“So. Help me out,” I asked, sidling into the booth.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” she was nondescript, in such a way that I couldn’t describe her even as I stared straight at her.
“Yes. And don’t bullshit me. I’m an investigative journalist with the power of anime on my side.”
“You are a student of journalism at a mid-level university with a strange fascination with illustrated novels created by an island country across the ocean to the west of here.”
“Thats what I said, yes. Now, and I know you know what I want. Help me.”
“May I ask how you figured me out?”
“You may. I don’t know why you would, though, considering you saw everything I did. Help me stop this.”
“I do not interfere. It is my code. My chain. In that way I am much unlike my sisters. And she. That is how you see me. Interesting.”
“Which means you aren’t?”
“I never understood my sisters’s desires to take on your mortal forms. I merely wear one so you may understand. They live in theirs.”
“Like living your life in a cocktail dress or tuxedo?”
“Indeed.”
“So,” I paused for a while. “That help?”
“I do not interfere.”
“Well, you are going to need to. Cause the only ways I’m going to stop bothering you are if you help or if you kill me. You don’t even need to directly intervene. You can tell me what can be done.”
“Can you kill a god?”
“Can I?”
“No.”
“Thanks,” I blew air out my mouth at this, trying to stop myself from attacking her.
“I assume it’s only become worse since I talked to the shadow woman?”
“Not yet.”
She disappeared. Not like teleportation, or at least not like teleportation from anything I’ve read. Just one moment she was there, the next as if she never was. I swore under my breath. It took me another week to find her again. Or, not her I guess. Them? It? I wasn’t clear on that, but it didn’t matter. This time it was in a park, on a bench, watching a group of children and their dogs playing. I barely sat down when it spoke.
“You may call me she, if that is what you see me as. I do not understand my sisters’s desire to take these forms, but the reason I appear as such before you mortals is to ease the strain on you.”
“That’s it? Not even a hello?”
“Do you say hello to a particularly persistent insect?”
“If that’s really how you thought of me, you would have killed me already.”
“You know that I do not interfere, and yet you keep coming to me. It is time you waste, that you could spend helping she who you wish to help.”“Don’t say it like she’s the only one I want to help.”
“The other you wish to save only because you know they are friends. The third you do not know can be saved. And the masses you do not care for beyond the basic decency of believing they deserve to live and live free.”
“When I spoke to the woman of shadows, no. When I spoke to Johanna. When I spoke to her, I realized something was wrong. And I stopped and thought for a while. And I realized something was wrong. Something doesn’t make sense. So I did some digging. I am a journalist, its what I’m good at,” I licked my lips as I realized they were dry. “If you’ll forgive my mixed metaphor, I did some digging and realized I was being asked to ad 1+! and get 5.7. And that’s not true.”
“No. It is not,” and she pulled her disappearing trick again.
“Damnit.”
The next time took me just under a week to find her. Then a little over. Then a week and a half, then 6 days again. Then 4, then 4, then 5, then 3. Finally it got to the point where I was finding where she was going every day. It was April. I was glad Maryanne had gotten me to take a leave of absence, or my GPA would be in the toilet right now. This was a lovely library. Is this table made of mahogany?
“You truly are persistent.”
“Oh, so you are going to acknowledge me?”
“You truly are persistent.”
“You can get me out of your hair. Fairly easily, too,” she didn’t respond for a time, so we just sat quietly at a table in the library.
“There was a great hero. He was brave of heart, but weak of body. He wanted to save his land, however, and wasn’t about to let his weakness stop him. He trained himself at every opportunity, as he traveled the land saving farmhands and barmaids, knights and even a princess. But it wasn’t enough. A foreign nation had a great and powerful warlock. He summoned forth waves of creatures, both native and foreign, natural and not. And the hero despaired, for he was not strong enough. But still he fought on. And, in his desperate fight, he drew attention from a greater power still than the warlock. A divine power. And he was granted favor. And with favor, power. He rallied, driving the creatures back and out of his land. He drove them up to the warlock’s lair and, with their dark master, destroyed them utterly. But upon his return, he learned that the power he had was not enough. His people were ruined, their land salted. But the god would not give him more power. He was given power to save his land and his people from monsters and magic, not agriculture. But the hero had the learning of the warlock, written down in books most foul, and was no small intelligence himself. He began to leech the power he thought he needed from the god. And this worked for night on 30 years. But the god grew wise, and the man grew old. So the man began to plan, and the god gathered his might, for the hero had grown powerful on the fat of divinity, and cunning on the marrow of age. The god struck, having marshaled the greater part of his remaining power, falling directly into the hero’s trap. Divinity comes and goes, child. Its best to not give anyone reason to speed up the process.”
She was gone again. I swore. While it had been getting easier to track her down, it was still time I had to spend. My phone was dead, I hadn’t stayed anywhere long enough to charge it recently and for whatever reason I was too foolish to get a car charger. My money was dwindling as well, so I didn’t have enough to pay for a charger. This was a library, however. Perhaps I could find a socket. It was as I stood up that I saw the book. It was sitting on the seat of her chair, a nameless, leather bound book. I almost left, but there was something drawing me to it. I reached down to pick it up, opened it up, and smiled. I love finding the kernels of truth.
