Nightingale

by David Farland

  Olivia shuddered and took a deep breath. "How could you even think such a thing?"

  Bron shrugged. "People die every day. She's trouble just waiting to happen. She's the kind of person that when she trips, someone else gets to take the fall. When she gets cut, the rest of the world bleeds."

  "What do you mean?" Olivia asked.

  Bron tried to explain. "She's rich, beautiful, spoiled. She begged me to run away with her, but if I had, what do you think would have happened when we got caught?" He waited for Olivia to answer, and explained, "I would have gone to juvie. She would have gotten grounded. I would have gone up on charges—runaway, rape, theft, kidnapping. She would have lost her cell phone privileges. That's the way that it works when you're a kid from social services. You saw Officer Walton. He can tell you. If a window gets broken, must be one of us who did it—not some kid from a 'good' family. As soon as Galadriel went missing, he came knocking on my door. How fair is that?"

  "It wasn't fair," Olivia said.

  "Damned right it wasn't fair. That girl is a danger to everyone around her!"

  "You can't be that cold!" Olivia said.

  Bron gave her a knowing smile. "Oh, yeah? Watch me."

  Olivia didn't know him at all. He'd been pulled from one home after another, abandoned by his mother. Everyone he had ever loved had been stripped from him. No one had ever cared for him. Why should he care for someone else?

  Or is there something even more wrong with me? Bron wondered. Had he been bred to be cold and callus? Did that lie at the root of his problem?

  Or maybe he was just scared to try to fix Galadriel, afraid that he wouldn't be able to do it.

  "Bron," she said. "You have been hurt so much, it's going to be hard for you to reach out. You've got to overcome that!"

  Bron had never actually wanted to kill anyone. He might have been angry and hurt, but he'd never acted on that anger. He'd never lashed out at someone.

  "You're right," Olivia said, trying another tactic. "She's a danger to others. Maybe it would be just to let her die. But have you wondered why Galadriel's such a danger? It's because she just doesn't give a damn about anything—you, herself, her future. The thing that she lacks, the thing that nobody else in the world can give her, is yours to give. You can do more than just help her survive. You've never felt what she's feeling right now, so you don't understand her, but you could make her whole."

  Bron studied the red-rock cliffs to the north for a moment, and his dark eyes flicked up with interest. Olivia felt small for using this tactic. Men have a powerful instinct to save others, to risk their lives. That's why from time immemorial, men have gone to war. She was using Bron's instinct against him, but she told herself: it's not just to save Galadriel. It's to save Bron, too.

  Bron asked, "How do you do it?"

  "I usually sneak up on them at night," Olivia said. "It can take a long time to reorganize memories—"

  "No, I mean how do I do it? How am I supposed to fix her?"

  "Look, ducks are born knowing how to fly south for the winter," Olivia said. "Just touch her forehead. Instinct will take over."

  Olivia bit her lip, then fell silent. She started the car and drove slowly back onto the highway. The new white Corolla was as much as one could hope for in the way of camouflage. With the overbearing summer heat, white was the color of choice for cars in Saint George, and with the tinted windows, she and Bron were about as anonymous as one could be.

  Yet as she peered up the road at a sedan approaching in the distance, she could not help but feel that a noose was tightening around them.

  The Draghouls are coming, she thought. We can't see them, but I know they're here. I can almost feel them....

  A phone call to the hospital that afternoon confirmed that Galadriel was in the Intermountain Regional Medical Center, undergoing treatment.

  Mike had left a note at the house. He was up in the hills, checking on the cattle that were out in the open range. He wanted to get them back out of the hills before the muzzle-loader hunters descended on the area.

  So Olivia offered to drive Bron to the hospital. Reluctantly, he agreed to go. He didn't want dinner. He paced around the house, nerves on edge. While Olivia got ready, Bron went outside. Clouds were scudding in from the south, big thunderheads streaming up from the Pacific.

  Bron stood by the Corolla and watched some birds flitting by the rail fence—bee eaters that seemed to dance in the air, hover and dive, snatching up flies and mosquitoes and honeybees. He tried to capture the rhythms in his mind, put their dance to music.

  The air smelled of dust and a rising storm.

  Bron went to a rose bush by the hummingbird feeders. From a distance the white roses looked tawdry. Their petals were aging, burning brown on the edges. Bron picked the nicest blossom and peeled away the older petals.

  "Ready?" Olivia asked as she came out of the house

  "As I'll ever be," he mumbled.

  Olivia eyed the white rose. "Nice touch," she said. "I thought you didn't care if Galadriel lives or dies?"

  "Aren't you supposed to take gifts when you visit the sick?"

  They piled into the car and headed through town, past the juniper forest and then out of the valley altogether, where the sagebrush poked up through rocks. Once the scenery turned bland, Bron's thoughts focused inward. He sat staring out the window, clenching and unclenching his fist.

  "You all right?" Olivia asked, just to fend off the silence.

  "I feel like I'm being asked to take a test," Bron said, "in a subject that I've never studied before—never even heard of."

  "Relax," Olivia urged. "You'll do fine." He wasn't sure she believed it. "Now that you recognize what's going on, I think that these incidents will become fewer and farther between. I know that you didn't really want to hurt Galadriel. Once you wish her well, if you wish her well strongly enough, I think that she will heal."

  "What about Melvina?" Bron asked. "I might have accidentally taken something from her, too. I... didn't like her."

  "She lives so far from here, you can't do anything for her today. She'll stay the same cramped, miserable person that she is now—until you return the ambition you've taken."

  Bron considered. He didn't want to see Melvina again, but his reluctance shamed him. Olivia talked about it as if it were a done deal. "When would we go?"

  "Maybe next Saturday?" Olivia suggested. "You're going to have to learn how to use your powers anyway. We could make a day of it, maybe find something fun to do up in Salt Lake? When was the last time you went to the water park, or took in the rides at Lagoon?" Lagoon was a large theme park in the northern part of the state.

  "I went to the water park last year, but I haven't been to Lagoon since... I was eleven." Olivia smiled. "We should go to Lagoon, unless there's something you'd like better? 'Lion King' is coming to Salt Lake—the musical."

  "That would be fun," Bron said, but there was an edge to his voice, a lack of enthusiasm. He didn't really want to go. She was the one who loved musical theater.

  "No, wait a minute," she suggested. "Why choose between the two? We can do both!" She talked excitedly as she made plans—suggesting that they go to one of the better places for dinner: Zinn Bistro.

  Bron broke in, "If I give these people ... ambition, what happens to me? I mean, I don't have much myself, or at least not so much that I want to get rid of any."

  "As I understand it," Olivia said, "you were the one who was cleaning the Stillman's house, doing the dishes, fixing the meals, taking care of the children—all on top of going to school?"

  "Yeah," Bron admitted.

  "You've got more ambition than is good for a kid your age."

  "Yeah, but what if I give too much away?"

  Olivia glanced out of the corner of her eye, kept her attention on the road. "I don't know much about dream assassins," she admitted. "No one does. There hasn't been one for a long time...."

  "Why's that?" Bron asked.

  Olivia chose her wor
ds carefully. "Too few are born."

  "My parents were dream assassins, right?"

  Olivia shook her head. "No." She sounded a little bewildered. She finally said, "I told you that masaaks don't have a lot of offspring. That's part of the reason that there aren't many of us. But you should know that our talents are ... like hair color. Most people in the world—throughout Asia and Africa—have black hair, more than seventy percent. Us memory merchants, we're like people with black hair. Most masaaks have my gift, though few have it so powerfully. You're ... like an albino, which is a very rare thing, even for a masaak. Your parents could have been... anything."

  "So there are other kinds of masaaks," Bron asked, "with different talents?"

  "Let's not worry about that right now."

  "You said that we don't have a lot of children," Bron said. "But there are other reasons why we're so few, aren't there?"

  Olivia smiled. "In the old days, the humans sometimes killed us. They called us witches or warlocks...."

  "Cool," Bron said.

  "Why is it cool?"

  Bron struggled for words. "I guess, everyone wants to be an oppressed minority."

  Olivia grinned. "Everyone wants to feel special. I'm not sure that they want to be oppressed." She tried to sound casual. "I told you that I'm not supposed to answer your questions. Someone else will: the Weigher of Lost Souls. She'll tell you everything that you need to know."

  Bron grew quiet. At last he said, "I don't know. Would she have to ... touch me? I mean, isn't it kind of dangerous, what she does?"

  Olivia suggested, "She doesn't have to 'teach' you. She can just show you some things. It would be like watching a movie, except that you would smell and touch things, and you'd feel the world, and think remembered thoughts. It's better than 3D."

  There was something that she wasn't telling him, Bron knew.

  "All right," Bron said, "as long as she doesn't do anything wonky to me."

  "She won't," Olivia assured him. "This woman and I, we're more than just friends. We're more like ... allies. There are a lot of muses like us—math, science, athletics. You'd be surprised at what you could learn."

  Bron cast a sideways glance. "Allies against what?"

  She smiled nervously, kept her eyes fixed to the road. He was fishing for information that she wasn't supposed to reveal. They were coming past some scenery now, three volcanoes up ahead. With the thunderheads coming in from the south, the black volcanoes looked as if they were lowering beneath clouds of ash. Her answer seemed evasive. "Against the rising tide of ignorance."

  Olivia shifted her hands on the steering wheel. She had been clutching it so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

  "I've been thinking," Bron said, "about what kind of damage a memory merchant might do. I mean, they could steal secrets from corporate executives, or government leaders! Right?"

  "Yes," Olivia admitted. "I would even go so far as to admit that such things have been done—though not by me."

  "They could, like, wipe out memories from their enemies. They might make great spies—sort of like James Bond, except with super powers."

  "Yes, they could be like that," Olivia said. "So if we're on the good side, who's on the bad?"

  "You're not ready for the whole truth," Olivia said. "And I'm not the one to tell you, even though I really want you to know."

  Chapter 15

  Healer

  "Nearly all masaaks are left-handed. Anciently, being left-handed, being sinister, as the Romans called it, could be counted as proof that a person practiced sorcery, was in league with the devil. Today such things are considered foolish, but modern men don't understand how close to being right the ancients were."

  — Olivia Hernandez

  Bron waited for Olivia to answer his question, but she never did. That's all right, he told himself. I can be more patient than you.

  Yet he worried about the consequences of her silence. They'd been attacked once already, and it was obvious that their enemies terrified Olivia. Couldn't she see that he needed to know more?

  She drove them in silence as they passed the trailhead at White Rock. Olivia nodded off to the side. "That's where I go to practice the guitar sometimes," she said casually, jutting her chin toward some cliffs the color of eggshell. The valley between was spotted with sagebrush, yucca plants, and juniper trees, with a ridge from an old lava flow running down the valley.

  She indicated a small warning sign. "All of this land is on the desert tortoise refuge. If you see one by the side of the road, don't pick them up. You'll get a fine."

  "Have you ever seen one?"

  "Oh, they're all over the place," she said. "They hibernate in the winter. Otherwise they come out to eat in the morning, before the heat of the day."

  At that, Bron smiled. It meant that he'd have a good chance of spotting a tortoise.

  "But if you pick one up," Olivia warned, "it will get scared and pee, and if it loses too much moisture... well, we live in the desert. Life here is fragile."

  She fixed him a warning glance, and he fell silent. He knew that she was talking about more than tortoises.

  Soon they reached the Intermountain Medical Facility. The hospital in Saint George was a new affair, backed by cliffs on the east side of the city. It was made of sand-colored rock to blend in with its background.

  Galadriel was in Room 411, and when Bron and Olivia reached the room, Bron felt astonished to see how poorly the girl was doing.

  She was strapped to her bed, her face contorted and staring blankly at the wall. A heart monitor beeped steadily, while a pair of catheters dripped fluids into her wrist. Her face was pale with shock, and her blue eyes seemed empty of life.

  Galadriel's mother sat in a chair at her side. Mascara tracks showed that she'd been crying. She sobbed when she spotted Bron, then broke into fresh tears at the sight of Bron's white rose.

  "You shouldn't have come," Marie Mercer said. There was just a hint of blame in her tone, as if this was Bron's fault.

  Olivia gave her a hug. "We had to come, sweetie. We had to give you a break." She squeezed hard and asked, "How has Galadriel been?"

  Bron held his white rose. He didn't see a vase to put it in.

  Galadriel just stared at the wall, completely unblinking. Her chest didn't even move when she breathed. She looked like someone who has witnessed a tragic accident, and then given up on life.

  Marie broke into tears. "There's no change. I don't know what could have done this to her. The hospital checked her with a rape kit. She came back clean. There are no marks, no bruises. It's like, like she's looking into the depths of hell. She quit babbling once we got here."

  "So do you have any idea what could have caused this?" Olivia asked. Of course she wouldn't have a clue.

  Marie pointedly looked away from Bron. Obviously, she suspected that he had something to do with it. In a momentary silence, the beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor seemed unnaturally loud. The smell of antiseptics couldn't hide a peculiar musty odor in the room, as if Galadriel had been lying here, rotting away for days. Bron suspected that the scent came from the muck at the pond.

  "We don't know what's wrong exactly yet. The doctors think she's had some sort of psychic break, one that has thrown her into deep depression. She won't eat, won't drink. They've got her on fluids, and they've started her on painkillers and some other pills, serotonin reuptake inhibitors, but it might take days before they begin to have any effect."

  Olivia smiled sympathetically, offered some comforting platitudes.

  Marie had no idea what she was up against, Bron realized. If Olivia was right, modern medicine was powerless to help the girl.

  For a moment, Olivia held Marie's hand reassuringly.

  Marie nodded to Bron. "White," she said, nodding toward the rose. "It's the symbol of pure love, wholesome and unselfish."

  Bron nodded, but he hadn't known that. Obviously Marie thought that he was being gallant, and he wondered what she would have thought if
he'd brought another color—say the peach-colored roses by the back door. What meaning was attached to those? Would they say something crude, like "I want to hook up?"

  "Thank you for bringing it," Marie said, as if she might burst into tears. "It's nice to know that she's loved—I mean, that someone else loves her besides me. I don't think she has gotten that through her thick head—just how much she's loved."

  Bron smiled sheepishly just as a nurse came in, making her rounds. She checked the fluid levels in the I.V.s, and then jotted some notes on the chart at the foot of Galadriel's bed.

  Even now, Galadriel looked beautiful. Not beautiful and seductive, as she had yesterday. Beautiful and tragic, Bron decided, like a victim of the Holocaust.

  Marie was talking ... "move her up to the psych ward" ... but her voice came from far away.

  The suction cups suddenly manifested at the ends of Bron's fingers. He was eager to get this over, and somehow the sight of Galadriel looking so helpless called to him.

  The nurse was so busy, she didn't even notice, just left the room in a hurry. Marie Mercer was distracted, talking to Olivia. Down the hall, an old woman cried out in pain, while a nurse's call bell dinged.

  Bron looked into Olivia's eyes. She'd noticed his sizraels. Olivia shook her head, just the tiniest movement, warning him to take control of himself.

  She spoke to Marie Mercer, "Sweetie, why don't you go home and rest. You look positively worn out." She reached up as if to smooth a stray strand of Marie's long blond hair, and suddenly her sizraels popped out like claws. Olivia touched Marie's temple, and Marie said, "Oh, my gosh, I forgot to feed the horses this morning, and they didn't get fed last night at all. I have to go!"

  With that, she grabbed her purse and pleaded, "Can you stay with Galadriel—just until I get back?"

  "Of course," Olivia offered.

  When she was gone, Bron accused, "You made her forget feeding the horses, didn't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Is it always that quick?" he asked.

  "Pulling a simple memory? Yes, it can be done easily. She was just holding the memory short term. But training someone can take a long time, especially when you have to lay down a whole new skill. For those who can do it at all, it takes hours." She came around Bron and closed the door to the room, for greater privacy, then turned off the lights. "Go ahead," Olivia urged, "do it."