As though her bare feet were winged, she ran and placed herself between him and the ball. For long moments he didn't even look at her but merely studied the dancing spark on his fingertip. How...HOW...had the two of them gotten so quickly from apple pie to THIS? She knew, though, that it was the implacable, inexorable law of epiangst at work. Finally he spoke, though his words were darts of fire to her heart. "You think to keep me from what I choose?"

**********

Though her chin trembled at his words, she held it up defiantly and said, "By God, I will surely try."

A strange sound escaped his lips, half laugh, half something else. He looked at her standing there barefoot in the fallen cornstalks in her ridiculously flimsy dress. Her hair had come loose in her run and fell in long, pale waves below her shoulderblades. He took a step forward, which she matched with a step backward, putting her less than two feet from the plasma ball. Sparkles flew from it, lifting her hair up and out, framing its strands in sheathings of blue.

Staring at him intensely, she said, "You shall not pass, Maximus."

She looked so very...otherworldly...in that moment that the anger-tensed muscles in his jaw relaxed and his breaths came soft and shallow through his parted lips. He knew that with the slightest push of one hand he could sweep her aside. She knew it, too. Tears welled, then over-brimmed in her blue eyes. She studied the beloved countenance, a tremulous smile in the corners of her lips. Something about the way she was doing that, some...different... something he saw in her eyes, penetrated the last shield of his fury and he realized with a start that she was...saying good-bye. In a voice that was broken in its quietness, she said, "You doubt my love....but I can not, will not, let you lay hands on this plasma ball." Suddenly she turned and flung herself into its blueness.

"JOIMUS!" Her name ripped its way up his throat, then he was thrown violently backward as the plasma ball exploded upwards accompanied by a tremendous sucking noise like a giant slurp. He

lay there, stunned, as the cornstalks all around him were drawn upright, all signs of the signs disappearing. The plasma soared upwards in a tall, sparkling column, then spread itself, stratus-like, across the sky before nearly fading completely from view.

Juba, sprinting through the dense corn, almost stepped on Maximus, so closely had the stalks reared upright around him. "Maximus!" he cried, dropping to his knees beside his friend. Quickly he touched his face then let out a relieved breath. The General lived.

Everyone had heard the explosion, seen the column and its aftermath...well, except for Martvy, who, sick and tired of her empty sockets, was in her kitchen fishing her eyeballs out of the jar.

Himself and Terry both dropped to their knees on the other side of Maximus' still form. "Is he all right?" Himself asked worriedly.

Juba shook his head, saying simply, "The explosion...."

"What of Joimus?" Terry asked.

Again Juba shook his head. "I have seen no sign of her."

"Or of the signs themselves," Himself added. "At least THAT problem is solved."

Indeed, if like the corn, one had the ears to hear, one would have heard chuckles, murmurs of delight, even a few pub songs rising up from the cornfield. It was good there was no plot, for if there had been, this sudden shift in it would have been disconcerting to the cast, not to mention the readers. But since it did not exist in the first place, no one was in the least disturbed.

Berti, her hair comfortably short again, arrived on the scene and turned to comment to Bud, "They've lost Joimus again."

"In the park?" he asked.

Lifting her eyes, she said, "I think the sky." She rolled her eyes just a little. "Joimus was never very fond of having her General's weapon be a fork."                           

"She did all this," Bud asked in wonder, looking around at the now-standing corn, the unconscious General, the faint blue smear in the high heavens, "just to get him away from FORKS?"

Berti shrugged. "She's like that. We all just have to learn to live with her."

"Or without her, it would seem," added Bud.

Jack, Biebe, and Cort joined Juba, Himself, and Terry and the six of them lifted Maximus up and carried him out of the cornfield.

"Didn't you do this once before?" Biebe asked Juba.

"Yes," he said, "but it didn't last."

Gently they lay him on his bed in the yellow farmhouse. Marti and Franki both tried to enter the door at the same time.

"I'm a nurse," Marti said, narrowing her restored eyes at the other female.

"Not in epis," Franki retorted. "I am the designated epinurse. Besides," she added, "do you think I am unaware of the lengths to which you go to keep an unconscious General...clean?"

Marti had the grace to blush...though only slightly...before adding, "That was Ana, not me!" (See: "Wolfsbane" on Enchantments)

"Hey!" Anna Shadow said, getting a line at long last, "I never got to bathe the General!"

"I didn't say you did," Marti retorted.

"Did, too!" Anna shot back.

Marti ignored her and went to unroll an ancient medical scroll. "In case he gets lung fever," she said importantly.
 

                          
"Yeah, from inhaling corn silk," the peeved Anna replied. Anna looked about the room. "Is there an extra wash cloth?" she asked hopefully.

"Why don't you do something useful, Anna," Franki said in an attempt to clear the room, "like go gather mandrake roots."

"No one's being left alone in the room with him," Himself said firmly, and the way Juba had taken up guard duty at the foot of the bed indicated he had no plans to leave, either.

"DRAT!" Franki, Marti, and Anna all spat at the same moment.

Himself was quite fully aware that no matter what any of the females said about other characters, each and every one of them was attracted to the General. Indeed, he feared the chaos that might result were Joimus never to return.

Since the General had no real current need for maggots, Juba continued his silent watchfulness. Franki folded a wet washcloth and lay it across Maximus' forehead.

The Village had only the most primitive of medical supplies and most of that was in the form of garlic. There was little she could actually do for him. Anna went downstairs and asked Andy to accompany her in the mandrake quest.

                                
Himself stood at the window, looking out across the smooth tops of the cornfield. He wondered if Lachlan and Nash had made it out alive and decided to go find out for Himself.

Quietly, Juditha came into the room, sitting in the small chair beside the bed. Only Juba remained now besides herself and the General. She lifted one of his hands from the quilt and held it between both of her much smaller ones.

A few minutes passed and then he groaned, turning his head to the side so that the washcloth slipped off and onto the pillow. Juditha moved to replace it, but his seagreen eyes flickered open and so she just lay it aside on the end table. Slowly, he licked his dry lips and blinked several times, trying to bring her face into focus. He could see the halo of blonde around her face and murmured, "Jo...Joimus?"

"No," she replied softly, "it's Juditha."

He closed his eyes again, feeling the familiar touch of her cool fingers on his cheek. His mind felt full of fog and he couldn't seem to grab onto why her touch was so familiar. He lay there silently minute after minute, keeping his lids shut, waiting for the memories to form. There had been...chains...and she had freed him somehow. He had fallen to his knees, too weak to stand and she had knelt before him. He remembered the scent of her, like roses in the afternoon sun, as he pressed his face into her breast and listened to the beating of her heart. Later, he had lain for a long while on a couch, his head in her lap as she sang soft songs to him in Gaelic, then when he felt recovered somewhat, her arms about his waist, they had wandered in the night out to the rose garden. Suddenly his eyes flew widely open and he stared at her.

"We...we...," he gasped, amazed at what he was remembering. She smiled tenderly, smoothing the hairs on his forearm, and nodded in assent. "But...but...," he stammered, quite stunned.

"Your anger toward Joimus was misplaced, Maximus," she said. "She was with Jack only because she was gracing me with you."

Berti popped her head in the door, remarking perhaps a bit too brightly, "She graced ME with him in chapter 16 of the Russketeers!"

"I...with Berti?" he said, his mouth dropping open.

"Yep," Berti affirmed, "I thought she might totally smuck me, but instead she sent me off with you to the gardens of Tuscany."

"I...I...," he looked a bit wildly from woman to woman, "with...with...BOTH of you?"

They looked at one another and grinned, the memories still perfectly clear and fresh for them. Juditha, quite radiant, looked back at the General. "Twice," she said, "Berti and me." Joimus herself had

nearly forgotten the Berti incident, but Berti certainly had not, nor ever would.

His teeth clamped down on his lower lip. He squeezed his lids tightly shut, recalling Joimus' face in the cornfield as she let her eyes roam about his features, that sense of good-bye in the way she did so. He saw again her small form as she determined to block him from harm.

Juditha, seeming to know where his thoughts were roaming, said, "She could not let the plasma ball take you from her again. If you had seen her pain that day your hand reached for your sword as you looked at her there in the jungle, you would know that it was, for her, impossible to have you taken again from her in that way."

Despite how tightly he compressed his lids, a tear escaped, rolling down his cheekbone. Both women left silently, closing the door, and even Juba turned toward the window to permit Maximus to lie there, unobserved, his hands pressed to his face, his shoulders shaking as deep sobs wracked his body.

Jeffarry looked up, seeing Juba standing just inside the window. All was not well in things of an epi nature. His gaze then fell to the porch where the lovely Uthne sat with Susan Guildford and Eryn. She must have been aware of him standing there. Why else would she be keeping her back so straight, so carefully turned away from him? Shaking the last of the maggots off the black crowe feather, he replaced it in his breast pocket. He strode determinedly toward the cornfield. Perhaps if he could find Joimus and reunite her with the General, Uthne would take back the symbol of his disgrace.

                                  
Before he had taken 10 steps, Juba was beside him. Jeffarry nodded back at the yellow farmhouse. "Maximus?" he asked.

"He is well attended by the females," Juba replied. "You, though, are reaching for the sky and I will go with you."

"Reaching for the sky?" Jeffarry repeated.

Juba lifted his eyes to the high, faint bluish smear then looked meaningfully back at Jeffarry. "Tracking her may be...difficult," he said softly.

"Yes," Jeffarry agreed, "and everyone seems to have their regular names back but me."

"Your task is yet to be completed," Juba said. "You will get your name back." Wisely, he refrained from adding, "but not yet."

Despite what Himself had said earlier, Maximus had been left alone. Juditha had said he had looked at Joimus and reached for his sword. He had no memory of that, but tried to imagine it,

tried to think what that would have been like for her. It was too terrible and he had to let it go. Instead, he allowed his exhausted mind wander to that moment on Droogheeda when he had come to himself again there in the smoldering brush and she and he had simply folded themselves together in the silence of unspeakable relief and peace. She had loved him still...in spite of the sword...but he had turned on her today and now she was gone. His last sight of her was as she flung herself into the plasma ball.

His jaw worked, his teeth gritted harshly as he saw that replay over and yet over again. Her whole form had become a transparent blue, then she was...gone. Had there been great pain? He could not bear the thought and turned, burying his face in the pillow. Finally he slept, but his dreams were terrible. He walked toward her through a vast field of blue wheat as she, herself, ran, arms wide, up the gentle slope to him. Sudden black clouds swept across the sky and jagged blue lightning shot down, enveloping her, leaving only a rolling, wild laughter fading in the distance. He tossed violently on the bed, ending on his back again, then sank into a deeper,

dreamless sleep.

He awoke to a warm wetness. Marti was washing his right leg. When she saw that he was watching her, she murmured, "Unconscious Generals are usually quite dirty." He had showered

less than an hour before the plasma event and knew good and well he had not fallen into any Roman sewers since. He closed his eyes, far too drained to protest.

"What are you DOING?" Franki cried, coming hurriedly in the room.

Marti smiled, continuing to wipe with great care around and around his knee. "Tending to his...needs," she finally replied.

Maximus murmured something Franki couldn't quite make out, so she bent over him. "I said...," he repeated, "don't let her near me with any heated unguents."

"What does he mean?" Franki asked, looking at Marti with narrowed eyes.

"I have NO idea," she blustered as she turned to the bureau to mash some pears and pomegranates, concerned as she was with the health of his bowels. This was a new development and, without Marti, would probably never have ocurred in the history of epidom...this fact that one character was concerned with the bowel health of another. It was a pure Marti-ism and she made no apologies for it. None. Bowels were important. After she had mashed the fruit,

she left the room for a moment, returning with a fat goose dangling noisily from the fingers of her left hand. "I'll be needing lots of flannel," she announced. "Do you know where that might be had?"

How grateful Maximus was at that moment that only Himself had any flannel in epis and that had been reduced to parts of one cuff and a bit of collar

"But...but...," Marti protested, "I have mustard and...and... camphor. And the scrolls...,"

"Scrolls, schmolls," Franki said, bringing out a long string of garlic. "I prefer more modern methods." Just then Anna rushed in with a still-screaming mandrake root. "Ah, good," pronounced Franki. "A fine emetic! Just what we need!"

At this point, the General was quite on the verge of chundering his guts without the help of mandrake. He had turned positively green as he listened to the three women. Marti studied his Vulcanic complexion. "His gut is troubled, she said seriously.

"OUT!" he bellowed."OUT!"

Terry ran in, sized up the situation from the many scenarios he had witnessed of the unbearable torture of kidnap victims, and hustled the three indignant women out the door. When they had

left, he sat in the chair close to the nearly hyperventilating General.

"Do you," Maximus gasped, "think she is just...gone?"

Terry considered this seriously for a moment, then from long years of epiexperience, replied, "I don't know." Not knowing was usually the wisest recourse where epilife or even the possibility of

epinonlife, was considered.

Maximus pushed himself up on his elbows. "I've got to get up," he rumbled but waited in that posture until the whirling in his head stopped.

"You are likely concussed, Maximus," Terry pointed out.

"No matter," the General gritted, and with great effort swung his clean legs over the edge of the bed. Terry reached out a hand to steady him and keep him from toppling forward onto the rug amongst the dropped garlic and mashed pears.

Himself wandered through the tall corn. "Lachlan!" he called.

"Nash!"

He heard a rustle behind him and whirled quickly, his nerves a bit on edge what with the plasma sucking and all so recently in that very area. A shadowy form stepped out from between two stalks.

"You?" he said, surprised.

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