Following Trails

A car is like a gun: a machine that can kill people. That is one of the first things Aram told me when giving me lessons. Never forget how dangerous a car is. Never forget that you are fallible. I’m not Kelly: they drive as easily as breathing. But I think fear helps me. A little bit.

That, and my talent. I can push things and pull them; the car hugs the road on tight gravel turns. Anya is sitting in the passenger seat, focused on something only she can sense. She does with pain what I do with movement.

“Left. We’re getting closer,” she says, voice as pale as her face.

I take a left down another narrow road. Everything around us is evergreens, small homes buried in the forest whose existence is only guessed at by mail boxes. All I know is there is some pain here; pain we might be able to stop. Wilbur isn’t with us, busy trying to learn magic from Mr Pickles. Not helped by the fact that Wilbur is possibly the first magician who deals mostly with ghosts, or that Mr Pickles is a cat. I don’t know if Wilbur even wants to be what he is, and that’s nothing that can be taught.

I pull over to let a battered truck pass us, and Anya puts her left hand on mine before I pull out onto the road.

“Something is trying to hide. Everything has gone foggy.”

“Oh.” I reach, and pull the fog out of her head. Neither of us like me doing it: we have no idea what it might be harming. But sometimes there are no simple choices. Anya might not have lupus anymore, but no one is certain what is inside her. Or what she is becoming.

Anya shakes her head a little. “Better. The next right, a left. That should take us closer.”

I drive slowly. The road gets narrower, winding as though designed to cause accidents. We don’t pass any other vehicles, which is mostly a relief. I get tired of double- takes and stares. I’d get it for having too many freckles alone, to say nothing of acne and scars. The acne is better than it was least year, but I’m never going to not attract stares. It doesn’t help me like it.

“Left,” Anya says slowly.

I turn left, slowing the car down a crawl down a driveway whose trees scrape both sides of the car before coming to a clearing. There is a shall house that is falling apart built into the side of mossy hill. No vehicles, no garbage. Even so, I hesitate getting out of the car. Something feels wrong, though it’s nothing I can see. I reach out a little with my talent. Not using it; just trying to see if anything is pushing or pulling at the world. Nothing. The feeling remains.

Anya gets out slowly, walking over beside me. “Anything?”

“No. Still feels wrong. I could just be projecting?”

“No idea. There is a strange pain here. Under the hill, in the earth, straining against the sky. Rivers move toward the ocean. If it was the other way, it would be this. A bleeding out. A tributary.” She lets out a breath. “Sorry. I can’t tell you what it is. Or even where. I can’t even tell you if they are dying. It’s probably something like a miracle that I sensed the pain at all.”

I nod and walk beside her toward the house. Our feet begin sinking into the earth as though it was mud after seven steps. Anya would make fun of me for counting that, but Aram always says that information is vital. I reach over, right hand in Anya’s left, and use my talent to lift us into the air. The ground looks solid after our feet leave it.

“I think it’s inside the hill. The pain, and what is causing this?”

“Not the house?”

“The house isn’t there. Huh. I have no idea why I said that?”

I reach out with my left hand. A board snaps off the house and lands in my palm. Anya turns her talent on it: the board cracks and rots away. I let go of the remains.

“Still not here?”

“No idea.”

I keep up in the air, hold out my left hand in a fist. I open my hand slowly, the house shattering apart in a spray of wood. Walls, some furniture. A basement. I reach out with my talent. Nothing.

“There is a basement. It doesn’t want to budge, not rooted in this world. I think it’s a door into the hill?”

The wreckage of the house comes into clearer view as we get closer. I’ve never destroyed a house before, but it looks extremely real.

There is no door down to the basement. One slab of concrete greets us. I land on it, finding it solid Anya hisses softly. “A lot of pain. Under us.”

I gesture. She moves back off it, not sinking too deeply. I centre myself, touch the concrete. Pull. Something resists even as the concrete begins to crack. It feels like trying to lift up a mountain.

So I twist, aiming to tear the top off like a bottle cap. The world goes still, quiet layered upon quiet. I tune that out. Let my talent out. Shape it. Be it. My vision darkens at the edges, the world blurring. I am a space I find.

Pull.

I hear the world break. A thousand sounds I’ve never heard. It’s too late to stop. Too deep to be pulled back. I hear a scream of pain that burns through more than flesh. Somehow I push that away from me.

I open my eyes. My head throbs. My face aches. “I don’t think hair is meant to ache. Or fingernails.” My voice is a thin rasp. I have to use my talent just to sit up. The world spins a little.

I’m sitting on moss. I ache inside and out. Anya is sitting beside me, tense and trying to hide it. Across from us is an old man. Human. Except his left arm is like the earth we walked in. It bends, twists in the air, melts before our eyes.

“I thought the wandering magician would find me.” The voice is cool and calm, entirely at odds with the fact that his body isn’t moving at all beyond what used to be a left arm spasming energies into the world. “Instead I am found by children.”

“We did find you,” Anya says flatly.

“I am wounded. We are not impossible to find when wounded. Your friend, though.” His gaze focuses on me. I know he’s not human, because there’s no shock. There’s no sympathy either. “You forced your way into my home. And can still do things after that.”

I shrug, but say nothing.

“Can we help you?” Anya asks. “You said you’d answser once my friend woke up. He’s up. We can hurt you; that’s not the same thing at all.”

“It can be. But no. Your friend broke the door to my home; it will be noticed. Other fae will arrive, and notice I am wounded. I will be healed, perhaps, or at least taken home. You have done the only thing you could have done for me, and by accident at that. Sometimes the universe works that way for fae.”

“Fae. Which is –?” Anya asks.

“We protect the borders of the universe. And deal with certain creatures in our employ. One of which decided to rebel, and wounded me in dying. It is hard to wound us, and the injury was deep enough that I dared not contact one of our castles.”

“You’d bleed out more. Like radiation poisoning?” I ask.

“Consider it more poisoning reality. Fae glamours are more real than reality; our injuries spill out glamour. That much I tell you, and this too: go.”

We’ve met magicians. The fae’s voice isn’t power. It’s a fact. One moment we’re under the hill, the next we’re in the car on a different road.

“Okay,” Anya says slowly. “That was more than a little scary.”

I nod. “More than a lot.”

She laughs, almost. “Point. You up for driving?”

I shake my head. I don’t trust myself to do anything right now. Even shaking my head makes the world spin in sickening colours, the headache having migrated to my whole body. I crawl into the back seat, trying not to whimper, and Anya says nothing, turns on music and drives back toward Rivercomb. I drift in and out of pain that is somehow not as bad as it feels. That thought helps me shake myself off.

I hurt. Not as much as the fae was making me feel, but I hurt. I don’t know why the fae wanted me to feel more pain than I do. I don’t know what the fae even is. But I’m hoping Anya knows, or Mr Pickles. Or anyone at all. Because I pushed my talent harder than I have before, and I think the fae was shocked I managed anything at all.

I think the fae is very old, and very arrogant with it. And impressing something like that isn’t a good idea at all. Not an Aram-lesson. Just a Noah-lesson from a life too full of weirdness lately. Anya is singing along to the radio; that helps me find a proper sleep, and welcome relief from the pain as much as her singing voice.

I don’t think she puts her talent into her singing. Not consciously.

And then I think nothing else, and let the deep darkness claim me for a few hours.