JEFF WOKE EARLY SUNDAY MORNING FROM A BAD dream to still more rain drumming on the roof. Outside cars went by, tires hissing on the pavement. Jeff sighed. He loved rain, but he had planned to go and visit Russell in the afternoon, while the Clarks hunkered down in the living room to read the Sunday papers, do the crossword puzzles, and nap. But even with them distracted, it would be difficult to hide any wet clothes—and he had barely managed to get away with sneaking out Friday and back in on Saturday morning. He knew if he asked, they would have taken him over there—but then they would have to meet Russell’s parents, and Russell was afraid of what would happen if they did. Besides, Russell was still grounded. Jeff thought about praying to God to sort things out, but no. Jeff shook his head. His dad had made him go to church every Sunday and every Sunday Jeff had prayed for things to stop and everything to be as it was. It had taken God three years to answer the first part of his prayer and being with the Clarks wasn’t how things had been.
But never mind that, Jeff thought, as he leaned against the window. Maybe it would fair off later. Then he remembered Mr. Clark saying it was supposed to rain all day Sunday.
I’ll call him tomorrow—I mean later today, Jeff thought, still leaning against the window. He looked back at the clock on his dresser. 3:11 A.M. Waaay too early to call anybody, he thought. But he was wide-awake and he didn’t want to go back to sleep. Sometimes if he woke up and it was still night and went back to sleep, he would have the same dream again, as if it had been waiting for him, just the other side of being awake. He had been in bed and had been frozen. He had been cold and still, with ice on his skin and all around him. And Someone had been in the room, waiting in a dark corner, just beyond where Jeff could see. But this dream had been different. When Someone had started walking across the room, his feet heavy on the wooden floor, Jeff had finally been able to do something. He couldn’t move, but he had been able to make one of his dinosaurs move: the big one-foot-tall bright red T-rex. T-rex had floated up from Jeff’s desk and smashed into Someone. And again and again and again until Someone had fled, howling.
Jeff had woken up when Someone had started howling and running away.
“I did that,” he whispered to himself. “I made that dinosaur move.”
But it had been just another bad dream, right? But now he knew dreams were real—after all, his ears were pointed and if he looked into the mirror he would see his eyes were greener and almost luminous.
Okay, let’s see. Jeff stood up from the window, turned on the lamp by his bed, and looked around the room. There was a heap of dinosaurs on the floor. A purple pterodactyl was on the top. In the dream it had been like completing an equation, or completing a puzzle. This here, that there. For a long moment, nothing moved, except the rain outside the window. Then, with a quick jerk, the pterodactyl shot straight up, hit the ceiling and fell back down on the pile.
“Okay, I’m getting there,” Jeff said and grabbed the pterodactyl and held it over his head. “Dreams are real,” he reminded himself and tossed the pterodactyl up in the air. This time when it hit the ceiling it stayed. Yeeessss. Just like in the dream. The dinosaur banked to the left and zoomed around the room, in and out of the white light of the lamp. He made it do cartwheels, somersaults, figure eight’s, loop-de-loops, barrel rolls. Now: here. And the pterodactyl landed on Jeff’s open palm.
For the next half-hour dinosaurs flew everywhere. Jeffs comic books joined them in flight, becoming big paper birds with flapping wing-pages. The lamp flicked on and off, on and off, on and off, over and over again.
“I can’t wait to tell Russell,” Jeff said as he lay on his bed, hands behind his head, watching an apatosaurus spinning right above his head. Three triceratops whizzed around the room, swooping and diving low over the bed. A brachiosaurus hovered by the window, looking for all the world as if it were watching the rain outside. The air-trails the toys left behind became a web of blue, an azure net cast over the room.
“Maybe I can tell Russell now,” Jeff said and sat up. All the dinosaurs fell down then, banging on the floor, flopping on the bed. “If I can move my dinosaurs—” He pushed up the window, and then the storm window and screen, and jumped back almost immediately as the rain and wind hit him in the face. “Sure—” and he pushed back the rain and the wind. The air between Jeff and the outside sparkled and shimmered and no rain and no wind came in the window. “Now a test pilot.” He tossed the brach up and out and caught it before it hit the grass. Then the green toy flew in widening circles around the backyard, around the trees, under and over the swings.
“Come back,” he called and the brach turned and floated back to his hand.
I can do this, I know I can do this.
Jeff closed the screen and storm window and the glass window and then, feeling more wide-awake than he sometimes felt in the daytime, Jeff snuck out of his room and down the hall and out the back door to the deck. He climbed up on the porch railing and stood there for a moment, balancing himself, his eyes closed. I’m getting soaked—hey, if I can push the rain back out the window—There—Now the faintly sparkling air surrounded Jeff; it moved as he moved, as if it were a separate skin. And he couldn’t feel the rain or the wind. All right. Just like moving the dinosaurs, pushing back the rain, except it’s me. One, two, three—Jeff flew, the wind and the rain parting before him, the night all around him like a black glove. He flew faster and faster, his eyes still closed, until he ran headlong into a pine tree. The sparkling air disappeared as if it had been cut off. Branches slapped his face and ripped a long tear in his shirt and down his back. Crying and wet, Jeff fell, breaking more branches until he hit the ground with a thud.
He sat unmoving, water soaking through his shorts to his skin, rain on his head, running down his nose, into his eyes, down his back. At least the rain was slowing down a little. He gingerly moved each arm and leg. Nothing broken. His back was a little sore and when he reached behind him, Jeff felt something warm and wet. In the light from the deck Jeff could see a dark streak on his hand. He shrugged and wiped the blood on his shorts. He stood up slowly, pulling a few twigs and needles out of his hair. A trail of broken branches marked his path down the tree.
“Okay, let’s try again with eyes open and away from trees. First, the sparkly air,” Jeff said. The annoying rain disappeared. Satisfied, Jeff glanced toward the house: no sign of the Clarks. Good, they hadn’t heard him crash into the tree.
Onetwothree ...
Jeff flew straight up, not stopping until he was high above the trees and power lines. Then Jeff floated on his stomach, his arms spread out like Superman. The cars looked no bigger than the Matchbox cars he had left at his parents’ house. Their headlights seemed to be running in front of them, white shadows pushing back the black. Jeff let himself drift for a long time. He floated on his back, pretending he was in an invisible hammock, swaying back and forth. Flying was just how he had dreamed it would be.
“Okay, Russ,” Jeff said and flew up and over the trees and other houses and streets between his house and Russell’s. The night was amazingly dark: no moon, no stars, only the heavy clouds and the rain. At least it was beginning to taper off, and the wind was almost a breeze. He wished the clouds would go away and let the moon and stars come out. Then the night and everything in it would be all his—for right now, as he flew, there was no one in the whole world but Jeff. He was almost disappointed to reach Russell’s house. Down Poole, and then left here, down the Whites’ driveway. There was the house, standing alone in the middle of its big, ragged going-to-weed yard. Jeff landed on the roof, just outside Russell’s window. He could see Russell’s manger scene through the glass.
“Windows lock on the inside,” Jeff muttered. Just like the dinosaurs. Even so, moving the metal lock was harder and required more concentration. Jeff closed his eyes and scrunched up his face. He felt the sparkling air wavering around him and he felt just a hint of the cool, wet night. There. The lock moved and Jeff shoved the window up. He carefully set aside the little manger and the statues, and crawled inside. He let the sparkling air fade away.
“Russell. Russ, wake up. It’s me, Jeff. Wake up,” Jeff whispered and shook the lump beneath the spread.
“Huh? Jeff? Watterya doing here in th’ middle of night? How’dya get in?” Russell finally rolled over and pulled the covers back from his head. He looked up at Jeff, his face still heavy with sleep.
“I flew here from the Clarks.”
“Huh? You did what?”
“Wake up, Russ. It’s like what you did when you shoved Mrs. Findlay at school. I, we, can move stuff. I had my dinosaurs flying all over the place and I moved me. We can fly and stay warm and dry—I mean—Russ, are you awake? Watch me.” Jeff floated straight up to the ceiling and then came down slowly to stand on Russell’s furry rug. Then, slowly, the spread peeled itself off Russell and clumped at the foot of the bed.
“Now hit me,” Jeff said and the air shimmered and glowed around him.
“Hit you?”
“Hit me. Go ahead. You are awake, aren’t you? It’s okay, hit me. Go on. It won’t hurt.”
Russell got out of bed and slowly swung his hand toward Jeffs face. His hand stopped a few inches away. He pressed hard and still he couldn’t reach Jeff’s face.
“Man, I can’t—but—this is more magic, isn’t it? And you said you flew here, right?” Russell asked. “Can you show me how?” He sat down on his bed and pulled his spread around him. He was wearing only his State gym shorts.
Jeff sat down beside him, still wrapped inside his shimmering air shield. “I think so. I can see, when this air is around me, lights all around you, layers of light. Close your eyes and hold my hand.”
Russell nodded and closed his eyes. He couldn’t quite get his hand around Jeff’s; instead, he was holding the shimmering air. His hand tingled, and then for a long moment, nothing happened. He could hear Jeff breathing and his own breathing. Then small, white stars appeared behind his eyes. The stars grew bigger and brighter until there was nothing but brightness and it hurt and yet felt good and funny and warm and too hot and cold and—it was gone. And Russell could feel Jeffs hand, each finger, and he knew.
“Well?” Jeff said when Russell opened his eyes. Russell got up and opened his wardrobe and looked into the mirror. He was surrounded by the same shimmering, twinkling light as Jeff was—no, Russell’s light was more the color of fire, a yellow streaked with orange and red. The light rippled in his red hair, making it like a living flame. Jeff’s light was cooler and more subdued. It was the color of ice: blue, white, and streaked with pale green. Jeffs light was wet, Russell thought, if a light could be wet. His light burned.
“Ready to fly?” Jeff asked. He stood by the now-open window. Russell hesitated. All he could see behind Jeff was night.
“Here, Russ, hold my hand for a little while,” Jeff said and they climbed out the window and onto the roof. “One, two, three, blastoff!”
For a few seconds Russell knew he was a weight, dragging Jeff down. Then, it came to him, as if someone had flicked a switch, or pulled curtains back to let light in. He saw what Jeff had been trying to make him see. At first, a strange, intricate pattern, convoluted, intertwined, sparking, shifting colors, then, he could see the pattern, trace it, and there it was, he saw. Russell let go of Jeff’s hand and flew past him, straight up, the fiery light around him crackling and sparking and hissing in the air.
“I’m flying, I’m flying! C’mon, Jeff, let’s race, let’s do something, anything. We can fly.”
Jeff caught up with Russell when they were a good hundred feet above Russell’s house. Russell was floating on his back and laughing. Jeff flew up and under him and flipped him over and darted away, a quick air-fish.
“I’m gonna get you!”
And they flew, one after the other, two small comets in the sky, one blue-green, the other yellow-orange.
Russell wondered, as he turned and banked to chase Jeff over the trees if this was the same Jeff who had been so terrified on the cliff above the swimmers’ sea. The same Jeff who tried to be invisible in school? And yes, he thought, the same Jeff who swam like a fish and rode on dolphins’ backs. Each one was Jeff, whose eyes were like twin green stoplights. I bet my eyes are like that: green lights. He shook off his questions. There was too much happening all at once for Russell to even get close to any answers. Below and behind him was his house, but it didn’t look like his house anymore. It was a white box receding into the shadows of the forest, which was all dark and green and black. Jeff’s neighborhood looked like a patchwork quilt made of uneven squares and rectangles. Russell caught Jeff when they crossed Poole Road and they flew side by side, their arms outstretched, a hand’s width apart. Russell flew a little closer and tapped Jeff on the hand.
“Tag. Yer it.”
“Wait, I’ve got a better idea,” Jeff said, laughing. “Let’s go to the school, to the playground. I want to try something. When we get there, let’s play follow-the-leader. I’ll be leader first, okay?”
“Sure,” Russell said with a shrug.
The school came into sight within a few minutes’ flying time. Jeff turned his head and grinned. “Are you ready?” Russell nodded. When they cleared the trees enclosing the playground, Jeff dove straight down. It was like riding a roller coaster: a long, long, sharp dive, and down, down, down, down, to skim the ground; then straight up and back down again. And up again, making a corkscrew in the air. Then Jeff led him in great circles around and around the playground.
“Okay, now we go this way, toward that pond over there,” Jeff shouted and banked left.
“What are we gonna do there?” Russell shouted back, wondering why they were shouting. Jeff was only a few feet away.
“You’ll see.”
When they got to the small pond, Jeff dove straight down again, slicing into the water with a quick splash. Russell could see Jeffs blue-green-white shape streaking below the pond’s dark surface, like some great racing fish. He burst through the water on the far side and flew up, the water streaming off his light-skin.
“We’re still playing follow-the-leader, Russ. You aren’t scared, are you?”
“I’m not scared,” Russell snapped. He’d show Jeff who was tougher. He let his light-skin wink out and before he could begin to feel the night air and the now-misty rain, dove into the pond. The water was like a sudden slap, very cold and very hard, and then he was under, shooting just below the surface as fast as he could go. The water exploded in front of him and he shot up in the air, a wet comet.
“You lost your shorts,” Jeff yelled, laughing and pointing.
Russell looked down. He was naked, forty feet up in the air. And he was wet and shivering. Chattering and with some effort, he turned back on his light-skin full strength. At least the cold went away. He flew down slowly, in wide circles, to look for his shorts. There was the dark water of the pond. No shorts. Russell flew back up, shaking his head. Jeff laughed again and dove down into the water. He skimmed the surface this time, as if he were a skipping stone, and then up, stopping to hover in front of Russell.
“Here they are, you goof. Can’t you see? You’d better put them back on,” Jeff said and handed the dripping shorts to Russell.
“What for? Who’s going to look up in the air in the middle of the night? This is like swimming with the swimmers, remember?” Russell said and let his gym shorts fall back in the water. They weren’t his favorites, anyway.
“I guess you’re right,” Jeff agreed and peeled his clothes off and dropped them in the pond. “This is like when we were with the swimmers and the dolphins. C’mon, let’s race.” Jeff flew off, with Russell at first behind and then right beside him.
Sometime later they stopped racing and diving and floated, like dandelion fluff on a light breeze. They lay on their backs, with their arms outstretched, over the trees between Russell’s and Jeff’s houses. By then it was almost morning. The clouds were gone and the sky was changing from purple-black to blue-grey.
“I could live up here forever,” Russell said, his eyes closed.
“Me, too. The sun’s going to come up soon, Russ. Look over there. See the light just starting behind those trees?”
“Yeah, I see it. I guess we should go home soon before somebody on their way to early church does look up and see us up here with no clothes on.”
“You’re right,” Jeff said a few minutes later, yawning. “There’s the sun, just over the trees,” he added. The faint glow had become a golden fire. “There’s the Clarks’ house. I’d better go. Call me later, if you can.”
“Okay, see you later,” Russell said, wondering if either one of them would be able to sleep when they were home, if they would just lie in bed, remembering flying. Russell watched as Jeff flew down and landed in the backyard and then ran into the house, disappearing into the back door, a white shadow on the green grass. Russell flew back to his own house and landed on the roof. The floor felt odd to his feet as he put the manger scene back in the window. He crawled back in bed and the sheet and spread lay heavy on his skin. For a little while the pillow felt hard. And then, completely under the covers, Russell let his fire-colored light-skin go out.
Malachi stayed out of school three more days, until the middle of the week. He had wanted to go back on Monday but his father had insisted he stay home, sleep, get back his strength. Thursday was soon enough.
“Dad, I’m going to get behind,” Malachi grumped Monday morning as his father stood meditatively over his open briefcase, pondering what to put in next.
“I’ll call your teacher and get your assignments. I’ll drive over there this afternoon and get your books. I’ll tell her the doctor said you were to stay in bed for a few days. The flu. No, don’t ask me again. You’re staying at home. And how in the world could we explain how you look?” Ben said and selected two books he needed to review. Then he scooped a stack of the manila file folders. He wasn’t on the public desk until the afternoon; maybe he could get all these done today. Well, at least two or three of them. “I don’t think there are any other kids at Nottingham Heights Elementary that have light-smoke drifting out of their pointed ears. Do. You? Besides. You’re. Still. Tired.”
“When Mrs. Collins gets mad she has smoke coming out of her ears—never mind,” Malachi said. Whenever his father spoke each word as if it was a single sentence he knew the argument was over and done with. And he was still leaking light. Tendrils oozed slowly out of his skin pores, his ears. As his father closed his briefcase, another thin stream came out of his nose. Malachi watched as it drifted slowly up in the air, twisting and turning near the living room ceiling until it faded away.
“Case in point,” his dad said, watching Malachi’s nose smoke in the air. “Your mother could turn the light on and off. I wish I knew how to tell you to do it, too, son. Try concentrating on it, visualizing the light going off. You can do it—you were born to,” Ben said. “You glowed all over when you were a little baby. I wish I could take you to a doctor about being so tired.”
“I’ve never been to a doctor,” Malachi said. He raised one hand and the door opened in front of his father.
“You’ve never been sick before, either. Never caught anything like measles or mumps. But even if you weren’t leaking light, I couldn’t take you. Who knows what would show up on a blood test and your normal temp is 100. I arranged for all the paperwork the schools needed—but never mind that. I’ll be home for lunch. I love you, son,” his dad said and kissed Malachi on the forehead and went out the door.
“I love you, too, Dad,” Malachi called after him as he closed the door.
It was a long three days, even though Malachi spent most of them sleeping—deep, heavy sleep. His father had been right. Getting up for breakfast, eating, reading, doing whatever schoolwork Mrs. Collins had given his father took him to mid-morning. Then Malachi would be bone dead tired again, so tired he would fall asleep where he was, on the couch, in an armchair, at the kitchen table. By Tuesday night he began to feel stronger and the light discharges stopped. Malachi had wanted to be able to tell his father he had stopped them, but he couldn’t. They just stopped.
In the afternoons, after the morning nap, lunch, and another nap, Malachi practiced his levitation and psychokinesis. By Wednesday morning Malachi was able to keep a circle of balls moving over his head, like a revolving halo. He drifted about the house, from room to room, and walked up walls and on the ceiling. It was a relief to be able to practice magic and not have to hide it from his father. All his father had said when saw the balls in the air was to be careful and let no one else see what he was doing.
“Be sure you draw the drapes, son. And no going outside. I just have a funny feeling they aren’t far away.”
They were the Fomorii—the red-eyed ones who sometimes lurked in dark corners in his dreams. He knew the monsters terrified his father. Malachi was able to pick up enough of his father’s thoughts to know that. It wasn’t actual mind-reading or listening—rather it was as if the emotions that were part of his father’s thoughts —fear, worry over Malachi—were being projected. And even if he couldn’t pick up his father’s emotions, Malachi could tell his father was worried and afraid by the colors in his aura. The usual warm white-yellow of his father’s aura was streaked with dulling browns, black, and greys. He wanted his father to tell him about the Fomorii: who were they, really and did they come from Faerie, too, and what did they want so badly? Uncle Jack had been of no help.
“The Fomorii? Those red-eyed monsters, huh? No, Malachi, that story your dad has to tell you, not me,” Jack had said.
On Thursday morning, his father, grumbling that Malachi could have waited until Friday, drove Malachi to school. Malachi had wanted to ride the bus, but his father had been adamant. “Malachi, are you sure you’re up to this?” his father asked when they were stopped in front of the school.
“I’m fine, Dad, really,” Malachi said, one hand on the door handle.
“Well all right, but you be sure you tell the teacher to call me if you get tired,” his father and kissed Malachi on the forehead.
“I’ll be fine, Dad.” He wanted to ask his father right then about the Fomorii. The physical contact—lips on forehead—had been an instant download and this time not just emotions, but images. The Fomorii, their eyes, fire whips, in the middle of the night, and his father, afraid, afraid for his son, his wife—and deep, sharp grief. Then his dad had pulled away. “I’ll be okay, Dad; I have her charm, remember? See you at three.” You are going to have to tell me and soon. I need to know.
Malachi waited at the top of the school steps until his father’s car was out of sight. Then he turned and faced the school and took a deep breath. Malachi could just vaguely sense the other kids’ feelings, as if they were a distant thunderstorm. When a girl bumped him as he stood there, it was like having someone throw cold water on him in the shower. He pulled away, gasping. She was—her dad had—no, no—she hadn’t wanted him to—And she was gone. Malachi counted to ten and then, keeping himself as close to the wall as he could, went in. He wasn’t leaking light, and as long as he didn’t touch anyone, it would be safe.
That feeling of safety lasted until he got to his classroom. Hazel’s mind practically slapped Malachi in the face when he stepped through the door. She was sitting at her seat, reading and fiddling with her long, brown braid. Hazel was outlined in layers of light: a pale blue close, then rainbow colors, yellow, and more rainbow colors. What looked like small fires burned at the top of her head, her neck, and her heart. Hazel’s ears were pointed; her eyes glowed silver. Malachi blinked and she looked like she always did, except she wore a headband over her ears. Hazel looked up then and Malachi saw recognition in her face: he knew she had seen him in her dreams.
Two, Malachi thought, and went in the room, chatted with Mrs. Collins, and then sat down with the work sheet for morning work. I’ll talk to her at lunch, maybe PE. She’s scared, too, and kind of glad—
The air crackled and snapped and Malachi felt a sudden heat on his face and rain on his head. He looked up. Russell White stood in the doorway, talking with his buddy, Jeff, who was in Mrs. Markham’s room across the hall. Both of them had headbands wrapped around their ears. Malachi could see the layers of color in Russell’s aura all the way to the fine burning gold edge. Small fires burned on the top of Russell’s fiery red hair, his neck, his heart, the middle of his torso, his belly, his crotch. His eyes glowed green. Jeffs eyes were as green as Russell’s, but his aura was cool: white, blue, and green. A rose-colored vine of light grew out of each of their hearts, linking the two boys together.
Three and four. Russell, he thought, hadn’t been the same since his suspension two weeks ago. The usually cantankerous boy had come back quiet and subdued and suddenly best friends with a boy who was no longer quiet or subdued. And somehow Malachi was sure Russell’s new quiet wasn’t just because of the fire and the trailer and the new Resource teacher. Malachi quickly looked back at the work sheet on his desk as Russell walked past him to his desk, feeling like a faint brush across his back the boy’s dislike and distrust.
At least he doesn’t out and out hate me. And he and Jeff and Hazel are the other kids I have dreamed about. Now, what do I do? I know them and I don’t. I know they are becoming like me and we are sup - posed to be together, the four of us—
“Ow,” Malachi said out loud, for the moment forgetting the other three. He had brushed his bare arm against the steel desk support. There was a long, angry red welt where the metal had touched his skin and his arm hurt. He pressed his right hand against his mother’s charm and felt an answering surge and the welt faded. A ward, he thought; Dad had talked about her setting wards like force fields. And iron, how iron was poisonous to her—
“Malachi? Do you feel well? Did you hurt your arm?”
He looked up to see Mrs. Perry leaning over him.
“Just tired. I’ve finished my morning work. Here it is, and here’s what I did when I was home and ...”
Then Mrs. Collins began quizzing Russell about his headband.
“Is it some sort of club you and Jeff have, or something one of you saw on TV? Well, Russell?” she asked, tapping her pencil on her desk. Malachi looked up to see Mrs. Collins’s aura as well, a dull, rusty brown that kept flickering on and off, as if whatever batteries powering it were weak.
“We just wanted to wear them, that’s all. No club, no special reason. Besides, Hazel has one on, see?” Russell said. Mrs. Collins turned from Russell to look at Hazel and her mouth dropped open.
“Hazel? Why are you wearing a headband?”
“Uh, I, uh—”
Malachi dropped all his books on the floor and everybody in the class jumped and looked away from Russell and Hazel. Jeff slipped out the door and Russell took his seat. Hazel buried herself in her spelling book. Malachi busily and loudly picked everything up.
Hazel looked up from her spelling book when everyone had settled down. Russell, still scowling, looked intent on his morning work. Malachi had finally secured all his books beneath his desk and it looked like he was doing math. Hazel could tell by the red cover of his book. Was he the boy she had seen in her dreams in the country of the dragon and the white trees? She couldn’t be sure—not of that or anything else now.
The morning had been bad for Hazel. She had turned around from the water fountain to find Russell White standing directly behind her, glaring, with his arms folded across his chest. Jeff Gates stood a little behind him, tugging at Russell’s arm. Russell shrugged him off. Hazel took a step backward. Russell scared her. Hazel had looked frantically up and down the hall. Where were all the teachers? The teacher’s assistants?
“Why are you wearing a headband, Hazel? Huh? Are you trying to make fun of me and Jeff? Is that it, you little goody-goody teacher’s pet? Hazel, will you please take this to the office? Hazel, your story was sooo good I want you to read to the class. Take it off,” Russell ordered and reached out to jerk the headband off.
“No, Russell, don’t,” Hazel cried, stepping back even further until she was pressing against the water fountain. “I’m not making fun of you. I promise. Leave me alone. I didn’t even know y’all were going to wear them today. Leave me alone; I have to go to the bathroom.” The girls’ bathroom door was right behind Russell, a few feet away. He wouldn’t follow her in there, would he? Or maybe she should just make a break for the classroom. Mrs. Collins was probably there, or Mrs. Perry. She should have caught a ride with her grandfather, skipped the bus, gotten to school sooner.
“Russ, leave her alone. Hazel’s all right. C’mon,” Jeff had said and jerked Russell’s arm again. Hazel ran when Russell turned away from her, as fast as she could down the hall. She didn’t look back until she got to the door. Mrs. Hoban, a second grade teacher’s assistant, was talking to Russell. She could see Mrs. Hoban wagging her finger in Russell’s face.
Hazel looked away from Russell quickly, before she made eye contact and took out her math book. At least numbers were a constant; they didn’t change. Not like her ears had. And Russell, too, she had thought. He hadn’t been mean to her for over a week. When school started Russell had picked on her almost every day: her hair, her size, her glasses, being Mrs. Collins’s pet. Hazel had wanted to kill him. Then he had gotten into really big trouble and there had been the trailer fire and Miss Findlay; Russell had been suspended for a week. When he came back he seemed like a different boy. Until today.
Twenty-eight plus forty-four would always be seventy-two. She wrote the answer neatly on her paper. And today was computer lab day and for the first time ever she dreaded going. All her dreams of the other place began with the computer and the Worldmaker game and the Valley of the Alexzeli—but that was the computer at home. It would be different at school; it had to be.
Mrs. Perry started taking the class down the hall to the computer lab in the middle of the morning. She had everybody count off by fives and Hazel’s group, the ones, went first. She reached into her book bag to take out two new math games her grandfather had given her. She knew the class’s games would be boring and she also knew Mrs. Perry wouldn’t care.
“I like seeing a young girl stretch her mind,” Mrs. Perry had said when Hazel first asked if she could bring computer games from home. “I wish I had someone like your grandfather when I was coming along.”
What would Mrs. Perry say if Hazel told her that sometimes she wished her grandfather—and grandmother—were different? She did love the computer games, but still, they were only another way for her to be invisible.
Hazel got into line and sighed. There was Russell; three people up—how did he get to be a one? She liked it better when they went by math or reading groups. Maybe he had gone back to his new quiet self and would leave her alone. Anyway, she thought, Mrs. Perry could handle Russell and a lot better than Mrs. Collins could. Hazel could see the relief plain and visible on Mrs. Collins’s face as the students passed her going out.
Hazel chose the computer farthest away from everybody else, especially Russell. She didn’t want a partner. Besides, they wouldn’t get her grandfather’s games anyway. When she sat down in the hardbacked little chair, the computer blinked on. What? No, someone had to have left it on. Behind her she heard Mrs. Perry telling Russell how proud she was that he was behaving so well lately. She didn’t see him stop me at the water fountain, Hazel thought, and started to slide her diskette into the A drive. A claw snagged it and pulled it in with a quick pop.
Hazel froze, blinked, and then slowly looked around the room. Everybody was doing what they were supposed to be doing. She poked her finger into the A drive. No claw, but when she touched the little A drive slot again, the room became instantly silent. Whatever Russell said back to Mrs. Perry and whatever the two girls two computers away were arguing about was lost. Hazel couldn’t hear them, nor could she hear the hum of the computer in front of her. There was no mathematics game menu on the screen—and she heard a loud tearing noise. The screen, the pale green cinderblock walls, the school, was ripped away.
Hazel stood at the edge of the meadow, a few steps out of the forest of white glowing trees. The tall meadow grass brushed against her legs, as the wind made the meadow into a green sea. She could and did reach up to touch a low branch over her head, pull off a leaf, and press it to her cheek. And there, wings outstretched, gliding down over the trees to the grass, was a flying horse. Hazel watched and waited, her arms crossed, the leaf in one hand, as the horse landed a few yards in front of her. It pawed the grass and bent to take a mouthful. Then it lifted its head, folded down its wings, and came to her. Hazel kept very still until the horse was so close she could feel its warm breath. She touched its nose with the tips of her fingers and then let it eat the leaf out of her hand. Then the horse nuzzled, blowing more warm horsy air on her face until Hazel laughed.
“Put your hand in my mane and walk with me,” the horse said. “I want you to talk and walk with me—but I will do most of the talking.” Hazel nodded and wrapped part of the horse’s thick, silvery-grey mane around her hand.
The horse talked for a long time. It talked about dreams and gates and time and space being like a house with many rooms. Dreams removed the walls between the rooms and let one remember what was forgotten. Dreams let souls travel.
“I don’t understand what you mean—is this a dream or it is real? Where are we?” Hazel asked.
“Elfhome. Faerie. Tir Mar, the Great Land. Tir Na n’Og, the Summer Country—this place has many names. Think of your house at home—you have your room and your grandparents another and a room to eat in and to cook in, yes?”
“But I can just get up and walk into other rooms at home. And I was sitting in front of a computer at school—just, just a little while ago. And before, when I met the dragon, I was in my bedroom.”
“The machine is a dream-gate. The story you are telling yourself is the one I am telling you and the one the dragon told you.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Hazel, wake up; wake up, honey. Earth to Hazel, come in, Hazel, over,” Mrs. Perry said.
Hazel jumped. Her computer mouse fell and banged against the metal desk leg. Mrs. Perry was standing right behind her. Hazel looked up at the woman, feeling dazed and flushed. On the screen in front of her was the math game’s menu. The cursor blinked at Hazel, a tiny, amber eye at the bottom of the screen. The other kids giggled. Russell hee-hawed like a donkey.
“Russell, that’s enough. Y’all line behind Tommy and go on back to the room. Tommy, tell Mrs. Collins to send the next group in about ten minutes,” Mrs. Perry said and turned back to Hazel. “Hazel Richards, do you mean to tell me you have just been sitting here sleeping the entire time? Russell, go on, and mind your own business. Hazel-honey, do you feel all right?”
Right now she wanted to curl up in Mrs. Perry’s lap, snuggle up, inhale the sweet scent of the vanilla or lilac hand lotion, and tell her everything so Mrs. Perry would stroke her hair and tell her it was all going to be all right. She knew she could never do that with her grandmother. Hazel shrugged; Mrs. Perry would never believe her —and neither would her own grandmother, for that matter.
“Hazel? Are you not feeling well? It’s not like you to sleep in class.”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Perry, really I am. I’m just—really tired; I couldn’t sleep last night. I’ll be all right.” If Mrs. Perry wasn’t going to take Hazel into her lap, couldn’t she just go away? Hazel’s head felt thick and heavy, as if she had gotten a really bad head cold.
“Insomnia? That explains it, because you don’t look fine and you certainly aren’t acting fine. Go on to the health room and lie down for a minute. Maybe you’re coming down with something. I’ll be up in a minute and take your temp. Is your grandmother at home today? Never mind, now go on—don’t try and argue with me—go on. I’ll be there directly.”
Hazel nodded and got up. Maybe Mrs. Perry was right. Maybe she was sick. Hazel, you aren’t sick. That is what I am trying to tell you. You are not sick and you are not crazy. Dreams are real. Hazel stopped in the middle of the hall and looked around. Where had that voice, the winged horse’s voice, come from? She could hear Mrs. Perkins’s voice coming from the open library door. She was reading a story. The phone was ringing in the school office, just up the hall. Behind her Hazel could hear Mrs. Perry moving chairs in the computer lab. The horse’s voice seemed to have come right out of the wall beside her.
Hazel?
Now Hazel could see the winged horse. And Mrs. Perkins holding her book and the kindergartners sitting on the floor in front of her. She saw the meadow and the white grass. The tall grasses stirred and rippled from the warm breeze. The white trees moved, their leaves whispering. The kindergarten teacher sat at a table, her head bent over papers. Hazel laid her hand on the nearest wall. It was made of solid, smooth, yellow cinder blocks. But when she pushed, she felt her hand go through the wall until she felt the hard, white wood of a tree. Hazel jerked her hand back and there, like a huge scar, was a glowing white streak. Beneath her feet, shifting and moving, as if reflections in water, were grass, earth, flowers, and the tiled floor.
Hazel?
“Hazel? Are you all right? I thought I told you to go to the health room. Hazel? Can you hear me?”
Mrs. Perry and the winged horse were standing in the same space and they were speaking at the same time. The horse’s wings rose and fell, and for a moment, Mrs. Perry looked winged, and did Hazel see the woman’s grey hair rise and fall in the wing-made breeze? The skin in the palm of her hand glowed even brighter. Hazel cried out and reached for the horse’s mane, for Mrs. Perry’s hand, and fell and fell and fell.
“She’s waking up now. Normal pulse and blood pressure and her heart sounds fine. How are you feeling, Hazel?”
Hazel opened her eyes and looked into the face of a strange woman. Hazel lay flat on her back and the dark-haired woman was leaning over her. The woman who was wearing a white coat, like a doctor—she was a doctor, Hazel realized—holding a stethoscope to Hazel’s chest. Hazel closed and reopened her eyes. She wasn’t in school—in the doctor’s office? A hospital, she decided. She was lying in a hospital bed, with long rails on either side. A crisp, white sheet covered her up to the waist.
“Grand-dad? Grandma?”
“We’re right here,” her grandmother said, moving into view. Her grandmother was wearing one of her work smocks, dusty with clay and spattered with paint and glaze. Brown clay made smudges on her forehead and cheeks. Behind her grandmother was her grandfather. He looked like he had been in his lab. He had on a white coat and his IBM ID dangled from one pocket.
“Mrs. Richards, Dr. Richards. If you could both step out with me for a moment,” the doctor said, and Hazel watched her grandparents follow the doctor out. The doctor was a loud talker. “She’s going to be all right, but I would like to keep her overnight. This afternoon we’ll run those tests I told you about. It’s really unusual for a healthy nine-year-old to pass out like this and stay out for so long. I’ll be right back with the forms for you to sign.”
“What was she talking about?” Hazel asked slowly after the doctor had left, and her grandparents had come back into the room. A long, yellow curtain hung from runners on the ceiling. One side of the bed was a little table with a pitcher of water and a small box of Kleenex. Beyond the table Hazel could see out a window into a parking lot. A TV looked down at her from the opposite wall. “How did I get here?”
“Haze,” her grandmother said, with a rare use of a diminutive for Hazel, as she reached down awkwardly to stroke her hair, “we’re in Wake County Hospital, not too far from your school. You came here on a field trip last year, remember? I was with you.”
“You felt sick at school—don’t you remember?” her grandfather said, walking around to stand on the opposite side of the bed. “You were in the computer lab and you fell asleep and—” He stopped and looked at her grandmother.
“Go ahead, Hawthorne, you tell her.”
“Haze, you may have had a seizure. Remember the boy in your class last year who was epileptic? The doctor wants to give you some medical tests to see if you really did have a seizure. You passed out again in the hall and you didn’t wake up until now.”
Hazel remembered the boy. Charlie Baggott had fallen out of his seat in the middle of science. His whole body started jerking and twitching and his eyes rolled back in his head. A lot of kids screamed and ran. An ambulance came, with a siren, and quick people shouting directions at each other. Everybody talked about it for days.
“It wasn’t a seizure, Grand-dad. It’s the game, Worldmaker. It’s not a game anymore; it’s real and—” Hazel stopped at the expression on both her grandparents’ faces.
“You were delirious in the hall and in the ambulance—a winged horse? That was a dream, Hazel-honey, you were dreaming, that’s all,” her grandmother said. “Just a very vivid dream.”
“But—never mind.” Hazel knew it was useless to argue. And maybe they were right. Maybe her game and her dreams had gotten mixed up and she really had been sick, with a fever or something. A virus, like the doctors always said. But she was positive she wasn’t sick the way Charlie had been. And the horse had told her and told her it wasn’t a dream.
“But what?” her grandfather asked.
“Nothing. I’m just tired.”
The doctor came back in then, with forms for her grandparents to sign. An electroencephalograph, blood work, some X-rays, a psych consult (just to be sure), the doctor said. Insurance forms.
“I don’t think there is anything to really worry about, but I just want to be sure there’s nothing I missed,” the doctor said as Dr. Richards signed each form. “We’ll get these started right after lunch and she should be able to go home tomorrow morning ...”
The tests took most of the afternoon. First the electroencephalograph and the X-rays, then some man took little tubes of blood from her finger. Another doctor examined her eyes and then asked her question after question: did she ever have headaches? Any other dizzy spells? Hear voices, have bad dreams? Either her grandmother or her grandfather stayed with her, until finally Hazel was back in the room with the yellow curtain. Her grandmother sent her grandfather home to get clothes for both Hazel and her and Hazel ate bland food from a plastic tray. Her grandmother was at her best at times like this. Hazel knew that when she was better, her grandmother’s attention would refocus downstairs on her pots and the wheel and the clay, and Hazel would be back on the edges. But, for now, Hazel’s grandmother’s attention was on her.
Her grandmother fell asleep first and it made Hazel feel better to watch her sleep, her chest rising and falling, wisps of hair floating up and down as she breathed. It was as if her grandmother’s breathing was a soft and very faint lullaby and Hazel felt herself slowly, slowly, falling down, down into sleep. As she turned over, stretching against the crisp hospital sheets, Hazel heard her name and the voice, low and dark, was a familiar one, one she had heard before. It caught her right between diving into a great warm pool of sleep, and being awake, listening to the hospital sounds, the voices outside, the distant metallic sounds. Hazel tried to wake up to answer the voice, but she couldn’t. She could brush the bright underside of wakefulness with the tips of her fingers.
I’m not there; I’m here.
Grandma? (and she knew she was asleep, as the words came without her mouth moving, with her tongue still)
No, over here.
It was the dragon in the meadow. Its yellow eyes were like two fires in the room’s darkness.
I know they told you were dreaming or hallucinating. They are wrong. Everything that happened was real, even though your body slept. You were in Faerie.
Where am I now? I can see you and the bed and Grandma and the curtain and behind you, the white trees.
Between. I am going to give you proof, proof that won’t go away. Here, take this.
Something small and shiny fell onto the white hospital bedspread.
And one last proof: open your right hand.
The white streak was still there, luminous in the darkened room. Then, the dragon leaned, shot out its forked tongue, and licked her hand.
“It burns—and the white—” The white winked out, leaving behind two glowing, thin blue streaks.
No one can see that unless they are like you and have been here and belong with you.
The dragon began to dissolve then, as if it were turning into its own smoke and when Hazel reached for it, it was gone.
Wait—I want to ask you—I need to know—
Hazel sat up in bed, breathing hard and fully awake and alone in the dark of the room. Her grandmother, a darker shadow in the chair, stirred and murmured something in her sleep.
Hazel opened and closed her right hand, dimming and brightening the streaks, like little lines of blue fire across her palm. She laid the luminous green scale against the blue. It was the size of a saucer and pliable; Hazel could bend it back and forth.
“Grandma?”
Her grandmother moved again, smacked her lips as if she had just eaten something pleasing in her dreams, and then was still. Hazel could hear her grandmother breathing. She lay back in the bed, pulling the spread up to her neck. She rolled over and opened her right hand on the pillow: two flashes of blue fire. She pulled the scale out from under the covers and laid it on the sheet: a soft glowing green.
It was true then, all of it.
The doctor let Hazel go the next afternoon.
“All her tests came out fine. She’s a perfectly healthy nine-year-old, who seems to be putting herself under a lot of stress. She needs to relax. Here is the name of a good child psychologist. You should call her if there is another episode—and you might want to call anyway,” the doctor said and handed Hazel’s grandfather a business card.
“Can she go back to school?” her grandfather asked, as he stuffed the card into his shirt pocket. Hazel said nothing.
“Let her have the rest of the week off. Relax. Stay home and play, watch TV, read a good book—”
“But I want to go to school tomorrow,” Hazel interrupted.
“Hazel, give yourself a break,” the doctor said, smiling. “Please call me if you need to.”
Hazel smiled back and stood when her grandparents did. It’s not school; it’s the magic. If I told you I’d be in trouble; you wouldn’t believe me, anyway. But I have a dragon scale in my pocket and two dragon tongue marks on my hand that glow blue in the dark. Hazel shook the doctor’s hand and then let her grandfather wheel her out of the hospital, her grandmother trailing behind.
Hazel wanted to see Alexander the minute she got home. Even before her grandfather had the car in the garage, she was out and calling the cat’s name. He wasn’t in the house. She grabbed a can of Pounce from the kitchen and ran outside to look for him, shaking the can and yelling Al-lex, Al-lexxxxx. Hazel ignored her grandmother’s protests to take it easy. She wished she could yell back she wasn’t sick and she had never been sick. It’s magic.
“She’s fine, Annie, just look at her. She’s fine,” her grandfather said. “Let her go. Remember what the doctor said ...” Her grandfather’s usually loud voice dropped into a whisper. It didn’t matter what they were saying, Hazel thought as she made her way through the bushes that separated the Richards’ backyard from the neighbors. It didn’t matter.
“Alex, there you are. Why didn’t you come when I called?” Hazel said. There was the cat, crouched by the neighbor’s goldfish pond. He stared intently into the dark green water. He looked poised to strike, one paw half-raised. Hazel quietly knelt down beside the cat.
“What do you see, Alex, a goldfish?”
The cat turned and looked at her, his dark blue eyes intent on her face, his head bent to one side, listening.
“Here, have a Pounce,” Hazel said. She couldn’t see any goldfish: just her face and Alex. Was he bigger than he was the day before? Maybe. But what Hazel could see without mistake was her ears. Pointed.
Alex touched her thigh with one paw. She sat back on her heels, and then lay down on the grass, her arms outstretched, her feet touching the edge of the walk outlining the pool.
“Hey, boy, do you see my ears? I bet you do,” Hazel whispered. “Here, have a Pounce. The cat leaned down to scarf up the tuna-flavored snack. Then he reached out with his paw again, this time to lick her hand, his rough tongue right on the two marks. In the shadow of the neighbor’s house they glowed. Then he sat back and meowed and, for a moment, looked as if he were trying to talk.
ShetasteswhatIsmellfeel
SheknowsmeIknowher
TongueIcantshapethesesoundsheadsounds
HazullmeIammynameAlexxxIknow
Iknowmyname
Alexxx
IknowmynameAlexxxIknowyourname: Hazull
Hearmyname
HearmynameIknowIam
Friday morning, the day Hazel went back to school over her grandparents’ protests, Mrs. Collins sent both Malachi and Hazel to the library on an errand. She gave them a long list of books to find for her. The library was empty when they got there, except for Mrs. Perkins. She sat at her desk in her glass box office, typing carefully. Malachi and Hazel went there first, and stood waiting until she finally looked up.
“Mrs. Perkins? Mrs. Collins wants us—”
“It’s okay, Malachi. Y’all go ahead; Mrs. Collins told me she was going to send the two of you up here this morning. If you need any help, let me know.”
“Here, Hazel,” Malachi said when they were standing in front of the 398’s, the fairy tale section. “You take the first half of the list, it starts here, I think, and I’ll take the other half—” He stopped and looked at Hazel’s open right hand. The blue streaks glowed.
“You can see them?” she asked, whispering even though Mrs. Perkins couldn’t possibly hear through the glass walls of her office. “The dragon said only those like me and who belong with me would be able to—only those who had been there, where the dragon is.”
“I’ve seen your face, reflected back at me, in water in the other place, with the white trees.” And your thoughts like a murmur in my head therecanyouhearME?
YesIcanhearYOUears&eyes?
Malachi pushed back his hair and smiled.
We’reNotaloneanymoreShowme.
Hazel pulled her headband down to her neck.
ThatfeelsbetterHURTSmyearsYoureyes are gold.
YoureyesaresilverAndYOURcat, too? “Hey, you don’t need the headband anymore, Hazel. Nobody but people like us can see our ears are pointed. Well, my dad can, and Uncle Jack. I think the priest at our church can, too. Glamour is what Dad calls it: a fairy magic to hide things in plain sight. What about your cat?”
“Yeah, my cat,” Hazel said, sounding infinitely relieved, “bigger and his eyes—well, it’s hard to tell if they are glowing, cats’ eyes look so funny in the dark anyway, but he’s smarter, too. Everything, all this, our ears, the cat—”
“It’s real. I’m still trying to figure it all out, but it’s all real. My mother—she was from there—the place in our dreams, where the dragons and the centaurs are. My dad told me she was Daoine Sidhe, a fairy. There are—two others—I think,” Malachi said softly, looking around the library. Mrs. Perkins had left her typewriter and was at her desk, buried in a catalog. There was nobody in the hall. The other nearest person was Mrs. Anderson, the school secretary. He could see her over Hazel’s shoulder, through the glass display case. Mrs. Anderson was on the phone. And the goldfish in the library aquarium, swishing their long tails in and out of dreamy green water ferns.
“We’d better start getting Mrs. Collins’s books before she sends somebody to look for us,” Haze said. “Who are the other two?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Most of these are in the 500’s,” Malachi said. “We can talk while we get the books—I’ll tell you who I think they are as we get these ones Mrs. Collins wants. Here is the first one,” Malachi said and pulled down a book on eagles and handed it to Hazel. When their hands touched there was a spark and a pop and for a moment, both their bodies glowed, a barely visible luminescence. Above them the lights flickered and one of the fluorescent tubes sputtered and went dead. Balls of light the size of a ping-pong ball shot out from the dead tube and ricocheted around the library, caroming off walls, bouncing off tables. The air glittered and sparkled with trails of light.
“Malachi, stop it, Mrs. Perkins, she’ll see,” Hazel yelled and ducked as the ball zoomed over her head, to smash into the biographies, raining down glowing glitter that fizzed and popped and disappeared on the library’s green carpet.
“I can’t; I don’t know how,” Malachi said as he began crying, big glowing tears that left luminous trails down his face. One of the balls struck the glass wall of Mrs. Perkins’s office and bounced back straight at them. Trying to hide behind chairs or under a table did no good—the ball was like a guided missile: it paused and hovered and bounced again as Malachi and Hazel moved. Finally the ball shot forward and zipped through a chair and then through Malachi, from shoulder to shoulder, then in and out of Hazel. They both shook as sparks flew from their fingers, their toes, ears, eyes. Then, everything stopped. The dead fluorescent tube over their head hummed back to life. The tear-streaks on Malachi’s face grew pale and then winked out.
“What did you do, say abracadabra or shazam or something?” Hazel whispered. She wanted very much to run as fast and as far as she could. She forced herself to be still—running, no matter how far, wouldn’t change anything.
“No, Hazel. We aren’t becoming magicians or witches. They can work magic, make it do stuff. They know the words. Us, no, we are becoming—we are magical. You, me, the other two.”
“Here, let’s get the books together,” Hazel said and crawled out from under the table. “Who are the other two? And what do we do now?” Hazel stood and picked up half the books. How had all that happened without Mrs. Perkins seeing anything? Or maybe the lady had, Hazel thought, as she stared through the glass walls of the librarian’s office. Mrs. Perkins was at her desk, her glasses off, and her face in her hands. “Do you think she saw?”
“If she did, she will never admit it. Anyway, there have always been four of us in my dreams,” Malachi said as he picked up his half. “You, me, and Russell and Jeff.”
Hazel shuddered. “I hate Russell White and he hates me. Come on, let’s check out these books. Not Russell, Malachi. I don’t know Jeff, but he seems okay. Russell is mean.”
Malachi shook his head. “It has to be Jeff and Russell. All four of us are being called as a group; a quartet, I guess. You know, I can move these books—see?” Malachi said and the first three books on his stack floated a few inches up into the air. Then, wobbling, they floated past the aquarium to drop on the circulation desk. Then, with a smoother flight, the rest of the books Malachi was holding floated over to the desk. “You can do that, Hazel, I bet you can or will soon. It has to be Russell; he’ll be all right. A centaur told me that in a dream.”
Hazel nodded her head as she followed him to the circulation desk. “I know,” she said, sighing. “I dreamed about him and Jeff both. I just don’t like him. And besides being mean, he’s gross. His clothes are always dirty. I wasn’t really surprised to see them both wearing headbands. So, what do we do now? That all the books?”
“Yes, they are all checked out.”
Above them all the lights in the library flickered, popped, and went out.
There was only the sunlight from the tall library windows, broken into long rectangles by the venetian blinds. The library was in grey shadows for a long, long moment, then as if they were odd gumball machines, the light fixtures started popping out glowing white ping-pong balls that bounced and bounced and bounced. Behind them someone screamed, and they turned and saw Mrs. Perkins’s office was filled with the glowing balls and she was surrounded by them, trying to knock them away.
“We have to help her—can you make them go away—too late.” While Hazel was watching, Mrs. Perkins dropped out of sight.
“I can’t stop it—I can’t—I need all of us to be here,” Malachi yelled as the balls began exploding. It was like being inside Fourth of July fireworks as all around and above and under and through the library was filled with showers of stars.
Jeff and Russell stopped in the hall outside the cafeteria to examine the pictures hanging on the wall. They were looking at the fifth grade pictures, which made a long line from the cafeteria to the teacher’s lounge, then all the way to the health room. They had found Russell’s and they were looking for Jeff’s. They were supposed to be on their way to Resource.
“Russ, I still think we need to ask Hazel about her headband. I am positive her ears are pointed, too,” Jeff said stubbornly. Russ, you can be such a pain in the butt, you know that? Don’t you see that three are stronger than two? Three have a better chance of finding the way to Faerie than two? “She’s not wearing it for decoration.”
They had been arguing about Hazel ever since she had gotten sick at school.
“I told ya, I don’t care if she has two headbands and horns growing out of her head, like those faun guys. She’s never been nice to me or to you before. Tell me one time—see, you can’t think of one. Hazel Richards hasn’t said good morning to me since I started coming to Nottingham Heights,” Russell said, his face darkening. “And another thing—”
Russell stood still for a moment and held his stomach, as if he had a sudden pain. Then all the pictures flapped up and down, as if a sudden warm wind had come and gone. A faint smell of heat lingered in the wind’s aftermath. Behind them a tiny, white ball of light rolled down the hall and out the front door.
“Russ. We agreed not to show off at school,” Jeff grumbled and the pictures stopped flapping. “Do you think she meant bad morn - ing when she spoke to you? C’mon, Russ, give her a chance. She’s trying. Before you got suspended, you picked on her all the time.”
Russell frowned and clenched and unclenched his fists.
“Nothing’s the same anymore, Russ. You know that. You and me —we’ve changed. You know what I heard Miss Dorman said to Miss Bigelow yesterday?”
Mrs. Markham had sent Jeff to the office to deliver the morning lunch count and to get a nine by twelve envelope from the secretary. While he waited for Mrs. Anderson to get off the phone, Jeff heard his name and Russell’s. It was Miss Dorman, the new Resource teacher, in the principal’s office. Miss Findlay had quit two days after the fire, telling everyone as loudly as possible that she had had enough. Miss Dorman stood just inside the door, her back to Jeff and the secretary. Miss Dorman waved her hand as she talked, as if she were drawing circles in the air.
“She said she couldn’t believe how we had changed—she said she had read our files from cover to cover and we weren’t the boys she had expected us to be. She thought maybe it was because we had became friends. You aren’t getting into fights or talking back to your teachers and you’ve been coming to class looking happy. She went on and on at how talkative I’ve become—she had expected me to be practically a deaf-mute—can’t talk, can’t hear.”
“I knew what the deaf part was,” Russell muttered, looking down at the floor. “Maybe you’re right about you and me. But, Jeff, you were like a ghost; nobody ever saw you or anything. Nobody ever told you how horrible you were and what a bad kid you were and that your mama left because you were bad and she took the good kid with her. Kids like Hazel and that buddy of hers, Malachi, tell me stuff like that all that time. Or they did. Why should I be nice to her? She’s always ignored me. Kids like her are the worst. They laugh at me, call me names, tell me I’m dirty and stupid. And if I called them names, I’d get in trouble, not them. Why, Russell White,” he said in a falsetto, “do you think I’m going to believe you: little goody-goody started a fight? Hazel is one of them.”
“She’s scared,” Jeff said. “Come on, let’s go before Miss Dorman starts looking for us. Just think about what I said, okay?”
Russell grudgingly nodded as they went down the hall past the cafeteria to go outside to the brand-new Resource trailer.
But I do know, Russ, what it’s like to be told that my mother is no good and if she had loved me and him, she wouldn’t have left. And he wouldn’t have to do what he did. I do know what it’s like to feel dirty and bad and ashamed. I want to tell you, but I’m scared, too. Jeff wanted to tell Russell all that, but telling Russell teachers had noticed his good behavior and Jeff being talky was one thing; finding the words needed for the other was another thing and just too hard.
A little, white ball of light dropped out of a hole in the hall ceiling. It bounced once, twice, and then winked out.
The lights went out halfway through their Resource time. Miss Dorman was sitting at her desk, working with another kid, Kwame, from Jeff’s class, on his Young Writers Book. Kwame and his book had been picked to represent Mrs. Markham’s class at the countywide conference. Jeff and Russell and the other kids were finishing up new versions of theirs—everybody’s but Kwame’s had burned up in the trailer fire, so Kwame was going to the Young Writers Conference. Miss Dorman whispered to Kwame, one hand on his book, the other fingering a cameo broach on her dress.
The lights overhead flickered and popped, quickly, as if popcorn had been trapped inside. Everybody stopped and looked up. The popping got louder and louder and then the lights got brighter and brighter and exploded into a shower of glass splinters and sparks and hundreds of little, white balls. Miss Dorman screamed as the balls rolled and rolled out of the light fixture, hitting the floor, desktops, bookshelves, to explode again, into tiny showers of stars. When a ball exploded on Kwame’s head, he ran, batting the balls away, smashing them into stars, stars, and more stars.
“Kwame! Kids! Be calm, just be calm; nobody’s hurt; everything will be all right. Get under your desks, I’ll go get—” Miss Dorman fell to the floor when another shower of white balls fell on her, exploding on her head, her face, down her chest, her arms, her legs. Half the class bolted after Kwame, screaming and crying.
“Russ? Russ?” Jeff whispered under his desk. They were both lying on the floor, along with four other Resource kids—they were all too scared to run through the white balls.
“Russ, this is magic. Just like in the dreams. It’s happening here—and neither one of us are doing it.”
“I know, I know—what do we do now?”
JeffRussitsokaycometotheLibrary!
“Jeff, you say something? C’mon, let’s get outta here—I think the balls have stopped—whoa,” and Russ dived back under his desk as another shower of balls rolled out of the fixture.
“Boys? Come on, nobody’s getting hurt, come on, get up. See? They explode and there’s this dust, but nothing else,” Miss Dorman said. She stood, slowly, and brushed away the now-grey residue.
IknowyoubothhavePointedEarsIT’SOkayweareintheLibrary.
“I thought you did—it was in our heads—”
“Don’t whisper so loud, Jeff—”
“Boys. Let’s go. Marty, Jeff, Russell. Thomas, you okay? Will? Jamey? Good, let’s get out of here,” Miss Dorman took Marty’s hand and the rest followed, picking their way through unexploded balls on the floor, stepping on them so they would explode like a puffball filled with white stars and sparks. Miss Dorman’s orderly departure might have worked if there hadn’t been another shower of white balls that this time, instead of falling, zoomed and cavorted in the air, zipping over and around and through bodies, hands, arms, cameo broaches. Everybody bolted, including Miss Dorman.
“Russ, come on, this way,” Jeff said and grabbed Russell’s arm. “Not with them, this way, we have to follow the voice—he’s in the school.” Jeff took off running then. The rest of the class ran after Miss Dorman out into the teachers’ parking lot. Jeff didn’t look back; he knew Russell was following him.
Inside the school bouncing, vibrating, exploding ping-pong balls of light zoomed and ricocheted, caromed off walls, zipped in and out of ceilings. The balls kept exploding as they ran, the white stars raining on them, soft, warm, and then a fine, grey dust. The fire alarm was on, but Jeff could barely hear it. He dodged kids and ignored teachers yelling for everyone to be calm, line up at the door, or just yelling.
“This way, Russ, this way.”
Jeff ran to the library. Once inside he stopped to catch his breath and wait for Russell, who was right behind him. When Russell closed the door, all the noise outside—the zipping balls of light, the running kids, the shouting teachers—stopped, as if a too-loud TV had finally been turned off. They stood and listened in the quiet, dark room and heard only the bubbling of the filter in the aquarium. Mrs. Perkins was gone. As they stood still a moment longer, they could hear each other’s breathing beginning to slow down. The goldfish swam in their dreamy way, the biggest one close to the surface, delicately eating the last few flakes of food.
“Well, Jeff,” Russ whispered. “What do we do now?”
“Back over there,” Jeff said and pointed to the jumble behind Mrs. Perkins’s glass-box office: the big laminator, a copier that was always breaking down, two VCR’s, a 16-millimeter projector, the Chapter I reading teacher’s desk. Jeff could not have explained to Russell how he knew the mental voice they had both heard was here in the library and specifically where he had just pointed. Here was the place.
“This way,” Jeff said and taking Russell’s hand, led him past the encyclopedias, the carts with unprocessed new books and the record bins, to a little space behind the laminator. Russell shook his head and let Jeff lead him, thinking he would have never let anyone, let alone another and smaller boy, lead him anywhere before.
Jeff dropped Russell’s hand and pulled off his headband. Russell did the same. Sitting on the floor, with two small stacks of books on either side, were Hazel and Malachi. All four had pointed ears. All four had intensely glowing eyes. Malachi’s eyes were a bronze-gold. Hazel’s were a silvery grey-blue. Jeff’s and Russell’s burned green.
The Raleigh News and Observer
Friday, September 27, 1991
Carolina Power & Light officials are baffled by the bizarre electrical problem experienced at Nottingham Heights Elementary yesterday. A short circuit of some kind apparently generated a rare electrical phenomenon known as ball lightning in massive amounts. No students or staff were injured by the peculiar electrical malfunction, although several suffered minor cuts and bruises in the efforts to escape the building. The elementary school was closed by mid-day ... Wake County School officials stated that only after all the wiring has been checked will the building be reopened... According to local meteorologists ball lightning is extremely rare and especially so in such a small size, that of a ping pong ball ...
“Hilda? Hilda? Honey, can you hear me? It’s me, Jack. Hilda?” Jack squeezed his wife’s hand. No response. He looked up at all the medical machinery—the heart monitor, the respirator, the IV hookups—all the lights and numbers that said she was alive. Jack glanced at the clock on the wall. He squinted to see the numbers in the dim light: close to midnight, late Saturday. Hilda’s heartbeat was too slow. Even with the drugs the doctors had given her, which were even now dripping into her, her heart was too slow. Or at least Jack thought so, watching the blips on the screen—shouldn’t there be more of them? Shouldn’t they be moving faster?
“We’ll light a candle for Hilda tomorrow, Uncle Jack—one of the big two dollar ones. And ask Father Jamey to pray for her. He’s the new priest.” Malachi had said that afternoon, sounding for all the world like your regular run-of-the-mill ten-year-old who was a little on the short side. With some very strangely colored eyes.
Jack checked all the machines for what he was sure was the millionth time. Nothing new, no difference, no change. Ben had told him about all the other weird things that were making local, state, national, and now international news. Everybody was seeing UFO’s; it was as if there was an invasion fleet scouting out the planet. And not a fleet of your usual flying saucers, but rather UFO’s with huge, black batlike wings and breathing fire. Ancient rituals were being spontaneously revived and in broad daylight. Ping-pong balls of electricity had been flying around Malachi’s school and now there were three more kids like the little golden-eyed boy. Well, almost: pointed ears and glowing eyes.
“At least he’s not alone anymore, the only one like him. It all has to connect, Jack, you know—all of this is the same thing, I think. Malachi and his fairy magic and the light—” Ben started and stopped when the internist came back in Hilda’s room.
“There’s no discernable medical reason for this to be happening to your wife, Mr. Ruggles,” the internist had said, repeating himself as he reviewed his clipboard. “We just can’t wake her up. I don’t get it; I’m sorry.” Ben and Jack had looked at each other as the doctor left, shaking his head and thumping his clipboard on his hip. Of course there was no way to wake Hilda up. She was dying from magic.
That had been seven hours ago.
“My son—my son—killed her,” Jack said to the machines. “My son killed her.”
Jack squeezed Hilda’s hand again and then put his open palm against her nose. He looked up at the heart monitor: the peaks were gone and a flat line traced itself across the screen.
The young woman’s name had been Marnie and she was a med tech at Rex Hospital and Thomas had picked her up in Bennigan’s, on Six Forks Road two days ago. Now, naked and drugged, bound to the coven’s altar, the fire’s tongue-shaped shadows flickering over her body, she had no name. Thomas had removed her name when he had removed her clothing. Everything that made her Marnie—the dark blue dress her mother had given her, the matching shoes, her purse with its motley collection of lipstick (coral, pinky peach, touch of mauve), powder-and-mirror, Kleenex, movie stubs, car keys, wallet, money, NC Driver’s License—had been given to the fire. She was now the Sacrifice, the offering to the Great Goddess and her consort, the Horned God, the requisite gift to their servants, the Lords of The Shadow, the Fomorii. Thomas stood beside the altar, with the high priestess at his right. The other coven members enclosed them in a hot, shifting naked circle. The cauldron, filled with a black liquid, bubbled and hissed above the fire.
Thomas looked at the high priestess, her long, black hair a mane down her back. Her nipples were hard, her body flushed from the fire. The same two days ago they had sat together at Bennigan’s, drinking a beer. No one who would have seen her then would have guessed this woman beside Thomas was one and the same. No one in the bar would have even paid that much attention to the high priestess. She had not wanted them to see her, she had told Thomas, and a simple spell had done the trick, a small glamour of distraction, and their eyes strayed to the next person, the next thing. If she had wanted to be seen, she had added, she would have been seen and remembered.
After the beer and idle conversation, the priestess had given Thomas the shiny black belladonna berries and told him to mix them with blueberries, make a cobbler. But first he had to select the sacrifice.
“A woman, Thomas. The Goddess and the Horned God ask for it. You have taken the life of someone close to you, a family member—now take the life of a stranger—someone you pick up at this bar—any bar, for that matter. Complete the acquisition of power.”
After she left, Thomas had put the belladonna berries into his briefcase and then sipped his Cuba Libre. Bit weak on the rum, he thought, and scanned the room. Bankers, secretaries, state government workers, maybe a doctor or two from Rex, he guessed. Some he knew from the bank, but none really seemed right for this. He thought back to work, doing a mental run through the building. The tellers? No—wait. That woman there, by herself, three tables over—hadn’t she been looking at him, checking him out? He smiled at her over his beer—yes, she was smiling back. This was going to be easy.
The sacrifice and Thomas had had dessert a few hours ago, Saturday evening. She must have said a thousand times, he thought, how she couldn’t believe she was having dessert at a guy’s house she had met just two days ago. But they had talked so long the first night and the second, and well, here she was. It didn’t take long for the belladonna to shut her up. After all, Marnie had eaten almost all belladonna. Just a few blueberries. Thomas had used all but a few blueberries in the other tarts, including the one he was eating. Small individual fruit tarts—the crusts from Harris Teeter—had been easier than a cobbler, and besides, this was his sacrifice, not the priestess’s. Thomas finished his—not bad for a first time—and drained his coffee cup before he took her pulse: she was barely alive. There was no way out of her coma, even if Thomas had called 911 the minute she had fallen asleep. Eventually, no matter what happened, her heart would stop beating.
The high priestess began the sacrifice by touching Thomas with the blade of the athame: on his forehead, his chest, above his navel, his erect penis. Then she handed him the knife, black, carved handle first, and stepped back. Thomas inhaled deeply as he held the knife, drinking in the scents of the oil on his and all the other bodies: frankincense, cinnamon, bay, rosemary, and the almost overpowering musk. His skin glowed and tingled and as he looked at the hand that held the knife, he could see a subdermal luminescence shifting and turning, like a tiny, trapped ghost. Then Thomas listened: the cauldron, the fire, his own breathing, nothing else. The normal night sounds were gone; the forest was still. He was inside the magic now, in a time and space without minutes, without seconds and hours. And close, so close that Thomas knew he could touch it if he wanted: the others in the coven, the priestess, presences, pushing against his own.
Midnight.
“Now,” Thomas said, feeling power flowing into him, into his blood, stronger, harder, darker, permeating his cells like an enormous ink stain. Thomas presented the knife to the coven, to the high priestess, to the fire and the cauldron, to the night sky. Then, he cut out her heart and held it up, the blood streaking his arm.
“This is the Gospel of the Lord,” Jamey said.
“Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ,” the congregation answered and in the soft rumble of bodies and fabric on wood, sat down.
“Today,” he began slowly, as he scrutinized the congregation, his gaze roaming from pew to pew, lighting on first one face, then another and another, “today, I want to tell you a story.” After two months, a few of the faces now had names—and a goodly number were familiar. Around a third, barely glimmering, he could see auras: golden, white, blue, green, red, brown, and purple. Faint ripples of light, flickering, appearing and reappearing, like a candle in a breeze.
Ah, there they were: the golden-eyed boy and his father. Their auras weren’t faint or flickering—more like small fires, especially the boy’s. White flames burned on the tips of the boy’s pointed ears. Jamey carefully ran his fingers through his own dark red hair, lightly tracing his own pointed ears. Then he cleared his throat, shuffled his homily notes, and smiled out at the congregation.
“Today is Michaelmas, the Feast Day of St. Michael. According to the liturgical calendar today is the Feast Day of all the Holy Archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Only the fourth, Uriel, is left out—I couldn’t find out why when I was looking all this up in the library at State. Probably should have driven over to the Divinity School at Duke. Anyway, by tradition this is St. Michael’s Day. Who is he and why does the Church venerate him? What significance does St. Michael have for modern American Catholics in Garner, North Carolina, in the latter days of the twentieth century? In England, this is a day for roast goose. And don’t pick any blackberries after Michaelmas Day. Any young animal born on this day is thought to be particularly rambunctious. Kittens are called blackberry kittens and if tortoiseshell, considered lucky. If you wish to have money in your pocket, put three leaves each of blackberry, bergamot, and bistort—I see you shaking your heads, I am not sure what the last two are, either—inside it on Michaelmas Day. Now, how many of you, not counting those who took St. Michael’s name when you were confirmed, had any idea, until now, that today was St. Michael’s Day, Michaelmas? Come on, raise your hands.”
A scattering of hands rose nervously across the church. The parishioners of St. Mary’s weren’t used to being quizzed by the priest during the homily. Jamey noticed with no surprise that the golden-eyed boy, Malachi, and his father, raised their hands.
“I thought so.” Jamey glanced quickly at his notes and cleared his throat, wishing he had thought to have a glass of water tucked away in the lectern. “Well, then, who is St. Michael? There is no historical figure anywhere in the Church’s long two-thousand-year history that matches the St. Michael of tradition and story. But the Catholic Church believes in angels, and I do, too,” Jamey added. He saw one woman in the back pew stand up, look hard at him and then at her watch, and then left. The auras of a dozen more glowed even brighter. He felt as if he could warm his hands by their fires.
“In Hebrew Michael means who is like unto God. In the Book of Daniel, we learn he is one of the chief princes of the heavenly host. Indeed he is the great prince and the guardian of Israel; he is their patron angel. Michael is also the patron saint of soldiers and knights, and of the Catholic Church herself. Michael is the great captain and the slayer of dragons, according to Revelation 12: 7-9. He is the helper of the Church’s armies against the heathen. He is the Prince of Light.”
Jamey paused and shuffled his notes. A couple, three pews from the rear, slipped out the back door, their exit opening and closing a brief box of white light.
“You are, I know, wondering why I am telling you all this in this morning’s homily. More than a few of you are trying to look at your watch without anybody seeing you. Yes, this homily is a little longer than what you’re used to. But I do have a purpose and it is one that I feel is important, especially today, now, here, in Garner and Raleigh, in North Carolina. I will explain—but let me get back to Michael. In Acts 7:38 there is mention of the tradition that he gave Moses the Ten Commandments on Sinai. When Michael is portrayed in art, he is a young man, strong, in full armor, but barelegged, and wearing sandals. Often as not his sword is drawn and a dragon is prostrate at his feet. But Michael is not just God’s chief warrior. There is more.”
Someone cleared his or her throat. Two other people coughed. A woman two pews back from the front sneezed.
“Michael is the patron saint of soldiers. But he is more than that: Michael is an angel considered so powerful that his intercession can rescue a soul from Hell. This is reflected, surprisingly, in the song we all sang at summer camp: Michael, row the boat ashore, Michael, the saver of souls. High places are sacred to Michael; there are churches and chapels across Europe built on hilltops consecrated to the saint, the most famous being Mont-St. Michel in France. Any hilltop is sacred to Michael.” Jamey cleared his throat and again wished for water. Nobody was leaving; they were all watching him intently. A few, he was sure, were wondering if this new, young priest had gone over the edge. After all, Garner was a flat, little town, with no hills worthy of the name. The Southeast Regional Branch of the county public library system, which had replaced the old Garner Public Library a few years ago, was built on a slight rise—hardly a hill. St. Mary’s was on very flat ground—so flat Jamey had been reminded of the beach.
“So, St. Michael is the warrior-archangel, one of the chief princes of the Heavenly Host. Now, you have some context for Michael, context for what I want to talk about now, what I think is important to us here at St. Mary’s today. Michael is not far from God in Heaven. He knows the secret of the mighty word, by the utterance of which God created heaven and earth. A lot of you are thinking right now: so? Well, we all read the newspapers and watch the news, listen to it on the car radio. Most of us either saw or heard President Bush speak last night. Surely most of you read about his speech in the paper this morning; it was the front-page headline story in the News and Observer. How many of us believe what he said was true? Go ahead, raise your hand.”
Jamey waited as a sprinkling of hands raised in the sanctuary.
“I thought so. What did the president say—it’s sunspots or atmospheric phenomena, NASA is going to send up a shuttle to investigate? But we know better: something out of the ordinary is happening. Things we would normally call impossible, out of fairy tales, have and are happening, and are witnessed by thousands of sober, reliable people. And not just the happy magical things from fairy tales, but the bad, dark things. The New Agers are proclaiming the Age of Aquarius. I don’t think so. I think it is this, friends in Christ—that God is changing the pronunciation of the secret word of creation that Michael knows. The world, the universe, is transforming.
“It scares me.
“I know it scares you. I can hear it in your voices in confession; I see it in your faces—even from up here. So, my message for this Sunday morning, this Michaelmas, before we take communion, is to remember God loves you. He sent Jesus who loves you. And because God loves us, we must love one another. Love is, I believe, the single most powerful force in the universe and when we love and accept love, we are the closest to God we will ever be in our lives. Love will get us through these crazy dark-and-light times we are in. It’s going to get crazier folks, darker and lighter. But if we love one another, as Christ taught us to, we will survive. Remember the words in the creed we recite every Sunday:
“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
The only Son of God,
Eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
True God from true God,
Begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.”
Jamey counted to ten, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. At least they were listening; some were nodding in agreement; others looking as if he were completely crazy. Maybe he was. But he had told them what they needed to know, given them the armor to protect themselves in the coming craziness. Most of them would get through it in one piece. More or less.
“God from God, Light from Light. Through him all things were made. All that is happening now—the banshee wails in the night, the shadows of dragons, the flickerings of light and shadow through which we see no place on this earth—all this comes from God. It is a mystery as to why they come with fear and darkness, but they do. And what isn’t from God, the evil, the malevolent, the wicked—we must resist with love, the force, the strength, the power of love. Jesus is this love incarnate; we must remember this. There is no other way. God is changing the pronunciation of the Word. We must remember to call on the saints like Michael to shield us with love, to help us fight the wicked and be who God meant us to be. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
Yesterday went on forever. I should be in bed—getting some sleep before I have to go to work this afternoon, instead of sitting here in front of this computer, babbling on. I envy Malachi tonight—being ten-going-on-eleven, being a boy, no matter how unusual a boy he is. We spent the day with Jack in Charlotte, at Hilda’s funeral, got home late last night and after futzing around the house and grazing in the kitchen, he asked me to tell him again Valeria’s story.
“Again?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I want to memorize it, okay, Dad?”
“Sure.”
So I told the story again.
“I dreamed about the swimmers, Dad,” Malachi said sleepily, interrupting the story. “They aren’t really big frogs, you know.”
“Yeah, but that’s how I picture them,” I said and tapped my head. “Anyway, then ... And you’re still a pretty good looking boy,” I said at the end, “now go to sleep.”
“Night, Dad.”
I watched him as he slept. He looks so small—light and little, like a bird. He’s still losing weight. I wish—what do I wish? That he would stay ten forever and that none of this had ever happened—that I wouldn’t have to keep telling him his mother’s story, that he was a human boy and not half-Daoine Sidhe? That when I turned off the lights in his bedroom, I wouldn’t be able to see light leaking from his fingers, his nose, his ears, his eyes—tiny flecks of light on his eyelashes? Not see the tiny snakes of light twisting through his hair, like tendrils of ghost ivy?
I don’t know what I wish except that I could go to sleep as easily as he does, and not pace the house, rearranging magazines, the salt and pepper shakers, the bottles in the medicine cabinet. Or sit down and write everything out, while sipping on Sleepy time tea.
He was worried about me when I drove him to school this morning—that I was too sleepy, that I wouldn’t be okay driving home alone. I’ll be fine, I told him, you go on. I’ll be fine.
So I came home to sit down and write. Taking my thoughts and making them into concrete, tangible words appearing one after the other on a computer screen or a Piece of paper makes them real and manageable. I worry out problems by writing down questions for myself, possible solutions, alternatives. Anne Morrow Lindbergh once wrote that “writing is more than living; it is being conscious of living.”
I believe she’s right.
I got up early this morning, before Malachi did, and went to the six o’clock mass at St. Mary’s. I liked the walk—few cars, a sky with a few stars left, a fading moon. I felt foolish, though, to be going to early morning mass on a weekday. Most of the people there were little blue-haired old ladies, clutching rosaries. I never went to early mass at St. Anthony’s with Father Mark. Emma wasn’t a morning person, and after moving to Garner, well, it was just too far to drive into Raleigh.
Jack has asked me why I still keep going to church.
For Malachi, I told him, but he wouldn’t have it. “Come on, Ben—it’s more than that. Why don’t you convert to Wicca, then, or whatever faith Valeria professed?”
“Because Val said they were all the same.”
“Yeah, right.”
He asked me again, yesterday, at Hilda’s funeral. And here I am, Tuesday morning, trying to come up with a good answer. They are all the same, but there is more to it than that.
I was raised a Presbyterian in a little country Orange County church whose roots go back over two hundred and fifty years to a group of Scotch-Irish settlers coming down from Pennsylvania looking for farmland in the Carolinas. The Scotch-Irish are from Ulster and were supposed to be pretty hardcore Presbyterian—I imagine my Presbyterian forebears spinned in their graves when I was confirmed a Catholic.
I started attending Catholic confirmation classes (Jack always said RCIA: Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, sounded like joining some fraternity or lodge, where you had to eat raw eggs or something to be initiated. So speaks the confirmed agnostic-and I told him it wasn’t raw eggs: it was the fresh blood of a chicken) just to make Emma and her parents happy. But after we were married, and I was attending church regularly, I found the mass to be poetry, rich, tex - tured, symbolic poetry that struck a chord in my soul that the Presbyterian services of my childhood never did. Religion is, after all, imagination before it is anything else: to believe in God, you first have to be able to imagine the concept of a god or gods, something greater and larger than yourself. Instead of just pleasing Emma, the faith journey became mine and to my surprise, I stuck with RCIA and on Easter a year after we were married, I was confirmed and took my first communion as a Catholic.
And I stayed Catholic, more or less, after she died, because of the poetry.
So, this morning I went to the 6 A.M. mass. I wanted to talk with Father Jamey, especially after his Sunday homily. He knows. He looks at Malachi and sees more than his yellow eyes. He sees the pointed ears and the glow in the eyes, the sometimes too-visible shifting lights of Malachi’s aura. And that all that is happening is not, as President Bush tried to explain, a result of sunspots, disturbances in the ionosphere-no, not causes, symptoms.
Okay, okay, I know the president is trying to calm and reassure everybody, take away some of the fear I see in almost everybody’s eyes. Just Saturday, at the library, Mrs. Carmichael told me she sleeps with all her lights on: “I don’t know, Ben, but the lights do keep away the dark and, well, things have just been so strange at night lately. Every - body on my street keep their lights on-like Christmas. It is more than just being scared of the dark; this dark is different. I know that sounds crazy, but the dark does seem, well, alive and purposeful.”
Alive and purposeful? Yes, with the Fomorii and their minions.
I lit a candle this morning and then knelt in a pew near the front. I Prayed for strength and wisdom and love and that my son be safe and that he live. And I felt guilty: are my prayers selfish, do I say the same things all the time, am I—Father Jamey talked about love being the force we need to get us through, to sustain us for what is coming. And what is that? I have to get Malachi to Faerie before he dies and I still don’t know how to and where to go—when, Halloween, I guess, Samhain. Is it the call to come home, to return to Faerie that is causing all the weird stuff? It has to be.
I talked to Father Jamey after mass. He came by to visit after I got back from taking Malachi to school. He seemed to know the wards Valeria left around the house were there. He pushed to enter the house, paused, as if waiting for the magic to recognize him, and then, a sudden pop, and he was in.
Father Jamey sat at the kitchen table as I poured coffee, and then put milk on the table, spoons, checked the sugar bowl to see if it was full.
“So, Ben, what do you want to talk with me about?”
“Your Sunday homily, I guess, the craziness, all the strange things,” I said as I sat down across from him and spooned in sugar and then milk.
“Tell me what you know—like why is there an invisible electrical fence around your house. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons aren’t that bad in this neighborhood, are they?”
“There are only a handful of people who can feel that fence,” I said slowly and looked at the priest for a long moment, long enough for the lights in the kitchen to shift and change color. His dark red hair grew suddenly brighter and the freckles on his face glowed. His eyes—I am sure they were blue. Now, they were a silvery-grey, like pol - ished pewter. I would have guessed Father Jamey Applewhite to be about my age, late thirties, but now, in this new and unexpected light, he was no age, like Valeria, ancient young Valeria, who had no age. Father Jamey’s aura shimmered around him, a pale blue shot through with gold. His ears poked out of his hair.
“You’re one of them, too; you’re a changeling,” I said slowly. “You’re the first adult I’ve met—and there haven’t been any JW’s or Mormons about in a long time.”
Father Jamey sipped his coffee and looked back and slowly smiled, “Of course you would be able to see past the fairy glamour, wouldn’t you? It started back the first of May—”
“Beltaine,” I said.
“Yes, and that was about the time the Diocese told me I was coming to St. Mary’s here. But I started having dreams about Malachi before that—and three other children, and the dark ones,” Father Jamey said. “Got any more coffee?”
“Some instant dessert flavored stuff, Cafe Vienna, Italian Cap - puccino-I’ ll get it—I can nuke it in the microwave. Which flavor?”
“The Vienna. You weren’t raised Catholic, were you?” he asked as I first spooned in the coffee, added water, and set the microwave for two minutes, ten seconds.
“No, how can you tell?”
“Oh, you don’t have that pre-Vatican II parochial school look about you. No scars on your hands from those nuns’ sharp rulers. Any - way, by the time I came here, I was seeing auras; I could levitate—not much—and move things. You know, you are the first person I’ve been able to tell all this.”
The plastic milk jug on the table rose up and floated over to Father Jamey’s hand. The microwave chimed and the door opened and the cup floated over to land in front of the priest.
“I knew when I met you and your son that you both knew, but I thought maybe it would be better if you sought me out. Protect your privacy—not expose you, you know. Ben, I don’t know the purpose of our coming together here, but we are supposed to; I feel sure of that. My fate and yours and your son’s and his three friends are tied together in all this.”
“But, Father,” I asked, wanting this priest, this priest-who-looked-too-young, to give me an answer that would explain everything. “This can’t be just about my son. Yes, he is entering puberty and I have to get him to Faerie; I know that. But he is only one half-fairy child. Your mother isn’t a fairy—these three other kids—they’re human. I saw the ghost of a unicorn running down Vandora Springs Road last night. You are all being called, you are all becoming magical—why?” And I told him everything: Valeria, the dreams, the light-sicknesses, the Fomorii, everything I could think of.
Give me an answer. You have to know. You’re a priest.
“You and James Thurber?” he said and laughed. I laughed, too. “It’s the call from Faerie all right—and from everything you are telling me, everything I have seen, what people are talking about—here, here (he slapped the kitchen table) is a locus. Malachi is like, a magnet, and the center of a huge rippling pool—which metaphor is better, I don’t know. Fairyness, sexuality, puberty, not-quite human hormones, the call: powerful stuff to be in one place. But I don’t know why I am being called—or even if I am. I haven’t had those dreams like Malachi; I am just changing. Maybe it’s because of the story in Gen - esis, what happened right before the Flood. And I don’t think we are really becoming magical—I mean, I can’t work spells. I don’t even know any. Rather, it’s as if our bodies are waking up to what they are meant to do. Witches are different. They can manipulate the unseen forces—God, that sounds corny—the Force? They are learning another language; we are becoming that language.”
I nodded my head. “Malachi tried to explain all that to me, too.”
“Genesis 6, verses 2 and 4: The sons of God seeing the daughters of men, that they were fair, took to themselves wives of all which they chose. Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they brought forth children, these are the mighty men, men of renown. The story is in all the mythologies: humans bearing the children of the gods. Hercules, Perseus, Aeneas,” he said, and then raised his hand and his cup floated over to the pot and hovered as the pot poured him another cup. Then the cup sailed back to the priest’s hand. “I’ve been practicing. There have been fairies mixing in the human gene pool since forever, Ben.”
“Valeria told me that Faerie-folk had been coming here for centuries. Now they need their descendants back—all of them, it seems.”
“No, not all. Like I said: I haven’t been called. I am to remain here. The crossing is soon, though, and the dark ones will do anything to stop it.”
I shuddered. “Have you seen the Fomorii?”
“Yeah, I have,” he said and drained his cup and stood. He wasn’t wearing his collar and he didn’t look much like a priest. T-shirt, jeans, Nikes. “I’ve got to get back to St. Mary’s. Ben, you’ll know when to ask me for help. Be careful. They will kill you and Malachi if they have to, to prevent him crossing over. He’s important.”
“He’ll die if he stays here. Why is God letting this happen? Why is He letting evil run loose? Why is He changing the pronunciation of this universe’s word of creation?”
Father Jamey had no answers.
The governor of North Carolina, according to National Public Radio, is considering declaring the state to be under martial law. He declared a state of emergency this morning. He has ordered the National Guard to mobilize, and is consulting with Senators Helms and Sanford and even the White House.
Malachi told me this morning, on the way to school, that he had had a dream of flying over North Carolina, being guided by the twelve-pointed star around his neck. He said the star was pulling him east.