Prometheus Wakens - 18. Chapter 18: Jonathan

Chapter 18: Jonathan

Earth Analogue VII

Whittaker knew he didn’t have to ask, but popped in while I was at breakfast. I didn’t have to ask Alder (Ilex verticillata) to set another place, but I did wonder at Whittaker’s timing.

“Whittaker? Are you still happy being a dryad? No regrets?”

I think he knew what I was thinking. “No. But I do miss bacon,” he said.

Alder passed the serving platter to Whittaker, and grinned.

“Is that all you miss?” I asked.

Whittaker was slow enough to answer that I knew it was thoughtful.

“Yes, Lucas,” he said. “That’s all I miss, really. And I don’t really miss even that, but it does give me an excuse to visit you!

“You were right. I am fulfilled. And I am happy that you agreed to allow Reggie to live here as a dryad. But,” he paused; I think he was waiting to see how I would react. When I did nothing, he grinned and continued.

“I have found another mission.”

Whittaker’s Mission: Earth Analogue VII

The boy sat alone in the hospital cafeteria. He wore the blue and white pinstriped shirt and khaki pants that marked him as a volunteer. I had taken the appearance of an elderly man, and wore the same uniform as the boy, with the addition of a blue bowtie. The uniform looked a lot better on Jonathan than it did on me.

Jonathan had survived his first orientation—and learned stuff like never discuss a patient’s condition and you’re not a doctor or a nurse so don’t try to do anything remotely medical. He was given a TB test and had blood drawn for other testing. He was told that although he wouldn’t get paid, the hospital volunteer program charged $25 per year in dues—and, he had to buy his own uniforms. On the other hand, volunteers did get a 10% discount in the cafeteria, and the food is surprisingly good for hospital food.

He had survived the TB testing and the other screenings, and had found a place in the volunteer corps where he appeared to thrive. I knew differently.

I took my tray to Jonathan’s table. “Hi, Jonathan, may I sit here?” He looked up, saw a bespectacled, thinning-haired 60-year-old man in a pinstriped shirt with a blue bowtie, wearing a volunteer name badge. He looked around. The cafeteria was reasonably full.

He nodded. “Sure,” he said and then put his head down, and focused on the food on his tray.

I took my food, utensils, and condiments off my tray and put them directly on the table. Something I’d read, somewhere, that people in New York City Automats could tell who was from out of town, because they left things on their trays when they ate. It was a silly superstition, but it seemed like something I would do in my current Aspect.

I gave the boy a few minutes to get accustomed to—if not comfortable with—my company before I spoke. “Jonathan? I need your advice.”

He looked up. “Huh”?

“Jonathan, I know a boy your age, and I need to tell him something, but I don’t know what to say or how to say it. I figured that you could help me, being the same age and all.”

He didn’t say anything, but at least he didn’t put his head back down, so I continued with a long-rehearsed speech.

“This guy is a good boy. Smart. Lot of energy. But he has a little hygiene problem. Not uncommon for boys his age, because of all the hormonal changes going on, but he’s got body odor. I need to be able to tell him to wash more often, and to use deodorant, but I don’t know how to say it without offending him.”

Jonathan narrowed his eyes. His nose twitched. Before he could say anything, I added. “There’s another thing. He’s gay, and he’s confused. He thinks his parents will abandon him if they find out. And, he wants a boyfriend—not just for sex stuff, but to be a real friend, a confidant, someone he can trust with the knowledge that he’s gay. What should I tell him?”

Now the boy’s eyes were so narrow I thought he’d closed them. They snapped open. Something had clicked in his mind.

“Tell him he stinks. Tell him to shower every morning, and not just at night. Tell him to use deodorant. Tell him to stop being afraid to tell any boy he wants to be friends with that he’s gay. Tell him to be ready to take his lumps when he’s outed at school, and when his parents find out, and when his Reverend finds out.”

His mouth curled in a frown. “How did you know? About me, I mean? And do I really stink?”

“I said you were smart. When did you catch on that I was talking about you?” I asked.

“When you said deodorant,” he said. “My mother got me some, said I should use it. But it’s for girls and queer . . .” He stuttered to a stop, and then said, “I guess I can’t say that, can I? How did you know?”

That seemed to be the right question, so I morphed from the old man into an eighteen-year-old boy with blond hair reaching his shoulders, and wearing a sleeveless tunic. Jonathan’s eyes got wider.

“Who are you?” He looked around. “Does everyone see you? Am I dreaming?”

“The others no longer see you or me, Jonathan,” I said. “Neither do they see this table, so we won’t be disturbed. No, you’re not dreaming. This is real, perhaps more real than anything you’ve experienced in your life. Oh, and I’m Whittaker . . . not Whittaker Smith like on my hospital nametag and ID badge, just Whittaker.”

“Whittaker. And are you really—how old are you really?”

“That’s hard to say, Jonathan. Where I’m from, time doesn’t mean the same as it does, here. It just doesn’t work the same way. I’m eighteen, and will stay eighteen as long as I live—except when I need a disguise, like Whittaker Smith. Then, I can be as old or as young as I need to be. And I work for a guy who has the memories of someone who is more than 12,000 years old.”

“Who?” I knew the boy was smart. He cut to the most important part of what I said.

“A fellow named Prometheus. Ever hear of him?”

“Yeah. A Greek god who got in trouble for giving fire to humans. Zeus punished him. Um . . . had a bird eat his liver every day, and healed him every night.”

“That’s the guy, all right,” I said. “And the stories are somewhat exaggerated. Prometheus gave fire, literacy, art, and science to humans. He was a titan, a member of a group of gods that came before the ones most people think of—Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, that lot. Each of the titans had all the powers of all the gods. The titans came from the Silver Age; the gods came into being in the Bronze Age.”

Jonathan furled his brow as if puzzled. “I learned about the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. I never heard of the Silver Age.”

“In Greek mythology—which is really history—the earliest age was the Gold Age. No one seems to know much about that. The titans came into existence in the Silver Age; the current gods, in the Bronze Age. The names of the ages are allegorical and don’t have any relationship to the materials that tools and weapons were made from.”

“So, how did you get to know Prometheus? And how did you get powers?”

“I knew you were smart, Jonathan. Those are good questions, but maybe we could get back to you. You’ve already solved the hygiene problem—”

“You mean the BO. It’s okay to say it. I stink. And I bet it’s really bad, now. I’ve been pushing gurneys around and hauling bags of dirty laundry all morning.”

“Want to come to my home? Take a shower, and maybe change clothes?” I asked.

The boy seemed to think about that. I wondered what was going through his mind. I could have read him, but didn’t think it would be necessary—or fair—at this point.

“I guess,” he said. “I’m done here for the day. As long as I get home by suppertime.”

I laughed. “Remember what I said about time?”

He nodded. The smile on his face was small, but it was a smile.

“Stand up, please,” I said as I pushed back my chair. “You can leave your tray.” When Jonathan stood, I translocated us to the patio of one of Lucas’ guesthouses, and then stepped toward Jonathan, in case he fainted. Sometimes, people did that the first time they translocated.

Jonathan blinked, and then grabbed me. But it was a hug. I did not sense either fear or lust. I returned the hug.

“This is real!” he said. “You are real!”

Then, he looked around. “Where are we?”

I described the island without, however, telling him we were in a different reality. None of the other dryads were working within sight of the house, so I was able to save that explanation for later.

“Before you shower,” I said, “May I have the pills you took from the nurses’ station?”

Jonathan turned white. Had his blood pressure dropped any more, I think he would have passed out. “How do you . . . I guess you know everything.” He pulled a pill bottle from his pocket and handed it to me.

“_____,” I said, naming the drug, a powerful narcotic. “It probably would have worked. Especially if you _____. You would have gone to sleep and stopped breathing. Nice and easy.”

“At least it wouldn’t have hurt,” he said.

“Actually, it would have, Jonathan.”

“How. I’d be dead.” His lips curled and he looked away from me. I thought for a moment I’d lost him.

“Hate to be the one to tell you, buddy, but death isn’t the end. And neither is the heaven nor the hell you learned about at the Universal Fundamentalist Church. Neither of those places is supposed to be your next stop. And, you’ve got a lot of years before you find out what that is.

“You see, it’s not your time. Something was supposed to happen to make you want to live. Something that didn’t happen. That’s why I’m here.”

Jonathan came back from his shower wearing the tunic I’d laid out on the bed for him. I also put out a pair of briefs—an import from his—my old—reality. Later he could become accustomed to his bottom and penis being exposed to the breeze and occasionally exposed to view. I’d made another change to his wardrobe: he was wearing the same Tiva sandals Lucas had gotten for me. Neither Lucas nor I liked the thing-in-between-our-toes on the Greek sandals.

“Feel better?” I asked. Brilliant conversation, I thought.

“A lot better. Thank you for the deodorant and stuff.”

“You are welcome.” I took a chance, and pressed a little more. “It looks like you used the conditioner on your hair.” Jonathan’s hair was soft, and flew about his face when he moved his head.

“Yeah,” he said, and then blushed. “I used to not use it, ’cause it was sissy, but I guess if . . . I mean, since I’m queer—”

“Jonathan,” I interrupted. “That’s one of many things we need to talk about. Please don’t think of yourself as queer. It’s an ugly word, and when you think ugly things about yourself or others, it creates hurt. Hurt can build up in your mind until it spills over and makes you want to do something foolish.”

“Things like kill myself.” Jonathan’s voice was a whisper.

“Yes, exactly like that.”

“So, the reason I wanted to do it was because I kept thinking I was qu . . . gay?”

“Yes. Not that it was wrong, but thinking that it was wrong.”

“But it is wrong! Reverend says it’s evil!’

“Jonathan, it’s going to take more than a few words from me before you understand, but here’s a beginning.

“In your Reverend’s mind, homosexuality is evil, it is sinful, and it will be punished in an afterlife. You’ve been told that over and over again. Your friends—well, the boys your age in the church—reinforced that notion by making fun of boys who aren’t macho, by using queer as a pejorative word, by bragging about their experiences with girls—whether those experiences were real or just wishful thinking.

“In their world and that of their reverends, adultery—any sex outside of marriage, even looking lustfully at someone—is sinful, but homosexuality is even worse. Their male-dominated society has found it easy to forgive teen-age boys for having sex, as long as it is with girls. Girls who have sex outside of marriage are punished almost as severely as homosexuals.”

Jonathan’s eyes hadn’t glazed over, so I kept talking.

“Everything you’ve heard for most of your life tells you that being gay is wrong.” I couldn’t smile, but one corner of my mouth curled a little. “It’s going to take a lot more than me telling you once that it’s okay.”

“Oh, and I’m gay, too, and the reason I got the job of talking to you was that I tried to kill myself, too.”

That got his attention. “Really?” he said.

“Really, except that I was going to use a gun and would have made a real mess,” I said. I explained what and why, and watched Jonathan’s face turn from white to red and back to white as I told him about my life as a porn star and about-to-be-sex-slave.

“So this is how you got to know Prometheus,” Jonathan said. “He saved you.”

I nodded, and wondered if he remembered the second half of his question. He did.

“How did you get powers?”

“May I answer that later?” I asked. “And do you think you can give me—and my friends—a chance to help you?” I asked.

Jonathan nodded. He’d heard the words, and he wasn’t afraid to either absorb them or accept them—but neither had he completely done so. His thoughts were still black except in one small corner of his mind where there was a tiny bit of light, a flame that flickered in the darkness, a flame that I would have to nurture.

We both turned when we heard the crunch of footsteps on the pea-gravel of the path. Two dryads stopped when they reached the table where Jonathan and I sat. “Jonathan, these are my friends Oak and Willow. Guys, this is Jonathan.”

“Are you guys like trees, or something?” Jonathan asked. His eyes switched from Willow to Oak and back again to Willow.

“What gave it away?” I asked.

“Greek gods? a titan? an island off the coast of Greece? names like Oak and Willow?” Jonathan giggled. I was glad to see that.

“Yes,” I said. “Both Oak and Willow—and I—are boy dryads who live in some of the trees you see around us.”

“There are nearly a thousand dryads on Lucas’ estate, and several thousand on the island,” Oak added.

After Oak and Willow had sat, I added, “Jonathan? There are some things we must do; some things you must see. We’ll be gone for a couple of hours.” I stood and held out my hand. Jonathan took my hand, looked hard at Willow, and then nodded to me.

The sun was just rising when we arrived. The streets were covered with ice that would not melt in the scant heat of the winter sun. It was nearly 9:00 AM; there would be only eight and a half hours of wan light on this day.

“Where are we?” Jonathan asked.

“Moscow, outside a prison. Not the Lubyanka prison of fame, but a prison for juveniles, for children from age eight to eighteen or so. Come.”

Still holding Jonathan’s hand, I led him through the walls and into a cell. The temperature in the cell was marginally warmer, although neither Jonathan nor I felt the cold.

Two boys lay on a bed that was nothing more than a shelf attached to the wall. They were covered with a single, thin blanket. They had huddled together for warmth. It hadn’t worked. They were dead, and frost had formed on their eyelashes. At least, I thought, they died in their sleep.

“They are brothers,” I said. “They were arrested for trying to steal food from a cart in the market. Not for stealing; they were only trying to steal. Neither had eaten in four days. They were too weak to escape, too weak to fight the cold. They had no family to bribe the police into releasing them. They died in the night.”

Jonathan had stopped breathing when he realized what he was seeing. Now, he expelled his breath in a burst of fog, and then drew it back in a great, shuddering gasp.

“Why did they have to die? They were trying to get food. That means they wanted to live. I wanted to kill myself. You’ve got it all backwards! It’s the wrong way!”

I felt his tears, and knew that he was feeling sorry for the boys, sorry for himself, and angry with me. I wrapped my arms around him, and hugged him. At first, his anger led him to struggle. Then, pain overtook his anger, and he relaxed, sobbing into my chest.

“Jonathan, I said it was not your time. However, it was their time. They have left the hunger and cold, and are now in their good place, where they will laugh and play in the sunshine as little boys until it is time for them to return.”

I handed him a handkerchief and waited while he wiped his tears and blew his nose. “Come,” I said.

A tropical sun baked the sand of the beach, but it was cool in the shade of the palm trees. Two golden-skinned boys lay on a mat of woven reeds. Beside them was a basket full of coconuts. The boys were naked; the strips of cloth that could be wrapped around their waists, like a short sarong, lay beside them. They were engaged in mutual fellatio.

Jonathan gasped and squeezed my hand, hard. “We shouldn’t . . .” he whispered.

“I don’t think they would mind,” I said. “Look.”

A few yards away, two other boys lay on the sand watching. After a few moments, they turned to one another and coupled. Again Jonathan gasped. I guessed he’d seen enough, so I translocated us to our next destination.

Noise—people calling, jangling bells, and babies crying—filled our ears. Light came from a strip of sky the color of steel. Mud brick buildings crowded the narrow street.

“India,” I called to Jonathan over the hubbub. “Delhi, actually. Be careful where you step,” I added as I moved to avoid a fresh cow pie. Jonathan watched as a woman scooped it up into a flat, reed basket.

“Ewww!”

“She will dry it, perhaps on a rooftop,” I explained. “In a few days, it will be dry enough to burn. It will cook a handful of rice, perhaps warm some tea, to feed her family.”

A few steps farther and we saw a man standing against the wall of a building. His robe was open. A boy, no older perhaps than six, knelt in front of the man, holding the man’s penis in his mouth. The boy moved his head, pressed his lips closed. The man grimaced in a rictus of pleasure. The boy wiped some residue off his lips. The man tossed the boy a copper coin before closing his robe and walking away. No one seemed to notice.

“Are you the Ghost of Christmas Present, or something?” Jonathan said. “I never did anything to deserve this!” He sounded angry. “This is what I hate! It’s not my fault it happens . . .”

I popped us to my favorite place: Los Glaciares National Park in Patagonia. It was mid-afternoon. High winds aloft created beautifully streamlined altocumulus standing lenticular clouds. The nearly freezing air falling from the face of the glacier competed with the heat of the sun. I pulled Jonathan until he sat beside me on a rock.

“Jonathan, none of this is your fault, nor did you do anything deserving of what you saw. It’s my fault for going too fast. I said there were things for you to see, and I was anxious for you to see them. Please forgive me.”

Jonathan didn’t answer immediately, and I allowed him time to think. Finally, he asked, “Were all those things real?

I nodded.

“Then you showed me things I needed to see. You showed me boys who froze to death, and told me they had found a good place. You showed me boys who could love one another the way I want to love, and didn’t have to tell me anything. You showed me a boy being forced to do sex stuff, and I interrupted before you told me the lesson.

“What was the lesson?” he asked.

“The little boy will take the copper coin to his mother, who will buy rice for his little sister. The little boy will do what he did many times each day in order to keep his little sister, his mother, and himself alive. He, like the boys in the Russian prison, wants to live.”

I paused for a moment. “However, I see that in a few weeks a man will beat the boy rather than pay him. The boy will die from the beating. Without him to support them, the little sister, and then the mother, will die. They will be taken up by Shashthi, a Hindu goddess, to a place of rejoicing.”

I looked at Jonathan and asked, “What was the lesson?”

He thought for a moment.

“Sometimes,” Jonathan said, “sometimes bad things have to happen so that good things can happen. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“It often seems that way,” I said. “Part of my job is to figure out when it’s true, and to let things happen. No matter how painful they may seem. Sometimes that hurts, deeply.”

“Am I one of those times?” Jonathan asked.

“Your story is still being written,” I said. “But I do not think so.”

* * * * *

Oak and Willow were waiting. In fact, they’d not moved, nor had the sun. Jonathan and I had moved in n0 time, and returned in less than the blink of an eye.

“Jonathan, you have accepted what has happened to you today with unusual equanimity.” I giggled. “A lot of people would have run away screaming as soon as I morphed in the cafeteria. You’ve traveled between countries in the blink of an eye, seen things that most people would never see, and accepted that Oak and Willow and I are boys who live in trees.

“Further,” I said, “I believe not only that you want to have sex with Willow, but also that you can feel what Willow is feeling about you—the feeling that he, too would like to have sex with you. Am I right?”

Jonathan didn’t hesitate. “Whittaker? The boys on the beach? They had no trouble expressing their desire or fulfilling it. I do not think I can be less honest than they. Yes,” he looked at Willow. “I would like to have sex with Willow, and when I look at him, I feel his desire. How is that possible?”

It was not easy to answer that question. I remembered that in the Moscow prison, his breath had made a fog in the cold. That should not have happened; he should not have been able to interact with that reality. Did that mark him as someone with powers? If so, was he, would he be, an ally? Could he be an enemy? Lucas had warned us that some of the gods might attack through surrogates.

“Jonathan, we dryads are demi-gods, and have been given powers appropriate to and proportional to our status. You are getting powers, too. I can see that. I do not know who or what you are. I do not know why you have powers. I do not know what your powers are. I do know that it was right for me to visit you today and to show you what you saw.”

“I’m a god?” Jonathan whispered.

“Or a tree,” Willow said, and then giggled.

Jonathan looked at Willow and smiled. “If I’m to be a tree, what kind of tree would I be?”

Willow giggled again. He pursed his lips, and pretended to think about the question. “Perhaps Prunus serotina, the wild cherry, for I see wildness in you, and you are a virgin.”

“I think Willow is right,” I said. “You have a huge energy inside you that begs to be released.”

“And the virgin part?” Jonathan whispered.

“Oh, I can help you with that,” Willow said. He stood, took Jonathan’s hand, and kissed his cheek.

Lucas’ Perspective

Whittaker was waiting to introduce Jonathan when Jonathan and Willow joined Cedar (a Cryptomeria japonica) and me on the patio the next morning.

Willow looked frazzled. I sent a ??? to him.

“Whittaker was right,” Willow said as he plopped into a seat. “Energy.”

“And no longer a virgin,” Jonathan said. He smiled, kissed Willow on top of his head, and sat beside him.

Cedar brought a platter of food, and went back to the kitchen. Before he returned, Jonathan spoke. “Whittaker told me something was supposed to happen that didn’t happen. It was something that was supposed to make me not want to kill myself. Do you know what it was?”

“I think I do, Jonathan,” I said. “We’re going to have a visitor in a moment. He will explain.”

Cedar had just returned with a tray of pastries when the oaks rustled, and an old man appeared at the edge of the patio.

Cedar and Willow stood and bowed. Jonathan quickly followed their example. I stood and bowed, too, although I knew who the man was. He is much lower on the hierarchy than I am, I thought, yet he is so very important to this moment. I know what he will say, and I fear it.

After the man had taken a seat and been served coffee, he spoke.

“I am Eleos. For some thousands of years I have been the spirit of Compassion.” He chuckled. “Compassion grew in the minds of the earliest people. In fact, I suspect that compassion in the form of love of parent for child and the feeling that comes from shared suffering was present in the early hominid ancestors of humans and is present in your cousins, the chimpanzees, bonobos, and others. Like many of the gods and spirits who came from primal needs, I am older than Zeus. Much older.

“I no longer want this task. I have searched for years to find a successor but it was not until I saw you, Jonathan, that I knew who it was to be.

“I’ve been watching you at the temple of healing—the hospital—where you give of your time and energy. I have seen you share the sorrow of families. I have seen you share their joy, as well. I have seen you cry at the death of a child you did not know. I have seen you laugh with children as you try to make their time in the hospital less unpleasant.

“I have felt you wishing you could do more to help, but also I saw you happily doing the tasks you were assigned, even though they were dirty and hard.

“I felt your arrival, yesterday, and would have come then, but you and Whittaker were already in Moscow.

Eleos laughed. “And I didn’t want to interrupt you last night. So, I told Lucas I would be here this morning.

“Sometimes, Jonathan, wishes do come true. You are a worthy successor, and I give my powers to you, to do the things you have wished to do.”

A light left Eleos and moved toward Jonathan. It moved slowly enough that Jonathan could have avoided it. He seemed to understand and accept what was happening, although I felt a little fear, but also something else: wonder? hope? Willow felt it, as well. He reached for Jonathan’s hand and grasped it.

“Will you tell us where you will go, now?” I asked the once and former Eleos.

“Lucas, I’m sorry, but I may not do that,” Eleos said. Then he laughed. It was a joyous laugh, and it seemed that his eyes twinkled. “I have seen it, however, and I have seen others I have known, others who have left this reality—including a silver-haired boy who looks a great deal like you, Lucas—and who sends his love and his approval to you.

“Do not fear for us, do not mourn us, but be happy for us.”

At that instant, Eleos disappeared.

Jonathan had sat quietly through this. I looked closely. He was glassy-eyed. His lips were parted, and he was breathing in shallow gasps. He was not in distress, so Willow and I waited until he closed his mouth, shook his head, and looked at Willow and then at me.

“You know, Jonathan,” I said, “that boys who live in trees, titans and gods, and the mind-reading you and Willow have done is not part of the world in which you grew up.”

Whittaker had told me that Jonathan was a smart boy. Jonathan nodded. “I guess I knew that, but it’s different hearing you say it. Whittaker said you had the memories—and I’ve figured out, you have the powers, too—of a titan. And now I have the memories and powers of a god?”

“Um, spirit, actually, although the difference is only important in the Court of Zeus, on Olympus. And just powers. Probably not memories.”

Willow had sensed Jonathan’s confusion, his fear, and his sense of wonder. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “We’ll all be here to help you.”

Jonathan seemed to settle down at that. I described my relationship with Zeus, and explained that Zeus would probably consider Jonathan to be in my camp. Jonathan accepted that easily—I did read him to be sure, because of its importance.

“Powers? What can I do,” Jonathan asked. “I mean, besides . . .” He looked at Willow, and blushed.

Cedar had brought another tray of food. “Are you guys going to eat,” he said, “or should I take this down the lane and feed it to the goats?”

I apologized, asked Cedar to sit, filled a plate with fruit and hot biscuits, and passed the plate to Jonathan. Willow offered him butter and sorghum molasses. Cedar got over being upset with us.

While we ate, Willow, Cedar, and I told Jonathan about some of his powers. I cautioned him about translocating to a time or place with which he was not familiar, and suggested he be circumspect when reading people, especially mundanes.

“What will be my job?” he asked.

Willow and Cedar looked blank. I probably wasn’t much different. “Actually,” I said, “we don’t know. I didn’t know what my job would be when I first arrived with the Attributes and Authorities of Prometheus. In fact, I didn’t have them all, at first. It took a while to learn them. And, it took several weeks and quite a few discussions with the gods before I figured out what my job was.

“Remember, please, that Willow said they—the dryads—would help you. I will, too, and I suspect there will be others—elder gods—who will want to meet you.

“While you are learning, I would like for you to live here. Willow must remain near his tree, and must spend some of his time in the tree.” I knew that would seal the argument.

Willow did convince Jonathan that he should work with the dryads in the vineyards, and that Willow, himself, must return to his tree that night. Willow was perceptive enough that he didn’t invite Jonathan to his tree, and unselfish enough to make sure that Jonathan met another dryad—an Oak—with whom to spend that night.

The next morning, Jonathan looked as frazzled as had Willow the previous day. Oak looked—smug, I suppose. Jonathan accepted coffee from Cedar, who had spent the night with me. Jonathan laced the coffee liberally with cream and sugar and drank half the cup without stopping.

“Hot!” he said, and fanned his lips.

The dryad-of-the-day, a Birch, topped off the cup. “And too much cream and sugar. You’ll not taste the coffee!”

“How was your night, Jonathan? Did you sleep well?” I asked.

Jonathan wasn’t sure how to interpret that question. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Jonathan, do you think for a minute I don’t know how you spent the night?”

Then, I got serious, and tried to communicate that to him. “Jonathan? You must know that all the boys, and I, are gay. If we tease you a little about you and Willow two nights ago, and last night how you and Oak got along, it’s because we love you and them, and we are free to talk about things that are taboo in your world.”

“Why is it so different, here?” Jonathan asked.

“Jonathan, the biggest reason is that the Universal Fundamentalist Church does not exist in this world. That church is so powerful, its leaders are so good at what they do, its members are so docile and trusting, that the power of their minds is creating a reality in which their rules are the rules. Just like the law of gravity is a rule. If they are not stopped, they may strip away that reality into its own little bubble. And that bubble would be worse than any hell ever imagined.

“They are so anti-science that they would probably fall back into the dark ages. They are so authoritarian, they would probably create a religious dictatorship that would eventually consume the western world. They are so dominated by men that women would sink into slavery worse than in any of the Muslim nations, today. Without the balance provided by the so-called western powers, the Chinese communists would likely take over a third of the world, and the Muslims the remaining third.

“Does any of that make sense?”

Jonathan thought for a minute. “Is this like multiple universes, like in that TV show, when all the ships from different universes came to the same place because of a space warp or something? Where Picard was sometimes captain, and Riker was sometimes captain?”

I didn’t know what TV show he was referring to, but I grasped what he was trying to say.

“Very much like that, I think,” I said. “I can travel to at least two realities. This one and the one you lived in—which is the one I lived in before Prometheus gave me his powers.”

“Can I do that?”

“Probably,” I said. “But I’d like to take you the first couple of times, and then monitor you just to be sure. I’ve been told it can be dangerous if you don’t know where you’re going.”

Jonathan asked the most important question. “What am I supposed do about it? And, will you help with that, too?”

“Jonathan? I asked pretty much the same questions when I first came here: what was to be my job, and who would help. Every day I find new answers to those questions. In fact, I think you’re one of those answers; I think part of my job is to help you.

“And, I think you’re an answer to the second question; I think you will help me.”

I stepped around the table, took Jonathan’s hands, and pulled him to his feet. Still holding his hands, I looked deeply into his eyes and his mind, and opened myself to him.

“Will you trust me and accept my trust and love?” I asked. “Will you accept my help and the help of those who are allied with me? Will you help us?”

Jonathan’s eyes glistened a bit, but he didn’t cry.

“When my Reverend talked to me, he seemed to see inside me, just like you do. But all he saw was evil—even though he never said exactly what it was—and all he did was tell me to repent. He never offered his trust.” Jonathan blushed, and then said, “Or his love. And he never asked, he just told.

“Yes, Lucas, I will trust you. I . . . it may be a while before I can love you . . . I hope that’s okay. I will accept your help and I will help you.”

I’m not sure who initiated the hug, but it was a good hug, and it sealed our bargain.

Chapter End Note: Whittaker’s love of bacon, almost a need, reminded me of the case of a boy who ate ants. A smart doctor did a series of blood tests, and discovered a deficiency in the boy’s blood chemistry that he was trying, unconsciously, to solve by eating ants. I took a soil sample from near Whittaker’s tree back to my reality and had it analyzed by a county extension agent. He said that the soil was deficient in potassium. Potassium is just below sodium in the periodic table of elements. It was clear that Whittaker was trying to make up for his tree’s potassium deficiency with salty bacon. With the help of a couple of the dryads, I added potassium along the fall line of Princeton Gold, but still offered Whittaker bacon when he visited.