Work in Progress | Excerpt from Serpent's Star

“Pardon, you need to do what?” said Mordimer.

The inside of the Rattletrap was much homier than it appeared on the outside. It seemed like a fully functional house with a cute little kitchenette, an upper floor with a dorm (and a large plush dog bed for Oephrid), a bathroom with a claw-foot tub, a common room, and even a full plumbing system with heated water and waste disposal that Mordimer decided not to wonder too much about.* Although, no house Mordimer had ever seen had portholes, woolly floors, domed windshields, and carpeted captains’ chairs covered in mysterious glowing buttons along the armrests and surrounded by an assortment of complicated and oddly-shaped levers and pulleys. Audrey had told him she still didn’t know what all of them did.†

“We’re gonna call a friend of mine in another universe,” Audrey explained as she rummaged around the shambolic walls of the otherworldly wagon. Every visible surface was cluttered, even the vertical ones, and not just because they were all plastered with curious posters, decals, and sticky-notes; the vertical surfaces had a disparity of knick-knacks and junk that clung to them sideways through some kind of localized gravitational pull. There were even half-hidden things that bobbed in and out of the walls, tables, shelves, and floors, as if they floated on water.

“He owes me a favor,” she continued, pushing some wall-clinging baubles aside with her hand then shaking her head, “and I need some kind of lead about the Danger.”

“Danger? What danger?”

“Danger with a capital D, my friend. The Danger that could destroy your city or planet or galaxy or universe or whatever.”  She picked up and examined an item, then shook her head and threw it over her shoulder. It passed through the floor and reemerged shortly after, floating upside-down. Mordimer made a mental note to watch his step.

“That’s why Oephrid and I are here,” Audrey continued. “We’re like knights errant.”

“The ‘questing heroes’ part I understand,” said Mordimer, “but ‘city or planet or galaxy or universe’? That seems awfully vague.”

“It’s usually one of those if not all four. Not always, though. One time it was some Alaskan guy’s outhouse we had to save from Danger. Long story. Don’t ask.”

She hopefully lifted a towel covering some cylindrical object, but uncovered an empty cardboard tub labeled COOKIES & CREAM and groaned.

“What are you searching for, Mistress Mayhew? Perhaps I can assist you.”

“You can assist me by removing the stick from your butt and talking normal, for starters.” Audrey snapped.

Mordimer felt himself blush deeply. She took in a calming breath and then looked over her shoulder at him.

“Sorry, that was uncalled-for. I just can’t ever find anything around here.” Her features turned wistful. “I kinda miss my apartment. It was messy, but at least I didn’t have to worry about all my crap phasing through the wall or getting attached to the ceiling.”

Mordimer glanced up, and indeed there were objects and papers and unwashed articles of clothing scattered about the hardwood panels and light fixtures above them.

“Anyway,” she said, “I’m looking for my quantum telephone.”

“Tele-phone… That sounds like Hellenish. Something like…‘Far-sound’?”

“Yeah. In the places they have it it’s a machine people use to talk to each other, no matter how far apart they are.”

“Incredible,” said Mordimer.

“Eh, not really. People waste a lot of time on them as soon as they’re advanced enough.”

“The tele-phones, or the people?”

Audrey shrugged. “Both, sorta; but after a while the phones make the people using them less advanced, since they put so much of their brains into the phones that the phones think for them. Wait…” she snapped her fingers, “No, it was the other wall.”

She walked past Mordimer and to the other side of the room, where she feverishly attacked the objects strewn about its surface until she suddenly went “Aha!” and produced a shiny metal cylinder—perhaps some kind of storage vessel—with bits of ripped-looking paper stuck to its sides. A long, thin, translucent wire protruded from the bottom of the cylinder and blurred into nothingness at the end. She knocked on its side three times.

“Hello, Audrey, how may I help you this fine day, afternoon, and/or evening?” droned a bored, demonic voice from the inside of the can, echoing slightly.

“Whadup, Yornagg?” said Audrey conversationally. She twiddled the end of the wire with one finger. “Hey, how’s your wife doing?”

“I never married,” Yornagg replied.

“Great, great. Say, be a peach and put Gander on the line, will you?”

Yornagg mumbled something, and then the can emitted a click and a series of long beeeeeep noises before it clicked again.

“Howdy, you’ve reached Gander Marston,” The newest speaker sounded like a middle-aged man with an outlandish, drawling accent that Mordimer couldn’t place.

“Gander? It’s Audrey. I need to talk to you abou—”

“I think y’all got the wrong number.”

Click.

“He—he hung up on me!” She pounded the side of the can three times, muttering to herself. “Hey, Yornagg?!”

“Don’t knock on the can that hard, it gives me a headache.”

“What, you mean like this?”

She banged the can against the wall several times.

“Was that really necessary?” said Yornagg, his voice expressive for once. “One would think a career polydimensional heroine would know better than to throw temper tantrums.”

She ignored him. “Try another phone in the area,” Oephrid yipped at Audrey from where he was coiled up and gave her a disapproving look, “Please,” she begrudgingly added, then stuck her tongue out at him. Oephrid looked smug and returned the gesture.

Mordimer silently blessed the ophialepou. He would have told Audrey off himself, except… No, he really wouldn’t have. Not in any circumstance. She scared him far too much for him to consider standing up to her.

“I don’t have to do this, you know,” the spirit of the telephone replied.

“You do if you don’t want me to send you back to the Spaces Between.”

Yornagg scoffed. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, yeah?” Audrey began to intone something in an alien tongue Mordimer somehow had trouble hearing.

Yornagg panicked and apologized to her, and the can started going beeeeeep once more. Mordimer saw Oephrid looking at Audrey with discontent again, but the ophialepou made no attempt to get her attention this time.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Audrey without looking at Mordimer.

“Me?” He gestured to himself.

“Yeah. You think I was bullying Yornagg.”

Mordimer hesitated. “Were you?”

“Kinda,” she admitted, “You have to be firm with demons, though. Yornagg’s only been working for us a couple of months, but I know he hates it.”

The telephone continued droning.

“Why don’t you set him free?”

“It’s either this or the Spaces Between for Yornagg. That’s where all the other gods and spirits live, and he has somewhat of a wanted status over there.”

“Do you mean to tell me you’re harboring a fugitive demon?”

“It’s not the kind of demon you’re thinking of. ‘Demon’ is just another word for ‘lesser spirit’ in the Spaces Between. Anyway, Yornagg got mixed up with the space-mafia, and they gave him his multidimensional powers in exchange for…actually, he never told me what he owes them, but anyhow he owes them a lot of whatever he promised them and his bill’s long overdue, so they came for him, and he somehow managed to escape and find me and Oephrid. He connects phones to this old soup can, now. I can’t say it’s a very dignified use of his powers, but it keeps him out of the mafia’s hands or tentacles or whatever they have.”

The beeping ceased, and a new voice came from the can.

“Hello, this is Claire.” The female speaker reminded Mordimer of the stern women who had taught some of his courses his first year at the Basilica, back when he had still dealt with spots on his face.

“Hi, Claire,” Audrey replied, “Could you do me a solid and lend your phone to the cowboy in the robes standing near you?”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“Not really,” said Audrey, “I haven’t even asked about your refrigerator, yet.”

Click.

Audrey went into a fit of giggles.

“You’re wasting valuable time, Audrey,” Yornagg chided.

“Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

The demon sighed. “I suppose you want me to call another phone in the area,” It wasn’t a question, just a dry observation.

Audrey stifled another round of laughter. “Please.”

Beeeeeep… Beeeeeep…

“Refrigerator?” Mordimer asked.

“I’ll tell you later.”

The phone stopped beeping.

“Yo,” said the new speaker. It sounded like a young man with an accent similar to Audrey’s.

“Yo,” Audrey replied.

“…I’m sorry, who is this?”

“Audrey. Audrey Mayhew. And who am I speaking to?”

“Uh…Keith…Keith Smith…”

“Hello, Keith,” Audrey touched a finger to her throat, and a latticework of colorful light wrapped around her neck like a neon collar. “Listen, this is gonna sound crazy, but I need you to lend your phone to the cowboy in the robes. See ’im?”

“…Yeah, I…do…” Keith’s voice sounded flatter than it had before.

“Perfect. Be a sweetheart and tell him Audrey needs to talk to him about some Danger with a capital D, alright?”

“Sure thing…” said Keith.

“Thanks, Keith.”

The quantum telephone made a sound like cloth whipping in the wind, and Mordimer could vaguely hear Keith telling whoever this “Gander” person was what Audrey had told him to say, but in what was probably supposed to be a seductive voice.

“Whoops, he may have taken the ‘sweetheart’ part too literally,” Audrey remarked.

“What did you do to Keith?” said Mordimer.

“I put a glamour over my voice,” said Audrey, “and concentrated it so it’d only work on him; it would’ve been weird if you and Oephrid had crowded around the soup can to deliver that message to Gander,” she reached up and rubbed the back of her neck blushingly, “Especially like how Keith just did it…”

“Damnation, girl; this really ain’t a good time to chat,” said Gander in a terse whisper.

“Why, what’s so important that you can’t scry something for me right now?”

“I’m kinda on a date, and havin’ some yuppie come up to our table and tell me in that damned fool voice that another woman wants to talk to me is not ideal. Not ideal at all.”

“Who’re you on a date with?”

“Y’all wouldn’t believe me if I toldja.”

“Try me.”

Gander hesitated. “Remember that gal with the short pink hair and the neck tattoo? The one who worked for Mr. Carlisle that ya said looked like a retired rock star (those-were-her-words-not-mine)?”

Audrey gasped. “Mila?”

“That’s right,” said Gander proudly.

“You lie, boy.”

“I’d send ya a photograph, but I know that can don’t have no screen.”

“I wanna hear it from her.”

The can went silent for a moment, then another voice said, “Hello, Audrey.” The speaker was indeed a woman, probably in her early forties judging by the sound of her voice, which rasped as if she had been smoking for some time.

Audrey put her hand over the open end of the telephone and looked over her shoulder at Mordimer. “He actually did it!” she said in an excited whisper, then removed her hand from the can’s orifice and said, “Hi, Mila. Sorry about embarrassing your date, but this is urgent. Could you please pass the phone back to Gander?”

The phone made a rustling sound.

“What’d I tell ya?” said Gander, triumphant.

“Fine, fine, I believe you. And what were you so angry about? You don’t have any right to be annoyed with me right now.”

“Oh, yeah? Do enlighten me as to why that is.”

“If you had just excused yourself from the table instead of hanging up on me,” Mordimer was sure Gander could see Audrey putting her hand on her hip as she lectured him, “you could’ve spared yourself that hilarious spectacle.”

“There ain’t nothin’ funny about what you put that boy up to, girl.”

Audrey snorted.

“Alright, I’ll probably laugh about it later, but not now.”

“Why did you even pick up the phone if you were just gonna hang up on me?”

“The number on the screen was 867-5309; ya might say I was a tad curious. Anyway, whadda y’all mean by Danger with a capital D?”

“Weren’t you listening to me? I need you to scry something.”

“What, right now?”

“Yes, right now. You owe me, and a universe probably depends on it.”

“Probably?”

“Or a galaxy, planet, city, village, or possibly another outhouse; I don’t know which one, yet. That’s why I called you.”

“Ya want me to break my date with Mila over an outhouse?”

“The likelihood of another outhouse is very low. Look, you don’t even have to leave the restaurant.”

“All my scrying stuff’s back at my office.”

“Can’t you just use tea leaves or a bowl of water, or something?”

“Sure, if ya wanna know your horoscope, but not if y’all need me to look at another universe.”

“Wait a minute…” Audrey pondered something for a moment and then snapped her fingers, “Hey, Yornagg?”

“Yes, Audrey?”

“Do you think you can use your transdimensional powers to help Gander divine something for me?”

“You want me to attend to another human? That is not part of our deal.”

“I’ve altered the deal,” said Audrey grimly, “pray I don’t alter it any further.”

The demon grunted. “Fine, I’ll do it, but I’ll have to break the phone connection for a moment. You fine with me hanging up on you?”

Gander barked a laugh.

“Go ahead, Yornagg,” said Audrey, “And I’m not paying you to be sarcastic.”

“You’re not paying me at all.”

“Well, if you’d rather I turn you over to the—”

Click.

“Hmph.” Audrey rocked back and forth on her heels, still holding the can near her face and humming an unfamiliar tune to herself. Mordimer listened closely and caught a few snatches of mumbled lyrics:

…Staring straight up into the sky

Oh my, my

A solar system that fits in your eye

Microcosm

You could die but you’re never dead

Spider web

Take a look at the stars in your head

Fields of space, kid...

What strange prose; he would have to ask Audrey what she had been singing later. Right now she seemed too…intense.

Then again, she always did.

Mordimer’s eyes wandered about the room, but he avoided looking directly at Oephrid, lest those horrible eyes meet his own, again.

“Alright, I managed to bring his mind to this universe,” said Yornagg, “He’ll be able to find a diviner god on the local plane of the Spaces Between and then you’ll have yourself a prophecy.”

“Thanks, Yornagg.”

“Anything else you need?”

“Yeah, call Gander again whenever he’s ready,” said Audrey, and then looked over her shoulder at Oephrid and added, “Please.”

The ophialepou smiled, but not smugly; rather, he seemed pleased with her manners.

What a peculiar creature, Mordimer thought to himself.

“By any chance,” said Audrey to Mordimer while they waited, “were there any weird paranormal things that happened—oh, I dunno, five, six, seven years ago?”

“Not around here, but…I heard there was a rain of frogs in Rosk not too long ago.”

“And that’s weird in your universe?”

“Oh, certainly, Mistress Mayhew,”

“No kidding,” she replied absently, studying the telephone.

“Normally it rains newts, you see.”

“Cool.”

“We think the elves find it amusing.”

Audrey seemed to hesitate before she said, “I, uh, kinda know some of the people involved in that. I dated one of them for a while, too.”

“Someone made it rain newts on purpose?”

“Sorta…It’s kinda a long story, and I don’t think you’d care to hear all the technicalities.”

“Oh, but…I would,” said Mordimer, “Do you realize how amazing it would be to have knowledge from another universe?”

“Believe me, the novelty wears off fast; and in all honestly I don’t feel like unloading a massive dump of exposé at the moment. I’d be like one of those annoying NPCs that interrupts the story to give you all the as-you-know dialogue—”

“He’s ready,” Yornagg finally said.

“Ugh, finally. Put him on the line.”

Beeeeeep… Beeeeeep…

“Hello?”

“Gander? Do you have the prophecy?”

“I do, but…”

“But what?”

“It’s…I’m just gonna warn ya, it ain’t what yer expectin’.”

“Just tell me, Gander.”

The seer cleared his throat, and solemnly intoned:

There once was a snake who’d begun

To feel underfed by its sun

So it’s taking a trek

And the Earth it will wreck

Just to bask in a star that’s not dun.

“Was…was that a limerick? Who gives prophecies in limericks?‡ And how can a star be done with something?”

“No, girl, it’s the other kind of ‘done’,” said Gander, “the one with three letters.”

“Don? That makes even less sense—and it doesn’t rhyme.”

“I believe,” Mordimer interposed, “he is referring to the word ‘dun’, Mistress Mayhew. D-U-N. It refers to something that is dark or dim.”

“Oh…”

Oephrid sniggered in his corner.

“Shut up, Oephrid,” Audrey hissed, then turned her attention back to the quantum telephone. “What do you think it means?”

“Well, it’s pretty obvious some big ol’ rattler needs to destroy the Earth to get to the sun.”

“I got that, but it could’ve been clearer.”

“Prophecies ain’t never clear, girl; not in my experience, anyway.”

“How ’bout you, Mordy? You know anything about any of this?”

“Me?” Had she just called him Mordy?

“Yes, you. Do you know like any piece of mythology or something that could help us?”

“I’m afraid not. Humanities and Inhumanities were never my areas of interest; I was always more fascinated with language studies and—”

“Do you know anyone who does specialize in mythology?” Audrey interrupted.

Mordimer gave her an affronted look.

“What? What’d I do?”

Oephrid yipped at her, and their eyes met from across the room. After a brief pause, she let out an exasperated groan, then reached out and grabbed Mordimer by the hem of his mantle and pulled him close.

“I’m…just gonna go ahead and give that fool boy his phone back,” said Gander, “Call my personal phone if y’all need me again,” and then the quantum telephone went click.

Audrey ignored him. “Listen,” she said curtly to Mordimer, “I’m sorry I interrupted you, but we have far more pressing matters than my rudeness to worry about right now. Your planet or whatever is in Danger, and I really need to know what the problem is so I can be on my way—” Oephrid barked at Audrey and gave her a hurt look, and she rolled her eyes before continuing, “—so we can be on our way and go save the next place in Danger. In other words, you’re not making my job any easier. This job is stressful enough as is, so if you could just cooperate that would be very much appreciated.” She pulled him in closer, and all Mordimer could see were here violet eyes, glinting dangerously. “Got it?”

Mordimer nodded vigorously, suppressing a gulp.

“Excellent,” She released him, and Mordimer backed out of the reach of her arm. He was surprised to find himself gasping for breath, as if she had been gripping him by the throat instead of his mantle. Her eyes were almost as bad as Oephrid’s!

“Now,” said Audrey, “Do you know anyone who specializes in mythology studies?”

“Y-yes, I do,” said Mordimer, “I have a friend in the Library; he’s a dwarf named Gimlet—”

Someone in the room squealed with delight, and all eyes fell on Oephrid. The ophialepou’s jaws had been cleaved in twain by a toothy, open-mouthed smile.

“Pray tell…why does he look so joyful, Mistress Mayhew?”

Audrey smirked. “Long story,” she winked at Oephrid and then looked towards the door, “now let’s go.”

---

* The heated water comes from a small portal that remotely opens inside of an uncharted Himalayan hot spring, and is heavenly for baths. On tap is freshwater from a river in the lush woodlands of the Sahara. All of the waste water is dumped outside the event horizon of a black hole, because manual waste removal from any form of RV is disgusting and black holes throw matter into the neighbor universe’s backyard where it can be their problem.

† In truth, most of them do nothing and exist for pure aesthetic.

‡ That would be Shu’puru, god of cool and unusual prophecies.