by Tim Kaiver
His dad gave him a quick hug. "Thank you."
"Yeah, yeah. Let me see yer queen." He leaned in and pecked his mom on the cheek. "Glad you made it safely, Grace. Shirley was north of the city, so I told her to hole up with some friends. This way, everyone. Oh, let me." He motioned to the door that led from the garage into the home.
They entered a kitchen, and Ehli found glasses from a cupboard.
"We have a tail," his dad told Chester. "From the Valcud Squadron."
"Had," Ehli corrected with a wink.
The Star General turned with a playful smile, then tipped his head. "Had. For now," he clarified. "It's safe to assume they'll send more, but she's right; we lost them for now."
"Interesting," Chester said, not seeming to grasp what was going on between them, but not pressing yet as to what they meant. "Valcud is Hormen's group. He making a play too?"
"More than likely." His dad saw him watching. "Don't worry, Son. We'll catch you up. Have a seat. We'll whip up a cocktail for that space sickness."
Chester glanced at Cullen. "Oh yeah. I'll get somethin' good for you."
"I'm curious what you'll use," Ocia said. He introduced himself to Chester with a brief history of how he’d been blackmailed by the Osuna to use his medical skills on the Osuna, but after his escape had helped rescued prisoners of war.
Torek handed Cullen a turkey leg.
He chewed on the cold, but delicious, meat as he watched Ocia. How much longer would the man have to wait to see his wife and son? Now that they were here, he wondered if he ever would.
Ocia's ability to find joy in the waiting encouraged Cullen. Willo had been very wrong about him. He was glad to have escaped her manipulation, even if she was still out there, causing havoc. We'll catch her….
Cullen pulled up the keys from his "Cipher's Quest" subfolder and copied them into a file called "Keys" on his wristcom. His dad then took the wristcom and compass, and settled down with Schaefer and Brinoway to sort through and translate the Cusaugh texts. Cullen sat and listened as the others made small talk while they ate and drank, but after three turkey legs, Cullen asked his mom to show him a bed, couch, or even a dark corner. She took him downstairs to a wide, comfy-looking bed.
"We're so blessed to have you home," his mom said.
He whipped open the bed sheet and sat on the cloud-like edge. He started to untie his mud-caked boots, but his mom stopped him and kneeled to help. "Let me."
He fell back. The cool sheets welcomed him as none others had since he'd left home.
"This last ten years has taken its toll on your father and I, more than he'd admit."
He'd had this conversation with himself thousands of times in his travels through space, and the sleepless nights between, but his experiences in the last few days had changed him. Feeling the blessing of her love, and his belief that Shephka had made a way for him to be here, meant he no longer harbored bitterness. "They have changed me too, Mom."
Gentle lips kissing his cheek released him into the bliss of rest.
Cullen woke to quiet darkness and the wide cushion of the bed. His headache and mara claw gashes bit with pain at the slightest movement. As his eyes adjusted, he noticed a three-quarters full glass of the stuff his mom made last night. He gingerly reached for the glass, and took long gulps of the gritty, tang-sweet drink. As the nutrients spread with noticeable healing into his wounds, he removed the blanket to see someone had taken his suit off while he slept. He tapped the base of a lamp to add some light to the room, and found a fresh pair of civvies and his boots cleaned. The neatly folded pile, obviously set there by his mother with love, had his old Oswald's Pirates shirt on top. He smiled, remembering the concert he bought that shirt from and how his mom had taken another spin around the block when she caught him talking to a couple cute girls outside the shop. As he held it up, it reminded him of his fat stage, and that the girls had really been talking to his friend TJ, but he appreciated his mother's winking gesture as she slowly drove past. Now that he'd bulked up in both torso and height, this was one of his better shirt options. It only had a couple food stain drops near the center logo where the eye-patch wearing pirate cartoon wailed on his guitar from the crow's nest below the pirate flag. He felt a little bit like that pirate, except with a levitor rifle instead of a guitar, and ready to hunt the rejects Willo and Scanis instead of the sharks in the water below. The guilt of bringing them here weighed deeply as he dressed, and he was glad at the relief in his aching wounds because he would hunt those rejects as soon as he could.
In the hallway outside, dawn's light blessed the patio garden and the basement walkout. The silence and peace of it took him aback. He soaked up the calm before the storm as he slowly climbed the spiral staircase.
Soft voices carried from a room upstairs. Inside, his mom, his dad, and Chester looked up from holoscreens hovering over their worktable.
"Hey, Son," his dad said. "Sleep well?"
"I did. Please tell me you all slept?"
"Some," his dad said, and sipped from a mug. "Nice shirt," he added with a wink.
His mom rose, smiling as she observed his outfit. "We'll be fine." She kissed him on the cheek and motioned for him to have her seat. "How's your head?"
"It'll be okay." Already he was eight years old again, with his mom telling him not to chase bear cubs. As though that had ever been a good idea. "I found that new glass of cocktail by my bed. It helped."
"Good. I'll get you another," she said on her way out.
Neither Chester nor his father had stopped watching him since he walked in. Chester's eyes glimmered with a secret less well hidden than that in his father's eyes. "Is there something going on? What'd you find?"
His dad checked with Chester, and a smile grew on his face.
"He's your son."
"Somebody better," Cullen said, joking.
"The texts you brought. They're mind-blowing." His dad swiped something from his screen to Cullen's. "It's a gift from Shephka."
"Okay." Cullen waited.
"Ah, I can't stand it." Chester jumped out of his chair. "The windwalker. Agh!" He sat back down, almost fell, then caught himself on the wall. He giggled and covered his mouth. "Sorry," he mumbled.
"And you wonder why I keep you in the garage. Couldn't keep a secret to save your life." His dad's attention returned to Cullen with a sly grin. In the silence, he examined his son.
Windwalker.
He knew what Chester meant, but not why he'd said it. Less than a day had passed since that gust of hot air had carried him the last precious feet to safety over the gorge. He cocked his head to one side. Guilty as charged, but how do they know? I didn't tell them.
"Do you know what he's talking about?" his dad asked.
Cullen took a deep breath, looked them both over, then nodded. "You think that's me."
Their smiles grew, but they both waited for him to say more.
"Why?"
Chester sat forward, sticking his chin out in mock interrogation. "That's what we want you to tell us."
Footsteps sounded behind him. His mom set a glass with green liquid on the table by Cullen.
"You first," Chester said.
"Okay." He told of how he'd used his levitor rifle to cut down the tree, of how he'd jumped off it to reach the other side, and of how he was saved by a strong gust of air. "The way I fell... I wasn't going to make it. And that gust..." He shook his head. "It saved my life."
He sipped the cold, tangy drink, then chugged half the glass before lowering it and gasping in relief. "I've never heard the term before, but the way you brought it up and looked at me like I ought to know made me wonder if you meant me. So, if you don't mind... Why did you use that word?"
His dad rolled his chair over next to Cullen. "Can you scoot over." He squeezed Cullen's triceps as he tried to make room. "You packed on—what?—forty or fifty pounds of muscle since we saw you last? And at least four inches taller?"
Cullen gently pounded his dad's hand. "Yeah. G
otta fight the time in zero gravity. The Esune have some nice elixirs to combat spinal and muscle decay."
He reveled in the precious moment with his dad, breathing in the wonder of having him nearby. His dad rose and kissed him on his head bandage, a gesture as foreign as a belch in full uniform from the Star General he called Dad, but welcome even more because of it.
"Getting soft in my old age," he muttered as he sat back down, then pointed at the screen.
Paragraphs of Veltuk script lined the holoscreen. Cullen caught a few familiar words, but they meant little without concentrated translation.
His father pointed at a line and it turned yellow. He tapped it, and the paragraph enhanced. He watched Cullen. "You keep up on your Veltuk?"
"Not a lot of Veltuk out there," Cullen said. "Getting scanned by the Osuna and found with any means capture and torturous interrogation."
His dad sighed. "Well then, let me help you." He returned his gaze to the text. "The windwalker will return prior to the dawn of a new age. The Age of the City will be restored to signal the last great war."
"Keys 9, 3, 7, and 4," Cullen answered.
His dad's expression slowly turned from sober to joyful as he read the ancient text. "The city of Shephka. Before your texts, we had nothing that spoke of the city being restored. Nor of a windwalker. If that's you, I think we have an amazing time ahead of us once the Cipher is unlocked."
"Including the last great war," Cullen added, intending to temper on his enthusiasm.
His dad acknowledged that with a raised brow. "Yeah. But. We want that. If the Cipher blesses us all with the power you've experienced, then to war we will go—and to victory, by Shephka's strength." He selected another line. "The—this could be translated three, or tri—family of three will... again, this part is hard, and I agree with your translation of ride, but could also mean follow… ride or follow the windwalker to tragedy."
The family of three will ride the windwalker... His mom and dad, and him, would make a family of three, but he had a hunch. "Ehli, Emmit, and Schaefer?"
His dad shrugged. "Probably, if you're the windwalker. They came in with you, and what's happened so far in Vijil City is a tragedy. A state of emergency was issued by the president shortly after your arrival. The city has been locked down, and I suspect only vital service industries and soldiers are being let in. Willo and Scanis have done most of the damage without being spotted, so we don't know where they are. In most places, the chaos of people fleeing created accidents, which snowballed to deaths. It's been hard to identify where a telepath was involved, or just someone breaking the law to beat the next person to safety. All flyers have been grounded as well."
"You think that gust of wind was Shephka?" Chester asked Cullen, as though this had been his question all along.
"Do I think Shephka helped me over the gorge?" Cullen looked around the three, each of them smiling and analyzing—well, his dad wasn't smiling, more testing. "Maybe. The Cipher granted me a whisper of my future class and skill as part of a level-up bonus. But thermals happen all the time in places like that. One could say I got lucky and rode one."
"One could," Chester said, "if he were an idiot. Or one could say Shephka's hand of blessing," and he made a scooping motion with his hand, "boosted you over."
Cullen smiled, more out of nervousness than gratefulness. "I suppose." He believed Shephka had blessed him, but that directly? That felt like living too close to Shephka, as if He were sitting in the same room, and that made him as uncomfortable as sleeping with his ship unlocked. Not that Shephka was a thief, like most people he met in space, but because His power, and the potential of being so close to it, made him fear being overwhelmed. "Why are you asking me this?"
"Because," Chester said, "windwalker or not. Lucky or blessed. Path this way or path that way."
"What path?" Cullen asked.
Chester shrugged. "Which one do you want?"
"What?" Cullen checked his dad and mom. Neither offered support. "Isn't that what I just asked you? What paths are you talking about?"
"The path of the windwalker or the path of the lucky," Chester answered.
That made more sense. But he didn't have context and consequences to either. Lucky—that was more or less obvious. Can't rely on luck every time. Soon it will wear out. "What's involved with the windwalker path?"
Chester gave a cheeky smile and winked. "Training... annnnd a bit of Spirit power."
"Spirit power? Wha...? How?" He thought of Ehli, Emmit, Willo, and everything that had blown his mind in the last day.
"If Schaefer or Ocia were here, they might have different opinions," Chester started, "but I think Shephka lifting you over that gorge, and the ultra-power they unlocked is grace enabled by the power of Shephka's Spirit."
Cullen chewed on that, took a drink, and came up for air. "Huh."
Chester chuckled. "'Huh,' he says." He cocked his shoulder and made a face in mock ambivalence. "Huh. Shephka's power. Huh. I think I'll jump off a cliff. Huh. Didn't die." Chester snarled a lip like a close-up with a camel. "Heh."
"I mean, one could be explained by science, just like the other. I don't deny Shephka exists and is involved, but—"
"There's more here than we have time to go over, but I'll send it to your com to read when you get a chance," Chester said. "For now, I'll just say that the return of the City and the widespread presence of gifts and miracles are all over the texts you brought. And if you look carefully, they line up with the texts we've made canon."
Cullen grinned. Not opposed to the idea, and not trying to say he fully understood. Just there. He breathed in to say—
"Do you know your dad has a secret division under him whose sole purpose is investigating claims of a Spirit Realm we can't see, and which people... people say they have been to? And come back from." Chester's stare dared him to challenge the statement.
Cullen checked his dad and mom again. Neither broke their gaze nor otherwise indicated a big joke waiting for the punchline.
"Magic unlike what you might see at a casino," Chester added, "because it's real. Something happened about a year ago. We're still investigating. Most of the people we've caught say it's just a game and some take it seriously because of how real it feels, but others say that's the cover answer they're told to give so that people like your father won't take them seriously.
"But I do," he continued. "Bodies have disappeared. People we've chased have disappeared. I've interrogated. I believe. It's infiltrated schools like a weed. We've sent agents inside." He sighed. "But we've lost them all. If you're the windwalker and the dawn is here, I hope we will gain some insight into this Spirit Realm, where it came from, how we get there, and what it may have to do with our fight against the Osuna."
Cullen thought of the last moments before he'd pullspaced into the field by their old home. How he'd considered destiny and the weight of failure. How he'd had no idea what destiny would bring, but how failure wasn't an option he'd accept.
He took a breath. Exhaled. Glanced first at his mom and dad, then at Chester. "Windwalker Re." Coming off his tongue, it sounded like one of Torek's jokes. He remembered the Cipher's message: Future class and full skill awarded at completion of Cipher's Quest.
Chester gave a slight smile.
Cullen looked at his dad. "So, is that better than Star General, or do I need to kill a goblin to get my magic staff first?"
"I'll stuff a goblin in your ear," his dad said, rising, and kissed his boy again. Two in one day! "Let's have breakfast, Windwalker."
The words entered like a whisper in his spine.
39
Ehli started to notice the dream as Schaefer rode into their old kitchen on a glowing teal mara. The tiger's tail flailed about but did not shoot the growing energy building into blinding light at the tip. "Did you forget to get coffee?"
"I don't think so?"
Ehli parted the curtain of her dream and opened her eyes to see Schaefer smiling from his pillow.
"I don
't know if you're ready for Saemera jokes yet, but since you asked: Yes, I may have forgotten to bring the coffee."
"Stop." She dragged her arm out to playfully smack him, giving him time to deflect.
She rolled onto her back and stretched her legs under the smooth sheets, resting on the wondrously comfortable bed.
We're free.
Even with the unfinished Cipher quest and dealing with whatever Willo was doing in the city, she was no longer in prison. She fought the unreasonable fear that a guard was running to lock them back up.
Schaefer's hand grazed over her stomach. Morning breath preceded a kiss she squinted through in polite thanks. She'd brushed him off last night too, saying she was tired, and her head hurt. All true, but eventually a sorry excuse. She and Schaefer had made up on Saemera, and she had forgiven him for letting her think he was dead. And she had forgiven him for waiting six years to break them out. And that other pesky issue of slowly turning her and Emmit into telepaths without their knowledge.
They'd made up. She'd forgiven him but she still needed some time to adjust. She smooched the air, adding a verbal, "Mwa," to soften the blow of not turning to kiss him back.
His hand... and breath... retracted as one of his muscles popped. "Oh." Schaefer groaned. "Join me in praying I get at least a week before I have to run again?"
Ehli smiled, and opened her eyes as she rubbed a hand on his back. "Join me in prayer that you find some toothpaste before your next kiss attempt?"
"Oh you." He spun around and mock-tackled her, kissing her ten times on her neck and wrists as she playfully fought back.
"Uh, what are you guys doing?" Emmit asked, voice groggy as he peeked out from one squinting eye at them. His bed sat between theirs and the closed door.
"Your mom was just daring me to show how much I love her in spite of the fabulous smell emitting from my unbrushed teeth. I dare say, I believe I won."
Emmit rolled his eyes. "I'm hungry. Can we get something to eat?"
Ehli and Schaefer shared an almost eye-roll look of their own.