Chapter 20

The following characters appear in this chapter:

Daniel Morgan (Dan)

Owner of the property, 5’-9’’ tall (1.75 meters) 180 pounds (81 kg), mid to late 80s, remaining hair is gray, hazel eyes

Theresa Morgan

Dan’s wife, 5’-5’’ tall (1.66 meter), 145 pounds (66 kg), early 80s, long gray hair up in a bun, blue eyes

Charles Williams

The Morgans’ Grandson, 5’-10’’ tall (1.78 meters), 175 pounds (79 kg), 32 years old, dark hair, shifty eyes

Yuryi has the Narrative

While we were up early the next morning, Maddy and Deirdre were already having breakfast when we got downstairs.

“Good Morning,” both said, as we entered the kitchen. We returned the greeting, as Yvonne began looking for things for breakfast.

“We’ve already made it for you,” Deirdre told us as two meals appeared on the table.

“Thank you,” we both said, as we took seats and began to eat.

“Yvonne, you will be going with me this morning to meet with those in the financial department of Dragon Security. They will give you the list of the company’s investments, and what returns they have been getting on them. You may work there or here. One of us will bring you back when you are ready,” Maddy informed her before turning to me.

“Will you be working on the information for Dr. Graham, Yuryi?” she asked.

“Yes, I’ll be working on that after I have a chat with Craig about portals,” I told her.

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “Deirdre will take you over to Jorani and Craig’s house. She was going over there anyway,” she told me. As usual, the Familiars were up and looking at us piteously to see if they could mooch any of our meals. I left with Deirdre after we finished eating, while Maddy and Yvonne took care of cleaning up.

Deirdre led me across the lawn, and past the oak trees to the road side of Maddy’s property. We passed through the Wards there, crossed the road when it was clear, and then passed through the Wards around the property on that side of the road. I could see that there were three houses under this set of Wards. Two of the houses were back a reasonable distance from the road, but the third house was set back a considerable distance behind the first two houses and between them.

This third house was brick and similar to Maddy’s house but larger. Of course, the Queen of the East did have four growing children, the triplets and a son, so they would need a larger house. Once through the Wards, Deidre transferred us right to the front door of the third house. This door did not open automatically, and she rang the bell. The door was opened by one of the triplets. I had changed to my Dragon vision, so I wouldn’t mistake who had opened the door to admit us. The door opener had a blue glow, so she had to be Maly. Deirdre only said, “Hi”, but I said, “Thank you, Maly.”

“Is my brother here? Yuryi needs to talk to him,” Deirdre asked as we entered.

“Yes, Dad got up a short time ago. He and Mom are having breakfast,” Maly informed us.

“I’ll wait until they have finished, but I need to talk to him about something,” I told her. She led me to the large parlor. It appeared that their house was very similar to Maddy’s, just larger. Craig joined me a short time later. While waiting, I had been working on remembering the first time that I had died, and when it happened. It wasn’t a pleasant memory.

“What can I do for, Yuryi?” Craig asked, as he joined me a short time later, pulling me out of my memories. I was still trying to get a handle on what year it had happened. It took me a couple of seconds to remember why I was here.

“I need to know about portals. I’ve never really done anything with them, but remember reading about them in the Books,” I told him before explaining about Yvonne’s desire to live here near the Grahams, and why I needed access to things in Duluth.

“Deirdre told me that you know a lot about the portals at the Nest in Tibet,” I finished.

“There are two major portals in the Nest there. One comes out in the Nest in Stone Mountain. Initially, it was a rough trip and only for Dragons. Later, the Spirit of Ley Line Magic worked on it, and it is much easier to use now. I don’t believe, however, that you need anything that extreme,” he told me with a smile.

“The other portal there goes from the Nest to the Potala Palace in Lhasa. I’m not sure of the exact distance between the two, but Tibet is a very large place, and it may be as much as a thousand miles or more. It comes out deep inside Red Hill near the base of the White Palace. I’m sure it would fit your needs. We also used a number of temporary, short distance portals while in Lhasa. We used them to move the food that we removed from the Chinese warehouse there and distributed it to the poor Tibetans who couldn’t afford to buy good food at the inflated Chinese prices,” he told me.

“So, I need a place to set up this portal and then have it come out at my house in Duluth ... right?” I asked.

“Yes, if you are going to buy a house here, I’ll help you set it up. Do you have a place in mind?” he asked.

“No, we’ll need to look around. Perhaps, even consult with the Doctor Grahams as to a good location. We don’t know where they live. Is it near here?” I asked.

“No, they don’t live in this area, but I’m not sure where they live. Their office is in the county seat of the next county over from us. I would presume that they don’t live too far from their office or the hospital where she delivers most of her patients’ babies,” he told me.

Yvonne was very busy for the next several days at Dragon Security going over their investments and their 401k account. It appeared from what she said at night, that she got along very well with those in the finance and accounting department. There was always someone available to take her there and to bring her back.

I had spent that time in painful remembrance of how I had died each time and trying to reconcile that to a year or some recorded event. After way too many painful memories of friends lost and not enough enemies punished, I was able to arrive at the number of years between each death. It was nowhere near a constant number. It started at about twenty-five years apart, and as I grew older and somewhat wiser and more accomplished with my Magic and my Dragon, the time lengthened to nearly fifty years or so. From this, I would say that twenty-five years would be the shortest interval for her to use.

On the seventh day since our initial visit to Dr. Graham’s office, we returned there by transferring to the room where the children played. Our sudden appearance there didn’t seem to frighten them at all.

“You’re early,” young Allen calmly told me. “Uncle Nicolae isn’t here yet.”

“It’s good to know that we aren’t late,” I told him. One of the girls was talking to Yvonne while I talked to Allen.

“You still don’t have a Familiar,” she was saying to my wife and sounding disappointed.

“I’ve been very busy, but I have learned that Familiars have to be created by the Queen, and she has also been busy,” Yvonne told her.

Nicolae had arrived in the front office alone, and Moninne soon brought him to the back room. All of the children were glad to see him, but sad that Sara and their Familiars hadn’t come with him. Dr. Graham was soon ready to see us, and Nick and I adjourned to her office with Ariana. He was very surprised when he saw how she had changed even though he had been told about it.

“What have you been able to learn?” the Doctor asked once we were all seated.

“Go ahead, you’re senior,” Nick told me with a smile, when we looked over at each other.

“I never thought I’d get to say that again,” he added with a laugh.

“As best I can determine, twenty-five years was about the shortest time between deaths. The time tended to lengthen as I became stronger in the use of Magic and my Dragon,” I told her.

“My experiences were similar. Twenty-five years or so seemed to be the least amount of time between incidents. My time also lengthened as my Magic became stronger,” Nick told her.

“So, say thirty years between the use of the reset should be safe, or longer if not needed just then,” the Doctor said.

“Yes,” we both agreed before the meeting ended. On returning to the children’s room, we found Vivian there with her children and all of their Familiars. The children were all gathered around the Familiars and talking to them.

“Where is Myles?” the Doctor asked her.

“He’s out trying to drum up support for another trip to look for Mahogany trees in the Dragon Lands. Even if they locate more, he doesn’t have the means to fell the largest ones, let alone to cut them up into usable lumber to be dried,” Vivian told her in a tired voice.

“What would you think of Myles looking fifteen years or so younger?” the Doctor, who had accompanied us, asked.

“Younger!” Vivian asked in surprise.

“I was considering him to be the next one to receive the use of the reset option,” the Doctor told her.

“I ... you would need to ask Myles. I think it would be wonderful,” Vivian told her with a smile.

I had been listening to what Viv had said about her husband’s search. I was intrigued, as I remembered how much the custom wall cabinet in my office at the building had cost. Much of the cost had been for the prime Mahogany used in its construction. When the Doctor had finished talking to her, I moved over to speak to her.

“What can you tell me about Myles’ search for Mahogany trees, and what problems he is having?” I asked. Viv explained what he wanted to do and about his trouble financing the venture.

“I would be interested in investing some money in this idea. Would a hundred thousand dollars interest him?” I asked. I thought Vivian would choke on hearing that.

“You’re sure about that? Where can he reach you? Are you still staying at Maddy’s?” she asked in a rush.

“Yes, we’ll be there for a time yet. We will be looking at buying a house in this area,” I told her.

“I’ll tell Myles tonight. I’m sure he will want to talk to you tomorrow. Will you be available then?” she asked in an excited voice.

“Yes, as far as I know,” I told her. While I was talking to Vivian, Yvonne was talking to the Doctor and Ariana about houses. I could hear much of their conversation.

“We are looking at buying a house here, but we don’t know anything about the area,” she was telling them. “Where do you live and are there houses with land for sale near there?” she added.

“We live some distance outside the city. It’s about six miles from here. We have a house on two acres of land. All of the Dragons seem to want large pieces of land around their houses. Myles has twenty acres around his house, and Maddy has ten acres, while her daughters and Jorani live on twenty acres,” I heard Ariana tell Yvonne.

“Yuryi has ten acres that his house in Duluth sits on. That much land might be difficult to find now in this area, as built-up as it appears to be,” Yvonne agreed. The Grahams appeared very thoughtful for a time before the Doctor said anything. I had joined them by then.

“There is a house not far from where we live. It sits on six acres of land. We have known the owners for many years. In fact, I delivered all of their children and many of their grandchildren. The owners are rather old now and not in the best of health. They are ready to sell the house, but there is a problem,” she told us but stopped there for a time.

“A problem?” we both asked.

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “There is a subdivision that was built on the land adjacent to their property. The builders want the land that the house is on for a recreational area for their subdivision. They want to tear down the lovely old house and tear up their garden and other plants and trees to put in tennis courts, basketball courts, a swimming pool and several buildings for the recreational area. The owner does not want to sell it to them, and is asking a million dollars for the property.

“There is an additional problem,” she told us after a brief pause. “The problem is that their one remaining grandson wants to sell the property to the subdivision so he can access their money. He has filed a petition with the court to declare them senile, so he can take over handling their finances,” she told us.

“What about the rest of the family? Are they going along with this? Has anyone tried to stop this?” I asked.

“It’s a very sad story,” Ariana told us. “The rest of their children and grandchildren are all dead. They inherited a fatal condition from both of their parents, and then they married others with the same condition. They have all died but this one grandson,” she added.

“And the parents haven’t?” Yvonne asked in wonder.

“Each parent only has half of the gene, which isn’t fatal. The children all inherited the entire condition, half from each parent. I warned them about the problem, as I had detected it, but I wasn’t able to correct the condition. Despite my warning, they insisted on having children,” the Doctor told us in a sad voice.

“Could we get a look at the property? It’s expensive, but I know that Yuryi wants a house on a good size piece of land,” Yvonne asked.

“How old is the house?” I added.

“It’s contemporary with ours. It was built in the 20s, that’s the 1920s,” Ariana told us. “It could use a little work, but we know someone who can take care of that,” she added with a knowing smile.

“We’ll need to determine when you can show us where this house is,” I told her before Nick, Yvonne and I left.

The next morning, Myles came to see me. One of the young women must have moved him through the Wards, as he joined me in the small parlor after Deirdre had warned me of his arrival. Following shaking hands, he had a question.

“Were you serious about what you told Viv yesterday?” he asked.

“Yes, I was totally serious. I would like to invest in your project to bring more high-quality Mahogany lumber to the market place. Some time ago, I had a cabinet system built in my office. The Mahogany to build it, it is quite large, was more than 50% of the cost of the project, as I wanted the best material available,” I told him.

“Do you realize that this will be a very long-term investment before it shows a profit?” he asked but continued. “The wood needs to be air dried for, at least, ten years, but fifteen to twenty years is better. With air dried wood, it seems to be more alive. The craftsman can feel the difference in the way the wood works compared to kiln dried wood, which feels dead in comparison. Also, the wood will have come to a balance with any strains in it,” he told me in a passion-filled voice.

“Yes, I understand that. In the past, all wood was air dried. The old craftsmen knew what they were doing. Are you having trouble finding the trees?” I asked.

“Finding them ... No. Doing anything with them ... yes,” he answered. “We can go to the Islands and South Florida in the Dragon Lands easily. The problems are in cutting the trees down and then sawing them into useable lumber. The trees in south Florida and the Keys aren’t that large, maybe 45 to 50 feet tall and about 2 feet or so in diameter. They are at the far northern range of the trees.

“Mature trees in the West Indies and Cuba grow to a 100 feet tall or more and are from four to six feet in diameter. Many are from 60 to a 100 years old or more. Their size is the problem. Everything that we use has to be taken to the Dragon Lands, as there is literally nothing there but the trees. The only way to get chainsaws and other equipment there is to transfer it to the Timeless Zone, as the authorities on the islands would impound it if they found it. Other things like clothes, food, fuel, lights and everything else that we need can usually be found on the islands, but it too must be transferred to the Dragon Lands by us.

“The final problem is that we don’t have a means of moving the cut logs, which are quite heavy, anywhere. I would like to move them to South Florida in the Dragon Lands to be cut into planks to be air dried, but we have nothing to do that with. What we have cut so far is air drying close to where we cut it. It will need to be moved eventually. What we need is something to move it within the Dragon Lands, as the authorities would arrest us if they found us with it,” he finished in a frustrated voice.