The Druid's Guise: The Complete Trilogy (The Druid's Guise Trilogy)

by Michael J Sanford

  The tsiyyi shouted in surprise and fear as the wind whirled about them. Only Wyatt and Athena remained unfazed. Wyatt drove the wind like a whip. Athena charged for Tug, churning up a cloud of black sand.

  Athena collided with the first tsiyyi, who was too busy looking to the jet sky. He was turned horizontal in an instant and then Athena was atop the one at Tug’s back. Wyatt lost sight of the blade, but never strayed from the wind. Like a puppet master, he tugged at each string, sending a whirlwind through the mob. Bodies dove to the sands, seeking to escape the gale. Wyatt sent it lower, raising a twister of sand and hooded tsiyyi. The night erupted with shouts of pain, bellows of fear, and cries for mercy. I guess they didn’t learn their lesson before. I’ll have to be sure they don’t forget it this time.

  It was over in an instant. Torches burned dimly against the sand, fighting a losing battle against the night. Wounded tsiyyi crawled and stumbled away into the dark. Just like that—Wyatt was victorious.

  But then he heard the cries. Hunched beneath the glow of a lone standing torch, Athena was wailing.

  Wyatt’s heart faltered as he stumbled to her side. Omman knelt in complete silence, but Athena continued to scream, deep echoing shrieks of mourning and rage. Wyatt didn’t need to look to know Tug was dead. A dark shadow wet the sand below the small tsiyyi. His eyes were dim and unmoving, but Wyatt couldn’t shake the notion that the boy was smiling, his whiskers pitched sharply upward.

  “Noooooooooooo,” Athena was screaming. She sat on her heels, hugging a bloodied glass fish and rocking. Her tears glittered in the torchlight.

  Wyatt looked to Omman and thought to speak, but found no words. The tsiyyi sculptor and master glass worker met Wyatt’s gaze, but he couldn’t read the expression.

  Athena’s cries turned to shouts of “Why?” and they became more blood-curdling with each passing moment.

  He couldn’t bare it. I failed again. Wyatt stumbled to his feet and stepped backward, unable to turn his gaze from the slain boy lying crumpled against the sands. A second step caught on a fallen Sidewinder and Wyatt fell to his back with a noiseless gasp. He pulled himself to his knees and caught Athena’s gaze. He couldn’t read it in the darkness, but the feeling it twisted within him spoke volumes. She blamed him. Hated him.

  Athena’s screams faded as she watched Wyatt scuttle and stumble away. Eventually, he fell against the sloped sand dune piled against the side of the last Sand Shrew’s home. Wyatt knew his pendant had awoken before he saw the first twirling sparks. He sensed them coming before the first ethereal vines seized his wrist and yanked it to the sand. He felt like a coward, but was too ashamed to fight the magic.

  Athena was yelling again. She was screaming from the torchlight; shouting at him. But Wyatt couldn’t hear the words. The magic had already swallowed him whole.

  Chapter Five

  THEY WANTED WYATT to tell them where Athena was. Mrs. Heclar, Mr. Gerald, Dr. Forentino, the State Police, Department of Social Services, and the county sheriff. So he did. He told them Athena was in the Realms, though which one he couldn’t be sure of. He told them she was likely still in the Dunes, mourning the loss of an innocent little tsiyyi named Tug, just as he was. Wyatt had tried to control his own emotions at first, but the weight of it became too much to bear and by the third interview he was awash in tears and regret. By the sixth, he was dry, but no less sorrowful.

  They wanted to know where he had been for the previous five days. They wanted to know what made him return, knocking on the front door of Dorm B, clad in the same mismatched socks, athletic shorts, and stained t-shirt he had been wearing when he had disappeared that night with Athena. They also wanted to know why he had attacked Craig the moment the shaggy haired teen had opened the door.

  Wyatt laughed at the last question and said, “Because I hate his face and residents aren’t supposed to open the door. You’re welcome.”

  The interviews broke down after that.

  In all, it took four hours and thirty-seven minutes before he found himself alone in his room. Thirty-seven, he thought. There had been thirty-seven of them. Of course, he wasn’t truly alone; Ms. Abagail occupied the doorway, her feet propped up on the door frame, one hand clutched around her phone, the other twirling the streak of pink in her otherwise jet hair. A can of energy drink sat nearby.

  “How do you always get the short straw?” he asked, watching the sun disappear behind the basketball courts. The tarnished safety glass made it feel false, like he was not looking at a world beyond his room, but a dream.

  “Because I choose the short straw.”

  Wyatt swung his legs over the edge of the bed and leaned toward the doorway. “You like babysitting the crazy kid?”

  “Yep,” she said without missing a beat. “But you’re not crazy.”

  Wyatt grunted. “I wish I were. It’s better than the truth.”

  “And what’s that?” she spoke without looking up. Her thumb was a blur over the small touchscreen.

  What was the truth? “I’m a failure,” he said at last.

  Ms. Abagail looked up at that and scowled at Wyatt. “Don’t say that, Wyatt. You’re not a failure. You just...got crap to deal with. Everyone does. Especially here.”

  “Everyone I care about dies or disappears,” he said and felt his chest tighten.

  “Can I tell you a story?”

  Wyatt shrugged. He had grown to fear the silence. There was no telling the secrets it held. The only thing worse was the shadows. He looked around the room and shuddered.

  “When I was little,” she said, leaning her head into the room. “My dad traveled a lot. For business. He had this old worn briefcase that he always set at the front door when he was getting ready to leave. I remember the way it smelled…like dirt and shoe polish. I would hold onto it as tight as I could, forcing him to lift me off the ground with it. I told him that I would have shut myself inside if I could have fit. He would laugh, pull me to his chest, still clinging to the briefcase, and hug me.” Ms. Abagail paused to take a sip from the tall can of the caffeinated soda that was never far from reach. Her eyes were distant, full of something Wyatt couldn’t identify, but something he wanted all the same.

  “I’d ask him when he’d be back,” she continued after belching quietly. “He would set me down, and say ‘I’ll be back before you can close your eyes, spin, and count to ten.’ And so, I would. And when I’d open my eyes he’d be gone, but I wasn’t mad. It wasn’t a trick. It was our little game. One day, when I was ten, he picked me up with his briefcase and hugged me, just like he always did. I asked when he’d be back and I spun, counting to ten…” She looked at Wyatt and sighed, a half smile arcing beneath heavy eyes. “…And that was the last time I ever saw him.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Ms. Abagail sighed again and brushed her hair behind her ears. A half dozen shining studs lined her ears and Wyatt caught a glimpse of a small tattoo at the base of her left ear, tucked behind the lobe. It was a date: 8/19/98.

  “My mom told me he had died trying to save a family from a burning car,” she said with a muffled laugh that was more of a cough. “I knew it was a lie. The edge of her mouth always curled when she lied. When I was older I found out that he had run off with a new family. He had another wife, another kid. He even had another dog. Baxter…”

  Wyatt picked at his cuticles, but couldn’t look away from the monochromatic twenty-something woman with pink in her hair. “I’m sorry, that sucks,” he said.

  “Yeah, but you got to try and remember the good more than the bad.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a worn, black and white photograph. She looked at it fondly. “I carry this to remind myself that he wasn’t always a selfish…anyway, the point is, we all have our crap. It doesn’t make us failures. Most of the crap we gather through life isn’t our fault in the first place.”

  Wyatt stared at Ms. Abagail for a long moment. Somehow, she looked different than she had before. “My grandma left me too,” he said after
having worked up the courage.

  “I know.”

  “She…killed herself.”

  Ms. Abagail’s mouth curved in a sympathetic pout that Wyatt knew he couldn’t duplicate. “I know.”

  “It was my fault,” he said and felt a lone tear roll down his cheek. He had thought he was out of sorrow. He thought he was done crying.

  Ms. Abagail dropped her feet and rolled further into the room, until their knees nearly touched. She leaned close, her soulful eyes wrapping him in understanding. “It wasn’t, Wyatt. You can’t blame yourself for that. You could never make anyone do something like that.”

  “She wanted to get away from me,” he said, looking to the ground. Her stare was too much. It made him feel all funny inside, weak, like he wanted to melt into a puddle. “I made her hurt and she couldn’t take it, so she…”

  “That’s not true. Remember what I said about everyone having their own crap? Your grandma was no different. Whatever crap she had going on, it wasn’t you. I’m sure she loved you very much. What she did had nothing to do with you.”

  Wyatt shook his head, but didn’t answer. He heard the words and they brought him a measure of comfort, but he knew them to be lies. She had done it because of him. But that wasn’t what had created the pit in his stomach. It wasn’t why the voices taunted him. It was because he didn’t know why. What did I do? He asked the question not actually wanting to know the answer. He knew the pain that came with it would crush him. Of that he was certain.

  The odd pair sat in silence for a bit, each trying to sort out their own crap. Wyatt broke the silence. Even his own voice was better than the quiet. “They’re gonna send me away, aren’t they?”

  “Send you away?”

  Wyatt had heard Mr. Gerald and Mr. Forentino talking while Officer McNeali tried to ascertain Athena’s location. “Mr. Gerald wants to send me to the hospital. Mr. Forentino is on the fence.”

  “Well,” she said, leaning back into the office chair. “Do you think that would help you?”

  Wyatt dragged out the pendant and thumbed the green stone. Did it matter where he was? The stone would take him from wherever and whenever he was. There was little he could do to change that. And it wasn’t like Athena was part of the community at The Shepherd’s Crook anymore. “I don’t want to leave you,” he said after a long pause, startling himself. He looked up and realized he meant it.

  “That’s sweet, but it’s not up to me. If you want to stay, you gotta—”

  “Work on my crap?” he offered with a smile. It was the first smile he had given since he had appeared in the middle of the baseball field earlier that afternoon.

  Ms. Abagail returned the smile. “Somethin’ like that, yeah. You’ll be all right. I promise.”

  Wyatt’s smile melted. “You shouldn’t promise.”

  “Why? I can keep it.”

  Because I couldn’t, he thought. And now they’re dead. Dead and lost.

  * * *

  The voice woke him in the middle of the night. It was screaming, sending shockwaves through his entire body. He bolted out of bed, awash in cold sweat, eyes scanning the darkened room. It was all shadows. Death and shadows.

  “Whoa, bad dream, Wyatt?” Mr. Brad asked from the doorway. Mr. Gerald had made a point that Wyatt’s doorway should never be without a staff member in it, day or night. As if it mattered with the power pulsing from the hempen string around his neck.

  Wyatt crouched atop his bed, at the ready. Why? Why? Why? the shadows called. A thousand voices came like a wave, echoing and reverberating within his skull. Whhhyyyyy? The darkness shifted and pulsed, a growing amorphous blob. The room twisted around him like a serpent.

  “Mr. Brad!” he called. He could only move his eyes and they continued to dart erratically about the room. There was no telling where they would come from and he needed to be prepared. “The light. Turn on the light!” There was movement behind him, but he couldn’t turn. He didn’t dare to. Whhhyyyyyyyyyyy? Why Why WHY WHY WHY WH—

  The light clicked on, silencing the voice and dispelling the shadows. Wyatt remained in place, breathing heavily. He grabbed his head and shook it. It was gone. At least for now.

  “You all right?”

  Wyatt melted back onto the bed and stared at the whitewashed ceiling. Bright and unblemished. Just as it should be. “Yeah, nightmare,” he said. “Can you leave the light on?” He didn’t hear the response. He was too preoccupied with whispering into his pillow, “What did I do?”

  Chapter Six

  ON SATURDAY, WYATT was permitted to take lunch with the group, albeit at his own table, set against the back wall, flanked by Ms. Abagail and Mr. Gerald. The other residents buzzed with excitement over the afternoon’s off-campus trip to the local fair. Wyatt picked at his meatballs in silence, eyes never leaving the shadow in the next room. It stood in the far corner of the living room, tucked into the space the sofas left. Its shape continuously shifted, but it looked far more human than any of the others. And he knew it was watching him.

  “You won’t have to hang out in your room today,” Ms. Abagail said cheerily.

  Wyatt tore his eyes away from the shadow long enough to look at Mr. Gerald. The large man scowled. His polo shirt was damp at both armpits and around the collar despite the coolness of the autumn air. His face was as red as ever.

  “Well, you have been pretty good the past three days,” he said begrudgingly. “So as long as you listen to Ms. Abagail, you can hang about the dorm today. But you’re not permitted outside, so you’ll have to find something to occupy yourself inside.”

  Three days? It’s been three days? His eyes went back to the living room, but the shadow had gone. He sighed with relief. “Thank you, Mr. Gerald,” he said with feigned politeness. He knew he had to play the role if he was to prevent his banishment.

  “Can we play Dragon Masters?” he asked Ms. Abagail.

  She shrugged. “What’s that?”

  “A card game. I can teach you.”

  She smiled. “Sure, what the heck?”

  * * *

  Ms. Abagail grinned like an imp as she played her Mystic Gnome card. “Take that,” she said.

  Wyatt smiled, but groaned on the inside. While the Mystic Gnome was, as she said, ‘adorable,’ with its toadstool hat and funny shoes, it possessed only 500 vitality points. Wyatt’s Dragon Guardian of Ra was already on the board and boasted well over 2000 points. He eyed the pathetic card, knowing he could wipe it off the board and end the game, but he didn’t. And it bothered him. Not that he couldn’t do it, but that he didn’t know why. He withdrew the Guardian and set out a Mischievous Rabbit with a paltry 300 vitality points.

  “Do you miss her?” Ms. Abagail said as she drew a card and tried to decide which monster was the cutest.

  Wyatt was caught off guard. He coughed. “Who?”

  “Athena. You’re friends, right?” She laid out an Emperor’s Gift of Fortitude.

  The card Ms. Abagail had played bestowed an earth type monster with 500 extra defensive points. Neither her Gnome or Horned Mermaid were that, but he didn’t correct her. “Friends? Yeah, I guess.”

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  “Not for the reasons you think.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  Wyatt frowned and destroyed her Mystic Gnome. Ms. Abagail made a show of pouting. “You think I’m crazy just like the rest,” he said.

  “What does this do?” She held up Secret Passage.

  Wyatt sighed. “It allows an indefensible attack by a monster of lower than 200 attack points.”

  She smiled like a child handed a kitten and used the card on her Horned Mermaid. The monster possessed 300 attack points, but Wyatt allowed it. At least she was trying. No one ever wanted to play with him. His deck of cards had been slapped out of his hands on more than one occasion, quickly followed by a derogatory remark about his masculinity.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” she continued, drawing a card even though it wasn’t her turn.
“I just think you get caught up in your head sometimes.”

  “Sounds like you’re callin’ me crazy.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not. Do you think you’re crazy?”

  He shrugged and played Hunter’s Aid, giving his Solitary Ranger an extra attack. Ms. Abagail pouted again as Wyatt placed her Horned Mermaid in the discard pile. “I don’t know,” he said. “If I were crazy it’d mean…”

  “What?”

  His mind went to Athena, abandoned in the Dunes, cradling the lifeless form of a young tsiyyi that he couldn’t save. If I were crazy then none of that really happened. He shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “You gotta talk, Wyatt. It’s how we get through…you know.”

  “Crap?” he said with a smile. She nodded. Wyatt stared at her a moment and then sighed. “Hypothetically…let’s say I did something…not anything bad, something good, but it turned out bad and someone got hurt. Someone who didn’t deserve to get hurt. And what if I ran away because of it?”

  The smile vanished from Ms. Abagail’s face and she set down her cards. “Hypothetically in real life or hypothetically in fantasy land?”

  “The last one. Hypothetically.”

  She relaxed a bit. “Well, it’s normal to feel bad if you made a mistake, and it’s okay to be sad if someone got hurt, but you need to stand by and deal with the consequences. And most importantly, you have to get yourself right. If you don’t, you can’t help anyone.”

  “That supposed to be like not being able to love someone if you don’t love yourself first?”

  She gave an exasperated look. “Something like that.”

  “Well, I love myself,” he said. Or at least I used to. “But I keep messin’ things up. I’m Wyatt the Mighty, a Druid—hypothetically—but I can’t seem to get things right. My friends…” Visions of Mareck and Gareck’s smiling faces rolled through his mind. You killed them. He grunted and rubbed his temples. Whose voice was that?

  Ms. Abagail raised an eyebrow at the noise. “All you can do is keep your intentions pure and try your best.”