Going for the Juggler
3
Tumbling
WE FELT A TWISTING in our stomachs before we hit the floor and rolled, laughing as we clutched at each other, my canes rattling on the white floor.
“We did it!” Cadence cried. “This is either Crossroads or Heaven. Which is it?”
“Could be both,” I laughed. “Sephie! We’re home, honey!”
A wall opened ahead of us in the white room and Persephone came into the room dressed in a diaphanous blue gown. She was crying but held herself straight.
“Hero! Lincoln? Lincoln! Is it really you?” Persephone rushed across the white floor and threw herself into my arms. “It’s you! It’s you!”
“Of course it’s me, silly girl. Who else would it be?”
“They said… your portal went inactive as you went through it. The Supervisor said you must have been killed. Oh, Lincoln! They sent me back to Cassandra, but suddenly I was called back here to Crossroads. And you’re here! How did you get here?”
“The fact that you tried to grab me when I went through the portal saved my life. I fell forward and tumbled through just as Wilson put an axe through the framework of the portal. It’s been touch and go on Earth for a few days, but we found another portal. Cadence found it. Cadence, this is Persephone.”
“Oh, my! You’re Lisa’s daughter. I’d recognize you anyplace. Welcome to Crossroads!”
“Yes. I’m Lincoln’s fiancée,” Cadence said rather tightly.
“You would not believe what we’ve gone through in the past few days!” I said.
“You?” Cadence practically screamed. “It’s me who has less than nineteen days to live. It’s me whose father has been trying to kill or kidnap her. It’s me whose mother abandoned her to stay on Chaos. It’s me who just inherited an empire and has to prove she can run it. It’s me who just jumped through a fucking window forty-one stories off the ground!”
Whoa! Cadence had just stepped off the deep end. All the stress of the past week had just caught up and I realized that my holding and kissing on Sephie was probably not helping. I pried Persephone off of me and turned to catch Cadence. I wasn’t quick enough. She slapped me.
“And it’s you who’s fucking around with another woman right in front of the woman he said he loved and wanted to marry!” Cadence collapsed on the floor crying. I tried to gather her into my arms and she squirmed away. “I am Hero Cadence. Get me a caretaker!” Cadence snapped.
“What?”
“I have a ring and I just entered through my portal,” Cadence asserted, holding up the ring.
“Computer, can you identify the ring Cadence is holding?” Persephone asked. “If there is an earthly caretaker, maybe there is a female hero.”
“The ring once belonged to Hero Alfonso. It was paired to the portal from which Hero Lincoln and Cadence arrived.”
“See!”
“However, the ring did not activate the portal and has not done so in sixteen years. Hero Lincoln’s ring activated the portal and he brought his companion Cadence through.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Cadence shouted at the ceiling. There was no response.
“That’s Computer,” I said. “He assists Persephone in caring for me and for my companions, including your mother and the damsels I rescue. He is an artificial intelligence and is normally very polite if you speak nicely to him.”
Cadence passed out.
“That went well,” Computer said.
I carried Cadence to bed, undressed her, and shed the remains of the black suit I’d been wearing. I kissed Persephone deeply and had her undress and get in bed with us on the other side of Cadence.
“What do you think happened, Lincoln?” Seph asked me. “I thought she was excited to come here.”
“She is. It’s been a very difficult week and she’s really done remarkably well. I think getting here was a sudden jolt of reality. I don’t know what she was expecting. That bastard put his portal in an open window five hundred feet above the ground. If that had been my first experience, I wouldn’t have done it. I wasn’t sure I was going to do it anyway until Cadence jumped. I just kept hold of her.”
“I love you, my hero. I do not want to be the cause of discord between you and your chosen one,” Seph said. “I so want to…” She looked at Cadence and tears stung her eyes. I couldn’t help myself. I reached across Cadence between us and kissed my caretaker. We managed, somehow, not to get too carried away. I lay down beside Cadence and began to kiss her softly. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Are we in our bed? Was it all a bad dream, Linc?” she whispered.
“I’m afraid not, sweetheart. We are at Crossroads. I am here with you and I love you more than life. I know it’s hard to take in, but it’s all real. And yes, that is Persephone petting your hair beside you,” I said. Cadence turned from me and looked at my caretaker.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to sound like a jealous bitch. I just… Somehow seeing you together was so much harder than I thought it would be. I cracked up. I’m sorry.”
“Cadence, companion of Hero Lincoln, I will never come between you and your love. But know that I love him, too, just as Lisa Caretaker does. And given the chance, I know I will love you, too,” Persephone said.
“It’s so much to take in,” Cadence said. “Oh. I’m sorry, Computer. Please forgive my rudeness earlier.”
“It is nice to make your acquaintance, Cadence Companion,” the disembodied voice answered.
“That is really going to take some getting used to,” she sighed. “Um… Are we all three naked in bed together?”
“That’s the way we sleep here,” I said.
“Persephone, I’ve never… you know… done anything with a girl before. Um… why don’t I go out for some lunch while you and Lincoln… um… have your reunion. I promise I won’t freak out,” Cadence said.
“Computer, what would you suggest for a light meal that we can eat right here in bed while we get to know one another,” Seph asked.
“Antipasto,” Computer answered. “Please allow me to serve an array of authentic Umbrian finger foods, prepared meats, cheeses, and breads. I would suggest the Sagrantino di Montefalco wine with your meal and background music of Verdi’s Four Seasons.”
“Computer, how did you know about the Sagrantino di Montefalco? And Umbria?” I asked.
“When Cadence Companion arrived with Hero Alfonso’s ring, I accessed the database of his preferences. It seems that was his favorite.”
“Thank you, Computer. That will be an excellent repast for us as we become acquainted,” Seph said. We sat up in bed with pillows behind us. Cadence was a little self-conscious being naked and I saw her steal several glances at Persephone’s impressive chest. I put an arm around Cadence and turned her head toward me.
“You might not want to watch this the first time. It’s a little disconcerting.”
“What?” she asked.
“Having food appear out of nowhere.” I turned her head back to the front where a tray had been placed across our laps with an assortment of antipasti and the wine already poured. Cadence looked around.
“Who brought that?”
“Computer did, dear,” Persephone said. “Did you know that there have been over four hundred instances of Heroes passing out the first time food appeared in front of them?” she continued conversationally. “Of course, most of them were before television made its appearance on Earth. I’ve been watching different Earth television shows. I think the instances of fainting began to decline about the time the Star Trek series aired with its transporter. Heroes and companions who had seen that had less difficulty accepting food appearing out of nowhere.” She rolled a thin piece of salami around an olive and popped it in Cadence’s mouth before my sweetheart could respond.
Once food actually touches your lips, conversation relaxes, and before long we were telling Persephone what had happened from the time I crashed into Wilson on the way out of the portal to stepping out the open window in Alfonso’s office.
“I wanted to believe everything was real,” Cadence confessed. “But it’s all so impossible. My sweet, kind Lincoln going off to battle bad guys on a primitive world and then fuck women until they were pregnant. Even all the training and the quest and the clothes. There was still that doubt in my mind. It’s all a game. We’re going on a fantastic LARP. And then Mom didn’t come back. And Wilson trying to kidnap or kill me. And Gino and the will and the inheritance. I was overwhelmed.”
“You were keeping up pretty well until we actually got here,” I said. “If you were in doubt, how could you make the leap?”
“Remember back when I was thirteen and curious about religion? I went to church with my friend, Sally. I decided they were really weird and never went back,” Cadence said. “But I still remember the sermon and I actually looked up the Bible verses. It was the story of Joshua leading the Israelites across the Jordan River to the promised land. The river was at flood stage, but the men carrying that thing with the laws in it, walked right into the river and found dry land. That’s one of the reasons I never went back to that church. How stupid is it to walk into a flood and find dry land?”
“About as stupid as jumping out a forty-first story window into another world,” I laughed.
“That’s just it. The preacher said the story wasn’t about the Israelites getting into the promised land; it was about faith. He said, ‘Faith isn’t standing by the river chanting, I believe, I believe, I believe. Faith is putting your foot out and stepping into the abyss.’ When I picked up my grandfather’s ring, I realized I’d been standing at the edge chanting ‘I believe.’ So, I put my foot out and stepped into the abyss,” Cadence cried.
“And Lincoln brought you safely here,” Seph said softly.
“Are you sure I’m not a hero?”
“All companions are heroes. That doesn’t mean they can come without their hero, though,” Persephone said. What a nice way to put it. I thought of Lord Chang, stranded on Chaos after Danny Sun died. “You are going to be a great hero’s companion.”
I kissed Cadence and then I kissed Seph. Cadence shuddered a little and then joined our kiss.
“You won’t stop loving me, will you, Lincoln?” she whispered.
“Never.”
“Then you’d better make love to our caretaker. I can feel her dripping on my leg.”
“So, when can we go find Mom?” Cadence asked as we ate a dinner prepared to perfection by Computer.
“We have to get you trained and choose a mission,” Persephone explained. “In the morning I’ll assess your level and get you both tuned up. Neither my hero nor his companion nor his caretaker will go into Chaos unprepared.”
“I’m prepared,” Cadence said. I think she had a double agenda. She wanted to hurry to see her mother, but she also wanted put some distance between Seph and me. She’d been beside us while we made love, but she hadn’t been enthusiastic. Not at all like Lisa. Lisa was ready to make love to Persephone the minute she saw the girl’s picture. Cadence still viewed my caretaker as a bit of a threat—competition.
“We’ll see when we do the tests in the morning,” Seph insisted. “And when we start selecting a mission, I need to find one that is in the area where we assume Lisa Caretaker is wandering. Do you think she will stay in the South, Lincoln?”
“I believe so. The conditions in the South are better for a traveling circus, assuming she still has the show. I would expect her to stick to that climate. The Northlands tend to be more rugged. There are many more small towns and not as many large centers. Traveling a distance with wagons on any but the largest roads would be catastrophic. They would never do anything but repair carts.”
“So just choose a damsel in the South and let’s go,” Cadence stated.
“Now that you have an empire to rule on Earth, do you really want to be stranded on Chaos for the rest of your life?” I asked.
“Why would we get stranded? I’m not volunteering to stay like Mother did.”
“And if I’m dead, how are either of you going to get back?”
“Dead?”
“This is serious business, Cadence. One wrong step and I’m dead. Trust Persephone to choose us a mission that will get us to the right place and give us a good chance of success. We’re going off-mission to find Lisa as it is. I might have to rescue the damsel and then cart her around while we find Lisa. And believe me, as much as I love the women I’ve rescued, they aren’t that pleasant to be around on Chaos once they’ve been rescued,” I said.
“Great. Hauling around another horny woman who wants to fuck you all the time,” Cadence growled.
“There are rules that state the hero cannot fuck the damsel until they return to Crossroads,” Persephone said. “I believe it is one of the great challenges that heroes face to show their true character.”
Cadence got frustrated pretty fast. The Companion’s Rule Book we’d read indicated that she could have sex with the hero on Earth and on Chaos—in fact, was expected to—but not on Crossroads.
“So, I suppose you’re going to have sex with me,” Cadence said after Seph and I had made love again the next morning.
“It’s my choice,” Seph said. They really weren’t getting along well. I was not at all happy about it. “So far, I haven’t seen anything that attracts me to you sexually.”
“You’re too into my Mom, aren’t you?”
“I’m wishing she was here right now instead of you.”
“Just get us a mission, then, and let us go get her.”
“Not until you are ready and I have a reasonable expectation that you’ll return alive.”
“I’m ready. I’ve been training for six months.”
Persephone slapped Cadence. What? That was the start of an all-out catfight. Cadence attacked my Cassandran lover. Persephone batted away her attack and hit her again. Realizing she wasn’t going to win just because she was bigger, Cadence took the fight seriously and landed a punch that set Persephone back. She grinned. What came next was a series of attacks and parries and wrestling that had the two women tumbling through the entire apartment. I saw them rolling toward the dining table that was set with our breakfast. Computer snatched it into the air, letting it disappear with a crack as the two women continued grappling.
I was not about to get in the middle of this. I knew what happened to guys who tried to separate fighting animals.
“Better get the healing chamber ready,” I mumbled to Computer.
“Would you care for coffee while we wait?” Computer asked.
“Thank you.” A cup appeared in the air before me and I took it to sip the heady black brew. I was going to miss coffee when we got to Chaos. The stuff they drank there was made from a ground bark and reminded me of chicory. Not coffee.
It was obvious now that Cadence was getting the worst of it. She kept fighting back, even though she was being slapped around by the smaller but far more experienced Persephone. Cadence fell back on the floor and Persephone pounced on her. She grabbed my fiancée’s hands and held them above her head as she straddled the girl.
“You are ready to go to Chaos when I say you are ready to go to Chaos,” Seph growled. “Not until.” Cadence feebly struggled against Seph but Seph spread herself out on top of the Earthling. Then Seph kissed her.
It was a sudden break in the storm where everything gets quiet, like it is frozen in place. As quickly as it began it was over and a new passion and wrestling match ensued. In this one, their lips never parted as they rolled over and over, groping each other. The gasps and cries were not of pain but of ecstasy. They each had a hand in the other’s pussy and mauled a breast with the other. Persephone was at a disadvantage in this battle, not because of less skill, but because her body responded in orgasm after orgasm as Cadence rolled on top of her and buried her face in the Cassandran’s pussy. Persephone rolled them and rode Cadence’s face as she attacked my lover’s pussy with her mouth.
It was too much. The view I had was of Persephone’s backside posed over Cadence’s mouth, the juices running faster from her slit than Cadence could drink them. I set my coffee cup in thin air and it disappeared. My rampant cock led the way as I sank to the balls in Persephone as Cadence licked both of us. The cacophony of our orgasms echoed in the empty room.
Persephone kindly let Cadence have the first turn in the healing chamber. I was sure there were bruises and suspected cracked bones. I held Seph gently while we waited, unwilling to risk hurting her. When the chamber chimed, Cadence climbed out and helped Seph in. We waited, holding each other on the restored sofa while we waited.
“I’m sorry I’ve been a bitch, Lincoln. I won’t even add ‘but’ to that. There was no excuse. This is what I wanted. This is where I belong. I might not fall in love with Persephone to the extent Mom has. But I will love her. And I will become the best companion you could have on Chaos or on Earth.”
I held her and kissed her. This was my beloved Cadence. We would still have some rocky times, I was sure, but we knew where we were anchored—had been anchored for all her life. The chamber rang and we released the lid. Sephie stepped out and stretched.
“I feel so much better now, don’t you?” she said to Cadence. Cadence stepped into her embrace and kissed my caretaker.
“Teach me what I need to know, Persephone. I want to protect and serve our hero on Chaos.” They kissed again.
“And you will do a wonderful job of it. I worked up an appetite. Shall we take a quick shower and have breakfast?” Seph asked. We all agreed.
Of course, a quick shower is never that quick when a horny hero is sandwiched between two incredibly sexy teens. There was a lot of playing, sucking, diddling, and coming. But we were all laughing when we got out of the shower and toweled off. None of us bothered with clothes when we went to the dining area to eat. The spread of food was incredible once again and we simply relaxed. As we had coffee and sweet cake, we got around to some of the burning questions.
“Do we know where Lisa is so we can pick her up as quickly as possible when we reach Chaos?” I asked. Sephie’s eyes clouded.
“That’s a problem, my Hero,” she said. “Lisa is not the only Earth Companion or even Hero stranded on Chaos. Sadly, we don’t know where they are. The surveillance system that we have tracks three things: Portal activity, Damsel location and distress level, and Hero location. We don’t track everyone on Chaos. We compile data from returned Heroes and Damsels in order to learn what the current conditions on the planet are. We identify people surrounding the Hero and Damsel, but when they are not in contact, we have no way of finding them.”
“It sounds like a novel,” Cadence said. We looked at her and she continued. “Well, in most novels, there is a single point of view. At least at a time. You see things from the Hero’s point of view and don’t see anything else that is going on. You might switch to a different point of view—say the Damsel’s—but then when the Hero is off-screen, you don’t know what is happening there.”
“Well, we are fortunate that we can follow both at the same time,” Persephone said, “but you are right that we are limited to their sphere of influence. We have weather reports from all over the planet. We can tell when a storm is moving toward our Hero’s location, but we don’t know if a mad bandit has decided to track him down. And, unfortunately, that means that once a Companion leaves the presence of the Hero, we don’t know where he or she has gone.”
“So, we have to go back to where we parted and start working on where she went from there. Maybe we’ll be lucky and get back there the day after we left. That happened the first time Lisa and I returned to Chaos. We left with Ariel Songbird, spent a couple of months here working on her reward, and then returned to Earth. We were there four weeks before we came back here. We spent two months training and then returned to Chaos and it was the next day there,” I said.
“We can hope, but time is uncertain on Chaos,” Persephone said.
“It’s still hard to believe that everyone is, like, frozen in place on Earth while we are adventuring for a month or a year here and on Chaos,” Cadence said. “It makes me giggle to imagine Wilson with his eyes popped open as we jumped through the portal, frozen there in disbelief until we come back.”
“As we discovered the last time, he isn’t frozen in place. He managed to get an axe and destroy the portal in the time I was last gone,” I said.
“Well, we do know some things,” Persephone said. “I think we can safely say that the circus has stayed in the south. Large traveling caravans of the sort your performers have are rare in the rugged land of the north. It is too mountainous there to depend on wagons for more than a day. Even in the south, it is more common to have goods packed on beasts of burden than in wagons. Trade routes, even on land, generally follow the courses of rivers. The towns are larger and spaced farther apart with emptiness between. A town of the size that is common in the south must be supported by what is grown within a day’s ride and by what can be traded or brought in on barges. Location on a river might increase the supportable population if foodstuffs can be transported on it. In the North, villages are more scattered, generally subsist on food grown within a few miles, have lower populations, and are more isolated. There is some, but not a great deal of trade, even among the large citadels.”
“So, since she has a circus, she’d stay in the South?” Cadence asked. Seph asked for a map and Computer cleared the table. A very realistic depiction of Chaos appeared as a holograph. “Cool!” Cadence declared.
“I contacted Mei-Xing, Danny Sun’s former Caretaker. She became a Hero Greeter for some time before she retired and is now back on Cassandra. She was grateful for the news that Chang has survived and thrived on Chaos and begs that if you see him again, you will give him her love,” Seph said.
“Of course.”
“She supplied me with the maps of Danny Sun’s missions, from which I compiled this picture of the region. The Slaver Wars were focused on the Central and South Central portion of Chaos. Meeting with Sid at the Jones Citadel was a new experience for Danny. He had several weeks of hard riding to return to his base of operation, gather an army and ride back north.” Persephone pointed out the general route. Unfortunately, Danny’s forces did not extend far into the battle due to his death at the hands of his supposed allies. “There were continued strikes from the South, but the war was won with the pincer action of Sid, Malcolm, and Colonel Lee,” Seph said.
“So, this whole area in the South is unexplored?” I asked.
“No. Heroes come from every part of Earth,” Seph explained. “There are far more of them than you would imagine. Now this is what I want you to note. It is the path that your circus took when you were pursuing Cathy Temp. Notice that it follows the courses of these major rivers. Up until this point. This is where you rescued the Damsel and immediately turned North to get back to High Castle. The logical choice for the circus would have been to continue to follow the river going from town to town rather than to take this cut across the plains between the two rivers. If Lisa is functioning more along the lines of the traditional route, she will be going all the way around rather than taking the shortcut.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “If we put in at High Castle, we can follow much the same route and either catch up to her by riding or when she returns to High Castle for her next break if we leave word for her there.”
“We just need a Damsel somewhere along the route for you to rescue as well,” Seph said.
“How long did it take the circus to make this circuit?” Cadence asked.
“Close to a year,” I said.
“But it’s only been five days,” Cadence said. “She might still be at High Castle.”
“It’s the time thing again,” I sighed. “When we return to Chaos it might be the day after I left or it might be ten years later.”
“Years? Oh, no! Mommy will be old!” Cadence wailed.
“Gentle, sweet one,” Seph whispered. “When a Hero or Companion from Earth is on Chaos, he or she does not age. It is the same for Damsels. They might be injured, worn down, or even killed, but when they return to Cassandra, they are only fifteen minutes older than when they left.”
“Does that mean that when we take her back, she’d be thrown into the closet fifteen minutes after I left? That we’d have to fight our way back against Wilson again?” I asked.
“Ah, no, I don’t think so. Computer, when is the companion returned after a rescue?” Seph said.
“The timeline belongs to the Hero,” the disembodied voice responded. “The Hero returns fifteen minutes after he left. Anyone who travels with him returns when he does on that trip.”
“So, if we brought Chang back with us,” I mused, “he would be several years in his future from when he left Earth. That could create some interesting confusion.”
“Consider it carefully before you make such an offer, Hero.”
“I believe we should relax our hero tonight and tomorrow we will work on selecting a mission, Cadence,” Seph said.
“Um… Do you mind if I sort of wait out here? I’m not jealous any longer, Persephone. At least not much. But I’d rather not watch again while you make love to him,” Cadence said. “It’s too hard.”
“I thought we could do it together,” Sephie said.
“But I thought I couldn’t have sex with the Hero on Crossroads,” Cadence said.
“Oh, sweetheart. I thought you were just being nice by letting me enjoy my Hero for the little time we have together. That rule was changed back in Hero Sid’s day. It just wasn’t fair.”
“Lincoln! You said we couldn’t make love on Crossroads!”
“I didn’t know, Cadence. That’s what our handbook says. You read it,” I said.
“You must have a very old edition of the handbook. I will assemble a new batch of handbooks while you’re gone,” Sephie said. “Who knows what other rules you might be living under that are obsolete.”
Cadence plastered herself against me and kissed me like I’d just gotten the feeling back in my limbs.
“Make love to me, my Hero,” she said. “To us!”
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
