Just Cause Universe 2: The Archmage

by Ian Thomas Healy

  While Will and Tesla worked feverishly to build the guitar and load it up with as much magic as they could, the others rested and explored the small hamlet of Graz. Juice stayed in the flat they rented; a black man in Austria was a curiosity and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself or the others. Ace likewise stayed nearby, but her motives were more selfish. She spent a lot of time around Will when he wasn’t working. Shannon claimed to have seen them kissing once and Sally told her with a smile to mind her own business. The two younger girls wandered through the streets of Graz together, looked at shops, and drank tea at cafes. More than once, they were forced to politely fend off the attentions of students at the Polytechnic Institute. Between Shannon’s half-Asian looks and Sally’s petite charm, as well as the mystique of being Americans in Austria, they found the earnest young men were very curious about them.

  At the end of the second week, Will and Tesla had nearly completed the guitar. The last thing they did was to install a series of magical tone controls to modify the sound like an entire bank of effects pedals would have. Will acted like a kid in a toy store; the guitar that he and Tesla built was a far superior instrument to that he had carried previously. Its sound was thunderous, and as a magical conduit it was unparalleled. It had a very odd appearance, combining Victorian grace with modern design elements and Tesla’s unique electrical architecture. Sally pronounced it an honest-to-God steampunk creation, and rolled her eyes when the others gave her blank looks. “They’re called books,” she said. “You all ought to look at them once in awhile. Science fiction? Ever hear of it?”

  That afternoon, Sally and Shannon sat outside the small bistro which had become their favorite hang-out. They drank cups of strong spiced tea and nibbled on scones while bundled up against the chill of the Fall.

  “You know, I could really get to like Austria,” said Shannon. “I’ll have to visit it when we get back home. You know, see how it’s changed and all.”

  “Maybe it won’t have changed all that much. Modern conveniences, maybe… but it might still be just as charming.” Sally sipped her tea, careful not to burn her lips.

  “I hope so.” Shannon selected a chocolate-dipped scone from the tray provided by the cheerful hostess. “Say, look at that.” She nodded her head toward a young man and woman arguing across the street.

  The young man was angry, insistent, and gesticulated wildly. The girl, not much older than Sally and Shannon by her looks, hissed back at him in rapid-fire German. The man reached out and grabbed her arm. Her other hand looped around and caught him across the cheek in a lightning-quick open-handed slap. Sally was impressed. “She’s fast. I mean, really fast.”

  “Should we intervene?” Shannon pushed back her chair.

  Matching red splotches colored both of the man’s cheeks as his temper rose to the boiling point. He raised a fist up over his head. Sally checked to see if anyone was watching. “Be right back.” She zipped across the street and closed her hand around the man’s wrist.

  “Was auf—” began the man.

  Sally felt a little silly, confronting him in her fashionable-but-very un-super clothing. She raised her purse in threat. “Let her go, handsome, or you get the business.”

  The young woman looked shocked. The man glared at Sally and released his hold on the woman. Sally, her reactions amped up from her dash across the street, saw his jaw muscles clench as he started to swing at her with his free hand. She brought the purse up and around in a quick overhand loop. With a metallic thunk, it connected solidly with the top of his head. He dropped to the ground, knocked unconscious.

  “D-danke,” said the young woman. “I… speak… small English.”

  “You’re welcome.” Sally beamed. “No reason to let him go on like that. He’ll wake up with one hell of a headache and maybe think twice about picking on someone half his size in the future.”

  The woman looked confused as she tried to follow Sally’s speech. Shannon hurried up to them. “What’s going on? Everything happened so fast.”

  “It’s all good,” said Sally. “I was just explaining to… uh…” She shrugged at the young woman.

  “Zala,” said the woman.

  “Zala,” repeated Sally. “Huh. I was just explaining to Zala that hopefully this guy won’t bug her anymore after this.”

  “I should say so,” said Shannon. “What did you hit him with? I heard that from across the street.”

  Sally laughed and withdrew her horseshoes from her purse. “Never leave home without ‘em.”

  Zala’s eyes widened as she looked at the steel horsehoes.

  “Great anti-mugging device. Maintenance-free. My grandma always said a lady should always have a horseshoe handy for mashers. Although…” Sally scrunched up her face. “I was never quite sure what a masher was.”

  Zala smiled. She had pretty, straight teeth. “Ya, ya. Das Hufeisen. How you say?” She pointed to the implements Sally held.

  “Horseshoe,” said Sally.

  “Horse… shoe,” repeated Zala. “Yah. Wie der Blitz. Danke wieder. Uh… thank you again.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Zala looked helplessly at them. “You… names?”

  “Oh. Silly me,” laughed Sally. “I’m Sally. This is Shannon. We’re just visiting here from America.”

  Zala nodded solemnly. “Yah. Cowboys.”

  Shannon burst out in laughter. “Such an impression we leave around the world.”

  The man Sally had hit groaned and stirred.

  “Oh! Klaus!” said Zala.

  “You better get going,” said Sally.

  “And so had we,” added Shannon.

  They headed in their separate directions. Sally and Shannon walked back toward the flat in which they were staying with the others. “You see her slap that guy? I wonder if she’s a parahuman,” said Shannon.

  Sally shrugged. “She was pretty quick. I suppose there are parahumans here in the past. They can’t have been very powerful, though.” She reached for the doorknob and stopped with her hand on it.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Shannon. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  “I think maybe I have. My grandma said she got the horseshoe tradition from her grandmother. That’s why she carried them as Colt back in World War II.”

  “Are you saying you think Zala is your… what, great… great… grandmother?” Shannon counted off generations on her fingers.

  Sally shrugged. “I don’t know. Speedy reflexes. Horseshoes. I’ll have to ask Grandma Judy when I get back.”

  The next day they all trekked several miles out of the town and Will cut loose with some amazing magic, making sounds that none of them had ever heard come from a guitar before. When he used it to destroy, trees, boulders, and one small hill flew apart into splinters. But his power could also be used to repair, and the shattered earth swirled around to smooth itself out at the touch of his notes. Grass and trees sprang forth from the earth like a time-lapse film until there was no evidence they had ever been destroyed. Will’s eyes shone and his body crackled with power as he absorbed ambient magical energy from the region, using the guitar as a conduit.

  Tesla was very pleased. He’d learned a lot from Will’s explanations, and felt that there were a lot of directions he could explore further. He was enchanted by Sally’s description of Colorado and promised he’d visit it someday. He promised that he’d keep their secrets and wished them the best of luck in returning to their own time.

  They booked rail passage back to the coast. Although they’d been frugal with their money, Juice was still worried that they wouldn’t have enough to get passage all the way back to Colorado. Will solved that problem by conjuring up a bar of gold.

  “Is it real?” Sally touched the cold metal in fascination.

  “Yep,” said Will with pride. “Good thing I’m not a greedy type.”

  “Hmmm.” Juice frowned. “Did you actually create this out of nothing? You created matter?”

  “Yeah.
Why, is that a problem?”

  “I thought I read somewhere that matter and energy can’t be created, only changed.”

  Will laughed. “This is magic, dude! Physical laws don’t apply.” He strummed the strings once and a shower of rose petals fell from the roof of their car.

  “Are you okay, Will? You don’t seem like yourself,” said Shannon.

  “He’s fine.” Ace put a protective arm around his shoulders. “He’s loaded with magic. That would make anyone a little weird.”

  “That’s it. That’s it exactly,” said Will. He chuckled and the floral pattern on the seats of their cabin changed to a checkerboard.

  “All right,” said Juice doubtfully. “I just don’t want it to turn into a problem.”

  “No problems. I promise. Not for us anyway. That bastard Frazier, though… He’s going to have some serious problems.” Will’s joyful demeanor turned solemn. “I’ll make sure of that.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”

  -Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator

  October, 1876

  Denver, Colorado

  The journey back to Colorado was eventful. A series of storms crossed paths with the heroes’ America-bound steamship. In the mornings, they found the crew busy chipping ice off the decks. The choppy seas gave Sally another difficult bout of seasickness. She fell horribly ill for the duration and lost what weight she’d gained back during their stay in Austria.

  By the time the liner dropped its gangplank in Boston harbor, Sally swore her feet would never again touch the deck of a boat. They spent a chilly night in Boston and gave Sally a chance to rest and recuperate from her massive illness. In the month that they’d been away, temperatures had grown cold and they all bought heavy coats for the rail journey.

  As they waited for the train on the platform in Boston, a young black man came up to them, very excited, calling out, “John! John Henry! I thought you was dead in the War, down in Ala-bammy!” He ran up and pumped a surprised Juice’s hand in excitement.

  “I’m sorry, I think you have me confused with someone else,” said Juice.

  The man looked closely at Juice’s face. “Well I’ll be,” he said. “You a relation of his? You could be his brother.”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Juice. “I was born here in Boston.”

  “My name’s Willie. Willie Washington. Named after the President,” said the man with pride. “I work for the C & O. I’m up here with Mister Robbins, negotiatin’ for steel prices. So you ain’t got any family down South at all?”

  “Uh, no. I sure don’t. Listen, uh, Willie…” A shrill whistle sounded as a steam engine chugged alongside of the platform. Juice gave him a weak smile. “I’d love to stay and chat with you, but this is my ride here.”

  “Oh,” said the man. “I didn’t get your name, Mister.”

  “James.” Juice hefted his valise and headed for the nearest car as the others watched him, entertained by his discomfort. “Nice to have met you, Willie.”

  “Same here, James.” The man doffed his cap and walked away from the train toward the freight offices.

  “John Henry?” asked Shannon. “Wasn’t he that guy? That railroad guy?”

  “Hey, yeah.” Will started to unsnap the latches on the guitar case he and Tesla had built just before they left. “I remember that song from the Disney cartoon.”

  “Please,” Juice sounded pained. “Spare us.”

  Will shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “Hey, maybe you’re related to him. I mean, John Henry.” Sally grinned at Juice. “I think I met my great-great-great grandmother in Austria.”

  “John Henry might not even have been a real person,” said Juice. “A legend.”

  “You’re pretty legendary yourself,” said Ace. “It’s not a bad thought that he might have been one of your ancestors if he existed, is it?”

  Sally grinned at him. “I bet it’s true. I’m going to tell your girls when we get back.” She’d met his two daughters numerous times; neither of the teenagers exhibited the slightest bit of interest in anything involving their father.

  “I’m sure they won’t care in the least.” Juice’s eyes went far away for a moment, a father missing his children.

  Temperatures dropped as they went further west, and by the time they passed through Kansas, snow blew through the air, accumulating along the dry grasses of the prairie. The train whistle woke Sally from a light doze. The cabin was cold and ice had formed on the windows. She ran a hand across the glass at high speed, melting the ice quickly with the friction. The sky was overcast and the countryside was completely covered with snow. Then she saw the reason the engineer sounded the whistle. A herd of bison trudged through the snow, their large furry heads coated with snow as they tried to uncover the prairie grasses.

  Shannon leaned against the compartment wall, hunched under a blanket and snored gently. Sally leaned over and tapped her on the shoulder. “Huh?” Shannon opened her eyes and looked around blearily. “What’s up?”

  Sally pointed out the window. “Check it out.”

  Shannon looked at the herd in the snow. The train had slowed to a crawl. “I wonder if they’re on the tracks or something?” She pressed her cheek against the cold glass to try to see toward the front of the train.

  Over the clanking of the cars and squeaks of the suspension, three gunshots rang out. Two buffalo staggered and dropped into the snow. The sounds of masculine laughter, jeering, and catcalls could be heard from elsewhere on the train. Shannon and Sally looked at each other in horror. Another burst of shooting dropped more of the stately animals.

  Shannon leaped to her feet, her face dark red. “This stops now,” she muttered to Sally, and vanished through a wall to leave behind only a thin trail of mist.

  Sally went out into the passage to look for the group of shooters. An icy breeze came from the open door at the end of the coach where a cluster of men had rifles out and laughed as they shot. Suddenly, the ghostly form of Shannon rose up in their midst. She dragged her fingers across her face, distorting it into a frightful mask, and screamed at them.

  The men screamed likewise, and leaped from the train in fear, tumbling into the deep snowdrifts alongside the tracks. They made no effort to get back on the train as it pushed resolutely on past the slow-moving herd. Shannon solidified and looked very pleased with herself.

  “That’ll show them,” she said with glee. “Did you see their faces?”

  Sally frowned. “They could die out here, you know.”

  Shannon shrugged. “Seems a fair trade to me. Assholes.”

  “It’s not right!”

  Shannon’s eyes narrowed. “Everyone has to die sometime, Sally. Not one person we’ve seen this entire trip is alive in our time.”

  “Yeah, but leaving them in the snow is pretty cruel.”

  “Not as cruel as shooting buffalo for sport. It’s not like they were hunting for meat or something. Don’t you know the buffalo were almost hunted to extinction during this time period?”

  “Sure, but they came back. There are lots of them in our time.”

  “So that makes it okay that these guys were just shooting them?”

  “Of course it doesn’t. But it isn’t any better for those guys to freeze to death.”

  Shannon paused, looking over Sally’s shoulder at the horizon. “I don’t think that’s going to be an issue,” she said quietly. Sally turned to look.

  Four horsemen sat atop a ridge. It was hard to make out details at this distance, but their long dark hair, buckskin outfits, and unsaddled horses left little to the imagination. They began to ride downward toward the men in the snow.

  “No wonder they hated us so much,” whispered Shannon.

  “Shouldn’t we do something?” Sally couldn’t help but feel sorry for the men as
they floundered around in the snow and tried to run after the train in spite of their scare.

  “Look, what’s done is done. If they’re meant to survive, they’ll tell their grandkids about the ghost they saw on a train once. If they’re not meant to, what business is it of ours to interfere?”

  “We already interfered. Or rather, you did.”

  “What’s going on, girls?” asked Juice as he stepped up behind them.

  “Nothing, sir,” said Shannon.

  Juice raised an eyebrow at Sally.

  “Nothing.” She felt her friendship with Shannon was starting to grow a little strained.

  “Well, then let’s get this nothing back inside where it’s a bit warmer,” said Juice as he guided the two of them back into the car.

  The remainder of the trip to Denver was uneventful, if snowy. Sally and Shannon avoided speaking to one another about Shannon’s actions on the train. When they’d stepped off the train into a chill wind carrying minuscule ice crystals, Will and Ace went to see about renting or buying a wagon and team and outfitting it for travel across the snowy plains. Juice, Shannon, and Sally pored over maps of the region as they tried to figure out exactly where the team’s headquarters would be a hundred and thirty years later. They would have to place Sally’s horseshoe where she would find it in the future. Once they did that, Will and Tesla had agreed that it would be the best possible chance for them to return to their own time.

  Nobody talked about Sally’s fear that she was destined to die. It was constantly in the back of her mind though, yammering to be let loose like a prisoner in chains.

  Will returned without Ace, carrying his guitar case as if it were an extension of his own body. “Congratulations, we are now the proud owners of a Benchley and Rowe covered wagon with a pair Clydesdales.” He winked. “Same as the beer company.”