Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver) (11 page)

“You need to answer that question sooner or later, young man,” said Nurse Florence somewhat more formally. “You understand we can’t just let you run around town stealing things, but if we know what you need, we can find you some better way for you to get it.” Still no response.

“All right, your ankle is better now, but I’m still waiting for an answer. We can’t help you if—”

“Nobody can help me,” he said with a sort of dismal finality I had never heard from a little kid before. For a second I was afraid he was going to start crying again, but he managed to hold himself together, at least outwardly.

“If I had the sword,” he almost whispered, “then he would have taken me back. I know he would.”

“‘He’ must be this boy’s father,”
thought Nurse Florence.

“The kid was abandoned? Why?”
I asked.
I knew that kids were sometimes abandoned, but I had never met someone whose parents had just dumped him.

“Try not to act too surprised. I don’t want to say this in front of the boy. During my physical examination I figured out where his powers come from. He’s half djinn.”

I had encountered more than my share of weirdness in the past four years, but generally it was Celtic weirdness, not Arabic weirdness, so it took me a minute to catch up with her.

“Djinn?”

“In the Quran the djinn are described as being created by Allah from smokeless fire, which explains why the boy is so fire resistant. Islamic law forbids sexual relationships between humans and djinn, but there are a few known cases. I dealt with one half djinn back in Wales, so I can recognize the physical signs. I’m guessing the boy’s father is the human partner in a human-djinn relationship and abandoned the boy when it became obvious he wasn’t ‘normal.’”

“But how…” I started. Then I realized my shock had caused me to speak aloud, and I switched back to mental dialogue.
“How could a parent abandon a child for any reason, let alone something the child has no control over?”

“People abandon children for many reasons just as arbitrary as that. I’ve had to deal with a couple of situations in which students were thrown out by their fathers when the fathers discovered they were gay.”

I thought about how, just a few weeks ago, my father had feared I was gay. Even at the darkest point of that misunderstanding, I didn’t think he had ever been close to throwing me out. I had to give him credit for not giving up on me.

“So what do we need to do, find his djinn mother?”

“I wish it were that simple. Typically the djinn are no more welcoming of half djinn children than the mortal parents are. Honestly, I’m at a loss on this one. The boy apparently thinks that if he performs some great feat, his father will take him back, but I doubt that’s a realistic hope. If anything, the boy’s showing up with a stolen magic sword will just reinforce the father’s feeling that he wants nothing to do with him.”

“How long has he been living on the street like this?”

“No way to tell. His accent tells me he wasn’t born here but rather in some Arab country, and then he came here later. But since I don’t know how old he is now, I can’t even speculate. It could have been days, though I’d guess that’s too conservative an estimate, based on the way he is behaving. Unfortunately, he could also have been abandoned years ago.”

“Years!”
I went from shock to outrage.
“What a scumbag his father must be!”

“My father is not a scumbag!” screamed the kid. I felt stupid, as if we had been spelling words the kid we were talking in front of actually knew how to spell. After all, if he really was half djinn, why couldn’t he pick up thoughts so close to him? None of his earlier actions had suggested he could read minds in the way I could, but I had just mentally shouted right next to him.

Nurse Florence also looked non-plussed, and the guys moved as if to restrain the kid. “That will not be necessary!” she snapped. Then, turning to the kid, she adopted a gentler tone. “We’re sorry. We don’t really know your father, so perhaps we shouldn’t judge. Tal is angry that you have had to fend for yourself when someone should have been taking care of you.”

“I did OK on my own!” said the kid defensively. “No one needed to take care of me.”

“May I ask your name?” said Nurse Florence. “Mine is Viviane. Gentlemen, would you please introduce yourselves to our guest?”

“You mean, to our prisoner?” asked Shar acidly.

“Guest,” replied Nurse Florence, calmly but forcefully. One by one, the guys introduced themselves.

“Now it’s your turn,” said Nurse Florence gently.

“Khalid,” replied the kid finally, after a long pause. It was clear we were not going to get a last name, and Nurse Florence knew better than to press for one.

“All right, Khalid. For the time being, I’m going to see if some of my friends in Annwn will look after you—”

Khalid, though clearly afraid of us, was apparently even more afraid of going to Annwn, though I doubted he had any idea what Annwn even was. “No!” he practically screamed, jumping up and looking as if he would make a dash for the room’s only door.

Just as Nurse Florence had predicted, however, the room was just too cramped for his speed to make much difference. In seconds Dan and Gordy had his arms again. He struggled desperately, and if his strength had been as great as his speed, he could have given them much more trouble. As it was though, two seventeen-year-old varsity football players had little difficulty subduing one eleven-year-old.

“What’s wrong?” asked Nurse Florence, genuinely puzzled.

Khalid said nothing, but his quivering lip spoke volumes.

“Khalid, we really want to help you, but you need to tell us what’s wrong,” said Nurse Florence, trying her most calming tone.

Khalid looked even more as if he would bolt at the slightest opportunity. “Just…leave me alone!” Khalid finally begged in a half whisper. “I’ll…go somewhere else. And I won’t try to steal from you again—I promise.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Nurse Florence explained patiently. “Khalid, we can see you can take care of yourself—” Dan snickered a little but quickly got control of himself. “—but we still can’t just leave you all alone. You have noticed the young men with you all carry swords—”

“You bet he noticed,” cut in Shar angrily.

“I can do this more easily without interruptions,” said Nurse Florence in her do-what-I-say tone. Switching personas again, she looked into Khalid’s eyes. “Khalid, they carry swords because there are…bad people nearby, very bad people. One of them tried to kill all of us just a few weeks ago and nearly succeeded. You have seen what these young men can do. If even they were nearly overcome, can’t you see that even someone as fast and clever as you are might not survive on his own?”

For the first time, Khalid actually appeared to be really listening. “You mean like that pale, dark haired lady? The really pretty one?”

We all froze. Was he talking about Morgan?

“What lady, Khalid?” I asked in as neutral a tone as I could.

“I’ve…I’ve been watching you guys for a while. She is often watching too.”

“Today?”

“No, I didn’t see her today, but I wasn’t really looking.”

“What makes you think she’s a bad person?”

Khalid shrugged. “I just feel it. She’s…cold, somehow. I can feel darkness when she is nearby. Somehow, I know she might be able to see me, even when I’m invisible, so I stay as far away as I can.”

I tried to sound more reassuring than I felt. “If she is the one I am thinking of, that was a good thing to do, Khalid. She is definitely one of the bad people we were talking about.”

“I don’t want to upset our ‘guest,’” said Dan, who still had a grip on one of Khalid’s arms, “but how do we know he isn’t really working with Morgan? Maybe he isn’t even a little kid at all.”

Khalid, who had seemed marginally calmer while I was talking to him, began looking very wary, again ready to bolt at the first opportunity.

“He’s not a shifter, if that’s where you’re going with that question, Dan,” replied Nurse Florence quickly. “I would have picked up some hint of that while I was working on his injuries. As far as his being an ally of Morgan, well…I can’t tell. Khalid, I need to ask you to trust me. I know you have natural defenses that prevent people from seeing into your mind. Can you lower those, just for a minute?”

Khalid’s eyes filled with horror, as if Nurse Florence had just suggested cutting open his skull to look inside. I could understand the reaction. Most people don’t really want somebody else rummaging around in their heads, and Khalid hadn’t exactly had a life that would inspire him to trust others. Unfortunately, someone who really was in league with Morgan would have the same reaction. As much as I sympathized with the kid, we couldn’t have him around unless we knew for sure.

“Khalid,” I began gently, “if you have been watching us for a while, you know we aren’t bad people, right?”

Khalid did give Shar a hard look first—which Shar returned—but then he nodded yes.

“Then you know we wouldn’t really do anything to hurt you.”

“But you want to see into my mind! That’s…wrong!”

“It’s the only way we can help you, Khalid. We have to be sure you aren’t working with one of the bad people—”

“I’m not bad!” he protested loudly.

“But how do we know that? All we know about you is that you tried to steal one of our swords. Please, Khalid, try to look at this situation from our point of view. We need some way to know you, to know that you aren’t out to get us.”

Khalid thought about the problem for a moment, then said, “I know someone who could tell you I’m a good person.”

“Who’s that?” I asked with an indulgent smile.

“Gianni,” he replied innocently.

My heart skipped a beat. Yeah, I did want to trust Khalid, I did want to help him. Still, the idea that he had been around Gianni without my knowing gave me the creeps. I made a valiant effort not to let my uneasiness show.

“How do you know Gianni?” I asked. The sentence came out more tonelessly than I wanted. Dan raised an eyebrow, but Khalid seemed oblivious.

“I’ve been near here since early November. I…I can take care of myself, like I said, but sometimes…it’s nice to talk to someone my age. Every few days I stand at the front of the middle school right when school lets out and kind of pretend I’m just coming out of the school myself. Sometimes I say ‘Hi’ to some of the people coming out, but usually they don’t talk to me much.”

Considering that Khalid looked like something the proverbial cat dragged in, I wasn’t too surprised, especially in a fairly upscale community like Santa Brígida. I was surprised that one of the adults at the school hadn’t noticed a homeless kid hanging out near the school, but if he only showed up right as school was getting out, he might have blended well enough that no one noticed from a distance.

“I had seen Gianni with you, though, so when I said ‘Hi’ to him, I kinda pretended that I knew you, and he talked to me. He even had me come home with him a couple times and gave me cookies.”

Khalid’s expression hinted at what I would have suspected anyway—that the cookies were about the only food he hadn’t had to steal in weeks. The wave of sympathy about to engulf me, however, didn’t quite wash away my feeling of uneasiness about his being around Gianni. In that second I wanted to probe his mind—hard, if necessary—to verify his story, and his permission be damned. I wasn’t about to take any chances with Gianni’s safety.

Nurse Florence, as if reading my mind, put a restraining hand on my arm.

“Khalid, we all know Gianni, but you could have fooled him. You won’t be able to fool us if you allow us to see what is in your mind. Otherwise, we’ll have to keep you in a place where we know you can’t hurt anyone.”

Khalid looked at us one by one, as if trying to find a sympathetic face. Mine was now expressionless. Dan, Shar and Carlos were all looking at him suspiciously. Gordy was clearly puzzled. That only left Nurse Florence, and she was the one who had just given him the ultimatum. He looked so trapped that I began to sympathize with him again, but I squashed the impulse. We needed to know the truth, period. Then I realized what I needed to do to get the truth.

“Khalid, how about a trade?” I asked. “You can look inside my mind if we can look inside yours?”

“Is that wise?” asked Carlos quickly. The others looked equally skeptical.

“Personal stuff only, not information about our dealings with Morgan, the extent of my magic, or anything like that. Nurse Florence can monitor to make sure Khalid doesn’t go where he shouldn’t. Well, Khalid, what do you say?”

I could tell Khalid was still conflicted, but my willingness to do what we were asking him to do had at least cracked his resistance.

“Will it hurt?” he asked quietly after several seconds had passed. “When you go in my mind, will it hurt?”

“As long as you relax and let it happen, not one bit,” replied Nurse Florence in her most reassuring tone.

“Can I look in Tal’s first?”

“That’s the idea,” I replied.

“OK,” said Khalid, still visibly reluctant.

“Dan and Gordy, I think you can stop holding him,” pointed out Nurse Florence. They did, slowly and with noticeable reluctance—and they stood close enough to seize him again at the slightest sign of trouble.