A STRONG TOWER

PART NINE: THE NIGHT OF THE RABBIT

"Ah hae gi'en the seetiation muckle thocht," Broch Scottished barely understandably as he walked beside Himself southward over the Nullarbor, "an' Biebe'll nae be comin' easy fra' yon hole. Ah dinna wish ta skelp the poor man's leg."

Himself kept his lips pressed tightly together as he avoided a small blowhole.  "You said there are caves around here?"

"Aye, but nearer tae the sea, Himsel'."

While Himself, Broch, Bud, Terry, Jack, Zack and East made their way carefully through the night across the ever more frequently blowhole-pocked landscape events of some consequence were also happening meanwhile back at the ranch, er, campsite. Good it was that the three nursely castmembers had remained behind because, with a small gasp, Bunny had plopped over into the sand. Sid was beside himself even though it was, truly speaking, Broch who was beside Himself. He'd handed Livi into Rose's care and quickly knelt near the English wabbit, who lay unmoving and quiet under the expanse of Australian stars.

"Bunny!" He touched her cheek. "Wake up, Bunny!"

She did not respond. Sid looked frantically around for Joimus. "Help her!" he called as he saw her walking up.

She, too, knelt beside the prostrated Englishwoman, her brows knit in concern. Then she met Sid's gaze. "You know, Sid, that for the last three years or so of real time, Bunny's been looking rather pale?"

He nodded. He'd noticed but had never broached the subject with anyone. "Well," Joimus continued, "it seems to me she's about to fade entirely away. I don't think anything can be done."

"It's too...late?" Sid's eyes grew large.

"I'm afraid so. It's one of those transmogrification virus things." 

Indeed, the Englishwoman grew so transparent you could see right through her to the small saltbush she'd squashed when she'd fallen. (Note to reader: the actual Bunny sort of disappeared off the face of the earth about three years ago and so something had to be done as far as epi characterizations were concerned. Because she was so intimately involved with the whole Sid storyline and being the mother of Maximus' son, Livi, it's kind of a big deal to change her, but I'm giving it a go.)

"But...but...she can't just be...gone!" Sid moaned.

"Just wait," Joimus said confidently, "I hear even now the click clack of distant computer keys."

Sid, staring at Joimus, had a sudden flash of green fill his mind. Once you had been through what he had with her back there near Bellingen (see A Yook By Any Other Name),
once your blue had flowed through her yellow above the waterfall that plunged down
the Dorrigo Escarpment, even the magnetic pull of Ayres Rock couldn't...quite...destroy
that. "Computer keys?" he repeated, a hopeful look in his eyes. He remembered how though
Himself had been able to bring him and Maximus back to life, the woman with the computer
had brought about Joimus' return. "She...she'll be all right then? She'll be the same?"

Joimus sighed. Ayres had not affected her at all, of course, and it had only been Sid's
subsequent actions that had changed her friendship with him. It was easier for her to recall
with complete clarity...green. Quickly she cast a sideways glance at Maximus, who was standing
just out of the firelight glow, holding Dess. She knew he had no wish, none at all, to remember
purple, had squeezed all the blue, every bit, out of his red back there in Himself's place on
Woolloomooloo the moment he'd found out Bunny's baby was his. (See Sons of the Fathers) It had been harder for her to...forget.

"She'll be all right, Sid," she said softly, looking back at him, "but she won't be the same."

The look in his eyes pulled at her heartstrings. Damn! She hadn't known, not for some time, how
he could still get to her. "She won't be an English wabbit?" he murmured.

"No. Not at all." The click clacking of unseen computer keys seemed to grow louder in the Australian night.

Sid lifted his head, looking up at the Southern Cross. "I suppose all we can do is...wait?"

"Truly," Joimus nodded. "I don't think transmogrification takes all that long. Some of the women managed it in the blink of an eye."

"Bunny's taking longer," he observed.

"Well, Sid, other than me, she's the only one who's given birth. It's more...involved, you know."

Sid closed his eyes, remembering that night back in Sydney when Bunny had gone into labor there on the roof of the Opera House. For months she had been justifiably concerned about where she might be when that happened, but never once had she ever even considered the roof

of the Opera House. It was the way of epilife. The unconsidered thing was, more often than not, what came about. Even for Joimus. She'd been in 1818 when her labor pains had come that night as she crossed the Botanic Gardens alone. She'd made it to the stone bench just in time to return
to the present, had been found by Maximus just as Dess was coming into the world. He knew he was recapping, but there were, as hard as it is to believe, those who had not been so fortunate yet as to have read everything from YOOK on (a state of being devoutly to be remedied!).

"I think it's happening," Joimus whispered, and he opened his eyes, watching as Bunny faded completely away and the place where she had lain was gradually taken by...Stacey. "Two syllables, Sid, and still ending in a 'y'. Not so bad, eh?" Joimus remarked brightly as Stacey struggled to sit up.

Sid felt his heart instantly go out to her, or, well, whatever it was that was somewhat heart-like in him. She was lovely and had striking eyes and dark hair with a reddish tinge. "I'm here," she said, looking at him with a tentative smile.

"So you are," he replied, extending his hand, helping her to her feet. He looked briefly at Joimus. "She's not English," he stated.

"Nope, Texan."

"Texan? Ah!" He studied her face. "Now that's different."

"Is not," Phyllis remarked.

"Definitely not different," Franki interjected. Who knew so much of the female cast had Lone Star connections?

"Let me explain something," Joimus added, somehow seeming to know these things. "Stacey comes to you, Sid, with every single memory Bunny ever had. Yes, even those in the caravan back in Bellingen. She comes with a different name, look, and accent, but she is, to all intents and epi purposes, your woman, your same woman. Here, let me show you what I mean." She stepped up to Rose and took Livi from her arms, holding out the toddler toward Stacey.

Livi instantly strained toward Stacey, a big smile on his entirely Maximus-like little face. "Mama!"

"See?" Joimus said, cocking an eyebrow.

Maximus cleared his throat and she turned, going to stand by him. Sid had put his arms around both Stacey and Livi and the family scene the three of them created rose like gall up the General's neck. He narrowed his eyes, staring at Sid, the look a pure glare with nothing the least resembling purple about it.

"Come," Joimus said, sliding her arm through his and tugging just enough to get him to follow her back to where they had been seated earlier. "I think they still have some adjusting to do."

"I would find great pleasure in adjusting him," Maximus growled.

"Not yet," she smiled up at him, "not yet."

He cast a quick glance back at Sid. "Not yet," he repeated, his voice low with menace.

"How is he?" Layne asked Cort, worriedly looking at Biebe's strained face.

 
Cort had been supporting John's right side for a long time now, trying to keep some of the trapped Alaskan's weight off his hip. "Not so good," Cort murmured.

Indeed, Biebe's eyes were half-closed and he was breathing heavily through his mouth. From time to time when, um, whatever it was brushed his leg, he would close them tightly and his whole body would shudder. Egan, on John's left side, had unreeled Colin's sideburns and employing them in their less decorative but more useful manner, had tied them around John's torso under his armpits and then looped them around a particularly large and patient kangaroo who stood silently nearby on the plain. Tonia, fearing that the kangaroo might change its mind, was feeding it the remnants of her peanut butter sandwich, torn little bit by torn little bit. She was quite fond of the sideburns and all the adorable little tricks Colin had shown her, privately, that he could do with them and wasn't about to have them ripped from his temples in the night by a fleeing marsupial.

Marie had just taken Biebe's blood pressure with the gauge she kept stored securely with other medical equipment in her bodice. "497 over 325."  She sighed. If he keeps on like this, in another hour or two we're really going to have to start to worry." 

 
Franki, though, was more concerned over the fact that Biebe had started to sweat blood. The small capillaries in his forehead seemed to be snapping with little *twang* *twang* sounds that were, alas, making the kangaroo nervous.

Marti was making a poultice for that out of old cranberry juice she mixed with dried emu dung. "This'll help," she said with her usual assurance as she spread a thick paste of it across his brow. She stepped back, smiling with satisfaction as the capillaries stopped twanging and recoiled down behind his eyeballs. His blood pressure cooperated, too, by immediately dropping to 12 over 5. "Works every time!"

The plop behind them was Buggie fainting.

Darna walked back into the circle of light, buttoning her blouse, and with a grinning Ben beside her. "Is it going to be like this, Darna?" Joimus asked as the two passed by where she sat. "Are you always going to be coming out of the dark, rebuttoning?" 

 
Darna smiled as best she could with her puffy, swollen lips. "Yes," was her simple reply. Ben looked at her, eyes sparkling with deep satisfaction, and he, too, smiled with his puffy, swollen lips.

"How come I never get to have puffy, swollen lips," Julie sighed, gazing at Jim.

"I've had more than my share of those," Jim replied.

"Yes, but there are better ways of getting them, Jim, than a fist in the mouth."

He offered to experiment with that proposition and the two of them moved off into the darkness. Joimus glared at Darna. "See what you've done! Now everybody wants puffy, swollen lips."

"I could help," Ben offered, his voice fading into a deep moan as Darna brought her foot down hard on his instep.

"Watch it, big boy," she purred. "I've got exclusive rights."

Linda, waiting for East's return, smiled a secret little smile. She would see about that.

Broch paused, listening. "D'ye ken whaur we be, Himsel'?"

"Sounds like the wind in the trees at Nana Glen," Himself replied homesickedly.

"It's the sea!" Jack said loudly. "By God, man, it's the sea!" He stood, head tipped back, letting the wind blow his stray blond locks as he inhaled deeply. "The sea...." The words came as a satisfied whisper.

"Dae ye see tha'?" Broch smiled, pointing to the east. "The nicht is ower."

Sure enough the top edge of a pale sun was beginning to peek over the flat horizon, revealing the lay of the land upon which they all stood. And good was the timing of it, too, as Bud had stopped with his toes protruding over a 200 foot drop straight down to the ocean.

"The Great Australian Bight," Terry said, leaning over, watching the surf pound against the sheer cliffs that formed the southern edge of the continent for endless miles in either direction.

"There be whales here!" Jack laughed, spying a pod of right whales not far off the coastline.

"Didn't you say that same line when the whale breached in the wheatfield in Toronto?" Bud observed, taking several backwards steps. (see Toronto Tribulations)

"I did not!" Jack huffed.

"Yes, you did," Bud corrected. "Only you were just emerging from being Jack Black and that's why you don't recall."

"I've never been a comedian in my life!" Jack growled.

"Not the comedian, Jack," Bud explained not terribly patiently. "As in 'Death'. You know, 'Meet Jack Black.'"

"That was Joe Black," Himself corrected.

"Yeah, but you've never created a Joe, Himself, now have you?" Bud looked back at Jack. "And he was damn scary, going around in that calm way, mentally measuring us for our coffins."

"Cave!" called out Broch, the single word being understood even by those who did not speak Scottish.

"Where away?" Jack shouted back.

"O'er he...." Broch's voice was cut off before he could complete the last word...which was 'here', for those readers who might not be able to figure that out...not that there's anything really wrong, mind, with the not being able...but one desires at least some form of clarity from time to time despite its being an epi and by the very nature of that, often unclear. But, it was 'here'. Though that's neither here nor there, but only here.

The rising sun illuminated Zack's hirsute head. His eyes wide he looked from where Broch had been to Himself and then back at the empty place.

"What, Zack? What did you see?" Himself hollered. "Where is Broch?"

ON TO PART 10...at long last

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