joegoda | BP&G - The Mad Wizard

"We settled into a routine, pretty much." Bags continued. "Pockets would spend most of his time in the library; I would muck the stalls and take care of the horses, get supplies from a nearby village..." he paused, and then said, "More about that village later. Anyway, I was given pretty much free reign of the entire place, and I got to tell you, it was a big place. Besides the five buildings you saw when you first entered, there was this great big tower that went from the ground pretty much up to the top of the cave. I figure it was probably a good hundred feet up."

"I could go into the tower, and I could go up the first five floors, but beyond that I wasn't allowed. Why? I dunno. Pockets, though, Pockets could go where he wanted to. But even in the tower, Fletcher had to be with him, if he went past the fifth floor. I asked him what up there once, and he looked at me a long time, trying to figure out what to say. Eventually he just gave up, saying that it was too complicated."

"So I pushed him for information. Was it slaves? Was it gold? Was it money? The answer was no to each question. Now, remember, he and I had been together for some time, and though he was pretty much locked up in his own head most of the time, I knew that he wanted desperately to be like you and me." Bags looked around at the assembled pub goers and said "You know. Stupid." That brought a series of nods and sounds of sympathy."

"So he tried to explain it to me one night after we had been there a coupla years. He tried to bring me to a point where I could understand. He started out by telling me that the top floors of the tower contained nothing but empty space. 'Course, that wasn't all of it; nobody would lock a door to protect empty space, so I pushed him a little bit more. He said that it was empty space, but there were things in it, machines and chairs and dusty things. That made more sense to me. It was like a warehouse, I say to him. No, he answers me. Not like a warehouse at all."

"Ok, I say, if it's not a warehouse, then what's all that stuff doing there?"

Pockets turned with a serious look on his face and said "Bags, this is stuff I'm not quite sure I understand. I'm understanding enough that it's really, really interesting, and I need to keep reading the books in the library to understand it all... I think. But I'll explain as best I can, Okay?"

Bags nodded, waiting for the answer. "It's not so much a warehouse as another library, Bags." Pockets continued, pausing to gather the right words. "Except this library isn't books, or paper, it's... pictures and voices. Pictures that pop right out of thin air, and voices that pop right into your mind."

Bags looked cynically at his friend. "Uh huh." he said. He could have said to Pockets that his hair was on fire and it would have done no good. Pockets was in the grip of telling the tale and reliving the wonders.

"And there are machines, Bags, machines like you would never imagine. Push a button, pull a knob and they do the most incredible things. I have seen this world from far up in the sky, like I was a bird in flight. I asked Fletcher how it worked, and he told me that I would have to wait a little while longer. I know it's not magic, Bags, it's something else, but it sure seems like magic to me."

"There's one machine that does nothing but teach." Pockets eyes were glowing from within, and his voice rattled with excitement. "You sit in this really comfortable chair, and it massages you till you get all relaxed. Then you put on this headset... That's like a cap with out a top... a little wire hoop that goes around your head." When Pockets saw Bags head nod in understanding he went on.

"Okay. Then, while you sit there, all relaxed like, almost asleep, you start seeing images and hearing voices, but they go by so fast you can't keep up with 'em. That's the machine I like the best, of all of 'em. I'm learning so much, so fast, Bags!" In his excitement, he reached over and grabbed Bags' arm.

Bags looked down at Pockets' hand and very gently pulled it away. He placed his own hands on his friend's shoulders and said, "Chum, that sounds very interesting, and I'm sure it's important somehow. But I gotta ask you something, okay?"

"Okay, Bags."

"Remember that time when the nuns brought in that hypnotist guy? Renaldo the great or some crap like that?"

"Yeah." Pockets answered warily.

"Okay." Bags said. "Look at my eyes and answer me this. Is this Fletcher guy like that? Has he got you under some sort of hypno spell or whatever, so you believe this stuff?"

Pockets looked at Bags square in the eyes for a long moment, and then dropped his gaze. "Bags," he said, "it all seems incredibly real. I know that some of the stuff I've talked about may sound made up, but it's not. Granted, I may not be the best judge of what is real and what is imaginary, but I'd have to say that yes, I believe all this stuff. It all makes sense to me."

Bags looked at Pockets forlorn face long enough to make his own decision. "All right. That's all I needed to know. So tell me some of the stuff you've learned."

"Okay!" Pockets said, excitedly.

The rest of the night was spent with Bags trying hard to keep up with Pockets' chatter. On and on went the stories of the things Pockets had learned. Other planets, stars, magic machinery that would do everything from make bread to fly through the air, between the stars themselves. Pockets spent a lot of time on the story of the trip to this planet, which he said is a planet called Nowhere.

"Whoa!" said Bags. "Hold that thought. Now, some of that fairy tale stuff is okay. It sounds neat, and I'm sure that it can be found in a lot of books. And I can almost believe that one of those flying ships might have crashed here. I mean... we had to come from somewhere." He paused.

"And I don't mind listening to you tell about it all night long, Pockets. I don't. But I have to get up here pretty shortly, and go check on the horses. Then I have to make that ten mile trip to the village and pick up supplies. If I stay up much longer, I'm going to be dead tired before my day even starts. I need my sleep. Okay?"

"Okay, Bags." said Pockets, though the disappointment showed in his face. "I guess I need to get some sleep too." Pockets turned to his bunk behind the kitchen, pulled his pillow close and appeared to go to sleep.

It was a little while later when Bags heard Pockets mumble "It's not my imagination, Bags. It's really real. G'night."

Bags did not fall asleep. He stayed awake thinking about the things his friend had said, all the things that, to his mind, seemed as magical and useless as fairy stories. None of the things Pockets had said would help them eat, would keep them alive, keep them safe. It's not that the stories weren't good stories, and it's not that parts of them weren't interesting. Bags did have an imagination, and it was quite good.

The thing was just that the things Pockets had talked about were things that Bags could not feel, see, hear or taste. They did not help get the horses fed, and other than the flying machines, would not help him go the ten miles to the village.

Bags also knew that once the dam of Pockets had been breached, he would be hearing the stories from now until forever. It would be a time where Bags would remember some of what he had been told, and file away in that forgotten space the things that didn't mean much in the here and now. If it can't be proved, can't be used, then it was pretty much unprovable and useless. That was part of the young Bags' philosophy. Still...

"It's all right, Pockets. I believe you. I just don't know if I believe Fletcher. G'night."

Bags looked at the folks in the pub, and sighed. "Seems now that I should have believed in Fletcher. There was a lot of things that happened over the next twelve years that were just weird. Things disappearing. Things appearing. Voices in the night. I did finally get up to the top part of the tower, but that was near the end. That was near where we had to kill Fletcher."

Fallow, wife of Franklin the Butcher, said "Twelve years?" Her reddish hair was cut short and curled around her round face. "You were there for twelve years?"

Bags nodded. "Yep. Twelve of the strangest years, but I wouldn't have traded them for anything. Granted, most of my day was filled with manure, mops, and goin to town for supplies, and Pockets was filled with... Strange things, strange thoughts... I dunno. It was pretty hard on him. If he gets back, you'll have to ask him, but don't count on getting a straight answer from him. Things were done to him that ... were just not... Hell! I don't even know how to describe it. The Pockets that went in was not the same Pockets you folks know. He became more than he was, and he became less than he was. That's the only way I can describe it."

There was a period of silence while the crowd nodded and murmured to themselves, absorbing what Bags had told them. There was some discussion, over at the bar, about the existence of machinery that could project visions, and someone mentioned that he had heard about a device that could throw an image onto a sheet.

"Now, like I said, that was the end of the twelve years. And if Pockets came out less and more than he was when he went in, so did I. I learned how to fight, because Fletcher would rent me out to some moron or another who wanted to take over his neighbor's fields or village or castle, or whatever. There's always some fight going on somewhere, and Fletcher decided that I could be useful in other ways besides muckin stalls and fetching supplies. I didn't want to become a fighter. It just happened to me, just like what happened to Pockets, happened to Pockets."

Briggs raised his mug and asked, "You were a mercenary?"

"Depends, Briggs." Bags replied. "I wasn't paid in money. That all went to Fletcher. It did allow me to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly. If you want to call fighting to survive mercenary work, then I won't argue. The way I figure I paid for Pockets room and board, too. That's what you do for family, right?"

"Can't argue with you there, Bags. Reckon I'd do the same thing in your shoes."

"Damn right you would, Briggs. And remember, I was still a kid. Not even twenty." Bags raised his glass and toasted, "To the folly of youth!"

Voices rose "To the folly of youth!"