Thread: The Search for Grinningbook - A Novel

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The Search for Grinningbook
Episode Ten
The Duel of the Spheres




The two spheres of pure energy – one a brilliant blue, the other scarlet red – collided in mid-air with an explosion of crackling energy.
Inside the blue sphere, the Wizard stood his ground, his hands extended, with sweat beginning to drip down his brow. He was aware of the cat, Thirteen, perched on his shoulder. He could hear her yowling, and he was vaguely aware of the tiny claws digging into his flesh. He watched the red and blue energy blend, absorb each other until the sphere around him changed from Grinningbook’s vivid blue to a brilliant purple. The light around him grew in intensity. He could hear a wild screaming coming from Rage. Thirteen’s yowling became a steady siren of horrifying sound.
For an instant, he thought he heard Grinningbook’s voice calling his name. She was saying something sweet. She was saying something sad. But he couldn’t tell exactly what it was.
Then the energy around him exploded in white light.
The Wizard closed his eyes tightly against the pain of the sudden brilliance. But with equal abruptness the light was gone and everything around him was wrapped in a cloak of silence. His body felt suddenly very heavy, and he could feel something solid beneath him.
He slowly opened his eyes, dully registering that he was no longer in the sphere. Instead, he was sitting in a chair in the library facing the elaborately carved table Grinningbook had shown him. But this time, neither she nor Thirteen were there.
He stared at the table. Something odd was happening to it. He leaned forward in the chair, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. The elaborately carved relief was losing definition. He thought it was his imagination at first. But it wasn’t. The carvings were changing as he watched them, softening, flattening, disappearing. It was as if the table itself was filling itself in. He reached out with both hands as if to stop it, but he was too late.
His hands fell on a smooth surface. The history of the lives he and Grinningbook had shared both apart and together displayed in the intricate carvings were gone as if they’d never been there to begin with.
He stood, pushing over the chair he had been sitting in, staring at the table. Slowly, he looked at his palms hoping to see the flicker of blue energy.
It was gone too. But that wasn’t all. He suddenly realized that he could no longer feel Grinningbook’s soul within him. He clutched his chest in desperation. He couldn’t feel any sense of her at all.
It could only mean one thing. “I’ve lost,” he said mournfully.
He looked around the empty, silent room and called Grinningbook’s name. There was no answer.
“No,” he said, backing into the wall behind him. But he knew it had to be true. Rage had won, and all his efforts to save Grinningbook had been for nothing.
Overwhelmed by the immediate bitterness of this single inescapable conclusion, he closed his eyes and contorted his face in preparation of one final scream of despair.
But it never came.
Instead, he felt a sudden breeze and his face relaxed. He slowly opened his eyes and found that he was standing beside a window looking out on to the streets of Raven’s Point. He turned abruptly and found himself standing in the main parlor of the Caws and Effects Magic Shop, staring at the display counter. It was filled with all the wonders the Wizard was known for. He looked around, his mouth agape, trying to make sense of the impossibility of what his eyes were showing him. The shelves were filled with books. Odd magical objects and crystal balls set atop the glass counter. Everything was as it was before the shop was destroyed.
But that, he knew, was impossible.
He walked to the counter and plucked his wand from it. He turned it over in his hand. He had seen it blasted from his hand and destroyed when Rage first attacked atop Poseidon’s height. It, as well as the shop itself, couldn’t possibly be real. Yet, somehow he knew he wasn’t in a memory or a dream. This was something else, and there could only be one answer for it.
“Rage!” he cried, turning quickly from side to side. “No more games. Show yourself.”
The Wizard turned full circle. Nothing around him moved.
“Rage!” he cried again. “I’ve had enough. It’s time to finish this.”
“She’s not here,” a voice from behind him said.
The Wizard snapped about to see Poseidon, still posing as a thin blond man in a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts sitting on a stool behind the counter.
“What are you doing here?” the Wizard said angrily. “I thought you couldn’t interfere.”
“I can’t,” Poseidon said casually.
“Then go away. I still have unfinished business.”
Poseidon shook his head. “No,” he said. “You don’t.”
“What are talking about?”
“It’s over, dude. You won.”
The Wizard stared at him. “What are you talking about?” he said angrily.
The Sea god smiled. “When Rage took your girl over, her very existence was erased from time, remember?”
The Wizard nodded.
“This is the same thing in reverse,” Poseidon said. “Now that Rage is gone, everything has returned to the way it was before she appeared.”
He looked down and sighed again. “Well, almost everything,” he said.
The Wizard continued to stare at him. “Then you’re saying that I beat her,” he said, sounding as if he could hardly believe his own words.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. You did.”
“She’s gone? Gone for good?”
Poseidon nodded.
“And Grinningbook?”
Poseidon’s eyes looked peculiar, almost sorrowful. “She’s alive,” he said.
A wide smile grew across the Wizard’s face as what his friend was telling him began to sink in. “Then it’s really over,” he said. “And Grinningbook is back. Where is she? Is she upstairs?”
He turned to race up the stairs.
“No,” Poseidon said simply. “She’s not here.”
“Is she still atop the heights?”
“No. She’s not there either.”
“Well, where is she?”
Poseidon bit his lip, and looked down.
“Come on,” the Wizard said, taking a step toward him. “Don’t screw around with me. Where is she?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“The train station.”
Poseidon pointed to an envelop beside the brass cash register on the counter.
“She left that for you,” he said.
“What’s this?” the Wizard said, plucking the envelop off the counter. “What kind of game are you playing?”
“It’s not me,” the Sea god said.
David ripped the envelope open and pulled out a handwritten note. He held it in front of his eyes, reading quickly.
“David,” it began. “Well, where do I start? You said last week that you’ve had enough of my being late. You know darn well I only get in late for good and honest reasons. I try my darnedest to be here on time just to spend the time with you. And to be honest, I think I have had enough too. Trust me, I know what it’s like to sit and wait for someone. I have sat and waited two, three, sometimes four hours for my last boyfriend to show up, and not once was I upset or angry. I knew there was a good reason for it and I spent five years going through that. But in the short six months we have been together you have gotten angry and upset with me most of the days I show up late. I’m sorry if what I do doesn’t conform to your strict timeline and I guess that’s something that won’t change. I have tried to change it, but it just never works out right. I think all I can say is that I can’t do this anymore. I can’t run around al day trying to get things done so I can get here on time, not make it, and then have you angry with me. On that note I will say goodbye. As you said, I will be happier on my own. At least I won’t be getting angry with myself for not being on time. So this is goodbye, David. Don’t try and follow me, as you will be angry and I can’t deal with that right now.”
It was signed, “Grinningbook.”
The Wizard looked up, stunned and confused by what he’d just read. “What hell is this?” he asked.
Poseidon shrugged. “The effects of time and continuity, I guess,” he said.
David stared at him. “What does that mean? What does this note mean? What the hell is going on?”
“I told you. Everything returned to the way it was before Rage appeared. Time and continuity picked up where it had left off.”
“But there wasn’t a note like this waiting for me by the cash register before I woke up on that pile of rubble Rage left for me.”
“No? What were you doing?”
The Wizard thought for a second. “I was waiting for Grinningbook,” he said. “She was supposed to be here, but she was late again. I was pacing the floor.”
He looked back down at the note, shaking his head. “And I was getting angry,” he continued, thinking back. “We had a stupid fight over this sort of thing last week. But I thought we’d come to a conclusion. I was annoyed because I couldn’t believe she’d show up late the very next time. It was a constant, nagging problem, but it was no big thing.”
“It was no big thing last week,” Poseidon said. “But things are different now.”
“Different how?” the Wizard said, crumpling the note in his hand. “You said with Rage gone, everything had returned to normal.”
“I said almost everything.”
The Wizard felt a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What aren’t telling me?” he asked.
Poseidon frowned at the question. “I think there’s something you need to see,” he said, pointing toward the counter.
The Wizard followed the gesture. Setting on the counter between a crystal ball and a brass telescope was a life-size crystalline sculpture of a cat. The Wizard stared at it for a moment, then stepped toward it for a closer look. The details were perfect, all the way down to the texture of the cat’s fur.
He extended a hand to touch it, but withdrew it quickly.
“Its cold,” he said, turning toward Poseidon with a puzzled look.
“Its made of perpetual ice,” the Sea god said. “It will always be like that, and it will never melt.”
“It looks like Thirteen,” the Wizard said. “Where did it come from, and how did it get here?”
“It is Thirteen,” Poseidon said with a long sigh.
“What are you talking about? Thirteen is a living, breathing cat, not a lump of ice.”
“No, not a lump of ice. But not a real cat either. She was a construct of the blue energy.”
“I know that,” the Wizard said, thinking about it. “That’s why I needed her to fight Rage. She was part of Grinningbook’s soul.”
“She still is. Only she’s part of the way Grinningbook’s soul is now.”
“But this thing is made of pure ice!”
Poseidon’s eyes were sorrowful as the Wizard gazed into them. “You really don’t know what’s happened, do you?” the Sea god asked.
“No,” the Wizard said, shaking his head from side to side. “I don’t understand what this has to do with anything.”
“It all has to do with Rage. You beat her. But you used your Grinningbook’s energy to do it.”
“But that’s what she told me to do. She said to use what she’d given me.”
“I know,” Poseidon said, nodding. “Whenever Rage shows up, she obliterates the host that spawns her. The only way to get rid of it is to destroy it. Whatever is left of the host is destroyed as well.”
“I know that. But Grinningbook is alive.”
“Yes. But she isn’t the same woman you knew a week ago. The only reason she’s alive at all is because she was born with the ability to produce and use the blue energy.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“The reason Rage didn’t appear years ago was because it was contained by Grinningbook’s unique power. She didn’t know she had it. But then she met you. She used it to make the cat she gave you last Christmas. She used it to give you half of her soul to show you her undying love. Those gifts weakened her enough to allow Rage out. The only way to drive Rage away was to throw all that power back at it – all of it she still had, all of it she’d given you.”
“I know all that. But so what?”
“Aphrodite could explain this to you better than I can, but in essence, the blue energy is a sort of intensified love. That’s what creates it. That’s why rage couldn’t get past it. What was once in Grinningbook’s heart cancelled Rage out. Unfortunately, what’s left is like the cat. In other words, her fire’s gone out.”
“Are you saying that she doesn’t love me anymore?”
“What I’m saying, dude, is that she can’t. She sacrificed the best part of herself to save your life. She doesn’t know that now, though. She doesn’t remember anything that happened. She doesn’t remember Rage. She doesn’t remember the sacrifice. She doesn’t even remember the love the two of you shared.”
“That can’t be true,” the Wizard said, shaking his head.
“Believe me, I wish it wasn’t,” Poseidon said. “That’s why I’m here. I couldn’t let you find all this out alone.”
“But it’s not fair. I can’t have fought so hard to save her only to have lost her in the bargain.”
“I’m really sorry. I wish there was something I could say. I wish there was something I could do.”
The Wizard looked up angrily. “I’ll tell you what you can do,” he said. “You can put her back the way she was. If it’s a problem with the blue energy, give it back to her.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Don’t give me that. You can make storms and fifty-foot waves. You can throw lightening. What’s the difference? It’s all energy.”
“Blue energy isn’t like lightening. In its own way, it’s like Rage. Once it’s gone, it can’t come back until it’s recreated in someone else. I can only deal with what is, not with what isn’t.”
“But you’re a god.”
Poseidon raised his hands in a helpless, frustrated gesture. “I’m just a has-been mythological god, dude,” he said. “This is way out of my league.”
“But there has to be something I can do,” the Wizard said. “It can’t go down like this.”
“It might not be altogether hopeless,” Poseidon said. “Blue energy is tricky. It might not be gone altogether. It might just need time to recharge.”
“How would I know?” the Wizard said.
“Watch the cat. If it begins to come back to life, then you’ll know.”
The Wizard stared at the frozen figure. “Has that ever happened before?”
Poseidon looked down. “No,” he said. “But there’s always a first time for everything.”
The Wizard stared at Poseidon and then turned back to the frozen statue of Thirteen. He was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of hopelessness. He realized he was still holding his wand. He regarded it for a moment wondering what to do. Then he aimed it at the wall, and a shower of green sparks flew from its tip. A portal began forming in the wall.
“What are you going to do?” Poseidon said, startled.
“I’m not going to just sit here and wait,” he said. “I’ve got to see for myself. I’ve got to see if there’s still a part of her I can reach.”
“Don’t do it, man,” Poseidon warned. “You’re just going to make things worse.”
But the Wizard wasn’t listening. He turned his back on the god and rushed into the portal he’d created. An instant later, he stepped out onto the platform at the Raven’s Point train depot.
People were already boarding the train. He rushed past them, peering into windows. Finally, near the end car, he saw Grinningbook. She was wearing her favorite traveling clothes – a tight fitting black top and a pair of green camouflage cargo pants. She was standing beside a soft black bag staring at the open door as if considering whether to board or not.
The Wizard’s heart seemed to skip a beat as he saw her. He ran toward her.
She turned to glare at him as he neared her. The Wizard stopped short.
“What are you doing here?” she said coldly. “Didn’t you read my note?”
“Yes, I read it,” he said.
“I told you not to follow me. This is hard enough without a scene.”
“I’m not here to make a scene,” he said.
He raised his hands and gestured with his fingers toward her, trying to reach out and feel what was inside. Frowning, she swept the contact away with a sweep of her right hand. The Wizard stumbled back a step, overwhelmed with a sudden, icy coldness.
He rubbed his hands. They were numb.
“I’m in no mood for your cheesy magic tricks, either,” she said, watching him.
“What’s happened to you?” he asked, looking into her blank, expressionless eyes.
“You read the note,” she said. “So you know how I feel. I’m tired of feeling bad about myself because I can’t seem to live up to your standards. I’m sick of this whole thing.”
“But I can’t believe you’d leave me over something so trivial.”
Her eyes narrowed, and he felt another icy chill.
“Perhaps it’s trivial to you,” she said icily. “I don’t like having anyone monitor me. I don’t think I ever did. Now I’m sure.”
“What about our lives together?”
She stared back at him without emotion. “Did you think I was going to wander around in that shop of yours cooking your food, washing your clothes and playing with toys for the rest of my life? That’s not living.”
“But you liked the Caws and Effects. You loved living there.”
“I’ll admit that I was taken in by its wonders at first. But it’s just an illusion. None of it’s real. I should know. I was the town’s psychiatrist. I had a real function in Raven’s Point before I moved in there with you. How many patients did I treat after that? A total of none. I turned my back on myself and became nothing but your sidekick. And you want to know something? I don’t much care for the role.”
She bent down, picked up her bag and handed it to a porter standing in the door.
The Wizard watched her helplessly. He reached out with his mind, hoping to enter her mind, as they’d always been able to do in the past. It was mostly closed to him now. But what was available was exactly like Thirteen. Ice. It was as Poseidon had told him. There was no longer a trace of the blue fire. There wasn’t as much as a spark.
“This can’t be,” he said, shaking his head. “There has to be something inside you that I can still touch. There has to be some part of you that I can still reach.”
She turned back to him coldly. “You know what your problem is?” she asked. “You think too much. You over analyses everything. You’ve wrapped yourself so tightly in this smoky cloak of yours that you see everything as a mystery. But life isn’t like that. Sometimes things are exactly what they seem, no more, no less. For all your power, you just don’t get it.”
“But you have to remember,” he said, almost pleading. “That night at Vlad’s when we danced. You wrapped us in a blue sphere. It was made from the magic you had inside you. You can’t have forgotten. And before that, when you touched me and gave me half your soul, you have to remember that. It was real. It happened.”
She shook her head again. “Those were just sweet words,” she said. “And the dance was just a steamy dance in a bar. They meant something at the time. But times change. There was nothing magical about it.”
“But you had the magic inside you.”
“I don’t believe in magic. I don’t think I ever did. But I do believe in fate. And while I’m sorry this hurts you, my fate has little to do with yours.”
David felt as if he’d been kicked. The hurt was worse than any of the blows Rage had hit him with during their fight.
“What about the table?” David asked in desperation.
“What table?”
“The table you showed me – the one that showed our lives together. You made me see it when I was about to give up. Don’t give up on me. Please see it, Grinningbook. I know it’s still inside you somewhere.”
Grinningbook stepped on the train and then turned, shaking her head. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Please,” he said. “You can’t leave me. Not like this.”
“You aren’t making this any easier,” she said.
She looked up into his eyes as the silver-metal doors slid closed.
“Goodbye, David,” she said.
The Wizard stood, stunned beyond words as the train pulled away.
“It’s all true,” he whispered to himself as tears welled in his eyes. “That wasn’t her. It couldn’t have been. Grinningbook really is gone, and this long search was for nothing.”
He looked down and stared at his hands. They were capable of wielding unimaginable power. But the power hadn’t been enough. The town was saved, Rage was gone and Grinningbook was still alive. But he couldn’t save what he loved the very most in the world. Stabbed with anguish, he suddenly realized he truly had fought against hell itself and won only to lose.
Tears streaming down his weary face, the Wizard stood and watched the train until it was lost in the distance.






Your friendly neighborhood Wizard

<center>THE END</center>

Your friendly neighborhood Wizard

The story might be over, but the work needn't disappear. So up it comes!


As that fabulous Halloween superhero, MagicSlider, says; "DEAD GUYS ROCK!"