Deliverance

by Samantha Schinder

  Lord Asher was silent for a long moment, lost in thought. Without looking at Jack, he nodded his assent. Before he got up to retreat back to his offices, he shoved the second jar at Deliverance, saying, “Here. This is actually yours. Just dip your finger in and touch it to your temple.”

  “Why do you keep your own memories in a jar then?” she asked pointedly.

  “Because sometimes it is easier to live with oneself if one can forget.” And with that, he swept out of the room.

  CHAPTER 22

  Deliverance

  “You’re not saying anything,” Jack said, eyeing Deliverance sideways as they drove home.

  “There’s a lot on my mind,” she replied, watching the wheat fields that were now ginger with the tinge of sunset.

  “Like…?”

  “Like I am beginning to see why everyone thinks Lord Asher is a nut.”

  Jack chuckled at that.

  “And,” she continued, “I think politics is much more complicated than I understand. And it makes me nervous. And…I thought for a while that perhaps you were one of them…those men who would keep us on that island for all eternity.”

  “You thought I was a technocrat!?” Jack yelped. “I do not believe I have ever been so insulted. Even by your father. And he’s pretty insulting.” Jack was kidding with her, Deliverance realized, and cast a grateful smile at him for lightening the mood.

  “He is rather that, isn’t he?” Deliverance mused. She was not about to let a man who had abandoned her and her mother, no matter the reason, get under her skin. “What do you think I should do with this?” she asked, holding up the unsettling little jar he had bid her take.

  “Well…that is entirely up to you, my love. But those memories are rightfully yours,” Jack advised and would say no more on the subject.

  They lulled into a companionable silence for a while as they traversed the countryside. Then, unthinkingly, Deliverance reached over and placed her hand overtop Jack’s to give it a squeeze. Immediately, she was rocketed into a memory.

  ***

  “Medic! Medic!” The desperate cries rang out. All around was chaos and death. The air stank of flesh in all stages of life—fearing death, dying, and dead. An explosion rang out, causing a deafening, piercing ring to block out all the noise. In front of her, Deliverance could see a much younger Jack, carrying a fellow soldier over his shoulder, attempting to navigate the perilous chaos. His charred fatigues were covered in the filth of war, grime, blood, and fire.

  “Hang in there, old chap!” Jack shouted to his friend, as he struggled up the sides of an embankment. His fellow soldier groaned and then grew silent, limply dangling as Jack fought his way up the steep, silty mound. He stumbled, and almost collapsed once he reached the precipice. Giving a frustrated shout of effort, he carried his companion the last several meters to the perimeter line.

  “Medic!” he shouted desperately as he navigated his way through the reinforced defenses. Finally, unable to go any farther, Jack collapsed with his back to an entrenchment.

  “We made it, buddy,” he said, heaving. Rivets of sweat drew channels down the sooty grime of his face. “There! A medic is on his way…Roger?” His voice grew tremulous, and with shaking hands he flipped his friend over, face to sky.

  When the medic arrived, he confirmed what Jack saw—Roger was dead.

  “I’m sorry,” the medic said breathlessly. “I have to get back to the others.” Then he paused for just a second, adding, “That was a brave thing you did, Sergeant. Carrying him all the way back here.”

  Jack had slumped back down, back sliding down the chalky sand of the trench wall. He waved the medic away wordlessly.

  Emotion threatened to overtake him, eyes tearing up. He put a hand to Roger’s eyes and shut them for their final sleep. Shock, grief, disbelief played across Jack’s younger features, each emotion overtaking the next. Finally, he settled on anger.

  “DAMN!” He cursed, leaping to his feet and punching the earthen wall. “DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!” With each punch, Jack’s skin began to smolder a bit more, building heat.

  “Sergeant!” barked a voice. Jack paused in his assault of the wall, rivers of red-hot blood still snaking their way under his skin, the veins causing little spots of charring where they brushed his uniform. “Compose yourself!”

  Shoulder heaving, Jack relented and dropped his fists. He turned to eye the other sergeant, a man of equivalent age, a prowess-gifted he recognized but did not know personally. He worked in reconnaissance though—a brave capacity. Highly dangerous even for one as gifted with stealth and agility as a prowess-gifted.

  “And just how do you propose I do that?” Jack snarled, his power still threatening to take off.

  “What three things cannot long be hidden?” the other sergeant countered.

  “Huh?”

  “I said what three things cannot long be hidden?” the man calmly repeated. He had an air of tranquility about him even in a warzone.

  Jack cursed, then said “What?” to placate the man.

  “The sun, the moon, and the truth,” the even keeled sergeant replied.

  “Are you a Buddhist?” Jack said, eyeing him.

  “No, I saw it on a TV show about werewolves,” the man replied, breaking into a grin. “But you see, it worked.”

  Jack glanced down at his hands. His forearms were no longer glowing with lava rivers in his bloodstream. The magic had retreated, taking his rage with it.

  “I’m Niles,” the man introduced himself, offering his hand when he was certain Jack would not singe it to a crisp.

  “Jack,” Jack said in kind, shaking the man’s hand. He looked down at his dead companion, unnaturally peaceful in his hollowed form, and grief welled up inside him. “But, really, how do you do it?” he whispered.

  Niles looked at him thoughtfully and then answered, “That rage you have?” Jack nodded. “Use it. Burn down the whole world around you. But do it with calculation and control. Burn it down, then rebuild it again in a better image.”

  ***

  Deliverance gasped, jolting out of the memory. It took her a moment to realize Jack had pulled over to the side of the road. He was patting her face, trying to get her to come to.

  “Oh, thank God!” Jack breathed. “What was that!?”

  “I…oh. I had forgotten Lord Asher touched me,” Deliverance replied.

  “Jesus. Your eyes rolled in the back of your head and there was no reviving you. I nearly had a heart attack!” Jack exclaimed, putting both hands on the sides of her face and examining her, as if to reassure himself she was cognizant and with him.

  “I must have absorbed his power. I saw a memory…” Deliverance reasoned.

  Jack stilled. “Of mine?”

  “Yes, it was a battle. There was blood and chaos everywhere…your friend. Roger. He died,” Deliverance choked, the emotion swelling up in her chest, threatening to crush her.

  A grimace pulled down Jack’s face. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he quietly said, after a moment.

  “Oh, Jack, no! I am sorry!” Deliverance said, unable to stop the tears from
rolling down her face.

  Jack gathered her close, and comforted her. “Hey now. Easy there. It’s all in the past,” he murmured, rocking her. He had unbuckled her seatbelt, and pulled her into his lap.

  “But it just happened right in front of my eyes,” Deliverance said into the collar of his shirt where she had buried her face.

  “Makes one almost want to cut Lord Asher a little slack. His gift is bound to rock someone’s stability after a while,” Jack commented. “Almost,” he added, not quite willing to give the man an inch.

  They sat that way for a long while, until Deliverance had collected herself. When she had, she removed herself to the passenger seat, wiping her face, her cheeks warming with embarrassment.

  “I feel silly. It was you who should be upset. It was not even my memory,” Deliverance said, as she refastened her seat belt.

  “I’ve learned to come to terms with my past,” Jack said evenly. “But it fuels me all the same today.” Deliverance nodded, understanding Jack just a bit better now.

  He started the car with a thrum, and they drove in silence for a while, each mired in deep thought.

  Then Deliverance said, “Jack?”

  He hmmmed at her in reply, so she continued, “When we get home, we are most definitely going to need another family meeting.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Deliverance

  Normally she would worry her long, thick braid when faced with a decision of this magnitude. In its absence, she ran her fingers through her choppy ends repetitively as she paced the length of her bedroom. The jar, swirling in its effervescence, was perched on a lacy pillow case on her four-poster bed. She would walk to it, then think better of it, and begin to pace again. Pretty soon she would wear a tread in the pastel, vined rug beneath her stockinged feet.

  She blew out a breath. “Bloody hell. I’ve never been a coward before!” she reasoned, finally settling onto the bed and reaching for the jar. Her hand quivered slightly as she reached for the stopper, but with thick determination she quelled her misgivings. Knowledge was always better than ignorance, she thought, and plucked the stopper from the jar with a thunk. Carefully, with still trembling fingers, she coaxed the green thread of wispy magic from the jar. With another deep breath she plunged the magic into her temple.

  The memories were hazy at first, as though viewed through a wide-angle lens out of focus. They were not all sights, but mostly sounds, smells, and feelings. The sound of a rumbling Arcanton lilt and her mother’s own tinkling laugh. The smell of cinnamon and pipe tobacco, of maleness and the scent of safety. The feeling of tickling chest hairs and the purr of a hum not her mother’s, but deeper. Security. Attached. Content. Safe.

  Then the memories began to evolve, take more shape. The excitement for winter to arrive. The million questions she would pepper at her mother while they waited for the ship to come ashore. The splash of water as her daddy… Her daddy! Daddy would wrap her up in his arms and toss her high over his head like a little bluebird. He called her Del. No one ever called her that but him.

  “Here,” he said. “A gift for my lovely Del. Someday this is where we will go.” He pressed a cool, round object with a heavy base into her chubby little fingers. “Watch,” he said and shook the ball. Snow fell all around the magical fairy city inside.

  Then the winter night fighting would begin.

  “I’m tired of waiting!” Del would snuggle down deeper into her blankets but she could hear Mommy and Daddy arguing still. “We have to wait three seasons just to see you! And even then ’tis not safe! If one of the villagers decided to brave the snows to check on us, they would sooner murder you than welcome you!”

  “No one ever comes here in the winter.”

  “But they could, John. They could.”

  “All right, but I will need this next season to plan. Be ready with Del after the Autumn Equinox.”

  Then another warm season without Daddy, tending the garden. But Mommy sold all their animals that September. Del was sad about her favorite pony but remembered Daddy had said he would buy her a new pony when they got to the new home. Del did not know what this meant, but it sounded exciting.

  Terror. The boat felt wrong to every fiber of her being. Daddy said it was the magic of the narrative working its way into their minds, but Del did not know what this meant either. Rocking, cold, salt, wet, shivering. Mommy clutched her close.

  “It’s all right, Del. Come over here and sit with Daddy.”

  The warm, sturdiness of his knees.

  “Would you like to play with Daddy’s camera?” She nodded. She loved the flashy box that made pictures.

  “John, really?”

  “What? It’s keeping her distracted. Del likes Daddy’s toys, doesn’t she?” Del poked her tongue out of her mouth in determination to hold the shot still and snapped. The picture showed up on the screen—Mommy looking over her shoulder apprehensively at her and Daddy from her seat at the prow of the boat.

  ***

  Tears poured freely down Deliverance’s cheeks, plopping in ugly splatters upon the coverlet. With a cry she heaved the damnable jar at the wall and it shattered into inefficacy.

  She had taken the Fades-fated photo of her mother on the boat that she had seen in the lecture hall that day. How could her father steal all that from her? To protect her? Instead she had spent her life wondering, ignorant, a cog in a machine whose purpose she’d only just revealed. She shuddered, wracked with grief. Maybe it had not been such a good idea to try to put the memories back into her mind tonight. But she figured it was late. Everyone had gone to bed. She would have some privacy. She was not prepared for the onslaught of emotions that came with the returned memories.

  Her door softly opened and closed again with a click. Deliverance did not have to look up to know who it was. Soft pine and sea enveloped her before his arms did. Jack held her all night as she cried, until she fell asleep. And even though she was sad at the loss of her father, she felt safe again.

  ***

  John Asher

  The fire crackled in a vivacious commentary. It was as if that damnable Jack Quentin had never left. John sat back and stewed, ruminating over his second glass of smoky scotch. His comfortable, careworn chair by the fire in his shabby apartments beleaguered his staunch bachelorhood. Everything in the tattered scholar’s room spoke of austere function. The piles of manuscripts, the curled maps with notes scribbled haphazardly in the margins, stacks of dust-filmed tomes, propped open to this page and that, were the only evidence a person actually dwelled here. Otherwise, the cobwebs in their gossamer filaments would have taken over the few areas he moved about as well.

  The ephemeral, delicate cobweb silk reminded John of the memories he took, from others’ minds and his own. Upon the coffee table, laid out in front of him in several jars were such memories, lissome in their flotation in their milky jars. John sat back, rubbing his hands across his scruffy face, and considered the jars. He had retrieved them after Jack and Deliverance left.

  Deliverance. The girl’s image sprang to his mind unbeckoned. If he could have, he would have taken this afternoon and its painful reunion from his mind as well. That was how he had been coping these past almost two decades. At fir
st it had been a poignant moment, a profession of love or the act of lovemaking with Catalyst, memories that resurfaced over and over again, causing him unbearable anguish. Those went first, sliding easily into their compartments, offering ease for his grieving mind. Others, eventually, took their place. A little dark-headed girl’s giggle, the infant smell of milk and lavender. A flash of green eyes, glinting in the midwinter sun. These went as well.

  It was not as if he forgot who they were. The idea of them was still ever present, haunting him. But these little details he spared himself…they spared his sanity as well. He was well aware others thought him eccentric. The therapy of relieving his mind and conscious of his once wife and daughter, however, had saved him from breaking over and over. His futile efforts to regain them had been like water crashing against stone. After years of attempting everything within his perceived power to go back to them, he relented. He never forgave himself for relenting.

  Now, this brash Jack fellow may have actually figured out a way—succeeded where he had failed. He took a healthy swig of the amber liquid in his glass. This stung more than he would ever allow. He saw now his failing was in acting within the law. Jack Quentin never concerned himself with what was actually legal, only what he thought was just. An odd trait for a man entrusted with lawmaking. John grimaced, thinking of the younger man’s smug expressions, his irritating bravado. He hoped to God the man did not fail his daughter as he had failed her mother.

  Carefully, he set aside his glass and considered the jars before him, winking in their firefly way, twisting like silky cream in tea, the green ribbons giving off a scintilla occasionally. Before him in life lay an opportunity—one he could not afford to waste. He had a chance to succeed where before he had failed. Perhaps it was time to retake these memories.