Harvest of Changelings (42 page)
Read Harvest of Changelings Online
Authors: Warren Rochelle
When Ben disappeared, the light barrier dropped and the shining ones, who had followed them, began to file or fly or walk or run through the door. Thomas knelt on the ground, groaning, holding his twice-burned hands in his armpits. His mob was unable to move. When the last passed through, the door shimmered, and closed into a thin line, which then shrank down into the dwindling blue fire, and then only glowing blue ashes remained.
“You lost, Thomas,” the priest said gently to the man who was at his feet.
“But I took hith hearthâI even ate itâlook at my burned mouth, my tongue. Ith have his blood all over me,” Thomas said, looking up.
“He was a willing victim, an innocent sacrifice, not like the others you tricked or drugged. You lost Malachi's power when he went through the gate. And his crossing over released all those forces you wanted to control. Now they just are. Watch.”
“You're wrong, you goddamn cockthucking priesthâ”
“Watch.”
The light within the earth, in the circle around the blue ashes and blue coals, began to pulse. The surrounding ground rippled and throbbed and moved, as if it were no longer solid, but water, waves, at the beach. Then, a pause, and like waves before a storm, ripples in a pond from a tossed stone, the light spread out from the circle, riding the moving earth.
“No, no, no, no, NO!” Thomas cried and tried to get up, but it was too late. The light caught him, wrapped around him, and bore him to the ground, writhing and twisting as he burned. Some of the others ran, screaming. Others fell, as Thomas did, caught in the burning light. A fewâwho looked like Fomoriiâexploded. Still others stood transfixed, as the light washed over and around them,
taking away their frozen faces as it spread farther and farther out from the circle on the ground. More rings of light following the first burning white ringâdifferent colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violetârainbow after rainbow after rainbow.
Finally they stopped and the glow of the circle and the blue ashes and coals began to fade. The ones who had fallen were still; Thomas's body smoked.
“What am I doing here? Where am I?” a woman said, who stood a few feet away from Jamey. Before the circles of light had spread, before Ben had stepped through the gate, she had taken a swing at the priest with a machete. The blade had bounced off his aura and she had frozen then. The wolves with her had all run howling off into the trees.
“What's happened? I want to go home,” she said. Now that Jamey could see her face, he saw she wasn't a woman, but a young girl, a teenager, African-American, no more than sixteen or seventeen. She wore a McDonald's uniform and her dark hair fell in beaded braids around her face.
“It's a long story,” Jamey said. “Things have changed. Come on, I'll get you home.”
She took his hand and they walked out of the woods. In ones and twos and threes, those who had not fallen came behind them.
After Friday, November 1, 1991
F
OR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HE HAD ARRIVED AT ST. Mary's in Garner, Jamey Applewhite didn't make his Friday morning office hours. He had a good excuse: he didn't get back from southwest Chatham County and the Devil's Tramping Ground until just before dawn. He wasn't sure about the time because his watch had stopped just after midnight, the hands locking in place when the rainbow-colored rings of light had passed through his body. He had talked with Althea, the young black woman who had been standing there, stunned and confused, after the rings of light had passed, for two hours and then he had driven her home, back to her apartment in Chapel Hill, on North Greensboro Street.
“You were seduced, Althea, by darkness, by evil. You aren't the first; you won't be the last,” he said, as he pulled the van into the parking lot near her building.
“But I always go to church, Father. I've been going to church all my life, St. Paul AME, over on Merritt Mill Road, I even sing in the choir . . .”
Finally he had told her to go inside and go to bed. Jamey gave her his number and directions to St. Mary's; maybe, he thought, as
he headed for 54 East, she would. He doubted she would talk to St. Paul AME's minister.
Why didn't I tell her there is darkness in all of us? That it is an integral part of human nature and if we deny or embrace it, we give it power and we leave ourselves vulnerable to people like Thomas? If she calls me and comes to Garner, I will tell her. I will tell her about my own darknesses. I will tell her about Thomas.
Jamey tried the radio on the way home: WUNC 91.5 FM's all-night jazz wasn't on. He turned the knob as far as it would go in either direction, AM and FM: the radio waves were silent. Maybe it was the continuing aurora borealis, maybe the rainbow rings broke up radio waves, maybe the stations' staffs were just as stunned and confused as Althea. Just as well, he thought, they probably had no idea what to say. Not yet, anyway. He had never known NPR to be at a loss for words before, but there was a first time for everything. He wished he had found the words to say to Althea. He knew he would have parishioners coming with questionsâhuge, larger-than-life questionsâto which he wouldn't have a lot of answers.
The world has changed. Magic has been released. Good fought evil and for now, good has won. No, I don't think your missing wife, husband, son, daughter, friend, whoever, will ever come back.
That might work, he had thought, as he drove east into the dawn.
Nowâwhat time was it, eleven, eleven thirty?âhe wasn't so sure if the answers he had come up with on the way back would work. Jamey got out of bed to check the clock on his dresser to be sure the time was right. That clock was an old-fashioned wind-up; it still worked. Yes, he had slept almost all morning and he was still tired, still sleepy. Those answers might work for someâbut what about those who had dreams like he had? He glanced into the mirror over the dresser: yes, his ears were still visibly pointed; yes, his blue eyes had a faint silver glow to them. On the top of the dresser, a rosary, St. Anthony and the Christ Child prayer cards, a thin, red-leather-clad book of prayers. A crucifix hung on the wall by the mirror. Two white votive candles sat on the dresser right below the crucifix. Yawning, he glanced about the roomâbed, dresser, nightstand and lamp, closet, the two windows. Small bookcase and table in one corner, chair, another smaller lamp. Just like the bedroom of most priests he knew.
Except a changeling lived in it. His aura flared then, an intense white-yellow, and with one slight wave of his hand, he dropped a tiny spiral galaxy of light into the air. Then, he leaned over and blew gently and the galaxy dissolved. His aura dimmed, but didn't
altogether fade. It was as if a pale haze surrounded him, the faint echo of fog, of a low, barely glowing cloud.
And yes, Jamey had had an erotic dream about
three
other people: a man, and two women. He had known themâtheir faces, their eyes, their hands as they had touched him, their bodies. He could still feel their hands on his skin. He had never seen them before or dreamed of them before; he didn't know their names. Even so, Jamey knew them and that they were close, in time, not yet in space. There was only a fine, faint disturbance in the ether of molecules displaced by their approach.
They're looking for me.
They were the rest of his tetrad. He wasn't, if the dream were true, the only changeling who had not been called to cross over.
But I am a priest. I can't marry anybody, let alone three other people. Can I?
But the world had changed.
When would they find him, these three with whom he would make four? He knew he had to stay here, to listen to the questions of his parishioners. Was he air, water, fire, or earth?
But I am a Catholic priest. I have no doubts that this is what I am supposed to be, what I am meant to be.
But the world had changed. How much remained to be seen.
When the rings of colored lightâat that point, bands of lightâpassed through Hallie, it had been sixteen minutes after midnight. Her wristwatch had exploded when the blue band had touched her, the crystal shattering into fine dust, the green digital face flaring into a quick, green fire. When the violet band passed, only darkness remained. Hallie had lain very still then, waiting, on the cushions she had dragged in her office from the teachers' lounge. She hadn't been the only person to spend the night in the school. There had been a good twenty or thirty waiting for her when she had driven in from Leadmine Road. People from the neighborhood, with their kids, Camille Bondurant and her boyfriend, Caroline and Charlie Perkins, Rob Warner, who taught fourth grade, his partner, Carter. Michael Murphy, the gifted and talented specialist and his partner. They were carrying sleeping bags, deflated air mattresses, pillows, quilts. She had told them to use the mats in the gym; most of them had slept in there.
How long she had lain there, waiting for another colored band, Hallie didn't know. Finally she had slept, only to waken when she
heard voices outside her office door. Somebody was upâor somebodies were, Hallie thought. She decided to lay there on the floor awhile longer, wondering what they were talking about, what they saw outside, if the trees and grass and evergreen shrubs and the steps leading down to the street or the street lights and the houses looked any different, if they were still there.
The magnolia by her window was still there. Did it look the same? After staring it, Hallie decided it did and slowly got up, thinking:
just because things look the same doesn't mean they are.
It was morning. Where there had been dark ships, a dark, fanged prince, with eyes of glowing fires, a dark, sharp-clawed lieutenant, hungry for a feast of souls, the sea was clear. But, still barely visible on the far horizon, a small and getting smaller dark shape. Eventually the dark shape disappeared.
Once the door of blue and white fire closed, it took Ben a long moment to just be able to focus and see what was around him, where he was, where the others were. The sky was different, a darker, deeper blue. The air: sweeter and warmer, and he knew, as he inhaled, the sea was near. Four very ordinary just-like-back-home-on-Earth sea gulls confirmed the sea's nearness. Their plaintive cries, for a moment, made him think it hadn't happened; they had only gotten as far as the beach back in North Carolina. It was a very short moment, as he looked down at the flowers around him: none of these had ever grown in any garden or meadow in North Carolina. But he recognized a few: the tiny, twinkling star-blooms, the spicy fragrance from the violet ones cascading down a rock wall. Valeria had told him and Ben remembered. He looked down again: there, in the grass, burnt, its chain missing, was Valeria's twelve-pointed star. Ben picked it up and dropped it in his pocket; maybe some day Malachi would want it.
They were in Faerie, in a walled garden, with flowers and bushes and small trees, by a small house that seemed to have grown out of
the ground, on a street, in a neighborhood, in a city. The house to the left and the right and across the streetâall had grown out of the ground. Not all of them were white, but rather soft earth tones: beige, dusty pink, a fine grey, a faded orange. A few, up the street, were ivory, cream, eggshell, and behind them, the city walls were white. Tall, silver-white golden-leafed trees lined the street on both sides. There were no lawns; instead other small walled gardens or what could only be described as tiny meadows, with thick grasses or a thicket of more silver-white trees. The whole effect was an odd mixture of the neat and the untidy.
Ben knew, without doubt, that Valeria had lived in the house, walked in the garden, on the street, in the city. He had brought Valeria's son home to his mother's garden. There was no sign of all the others who followed them to the Devil's Tramping Ground. Much later, Ben was to find out what happened. Everyone who had followed them had also walked on the Straight Road that led between the gate in the human universe to the gate in the fairy universe. There were other gates besides the Devil's Tramping Ground on Earth, all fixed and set in one place. Most of the gates in Faerie were not: they shifted and moved, depositing people in first one place, then another, responding in some way to whom the Straight Road walkers were, where their fairy ancestors had lived.
But his charges were all here in the garden: Malachi, Jeff, Russell, Hazel, and Alexander, the cat.
Now, what was he supposed to do?
She saw them before they saw her, standing bewildered in Valeria's garden, by the small house where Valeria had lived when she was Prime Mover, the garden in which she had been when she had gone on that furlough to Earth from which she had not returned. Today, Valeria had returned, in the presence of the human she had loved there, and the son she had born there, and the other three who completed Valeria's son's tetrad. Larissa, who had been Second and had succeeded Valeria as the Prime Mover, had come alone, despite the protests of Roth and Thorfin. Fortunately Tasos had gone back into the ocean or she would have had to argue with the swimmer, as well as the two centaurs. At least Hazel's dragon and winged horse had said they preferred to wait.
“We met the two boys first, when they were dream-visiting,” Roth said, shaking his red tail with a hint of anger, his nostrils slightly
flared.
If he had a mane, he'd been shaking it at me. Not that his head of hair isn't close to a mane.
“I know, butâ”
“So we should meet them here, now, now they have crossed over,” Thorfin interrupted, his black tail twitching as much as Roth's red one. “They will be expected us. Seeing us will make them more at ease, more comfortable, and they can see that there are others like them here.”
“And I should get the dragon for the girl? The winged horse? No, you will see them all soon enough. I am the Prime Mover; I took Valeria's place,” Larissa said impatiently. “I have to do this alone. Besides, they are still very youngâeven Russell has only just turned thirteen, I don't think they have even begun to figure out how they are like the two of you.”
She sighed. The two centaurs, their hooves loud on the stone of the street, had not been gracious in agreeing, huffing and snorting, swishing their tails. She watched the man and the children and the cat from behind a rhian tree. All five and the cat just stood there, lookingâno, they were dazed. Enough. Why should she be nervous anyway?
Larissa stepped out from behind the tree and walked toward them, waving when at last one of the children saw her and called out and ran toward her. Then he stopped, his face frozen.
Malachi. He thought I was his mother.
The cat got to her first, bounding over the garden wall, up the street, to jump on her shoulders and lick her face,
pushing
at her with a jumble of excited thoughts and images.
Can I, will it be okay, would anyone care, are there other cats?
Yes, you can, it will be fine, I don't think anyone
would
care, but there are acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, here too, and yes, there are other cats like you.
Ben, she saw, between pushing Alex down and laughing and wiping her face, trailed behind them, uncertain, although he was smiling. She reminded herself that he was probably the most bewildered of them all. The children had made dream-visits; he had only memories of what Valeria had told him over ten years ago.
Hazel missed her grandparents; she wished she had been able to tell them good-bye and why she was doing this, why she was linked to these three boys and how she had changed. She walked just ahead of Ben toward the fairy woman who walked toward them from wherever
the street this house and garden were on led to. Not so much a street, really, she thought, but rather a wide path of hard-packed earth. Later, she would find out there wasn't much need for streets as there had been back in Raleigh or Garnerâon Earth. Streets were for cars and trucks. Fairies flew.
Hazel wanted to hold Ben's hand. She wanted to ask him if she could go home and visit. She wanted to ask him what would happen if she changed her mind and wanted to go home to stay. Would it be all right to leave Malachi, Jeff, and Russell here without her? Couldn't they find another person to be the fourth, to be earth? She felt that there was nothing that would make any of the three want to go homeâhome would shift for them to here. Jeffs mother had abandoned him; his father had hurt him, and would hurt him again if he came back. Malachi's father was here; his mother was from here, and here was where she had wanted him to be. And here was where he had to live, more so than any of the others. Russell's parents were like Jeff's; they had just done their abandoning and hurting in different ways. But, what would she be going back to? To a house where, yes, she was safe, but also where she was invisible. Her grandparents' lives wouldn't be disrupted by her absenceâshe knew she had been the disruption from the day she had arrived.
We have to stay awhile, first, Hazel, and see. Come here.
Okay, I'm coming.
The fairy woman waited for them where Alex had stopped her. He was wrapping himself around and around her, his purring loud and rumbling, as if he had swallowed a huge outboard boat motor. The woman, Hazel thought, was beautiful. Her hair was golden with grey streaks and fell down her back in a long, thick mane; a silver circlet crowned her head. Her dress was long and blue and silver and sprinkled with golden stars.
“Oh, you're here; you're finally here at last. Now, all Faerie will be renewed,” the fairy woman said as she let Alex push his big head into her legs so she could pet him, stroke his fur, tell him he was beautiful and amazing. The boys got to her first, and she kissed and hugged each one, Malachi last and the longest; he seemed to press into her, as if he needed this hug more than the other two boys. Hazel waited beside Ben, wishing Alex would come back to her side. “And I'm Larissa, the Prime Mover, the First on the Dodecagon, as Valeria was. I will show you the city; I should have told you that first.”
“But what do we do,” Ben asked. “Where do we go? Where do we live?”
I won't ever leave you Hazel don't be afraid of this don't leave me.
Alex had pushed his way back to her, and was pressing his head into her, as he had done since he was a very tiny kitten.
But all this scares me and I miss Grandma and Granddad.
We have to stay awhile, first, Hazel, and see.
“You? You have four children to raise, Ben,” Larissa said, “and I imagine we will ask you to serve on the Dodecagon, the Council of Twelve, to represent the changelings. You are one of the few full-blooded humans here. There is a library at the university here, too. As for the rest of you: grow up, learn things, be educatedâyou didn't think there would be no school here, did you?” she said, giving Russell's red hair a quick tug at his scowl. “And figure out what sort of adults you will be. Now let me show you the White City. You will live in that house back there, where you arrived. That was Valeria's house here in the City. It's yours now, Ben.”
Hazel?
Okay, Alex, I'll wait and see.