III | The Shadow, the Siren, and the Sage-3
527 Words
AS IT TURNED OUT, JEREMIAH need not have looked back anyway, for the burning complex was reflected perfectly in the elevator’s glass walls as he faced the control panel and reached out to Jasper: It’s no good ... the panel’s been sealed with an iron plate. I fear that my musket will not penetrate it. Even if it could, the blast would surely damage the controls.
Jasper wasted no time: Then you must be my hand in a way you never have before, Jeremiah. You must burn as you did at the kitchen table, only hotter, more intense. You must paint with fire so that the seal is broken while the controls remain undamaged. And you must hurry! I sense a presence—yes, Witch Doctors, approaching across the east lawn ... a War Wagon has returned. Do not look! Instead, look inward, to that place you saw while at the kitchen table. Draw upon it, Jeremiah, but do not fear. Time will stretch for us ...
And Jeremiah did so, bracing himself against the panel with one hand as he holstered his musket and looked down at the other, ignoring the sound of cursing and the clanking of tanks as the men approached, closing his eyes, opening his Third Eye, accessing the Realm, whatever it was, snapping his wrist and reopening his lids as the white flames flickered from his fingertips and were extinguished one by one until only his index finger remained alight, which he used to trace the edge of the plate.
That’s it, my friend, projected Jasper somewhat breathlessly, yes, move as though you were guiding my hand across the canvas.
“There he is,” someone called from a couple hundred feet back. “He’s at the elevator!”
And the plate fell away.
Now, said Jasper quickly. The security override. It’s 1—1—0—8—3—0—0.
Jeremiah’s heart thudded as he keyed in the code and the door slid aside, leaving him just enough time to slip inside and duck before one of the Witch Doctors opened fire, shattering the glass of the rear wall and setting fire to the shaft’s insulation. He poked his head and shoulders around the door as it closed and squeezed off a round, a lucky shot which punched through the man’s chest and struck the Witch Doctor behind him, setting both aflame and causing them to fall, where they writhed and screamed on the grass. Then he was climbing; the lift was ascending with a hiss, and it was all over, at least for the moment. But this time he did look back—through the glass at the collapsing complex below—realizing that the group of buildings had been laid out in the form of the Christian cross, which burned in the night no different than the hate symbols of old (for Jasper had shown him pictures in books), and knew with certainty that he and Satyena and Jasper were doing the right thing; that is was time for the fear and the killing to stop, and to stop forever, that even if he did not survive to see it, there would be a new world, a world in which men and women both would be free to thrive and to love—perchance to even make children again!—and that what they did now was the only thing to do.
––––––––
- Writer
