Lucia’s jaw went slack. She recovered quickly and said, “That’s going to drive the Board of Neutralities crazy.”
I hadn’t thought about that. “They can’t control me, can they? I’m not a Neutrality, I’m a person!”
“I have no idea what they’ll think. But you shouldn’t fall in line if they want to order you around. I’ll back you up if necessary, but I think you’ll find they’re intimidated enough not to behave as if everything is as it used to be.” Lucia shoved back her chair and stood. “Go home. Shower. I’ll send Campbell to you when the Well is secure. Let us take care of the rest—what the hell are we supposed to do about the store?”
There were a lot of things I hadn’t considered yet. “In a sense, the oracle is lost. I don’t think I can do what it did with choosing auguries, but I could be wrong about that. I guess, as soon as it’s repaired, I’ll go back and…see what happens.”
“You have the strongest work ethic of anyone I know. Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
I shrugged. “I plan to go home and sleep for a week. How’s that for getting tired of it?”
I’d driven to the Gunther Node in my own car despite Lucia’s commando insisting that I didn’t look well enough to drive, and now I took myself home. I didn’t know what I looked like, but I felt perfectly okay. I didn’t even feel emotionally overwhelmed. That would probably hit me later that night. I didn’t feel anything except hungry and in the mood for pasta.
When I got home and into the bathroom, though, I realized why I’d gotten all those strange looks. My hair looked like rats had nested in it, my face was white and streaky with plaster dust, my clothes looked like I’d rolled around on a dirty floor—not true; Abernathy’s was always clean—and my eyes were red-rimmed like I’d been crying. They also looked strange beyond that, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was different. I ran my fingers through my hair and shook about five ounces of dust onto the countertop. Time for a shower.
It took three shampoos and rinses to get all the dust out of my hair, but when that was done, I felt cleaner than I ever had. I examined my left hand, which wasn’t as stiff as it had been. It was still faintly yellow. I couldn’t tell if the color had faded at all, but I liked to think it had.
Downstairs, I set water on to boil for pasta and turned on the television. The news was still reporting on the attack on Portland, and it sent a chill through me—maybe I was wrong, and I hadn’t stopped anything—until I remembered the finality of that golden attack, and my knowledge that there were still invaders in our reality. I felt the tiniest twinge of guilt that my solution hadn’t saved everyone and mentally slapped myself. I’d sacrificed my own life for this, and I needed to be grateful for all the people it had saved.
I changed the channel to Jeopardy! and set the pasta to cooking. I didn’t want anything more than noodles Romanoff, simple and delicious, and easy to make for one person—
I sank down onto a kitchen chair and put my face in my hands as the enormity of what had happened finally struck. I didn’t feel like crying, but I shook as if the tears were pouring out of me. It was too big to comprehend. What I’d done…and the oracle had said it wasn’t even because I was anything special, just a woman with certain qualities who the oracle had liked. That felt right. I certainly didn’t want to be some superhero.
And yet, now that I was the oracle, wasn’t that what it made me? A superhero? The shakes returned, double strength, and I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to breathe normally. I didn’t even know how it worked, whether other people still had to ask me questions, or if prophecies would come to me at random, or something else I hadn’t even considered.
I wished desperately that Malcolm was home so I could tell him everything and get his advice. I didn’t dare text or call because I didn’t know if that would disrupt whatever he was doing at the Well. And I wanted him to be the first to know—the first after Lucia—so I didn’t want to call Judy or Viv, even though I was sure they’d be supportive.
I realized I’d let the pasta cook too long and hurried to drain it. It would be too soft, but I no longer cared.
When I finished eating, I put my dishes into the dishwasher and contemplated the sink. For once, the idea of cleaning didn’t soothe me. What I wanted, I realized, was to read more of that book I’d been engaged with before the attack. Did I want to drive all the way back to poor, ruined Abernathy’s just for one book? I realized the answer was Yes and got in my car.
I decided to enter from the street side, as I’d left the book on the front counter and going through the back meant passing the enormous mess the invader had made of the store. The street was crowded with National Guard forces helping to clear away bodies. I’d almost forgotten all the deaths that had preceded my destruction of the invaders. The cordon stretched well down the street, so I parked beyond it and walked the rest of the way. No one stopped me, either because the growing darkness obscured me from the busy people or because part of my transformation had given me a limited invisibility. Probably it was the former. I hoped it was the former. Invisibility was a pain.
I let myself in through the front door, marveling at how it transformed the light of the setting sun into a hundred tiny rainbows. The book had been knocked off the counter by the teeming mass of invaders that had destroyed the cash register, but it was unharmed. I picked it up and dusted it off carefully, shaking the glass shards from the broken window off it. I would have to tell Judy what had happened before she came in tomorrow morning and found out about the destruction the hard way.
Aside from the shattered window and the thick coating of plaster dust that covered the counter, the shelves, and the floor, the store looked remarkably intact. No bookcases had been knocked over, no books had fallen off the shelves. I tried to right the cash register and discovered it weighed about a ton. I’d leave it for the Wardens, assuming anyone wanted to rebuild Abernathy’s.
I’d thought I only wanted the book, but something drew me into the maze of aisles. It felt so strange, wandering in the stacks without the oracle’s presence. “We both changed, I think,” I said quietly. “It sounds like we both died to become something new. And now that something new is…I don’t know what we’ve become, but I’m grateful it let the Helena part have her life back. I’ll miss talking to the oracle, though.”
An image rose up before me, like a memory, but sharper and clearer. I recognized it as Mount Scott.
Again, it was like the knowledge simply appeared in my mind, and seconds later I translated it into words. I immediately pulled out my phone and called Lucia, who to my surprise picked up rather than letting my call go to voicemail. “The invaders are leaving the city and heading south to Crater Lake,” I said.
“We’ll surround them. Thanks,” Lucia said. The phone went dead.
I shoved my phone into my stupidly shallow pocket and leaned against a bookcase, regretting it instantly when my shoulder picked up a line of white dust. “That was interesting,” I said. “I wonder if I’ll ever get to where I don’t need to turn that knowledge into words? Though if I have to communicate those prophecies to other people, they’ll have to be words sometime.”
I walked through the stacks to the back hall and entered the office. That room didn’t look as if anything had happened to the store. I looked at Silas’s picture for a while. “So the oracle really did tell you to become a magus,” I said. “I guess we won’t ever know why. Maybe it liked you and wanted you to be happy.”
After another moment’s consideration, I took Silas’s picture off the wall. It revealed the wall safe, but I found I didn’t care whether anyone saw that or not. “You saw the beginnings of the store here,” I told the picture, “and I saw its end. I think that means we should stick together.”
I stacked the book on top of the picture and walked back to the front of the store, crunching glass shards underfoot as I neared the counter. The wards the intelligent invader had revealed had disa
ppeared again. Whether they were destroyed or had reformed, I had no way to tell, though the way the invader had parted the threads without breaking them suggested that maybe the hole had sealed itself. It didn’t matter. The invaders weren’t coming back, and there was nothing mundane that would be interested in the store’s contents, especially with the National Guard just outside.
I stood inside the broken window and watched the National Guard carry body after body to ambulances and trucks. The sight of so many bodies made me sick, and again I felt guilt that I couldn’t save them. Misplaced guilt, since that would have been impossible, and what I really felt was sorrow and anger at their deaths. I wondered what the final death count had been. It didn’t matter. Even one death at the claws of an invader was too many.
The sky grew darker, and street lights came on, making the horrifying scene less terrible. The pole halfway inside Abernathy’s stayed dark, of course. I finally snapped out of my reverie and let myself out, locking the door behind me out of habit. I again walked unnoticed down the street to my car. The distant hum of the city comforted me. Life went on, even in the midst of tragedy.
When I was in my car and about to start the engine, my phone buzzed with an incoming text from Malcolm: WHY ARE YOU STILL AT THE STORE?
We had apps on our phones that let us see the other’s location, something Malcolm had suggested a while back when he’d come home late from the hunt and I’d freaked out a little. LONG STORY. YOU COMING HOME SOON?
EVEN LONGER STORY. BACK IN AN HOUR. LOVE YOU.
I smiled and headed for home.
It was closer to an hour and a half before Malcolm returned, but I was engrossed in my book and hadn’t noticed he was still gone until the patio door slid open. I ran to greet him and fell into his arms, welcoming his kiss that felt as if we hadn’t seen each other for a year. “Sorry for the delay,” he said. “It took longer than expected to retrieve the custodian’s body.”
“But you found it? Does that mean the Well is usable again?”
Malcolm took my hand and led me upstairs. His fatigues and his face were filthy, making him look like a coal miner after a long day in the mines. “What happened to your eyes?” he asked, peering into them. “They’ve changed color.”
I remembered thinking something was different about them. “What color are they now?”
“Sort of brownish-blue. It’s nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
“Um…that’s a long story.” I wondered in passing why no one had told the teams in Iraq what had happened in Portland. Malcolm would still be gone if he knew that. I guessed Lucia had done as she’d promised. “But you didn’t say if the Well is active now.”
“Not yet. Al-Hussein thinks if the Board appoints a successor, and the Well receives the right kind of supplication, it will be restored in a few months. Not good news, but not the worst. We’ll just have to hold out against the invaders without it.”
Right. The Board of Neutralities. I’d need to tell them what happened. “Get cleaned up,” I said. “I have something to tell you.”
Malcolm began taking off his clothes. “Something good? I could use some good news.”
“Something…unexpected,” I said.
We lay together in bed while I told Malcolm the story. He became gradually stiller as I progressed, listening intently the way he always did when something awful happened to me. When I got to the part where I died, his arm around my shoulders tightened, but he made no sound. At the end, he said, “That seems so…anticlimactic, maybe? One person goes into the invaders’ reality and destroys it. Not shuts it off from ours, destroys it.”
“Not one person, the oracle with the power of Abernathy’s’ node. And the collusion of the invaders, apparently. They had to shut down all the other ways they were getting into our reality, or something like that.”
“But they were slipping through all sorts of little cracks, all over the world.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t say I understood it.”
Malcolm took my hand with his free one. “I can’t believe the Long War is over. Mostly over.”
“There’s still a lot of loose invaders in our world, and probably some of the intelligent ones. But…yeah.” I stretched and cuddled closer. “It still doesn’t seem real. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t have such vivid memories.”
“And now you are the oracle.”
“I don’t understand that either yet. Knowledge comes to me without me asking for it. That seems not nearly so useful as the oracle was.”
“Time enough to work that out.” Malcolm squeezed my shoulder. “Does the Board know?”
“Not unless Lucia told them. I’m going to tell Viv and Judy first, and then I will call Ariadne. And after that, I’m going to sleep for a million years.”
“I hope not,” Malcolm said. “I had other plans for tonight.”
I laughed, and kissed him, a casual gesture that turned into more kisses, warm and passionate kisses I craved. He drew me closer until I was pressed against his body, holding him tight. “You know I might be a powerful supernatural being now?”
“Even better,” Malcolm said.
Epilogue
Seven years later
Picnic day. I laid out slices of bread on the counter and slathered creamy peanut butter on half of them, wishing I’d thought to grab a stool. Standing at the counter made my back sore these days, but I never remembered that until I was there. The ache was motivation to work fast. I squirted honey from the plastic bear onto the peanut butter and slapped more bread atop that, finishing all the sandwiches in record time.
Xerxes shot through the kitchen, heading for the stairs, and then a streak of pink flashed past, laughing like crazy. I put my hand on my lower back and shouted, “Malcolm! Your son is naked again!”
Thumping came from the direction of the stairs. The laughter turned into a shriek and helpless giggles. Soon Malcolm came into the kitchen, holding Duncan upside down by his ankles. “Why is he always my son when he does this?”
“Because your mother told me you used to do it, and I blame your genetic contribution.” Three-year-old Duncan reached for me, and I squeezed his hand before rubbing the curve of my enormous protruding belly. “Please dress him? And maybe convince him to stay dressed?”
Malcolm tossed the boy into the air, catching him in an upright position. “No park if you take off your clothes,” he said in an exaggeratedly menacing voice.
Duncan giggled again. “I want to go to the park.”
“Then let’s put on some clothes,” Malcolm replied, and put the boy under one arm like a football and charged out of the room. I sort of hoped Duncan would pee all over him at times like that. He’d certainly done it to me often enough before potty training set in.
I cut the sandwiches into triangles and inserted them into plastic baggies. “Alastair, come help Mommy,” I called out.
My oldest son came in from the living room, his book in his hand. “I’m reading.”
“You’re always reading. The book isn’t going anywhere. Why don’t you pick out some fruit and put it in the basket?”
Alastair nodded and set the book on the counter. I eyed it suspiciously. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Not as heavy-going as his usual fare, but Alastair had been reading since before he was three, and five years old struck me as a little early for Harry Potter. He was so serious all the time, it was like having a tiny adult in the house. I wasn’t sure I was up to being the mother of a genius, but he was also sweet and considerate and a huge help in keeping Duncan out of trouble.
My baby chose that moment to stretch painfully within me. I was so past ready for her to be born, even though I had another two weeks to go. Alastair looked from my belly to me. “Does it hurt?” he asked, for once sounding like a child.
“Only a little. It’s more like someone pushing on my tummy.” I took his hand and pressed it to where he could feel the baby move again. His eyes, the same brownish-blue as mine, lit up.
Du
ncan came running in again, this time clad in shorts and T-shirt with his little bare feet slapping the tile. “Mommy, can we have cookies? I want to choose the cookies!”
“All right, you can choose. Use a stool.” It probably wasn’t the best idea to encourage Duncan in reaching the upper shelves of the pantry, but he was remarkably well-behaved when it came to not taking food without permission and it beat having him climb them like a blond monkey. I suspected Alastair’s example.
Alastair was putting bananas in the picnic basket. Duncan brought me an unopened package of Oreos, which I set beside the bananas. He watched me curiously with those same brownish-blue eyes as I moved the sandwiches so they wouldn’t get squished. Suddenly, he laughed. “Mommy, you wet your pants!”
I looked at him in confusion. Then I bolted for the washroom. I made it as far as standing in front of the toilet when my abdomen lurched weirdly and a gush of fluid poured down my legs. For a moment, I stood still, shocked by the suddenness of it. Then I shouted for Malcolm.
“He’s not naked anymore…” Malcolm came into sight of me. His smile fell away as he took in my shocked expression. “What—”
“My water broke,” I said. “I need a towel.”
Malcolm pulled a towel out of the cupboard and handed it to me. “Go get changed. I’ll call Viv and tell the kids the picnic is on hold.”
I mopped myself as dry as I could manage and went upstairs. About halfway up, a contraction gripped me, not a hard one, but enough to make me pause. There was no need to rush, but wasn’t it true that labor got shorter with every child?
I hurried through giving myself a quick sponging down and changing into a new loose-fitting dress. Then I made my way back down the stairs and sat in the rarely-used front room.
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