TNT: Ch. 20

"And what would that be?" asked Eric.
"Back home, we have a vault of sacred objects. They're various things that played a part in my father's fake scriptures. One of the items is called Briksol Ip, or the Red Snake. It's also referred to as the Heating Element of the Eternal Flame."
"Yeah," Eric agreed, "That's a stronger lead."
"Unfortunately, it involves going back home," she said glumly.
"Well then," said Vlad, "We will go without you. We can drop you off somewhere with the lobster, and go in oursel-"
"No," she said in a final tone, "You'd never get in and out without me."
"Maybe it would help if we new more about the... cult," Eric suggested, "Here's the rest stop, and there's a Waffle Shoppe. We'll stop and have waffles and you can tell us."
"Sounds good," Gina agreed, "Then you can listen without getting us killed."
They went into the restaurant and ordered. Comfortable, Gina began her story.

"My father started the Followers of the Whey ten years before I was born. In his version, that was when a great White Stag came to him and told him a great story, which he wrote down in the Book of the Whey. The story was about the four antlered ungulates of old - the stag Engren, the moose Floobel, the elk Gerdam, and the caribou Brim. They had once been warring creatures, always locking antlers against each other, until they discovered the Whey. Now, whey is basically the liquid part of curdled milk, but the Whey was some mystical drink that would bring them peace. Apparently they wanted to share it with humans, and as soon as my father got enough people to follow him they would. He started a closed community on a plot of land in Maine. I grew up believing all this.
"Of course, it's a load of hooey I found that out as I got older. I started noticing how my dad, the great prophet, never showed respect to the idols when he was at home, only among the community. How the money and goods given to the community to facilitate reaching out to new followers always ended up in his pocket. How the community never actually grew bigger than the plot of land. By the time I was 16 I knew it was all a ruse. A talk with my older brother, four years my senior, yielded the rest. As the chosen heir to my father's position of Golden Stag, he was privy to the truth. He of course didn't want to tell, but we were close and I used my charm to weasel it out of him. The truth is my father, down on his luck and low on money, wrote the Book of the Whey off the top of his head. Somehow, through great speech and finding gullible people, he drew people in, building and acquiring more "artifacts" as he went to make him more credible. It was artfully done.
"Now, as a 16 year old girl who was growing up treated like a princess, this information by itself didn't matter to me. I struggled with it and lived with it for three more years, but when my father told me it was time to marry Rob, I started looking for a way out. Rob was one of the worst, who had risen to a high position by being stupider and more gullible, and therefore more devout, than anyone else, and I was to be the final rung in his ladder of success. (Marrying me would bring him into a new order.) I finally made it out at age 20, the day before the wedding. I bought my way to where you found me with smuggled money, and the rest is history. You came when I was out of money."
"Wait a minute," said Eric, "You were hitchhiking from Maine to New York and ended up in Illinois?"
"No, I got out by smuggling myself in the back of a semi truck shipping lobsters caught by the community to where I thought was New York. Actually it was New Mexico, and when you think about it that way, I got off pretty good getting off the truck in Michigan."
"Hmfw Wmfng wf yrn trmnft?" asked Vlad. Reacting to the blank stares, he swallowed his waffle and repeated.
"How long were you in transit before you met us?"
"Three weeks. Enough to take all my money. Speaking of which, who's paying for this?"
"Master Lin," said Vlad, holding up a credit card he had been given, "But you two have not touched your food. Eat up. I will talk."
At once they started shuffling food in rapidly.
"I know another old tale," Vlad continued, "About a walrus and the true meaning of Christmas..."