louder, and the power increased. Most of the Villagers closed their eyes to let the power flow become more real for them.
Dickon did not close his eyes. From across the room he watched the table’s power items glow with some inner light beyond his ken. The room lights paled before the table’s brilliant occupants. How long the chanting went on he never remembered, but at its end, Val’s voice rose to a high pitch, then cascaded tone by tone to its lowest pitch, and died away. The silence in the room was profound as the light from the objects faded. Sleepily and dreamily the Villagers returned to the ordinary reality of Malcolm’s living room.
“Thank you,” Val said. Exhaustion dragged at her flesh. On her shoulder the crow tattoo tucked its head in its wing and slept. “When the time comes,” Val said, “you each of you should sense the call to come together in spirit to support Ben in the struggle.” Val sighed. “Excuse me,” she said. “I need to rest.”
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Malcolm asked. “I have some very fine Darjeeling.”
“Yes, a cup would be nice.” Malcolm got up to put the kettle on. “I’ll make a big enough pot for everyone,” he said.
“Here,” Dickon said to Val, “sit on the sofa.” He got up and went to Ben. “Are you sure about this, Ben?” he said softly.
Ben replied in a soft voice, “No.”
“Oh, jeez!” Dickon said. The kettle whistled, and Malcolm made tea. Emma opened a bag she had brought, and handed round orange drop cookies. The Villagers made small talk for a while, and then made their respective ways home. The owners took their power objects with them as they left.
Boring out the Neural Pathways
Dickon slept poorly that night. In the morning he got up early and made tea and toast for himself. He knew Ben would boil up some pasta for his breakfast. When he had eaten his toast and fed Butter her morning treat, he went out of their cottage into the gray drizzle. It wasn’t heavy enough to wet him, and it matched his mood. Butter had wisely declined to accompany him. She’d rather wait for warmer hours in the morning to wander the trails.
Dickon went down the stairs to the beach. He needed to let the waves wash his mind and soul clean of worry. Princess Valiant found him on a rock near the mouth of the cove.
“Good morning, Dickon,” the Princess said. “You’re up early.”
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
“You’re upset about Ben, aren’t you?”
“I am,” Dickon said. “Why Ben? You’ve told me why not me. Okay. I accept that. I don’t understand it, particularly, but I accept it.” He glared at her. “Why Ben?”
“Ben’s an older soul than he imagines,” the Princess began. “He has hidden experience to draw on that nobody else can equal, at least among the Villagers. It’s experience he’s acquired over several transmigrations.”
“Are you telling me he has past lives? I don’t believe in such stuff.”
“I do, and it’s the way I explain things. Be free to come up with your own explanation, whatever suits your religion. There’s more to it, too. Ben doesn’t have any religious axes to grind.”
“Meaning?”
“Ben’s not allied with any one world view shaped by a religion. You have one, I have one, Harry Pitts is locked into one, but Ben is not.”
“No, he’s not much on religion.” Dickon shifted on his rock. Then he stood and dusted off the seat of his jeans. “How dangerous is this thing you’ve got Ben doing?”
“Dangerous?” Val frowned. The tattoo on her shoulder fluttered its wings. “I don’t know, Dickon, how dangerous it is,” she said. “It could be pretty hard on Ben, and maybe it won’t. The human mind is curiously fragile and wondrously strong all at the same time.”
“I don’t want him to do it, but that won’t stop him, I know.” Dickon clenched his fists. “I’ve waited all my adult life for Ben to come along. I don’t want to lose him now.”
“You won’t, not if I can help it.” Val put a hand on Dickon’s shoulder. “Can you keep Butter busy today for several hours? I need to help Ben get ready.”
Dickon heaved a long sigh. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll help Butter worry.”
“Good man,” the Princess said. “I’ll start back, now. The longer we have, the better I can prepare Ben.”
“I’m coming with you,” Dickon said, and turned away from the ocean to climb the bluff to the cottage he and Ben shared. Along the way he and Val didn’t speak. When he looked over at her, he could see she was preoccupied.
When they were almost at the cottage, Val turned to him and asked, “Is the Chapel available?”
“Sure,” Dickon said. “We have a key.”
“I think Ben and I should work there,” she said, “where we won’t be disturbed.”
“Do you want to come in for some tea?”
“No tea, thanks. I’ll just collect Ben and get to work.”
“What about lunch?”
“We’ll eat when we’re through.”
“I hope he’s had breakfast, then,” Dickon said, and opened the door into the cottage. Ben was sitting on the couch in his bathrobe, finishing a cup of tea.
“Hi,” he said. Butter came to his feet and lay on them. He wriggled his toes under her stomach. She had learned to require this bit of attention every morning.
“Dress warmly,” Val said, “and come along with me, Ben. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Sure,” Ben said, and stood up. He pulled his robe together where it threatened to gape, and went into the bedroom. He drew on jeans, a flannel shirt, and put on his heavy socks and boots. When he came out, Butter danced around him, certain they were going to go for a walk. He stooped and petted her.
“Not now, old girl,” he said. “Dickon will take you out later. You stay, and guard the house, okay?” Butter whined, and sat, puzzled, as Ben followed Val out the door. Ben looked at the sky overhead.
“Still gray, I see,” he said. “It’s that time of year again, I guess.”
“Stays gray here a lot,” Val said. “It’s a common thing, on the coast of an ocean, the fog and low cloud.” She pointed. “We’re going to the Chapel,” she said. “Dickon gave me the key."
When they got to the Chapel, Val opened the door and said, “Take a comfortable pew, Ben. You’ll be sitting for quite a while.”
“Okay,” Ben said. Princess Val took a small sprig of sage from her pocket and lit it. She waved it in the air, censing the Chapel with its smoke. As she waved the smoldering sprig, she chanted in a deep voice that recalled her masculine beginnings. Ben waited. He had no idea what tongue she spoke. He could not tell Cherokee from Kwakiutl; indeed, he had trouble distinguishing Spanish from German.
When Val completed her chant, she raised her arms to shoulder height and extended them as widely as she could. She began another chant. This sounded to Ben like an invocation of some spiritual being. He looked around the Chapel, half expecting a loincloth-clad apparition to rise from the floor. Nothing like that happened. Val completed this chant also, closed her eyes, and bowed her head. Ben thought he saw her lips move, as if she prayed silently. He waited.
Val opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Ready, Ben?”
“I guess,” he said. He heard a tentative quaver in his voice and cleared his throat.
“This won’t be easy, I don’t think,” Val said. “What I need to do is enter your mind and open up certain pathways. I will be as gentle as I can about this.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“First, give me permission to enter your mind.”
“Granted.” Ben swallowed hard. “Just don’t broadcast everything you find there.”
“Granted,” Val said. “Next, I need you to close your eyes and relax as much as you can.”
“Sounds like sex for the first time,” Ben tried to joke. Val remained grimly serious. She knelt on the pew over Ben, her knees to either side of his thi
ghs. She put her hands on his temples and began to mutter. Ben smelled the closeness of her, and felt the warmth of her breasts near his face. He felt a prickling in his temples. Darkness overtook his mind, and he lost all sensation of the pew beneath him.
Val concentrated her mind on the image of a drill bit boring through blockage after blockage. Some blocks were thin, and presented themselves to Val’s mind as flimsy plywood. Others were more substantial brick or stone, and yielded more slowly to Val’s intrusion. She came to a final barrier that presented itself as steel shining in a dim light. She began to drill. Her bit bounced off. She tried several times without denting the barrier. Finally she conjured a diamond drill bit and that bored through.
Once into Ben’s innermost mental compartment, Val discovered Ben was amazingly adept at mustering psychic energies. She quickly allied Ben’s energies to her own, and began the slow and careful withdrawal she deemed necessary to preserve Ben’s mind. She imaged doors built into every barrier she’d drilled through as she withdrew. These she carefully closed and locked, and saw herself handing off the key to them all to Ben. At the very end she came out of Ben’s mind and removed her hands from his temples. She backed off her numb knees and tried to stand. She couldn’t, quite, and had to hobble to a place on the pew near Ben. She sat, and drifted into an exhausted slumber.
Ben came back to the world slowly. First he felt the hard pew under his butt and behind his back. He was sore enough that he had trouble moving. He felt numb, until he