by Russell Moon
But I realize, after walking along in a haze of what I have to confess is a sort of power-induced intoxication, that I am not headed toward my home, my mother, my dog, my stream and my sanity. I realize, just before I arrive, that I am going to Dr. Spence’s.
Going right to the top, as far as I can tell.
I am ringing the doorbell, once, twice, and thrice, before anyone has a chance to answer it. Then I am knocking, over and over again.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Dr. Spence says a little testily as he slings the door open. “Oh, Marcus, what an unexpected pleasure. Please come on in.” He gestures me in with all the grace I cannot offer him. He seems too happy to see me.
“Look who’s here,” he says, just as she comes down the hall to see.
Eleanor.
“Eleanor?” I say.
“Marcus?” she says.
Spence just smiles.
“What are you doing here?” Eleanor and I say at once.
“Who is the mother here?” she says angrily.
“No, really, El,” I say, completely flustered by this. The thought of her here, in this house, with Spence, is making me sick to my stomach.
“No, you really,” she says. We are, for the moment, the two rudest people possible, caring not a whit how we are acting in front of this guy. At least, I am not caring.
“Let’s go,” I say.
She goes completely red in the face. She looks back and forth, from me to Spence and back again, the way you do when you’re trying to nonverbally tell somebody to stop embarrassing you. I do not take the hint.
“Why are you here?” I demand, sounding petulant.
“Listen,” Spence says, “how about if we all sit down to a cup of tea.”
“No,” we both snap at once. On one level, Eleanor and I are very much in sync.
“Go on home, Marcus,” she says. “Dr. Spence and I are working. I will speak to you when I get home.”
“Come with me,” I say. I cannot—literally cannot—leave her here alone with him. It would take a shotgun—more, even—to get me to leave here without her now.
“Marcus Aurelius,” she says, appalled at me. I don’t care.
“I’m not well,” I say, finally, desperately.
She growl-whispers at me. Again, a sign of embarrassment in front of company. “That is apparent,” she says.
I have only one tack left. But I must try everything.
“Please?” I plead. “Mom? Please?”
I cannot fail to get her attention, or to convince her of my seriousness, when I use her maternal title.
But that doesn’t mean she’ll go happily.
“I am sorry, Dr. Spence,” she says in a more mannered tone than necessary. “But as you know, Marcus hasn’t been entirely himself of late….”
“No need to apologize,” he says, graciously. “I understand everything.”
I’d been half-ignoring him till now, or at least making an effort not to look directly at him. But as he says this, I must look to see what he means by this remark.
He is indeed smiling. But it is not the kind of leer that indicates he has put something over on me, that he has scored points off of me, or that he has some secret, illicit knowledge beyond even what I already know.
Entirely different. It is a sort of kindness. A kindly smile, a familiar and benevolent smile.
It is, as much as I understand such a thing, a fatherly smile.
It shakes me to my roots.
I fairly haul Eleanor out of the house and down the front porch stairs with her still calling back that she will phone him later and that everything will be all right.
“Are you finally out of your mind, Marcus?” she demands to know after she has roughly shaken loose of my hand a ways down the road.
“How come you had to be there?” is my version of an answer to her question.
“How come I have to answer to you, is more to the point,” she says.
“Because,” I say, absolutely jamming on the brakes before saying anything more. Before saying any of the several things I might say that could make everything even worse.
Because I don’t know, do I? I don’t know what I am going to do, or who I’m going to do it to, or who I’m going to do it with. They are all bad guys. I cannot tell her about my father—because according to him, it would put her in danger. I cannot tell her about Spence for the same reason. Who is to say that if Spence gets cornered, he won’t expose the presence of my father and attempt to enlist my mother to aid in his destruction?
I’m simply not sure I’m ready to see him dead yet. And I’m certainly not ready to see Eleanor risk herself trying.
But maybe, just maybe, the third option is still somehow a possibility.
“We have to get out of here, Eleanor,” I say.
“Don’t start this again, Marcus.”
“Things are not good here,” I say. “It’s not working. I’m not happy.”
“Well I am good here,” she shouts, near tears. “And I am working, Marcus. And after all … after everything … you can just get happy.”
Whoa. I never saw this coming. She is coming all over emotional, in a way she does not ordinarily allow. I don’t like it. I want to reverse it, get this wicked genie back in its bottle.
But I can’t.
“It’s my time,” she says. “I have good work here. I have a life here, Marcus. And now there’s even more future for me, because Dr. Spence has gotten me even further involved at the college, to the point where I will be working on campus regularly. That’s a life, Marcus, do you understand? And it’s a future too. Do you at all understand?”
I unfortunately think I do.
“And not that I have to justify myself any further to you, but I happen to find Dr. Spence a fine man. A kind and warm man. And I am fortunate to have connected with him.”
Fortunate is the word that rings in my head. Isn’t it magical, the way fortune shines.
“I don’t like him,” I say. Proving I cannot control what comes out of my mouth after all.
“What,” she says through gritted teeth, “could you possibly have against him?”
Oh. Damn. Now where do I go? I can’t, can I? No, I can’t. Not yet anyway.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You don’t know.”
She is repeating my words now, since I really am making rational conversation almost impossible. We have reached the point where something’s got to give. Something’s got to be coming here.
“You don’t like the man. You don’t know why you don’t like the man. And you would like us to move to Alaska, for no concrete reason. Have I got that, son?”
If this were not so serious, this would be a perfect me—Eleanor moment. If we were not talking about precisely what we are not talking about, I could say something like ya, that all sounds pretty nuts, El, but it ain’t nothin’ compared to the honest truth.
But I know I can’t.
However, there is something I can let her in on. Something I really must, finally, let her in on. I can keep the information quite specific, not bring anyone else into it. Hell, that’ll be enough, won’t it?
“Right,” I say. “Well actually, I do have something to tell you. Something to show you, to be precise.”
“Then show me, Marcus,” she says in a weary, but tolerant Eleanor voice. My Eleanor voice. We will be all right, I am certain of it now. I am doing the right thing, what I have to do. “Show me, and by all means, do be precise.”
I take her by the hand, much more gently this time, over the small footbridge that is the most direct route from here to the woods.
“What are you doing, Marcus?” Eleanor says tentatively as we emerge through the woods, through the clearing, reaching my tree. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it here. I don’t like what I’m feeling.”
I steady her, holding her by the shoulders, although I probably need more steadying than she does. I know full well how ferocious her feelings are on the subject of mag
ic. But even more unsettling than that is the memory of when I last attempted this revelation, at another tree, in another woods, with Jules. I shudder at the memory of that past, at my guilt which, in the fever and confusion of everything else, can sometimes blessedly be if not forgotten, then ignored.
I hold Eleanor still, staring into her eyes.
She sees my eyes, sees something familiar and unwelcome, and turns sharply away.
“Eleanor,” I say.
“I hate this place,” she says.
“Why?”
“It gives me the creeps. This is a bad place. It just feels like a bad place. I want to get out of here, Marcus. Right now.”
“Not just yet,” I say. “First …”
The wind, out of nowhere—rather out of everywhere, since it seems to hit from all directions—starts to blow. It is a hot, desert wind, and it stirs the trees, the dirt and leaves and pine needles off the ground. It leans on us, makes us have to brace ourselves for stability.
“Marcus,” she says, clearly unhinged now. “Marcus, let’s go.”
“No,” I say calmly, and take several steps back from her. She can see it coming and rushes up to me, refusing to let this happen.
Chuck comes galloping out of the forest to lie sphinx-like by my side.
“I knew you’d be here somehow,” she shouts at him, accusingly.
I start to raise my arms, and Eleanor immediately flattens them back down to my sides.
“No,” she says, tears welling up in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Eleanor,” I say, feeling myself start to go as well.
“Not again,” she says, crying freely this time, straining to be heard above the swirl and crash of the wind attacking the trees. “Please God, not again.”
“I’m a witch, Eleanor,” I say, sadly. I am sadder, madder about it than I have been at any time before. “I don’t want to be, but I am.”
“Damn you!” she screams, right in my face, right through my face, with a greater force than the hurricane around us. But it feels like it is not me she is screaming at. Or maybe that is merely what I hope.
“How many times can one life be ruined?” she screams.
“We can run,” I say, simply, weakly, unconvincingly. “We can leave it behind somehow, get away somehow.”
“You cannot run away from it,” she says, practically spitting at me. “You are it, Marcus. You cannot leave it behind. It will not leave you behind.”
She knows, of course. Of course she knows.
She stands in the eye of our private storm. Staring at me. Staring at Chuck. Tears stream down her face, and she looks suddenly exhausted, defeated, old.
She turns to pure rage. She winds up and kicks Chuck in the side, in the ribs, so hard he cries, a sound like a human baby bawling, and rolls onto his side before hobbling off behind a tree. Then she turns back to me.
Slaps my face, hard. And again, and hard again, and again, harder and harder still, until the side of my face is numb.
I drop my chin to my chest, stare at my feet, and prepare to absorb it for as long as it takes.
Instead, I hear her beat feet, running away. I look up and call in time to see her trip on a tree root, fall onto her hands and knees. I rush to her but she is up and, dirt-caked hands thrust out in my direction, warning me away.
“You stay here, witch boy, where you belong.”
She turns again and, sobbing wildly, is off in the direction of civilization
CHAPTER
6
I thought it was the right thing to do.
It was the right thing to do.
But the right thing and the smart thing are not always the same thing.
I should have known she would have reacted more or less that way. This, to Eleanor, was the worst possible news, the one thing she could never bear. It is the equivalent of a death in our little family.
I wander the woods with Chuck after Eleanor has left us. Of course with Chuck. Chuck is all I have now.
We wander and wander, no aim in sight nor in mind. We wander farther and wider than we have ever gone in these woods, in the Port Cal woods, in any woods anywhere.
Farther, in fact, than I ever imagined these woods could go. It is a massive expanse of forest, covering many miles, containing small waterways, populated with the sounds, if not the sights, of many different kinds of life. Birds chirp and cheep, some in songs completely foreign to my ear. There is scurrying all around, on either side of us, no matter what path we take. Claws dig into bark as this or that creature makes its way up a tree to get a better vantage point to take a gander at the two of us.
Because there is no mistake: Chuck and I are the center of our invisible neighbors’ attention.
Oddly, though, Chuck makes not a single dash to root anything out. His ears do not even twitch, the way they do when something moving under cover catches his attention.
It is as if none of this is new to Chuck, and he is not surprised by any of it. And I surprise myself in turn by not being surprised.
We walk and weave our way with determination through a fluidly changing landscape that moves from entirely coniferous woods, to oak and birch, to dense and viney rainforest. As the landscape changes, the temperature fluctuates, from hot to cold to temperate, and the moisture level changes too, from rain to arid air. We seem for all the world to be traveling all the worlds, through their intertwined network of secret woods. Had I not been the places I have been lately, had I not seen, felt, heard all that I have, this would be unnerving to me. But as it is, as it happens, it doesn’t even feel that strange. I feel somehow right about the incredibly moving world I’m speeding through. I feel almost familiar with it.
I walk blindly but surely, knowing not what lies in front of me, but certain of the fact that I want to walk, to travel, to progress, from the scene that is behind me, the truth, the reality, the shame and sadness that is behind me.
And walk I will. Walk I do. Chuck at my side and occasionally ahead.
Until finally we come upon our destination.
I recognize it as soon as I arrive, even though I have never before seen it, or anything like it.
It is a patch of intense emerald moss, the size and shape of a baseball field. I can smell the moss, the rich vapor of it rising in clouds with every step I take onto the soft carpet of it. I walk, feeling the ground give gently under my feet, until I reach the center of the great wide open. I turn to see my footprints and Chuck’s, still there behind us but closing up quickly, like wounds that instantly heal themselves.
And I make one long rotation where I stand, taking in the majesty of it, of the massive array of stones ten feet, twelve feet, twenty feet tall that stand guard around the rim of the emerald-carpeted field.
This is their place. I know it. I feel it.
“Of course you know this place,” he says from behind me.
I don’t look at him. I continue staring at the stones.
“Because it is likewise your place,” he adds. “In a way.”
“Because I am them,” I say.
“You are not them,” he growls.
“I am not you,” I say defiantly
He does not take up this challenge. He waits. He pats Chuck, I can see out of the corner of my eye, stroking him lovingly. Chuck responds, raising his head, leaning into him.
“You were not supposed to tell her,” he says. “You agreed not to tell her.”
“I agreed not to tell her about you. I didn’t say anything about telling her about me. She had to know.”
“Well, you saw what you did. You have made it much more difficult.”
“Made what more difficult?”
“Protecting her.”
Now I spin to face him.
“Why does she need protecting? What is going to happen to her? Why would my telling her about me change anything?”
“Marcus, these are very bad, bad witches we are dealing with.”
“They say the same thing about you!” I scream, and sh
ove him hard in the chest, as if this were nothing more than a schoolyard fight.
He indulges me, does not respond to it.
“I understand your confusion. But we have to get past this now, because time is not your friend at present.”
“Nobody is my goddamn friend at present!” I say, shoving him twice as hard, sending him a good ten feet backward.
He calmly walks to me again.
“I am your friend, Marcus. I have always been. That is why I left you, to spare you.”
I try my shove move once more.
And feel the shock of it all the way up my bones.
It feels as if I have punched a steel wall with both hands. An electrified steel wall.
He continues. “They do not have our power, Marcus. That is why they fight through other means. In order to finish me, they need you. Just as they needed you and your mother, years and years ago. By telling your mother about this, you have only accelerated things. It could force their hand, so to speak.”
“Would they—?”
“The answer is yes, son. The answer to all questions about the coven that begin with the words would they is yes.”
I go into a panic, begin pacing madly, walking a circle, not knowing what to do, knowing what I have done.
He reaches out, places his long, bony hand on the crown of my head like a skullcap.
I calm. My mind is still a mess, but my heart slows, I can think, I can listen. I can feel myself turning toward my father. Not so much out of a sudden trust as out of desperate need.
“There is still time,” he says. “They will not do anything. Not yet. Dr. Spence is great trouble to us,” he continues. “All vile roads lead to him, which I think you already suspected.”
“Yes,” I say, “and when I found Eleanor there with him …”
A low, terrifying growl comes from him now when I mention this. It appears not to come out of his mouth but down through him, through the ground.
He still has his hand there, atop my head, gripping it, holding me somehow totally within his embrace, when we feel it.
As though responding to a sound in the air that isn’t actually heard, we all—me, Chuck, and my father—prick up and turn to look into the distance, the direction I came from.
