The Fire Bringers: An I Bring the Fire Short Story (IBF Part 6.5) (2 page)

He picks up the last picture. It’s a photo of Amy in mostly human form
—
she still has green hair and pointed ears
—
himself, and their one and only child, their daughter Durga. Taken four years ago, Durga is only two years old in the photo. She’s adorable with her dark brown pigtails, blue skin, velvety black bat wings, and her black, pronged prehensile tail
—
in the picture it’s wrapped tightly around Bohdi’s arm.

He frowns. In the picture Durga is smiling. Lately, she hasn’t been smiling as much. She’s begun to realize that being blue, having wings, and a pronged tail isn’t “normal” for little girls. He’s trying to convince her that it’s
better
. It’s hard with the occasional, nosey busybody suggesting they surgically remove her wings and tail. His jaw gets hard and he hangs the picture up on the wall. Feeling a mood coming on, he shakes his head. “Amy?” He calls. Again, he gets no answer.

He goes into Durga’s room. It’s neat and tidy
—
a sure sign that they’re out. Patting his back pocket, he looks for his phone and simultaneously closes his eyes. He sends projections throughout their house and to the backyard. It’s a rather nice backyard. Their home is near the lake, just north of the city
—
Bohdi prefers the city
—
but things tend to happen around Amy’s and his home that are best kept from major metropolitan areas: meteorites, spontaneous eruptions of mud monsters, that sort of thing. He doesn’t see the smoking husks of any meteorites, or any mud monsters, or leaf monsters for that matter
—
but no Durga or Amy, either.

… if only he had his phone. It’s in the couch cushions? He lets a projection go there, but doesn’t see it. He tries to remember when he last had it—it was last night in the bar in Alfheim
—
he texted Amy to let her know he was fine. He winces. He’d been showing off the inter-realm reception to the Light Elves. Had they stolen the phone? He puts a hand to his forehead. Of course they have, but to the Light Elves it is merely borrowing. They’re bound to return it in another hundred years or so.

Turning around, about to leave the room, he almost walks through Steve.

“Is my son alive?” Steve, or rather the projection thereof, asks. Bohdi squints. Steve’s bionic eye—a combined effort of Brett, Bryant, Amy, and Harding
—
isn’t glowing. He’s wearing the latest fashion in men’s formal office attire: a thigh-length silver coat with a high collar and red embroidery at the sleeves and hem. It looks a lot like the traditional Indian groom’s attire that Bohdi wore to his wedding. When the coats first came into fashion, Bohdi had spent about fifty years making “Where’s the wedding?” jokes … at first to be funny, and then just to be annoying. He’s not feeling in the mood now.

“Yes,” says Bohdi, running a hand through his bangs. A projection of his own notices Amy’s and Durga’s shoes are gone from the foyer. Why did she take Durga out today? It was Friday, a day she usually went to the office. She had to have realized Bohdi wasn’t drunk … just sleeping out near Henry in the event he started to choke on his own vomit. Bohdi sniffs
—
also he reeks of cigarette smoke, and he had been too tired to take a shower.

“Did you convince him not to join the fleet?” Steve’s projection asks.

Bohdi temporarily snaps back to his friend-frenemy-whatever. “Of course not.”

Steve scowls. “Deep space is still dangerous.”

Bohdi raises an eyebrow and his lip curls. “What about the whole “the military teaches discipline lecture” you gave me after you made me join the Marine Corps?”

Steve rubs the bridge of his nose and waves his other hand at Bohdi. “Henry doesn’t need discipline. Boy’s got too much. I had hoped that when he became a doctor at least one of my kids would outlive me.”

Bohdi can’t scoff. Claire looks for danger, and she is as cool as it had seemed before Bohdi had Durga. Now he can’t help empathizing with Steve. There is a part of him that wishes that Durga could lead a boring life. But she won’t
—
she is blue, and she has wings and magic so strong that even non-magical creatures can feel it in their whiskers and scales. She’s six years old and showing signs of “world walking readiness” according to Lionell, Bohdi’s elf house-husband buddy. Bohdi has destroyed all the World Gates in the vicinity, terrified that Durga will get herself lost in another realm.

He runs his hand over the stitches in his neck. Who is he kidding? Even if Durga looked normal, her life never would be. Her parents are Chaos incarnate. Her mother is the Chaos of creation, which isn’t so bad. Wherever Amy is, scientific discoveries bloom like flowers in spring, the arts flourish, and strange and wonderful creatures emerge. Granted, it had taken nearly a century to tackle Chicago’s invisible rat problem, and the Zombie Virus was disturbing, but Bohdi thinks both were small prices to pay. However, he is the Chaos of Destruction; things die around him, break, or just go wrong. Some people who know what Bohdi is have suggested that he shouldn’t be around children.

Pushing the dark thought aside, Bohdi takes a deep breath. “I did give him the ‘don’t wander off in boot camp and die’ part of the lecture,” Bohdi says.

Steve snorts, “Thanks for that.”

“Have you seen Amy and Durga?” Bohdi asks, patting his back pocket. “I’ve lost my phone.”

Steve drops his hand. “No … let me look.” His bionic eye glows faintly purple, and his hand drops idly to his hip and the pommel of Laevithin. Bohdi’s eyes drop to the sword. After the old order had been torn down and the new order had been established, Amy and Bohdi gave the sword to Steve. Steve’s nature is to keep things safe and the same and boring
—
there have been no tsunamis in Lake Michigan since Steve’s had the sword, no strange new viruses or volcanoes. After a few unsteady centuries, it’s what people need. But he does miss it.

Steve raises an eyebrow and looks sharply up at Bohdi. “Wait, you’re not fighting, are you?”

Holding up his hands, Bohdi blinks. “No … it’s just a misunderstanding.”

Steve’s eyes narrow. “If you are fighting, you can’t be making up tonight. Chicago is hosting a peace delegation for the Light Elves and Dark Elves, I can’t have earthquakes tonight.”

Bohdi’s lip purse. Earthquakes, World Gates spontaneously forming, and magic-eating trees going crazy don’t happen every time Amy and he have marital relations … but when things are emotionally intense, like after a fight …

“Go to Niflheim,” Steve says. “That place is flat as a pancake, it could use a good earthquake!”

“I have a kid, Steve!” Bohdi snaps.

“Get a babysitter!” says Steve.

“You have Laevithin, you have enough power to counter our magic!” Bohdi protests.

Steve’s lips twitch. “I don’t want to risk it.”

“My wife is missing. Help me find her,” Bohdi says.

Steve stares at him for a long moment, but closes his eyes and then opens them, the bionic eye glowing bright purple. “She’s not answering her phone … Accessing data on her last known whereabouts … They went to Amy’s lab, right now they’re not on any of the security cameras
—
”

But Bohdi’s already running through Steve’s projection.

“Uncle Bohdi?” he hears Henry say, and then Steve’s voice in the bathroom. “What were you thinking!”

He passes through the living room, and Loki shouts from the television set. “Did you lose Amy?”

Bohdi doesn’t even pause to flick him off. He practically flies into the kitchen. Opening a cabinet, he reaches for a high shelf and grabs a handful of magically-charged marbles from a fishbowl they keep out of Durga’s still flightless reach. He jams all but one into his pocket. Clasping the one in his palm, he dashes to the foyer. Through the panes of glass beside the door he sees a beautiful Chicago day. The magic carpet on the floor lifts itself expectantly as he slips on his sneakers.

“Take Henry home,” Bohdi says, and the carpet waves its tassels in acknowledgement.

Dread coiling in his stomach, Bohdi grasps the magic marble tighter, focuses, and slips into the In Between.

x x x x

Durga loves Amy’s “office”. On the banks of the South Pond in Lincoln Park, the building was built in 1908. It is one of the most beautiful surviving examples of Prairie School architecture and has been declared a Midgardia monument. The Light Elves scoff, but Amy thinks it’s very pretty.

During the years after Cera, the Lokean Age, and then after the Technomagical Renaissance, nine separate World Gates sprang up in the quarter acre around the building, and a tenth even sprang up in the building itself. Lost bakus, unicorns, baby dragons, and others have a habit of stumbling through the gates. The building has been closed to the public, in part to rehabilitate those lost souls. Amy and her staff tend to their injuries before sending them home.

Right now Amy and Durga are in a “dragon recovery room”. There is a tiny faux cave made out of poured concrete for little dragons to sleep in, comfortably scrunched the way they like. Inside it there is a red heat lamp. The ceiling of the room itself is high, allowing for limited flight, and there are cement boulders arranged for perching. Right now, their Labrador-sized dragon guest is sitting on a boulder, a big toothy smile on his emerald, green-scaled face. He’s kneading his inch long nails in the boulder, basking in Amy’s and Durga’s company. The little guy isn’t injured
—
he’s just lost, and too young to say where he came from. Inquiries are being made in Alfheim, Nornheim, Svarthlheimr, and Niflheim
—
but it’s difficult to track down dragon parents. They’re extremely loving toward their children, and reward their progeny’s rescuers with treasure and friendship. However, visit the wrong dragon den, or fail to speak your business quickly enough, and they’ll try to eat you.

“He has a tail and wings like yours, Durga,” Amy says. “And just like you he can’t fly yet, either.” Which is why all the perches are no higher than eight feet, and all have little steps to the top.

Durga is silent for a long moment. And then, stroking the dragon’s tail, she says softly, “I want to see the blue people.”

Amy stops scratching the scales behind the dragon’s ears and looks at her daughter. Durga’s wearing a shirt specially designed to accommodate her wings. Its pale pink color contrasts sharply with her sapphire-hued skin, as does the white of her anklet socks and the light gray of her skirt. Skirts are easier when you have a tail.

Right now, her daughter’s tail is swishing agitatedly. She blinks. Durga’s eyes are on hers. Durga’s eyes are such a dark blue they’re almost black, and right now they’re wide and pleading. Her tiny bow lips press together, and her little nose sniffs. Durga is beautiful even when she’s sad. It’s not motherly pride, it’s true. Her features are perfect and her blue skin is magical.

But Durga is six years old and beginning to think she’s not beautiful. There are no blue princesses in cartoons, or princesses with tails or
bat
wings.

“I want to see the blue people,” Durga says again. The voice actually comes from a little pendant around her neck. Durga speaks at frequencies normally inaudible to humans. Fortunately, her “aunt” Harding’s hearing isn’t normal. The Marine communications specialist had detected the cries of Bohdi’s and Amy’s child when Durga was a baby. Brett and Bryant were able to create devices that lowered the pitch. At first the two “Gods of Electronics and Small Engines” crammed the devices into baby monitors. But as Durga has gotten older and mobile, they’ve concealed the devices in costume jewelry. This “Durga Translator” they’ve put in an ornate “Magical Princess Pendant” for their “little blue princess.” When they’d presented it to Durga she’d thought it would grant wishes. Her first words after getting the gift were, “Magic pendant, make me not blue.”

Amy’s brow furrows. “Durga,” she whispers. “We can’t go see the blue people. Only special doctors and scientists are supposed to see them.” The reason the building has been closed to the public, and turned into a magical rehabilitation center, is that the World Gate within goes to a tenth, formerly unknown realm.

Technically, Durga isn’t even supposed to know that the “blue people” or the Tenth Realm exist, but she has magical bat hearing.

Durga swishes her tail. “You’re a doctor-scientist and I’ll be with you.”

Amy bites her lip. Bohdi told Amy that Durga was becoming obsessed with seeing the “blue people.” To dissuade her, Amy has broken down and told Durga secret information: the blue people aren’t like her, they don’t have wings, and their tails are furred. They look like upright, blue, mostly hairless lemurs. Their DNA shows they diverged from Earth primates about 60 million years ago. How the ancestor of Earth primates and lemurs got to the Tenth Realm is anyone’s guess.

Bending down so that her eyes are level with her daughter’s, Amy says, “Durga, the blue people … they are a new people … when hominids from the Nine Realms go there, they have to be careful not to be seen. We don’t want to disrupt their evolution.”

“So use your magic and hide us.”

Amy straightens. She also doesn’t want her daughter to see how violent the “Lemurlikes”, as they’ve come to be known, are. “Perhaps when you’re older,” she says.

Durga’s brow crinkles, her shoulders slump, and she bends even further at her waist. The weight of Durga’s wings always makes her lean forward a little, like a child carrying a backpack. Now her back is nearly parallel to the ground. Amy’s heart constricts. People have asked why Amy hasn’t surgically removed the wings, commenting that Durga is flightless. But Amy is sure that one day Durga will be able to fly; do you remove a weight today that one day may give your child the gift of flight? She’s so glad that Bohdi’s never once argued with her on that, or Durga’s blue skin or tail. Other parents, with magical statuesque-non-typicals, have divorced over whether to surgically alter their children.

From behind her comes a voice. “Amy, you’re here! I have a problem.” Amy turns to find Hoenir, now a fellow veterinarian in the rehabilitation center, waving a digital tablet. Hoenir is still youthful, even though he doesn’t eat apples. They wonder if it is a carryover from living as Creation for so long.