A Magic King

by Jade Lee

  As Jane watched, she saw his figure, slowly becoming part of the computer. He reached into machinery, checking power flow, rerouting software. Soon, his form became indistinct as he spent more and more time within the hardware.

  "It took a long time before I ventured outside again. Time had little meaning to me, and I think it must have been years. Eventually, I left to explore the land, but I was too much part of the equipment I nurtured. I traveled along the telephone wires, old power lines, whatever I could find."

  The view followed him, still neat and tidy in his pinstriped suit, pushing through the debris of a nine-story building, now collapsed in on itself. He traveled along old metal and exposed wires, occasionally dropping below ground before surfacing somewhere else.

  Once outside, Jane had to restrain her gasp of horror. The land was dead, scarred by radiation; filth and destruction everywhere she turned. The few people she saw were sick, their eyes feverish with hatred from the daily struggle to survive. They banded together in tiny knots of gangs, preying on one another like vermin.

  Dr. Beavesly saw it all, but they never saw him.

  "That's when I began to realize I was dead. It wasn't a clear thought. It would take even longer before it crystallized into a conscious possibility. Actually, I think only now, as I breathe and think and feel with you, do I really understand. I'm dead." He looked surprised. "I'm really dead."

  The Dr. Beavesly in the landscape continued to walk, moving silently and swiftly through the world. There was snow everywhere. Snow and blood and filth. But time continued swiftly, sliding by her as the snow at first covered the sick and the dead alike, eventually melting to reveal a brown and dead land.

  "Where are the people?" she asked. "Did they all die?"

  "Most. But a few survived. Others changed."

  "What do you mean—changed?"

  He pointed and she saw a young man, dying from grotesque lesions covering his skin. He crawled to a dirty river that moved brown and sluggish through the mud. The man didn't make it there in time.

  Just as with Dr. Beavesly, she saw the man fall, dropping to the ground to die, but his spirit continued to crawl, finally making it into the river.

  "He joined with the river. He uses his energies, his spirit to cleanse the water and keep it alive."

  Jane tensed, a sudden flash of insight making her shake. "That's the river I bathed in, the one Daken cleansed. That's—"

  "That's the Old One who spoke to you. Yes."

  Jane turned slowly, watching the images flow through her landscape. "Did everyone do that?"

  "Many did, and they still live here today. Others found a different way."

  This time, she saw a woman, weak from starvation, drop wearily beneath a twisted and sickly sapling. She wasn't on the verge of death, but she was gravely ill. She lay still beneath the sapling, and Jane began to think the woman had indeed died. But then there was a blurring. The images grew indistinct as though both tree and woman flowed together.

  Time passed, and still the woman didn't move. The tree grew stronger, and the woman never died.

  "She was the first dryad."

  "A what?"

  "Tree and woman, together. She kept her body, but she is part of the tree too. They both strengthen each other."

  "That's not possible."

  "Of course, it is. You forget, Jane, this land literally pulsed with radiation. It burned in the air, saturated the ground."

  Looking up, Jane could almost see the heat hovering in the air, surrounding and filling everything. "Everything should have died."

  "Died or changed."

  "But—"

  "The radiation is what the people today call the source of power. Magic."

  "Magic!" Jane nearly laughed at the word. The life she understood was grounded in science, not fairy tales.

  "People changed. They adapted, learning how to tap into all that radiation as a type of personal power."

  "And that power let them—" She waved at the woman-tree. "Let them do that?"

  "It was the only way to survive. And it worked. Some became dryads or other spirits of the earth. Some linked with animals becoming cat people, spider walkers, moles. The list goes on and on."

  Jane shuddered and her mind balked at the types of creatures that could emerge. "All from radiation?"

  "It was a combining of life forces. It was the only way to survive."

  "And everyone did this?"

  "Almost. A few, like the kings, changed their genetic code or mutated in other ways."

  Her heart lodged in her throat and beat painfully fast. "The kings? Like Daken?"

  "His ancestors were truly blessed. They became the healers."

  "Doctors?"

  "No. They actually thrive on radiation, drawing on it and their own energies to heal others."

  "That's what he did to the river?" She had a vivid flash of Daken lying exhausted in a crystal clear river. "He draws on the radiation as an energy source—"

  "And shapes it. That is his particular magic."

  "And the other stuff. The language spell. How does that work?"

  "Just as Daken can shape the radiation around him, others have learned to shape and control it in specific ways. Therefore, a world of magic." Scattered about her were people, some old, some young, accidentally discovering what she would call magic spells. A boy stares at a pile of sticks and suddenly they burst into flames. An old man desperate for a way across a ravine shapes with his hands what looks like a glowing energy wave. Like a surfer, he rides it across the chasm. A mother uses a glowing needle and thread to stitch closed a hole in a pair of socks.

  Jane felt the first workings of awe seep through her system. "It's an ability to shape and use the radiation. Wow."

  Dr. Beavesly turned, and they both watched as the land slowly recovered, becoming lush and green again. "Wow," he agreed softly.

  A thought tugged at Jane as the concepts began to take root. "But the radiation is dissipating, right? I mean, eventually it will fade away."

  "Not completely, but yes. Each generation struggles to accomplish what their parents did."

  "Then Daken's children—"

  "Will have to work twice as hard to accomplish half as much."

  "They've got to do the work now, then. While they still can." Even in the midst of the beauty that continued to flow past them, Jane saw the scars. She saw the ugly and the evil, the festering wounds of the land that time hadn't yet erased. "How long has it been?"

  "Over two hundred years."

  "And you've been here all this time? Why?"

  He smiled, and Jane suddenly noticed that his face glowed. His slight aura of light was now a bright light burning through him. She could still see his face and form, but it only barely contained the radiance within him.

  "Dr. Beavesly?"

  "I told you, Jane. I've been waiting for you."

  "For me?"

  "Even from the beginning, I don't know how, but I knew I had to wait for you. I knew you were coming."

  "What?" Jane tried to read his expression, but the light within him grew even brighter, making him harder and harder to look at.

  "I've saved this equipment, saved all this knowledge for you. It's your job now to bring it to the people. "

  "But how did I..." She swallowed. "How can I..."

  Suddenly it all came crashing in on her. What moments ago had been an intellectual exercise, a man relating a story to her, became suddenly clear. Finally she linked it together with her own life.

  She hadn't been transported in space to another world. She'd been transported in time. To Earth's future where a ghost had merged with a computer, saving the knowledge of her world so she could pass it on.

  "This is Earth," she breathed, still caught up in the shock.

  It all made sense. That's why there were names for elves and dwarves and dragons. The words were there in English so when someone merged with a tree, the name "dryad" was already in the language. If someone joined with a
lizard, the root was there for "dragon".

  She pressed her hands to her temples, her fingers shaking as she tried to hold off a headache. "I can't go home," she moaned. "There is no home left."

  "You are home, Jane. Two hundred years in the future."

  "But my job, my friends, my family." She nearly choked on the panic.

  "They've been dead for two hundred years."

  She looked around the gray landscape, the black swirls of horror already creeping across the horizon. "But I don't want to be here. I don't want to do this. I'm not some white knight who can save the world."

  "It's already done, Jane. You 're the only one there is."

  "But I don't even understand this world. I'm not trained in sociology or politics. I don't even speak the language."

  "You will. I can pass you my memories of the last two hundred years. You will know all I've seen and heard. You'll even speak the languages of the people and the high court."

  "No!" Jane reached out to clutch him, but his body was so blindingly bright she couldn't see to get close. And that only made her more frightened. "You know this stuff," she cried. "You do it!"

  "I can't. I'm already dead." His voice was like a whisper in her head. A soft, soothing sound, useless against the clamor of fear in her heart. "You can do it, Jane. God has chosen you."

  "God? God! How can you speak of God after all this?" With a sweep of her hand, she brought back the first horrifying images of nuclear holocaust—the diseased children, the violent gangs, all the festering evil that man can create.

  "That was man's work. God gave us free will. That means He can't stop us from evil, but He will help us work toward good."

  "No!" she sobbed, pleading with the man who was now a glowing brilliance that both surrounded and suffused her. "Please," she begged. "Not me. I don't know what to do."

  "It's already been done."

  Then there were no more sounds, no more words, only light burning within her. It was Dr. Beavesly's last benediction, the blessings of a ghost, dead two hundred years.

  After the light receded from her mind, Jane remained. She sat cramped in a corner of the old Op's office, seeing the room now as the remnants of the computer center she'd worked in before the holocaust that destroyed her world. She took a shuddering breath then closed her eyes, not wanting to see anything, do anything, or even think anything. The only sound was the coarse echo of her ragged breathing.

  But she couldn't stop herself from knowing. Dr. Beavesly had given her two hundred years of memories. Like a drawer in her mind, a file she could access at will, she held the lifeless images absorbed by Dr. Beavesly as he watched the Earth's people recover from a holocaust.

  She now knew the truth.

  And she hated it.

  Chapter 7

  It took a long time before Jane opened her eyes. She wanted to become comfortable, or at least less resentful, of the extra information in her mind. Dr. Beavesly's memories weren't exactly an intrusion as much as an added weight she had to absorb. And she didn't think she could do that and deal with anything new at the same time.

  So she kept her eyes closed. She dropped her head back against the wall and steadied her breathing. She reached for and found Daken's hand, clutching it, needing his silent reassurance as she sat, trying to get comfortable with her own mind.

  Finally, she opened her eyes.

  The room was dark, empty of all but three other people. Daken she knew, so she focused on the other two. One appeared a young man with wavy, long brown hair, dark green eyes, and ears that curved into a clear point. He wore a simple white tunic over his willowy form and dark skin.

  Unbidden, Dr. Beavesly's memories pressed forward, and she spoke the thoughts aloud as if reading them off a screen.

  "I see a ten-year old boy climbing a crumbling wall while your mother screams for you to come down."

  Across from her, the man didn't move, but he was alert, his eyes bright and dark. "What else do you see?" he asked.

  She paged through her new information, shifting through images like a woman flipping through files until she found the right one.

  "I see a man struggling to harness an energy he doesn't understand. Your hands glow as you try to press it into a ball, but it doesn't work. The energy dissipates and your hands are badly burned. A healer," she glanced over at Daken, "I mean, a king heals you. It took another seven years before you mastered it."

  The man nodded though his hands curled slightly inward as though in remembered pain.

  Jane looked at him, summarizing as she finally placed him in her own memories. "You are Ginsen, the Elven Lord, bound with the ivy that grows on these buildings. Your lifespan has been extended by hundreds of years and so you are doomed..." She cut off her words, horrified by what she'd just learned from Dr. Beavesly's memories.

  But Ginsen finished for her, completing her sentence in a voice both mellow and hushed. "Doomed to be the first born and last to die of my line. I will watch my children and their children's children pass on before me.

  "I'm sorry." What did you say to a man who would see all he loved most die before him?

  "There are worse fates."

  Jane turned her attention to the second figure, the dark man in the dark robe who had angered her so much earlier. Again, paging through the information left to her, she came upon a strange image.

  "I see a small boy, age three, with straggly hair and an innocent smile. The power runs like water through his hands and he plays with it, throwing it like a ball against walls and trees. His parents are terrified. His neighbors," she stopped, her breath catching at the image, but the memory wouldn't stop and so she kept speaking. "His neighbors brand him the devil's child. They kill his parents, burn his lands, and cast him into... a pit. No, it's an old warehouse. He's left there to die."

  Her heart went out to the child, as apparently did Dr. Beavesly's. The ghost waited until dark, then pushed an old power line into the pit so the boy could climb out. He then walked with the child until they found a poor farmer who was all too grateful for an extra pair of hands. But before leaving, Dr. Beavesly whispered Ginsen's name. "Find the Elven Lord," he said. "He will accept you."

  The memories shifted, focusing on someone else, so Jane pushed it away, looking again at the dark, handsome man before her. Kyree smiled coldly, spreading his arms, his palms turned up. "As you can see, I didn't die."

  "No," she said, carefully finding the next image of him. "You came before the Elven Lord as an adolescent, already powerful and seeking more power." The young man she saw in her memory stood proud and haughty before the Ginsen, daring him with word and stance to deny the knowledge he sought. "You have been here for nearly twenty years, learning and gaining in power. You are now considered the most powerful wizard alive."

  "And I have only just begun to learn." His voice was quiet in the still room, but she heard the steely determination beneath his calm exterior.

  The silence descended again. The men didn't move, waiting for her, but Jane was busy containing the memories surfacing within her mind like the overflow from a cauldron. She had to learn how to close the lid on her thoughts.

  "And what of me?" Daken's gentle tones filtered through her thoughts. "What do you see when you look at me?"

  Jane turned to Daken, struggling once again with her memories. Dr. Beavesly hadn't traveled to his lands often. She saw his mother, pregnant with him, his older brother running about her feet. Then years later, she saw him as a shocked young man grieving alone at night by her grave. The rest was a confused wash of images running too fast through her mind. Eventually, she stopped trying.

  She looked back at Daken, his angular face drawn tight with strain, his dark blue eyes pinched by lines of fatigue. "I see the man who saved my life. A man who has now fulfilled his mother's prophesy and can take his seat on the Council."

  She saw Daken's jaw clench and his hands tighten almost imperceptibly on the hilt of the sword. To the others, it probably seemed as though he hadn't
moved, but Jane knew he fought an internal war. His one harsh word betrayed the intensity of his emotions.

  "No!" The word nearly exploded out of him, and Jane was surprised by the hatred briefly flashing across his face.

  "Daken?"

  "You are the Keeper of the Knowledge. You will take the Council seat." His words were abrupt, almost brutal, though he tried to soften his tone.

  "No!" The word was harsh in her throat, but it was as vehement as when she screamed it to the fading image of Dr. Beavesly. Suddenly all the words, all the images and thoughts and fears became too much for her. She rebelled at everything she had learned, denied its possibility, denied even the information of her senses.

  And the resulting confusion led to anger.

  "No, Daken. I don't belong here. I already told you that. I don't want to be on the Council, I don't want to be your Keeper of Knowledge, I don't want any of this. All I want is to go home!" She heard how childish she sounded as the words echoed back to her in the chamber. She felt like a two-year old throwing a fit in front of the President of the United States.

  But all she could think of, the thought that haunted her as she glared at the startled men around her, was that her mother was dead. Her beautiful mother with the wispy gray hair and the rich chocolate-colored eyes. Her mother who worked two jobs to put her miscreant daughter through school. The one who kissed both of Jane's eyelids and told her how proud she was even after Jane failed her doctorate orals. The woman who finally retired to Florida for a well- deserved life filled with bridge and golfing. That woman was dead.

  And had been for over two hundred years.

  Suddenly Jane was screaming, running blindly from a knowledge and a reality too harsh to bear. Her mother's image followed her as Jane tore from the room, stumbling through the courtyard until she finally fell face first in a long grassy plain.

  Her mother was dead.

  * * *

  She didn't know how long she lay there. The ground was damp from her tears, the grass cold, and the world filled with the utter blackness of a night unpolluted by electrical lights. Pressed against her back, she felt a long, warm body. Slowly turning her head, she recognized the panther resting beside her. The cat wasn't asleep. She lay on the grass, her black eyes alert, her ears pricked for sounds, as though she guarded Jane.