Echoes from My Past Lives (Spell Weaver) (5 page)

At first all I could get was a momentary shimmer about the color of Taliesin’s green tunic, but it faded quickly, and my head was beginning to ache. What worried me even more though, were the occasional flashes of swirling red that sparkled momentarily in the darkness. Apparently, I was not as good as Taliesin at keeping all the others in check. No question, I needed him—and I needed him now.

I made one final effort at focusing myself on Taliesin and only Taliesin. Even then, I wouldn’t have made it, but I could feel him helping. First he was a swirl of color, then he was like a faded picture in an old photo album, and then he was there, substantial as anyone could have wished for.

“We don’t have much time,” he said matter-of-factly—and not very strongly. He sounded so, so tired. Also, his face was bruised, though I didn’t think he needed to appear that way. He was doing it on purpose to remind me that I had screwed up, I guess.

“I know we don’t.”

Taliesin took a quick look around. “Not only are you strong, but you are also what people in your time call a quick study. Such a short time, and look at what you have mastered!” I couldn’t help but feel a little proud, although the thought did cross my mind that he was just manipulating me.

“But I see you have figured out that you can’t win this battle alone,” Taliesin said, taking a step forward. “The question is, are you willing to trust me enough to work with me?”

Before it had been Taliesin’s job to supply the awkward silences. Now, clearly, it was mine. Still, my head had never ached this badly, and the red flashes were becoming more persistent.

“What did you mean when you said we would become one?”

“As I have told you, putting an end to this pandemonium in your head requires that you be reunited with all of your past selves. They need to be memories again. However, the only way to calm the others enough to get them to become part of you is to use powerful magic. Strong as you are, you aren’t strong enough by yourself, and quick as you are, you will never master the skills you need in time. The process has to begin with us. Once you and I are one, our combined strength and my experience will be enough to pacify the others, one at a time perhaps, but the job will still get done.”

“When all this is over,” I said hesitantly, “will I still be me?” Taliesin knew what I meant.

“I can’t promise that, exactly,” he finally replied. In that instant I was ready to call off the whole thing and take my chances with my other selves.

“Tal, I won’t lie, despite what you think. I honestly can’t be sure precisely what will happen. Will you still love your parents? Will you still be friends with Stan and the others I can see so vividly in your mind? Will you still love Eva?” He suppressed a little chuckle at that last thought. “I believe you will. At the same time, having my memories, and everyone else’s, to say nothing of our skills? That experience will change you. How could it not?“

“I…I don’t know if I want to risk losing who I am.” Pounding redness began to push in on me, not fully visible yet, but soon to be.

I could tell Taliesin was frustrated with me, but I gave him credit for trying hard not to show it. “Tal, what makes you think you won’t actually be better than you are now? All things change. Change can be for the better.”

“I’ll…be…a…freak!” I gasped through clenched teeth. My mind felt as stable as an old building in an earthquake.

“What you will be will still be up to you. But you have to decide soon. Even the two of us together may not be able to control what’s happening if you let your other selves run rampant for too much longer.

Who could expect a twelve-year-old to make this kind of decision? Part of me actually wished that Taliesin would just take over and do what needed to be done.

“I won’t try to force you,” said Taliesin calmly. “I could, and maybe I would succeed, but I won’t. Doesn’t that show I’m trustworthy?”

I had expected Taliesin to start singing the chaos back by this time, but he seemed to be doing nothing. Was he trying to coerce me, or was he trying to leave me room to decide for myself? If I opened myself to him, I would know—but if I did that, and his motives were evil, he would have me—of that I was sure.

“Tal,” said Taliesin gently. “It is time.”

By this point I could hardly think, but I didn’t exactly need to be a genius to see that I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. I could “become one” with Taliesin and discover that he had somehow tricked me into surrendering my life to him, or I could refuse and let my mind get ripped apart by my other selves. Really, though, there was only one way I could go—the one that offered at least some hope. I just had to have the guts to do it.

“I’m ready,” I said, holding out my hand to him. He took it—and my world changed forever.

Taliesin was gone as a separate entity. He was, as he had promised, just memories, but memories of such power I reeled from the impact of them. They were, however, coherent, in contrast to the writhing confusion of my other selves, and Taliesin had somehow kept the most critical memories “at the top of the pile,” so that I did not have to hunt for them. Just like that, I knew how to channel magic through music. I also knew how to handle my past selves. I started to conjure up a guitar, but somehow a lute, the instrument Taliesin had been carrying before, appeared instead. Well, whatever. I also noticed I was wearing Taliesin’s sheath—I now knew the word—with his sword in it, though I wouldn’t be needing that just now.

The whole process was not easy, but at least now it was doable. Singing better than I had ever sung—and in Welsh at that—I drove back the squirming mass of my past selves. I could see them much more clearly now, and I was able to separate them, pulling loose from the mass one at a time and healing him to a state somewhat like he had had in life. Some of them were as skeptical as I had been at first when I explained the situation, but one by one they joined me, and they became part of me again, their independent existence dissolving as they became just memories. None of them were as powerful as Taliesin, but each one still jolted me as I struggled to assimilate his memories successfully. Nonetheless, Taliesin had been right: his skill and our combined strength could do what needed to be done.

I could not do it all at once. Every so often I made sure the remaining selves were quiet and rested for a while, sometimes in mental image of Camelot, sometimes in the same kind of image of my bedroom at home. Eventually, though, all of them had been re-integrated into me. Occasionally I felt an echo of their earlier sentience, as if one of them was still a separate being, but I knew that they would not tear away again. They were part of me, and they would be as long as I lived.

When I finally woke up in the hospital again, I was in restraints, and Stan was holding my hand as if he were trying to anchor me to this world, looking at me as if he were trying to will me back to consciousness. In that moment I knew that something else Taliesin had said was true—I would still feel the same about the people in my life as I always had. Stan was still like a brother to me.

When he realized I was awake, his cheeks reddened a little, and he dropped my hand as if it had suddenly become red-hot.

“It’s good to see you again, dude,” I said. My throat was scratchy, my voice hoarse. For a second I thought I must have sung myself hoarse, but then I remembered that all the singing had happened in my mind. I had not even spoken—except, I was told later, to scream occasionally—for several days. I guess my mouth had been hanging open a lot, and my throat had gotten dry. Stan handed me some water and then bolted off down the hall to tell the nurse I was conscious again. Somehow it was fitting that he, who I gather had been at the hospital almost as much as my parents, should be the one to spread the news.

My parents appeared almost at once, as did some of my friends and one of the doctors on my case. Though the doctor expressed cautious optimism, he also mentioned that I had seemingly recovered once before and then relapsed. He insisted on a fairly long period of observation before I could be released.

Well, screw that! I knew there was no chance of a relapse, and I was eager to get back into the world again, a world I would now see with new eyes. Even more, I wanted to start practicing the skills I had learned from Taliesin and the others. So I did a bit of “practicing” at the hospital. One by one I got my doctors alone, and I sang to them a little in Welsh. Of course, the song had my new-found magic woven into it. They never remembered my spell-casting afterwords, but one by one they came around to the idea that they would really not need to keep me in the hospital as long as they had once thought. Taliesin’s memories warned me not to push too hard with this kind of magic, and, impatient as I was, I took his wisdom to heart. A gentle nudge here, a little tweak there, and in the end I still got what I wanted—out of the hospital. Out into a world that I would perhaps surprise more than it could ever surprise me. What did I want to do? Be a rock star—literally? Well, now I could be if I wanted. Psychologist? If I could fix the mess in my own head, Joe Average’s typical neurosis would be no match for me! A whole range of possibilities I had never even considered now opened up before me. Superhero? Well, I could work magic. I’d probably not want to advertise that fact, so in a sense I would have a secret identity.

Maybe I would be a freak. Well, if so, I was damn well going to be the best freak I could!

If you enjoyed “Echoes from My Past Lives,” be sure to try
Living with Your Past Selves
, the award winning novel in the same series.

Living with Your Past Selves
is set four years after the end of “Echoes from My Past Lives,” and Tal has recovered from the sudden emergence of past life memories that nearly cost him his sanity. In fact, just as Taliesin predicted, Tal is beginning to realize that having hundreds of lives worth of accumulated knowledge can be a blessing. Tal is still mastering both his music and his magic, and his life is not without its complications, but he is managing…until Stan begins to suspect his secret, and Stan isn't the only one. Suddenly, Tal is under attack from a mysterious enemy and under the protection of an equally mysterious friend whose agenda Tal can't quite figure out. An apparition predicts his death. A shape shifter disguised as Stan attacks him. An old adversary starts acting like a friend. He and some other students get hurled into Annwn (the Otherworld), face Morgan Le Fay, and only just barely get back alive—and that’s just during the first month of school!

By now it is obvious to Tal that he is not the only one who can work magic and certainly not the only one who can remember the past. He realizes there is something that he is not remembering, something that could save his life or end it, some reason for the attacks on him that, as they escalate, threaten not only him but everyone he loves as well. In an effort to save them, he will have to risk not only his life, but even his soul.

You can purchase
Living with Your Past Selves
from any Amazon website, including those listed below:

United States
http://www.amazon.com/Living-Selves-Spell-Weaver-ebook/dp/B00987M4CI/

United Kingdom
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Selves-Spell-Weaver-ebook/dp/B00987M4CI/

Canada
http://www.amazon.ca/Living-Selves-Spell-Weaver-ebook/dp/B00987M4CI/

"Debut author Hiatt offers an engrossing coming-of-age story richly infused with ancient mythology and Arthurian tales...A fast paced, emotionally nuanced page-turner."-
Kirkus Reviews

"
Living with Your Past Selves
cast a spell of enchantment on me from the first page and held me within its grips to the very last page. Bill Hiatt weaves an alluring tale filled with magic, spells, good versus evil, fairies, reincarnation and friendship...characters in this story dance right off the pages swinging their swords, fighting their battles, and singing their magic as though they truly existed....Please don't keep me waiting too long for the next chapter in the lives of Tal and friends." Five Stars. Reviewed by Anne Boling for
Readers' Favorite
.

As of March, 2013,
Living with Your Past Selves
is a finalist in ForeWord Reviews’ Book of the Year Awards (adult fantasy category) and a quarter-finalist in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award (science fiction/fantasy/horror category).

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