HIS EFFORT WENT on forever, but Jared kept it up until not even a ghost image of his jeans persisted. Then Shika rewarded him, chest against chest and groin against groin, and the rough scrape of the wooden porch planks was now a counterpoint which kept Jared from spoiling their fun too soon.
Only once they were clean and clothed again, and after Shika had banished his shields and had produced his flute again, Ameru-san appeared by Jared’s side. “So that’s what’s been keeping you in the hiding,” she said with a knowing look in her old eyes. “I’ve been missing your company over the last few days, but it would’ve been hard to miss your latest display.” Her look grew stern as she turned it toward Shika. “And you! You sure know better. You know better, yet you knowingly upset the rest of the Wielders as well as the Maker. Next time you see him get drawn into the current Wielder’s thoughts, I expect you to stop him instead of encourage him. This isn’t the time or place to start anything.”
She disappeared.
“I’m sorry,” Shika said. “I just… well.” His shy demeanor was back. “I didn’t start anything. I only took off where we ended last time around.”
ASH AND COOPER
Ash strode next to Cooper, stretching his legs on the sidewalk of Ann Arbor’s college-town commercial area. They had landed in a nice neighborhood, surrounded by well-kept houses and trees whose bare crowns were reaching toward the dark skies. Thankful for the street lamps, Ash stepped over an ice patch and let his elbow bump Cooper’s.
Cooper reached out his hand and Ash grabbed it, glove brushing against a glove.
“I’m starving,” Cooper said.
“That’s no news to me,” Ash said with a small laugh. “What’s more interesting is that I’m starving too.” And it was true. Cooper could put food away like a lumberjack, and there was never any indication of extra padding. He just burned it.
So did Ash - except Ash was water-walking often enough, he figured the cold water helped his body used the extra he ate to keep him warm. And Ash had never been one to eat to excess. Hunger seldom bothered him. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in days,” he said as a sudden chill came over him. “Is that place close?”
“Next block, across the street,” Cooper said. He eyed the main drag and the street where only a few bundled pedestrians shared their sidewalk, and where a steady, thin stream of snow-capped cars passed in every direction. “The Intake Grille.”
Soon they found a place to cross between mounds of snow, and headed to the unmistakable facade of a steakhouse which sported the front of a huge, 60’s era car mounted above the door.
“The chrome-plated grill, of course,” Ash said with a grin. “There had to be an automotive reference here somewhere.”
“It looks like a Chrysler Impala,” Cooper said. “Those things have a back seat big enough for both of us.”
Their eyes met, and Ash’s chest filled with conspiratorial glee. Someday, if they came across an available Impala, he’d take Cooper at his word and see if they could get away with testing his bold claim.
THE INSIDE WAS warm, all dark wood and local school sports trophies and the smell of good food. Cooper was surprised to see Ash order the same menu item he had - a porterhouse steak done medium with a potato and vegetables. And a beer, and, wait, a shocking surprise when Ash asked for a melty-cheese artichoke dip to go with their bread.
“Wow, Ash.” He rose his eyebrows in appreciation. “I hope you’re sharing!”
“I am.” Ash took a swig of his brown ale, leaned against the padded bench of their booth, and closed his eyes. “I shouldn’t be this tired.”
“My family can tucker you out,” Cooper said, and now his tone was apologetic. Trust his Dad to let Ash try some idiotic hare-brained scheme to go water-walking under the ice with Uncle… wait. What was his Uncle’s name?
Cooper masked his confusion with a sip of his own. It bothered him that his time up in camp was so strange and hazy, and that he couldn’t remember his uncle’s name.
He knew what he looked like, this older uncle of Ojibway heritage.
He remembered the dream-catcher he got from the man years ago. In fact, he still had it in one of his boxes.
But he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember his name.
“What is it, love?” Ash’s voice bore a note of concern.
“I.. uh.” Cooper cleared his throat. “This is weird, but… tell me one thing. Do you remember going water-walking in an icy lake?”
“Sure,” Ash said. “It was part of meeting the local spirits. Al was there with me.” His eyes widened. “Oh. Oh! Oh my gods. And you were there with me, under water.”
Cooper laughed so hard, few people turned in their direction.
“No, really. And you really helped me out.” Now it was Ash who sounded a bit hesitant. “You did, didn’t you?”
Cooper shrugged. “I remember you going into the water and my Dad leading me away, and I remember being upset. And Grandma Olga had me over for a while afterward, but… shit, Ash. I have empty spaces where I should’ve remembered what happened.. Were we drinking a lot, you think?”
Ash shook his head. “No. I never drink much, and I was too nervous after that car crash where we had helped out.” He paused, concerned. “You do remember that, right?”
The rest of their dinner went like that, a disturbing account of what did or did not happen. Food which should’ve been delicious was like dust in Cooper’s mouth, just hot and salty and eaten for sustenance rather than for pleasure.
He didn’t finish his beer.
Neither did Ash - although Ash finished every last bit of food set before him, which was unusual.
“I don’t know what happened,” Cooper finally said. “I think something unusual had happened, sure, but I don’t know what, and I think we should make a time-line on paper and compare notes.”
ASH HAD NEVER felt this dumb. The fresh paper placemat which they had gotten from their waiter became a compilation of their memories and events, accounted for day by day using a borrowed pen. His side had parts he remembered but Cooper had left blank, yet Cooper’s side had events Ash was unaware of, which bothered Ash greatly.
And there had never been any shaman Uncle in the lake with him. He had gone by himself, the way he always did.
Or did he?
Second cup of coffee and a shared bread pudding with ice cream later, Cooper put the pen down and turned the place-mat sideways so they could both see again. “I filled my parts. Let’s see where we agree on what happened in the last few days.”
The picture emerged hazy and indistinct. “We agree on stuff until the morning we woke up in the gher,” Ash said. “It gets weird after that.”
Cooper nodded, then put a mark on the timeline. “So from here to here,” he marked a period of about two days, “it looks like both of us were tripping on some serious shit and can’t remember a thing. Or we slept and shared dreams which overlapped, but there are the details on which we disagree.”
“The only thing we agree on was the group sex thing. We have all the details down pat,” Cooper growled. Then he leaned back, squinting and looking downright mad. “You know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of the time Feather soothed you or me with his humming shit. The way he can control people and their emotions - who’s to say he didn’t pin us down for two days and somehow made us dream all this stuff? Because,” and now Cooper threw his body toward Ash with vehemence that startled him, “if we disagree on everything except on one thing and that’s sex, and when last night was so much more memorable than anything we can both agree on, then I bet my sword that that memory isn’t real.”
Ash stared at Cooper for a while, getting a read on his anger and his vehemence. His conviction that something wasn’t right. And, most of all, his willingness to bet his sword.
Then, like a lightbulb, the obvious answer appeared.
“Your sword,” Ash whispered. “Cooper, you were connected to Jared. And you still are, right?”
�
�Right.” Because whatever went wrong, one thing that had resulted had been positive. Jared was with him, a steady presence in the back of his mind. “I wish I could talk to him,” he said. “If we were connected, I bet he had seen what happened, and if he could only talk to me, then… then we would know for sure and not feel like we’re going crazy.”
Ash’s grin was unexpected. “You don’t need him to talk, Cooper,” he said. “You just need to hold him and access his talent. If you can give my aura a solid scan. If my memories had been tampered with, I’ll look different than before. I think you’ll be able to tell. At least I hope you will.”
“Brilliant!” Cooper clasped Ash’s arm with fervor, then pulled out his wallet and left enough to settle their bill along with a generous tip. “Come along. We have some work to do.”
THEIR COZY ROOM had enough space for them to settle on the floor into a meditative space. Cooper lifted the sword that was Jared up to his forehead, and bowed in a gesture of both greeting and a plea for help.
He drew the blade, revealing its length. The ruined half shone dully in the light of the reading light, while the healthy lower half reflected the warm glow like a mirror. He was at a stage where he no longer needed to draw Jared to use his gift, but this was going to be a delicate, complicated reading and he had no reason to take any shortcuts today.
Today, he treated the blade with all honors.
He had never needed Jared’s help more.
Cooper grasped its grip in both hands, and aimed the tip at Ash’s prone figure. With Ash star-fished on the floor, they theorized, they’d be better able to discern anything irregular than had he been seated with his legs crossed.
He sent a pulse of his own energy into the blade, expecting that returning ping which would tell him that the lit-up lines of power would soon appear.
Soon, he’d see Ash’s chakras and the flow of life force through his body. He’d see the bright spots that seemed to have corresponded to his normal functions, and the dark spots that would’ve represented an injury, an illness - or in this case, tampering.
Except the ping never arrived back.
Cooper tried again. He was centered and grounded and focused. His breath was even. He could feel the structure of the basement and the rocks underneath them, so the lack wasn’t in his own ability to project, and to see.
“Well?” Ash whispered after a while.
Cooper lowered the blade reverently. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but… I seem to be unable to access Jared and his gift.”
CHAPTER 20
JARED
“We’re moving again,” Jared said over his bowl of tea. “I don’t think the guys will want to reach me now.” A sip, a coy smile.
Jared was learning how to flirt and he liked it.
Flirting led to that heated glimmer in Shika’s eyes. It resulted in a discreet, gentle caress, a stolen kiss. And when the other parts of the sword spirit began to grumble, and when Arashi-san gave them another one of his stern looks over his and Ojii-san’s game of go, Shika would take his hand and lead him to the garden, where they would sit inside Shika’s sphere of swirling blue and green.
It was a place Jared trusted absolutely, for Shika’s shields would stand to any assault from without. And that meant that none of their heated feelings and thoughts would leak from within.
Shika set his tea down only half full. His mouth would taste of matcha and jasmine now, fresh and floral and beautiful.
Jared took his offered hand, and rose. They were, after all, moving. Cooper was probably driving. There was no way he would call on him now.
ASH AND COOPER
Why would the sword not respond? Ash pondered the question since Jared had remained out of touch for the rest of the night. It was a lot as though a trusted associate with his cell phone suddenly turned it off on purpose, and Ash wasn’t sure he liked the implications of that.
Then again, perhaps they were relying on Jared way too much.
The wheels of the old van rumbled under him as they entered the snowy plains of western Ohio. The sun was crawling on its path westward as they sped under it in the opposite direction, squinting against the glare.
Cooper was taking his turn behind the wheel, and he was strangely silent. A lot has happened, certainly, and both Ash and his beloved had been pondering the awkward, non-congruent timeline of their recollections. They had admitted as much to each other, and now they sat in contemplative silence. The gap in his memory disturbed Ash greatly. Memory was a reality check, a way to navigate the physical world which existed outside the fantastic and barely believable world of elements and ley lines and power nodes.
A world where a thought was as good as an action, because when a person with the right abilities generated it, it became action. Somehow, their thoughts had become muddled - and this spoke poorly of their actions.
Suppose they had done something ill-advised.
Suppose they had hurt a person, or another being.
Suppose they were being manipulated by an outside entity.
Ash recalled the way Al, the Old Man Allegheny, tried to say something about lost data. A river spirit wasn’t going to be crying over an old laptop, certainly. More likely, he was trying to speak their own language. The language of modern men, where information was data regardless of the storage system or the method of retrieval.
Could he have been referring to altered memories?
Why not call it what it truly was?
“Hey, Ash,” Cooper said just then. “One thing is bothering the shit out of me. Do you remember an Old Woman talking to you?”
“An old woman? Not Grandma Olga, right?”
“Right. In that broken-up dream sequence. I remember an Old Woman, and she really, uh, loved me. She liked having me around and she helped me, too. Does that ring a bell?”
Seconds ticked by, then stretched into minutes as the wheels of the old van ate up the miles under their cushy seats. “Maybe,” Ash allowed. “But my strongest hallucination is of Al.”
“The river.”
“Yeah.”
More silence.
“And that other river. A woman, I think. I made note of her, because you really wanted to visit her, but it was expensive.” Cooper was truly miffed.
“What’s wrong, love?” Ash asked gently.
“I wanted to make it happen for you,” Cooper said in a voice as soft as the lapping waves on a placid lake. “I remember you yearned to go back. And I wanted to save up so you could. Maybe go with you, if it worked out. But I can’t make it happen unless I can remember what you wanted so bad.”
THEY STOPPED FOR lunch and ate something simple and entirely forgettable. They fueled up, and through all that Cooper had been wrecking his brains for the place Ash had wanted to visit. A hot, rocky place baked by merciless sun, where the cold water soothed sunburned skin like a benediction, and never mind its hazards and its big, toothy big fish.
A woman place, a place of birth and renewal.
He still heard the echo of her voice in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t recall the name. Not the location either. And that wasn’t fair, because Ash had been so good to him. He had made so many things possible for him. He tolerated his crazy family - yes they were skilled, but they sure were eccentric at the very least - and Cooper wanted to make Ash happy.
Ash had made him, first and foremost, so very happy.
I want to be like this forever.
The thought was not unfamiliar. Cooper had wrestled with it many a time. He loved Ash truly and with all his heart, and he never wanted to be parted from him.
That meant marriage, and nowadays that applied even for two guys.
Except… except marriage was such a weighty concept. Cooper’s personal history didn’t offer much in the way of tools when it came to a structured familial relationship. He was, after all, a pariah of his own clan. One that had displayed a zero power signature well into his teens. One that came to his powers, such as they were, as a freshman at
a prestigious art school in Rhode Island.
So very far from home.
Away from family.
Alone.
He had struggled hard to come this far, and he had still been tending bar part-time when Ash had come along as his first serious architecture client. Those small jobs before? They had counted, but they had been but prep work in learning how to make one Ash Ravenna, a water-whisperer extraordinaire, very happy.
“Do you want me to drive?” Ash broke into his train of thought with a considerate question.
“I’m fine, thanks.” He was always fine. He’d always be fine just to make Ash feel comfortable and cared for. The big M-word was a bit scary right now, but he could at least drive them home in one piece.
“Let me know if you want me to take over,” Ash said. Then he leaned over and pecked an unexpected kiss onto Cooper’s cheek. “I’ve been napping a bit. I can drive if you need me to.”
If you need me to. So much subtext. Cooper didn’t bloody well need him to. Ash could rest in the passenger seat and figure out what had happened to the two of them. He was the better one to tackle such weighty questions. He was the one with a lot more experience than Cooper. Hell, he’d been the one to tell Cooper he was an elementalist, and that his abilities were a cause for celebration and not for alarm.
Cooper owed him his life.
“No problem, love,” Cooper said, meaning every syllable.
ASH WOKE TO a swerving vehicle with Cooper behind the wheel. The pattern of light and shadows from the trees by the road was unpleasantly strobe-like, true, and Ash and covered his eyes to keep his headache at bay.
Damn migraines, seriously. And he hadn’t even been using his talent.
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