American Goth

by J. D. Glass

  And after…what had happened after, I had known what it was, the little soul that stood before me, had known what to do, as if I’d done it a thousand times before, would do it a thousand times again. How…why did I know that?

  It had happened despite the fury of hunt that had ridden me. Faced with that living Light, my anger had disappeared, to be replaced instead with an overwhelming… What was it I had felt, anyway? Care? Not a strong enough word. Compassion wasn’t exactly right either. I glanced up to see Fran enter the room and as her eyes met mine, I knew what it was. Love. I had felt love for that creature that in the Material had tried to do such damage, had hurt and willfully hurt others out of fear, out of pain.

  So small, so young in the Universe, and I had seen it in its pure essence, brought it by its own choice back to the Light, to begin again.

  I couldn’t control the shudder that ran through me as I pondered what it meant.

  “God, Sam—you’re freezing!” Fran said as she knelt next to me and vigorously rubbed my shoulders. I was unresisting and let her wrap around me until my head rested against her collar.

  “Are you all right?” she asked as she stroked her fingers through the hair that feathered against my ear.

  “I’m fine,” I said, then kissed the hollow of her throat and sat up straight to gaze into her face. Her eyes reflected the concern that waved off her.

  “Did you have lunch yet?” I asked, not ready at the moment to discuss anything.

  “It’s almost dinnertime,” she said softly, “you’ve been here all day.”

  I had known it would take some time, I just hadn’t known how much, and that explained the cold and the stiffness I felt in my limbs. I stood and stretched until I felt my back loosen.

  “I think they might actually be arguing,” Fran said and passed me my tea from her perch on the floor.

  “Who?”

  “Cort and Elizabeth—no one’s yelling or anything like that, but…” She shrugged, then stood herself and handed me the rest of my clothes.

  She was right. I let my senses extend and felt not anger but fear and frustration roil through the household.

  What was between Fran and me could wait. This had to be taken care of now and I took her hand in mine to go downstairs, but we heard their discussion in the hallway as they approached.

  “She’s mastered movement through the Aethyr and the levels of Astral on her own. You’re certain?” Elizabeth’s voice said.

  “Yes.”

  “Guide for the willing return to the River—you didn’t teach her that?”

  “No.”

  “Then she’s more than Wielder.”

  “More what than Wielder?” I asked. Fran’s fingers were warm and steady in mine as Cort and Elizabeth stepped into the room. They’d each brought a tray.

  They stared at us in apparent surprise.

  Given the look they shared, it wasn’t difficult to guess what they were thinking.

  “I’m not avatar.”

  “How do you know?” Elizabeth asked as Cort set a tray down on the desk, then took hers, placing it next to the first.

  I shook my head. “I’m not. We’re all…” I cast about for the right words. “We’re all a part of that, all of the same Light, and if I was avatar, I think…I’m certain I’d know it. I’d think differently, see and feel things differently.”

  They all looked at me curiously and I shook my head in an attempt to clarify my thoughts. “Every avatar I’ve learned about—they’ve each had a sense of mission, of message. Most of them seem to have been born with it—even if they didn’t know what they’d do or who they were while on the Material.”

  That, I realized, was it, the real difference. Avatars incarnated knowing they had a mission and it was the guiding force in their lives, whether they recognized their true self or not. Me though, I’d had no such self-knowledge of my role in life—I’d been born into it and stumbled upon it, unknowing.

  Elizabeth smiled at me. “Well, you might not know if you were, but you do know that you’re not—and at this point, we have to decide what to do. Right now, you need something a bit more substantial than that,” she said, nodding at the bowl I’d left on the table, “so tonight, we’ll eat up here.”

  The covered bowls and plates revealed a simple but hearty meal: a thick potato soup, with no sprigs of green on top because I hated the superfluity of garnishes (which Elizabeth took a moment to tease me about), several steaks (Cort promised me the “raw” one was mine), and string beans, which, as far as vegetables went, were the most innocuous so far as I was concerned, which meant I’d actually eat them.

  “Please eat,” Elizabeth requested, “and then let’s discuss this.”

  Cort built a fire, and it wasn’t until after we had finished dinner and the plates had been cleared, when I was comfortable on the sofa with Fran curled at my side and a blanket over both of us because I was still a bit chilled, even with the merry sound of crackling in the grate and the occasional pop of wood, that I felt functionally human again, or that anyone spoke.

  My uncle went first. “You’ve so much yet to learn, but your abilities outstrip my training. In fact, you’ve gone out of the sphere I’d normally teach within. We still don’t really know,” and he began to tick off the points on his hand, “what your natural gifts will be once you’ve been sealed, or what your blind spots will be. We know the threat to you is physical, but I suspect…” And he glanced over to the fire.

  For a moment, I saw the salamanders dance in the flames, an urgent jump as they tried to convey a message, or merely a greeting, before the world righted itself again.

  Once it did, his eyes were steady on mine, the same flame within them. “This one is very close, and will not stop, even after, especially after, you’ve been sealed to the Circle. That he…eliminated one of his own adepts proves it.”

  I knew that. I knew that, had expected it, and even as the quick rise in Fran’s heartbeat was as audible to me as the quick catch of her breath she tried to quiet, part of me relished the challenge.

  “Ann, you’ve changed all the rules,” Elizabeth said into the silence that greeted the last statement.

  “How?” That puzzled me. I’d been certain I’d been almost rigid in my adherence.

  She smiled at me again. “We didn’t know what would happen—how you’d face your training, your testing. You’ve done things no one has done before—you’ve managed to change the whole game, and you didn’t even know you were playing.”

  I stared, fully confused.

  “Your abilities, your senses—they’re still somewhat intermittent, are they not?”

  “Yes, sometimes,” I answered.

  “We call that being head blind, or mind blind. And when you have been stripped, as it were, blinded, you were tested—you’ve had to make decisions. What were they based on? What you wanted, or what was needed?”

  I thought about the times I’d found myself trapped in my skin, forced to act based solely on the information the usual five senses gave me.

  “Always what’s needed,” Fran said and put an arm around my waist.

  I gave her a grateful smile and wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “I try.”

  “When faced with your first real threat, there would have been no wrong, none, in taking you to a safer place, yet you chose to stay—and then? And then you teach yourself how to change your own projection.”

  Elizabeth got up and poured a cup of tea, then offered me one, but I declined, fine as I was for the moment. It was bizarre, because she spoke as casually as if this were one of our normal discussions about history or literature. Perhaps we’d discuss Blake, or Joyce, or Hemingway in a few moments.

  “Now, you’ve faced several of the deeper trials, passed those tests, and on your hunt, your first solo hunt—no small milestone—you decide to track using the Aethyr, and then? You’re not only successful, you moved through at least three different levels of the Astral, all while attached to another. Do you have
any idea of how…” She paused to shake her head, and her eyes were lambent as they gazed at me.

  “Of all the things you could have done, from pursuing your curiosity to your own revenge, you instead gave someone something precious. You gave them back their free will.”

  At that moment, the doorbell rang and Cort stood. “Anyone expecting anything?” he asked. “No?” he said to our negative expressions. “Back in a moment, then.” His footsteps echoed across the floor, then faded down the steps to the door.

  “I owe you an apology,” Fran said softly as she stirred next to me, and I twisted my head around to see her clearly. “I haven’t told you much of anything that I’ve been doing.”

  “At my request,” Elizabeth clarified as she drew her seat closer, “at my very specific request. It was necessary at the time—it would have distracted you.” Her eyes still flickered with their own flame in the firelight as she neared.

  Touch was a rare thing in this household. At first, I’d assumed it to be the normal formality that existed between people forced together who were still more strangers than friends, but as the weeks had flown by and my own knowledge had grown, I’d come to realize this was not the only reason for the physical distance.

  There was no one in this group that was not a sensitive of some sort, and touch, the bare of skin on skin, could forge an instant connect, not merely the recognition of general mood or condition, but of mind-view, a peek into the inner thoughts and feelings. It was brief, certainly, but it was also intrusive and potentially uncomfortable unless one’s barriers were perfect or the sense of the person’s self was so familiar as to be comfortable, a normal part of the background noise, so to speak.

  That Fran and I could sustain such continued contact was due to many things: we’d been teammates and friends for years, were linked because of the contact we’d shared when we’d dated, and now we were bound to each other because we were lovers, though that in and of itself made our rapport almost constant, to the point where we were almost extensions of each other.

  So when Elizabeth briefly skimmed her fingers across the back of my hand as it lay resting on the arm of the settee, I was happily surprised by the level of affection it meant she held for me, that she let me see, and for a moment, I remembered her. I had a very clear image of her face reflected above mine in a mirror as her hands gently parted then plaited my hair…and then the image blanked.

  And while I already knew she and Fran had a special bond by virtue of the learning they shared, I was stunned but pleased to discover the deeper, nurturing aspect of it: Elizabeth cared for Fran as if she’d been born to her. Perhaps, in another life, she had been.

  ??Francesca…is adept,” Elizabeth said softly. “She is very easily made priestess, High Priestess.”

  “What do you mean?” I knew, of course, that there were different religions, pantheons, schools of theory and of belief, and each of them had their representations, their godheads. Some were historical figures, real, “living” incarnations of an archetype that had its root in the beginnings of the Universe, some of them were actually highly evolved and advanced beings, and a few, like the Elemental Lords, were the existence, the ultimate manifestation of a principal force, but most of them were constructs, the projections created from the combined energies of worshippers—and I adhered to none of them. However, it didn’t surprise me that Fran might or that Elizabeth had trained her in a specific Rite. Fran had told me about the “green ray”—and being a priestess, or, more specifically, High Priestess, was something unique within that school of thought.

  Fran, with her essential…I didn’t know what to call it, couldn’t quite name it, but it was something akin to buoyancy, an unshakeable part of her core makeup. It was that part of her, I was certain, that responded so well to that philosophy. I had no doubt that it was her innate talent that made her adept, and the combination of her own personality, ethics, and intelligence that enabled her to advance, take on a larger role.

  “It means…” Fran said in a low and throaty drawl, and she gently caught my chin in her hand and turned my face to hers. I couldn’t help the skip in the beat of my heart when I read her expression, caught the shape of her deeper desire. “It means that before you can have your sealing, you have to go through mine.”

  I struggled to understand even as she kissed me, and I glimpsed a very clear image of part of the role I would play. This was not what I thought would happen; this would wreak havoc on my plans, on the path I had intended to take.

  “There are some decisions that are not yours alone,” Fran murmured against my lips.

  “But Fran,” I tried to explain, “you’ve already been threatened twice and approached—attacked—once. This hasn’t even started yet, and it’s only going to get worse. You heard what Cort said—it’s not going to stop.”

  Fran leaned back, her eyes blazing, body radiating heat. “Do you really think I don’t know that? Do you really think I’d let you go through that—alone?” She gestured vehemently. “You’ve lost your mind if you—”

  I caught her hands in mine and spoke over her. “I don’t want you to get hurt—or worse. I couldn’t—I didn’t—do anything for Nina, and she’s gone.” I didn’t know I was going to say that and it hurt, oh God it hurt, a churning lump of aching sorrow and anger that I thought I’d forgotten. I was wrong. I felt worse than ever, and it was because I now knew what it was I felt. Guilt. I felt guilty. I should have done something, anything, differently than I had. “Let me do what I can,” I said quietly. “This I can at least do something about.”

  Fran stared at me, eyes wide. “What in the world could you have possibly had to do with that? Sam, you don’t know what happened. All either one of us knows is what her father told us.”

  It was my turn to stare as I realized Fran didn’t know, had no idea about the conflict that had existed between our friend and her parents, the very real physical threat she had dealt with at least once at their hands and survived.

  I don’t know why I had assumed Fran had known; thought she’d have been told. How much should I tell her? It wasn’t my story, it was Nina’s, but if she was gone, then shouldn’t someone besides me know it? That story was a part of who I was now, of who Fran was, whether she knew it or not and Fran…had loved her, still loved her too. And like it or not, for better or worse, Nina was also a part of how Fran and I loved each other.

  “I know enough,” I said finally, “I know that…” We spoke as if we were alone, as if Elizabeth wasn’t there, and I started by holding Fran in my arms. I told her what I finally realized Nina hadn’t wanted to tell anyone—not even me—but had been forced to by circumstance at the time. I told Fran what I could.

  “…and you think her parents or—or she herself…?” Her voice choked with the shock that so clearly suffused her, and though she couldn’t complete the sentence, I could complete her thought.

  “Yes,” I said finally, the word spitting through my teeth, “and I still can’t tell which one I think is worse.”

  “Oh, Sammer,” she whispered, her head tucked tightly against mine. I could feel her heart break within her, the equal echo of mine, the not-so-old hurt doubly renewed with the fresh cut of new knowledge, and I tore again, knowing I’d hurt her. “I wish I’d known—maybe we could have done something. My dad, I mean, maybe he—but it’s not your fault—I swear it’s not.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of what she said. “You just found out,” I said, raising my head from her shoulder and wiping my eyes, “just now, and even you think something could have been done.”

  I touched her face gently, and my thumb wiped away tears that still streamed hot and wild from her eyes. “Frankie…I can barely live with that, I wouldn’t, if I didn’t have to. Do you think, even if you know what you’re doing—even if you accept responsibility for it—that I can live sanely with something happening to you? Especially if it’s something I can prevent in any way?”

  She caught my fingers against
her cheek, then turned her head to gently kiss my palm. “I hear you, Sammy, I really do. But this doesn’t have to happen now. Can we talk about this again after we both know more about what happens next for you?”

  “I recommend that,” Elizabeth broke in, startling us both out of the little private world we’d just been in.

  “By courier, today, as you asked,” Cort said, having just entered the room. He carried something large in his arms and I stared as he set it down before the hearth.

  The skin on my scalp went numb as I recognized it: the footlocker. My Da’s footlocker. I got up on frozen feet to open it.

  I hadn’t seen it, set eyes on it, since it had been sent to me from his station right after the funeral a few years before. I couldn’t bear to see it, to even begin to look within it, but I wasn’t going to get rid of it either—it was my Da’s, and I’d had it left in storage with other things.

  But it was time, more than time, and I needed to find out if my Da had left me something besides the mixed blessing that was the blood I carried.

  “Shall we leave you to it?” Elizabeth asked as I knelt before the first puzzle: a tubular combination lock that held the brass clasp firmly shut. She briefly laid a warm hand on my shoulder, a firm gesture of support, a lending of strength and affection I was grateful for.

  “I’ll be in the workroom back of the shop, if you need me,” Cort said.

  I didn’t even look up as I nodded and once more heard the tread of his retreating step as Fran knelt next to me and I faced her.

  Lit by the fire that still burned happily away, her eyes carried the same flicker and I was struck sharply by how beautiful she was, by how much I wanted to forget the tasks that lay before me, forget everything to touch the delicate curves and planes of her face, to taste the honey-sweet soft of her mouth, the feel of her body yielding to mine, and for a brief instant, I did. I reached for her, folded her to me, let myself feel the beat of her heart against mine.

  “I’ll wait for you,” she said quietly into my ear before we disentangled ourselves. She paused to give me a smile before she left the room, to leave me to my discoveries in the half-light.