charlatans for pay. One in a great many is like me.
I can Hear and See beings of power. Gods, deities, demons - whatever you want to call them; I can see through the veils that hide them from normal people. Veils that they place over themselves, and veils that humanity places there - a vast slumbering herd mind too disturbed to recognize the bright light that walks among it, unknowing of its own strength. Remember when Barrie's Peter Pan urged all you children to believe? Well, guess what? It works the other way, too.
The Djinn in his endless wanderings, Baba Yaga behind her ageless cold mask; I could See them where others saw only their vessels. Looking down at my grandmother, I could See her too, touched as she was with a Power much stronger than mine. I could Hear her as she lay there.
For my grandmother wasn't peaceful. She was screaming.
* * *
I went to drink.
This doesn't help, but at least gives me a perfectly good excuse for feeling maudlin, useless and guilty. Nan Wibert was old. I didn't know how old, precisely, because she didn't know herself, but she was in her upper nineties. She had given birth to my mother in France before coming to the U.S., arriving sometime after the Second World War. She had some degenerative illness whose name I kept managing to forget two minutes after the doctors told me, one that despite my considerable financial resources I couldn't save her from. She'd known that, of course, and schooled me sharply about it before she'd closed her eyes some weeks before.
"Cher, listen to me." Her voice was thready but still had snap.
"Yes, Gran’mere."
"This thing I am doing."
"Dying, Gran."
"Yes, impertinent boy. Dying."
"What about it, Gran?"
She pushed the coverlet back a few inches and moved her hands about aimlessly before clasping them on her breast and looking at me. "It happens to us all, Michel."
"I know that, Gran." I was sitting in the chair next to her bed, trying not cry, trying not to hulk in my overcoat festooned with talismans of magic and firepower.
"No," she said, reaching out one hand to touch my forehead. I bent my head forward. "You think you know that. But you do not. I will die, Michel. It is something I fear. But that, too, is something that happens to us all, fearing death." Then she'd patted my cheek and gone to sleep again. I'd spoken to her three or four more times before she'd stopped waking up.
I waved at the bartender, who brought me another whisky. It burned, going down. This was worse than my parents dying. Much worse.
When they died, I had no Power at all.
My fist clenched against the vial again. It pulsed once, gently, in response. It could give life. That was its purpose. It could take my grandmother and lift her from her suffering, the suffering the doctors couldn't see; the pain from destroyed nerves that she was no longer able to express, her mind still present enough to feel but her spine long gone and even her muscles unable to grimace. The machines did not need to keep her alive, for she was breathing on her own, and that was the curse.
Every moment, she screamed, and no-one could hear her but I. But I could restore her.
She'd never spoken of it directly. There were no rules in this world where she played cards and fenced with the Immortals. There were no judges, no codes; just manners . Manners, she told me, were what would save me if I chose to swim in those waters. Not with humans, who cared nothing for such things, but with those to whom the things which humans cared about were less than nothing - with them, manners were all, and sacrosanct.
Manners had gained me the vial.
But somehow, I knew, without being told, that to use my gifted Power to bring her life would be discourteous . I had never risked being discourteous in the steps of the immortals before. I had no interest strong enough to risk discovering the penalty.
I did now, I thought. But I wasn't sure.
I didn't know if I cared.
I went back to the hospital, stared down at
I can Hear and See beings of power. Gods, deities, demons - whatever you want to call them; I can see through the veils that hide them from normal people. Veils that they place over themselves, and veils that humanity places there - a vast slumbering herd mind too disturbed to recognize the bright light that walks among it, unknowing of its own strength. Remember when Barrie's Peter Pan urged all you children to believe? Well, guess what? It works the other way, too.
The Djinn in his endless wanderings, Baba Yaga behind her ageless cold mask; I could See them where others saw only their vessels. Looking down at my grandmother, I could See her too, touched as she was with a Power much stronger than mine. I could Hear her as she lay there.
For my grandmother wasn't peaceful. She was screaming.
* * *
I went to drink.
This doesn't help, but at least gives me a perfectly good excuse for feeling maudlin, useless and guilty. Nan Wibert was old. I didn't know how old, precisely, because she didn't know herself, but she was in her upper nineties. She had given birth to my mother in France before coming to the U.S., arriving sometime after the Second World War. She had some degenerative illness whose name I kept managing to forget two minutes after the doctors told me, one that despite my considerable financial resources I couldn't save her from. She'd known that, of course, and schooled me sharply about it before she'd closed her eyes some weeks before.
"Cher, listen to me." Her voice was thready but still had snap.
"Yes, Gran’mere."
"This thing I am doing."
"Dying, Gran."
"Yes, impertinent boy. Dying."
"What about it, Gran?"
She pushed the coverlet back a few inches and moved her hands about aimlessly before clasping them on her breast and looking at me. "It happens to us all, Michel."
"I know that, Gran." I was sitting in the chair next to her bed, trying not cry, trying not to hulk in my overcoat festooned with talismans of magic and firepower.
"No," she said, reaching out one hand to touch my forehead. I bent my head forward. "You think you know that. But you do not. I will die, Michel. It is something I fear. But that, too, is something that happens to us all, fearing death." Then she'd patted my cheek and gone to sleep again. I'd spoken to her three or four more times before she'd stopped waking up.
I waved at the bartender, who brought me another whisky. It burned, going down. This was worse than my parents dying. Much worse.
When they died, I had no Power at all.
My fist clenched against the vial again. It pulsed once, gently, in response. It could give life. That was its purpose. It could take my grandmother and lift her from her suffering, the suffering the doctors couldn't see; the pain from destroyed nerves that she was no longer able to express, her mind still present enough to feel but her spine long gone and even her muscles unable to grimace. The machines did not need to keep her alive, for she was breathing on her own, and that was the curse.
Every moment, she screamed, and no-one could hear her but I. But I could restore her.
She'd never spoken of it directly. There were no rules in this world where she played cards and fenced with the Immortals. There were no judges, no codes; just manners . Manners, she told me, were what would save me if I chose to swim in those waters. Not with humans, who cared nothing for such things, but with those to whom the things which humans cared about were less than nothing - with them, manners were all, and sacrosanct.
Manners had gained me the vial.
But somehow, I knew, without being told, that to use my gifted Power to bring her life would be discourteous . I had never risked being discourteous in the steps of the immortals before. I had no interest strong enough to risk discovering the penalty.
I did now, I thought. But I wasn't sure.
I didn't know if I cared.
I went back to the hospital, stared down at
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