Maybe I would have to come back and play Guildmaster in ten years after all.
“You understand,” she said, “This is only in Luray. The ban must be lifted region by region, and ultimately country by country. But I have no doubt that when Antonin’s evidence is presented, demonstrating that Dreamwalker insanity is no longer an issue, the Guilds of other cities will have no objection to your return.” She smiled slightly. “His ‘documentation’ was very cleverly designed. And of course the Seers will verify it, when asked.” Her eyes sparkled. “You must have put quite the fear of God into him.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She chuckled. “Come. You deserve a celebratory dinner. No reapers, no Hunters, no magistrates questioning your status. Just family.” She stressed the last word slightly.
“With all due respect to you and Miriam . . . I just want to go home now.” After I tell Isaac what happened. He’s like family, too.
Her expression softened. “All right. I’ll make the arrangements. But only if you promise me an update later.”
After I’m home, I thought. I can contact anyone I want to, even with the quarantine in place. But how much involvement do I want with you? With this world?
Don’t worry about that now. One step at a time.
I shut my eyes and breathed deeply. So this was what it felt like to have the weight of the world lifted from your shoulders. It was good. I liked it.
Mom, Tommy, Manassas . . . I’m coming home.
35
MANASSAS
VIRGINIA
JESSE
I TOLD TOMMY AND MOM that I was on my way back to Terra Colonna, but not exactly when I would arrive. I wanted to surprise them.
When Tommy opened the apartment door and saw me standing there in the hallway, his mouth dropped open. “MOM! JESSE’S BACK!”
She came running, and I was dragged into the apartment by both of them with hurricane force, and hugged until I could hardly breathe.
“My God,” Mom said, when she finally allowed me to take a breath. “Why didn’t you let us know you were coming? We would have picked you up.”
I grinned. “I wanted to surprise you.”
There were tears of joy in her eyes. “That’s one hell of a surprise. I haven’t slept for days . . . I was so afraid you would never come home.”
“I wasn’t that sure myself.” Her tears were making me want to cry.
“So are the reapers all dead?” Tommy asked. “Are the Shadows going to leave you alone now? What about the government guys here? They’re going down into Mystic Caverns. What if they find what’s left of the Gate? Is someone going to do anything about that? Other than destroy the whole world to get rid of everything? Because that would really, really suck.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, Yes, and it’s all taken care of.” God, I had missed my annoying little brother. His rapid-fire questions were a beacon of normalcy. “Our world’s going to be quarantined for ten years at least. All the portals are being shut down, so no one can come in or out. I was one of the last people allowed through.”
I watched comprehension dawn in Mom’s eyes. “So . . . it doesn’t matter what investigators find in the caverns? If none of the portals work, no one can ever learn the truth?”
“Exactly. It was my idea.”
“Jeez.” Tommy grinned. “My sister saved the world. How cool is that?”
“Not that you can ever brag about it,” I said sternly.
“Of course not!”
“Or write gaming modules based on it.”
His face fell a bit.
“Hey, cheer up.” I reached out and mussed his hair, just the way he hates. “I promised I’d bring you back something from Terra Prime, right? Something special?”
He brightened up again. “You brought me a souvenir?”
“Well . . . no, not exactly.”
I leaned back into the hall and signaled. A moment later Isaac appeared in the doorway.
“Holy crap.” Tommy muttered.
Now that Isaac was clean, well groomed, and dressed in a T-shirt and jeans that I’d bought for him on the way home, he looked pretty normal. His sunburn was mostly done peeling, and his forehead was clear of any disfiguring marks. I felt a pang in my heart every time I looked at him, knowing what it meant to him that his father had freed him from that burden. A parting gift.
I waved him into the apartment. “Mom, this is Isaac Antonin. He’s the one who helped Tommy and me escape from Shadowcrest. Without his help I wouldn’t be here today. Isaac, this is my mom, Evelyn Drake. And of course you’ve met my brother, Tommy.” And by the way there’s a ghost present, but none of you can see him.
“We met briefly,” Isaac said, a spark of amusement in his eyes.
Tommy was still in shock.
“Thank you,” my mother said. “For all you’ve done. Thank you so much. But . . .” She looked at me, confused. “Didn’t you say the portals were all shut down?”
“They are,” I said quietly. “We were the last ones through.”
Isaac reached back and shut the door. “Jesse told me that her brother was having issues with hearing ghosts. I thought I might be able to help.”
Tommy’s eyes grew wide. “You mean, like, necromancy lessons?”
Before Mom could protest, Isaac told her, “I can’t teach him to do anything but hear spirits more clearly . . . or stop hearing them whenever he wants to. The latter is actually far more important. No summoning, no commanding, no binding—the Gift needed for all that isn’t in his blood. But I can help him control what’s happening to him, so it doesn’t disrupt his life.”
“Oh, please, Mom.” Tommy grabbed her arm and shook her gently. “Can I have necromancy lessons? Please?” When she didn’t answer right away he added, “I promise when school starts I’ll do all my other homework first.”
Her expression softened. She looked at Isaac. “Do you have somewhere to stay?”
I said quickly, “I was hoping we could put him up for a little while. Just until he got settled in.” I’d intended to broach that subject more privately, but what the hell.
“I’ll be fine on my own,” Isaac told me. “Don’t forget, I lived independently for quite a while.”
Mom bit her lip as she considered. I figured she was listing pros and cons in her mind, but if so, it was just a motherly ritual. Isaac had saved our lives, and there was no way she was going to turn him out on the street. Finally she sighed. “Well, he’ll need ID. And some kind of cover story. With all the attention this family has had recently, we can’t just have him appearing out of nowhere.”
I nodded. “I’m thinking Rita probably knows how to get a fake ID.” Assuming she’s still on Terra Colonna, which I’ll have to check. “She understands how the foster system works, so she can help him set up a convincing background story, one that would explain why there are no parents for anyone to check on. She owes me that much.”
“I can teach him about computers and cars,” Tommy said, “and how to speak regular English so no one asks questions about where he’s from. Please?”
Mom looked at Isaac again. I found myself holding my breath. He’d left everything behind for a chance to make a new life here. It would be magnitudes harder without our help. “The apartment’s pretty small,” she said at last. “Not exactly luxurious accommodations.”
He nodded gratefully. “Any day you decide I’m crowding you too much, I’ll leave.”
Tommy grinned. “You and I can share the bedroom. Since there are two guys here now, that seems fair.” He looked at me defiantly.
“Sorry.” I shook my head. “I just saved the world, I get the comfortable bed.”
Mom chuckled softly. “You can share my room, Jesse. Let the boys have the other one. Maybe it’ll help keep the ghosts out of the living
room.”
Tommy grinned. “C’mon!” He waved Isaac toward the bedroom. “I’ll show you where everything is.”
Isaac started to follow him, but when they reached the bedroom door he paused for a moment, looking back at my mother. “Thank you,” he said softly.
As he disappeared into the bedroom, Mom and I looked at each other. Suddenly I found myself at a loss for words. How did a person even start to tell a story as dark and complicated as the one I’d just lived through? Or express the incredible gratitude I felt, for her taking Isaac in like that? There were things in my head I didn’t know if I’d ever find the right words for.
Silently she came over to me and took me in her arms. And that was enough for the moment. No words were needed.
“Welcome home,” she whispered.
EPILOGUE
RICHMOND
VIRGINIA
JESSE
THE FIELD OUTSIDE RICHMOND was lush and green, with only a hint of brown on the tips of the grass to testify to summer’s heat. In the distance some horses were grazing, and beyond that a small house and stables were visible. Both looked like they had been built recently. Nothing else was in sight, other than a small stand of trees about a hundred yards away. “You sure this is the place?” Tommy asked.
I took out the map of Richmond that I’d annotated, and he and Mom and Isaac moved closer so they could see it. The rectangular shape I’d drawn just northeast of the city was labeled Hayes 1771, and it had GPS coordinates at all four corners. I took out my cell phone and checked the coordinates for where we were standing. “According to county records this is it.” I looked at the house again, wanting it to be the building we’d come to find. But it was just too modern. The original house on this property had probably been demolished long ago.
Two figures appeared in the west, heading our way, and I shielded my eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun to watch them approach. Devon was wearing his usual impeccable T-shirt and jeans, with Rita in a white tank top and denim shorts. They were walking side by side, so Devon must have made his peace with her betrayal, but I felt a twinge of bitterness as I watched her walk across the field. It would be a while before I fully forgave her for spying on me.
But there was no one to spy for now. No Gates, no Guilds, no Morgana. And in a world where there were only five people I could talk to about my recent experiences, I had to preserve those relationships.
“Hey.” Devon nodded to Mom and Tommy and then came over and gave me a big hug. “How are you doing?”
I hugged him back, basking in the comfort of the contact. “Better. It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep will do for the spirit.” I saw out of the corner of my eye that Isaac was frowning slightly. Was he jealous? The thought brought a blush of guilty pleasure to my cheeks. “How’d you get permission to come down here, anyway?”
“Dad thinks I’m touring VCU. Actually, I will be touring VCU, but only after this is done.” He and I had been chatting in furtive texts about using a demonstration of dreamwalking to convince his father that our stories about other worlds were true, but things had been so busy since my return that we hadn’t gotten to it yet. Until that happened, Devon still wasn’t allowed to hang out with me.
Rita had stayed back a few yards during all this, probably not sure about how she would be received. I nodded to her and said—perhaps a bit too sternly—“Rita.”
Taking that as permission to approach, she nodded back to me, took a large manila envelope out of her purse, and walked over to Isaac. “I didn’t know your age, so I made you eighteen on everything. Much less hassle that way. Couldn’t get the birth certificate into the hospital database, but the rest is good to go.” She handed him the envelope. “Be warned, street forgeries like this won’t get you through a police investigation. You’ll want to get a social security number and start accumulating real paperwork as soon as possible.”
He opened the envelope and peered at the documents inside. “Not sure I understand most of these, but thank you.”
“And don’t try to drive until you learn how. The license is just for ID.”
Tommy rolled his eyes. “Duh.”
Devon offered, “My dad can probably get all that entered into hospital records, once he’s on board with everything.”
Rita turned to me. Her smile faded. “I’m sorry, Jesse.” The regret in her voice sounded genuine. “For everything.”
I sighed. “You did what you thought you had to. I will say I was surprised to find you were still here, though. I would have thought you’d want to be on the other side when the Gates shut down.”
“It was tempting,” she agreed. “But having a long-distance patron who occasionally asks you for favors isn’t the same thing as being on call 24/7. Given the choice between settling in as a house servant or continuing on in glorious cash-strapped freedom, I decided to go with door number two. Though probably sometime in the next ten years I’ll regret that decision.” She looked out over the field. “So where are we doing this?”
I checked my map again to make sure I knew exactly where Sebastian’s former property ended, then pointed to the stand of trees. A huge oak whose spreading branches dominated the grouping seemed the perfect location for our needs, so we headed over there. The grass rustled as small animals scurried out of our way, and I relished not having to worry about them. For the next ten years I would be living on a planet where birds and raccoons were nothing more than birds and raccoons, and if a pair of eyes peered at me from the shadows I didn’t have to wonder if there was a human spy behind them. There were some Gifts I wouldn’t miss.
Amidst the twisted, half-buried roots of the oak I found an open spot the right size, and gestured for Isaac to dig there. The hole didn’t need to be large, so it only took him a few minutes to dig down the depth of his forearm. When he was done he laid the shovel off to the side, and everyone looked at me.
I took the small bundle from my pocket and for a moment just held it in my hands, gently stroking its white cloth wrapping. Though I’d done pretty well up to now in holding back my emotions, the feel of the bundle invoked a wave of memory so intense that for a moment it took all my self-control not to cry. Then, very gently—like I was handling a child—I parted the fabric, revealing a portion of Sebastian’s ashes. Kneeling beside the hole, I poured them down into the tiny makeshift grave. I hadn’t been able to recover all of him from the remains of Redwind’s fire, but at least this token bit could rest in the place where he had once been happy. He would have wanted that.
By the time I was done there were tears running down my cheeks. I wiped them away as I stood. “Should we pray now, or something?”
My mother put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Whatever you want.”
I folded the cloth and stuck it in my back pocket, then looked down at the grave. “God . . .” Words stuck in my throat. “Give him peace,” I whispered. “Wherever he is. He was a good man and he deserves peace.” I paused. “That’s all.”
Isaac and Devon both reached out to comfort me, but it was Mom who drew me into her arms first, in whose embrace all the pain and sorrow of recent events finally overwhelmed me. Everyone stood silently by while I wept, but I could feel their sympathy radiating like sunlight, soothing my sorrow. Finally my tears slowed enough for me to take up the shovel and push a bit of dirt into the tiny grave. Isaac then did the same, and then Tommy, and Rita, and Devon, and finally Mom. Isaac then shoveled the remaining dirt into place, and I smoothed the top of the grave and placed a single blank stone at its head, like a tiny tombstone.
We stood there for a while longer before leaving, just listening to the birds and the wind and the rustling grass, savoring the echoes of memory.
Rest in peace, Private Hayes.
Celia Friedman teaches an online class in science fiction and fantasy writing. For more information, go to http://www.writer.org.
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