Rebirth

by D. C. Alexander

  Speaking of the necklace – I didn’t know what it was or how to refer to it. It was me, but had a separate existence. It wasn’t alive, but there was something there. I wondered if it were a spirit. My recent conversation with Morrigan had me thinking along those lines. They raised me to believe spirits were evil, best I could remember. Necklace felt at me real clear: Not evil Not different Not spirit.

  It showed me again its beginnings, me and the other pieces getting melted together in a burst of magic.

  So it was like a mini-me. A minion.

  Very plainly it showed me it was not a yellow funny looking robot thing. There was just a little bit of huff.

  It showed me in little thoughts like I was an idiot. It was almost insulting. No, not almost. It was insulting.

  It/me explained. Everything has a presence. Call it what you will, call it nature. Trees, dirt, water, air, it is all filled with presence. They think after a fashion. Not like people think. People come and go like sparks from a fire, sudden, blazing, organizing, in a hurry. Nature exists. It doesn’t break time into little pieces and make a string of it. Nature doesn’t see beginnings and ends, it sees changes. Everything changes. At this instant, everything is. And this instant is all that exists, all that has ever existed.

  It:Necklace was iron, me, air and fire. The essence was there, and was me; it was an alternate mind, one of those alter egos I used to communicate, combined with those other essences. It could not be other than me. If I burned up, that was fine; I just changed, if you take the larger view. But necklace incorporated my values, so changing form that way was something to avoid for whatever reason, picky, picky.

  Me:But it was something separate from me, I could lay it down and walk off and lose it.

  It:I lose pieces of me all the time, hair, skin cells, particles in my breath. I am still me. I form new pieces that are part of me.

  Me:Before we found the necklace in the creek the day of the vampire fight, I didn’t know about it, it wasn’t part of me.

  It:If my hand was separated from me, it would still be part of me. It might not be healthy, but would still be my hand.

  This wasn’t a conversation like with someone else, it was talking or picturing with myself, but it was enlightening. And I was drooling. I caught myself, wiped my lip, and saw Mags grinning at me like she knew what I had been doing. Or she thought I was a drooling idiot.

  I jumped up and ran to the bathroom to see how bad my hair was, not out of vanity necessarily. More to stop questions I didn’t want to deal with.

  It wasn’t bad at all, seems I could replace hair without even thinking about it and had done so. Cool!

  Would I keep calling the necklace ‘Necklace’? Or I could call it ‘Rose’ according to it. It saw no difference between us.

  How about Beta? That captured the idea it was part of me, I would be alpha?

  Fine, whatever, Ok, I suggest our left eye is Theta, let’s call our asshole Bob, we gone do individual fingers, or like a hand at a time?

  I walked out of the bathroom ignoring the damn necklace, I mean Beta, it was too irritating, like one of those little itches you get in your Bob sometimes.

  Me and Beta snickered all the way back into the kitchen, thankfully our Bob did nothing. Theta twitched a couple times. I need to get out more, no doubt.

  Speaking of which, the coffee was ready. After a day of no coffee to speak of, the smell was enough to get me drooling. I got a cup ready, I noticed Mags already had one sitting there waiting. We glanced at each other and dove for the pot. We’re too mature and good mannered to wrassle over the first cup of coffee. It was a close thing. We both got half a cup before it finished and sat down together to enjoy it. I appreciate the chairs Carl brought every time we use the kitchen.

  Carl came in, got a cup, and pulled a seat up to the table “Momma got back ok. I think they had a good time spending the night in a hotel, they stayed up and talked late, seemed to get her settled down.”

  I got Willie to help me with the window. He’s lookin’ for legit work and I figured you wouldn’t mind.” He raised his eyebrows and looked at me.

  “Yeah, that’s fine, glad to see him doin’ something useful.” I said nothing about the shorts. Maybe he missed that.

  He continued “Nobody noticed all the shootin’ and noise the other night, no cops showed, nothin’.” He took a long sip of coffee and sat his cup down.

  “How ‘bout y’all, how’d the trip go? You find anybody could help Mags?”

  Mags said “Somebody to come here and help. All my people gone.” Matter of factly. If it was me I would be a little upset.

  I said “We had adventures, some people wanted to kidnap us. Met druids who didn’t know about anything like us. Met good people we spent the night with.”

  “You had trouble then? What did the people want to do with you? That don’t sound right.” Carl leaned back and put his ankle on his leg, and sat his coffee on his raised knee casually.

  Mags grinned “People not want sex, want to know what we can do, you not worry Carl.”

  “Yeah, he don’t care about them tasin’ us or pulling a gun or anything, just the sex.”

  Mags grinned, “Don’t forget The Morrigan throwing you up in the sky.”

  I wouldn’t keep anything secret, just didn’t see the need to share everything right now. I wanted to sit around and drink a cup of coffee before the next shit hit the fan.

  Carl said “Sounds like a lot of fun, I hate I missed it. Maybe next time I could go with you. You know, carry yo bags or something?”

  Mags knew exactly what she was doing “We not have bags. Run a lot, very fast. Oh and Rose hook me up good, I got my rock.”

  That came out a little wrong sounding. “We met the Irish version of dirt. I got a rock and introduced Mags. Now she is friends, I guess you would call it, with something like dirt.

  “It’s good to be friends with dirt, I guess.” Carl casually leaned forward and put his cup on the table, “Can you introduce me to dirt?”

  The idea had never crossed my mind.

  “Come on, let’s step outside, I don’t see why not. I ran into this stuff when I was little. I’m just kinda remembering stuff now and that got me hooked up to start with.”

  Kicking off my shoes, I gestured for Carl to do the same. He moved as quick as he could but he was wearing boots. He had to sit on the steps to get them off. He took off his socks and stuck them down in the boots.

  “Alright, I’m ready, let’s do this. What do you want me to do?”

  “Just stand there, I’m talkin’ now.” Mags had on a big frown, standing there on the porch. She shook her head at me but said nothing.

  I reached out for dirt, it was there, I ran through what I wanted. Could it set Carl up with a rock, let him use the energy, take care of him?

  It didn’t know Carl so I grabbed Carl by the arm and had him sunk about halfway in just a second as an introduction.

  This is Carl, the one we sunk.

  Not communicating.

  Can you put stuff in his head so he can talk with us the same as you do with me?

  Carl had a difference in his brain. Or he didn’t have the difference I did. It wasn’t the same as mine. His brain had defenses that prevented dirt putting anything into it; mine didn’t have those defenses and neither did Mags. Removing or changing those defenses invoked the automatic dissolution, we couldn’t do that.

  Could he get energy from the earth? Hadn’t we done that before?

  Yes, but it is risky. Someone had to tell dirt what he wanted, dirt could do it, but too much would snap bones, tear loose tendons. If dirt knew someone was in need it could flood them with power – a mother able to lift a car off a child, for instance; but that might leave the mother broken and ruined. The desire had to be expressed strongly and plainly enough for dirt to pick up on it and act.

  Mags and I could channel the energy and we were aware of what it was doing and could fix damage it caused.

  I didn’t
want to tell Carl he was out of luck. Lots of options but all I could do was pass it along like it was.

  I told him. Even the clincher, and I didn’t like that part.

  “Dirt can load you up and make you strong, but you might break your arms and legs and shit with it, and you got no way to tell it to stop before your heart busts wide open. And you can’t fix it because you can’t see inside yourself.”

  “So this is all special stuff I can’t get into. I ain’t built right, it ain’t nobodies’ fault, but all the same I gotta stand by with a lil nothin’ gun whilst you man up and take on the damn boogers.” I guess he was a little upset.

  “Could we set it up so I could get strong if I really needed it? I know I’d have to be careful with it, but if it gives me a chance, it would be worth it.”

  I unpacked more of the info from dirt. It couldn’t tell Carl from anybody else. Dirt didn’t see gestures like people did. It didn’t hear sounds the same way we did. Dirt was, well, dirt, rock, and that’s what it experienced.

  Ok, I could do this.

  I communed with dirt, a flat piece of sandstone about the size of half a playing card and the thickness of three nickels came to the top of the ground in front of Carl. Shaped like a tear, it had a hole in the small end ready to make a necklace.

  “Ok, this rock here, you keep it handy. If you need extra strong or fast, you break this stone and dirt will load you up. It will only work when you on dirt’s territory.” Wait a sec –“Naw, sorry, it will work anywhere, damn, this rock is loaded. I need one of these...never mind I got Beta.”

  They were looking at me like I was babbling. I was babbling, no wonder.

  “Beta is the necklace, we named it Beta.”

  Mags said “Bay-ta? Sounds odd.”

  “Yeah, it’s the name of a letter in Greek or some such. And don’t even start, we ain’t gettin’ into Bob.”

  I wisht I hadn’t said that out loud.

  Sure enough, Mags said “Who is Bob?” at the same time Carl said

  “Why ain’t we gettin’ into Bob? This more special stuff I ain’t allowed into?”

  “Yeah, it’s special and for damn sure you ain’t getting’ into it. Come on, they’s coffee left and I still got a place needs coffee.”

  For a wonder, they both just got up and followed me.

  Fourteen

  C arl hired Willie full time to work with him in the lawn care business, said he was good help. They did a good job with the window. It didn’t fall out and kept air from circulating past it. That’s a lot better than it was.

  We visited with Wanda and her bunch. She was back to kinda normal after a week or so. Her skin was beautiful, no blemishes anywhere, no wrinkles, she’d have to wear it a while to get back looking real; she looked like plastic. We didn’t tell her that but she had to notice when she looked in the mirror.

  We sat at her table drinking the inevitable coffee one morning, me and Mags and Wanda, Carl was off somewhere. She said,

  “You never know the really bad parts. It’s been eatin’ on me and it feels like y’all treatin’ me funny about it. I’m gonna tell you while they ain’t no kids here. Let that be the end of it.”

  She leaned in toward the middle of the table. We huddled in. She looked made sure the kids weren’t listening.

  “That skinning shit hurt. I was hangin’ upside down, he broke my arms and I got so tired. I was willin’ to keep fightin’ but I was wore out and he didn’t even notice when I tried to fight.” Tears leaked down her face. She ignored them.

  “That… I coulda lived with that, it was bad. It was fuckin’ horrible. I coulda lived with that. He cut around my wrist and made long cuts down my arms and they didn’t even hurt that I could tell, just pressure. Then he put his fingers in and pulled the skin loose, peeled it loose from the wrist up each arm, holdin’ my hand so it wouldn’t move and that hurt.” She gasped, out of breath, but she had to tell us the rest, it was busting loose inside her.

  “He moved so fast. By the time I knew what he would do he was finished. I could have been a couch or a tree, he didn’t let on that I was even there.”

  She shuddered with another breath,

  “When he was on my legs and got to my ass, he pulled my leg over so he could get to it and cut the skin loose, he stuck the knife” she broke off and sat there looking off in the distance twitching. Tears gathered in her eyes and dripped down her face. The kids were gathering at the door looking in, they always know when they should be elsewhere.

  “Y’all get on out of here, we got this, go play.” They left, quick.

  She spoke, low and quavering and scratchy, like Janice Joplin crooning but there was no tune “He cut my…” she wound down. I moved around the table to hold her, I met Mags and we wrapped her up, talking to her

  “I know, we know Wanda, baby. It’s ok. It won’t happen again. We got you. We fried that bastard and dissolved him down into ashes and goo on the road. He won’t ever do any of that shit to anybody again.”

  She shuddered and cried for a while. Gradually she ran down. Maybe she wasn’t all right. We’d make sure she got there at some point.

  “What did he do with my skin? Is it still hangin’ up somewhere, or rotted on the ground? Was he curin’ the skins?”

  I wasn’t gonna let her know Chen was wearing her skin, I looked at Mags to make sure she didn’t say anything and she was looking at me shaking her head, we were on the same page.

  “We burned it, Wanda. Don’t worry about it. It’s gone and no comin’ back.”

  “Thank you. I didn’t want to see it. I keep feeling like I ought to want it back but I just want it gone, I don’t want anyone to ever see it, what he did to my private parts.” She started up crying again, but maybe not as hard, maybe she had to do this to recover.

  I got pissed at that bastard all over again. I wished I could do more to him. Quick melting was way too good for something that could do these things. But it was over. I took slow breaths and tried to calm down.

  The kids were crying and grouped up outside the door, they needed reassurance and normality. No doubt we all had PTSD. We had damn sure been through some trauma. We’d live.

  After that little drama fest we were all tired. I felt like I’d run several miles and it took a lot out of me. Me and Mags moseyed back over to the house.

  We puttered around a little, cleaned up, washed clothes and put them up. Wanda mentioned the kids playin’ and the traps so I needed to get them safed up. I got the one from under the side window. Mags watched, when she figured out what I was doing, she really liked the trap. She was impressed and I had to tell her all about it. It was aggravating dealing with the language thing. I asked her about how well she was talking when we met Morrigan, she told me Morrigan could do anything, she did not understand how. She laughed a little about how me getting up in her face, she told me that Morrigan was blood and war, death, crows on a battlefield; the end of good things. She wasn’t a person, she was a power, and fed on all the things that made for screams and crying. Nobody gave her shit.

  “Yeah, I get it. She’s a booger. Maybe she ain’t as strong these days; we don’t do as much fightin’ and killin’ and all, or not as bloody as it used to be.”

  Mags drew back and looked at me straight on and serious

  “Are ye fockin’ wid me? I been lookin’ at the TV. All these places is fightin’ and wars and mobs of people getting’ blown up. Those crazy bastards are blowing themselves up to murder kids. The Morrigan is prolly the strongest she has ever been. A war used to be a couple hundred people fighting with sticks and shit, they couldn’t afford to spend a year’s wage to get a sword. Some might have axes. They didn’t have time to fight a lot, they had to farm and hunt. Now you got people that do nothin’ but war and navies and all that, and they don’t have to take time off.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, that was a dumbass thing I said. You’re gettin’ better with English.”

  “Thanks, I’ll be glad when I don’t have to
stop and think about it so much. TV helps with that but I don’t like how strong it is – all that extra stuff makes me sick at the stomach.”

  “You get that I don’t speak correctly a lot of the time? I shorten words and use slang?”

  “Yes, I they taught me to pick up on that. People around you are easier if you act like them, speak like them.”

  “Now that is good teachin’. I wish I could get some of that. What else did they teach you? Were you trainin’ to be a spy or somethin’ like that?”

  “No, not a spy, we had to be careful nobody thought we owed someone else. We helped sick people, sometimes someone would get laid up and couldn’t hunt or tend stock or plant. If someone had a grievance against another, we judged it and decided what should happen. We carried word from one place to another and told stories, showed people how to grow food, carried seeds. Made ditches to move water, built fences that would last. We had to know how to fit in and work with people.”

  “You bein’ a woman, how’d you keep from getting’ raped and robbed? Wouldn’t they rather use a man?”

  “I wouldn’t have been sent out till I could defend myself. They taught me how to fight, how to watch and keep myself safe. And I would have had the help of earth, and fire. People knew, and nobody wanted to start shit with one of us.”

  “What’s the best thing we got now you didn’t have then?” I figured she’d think about it a while, then say cars. Cars kick ass.

  “Toilets. Toilets are the shit. You have, those, I just can’t say enough. They are without a doubt the most incredible thing that ever existed. I used to smell a place where people lived an hour before I got there. It’s hard to believe you don’t know this. Everybody shits every day. One person leaves a trail wherever they go, and if they stay in one place it builds up. It will rot, it goes away, animals, insects, rain deals with it, but slowly. When more than one lives in the same place, like a house, it accumulates ever day, faster than the world can get rid of it. Villages had to be on a stream or river. They threw the wastes in it. Down the stream was nasty and stank, it changed everything and made people sick if they drank from it. The only workable thing was to put it into ditches and bury it. Nobody did that. They shit in pots and threw it in the street. Y’all just sit on a nice seat and pull a handle and it goes away, and probably not into a nearby creek.”