Betwixt (22 page)

The woman who had come out of nowhere right before the lightning struck had said the word
fay. Changeling fay. The fire
that runs in your veins, in your bodies….
Then a lot of other insanity that Nix couldn’t hear because he was backing away by then, running, in fact, from the whole
ugly fiasco. Someone had died in front of him. A kid. His age. An innocent. When Nix saw him there at the edge of the gigantic
maypole or lightning rod or whatever it was they had raised, holding a spoke that was clearly metal wrapped in cloth, he had
tried to run toward him but the bolt had come too fast.

We taste the sweetness of mortality, and pass on the cup …

He hadn’t stayed long enough to hear any more. He had run. Though the rest of the kids around the pillar, incredibly, had
survived a direct lightning strike — they were moving, shaking, trying to wake up; Nix could see that much — that one kid,
the blond boy whom he had seen in the forest earlier, the fire around him already blazing, that kid had died. Nix had known
he would. That’s why he’d been so quiet earlier.

He had brought her here, his friend, Ondine. It was his fault they were there. It was his fault a person had died.

You’ve known it since you were young.

“No.” Nix said it aloud. “No. No. No.”

He walked toward the trees. The last thing he heard was the woman in the long black coat telling someone to call an ambulance.
By then he was yards away.

The storm had passed over the mountain and he could see it in the distant dark like a flashlight underwater. The moon had
risen. It was a little less than half full, and its light shone clear in the mountain air.
No.
Nix said it again. This was Moth’s fault. The one who lured them there. The one he’d been looking for and could not find.
Yet he could not explain the profound sadness that rose from his stomach, wrapped its tentacles around his chest, and squeezed.

He had heard more than he had wanted to. Seen more, too. He had walked into this nightmare on his way down the dark well of
madness and here he was. What was the real Nix doing in the real world? Was he having a conversation with himself on a street
corner somewhere? Was he down in the Shanghai Tunnels, loaded? Was he even in Portland? Was he even himself?

He had to get his head clear before he could help Ondine. And Morgan, he remembered suddenly. She was supposed to be there
that day. What had happened to her?

Nix’s legs felt weak so he stopped, putting a hand on a nearby tree to steady himself. Like the first day on the water with
his grandfather during the salmon run. But that was a good memory and this was bad. Worse than bad. Nix felt the tree’s trunk,
rough. A needle grazed his cheek. He looked around him, seeing a dark path, illuminated only by the moon and the faraway storm.
He could hear the low buzz of people talking through the trees, but no one word was distinct. His mouth felt dry, his forehead
moist.

He crouched on one knee, feeling the wet sponginess of dirt
mixed with pine needles and leaves and sticks.
Now I’m a real Injun.
He put his face down and inhaled. It smelled like his childhood: sweet and thick and mineral. What was this if not real?

The beating in his chest slowed.

The woman in the long black coat had grayish eyes. Her hair was black, pulled back, ringed by a single line of silver. She
was small and older. She had been pretty once and carried a cane in her right hand. He’d have to identify her eventually.
She’d be charged with murder.

Someone scuffled on the path behind him; a hushed male voice floated around the trees, more like an odor than a sound. Nix
turned. Whoever it was hadn’t rounded the bend. He strained. The voice was familiar to him, its rasp, its conspiratorial tone.

Without thinking he slipped behind a tree, pressing his back to it, feeling its rough striations. He felt for the last of
the dust in his jacket pocket and reminded himself that he hadn’t taken any that morning. Or had he? Was this withdrawal?
Was this a hallucination? If it was, he was still in it. It wasn’t going away. Nor, Nix recalled, did any of them, no matter
how much dust he took. All that crap about forgetting: Nix didn’t forget anything. Daddy Saint-Michael and him on a boat on
the glassy sea, his mother sitting in Koloskov’s singing,
I can’t stand the rain,
her idea of a joke. The smell of buses and public bathrooms and death. The hallucination that was his life.

He could make out the soft shuffle of two pairs of legs and he pressed closer to the trunk; the passersby approached. The
single voice had gotten clearer. Nix could make out the barest hint of a higher voice, too: light, girlish. He was afraid
to peer out beyond the trunk to see who it was, but words slowly took shape.

“Here, pet. Eat it. You’ll feel better.”

Nix cringed. He knew what was being offered. The man’s voice was thin and reedy, placating yet aggressive. The girl with him
moaned.

They paused beyond the tree. Nix placed himself so that he could get a partial view.

He could see only the backs of their heads, but in the moonlight he knew immediately who he was looking at. That receding
corn-husk hair. The squat neck. The red jacket. He would have known that fucking jacket anywhere. And the girl next to him,
whose slight shoulders Tim Bleeker bearishly grasped, whose little sock, Nix noticed, had dropped sadly on her thin ankle.
Not embracing, but pulling her closer, weighing her down so that she had to lean on him to stay up; that pathetic little thing
was Neve.

Nix didn’t need to think much before he stepped out of the woods toward them.

M
ORGAN
D’A
MICI BIT THE KNUCKLES
of her pointer fingers to keep from smiling. Hard. Or at least, she thought, hard enough for it to hurt. She liked a bit
of physical unpleasantness every once in a while. Some might call it pain. But pain was so messy. Anything taken to an extreme
was unpleasant. A little bit of pressure — combined with that ice cube feeling of sharpness — it kept one’s will strong. It
kept one from slipping — Morgan cleared an imaginary strand of hair from her brow — into messiness. Cloudy thinking. The miserable
in-between.

She took a breath and tipped her chin up, looking straight at the empty stage. Already people had started to dismantle it.
So that was what had accounted for the jury-rigged nature of the Ring of Fire. The gathering had to be broken down quickly,
in case something went wrong. Which, tonight, it most certainly had.

Morgan had been at the outskirts of the mysterious circle when it had started to shift. She had watched the pillar rise: the
stakes hammered into the ground, the cloth-wrapped spokes lying like ribbons on an Easter bonnet. She had spoken to no one
and no one had spoken to her. Her experience with the freak in the parking lot had prepared her. When that boy from San Francisco
came around with dust, Morgan had taken it willingly, despite her bad experience in Eugene. Something very out of the ordinary
was occurring and she wanted to take full advantage of it.

When the Flame left the stage and took up their posts at the pillar with the others, Morgan almost swallowed her tongue. She
was that excited.

Exidis,
they had chanted. The word she had been trying to remember all those weeks after Ondine’s party. The one Moth had whispered
in her ear.

Just before the lightning struck, balls of electricity, many-colored orbs, like giant sparkling Christmas balls, burst from
the stem of the pillar and tumbled to earth, rolling willy-nilly through the pulsing crowd. Not among them.
Through them.
Through their bodies: in one side, out the other.

That only one died seemed a miracle. When the bolt came, it was as if the sky had parted and delivered a pure blast of unimaginable
cosmic heat straight to the center of the earth. The entire structure of the ring — for that’s what it was, Morgan deduced
from looking at its unshrouded shape, a rather primitive superconductor ring — flashed blue, then red, then dirty orange,
its human attachments frizzed off like so many burnt husks.

The others were struggling to awaken. The woman in the black coat had emerged from the crowd, giving brisk orders for someone
to call 911, and had then spoken directly to her. Or so it had seemed. For the crowd had parted around three lone bodies as
soon as the chanting started, and Morgan had understood, in an instant, the answer to so many questions: Why she’d been attracted
to Ondine Mason. Why Nix Saint-Michael had shown
up at their party that night. Why all of them were in the mountains together. But now Ondine was passed out, having danced
pathetically right in front of her, and Nix — whom she’d spotted earlier at the edge of the crowd casting his eyes around
as if he were looking for someone — was nowhere to be seen. Not that Morgan much cared.

“Listen closely,” the woman had said. “Starting now.”

So she did. Morgan always had been good at following orders.

“You are called a changeling.” Her voice was metallic and raspy, like a bell rubbing against a cheese grater, and she spoke
quickly, without ceasing, so Morgan had to concentrate to remember the terminology.

“Your human body is used to hold what you truly are, which is not of this world, nor of humanly conceivable proportions. You
belong to another dimension: Novala. The never-ending, the one. The everything and nothing. Your time in the human world,
everything you’ve known thus far, is but an intermediate state in your ultimate evolution. What you have just witnessed is
the exidis of a group of your kind, leaving their bodies and entering their true home. We call it Novala. New Land. Be advised.
These are all simplified ways of understanding what is beyond any human’s ken.”

That’s when Morgan saw James Motherwell, whispering something to the woman before he progressed to Ondine.

“The ring is a superconducting vortex. At its center is cold fission. Lightning is used to power the conduit, liquid nitrogen
to keep it cold. The exidis takes immense energy and preparation and that is why we are here. The ring is your cocoon. You
will be reborn into Novala as a being of such unimaginable power and greatness there are no words to describe its awesome
totality.”

Here her voice softened.

“Soon you will know it. You will see it. You will come so close….

“Human life is ending. You have already witnessed its initial corrosions. Is Novala a safe place? Should we doubt it? You
have a chance to join the existence of a higher plane. The fay. The one. The ever changing and immutable. We have been with
you through all time. The bodies you inhabit are our conduits. You, the changelings, are chosen for your fitness and intelligence
and energy.”

Her voice became colder, though her eyes remained quiet. “You have only a year to learn and organize. There will be those
who will try to disrupt your progress. Family, friends. They will ask why you seem different. Why you seem, perhaps, oddly
happy. Or sad. You must tell no one. You must live as you have lived. You are safe in your ring. After your body reaches its
mature state, which is soon, the pressure of the inhabitation will
start to wear on it, and it will rapidly deteriorate. If your corpus dies before the exidis, your fate will be of the harshest
proportions.”

She paused. Morgan held her breath.

“Study well the exidis and the laws of the fay. The boy’s fate you saw tonight” — for the first time the woman cast her opaque
eyes down — “could have been averted. Each of you has a monitor. A ringer. You probably already know him.” She stopped and
Morgan saw her eyes dart around, as if looking for someone. “A person who can read the health and fitness of your human corpus
and advise you of its life force. Remember that your ringers are there to help you. Use them well.”

Ringers?
But before Morgan had a chance to wonder, she took up again.

“The police and the ambulance will soon be here. Before then we will disperse.” She flicked her eyes to Moth, now back at
her side. “You will want to know if you have ‘powers.’” The cold look resumed. “And you will find out. Your guide will help
you. Remember that you must not allow your body to be harmed. There are chaotic, insidious forces out to hurt you. Changelings
who have chosen the path away from their one fate. One is familiar to you already.

“You will know us by this mark.” And here she held up her wrist, upon which Morgan could make out a small tattoo of an
X, the same one she had seen on Moth, the same on the rabid girl in the parking lot. “It is tattooed upon us after our initiation,
and the radiation from the exidis completes its design. There are those in the world who have it. Humans. It means they were
once inhabited. You will know the completed design when you see it. You mustn’t speak to them or show them your own sign.
They have no memory of the experience. They have no memory they had once gone through the ring of fire.

“I am Viv. I am a scion. We are the bridges between changelings and fay. We stay in the world longer, and the threat of elimination
is greater for us. Do not think that you will see us often. We come out rarely for fear of the evil ones.