There happened to be an old spring flowing out of the midst of the ruins we’d finally made it to. The Philosopher’s Palace. Autumn showed us where it was, and soon the NCOs had canteen and CamelBak top-offs organized. I was busy interpreting for the sergeant major and the wizard as the old man tried to answer the many practical questions about the next phase of the route and what we could expect to run into until we were “safe” in a cave somewhere.
The sergeant major seemed dubious.
Almost every answer from Vandahar was basically the same. “For now, you are safe and under the protection of the forest. And of course, I will be with you.”
Once all the sergeant major’s questions were answered with the same answer, I was released to refill my own canteen and get ready to move forward with the scouts who would be the first to depart.
Spacing between elements would be tight. Vigilance was being emphasized despite Vandahar’s assurances.
There were only a few teams left near the fountain in the center of the ancient ruins when I got there. Tall forest giants grew up through the ruined marble and into the hazy blue sky above. The air was cool and quiet. And as I wove through the remaining walls and cracked halls of what must have once been a wide airy temple, I heard the tinkling, almost melodic notes of the fountain burbling out of an ornate well set in the floor and surrounded by a recessed amphitheater littered with statues. Carved haughty elves in full plate armor who held spears and stood at attention, many broken or cracked or fallen, but a few still in complete condition. Scroll-worked dragons curled across their impressive breastplates. They wore helms like ancient Spartans and kilts that seemed to be made of leather and metal if the carved stone was any indication.
Kurtz and his team were the last to top off from the fountain. Jabba had been left out near the gear saying “No like scary place” or something to that effect. Apparently this tranquil, almost spa-like meditative space of peace and quiet, like a real-world visual representation of an ambient music group’s album cover, counted as “scary” to goblin-kind.
“You trust him?” I asked Tanner, nodding my head toward the gear and weapons. “You trust Jabba?”
Tanner, who was guzzling another canteen of water, laughed almost insanely for a second before checking himself and returning to hard Ranger. Then he burped. He actually apologized, which was uncharacteristic, and said, “Sorry, Talk. But man… this stuff tastes like the best 7 Up you’ve ever had, and it makes you feel like the first shot of really top-shelf tequila does, but without all the stupid that follows. Or at least I hope so, ’cause as far as I know there ain’t no strippers to marry here.”
He took another big drink as I bent down to the fountain set in the marble floor and stared transfixed at the clear water. Its tumble and bubble had a hypnotic quality that was fascinating to just stare at.
“Yeah,” said Tanner, distantly. “We trust the little guy. He’s nosy. But we got him trained. Soprano is like his new best friend.”
I heard all that. But still I stared into the well trying to see the depth of it… and I could see nothing but what felt like an endlessness down in there. And to be clear, not an endlessness like the oblivion I’d felt near the thing in the crack back in the last temple I’d had the pleasure of hiding in so as not to get killed by centaurs and goat men. No. This endlessness was different. This was like an oasis that was everything. Like a vacation on that first day you arrive in paradise. When it seems like you have all the time in the world and you’re nowhere near the last days when you must think about packing, getting ready, checking out, and going back to the airport to leave for reality once again.
I held my canteen under the water until it had filled. One of my fingers dipped into the well, and the water was cool but not cold. My finger, which had been cracked and dried, dirty and caked with cordite and dirt, felt… suddenly… refreshed. New. Like it had just gotten a massage and spent the day at the ladies’ spa. I pulled it out and looked at it, turning it around in the warm light of the morning and the quiet ruins.
It wasn’t like my finger had been washed clean, though it was that. It was more like it had been restored. Lines were gone, and the scar I’d gotten when I was a kid on some barbed wire I’d been hopping over… that was gone now. Strange. Maybe that scar was on the other finger? So I checked, pulling off that glove. No scar there. But dirt and baked-in cordite.
So it had to be this finger. And I was sure there had once been a scar
there. I remember my mom seeing it once and tsking like she did because it was something that had happened when I was with my father. After they’d parted ways. I remember her saying, “You’re no longer perfect now.”
I remember being mad about that. And then, one day… I wasn’t anymore.
It happened when I was sitting in a coffee shop in New York City studying Italian one rainy fall afternoon. I was there for an advanced program at NYU. Some young mother was bouncing her new baby on her knee while she waited for the baristas to make her coffee. I could tell it was maybe the first time she’d been out since the child had been born, and she’d decided to take the both of them out for a coffee. Like the two friends she hoped they’d always be. Her and her child. I remember her bouncing the baby, a chubby little boy, on her knee and saying over and over again, “You’re so perfect.”
That’s how real mothers are. They see us as perfect when the rest of the world isn’t going to, not long after we’ve stopped being new babies. I understood my mother that day. How she’d felt about me since the very beginning. That I was perfect. To her. And that, to her, for life to scar me… that was an incalculable loss. I was hers. And we’d once had that very same moment when there were no scars. When she’d dandled me on her knee. Dandled is an old-timey word for bounced.
But scars… scars were some of my best memories. Fun often came with a good scar. Ask any of the Rangers around me.
So there’s that. Staring into that endless well that seemed to whisper all the good things life might offer and that’s what you think about. Everything. Or at least, as much of everything as the human mind can process.
I heard someone laugh above me and turned to see Chief Rapp. “It do have some kind of properties, don’t it, PFC Talker?”
I nodded and lifted the canteen to my lips, holding it before taking a sip. Hesitating. Would there be a scar? How much does this cost? How much further from perfection this time?
“Is it safe?” I asked the SF operator as I held it there for a second. He smiled and nodded, pulling out his own canteen.
“Safe as I can tell. I’ve already topped off three times. Seems to produce some endorphin boost and generally positive feelings. That’s good. Nothing bad there, PFC Talker. And it’s definitely loaded with some kind of
alkalizing electrolytes, so that’s another benefit. Just using field techniques and observation it seems vastly superior to my IVs, which is a good thing because there ain’t too many of those left.
“But I’ll be honest. I’ve had an ongoing medical condition that leaves me in a certain amount of pain every day, PFC. Picked it up somewhere we were never supposed to be, if you know what I mean. Was told I’d need to live with it for the rest of my life. And after the first canteen of this stuff… thirty-seven minutes ago…”
He’d checked his giant high-speed SF watch. All the Super Friends, as some of the Rangers like to refer to special forces when not calling them Green Beanies, wore one. Usually they were super-expensive. Rangers on lower enlisted pay weren’t ever going to have watches like that. Most of them were content to covetously eye Oakley tactical gloves and considered even their lower price prohibitive. Watches by elite foreign makers were orders of magnitude more expensive than Oakley gloves.
“… I can’t feel that pain anymore,” continued the chief. “Also, I have scar tissue from an old gunshot wound. And that, too, doesn’t seem to hurt as much thirty-eight minutes after my first canteen from this water source. My muscles feel stretched and limber, though right now we should all be hobbling like we just came off a hundred-mile road march. Not dancing around like I just gave everyone vitamin B shots.” The chief gave a big, wide grin. “There’s something to this water, PFC. But it’s safe. Drink up. Good Lord send us a gift, I ain’t gonna say no. I’ve asked Dr. Van Strahnd to come and take some samples. Maybe we can analyze and even… who knows…” He laughed to himself and filled his canteen one more time. “Possibly even synthesize its chemical structure if we get the Forge back any time soon.”
I took a sip from my canteen. It tasted sweet and clear without being sugary. I didn’t get 7 Up. This was nothing like a mass-produced soft drink. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I felt some kind of flush happening for an instant, and that flush seemed to… purge something dark and unhappy from inside my mind, my guts. I burped, and I felt like I could breathe better. My lungs and nasal passages felt clear, and the air all around me tasted sweet and dreamy.
That’s the only way I can describe it. Good vibes. Dreamy.
“PFC Tanner says it hits like the first taste of really top-shelf tequila,” I
said after I drank some more. The chief laughed at that.
“Well… that’s a bit of an overstatement. He’s probably never had the really good stuff. But yes, I see the comparison. It do make you feel kinda invincible.”
The Baroness, or Dr. Van Strahnd as she was officially known, came in with her ruck and case and began to take samples in vials. I left her and the chief to their work and rejoined the scouts. But I studied her for a moment from the recess of the temple-amphitheater-well of good vibes that was this place. She was one of only three civilians that had come along on this trip. One was…
… gone.
The other two had hung in right beside the Rangers and were still alive. The Forge technician and the Baroness. The Baroness was quirky and enigmatic, even bookishly sexy. And she’d made it. There was something strange about her, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Minutes later, as the sun began to climb toward noon, the Rangers started out for the last leg of their march. By dusk we would reach our destination, the Hidden Cave.
Along the way there were many conversations. And what would happen next soon became clear.
