Small Talk in an Evil Lodge

Now that Nathan Coon was gone, the small and thin man opened up. The goggled man from the party went to get some more alcohol - he had a headache and wanted to make it go away (he had not thought of drinking a pint of water before going to bed), and left the small thin man together with the would be ravisher from the river. Since he comes back in this story, I might as well tell you he is called George White.

"We have to use shrinks, but even I have difficulties about standing them."

"Who hasn't?" said George White.

"You know, there were the good old days, before he got in ... and before you did."

"So, what were you up to?"

"You know, and you would not want to know."

"Apart from sacrifice to Tash, the inexorable, the ..."

"Shh - don't name him, you are not as highly initiate yet!"

"Sorry, slip of the tongue ..."

"You will pay the usual penalty."

"When you come around to it - meanwhile, what were you up to?" George White knew he was right on the technical issue and that humouring a nostalgic moment could earn him some leniency (and maybe recognition for not having named the fact that these sacrifices were human ones). A few days hence he would be sorry for that.

And the thin and small man told his story:

"As quite a few here, I have Telmarine roots. On an island there lived a few pirates, who founded a kingdom in another world and generations later some came back. Seems less time happened on the island than in that other world ..."

He wondered if George White was going to ask what he meant by "other world", and the younger man was wise enough not to.

"Might have heard of such things in your studies of the Kabbalah, I reckon. Even Catholics have admitted that their God could create more worlds than this one. Now, this means we have a past with more centuries than other people - our history folded out over the histories of two worlds, not just one. One thing we do recall from the other world was a lion sending us back here. Some adore him. Some think he is Christ. Some on the other hand prefer to worship Tash - whom you unwisely named - who was adored by another nation of the other world and in secret by some Telmarines over there as well. He was the enemy of Aslan."

He paused.

"My father worshipped Tash, and I was very small when first initiated into the mysteries of pain ..."

George shuddered. The older one relished his discomfort and went on:

"... and of power. I wondered all my life since whether Tash exists in this world too. I searched into Delphic Apollo, into Shiva, even into Odin for a while ... until I found out in a Christian Catechism that Christ has an enemy. Then I knew Tash exists in this world too. Then I founded our august society with altogether thirteen of us."

"So you actually know that Narnia is a country in that other world?"

"Of course, but I cannot tell that to Coon. I had to swear an oath, which it costs pretty much to break."

George felt extremely ill at ease when he realised why the older one felt free to tell him and none else. But now the other young man came back with a few drinks, and the small talk finished.