"We never thought it would go this way," she said, "and yet," she winked, "we knew it would, didn't we? The Wayfaring Stranger is amongst us, and we all, I think, know what that means."
"Party time!" called a man named Robert from the back of the room. Others laughed.
Annabelle smiled. "Yes. We get to celebrate. As we have been doing. As we will do again." She peered out over the crowd. "But we have some work to do now, don't we?" she asked.
Many nodded.
"And it could get dark," she said, "for it's darkness we shall oppose." Some of her words sounded, to Cole, like they must be lifted straight from The Book of the Stranger. He'd have to read the whole book one of these days.
"So we shall hope that the Stranger's Light can lead us," said Annabelle. With that, she held out a hand toward Cole. Those few folks standing between the two stepped to the side and Cole, as if caught in a dream, stepped forward to take both of the old woman's hands in his own. He was hot and sweaty from dancing and wished he had a towel to wipe his face, but Annabelle did not seem to notice. She studied his palms for a moment, then looked up at him and lifted an eyebrow. "Do you have a plan for tomorrow?" she asked.
Cole shook his head. Partly to deny having a plan and partly to clear his thoughts. It was so late, and he was exhausted. "There were phone calls," he said tentatively, trying to find some words that might meet the huge expectations Annabelle seemed to have for him. "A man with a disguised voice. He... he told me to come here. To raise a stink. 'A media circus,' he said. I haven't really thought it out... beyond that..." Cole shrugged.
Annabelle nodded. "Your mystery caller thinks you can force their hand," she said evenly. "What do you think?"
"I think..." Cole exhaled loudly. "I don't know. Maybe. It depends on who we're dealing with here… who's in charge." He looked down to the floor for support. “I’m just… we’re all just regular people, you know?”
"Indeed," agreed Annabelle. "And yet you have other resources to draw upon now." She squeezed his hands in hers, to give him a hint of what she meant.
Cole let go and held up his hands. "The lights?" he said. He shook his head in a vigorous 'no.' "But I can't control them!" he explained, waving his hands wildly to prove his point.
His point was not made. From both of his waving palms, fireworks of green and gold burst forth. Cole clenched his fists and the fireworks stopped. He opened his palms and held them facing upwards before him, then studied them with intention and focus. The fireworks sprang back to life, softer this time. Like tiny faerie ballerinas dancing in his hands, the lights sparkled and spun. Cole watched them closely, as one might regard a dragonfly alighting on one's finger. He looked up at the rapt faces of his audience and smiled.
"The Wayfaring Stranger will bring the Light," quoted Annabelle. Her voice was hushed and reverent, but the room was so quiet that everyone could hear her.
8.9
Tears streamed down Linda's cheeks. She gulped for air. With measured slowness, she surveyed her underground cell, making sure that William hadn't suddenly reappeared. There was an arched opening in the wall opposite the cubicles, but the doorway was empty, and revealed only a bare hallway beyond.
She could feel her lingering trauma buzzing inside like a nest of hornets, angry at having been disturbed. She flashed back to her incarceration in the Ottawa Lodge: waking up on the cold stone floor, her body bruised and bloody, her scalp screaming with pain from the lacerations left from Rice's sadistic haircut. Rice had held her for days in a room like this, naked and cold and distraught at the death of her new partner, Cole. He had laughed at her pain. Though Obie's gentle ministrations had healed her body and eased her soul, and even though Cole had been restored to her, the nauseating memory of that time had ingrained itself into every bit of her flesh. With a hesitant, shaky hand, Linda reached up to touch her hair. It felt normal, long and clean and neatly ponytailed. She lowered her hand to her heart and took another calming breath.
Slowly, Linda lowered herself to the floor and sat cross-legged on the waxy stone, facing the doorway. Her stomach churned and her head ached. She sensed that there was no real light here, and that if she adjusted her perceptions, she would be engulfed by blackness. But she would do no such thing. She would not even close her eyes. To add darkness to this imprisonment would overwhelm her. Linda had no intention of letting that happen. She would not be undone by this. She looked up at the ceiling and cursed William for turning out to be no better than that damnable Rice.
But already she could see that the Fisherman was no Agent Rice. William hadn't left her in the dark. He hadn't stripped her naked and beat her. He did not seem to hold her in contempt. For all his maddening presumptions, William was neither cruel nor violent. If her sense of him was accurate, the Fisherman was, she had to admit, trying to be a good and honorable person.
A wave of calm passed through her at the thought. Linda rolled onto her knees and pushed herself to her feet. Unlike Theodore Rice, William was not going to use torture to get what he wanted. She could be thankful for that. But he did need something from her, and he'd obviously left her here to puzzle and ponder what that might be. Her request that he stop dawdling and tell her what she needed to know had stopped him in his tracks. He'd looked lost. Embarrassed, even. And then he'd disappeared without a word of explanation.
Linda turned and stepped across the room to the alien cubicles. There were seventeen of them, three-sided boxes with open tops, made from what looked like burnished nickel. They were roughly eighteen inches wide and two feet tall, just large enough to contain a small gray alien. But there were no aliens here, and no sign of such creatures. Just bare, clean metal boxes and a polished stone room. And a doorway. Linda turned and approached the arched opening in the opposite wall.
William had "tuned" her to the "near-physical," he had said, so that gravity and light and her body all worked in ways that her habituated mind could most easily comprehend. It was certainly effective. Her body, and the room, felt solid and real. The air was comfortably warm. Were it not for the line of metal boxes, she might have thought she was in a storage vault on Earth. But she knew those cubicles. And there was no discernable light source. And the feeling of pressure convinced her that she was deep underground.
Linda had had enough of being left alone in underground rooms.
She put a hand on the side of the doorway and leaned forward to inspect the hall. The corridor stretched off in the distance in either direction. It was no wider than a shopping cart but was twice as tall as she, and Linda wondered what sorts of people it had been built for. If this room housed the small aliens like Spud, as the cubicles seemed to indicate, were there also tall, spindly aliens here that needed such headroom?
The hallway was empty. No Agent Rice, no William, and no aliens, tiny or spindly. So Linda stepped forward and studied both directions. To the right, the corridor seemed to go on forever. To the left, she could see what appeared in the distance to be a stainless steel door with a circle on it. She turned left.
It was a door. And the circle was a handle, a ship's wheel like you would find on a submarine hatch. An entrance, perhaps, to an airlock of some sort. Linda stepped to the door and reached out, thinking that, in this near-physical state, she would have to turn it. She found, to her surprise, that her fingers passed right through the metal wheel. She raised an eyebrow, then moved forward and stuck out her hand. Her arm passed freely through the door, just as it had on Phobos. Glancing back down the hallway to the underground room, trusting that in whatever plane of existence she currently inhabited she would need no oxygen, Linda stepped through the door.
Beyond was another corridor, the rock more roughly hewn than in the one she had left behind. Linda continued on, noting other airlock doors on either side of the passage. She turned a corner. Fifty feet ahead the hallway ended in a stairway leading upwards. She came to the foot of the stairs and looked up. It seemed to go on forever. Feeling like she had no choice, Linda started her ascent, t
aking care not to trip on the tiny steps.
At the top, which came sooner than she'd expected, was a landing and another airlock door. This one she stepped through without hesitation. Before her was a scene out of the American Old West, a desert landscape, with distant mountains silhouetted against the sky.
It was too dark to make out much detail on the landscape, but the sky was bursting with stars. And right overhead was her old friend, Phobos. Linda was back on the surface of Mars, alone in the desert, in a body but not really, and free, apparently, to explore wherever she wished.
8.10
Ness put her phone on the table and rotated it slightly until it was just right. She glanced up at the surveillance camera, then pushed the button to wake up her phone. The tiny screen came to life. The brightness would likely show up on the monitor in the nurses' station. No doubt they would come check on her soon. It did not matter. She was finished. Her structure was built. It fairly sang with life and energy. The magic worked, and she was inside of it, and so were the kids. If she was right, then nothing could disturb them now.
8.11
Mary hovered in the Astral plane, scanning the Cosmos. She could sense Linda’s presence at Squirrel Island but could find no trace of Keeley’s vibration at all, there or anywhere. She scanned for the children, and would have sworn she’d sensed their vibrational patterns, when all three suddenly disappeared. No amount of subsequent scanning would reveal their presence.
Without their patterns to key in on, she could not blink directly to them. Or to Keeley. Now she would have to go searching.
And she would have done just that, had not a second wok appeared right in front of her.
"Damn," she muttered.
8.12
"Damn," said Mihos in the blackness.
8.13
Cole trudged through the new-fallen snow, his boots now and again breaking through the icy crust underneath, causing him to lurch forward. Were it not for his staff, he'd have fallen already. At his age, that could be disastrous. Old bones were brittle, they said. He preferred not putting them to the test.
The others scolded him for walking alone, especially at night. But Cole was tired of being escorted everywhere he went. Tired of needing help. Tired of the constant closeness of human bodies. He needed time alone. Time to think. Time to slowly get back in touch with his feelings. Change was the constant background of their lives now, to the point that change itself had become routine. It was all he could do to keep up. And maybe he wasn't really even managing that. Who would tell him?
The quarter-moon shone down on him as he walked, having risen once again in the wrong part of the sky. Same old moon, though. Same bluish light on the snow. Same glints and sparkles in the air. So cold. So dry. So hushed that even the distant howls of the dog pack were muffled and soft, as if those poor old beasts were still chasing rabbits in their dreams as they slept in front of their masters' fires. Cole stopped to take a breath and held his staff out before him, turning it slightly so that the old Moody Blues CD, wedged into the top, would catch the moonlight and reflect it back to the stars. An old habit. A silly game. To think he could reach them this way. To think he even wanted to.
Grace's cabin was just ahead. She insisted on being called Rowan these days, and of course he would comply, but to Cole she was always Grace. Cole had a can in his pocket with which he intended to surprise his youngest. The salvage crew had brought it back this morning. The label was gone, but he was pretty sure it was milk. Maybe that condensed stuff. Maybe even the sweetened stuff. Something about the shape of the can, maybe. Or perhaps he just had the ability to suss out the contents of cans now. Who knew, these days, when all of the rules were changing? He hoped it hadn't spoiled, whatever it was. Grace... Rowan... could use a treat tonight.
Cole sighed and his eyes misted. He blinked to clear them. Goddamn, he missed Linda. And it was times like this, when one of them passed, that he missed her the most. He had never been too good with grief. Not on his own. But if Linda had been there... Cole shook his head. She wasn't there. She was gone. Gone so long he could barely remember her face. Janie was fine. Janie was great. Janie had saved him when nobody else could have. And still he missed Linda.
Cole patted his jeans with his gloved hand to assure himself that the can was still in his pocket. If it fell out into the snow, he might never find it. Satisfied, he thrust out his staff and took another step. It would not help his case, to be found outside by himself on such a night. If he got to Grace's, they could make up a story about how she'd helped him. And Cole would wink and Grace... Rowan... would wink back, and all would be right with the world. No one else need know otherwise.
Rowan's lamp (there, he remembered her name...) was burning. Up late reading, probably. Cole was glad of that. He turned down the path to her cabin, brushing the snow from low-hanging pine branches as he passed, an old game, an old habit. One branch dumped a load of fresh snow on his face and Cole sputtered, reaching up to wipe the cold, wet stuff from his mustache and beard. He came to Rowan's porch, stomped his feet, and knocked on the door. With no response from his daughter, he worked the latch with his gloved hand and pushed the door open far enough to announce himself.
"Rowan?" he said, but his voice was tentative and confused. There was no lamp burning after all. The room was cool, and dark as a cave. Grace... Rowan... was not there.
Cole opened his eyes, pushed back the covers, and stood. He stepped to the window and gazed out over the Grid-lit waters of Boothbay Harbor. He'd gone on another hop, this time to some weird alternative future in which he was still himself. But it was not real. There was no snow, and he was not old, and Linda was not dead. She was being held captive on Squirrel Island. He could see that island now, a dark mass rising from the waters, barely visible in the night.
In the morning, he would go see his wife.
8.14
"I'm gonna pass," said Carl, lifting his wooden rack and dumping his Scrabble tiles back into the bag. He shook the bag a few times to mix the tiles, then started choosing new ones to put on his rack.
"You can't do that!" Ted blurted, wide-eyed.
Carl cocked his head and smiled. "Of course I can," he said. He pointed toward the box on the floor. "It's in the rules."
"But you can't get new tiles!" said Ted.
"I can if I give up my turn, Ted. That’s how the game works.” He gestured at the board. “It's your go."
"But you have to play with..." said Ted, sputtering out before he could finish his sentence. He glanced down at the box, then back at Carl.
"That sounds more like a philosophical statement on the nature of reality than a Scrabble rule, Ted," said Carl. "You care to elaborate?"
Ted shook his head. "Shut up."
"I mean," continued Carl, "maybe you felt trapped in your life, Ted. Stuck. Limited. Didn't know how to get out. How to start fresh. How to change. You had to play with the cards you'd been dealt. That's how it felt to you. You ever think of that?"
"You're an asshole," said Ted.
"Maybe. Or you could think of me as an angel here to help you. You think maybe you have a difficult time accepting help?"
"Go screw yourself.”
"I'm just saying, Ted. Cuz I've noticed that you're pretty resistant to feedback. And that's not going to serve you, if what we're up to here is to process things from our previous lives. I don't see you doing that on your own, do you?"
Ted looked up from his tiles and glared at Carl. "You really are a dick, aren't you?"
Carl grinned. "So what if you're stuck with me until you do what you came here to do?" he said. "What if we're both stuck here?" Carl began to chuckle. "You've got me ‘til the end of time, Ted. What fun, eh?"
Ted focused on his tiles. Carl leanned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his stomach. After a long while, Ted picked up his rack and dumped his tiles into the bag. Then he lifted the board, bent it into a V shape, and poured the tiles already played into the bag as well. He looked at Carl,
chin out, one eyebrow raised, a mischievous glint in his eye. "New game," he said, setting the empty board back onto the table.
Chapter Nine
9.1
Gabrielle stuffed a change of clothes into her backpack, grabbed her wallet and keys and phone, checked her red-blonde bob in the mirror, and headed out her dorm room door. The pre-dawn light was enough to see by as she made her way down the hallway and stairs and out the side door. In the warm, moist morning air, she slipped her backpack over one shoulder, glanced around to make sure she was alone, then headed quickly along the concrete pathway. The bus stop was only two blocks away.
There had been no night visitation from Zacharael. No strange and awful dream. No mysterious writing in her notebook. And he was no longer in her head. She could feel his absence, as if a portion of her memory had been wiped. She'd seen his body fade to nothing. Was he dead now? Gone forever? Or did he still watch her from afar? Gabrielle exhaled loudly in frustration. There was no way to know. If Zacharael wasn't finished with her, she'd just have to wait until he made himself known.
In the meantime, Gabrielle had something to do. She didn't know what it was, exactly, but she knew that it would come down to a single moment. She could see it in her mind's eye, like a drop of time embedded in amber. She was standing in a hallway. Underground, it felt like. Concrete and white tile and overhead fluorescent lighting. In front of her stood the American President, Linda Travis. In the President's hand was a small brown object. And Gabrielle was reaching out to grab it.
She laughed at herself as she walked. Was it crazy, to think such a moment might come to pass? The US President was deathly ill, and locked down in some military hospital in Maine. Who the hell was Gabrielle, to think she could get in to see her? Perhaps if she'd taken her rightful place in The Families. But on her own? A rebellious child? And now sneaking away?
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 28
