Caino's Alphabet, J

Joining Gail by the fire, 
Aaron bid Caino tell her what Darius had related
of his misadventures, asking if his description
of the ferry matched her memory of it.  
    “He came across it at the right place, 
but I don’t recognise much of what he saw.  
Those ‘boxy’ vehicles he described sound like 
motor cars to me, but all of those will have 
long since rotted away
in the three hundred-odd years 
since your last collapse.”
    “You mean the Last War?” 
asked Aaron cautiously, earning himself 
a condescending look from Gail. 
    Although well-educated, Aaron was, like Caino, 
a product of the time, Place, and Path 
upon which they found themselves.  
Gail’s Mind, however, 
had taken possession of the body she now inhabited from a far distant future, 
where the Machine is reality 
and the present time, Place and Path, 
an obscure part of a much longer history 
she had studied as a girl while at school.
    “Your world is going through a dark age,” 
Gail explained, “three centuries ago 
it swarmed with technology.  
Your ‘Last War’ ended all that in a matter of days, but on some Paths things happen differently, 
and that’s what your Darius saw.”
    “Can he always see a multitude of Paths?” 
asked Aaron of Caino.
    ‘Only when he strays from my side,” 
replied Caino, 
“he thinks when he’s with me he’s dreaming, 
but I think he’s tied to my Path, 
his Mind follows it when he’s sleeping 
and if I’m not close he falls off.” 
    Aaron and Gail shared a sceptical look.  
“Have your people observed the Paths directly?” asked Aaron.
    “We have not,” she replied,
and the two Scientists fell silent, 
staring into the same fire, 
each reconciling what they had heard 
with their own respective theology.
Caino, his audience now lost, 
rose and left to find Darius.
—
    As usual, Darius appeared 
as soon as Caino was out of sight of the others. 
    “I think they know you’re real now,” 
Caino told Darius, 
in the language that was all their own, 
“and I reckon I’ve figured out why
the world shifts and changes around you 
when we’re apart.”
    “It was the river,” replied Darius happily, 
“it’s haunted.”
    “No, it’s not.  What I’m thinking is that 
since you’re tied to my Path, 
when you stray from the certainty of my presence other Paths can reveal themselves to you 
because they don’t affect you or my life 
and my Path.  That rabbit you saw with the fox either escaped or was eaten, 
but since it didn’t affect my Path, 
to you it could be either, 
neither or both of those things all at once. 
That’s what you saw.
    “Where it does involve me—
when our Paths do cross, 
only one of that rabbit’s Paths 
can intersect with mine.  In other words, 
I’ll see either the bones or the bunny but never both.  Since here you don’t have your own Path, 
you got a glimpse behind the curtain at the hidden workings of this world.”  
Caino was pleased with himself as he finished, imagining he sounded a bit like Aaron.  
He was about to continue when 
he heard Gail calling to him from the campsite.
    Caino walked the short distance back
and found that Aaron had packed away their kit 
and was waiting for him with Gail, 
both reluctantly ready to depart.
    “We’ll be heading for that ferry,” 
said Aaron as he hoisted his pack, 
“our path lies to the North, 
so we’ll need to cross the river; 
the ferry will get us across, 
and it’ll also allow us to check 
on your friend’s story.”
—    
    So the trio set forth along the same path 
that Gail had sent Darius, and within a day 
the silty ground beneath their feet 
told them they were nearing the river.  
    When he began to recognise the landmarks Darius had mentioned, 
Caino asked the others to wait 
while he moved deeper into the forest.  
There he found his friend, as he had expected, amongst a wild growth of grass, 
once again as a big smiling wolf.  
    “No haunting then?” asked Caino, with a grin.
    “You were right.” Darius agreed. 
    “And where did you see the rabbit?  
Was it here?” asked Caino, 
glancing about the ground, looking for bones 
or clumps of fir.
    “It happened over here, in these tufts of grass,” said Darius, sniffing at them, 
“It seems that on this Path of yours 
the rabbit escapes.”
—
    Caino must have returned 
sooner than was expected, 
for when he came upon his companions, 
they were sitting close together on a fallen tree talking quietly, Gail’s unbound hands resting lightly on Aaron’s knee.  Seeing his approach, 
they quickly disengaged as Caino 
stifled his giggles with a snort.
    Gail remained free of her bonds 
for the remainder of their journey.  
They talked less of the politics 
of their respective sects and Caino, 
inexperienced in the ways of his fellow humans, 
was as bemused by Aaron’s doting behaviour 
as he was by Gail’s newfound shyness.  
He responded in the way any young boy would: 
with fits of laughter and a satirical commentary 
he shared with Darius when he appeared.
— 
    They reached the Ferry before nightfall, 
in time to make the crossing.  
Darius hardly recognised it at all.  
It was simply a raft pulled by a rope strung across 
a narrow point in the river. 
Aaron gave the ferryman a couple of coins 
and they crossed.