by Elsa, Sandra
We buried any excess scraps from our meals near the plants and the nutrient lacking soil composted it quickly. Feces and urine went in a hole far from our campsite. The smell wasn't pleasant but the ground began taking on a richer hue and we planted another flower near the pit. A small amount of fertilizer and all three plants took root and thrived, soon looking much better than the ones we left in pots.
Chapter 5
After a week of wetting the ground daily, the soil swelled and sealed the immense dry cracks. On the ninth day, water an inch deep sat in the bottom of the lake bed. Harrison was exhausted. We couldn't keep this pace, the magic drained him and every night he lay down to sleep and I curled up next to him. Three more days, the lake still held water and our experiments changed from attempting to fill the lake, to determining how far Harrison could travel with his aura loaded down with water and minerals.
We traveled half a day, putting mountains in sight before he began to show the strain of using his magic. We dropped the water in another lake bed and returned to our camp. That night we decided to see if he could hold the water while sleeping. His exhaustion made him drop right off after we visited the sound and I curled up with my head on his chest and ran my fingers over his flesh. In the middle of the night he awoke and we made love, in the morning the water he held was gone. The ground wasn't soaked, there weren't any mineral deposits, it was just gone.
He looked around in confusion, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Nothing like this has ever happened before. If I take water in, it remains until I let it back out."
Terry sat up from his sleeping bag, rolled out a discreet distance away from ours and turned to look at us. His eyes widened. "What the hell." He rubbed his eyes, mashing his lids down over them then tugging at the corners as though to remove sandmen. "What did you do? How is that possible?"
"How is what possible?"
"Frankie has an aura, and it looks just like yours."
Chapter 6
Harrison backed away from me. "Is it still there?"
"Yep."
He moved further. "Still?"
"It seems to be getting lighter, but I don't know if that's you moving away…" His eyes transfixed a spot above my head. "Or if her own magic is drinking yours in. Go closer again."
Harrison moved back to stand beside me. "Doesn't darken back up and the water churns in her aura, I stood up and headed for the hole we’d dug for waste. "I'd love to stay and discuss this new oddity but I have other business to attend to."
When I returned Terry stared at me as though his gaze could decipher the willful intent of my magic. He smirked and asked, "You didn't pee rivers did you?"
"Hardly."
"Well the violet color is just barely there now."
"So maybe whatever happened, it's faded away."
Harrison slapped his leg. "Nullspace,."
"Null what?" I blinked and stared at him.
"Nullspace. An empty pocket capable of containing vastly more than should fit. Most people look at null as empty. It's not. It contains zero. In your case zero is any magic you contain and any magic used against you."
"Well you weren't using your magic against me."
"No but we made love while my magic was in full use. We can't get much closer. I would guess your talent simply absorbed the overflow."
"So can you take it back?"
"That's a very good question. If I can. We can fill nullspace with water and travel wherever we wish. Null shouldn't exhaust you. It's not something you're even normally aware of."
"Suggestions? Hints? I don't have a clue how to give back something I didn't consciously take in the first place."
"We could try making love again."
"We'll do that anyway, but maybe we should exhaust other attempts before Terry quits on us."
Harrison looked at his cousin and grinned. "OK." He sat on the ground and patted the space beside himself.
I sat where he indicated and he held my hand. "Should I draw the field down around myself like when you use illusion on me?"
"That might work. Constricting the field may force it to give up what it's storing."
I concentrated, removing myself from the moment, giving myself over into Harrison's care. I felt his magic groping at the edges of my mind and my magic thwarted his effort to penetrate the null. He lifted me and placed me in front of himself then bent over and kissed the back of my neck. "I'm not an enemy. This is our work. We're doing this together." His talent for persuasion tickled my soul, his voice soothed and cajoled and I wanted to give him anything he asked for.
Persuasion followed his rain talent into the immense void of nullspace, but still his voice pled for me to give him the water back. His hands wandered under my shirt, thumbs sliding inside my bra to bring my nipples to full attention. His mouth worked on my neck, and he nudged my shirt aside moving down my shoulder. I concentrated on what he did to me and when he reached out with his mind and joyously combined his magic to mine we were drenched by a sudden downpour.
He laughed. I turned my face up into the rain and joined him. No scooping water from our shallow lake to bathe in today.
Terry stood a hundred feet away ogling us. "I've never seen anything like that."
We stood and moved out from under the rain cloud to stand next to Terry. "Like what?" Harrison asked. "You've been closer when we actually made love so it must have something to do with auras."
"The rainbow came before the storm."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"Just before he succeeded in making a rain cloud, the space around you lit up in so many different colors it was beautiful, like a rainbow. It must have been you allowing him access."
Harrison hugged me tightly. "Now, if I can learn to direct it while you hold it. We can go anywhere we want. Once we get someplace started, we'll only need rain once or twice a week. We can make the trip to the ocean once a month…but I'm getting ahead of myself. We should see how much water you can carry and whether or not it has any negative effect on you."
We left Terry with our camp and made our way to the Sound along with a couple of blankets. Beside the water, Harrison began absorbing liquid while I wrapped my arms around him and concentrated on the magic growing against my psyche. It swelled and flowed and seeped around the two of us, water converted to a mass of energy and the moment that thought occurred to me it disappeared, swallowed by my magic. This way took much less effort than releasing it back to him. He picked me off my feet and whooped then went back to work. All day we took water from the Sound and stored it in nullspace for future use.
Nullspace seemed limitless. Toward evening we returned to our pond and reversed the process until the water overflowed the banks. Initially the only way Harrison could pull the water back was to convert it immediately to rain which left us drenched with nightfall coming on. Terry had hung our blankets to dry after the morning's experiments and they were now safely folded in the car. We changed clothes and drove a half mile away from the center of the downfalls to sleep on dry ground.
The next morning we walked in search of another pond to fill. By the time we found one we just sat on a highpoint of ground and watched our water soak into the ground. As the day wore on, Harrison managed to control the deluge, turning it into a soft rain and managed to direct it to a place a hundred yards distant from where we sat.
We went back and spent time with Terry before announcing our intention to sleep beside the Sound. Refill nullspace overnight and take off the next day to find a place we hoped would be able to withstand storms. Terry was more than ready to move on to the next part of our experimentation.
Overnight he packed up the car so we planted some grass seed on the bank of our lake and wished them and the flowers well and headed west. After nearly a full day spent driving around on roads, most of which were only visible because they were clear spots among the crystalline trees, we found a site we thought might do. There were caves we could live in. A dry lake of immense proportions, and a c
liff we could use as a windbreak for our garden in hopes of protecting what we started when the rains came.
We duplicated our effort by the sound except this time we planted many more plants and turned a lot of earth and after several days of gentle soaking rain we seeded it, vegetables and herbs we planted in long straight rows. Around the garden plot we planted grass. With the lake holding water and our plants fertilized and looking healthy, we put our extra supplies into the cave and decided it was time to drive back to Two-Three-Seven and restock our food and water supplies. In two weeks we'd only had to make one trip back to the Sound.
We arrived in the district unnoticed this time. The steady exposure to sunlight unfiltered by a dome had first painfully crisped all of our skin, then left us looking a healthy tan, we fit into the population of the dome perfectly, and rather than paying for two hotel rooms we rented a three bedroom house. The Daniel Bromer ident was most likely compromised so Terry rented the house. I returned to the doctor and had him check my leg and he declared me healed enough to walk without any cast. I dug out my swimsuit and Harrison and I headed toward the boardwalk and the ocean.
We spent four days unnoticed. A much calmer existence than the last time we'd arrived. On the evening of the fifth day as we lay sunbathing, a shadow fell across us and didn't move. We looked up to see lank brown hair and a two days growth of beard hovering overhead. Dark hallowed eyes stared down at us. Detective Allen looked as though he were trying to figure out what might be appropriate to say. Finally he sat down beside us and said, "Didn't expect to see you two again."
"My wife enjoys the ocean." Harrison said. "Hell, I'm enjoying the ocean."
"How are your local troubles?" I asked.
"Changed. It's been a month since the two of you took out nine of the worst thugs around, but without you to testify, those we picked up are back out on the street and looking for blood. Captain made it pretty plain that he was pissed that we never figured out who they were attacking, so nobody's quite sure who was responsible. They all figure that if it was a sting by the watch, the innocent couple would have been there to testify, but now they're determined to find who took out Bud and Rover."
"Rover? Honestly?" The incredulous tone of my voice barely held back the laughter.
"It's what the Were went by. I don't know if anybody knew his real name."
"Fingerprints and DNA didn't identify him?"
"He's a ghost. DNA on a Were is a tricky thing anyway. They have so many like markers if you don't get a one hundred percent match it's worthless in court, and one hundred percent never happens. Any technician will allow at least a tenth of a percent for possible inaccuracies."
I looked over at Harrison. "I suppose you knew that?"
"It is my specialty."
I shrugged. Learn something new every day. "It's been long enough since that incident; you'd think they'd have decided we were tourists who just went home."
"There was a recent request to identify a mage involved in an altercation sent to the registry from District Six-Two-Two. It was blocked by order of the president, and Captain Jarvis was notified as it's believed to be the same request we sent in the night of the event."
"How could they know it was the same event?"
"The identification request was based on a vid recording instead of captured residual energy, which usually indicates the event happened some time ago. And obviously some registry workers recognize Harrison's magic."
I laughed. "Probably a bunch of District Seven troopers who got sent there after we finished with them."
His brows formed a vee as he tried to make sense of my words.
Simple fact was nobody wanted a boring, dead-end job in the registry and having failed to capture us, quite a few of them probably got rotated through as punishment. Didn't think it was politic to explain to a member of the watch that we'd made fools of an entire district precinct with the resources of HQ at their fingertips.
When no explanation was forthcoming, he shook his head. "Unless you two have been out stirring up more trouble the request helps us with our case. It's a pretty safe bet that a lot of the money behind the drug trade is coming from Six-Two-Two, so you continue to help us."
"Since I'm not even sure where Six-Two-Two is located, it's safe to say it wasn't anything new we did."
Detective Allen rubbed his jaw. "That solidifies our suspicions that somebody higher up the food chain lives there. It also means there is evidence of their attack on you. If we can get hold of the vid footage we can round up the thugs you two disabled and actually get the case to trial. Unless you want to testify. Then we don't need the footage."
"I won't endanger my wife," Harrison said. "Testifying would let too many people know who we are and considering what we just started, we don't need people gunning for us."
"What did you start?" The detective's voice held curiosity.
"Not something we're ready to let the world in on just yet."
"A family?" He guessed.
Harrison looked over at me and grinned, "Not yet. Can you get the name of the person checking the registry?"
"Guess I don't get to know then. The mage registry doesn't share requestors’ names as a matter of policy, but we're working on retrieving that information."
"We have a couple of contacts we can try for you."
My mind was racing as I started counting days. Had I had a period since I gave up my virginity? It'd been more than a month and no, I hadn't. It wasn't time to panic yet. The doctor had said something about the insertion of the birth control device altering my menstruation. Still…maybe it was time for a trip to the doctor.
"Babe?" Harrison was looking down at me.
"Hmmmm?"
"Do you think Sergeant Wallin might have access to the registry requests?" He said it slowly as though repeating it.
"Wally? I don't know. I left Wally in a tight spot. No telling how he feels about me right now."
"You did everything you possibly could to get my dad off his back."
"Wally was in love with me. He's not likely to be happy about us getting married. What about my father? He should have contacts with proper access."
"He might. There're a couple people I can ask. I guess it all depends on whether or not my father gave orders to deny everybody information or if it actually is just policy."
"There's a problem between you and your father?"
"My choice of women."
"How can he not like your wife?"
"I'm not as sweet as I project," I grinned at him. "Nor do I take orders well."
"The whole world voted the man into office. Are you telling me you don't get along with him?"
"The whole world was persuaded to vote him into office. The results of the election had nothing to do with him and how good or bad he might be for the future of the world, and everything to do with how many people sat in front of the newsnet and listened to him persuade them to vote for him. Ask Gerrill if he ever watched a campaign ad. See if he didn't feel magic in use."
"Interesting. Maybe I will ask."
"At any rate," Harrison said, "my father needs me in one piece and alive, so he's not going to pass on my name and stats to just anybody; but he's not going to go out of his way to help anybody he thinks might be assisting me. Which would be people wanting to know who's asking about me."
"If you can make him see that it would benefit the watch and not you, would he release the information?"
I rolled up on an elbow. "Rollick owes me one. He's a lot less susceptible to magic's influence than the average trooper. I'll give him a call when we get back to the room."
"Who's Rollick?" the detective asked.
"A Were, works in HQ. Him and his partner were really good friends of mine up until the last couple days of our acquaintance. Rollick's mostly responsible for me being pushed out of my comfort zone and into the arms of the president's son. Though that wasn't quite the way he planned it."
"Rollick did that?" Harrison sounded intrigued. "I fig
ured it was Wally."
"If not for Rollick I’d have given them everything I had on you and stayed home straightening out the mess you left me. End of story. As is, Wally felt the need to drag me around all night long, for my own good, so I was there when he received your father's call and your father seemed to think I should know where you'd run off to. I blame Rollick completely."
"Then I guess I’ll have to thank him next time I see him. All in all it hasn't worked out so badly."
"You didn't break your leg and get left to crawl down a mountain, did you?"
"No, but if you hadn't, I’d never have slowed you down enough to convince you to marry me."
"No matter how you wish to see it, Rollick owes me."
"Can't hurt to try him."
"I have smoozing to do." Detective Allen said as he rose. "Gotta make it look like I'm feeling out potential customers. Ya'll have a good day."
"You too." I rolled over on my stomach and Harrison got to his knees and started massaging my back. Bliss. Sheer Bliss.
Chapter 7
Later that evening I called Rollick from our house. It rang four times before he answered. I could hear the hesitation in his voice as he said, "Frankie?"
"Ahh…you sound like this might be your worst nightmare come to life."
"Didn't figure I’d hear from you again."
"You alone?"
"On my way to work."
"Got a favor to ask."
A long pause preceded a heavy sigh. "You're determined to get me fired, aren't you?"
"I could do that easily, just by letting somebody know about that little trick you played on me. This favor is for your brothers in law enforcement."
"No guarantees."
"Harrison and I were involved in an altercation in District Two-Three-Seven. Harrison used his magic to kill a man in self-defense. The locals sent a request to identify the mage to the registry, which as you can imagine was promptly forwarded on to his father. The whole thing went away. But more recently, somebody--apparently using footage of the attack on us-- sent another request to the registry. The locals believe the requestor had enough pull he expected to get answers and consider him to be a person of interest in drug trafficking in their district. The request originated from District Six-Two-Two, but the name of the requestor is kept discreet by District Seven policy. Any chance you can get that name?"