Legends

by Unknown Author

  Scott frowned. “She’d be at least seventy by now. And why would she attack you?”

  Jean took Scott’s hand as she urged him from the library. “I don’t think it’s an attack,” she answered. “I should have thought of it sooner. Our first names are almost the same. And there are other similarities, if the images in the dreams are true.”

  “You’re both telepaths?”

  Jean glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s only eight o’clock,” she said, pulling him toward the door. “Let’s just drive.”

  “We might as well go this way,” Scott said with a shrug, indicating the massive hole. A broken piece of plaster hung down from the top of the hole. Scott lifted his glasses just a fraction. Scarlet beams of energy lanced from his eyes and shattered the treacherous obstacle, dealing the way. He adjusted his lenses again. “It’s closer to the garage.”

  A half moon floated above the trees in the summer night sky as they drove in their new convertible, a wedding gift from longtime friend and fellow X-Man, Warren Worthington III, along the country lanes toward Salem Center. If Jane Somerset were near, the town seemed a likely starting place, and Jean suggested it.

  But Jean paid little attention to the romantic moon or the rush of wind through her hair or the beauty of the night. She closed her eyes. Unable to find a trail, she opened her mind, all her psychic senses, and called Jane Somerset’s name. No answer came, nor any sense of a presence. Yet unexpectedly, Jean Grey felt an overwhelming grief and a regret deeper than she could bear.

  An image of bombs flashed through her mind. Jean flinched and forced it away. She wasn’t asleep this time, and she wanted no more of such images. She concentrated, instead, on other images from the dream, on wedding invitations, on Captain Stephen Maxwell.

  As if from a great distance, she heard the sound of bells in her mind. They faded, replaced by a sound like weeping that also faded.

  Jean rubbed her eyes and sat more erect in the car seat. “If Jane Somerset is a psi, then she’s a low-level one. I don’t know why I can’t make contact with her. I’ve tried; I’m trying now. But on the astral plane I got an image when I touched her light. Just a flash of something—a church steeple, I think.”

  Through the quiet streets of Salem Center they drove past coffee shops and antique stores, restaurants and the lone movie theater. The town seemed a place out of time, tranquil and safe in its storybook isolation.

  “Stop,” Jean said suddenly, her hand clutching on Scott’s right arm.

  The Salem Center Congregational Methodist Church rose up on the left side of the street, stark and black without a light in its stained-glass windows. Its tall steeple thrust upward at the moon. Jean felt a shiver of recognition, and opening the car door, got out.

  “No one’s home,” Scott observed.

  “Let’s walk,” Jean insisted.

  Hand in hand, they strolled the sidewalk and up the steps to the church doors, which they found locked. With the smallest part of her power, Jean mind-probed the interior. Indeed, it was empty, but a parish house stood at the south end of the church, and the minister, with an armload of groceries, was juggling a key at his door.

  “Hi!” Jean called, waving.

  Startled, the minister nearly dropped keys and groceries both. “Oh, me,” he exclaimed nervously. He peered at them with momentary suspicion, then relaxed. “Can I be of service to you young people?”

  Scott introduced Jean and himself and shook hands with the grayhaired reverend. “We were wondering,” he said conversationally after they’d exchanged a few pleasantries, “do you know a Jane Somerset or perhaps a Stephen Maxwell?”

  “We think they used to live around here,” Jean lied sweetly.

  The minister set his groceries down and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Jane, you say?” He rubbed his chin again. “Why no. We do have a Martha Somerset on our membership roles, a longtime parishoner, wonderful woman, though she doesn’t attend services much anymore. Quite old, you know. But no one by the name of—”

  Jean gripped Scott’s arm. The sound of bells layered over the explosions of bombs filled her head. Her knees buckled momentarily at the unexpected onslaught before she blocked it out. “It’s all right,” she said, steadying herself. “Just a bit of dizziness.”

  But the minister’s suspicions were once again aroused. Bending, he recovered his sack of groceries and inserted his key into the door’s lock. “It’s quite late,” he said. “Do come back for one of our services. Good night, good night.” Then he was inside and the lock clicked shut.

  Biting her lip, Jean reluctantly reached inside the minister’s mind and seized the address of Martha Somerset. She hated invading people in such a manner, but a sense of urgency compelled her. “I know we’re close,” she told Scott. “The images are so intense!”

  Martha Somerset lived in the oldest part of Salem Center where the homes were all Victorian and stately, though some were faded and in need of repair. Scott parked the car at the curb before such a house, and leaned across Jean to stare at the structure. A few lights burned in the windows, though the hour was late. Getting out, they walked side by side up the cracked sidewalk, past neat flower beds, to a door with leaded glass windows. Scott pushed the doorbell.

  An antique little face peered from behind a sheer lace curtain, before opening the door. Her hair was thinning gray, and little flesh clung to her bones. Yet her eyes sparkled, and she regarded them with none of the minister’s nervousness as she wiped her hands on a lace apron.

  “Martha Somerset?” Scott inquired.

  “Yes?” She looked them both up and down.

  Jean took Scott’s hand, interlacing her fingers with his. “I know it’s late,” she said apologetically. “But do you know a Jane Somerset?”

  The old woman’s eyes widened. “Why, Jane’s my sister!” She threw back the door and beckoned them into a foyer with flowered wallpaper. An old coatrack stood behind the door, and against one wall, an upright piano. “However do you know Jane?” she asked. “And may I get you some tea?”

  Even without her telepathic power. Jean sensed Martha Somerset’s loneliness, but also her sincerity and warmth. She liked the old woman immediately. “Is Jane here?” Jean asked. “Please, I have to know.”

  Now Martha stood back for a moment and examined Jean closely, and her cheerfulness quietly faded. “Oh my, no,” she said. “The news isn’t very good, I’m afraid. But I’m forgetting my manners. Let me get you that tea.”

  She ushered them into a sitting room off the side of the foyer and returned a few moments later with a silver tray upon which sat an English brown Betty teapot, china cups, and saucers. She poured three cups and distributed them.

  “Jane’s been very' ill, hasn’t she?” Jean said, restarting the conversation. “In and out of the hospital.”

  Martha Somerset nodded as she balanced her cup and saucer expertly on the palm of her left hand. “I had her transferred from San Francisco to a hospital here just last week,” Martha told them. “We grew up here, you know, and I just couldn’t afford that expensive place anymore. But the strain of another move was too much, and she’s had a stroke.”

  “But she is here,” Scott said, “in Salem Center?”

  “Please,” Jean said, leaning forward. “I know you have no reason to trust us, but I must see her.”

  Again, Martha seemed to study Jean. She took a sip of her tea, then set the cup back on the tray. “You hear her, don’t you?” she said to Jean.

  Scott and Jean exchanged glances. “What do you mean?” Scott asked.

  “I used to hear her sometimes, too,” she answered. “I took care of her for a while, you know, when I was younger. Maybe hear isn’t the right word. But I knew when she needed things: another blanket, a sip of water, or when she was awake. She let me know, though she never spoke another word from the day Stephen died, and of course she was quite deaf.” Martha shook her head sadly. “She never got over Stephen’s death.”

  Jean said. �
�They were to be married?”

  Martha nodded, her face serious. “She is talking to you. No one in this town but me remembers that. They were going to get married right over at the Methodist church on Christmas Day. But she was an army nurse at Hickam Field, you know, right up from Pearl Harbor.” She took a sip of her tea. “I never married, myself.”

  Jean touched her head. The sound of bells and bombs echoed softly in the back of her skull. An urgency filled Jean. She had no doubt now that Jane Somerset was calling to her. “Please, Miss Somerset,” she set her teacup down. “Martha—tell me where she is?”

  Martha brushed her hands over the lap of her neat lace apron. “Why, she’s up on Harvard Street in St. Anne’s Convalescent Home.” Jean rose to her feet. “Let’s go see her,” she said.

  Martha’s eyes widened again. Then she slapped her knees. “It’s a little past visiting hours” she said, rising. “But I can get us in.”

  The staff nurse was firm—only one visitor at a time, so Jean went in alone. Jane Somerset lay comatose amid a spiderweb of intravenous tubes; she’d never regained consciousness after the stroke. Jean approached the bed, gazing down at the frail, almost skeletal form on the sheets. Martha had told them much on the drive over.

  Deafened by a bomb blast, unable or unwilling to speak or even communicate after her ordeal, Jane had spent most of her life in hospitals and institutions. At first, a brain injury had been blamed, and there was a scar from a wound over her left eye to suggest it, but no such injury could be found. Insanity, some others suggested, or trauma-induced catatonia. Whatever the cause, Jane Somerset had lived most of her life sealed inside her own mind.

  But Jean knew the cause. Reaching out, she touched the parchmentlike skin of Jane’s hand, and as she did so, she remembered a childhood friend named Annie Richards. Struck by a car, Annie had died in Jean’s arms. That tragedy had triggered Jean’s still-latent telepathic abilities at a young age. Mind-locked with Annie, Jean had nearly died with her friend—would have died, but for the intervention of Professor Charles Xavier.

  But for Jane, there had been no Professor, and for all intents and purposes, on December 7, 1941, she had died with her beloved Stephen.

  She squeezed Jane’s hand. “I’m here,” she whispered.

  It was only Jane’s unconscious mind, after all these years, that was reaching out in her final hours, trying to make contact with someone, to tell her story. Had she not come to Salem Center, she might have gone unheard. But in Jean, she had found a kindred soul. “I’m so glad to meet you,” Jean told her.

  An image unfolded in Jean’s mind of a desk at a window and wedding invitations piled high, and bells pealed in her ears—wedding bells. There were no bombs in the background this time, just sadness and regret. Through the touch of their hands, Jean felt Jane’s life slipping away with a sensation and certainty few others could ever know.

  Chewing her lip, Jean slipped from the room into the corridor and down the hall to a waiting area where Scott sat quietly with Martha. The two had obviously struck up a friendship. “There’s a place I know,” Jean explained, kneeling down beside Martha as she reached out for Scott’s hand, “where anything is possible. Will you trust me?”

  Martha regarded her without blinking. “If it’s for Jane, I’ll do anything,” she said. “We’ve both lived a long time.”

  Jean smiled softly. “Then go to sleep,” she said, sending the telepathic command into Martha’s brain. The old woman sighed and eased back on the waiting room couch.

  She turned to Scott and her smile became mischievous. “Well, handsome, would you meet me at the altar a second time?”

  His brow furrowed with suspicion over his ruby quartz lenses. “What are you up to?” When she only arched her eyebrows, he answered, “I’d meet you there a dozen times.”

  “Great,” she said, grinning, “but I won’t be the bride this time.” Before he could protest, she touched that furrow above his glasses. “Sleep.” He slumped back in his chair.

  Jean returned to Jane Somerset’s room. The lights of Salem Center shone outside the window; she pulled the drapes, and moved to the bedside again to take Jane’s hand.

  Closing her eyes, she felt beyond the walls of the room for the minds of Scott and Martha Somerset. Then, taking them in tow, she plunged deep into the dormant mind of Jane Somerset, past her sleeping conscious mind, past the layers and layers of her subconscious and deeper still to that very core mind where all that remained of Jane Somerset’s self-awareness resided.

  Jane Somerset, a young girl in a crisp white nurse’s uniform with gold wings on the collar, regarded her with a shy smile. In her mind, time had not passed. “Hello,” she said. “I know you, don’t I?”

  “It’s time to get ready,” Jean said. “Stephen is waiting; the service is about to begin.”

  Jane Somerset looked confused, then she brightened. “Stephen?” “Come with me,” Jean said, holding out her hand.

  Nervously, Jane Somerset reached out. As their fingers brushed, Jean shifted them to the astral plane where all things were possible to a strong enough mind, and hers was one of the strongest.

  Jane Somerset’s uniform metamorphosed into a wedding gown, the very one she once had dreamed of wearing. Jean had plucked the pattern from Jane’s memories. "He’s waiting for you,” Jean said, pointing. An organ swelled with the familiar strains of the Bridal March. “There’s the music. Go to him now. Be happy.”

  The astral plane bent to Jean’s mind and became a chapel. Scott, clad in captain’s dress uniform, waited at the altar, and with him, Jane’s sister, Martha, much younger and tearful in the white gown of a bridesmaid.

  Scott’s thoughts reached out to her, for on the astral plane words were unnecessary. “What role are you playing?”

  “What else?” Jean answered, her red hair spilling loosely past her white collar and over the shoulders of her black suit. “I’m the minister.” “Are you sure you remember the words?” Scott grinned.

  Jane Somerset arrived at his side, radiant, beaming with happiness. “I’ve dreamed of this moment, Stephen,” she whispered. “Now we have all our lives together.”

  “Her power was completely latent,” Jean told Scott over coffee in the mansion’s kitchen. The Sunday afternoon sun was sinking slowly outside the window. It would be dark soon, and their fellow X-Men would return home. She and Scott had spent the day trying their best to clean up the library. “The shock of the attack activated it suddenly, and just as suddenly the trauma of Stephen’s death shut it down until, sensing her own approaching death, a small subconscious part of her reached out again.”

  She grew silent and stared into her coffee. “If the Professor hadn’t been there for me when Annie died . . .” She pushed the cup back.

  “We’ve buried a lot of friends, Scott,” she said. “I don't think I’ve felt closer to any of them.”

  Scott reached across the table for her hand, but the phone rang. Picking up the receiver, he spoke a few quiet words, then hung up. “That was Martha,” he said, his voice subdued. “It’s over.”

  Jean gazed out the window at the red sun that hung on the horizon.