Smells Like Finn Spirit

by Randy Henderson

  After a few seconds, I felt a slow but steady stream of life energy flowing into me, waking up my mind, warming my muscles.

  I took a deep breath. “Thank you,” I said to them both.

  Dawn grinned. “Now I can really say I shared the best years of my life with you.”

  “And I can honestly say you make me feel alive.”

  Mort gave a martyred sigh. “Seriously, you two. So, brother, what’s your brilliant idea exactly?”

  I explained the idea to Mort, keeping my voice low so that Grandfather couldn’t hear, and projecting the conversation to Alynon.

  After their expected accusations of insanity and bleak predictions of failure, we began.

  Mort reached out through the breach in the barrier with his necromantic senses, and I piggybacked on his effort, working in tandem with him like in the old days when we were being trained. Guided by the strong resonance between my spirit and Grandfather’s, we located his spirit within his stolen body.

  “What—” Grandfather said.

  Together, Mort and I threw our will against Grandfather’s.

  By our powers combined!

  37

  IT’S SO HARD TO SAY GOOD-BYE TO YESTERDAY

  Even with mort and I combining our will, we probably would have lost a direct confrontation with Grandfather on an average day. Especially with Mort’s will divided keeping me alive, and me being on life support, we should have had about as good of odds as a sloppy drunk Aeon Flux assaulting the Death Star trench.

  But Grandfather’s own will thankfully remained largely consumed by his ritual. Our will hit his like a rhinoceros ramming into another rhinoceros, except if we rammed the other rhinoceros from the rear.

  Only, uh, less messy.

  Our will met resistance, but it was like squeezing a balloon. The tension increased, and then suddenly gave away as we broke through.

  The ease of it shocked me. Then, as my awareness settled into the mind and body that Grandfather also possessed, I realized the truth. Grandfather had turned this body into little more than a living conduit. The twined magical and spiritual energy flowed through him, and was transformed through him, transmuted from the energy of life into the energy of death, poisonous and infectious and terrible, before flowing on through the portal in a dozen smaller streams. I wasn’t even sure killing Grandfather would end the flow, because the life energy and magic flowing into him would keep this body essentially alive as far as the needs of the spell were concerned, even if you chopped off his head and cut out his heart. Deputy Dolph had been right.

  And it was also obvious that Grandfather would need a handy body to jump into once he’d used this one up.

  Grandfather whispered, his words reflected in his host’s mind, “You waste your time. You cannot stop this.”

  No, I projected back at him. But you can. Please, Grandfather. You must realize you’ll be seen as the next Hitler, or Mordred, or Vlad.

  “I will have as great an impact as them, perhaps,” he replied. “But history will view me as the savior of our world.”

  Holy Ozymandias. He really had drunk his own Kill-Aid. Despite his constant rants, I’d always had some doubt, some certainty that he couldn’t be this far gone, that his holy crusade was really all just a mask for a power grab, something to pull in a bunch of zealous and expendable followers he could exploit, like most ambitious ideologues or corrupt religious leaders. But there was nothing more dangerous than when the leader of a crusade actually believed that he was on some holy mission.

  Mort’s voice rose up, Grandfather! You bastard. You would have killed Mattie. You used me. You’ve destroyed the Gramaraye name forever!

  “And you were never going to be anything more than a tool at best, a disappointment at worst,” Grandfather said in a bored tone. “Forgive me if your opinion holds little weight here, boy.”

  I directed my thoughts to Mort, so that only he could hear, Don’t let him get to you. We need to open the way for Alynon to possess him, now.

  Whatever you say, Mort replied. The tool is happy to help. Wouldn’t want to disappoint.

  I sighed. I understood why Grandfather got under his skin so easily, I just wished it didn’t always seem to come back on me.

  You’re the one with the real skill here, I said.

  Grandfather probed at us with his will, tried to push us away, but we easily resisted.

  “Are we pouting now?” Grandfather asked. “Done whining?”

  Thankfully, Mort didn’t take the bait. I felt him opening a kind of spiritual tunnel, like the eye of a tornado into the brain of Grandfather’s freejacked body, holding at bay Grandfather’s own spirit.

  I diverted a small portion of will to raise my physical hand. Then I felt for Alynon’s spiritual resonance, and summoned him into Grandfather’s body. It was a little more difficult than usual, and not just because of my state, but because I had to work through the filter of Mort, like operating robot hands to do a delicate job rather than using my own, which was especially hard to do on a job like this that relied so much on feeling your way along.

  Alynon’s spirit responded, however, and with my guidance settled in to Grandfather’s borrowed body. I felt a shift in the body’s spiritual energy as Alynon took possession.

  We waited until Alynon had formed his own mental and spiritual fortifications around himself before releasing our protective funnel. Grandfather’s spirit crashed in instantly and tried to exorcise Alynon.

  Neither Mort nor I were sorcerers, or at least had never attempted to manifest any small ability we might have in our blood from sorcerer ancestors, so we lacked the ability to manipulate Grandfather’s mind directly. But Alynon was a creature of memory, raised to feed on spiritual memory, to pick and choose and shape it, to understand it the way a master chef understands food. So Mort and I ran interference on Grandfather’s attempts at exorcism as Alynon went to work, digging, seeking the heart of Grandfather’s hatred for the Fey.

  *I’ve found something, memories locked deep within, beneath a lot of pain and anger.*

  Can you access them?

  *I’m trying. I—there. I think I can manifest them with a little bit of—*

  Grandfather’s memories rose up, and enveloped us all.

  * * *

  Gavriel Gramaraye followed his older brother into the library where their father entertained several men from Seattle. The house still had decorations up from the Winter Solstice and turning of the year. Their mother said that since it was such an important year—the start of a whole new decade, one hopefully free of the wars and the difficulties the world and arcana had seen in the last ten years—that the arrival of 1920 deserved to be appreciated for a while.

  Their father sat in his throne-like armchair, and the three visitors sat across from him in less ornate armchairs, the table between them holding Father’s special collection of decanters and potion samplers on a silver tray, the contents all illegal in one way or another.

  This was not a meeting with necrotorium clients. Father met with clients in the entry parlor, where the bodies were shown. This was another one of his “special” meetings. Which meant Gavriel had to be on his best behavior.

  One of the men said, “Those radicals shut down Seattle for nearly five days with that strike, Don.” He made a wild motion, causing the yellow liquid in his glass to slosh over his hand. “Ah, damn it.” He set the glass down on the silver tray, and grabbed out his handkerchief. “My point is, this is not a friendly place for business anymore. Seattle will be a ghost town in ten years, take my word on it.”

  “Bah,” Gavriel’s father gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “That Palmer fellow is cutting the knees out from under those radicals, and Hoover’s working on deporting the rest of the damned Russians and Italians.”

  One of the other men raised his glass in a toast, and said, “And they’re talking about finally creating real immigration laws.”

  “Here here,” Father said, raising his own glass, and taking a
sip. “We can’t let a few socialists scare us, gentlemen. More importantly, Port Townsend isn’t Seattle, which is exactly my point. If you bring your businesses here—” Father glanced over, and spotted Gavriel and his brother. “Ah, Geoffrey, Gavriel, come here.”

  Gavriel followed his brother’s lead. Gavriel always followed his older brother’s lead. If they both did something wrong, then at least if Geoff did it first he would get the worst of the beating. Even if that usually meant Geoff would later turn around and beat Gavriel the first excuse that came up.

  “Boys, how many arcana friends do you have around your age?”

  “Lots,” Geoff said.

  Father frowned. “I didn’t ask for useless terms. Give us a number. And remember your respect!”

  “Sorry, sir,” Geoff said. “At least twelve, sir.”

  “And how many mundanes. Gavriel?”

  “None, sir,” Gavriel said. Not that there weren’t plenty of mundies also around ten years old, just that Father forbade them from playing with any.

  And then just in case that wasn’t good enough, Gavriel said, “I mean zero, sir.”

  “You see?” Father said, turning back. “And half of those arcana are girls. You want your children growing up to marry mundanes? Then move to some big city. Or you can move your business here, and your families can be among true people, among other arcana.”

  Gavriel’s mother entered wearing her entertaining dress, carrying a tray of fresh-baked cookies.

  “This is 1920, Don,” the mustachioed man in the center said. “It is an age for enterprise, and opportunity. Have you seen these new radios? The mundanes are creating their own kind of magic now. It is, frankly, time to leave the old ways behind and embrace the new.”

  Mother set the tray down on the table, and said, “Well, I don’t feel—”

  “Nobody wishes to hear your feelings, dear,” Father said in a joking tone tinged with reprimand. “Clean that up, will you?” He waved at the glass the visitor had spilled drink out of.

  Mother did as instructed, and left the room.

  Once she’d left, Father said, “With all this talk of giving women the right to vote, they suddenly think we want their opinion.”

  The other men chuckled. Father glanced back at Geoff and Gavriel still standing there. “You’re dismissed, boys. Go do your chores.”

  “Yes, Father,” both boys responded, and left.

  As they stepped outside, the boys found their mother there, finishing off the liquid from the glass with a shaking hand, and Gavriel thought he saw tears on her face before she quickly turned away and wiped at her eyes. “Oh, boys, why don’t you go into the kitchen. I left a cookie for each of you.” Softly, she added, “Don’t let your father know.”

  * * *

  A blur …

  * * *

  Gavriel shifted uncomfortably in the heavy robes. Nervous sweat trickled down his arms despite the cool night air as he stood with his father in the center of a ring of men, all wearing their own robes. Torchlight flickered across the thick, mossy trees surrounding the clearing, and downhill from them Lake Quinault glittered beneath the full moon.

  Gavriel felt less nervous about this ritual than what came after: the not-so-secret rite of passage most arcana boys enjoyed when they turned fifteen.

  Father continued speaking in his ritualistic tone, “And do you, Gavriel Gramaraye, swear to uphold the sacred duty of an Arcanite, to protect the purity and honor of arcana blood, to stand watch against the Fey and their corruption of our world?”

  “I so swear,” Gavriel replied.

  Father raised his hands over his head. “And thus are you named an Arcanite, with access to all the secrets and privileges thereof.”

  The ring of men all intoned, “So it is witnessed, by blood and by magic, by moonlight and arcana sight.”

  Father lowered his hands, and a mischievous smile spread across his face. “Congratulations, son. You are a man now. Well, almost.” He motioned to one of the men, the alchemist Mr. Flowers, and Flowers strode off into the forest along a barely visible trail.

  The remaining circle of men shifted to form a line from Gavriel to the trailhead.

  Father slapped him on the shoulder, and turned to guide him along the line. Calls of “Congratulations,” and “It’s your lucky night, boy,” and “Welcome to the order,” followed him as Father lead him down the line. When they reached the end, Father stood with one hand remaining on his shoulder. It was a strange feeling, a good feeling. Father had never been one for affection, certainly not for hugs or other womanly shows of emotion.

  “Did you hear, Don,” the nearest man in line, Mr. Mills, said. “The Klan marched forty thousand strong on Washington. Imagine if we could organize those numbers, what we could do.”

  “I heard,” Father replied. “They overplayed their hand. The country is not ready to rally behind their cause openly, not yet.”

  Mr. Davis leaned forward to see us from down the line, and said, “It is a foolish war to wage regardless, this concern with dividing humans by race and country. They bicker over which flavor of pie is best while a bear is breaking into the pie shop.”

  “It’s not like they know about the Fey, Reginald,” someone further down the line said.

  “Don’t dismiss their concerns entirely,” Father said. “We cannot deny that certain countries seem to have bred dangerously radical and criminal breeds of mundanes.”

  “I think that is more a question of mundy ideology than race,” Mr. Crawford said.

  Mr. Davis replied from further down, “I imagine all this race nonsense the Klan is focused on will go away soon enough, anyway. The mundies are finally seeing past their old myths. Did you hear about the Scopes trial?”

  Mr. Mills said, “If they are so undone at the thought of being descended from monkeys, imagine how they’d feel if they ever met a centaur and worked out its origins.”

  That brought some laughs.

  “I think this new move toward science is dangerous,” Father replied. “If the mundies aren’t fighting amongst themselves, or dismissing magic as miracles, they might begin to recognize and fear us as the outsiders.”

  “But forty thousand! Just imagine if we could get those numbers,” Mills repeated.

  Mr. Davis leaned forward again and said, “The Klan has preachers and the radio helping them out, and can talk openly about their concerns. We need to find some way of spreading our message like that, without exposing ourselves to the mundies.”

  “I like the Catholic way,” the man beside Mills said. “Breed ourselves an army of followers.”

  “You would,” Mr. Crawford said. “You’ve got that young new bride.”

  Father slapped Gavriel on the shoulder. “Well, my son will soon enough have a more informed opinion on the matter.”

  That brought chuckles from the men down the line, as movement in the forest drew Gavriel’s attention.

  Mr. Flowers returned, and following him glided the most beautiful woman Gavriel had ever seen. She looked maybe twenty years old, with deeply tanned skin and hair traced with green and orange streaks.

  And she walked fully naked.

  Gavriel blushed, his heart now racing.

  Father turned to face Gavriel, and handed him a potion bottle as Mr. Flowers and the nymph approached. “A love potion,” he explained in a voice pitched low for Gavriel’s hearing alone. “She will follow her nymph’s calling without it, but I’ve found that love can make them even more … passionate about their work, willing to behave more fitting with their animal natures. And control is a powerful feeling, one I would have you appreciate. There’s a reason we don’t just take you to a common lady of the night. You can learn much here besides how to simply christen your manhood, if you have the fortitude to take advantage of this opportunity.”

  Gavriel took the potion. “Yes, Father.”

  Father nodded in approval, and said, “Just don’t ruin her for the rest of us. That would be bad form.”

&
nbsp; Father handed the nymph a small mana vial.

  “So little,” she said, looking down at it as if she were a starving woman handed moldy bread, wrestling between refusing it or giving in to her hunger.

  “I am sure you would love if I gave you enough magic to attack us, or to leave your tree,” Father said, holding out his hand as if to take the vial back. “But if you don’t want this much—”

  “No! No, I—Thank you, masters. I am pleased to serve.” She held the vial against her breast with one hand, and took Gavriel’s arm with the other, then led him back into the forest.

  “Have fun!” his brother called after him.

  The nymph led Gavriel down winding and hidden paths until they reached a tree with a broad canopy of leaves over a bed of thick moss.

  “How shall I please you, master?” the nymph asked in a voice devoid of any emotion except a hint of fear.

  Gavriel looked down at the potion in his hand, feeling suddenly awkward, uncertain. There were the theories, the hints, shared between boys in class or while up in Greg’s tree house looking at pinup girls. But that had not given him an exact map to follow, a certainty of what to do first, or how, or even where exactly.

  “Uh, what is your name?” he asked.

  “I am called Sylia.”

  Gavriel didn’t know what to say next. What if he couldn’t do this? What if he failed? Father would know somehow. They’d all know. Gavriel would never live it down. Father might even punish him.

  One piece of advice rose up sudden and strong above all others. Mother, looking at him with sad eyes, and saying, “Promise me something, Gavriel. Promise me you will only be with a woman for love. You will both be happier if it is for love.”

  Gavriel raised the bottle, considered its contents.

  “Do you wish me to drink that?” the nymph asked.

  “No,” Gavriel said. He uncorked the bottle, and drank the potion.

  And then Gavriel realized Father didn’t matter, his fears didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he had found his true happiness at last. Sylia was perfect in every way. As long as Gavriel had her, he didn’t need Father’s approval, or to prove himself as an arcana or necromancer, as a student or son.