Three Stories About Ghosts

  He tried to lurch to his feet but was still bound to the crate.

  “Frankish sack of shit,” Agatha growled as she picked herself up. “Elite guard? Well, I’m a motherfucking Warden, bitch.”

  The magma below had flared, throwing up spumes of fire as the guard hit, but over the din of battle above them, with power crashing like thunder into the ward, John wasn’t sure that they’d been heard. Still, he didn’t waste any time.

  The female guard’s body had fallen close to him, and he shifted himself over to try and reach for her wand, but Agatha came over and tightened his bindings with her one good hand.

  “What are you doing?” John whispered.

  “It’s for your own good,” she answered. She placed the guard’s wand at the outer edge of the wall of crates, and set it to glide towards him slowly.

  “This is in case you have delusions of heroism.” She gestured down to his bindings. “You’ll get the wand in five minutes. Take Trish and go.”

  “And where in the Sky Mother’s love do you think you’re going?” he asked as Agatha bound Trish to John, and released her other bindings. She snapped over to him, her body crashing into his and knocking the air out of him.

  Agatha paused. “The Wardens,” she said, “know a thing or two about Nafarin. His rites better be exact, or else the cultists will incur His wrath. If we can anger Him enough to expose Himself…” She left the rest unsaid and started to walk out, but John called her again.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “Have you gone mad?”

  Agatha walked back and bent over by the two of them. Trish seethed at her.

  “Look,” she continued, “the rite demands the blood of a young virgin. I was young in the sixties, back when love was free. If I dive into the lava, and not Kate Hart, how do you think He’ll react?”

  John tried to suppress the image of Agatha being young in the sixties, but found her logic sound.

  “Alright,” he said, “but I’ll go. If the spell needs a virgin witch, a married warlock would—”

  “No,” she snapped at him. “Witch, warlock, piss on your distinctions!” She shook her head. “It’s all the same to Him, John. Those are our distinctions.”

  He fell back to the crate and nodded.

  “I, ah—” he tried to say.

  “Get her out of here, John,” she said. “I always liked you.” She turned back to the gap in the crates that formed the exit from the makeshift prison, cradling her wand-burnt hand. “You’re a good man, like your father. I never said this, but I knew when Trish married you that I’d never have to worry about her again.”

  She dropped her head, bent down, kissed her daughter on the forehead, and strode off.

  She hadn’t been gone for a second when the wand snapped over to them, and Trish, who had been laying against him, gestured down to it. He swallowed, shook his head, and picked up the wand. He blasted the rope around him and released Trish’s bindings.

  She lay against him breathing for a moment, but rolled onto her side and clambered to her feet.

  “Right,” she said as he stood to join her.

  What in the Sky Mother’s love was going on?

  “Could you have done that the entire time?”

  She shook her head.

  “I didn’t fetch the wand, the Sky Mother did.”

  John started and swallowed hard. “What?”

  “Nafarin,” Trish said as she pointed up to the ward. “He wants this bad, John, so bad. He’s invested every bit of Himself into that ward. If He gets the world engine”—she grimaced—“I don’t even want to think.”

  “And your mother’s plan will disrupt his attention long enough to weaken the ward, at least.”

  Trish nodded but then shook her head. “Our Sky Mother is exposed here, John. Yes, we’d expose Nafarin, but She’s right here behind him, and other than Professor Goodland and us, no one understands Her link to the world engines. If my mother succeeds, and the ward collapses long enough for our friends overhead to break through, they’d probably kill our Sky Mother with collateral spells as they obliterate Him.”

  John shuddered at this reminder of the Sky Mother’s mortality. He didn’t want to imagine that what they did here decided Her future as much as their own.

  “John,” Trish said, suddenly serious as she took his hand. She looked straight into his eyes, kissed him, and dug her head into his chest.

  His mind melted. Without controlling himself, he clasped his arms around her, dropped his head to hers, breathed in the scent of her hair, and sagged as her warmth filled him from head to toe.

  “I love you,” she said, and John felt her tears against his chest.

  He breathed for a moment, relishing the smell of her hair and her breath. He pulled her chin up, kissed her on the lips, and smiled.

  “I love you too. What do we have to do?”

  “Nothing,” she answered. “I’m here, like… like an autoimmune cell in the Sky Mother’s body. Nafarin is the virus. My mother is about to do something stupid.”

  John didn’t want to let her go but stepped back to look at her.

  “And?” he asked.

  “When I say, summon that guard’s broom from her wand, fly over, grab my mum, grab Kate, and get as much altitude as you possibly can. You’ll be heavy, but you have to get clear, as close to Nafarin’s ward as possible.”

  John nodded, trying not to think about what was about to happen.

  “And you?” he asked.

  “She brought me back for a reason.”

  “I thought Tamoka—”

  “He thought so, too, but it was our Sky Mother, John. Nafarin has sunk everything He has into this world engine, and the Sky Mother, into me.”

  She stroked his face and gave him one more kiss.

  “It’s time. Don’t let me down,” she said as she dematerialised.

  John dashed over to the wand, felt for its contents, summoned the broomstick, and darted up and out of the semicircle of crates. He couldn’t see Trish, but in the distance, he saw Agatha had reached the central platform and thrown up a ward around herself and Kate Hart as she released Kate from her cage.

  John didn’t hesitate. He summoned every bit of speed he could manage and didn’t slow as he approached.

  “Agatha!” he shouted, and she looked up with a split second to spare. He lashed each of his arms, one to Agatha and one to Kate, keeping his balance on the broom with his thighs, wrenched the broom ninety degrees back with his feet tucked under him, and as he struggled against the extra weight, summoned every last ounce of his strength to ascend.

  As the first of the arcs of power crackled near them, a white flash filled his sight. He screwed his eyes shut against it, but it still stabbed at his eyes as he felt his balance waver and the broomstick stall.

  Chapter Eight

  “YES, THANK YOU, Simon,” a strange man’s voice said. “It’s taken my colleagues around the world by surprise; we’re struggling for an explanation.” The voice paused to clear his throat. “If you look closely, you can see that it resembles the great eye of Jupiter, but from what we know of Venus’ weather patterns, we can’t explain its origin.”

  John tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids seemed stuck. Panic gripped him and he tried to force his eyes open, and a searing pain spiked through the back of his head. He became aware of a dull thudding, like a rhythmic echo pounding at the burning nerves of his mind, and he tried to sit up despite his head spinning in darkness.

  “Oh, what does this bawbag know anyway?” Laird Bellard said. “Turn that shite off.”

  A man laughed, and John’s panic deepened. Where was Trish? He felt for her presence in his mind, but all he found there was the old familiar darkness, the hole she’d left in him when she passed.

  “Hey,” Anton said from somewhere behind him in his soft-spoken Hungarian lilt. “Turn that back on. I want to see.”

  “What’s to see?” Grand Master Caohopa answered from somewhere behind him, w
ith the sound of sharp footsteps. “Nafarin ran to Venus.”

  “Hold on,” Margaret Goodland said from right above his face. “He’s awake.” She gently pulled at his right eyelid, and pain surged and flared straight through his head at her touch.

  John’s panic overwhelmed him, and he lurched up, tried to find something to hold on to, but a kind pair of hands stroked his head as Margaret Goodland hushed him back down.

  “It’s alright, dear,” she said. “My husband’s truly dead now. We’re safe.”

  John struggled to stand and fresh agony seared across his head as he tried to tear his eyes open.

  “Relax, John,” Margaret said, “look here.”

  She took his hand and placed it on what felt to be her chest. Between the beats of her heart, John felt the power of the Sky Mother pulse in a strange spell. His gut still flared in panic, but as the spell’s machinations swirled about him, he sensed that she did not share her husband’s treason, she didn’t hold a shred of Nafarin’s power, and he relaxed as another pair of hands squeezed his shoulders.

  “Relax,” Anton said, close behind him. “You’re safe.”

  “Margaret,” Laird Bellard said from somewhere on his left, “what’s happening?”

  “Nothing—Oh, stay back, you oaf,” she moaned. A loud smack sounded nearby.

  “Don’t you raise your hand to—”

  “You’re in my light,” Margaret said, exasperation dripping from her voice.

  Anton’s hands released his shoulders from behind him, urged him to lay back down on what felt to be a sofa with large cushions to his left, and gently held either side of his head.

  “Brew’s ready,” Claire Goodland called from another room.

  “Alright, bring it here,” Margaret answered.

  As footsteps shuffled all around him, Margaret muttered something else about blocking her light, and what sounded to be a bubbling cauldron clanked to the ground near him.

  “Draw ten CCs for me,” Margaret said.

  Waves of agony bounced from the walls of his skull, searing his nerves and making his head spin. He had to fight to keep bile from swelling in his throat.

  As Anton firmed his grip to keep his head steady, he felt droplets land on his eyelids. A chilled wave of power spread immediately from his eyes to the back of his head and started to bounce around inside his skull, chasing the waves of pain away and soothing his burning nerves.

  “Ten more,” Margaret said. She placed rubber-gloved fingers on his eyelids and gently pulled.

  More droplets soothed his eyes, and as Margaret pulled a little harder, the first rays of light burst into his eyes, making him screw them shut and wince.

  “Try, dear,” Margaret urged, “keep opening them a few moments at a time.”

  His eyes screamed at him, but he forced them open a crack at a time, and as Margaret Goodland’s potion took hold, the pain subsided, and his vision, though still blurry, started to clear. The now dull echoes of the pain ringing through his skull still kept him sitting on the sofa, though, gingerly holding his head.

  He looked around. He was in a cluster of sofas near the entrance to Castle Bellard’s banquet hall. Tapestries and paintings of Bellard’s ancestors hung on every wood-panelled wall, metal-disc chandeliers were lit with hundreds of candles, and above the enormous stone fireplace at the end of the hall, a painting of the Sky Mother covered the entire wall.

  Over the lingering scent of burnt blood, he picked up hints of nettles, mint, dandelions, and the various other Earth scents that form the core of modern medicine. He looked around. The Khan lay senseless on a fold-out bed close to him with three flasks of glowing white potions in medical drips connected to his arm, and two battle-stained Cossacks stood guard as his son held his hand.

  Agatha sat up on a sofa against a wall, looking none the worse for wear except for her hand bound in a linen bandage, which seemed odd given the severity of her burns, and to his immense relief, Kate Hart lay next to her, dressed in a hospital gown and sedated. He went to call Trish, to tell her the good news, but again, only the silence of his mind echoed where she had been.

  He wondered where the wounded were, but caught the edge of a conversation one of Laird Bellard’s officers was having on the phone, tracking the whereabouts of the Highland Fighting Men. They had been taken to infirmaries in Boston, Isfahan, Oxford, Moscow, Tokyo, even Shangri-La in Tibet. The whole world had joined in defending their Sky Mother.

  Margaret Goodland filled his vision again, shining a light from the tip of her wand into his eyes, peering at him until his eyes burned. She nodded, stood, and moved over to Kate Hart.

  Around him, Laird Bellard stood in his highland battle tartan, Grand Master Caohopa leaned against the sofa, still wearing the same suit as last night, and Anton sat next to him in his uniform with the Arch Mage’s echelons rightly in their place at his lapels. Laird Bellard stepped forward.

  “Lizzie’s gone to see the whales with Phiona,” he said, a strange, uncertain look in his eyes. “You still have her, lad, and you have us. You’re staying with us for the summer, and I’m not accepting any arguments.”

  John’s head spun.

  “The—” He sputtered, coughed, and took a glass of water that Anton held for him. He drank, cleared his throat, and thanked him. “The world engine.”

  “We connected it to your ley mines,” Grand Master Caohopa said. “Our Sky Mother breathes free.”

  John looked up. She smiled and nodded at him.

  “Shangri-La, the Desert Springs, even the custodians of Damavand, everyone has stopped tapping their wells for now, but, ah—” She paused.

  “What?” John asked, unsure as to why his heart still brimmed with panic.

  “This world engine, John, it’s more powerful than anything we’ve ever seen.”

  “It was, we think,” Anton said, oblivious to the sharp look the Grand Master shot him for interrupting her, “the orifice that supported our Sky Mother as She filled every other engine in the world.”

  John turned to the Grand Master.

  “The other Chiefs?” he asked.

  “We all agree. As for division of power, we treat it the same as every other ley mine in the Americas, but, if you colonials agree, we all only draw from it in dire emergency.”

  John nodded. As CEO of the Trevelyan Mining Network, he spoke for the Colonial Government in matters of mana, and his word was binding upon his descendants, as his father’s words were binding on him. The pact upon which centuries of coexistence had depended seemed more important now than ever.

  “Were we all there?” he asked.

  “Every tribe, and all colonies of your people. All of us.” Grand Master Caohopa smiled.

  John smiled back and dropped his head. He wished Trish was here, but before he could start to think how to grieve again, Agatha stood, coughed, and picked up a bulging trash sack that rattled as though filled with dozens of empty glass bottles.

  “How are your eyes?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Agatha said as she walked over. “It wasn’t your eyes that were the problem.”

  John furrowed his brows. “What? The light when Trish dove into the volcano, it—”

  “That was the Sky Mother’s power. It stung, but no. If I ever hear you’re drinking scholin weed again, I’ll tear your balls off. You almost killed yourself.”

  He looked around, confused, and the Grand Master placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “We’ve all been there, lad,” Laird Bellard said, kindly.

  He wanted to shrink back into himself, embarrassed beyond reason that so many knew he’d been drinking as much scholin weed as he had.

  “You did have two life forces to support, though,” Agatha said. “Not sure how you could have done it otherwise, so don’t be too hard on yourself.”

  If anything, her trying to comfort him stung even more. He forced himself to smile, tried to stand, and immediately fell back onto the sofa.

  He turned to Anton. “What happened
to—?” He paused. He couldn’t even bring himself to mention the bastard’s name.

  “He fled,” Anton answered. “The Sky Mother had poured everything She had into Trish. She used her consciousness to slide in-between the Sky Mother and Nafarin, cut Him loose, and when His ward fell, and He saw the power arrayed against Him, He ran; to Venus, we think.”

  John shook his head, confused.

  “The planet’s temperature dropped three degrees in a day, and a new storm now rages where we believe He impacted the planet.”

  John nodded slowly, but he wasn’t sure that his battered mind was following. He lay back down, looked around his gathered friends again, and closed his eyes. As he felt himself drift into sleep, the world around him dissolved.

  He sat up, but he wasn’t on a sofa anymore. He stood on grass as a gust of wind blew into him. His stomach lurched, but then he felt Trish’s presence, and all fear drained from him.

  “Trish?” he called.

  “I’m here,” she answered, and her voice sounded sweeter to his ears than milk and honey. He looked around, but he stood alone on top of a grassy hill.

  “Am I awake?” he asked.

  “No, my love. You’re dreaming.”

  He shook his head, but as far as he could tell, this was real. He looked around again, and below him, down the hill, he saw the hotel in the highlands of Scotland he and Trish had run off to as students. His heart almost tore apart as a well of joy burst inside of his chest.

  “Where are you?” he called.

  “Here,” she answered from behind him.

  He spun. She wore the same floral yellow dress she’d worn those days they’d spent here, decades ago. Her skin was smooth and young, her hair was tied into braids, and she’d woven daisies through it as she had done back then. He went to step forward, to grab her and squeeze her so tightly that she could never let go of him again, but she stepped back.

  He followed, but with every step he took, she backed away again, and his heart shattered more and more.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, unable to keep the desperation from screeching through his voice.

  Trish smiled, but the sight only set his heart racing harder.