Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel (34 page)

“
And for the love of God, quit trying to
mold yourself around each new woman. Until you know who you are,
and what you truly want, everyone will disappoint you, and you
them.”

If only he could heed his father’s advice,
but every pretty face brought new temptation. What was a guy to do?
As he walked down Hopewell’s shiny new halls, Isaiah had the
passing thought that maybe he would find the meaning of life in the
medical profession. Saving lives was certainly honorable.

When he got to the room, Dr. Julie Franke was
there removing Grandma Elizabeth’s IV drip.

“What are you doing?” Isaiah demanded to
know.

“Sheriff’s orders.”

“Won’t she die without a feeding tube?”

“I must abide by the wishes of her
family.”

“But my father has her Medical Power of
Attorney and I know he didn’t give any such order.”

“Your Uncle Barrett is listed as the
secondary Medical Power of Attorney if your father is unavailable
or mentally incompetent.”

“My father is fine.”

“Not according to Dr. Steelsun,” Dr. Franke
informed him. “He’s been observing your father for the last
forty-eight hours and has declared him mentally unfit. I just
received the signed paperwork.”

“Last I heard, Dr. Steelsun is among the
missing. Let me see that paperwork,” Isaiah demanded, nostrils
flaring.

“I can’t do that. Patient
confidentiality.”

“This is bullshit. I’m going to put it back
in.”

“You can’t do that,” Dr. Franke said coolly.
“Your Uncle Barrett has already approved its removal, so take it up
with him.”

“Oh, I will,” Isaiah said, fists curling at
his side. “I will.”

Isaiah stormed to the National Building. A
dozen guards were stationed outside the entrance. A dozen more were
on the steps of the jail across the street. When Dad was in charge,
he had never required guards.

“I need to see Barrett Fade.”

“That’s
King
Barrett to you,” one of
the guards replied, “and no, you may not see him.

“Is that what we’re calling the sheriff these
days? Well, he’s still
Uncle
Barrett to me.” Isaiah brushed
past the guards.

The door to Dad’s office was locked, but
Isaiah was so angry he invoked the charisma and pulled off the
knob. Barging right in, his breath caught in his throat and his
eyes went wide. Uncle Barrett was lying on Dad’s desk completely
naked. His wife straddled him, hips gyrating as she rode him like a
pony, while he cupped her breasts. They were husband and wife, so
he shouldn’t be so flustered, but Magus Mull, the humanoid with the
coppery eyes, was there too—feeding Uncle Barrett the tip of his
wanker.

“What the hell is going on in here!” Isaiah
voice went up an octave.

Aunt Feenie didn’t even bother to stop riding
Barrett. Instead, she flipped her loose blonde hair out of her face
with a toss of her head.

“Come on over here, sweetie,” she said with
an inviting finger. “We can make it a foursome.”

Mull had pulled himself away from the little
orgy and crawled up the wall like a nasty cockroach.

Glancing around for something to defend
himself if need be, Isaiah noticed his father’s bust of Abraham
Lincoln on the desk, and there was a clear plastic umbrella in the
vase by the door; that had a sharp point.

“What do you want, Isaiah?” Uncle Barrett sat
up on the desk and started putting on his trousers, while Feenie
slid into a silky green dress. His aunt and uncle’s calm in what
should have been a very embarrassing situation made Isaiah feel
even more bewildered.

“You need to order the doctors to replace
Grandma’s feeding tube.”

“Keeping it there is only prolonging the
suffering, Isaiah,” Uncle Barrett said softly as he adjusted the
strings on his tunic. “Even if she wakes up, after a stroke like
that, she’ll never truly recover. This isn’t about our feelings.
It’s about letting her die with dignity.”

“But they don’t even know for sure if it was
a stroke! How you can do this to your own mother?” His mouth
thinned into an angry scowl. “But considering you threw my father,
your very own brother into prison, apparently there’s no limit on
how low you will go.”

“That was the people’s decision, not
mine.”

“Some are saying otherwise.”

“Who is saying otherwise?” Feenie’s eyes
narrowed to slits as she took a step toward him. “Give me their
names.”

Isaiah backed toward the door. Mull, that
ceiling-clinging freak, was directly over Isaiah now, holding a
slender bamboo straw to his mouth. Isaiah grabbed the umbrella and
popped it open just as orange dust exploded from the end of the
straw. The whoosh of the umbrella made the dust fly back into
Mull’s face, then float harmlessly down past Isaiah under the
protective plastic bubble of the umbrella.

“Oh, no!” Feenie’s hands slapped her cheeks
as she gazed at the ceiling.

Mull’s lids began to droop. One set of
fingers let go of the ceiling, then the other, and then his toes.
Isaiah jumped out of the way just as Mull hit the tile floor with a
thud.

“Magus!” Feenie cried out and rushed to the
humanoid’s side. Blood was coming out of his nose. “You did this!”
Feenie’s eyes flashed with anger at Isaiah. The blue teardrop stone
on her forehead began to glow.

“Logus Ordinus…”

“No, Feenie, no!” Barrett hollered. “Get out
of here, Isaiah.”

Isaiah leapt over Mull, flung open the door,
and tore down the hallway as fast as he could. When he glanced
back, Feenie was standing in the doorway with a ball of orange
light rolling between her palms. He flattened himself at the last
moment. Heat seared his skin as the ball skimmed past him. It
slammed into a guard instead, seeming to go right through the man’s
back and into his body. He began to gyrate. Soot came out of the
man’s ears, nose and mouth. His eyes turned into spent coals. The
smell of singed hair and cooked flesh filled the hall.

Gagging from the smell, Isaiah shot out the
front doors and dashed across the wide landing. Down the steps he
went, taking them three and four at a time until he hit the square.
He needed a place to hide, but the city was locked down. Galatia
was surrounded by enemies on every side—including the
in
side.

Knowing Aunt Feenie was gunning for him, he
fled down the street, then dodged into a back alley. He found
himself at the side entrance of the hospital. His nineteen-year-old
cousin Ruby Penn, Uncle Mike’s daughter, ought to be sitting with
Grandma Elizabeth right now. In private, Ruby had expressed a
vehement dislike for Feenie, so he knew she’d take his side.
Perhaps she could get a message to the rest of the family about
what had just happend.

The halls were empty. Isaiah bee-lined to
Grandma Elizabeth’s room, but when he peered inside there was no
sign of his cousin.

Crap. What if Feenie had already taken Ruby
out of the picture?

Perhaps the hospital wasn’t the best place to
hide.

Then again, it might be the last place
anybody would look.

He gazed at Grandma, laying there with her
hands folded over the blanket, the top of the sheet folded down
neatly.

Her hair was still black in places, with gray
radiating from her temples like rays of light. Isaiah gently
removed a strand from her face, leaned down and kissed her on the
forehead and lingered near her ear.

“Grandma, things have spiraled out of control
since you left us. Uncle Barrett needs the kind of ass-whooping
that only you can deliver.”

He watched his grandmother’s face intently,
half hoping she would respond. One of her hands slipped off of her
abdomen to fall to her side, which was more movement than he had
seen out of her since she landed in Hopewell.

“Grandma?” he asked hopefully.

A few minutes of nothing confirmed what he
already knew. She was just shifting in her sleep. A noise in the
hall caused him to flatten himself on the floor between Grandma
Elizabeth’s bed and the outer wall of her room. Galatian
soldiers-in-training had just brought in one of their own on a
stretcher. Apparently, he had fallen off the earthen wall and
landed on his own knife.

The hospital staff was running back and
forth, ruining Isaiah’s chance of a getaway. At least the bed
blocked him from the view of anyone who walked through the door, so
he decided to stay there until the hallway cleared.

..............................

Isaiah hadn’t realized he fell asleep on the
cold hard tile floor. He was dreaming of the gymnasium at the
bunker, playing basketball after school, when Grandma appeared on
the court in front of him, catching the basketball neatly mid-arc
as he shot a basket.

“This isn’t the time for games, grandson,”
she said. “There’s work to be done.”

The other players vanished and it was just
him and Grandma. He had the greatest urge to hug her and he did.
She felt weird—like a blanket of static electricity.

“Is this a dream, Grandma?”

“I bet you didn’t know that Galatians
sometimes Mind Wander in their sleep. When they wake, they think it
was all a dream.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Yes, but I’m hoping you’ll be the one who
wakes up and knows that it was not a dream.”

“I’m you’re man, Grandma.”

“We will see.”

He blinked and the gym morphed into Grandma’s
hospital room. She was there in the bed like she’d been for weeks
now, eyes closed, and chest rising up and down. She was also
hovering behind him, semi-transparent. Little beads of light
twinkled in and out of her shadowy form. Holding up his own hand,
he realized that he was semi-transparent as well.

“Thank god,” Grandma said. “You’re
awake.”

“They say you’re brain dead, Grandma. How can
we be doing this?”

“They are wrong.”

“Oh, Grandma, I missed you.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll stay cognizant,
so excuse me if I seem abrupt. The night Feenie returned, while
everybody was celebrating, I saw in her mind that she had come to
put Barrett in Red’s place.”

“I can’t believe Barrett would be part of
something like that.”

“He wasn’t—not at first anyway. Barrett had
truly thought his wife was dead until the night she arrived in
Galatia. Seeing her again overwhelmed him; he’s sick in love, and
there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to please her. The wagon accident
was staged. The story about her being a sex slave—a lie to explain
her long absence and a ruse for sympathy. She’s been out in a place
called Windmere, studying magic. She has her own coven now—those
who have come to Galatia are part of it. They hope to turn our
people on a path toward magic, creating a kingdom in which they can
practice the dark arts unrestrained.”

“If magic can help us survive the
battle—would that be so bad?”

“You have witnessed Feenie’s brand of magic.
Tell me, was that so bad?” Isaiah shuddered. “I’m starting to fade,
so listen good. Your Uncle Bryce used a green digital camera to
record Mull’s magic in action. If those recordings go public, every
witch and warlock will be run out of town.” Her voice suddenly
broke up. “In hindsight, I realize that in protecting Bryce and
Barrett, I have betrayed Red and Michael.”

Going over to the bed, he stared at her
physical form, her placid face. She looked so frail. Who could have
guessed so much was going on behind those closed eyes?

“You don’t look so bad, Grandma,” he told her
spirit.

“My body won’t last more than a week or two
like this. By the way, it wasn’t a stroke. The coven knew that my
mind reading abilities could ruin their plans, so they poisoned my
wine before I got a chance to rat them out.”

“Feenie,” he said her name with contempt.
“How could such a beautiful woman be so ugly? Does Uncle Barrett
know she tried to kill you?”

“No, but he’s quite aware that she’s
practicing magic again. They were both practitioners under the
tutelage of Mull when they lived in their own settlement. When
things got out of control, Barrett had the good sense to quit, and
he demanded that Feenie quit too. Hence, her fake accident and
departure for Windmere.”

“I still don’t understand how the warlock
fits into all of this.”

“I fear my son’s love for his wife has
blinded him to her faults, to the evil of his own actions. Mull
controls Feenie. Feenie controls Barrett. Barrett controls Galatia.
And only God knows who controls Mull. So, hurry grandson, find that
digital camera, or rather the files that were on it.” Grandma’s
spectral form was dimming. “You’re looking for a very specific
video—one taken in a woods at night. Several people were there,
including Nora and Sam Harvey. It was taken before the rest of us
came to Future Earth.”

“How will I know if I found the right
video?”

“Trust me,” her form condensed into a
pinpoint of white light, but her voice echoed a little longer, “you
will know.”

(Isaiah Wakeland)

The rain pitter-pattered on the darkened
cobblestone streets as Isaiah stood in front of a row of identical
studio-style cottages. Their foundations were formed of river
stone. The clapboard siding was hewn from lostwood. Each cottage
had a varnished wooden door flanked by two rectangular windows.
This was the bachelor and bachelorette section of town, where
single adults or retired couples were housed. The cottage to the
left belonged to Uncle Bryce. Breaking in was a matter of turning
the handle on the front door.

The sound of the rain faded away as Isaiah
shut the door behind him.

Standing in the pitch-black living room, he
ran the beam of the penlight he had swiped from the hospital over
the dark outline of the bed. His breath caught in his throat at the
sight of Uncle Bryce sleeping on the sofa. He was a deep sleeper,
but Isaiah didn’t feel reassured.