Magic Time: Angelfire (31 page)

“Goldie …” Cal said.

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Jeez, Goldman, you eat scary shit for breakfast.’ Granted. But it costs me to stay connected to the Source. To hear those Voices night after night. When I’m on the edge, Cal, they make stepping over sound… easy.” He raised his eyes to Cal’s face, and Cal went white at the look in them. “Sometimes it’s all I can do to hold on to the little piece of sanity I’ve got left in here. I know you want yeses instead of maybes and answers instead of riddles. But I don’t have them. Not right now.”

There was a vacuum in the room. No one spoke or moved. The wind rattled the doors and pried at the windows.

Finally, Cal spoke, his voice careful, gentle. “Then we’ll make do with maybes and riddles. I … I know you’re not making this up, Goldie. But I’m blind right now. I’m not sure what we’re facing.”

A ghost smile touched Goldie’s lips. “Welcome to my world.”

Cal’s expression changed subtly in the exchange their eyes made. “Yeah. I … I get it,” he said finally. “If you … sense anything, hear anything—”

“You’ll be the first to know. Trust me.” He turned back into the rippling shadows and disappeared into the stalls.

Cal picked up the crumpled map and smoothed it against his stomach. “I’m sorry, you guys. I … I don’t have any excuses. It’s just… another day in a long nightmare.”

Colleen laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. Everybody’s worn-out and a little tired of surprises.”

Cal shot a glance back into the shadows where Goldie had gone. “I’m worried about him. He’s our compass. Always pointing almost due west. Now it’s as if … the pole has moved. Maybe it’s these dreams we’ve been having … maybe they’re confusing things.”

“Well, one thing I’m not confused about,” said Enid. He 
pointed toward the southeast corner of the barn. “Howard is that way.”

Cal took a deep breath. “Then we go that way.”

Enid nodded, as if content with that, and lay down on his hay bale, pulling his sleeping bag over him. I realized how hungry for sleep my own body was. I had laid out my bedroll in what was left of a haystack along the inner wall of a stall. Now I went to it and crawled in, facing the common area, almost numb with cold and weariness. I could see Cal and Colleen standing where I had left them, both looking at the hard-pack floor rather than each other.

After a moment Cal dropped the map onto a hay bale and moved to stand by the fire barrel, where he made business of warming his hands. Colleen hesitated, then followed him.

“Could the Source really be in Chicago?” she asked, her voice low. “Is that what we’ll be facing on the other side of the void?”

“That’s one of the things that doesn’t feel right. All this time, I’ve assumed that when we get to the Source, I’ll know it. I’ll hear it, or I’ll
sense
it in some way. And I thought…”

“What?” prompted Colleen, her eyes tight on his face.

“That when the time came, there’d be something for us to use—some tool or weapon or … knowledge that we don’t have now. Some way to defeat it. We’ve got Enid, but I don’t know how he fits. His music is like a shield, but is it a weapon? And… I’ve always assumed that
I’d
find it—this weapon—whatever it is. The way I found the sword. I feel as if there’s a piece missing. Something I’m not understanding.”

Colleen shrugged. “Maybe we have the missing piece but we just don’t know it. Or maybe it’s out there, somewhere.” She tilted her head toward the same wall Enid had pointed at moments before. “Or maybe it’s here, inside us. Not just one or another of us, but all of us together. You found the sword, but Goldie led you to it, didn’t he?”

Cal tilted his head and smiled down at her in the fire’s glow. “You say the most amazing things.”

She took a half step back from him. “What? What’d I say that’s so funny?”

“Not funny, profound. You said something … Doc might’ve said, or Mary maybe. That it isn’t just one of us— it’s
all
of us.” He took back the half step she’d given up. “I wasn’t laughing at you, Colleen. I wouldn’t laugh at you.”

She opened her mouth to respond, sarcasm battling something else in her expression. But before a word could come out, he bent his head and kissed her.

I rolled over onto my back, casting my eyes deep into the darkness of the hayloft. Good. This was the way it was supposed to be, was it not? It was what Colleen had hoped for. Clearly, it was what Cal wanted. It was what I had expected, encouraged.

Then why did I feel no contentment?

Fierce, sudden wind slammed against the barn’s broad flank. The entire structure shuddered as if the earth had bucked beneath it, and the front doors blew in, admitting wind and sleet mixed with rain.

Colleen and Cal were startled into action, while I sat up as if on a spring. They had pushed the doors shut and lifted the oaken latch bar into its iron cradles before I could struggle from my bedroll. Dirt and hay scooted across the floor, pursued by the chill wind that stole beneath the doors and through every seam and crack.

Cal pulled a hand through his wet hair and grimaced. “Looks like it’s going to be a rough night.”

It was.

No, I don’t
, was what I wanted to say.
Maybe it’s the best time in the world. Our defenses are down. We’re not so careful, so-damned-in-control.
But I didn’t say that. I let her go off to her bedroll and moved like an automaton to unroll mine.

That was when I saw something in our peculiar domestic picture that wasn’t right. Colleen and Doc had chosen to bed down in the half-empty haymow; Enid was snoring on a couple of bales laid end to end. The bale next to him was empty. I stared at it for a long five count before I realized that empty spot was where Magritte should have been. Her tether lay loose on the floor. Chill swiped through me.

“Maggie?” I moved instinctively toward the darkest part of the barn, where Goldie had gone. Surely the Source couldn’t have taken her. We would have heard something, felt something.

We did hear something, my argumentative side reminded me—that big wind hitting the barn, the doors slamming wide open. And we didn’t hear much else while that was going on.

“Maggie?” I called again, and behind me Colleen asked, “What’s wrong?”

I was at the head of the row of stalls now. It was black on black back here, except where pale, aqua light seeped from an unseen source to ripple across the ceiling. That could be Magritte; it could just as easily be one of Goldie’s light-globes.

I hesitated, suddenly afraid of interrupting something. I took another step into the gloom, drawing level with the first stall.

“What is it?”

I swung around to find Goldie watching me over the bottom half of the stall’s double door. He was wearing an unmistakable aura of the palest gold.

Caught gaping like a fish, I managed to say, “I just… realized Magritte was gone.” I met his eyes. Behind his veil of wild curls, they were dark and wary.

There was movement behind him. Light shifted as if someone approached with a lantern, and Magritte appeared over the threshold of the stall, her own aura bright, silvery, blinding.

Goldie said, “I’ve got her covered.”

“But the tether—”

“Don’t need it.”

I realized, suddenly, what he meant. Each of them was the center of a radiant halo that extended to touch and mingle with the other, changing hue subtly in the process. I’d noticed it a number of times, but had always assumed that Maggie was creating the phenomenon, that she was reaching out to Goldie. Now I realized that Goldie was generating his own halo.

“A proximity effect?” I looked from one to the other.

“To all intents and purposes, Magritte disappears when she’s close to me.” He smiled wryly. “I’m just plain overwhelming, I guess.”

Magritte snorted delicately.

“When did you realize you could do that?”

His eyes flicked away from mine, as if the subject were embarrassing. “My first day inside the Preserve. But I didn’t realize what it meant until we left the Blue Mounds. I was afraid for her and I … just sort of reached out mentally and shut out the Storm.”

Magritte looked at him with something like adoration in her eyes. “Goldie brought the power of the Mounds with him.”

He returned the look, adoration mingled with something darker. “Yeah, I’m just like one of those glow-in-the-dark things.”

I remembered, then, what he’d said about the Black Tower that bound our dreams together:
It’s inside me.

I couldn’t imagine what that must feel like. Could I handle it any better than he did? “I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“Jumping all over you earlier. It was uncalled for.” “Yeah, well, shit happens.”

He surprised laughter out of me. “What are you—psychic? Doc said that.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Doc’s psychic—I’m psycho
. It’s important to keep that straight.” He sobered, meeting my gaze. “I’m going to get through this, Cal. I have to get through this. I don’t know what’s in Chicago, but whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”

“When I said I understood what it costs you to touch the Source,” I said, “when I said I got it—I meant that. I think it … must feel… as if you’re not quite yourself.”

He laughed, breaking eye contact. “Not quite myself. Oh, that’s a mouthful. Am I ever myself?” He shook his head. “Yeah, that’s one of the feelings I get, I guess. Not myself.”

“When I do … the maps, the contract … things like that…” I felt my way through the emotions; the words were elusive. “I wonder … what I’m becoming. I’ve always thought change comes from within. That you change yourself. You know what I’m saying?”

“Self-determination,” he said. “Self-possession. Those may be chimeras now.” He spoke the words as if he’d already accepted them, but they were killing words to me.

I didn’t let it show. “So? For all we know, there may really
be
chimeras wandering around out there.”

Magritte laughed. It was a little girl’s laugh. Incongruous, slipping from between those razor-sharp teeth. I was amazed she could still make that sound after all she’d been through. “Those are the lions with the bird-legs, right?” she asked.

Goldie gave me a sly look. “Naw, those are griffins.” The sly look broadened into a smile that seemed genuine. “Sweet dreams,” he said, and moved back into the stall, drawing Maggie after him.

I shivered and sought the comfort of my sleeping bag.

Psychic, maybe. Prophetic, not. Having let it into my head, I dreamed of the Tower. That night there was a different twist. Tina was still trapped behind the dripping, glazed walls, but now Goldie was there with her.

Morning dawned cold and relatively clear. The blanket of clouds was higher, allowing the sun to peek beneath it at the horizon. The cloud cover wasn’t quite as seamless as it had been the day before. The wind still came out of the north, but it was a tired wind.

I could relate.

The silence struck hard. I could see it in every face when at last we crept out of the barn, leading our jittery horses. It was a ghost-town silence that made our voices ooze out in whispers and our eyes dart about in search of mysterious shadows. There were none, so we imagined them. Wind stirred the tufts of dried grass that stood above the powdery snow, while tree branches nodded and creaked and ash lifted lazily from the burnt shell of the farmhouse. Then, far and away across a ruined cornfield, a crow called and another answered. Sepulcher sounds from the first living things we’d heard or seen for days.

Goldie breathed out a gust of steam. “Whoa. Where’s Stephen King when you need him?”

“I used to love that sound,” said Colleen. “The crows, I mean. It meant autumn: Halloween, Thanksgiving, the crunch of leaves, the smell of wood smoke, snow.”

“Well, we got you some snow,” Enid observed. “And I can give you crunchy leaves, if you really want ’em all that badly.”

Colleen returned his grin and threw her leg over Big T’s broad back. “Thanks, Enid. I was getting all morbid and mushy there for a moment.”

“Any time.”

We moved out. I tried to put myself next to Colleen in the hope that we might talk about certain events, but she seemed to be in one of her loner moods, keeping herself a little aloof from everyone. I tried to tell myself it didn’t have anything to do with
the kiss
, but I couldn’t help wondering.

It was Enid I found myself riding with at the head of the column. He was as eager as I to see what Goldie’s black hole really was.

As we made our way into the sunrise and rode the last sev
eral yards to the top of the hill, I realized I was holding my breath. I’m not sure what I expected to see when at last we crested the rise. Maybe something from one of those disaster movies—a nuclear dead zone à la
Independence Day
or any one of the dozens of postapocalyptic creations imagined by science fiction authors and Hollywood script writers.