Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (12 page)

“Could be,” he replied. “It would have to be immune to the assault though. And something mean enough to storm her defenses and survive this shit
e storm is not something I think we should be sticking around for.”

Her defenses! I stepped back and looked up at the tree. Al followed my gaze. I should have seen it before.

“Remind you of anything?” I asked.

“Yeah, a tree…”

“No,” I said. “You were right. Think metaphorical. It’s big and imposing. It towers over everything. It’s secure.”

His little bird eyes widened.
“It’s a partition!”

“Exactly,” I said. “Whatever the hell else she was, she knew how to partition her mind.”

As I said the words, there was a sound like thunder and a massive branch broke off from the crown. After a descent that seemed to take forever to finish, it landed like a bomb, shaking the ground in an explosion of massive shards.

“What do you make of this?” I asked.

“She’s trying to cope,” replied Al, eyeing the pieces.

“This is coping?”

“She’s
trying
,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s working”

“So all she needs to do is pull herself back together again?” That was a bad pun.

“That was a bad pun,” Al snorted. Can birds snort? “But I don’t think it’ll be that easy. You can’t just glue these pieces back together and make a person whole again.”

“Why not?”

“Look,” he said. “Most of the pieces have faded, they hold nothing. They didn’t just assault her, they took something. They sucked the life right out of her.”

I pulled out the flower fragment. The color was completely gone now. The damage was too much and now whatever it was that this had represented was gone.

“How much damage did I cause when I did this?” I asked, holding up the glass petal.

“Probably nothing,” he replied. “The brunt of the force was done with the initial assault.”

“Then what happened?”

“She retreated to the partition,” he said. “Like you did.”

“Like I did,” I agreed, shuddering at the memory.

“But she lost. Her partition i
s dying. Is this the work of a Branding?”

“No,” I r
eplied. “Temperance can see my Brand. She would have seen one on Sarah immediately. And bad as it was, it didn’t do this to me. I’ve never heard of a Brand wiping out an identity.”

“No wonder she’s such a bitch,” said Al. “If your mind looked like this you’d be a complete ass.”

“My mind doesn’t look much better,” I said grimly.

“
I rest my case,” he said.

I ignored that last statement, stepping into the tree. A stairwell led up into the trunk. I paused before it. This was going to be a very personal experience, leading straight into the partition. Possibly a dangerous one as well. A partition was built specifically to keep out foreign threats, to protect everything that was most essential to that person. I was not a threat but I sure as hell wasn’t native either.

The staircase lead up in a spiral. I had already come this far, no point in turning back now. I began to climb. It didn’t take long before we began to pass rooms. The first was full of more glass, piles and piles of unrecognizable carnage.

I couldn’t help but stare at the ruins.
Nothing went into a partition but the most important things about that person, the things that made them who they were. With those things protected, the rest of the mind couldn’t, shouldn’t anyway, have been affected. In the rooms of my mind, the ones that weren’t taken, I held my father, my mother, my first dog, my first car. Madison. All of the memories and experiences that made me who I was.

What had been in this room? Her family? Her first love? What had been stolen, sucked dry of everything that mattered and left in pieces on the ground?

I didn’t want to think about it. I continued on.

On the fourth room we found a figure of Sarah. She was dressed in a skirt suit, very prim and practical but alluring all the same. It held a perfect balance between professionalism and sensuality.
Or would have, anyway, if not for the cracks that lined her surface.

I stepped into the room, studying the wall as I went. Window after window, most shattered or cracked, showed images of the woman. Some showed her in an office, others in what looked like interrogation rooms, surrounded by shadow. She was cold and calm and methodical. In the back I could see a man but his face and upper body were shrouded. A single light, a cigarette I think, illuminated mocking eyes.

“Are these memories?”

“No,” Al
replied. “Not really. More like impressions. Your mind doesn’t film things like a camera. Mine does, but yours and most everyone else just shows things that stand out to you. It’s all shaded by emotions, misconceptions, and half-truths. Hers are clearer than most, but that only mean she has a good memory.”

“That’s an interrogation room,” I said, pointing to the l
ast image. “Think she was a cop? Maybe with the Coven?” They were always looking for power. If she was a Witch though, that could mean trouble I wasn’t ready to take on.

We kept climbing the stairs, but took no more time to explore the rooms. Most were shattered, others displayed images that weren’t going to tell us anything about what had happened. I wasn’t here to poke around. Even if there was this one showing her in bed in the most interesting negligee…

Never mind. I didn’t go in, didn’t even look. Not much. Al did though. He’s a dirty bird.

At last, after what felt like climbing the entirety of the Chrysler building, we made it to the top. I was winded.

“You should have been a bird,” said Al. “We wouldn’t have had this problem then.”

I ignored him. The stairs ended at a large, solid door. Cautiously, I pushed it open. It exited out into the crown of the tree. A large stage stretched out from the door.

In the center of the stage stood another figment of Sarah. This one was unlike any I had seen prior, including the real person we had met in the garden. She was wrapped in a long, green gown. Rubies adorned her neck, ears, and fingers. Her hair was wrapped tightly in an elegant knot, revealing the lean, smooth muscles of her neck and shoulders. The gown was backless, revealing her shoulder blades and lower back, drawing the eye lower and lower…

Well, it gets a little fuzzy after that. Let’s just say she was stunning.

Unlike everything else we’d seen, this figure was moving.

What we were seeing now was not a memory or residual image. It was the woman herself, trapped in her own creation. She had been chased all the way to her last defense, the last vestige of the woman that had been, the last sign of life in a dying mind.

She was wandering the platform aimlessly, stepping in pieces of glass as she moved, flitting in between clear and solid. Wherever her slender, black heels fell, the shards shuddered and twisted behind her, fitting back together as they tumbled until images and figurines could be seen.

“This just got worse,” said Al.

“Why?”

“Look at what she is doing,” he said. “This is all that is left of her. She has nothing. All that she can remember are bits and pieces of what was left behind. And she’s not even doing it right. She must have been wandering the whole tree. Each time she finds another aspect of herself and pieces it together
, she slips into what she thinks she needs to be.”

“Why isn’t it sticking?” I asked. “If she’s rebuilding the memories than she should be healing, slipping out of the amnesia.”

“That’s just it,” he replied. “They’re not memories, they’re images. They have no meaning, no essence. It would be like watching a stranger and mimicking how they act. You don’t know they’re drive, the personality behind their actions.”

I watched her wander aimlessly, her face pained and confu
sed. She hadn’t noticed us yet.

“I can manipulate this, right?” What I was thinking was dangerous but if the partition was failing and h
er psyche wasn’t recovering, than she was going to be in bad shape. And fast.

Al was right. Her personality was fractured. It was why she had acted so strange in the garden, one moment genial and sweet, the next vicious and horny. She was just finding aspects of herself, going through the motions with habits, instincts, and memories that had no context and made no sense to her.

“Virgil,” Al said. “The woman who did this did so to survive the assault. She failed.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s dead,” he said. “Not literally, but mentally. Everything that made up the identity of this woman is gone.” He flew to the ground, shuffling around in the glass. “These pieces are dead. Some have the remnants of memory, but the personality who accumulated those memories is gone. There is nothing we can do for her.”

I set my jaw. “Yes there is.” I stepped out onto the stage, making my way toward the w
andering specter. “Sarah Hale!”

She twisted around, her dark eyes thunderous in their anger. “That is not my name!”

“It is now,” I replied, not giving an inch. I stepped closer to her until we were only a few feet apart. “You are not the woman who made this partition. She is dead.”

“I am not dead! This was my life! Mine!”

I softened my tone, but remained firm. “They murdered you.” I gestured toward the memories littering the ground. “These aren’t real. You have no choice but to build a new one. If you remain in the past, only trying to put together incomplete memories, then your mind will continue to fail. Look around you.” I raised my hand, indicating the tree.

Her beautiful, blue eyes glistened with tears. “That can’t be.”

“It shouldn’t be,” I corrected. “But it is. If you continue wandering like this, looking for what was taken from you, than your mind will fail. They killed a part of you, most of you even. Do not let them finish the job.”

“What can I do? What else can I do but put the pieces back together?”

I pulled out the petal. “Make new ones.” I dropped it to the floor. It clicked against the wood, mixing in with the other pieces. “These are images. Dreams. They are diary entries of the woman who occupied the space before you; nothing more. Don’t throw them away, but don’t let them hold you back either.”

She screamed, falling to her knees with her face in her hands. She was weeping. The tree shuddered under my feet in response.

Hm. That may have been a mistake.

Al was flying around the room in a panic. “You did it
! You knocked her off her rocker! We are so epically fucked!”

Suddenly the tree lurched and glass exploded all around me. I dove to the floor, covering my head with my arms. I had gone too far and now she was going to tear the world apart around me.

As suddenly as it began, it ceased. I peeked out from under my hat, waiting for the tree to collapse around me. Nothing happened.

Al landed in front of me and clucked. “There is no reason to be dramatic, Virgil.”

I looked up toward Sarah. She was standing now. Her hair was halfway between up and down, giving her a ruffled appearance. For the first time in her mind, she was neither glass nor mist but flesh and blood. Her eyes were neither crazed nor hysterical, only tired.

She smiled sadly. “Thank you, Sorcerer. I was wrong to have doubted you.”

I stood, looking around. The glass pieces had assembled themselves to the best of their ability. Many had too many pieces to be made whole but they were recognizable. They would mean a whole lot more to her than they would me.

The big change was the tree though. Mainly in that it was a tree again. I could see from here the few remaining branches swaying in the wind.

Wind?

I stepped to the edge of the tree’s crown. The grass swayed gently in the breeze and bright sunlight shone through dark cloud cover. It looked like a storm was rolling in. Great purple thunderclouds loomed in the distance, thunder and lightning rumbling in their bellies.

The clouds were good. A storm was a purifying force and represented the move toward recovery. Her problem had been stagnation, a world caught in a loop. The storm would hurt, hurt more than anything she had gone through since the initial assault, but afterwards it would be a brand new scene.

She was sitting down in a chair that had
n’t been there before. Her mind, her rules.

“How are you feeling?” I asked. Her color was off and she looked cold. I pulled off my coat and draped it over her shoulders. A pity really, they were nice shoulders.

“Better than I was. For the first time I can remember, I can actually think. How can I ever thank you?”

Al landed on my shoulder. “There was this one thing you were doing in room thirty-eight…”

“Al!” I snapped. “She’s a nun for God’s sakes.”

“She’s not a real nun, Virgil,” he replied.

I snapped my fingers and the orange, perverted kookaburra disappeared.

I smiled sheepishly. “I apologize for that. He was designed with no inhibitions.”

She laughed. It was the first time I had seen her do so and I liked it. “I’ll take it as a compliment.”