Separated from Yourselves

by Bill Hiatt

  “I am sorry to interrupt again,” I said, “but, wrong as Magnus is, we cannot do without him now, unless you can break the spell on our friend and help us defeat our enemies. They control Olympus, they control at least part of our own Earth, and who knows what else? We will all die, and many others as well, unless we can set things right.

  Phul seemed genuinely puzzled. “To leave a living imbalance free to roam, so that he may cure a greater imbalance? I cannot make such a bargain, yet I am pledged to do what I can to aid the balance, so I cannot just ignore the greater problem, either.”

  “Can you help us, then?” asked Gordy.

  Phul’s expression darkened. “I cannot break the spell on your friend. The workings of Cronus are not within my sphere. Aratron, he who dwells on Saturn, could do so, but communication between us has been hard for centuries. In a few months—”

  “Pardon, great one, but we do not have a few months,” said Gordy.

  “Allow us to proceed,” said Atlante. “Magnus and I are confident we can break the spell successfully.”

  “I am not,” replied Phul, “for it is a spell more powerful than you imagine. Your attempts might make the situation worse. As for the imbalances on other planes, I could not assist you much. Once I traveled,” he added with a faraway look in his eyes. “Once I traveled freely. Now I find myself more…limited. I can perhaps reach the Olympian plane through its moon.”

  For a while he seemed lost in thought, almost oblivious to us, and this time I didn’t have the nerve to interrupt.

  Finally, he focused on us again. “I will investigate your claim. It appears I can reach the Olympian moon and speak with Selene. In the meantime, you are to remain here. Under no circumstances should you proceed with your efforts to break Cronus’s spell. When I return, I will do what is needed to contact Aratron. There will be delay, but I will do all in my power to avert the disasters you have visualized, so that you can wait the necessary time.”

  Without allowing us to answer, Phul vanished in a burst of moonlight.

  “What do you think?” Gordy asked Atlante, who shrugged in a way that gave me a sad reminder of Jimmie.

  “I know not what to make of his words. I cannot even be sure if he is good or evil.”

  “Why did you get in my way?” Magnus asked me. “I could have just destroyed him and solved the problem.”

  “No, the maiden acted wisely,” said Atlante before I could respond. “Perhaps you could not have destroyed him, and the attack would have resulted in your own destruction instead. Perhaps you could have destroyed him, in which case you might have unbalanced this world beyond repair. Whatever else he is, he is powerful, and he may contribute to order in ways we do not comprehend.”

  “Nonsense,” said Magnus. “Didn’t you hear him? He can’t easily travel from plane to plane, and it could take months for him to contact another Olympick Spirit. Sounds to me as if he didn’t do what God wanted, just like the Olympians, and now he’s in the penalty box.”

  “That may be, but the ways of Allah are often beyond human comprehension,” said Atlante. “You must not take the risk of killing him.”

  “A better question than why Eva got in your way would be why she stuck out her neck to protect you,” said Gordy, clearly curious.

  “It’s just as I said: we still need him,” I replied, a little uncomfortable. That had to be the reason. I wanted him gone just as much as everyone else.

  Didn’t I?

  Khalid scouted again and reported that the wolves were still surrounding us, though they had stopped trying to pile themselves up so that some of them could scale the walls. Phul had done something to keep them at bay, at least for now.

  Magnus finally got a chance to finish healing Alex, who was relieved to be back on his feet. Atlante conjured up a fountain in the courtyard so that we could wash up, and Gordy and Carlos in particular were happy to finally be able to rinse off the wolf blood.

  While we cleaned up, Atlante somehow got rid of all the scattered wolf remnants and even the blood stains on the ground. Khalid flew out to get us something to eat from the nearby orchards and returned several times with armloads of pears, papayas, and coconuts. Magnus told us all three were associated with the moon in ritual magic, which might explain why they all grew nearby. None of us were normally vegetarians, but we weren’t about to go out hunting, either, and as Lucas pointed out, given what Phul was riding, venison might not be a good menu choice, anyway.

  All of us were too keyed up to sleep easily, but Atlante, sounding almost paternal, insisted we needed to. Against Gordy’s better judgment, Magnus was eventually allowed to lull us to sleep with the lyre. Despite our concern about the wolves outside, the courtyard was warm, and we all decided to sleep together under the somehow comforting light from Earth.

  I woke up feeling oddly refreshed about the same time everybody else did. We had slept for several hours and no longer felt half-dead from our struggles.

  The question was what to do with all that renewed strength.

  Phul hadn’t returned yet—a problem all by itself, because we had absolutely no idea what his failure to return might mean.

  “There’s just no way to know,” said Magnus. “Maybe getting there wasn’t as easy as he thought, and he’s still trying. Maybe he got there and is battling Hecate and her allies. Maybe he’s already lost and is in Tartarus.”

  “Could he lose?” asked Carlos.

  Magnus shrugged. “It’s hard to tell exactly how powerful someone is. Phul is definitely strong, but is he strong enough to beat Hecate, Dark Zeus, Cronus, Poseidon, and Ares? I doubt it. If he was foolish enough to attack all by himself, he could have lost.”

  “In which case we’re even worse off now than before,” said Gordy.

  “By this time, we have to assume he has been captured, perhaps even killed,” said Magnus. “We’re on our own. We should break the spell on Tal and get the hell out of here.”

  “But Phul said—” I started.

  “I must agree with Magnus in this case,” interrupted Atlante. “It is all too likely we are on our own. If that is the case, we have no idea how long the moon will remain safe.”

  “You don’t think…it’s going to blow up, or something?” asked Gordy.

  Atlante laughed, but it was a cold laugh. “I doubt anything quite that drastic will happen, but if Phul truly still controls this moon, his defeat could have unpredictable consequences.”

  “We can’t just sit here and wait,” agreed Carlos. “Forget about Olympus. We still don’t know what happened to people like Stan, Shar, and Dan. They could need our help.”

  The reminder about Shar was enough to get Khalid’s vote. Alex also agreed; I think he was hell-bent on getting Carla back so we could return her to normal. Gordy seemed reluctant to look like a wimp and gave a hesitant thumbs up.

  That left Lucas, Tal, and me. Lucas seemed as if he didn’t want to go against the consensus, which just left Tal and me. The whole thing didn’t feel right, but Tal all but begged me not to object. He knew enough about sixteen-year-old Tal by now to know that that was who he wanted to be, and no word of caution could ever convince him otherwise.

  “All right,” I said grudgingly. The poor kid was heartbreaking enough under the best of circumstances, but disappointing him about something so important? I just couldn’t do it.

  I did, however, manage to extract one concession. Khalid would watch the wolves, and if they turned hostile again, we would stop at once. In the absence of Phul, they seemed as good a barometer as any of whether what we did was crossing into forbidden territory or not. Atlante told me he and Magnus would not attempt to draw on lunar magic this time.

  “It may have been lunar magic that brought the wolves and Phul down on us in the first place,” Atlante pointed out. That was one of the things Phul was angry about in the beginning, so it made sense not to do it again.

  Once the ritual was prepared, this time with only a triangle and a circle of plum-scented black
candles, Khalid took his position; Tal, Magnus, and Atlante readied themselves in the center; and the rest of us circled the ritual area, keeping our fingers and toes crossed. Restoring Tal to normal would give us a much better chance at meeting the challenges ahead.

  Atlante chanted; Magnus sang and played; and Lucas danced, trancelike and wild at the same time. Again the power was so strong that even I could feel it as it surged insistently around Tal, chipping away at the powerful binding Cronus had laid upon him.

  At about the point the spell had already taken twice as long as the restoration of Alex had taken, I began to worry. What if Phul had been right, and we lacked the power to free Tal? Would we have to wait months for Aratron?

  Then Tal screamed, a sound such as I imagined the damned might make in Hell. Black smoke encircled him and the two casters, as if they were burning. Some of the guys started to move forward, but Atlante shouted at them to stay back.

  I felt the power make one last, desperate surge, and then I felt it fade. The smoke drifted away, but I couldn’t process what I was seeing.

  I had braced myself for possible failure, but I was not even remotely prepared for what I saw.

  Instead of three figures in the center, there were now four: Atlante, Magnus, twelve-year-old Tal—and sixteen-year-old Tal, wearing what appeared to be an exact replica of his dragon armor and looking completely stunned, almost blank.

  “What happened?” demanded Gordy, rushing forward. I and the others were not far behind. This time Atlante made no attempt to keep us back.

  “I…I don’t know,” said Magnus, less sure of himself than I had ever seen.

  “I’m still here,” said twelve-year-old Tal, more frustrated than puzzled. “It didn’t work!”

  “Who’s that?” said Carlos, pointing to sixteen-year-old Tal, who looked at us vacantly but still said nothing.

  “We succeeded in visualizing the outcome we wanted,” said Atlante, looking from one Tal to the other. “We had a clear image of Tal as he is today. Cronus must have bound him too securely, however, for instead of freeing the original Tal, we must have created some kind of duplicate.”

  “I…I think I’m me,” said sixteen-year-old Tal haltingly. “But…but I can’t remember…”

  “Can’t remember what?” Magnus prompted with odd gentleness.

  “I can’t…I can’t remember anything…before the awakening.”

  “Great!” said Gordy. “You didn’t bring Tal back. You broke him into two pieces. One’s got his memories only from before the awakening, and one only from after.”

  “That could indeed be what happened,” agreed Atlante unhappily. “Phul was right after all. Breaking the spell was beyond our ability, and we have indeed made things worse.”

  “I can fix this!” insisted Magnus.

  “You’d better!” demanded Gordy. “This is all your fault.”

  “We all agreed,” I said sadly. “All of us are responsible.” Much as everyone else would have preferred to hate on Magnus awhile longer, they all pretty quickly admitted I was right. There was plenty of blame to go around.

  It didn’t take Magnus long to confirm that what sixteen-year-old Tal was saying was right: he didn’t recall anything prior to that fateful day when the awakening spell had hit him. Otherwise, his mind seemed to be working normally, but very slowly. Magnus hoped that was the shock of being ripped away from the rest of himself and that he would recover, but right now talking to him was a slow process, and he seemed unable to use magic. Magnus put White Hilt in his hand, and it flamed, but I thought not quite as brightly as normal, and Tal seemed unable to direct the flame as he could usually do.

  “I’m…sorry,” he told us. It seemed as if he knew we were in a desperate situation, and in the short term he couldn’t be much help.

  During the next few hours we accomplished little. Magnus and Atlante couldn’t agree on what to do next. Magnus favored trying to undo what they had done before and start over again. Atlante claimed they lacked the knowledge to merge Tal back into one person, which could only be tried safely after appropriate research. Magnus argued there was no time for that. Atlante pointed out that haste was what led to disaster in the first place. On and on the argument went, until I thought my head would explode.

  I walked around the courtyard, but there was really nobody to talk to. I exchanged a few words with Gordy, Alex, and Carlos, but they were all so unhappy that they brought me down even further, something I wouldn’t have thought possible. Khalid was hovering to keep an eye on the wolves. I tried Lucas, then wished I hadn’t.

  “Maybe I should let Magnus awaken my past self,” he said.

  Knowing he had been dead-set against that just yesterday, I was thrown off balance. “Why would you even say that?” I asked finally. “You know how dangerous it is.”

  “It seems to be working out for Alex,” Lucas said.

  “Yeah, but Alex is a total Greek mythology addict,” I pointed out. “He could have been the gorgon Medusa in a previous life, and it would still have made him happy.” I’d hoped to get a laugh, or at least a smile, but Lucas didn’t react at all.

  I decided to push ahead anyway. “Between you and me, Alex has had a pretty rough life. You haven’t…not like his, anyway. I think Alex sometimes believes he has nothing to lose. You do…right?”

  Lucas waited a long time before answering. “Alex did what he did because he knew it would make the group stronger. Maybe I need to man up and do the same.”

  “You know if Tal were…who he used to be, he would be the first one to tell you not to do this—not even to restore him.”

  “Yeah, I already got that he’s like that. I hope you get that he, some of the other guys, and Nurse Florence saved my life.”

  “They didn’t save it to have you throw it away,” I pointed out. “If we knew who was in there, it would be one thing. All we know is that whoever is in there is powerful. Carla had someone in her who was powerful, too—powerful and evil. Carla’s in control now, uh, before she was regressed, anyway. However, she almost wasn’t. Judging by the way Atlante and Magnus look at you, I’d say you could have someone inside who would make Alcina look like a kindergarten student.”

  “Wow, that’s flattering,” said Lucas in a mock-offended tone.

  “It wouldn’t be your fault if that were true, any more than Alcina is Carla’s fault. It’s just a fact that you might be better off not knowing. You notice I have no idea who I was in a previous life—and I never intend to find out.”

  “OK, OK,” said Lucas. “I won’t make any rash moves.”

  That was less than an absolute guarantee that he’d never let the awakening spell be used on him, but I decided I had pressed as hard as I could on that point.

  The conversation did make me wonder, though. If someone I was in a past life could help Tal or one of my other friends, wouldn’t I want to help as much as Lucas did? Maybe.

  I realized I couldn’t put off the awkwardness anymore and went to check on the Tals. We needed some clear way to refer to them, so I’d convinced everyone that we should refer to them as Tal Twelve and Tal Sixteen. That made them sound a little like futuristic android models, but hopefully we wouldn’t have to keep doing that for long.

  A thought crawled like a spider across my mind: what if we had to keep doing it forever?

  The two of them were sitting in the corner, with the younger one in the older one’s lap. They were close enough together in age that they might have looked bizarre that way, but somehow they managed to pull cute out of it.

  Tal Sixteen had his arms around Tal Twelve, and both of them had their eyes closed, as if they were sleeping—or trying to will themselves back into one person.

  “Hi, guys,” I said quietly, thinking I’d creep away if they really were asleep, but their eyes flew open at the sound of my voice.

  “Hi, Eva,” said Tal Twelve eagerly.

  Tal Sixteen nodded but said nothing, I supposed because getting the words out was still hard for
him.

  “How are you guys doing?” I asked.

  “I’m happy knowing how handsome I’m going to turn out,” replied Tal Twelve, poking Tal Sixteen, who smiled but still said nothing.

  “Can you sit with us for a while?” asked Tal Twelve.

  I told myself it had to be better than listening to the rambling argument between Atlante and Magnus.

  “Actually,” I said to Tal Twelve, “you already knew how handsome you’d look. You’ve seen Magnus.”

  “He’s a bastard!” said Tal Sixteen with such vehemence I was caught completely by surprise.

  “It’s not the same somehow,” said Tal Twelve. “Maybe it’s that sneer Magnus has so often, but he just doesn’t look as good as this one.”

  “Tal,” said Tal Sixteen, “can…can…can…”

  “Yeah, I can let you be alone with Eva,” said Tal Twelve, giving me a wink and trotting off to talk to Khalid.

  “Can you…kiss…me?” asked Tal Sixteen. I had expected a lot of possible questions, but definitely not that one.

  “Tal, I have to think about Jimmie—” I began.

  “This…isn’t…romantic. It’s…research.” His words were coming even more slowly than before, and I had to wonder for a couple of seconds if he was trying a line on me.

  “Well, all right, for the sake of…research,” I said, bending over to kiss him on the cheek.

  “Lips,” he said tonelessly.

  That request really made me nervous, but now I was curious to see what he was up to, so I did kiss him on the lips.

  Tal had always been a good kisser, but this time kissing Tal Sixteen felt like kissing a mannequin. Something was missing.

  “It’s…as I…feared,” said Tal Sixteen. “I don’t…feel…anything.”

  I should have been happy. If Tal really had stopped loving me, that would make everyone’s life easier.

  Then why did I feel a pang when Tal Sixteen told me he felt nothing for me? Maybe something about the mournful undertone in his voice got to me. Perhaps he did feel nothing, but he was conscious that something should be there, like noticing the blank space on the wall where a picture used to hang.