by Horn, J. D.
I couldn’t help smiling. “That’s mighty big of you.”
“Oh, now, Mercy. No need to take umbrage. I felt we had begun to develop an understanding of each other, you and I. Perhaps I was wrong, but then again, we have not given you much reason to trust us. We have kept you ignorant of things you have the right to know. Without this knowledge our actions must strike you as erratic at best, or more likely monstrous.”
Yes, monstrous. Ding. Ding. We have a winner. Forbidding us to turn the hurricane Emily had aimed at Savannah back to sea. Expecting us to stand down and watch our home be destroyed as they had forced our cousins the Duvals to do when Katrina took New Orleans. Declaring war on us when we refused to capitulate. Binding my entire family, leaving them to drown, paralyzed and unconscious, beneath the incoming waves. Attempting to bind me, even though they knew that as an anchor, if I survived at all, I would be left to live out the rest of my life in a vegetative state. I was certain they never gave my child a second thought in this decision either. And afterward, when we had stopped them from wiping Savannah and its Taylors from the map, they turned their sights on my son.
I didn’t even know how much I didn’t know. The other anchors had even kept me ignorant of the line’s origins. Had they done so out of caution, as Fridtjof seemed to imply, because they too shared Gudrun’s opinion that I was the witch who would bring about its end? Or had they kept the story from me out of shame? They knew the ripples of carnage the line’s creation had set loose across God only knew how many realities. The anchors had convinced themselves that the ends justified the means. Were they afraid I might somehow challenge this assumption and aggravate their heavy consciences? Perhaps the truth lay somewhere in between.
“We had hoped to keep you innocent, to protect you from the full onus of what you had been chosen for until you had time to adjust to being a witch. We acted solely out of concern for you, but you misread our intentions and acted wildly. I fear we can no longer afford the luxury of providing you with breathing space. There are too many forces trying to take advantage of your ignorance. An ignorance”—he rushed on lest I had time to take offense—“I and your fellow anchors have engendered. For your own good, but in truth for our own comfort as well. I cannot deny it, you have frightened us.” This admission felt like the first bit of real truth I’d ever gotten out of the other anchors. “You are as yet still unaware of the stupendous power surging through you. You suppose you are a harmless flame, when you are in truth a nuclear blast. You know our grasp on the line has been loosened. I’m sure you sense that it has bent around you. Only once before has the line been shifted in this way.”
“If the line seems to like me so much, why are y’all so afraid I’ll cause it harm?”
Fridtjof raised his hand and pointed at me. “That is an excellent question, but before I address it, I must provide you with some context.” He relaxed his hand and lowered his arm to his side. “We know you have learned of the fate of the Fae. We know how their story affects you personally. However, you must believe me when I say their world was doomed before they themselves had even been created. It had been doomed from the second the old ones discovered our planet. It is true that at one time our worlds were touching. No”—he pressed his hands together—“interlaced.” He let his fingers slide together then tugged his hands to demonstrate the connection. “The proximity of our realities was not an accident. Witches, fairies, humans, we all owe our existence to the old ones and their experiments with breeding.”
He looked at my waistline. “You of all people must realize that. How else could you have successfully mated with a Fae? We all come from the same source, just with slightly different balances of DNA. The Fae were engineered first, but they proved far too capricious, too willful. They would certainly have been destroyed outright had the old ones not found their appearance very pleasing. The Fae were spared the grunt work and found themselves set aside as concubines and entertainers.
Then came humans. Useful for heavy lifting, and per the remembrances left by the old ones, quite tasty when young. We witches came last, the product of unsanctioned matings between the two groups.” The word “unsanctioned” spoke to me on two levels regarding control the old ones had held, or at least imagined they held, over the creatures of this world. The old ones felt themselves within their rights to determine our mating patterns, as if we were to them as cattle are to man. Still, the existence of witches showed the creatures of this world were a slippery group they couldn’t completely control. Had this intermingling been the “original sin” that still colored so many people’s perception of sex?
“Despite their early attempts to wipe witches out, our creation proved a happy coincidence for the old ones. Animal lust created the functional compromise between Fae and man for which they had been striving. Eventually witches were co-opted into the old ones’ plans and were placed in functionary roles, overseers at the lowest of levels, monarchs at the highest. Our job was to keep the human population in line, in balance,” he said, pointing up at the standing stone whose presence I’d nearly forgotten. “The Fae were slid slightly out of sync with the human reality, to prevent any further interbreeding between the two populations. The barrier between the worlds was largely impermeable, but not entirely impenetrable.”
“Until the creation of the line nearly wiped the Fae out, then sent their reality drifting away from ours.” I shifted my weight as much for comfort as for emphasis, widening my stance. I folded my arms over my chest. I was not going to let him simply gloss over our destruction of the Fae’s world.
“The decision to act as we did was not made lightly, I assure you. No one feels the pain caused by the line’s creation more deeply than we anchors. That’s why we keep the dirty details behind its creation to ourselves. We bear the guilt so our friends and family can go about their lives, unfettered by the knowledge of the line’s true costs.” His face turned away from me. He looked toward the ground as if he were wishing he too could have been spared. “However, your ignorance is a luxury we can no longer afford. Tell me, what do you know of the creation of the line?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Maisie had once suggested that deep down I knew the secret of the line’s creation, but I’d never been able to pull the disjointed images into a coherent narrative.
“I’ve had glimpses. Dreams,” I admitted to Fridtjof.
“Of course you have; you are an anchor. But these visions of yours are not dreams. They are memories, imprints that the line shared with you as it took you as its own.” I could feel his taking my emotional pulse before he dared continue. “Your fellow anchors, in truth we have been working to limit you, suppressing your conscious ability to communicate with the line.” He held his hand up as if to fend off outrage. I had none, as I had sensed it all along. “The line has been amassing its energy around you. We have been trying to act as a type of circuit breaker, to keep you from being overwhelmed by its surging power.”
“Or to prevent her from gaining the power the line wishes her to have.” Emmet’s voice came from over my shoulder. I glanced back at him, but only for a moment. His expression was unyielding and wary. I consciously mirrored him.
“I assure you, should the full force of the line invest itself in your pretty Mercy, there would be no Mercy left to wield this prized magic.” He lowered his face to my level. “Our ability to maintain a buffer between the line and your conscious mind is much more precise than with your dreaming mind. Your unconscious mind is much harder to pin down. We intend to continue dampening the line’s access to you, for your own protection, of course.” His phrasing struck me. They were less worried about my interacting with the line than they were about its interacting with me. “However, now is the time for disclosure. Tell me what you remember from your visions, and I will fill in the pieces for you.”
I had no reason to believe he would tell me the truth. As a matter of fact, this whole offer of disclosure might jus
t be a trick. Still, it seemed to be in my best interest to play along. I might learn as much from a poorly framed lie as from the actual truth. “I remember a man, or something that looks like a man at least. Only he has no features, his face is blank.” I looked up to Fridtjof, seeking validation.
“Yes, go on.”
“He has arms and legs, but he slithers on his stomach like a snake.” I felt my grasp on this image fade, as if it were being shielded from further scrutiny. I felt my physical eyes zero in on a point in a nonexistent horizon as my mind tried to examine the odd man further. As I focused in on him, I saw the creature stop. It raised its head and turned it from side to side, a forked black tongue testing the wind. This was not my imagination, and this was no memory. The illusion of linear time had fallen away as I connected with the sight. This was happening right this moment in the eternal now. I yelped and jumped back.
Emmet caught me. “Enough,” he said to Fridtjof. “Why are you playing games? Tell her what you want her to know then be gone.”
“I am not playing games. She will not believe my words alone; she must experience this”—he pulled his hand into a loose fist and struck himself repeatedly on the stomach—“viscerally, in her gut, if she is ever to believe.” His pale lids lowered, and he regarded me through narrowed eyes. “I could help you. I could help you focus, to remember what has been kept from you, but you would never believe I hadn’t influenced your perception.” I reckoned he was right on that one. “Forget the faceless one for now. What else do you remember?”
I let my mind drift back, try to grab hold of another of the vague impressions I carried. “There was a storm. A huge one. Lightning everywhere, but no . . .”
“But no thunder.” Fridtjof sought to finish the thought for me.
“No,” I said, then considered what he had said. “Well, yes. It’s true. There was no thunder. There was no sound at all.” Again the myth of time dissolved and I was left witness to an absolute silence falling all over the whole world. No sound of man, no sound of nature. Utter and total quiet. The thought terrified me. I could see multiple overlaying images, some nearly the same, others radically different, making me think of the twin cartoon images where you try to spot each subtle difference between the two. Only here the images overlapped and struck me as being beyond count, let alone comparison. The pictures quivered, then shook violently, each pulling an infinitesimal degree away from the scene at the center of my focus.
“This is no storm,” I said aloud. I felt my heart pounding. I felt the need to run away, but the dimension where my awareness found itself began folding in on itself. The familiar three dimensions pressed against each other. “This is rape.” I could find no other word that fit the sense of what unfolded before me. I was experiencing the rape not only of this planet where we stood, but of every iteration of this planet as it exists in every dimension. The magic was being drained from every contiguous realm. Our version of the world was awash, no, flooded, by the magic that descended on us. Then the silence gave way to a humming, gentle at first, but increasing in volume and pitch until I fell to my knees, pressing my hands to my ears in a futile attempt to block out the sound. The magic. It was aware, and it was screaming. “Stop it. Stop it.” I added my own feeble voice to its heartrending protest.
Monuments, ancient and many forgotten by the human race, came to life. Energy whipped around the dolmens of Stonehenge, Brodgar, Drombeg, and hundreds of similar sites I witnessed firing up with blinding blue light—haint blue, the precision pressed against my awareness then flitted away. My consciousness was caught up, and the globe of the earth flattened out before me, allowing me to observe every point in the same moment. “It’s all a machine.” I heard my own voice beneath the whinnying of the energy as it spooled around the circles. It washed into the circles, and drained away into their center, the bright-blue light disappearing from the face of the earth. Flashes of energy began to flare up at points along the plane. Pyramids and ziggurats, YaSen Garden, Nemrut, Argos, Ur, Monks Mound, the Valley of the Sun, Giza.
Logic told me that we knew for a fact these monuments had been built thousands of years apart. Still, these sites, spread across space and time, somehow functioned in unison, until all fell dark, save one. My awareness collapsed, and I found myself hovering near the Great Pyramid. A great rumbling took the earth, a quake so great I wondered if the pyramid could withstand it. Then the shaking stopped and the same blue light I’d witnessed before shot out through shafts on opposite sides of the pyramid. The beams of light enmeshed each other, extended outward like a web. A final brilliant flash, and the world around me returned to normal.
I was no longer on the Giza Plateau. I was in Georgia, draped over Emmet’s arms as he knelt on the ground before the Georgia Guidestones. I was struck by the idea of how our little tableau must have resembled a poor man’s Pietà.
“Creating the line required more magic than was at our command.” Fridtjof spoke as if there had been no interruption to his lecture.
“They raped and pillaged,” I said, trying to rise off Emmet’s arm. He helped me find my footing. “They stole magic that never belonged to them. That should have never belonged to them.” They try and act like they did some noble thing for the rest of us. But all they did was take every last bit of the magic left in this world for themselves. The memory of Jilo’s words returned to me.
“We did not steal. We appropriated largely unharnessed resources in the interest of the greater good. Like the Colorado River was diverted to feed your city of Los Angeles, witches reached out to every realm they could touch and diverted magic from its natural course to weave the precious barrier that has protected this world for millennia.”
Emmet stood next to me. “How was this even accomplished? How did the old ones not stop you? They must have witnessed your building, suspected you had some plan.”
“They suspected nothing, as we were following their blueprint.”
“Wait,” I said, waving my hand at Fridtjof. “I don’t understand. The old ones condoned the creation of the line?”
“The old ones condoned . . .” He paused. “No, commanded that the machine be built. They intended it to siphon the magic of this realm and relay it to them to help power their own works. That we managed to repurpose their device without their catching on is nothing short of a miracle.” He drew a deep breath and let it go. “The old ones, they are not gods, they are empire builders, exporting the valuable resources of the planets they colonize back to their own realm.”
“And if we had built their machine and not used it to create the line?”
“Then eventually this world would have been left dry and lifeless as the frozen desert of Cydonia.” He nodded. “Yes, you have to look no further than our next-door neighbor to learn the future the old ones intended for our blue planet.”
I felt a shiver run down my spine.
“I told you we followed a blueprint when building the machine. This machine has been replicated and continues to be replicated in every realm the old ones discover. I do believe what we have achieved here on earth, this may count as the first and only time the old ones’ ambitions were ever checked. Should the line ever fall . . .”
For the first time, I truly understood the other anchors and the desperation that drove them. “But why would the witches from the rebel families ever consider bringing down the line? The old ones would destroy us all.”
“No, not all of us. Only those of us who have remained loyal to the line’s cause, and those the old ones consider cattle, those without magic. I am fairly certain the witches of the rebel families would be spared, if not rewarded, for their change of heart concerning the line.” He tilted his head and gave it a slight shake. “Nothing like the joy of the prodigal son’s returning to the fold, eh?”
“Still, the rebels would only live to see their world destroyed.”
Fridtjof’s shoulders relaxed. Not only had he
sensed my coming around to his way of thinking, he had returned to the role of being my superior, my teacher. He felt comfortable around me as long as he remained in charge. “The old ones follow the same pattern: discovery, infiltration, invasion, breeding of hybrids that combine the DNA of the most adaptable local life form with their own. Oh, but they are as vain as they are rapacious. They visit the conquered planets, make holiday there, enjoy the worship of those they have conquered. Then when they grow bored with their new toy, they order the final stage of colonization: the building of the machine.”
“But these places”—my mind flashed again on the ancient monuments—“they were built several centuries apart.”
“And thousands of miles apart, but as your mind has little difficulty comprehending how the sites exist on different continents, the old ones have no problem understanding how they sit together temporally. The old ones exist outside the dimension we experience as linear time. Bound as most of us are by the flow of time, we aren’t able to experience their machine as a functioning whole. From any given point in our timeline, one part of the machine is viewed as having existed in the past. Another in the future. The only moment when it is possible for us to experience their device as a functioning whole is when it is flipped on. The image your subconscious carries is of the moment when our planet was about to be destroyed. That moment transcends history; it exists in the past, in the future—”
“And in the now,” I finished for him.
He nodded, seeming pleased by my understanding.
“But why would any witch cooperate with the building of the machine? They’d be committing suicide by helping.”
“The inhabitants of the highest order, those who have been bred to contain the greatest concentration of the old ones’ ‘pure’ blood, they build the machine, and as their home planets breathe their last gasps, the chosen ones leave behind the corpse of their mothers. They spread out through the universe like a virus, scouting new and suitable targets for exploitation. On earth this highest order is the witch, our having supplanted the Fae thanks to our functionary skills and the mercurial nature and general uncontrollability of the Fae.”
