Mind Over Psyche

by Karina L. Fabian

  The warriors stepped forward.

  Terry pulled on his arm. “¡Por favor, Joshua!”

  He couldn’t much help Deryl if incapacitated (or decapitated), and he had no doubt that the warriors would not have hesitated to do one or the other if he continued to resist. He marched between them in silence, saving his fury until he and Terry were alone in his room. Then, he related in detail what had happened, particularly the seemingly uncaring behavior of Leinad and the other healer.

  “They didn’t do anything, not even for Tasmae! They just sat there like it was some kind of, of show! What is up with that?” Joshua stopped his pacing to glare at Terry.

  The Kanaan healer nodded sympathetically. “It is not something you or I could do. We are men of action. One who works with the Remembrances must have infinite patience. What’s done is done. All we can do is pray and wait.”

  “How long?”

  “Most Miscria have been weeks in the experience.”

  “Weeks?” Joshua’s voice cracked.

  Terry shrugged. “It may be less. It is unusual that the Remembrance, especially that one, should call upon the Miscria in this time. It has an intelligence; it knows the danger our world is in. Perhaps, too, it will be quicker since the Ydrel shares the experience with her.”

  “Or maybe not. He’s not Kanaan. And the way they just…fell over. It was spooky. What if they can’t get through it? Could they die?”

  “The Remembrance healer will not let Tasmae die.”

  “What about Deryl?” Terry didn’t answer. “Terry, what about Deryl? He’s my friend and, and if he dies, how do I get home?” Joshua felt like a heel for thinking that now, but he couldn’t help it. He had to get home!

  Suddenly, homesickness gripped Joshua so tightly, he couldn’t see; he almost couldn’t breathe. His neck throbbed from Tasmae’s choking, and his head with it. He felt Terry’s touch on his shoulder, sending healing warmth through him. His pain eased, though his misery remained a tight knot in his stomach. He sank onto the bed and looked at the floor.

  “Am I a prisoner again?” He jerked his head toward where the warriors had posted themselves outside his door.

  “Leinad will not let you interfere. No one has done what Deryl has, and he is afraid of what else may happen.”

  “So they are in danger.” He closed his eyes.

  “Trust, Joshua. God brought you here, to this place and this time, for a purpose. Now, here.” He pressed a cup of something warm and fragrant into Joshua’s hands. Joshua looked up just in time to see someone leave his room as silently as he’d entered.

  “What’s this?” He asked suspiciously.

  “It will help you sleep. Make the waiting easier. Drink it all.”

  Joshua started to protest that he had an alien physiology and strong reactions to medications, anyway, but a moment later decided that at this point he didn’t much care. He gulped the liquid down too quickly to taste and handed back the glass to Terry as a tingly warmth spread over his body. Almost immediately, he felt his muscles relax and his head get woozy. “Whoa!”

  Terry chuckled as he helped him lie down. “Now, you sleep.”

  Joshua only half heard the words. Already, his pains had faded and his eyelids drooped. Idly, he wondered if Haldol felt like this, and if the potion would have an amnesiac effect. He didn’t want to forget…

  He must have spoken his thought, for Terry said gently, “You won’t forget anything, Joshua. And I’ll stay to watch over you awhile.”

  “Like a guardian angel,” Joshua murmured, his speech slurred and his eyes half shut. A thought struck him and he opened them to look at Terry. “Hey, guardian angel. Do you think?”

  “What?” Terry tucked the covers around him.

  His thought fluttered away on angel’s wings. The bed felt so wonderfully comfortable.

  “Hmmm? Terry, will I dream?”

  “No, Joshua, not this time.”

  “Good,” he slurred as darkness took him. “Because I can’t bear to lose Sachiko, not even in a dream.”

  *

  For Deryl, there were no dreams, either. Only nightmares.

  In the waking world, his body lay frozen, his mind shorted out, overloaded by the pandemonium of images assailing his mind. In the world of the Remembrance, he struggled and thrashed and could not stop screaming.

  He felt himself being torn apart from the inside. Fire blazed across his back and legs. His blood pooled, threatening to burst his veins and his skin. He tumbled helplessly through a hurricane of pain, in too much torment to notice his fall until he smacked hard against something like water or quicksand—and like water or quicksand, it pulled him under.

  Mental anguish replaced the physical torture as the “sea” morphed into a mass of lost psyches. They bumped and swirled against him, tried to press themselves upon him, into him. Snatches of memories, most of them painful, flooded his mind. They pulled him down. He fought them psychically as he fought physically to reach the surface. He’d rather face the agony of the surface than the insanity of the sea.

  He was losing. Thoughts tangled around him, too many, too strong. He was going to die there, drowning in a strange sea that was half psyche, buried by the painful experiences of others. His thrashing grew more violent, but he knew he couldn’t fight them.

  Then stop fighting, a memory of Joshua called faintly. Defense! Get your shields in close and strong!

  Desperately, Deryl tried to imagine his ragged shields pulling in, knitting themselves close and tight, strong as armor. The psyches faded only slightly, but it was enough. The sea became water again.

  He broke the surface, gasping and trembling, tread water, and forced his mind to think coherently as he sought his bearings.

  The world reflected the turmoil he felt. Above, the sky glowed red shot through with black. Cruel-looking blue lightning arched from cloud to cloud, though he could not hear the thunder over the blaring wind. The sea churned about him, and the rain fell in cold sheets. Two large stars fought to shine through the darkness, yet oddly, the planet between them flared, clearly visible. Barin.

  A wave forced water into his mouth and nose. He sputtered, felt the world gray. Pain wracked him.

  Where was Tasmae? What was this—a kind of memory? Could Gardianju have really experienced this? No wonder Tasmae—

  “Tasmae!” He called, his words immediately ripped away by the wind. His telepathic call fared better; he could almost feel the psyches below him pounce upon it like sharks feeding. Buffeted among them was a dark shape, nearly a psychic null point.

  “Taz!” All his fear and pain suddenly vanished in the need to get to her, and he plunged in again to pull her from the depths.

  The depths were not so eager to release her, and they had had longer to ensnare her. Tendrils of thought, like seaweed, clung to her body, but unlike seaweed, these thoughts had weight and a kind of intelligence. They dragged her down and him with them. No matter how he struggled, he could not pull her to the surface.

  Even if he could, what then? They were trapped. There was no way out of Gardianju’s memories.

  No way out but through.

  Swallowing his fear, he stopped struggling and allowed himself to be pulled down, and as he did, the memories of Gardianju the Miscria insinuated themselves into him until he could no longer tell the difference between her, Tasmae, or himself.

  Chapter 18

  Despite Terry’s reassurances, Joshua awoke from a nightmare about arguing with LaTisha.

  The sun shone brightly through his window. He sat up, filled with awful but undefined feelings he couldn’t find a reason for. A quick glance told him Terry had left. He schlumped over to the clothes chest and pulled out a fresh outfit, trying hard to remember his dream. He considered shaving, decided it wasn’t worth the effort, and tried the door. It refused to open, and he flopped back ont
o the bed, feeling his bad mood justified. He was contemplating his next move when Terry came in with a tray of food.

  “I thought you would be hungry,” he offered.

  “I’m still under house arrest?” He asked as he grabbed some kind of fruit. At the moment, he didn’t much care what it tasted like.

  Terry, too, grabbed a piece of fruit, but twisted it in his hands. “I will speak with Leinad. I think I can convince him to let you move about the compound again, if you promise not to interfere with the workings of the Remembrance.”

  “Terry, that’s whacked! I have to help Deryl. You saw him. He’s catatonic or something!”

  “He is caught in the Remembrance with Tasmae. Right now, that’s all that’s keeping him alive.”

  Joshua dropped the fruit into his lap. “What?”

  Terry held up his hands, making little erasing motions. “¡Espérate! That’s not what I meant, exactly. He is not dying. He is in danger, as you are. Tasmae has declared you ‘contagion.’”

  Joshua felt his stomach sink. Terry had told him that the Barins were contagion; and because of that, the warriors killed any Barins left behind when their armies retreated. He swallowed against a suddenly dry throat and tried to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Terry, Tasmae was delirious. She’s not thinking clearly.”

  Terry set a hand on his wrist, but his words didn’t comfort. “She is caught in the Remembrance. Leinad has from the beginning felt it awoke out of season to deliver a dire warning. He is very close to her, as a father, and he has doubted the changing actions of the Ydrel. Now, he feels his fears verified.”

  I taught Deryl how to talk to her. Joshua pressed his fist against his mouth. He felt panic making his breath shorten and forced himself to inhale and exhale deeply. It came out shaky and he clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. I taught Deryl how to talk to her, and that’s what changed their relationship and brought us here, and now they want to kill us! He forced his mind away from that thought to listen to Terry.

  “Leinad is the ultimate authority when a Remembrance is concerned, but he can do nothing to interrupt the workings of a Remembrance. Deryl should not have been able to enter into it with her, but while he is there, Leinad cannot risk doing anything that will interfere.”

  “So he’s safe for now? What about me?”

  “You have allies here. We healers know you are not contagion—you could not have helped us heal as you did, otherwise. But you are something different, and we do not understand. Leinad fears what he does not know. The warriors find threat in the unknown. But others of us desire answers.”

  Joshua leaned back against the wall and shut his eyes, fighting the urge to be sick. “Answers to what?”

  “Explain to me the human mind, Joshua.”

  He barked out a laugh. “Explain the human mind? Terry, people spend their entire lives trying to understand the human mind! I’ve got a year left on my bachelor’s in psychology and you want me to explain the human mind?”

  Terry shook his arm. “You have to try, Joshua. If I can explain that you are not a threat—”

  “We’re dead,” he muttered. “Terry, if I understood the human mind, I wouldn’t be here! Heck, I wouldn’t have been in Rhode Island!”

  “¿Que?”

  “Listen, the only reason I was in Rhode Island, where I met Deryl, was to get away from a really bad relationship.”

  “Relationship?”

  Joshua sat up and glared at the healer. “Yes! Relationship—a really heavy one I should never have gotten into. If I understood the human mind, Terry, I’d have never gotten involved with LaTisha, much less…Can we get back to the subject?”

  “This is the subject,” Terry asserted. “LaTisha is your mate?”

  “No!” Joshua sputtered. “Sachiko is my soul-mate. Lattie was a mistake.”

  “But you had a ‘heavy relationship’ with her? Why?”

  Joshua flung his hands. “Because she was hot and I was stupid. Is this really such a big deal?” Then something clicked, and the blood drained from his face. “This is a big deal, isn’t it?”

  Terry nodded. “Kanaan mate for life.”

  Please let me have been wrong about Deryl and Taz! “Mate? Okay—no dating? Romance? Stolen kiss between the young and foolish?”

  Terry shrugged. “One soul-mate. One romance. No stolen kisses.”

  “Lucky you,” Joshua muttered, and before Terry could guess at his new source of anxiety, he said, “So! I guess we’ll start with Freud.”

  *

  Lost deep within the Remembrance, Deryl and Tasmae could not think, only share the torturous experiences of Gardianju as she tumbled through what she thought was an endless sea of demon-specters: alien thought and alien emotions so strong and chaotic they tore her away from the physical agony she shared with Kanaan as the planet itself struggled to keep from being torn apart. She screamed, and Deryl and Tasmae screamed with her, as her, and in the real world, their bodies convulsed then lay still once again.

  As suddenly as it had come upon her, the sea of demon-specters retreated, leaving Gardianju alone in a dark fog. She immediately fell onto hands and knees and vomited, then pushed herself away from the mess and rolled onto her back, sighing with relief.

  She didn’t understand what was happening, neither here nor on her world. Her people had seen the star growing in the night sky, had seen it for hundreds of years, yet it was in her generation, her lifetime, that it had become a sister to their own sun. It was in her lifetime, too, that the earthquakes, volcanoes, and storms of Kanaan had become unbearably violent.

  She was the Miscria, bonded with Kanaan, feeling its changes as her own. She was the God-sent one tasked to bring healing to her world. But she couldn’t! She’d tried and she couldn’t! It was too much, the changes too hard and too fast; she could not keep up with them. She could not stop Kanaan’s pain, nor protect her people from its violence, and her failure seared itself upon her senses. So she had fled her Calling and her mind and been caught in the demon-spawned seas.

  At least it’s over now, she comforted herself. She shut her eyes. It was wonderfully cool and calm here. The fog folded itself around her like the softest blanket. She dozed and dreamed of Kanaan, with its two suns. There was another planet, and she feared it, though she couldn’t understand why. How could it bring greater torment than she’d already felt? Yet in her mind it flashed with a thousand tiny sparks and she knew each spark brought death to her people.

  But the sparks were nothing. The planet itself crumbled, then exploded, and rained destruction over half her world.

  She awoke with a start and sighed gratefully to find herself still safe in this misty Netherworld. She sat up and stretched, feeling comfortable for the first time in longer than she could remember, when she heard a small voice:

  “Hoosthehr?”

  She turned toward the sound and was amazed to find a boy. His size and the soft curves of his face suggested he was younger than her, just starting the transition to manhood, yet the hooded and wary expression made him seem older and somehow deformed. He sat curled up against a corner she could not see. His short blond hair hung lank and filthy about his face. His head was tilted and twitched spasmodically. Otherwise he did not move, but regarded her with suspicious yet dull eyes and a jaw at once set and slack. The air around him seemed thicker and the gray fog had an odd pinkish tint.

  Slowly, tentatively, she made her way to him. He watched her but made no attempt to approach her or to run. She wasn’t sure he could move. As she got nearer, she could see that part of his “deformity” Came from the play of the gray lights on his bruises.

  Suddenly, he focused beyond her. His head snapped up.

  He began to scream.

  Without thinking, she threw herself over him to shield him as the demon-specters attacked.

  Before, the specter
s had swirled over and around her, bumping her, tossing her about. It had been painful, yes, but somehow impersonal. Not so now. For whatever reason, the demons were targeting this boy and she could not protect him completely. He cowered under her, keening like an animal, struggling when one got through. He fought her and made bizarre sounds she did not understand. Then the demon would leave—perhaps he forced it out—and he’d cling to her again and resume his high-pitched wails until another took its place. She couldn’t protect him.

  But she also couldn’t leave him to suffer alone.

  Hugging him close, she used her talent, her ability to bond with her world and join in its sufferings, to bond with this boy and take some of his agony onto herself.

  She thought she had known madness.

  She was wrong.

  *

  Gardianju had never felt such fear as she did huddled in the dark mists of the Netherworld, anticipating the next attack. The demons had left them again, and she didn’t know why or where they had gone. She didn’t know when—or if—they’d come back. No, she corrected herself, they’ll come back. She looked down at the boy who slept, shivering, his head in her lap. They were drawn to him, and somehow she knew that as long as a shred of his identity, his self, was left, they would return to savage it.

  Why?

  How long had he been here, alone? There was no time in the Netherworld, so she couldn’t know if the attacks had lasted hours or days. Subjectively, it had lasted both an eternity and an instant, with so many thoughts, feelings, and sensations coming upon her at once that she hadn’t been able to identify them, much less defend against them. Even now, in this brief and eternal respite, her mind lay flayed beyond the ability to think or feel.

  The boy stirred slightly, opened his eyes. Although battered worse than she, he looked at her and made sounds, like some of the Greater Beasts did when communicating with each other. “Miscria? Momma said you’d come. It’s me, Deryl.” He pointed to himself, murmured something that sounded like “iddryl.” His eyelids fluttered, and he focused with difficulty. “Please. Help me. I’ll do anything. Don’t leave me, my guardian angel.” He slurred over the last words and his head lolled as he again lost consciousness.