Marc Zicree - Angelfire

“Dancing,” I repeat. “For Enid?” I’m trying, I realize, to wrap my mind around their relationship, as if it matters.

“No, not Enid. Enid is my friend.” She lays subtle stress on the last word. “He was there to save me from one thing, and ended up saving me from something worse.”

“You knew him before the Change?”

“He played at the club I worked before his manager got him a break. After, he’d come back to check up on me, make sure I was okay, talk about getting me out of there. He tried to get me out of there.” She shrugged, spilling radiance into the air. “When all the weird shit came down, he was there for me. In the wrong place at the right time, I guess.”

Darkness flitters across her face again like the shadow of wings. It’s the same look I glimpsed earlier when she asked if we’d abandon Tina. I have the sudden conviction that Magritte knows a lot about abandonment. I fight the urge to stroke her cheek. Did I mention I’m a lousy fighter?

She doesn’t flinch away from my touch as I expect. Instead, she turns into it, fixing me with her whiteless topaz eyes, wrapping me in a tingling veil.

From my fingertips, gold-white light fans out across her cheek and bleeds into her own vivid aura. A luminous mist glides over my hand, my arm, my head. It envelops her, too, and in a moment we’re engulfed in a veil of something kinetic that is both hers and mine. The world is shut out. I hear no shimmer of wind chimes, no snap of flame, no life-noise from the camp outside, not my own breathing, not even my own heartbeat. I am aware only of our mutual amazement.

The opening of the kitchen door pulls us apart. The combined aura explodes soundlessly and the outside world rushes back in. I am dispossessed.

“Council wants to see you,” says Enid, and if he is aware of having interrupted something, he hides it.

The Council meets in a large parlor I suspect was once the staff lounge. There is a huge braided rug around which sit nine people on chairs, bench seats, and pillows. They are an interesting mix, five women (including Mary), four men. They are racially mixed, too-three blacks, one Hispanic, one Asian, two Native American. Mary is the sole Caucasian. They are old and young. Fresh and worn.

Their clothing suggests diversity of social strata, as well. The Asian gentleman wears a sweater that is obviously cashmere, but his L.L. Bean boots are muddy and scuffed. The Hispanic woman next to him is dressed in ill-fitting overalls and a man’s flannel jacket-Kmart wardrobe. They both have very clean but very chapped and callused hands.

In the once real world, clothes said something about who you were. Now I think they might only say something about where you’ve been. The Change has been a great equalizer, I suppose, whatever its faults. Perhaps it’s true that no evil happens that does not bring good in its wake. If there was ever a time you couldn’t judge a man by his clothes, it’s now.

I smooth the loose tails of my own gaudy purple and green plaid flannel and await their verdict.

“Enid has explained what you’re proposing,” Mary says. “On the surface, it sounds ideal. Like Kismet. You have a way of tracking the Storm; we have, just possibly, the means of freeing its slaves and an underground railroad ready to receive them.”

“But?” I prompt.

“Mr. Goldman,” says the Asian gentleman, “we have had a number of people approach Enid during his sojourns with an interest in using his talent. Ultimately, they wish to seek advantage from it over their unfortunate fellows. Machines such as we once relied on for services no longer work. There is only one means of replacing them that does not require arcane talent.”

“Human machines,” I murmur. The ambient temperature in the room drops a few degrees and I shiver.

He is nodding at my reaction. “In a word, slaves. So you see, there are people in our new world who have a need, and others who will attempt to fill it. Commercialism, Mr. Goldman, at its most despicable. Out there, human beings are once again becoming a commodity. I think you will understand how some would find Enid’s talent attractive in that context.”

“I do understand. And I understand that your mission is to protect all of this. I don’t know what I can do to convince you that my friends and I are no threat. Look, um, maybe if I tell you what we know about the Change and the Storm, you’ll understand our mission.”

They exchange glances, then all eyes go to Mary. She nods.

“There was a government project code-named ‘the Source.’ I don’t pretend to understand the physics behind it, but I do know that it went pretty horribly wrong. We … met one of the scientists who’d worked on that project. He’d been changed by the disaster-not like anyone we’d ever seen. Not like anyone we’ve seen since. We suspect that when the project went south, something terrible was born. You call it the Storm; I call it the Megillah; I’ve heard it called other things. It’s powerful. It’s sentient. It sees. It senses. It hungers.”

Even at a distance, you can feel the power of it .

“And for some reason it’s most hungry for flares, people who were twisted like Magritte was. Like my friend’s little sister, Tina. She was twelve when the Storm took her. Look, I don’t want to sound like, um, like Mr. Sob-story, but since you seem to be in a position to decide my fate, I think you should know the kind of person Cal Griffin is. He’s been taking care of Tina since their mom died and their dad ran out on them. Well, not quite in that order, but it’s a complicated story. The point is, he’s spent most of his adult life protecting her. But he couldn’t protect her from the Change or from the Storm.” I glance at my musician friend, where he leans against the door frame. “Cal wasn’t as lucky as Enid, or maybe the legal profession just doesn’t lend itself to sorcery, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop what happened to her. It was like Magritte said, a-a tornado just sucked her away from him. Since then, we’ve been on a sort of quest-Cal, Colleen, Doc, and me. Cal is determined to find Tina and free her and the other flares the Source has taken. More than that, he intends to find some way of defeating the Source.”

A ripple of surprise circles the room.

Mary watches the reaction of her fellows closely then turns to me. “And you and your friends accompany him. Why?”

I pause to consider this. “Before the Change, I lived on the street. People stepped on me, over me, and around me on a daily basis. Most of them took me as just another crazy. While insanity is a great defense against all sorts of abuse, I … I admit I slip in and out of reality more easily than the average guy. Cal always treated me like a man, even on my bad days. Sometimes he even treated me like a friend. So when he says we can find the Source and do something about it, I believe him.”

“Why?” Mary asks.

How to describe Cal’s possession by this mad vision that we four merely human beings can confront and conquer the unknown? That we must do it. “Because he believes,” I say at last.

The Native American fellow, who appears to be in his early fifties, leans forward, eyes intense. “This Doc you mentioned, he’s a real doctor? A medical doctor?”

Duh. I should have my head examined.

I nod eagerly. “Yes. Yes, he is. He was a surgeon in Russia, but he knows a great deal about general medicine, and he’s absorbed bookloads about herbal remedies. He’s had to.”

I neglect to tell them that before the Change, Doc was peddling hot dogs on Manhattan street corners.

Mary says, “I know what you’re thinking, Delmar, but I’m not sure we can afford to let ourselves be seduced by need.”