Ronan sighed and shook his head. Even the fairytales and myths were gone in this age, they had no meaning anymore and their absence left the men both struggling to find common understanding. Once he could have just been, and humans would have understood instinctively, but now their realm and his were as far apart as they had ever been. They had no common language anymore.
“We’re here.” Ronan looked dismally at the dripping silent wall that completed the alleyway.
“Here where?” His companion’s voice now held something like irritation.
“For someone who is in Greer's back pocket, you certainly aren't showing much recognition of her home.”
Bakari gave him such a blank look that Ronan knew he wasn’t faking. He had no idea that it was Greer who had set up the whole thing. It couldn’t be helped. Ronan viewed humans as children. He knew it was a fault of his, but even after so long in this world their ways still reminded him of blundering toddlers.
Nor could he help a laugh escaping. “I guess my contacts are a little better than yours, my friend. You are, in fact, just about to meet the person that hired you to hire me in the first place.”
Bakari hid his annoyance pretty well for someone who spent most of his life on the Line. “In my world,” he replied a little stiffly, “the real names are the ones you use on the Line.”
Perhaps Bakari deserved Greer after all. Yet then again, once upon a time, he had as well.
With a sigh, Ronan flicked out his hand and gained them both entry into the witch's chamber. The palm scanner looked much like any other brick in the wall, but the childlike flower drawn on it was a clue. The docile machine contained within examined his print and a few seconds later Greer’s voice seemed to float around them.
“You’re slower than usual.” Her voice was, as always, ice cold.
But then, his own was not much friendlier. “We have a lot to discuss. Why don’t you just let us in and forget the cheap shots.” With Greer it was always a dice roll. Even if she had set this whole sorry mess up, there was still a chance she could throw it all away in a fit of pique. It came with the psychopathic territory.
“I saw the mask,” he added for good measure. “And I recognized the face.”
She didn’t reply, but the wall before them cast off its holographic skin, revealing a steel grey door with no handle. It slid aside to reveal an equally neutral corridor.
He very much didn’t want to go in there—not just for the sake of his pride, either. Greer was one of the few people who could scare him. Beside him, Bakari’s chin was hitting the pavement and Ronan could relate. It was certainly not the average sprawl alleyway, but Greer was not the average sprawl dweller.
Against his better instincts, Ronan stepped forward and into her domain. Bakari followed after—thankfully without asking questions. The corridor dropped steadily and steeply away and as they followed it down every step it became warmer and wetter. Greer and her charges liked it that way. It made Ronan’s skin crawl.
The corridor ended finally, opening into what seemed to be a wide room. There was nothing to see of either wall or roof, for everything was covered with foliage. Everything green and vigorous was Greer’s friend, perhaps because it was the very antitheses of what lay outside. Some might have found such luxuriant growth comforting, but to Ronan it was just disturbing.
A thick vine covered in garish red flowers brushed against his cheek and he flicked it away with the same enjoyment he might have felt had it been a poisonous snake.
“This is some garden,” Bakari whispered, perhaps mistaken into thinking he was someplace holy. It didn’t seem to affect him in quite the same way it did his companion; likely he only saw the beauty and not the beast.
“It seems your friend is more appreciative than you are, Ronan.” Greer emerged out a stand of dark, club-leafed plants. She’d gotten thinner and cut her thick blonde curls to within an inch of her scalp—it didn’t suit her; neither did the sewn-over eyelids which hid the caverns where once her brilliant eyes had been.
Bakari was smart enough not to say anything. He stood poised lightly between them, looking to Ronan for advice, but just as prepared to go the other way. He must have sensed the primal forces his companion and Greer represented.
The woman cocked her head, eerily mimicking what in others would have been an appraising look. “I chose well.” He might have been one of her ill begotten seedlings for all the emotion in her voice.
“Don’t you ever get sick of using people?” Ronan asked easily, while his eyes scanned the jungle about her; he wasn’t about to count on his previous relationship with Greer for her good behavior.
Greer’s lips imitated a smile. “Are you going to bring up that old chestnut again? We’ve got different ways of looking at things—that’s all.”
“Yes, I happen to think humans are more than just tools.”
Greer raised her hand sharply and turned her sightless head away from him. “Enough. I didn’t bring you here for this.”
“Then why’d you do this at all?” Bakari’s face, usually dark and calm, was almost flushed, “If you knew him—why’d you simply not get him to steal the mask for you?”
“Does he look like he’d do me any favors?”
Bakari chewed the inside of his lip and eyed the two of them, as if uncertain which one was worse.
Sensing she was losing him, Greer switched from vinegar to sugar. She walked confidently forward, hands stretched out a little. “Forgive my lying. I was afraid he’d sense if I told you the truth. We’re both looking for the same thing.” Even lacking her lustrous green eyes, Greer could still be charming when she thought she needed to be.
“I doubt you are, somehow,” Ronan interrupted, not wanting her to sway the vulnerable Liner. “She wants power, Bakari, power from magic. Despite being a complete fool about all this—I don’t think you are that selfish. You’ve got better reasons I hope.”
Bakari’s eyes were burning bright with the memory of something that Ronan could almost see. “I want magic again. I want there to be something else in this world apart from metal and death and pain.”
Ronan had heard a similar cry from a thousand throats through hundreds of years; it still made him ache.
“I don’t want there to be nothing else but reality in this world,” Bakari’s hands were clenched almost white now. “I want to make her hopes real.” The memory sprung from him, so hot and painful that Ronan could at last see the beautiful old woman who had been the birth of it. Her agonizing death by fire, in a high-rise no landlord cared about, had been more reality than any young child should bear. Bakari had retreated into longing for a taste of that magic she’d fed him on.
Ronan's heart ached. Even though he'd barely known his mother, he was familiar with loss. He'd done things himself out of pain and despair. But nothing like this: nothing that could change the lives of millions.
Greer was ignorant of all this. Even if her little magics had allowed her to see, her heartless cold nature would not have understood at all.
Ronan let his tears dry against his skin. He was not afraid to show emotions; he had other weaknesses, but that was not one of them.
Greer's head tilted; perhaps she sensed something passing between the men. Her lip curled. “We all have hopes, Bakari—but only a few are strong enough to make them real.”
Her sharp words cut the delicate moment in two.
“If this is your big power play, Greer, I think you were the one who chose badly. It isn't the kind of power you can use.” Ronan had spent the previous night searching the musty archives of the British Library—they detailed many things the Line Mags found of little interest.
One had been the discovery of the Winter Mask, as they called it. A lot of things were dug up in Britain every year and its discovery had not raised many eyebrows. It was perhaps part of the mask's magic; part of that old magic Ronan knew as Art. It hadn’t wanted to be found.
He looked at Greer and despite her lack of sight, she coul
d feel his contempt.
Ronan couldn’t have been positive, but something dark and excited seemed to move in the jungle just in the corner of his eye. He held his breath, recalling the nightmare she’d summoned at their last encounter and not wanting to visit that situation again. He looked away as conscientiously as possible; it was the only way to see Greer’s Art. But even anger was hard for this consummate ice princess to manage.
Her fingers wrapped around his arm with strength her body could not possibly possess. “The world needs the magic —the Mask can bring it about.”
Ronan shook his head: there was no purpose in hoping.
“But you felt it, Ronan,” Bakari with his calm assertion and brimming belief reminded him of that moment, the taste of what he'd thought lost.
“I did. It was… just the same as I remember.” Despite himself, his heart had strangely begun beating very fast.
Greer was pacing now, brushing impatiently at the leaves that stood in her way. “There is so little real magic left in this world. Perhaps we are all there is,” a somewhat disgusted look in Ronan’s direction. “Yet when we get chance to set things right, you won’t!”
“Bring back the magic—I knew it!” Bakari’s lips curved up in a triumphant smile.
Ronan had to grin; he would have never imagined that a Liner would want to have anything to do with the wild tides of magic, and yet it seemed that this one had set out to deliberately lure him to Little Penherem. The thought should have rankled him more than it did, but it pleased him in an odd way to see that humanity still had some surprises.
Still, it was a nice irony that it was not Greer who had succeeded. She'd spent years of their time together trying to think of ways to use Ronan's powers for her own purposes. At first very subtly, but with increasing anger and frustration as subtlety had failed. He'd tried explaining to her the futility of her attempts, tried to tell her that his home was now so very far away from here that there was no chance of that happening—but those arguments had eventually led to the scuffle. Thinking on it refreshed his nervousness, and this time he knew that the plant life around her was definitely rustling.
“You could waken more than my world, you know,” Ronan said. “Not everything is as pleasant and attractive as I am.”
Bakari was chewing the inside of his cheek, looking very young to the shapeshifter's old eyes. “But it's still worth the risk…”
“Magic, as you call it, isn't all fluffy unicorns and chirpy sprites—there are just as many dark creatures which would be attracted to the light,” Ronan shot Greer a hard look. “You wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.” Her face was as sealed and remote as the mask had been, for she was already lost in a torrent of her own plans. “There is something missing—like any great spell, the right people, the right time and the right objects must be present. Obviously, we are missing something.”
“Yes,” Greer’s ruined head nodded. “Yes, I must look, examine, find the path.”
He was lost then. Ronan felt a deep weariness set into him, for she had finally got her way—he was hooked by the Winter Mask. He’d tasted the tiniest slip of his home and could no longer walk away.
Greer was smiling now, as gentle as he’d ever seen her. “We will find you a place to rest while I search for the path.” The greenery around her relaxed, shuffled back into normal fauna: its mistress had other uses for her power now.
Ronan took Bakari by the shoulder and turned him to the rear of the greenhouse where, from memory, the bedroom was. “You don’t want to see her in action. Believe me, it’s better if we get what sleep we can.”
Greer had already erased them from her consideration. Instead, her slim form cut through the deepest parts of the jungle where she kept her darkest secrets. Ronan was too tired to argue and too angry to say more. Sleep was, for now, easier.
When Greer next intruded, it was morning. Ronan levered himself off the ground, feeling the usual effects of spending too long in her domain; his throat was thick and his head was clouded. The sooner they got out of here, the better. He found Greer where they had left her, shrouded in thick fronds, but beaded with sweat as if she’d been running.
Greer’s face, even without eyes, was folded with puzzlement and she seemed to sway in her place. “The way is still not clear,” she said finally, “but I sense that it begins with a woman. I felt a strange and strong presence of a woman near to both of you.”
Bakari got up from the ground and took a while to shake out the coat he had used as makeshift bedding. “There’s only two women I’d call close in Penherem—Ella and Tania.”
“You’re sure this is the beginning?” Ronan would not have trusted Greer, but for his own intimate knowledge of how much she wanted this.
“You have already begun, my Fey darling.” Her smile was only an imitation of ones she had once worn for him.
He gestured curtly to Bakari that now was the time to leave, but couldn’t resist turning back to her. “You could come with us, Greer…”
Her flinch was so tiny that only Ronan could have possibly seen it. “You know that is impossible—but if you succeed, I may well walk with you again.”
A little pain, a little remembrance made him pause. “Once that would have been grand, Greer, but even if we were to meet in my home, I would not hold your hand—not anymore.”
The two men left. If there was any remorse on her face, Ronan did not turn back to find it.
10
Regret
There was to be no more lying. When Aroha woke, she knew that if she was to do as the Earth mother and the Folk had asked, it had to be done purely and without any deception. So when she went into the kitchen the next morning she told Nana exactly what she had to do.
“Go to Wellington?” Her guardian’s voice broke with surprise.
She nodded. “Alone.”
“You’ll certainly do no such thing,” Nana’s lips folded in tight. “The best bits are locked down by the army and the worst,” she shuddered. “It’s far too dangerous.”
A little piece of Aroha’s confidence chipped off, but she recalled the promise and the need she’d felt in the spirit last night. It wasn’t as if she was any eleven year old going off by herself, Nana might like to pretend she thought that was all she was—but it wasn’t so.
“Oh, my dearest,” Nana hugged her close, enveloping Aroha in lavender and fear in equal measure. “Why are you trying to grow up so quickly?”
“I’ve got no choice.” Aroha pushed back a little and tried to look brave.
A moment, a hard look, but Nana nodded. “Being what you are means you are held to a much higher standard.”
Aroha nodded. “You told me that.”
Nana’s shoulders slumped and she suddenly seemed tiny and frail. Was she going to cry?
Both of them jumped when the knock of the door broke the silence. Nana straightened, summoning the courage to answer. When she opened the door to Daniel, she might have been in any other day.
But the young soldier’s calm face did not seem fooled. He dropped his fully loaded pack on the top of the doorstep and smiled uncertainly. “Do you know why I’m here?”
The Folk were, it seemed, not totally heartless. Aroha edged her way past Nana, meeting his blue gaze steadily. “You’re here to take me to Wellington.”
In the corner of one eye she saw Nana give a little shudder.
Daniel’s brow furrowed, “I know it sounds odd but…”
“You had a dream,” Nana took his arm and guided him into the kitchen. “Don’t get worried, it usually happens like that. Cup of tea?”
He accepted gratefully and, rather uncertainly, took a seat at the table. “It’s not usual procedure for me, though.”
“I dare say not,” Nana was better at offering advice than taking it. She put the mug of tea into his hand and watched, amused, as he took several spoonfuls of sugar. “Not army protocol at all.” She peered into his face.
Aroha had already seen it—the glimmer of m
agic in his eye. Perhaps he had a touch of the Folk in his family past.
He blushed a little under such close inspection, “I had an aunt who said she was psychic—the rest of the family just laughed at her. But after last night… and then this morning, I just knew I had to pack up and get over here.”
“Hmm,” Nana nodded. “Once you feel it yourself—you know there’s a whole different world out there. It can be very frightening.” She shot a glance across the room at Aroha, who was trying very hard to be very small. “But my granddaughter has a way of changing things for everyone—especially herself.”
Daniel couldn’t possibly understand the currents that flowed about him, but he sensed them. With a slight cough he found his way onto slightly better known ground. “So, she needs to get to Wellington. That shouldn’t be difficult.”
It was perhaps a day’s tramp to the city. Once it had only been half an hour in the car, but the roads, though broken now, were not the greatest danger. Law was a fragmented thing in this current climate, and those who had once lurked in the shadows now strode in the daylight. Even an armed escort was no guarantee.
“But what happens then?” The soldier's eyes darted between them.
Nana's pursed her lips and waited for her granddaughter to answer.
Aroha felt her heart flutter in her chest, like the first time she'd jumped from the swing rope into the creek. The Folk had not said what had to be done. They didn't like to come close to humans, let alone tell them what to do. She only knew that she had to get to the capital.
If only she could crawl back into her bed and pretend that all the day held was weeding the garden for Nana and perhaps podding some more peas. A ragged little sigh escaped her, and only Nana's firm hand suddenly on her shoulder prevented tears.
“It'll be all right,” her voice soothed. “Wellington used to be such a bonnie city—such wonderful place.”
Aroha had never even seen it.
Digital Magic Page 14
