Flight

by Neil Hetzner

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Compromise

  When Prissi walks away from the dead winger, Joe, and the wounded centaur, her only thought is to get back to her bed in the quiet, dimly lighted room. She ignores Fair, who is following close behind, in the hope that he will go away. Her hope seems justified when she opens the door, passes through, closes it and it remains closed. Prissi stands over the narrow hospital bed and for the thousandth time ponders the Pandora’s Box she has opened from which so much misery and sorrow has escaped. She can not fathom how hard the darker Fates have had to scheme, finagle and cajole to get Joe Fflowers out in the middle of nowhere so that his friend can be killed by a catatonic centaur.

  Prissi tells herself that when she is around there is no sanctuary. None for her and none for those around her. She might argue at the injustice, she might complain at her unintended horrors, but she can not wriggle free of the fact that a live Prissi means dead family, friends, and, perhaps worst of all, strangers…like the one outside.

  Prissi is planning what must be done when she hears the door open. Fair comes up close to her before he asks, “You stay?”

  Prissi doesn’t know what to say.

  “You go?”

  Prissi takes a deep sigh.

  “You go.”

  Fair reaches into his left pocket, removes his hand, opens it and shows Prissi the two lost crystal pendants and offers them to her. Before she can reach out, Fair reaches into his other pocket and draws out a closed fist. Despite her intention to show no interest, Prissi leans forward. The girl is stunned when Fair opens his hand and reveals a third crystal nestled in his dirty palm. Whatever information the crystals contain, it is now back together for the first time in sixty years.

  When Prissi told Olewan her story, the old woman had not said a word about possessing the final crystal. As soon as Prissi sees what Fair holds, and knows whose it must be and how it came to be in Fair’s hand, the feelings of trust that had begun to bud in her as the geri nursed her back to health immediately disappear.

  In an oblique, meandering way that reminded Prissi of her father, Olewan had suggested that Trinity had discovered a way to increase longevity. It didn’t take someone of Prissi’s intelligence and cynicism to understand the lengths people would go to get their hands on that information. However, knowing that people would want what they thought she might have still did not tell her who was after her. From the information the African women had been able to extract, Prissi knew that those attackers had been sent by a man named Schecty; however, those two wingers had endured much pain without ever admitting to knowing who Schecty was, or who he might be working for.

  Since the captured wingers had no idea about the attack on the West Side levee, Prissi had decided that she had two enemies rather than one. That conclusion had led her to infer that Dicky Baudgew was one enemy and Joshua Fflowers was the other. Olewan had told Prissi that she was sure the blue jays had to have been sent by Joshua Fflowers, and from all that Olewan had told her of Fflowers, the teener could see how Olewan herself would be so sure it was her megalomaniac husband. However, she also wasn’t sure whether it even made any difference. The critical fact was that she was the target, but, so far, it was other people who were paying the price.

  Fair commands, “You stay!”

  When Prissi hesitates, Fair jabs his hand with the third crystal toward her.

  “Stay.”

  Prissi only hesitates for a split second before she nods, forces a smile and whispers, as if speaking softly will mitigate her lie, “Stay. I’ll stay.”