Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

  "So what's your grand solution?" Sam asked the mirror.

  "I can only work with what's in you that's reflected in me. I'm the other side of what you are, remember. I say you got a right to be as unconventional and abnormal according to their lights and set your own standards rather than live with somebody else's. I can tell that's what you really want, too. I say don't pretend for nobody, and if they don't like it, to hell with them. You got Boday. She's still alive and out there someplace and your destiny is to see her again. The spell of union still exists and I can see it. So what's your problem?"

  Sam sighed. "Boday," she replied. "The attraction on her part is chemical, not real. What if it wears off? What if a spell frees her, or something else, and she suddenly finds me repulsive? Then what do 1 do?"

  "It probably won't happen, but what if it did? You know you aren't the only one like yourself. If you're comfortable with yourself and out in the open and honest to everybody else, you'll make out. Go out there with a feeling that you're gonna live your life with the cards destiny deals you, not curl up and die in a self-pitying cloud that you and things aren't what you want them to be. Consider that society's happiness does real harm to you, but your own happiness really doesn't hurt them at all. It's an easy choice. Be strong, be decisive, live on challenges, don't run from them or worry about what might be."

  It was good advice, advice that was, she realized, really what, deep down. she had wanted to say to herself but never could. "It'd be easier if I had Charley's brains, though," she commented. "God knows she ain't usin' 'em."

  "So who said you were dumb? Some junior high guidance counselor waving his I.Q. tests around in so stupid a manner? Coming straight out and saying you were dumb, so you believed it, just like you swallowed the rest. and you stopped trying. Your grades were fairly good until that time when he told you you were below average. And who was he to tell you that? You picked up the tools and skills of carpentry just watching your Dad. You know, in every case where you haven't just given up and surrendered, you've out-thought and outmaneuvered just about everybody. You escaped from Klittichom back on your own world. You escaped from traitors on this one, and you have survived quite well here. It is only when you quit, when you listen to them rather than just go out and do what you want that you fail. Forget about them. A lot of great minds flunked out of school but not out of life. Ever wonder what that guidance counselor's I.Q. was? Or how much of it he used? Who cares whether you're smarter than some and dumber than others? That's another thing that is. What do those numbers mean? There are always people smarter than somebody else, and lots dumber, too. You're probably a lot smarter than some smart people in some areas as it is. So, forget it. If you can't learn something you figure out a different way to do it and you go on. How many brains could nave survived what you've already survived? You got big problems to solve ahead. Get rid of the old ones. You can't afford 'em."

  She stared at the reflection, as if sensing for the first time that this was a true dialogue and that this creature that looked like her was anything but.

  "Just who and what are you?" she asked the reflection suspiciously.

  "You might say a spirit. A kind of life that exists outside the kind you know or understand. All things which are not energy are created by energy. That trapped energy breeds us; the matter contains us, or natural laws shape us in energy itself. My kind is called by many names by many people of many cultures. Some call us elementals, some ghosts or spirits, manitou and turgerbeist. I was born within the casting and polishing of the mirror, and am sustained by its perfection. Because I reflect you, I become you, for a time, as I said."

  "But you aren't reflecting my thoughts, not even deep down! I never thought this heavy or thought any of this through."

  "Because you reason, so can I. I know all that you know, and all that you are. but it is secondhand. I did not live it or experience it. I can, therefore, be objective about it. First we deal with what is and is unlikely to be changed, for good or ill, right or wrong. You arc a Storm Princess, a magnet for the elementals born of storms and a mistress of them. Those are powerful ones who have no feeling for matter; they are bursts of pure emotion who must live their lives in the briefness of the storm rather than within the lifetime of a tree or a rock or a mirror. They obey neither sorcerer nor demon, although they might cooperate if they feel like itor turn on them and devour them. Those of magic fear them, as do even the other elementals. But, long ago, there was a compact of some kind. Some great one performed a service which even they can not now know or understand, but a debt, an obligation, was created. Girl children of that one line, descended from that first who created the debt, they will obey and never betray. They are the Storm Princesses."

  "But I'm not born of that line."

  "Perhaps not, although who's to say? They recognize you as a legitimate heir to that debt and that is all that matters. They can not tell you and the one born in Akahlar apart. As you already know, they will come if they are summoned, and they will obey you, at least as you are in Akahlar or connected to it in some way, by interacting with those forces that flow from it."

  Sam sighed. "So how the hell do you get to tell me the way I should act and think?"

  "As I say, first we take what is. You are a Storm Princess and you can't change that. You are fat, and unless you intend to be constantly at war with your body for the rest of your life you are going to stay fat. And, you find men sexually unattractive and not even all that interesting on the whole. You have been fighting that up to now and you can fight that for the rest of your life and pretend it is not so and be unhappy because of it or you can just accept it as something no different than a tendency to be overweight or being short the rest of your life and get on with living. Your problem is that you have not thought it through. You think of these things as wrong rather than as simply different. Do you remember your life as Misa on the farms of Duke Pasedo?"

  She nodded. "Yes. That, too. In many ways it was a happy time."

  "Yet almost all of the peasants and workers there were different. Victims of the Changewinds, or of other spells and curses that made them abnormal, unnatural. The Duke's own son has hollow bones and wings instead of arms and flies as a bird might fly. Did you find all those who were there who were not totally 'human' to be repulsive? To be unfit company? To be denied your friendship and help? Should they be treated as animals, as less than humans?"

  "Of course not!" she retorted immediately. "They were some of the nicest people I found here. A lot more human where it counted than most of the Akhbreed."

  "But many were ugly, deformed- Surely they bore the mark of sin and the wrath of God and were punished by God, condemned to look like that and live like that."

  "No, no! They were all victims. Just victims of circumstances beyond their control!"

  "Do you believe, then, that the Akhbreed are the inheritors. the truly superior race who has a right to forever rule hundreds upon hundreds of other races on other worlds who do not match their own physical standards or accept their culture?"

  "0f course not! The system here is obscene. Kind'a like the worst parts of all the racism and sexism and shit back home."

  "And do you remember your vision of the Changewind?" the elemental pressed, reading her memories. "Of a young boy caught out in the great storm and changed by it into an inhuman, demonic creature?"

  She did remember. "Yes! And when the soldiers found him afterwards he pleaded with them that he was the same boy on the inside still, but they murdered him! It was awful!"

  "Then we should accept them as they are? Treat them according to how they act and contribute, whether they are good or evil people, without regard to their looks or what they eat or what language they speak or what culture they follow? Or should we consider the different our inferiors and treat them as such, and perhaps kill all the maimed and deformed and the crippled among even the Akhbreed who do not attain the Akhbreed standard of physical perfection and behave exactly as all Akhbreed are exp
ected to behave?" "That's stupid' Where are you goin' with all this?" The reflection looked her straight in the eye. "How major are your problems compared to theirs? How can you condemn them while eating your heart out that you yourself don't quite meet their standards? You are no different than those people at Pasedo's, than the colonial races, than the cursed and deformed and handicapped, except that your differences are so minor you can even exist in Akhbreed society. How can you at one and the same time condemn the Akhbreed for their ways and yet be upset because you can not fully meet the Akhbreed standards yourself? You would not be upset if you were caught in the Winds, if you suddenly had a tail or grew wings. Or even if you caught a terrible infection and lost your hearing or an arm or a leg. You admired those people for overcoming their differences, which were in most cases very severe."

  For the first time, realty, she did see the mirror's point, and see, too, how very silly her own feelings must look to such a one.

  The reflection, however, wasn't true. "Now think of yourself in their position. They could be horrified at what they had become and give up, become vegetables, die by inches in a morass of pity. They might have been so forlorn that they committed suicide. Many do. Those who you saw were the survivors. The ones who decided to accept what was and live. That self-loathing, that lack of ego and self-worth that consumed many of the ones who did not survive, is what also is consuming you. And for what? That, through no fault of your own, you aren't what other people think of as normal, attractive, perfect."

  Damn it, the thing was a hundred percent right. She knew it now, understood it, and also understood what kind of a hypocrite she had been. She would have saved that boy. She would liberate the colonies. She wouldn't care a bit if she shared more meals and living quarters with the folks at Pasedo's.

  And yet, without that potion, she might well have shrank from some of them, or been worried or revolted by them, and that knowledge made her feel ashamed. The potion had done more than wipe away memory; it had wiped away hangups as well. Because she did not remember then, those people were the only ones she knew. They were normal.

  They were a far better lot of human beings than almost any of the so-called "normal" humans she'd run into. Those bastards back at the cliff— they were "normal" humans. Zamofir was "normal." Probably even Klittichom was "normal."

  "Just understanding and realizing that makes you wiser than almost all of the Akhbreed of Akahlar," said the elemental. "And most of those of your home world, too. One who matches all of society's rules and perhaps is even a genius can still be insane or even evil. But the only true measure of superiority is one's wisdom." Sam sighed. "What do I have to do?" The reflection smiled. "Look inside yourself and then look at your reflection and decide that it will do just fine. Be ashamed of nothing not of your own doing, and cast off all the worries over things that have no meaning and no relevance and which can not be changed."

  "1I want to very much, but I'm unsure that I can! I grew up set in one way, and even though I hated it, it was still a part of me. That's what I've been trying to get rid of by my memory lapses. I understand that now. But I'm back. I'm Samantha Buell again. It's not that easy to do it all at once, like this, now, and know that it'll stay."

  "If that freedom is what you truly want," said the reflection, "then I can give it to you. I can not force it. I can not do it for you. But if you truly wish it, if you let me in, if you do not fight or fear or doubt, then, now, at this point, at perhaps only this point, I can heal you."

  Choices….Crossroads….This way or that. This is what Etanalon meant. This is the moment of decision. Not to be transformed into some artificial beauty as Charley was, nor to become anything other than what I am. Rather, to accept what I am and go on from there. To be content to be just me….

  It wasn't an easy choice for all that, for it meant surrendering forever the fantasy of changing, of giving up even the desire for the magic wand that would make her perfect. Instead a Sam with no illusions, and content with that. One who would never please the public, but might well please herself. It was a tough thing to choose. Nobody outside of fairy tales ever really lived happily ever after, but it was damned tough to give up the dream of it.

  The reflection seemed to shimmer, and parts of it began to fade, and Sam was suddenly afraid that she had made a choice by not making it.

  "Wait!" she called. "I'm ready."

  The reflection solidified once more, this time becoming very much her reflection, her perfect mirror image. She stared into her big brown eyes and the image seemed to come closer, floating to her rather than walking, until they were nose to nose.

  Then the image and her own body merged, and inside the mind, throughout her whole body, there was almost an explosion, a tingling, an excitement. Barriers within her mind fell like dominoes, one after the other, until she remembered her whole past, her whole self, right up to this point, but with a kind of clinical clarity she had never known before.

  Yeah, she'd been dumb, all right. Dumb all the way through. All the time it was them she listened to; all the time it was herself she'd been fighting. The barriers continued to fall. What a mess I made for myself back home and here, she thought sourly. Well, I'm not going to give a shit about them and their standards and their rules and demands anymore. It's time to stop being afraid of living. Okay, I'm not like them. I'm different, in a lot of ways. and they aren't really so bad at all.

  It was as if she was suddenly reborn, grown-up and wise. She liked herself now, and she found her old self pretty damned pitiful and repulsive. She liked the image of herself as a survivor, as somebody with power who might be able to do important things. No more dishonesty, not with herself, not with other people. Anybody who didn't take her as she was, wasn't worth knowing anyway. Let other people be embarrassed for her differences. She wasn't gonna be, not ever again. Who the hell wanted to be "normal" anyway? That was just another word for "dull."

  So now what? She was sick and tired of being led around by the nose, of running and hiding and being scared of shadows and the future. She had power here great power. Maybe it was time she used it. Maybe it was time to test it out and see if the journey was really worth the trip.

  She turned, and suddenly realized that she was no longer within the mirror but back in Etanalon's bedroom, just standing there. She turned back and looked into the mirror once again and there was no reflection there at all.

  Etanalon came back into the room and covered the mirror once more. Sam went to the bed and got dressed once more, then sighed, turned, and looked at the sorceress. "I think 1 can handle it now," she said simply.

  "Indeed?" Etanalon replied, sounding a bit skeptical. "Then you believe that there is nothing that can crush you, nothing that can stop you, even unto death. You're now ready for any new challenge. Is that it?"

  "I think so. I'm gonna try and avoid that death part as long as I can, though. I ain't sayin' I'm not gonna fall flat on my face, but at least it'll be my decision, up front. I'm through running. From myself, from others. I didn't pick gettin' dropped here or what I have to do, but it's right that I do it. That I face her down and screw her ass into a thunderstorm.

  Not 'cause Boolean wants it, but because it's the right thing to do."

  The sorceress nodded. "That's nice. dear. Come back in and I'll hand you your first crisis of your reborn self."

  Sam was suddenly wary. "Something happen while I was in there?"

  "Oh, no. Nothing's changed. In fact, the entire process took only a few minutes, no matter how long it seemed to you. It's something that already was, but which has been kept from you. Both a severe complication to your plans and, well, a potential advantage as well. But you should be sitting down for it."

  Kira was curled up on the couch but looked up and then sat up. "That was fast."

  "I'm a lot better, Kira. Inside, anyway. I still feel like I'm carrying a ton." Sam settled down in one of the padded chairs.

  "Not a ton, dear," Etanalon said softly, "just a baby." Sam
stiffened in shock. "What!"

  "You're pregnant," Kira responded, affirming the news. "Six months along."

  "Holy shit! You knew about this? And you didn't tell me?"

  Kira shrugged. "In your mental state it was tough to know whether or not the news wouldn't push you off the edge. But, as the physician said last night, you weren't too far from finding out with a vengeance."

  Sam sank back down. "Jeez! Pregnant! I come out of there ready to march into battle against the forces of evil and now maybe I can waddle a little. I know I ain't had a period since lord knows when, but I figured it was the potions or the shock or the weight or something. Jeez! One of them bastards back with the Blue Fairy in Kudaan. probably." She paused a moment, thinking, all the memories now clear in her mind. "Or maybe not. God,! hope not!"

  "The rape was the only sexual experience with a man?" Etanalon asked.

  She thought a moment. "No, it wasn't. A day or two earlier, really. I realized I had this power with that demon amulet, and there was Charley screwin' half the train, and I just had to know. 1 just picked a strong, nice guy and kind's bewitched him into seducing me. It was no kick at all. I didn't even get off." She thought a moment. "But he did. Jeez. 1 hope it's his! He was a pretty nice guy for all that and I think he was killed in the attack. Huh! I guess we'll never really know, unless he or she grows up to be an ax murderer or something."

  "She," Etanalon told her. "Storm Princesses have only girls, and generally only one child. She, too, will be a Storm Princess, at least as long as she remains on Akahlar. More importantly, it will preclude the native Princess from a child, since such things are determined by the elementals. More and more they will take you for her, dividing their support less and less between you."