by Sheena Bandy
Not bothering such trivialities as asking for permission, she flopped down on the couch and reached for the remote. She turned on the screen and saw people screaming and banging their heads to hard music and flashing lights.
Maji flipped through the channels. It was like she'd seen everything that was on. She went past several music stations, talk shows, documentaries, and soap operas before she found something she could deal with: cartoons.
Animations, to say the least. These cartoons were definitely not for children.
"Porn?" Jakob asked.
"Yes. Yes it is."
When you don't want sex, you'll find that even the best porn has the ability to be repulsive to you. When you've been chaste for nine months and your hormones are exploding inside you, the worst porn is like a mirage in a desert.
So Maji found herself watching animated characters, perfect and unrealistic, doing more and more raunchy things to each other. She was just on the edge of rutting against the couch like a bitch in heat.
Jakob eventually left his laptop and went into his bedroom. Maji considered doing the same. Not going to her room; going to his. But she settled for flipping the channel onto something more appropriate. If she was going to seduce Jakob, she'd do it with a bit more class. She switched it back to the Animal channel and settled in.
The Sharks were gathering around a whale the biologists had found fermenting on a beach and dragged out to sea. The sharks acted like every other species does when drunk and started to pair off.
Maji gave up on television and went to take a cold shower.
She opened the door and chucked her clothes to the floor and turned on the tap. The water ran firm over her shoulders as she took deep breaths. She sat down in the bottom of the tub, looking at an unexplained burn on her left foot.
A knock on the bathroom door had her up on her feet. She'd stayed in there longer than she'd thought. She got out and heard a more frantic knock on the door. She grabbed the towel and opened the door. Jakob ran past her and straight to the toilet.
"I'll only be a moment." He said quietly, turning away from her and towards the toilet.
She'd never thought she'd be stuck in this situation with anyone but Morpheus. Who wasn't even real. Awkward didn't begin to cover it.
"You don't mind me being in here?" She asked quietly, "Or that I'm naked?"
"I've seen you more intimately than this." He said, "And I'm fairly sure you've seen my piece before."
That made sense. Kinda.
"Still." She said, covering herself with her hands.
"Don't worry." He zipped. "You're really not my type."
He turned around to face her. His apologetic smile said it all. She'd never have guessed that Jakob was gay. Not that she believed the stereotypes. But Jakob was so - well, butch. He stepped out and left her to her shower.
Maji turned off the water and put her clothes back on. The edge was off and now that she knew Jakob's preferences, there wasn't any danger. She tied her hair up on her head. She didn't really care how she looked.
Jakob had returned to his spot in the sitting room and the television was turned off again. Maji sat down and could feel him eyeing her. Computer programming required concentration, apparently. Who knew? She would have to get some books to occupy her.
But the remote was tempting, sensuous buttons on the tabletop. She wondered if she could manage to keep the volume low enough to avoid bugging Jakob.
"Do you have any books?" She asked, stretching out on the couch.
"The library's through there." He pointed.
The books on the shelves were really sub-par. She missed the afternoons spent in the library of Morpheus’ mansion, not that it was real. She missed doing research about different kinds of ghouls and demons. She could remember so vividly the missions she'd been allowed. But they were all just a dream.
Unreal memories brought her down. She sat in an armchair and pulled a book into her lap. There were no books on magic but there were plenty of technical manuals and cyborgs, which she'd researched before, were partly tech.
She'd learned so much, experienced so much. None of it was real. She'd never captured a Banshee. She'd never led an army against the cyborgs. She'd never fallen in love with a horrible man and she'd never had a baby.
Did she wish she had? After not wanting it and then being forced to have it, did she wish that had been real?
It still felt like a part of her was missing, calling out.
Maji tossed aside the book. She'd fallen asleep and dreamt waking in Astral. She didn't know what could have lodged that in her subconscious. That's all dreams were, right? She got up to make one more round of the library. Nothing caught her interest. She drudged back to the bedroom and forced herself back to sleep again.
'Maybe I could get a computer.' The internet was bound to be more interesting than this library.
She felt her stomach growl with enthusiasm. The kitchen was at the other end of the sitting room. She opened the fridge to find the rubbery, thin pizza from the night before.
Nicking a few, she went back into the sitting room where Jakob was still working. She looked onto his screen for a moment, just to watch the code scrolling past.
She scoffed at him and went back into the little library. She'd be spending most of the time in there. Just like in the dream. She sighed and ran her fingers along the edge of the books until one of them caught her attention.
'Lucid Dreams and Astral Travel'
Magic?
Maji picked up the book and began to read though it. She didn't get very far before a knock on the door interrupted. She got up and went to the library door. Easing it open, she found that the knock hadn't been on the library door at all.
The entryway had four or five guests standing in it, greeted with shaking hands and one armed hugs from Jakob.
She went through the sitting room, peering down at the computer screen as she passed to see commands running themselves. Jakob handed over her shoes.
Everything went by too fast. They were in the back of a truck and everyone was talking.
"What's yer name?" One of them shouted.
"Maji!" She shouted back.
The rest of the ride was wind blown hair and shouted conversations. She was ready for the truck to stop by the time they got into town. She looked around for a bookstore. She could possibly find more books like her Astral Travel guide, and perhaps she could learn to do some real magic after all.
The truck stopped in front of a little grocery store. Maji was bored already.
"Ready?" Jakob offered a hand to help her out of the bed. She landed on the ground with a scratching of gravel and stumbled forward.
"We need groceries and light bulbs," Jakob said, "didn't you say something about books, Maji?"
It wasn't long before the basket they'd found was full.
"Books're over there." one of the boys pointed.
The book section was small. It was sharing the magazine rack and most of the books were Romance novels lonely old housewives liked to read. Maji knelt down on the tile floor and browsed through the titles, stopping occasionally to read the backs of them. There weren't many interesting books and none of them could teach anyone anything.
She headed back to find the others. She looked down the aisle and saw a very familiar set of blue eyes looking down the aisle at her. She leaned in close and looked at the face of the baby and felt the pull in her chest. She needed to see a professional about this.
She turned the corner and found them, every last one, staring at one wall in an aisle that stood second to the last in a row.
A wall full of fireworks meant for Independence day.
This did not bode well for the woods they were living in. She took one of the boys by the arm and tried to lead them away from the aisle. But they wouldn't budge. She pulled on Jakob's arm but he shrugged her off. She stood between the boys and their explosives.
"What?"
Maji wanted to smack him and drag all of th
em away but didn't. They were her only way home.
Jakob checked the price tags and they all shifted away from the aisle. Once they'd paid for their groceries, they all piled back into the truck and headed back to the wood. She listened to the shouted conversations of the three boys sharing the truck bed with her and started to drift off. She put her head back against the brim of the truck and let the air at her ears drift her off towards sleep.
HONK
Maji woke with a start. She didn't have time to look around before the screeching tires and spinning world and shards of flying metal took her from consciousness.
***
Maji woke in a very white room. She looked around and saw that she wasn't the only one there. She was one of five. The other four were all still unconscious, the curtains pulled around their beds, but she could tell who they were. The three boys from the back of the truck- plus one. She looked at the shapes of bodies through the semi-transparent curtains and recognized the largest of the four: Jakob.
They'd both survived! She looked pretty rough, she could tell from the bloodied arms draped across the blue coverlet. When the others woke up, they would have to face what had happened.
Not that she even knew what happened.
The next few minutes brought a nurse with a jug of cold water with a bent straw. Maji asked for some orange juice. She was assured she would get some soon. She expected to have to wait till mealtime nonetheless. She took the offered glass and drank. It had been too long a night and she felt that somehow the worst was yet to come.
She didn't know how long she was out or how long the others would be. She could be in for a long wait.
The sun came through the window and right into her eyes. 93 million miles away and it still had perfect aim. The nurse closed the blinds without having to be asked. Maji tried her best to smile but she was too tired and in pain. Everything hurt. She leaned back on the pillows and drank some more from the glass. It tasted sweet and tangy. Not like orange juice, but close. Like something she'd had before, in a dream, or in a world far, far away.
Astral.
Just as before, the juice from the fruit put her to sleep quickly. She was falling away from the world she had been in and into another one, a different one. Flying, falling. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't keep it up. She had to be awake.
Which she was very shortly thereafter.
Just not in the hospital.
Maji looked around her. The familiar Astral cottage. She didn't know what happened. She looked at her arms. They were healed. It could be a dream, she realized. But she felt solid, unlike last time she'd been in Astral. She could feel her breathing and she was actually hungry.
Trina was there, as though summoned. She wrapped her arms around Maji's neck. She seemed so real, but Maji was sure she couldn't be. Maji looked out the window. It was a very different landscape than Astral's. It was a frozen wasteland. The inside of the house felt like Astral and looked like Astral, but this certainly wasn't Astral.
"Maji." Trina pleaded in the strange voice she'd had at first, so far away and distant, like it couldn't quite reach.
Maji woke in the hospital room again with a nurse standing over her bed. She looked away from the nurse as quickly as she could and felt the woman start to tend to wounds.
When the nurse finished, Maji settled down and waited for something to kick in and send her back to sleep. She could tell the boys hadn't woken up yet.
When the next seize of sedatives took affect, Maji let herself fall prey to the darkness.
She could hear screaming in the distance. It sounded familiar, like someone she'd known all her life. She followed the sounds to the lee of the hill. Some baneful creature, a woman as it seemed, screeched and howled and clawed at the shields around a hooded mage. She recognized the scene immediately.
That mage was herself.
She watched as the shields broke loose, as they had. Herself was thrown back by angry black nails. She grabbed a few chunks of raggedy grey hair.
The Bean Sidhe continued her rampage until the past Maji was lying bleeding on the ground. If Maji hadn't experienced the scene herself, she would have worried for the life of the wounded mage. At any moment, however, Morpheus would appear and save his minion. He always had.
Not that he was any safer than the Bean Sidhe.
Maji looked on as the Bean Sidhe screeched and screamed and howled her sorrows, soon followed by the tears of the cursed demon. Tears that were leaking from the red eyes, down the thin, white face.
The tears pooled along the figure's chin and dripped lightly down to the ground around Maji's feet, steaming as they struck the clean earth.
One drop hit on the toe of Maji's left foot, and Maji felt the burn anew. The burn that remained, all this time later.
The burn that had been real.
Maji woke up shaking. She hadn't dreamt the mages or Morpheus or Ellie. And she'd been living a life that wasn't a dream at all. She looked over at the curtains of the other beds and saw that they still hadn't moved. There were no clocks to tell her how long she'd slept or calendars to tell her how long she'd been away.
She got up and looked down at her bare foot, where the teardrop scar still tinted her skin. She got up and summoned her clothes. Her magic was weak but it was certainly there. Even the Gating that she'd done after Ellie was born hadn't been so draining.
She decided that Gating wasn't the best idea. She'd have to walk. She had no clue where she was going or how she planned to get there, but she had to move quickly. If she hadn't dreamt the magic, that meant that either she'd been kidnapped or this was the dream.
A dream she couldn't wake up from.
She went down the hallway, hoping to find an elevator or stairwell somewhere. Something was wrong. She had to get away from that place as soon as possible.
Maji tried to reach for her daughter, but even her own magic seemed out of reach. She found an elevator and climbed aboard.
The ground floor was waiting rooms and financial offices. Typical for any hospital. Maji headed straight for the door. No one seemed to notice. Outside, Maji could see nothing of the city where they'd crashed and when she turned around she saw no trace of the hospital either.
She saw empty hills, canyons, and cliffs, but no civilization anywhere. She marched forward, trying to feel for her child, as far out as she could reach. She could still just barely feel her powers, somewhere off in the distance. She kept walking.
The grass didn't bend beneath her feet, and the wind held her still when it blew against her. If she stopped trying to move forward, she wondered if the wind would push her backwards. She continued to push, beaten down and blown about. The hot sun, far hotter than on Astral, came down on her. She could feel it burning her flesh till the blisters rose, burst, and rose anew. The sticky, wet air soaked her lungs as she heaved for breath.
The landscape steadily changed from the hillside of neatly cut grass to orange ground and pink skies. A canyon at sunset. The sun still high, but the color of the sky was sunset.
Maji could see the smallest trail of cool water snaking through the chasm. She swallowed around the lump in her throat and took a blind dive into the canyon. The heat receded and something cool and slimy engulfed her body. When she opened her eyes, she saw the ground still quite a ways beneath her. Something was holding her up.
The matter beneath her began to shift slightly and she slid downwards, towards the wall of the cliff. She could feel the moving mass around her, taking her in and pushing her back out. It was an odd sensation. When she finally hit something other than air and the slick surface of the dome, she was standing on a small path along the side of the cliff.
She stepped back and felt something slimy brush against her elbow. She spun around and saw moss. Dripping, dark green moss. There'd been no water atop the cliff. The water was only down at the bottom, in a tiny river.
'A spring?' Maji looked around the small overhang to the path she'd fallen upon.
Small puddl
es of fresh water littered the orange rock, dripping from the green moss. She knelt down by one of the pools and cautiously cupped her hands beneath the surface. Like everything else here, the water could be a trap or a dream. But the heat was broiling and there was no other water to be had.
The jump had been a whim. A chance that she might be deposited in a less hostile place.
The water was cool to her lips. Most of the thirst she'd felt before vanished. She drank a few sips and sat down to look over the edge of the path at the river below.
The smell of the moss, dripping water. She felt herself slipping away. She was helpless against the fatigue. But she would be no help to her daughter this way. When Maji opened her eyes again, she no longer saw the bright pink sky or the orange overhang of the cliff wall. There was a greenish sky, bruised with brown clouds.
She sat up and glanced around her new surroundings. She could see nothing of the cliff. Instead, there were fields on every side, stretching off to the vivid yellow horizon. The sky was really a pale blue in the center, radiating out to a pale yellow along the ground. The clouds looked green in the odd light, casting their shadows in upon themselves. Maji watched them float upward until they were so small that she could barely see them. Just as soon as the sky would clear, the water around her would boil and steam, though they didn't feel hot. The sky would once again be filled with plumes of green-grey cloud, floating ever upward.
The pools around here were brown and filled with the moss she'd seen on the cliff side. She got herself out of the puddle and tried to dry herself off with some of her dwindling magic. No use. She would just have to stay wet and muddy. She looked around at the rising clouds and saw that one of the pools hadn't stopped boiling and the cloud above it was looking very weighed down. It hadn't even started floating away with the others.
Maji watched as the cloud began to sag and started pouring down shining rain, cooling the pool below. Drops of mirror fell heavy into the mud and moss and reflected the odd light up to the now silver-lined cloud. She waited for the rain to end and stepped over to the pool.
The pool had become a liquid mirror.
She looked down at her reflection. Her wings shimmered with silver tips and her eyes were glowing the blue that she'd passed to her daughter. Her hair had returned to its fiery red. She pulled a lock in front of her eyes. It was only in the reflection.