A CHRISTMAS FUGUE
STAVE II: THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
The light did not fade, but it did recede, until Kraden could see its source. It was like a man, but seemed insistent on not choosing a particular age to fall into. Its long white hair tumbled like an ambling waterfall from a face of astonishing youth, yet its arms and legs had the size and strength of a man at the height of his physique.
"Who… who are you?" Kraden demanded.
The Spirit seemed bemused by this question, and rather than try to answer, an unseen wind whirled its long hair about its face. When the ivory strands fell back again, the face was familiar indeed, as well as providing the OBHL all the more reason to enjoy this particular stave.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past," said a man who looked precisely like Picard. "And I have come back to you at the turn of the tide… no, wait… I have come back to guide you through your first journey."
"You're no ghost. You're that Piers fellow," said Kraden, frowning.
"He prefers Picard, and I am not he. I took his features so that you would stop trying to figure out who I might be, because there is no answer to that question, and it doesn't matter anyway," said the Spirit, matter-of-factly.
"Bah! You're a Lemurian, no one else would look so young and old at the same time," Kraden argued.
"Though I enjoy the irony, you remain wrong. Can we get on with things? There is better company on Christmas Eve than a grumpy unseasonal alchemist."
"You sound like him, too. And it's Alchemist. Capitalized," Kraden corrected him.
"Capital. Shall we go?" The Spirit who was so eerily like Picard drew a holly branch from the dark silver belt around his white-robed waist and moved to the door.
"You are the Spirit, then, whose coming was foretold to me?" asked Kraden, starting to believe it.
"Why does everyone insist on going the long way?" the Spirit grumbled. "Yes, I am, the Ghost of Christmas Past, no, not long past, your past, I am here for your welfare, and if you insist that a full night's sleep would be better for your welfare, try 'your redemption'. Now shall we get started?"
"Where are we going, then?" asked Kraden. "I hope not anywhere in the village outside. It's quite cold, and while my slippers are well-insulated with a polymer I invented, it really is-"
"Take heed! We go not to any such simple place as the outside of your house, Kraden. We go to your past." And the Spirit reached out with one hand, touched him on the chest, and the Spirit's light grew until the rest of the room seemed to be nothing but shadow in comparison. When it returned, it was not his bedroom, but the grounds of a large building, with a carpet of snow steadily being trampled by running and shouting children.
"This… this is Tolbi! Babi's palace, where I first learned about Alchemy! So many memories… can we go to the library? There are so many books I never read-"
"We are here for a different purpose, Kraden. Do you recognise any of these children?"
"Of course, of course! The students from Babi's academy. There's… there's Alejan and Kirck and... and Iodem, that little rascal who was always setting my toads free in the Lucky Fountain…"
"What is that on your cheek?" Kraden mumbled a response. "Sorry?"
"A melted snowflake!" he snapped, smothering his wistful smile with annoyance.
"Of course. And where would they all be going at a time like this?"
"Home, of course, most of them didn't come from Tolbi. They're going home for… for Christmas," said Kraden. He was bright enough to realise that he was supposed to be learning something from this, or be told something that they would teach him from later. Well, no Spirit was going to manipulate his emotions, no matter what-
A snowball interrupted his thoughts, striking the back of his head like a well-packed lightning bolt. Kraden whirled about as fragments rained around him, then reached out on impulse and watched as Alejan ran straight through his hand. "I thought as much. This is only memory." He turned on the Spirit, who was looking at the sky, waving his holly branch somewhat aimlessly and whistling something. Kraden would probably not have felt any better to know it was a Lemurian dancing tune.
"Hmm?" asked the Spirit, noticing Kraden's accusing stare. "Ready to go inside?"
"…What for?" he asked, suddenly derailed by the change of subject.
"There is one child who isn't going anywhere. One who is remaining at the school over the holidays. Alone, the way he likes it. And only too happy for the quiet studying time."
"Oh. …Yes, there is, isn't there?" He looked back at the receding children, approximating their ages. "I'm working on my Psy-Crystal locator, aren't I?"
A yellow flash illuminated one of the windows at the very ground level, suggesting something had just happened with great enthusiasm in the basement. "I think you just tried adding Laughing Mushroom to the mix," the not-quite-Picard agreed.
"It's Healing Mushroom. I should go tell… but I can't, can I?"
"No. But we'll go in anyway. Come along," said the Spirit. Kraden looked back at the children one last time, and might have murmured something exceptionally sentimental if he hadn't been struck by another snowball that time.
"Hah!" Kraden shouted, spinning and throwing back in the same direction. He marched over to the disturbed snowbank and triumphantly withdrew a disturbed Djinni. Well, yes, I know. Very well, a more disturbed Djinni. "I thought you might be somewhere around here. Always mucking about in things, aren't you?"
"Arr, we be multi-purpose elementals," said the Mercury Djinni, and none of them spoke like that except Hail, who was convinced that pirating was still a surviving and noble tradition.
"Get out of my past, you blue crab-frog, or I'll grind you through my Psynalyser like I asked to last month!" Kraden growled.
"The Djinni is here with me," said the Spirit. "And you may not harm her."
"I suppose I should have seen that coming. Get on with it, then!" The Spirit simply nodded in deference and led Kraden through the doors of the palace, but let Kraden take the lead once they were inside. By memory and instinct he marched through the halls, down stairs and around twisty corridors until they reached a place not unlike a much grander version of his workshop in Vale, obviously meant for a much larger number of people.
But there was only one there, a boy of perhaps twelve years. His brown hair, lighter than dark but darker than light, was streaked with soot, as was the rest of him. He didn't wear glasses, but something about the shape of his features was unmistakeably Kraden. He seemed to be sweeping something up.
"Kraden?" called a voice, and there was Babi, alive and rather younger-looking. "You're still here? All of your classmates have left."
"I have nowhere to go, nowhere I'd rather be, and you wouldn't believe the reaction I just got from a Laughing Mushroom when I added it to my-"
"Glad to hear it!" said Babi firmly, not waiting for Kraden to finish. "It's very heartening to see I have instilled a thirst for wisdom in even one of my students. You, Kraden, show great promise, and your decision to remain in the palace throughout Christmas is a sign that my hopes for you are not unfounded."
"Well, I was thinking of going to the Carol of Lights tomorrow-"
"An excellent chance to take a few field samples, you're right!"
"I mean, I'm not a bad tenor myself-"
"I'll prepare a few soil and water capsules, you get the thermograph and my wind-net."
"And I thought… Lord Babi?" The ruler of Tolbi had already left the room, humming to himself in a self-satisfied way.
"Quite an enthusiastic teacher," the Ghost commented.
"Indeed," Kraden said, in a faraway voice. "He showed me so much, taught me how to look for clues, gave me the lessons in life that I had never gained from my parents…"
"Ye are na soundin' 'specially thankful at the mom'nt, ye scurvy alchemist!" Hail observed.
"I was just remembering the Carol of Lights. I went every year, you know. That was my first great discovery, when I found that sometimes the songs seemed to cause Psynergy fluctuations…"
"And now you're wondering something else," the Spirit prompted.
"I'm wondering… if maybe I should have been paying closer attention to the songs than the air that carried them…" said Kraden.
"It couldn't be this easy…" the Spirit whispered to Hail, who shook her head in agreement.
"I might have discovered something even more. Oh, why didn't I ever study the singers? They might have been Adepts and not known it, they could have had entirely new forms of Psynergy! For all I know, that's the one part I've been missing in creating the Stone of Sages, some kind of music."
"It aren't," Hail stated flatly, and this time the Picard-Spirit nodded glumly.
"Another time, then?" asked the Spirit.
"What, are we done already?" asked Kraden, shaken out of his thoughts.
"Of course not," said the Spirit of Christmas Past, grinning. "I meant literally." And with a wave of his holly branch they were in a different place. It was not the same city as it was in the present, if 'present' still applied to Kraden, and he never got presents anyway, so who cares?
"Where are we? This is an inn… it is! It's old Fezz… Fozz… Faustus? What was his name?"
"You don't remember where we are?" asked the Spirit.
"Of course I do! Why, this is where I was first apprenticed, I was keeping the books for the innkeeper and trying to invent a heating system for his building…" They entered, again without bothering with the door, and found themselves in the middle of what had to be a party, because there weren't any riot police in the room.
"Arr! A party in the true spirit o' pirating!" said Hail approvingly.
"So many people," said the Spirit in Picard's shape. "Do you know them all?"
"Oh, yes, better than some of them know themselves!" said Kraden, who had lost enough of his gruff attitude in the face of so many memories. "There's Ouran, old Ouran who walked with two limps and ran the fresh produce market, and Davin, my best friend, who was always saying I should just ask the Spirits… not you, I presume… how they made gold and do it that way, and then there's Kiefer…"
"And who's that?" asked the Spirit. Kraden shook himself back into the world to follow Picard's pointing finger until he saw a young woman across the room. The roar of song and conversation seemed distant to him, watching the lady- and then he noticed himself, walking across the room, reading his book.
""But this cannot be my past. Clearly there is about to be a meeting, but I don't remember anyone like her in my life!" Kraden protested.
"Watch!" the Spirit hissed. And Kraden did watch as his younger self bumped into her by mistake and dropped his book. With a hurried apology, the youthful Kraden snatched the book back up and continued reading. Behind him, Davin swept in and asked the lady if she was all right, if there was anything he could do. She went with him, off into the crowd.
"What?" Kraden yelped. "You mean that was supposed to be my life-changing encounter and he got it instead?!"
"Avast with the ownership! Ye didnae look up long enough ter see who ye was talkin' to, and that's what happened!" Hail admonished him. "T'weren't yers ter start with."
"You didn't see much of Davin after that party, did you?" asked the Spirit. Kraden thought back, still watching himself amble on without a glimmer of understanding of what had just happened.
"No. I don't suppose I did. Never thought about it, I suppose," said Kraden.
"Well. Let us see another time that could have been your past." The Spirit waved its holly branch yet again, and they were in a house. The same young lady, now not quite so young, sat on a sofa between a blazing fire and a Christmas tree, with children on either side. Davin entered too, and Kraden broke down.
"I see it," he said, his voice cracking. "I understand now. The joy, the warmth…"
"It could be this easy," said the Spirit to Hail, grinning.
"It should have been mine!" Kraden shouted in fury and despair.
"No, it aren't," said Hail, and the Spirit sagged in disappointment. "Yer not 'xactly as brilliant as ye'd like us ter think, are ye?"
"What?" asked Kraden, baffled.
"Ye are na supposed to be sayin' 'that were mine and ye stole it', ye bearded twit! Yer supposed ter be sayin' 'good ter see they're so warm an' fuzzy-happy'!" Hail ranted.
"…I don't understand…" He looked back at the holiday scene in confusion, baffled enough that he didn't have any room left over to be angry. There was a wistfulness in his eyes too, like a Mercury Adept in a jail cell with a seaside view. The house and the family faded to shadows, and then he was in his room, alone.
"Do ye have any more o' that sparkly holly magic stuff?"
"I'm afraid he's run out of any useful Past to speak of. And we're obviously not done. Talk to… Coal, I believe."
"Arr!"
"Is that the same as yes?"
"Arr!"
"Is that the same as yes?"
The darkness of Kraden's room seemed all the more forbidding to him without the Spirit's light, and his mind was abuzz for the first time in years without a single thought of mixing oak bark with mayfly wings by the light of the half-moon.
"This looks like the place," said another familiar voice, somewhere else in the house. "Hey, he actually has food in the pantry."
"I'm about to appear with a celebratory feast and you're raiding his kitchen?"
"I have a thing for cold chicken."
"Oh, light the candles already."