~~~
That Friday, Mara was really bummed that Lin wouldn’t go to the tavern with her, but she wasn’t jealous about her going out with Milton, so that was a relief.
At 8 p.m., Milton knocked on her door.
“You look gorgeous,” he said, eyeing her in her purple skirt and white sleeveless tunic.
He took her to a chic restaurant called The Top Linen.
Inside was decorated with low lit candles, small bouquets of flowers on every table, and elegantly dressed diners. It was strange for Lin to see how everyone in the restaurant either nodded or said “hello” to Milton as they passed, including a lovely brunette in a long red dress.
Their hostess lead them to a table, Lin felt a breeze brush by her neck, and instinctively, looked around. The figure hadn’t been back to her apartment since that night, because she protected her place with crystals and spells, but at that moment, she felt like he was there.
Then she spotted him. The tall hooded figure stood in the corner, motionless, in a black robe; the hood shadow his face, and all Lin saw were his white hands.
Lin felt tense all over.
Milton stopped talking, and asked, “Are you alright? What are you looking at?”
He turned in his seat, and Lin realized that she was the only one who could see the figure.
“Nothing.”
Over dinner, Milton told her about his childhood. He’d grown up in Blackthorn and was passionate about art. Milton was an only child when both his parents died, leaving him enough money to take care of himself.
After he’d talked a bit about himself, Lin asked about something she’d heard again, earlier that day at the café.
“Do you think it’s true that there is a group called the Blackthorn Contention?”
Milton’s eyes flickered in the light. For the first time since they’d met, he seemed at a loss for words. Lin could see the wheels turning in his head. He was desperately trying to figure out what to say.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No. I was just wondering why you asked me that. The whole town has gone mad, talking about some contention group.”
“I heard some students talking about it. In keeping with Miles request to stay vigilant, I was wondering if I should worry about the so called Contention. I asked you because you’re knowledgeable about many things that happen in Blackthorn. I’m still relatively new here.”
He took a sip from his wine glass and said, “I don’t know anything about the Contention, but I hear it’s a group of rivals whose aim is to stop the Wackens.”
Lin took a bite of her bread, and then asked, “So why didn’t they help when the city was being attacked the other night? Why don’t they come out of hiding and help the deputy?”
“Because if anyone were to know who they are, then they could be a target for assassination,” he said irritably.
“But people are dying.”
“Are you really so short sighted? Can you not see the forest through the trees,” he asked. His voice rose. “People are doing what they can. Maybe they aren’t able to act as quickly as you’d like, but it seems to me that when trying to avoid assassination, the best way to go about an operation is in secret.
Yes, people are dying, but one can’t help others when they, themselves, are dead, can they? Coming out too soon could cause more unnecessary deaths, and deterioration of any secret weapons or plans. That is why it is necessary for rebellious groups to remain anonymous. Groups like the contention only come about when an opposing force is too strong to fight head on; that’s the situation that we’re in right now, whether you realize it or not!”
Lin didn’t mean to upset him, but she had to ask. “So you do believe in the Blackthorn Contention?”
“Yes, of course, I believe it. Who do you think has fought the Wackens off every time they’ve tried to take Blackthorn? Why do you think we still exist, here?”
Lin didn’t respond.
The meal became uncomfortable after that. Milton shut down and barely said two words to her. She understood him wanting to defend his town folk, but she didn’t understand why asking questions upset him.
When the meal ended, Milton looked almost relieved. He walked her up to the steps of her apartment building.
“I’m afraid this is where I must leave you.”
“Oh,” said Lin without much surprise that he didn’t want to come up upstairs. “See ya.”
She turned her back to him and stuck her key in the lock. The last thing she wanted was a kiss or a hug from from him.
As the lock clicked and she reached for the door knob, the bushes that lined both sides of the door rustled. The first thought that came to mind was the figure from the restaurant.
“Wait,” she said and spun around, but Milton had gone.
Typically, witches and wizards couldn’t disappear so silently, so she called out loud, “Milton?”
No one responded.
“AAhh!” she screamed as something jumped out at her.
A stinky man in a wrinkled suit stood out of the bushes. His arms flailed and spit sprayed from his mouth as he shouted, “You bitch! I warned you to leave this town. I told you, we don’t like people coming here and taking our homes and jobs.”
He walked menacingly toward her. She stepped backwards. When he stepped under the light of the street lamp, she recognized that it was Angel Craig, and he was drunk.
Quickly, Lin tried to calculate what Angel was going to do; if he was just talking or if he meant to get physical.
“Stay back,” Lin warned, but he kept getting closer.
Angel talked belligerently. His voice continued to rise until he started to choke. His tongue protruded from his mouth and his eyes bulged.
“Mr. Craig?”
He put both hands around his throat and struggled for air. Angel, then, fell to the ground.
Lin knelt beside him and put her ear to his lips. Just barely, she could feel his breath tickle her ear. From her right side, she felt the presence from earlier at the restaurant. Lin couldn’t see him in the dark shadows of the trees, but didn’t have to in order to know it was the dark figure.
“Stop it! Now!” she yelled.
Suddenly, Angel was fully breathing again.
“And stop following me!”
The presence disappeared.
Angel was breathing regularly, but he’d passed out. She slapped him as hard as she could.
His eyes flung open.
Too drunk to realize he’d almost died, he pushed himself off the ground, and stumbled down the street.
Wanting to make sure he was alright, instead of going upstairs to her apartment, she turned around and followed Angel for a while. She wanted to make sure he made it somewhere safely. The last thing she needed was for the man, whom everyone knew had it in for her, to be found dead in her neighborhood.
As she walked, she kept her eyes roving all around her, wondering if the figure was still watching her. She didn’t feel his presence but with magic, there were ways around that.
After some time, and to no surprise of Lin’s, Angel led her straight to the tavern, where he clumsily opened the door and stumbled inside.
Lin watched from a few feet away, but then decided to go in.
Inside, she watched Angel struggle to sit on a stool without knocking it over. Repeatedly, he massaged his neck.
She smiled at Billing, and then sat in the only available seat at the bar.
Next to her, a woman she didn’t know said, “I remember Golshem. He was a grubby little teenager. He spent a lot of time up on the mountain, and even claimed there were ghosts up there. He thought he could travel to other worlds. That was twenty years ago. The man hasn’t changed a bit, since. He’s crazy and needs to be locked up. I said it then, and I’m saying it now.”
“How are you doing?” asked Billing.
“Alright, except that Angel Craig, who’s drunk as a skunk, was hiding in my bushes
, and tried to kill me.”
“What?” he asked, sounding as if he didn’t quite believe her.
“Yeah, just a few moments ago, he attacked me.”
Billing poured her an Irish coffee and then went to help another customer. She sat there, listening to the other patrons babble. They were a pathetic and silly group of people.
Then as she took down the last of her coffee, the ground started to rumble. Blackthorn was not located in a place that was prone to earthquakes.
Lin looked around.
The patrons had gone silent. They all looked scared. Someone screamed shrilly.
Everyone ran outside.
Across the street, people stood in groups, talking and pointing up at the mountain. Lin and the bar patrons joined them, across the street. When they looked up, it was to see that the warehouses were ablaze.
“Who did that?” asked a man she’d never seen before.
“Nobody knows,” said the scraggily haired woman from the other night. “It’s probably the contention.”
With nasty pitches, there were multiple explosions that sent up thick clouds of dust, highlighted brightly by the light of exploding flames. Then the sky rained ash, soot and soil down on them, yet the structures didn’t melt and they didn’t fall.
Something blasted upward into the atmosphere, from behind the structures. Lin couldn’t tell what it was, until the thing fell downward, and blocked out the moonlight.
“Get out of the way,” screamed a man, who turned and bolted down the street.
A mere second before it was too late she realized what she was seeing. Lin ran down the street, as did the others. The chunk of blasted boulder landed in the middle of the street; it broke through the tarmac and a foot deep crack extended down both sides of the street for half a mile.
The ground shook everyone to the ground. When the rumbling stopped, Billing asked, “Is everyone okay?”
“Where’s the Deputy?” asked a woman.
No one answered.
Not wanting to wait for more boulders to smash up the town, Lin transported herself to the warehouses to see what was going on with her own eyes.
When she got to the base of the mountain, all was quiet. Seeing no one made her wary. She didn’t want to be ambushed, so she landed in the barrage of trees a hundred yards up the base. There, she heard foot falls all around her. Turning around and around, she saw hooded figures running this way and that. Some were trying to curse one another.
Then, not more than fifty feet away, Lin saw and heard a woman muttering a death curse at a person who ran away from her. She could barely see the white of the woman’s face through the shroud of her hood.
“NOOO!” a woman behind the one who muttered the death curse, screamed. She pulled out a wand of her own. A bright ray of light hit the woman in the back. She was knocked forward off her feet; she flew through the air and face forward into a tree trunk, as did her death curse.
.
“Mara?” asked Lin, thinking the woman who shouted, “No,” sounded familiar. But she was too busy battling with another hooded figure.
All around her, there was fighting and screaming. Dark figures ran through the trees. Some were already injured while others tried to injure others.
Unsure of whom she should help, Lin stood and watched a moment longer, trying to think of what she could do to put a stop to the fighting. The only idea that came to mind was something she’d read about in one of her books: A wizard who wanted to stop a town from being slaughtered, without revealing who he was, brought a tornado that swept the attackers away. She’d never tried anything like that before. Would she be able to control a low pressure storm?
She closed her eyes, raised her hands and envisioned the dark night. The sky resonated within her and she felt its power. Using her mind, she envisioned herself as one with every particle in the sky, and she could feel the molecules moving within her. Lin imagined moisture soaking up the air, becoming more and more humid until she felt droplets splatter her face.
Within moments, it started to pour down, hard. A stroke of thunder blasted from all around them, but the people weren’t scared. They continued to fight as if nothing happened.
Closing her eyes once more, she imagined the wind blowing down the mountain, fast, spinning out of control.
A few more moments, and the air blew so violently that the trees slanted. Lin, herself, could barely stand.
“DUCK,” a woman shouted.
“Mara?” Lin called again.
A pair of hands grabbed her shoulders from behind and flung her to the ground. Spells flew back and forth above her. The woman who threw her to the ground struggled to stay standing as the wind got even more violent.
Next thing she knew, the woman was tugging her robe, miming that she should get up because the wind was too deafening to speak.
All around her, tree limbs broke off and flew like daggers. Then the tree to her right uprooted and flew through the sky, breaking other trees in half, some of which fell down so hard and fast that they planted themselves right back into the earth.
Suddenly, everyone was running away from the woods. Lin saw a few white faces and, although she couldn’t hear them, their mouths formed silent O’s as they fought to escape being carried away by the wind.
Shocked at what she’d done, Lin tried to ease back the wind. It was too late, though. Horrified, she watched a couple of the hooded figures get pulled up into the whirling air!
The woman who yelled at Lin to duck stood next to her. Her hood was down, and it was Mara.
“CAN YOU STOP IT?” she shouted.
“I DON’T KNOW!”
Lin tried to calm her nerves and focus, but she was distracted, for a moment, by the same hooded figure from earlier. It just stood there, across the way, facing her; a white chin gleaming under the moonlight.
Ignoring the figure, she raised her hand and mimed pulling those, who’d flown into the tornado, back down to the ground. Next, she closed her eyes and resonated with the wind, telling it to calm.
The tornado slowly, completely, dissipated. When she opened her eyes, the figure still stood, watching. As before, he disappeared without a word.
Lin never felt so horrible in all her life. As she looked around at the mess, it occurred to her that she might be arrested. She’d nearly destroyed the entire mountain forest, and likely killed several people.
To her right, at least a hundred yards of trees lay flat upon the ground, broken, bent and uprooted. Most of the people who fought had gone. Those who remained looked lifeless in the dirt and covered in debris.
Mara grabbed Lin’s arm, said “Let’s get out of here, now!”
Lin flew them back to Mara’s apartment. Although Lin tried desperately to excuse herself, Mara insisted that she come in so they could talk.
“Coffee?”
She went off to put on a pot.
Lin pulled back the window curtain and peered down at Main Street. Although she’d extinguished the wind storm, the city rained on.
“What are you?” asked Mara, setting down a hot carafe and cups. “A warlock? A shaman? I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that before.”
“It’s just something that I was born with.”
“Are you an elemental?”
“What? Some who controls the elements? No.”
“Why have you never told me you have power, like that?”
“Mara, I have a secret, true. I’d rather keep it to myself, but don’t make me feel bad about it. Let’s face it, you have some secrets, too, like I know there is something going on with you and Milton. Also, I’ve noticed how you disappear sometimes and don’t want to tell me what you’re up to. I don’t know if you’re mixed up in something bad, but I’m willing to ignore all the curious things if you agree not to question me.”
“I’m not hiding anything terrible, Lin,” she said defensively. “If I could, I would tell you; in time, I pro
bably will. Hopefully, then, you will tell me yours, too.”
“Alright. Maybe in the future. For now, we’re even,” Lin said and then took a sip of coffee. “But what if people died tonight because of me? How am I to live with that?”
After the Storm