Maybe they were the spirits of dead cafeteria workers who were angry that the kitchen had been subsumed for the school play. Or maybe they were the ghosts of Indians. There was an Indian burial ground only a mile or two from the school. No, ghosts didn’t exist, his practical self lectured. It’s a trick. No ghosts. No faeries.
They floated toward him, sparkling motes that looked like movie special effects. He wanted to run—as fast and as far as his dyed-green Nikes would take him. But he couldn’t move. It was like someone had super-glued the bottom of his shoes to the floor. So he shook, trembling all over, praying no one was spying on him and seeing him so scared.
The motes circled him, starting first at his head and working their way down to his knocking knees. As they moved, the air stirred around him. It was a chill breeze that brought goose bumps to his skin and made his teeth chatter. One mote touched his hand. It was an odd sensation, that had he not been so frightened he would have better noted it for his memory. Chilly and warm at the same time, and feeling damp.
The Ferguson twins weren’t bright enough to put together something this impressive. Definitely not the Ferguson twins. Not anyone in his class that he could think of. The apparitions spun back around his face. They were moving faster now, whipping up the chill breeze and chattering to themselves, sounding like maddened insects.
Maybe ghosts did exist, Scotty thought, letting his mind open just a little to the possibility. After all, he’d watched a special on the History Channel about ghost hunters in Lousiana. And if they were ghosts. . . .
Scotty suddenly feared that they would kill him for intruding on whatever they were doing. Then his spirit would join theirs, trapped in the kitchen of Green Hill Elementary School until the end of eternity. He’d never make it to the eighth grade and then to high school. He’d never attend Southern Illinois University, become an archeologist, visit the pyramids.
His heart was hammering so loudly it was practically drowning out everything. Scotty’s fingers had started quivering, and he thrust them into the folds of his tunic. His bottom lip was trembling, and he felt a drop of sweat run down his face.
The apparitions floated closer still, as if they were inspecting every square centimeter of him. One looked slightly bigger than the other. It made a huffing sound, sort of like Mr. Lawlor was prone to make when he was upset.
“We are not ghosts, boy. Elspeth, he thinks we are ghosts.”
“No, ghosts do not exist. And we are not dead. Not yet, at least. Not ever if this boy plays his part.”
The play, Scotty thought. He heard the director hollering for him.
“Play your part,” the one called Elspeth cooed. “Accept our magic. Go on.”
Then the motes drifted back to the countertop, hovered above a spray-painted Styrofoam sword, and floated the weapon into Scotty’s shaking hands.
He bolted from the kitchen, the rubber soles of his dyed green Nikes squeaking on the tile floor. A heartbeat later he was jumping onto the stage, hand all tingling where it touched the Styrofoam pommel, fingers bone white from gripping it so tight.
Scotty couldn’t see the director, and could only barely make out the forms of his Merry Men in the stage foliage which had oddly become thick and lifelike. He heard the paper leaves rustling in a wind that had inexplicably and impossibly picked up, felt a curl stir against his forehead, the sweat drying and cooling him. He smelled flowers, heard a brook, heard something thrashing in the trees and caught sight of a doe sprinting over a fallen log.
“Gather ’round me ye Merry Men,” Scotty said.
His fellows came forward, not in the awkward way fifth-graders move, but in a lithe fashion, quiet like thieves. And they didn’t look like his class mates, they looked like men—rugged and haggard, with careworn and scarred faces, dirty hands holding bows and brandishing swords.
“We come, Robin.” This from a tall man in a tunic so dark green it looked nearly black. “Today we face the Sheriff.”
“For Robin! For Sherwood!” Friar Tuck was clutching his belly, smiling slyly and winking with Drew’s pale blue eyes, though the form certainly wasn’t Drew’s. Softer: “For magic and for the fey.”
Scotty didn’t remember much else about the rehearsal, save for after it was over, on his way across the parking lot, the director caught up to him and said “good job.”
Drew met him at the corner, sack swung over his back filled with Friar Tuck’s robes and stomach. “Going to watch that special on the pyramids tonight, Scott-my-man?”
Scotty didn’t answer him.
Drew poked him in the arm. “How about the Sci-Fi channel instead? Heard they’re showing the first part of a mini-series on Merlin. But then, you don’t believe in magic.”
Scotty cut across the street, his hand still tingling from gripping the Styrofoam sword. A tiny cloudlike mote sparkled on his shoulder, then melted into the fabric of his shirt.
“Or do you, Scott-my-man? Do you believe in magic?”
“Hey, Scotty, what do you think that is?”
Scotty Wiggapolan tried his best not to smile, his carrot-red hair fluttering around his ears. “I dunno. What do you think it is, Sara?”
“Algebra?” She asked the question more to herself. “No. I’m sure it’s not algebra. That has letters and numbers in it, X plus Y equals C-squared and all of that. So I don’t think it’s algebra.”
“So maybe it’s calculus or geometry, huh?” Scotty leaned to his right to get closer to Sara’s desk and to better observe the blackboard. They were sitting in the third row of Mrs. Pepkin’s sixth grade class, where despite the old woman’s claim to poor hearing, they had to be quiet.
“Geometry? You really think so, Scotty?”
Sara hadn’t known Scotty Wiggapolan very long, him having just transferred here a few weeks ago. Scotty was at Green Hill Elementary last year, but his family moved to the other side of town in the early fall after too many strange things started happening in their old neighborhood. Trees uprooting, sinkholes appearing, things that Sara planned to ask him about after she got to know him a little better. She intended to be a geologist, and maybe he got a close look into those sinkholes and could give her a good accounting.
“Sara, I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not hieroglyphics. I have a few books at home on the subject.”
“Hieroglyphics?”
“Yeah, once upon a time I was interested in archeology. Not anymore, though. But once upon a time.”
“So what do you think they are, all those marks?” Sara persisted.
Scotty shrugged.
There were circles within circles cut by wavy lines that ended in arrows and smaller half-circles and ovals, some of them colored in solid, others filled in with a crosshatch. And there were marks that looked like numbers, but not quite—at least not numbers that were written in English—and all of them were sitting inside something that looked like a large hexagon awkwardly tipped up on a point, as if it were rolling along, and in the process taking up more than half of the entire blackboard.
“Maybe it’s part of some sort of helix, like for DNA,” Sara mused.
Scotty knew she was a brain and probably could draw all sorts of DNA helixes herself. She was far too serious, reminded Scotty of himself a year back.
“Sara, I don’t think Mrs. Pepkin would know about that stuff. She only teaches basic math.”
Sara tipped her head, still scrutinizing the marks, eyes refusing to drift from the blackboard.
“Maybe it’s magic, Sara.” Scotty tucked his feet under his chair, the rubber soles of his oh-so-comfortable dyed green Nikes making a squeaking sound on the tile, a tiny cloudlike mote sparkling above the laces.
“I don’t believe in magic,” she returned.
“You will after play practice,” he whispered.
FEVER WAKING
Jane Lindskold
Jane Lindskold is the author of over fifty short stories and fifteen or so novels, including the recently released Child of a Rainless Y
ear, the five volume Firekeeper saga (Through Wolf’s Eyes, Wolf’s Head, Wolf’s Heart, The Dragon of Despair, and Wolf Captured), and the archeolog ical adventure fantasy The Buried Pyramid. She resides in New Mexico, where is she is currently writing her next novel.
YNAMYNET KNELT TREMBLING beside the cot on which her eldest brother, Kiriel, tossed with fever. Sometimes the sufferer screamed as if his nerves were on fire. Sometimes he talked animatedly to people who were not there. Once or twice he opened his eyes and then Ynamynet knew Kiriel saw her. His lips tried to curve in a smile, but he lacked the strength even for that.
Finally, Kiriel fell completely silent, and nothing Ynamynet did—not the cool clothes she pressed against his forehead and wrists, not the herbal infusions she forced between his lips, not the prayers she offered to indifferent deities—made the least difference.
Drawing breath in ragged gasps, Kiriel struggled to sit up, then collapsed back. He was dead before his sweat-matted hair hit the pillow.
This was Ynamynet’s first such vigil. It was not to be her last.
She was only six years old.
“There is a bane upon those of us who bear the mark of magic upon our spirits,” Ynamynet’s mother said heavily as mother and daughter knelt beside Kiriel’s fresh grave. “You have heard of this bane, but it was time for you to see it at work. That is why I assigned you vigil at your brother’s bed, and why I am speaking to you now—as I already have to each of your brothers and sisters.”
Ynamynet knew this. It had been explained to her before she went into the Chamber of Transformation, but she knew her mother took comfort in repetition, and so held silent.
“The bane did not always exist,” Mother went on. “Not all that long ago, as ages of the world are counted, those who carried the mark ruled all the world. My own grandfather remembered those days. He told stories.”
Rocking back on her heels, Mother’s eyes glazed with memory, remembering the tales that had been bedtime stories to her, stories which she in turn had related to her children. They were tales of power and glory, of sorcerer kings who rode dragon-back through storm clouds, fearing neither thunder nor lightning for both were theirs to command. Ynamynet’s favorite tales began in jeweled halls in which toasts were drunk from cups made from the gilded skulls of defeated enemies while boasts of future daring were made before all assembled. Such settings certainly were far grander than the sprawling, ramshackle farmhouse in which she, great granddaughter of those sorcerers, now resided.
As Ynamynet waited to see if Mother would tell one of those familiar yet always thrilling tales, the girl’s vision blurred. At first she thought tears had risen unheralded to her eyes, for Kiriel, who lay so close but eternally distanced by death’s void, had loved those tales and shaped his life by them.
But tears were not what blurred Ynamynet’s eyes. The air in front of her shimmered, giving way to a vision of past overlaying present. Before Ynamynet knelt Mother as a child. She looked very like Ynamynet herself: thick, straight brown hair, hazel eyes that shifted between blue and grey, the same coltish body, all angles where just a few seasons before there had been baby fat. This vision child was superimposed upon Mother as she was now: plump again, wide in hip and heavy in breast from bearing many children, her brown hair streaked with white, the blue in her eyes faded, leaving dull grey behind.
Ynamynet trembled. She knew this vision was no trick of her imagination. It was a sign, perhaps sent from beyond by Kiriel, so newly dead, a sign confirming what Ynamynet had long suspected—that her own spirit carried the mark upon which the bane would fasten.
Thus far, the ability to work magic had not manifested in Ynamynet, not as it had in Kiriel. She knew from observing others that for years to come the ability would be an erratic thing, crashing forth, then falling back, like waves against a shore. For all that it was no less real—no less inescapable—no less a promise of danger and possibly death.
Mother did not see Ynamynet’s trembling. Her gaze was fixed on the mound of fresh dirt that covered Kiriel’s grave. Did Mother see her son as he had been—a tall, laughing youth of twenty, favorite of all the girls, but giving his attention to none because of his obsessive study of sorcerous lore? Or did Mother see him as she had imagined him—the inheritor of terrific power, bringing the family into prominence and power that had not been theirs for over a century?
Perhaps Mother saw Kiriel as he had been on what proved to be his deathbed, twisted with pain, half-insane, fighting, fighting ever on not to relinquish his power, until at long and tortured last that battle had killed him.
Whatever Mother saw, she did not share her vision with Ynamynet, nor did she relate one of Great-Grandfather’s inspirational tales of past wonder and glory. Instead, when she cleared her throat and raised her tired voice, Mother spoke about what Ynamynet both most and least wanted to hear, about the sorcerer’s bane that had ended their ancestors’ reign of glory, a bane that to this day attacked those who carried the mark of magical talent upon their spirits.
“The bane was worse, once,” Mother began. “When the bane first struck, it killed almost everyone it touched. Only those of lesser talent survived, and they were crippled, unable to cast the least spells. Those whose talents were less for sorcery, more innate—such as healers or those with sympathy for beasts—fared somewhat better, but many of these died as well. Those who recovered realized that what had been as a sixth sense to them had vanished forever. At the best, they found the sense diminished to a whisper of what it had been.”
Ynamynet had heard this before, but never had she listened with such a feeling of immediacy, knowing the story belonged to her personally, rather than to those distant ancestors. She reached and touched the soft, crumbling earth that covered her brother’s grave, but otherwise waited in perfect, listening silence.
“In my generation,” Mother said, “things began to change. Still the bane came, bringing with it fevers, chills, and madness, but gradually an awareness spread that more victims were surviving. More importantly, more were surviving with some trace of magical ability intact. Even those who had a gift for sorcery—before this time they had been the hardest struck, and the most certain to die—began to come through. True, most retained only a memory of what they had known, as a blind man may remember color, but one or two found that when they studied the old rituals the intricate workings still made sense. These immersed themselves in the old lore and slowly began to bring alive the wonders that had been.
“Those who lived through the bane spoke of having to fight a terrific battle within themselves. Many admitted to having sacrificed some part of themselves to retain their power. Sterility was common result of these battles, as was loss of a sense or a crippled limb. Even so, those who survived the bane felt this price worth the opportunity to retain their ability to do magic.
“Over time, titles arose to define the different ranks of survivors. Those who lived with power intact were called Once Dead, for going through the bane was like dying. Those who lived but gave up their power were called Twice Dead, for they had died twice: within the bane, and in the death of their powers.”
Mother said nothing more for a long moment, but her gaze shifted back and forth between the fresh grave and her daughter.
“Your brother sought to be Once Dead, and here he lies merely dead. Years ago, when my own time came to battle the bane, I could not face either my death or the corruption of my body. I remember little about that time of fever and madness, but I do recall the moment when I chose to let the fever burn itself along magic’s mark upon my spirit, burn until the mark was ashes and fell away. I lived, without talent, but intact. I told myself I could still serve my ancestors by providing many children to carry on where I could not.”
Ynamynet experienced a sudden revelation. She had imbibed with the milk from her mother’s breast the suspicion that Mother felt great guilt about that long ago choice. For years Mother must have justified her choice on the grounds that her children would do w
hat she could not. Now her eldest son, most promising of all her children, lay dead, victim of the cruel bane Mother herself had shied away from. In addition to her grief, Mother must be feeling a renewal of guilt—a fear that she had not made the right choice, but instead had condemned her children to a heritage of impotent suffering followed by a horrible death.
Ynamynet looked at her mother’s sorrowing face, at the tears that tracked unheeded over Mother’s rounded cheeks. In her heart, Ynamynet resolved that her mother’s sufferings would not be for nothing, that Kiriel’s courage would be an example to her.
Gripping the damp earth mold in her hand, Ynamynet swore a vow that when her time came she would be Once Dead. Young as she was, Ynamynet had the wisdom to keep that vow to herself. Words spoken aloud have the power to bind beyond reason.
Aloud, Ynamynet said only, “Don’t cry, Mama. It’s going to be all right.”
Ynamynet began her studies, first using her brother’s notes, and, when she had exhausted those, receiving permission to delve into copies of the few books of sorcery that had been preserved from the days when the bane first struck. Then the vicious commoners had destroyed anything that had held the least hint of magic about it. That many perfectly innocent books and works of art had been destroyed did not matter to these who had—in the modern parlance—“Never Lived.” The non-magical had destroyed for the joy of destruction and the petty power it gave them.
Years passed. Ynamynet’s education did not stop with reading. She volunteered for additional vigils in the Chamber of Transformation. She chose to serve as an attendant not just because this was the right thing to do, but because she hoped to learn something from the sufferers that might arm her against failure when her own battle came.
Not all those who came into the Chamber of Transformation were Ynamynet’s immediate kin. In the days since the bane had struck, those who retained the mark of magic upon their spirits had formed secret communities. They could not always manage to reside apart from the Never Lived. That would have been both difficult and dangerous, for an isolated community could easily be wiped out. Well over a century might have passed since the sorcerer kings had reigned, but feelings about those with magical talent had not greatly changed. The commoners still hated and resented those with greater gifts, and would gladly destroy any who showed too much interest or knowledge in the vanished arts.
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