Separated from Yourselves

by Bill Hiatt

  “I never thought I would behold such a wonder,” whispered Atlante, more moved than I expected.

  “You haven’t been here before?” I asked. Magnus rolled his eyes again, but I ignored him.

  “Only one man I know of ever reached the moon,” replied Atlante, his voice still little more than a whisper. “Astolfo did so with the help of the Almighty Himself, who allowed him to fly in the flaming chariot that took Elijah up to heaven. Not only that, but Astolfo was given your apostle John for company. It was John who got him through the flaming barrier. Without help like that, no one—not even a sorcerer such as myself—could ever have reached the moon.”

  “At least until I came along,” said Magnus with a broad, disquieting smile. If not for the fact that we still needed him, I would have wished God would strike him with lightning. Well, there was always something to hope for later on.

  Atlante kept up his discourse on the wonders of lunar travel, but I’d never been that interested in that kind of background, and after a while I said, “Excuse me for interrupting, but we need to get to work, don’t we?”

  “Oh, indeed, said the sorcerer. I should scout us a place where we can study what needs to be done,” He walked over, spoke to the hippogriff a little, mounted it, and took off, creating a blast of wind in the process.

  “Are you sure we’re safe here?” asked Carlos, looking around, his wonder mixed with more than a little suspicion.

  “Everything has risks,” said Magnus, “the fact that we know nothing about the locals being an obvious one. That’s why we landed in an isolated area and why Atlante is going to be very careful to find us an equally remote place to work. But as far as our enemies are concerned, magic is partly a function of distance. I don’t doubt someone is going to come looking for us on Alcina’s island before long, but it would take someone like an elder Olympian to have enough juice to scan anywhere nearly this far—”

  “It doesn’t sound as if an elder Olympian is out of the question,” said Lucas.

  Magnus dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand. “If they had been able to get off the Olympian plane, we would have been fighting them before now. They’re still trapped there.”

  Then, clearly annoyed as much by interruptions as he always was, he continued. “Besides, somebody would have to think we could be up here to look in the first place, and you heard Atlante. Even in a world as magical as this, reaching the moon is an incredibly rare thing. Since none of our enemies have ever been here, none of them could portal around the obstacles as I did with you guys. I doubt anyone is going to find a hippogriff, either, let alone another sword of chaos. We’re about as safe as it comes.”

  Nobody wanted to press that point, especially since watching Magnus be smug about his own cleverness was annoying, so we let the subject drop. Anyway, he was probably right.

  Atlante took a while, so we entertained ourselves as well as we could. Khalid flew a little way to check out the view. I was nervous about that, but he was good about always staying in sight, and after a short time, I had gotten used to the idea. Besides, having someone alert to any moon dwellers approaching could have its advantages.

  After some time gazing at the luminous landscape, Tal started talking to Eva again. Though probably better than awkward silence, their conversation troubled me almost as much as Khalid’s flying. I had a pretty good idea any kind of positive attention from Eva was just going to encourage Tal to think there was hope of getting back together once he returned to normal, and I doubted that would ever happen. There had been a lot of opportunities, and Eva had never taken advantage of any of them, much as most of us wanted her to.

  Jimmie, of course, was the exception. Thinking of him made me feel a little sick. His body had been stolen on my watch, after all. I should have done better, much better.

  By now Khalid was talking excitedly to pretty much anyone who would listen about what he had seen from the air: the forest we were in stretching as far as he could see, distant cities with towers high as skyscrapers, oceans that shone like molten silver. Carlos wondered out loud what it would be like to bodysurf such an ocean. I felt like laughing, but I was too worried.

  Ascalaphus spent almost the whole time praying to Selene, who he told us later was the Greek moon goddess. He didn’t understand that this was a different moon from the one he had seen in the sky, that Selene was basically a prisoner on the Olympian plane, that she would never hear his prayers. To be fair, he might have, but he seemed so solemn about the whole thing that none of us had the nerve to tell him what was really happening. Anyway, praying made him happy, and it did no harm.

  After he was done, Lucas asked him about his life, and I had yet another long lecture to tune out. Actually, it was interesting enough that I did catch a little of it.

  We already knew about the fact that Ascalaphus had fought at Troy, and Carlos pointed out that made him a comrade in arms with Achilles (now Shar) and Patroclus (now Tal).

  “Is that why Alex was drawn to Tal in the first place?”

  “You think?” asked Magnus sarcastically. How I ached to shove his teeth down his throat.

  “Tal believes we all have past-life connections,” said Carlos.

  “Want to find out who yours is, Gordy?” asked Magnus, raising his hand. “Practically anybody would be an improvement.”

  By now Magnus was so far under my skin that he could be taking a tour of my intestines.

  “Whatever I might be, at least I’m not universally hated,” I said, totally deadpan. Yeah, that was kind of childish, but the guy was the classic bully and seldom missed a chance to take a shot at me.

  For a second Magnus actually looked as if I had hurt his feelings. Then his Captain Cool mask slipped back into place. “We’ll see how many of you still hate me after I’ve saved all of you.”

  I was tempted to take another shot, but Lucas asked Ascalaphus about his earlier life, and the conversation went a different way. Apparently, Ascalaphus had been one of the guys who wanted to marry Helen of Troy, like pretty much every Greek king who fought in the Trojan War. He was a lot older, though, because he’d also been on the Argo with Jason a generation earlier.

  I was a little sad that Alex wasn’t with us. If ever there was a Greek mythology fanboy, it was Alex. Finding out one of his earlier selves was such a big part of it would have to make his day. If all went well, though, he’d be back with us soon.

  About an hour later, Atlante returned with good news. There was an abandoned castle that would be perfect for our purposes, but it would be several days walk from here. Fortunately, though Atlante hadn’t been able to use Magnus’s memories of a place to open a portal, Magnus could use Atlante’s, so in no time we were standing in front of the castle.

  I’d seen a lot of castles recently, and this one didn’t seem particularly spectacular—or maybe my eyes were just tired of silver. Its glow actually was a little duller than its surroundings, and as castles went, it was on the small side, but at least it would be a roof over our heads.

  It would not, however, be that easy to defend. There seemed to have been a moat once, but it had long since dried up, and the front gates sagged uselessly from their hinges. Since the place had been abandoned long ago, that wasn’t really surprising. We just had to hope no one came along and attacked us.

  At least enough grass grew in the courtyard to keep the hippogriff happy, and Atlante said he had seen nearby orchards that would certainly produce enough food to keep us from starving, even though the orchards, like the castle, had long been neglected.

  Atlante was thrilled almost out of his wits by one of the castle’s towers, which had apparently belonged to a sorcerer and contained all kinds of supplies he and Magnus might need. It also had what Atlante described as a small but rare library of magic texts, none of which he had ever heard of before. He declared himself even more certain that all our problems would soon be solved.

  As far as I was concerned, giving Magnus access to rare spells wasn’t exactly
at the top of my wish list, but if that got Tal and Jimmie back to us, I’d take the risk.

  Chapter 8: Down and Out in Madisonville (Stan)

  Lucas’s old house naturally had no food in it, but Shar said he knew where the local grocery store was.

  “I’d better go, though,” said Dan. “If this place is as small-town as you say, a Persian teenager strolling around downtown is going to be pretty conspicuous.”

  Shar looked a little offended. “My family is about the only Persian family in Santa Barbara, and people don’t exactly call Homeland Security every time I walk down the street.”

  “Shar, you know me well enough to know I’m not being racist. What I am being is practical. Vanora may not know Umbra could only take us here, but she will figure out quickly enough that this is one place we could go. We’re far enough away from her that trying to search for us by magic would probably be a tremendous strain, but that doesn’t mean she can’t use more traditional means. She’s Carrie Winn, remember, and she has friends in law enforcement. It would be easy enough for her to get our local police chief to place some calls, maybe imply she wants to handle the situation discreetly but that we’re runaways, or we’re guilty of some crime, something like that.

  “Sorry, dude, but you’re the one of us who sticks out like a sore thumb. Worse, Lucas told us there were a lot of rednecks here. Someone really might call Homeland Security—or at least try to mess with you. You could beat any of them to a pulp, of course, but that’s going to make us very conspicuous.”

  “OK, Mr. All American Boy, you go,” said Shar grudgingly. “How much money you got?”

  “Not much,” said Dan. “I wasn’t exactly expecting we’d be on the run.”

  We hastily checked our pockets, and none of us had much. We could get a few groceries, but they wouldn’t go very far.

  “Then it has to be me,” said Shar, waving one of his credit cards. “I’m the only one of us with magic plastic.”

  Umbra stared at the card as if it actually were magic. I restrained my impulse to snicker, though, because there was another problem.

  “If Vanora uses legal channels to try to catch us, it’s going to be pretty easy to find out where you charged stuff on your credit cards,” I pointed out. “We aren’t going to be able to use them.”

  “How about if we stock up, rent a car, and put a lot of distance between this town and us?” asked Shar.

  Shar’s past-life memories were a great help in combat, but not much in being on the run.

  “Then she could track us through the rental car,” I said, “except that none of us are old enough to rent a car.”

  “Low on cash, no wheels, two of us can’t even show our faces outside,” said Dan.

  I frowned. “Two of us?”

  “Shar and Umbra—well, unless we got her something different to wear. Right now she looks a little like a wannabe ninja.”

  “We need to go…what is that expression? Oh, yeah, off the grid.” I said. “We don’t have the resources for that, though.”

  That reminded me to call the Order for help, but no one picked up on any of the numbers I had.

  “Maybe the time difference?” suggested Shar.

  “One of those was the hotline number Coventina gave to Lucas’s great-grandmother. There’s always supposed to be a live operator.”

  “You think that means this is bigger than Vanora? Surely she couldn’t be attacking us and the Order at the same time,” said Dan.

  “All the more reason we need to find some place she won’t think to look for us, but we need someone’s help.”

  Our parents would have been logical choices, but none of them knew about our double lives, and it was possible Vanora had used some magic on them already. None of them had called or messaged any of us, and for my mother that was very unusual behavior, especially during a time the city was being evacuated. Vanora might by now have set up some way of spying through them, so we’d give ourselves away if we tried to get in touch.

  “We’ve got to get to Tal’s mom,” I said. It was such an abrupt change of direction I surprised both Shar and Dan.

  “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. It makes total sense.” I explained my worries about trying to get help from our parents, and then added, “Mrs. Weaver isn’t close enough to have been hexed by Vanora, and she already knows about our…situation.”

  “Yeah, but his dad doesn’t, and you know we can’t tell anybody else,” said Shar.

  I made another call as fast as I could.

  “Mrs. Weaver, it’s Stan again. Are you guys still in San Francisco?”

  “I convinced Mr. Weaver to cut our trip short,” she said, sounding a little guilty. After all, she had done exactly the opposite of what I suggested.

  “No! Listen, you have to talk him into staying. We’re going to have to come to you.”

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “Because we’re on the run, and where we are right now isn’t safe. Anyone else we could run to is already on Vanora’s radar.”

  “Is…is Tal all right?” she asked hesitantly.

  “I hope so,” I said. No point in lying to a seer, anyway.

  “If he was dead, I’d know it,” she said with a confidence I wasn’t sure she really felt.

  “We think Vanora needs us alive. Can you stay?”

  “I’m going to look like I’m getting soft in the head, but yes, I think I can get Mr. Weaver to stay, even though I’ve been begging him to go. But, Stan…you realize he doesn’t know, right?”

  “Try to get him out of the hotel.” Even as I said that, I knew how stupid it was. First, she wanted to cut their romantic getaway short. Then she wanted to stay, but she wanted him to leave the room for a while? Yeah, that would be easy to sell.

  “I’ll do what I can, but what if I can’t?” she asked.

  “Then we may have to tell him,” I replied. Mrs. Weaver had wanted to tell her husband what was really going on for some time, so that might actually have been welcome news. Tal, however, would have an aneurysm on the sport if we had to do that. Our faerie allies were not exactly going to be thrilled either.

  “You’re crazy,” said Shar as soon as I said good-bye to Mrs. Weaver. “We can’t—”

  “I know, I know,” I said, holding up my hands. “But this could be life or death. Gwynn ap Nudd and company will just have to understand.”

  “How are we going to get there?” asked Dan.

  “Short jumps through the shadows,” I replied. “Umbra has said—”

  At precisely that point, Umbra let out a blood-chilling scream. All three of us were instantly on high alert.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Dan.

  Umbra pointed at one of the shadows. “I just saw someone looking through it. The Populus Umbrae must have been watching in case Lucas came back.”

  Lucas now had a medallion that protected him from shadow attack. We, unfortunately, did not.

  “Immediate attack?” asked Shar.

  “If it were going to be immediate, they would already be here,” said Umbra grimly. “They are assembling numbers. After their defeats at your hands, they will not take chances on a single assassin—maybe not even a hundred.”

  I could tell from the light through the window blinds that the sun was about to set. In the few minutes before that happened, we wouldn’t get very far, and afterward, we’d be hopelessly outnumbered.

  “Have any of you something that produces a very bright light? One of your number had a sword—”

  “He’s not with us. Besides, only one of us can make the sword flare like that, and he’s not here, either,” I said.

  Umbra looked at me sadly. “Go. None of you are Lucas. The only one they really want here is me. If they take me, they will probably not bother going after you.”

  Shar, originally the last to want to trust her, jumped in first. “We aren’t going to sacrifice you, Umbra.”

  “I was about to suggest jumping from one local shadow to an
other, working our way up to San Francisco,” I said. “Can we still do that?”

  “By now someone is watching every local shadow. There will be too many others grouped near them. If we go into the shadow realm, we may never get back out.”

  “Can we beat them?” asked Dan.

  “No way,” said Shar. “Not if they come in numbers. Last time we had Tal’s magic, we had party members who could fly—actually, we had lots of things going in our favor that we don’t have now. Umbra’s the only one among us who can see them clearly, and I’m the only one who won’t be killed immediately by their poisoned weapons, because the poison is magic, so Zom will protect me. The blood loss from wounds will get me, though.”

  “I am immune to the poison, also,” added Umbra—not that it much mattered. There was no way any of us were getting out of this alive.

  Grasping at straws, I asked, “If we were in a moving car, could they catch up with us?”

  “They could easily keep pace with you, especially at night,” replied Umbra. “However, they aren’t trained to attack your mechanical vehicles. They would have to try to develop strategies on the spur of the moment. It would take them a while to do that.”

  “What are you thinking?” Dan asked me. “We don’t have a car, anyway.”

  “We know someone who does—or at least, Lucas does,” I said, punching in a number quickly.

  “Gavin? Hi, this is Stan Schoenbaum, a friend of Lucas’s.”

  “Hi,” said Gavin, clearly puzzled. “Is Lucas OK?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Gavin, something really bad is going down in Lucas’s new hometown. We had to get out of there fast. We’re being chased by someone who wants to kill us.”

  There was a long pause. “This is a prank, right?” he asked. I could see it was going to be hard to convince him to lend us his car.

  “Give me the phone,” said Shar. Remembering that Shar had actually met Gavin, I handed the phone over willingly. Shar could speak jock much more fluently than I did, and somehow he convinced Gavin we really were running for our lives. Naturally, Gavin wanted to know why we didn’t just go to the police. Shar explained that one of the people threatening us was a prominent citizen whose word would be believed before ours.