Marc Zicree - Magic Time

Cal felt a brightness on his face and jolted awake, realized he had dozed. Tina’s eyes were on him, mosaic tiles, turquoise, unfathomable. Her aurora shimmered outward, and her hair drifted off the cushions as in a current.

“Tina.”

She turned from him, toward the wall. An impotent rage rose in him at her despair. He fought it down, spoke softly. “I couldn’t stop what happened to Ma, I couldn’t keep us safe-but we’re still here.”

“Am I, Cal?” Her eyes found his, and her voice was a whisper. “Am I, really?”

“ Yes .” He reached a hand to touch her, but she flinched, gaze averting, and he let it drop. Then, for a reason he could not have given name to, he added, “To the west and the south, there’s a power.”

Startled, she again faced him. “Yes.” There was music in her voice, subtle tones accompanying. Her glance diffused inward, on memory. “In bed when I was little, I’d hear Mama’s records through the wall. It was like the melodies were reaching inside, you know, like they were pulling me.”

“And that’s what this is like?”

She nodded. “Only. . not beautiful. It’s jangly. Scared and angry and sad. Sometimes. . I dunno. Crazy. I hear it all the time, getting louder. Telling me there’s something I have to do.”

“What?”

She shrugged, not knowing. “But if I stopped fighting it, if I let go. .” She looked at her bloodless hands, the nimbus casting shifting colors on her like stormclouds coming. “Near the end, when Nijinsky was in St. Moritz, he went for a walk in the snow at night. He heard a voice; he thought it was God. It told him to jump off a cliff into the darkness, that he wouldn’t fall. . ”

“Did he jump?” Cal asked.

Tina nodded. “A tree caught him; he hadn’t even seen it. He climbed back up, went home. But it was the moment his whole life changed. He went from being what he had been to. . what he became.” Cal thought of the glorious, singular moment that had been Nijinsky at the height of his brilliance and prowess, and the forty years in the asylum that had followed. Tina’s face twisted. “I don’t want to go into that darkness, Cal. I’d rather-rather-”

“I know.” He reached to stroke her starlight hair, and this time she allowed it. The pastel luminescence around her eddied about his fingers, sparkling off them. At the far side of the room, Goldie had settled near Doc and Colleen, strumming his guitar softly, the music drifting with no particular tune.

Within the corona of light, Tina’s eyes had closed again, not sleeping but meditative. She’s hearing it even now, Cal thought, this pitiless force with its grasp on her. Perhaps on all of us.

He wanted to run, take his sister and hide. Some dark hole, some mountain fastness. But where?

Where wouldn’t it find them?

Then suddenly, her words registered. “Tina?”

Her eyes opened.

“It’s getting louder. . stronger?”

She nodded.

“When you say it’s to the west and the south, is that one location, or two?”

She considered, cocking her head, seeming to listen to a sound he could not hear. “Two. The one in the south’s weaker, kind of confused, like it’s-” She intertwined her fingers, pulled at them as if battling.

“In turmoil?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else? I mean, can you tell what it looks like, what it is?”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know, but can you?”

Again, that concentration. “No. Only-there’s these words I keep hearing in my head. Wish. . Heart.”

“Sounds like part of a prayer. What do you think it means?”

“I dunno. Maybe. . it’s a place?”

“A town?”

She took in the thought, searching, but over what unsettled landscape Cal could not guess. At last, she whispered, “South.”

“South,” he repeated. “Tina, is this a place you can find?”

Her face flashed alarm.

“You feel it’s growing stronger. Like something forming, but maybe not formed yet. Supposing-”

“ No .” She shook her head vehemently. The aura about her flared up bright, and Cal felt an unseen force shove against his chest, press him and his chair several inches away.

Cal touched his breast. It didn’t hurt but felt momentarily numb. He wondered how strong the power filtering through Tina might be, how controllable. Somehow, he managed to keep his voice calm.

“Tina, do you remember-maybe not, you were really small-when I came home from school and you were so upset because the Gage boys had set out those squirrel traps?”

She had withdrawn into herself again, behind the angry slashes of moving light. After an aching silence, she said, “I remember.”

“We’d sneak out after midnight, you’d help me find them.”

“And you’d break the lock from the inside, like they were super squirrels.” Though she wasn’t smiling, her face held an animation, a vibrancy, that summoned back a sweet ghost of what she had been.

He shook his head, the recollection was so vivid. “They were so damn mad and so damn sure it was a trick. Only-”

His eyes again met his sister’s. And it was the two of them again, spliced in the tide of remembrance, before law school, before New York. Together, they said, “No more traps.”

Cal smiled, the chilled hollow within him sparked warm. He didn’t know if Tina had the strength to save herself, or the willingness to let him try. But he knew her heart, and what it encompassed.

“What I’m thinking about,” he continued, hesitant, “is all the other ones. The ones who hear it calling, who can’t resist.” This time, she didn’t look away. “What if-before it gets any stronger, while it’s still in turmoil-we find it? What if-I don’t know how yet-but what if, together, you and me, we could stop it? What if we could save them?”

She was gazing at him now, into him, weighing all the myriad hopes and dreads, the territories they had journeyed over and might yet encounter.

Doubt iced through Cal. Perhaps he’d just be hastening her death, or worse. But it was as if he were looking at an hourglass, the sand ever more swiftly running out. And he didn’t know what else to do.

Tina’s aura faded into its cooler colors. Concern etched her face. “It’ll kill you, Cal.”

He said nothing, let silence answer. Then he asked, “You think what Nijinsky heard was God?”

It wasn’t what she expected. She contemplated it. “No.”

“If somebody could’ve stopped that voice before he jumped off the cliff, what do you think would’ve happened?”

She stared at Cal through her shimmering haze, and he felt, astonishing and harrowing, the current of her faith in him.

“He would have kept on dancing,” she said.

Toward dawn, Tina fell into sleep at last. Cal withdrew from her side and sought out the others. He found them in his room. Doc lay across the bed, dreaming fitfully. Colleen sat curled in the big chair, napping, but with a wary tension that reminded him of a sleeping cat. Goldie sat cross-legged on the floor, still fingering his guitar. When does he sleep? Cal wondered, and the thought came back to him, illogically, Never.

Although Cal strove to keep his footfall soundless, the creak of the door roused Doc and Colleen. Blinking, they turned to him, inquisitive.

“We’ll be leaving as soon as I can get everything together.” His gaze swept over them. Strangers who had become so much more than friends. In words awkwardly, embarrassingly inadequate, he began, “There’s no way I could ever hope to-”

“Listen,” Colleen bounded from her chair, trying for an easy tone. “I been thinking of stretching my legs, so if you and Miss Emergency Flare could stand some companionship from the other side of the tracks-”