Static Mayhem

by Edward Aubry

He turned and sat down again. He drew Bess and examined her in the daylight. Except for a narrow stripe on one side of her blade, presumably from having been yanked out of Scott's torso, she was completely black. The stripe showed silver under the blackening, and he tried to polish more of it off of her. It was difficult work with only one hand. All he had to work with were his pants.

  "I'm sorry I dragged you into this," he said to her as he worked. He was able to get a pretty nice clean spot, about the size of a half dollar. It shone in the rising sun. He remembered something then, something he had seen Alec do, but had never asked him about. He polished more of her, until he had almost half a blade of clean, naked metal on one side. He held this out from himself, and looked at his reflection in it.

  It didn't quite look like him. He had a weird sort of green aura around his head. Laying Bess on the ground, he reached into his pocket to find an object to hold up to the sword for comparison. He pulled out a small stuffed chimp.

  He choked. He had completely forgotten about it. He closed his eyes and held it to his mouth. He allowed himself the luxury of a few tears before pulling himself together. They would have plenty of time to get acquainted, but right now this monkey had a job to do. He held it up to Bess to see its reflection. No aura.

  Alec had used this sword as a magic detector the very first time Harrison met him. He had not known how it worked, but he had seen Alec use it like a mirror. The green halo around his head now told him that he was probably throwing off some kind of magical signature. He hoped that was a good thing.

  He reached into his pocket again and pulled out the ring. It glowed against the blade like a little green star.

  Next, he held the blade out at arm's length and started to scan the island with it. It was a clumsy process, at best, and he was not sure what he was looking for. Something, anything, normally unseen. A hut, perhaps, like they had found in New York. Maybe something he could use to survive.

  A pixie, maybe.

  He shook that thought away. If he did not find some means of support, he would die here in no time at all. He had no way of calling for help, no resources of his own. He dismissed the irony of having gone in to save Glimmer, only to have killed her and himself. The world was safe, such as it was. He had done good. He had no regrets.

  Captain.

  He nearly dropped the sword. It had been so long since she had spoken that he assumed she was gone. "Bess?"

  Did we prevail?

  "Yes," he said. "We won."

  For a while, she said nothing. He began to worry again. Finally, she said, Good.

  She paused again, too long for his comfort. "Are you going to be all right?" he asked carefully.

  I need rest , she said, and was silent again.

  He was torn between relief and anxiety. He had not lost her, but he might yet. He wished he knew how to care for a sick magic sword. He was just going to have to sustain her, like everything else, on pure hope.

  Something distant and green flashed briefly off Bess's surface. He tried tilting her back and forth to find it again.

  "What are you looking for?" asked a voice behind him. He flinched, then found himself in the thick of a bizarre déjà vu moment. He turned to look, thinking he knew what he would see, ready to be relieved. Everything was going to be all right.

  Hovering at about eye level was a woman, just a bit smaller than a pigeon. She was held aloft by a pair of translucent butterfly wings. They were orange with yellow streaks. Her hair was a similar color, with an iridescent quality. She was naked.

  "Uhhh. He had no idea how to proceed. Answer the question, perhaps. Ask a few of his own. He finally decided to share an observation. "You're a pixie," he said.

  She tilted her head, then tilted it in the other direction. She seemed to be studying him. To what end, he could guess. He had seen his reflection. Apart from the aura, he looked like shit. "Good call," she said. "What were you looking for?"

  Harrison rubbed his eyes. This was not at all who he thought it would be, but she was a welcome surprise nonetheless. A semi-familiar face, at the very least.

  "I was looking for anything," he said. "Anything at all that will help me get off this rock. Or keep me alive on it."

  "You're kind of in the wrong spot for that," she said. "You want to head closer inland, I think"

  "I thought all the pixies were gone." He thought about this. He had been planning to say all the pixies but one were gone. Then he thought about Glimmer, and silently amended his observation to include her. He did mean all the pixies. She was gone, too.

  But this one wasn't.

  "Maybe we were," she said. She looked genuinely confused. "Do you have any idea where we are?"

  This one he knew. "Indian Ocean," he said. "Somewhere southeast of Madagascar."

  "Oh," she said. She looked unsatisfied. "How long have we been here?"

  "I can't speak for you," he replied, "but I've been here about two weeks. Were you here when there were hills and buildings and things?"

  "Were they pretty noticeable?" she asked.

  "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, they were all over the place."

  "Hmm," she said, tapping her chin. "Nope. It's been pretty much like this ever since I've been here."

  Harrison smiled. This was starting to make sense. Sort of. Maybe. "Well, then, I'd say you've been here since yesterday at the earliest."

  She shook her head. "I don't remember," she said. "Isn't that the damnedest thing?"

  So the bomb had brought back a pixie. It was not supposed to change anything at all, but it had. He wondered if he should feel nervous about this development. He decided not to. She was inside the blast radius, and things were sure as hell changed in here, so maybe she was a harmless fluke. At any rate, he did not want to be suspicious. He was immeasurably grateful for the company. And he liked pixies. Things were looking up.

  "Yeah," he said. "Go figure." He looked back at the sword. He caught two more green glints, but he couldn't keep a bead on it. "My name's Harrison," he said. He held out his injured hand for her to shake. It trembled slightly, but his other hand was attached to an arm that did not work, so this one would have to do. She took his index finger in her own hand. He waited for the shock, but all he got was a fuzzy, tingly feeling. He frowned. It was less jarring, but it felt wrong.

  "Sparky," she said. "Pleased to meet you, I'm sure."

  Cutesy name, he thought. Pixie name.

  "Is that what you're looking for?" she asked. She was pointing at the center of the island.

  "What?" he said. He squinted, trying to see anything except parched ground.

  "There's a magic something down there," she added. "Can't you see it?"

  He sighed. Of course he couldn't see it. He tilted the blade in the direction she was pointing and tried to find its reflection. As he did this, he kept looking back and forth between her and the sword. On his third glance at her hand, he saw something that took him back, hard. He stammered, trying to decide how to ask her about it, or what even to ask. He looked at her face, scrutinizing it, but didn't see what he sought. Not in her expression, not in her eyes, not in anything else about her. He looked back at her hand.

  It was her right hand. She was pointing with her middle finger. She had to. The index finger was missing.

  * * *

  Harrison and Sparky reached the area she had indicated in what he guessed was about an hour. He avoided the subject of her hand. It troubled him deeply, but he refused to accept it as anything other than a bizarre coincidence. Maybe it was a pixie thing. Maybe sacrificing their index fingers was a standing emergency backup plan.

  She wasn't Glimmer.

  He was firm about this. She didn't look like Glimmer (precisely). She didn't behave like Glimmer (exactly). She didn't talk (swear) like Glimmer. She really didn't remind him of Glimmer in any way other than being, well, pixyish. He couldn't ask her about it. Not yet. The wound was still too fresh.

  "We're here," she said. He knew that. He recognized it. It was
a zone right in the middle of the crater. It had a distorted look to it, like he was viewing it through a glass shower door. He walked into it without hesitation or fear.

  Inside, he found a lawn, a garden, an omni tree, and a hut, all identical to the setup where he had first met Apryl. He wondered if it was the same exact plot, lifted from New York and shunted the whole way down there.

  "Wow," said Sparky, who was just behind him. "Cool."

  He made straight for the omni tree. He had not put any thought into food for a very long time, and as soon as he realized how close he was to it, his gut prodded him with painful jabs. He respected his gut's zeal and chose to reward it. "Scrambled eggs and bacon," he told a piece of fruit, then plucked it from the tree. He peeled it open with his teeth, and found steaming fluffy eggs, with just a hint of salt and fresh ground pepper, and three strips of hickory bacon, thickly sliced and cooked to the perfect balance between chewy and crisp. He had to eat it one-handed, squeezing egg into his mouth, and pulling at the bacon with his teeth, but it was perfect. He walked as he ate. "I'm going inside," he said to Sparky. He was eager to find a comfortable chair. He was going to be all right. He might never get off the island, but he knew he could be comfortable here. Not his first choice, of course, but it beat the hell out of starving and freezing. He even, he hoped, had a friend here. Things were looking very up indeed.

  Unfortunately, he was looking down. He was so engrossed in eating his breakfast that when he got to the door he almost collided with the man standing in it. He was startled enough that he almost choked, but not startled enough to drop the omni. He swallowed, carefully, then said, "Whoa! I'm sorry. I thought … I thought the house would be empty."

  He was looking at a man just a bit taller than himself. He looked older, but he could not guess by how much. Maybe forty years old. Maybe older. He was wearing a long robe, in patchy brown and white, and his hair was a graying reddish blonde that fell thickly down to his shoulders. He had a beard, which he wore long, but shaped and tidy. The hair in his beard was a mixture of blonde, gray, and pale red, and it had a faintly glittery effect. He was giving Harrison a look that was hard to read. He didn't seem angry, or even surprised to see him. Most likely he was curious. He stepped aside, and gestured for Harrison to enter the house.

  "Come in," he said. He had a full and resonant voice, which Harrison found striking. He found himself compelled to draw this man into conversation, just to hear more of his voice. So he stepped inside. He had lost track of Sparky, but assumed that she would come in or not, based on whatever whim possessed her.

  As he entered, he saw that the man had a dog. A Newfoundland, he thought, and almost as big as Harrison. His coat, black and shiny, was beautiful, and even in pure black, there was a mildly shimmery quality. The dog was sitting by the door, but not blocking it. He appeared to be waiting patiently. He gave Harrison an appraising look.

  The interior of the hut was exactly as he remembered it. Again, he wondered if it was the same hut. An exact duplicate? It didn't matter, really. It was familiar and inviting. He fleetingly considered being wary of the robed man. This seemed too easy, he was too friendly, but something about him felt trustworthy. Harrison felt safe in ways he would never have been able to explain.

  The man entered behind Harrison and walked to a cupboard. The dog followed the man. one step behind, the picture of obedience, but without the obsequiousness Harrison often associated with dogs. The man took a plate and a fork out of the cupboard and set them on a wooden table in the front room. He pulled a chair out, and gestured for Harrison to sit. Harrison did so, dumping the contents of his omni onto the plate. Eating the eggs with a fork was far more civilized than sucking at an omni and put him more at ease. The man pulled up a seat across the table from him. The dog curled up on the floor beside the table and put his head on his front paws. Harrison noticed for the first time that the man's robe was made from some sort of very fine leather. It looked soft and thin. Rabbit skin, perhaps. It looked like an awful lot of rabbits.

  "Have you ever had a dream," he said to Harrison, "that was so absurd, so outlandish, that you couldn't possibly accept it as reality? Have you ever found yourself fully aware that you are dreaming, and that nothing that happens will have any lingering consequences?"

  The question seemed apropos of nothing, but it intrigued Harrison. "Those are called lucid dreams," he said. "I don't usually remember my dreams, even the normal ones. I did have a lucid dream once when I was a teenager. It freaked me out."

  The man nodded. "All my dreams are lucid. Usually, when I dream such a dream, I have complete creative control. I make it happen."

  He leaned forward on the table. Harrison had a closer look at his sleeves. They were constructed of leather patches no more than two inches across. Lots and lots of teeny tiny rabbits, thought Harrison.

  "Let me see your hand," the man said. Harrison did not understand where any of this was going. He considered his choices. The numb hand or the burnt hand? He did not think he would be able to get his left hand onto the table, but he felt strangely self-conscious about showing this man the hand he had injured with a faerie gift. As he sat thinking, the man held out his own right hand and tapped the palm. Now Harrison was starting to feel the beginnings of uneasiness. He held out his injured right hand, but not too close. He was trying not to think about it, but the pain was coming back. The man reached for it gently. Harrison did not flinch. When the man took Harrison's hand in his own, turning it over to inspect it, Harrison expected agony, but his touch was so delicate that Harrison barely felt it. The man reached into a pocket and produced what looked like a rolled up bandage. Without asking, he unrolled a length of it and started wrapping Harrison's hand.

  "I had a lucid dream last night," said the man as he worked. The bandage had been soaked in something cool and felt wonderful on his scorched skin. The pain was receding again, and he actually began to feel strength coming back into his fingers. When he was finished, the man handed Harrison a cloth about the size of a dish towel. He pointed to his own shoulder. Harrison followed the mimed instruction, laying the towel on his ruined shoulder, with much the same effect his injured hand was experiencing. "My dream lasted for just over a year. I had no control over where it went. It was a trap beyond despair."

  Harrison came to attention on that remark. He had already figured out that this person, like Sparky, was a side effect of the bomb. Someone who had been taken away last May and through extraordinary luck had returned yesterday. The idea that for all that time he had been aware, and helpless, was wrenching. Harrison wondered if everyone who was gone had been experiencing the same dreadful limbo.

  "This morning," the man continued, "I woke up. I don't think you'll ever be able to appreciate just how glorious that felt." His eyes bored into Harrison's. "You have my gratitude, young captain. It is significant."

  Time stood perfectly still as Harrison absorbed the brief story, the form of address, the thanks. "I think," he said, once time started moving again. He gulped. "I think I may also have your ring."

  Oberon nodded.

  Harrison closed his eyes. The depth of his success overpowered him. This was a surprise, far greater than he had dared to ask for or hope. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the silver ring, and set it on the table.

  "I would offer this to you," said Oberon, indicating the ring, "as a reward."

  "But I would respectfully have to decline," Harrison replied. He held up his bandaged hand, hoping that he had not committed an offense. Whether he had or not, he could not keep this faerie gift. It had come with a price. His bungled theft of Claudia's power had set in motion a chain of events that had cost him his pixie. Given the same set of choices, he would likely make the same decisions in a heartbeat, but now he was finished.

  Oberon smiled. "That's right," he said. "You would. So I have a greater boon to offer. Are you finished with your breakfast?"

  Harrison looked down at his plate. It was empty. He nodded.

  "
Come," said Oberon. As he stood up, the dog rose with him. It was like watching synchronized ballet.

  Harrison got up and flexed both his hands. The feeling was starting to come back into his left side, and only some of that feeling was pain. It was dull, where it had been searing before, and he appreciated the difference. He imagined that his shoulder would still need surgery, that it would never be quite the same, but he tugged at the faint hope that this cloth would bring about a miracle cure. He didn't want to ask yet.

  He followed Oberon into a room that he recalled as holding the deathbed of the old man. There was a bed there, but its occupant was not old, dying, or a man. He looked at the sleeping woman, trying to understand what this was about. As he drew near, he gasped.

  It was his sister.

  "Lisa," he whispered. She did not stir. He turned to Oberon. "Is she alive?"

  "She lives," he confirmed. "And she sleeps." He put his hand on Harrison's shoulder. "She's had a hard year. She needs a great deal of rest. When she wakes up, she will need you by her side."

  Harrison reached down and took her hand. It was warm and soft and magnificent. He wept. "You did this? You did this for me?" He looked back at the Faerie King, who was smiling and shaking his head.

  "You did this," he replied.

  Harrison looked back down at his sister. "I don't understand."

  "You altered the bomb," said Oberon. "You gambled that you could bring back the people, without changing the nature of the world. You used the Tools you were given, and you altered the spell."

  "I did?" His eyes snapped wide open. "I did! I remember now! I was in the cargo hold. I was thinking about how many people I was about to permanently snuff out with that bomb." He looked at the king again. "I was thinking about you. It inspired me to try."

  "Milady's prompting, I dare say." Oberon smiled wistfully.

  Harrison thought back. "The ring?" he asked, but he already knew. It had given him hints, suggestions, on levels he could not explain. Titania could not act directly, so she had trusted Harrison to read the signals and do the right thing. But, he remembered, faerie gifts come with strings, and this one came with strings of risk. Handing that ring to Harrison was like giving a lighter to a monkey. The number and scope of things that could have gone wrong, let alone the ones that actually had, chilled Harrison to the bone. That this was her plan spoke of her desperation. Or of her respect for him. As that last thought went through his mind, Oberon bowed slightly. The approval was soul-warming.