by Marc Zicree
That was when I saw something in our peculiar domestic picture that wasn’t right. Colleen and Doc had chosen to bed down in the half-empty haymow; Enid was snoring on a couple of bales laid end to end. The bale next to him was empty. I stared at it for a long five count before I realized that empty spot was where Magritte should have been. Her tether lay loose on the floor. Chill swiped through me.
“Maggie?” I moved instinctively toward the darkest part of the barn, where Goldie had gone. Surely the Source couldn’t have taken her. We would have heard something, felt something.
We did hear something, my argumentative side reminded me-that big wind hitting the barn, the doors slamming wide open. And we didn’t hear much else while that was going on.
“Maggie?” I called again, and behind me Colleen asked, “What’s wrong?”
I was at the head of the row of stalls now. It was black on black back here, except where pale, aqua light seeped from an unseen source to ripple across the ceiling. That could be Magritte; it could just as easily be one of Goldie’s light-globes.
I hesitated, suddenly afraid of interrupting something. I took another step into the gloom, drawing level with the first stall.
“What is it?”
I swung around to find Goldie watching me over the bottom half of the stall’s double door. He was wearing an unmistakable aura of the palest gold.
Caught gaping like a fish, I managed to say, “I just… realized Magritte was gone.” I met his eyes. Behind his veil of wild curls, they were dark and wary.
There was movement behind him. Light shifted as if someone approached with a lantern, and Magritte appeared over the threshold of the stall, her own aura bright, silvery, blinding.
Goldie said, “I’ve got her covered.”
“But the tether-”
“Don’t need it.”
I realized, suddenly, what he meant. Each of them was the center of a radiant halo that extended to touch and mingle with the other, changing hue subtly in the process. I’d noticed it a number of times, but had always assumed that Maggie was creating the phenomenon, that she was reaching out to Goldie. Now I realized that Goldie was generating his own halo.
“A proximity effect?” I looked from one to the other.
“To all intents and purposes, Magritte disappears when she’s close to me.” He smiled wryly. “I’m just plain overwhelming, I guess.”
Magritte snorted delicately.
“When did you realize you could do that?”
His eyes flicked away from mine, as if the subject were embarrassing. “My first day inside the Preserve. But I didn’t realize what it meant until we left the Blue Mounds. I was afraid for her and I … just sort of reached out mentally and shut out the Storm.”
Magritte looked at him with something like adoration in her eyes. “Goldie brought the power of the Mounds with him.”
He returned the look, adoration mingled with something darker. “Yeah, I’m just like one of those glow-in-the-dark things.”
I remembered, then, what he’d said about the Black Tower that bound our dreams together: It’s inside me.
I couldn’t imagine what that must feel like. Could I handle it any better than he did? “I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“Jumping all over you earlier. It was uncalled for.” “Yeah, well, shit happens.”
He surprised laughter out of me. “What are you-psychic? Doc said that.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Doc’s psychic-I’m psycho. It’s important to keep that straight.” He sobered, meeting my gaze. “I’m going to get through this, Cal. I have to get through this. I don’t know what’s in Chicago, but whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”
“When I said I understood what it costs you to touch the Source,” I said, “when I said I got it-I meant that. I think it … must feel… as if you’re not quite yourself.”
He laughed, breaking eye contact. “Not quite myself. Oh, that’s a mouthful. Am I ever myself?” He shook his head. “Yeah, that’s one of the feelings I get, I guess. Not myself.”
“When I do … the maps, the contract … things like that…” I felt my way through the emotions; the words were elusive. “I wonder … what I’m becoming. I’ve always thought change comes from within. That you change yourself. You know what I’m saying?”
“Self-determination,” he said. “Self-possession. Those may be chimeras now.” He spoke the words as if he’d already accepted them, but they were killing words to me.
I didn’t let it show. “So? For all we know, there may really be chimeras wandering around out there.”
Magritte laughed. It was a little girl’s laugh. Incongruous, slipping from between those razor-sharp teeth. I was amazed she could still make that sound after all she’d been through. “Those are the lions with the bird-legs, right?” she asked.
Goldie gave me a sly look. “Naw, those are griffins.” The sly look broadened into a smile that seemed genuine. “Sweet dreams,” he said, and moved back into the stall, drawing Maggie after him.
I shivered and sought the comfort of my sleeping bag.
Psychic, maybe. Prophetic, not. Having let it into my head, I dreamed of the Tower. That night there was a different twist. Tina was still trapped behind the dripping, glazed walls, but now Goldie was there with her.
Morning dawned cold and relatively clear. The blanket of clouds was higher, allowing the sun to peek beneath it at the horizon. The cloud cover wasn’t quite as seamless as it had been the day before. The wind still came out of the north, but it was a tired wind.
I could relate.
The silence struck hard. I could see it in every face when at last we crept out of the barn, leading our jittery horses. It was a ghost-town silence that made our voices ooze out in whispers and our eyes dart about in search of mysterious shadows. There were none, so we imagined them. Wind stirred the tufts of dried grass that stood above the powdery snow, while tree branches nodded and creaked and ash lifted lazily from the burnt shell of the farmhouse. Then, far and away across a ruined cornfield, a crow called and another answered. Sepulcher sounds from the first living things we’d heard or seen for days.
Goldie breathed out a gust of steam. “Whoa. Where’s Stephen King when you need him?”
“I used to love that sound,” said Colleen. “The crows, I mean. It meant autumn: Halloween, Thanksgiving, the crunch of leaves, the smell of wood smoke, snow.”
“Well, we got you some snow,” Enid observed. “And I can give you crunchy leaves, if you really want ’em all that badly.”
Colleen returned his grin and threw her leg over Big T’s broad back. “Thanks, Enid. I was getting all morbid and mushy there for a moment.”
“Any time.”
We moved out. I tried to put myself next to Colleen in the hope that we might talk about certain events, but she seemed to be in one of her loner moods, keeping herself a little aloof from everyone. I tried to tell myself it didn’t have anything to do with the kiss, but I couldn’t help wondering.
It was Enid I found myself riding with at the head of the column. He was as eager as I to see what Goldie’s black hole really was.
As we made our way into the sunrise and rode the last several yards to the top of the hill, I realized I was holding my breath. I’m not sure what I expected to see when at last we crested the rise. Maybe something from one of those disaster movies-a nuclear dead zone a la Independence Day or any one of the dozens of postapocalyptic creations imagined by science fiction authors and Hollywood script writers.
What I saw was water.
“Damn,” said Enid, and Goldie sang, “ ‘The river is wide, I cannot get o’er. And neither have I bright wings to fly.’ ”
Bright wings. They’d have to be 767 wings to get five people and eight horses across that. The water stretched north to south as far as the eye could see, its flat, opaque surface rippling beneath a layer of rheumy mist, the far shore all but invisible from our vantage point atop the hill.
>
I knew there was a far shore only because the map-the post-Change, Griffinized map-said so. The pre-Change map only indicated that a narrow stream called the Fox River had once inhabited the landscape somewhere out there.
A current seemed to be flowing slowly and diligently south. Was this a river of epic proportions, or a migrating lake? It hardly mattered; it lay between us and our goal, effectively cutting us off.
My frustration was sabotaged by the sudden appearance in memory of a childhood icon: a large, stuffed teddy in a red shirt sat atop my horse, tapping his wadding-filled noggin and muttering, “Think. Think. Think.” I felt an insane urge to laugh.
Magritte, hovering near Goldie, gestured skyward. “I’m going up,” she said, “so nobody flip out, okay?”
I don’t know if it did anything, but Goldie tilted back his head and began to sing, of all things, “I Can See Clearly Now.”
I bit back laughter. Colleen, too, seemed amused, and Doc… I turned to look back over my shoulder. Doc was sitting silently amid the pack train on our rear guard, wearing an expression that made me doubt he was even in the state of Illinois with the rest of us.
I glanced up at Magritte, floating upward as if made of fluff, then reined Sooner around and circled back to Doc’s side.
“You all right?”
“What?” He blinked at me like a man just awakening from a long sleep.
“You seem… I don’t know … a bit lost.”
“Ah, yes. That is it. I am… a bit lost, as you say. I … did not sleep well last night.”
“I’m sorry about that. I’m sure I didn’t help matters much with my little outburst. I apologized to Goldie.”
He was regarding me solemnly, but I had the distinct impression he was only half hearing me. “And did he accept your apology?”
“Actually, he said ‘shit happens.’ ”
“I would say that ‘shit’ is not all that happens. Good things also happen, even in this chaotic world.” His eyes shifted into focus on my face and I was suddenly too warm, realizing he must have seen me with Colleen. “Don’t let this quest we’re on make you too single-minded, Calvin. Don’t let it steal what small pieces of real life you are given.”
His gaze shifted again and I followed it to where Colleen sat astride her roan-watching us. Her eyes flew up after Magritte as soon as mine touched them.
“Why is this so hard?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “This thing with Colleen. You know what I mean. Shouldn’t it be simple?”
“I think, perhaps, it is simple, but we make it hard. With all that has changed, it seems to me that love should be the one immutable thing. I suppose that seems … what is the word-corny?”
“No. Not corny. True.”
His eyes swung to meet mine, catching me off guard. “And do you love Colleen?”
Did I? “I don’t know. She’s an admirable woman- strong, resilient, smart, vital. I wouldn’t have thought she was my ‘type’ before-whatever that is-but I … she… There’s some kind of attraction there.” I floundered. “Sometimes I think my soul is… that I’m too full of darkness to understand love. That the whole world is too full of darkness. That’s what’s hard-the ambiguity. I wish I could just know if I loved Colleen, or if it’s just chemistry.”
Doc carefully arranged his horse’s mane so it lay all on one side of her dark neck. “For you, it should be simple. You are young. Unbroken. And possessed of fewer ghosts.”
“We make our own ghosts,” I said, “and then give them permission to haunt us.”
He looked at me again, speculatively. “Your thought is your reality.”
“What?”
“Abdu’l-Baha Abbas Effendi-a nineteenth-century Persian idealist. There are infinite meanings buried in that statement. A man can spend many years pondering it, trying to apply it, yet grasp but one or two.”
The words struck a chord. Goldie had grasped at least one of those meanings. He used it to manipulate light and energy. I’d grasped one of those meanings, too, the night before we left the Preserve. But I had the feeling Doc was talking about something else and perhaps speaking more to himself than to me.
“There’s a land bridge!”
Magritte’s excited cry interrupted my thoughts. No wonder Muhammad had favored a cave for his meditations. I urged Sooner forward. When I rejoined Goldie and Enid, Magritte was bobbing at eye level, pointing south.
“Well, it’s more of a sandbar, really,” she said. “But it looks like it might go all the way across… sorta.”
Everyone turned to look at me.
“It’s all we’ve got,” I told them.
Maggie’s land bridge was about three miles south as the crow flies. I considered the possibility of finding some way to turn us all into crows for the rest of the trip, but there was no time to thoroughly ponder the effect of thought on reality, so shape-shifting was not an option.
The bridge had apparently once been part of a county-maintained road. Now it was little more than a ridge of rock and dirt and pocked tarmac that had collected sand, uprooted trees, brush, pieces of human habitation, whatever had chosen to drift down against it.
It looked treacherous as hell, but it did seem to go all the way across the river (if such it was), with the exception of some visible channels where the slow-moving current had crested it. There was no way to know if those channels were passable without going out onto the ridge.
We went.
Once we left shore, the sensation of having stepped into an alien world was overpowering. The sky overhead was dull pewter, the water greenish gray. Mist rose like dry-ice vapor to carpet the river’s surface and festoon the twists of wood and brush that bordered our dangerous corridor. All color seemed drained out of the world.
Even we looked gray.
We traveled single file, picking our way carefully across the debris, sometimes dismounting to lead the horses through narrow or difficult passes. I led the way, followed by Enid and the airborne Magritte, acting as lookout. Goldie trailed behind Enid, leading two of the three packhorses. Colleen came after, with the remaining “mule” sandwiched between her and Doc.
The rear horse in a train, Colleen had taught me, will always be a little skittish. For this reason, a mounted animal should always bring up the rear. The packhorses were nervous in spite of the precaution, and who could blame them? There was little visibility, the constant slap and moan of water, miserable damp and cold, uncertain footing, and a pervasive stew of smells, all of them unpleasant. Enough to give anyone the jitters-equine or human.
The channels we had seen from shore marked where the river had overwhelmed the tarmac and broken through, forming rough spillways. We hit a number of these in the first half of our crossing. The water in them was never more than about two feet deep-roughly knee high on your average saddle horse-and it was sluggish, as if rendered torpid by the cold.
If pressed to guess, I’d have to say the river was between six and eight miles across, including its flood plain. I couldn’t help but wonder what was feeding it and how; none of the theories I came up with were particularly comforting.
Just past the halfway mark, we came upon a long stretch of uprooted trees and boulders filled in with coarse, treacherous sands. It took an exhausting hour and a half to navigate less than seventy-five yards. We rested after that on a high spot in the narrow ridge, ate a little, spoke less, and watched the water move by around us. It had a soporific effect. If I closed my eyes I could almost imagine myself in a rowboat, drifting down a lazy, peaceful stream, fishing, maybe. Except that I had never cared for fishing and the temperature was near freezing.
I opened my eyes to a slight disturbance out in the murky water below us. What appeared to be a large tree had caught on a submerged snag and bobbed in place about thirty yards out. A moment later it just disappeared. Sucked straight down or …
Adrenaline went to high tide. I got up, no longer drowsy. “Let’s move out. We’ve still got a trek ahead of us. And the sooner we get
off this strand, the better.”
I didn’t have to say more. Everyone was as eager to move on as I was.
“Did you see that?” I asked Goldie as we sorted ourselves back into order.
“I’m not saying,” he told me, then, “What did you see?” “A tree.”
“Uh-huh. I saw a tree.”
“What was your tree doing?”
“Exhibiting un-tree-like behavior.”
“Currents,” I said.
“Oh, I certainly hope so.”
In what seemed like ages, we drew within tantalizing sight of the nether shore and I could make out the silhouettes of buildings in the distance. I glanced back at Enid. He was smiling. Magritte, floating at his shoulder, was also smiling. We could smell dry land.
Then hell erupted. Behind me someone shouted a warning. There was a wild thrashing of water, the thunder of hooves on rocky ground, a scream that could only have come from Colleen.
I twisted in the saddle. Past Enid, past Goldie and his two charges, I could see that another animal floundered in the water. It was Colleen’s pack mare. The bank she’d been traversing was gone, undercut by the river. Where the trail had been, there was now a yawning sinkhole.
The mare’s lead line, snagged around Big T’s saddle horn, threatened to drag him and Colleen both into the muddy current. The big roan’s hindquarters were already half in the sink, while his forelegs flailed at the slope, spraying wet sand and rock in every direction.
There was no way to turn Sooner on the narrow trail without ending up in the river myself. I dug in my heels and drove him up the ridge to the first place wide enough for me to slide off and scramble back.
I didn’t get far. Goldie’s abandoned mount was charging straight at me. I had nowhere to go but into the rocks and brush that studded the side of the ridge. Cursing, I struggled back up onto the trail and turned just as Colleen’s horse lost his footing and slid backward down the embankment.
Water flew. The gelding lunged upward, trying to take the bank, but the pack line snugged to his saddle horn pulled him back. He upended and hung almost upright for a moment, staggering on his hind legs. Colleen tore at the pack line. At the last possible moment she got it free and hurled it into the air, where a flash of aqua intercepted it. Magritte.