Gambit of the Gods

by Ashley, Angela

  “Our spiritual teachings say that God made us from the dust of the earth, breathing the breath of life into us. That is Earth and Air. We know as scientists that we’re beings made mostly of water, with electrical impulses powering our thoughts, emotions, and movements. Water and Fire. We live, our cells perpetually born, aging and dying from the moment of conception until the moment of our death. Thus, we carry both Life and Death within us.”

  I nodded thoughtfully.

  “Spirit moves through us,” she continued, “binding these seemingly antithetical forces together into the unique beings we are. We are walking contradictions, paradoxically on fire and quenched, of the earth and of the air, living and dead, body and spirit. Such a wondrous creation could not be an accident, I think. This is ultimately why I decided to believe in God.”

  Her argument made sense. I would never have thought so, before.

  We decided that Gideon, Kai, Malyse, and I would follow Gideon’s niece Ellrie and her group north. Lark, Jade, Jacob, and Sera followed the other group, which included Sera’s brother Torun, south. The latter had a day’s head start, but with just a thought, Lark and the rest caught up with them easily. All we have to do is think of moving, picture where we want to go or who we want to see, and we’re there in the blink of an eye.

  Her group watched the survivors for several days. Jade and Jacob, as children will do, played games with one another, hiding their light within this traveler or that one, then popping out suddenly in front of the other.

  Lark didn’t see any harm in their play, even joining in from time to time, mostly to hide her growing concern. The travelers, just over two thousand men, women and children of varying ages, carried knives, axes, bows and arrows, and even sharpened sticks, but few knew how to defend themselves or hunt for food. Even fewer knew something about which plants in the forest were edible and which were poisonous, as we had grown crops to feed ourselves before. They carried seeds with them, but those would take a long time to grow.

  Some carried chickens in cages or led goats, pigs and cows, but they couldn’t eat them because they were needed for breeding stock. The fruits, vegetables and bread they carried with them wouldn’t last long. And those few who could hunt couldn’t bring down enough game to feed two thousand people every day. Wild mushrooms, onions, fruits and berries were few and far between in mid-springtime. At least it wasn’t winter, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter.

  After ten days with minimal food or water, still weakened from fighting off the plague, grief, and loss, the group collapsed by a small stream. Many of them looked as if they only waited to die. They had lost hope.

  Lark chose this moment to try to restore their spiritual flow, arguing, “If they could regain even a fragment of those abilities of old, they could perhaps use them to find a way to survive.”

  She stepped into the leader, a tall, broad-shouldered man called Aber, whose dominant forces were the same as her own: Life and Spirit. First, she tried to pour her flow through his weakened force-lines, willing them to strengthen and manifest themselves.

  Aber didn’t stir from his bone-weary stupor, but after a few moments, she thought she felt something spark within him. So Lark tried harder, trying to speak to Aber with her mind as we did with one another. He shifted uneasily in his sleep, then settled weakly, seemingly unaffected.

  Lark’s children moved into him as well, bending their flows to aid their mother’s. Sera soon followed suit. Jade’s flow was of Fire and Spirit, Jacob’s of Earth and Life, and Sera’s of Air and Spirit, but they hoped they might help nevertheless. Long moments passed.

  Then, at last, they felt it—something began to change deep inside of Aber.

  Now we know that the four of them together strengthened his two dominant abilities of Life and Spirit, combining them somehow with trickles of Earth, Fire and Air.

  This new energy took what Aber had been dreaming of—a wolf stalking him—and incorporated it somehow. He woke with a start, immediately Changing into a big, shaggy black wolf. Without a backward glance, the wolf he’d become dove into the underbrush. He soon returned with a dead rabbit clamped between his jaws.

  Awed at what they’d accomplished, Lark and the others moved from one sleeping form to the next, touching each. To some they gave the image of a predatory animal; to others, they gave prey animals, both to promote balance in diet and temperament and to prevent them from wiping out all the food animals within reach too quickly. When each woke, they Changed into their new form.

  Later, the survivors gathered together. Each spoke of a vision they’d had about the animal they’d Changed into, believing it had come from the Spirit Over All.

  Days later, strengthened by the steady stream of meat they now brought into camp, the survivors began to thrive. They spoke of building shelters in a large clearing nearby. Feeling connected to this land that had begun nurturing them, they decided to give up traveling to the Queensrealm altogether.

  Lark and the others traveled to check on us and our group of survivors, excited to share the story of what they’d been able to accomplish. Fortunately, our group had come across a hunting party from Civitas Dei ranging far afield who agreed to take them to the city. The hunters shared their supplies and taught the men how to hunt the game teeming by the great lake nearby.

  Two days before, a girl of eleven summers named Vivi, who had been born with a shriveled foot, fell down a rocky slope and broke her good leg. Infection had begun to set into the wound. Unfortunately, due to the lack of clean bandages and medicine, she was fading fast. Jacob insisted that we should try to help her in some way, not that we needed any inducement.

  We waited until night fell, the suffering girl finally drifting into a pain-haunted sleep there on the windblown plain. She lay surrounded by the other children in the group, who also slept. The adults slept in a ring around them to keep them safe from predators.

  This time, we focused on thoughts and images of healing. I took the role as conduit this time, for we decided that my dominant forces of Life and Spirit would be most conducive to healing. We spent a long time this way before Jacob shouted in our minds, “There! Do you feel it?”

  We felt the spark within Vivi that we’d hoped for. But to our surprise, we felt it not just within her, but also within many of the other children who lay sleeping nearby who had Spirit as one of their two dominant forces.

  We’ve learned that children respond more strongly to our influence than adults. Their elemental flows are more malleable. As Lark later marveled, “We need only be near them to change them.” Not only had Vivi’s broken leg nearly healed, but so had many of the cuts, bruises, and sprains the other children had suffered.

  A few days later, Jade confided in me. “Have you sensed it? I think many of the children now possess an ability to heal others.”

  It was true. In time, we found that some could heal severe damage, while others could heal only a small scrape or bruise. As with the ability to Change from human to animal, this healing ability passed from generation to generation. But unlike the ability to Change, the ability to heal required the dominant force of Spirit to be present, with the strength and type of healing dependent upon which other dominant force they had.

  Well satisfied with the gifts we’d bestowed, we still had one question weighing on all our minds. Jacob piped up, asking it with the bluntness children have.

  “What do we do now?”

  We looked at one another, not knowing the answer. Like I often do, I deflected the seriousness of the question with a joke.

  “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve always wanted to take a trip around the world. Being invisible will be great, right? And we don’t even need to worry about finding food or water anymore. I mean, it’s almost like we’re gods!”

  I didn’t really mean any of it. I was just trying to look on the bright side for the kids’ sakes.

  Jade looked as if she wanted to cry, but couldn’t.

  “But…it’s lik
e we’re dead!” she blurted.

  Her mother turned to give what approximated a hug between people without bodies, but Jade moved away angrily, shutting her out.

  Lark’s soul light flickered in annoyance, but she showed no other reaction to the rebuff.

  “Honey, I’m sorry this happened to us,” she soothed. “It’s going to take some time to adjust to our new situation. We need to have faith that this happened for a reason, and find the good in it somehow.”

  Kai laughed at this, earning him disapproving looks that he pointedly ignored.

  “Spare me this talk of faith,” he said scornfully. “The Spirit Over All has abandoned us, if He even exists. I for one don’t plan to waste any time looking for any special meaning or purpose in an unfortunate accident.”

  He stood looking down his long nose at us as if his wise words should end any foolish debate. He’d always struck me as a pompous fool. I enjoyed laughing at him behind his back: short, stout and ugly, he looked just like a mean-spirited little troll.

  “If not for your clumsiness, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place,” Lark retorted, her pretty face grim. “It’s not the Spirit Over All’s fault that you dropped that beaker!”

  Kai just grinned, completely unphased. Gideon made a calming gesture towards Lark, stepping toward them both with a placating smile, disembodied hands raised.

  A natural leader, Gideon Archer had been the senior owner and head geneticist of our lab. Kai Wade, our financier, also catalogued our findings. We were all used to Gideon taking the helm with his signature mix of encouragement, decisiveness, and gentleness.

  “It was just an accident, of course. None of us blame you for what happened to us, Kai,” Gideon amended, his eyes mild behind his glasses.

  Lark nodded, having the grace to look embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry, Kai. I didn’t mean to blame you.”

  Kai just shrugged. “No apology necessary, my dear.”

  I sensed the whole thing amused him.

  “That’s great and everything,” Sera broke in tersely to no one in particular, “but like the kid said, what do we do now?” She was usually so quiet; her outburst surprised me.

  Gideon sighed and straightened his insubstantial shoulders.

  “We’ll make the best of this, that’s what, Sera.”

  His essence brightened with an idea. “We’re scientists, are we not?”

  Everyone but the children agreed.

  “Well, I say we conduct a new experiment.”

  Malyse raised a shadowy eyebrow, intrigued. “What do you have in mind?”

  Malyse was stunningly beautiful even as a spirit, from her glossy, upswept black hair and blue eyes to her shapely outline. Too bad she has about as much warmth as a snake, I mused. It hadn’t stopped me from being with her in the past. A woman like that, I found impossible to resist. She had plenty of…abilities…to make up for her heartless nature.

  Gideon smiled at her, pleased to find someone eager instead of upset.

  “We’ve already learned we can help the survivors,” he explained. “What else can we do? Can we fly?”

  The children perked up at this idea.

  “Can we travel to the center of the earth? Can we walk to the bottom of the sea? Can we change other living things, like plants or animals? Can we make ourselves visible to people, if we try hard enough? Can we experience what they’re feeling? Can we find a way to communicate with them?”

  Several of us looked skeptical of these last ideas. We’d tried some of them already, with no success.

  The children exchanged glances and concentrated. I realized they were trying to fly by sheer force of will. Nothing happened. Soon, their ghostly shoulders drooped again.

  “I know,” Gideon said, sensing our skepticism. “But maybe such things take practice. Who can say for sure? It’s not like we have anything better to do."

  We couldn’t argue with that. I decided to speak up.

  “I’ve got an idea to add.”

  Gideon nodded, clearly interested, so I continued.

  “I’d like to take a couple of you with me to visit the Queensrealm. I’ve been curious about them for a long while. I’m interested to see if we can change them, like we did our own people. Though I don’t see why not,” I hastened to add.

  “I’ll go with you,” Malyse volunteered, her curiosity piqued.

  “I’ll go too,” Kai chimed in with his usual pompous drawl.

  “I’d like to go as well,” Sera put in shyly, “if that doesn’t make for too many?” I assured her that it did not. Neither Malyse nor Kai looked as if they cared a whit either way.

  Gideon chuckled, pleased at the increase in positivity.

  “It’s settled, then. The rest of us will stay with one or both of the survivor groups. Why don’t we agree to meet back here, say, at the full moon? We can share any discoveries we make with the rest of the group then.”

  We all agreed, peering up at the new moon. Plenty of time to learn more about our abilities.

  Gideon’s light drew closer to Jade’s, and he looked directly into her sad green eyes.

  “I know it’s a shock, sweetheart,” he told her gently, “But we have each other. And whether it seems like it or not, we still have a life—of sorts. While we exist, we have a chance to…to live, if that makes any sense.”

  Jade brightened slightly. It did, somehow.

  “I lost my children to the plague,” Gideon continued, his voice breaking, then steadying, “so I consider you and Jacob to be my children now.”

  They smiled at one another, Jade’s smile tremulous but real. Jacob’s soul-light beamed. Lark appeared deeply moved.

  Gideon looked over at the rest of us. “I lost my family, but you’re my family now. We’re not giving up. Let’s face this thing together and find a reason to go on.”

  We felt in one accord at that moment. Then I noticed that Kai’s mind was tightly shuttered. I didn’t know him very well, and I wondered if I ever really would. Or wanted to.

  Those of us traveling to the Queensrealm wandered apart from the others to plan our strategy. Meanwhile, the other group decided that Gideon and Jade would stay with the survivors traveling to the Elusian Mountains while Lark and Jacob would rejoin the survivors in the Great Forest.

  So much has been taken from us, I mused, as the others chattered about what they wanted to do once we arrived in the Queensrealm. But now we had a purpose, perhaps even a mission. We’d found hope.

  Well played, I thought to the Spirit Over All, whose existence I’d had a scientist’s healthy skepticism of all my life. I imagined that I sensed his divine amusement in response, and wondered about his ultimate plan for us.

  I’d not been far wrong, I supposed, when I’d flippantly suggested we were like gods. But I couldn’t help but recognize a greater hand at work here, gifting us and some of the survivors with powers we could never aspire to before. It felt as if the Spirit Over All had positioned us on his game board for his next move. I felt a newfound anticipation to see what he would do next, and how he would use us to bring it to pass.

  I failed to realize that the next move on the game board would of course be his opponent’s. And I had no way of knowing that it would come several generations in the future.

  Chapter 2: Little Squirrel

  The first light of a new day vaguely silhouettes the misty, moss-hung trees. The birds trill their sleepy songs to greet the morning. I’m chasing Spark through the forest to our secret fort. Laughing and occasionally cursing, he deliberately allows branches to whip back toward my face in an attempt to slow me down. If I catch him, I get to be queen of the castle, and he’ll have to play the lowly slave. If he beats me, there’s a slave uprising, with much chasing and sword-fighting with whichever branch happens to come to hand. But Spark doesn’t beat me very often.

  Running up a dry creek bed muffled with ferns, we watch our feet to make sure we don’t turn an ankle. Dashing silently past a stand of trees to
the side, I glimpse Swift Blaze, Twitching Whisker, and a few others clustered together just beyond them. Swift Blaze is Spark’s older brother.

  That’s odd. Swift Blaze, the good-looking, affable young warrior everyone has high hopes for and all the girls moon over, talking to Twitching Whisker, the bully and loner of our age group? I’ve never seen them near one another. Swift Blaze’s group of friends follow him around wherever he goes; when they draw near, Twitching Whisker usually skulks off, alone.

  It’s more than the differences between the Clans separating them. It’s a social pecking order, with Swift Blaze at the top and Twitching Whisker at the bottom. Just a natural part of life among the People.

  I don’t think they saw us. When I turn my attention back to Spark, he’s disappeared. I stop and look around, surprised, then run on, smug in the knowledge that I’ll beat him to our fort. He probably stopped to relieve himself.

  Spark steps out from behind a tree just ahead, naked, and I see that he’s begun to Change. His back puffs up, elongating. He falls forward onto his forearms, running on all fours, his hands now paws. His furry ears swivel back to catch my gasp. Then he’s off, leaving me behind in leaps and bounds, tail waving. Mocking me.

  “No fair,” I say, but it’s a whisper.

  I follow, slower now, tasting defeat. I wonder if I’ll be able to do that too, soon.

  He just completed his Vision Quest a few days ago, receiving his new name, Sudden Spark. He also came into his birthright and received his Wolf. I’ve worried that this would create a distance between us now that he’s crossed over into adulthood in his sixteenth spring. So I felt elated and relieved when he asked me if I wanted to go to our fort today.

  Spark has been my best friend since we were littles, yet so many doubts plague me. My Vision Quest will begin tomorrow. What if I don’t see anything? What if I don’t receive the Change? Even if I do, will the differences between our Clans, our genders, and my mixed heritage eventually divide us?