by Rob Summers
Chapter 5: Adapting to Severe Weather
With that, an hideous storme of winde arose,
With dreadfull thunder and lightning atwixt…
-Edmund Spenser
As they approached the porch, Bis was so concerned for her injured friend that she paid little attention at first to the shouts and giggles coming from around the corner of the inn. But in a moment her attention was arrested by glowing, sparkling lines of fire moving toward them along the ground through the dusk of evening. Barely enough light remained in the sky to show her two apparent maniacs holding these firework sticks and running. The girl in front saw them first, came to a sudden stop and choked off a bubbling laugh. The tall young man behind her shouted, “I’m going to set your hair on fire!” and then also saw them and came to a panting stop. For a moment all was still except the sizzling sparklers.
“I—I’m sorry,” the young man said. “Julie just brought some fireworks and we were just sort of goofing around. Are you wanting to stay here tonight?”
“We are looking for the innkeeper,” Mrs. Rollins said stiffly at Bis’ side.
“I, uh, am the innkeeper.”
“Then show us to a room, please.”
The fellow handed his still glowing sparkler to the girl he had called Julie and gathered the two guests’ sparse luggage.
“Sorry. Welcome to the inn. We’ll get you fixed up right away.”
As the visitors ascended the stair, Julie stared in a mixture of amusement and admiration at their floor length Victorian winter garb. They had removed their waterproof, hooded cloaks, revealing hoop skirts—hard to manage on a stairway. After she had shown the ladies to their rooms, learning their names from them as she did, she paused in the bathroom to make sure that everything there was clean and presentable. Because of this she overheard the younger woman, Miss Bis Boland, as she stepped to Mrs. Anna Rollins’ door and asked her whether she was in much pain.
“Enough to make me disagreeable,” said Mrs. Rollins (who was perhaps forty), “and it’s so hot here!”
“Maybe we can get you some ice,” Bis suggested. “I’ll ask the old couple who run the place. I’ve been here before once, and I found they’ll do anything for guests.”
“If you think ice would help, then ask,” Mrs. Rollins said wearily, and Julie heard her sit down on the creaking springs of the bed. “But I think it will do us the most good to get out of these heavy clothes. And will you open the window? The wind will be strong within an hour, which will be best of all. I feel a storm coming.”
“Don’t you do anything wild,” Bis said with youthful sternness. “I mean it, stay inside!”
Mrs. Rollins made no reply to this. “Will you look at my bandage and see if it needs changing?” she asked.
When Bis had closed the door, Julie tiptoed out of the bathroom and down the staircase.
When Julie arrived beside him, Bob was in the kitchen, staring out the window, for he had heard a distant rumble.
“Storm coming,” he said, “but no lightning yet.”
“We’ve got another one hurt,” she said as she took ice cubes from the freezer. “The first guests weren’t coming here wounded or with that tight, fearful look like Mrs. Rollins. What’s going on with them?”
He shrugged. “They’re hunted. I guess that’s what your eyes start to look like when you’re somebody’s prey. The girl looked like she’s taking it better.”
“I don’t know. Her mind may be a little affected. I overheard her talking to Mrs. Rollins, and she referred to us, you and me, as an old couple! Oh, and she said she’d been here and met us before.”
Bob agreed that this was strange. Still, after four evenings without guests, they had now had the five guests of yesterday and two this evening. Wizards were beginning to come to the house again! These were the last few days they could have them, and here they were, ready to be protected and cared for. It struck him suddenly that he liked this innkeeping better than anything else, better even than anything he had ever imagined, such as being a fighter pilot. For even pilots never get to grab fire balls or talk to people from past ages. And anyway, he simply loved the wizards.
“I don’t want this to end,” he said.
Julie put the cubes into a sealable plastic bag. “Oh, I know, I don’t either! It’s twenty times better than some ordinary bed-and-breakfast. I’m so glad I’m here this evening to get to help you with some guests before it’s over.” She paused for a change of subject. “So where are you going to go when you move out?”
Bob expected he would move back to Viola and live with his mother and grandfather. What else could he do with no money? But considering the distance—almost fifty miles—and his lack of funds for gas to visit her at Mercury, he did not want to give her that answer.
“I’ll look for a way to stay around here,” he answered and surprised himself with his own words.
Julie was so pleased she could not speak.
A quarter hour later they sat in the living room with Bis, drinking iced tea and getting more leisurely impressions of her. This was the first Mage they had met who was their own age, a brown-haired girl with gray eyes and upturned nose. She had changed into a navy blue top and shorts that seemed quite modern, though of an unusual style; and she was proving to be open and friendly, even gabby. Her language was sprinkled with expressions from a fund of youthful slang unknown to them. Bis was fun.
“Yerp, I was visiting with Anna, with Mrs. Rollins, when the evac warning came. She’s a sort of adopted aunt to me and a great friend and mentor.” She paused. “Oh, look at what you’ve done! That’s a great restoration job on the hearth. It looks so swarly.” She looked at their blank expressions and seemed to remember herself. “Oh, I’m getting it backwards again. I’m always doing that. We Magi move around in time so much that it’s a duff challenge for us to remember when we are. We literally meet ourselves coming and going. That’s only happened to me once, and it was grolly beyond belief. But I was very nice to me, and I’m looking forward to the same meeting from the perspective of older me in several months. Which reminds me to say that I’ve met you two before, and you were just as nice then, or will be.”
“You must mean the married couple that were innkeepers here in the 1860’s,” Bob said, who was straining to follow all this and not succeeding. “We’ve never met you.”
“Well, yerp, I mean you haven’t met me, right. But you’re very nice and I like you.”
“Thank you. We like you too,” Julie said in confusion. “Can I get you something to snack on with the tea? And will Mrs. Rollins be coming down?”
“Oh, I hope not because of the storm that’s on the way. She does strange things in storms. I’m not hungry or anything, but I wonder if you might show me some more of those fireworks? In my century we don’t have them. We have some great holos, of course, but there’s something about the crackle and the smell of the real thing.”
“Uh, what century are you from?” Bob put in.
“The twenty-third. Could I maybe hold one of those sparklers?”
Though they had a full bag of fireworks, they found there was just time before the rain for Bis to dance around the lawn with several sparklers and then to ooh and ah over a couple of fountains. When the big drops began to fall they ran in and settled around the kitchen table, and then their guest did consent to share snacks with them.
They were quite relaxed with one another, so while smearing peanut butter on a cracker, Julie asked, “So what’s it like being a Mage?”
“I like it real well generally,” Bis said. “But lately it’s been a gargle, what with being stuck in the middle of this rebellion. I mean it’s one thing reading about it in Mage history books and another to actually be caught in even just a little of it. I’m all on edge, and Mrs. Rollins hasn’t been herself for weeks. I mean, if all goes well, I’ll get back home to my family and back to normal; but they’ve burned
her house in 1857 Philadelphia, and her husband had to escape to Boston, and worst of all, one of the Rebels, a rattlesnake named Vivien….” Bis stopped speaking long enough to dab at her eyes with a paper napkin. “I’m sorry. They get to know you, you see, and make friends, and then try to murder you. This one looked like an angel. She stabbed Anna in the arm while they were in the upper parlor together. She got away, and Anna had to be put to bed, and then Herr Stringer came and said we had to get out through the portals right away. So what could we do? We got Anna on her feet and off we go blinty, but not to the nearest portal. Oh, no. The Rebels had already blocked all the escape roads but this one. We had to travel by train. We heard about her house being on fire while we were waiting at the station. Then we went to Gettysburg and got away through a portal there.”
“We’re on the only road left?” Bob said, for he was again having trouble keeping up with her.
She nodded shortly. “The damned Rebels cut all the others.”
“But will there be more Magi coming through yet?”
“Oh yerp, loads of them. The road behind us will be jammed. I just don’t know how many will make it this far.” She carefully picked up a few crumbs from the table and put them on her plate. “It’s been rough at the inns. So many of them are cold and,” pausing to listen to thunder, “they caught up to us at Seoul and burned that inn. Of course, we weren’t in it, but we saw the smoke from a distance. That was too close.”
This was the first Bob had heard that the inns themselves might be attacked and destroyed. He and Julie exchanged wide-eyed looks. Until now they had thought of themselves as more or less safe.
Lightning flickered outside the window. Julie murmured something inaudible and then said, “Look, I’m just the day help around here. I mean, I may have gone about as far with this as I want to go. I didn’t sign up for a war.”
“Yeah, it’s like military service,” Bob said with quite a different tone. “Geez, I wish I owned a gun.”
“They have lots of them,” Bis said in a casual voice. A huge crash of thunder now shook the house and the lights went out. “Oh, heavens!” she almost screamed. “Even in Victorian Philadelphia this doesn’t happen. They use oil lamps or gas.”
“It’s all right,” Julie said. “There’s an oil lamp in the living room. I’ll get it.”
Bob heard her blunder her way to a kitchen drawer to get matches and then walk into the living room. She returned quickly but not with the lamp.
“Bob? Bis? Mrs. Rollins is in the living room and wants to talk with us. She’s—well, she’s sort of glowing.”
“Oh, here we go again,” said Bis as she pushed her chair back.
When they had found chairs in the dark, the stabs of lightning showed them that Mrs. Rollins was clothed in slippers and a light, flowing garment that covered her from neck to ankles. This was odd enough for a Victorian, but far more bizarre was what they saw of her when no lightning flashed. Her face, the visible parts of her arms, and her piled-up hair pulsed with a glow that was yellow-green as if painted in florescent strokes on the darkness. Bob noticed that after one or two major bolts even her robe glowed briefly, or perhaps it was her body glowing through the cloth. But this did not distract him so much as to lose the meaning of her words, as she easily and naturally took charge of them.
She began by making sure of Bob and Julie’s full names. “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t want to call you away from your talk with Miss Boland in the kitchen, but I have some things to impart to you before I go out.”
“Oh, you’re not doing that again?” moaned Bis.
“I am. You know how gloomy I’ve been. Also, it will help the healing of my wound.”
“Ucch.”
“Please express yourself in a more elevated manner, dear.”
“But what about the Rebels? Are they nearby?” Julie asked nervously.
“Not yet, I think. Let me explain to you about them.”
Suddenly, Sophia’s voice spoke to them from the mirror. “If you wish to be virtuous, then be courageous.”
Mrs. Rollins nodded in agreement. “Do you think that evil is triumphing? But I want you to know that Nineveh and his Rebels have gained control of just a small part of the Magi roads, and the roads themselves are a very small particle of the universe. You could accurately compare the Rebels orb-island to a tiny infected area on an otherwise healthy person’s body, perhaps to a little darkened spot on a fingernail. The Rebels are holed up in this little infected spot with no way to escape and are awaiting their sentencing and execution by vastly greater powers. They’re desperate, lawless, and without protection of law, because they have chosen to be without it. While it’s true, Miss Beckerhof, that they have hunted down or driven out almost all the Magi who happened to be in their island at the time of Nineveh’s coup, yet the far greater powers outside they can do nothing to withstand.
“Furthermore, their every seeming success is a catastrophic defeat, as I’ll explain to you. The areas near their island’s portals are scenes of barbarism and catastrophe, since they have made them so by limiting the influence of the Magi. Every day these neglected lands become more full of wars, ugliness, greed, tyranny, starvation, and so forth. One example that you may have heard of is that of England after Merlin was cut off from King Arthur’s court. Merlin was not there to provide either counsel or magic, and so the Round Table crumbled away. This brought on chaotic misery for all the people of the land. Now, do you suppose that Magi can be torn from their work places and whole nations allowed to erode, and that there will be no reckoning for the criminals who bring it about? They think only of the little piles of money they are making and the power they’ve gained over a few servants and slaves. But what is their true situation?”
“Words of truth burn the ears of the wicked,” said the mirror.
Mrs. Rollins nodded again and continued. “They are like a few bank robbers trapped inside the bank by an army of police. Yes, they can damage things and murder hostages, but they can’t escape. And the damage and killing adds to their punishment when they are finally, and certainly, captured. They would ease and shorten their coming torment if they would surrender now, but they won’t. In fact they claim to be winning and say they’re doing quite well.”
“You make me feel almost sorry for them, Mrs. Rollins” Julie said softly.
“Well said. I pity them greatly.”
“May I light the lamp now?”
“Of course. I was thoughtless to delay you.”
Julie rose, struck a match, and raising the globe of the oil lamp, lit it. As she replaced the globe, the room appeared and Mrs. Rollins’ glow became less noticeable.
When Julie sat down again, Bob made a slight discomfited sound and raised a warning finger. “Wrong chair, Julie. Wait a minute, you haven’t been sitting there in the dark all this time?”
Julie looked down at the Siege Perilous on which she was indeed perched. “Uh, yeah, sorry. Of course, I couldn’t see what chair I was in when I first sat down.”
Bob looked with surprise at her fresh, open face. “And you don’t feel like crying or confessing awful things?”
She gurgled her laugh. “No.”
Mrs. Rollins smiled. “I believe Miss Beckerhof’s character might be described as transparent. There’s nothing for the chair to draw out of her.”
“Wow,” was Bob’s response. He suddenly felt very humble. What a girl.
Thunder rolled again and Mrs. Rollins stood. “Thank you for your time. I hope I’ve helped you to see how helpless our enemies really are. I’m going out now. I won’t be long.”
“Unless you get fried,” Bis said unhappily.
“There is always that chance,” she replied. She left the room, and they heard the front door open and close behind her.
After a few moments the three young people went to the door and watched her striding eastward, alread
y soaked with rain, and glowing even more vividly than before.
“What’s she going to do?” Julie asked.
“She’ll go to a big tree,” Bis said. “She wants to get nearly hit by lightning but not hit. I’ve tried to tell her to give this up, but it’s like Watson warning Holmes about his cocaine. She says it heals her of depression, and I have to admit that’s true. Her wound might even heal quicker.”
“Electro-shock therapy,” Bob said quietly. “She’ll go to the pin oak, I’ll bet. It’s the biggest tree on the property.”
“Don’t shake hands with her when she comes back,” Bis said dryly, “unless you want a frizzy hairdo. I should say if she comes back.”
Bob stirred. “What am I doing staying here? I want to go out there and see this.”
“No, please, stay where you are. Aside from the danger, she wants to be left alone at these times.”
“Well, OK. But tell me, is she some kind of arch-Mage or something?”
“You sensed that. Yes, she’s both a Storm Mage and a Wise Woman, which is a griller of a combination, and more than that, she—well, let’s just say she has some high-placed friends that you wouldn’t want to do anything to upset them. I don’t let her intimidate me, you know, because, rikes, she’s still only human. She cuts her toenails one at a time. But I think I was assigned to her because I’m kind of shallow. You can’t stay shallow around her. She won’t let you.”
“What kind of Mage are you?” Julie asked in the same tone in which she might have asked what Bis did for a living.
“Oh, me! Well, I’m a special case because most Magi are healers, fixers, counselors, that sort of thing. But me they want when something needs, uh, undone, stopped. I, uh….” A great lightning bolt striking nearby lit up her fair-skinned face and the thunder rumbled. “Whoosh! Was that a zoom, or what? Looked like it hit about where she’d be now, too. Sometimes I think that she calls the bolts down. I mean, how else do you explain that she gets them when she wants them? It’s too much for coincidence. I hope she’s all right.”
“Oh, I sure hope so,” Julie said fervently.
“But you were about to tell us what kind of Mage you are,” Bob said.
“Well, that’s why they wanted me to get mentored by Mrs. Rollins. I need all the wisdom I can get. Gotta be careful, always think everything through. You see, I’m a Curse Mage. Uh, you know, like the seven plagues of Egypt? Mrs. Rollins says I’m OK as far as having a relentlessly sunny disposition, which is a necessity, but that I’ve got to be mulger steady too. I’m learning.”
Bob was delighted to be standing next to someone who could, presumably, call down floods and swarms of locusts.
“So why don’t you just curse Nineveh?” he asked.
“That’s exactly the sort of thing I started out asking,” she said, and he was surprised to hear a quaver in her voice. “But Anna says you just don’t do whatever comes into your head. There’s all kinds of rules about it, and the main one is that you don’t trust yourself. Another is that you’re supposed to have loads of compassion. Which I don’t. Yet.”
“I’m sure you will,” Julie said, laying a hand on her shoulder.
“Yerp, I wish I was like you, Julie. I’ve kept out of that conjured chair because, if I sat down on it, I’d be bawling in no time.”
After they had watched out the backdoor window for a few more minutes, Bis suddenly stiffened. “There she is! Thank God. Look how much faster she’s moving now, like lightning herself. I’m so glad she’s all right. I do love my mentor.”
Bob and Julie were shocked to see the difference in Mrs. Rollins, who now shone like a star, pure white tinged with blue. As she came swiftly across the yard, Bob opened the door for her, and suddenly she stood among them, almost too bright to look at, throwing sharp shadows, dripping rain, and laughing.
“Bis, you’re right, you’re absolutely right. I have to give this up. I was far enough from where the bolt hit, but the limb it brought down almost hit me! A huge limb off an oak. I could have been crushed like a lightning bug.”
Bis threw herself at her mentor and hugged her. “Well, don’t ever do it again. Ever. Rikes, are you OK? How’s your arm?”
“Much better.”
The older woman pulled up her short sleeve and touched the dark bandage that covered the pulsing brilliant white of her upper arm. Bob saw that the vague dark shapes of her bones were visible beneath her flesh, as in an x-ray.
“I think I’ll sleep tonight,” she said.
“Can I get you anything?” Julie asked in a shaky voice.
Mrs. Rollins turned to her an other-worldly face in which her skull bones were dimly visible. “Nothing, thank you. But I do want to give you some counsel, Miss Beckerhof, before I go up to my room. Shall we sit down for a moment?”
A few minutes later they were again seated in the living room. At Mrs. Rollins’ insistence they had spread towels under her to protect her chair from the dampness of her garments. Bob wondered if, even at that, there would be a Mrs. Rollins-shaped scorch mark on the chair fabric.
Now the older woman turned to Julie. “I believe you are concerned about your safety here?”
“Uh, yes, I am,” Julie said. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“As a matter of mere practicality, yes. Yet, don’t you feel at least a mild sense of shame?”
“Yes. I don’t want to be a coward.”
“Then you will follow the advice I’m about to give you. You can’t have it both ways. You envy Mr. Himmel’s position as resident innkeeper and want to live here yourself and experience as much fun and adventure as he does. You say to yourself that you will perhaps marry him and share the running of the inn with him night and day. But you also want to keep the option of leaving behind both the inn and him at any time that you may find things getting really unpleasant. Surely you see that won’t do? Dear, it is time for a commitment.”
Julie said nothing.
“Miss Beckerhof?”
“Well, actually Bob’s Uncle has bought this place at auction, so it doesn’t really matter,” Julie said.
Mrs. Rollins considered for a moment. “No, dear, you should not assume that the inn will close. However, even if it were to close, you would still be obligated to become firmer of spirit. Consider what a lifetime of timidity and self-protectiveness would be like. Mr. Himmel?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I want you go out in the storm, out to the oak. Will you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You don’t even question me as to why or about what will happen. You are a priceless young man. Miss Beckerhof, you may go with him if you wish. I hope you do.”
She rose and proceeded out to the entrance hall and up the stair, in her progress gradually darkening the living room where they sat, for minus herself the oil lamp became their only light. For a few seconds they listened to the drumming of the hard rain against the windows.
“Are you going out?” Julie asked Bob worriedly.
He stood up. “I sure am. You can bet she didn’t tell me to go for nothing. This could be an adventure.”
She went to him, hugged him, and then stood off for a moment. “If you’re going to do something really stupid—I mean, that you’ll survive—I want to be out there with you.”
So disdaining umbrellas but taking a flashlight, the two went out in the downpour and amidst the night lightning. Bob wanted to run, directing the flashlight beam ahead of them, so Julie ran with him. After a few minutes of stumbling and yelling to one another, they arrived, gasping and drenched, at the huge pin oak, which stood in a clearing between the Wandering Wood and the road. Beneath it was a great fallen limb as big as a tree itself, they saw, as Bob played the flashlight beam on it. This was undoubtedly the same that had come down, almost hitting Mrs. Rollins. They stood holding wet hands, unsure of what to do.
“I’m going
to climb the oak,” Bob said.
“What for? She didn’t tell you to do that.”
“Mainly just for the thrill of it.”
Julie had brothers and so was too wise to tell him not to do it. Boys will be boys, and she loved them for it. So she merely prayed silently while he went in under the shadows of the trailing lower branches, directing the flashlight beam upward. Momentarily the light went off, and straining to listen, she thought she heard a few snaps and thumps that indicated he was climbing. She could not tell exactly where he was now, just somewhere behind the boughs of leaves swaying in the wild wind.
A few too many minutes went by as the rain poured, and she became scared. Bob would probably be hit by lighting, and she might be too. Or Rebels might come through the portal, which was close by in the Wandering Wood, and murder them both, but her first, because she was more exposed. Besides, that rascal had taken the flashlight with him. She was strongly tempted to leave him up in the tree and go back to the inn. Yes, she was doing him no good here. She would go.
Abruptly, she started walking back, but stopped before she had gone ten yards. There were people in front of her, four of them. She was scared silent, swaying on her feet, almost fainting. Yes, four dark figures in the rain. But what was most frightening was that the lightning flashes gave her no sense of what they looked like. It was as if light could not illumine them or was swallowed up by them. They did not move and she could not.
“Oh, gosh,” she said at last, shrilly. “Just go away and let me go back to the inn. Please, let me go.”
One of them laughed and answered in a deep male voice. “Maiden, we won’t let you go until you take and use the gift we’ve brought you.”
She finally remembered to pray and did so out loud. The figures before her simply waited. She prayed until she ran out of words, but they were still there. God was apparently busy elsewhere. She was dead meat.
“What gift?” she said miserably.
“Here it is.”
The one who spoke produced from some fold of himself or his clothing a blinding white stick of light, which he held in his hand as lightly and casually as if it were a walking stick. The yard long bolt was bright enough to make her squint and look away, and yet, even in the speaker’s hand, it did not illuminate him or his companions. Silently he extended it to her. This was the gift.
“I won’t take it!”
“Yes, Julie, you will.”
Before she knew she had done it, she had taken it. It was grasped in her hand. The result was not pain, or at least not much pain, but she felt sick.
“This is a throwing bolt,” he said. “You may send it where you please, but you must send it somewhere.”
“Even at you?” she quavered.
“If you wish, but it will not harm us. Or if you wish, you may throw it at the oak.”
“What, at Bob?”
“Somewhere.”
“I can’t just hold it? I don’t want it, take it back!”
“You have taken the gift,” said another of the figures. “Use it.”
She was completely convinced that she could throw this lightning bolt and kill Bob (and where was he, anyway, when she needed him?), or even cast it a long distance with accuracy and set the inn on fire. The power was hers.
“This is so wrong,” she cried to them. “It’s like giving a bomb to a three year old. What are you? Don’t you see I shouldn’t have anything so dangerous?”
“Do you think it such a great thing, Maiden, that you should control a lightning bolt, when you yourself are a living soul? Do you think you can’t do, that you haven’t already done, far more harm with your life than this bolt can do?”
These words made her think about Mrs. Rollins’ accusation that she, Julie, wanted to escape danger by leaving Bob and the inn to their fate. She meant no harm to anyone, but perhaps simply going away was the most destructive thing she could do? She was too weak to attempt to deny it. She was the day help, she had said, so by what law was she held here? She wanted to run away, to go home to her parents and brothers, and never get near Bob or this horrible place again. She quickly calculated that she would pitch the bolt first, since there was no other choice, throw it quickly somewhere, anywhere, and then run.
“It’s time,” one of them said.
She raised the bolt like a javelin and turned, to her own surprise, toward the pin oak. Bob was up there. She would throw it at him. That made perfect sense. How could she avoid ever seeing him again, avoid ever returning here, unless she used it on him? Everyone would say the fool had climbed a tree in a storm and had been hit by lightning. Nothing could implicate her. She would do it!
No, she wouldn’t. She gasped a final prayer and plunged the bolt into herself, ribcage high, and her heart stopped.
The trouble with climbing a tree in a thunderstorm is that it seems like a lot better idea beforehand than it does later. As if the darkness, the wind, and the slipperiness of the limbs were not bad enough, Bob had found that, once well up at an easier climbing height, he was denied the view he had expected. The leaves were in the way. He had hoped to find some wizardly adventure up here, but other than risking a fatal fall, he had accomplished nothing.
So he was sitting on a broad limb, holding on to another, and considering the other trouble with climbing a tree, that is, that it is a lot harder going down than coming up. He yelled to Julie, hoping that a little shouted conversation between them would encourage him, but she did not answer. She’s probably gone back to the inn, he thought, and who can blame her?
A gust of wind caused his seat to rock alarmingly and he tightened his grip. A few moments later, in another gust, a terrific rending sound told him that a limb of the tree—he hoped not the one he was on—was being torn loose. He did not stay to find out which limb it was but began feeling his way back down somewhat faster than suited even his usual readiness to take risks.
At last he was down, a little skinned up, rather dirty, and greatly relieved. He hurried out from under the shadow of the oak before a limb could fall on him. No sign of Julie. Pulling his flashlight from a back pocket, he shined it around. No, she must have gone back. So feeling a little misused, he started home. But after he had gone just a short distance his flashlight’s beam picked up someone lying on the ground in the rain. A little closer, and he saw it was Julie.
She was on her back. He leaned over her with the flashlight on her wet face and found that her eyes were closed, her lips curled in what looked absurdly like a smile. When he jostled her and called her name, she responded with a gurgle-laugh. Only then was he able to clearly tell himself that he had feared she was dead.
He laughed too, with relief. “Come on, Julie, wake up. What’s happened to you?”
After a few minutes of useless effort to get her to open her eyes, he gathered her in his arms—fortunately she was pretty small compared to him—and carried her back to the inn.
He laid her drenched body on the couch in the living room and stood panting and tired out. What now? Call 911? No, Mrs. Rollins. She would know what to do. He started toward the door but was called back by another bubbly laugh. Julie’s eyes were open and she was looking up at him.
“How was the tree?” she asked.
“It was all right. What happened to you?”
“Woo-hoo! Who says you get all the adventures? Were you carrying me? Golly, I was sure I was dead.”
“What happened?” he asked, now crouching beside her and holding her cool hand.
“I had a vision. I think that’s what you’d call it. It had to be a vision because I knew that I died, and in real life people don’t know they die, they just die”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She told him everything she remembered but in a wandering, inebriated fashion and with many inappropriate giggles. Even her brief desire to kill him seemed funny to her now. Bob
was too worried about her to be offended. He felt her present condition was his own fault for having enlisted her to help him with the inn.
“So who were the four guys?” he said at last.
“I don’t know. She could tell you.”
“Mrs. Rollins, yeah.”
“I mean she’s here.”
And there she was behind him, for she had entered the room quietly while his attention was diverted. She was dressed again in her Victorian period clothing and did not appear to be glowing.
“The ones she saw were Legionnaires,” she said.
“I’ve heard of them,” Bob said. “Aren’t they supposed to be good guys?”
“Very good indeed.”
“Then why did they look so dark?”
She sat down smiling. “I usually have no ready answer to questions as hard as that, but in this case I do know. They appear so dark to us because they are of a light so profound that it is beyond the ability of human eyes to see. You might compare it to sounds outside our ability to hear.”
“So they’re so light they look dark?” Bob asked dubiously, and Julie gurgled again.
“That’s more or less it.”
“So what does that make them?”
“Very good, as I said.”
Bob gave it up. “So what did they do to Julie?”
“No harm, you can be sure. How are you, Miss Beckerhof?”
Julie sat up slowly. “Pretty zippy, considering. A little dizzy. She’s right, Bob, those guys were good. I didn’t think so at first because they were really stern with me. But now I’m not complaining. Rikes! as Bis would say. I feel released from worry.”
“You better stay down,” he said, preventing her from standing.
She looked at her watch. “But I’m late getting home, Bobber. Musn’t worry Mom and Dad. I’m OK. I’m sure I can drive home.”
Bob felt that she would be driving the equivalent of drunk. “You better let me go first in my car and just follow.”
“OK, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning and cook breakfast. Gee, it’s late. I better go now. Good night, Mrs. Rollins.”
After seeing Julie safely home, Bob returned to the inn, finding that the power had come back on. He paced around the living room nervously, feeling scared. An awful fate seemed to be hovering near the inn. Both Mrs. Rollins and the wizard named Cyrus had narrowly escaped the Rebels with loss of blood. Now something frightening had happened to Julie. And the Rebels were coming soon. He had wanted this innkeeping to be fun, and it had been, but now the picture was darkening.
“How can it be fun if people might die?” he said aloud to himself.
“Fear death and you will never live,” replied the mirror.
“Oh, shut up!”
If more, many more, wizards were coming his way, crowded down his road as Bis had said, then this could end horribly. The Rebels might catch up to them at this inn at some time during the remaining three days before the redemption period would end and the inn be closed. In other words there might be just time for a massacre before his tour of duty would be over.
But had he not been ready both to face death and to witness the death of others if he had joined the military? Yes, he had told himself he was ready for that. Now he did not feel at all ready. But at any rate, what else could he do other than stay at his post? He would have to be steady and try to see death itself as a lark, a laugh, in the great storm of life. You play the cards you are dealt. He had wanted adventure. So be it. Maybe death was a part of adventure like Peter Pan or somebody had said. The important thing is to obey the rules. He went to the kitchen, turned on the light, and once again read the Innkeeper’s Rules posted on the refrigerator door. He had not imagined when Stringer had commissioned him that the one about keeping the guests alive would become a real issue. If they were shot at, then what could he do about it?
Something Davy Crockett was supposed to have said came to mind: “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.” A satisfying, calming sort of saying. Returning to the living room, he picked up the book Thomas had conjured for him, Dragon’s Children, and settled himself to read from it and maybe learn a little about how to resist evil people.
“Be sure you’re right, then go ahead,” the mirror said to him quietly.
“Oh, that is just so cute,” he muttered. “I told you to shut up.”
In the morning Julie showed up in time to be the cook. She was perhaps more thoughtful and quiet than usual, but no less cheerful despite her adventure of the previous evening. After breakfast Bob, Julie, and Bis took a walk down the quiet road in the cool of the morning. They paused to admire the Queen Anne’s lace, which was just beginning to bloom, and the red flower-trumpets of the trumpet creeper.
“Mrs. Rollins asked me to fill you in on some history,” Bis said, “although it’s not really my best subject. Still, I’ve studied Nineveh’s Rebellion with her along with a lot of other Mage history. She home-schools me, you see. It’s funny really, being in the midst of it like this and at the same time knowing how it all ends.”
“How does it all end?” Julie asked in a tone of disbelief. Though Bis had mentioned something the day before about having read Mage history books, Julie had not grasped that a friend from the future could provide such information.
“Oh, just like you’d expect. The Rebels get squashed. But the most exciting part in the book is that the trapped Magi got evacuated along these old roads, and some got out alive and some didn’t, and it was all very sad and heroic. I remember that almost all of the Magi’s children were evacuated early on, usually with their parents, and I’m not even sure that they went out on these roads. Did they? OK, not this one anyway. But we seem to be past that time in the here and now. Then all of the roads got cut by the Rebels except one, and the remaining Magi crowded onto it. The ones that made it out gathered at an inn on Mount Baldy in Colorado or Arizona or someplace, and they were supposed to be met there by enough Mage forces to protect them. Only the plans broke down. Supplies were there but no reinforcements came.”
Bis stroked the delicate surface of a Queen Anne’s lace bloom.
“The next part makes me almost want to cry because it must have been a miracle. They were completely vulnerable in this mountain meadow, most of them in tents that had been set up around the inn, and they couldn’t run anymore. They were played out, lots of them wounded and exhausted, and those who could have kept going through the far portal were staying there with their friends in hopes they could gather enough strength to make a stand. They expected that at any hour the Rebels would come through the portal and slaughter them with bullets.
“Some said to cut the road themselves before the Rebels could reach them, but they couldn’t bring themselves to do it because they knew there were still a few Magi trying to get out, including Merlin himself, and they had to leave the portals open for them. Also, there were a few of them there, like Mrs. Rollins and me, who knew the future, and they did their best to convince the others that they were safe. What else? Let’s see…. I don’t remember all the details, but I think this road was cut for a short time, maybe by the Rebels for some reason, and then it reopened and Merlin and whatever other Magi were with him got through alive to the meadow. But the amazing thing is that, with an open road and nothing to stop them from reaching Mount Baldy and killing us all, the Rebels turned tail and went the other way.”
“Why?” Bob asked.
“Nobody knows to this day. There isn’t even a plausible theory. But surely you two will know before long, don’t you think, being right here on the part of the road where they give up the chase? Or maybe they turn back before this inn, or after. Whatever. The thing is that a whole lot of Magi died in the rebellion, but it could have been so much worse if not for Herr Stringer reopening these old inns. And just think, I’m going to be on Mount Baldy, right there among the refugees, in just a few days. That is so grolly.”
Bob was thoughtful. “So you know you’ll be all right. It’s all so sure that it’s written down as past history for you. But what about this inn?”
“What about us?” Julie added.
“That wasn’t in the book. But don’t worry. I’ve already met you when you’re old. I mean, I can remember it, but that meeting hasn’t happened to you yet, so you don’t yet have it to remember. Ordinarily it never happens that people can get out of step with other people in aging like that, because time moves forward at a uniform rate at all the locations along the portal roads. So you’d think the only way I could see you here when you’re old would be for me to wait and get old too. But Mrs. Rollins has me getting some special counseling from a time Mage, Mr. Malory the undertaker, who sent me on a special trip by pure time travel. That was so breff, but I should stick to my subject.
“I’m just not sure about what happens to any more Magi who come through here in the next few days. Has Merlin been through yet?” They shook their heads. “Well then, some more of them are going to make it through alive, because I know from the history book that he does.” She snapped her fingers. “Yes, that’s it. Merlin’s group was the last to get through. Not all of them who started with him made it, but he did and some others.”
“This is just starting to sink in,” Bob said excitedly, “I mean that Merlin himself is going to come here! Did I get that right?”
Bis affirmed it and added that she had never met him.
“Wow! Julie, we’ll get to talk with him. Maybe he’ll even show us some magic. We can ask him about King Arthur.”
“I won’t have you bothering him,” Julie said. “He may be tired out, and there will be other guests to take care of.”
Bob was hardly listening. “And when he signs the guest book, we’ll have his autograph! Hey, we could get his picture!”
“Will you relax, Bob?” Bis said laughing. “Julie is right. All he’ll want is a good night’s sleep.”
“Just be glad that he came,” said Julie, “and later you can put up one of your signs, one that says ‘Merlin Slept Here.’”
“I will!” Bob said. “That should impress our guests. Won’t it, Bis?”
Bis affirmed that, yes, even the other Magi were impressed by Merlin.
They turned back on the road and sauntered along toward the inn. Presently Bob asked, “If Nineveh’s Rebels travel the portals, then haven’t they been in the future?”
“Some have,” Bis said. “I can see what you’re leading up to.”
“Yeah, how come they’re keeping up the rebellion if they know they’ll get squashed?”
“Or why rebel to begin with? Well, for Nineveh himself I guess there’s no answer but his own foul, evil heart. He must have figured he was going to get to be like God for some years, and that was enough. But he kept his forces in the dark about the future, even though he knew about it himself. He allowed his Rebels to travel portals to the future, of course, but only to places and times where it was really unlikely that they would hear a report of their own defeat. That didn’t restrict them much really, since there aren’t many places you can go and find a good, solid Mage history text. Still, Nineveh kept his followers ignorant, and in that sense he betrayed them. But don’t feel too sorry for them. Even though they didn’t know exactly what was coming, they did all know that they were vastly outnumbered and out-powered, so the followers really knew they were committing suicide, the same as Nineveh did.”
Bis’ face was reddened by the intensity of her emotion as she said this.
“How will it end?” Bob asked. “I mean what’s the squashing like?”
“Not pretty. The Rebels ran out of hostages and then had to try to fight celestial powers and some pretty amazing Magi. Their kind usually won’t surrender either. The good guys smashed Nineveh’s palace first, and the rest was just a few years of mopping up. Nineveh’s Realm was won back completely. I mean, rikes, what else? They were like mosquitoes taking on elephants.”
“And Nineveh? What happens to him?”
“Yeah, what did happen?” She furrowed her brow. “I think he died or got sick or something before the liberation. He wasn’t mentioned in the parts about the final battles. Oh, look, is that a deer?”
It was. A red-coated whitetail stood in the field across the road, its head up and all ears. They paused to look at it until, after a long stare, it ran away.
During this interlude Bob had been thinking. “So when Merlin shows up, we know its crunch time?”
“Yerp, the Rebs won’t be far behind. I’m sorry. I wish I could honestly say that I’d like to stay here and face it all with you, but the fact is I’m just about scared gibbery as it is and just want to get away. You see, I don’t absolutely know yet whether Mrs. Rollins will survive. It looks like she will, but she isn’t mentioned in the history one way or the other. The only way we’ll know she’s all right is when we get to Mount Baldy. As for me, since I’ve met my older self, like I told you, I know I’ll make it through alive; but the thing is, I didn’t know to ask her, me, about injuries. I could have been standing there on artificial legs for all I know, and knowing me, I wouldn’t tell me. We have some great prosthetics in the future, but I’m not kippy about trying them out.”
“Well, good luck,” was all that Bob could think to say.
“Thanks. You too. Oh, and not to be a total glummer, but Anna says that the condition of your next guests may come as a shock to you.”
“What does she mean?” asked Julie.
“Oh God, I don’t even want to know. They’re going to be pretty closely pursued, and Magi can only take so much stress. I’m really sorry. That’s why she wanted you to have the history lesson, I guess. It’s good to know that the Rebels lose in the end even if, well, even if they murder some of your guests. Sorry.”
