Magic Time: Angelfire

by Marc Zicree

  I sat down at the table. “What do I do?”

  She pulled a longish shaft out of a bundle and held it out to me. “You take that very, very sharp knife and you cut a notch yay deep in one end of the shaft.” She ticked a mark across the shaft with her thumbnail. “Then you cut three slits yay long…” She scored the other end of the shaft vertically. “… around this end. Equally spaced. Use the razor blade gadget there for that. And if you cut yourself, please don’t bleed on the binding. Liquid makes it stretchy, and we don’t want it to get stretchy just yet.”

  Young Matt stifled a chuckle and squinted at the arrowhead he was attaching.

  “I won’t cut myself,” I promised.

  I don’t know what Cal thinks, she’d said. What I thought was that even with shorn hair, she was beautiful, the way a wild mountainside is beautiful. More than that, she was vital. Strong. Capable.

  Colleen smiled and went back to slipping sharp, nasty-looking bits of metal into the notches she’d cut in her crossbow bolts. “Talk to Doc since last night?” she asked, eyes on her work.

  “You mean since he dropped his little bombshell?”

  She peered intently at her wrapping job. Apparently satisfied, she set the barb aside. “Yeah, that. Did you… ?” “We talked.”

  She gave me a sudden, sharp glance. “Well, is he coming with us or not? Because I can’t believe you’d let him get away with faking that bum knee and that crappy attitude. And I told him that… more or less.” She fell silent for a beat. “Well? What did you say to him?”

  I blinked at her, wanting to laugh, forcing my face to remain solemn. “I told him… he wasn’t an albatross.”

  She stared at me for a moment, then lowered her eyes. “Oh, you heard all that. So you understood what he was doing.”

  “Yeah, faking a limp.”

  Colleen swatted at me with a length of leather thong.

  “That wasn’t what I meant. I meant the reason he was faking the limp.” She leaned across the table toward me and lowered her voice as if it might keep Matt from overhearing. “God, Cal, I swear he actually thinks he’s going to get us killed. Like he’s a—a jinx, or something. Like what happened with—” She broke off, flushed, and shook her head.

  “Like what happened with what?”

  She shook her head again. “Nothing. Um … just, you know what happened at the mill with the dam. All that. He has a clumsy moment and turns it into a disaster.”

  Colleen is a terrible liar. I reached over and stopped the movement of her hands. “That’s not what you meant. What were you about to say?”

  She looked down at our entwined fingers. “Nothing I should’ve.” After a moment she glanced at Matt, then back to me. “Has Doc ever talked to you about Chernobyl? Or his family?”

  “I know he lost his family. And yes, he told me he was at Chernobyl. It must have been horrific. Are the two things connected?”

  She gazed at me unfocused for a moment, then said, “He felt like he didn’t make a difference then. Like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Here, in the Preserve, he can make a difference.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s really what he’s all about. Making a difference. Making … choices.” Her voice seemed to die in her throat.

  “What?”

  She shook herself visibly, looked down at her work and said, “Just a little lightbulb going on in Colleen’s head. So, what did you say to him?”

  I tapped the fist she’d knotted around one of the pencil-

  thin dowels. “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to break that?” “Don’t be a shit, Griffin. What did you say to him?” “Sorry. I told him you were right.”

  She sat back and looked at me wryly. “Really. Oh, well, I’m sure that changed his mind.” She wet a binding and began wrapping it around the notched joint between barb and shaft.

  “Actually, it did.” I glanced at the contents of the table. “What are you planning on using for feathers?” I asked Matt, aware that Colleen’s eyes were making holes in the side of my head.

  “Whatever’s lying around.” He pulled a basket of junk out from under the table. It contained a motley collection of actual feathers, plastic playing cards, business cards, and other junk. “Feathers,” he said.

  “Very eclectic.”

  He shrugged, smiling. “Works.”

  Colleen’s hand clamped firmly over mine. “Back up! Doc isn’t staying? You talked him out of it?”

  I looked up and met her eyes, and the breath stopped in my throat. I was suddenly aware of every sensation in my body— the quickening pulse, the tingle of subtle electricity on my skin, heat warming my face, other, more intimate responses.

  What do you mean, I’m a square peg?

  I had a vague impression of Matt glancing back and forth between us before bending back to his work. Colleen’s smile went from bright to bashful, as if we were two kids at a high school dance and I’d just asked her for the next waltz. Then her eyes shifted away from mine toward the door to the outer room.

  “Oh,” she said.

  I followed her gaze. Doc stood in the open doorway, a fat backpack in his hands. Something passed between them, swift as thought—a secret conversation that made my ears burn. I felt myself flushing.

  The moment passed and Doc raised the pack. “I have finished the med-kits. We will have two.”

  Colleen got up to take the bag and pretended to stagger under its weight. “Jeez, Doc! I hope you didn’t rob Peter to pay Paul.”

  “Pardon? Oh, no. Cherise said they could well afford this. They have already a good collection of basic supplies. They lack organization.”

  “Not for long,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll have that infirmary up and running in no time. Then you’ll be bored stiff.”

  Doc looked past her to me. “You didn’t tell her?”

  “He told me. I was faking. But you’re the expert at that, aren’t you?” There was another silent exchange, at the end of which Colleen punched Doc lightly on the shoulder. “Albatross.”

  We spent the next several days prepping for the journey. While Colleen marshaled supplies and decided how to distribute them among pack and saddle horses, I plotted our route, compulsively checked and rechecked the mechanics of the chime system, and worried about what would happen to Magritte when we stepped out of the safe confines of the Preserve. That was a question we still had no real answer to, other than Maggie’s repeated assurances that she was stronger than the other flares and better able to protect herself from the Source. Having seen how she’d been the day we lost Faun, I was hopeful, but not certain.

  Doc spent his time doing what he could in the Preserve’s small infirmary, giving Cherise and her two volunteer nurses pointers on everything from dosages to the fine art of surgical stitchery.

  Enid rested for the most part, though he did open the portals to allow foraging parties in and out. If they were going to be cut off from the outside for any length of time, Mary’s little community was going to need all the food, seed, and other supplies that could be brought in.

  It was Goldie who concerned me most. In the days leading up to our planned departure, I saw him so rarely, I began to think he was a figment of my imagination. The one opportunity I had to talk to him, he artfully dodged me.

  He was cheerfully stuffing his face in the dining hall one morning when I wandered in, feeling like reheated animal protein. Despite the early hour, the place was buzzing with activity as Olentangians lined up at the fruit and grain bar for breakfast, chattering like a bunch of tourists on holiday. Only the snatches of conversation I caught informed me that their concerns were more pressing than any tourist’s.

  Goldie had parked himself at one end of a laden trestle from which he was snatching random food items.

  “Well, if it isn’t Goldini the Magnificent, Master Escape Artist,” I said.

  He bowed deeply from the waist and performed a flourish with a tortilla-filled hand. “My fame precedes me,” he mumbled around a mouthful.

&
nbsp; “So, what have you been up to?”

  “Busy.”

  “Busy. Doing what?”

  “Stuff.”

  “Stuff.”

  “Is there an echo in here? Stuff—you know, things to do. Don’t nudje, I’m keeping myself busy.” He moved away from the food toward a less occupied corner of the room.

  I picked up a muffin of some sort from a large ceramic bowl and followed him. The muffin was an unappetizing shade of green, but tasted of berries and honey.

  “That’s not the point,” I said. “I was hoping we could all be highly productive during our last days here.”

  “Who says I haven’t been productive?”

  “Goldie—”

  “I told you, I’ve been busy. Productively so, in fact. Now stop sounding like my father, okay? You’re scaring me.”

  A hint of annoyance had slipped into his voice, and I realized he looked about as tired as I felt. Dark circles and lines of strain stood out around his eyes.

  “Fine. Just tell me what you’re doing.”

  He took a last bite of tortilla and washed it down with a swig of the local tea before setting his cup on a bus cart. “Say, did Colleen mention that there’s a portal north of here on Lake Erie?”

  I stumbled over the change of direction. “Uh, Magritte mentioned it, actually. Someplace called Put-in-Bay?” “Yeah. I guess Mary considered moving the whole Preserve up there because it’s so isolated, but the weather is too inclement; the Veil can only do so much.”

  “And you mention this at this juncture because… ?”

  He grinned. “Well, um, partly to sidestep the issue of what I’ve been doing, and partly because I noticed when I was up there with Colleen that the weather is really, really bad outside the Preserve and I think we’ll need to be better prepared for that.” He caught his breath and added, “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover—a couple of states worth.”

  He’d succeeded in distracting me, at least momentarily. “This northern portal, is there any way we could use it to get closer to Chicago?”

  “Yeah, but there’s this little problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “A lot of very deep, very cold water. Put-in-Bay is an island, remember? Accessible only by airplane or ferry.” “Or rowboat?”

  He flashed another grin. “Two words. Winter. Great Lakes.”

  “That’s three words.”

  He shrugged. “Gotta go.” He started for the door. “Whoa! Whoa! Where are you going?”

  “I’m late for my flute lesson,” he said, not even slowing, and was gone.

  Under other circumstances the whole scene might have been funny, but under these circumstances it made me uneasy. Was Goldie slipping out of touch with reality into some sort of manic episode? If he was …

  I stopped the train of thought. There was no time for it now and too much to do.

  During that last week, the weather turned decidedly colder even within the protected precincts of the Preserve. Mary made certain we were well-provisioned with warm clothing, blankets, dry kindling, and other necessities of winter travel, but I was still uneasy. We had hundreds of miles of open terrain to cover in a midwestern winter, which I had every reason to believe would be even harsher with the Change. And through it all, we would be taking the chance that at any moment Enid would have to start “jamming” to keep Magritte safe.

  I shook off a tremor of real fear and put my mind to the business of preparation.

  Mary had maps. I got one and did the math. Assuming that Chicago was where we’d left it, we were looking at about a 250-mile trek, as the crow flies. None of us being crows, and given that we’d no doubt have to take evasive action to skirt Indianapolis, the journey could easily exceed three hundred miles. At an average of twenty to thirty miles per day, that gave us road time of ten days or more. At last report from the northern portal, it had begun to snow.

  Almost against my will, I also checked the map for “anomalies.” They abounded. There was some sort of ragged edge around Indianapolis. What it was, I couldn’t tell, but I had a sharp if fanciful vision of the city perched on a towering scarp, below which wild rivers raged. Or at least I assumed they raged; under my fingertips, they felt just as the Ohio had, rough and spiky.

  I decided the best route would be to take Highway 317 northwest, swinging far to the north of Indianapolis and passing close to towns with such charming names as Arcanum and Nineveh. I found myself wondering if the Biblical story of Jonah was neither myth nor metaphor, but rather the way the world operated then. Maybe a man could live inside a giant fish. Maybe there was a God—one with a peculiar sense of poetic justice. And maybe the Source was something that had always been with us. Something that had just been trapped in another dimension for uncounted centuries, or locked up in a celestial prison house until human intervention had caused an inopportune jailbreak. Maybe Jonah had known the Source and simply called it by a different name.

  I straightened from my map reading. “Doc, you’re pretty familiar with the Bible, right?”

  He glanced over at me from where he sat, cutting various sized bandages from freshly washed but irregular hunks of fabric. “I am familiar with it, yes.”

  “Isn’t there something in the Revelation of Saint John about God locking Satan up someplace and then letting him loose at the end of the age to torment the world?”

  His gray gaze was contemplative and level. “That is metaphor, my friend. The seemingly simple words speak a complex truth, which they can either illuminate or obscure, depending upon who reads them.”

  “And how do you read them?”

  “I understand them to mean that what torments the world is man’s insatiable thirst for control.”

  I nodded. “I guess the prophecy applies either way, doesn’t it? It sure seems as if someone let Satan out of jail.”

  “I thought you were plotting our course.” This came from Colleen, who was bundling barbs and arrows on the floor near where Doc sat. “What’s that got to do with the devil?”

  I rubbed my eyes, feeling suddenly light-headed. “Must be getting punchy. Maybe I’ll take a break.”

  “Good timing!”

  Goldie entered the cabin on a wave of kinetic energy, rubbing his hands together fast enough to make static.

  “I was just going to suggest that you all take a break and come for a little walk underground.”

  His face was flushed; his eyes were overbright, and for a moment I had the sickening thought that he was on something, or worse. He stopped in front of me and I realized that his jeans were soaked from the knees down.

  “Well, don’t everybody move at once. Just line up in alphabetical order and file politely out the door.” He made a shooing gesture with both hands.

  “Where would we be going on this little walk?” Colleen asked, not even preparing to move.

  “I told you: underground. There’s something I want you to see.” He imitated a praying mantis again and giggled. “You’re gonna love this.”

  I exchanged glances with Doc and Colleen. Both looked uneasy. Doc rose slowly and put his bandages aside. Colleen, taking the cue from him, followed suit.

  “Please, show us,” Doc said, and smiled.

  Goldie rolled his eyes, shook his head and laughed. “Jeez, you guys are a piece of work. Fine, if thinking that poor old Goldman is about to leap out of his head will get you into the caves any faster, so be it. Walk this way.”

  He did a creditable Igor, hunching his back and dragging one foot behind.

  I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to laugh or cry, so I did neither. I just followed, Colleen and Doc close on my heels.

  Ten yards from the door of the cabin, Goldie straightened and shook himself all over. “Man, that gets old fast. How’d Feldman do that through an entire movie?”

  He cocked a glance back over his shoulder. “Oh, there you are.” He crooked a finger and took off again.

  Down in the cavern, he led us through the Indian Council Chamber,
then took a left-hand passage rather than the more or less straight-ahead one that led to the Adena portal. After a silent walk of about twenty yards or so we came to another branching of the ways. Again Goldie took the left-hand trail.

  Colleen, just behind me, tapped my shoulder and whis-

  pered, “This is the one that goes to Put-in-Bay cave.” Goldie turned back with a finger to his lips. “Ssshhh.” “Now he thinks he’s a librarian,” muttered Colleen. “Quiet, Miss Brooks,” said Goldie. “We don’t want to do

  detention, do we?”

  Colleen fell back, muttering obscenities under her breath.

  Yards of faerie-lit tunnel slid by around us and I found myself internally oohing and ahing at the sheer beauty of the glittering rock formations. God’s jewel box. Another passage opened up in the left arm of a Y junction. The lights continued to the right; Goldie ducked under a diamond-studded curtain of limestone and forged into the darkness of the leftmost branch.

  I hesitated.

  Behind me Colleen protested, “Goldman, you lose your compass or something? It’s that way.”

  A shower of gold light cascaded down the left-hand passage from Goldie’s hand and rolled into the junction where the rest of us stood in confusion.

  “Nope. It’s this way.” He beckoned, releasing the ball of light into the moist air, then turned and led on, a second tweaked lantern floating above his head.

  The passage twisted and turned a bit, then opened up into a huge, sandy-bottomed chamber from which I could hear the gurgle of running water. The golden light did not touch the walls on the far side of the room, giving some indication of its size, but it sparkled like stars in the waters of a tiny lake.

  It was into this body of water that Goldie plunged up to his knees. He splashed across to the other side, where Kevin Elk Sings sat cross-legged on the floor, flute in hand, wearing the same gray look of exhaustion that Goldie did beneath his flush of excitement. Mary McCrae stood behind him, looking bemused. Magritte hovered at her shoulder. Goldie’s light globes and smaller, starlike motes of gold floated about them, casting luminescence over the glistening floor.