The Gypsy Morph

by Terry Brooks

  TESSA CAME UP BESIDE HIM and took his arm, squeezing it. “What are you thinking about?”

  “You and me. The baby.” He put his arm around her and pulled her against him. “About how lucky we are.”

  She took his hand and put it on her belly, where the first faint swelling had begun. “It won’t be long. I think it will be a boy.”

  He started to say something in reply, but his voice caught in his throat. “I have something to do,” he said finally. “Back up in the pass.”

  “Right now?”

  “It would be better.”

  “But it’s almost dark.”

  “That won’t matter.”

  She looked at him carefully. “Wait until morning. Please?”

  He hesitated. “All right,” he agreed.

  He waited until it was fully dark and she was asleep, then he rose from their bed and slipped from their shelter. He walked steadily from there, not looking back, trying not to think of what he was leaving. The air was cool and still, and the sky was filled with stars. The way was brightly lit, the path easy to follow. He took time to recall memories of his days with the Ghosts, of their life in the city and then on the road, of each of them in turn, calling up their faces and holding them before him in his mind like pictures from a camera. He wished he could have said good-bye to them, could have told them how much they meant to him, could have tried to convey what he was feeling.

  But that would have been so difficult. There was no easy way to say what needed saying. He would have to trust that they would be able to imagine the words he would have said simply by knowing him.

  “THERE IS NO NEED TO BE FRIGHTENED, Hawk,” the King of the Silver River says, smiling. “Your magic will protect you. There will be no pain. There will only be peace.”

  “What am I to do?”

  “You are to go to the head of the pass that brought you into the valley. You will know what to do when you get there.”

  He already knows, although he doesn’t say so. He thinks, again, that perhaps he has always known. He has brought his followers to this place of safety, brought them through the wilderness and out of the path of the destruction that is coming. Only one thing remains in order for them to be made secure. Only he can provide it.

  “It is because of who you are,” says the old man. “A gypsy morph, a creature of wild magic, a giver of special gifts. To those you lead, you give the gift of life.”

  THINKING OF IT NOW, he hoped that it was true. He needed to believe that it was why he was making this journey. He needed to feel that it mattered in the way he wanted it to.

  As he climbed into the mountains from the valley floor, he paused to look back. The starlight was bright enough that he could see to the far horizons. Bits and pieces of the valley floor were visible, as well. From the camp he had departed, a few lights glowed in the darkness. Not everyone was sleeping. He experienced a sudden urge to turn back, to return to what he so badly wanted to hold on to. But the urge came and went, and he began to climb once more.

  When he reached the head of the pass, he stopped to collect himself. He was visibly shaking by now, and his fear of what was going to happen was almost overwhelming. He replayed in his mind the words of the King of the Silver River, reassuring himself that the old man would not have lied. He reminded himself of his origins, of the power that was given him at birth, of the magic that had served him so well. It would not fail him now, he told himself. Nor would he fail in his duty.

  It was a duty, after all. It sounded strange to say so, but it was what he had been given to do. To keep them protected. To keep them safe. Those he had brought to this place, friends and family and strangers alike. They were his responsibility, and he must embrace that responsibility as a soldier would his duty.

  Still.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and whispered Tessa’s name.

  “HOW CAN I JUST LEAVE THEM?” he asks the old man. “My wife and child, my friends, all those who care about me?”

  The King of the Silver River places a hand on his shoulder. “You won’t be leaving them forever. Only for a little while.”

  Hawk does not know what he means, but he is not reassured. Leaving them at all seems wrong. He thinks that this is unfair, to require him to do this after he has already done so much. He did not ask for this responsibility. He did not ask to have his life directed so. All he has ever wanted is a family, and now it is to be taken away from him. How can anyone make such a sacrifice?

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” he says.

  “I don’t know that, either,” the old man agrees. “Yet you must.”

  HE LOOKED WESTWARD then across the vast reaches of the empty, barren land the caravan crossed in coming here, and was reminded anew what the rest of the world was like. In that moment he was reminded, as well, of the dark and twisted place the world would become in the aftermath of the approaching destruction. He could not allow this valley, this newly found haven, and all those he had brought here to live, to fall under that shadow. He could not permit such a monstrous subversion.

  But he would be doing so if he failed to act now, as the King of the Silver River had told him he must.

  There was no point in waiting any longer.

  He took a moment to calm himself, breathing in the night air and staring upward at the stars. He was standing at the highest point of the pass, directly at its center. From this vista, he could see the mountains that ringed the valley, the valley itself, and everything that lay within its vast cradle. Even though the details were hidden by the darkness, he could see them in his mind.

  He knelt and placed his hands against the earth.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, the magic began to build within him as the familiar sensations began to surface. He took his time letting it do so, giving it space and freedom to find the necessary level of intensity. He knew what was needed, but not what it would take. He could only assume that the magic he wielded was sufficient and the price it would demand bearable. He knelt with his eyes closed and his head bent, with his arms braced in rigid support, his back bowed, a supplicant seeking relief.

  It took a long time for the magic within to fuse with the magic without. When it did, he felt himself begin to join with the earth; felt the elements that composed its body and the life that it sustained to find a home in him. In the smells and tastes and sounds and feel of the world, he found himself made whole, all his separate parts become one. He was the world, and the world was in him.

  It was the strangest feeling.

  It made him smile.

  Then the ground heaved beneath him, and dozens of tiny vents opened from deep underground. A fine gray mist rose into the night, layering the cool air. An opaque curtain rose and spread, winding outward in a vast spiral, filling up the open space with layered shrouds that draped the darkness, one on top of the other. From the place where Hawk knelt, the mist began to infiltrate the trees and rocks and then the mountains themselves. It gained speed and height and thickness, a silent storm front wrapping about, running north and south for miles before bending east and closing the haven that sheltered his followers like a giant’s hands about a cup.

  The mountains and the valley they cradled disappeared. Rocks, trees, cliffs, grasses, streams, and rivers—all that encompassed the perimeter of the peaks and their protected valley—slowly faded away.

  Hawk’s strength was drained from him as his gypsy morph magic was steadily, implacably leached away.

  I am so tired, he thought near the end.

  Then the mist swallowed him.

  WHEN THE RESIDENTS OF THE CAMP that housed the children and their protectors woke the following morning, they noticed the difference in their world right away. The light was altered, although no one was able to agree in what way. The sky was clear and cloudless, a day like any other except that it wasn’t. There were changes in the texture of the air, in the slant of the sunlight, in the way that shadows fell and sounds reverberated.

  There was a wall of mi
st that had settled into the mountains on all sides, thick and impenetrable, miles of it, encircling the whole of the valley.

  Tessa stood beside Owl in the company of Sparrow, River, and Candle, staring at the mountains and waiting for Angel to return. It was nearing midday, and the Knight of the Word had been gone since early morning. She had left as soon as she had discovered the strange transformations, gone out into the mountains to discover its source. Others had wanted to go with her, but she had insisted that it would be safer for everyone if she went alone. So there had been nothing left for any of them to do but to wait for her return.

  Tessa had waited with the others, although she already knew what had happened. Hawk had left during the night and climbed back up into the mountain pass as he had told her he must. He had done something with the magic, used it in the way that was meant to make them all safe.

  Just as he had done when he had driven the rogue militia from the bridge and the demon army from the plains.

  With one important difference. He had used the magic for the last time. He was gone, and he wasn’t coming back.

  She could barely keep her tears in check when Angel finally reappeared and walked toward them. She was prepared for what she was going to hear but unable to imagine living with what it meant. She had struggled all day to keep from breaking down completely, and several times had gone off alone to cry. Owl must have known, perhaps the others, as well, but no one had said anything.

  Angel trudged up to them, her face reflecting frustration. “I couldn’t find anything of the source,” she said. “But something’s certainly happened. That mist is impenetrable. No matter how often you go in, you come out again right where you started. As far as I can tell, it wraps around the entire valley. I tried everything to get through it. I even used the Word’s magic. Nothing worked.”

  She looked from face to face, stopping finally with Owl. “It was Hawk who did this, wasn’t it?”

  Owl nodded. “Tessa told me that he said yesterday he was going back up into the pass to do something. She made him promise to wait until morning, but he went up sometime during the night.”

  “I didn’t see him,” Angel said. “Are you sure he isn’t here? He didn’t come back?”

  Heads shook slowly. Candle was crying soundlessly. Sparrow stood with her hands on Owl’s shoulders, and River was hugging herself.

  They tried not to look at Tessa, but they couldn’t help themselves. She bore the weight of their shifting gazes for as long as she could and then walked away before they could see her break down.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  W ILLS WALKED THE EMPTY CORRIDORS OF HELL, talking with the ghosts of the dead. A quarter mile underground, buried in his coffin of concrete and steel, he carried on his one-sided conversation with Abramson, Perlo, and Anderson—or was it Andrews? He could never remember her name. They had begun appearing to him a while back—he wasn’t sure exactly how long—come to keep him company. They were only faint presences at first, shadowy and elusive, enough so that he wasn’t sure if he was seeing things or not. It wasn’t until they began to be there all the time that he knew they were real.

  He hadn’t understood what they were doing there, why they had returned, what mission they were on. Soldiers come back from the grave to haunt him—why? But after a time, he had come to realize their purpose. It wasn’t so difficult to understand. Deep Rock was their home, the final resting place of their corporeal remains, which were still locked away in one of the storage rooms . . . although their bodies were beginning to rot now, he had noticed, even with the refrigeration units operating on high.

  In any event, it made sense that they should return. Deep Rock was their home, just as it was his.

  Until he joined them, of course. Which wouldn’t be all that long.

  Which was why they had come back for him.

  When you were a soldier, you never left your buddies behind. You always took them with you.

  It touched him deeply that they would care that much about him, and he told them so repeatedly. Well, he told Perlo and Abramson, anyway. He didn’t talk that much with the woman, and she didn’t seem much interested in him, in any case. She only seemed interested in poking about through the complex, as if searching for something she had mislaid. He thought it might be the code that would have allowed them all access to the surface and freedom. But he couldn’t be sure. He would have welcomed a chance at escape, even at this point. He would have taken it gladly, gone back to the surface, gone out into what remained of the world, even if it was just long enough to breathe the air and feel the sunlight on his skin.

  He cried about it sometimes. He missed it so.

  Most of it, he had long since forgotten. Time’s passing had erased the particulars from his memory bank, and all he had left was a dimly remembered happiness at how it had made him feel. He asked Abramson and Perlo if it was like that with them, too, but they only shrugged. That was pretty much all they ever did when he asked them questions. But at least they were paying attention. Anderson never even did that.

  “Got to make the rounds,” he told them as he walked down the corridors of the missile complex, moving from room to room, checking the computers, the monitors, the screens, the windows to what remained of his connection to the outside world. Routine was important, he reminded them. Routine was what kept you busy and engaged. Routine was what kept you from going insane.

  But he was having increasing difficulty understanding why any of this mattered. Routine did all the things he said it did, but to what end? He wasn’t ever leaving this place; he had accepted that some time back. He wasn’t ever going to get out, and no one besides his friends was ever going to get in. Time was going to pass, he was going to age, and sooner or later he was going to die. The inevitability of it was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla sitting on his lap. In the face of such an overwhelming truth, what did anything else matter?

  His buddies had nothing to offer. They listened to his thoughts as he voiced them, considered his questions and shrugged.

  The truth was, they had known all along something he was just beginning to realize. Even routine wasn’t enough to keep your mental trolley on the tracks. Even routine could drive you crazy.

  He paused at the reflective window of the door opening into the sick bay—as if the entire place wasn’t one big sick bay, ha, ha, joke—and looked at himself in the glass. He didn’t recognize the stranger looking back. Bearded, disheveled, hollow-eyed, and gaunt, the other man stared at him. A man who had let himself go, who had ceased to do anything to keep up his appearance, who had given up eating regularly, who seldom slept, who prowled the complex like the ghosts who kept him company.

  A man who had become a ghost himself.

  I know this man, he thought, but couldn’t put a name to the face.

  He shrugged his indifference, taking a page from the book of Abramson and Perlo. Didn’t matter.

  “Over here, we have the command center,” he continued, his narration of his daily routine, a smooth and practiced recitation by now. “You may remember its purpose. The missiles are monitored from here. All of them, all over the United States. All those that haven’t already been dispatched to their intended targets.” He grinned knowingly. “The launch switches are kept under lock and key, even if there’s no one but me left to launch them. Kind of silly at this point, when you think about it. I mean, why monitor all this when there’s really no reason. You know, before we had a world to be concerned about. When we had people and animals and cities and towns and hope. When we had a working civilization. All gone now. All you have to do is look at the monitoring screens and you can tell. There’s nothing out there. Nothing that matters, anyway. A few people, sure. A few monsters, too. But nothing of importance. Nothing that is going to change what’s happened. We let it go too far for that. We let it decay like a set of bad teeth. We didn’t brush. We didn’t floss or rinse.”

  His grin widened. Excellent analogy, he told himself. He had gone away from his usual
narration, but he didn’t care. It felt good.

  “You think about it a moment, you’ll see I’m right. We just ignored what was right in front of our eyes. We didn’t take care of business. Not the business that really mattered. We were too busy living our lives to do that. So now what do we have?”

  He paused, considering. “I’ll tell you what we have. We have what we deserve.”

  He saw both Abramson and Perlo nod in agreement and was encouraged. They understood. They knew he was right. That was a part of why they stayed with him. They liked listening to what he had to say. It helped pass the time for them, too.

  Impulsively, he walked over to the command console and seated himself at the launch board. A faint memory surfaced of that time, now long past, when the last general strike had been called in from the National Command Authority, and he and the other key holder, Graves or whatever—now, that was an appropriate name—had activated the triggers to missiles housed in launch silos all over the country.

  How long ago had that been, anyway?

  He could do that again right now, if he chose. It was a thought that crossed his mind at least several times a day. His retinal scan and the keys slung around his neck were all that was needed. Once, he would have needed authority from farther up the chain of command, a direct order come down from the general. But there wasn’t any chain of command left. There wasn’t anyone left but himself. He had to accept that. All his efforts at communication with the outside world had failed. He still tried, now and then. He still kept an open channel on the broadband. He still scanned the surrounding countryside through the monitors. He still hoped.

  But he knew it was pointless.

  Why don’t you just do it?

  He jumped at the sound of the voice. It was Perlo who had spoken. But Perlo never spoke! None of his buddies did. He wheeled his chair around and stared at the other’s face, shocked.