Magicland, p.6
MagicLand, page 6
“Umm, okay. Where is this horse?”
“Ha ha,” was all the old man said in response.
“Why do you call me Augmenter?”
The man sighed. “Why do you think?”
“But you’re augmented, too.”
“That is a very silly thing to say,” the man scoffed.
“What do you think those are for?” Belex reached toward the man’s face and pushed gently against his spectacles and walked out the door.
It was cooler outside than it had been just a few minutes ago, and now a stiff, chilly breeze was whipping around the buildings, making Belex wish for a hood. Before he could explore another thought, a heavy black-hooded sweatshirt formed around his upper body.
“What the—” he said out loud. He looked up and saw a small, bald boy looking at him and smiling. The boy clapped his hands twice and ran off, and a soft purple scarf filled with symbols wrapped itself around Belex’s neck. “Hey!” he yelled for the boy, but there was no response.
Belex walked through this part of the city for several hours. He found numerous other kinds of small magical acts taking place. He watched a nearly emaciated man heaving large square stones up to one building’s third floor with nothing but the wave of his hand, aimed at a mason who somehow was able to catch each stone in his hands. The mason expertly molded them into an emerging new pattern in a gap within the stonework.
“Heave, Shage, heave,” the mason would yell below when he was ready for another. Belex watched in fascination for a considerable amount of time before he moved on.
Belex observed children playing the ball game he had seen earlier, and he watched what looked like a horse race between two women in the flat streets below the hill. There were dozens of outdoor stalls filled with people offering a variety of services and goods. The odors of grilled meats lingered in the air. He was hungry, but he couldn’t eat meat, and as the lunch hour passed into the afternoon, he started to crave fried vegetables, which he thought he also smelled in the air.
Belex spotted a group of tables outside an eating establishment that looked like a good place to sit down and rest his feet for a few moments. The tables were round wooden slabs with billowing umbrellas poking out of a middle hole. He sat down at one and rubbed his eyes. He was tired from all of the walking. He realized his legs were burning, which was an odd and foreign experience.
When he moved his hands away from his eyes, he nearly jumped out of his skin-tight suit as his hand brushed into a hot bowl of steaming vegetables. A young girl, not more than ten or eleven years old, was standing a few tables away, looking at Belex while holding a doll and pretending to feed it. When Belex tried to say something, she ran off giggling. Belex looked down at the bowl, which had a pleasant, spicy smell and noticed a fork hovering just above the bowl. He tried to grab it, but it danced away as he heard the child giggle again.
He looked up and her little head, covered with long, straight sandy hair, dashed behind a nearby wall, as if it had been alone and disembodied. Belex thought, given the circumstances, that may have well been the case. He tried to grab the fork again, but the fork escaped, and again, he heard the giggle.
“C’mon,” he pleaded. “I’m hungry.”
At that, the fork stabbed into the food and presented itself to Belex. He looked up, and although he couldn’t see the girl, he smiled and said, “Thank you.”
He stood up after finishing his food and walked among the stalls and milling people, keeping an eye out for the little girl who had given him the delicious vegetables. A fog rolled in, dropping the temperature even more. He tightened the scarf around his neck, which warmed him considerably more than such a thin fabric should, and he noticed a nearby window. It was full of condensation with an inlaid set of symbols. Curious, he approached. Scrawled inside the condensation were words he could somehow read: “You’re welcome.” What a funny place this is. A strange, funny place, he thought.
The day wore on, and he saw no further signs of either of his two child benefactors. He was thankful for them, for they had not only warmed his body but warmed his soul, if only for these few hours. Before long, the sun was disappearing again over the western building tops, and he found himself walking up the same hill where he had woken in the morning. A sense of familiarity settled over him. Instead of using the walkway, he found himself in the street where the children had been playing their ball game.
Next to him was a set of parallel metal bars embedded into the street itself. These seemed to bend and follow the middle of the street all the way down the hill and, probably, beyond. He assumed these were part of a guidance mechanism, which this primitive city had not yet abandoned. He decided to follow them.
He threw a branch at them to test for an electric current and nothing happened. Next, he tossed a stone across the two rails to test for a weaponized field. The stone landed softly just beyond. He touched one of the rails lightly with his foot. Nothing. This disavowed his mind of the theory that it was part of an electrical or defense system.
He had yet to deduce what powered the lights in this city. Based on the city’s obvious attachment to antiquity, he would have expected lanterns and other absurdly ancient lighting technologies, but all he had seen the previous night were glows with undefinable power sources.
Then, brilliantly, he realized that perhaps these people were fakes, that the basis behind their war against his people had been contrived. That maybe these bars of metal were part of MagicLand’s local communications network—that these people were renegades of some kind, and their insurgency amounted to nothing nobler than rebellion. Maybe their power sources were small fusion reactors—centuries-old technology, perhaps, but technology just the same, and more to the point, a technology that required computerization.
He wanted to learn more about the potential communications network nestled within the street, so he thought he’d put his ear down and open a connection to the port that was surely a necessary access point. Even if stoven. net was inaccessible, he should be able to do that. His memories were coming back, so parts of his system were probably back online, he reasoned.
He got down on his knees, splayed out, and put his right ear against one of the metal rails to let his systems go to work.
As he tried to focus on setting up a connection, he also thought about how weird this place was. He was an escaped prisoner, laying down in the middle of the street of his captors’ town, and nobody seemed to pay him any attention. He chuckled inside, thinking the two kids were probably watching.
He looked up for a moment to confirm his reality, and sure enough, people were around, doing various things—mostly walking from one place to the next but not paying any attention to him. He almost felt insulted by the lack of interest before he put his ear against the metal bar once again.
At first, nothing happened, so he tried again, assuming his systems were trying to identify a network with unfamiliar protocols. He felt a sudden thrill as he heard something in the metal that seemed distant but profound all at once. A ringing, clanging sort of noise. He rejoiced at the reminder of the feeling that one gets in a history stratum, listening to the sounds of ancient technologies. But this was real. It sounded alive. He slammed an open palm against the street in excitement and disbelief.
2
It was a major surprise when Aurilena’s mother volunteered the following morning to accompany her to Hilkiah’s home to discuss the young Gath and possibly meet him. “I’ll admit you’ve made me curious from a healer’s standpoint,” she smiled wanly. “I’m curious to know what the awful thing looks like. Perhaps Orpah could use it in a stew.”
“Mom!” admonished Aurilena.
“You’re right, darling. A Gath is not worthy of one of Orpah’s fine stews. I doubt even she could offer anything to reduce their foul flavors.”
Aurilena sighed and scoffed as Hilkiah greeted them warmly. “Miriam,” he said, extending his hands. She took them, and he kissed each of her cheeks.
“I’ve missed you, so,” Miriam said to Hilkiah with deep reverence. They had their differences regarding how magic should be used, but Miriam had genuinely warm feelings for Hilkiah and his stalwart pacifism.
“And I you, young lady.”
Miriam tugged twice on the long, draping sleeve of his purple robe and smiled.
“Please sit. Both of you. I’ll conjure up some tea from Orpah’s lair,” said Hilkiah. He brought out three steaming mugs of tea and everyone sat down.
“About the Gath,” began Miriam after sipping her tea. “Oh, this is quite delicious.”
“Ah. It takes a Gath to earn a visit from my favorite healer.”
She laughed at that and said, “I thought I was your only healer.”
“Indeed,” said Hilkiah as he thought back to another day.
3
“This is madness! Absolute madness. I swear I’ll ask the Legions to remove every healer from this land.” Miriam had never seen Hilkiah so openly exasperated. Hilkiah threw a mug against the beige wall, splattering it with green tea. The mug bounced on the floor. “Madness!”
“Hilkiah, they’ve tried everything.” She tried her calming, soothing voice. “These are good healers, Hilkiah. Truly.”
Hilkiah was having none of it. “They aren’t. Not at all. This was what? A common cold? A runny nose! A slight cough! Maybe a little headache! And now, look at him!” The man lying on the bed was pale and wheezing, not responding to Hilkiah’s tirades, or even noticing them.
Hilkiah sat down on the far end of the man’s bed as a stream of nurses and healers entered the room and left quickly when Hilkiah screamed, “Be gone, knaves!” He looked upon the man, who had become emaciated after having once been strong and athletic. The man was a few years older than Hilkiah, but not by much. Both men had been busy proving to be formidable opponents to the degradations of middle age.
“He was the friend I left behind,” said Hilkiah to the young healer softly. “Of course, I was a young lad. I had no choice in the matter as my father hauled me out of bed and dropped me onto a boat aimed toward the Wandering City. But for several years, I assumed he was dead. Oh, my dear Miriam, I was ravaged by guilt for every moment of those years. Then when he found me years later, I barely remembered him. And we became so close. So close.” He shook his head. “It sometimes isn’t easy being a high priest,” he sighed. “We are required to be somewhat beyond our capabilities.”
Miriam was a healer but was certain nothing she could try would correct the course of events that had taken Hilkiah’s friend. She had seen the efforts of everyone else. She would have done nothing different. When Hilkiah had asked her if she’d try, she had told him that, and that was when the rant began.
“But he did survive. Somehow. A few did . . . I do know that, but . . . well, they were all miracles, weren’t they? Those that didn’t flee to the Wandering City?”
“And many of those who did flee became ill in that soup of toxins and poison,” Miriam pointed out.
Hilkiah nodded his agreement. “Yes, and a determined few made their way back and managed to launch an exodus out of The Wandering City back home. And, Miriam, you do know about this lad here, do you not?” He looked at his dying friend.
“Yes, Hilkiah.” She tried not to sigh, but she was also determined to avoid hearing the story yet again. “His heroism was the stuff of ceremony, you said. He staved off the attack of the Gath with fireballs in the sky that melted their machines in flight. As a mere boy!” she said with exaggerated regard.
“Indeed.” His voice was quiet. Resigned. He then implored her with a look of such sadness that Miriam feared it would etch itself into her mind for eternity. “Have you nothing?” his voice choked, “at all?”
She shook her head. “Everything has been done, my dear friend. I’m sorry.”
He sat silent for some time, and she sat with him, not speaking because sometimes healing meant simply sitting quietly in a room with a loved one.
After some time passed, Miriam said, “Except one thing. One thing I do believe has not been tried, and I can’t believe, quite frankly, that both of us have neglected to consider it.”
“What might that be,” he stated in a broken whisper.
“Have you knelt beside him and prayed? Have you asked your Great Shepherd to dictate if his journey should end?”
Hilkiah looked almost alarmed. “What is wrong with me? And they call me a high priest! That should have been the first thing I tried.”
“You were too close to this,” explained Miriam.
Hilkiah did indeed pray to Yehoshua, and within hours, his friend rebounded from a nearly comatose state to alertness, almost as a dog shifts from sleep to frenetic buoyancy.
When that happened, Hilkiah embraced Miriam with tears in his eyes and said, “You are the greatest healer I’ve ever seen.”
4
“Tell me about him,” Miriam said. “Tell me about this Gath.”
“Well, he is a broad-shouldered young man with an interesting pattern of hair on his head and what I believe the women in the city will call, regarding his face, ‘chiseled looks.’ A rather impressive specimen.”
“He’s not a man,” corrected Aurilena, hoping to curry a few points with her mother. “He’s a Gath.”
“Quite harmless here and quite your age, I dare say,” Hilkiah said to Aurilena. “You’ve mentioned that he doesn’t seem to have access to his charming biomechanical systems, not that they would be particularly effective here if he did.”
“Hilkiah,” said Miriam. “All it takes is for a few people to believe that he can cause damage, and your theory that they can’t harm us in Moria is left in tatters. This attitude toward Gath asylum I find extremely disconcerting. One of these days, this policy is going to explode in your face, and we’ll all be the worse for it.” If Miriam had known the kind of pain that sort of reference brought to Hilkiah, she wouldn’t have said it, but she didn’t know, and it did.
Hilkiah sat silently and somewhat sullenly for a moment before replying: “Your objections are noted, Miriam. Perhaps we can strike a bargain.”
“Oh, no,” said Miriam. “Not this again.”
“You shall heal using the power of Yehoshua. And I will send the Gath back to his accident site . . . with but a bit of lunch.”
“Sorry, my good friend. You can’t purchase a change in theology from me. But it was a noble effort.”
Hilkiah nodded and smiled.
She continued, “But you still haven’t told me the story behind this Gath creature. Why he’s here. How you found him.”
“Mom, I told you all that.”
“How you found him perhaps, but . . .” and she looked at Hilkiah when saying this, “isn’t it a heavy coincidence that my daughter was riding around in the Eastern Hills when she encountered the wired demon?”
Aurilena sighed.
“Yes, it is an interesting coincidence,” replied Hilkiah. “I suspect your daughter is in league with the Gath. Guards!”
“There are no guards here, you silly man,” said Miriam. “My point is that something drew her there. A force—something—and it may be something we aren’t familiar with. A new technology, perhaps. This is a tenacious race, Hilkiah. They’ve been trying to destroy us for two thousand years, and they keep inventing new ways to have at it. Or perhaps . . . there was a powerful high priest, whom I shall not name, who detected his presence and sent my daughter out on a reckless mission to find him?”
“Mom. Were you listening to me at all when I told you about what happened? How I heard a voice? And who sent me to investigate?”
Hilkiah raised an eyebrow at this but said nothing.
Her mother was dismissive and unconvinced, and the three of them haggled over this point of contention for several minutes before Aurilena finally seemed to break through with this point: “It’s a lot like when I speak with animals, Mom, which you never stop making fun of. Telling Judith I’m an animal trainer . . . sheesh.”
Miriam shrugged as if saying, “What can I say?”
“But he’s an animal, too, like you and me.”
“Bah! He’s no animal. He’s a souped-up electrical cord,” Miriam scoffed.
“And I heard him in distress, and I went to him. It’s really not complicated.”
“That’s nice, dear, but it doesn’t explain why you and the techno-infestation were in that area at the same time in the first place.”
“Mostly as part of a conspiracy to see how many derogatory synonyms for Belex you can come up with, Mom.”
“What is a Belex?” she asked with unblinking eyes.
“That’s his name.”
“Oh, torture my soul—you’re on a first-name basis with the electro-plasma monstrosity?”
“Face it, my friend,” said Hilkiah, looking at Miriam. “Sometimes, events conspire to fall into the realm of coincidence. It really can be that simple.” He could have been more honest with her, he knew, but it would have complicated things.
“Fine. But why do you think he’s here?”
“He says he’s an actor,” said Aurilena.
“An actor!” laughed Miriam. “What a hoot! Well, at least we know that on a certain level, he’s not lying. At least I know why you’re smitten by the silicon rat. And what is your take on him, Hilkiah?”
“I am not smitten by him!” insisted a flustered Aurilena. “First Judith and now you? What’s wrong with you people?”
Miriam ignored her and waited for Hilkiah’s answer.
“A Reckless, perhaps,” said Hilkiah, still unsure about that. But because this was Miriam, he felt like he should refer to the Gath boy as a Reckless. In fact, he thought, it would be best if all Morians considered him so, no matter what his true intent may be. “His systems are completely useless to him. They appear to have quit on him, perhaps because he truly was in an accident of some kind. He says he was in a pod, which isn’t a device I’m fully familiar with, and that he crashed. His biomechanical and biometric systems were disabled in this accident, so he is relatively harmless.”
