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Whatever happened to Laurel Kent?

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO LAUREL KENT
(EARTH-K2 VERSION)

Half-way across the multiverse and just next door are the Poisoned Realms.

This is where Mysa Nal, the Black Witch, took the Sorcerers’ World, Zerox, when it was threatened by Validus and the New Fatal Five.

Here they found worlds of Science and Magic, worlds threatened by evils small and great. Here, she organized her subjects and her acolytes to battle and put down those evils.

Even after she returned, defeated by Mordru and defeating him in turn, she continued to lead her people as the White Witch.

But this is not her story.

This is the story of one small inhabitant of the Sorcerers’ World.

Laurel Kent.

The epiphany came one afternoon when Angelia delivered her weekly supply of Ambrosia and Nectar.

She had interrupted the necromancer’s experiments.

“Just set it down,” said Laurel. “I’ll eat later.”

Angelia smiled, as it was nearly constitutionally impossible for her to frown. She gently brushed the dove’s wings above her ears.

“This is literally the food of the gods,” she remarked. “So delicious that even after countless millennia, the Olympians have not tired of it. Are you so focused on extending your life that you can no longer enjoy even the smallest pleasures?” She shrugged her silvery shoulders. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you next week.” She departed into the ethereal skies.

Laurel continued to work. She sampled the bounty of the gods. Twenty-one small cakes, and a gallon of fragrant Nectar. Three cakes of Ambrosia and a cup of Nectar each day would be enough to sustain her life, forever. But one day even the Olympian gods might die-- it had happened to several already-- and her supply would disappear.

She sought true immortality, beyond the gods, beyond the Universe itself, beyond the reach of death.

The Ambrosia was, admittedly, transcendentally delicious, almost by definition. Her senses momentarily overwhelmed, she was, in that moment, distracted from her work.

She gazed out the window. The world was different than she remembered. She drifted toward the door. It was foolish, she had left her house before. How long had it been? Laurel really no need for the outside world. She and her dwelling were self-sustaining.

She found herself walking outside, the great black gothic mansion at her back. Her lawns had once been overgrown with weeds, but even these were now gray and withered with neglect. There were other houses, not far away, and yet, far enough away that the great black gothic mansion seemed isolated.

Entering the little town, she first came to a little white church, in front of which an old woman was selling… apples?

“Good morning, Mistress Laurel,” said the old woman, nodding her head.

“You know me?” asked Laurel Kent.

“Oh, aye,” said the old woman. She must have been over one hundred. “Everyone knows the Necromancer Laurel, although few have seen her.”

“But we have met before?” asked the necromancer.

The old woman, well, cackled. “Not me, not until today,” said the old woman. “But when my Granny told me that when she was a little girl, the Necromancer shooed her out of the old dead laurel tree that grew in front of the Black House. Terrified her, but she was right proud of it. Must have told me the story a dozen times.”

“And are you afraid?” asked Laurel Kent.

“Mistress of Death,” said the old woman, “No offense, but in a very short time death will hold no more terror for me. We will be friends, and for the rest of eternity. I only hope I can tell my great-grandchildren that I, too, saw the Dweller in the Black House before I die.”

“May I buy an apple from you?” asked Laurel Kent. She made a motion with her hand, and produced a gold coin from thin air.

“Lawks, the Old Magic,” said the apple-seller. “No gold, only silver please.”

The gold was transformed into a stream of silver coins, tinkling into the old woman’s basket.

“You could buy all my apples, the basket, my apple-tree, and the clothes off my back for that,” said the apple-seller.

“One apple is enough,” said Laurel Kent. The apple was mealy and woody compared to her daily diet of Ambrosia, but she ate it solemnly, the apple-seller watching. It tasted of earth, or perhaps Earth, and of buried memories.

“Is the Old Magic still around?” asked Laurel Kent.

“Out here, a bit, in dribs and drabs,” said the apple-seller. “If you wanted to hobnob with real sorcerers, though, you would have to go to St. Bosco’s City.”

“How long has this town been here?” asked Laurel Kent.

“This church was built when I was a girl,” said the old woman. “Most of the rest of the town is older, but not older than the Black House. Are planning to return, and work your evil will on the townsfolk?”

“I think not,” said the Necromancer Laurel. “But I may work my evil will on myself.” She turned and walked back to the Black House.

Laurel Kent stood in front of a full-length mirror. Her skin was pale, her eyes cobalt, her hair black, her form slender. She wore a simple black blouse and skirt, and black house-slippers. She might have been mistaken for a young woman of twenty-five. Or a girl of fifteen, if she smiled.

She lifted her blouse slightly, and traced the finger-long scar in her side, only faintly visible, the palest green against her white skin. She conjured a lipstick, and painted her lips blood-red. The effect was ghastly. She vanished the makeup immediately.

“Mirror, mirror, foul demon, et cetera, et cetera,” she intoned.

“Oh, we just can’t make the effort anymore, can we?” said the empty mirror.

“How long has it been since you have been materialized?” asked Laurel. “Do you want to come out or not? I conjure you, and so forth. Besides, I can’t think of anything appropriate to rhyme with ‘demon’.”

“You have to say my name,” said the mirror, “Or have you forgotten?”

“Oh, very well,” said Laurel. “Tetrigan.”

A shower of puzzle-pieces fell inside the mirror, resolving into a demonic female form, chartreuse with rust-orange highlights.

“I know I have been your servant for half-a-millenium,” said Tetrigan, “But could we at least observe the conventions?”

“Next time, I promise to write a little doggerel,” said Laurel Kent. “I may be using your services more often in the near future. Now, show me St. Bosco’s City.”

“That’s a proper command,” said the demon. A panorama of a large, modern city appeared in the mirror behind it.

“Show me a dress shop in the city,” said Laurel. “Small, but with the latest fashions. Not too near the city center.”

The picture zoomed in on a little shop. It appeared open, but with few customers.

“What time is it there?” asked Laurel.

“Mid-morning,” said the demon. “Shall I give you a hand up?”

“I think,” said Laurel, “I am not so old to need your assistance. I dismiss you, Tetrigan. Go back to whatever you were doing before I conjured you, and no, I don’t want to know.”

“Sleeping,” said the she-demon, sticking out her tongue as she vanished.

Laurel stepped through the Magic Mirror and found herself on the street in front of the little dress shop.

“I want something summery,” said Laurel. “With flowers. Lots of them.”

“The Summer season comes to an end in a fortnight,” said the proprietor, a woman with curly white hair that gave her the appearance of a sheep. “Would you prefer to see some more appropriate fall fashions? I have several in already.”

“I want something wildly inappropriate,” said Laurel. “With too many colors. And do you have fuzzy pink slippers?”

“Pink, or red, or green, as you wish,” said the proprietor. “I have some white ones with pigs on them.”

“No, it’s too much,” said Laurel. “Just one pair for now. But I’m looking for someone to paint my house. Do you have any suggestions?”

“For house-painting, you want kobolds,” said the shopkeeper. She rummaged around behind the counter, eventually producing a business card. “These are a pair of brothers who do that sort of work,” she said. “Can I have your name and address? I would be pleased to add you to our list of customers”

“Laurel Kent, of the Black House,” said Laurel. “It’s outside a little town, I’m afraid I don’t know what the name of it is.”

“The Necromancer Laurel Kent?” the shopkeeper gasped.

“Well, yes, I suppose,” said Laurel. “But I may be turning over a new leaf.”

“You’re, urm, you live just outside Maidstoneshire,” said the shopkeeper. “Everyone knows the Black House, with its black turrets.”

“Well, it won’t be the Black House for long,” said Laurel. “Not after the kobolds are done with it.”

There was a great, winding staircase leading up to the top of one of the three-story towers. Along either side of the staircase were bookcases, making the pathway winding and narrow indeed. From the lowest level to mid-way up the staircase, the bookcases were filled with journals. Laurel was not especially careful about keeping journals-- there were many blank pages-- but she was careful to purchase one book every year.

She pulled the final book from the last shelf. It was empty from beginning to end. So it was with the second-to-last, but halfway through the third-to-last was this entry:

====================================================
Cinnabar is gone now, to where I do not know. She was the last friend I had, since Mysa Demonslayer passed. I suppose if I am to defy the End of Life, I must get used to losing friends.
=====================================================

“Not anymore,” said Laurel out loud. “I will make new friends, as fast as I lose the old ones.”

She walked down to the bottom of the staircase, and took out the very first volume, battered and stained with age.

====================================================
My real name is Laurel Daye Beignet. I was born in Metropolis, on Earth, in the Smallville District, on June 18th (Old Calendar) in the year 2952. My parents are Daniel Beignet and Margaret Daye.
There has been a long tradition in our family that we were descendants of Clark Kent, the original Superman, Kal-El of Krypton. So when my power manifested, I began calling myself Laurel Kent.
=====================================================

When was 2952? Surely her parents were long gone. She went over to the mirror.

“Tetrigan, Appear Again,” she chanted.

“A little better,” said the mirror-demon. “But perhaps a little iambic pentameter next time? Four or eight lines?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Laurel. “How many years of your thousand-year service do I have left?”

“I must speak the truth,” said Tetrigan. “Four Hundred Three Score and Fifteen.”

“Do you know how old I am?” asked Laurel.

“Certainly older than my Service,” said Tetrigan. “By at least a century or two. There are Eight Hundred Four Score and Twelve volumes of your journals on the staircase.”

“Thank you,” said Laurel.
“Tis almost morning. I would have thee gone.
And yet no further than a wanton’s bird,
That lets it hop a little from his hand
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,
And with a silken thread plucks it back again,
So loving-jealous of his liberty.
Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

“Good night,” said Tetrigan. “Although none of that makes a bit of sense.”

“It’s older than I am,” said Laurel Kent.

She had the kobolds paint the house a lemon yellow, with red- and blue-framed windows, and sky-blue tiling on the roof.

Laurel re-planted a laurel tree in the middle of the front yard, and surrounded it with pleasant lawns and flowers of all colors and descriptions. Paved stone walkways and paths wove among the shrubbery. Behind the house, she planted a variety of fruit trees, and tended a large vegetable garden. The children of Maidstoneshire came to pick her fruits, and, occasionally, to try her vegetables.

She carefully kept them out of her Witch’s Herb Garden, however.

Colorful birds came to nest in the fruit trees. When the laurel tree was tall enough to climb, children swung in its branches. When it grew old, and had to be cut down, Laurel replaced it with a Lunch Box Elder, and in the summertime the great-grandchildren who climbed on the laurel’s branches had picnic lunches on the lawns and in the ever-changing gardens of flowers.

There were others on Zerox as old, or older than she. She saw them rarely, but was always glad of their company. Biron the Centaur, his blonde hair now going gray, and his handsome face lined with care. Martin Hunter, the Martian Magician, who seldom appeared in the same form twice. Jason Norwich, also called Blood, who had known Merlyn himself. Cassiopeia of the New Gods, heir of the Moebius Chair, and only a century or so older than Laurel herself. She was, of course only three-quarters New God, her maternal grandfather being Metron. The wandering Tanner Mothgrasp. Nabu, the fallen Lord of Order, who always seemed to be inhabiting some new inanimate relic. The wizard Klavanatus (His sister, Mariam Abraxas, had been left behind on Tharn). Therion, who would have traded his immortality for the chance to love again. The Indigo Warlock, who never would reveal his origins. And the peculiar, headless Arrant deClaire.

On a typical morning, Laurel would arise, go to the closet in her room, and begin the long journey down the wide stone steps to the beginning of time. There, she would drink from the spring at the foot of the world-tree Yggdrasil. Occasionally, she would glimpse in the distance, what she assumed were the Norse gods, or see in the tree the great stags Dainn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr or Durathror. She once even saw the gossipy squirrel-god Ratatoskr. He chittered at her, but she did not understand a word. On leaving, she always Nidhogg, the great dragon that gnawed on the root of Yggdrasil, a good kick in the snout.

She knew that what she was seeing was metaphorical; the infinite branches of Yggdrasil were merely the various alternate worlds created by the branching of quantum probability. The four stags represented the four forces of the universe, and the squirrel-god was… well, she had known that once, and had it written down somewhere.

It was a peaceful way to start the day, and no matter how long she lingered, on the staircase of the tree, she arrived back home only moments after she had left.

She would then breakfast on Ambrosia and Nectar, quickly tidy up the house (things always seemed to misplace themselves during the night) and then go out on her porch to sit in her rocking-chair and watch the little children on their way to school.

On their way home, they would stop by her flower gardens and orchards. Some of these little children would grow up to be her friends for a time, then at last grow old and... she attended many funerals over the years.

There was a little game she played with them. They would twist together sticks and grass and flowers into rough little dolls, or birds, or animal-shapes, and Laurel would animate them. The spell would only last until sunset, but it entertained the children. One day a boy came, towing a wagon. He had made a stick-man, larger than he was, limbs tied on with twisted grass.

“Come, we can do better than that,” the necromancer said, and helped him build a sturdier wooden puppet, sanded and smoothed and polished, with complicated wooden joints. It was a project of several days, and the little boy soon grew tired and bored, and lost interest in the project.

Laurel persisted, replacing the stick-like limbs with sturdy carved wood. She made the creature a hollow, barrel chest with wooden slat bellows inside, and a hollow neck with a harp-like wooden larynx, so that when animated, it would be able to breath and talk. The wooden man stood outside her house for several months, as she made ever more fine improvements.

Eventually, the boy’s young sister, a girl named Gerda, took an interest in the construction of the wooden man. She brought some old clothes to dress it with, and helped carve the face, and the complex, hinged wooden jaw, complete with white wooden teeth and redwood tongue.

Laurel opened the wooden chest, and placed a carved wooden heart, painted a brilliant crimson, on cross-pieces in front of the wooden bellows.

At last, with final coat of varnish, Laurel declared to Gerda that the wooden man was complete. The necromancer had a single, innocent soul which she had acquired years before, stored in a little silver flask. She blew the soul into the open mouth of the golem, and it came to wonderful life.

“You must be Gerda’s protector,” Laurel instructed the wooden man. “She is no doubt destined for some grand adventures, and you will be her companion.”

Gerda named her new friend Alon, and the two had many grand adventures together.

It was perhaps a decade and a half later, not long at all, when Alon, the Wooden Soldier, returned to Laurel’s house.

“You must use your magicks to make me a senseless log again,” he said. “I have fallen in love with my Gerda, but it is hopeless, for I am only a wooden man, animated by sorcery, while she is a real, living, beautiful woman.”

“Oh, I think not,” said Laurel, and motioned for him to see Gerda, skirts flying, rushing towards them. “I didn’t give you a heart for nothing.”

Gerda arrived, gasping for breath, and proclaiming her own love for Alon. Laurel went back into her yellow, blue, and red house as they spoke together, and returned with a tiny vial of oil she had been preparing over the years.

“You could, of course, find happiness as a woman of flesh and a man of wood,” said Laurel. “But to obviate the danger of splinters…” she poured three small drops of oil over the wooden man’s head, and the wood of his body rippled into flesh.

“As the Wooden Soldier, you have saved Gerda’s life countless times,” said Laurel, “Even as she has rescued you more than once from fire. If you practice, you will learn to change your form at will, from flesh to wood. You may find this necessary from time to time, as you continue to have adventures together. And your children will inherit the same power. I am not very good at predicting the future, but my tapestries seem to indicate a long and happy lives for you together.”

She learned to dress appropriately for a witch, gold in the summer, reds and browns in autumn, pure white in the winter, and green in the spring. But occasionally, she would receive a call for help, and throw on her work-clothes, the hooded ebon robe with the red satin lining.

The mirror-demon Tetrigan was long gone, and Laurel had not replaced her, although it was on her to-do list. She had had more bookcases installed for her journals in a second tower. There were now three trees among her flower gardens: a Grecian laurel, a cinnamon tree, and yet another Lunch Box Elder.

This time, it was a haunting.

It was a poltergeist, which meant an adolescent was most likely involved. When Laurel arrived at the little house in West Maidstoneshire, the teen girl was unconscious, floating above her bed. Laurel could see that it was a particularly violent ghost, from the holes punched in the walls, the scorch marks, and the general disarray.

Laurel could see the ghost, holding the young girl’s astral self hostage. The poltergeist itself was fuzzy and undefined, usually a sign that the thing had been dead a long time, and was forgetting what it had looked like in life.

“Who are you?” asked Laurel.

“Go away,” said the ghost. “This is my home, you are all trespassers here. Go away, or I will kill her.”

Laurel turned to the parents. “How old is this house?” she asked. “How many owners had it had?”

“It’s about thirty years,” said the mother. “We are only the second set of owners.”

“And when did the original owners die?”

“They are still living. An elderly couple, that needed a smaller home. This house had become too much for them.”

It was puzzling. “How long have you been here? What is the first thing you remember?” she asked the ghost.

“This is my home,” repeated the ghost. “You must leave.”

“I can help you,” said Laurel. “I know this seems a silly question, but what is your first memory?”

“Irrelevant!” said the ghost. “You… I remember the beautiful golden-red fern-fields, the singing of the winged frogs, the silver rain… it seems so long ago.”

The shapeless outline of the poltergeist began to coalesce, a four-armed, four-legged outline.

“It was long ago,” said Laurel. “Ten thousand years or more. And you have been wandering all this time?”

“I need to find my family,” said the ghost. “I need to bring them home.”

“The original inhabitants of Zerox, long before the sorcerers came,” said Laurel. “Your family, your people, have been gone for thousands of years. They cannot come back here. You must go to them.”

A circle of light was forming behind the poltergeist.

“Look, here is your family,” said Laurel. “Here are all your memories.” The poltergeist turned, gazing into the light. It let go of the little soul it had held captive. The little girl awakened, falling onto her bed. The parents rushed to embrace her.

“Go to them,” said Laurel. “Do you hear them calling you?”

“I’m afraid,” said the ghost.

“I’ll go part of the way with you,” said Laurel. She sat down in a chair, then got up again, leaving her body behind. “See how beautiful?” she asked. She took the ectoplasmic creature by one of its hands.

“It is lovely,” said the poltergeist. Laurel helped it into the light. She saw her own childhood there, her parents, her brother and sister. The old house in Metropolis she had grown up in. The flyers darting through the skies above. She felt a great uplifting in her heart. She took a step towards the light. Caught up in the memories, she looked beyond, and saw a future, a bright future, waiting beyond the light.

The family did not know what to do with the necromancer. She seemed to be asleep, breathing quietly. They asked the authorities, she was in some sort of trance. Eventually someone came to take the sleeping sorceress back to her home. They placed her in the rocking chair on her porch.

The seasons came and went. With no hand to tend them, few flowers came up that spring. The vegetable garden turned to weeds, and still the body of the necromancer slept on.

The years rolled by. The rocking chair collapsed, and a few days later, someone moved her into a bed in the house. The house collapsed and faded away, orchards, gardens, and all. Maidstoneshire and West Maidstoneshire were abandoned, and the body of Laurel Kent lay sleeping on the empty ground. Zerox itself was abandoned; its sun went nova, but the spells of immortality on Laurel Kent’s body remained strong. The elements fissioned and fused into inert iron. Gravity pulled the world into a perfectly smooth sphere, but still it slept on, untouched. The stars went out, protons themselves decayed, a long vigintillion years passed away. The Universe was a thinning plasma of electrons, positrons, and photons, each particle separated by light-years, and still the immortal form of Laurel Kent floated in the midst, unchanged, immortal…

But Laurel Kent herself had long forgotten.

Would one go mad with immortality? Or does the magic shield the once-mortal mind?

I read this as a tale of redemption and appreciation of each day as it presents itself, but the ending, I'm not so sure about.

Perhaps a new universe forms around Laurel.

I like it, I think it's kind of....I dunno if sweet is the right word? It doesn't feel like a bad ending for Laurel though