Cosmos, Chapter 15

*copyrighted material*

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    Boreal owls soared nearby, birds of ill omen, she noted. She heard their hoots, their wings, she felt their lemony eyes tingling at the back of her neck with their calibrated sights. High-rise Scots pines screened the view below and before her, except for the night-loving planetoid shining through graphite-stained clouds. A modest quarter-moon. Mt. Mowaki was known to be a treacherous place for expeditions since the beginning of the 1890s, and more than a few had kicked the bucket exploring its wildwoods and highest fields. Mickey Mulhouse, a middle-aged woman, thought of it as simply chaotic. A true challenge for a long-term overthrower and rebel leader, Rootstock members had too many names. Those chosen by their allies and those chosen by their enemies. No amount of weapons shielded her from once being a city slicker, a life in the city—as muddy and unconcerned as it was—could dim the greatest of minds. Privileges granted no more than imbecility, flaws, and weakness. Her teachers had squeezed out the last drop of naivety in her ages ago and also then as a certified doctor too. But she still knew she stood no chance in these lands, not even to her fullest potential.

    Mickey stood upon a tree branch before quietly hopping onto another, and another. She unclasped her kerosene lamp from its belt and lit the beacon with a rifle cartridge lighter that

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used to belong to someone else. She couldn’t remember whom she had looted the object from. The rebel leader bounced again, leading the way with fixed and careful steps. She moved for half an hour, climbing and skipping through, looking for her comrades. Upon inspection in the dark, the woman had sewed gray wolf skin to the interior of her lace-up hiking boots, wore olive green flying trousers tucked into the footwear, a white turtleneck sweater, a fuel-toned jacket, and gloves. A loaded musket drooped from her shoulder, while she wore her flaxen hair in a ponytail. Her scents of grease and gunpowder. Her eyes, caramel encrusted.

    A spark danced a long way off from the other side of the forest heights, and she replied waving her lamp under layers of distance and obscurity. A hundred flames surfaced from all directions, glowing over the ice-crammed woods like Christmas decorations. A Rootstock was never a loner, just a deserter for those that watched the land from overhead on their classic and luxurious, blue velvet chairs. Surrounded by ivory floors and yellow dirt. From all people, she knew the feeling of being safeguarded by loads of cash and the most powerful people. But once you begin revaluing your privileges, certain aspects of it can no longer be unseen. And then surges the guilt.

    She smirked, clambering down the closest pine trees and down to ground level. Fresh, soaked soil waited for her beneath snowfall. The Rootstocks’ leader leaned on a sharp-edged, heathered value boulder covered in ice flakes and pushed herself up onto it for a better view. There, she lingered pulling her musket out and placing it on the surface of the rock. She saw torches cutting distance. And with them, her people. Convoyed by a large group of Renou villagers yielding permission to their visitors under the eye of their deities. The broken away, yet equally reputable reindeer nomads knights of the wild, and shamans of the free soul. Their kind was only tied to the unpolished earth just like their Viking fathers. Still, the Renou had become harvesters of

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gracious signs from the Cosmos in their unique way after being separated from their parents at birth.

    A ravishing man led the way toward her. She knew him by the name of Cobra Killgore. Collaborator to the Rootstocks, sent by the British government to establish a fair relationship with the Renou people. Baldheaded, unshaven, full-figured, and powdery brown. By his side walked another man, much compact and aged. A milky white beard and locks that yet lacked on most of his skull caps. The senior was one of the much-designated alliance representatives of the Renou, and he coiled his chapped lips smiling with lame dentures upon foot’s reach. Mickey jumped off the boulder and shook the old man’s hand between hers with familiarity, a time-worn acquaintance of her father’s. 

    “Randall Haagensen!” She let out with unequivocal relief. “I had thought of the worst when the news came to our camp. Persecutions like this are . . . damnation.” The Renou convoy—a group composed of seven guides, long-dressed bishops that meandered wearing vestments of feverish red, royal blue, moss green, and voltaic yellow—congregated around them, while the Rootstock soldiers stood far to guard the perimeter.

    “I know, I know my dear friend.” Woodbone croaked, “A breakout from Nooktown was it, sweet gal. I managed as much with my groundwork at hand.” He looked down at his knapsack. “I’m afraid not many had my lucky star. Without Cobra I don’t know where this wood-legged chum would be!”

    The black man took that with courtly manners, nodding before speaking. “Mcallister’s cavalry has scattered as we tracked Mr. Haagensen, we’ll be safe if we mount the pines again and head West. No casualties for now, but we must make haste. The Renou Matriarch is waiting for us at

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the camping site.” He communicated, knowing their current position could get compromised at any minute.

    “The kid, what about him?” Mickey asked, recalling the assault she had conducted with her men that afternoon from over the trees. The rebel leader’s unfaltering motivation to finish the hunt her persecutors had started—even before the recruiting national broadcast had taken place—had dozens of soldiers slaughtered daily in those woods. With no signs that she was willing to tone it down. Calvin had been spotted quickly due to his wretched and harrowing condition that lucky day.

    “The kid tagging with the hunting party? He’ll do well, I dragged him across the Instauration river and took him to the villagers, they said Ráfi would tend to him with native antidotes, doctor.” Cobra said.

    “You don’t happen to be talking about Calvin Elsner, do you, lad?” Woodbone faltered, “A boy and a red fox?”

    “Oh yes, his fox, she bit one of our men’s legs. She didn’t lose sight of him. Is that his name? Calvin Elsner, you say?” The black man inquired with an offbeat move of his jaw. “But . . . what was this kid doing in the warzone, Mr. Haagensen?”

    Woodbone coughed, masking all sense of iniquity from his inquirer. Yet, the cunning soldier noticed the silent exchange between Dr. Mulhouse and the old-timer with fooling gazes, and just then did he feel the pressure to answer, “I think Dr. Mulhouse here will have to deal with the boy. His matters are with her. But there will be time for that soon.” The conversation ended there and then, for the local bishops suggested moving speedily. Safety was taken for granted under their accustomed circumstances. They admitted the mountain’s spirits had alerted them of grave

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danger, but whatever these spirits had instructed the elder witch was never discussed with the rebels.

    The freedom fighters and bishops ascended once more, clawing their raspy palms to the peeling skins of the surrounding trees and pulling themselves up with the help of braided fiber cordages and alloy hooks, all hand-made by the Renou. The centralized war had forced them to forbid any major contact with Roanoke’s government and synthesize their materials, for they had decided to stay away from Nooktown’s trading center and stash houses, naming Woodbone their temporary ambassador in town. But temporarily became forever, the man had known his ways to deal with the locals, their police, and also the military before being persecuted. This only meant that the government was now ready to transgress their lands and reach the Renou Community any day or any minute. The gamble was greater now, they knew the entire village stood now on the line of fire.

    Farther into the hinterlands and wilderness was a snowy cavern. Approximately three miles away from the first spot. There rested the native owners of the land, sheltered by shrubs, low trees, and a cliff that roofed them from tempests and the naked eye. Samplings grew around the snow like a bitty meadow and during the daytime, the place would bathe with sunlight. The indigenous campsite housed Renou children, men, and women of all ages. White, or gently tanned, blue, or dark eyes, their strongest features resided in their ancestral facial bone structure. All dressed for the weather, amidst hard labor to withstand until the morrow. Collecting and unpacking cattle and sheepskin to rebuild their tents, while the herding villagers gathered their reindeer under the silhouette of the steep rock. Wild things the size of horses and with a matching appetite for all grasses. 

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    A fixed residence had always been completely impossible up the mountain and kept secret, the original grounds of the village had certainly been like a home for a couple of generations. But there was nothing on those grounds they could not have left behind. What was for the earth, went to the earth. But from the earth, it also provided to men, as wool-covered hands peeled potatoes with obsidian shard knives, onions, and wild mushrooms picked from their nomadic farms. Seasoned rabbit breasts and reindeer roast would do tonight for dinner time. Alchemic synthesized alloy pots steamed over the embers as they incorporated reddish-colored powders, herbarium seasonings, pepper seeds, and treated rock salt.

    An elderly Renou woman by the name of Ráfi rose from her place near those gathered to cut the animals’ flesh. She was dressed in a long-staple-yarn ebony robe, cinched and lined with vibrant colors plus a matching cape of the same grimy mood. With silver hair that came past her chest and up to her lower back in a single, silky drape despite her hunched back. The old lady possessed a round face and olive skin and very few eyebrows. She was the head of the community—chief and Matriarch—veteran sorcerer Ráfi. A powerful shaman and arbiter between humans and resting spirits.

    Regardless of the somberness of her stoic features, the woman had forged strong partnerships with creatures of the good for the past forty-seven years, discovering her endowed essence as a child. A gift that had been granted to her ancestors first and transferred through their blood and lineage for centuries until the present times. Ráfi had given her life to shamanism, a lighthouse for those spirits of light guarding the Renou through their never-ending nomadic journey. A magnet.

    The old woman paced around and mumbled under her breath, shutting her eyes and squeezing with the fierce force of her creases. Her voice rang louder and louder in an uncharted tongue. She opened her palms and raised her arms to the night sky, kicking off her soft-skin

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winter boots and burying her feet in the snow. Chanting. Panting in euphoria as complex energies concentrated in the surrounding life forms within the camp. Her people observed. And when the connection was broken, Ráfi fell onto her bum. 

    She was quickly aided to her feet by those around her, and she announced in a solemn voice, “The child must wake now.” The elder picked up her boots from the snowy turf and led the way, barefoot. She walked to a bell tent, lit inside by a bonfire. Calvin lay there beside it, tangled in quilts and surrounded by women in the same ebony clothes—Ráfi’s disciples—who’d worked her remedies inside him shortly after Cobra had brought him in.

    Carol whimpered at his side, still sharing some of her heat. Her wounds were now clean and mended. The fox retrieved once the old Renou woman crouched before him and smacked the kid hard on the face.

    “Owww!” Calvin covered his face completely stunned. His cheek was hot and ruby red after the woman’s slap. “What was that!?” He reproached, still not fully on his five senses. The boy sat up straight, his mind fuzzy and very much drugged with the disciples’ anti-hypothermia concoction. A revolutionary mixture that did not exist in any pharmacy. Another well-kept secret was their artistry in healing.

    The shaman lady sat cross-legged, chewing on some crisp magenta leaves dotted with blue reflective spots she took out from a pouch and spat them in an alloy bowl. Her tongue was soaked and stained in those pigments. She added some sort of amber syrup into the mixture, passed the bowl to Calvin, and said, “Put this on your tongue.”

    “W—where am I?” He faltered, his eyes wandering off in search of Carol. “Where is my fox?”

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    “I’m Ráfi, chief of the Renou in the domains of this mountain. Your gal and you are in good hands. We patched you up. See?” Her wrinkled face featured a smile while Carol brushed her whiskers against her lap.

    “I . . . put this where?” He inquired. And that just earned him another slap. “Okay, I get it!” He spooned the mixture with a finger and paused, staring at it hard. The shaman nodded. Reluctantly, he touched his tongue with the new concoction, and his mind was back in place straight away. His senses elevated, his pupils dilated and all sickling symptoms were gone. He felt strengthened and wholesome. He was blown away by the sensation of being in another mental frequency. 

    Calvin looked up and wormed away at the sight of yellow glowing eye sockets staring back at him from all directions. It took him seconds to realize he was surrounded. And another half a second to recall the apparitions at the hot springs, the same beings, now before him once more, turning the past into vivid memory. “Holy fudge nuggets!”

    “Easy there. They won’t hurt you.” The shaman stood up with the help of one of them. “These are the greatest allies of the Renou and the fallen messengers of the Cosmos. Those that renounced divinity in higher existential planes to guide all living beings in the name of the universes.”

    One of the horned beings took a step forward and offered Calvin a handshake, “Calvin Elsner, my name is Krishanu, The Flame, my comrades and I form part of a guild called Defenders of Shine. As Matriarch Ráfi said, we are here to lead the way, your fox must have sensed us a long way since you left town. I must say, quite a journey you’ve had since we last saw you at the hot springs . . . I apologize for our sudden arising that night, but it was a necessary reunion, your fox is very well aware of it . . . ”

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    The first few minutes of the conversation had the boy astounded, their ghostly frames made of fibers of light, entities of high intellect. It took him some time to understand what these beings wanted of him and his brother. Krishanu spoke of a revelation handed to him by the Cosmos while he meditated one day. He defined the Cosmos as everything in everything, sentient, yet the invisible force that produced a perfect order and harmony between men and spirits. A very sterile fight between these sides led the Cosmos to found a third party, a union between spirits and humans, the Defenders of Shine, and the Renou. The Cosmos assigned them to keep the balance amongst those that believed the union was possible, wherever they were from. But in this mission across ‘infinite universes’—a non-existential term for the humans of the 1930s—the Defenders and Renou people were suddenly betrayed after transferring their knowledge to the wrong humans, a group of predatory colonists. Then the Cosmos forever remained silent and the order it had produced, wore off. ‘The Grip of Modern Men’ had begun as the secrets of the alliance were spilled and corrupted. This all reminded the boy of the manuscript and notes he carried with him about these beings, he'd kept studying them once in a while in secrecy at the huntsmen's campsite, knowing now the author had surely been a Renou scholar chronicling for a future reader. But it was also Carol's erratic behavior that had a meaning now. A spiritual purpose calling her for him to reunite with the ghosts.

    This new revelation—an epistle, Krishanu called it—had shown him a hundred if not thousands of outcomes of what he insisted were a variety of conclusions for him and his brother in this current universe. All real, but different in details that later on grew solid, stemming from every action. Krishanu had researched every aspect of this current universe and others through meditation before finally finding them both. What exactly did he see? He did not say. But Ráfi concluded by saying Calvin and Wyatt could restore part of the lost order by straightening Roanoke’s path. The phantom had shared his vision with the shaman and her alone since the

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news of the new epistle had divided the guild of the Defenders of Shine into equal parts little by little. But far from all surprises ending, the phantom added that his twin sister Marut was keeping an eye on Wyatt, who’d been captured by Jesse Mcallister and taken to a nearby fort upon arriving in Nooktown. The Head Commander was acting under the manipulation of the Visitors. The real enemy.

    The boy’s reaction was an unexpected one, his teary eyes didn’t match his dorky smile, “I thought he’d forgotten about me . . . ” He breathed in relief, wiping the tears away. He took Krishanu’s skeleton-like hand in his and said, “I put my trust in you and the Renou, I must, there’s no other way. I can’t lose my brother, not now that he is here. You’ve got to do something.”

    The phantom’s tall figure came down and knelt, grabbing him by the shoulders, “Calvin . . . I’ll bring your brother back and he’ll be safe. But there will be changes in him . . . Do you understand? As spirits, we can’t do much unless we have a physical body.”

    “Changes? What sort of changes?” 

    “Good changes! He’ll be a new man!” The crowd of ghosts faded away as Dr. Mickey Mulhouse joined the conversation. Krishanu and Ráfi greeted the woman with a curt nod, while the pack of Rootstock soldiers and the Renou convoy reintegrated with the rest of the camp. With her came Woodbone, and a black man who introduced himself as Cobra Killgore. Calvin exchanged a grin with Randall, who returned the smile and shrugged. The kid had assumed as much knowing how important the old man was within the village.

    “Boy, this woman here is the gal you are looking for. We all call her Mickey. I think you got something for her, don’t you?” The wood-legged man smiled, placing a heavy hand on the kid’s head. “Come on, let’s go. It’s time for some gossip!”

END OF CHAPTER #15