Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest
I Art Sixteen - part 7

“Why doth your mother not liketh me?” asked Dwendra, raising her eyebrows.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “She had a core meltdown when Egrindreth returned too. It’s likely Yoldasia told her something bad about you. I think Miandri might have told her you were psychic but Mum seemed to dislike you before that. I replace it hard to believe the two of them have devised some sort of code.”

“Art Miandri as clueless as she doth seemeth? Art it a ruse and she art really ... Well I doth not knoweth.”

“Clindar!” shouted Mum.

I went into the kitchen and found Mum looking angry, “Have you had sex with that girl?”

“No. Why don’t you want me to have sex?”

“Ah, Anden, you’re home at last,” said Traivanin, who’d been slumped on a chair in the dining room with his head on the table. I’d forgotten he was still in the house. “I just want to ask Clindar a few questions.”

“About the sand?” asked Mum.

“There’s something puzzling us,” Traivanin stood up and turned to me giving Mum a somewhat cross look. “Well a lot of stuff but one thing seems particularly odd. Do you know what that is?”

“All of it?” I asked.

“The sand.”

“What sand?” I asked.

I’d been told your teleportation field extends several centimeters from your body and anything that’s mostly within it goes with you, while anything mostly outside stays behind. Obviously there must have been a lot of sand around Dwendra’s feet and mine when we’d teleported from Zorg’s palace grounds.

“We found a sprinkling of sand near Miandri’s bed. You may think all sand’s the same as it’s been blowing around Midbar forever. Only that isn’t the case, there are several different types. The sand you’d buy in a bag here for using in cement or kid’s sandpits or potting plants is all river or sea sand. Then there’s that sand that blows in sometimes and leaves a light covering on everything. That’s wind sand. It’s picked up from the desert but has very fine particles because the bigger grains don’t make it over the mountains. Then there’s desert sand, the type you replace out in the desert, don’t get that much in the Great Basin. Can you guess the type we found?”

“Well logically I’d say sea or river sand is the most likely,” I said, “but I don’t really know.”

I was really glad this guy wasn’t psychic but I was a bit concerned about how much Miandri was picking up.

“No, desert sand,” said Traivanin. “Now how do you think that got there?”

“I’ve no idea. How long’s it been there?”

“Don’t know, may have been a while or maybe it’s new and somebody cleaned up most of it so we only found the bits down between the pile on those tiles.”

I wondered why some sand hadn’t got embedded like the sole of my boot. Perhaps it had and either Egrindreth hadn’t thought of that or she didn’t think anybody would notice.

“I don’t know. There used to be three kids in this house so some odd things happened.”

“Odd distribution too.” He showed me a portable computer with a plan of the bedroom with a shaded area beside Miandri’s bed (there was a second, unused, bed in the room). There were three more darkly shaded areas, I guess where our feet had landed, except my left foot, the area around which had been removed. “It looks to me as if the gouged out area had something to do with the sand.”

“Could it be Old Magic?” I asked. “Miandri practices that.”

“No, that’s totally not how Old Magic works,” said Miandri.

“I don’t like it when things just don’t add up,” said Traivanin, “and this doesn’t. Anyway, let me know if you think of anything!”

“I told you he wouldn’t know anything,” said Mum.

“I’ll let myself out,” said Traivanin, heading down the hall to the front door.

“Anyway,” said Mum, smiling slightly. “We care about you. There are just certain issues we need to be concerned with. You understand that don’t you?”

“You’re a member of Benai Nibeyim,” I said.

“We’re talking about your safety!” said Mum.

“Like being able to rely on my mother not conspiring against me!”

“Don’t be stupid!” Mum snapped angrilly. “Like not having sex with the wrong girl.”

“I thought morals were just symbolic,” I said, “and it didn’t matter as long as you used a contraceptive artifact.”

“Don’t try to be clever!” said Mum, putting her hands firmly on the counter and gritting her teeth. “Miandri lost her virginity when you were supposed to be looking after her and she can’t remember what happened.”

“That was between you taking her to a Sorority meeting and me getting home after her!” I snapped, also gritting my teeth. “I can’t see how you can ...”

“We can’t just take in people at random because you like them.”

“It’s hardly at random and it was Dad’s idea for her to move in. What is the problem?”

I put all my effort into reading her mind. She was just standing, turned towards me with her hands on the counter.

“What does your father think he’s doing?” asked Mum. “Letting that thing into the house!”

“It’s like he said last night. Either you give me a girl, tell me the rules and let me play the game or I’ll do things you won’t like,” I waved my arm towards Dwendra.

“You can’t get involved with the wrong sort of girl!” said Mum, loudly.

“What’s the wrong sort ..?”

“That!” she waved towards the living room.

“... the type who are composed mostly of water or the type who use DNA?”

“Don’t be stupid! Yoldasia doesn’t like her!”

She was lying, she didn’t think there was a right type!

“She also hates me," I said, "so that’s not a good indication!”

“She doesn’t hate you!” Mum waved her arms in an exasperated way.

“I think she does.” I stared at her but she didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. “What did she tell you about Dwendra?”

“Nothing.”

That was definitely a lie.

“She totally had a core meltdown when Dwendra came round!” said Mum. “Why?”

“Didn’t she tell you?”

“She’s very wise and a psychic,” said Miandri.

“I’m a more powerful psychic,” I said, “and I like Dwendra.”

“Yoldasia knows better than you!” said Mum.

“What does she know?”

“That Dwendra’s dangerous,” said Mum.

“Why? What bad thing is she likely to do?”

“Fornicate you for a start!” snapped Mum, clearly losing her calm.

“I don’t think so and why’s that a problem?”

“Because it is!” Mum stamped her foot.

“Are you responsible for me not being able to have sex?”

“No! I brought Miandri here for you but you couldn’t even do that right!”

“You took her off to the Sorority meeting and Narblo swooped in and fornicated her while I wasn’t ...” I was trying to stay calm but this still upset me.

“He wouldn’t do such a thing!” shouted Mum.

“His sex rating is a hundred and seventy five,” said Miandri.

“I saw before I stormed off into the night with my heart broken!” I said.

“Miandri?” asked Mum.

“What?” asked Miandri.

“Is this true?”

“I can’t remember.”

Mum turned back to me and asked, “You expect me to believe you got home, found Miandri in bed with Narblo, left for three days and then somebody else came and erased Miandri, Narblo and your father’s memories and gouged a hole in the floor and scattered sand around?”

“That’s what happened. Well not sure about the sand.”

“And what happened to your clothes? I buy you good clothes and you lose them, including the good shoes, and come home with something different.”

“My clothes and shoes got dirty so I swapped them for similar, clean ones.”

I was pretty sure Miandri was acting as Mum’s lie detector so I had to approximate to the truth.

“Miandri, what really happened?”

“You’ve got to replace your own truth,” said Miandri as she got out her crystal, and lit a candle under it. “What really happened the night Clindar disappeared?”