Charlinder's Walk

by Alyson Miers

  "What about them?"

  "Have you thought about it?" asked Eileen.

  "You mean, is she dead on, delusional or deceitful?"

  "Yes, which one is it? Since you were so dead set on asking her if she’d create another Plague, I guess that means you accept she wasn’t lying about that."

  "Oh, I never really considered that. It’s like you said; if she were going to lie about anything, she didn’t have to tell me that she created the Plague, of all things. And like you said earlier, she didn’t benefit from any of this."

  "And you keep referring to the voices in her head, so I guess that means you’ve decided she’s delusional."

  "Of course she’s delusional," said Charlinder. "Creating a disease that destroys nearly all of humanity? That’s not the behavior of a person in touch with reality."

  "But it would make sense for her to commit a singular act of destruction with no benefit to herself," Eileen explained, "if there really were a goddess in the Earth who instructed her to create the Plague. How are you so sure she isn’t right about that?"

  "Because the whole idea is preposterous," he answered. "This is the planet that’s already seen the Black Plague, smallpox, the Spanish Flu, and HIV. If there really were some conscious power living in this planet, and She wanted a new disease to wipe out humanity, She wouldn’t need Gentiola’s help."

  Eileen looked satisfied, maybe even impressed. "Okay, then. You don’t doubt her sincerity. What if she was right about the big picture, though? Suppose humanity really was about to destroy itself even without her help?"

  "I have no doubt she knows a lot more than I do about the situation at the time," said Charlinder, "but she didn’t even know that her Plague would lead to rioting and mass suicides. She couldn’t predict what would have happened without the disease."

  "Fine, that’s settled. So why did you summon me again?"

  "Because...is that really enough? I know she’s determined not to do it again, but is that enough to forgive her?"

  "I don't believe either of us ever heard Gentiola asking for your forgiveness. The only people who might have been asked to forgive her all died many years ago. Gentiola asks for neither forgiveness nor absolution. She wanted someone to hear her story, and you did. Perhaps she hoped for a tiny piece of understanding, but if that takes you longer than you're prepared to spend in her company, I think she'll understand."

  "Yeah. It will take me a while, and she will understand. I guess..." he began, searching for the right words, "obviously I'm the one who doesn't get it, but really, how is it possible? How is she possible?"

  Eileen waited for him to elaborate.

  "I'm not talking about her powers, either. How can someone so destructive be so compassionate?"

  At this, Eileen sat up from her reclining position on the opposite couch and gave a shrug, "I never suggested she was a sane or balanced person, only that she's human. If you believe her reasoning, then she honestly believed that act of destruction was an act of compassion. Of course that was madness, but you can accept that she is capable of singularly destructive action, and that she is incredibly compassionate, or you can be one of those people who separates the world into black and white, boxes every person into Good or Bad, and in the process goes around creating exactly the types of problems you're trying to cut off at the pass."

  "I know. 'Purity and order are for chemicals and blocks.'"

  "You may be perplexing to some people, too. You're intelligent, honest, caring and driven, and you're oversensitive, single-minded, more than a little arrogant and comically naïve. One does not negate the other."

  "Whereas you were bright, courageous, hard-working and supportive, and also stubborn, self-righteous, tactless and dare I say it, more than a trifle arrogant yourself."

  "There's one thing you're forgetting, Char," she responded with a little laugh. "I'm not Eileen. She died decades ago. I'm nothing that isn't already in your mind."

  "But why can't you be a natural part of my mind and a bit of Eileen?"

  "If you want that, then fine," she shrugged. "Only don't refer to me like I'm Eileen come back to life, like some spiritual fairy godmother. The fairy godmother is all in you."

  "Yeah, well, Eileen was stubborn, self-righteous, tactless and arrogant, but she was also probably the reason why I grew up as happy as I did."

  "And why should anyone want to turn that into a contradiction?"

  "Of course we shouldn't, but one does not absolve the other," said Charlinder.

  "Speaking on a purely preventative and future-oriented basis, of course," said the Anima.

  "Oh, sure," he replied. "Though Gentiola said something else that's staying with me. When I first asked, she said she didn't expect to be alive to see it if humans make a wreck of the Earth again."

  "Yes. And?"

  "But what really happened was that when she tried to kill herself, instead she just became immortal. So, how can she not expect to be alive that far into the future?"

  "Let's think about this. Gentiola says she hasn't aged since the end of the Plague. You’ve already decided she’s not a liar, but you’ve also decided she can’t be right about the Earth being a conscious entity capable of decision and communication, so there wasn’t any intention involved. Millions of people before her attempted suicide without unnaturally extending their lifespans, and, let’s face it, losing that much blood really should have finished her off, so let’s first focus on the sudden loss of several billion lives by her hand. How could that lead to her becoming immortal?"

  "That the Earth is rewarding her for rescuing it, perhaps?" Charlinder suggested. "Isn't that a scary thought?"

  "You’re wrong about that on at least two levels," said Eileen. "Where Gentiola’s concerned, it’s anything but a reward, and unless you’re going to rethink your position on the goddess Mother Earth, this isn’t a result of anything making a decision. It seems intentional to you because that’s the language your monkey brain understands. Is Gentiola the only thing you've seen that's been altered to something unnatural since the Plague claimed its last victims?"

  "What else could be unnatural?" Then the answer came to him. "You mean the land on the estate?"

  "Right. And you notice Gentiola said her land started behaving so differently since the end of the Plague, not the beginning. So, if Genti's moral standing was the same at both stages, then what was different at the end?"

  "The Earth was drained of people by then, so a lot of what they'd been doing was no longer happening, and...the Earth started to repair itself, I guess?"

  "Well, yes. And, then, what separates Gentiola from people whose homes don't experience all four seasons at once? Aside from her being a world-destroying fanatic, of course."

  "She's a witch. Her magic draws on the Earth's energy."

  "Yes, it does. And she is a magic practitioner who is especially sensitive to, and obsessed with, the patterns of the Earth's power. Which has increased tremendously, of course, since the Plague did its damage. That means that if she was previously disposed to absorb a piece of the Earth's energy, then after her Plague burned itself out, there was suddenly a lot more energy for her to absorb, not just into herself but also into her land. The sudden upsurge in the energy flourishing in the Earth, then, may explain Gentiola's eternal youth and the estate's unnatural seasonal cycles."

  "But she didn't know that would happen," said Charlinder.

  "Of course not," said the Anima. "She had no way of knowing the increased energy would have that effect. Otherwise she wouldn’t have bothered opening up her femoral artery. The effect applied to her with no regard for what she wanted or anticipated. And it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. So how long do you think that future will be?"

  Charlinder didn't respond right away. He looked back at his Anima's politely challenging face, letting the pieces add up. If the Earth was not a conscious entity, and Gentiola wasn't asking for her eternal youth, then, "She's become a magnet for the energy," he sai
d. "No one arranged it, but that's how it worked out. The Earth is stronger, and part of that power is always flowing into Gentiola."

  "And how much longer will that much energy keep flowing?"

  "As long as the planet stays this strong," he answered. "So if we humans do the same thing as last time, and wreck the Earth, then she won't attract nearly so much power anymore," he attempted, while for some reason the thought stuck in his throat.

  "She will start aging again, and in that case she will eventually die," his Anima finished.

  "Only, for now she’s still here, and she still hears those voices in her head, and there’s no telling how long it’ll be before she loses her immortality," said Charlinder. "So, if we do it differently this time, if we do it right, and don’t make a toxic wreck of the planet, then will that keep her from getting the same idea again?"

  "If you people don't poison everything from the oceans to the ozone, then, no, she will probably not have to contend with Mother Earth ordering her to kill all the humans again, but this isn’t just about her. There are other people around who have learned and continue to learn the same abilities, and who may or may not ever suffer the same delusions. Another Gentiola might happen no matter what you and your fellow bipedal primates do. This is about you and all the other people who are still here and have to grow crops and raise children. This is about the kids your friends will raise, and the ones who come after them. If you think you can persuade your fellow humans of the importance of using your planet appropriately, rather than using it up, then do it for their sake, not hers."

  Charlinder took his time in waking up the next day. He attenuated every step, savored every moment, committing to memory every possible inch of that house, that place. He would not waste a further second of his stay in those rooms that echoed from decades in the past and beckoned to centuries in the future.

  Despite this sense of wonder, or perhaps because of it, he also felt snatches of the same inexorable terror he'd experienced in the hours before he'd killed Queen Anne's Lace. He eventually found Gentiola sitting on the sun porch with a spinning wheel, turning a leathery plant fiber into a tough yarn. She must have heard him come in; she looked up at him blankly, and the look on his face was all she needed to hear.

  "You're ready to go," she said. It wasn't a question.

  "I can’t stay here much longer," he said.

  Gentiola nodded and turned back to her spinning. "We'll need to work out your itinerary. And there's something else I need to give you before you go. It'll take a few days to prepare. I don't think there's anywhere you need to be in the next few days, is there?"

  "Nowhere except on my way."

  "Come with me to the cellar," she said, leaving the wheel. "Let's consult the globe."

  "The question," she began while Charlinder gazed uncertainly at the giant sphere of light, "is whether you want to brave the Alps to go northwest, or go back the way you came."

  "As much as the thought of going back east makes me weep, what could I possibly gain from going northwest?"

  "Only a year or more of your life back in America," she replied, and with that, she had his attention. "You could take another two and a half years to go through Asia again, or you could go through France and Great Britain and get back to North America in a matter of months."

  "Is that really possible? Is there someone in Britain with a boat that can cross the Atlantic?"

  "The span between the British Isles and eastern Canada, no," she said with a minor chuckle, "but in Scotland, they do have boats that can get as far," she pointed to an island in the northern Atlantic, "as Iceland."

  Charlinder suddenly felt like someone had just hacked through a chain shackling an enormous weight to his feet. "And then the Icelanders would take me to Greenland?"

  "You'd travel over land for some time, and from the western side," she continued Charlinder's train of thought, "the Greenlanders can easily take you to Canada."

  "I'd have to ask a bunch of people to take me over water, but...yeah, that is a much shorter trip."

  "The only problem with you going through Greenland is that now is when you should be finishing your stay there. If you leave tomorrow and go straight up, you'll get there at the worst possible time of year. I doubt any Icelanders would even attempt the voyage."

  "Is Greenland in the winter all that much worse than Iceland at the same time?"

  "You don't even want to think about being in Greenland in the winter. The Inuits know how to survive it, but you wouldn't be so lucky."

  "I went through Siberia in the wintertime without any catastrophes."

  "Siberia in September is cold and barren. Greenland in December is dark twenty-four hours a day."

  "No, I won't be doing that."

  "So you'd have to wait out the winter farther south and then have your hosts take you up there in early summer, say late May or June. And that'll cost you several more months."

  "It'll still get me home a lot faster than retracing my steps."

  "Of course it will, but there's still the matter of where you'll spend those extra months."

  Charlinder tore his eyes away from the globe to find Gentiola looking at him, and at that moment, he knew what she was thinking.

  "I can't stay here until springtime. If I spend months here, I'll never be able to leave, and I can't abuse your hospitality forever."

  "Char, don’t you understand me by now? You don’t have the capacity to abuse my hospitality."

  To his surprise, he found that he did not need her to elaborate, and as soon as he got his laughter under control, continued. "I should spend the winter somewhere farther north. It's way too easy to miscalculate travel time."

  "Of course this is true. There's a nice mild climate in England. The locals even speak your language, more or less."

  "Yeah," he responded in awe. "I hadn't thought of that. Okay, so we've got my itinerary. I never really expected to travel over that much water, but, if you think it's doable..."

  "There'll still be more supplies you'll need for later in your journey, and I can't provide them," she cut in. "But the thing I'm preparing for you will help."

  "Is this a magical thing?" he asked.

  "It is," she answered, turning away from the globe and leading Charlinder back upstairs.

  "I wonder, and you may or may not know, but is there anyone else in the world now with your skill at magic? Or is it a talent?"

  "It is a matter of both talent and skill, and yes, I know of other practitioners," she replied. "There were three other witches who survived the Plague, but not like me: they aged normally and died of natural causes. There are a dozen or so others alive now, and they're also aging normally. I know where they live, but I can't tell you much else about them. Why do you ask?"

  "Because...well, I'm glad to hear there are others, because I don't think what you can do should be kept in the dark."

  Gentiola sat down again at her spinning wheel before speaking again. "It takes mental focus," she said. She didn't look at Charlinder. "You need to be able to concentrate your attention far better than the average person can. People with that ability are few and far between, but if you do have that predisposition, then learning the craft is really just a matter of example."

  "Once the example is set, how long does it take?"

  "A lot longer than you're proposing to stay here," said Gentiola, glancing sidelong at him over the wheel's clicking hum.

  "I'm pretty sure I don't have that kind of attention span," he clarified, "but suppose someone else in my community wanted to learn. Is there a book you can send off with me that explains the craft?"

  "I don't have a book that I could send home with you, as it's not the sort of thing one needs to study in a book. If there's anyone in your community who can execute sufficient focus, and you mustn't assume there is, then if you can adequately describe what you've seen here, they'll know where to begin, and they'll figure it out on their own. It takes several months to learn to do anything significant
."

  "How long would it take to get a thorough grasp?"

  Gentiola looked up, not at him, but out the ceiling-height glass window, and for a fleeting moment, Charlinder thought she wouldn't know how to answer. "There's a whole language in magic, Char. No matter how well you speak it, there's always something more to learn."

  "Okay, I get what you're saying."

  "If you know how to talk to the cosmos," she continued, and this time she was facing Charlinder, looking him straight in the eye, her spinning wheel idle, "it will listen, but it will also, always, answer back, and the answer may not be what you wanted to hear."

  "What you're saying is, the result of a spell might not be what you wanted, even if you do successful magic."