Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student (Illusions 2)

“We love you, too, Richard. Your stories told of the Ferret Code, told that there was never an evil ferret, that we live always to our highest right. Maybe that’s never been done, never been written, but now it is, and nothing can erase the power of our kindness, one to another, and to humans, too.”

She pressed the interphone. “Starboard High, Resolute’s your boat. Take her ten paws from the beach by the forest, release the sailboat and crew to the shore.”

“Command, aye.” Down the steps like lightning on fur, Kimiko entered the bridge. “Command at your request, ma’am.”

“Command aye,” Bethany said, and Kimiko took the wheel from the touch of her paw, a quick glance for me.

The captain walked me down to the deck. Those stories are written love, you know that, do you?”

“Of course.”

“And love is the only power in the universe. You made us real when no one had done that before. Do you know the influence you’ve had?”

“No. I write about adventures.” I smiled for the captain. “And a little love, too.”

“Go back to your mortal life, Richard. Our lives are entwined. We’re your students, we’re your teachers too. We will never die. Nor will you.”

She took her scarf, the colors of her boat and her crew, reached it up to me, turned it around my neck.

“Bethany…”

“From the crew. From every one of us. We’ll carry your love as long as we live.”

I saluted the ship’s flag, and the captain, a ferret custom, leaving the boat.

“Thank you, dear Bethany.”

And she was gone. That moment, the Resolute, Harley, Kimiko, Boa, Vincent, Bethany, gone. A book. Yet for me the ferret world, and their gentle Code, lives.

How can I forget their stories?

Chapter 6

Oh, the different consciousness between the grieving and the dying!

One sees midnight, the other joyful sunrise.

One sees death, the other Life as never before.

It was prison, the hospital.

How to escape? Our eyes, when they’re closed, they see differently, hear differently.

The hangar was dim, shadows and silence. There was the wreckage of Puff, my little seaplane. All neatly laid on the concrete floor. It seemed like death: the wreckage of the right wing, struts bent and severed, the whole top of the fuselage, all of it, from the rudder to the bow, twisted, smashed, crushed from her landing inverted. Seemed like death.

I cried out, “Oh, Puff!”

A sleepy voice. “Richard?”

“Are you all right?” My voice and hers, the same words.

“I’m fine, Puff. Just a scratch or two. But it looks…that you took it all, the crash.”

“No. You’re looking at my mortal body. I guess I’d say ‘Oh,’ if I saw your body just now.”

I laughed. “I’m not my body, Puff. Neither are you.“

“You’re OK.”