Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

I stood upstairs in Gerry’s house after Katrina. Black, oily sludge oozed from the carpet on the first floor, and I stared at a voodoo symbol painted on the wall in blood. Gerry was missing, and the Elders suspected me of helping him go rogue. Alex, a stranger who worked for the wizards as an enforcer, descended the stairs from the attic, holding a box containing an old wooden staff. I didn’t know what it was. Sparks flew from its tip when I touched it, and it glowed with a golden energy. I decided to take it home.

Other scenes flitted by, in and out of the gray mist, some in fast-forward, some slowing down as if I needed to relive them in slow motion, each second agonizing because I knew the punch line of each scene, and they were never funny. Using hydromancy as a teenager. Scrying in a frantic attempt to find Gerry after Katrina. Being brought into dreams by Gerry before he died, then learning how to dreamwalk myself using the staff.

It always came back to the staff.

I curled on my side as I was jerked back and forth in time. Lessons with Gerry. Using the staff to trace odd rifts in the Mississippi River back to the Styx. Early runs as sentinel. Every time I fought through the mist and pain, clawed my way back to consciousness, Lily’s cool hands would rest on my forehead, and my ability to fight evaporated.

But unlike the first flashbacks, the more recent events that seemed to transport me away to relive them, older memories razored through my mind at random, as if etching themselves into my aura. Or maybe the cuts were already there, and now they were exposed and raw.

Oh, God, I hated these creatures. I tried to pull away from them and wrap my hands around my head as if I could physically keep them out. My face was wet and I tasted blood. Had they hit me? Was an aneurysm like the one that took my mother also ready to take me?

And behind it all, a plea: God, don’t let them go all the way back.

Another cooling touch, and the gray fog settled over me again. I was seven years old and sat in the backseat of the old Plymouth as my grandfather parked in front of Gerry’s house. My grandparents were getting rid of me, foisting me off on a stranger I’d never seen, and I was petrified.

The drive had gone on for hours, and I’d cried most of the way, bunching my hands up in my stiff pink Sunday School dress, begging them to turn around so often that my gran yelled at me to hush. Why did they want to get rid of me? I’d tried to be good, to do what they wanted. I’d tried to make them love me but I always knew how they felt, that Gran was afraid of me, that Grandpa stayed away from home so he wouldn’t be ashamed of what I was.

Today, in the car, driving over long bridges and past towns with funny names, they were relieved someone was going to take me off their hands.

Blinded, I struck out at the hands touching me, and realized on some level that the voice crying in long, ragged sobs was mine. But the disconnect was too great, like my brain and my body were separate now, and I didn’t have control over either one.

I was five, and heard a sound in my parents’ room. I couldn’t sleep, so I padded down the hall and pushed open the door. Mommy lay on the floor, clutching her head, and Daddy (only he wasn’t really my daddy, was he?) leaned over her, his face white as the paper in my kindergarten notebook. He cried and called her name. Carrie. Her name was Carrie.

I cried out, and when he saw me, he sat heavily on the bed, like a balloon whose air had been released. I tried to run to Mommy but he reached out and pulled me away. She was dead and, without her, he was afraid of me too. My magic grew out of control. I broke the vase. I broke Mommy’s mirror. I broke and broke and broke.

The gray screen that was my mind went blank, and I knew on some level that I’d returned to a place more than twenty years later and a world away. There was shouting and movement around me, but nobody touched me. Maybe if I curled up tighter, they’d forget about me, leave me alone.

I remembered nothing more. Just darkness, and blessed silence.

The soothing, steady noise of a ceiling fan droned above my bed. I burrowed deeper into the pillow, wondering why my muscles ached. Faint voices drifted from downstairs. Had I left the television on?

Someone shifted next to me and whispered, “Dru? Wake up. We have to talk.”

I frowned and slit my eyes open to see Rand sitting on the bed next to me, his white sweater smeared with blood. Why he was here, in my house, in my room? Had something happened to Eugenie?

It all came back then, and I scrambled away from him, looking around for some sign of the Synod members. Snatching the staff from its holder and pointing it at Rand, I eased off the bed and edged toward the door.

“Where are they?” The end of the staff wavered with the shaking of my arm, so I grasped it two-handed, sending sparks out the tip.

“They’re not here—Mace doesn’t like to leave Elf heim. Don’t shoot that thing at me.” Rand eased off the bed with his hands up and sat in a chair in the far corner of the room. “Just listen to me a minute before you leave.”

The fear dissipated, replaced by its bully classmate, anger. “Go to hell. This is all your fault.” My voice was hoarse, and I vaguely remembered screaming as I saw my mother die again and my grandparents give me away. Tish dying. Gerry dying. Rene’s brother dying. Jake’s life destroyed. So much death. So much loss. I couldn’t stop shivering.

“Let me help you.” Rand stood up and started toward me, but I held the staff up again and its sparks sent him back to his chair.

“I swear to God if you come anywhere near me, I will fry you.” I hadn’t been sure the elven staff would work against an elf, but he seemed to respect it.

“They were just supposed to ask you questions, I swear. I would never have taken you to Mace if I’d had any idea he’d try something like a regression. I fought them to get you out of there.”

I’d never felt so violated. They’d stripped away my will, torn my memories from me, made me relive things I’d spent years putting behind me, seen private things no one else had any right to. “I’m never going to forgive you for this. Never.”

My head pounded, and the room spun in a way that made me queasy. “What are you doing here? Who’s downstairs?”

“Sit on the bed before you fall. I promise I won’t come near you.” Rand gripped the chair arms as if to convince me he wasn’t moving. “It’s important that we talk and there isn’t much time.”

“Who’s downstairs?” I asked again.

“Alex and one of your Elders. Why do you think my face looks like this?”

I opened my mouth to scream for Alex, but closed it again after taking a closer look at Rand. His lower lip was cut and swollen, a bruise was already purpling on his jaw, and he’d have a black eye within the hour.

“Alex did that?” Good for Alex.

Rand touched a finger to his lip and winced. “He was tearing up my store when I brought you back.”

A new panic arose. “Did you hurt him?”

“No, I didn’t fight him.” Rand started to rise, then thought better of it and settled back in the chair. “Look, we don’t have long. If he catches me up here, he’ll try to kill me and I’ll be forced to defend myself this time. None of us wants that.”

I stared at him, wondering what he could do that I hadn’t seen. Whatever it was, I didn’t want him doing it to Alex. “What do you want?”

“I want us to be bonded to each other. It’s a short ritual, a blood exchange.”

Was he flipping insane? “If I do anything with you involving blood, it will be because you’re injured.” My voice got louder as I talked, despite Rand’s gesturing for me to talk softly. “I want you out of my house. Out of my life. Out of Eugenie’s life. If you or any of your Synod members come near me again, I will kill you with your clan’s sacred staff.”