Chapter 21: Prodigal

The birthday party was dazzling, dizzying and impossible. All the people we had seen working, as well as so many more behind the scenes, had completed the preparations and transformed the house and the grounds into a wonderland of light, color and music.

There was a string quartet playing under a tent in front of the house. Down at the dock, the more flamboyant and energetic group we'd seen warming up when we'd returned played fiddle, guitar, banjo and harmonica, with a couple humorous and energetic turns on the washtub bass, laid down a little more Carolina flavored blend of folk and dance music. Ginny and I watched reels and jigs and square dances of various kinds, but most of our dancing was done under the slow romantic strains of the classical strings. Her Mom's lessons paid off, and we were able to avoid embarrassing ourselves. The highlight of our dancing came towards the end of the evening, when the fiddle player joined the string quartet and they played a song called "The Lover's Waltz". The fiddler and the violinist alternated the passages, and it was haunting and beautiful both ways. As Ginny and I danced, the other couples left the floor to us, and it was soon just the two of us. Our eyes were locked together the entire time, and I could feel Ginny's heart beating next to mine. I reached out again without effort to pull a little energy from a nearby jump point and wrapped Ginny and I in a blanket of energy, blending our rhythms and sensations. We moved without thinking in perfect time to the music, and we kissed through the applause at the end of the song.

I met hundreds of people. Literally. Too many to really remember, but I made an effort to file the names and faces away. If it was possible to remember, I wanted to give it a try. There were countless McKessons and Hallidays, but there were also Waites and Culbertsons and Aillards. All with various ties to the Clan and to our history and success.

There was food! Lord was there food. I learned that in North Carolina, barbecue means pork, and the Chocowinity and others parts of Eastern North Carolina considered one cut the perfect barbecue meat and those from Western North Carolina considered another part of the hog as the prime subject for the barbecue. And then their was the sauce. Any tomato base was anathema to the Easterners, while it was considered acceptable to use a little in the west, and the farther West you ran the more was considered okay. And seafood! I actually had conch!

Cyrus introduced me to his wife Felicia, who was a lovely and elegant woman who was so petite I was tickled to see them standing side by side. Later, the two of them astonished us newcomers by singing a beautiful duet version of Don McLean's 'Vincent', accompanied by the string quartet. I think most people think of the song as 'Starry, Starry Night'. Their singing was a perfect synchronization and blending of two voices, and was easily the match to our waltz for demonstrating a couple becoming as one. We applauded wildly. When I thanked both of them personally a bit later in the evening, Felicia blushingly confessed that it had become a standard request for them to perform it at Clan gatherings.

The large crowd gathered together eventually and sang Happy Birthday to me. Toasts were made. Toasts for which Ginny and I drank sparkling cider. Grandpa and I stood together to thank people as they left for the night, and soon all were gone save for a select few.

There had been several private meetings during the night, where Grandpa told people what they expected to hear, that I was not going to be a guardian, but that I had my own gifts that would contribute greatly to the family in the coming years. Each group was allowed to think of me as not the prodigal son, but perhaps another McKesson prodigy and then left to make their own assumptions about what that meant. It was true that often, as if in compensation, McKesson men who could not pass the test achieved great success in other areas. The implication was left laying there that I was one such.

Later, after all but a select few were gone, I went upstairs to retrieve Dare and we joined everyone as they gathered in the Library. This was in the opposite corner of the house from Grandpa's room, on the other side of the Banquet Hall. I could've spent weeks in this room. There was a bookshelf that ran from floor to ceiling the entire length of the long inside wall. A great many comfortable chairs had been placed there, and Violet ushered in several ladies pushing carts with coffee and and several champagne buckets. She escorted the ladies back out of the library and closed and locked the door behind them as they went before settling in her spot beside Sheb.

Grandpa stood then and reintroduced me to the men, all of whom I'd met at the beginning of the evening. Doctor Aillard was one of them. Before I could start, Grandpa said "A Halliday has always been entrusted to keep the history of our Clan and its hidden duties. Sheb holds that position now, and what you tell him here he must be prepared to remember, and add to the story of the Hallidays and McKessons and those others who have stood with us over the years."

I stood before these gathered members of my family and spoke.

"Early this morning there was concern over my having been unconscious for nearly an entire day. I told everyone then that their concern was misplaced. I had not been unconscious. I had been ... away."

I took a sip of my coffee while I gathered my thoughts.

"My mind was lost, traveling countless Earths, most much like this one, but many different in ways both strange and wonderful. I don't know yet where I was. It was not a single place. It was many, many places. I believe I was cast adrift between the world that is revealed to us here, and other places.

I do not yet know how to explain or describe what truly happened, but I will describe it using words which will do for now. I want you to understand that the reality of it, the physics of it, the truth of it, those will not be exactly as I state it today. I will build a story that matches the events as I perceived them, but which doesn't really explain them."

I again sipped my coffee. I looked into each and every pair of eyes, and to my wonder, I saw no sign of doubt in any of them.

"I felt as if I passed through a new Earth each second I was gone, and I was conscious and without sleep the entire time. I could do nothing, could barely register the flickering passage of reality after reality. Reaching out to touch the realities as they flickered past was like trying to hold quicksilver. On my own I was helpless. I would never have returned, and you would have all eventually accepted my fate and removed the tubes and whatnot and laid me to rest. But my touching of that power back at the tree set off a signal or alarm or warning of some kind, and somewhere something responded. I was found, and examined. I was opened and turned inside out and back again. I do not know if it is possible to pass or fail that examination, but whatever examined me then sent me home to all of you."