Blue Magic

by A. M. Dellamonica

  Time travel seemed elegant and clean; it let you do things over, do them better. It was 20/20 hindsight and an opportunity to act on it.

  The summer Back to the Future had first come out, he saw it a dozen times in the theater. He bought a skateboard and dislocated his shoulder trying to ride behind the back of a truck, just like Marty McFly.

  When he decided to travel back and save Albert Lethewood, he imagined himself materializing in the past, in the pre-Spill world he missed so much. He had envisioned looking at graffiti-painted walls covered in gang signs instead of Alchemite symbols. Of seeing the pale, uncontaminated sky.

  Now the time had come. He thought himself back using the magic pen … and immediately felt a bone-deep sense of wrongness. He squeezed his eyes shut, thinking this was stupid, he was in New York with magically spun clothes. No wallet, no ID, no money … What was he going to do? Hitchhike to Oregon?

  Next, he thought: Awfully quiet for New York.

  Opening his eyes, he saw his bedroom in Boise. He was staring at a ceiling-mounted poster—the Violent Femmes, American Music. His shoulder throbbed, and the broken halves of his ill-fated skateboard lay on the floor.

  A tarnished silver pen was clenched in his fist.

  “Oh, no.”

  The dusty mirror above his dresser confirmed his guess. He hadn’t physically shifted in time. He’d just taken up residence in the body of his eighteen-year-old self.

  “Mouse magic,” he muttered, as if it were a curse.

  He’d run away, he remembered. Out of the blue, one summer afternoon. He was already reaching for a scrap of paper, thinking about the kind of note a kid would leave, something so the police wouldn’t take his absence for an abduction, something to make it seem minor. He was of legal age. If he did it right, they wouldn’t look for him.

  He had been gone for days, he remembered, and when he came back, he’d said he didn’t remember anything. Nobody believed him.

  His wallet was on the dresser, and inside were his driver’s license and a checkbook. His account wasn’t exactly full—he’d bought a car three months earlier—but there was gas money, enough to get him to Oregon, especially if he raided the fridge.

  That would be smart, wouldn’t it? It would bolster the runaway thing. Loading up on sandwiches and fruit, he hit the bank, emptied his account, and got on the road.

  He had to stop several times, because staying in the past took so much energy. He would lock himself in a public washroom and draw electricity from the power grid, weaving letrico, triggering blackouts, and driving on.

  On the radio, the pop stations were playing the soundtrack of his youth, all the cutting-edge punk stuff he’d loved. The songs were oldies now—how weird was that?

  Twelve hours into the drive, he found himself swearing at everyone who passed him. He was furious, he realized. He’d meant to stop in Portland on the way to Indigo Springs—watch the kids heading off to school, just get a look.

  They wouldn’t be born for years. He hadn’t meant to come back so far.

  Cheated again, he thought, turning up the radio.

  Forget the kids—how could he approach Albert Lethewood? If Will scared him, Albert might run.

  The point was to keep Albert alive and working. Astrid wouldn’t take over the well, Sahara Knax wouldn’t be contaminated.…

  If Astrid’s dad survived, she’d have a better life.

  We’ll never meet, he thought, and that hurt now, but it wouldn’t soon. He would never know what he’d missed.

  Astrid, eyes sparkling as she chanted one thing after another. The weird imagination that went into the chantments, and her forthright honesty. The way she clung to everyone, Jacks, Ev, Olive. Even Mark, whom she didn’t especially like.

  Loyal to a fault. Will’s expresson, in the rearview mirror, looked guilty. Can’t say that about myself, can I?

  “She deserves better,” he said to his teenaged self. “Maybe this way she’ll get it.”

  It was strange to see Indigo Springs before it had been flattened. The bank was intact, the town square a bit run-down. The Indigo Springs Grand Hotel and the hospital stood at opposite corners of a well-manicured lawn. Up on the ridge, the copper roof of the fire tower gleamed in the sun. People went about their business, never guessing that in a few decades their homes would be rubble.

  Not if I succeed, Will thought.

  He found Albert in an antique shop, picking through stuff, dressed in jeans and a grubby T-shirt. Looking aimless, he weighed the cost of two magically receptive items.

  Albert had always been broke, Astrid said.

  Will dug out a twenty. “I’ll buy them.”

  Albert pushed the money away. “Why would ya?”

  “For an hour of your time.”

  “You’re looking for drugs, kid, I ain’t that guy.”

  “Buy the doodads,” Will said. “They’ve got a certain sparkle.”

  Albert flinched. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “No choice.”

  Snatching the twenty, Albert bought the antiques, then headed out to a beat-up pickup truck parked on the street. He fiddled with the keys as Will got in. “Where to?”

  “The house on Mascer Avenue?”

  Albert started the truck. “There’s a Burning Man working the area, son.”

  “I know who he is.”

  “Think that’ll save you?”

  “It’s Lee Glade,” Will said.

  “Jesus!” Albert was caught off guard as he was shifting gears. The truck bucked, almost stalling. “I’m going to be married to the Chief’s ex-wife.”

  “And his son is going to fall for your daughter.” It was almost fun, being the know-it-all for a change.

  At the mention of Astrid, Albert bristled. “Why are you here?”

  “Lee kills you,” Will said.

  “No. He gets me, he gets Astrid too. He doesn’t get her, I know that, because…”

  Because the well opens, Will thought. Because you’ve seen the future. “He doesn’t recognize you. You have a chantment, a coat…”

  Albert swallowed. “Keeps people from recognizing me.”

  “Lee shoots you, but he doesn’t make the ID. You die of sea-glass poisoning.”

  “He doesn’t figure it out?”

  “He thinks you’re a drunk, Albert.”

  “Then Astrid’s safe,” Albert said.

  “Nobody’s safe if he shoots you,” Will snapped. “Not you, not Astrid, not even Lee. It’s going to go terribly wrong.”

  Albert parked behind the house, the one Astrid would one day inherit. Will had seen it destroyed on TV. Here and now, Patience Skye was puttering next door, cleaning her front window with vinegar and newspaper.

  Will suppressed a pang of guilt. Patience had caught a lucky magical break, a new lease on life. Magic, and Sahara, had helped her.

  Magic and Sahara burned Caro, Will reminded himself. Maybe if Patience Skye gets carted off to an old folks’ home in twenty years’ time, Jacks Glade and my wife will live to ripe old age.

  “Come on.” Albert led Will indoors. In the front room, a blue smear marked the wood floor in front of the fireplace; a roll of pink carpet lay nearby, awaiting installation. Albert fussed with it for a second. When he turned, he was wearing a girlish silver pendant around his neck, a feather. He spoke, his voice suddenly compelling: “Why are you here, son?”

  “I’m in love with your daughter,” Will said.

  He spoke without thinking; he couldn’t stop himself. The feather, Will thought. Sahara called it Siren. She used it to control other people.…

  “My daughter is five,” Albert said.

  “I will be in love with her, when she’s grown,” he amended. Or I would have been, he thought, but I’m going to make all that go away.

  He felt that electric jolt of grief again.

  Albert tilted his head. “How’s that brought you here?”

  “I’m trying to prevent the magical spill,” Will said. “To take S
ahara Knax out of the equation.”

  Albert slipped off the feather with a sigh. “That’s not what happens.”

  “Don’t give me the fixed destiny crap.”

  “I never went to college, kid, and I’m no philosopher, but you know what I figure destiny is? Stuff you can’t change. Winter comes after autumn. Everybody dies.”

  “I’ve heard this. You tell it to Astrid, and she tells me.”

  “Listen this time. You can’t keep the magic from busting into the real.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Free will doesn’t mean we control it all. We just get to shape what is. We all die, but how? Sometimes we go to war, sometimes we destroy ourselves with drugs.”

  “Sometimes we don’t give up.”

  “Sure, fight. Diet and exercise, pay the best doctors, buy time. Hold it off, at best make the end less painful.…”

  “There’s nothing wrong with less painful, Albert.”

  “Think about heart transplants, son. You need a heart transplant, someone else has to die.”

  “If you need a kidney, they don’t. Don’t be simplistic. Every dead organ donor saves more than one life.”

  “That’s just it. The recipients still die. Just … not of that.” Albert sighed. “This is why I failed debate. What’s your name?”

  “Will Forest.”

  “Look, Will Forest—grumbles say this well’s the last well. They say it’s gonna blow, that Astrid lets the magic out. She kills hundreds, or thousands … or millions. They tell me this when Astrid’s not born; I’m barely married. And yeah, at first I figure to keep it from happening. I ask my sister to take over for me. She freaks, moves out East.

  “I try to bring her back. It’s a fight. Now my sister hates me. Any kid she has I never get to meet, so I can’t recruit them. Also, I showed her some family heirlooms, chantments, and she stole ’em. All I did was create a new problem.

  “Oh well, I figure. I got a cousin I can initiate. And I’ll make him better than me, more powerful. But—”

  “But he had leukemia,” Will said. “Astrid told me.”

  “Initiating him causes more problems. He gets the greeds, trying to cure himself. We almost get caught. He makes stuff I can’t get rid of, dangerous stuff. That damned pocketknife, remember? He spends the cash Granny set aside for us. And being so broke, it works a hell of a number on my marriage.”

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “You gotta work with the grumbles, son, not against ’em. I hadn’t figured that out. I tried again. New apprentice, a friend. Maybe if he’s even more powerful, I think. So I make him more powerful. Oh, he’s golden—till someone murders him.”

  “Lee,” Will said. “Lee murdered him.”

  “Lee Glade,” Albert said, “I can’t believe it.”

  “You’d better if you want to live.”

  “Well. I turn to my daughter, do the thing I tried to wriggle out of with all that free will. By then the magic trick I’m best at is making chanters. I turn Astrid into this power, this typhoon.… Of course she’s gonna remake the world.”

  Will squatted next to the fireplace. The crack between real and unreal was here, hidden within the hearth. He examined the bricks, looking for a fake, and Albert popped it out. A pinprick of blue welled through the crack.

  “You’re not initiated; don’t touch it,” he said as Will was about to put out his hand.

  “Right.” He sat a respectful distance away. “I could kill Lee Glade.”

  “You’re a stringbean of a kid.”

  “I have a powerful motive.”

  “Sweet little Jackson Glade,” Albert said after a second. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly, am I right?”

  “So?”

  “What happens if his daddy’s murdered? Maybe some nice uncle type, another Burning Man, comes to town and says ‘Witches killed your pop.’ Convinces him to start looking for me?”

  “There’s Sahara Knax.”

  Albert teased a plastic bag out from under the roll of carpet, coming up with a kaleidoscope. He handed it over. “Look east. What you do is—”

  “Astrid told me how it works.” He cranked its eyepiece to the left. The wall and intervening houses melted away. A puppet theater had been set up in the town square. A female Ev Lethewood was there, with Astrid and Sahara. Olive sat nearby with a baby on her lap.

  “There’s what, fifty kids there?” Albert said.

  “So?”

  “Any of ’em could become Astrid’s new best friend. Any of them could do more damage than Sahara ever thought of. For that, you’re gonna attack a six-year-old?”

  “She gets my wife killed,” Will said, but there was no force in his voice. “She’s destroyed my daughter’s mind.”

  Albert put a hand on his shoulder. “Fight the grumbles and it gets worse.”

  He said, through a tight throat: “You give Jacks a magic watch, you hypocrite. You try to save him.”

  “We all have our moments of weakness,” Albert said.

  Will felt a wave of fatigue—he was out of power again. “I don’t suppose you’ve got electricity at this place?”

  “Can’t afford her.”

  “Could you at least buy a bulletproof vest?”

  “I’ll talk to the grumbles. If it’s a good idea…”

  “Even if Astrid inherits the well a few years later—”

  “Maybe Lee woulda got me next week if you hadn’t come.” With a weary grin, Albert closed up the fireplace.

  “At least let me teach you how to draw power—”

  “I think you’re about out of that yourself.” He stretched, joints popping. “Let yourself love her, son. Do you both good.”

  A rush of spots before Will’s eyes, a sense of dizziness, and suddenly he was in the bathroom of a New York hotel, hiding in the pitch black of a power outage.

  Before he could look for Bramblegate, he found himself reclining in a leather chair in the Indigo Springs bomb shelter.

  Astrid was there, whipping off the scarf she used as a disguise. She snatched the magic pen, snapping it in half. “Would you have done it? Unmade all this?”

  He clambered to his feet. “What do you expect? Passion’s never going to give me the key to that padlock.”

  “Sahara’ll be here soon. Passion will follow her.”

  “I’m tired of waiting for soon and someday, Astrid. If I’d succeeded, your father would be alive. The Chief, Jacks—”

  “And Caro. You’d be unhappily married.”

  “Is that what matters here? You’re jealous?”

  “What matters is trust.” Her words were clipped. “After Sahara … do you know how hard it’s been?”

  “You’ve just figured out believing’s hard?” he asked. “You expect me to buy in to your happily ever after.”

  “I never pushed you! Not on being a chanter, not on us.”

  “Why didn’t the grumbles warn us Caro was going to get flash-fried?”

  “I don’t know, Will, I don’t.”

  “Maybe they wanted her out of the way. If my becoming your concubine is their idea—”

  “So don’t get involved with me, then.”

  “Thanks for that, Astrid, I won’t.”

  The ground shivered. She turned, fighting, as he’d seen her fight before, to tuck the hurt beneath her poker face.

  I did that. I hurt her.

  Let yourself love her, Albert had said.

  Cobalt blooms of vitagua roiled through her eyes. Was she losing control? Was there more emotion there than he’d guessed?

  Closing his eyes, Will reached for the magical well, imagining a deep pond, a reservoir without ripples. The ground stilled. They stood in silence, two chanters working together to stabilize the break between worlds.

  Okay. Try again. Stay calm. “Astrid—”

  “You were right, you know.” She braced herself against one of the planters. “My feelings about Sahara when you got here, they were still tangled. I’d loved her my whol
e life. I knew she’d never come back to me…”

  He thought again of Caro. “Giving up on someone entirely is very tough.”

  “Know what I saw that day at the courthouse? The Sahara I loved wasn’t even real, just someone I imagined. Another pattern, I guess. You’ve always been kind to me, but…”

  Cool waters, no ripples, everything still and serene. “I’m imaginary too? Is that what you think?”

  “If all I’ve ever been to you is the way back to your kids, Will, it’s okay. I get it.”

  A thrum underfoot. “Now you’re saying I’m the one who doesn’t care? Astrid, you’re not even attracted to men.”

  “Then you must be a woman, Will, because—”

  “You want a man? Go back to Jacks.”

  “Jacks develops a thing for Katarina.” She giggled, sharply, a little shocked. “Katarina … I didn’t know…”

  “Dammit, Astrid, we’re talking about our relationship.”

  She stepped close to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and staring upward with vitagua-tainted, unblinking eyes. Will tried to pull back, but she hung on. He paused, balked, wanting and not wanting to shove her. Frustration simmered outward from his chest; the ground shook again, and this time it was him losing control. The space between their bodies warmed, and she just held on.

  You’re going to fall in love today, she’d said when they first met, but how could he love the end of the world, the bringer of so much destruction? It felt like betrayal, even though Caro had left him, even though she was gone.

  Astrid’s body, lithe and muscular, her lightly freckled skin warm against his. All that power and passion, and the ground bucked beneath them.

  “This is all your fault,” he said, and with that he let go of something—he couldn’t have said what—and bent to kiss her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  THE ROSARITE COILED AROUND Ev’s wrist sank its teeth deep into his flesh over the next several days. It didn’t hurt or impede the use of his hand. The arm was heavy; that was all.

  He might have ignored it, if not for the coarse hair coming in on his legs, the ache in his forehead where the goat horns had broken through … and the madness.