C. E. Murphy - No Dominion - A Garrison Report

“—and getting your neck snapped by a scarf catching on a motor car wheel,” Robert mumbled.

“—oh, not like that part, jeez,” Kiso said without catching her breath. “Can you tell me—”

“No!” Suzy held her hands up. “It doesn’t work like that. The future doesn’t work like that. There are millions of different ones, all based on whatever choices you make day by day. Sometimes something goes wrong and a whole lot of the futures turn bad. That’s why I came up here at Halloween, I had to warn Detective Walker that her futures had all gone bad. And she managed to squeeze into the one that hadn’t. So I can’t, like, read your palm, Kiso. And I wouldn’t want to if I could. I don’t want to know what’s going to happen, and I bet you don’t really either.”

Kiskeo stuck her chin out, then slumped back to sitting. “I guess not. Well, what good is magic you don’t want to use? And why did we get you when we were trying to call up a nature god? I mean, because of your biodad, I guess, but—”

“Or maybe,” Robert said worriedly, “maybe her magic responded so she could come along and protect us from that .”

Suzy turned to see a slender earthy figure unfurling from the floor.

It didn’t look evil. Not in the first few seconds, anyway. It looked quite beautiful, dark and barky, with soil spilling through the breaks in the bark. Leaves shimmered down its back like hair, and it stretched, sending the scent of new-turned earth and crushed greenery through the basement.

A deeper, older smell wafted along, too. A smell of decay, of old earth rotting and dead things falling to pieces in it. Suzy thought of zombies, and of Detective Walker’s panic, and feeling very stupid, she got up and put herself between the rising green and her friends. She didn’t know how to fight or protect or any of the things Detective Walker did. But she was magic, and that had to make her a better match for the than Robert or Kiseko were.

Robert leaned forward past her calf and slapped his hand onto the pentagram chalked onto the carpet. Suzy felt a hint of strength from him, a promise of power, but—”Kiseko!” Robert hissed. “You drew it, you have to activate it!”

“Actiwhat? Oh. Oh!” Kiseko flung herself forward too, making Suzy feel like an Egyptian god statue, flanked by two low-lying animals. Kiseko’s energy sparked out, not at all organized or well-presented, but it did the job. The pentagram came to life again, still a flickering feeble thing like it had been when Suzy arrived. Suzy took a jerky step forward, lifting her hands to add her own strength to the pentagram.

The thing inside the circle lashed out, smashing a branchy arm into Suzy’s chest. She staggered, but only a step. Only enough to be out of the pentagram’s reach, instead of knocked aside like she should have been. Kiseko squeaked with delight, but Suzy’s chest felt caved in, like she couldn’t quite breathe anymore. It wasn’t just the hit, either. It was the knowledge that flooded her with the ancient nature spirit’s touch. Once it had been neutral, neither intentionally caring nor harming. Not anymore. Sometime, so long ago it barely remembered the neutrality, it had tasted blood. Been fed blood, until the earth itself was poisoned. Until the very world was riddled with spots of hate, alive with it, waiting for magic to draw it out so it could attack.

It was hungry. It wanted youth, vitality, magic, blood . Its spindly branch arms shot out, growing at an impossible rate, but they bypassed Suzy and went straight for Kiseko and Robert.

“ No !” Suzy flung her hands out like she could stop the green with a word, with an action. Like she could undo the last minutes of time, because she could . She had , before, or almost. She had unraveled a man from time once before, taken the zombie corpse he had become and undone him all the way back to conception. It had been easy, like pulling a dangling thread from a shirt, and it had popped at the end, satisfying sound of the thread snapping. She couldn’t do it again: something stopped her. Time resisted her, like it had been changed once recently and refused to be again, even for a semi-god.

Still, her magic was alive now, its own threads snapping and weaving through the air. Futures shone along them, mostly dark and deadly. Kiseko, infected by the ancient earth spirit, eyes blazing and hands becoming stretched branches like the green’s. Robert falling under that attack. Suzy running, Suzy fighting, Suzy dying: she cast away a thousand futures, searching for one where they won . Time might refuse to listen, but the future was hers to choose. She held onto the thought, leaning hard against the earth magic’s hunger. It would have everything, it said, because it was the endless turn and tide of seasons, of life. It was the rising green, and would never die.

But Suzy’s power was green and rising too.

She pushed , pushed as hard as she knew how, using just her mind. Pushed them toward the rare and faltering futures where they survived. Only a handful among hundreds, but she wouldn’t let her friends die. If the green wanted a conduit, it could try her , daughter of gods.

It hesitated like a living thing, tempted by her strength. Tempted by the ancient blood inside her, by that tie to something not of the world. Then its hesitation ended and it came for her. Suzy opened her arms and drew it in, tasting the most ancient scraps of earth that tied her to her demi-god father and the wild thing that was her grandfather. Herne was of this earth, as Suzy was, but Cernunnos came from far beyond, and there was something in the rising green that was as old and foreign as Cernunnos. It howled triumph as Suzy called it to herself, and it crashed into her, taking up lodging in her mind. Safe, certain, a part of her: it belonged, in a dark and frightening way.

Darkness . Utter and complete, overwhelming, and beyond the darkness, silence. Wind and breaking branches had howled and snapped a minute earlier, though Suzy hadn’t heard them until they were gone. Light returned in a painful rush. The pentagram was losing cohesion, its color fading and power failing, but there was nothing left inside.

Kiseko, squealing, caught Suzy before she fell. “OMG, you banished it! OMG, how did you do that?!”

“There was a…a future where we won. I just…shoved us that way.” Suzy sat down, her head in her hands. “It worked, but it…it got dark.”

“No it didn’t!” Kiseko bounced around Suzy, barely able to contain her delight. “You were awesome! You kicked ass! Did you see that thing, it went fwssht ! and zooft ! and—”

“No, it…” The green—except it wasn’t green anymore, it was just the dark—it felt like it was behind her eyes now, or even deeper into her head than that. It didn’t hurt, but it weighed a lot, and it throbbed in time with her heart. A trickle of it fell down from her brain to her stomach, making her want to throw up.

Kiseko, oblivious to Suzy’s half-muttered protests, only ceased her praise when the ceiling creaked. All three of them froze, Suzy peeking upward and seeing Rob and Kiso doing the same thing. “ Shit ,” Kiso whispered. “My parents . If they find a boy here—!”

Rob pressed a finger to his lips, then darted across the basement in a few long steps. He cranked a daylight window open, then glanced back, checking the room like he was making sure everything was okay. Kiseko flapped a frantic hand at him and he gave her and Suzy a quick, concerned smile before scrambling up to and through the window. A heartbeat later, he was gone, eaten by a suburban Seattle yard.

Suzy trembled. The wood creature would’ve eaten him for real, all of them. Inside her head, the darkness flared like it thought that sounded good. She clenched her hands against her temples, trying to squeeze its presence away. Green power, she told herself. Rising green, like the wood spirit had been rising green, but this was her own strength, her own magic. She didn’t want a dark seed at its heart. She imagined her grandfather’s vast power in her own hands, crushing the darkness away.