Lives of Magic (Seven Wanderers Trilogy) (14 page)

“They won’t strike twice in the same place,” Kian assured us. I thought he was taking the attack on our lives very well. Still, he showed up one morning with this giant hockey bag and dumped it in front of us.

“What is it?” I asked wearily.

He knelt down to open it, and before we could react, he began tossing various heavy objects at us.

“Hey!” Garrison protested as he skipped out of the way. He then bent down to pick up a metal sword. The sun glinted off of the blade like a strobe light. The weapon seemed out of sync with the crowded park.

My eyes widened as I noticed I was standing in the middle of swords, daggers, and other paraphernalia that made me believe my troubles with assassin magicians were nowhere near over.

“Seriously?” Seth asked, eyeing the weapons skeptically. “People are going to think we’re role playing some video game.”

Kian crossed his arms over his chest and said nothing.

Garrison had picked up the sword with both hands and held it up to the daylight. The thing was longer than his arm and nearly as broad. I noticed, thankfully, that the edges were dull. The thick metal hilt was worn from use.

“Where did you get these?” Garrison asked.

“Borrowed them,” Kian replied obscurely.

I doubted that. They looked to be relics stolen from a museum. He had left us for hours the night before.

“Legally?” I asked. He raised an eyebrow and ignored my question.

Garrison tsked and shook his head, putting down the sword. His struggle implied it was heavy.

“This is literally like bringing a knife to a gunfight,” he told Kian. “Look at that tree!” He pointed to a maple that looked as if careless beavers had had their way with it. The bark near the bottom centre was gone and it curved into the middle, dangerously leaning to one side. It was the tree they hid behind days earlier.

“That could have been our heads!” Garrison exclaimed.

Kian placed the sword back into Garrison’s hand. Then he fitted one into Seth’s hand and my own. The steel felt cold against my skin and my arm and wrist began to ache within a minute.

“You won’t win this war with weapons,” Kian said. Garrison opened his mouth to protest but Kian silenced him with a hand. “You need your magic to get stronger, quickly. You’ve been found by the magicians, which limits your time to learn considerably.”

“So what’s with the Highlander sword?” Seth asked. He still looked tired and the bags under his eyes hadn’t disappeared.

“You need to stay in shape,” Kian said simply. “If only to run, but this is something you were once very familiar with.” He looked each of us in turn.

“Swords?” Garrison cut in.

“War,” Kian said. “Perhaps if you fall into similar rhythms, you will regain your memories faster.” He seemed proud of himself for thinking of the exercise, and I couldn’t bear to tell him that I felt nothing from this other than a cold heaviness.

Despite our lack of enthusiasm, he lined us up in a row and began to explain, pointing to various parts of the heavy swords.

“This is the blade.” He ran his finger along the dull edge. “Where your knuckles face is called the true edge, and this will be your striking edge most of the time. The side of your thumb is your false edge. This bar is the cross-guard, which keeps blades from sliding down to your hands. Where you hold the sword is the grip, and that round thing at the bottom is called a pommel. You can hit people with it.”

The rest of the afternoon followed in the same fashion, with Kian spouting information and us listening patiently. He showed us a few simple moves and made us practice until sweat ran down my forehead and into my eyes. They stung, and as I watched Kian shouting directions to Seth and Garrison while they sparred, I saw something come to life within him.

Our group had gathered a small audience that came and went throughout the day. The teenaged girls stayed longest, batting their eyes at Kian while he made us struggle under the weight of the swords. When I complained my arm hurt, he told me it was because I wasn’t strong enough.

No kidding,
I thought.

Another week passed. We ate like savage animals after having our lessons with Kian, where he drilled us endlessly and exhausted us to the bone. He kept us so busy that I did not have time to worry about anyone being after me. It was now mid-October, and I consoled myself that only one attempt on my life in a month and a half of travelling with Kian was a pretty good record.

Seth and Garrison had small glimpses of memories, but my mind remained blocked off. I blamed Kian’s rigorous training schedule, but I also felt my own resistance. Since meeting Seth, I was afraid to let myself go. If I opened the floodgates, I was worried I could never close them again.

I was eating yet another hot dog in the evening with Seth and Garrison, contemplating time travel, when Kian came back. He had left to talk on his phone, which had been unusually quiet lately. I knew by the set of his jaw that he wasn’t happy.

“We are leaving tonight,” he said.

S
eth and Garrison looked at each other. Though they had abandoned their lives, I guessed that it was a small change since we’d stayed in the city they knew. Now, they were surprised to hear their lives would be changing so suddenly.

“Where are we going?” I asked, feeling like the travel veteran.

“I don’t know yet,” Kian said, “but there is going to be an unexpected hurricane hitting New York in the early morning. We need to leave before they know and start cancelling flights.”

“Unexpected?” Seth raised an eyebrow.

“How do you know?” I asked.

Kian ignored both of us and started to walk away towards the hotel. Grudgingly, I followed him to our room. The evening was spent quietly, packing as I removed my belongings from the hotel wardrobe. We had been here for over a month now and it was beginning to feel like home. I had worried that coming with Kian would mean turning into a nomad, and was beginning to believe that that wouldn’t be the case. My own dark thoughts made me grumpy.

The way Kian had neatly put all of his things away and fitted them all into his small suitcase annoyed me further.

“Why are you being so cryptic all of a sudden?” I snapped at him, knowing very well that cryptic could have been his middle name.

Kian zipped up his bag then tossed it near the door as if it weighed nothing. “You know what you need to know,” he said.

I could have hit him.

Then, without warning, he spun and took both of my hands. His eyes met mine and my heart stopped in its tracks, all of my thoughts tumbling out of my head as if they weighed nothing.

“You need to be very careful,” he said, his eyes imploring.

“Okay,” I replied. It was a stupid reply but I felt like the moment had escalated to something serious between us, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

“I’m serious, Gwen.” Kian brought both my hands up and touched them gently with his lips. “You could be the strongest.”

My eyes widened. What was happening?

When a knock sounded at the door and Garrison impatiently called out to us, Kian dropped my hands as if they had burned him. He got his bag and left the hotel room. I followed him again, still unsure of what had just happened. My hands tingled where he had held them.

When we got to the airport, the sky was turning a strange shade of dark as if someone had turned the dimmer switch down on the western hemisphere. The airport, made of glass and lit brightly, made it feel even more eerie. My eyelids began to droop. After a silent taxi ride, we stood in the international departures hall.

Kian was on edge. He kept checking his little cell phone and looking at the clock. My head felt like it was filled with cotton as the knowledge of a hurricane slowly crept up on me. The weather was giving me a headache and making me sway where I stood.

I turned and realized Kian was gone. I spotted him at a flight desk, paying for tickets. We stood in silence waiting for him, like children waiting for their mother, until he returned and handed out boarding passes to us all.

“I never gave you my passport,” Seth said, frowning.

Kian smiled at him. “You are not the only one with a power for persuasion,” he replied.

“Manchester?”

Seth was looking at his boarding pass. I realized I hadn’t known where we were going either and looked down to find it was England.

“What’s in Manchester, anyway?” Seth asked. “And when do we get to find out why we’re travelling around? Are we looking for someone or is this visit about something else?”

“We should go somewhere,” Kian said over Seth to drown him out.

In the airport, I doubted any one was listening anyway. But we obediently dropped the subject while our group made our way to the baggage drop-off, and I was glad to get rid of my bursting green suitcase.

We filed quietly through security and bought snacks in the shop on the other side. Then Kian led us to the first class lounge, where we showed our boarding passes and walked through to an empty blue room full of empty blue booths.

Kian chose one near the window, where the sky could be clearly seen. It was looking more dangerous by the minute. I sat next to Kian while Garrison and Seth sat across from us. In hushed tones, we discussed finding more of our kind in order to be stronger and fight the magicians.

Time crawled as I kept my eyes on the clouds rolling in. It was nearly midnight when the sky was illuminated by orange as if lit with fiery electricity. I did not yearn to be up in those clouds.

“How did you know about the hurricane?” I asked Kian.

He pointed out the window. “That,” he motioned to the orange clouds, “takes a great deal of magic. Magic they got from you.” I shuddered. “All part of their plan. Soon, you’ll be able to feel it before it acts. For now, you’ll have to trust me.” He smiled at me and it didn’t seem like a crazy request. I had already clung to him for dear life on several occasions.

Time passed and my headache grew. After an orange juice and snapping at Kian for looking at his watch every three seconds — it was making me nervous — our flight was called for boarding. I was surprised to find that Seth was sitting next to me, with Kian and Garrison in the row in front of us.

The sky was nearly erupting with energy.

The flight attendants ran through the safety procedures, checked our seatbelts, and asked everyone to keep their seat upright. The pilot introduced himself and told us that the flight would take six hours and forty minutes. Sitting next to Seth and looking out the window, my tiredness was abated for the moment.

He smiled at me reassuringly, and I saw that he was gripping the armrests of his seat.

“Fear of flying?” I asked.

“Not fear,” he answered, “I just hate it.”

I smiled, keeping to myself that the two were probably the same thing.

“Tell me something distracting,” he said.

I thought for a while, but nothing came to mind. We were warriors from an ancient land who died to come to the future in order to, most likely, die again fighting some magicians who wanted to take over the world. In the end, I could only think about us and the connection we had felt weeks ago. It still seemed peculiar that it could flare to life and be extinguished just as suddenly.

“It was very nice to meet you,” I said.

He smiled at me. “It was nice to meet you, too.”

It was like an inside joke that had spanned two thousand years. I knew everything about him, but I just hadn’t figured it out yet. And I knew he could say the same about me. I felt a comfort in that.

The plane, after driving around for a while, finally came to a standstill. The engines went full power and we started to speed down the runway. Seth’s grip on the armrests made his knuckles white.

Hesitantly, I placed my head on his shoulder, though it bounced as the plane lifted off. He glanced down at me in surprise. I don’t know why I did it. I felt sure that I could seep my calmness into him if I just touched him. He did relax slightly and leaned back into his seat. The incline of the plane pushed us back, and I relaxed into my place near his side. This felt natural. He was quite a bit taller and as I looked up at him I saw a mark like a scar under his chin.

Without thinking, I gently touched the mark with a finger. It was raised like a scar.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Birthmark,” he replied through gritted teeth.

Suddenly, the small incline turned into a big one as the plane jerked nearly straight up. We were seated at the front and heard some cries from behind. What was most alarming to me was seeing the eyes of the flight attendants widen and their hands move to grasp their seatbelts. Seth winced. I leaned over to look out my window and my heart dropped to my feet.

We were flying through the hurricane. The black and orange clouds around us were shaking the plane and lightning was shooting through the clouds. The wings and engines shuddered with the pressure as we ascended too quickly. My ears roared and popped. The lights in the cabin dimmed and more people screamed. The metal of the airplane’s body made a groaning sound as we moved higher and higher, never able to break free from the hurricane.

“Oh, no.”

“What is it?” Seth asked. His head was pressed back into his seat, hands gripping the armrests and eyes closed.

“Uh …” I didn’t know how else to put it. My heart was speeding up too. At a loss, I punched the seat in front of me. Kian turned around.

“What?” he asked.

I motioned out of the window and widened my eyes at him meaningfully.

“We are flying through the hurricane. I was afraid we would be grounded, but at least we can get above it,” he told me. Then cast an eye at Seth. “This is not dangerous,” he told him in a flat voice. It was not reassuring.

“Sir, please sit down,” a flight attendant called from a few rows ahead. She was still strapped in.

Kian did as he was told and I leaned forward to whisper between the seats.

“You scared?” I asked. I saw the side of his face turn towards me.

“I don’t understand how we are up in the sky,” Kian told me. “To me, this is already being logical. I don’t see how a hurricane is more frightening.”

I sat back, dejected. I could see Garrison rocking backwards and forwards in the seat in front of Seth.

“You okay?” I called.

“Fine!” came the reply. It was strained and hoarse.

In the next five minutes, it was all I could do to not join Seth in an absolute panic attack. In a way, I was glad that I was seeing a more human side of him than just the person I felt I knew from my dreams and memories. But whenever I would get on this train of thought, the plane would rock, drop or incline steeply and my chest would seize up in terror.

Finally, the plane seemed to level out and the lights came back on in the cabin. Seth tentatively opened one eye and then the other, releasing his grip on his seat. I found myself able to breathe again.

The sound system in the airplane beeped for attention.

“Well, folks,” the pilot said through some static, “it’s been a bumpy ride with a turn of unexpected bad weather, but we’re past the worst of it now and will continue en route to Manchester. Enjoy your flight.”

Some people around us clapped.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” Seth said, sitting back. I smiled at him again.

The flight was uneventful because I passed out as soon as we had gotten over our escape from the hurricane. Emotionally drained, I slept for most of it and woke up when Garrison was tapping me on the forehead. I opened my eyes.

“What?”

He was leaning over the back of his seat and looking at Seth and me.

“We’re talking about memories,” Garrison said. “Wondering what snippets you’ve come across that perhaps are new.”

I winced, not wanting to share anything I remembered. I had not fully explained my dreams and memories to the others. No one knew about my frantic running through the woods.

“I think I remember most,” Garrison was saying.

When I looked at him questioningly, he continued.

“My name is Dylan. Really. But I think that Garrison used to be my old name. I introduce myself by it.” He shrugged.

“Do you remember my name?” I asked suddenly. I hadn’t known that I wanted to know.

Garrison shook his head. “No one else’s, sorry.”

Right then the seat belt sign came on and the pilot announced we would be landing shortly. I was glad. My back ached and the left side of my butt was completely asleep.

“Have you ever been here before?” I asked Seth. He shook his head.

“I’ve never travelled anywhere,” he said. “Garrison’s been around the world with his parents. They’re very …” he searched for the right word, “progressive. When he started calling himself Garrison, they went along with it. They barely needed any convincing at all.”

Through the crack between our seats, I could see Kian was listening. He had put down his magazine and his head was turned in our direction.

“And your parents?” I asked.

“They are very protective. I hate it. But I hated having to put thoughts in their heads too.” Seth looked ahead at the tray table. “It doesn’t feel right. How did yours let you leave?”

I motioned my head in Kian’s direction and lowered my voice so he wouldn’t hear.

“He did the same thing to mine. Put thoughts into their heads or whatever. I guess it’s better than them worrying. I know it’s wrong, but it’s for the best. They think I’m out at some private school or cruise high school or whatever. I don’t even remember what I told them anymore. Something about
X-Men
.”

Seth looked at me questioningly but didn’t press. Instead, he also motioned his head towards Kian.

“How long exactly have you two been … travelling together?” he asked. I didn’t miss the hesitation.

“He found me in Oregon,” I said quickly. “That’s it. I came to New York to find you.”

I remembered how the memory of some kind of ridiculous love and wonderful past life had made me set out on this adventure in the first place. I had been so naïve.

In a way, I felt like I had been lied to by my memories. Ever since that initial first glimpse into something wonderful, I’d been plagued with memories and feelings of endless running, despair, and helplessness. Not to mention that the initial memories nearly killed me.

“What do you remember about us?” asked Seth suddenly. “Exactly.…”

There was a glint in his eye that I could fall in love with in a heartbeat.

Snap out of it!
I chastised myself. I was very aware of Kian straining to listen, but Seth has lowered his voice.

“Not much,” I answered.
Am I blushing?

I had never told a more blatant lie in my life. Worst still, I knew he knew. I knew we both had felt it.

Seth raised an eyebrow at me. His hazel eyes stared me down, unconvinced. “Really?”

I felt the heat rise to my face like an unstoppable torrent of evident embarrassment.
You look like a freaking tomato.

“I just need to … uh … sort it out,” was my short answer. Thankfully, Seth let it go. He smiled knowingly and then began flipping through the safety pamphlet, something he had done about a dozen times already.