Emerald City Dreamer (17 page)

What could he do? He could leave. Then they wouldn't have to make such a terrible choice. He wasn't sure how he would eat, and he would miss his friends here. He wouldn't be their problem anymore.

The tent flap opened.

Ezra pretended to sleep. "You awake?" Elder Noah asked. He nudged the sleeping bag gently with his boot. Ezra stirred and pretended to wake.

"
Brother, listen, I know I've treated you pretty harshly in the past. I... I guess I don't like kids much, and I don't approve... at least I didn't approve... of our policy to take in strays. So, I'm sorry for any unchristlike words I may have used towards you in the past." He scratched at the bandage on his forehead.

Why was he being so nice? Probably afraid of him, afraid of his power.

Ezra sat up slowly. "It's okay."

"
Anything I can get for you? You must be hungry."

Ezra nodded. "Very."

Noah slipped out and returned with a bowl. "You can stay here in my tent until the Elders figure out what to do with you. You've caused quite a stir."

Ezra nodded. "Can't I stay in my own place tonight?"

"
No. You'll stay here."

Ezra scooped stew into his mouth. His first priority was to get some time alone, to think about whether he should leave for good. Why wouldn't Elder Noah let him go home? How was he going to get away if they...
Oh, I see.
They didn't want him mixing with the rest of Congregation until they decided what to do with him.

After finishing his food, he stood. Noah stood with him.

"
Uh, I uh, need to use the bathroom."

"
Of course you do. Let's go." Ezra smiled weakly, and inwardly sighed. So it wasn't going to be that easy. He'd have to wait until the Elder fell asleep.

He felt naked, standing at the latrine. The eyes of fellow brothers glanced his way now and then. Brother Ezra, the topic of the day, and probably the butt of a lot of jokes.

Noah led him back to the tent, and zipped it up tight, sealing the outdoors away. "It's late, let's get some sleep."

Ezra complied. He didn't want to arouse suspicions and get a guard posted to the door, so he huddled in his sleeping bag, listening to the sound of the elder's breathing until it turned into a gentle snore.

Then he slid out of his sleeping bag without unzipping it, and then slowly unzipped the tent flap. Elder Noah stirred a bit, but the plastic zipper wasn't too loud. The darkness of the chill night air enclosed around him. Ezra started walking towards a hidden place he knew, down an overgrown trail that not even the
Wanderers
knew about.

Ezra thought back to his first memory. He didn't know his age then; he must have been six. He'd been in school. The kids were taunting him. They poked him and called him Billy Goat Gruff. He cried. Then there was a flash of light. He couldn't see. Then he was in the principal's office. Lots of people were there. Were they his parents? What did his mother look like?

No matter how hard he tried, he could never remember.

They said he'd punched someone. But he hadn't. He didn't punch anyone. He never wanted to hurt anybody. Somehow the other kid was hurt real bad. The next thing he could remember, he was in his bedroom, crying. He slipped out the window and never went back.

After that, he'd made do sleeping in abandoned buildings. He ate trash or made deals with restaurant owners for leftovers.

Since then, he'd seen things. A lot of things that shouldn't exist, and yet, there they were, little people and odd creatures. No one else could see them, so he started doubting his perceptions. He had learned to not point out anything unusual to anyone. It was best to wait to see if they saw it first.

So if he wasn't a demon, he was crazy.

He'd met a lot of crazy people on the streets who thought they were prophets. Maybe all the prophets were crazy. Did it work the other way around? Did prophets think they were crazy?

Maybe it took crazy to hear the word of God. Maybe you had to see things that weren't there, and believe you had horns and long creepy arms. Maybe only then you'd have enough faith in God that He could speak through you and open wide the clouds and lift you up into the air. He looked up into the broken clouds, hints of moonlight here and there, but no answers.

His thoughts and memories and prayers rolled around in his head for the whole walk, battling one another. When he reached the stream crossing, he remembered Jacob from the Bible, who wrestled with God, and wondered if this is how he felt. Surely Jacob knew it was God he wrestled with. He prayed asking if this was how Jacob felt.

He crossed the small creek easily. Then he stood on a fallen log that spanned a pile of branches intentionally placed by park services to hide the path. Beyond it, the ferns grew in very closely around the old path, so that you could hardly tell it had ever been a trail.

He paused for a moment on the log.

"
Hello there, Old Mother," he said. He leaned down to see the large spider, nested in her web, blocking his way. "Thank you for guarding my secret, pretty girl. Sorry to destroy your home again, but you'll have it rebuilt by morning."

She dined on a fresh kill, and didn't even twitch as he pinched the top strand connecting to the gnarled roots of a fallen tree. Gently, he lowered the entire web, like a gate, and she patiently sat in the center, eating her dinner while her web collapsed. Then he released the second strand, and passed through into his own world.

He wandered among the crowding ferns until he found his favorite place, next to the creek, under a towering boulder. Beside it was a rough pyramid, nearly his height, that he had built out of rocks during previous visits. No eyes but his had ever seen it. During more peaceful times, he had felt compelled, placing one stone upon the other until it was complete. He'd built one in every city they'd stopped in, near every site of Congregation, and even before that when he lived alone.

Sighing, he sat, leaning against the soft moss, listening to the creek for the voice of God.

Had he really made his life better by joining these people? Before he met them, he ate from dumpsters. Now? He still ate from dumpsters. If it turned out they didn't want him, he should leave. Especially if he really was a demon.

Or maybe he should leave even if he were a prophet.

He was pretty sure some of the things he'd said at the University were blasphemous. He believed those things; at least... he thought he believed them. They had come from a place deep down inside him where all his favorite thoughts came from.

And where his lusts came from.

Ezra sighed. Round and round in circles again. How could he know what was truth? Everything seemed to have a contradiction, and each contradiction was as believable as the next. Something had to give.

He prayed aloud to God in heaven, the way Elder Isaiah did. He also prayed to the God in the stream, in the trees, and in the boulder he leaned against: "Please Yahweh, if I am a demon, let me know it. Or if I am a prophet, let me know it. Or if I'm crazy..."

"
There you are!" cried a voice from the darkness. "You know, if you pray like that, you'll never get any answers. It's best to ask clear yes or no questions."

Ezra jumped. Who was there? Was it God?

Another boy sat down next to him, a little older than him. Not God then.

"
Who..."

"
I'm quite possibly the answer to your prayers, but I'm not God."

Then Ezra noticed his ears. They were not human ears; they were fuzzy animal ears. He felt something soft against his arm, and looked down to see a flicking raccoon tail.

He held out his hand. Ezra looked at it, eyes wide. "My name is Jonathan, good sir. But my friends - and therefore you - shall call me Fiz. Like a nice glass of soda pop."

Crazy just got company.

JETT KNELT SKYCLAD before the pool in Cloncahir. At her command, the stalactite had ceased dripping, so now the chamber lay in calm silence. She dropped the button where it floated for a moment before succumbing to the weight of water to sink it beneath the depths. She leaned in until her hair skimmed the surface. Inhaling deeply, she could smell the purity of the still pool. She moved her face in closer, until her nose touched the cool mirror, her hair floating all around her. With inner eye, she could see the button, and through it, could feel the thread connecting it to its former owner.

It led back, as if still sewn to his clothing, to a boy. A young boy. No, a troll, just as Fiz had reported.

He lay asleep against a tree, with another man in old-fashioned clothing bleeding beside him.

Jett sat back on her heels, her hair dripping over her breasts. She shifted until she sat sideways. Scrying could be a bit of a chore, but Jett had the patience of someone who had lived a millennium.

After a few hours, the boy finally awoke and followed the old man back to a camp. She learned a few things. His name was Ezra. He was living at some kind of religious camp in the woods. He was concerned about the argument between the old men. He complied with everything they told him. He was shy. They all looked at him strangely. And... he was being watched. One of the men followed him wherever he went. Was he captive?

Poor thing.

She watched as he fell asleep again.

Who were these people? Some kind of cult? She felt a wash of concern. This boy had a number of things against him. First, there were those two strange women Fiz had seen at Red Square. They weren't with the camp. Possibly the same two Ivy had seen at the support group? Were they the reason the old man had been bleeding? She couldn't rule that out. And he was a Lost One, living with what to him must seem like deformities, for possibly years.

Jett had sheltered hundreds of the
leanai a cailleadh
over the centuries of this timthreall, when she'd chosen to become faeborn for barely-remembered reasons.

She barely knew her human father, only that he was Japanese and handsome. As little more than a sperm donor, whisked way to Tir Nan Og, he would have been ill-equipped to teach her anything of use. She had the privilege of being raised by Flidais, who taught her how to control her magic, and how to remember the life before, to remind her why she'd chosen to be faeborn in the first place.

She could barely imagine coming into the world in a new blaosc, with no memories, your fae parent absent. When the things that go bump in the night are really there, staring at you from your closet, and you don't know what they are, it must be terrifying.

Ezra lived through this timthreall alone, ignorant and confused. He would have seen himself and the world differently than everyone else did.

If left alone,
leanai a cailleadh
had little chance for a happy or normal life. Their minds turned to self-loathing, madness, violence, depression, institutionalization... sometimes even suicide. Or worse. Some leanai a cailleadh became bitter, learning just enough about their powers to abuse others, turning unseelie for no good reason other than... What did moderns call it? A way to cope.

And if that wasn't enough, he lived in the woods with these weirdoes, being fed their Christian drivel. Who knows what the poor boy must believe about himself at this point.

She wondered what these Christians must think of his feat of wild magic earlier that day. They could be keeping him prisoner while they searched for a stake to burn him on. She'd seen worse.

This called for an immediate intervention. Just as soon as he was alone.

An hour later she got her wish.
Ah, so you weren't asleep after all. Clever boy.
She watched him rise, unzip the tent, and sneak away.

"
Fiz!" she yelled. No, that would not do. She ran to her pile of clothes and fished out her cellphone.

"
Fiz. Wake up. No, wake up more. I need you to get in your car and drive." Holding the phone close to her ear, she knelt again at the water's edge and touched the image of Ezra's head lightly. "Head for Cougar Mountain. Near Issaquah. Our troll is there, leaving camp. See if you can find him. Lead him to Coffee Messiah. I will meet you there."

She hung up and returned her attention to the boy in the water. He strolled slowly through the woods with a look of consternation on his face. Fiz may have trouble finding him. Cougar Mountain was a mountain after all.