Dragon's Met
Part Eleven
by peregrin anna
c. 2001


(Disclaimers and notes may be found on the introductory page .)





Chapter  71

I feel a shadow passing over me that could stay forever more.
Like a wave I'm breaking far at sea, there's no-one to hear the roar...
What if I could cross a hundred borders--
There's no going home.
          ~ Stephen Knightley


"Gary, where did you go?"

The next time he woke, Marissa's voice, really Marissa's voice, no accent, just concern, echoed in his head, the end of a dream that he couldn't remember.  He'd been trying to find her, but he couldn't reach her, and--

"Where would we go?"  

Gary's eyes popped open, but fog had crept in; it clung to his clothes and skin, shrouding the world, muffling the ocean sounds and the voices that were somewhere...somewhere behind him, back in the cave, he finally decided.  The way sounds bounced off the rocks, it was hard to tell.  He had fallen asleep sitting against the wall, and was slumped down, too stiff, for the moment, to move.

"There is nowhere to go, nowhere at all.  Where would I ever fit in?" Morgelyn continued.

"It is not a matter of fitting in."  Even though he couldn't see Fergus, Gary could tell his jaw was clenched tight in frustration.  "Do you think I fit in?  Why should we worry about that, with a whole world to see?"

"It would not be seemly for us to travel together--"

"Morgelyn, if you stay here--"

"--and what good is seeing the world if there is no home to which we can return?  We would be like--like fish in the ocean, always circling, never stopping anywhere."  Her voice was weary, Gary thought; she hadn't had enough sleep.  Then again, all the sleep in the world wouldn't make this decision easy.  "I appreciate your offer, Fergus, and I know you mean it, but this is my home.  I have to find a way to make this work."

Gary could swear he heard Fergus's patience snap in the split-second of silence that followed.  "I did not save your life so that you could turn around and offer it back to those ingrates as some kind of misguided sacrifice!"

"I did not ask you to save it!"

"Are you saying you would rather be back there in that dungeon?"

"Of course not, I--"  Morgelyn gulped, and Gary shivered.  He should stop this.  But then, after a short pause, she asked, "Oh, why do we always end up arguing?  Please, Fergus, try to understand--they need me."

"What they want is someone to blame.  I will not let that be you."

"It is not as if you know what will happen if I go back."

"I am fairly certain that I do."

"And I am more than fairly certain of what will happen if I leave."  There was a desperate catch in her voice.  "Father Ezekiel may be in danger, and the others...they will die, Fergus.  Too many of them.  Again."

"You were ever the most stubborn woman in creation, save your grandmother, and now I believe you are worse."

"Do not bring my grandmother into this!"

Gary shifted uncomfortably on the stone.  Maybe he wasn't supposed to be hearing this argument.  Then again, they weren't making an effort to keep their voices down.

"And what would she say about all this?" Fergus pressed.  "Have you thought of that?"

"I have thought of little else.  I wish she was here; I wish--I wish I knew what to wish for."
 
Fergus sighed.  "Amalia would be appalled.  She would never want you to stay if it meant you would be hurt."

"No--no, we stayed here all through the months of the sickness.  She stayed even though she knew it could kill her."

"It is killing still.  It has them so scared that they are willing to kill you.  If Amalia had known--"

"She would want me to fulfill my duty to these people.  I promised her I would stand with them when they needed me."

"You can stand by no one if you are dead!"

There was no answer, and Gary could hear gulls squawking out over the water.

Fergus's next words were exasperated, demanding an answer that he knew he wasn't going to get.  "I told you once, I will not stay and bear witness to this."

"I will go back alone if I have to, but I am not leaving Gwenyllan.  Fergus--Fergus!"  Morgelyn's voice rose, but there was no response.  Gary peeked through his lashes and saw her shadowy form  come around the corner, through the fog, alone.

"He will return," she said, and her voice was so soft and small that Gary opened his mouth to reassure her, to tell her that he was just being Chuck-like, or, rather, Fergus-like--but maybe she hadn't realized he was awake.  She might be embarrassed to be caught talking to herself.  He closed his mouth, watched her back as she stared out at the blank wall of fog.  

"Gary?  Do you think he will come back?"

He should have known she'd be able to tell that he was awake.  Stretching his legs, lifting his arms over his head and wincing as the punches he'd taken kept doing their work, he started to answer, but his voice was so rough and gravelly that what came out was unintelligible.  A wish for coffee was pushed away as he got to his feet and joined her by the mouth of the cave.  Though the sea continued its everlasting roar, it was completely hidden by the fog, out there somewhere, a few yards or a hundred away.  Morgelyn sat on the edge of the rock floor of their cave, her legs drawn up and her arms wrapped protectively around her knees, only her bandaged hand standing out from the tight knot she'd made of herself.

"Yeah," Gary managed after clearing his throat and coughing, which elicited a sharp glance from Morgelyn.  "I'm sure he'll be back.  How ya doin'?"

"I know not."  Morgelyn gazed into the fog.  "I know naught."

Feeling as creaky and decrepit as a haunted house door, Gary eased himself down to sit next to her.  He let his legs hang off the edge of the rock, gripping the ends with his hands and peering down, only to discover that he couldn't see his feet.  

"I wish that I could see the future," she murmured softly.  "Then I would know what to do.  But it is as foggy as this morning."

"Well, we, uh--"  Gary stared down into the soft grey.  "We know what the book said yesterday.  About us, about you--Fergus just doesn't want to see you hurt any more."

She uncurled her legs.  "That is not what I meant.  I meant the future, the whole future, all of--all of mine, ours.  I do not know how to make this choice.  I want to see the world, like my grandmother did, but not--not like this.  Running away from this feels wrong.  Fergus refuses to see that.  Leaving now would be like--like flinging myself off this ledge.  I could fall a few feet and land in the sand, no worse for the wear, or I could fall too far, land on the rocks, and break, just like my mother."

Gary fought the urge to grab her arms and pull her back from the ledge.  He knew she wasn't about to jump, but just the thought scared him.  When she didn't move, he finally managed, "The same thing is true if you go back, you know."

She nodded.  "There is nothing left to cling to, nothing solid.  Like the tide remakes the sand, it is a new world, and I am not sure that it has a place for me."

"That's very poetic."  Rubbing his face, Gary added, "But true."  He pushed the wish for coffee back more firmly than he had the first time, and searched instead for some bit of wisdom he could give her through his befuddled state.  He hadn't had enough sleep to have this conversation, or to heal, but then, he wasn't sure he ever would.  Somewhere out beyond the fog, the sun was rising; the air around them was lightening, the fog gradually turning more white than grey.

"Fergus said that going back is dangerous and stupid."

"Maybe it's dangerous and brave."  Gary forced a smile, but it wouldn't stick.  "Look, Morgelyn, I know you feel responsible, but after what happened, I wouldn't blame you if you didn't go back.  Nobody would."  Father Ezekiel would probably blame Gary if she did go back, he thought ruefully.

"I would.  My--"

"I don't think even your grandmother would."  He paused, remembering the conversation they'd had down on the beach, a few days, a few lifetimes, ago.  "You told me that she left her home and wouldn't even talk about it.  So I think she'd understand if you left now."

There was raw confusion in Morgelyn's voice.  "Perhaps she regretted it.  Perhaps that is why she made me promise to stay and help."

"You can only do so much.  If they won't take your help, then maybe it's time to go."  It sounded like a betrayal, knowing how strongly she felt.  But Gary had to say it, he had to try, because that's what he was here to do--to get Morgelyn out of this.

Wasn't it?

"Would your city ever turn on you?"

Startled, he bent his head and tried to read her face.  

"You are such a good person, Gary, but--well, I just wondered if you could possibly understand what this is like.  I thought they trusted me, but more than that, I trusted them.  That they would believe me capable of such things...I do not understand how they could."

Gary worked his jaw, wondering if he should bring this up.  "Once..."  He shivered as if the June fog had turned to January snow.  It had been almost two years ago, but whenever he thought about Marley, everything still felt fresh, not once upon a time at all.

Morgelyn swiveled and fixed him with a curious stare.  "Once?" she prompted.  

"Once they did.  Once everyone thought--almost everyone thought--that I had killed a man, and that I was going to kill another..."  Gary ended up telling her the whole story, as much of it as she would understand and some things she wouldn't.  He gave up trying to couch everything in medieval terms when he got to the night he'd found Hawks, when he'd spent the whole night on the El, riding from station to station hoping no one would find him.  Hiding in plain sight.  Running and hiding and trying to figure out, through his shock and desperation, the right thing to do.  

The paper hadn't changed until it was all over.  He'd had a clue about the worst possible consequence, but nothing other than his own moral compass to help him make his decision.  

"Did it ever cross your mind to leave the city, so that they would not find you?" Morgelyn asked.

Gary nodded.  "But they were watching every way out.  It wasn't possible."

"No way at all, in such a large city?"

"I guess I could have found some way, but--"

"But you did not."  Her stare was direct now, and full of meaning.  Gary was glad that Fergus wasn't there.  He'd have a fit if he knew.  Gary wasn't even sure he should be telling her this, giving her ammunition.  

Still, he swallowed hard and said, "If I had left, no one would have known that Marley was trying to kill the president; no one would have stopped him.  I couldn't have spent the rest of my life with that on my conscience."

"But that man nearly killed you.  What did your paper say would happen before you went to him?"

Gary didn't know what to tell her.  It had all been so complicated, and he'd never told anyone, not even Chuck and Marissa, what the paper had said about him, not beyond the accusations of things that he would never have done, that they would never have believed.  He'd kept the rest from them because they would have believed it all too readily, and stopped him from going to the Randolph building.  And if they had, Marley would have won, and somehow Gary would have been blamed; he probably wouldn't have lived long enough to protest his innocence in a trial.  

More than that, he hadn't been able to stand the way his friends had looked at him to begin with, their fear and concern and helplessness.  Chuck's admission that he had almost believed Marley's frame-up was a lot easier to deal with than the panicked looks he'd directed Gary's way, and Marissa had walked around looking as if her heart was cracking deeper with every minute.  How could he have added to that?  How could he have told them?

"Gary?"

He sighed.  "It told me that if I went to that building, I was going to die."

Her eyes went wide with something more than sympathy, with real understanding.  "When did it change?"

When Marley had keeled over at Gary's feet, felled by Crumb's bullet; when Gary had turned from the disbelieving stares of the cops and glanced at the paper on the floor and the headline had finally faded away; when he'd been able to breathe again..."When it was all over."  

Morgelyn gave her head a rueful shake.  "It is not the most helpful oracle, is it?"

"No.  But that's not the point.  It was telling me what I had to change, not what would happen minute-by-minute.  I--I had to go on faith and--and make my own choice."

"And your friends did not argue with you?"

"I didn't tell them what the paper said."

She glanced back over her shoulder in the direction Fergus had gone.  "That was wise."  There was a pause; she looked down at her hands.  "Fergus does not understand."

"Fergus is your friend.  He doesn't want to see you hurt.  Neither do I, but--Morgelyn, if you think you need to go back, I understand.  Just don't try to go off alone, all right?"

"You heard that?"

He nodded.  "That was the other thing, about what happened to me.  Not everyone thought I had killed Hawks.  Marissa and Chuck, they didn't stop believing in me. They trusted me all along, and they made Crumb believe it.  I made the choice to be there in the end, but without my friends, the paper would have been right."

"Your choice and your friends," Morgelyn repeated.  "Thank you, Gary."  There was a faint smile on her face when she added, "A dragon slayer like St. George might not have understood this.  And he might not have become my friend.  But you do understand, and you are my friend, and if your friends believed in you then, I am sure they will believe in you now."

"Believe what?"  Fergus's voice behind them made them both jump--they caught at each other to keep from falling off the ledge.  Morgelyn clambered to her feet, offering Gary her good hand as he struggled to his own.

"We are going back, Fergus," she told him with more command in her voice than Gary had heard throughout all the long hours.  "You may do as you wish, but we are going to help the people of Gwenyllan."

His jaw worked for a moment.  He turned blazing eyes on Gary.  "You are responsible for this.  I do not know how, but you--"

"Fergus..." Morgelyn warned.

"'Tis lunacy!"  He strode right up to Gary and slammed Morgelyn's book into his chest.  Propelled backward by the force of Fergus's temper, Gary blinked at the familiar face and tried to get his breath back.  "I went back to find this, to show you--this--this thing still says you both will die.  It has not changed."

Gary looked down at his chest, at the curled fists and the awkward little book.  Fergus glared up at him, his goatee trembling with...with something more than anger.  He was scared.  So it wouldn't do any good to get mad right back at him--and Gary didn't have the energy anyway.  

"What did you do to her?"  Fergus looked back at Morgelyn.  His hands pulled away from Gary's chest; the book slid down and Gary caught it.

"Nothing.  He did nothing."  Morgelyn held out her hand.  "Gary, give me the book."

He held it out to her over Fergus's shoulder.  Still petulant, Fergus had both hands on his hips as Morgelyn read the last few pages.  Then she shut her eyes, drew the book in tight and wrapped both arms over it.  "You were right, Gary," she said, eyes still closed.  "It will not change until we...until we cause it to change."

"He told you--but you--you already did that once," Fergus sputtered, looking from one to the other as if he didn't know which was causing him more frustration.  "You changed it and now it is worse than yesterday morning.  If you do not do something to save yourselves, you will both die."

Gary rubbed the back of his neck while he tried to think of what to say.  He knew Fergus's fears were well-grounded.  But he also knew, in his gut, in his heart, that Morgelyn was right.  "In that case," he finally told Fergus, "I guess we could use your help this time."  

Fergus snorted.  "You need more help than I can give."

"We will not die if we work together to stop it from happening."  Morgelyn used the same tone of voice she had with Tamsyn, with Robert.  "Fergus, I know you are afraid, and so am I--but I trust you.  I know you will not abandon us."

They locked eyes in a silent battle of wills; finally, Fergus's expression softened, though the scowl didn't entirely disappear.  "When this is over," he grumbled, "I intend to go somewhere that is much less populated."

"But you will take Cecily with you," Morgelyn said with a twinkle.  She pushed past Fergus to where the few things they had with them were piled.

He gaped at her like a beach-stranded fish.  "Of course I--what do you mean?"

Morgelyn shot him a knowing smile.  "'Tis meant to be," she said simply.  "If everything works out, I have a feeling you will stay here for a long time."

As they went about putting their odds and ends together, Gary bit back his own response--that he hoped his work here was almost over.  That he wouldn't be staying for a long time.  Not just because it would have been rude, but because he was no longer sure that it was completely true.  Because, in a way, if he had to be lost in time, he supposed that there weren't two other people he'd rather be with.





Chapter 72

Nothing belonging to God can burn,
any more than God himself.
I shall remain.
Do you tell me
that God's children
can't stand fire?
          ~ Carl Sandburg


"There is a storm out at sea."  Morgelyn bookended her pronouncement with delicate sniffs at the air.  Other than that, Gary had no idea how she could tell.  They were too deep in the forest to see much of the sky.  Still, she pulled her cloak close around her as she led the way along the river.

"There will be one here as well, if you keep on with this."  Fergus hurried to keep up with her despite the withering glare she shot him.  "'Tis not too late to turn around."

"No."
 
Gary kept his mouth shut.  He'd been listening to the two of them go at it since early that morning--in the cave, at Morgelyn's cottage, and now here in the forest, headed back to Gwenyllan in the mid-morning mist that was all that was left of the fog.  Maybe bickering was their way of dealing with nerves--certainly it seemed to be Fergus's--but it was making Gary's anxiety even worse. 

"If we take the fork up ahead we can be across the moor and halfway to Plymouth before anyone is the wiser."  Pointing down the path to where Gary could just make out the split, Fergus bounced nervously on his toes--this, despite being weighed down by his pack and by a large earthenware jug which hung from his back in a hastily-fashioned rope harness. 

"I said no the first time, and the second, and all the times thereafter--or have you lost your sense of hearing?"  Tired and tense, Morgelyn's voice lacked the cutting edge that she seemed to save for sparring with Fergus.  Her heart clearly wasn't in it, but Fergus kept up, as he had since before sunrise.

"It seems to me that you have taken leave of all sense.  Look, right here," he persisted.  "We can--Morgelyn!"

Morgelyn didn't respond.  She strode purposefully ahead of Fergus, taking the left branch of the trail without so much as glancing at the other fork.  Fergus threw an irate scowl back at Gary.  "This is all your doing."

Gary sighed, but decided that this time, he'd be better off just staying out of the argument.  And Fergus was right--he'd as much as told her to go back.  Ahead of him, Fergus took one last, longing look at the right fork, heaved a sigh of his own, and then followed Morgelyn.  Though the peddler didn't know what had been said during his absence, he had nonetheless decided that it was Gary's fault, this decision to return to Gwenyllan and take their chances among the villagers. 

Fergus was right, of course.  Anything that would happen, that was about to happen, would be a direct result of that conversation about Marley and the fact that Gary hadn't run away from him.  But he'd had to tell her.  She'd asked, and he couldn't lie. 

Not even if it meant saving her life? chided a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Chuck's, like Fergus's; despite the accent, it was becoming more and more difficult to tell them apart.  Gary tramped after the pair, resisting the urge to stop them and ask Morgelyn to get out the book.  She'd tucked that, along with a few extra plants picked fresh from her garden, into her own bag, the one swinging from her shoulder.  But he didn't need to see it; it would just show the same thing it had before they'd started off from the cottage, the same thing that had been there since they'd--well, since they'd been in the dungeon.  The story wouldn't change, if it was going to change at all, until they got to the village and did what Morgelyn thought they had to do.

Which apparently involved getting the residents of Gwenyllan--the ones who were sick, anyway--to drink whatever it was she'd brewed up and given to Fergus to carry.  

Gary tried to ignore his own burden and the way it tingled against his skin, even through the leather pouch that he'd tied onto his belt.  He hadn't wanted to carry the Dragon's Eye--he'd even suggested leaving it with his own clothes and newspaper at Morgelyn's cottage--but what had started out as a hesitant suggestion on her part had blossomed into stubborn insistence. 

He had stood guard outside her cottage while she and Fergus had worked on the potion--medicine, he told himself--to cure the illness.  Poised just inside the stone wall, where the gate hung like a broken bird's wing from one leather hinge, he'd started at the cry of a hawk, but had seen no sign of the more malevolent predators they all feared.  Not even Cat had shown up to keep an eye on him.  Keeping watch had been easier than looking at the cottage, with its splintered door and ruined roof.  Even with his back to it, the sharp smell of charred thatch and the trampled plants at his feet had been painful reminders of all that had happened the day before.  There had been something withdrawn about it all, as if Morgelyn's garden and home had pulled into themselves to hide or to heal.  But up and down the path, in all the other directions Gary could see, it was the forest that was alive in the foggy grey morning.  It seemed to be watching him while it went crazy-mad green in what passed for summer around here.  He could hear the river rushing over the fall, and, if he listened closely enough, the throbbing heartbeat of the ocean.  Calling him home, he had thought, but not yet.

"Gary?"  He'd jumped at the quiet voice behind him; flashed an embarrassed grin at Morgelyn as he'd turned around.  She'd changed back into the dark green dress, re-bandaged her hand, and re-braided her hair.  Despite the bruises on her face, she had looked more composed than he'd seen her since...since two nights ago, really. 

Tendrils of steam, pungent and spicy, curled out from the pewter mug she offered.  "Drink this.  It will help the aches and pains," she assured him.  "Your head..."

"Feels like someone's been using it for shot-putt practice," Gary admitted.  Not bothering to explain, he took the mug, sipped, and found it wasn't too bad--a little bitter, but at least it was warm. 

"Willow bark--Grandmother always said it was the best thing for such pains."  Morgelyn looked back at the cottage with a sigh.  "I am glad she is not here to see this."

"It's mostly just the roof," Gary said.  He nodded over the rim of his cup at where the thatch had burned away.  "That can be redone, can't it?"

"Mmm."  Her noncommittal response told him that she was talking about more than just the burned roof, the trampled garden, the stones knocked loose from the low wall.  She inhaled deeply and smiled at him.  "It is good to breathe free air." 

"Yeah."  Gary wondered just how long it would last, this freedom.  Who knew what would be waiting for them...well, he did, he'd seen the end of the book, and the news wasn't good.  The hawk circled around and called out again.

"Someone has disturbed her nest," Morgelyn murmured, squinting into the glare of low grey clouds to spot the brown form overhead.  Gary frowned, wondering how she could tell, but didn't ask.  They both watched the bird trace wide circles over the back edge of the forest and the moor beyond, toward Nessa's manor.  He was lost in contemplation, too tired to find words, when Morgelyn's voice startled him again.

"You should take it."  Blinking, Gary found himself staring at a tan leather pouch that had been dangling from her wrist, now held out in her open palm, and he recognized the shape of the Dragon's Eye.  "In case--"  Morgelyn swallowed hard, looked away for a moment.  "You have to be able to get home, Gary.  You have to." 

"But--"

"It is as you said last night.  It should be your choice when you go back.  I am glad you are staying to help, truly I am, but--if anything happens to us--you will have no choice without this.  Please."

Gary didn't move a muscle.  He'd already decided, more than once, that he wouldn't--couldn't--go back until it was all over.  One way or another.  "Maybe we should just leave it here and come back for it when we're--when we're done."

"We may not come back at all."  She was trying to say it matter-of-factly, but didn't quite succeed.  The sad resignation in her voice made him glad he had the fence to lean against, to hold him up.  What the hell were they walking into?

"I just meant--"  Gary swallowed hard.  He set the mug down and picked up a loose stone; tapped it against the top of the wall.  "If people see it, they might think--"

"They may see it for what it is," Morgelyn finished for him, her voice gaining insistence.  "Or for what they think it is.  But it does not matter if it will help you."
 
"They might," he said, finally meeting her steadier gaze, "use it against you."

Her eyes got very bright, but all she said was, "Hide it under your shirt; tie this pouch to your belt and no one will notice."  With a quick nod that sealed the deal, she exchanged the Dragon's Eye for his now-empty mug and turned back to the cottage.  "We shall leave as soon as the sun crests the hill."

How she would know with all those clouds around, he hadn't been sure, but it had only seemed like a couple of minutes before they had all set off toward the village.  And Gary did, of course, have the Dragon's Eye with him.  It pressed against his side, but he tried to ignore it.  He figured that if he could forget it was there, maybe no one else would realize it either.

Now, where the path curved away from the river, Morgelyn stopped at a bush and picked sprays of tiny yellow flowers.  "This is rue."  She tucked one sprig into Gary's rolled-up sleeve.  "For protection," she added when he raised an eyebrow.  She wove a bit of it into her own braid and handed the rest to Fergus, who snorted but twirled it in his fingers as they walked. 

Oh, yeah, this is much better, Gary thought.  Now I know we're gonna be just fine. 

"Now that we are well protected," Fergus said with more than a little sarcasm, most of which, Gary knew, was directed at him, "what is our plan?"

They slowed their brisk pace when the bridge came into view.  "First," Morgelyn said, "first, we must make certain that Tolan has not suffered a relapse.  And find Robert, and the others who might be ill.  I hope Anna can tell me who they are.  If she cannot, perhaps Father Ezekiel will."

"Oh, yes."  Fergus wagged his head ruefully.  "He will be overjoyed to see you."

"He will understand."  Morgelyn fixed what they could make out of the village with a determined stare.  "I will make him understand."

"Before or after you are tied to the stake?  Perhaps when they light the fire at your feet, he will see why this had to be--"

"Cut it out!"  Gary couldn't stand to hear this, even though he understood what Fergus was trying to do.  Part of him sympathized, but it was too late to go back now.  "You're not going to change anybody's mind here."

Fergus waved a hand in the direction of the quiet village.  "What makes either of you think that you can?"

"We don't have to change their minds," Gary said.  "Just their futures." 

Morgelyn nodded.  "Gary has a great deal of practice with that."

Maybe, but he wasn't sure he deserved that much confidence.

"This--"  Fergus shrugged, shifting the jar on his back.  "--is not enough.  You saw Robert last night.  He is still sick.  But even if you could cure them, it would not be enough."

"It is all that matters."

"No, not all.  Morgelyn, you matter."  But there wasn't any audience for Fergus's argument this time.  Morgelyn was already at the bridge.  Gary, too, started past him, determined not to let Morgelyn out of his sight, but Fergus grabbed his arm.  "Wait.  Here, take this."  He pulled a knife from the pack at his side and held it out to Gary. 

"What would I want with that?"

"In case--"  Fergus tilted his head toward the village, raising an eyebrow. 

"I'm not going to--I won't."  Gary didn't want to find out if he could hurt someone just to protect himself, or even his friends.  He couldn't imagine himself sticking a blade into another person.  "I told you before, I'm not really a dragon slayer."

"We have certainly seen much evidence of that."  Fergus slipped the knife into the belt of his tunic with a scowling twist of his mouth.

Ignoring the barb, Gary hurried off after Morgelyn. 

"Right then," Fergus said.  "To our doom!"

The little town seemed shrouded in grey, even with the sun burning off the fog.  Droopy, browning remains of flower garlands littered the open ground.  One little wish boat, its mast broken, lay on its side on the bridge railing.  The whole place looked as if it had a hangover. 

Maybe once everyone woke up, they'd come back to their senses.

It sounded good in Gary's head.  He even believed it, until he saw the pile of logs between the well and the church, stark against the pale grey sky.  It had to have been at least as high as his shoulders.  Fergus glowered, even darker than before.  "This is your reward for having faith in them, Morgelyn."

"No."  But she stood staring at the wood, mesmerized.  "No..."

"It's not how the story ends," Gary said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.  "We'll talk to them, and we'll change it.  Once they see the truth, they'll change their minds."

"And what if they do not?"  All sarcasm fled, and Fergus's voice was urgent with fear.  He gripped Morgelyn's stiff arm.  "Leave your brew with Anna, and we can be gone before anyone knows."

Morgelyn sighed and turned from the scene.  Shrugging Fergus away, she started down the lane that led to Anna's cottage.  "No.  Gary is right." 

"That would certainly be a first." 

"We can do this," Gary said with a whole lot more conviction than he felt. 

They'd only gone a few yards when high-pitched cries made them turn.  A group of small children darted out from behind one of the houses.  They dragged swags of half-dead flowers behind them; some stopped to arrange the garlands on the pile of logs, calling happily to each other.  The sight made Gary queasy.

"They are only playing."  Morgelyn's smile missed her eyes. 

The three strode toward Anna's house, Gary and Fergus protectively flanking Morgelyn.  They were only a few yards away from the lifeless-looking hovel when a louder commotion than the children's erupted behind them, across the common.  Half a dozen men stumbled out of the tavern, barking harsh commands, tossing something from man to man--something that flashed ginger fur in the strengthening sunlight and yowled at the top of its lungs.

Gary went cold with recognition and fear.  "Cat?"

He took off toward the well at a dead sprint.  The kids were in the way, chasing after each other and squealing.  Swerving to avoid them, Gary tripped over a stone and went down on his knees, sending a fresh wave of pain jarring through his worn-out limbs.  Back up as soon as he could find breath, he hurtled forward, driven by the fright he thought he heard in Cat's cries, something he would have sworn the animal had never felt until now.  His attention was focused not on his surroundings, not on the sound of footsteps somewhere behind him, but only on the scene at the well. 

The men were drunk, stumbling into each other and cursing loudly.  Two of the them bent over a third, who held Cat, and they were all doing something with their hands.  One jumped back, sucking on his fingers.  Gary now saw Cat clearly, as Simon Elders held it above his head, over the black hole.  There was a rope tied to Cat's back leg, and at the end of the rope another man had secured a stone. 

Somewhere behind him, Fergus was shouting at him to stop, but Gary couldn't. 

He was only a few yards away when Simon dropped Cat into the well.





Chapter 73

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
          ~ Alfred Tennyson


Crumb shifted the donut bag from one hand to the other and scowled at the darkening sky.  It was supposed to rain, maybe even storm, before long, and for once it looked like the forecasters had got it right.  He pressed the door buzzer again.  It was after eight; there was no reason why they shouldn't be up.

No reason but sheer emotional exhaustion, he reminded himself, and almost turned back for his car.  Maybe he shouldn't have come--but at that moment Marissa's voice, groggy with sleep, sounded from the tiny speaker next to the door.  "Who's there?"

"The Avon lady."  The joke was half-hearted, hardly the best thing he could have come up with.  But it was enough to get the door opened a few seconds later.

Marissa stood before him, wearing the same clothes as the day before, hair rumpled, guide dog at her heels.  Crumb shook his head.  "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up.  I thought--"

"It's okay."  Marissa smoothed her hair as she stepped aside to let him in, and his peripheral vision caught a tangled quilt on the sofa.  "I fell asleep down here last night and I--I guess I needed it more than I thought.  I shouldn't have..."  A look of pure distress crossed her face. 

"Yeah, you should've," Crumb said firmly. 

"But we--we don't know--"  Marissa faltered, swallowing back something, trying to compose her features, but it was clear to Crumb that she was just as messed-up inside as out.  It was getting harder and harder for her to keep that wave of emotion--and information--from him, and he was getting tired of watching her try to hide it.  What was he supposed to do, if they wouldn't tell him what was going on?

"I brought breakfast," he finally said, letting her off the hook again.  Spike wagged his tail, cocking his head brightly at Crumb. 

"Donuts?" Marissa asked with a perplexed sniff in his direction.

"Why not?  They're jelly-filled."

"Why not," she mumbled, and pushed some button on the answering machine in the foyer, shoulders drooping when a computerized voice declared that there were no new messages.  Crumb wondered whose call she'd been expecting, but he didn't ask.

"I don't know if Chuck--"  Marissa was already a few feet into the living room when she realized he wasn't following her.  She stopped and turned around, Spike mimicking her movements.  "Crumb?  Are you--is there--?"

"What?"  He wasn't sure what it was she wanted to ask, but she didn't seem to have the right words.  That was saying something, for this lady.  At this point he was so damned confused about things that he didn't dare try to guess what was going through her head.

"Nothing, I guess."  They both paused, each waiting for the other to speak.  Marissa finally headed back into the living room, and this time Crumb followed her.  That crystal ball they'd fished out of the lake was sitting on her coffee table.  She picked it up, running her fingers over the glassy surface as if she was waiting for something to pop up out of it.  "Chuck?" she called, then lowered her voice to ask, "Is he down here?"

It didn't take long to make a scan of the living room or the kitchen Crumb could see beyond.  "Nope.  Fishman!" he bellowed up the stairs.  "Up and at 'em!"

Marissa cringed, but didn't protest.  She nodded toward the kitchen and set the crystal ball back down, self-consciously brushing at her clothes.  "Do you--do you want some coffee?"

"Lemme make it," he offered.  "You can go and--you know, freshen up, or..."  

"Sure.  The coffee's--"

"I'll find it."  Crumb watched her cross the room back to the foyer and the stairs before he headed for the kitchen.  When, exactly, had he become close enough to these people to speak with them in shorthand? 

He set down the bag of donuts next to the coffee maker, and tried to figure out what the hell he was doing there.  He felt too big, too ungainly, even though Marissa's townhouse wasn't much smaller than his own home.  It was just a whole lot more--well, female--than the places where he was used to hanging out.  Everything was clean and precise, and he was half-afraid he'd mess up the careful order. 

Overhead he could make out footsteps and muffled voices, then running water.  Might as well get to it.  The coffee and filters were in the cupboard directly over the coffee maker--right where they should have been. 

He should have been at home, rattling around the empty house.  Or at the bar, getting it ready for the wake.  Or at the station, bugging Nick and anyone else who'd listen for more information.  Not that there was any to give, but that was what he did, what they all did, when the case involved a friend.  But instead he'd stopped at Dunkin' Donuts and, out of habit, bought too many jelly-filleds to eat alone.  So he'd brought them here.  He knew he wasn't going to be able to settle down at home, he knew there wouldn't be any news at the station, and he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the last place he wanted to be was at McGinty's with Bernie and Lois Hobson.  Last night, he told himself as he deposited scoop after scoop of grinds into the basket of the coffee maker, had been bad enough.

Usually he encouraged closure for families in situations like this, and he would have approved of the Hobson's plans if they'd been for anyone else.  He'd never run into a missing person's case like this--disappeared into the lake, deserted a good friend with no explanation--and found a happy ending.  Not once in thirty years.  There was no logical reason to expect one now.  And Lois and Bernie, Lois in particular, just couldn't live with not knowing.  Crumb understood all too well--he'd specialized in closing out cases that no one else could, and he had seen the agony of waiting for news, how it never got easier, not after days, weeks, or even years.  He'd seen it torture people, and he knew that Lois and Bernie were better off having made up their minds now, so that they could live the rest of their lives in some kind of peace. 

But in spite of his experience, or maybe because of it, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was different.  It was like he'd let slip to Fishman yesterday--something about all this wasn't right.  They should have found Hobson's body by now.  Then there was Marissa, the way she just kept acting stranger and stranger.  Gracie Best had told him what he'd suspected, but hadn't quite articulated to himself--that Marissa was the most likely, out of all of them, to be right about this.  She'd been right about Fishman being on the Rosario's boat, and this one beat that for spooky by at least a factor of ten.

Crumb had first gone through all this in his head the night before, sitting alone at the bar after everyone else had left, trying to hold onto his sanity with the help of the solitude, the dark, and a Scotch.  But something in the bar had felt wrong, too.  And then Lois had interrupted his reverie when she came down from the loft looking for something to help her sleep.  He'd offered to make her a nightcap, and managed to screw it all up. 

"I never wanted to do this, Marion," she'd confessed softly.  "Parents shouldn't have to bury their children.  And there's not even anything--"  She gulped the brandy as soon as he handed it over. 

He nodded silently so she wouldn't have to finish.  Not even anything to bury.  And then, his tongue loosened by exhaustion as much as by the Glenlivet, he muttered what he'd been thinking all evening.  "I just get the feeling there's something we're not seeing."

Lois sat straight up on the stool, eyes burning holes right into his cheeks.  "My son.  We're not seeing my son, Marion.  You found him once--can't you find him this time?"

That left him feeling about two inches tall, and he'd had no answer for her.  As it turned out, he hadn't needed one.

"Lo--"  Bernie had wandered back into the bar, unnoticed by either of them.  "C'mon, hon, let's go to bed.  You know I didn't mean--I'm sorry, Lois."  The raw emotion on his face was more, Crumb was sure, than the man had ever let anyone see. 

"Then you shouldn't have said it."  Lois didn't sound angry or defiant or...or much of anything, Crumb thought.  Whatever they'd fought about, it hadn't been the real problem.

"You're right," Bernie told her gently.  "You're always right."  He put an arm around his wife, pried the drink out of her fingers, and helped her off the stool.  They shuffled toward the office like they were twenty years older all of a sudden--and inside, Crumb knew, they were. 

"I want this to end, Bernie.  One way or another, it has to end."

"It will, Lo.  Two days, remember?  Two more days, and we can--"  Hobson stared back at Crumb for a minute, swallowing hard, then told his wife, "We can say goodbye."

Crumb offered a grimace of sympathy, then watched them move away.  He left most of his drink on the counter.  There wasn't enough of the stuff in the world to make this right, or to make him...to make him believe that this *was* right, he realized with a start.  He'd had to tell parents that this was the right thing more than once, but this time, this time he couldn't be part of it.  He couldn't--

He couldn't believe it.

The thought had been enough to drive him out of the bar and home to a night of restless sleep, running in his dreams from the criminals he'd always caught before.  And as much as he didn't want to admit it, that thought was the reason he was standing in Marissa Clark's kitchen--making sludgy coffee, getting powdered sugar all over his fingers as he arranged the donuts on a ceramic plate, and vowing to deck Fishman at the first sign of a cop/donut joke. 

He was looking for something he wasn't able to see.  Why the hell he thought--no, felt--like it was here, now, he had no idea.  Maybe it was what Gracie Best had said yesterday afternoon, eyebrows lifted over the rim of her teacup: "I'm sure, Marion, that you had to have faith in something in order to do the job you did all those years.  Whatever you called it, whatever you placed your faith in--it can't be all that different from what those young people need to believe right now.  Besides," she'd added, in a voice that dared him to disagree with her, "they might be right."

But doing his job had been different than this.  Back then his faith, what little he'd had, had been mostly in his wife.  When Evelyn had died, he'd thought, for a long time, that faith had left with her.  He'd become cynical and hard as nails because it was easier...and then he'd met Hobson, and he'd only recently started to realize how much the little jaunts into Ripley's territory that had resulted from that meeting had changed him.

He was trying to imagine what Evelyn would say about all this when he heard a light tread on the stairs.  Crumb pushed himself into action.  Hastily filling the coffee pot with water, he poured about half of it into the reservoir before he realized he'd already turned the damned thing on; hot coffee was dripping out onto the counter at a good clip.  Swearing under his breath, Crumb managed to set it up right the second time.  He was wiping up the last of the spill when Marissa entered.

"Is everything okay?" she asked, and for a moment he wondered if she could smell his confusion. 

"Sure.  I just wanted the coffee to be, you know, fresh, when you got down here."  It wouldn't have convinced a wet-behind-the-ears Assistant DA's intern, but Marissa let it pass with a lift of her eyebrow. 

"Chuck will be down in a little bit.  He said something about not wanting raw eggs for breakfast this time."

"Huh."  Crumb watched Marissa move confidently to the cupboard by the back door and refill Spike's food dish.  She'd pulled her hair back into a clip of some kind and changed into a long knit skirt and a sweater, but she hadn't put on any makeup, and the overall look didn't give the fastidious impression that Marissa usually achieved.  Her face was drawn in tense lines and sharp angles.  They were all unraveling, he thought, bit by bit.  "That's a nice, uh, skirt."

"Thanks."  Her mouth twisted into a wry smile, Marissa sniffed at the coffee pot, then went to the refrigerator for milk.  "How much did you put in there?"

"A few scoops.  Big ones." 

"Better get the sugar out, too, then.  Do you want anything else?  Eggs, or--"

"Nah."

They were tap dancing, neither one of them saying what was on their minds.  As she passed the phone, Marissa reached toward the receiver, then pulled her hand back with a firm little shake of her head.  Crumb was dying to know what was going on, but he couldn't ask what he really wanted to know--yesterday, that stuff with the long-hairs, they'd seemed so excited, but now--was that just a dried-up lead?  He didn't know how to ask. 

But somehow, Marissa must have known.  She stopped halfway between the refrigerator and the table, fingers clenched around the milk bottle, and swallowed hard before she spoke.  "Not--it's not that I'm not glad that you came, but Crumb--why are you really here?" 

Caught, he gaped at her.  This was it.  Once he told her he wanted in on this, there would be no going back.

Her forehead crinkled into worried furrows.  "Are you--is there some kind of news?"

It dawned on him then--she'd been reading his hesitation all wrong.  "No."  Quick as he could, Crumb stepped closer and touched her elbow.  The milk jug was shaking.  "No, there's not--I didn't--look, sit down, okay?"  He pulled out a chair with one hand, led her to it with the other.  "Nothing happened that I know about."

Marissa let out a long, slow breath and leaned into his hand for a moment before she sat, still gripping the milk for dear life.  "I didn't think there would be--but you've been acting so--so different..."

Crumb sighed.  Here he went again, screwing things up.  The coffee was finished, so he poured a cupful and brought it to the table.  "Trade ya," he offered, taking the milk out of her stiff fingers and scooting the mug closer to the elbow she had propped on the table.  She reached for it but didn't drink, just wrapped her hand around it.  He didn't understand her relief--what did she think might have happened? 

The first lashes of rain hit the windows as he poured his own coffee and joined Marissa at the table, watching her cautiously add milk to the thick, dark stuff he'd always needed to get himself going in the morning.  She was waiting, he realized, and he wasn't sure for what, but since it might be him, he decided it was time to confess.

"Look, to tell the truth, I--uh--I came to ask you the same thing," he finally admitted, but more to the coffee than to Marissa.  Whether she could see him or not, it was hard to look at her while he said it.  "Whether you'd heard anything, any--any news about Hobson.  From, you know, those people yesterday, or--or anything--anywhere else."  There, he'd said it.  Gracie would have been proud.

But it still sounded pretty damned bizarre.

Her mouth opened and shut twice.  "No, there's really nothing, except..."

Crumb leaned closer.  "Except?"

"It's strange, but--"

"It's Hobson.  What isn't strange about him?" he asked with a snort, and for a moment everything was normal, and the heaviness in the air lifted. 

Marissa chewed on her lip, and then seemed to come to a decision.  "How much attention were you paying yesterday to what Josh and Betsy were saying?"

Crumb drew in a deep breath, knowing that whatever he was going to hear now would be exactly the opposite of what he wanted to deal with--but he'd brought it on himself, hadn't he?  "Enough."

"Well, they found--in that book Kelyn brought us--"

The phone rang, and they both jumped.





Chapter 74
 
That was good.  Very, very stupid of you, but good.
         ~ Neil Gaiman


Maybe it was a couple years' practice with last-minute saves, but more likely it was instinct born of desperation: Gary's forward dive was unplanned and perfectly timed. 

He was in mid-air as Cat's tail flashed into the darkness of the well, and though he missed that, he caught a handful of the rope they'd tied to its leg.  The rough twine ripped into his palms and he went head first over the lip of the well, the rocks thumping into his gut.  Aided by the stone, Cat, and momentum, gravity carried him down, and would have won the split-second tug of war if it had had only Gary to contend with.  His sole thought was to hold onto the rope burning his hands--to hold onto Cat no matter what the cost.

Luckily, someone else held onto him.

Hands--he realized through the nauseating rush down, and then back up and over--there were hands on his vest and belt.  They pulled him out of the well, down to the ground.  The world spun, black and red at the edges of packed earth, brown rocks, and feline fur.  Gary anchored himself by gathering Cat into his arms with the tangle of rope, and blinked into Fergus's pale face, staring down at him in abject astonishment.  Breathe, Gary thought, recalling the last time Fergus had pulled him out of watery trouble; don't forget to breathe.  It hurt.  Morgelyn knelt next to him, her eyes wide, still clutching the back of his vest.  Gary pulled the rope off Cat's leg with a shaking hand.

"That must be quite a cat," Fergus growled through clenched teeth.  "I hope it is worth our lives."

"Wha--"  Gasping for air, for meaning, because he didn't fully understand what he'd done, Gary could feel the incredulous, hostile stares coming from the other side of the well, even though he couldn't see them.  This lull was only going to last another second or two, and he knew it--knew he'd exposed them all--but what else could he have done?  As usual, Cat wasn't giving any answers; it snuggled up against his chest as though it had always been his bosom companion and not his tormentor.  Morgelyn tugged at his vest, and he struggled awkwardly to his feet.  Together, the three of them faced the malevolent little group across the well.

There was just a handful of men, Gary saw; not as many as he'd thought before.  Five or six, all dirty and all clearly drunk.  The one who'd tied the stone onto the rope had a hand up on Simon's shoulder to hold himself steady.  Even though he stood a few yards away, Gary could smell the alcohol on their breath.  These guys had probably been drinking all night, if not longer.  They had reason to, after what they'd done, Gary thought darkly.

On a good day, and with Fergus's help, he probably would have been able to take them.  But this wasn't a good day, and a fight wasn't going to fix this situation at all. 

"Why?" Gary asked, as if they were reasonable people who'd give him a logical answer.  "Why did you try to--it's only a cat."  It was one of the biggest lies he'd ever told, but these men wouldn't, couldn't know that.

The short, filthy man next to Simon gave a bark of a laugh.  "Kill the witch's familiar, and we break her curse."  He spat in Gary's general direction.  "Never thought it would bring her back from the dead."

His red hair tousled and standing on end, Simon glared at them through narrowed eyes.  "She never was dead.  But we all thought you'd run away, Morgelyn.  It seems you are not as smart as I thought."

"Flew out of the cellar on the smoke, is what I heard."  A man with a shaggy brown beard tottered into one of his companions.  He seemed amused, adding with a malicious chuckle, "Looks like she took her friend there along for the ride."

"Perhaps she came back for revenge."  A tall man, whose grimy hair might once have been blonde, remained a step behind the others.  He actually did look frightened.

Whether she was scared or angry, Gary couldn't tell, but Morgelyn's breath came harder, and her knuckles pressed into his back.  He wondered what he'd do if any of these guys actually made a move--his arms full of Cat and his vest clutched so tightly from behind that it was impairing his ability to breathe.  Fergus whispered something, but Gary couldn't tell what he was saying.

"We should have tossed you on the Midsummer's bonfire when we had the chance," Simon went on, relentless, moving closer by fractions of an inch.  "All of you."

"...ackaway, backaway, back away..."  Fergus's whisper grew more pronounced and urgent, but Gary couldn't move.  There was nowhere to back away to but the woodpile.

Simon took another step closer.  "What say we do it right this time?  We will start with the cat."  Grunts of assent, crooked grins, and one loud belch were the responses on his side.

"No, now, look--"  Gary held out one hand.  "You don't want to--"

"Papa!"  The cry came from the gaggle of children huddled off to the side.  One little girl came running on bare feet.  "Why were you playing with Morgelyn's new kitty?"

"Tamsyn?"  Morgelyn's grip tightened until Gary thought she'd rip his vest.  "No, she should not see this--"

"Get back, girl!" Simon snapped, and Tamsyn skidded to a halt a few yards from Gary.  The child was barely recognizable as the same one who'd run to them two days ago for protection from her brother's teasing.  Her hair was a nest of tangles, her clothes were dirty and quite possibly backwards, and her face was streaked with dirt.  

"Morgelyn, they said that you are--"  Tamsyn's tiny voice carried through the suddenly still air as she pointed at the other children.  "--that you made everybody sick.  My mama is sick."

Morgelyn finally let go of Gary's vest; she took a step closer to the little girl, but stopped when Fergus hissed, "No!"

"It is all right, Fergus.  Tamsyn, I did not make your mama sick."  She turned a pleading look to the men who glowered back at her.  "All of you know I would not do that.  I am no witch and I would never, ever try to--this is my home.  The fact that I am here, that we came back, should be proof enough--"

Simon cut her off with a sneer.  "I think that the fact that you stand here, instead locked up where you belong, with this worthless peddler and a stranger who jumped into a well to save a cat, is proof enough of your witchcraft."  He was closer than ever, nearly half way around the well, his companions a few steps behind.  "Father Malcolm said we had to wait for a confession before we burned you, but I am convinced we will be doing God's work if we go ahead right now.  What do you say, lads?"

"No, this is not right--"  Morgelyn's desperate gaze skittered across the half-dozen men and back to Gary, who felt sick even though his stomach was nearly empty.  He had seen--had felt--this kind of hatred before: in a camp full of white supremacists; in Daniel Sullivan's tavern; during a blackout in his own neighborhood; and, just a few days ago, in a sedate suburban cul-de-sac.  But never, never with this kind of intensity.  What had he done, what had he ever said, that had helped before--or could possibly help now?  He groped for answers and drew a terrifying blank, but he tried anyway.

"You've got it all wrong.  She's not the one who's making the trouble here."  Gary took a step forward, putting himself as squarely as he could between the men and his friends, but the little girl slipped in front of him.  

"Papa?" squeaked Tamsyn, who, with her child's one-track mind, was still focused on Cat.  "If the kitty does not make people sick, then why can I not play with it?" 

Right on cue, Cat squirmed until Gary loosened his grip, then jumped at Morgelyn.  Gasping in surprise, she caught it; it curled into her arms, arching its back and hissing in Simon's direction.  Tamsyn skipped over and stood next to Morgelyn, head tilted up so she could watch Cat.  "I want to play with the kitty!"

Her father didn't even appear to hear Tamsyn; he ignored her while he lumbered around the well, supporting himself with one hand on the loose rocks at its rim.  "It is your familiar, is it not?  Did that man of Lady Nessa's find out all yer secrets?"  His eyes were fixed on Morgelyn.  "I wager he has ways of making witches squirm--maybe even scream."

Fergus had stepped up to Gary's side, and he was reaching for the knife at his belt.  "You will show respect, Simon, or I will--"

"Hold on a minute!"  Gary spread his hands wide.  This was starting to feel like High Noon, a few centuries too early.  "You don't know what you're talking about.  She's not a witch!" 

"And wha'are you, stranger?" slurred the short man who was trying, and utterly failing, to look as threatening as Simon.  "Do no' think we've forgotten wha--what happened yesserday."

Gary wondered if this bunch had enough brain cells left between them to remember anything.  "I was just trying to stop you from making a mistake--same as I'm doing now."

"Maybe he should be the first to burn," suggested the tall, scared-looking one.

"I told you, we're startin' with the cat," Simon snarled.

"No, papa!  Do not hurt the nice kitty."  Tamsyn turned to Morgelyn, half-petulant, half-hopeful innocence, her arms outstretched.  Cat extended a paw in her direction.  "Let me play with it."

"That is not an animal to play with, child.  It is an evil thing." 

Confusion playing across her face, Tamsyn put two fingers in her mouth and looked from her father to Morgelyn.

"It's my cat," Gary said quietly, "and it's just a cat."  He took a step back, shifting sideways so that he could keep an eye on everyone at once, his friends and his--well, not-friends.  Fergus held the knife with one hand and Morgelyn's sleeve with the other; he was pulling her back, slow step by slow step.  Morgelyn clutched Cat to her as if it were a shield, and Tamsyn followed. 

"You look funny," she told Morgelyn, and tilted her head.  "What happened to your face?"

"Tamsyn," Morgelyn choked, blinking hard, "go back home, please--"  The look she shot Gary was terrified.  They should all go back home, he thought, and the Dragon's Eye tingled against his skin.

"Look, this is getting us nowhere," he said, turning back toward the group of men.  Were they standing straighter now that they'd seen fear in their prey, or was that just Gary's imagination?  Something had changed.  The glints in their eyes were stronger; they looked, collectively, as though they were on the verge of sobering up.  "We can talk about this like civilized adults, if you'd just open your eyes and see what's really going on here."  He could almost feel the air harden as their jaws stiffened, but he kept going, talking directly to Simon, the leader for some unfathomable reason.  "Morgelyn hasn't done anything.  You've been led to believe it because someone else wants you to."

"He's right."  Fergus's eyes were wide.  When he shot a questioning glance Gary's way, Gary managed a barely-perceptible nod, and Fergus stepped forward.  "It is Lady Nessa, trying to--"

A sharp pain exploded through Gary's left shoulder, and a rock tumbled to the ground near his feet.  He spun back around, gripping the wounded spot.  It didn't hurt as much as, say, a club wielded at close range, but on top of all his other injuries, it stung like hell.  All of a sudden, all the crazy guys had rocks.  When had they found the presence of mind to arm themselves?

Arm themselves against him, against his friends, this was pure insanity--

"No, stop--"  Morgelyn's cry was cut off when Fergus pulled her down to the ground, out of the way of another stony missile.  Cat jumped free, its screeches carrying over the burst of noise that came next--yelling and the thudding of rocks in the ground and oh hell, Gary thought, oh shit whatthehellwashesupposedtodonow--

Move, damn it, get out of the way...

Trying to scramble to his friends, he tripped just under another stone; it sailed past him and caught Tamsyn squarely on the temple.  Her scream was barely audible with the rocks pelting down around them like rain.

"The church!" Fergus yelled, hauling Morgelyn up and heading for the path behind them.  "Hurry--Gary, run!"

But Tamsyn sat within arm's reach of Gary, clutching her head and wailing like a banshee.  Blood trickled out between her fingers and he couldn't just leave her there.  Morgelyn pulled away from Fergus, trying to get back to her, oblivious to the rocks that bounced off her back as she ducked her way forward.  Their aim was getting better; Gary knew he had to move... 

The men were gathering more rocks from the ground in some weird ballet of hatred, still so drunk that they couldn't do anything gracefully.  One lost his balance, toppled into another.  They cursed and fell together, distracting the others for a few precious seconds. 

"Gary!"  Fergus motioned frantically toward the church, and Cat streaked by him on its way up the path. 

Gary scooped Tamsyn up in his arms and pushed Morgelyn ahead of him, and then the rocks stormed down around them again.  They stumbled toward the top of the hill where Fergus was struggling with the church door.  The ground kept slipping out from under Gary's feet.  He tried to shield Tamsyn, pushing her face into his shoulder; tried to keep himself between Morgelyn and the rain of rocks that stung his back; tried to ignore the ground-shaking footsteps behind him and the angry, ugly, incoherent shouts and curses.  Simon Elders was the loudest of all, screaming, "The witch is taking my child!"

But Gary didn't dare put Tamsyn down.  She'd be trampled or stoned, and she was clinging to him like an octopus.  He'd never pry her off before one of them got clonked on the head.

Their aim worsened as the men followed their prey.  Angry or not, they were still too drunk to manage both the steep hill and the rock throwing.  A few, Gary saw with a last glance over his shoulder, had skidded back down the hill and were hefting logs from the wood pile.  He swore under his breath and followed Fergus's frantic urging through the church door, stumbling in behind Morgelyn while Tamsyn, sobbing, clutched his neck and kicked the Dragon's Eye into his side.  He fell to his knees, barely able to draw breath.  Fergus slammed the double doors shut, lifted a thick plank and dropped it into the iron holders to bar the way, and leaned his forehead against the wood. 

Gary caught Fergus's eye.  "Sanctuary?" he asked between pants. 

Fergus nodded.  "For how long, I am not sure.  They have murder in their hearts." 

His statement was punctuated by a series of shuddering blows against the door.  Fergus jumped away, but the doors held.  "Even in here, I fear they will kill us."

Tamsyn shook her head against Gary's neck.  "'Tis only my papa."  Poor kid.  How much of this did she understand?

Fergus dropped his pack to the ground and pulled the harness holding the jug off his shoulders.  "All for this," he muttered, but even though he gave the heavy container a disgusted look, he set it down carefully on the packed-earth floor.  The door continued to shudder under random blows while Fergus paced the length of the little church.  There were no pews, Gary noticed in surprise, just a bunch of pillars to hold up the stone walls and the tiled roof.  "You should have left her out there.  Now Simon thinks we have abducted his child."

"She would have been killed if he had left her."  Morgelyn's voice was strident; she jumped every time the doors took a blow.  Kneeling at Gary's side, she smoothed the little girl's unruly hair.  "Tamsyn, sweetling, let me see."

Tamsyn lifted her head, and her death grip eased.  Gary pried her arms off his neck and set her down among the rushes and flower petals that covered the floor. 

"Papa is only grumpy because Mama's--owie!"  Tamsyn yelped when Morgelyn pulled strands of hair from the congealing blood on her forehead.  Her lower lip trembled.  "Who threw those rocks?  Was it James and his friends?  Papa will scold them."

"Your papa--" Fergus began angrily.

"Stop."  Morgelyn's command was calm, but the look she shot her friend was enough to quiet him.  She turned back to Tamsyn, pulling the pouch from her belt and sifting through it.  Fergus pressed his lips into a thin, hard line and didn't say any more.

Gary stood on wobbly legs and ventured a look around the church, hoping for another way out, one that wouldn't lead them past the mob.  There was no other door.  At the front of the room, a table with two thick candles and a crucifix marked the altar.  One window was stained glass, a picture of Noah and the ark.  The only man-made color Gary had seen in the architecture of the village was startling in its brightness.  The rest of the windows were merely slits in the stone walls to let in some light and air.  And maybe other things--like rocky missiles, arrows, and flaming torches, Gary thought with a shudder.  The pounding on the door stopped for a few minutes, then picked up again, louder and more insistent. 

"I told you this was a bad idea."  Fergus was beyond peeved; he was scared.  "You had to go rescue the cat, didn't you?" 

Gary exchanged a glance with Cat, who sat smack in the middle of the floor, perfectly at home.  "Yeah, I did," he said quietly.

"So much for your plans.  Look where your affection for that--that creature has landed us."

"Better the church--"  Morgelyn pulled a couple of chewed-up leaves out of her mouth.  "--than the wood pile.  Hold still, child."  Squirming in Morgelyn's lap, Tamsyn pouted.  Morgelyn applied the makeshift poultice, a bright green plaster, to the cut on the little girl's forehead. 

Fergus paced off again, muttering about the relative worth of cats and children.  "Uh, is that--?" Gary began tentatively.

Morgelyn spat out little bits of leaves.  "What?"

"Sanitary?" he tried, but she shook her head, a blank expression on her face.

"It works," she told him simply.  And it did; the bleeding had already stopped.  Satisfied, Morgelyn wrapped an arm around Tamsyn's shoulders.  "Stop scolding Gary," she continued with a pointed glance at Fergus.  "He stood between us and all those rocks..."  Her voice faltered and she hugged Tamsyn closer. 

"And they are still out there, just beyond the door," Fergus snapped, echoing Gary's thoughts.  "One step outside and they will try to tear us apart with their bare hands.  What do we do now?" 

"We've got to get out of here," Gary muttered.  "Nobody'll listen to us, at least those guys won't."  What about everyone else, though?  What if they could convince the rest of the town?  But first they'd have to get past the men out there, and Fergus was right; he'd blown their chance to sneak in and rally support.  But he couldn't have let Cat--his head was pounding in time to the blows to the door.  Gary shut his eyes and leaned against one of the stone pillars.

"Are you all right?"  Morgelyn approached him with a look of concern.  She held out her hand, as if she were about to put some kind of plaster on him, too.  Tamsyn scurried along behind her, clutching at her skirt.  "Gary?"

"Yeah, I just--I'm tired," he said, and that truth came from somewhere in the vicinity of his toes.  He *was* tired, tired of the way people treated each other around here.  In Chicago.  Everywhere, damn it.  And tired of the way it led to disaster.

"When does it end?" Morgelyn asked in a whisper.

"Now.  Here."  He sighed.  "Somehow."





Chapter 75

What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land...
Do, but awake a hope to live
That had gone
With the dragons?
        ~ W. B. Yeats


"Josh--Josh, slow down."  Marissa held out a hand, as if he could see her signal to stop and let her catch up.  She leaned back against the small, stand-alone cupboard that held the telephone.  "For heaven's sake, take a breath."

"I can't--I hardly know how.  This so doesn't happen."

Preceded by a waft of overpriced after shave, Chuck walked into the kitchen and tapped her on the shoulder.  "What's up?" 

She shook her head, turning her hand up in a "you got me" gesture.  Josh Gardner had been babbling for several minutes now, and all she knew was that he didn't believe what he was telling her.  She had yet to figure out exactly what that was. 

"Start from the beginning,"  she tried, pulling, from a nearly-empty reserve, the same steady voice she used when Gary was freaking out about the paper.

"Okay, remember last night?  I called you and asked what you remembered?  Do you remember?"

She shook her head in confusion.  "Of course I remem--"

"I mean, do you remember what you said you remembered?"

When exactly had she followed the White Rabbit down its hole?  "Yes.  It was what your friend translated for us from the book--Kelyn's book--at McGinty's.  About a woman who was--"  Marissa gripped the countertop, and a nick in the edge cut into her palm.  "You said she was executed for witchcraft."

"Uh-huh.  And then?"

"And then you called late last night and said there was someone else."  Repeating it was horrible, but she had to get a grip.  Saying it wouldn't make it happen.  "You said that now there was a man with her.  He was--you said he was killed, too."

Behind her, she could hear Crumb asking Chuck something, quiet but insistent.  "I don't know," Chuck snapped, and silverware rattled on the table.

"Josh, what's happened, please?"

Josh's breath was shaky in her ear.  "Last night, everyone was kind of fuzzy about the whole thing.  But now--this morning, no one, not here, not at Oxford--nobody who's familiar with the story in that book remembers it the way it's always been.  Or that you're telling me we told you it's always been."  Bewildered and honest, he sounded like a little kid instead of a competent archaeologist.  Even though Marissa was confused too, and frightened at a level she couldn't let herself feel just yet, her heart went out to him. 

"It is what you told me.  I promise, I haven't forgotten."  It sounded like...it sounded so familiar.  How many times had she heard Gary say it? 

"It changed, Marissa; the story's not the same...we must have done something that changed it."

"Well, then you're just about the only one who hasn't," Josh was saying.  "Me, I'm not quite sure--I mean, talking to you now, I am, but I was starting to think that it didn't happen that way.  Even Betsy, who knows the story better than me--better than most people in the world--was trying to tell me a few minutes ago that it had always been this way, and not the first way she told us.  And then she got this confused look on her face and backed off.  Neither one of us trusts what we remember.  Every time I read it, I get more confused--what I remember gets farther away from what you're telling me it was--but I don't think you're wrong.  I just think you're closer to the source."

"The source?"

"Of whatever's changing this."

"You think history is changing?"  Crumb's coughing fit startled Marissa; she jumped away from the counter.  There was a thumping sound, and Chuck asked if Crumb was okay.

"Betsy thinks I'm nuts, but Occam's Razor, you know?  The simplest explanation is the best.  The story's changing because the events themselves are changing, even--even though they're in the past."

Marissa twisted the phone cord in her fingers, remembering Chuck's outburst the night before.  "But then why do we--some of us--know they haven't always been this way?"

"Maybe it's like--it's like a pebble in the pond.  The farther out the rings are, the less the effect, but we're pretty close to the center, and you and your friend, you were at ground zero."  Josh's voice rose as he warmed to his theory.  "The ripples are our record of something changing, but farther out, they're fainter, even though the pond has changed for them, too--just not in such an important way as it did right where the rock fell."

Now she had to choose her words carefully, because he was getting close to the truth she knew had happened last spring, when Gary had come back smelling of century-old smoke, and to the truth she suspected was happening right now.  "It's an interesting image, but what makes you think someone could go back and change the past?"

"Probably lack of sleep," he said with a snort.

"I got plenty of sleep, and I'm with you so far."  The two men at the table had fallen silent, and the tension in the room was thicker than jelly donut filling.

"Well, if you go with what the people who made that crystal ball, the Dragon's Eye, believed, it actually does make sense--just not the kind of sense that we're used to now.  Have you paid any attention to the shape of its base?"

"The knots," Marissa said, "the metal, it's in--strands--and they weave in and out to make the pattern."

"Right--and that means more than a nice, symmetrical kind of design.  It's supposed to signify eternity, because the Celts didn't see time as a straight line.  It was a circle that looped back on itself.  Memories and stories weren't just entertainment.  They were points of intersection, where the present touched the past in a very real way."

"I do understand that," Marissa told him, thinking of her grandmother's quilt. 

"It's not all that different from what some quantum physicists theorize about time.  I don't understand much of the math, but even Einstein thought time might be able to--to curve.  For the Celts, eternity was a knot, and it's always going somewhere new.  It doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes the threads intersect, and if someone was at that juncture," he finished in a relieved rush, "maybe he could shift to a different strand--end up in a different place, timewise." 

"And change what had happened," Marissa finished.  Did Josh realize that this was more than just a theory to her?  That it was real, that it was happening?  She couldn't tell, and she didn't dare ask and break the spell.  "Then how would he get back to the thread of his own time?"

Josh hesitated, then admitted, "I have no idea." 

"He'd have to find another intersection."  Another point of memory, a place or a space where...where they all met.  "Courage, faith, and clearest sight..." she murmured.

There was silence for a moment.  "I might get kicked out of the university for saying it, but--well, it makes perfect sense to me.  And one more thing--since I've gone this far--you should know that there are a lot of ancient cultures that connected water with magic.  The Celts had sacred wells and streams and they thought that stuff that we would call magic happened there.  I just thought--since your friend--well, I thought you should know."

On the counter, her fingers traced the knotwork pattern she'd memorized.  Intersections and skipping from strand to strand and coming home , Gary, somehow--

"Marissa?"

"I'm here."

"I'm going to put Betsy on now, and she'll tell you what the story says, okay?  But the other version--if you get a chance and you still can remember--"

"I'll write it down for you."

"I'm not sure I trust what's written down after last night."

"Don't worry," she told him.  "I'll remember."

There was a pause, a mumbled conversation on the other end of the line.  Though she couldn't hear the words, the general tone was not unlike the one that she and Chuck could generate on one of their more strained days.  She pulled the receiver away from her ear and took a deep breath, knowing that she had to steady herself before she heard this.  This was Gary, she told herself, and then, once again--but it hasn't happened yet.  It won't, he can stop it--we can get him home before--

--not before.  After.  After he'd changed it--or tried to--

She caught her breath.  The last piece of the pattern, the one she'd been missing all along, fell into place with a dizzying rush.  How could she have thought he'd simply been waiting all this time for a way to get home, like a tourist at a taxi stand?  Not Gary, who risked his life for strangers all the time; not Gary, who offered help even to those who'd hurt him.  If he knew what was going to happen to this woman, to this town, he'd stay--that's why he was there in the first place.

To change it.

Gary hadn't been waiting for help.  He was still there because he wanted to help. 

"Hello?"  Betsy's voice was faint with concern and confusion, and Marissa realized that she'd been trying to get her attention for a few moments already.

"I'm here," she managed.  But she could barely feel the ground beneath her shoes.

"Hi, Marissa."  The excited rush of the day before was gone, and now Betsy just sounded as tired and confused as the rest of them.  "Look, whatever Josh just told you, keep in mind that he slept in my office chair last night--for a grand total of twenty minutes.  Plus, he watched the entire Quantum Leap marathon last month, and I don't think he's been the same since." 

It didn't matter.  The logistics and mechanics of how didn't matter anymore.  What mattered was why, and how they could help Gary change it.  "It's okay," Marissa managed faintly, even though she knew it wasn't, it wasn't okay, not for Gary, not for those people over on that other strand of time, in that other place...

Save us, make haste to help me...

Focus, pay attention.  This could be important.

"...so I'm just going to read you what it says because Josh says you need to know.  But I don't--I don't trust it right now, you know?" Betsy added, almost as if she were talking to herself.  "Everything feels so...so fluid.  Okay, here goes..."

Betsy stopped to clear her throat a couple times while she read, but otherwise there were no interruptions.  

A few moments later, Marissa couldn't recall if she had thanked Betsy, or said good-bye, or said anything at all.  She was in the living room, clutching the Dragon's Eye close while the rest of the world spun around her.  Coffee and soap and Old Spice and sugary donuts and whatever designer after shave Chuck was wearing...

Dropping onto the couch, she forced herself to take deep, even breaths.  She had to get control, or she wouldn't be able to do anything.

Two sets of footsteps hurried after her, and it was Chuck who asked in a halting voice, "Marissa, what--what is it?  What did they say?"
There once was a free village on the banks of the River Efflam, near the great sea cliffs, where farmers and tradesmen lived in peace and prosperity.  In this village there lived a woman whose people came from another place, and left their mark upon her as sure as the old ones left their mark upon this land.  Some saw this mark as a curse, and yet in the time of the great trial, when the pestilence raged across the world, the villagers turned to her for her knowledge of herbs and cures.
Was the glass ball warming because of her hands, or because it was somehow coming to life again?  She traced a metal strand, and it hit her like a fast stop on the El. 

On the banks of the River Efflam, near the great sea cliffs...
Sacred wells and streams where magic happened...

The conviction came over her with absolute certainty; she knew it the way she knew that Gary was alive and trying to help the victims of that awful story, and she jumped back up. 

"We have to go to the lake."

"What, now?" Chuck squeaked.

"Now."  Nownownownow, her heart insisted.  Before it was over, before it was too late, before that hideous story was true, before Gary was--she started for the foyer, but Chuck grabbed her arm.  "We have to go now" she choked.

"What the hell did he tell you?"

"Josh and Betsy have the paper." 

Chuck let go so abruptly she almost fell.  "They what?"

Taking time to explain would nearly kill her, but if she didn't, she'd be all alone again. 
But once the pestilence had passed, like a shadow leaving its own dire and cruel mark upon the world, the people of her village were blinded by fear.  They came to see her as the cause of their troubles, rather than one who had fought with them...
"That book, that's what it is, it's Gary's paper; they didn't have newspapers back then but the story at the end of that book, that's why Gary's there, that's what he has to change.  And it says--"  Marissa swallowed against the lump in her throat.  "We have to go now, Chuck." 

Spinning on her heel and nearly losing her balance in the process, she started for the foyer, but Chuck was there in front of her somehow, blocking her way--his hand brushed her elbow, but he didn't try to grab her this time.

"Calm down, will ya?  This is nuts."

"It isn't nuts, Chuck."  What was crazy was...mob mentality, witch hunts...
Cursing her for a witch, they handed her over to a zealot friar, whose torments could not procure a false confession.  Though she escaped his clutches and returned to help the villagers, many of whom were now suffering from another illness, they mistook her intent in their anger and fear...
She clutched the Dragon's Eye in tighter, hoping Chuck would see, hoping he'd understand, but he didn't move.  "Get out of my way."

"Marissa--"  He drawled out the last syllable of her name, the way her older sister used to when she was forced to play little girl games while babysitting.

Marissa set her jaw.  She'd always won before, and she wasn't going to lose now, not when it mattered so much that it tore into her chest.  She sidestepped him.  "I need to get my coat."

"It's raining buckets out there!"

"Then I'll take an umbrella.  Spike, come."  She lifted the harness from its hook on the wall.  Somehow the moments it took to put it on the German Shepherd--one handed, because she refused to let go of the crystal ball--seemed to stretch into a near-eternity. 

"We will take an umbrella," Crumb corrected from somewhere in the living room.  "Left my keys in the kitchen, give me a sec."  He'd been silent through the entire scene, and heaven only knew what he must think of her after what he'd heard, but still he was ready to play the knight in armor--

--just like Gary.
And there was with her a man, a stranger whose speech was unfamiliar but whose intent was kind, and when he would not disavow himself of her, and rather tried to be her aide, him too they burned.
Any other time, the thought of Crumb as a gallant knight would have made Marissa smile, but now she had to fight back tears.  Her tiny entryway was crowded with Chuck, Spike, and herself, and it was getting hard to breathe. 
As they had died unshriven, and could not be buried in consecrated ground, the ashes that remained were scattered upon the ocean, so that their spirits could not disturb the villagers...
"At least tell us what they said, will ya?" 

"On the way.  I'll tell you on the way."  There were other coats hanging on top of her own.  Groping around, she finally found the smooth, tightly-woven fabric of her rain coat and worked it off the coat tree with shaking fingers.

"Do you hear that?" Chuck asked as thunder rolled overhead.  "I don't see why we can't do whatever it is right here." 

Marissa would have answered, but her coat, following rules of physics known only to outerwear in times of emotional difficulty, had somehow ended up tangled behind her, attached to the wrong arms. 

"Damn it--"

"Hold still."  Chuck had always had this ability, to fire off barbs and objections that made her want to haul off and smack him, while in the same moment his actions totally belied what he was saying.  Now he helped her struggle out of the coat and held it so she could put it on properly, all the while muttering, "Thing worked perfectly well last night.  All of a sudden you have to take it to Lake Michigan?"

"What worked last night?" asked Crumb, jingling his keys as he rejoined them.

"I'll explain on the way," Marissa repeated.

"Well, what if I don't want to go?"  Chuck kept right on protesting, even though she could hear him sliding into the coat he'd bought a couple days ago.  "What if Crumb and I decide we want to act remotely sane?"

"Then I'll take the Red Line to Clark and Division and catch the bus--"

"I gave up on sane the minute I started hanging out with the three of youse," Crumb grumbled.  He put a hand on Marissa's shoulder.  "Let's go."

They ducked out into the rain, Chuck holding an umbrella over their heads.  The wind pushed them to Crumb's car, and she climbed into the back seat with Spike.  The crystal ball would have fit into one of her oversized pockets, but she kept it in her hands instead.
This was done not according to the laws of God, but in ignorance and fear.  And that it was not God's will that they should do so, was shown when many of the villagers were taken ill and died.  Others gave over their land and freedom to the lady of the nearby manor, so that they might receive her protection, but before three summers had passed, the village was no more, and all those who had scorned their own healer and her talent with God's gifts lay in the ground.  Their village is already nearly forgotten, but for this tale which I have inscribed, so that others might not repeat the ungodly actions of the villagers of Gwenyllan.
"Hurry," she whispered, pressing her fingers into the metal strands, into the inscription that was the only hope she had left.  "Please hurry."





Chapter 76

Witch burning in the Fourteenth Century was
completely pointless--discuss.
          ~ J. K. Rowling


"I have it!"  Fergus stopped just short of the altar, spun around, and hurried back to the others.  "We can use the girl as a shield."  He gestured at Gary.  "You can go in front and hold her--show them my knife, and tell them that if they grant us safe passage, we will let her go!"

"No, Fergus, a thousand times no!"  Morgelyn pulled Tamsyn behind her and backed toward the nearest pillar.  Gary shook his head, unable to form a coherent response.  Even Chuck wouldn't have come up with anything this--this--

"It is wrong," insisted Morgelyn.

"It's insane," Gary added.

"It will work."  Fergus spread his arms wide and smiled, enamored with his brilliant plan.  "Simon Elders would not hurt his own child."

Gary wasn't so sure about that.  "The man had no problem throwing rocks in her direction a few minutes ago."

"Tamsyn," Morgelyn said in a strangled voice, "go see if you can find where the kitty went to, will you?"  The little girl scampered off obligingly, chasing Cat around stone pillars and up and down the length of the church.

Arms crossed over her chest, Morgelyn glared at Fergus.  "I will not put that child in more danger."

"There is no danger, not if she is our shield.  It is perfect!"

Gary had had enough.  He cut off another effusive explanation with a sharp swipe of his hand through the air.  "Look, Fergus, it just isn't gonna happen, so give it up."  In the stony silence that followed, the pounding on the door stopped, and the voices were raised enough for them to catch a few words.  Gary distinctly heard "witch", "trapped", and "burn".  Lips pursed, Morgelyn huddled into herself.

"Then what is your plan, Dragon Slayer?" Fergus snapped.

Tamsyn skidded to a halt and frowned up at Gary.  "Dragons?  Are you a knight?"

Shaking his head, wishing for once that he could answer in the affirmative, Gary sighed and glanced at the stained glass window, the only one big enough to offer escape.  "We could break it and get out that way."

"No!"  Morgelyn looked almost as horrified at his suggestion as she had at Fergus's.  "It is a treasure.  It has been a part of this village for three generations."

"So has your family, and now this village wants you dead.  I say we do it."  Fergus began scanning the floor.  "Tamsyn, be a good lass and find a rock."

But Tamsyn shook her head.  "I like the window."

Fist clenched at her side, Morgelyn looked ready to start swinging.  "Destroying God's house is not the way to ask for a miracle."

A miracle, Gary thought, was exactly what they needed, but when he looked for his usual source, there was no sign.  "Hey, where's Cat?"

He stomped in a circle around the church, trying to ignore the shouting outside as he peered behind pillars and into the darker corners.  Nothing.

Tamsyn held her arms out wide.  "Kitty's gone."

"Figures," Gary muttered.

They all jumped when the pounding resumed, more rapid and insistent.  "In God's name, open this door!"

The three adults stared at each other.  Gary gulped.  "That was--"

"Father Ezekiel."  Morgelyn was halfway to the door when Fergus caught her arm and spun her around.

"You cannot open that door."  It was half-plea, half-command.  "They will have you in a heartbeat."

"He will not let them harm me, and it is his church--"

"It is Father Malcolm's church as well.  This could be a trick; they could be forcing him to call us out because they know he is our friend."

"MacEwan!"  The gruff voice was so peeved that Gary wondered if Father Ezekiel could somehow have heard Fergus.  "Hobson, I know you are lurking in there!"

Twisting out of Fergus's grip, Morgelyn looked at the door, though she didn't go any closer.  "I trust him."

"And no one forces that man to do anything he doesn't want to do," said Gary.  "I trust him, too, but you--"  He put a hand on Morgelyn's shoulder and gently pushed her back a few steps.  "Fergus is right to be cautious.  I'll get the door, but you stay clear." 

Fergus was only too happy to help, pulling Morgelyn as far away from the door as he could.  "Be careful," she whispered, and Gary tried to ignore the way his heart stabbed at the familiar warning.  She held out her hand, and Tamsyn took it, all freckles and wide eyes staring back at Gary.

He lifted the heavy wooden plank that barred the door, and stumbled back with it still in hand when one thundering blow pushed the doors wide open.  Father Ezekiel stood before him, murderously angry.  Behind him were men--many more than just the half dozen who had met them at the well--and women, even a few children--a good portion of the village, Gary guessed.  But Simon and his friends were at the forefront, still carrying rocks and thick sticks.

"What in the name of all that is holy are you doing here?" the priest demanded.

Gary retreated toward his friends.  Robes billowing behind him, Father Ezekiel stalked across the threshold, and the men behind him followed.  At the pointed stare the priest directed toward the plank that had barred the door, Gary hastily set it down on the church floor.  It lay there like a barrier between them and the motley group now filing into the church.

"We had to come back, Father," Morgelyn pleaded softly.

His scowl softened just a fraction.  "What happened to that child?"  He pointed at Tamsyn, peeping from behind Morgelyn's skirt.

"They happened," Gary said coldly, nodding at the men behind Ezekiel. 

A sound, perhaps a growl, started deep in the priest's throat.  Ignoring Gary, he motioned for Tamsyn to come closer.  Morgelyn gave her a gentle shove forward.  Tamsyn looked from Simon to Father Ezekiel and hesitated, but when the priest squatted down and beckoned, she walked over to him.  Gary tried to read the crowd; the men in front were angry, but behind them most of the faces he could see looked plain old confused.

"Papa was playing with Morgelyn's kitty.  Then some bad men started throwing rocks."  Tamsyn touched her forehead and flinched dramatically.  "It was not a fun game, but the big man brought me here, away from the rocks, so Morgelyn could help me."

"That was a trick!  The witch put my child in harm's way--she made that rock hit her!"

Standing up, Father Ezekiel turned his scowl on Simon Elders.  "Don't be a fool, man."

"But 'tis true."  Simon raised his voice so all could hear.  "She would put all our children in danger with her trickery.  What is that on Tamsyn's head?"

"It is only yarrow--" Morgelyn began.

"More witchery.  Child, wait outside," he told Tamsyn gruffly.

"But Papa--"

"Go have your mother tend to your head."

Tamsyn turned back to Gary.  "Can the kitty--"  Her father grabbed her arm and yanked her around. 

"I have spoken, child.  Would you disobey me?"

"No, Papa."  Tamsyn's eyes filled with tears, and Simon--it was only a split-second, but Gary thought Simon's fierce scowl softened.  He released her arm. 

"Go home,"  he said with a wave at the crowded doorway.

Tamsyn cast one more look at Morgelyn before she left, scampering between the villagers.  Then Father Ezekiel looked around at the men closest to him and said solemnly, "This is the house of God, and as such, it is not a place for violence.  Put down your weapons."

Simon pursed his lips, but not a single man among them questioned the priest's authority.  All the stones, logs, and planks thudded to the floor.

"You should be thanking us," complained the short, bearded one.  "We stopped her just as they would have poisoned the well." 

"Poisoned?"  Gary had been thinking things couldn't get any worse, but now the frightened looks of the villagers told him that things had gotten so twisted that any lie, no matter how outrageous, was somehow easier for them to believe than a truth that had been undermined by rumors and misperception.  A look of crushed defeat swept across Morgelyn's face.

"The only poison here is in your lies," Fergus snapped.

"Then what is that, peddler?"  Simon pointed at the jug at Fergus's feet.

"It is a tonic."  Morgelyn's words were just this side of calm, steadied by what Gary knew had to be a hell of an effort.  "It is not for the well," she insisted in a louder voice, "but for those who are ill.  That is why we came back.  People are sick--there was no choice but to help."  She held out her unburnt hand, palm up.  "Surely you see that."

Father Ezekiel pinned Fergus with his steely stare.  "You.  Bring it here."

"I tried to make her go, Father, I swear I did," Fergus whispered when he set the jar at Ezekiel's feet.  "Neither one of them would listen to me."

Ezekiel sighed, features drooping in defeat, though only the three of them could see it.  He had his back to the villagers as he uncorked the jug and sniffed at its contents.

"'Tis tansy and lungwort, and some comfy," Morgelyn explained.  "With more time and the right plants, I could have made something better, but at least this might keep the sick alive until we can do more to help them."

"More lies."  Simon stabbed a finger at Morgelyn.  "Father, I know you have a fondness for the girl, but she is beyond your protection now.  You cannot give sanctuary to a witch."

"There is still no proof of witchcraft," Ezekiel said.  Gary had been around Crumb enough to know that that particular scowl meant he could go either way; he was weighing his options.  If Ezekiel turned on them now, there was little hope left that they'd get out of this alive, let alone unscathed.  He'd sacrificed so much to help them the day before--but that had been in secret.  As much as Gary wanted to trust him, he wondered how far the guy would go in front of everybody else.

"We do have proof!" Simon ranted.  "Yours included.  You heard what she said to Mark two days ago."

"I heard her offer to help him, and I heard Mark refuse."  Father Ezekiel stepped away from Simon, closer to Gary.  His tone was still level, his gaze unerring.  "What other reason do you have to believe she is a witch?"

"You have heard the rumors, Father.  They said you were there yesterday, that you gave testimony."  Heads nodded behind Simon.

They were sunk, Gary thought, well and truly sunk--but then Ezekiel looked from the villagers to Morgelyn and back, never breaking his scowl, and said, "I did no such thing.  What I saw yesterday was a young woman, a member of this village--your clan, Simon--hurt and tortured well beyond the limits of what our savior would condone."  A murmur ran through the crowd; his voice took on even more command, and he seemed to grow a couple of inches taller.  "Still she held to her faith and to the truth: that she is not what you say she is.  I see no devil's work in that.  So I ask you again, what proof do you have that this woman is a witch?"

"She has spat curses upon us all!" Simon said, apparently unaffected by Ezekiel's speech. 

"I never did!"  Morgelyn stepped forward, her voice strained to the breaking point.  "You twisted my words and--why can you not believe that I never meant any harm, not to any of you?  What have I ever done that would make you--make all of you--do these things?" 

Gary could feel the crowd's growing unease, and knew they were all on a razor's edge here.  If the people started to believe they'd been wrong to listen to Simon and Mark, they might back off--or they might go through with it just to push their guilt away.

"Get back," Fergus hissed between his teeth.  He reached for Morgelyn, but she shrugged her arm out of his reach. 

"All you have to do is look at her!" screeched a woman with a lopsided sneer, looking around at the rest of the crowd for approval.  "You can see she is not one of us!"

Gary jumped in before he had time to think about it.  "The color of her skin has nothing to do with it--it never has before, not when you needed her help, so why--"

"You are right."  Simon surprised Gary by interrupting him.  His eyes were cold as he turned to the priest.  "But Father, whatever you may believe she meant at the fair, Mark Styles is dead.  What further proof do you need?"  He raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps you are defending her because she has bewitched you as well."

There were gasps from the crowd, and several people crossed themselves.  Father Ezekiel rolled his eyes, but before he could respond, Morgelyn burst out, "How can any of you believe that Father Ezekiel would allow me to do such a thing, even if I could?  Father, please, there has to be some way--give this tonic to the sick, and you will see--"  But at a sudden movement behind him, she came to a dead stop, her gaze riveted to the back of the crowd.  Her voice dropped to a whisper.  "Oh, Anna..."

Gary frowned, then looked in the same direction and understood why she'd stopped.  The villagers were making way for two women--Anna Styles and Lara, Tamsyn's mother.  Between them they carried the limp form of a little boy.  Tamsyn trailed behind Lara, who was coughing worse than Robert had been the night before. 

"Woman, you should not be here," Simon growled.  Lara's eyes were glassy and feverish, and she barely gave her husband a passing glance as they advanced.

"Morgelyn, please."  Anna didn't seem to see anyone else in the church.  "My boy...they said you were here, and he is worse--please, help him.  And Lara, too."  Gary didn't think he'd ever seen such pure desperation.  The women stooped awkwardly under their burden.  Tolan was unconscious, and Lara swayed like a reed in the wind.  "He is all I have left," Anna whispered.  "Please."

The entire crowd had fallen silent.  Morgelyn started forward.  "Lara, what is wrong?" she asked the other woman.

"I told you, my mama is sick," Tamsyn piped up.  "I told her you could help her."

"No!"  Simon sounded more frightened than angry as he stepped in front of his wife, his face as red as his hair.  "Father, you cannot allow her to harm anyone else."

Gary could feel Fergus inching up behind him, but a new commotion at the back of the crowd got his attention instead.  He could see a flash of tan robes and bright yellow silk.  A whisper spread through the villagers like a gathering breeze, and another aisle opened.  "Lady Nessa," someone said reverently, and several people bowed and curtsied.  Simon turned from his wife to see what was going on, and Morgelyn slipped behind him.  She helped Anna ease Tolan to the floor, feeling his forehead, speaking quiet words to Lara.  She didn't see the visitors; didn't hear the low curse that Father Ezekiel muttered or Fergus's sharp intake of breath.  But Gary did, and his fists clenched.

"So, even in the house of our Lord you would bring your evil and deception."  Banning's accusation rang off the church walls. 

Morgelyn shot up, her eyes wide and terrified.  There was a murmur in the crowd that Gary couldn't interpret.  He couldn't take his eyes off Banning and, right behind him, Nessa in her saffron finery.  He couldn't stop thinking of snakes.  Of dragons. 

He was the dragon slayer.  He had to do something. 

"Priest," Banning commanded.  Gary's gaze swiveled to Father Ezekiel, but there was a movement behind Nessa, and Father Malcolm stepped forward, obsequious and toady as always.  "Here is your fallen sinner."

Anna gathered her son into her arms as if to protect him from this new danger.  Morgelyn backed away from them, from the crowd, toward Gary--but Lara coughed again, and she hesitated.  Gary could see her hands start to shake. 

"Your congregation stands ready to deliver her punishment," Banning continued relentlessly.  "What say you?"

Father Malcolm looked around nervously, and his words were laced with false bravado.  "I say we--we let them."

"Malcolm, don't be an idiot," Father Ezekiel spat.  His eyes were blazing now, and Gary knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had at least one ally.  Somehow, the thought wasn't as comforting as he'd hoped it would be.  It wasn't enough.

"I only want to help."  Halfway between safety and the people she wanted to save, Morgelyn stood straight, hands behind her back--the rock that would not be moved, as she had been the day before.  Gary's stomach dropped another fathom or two.  There was just no way this was going to end well.

"Let them deliver their punishment," Malcolm repeated, more sure of himself as he locked eyes with Ezekiel.  Any illusion of amiability between the two priests was gone now.

Banning nodded.  "And then we can decide the fate of those she has led astray."   

"Not all the congregation," said a soft voice.  Gary realized it came from Lara, who stood with one hand on Anna's shoulder, unsteady but with her head up.  
Banning's eyes narrowed.  "What did you say?"

"Not all of us believe that Morgelyn is--what you say she is."  Lara paused, coughing, and Anna nodded, the two of them small and disheveled but somehow emanating strength.  "Some of us want her help," Lara continued, and she held out her hand to Morgelyn.  "We need her help.  Not all our minds are addled by drink and your elegant patron."

For a second, Morgelyn stared at her friend as if she didn't quite understand.  Then, as some of the fear left her face, she took the hand Lara offered.  Gary glanced at Nessa, who kept her face composed in a mask of condescension.  She caught him looking at her, and the corners of her mouth curved up, but he wouldn't have called it a smile. 

Nearly everyone else up front was gaping at Lara, but Gary noticed a few heads nodding at the back of the crowd.  Hope stirred.  What if...

"Go home, woman."  Simon started toward Lara, but Gary matched his move.  He wasn't going to let any of them near Morgelyn.  The other man stopped, settled for a scowl and a foreboding tone of voice.  "Go back to your sick bed."

"Simon, no, please--she will die," Anna whispered.  "Just like Mark did, because he would not take the help Morgelyn offered him.  Tolan is still sick," she added, brushing the hair off her son's forehead, "but he lives, at least he lives."

Simon's scowl deepened, but when Lara was overtaken with another coughing fit, bending almost double, Gary thought he caught a moment of...hesitation, confusion, something in his expression that wasn't wholly hostile.

"This is ridiculous.  You let your women defy you like this?" Banning demanded. 

"Oh, that's priceless, coming from you," Gary shot back.  Then he realized what he'd said, and that everyone in the place was now staring at him as if he had two heads.  "I--I just meant--" he stammered.

"What did you mean, Gary?" Nessa asked with a smile that sent chills up and down his spine.  She was getting exactly what she wanted with this showdown, and she knew it.  "You, who have never lived in this place--do you have advice for these good people?"

Gary had no idea what was about to come out of his mouth, but he opened it anyway--and Lara had a violent coughing fit that drove her to her knees.  He spun and caught her as she collapsed, shivering in his arms.  Kneeling amid the straw and rushes, he helped her to sit next to Tolan.  Morgelyn was there, wrapping an arm around her friend's shoulders. 

"Morgelyn?" Lara spoke so softly that even Gary could barely hear her.  "Tamsyn said that you had a cure with you.  I would like to try it."

"I--yes."  Morgelyn looked over Gary's head, at Banning, Nessa, Malcolm, Simon--then took a deep breath.  She reached for the jar at Father Ezekiel's feet, hesitating only a moment when their eyes met.  His lips pursed, then relaxed, his nod barely perceptible. 

Simon growled, "Lara, I forbid it."

Stifling another hacking cough, the sick woman faced her husband.  "You will say I am a woman, and this is not my place.  But I do not think we should trust our futures to your--your drunken ravings.  You always lose all sense when you drink."

Banning turned to the crowd, stabbing a finger in Morgelyn's direction.  "Do you see how this woman's venom has infected all of you, from the weakest of women to one of your own priests?  She must be dealt with!"  Gary jumped to his feet, ready to do battle, but no one was moving--they were all watching the drama unfolding beside him.

Lara stared at Simon defiantly.  "Morgelyn helped to deliver our children.  She saved James and Tamsyn from fevers and the pox.  I trust Amalia's granddaughter with my life."  As if that settled the matter, she reached for the jug that Morgelyn held out to her.  "How much should I drink?"

"None!" Simon shot past Gary, reached in and knocked the jug to the floor; the precious liquid spilled out.  With a startled cry, Morgelyn jumped forward, but before she or Gary could reach the jug, Banning lunged toward them.  He shoved Morgelyn to the ground and hurled the jar against the stone wall, where it shattered in a shower of potion and pottery.

The silence was broken by Banning's ragged breath.  "Thus shall I break you and your cursed hold on this village!"

Face down on the floor, Morgelyn didn't move.  "Oh, no," Fergus breathed, and he pushed through the people who stood around him to kneel by his friend.

Something broke inside Gary, too, at the destruction of their last hope.  He didn't care any more about being cautious or talking his way out of it.  He cared about a sick kid and a woman who was dying before his eyes and a friend lying there on the floor, cast aside just because she was different. 

"How much?" he shouted at Banning, pushing him back toward Simon with a one-armed shove.  "How much is she paying you?"  Whirling on Nessa, he demanded, "What's the price for her life--for all of their lives?  They're sick--they're dying, and you're willing to let that happen?  How could you?"

Father Malcolm sputtered, "Y-you may not speak to the Lady Nessa as if she were a common--"

"She is a common mercenary," Gary finished.  "All she cares about is how much she can get from these people--their land, their work, whatever she can use."

Nessa's laugh was high and cold as sleet, and her eyes glittered.  "I've no idea what this stranger is talking about.  It is clear that the witch has turned his head.  Or perhaps he turned hers."  She lifted her chin and addressed the villagers directly.  "I remind you that Brother Banning, who is here at my behest to help you all, is a friar, a man of God who is trying to protect you from evil.  And there is only one way to rid your village of this curse."

"Burn the witch!" Banning shouted, and it was as if a switch had been thrown.  Chaos erupted in the church; people surged forward, shouting, heedless of anything or anyone in their way.  Gary was on his knees, reaching out for Morgelyn and Fergus, when the wave crashed over him.





Chapter 77

Though hope is frail
It's hard to kill.
          ~ Stephen Schwartz


"Marissa, this is--"

"Nuts, I know."  She'd already heard it a dozen times.  She was long past caring.  Not even waiting for Crumb and the umbrella, Marissa got out of the car and let Spike lead her across the parking lot.  She could hear Chuck panting a little to keep up with her brisk pace through the wind and rain.  There was no hesitation once Spike found the path to the pier.

There was no time for hesitation.  She wrapped her free hand around the crystal ball, safe inside her pocket.

"We have to be there," she shouted over another roll of thunder. 

Crumb caught up to them, puffing and trying to get the umbrella over them all.  Marissa could tell he was there when the rain stopped pounding on her from overhead, but the wind still blew it into their faces.  She was drenched in less than a minute.  But it didn't matter. 

"Those people, where Gary is, they're falling apart.  They stopped believing in each other, stopped trusting--they needed a miracle.  And it's like Aunt Gracie said yesterday; miracles happen where there's faith."  Already hoarse from shouting over the elements, she paused for a second to turn her face away from a harsh gust of rain.  "It's the faith that's the hard part, and that's what we have to give Gary.  Our faith, our help--instead of just pulling him home, we can send him that.  And somehow, it will help.  I believe it will.  I have to believe that."

She had to, because the panic and worry were tearing her apart.  It was more than belief, it was sheer certainty. 

"Geez, look at that," Chuck breathed.  Both men fell behind Marissa, but she didn't slow her pace. 

"Hey, hold on."  Crumb caught up with her; his voice was loaded with worry.  "The waves are gonna be up over the pier if they get any bigger."

"The storm will spin itself out.  We have to be there."

"It's dangerous out there," Chuck told her.  "And besides, you--you don't know what to do, do you?"

"We know enough.  It's happening right now, can't you feel it?"

"All I feel is wet and cold," Crumb grumbled. 

"We need to be nearer to the water," Marissa insisted.  "I think that somehow that makes it easier to make contact and--oh!"  She stopped, arrested by the sudden warmth of the crystal ball.  She pulled it out of her pocket and a tidal wave of emotion rocked her back on her heels--panic and fear and ohmygodgaryintrouble, worse than before--

"What is it?  Marissa?" 

There was no way to answer Chuck, no breath for a reply.  It caught her in the gut and wouldn't let go and she bent over double, Crumb's firm grip on her arm the only thing that kept her from falling. 

She didn't know how she knew it, but she did.  Everything was falling apart; her heart pushed against her rib cage like the waves pushing against the shore, wearing it down.  It was too much for her, too much for Gary, too much for any one person to bear.  "Chuck?" she gasped.  "I can't do this alone, it's too much, he's in trouble--"  Chuck put one hand under hers on the scrying glass and the other on her back, while Crumb anchored her arm. 

"You gotta tell me what's wrong, right now."  Crumb's voice was urgent with worry.  "Marissa, what's--"  He broke off abruptly. 

"Oh, my God," Chuck whispered.  "It's--it's starting again."

"What the hell is that?"  Crumb's voice rose into a register she'd never thought he could manage.  The warmth was flooding all through and around her, and she knew they could see the lights and colors Gary had tried to describe that first day, when they'd stood just a few yards from here and he'd vanished.

"It's Gary," she said simply, and the fear let up just a little, a wave receding back out to sea to gather its strength.  "We have to go out there."  Through a force of will she hadn't known she possessed, she made herself straighten up, put one foot in front of the other, and go forward. 

Chuck steered her onto the pier with a fierce grip on her arm.  Crumb was there, too, trying to keep the hapless umbrella over their heads.  The wind got stronger as they left the shelter of the trees; damp leaves and rain blew over their feet.  Spike resisted going forward, but she pulled at his harness until he moved along with her.  Out on the pier, the sheer power of the storm was even more evident.  Wild, elemental, it was a force in its own right; she'd never stood out in the heart of something like this. 

"This is far enough," Crumb insisted.  She knew, even though the weather had her all turned around, that it was close to where Gary had fallen in, close to where everything had started.  Where the past and present had intersected.  "What now?" he asked.

Follow your heart, she'd always told Gary.  Okay.  Dropping Spike's harness, she lifted the scrying glass out in front of her with both hands.  Spike didn't like being let go; he whined and pressed closer, but she only felt his bulk against her leg as a momentary presence, and then it slipped away.  It was like meditating, like praying...the wind swept off the lake and drove the rain into their faces, but they were there, they were all there, together, and they would not be moved.

She drew in a deep breath, and had to hold it against nervous laughter when Crumb muttered, "I knew we'd get around to a séance eventually."

"We're standing at an intersection--somehow times and places are connected here."  Despite the way that they were huddled together, trying to keep the worst of the storm at bay, Marissa had to shout over the wind and crashing waves.  The rain was threatening to wash away her tenuous grasp on the thread of reason and sense that ran through all this.  "We're on the pier."  She stomped with her thick-heeled boot to emphasize her point, to remind herself.  "The pier is in Lake Michigan.  The Great Lakes run to the St. Lawrence River and out into the sea and across the ocean--they're connected.  And time--time intersects itself because it's not a straight line, and that's what happened to Gary.  We can help him--no," she corrected herself, "We can help all of them.  I believe that."

"But how?"

"Just like last night, Chuck," she said.  "We just have to do it together."

"Do what?" Crumb wanted to know.

This was the part that was harder to explain, and she prayed for the right words.  "When Gary goes on a save--when he goes to help someone--" she added for Crumb's benefit, "--he just has himself.  He doesn't have super powers, just the need to help.  And sometimes, when things are really difficult, he's had--he's had us--"

"Backing him up," Chuck finished.

She nodded.  "And you too, Crumb.  You might not always have understood, but when the chips were down you have always come through for Gary."

"Well, the three of youse have gotten pretty damned good at talking me into it," he acknowledged gruffly. 

It had to be more than that, though; for this to work she had to make him understand his true stake in all of this.  "Crumb, why are you here?"

"Aw, hell, Marissa--"

"There isn't time to be embarrassed," she pleaded.  "Just tell me why you're here."

"I've seen a lot of things over the years.  I've had some good friends.  But youse guys--"  A clap of thunder cut him off.

"Yeah?" Chuck prompted.

"Look, I do not fully understand what the hell is up with Hobson and his...his newspaper.  Alls I know is, given what he seems to do, I'd think a couple good friends'd be worth more than X-ray vision or something like that."

Marissa was about to respond, but then she felt it happening again, the wave of conviction and fear coming closer, about to overwhelm her.  "Chuck, hold on, please--Crumb--"  It was going to be on top of them any second.  The wind rocked the ball in her hand.  "You *know* Gary, better than you think, better than you'll admit.  You said last night that he reminded you of--"

"Okay, okay!  How?" 

"He needs all of us."  It wasn't rainwater she was choking on now.  "I know I've asked a lot of you, both of you, these past few days.  But if you could just believe, if you could give me your faith, give Gary your faith, through this, I know we can help him.  Please," she finished as another gust lashed sheets of rain against them.  "It's Gary."

There was a moment of silence, and it was too much, too heavy--her arms started to sag.

"It's Gary," Chuck echoed, and grabbed her hand, lifting it back up.  "C'mon, Crumb."

"Aw, hell," Crumb grumbled, but he too put a hand on the crystal ball. 

What came next was stronger than in the lab, where the world had fallen away from her; more bearable than on the bench, when she'd been all by herself.  It wasn't even like the night before, with Chuck in her kitchen. 

It was a charge in the atmosphere, and Crumb's low whistle of astonishment.  It was Chuck saying, "It's happening, but--wow, this is like a million times more than last night," and Spike's excited woof.  The warmth spreading through her, warming them all in spite of the rain and the wind.

There was a power there that she'd only felt in the wildest moments of faith and song and prayer, and yet it was somehow more and different--a sense of someone with them, of real connection.  Chuck was supporting her and Gary, and Crumb was grounding all of them, and they were together...

All of them.

The familiar scent of worn leather and deodorant soap and Gary through the wet leaves and fishy lake washed over her.

"It is Gary," Chuck breathed.  "I can--it's like he's here--Marissa, you should see all this light."

"Holy shit," Crumb muttered. 

Everything solid dissolved away, and there was only this--the water and the rain, the connection to her friends, and, beyond that, to something larger than them all, and to the need to help.

She gathered up her faith and all the hope she'd mustered over the past awful days and let it come through her, through her hands, into the warmth and the light that she knew they held, into the lives that were somehow, through some miracle, connected to their own.

"Gary," Marissa said, "we're with you."





Feedback:  'Tis a consumation devoutly to be wished.   peregrin_anna@hotmail.com


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