Author: M G Kizzia

Avalon Pilot Part II: Missing Person

M G Kizzia 2 Comments

Present day outside Washington DC.  Kairos 121:  Glen, the Storyteller.

Recording…

Glen looked at his silent companions while the plane landed.  Lincoln looked distressed over his missing wife.  Lockhart probably thought about his miraculous healing.  Boston tried not to think about the paperwork.  All seemed right with the world, as the pilot shut down the engine, until Lincoln reached out to grab Glen by the arm, as if Glen had no idea what the man wanted to say.

Lockhart stood up and stepped out of the plane on his own two feet.  He took a deep breath of fresh air and let it out slowly through his smile.  He couldn’t help it.  He spent the last fifteen years in a wheelchair and had come to dread retirement.  Now, healed and free, he stood on his own two feet and tasted the good air.

Glen scooted past, but paused long enough to repeat the earlier comment.  “Don’t start depending on those healing chits.  That is a good way to get yourself killed.”  Lockhart nodded, but then they saw Lincoln rushing to the door so Glen hurried off.

Boston followed Lincoln.  She lugged the folded-up wheelchair.  “I guess this goes back in storage.”  The young woman groaned as she lifted it over the lip to the ramp.  Boston and the old man walked side by side toward the main building where they saw people running toward them.  Boston thought to say one more thing before they got swallowed by the crowd.

“I will miss pushing you around in this thing.”

“Me too,” Lockhart responded in all seriousness.  Then he had to stop walking to hug Bobbi, the director of the Men in Black.  Bobbi cried big tears; while Lockhart had to be touched, praised and congratulated for getting his legs back by any number of others as well.

Glen got as far as the door to the main building before Lincoln caught him, grabbed his arm and spouted again.   “My wife has to be out there somewhere.”

Once again, Glen tried to reassure the man.  “Don’t worry.  Up until now there were a few other things pressing, like fending off an alien invasion and finding you, for instance.  But Alexis is now my top priority.  Oh no.”  He said that last because he saw Mirowen and Emile Roberts racing toward him.  “Lincoln is one.  This is two.  Trouble does come in threes,” he mumbled.  “I can’t wait.”

“Hey you!”  The shout came from further down the hall as Mirowen and Doctor Roberts hustled up to the front door to hide behind Glen.  A marine followed and only stopped when Glen held up his hand like a traffic cop.

“Go tell Colonel Weber to meet me in the lunchroom in thirty minutes.”  The marine looked ready to object, so Glen repeated himself.  “Go.”

That just made the marine mad.  It looked like he was going to say “Who the hell are you?” but when Glen vanished and an absolutely stunning young woman in an outfit both tight and short stood in his place, it came out, “What the fuck?”

“Princess,” Mirowen, the elf, lowered her eyes in a sign of respect for her goddess.

“Crude.”  The Princess stared down the marine before she gave both Lincoln and Doctor Roberts a sharp look.  She grabbed Mirowen by the arm.  “We will be in the ladies’ room so too bad for you Lincoln.”  It remained the one place Lincoln could not follow, and she could get some peace, even if Glen could not.

Once inside the women’s room, the Princess turned immediately to the mirror.  She understood the reflex, an automatic reaction to see how she looked.  The main part of her mind focused on the elf, and she spoke.  “So Mirowen, what have you and Emile decided?”

Mirowen curtsied, and gracefully, despite the fact that she stood dressed in greasy overalls.  “Lady.  Emile is reluctant to become elf kind, and we have researched it.  It has not seemed to us that you have done that very often.”

“Not often,” the Princess responded in an absent-minded way as she examined her eyes in the mirror.  “But one of my godly lifetimes like Danna or Amphitrite might arrange it.”

Mirowen curtsied a second time and looked at the floor.  She spoke softly.  “I understand.”

“But Mirowen, what about joining Alexis in the human world?”  The Princess turned from the mirror to look at the elf, the lovely elf.  The Princess had no doubt she would make an equally lovely human woman.

“I am prepared for that.”  Mirowen dropped her eyes again but she did not sound convinced.  “Oh, but Colonel Weber is threatening to drag Emile back for trial for stealing property from area 51.  But it was my unicorn.  I was just getting her back.”

Boston came to join them at that point, and also went straight for the mirror while the Princess turned again to face Mirowen.  “You know if you stay as you are, he will grow old more rapidly than you can imagine while you will hardly change at all.  You will lose him, and he will lose you in the end.”

“One of us will likely go first in any case.”  Mirowen sounded forlorn, and she would not look the Princess in the eyes.

“I could do that,” Boston interrupted.  “With Lockhart, I mean.  He is such a snuggle bear, and a good kisser too, I bet.  If only he wasn’t such a father figure.”

“Grandfather figure,” the Princess corrected her, and Boston did not deny that truth.

“Oh, but did you hear Lincoln’s concern for his missing wife?” Boston asked.  She spoke to Mirowen and the Princess without putting together in her mind that the Princess and Glen were essentially the same person.  “I never met her, but I understand Alexis was an elf once.  He must really love her.”

The Princess nodded for Boston, but she spoke with an eye on Mirowen.  “And she really loves him and would do anything for him.”

“Two peas in a pod.”  Bobbi, the director came in, a marine on her heels.  The director caught the tail end of the conversation.  “And that is why we need to find Alexis if we can.  Is it crowded in here or what?”

“Women’s conference,” Boston suggested.  The marine grimaced as she set down her briefcase and took a turn in the mirror.

“Yes, well, Mirowen, we will talk more, later.”  The Princess took back the conversation.  “Meanwhile, I had a hard time at first getting a lead on Alexis.  She became too human, I think.”

“She still has the magic,” Bobbi noted.

“Yes, but so do any number of humans these days, and more so as the Other Earth waxes toward full conjunction.”

“What about the Lady of Avalon?” Boston suggested.

“Alice?”  The Princess closed her eyes.  “Yes, that is how I found her.  Alexis is there in Avalon, or was, and I suppose I knew that all along.  She was just not the priority because she did not appear to be in any danger.  Her father Mingus took her out of fear that she was getting too old and would soon die and leave him grieving.”  The Princess sighed.  “I guess we have to go fetch her.”

Bobbi touched the Princess on the arm and the Princess started to move over, but Bobbi had a request first and only glanced briefly at the marine before she spoke.  “Can I go to Avalon?  All these years I have worked this operation and in these last few years I have kept it all running, and I have never been to Avalon.  Not even once.”

The Princess smiled and hugged her friend.  “Soon.  Not this time, but after you retire, and no, you cannot retire today.  I need you to keep Colonel Dipstick away from Mirowen and Emile while I am gone.”  The Princess turned toward the marine.  “So, do you work for Darth Weber?”  Colonel Weber’s name was properly pronounced “Vay-ber.”  The marine picked up her briefcase and smiled, but just a little.

“I don’t do typing pool gossip,” she said, and left.

“Humph.”  Bobbi harrumphed, but not in a sour way.  She stepped up to the mirror, touched her gray hair, looked at Boston who was maybe twenty-five, the beautiful elf, the incredible Princess, and harrumphed again.  “What am I looking at?  I am way past the age for mirrors.”

All the women paused to give Bobbi love hugs before they exited the women’s room together.  They had a real conference to attend, and they had to get Lincoln’s wife back.

Avalon Pilot part I-5: Humanity

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People, maybe a million souls, stretched out on the flat land beyond the tower.  They dressed in ragged animal skins, or went naked, looked gaunt and starved, but for some reason, they kept working—gathering clay, whatever grass or bark they could to strengthen the bricks, baking the bricks, and adding them to the tower.  Why they would continue to work while they starved to death, Mingus could not imagine.  They were human, he concluded.  They were crazy.

“We need glamours, an illusion so the people think we are one of them.”

“Father,” Alexis objected.  “These people need help.”

“That may be, but we dare not stop among them.”  He paused to look at his daughter.  He dressed her in fairy weave for their first journey, a magical cloth that could be shaped, colored, and given texture as desired.  Alexis shaped her fairy weave to give it the look of raged, animal-skin clothing.  She added the glamour to appear too skinny, like a person half-starved, and she added a slightly bloated belly, but he made her adjust the look.

“You need to darken your hair so you don’t look so old.  I suspect when the elderly collapse, they probably get eaten.”

“Father,” Alexis objected again, but she made the change.

“Now follow me,” Mingus said.  “I believe we have jumped to the first days, before the human race got scattered and the language broke into a million forms.  These people likely speak the universal tongue, which you should understand.  But if they speak to you, do not answer them.  Keep your head down, and do not meet them in the eyes.  We are going to try to skirt the edge of this mass of people, and walk.  Only walk.  If we must run, I will tell you to run; but if we show these people our backs, I suspect they will be after us like a pack of dogs.”

“Father.” Alexis said it a third time, but she voiced no more objections.

The people grunted and moaned, but few talked.  It seemed like talking would take too much energy, and that was energy they needed to use for brick making and building.  No one moved, or stepped aside for the couple.  Mingus and Alexis had to walk around people, fire pits, and bricks laid out to bake in the sun.  It felt like they were weaving a thread through a tapestry.

The first portion of the journey went well. The people ignored them, but the mass of people stretched for several miles, up to the edge of a hill that looked a long way away.

“There is some powerful enchantment at work here,” Mingus said.  Being an elf, he was able to direct his words to Alexis’ ears only.

Alexis felt unsure if she could still do that.  She knew the little ones in the future could hear, understand, and respond to any human language, but Alexis knew she could no longer do that since she became human.  Too bad, she thought.  It would have helped when she and Benjamin traveled to France.  Alexis contented herself with listening.

“It appears to be centered in the middle of this mass of people, and feels like some form of compulsion.  No doubt that is why these starving people are continuing to work day and night.  And here, I thought they were just expressing typical human insanity.”

Father!  Alexis did not say the word out loud, but she thought it as hard as she could.

Two-thirds of the way along the edge of the camps, and Alexis could not hold her eyes to the ground.  The distraction came in the form of a dozen naked, filthy children attempting to run and play.  It looked like a game of tag, and for the most part, the adults around them ignored them.  Sometimes the children got yelled at.  Sometimes they got pushed to the ground or got hit.  One brute picked up a little girl and threw her into the fire.  He laughed as the girl scrambled to get out.  She did not get badly injured, but Alexis could not help herself.

“Father.  The children.”  She watched a baby try to suckle a dry and shriveled breast.  The mother had nothing to give.  “The children,” Alexis repeated.

A man stood in their path and signaled for others to join him.  “What about the children?” the man asked.

“They are making a nuisance of themselves,” Mingus quickly lied.  “We can’t get any work done.”

“I’ve watched you,” the man said.  “You haven’t been working.  You are not staying in your place.  I think you are trying to escape.”

The crowd that gathered began to make noises about taking them to Nimrod.  More than one suggested eating them.

“We are going to collect plants for the bricks,” Mingus tried.  “In the hills.  It is the new place.”  He pointed up the hill at the end of the camp.  “We were sent to see what is there that may be useful.”

The man paused, rubbed his chin, and the crowd noise toned down.  The man looked once up the hill before he decided.  “No.  That is the place from which destruction comes.  No one goes into the hills.”  The crowd noise started up again. Alexis pulled her wand. Mingus made a fist around which he formed a small fireball.  Then everything stopped and became utterly silent.  Everyone looked frozen in place, unable to move.

A woman appeared in that same instant.  She looked young and seemed to be well fed, which made her stand out in the crowd.  The man who blocked their way and the crowd did not appear to notice.  In fact, after a moment, the people all went back to what they were doing as if nothing at all happened.

“Let me look at you,” the woman said, and grabbed Mingus by the chin.  He squinted as she squeezed, but did not resist.  “Elder elf.  You two are leaking the future all over the place.”  She let go and looked at Alexis.  She smiled.  “Former elf,” she said, correctly.

“Yes, ma’am,” Alexis offered, and felt it was only right to curtsey.

“Your Kairos.  I see you belong to them.  They are right now wending their way back to the tower.  They are not in a position to draw attention to themselves by meeting up with you.  Really.  You must stop leaking the future.  I have already been exposed to far more knowledge about the future than is safe.  The Kairos is beginning to leak, badly.  I had to put a hedge around them so the others could not find out about tomorrow.”

“I am sorry,” Alexis said, feeling the need to apologize out of her confusion.  She did not understand why this woman referred to the Kairos as they and them.

“We don’t know how to stop leaking,” Mingus admitted.  He imagined this woman had to be a goddess and she unconsciously read their minds.

“I can see your limitations.  I am a titan.  The gods have not begun yet, though young Zeus has been born and he is coming to kill his father.”  She raised her hands, one to each of them.  “There.  I have placed a hedge also around you, and I will ask others to strengthen it. I have also scrambled your words, so when you speak of future things, no one may hear unless they are standing with you and hear by normal hearing.  The gods to be do not need to know what will be.”

“But what if I inadvertently say something in the wrong ears?” Alexis felt concerned.

“Then you will give the Kairos in the future many headaches.”

Mingus understood what confused Alexis.  The Kairos in this day had to be the twins, Zadok and Amri, if the history was correct.  He looked at his daughter with his expressionless look, but the woman read the elder elf’s true insides.

“You love your daughter well.  That is the only reason I did not give you to the bokarus of the woods.  And yes, the Kairos is Amri and Zadok.  And yes, I can still read your thoughts.  It is my hedge, but it is too late for me.  I have already been tainted by the future, even beyond the day of the dissolution of the gods, though most of the gods have not yet been born.”  The woman raised her hand and the three of them vanished from that place and reappeared on the distant hilltop, the one before the mountain that still had grass and trees upon it.

A fire had already been made, and a beast of some sort, well cooked, roasted slowly over the flames.

 

“But who are you?” Alexis asked.

 

 

“Leto,” the woman said, and she had two things to add.  “I will also put a hedge around your friends when they arrive, so you may have to explain it to them.  Now I go to mourn.  I know Zeus will bring an end to the days of Cronos.  That is as it must be.  Time being the mere counting of days will come to an end.  Time will now be vested in the Kairos.  Everything will get complicated and confusing.  It will be counted by events and the rise and fall of great civilizations.  Now, we begin event time, and I know the tower will fall.”  She vanished.

Alexis turned to her father.  “What friends?”

 

Mingus shrugged.  “All I know is the way to get home is to go back to the beginning of time.  Once we break through the last barrier, we should automatically go back to our own time.”  He lied.

“Should?”

“Will.”

“So why did you kidnap me if you were just going to bring me right back?” she asked in her sharpest voice.

Mingus shrugged.  “I realized when we got here that it was not fair to you.  What I want doesn’t matter.”  He looked sad, but elves could fake that look very well.

Alexis did not buy it.  “Change of heart?”  She scoffed.

Mingus shook his head and offered another lie.  “Actually, in the forest, I realized I was putting you in far more danger bringing you here than leaving you back home.  I never could fool you, or your mother.  Here.  Have some lunch.  Then you can lie down for a while and get some rest.”

Alexis did not trust her own father, but that did not prevent her from eating and lying down.  She trusted enough to know her father would watch over her while she slept.

Alexis woke up around four in the afternoon, as near as she could tell.  It appeared to be summer, so the sun was still well up in the sky.  Mingus had the campsite cleaned up, so all they had to do was walk.

“You wouldn’t have liked the climb earlier, in the heat of the day.”  Mingus tried to sound like he cared.

Again, Alexis did not exactly buy it, but she went along because she had no choice.  And it felt all uphill.  After a short way, it seemed like they left the hill and started to climb a mountain.  The sun eventually set off to their left hand, but Mingus did not want to stop.  He made a fire into a small floating globe of light to trail them in the dark.  Alexis used her wand to make a fairy light, to light their steps and shed some light on the way ahead.

Alexis had to stop about every hour to catch her breath, but Mingus seemed kind to her, even brushing off logs and boulders to let her sit and rest her legs.  Near midnight, they finally came to a dark entrance to a cave.

“No,” Alexis objected.  “I’m not going in there.”

“I’m sorry, but this is the way.  Trust me.  We are almost there.  Besides, I don’t want to risk sleeping again out in the open.  Trust me.  Another hour and we will be home.”

Alexis screwed up her face and tried to shove her fairy light into the cave.  It immediately went out.  She took out her wand and tried again.  The second light fared no better than the first.

“Wait, let me show you.” Mingus said.  He stepped through the opening and made a fire light that lit up the way for a short distance.

“A tunnel?” Alexis asked.

“That is how I know we are in the right place, now come on.”

Alexis stepped forward and felt her whole-body tingle as she stepped through the opening.  She watched her wand rapidly shrink.  The oak stick became covered with bark before it sprouted a leaf, became a twig, and vanished altogether.  “What?”

“Proof we are on the right road,” Mingus said.  “You don’t need the wand to make a light.”

“It helps.  I’m tired, already.  The wand helps me maintain focus so I don’t have to do it all in my head.  That is very draining.”

“But only one more gate and we will reach the last point,” Mingus assured her.  “When we pass the last point, we will be home.”

“Is that what that was, a gate?”

“Like an invisible door,” Mingus said.  He knew she did not remember much from their journey home from the eighteenth century.  He made sure she did not remember.

“It felt like spider webs.”

“So only one more web, and after that we will come to our destination.”

“I don’t like spiders,” Alexis said, and shivered, but she walked.

************************

MONDAY

Missing Person: Glen has to put together a rescue team and bring it to Avalon and the tower of the Heart of Time. Until then, Happy Reading

*

Avalon Pilot part I-4: The Tower of Bricks

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Mingus and Alexis landed somewhere in the woods.  Alexis spent the first ten minutes yelling, and occasionally hitting her father in the arm.  Mingus took it, but as she began to run out of steam, he said they had to move on from there.

“Why?” Alexis asked.  “Why should I go anywhere with you?”

“Because I am moving on, and I don’t believe you want to be left alone here in the wilderness, in the dark.”

Alexis looked around for the first time.  The woods appeared like a jungle, even if the trees and bushes were the sort that might be found anywhere in the temperate zone.  All the same, there was no telling what might inhabit such woods—wherever they were.  She had one more thing to say.  “Cheater.”  They began to walk.  Alexis added another word.  “Kidnapper.” After a time, she added, “Selfish.”

Mingus checked the amulet once, set his direction, and otherwise kept the instrument hidden in his pocket.  “An unspoiled wilderness, probably untouched by human hands,” Mingus said, after a while.  “I thought you were into all that environmental stuff, save the planet and all that.”

“Save space for the trees and animals,” she said.  “That doesn’t mean I want to go tromping through it.  That sort of defeats the purpose.”

Mingus shrugged.  He picked up the pace where he could.  He felt spooked, and wanted to get out of the woods as soon as possible.  Something unnatural permeated the air.

After a while, Alexis said, “Wait a minute.”  Mingus stopped, assuming she needed a break.  She was an old woman, after all.  He knew he could not expect her to walk all night, but he wanted to get out of the woods.

In fact, all Alexis wanted to do was snap a thin branch off an oak tree.  She used a little magic to clean off the bark and sand it smooth.  “I need to use this wand to break it in,” she said.  Mingus said nothing.   He looked around and feared she might get to use it sooner than expected.  He walked.

Alexis was a real trooper.  She walked a long way for someone her age.  She thanked the gym membership, which she did not use often enough, and the Y, where she regularly swam.  She kept in reasonable shape, but at last she said she had to stop.

“I can’t do an all-nighter like some college kid.  I need to rest.  I need some sleep.”

They came to a small clearing and Mingus did not argue.  Only then did he think about how unprepared they were for such a journey.  They had no tents or blankets, though it felt hot enough, the ground was dry, and it did not feel like rain.  They did not have so much as a knife, which meant it would be hard to hunt or fish.  If they arrived anywhere near his intended destination, he knew they could not count on human help.

Alexis did not worry about any of that.  She just needed to sleep.  She curled up in the grass and let her father watch over her.

Mingus remembered Alexis as a little elf with a big heart.  A good spirit, with a good will, she was always kind to the animals and to all the people she met—even human people, which might have told him something.  He did not need to think about that.

He remembered how everyone praised her gentle heart.  She practically raised her baby brother when their mother took a turn on the earth before she retired to Mirroway.  Of course, Roland would take her side.  He would support Alexis in whatever she wanted to do.  She was loved.  Mingus, on the other hand, might have been…perhaps…not a very good father.  He spent all his time in the history department and had little time for his daughter, Alexis.  He named her after Alexander the Great, and his son Roland, he named after the best friend of Charles Martel.  He spent so little time with his children, he admitted to himself.  Even when he did, he made everyone feel like they were a burden and disturbing him.  He did not need to think that way.

Mingus found some stones and built a small circle in the clearing.  He gathered some dead wood and piled it inside the circle.  He held his hand over the pile, and the fire jumped from his fingers to the wood.  It gave him a small campfire to cut through the dark of night.  He could do that much.

After mind magic, Mingus’ element was fire.  Alexis, a healer, a reflection of her internal goodness, could manipulate the air, like her mother.  Roland, a hunter, had a little of both wind and fire.  Mingus wondered where Roland might have gone off to in the night.  He hoped the boy would find a nice elf maid and settle down.  He prayed that he not make the same mistake his sister made.

Mingus cried to think of losing Alexis to death.  Once she went over to the other side, even the Kairos would not be able to save her.  Mingus was not a man to pray, but his heart cried out to the Kairos, the god of the elves, light and dark, and all the dwarfs in between.  The Kairos became their god at the beginning of time—at the beginning of history.  All the ancient gods on the earth gathered, agreed, and anointed him and her for the task.

Over one hundred and twenty-one lifetimes, the Kairos did take turns being male or female, more or less.  The Kairos did have double the normal DNA, and the capacity to be him and her at the same time, but…  Mingus understood being one person in two bodies at the same time would be very hard to pull off

In any case, the ancient gods wanted a god for the little ones, and not just the little spirits of the earth, but the sprites of the fire, air and water as well.  The gods wanted someone to watch over the little ones and, more to the point, be held responsible when they screwed up.  But they were not about to put that much power into the hands of one of their own.  So instead, the elves got a person who moved on every fifty or sixty years and started all over again from scratch as a newborn baby.

Mingus laughed at the memory of an expression old Fangs the goblin used to say.  “Just our luck.  We get a god who dies.”  Of course, the little ones rarely followed the rules the Kairos gave them, even if they knew the rules, like not lying, not stealing, being good, and doing good for others, and stuff.  Then they got a break every sixty or so years when the Kairos started over again as a baby.  It seemed a good arrangement, overall.

Mingus prayed.  He knew little ones prayed to the Kairos all the time, but like humans, their normal prayers asked for things people had no business asking for.  Most would be scared witless if the Kairos actually showed up.  Mingus shrugged and figured he fit that category.  He had no right to ask for a solution to his problem, and he knew, deep down, Alexis was a problem of his own making.

Mingus chided himself for spending so many years in study.  He missed so much of his own children’s childhood.  He sighed, but realized it was too much to ask the Kairos to turn Alexis back into an elf.  The Kairos, in the form of Lady Alice, was the one who made her human in the first place.  It was too much to expect the Kairos Glen to change his mind.

Mingus stirred the fire for the next several hours and worried about what he could do.  Alice stood there, in the tower on Avalon.  She saw him escaping with Alexis held captive.  Surely, she would send a rescue party.  Old Doctor Procter might get that new amulet working, and then they would be after him.  Mingus figured his only chance was to get beyond the range of the Heart of Time.  He had to somehow take Alexis back to a time before history began.  He had no idea how he might do that.

Something shuffled among the leaves.  Mingus looked to the sky.  It would be daylight in another hour.  Something wailed nearby.  Mingus woke Alexis gently.

“We have to go,” he said.  “We have intruded and made the spirit of this wilderness angry.  I have been feeling the anger building, ever since you snapped off that twig from the oak tree.  We have to get out of the woods while we still can.”

“Father?” Alexis asked.  She did not quite grasp what he said.  She rubbed the sleep from her eyes to better focus.

“Come on.  Now.  Hurry.”  Mingus took Alexis by the elbow and dragged her among the trees.

“Father, the fire.”  Alexis saw the fire and objected.

“Give the wilderness spirit something to do while we run for it,” he said, and picked up the pace.  Alexis had a hard time keeping up.

They reached the edge of the woods when the sun topped the horizon.  They tumbled out from the bushes and paused to stare.  The plain before them had been stripped clean of vegetation.  It had become a great mud flat, like it might have looked after a devastating flood.  A great, three-story sized mound of dirt, like a small hill, stood to their left.  On the top of the mound, an enormous brick-built tower stood and reached up toward the clouds.

“The bricks won’t hold that much weight.  It will come down,” Mingus said.

“Father!  Do you know what that is?”  Alexis looked, awe-struck.

Mingus turned from the tower to look back at the trees.  He saw the unmistakable face among the green.  It looked like a face full of rage, tempered only by a touch of cruelty.  Death glinted in the eyes; but it also looked like it had no intention of setting one foot beyond the edge of the forest.  Clearly, it despised the human race that stripped the flatland bare.  Mingus had no doubt the spirit would attack the humans if it could.  He imagined some agreement had been reached.  The edge of the forest looked like the DMZ.  Mingus sighed his relief to be out of it.

Avalon Pilot part I-3: Meanwhile, Back on Earth…

M G Kizzia 2 Comments

Three old men and one young woman stood in an open field somewhere in suburban New Jersey.  The green grass looked uncut and undisturbed, except where the corporate plane set down.  The trees that surrounded the perimeter of the field, mostly oak and maple, had just enough fir trees to break the monotony.  The trees looked well-spaced for easy passage, if anyone cared to walk through the woods to the field.  The sound of distant road traffic suggested civilization, not far away.  The sound of children playing among the trees suggested the three old men and young woman should leave before they were discovered; but first they had to watch.

A white light, bright enough to easily be seen under the noonday sun—a rectangle, door-like shape of brilliance stood before them.  They watched it rise about ten feet in the air.  A voice, like one might imagine the voice of an angel, came from the light.

“Remember, Lockhart, do not depend on those healing chits.  They are organic and will stay in your system for some time, but you do not have the seeds to grow more.  They will eventually die out, and you will again be vulnerable to the pains of age.  I am sorry.  I am not permitted to do more.  Maybe the Kairos can do more for you, but that is not my place to say.  Farewell friends.”

The light rose slowly in the sky even as it rapidly shrank in size.  It looked like it disappeared, but one of the three old men shook his head.

“It did not really go invisible,” he said.  “It just got too small to see and zoomed off to somewhere else in this universe or in some other universe.”

“We won’t see them again?” the tallest old man asked.

The first man shrugged.  “Who can say?”

The third old man turned on the first.  “But you are the Kairos, the Traveler in Time.  Don’t you know?”

The first man, the Kairos, shook his head as he replied.  “No reason I should know.  The future isn’t written yet.  Well, it is written, but I don’t have the record of every individual life in history.  Well, there is a record of every life in the Heart of Time, but I don’t have snap-your-finger access to the heart.  Besides, it only records what happened in the past, or rather, it is recording the present, but it has no record of the future.  True, I remember a couple of future lifetimes, you know, but I can’t say exactly what will be.  I mean, my future lives can’t be expected to remember all the intimate details in the life of every human being this far in the past.  Are you following me?  Am I making any sense?”

“None at all,” the tall old man said, and added a big grin, like this was not the first time the Kairos spoke in riddles, and he found it funny.

The Kairos shook his head and continued.  “Anyway, I mostly deal with events, and usually just the big things.  I have one hundred and twenty past lives stretching all the way back to about 4500 BC, though I don’t remember most of them.  I have twenty or more in the future, though I only remember a few of those.”  He stopped and shook his hands as if to say, don’t interrupt.  “Remembering future lives is the only way to explain it, because it comes to me just like any memory.  But, what I mean is, I have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow.  Tomorrow is just as much a mystery to me as it is to anyone else.”

The Kairos turned toward the corporate plane that started to rev its engines.  The tall old man looked at his own two feet as he walked, but raised his voice to comment to the young woman.

“Come along, Boston.  Don’t forget the wheelchair, which I no longer need.”  He smiled as he walked.

“Lockhart,” Boston complained while she lugged the folded chair as well as she could through the tall grass.  “It didn’t seem so heavy when you were in it.”

Lockhart nodded.  “It is a wonder I didn’t put on a hundred pounds given all the years I spent confined to that chair.”  He hopped, and tried to click his heels, but he nearly lost his balance in the attempt.  He remained sixty-eight, even if he could walk.  He did not suddenly become twenty-five, like Boston’s age.

“But Glen,” the third old man was thinking things through and stepped up to the Kairos.  “How are we going to find Alexis?  Don’t you know where my wife is?”

“Lincoln,” Glen spoke kindly to the man and touched his arm to assure him of his sincerity.  “We will go back to headquarters and I promise we will use every means available to find her.”

“But…” Lincoln started to say something, but he held his tongue and went wide-eyed instead when the old man in front of him vanished and a well-built young man in ancient looking armor appeared in Glen’s place.

“Diogenes,” Boston shouted the young man’s name, and smiled.  She normally smiled when the Kairos traded places, as he called it, with a different lifetime from somewhere in history.  Lincoln normally quieted and his eyes often showed his surprise.  Lockhart stayed busy enjoying the sensation of walking on his own two feet.  He noticed, but he was preoccupied.

“L-let me,” Diogenes stuttered.  He reached out for the folded wheelchair and picked it up off the ground.  He carried it over his head, awkward as that was, but in that way, he got it up the ramp and into the plane.  Lockhart and Lincoln followed, old-man slow.  Boston came last because she caught some movement in the woods.  A half-dozen children, the oldest being a girl of maybe ten years, stood at the edge of the trees, staring.

“Keep back,” Boston shouted.  “Keep the little ones back,” she added for the ten-year-old, and underlined the command with her most serious look.  Then she ran up into the plane and pressed the button to retract the ramp.  The pilot hardly waited for the door to close.  He took the stealth designed VTOL straight up into the air.  Seconds later, the Kairos, Lockhart, Lincoln, and Boston were headed toward a non-descript building in the Virginia countryside, outside of Washington.

Diogenes traded back with Glen.  This was Glen’s life, after all, and Glen sat his old body down on the couch facing a work table full of computers and an inordinate amount of paperwork.  Lockhart sat in the co-pilot’s seat until they reached cruising altitude, though he gave the impression that he wanted to stand on his newly repaired legs for a while.  Lincoln sat in the corner and fretted about his missing wife.  Boston sat at the table, but swiveled her chair around to face the Kairos.

“Glen,” she tried for his attention, but clearly did not want to disturb him if he was thinking about something important.  He looked at her.  “Can I go to Avalon some day?” she asked, sweetly.  One of the two young men working at the table handed her a stack of papers.  She griped.  Glen snickered, but answered.

“Someday, maybe,” he said.

“Grumble,” Boston verbalized as she turned and at least pretended to type.

Lockhart came back from the cockpit.  He faked a little soft shoe before he sat where he could face Glen, and Lincoln in the corner.

“So, Lockhart,” Glen asked a question.  “As the assistant director of the men in black, got any ideas how Bobbi can convince Colonel Weber and his intrusive marines to go back to Groom Lake and leave us alone?”  When the alien Vordan came to earth, they first targeted the so-called Men in Black in strategic locations around the globe.  Colonel Weber and his marines, supposedly under the authority of the president, invaded the headquarters building when the Vordan flattened area 51.  Weber came, presumably, to help provide security and defend the only organization that knew anything at all about aliens.  Glen objected.  The president had no such authority, but Colonel Weber said he figured the organization was so secret, who would know?

“I don’t suppose one of your godly lives, like Junior or Nameless would be willing to blink them back to Nevada.”

Glen thought a minute.  “No.  Colonel Weber is an ass, but not a threat to history.  The gods have strict limits on where, when, and how they are able to interfere in normal, everyday life.  But Danna and Amphitrite agree that they don’t like the man, if that helps.”

Lockhart shook his head.  Getting the marines out of Men in Black business would be a headache.  He would help Bobbi, the director, as much as he could.  He would probably have to come up with some ideas for her to at least try.

Boston spun around.  “Maybe you could tell them some Vordan got left behind and are available for dissection if they all fly out to their own place and leave us alone.”

“We try not to lie,” Glen scolded her, but smiled.  “Besides, Colonel Weber already thinks anything alien is there to be dissected.  Living, intelligent, alien person; it is all the same to him, and I don’t want to promote that kind of thinking.”  He waved his finger in a circle.  Boston made a sour face and turned back to the table and her work.

“PhD in electrical engineering and I’m nothing but a clerk…a cluck,” she said.

Lincoln scooted closer to the conversation and kindly asked about something other than his missing wife.  “What I want to know is what are you going to do about Emile and Mirowen.”

Glen thought again.

Emile Roberts, utterly human, was a physicist that should have been an auto mechanic.  His current specialty appeared to be taking apart two-thousand-year old abandoned alien spacecraft to see how they worked.  Mirowen, a former elf maid, got right in there with him.  She knew the little spirits of the earth were not supposed to make those kinds of attachments to mortal humans.  But she got attached to the man, and whenever one of Glen’s little ones got attached in that way, it felt like superglue.  They were very hard to remove.

Boston spun to face them again.  “But they are so cute together.”

Glen looked at Lincoln.  Lincoln’s wife, Alexis, had been an elf; but she gladly gave up being an elf and became human to become Missus Benjamin Lincoln.  The problem with Emile and Mirowen was Mirowen did not seem so anxious to become human.  Of course, Emile becoming an elf was laughable, so that was out of the question.  Right now, the couple appeared to be in a stalemate position on the issue, but Glen knew that was not what Lincoln felt concerned about.

“Don’t worry,” Glen told Lincoln.  “We will find your wife.”

Avalon Pilot part I-2: Thief, Kidnapper, Father.

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Mingus stopped at the top of the stairs.  He heard voices in the lab.  He peeked through the glass in the door and saw old, white-bearded Doctor Procter leaning over a table, trying to concentrate.  Doctor Procter held a delicate piece of equipment in one hand, and held his wand in the other hand, ready to make whatever adjustment might be necessary.  The young elf doing all the talking and interrupting kept leaning into the light, like he might be trying to read over Doctor Procter’s shoulder.

“Roland.”  Mingus entered the room, the name of the young elf on his lips.  “Leave the man to his work.”

“Father,” Roland turned and stood tall.  A look of pride crossed his face.  “I guessed I would find you here.”

“Why?” Mingus sounded suspicious.

“Because I have not been able to find you anywhere since you came back from the past.  But you have always lived in this place… Oh, I guess you are asking…”  Roland straightened up.  “Because I want to give answer to your unasked question when you went away.”

“What question?  Maybe there was a reason it was unasked.”

“Father.”  Roland sounded serious.  “You said some terrible things about Alexis before you made the time jump, but I want you to know, I support my sister.  She freely chose to give up being an elf and became a human to marry a human, and I say, as long as she is happy, she will have my full support.”

“And you have told her this?”

“Not yet.”  Roland looked down at the table and at his feet. He worried his hands before he raised his head again.  “But I intend to.”  He spoke with conviction.

Mingus nodded and kept his sarcasm to a minimum.  “You better hurry up, son.  Your sister is sixty.  Her human husband is sixty-five.  They have children of their own.  They have grandchildren.  You know; humans don’t live very long.”  It irked Mingus every time he thought of Alexis getting old and dying, but he tried not to show it on his face.

“Like a breath,” Doctor Procter breathed.

“Roland.  Son.” Mingus stepped to the far side of the table to face the young elf.  “I am glad you support your sister.  Family is important.  But now, um…  You are over a hundred, aren’t you?”

“Father.”  Roland let out a deep breath of exasperation.  “I will be one-hundred-twenty-seven next winter solstice.”

“Good, good.”  Mingus waved off his own ignorance.  “I heard certain elf maidens have a bonfire and dance planned in the three-circle court of Giovani.  An elf your age should be out enjoying himself.”

“No good.  You spoiled him by activating his brain cells,” Doctor Procter said, with a small grin beneath his long white, unkempt beard.

“Father.  Those elf maids are not exactly well educated,” Roland admitted.

“It isn’t their education you should be looking at, at your age.  Go have some fun.  You remember fun?”

“But father—”

“Get out,” Mingus yelled.  Roland flushed red and made a fist.  He stomped his way to the door.  Mingus and Doctor Procter watched until the door closed.

“No need to yell,” Doctor Procter said.

“That is what children are for,” Mingus responded.  “They are for yelling at when they don’t get the message.”

“Um,” Doctor Procter made a sound, shook his head slightly, and returned to his work.

“So,” Mingus said, casually, taking a deep breath to calm himself.  “Is that the new amulet?  The prototype worked well enough, but it did not give much detail in terms of the surrounding area.  We—I came to a cliff in the Rockies in 1875 and had to backtrack a long way to go around.”

Doctor Procter nodded.  “See any Indians?”

“Native-Americans.  No.  Is it ready?”

Doctor Procter paused in his work.  “We have added some basic scanner technology to the amulet so it will get a reading on the area, cities, towns, forests, mountains, and so on.  But the screen is so small, it will take very good eyes, preferably elf eyes to see it.  It took some real coordination with the technology and IT departments, not to mention—”

“Doctor.”  Mingus cut the man off before he went into a half-hour unintelligible explanation.  “Is the amulet ready?”

“This?  No.  It needs further adjustments, and then testing.”

“Adjustments?”

“Additional work.  I’m afraid it would not work at all in its present condition.”

Mingus nodded.  “The prototype still around?”

“On the wall there,” Doctor Procter pointed over his shoulder without turning from the table.  Mingus walked to find it in the mess by the filing cabinets.  Doctor Procter paid no attention.

“The prototype worked well enough,” Mingus said, in his friendly voice.

“Yes, yes,” Doctor Procter responded as he leaned over his work and squinted at the amulet in his hand.

“It got me home in one piece, through the time gates.”

“And we are all glad.  Welcome home,” Doctor Procter mumbled and he leaned further into his work.  Mingus found the prototype under some papers and slipped it into his pocket.  Doctor Procter paused and turned to Mingus.  “We are glad you are home, but this time, don’t expect to steal the new amulet and leave me a note about going to test it.  The new one is shielded.  If you so much as touch it, alarms will go off and all of Avalon will know.”

Mingus looked down and nodded like a child, properly scolded.  “I understand.  It was just the first one.  I am the only one in all of Avalon who knows the history; maybe the only one who had a reasonable chance of making such a journey, and getting home in one piece.  I might have died at the outset, entering into the crystal.  I felt I was the only one who ought to take that risk.  An expedition of young elves without the proper knowledge would have been a disaster.”

“That is debatable,” Doctor Procter said.  “But you stole the amulet and went before anyone could stop you.  You won’t be stealing this one.”

“Fair enough,” Mingus said.  “I’ll leave you to your work.  You have had enough interruption for this evening.”  He headed toward the door, and paused only briefly when Doctor Procter had one more thing to say.

“Glad you made it back.  The history department would not be the same without you.”

Mingus stepped through the door and hurried down the stairs.

Now that it had become a fully dark night, he needed to get Alexis before she broke free of her enchantment.  They needed to be gone before anyone found out.  He looked once again to be sure the naiad was not in her spring.  He looked again at the tower, now pitch dark, like a giant finger pointing to the stars.  There were various opinions on just which finger the tower represented.

Mingus found his daughter in the closet where he left her.  He paused to note her gray hair, wrinkles, and pale human skin.  At least she didn’t get chunky like some human women got when they turned sixty, he thought.  He made sure her hands were still bound and the magical gag remained in place.  He made her stand and walk.  He had to lighten the trance so she could stagger.  He had to help her, but he dared not let her come to full consciousness, even bound and gagged.  She retained her elf magic when she became human.  She was hardly powerless, and might yet find some way to break free from his control.  She was his daughter, after all.

The most dangerous part came when they went out into the open to cross the green, and particularly when they crossed the little bridge over the stream.  Mingus’ mind wandered.  Doctor Procter was wrong.  The history department on Avalon would get along just fine without him.  Some fifty years ago, the dark elves learned to extract information directly from the Heart of Time and put it on computers.  The history department on Avalon started slowly filling up with computer geeks.  Elves should not be nerds, he thought.  Mingus knew he was old fashioned, like someone out of the stone age.  But he still believed in things that mattered.  He still believed in family.  He believed a daughter should not die before her father, and Alexis, now human, was ageing rapidly right before his eyes.

Mingus got them to the tower door.  He took one last look around the green before he slipped them inside.

“Uh,” Alexis made a sound and wiggled in the light, like a sleeper trying to wake.  Mingus held her until she settled down again into her enchanted sleep.  He looked around.

The ground floor was the only floor in that great hollow finger.  The walls stretched up high enough so Mingus imagined the cathedral roof might have been designed not only to keep out the rain, but to keep the stars from falling in.  No fire gave light to that room.  No torches lined the wall.  No electric lights were allowed near the place.  Only the Heart of Time throbbed with its own internal light, and somehow, the wood out of which the tower got built retained enough of the light to light up the entire inside, even to the ceiling.

There were theories about the wood.  Recently, an ancient theory had come back to the surface—that it was some alien wood Lady Alice snatched off some impossibly distant planet.  Another theory suggested that the tower had actually been planted, like a tree, and the wood was alive, and still growing.  Mingus shook his head.  Some people will believe anything.

He helped Alexis come inside the circle painted on the floor.  They faced the stand in which the crystal rested, silently pulsing with light.  Mingus reached into his right-hand pocket to make sure he still had the amulet.  He reached into his left-hand pocket where he had a handful of gold dust.

“Mister Barrie called this fairy dust,” Mingus whispered to himself—some distant memory.  He sprinkled it on Alexis and himself, three times, and mumbled a long series of unintelligible syllables.  Alexis sneezed.  Mingus reached down to scoop Alexis up in his arms when he caught sight of movement out of the corner of his eye.  Lady Alice was in the room.  Mingus panicked and jumped right into the crystal.  Alexis snapped out of her trance as they jumped into the light.  She yelled, a muffled “No,” before the sound cut off.

Alice and the naiad stepped up to the crystal.

“I think he saw you,” the naiad said.

“He needed to see me,” Alice responded.  “Hopefully, he won’t put up a struggle when the rescue party arrives.  Now, let us see where they went.”

************************

MONDAY

Meanwhile, back on earth, Lockhart and the men in Black are ready to focus on finding Lincoln’s wife, Alexis while Mingus has his daughter, Alexis, in the deep and distant past. Don’t miss it and Happy Reading

*

Avalon Pilot Part I: Various Nefarious

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Present day, Between Avalon and Earth.  Kairos 121:  Glen, the Storyteller.

Recording…

Mingus, a well-respected elder elf, nearly eight-hundred years old, a true academic and head of the Avalon history department for the last three-hundred years, a peace-loving scholar by reputation, dragged the elderly human woman to an obscure closet on the campus in the castle of the Kairos.  She struggled, but her hands were bound behind her back and her lips were magically sealed so she could not cry out.  Her eyes got big when Mingus opened the closet door and a cloud of dust greeted them.

You wouldn’t, she thought.  Mingus, a master of mind magic, caught her thought because she directed it at him.  You can’t do this.  Lady Alice will find out.  She will know.

“Hush,” Mingus said out loud, as he forced her to sit on the closet floor beside a broom and dustpan that hardly looked used.  He raised his hand, and the woman widened her eyes.

You wouldn’t, she repeated her thought.  Father!  Her mind cried out and her whole being objected when he touched her forehead.  Her eyes rolled up and closed as she fell into a trance.

“Alexis.  I am just trying to save you from yourself,” Mingus whispered.  He left the light on when he gently closed the door.  He paused to make sure the light did not leak out the bottom or around the edges of the door frame.  Satisfied with his work, he stepped out of the first-floor door and headed across the green toward the history building.

The great, wooden tower on his right reached for the clouds.  He understood it was the first building in Avalon.  The rest of the castle got built around that ancient structure.  It housed the Heart of Time, the glowing crystal that beat with light like the beat of a living heart.  The Heart of Time held a record of all human history.  It got created when the old god, Cronos and the Kairos, Alice, held hands, the angel presiding.  Alice made a three-pronged stand to hold the great crystal, built the tower to house it, and there it rested through the ages, beating from its own internal light, capturing a record of everything that happened on the earth.

Mingus shifted his eyes to the spring beside the tower.  The spring and the stream that came from it supplied all the fresh water in the castle.  People called it the spring of life.  Fortunately, the naiad of the spring was not present.   Rumor said she was still in recovery from the time, several years earlier, when the goddess Ashtoreth invaded Avalon and enslaved the people.  The naiad was the last defender of the tower and the Heart of Time.  The goddess overcame her in the cruelest way imaginable, and then Ashtoreth had access to all of human history.

Mingus paused.  He stopped walking and looked again at the spring and the tower.

In the end, the children of the Kairos overcame the demon-goddess with the help of the Knights of the Lance, but in the meanwhile, Ashtoreth discovered some interesting things about the Heart of Time.

First, she found that gateways, something like invisible time gates, bracketed the many lives of the Kairos throughout history—like bookends.  The gates gave real access to the lives before and after whatever life the Kairos presently lived.  If one knew how to find the gates and work them, and could cross safely through each time zone, they made something like a time-travel highway through history, from the beginning of history, when the Kairos was first conceived to live lives number one and two, up to the present one hundred and twenty-first lifetime of the Kairos.

Mingus started to walk again.  The second discovery showed a person could enter the Heart of Time and travel to anywhere in the timeline of history to begin the journey.  Jumping into the past through the Heart of Time displaced a person from his or her normal time stream.  Mingus supposed a person would continue to age according to their own internal time clock, but at that point they could travel through the gates into the future and not fear prematurely ageing, or into the past without suddenly getting younger than their birth.

No one knew this before Ashtoreth.  Maybe the Kairos knew it, but no one previously guessed.  Ashtoreth proved the fact by sending all sorts of terrible persons and monsters into the past, in her effort to disrupt history.  “Unsavories,” as Doctor Procter called them.  Mingus smiled.  That quick access to any point in history was the discovery he counted on, dangerous as it might be.

After Ashtoreth got overcome, the brains and powers around Avalon got together and built a prototype amulet that would lead a person from one time gate to the next.  Mingus volunteered to test it, in the dead of night, without telling anyone.  He took his daughter to the days of her youth, not that anyone knew he kidnapped Alexis.  They jumped to the year 1776, but Alexis remained stupid and stubborn.  She refused to come home to the Long March of Elfenheim.  She insisted on staying married to that human—on remaining human.  There appeared to be no way he could get through to her.  Mingus got angry to think about it.  He ended up dragging her back to the present through the time gates, which proved their worth.  It took him half a year to do that.  He felt prepared then to let her go.  But when they got back to the present, she made him angry, again, and he thought what he had thought a thousand times before.  No daughter should die before her father.

He stepped into the history building and walked up the stairs to the lab.

~~~*~~~

Lady Alice stood on the wall that surrounded the tower and the campus.  She watched Mingus enter the history building before she turned to the lovely naiad that stood beside her.  “You understand.  This one time I want you to stay away from your spring and let Mingus enter the tower of the heart.  He will run.  I will send others to chase him, and when they have him, I will bring them all back through the heart.”

“Aren’t you afraid they will get lost in time or mess up something in history and set the whole course of human life off track?” the naiad asked.

“There is a risk, but it is the only way to test the Heart.  When Ashtoreth broke it, I feared time itself might unravel.  Some said history would come to an end.  Some thought the whole of creation might roll up like a scroll and be finished.  Glen’s children were able to collect the broken pieces of the Heart, and I managed to make it whole again.  It is continuing to record the events on earth, but it needs to be thoroughly tested before I can pronounce it fully healed.”

“But what if you can’t bring them back all at once from the past?”

“Mingus and his captive daughter, that is one elf and one human, tested the time gates between my Michelle Marie’s lifetime and the present; even if Mingus did not realize that was what he was doing.  If something goes wrong, it may take a long time, but we know the people will be able to get home using the time gates.”

“It just seems a big risk.”

“Relax.  Have some faith.  Everything will work out in the end, one way or another.”

“Oh, I know,” the naiad said.  “I love the conspiracy of it, except it makes my waters churn.”

Avalon, The Pilot Episode, by M G Kizzia

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Friends,

I started this blog on June 14, 2009, when I realized the market for long stories, Novelettes, and Novellas (roughly 8,000-42,000 words) had completely dried up. Sadly, whenever I sit down with an idea for a short story, my wee-little-brain quickly realizes it is too long and complex for the word short. It is not generally novel length, but even editing it down to the nubs it is still too long to be a short story, at least of marketable size.

Oh, there are some literary and university magazines that might consider something longer (if you are a well known author whose name can go on the cover), but I don’t generally write that sort of story. I’m sorry. I have no interest in beautiful sentences with lovely characters who do nothing. So I started this blog with the story Ghosts (about 27,000 words) because I figured it was better read than dead. (Ghosts. That’s a joke, folks).

By 2011, some 14 years ago for those who are slow in math, I had worked out the basic ideas for the Avalon stories and I began by posting The Pilot Episode (30,000 words) in May. It took 12 years to write 9 seasons and the prequel. The ending season, season 9, at least in beta-reading form, was posted in 2023 and will be available for purchase as soon as I get certain details straightened out.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that 14 years is a long time. Some readers were babies when The Pilot Episode posted, not to mention seasons one (2012), two (2013), and three (2015). Plus, these early stories were posted before I started adding pictures to help suggest the characters and action as the story progressed. I think the pictures help, especially when the story is chopped into 2000 word bits and spread over several weeks.

I am beginning with the pilot episode. I hope at some point to post / blog the prequel, but not today. The first three seasons will follow, though in between there may be continuing stories of the Kairos, the Traveler in time, the Watcher over history, and now that the Heart of Time 1 The Golden Door has posted, there may also be further stories of the children of the Kairos and their search for the broken pieces of the heart and of course there will be the occasional long story. Whatever the case, let us begin with the pilot episode and see where it leads us. Enjoy, and Happy Reading.—MGK.

Avalon, The Pilot Episode

MGK Books, Second Edition

Revised and Expanded (version 2.2)

Table of Contents

Part I: Various Nefarious

Thief, Kidnapper, Father.

Meanwhile, Back on Earth

The Tower of Bricks

Humanity

Part II: Missing Person

Mission Team

Avalon

The Heart of Time

The Middle of the Night

Before the Beginning

Part III: The Beginning of History

Myths and Legends

Ararat

The Plains of Shinar

Nimrod

Babel

Kairos

Bokarus

Avalon, Moving into the Future

Avalon, The Pilot Episode, Introduction

Avalon is designed as a television show in written form, with each episode forming a chapter, and thirteen chapters making a whole season, or a book.  Like any good television show, seeing one full episode (or reading one full chapter) should give enough information to grasp who these characters are, the relationship between them, as well as understanding that this is a time travel adventure, where this small group of people are attempting to get back to the twenty-first century.

Thrown back to the beginning of history, the travelers from Avalon must get home the hard way—through the time gates that surround the many lives of the Kairos, the Traveler in time, the Watcher over history.  The time zones are dangerous.  The Kairos never lives a quiet life.  And the travelers understand that they are not the only ones lost in time.  Other people, beings, and creatures are surviving around the edges of the time zones, and some have picked up their scent.  Some are following them, and some are hunting them.  The travelers face a long, hard road to get everyone back to the twenty-first century, alive.

The pilot episode immediately follows the prequel, Invasion of Memories, which is available from your favorite on-line retailer under the author name M G Kizzia.  But the Pilot is a good place to start.

Only one warning.  I have never been good at the distinction between science fiction and fantasy.  It is like the amulet that leads the travelers from one time gate to the next.  It is a marvelous combination of sophisticated technology and magic.  Thus, you will find science fiction in these episodes, like space aliens and their technological wonders.  You may also find elves, spirits, ancient gods, mythical creatures, and magic of all sorts.  And sometimes, you will find aliens and elves in the same story.  Be prepared.

Thank you for reading.

–MGK

Cast

Robert Lockhart, a former policeman, now assistant director of the men in black, the one organization on earth in the twenty-first century that deals with strange and impossible things.  He is charged with leading this expedition through time. though he has no idea how he is going to get everyone home—in one piece.

Boston (Mary Riley), a Massachusetts redneck, rodeo rider, and technological genius who finished her PhD at age 23.  A “man in black,” she loves all the adventure, and all the spiritual creatures they encounter, which suggests she may be a bit strange.

Benjamin Lincoln, a former C. I. A. office geek, now a man in black, he determines to keep a record of their journey.  He tends to worry, and is not the bravest soul, but sometimes that is an asset.

Alexis Lincoln, an elf who became human to marry Benjamin; also went to work for the men in black”.  She retained her healing magic when she became human, but magic has its limits.  For example, it can’t make her father happy with her choices.

Roland, Alexis’ younger brother, a full blood elf and gifted hunter.  He came to keep his father Mingus under control and out of his sister’s face.  He discovers there is something in humanity worth saving and protecting.  He knows many of the creatures in the spirit world that they face, including the nasty ones inclined to rise-up out of the dark.

Mingus, father of Alexis and Roland, an elder elf.  He ran the history department in Avalon for over 300 years.  He knows the time zones and the lives of the Kairos but tends to keep his opinions to himself.  And he believes his children are being ruined by so much human interaction.

Doctor Procter, a half-human, half-elf who worked with Mingus in the Avalon history department for years.  The old man, with the long, white beard, also knows the many lives of the Kairos, but at first, he speaks in half-sentence, and soon, the others can hardly get a word out of him.  He carries the amulet, a sophisticated combination electronic GPS and magical device that shows the way from one time gate to the next.

Lieutenant Katie Harper, a marine and a PhD out of the pentagon whose specialty is ancient and medieval cultures and technologies.  She is torn between her duty to the marines, to her boss at Groom Lake, and her desire to be part of this larger universe she is discovering.

Captain Decker, a seal trained marine special operations officer who will do all he can to keep everyone alive, even if it means shooting his way back to the twenty-first century.  He is a skeptic who does not believe half of what they experience—even if he does not know what else to believe.

The Kairos.  But that is a different person in each time zone.

 

Golden Door Chapter 26 The Broken Heart, part 2 of 2

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

The elf queen wrinkled up her face. “Children, you must try to understand,” she said. “The Heart of Time has been shattered and time itself is in danger of unraveling. The Kairos, your father is safe here for the present, in the second heavens, but with the heart missing pieces, he is very, very sick.”

“Our main concern is for your father, of course, but we are also concerned for your world under the first heavens.” Lord Oak, the fairy King looked down again at his hands.

“The Earth is in the most dreadful danger,” Deepdigger, the goblin king interrupted, speaking for the first time. His red eyes flashed gold as he spoke, like eyes on fire, filled with lava from the deep. Nothing could have grabbed the children’s attention quite like a goblin speaking of dreadful danger. Lord Noen went on to explain.

“You see, without time and history to keep life in order and on track, the Earth, the planets, the sun and the moon, and even the stars are in danger of curling up like a scroll and maybe disappearing altogether.”

“But what can we do about it?” Beth asked. Everyone heard the Thump!

The Golden Door appeared behind the children and elders, near the bookshelves at the far end. A moment of staring and silence followed before Deathwalker finished speaking.

 “In any case,” he said. “This much we have been able to discover. The shattered pieces of the heart have flown throughout time to the many, future reflections of the Kairos, the Traveler in time. And this golden door, though not of our making, is certainly able to travel through time. We believe it is the same door that once brought Lady Alice from the far future, back to the beginning of history when the Heart of Time was first made.” He sat down.

“Not of your making?” Mama looked up as if this was news.

“A power far greater than ours is behind the golden door,” Lord Oak said, quietly, and said no more about it. He cleared his throat and Stongheart reached over to nudge him and nod. It was time.

“Please,” Lord Oak began, and took a quick sip of water. “What we are asking is if you children might be willing to make the journey through time, to find the Kairos, wherever you may find him or her, in order to retrieve the pieces so the Heart of Time can be restored.”

“So your father can be made well again,” Lady Lisel added.

“So the earth can be saved,” Stongheart whispered.

The children looked at each other, and then at their mother who sat quietly on the dais with her head lowered. She was not going to influence them. She knew there would be risks and dangers, and sometimes the dangers would be very great, indeed. But she did not want to think of that. She only thought that she was glad she did not start crying.

“But why us?” Once again, James, in his almost inaudible voice, threw the important question into the silence.

Lord Oak did not hesitate to answer this time. He spoke as if this question had been anticipated. “Because, for all our magic, our wisdom, our power, we are like any other people. We are trapped in the days in which we live. We are born, we grow old, and yes, even we come to the end of days.”

“Even the elders behind you will not be able to come with you this time,” Lord Noen added, with a look at Mrs. Copperpot, his grandmother.

“I’ll starve,” James said, with a smile and a glance back at the same Mrs. Copperpot, and thoughts about the old dwarf’s good cooking. She returned his smile but said nothing. Besides, as usual, James’ small voice got swallowed up by David’s shout, which was perhaps David’s normal voice.

“You won’t be coming?”

Inaros leaned forward from his wheelchair and patted David on the shoulder. “I’ll be with you in spirit, boy. In spirit.”

Mrs. Aster, sitting in her big size rather than her natural small fairy size, also leaned forward to pat Beth on the shoulder. “Besides,” she said. “We have already given you all the help we can. You carry all the magic and abilities of the fairy world, as Chris carries the strengths of the dark elves, David the light elves, and James the dwarfs and all the in between spirits of the earth. At this point, us older folks would just be a burden to you.”

Beth held Mrs. Aster’s hand on her shoulder and looked back with a look that said she cared deeply for the old fairy and being a burden would not matter.

“And your mother.” Lady Ivy added and reached in front of her husband toward the empty place and Mama’s hand in a sign of reassurance. “For all of her love, she is only an ordinary, mortal woman,” and she whispered, “I mean no disrespect.”

“You children, alone, carry the blood of the Kairos, the Watcher over history, the Traveler in time in your veins,” Lord Oak said. “You, alone, can travel through time to find the pieces and restore the Heart.”

“You are the only ones who can do it,” Strongheart said softly, and nodded to himself.

A silence even deeper than before fell on the room while once again the children looked from one to the other. Beth finally nodded and Chris spoke.

“When do we start?” Chris asked, and a great sigh went up all around. Most had been holding their breath. Mama began to weep, softly, but this time it was out of fear for her children. All the same, Davey spoke up loud and clear.

“I want my dad to get well and come home,” he said.

“Thank you.” Strongheart spoke for everyone in the room, and with a glance down at Mama, he added, “You may begin when you are ready.”

Lord Oak stood, and others followed until everyone stood apart from Mama and the children. The fairy king clutched a gold and silver goblet firmly in his hand and he raised it with a word. “To the children,” he said.

“To the children,” the dais responded.

The children stood. The golden door slowly opened to reveal a light so bright, even fairy eyes could not penetrate. James started it by hugging Mrs. Copperpot and saying, “Thank you.” David leaned down to the wheelchair and hugged Inaros.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” Inaros whispered in David’s ear.

Chris hugged Deathwalker, and the goblin returned the hug briefly. He looked a bit surprised, and mumbled, “Yes, well… We don’t go for much of that sort of thing in the underworld.”

Beth hugged Mrs. Aster and let out one tear before she let go and looked to her mother. They all looked, but Mama kept her moist eyes glued to the table. She would not say anything, or even show a facial expression that might cause her children to second guess their decision.

“Come on,” Beth said, and the nineteen-year-old led her soon to be sixteen-year-old brother Chris, and her brothers David, just twelve, and James, just three months into his ninth year into the light. The light did not blind them because it was meant for them. And when they vanished behind that brightness, and the golden door closed on the outside world, they went to their knees, trembling.

Angel stood there, but his first words brought them comfort. “Do not be afraid.” Angel toned down the light and his awesome nature so the four could breathe as Angel spoke. “Welcome. We have a long way to go.”

End

************************

MONDAY

Now you know how the Avalon Series really began. It started with four children and a broken heart. Of course, once the heart is repaired it must be tested, but that is a different story. Look for Avalon, Season One Travelers (The Pilot Episode included) at your favorite e-retailer. The series is nine seasons (nine books) altogether worth buying and reading. If you are still uncertain on just who this Kairos person is, you might start with Avalon, the Prequel Invasion of Memories, where the Kairos is forced to remember himself as the Traveler in time, the Watcher over history because there are three Vordan battleships on the moon preparing to invade. A book to buy and keep. You might want to refer to it now and then. Enjoy.

*

Golden Door Chapter 26 The Broken Heart, part 1 of 2

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Beth, Chris, David, and James all entered the annex room at roughly the same time. It looked much bigger than they expected for a small room off the main banquet hall in the Castle of Avalon. Then again, the banquet hall itself was a huge room, built to accommodate all the residents of a castle that was big enough to almost be a small city, with more rooms and buildings than could reasonably be counted.

The annex proved a long room, almost like a hall, with a big fireplace on one end and bookcases on the other. Along the long wall where the door was located, tapestries alternated with instruments of war, like swords and shields, long spears, and suits of armor. The other long wall appeared to be all windows, with two glass doors that let out to a stone-built balcony. Beyond the balcony, a sculpted garden stretched out to the horizon and the setting sun.

Mama hugged each of her children as they came in, while the lords and ladies of the dais went to sit at the semi-circular table on the fireplace end, though near the center of the room. When Mama went to join the dais, she sat in one of the two empty seats in the very center of the semi-circle. Everyone imagined the other empty seat would remain empty. It had to be for father, though the Kairos, Lady Alice might sit there.

Lady Goldenvein, the goblin queen sat to Mama’s left hand and took Mama’s hand to comfort her. Beside Goldenvein, her husband, Lord Deepdigger seemed deep in thought. Next came Lady Biggles and Lord Noen of the dwarfs, who spoke quietly with each other. To Mama’s right hand, after the empty chair, Lord Oak and Lady Ivy, king and queen of the fairies were followed by the elves, Lord Galadren, which is “Strongheart”, and his wife, Queen Lisel.

“Children.” Lady Lisel was the first to speak. “It seems it is time to talk with you.” She waved for them to come forward, and Beth, with a look to her brothers, came to the center of the room where seven chairs had been set up, facing the dais. Chris came with her and Davey and James, with a little push from behind, sat in the four chairs facing their mother and the table. The elders of the little ones sat behind the young people. Mrs. Aster of the Fairies sat behind Beth. Mrs. Copperpot of the dwarfs sat behind James. Professor Deathwalker of the “dark elves”, which is to say, “goblins”, sat behind the Chris. Inaros of Constantinople, the oldest elf on record, and one presently confined to a wheelchair, rolled up to sit behind David.

“Did you enjoy the day in Avalon?” Lady Ivy asked abruptly, and the children all nodded and smiled, but voiced nothing.

“I imagine you are wondering why you are here,” Lord Oak glanced at his wife and began, haltingly. He looked down to the table where he worried his hands. “Your father is fine, though fading, as you know… Lady Alice, one of your father’s future lifetimes may herself be too sick to attend…well…” He looked up to see the children nod, sadly. They understood, but said nothing, and Lord Oak looked away. He seemed at a loss for words. Strongheart, the elf king took up the telling.

“The plain truth is we need your help,” he said, bluntly, before he explained. “You see, at the beginning, when the steady progression of days turned to history, old Cronos and the Kairos got together to instill some small part of themselves in a common thread, like the threads of fate, only more so, not less. It was not yet woven, of course, because history was not yet written.” He stopped. It felt like he was giving a speech and he needed something to wet his lips.

“We call that thread the Heart of Time,” Lord Noen said, from the far end of the table.

“Think of it more like a crystal,” Lady Biggles added for her husband. “Think of it like a heart shaped crystal, red in the center inside, and glowing, like the beating of a real heart.”

“We all saw the Heart of Time,” Chris said, softly, and the others nodded. They saw it broken and knew it had missing pieces.

“Of course,” Lord Noen breathed, and Lady Biggles kindly patted his hand.

“As long as it was kept safe and beating, time continued in an orderly way,” Stongheart added.

“History is built on that,” Lord Oak said, trying to regain his place.

“Only now it is broken,” Goldenvein spoke in her chilling goblin voice.

“There are missing pieces,” Lord Oak continued.

“We must put the heart back together or things in life, in the world…” Lady Ivy interrupted her husband.

“In your world,” Goldenvein interrupted the interruption.

“…Will begin to fall apart,” Ivy finished.

“Alice by herself cannot hold life together, forever,” Lady Biggles added her two cents.

“History is in danger of being swallowed up in a confusion of time.” Lord Oak came to a stopping point, and everyone looked at the children to see if they were following along.

“I am very confused,” Beth admitted.

Davey took that as his chance. “I don’t understand,” he said, turning to the others.

“What are you suggesting?” Chris asked. He didn’t get it either, exactly, though he suspected something might fall on them.

James yawned while the people at the table looked at each other. He stepped into that moment of silence. “Where did the pieces of the heart go?”

Strongheart nodded, thinking the children were at least understanding something. He pointed at Professor Deathwalker. The others waited for the professor to speak.

Deathwalker stood behind Chris and pulled out a piece of paper. “Skipping over all the math and scientific rationale, blah, blah, blah,” he said, a comment which the members of the dais found funny for some reason. “The consensus is the pieces have moved into the future, a piece to each future life of the Kairos, whoever he or she might be.”

Golden Door Chapter 25 Sunshine, part 2 of 2

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The room, big as a football field, had model trains, miniature villages, towns, and cities, mountains, forests, lakes worthy of the name great, and people to scale that appeared to move like real nineteenth-century people. The boys had soldiers that would really fight on the battlefield, and all magically protected, so Warthead the ogre could not accidentally knock things over, or crush things. Grubby, could not cheat by moving things when the others were not looking. All the same, the dwarf twins, Picker and Poker, complained that Grubby was cheating. They could not prove it, but they said he would hardly be worthy of being an imp if he did not at least try to cheat.

“So what if he does?” James said. He watched his green uniformed troops load up on the freight train. The girls and baby dolls waved and cried. James would have to think about that. “This is still the best game I ever played,” he said. He felt sure of that.

“Picker and I are thinking of making an alliance,” Poker said.

“Grubby has Warthead assisting,” Picker added, to suggest Grubby had two on his team working together, as if Warthead might be a help rather than a hindrance.

“I don’t know,” James shook his head. “Blue and Gray usually don’t go together, especially with Civil War soldiers.”

“But we have to do something to beat Grubby’s redcoats,” Picker complained.

“I said James would not be interested,” Poker said. “His green coats are not losing.”

“James…” The elderly dwarf, Mrs. Copperpot called from the door.

“Supper?” James wondered out loud. Ever since he gained a dwarf constitution and endurance, he found he could always eat something. In truth, he gained more or less everything from what some called the middle ones: dwarfs, imps, gnomes, and even some ogre strength. He could find Warthead easily because he stunk so bad, but he could find Grubby, Picker, Poker, or even Mrs. Copperpot, just by taking a great whiff of air and thinking about them, even if they hid in a labyrinth. The train room seemed like a labyrinth, but James could sniff and find what he needed, wherever it might be. It felt like a sixth sense.

“James…”

“Coming,” he hollered. He glanced at Picker and Poker and started off, knowing right where the door was in that great room. Right now, Mrs. Copperpot was calling, and he thought it best to go to her rather than her come out and maybe disturb or mess up the playing field.

James saw Lady Biggles and Lord Noen standing by Mrs. Copperpot and the door. James only saw the dwarf king and queen a couple of times, and briefly over the last few days. He wondered what was up, but he naturally turned to Mrs. Copperpot to explain.

“Lady Alice wants all of us in the Annex room by the banquet hall,” she said.

“Will there be food?” James asked.

Mrs. Copperpot let out her old grin. “You are my good eater, James.”

~~~*~~~

David ran up the slide at super elf speed and hid behind the pirate wheel. Oren and Alden might not find him right away.  Just to be safe, David got small, to stand about six inches tall, so he could squeeze between the wooden boards. He let his elf ears and elf senses focus, to listen for the boys. He heard the animals in the petting area scuffling about, and the birds up in the tree house area.

David never got to go on the playground in the sixth grade, or in the fifth grade. He hardly got to go in the fourth grade, and now that he would be going into the seventh grade in the fall, playgrounds were supposed to be for the little kids and beneath him. But honestly, he enjoyed all the climbing, swinging, and running around. And now that he had been granted every gift an elf might have, included the sure footedness of a mountain goat, and he could run around at super speed, he honestly wanted to run around all day. Besides, this playground was the equivalent of a dozen of the best city playgrounds, a dozen school playgrounds, a dozen of the best back-yard playgrounds, and a good dozen fast food playgrounds, and without ever repeating.

“The best theme park ever,” he said to himself, and squeezed back into the space between the wood as a tram moved along the wires overhead. He looked further up to the treetops, where Galadriel might live, or maybe it looked more like an Ewok village. David felt uncertain about the roller coaster, but he did not mind the treetops.

“David…”

David heard Floren, Oren’s big sister and daughter of King Strongheart and Queen Lisel.

“What?” David said, softly without vacating his hiding place. He knew her good elf ears would pick it up, even if he risked Alden and Oren hearing him, and maybe zeroing in on his position.

Floren answered. “Your mother and Lady Alice want you in the annex beside the banquet hall.”

“Come on boy. Don’t dawdle.” David heard the words of old Inaros, one who David since discovered, at fifteen-hundred-years-old, was the eldest elder elf in recorded history.

“Coming,” David said, and he wiggled out from between the wooden boards and returned to his regular size. He spied Oren and Alden sneaking up past the gangplank, and they showed unhappiness at being found out by the look on their faces. Whatever they planned, it was probably a good surprise. “Hold that thought,” David said, and raced off at super speed. Oren and Alden followed, matching his speed.

David saw Strongheart and Lady Lisel with Floren, by the door to the game room where all the old videogames and pinball machines were kept. Inaros was there, too; but he sat in a wheelchair that Floren pushed. David paused, and felt bad about seeing Inaros in a wheelchair, but it prompted another thought in his mind.

“My dad?”

“Resting comfortably,” Strongheart said.

“Fine, as far as we know,” Lady Lisel added. “This is not about that, as far as I know.”

David nodded. He accepted that. He put a hand on the back of Inaros’ wheelchair and walked beside the elf, while Floren pushed.

~~~*~~~

Beth got small as a fairy. She folded her wings in tight to her back and slid down the best water slide, ever. She came behind Holly, and Mistletoe followed her, Mistletoe’s betrayal long since forgotten. It took a long time to get half-way down a mountain, but they ended in a large pool of fresh water that connected to the sea. Mermaids frolicked in the pool.

Zinnia, Daffodil, and Hyacinth came behind. Daffodil said the trip was too scary for her and she had to have one in front and one behind. Needless to say, they were all screaming by the time they reached the pool, and the mermaids paused to laugh.

Beth had to come down the mountain in her fairy size, because sometimes the chute was only a few inches wide. She only got big again, her wings disappearing, when she came to the pool. She had her fairy weave clothing shaped into a nice bikini, and it automatically grew when she grew, so no worries there. She flew gently to a small beach where they had towels. She could fly in her big size, and she smiled at the thought. Flying, generally was a heady feeling. All fairies could fly big, though that was not a well-known fact, but they flew much slower than in their regular, small size with wings. For Beth, though, being big felt most natural, so she stayed big most of the time.

Holly, who had yet to get big in front of Beth, rushed to her shoulder, even though Beth’s hair was soaking wet. “Let’s do it again,” Holly shrieked in Beth’s ear. Beth instinctively put a hand to her ear against the volume of the shriek but smiled. Fairies tended to be very one-tracked, and especially the younger ones. She knew at fairy speed they could get back half-way up a real mountain and at the start of the slide in less than a minute. Even in her small size, it would take Beth a little longer, because she was still so new at this flying business, and she was not an actual fairy. But for her, three times down the slide was enough. She wanted to join the mermaids and get some late afternoon sun.

“Come on-y.” Holly tugged on her hair.

“Now, wait a minute,” Beth said. “Before we go anywhere, I think you should get big so I can see you in your big size.”

Holly backed off and flitted back and forth a few times. She thought about it, as Mistletoe stepped out of the water in her big size and said, “No chance of that happening.” Holly flew in a gentle backflip, as Daffodil gladly got big and stepped up on Beth’s other side.

“Now, Holly. I’ve been little, so I’ve seen you like you really are. Besides, now that I have fairy eyes, I can see both distance and small things really well.”

“Better than eagle eyes,” Daffodil said.

“You have everything a fairy has,” Mistletoe suggested.

“Not magic,” Beth said.

“Maybe you do,” Hyacinth said as she and Zinnia fluttered up.

“We don’t know about that,” Zinnia added, and in a way that suggested the girls talked about it.

“Okay,” Holly said suddenly. Her little mind made up. She got big and stood there, her wings gone, looking for all the world like an eleven-year-old girl. She almost looked like a stick figure in her little bikini, but Beth got a great big smile and stood, reached out and hugged her.

“You look beautiful,” Beth said.

“Too skinny,” Holly said, with a shake of her head as she backed up. She glanced at her sister, Mistletoe. “But maybe one day,” she said, without spelling out her hope.

“Beth.” Mrs. Aster flew up and interrupted. “You are needed at the castle.” Mistletoe stood as her mother and father Lord Oak and Lady Ivy, the fairy king and queen flew up.

“Nothing bad, I hope,” Daffodil said as she also stood.

“Not that I know of,” Mrs. Aster said. “Your mother and Lady Alice want to see all the children together.” Beth rolled her eyes for Mistletoe, but Lady Ivy caught it.

“Now Beth,” she said. “You will never stop being your mother’s child.”

Beth knew that was true, but she still wished her mother would let her grow up and be an adult, eventually. She turned to the girls. “You will have to do the slide without me.”

Daffodil shook her head. “I think I’ll stay here.”

“I’ll stay with you,” Mistletoe said.

“I’ll watch them,” Hyacinth said, and flew off.

A small Holly already shouted “Yipee!” and she and Zinnia were already zooming up the mountain.

Beth looked at Oak, Ivy, and Mrs. Aster. She looked at herself, got small again so she could fly with some speed, and followed them toward the castle.