Star Angel: Rising (Star Angel Book 4)

by David G. McDaniel

  He smiled, as warm as the flickering firelight.

  “Hi,” she said to him, staying as she was, laying on her side, all but her head covered, looking down the length of the cot at him. She glanced around the room but found no sign of the boy. They were alone.

 

  She hesitated. “Good.” It was true. In consideration of everything she felt pretty damn good.

  The old man nodded to himself, satisfied.

  “How ... do you do that?” She was probably more disturbed by this mind speak thing than anything so far. “And if you understand me why not speak out loud? I know you can. I heard you.”

 

  “Then … how can I hear you in my mind?”

  he said.

  “So how do you know what I’m saying? When I speak out loud?”

  He tilted his head, almost like a shrug.

  She was going to ask how, but instead began thinking of what might be going on inside her mind.

  It was a strange sort of introspection.

  Galfar admitted.

  She was about to ask another question, paused and ...

  Thought carefully:

  A grin spread across the old man’s face, widening further until it stretched the corners of his mouth.

  He was quite impressed.

  he assured her.

  And at once she felt that floating, out-of-body sensation. That familiar buzz in her skull and the feeling she was outside it. Way outside; outside her own head, outside everything.

  she wondered, delivering the thought to him with careful contemplation, as she had the last. And, as with the last, he heard it.

 

  She felt a twinge of panic.

  She tried to clear her thoughts, tried to feel unconcerned though she knew she was probably radiating sudden alarm in that moment. She’d already tested this for herself, a little, but it was so invasive it was hard not to feel the press of imminent violation.

  Then, to herself: How many things do I have to hide?

  Uh oh. Did he hear that?

  Crap!

  But the old man, Galfar, was shaking his head.

  He became thoughtful.

  Jess sat there staring at him, mind afire with possibilities.

  she said.

  He nodded slowly.

 

 

  It was so weird, resisting the urge to open her mouth, to use her voice and work her jaw the way you always did. Every word was tentative, every thought backed by the fear that others might slip.

  But Galfar didn’t answer. Instead he rose and bid her do the same, using nothing but gestures—same as anyone would if they just wanted to direct someone and didn’t feel like speaking.

  She sat up on the cot. She noticed she was wearing a sort of tunic. Somewhere during her most recent rest Galfar or Haz or both must’ve put her in it. It was made of rough, scratchy linen, but at least she was no longer naked. Now that the fever was gone there was no more sweating. She felt comfortable. Good, as she told him.

  Too good.

  She sat all the way up, to the edge of the bed, paused there a moment then stood steadily and followed Galfar across the room. He went to a shelf near the fire pit, which had a chimney-like connection to the rising heat of the fire itself, funneling it to a grill where a few pots simmered. He reached for a cup. Jess adjusted the scratchy tunic. It hung to her knees and was sleeveless, not much more fitted than if someone had cut holes in a sack. In fact, as she examined it more closely that’s exactly what it looked like. She was wearing a linen sack. Galfar found another container and scooped some dark grounds into the cup. He then took one of the simmering pots and poured hot water over the grounds, like making Turkish coffee or something, swished the cup and handed it to her. She took it as he put the pot back on the heat.

  This method of communication was so different. So, so different. Yet, she could see how it might also be better. In some ways.

  Galfar shook his head.

  Perfect. She could use a little Taste Good. She held the warm cup with both hands, blew on it, watched the grounds swirl in the hot water like chips of bark and … took a sip. Not that tasty, actually, but Galfar obviously thought so. She smiled and tried not to offend. Took another sip. Kind of like cinnamon at first, but after the second sip it started to taste more like the coffee it appeared. She took another to appear hospitable, but also because it was starting to course through her and ... to her depleted system felt needed. Invigorating.

  Maybe “tastes good” wasn't the best way to describe it. “Feels good” was more like it. Whichever, she found herself quickly warming to the sensation.

  She stood a little straighter. Stretched out some of the kinks. The single-room hut was cozy in the night air, a gentle breeze drifting through the open windows and door. The kid—Haz—was still nowhere to be seen. It was just her and Galfar.

  She marveled again at the fact she wasn’t more freaked than she was. Earth was gone. Zac and everything she knew … gone. Unlike previously when she popped through to some new location, this time she had absolutely no idea where she was and no clear way back. Not even a way that was hard to get to, like a lost Icon or something. Nothing. By all rights she should be quivering on the cot right then, refusing to budge; instead she was standing there in a potato sack, sipping hot cinnamon drink by a fire in an ancient clay hut, on a world-moon in orbit around an giant blue Saturn, talking telepathically with a wrinkled old man and actually savoring the moment.

  She took another sip.

  Once she read some words of wisdom that said you should do something every day that scares you. “Try doing something every day that scares you,” it went. “It moves you closer to who you really are.”

  She smiled lightly as she delighted in the taste of the sharp cinnamon, mind drifting over the warm waves of heat coming from the fire. She’d been scaring the hell out of herself for so long … if anyone should be close to who they really were it was her.

  She noticed Galfar staring.

  he asked. As she heard his words in her head she turned her attention more fully to him, seeing the degree of curiosity in his expression. It was profound. He was really looking at her, like trying to make sense of an oddity.

  Not more of that, she thought, nerves hedging in; recalling the sense of awe manifested so blatantly by others. Like the fanatical Conclave who thought her an angel.

  “Held anything still?” she asked, then, with her newly developing skill: But Galfar was different. If he regarded her that way it was somehow different. More as a curious observer. Fellow freak, perhaps, not as a barely concealed worshiper.

  he expounded.


  Strange as the question was, so seemingly random, she thought at once of the farmhouse and Zac. Not so long ago, that incident, it yet felt as if a lifetime had passed since then.

  She and Zac had been right in the bull’s-eye of the Bok, having just killed the bunch of them and sent Lorenzo scurrying, retaliation imminent yet … done nothing to prepare. They hadn’t even fled. All at her insistence. Zac wanted to but, instead—and the absolute absurdity of it hit her now—she cornered him and they made love. For hours. All afternoon. For an instant as she thought of this she blushed, the images suddenly quite vivid, but Galfar wasn’t reading her mind—couldn’t, as he said—and as she recalled those moments she suppressed a shuddering rush.

  But as to Galfar’s question, after that colossally bad tactical move—to be utterly practical about the assessment of it—she then made them dinner. Then went to bed. We had sex all day, then I made dinner, we ate it, I said good night and I went to bed! Every bit of it her decision, all driven by a belligerent defiance of what she refused to accept, and as she stood there with Galfar, remembering all this clearly, she also remembered deciding at that time, with full conviction, that the world could simply go to hell.

  Interestingly the world had done just that.

  Now that Galfar was asking she realized with sudden clarity she had, in fact, held the moment. Incredible! Like stretching what should’ve been a short period of time into something much longer. As if nothing could, or would, interrupt them. And nothing did. Not until much later, after she’d gone to sleep.

  She cleared her mind and fixed his gaze. she admitted. Then, curious:

  Galfar took her cup. He refilled it and handed back a fresh little container of warmth. he said as she wrapped her hands around its heat and squeezed. The statement, like the other, sounded random, disconnected, but for Galfar it seemed to answer her question.

  She let it go.

  And remembered her manners. she said. Vitality coursed through her and she didn’t know how she was getting her strength back so quickly. It felt like a transformation. Like she’d achieved some sort of mild transcendence. Maybe the old man had given her something.

  But his attention was on to other things. he said,

  Jess shook her head. She finished stringing together the long sentence, the longest she’d yet spoken telepathically, getting the hang of this—recalling with the first hint of sadness the loss of the Icon. she asked.

  Galfar shrugged.

  Demanded Galfar train him?

  That got her mind running. Could this “Other” be Lorenzo? And it struck her, based on what little she knew, that likelihood made sense. What Galfar described would be in line with what the silver-haired Bok implied in his final eulogy. Lorenzo was wrong to come here, he’d said. This was meant for you. Whether the world or the Icon or whatever that suicidal maniac was referring to, he was saying Lorenzo had already been here. Which meant, if the Other was the only one to come, as Galfar said, then Lorenzo must be the Other, and therefore the one Galfar trained. Which meant Galfar taught Lorenzo to speak in people’s heads. The trick the Bok leader used in the club.

  A chill passed through her.

  If Galfar did that, did that also mean …

  Could he have shown Lorenzo how to hurl attacks with the mind? How to throw punches? Move things?

  All at once she found herself eyeing this feeble old man with new regard.

 

  She waited nervously, but Galfar didn’t know.

  Jess thought to describe him, to get to the bottom of everything at once, but forcibly she let the rushing thoughts go. All would no doubt be revealed. Eventually. She supposed the details weren’t important. Not yet. She blew gently on the hot coffee-cinnamon drink and took another sip.

  Galfar queried:

  And that sent her drifting again, this time in suddenly tortured thought—a sharp ache made all the stronger as it came in contrast to the warm serenity she’d only just been feeling. She spoke aloud, mind a million miles away.

  “Someone else.”

  Galfar could sense her pain; she knew he could. Zac meant so much to her it must be obvious; this someone else for whom she waited, now quite probably gone forever.

  As the possibility of that washed over her, snapping her closer to harsh reality and the hopelessness of her predicament, Galfar continued with his line of speculation.

  he said.

  Though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. This sounded too much like …

  said Galfar, and her slowly stabilizing then de-stabilizing mind began to spin. Galfar’s expression straightened as he realized the word had meaning for her. His surprise was nearly as great as her own, as if her awareness of the Prophecy affirmed whatever he might’ve already been thinking. She grappled with the significance. How far did the Prophecy stretch? Was he speaking of a different one? She had the sinking feeling he wasn’t. The Bok of Earth, the Conclave of Anitra, now here, the Galfar of …

  Wherever the hell she was.

  She looked around desperately.

  Galfar’s words were hesitant, exploratory, and as he continued he watched her reactions carefully—surely catching her ever-widening eyes at the mention of the word priestess, and his words faded behind the fog crawling across her mind. I can’t get away from this. <… to bring freedom to peoples everywhere, using the knowledge of the Codex to restore our potential. She was killed before she could. Battles, vast wars waged across all lands, between those who wanted what the Codex promised and those who feared an enlightened people. Before her death Aesha foretold the Prophecy, that one would come, here, to this place, to continue her legacy and bring knowledge to all.>

  Definitely, exactly, the same.

  That was the latest twist on what was becoming an old tale.

  Galfar continued watching her carefully as he spoke. It was another tall tale. Only whereas before Jess might’ve tuned it out, might’ve looked desperately for flaws, now she listened. Galfar spun the yarn, the setting perfect; an old hut on an alien world, Galfar himself appearing an ancient mystic, in his own way, ngs, as written by the ancients. Unlike the godmakers Aesha shared that original intent. She had it in mind to bring the knowledge contained in the Codes into the light. To restore us. To restore everyone.>

  Jess made herself take another sip of the hot coffee. Digesting this volume of new information, adding it to all the rest; the loads of significant data that had, for her, so little real significance at all, curious Galfar was eager to dump it on her all at once. Like he’d been waiting for this moment. Absently she wondered if he’d told all this to the Other.

  Somehow she imagined he hadn’t.

  he went on,
 

  A long pause filled the room. Seemed to overtake it, in fact, like a tangible presence, and just as it started to become suffocating Galfar continued.

 

  Despite any new twists, here was the same prophecy, again, and Jess was, again, caught at the center. New world, new set of players, same trap. No doubt Galfar thought she was the one, and his next words confirmed it.