The Fifth Sacred Thing (18 page)

She crouched in the bathroom, shaken, shaking. Slowly, she grounded herself, called up earth fire to heal the wounds that didn’t show because they were not in her physical body. Wounds of the spirit.

She was so tired. But in her palms a fire burned, a power demanding to be used. Gripping the edge of the sink, she pulled herself up to her feet. Her legs were shaking. She had to steady herself with one hand while she splashed water on her face with the other. Breathe. Ground. She was alive, and that was the first victory. She had won through to this power, and that was another, even while her body screamed out at her for rest. Another breath, and she could balance on her feet. Another, and another, and yes, she could walk, unaided, back out to the ward.

“What happened?” Aviva was waiting, sponging a sick child. “I thought we’d lost you too, for a moment.”

“It’s okay,” Madrone said, but it was hard to talk, because she was still
mostly in the spiderweb world of the shifting lines of destiny. Her hands were on fire. She could see the child Aviva tended, and when the fire of her hands touched the child’s throat, something shifted. Something fled. Yes, that was the way—and it was so easy now, except that she wanted so much to sleep, but they would die, then, while she slept, and if she could just breathe, and take another step to another bedside, and lay serpent fire on another destiny, and another, and another.…

If she could just forget sleep, and rest, and food, and time, easy to do here in the timeless center, and let this moment of healing become her dwelling place.…

Five hours later, she collapsed.

6

A
black crow became Bird’s guide. He would see it fly up before them, to reveal a way across a ravine, or hear it call, beckoning them down a certain path at a crossroads. He and Littlejohn followed trails and overgrown dirt roads and fire roads, sometimes emerging onto a stretch of broken pavement buckled by tree roots, sometimes losing any semblance of trail and crawling on their hands and knees through the underbrush. The crow led them through the dunes that bordered the hill country and flapped down in an abandoned garden by a flat marshy lake where they were able to gather grapes and self-seeded tomatoes. They were still hungry, but they would survive.

Walking on the sand of the dunes strained Bird’s sore muscles, but he pushed on. At times, they could follow a trail over bluffs that looked out on the water. Bird had tried, in the hills, to steer away from the sprawling vines of poison oak, but by the third day he was itching and miserable.

“It never affected me before,” Bird complained. “I used to be able to roll in the stuff, and it never bothered me.”

“Piss on it,” Littlejohn said. “That’ll take away the itching.”

“Are you sure?”

“Anyway, it’ll help. Can’t you heal it?”

“I’m doing my best. But I’m not really a healer. When there’s a life-and-death situation, sometimes something comes over me, but it seems to have deserted me now. If Sandy were here, he’d have an herb for the itch, and Madrone—she can make you feel better with a wave of her hand.”

“Who are they?”

“My family. My lovers. If they’re still alive.”

They were silent. The long rush and hiss of the waves reached them where they sat, concealed under the sheltering branches of a live oak.

“What’s going to happen when we get to your home?” Littlejohn asked suddenly.

“You’ll be welcome there.”

“Yeah? We’ll see.”

“I mean it.”

“Sure. Your family’s going to be real happy to see you come home dragging some faggot you picked up in the Pit.”

“Littlejohn, when I say my family, I mean all my lovers and all their lovers and kids and ex-lovers and everyone—and half of them are faggots, at least half the time. We consider it a word to be proud of.”

“They’re going to welcome competition?”

“We don’t think like that.”

“Sure you don’t.”

“I’m not saying nobody ever gets jealous. But we work it out.”

“Yeah, sure. Look, Charlie, what we done in the Pit don’t necessarily carry over outside. I understand that.”

“I don’t.”

“We come from different worlds. You’re a real Witch. You’ve got powers. Me, the only thing I really know about magic is it makes you fair game for every demonfucker who takes it into his head to kill you. When you get back with your own kind, you won’t want to hang around with me.”

“I’ll teach you,” Bird said. “We’ll all teach you.” But he was trying to convince himself, because he suspected maybe Littlejohn was right. Their bodies joined, but barriers remained that Bird couldn’t cross and maybe feared to. Littlejohn was opaque to him.

“Hell, Charlie. When you get to know me outside the joint, you won’t even like me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth.”

Some part of Littlejohn had already passed judgment on himself, or had accepted the judgment of a world that never really wanted him anything but dead or as something to use and throw away, a rag to wipe a dripping cock with. Bird wanted to do battle with that thing, Littlejohn’s demon, but he couldn’t say the words of challenge or reassurance because he did not know if they were true. He didn’t know Littlejohn, not really, not down in the soul where it counted, and he ached for people he did know, who opened at his touch and shared the same ground.

“Well, there’s not much point in worrying about it,” Bird said finally. “We may never get to my home. And there may be nobody still alive there if we do.”

“Yeah, there’s always that possibility,” Littlejohn said. “But somehow I think you’ll find your people.”

“Thanks.”

“If they’re anything like you, they’ll be damn hard to kill.”

They slept curled up together against the cold, burrowed into the roots of trees. Bird cast a circle of protection around them and set wards, going
through the forms of the ritual although he didn’t feel much power. But power follows practice, Maya always said. The more he used his magic, the stronger it would become.

In his dreams that night, he became a hawk, soaring over the hills to the north. The hills were green, as if it were early spring after a wet winter. In a blue cove squatted a domed structure, the old nuclear power plant that had been refurbished in the early twenties. Bird could see its energy field, like a living thing, and the small sparks within it that were the spirits of the men who operated it. One by one, the sparks winked out. The dome began to glow, and the grass and trees began to die.

He awoke shivering and sweating. He had had that dream before. When?

“What’s wrong?” Littlejohn asked.

“Just a dream. An old dream. Nothing.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I think it’s part of what I still can’t remember. How I got down here in the first place. What I did.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Littlejohn said. “We’re getting out. That’s enough to occupy your mind.”

As they made their way farther north, Bird got more and more nervous. They would soon reach the place where the coastline curved eastward to meet the convergence of the old Coast Road with the Inland Highway. The road ran right along the beach for nearly ten miles, Hijohn had warned them, with no cover. He could
feel
the road closing in on them, trapping them in a narrow cul-de-sac. If they were being hunted, they were approaching the perfect spot for an ambush. But the crow urged them on.

As dusk fell, Bird could make out a silver line of fencing. He felt the aura of an electronic barrier.

“Let’s stop,” he said. They waited for nightfall. The fenced-in land ahead of them was posted with military signs. Where the road curved to the edge of the coast and the fence began was a gate and checkpoint where armed guards patrolled.

Maybe he could kill the electricity long enough for them to get over the fence, but that might alert the guards to their presence, and they would still have miles to go on a road with little cover, where more vehicles than he ever remembered seeing at one time sped up and down, headlights glaring.

Bird looked thoughtfully at the water, where searchlights played at regular intervals. He grimaced. It could be contaminated with anything from sewage to radiation. But what choice did they have?

“Can you swim?” he asked Littlejohn.

“No, sorry.”

Bird considered. The fence ran down to the water, but he didn’t know how far into the water it ran. He stripped off his clothes.

“Wait here,” he said. A searchlight played on the front of the fence, but he timed it and ran out during its shadow, hitting the ground and rolling when the light returned. He crawled along the edge of the fence and lowered himself into the water. It was bone-numbing cold. The waves sucked at his legs, trying to pull him under. But the fence ended before he got out of his depth. They could do it—barely.

Cautiously, he made his way back to Littlejohn, had him take off his clothes and follow. Bird rolled their clothes into a tight bundle and balanced it on his head as he led Littlejohn into the waves. For one awful moment, the searchlight caught them. They froze, kneeling down in the frigid water, listening for shouts. But the light passed, and no one came after them.

They crawled out on the other side. The barrier at the highway’s edge formed a line of shadow just deep enough for them to lie in, side by side, huddling together to restore some warmth to their cold bodies. Bird’s plan was to move in that shadow, crawling if necessary, running when the searchlights let them. A thick bank of fog covered the sky, offering some concealment even though the moon was nearly full, shedding a diffused, pearly light. They couldn’t wait for moonset, which wouldn’t come until nearly dawn. They needed to hurry; they had to be off the base or well hidden by daylight, so he urged Littlejohn to put on his pants and ragged shirt, and they set off.

If they stayed on their hands and knees, the searchlights and headlights passed over them. During the dark periods, they could run for it, throwing themselves down on the rough ground when the light returned. It was a hard way to travel. Bird thought about pilgrims, crawling to sacred places for penitence. His knees were soon bleeding and his hands scraped, but they had no choice except to go on.

After several hours, Bird began to wonder how long he could continue to force his body to move. He had no idea how much ground they had covered. Eight miles? Nine? The eastern sky began to glow with a dim gray light, and the stars were disappearing. He urged Littlejohn on. He thought he could see another line of fence ahead of them, maybe a mile away, where the road curved inland and the coastal hills bulged out to the west. They would find cover there, if they were over the fence before daylight came.

Gray turned to pink, and the black faded to blue. They were making good time, but not good enough. “Let’s run for it,” he said to Littlejohn, who nodded. They abandoned their cautious crawl and ran, flat out. Bird felt his body obeyed him only because he refused to consider the possibility that it wouldn’t. There was no real strength or speed left in him, but somehow they made it to the fence. It was marked with a skull and crossbones and a sign
WARNING: TOXIC TERRITORY
.

Whatever lay on the other side couldn’t be nearly as toxic as that road would be to them in a few minutes. Bird laid his hand on the fence and sent an
energy spark to cut the electricity. It no longer mattered if they alerted the guards; as long as they got over the fence they could hide in the thick brush across the way. Littlejohn climbed quickly to the top and Bird moved to follow. He made it up a few feet and then his bad leg froze. His muscles refused to work.

Bird was stuck halfway up, sweating. Littlejohn looked back and saw him. “Come on,” he whispered.

“Go on,” Bird said. “I can’t make it over.”

Littlejohn turned, climbed back over the fence, grabbed Bird, and hoisted him over the top. They fell down together on the other side, landing heavily with the breath knocked out of them. After a moment, Bird felt himself. He was bruised, but nothing was broken.

“You okay?” he asked Littlejohn.

“Yeah.”

“Thanks. Let’s get out of here.”

Only a small side road separated them from a new range of hills. They were soon across it and into the underbrush. They made it another mile from the gate before Bird’s body finally gave out. He had just enough strength to crawl into the shelter of a grove of oaks and draw a magic circle around them. Then he collapsed. The sun shone down through the leaves, dried their clothes, and warmed their bodies, but they were unaware. They slept.