Erin flopped back into the easy chair in his lounge with a heavy sigh. The last few years had been a rough patch, and he was getting haggard. His usually cheerful demeanor now put aside, he leaned forward to put his head in his hands and breathed deeply, suddenly looking his fifty plus years.
He thought aloud to no one in particular, “I don’t know how long I can do this.”
But a voice in his head answered anyway <Don’t worry, Erin. Relax, I’ll take good care of your family. Why don’t you get some sleep?>
“Why don’t you,” he said with serious snark in his voice, “make like a dildo at a homosexual orgy, and CRAM IT UP YOUR ASS!”
<Seriously, that’s your height of wit? No wonder you let me in so easily…>
“You’re like a persistent rash, irritating and constantly itchy, but ultimately harmless.”
<SHUT IT! Badger boi, do you think I enjoy being stuck in here with you? You are the most utterly annoying host I could possibly imagine. Just GO TO SLEEP already.>
For the briefest moment, Erin felt his consciousness fade, and heard a chuckle, but then the memories of Sable standing over him with his children in the moment when he faltered during the last Word War, came rushing into his mind. The Nite Qing recoiled in his head, like he’d been tased, and just as suddenly, Erin was back in control. The Nite Qing roared in Erin’s head, obviously frustrated.
“Not so easy anymore is it, you pathetic worm,” he growled. Erin didn’t have to say these things out loud for the demon in his head to get the message, but he felt that his raw thoughts lacked a certain panache, a particular level of vitriol, that he discovered really infuriated the symbiote.
He discovered that certain words really got under his cage, words like powerless, harmless, feckless, pathetic, feeble, pitiful. These words were sure to make him lose his shit, and when he was acting rashly, he had less control of Erin’s thoughts and was easier to control himself. He continued this barrage of insults at the Nite Qing until he finally had enough and retreated into the recesses of Erin’s mind, not to return, usually, for at least twelve hours. Once he hit such a particular nerve that the “whiny pissant” went and hid for four days.
Once he was gone, Erin went to his bed and called for his bodyguard. He undressed, put on pyjamas and lay down on his back. His room guard came in looking grim. It was Janet, she was a stout, strong woman, and a hellova combat literomancer. She had been through both Word Wars, and was assigned to Erin’s security detail by Realm, because she had never been undead. Realm had known her around the court since they were both children and she had always been an ally to him and Nik. She described herself as “on the rainbow spectrum” but when pressed it became apparent that she was Ase/Aro, not LGBT or Q.
But none of that mattered to Erin, what he was concerned about, was her willingness to do as told and secure him for the evening.
As she secured the bindings to his wrists and ancles, she turned to him with that mother badger look and said, “I really wish we didn’t have to do this to you, Your Highness.”
“We’ve been over this, Janet. It’s not getting better until I get him out of my head, but I can’t control him when I sleep.” Erin returned, perhaps sounding a little sharper than he should.
“I know, Sir, I just…” Erin grabbed her right hand in his and she jumped a little, as her other hand flashed towards her taser, but in an instant she knew it was still her boss. Grabbing her right hand in his right hand, it almost looked as though he was trying to shake it, which became even more pronounced when he switched grip to have her hand held like two muscle men shaking hands. Then he pulled her hand down to his chest.
“Until I find a way to rid myself of him, you KNOW this is the only way,” he said, looking into her eyes.
“Yes, sir.” She nodded at him. “It’s just hard to sit outside night after night listening to your struggles, and not knowing how to help. You are much loved, your Highness.”
Erin sighed and slowly let go of her hand, and dropped his wrist into the leather manacle. Janet began once again buckling him in. “I don’t understand why, they…the populous, have good reason to hate me and yet…”
“Not you, my lord, him.” That last word spat with vitriol reserved for Satan. “People know, Sable-rah was very clear after the First War, that you were possessed. People saw the possession return the next year. But when Sable and Prince Gala used, I don’t know what you’d call it, the “Care bear stare” I guess, to raise you from the dead, people saw, and that love spread out, and ultimately weakened the new Nite Monarq. So, people see you as a redemption arc, a Darth Vader or Spawn. They see your struggles against the Nite Qing as heroic battles for the fate of the Realm, where the everyman hero, Erin Righ, God knows where they got the idea that you are an everyman, but that aside, the everyman hero fights the Tyrant of Darkness.”
She tested the manacles and nodded. “That’ll hold ya."
He nodded in return, and said, “He might be gone for the night, I don’t know, he sulked off earlier, but don’t put your guard down. Who’s on duty with you?”
She nodded towards the door, “I’ve got Lonnie and Dwight, they’ll be ok, and of course Commander Kit said he’d check in at the start of his shift.”
He laid his head back onto the pillow, and asked, “Do me a favour before you go?”
“What’s that?”
“Scratch my nose? It all of a sudden has an itch.”
She laughed and gently scratched his nose.
“An itchy nose means you are going to kiss a fool,” he quipped.
“I’ll be sure to let your wife know your feelings,” she laughed, and kissed him gently on the forehead. “Try to rest, my lord.”
He awoke in the morning in the usual fashion, excruciating pain. He breathed deep and focused, what hurt? What was abnormal? The common neuropathic pain was there, but there were other things as well. His left (prosthetic) arm was numb, was that unusual? He thought about it. Yes, as a matter of fact, ever since SAPH-A had installed his cybernetics, he has had a semblance of feeling in that arm. His right wrist and left ancle were hot, burning, and raw. He was just wrapping his head around the numb cybernetic right foot and shin, when he heard a slight click and feeling, or at least what passed for it, in his cybernetics returned, and he realized they were not just numb but non-functional for at least a few minutes. His back hurt, and he felt like he had gone ten with Mike Tyson and didn’t manage to escape with both ears, but that really wasn’t that unusual. His right arm and his legs felt like he had been pumping iron all night, and that was slightly unusual, and it meant that he had struggled against his bonds. Which could only mean, that He returned last night.
“Wakey, wakey little demon whore,” he said quietly and with as much contempt as he could muster, “no way you get to rest after abusing my body all night.”
His mind kept drawing back to that minute click, and finally, his thoughts focused, and he laughed long and loud. In his mind he heard SAPH-A’s slightly flat, metallic voice when he woke from the cybernetic surgery, “you should experience feeling in your arm and leg now, Erin, the cybernetics are wired directly into your nervous system and respond to YOUR neuropathways.” He had always felt that she had slightly emphasised the final “your” in that statement, though he honestly wasn’t certain if she was capable of emotional inflection in her voice. Now he was certain she had. Why was his arm and leg numb and non-functional when he woke? Because it responded to HIS neuropathways, NOT the Nite Qing’s. When the bastard snuck back in, the body’s neuro signals changed and the cybernetics went dormant, meaning that even if he lost control to the Nite Qing that the weasel would fall, the fuck, over and not be able to walk or function on the left upper body. For some reason, probably schadenfreude, Erin found this extremely funny, and couldn’t contain his laughter.
The door burst in, and Janet and Lonnie burst into the room to flank either side with their tasers as Dwight braced against the doorframe with an elephant taser. It took Erin a couple minutes to regain his composure, and the three looked askance at him as he did so.
“Sorry,” he finally gasped out, breathlessly. After a couple deeper breaths he finally was capable of saying, “It’s me, Erin, your boss.”
“Yeah,” said Lonnie, her south Florida (read: Cuban, but don’t EVER say that) accent apparent, “FUCK you, prove it.”
“Lonnie?” he asked a “little” more seriously, “Is that any way to talk to your boss?”
She shrugged, “Again, fuck you! Until you prove to me that you are my Erin, you are nothing more than some undead beefsteak that if he tries the same shit on me ever again, I will light his ass up, and I might even reach for the wrong taser, Puta.”
It dawned on Erin that the dirty cunnntry boy, must have tried something with Lonnie, his face grew serious, and he said, “Aw I’m sorry Lonnie, he’s such a bastard, what’d he do?”
“I am not talking to you, until you prove you’re not him.”
“Fair,” he said relaxing back into his pillow and wracking his brain for proof. “Look, maybe if I tell you why I was laughing like an idiot, you’ll believe I’m not him.”
“You can try.” All three said in unison.
“Well, you all didn’t know me before the “accident”, but I was, am, a highly trained assassin. Basically, the company ended my career, left me as a high functioning quadriplegic with little more than my literomantic background and no ability to write. But I was a combat literomancer, so I wasn’t defenseless even then. My point being, the Company knew of my literomantic abilities, but needed proof before they could risk an abduction and sent some goons. I captured one, but in trying to be merciful and hoping the spook would turn over a new leaf, I let one run off. In my defense, I didn’t know about the Company and thought the spooks were from CSIS…”
Janet waved her taser in a circle, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you babble as much as Nik, get on with it, so far this isn’t proving anything but a knowledge of Erin’s history which we all expect you to have.”
“Ok, ok, my point being, when the Nite Qing took control, he was left with the body of a cripple, and he decided to do some body modifications. He cut off my left arm and replaced the arm and leg with undead variations, that served his purpose, but when I was raised by Coffee at the end of the First Word War, they rotted off in minutes of me being raised and left me with a double amputation, instead of one.”
“Aaand…” they chorused.
“Well, he was quiet and defeated between Word War One and Word War Two, and I thought he had gone away, which is how he blindsided me and took the Iron Tome to AuthorGoddess, who used her literomancy to grant him a robotic/cybernetic limb replacement for arm and foot. Again, when I was raised by the Love of All Bunnies at the fall of the Horde in the Battle for the Warren, the bionics withered and fell off, so I went and got the best Bionic prosthetics money could buy.”
“Yes,” said Janet, “partially paid for by your brother and the Royal Estate and partially paid for by your wife and her Royal Estate, which you used until SAPH-A replaced them with dinotech, last May.”
“Yes,” he said, grinning like the village idiot,” that’s my proof! SAPH-A programmed them to only respond to MY neuro signals, the Nite Qing can’t use them! Which means that we have a sure-fire way to determine who’s in control.” He flexed his left arm up and down and said, “Just tell him to move his prosthetics, if he can’t, it’s not me.”
“Bullshit!” growled Dwight from the door, “I say we zap his ass again.”
“No, wait!” cautioned Lonnie, “he might be telling the truth, here…”
“Huh?” questioned Janet, and Erin chuckled at the Americanism.
“I don’t think he could move his arm, when he attacked me,” continued Lonnie, “and when I got free of his grasp, he only grabbed for me with the right, his left was dead in the manacle.”
“Iii doon’t knoow?” joked Janet, half heartedly. Then she shrugged, holstered her taser and began to walk towards Erin’s bed.
“You sure ‘bout this, L T?” quizzed Dwight.
“I’m sure if Lonnie is sure?” returned Lieutenant Harley.
“I don’t know, LT,” she answered nervously, “I’m a dino, we can be dense, sometimes.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Lonnie,” Erin grumped, “how many times have I told you, I DON’T like that sort of self-degrading talk, you are NOT stupid, OR dense, and I think my good friends Bob and SAPH-A would take offense at being stereotyped as ‘dense’ and furth…”
The three chorused in interruption, “It’s him!”, and lowered their remaining weapons and all three started unbuckling him.
“Good morning, your Highness,” Lonnie said, with a smile.
“Good morning, Lonnie, he returned, “are you gonna tell me what he did?”
She shook her head and stuck out her lower lip as she did so, “No, it’s not important. It wasn’t you who did it. You don’t have to make apologies for him…”
“He grabbed her hard by her womanly parts,” snarled Janet.
“Oh, God!” said Erin, horrified, “Lonnie, I’m so sorry, if I could only…”
“No,” chided Lonnie, biting back tears, “I refuse to let you take responsibility for the evil things that piece of shit does. It wasn’t you and the doctor says I’ll be fine, just some bruising…”
“Doctor! Bruising!” coughed Erin, “By all that’s holy, Lonnie, I AM sorry.”
Lonnie smiled weakly, “It’s ok, your Highness, you give us more and more tools to combat him, everyday, I won’t fall for that move again.
Erin found Sable in the rose garden enjoying her breakfast. The air was warm this morning, but it was still quite cool in the shade. A servant, Alicia was her name, bunny-kin, was just finishing setting another place at the small garden table opposite the Queen.
Erin liked the bunny-kin, they were generally good natured, and he thought they were adorable. Bunny-kin were basically were-bunnies without the ability to change; anthropomorphic rabbits, as it were.
He noticed a large glass of cold brewed coffee and assumed the place setting was for him. “Good morning, my Royal wife,” he chirped, “and good morning, Alicia.” The first part he said as he circled the table, stopping briefly to kiss Sable then stopped again to put his arm around Alicia to say good morning to her.
Alicia jumped just a little, never quite expecting this sort of greeting from him, but she loved it anyway. “Good morning, your Highness,” she lilted, and tossed her arms around him. Erin loved how openly affectionate people were at the Warren. Bunnies tended to be affectionate in general.
“Oh, get a room,” teased Sable, obviously not bothered, and Alicia blushed right through her light brown fur.
Erin sat down and grinned at Sable. “Oh, I know that look,” she said mock cautiously, “what’re you up to?”
“He’s got another weakness, Babe,” he chuckled.
Suddenly her face became very serious, “I’m listening” she said.
“Should I be here for this?” asked Alicia.
“Can’t see why not,” shrugged Erin and he pulled her down onto his lap, “but I am so giddy at the moment that I need a snuggle bunny, so you sit right there.”
Alicia giggled and put her arms around him, tossing her legs over his lap, “Ok.”
With his right arm occupied around Alicia’s waist, he waved at Sable with his prosthetic, cybernetic left. Then he snapped his fingers, again on the left, and took Sable’s hand in his.
“He can’t control the cybernetics, Babe!”
She looked quizzical but motioned for him to continue.
“He tried tricking my room guards into letting him out, but he piqued Lonnie’s suspicions, so he attacked her.”
“Oh, shit!” gasped Sable, “She’s ok, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, a little bruised and her ego battered a little but she’s tough as hell, so I think she’ll recover. But that reminds me, I think I have him under control, though I am warily approaching November. By August 2020 and August 2021, I was already feeling the pull of the Iron Tome, though in actuality, I think what I felt the second time wasn’t the Tome, but the Nite Qing attempting to break free again. I’m not feeling ANY pull from the Tome right now. As a matter of fact, I feel almost an aversion, or an antipathy, towards the Tome, like it’s warning me away.” Erin waved his hand like a paddle in front of his face, while he shook his head, as though to process thoughts and clear his mind. “Anyway, I was about to go on a tangent there, but back to point…no, I think I need to get this off my chest. Look, I have some trepidations about heading into November, I am afraid he will be too strong to control, and if he is…”
“He won’t be,” she chided.
“And IF HE IS, and I lose control, I don’t want you to hesitate, because I have no fear anymore. I KNOW you have the, what’d you call it, the Kind Bear Stare, or something. Anyway, you can raise ME from the dead, so if you kill HIM, maybe it rids me of him once and for all, but I have a caveat!”
“Listening,”
“First, before you kill him, the first time you encounter him, I want you to castrate him with Fluffy, hit him as hard as you can, in the balls, with your mace, until you pulverize everything in his undershorts. Then before he loses consciousness, I want you to tell him ‘Keep your slimy, pestilent, hands off the staff, that was for Lonnie’, can you do that?”
“I take it, he put his hands on Lonnie?”
“He sexually assaulted her, grabbed her womanhood hard enough to bruise and tear.”
“Yes,” she hissed, “I can do that to the bastard.”
“I really should get back to work,” Alicia scolded, “as much as I enjoy snuggling with you, your Highness.”
“Oh…kay,” Erin said with mock reluctance, “If you HAVE to…”
“Things don’t get done, some bunny loses her job,” she said kissing him on the cheek.
“Ok, thanks for the bunny snuggle” he said hugging her tightly for a moment.
She returned the hug and said, with a giggle, “Anytime, your Highness.”
“Ok, tangent dealt with. He can’t control the cybernetics,” he repeated.
“What exactly does that mean,” Sable queried.
“When SAPH-A installed them, she told me they would respond to my neural signals, and I thought she meant the neural signals from my brain, but what it turns out she meant is MY neural signals. Apparently, your neural patterns are, at least, as individual as fingerprints, and his neural patterns aren’t even close to mine, so the prosthetics sense “brain coma” and go dormant. As SAPH-A told me when I contacted her about it, that’s mostly to shield the cybernetics from things like electric pulses from a defibrillator, but the side effect is, the slimy dead goat’s dick can’t use them either. And they’re nigh indestructible, according to SAPH-A, capable of withstanding the cold of space, and the heat of a volcano. The alloy used, which she assures me, modern science has no equivalent, is over a million years old and has a melting point of 35352° Celsius or 63665° Fahrenheit. Lava has a high side temperature of about 1200°C or approximately 2200°F, the surface of the sun is only a little less than 6000°C and a plasma cutting torch runs about 25000°C. It has a hardness of 327 gigapascals, for perspective, nanodiamond has a tensile strength of 310 GPas…”
“Do I NEED all these technical specs,” Sable asked, somewhat bored by the info dump and math, “this is making my head hurt. Why didn't you just say it requires heat not of this Earth, like the heart of a blue star?"
“No, I guess you don’t, sorry” he conceded, “My point was, he can’t use them, and he’ll never get them off, either.”
"Are you sure, what if he just cuts the flesh, he's done that before?"
"No way, these suckers are wired directly into my spine and brain. To do that, and restore the mobility of my arm, she had to replace the whole shoulder bone structure, right back to the ribcage and spine, she replaced the clavicle, the shoulder blade, everything. And on the leg, in order to support the cybernetics, she told me that she replaced the femur and hip, knee joint and lower leg bones. They really are quite the miraculous things we got here."
Sable wiped her mouth with the reusable cotton napkin and dropped it onto her plate. She then took a sip of her omnipresent coffee and reached for a cigar from the cigar box on the table. Erin smiled at the panatela. Almost as ubiquitous as her coffee was her cheap Kentucky cheroot. Sable had smoked them for years; long before Mother of Bunnies meant anything. Well before the Word Wars, when life was somewhat normal and he was not even a thought. Back then, Meles Lord and a two dollar bill would buy you a coffee in Montana.
"Ok," she said after a couple puffs, "that is good news."
After lunch, Erin once again found himself sitting in the garden with Sable; her with her signature cheroot and he puffing contentedly on his ever-present pipe.
"Did I ever tell you what happened to those two spooks that confronted me in the hospital after the accident?" he asked conversationally.
"No," she replied, "I assumed you ran them off. You're not trying to tell me that you killed two CSIS spooks while you were barely functional in the hospital are you? 'Cause I'm calling bullshit if you say 'yes'."
Erin laughed and so did Sable, "Seriously though, what did you do with them?" she asked.
"Well, you were half right, I did run one of them off, but the other I trapped in my copy of Wind In the Willows," he answered, starting to laugh, harder.
"You let him go, though?" she quizzed, with concern in her voice.
Erin burst into gales of laughter, "No," he laughed, "he's still there as far as I know!"
"Oh, for Frith's sake! Erin?! Don't you know how dangerous that is?!"
Erin immediately quit laughing and gulped, "No," he replied.
Sable just stared at him for a long moment then shook her head in dismay, "You ever hear of the Mandela Effect?" she asked, taking his hand and heading for the French doors into the library. "When you do that spell, you insert the person into the story, you literally change the narrative of the book. In the short term, that will just change your book, and allow you to counter the spell by finding the spot where you inserted the new character, but if you don't change it, it'll have an effect on all copies of the story, eventually and create a Mandela Effect. Some people will remember the story a certain way with certain characters and others who read it before, will remember it the old way. It usually affects the memories of those without a clear idea of the story in either version."
She went to the "G" section of the fiction library and took down her copy of Wind in the Willows as well as the 1st edition 1908 copy of Willows Whistle, that was the original book title. After flipping through the newer book, she asked him, "Erin, who is Mr. Rabbit?"
Erin thought about it, he knew that book from the days of his early childhood. Badgers didn't have many literary heroes but Mr. Badger, in his sett, handing out advice, in that book, certainly was one of them. "There's no rabbit in Wind in the Willows, " he answered.
"There is now," she scolded, and handed him the book. The scene clearly painted the picture of a nervous, fat bunny, who went by the name Porter Rabbit, in the sett of Mr. Badger, as he dispensed advice to him.
"Shit!" Erin whistled through tight lips, "does that mean it's too late?"
"No," Sable shook her head, "it just means that more people will remember a rabbit in the story when you set this right. So, you are personally responsible for their confusion."
She flipped through her copy of Willows Whistle and said, "Ok it hasn't affected the original yet, so it might only be through the last printing, which is lucky."
"Why would it only be through the latest printing?" asked Erin, "My copy is a first printing of Wind In the Willows, 1931 edition, with the Earnest Shepard art; when they changed the name to the modern one."
"Earnest Shepard, didn't he do Winnie the Pooh, as well?"
"That's right."
"It doesn't matter, you could trap him in the original typed manuscript and it still affects the most recent editions first. Don't ask me why, it is just a Law of Literomancy."
"So, do I need the book I trapped him in or will any affected copy work?"
"No," she shook her head, "I am afraid only the document you trapped him in will do."
"Well, we may have a problem then, I haven't seen that copy in at least two years, not since the company first got their hands on me and that was also two Warrens ago."
Sable smiled, "Good thing you have such a thoughtful wife then, eh? It's in your end table, I figured you would want it, so it was stored with your stuff until you came home, then I had them put it in your end table."
He smiled and kissed her, "I love you," he said then turned to the omnipresent servant in the room, a cute little rabbitfolk, (rabbitfok equals bunnykin, but a little more formal) named Lola and asked, "Lola, honey bunny, can you run to my room and grab my copy of Wind In the Willows from my end table?"
She put her hands on her hips in mock indignance and said, "What? Do, I look like your servant?"
Erin was totally confusled by her response and tried, and failed, a couple of times to answer her.
She and Sable burst into laughter, and she hopped across the room in a single bound, to kiss him on the cheek, "Of course your Highness, I was just playing confuse the badger." Then she hopped out of reach before Erin could give her an affectionate swat. "Missed me!" she called from the doorway.
"I'll still be here when you get back," he called after her.
"Promises, promises," he heard her bellow back down the hall.
Sable, still laughing, asked, "Is their anyone on the staff you won't flirt with?"
"Kit and Sunny, they might shank me, but them aside, nope, can't think of any?"
Sable shook her head in simulated exasperation, and Erin continued, "Look everyone knows it's harmless, I just like to make people feel good about themselves..."
"And you enjoy the attention, lets be honest here," she interrupted.
He shrugged, "That's true too," he admitted.
"Now, comes the real problem," she began.
"Oh? What's that?"
"The guy you trapped, his name is Etienne LaPierre, also known, by his SIN, as Stephen Peters. Anyway, Mr. Peters, was working for CSIS in the early Otts, Desert Storm, and all that, and apparently was killed when an IED exploded under his HMMWVV. Etienne LaPierre makes his first appearance of record a few months after that..."
"Hmm, Cold War Soviet Kite tactics, how quaint?"
"Exactly," she nodded, "some of the tactics used by the Company remind me of Nazi propaganda, and post World War II soviet spy tactics, including some of the shadier acts of the Kremlin and the KGB during the Cold War, suicide missions and the like."
"Oh, how fun of them," snarked Erin with contempt.
She continued, "Mmmhmm, in any event it is, without absolute proof, readily apparent that the CSIS Spook, Peters, is the same as the Company Spook, LaPierre. The Company did a good job of making Peters disappear, but they couldn't get access to the Canadian Armed Forces Soldier DNA database, so in a day or two, I should be able to get us confirmation by sending in the DNA I recovered from his pistol in to be checked against Peters' DNA."
"Ok, keep me informed on that one, will ya?"
"Sure, babe, but hopefully it won't be necessary. Hopefully, he tells us himself. That is, of course assuming he remembers who he is at all.
"You mean he might not?"
"Ya know, for a former Night Monarch and a highly skilled combat literomancer, you know surprisingly little about the consequences of your actions, magically."
"Never saw a need," he shrugged, "I used to treat literomancy with a fair bit of contempt. It was easy for me and people were always telling me that my poetry and prose were far advanced of my education level, and I was, white, middle-classed, and male, the whole system was designed for me."
"Sure, but they don't teach literomancy in public or private schools, no Hogward's for little literomancer kids, someone teaches us or we learn on our own, but either way, we, whether through a really well penned manual, or a living mentor, got it from somewhere. I have never asked you before, where did you learn literomancy?"
"My psychiatrist, he said, then added, "how many ten and eleven-year-olds have a private psychiatrist? But, I was having issues coping, so my 'Noble' parents saw that I was given the best galdarned coping skills money could buy. And part of that was an SAT and an IQ test to determine a 'baseline'. Well apparently, I scored high on both, like not just high but high-high. We're talking top zero point zero, zero, one percentile."
"How high are we talking here, IQ one thirty, one forty?"
Erin shook his head, "no, I mean like really high!"
"One sixty?"
"No," he said, starting to look embarrassed, "closer to one hundred and ninety."
"Wow, that's amazing, babe," she said, eyes wide with astonishment, but she'd never known Erin to lie to her, and couldn't see why he would start now. "What were you having trouble coping with?"
"I think I told you about this at one point," said Erin, "but I almost never bring it up, so I can see how you'd forget. My mom's third husband, a cop, killed himself in front of me, with my rifle, in the summer before my tenth birthday."
"Oh, yeah," she nodded, "of course, I wasn't thinking."
"Anyway," continued Erin, "the shrink let it slip where I could overhear, and that really didn't help my coping skills, but really ignited my creativity. So, the shrink suggested to my parents that they find some sort of activity that I enjoyed to focus on, and put my mind to use. They chose karate, and although, at first, the mental stimulation was less than adequate, it allowed me to get my aggression out. Then, I began to seriously train, and learn the history and esoteric secrets of karate. I learned ki magic focused on inner spirit and I went to Japan to learn more when I mustered out of the Naval Academy on a medical discharge. My knee was pretty badly injured, and the experts, including my sensei, didn't think I'd ever practice karate again, but I landed in Japan, well Okinawa actually, there is a difference. When I got to Okinawa, there was a serious reluctance to let me train, everywhere I went, they said I was too frail, and not body hardened enough to train with the Kyokushinkai masters."
"Keeo-kushin-kye," she pronounced slowly, knowing that subtle emphasis in Japanese could change the meaning of words, "what is that, your style of Karate?"
"A hard form, as opposed to soft form not opposed to easy, form of Karate," explained Erin, "it was founded by a guy that O-Sensei called 'Gogun' which means 'Rocky' referring to the head, so 'Rockhead'. Well, to be honest, he pre-founded Kyokushinkai, Yamaguchi Gogun Sensei was still considered to be practicing Goju-ryu, but his student Masutatsu, or simply Mas, Oyama, founded Kyokushin-ryu."
She shrugged and nodded in acceptance of the information not really knowing what else to do, and Erin laughed a little, "File that under 'Crap you will probably never need to know, but may be useful information sometime'," he said with a self depreciating chuckle and slight shake of his head.
"Anyway," he continued, "they figured that Ay, I was too frail, and Two, I couldn't possibly understand the culture, because I wasn't raised Okinawan. They were at least non-racist enough to recognise my Shodan, er, my black belt, but were reluctant to train me further."
"I know what a Shodan is, she teased, "I am not a complete ignoramus."
"Well, I hung around the Dojo, self training, and strengthening my knee, and met the Dojo caretaker one night. He was an immensely huge Einu, stood about two hundred fifteen centimeters,"
Sable did the math in her head, normal Lapins used imperial measures for height and weight, but Erin insisted on metric; Seven feet, tall guy.
Erin continued, "with a constant smile. He was friendly but simple, not very educated, soft spoken and humble; but he knew stuff. He had fought for Imperial Japan in World War II as a young man, and apparently was close enough to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be rendered sterile by the blast. But he also trained with O-Sensei, Yamaguchi Sensei and Masutatsu Sensei, whom he pointed out was not raised Okinawan either."
"He wasn't?"
"Nah, he was Korean, Masutatsu Oyama was the name his Sensei, Yamaguchi Gogun, gave to him when he was named Senpai. Masutatsu is 'success' and Oyama is 'great mountain'. He was called Oyama, like big men are called 'Tiny'. In other words, he was no mountain of a man."
"Did they ever give you a name in Japanese?"
Erin nodded, but didn't say anything. Sable looked exasperated and queried, "AND?!"
"Bibiddoryu," he chuckled.
"Bib ee dough ru," she pronounced, "you're laughing but I don't get the joke?"
"Well," he said, a little more seriously, "It literally translates to 'energetic dragon' or 'vivid dragon' but it has the connotations of sort of a bubbly, effervescent kind of energetic. I think they sort of saw me as a 'Valley Girl' kind of enthusiasm." He then tried his best valley girl impression, "Like, teach me karate, mkay?"
"Wikipedia says something entirely different, about Mas Oyama and the origins of his style, you know?"
"If you read the wiki, what do you need me for?" he joked.
"Seriously, how do you explain that?"
He shrugged, "Mas Oyama died in ninety-four at seventy-one, a year after the Internet was released to the public, and his wife was sixty-eight, his kids were adults, in their thirties and forties. Who do you think wrote the biography? Probably, modern Kyokushinryu Karateka, and they only know what they were taught and read."
"So, if you were taught right, why don't you correct the Wiki?"
"You know why, no sources to cite."
"Ok, fair, but you really should write this down."
"I did. It's all in my memoirs. I will publish them when I am too old to give a fuck anymore, or someone else can publish them when I'm dead."
"Valid, ok, Mister Babbley, this still doesn't explain where you learned literomancy. You led with your shrink, touched on the navy, and wound up learning martial arts from some old Einu, but none of this has anything to do with literomancy."
"Really?!" grinned Erin, "You, of all people, are going to get on my case for going down a rabbit hole?"
Sable put on her best crisp British accent and said, mimicking James, "Lapin hole, surely", then they both laughed.
"Seriously, are you ever going to get to a point?" she chuckled.
"Yeeeaah," he said, "are you going to complain about my literary style the whole time, or are you going to listen to the story?"
"I'm listening, I'm just getting older."
Erin shook his head in dismay, and continued. "You ever hear of the Yamabushi," he asked.
"Of course," she replied, "they are the rebel warriors that the legends of the Shinobi are based on. Supposedly a group of villagers and ronin who fled into the mountains to escape the Shogunate."
"Yes, well, turns out they are real."
"I never doubted it."
"I don't mean were real, I mean are real, as in they still exist."
"No shit?! How'd you find that out?"
"Well Chung, the Einu fellow, was assigned by his particular school of the Kogaryukai to keep an eye out for potential recruits in this dojo. He admired my dedication to my recovery and began to perform ancient Einu medicine on me. Herbs and poultices, and the like. He would lay me on my back on the tatami and perform healing massage on my knee, it hurt like hell but then he would put this soothing liniment on it and perform these mystical hand weavings over my knee."
"Kuji-kiri," explained Sable, "I learned it in my Ninjutsu training when I was younger."
"Yes," he agreed, "but no as well. Kuji-kiri is a part of a larger art called Kuji-In. Where the nine weavings of Kuji-kiri concentrate of stealth and invisibility, the art has weavings for all manner of things, combat blessings, healing, baby blessings, you name it. The discipline is divided into nine schools, each possessing nine arts, and each art possessing nine symbols. Kuji-kiri is one of the nine arts of the Ninpojutsu school. Who was your trainer, your Shidoshi?"
"Shidoshi Yamagiri Takahashi,"
"Ah, so you never finished training then?"
"What makes you say that?"
"Yamagiri Sensei only began his outreach program in ninety-six, and he died in two thousand three, seven years later. You didn't train in Japan, so I assume you were part of Takahashi's Gaijin Outreach Program, which was the first of it's kind, and you were never indoctrinated, so you have never been to Koga mountain. Hence, you never swore to the Clan, and are free to talk about what you know. As far as I know, none of Takahashi's western students were ever indoctrinated."
"And, how do you know all of this," she asked with mock interrogation.
"I was indoctrinated in nineteen-ninety, once Chung had healed my knee enough that I could make the journey, on foot, to Koga mountain." He explained, nonchalantly. "I'm not going to try to tell you that I was the first gaijin on Koga mountain, but I was among an elite few. I trained with Yamagiri, he was one hell of a shinobi, it is altogether too bad what happened to him."
"What did happen to him, we never found out, he just sort of 'disappeared' after the incident."
"Well, after those teenagers brained him with a crowbar and left him for dead, he recovered, mostly, and when the courts failed to help him, the Clan stepped in."
"Yeah, wasn't one of the kids' fathers a judge or something?"
"Yeah, a Magistrate. Well the Clan killed everyone involved, the teens, the parents, the cops who were in charge of the arrests, the judge who sentenced them, everyone, and took Takahashi back to Japan."
"Yeah, I remember that, there was a huge scandal and the RCMP questioned all of his students about it, but none of us knew anything."
"Well the Clan doctors gave him opium for the pain, and I guess it wasn't strong enough, so he went to an allopathic doctor in Tokyo and got a prescription for Oxicodon or Oxicontin, I can't remember. In any event, he was popping oxis and smoking opium and he ODed, and died one night in two thousand three."
"That's a shame," said the empathic Sable, with obvious distress, "He was so nice, and wise."
Erin laughed, "Are we talking about the same meathead descended Takahashi here? When I knew him, he was a brash, hot head who was perfect for Kyokushinkai, but I suppose even he could've mellowed. But, I assure you, you wouldn't have liked him after the brain damage, he turned into a brooding, miserable twat who really laid into his injuries for pity. Always complaining about something and moaning about his headaches."
"That's too bad."
"Anyway, back on point; I trained for five years in the Kuji-In art, which is Japanese literomancy. When I had mastered it, which included classes on poetry and creative writing, the instructors, who were actually professors at the University of Kyoto, awarded me a Bachelor of Arts in Japanese Literature, and suggested that I continue training in English. So, I went home to Montana and looked up my brother, Realm, he was a literomancer, and his husband, Nik, even more so. Then I met you. There are other points in my life, like my ex-wife and such, but they are unimportant."
"Wow," said Lola from the door, "cool story, your highness."
"And how long have you been eavesdropping?" chided Erin, affectionately.
"Eavesdropping?!" she said in mock indignance, "I'll have you know that I am a servant, and being unobtrusive is a highly sought after quality in a servant that shows that I am highly skilled at my job. The fact that you didn't notice me is a credit to my skills! I should get a raise!"
"What sort of raise did I give you last month?" he queried.
"Nothing," she returned.
"Well, double it!" he exclaimed and they all laughed. "Seriously, though," he added, "how much do we pay you?"
"Don't worry about it, your highness," she said walking over to him, "I do well and my husbands both work for the Warren too. We do well and there are plenty who are envious of our wages, and besides we're union."
"That's good," he said, "at least there is that." Everyone knew that the Lapin Protectorate in general and especially the Crown was pro-union.
As she handed Erin the well worn hardcover copy of Wind In the Willows, Erin gave her an affectionate swat on the rump, "I warned you!" he said.
Lola looked over at Sable with a faux exasperated expression, "Do you see the kind of sexual harassment I have to put up with?"
Sable affected a serious look and tone, just in case she was genuinely upset, and said, "seriously?" Erin had been known to take things too far.
Lola laughed and bit Erin on the ear, hard. "Ow," he exclaimed.
"No, not serious," she laughed, "I'll just sick my husband on him."
Erin stopped laughing in mock fear, "Aren't you Lola Walters-Reed, wife of Rhys Walters, 'The Flemish Giant' used to be an MMA fighter, heavy weight?"
"Yep," she laughed, "Now he's a security guard at the Warren."
"I can run faster than him," he said, confidently, with a nod.
"I doubt it," she retorted.
"I can if he is too busy sliding in my shit!"
"Spoken like a true Prince," said Sable with a shake of her head.
"Hey," he quipped, "I'm a lover, not a fighter!"
Then they all laughed.
"And, every girl in the Protectorate over the age of majority knows not to get caught behind closed doors with you, your highness," jibed Lola.
"What? Do people think I'm Harvey Weinstein? I'm not dangerous!?" spoke Erin with raised and concerned voice.
Lola belly laughed so hard that her knees gave out, and she sputtered from her seated position, "You should see the look on your face, sir, I think I just crushed you completely. No! Nobody thinks you are dangerous, and they don't fear being caught alone with you, we ALL love you, Prince Erin, and the girls of the Protectorate know without any shadow of doubt that if they ever were scared of a man, they'd only have to find you to be safe. I just love pulling your chain, maybe it's a bunny death wish 'lets antagonise the badger'..."
"Wolverine, actually," he said with a self-depreciative smile and a wink.
"Ok, wolverine then. In case you weren't aware, wolverines kill bunnies in the wild ALL the time, but teasing you makes me giggle, and I just can't help myself."
"Ok, fine," smiled Erin, "I can take a joke..."
"Half joke, half sincere flirting I would think," said Sable and Lola nodded.
"True," she said, "you are considered to be 'bodacious' in that 'Patrick Stewart is bodacious' sort of way, your highness. I mean sure, there are ageists and ableists and bodily purists that don't think so. Also religious intolerants, superstitious scaredy cats, no offense to Felis, and other 'racists' who think that there is something unnatural about you and/or relationships with you are unnatural. However, set aside that very loud, very needy, very small minority of people, and the vast majority, of what I like to call 'normal people' think you're pretty hot."
"Well, I wish I weren't so broken then," he self owned, "so I could live up to their expectations."
"You're not broken, your highness," she admonished, "you're possessed, and someday we are going to find a way to rid you of him. The Lapin Librarians are working day and night to uncover the secret that will forever destroy the Nite Qing, and free our Prince from his torture."
"You're sweet, Lola," and he smiled beatifically. "While we're talking," he said, "how is Tobias? He recovered yet?"
"Oh?" uttered Sable with obvious concern, "Is there something wrong with Toby? Can I help?"
Tobias or Toby was one of Lola's eleven children and one of the oldest at eight. He was bright and sunny, sharp as a tack and precocious as they come. He was, of course, one of Sable's favs among the million, or so odd, children that called her 'Momma Bunny'.
Lola smiled, it never ceased to amaze her how the royal family could keep it all in their heads. The queen was like a supercomputer of important names, in her few years of working here she had never heard Sable-Rah misname or misgender a single person. Although Erin Righ wasn't here for most of her service, having only returned after April, she had never heard him do it either.
"It's ok, now, 'Momma Bunny'", she said, affectionately teasing, "Toby picked up rabbitpox in school, and had to be quarantined, I've never had it, and it can be deadly in adults."
Sable nodded in agreement. Of course she knew what rabbitpox were, were-lagomorphs were, of course, immune to such things, but their rabbit kin most certainly werenot. In true rabbits, rabbitpox affected them like the vaccinia virus; smallpox. But among rabbitfolk, rabbitpox was very much like chickenpox (which rabbitfolk can't get), in that it was mostly an irritating rash on children treated with anti-itch poultices and unguents. However, in an adult population of un-inoculated people, also like chickenpox, it could be fatal. Fortunately for the populous at large, rabbitpox was common enough that most adults were former recipients, and like chickenpox, again, you can only ever come down with an outbreak of rabbitpox once in your life.
"Well, I hope they didn't scar," she said.
"Nah, he's a tough little tyke, hardly even scratched at them."
"Well, maybe I can make him some carrot sou..." her voice trailed off as she realized she was still banned from the kitchen.
Changing the subject, Lola turned back to Erin, "So, what'd you need the book for? Inquiring minds wanna know?"
