"The Coming War" Chapter 3.
Twilight threw long twisting shadows along the living room walls of Rachel’s home. They slid sideways across the wallpapered surface giving the room the appearance it was breathing. Susan closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She lay where she had for the better part of the day, on Rachel’s couch huddled neck deep in her counselors thick woolen blankets. She clung to the fabric with a desperation that was unjustified by the temperature of the room.


Chapter 3:
Fear

Gregory, he danced with me
Upon the Rock of ages
And in my book of sorrows
He did weep upon his pages
And in the night I suckled
On his dreams as they were torn
And Gregory, he said to me
I’ll be gone in the morn




Twilight threw long twisting shadows along the living room walls of Rachel’s home. They slid sideways across the wallpapered surface giving the room the appearance it was breathing. Susan closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She lay where she had for the better part of the day, on Rachel’s couch huddled neck deep in her counselors thick woolen blankets. She clung to the fabric with a desperation that was unjustified by the temperature of the room.
She thought of Tony, who’d left for home five hours earlier. When he'd gone most of the serious conversation had ceased. The rest of the night consisted of painfully strained pleasantries, uttered amidst a few fragments of what might be considered useful information. Mostly though the time passed in a quite blur of subcontexts, that Susan lacked the ability to translate. Thinking about it made her head hurt, so she curled deeper into the quilts that were her protection from the outside world. She was waiting on a dream—hoping that she might find her way back to the field with the stone bench and the man by the oak tree. The vision wouldn't come though, and the loss of it was nearly more than she could stand. The clock on the wall sounded jarringly the passing of each second’s time. As it beat it’s steady drum into eternity, the room and it’s inhabitant exhaled a stifled sigh.
She heard a shuffling of feet from the direction of the kitchen. A moment later, the darkened form of a woman appeared in the archway linking the two chambers. It watched her for several minutes without moving. I know you, it seemed to say. Deceiver!
Susan felt her first rush of real fear in over half a week. The adrenaline jolt was almost comfortingly familiar. Then her eyes began to adjust to the shadows, and she recognized the figure standing before her. Rachel entered, switching on the kitchen’s poor light fixture. She wore a pale blue bath robe and her hair hung loosely to her shoulders in messy brownish-gray curls. Her disheveled appearance was both humorous, and striking. It was the first time Susan had seen her former guidance counselor in such a state. The woman looked ten years younger.
"Want a bite?" Rachel asked.
"Thought maybe you’d ask." Susan said.
"Great!” Rachel replied. “Wheat bread or rye?”
"I never said….."
"Child, I'm not deaf.” Rachel pulled her robes around her wearily and for the first time Susan wondered how much the ordeal was costing her.
“I just thought you might be hungry," the woman continued bitterly. “though after the weight we’ve placed on you Suzy I don’t know how you could eat.”
"No one calls me that."
“Not true I just did.”
Susan smiled at Rachel’s jest, though she still didn’t like the nickname.
"I've decided it suits you. Now would you like wheat bread or rye?"
"I don't know."
"Rye it is then."
Her counselor gave her a timid grin that somehow still managed to seem serious. Then she darted back into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with the promised sandwiches and a cup of citrusy smelling tea.
"No caffeine," Rachel said, raising her right hand. "Scouts honor."
Taking the sandwich Susan suddenly realized that she was indeed quite hungry. Silently, the girl wondered if her guidance counselor was enchanting her. Regardless, the pair ate in silence. The tea tasted of honeycomb, and a splash of lemon. It warmed her, and somehow made the sandwich go down easier. When they had finished the two sat looking at each other, clueless of what to say next. The moment was intimate but also strangely formal. Eventually one question in the thousands that were bothering her slinked it’s way to the forefront of Susan’s mind. In spite of the feeling that knowing might bring unpleasant consequences, she ask it.
"Gregory and Edna know each other?"
"Oh yes."
"He doesn't like her though?"
"I believe that is true."
"You don't seem to like her either?"
Rachel's expression grew cloudy for just a moment, then the emotion vanished.
"Sometimes I don’t?" Rachel replied. Susan was a little shocked. She hadn’t been expecting an upfront answer. Rachel continued, “best you form your own opinion.”
Susan thought hard for a moment, then began speaking more to herself than to Rachel. "She helped me,” Susan said.
"Yes but she also hurt you."
"No, I was hurting before. She just helped me feel it."
“I wish I could bring myself to believe that.” Rachel said. “How easy things would be.”
The woman flopped herself down in the brown striped recliner that sat beside her sofa. It was an out of place looking piece of furniture, just as Rachel looked out of place in her warmly furnished home. The chair lent the room a certain humanity, as did it’s owner. Susan thought the two went together.
“I was not so different from you once,” the counselor said. She ran a hand through Susan’s hair. “It was my father though who was the cruel one. I ran away when I was fourteen years old. To this day I don’t know how I survived.”
“She found you didn’t she,” Susan asked certain of what the reply would be.
“You’ll come to understand,” Rachel continued, “that woman finds just about anything she’s looking for. Sometimes I wish though she didn’t find me.”
“Why?”
Pain danced a slow waltz behind Rachel’s eyes as she continued.
“Because she showed me the true nature of the world we live in, and sometimes there is a part of me that longs for that lost innocence. Because, though I lived in fear on the streets I’ve never been so caged as she made me. And because, she taught me how to feel pain again.” After this, Rachel just stared down at her knees. “I never understood why it had to hurt to so much. I used to think it was just the woman’s nature."
"But it hurts her too?"
"I know that now.” Rachel said, “If it didn't I wouldn't work with her."
"I don’t think I blame her," Susan said.
"And in that your humanity exceeds my own. Truth is, I should have forgiven her years ago."
"Is it the same for Gregory?"
"Oh no Suzy that's a little more complicated."
"No it's not," a voice said from behind them. Edna stepped through from the kitchen. She carried a cup of tea, and wore a jet-black robe, that clashed violently with Rachel’s. Susan didn’t even try to interpret the look that passed between them.
"What's done is done," Rachel said. "We have work to do."
"Thank you," was all Edna replied, though it seemed to be enough. She sat down on the floor by Rachel’s feet, and laid her head in the counselor's lap. It was like watching someone coming home. Susan understood that what transpired between the two women was deeply personal. She did her best not to disturb them as Rachel ran a hand over Edna's brow. Finally the older woman raised her head.
"What happened between Gregory and I is about a name," Edna said to Susan, "my last name to be exact, which used to be Neiland."
"Oh," Susan said dumbly. "Is that all?"
A ghost seemed to pass in front of Edna's eyes. She leaned back against Rachel, drew a shuddering breath, and began to speak in a strangely modulated cadence. As she did, her words formed images in the back of Susan's mind. The shapes solidified, until it seemed to Susan that she was watching some sort of bizarre movie. Spellfire danced across her skin, changing and expanding her perception of the world. She fought for a moment but eventually grew accustomed to the feeling of electricity taking up residence in the hairs of her arms. A story unfolded before her, and Susan allowed it to take her into the past.

# # # #

“My husband wasn’t a bad man, I don’t know what’s happened to him in the years we’ve been apart. But he was kind once, if naïve. I remember thinking when we met, that here was a person with no real place in the world, and no one to love more than himself. I thought he needed that—or maybe I did—maybe we were just too much alike. I fell in love with him the moment I first looked into his eyes. They were like silent screams, echoing my own need back at me. I knew then we weren’t destined for happiness, but I was beyond caring. So I let myself feel what I knew I should not, knowing even then any joy would be temporary.”
“I pursued him for a year before our first date. I know that sounds strange now, but I was afraid to approach him. I was a young witch just coming into my strength, and he was a college student who seemed unable to find a major and unhappy with the world in general. Why I didn’t just say hello sooner I’ll never know. Maybe I was just afraid to break the spell I found myself in. Maybe I was afraid he’d tell me to get lost. Eventually I wound up bumping into him in a library. I hadn’t planned it, so I took the coincidence to mean it was time. We had dinner the following day. I never told him what I was. I convinced him over the course of the next months that I was the woman he was meant to spend the rest of his life with. It was easy—I half believed it myself. He asked me to marry him on the 21st day of August in 1978. It was a pretty day, not to hot or cool. It was almost perfect. Almost.”
“Time passed. Gregory graduated, with a degree in Civil Engineering. He picked the field because he knew he could get a job working with his father. I must admit I was happy for him and myself. We had money for the first time in our lives, enough to keep us comfortable. I quit school and decided to enjoy what time we would have together. The problem was he wasn’t around to enjoy. From the beginning he worked to much. Whole weeks would go by when I would only see him late at night. In retrospect, I think he was trying to prove to me that he could succeed at something. The hardest part of it was realizing that the end had come.”
“But there were distractions; there were always distractions. I began delving into the darker aspects of the craft—the blood arts—trying to loose myself in the false sense of power they provided. At first I was hoping to find some happy ending for my husband and I. In the end though, it was the power, and not the hope it provided that drove me. I lost myself, and Gregory, to my own hunger.”
“Then one night I realized what I had become. I called a vision, thinking I could find some way out of it all. I was wrong. That night I saw two possible futures. In one Gregory left me when he discovered what I was. In that future I would come to regret having ever met him, and he I. He would loose his ambition, along with any hope of success in life. I would quit the faith renouncing what wisdom I had acquired in a misguided need for penance. I thought when this vision ended that surely it was the worst of all possible realities. I called out to the mother for another path I might tread. What I received was a warning.”
“I stood in the middle of a great barren plain. Above me there were three houses, floating in the sky like moons. One was of earth, another was of stone, the last iron. They were arranged in a great rotating triad, slowly orbiting a beautifully glowing light I thought was the sun. Each was connected to the others by delicate tinsel’s of illumination. These moved through a pale green sky that was cloudless, and somehow menacing. I remember closing my eyes, and hoping it would go away. It did not.”
“In the house of stone a great storm raged. The winds and water cut into the structure, breaking it apart. Then the strings connecting the other houses began to glow with a blue-green light. Two pulses, one from each began to travel toward the house of stone. The first to arrive was from the house of iron. It formed itself into the figure of my husband. When the second pulse arrived it formed many shapes, none of which I could recognizable. Then a small creature appeared. It's face was covered with a thick oily fur, and I thought at first it was an ape, but it’s posture was not that of an animal. It stood erect with brownish gold eyes, and large delicate ears. The two solid forms reach out for the third and the storm quieted.”
“The vision faded, leaving me more frighten than I’d ever been in my life. I got out my old instruments and began a spell, fool that I was, thinking that I understood what needed to be done.”
# # # #
"What did you do next," Susan asked. She never felt more like a child than when she had to ask questions everyone else seemed to know.
A movement registered from the corner of her eye, along with a subtle dimming of the illumination flooding in from the kitchen. Rachel and Edna who’d been facing away, didn't seem to notice. Susan then saw a frayed pieces of gray linoleum flooring suddenly press itself upon the ground. Someone was standing on it, someone invisible. She hesitated a moment and then looked directly into the space she calculated Gregory to be standing. She thought about revealing him but decided to give the man his privacy.
"I sent him there, that very minute, before I lost my courage," Edna continued. "After that I quit the craft for a very long time."
"But how did you know it was a place,” Susan asked, “the stone house I mean."
"I didn't know anything. I was just a scared young woman, who'd had her first real vision. I should have taken more time to consider what I’d seen." Edna closed her eyes, and leaned forward. She looked broken. "I should have given him a choice."
"Did it work though, did you save the other place?"
It seemed the logical question to ask, apparently though it was off limits, because Rachel and Edna summarily ignored it. The two just kept staring at the floor as if their eyes were somehow attached to it. The moment drew on in an awkward silence. Then the kitchen doorway was being obstructed by the frame of a very large, very old looking man, who’s face showed more emotions than Susan could name. Part of her was pleased that she’d detected him first, mostly though she just felt sorry for the man.
"It worked," Gregory spoke to Edna alone, "in a way.”
He turned to Rachel and Susan.
“I awoke in the woods, alone. I didn’t know what had happened. A second earlier I’d been leaving my office. Then I’m standing in the middle of nowhere, and the goddamn sky’s a different color. At first I just went nowhere. Then I got hungry, so I started looking around for a settlement, or anything that qualified as a sign of civilization. A few days latter I was found by a party of strange looking creatures. Genius that I was, I assumed they were hostile.”
Susan thought she detected the faintest hint of a smile.
“Their leader was a man named Eriden L’Oryn. I don’t know why, at the time I couldn’t communicate with him, but he let me live. Later I discovered I was in the middle of a war. The creature’s that found me were members of a raced that called themselves the Ehrouqi. Eventually when I learned some of the language, I discovered that they were being wiped out by a second race. Eriden asked me if I would help his people. I would have told him to go to hell—I should have told him—but he was my only source of food at the time, and by that point I’d seen enough of the enemy to figure I couldn’t make it on my own. So I enlisted, and I’ve spent the last three decades of my life fighting that war.”
He turned back to Edna. “The one you chose for me. I've learned a few things over the years, eventually I found a way to come back. Imagine my surprised when I discovered it was my beloved who sent me on my little trip in the first place.”
The man paused for a moment, all kindness draining with the blood from his face. “I never thought it would be you,” he said to her, “It’s one thing when you think your unlucky…"
"Quite another to know you were betrayed" Edna said numbly. “When did you know?”
Gregory shrugged. “A few years back I was able to reopen the passageway you created between the two worlds. When I returned I went looking for the power that created it.”
“And found me.”
“Pretty much”
“Why have you returned now?”
"Most folks would come if you called lady."
“Be serious.”
“I am.”
Rachel interrupted the two looking desperate. "But your beating it?” She said, “You’re here so you must know how."
"Theria M'rath does not face the lord of chaos, at least not anymore. Years before I arrived, he tried to do to them what he’s doing here now. He almost succeeded but eventually they recognized what he was and drove him away. When he saw that he’d lost, he sent the others. The two races have been fighting ever sense. Still the creatures operate in much the same way as the one that created them. They’ll like to work from behind the scenes, stirring discord until you’re to weakened to withstand them. Then they’ll crush you. "
Susan spoke up. “But you’ve seen him,” she said. “I know you have.”
“A friend showed me once, a long time ago.”
“How?”
“The same way Edna just showed you our past.”
Somehow Susan was still disquieted. There really only seemed to be one question left.
"What do I have to do?" She said, doubting she’d get a straight answer. Gregory looked as if he were afraid she would vanish if he stared at her to long. Then his face contorted into a sad sort of smile.
"Stay alive," he said. "preferably through tomorrow. And then when you've finished that, do it again. The rest of the plan we'll have to make up as we go, which by the way we’ll be doing tomorrow."
"Where are you taking them," Rachel said. Gregory's maniacal smile grew larger.
"Home," he said.
Bile rose in Susan’s throat.


# # # #