by C. T. Phipps
“I got these in the mail with instructions,” Andy said, looking guilty. “The book told me how to summon and control spirits as well as incarnate them into the natural world.”
“And you just thought that was a great idea,” I said, appalled at his lack of perspective.
“Do you know how many spirits are in the Grove?” Andy said, looking at me. “There are things here that do not exist in nature anymore. Not just mythical creatures but ones that went extinct long ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found a T-Rex here if I looked long ago enough.”
I had no idea what that referred to. “You decided to do this all by yourself, without any help?”
“I knew the shaman,” Andy said, accusingly. “She was not a teenage girl.”
“Robyn, may I punch your father?” I asked.
“No!” Robyn said, before looking back to him. “Does my mother know?”
“Yes,” Andy said. “Wilma is a priestess of the Goddess. Do you really want to kill her for what she’s done?”
“Wouldn’t you?” Robyn asked.
It spoke volumes about our situation and the Taylor’s religion that he didn’t have an answer. “Jones’s spirit is still a threat to the Grove,” Alex said, keeping us surprisingly on track. “We need your help to save her.”
Robyn didn’t answer to that.
“Jones is dead,” Andy replied, crossing his arms. “I killed him.”
“Rather than explain that he’s an immortal wizard, I’m going to simply state we’re going to visit the Goddess of the Forest right now whether you want us to or not. Also, I’m going to pistol whip you if you don’t.”
Andy looked down at me. “I’d like to see you try, little girl.”
That was when Robyn waved her hand and a pair of roots reached out from the ground to wrap around his legs. “You’re going to stay here, Dad.”
“Robyn!” Andy said.
“Goodbye, Dad,” Robyn said, turning around to walk toward the light. “This is not over.”
I looked over at Alex. “Should I still pistol whip him?”
Alex looked at me then him before shrugging. “I don’t care.”
I smirked.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Are you okay?” I asked, walking beside Robyn as we followed a dirt path to what seemed to be Heaven itself.
“Nope,” Robyn said, taking a deep breath. “I am most definitely not okay. I’m in frigging Oz, my father is a crazy eco-terrorist, and I’m off to see a god I don’t believe in who happens to be my mother.”
“Religion is annoying when it’s true,” I said, repeating a statement I’d once heard one of my college professors say. He’d been quite irritated with the Reveal and had quit his lucrative gig on the talk-show circuit to become a hippie in Bright Falls.
“I’m still not sure any of this is real,” Robyn said, frowning. “This could all be a hallucination, waking dream, or a bunch of aliens playing tricks on me.”
“Aliens are more believable than spirits?” I asked.
“Duh,” Robyn said. “One has flesh and blood.”
“Spirits, ghosts, and souls are matters of physics, not biology,” Alex said, gazing around. “Though I have often taken note everything we see and experience is filtered through our consciousness. That, in its own way, makes us each a deity. Religion is, in a way, just reverence for anything we choose to give it since all of reality is a miracle.”
“That’s stupid,” I said. “No offense.”
“Some taken,” Alex said.
Robyn laughed. “Yeah, well, just assume I’m an agnostic. I believe what my own eyes tell me but I see no reason to worship it. It’s pretty, but so was Disneyland when my parents took me there. You don’t see me worshipping Cinderella.”
“You remind me a great deal of Gerald,” Alex said, leaning heavily on his staff. He’d pushed himself to the limits during this mission. It was the biggest evidence he was telling the truth about me being stronger since I felt like I could start throwing fireballs all around this forest.
Why would you want to do that? Raguel asked.
I didn’t say I did, I replied mentally. Just, you know, if I wanted to burn the forest down, I could.
“You know Gerald?” Robyn asked.
“Yeah,” Alex said, sighing. “We became friends after the Victoria O’Henry case. Gerald believes there’s nothing man was not meant to know and there’s nothing science cannot explain. He also disdains any sort of reverence for the universe.”
“You’re wrong,” Robyn said, shaking her head. “He has an immense amount of reverence for the universe. He just believes we have to fight it because it’s such a cold and hostile place. What good in this universe comes from people not gods. I admire that strength of will.”
“Well, we can agree to disagree,” Alex said. “I believe the universe is a test but filled with as much good as there is evil.”
“I believe I’m hungry,” I said, shrugging.
Both of them looked at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just I think you sound like Jeremy when he gets high but without the fun part of snacks or getting high.”
No one responded to that.
“Oh yeah,” I said, nodding. “I dropped your mike.”
“You’re saying that phrase wrong,” Robyn said, looking annoyed.
“I dropped your mikes, oh yea,” I said, making finger guns at them.
Alex smiled and we continued on into the forest. It was the sort of place I wanted to become a deer and trot around for a few hours, especially as I hadn’t gotten my morning run out. However, that had the potential of being an extraordinarily bad idea.
Paths in the Spirit World were important, because when you were in a place that was potentially infinite, you could easily wander into a place where your mind would keep you occupied forever. Plenty of stories across the globe talked of people entering the Spirit World, only to return months or even centuries later. It was basically like the movie Inception, only you didn’t have to be asleep for it to happen.
Paths, like the one we were on to the light, were representations of our mind’s desire to reach a destination. If you fell off of them or were, Goddess help you, pushed, then you lost your tether. As such, it was always important to pay attention to the road because not only did it lead to your destination, but it also was a way back home. The Grove might not be dangerous as it was a place designed for human beings to visit their god, but I wondered how wild the magic might have grown with a century of abandonment.
“So, still interested in killing the Dryad?” Alex said.
“Not sure,” Robyn said, sighing. “But, yeah, I’m actually more pissed off now. Abandoning me and my kids in the woods is bad enough. Abandoning my father and leading him to crazy town? That’s even worse.”
“Your father knew what he was doing,” Alex said. “In the circles of mages I run in, they’re called Green Men. People who become the chosen defenders of natural places and receive supernatural powers for it. The druids may be gone, but it seems she was hardly helpless.”
“And yet there’s still the murder pit,” I said. “All I’m thinking of is the fact that she’s not aware of what happened to her children. The Earthmother I worshipped wouldn’t do that. She’s a goddess of love.”
“I thought that was Aphrodite,” Robyn said.
“There’s…more than one goddess,” I said, confused about how to explain. Truth be told, I worshipped pretty much whomever I felt like I needed the help of at the moment. It was a benefit from having the belief all gods were real thanks to the “Your Mind Makes It RealTM” nature of the Spirit World. I could probably find the Flying Spaghetti Monster around here if I looked hard enough.
“I’m just trying to wrap my head around how many gods there are supposed to be. Which are real and which are fake?” Robyn asked, mirroring my thoughts.
“That is a question which ends up answering itself,” Alex said. “The search defines it.”
“That’s not a real saying,” Robyn said. “It also makes no damned sense.”
I just shrugged away her complaints. “Of course it is, he just said it. Also, let the deer woman enjoy the Grove. Let us the sunlight dry our clothes.”
In fact, we were already almost dry despite the fact that the air was cool. The mysterious light was warm but not hot and yet the closer we got, the more I felt comfortable. There were few signs of the monsoon I’d brought down upon us, and it actually seemed like my clothes had been through the wash now.
Approaching it made everything feel more real.
“Well, you’ll have your answers soon enough,” Alex said, sighing. “We can determine then if the Goddess of the Forest is still a deity or has become a demon.”
“If she’s a demon?” I asked, not liking where this was going.
“We do what we must,” Alex said. “Banishing her back to the Earthmother so she can become part of her again should be less damaging than outright destroying her, though.”
“I’m cool with that,” Robyn said. “Assuming it’s the best we can do without causing the destruction of the town by tornado.”
“I’m hesitant at the should be,” I said, noticing Alex’s equivocation. “He’s pretty precise in his language, weird as it may be, so I’d like to know the odds.”
“Never tell me the odds,” Robyn said, grinning.
“Only Alex and I get to make Star Wars references,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t steal our thing.”
Alex waved a hand in front of him. “Like eighty percent chance.”
“That’s a twenty percent chance of me not being happy with this plan,” I said.
“The only guarantee in life is death,” Alex said.
“That is really bad way of convincing me this is a good plan,” I said, shaking my head.
“Sorry,” Alex said.
One more thing occurred to me, not related to our present situation. I couldn’t help but remember how sick using black magic had made Andy. The problem with that was a lot of black magic had been thrown about recently, and not just by the bad guys. “Alex, you said black magic did a number on Robyn’s dad.”
“It did, yes,” Alex said, looking down at the rich brown soil beneath our feet. “All magic is dangerous, doubly so if you’re borrowing power rather than using your own. Black magic is the worst since it’s the magic of death and destruction.”
Robyn stared at me, like this was an unwelcome question. “Really? You want to bring this up now?”
I ignored her. This was bigger than her feelings or even my promise to her. “What about Lucien? You? Me. I know Lucien uses black magic all the time. He’s got a portal to Hell in his club. Is that something we should have been worried about? Like a toxic-waste dump he built a dance floor over?”
I was still mad at Lucien for what he’d done and using his relationship with me to hurt his brother. I mean, who the hell does that? I’d forgiven him, mostly, and I didn’t want to see him hurt. Then again, I’d known he was using the power of Hell for his spells. What did I think was going to happen?
You are growing wiser, Raguel said.
I’m not sure realizing demonic power is dangerous is growing wiser, I said.
It is if you didn’t know before, Raguel replied.
Alex paused before responding. There was a brief flash of pain on his face before he shook his head. “No, Lucien can use black magic without hurting himself.”
“That’s…good,” I asked, wondering what Alex was alluding to. “Why?”
“His mother was possessed by a demon when she gave birth to him,” Alex said. “It’s probably why he was able to open the portal to Hell to rescue us last year.”
“There’s a Hell now?” Robyn asked, chiming in. “I’m still getting used to not being pissed off about benevolent gods and there’s a Hell.”
“There’s a lot of hells,” I said, wanting to get into that example of why the universe sucked even less than the fact her father had seriously screwed himself with his actions. “The hell of being skinned alive, the special hell for people who talk in the theater, and the hell of being stuck with your in-laws for all eternity are just some of them. The universe is full of countless places where enhanced interrogations never end because no one asks any questions.”
The discovery that Hell wasn’t a metaphor and that there really were places where people were tortured for all eternity had been one of the worst moments in my career as a shaman. No just god or goddess would create a place of endless suffering. What did that say about them that they not existed but in glorious multiple dimensions?
Do you have an answer, Raguel? I asked.
No, Raguel said.
Great.
“Hell exists. Okay, now I’m stuck in the Cthulhu mythos,” Robyn muttered, again mirroring my thoughts on the subject. I knew there was a reason I liked her.
“No, in the Cthulhu mythos, the monsters don’t care about humanity,” Alex corrected, running his hands on the tree branches as we walked past them. “In this universe, there are many spirits that actively hate humanity and want to destroy us or feed off of our suffering. They are the enemies of the world and are as powerful as the gods of good, at least as far as I’ve seen. It’s a Manichean universe, not a traditional benign theism.”
Is that true, Raguel? I asked.
No. It is also not false. God is all and all is good but this universe belongs to mortals and they may destroy it.
Wow, that was not the answer I was hoping for, I said.
It answers all questions because you are the one they are being asked.
Thank you, Mr. Miyagi. That makes no sense.
You asked.
Robyn was silent. “Oddly, that makes the universe make a lot more sense.”
I shook my head. “Back to Lucien being a demon.”
“Half-demon,” Alex said.
“He’s a demon dragon?” I asked.
“Yes,” Alex said. “The Drake family was not the nicest bunch of people in the world. To them, black magic was just another tool.”
Great. “What about us?”
“Black magic is harsher,” Alex said, softly. “It will enact a price on us to work it but, for you, I think it is a gift that will only make you stronger. For me, not so much.”
“Did you hurt yourself curing Yolanda?” I asked, panicking. As glad as I was he saved her, I didn’t want him knocking years off his life for her either.
“Only by making myself more like my father.”
That was a statement full of portent but what it was portending (is that even a word?), I couldn’t say. “Well, speaking as the ADD-suffering weredeer, I’m glad you did it even…ooo, what’s that shiny thing over there?”
I wasn’t joking, at least too much, because we finally entered the nimbus of the light and found ourselves someplace else. It was a place beyond the forest, with no trees or anything but a warm light. In this place, I saw a sight I didn’t expect.
A unicorn.
An honest-to-Goddess, stallion-sized unicorn with a single curved horn rising a foot in the air. The horn served as the source of the light. The creature was beautiful, clearly male, and possessed an aura about it that prevented me from approaching. I’d always assumed unicorns were a myth, I know that’s stupid of me, but I’d assumed they were based on the Chinese kirin or Zeus’s magical goat. I mean, some things weren’t real. Mermaids weren’t, at least as far as I knew. Yet, here I was, standing before a creature straight out of Peter S. Beagle’s imagination.
“Huh,” I said, staring at the sight before me. “That’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Okay, I’m back to being skeptical,” Robyn said, looking at the creature. “A unicorn, really?”
“What’s wrong with unicorns?” I asked.
“You don’t find them…silly?” Robyn asked. “I mean, they’re not even the coolest supernaturals. They’re just a horse with a horn.”
I stared at her. “You are l
ike the worst person in the world to take to see things. I bet you complained at Disneyland too.”
“Of course I complained at Disneyland!” Robyn said. “Have you ever been there? Lines, screaming babies, and bad food. That doesn’t have anything to do with the fact I think unicorns are lame. Unlike, say, dragons.”
I glared at her, suddenly intensely jealous. I furrowed my brow and stared. “You like dragons, eh?”
“What?” Robyn said, confused by my expression.
“I’m standing right here,” the unicorn said. It had a Midwestern accent and sounded annoyed.
I did a double-take. “The horse talks!”
“Like Mr. Ed,” the unicorn said. “A horse is a horse, of course, of course.”
“Who?” I asked.
The unicorn replied drolly. “I’ve been here awhile. What year is it?”
“2018,” I said.
“Yikes,” the unicorn said, stretching its neck. “I’ve been here since 1965.”
“Uhm,” I tried to figure out how to ask my next question. “This is going to sound like a stupid question—”
“Then you probably shouldn’t ask it,” the unicorn said.
I took a deep breath. “Were you always a unicorn?”
“Oh, that’s not a stupid question,” the unicorn said. “No, I’m Dave Johnson. I used to be a mechanic in Detroit. Man, I bet that’s bigger than New York now. The auto industry will never die! Rock and roll forever.”
“Yes,” I said, clenching my teeth. “Detroit is awesome now. No vampires at all.”
“Vampires?” Dave said. “Lady, are you okay? There’s no such thing as vampires.”
Okay, I was ready to punch the horse. “How did you get to be a unicorn?”
“Oh, the Goddess made me one,” Dave said, acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “I told her about them one day during our conversations about the world then she mentioned they didn’t exist naturally in the Spirit World. So she made me one.”