She turns when she hears my running footsteps pounding on the ground behind her. Whatever calm I was able to stroke into her lauvan when I left has apparently long since evaporated. Her face is fixed in an expression of utter terror.
“Merry?” she croaks, but doesn’t move. Has fright paralyzed her, or is she still following my orders? I sprint the last few steps and sweep her into a fierce clutch. She’s stiff in my arms for a moment, then her body melts and she dissolves into sobs.
I rock her while she cries.
“I thought you weren’t coming back.” She forces out words in between gasping sobs. “I thought I was going to die.”
“Oh, Jen.” I smooth her hair, my own eyes misting over. “I promised I’d come back. I promised you’d be safe. I always keep my promises.”
She doesn’t answer. Her body shakes out all the terror and anguish and adrenaline she accumulated during her ordeal. I feel the shoulder of my shirt grow wet.
“It’s okay. It’s over. You’re safe now.” I stroke her head until her sobs quiet into little hiccups. We stand there for a few moments longer, silent, affirming our aliveness and our connection to each other. At least that’s what I’m doing. Jen’s so quiet and still that I wonder if she fell asleep on my shoulder.
Eventually, she stands upright, pushing off me for balance. She searches my face with questioning eyes. I don’t know what she’s looking for. I try for a comforting smile, but she doesn’t respond. Finally, she speaks.
“Is the volcano safe now?” She shakes her head. “Do you know the answer to that question?”
“Yes, and yes,” I say. She just nods, sparing a short glance to Mt. Linnigan to confirm my report. I put an arm around her shoulder and steer her away from the sight.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
She follows my lead down the path to the parking lot. It’s tight in places, but I keep a firm grip on her shoulders. She’s so shell-shocked that I’m afraid to let her go, in case she keels over without my support.
When we reach the car, I stand her next to it. She leans against the side and closes her eyes.
“Jen?” I say softly. “I need the car keys.”
She feels around in her pocket without looking and holds the keys out. Her arm falls to her side as a dead weight after I take the keys. I unlock the door and lead her to the passenger seat. She’s unresisting while I buckle her in and shut the door. I slide into the driver’s seat and start the car.
“I’m heading back to the hotel to pack up our stuff and then I’m taking you home. Okay?”
Jen nods, the long black lashes of her closed eyes brushing her pale cheeks.
CHAPTER XXV
Jen gives me her key after I pull into the hotel’s parking lot, and I head to her room. I snatch her suitcase from the closet and look around the suite. Except for her work clothes carefully hung up in the closet, she’s been living out of her suitcase. I haul the case to the bathroom and sweep all of the toiletries into it, then grab her clothes from the closet and stash them hastily on top. A pair of shoes from beside the door completes the packing, and I wheel the case over to my room. There’s not much to pack up—I’ve also been living out of my satchel, and the bed hasn’t even been slept in. I wonder what the maid thinks.
At the front desk, I check out then retreat swiftly to the car. I throw our bags into the trunk and jump into the driver’s seat. Jen hasn’t moved.
“Are you okay?” I say, starting to worry. She’s so pale—I don’t want her to succumb to shock. Her lauvan look slow but healthy and I relax a little.
“I’m okay. Just tired.” She keeps her eyes closed. “Let’s go home.”
I couldn’t agree more, and pull out of the parking lot with a squeal. Out of the corner of my eye I see Jen wince, and this heartens me more than her words. She must be feeling okay if she can still be annoyed with my driving. All the same, I vow to make the rest of the trip smooth sailing.
A half-hour into our drive, Jen stirs and opens her eyes.
“Did I sleep?”
“A little,” I reply, checking my rearview mirror before passing a motorhome tootling up an incline. Jen nods, and reaches to turn on the radio. She starts to search for a station that isn’t entirely static. I’m glad for the distraction—I don’t know what to say to Jen. I have no idea what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling. Her lauvan don’t give me much of a clue. They swirl somewhat calmly, but almost in a careful manner, as if she isn’t sure herself what she feels.
The constant stream of static finally resolves into one lone station. The announcer’s voice is bouncy and irritating, but it fills the uneasiness in the car and allows us to avoid talking about what happened in Wallerton. The announcer babbles on about some concert we can win tickets for, and then plays a jingle to let us know that it’s news time.
“The big news for the Coast Mountain Region is Mt. Linnigan. While scientists say they can’t confirm that the mountain is once again dormant, officials have started gathering the evacuees to return to Wallerton.”
So much for avoiding the topic at hand. I feel Jen looking at the side of my face. My eyes stay on the road. I don’t know what to say, what she wants to know. She lets the announcer prattle on for a minute, then jabs at the button to shut the radio off. I sneak a glance. Jen’s lauvan have tensed and sharpened into angles. Uh oh. She’s decided how she feels, and is now ready for some answers. Am I ready to give her some?
“Merry.” She says my name with no question in her voice, just a demand for my attention. She has it. “What happened back there?”
Here we go. I attempt to probe her to see what she really wants to know.
“What do you think happened?” Her head snaps toward me and her mouth opens angrily. I hastily cut in. “Just so I know how to explain, given what you know.”
“I know nothing,” she says, repressed frustration in her voice. “For some reason, you come to Wallerton, act all weird for a few days—hiking? Really?—then when the evacuation order comes, you’re nowhere to be found. You’d just left my room, Merry. Where the hell did you disappear to so quickly? You couldn’t have come found me before you left? I was worried sick about you. Shut up,” she says when I open my mouth to answer her accusations. “I’m not finished. Then you don’t answer your phone for ages. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the car while people run around me. Evacuation is in full swing, people are shouting, crying. The mountain is smoking and tremors are shaking the ground every couple of minutes. Then when I finally get a hold of you, you tell me you’re at the base of an active volcano. Then you’re not at the parking lot when I come to get you.”
I’m silent. What can I say? That’s what happened. My heart squeezes so tightly at the thought of Jen’s anguish that I can scarcely breathe. Jen’s not finished yet.
“Then you ask me to stand like an idiot, watching an erupting volcano, while you run off to do who-knows-what. And I seriously figured that was it. I mean, there was no way I wasn’t going to die.” She gives a shaky sigh and turns to look out the side window.
“Why did you stay?” I ask quietly. There’s silence for a moment.
“I guess I trusted you. You promised me you’d come back, and I believed you.” She shrugs incredulously. “You’ve never let me down before, and you seemed really serious.” She turns so her whole body is facing me. She even tucks her left leg under her bottom and adjusts her seatbelt so she can lean against the door and look at me fully. “So tell me, Merry. Why was I right to trust you? What could you possibly have to do with this volcano? What’s the connection?”
A few moments pass while I gather my thoughts. Jen stares at me, waiting.
“What if I told you I could see things differently from everyone else?” I choose my words carefully. This is a dance I’ve done many times before, and I haven’t yet found the best way to broach the subject. My odds are fifty-fifty on whether they join the club, or run.
When they run, they run fast. Usually I have to run, too
, when they call the witch-hunter or the men in the white suits.
“So, what, you’re insightful?” A heavy note of sarcasm threads through Jen’s voice.
“No. Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant.” I sneak a glance at Jen’s stony expression and wish I hadn’t. “I mean that there are layers of energy around everything, and I can see them and manipulate them.”
Silence from the other side of the car. I start to sweat. The words are not coming out right. I plow ahead, trying to make her understand.
“Mt. Linnigan had a major problem with its lauv—its energy—and I was the only one who could tell that it wasn’t natural. And thanks to your help, I was able to fix it, to keep the volcano dormant.”
I peek again at Jen as we drive down a straight stretch of highway beside a river. She’s staring openly at me, her big brown eyes filled with a mixture of alarm and pity.
“Is that what you believe happened?” she asks in a carefully neutral voice. Wow. She’s afraid of me now. She either thinks I’m high or have gone off the deep end.
A little laugh escapes me. It probably doesn’t help my status as a crazy man.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what happened.”
“Okay, Merry. That’s great.” She tries to make her voice soothing, but I can hear the strain. “Why don’t you just pull over here and we can talk about it?”
She’s really frightened. I sigh and pull over on the shoulder, crunching a few dead branches along the way. I don’t want to distress her, not more than I have to.
I turn my body to look at her fully. She stares back at me, her eyes wide and unsure.
“Have you ever talked to a—therapist or someone?”
I smile wryly.
“Yeah, I’m seeing a shrink, but not for this.” I lean my head back on the headrest, trying to think of what I can do to prove to her I’m not crazy. The car, now that it’s stopped, is a minimal lauvan zone. Jen has plenty, most of them standing out from her body like the fur of an angry cat, but I don’t want to frighten her further by playing with her lauvan. I open my door.
‘Step out of the car for a sec. I want to show you something.”
Jen looks like she wants to say no but doesn’t dare. She silently climbs out of the car and stands with one hand on the frame of her open door. I nod encouragingly.
“Okay, good. I want to prove to you that I’m not crazy. That I’m telling the truth.” Jen doesn’t answer. I cast my eyes around for a good subject.
“Do you see that hanging branch, just beyond the car?” She nods. I say, “Watch it carefully. I’m going to break it off from the tree, while still standing here.”
“Oh, Merry,” Jen whispers. She looks distressed and puts her hand over her mouth.
“Just watch. After I snap it from the tree, I’ll swing it around three times, and place it on the hood of the car.”
Jen shakes her head silently. I look into her eyes.
“Just watch. Then we can talk.”
I turn to face the branch and raise my hands. I don’t need to do that, but it will help me find the correct lauvan more quickly, as well as look impressive to Jen. A car whizzes by, kicking up dust, and the diffuse lauvan of the tree drift through my fingers.
I grab lauvan from the tip of the branch in my right hand, and the base of the branch in my left. I can almost feel Jen’s consternation when I wave my hands and wiggle my fingers wildly through the seemingly empty air. Once the lauvan are secure, my left hand closes sharply.
The branch snaps off the tree. I hear a gasp from the other side of the car, but my job is not yet complete. I promised her a specific sequence of events. My right hand twitches, and the branch—still hanging in midair—rotates once, twice, thrice. I pull both hands slowly back and the branch floats gently toward us. It lands on the hood of the car, rocking slightly when I release its lauvan.
I look at Jen. She’s half-crouched behind her open car door. Her face is fearful and disbelieving. My heart contracts, but I keep my face calm. I don’t want to lose Jen.
“It has to be a trick.” Jen shakes her head, and pulls herself out of her crouch using the car as support.
“Jen. We’re in the middle of nowhere. How on Earth would I have set up a trick? More to the point, why would I?” I swallow, trying to stay calm as I perch on the edge of this cliff. “I know it’s hard to take in, I’m sorry—I didn’t tell you before because I know it’s hard to accept, and I didn’t want to burden you with it.”
Jen looks at me for a long while, her face unreadable. I hold her gaze as long as I can, but eventually turn my eyes away to stare along the road.
“Okay.” Jen’s voice is rough and unsteady. “You’ve got some crazy abilities that shouldn’t be possible, but are.” She exhales slowly. I keep my eyes on the road until a car door slams. I look over, and then bend down to the car window.
Jen sits in her seat with her seatbelt on. She turns her head when I peer in.
“Let’s just—drive back to Vancouver. You can drop me off at home. Then I need to think.”
I nod and she breathes deeply, turning back to the road. Her lauvan are still pointing outward, and now they twitch in occasional spasms. I grab the branch and toss it into the woods. Jen doesn’t look at me as I sit down, put my belt on, and start the engine. Before I take the car out of park, I turn to her.
“Jen, I—”
She holds up her hand.
“Don’t, Merry. Please don’t—say anything. Just drive.”
It’s a very long, very quiet ride home.
CHAPTER XXVI
Dreaming
My aunt stirs the morning porridge in its big blackened kettle hung over the fireplace. Her nose and mouth are pinched as if something stinky wafts by her face. She always has that expression. The baby on her hip reaches for the spoon and almost falls out of her arm. She smacks the little hand away impatiently. The baby lets out a surprised wail.
My mother sets out wooden bowls and spoons onto the table, the table which is the pride and joy of my uncle and the envy of the neighbors. Its massive wooden slabs are hewn out of an oak that fell in the forest nearby, years before I was born. My grandfather claimed it as first finder, and together with his son, my uncle, spent two whole weeks fashioning a mighty table. Now it stands in my uncle’s house—my grandfather long since dead and in no need of a table—the dominant furniture in the small, windowless hut. Its reputation is such that it, and our house by extension, is the recognized gathering place for neighbors living in the nearby dwellings.
I bend down to stoke the fire. I’m accepted as the best fire-builder in the family, although no one except for my mother likes to acknowledge why. I kneel on the dirt floor and spread my fingers, searching for the correct lauvan. I can see them, the bright, blazing orange lauvan that spark and twist out of the flames and spread like water over the rocks that surround the fire pit. When they extend past the rocks, however, they mix and mingle with the other lauvan swirling nearby from my aunt and from me, making them difficult for me to distinguish. They do feel different, and I’m learning to discriminate lauvan based on feel alone. It's tricky, though.
I half-close my eyes to better concentrate, and through my eyelashes I see my aunt turn away in distaste. She can’t stand me. She’s afraid of me, of what I can do.
She likes the result well enough, though. I finally feel out the warm vibrancy of the fire-lauvan and pull slowly. The flames rise in height to lick the bottom of the kettle.
Wordlessly, my mother comes to stir the porridge, letting her hand rest briefly on my head. I smile up at her. She smiles back, her one good eye filled with warmth but ringed by a dark shadow above her pale cheek. She holds herself carefully as if a sudden movement will hurt her.
My fist tightens and I look down, swallowing. It’s hard to see my mother so ill.
My cousin, Rian, enters the one-room hut with my uncle. Rian may be my eldest cousin at twelve, but I still have two years on him. Rian was a tractable-enough playmate
when we were both children, but he feels the power of his advancing years keenly. Years of being bossed around by me at our games has resulted in a well-honed desire for supremacy, now that he is treated more like a man by my uncle. And now that he’s older and understands more, he knows how to gain the upper hand over me.
My uncle moves to his wife to tickle the baby who gurgles with delight at the attention. Rian squats down beside me in front of the fire where my mother still stirs the porridge.
“Father took me with him to visit the other elders to discuss the summer pasturing,” Rian says in a conversational tone. “Very important, the timing of the pasturing. All the local men were there with their sons. I didn’t see you there, though.” He pauses for a well-timed moment. “Oh wait, I wouldn’t, would I? Because you don’t have a father.”
I stare into the fire, my cheeks burning with anger. Rian knows exactly how to needle me in the most efficient way possible. In the past few months, I’ve had difficulty controlling my temper. My mother says it’s because I’m growing up, but I know her sickness weighs on my mind with an antagonistic heaviness. It doesn’t take much of Rian’s ill-natured ribbing to push me over the edge. My mother watches me nervously.
When I don’t speak, Rian continues.
“It must be terrible to not have anyone claim you as a son. It’s like no one wants you. Maybe your father is embarrassed of you.”
My anger boils over, as I knew it would as soon as Rian joined me. This is not the first time he’s goaded me past endurance. It doesn’t take much, these days. I shift around to face him and push him back into the dirt, my hand on his chest. I’m still the elder and have the advantage of weight and height. He flails ineffectually and tries to pry my hand off his chest. I lean my body into it and plunge my free hand into his lauvan’s center. He stops flailing immediately and looks at me with wide eyes, gasping like a landed fish. My teeth bare in a feral grin. I slowly squeeze. His eyes roll back in his head and his breathing becomes shallow.
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