Marc Zicree - Magic Time

What lens, Cal wondered, was it seeing through?

Later, while the others slept and Colleen stood watch, Tina dreamed of darkness again and gasped awake.

“Sh, it’s okay,” whispered Colleen, bending down to her in the mouth of the tent. She reached over and stroked Tina’s back, now as unsettlingly fine-boned as a baby bird’s. Beside such fragility, Colleen felt clumsy and rough.

She became aware of Tina’s gaze on her, turned to the scrutiny of those intense, blue-in-blue eyes.

“Your boyfriend,” said Tina softly, “Rory? He changed, too, didn’t he?”

“Rory was a punk,” Colleen replied, and there was a shakiness in her voice that surprised her.

Tina cocked her head, not taking her eyes off Colleen. “You wanted to love him, but you couldn’t. . so you settled for him needing you.”

Colleen felt her chest clench, the breath in her go dry. She felt naked, seen by this being that had been a child, had been human once, and was increasingly becoming something other, something more.

“I thought of leaving,” Colleen managed to say.

“We leave when we can… or when something takes us.” Tina scanned the dark waters, the woods enfolding them, the open gulf of air beyond the jagged coastline.

To the south.

“ ‘Rory was a punk,’ ” Tina repeated to herself, voice nearly inaudible. “And Mr. Stern was a dragon in his heart, long before the Change. Is this,” she spread her spider-fragile hands, through which the light of the campfire could almost be seen to shine, “because of what I am?”

She dropped her hands, and there was resignation and release in the gesture. “Maybe soon I’ll know.”

Her gaze was turned inward, and she floated silent, her soft radiance filling her like an opal, playing over the interior of the tent. Colleen peered at her, sensing her despair, knowing the feeling so well and so long in herself. The fear of abandonment, the fear of loss. Striving to be the best- whether that meant being the prettiest, the most graceful or the toughest on the block, it really boiled down to the same thing. Having value to someone. . and feeling so afraid of being worth nothing at all.

Colleen ached to comfort her, to say, Everything will be all right . But her heart brooked no false promises, to Tina or herself.

The campfire crackled as a log fell, sending up a firefly swarm of sparks, drawing Colleen’s attention. On the far side of the flame, Cal and Doc and Goldie drowsed in their sleeping bags beneath the dark velvet of the eastern sky. Colleen found her glance lingering on Cal. The amber light of the fire picked out the grave features, the long chin and straight nose, the soft light-brown curls. He looked troubled, even in sleep, saddled with the weight of the world.

“Do you love him?”

Colleen turned her head sharply at Tina’s question, asked in that same small voice. She was drawing breath to say something, though she didn’t know what, when Tina looked up suddenly and her eyes flared.

On the far side of the fire, a huddled form darted, snatched up a leather backpack and tore off into the brush.

“Cal! Doc!” Colleen was on the run, unslinging her crossbow, keeping the shadowy form in sight. It was a puny little cuss, about the size of a child, but it moved incredibly fleetly through the darkness over the uneven terrain.

A light rose up behind her, and Colleen heard the hubbub of Doc and Cal following, one of them having seized a burning stick from the fire. She plunged on, unmindful of the evergreen branches whipping at her face.

The little fucker was moving like greased lightning, despite the weight of the cumbersome pack, gaining ever more of a lead. By his rough silhouette, the pointed, tufted ears that stuck out on either side of his oversized head, the baggy clothes that hung off him, it was pretty damn clear just what he was.

A nightcrawler, like the bunch that had bustled past them on the way to the hospital. That had cornered Cal in the tunnels under Manhattan.

That had once been someone she’d shared her life with. Ahead of him through the cover of trees, Colleen could see a darkness in the rock face.

It was a cave mouth.

Oh no, you don’t , thought Colleen. She raised the crossbow and fired, deliberately missing him. The bolt struck a cedar trunk ahead of him with an authoritative thwak . He let out a cry and ducked away. She reloaded and loosed another arrow. This one lodged in a mound of earth on the far side of him.

The thief flailed in panic, then wheeled and ran directly at them, shrieking like a banshee.

Colleen held her ground, readying for the impact. But before the figure reached her, its foot caught on a root and it tumbled headlong, crashing down with a solid “Oof!” The pack went flying, spinning end over end, bouncing off a thick branch and deflecting into a ravine. It struck an out-cropping in the cliffside and burst open, raining tins of devilled ham and apricots and baby corn into the void.

Colleen leapt to the lip of the chasm, caught the glint of the cans as they fell and were lost. “Great, just great. . just about every meal for the next week.”

A rustle of leaves alerted her. The invader was trying to crawl away.

Colleen grabbed him, pinned him with her knee to his chest. “Where you think you’re going, you rat bastard?”

“Easy, easy there,” Cal said, drawing up to her. “He’s just a kid.”

And Colleen saw, in the darting milk-white eyes and the trembling chin, that it was true. She eased her knee off him, and the boy scooted back up against the rock face, terrified and cornered. Barefoot, he wore the tattered remnants of jeans and a Darth Maul T-shirt, and Colleen wondered if he shivered from fear or from the cold, if he could feel cold.

Cal crouched down to his level. “What’s your name, son? Where are you from? It’s okay, we’re not gonna hurt you.”

He said nothing, rocking, his arms tight around himself.

Doc pulled a hunk of bread from his pocket, held it out. “Here, boy.” And then, to Colleen’s accusatory glare, “The boy is hungry .”

The nightcrawler boy snatched it, gobbled it down. But he would say nothing to their questions.

And then a warm glow, melting green and red and blue, breached the clearing, and the boy looked up in wonder.

Tina drifted liquid to him, and it was clear from his face that he had never seen her like before. They appraised each other with their altered eyes, tilting their strange, large heads, and there was kinship on their faces, and loss.

“I’m Tina Griffin,” she said, settling before him like a soap bubble, throwing dancing colors onto his face. He squinted at her, the light hurting his eyes but unable to turn them away.

“Freddy Salvo,” he said finally, his words distorted by tumbled razor teeth. “From Brandywine, down the road…”

“Pretty weird, huh?” She nodded at her weightless arms and legs, toward his gray, leeched skin.

Tears pooled in his pale eyes. “This sucks, man. My mom freaked, threw me out on my sorry ass. . I try to catch stuff, you know, squirrels and shit, but it’s a joke.”

“Freddy,” Cal kneeled beside him, spoke gently. “Do you have a feeling of someone trying to pull you somewhere?”

“ Nah .” His eyes ducked away, furtive. Then, still not looking at them, he mumbled. “I don’t listen to it. Nothin’ to do with me. It’s blurry, far off and shit.”

“Where’s it coming from?”

He considered, then motioned. To the west. The south.

Cal compressed his lips, thoughtful. So it wasn’t just Stern and Tina sensing it, not just New York. It was all the changed ones, at least the three kinds they knew about.