The Magister (Earthkeep) (19 page)

"Well," Zude began, carefully setting the cat aside.  Her grin was genuine but truncated.  She covered Bosca's hand with her own, holding it tight for a moment.

Bosca searched Zude's face.  "How are you?"

"Good," Zude boomed, for emphasis shaking the hand that she held.  "I'm good, Bosca. . . ."  Her heartiness faded.  "Wipe that," she almost whispered.  "I'm no good at all."  She looked at Bosca.  "Barely holding it all together, in fact." 

Bosca waited. 

Zude let her head droop and rested her elbows on her knees.  "It just seems like so much pain right now."  She imprisoned her hair in her fists and tugged, first one hand and then the other, as if her distress lived in her scalp and she could uproot it by hand.  "A season of pain."

Bosca touched Zude only with her voice.  "A season of pain," she echoed.

Zude nodded.  Then her chest expanded with a huge intake of air.  Her downward sigh became a sob.  She fell against Bosca, lodging her head in the long neck and inviting the long arms to surround her.  The arms obliged her, cuddling her like a child and catching her drenching tears.  Zude cried hard, filling the office with her wails.  And Bosca held her, a firm, gentle bower for the sorrow. 

Some minutes later they sat more easily in the sofa's deep cushions, Zude breathing smoothly again and Bosca enclosing one of Zude's hands with both of her own. 

"I had a visit with Regina," Bosca said.

Zude matched her voice to the texture of the moment.  "You saw her today?"

"Well, yes, but only briefly.  My real visit with her was last night."

"Oh?"

"We dreamwalked," Bosca said.

Small hairs rose on the back of Zude's neck.  "You what?"

"We met.  In our sleep."

"You mean like spooners?"

"No, no, no."  Bosca shook Zude's hand.  "You keep thinking that magic only happens between lovers."  She spoke slowly, as if to ensure Zude's understanding.  "Last night Regina called to me.  From her sleep."  Zude stared at her.  "So I went dancing with her on the High Road," Bosca finished.

Zude felt dizzy.  Carefully she took a large open breath and nodded very slowly.

"Like you did in Punto," Bosca resumed briskly, nodding with Zude, "when you left your body to get the computer codes."  She squeezed her friend's hand.  "Zude, I want us to walk with Regina together, you and me."  When Zude's mouth flew open, Bosca hurried on.  "I understood so much from her!  Things she can't tell us in her body.  I felt like I had dropped a huge burden.  You might feel better, too, if you met her there."

Zude shot off the sofa.  "Bosca!  I can't!"

"You can, Zude!"  Bosca's voice filled Zude's body, down to her toes.  "You're getting to be a regular card-carrying psychic, Magister Adverb."

Zude combed her hair with her fingers.  There was a long pause.  "All right.  I'll try, but. . ."

"Good!  We can do it whenever you're ready.  Tonight."

"You mean right now?"

"Why not?"

"Ah . . .well . . . no reason, I guess."  Zude looked toward the door.  "We could.  We certainly wouldn't be disturbed."

"Regina's been in bed. . ." Bosca said, closing her eyes, "hmm. . .she's been in bed for over three hours now.  It's eighteen after eleven." 

As she sat again, Zude checked her tacto-time.  It was 11:18.  "How do you do that?"

Bosca sank back into the deep sofa.  She stretched her arms above her head. "Anything you really want to know is available to you, Zude."

"Ah."  Zude drew a breath and sat up.  "Well.  How do we do this?"

"You're sure you want to?"

"Bosca, I'm not sure of anything anymore.  I know that I want to understand Regina.  I know that I trust you."

"Trust yourself."  Bosca let her hands massage Zude's neck and shoulders.  As Zude relaxed, Bosca's words took on a formal tone.  "Tonight's working will be different from our usual patterning.  Your Swallower will guide you as usual, but through me.  I will configure the passage and escort you to our appointed station.  You will leave the earth, much as if in flight, and discover yourself on a thoroughfare, empty of visible travelers.  Stay in touch with the energy spline that connects you to your body.  There is no danger.  I shall step aside when Regina arrives but will return when you call.  Regina may or may not appear in her echo-body, but you will have no difficulty recognizing her."

Bosca's hands withdrew from their massaging.  Her voice was smooth again.  "Here, stretch out."  She placed Zude supine on the sofa and dimmed the lights.  She stood for a moment at the windowed wall, watching the city glowing below. 

"The paque-trap is to your right," Zude told her, "there." The window disappeared.  Zude waited and watched. 

Bosca's long body was encased in a bubble of subdued brightness.  Her back was to Zude.  Both her hands were moving upward in front of her face, enclosing an object that Zude could not see.  She spoke words that Zude could not hear.  Abruptly, her arms fell, and without a glance at Zude she strode to the precise opposite side of the room, faced the wall, and repeated her actions. 

Now to the south, Zude thought.  And Bosca moved to the point on the south wall at right angles to the line she had just walked, repeated her actions, and walked to the opposite wall for her last repetition.  With her final low incantation, the room jerked.  The walls and the ceiling of the office were suddenly misted over, as if she had struck a protective dome within their confines.

Bosca surveyed the dimly lit area and returned to the sofa.  "I'll sit here in the recliner by your side."  Her voice seemed muted, without full overtones.  She settled into the big chair and closed her eyes.  Moments later she leaned forward and showed Zude a many-faceted crystal.  "It's a trisoctahedron," she explained.  "Twenty-four sides, eight for each aspect of the Glad Self.  It's our talisman.  I'll hold it and you'll hold my other hand.  Like this."  She took Zude's hand and leaned back in the reclining chair.  "Are you about to drop off?" she asked easily.

"No," Zude answered.  "But I could."

"Stay alert.  We won't be on a dream vector."

Zude closed her eyes, feeling Bosca's steady hand, listening to her warm voice.  "Just call yourself home now, like you always do.  At your own pace."  Zude felt herself floating, moving toward spaciousness.  Minutes later the voice said, "Reach for your highest vibration."  Zude began her shorter breaths, letting the voice carry her upward.  She rested, at ease but courting a more animated bliss, until her fullness began tugging against its belaying lines and the ballast of her body.  She focused on Bosca's voice, aware that it was drifting away from her.  "You are absolutely safe," it whispered. 

Those were the last words Zude heard, for suddenly she was swept upward by a cold rising wind.  It lifted her off the sofa and thrust her through the protective dome and the walls of the Shrievalty, catapulting her outward over the wide city lying resplendent below her.  It spun itself into light-year swiftness and set its course for the stars.  Zude clasped Bosca's hand, now a braided cable of light unfurling behind her as she hurtled through space, the wind roaring in her ears.

The wind died suddenly, and with it the sound.  Zude stood in boundless silence on a moonlit country road that traveled the crest of a high treeless ridge.  Below her and to each side, tall grasses, wooded hills and ancient stones lay motionless, vigilant.

She started walking toward the white moon, her footsteps on the dirt and pebbles the only sound.  She was clothed as she had been in her office, though her body was not solid and exuded an iridescent sheen.  The air, cold and fresh, held a trace of the sea, and behind her a thin strand of light rounded into a cloud and settled on a rock.  "I'll wait here," it said in Zude's mind.

She walked on, her feet moving now to a rhythm not her own, but one she knew well.  The familiar song of the children floated on the thin air.  She hummed along until the tune faded.

"You came!"  Regina — a shadow of Regina? — landed on Zude's back with a tactile thump, her legs straddling Zude's torso, both hands holding Zude's head. 

Zude disengaged a small finger from the socket of her eye and peeled the frail burden from her back.  "Reggie!"  She hugged and stroked, trying to give substance to a form that declined to be substantial.  At last she simply held the child on her arm, letting the white hair rest against her shoulder.  "Reggie, you are so. . .weightless!" 

"You, too, my Zudie!" said the child, giggling and poking at Zude's softshirt.  "Carry me?" she added.

"Of course," said her friend, moving toward the moon once more.  "Where shall we go?"

"Everywhere!" Regina exclaimed.  Zude dutifully strode forward, bouncing her laughing bundle with each step.

"Stop, Zudie."  When Zude obediently halted, Regina told her, "We have to play now."

"A game, preshi?"

"Eye-swap," the bundle said, wiggling to be put down.  "Come on." 

Regina slid from her perch and squatted in the middle of the road, her feet flat and her buttocks swinging just off the ground, her armpits on her overalled knees.

Zude imitated her position.  "So what's this eye thing?"

Regina's smiling head bobbed from side to side.  "Zudie, I can see me.  Can you see you?"  Zude frowned.  Regina bubbled on.  "Put your feet here, Zudie, inside mine."

"Mine are so much bigger, Reggie."  She started forward.

"In your head, Zudie, do it in your head!"  Zude closed her eyes.  "There!" Regina crooned.  "Now look!"

Zude opened her eyes to a squatting, slightly gray-haired woman in plastiped boots and a softshirt, earnestly squeezing her eyes shut.  Zude gasped and giggled, her head bobbing left and right.  "That's me!"  Her voice was a child's treble. 

"Yes!" said Regina from inside Zude's child-body, "yes, and I can. . ."  The voice slipped away.

And continued flowing from the mouth of the figure across from her. 

". . .jump into you!" said the warm mellow voice from the shiny-eyed Magister.  Before Zude could respond, the voice was back with her, her companion again inside her tiny body.  "Oh, Zudie, I've missed you so!" 

Zude was plunged gloriously into the heart of Regina's love.  She basked there only a moment before a cavalcade of characters paraded by her: Ria, Enrique, Eva, bisabuela, Bosca, cousins, friends, Zude herself, all perceived from the vantage point of a small being.  She saw with Regina's eyes both the accented memories and the daily commonplaces of a cheerful young life. 

To her astonishment she realized she could halt the progression and examine as deeply as she wished any one of Regina's experiences, vividly remembered or long-buried under armor deliberately or fortuitously forged.  Zude investigated a scene or two, feeling the feelings that pervaded them: big joys, stark disappointments, bald angers, lavish generosities.  There, in the still and frosty countryside, on a road with neither origin nor destination, and inhabiting the echo-body of her cherished child companion, the Magister explored them all with appropriate awe and attention, all the while aware that Regina was happily allowing her scrutiny.

She even survived with dignity and full appreciation her introduction to Regina's Source Self, that vital spirit from whose center the child's life energy and well-being surged.  I-Bear, Regina called her Source Self, and Zude in fact felt it as a great ursine presence.

"She has something to tell you, Zudie."

"Your I-Bear?"

"Yes.  It's important, she says.  Listen!"

Zude was surrounded by a delicate tuneful humming and a fuzzy breeze that swaddled her and held her close to an enormous heart.  She swung there, embraced by a big innocent joy and a vast affectionate curiosity.  If this was what an I-Bear felt like, she thought, she wanted one too.  Such comfort!

Then it came to her like an ocean seeping into her bones."What you are proudest of," the I-Bear told her, "you must destroy."

Then it ebbed quickly away, back into the light-year stars, leaving her in her echo-body again, cold upon a moon-drenched road with a white-haired child beside her.

Zude reached toward Regina to gather her into her arms again.  She held the child close, while the words resounded in her mind, over and over.

"I have to go, Zudie."

Startled, Zude squeezed the little hand.  "Will I see you again, preshi?"

"Oh yes, Zudie.  In my real body."

"But then you will go away?"

A dazzling smile covered the child's face.  "Yes.  Soon."  She kissed Zude's cheek.  The overalls and the shirt became translucent, then transparent. 

The Magister watched the precious shape fade entirely.  She did not reach out.  She did not weep.  She only nodded.  A deep ease settled around her, one in which she wished to abide forever.

Some time later a spline of light circled her head, took her hand, drew her back to earth. 

Zude was cold and shaking, even under the warm tekla of the Magister cloak that was spread over her.  Tears rolled down her cheeks.  She was on her side, and beneath her was not hard dirt and pebbles, but the cushions of a sofa.  Her arms held her knees close under her chin in fetal position. 

The voice from beside her was no longer muted.  "I found your cloak in the wall abditory," it said.  "I hope that's all right." 

Zude managed to nod, then slowly unfolded her legs and rolled onto her back.  The office was as usual, no longer under a misted dome. 

The lights were still low, and Bosca sat on the recliner holding a cup out to her.  "You should have flightbane to soothe you after an episode like this, but it's not on the transmog's menu.  This is a double-steeped herbal."

Zude pushed to a sitting position, keeping the cloak around her and closing her eyes to steady the room's spin.  She could manage only a small sip of the liquid.

"Did we do what I think we did?" she whispered.

"We did indeed."

Zude nodded.  She blew on the tea, then took a large swallow and sat back.  The hot drink eased her insides.  She rubbed her forearms and thighs, assuring herself of their solidity.  "Bosca," she whispered, "Bosca, I held  her!  She was so light!"