Marc Zicree - Angelfire

“When I said I understood what it costs you to touch the Source,” I said, “when I said I got it-I meant that. I think it … must feel… as if you’re not quite yourself.”

He laughed, breaking eye contact. “Not quite myself. Oh, that’s a mouthful. Am I ever myself?” He shook his head. “Yeah, that’s one of the feelings I get, I guess. Not myself.”

“When I do … the maps, the contract … things like that…” I felt my way through the emotions; the words were elusive. “I wonder … what I’m becoming. I’ve always thought change comes from within. That you change yourself. You know what I’m saying?”

“Self-determination,” he said. “Self-possession. Those may be chimeras now.” He spoke the words as if he’d already accepted them, but they were killing words to me.

I didn’t let it show. “So? For all we know, there may really be chimeras wandering around out there.”

Magritte laughed. It was a little girl’s laugh. Incongruous, slipping from between those razor-sharp teeth. I was amazed she could still make that sound after all she’d been through. “Those are the lions with the bird-legs, right?” she asked.

Goldie gave me a sly look. “Naw, those are griffins.” The sly look broadened into a smile that seemed genuine. “Sweet dreams,” he said, and moved back into the stall, drawing Maggie after him.

I shivered and sought the comfort of my sleeping bag.

Psychic, maybe. Prophetic, not. Having let it into my head, I dreamed of the Tower. That night there was a different twist. Tina was still trapped behind the dripping, glazed walls, but now Goldie was there with her.

Morning dawned cold and relatively clear. The blanket of clouds was higher, allowing the sun to peek beneath it at the horizon. The cloud cover wasn’t quite as seamless as it had been the day before. The wind still came out of the north, but it was a tired wind.

I could relate.

The silence struck hard. I could see it in every face when at last we crept out of the barn, leading our jittery horses. It was a ghost-town silence that made our voices ooze out in whispers and our eyes dart about in search of mysterious shadows. There were none, so we imagined them. Wind stirred the tufts of dried grass that stood above the powdery snow, while tree branches nodded and creaked and ash lifted lazily from the burnt shell of the farmhouse. Then, far and away across a ruined cornfield, a crow called and another answered. Sepulcher sounds from the first living things we’d heard or seen for days.

Goldie breathed out a gust of steam. “Whoa. Where’s Stephen King when you need him?”

“I used to love that sound,” said Colleen. “The crows, I mean. It meant autumn: Halloween, Thanksgiving, the crunch of leaves, the smell of wood smoke, snow.”

“Well, we got you some snow,” Enid observed. “And I can give you crunchy leaves, if you really want ’em all that badly.”

Colleen returned his grin and threw her leg over Big T’s broad back. “Thanks, Enid. I was getting all morbid and mushy there for a moment.”

“Any time.”

We moved out. I tried to put myself next to Colleen in the hope that we might talk about certain events, but she seemed to be in one of her loner moods, keeping herself a little aloof from everyone. I tried to tell myself it didn’t have anything to do with the kiss , but I couldn’t help wondering.

It was Enid I found myself riding with at the head of the column. He was as eager as I to see what Goldie’s black hole really was.

As we made our way into the sunrise and rode the last several yards to the top of the hill, I realized I was holding my breath. I’m not sure what I expected to see when at last we crested the rise. Maybe something from one of those disaster movies-a nuclear dead zone a la Independence Day or any one of the dozens of postapocalyptic creations imagined by science fiction authors and Hollywood script writers.

What I saw was water.

“Damn,” said Enid, and Goldie sang, “ ‘The river is wide, I cannot get o’er. And neither have I bright wings to fly.’ ”

Bright wings. They’d have to be 767 wings to get five people and eight horses across that. The water stretched north to south as far as the eye could see, its flat, opaque surface rippling beneath a layer of rheumy mist, the far shore all but invisible from our vantage point atop the hill.

I knew there was a far shore only because the map-the post-Change, Griffinized map-said so. The pre-Change map only indicated that a narrow stream called the Fox River had once inhabited the landscape somewhere out there.

A current seemed to be flowing slowly and diligently south. Was this a river of epic proportions, or a migrating lake? It hardly mattered; it lay between us and our goal, effectively cutting us off.

My frustration was sabotaged by the sudden appearance in memory of a childhood icon: a large, stuffed teddy in a red shirt sat atop my horse, tapping his wadding-filled noggin and muttering, “Think. Think. Think.” I felt an insane urge to laugh.

Magritte, hovering near Goldie, gestured skyward. “I’m going up,” she said, “so nobody flip out, okay?”

I don’t know if it did anything, but Goldie tilted back his head and began to sing, of all things, “I Can See Clearly Now.”

I bit back laughter. Colleen, too, seemed amused, and Doc… I turned to look back over my shoulder. Doc was sitting silently amid the pack train on our rear guard, wearing an expression that made me doubt he was even in the state of Illinois with the rest of us.

I glanced up at Magritte, floating upward as if made of fluff, then reined Sooner around and circled back to Doc’s side.

“You all right?”

“What?” He blinked at me like a man just awakening from a long sleep.

“You seem… I don’t know … a bit lost.”

“Ah, yes. That is it. I am… a bit lost, as you say. I … did not sleep well last night.”

“I’m sorry about that. I’m sure I didn’t help matters much with my little outburst. I apologized to Goldie.”

He was regarding me solemnly, but I had the distinct impression he was only half hearing me. “And did he accept your apology?”

“Actually, he said ‘shit happens.’ ”

“I would say that ‘shit’ is not all that happens. Good things also happen, even in this chaotic world.” His eyes shifted into focus on my face and I was suddenly too warm, realizing he must have seen me with Colleen. “Don’t let this quest we’re on make you too single-minded, Calvin. Don’t let it steal what small pieces of real life you are given.”

His gaze shifted again and I followed it to where Colleen sat astride her roan-watching us. Her eyes flew up after Magritte as soon as mine touched them.

“Why is this so hard?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “This thing with Colleen. You know what I mean. Shouldn’t it be simple?”

“I think, perhaps, it is simple, but we make it hard. With all that has changed, it seems to me that love should be the one immutable thing. I suppose that seems … what is the word-corny?”

“No. Not corny. True.”

His eyes swung to meet mine, catching me off guard. “And do you love Colleen?”

Did I? “I don’t know. She’s an admirable woman- strong, resilient, smart, vital. I wouldn’t have thought she was my ‘type’ before-whatever that is-but I … she… There’s some kind of attraction there.” I floundered. “Sometimes I think my soul is… that I’m too full of darkness to understand love. That the whole world is too full of darkness. That’s what’s hard-the ambiguity. I wish I could just know if I loved Colleen, or if it’s just chemistry.”

Doc carefully arranged his horse’s mane so it lay all on one side of her dark neck. “For you , it should be simple. You are young. Unbroken. And possessed of fewer ghosts.”