Tim: Chapter Nine

Tim

August 6, 1900

We had been aimlessly wandering through the woods for quite some time now. I was getting a bit irritated with the lack of information we were finding, there seemed to be nothing in the forest that would be of good use to us. However, I was renewed in my desperation to find James by Thea’s attempts. She was incredibly focused; her furrowed brow shaded her searching eyes as she scoured the area. What were we even looking for? There could hardly be anything to find.

“Thea, we need more than this,” I pleaded, stopping. I gestured around me with wide arms, showing off the seemingly endless forest that we had condemned ourselves to search.

“Tim, we don’t have more than this,” She looked at me helplessly, distraught. I sighed in agreement, and we continued our trek.

“Let me know if you find anything,” I told her after a minute, as an apology of sorts for saying that our efforts were in vain. As inevitably fruitless as they were, I shouldn’t have pointed out the futility of our actions.

“Of course,” Thea agreed with a kind of distant tone. She continued on without missing a beat. I took this as forgiveness; she had never been one to hold grudges.

She suddenly darted down a narrow path of some sort, and I quickly followed. Intent on finding whatever it was she could possibly be seeking, she ducked down to inspect a poor, bent poppy.

I strayed behind for a moment to take a gander at the flower as well, to see if I could identify what she had been scrutinizing. Finding nothing but a crushed flower, I caught up to Thea. She was standing, dumbstruck, in the middle of what could have only been a fight or a chase. There were tracks everywhere, from man and beast alike. The scene was speckled with traces of dried blood. I was unsettled, to be sure, but was mortified when I saw what had stopped Thea in her tracks. It was a shoe, scuffed and muddied. Our missing comrade’s name was on the inside.

Silence dominated the conversation. I tried to piece together the jumbled jigsaw of possibilities that the scene posed. The blood. The dog prints. The shoe marks of someone else. How did James fit into the picture? Was he being chased? By whom? My head swam. I closed my eyes in concentration. I replayed the last time I saw James. We had been eating pasta in the dining room, everything had seemed perfectly ordinary. He had laughed and joked as if it were any old day. Perhaps it had been any old day? At least at that point. What had he been wearing? The same shoes that matched the bloody, muddy one we had found; the same pair he wore every day, and a button down shirt with a single outlying brass button near the top. I remember noticing and commenting on it, but do not recall the response. It must not have been important. Then what had happened? We had gone to sleep, I think. Nothing more was said or done that night (at least to my knowledge). Well, I suppose Thea had snuck out. I had tried to prank her by telling her that James had departed because I knew as little about his absence as she did. In retrospect, that had not been the wisest decision. Yes, it had offered a reason for Thea to hope for a few more days, but at what cost? Her ignorance had preserved her spirits, but eventually, the dark reality of the situation had dashed any shred that may have remained. Cruel knowledge is a vice that never tells when honesty or fallacy should prove to be the correct choice.

It’s going to be all right, everything will turn out. I said this reassurance aloud, so it might help her too. Tears wet her cheeks, worry creased her brow, fear turned down the corners of her mouth and vandalized her complexion with spotty, nervous blush. I could not bear the candor of her expression. Everything she felt; all the fear, worry, guilt, and pain carved her face into a contorted look of honest emotion.

“This is my fault,” she broke down. I quickly gathered her up in my arms and murmured empty promises of James’s safety. It could never have been your fault, you have done nothing wrong, I told her again and again. Between gasping sobs, she managed to get out that James had proclaimed his love for her again the night he had disappeared, and that once more she had not requited. She was utterly convinced that he had gotten himself in trouble as a rebound of rejection. I continued my mumbling, but with less energy.

It was a possibility. As much as it broke my heart to think that Thea might be responsible, there was a chance that this could have sent James over the deep end. After all, he was a bit fragile and prone to rash, sudden decisions. For both of their sakes, though, I hoped with all my might that it was for some other purpose that he had gone.

Thea’s sobs had dampened to gentle weeping. I asked if she was alright, she shook her head no. I started for home, getting us away from that terrible place. I’m not sure why, but I picked up the shoe as we left.

That night, I made another inspection of James’s room. I scoured every nook and cranny, up and down, side to side. I sifted through piles of books and papers, checked the ornamentation on the walls and furniture for trap doors or secret hiding places, rudely disrupted the order of his boudoir. As before; there was nothing to find but old letters and Dickens, clothing, and simply tasteful decor rather than intentionally placed concealing articles. Disappointment washed in waves through my brain with every cast of my gaze around the room. I felt sick to my stomach. Everything about the empty, unhelpful space seemed to mock me. Every inch seemed normal, the belongings clearly unaffected by their owner’s absence. The scene told me that there was nothing wrong, the utter mistruth of which was wildly insulting. I quickly took my leave, disgusted.

Sleep never overtook me. Those days, it rarely did. For Timothy Waterburg, sleep was something like ice cream; unnecessary, yet desired, and constantly denied. It was something to be earned. For a week or so, such a luxury was too expensive. It took too much effort to calm my mind to a docile point of languid contemplation.

So I stayed up. Cooking, eating, dancing, writing sonnets for nobody. Sometimes, I would be moved by sudden artistic passion and I would paint my emotions into great works of chaotic complexity. This was my favorite midnight venture, though precious and rare. Some of the pieces I created were beyond even my comprehension; they were unparalleled contortions of realistic imagination that went somewhere that I could not follow. A few of the more cheerful paintings adorned the walls, though most were hidden in a broom closet.

For the past few nights, however, I had been utterly useless. I burned my cooking and had no appetite besides, my writing was heartless and empty. I found neither solace nor frustration in any of my usual occupations. It was more than irksome; I was completely idle. Stillness did not suit me all too well. It made me think too much. Every now and again, of course, it’s important to stop and think. But when there is nothing to do but watch my thoughts pass by, my mind shows it’s massive capacity for complex oddity. I argue and agree within myself. I often understand very little of what goes on up there. How perplexing it is, to not even fully comprehend the musings of one’s own mind. My head is an enigma of tangible impossibility. Therefore, the painful stagnicity of my situation was torturous. What else could I do but think? I wandered into the deepest, darkest depths of thought where the ugly creatures of mangled, half-formed ideas and guilt romped joyously in my misery. I heard the voices of reason stifled to silence as my imagination ran rampant. In a midway conscious state induced by lack of sleep, designs of bittersweet wonder came to me. Colossal towers of glass loomed by the dozens in a nightmarish dreamscape of distorted reality, where everyone drove in metallic transports and made no expression to each other. Their noses point either up or down; faces never oriented towards the eyes of another. Cut off, unreal, these people lost their humanity. How could they exist for each other if they did not have themselves? With all of their coldness, I was reminded of the fashion of my own forgotten family, who never conveyed themselves, but rather their current state of mind. I never met my siblings as characters; just as embodiments of whatever emotion consumed them at the moment. And so were the vacant looks of the passerby in this infected daydream. Sometimes I wondered if my wizard eyes were showing me something of the future; this had happened already on a couple occasions. It was, however, always impossible to tell. I had encountered other instances of imagination that consisted of great volcanoes and mountains of fire corrupting the earth’s surface, making it completely uninhabitable. Scaly, dragon-like birds, adapted to the smoldering heat and ash, roamed the skies. Now, I highly doubt this ultimate outcome, and so cannot safely assume that all my visions of incomprehensible oddity were premonitions.

Obviously, in this time, I accomplished less than nothing in the office of finding James. Every time my mind turned upon the subject of my friend, I began to fret and worst-case scenario so rapidly that I thought my poor brain might explode. So I satisfied my racing mind and irrational insomnia with ideas of preposterous proportion. In retrospect, this may not have proven to be wise. I detached myself, almost, from reality; extricated my focus from the present world around me. Productivity was impossible, and greatly undesired. The world was too heavy and dark for me to find the lightness in, and so I created my own little careless worlds to dwell in.

That one night, though, after we had found the shoe, something changed within me. I made Thea rest; it was pointless for her to stay awake with me. She was traumatized and in need of recuperation. I was alone after hours again. This time, though, usual foolishness did not monopolize my thoughts. I focused.

James was closer than family. Not just compared to the estranged relationship that I was accustomed to in my family, but James was actually more of a part of our unit. We were a team; we chose each other because we clicked. The amount of trust between the three of us was immeasurable. The question was not whether or not he kept secrets; it was a matter of why. The most I had kept from either of my beloved comrades was the contents of their birthday presents, and not even that half the time. Since we had known each other from such a young, we were there for the grand majority of each other’s lives. Every up and down was lived by all of us. I could only draw the conclusion, then, that James was not the cause of his disappearance.

Therefore, there would need to be a third party. Now who, pray tell, would want James for anything? We did not have masses of money, which is the only thing that humans seem to care for. They could have been after our magic. We hadn’t received a ransom note, meaning James had been taken because of who he is. A Shadow Thief.

In a moment, a flicker of an idea darted through my mind. It was painful to grasp, but the most probable answer to a most pressing question. Could it be possible that the government that had once banished us had returned to finish what they started? Did they still view James as a threat? In that case, there would be absolutely no way for us to find him. Other than Thea and I not being able to return to the magical realm to rescue him, the authorities would keep this a secret from the public. The only way to find out would be through backstreet connections and old acquaintances, of which very few of mine would be useful. Most of my people were for magical ingredients for potions and such, not for information. I’d rather distance myself from the news of the world above.

Perhaps I’d call Linda? She always seemed to have stuff going on. She ran a small store in the next town over that sold all sorts of baubles and trinkets, all with divine properties, of course. What were her opinions on politics again? Oh dear no, she used to work for the King. She would protect any details she had out of devotion.

Chad? He was a rather sketchy character, but that also came with an influx of street knowledge. He had been banished for rebelling against the monarchy; I’m sure that he would be overjoyed to disclose some confidence if it concerned the fae government at all.

I could visit Angelica. She was far from angelic; she sold questionably destructive spells that were designed primarily for chaos. In the apocalypse, she would thrive. Though she was very much in the loop of things, the amount of news she would have about the goings-on up there would be very superficial and unimportant to me.

Who else was I acquainted with?? I was sure there had to be more informants than that in my repertoire. I knew dozens of magical shopkeepers, but not nearly enough people in the know.

Silver. Of course! How had I not thought of him before? He was a central point for all things mystical. I wasn’t sure how to find him; he was secretive and humble. He was a good man, I think, but with a lot of power that made him appear dangerous. A true mastermind, if anything.

If Silver knew nothing, I would move on to Chad, and then to Linda before asking Angelica. I quickly made a list of these names because it was about 3 am, and I knew I would soon forget otherwise.

“Better start looking,” I sighed to myself.