Martin was stir crazy. Traveling for most of your life required overcoming restlessness at every stage. Being a nomad meant ignoring your shaking leg, your tapping fingers, your racing mind. He and Teresa used meditation, exercise, and pleasure reading to battle the anxiousness between Halloweens. Today Martin forgot to read his books this morning, didn’t have a chance to go for a run before they headed out, and couldn’t think of any meditation effective enough to numb his overactive mind. He felt a slow insanity creeping out of the endless white dashes in the road.
Teresa was wheezing again. The wheezes soon led to soft, rolling snores, which usually indicated serious snoozing. That was good, he thought, good for her, get some rest honey. But the snoring and the incessant hum of tires had brought on road dementia and Martin ached for the radio, even the condescending barking of commercials. No radio though. He wouldn’t try that unless he wanted to arouse a sleeping nicotine-fit waiting to happen.
But still—maybe just turn on the radio real low—his fingers fondled the volume knob for a moment. He checked his passenger; Teresa had an aura around her, as though a kinetic challenge floated above her. Go ahead, try me.
To hell with that. Martin withdrew his fingers and his intent.
There was a suicidal lull to the desert’s grays, browns and yellows—he hadn’t noticed at first touch, but he was deep inside the odd part of his mind now, tapping that glacial pinprick in his cortex. A shiver raced from the cold shiv and surged to his eyes. They felt frozen from behind and burning on the surface. He took a healthy fistful of ghost-matter from the place of his ancestors, the Old Domain.
Mantles were a reflection of matter from the other world. Here they could be made to interact like physical matter, but couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. With a lifetime of practice he and Teresa learned to use them as shields, knives, crude explosive devices, and sometimes as tools for espionage. Mantles formed in that cerebral zone where epiphanies lived. No matter how many times he’d conjured one now, summoning a mantle always sustained a moment of revelation.
Martin concentrated left of the road, just inches above the flying carpet of dirt and piss-weed, and found himself gripping the steering wheel harder. The cold point in his brain churned and wrapped over itself again and then it was a here and a there and a slip and a stand and a glimmer and a dying black hole—a salty metal taste spread in his mouth and this signaled his mind was at the ready.
Building mantles took several minutes but once he had hold he could go for hours. Teresa had a different proficiency. She could build one at a moment’s notice, no waiting required, but creating complex shapes had always been difficult for her. For years Martin worked on speeding up creation to match hers and she’d struggled to create less elementary structures, but they’d finally come to terms with the fact that some people had it, some didn’t, and some who tried hard to have it, never would.
But Martin felt he’d conquered other mental mountains. Creating mantles inside structures had also once been a problem and now he could see through things using them. He could fold one into a lock pick and insert it into a keyhole and see the tumblers turning inside the lock. Duration was another challenge he’d almost mastered. He was fairly certain he could create a permanent mantle, one that would never vanish from this world. Doing something like that would probably kick the everlasting shit out of him, probably put him into death throes, but he knew it could be done with the right amount of energy and time.
A cautious look to Teresa, Martin sucked in a breath and drove out the mantle like an axe blade. Cacti along the road began to slide in half. Thomp, Thomp, Thhhuwump. The succulents leaned to every direction and dust clouds coughed up. A rapid-fire succession of new thomps sent green flesh spinning. With a hollow sounding punch, a fist of cactus struck the hood and buggered off the side.
Teresa bolted up. “—the shit?”
“I think a bird hit the van.”
At once she slumped back over, closing her eyes. “Poor birdie.”
Quick as light, Martin brought the mantle back, only three inches away from his window. He couldn’t see it, but felt it just outside. The transparent guillotine pulsed with activated heat. Even through the window he could feel the friction burn on its sharp edges. With an exhale, he launched it as far as his mind could track it, and then reeled it back—it was the flexing of a muscle. The more he did it, the better. Even if Teresa said building one drew unwanted attention, he had to practice for the 31st. These mantles weren’t just used for barriers, after all. And he wasn’t going to lose another Heart of the Harvest. Not this year.
Something roared beneath them. The steering wheel violently jammed to the left—Martin hardly heard the tire explode when his shoulder momentarily popped from the socket and bucked at the counterforce. The blowout had sent the van sideways. The tires shrieked and the desert shrugged to one side. Somewhere to his left, the mantle thinned into the atmosphere. A big rig’s horn blared another time. Martin’s hands sought power uselessly—the creation had thrown mud over his reflexes. He cried out, still spent from bringing the mantle. A thought trickled down his mind and into his heart. I can’t believe I did this to—
—Teresa’s hand caught the steering wheel. The van jumped off the road, the truck rushed past, and the world jackknifed around in a sepia screech. Martin threw up his hands to block his head. He heard Teresa’s knuckles strike the van’s ceiling and she shouted so loud his ears rang. The radio had turned on and unintelligible music cut through the buzz of surprise.
And as soon as it all happened, it stopped.
The big rig had come to a stop a quarter mile up the road. The driver was probably emptying his pants out right about now, but nobody was hurt, no damage was done. Martin didn’t look over, but his heart lighted when he heard Teresa’s voice. It was sweet to hear the forgiveness in it, despite the ragged quality of her tone.
“Goddamn tires were only a month old.”