Indigo Springs (30 page)

“So you surrendered,” I say. Reaching the end of this tale has left me wanting a smoke, even though it has been fifteen years since I had a cigarette.

“Yes.” Astrid’s brown eyes shine. “Patience and I…stepped back into the world.”

“I saw it on TV.” The images are seared into my memory like third-degree burns. Mark staggering out first, his glasses glimmering and a rifle in his hands. He was already alchemized, so much a salamander man that his hair was falling out.

Caroline and my daughter were watching too. My wife’s face burned with something I didn’t understand. Now I think it was greed, the same hunger for power captured in these portraits of Mark and Sahara.

The cameras caught Sahara Knax as she flew through the broken roof on a flying carpet, zooming away from Mascer Lane and outpacing the helicopters in pursuit.

Next came Patience. She drew the attention of every camera operator away from Sahara, from the spectacle of a woman in flight. Patience, who made Astrid seem merely ordinary as she too crept out onto the porch of the house, barefoot, clad in a bloodstained blue dress. Her head was bowed, her hands raised as though she were a criminal. As though she were to blame.

Roche had rushed in, bellowing: “Who’s this? Where’s Patience Skye?”

Astrid, caught at the edge of Patience’s close-up, said, “This was Mrs. Skye.”

Watching, I suddenly knew the world was slipping beyond human understanding or control. I’d still believed, though, that we could change it back.

Now, I’m not so sure.

I shake off the memories and look at the fortune cards. Astrid hands over the deck and I thumb through. Here I see Patterflam, stabbed by poor, doomed Jacks; there I see blue bubbles welling from the crumbling fireplace. Tulips edge the picket fence in one springtime scene, the flowers foreground to the trio of housemates as they laugh together on the front porch. Flipping it over, I see policemen blockading Mascer Lane.

I linger over an image of a water serpent—some kind of alchemized aquatic life. I’ve seen video of these too. Sahara claimed she had created them: my wife and countless others were suitably impressed.

“Roche whisked us off to jail,” Astrid says. “He dug Lee’s body out of the ruins of the house and learned Mark had never shot him…that the Chief had never been shot.”

“They tried to get answers out of Patience,” I remember. “But she wasn’t talking. Protecting you?”

“She is kinder than I deserve,” Astrid says. “I was so overwhelmed by the vitagua, I could barely work out what was happening. I couldn’t get things straight—what happened when. I was so sad….”

“Grieving over Jacks,” I say. “And Sahara’s betrayal must have been like a death too. The person you thought you knew was gone….”

“In her place was a hole, something raw,” she murmurs.

“Like having a tooth pulled without anesthetic. Bloody, painful, and there’s a gap—”

“Exit wound.” She peers at me through windblown curls. “I didn’t know you knew that, Will.”

It is a relief, I find, that she hasn’t seen into every corner of my soul.

Wind snaps my shirtsleeves like sails, raising plumes in the gritty sand at my feet. I should prod Astrid—I still have questions—but I can’t bear the thought of digging at her. Earlier she said I’m not sentimental. Roche once claimed he hired me because I’m a heartless bastard. I want to prove—to anyone—that it isn’t true.

“Unsentimental and heartless aren’t the same.” Astrid answers my unspoken thought. Turning over the next card, I see…myself.

I am wearing the clothes I have on now, sipping tea and wearing an expression I’ve never seen in the mirror. My listening face, I suppose—but there is something in it, something wistful, affectionate. The portrait shows emotions I don’t remember feeling, but I glance up and see them again, doubled, reflected in Astrid’s pupils.

It’s a shock, a view of myself I never wanted, and when I snap my eyes down they find the painted image again. I release the card into the wind, send it sailing over the white sand dunes.

“What about Sahara and you?” I ask.

“Ah, Sahara,” she says. “Without the mermaid, she’s had to seduce her followers with flashy stunts. Taking credit for creating the alchemized forests, bribing her favorite Primas with chantments. Luckily she knew where we’d sent all the things I made. But—”

“But she needs more magical objects.”

“Yes. Which is why she needs me.”

“But you’re going to hide?” The sound of starlings shrieking and buzzing, behind us, is louder.

“That wouldn’t be responsible, would it? I’ve learned my lesson, Will.” White grit swirls around the toes of Astrid’s shoes. “Do you like the unreal? I remember you saying so…soon? Have you said it already?”

“Astrid…”

“Would you want to stay?”

Fear and desire pull me in two directions. “Roche’ll have my ass for letting you escape….”

“Like you could’ve stopped me, tough guy.”

“There’s my children.”

“Don’t decide right away,” she says. “You have the ring, you’re safe. Think it over.”

“Why should I?”

She smiles. “Will, the world will be a better place after this flood has broken. Cleaner air, lower birthrate, less poverty. Your kids have a future—a good one.”

The thought of retrieving my children from their kidnapper mother…“The unreal has day care, right?”

“Um. Not exactly.”

“Medical benefits?”

“Ma knows first aid.” The dimple appears on her cheek.

“Retirement package?”

“When you get old I’ll give you the rocking chair my grandfather made. Set it up on a porch somewhere.”

“This would be the rocker that Ev fell out of?”

“Well, I’ll chant it. Or you can wear a helmet.”

I’m grinning. Unbelievable. “What do you want with me, Astrid?”

“For starters, I need an apprentice.” She returns my smile. “I know I’ve made it sound real appealing.”

All I can manage in response is a nervous cough.

“Think it over,” Astrid says. “It’s time we moved on to the pyrotechnics. Ready?”

“No.”

My belly lurches and suddenly we are back in the real.

We are beside a small lake fringed by fir trees. The wind is gone and I place us immediately…I drive past this spot every morning on my way to work. We’re perhaps five miles from the secured compound.

Starlings crowd together on every branch of every tree, on the ground around us, shrieking. The sound is so loud, my ears hurt.

Sahara Knax is here.

She steps out of the trees, expression haughty as she  looks us over and dismisses me. Her iridescent wings are tinted with brown spots. Her coat drags on the ground.

Mark Clumber follows, his salamander face helpless and afraid, his magic glasses clutched in one slimy hand.

“So you came out,” Sahara says, addressing Astrid. “Afraid I’d break into the unreal?”

“You’re not that powerful, Sahara.”

“Right. You’re the anointed one. I’m just some thief wielding powers I can’t understand.”

“That’s the gist.” Astrid regards her calmly. “You should agree to let me drain you.”

“It’s cute how you think you’re still in charge.” Sahara flicks out a strand of pearls. I don’t feel anything, but Astrid is thrown backwards. She comes down hard on her butt with a splash in the shallow lake. Her nose is bleeding.

“You’re going to come with me,” Sahara says. “Whatever you did to Patience? You’ll do it for my Primas. You’re going to make chantments and keep your mouth shut. Do it, if you like, because you figure I’ll snap out of it one day.”

“I know better, Sahara.”

“Then do it to keep people from getting hurt.” She waves vaguely at Mark, at me.

“Sahara?”

“Yeah?”

“I was always in charge.” Astrid climbs to her feet. Clutched in her fist is a clump of mud, gray silt, and dangling green algae that writhes in her fingers, clearly contaminated.

“Whatever power you think you had, you threw it away.” Sahara produces a diaper pin from her jacket, brandishing it like a weapon. Astrid’s clothes knot together, constricting at her wrists, her waist, her throat.

Astrid barely has time to choke before I’ve moved between the two of them. My clothes quiver. Then there’s a gust from my ring. The fabric goes limp and I feel the fatigue setting in.

“Remember Will?” Astrid says. “Will doesn’t like traitors.”

“Don’t care much for violence, either,” I say.

“News flash, then—it’s Astrid who’s your murderer. You think I killed that asshole Lee Glade, don’t you? She let you think that?”

“I know she killed him.”

“He’ll tell anyone who asks too,” Astrid says. Our eyes meet and for some reason it’s funny—we laugh.

Sahara leaps skyward, wings displacing gusts of air as she rises off the ground. She aims at Astrid with the diaper pin from over my head.

Then Astrid raises her hands…and Sahara freezes in midair.

She lets out a surprised sound, a buzzing, distressed birdcall. Her fingers splay; she drops the safety pin. It falls end over end, bouncing as it hits the ground. I retrieve it carefully.

Astrid doesn’t move as Sahara’s hands turn bright blue. “What are—?”

“I’m holding the vitagua inside you,” Astrid says. “As long as it’s in there, I can manipulate your body. Don’t you remember? You might as well be a puppet. Should I make you pick your nose?”

“You won’t hurt me,” Sahara snarls, thrashing.

Instead of answering, Astrid looks at Mark. He bites into his lip, and she draws the vitagua out of him, pooling the liquid above us, out of reach. Mark’s features humanize enough for him to put the glasses on. Ignoring Sahara as she scissor-kicks the air, Astrid chants the glasses into Mark, pressing the frames and lenses into his face. They vanish like a stick sinking into mud, and the red spots on his skin fade.

“Your turn,” Astrid says to Sahara. Opening her muck-filled hand, she displays a bottle cap and a fishing lure. Litter scavenged from the bottom of the lake, no doubt, things she picked up when she landed.

She chants them both, face flushing with vitality, and tosses the lure at Sahara. It twirls through the air, dragging one sharp fishhook across the palm of Sahara’s bright blue hand. The skin breaks. Vitagua spurts out in a geyser, rising to join the sphere of fluid extracted from Mark.

Sahara shrieks again, voice still inhuman, like a starling’s call. The birds around us flutter. Their clamor lessens as Sahara’s wings shrink, as her features become more human. She struggles against her magical puppet-strings, with increasing success: as the vitagua drains from her body, Astrid has less to hold on to.

Sahara sinks from her position in midair, falling to the forest floor, hands stretched up toward the liquid magic bled from her body. As her feet touch down I take her arms. She struggles, but her strength is no match for mine.

This
is the woman we’ve been so afraid of?

A last few drops of vitagua well up out of her cut hand, and then the scratch begins to bleed red. The only blue left is in the edges of the torn skin.

“Residue,” I murmur.

Caught in my arms, Sahara Knax bursts into tears.

“Get the chantments off her,” Astrid orders, tossing the chanted bottle cap on her palm.

I ease the long coat off Sahara. Its pockets are heavy with chantments, and I pass them to a dazed and wary Mark Clumber. The two of us pat her down, looking for other items. Chains and baubles dangle from her throat, her wrists and ankles. We pull off rings and earrings, stripping her of all the jewelry as she flaps and fights.

“She harmless now?” Mark rasps when we’re done. I glance up, startled—I’ve never heard him speak.

“Don’t I wish.” Astrid sets the newly chanted bottle cap against Sahara’s chest, between her collarbones. Sahara tries to lunge away, but I hold her.

“What does that one do?” I ask.

“You’ll see.” A drop of vitagua falls from the pool still floating above us, landing on the spot where the chantment meets Sahara’s skin.

Astrid presses on the cap with a fingertip and the metal disappears into Sahara’s flesh, vanishing without leaving a mark. “Magic calls to magic,” she says. “The chantment will draw the residue out of your body and into itself.”

“It won’t change anything.” Sahara heaves with all her strength, and I lose my grip. She stumbles a half step…and then her knee buckles.

“The bottle cap keeps her from running,” Astrid explains as her childhood friend pitches into the dirt.

Sahara screams in all-too-human frustration, and the gathered starlings fly away.

“It’s for the best, Princess,” Astrid tells her. “You’re going back to Roche, Will?”

Am I? I imagine packing it all in, becoming a chanter. Living in the bizarre city I saw in the unreal. It’s a surprisingly tempting fantasy…but it’s preposterous. I can’t do anything until I’ve located Carson and Ellie. And I’m not ready to let go of the real. If it is slipping away, that only makes it more precious. “I’m going back.”

“Take Sahara with you.”

“Are you serious?”

“Roche wants her, right?”

I am flabbergasted. “But—”

“Remember the point, Will,” she says gently. “I can’t waste energy on her.”

“Just as Roche shouldn’t have,” I say, feeling as though I’ve only just caught on. “You were the one he needed to contain.”

“He spent all those weeks searching for her—”

“While you spent them recovering from your grief.”

“I needed time.” She lays a finger on Sahara’s cheek. Testing her resolve?

“You can’t walk away from me,” Sahara says, a charming half smile lighting her face. “Come on, I’m drained, you’ve won. What damage can I do now?”

“Cut my throat in the night? Eat at my peace of mind?”

“I could atone or some maudlin thing. Astrid, you can’t leave me here with them. Not me.”

“I want you to get better, Sahara,” Astrid replies quietly. “I want you to be uncontaminated, to live a—”

“You
love
me,” she insists fiercely.

“I always will,” Astrid says. “But—”

“Don’t say it.”

“We’ll never be friends again.”

Sahara shakes her head, turning on the charm, wheedling. When Astrid shakes her head, eyes full of sympathy, she goes red with rage.