Marc Zicree - Magic Time

“How’d you do that?” the muscular young woman asked her quietly, and it was clear to Shango that she both knew this girl and knew nothing of her power.

“I–I don’t know,” the girl stammered, settling like a dragonfly, ready to rise and flee. Her white hair floated weightless around a thin, haunted face. “I was just mad and scared, and I wanted him to stop .”

Shango had heard of such creatures in his travels, had even perhaps glimpsed one far in the distance over Arlington, a light moving quickly through the midnight sky, in this world where he had thought lights no longer moved in the heavens. Fireflies, he’d heard them called, or feys, or little bright fuckers.

The man in the Hawaiian shirts was clambering up the bank, panting, helped by the curly-haired young swordsman. “You okay, Goldie?”

“I’m fine,” said Goldie, looking around him with those hectic brown eyes, “though there are mental health professionals in several metropolitan areas who might beg to differ.”

The glowing girl-angel regarded Shango with her blue-in-blue eyes and whispered, “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Thank you, miss.” He inclined his head and, looking around him, saw that he’d killed one of Cadiz’s men on top of the stream bank, though he had no conscious memory of it.

Kneeling, he cleaned the head of his hammer in the stream, the blood trailing away, his hands shaking as they’d never shaken on night bombings raids in the Gulf.

“Thank you for helping him,” the young man said, sheathing his sword and approaching Shango and, in the way he held himself, his easy air of authority, left no doubt as to who was leader of the group. “I’m Cal Griffin,” he added, and introduced the others.

Shango regarded them as they stood together, and, though it was obvious they were travelers, they seemed neither refugees nor brigands. Perhaps, he reflected, they were pilgrims. Like himself.

“My name’s Larry Shango,” he said, sliding the weapon back into the straps of his backpack, standing up again. “And I’d suggest we make tracks out of here, before more company comes.”

With the young man called Cal Griffin, with Colleen Brooks and Dr. Lysenko and Goldie and Tina, Shango returned to Angels Rest. As he expected he found the house looted, the old men and women who had sheltered there dead. They had been clubbed like cattle, presumably a fate Cadiz considered more merciful than being left to starve.

In the potting shed behind the shady, silent house, under the dispassionate moon, they found a broken-handled shovel Cadiz had left and began digging a mass grave. Through all of this, Shango said little of himself and nothing of the business that had brought him here.

“The guy’s military or security services, I know the vibe from my dad,” Colleen told Cal, as the others spelled them on the digging. “Maybe AWOL.”

“No,” said Cal. “He doesn’t strike me as a man to walk away.” He glanced over at the big man working the shovel, shirtless now, the lantern light showing the dark sheen of him in the night air. His eyes were mirror mazes that reflected back the viewer, that gave up nothing. But in his actions by the creek, in his watchfulness and in the quiet, deep tenor of his voice, Cal read compassion.

As they laid the bodies in the pit, Goldie murmured some words from the Bhagavad Gita, and Doc said a blessing. Then they filled in the hole, and Shango found them a campsite that was shielded and secure.

Huddled beside the fire, Cal told Shango of the events in New York, of the man who’d changed into a dragon, and of what he’d seen in the tunnels. He spoke of the miracles they had encountered, cruel and otherwise, along the road, and of the Plant Lady in the little town off the Patuxent. And he told him of the place they sought called Wish Heart.

To all of this, Shango listened attentively, and nodded, and observed, “Staying off the beaten path, sounds like you’ve had an easier ride of it.” But he didn’t tell them of the Source Project, or of D.C. And looking across the fire at Cal, seeing the lines of weariness on the face that was so youthful, and the way those hazel eyes followed the flare-girl Tina with such worry and such grief, Shango thought of the ties of obligation and affection and relation, thought of his family in New Orleans, and of Czernas and McKay.

A log broke and fell in the sheltered fire. A flake of light fell across Colleen Brooks, nearly invisible in the trees, listening, standing guard; Shango saw her eyes, and they were on Cal, with a look in them that told him things that Cal had probably never seen. And Cal was watching Goldie, worried about the man but believing, caring for him. And Doc’s gaze moved among them, concerned and at rest.

People holding each other’s hands in the night.

“What about you?” Cal asked Shango. “Where are you bound?”

“Here,” said Shango, the word speaking double to him. Where are you going, and to what place are you tied?

Here.

“I came to find a woman who was on the plane that crashed here. I don’t think she survived,” he added, seeing the way Cal’s eyes shifted, “but she had something, was carrying something, that I was sent to find. And I see now it’s going to be a long search, especially if I’ve got a pissed-off gang of skinheads runnin’ around the woods lookin’ for me.” He thought of those cold mad coal-black eyes in the fear-caster Brattle’s pale face, and of what Cadiz and his band would do to him if they caught him again.

“What you’re looking for. . is it bigger than a breadbox,” asked Goldie softly, “and smaller than the Empire State Building?”

Shango glanced up and met the man’s wild brown eyes. A crazy , he thought, but he had seen the fireballs leap and blaze from his hands.

To his own surprise he heard his voice saying, “No. It’s just a couple of sheets of paper, folded up small. She probably glued it in her purse lining. That’s what she usually did.”

“Did you know her?”

“I met her once or twice.”

“What was her name?”

“Jerri Bilmer. Geraldine.”

Goldie chewed meditatively on his corn chowder. “You have anything she owned, or touched, or wore?”

“No.”

Goldie sighed and set his bowl aside, rising. “You’re gonna make me break a sweat, aren’t you?”

They insisted on going with him to the plane, despite his protests. In the end, his pragmatism won out. With Cadiz and Brattle in the woods somewhere, Shango needed whatever help he could get-even if his common sense told him magic tricks were ridiculous, that this was insanity.

These were insane times.

Still, as morning had broken and they’d set off, he had demanded that the glowing girl and the Russian and the Brooks woman stay behind in camp, sheltered, protected. No need to draw them all into the crosshairs.

So now Shango stood beside the blackened, sheared metal of United 1046 out of Houston, Griffin beside him, alert, his sword unsheathed, while Goldman bent beside a crumpled piece of fuselage and scooped a handful of fine gray ash that might once have been part of a seat cushion, or a backpack, or a dress. Standing, he sifted it slowly in his hand. There was no mirth to him now, no hint of the Woodstock Nation clown.

“What would she have been thinking about at the end?” Goldie asked Shango. “Her family, loved ones?”

“No. . about the mission, and failing.” And Shango realized he was speaking too of himself.

As Goldman concentrated, his color drained, and he looked wounded. He took a couple of hesitant steps to his left and then turned back and strode between two willows.

He led them to the sad, crumpled object that had been Jerri Bilmer.