleeps a room away. God is here.”

For Loche, no words come. He watches the leader of the Orathom Wis chop onions on a board. Flashes of Italy, Monterosso. A memory? Perhaps. Perhaps now. Seemingly, as each day passes, his written fiction, the events therein, become more like memory. His first meeting of the long-limbed, orange-haired George was in a kitchen. He was preparing fresh pesto. Loche’s mind battles between images. He sees his own hand scribbling out the affair—words on a page—then images of meeting George in Monterosso, the wood table with family photos in frames, the wine glasses, George’s eyes like bowls of amber-brown paint. He recalls the little girl, Elainya.

“Well done,” George says. He gestures out the window to the cliffs beyond the field. “Saving your boy. Brave. Brave leaping into death and returning—bringing with you your son.”

Loche does not answer. George adds, “But you and death have been becoming better acquainted over these last days, yes?”

“What does this mean?” Loche asks. “What does this mean for my son?”

George looks up and laughs. “What a question! What, indeed. I do not know… yet.” The edge of the bowl rings as he cracks another egg. “Tell me, Poet, what did you see at Mel Tiris, in the castle tower, in the paintings, the Orathom? You see Basil there?”

“Yes.”

“You see others there?”

“I saw Samuel Lifeson’s face.” Loche flinches and tries to erase the image of the severed head at his feet. George frowns and sighs. “And the boy god was there again. Only this time, it felt as if Edwin and It were one and the same.”

George’s odd grin stretches out across his face and he glances at Loche, “Now they are same, yes?”

Tears rise. Between sobs Loche manages to get out, “What of my son? What does this mean for my son?”

George’s smile disappears. He looks at the egg in his hand and then holds it up. “The Itonalya have a story about an egg—other peoples heard it, changed it, made it theirs. You might know the Hindu version. You know the tale?”

Loche shakes his head.

With his index finger on the tip and his thumb supporting the bottom of the oval, he holds it up to one eye. “Hindu say, like Itonalya, this egg—this egg is everything that is. Gods and stars, trees and bees, love and fear, man and sea, words and pictures. All existence. They call it Vishnu, but Itonalya call it Thi. Crazy, yes?

“Mighty Thi wanted to tell stories, but It had no listeners. So, Thi broke, became two parts.” George tosses the egg to his other hand, cracks it open and slowly drools its contents into the bowl. “This part,” he swirls the yolk and white, “all spirit, all heaven, all god, all Orathom. All things we cannot see.” He raises the broken egg shell, “And this is earth, and flesh. The world of physical. You, me, all this, caught in between.” George then reaches for another from the carton. He lifts it again to his eye, “Edwin, I think, is egg. Both he and Thi unbroken. Inside him is god and man. He is everything that is. Just as a parent’s child should be, yes?” The rim of the bowl chimes again. “Your son is Thi. Thi is your son. Stupid crazy.” He tips the white and the yolk into the bowl and tosses the shell into the wastebasket. “Trouble for Edwin is that we, Orathom Wis, eat the gods.” He fires a quick scowl at Loche. “But not Edwin. Something different now. Something very different this time. So, I make afternoon breakfast and eat omelette instead.”

He pours the egg batter into the hot pan. The two watch as the gold sizzles and thickens. Loche is suddenly hungry. It feels as if breakfast is the right meal for his internal clock.

“Julia tells me she believes Basil calls her to Egypt. To Menkaure pyramid.”

“Yes,” Loche says, recalling Julia’s story of what she found in Basil’s studio in Venice—some cryptic message of a paint splattered constellation, characters of Greek mythology tacked to the wall, leading to a photograph of the Menkaure pyramid on the Giza plateau. He shakes his head. Was it a message? Was it a warning?

George flips the omelette into the air and catches it in the pan. It hisses and pops as he lowers it back to the stove. “And you—you see Basil at pyramid, too, yes? In painting?”

“Yes,” he answers, “but the pyramid was different. I do not think it was Menkaure.”

“Different?”

“It was white. As if made of frosted glass—beside a lake. And there was a horrifying battle surrounding us.”

The immortal’s face seems suddenly ancient and pained—and then shifts back. “Wyn Avuqua,” he whispers. “You saw streams of light stabbing from sky, yes? A city breaking?”

Loche nods.

“You saw the gods of Thi, the Godrethion destroy the Itonalya. You saw the fall of our only home.” A single tear forms and slips over his high cheekbones. “My home…”

“The Godrethion,” Loche says, his tone lost in thought.

“Yes. The disloyal gods—summoned by Thi, Itself. The bridging spirits. Lawless gods. The true enemy of the Itonalya and the Orathom Wis. But you know this already, yes?”

Loche sees the open Journal on the table in his Priest Lake Cabin. He sees the volumes of writings in what were once locked cabinets in his office tower. The name Godrethion flickers like a faraway light at dusk on the sea. These tiny lights seem to become more familiar as each new vexing day unfolds.

George watches the eggs cook. His expression is troubled. “And now you go with Thi to Menkaure.” He whispers to himself, “Menkaure. Why Menkaure?”

Corey Thomas enters the kitchen along with a man Loche recognizes as Athelstan, Loche’s protector and door warden at Mel Tiris. “Angofal.” He bows and rises before George. “There are thirty-five confirmed Orathom Wis still living. Twenty-seven living in remote locations have not yet reported in.”

“News may not have reached them,” Athelstan says.

George does not respond. Worry still darkens his face. “And our Samuel and William?”

“They are gone,” Corey replies, his gaze falling to the floor.

George inhales the grief. His chest rises, sorrow tugs, and he breathes out a sigh.

“Menkaure,” George says to Loche, “is mystery. We do not know where it leads. Those that have crossed it, no return.” He laughs, “But maybe that will change. Maybe sometime we will learn. The changes in past change the times at hand.”

“I don’t understand,” Loche says.

“No mind,” he says, “we eat, then I talk with Edwin. After we talk, we leave here. We leave here and find Basil. We find Basil in Egypt at the pyramid.” George slides a spatula under the omelette and flips it, “Or the pyramid will take you to him.”

“I don’t know what Basil can do. He didn’t seem to have any answers.”

“Answers?” George says. “They do not exist. We don’t need answers. We must add to the story. Or take it away. I think you are being pulled to the beginning of the tale.”