Where The Raven Sits Part 6

Chapter Six

They pulled up at the hiking trail just as a small dust storm was clearing up. At that time during a weekday there were no other cars in the lot. It was eerily empty, like people had been evacuated instead of being at work or school. To Kadie, the parking lot looked unusually large. The air was choking, but her dad didn’t mind as he led her down the trail. Almost letting her nerves get the better of her, she nearly found herself reaching for her father’s hand. Kadie held off, making a fist and sticking it in her pocket. She wasn’t positive that that made her feel safer than holding hands with her dad, but she convinced herself that nothing else could grab it. On the other hand, her dad didn’t seem too worried about strange creatures getting grabby. As they walked the trail his face grew hard with thought. The wrinkles on his forehead doubled and his eyes lost focus. Kadie wondered if he was rethinking tracking this creature down. She hoped that’s what her dad was thinking.
Why are we doing this anyway? Kadie thought as she glanced around her. We should be trying to figure out a way to tell people about this thing…. Maybe that’s what Dad’s doing. Did he bring a camera or something? Worried that the creature may have been watching them, Kadie tried to inspect her father’s pocket as inconspicuously as possible. There were no noticeable bulges in his shorts or shirt pockets. Maybe he’ll use his phone.
The lookout was just as bare as the trail, the landing empty aside from a teenager in a hoodie. The hood was down and Kadie instantly recognized the dark wild hair from the day before. The boy had to be a monster, she figured, if he could wear a sweatshirt in that kind of heat. He didn’t turn around when her father hailed him, waving a hand in acknowledgment as he looked out over the ledge. Kadie’s dad strode right up to him, leaning against the railing. Kadie hung back, wondering if he had lost his mind.
“There was no reason for you to bring her.” the boy said.
“You bound her the same way you did me.” her father returned. “It’s only fair. Kay, come here.”
Kadie shook her head. “No. You come here! Get away from that before it pulls you over the edge again!”
“I wasn’t trying to do that last time!” the boy snapped, still with his back to her. “He jumped on me! Not that I didn’t appreciate the sentiment.” The boy turned only his head toward her dad. “Is she going to go run screaming? ‘Cause I’d have to chase her and I don’t want to do that.”
Her dad sighed. “Kadie, get over here. Let’s get this over with.”
Reluctantly, Kadie took her dad’s outstretched hand and let him pull her against him. She accepted the comfort of her father’s closeness, feeling wholly unsafe standing so near to the currently teenage looking boy.
“All right, Jason, tell us what all is going on.”
Kadie looked up at her dad. Jason?! It has a name?!
The teenager focused harder on the canyon. Something about the concentration reminded her of when she saw him the day before. “I’ve only had to do this once, thirty-something years ago, so I’m not really sure how to start. What am I? Where did I come from? Can you put your hand in my chest? It’s all one long story, to be honest.… Actually, let’s start with that last one: No, you can’t. It’s annoying and I hate it.”
“I had no intentions of asking that.” Her dad said. “Why don’t we skip the story and you just answer our questions as we ask them?”
“Fine. Go on.”
“What are you?” Kadie’s dad asked.
“I’m human…. I was human. Now I’m a semi-god.”
“You mean a demi-god.”
“No,” the boy shook his head. “No god blood or anything like that. I’m god-ish; I’ve got powers that were given to me, but they’re limited and only for the motivation of my existence.”
“That sounds selfish.”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t curse myself.”
“Curse?”
The boy sighed. “I was cursed by a god to look like this and got these powers as a result.”
“Why curse you? Curses are supposed to be punishments.”
“This is a punishment.” The boy smacked his hand against the rail. “You’d think immortality and being virtually indestructible would be good things, but not when you’re a living incubator for a damn egg and reshaped to look like the dropped offspring of a crow and a drunken bolder!”
That’s…almost a perfect description of him. Kadie mused. But what the hell?!
“What did you do to get punished this way?” her father pressed.
“I killed some god’s favorite pet raven.” the creature said. “And before you think I’m some horrible person for it, you try having some screeching ass bird nesting in the tree just outside your window, screaming like it’s being murdered from two in the morning to five in the afternoon.” The creature turned completely to them and Kadie’s dad had to hold her tight to keep her from running away. The change in its appearance was instant and jarring. “Ever heard of a Raven of Time?” The question was clearly rhetorical. “It’s a gods’ bird destined to lay and sit on an egg that holds a piece of “broken” time in every conceivable timeline possible. And when it screeches or caws or whatever those stupid birds do, the sound of all of its existences can be head at once! Try sleeping through that nonstop.”
“Kay, calm down, get behind me.” Her dad repositioned himself so that he was standing between his daughter and the beast. His voice was even, but she could feel him shake as he continued talking to it. “As bad as that sounds, you’ll have to explain to me how a bird is supposed to sit on a…broken part of time. Let me make an assumption and say you’re talking about…multivers theory. From my understanding, the whole point of that is that there is no wrong answer; everything is possible since the universes are infinite.”
“Everything is possible except the same exact thing happening in two separate universes. Um, how did Mo say it…? Right “Reality is a street and universes are the cars on it. Reality can’t hold twins. If twin universes come into existence they are immediately drawn together, crashing through other universes until they can merge into one. To keep that from happening, as soon as a twin situation comes about, one of the two is put into the womb of a special raven – which eventually becomes an egg – that blocks the draw completely.” Why they couldn’t use something quieter like a hamster is beyond me.”
“Hamsters don’t- No, never mind. How do they know when these twin universes are born?”
“Identical gods will appear. Every living person has a god connected to their timeline. All the gods are connected to each other since one human interaction causes a spider web effect throughout the world; someone meets one person who meets another who knows another; everyone knows each other through someone else even if they don’t know the person. Just looking at someone on the bus makes the connection. Each branch of every made decision of every human there has ever been creates a new marking on that person’s god. Please at least pretend to understand, ‘cause explaining this is giving me a headache.”
Kadie’s dad nodded. “I think I got it. So, there are trillions upon trillions of gods somewhere? And why would they just let the bird sit in some random place? Wouldn’t they want to keep it close?”
“Second and third questions first: they don’t care. The birds live forever on their own, but they’ve never took the time to think that the annoying things could be killed. They let them fly off to wherever and lay the eggs and stay there. The eggs never hatch and the birds ever leave. For the number of gods; there are only as many as there are living humans, and in no timeline can a human live forever. When a human stops existing in every possible timeline then their corresponding god does, too.”
“Can we-”
“No, you can’t meet your god. I only know a few and I hate all of them.”