In The Wind, Part III

“I think he’s waking up.”

            “About time. I hope I’m here when we find out just what in the hell happened to the boy.”

            “I just want a better look at that hand.”

            My eyes snapped open, frantic, searching. Bright light. Strange voices. A gentle breeze. “Am I dead?”

            “I f*****g knew it,” a nearby voice exclaimed, laughing. “Anyone dressed that oddly just had to be American. Wakey wakey.”

            I blinked, clearing my eyes, and breathed a sigh of relief. A hospital room. A crowd of people in scrubs and coats loitered around my bed, looking at me with a combination of excited smiles and confused frowns. “What do you mean American? Where am I?”

            “St. Francis of Assisi Medical Centre,” a nurse murmured, checking my forehead for fever. “You weren’t carrying any I.D., so you’ve spent a couple days in the John Doe ward.”

            Irish. I knew I’d heard that accent recently. “Ireland?”

            “Mmm. Don’t even know what country you’re in?”

            “Do you tease the Alzheimers patients, too?” I snarled. The nurse leaned back, offended. “Where are my friends? Two women about my age, are they all right?”

            Two of the doctors glanced at each other. “Uh, well, both of the people we found you with are fine…”

            I collapsed against my bed, relieved beyond words, noticing the IV tubes and monitors around me for the first time. My branded hand was wrapped snugly in bandages, covering every inch of steely skin. “Good.”

            “You’re lucky to be alive, yourself,” the nurse pointed out. I nodded.

            “Luck had everything to do with it. Um. So what happened?”

            They told me, patiently waiting once when I lapsed into unconsciousness. Apparently I was being intravenously supplied with enough painkillers to kill Paula Abdul.

            Pubgoers on a side street in Dublin had noticed a bright flash in the street, and piled out from the bar to find three sprawled, stick-thin bodies, wearing bizarre clothes and bearing injuries from head to toe. At first it was assumed we’d injured ourselves with fireworks of some kind, until the area was searched and no such devices were found.

            The woman in the weird green robes had recovered quickly, and been released. Bed rest was enough. It made sense to me; it had been Beck’s horrible spellwork that made her so weak, and she was far away from it now.

            Besides, the idea of Wylla not getting better just seemed… impossible.

            The vaguely asian-looking girl and I were placed on IVs and given blood transfusions. Both of us were so badly drained of energy that our organs had begun to shut down, and only all kinds of advanced Irish doctoring had kept us from slipping away in the dark.

            That would have been an easy way to die, so naturally it wasn’t available to me.

            I nodded, satisfied. “Can I see them?”

            “Well, the one you called Wylla has been released already, but she left contact information with us for you. And miss… you said Weon? She’s still not awake. But she ought to be, soon. All she needs is a bit more rest.”

            “Thank God,” I muttered.

            “I didn’t see Him in here, giving you CPR. That was Keating. But yes.”

            I tried to sit up, tangled in cords. “Damnit. How soon can I be out of this?”

            “We want to run a few more tests, but… well, you look all right to me. Be patient. This will all be sorted out, soon.”

            *

            I was sitting beside Lee when she woke up. It felt good to be there for her, to help her feel safe. So often, these past few days, she’d put herself between me and something unstoppable, and stopped it. All I could do to thank her was hold her warm hand and wait for her to open her eyes.

            It didn’t seem like enough.

            “Trick?”

            “I’m here,” I said, grinning. I stood up to look at her. “Everything’s fine. You’re safe.”

            She smiled up at me weakly. Her voice was hoarse.

            “’Course I am. You’re here.”

            She closed her eyes and went back to sleep, breathing peacefully.

            I sat back down. Held her hand in mine.

            It was enough, after all.

*

            I found the hotel easily. Dublin is an impossible maze of ancient streets and overly-textured architecture, and the thing about Gaelic is that it doesn’t sound anything like it’s spelled, but the people in the city were friendly and helpful.

            A guy who looks like me, walking around in hospital pajamas, doesn’t have to deal with a lot of resistance. People assume you’re insane and treat you with a very cheery deference.

            I told the clerk I was here to visit a Willamette Hatfield, which was the strange name Wylla had left with the hospital. They called up to her room, and told me she’d be down shortly.

            I slumped down on a couch in the hotel lobby, still exhausted. I’d left Lee asleep, with a note explaining where I’d gone. I didn’t expect to be very long.

            “Tyler?”

            I turned around in my chair at the sound of my name, looking for Wylla among the people moving back and forth. A middle-aged woman with a pretty face waved her fingers at me and jogged over, pale dreadlocks bouncing.

            “Um.” I said, too confused to come up with anything better. The older woman smiled broadly, a smile that glowed, that made me feel warm inside, and suddenly I knew. “Wylla?”

            “That didn’t take you any time at all, did it?” she laughed, plopping down next to me. She was wearing khakis and a pale green shirt, and her eyes hadn’t changed, but everything else… there was a visible shock of gray at the base of her long locks, and her hands were getting wrinkled. The total effect was of a strange agelessness- which I had thought upon meeting her the first time, I recalled.

            “What happened? What is this?” I demanded, trying not to raise my voice. People were already staring at us.

            “Tyler, it’s fine. Relax. I’ve just… used myself up a bit.”

            “I don’t understand,” I protested, “You didn’t even do anything!”

            “I felt you,” she said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I felt everything. Didn’t you figure it out? We smoked together, remember? It was a spell. We established a spiritual connection. That’s how I was able to speak to you. That’s why I was so wrecked, up there. I felt what you were feeling, and it was terrible.”

            We didn’t say anything for a few moments, just remembering.

            “So why are you forty now, then? Didn’t happen to me.”

            Wylla laughed delightfully. “Forty. Wow…” she chuckled, sitting back.

            “I didn’t mean-“

            “Tyler, listen to me.” She placed a warm hand on mine, and a wave of calm, soothing magics washed over me. Her eyes twinkled with subdued green light. “I was forty more than two hundred years ago.”

            I stared, confused. Not bothered, of course, with her relaxing aura around me, but very confused.

            “I grew up on a farm in South Carolina, in the eighteen hundreds,” she explained gently. “My father owned slaves, and I hated it. I hated the idea that people could abuse and take advantage of each other that way. I wished I could help them, but I was just a girl. Taken even less seriously than women are now.

            “There were rumors in our town about a witch, an old crone who lived in the forest nearby.” She smiled fondly. “I ran away from home when I was sixteen and sought her out. The idea of a woman having power of any kind was intoxicating. I wanted it, too.”

            I listened, spellbound. I guess I should have assumed this sort of thing could happen, all things considered, but it had never crossed my mind. Wylla continued.

            “When I found her, I was… astounded. She didn’t seem like a witch at all. She was young, and beautiful, and kind, and she loved to laugh. She lived in a clearing, deep in the woods. A sanctuary. I stayed there with her for many years, and she taught me.

            “I learned to speak to the plants, how to nourish life. I learned the herbal cures that anyone can use, and then the magics of a Sage. And eventually I realized I had stopped aging when I was about twenty-five. Working with life energies does that to a person. I’ve been blessed by nature, and by my mentor, with extraordinarily long life.

            “I’ve seen things I never dreamed of seeing. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be a child on a slave plantation, and then live to see men walk on the Moon. To go there myself. To see ailments only a Sage could cure, fixed by modern science.

            “People who live short lives tend to despair, and it only makes sense. They see the bad in life. They see their troubles. They see the conflicts of the day.

            “But when you can step back like I have, when you can take a longer view of things, and see for yourself just how far people have really come… they have so much potential. They’re capable of such beautiful things. Such amazing accomplishments.

            “Up there, in all that chaos, I felt you fighting to preserve that. You were ready to sacrifice all of yourself for this world, and these people, and all the progress they’ve made, whether they see it or not. I felt you dying, so… I lent you my own energy.

            “The connection between us let me send you life energy, enough to let you survive. That’s how you overpowered Beck. It cost me years, but it worked.”

            My mouth hung open. “Wylla… you shouldn’t have done that for me.”

            She shook her head, radiant. “I didn’t do it for you, Tyler, any more than you were fighting on behalf of you. You were prepared to give all of yourself to protect life. How could I allow myself to do any less?”

            She hugged me tightly. “There’s work to be done. The world still needs us.”

            “I was afraid of that,” I muttered into her shoulder, and felt her laugh.

            “You were afraid at the Nexus, too. You acted anyway. That will be enough.”

*

            It was easy to leave the hospital, which surprised me. The healthcare system is really different in Europe, I guess. They returned our personal effects, though the girl at the counter had some questions about where Lee had gotten such bizarre jewelry.

            We emerged into the overcast afternoon of Dublin, wearing baggy clothes I’d hurriedly picked out at a shop on the way back from my meeting with Wylla. Lee’s Text hung ever-ready on its silver chain, never out of reach. I kept a firm hold on my Text in the pocket of my jacket.

            I guess we were both feeling a little paranoid.

            We stood together, quiet, watching traffic go by for a moment. At last, Lee spoke. Her voice was back to normal, which was nice. “So what do we do now?”

            “You’re asking me?”

            “I value your input,” she smirked, shouldering me gently.  It still hurt, but I didn’t react. Discomfort wasn’t really a thing for me, anymore. After the Nexus, aches and pains that would have left me bedridden a week ago just seemed… insignificant.

            I could deal with it. I knew that for a certainty now.

            “I don’t know. You’re the senior member of Conclave at this meeting, you come up with something.”

            Lee hesitated. “I’m not sure Conclave exists, anymore.” Something about the way she said it reminded me of Grand Master Ramage, slumped against that pillar, broken and beaten so easily. So much pride, so much power, and in the end she’d been helpless against her own creation. Lee. “I was watching the news earlier. Lots of weirdness going on in the world lately.”

            “I can’t imagine.”

            “Dig this,” she said, producing a notepad from her pocket and reading aloud, “A group of terrorists have appeared in Greece, calling themselves the Olympians. They appear to have, quote, access to advanced technologies and weapons, unquote. There’s a gay rights activist in Topeka who seems to have an affinity for fire. Messiahs and incarnate gods are popping up left and right. I even saw somebody swearing up and down they’d seen a Djinn.”

            I nodded. “I sort of expected this.”

            Neither of us pointed out the elephant in the room, for the moment, but we both knew it’s name. Beck was out there, somewhere, in possession of at least one Text and a Phylactery, and god knew what else. And a grudge, for sure.

            She’d assured us she meant to rule. I didn’t doubt it for a second.

            We started walking, aimless. “So the question remains,” Lee remarked after a moment, “What do we do now?”

            I thought for a long time, as we walked. What did we do now? What would the future be? The world was changing, rapidly, as a direct consequence of our actions… and our inactions.

            I thought about that long moment, when Beck had flailed, helpless in my grasp. I could have ended it. I could have prevented so much of this. The weight of so much culpability was a tightness in my chest, a constant background panic. What was it that made Beck able to kill to save herself, and why didn’t I have it? Was feeling good about myself worth exposing my world to so much confusion, so much danger?

            I stopped in place, looking at Lee. “I recognize this place,” I realized suddenly. It was just a dirty side street, cobbled and wet in the overcast weather. A scorch mark disfigured the sidewalk in front of a raggedy-looking restaurant, surrounded by yellow tape on stakes. Not a restaurant, a pub.

            “You should,” Lee replied, “This is where we came for drinks… the other night.”

            Oh, that night.

            “Oh… yeah, I see it now. It was dark then.” I looked at the wide area of sidewalk that was cordoned off with police tape. “I think… I’m pretty sure this is where they found us, the paramedics. This is where we appeared.”

            Lee looked sideways at me. “I’ve been meaning to ask, why’d you teleport us to Ireland anyway?”

            “If you’d been awake,” I teased, “You wouldn’t have stopped and thought about it either. I really don’t know. I just tried the teleport Glyph, and here we are. Frankly I was surprised that it even worked.” I thought back to that evening. We’d only just escaped from the angry mob, and we’d run out to the sidewalk, and I’d grabbed Lee to teleport us somewhere safe.

            I smiled to myself. This was where I’d held her for the first time.

            “Guess I needed a drink,” I joked, and Lee shrugged. We kept walking.

            “Back to what you were saying before,” I began, before she could, “I think… we need to watch.”

            “Watch what?”

            “Just… the world. People. Our type of people, in particular.”

            She grinned. “And then what?”

            I thought back to my conversation with Wylla. What, indeed? Did we interfere? Try to prevent the introduction of so much new, powerful magic into the world? Did we strive for permanence?

            If I deserved a chance at this life, this magic, didn’t everyone else?

            And that, I realized, is why I hadn’t crushed Beck without a second thought. People deserved a second thought. We deserved a chance to turn things around, to make amends, to rise above whatever we were and become what we chose to be.

            I had to take the long view. I had to try to look at things, not from the perspective of one man with one man’s problems, but as a whole. A process. People changed. They grew. They had so much potential.

            “We watch, and we see what they do. Maybe it won’t be all bad. Maybe this doesn’t all have to be a secret. And if… someone… starts making things bad, hurting people, abusing their talents… you and I will pay them a visit.”

            Lee grinned. I flipped open my Text, and she stepped close to me, holding me around the waist. “Same s**t, then,” she chuckled.

            I had to smile, as I found the Glyph that would take us home. “Maybe. But it’s going to be a very different day.”

*

Author's Note

And that's my first draft of Checkout. I hope, if you're one of the mysterious few that's been following my work, that you'll have something to say, even if you think it sucked. I'm about to begin the process of editing, cleaning up and adding segments to help flesh out some characterization, and of course figuring out the whole name problem.

Thank you for reading, really. The dozen clicks my chapters get are all the support I had, at times, and the process isn't over. See you on a different day.