Twists Of Time

Casey stood looking at the material on his bed.  It was weird to him to see it.  Everything else in the room was perfectly clear to his eyes, but that pile of fabric was distorted somehow like an overhead projection at school when the teacher forgets to focus the lens.  It was just a blob of gray stuff on the bed.  He reached out carefully to touch it and it suddenly changed color.  Now it was black and shiny, but still cloth, not like vinyl or leather.  He unfolded the cloth and found the hole for his head that Mitch had told him about.  He slipped the giant black satin tent over his shoulders and as his head went through the neck hole, the outfit took shape.

 Casey stared at himself in the floor length mirror that was in the room.  More to the point he stared at the wizard's clothing he was wearing.  He had to admit he certainly looked the part of a wizard now.  The black satin outfit had a form fitting top with a lace up front that although it was laced and tied still exposed a bit of his chest and stomach.  The sleeves were long, but split on the bottom from the elbow to the wrist.  From inside the black satin sleeve, a silver satin sleeve with an enormous opening at the end dangled down.  When he held his arms out to the side, it looked almost like he had silver wings.  There was a similar split in the black satin from his waist down revealing silver satin once again.  Unlike the sleeves however, this time there were no stitches in place connecting the black outer layer to the silver beneath it.  In fact, as Casey turned, the black and silver flared out revealing a good portion of his legs.  Over all of this was a black satin cloak with a silver lining.  When Casey stood perfectly still, the cloak fell around him in such a way that he was completely enclosed within it.  All in all, he thought he looked pretty wizardly, if there was such a thing.

 Walking out the door of his room, Casey wondered where to look for Mitch.  Once again an arrow appeared on the stone floor in front of him.  “Thank you, castle,” Casey said out loud.

 “Did you thank the castle?”  Casey turned to see a girl about the same age as him staring at him.  She was dressed up sort of like Wonder Woman only not as colorful.  “I'm Kim,” the girl announced.  “I'm your muscle.”

 “My what?” Casey blurted.

“Officially I'm supposed to be the barbarian, but you only need one because you don't have the muscle to do the job by yourself,” she answered with a sneer.  “You do look pretty wimpy at that.”

 “Yeah, and you look pretty trashy,” Casey snapped back with one of his mother's comments.  “Girls aren't supposed to go around showing off like that unless they're.....”

 “Unless they're what, little boy?” Kim demanded as her hand shot out and closed around Casey's throat.

 “Unless they're my barbarian,” Casey wheezed.  Kim dropped her hand and he fell to the floor gasping for breath.  “I'm sorry, Kim.  I'm not very good around girls.”

 “That apparently is an understatement,” she said icily.

 “I am apologizing here,” he pointed out.  “Mitch says you're my partner on this mission thing.  I would like it if we could try to be friends.”

 “Well, since you're trying to be nice about it,” Kim thought it over out loud.  “I'll give you a chance.”  She reached down and grabbed his arm, pulling him back up to a standing position.  “Let's go find the weirdo and get back to training.”

“I'll thank you to not call me a weirdo, Miss Butch.”  The two kids looked up to see Mitch walking toward them.  The odd thing was that he was walking on the ceiling.  He looked at them with a yawn and said, “Yes, I can do this because I'm the Time Wizard.  Da....Casey will be able to do it too once he makes his staff.”  At the boy's intense blush, he added, “I said staff not stiff, you little sex fiend.”

 “I'm not a sex fiend!” Casey declared defensively.

 “You're the one with sex on the brain all the time,” Mitch responded flatly.

 “Can we not discuss this in front of a girl?”

 “I have a name you know,” Kim snapped as she popped Casey on the back of the head with her hand.

“Sorry, Kim, but I still don't want to talk about..... that stuff in front of you,” Casey explained as he rubbed his head.

 “Mitch, am I back in the gym today for more training?” Kim asked ignoring Casey now.  When the man nodded, she walked off mumbling, “Are we sure I need him for this?”

 “Well, you two aren't getting off on the right foot, are you?” Mitch questioned.

 “Don't give her any ideas,” Casey blurted.  “She's already choked me and slapped me up side the head.  I don't want those big boots of hers stomping my feet next.”

 “She's not your enemy, you know,” Mitch pointed out.

 “Oh yeah?  Tell her that then,” Casey barked.  “What do I have to do now?”

 Mitch walked down the wall and onto the floor to stand beside Casey before answering the boy.  “It's time to start your training, but first you need a staff.”

“You mean one of those big sticks like the guys in the pictures use?”

 “That's exactly what I mean,” Mitch confirmed.  “The cute little wand thing like in Harry Potter is a joke to real magic.  Around here, you do like Teddy Roosevelt said.  You talk softly but carry a big stick.”

 “You don't have one,” Casey pointed out.

 Mitch held his hand out in the air in front of him.  Suddenly a tall staff appeared in his hand.  It was light colored wood and looked like it had been carved by hand by someone that didn't know much about woodworking.  Mitch released his hand and instead of falling the big stick simply disappeared.

 “You don't have to see it for it to be here with me,” Mitch told him.  “You'll be able to do the same thing once you've made your own staff.”  He stopped suddenly as he looked at Casey.  “Spin around for a minute,” he told the boy.  When Casey did, Mitch was frowning.  “Well, it's a lot flashier than I would wear, but then this is you we're talking about.  I will admit that I wish I'd thought of the split at the bottom though.  It can get incredibly hot around here in the summer.”

 “There are seasons here?” Casey asked.  He saw the look the older man gave him and tried to explain himself.  “You said that we are at the center of time.  I just assumed that there wouldn't be any movement of time here in that case.”

“Well, that is a reasonable idea to have, but it's wrong,” Mitch told the boy.  “Time moves here just as it would anywhere else.  It's just that here it moves independently of everywhere else in the universes.”

 “Universes?” Casey asked, emphasizing the plurality of the word.

 “Yes, there are more than one,” Mitch answered.  “Universes is probably the wrong word for it, though.  Dimensions would be a better term.  Universes implies that they all exist on the same plane and that you could get to another one with a space ship.  You can't.  The only connection is this place.”

 “Emifornec?”

 “No, more specific,” Mitch corrected.  “This castle connects to all dimensions.  That's why I can walk on the ceiling if I want without my skirt coming over my head.”  Casey couldn't stop his giggle.  “What's so funny?”

 “You just said you wear a skirt, like a girl,” Casey told him, still laughing.

 “Yeah, well so do you,” the man snapped.  Casey stopped giggling and looked down at himself.  “You can't change the design now.  You've already made your choice, and the outfit will stay that way until you leave the Tower to return to your natural home.  Now it's time to take you to the Dragonwood Forest.”

 “Dragonwood Forest?  Is that where I will get my stick?” Casey asked.

 “It's a staff, and yes, that's where you go,” Mitch replied.  “The door is around here somewhere,” he mumbled as he kept trying doors only to close them again.  As if answering the question that Casey had not asked out loud, Mitch let him see the next time he opened a door.  There was a blank stone wall behind the door.  “That's what happens if you open a door that you don't need to open.”

“Well, why don't you ask the castle to tell you where the door is?” Casey proposed.

 “Which is the right door?” Mitch called out in a huff.  The door next to the one he had just opened lit up.  Mitch opened it to find another blank wall.  “You rotten old termite eaten pile of rubble,” Mitch grumped.  He turned to walk away and stepped into a wall again.  “I hate this old mausoleum.”

 “That was the door to your right,” Casey pointed out.  Mitch glared at him.  “Castle, could you please show me the door to the Dragonwood Forest?”  Three doors away from them in the direction they were heading a light suddenly flashed.

 “I would have gotten there eventually,” Mitch griped rubbing his nose where it had hit the wall.

 “You would have gotten there faster if you had asked nicely and been a little more specific though, wouldn't you?” Casey asked.

 “I'm the teacher, you're the student,” Mitch practically yelled.  “Don't start barking orders to me until you are in the position to do so.”

 “I wasn't barking orders,” Casey defended himself.

 “Don't start either,” Mitch snapped.  “I don't have to listen to you here; you have to listen to me.  You'd better start doing it too, mister.”

 “Yes sir,” Casey whispered fearfully.  He had seen the sparks fly around Mitch's head as he got angry.

 “Well, what are you waiting for?  Get in there and make yourself a staff,” Mitch ordered.

 “How do I do that?” Casey asked timidly.

 “Find a tree the right size, cut it down, skin the bark off of it, and then come back through the door,” Mitch rattled off in exasperation.

 “What do I cut the tree down with?” Casey asked.

 “Your knife, of course,” Mitch sighed exaggeratedly.

 “I don't have a knife,” Casey pointed out.

 “I just gave you one a few....” Mitch started but suddenly stopped when he reached into a hidden pocket of the robes he wore.  “I guess I didn't give it to you yet.  Well, if you hadn't distracted me so, I would have.  Here take it, and hurry it up.  I have other stuff to do around here besides nursemaid you, you know.”

 Casey took the offered knife and ran for the lit up door.  He opened it and slammed it shut behind him, glad to be away from the irritable man.  He also didn't want to cry in front of the grownup, since boys his age weren't supposed to do that anymore.  Once inside the door though, he couldn't stop the tears.  He fell onto the ground crying softly and wondering why he had ever agreed to go through that door in his bedroom with a crazy man that hated him.

 His tears finally stopped, and Casey started looking around.  He was in a forest full of fruit trees.  The fruit was unlike anything he had ever seen before though.  They were enormous for starters, and they were striped like a watermelon, but the colors were red and orange.  Casey had enough sense to know that it could be dangerous eating something unknown to you.  It might be poisonous, or at the very least it could be something you are allergic to and are unaware of it.  The problem was he was starving.

 He wandered around looking at trees hoping that if he concentrated on his assignment he would forget about his empty stomach.  Yeah, right.  The more fruit trees he saw, the hungrier he got.  This was getting to be torture. 

 Finally he found a tree that he thought was just the right size.  He took the knife out that Mitch had given him and started sawing away at the trunk.  Even though it was only a few inches in diameter, the tree was amazingly hard to cut.  He eventually got the small tree separated from its roots and then he started cutting off the branches.  As he did, he noticed something strange in the tree about six feet up from where he had cut it.  There was a giant tooth embedded in the trunk of the little sapling.  Casey decided it looked pretty cool, so he cut the tree off again just above this, making his staff roughly six feet tall.  All that was left was to peel the bark away from the trunk.  That turned out to take the longest time yet.  He was about half done with this final job when hunger finally overcame his better judgment.  He picked one of the fruits from a nearby tree.  This would not go down in history as one of his better moments.

 Knowing that the fruit might not be good for him to eat was the only thing that helped him out later.  He cut it up into small pieces and only sampled the smallest one.  The instant he bit into it, liquid fire exploded in his mouth and down his throat.  He couldn’t spit the offending thing out of his mouth fast enough.  When he spit it out however, actual fire came from his mouth, just as if he were a dragon.  These flames ignited the pieces of the fruit on the ground in front of him.  They in turn lit up low hanging branches of the tree he was sitting under.

 Casey grabbed his half finished staff and started running trying to escape the flames that grew more intense by the second as more fruit on more trees flared.  Soon the forest was an inferno.  The smoke was burning his eyes and lungs, which were still in pain from the fruit he had had in his mouth.  Only his fear of the fire kept him from curling up on the ground and screaming as the liquid that had gone down his throat continued its way through him.  Casey finally reached the edge of the forest.  All that lay before him was desert.  He ran out into the sand a good ways away from the burning trees and collapsed as the pain inside him intensified.  He writhed and screamed out as the burning flowed through his system.

 Meanwhile, back in the castle, Kim was fuming at Mitch.  “I don’t care if he is a little wuss, he doesn’t deserve that,” she was saying.  “You’ve got to help him.”

 “He was dumb enough to eat dragonfruit,” Mitch countered.  “This is self inflicted misery.”

 “You didn’t tell him he couldn’t eat it, and you didn’t let him eat before you sent him in there,” Kim pointed out.  “Get your butt in there and help him.  His screams are giving me a headache.”

 “Yes, ma’am,” Mitch said sarcastically.  “Am I allowed to wait until the fire burns its way away from the door?”

 “Do you want me to go?” the girl demanded.  “Honestly, a grown man refusing to help a little boy in pain.  I never thought I would live to see the day.”

 “You know something, you would have made a perfect mother,” Mitch told her sharply.  “You’re great at guilt trips.”

 “Me with kids, that’s a scary thought,” she returned.  “Wait a minute.  What do you mean I would have?”

 “Forget I said that,” Mitch instructed.

 “Not likely,” Kim told him with a frown.

 “Well, it will at least have to wait until I am done playing Fireman Fred,” Mitch told the girl.

 

 ***************************************************

 

Casey woke up and realized that he couldn’t see a thing.  He had his eyes open, but all he could see was a grayish blur.  He didn’t have a chance to say anything before he heard Mitch’s voice.

 “You’re not blind, you’re encased in ice,” the man said.   “We had to bring your body temperature down after you sucked down all that dragonfruit juice.  Since you are awake you must be feeling better.”

“I’m still burning… inside me,” Casey told him.  He had almost said where the pain and burning was, but he caught himself in time.  He did not want to tell this grouchy weirdo that his boy part was on fire from the inside out.

 “Well as soon as you pee a couple of times that pain should go away,” Mitch told him.  “It’s going to hurt like nobody’s business when you go though.”

 “Thanks for that encouraging word,” Casey said sarcastically.  “Hurt or not, I got to go and I mean now.”

 “So take the ice pack off your head, get up, and go,” Mitch said.  “I’ve got better things to do than take care of you.  I have to go heal a forest of trees that burned down because of a stupid boy.”

 “I don’t care what you do or say, just get out,” Casey ordered as he jumped from the bed.  Mitch left and a few seconds later more screams could be heard echoing throughout the castle.