by Sharon Lee
Friday, June 23
High Tide 10:04 a.m.
Sunrise 5:01 a.m. EDT
The coffee was brewing, the bagel was toasting, the french windows onto the summer parlor were open, curtains dancing in a stiffish breeze off the ocean. It was a good morning, all things taken into account, and I sang along with the Black Crowes, as I poured cream into my mug.
There was a step on the outside stairs. I reached into the cabinet for another mug, and had it down by the time Peggy pushed open the door, newspaper in hand and asked, “Breakfast club still open?”
“Sure,” I said. “We can split the first bagel while the second one’s toasting. There’s cream cheese and peanut butter in the fridge.”
She came in, put the paper on the kitchen table, and opened the fridge while I poured coffee, got a second plate out of the cabinet, and scooped a couple of butter knives from the silverware drawer.
“How’s it going?” I asked, carrying the plates to the table. The breeze was ’way too stiff for alfresco on the porch.
“Going good. Really good.”
I glanced down at the Journal-Trib’s front page.
PUC CONSIDERS RATE INCREASE REQUEST
…and sighed.
“Not what you were hoping to see?” Peggy asked, bringing peanut butter, strawberry jam, and cream cheese to the table.
I shook my head, half in self-mockery. Whatever Man Business had gone down last night had certainly been concluded long after the Journal-Trib had gone to bed.
“Just looking for word of a friend,” I said, and tossed the paper at the couch. It fell short, pages fluttering; spreading full color advertising inserts over the floor.
“So,” Peggy continued. “What d’you want on your bagel?”
“Cream cheese.”
“I will deal,” she said. “You go hack another one in half and get it toasting.”
“Sure thing, boss.” I turned to the counter.
By the time the second bagel was toasting, both first courses had been spread handsomely with peanut butter—her—and cream cheese—me.
I sat down, took a sip of coffee, and grinned at her.
“So, it’s going really well?”
“I shouldn’t say more.” Her eyes were wide. “Don’t want to jinx a good thing.” She took a bite of bagel; I did the same, and for a little while the only thing that was going on was concentrated chewing.
“I still need to get somebody to help out at The Mango,” Peggy said eventually, “so I don’t have to be Wonder Woman and do it all. I got a greenie in, like you suggested, but the intricacies of the juicers were beyond him. Also? I think he didn’t like getting all sticky and berry-spattered.”
“Seriously?” I asked, sipping coffee.
“There’s no accounting for some people’s foibles,” she told me earnestly. “Anyhow, I’m keeping up so far, mostly motivated by fear, because it’s fatal to fall behind on Arbitrary and Cruel’s reports. Unfortunately, I see a day when I’m going to fall behind, because I’m tellin’ you, Archer, there are people in this town who are serious about their smoothies.”
“Well, I’m an idiot, which we know because I used to sling code for a living, but I could probably learn to make smoothies, and I don’t mind getting splattered—” which I wouldn’t be, I added silently. “I’m available ’til three-fifty, most days.”
Peggy snorted. “After which you go to do your thing with the merry-go-round until ten-or-midnight.”
“Every other day,” I pointed out.
She shook her head.
“I think the goal here has to be that neither of us gets toasted. Speaking of which…” She got up, plate in hand.
I chewed the last bite of bagel; nodding my thanks when a second toasted half hit my plate.
This time I went with strawberry jam.
“That looks good,” Peggy said.
“Is good,” I told her, pushing the jar toward her. “Homemade.”
“Seriously? You know somebody who makes jam?”
I laughed. “Mrs. Kristanos makes her own jam, and, before you ask, she told me that she finds time by putting her kids to work her shifts at Dynamite.”
“For which small sacrifice, they get homemade jam,” Peggy said, applying jam with a will. “There’s no place else on earth where you can get a deal like that.”
“Point.”
I got up to fetch the coffeepot and the creamer, and freshened both of our mugs.
“So, everything’s going good for you?” Peggy asked eventually, and over the dregs of her bagel. “The boyfriend’s not being an ass?”
“Not an ass,” I said. “He does have some attitude, though.”
“Well, you want that; otherwise you’d walk all over him, and then you’d get bored.”
“True. I’m a terrible person.”
“You are, but I like you.” She cocked a sapient eye. “Something bothering you?”
“Well…” I sipped coffee while I weighed whether or not I wanted to bring this up. On the one hand, Peggy was almost certain to have more practical experience in the area than I did. On the other hand, I wasn’t used to discussing private matters with, well…anyone.
I set my mug on the table, picked up the bagel, and met her eye.
“It’s going a little slow. I think.”
“Yeah? He didn’t strike me as the shy type.”
“Not shy.” I felt compelled to defend Borgan’s honor. “Just…” I took a bite of bagel and chewed, considering.
“Careful,” I said eventually. “I’ve got some…bad history.”
Peggy nodded. “He know that?”
“Yeah…”
“Well then, it’s your move, Archer! If he’s worth having around, he won’t want to hurt you or rush you, right?”
I sighed. “Right.”
“So if you want to go faster, woman—go faster!” She eyed me over the rim of her mug. “You didn’t want to do any of the work?”
“I’m lousy at relationships.”
“Only way to get better is practice,” she told me. “Just like everything else.”
“And if I make a mistake and screw everything up?”
“That sucks,” Peggy said. “It really does.” She gave me lopsided grin. “See, I know that because I’m lousy at relationships, too.”
“What a team.”
She laughed and chugged what was left in her mug.
“We should do this at my place sometimes, so you don’t have to do all the work.”
“My God, but the labor of making a pot of coffee I was going to make anyway, and toasting a bagel I was going to toast anyhow will wear me to the bone! Besides, you don’t make breakfast.”
“A little respect, please. I have two different kinds of Pop-Tarts in inventory!”
“I had no idea.”
“Yeah, well now you do.” She gave me a grin. “I better go. I’m glad the breakfast club hadn’t shut down.”
“Me, too,” I said truthfully. “If you can hold up a sec, I’ll walk down with you.”
“Sure thing,” she said. “Pretty morning for a walk.”
* * *
I left Peggy at the midway gate, and crossed to Fountain Circle.
Even so early on a Friday, the place was crammed. The cement tables were full of people and their breakfast picnics of doughnuts, coffee, french fries, pizza, soda. The air was redolent of hot grease, and the sound of voices wove into the background of gull-calls, surf, and simulated mayhem from the arcade, to make a kind of music almost as seductive as Henry’s fiddle.
I found a place to sit on the edge of the fountain, and turned my face up to the sun, letting the murmur and shout of voices wash over me. So far the Season was a success. The hope now being that it would continue as it had begun, that the weather would hold, with every weekend sunny, and rain falling tidily, and only after midnight.
Not anything I had control over; I wasn’t a weather-worker. In fact, I wasn’t sure that weather-working was really viable, given the vari
ous balances and checks imposed by the environment. Be an interesting thing to ask Mr. Ignat’.
I sighed and opened my eyes.
To my left on the fountain-lip was a middle-aged woman in a pretty print dress and sensible flat sandals; her eyes hidden by sunglasses, her fingers wrapped in the leash of the tiny, fluffy black dog asleep on her ankle.
To my right, a boy in what looked to be his late teens had a baby in a chest sling. The baby was zoned out. The boy had his eyes closed and his face tipped up toward the sun, as if taking the benediction of the light.
Honey on the land—who had said that? I wondered, and then had it: Felsic. Something about the work in the midway pouring honey on the land to sweeten the sour times.
Odd sort of person, Felsic.
A shadow passed before me; the little dog jumped up from his nap with an excited yap, and his mistress said, “You’re late.”
“I couldn’t find a place to park,” a pot-bellied man in a Hawaiian shirt, blue shorts and flip-flops told her. “This place is packed.”
“It’s summer,” the woman said, standing, and slipping her hand into his. “Let’s go down to the water.”
Hand-in-hand, they crossed the circle, the little dog gamboling at the end of his string.
I sighed, relaxed under the sun’s grace…and felt a tiny tickle along my spine, as if someone had touched my jikinap.
Relaxation fled; I closed my eyes again, listening with every sense available to me. The tickle came again—and I had it.
Something was going wrong again with the rooster.
“Damn the bird,” I muttered, and opened my eyes.
A little girl with flyaway yellow curls, her outfit a cacophony of pinks, to match her round cheeks, was staring at me—or maybe she was staring at the place to sit, next to me, where the woman and the dog had been.
“Sally, don’t bother that lady,” said a plump woman with the same flyaway curls, who was pushing a stroller with one hand and trying to balance two coffees and a bag of doughnuts with the other.
Senses tingling, I got up and gave the woman a smile.
“In fact, I’ve got to be getting to work,” I told her. “Have a seat.”
She returned the smile, and steered the stroller in. “Thank you!”
“No problem,” I assured her.
I angled across the circle and up, toward the beach, jogging by the time I hit the tarmac.
* * *
Not too many minutes later, not jogging so much as bouncing, I came ’round the curve of the carousel’s storm wall, key in hand—
And braked hard, staring at the door.
Which was already unlocked.
I queried the land, which assured me that Nancy was not inside the storm gates; nor, when that question was put, was Vassily.
I pulled out my cell, and hit speed-dial.
Nancy’s cell rang in my ear—once, twice, three times, four…
And went to voice mail.
“It’s Kate, Nancy. Give me a call when you get a chance.”
I flipped the phone closed and slipped it away, staring at the door with a decided feeling of ill-use.
Only one way to find out what’s going on, Kate, I told myself.
I pushed the door open, quietly, and stepped inside.
Hot air rushed at me, my senses near overpowered with the scent of ripe peaches. Jikinap shot up my spine, questing, even as I turned, saw that the carousel was turning slowly inside a curtain of living green flame, like the Northern Lights ensmalled and contained…and shimmering with power.
Somebody—some unknown Ozali doubtless shielded by the coruscating flames—was trying to open the Gate!
I brought my power to hand, hefted it like a broadsword and brought it slashing downward.
Mr. Ignat’ would have chided me; there was neither finesse nor elegance in the action.
It did, however, work.
The curtain shredded, blowing in the hot air before dissipating, leaving a fading trail of golden sparks. Beyond, I could see the carousel, slowing, the animals—all of the animals, including the rooster—glowing as if they possessed voysin of such purity that it shone through the wood that encased them…
Except voysin was a substance irretrievably attached to the soul…which carousel animals, saving five very special carousel animals, do not possess.
I ducked under the safety rail and moved toward the carousel, jikinap and the land questing. According to those various sets of senses, I was alone inside the enclosure. Whoever had set up the Gate-crash had fled—possibly camouflaged by the twin bursts of heat and stink…
It occurred to me, as a peripheral thing, that it was still too hot inside the storm walls. I waved a hand, and a breeze sprang up, cool and damp and tasting of salt. Nodding approval, I jumped onto the carousel.
The first thing I did upon stepping Sideways was to check the master-spell and the wards on the Gate. Which were intact, of course. I couldn’t have avoided hearing the noise, if the Gate had actually been opened.
Next, I brought my attention to the animal nearest me, which happened to be the moose. In Sidesight, it contained a bonfire; blue-hot at the center and burning with a clear actinic light—jikinap, certain enough, with a little extra juice that might have been a pinch of voysin. I didn’t quite see what the use of it all was—then hunger roared through me, leaving me weak-kneed, and I had the answer.
My arm around the moose’s neck, I breathed in, tasting ripe peaches, and accepted that each and every animal on the carousel had been filled with jikinap.
Never mind open; I’d interrupted an attempt to blow the Gate wide.
And, I thought, looking around me, feeling my power yammer to consume more of itself—and, if they had just left the rooster alone, rather than trying to displace the working I’d left in it…
They might have succeeded.
That would have been bad. Even magical explosions can destroy real things.
Kill real people.
My stomach clenched and I swallowed bile. I closed my eyes and concentrated on taking deep breaths.
When I was feeling steadier, I opened my eyes, and straightened from my lean against the moose. The glow of voysin was bright enough to make me squint.
Well, I couldn’t just leave it here, potential threat to life as we know it as it was.
And there was only one way that I knew of to render loose power harmless.
Accordingly, I centered myself…and breathed in.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Low Tide 1:58 p.m. EDT
I was sitting in the chariot, hot, bloated, and shivering, when I heard a step in the door, and a voice call out.
“Who is here?”
“Kate,” I managed, making some shift to sit up straight and get my eyes decently open. Wouldn’t do for the help to find the boss falling down drunk.
Not that I could think of a way to avoid it.
I heard footsteps crossing the floor, and then a light thump, which must have been Vassily jumping to the platform.
More footsteps, and here the child was, his voysin burning in his breast like a votive table in a church.
He stopped a prudent distance from me, his hand on the lion’s rump.
“Are you—” he paused, perhaps hesitating over the proper word. He licked his lips and tried again.
“Are you an angel from heaven?”
I blinked at him, having expected that well? would be following are you. It was on the tip of my jikinap-loosened tongue to tell him to stop talking nonsense, and I looked down to gain some measure of control.
Whereupon, I saw my own hand, resting on my knee. The glow of my newly-increased power made a fairly pedestrian brown and work-roughened member into a thing of strength and beauty. Tears rose to my eyes, just looking at it—absolute perfection, the ideal to which all hands must strive…
I yanked my thoughts back from that edge, before I took a nasty tumble, and looked back up to Vassily.
“No,” I sai
d, wisely not shaking my head; “not an angel.”
He nodded.
“Are you in pain?”
That was better, I thought, peach and butterscotch at war on the back of my tongue.
“I’m a little under the weather, nothing to worry about,” I told him, hoping that wasn’t mere optimism.
It had by now occurred to me that I might have done something that wasn’t particularly smart. Though I’d imbibed jikinap previously, I’d apparently not noticed an important fact.
Mr. Ignat’ had given me his magic, and, beyond finding myself the unwilling vessel, I’d borne no ill effects.
I’d also stolen jikinap—a boatload of the stuff. And that? Had gotten me power-drunk, out-of-control, and slightly mad. That time, the survival of the land had been on the table, and I wasn’t tracking very well, anyway—see drunk, crazy, and beside myself, above.
This time, there wasn’t any deadly enemy into whom I could more-or-less immediately release the power I had ingested. The only thing I could do was digest what I had eaten, and endure until the new power settled in.
“The door was open,” Vassily said, carefully; “and you are here. Am I…dismissed?”
The kid’s worried about his job—and his dinner. Focus, Kate.
“No,” I assured him, taking care with my diction. “I just…stopped by. The door was open when I got here.”
His eyes widened. “The animals—the wheel—there is no damage?”
“Everything looks good. Guess Nancy just forgot put the lock through the loop on her way out last night.”
“This does not seem like her.”
“No,” I agreed; “it doesn’t.” I leaned forward, testing my balance. I’d been unsteadier, though I thought I’d had more fun, first.
The worst problem was my head, which was pounding like a Ginger Baker drum solo. I really didn’t relish the prospect of taking it outside to meet Midsummer’s brilliant sky. Lesser problems were my stomach—definitely queasy—and my balance—not great.
“Why don’t you open up,” I suggested to Vassily, “while I finish getting myself sorted out here? I’ll be out of your way in a couple minutes.”
“Yes,” he said, and crossed the platform, jumping lightly to the floor.
