Strange Medicine

by Jim Stein

  “What if I lose you?”

  “Maybe check in every hour or so. Like I said, I don’t think we’ll be able to talk, but you never know. The portal is acting pretty strange, maybe something’s changing.”

  All too soon, our rides were ready and everyone mounted up. Mr. Conti came to see us off. I admired my old boss’s calm demeanor in the face of crisis. Even now, he looked more interested than worried.

  “Thanks for all your support Mr. C.” I shook the hand he extended. “Not just for me, the whole town owes you big time.”

  “We each do what we can. Be watchful on the other side, Edan. Little is known of the worlds that came before. Your sprite may be your best resource.” Dwain waved from the back of Pete’s ATV, shamelessly listening in. “But also trust yourself. You’ve grown into a fine man with good instincts. Few could have handled our evacuation so well.”

  “That was mostly you and Meg. I just helped people-wrangle.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. You brought order to the madness and showed the town we have a chance against the desert. You can’t see it, but your very presence fortified and energized people who may have otherwise been driven mad by the notion of magic and monsters.” He placed a hand on my chest. “Trust in your abilities.”

  Others said their goodbyes, and everyone gathered to watch us ride out. The portal flashed and flickered, daring us to approach. Chugging across the two hundred yards took forever, and the frozen funnel cloud rose higher as the minutes passed.

  “Ed, can you still hear me?” Anna’s firespeak had a muffled quality now that we were halfway across the stretch of sand.

  “Weaker than last time.” I reached over Ralph and slipped a hand onto the candle, but the link didn’t strengthen.

  “Same on this end. Your voice is kind of fuzzy.” Even that sounded weaker than her prior statement.

  “Keep talking, but I think the link is fading.”

  She launched into a poem. By the third line, I recognized the lyrics came from the A-Chords’ latest hit. With each verse her voice grew notably weaker until it was a whisper against my mind.

  “Anna?”

  Nothing.

  “We just lost contact with the farm,” I told Quinn.

  “Better than you thought though. Now the real fun starts.”

  Our three ATVs stopped thirty feet shy of the towering emerald column. Even up close it resembled a frozen tornado, but big chucks of debris were suspended in the dirty swirls within. Most had arms and legs.

  “Are those what I think they are?” Quinn leaned in close to whisper the words.

  The creatures we’d encountered out on the sand were trapped within the funnel cloud like insects in amber. Of course, many of them were bugs. Scorpions, centipedes, and other insects we hadn’t had the misfortune to meet hung suspended along with the odd shambler and troll—or Nargun, as Manny called the aboriginal monsters. Others I didn’t recognize were scattered into the distance above.

  “They’re watching,” Pete said.

  The closest shambler glared down, studying us, as did the pair of Nargun hanging upside down above it. It was impossible to tell what the bugs might be focused on, but the intense feeling of being watched had the hair on the back of my neck standing. One pair of golden eyes in particular bored into me. The creature’s body was lost in the haze within, but those intense eyes glowed just above the sand.

  “Do we just ride in?” Pete asked.

  “Manny?” I looked to the road manager. “Ever seen anything like this in the Dark Court?”

  “Portals? Sure.” He looked the vortex up and down, extended a hand palm out, and shook his head. “Doesn’t feel special. I doubt it’s really a tornado. Containing that force would take a lot of physical energy. This resonates like any other portal—despite the constant dimming.”

  “Yeah, I don’t sense anything special either.” Except all those watching eyes.

  I didn’t feel any magic at all—certainly nothing elemental. The only other portal I’d encountered had been guarded by an Earth spirit and registered much differently on my magical senses. This construct looked pretty much the same when I stared right at it as it did when I let my eyes go unfocused and tried a true-seeing. The insects and bugs dissolved from sight, leaving only those creatures with power suspended in the glowing vortex along with that pair of golden eyes at ground level.

  “Nothing here either,” Quinn said.

  “I say onward!” Dwain stood behind Pete, brandishing one of his machetes and looking like a knight ready to joust.

  The sprite’s weapon reminded me of Koko’s artifact. I yanked the staff head from the holster on my belt. The carvings along its length remained dark no matter how hard I concentrated and cursed under my breath. It simply looked like an attractive piece of folk art.

  “Let’s go with Dwain’s plan.” I shifted the staff to my left hand, figuring I could handle it while driving. “Slow and abreast. All eyes on those creatures. If they drop on us—wait!” I’d forgotten all about my hiding spell.

  Initially, that spell had given me trouble, but over the last few months I’d perfected the Spirit shield to the point I could extend it to others. The spell drew on Tokpela, the nothingness before creation, to cloak me from prying eyes and magical detection. Though not foolproof, it had gotten me out of a few tight spots.

  I drew from the music that had powered my morning ritual for months and worked my way through the group. Rather than trying to cast a massive single shield, I placed a quick obscuring layer over each individual, tying the mini-spells off to the glowing point of the aura just below the sternum. The spell would draw a small bit of energy from each person’s heart chakra, which I had learned the hard way was the safest anchor point.

  “You may feel a little tired, but you’ll get used to it. I’ll cancel these spells if things are safe on the far side. Even if I don’t, they’ll fade and be gone by tomorrow unless I refresh them.”

  Already the eyes of our jelly jar full of suspended watchers slipped away. I skipped over Dwain and Ralph, figuring each had their own protections. When I got to Manny I hesitated and the music faltered. I wasn’t an expert at reading auras, but his shone pink as fresh salmon, which seemed an odd color. And instead of six clear chakra, his scattered into a dozen lesser nodes of light. I didn’t have a clue where to tie off the spell.

  “Don’t burst a blood vessel, slick.” Manny gave me a wry smile. “I’ll whip up something on my own.”

  I turned the half-formed spell on myself and added the two extra layers I usually used. The Tokpela billowed out in nested bubbles, shimmered in my Sight, and settled into an invisible cloak that conformed to my movement. By the time my last spell snapped into place, a blank spot sat astride Manny’s ATV. I could still see him, but he was undetectable to my magical senses.

  “Looks like we’re ready.” I strode back to my ATV.

  Quinn leaned on the handlebars and grinned, having apparently decided to drive. Ralph perched on the luggage rack extending over the headlights, looking like the masthead of an ancient Viking vessel. I shrugged and climbed on the back. Wielding the staff and magic would be easier with my hands free.

  The watchers scanned the desert, ignoring—or not noticing—our approach. All eyes looked outward, except those golden, glowing orbs set in a dark muzzle. Those still tracked our group, burned into us—into me—despite my spell. Few creatures could pierce a veil of Tokpela, and I didn’t relish meeting one.

  My skin itched as we crossed the border between worlds. Everything went dim, and the muted green light flashed overhead as if we stood in a lightning storm. But it was lightning in a bottle, trapped by the swirling circular boundary. There was motion inside. Not the torrent of activity you might expect within a tornado, but misty particles drifted from the sand in a steady upward flow.

  “Everyone okay?” My voice came out flat.

  “Good over here,” Pete said as he flipped on his headlights. Quinn and Manny followed suit.
“Is this fog?”

  “Must be.” My breath billowed out smooth and smoky to set the particles into a tailspin.

  “Nothing’s moving up there.” Manny scanned the eerie jumble of forms lining the endless tunnel above.

  An indistinct black muzzle formed around that glowing set of eyes at ground level and swung to track our slow creep forward. Just as quickly the outline dissolved, the eyes disappeared, and the prickling scrutiny winked out. The temperature dropped and our tires crunched onto a ring of icy sand growing from the center of the vortex.

  Tattered sheets of fog spun past and rose in a dense inverted tornado within the vortex. The light flickered faster, and my stomach dropped. Quinn snatched at the handlebars. I clutched her waist with my free hand, but couldn’t tell up from down and squeezed my eyes shut to stop a wave of nausea.

  Dazzling white lit the inside of my eyelids. I opened my eyes and blinked at sugar-white sand. Sweat popped out on my forehead, but instantly evaporated.

  “We’re through,” Manny said.

  “Ed, your staff!”

  I looked to where Pete pointed. Sure enough, the end of the staff Koko gave me pulsed with pale blue light before going dark. I held it up, willing the artifact to take me to the medicine shield. Nothing dramatic happened, but every twenty seconds the tip brightened and faded.

  Gleaming sand spilled out in all directions around the vortex. Dirty gray clouds drifted in isolated patches high overhead, occasionally obscuring a sun that looked too large and squat, like a sunset back home squashed by atmospheric effects at the horizon.

  We’d assumed the land beyond the portal would be nothing but desert because that was what came through on our side. But the spill of sand petered out and the ground turned to hard cracked clay a few hundred yards ahead.

  “Looks like a dry lake bed.” I pointed with the staff, and it flashed notably faster. I swung it in a slow arc, and the pulse rate increased when pointed off to our left at about ten o’clock. “Looks like we need to go that way.”

  The landscape continued to change as we crunched over the broken ground. At first, only the hardiest of weeds broke through the bits of shell and rock embedded in the gray-brown clay. But soon enough shrubs and grasses studded the path ahead. No glowing eyes watched among the branches, but we kept our guard up in case some of them turned out to be killer tumbleweeds.

  Unlike Ralph’s directions through the desert, the staff set a straight path. Compared to bobbing and weaving through unseen turns, following the pulsing rod was downright boring. We passed the petrified remains of ancient trees—only a few at first, but then with more frequency. Ralph sat uncharacteristically still, looking subdued as he scanned the horizon.

  “Trees ahead,” Quinn said. “An actual forest.”

  15. Powerful Memories

  A

  NNA KICKED another desiccated spider corpse and watched it roll off the porch. It left a little trail in the sand before stopping next to the others she’d swept out this morning.

  “Sand’s closer,” Charles said from behind her.

  The drummer was tall, trim, and athletic. His presence should have made her feel safer, but something about the man put her off. An odd feeling for a dedicated groupie, but he hadn’t been with the A-Chords when she fell in love with them. Randy had, but that silly, lovable guy was gone. She turned and studied the close-cropped black hair and piercing blue eyes that looked through her. So stern and serious compared to Randy’s adorably vacant expression.

  “Right up to the foundation now.” Anna mentally shook herself. No one could replace Randy, and it wasn’t fair to hold that against Charles. “The pesticide helps keep the spiders back.”

  “But for how long?” He held up a hand to indicate he didn’t expect an answer. “The other things are getting too bold. Those snipers on the roof aren’t going to keep them at bay for much longer.”

  “They won’t have to. Ed will make things right. I just know it.”

  Charles looked like he wanted to argue, but huffed out a breath and shrugged. Anna gave the drummer a tentative smile and stepped back into the house.

  As Kokopelli’s first child, Ed was strong in all three elements. And he had Quinn. She was scary and caring, a big sister you didn’t want to get mad. Anna’s training with Ed seemed the perfect opportunity to hone her power and become more kick-ass like Quinn. Unfortunately, those sessions were always rushed. Her control of Spirit energy improved, but came nowhere close to the terrifying force she’d once summoned in the heat of battle. As for firespeaking, Ed still didn’t answer her hourly calls. Now, she swept up dead bugs—so not kick-ass.

  Ed would fix things. Otherwise, all was lost according to Piper, and that girl knew a lot. If Anna couldn’t be mighty like Quinn, she’d settle for smart like Ed’s sister.

  “Is there anything in the barn to push back the sand?” Brent asked the group hunched over the kitchen table and studying Piper’s notes. “You know, like a snowplow.”

  “We might be able to rig up a bucket on the front-end loader, but most of the heavy equipment is gone with the outbuildings.” Melissa swept back messy hair to reveal tired eyes.

  “That would not work,” Mr. Conti said. “Physical force won’t hold back these sands. The ancestral energy of this house keeps the desert at bay, not the stone foundation or wooden walls. If this were just another building in the fields it would have been swept away with the others.”

  “With the Eastons gone, that protective energy ebbs.” Piper pushed out a graph featuring a fat red line that crashed to zero as it crossed a climbing dotted line. “I plotted the sand’s movement and depth near the house and barn. The slope prior to our arrival is just a guess based on what Ed and Pete remembered.”

  “It’s already at zero. There’s nowhere else to go,” Anna said under her breath.

  “Nowhere, except up the stairs and into the house.” Piper grimaced.

  “The energy could be replenished.” Mr. Conti rubbed his stubbly chin, squishing his face through a series of caricatures that would have been funny under other circumstances.

  “Sure, if we bring back the Eastons.” Piper held up a forefinger and turned to Melissa. “We do have one. The power of a threshold comes from its residents’ sense of home and safety. Those feelings are ingrained and strengthened by the everyday actions and routines that make a house a home. Layer on generations of those traditions and the power builds, charging the dwelling with the power to deny entrance to the unwanted.”

  “We’re the residents now,” Anna said. “Shouldn’t that be enough to recharge this force?”

  “The house is welcoming and cozy, but I wouldn’t say I feel at home. That’s what it would take to rebuild the energy, we’d all need to—” Piper paused and leaned in toward Pete’s sister. “What sort of things did your family do here every day, what made this your home?”

  “Chores I suppose.” Melissa nodded at the counters and smiled. “Every day started with Mom cooking. Bread and muffins went in early, long before breakfast. Then there’d be coffee for anyone riding out to check fences.” She laughed. “When we were little, Pete and I used to fight over feeding the chickens and pigs. I hated dealing with slop, but we weren’t allowed to tend horses and cows until we were older. Then there were family dinners, complaining about the weather, gathering around the fire for cocoa on dark winter nights.”

  “Wait, we all need to hear this.” Piper skipped over to the kitchen and rummaged through the lower cabinets. “Maybe we can make hot chocolate.”

  ***

  “That’s Uncle Bill washing the cows.” Melissa pointed at the screen where a man covered in mud struggled to push between juvenile brown cows. “Swiss Browns are like dogs. They loved the attention of getting cleaned up for the fair. Uncle Bill hates being licked and nuzzled and got himself dumped in the mud trying to back away.” The home video cut over to show the back of the farmhouse. A woman wearing a flowered dress pinned shirts out on the clothesline. “Ma won’t us
e our dryer. She says the fresh air makes everything smell like springtime. Da gets so embarrassed when houseguests look out back and see his underwear.” Melissa’s laugh drew chuckles from the group sprawled around the living room. “But Ma always said, ‘If you stay at the house, you get treated like family.’”

  They’d been listening to stories for an hour. Melissa played to the audience, but Anna could tell she loved talking about her extended family—and especially her folks. They’d already walked the fences with Cousin Norm after that beaver dam flood, ridden to market to help set up the stand, and spent a scary night in the basement under tornado warnings while Aunt Jenny went into labor.

  The small crowd hung on her words. Good-natured jibes were aimed at various cousins, uncles, and aunts along the way. Only complimentary comments for Ma and Pa Easton, you didn’t bash the heads of the house, even in jest.

  Snacks flowed from the kitchen as people took turns passing out crackers, cheese, and other treats from the Eastons’ stockpile. Baking up bread was out of the question, but fresh chocolate chip cookies and cocoa from a pot on the stove filled the house with soothing aromas.

  “This young lady certainly can spin a yarn.” Mr. Conti’s eyes shone with delight from Anna’s right.

  Piper sat to her left with Billy squeezed up against the sofa’s arm. Leaving Bakersfield had been hard, but being surrounded by such good people kept Anna from missing home. Even when the dark forces had her in thrall, some small part of her clung to the knowledge that friends were nearby.

  “I love her,” Anna said as Melissa launched into another tale. “All of you too. No matter what happens.”

  “We love you too.” Piper gave her hand a squeeze. “And I’m coming to love this darned ranch. Between the stories and a belly full of goodness, I’m feeling sleepy and safe. Like this really is home.”