neetha Napew - The Time Of The Transferance

He was taking his duar and ramwood staff, neither of which should draw any unusual attention. His iridescent lizard-skin cape he would leave behind. As for the rest of his unusual clothing he had concocted various explanations with which to satisfy the curious until he could purchase sneakers, jeans and a shirt to match. It shouldn’t take long to convert Clothahump’s gold coins into ready cash at any pawn shop.

Cautious was regarding him fondly. “You be careful for sure now.”

“You too. What are you going to do now?”

“I think maybe my hometown friends still pretty mad at me, you bet. So I think I go back with your otter fella and see what this Bellwood country is like.”

.”We’ll be waiting for your return.” Was Weegee crying? “I’ll have a talk with your lady Talea, female to female, and explain what you’re about. How will you make it home when you come back this way, Jon-Tom? You don’t know how long you’re going to be and Teyva can’t wait here forever.”

“I don’t expect him to wait at all. Mudge and I have traveled a fair portion of the world. I’m not worried about getting home from here.” He took a last look around, checked to make sure he had several torches handy. “I guess that’s everything. Teyva and his friends will fly you back to the Bell woods and....”

A large furry mass struck him square in the chest. He staggered backward with Mudge clinging to him. The otter was sobbing uncontrollably.

“You ain’t comin’ back!” Black nose and whiskers were inches from his face and tears were pouring down fuzzy cheeks. “I know you ain’t. Once you get back to your own world through that bloody ‘ole in the ground you’ll be back in familiar surroudin’s, back among your own kind, an’ you’ll forget all about us. About poor ol’ Mudge, an’ Weegee, and that senile ‘ardshell Clothahump who needs you to look after ‘im in ‘is old age, and even about Talea. You’ll get back to where everythin’s comfortable an’ safe an’ relaxin’ an’ you won’t be comin’ back ‘ere.” He grabbed the vee of Jon-Tom’s indigo shirt and shook him.

“Are you listenin’ to me, you ugly, ignorant, naive bald-faced monkey? Wot am I goin’ to do if I never see you again?”

“Take it easy, Mudge.” Feeling a little teary-eyed himself, Jon-Tpm disengaged the otter’s fingers from his shirt. “I wouldn’t run out permanent on my best friend, even if he is a liar, a cheat, a thief, a drunk and an incorrigible wencher.”

Mudge wiped at his eyes and nose. “It does me ‘eart good to ‘ear you talk like that, mate.” He stepped back. “Maybe you will come back, but I ain’t goin’ to ‘old me breath. I’ve seen wot ‘appens to folks when they gets back to where they belong. I sure as ‘ell ain’t goin’ to take any bets on you retumin’.”

“If for some reason I don’t, I don’t want you lying around moping and moaning about it all the time.”

“Wot, me?” The otter forced a cheery smile. “Not a bleedin’ chance!”

Jon-Tom looked at the entrance to the cave. “We had ourselves an interesting time, didn’t we? Set some evil back on its heels, met some special folks, spread some goodwill and generally shook up the status quo. No reason for regrets.’’ He dropped to his knees and lit the first torch, crawled toward the opening beneath the ledge.

“I’ll be back, you’ll see. Tell Talea not to fret. I’ll be coming for her.”

“Sure you will, mate.” Mudge stood next to Weegee. Cautious waved farewell along with the otters while Teyva pawed the earth. The only thing absent from Mudge’s goodbyes was a feeling of conviction.

Jon-Tom stumbled down the familiar tunnel until he could stand. Shouldering his backpack he held the torch close to the floor, following the damp footprints he and his friends had left on their previous subterranean excursion as well as those of the pirates who had pursued them. Within an hour he was following the crumbling wire back to the cleft in the rocks that led to his-own world.

Halfway through the narrow passage he extinguished his torch. Light and voices reached him from the other side. He was able to use the distant glow to guide him the rest of the way through the defile.

Soon after he emerged, a voice yelled at him.

“Hey, you there!” He blinked as his eyes received the full force of a multicell flashlight, put up a hand to shield them as he tried to locate the speaker.

“What is it?”

The light was lowered along with the voice. “Don’t lag back there. This cave’s full of dangerous dropoffs and unexplored dead ends. We ain’t lost anybody yet and I don’t want to start today.”

“Sorry.” As his eyes adjusted he found a dozen people staring at him. A couple of families, some young couples, one or two younger people traveling on their own. One shouldered a backpack as grungy as his own.

The guide resumed his well-worn spiel. “Now over here, folks, we have a formation called the bashful elephant.”

The faces turned away. Children oohed and aahed. No one questioned Jon-Tom’s sudden appearance. Those in the front of the guided party assumed Jon-Tom had been in the back, and those in the back assumed he’d entered with the guide. He simply fell in step with the tour and followed it back out into the bright warm sunshine of a Texas afternoon. There was the old building where he and his companions had battled Kamaulk’s pirates and then drug runners, behind him the stone entrance to the cavern below, at the end of the dirt road the sign identifying this as the location of the Cave-With-No-Name, and off in the distance the highway where a passing eighteen-wheeler had startled his friends. South of the highway lay San Antonio. Twelve hundred odd miles to the west was the megalopolis of Los Angeles, his home.

He turned to watch the old guide latch the gates which sealed the cave entry. Not too many yards below lay a small twist in space-time. Through that inexplicable, tenuous passage could be found a land where otters talked and a certain turtle practiced at sorcery, where he had battled armies of intelligent insects, ferocious ferrets and parrot pirates.

As Mudge would say, it was bloody unreal.

The tourists were filing back into their cars. Jon-Tom made several hopeful inquiries before one of the young couples agreed to give him a lift into San Antonio. Comfortably ensconced in the back seat of their Volvo he was removing his backpack when he happened to notice the elaborate digital clock set in the dash. In addition to the time of day it also provided full date information.

He knew he’d been gone more than a year, but it was one thing to view time in the abstract, quite something else to see it solid and irrefutable in the form of cool blue LED letters and numbers. How would his parents react when he turned up after a silence of more than a year? Fortunately he wasn’t one of those clinging absentee college students who called in once a week. They were used to long silences from their distant, hard studying son. But a year?

What was his counselor at UCLA going to say? And his friends, and semi-regular dates like Suzanne and Mariel?

They and everyone else were going to have to buy the story he’d carefully worked out.

A unique opportunity had arisen (and that part of it was certainly no lie, he told himself) for him to go to work for the government. When the inevitable question arose as to what sort of work that entailed, he was going to smile knowingly and explain that he wasn’t at liberty to go into details just now. Then his parents and friends and everyone else would (hopefully) nod knowingly in turn and let the matter drop.

It wouldn’t go over as well with the university administration. There would be classes abruptly abandoned he would have to make up, professors to mollify. He was confident, though, that he could get his life back on track.