Wandering Nowhen

Here I am, I believe. Here I am, wherever may be chosen for me. The here is easy, the when is where things get more complicated in my case. I can’t quite tell when, though. Time, it has always had an odd way of interacting with me. From time to time, at least. I think I’m nowhen right now. Can’t truly tell, though. This might be an everywhen, but a different everywhen than before. Than usual. Or, perhaps, I’m done. Perhaps I’m finally dead. Perhaps what we did to New Orleans was enough to end my wandering. I doubt it, but there is always a chance.

Then, my father’s face comes to me. It looks more dissonant than usual, with an uncomfortable pungency at the front and a strange note of sour on the afterimage. Another residual effect of our destruction, I suppose. “Child,” he does look at me.

I look right back at his eyes. Pushing past the paresthetic appearance, I reply, “Papa. Why be you here?”

“Because you are.” I can smell the truth in his meaning. He is as surprised as I am. He thought himself dead or gone, too. Certainly alone.

“Perhaps we are dead,” I offer.

He laughs a glowing laugh. “No, I’ve been to the land of the dead. This is not it.”

“It feels to me like I am stuck in that place I often wander. But I never before have remained for so long in it. I call it the everywhen.”

“But you do not believe this is that.” It is an offering of certain fact, not a supposition. He gets like this sometimes. Knowing is not always the same as knowing, but sometimes it is.

I nod. “I do not. If this is everywhen, I should be able to leave. I think we broke it. Time.”

“So, you think this nowhen. You think your wandering is forever this time.”

I can feel his feelings on the matter. “You believe it as well, do you not?”

His father sighed deeply. “What I believe matters little. You destroyed many things that could not be destroyed in New Orleans. That poses issues for existence.”

“Including you. You are including yourself as one of those things that could not be destroyed.”

“And, as you can see, I was not destroyed,” he counters.

I chuckle at that. “I suppose you were not. Simply permanently separated from your duties. I wonder, who will guard the paths now that you’re nowhen?”

Angered by this, he disappears. Try as I might, even straining my senses beyond what they are, not a glimpse of his tune remains before or around me. Perhaps he knows a way to leave, perhaps he lied about why he is here. But I doubt it. More likely, he is here, just no longer here. He can slip into his anywhere pockets from anywhere, even outside of space itself. I think I’m glad to see him go, at least for the moment. I can perhaps investigate the nowhen without the distraction.

If this falling into the fracture of time truly happened because of what we did in New Orleans, then there must be a path back. After all, my father may be a lot of terrible things, but one he rarely allows himself to be is wrong. We destroyed things that could not be destroyed only fragmented. If time is broken or fractured, that means it still is there. Like a dropped vase, I must simply find the right pieces and put them together. Though there be no doors, perhaps there are door fragments I overlooked during my first investigation of the surroundings. Now that I know, with Papa’s appearance here, it is not the sought end to my wanderings, I can instead look for a path onward.

The everywhen was a nothingness of intense draw. Doors that pulled me every which way. To exit the everywhen isn’t hard, it is inevitable. Just fall, and one of the doors will pull you through. This may not be the everywhen, but where there be doors, there are draws. If fragmented, the draws must be subtle. That is why I did not notice. But if I let myself wander nowhen at its will, not my own, I may have more luck. I open my eyes to the empty sounds and let myself wander.

My wandering is quickly interrupted once again. “What is the point of this?” the old man asks me.

“To fix what we broke. Do you wish to help, or simply annoy?”

He objects to that. “We broke nothing. I held no part in you and your allies’ fool’s errand,” he insists.

I do not look at him, for focusing would eliminate the purpose of the exercise. “Save being one of the targets,” I remind him.

“What is wrong with wanting a jaunt around the world with my true feet?” he posits as though it were an honest question. As though he did not know what he did.

I do not deign to answer it straightforwardly. “That is not your way.”

He understands, but he refuses to understand. “There is a difference between being obtuse and being wise,” he scolds, though I can taste he means it not.

As though on cue, for fate oft works that way I stumble upon a small hole. Not a door in earnest, but perhaps a fragment. One of the shards. Wetting my hands in sweat off my brow, I draw out a symbol around the hole, leaving sweat floating about in nothing. Though the hole might have a draw, the symbol is balanced and rigid. It will not break.

With the first of the fragments found, I am well on the right track. Heading out away from the spot, I continue to let nowhere guide me where it will. It takes some wandering, but I spot another small hole. Once again, or perhaps for the first time, as I’m not sure how time is broken, I wet my hands with the sweat of my brow and draw the symbol around the hole. Two complete, I turn to seek out the next.

“So, how exactly do you plan on fixing your mistake?” I could feel the statement unbalance me, playing in my inner ear.

“It was no mistake,” I counter, then reply, “And I do believe that if I find all the pieces of the hole, I can forge it to a whole and return to the everywhen from here.”

“If it was no mistake, why fix it?” he asks.

Setting out away into nowhen, I reply, “Because it be broken. One fixes broken things they find, whenever they be able.”

The old man sweeps around me. “Even if fixing the broken thing will cause more problems and evils than leaving it be?”

“Whenever one be able. Why? Believe you that fixing time will cause more ill than good?” I posit.

“Determining that seems your job, not mine. I simply keep the pathways.”

I smile. “We both know that is less than truthful,” I counter, heading forth, “Are you planning to help me fix time, or plan you to observe alone?”

He smiles a less than earnest sounding smile. In a voice tasting a fascinating mix of sweet and bitter, he says. “I am planning on observing alone, but I have already aided in the fix soon enough coming.”

And he speaks true. I come upon a pathway that isn’t there but a moment, and the eternity I walk along it shows me where all the pieces of the door from nowhen lay, once in the distant future. Or past, it can be ever so tricky to tell. Traversing nowhen with that knowledge, to find these pieces of a whole hole is easier done than said. For every hole wants but to be whole, and finding each piece of the hole helps me to have already found each other part of the whole.

With each, I wet my hands for the first time again. Carefully I draw the symbol one final time every hole I come across. They must be the same, or the process will not work. Identical. And I take care to ensure they are. For if they must, they shall.

Once I am confident I am drawing all the final symbols around every hole, I begin the process of making the parts whole. Taking the old black box out from my coat, I slowly open it. Inside lies a long, wicked knife, several small pouches, most of which are long empty, a small book whose contents I know well, and a large gap where before New Orleans sat a twisted orb. Wetting my hands for the second time first, I outline the space that is what shall have always been the door. I’ve been pulled through these many times in the everywhen, I know where they belong and what they seem. Taking one of the few pouches holding powder still within, I carefully pour out a different symbol at the very top of the outline. Using the powder remaining in the pouch, I stretch small, thin lines out from the outline towards the symbols about to have been made in sweat.

With the drawing of the symbols complete, I move on the empowerment of them. Taking the wicked knife in my right hand, I pierce my left index finger to the bone. As the blood begins to seep out, I draw a third symbol, one of interconnectedness, in the middle of the outline. Once that symbol is drawn, I extend the trail of blood off the bottom of it to the base of the soon to have always been a door. It touches, and the blood mixes with the sweat. All around the outline, the lines of powder begin to light aflame. Finally, as the lines burn outwards, the symbol begins to burn as well, licking up taller and taller, mingling the ends of its flames with the tips of the smaller ones.

Across nowhen, lights begin to glow and move rapidly, pulling themselves together. Before me, a door begins to build itself. It comes into being where it has always been. The more pieces of the hole being pulled into the outline, the more it resembles a door. And the more confidence I have that it can hold itself where it is. In no time at all, and all the time in the eternity, the whole door stands before me once again for the first time.

As the fires do fade, the door yet still remains, standing alone and unhelped, as it will always be. And I fall, quickly. Never before have I been so close to a door when it begins it’s pull on me. And, as soon as I know it, I return to my most true of homes, the everywhen. But, once again, not for as long as I wish. I am not pulled into another door, though. I am simply removed to one of Papa’s anywhere pockets. It seems he thinks us not done with our previous discussions. Or perhaps he wishes to punish me for what we did. I know not. I do know the only way out of many of these pockets is through him.

Standing before me in the back of my mind, he whispers, “You have yet to explain why I was a target,” echoing it about the space and inside my mind.

“I did,” I counter. “You heard what was said without listening.”

“You speak of your statement that it was not my way?” he says, then follows it up, “That is meaningless, for it can mean whatever the speaker wishes it to. What does it mean to you?”

“The world is simple. We all play our parts. Some wander and teach, some observe and give aid, some act with intent. To play a part other than your own only leads to chaos and pain.”

“And yet you always hope to stop your wandering,” he counters, “Even though you know it to be your part.”

I smile as I continue to wander on. “Always. That said, I never stop, do I?”

With a sigh that looks almost indigo, he agrees. “No, you never do.”