Armageddon's Children (6 page)

She leaned back in the wheelchair and looked from face to face, seeing herself in their eyes, a young woman just a little older in years, but infinitely older in experience and wisdom, with brown hair and eyes and ordinary features, not very pretty, but smart and capable and genuinely fond of them. That they cared for her as much as they did never ceased to amaze her. When she thought of it, after her years alone in the compound, she wanted to cry.

“Tell us about the snakes and the frogs and the plague that the boy visited on the evil King and his soldiers,” Panther suggested, leaning forward, black eyes intense.

“No, tell us about the giant and the boy and how the boy killed the giant!” Chalk said.

Sparrow waved her hands for attention. “I want to hear about the girl who found the boy on the river and hid him from the evil King.”

They were all variations on the stories she had been told as a child, stories that she remembered imperfectly and embellished to demonstrate the life lessons she thought they should know. Her parents had told her these stories, reading them from a book that had long since disappeared. She thought she might find the book again one day, but so far she hadn’t.

Owl put a finger to her lips. “I will tell you a different story tonight, a new one. I will tell you the story of how the boy saved the children from the evil King and his soldiers and led them to the Promised Land.”

She had been saving this one, because it was the resolution of so many of the others involving the boy and the evil King. But something made her want to tell it tonight. Perhaps it was the way she was feeling. Perhaps it was simply that she had kept it to herself long enough. The stories lent strength and promise to their lives when everything around them was so bleak. The gloom weighed heavily on her this night. Persia’s sickness and the dead Lizard were just today’s darkness; there would be a fresh darkness tomorrow. The stories brought light into that darkness. The stories gave them hope.

She could feel the children edge closer to her as she prepared to speak, could sense the anticipation as they waited. She loved this moment. This was when she felt closest to them, when they were connected to her by their love of words and the stories made from them. The connection was visceral and alive and empowering.

“The evil King had forbidden the boy and his children from leaving their homes for many years,” she began, “even after he had suffered over and over again for his stubbornness. No one could reason with him, even after the snakes and the frogs and the deaths of all the firstborn of his people. But one day the King awoke and decided he had endured enough punishment for his refusal and ordered the boy and his children to leave forever and not return. Why should he refuse them permission? What did he hope to accomplish? If they wanted to leave, then they should be allowed to do so. His Kingdom would be better off once they were gone.”

“Took him long enough to catch on,” Panther declared.

“Bet he changes his mind,” said Sparrow.

“He did change his mind,” Owl continued. “But not until the boy and his children had packed their few belongings and set out on the road that would lead them to the Promised Land. They walked and they walked, stopping only to eat and sleep. They traveled as swiftly as they could because they were anxious to reach their new home, but they did not have even an old cycle to ride on or any kind of car. So even though they had been gone for a week, they really hadn’t gotten very far.

“This was when the evil King changed his mind about letting them go. He had thought about it a lot since they left. He didn’t miss them or anything, he just felt like they should have been made to stay where they were. He felt he had been weak in letting them go. Thinking about it made him furious, and so he called his soldiers together and went after them. He had war machines and carriers in which to travel. Nobody walked; everybody rode. The King and his soldiers traveled very fast, and they caught up with the boy and his children in only two days.”

She paused, forcing herself not to look at Hawk, not to let him see in her eyes what she was thinking. “The evil King did not know about the boy’s vision of the Promised Land. He did not know about the promise the boy had made to his children that he would lead them there and they would live happily ever after. Only the children knew this, and they believed in the vision. They believed in the Promised Land and in the happiness that waited there.”

“Like us,” Candle said softly. “We believe in Hawk’s vision.”

Everyone looked suddenly at Hawk, and Owl said quickly, “That’s right, we do believe in Hawk’s vision. Just as the children in this story believed in the vision of the boy. But the evil King did not believe in visions. He only believed in what he could see with his eyes and touch with his hands. He did not believe in tomorrow. He only believed in today.”

“What happened next?” Bear asked.

“The boy and his children reached a river that was too wide and deep for them to cross. Before they could find a way to get around it, the evil King and his soldiers appeared behind them in their war machines and carriers. The boy and his children were trapped. There was no place for them to go, and they knew they would be taken back to their prisons or killed.”

“They should fight!” Panther shouted excitedly.

“They should try to swim!” exclaimed Bear.

Owl shook her head. “There were too few of them to fight and the river was too fast for them to try to swim. But just when it seemed that all was lost, that there was no hope for them, the boy held up his arms and the waters of the river parted in front of them, pulling back on either side to form a path across.”

“How did it do that?” Fixit asked doubtfully.

“It did it because the river knew of the boy’s vision,” Owl said. “Rivers are deep in knowledge and hold many secrets. This one knew the secret of the boy’s vision. So it let the boy and his children cross over to the other side where they would be safe.”

“What about the King? Didn’t he try to follow?” Panther was still looking for a fight to take place.

“He did. He took all of his army in their war machines and carriers and went down the same path the boy and his children had taken, determined to catch them and bring them back. But the boy lifted his arms a second time and the waters collapsed on the evil King and his soldiers and drowned them all, every last one.”

There was a momentary silence as the children digested this. She gave them that moment, then said, “So the boy led his children away from the river and after two more days, they reached the Promised Land.”

“What was it like there?” River asked, huddled on the floor next to Candle, her knees pulled up to her chest.

Owl leaned back in her wheelchair. “That story must wait for another night. It’s time to go to bed now.” She looked around at the disappointed faces. “Practice your reading until you get sleepy, then blow out your candles. Sweet dreams.”

She rolled her chair down forward, stirring them to action. They climbed to their feet grudgingly, some asking for another story, some saying they weren’t sleepy, but no one really arguing. Hawk was moving around the room, turning off the lamps, one by one, all but the tiny one that illuminated the heavy entry door. In the old days, one of them would have stood watch all night. Cheney took care of that now.

As the others trudged off to the bedrooms they shared, Owl paused to watch Hawk reach down and ruffle Cheney’s thick coat around the neck and ears. The big dog lay quietly, letting the boy pet him. Owl always found herself waiting for the day Cheney would take off his arm.

Candle stopped by her chair and looked her in the eye. “That was
our
story, wasn’t it, Owl?” she asked quietly. “The boy’s vision was Hawk’s vision.”

She didn’t miss much, this one, Owl thought. “Yes, it was,” she said. “But it happened to the boy and his children, too.”

Candle nodded. “Except that the vision in the story isn’t real, but Hawk’s vision is. I know it is. I have seen it.”

She turned and walked toward her bedroom, not looking back. Owl felt her throat tighten and tears spring to her eyes.

I have seen it.

Candle, who saw what was not entirely clear to the rest of them, had seen this.

Alone in the common room, Owl sat quietly in her wheelchair, staring into space and thinking, and did not move again until the rest of them were in bed and fast asleep.

T
HE LADY CAME
to Logan Tom for the first time in a vision. Even now, he could remember the details as clearly as if the meeting had taken place yesterday. He was alone by then, Michael and the others gone, traveling north toward the Canadian border. He had stopped for the night on the shores of one of a thousand lakes that dotted that region, somewhere deep inside what had once been Wisconsin. The day was gone and night had settled in, and it was one of those rare occasions when the skies were clear and bright and free of clouds and pollution. Stars shone, a distant promise of better times and places, and the moon was full and bright.

He had gotten out of the Lightning and was standing at the edge of the lake, staring off into the moonlit distance, pondering missed chances and lost friends. He was in a place darker than the night in which he stood, and he was frightened that he might not find his way out. He was riddled with misgivings and guilt, wrapped in a fatalistic certainty that his life had come to nothing. His wounds were healed, but his heart was shattered. The faces of those people he had loved most after Michael—his parents and his brother and sister—were vague images that floated in hazy memories and whispered in ghostly, indecipherable warnings.

You have to do something. You have to find a purpose. You have to take a stand.

He was eighteen years old.

A sudden movement in the darkness to his right caused him to glance down the shoreline. A fisherman stood casting into the waters, not twenty yards from where he stood. He watched as the rod came back and whipped forward, the line reeling out from the spool, the filament like silver thread. The fisherman glanced over and nodded companionably. His features were strong and lean in the moonlight, and Logan caught the barest hint of a smile.

“Catching anything?” Logan asked him.

But before the fisherman could reply, there was a noise off to his left, and he wheeled about guardedly. Nothing. The shoreline was still and empty, the woods behind the same.

When he looked back again, the fisherman was gone.

A moment later, he saw a tiny light appear somewhere far out over the water, little more than a soft shimmer at first, brightening slowly to something more definable. The light, diffuse at first, gathered and then began to move, drifting toward the shoreline and him. He stood watching it come, even though he knew he should move away, back toward the AV and safety. He didn’t even bother to shoulder the flechette, letting it hang useless and forgotten from its strap across his back. He couldn’t have said why. His training and his instincts should have made him react quickly and decisively. Self-preservation should have been his only concern.

Yet the light held him spellbound—as if he realized even then that it was the beacon that would provide him with the direction he sought.

When it was no more than a few yards away, bright enough that he was squinting against its glare, one hand up to shield his eyes, it began to fade, and when it was gone, the Lady was there.

She was young and beautiful, her skin so pure and clear that it seemed to him, in the white cast of the moonlight, he could see right through her. She was dressed in a diaphanous gown that hung in soft folds about her slender body, white like her skin, her long black hair in stark contrast where it tumbled about her shoulders.

She stood several yards offshore—not in the water but upon it. As if it were solid ground, or she weighed no more than a feather.

“Logan Tom,” she said.

He stared, unable to reply. He did not think he was hallucinating, but he had no other explanation for what he was witnessing.

“Logan Tom, I have need of you,” she said.

She gestured toward the sky, and when she moved her garments rippled like soft shadows and revealed that her perceived translucency was real. She was a ghost—or at least more ghost than human.

“You are meant to be one of mine, one of my brave hearts, one of my great ones. I see it in the way you are revealed by the stars, as immutable and shining as they are. Yours is to be a path of great accomplishment, a path no other has taken before. Will you walk it?”

He started to say no, to back away, to do
something
to break the spell she had cast over him. But even as he made the attempt, she pointed toward him and said, “Will you embrace me, Logan Tom?”

In that instant he heard in her voice a power that he had not thought existed. It wrapped him in chains of iron; it bound him to her as nothing else could. He saw her for what she was; he recognized her vast, ancient power. The stars overhead seemed to brighten, and he would swear ever after that he saw the moon shift in the sky.