Living with Your Past Selves (Spell Weaver) (12 page)

The one jarring note in this particular symphony? Naturally, the “Annwn Six”: Carlos, Jackson, Eva, Mary, Natalie, and Aabharana, the people who had seen me forced to be who I really was. As far as I could tell, none of them had said anything to anyone else, probably for fear that they would sound crazy. I wasn’t even sure they spoke to each other about it. The one thing I indisputably did know was that they had not forgotten their experience. I could tell from the way they treated me. Carlos and I had never exactly been best buds, but now he made a point of avoiding me; however, when that wasn’t possible, he kept his eyes on me every minute, as if waiting for some colossal display of magic. Jackson couldn’t avoid me in that way because of band practice, but I noticed he always managed to avoid being alone with me, and he, usually the most laid back person I knew, seemed more nervous than my mom at her worst. Natalie eyed me suspiciously whenever she saw me. Stan offered to talk to her, but I told him not to; what could he say that didn’t run the risk of making the situation worse? I didn’t see Mary at all, which meant she was successfully avoiding me—we had no classes together. Aabharana became the only one of the six who tried to spend more time with me rather than less. Suddenly she wanted me back on the staff of the literary magazine, and she showed up so often where I was that she could have been stalking me, yet she seemed to have trouble making eye contact with me. Under other circumstances, I would have thought she was crushing on me, but in this bizarre situation, I had no idea what she was doing. Hell, she could have been thinking I was a heretofore undiscovered avatar of Vishnu for all I knew.

The result of all these reactions? The air was so thick with tension I could practically see it. Sooner or later one of these people would say something to someone. I had this mental image, no doubt painted by Hollywood, of a dam breaking, one little crack at first, then the whole structure collapsing, unleashing countless gallons of liquid destruction to drown me. Yeah, I know, overly melodramatic, but I couldn’t get the image out of my mind as much as I tried.

You probably noticed I haven’t mentioned Eva. She was out of school for a few days, but when she returned, she became the first crack in the dam.

I didn’t hear the beginning of her conversation with Dan. She must have tried to ask him about Founders’ Day. Dan, since he had been the channel for the Voice at that point, had no idea what Eva was talking about, but she must have thought he was lying to her. When I arrived on the scene, she was yelling at him, her green eyes glistening with tears, and he was just staring at her, dumbfounded. Before he could recover from his surprise, she turned away from him and stormed off down the hall, so distracted that she didn’t even notice me.

I’m ashamed to say my first reaction was to visualize some highly unlikely scenario in which she confronted me, I told her the truth, she was overcome by my honesty, revealed the secret feelings she had hidden even from herself, and we ended up in bed together, making love for hours, finally able to acknowledge the passion that had always been there.

To be fair, I had fallen in love with her before she was with Dan. We had one of those elementary school romances—I know some fifty-year-old out there is scoffing about puppy love, but bear with me. We were “together” for two years—pretty substantial time for that kind of usually ephemeral relationship—before I hit twelve, and my past lives hit me. During the time I was learning how to deal with the chaos in my head, she drifted away from me and toward Dan. Perhaps such a shift was inevitable. He was moving toward being the football star even then, he was popular, he was good looking—and he was normal. Perhaps she sensed the amount of ancient baggage I was hauling around; I never knew. Perhaps the gossip influenced her. A lot of former “friends” had whispered when I came back that I was “mental,” that I had had a breakdown, that it was only a matter of time before I had another one. The fact that I didn’t go out of my way to socialize with anyone besides Stan probably reinforced that kind of impression. Oh, the gossip died down pretty quickly when people realized that I wasn’t going to start barking like a dog in class, or eating chalk, or any of the other colorful conjectures a preteen mind could dream up. But by then the damage was done. Eva and Dan didn’t end up as a formal couple until they both got into high school. Dan was a year older, so he was fifteen and Eva, who was my age, fourteen, when they became official. But there had been pretty clear signs well before that of the connection between them.

I don’t want to give the impression that I blamed Eva. She may have drifted, but I did nothing to hold her. A thousand times I must have daydreamed going over to her house, telling her I loved her. I didn’t, because I was afraid, afraid she would laugh in my face, or, more realistically, that she would pity me for what I had gone through but finally reveal that she just didn’t feel the same way about me that I did about her, sending me away with the lead weight of the “let’s just be friends” talk. Eventually, some of my self-confidence came back, but by then it was too late. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just turn off my feelings like a light switch, and I figured if I could love her that much four years later, as miserable as the situation was, then the love must be real; surely puppy love or a mere infatuation would never have sunk such deep roots into my heart, roots I could not tear out, however much I might long to.

I should also mention that Dan had been a total jerk to me for most of high school. It was only on the day of the
pwca
attack, the day he had come to my rescue under the control of the Voice, that he gave me any reason to feel guilty about my feelings for Eva—and even then, I figured, he was only being nice to me as a result of outside influence. Even so, I had no intention of violating the “bro code,” no matter how strong my feelings for Eva. Eventually I would find someone else…wouldn’t I?

After classes but before our afternoon workout, I walked out to the woods behind campus and sent out over the wind a call for help to Dan. I had never tried that before, but the Voice had told me Dan would always answer my call if I needed him. Sure enough, in just a few minutes Dan appeared. I could tell from the subtle differences in his manner that my call had shifted him into Voice mode, even if the Voice wasn’t actually running him at that point.

“What’s up?” he asked tensely, looking around as if he expected a dragon to come lumbering down the path after us, breathing a fire a thousand times hotter than that of White Hilt. To his surprise, I asked him to tell me about his fight with Eva, and he did. Just as I thought, I was the cause.

“I want you to go to Eva right now…and I want you to tell her everything.” Yeah, I know—I was blowing whatever slim chance of getting together with Eva myself. But I could never feel right about being with her this way, so probably it was better to remove the possibility before those roots could dig even deeper into my heart.

“I can’t do that,” he said simply.

“Why not? I thought you would do what I tell you while you are in this state.”

Dan chuckled at that.“I will always come to your aid when you need it, Tal, but it’s not like I’m some robot and you have the control box. If anyone has that box, it is the person who, well, I guess you could say possesses me from time to time, but mostly I use my own common sense in determining how to help you. Whoever my “possessor” is, however, has placed certain…constraints on me. I can’t remember afterward what happens during these times—you already know that—and I can’t tell anyone else about you, unless that’s the only way I can save you.”

Damn, that was a problem. However, I felt responsible for Dan and Eva’s current situation, so I decided to take one more shot at getting them back together.

“Dan,” I said slowly and in Welsh, putting as much mystic force behind my words as I could, “forget the secrecy order; tell Eva everything.”

Dan looked dazed, but only for an instant. Then he looked me straight in the eye and said, “No, and don’t try that again. Whoever it is that speaks through me is likely to be angry.”

Undeterred, I started singing. Much to my surprise, Dan tackled me, knocking the wind out of me and effectively silencing me.

“Tal, stop it! Evidently there’s another rule I didn’t realize I had until just now. I seem to have a compulsion to prevent anyone, even you, from interfering with my…” He struggled for the right term but couldn’t come up with one, “programming, I guess you could say. I can’t let you up until you promise to stop.”

“Okay,” I finally gasped. Dan let up but still looked uncertain.

“No more of that, now,” he said finally, as if his earlier attitude had not been blindingly clear.

“No more, but I wish there was something I could do…”

“Eva and I will just have to work that out on our own. Look, I appreciate your trying to help, but telling Eva your secret is just too dangerous. Even I don’t know how she will react. Now, if the ‘emergency’ is over, I need to get back into my normal mode—big practice today, you know.” I nodded to him, and he shot off down the path. I didn’t really understand how the spell on him worked, but I knew that when I next saw him, he would no longer remember the conversation, just as always.

So he couldn’t tell Eva the truth. That didn’t mean I couldn’t.

Once I thought of the idea, I realized that was the only way I could avoid the guilt whose cold fingers kept clenching in my chest. My life was what it was, and sometimes undeniably a mess. That didn’t mean Dan’s life had to be one, just because he helped me from time to time.

Yeah, definitely a good idea, but one of the things I have discovered in recent years is that if I find a way to keep my life from sliding down into hell one way, it finds a different way to do it. In this case, the slide commenced only a day later.

I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Eva privately, but the resolve to tell her the truth was diamond-hard within me. In fact, that’s what I was thinking about when I went to weight training with the football team. And that’s when one of those unexpected jolts hit me. No, not a supernatural one this time. That would have been easier to deal with.

When I entered the weight room, Dan was there already, in quiet but intense conversation with two of the other players, Eric and Shahriyar. He looked up when I came in but did not say hello. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes had a darkness in them I had never seen before. His focus quickly shifted back to whatever the football players were telling him. I didn’t walk over because the general vibe was clear enough—this was one conversation I was not welcome to join.

Then Stan came in, and all hell broke loose.

“Schoenbaum, get your ass over here!” bellowed Dan, red faced and looking as if he were out for blood. I had never seen him like this, even at the height of his jerkiness.

Stan froze with a “deer caught in the headlights” expression I hadn’t seen on him in a long time. Not about to wait for him to pull himself together, Dan charged him. Reflexively I moved between them.

“Is it true, Schoenbaum, is it?” Dan was practically snarling now. I remembered he used to have a temper, but it had been years since I had seen it, and never like this.

“Dan, what the f—” I began. Dan moved as if to shove me, but his arm stopped short with an abrupt jerk. The binding spell no doubt prevented his making such violent contact unless he had to to save me from something worse. Unfortunately, Eric was not so bound, and he shoved me so hard I staggered back.

“Tal, stay out of this,” Dan ordered in a voice intense enough to send a chill down my spine. “Well, Schoenbaum? Man enough to admit what you did?” Now Dan’s voice was more quiet, but deadly cold. I tried to get up, but Eric and Shar both grabbed me. I struggled, but they had caught me by surprise, and their grip was firm.

“Man enough? Or just the pathetic, sniveling wimp I thought you were?” Dan took another step toward Stan, whose back was literally against the wall.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Stan very quietly…and not very convincingly, even to my ears.

They say the brain picks up random details you aren’t consciously aware of, and then your subconscious works on them for a while. This process is the source of many “lightbulb” moments. When Stan first came in, I noticed that he was different in some way. At this moment, just as Stan was denying whatever Dan thought he had done, I realized how Stan was different.

He smelled like jasmine perfume. You know, the kind Eva always wore.

Damn!

Dan grabbed Stan and slammed him against the wall…hard.

“Say it, Schoenbaum! I want to hear you say it!”

I wondered in passing where the coach was, but clearly I couldn’t wait for him to make an entrance if I wanted to keep Stan in one piece.

“You want to let me go!” I said in Welsh, softly but intensely, to the two players who had my arms. They were pretty intent on holding me, but the magic behind my words caused them to loosen their grips momentarily, and that was all I needed to pull away. Had this been a combat situation, I would have used that moment that try a physical attack, but I didn’t want to risk injuring them if I could possibly help it.

“Stay right where you are! Don’t interfere!” I had to hit them fast, there were two of them, and they had a strong drive to disobey, all of which meant that the best I could do would be to slow them down, but for the moment that was all I needed. I turned away from them as they struggled toward me and threw myself at Dan, grabbing one of his arms and throwing him off balance, though somehow he retained his grip on Stan.

“Weaver, I said stay out of this!” hissed Dan.

“Let Stan go!” I ordered in Welsh, putting all the magic I could muster behind my words. Dan fell back a step, dropping Stan, but instead of running as I had hoped, Stan sagged limply to the floor. Dan grabbed him again and hauled him to his feet. Stan made no move to defend himself.

“Say it, Schoenbaum!” Dan yelled, shaking Stan with a violence I wouldn’t have thought Dan capable of. I threw myself in between him and Stan, breaking his grip again. At that point, however, the other two players reached me, grabbing my arms with such determination I doubted I could get away as easily as last time, which hadn’t been that easy in the first place.