My psychic link with Serenikha had held steady all through high school, growing no stronger but no weaker, ever since my first trip to her world. I still shared dreams with her, and I still had occasional moments of aphasia, where I couldn’t think of a word in English, only in one of Serenikha’s languages. And then, my first semester in college, it suddenly seemed to get a lot weaker — I shared no dreams at all with her, and had much less aphasia than usual.

The Other Half of My Soul

Part 1 of 11

by Trismegistus Shandy

This is a sequel to my earlier novella, "The Family that Plays Together." It's set with Morpheus's kind permission in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his comments on the rough draft.

My latest novel, The Bailiff and the Mermaid, is available in EPUB format from Smashwords and Kindle format from Amazon. You can read the opening chapter here.

Serenikha and I had met in a dreamscape modeled on Muir Woods, which both of us had gone hiking in though not at the same time. We were sitting side-by-side on a sequoia log, my feet dangling in the air and her tail trailing along the ground for several feet.

“So what else is new?” she asked, after she’d updated me on the gossip circulating in the Dragon Emperor’s palace.

“Not much,” I said; “I finalized my plans for Spring Break with Josh and Omar. We’re splitting the rent on a beach house down at Pacific Grove. I’m not sure what the magic level is there, so we might not share any dreams next week.”

“It’s just a week, though, right?”

“Yeah — uhh. I feel like I’m waking up. Something’s waking me up...”

There was a weird noise coming from nowhere and everywhere. For some reason I couldn’t identify it at first, until Serenikha said: “It sounds like your phone’s ringing. Talk to you later, if you can’t sleep through it?”

“It just might be important,” I said. “Bye,” and woke up already groping on the bedside table for my phone.

“Who’s this?” I mumbled.

“It’s Taylor. Were you still asleep?”

I glanced at the clock: 8:39. “I don’t have any morning classes this semester, remember?” I tried to sleep late so I could overlap my sleep hours more with Serenikha’s. It was around midnight in the Dragon Emperor’s palace.

“Sorry! I can call back tomorrow —”

“No, I’m already awake. What is it?”

“Next week is your Spring Break, right?”

“Yes.” I started to tell her about the beach house plan, but she interrupted:

“Tell them you’ve got to cancel. Make up whatever family emergency excuse you need —”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. But I’ve got something better.”

“This had better be good.”

“Oh, it is. You remember what I told you at Christmas, about the portal Mr. G. made back in October...?”

I hadn’t seen Taylor since we’d both been at Mom and Dad’s house for Christmas. She was super busy these days with a double major in International Studies and Magic. Of course, only the International Studies part would appear on her diploma or her resumé, but her magical skills were at least equally real, and they were a big part of how she planned to earn her living.

During our first trip to Mr. G.‘s world, which was also my last, we’d run into some trouble, getting our souls magically entangled with our hosts in Mr. G.’s world. Taylor and Mom and Dad got sorted out within a few months, but my soul was still entangled with Serenikha, the naga princess I’d swapped bodies with for a few days when I was fourteen.

While he was working on getting our souls untangled, Mr. G. noticed that Taylor had a talent for magic. When he offered to start teaching her, he told us that there were apparently a couple of dozen young people like her — children of parents who’d visited Mr. G.'s world multiple times, and particularly while the mother was pregnant. He gave her private lessons every couple of weeks while she was in high school, and arranged a scholarship for her to Kinnison College, a small liberal-arts school in Oregon where he was a visiting professor — under a variety of names and faces, a different one every semester to hear Taylor tell it. How he managed to give lectures and seminars in Spores Ferry, Oregon every weekday, and also run at least seven Travel Agency branches around the world, I don’t know and I’m not convinced Taylor knew either, though she made mysterious, knowing comments about it sometimes.

Last Christmas, she’d told us about a field trip she and the other magic students had taken with Professor G. to a state park in southern Idaho. Our world doesn’t have nearly as much magic as Mr. G.'s world, and what it has tends to concentrate or clump up in certain places. And those places shift around — which explains why the various Travel Agency branches have to keep moving their offices from one place in a given city to another, and sometimes to abandon some cities entirely. On a particular weekend in October, a really high concentration of magic was building up in this particular park, and Professor G. wanted to demonstrate a spell that, until now, hadn’t even been possible in our world except on a very small scale.

He’d opened a direct portal to his native world, and led his students through it for a brief excursion before they returned a few hours later. I’d been there before, of course, and Mom and Dad had been there dozens of times, and at first what Taylor told us hadn’t seemed so extraordinary — until we realized that she’d been in that world in her own body. Not borrowing the body of another person, a native of that world, but physically traveling there with her own body, clothes and luggage. She showed us the photos from her trip: a castle by a waterfall, a couple of elves, a herd of unicorns — even a distant, blurry photo of a dragon in flight.

“That day you took me and Leslie to the other world for the first time, Mr. G. had just started opening physical portals, but they were tiny and only stayed open for a second or two. Just enough to bring a pixie like Maella through or send her home again. But now, when we have a big buildup like the one in Idaho back in October, we can open portals eight or ten feet wide and keep them open for hours. She promised she’d teach us the theory behind those portals next semester, and maybe we’d be able to open them ourselves by the next time a big magic buildup occurs somewhere in North America.”

And now, apparently, it was happening again.

“How’d you like to visit Serenikha in person?”

“That,” I said, “would be the awesomest thing since awesome was invented.”

“Next Monday, in Yosemite Park, there’s going to be a big buildup. I should be able to open a portal to some secluded place near the capital of the Dragon Empire — I can use your link with Serenikha to help focus it — and we can go through, go into the city, and call on Serenikha at the palace. We’ll need to be back at the portal within a day, but I calculate I ought to be able to keep it open at least that long, and make it invisible to anybody else when we aren’t using it.”

“I’ll tell her we’re coming, next time I see her.” Hopefully that night, but almost certainly sometime before Monday, I’d share another dream with Serenikha; I usually did so five or six times a week, these days.

“You do that, and tell her to arrange some code phrase we can give to the guards on duty outside the palace, so they know we’re Serenikha’s friends and not some random peasants come to gawk at royalty.”

I thought of something. “How are we going to talk to people? When you visit Mr. G.'s world normally, he gives you the language skills of the person you’re swapping bodies with...”

“I can work that spell myself, now. And you’ve got your link with Serenikha; you can speak her languages in dreams, and with just a little nudge from me you should be able to do it waking as well.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll pack tonight, and leave right after my last class on Friday. Where do you want to meet?”

I’d seen Taylor demonstrate a few small tricks during her last couple of years in high school and her first years in college — levitating a gold bracelet, summoning hundreds of squirrels to our back yard, making our neighbor’s mean dog fall asleep in mid-bark. But the first thing she did that really impressed me was right after my first semester in college, when she’d been at Kinnison College for a couple of years.

My link with Serenikha had held steady all through high school, growing no stronger but no weaker, ever since my first trip to her world. I still shared dreams with her, and I still had occasional moments of aphasia, where I couldn’t think of a word in English, only in one of Serenikha’s languages. And then, my first semester in college, it suddenly seemed to get a lot weaker — I shared no dreams at all with her, and had much less aphasia than usual, which was nice in terms of favorably impressing my professors and the new friends I was making. But I was saddened, too: Serenikha had become my best friend over the last few years, we were almost as close as I was to Taylor — or even closer, in the last couple of years since Taylor had gone off to college and her magic studies, which I couldn’t share. And though I was hopeful that if our link broke, I’d be able to swap bodies with people in her world again, and visit her sometime, it still wouldn’t be the same as the psychic link we’d shared for so long.

And then, when I went home for Christmas, I shared a dream with Serenikha the very first night. She was frantic with worry, having not heard from me in three months, and I told her I didn’t know why.

The next morning at breakfast, I told Mom, Dad and Taylor about it, and Taylor figured out what was going on. “I’ll come with you, your first day back — you start back a couple of days before I do, anyway — and I’ll see if my idea is correct.”

It was. The freshman boys' dorm was smack in the middle of a dead-magic area that covered the whole southeast part of campus. Taylor was able to spot that right away, and what was even better, she used her magic to talk the administrators into letting me move into another dorm, one that lay comfortably inside the live-magic area that also included the administration building.

After that, she’d visited my campus at the beginning of each semester to survey the latest configuration of magic areas and figure out which dorm I should be in, and if necessary sweet-talk the administrators into letting me live there. Right now I was sleeping in the highest-magic area on campus, and though it was nice to share dreams with Serenikha almost every night, it also made my aphasia worse when I was in the dorm or the nearest classroom buildings. (I was a better or worse class participant depending on which building a classroom was in and whether I could count on my command of English when I spoke up. “Why are you so quiet this semester?” Professor Avery had asked me a couple of weeks ago. “I know you have ideas about this stuff, you had such incisive questions last semester.” I couldn’t give him the real answer.)

Predictably, I dreamed with Serenikha that night after my phone conversation with Taylor. “I’ve got great news,” I told her when I found myself on the foot-bridge over the West Garden in the Dragon Emperor’s palace, seeing her slither up the foot-path toward me. “Taylor says she can open a physical portal and I can come see you in person.”

“When?” She clapped her hands eagerly.

“Three days from now. She says she’ll open a portal outside the city, and we’ll walk to the palace — you’ll need to tell the guards we’re coming, so they’re expecting us and will let us in to see you.”

“I’ll make arrangements as soon as I wake up. Oh, this will be wonderful! You’ve seen the palace gardens in Autumn, but never in Spring. And you can finally meet little Osalikha!”

I’d seen dream-images of her baby daughter, but it would be wonderful to see the real Osalikha, and maybe even hold her in my arms. I remembered the whole year and more Serenikha was pregnant or incubating her egg, how her anxiety and excitement had been so infectious, and how I’d been just as interested in the mothers and their little children I happened to see at the grocery store or on the bus as any pregnant woman; I still took more interest in babies than most guys my age, and I thought that was due as much to my link with Serenikha as to Mom and Dad’s gender-neutral parenting.

We talked for a subjective hour or more before I woke up. I showered and got ready for class; in just a few hours I’d be on the road.

First, I drove to Mom and Dad’s house, to spend the night and to borrow their camping equipment. (And incidentally do a couple of loads of laundry.) It was on the way to Yosemite for me, but out of the way for Taylor, so I’d meet her near the park entrance Saturday afternoon.

“I thought you were going in on a beach house with Josh and Omar?” Dad asked.

“Change of plans,” I said. “I’ll still pitch in my part of the rent if they can’t find somebody else at the last minute, I don’t want to leave them hanging, but I’m going camping in Yosemite with Taylor.”

“Aha,” Mom said. “And when was Taylor going to tell us about this?”

“Probably sometime today,” I said. “She said she’d be busy and wouldn’t get away until tomorrow morning...”

“Is this something to do with her magic studies?” Dad asked.

I’d just started to explain when Taylor called Mom’s cell phone.

“Good evening... Yes, Leslie was just starting to tell us about that... Uh huh... Is Professor G. going to be there?... Hmm... Are you sure this is a good idea?... Well, yes, I know you can handle that, but — have you thought about the language aspect? Good, of course... And what about clothes?... I guess that will work, even if it’s not an exact match... Yes, I’ll send them with him... Sure, it’s a cosmopolitan city, they’re used to seeing people in all kinds of clothes... And money?... You seem to have thought of everything... Well, be safe! You too. Bye.”

Mom hung up. “I’ll just go dig through Taylor’s closet,” she said, “there are a couple of kimonos that she wants me to send with you. Your dad can help you get the camping equipment loaded in the car.”

“I guess now would be better than tomorrow morning,” Dad said. “Just let me get dressed.”

I still hadn’t undressed yet, just taken off my shoes at the door as was usual even when we were having guests over who weren’t naturists. After being at school all semester, where everybody wore clothes all the time and you had to wear at least a towel even on the way to and from the shower, it felt slightly odd seeing Mom and Dad naked, though not for long before it started feeling homelike instead. Once Dad and I got the camping equipment into my trunk, and Mom handed me a couple of kimonos to hang up in the back seat, Dad and I undressed and we sat down to supper.

“I’m a little concerned about this trip,” Mom said. “Taylor said Mr. G. isn’t providing a local guide as he does for his normal vacation packages.”

“But we’ll be going to a city where we know people,” I argued. “Just from the one time I’ve been there, I know Serenikha and Pientao, and Lady Hanuseri and Kinuko. And Taylor’s been to that area a couple more times, and she’s also been local guide for visitors from there coming to California; she knows several other people we can ask for help if we run into trouble.” (Taylor had worked for Mr. G.'s travel agency every summer since she was seventeen.)

“I know. Just be careful, okay?”

“We will.”

Next morning, I loaded up my clean clothes and a few more things Mom and Dad thought of that we might need — a first-aid kit, a GPS, some of Mom’s jewelry that we could sell for more draconic currency if we ran out, insect repellent and sunblock — and drove out. “I wish we could go with you,” Dad said, “but we can’t take time off work on such short notice. Tell Taylor to give us more warning next time, if she can.”

I made good time and was in Yosemite by early afternoon. I sat at one of the picnic tables near the lot where I’d parked, and texted Taylor to tell her where I was, then ate the burrito I’d bought at a drive-through while I waited for her. She got there about an hour later.

“The peak magic area is over here,” she said, spreading out a map of the park on the picnic table. “I think the closest camping area is here, and this is the access road for it...”

A few minutes later we were at the park office reserving a camping spot in that area, and we had our camp set up by nightfall.

“Why come in today rather than tomorrow?” I asked, nailing in a tent stake. “You said the, um... suavikh? I mean, the magic surge — that it would be on Monday...?”

“I can’t be sure exactly when,” she amended. She might have mentioned that earlier. “Monday afternoon is most likely, but it could be a few hours earlier or later, maybe even tomorrow or Tuesday. I wanted to be here early so I could feel it when it begins. Last October we got there a little late, past the peak of the surge, and Professor G. could only keep the portal open for a few hours. If I catch this one on the upswing, I should be able to keep it open for over a day, enough time for a good visit.”

“I’ll let Serenikha know tonight, if I see her while... um... uleri?”

“Uleri means dreaming, right?” She had a good memory for my aphasic moments. “Oh, you will, unless she’s suffering insomnia. Even here we’ve got more ambient magic than than you’ve probably ever spent a night with, as you can tell by how bad your aphasia is. I bet you’ll probably get some spillover from Serenikha’s emotions, and she’ll get some from you, but I don’t know how we can test for that... hmm, maybe if you keep a log book and compare notes with her when we see her...”

We lay out on blankets looking at the stars for a while before we crawled into our tents to sleep.

“I think our link is getting stronger,” Serenikha told me that night. We’d met in a dreamscape based on The Dying Earth, which I’d just been reading. “I keep forgetting the real words I was trying to say and saying stuff in English instead.”

“Me too, in reverse. I think our link is the same as ever, but it affects us more when I’m in a high-magic area. And Taylor says this park I’m sleeping in is one of the highest-magic areas she’s ever seen.”

“I wonder if it will get even stronger when we meet in person?” she said, suddenly looking doubtful. “Perhaps we should seek the Gray One’s advice before you come.”

“Taylor has him on speed-dial,” I said, “but who knows if he’ll answer...”

Thanks for reading. I'll post part two in about a week.

If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format. (Smashwords pays its authors more than other retailers.)