How the hell would I explain this to Wendy?
Short answer--I wouldn’t. She didn’t need to know the details. Our next session would probably focus on the kissing thing.
No, I would not think about kissing Nick. Underwater in the caldera of a dormant volcano in the middle of the night, I had other things to worry about. Like the specific kind of stupid that put me in that position. On second thought, a different kind of stupid had taken me this far without knowing how the hell to accomplish the goal.
Find some stones buried at the bottom of a huge, deep lake in the dark, he’d said. Sure, I’d said. No problem. Who couldn't do that?
My idiot self should have swam to the surface, climbed out, returned to my car, and gone home. Even better, I never should’ve left Portland. If I’d gone home instead of to Oaks Bottom like a reasonable, sane person, this all could’ve waited until never o’clock.
Why did I go there? I was upset, of course. Anyone should get upset about beating another person half to death with his bare hands. That I’d done it to my dad complicated everything more, not less.
I supposed I’d gone looking for something I didn’t think I could get from Mom or Matt. Maybe I’d needed to apologize to anyone but Dad.
Instead of doing the rational thing, I swam deeper into the lake. My muscles, already taxed from plowing through the snow, screamed and protested. I gasped for breath. Water. Whatever.
What else had Nick said? Focus my will. Whatever that meant.
Then again, I kind of knew what that meant. Keeping track of the ball at all times took plenty of focus. Looking for the seals with single-minded determination might somehow help.
No more thinking about Nick, Dad, my stupidity, or anything else aside from those seals and the unknown shells containing them.
Did anything in the lake make shells? I tried to remember what I’d learned on previous visits. They didn’t talk much about aquatic creatures in the lake. At least one or two kinds of fish lived in the lake because I remembered fishing with Dad and Matt on one of our camping trips. With luck, I wouldn’t have to sift through a thousand different types of shell to find the ones I needed.
If I wanted to bury things in shells, I thought I’d pick a variety that could close on its own, like a clam or oyster. Why didn’t I ask what the seals looked like? I didn’t even know the size. Searching for a shell the size of my pinky finger presented a much bigger challenge than finding one the size of my head.
I hadn’t asked any of those questions because Nick kissed me.
A guy kissed me and I liked it.
No, none of that. Shells. I had to find shells in the dark at the bottom of the lake. Step one, find the bottom of the lake.
Because I’m only a special kind of stupid, I swam with the side of the caldera nearby. Keeping a hand on that kept me oriented. I swiped my fingers through the collected silt as I descended and had no clue how I’d search the entire lake in four hours.
There had to be a trick. Nick had told me I wouldn’t have any trouble. He’d thought one day would cover it. That meant one day could cover it, which meant I needed to stop letting myself get sidetracked.
Seals inside shells at the bottom of the lake. When I brought them to Nick, he would kiss me again. Which I didn’t want, except I did with a gnawing ache.
No. Focus, dumbass.
Finding those shells wouldn’t happen with my eyes because I couldn't see anything. That left my hands, and I supposed, my gut. Instinct might guide me.
Dad once told me instinct boiled down to lessons learned so deep you no longer needed to think about them. Instinct, he said, made me edge away from a cliff because I’d learned early that falling hurts, and falling more hurts more.
In the absence of anything to see in the inky blackness, my mind filled the void with images of Dad lying on the floor after I’d beaten him. This version made it clear I’d killed him. His blood pooled and his glassy, empty eyes stared at nothing. The fantasy meshed too well with reality. Dead men couldn't do anything to us anymore, and I wanted that relief.
Everyone said a man like that didn’t deserve a second chance. No one would have blamed me for killing him.
And yet...
When I looked him in the eye, I saw the worst of him. I remembered the sting of his belt, Mom crying on the floor, and Matt shivering in the dark. When I stared at his corpse, I saw the best of him. I remembered the camping trips, Mom laughing with him, and Matt getting piggyback rides.
How did one man go from the best dad to the worst? Could he go back again? What had happened to him?
Maybe I needed to think about these things, but not in the lake tonight. I’d have five hours of driving home to consider that subject, plus my next session with Wendy.
Seals. I wanted to find the damned seals so I could go back to Nick. No, so I could go home. Focus, dammit.
Finally able to get myself to think about that one goal and nothing else, I dove deeper in the lake. My brain obliged by picturing the few kinds of shells I imagined would hold the seals. They’d lie on the lake floor, buried by silt created by centuries of pollen, dead fir needles, and other crap dropped by birds. I’d never find them if I didn’t think about this harder.
The man and woman who’d created the seals couldn’t have deposited them in a place that didn’t exist. From Nick’s story, though, it had happened long enough ago for us to consider dragons and unicorns creatures of myth instead of fact. If the lake had already existed when they dropped in the shells, those shells would’ve tumbled to the deepest point in their path.
The lake had an island on one side, called Wizard Island. It had risen after the initial collapse from volcanic activity. Even if it had partially existed at the time of the seals, it had grown since then. I decided to bet on the crafters putting their highest priority on hiding the seals, and to assume lava would destroy them. In that case, these people would’ve avoided the island.
Someone powerful enough to create these seals could probably fly, but I had a hunch they’d stopped at the edge and thrown the seals in. Reaching them under these conditions sounded hard enough that they wouldn’t have necessarily felt a need to bother scattering them. If I found one by itself, I’d reconsider that point.
No matter where the crafters threw them in, except beside the island, the seals should have slid to the center of the depression. Even if they’d gotten caught someplace, enough earthquakes had rocked the region to dislodge them.
Reducing the search area helped. I kept swimming, determined to find the damned things if it killed me.
Sharp pain exploded across my head. I heard a weird, muted crack. Stars danced in my vision. My body flipped and landed on a stone surface.
8
Lying on my back, I opened my eyes and regretted it. Harsh white light battered my brain. Cringing and groaning, I raised a hand to shield my eyes. As far as I could tell, I’d gone from everything dark to everything light.
“Great. I brained myself on a rock and now I’m dead.”
Someone laughed. “You’re not dead.” With those three words, he rubbed me the wrong way, like someone making a rude joke at my expense. “Not yet, anyway.”
The light dimmed as I sat up. The area around me became a vague interpretation of a summertime pine forest from the ground up, the scenery filling in as I watched. Trees consisted of brown swishes with green slashes to the sides. Muddy swirls of brown, yellow, and green formed the ground.
Matt would’ve gotten a kick out of standing inside a painting. I wanted to return to the lake.
“Then where am I?”
“A forest.”
“Thanks. That’s really helpful.” To my surprise, I wore jeans, my football jersey without padding, and the hiking boots I’d left at the boxing gym. “Am I dreaming?”
“Not exactly.”
Checking around me, I didn’t see anyone else. Trees everywhere, but no people. “Where are you?”
“Look up.”
I did.
On a brown line above me, a fat, readheaded squirrel with coppery claws swished its bushy tail. It waved.
“Hi.” I returned the wave. I also braced myself, ready to jump to my feet and run. The last animal I’d met who wanted to talk to me had also wanted to eat me. “I’m Brian.”
“Nice to meet you, Brian. I’m Tamor.”
“Do you want to eat me?”
Tamor stared for a long beat and cocked his head to the side. “I’m not fond of the taste of human, no. Not even the magically active kind.”
The way he’d worded that made me gulp and use the closest tree to help me stand. “Good to know.”
“I sense you’re focused on finding something important.” Tamor scampered down his tree and stopped a few feet in front of me.
“You could say that.” I noticed the scenery gaining definition. The green refined to needle-like strokes, and the brown developed bark contours. “Can you help me find them?”
“Multiple things? Are they magic?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes.” Tamor waved for me to sit again. “You have to activate your power so we can fix this mess. You’re in a state of--” He waved his claws like he didn’t know how to explain. You and me both, squirrel-guy. “Chaos or something.”
Activate my power? I squinted at Tamor. Hitting my head must’ve knocked a marble loose. Probably, my body floated in Crater Lake, waiting for my brain to decide to stop the hallucinations and get back to work.
I had no reason not to obey a figment of my own imagination. “How do I do that?” I asked as I made myself comfortable against the tree.
“The same way you do anything else--work, struggle, pain.”
“Good thing it’s easy.”
Tamor stuck out his tiny pink tongue at me. “If it was easy, you would’ve figured it out on your own, without crossing the barrier between your world and mine.”
Sure. I’d crossed some magical barrier. Obviously. “Are you going to give me any other brilliant hints, or should I go jogging until I trip over a key or something?”
“You’re not really taking this seriously.” Tamor crossed his tiny, furry arms.
I laughed at him, because that meant laughing at myself for having such a weird dream.
If a squirrel could scowl, I think he would’ve done it. “Fine. Figure it out on your own.” He leaped out of sight.
My brain had some strange ideas. Why had I hallucinated about a talking squirrel instead of something more relevant, like Dad telling me I’m a terrible person?
Never mind. I’d have plenty of time to think about that after I retrieved the seals.
Shaking my head, I pushed off the tree and started walking. On the off chance I needed to focus on the the seals in the forest for some reason, I forced myself to do that.
The forest seemed neverending. I picked up my pace, jogging through the trees as they gained more and more detail. My boots crushed pine needles, releasing their fresh scent. After an eternity, something finally changed.
Ahead, the trees parted to reveal a huge stadium. The building had no markers identifying it as belonging to any particular city or team. Its front doors stood open, so I stepped inside. The carpet of pine needles ended at the doors, replaced by concrete. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I smelled hot dogs, popcorn, and spilled beer.
Once, I’d loved soccer. The four of us had gone to at least one Timbers game a month. I’d dressed as a soccer player for Halloween four years in a row. Miracle of miracles, Dad hadn’t ruined it for me--the players had. I got a chance to meet a few of the best on the team, and every one of them had told me to pick some other future. Great thing to say to a twelve-year-old kid with stars in his eyes.
Later, when I heard the same things for football, I realized they hadn’t meant what I thought they’d meant. Every player needed a fallback option in case it didn’t work out. In one agony-filled second, a sports future could evaporate. Scouts overlooked talented guys all the time. Earning praise and titles at high school level didn’t equate to good enough for college or pro.
I didn’t have a pro sports career ahead of me, and I’d already accepted that. College sports would help me pay my way, but lacrosse didn’t have a lot of professional options.
As I walked through the concrete concourse, the layout reminded me of Providence Park, where the Timbers played. Since I hadn’t visited any other major league stadiums, that made sense.
How would I activate my powers in a sports arena? What did that even mean? How and why did I have powers in need of activation? What kind of powers?
If only I hadn’t screwed up yet again and said the wrong thing to Tamor.
Wait. Tamor wasn’t real. My mind had made up that red squirrel, so if Tamor knew what to do, then so did I. Unless my brain only taunted me so it could reveal that I knew nothing, in which case I hated my stupid brain.
The question of why my mind picked an copper-colored squirrel had no answer. Considering everything I’d dealt with lately, I would’ve thought a mangy dog with red eyes made more sense.
I climbed a flight of steps to emerge in the middle of the seating. Curved rows of hard plastic folding chairs marched in both directions. Overhangs protected spectators from the weather, but didn’t cover the field. In its current configuration, it had an oblong field marked for soccer.
With no clear idea what to do, I picked a seat near the center line. Putting my butt in the seat changed nothing. I waited. And waited.
“This is a great game, isn’t it?”
Tamor scared the crap out of me. I yelped and jumped out of my seat. Go me, the great warrior.
The squirrel glanced at me from the next seat and shook his head. “Kinda jumpy for a knight.”
I patted my chest and fought a fierce blush. “I’m not a knight. I’m a general.”
He snorted. “Way too jumpy for a general. Young for that too. What are you a general of?”
“What? Nothing. That’s my school mascot.” Anytime my brain wanted to wake up and get me out of this stupid dream, it could do that.
With a delicate sniff of derision, Tamor turned his attention back to the field. “At least the game is good.”
Should I take that as an insult? “What game?”
Waving a claw, Tamor gestured to encompass the field. “The one you’d be able to see if your dumb ass could accomplish anything worthwhile. Honestly, I’m not sure why I chose you. Pity, I guess.”
I stared at the squirrel.
Tamor huffed a melodramatic, over-exaggerated sigh that rippled across his entire body. “Your problem is you can’t find the things because you can’t see them, right? So you’re here to learn to see magic things. I figured this way wasn’t harsh. I mean, I could drill into your eyeballs with spinning razors if you’d rather.”
“Uh, no.” I rubbed my eyes and tried not to imagine that drill. “There’s something wrong with you.” Which meant there was something wrong with me, of course. Never mind that.
“I know. I should just strap you to a chair and get the drill, but here I am, being nice because I’m a fool.”
“You have a weird definition of nice.” Resigned to the squirrel’s presence, I took my seat again.
“I’ve heard the human mind doesn’t handle that kind of trauma well, so I’d say my definition is a pretty solid one.” He reached over and patted my knee. “If you want to see magic stuff, you have to learn to attune yourself to the magic in the world. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much everywhere, so you also have to learn to filter out the unimportant stuff.”
My rock-solid conviction about the nature of this situation frayed around the edges. Where did this crap come from?
Not me.
Yikes.
9
“Breathe,” Tamor said. “Slow and deliberate. With feeling.” He hopped to my lap and leaned both claws against my chest. “In and out.”
A squirrel sat on my lap, telling me to breathe. “Am I bleeding to death in the lake right now?”
Tamor rolled his eyes. “Does it look like you’re in a lake?”
“No?” Did I trust what I saw? Not really.
“Bravo. Good job noticing the obvious. Now breathe.”
“I’m already breathing. Am I bleeding to death someplace else?”
“You’re kind of obsessed with bleeding to death.”
“I hit my head in the water!”
Sitting on his haunches, Tamor crossed his furry little arms over his furry little chest. “If you ever want to be a knight, you’re going to have to learn how to suck it up and deal. The ghosts and things aren’t going to sit around and wait while you panic.”
“This is insane. I’ve lost my mind and now I’m--”
Tamor slapped me. His tiny claws stung against me cheek. “Get a grip. Do you want to find your magic things or not?”
Rubbing my cheek, I considered knocking Tamor to the ground and running. “Yes.”
“Then shut up and do what I tell you. Breathe with purpose and feeling. Stop thinking so damned hard while you’re at it. This is about connecting with your inner self.”
“What does that--”
He shoved against my lower chest, forcing the air out of my lungs. “For the last time, it means shut up and breathe. In, out, repeat.”
I shut up and breathed. Tamor glared at me.
Several inhales later, he pointed at the field. “There are two teams playing football. I’m going to describe the situation and you’re going to visualize it. I’d leave it at that, but you’re so damned jumpy. At some point, you’re going to start to see with your eyes instead of your mind. Don’t panic. We clear?”
Not sure if I had permission to stop breathing long enough to speak, I nodded.
“Good. Start with the ball. It’s round with black and white spots.”
He’d said football, but he meant soccer. Check. I pictured a soccer ball.
“It’s rolling across the grass near the center line. Two players are chasing it. One has red shorts, white socks, and a red and white shirt. The other has white shorts and green socks and shirt with white and gold bars.”
Relics and Runes Anthology Page 130
