Saviors & Martyrs
As the school bus drove down a winding dirt road, the young man in the seat sixth from the back on the right side paid no attention to the dirty gray snow, the evergreen trees, the ramshackle houses, or the profusion of litter on the side of the road.
Occasionally, other kids would shoot dirty looks from the corners of their eyes. He was one of the few of the kids on the bus who had a seat to himself, but that was none of his doing. None of the other kids would sit with him. Part of the aversion was that if they were friendly to him, they'd lose their other friends. The other part was everyone considered him weird.
Not that he looked weird, or at least not much. As usually, the skinny kid was bundled up against the weather, as he was from October, when the first snow fell, until mid-May, when the last of the ice melted from the lakes. He wore thick snowboots, as did many of the other kids, as well as a thick, well-worn winter jacket, scarf, and stocking hat. His mittens lay in his lap, and his small duffel bag lay on the seat next to him, his arm looped through the handles. Other kids had tried to take his gym bag before.
Although he was in ninth grade, the only evidence of puberty anyone could see was the slight fuzz of a mustache on his upper lip. He had curly brown hair down to his shoulders, and nearly everyone had been challenged by his bright blue-green eyes at least once when they had tried to tease or annoy him.
"Hey, bus driver lady!" one of the older kids, a senior, yelled from the last seat on the bus. The boy didn't look up but slid a little lower in the seat. "If you had no feet, would you wear socks?"
The rest of the bus got very quiet. But the senior boy must have gotten an answer, because he immediately came back with another question.
"Then why do you wear a bra?" he yelled to the front. The rest of the kids in the back burst into laughter.
The boy grimaced and went back to the book he was reading.
/You know that reading on the bus makes you queasy./
The boy smiled crookedly. Everybody was used to seeing his lips move or making odd expressions as he read, so it was OK to do so.
/It keeps the jackals away,/ he replied. /Most of the time./
/I wish there weren't as many constraints on you,/ his "invisible friend" mused regretfully. /When I was your age, they wouldn't have been able to get away with this type of behavior./
/In your time, they didn't have indoor plumbing,/ he reminded his friend. /But then again, the climate you grew up in wasn't as nasty as this, either./
He took a handful of paperback books from his gym bag and put them in his locker, planning to return them to the school library during the lunch hour. The gym bag, minus his notebook, went into his locker as well, and he pulled out the textbooks for his first two classes.
/Watch out!/
He turned and tried to duck, but the other boys were already too close and ready for his evasive maneuvers. Two boys grabbed his arms and twisted them behind his back, while another grabbed his legs.
/Shawn, I've got to get you loose,/ his friend said, and he could feel the build-up of something inside him.
/No!/ he replied, even as he struggled. The fourth boy produced a roll of duct-tape, with what was supposed to be an intimidating smirk. /It's just a prank, Xen. If you do anything, we'll both be in trouble with the Convocation, and they're not worth that./ The tension eased, even as the fourth boy began wrapping the duct-tape around Shawn's ankles.
Shawn spotted a familiar figure coming down the hall, oblivious to what was going on. The duct-tape was now wound around his chest, binding his arms, and around his wrists.
"Mr. Pablowski!" Shawn shouted. "Help!"
The teacher with reddish-brown hair and a bushy beard glanced up from his magazine article. He raised an eyebrow, taking in the entire scene.
"Why don't you take him to the gym?" the science teacher suggested, smiling. The smile did not reach his cold grey eyes.
/Guess we shouldn't have argued with him last week about Intelligent Design,/ Xen growled.
That's the problem, Shawn thought to himself, as he was half-dragged, half-carried down the hall. I'm not Polish, I'm not Catholic, and I don't have relatives here. This town is like the Polish Catholic version of the Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon: everybody is related. If they tried this with anyone else, they'd have cousins coming out of the woodwork. The other students in the hallway turned to laugh at the sight.
One of the boys in front kicked the double-doors leading into the gym, and they were greeted with a blare of sound.
The high school principal had started the practice, on the grounds that the students would be easier to handle if they burned off excess energy before class and during the lunch hour. The sound system in the gym was turned on, playing CDs that kids brought in (although no rap or violent music was allowed). Basketballs were pulled out of storage, for impromptu one-on-one (or two-on-two, or any variation) games and free-throw practice.
The boys ruled the basketball court, but the girls ruled the bleachers.
Mary Dalton looked up at the noise of the door slamming open, and shuddered. Like Shawn, she was considered weird, but she was also considered an insider. The fact that her mother was related to half the families in town barely made up for her compassion for animals and her white-blonde hair.
Her father had married her mother when both were in the military. When their time was up, they had returned to her mother's hometown, and her two uncles had soon followed.
She felt like crying. She still fell asleep every night remembering the day that Shawn had proposed to her on the playground, when they were both in third grade. Shawn was the only one in school who looked past her coke-bottle glasses and severe over-bite. He treated her like a person, and he encouraged her dream of becoming a vet.
The four boys shoved Shawn out into the gym, where he tottered for a moment on his bound feet. Mary felt herself reach toward him, although she was too far away to reach him, as he began to fall forward.
Shawn cursed as his glasses went skittering away, knocked loose from the jarring fall to the hard floor. He heard a distinct crunch, and groaned inwardly. /There goes another pair,/ he grimaced.
/Sixth this school year,/ Xen sighed.
"Nivens, what the hell do you think you're doing?" a harsh voice demanded.
"Yeah, Principle Kieliski, I wrapped duct-tape around me, all by myself, and then carried myself in here," Shawn replied sarcastically. "Don't you have a Master's degree? Did they teach you anything about simple observation, or deductive reasoning?"
A person with white hair was suddenly between them. "Leave him alone!" Mary told the portly man. "Why do you always blame him? Or is it too much to ask that you finally do something about your prize freshman basketball team?"
"Pathetic," another voice drawled. Shawn flinched from the voice, knowing it too well from the memories he shared with Xen. "You do not act to protect yourself, and you require this little girl to stand up for you. You should thank me, because I'm going to put you out of your misery, once and for all."
/MY TURN./Principal Kieliski turned to look at the tall man next to him. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Who gave you permission to be here?"
The man glanced at the chubby man with thinning hair. Mary stared at the dark eyes set in a sharp-edged, cruel face. His clothing was of black leather, with slashes of red along his legs and the sides of his torso.
"I gave myself permission," the man said, leaning slightly towards the principal. "And you should learn your place among your betters, DOG."
Mary gasped as the principal seemed to fold in on himself, and disappeared beneath the weight of his own clothes. A lump wriggled in the cloth, and a small mongrel puppy scrambled out, scampering away with its tail between its legs.
"Mary, get out of the way."
Mary, turned to see Shawn standing up, the duct-tape falling away in curls of ash. White energy surrounded his eyes, and she scrambled back towards the bleachers. She looked around, and saw that the gym floor was deserted. Some boys were trying to get out of the side doors, but couldn't get the doors open. The girls were frozen in their seats.
"Ah, Xen, you're awake," the dark man observed. "Before we start, let's take care of the witnesses, shall we?" He gestured over his shoulder, and a fiery image of a fanged mouth shot towards the boys at one of the doors. The boys disappeared before it reached them, and Mary turned to see them standing in the bleachers instead. They were quickly joined by the other boys from the other doors, and a shimmering transparent wall sprung up in front of the bottom row of seats. The bottom three rows were quickly deserted, as kids scrambled away from it. Mary found herself squeezed in on all sides.
"I think not," Shawn replied, disgusted. "You came here for me. Don't get distracted, Renj. That could be fatal."
"Fatal for someone, I suppose," the man called Renj replied. "But the children can be taken care of. Let me introduce you to my newest pets." He snapped his fingers, and two winged beasts appeared.
On the inside of the barrier.
Mary stared as the beasts, the size of a small dog, swooped at the screaming kids. They were reddish-black and scaled, each scale seeming to have a barbed hook growing from it. From the beak to their talons, to their tails, they seemed to be a mass of sharp edges.
"Let's see you do something about them," Renj taunted.
"I don't have to," Shawn replied with a warm smile. Mary knew that smile. She'd seen it often enough, when she and Shawn would go someplace quiet to talk.
She shrugged out of her cardigan, and jumped up in time to entangle one of the beasts with it. She was surprised when the struggling bundle in her arms gave out a soft, inquisitive "blert". The head of a small white cat looked up at her, with wide blue eyes.
She barely ducked when the other beast swooped at her, eerily silent. She put the small cat down, getting the sweater ready a second time. In a matter of seconds, she had bagged the second one.
"You should know by now how hard it is to enslave and change a gryff," Shawn remarked clearly. "By now, I'm sure their entire tribe has your scent. And Mary has had contact with them before, she'd be able to give them enough of what they need to break free."
Mary looked, dazed, at the two white cats, who were looking up at her with looks that said both "I adore you," and "You belong to me." Two white cats with soft, fuzzy wings.
Mary suddenly remembered where she'd seen that look, and those blue eyes before. She'd found a half-starved pale gray cat in the woods behind the school, its eyes caked shut with infection. At the advice of her gym teacher, she and Shawn had gently cleaned the cat's eyes with boric acid. When they had finally been able to get its eyes open, they had been the same blue. And it had looked at her in the same way.
She also remembered that it had been Shawn who had found someone to take the cat in, an old man who had beamed at Mary as if he knew something she didn't. Something about her.
She looked around, and noticed that the other kids had shrunk away from her, giving her and her two companions a wide berth.
"I like your company better anyway," she told the winged cat she was snuggling. "I don't suppose either of you know what is going on?" The two cats began cleaning themselves. Mary knew enough cat language to interpret this as meaning "Did you say something?"
She looked up as Shawn gestured, sending a swarm of long silvery icicles towards the man. The man spent several minutes blasting away at the circling icicles. But Mary was watching the two that didn't circle the man, but went towards the puppy scratching at one of the doors. The first one disappeared in a puff of fog, which settled down over the puppy, and the second one burst into a flare of light. When the fog disappeared, the puppy was gone. Instead, Principle Kieliski, clad in a long silvery robe, pawed at the door. It took him several minutes before he realized what he was doing. The kids in the bleachers snickered, and the tall man Shawn had called Renj looked around. But the principal disappeared before Renj could do anything, appearing in the bleachers instead.
While Renj's back was turned, Shawn spread his hands wide and called out something in a strange language. Renj twisted back to snarl at him, as Shawn was wrapped in snapping tendrils of lightning. Mary watched as Shawn's clothing shifted, leaving his arms bare and changing to silver.
"Answer, Renj," Shawn told him stubbornly. "Or be revealed as the craven coward you really are."
Renj stalked to the middle of the basketball court, and spread his arms out, speaking in the same language. Lines of energy shot out from him, and Shawn slid across the floor to stand about ten yards away. They each began walking around each other, and where they set their feet, lines of energy connected them, each line in a different color that remained as they continued to step around a large circle. When the circle was complete, they faced each other, as a dome of shimmering energy closed above them.
"I'm going to tear out your heart and eat it in front of you as you die," Renj snarled.
"I'll wait while you dispense with the bad clichés," Shawn replied wryly. "They're stale, and they reek as bad as you do."
"You're weak, Xen," Renj shot back. "Three millennia, and what has it got you? Bonded to mortals who drag you down. When was the last time you had a body of your own, without being cramped by a weakling's soul and mind?"
"We share more than a body, Renj," Shawn replied. "We share a purpose, a dream, and a destiny."
"That destiny ends today," the other shot back, his teeth lengthening to points and his fingers curving to talons.
"No, it is fulfilled today," Shawn smiled serenely. "I invoke the Rite of Simulacra." He held out both hands in front of him, and there appeared in his hands two curving blades of steel."
"So be it, I was always better with a blade than you ever were," Renj smirked, causing two black blades to appear in his hands.
"We won't be fighting with blades, Renj," Shawn smiled, as if he was holding back an extremely fine joke. "But with blood." Pulling his hands away from each other, he slashed a long gash down the length of each arm.
"You are insane," Renj spat. He sliced through the leather wrapped around each arm and into the skin beneath. He cut away the hanging strips of leather. "You have no idea of the power in my blood."
"I know exactly what is in your blood, Renj," Shawn shrugged. "I was there, although too late to make a difference. Today will be different, though."
"You admit it!" Renj screamed. "You were there to kill me!"
"I was there to save you," Shawn said quietly, although Mary could hear every word. "What I failed to do that day, I will do today." He held up his arms, parallel to the floor. From the gashes in his arms oozed golden light, like sparkling bits of dandelion fluff. His head rolled back on his shoulders, even as his feet left the floor.
"You. Will. DIE. TODAY!" Renj replied, holding out his arms. From the gashes oozed a thick black liquid. Mary watched his arms tense, and spurts of the black ichor leapt away, taking the forms of spidery little people that skittered towards Shawn. But as they came into contact with the gold fluff, they burst into flame, screaming in a tone that had most of the kids covering their ears in pain.
Mary sat petrified, trying to make sense of what was happening. The fight between Renj and Shawn seemed to be a long time coming. But Renj talked as if there was something else in Shawn's body! And who is Xen, is that what's in there with him? Her thoughts ran in circles, trying to ignore the one fact that as undeniable, and unthinkable: Shawn was killing himself.
Renj had ceased sending out the little people. Instead, he was now forming bat-winged things to try to attack Shawn by air. But they faired no better, as the golden ooze bubbled and popped below them, and they suddenly fell like stones into the ooze, bursting into flames like the others had. Except this time they were silent as they died.
The golden fluff covered half of the circle now, and beneath Shawn it was two feet deep. Shawn hung in the air above it, his back arched backwards and his arms spread wide, as if he were already dead, not moving.
"Die, damn you, die!" Renj screamed, as black tears streamed down his face. He threw long darts of black ichor at Shawn, but they were intercepted by globs of golden liquid that were launched upwards from the pool below.
Shawn's head came up a little, and his eyes opened slightly. His whisper could be heard by all of those in the gym, louder than a shout.
"Renj, I am truly sorry for all you have endured in these past two millennia," he said. "And to paraphrase you, 'Live, bless you, live!'" His head fell back, and the golden pool lurched forward in a flash, engulfing Renj. The floor beneath Shawn was suddenly bare, and Shawn dropped to the floor with a sickening thud.
Mary screamed as the dome of energy disappeared.
A pair of arms encircled her, pulling her into a gentle embrace. "Easy, now child," an unfamiliar voice told her. Mary sobbed into the woman's shoulder for a long while.
When she pulled away, the woman let her, with just enough resistance to tell her that she was welcome to continue to take comfort. She looked around, and a number of strange adults were in the gym, herding kids out and talking amongst themselves. She looked towards the circle, but there was nothing there.
"Where is he?" she asked hoarsely. She looked up at the woman and gasped.
The woman had white hair, but by her face and eyes, it was her natural color. The woman could not have been more than twenty-five, and was beautiful. Her grey eyes smiled at her.
"To take your questions from the easiest to the hardest, I am actually well over four hundred years old, although the body is younger," the woman told her. "My name is Brey, and I am a friend, even if the gryffs had not spoken for you. As for Shawn, his body is gone. The spell he cast used up everything, even that."
"Then Renj is dead?" Mary asked, blinking away tears.
"The Renj you saw before, yes," Brey replied. She turned Mary around. "That is Renj." She pointed to where a man she recognized held a small boy in his arms.
"No, that's Shawn's friend, the one who took the… the other gryff away," Mary shook her head.
"No, not him," Brey laughed. "Look at who he's carrying."
Mary looked at the sobbing little boy, and recognized the dark flashing eyes and the dark skin. The nose and chin were almost right, except they no longer looked cruel.
Brey and the other adults took Mary to a deserted classroom.
"I really don't understand," Mary repeated.
"A long time ago, there was a man who had a thirst for learning," one of the men told her. "He grew very wise, and very powerful. When he realized he would not live forever, he was determined not to let his knowledge die with him. So he cast a spell, so that his learning would continue on, in someone else. But the spell had a side-effect. It took his soul and his mind with the learning. That was Xen, and he has taught many of those like us, always working through a body he shares with someone with the talent."
"That must have been scary for Shawn," Mary whispered, shuddering.
"It was always voluntary," Brey assured her. "Xen told us a few times that it was as if Shawn had pulled him in."
"Xen found Shawn, or vice versa, about 6 years ago," the other man told Mary. "Xen also told us that he would have passed Shawn by, because of his disability, but found himself sucked in by Shawn."
"What disability?" Mary asked, surprised.
"Shawn couldn't read," he told her. "You know he was in remedial reading until third grade, didn't you?"
"Well, yes, but he-" She stopped. "He started reading really well, you could hardly get him to put a book down." Her eyes filled with tears, remembering the day Shawn had begged the teacher to let him sit with Mary, and he'd helped her with her math. "And then he helped me learn, he made math make sense to me again."
"Xen taught him to read," Brey nodded. "Helping you, that was all Shawn."
"And Renj?" Mary asked, not looking at the toddler in the corner playing with blocks.
"His father planned to sacrifice him to a demon, for power," the man told her sadly. "Xen tried to stop it, but he was too late. The demons killed the father, and infested Renj. He's been causing a lot of trouble ever since then."
"So what did Shawn - Xen, do to him?" Mary asked.
"Actually, from what we got, it was Shawn's idea, and his decision," Brey sighed. "I knew Xen very well, Mary, he would never have sacrificed Shawn like that. He cared for Shawn more than a father has ever cared for a son."
"Shawn healed Renj, cleaning all of the demons from his body," the man told her. "Normally, that would have killed Renj, he would have aged to death in seconds. But Shawn also healed him, and took him back to the age he was when the demons took him. Shawn gave him a chance at real life. We'll look after him, now. And when he comes of age, we'll teach him."
"Teach him?" Mary echoed.
"The reason his father felt he would make a good sacrifice is because he has the talent for what you might call magic," the man explained. "He still has that talent. This time around, maybe he can use his talent for a better cause."
"Shawn's body, then... It was used up by the spell?"
The man nodded sadly. "Again, his choice. His sacrifice made the spell stronger. He is the first in a long time to use that power. Most of us choose to take Xen's option, and go on, teaching others from the inside."
Mary darted a look at Brey, who smiled sadly.
"When I went looking for a student to teach, this last time, I was too late, she had committed suicide," Brey revealed. "I was able to heal the physical wounds, but the spirit was already gone."
The other man grinned. "My student's name is Chien." His voice changed slightly. "And my teacher's name is Willem."
The chubby man came over to them, extending his hand. "We are Niklas and Lucius."
Another man, with red hair, looked up from where he had been writing in a journal. "Seamus and Obo. My teacher is from Africa."
Mary looked at them all for a long moment and sighed. "What's going to happen now?" she asked.
Brey looked sad. "They will forget," she told her. "For many reasons. Your principal is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and many of the kids are in similar condition. But when one of us leaves our home area, or dies, the people around us tend to forget quickly. Besides, do you want them slashing their wrists to prove they are as powerful as Shawn?"
"And they would, too," Mary admitted. "I don't want to forget. But... I can't stay here."
"As I said before, the gryffs have spoken for you," Brey reminded her. "It was Shawn and Xen's plan to introduce you to me in a year or two. But if you will have me as a teacher, I would be honored."
"They spoke for me?" Mary asked, surprised, looking at the two dozing gryffs in her lap.
"Careful," Chien/Willem laughed. "Usually, when they speak for someone, it's because they think of you as their pet."
"What happened to the other one?" Mary asked Niklas/Lucius.
"I took him back to his people," he answered. "And he asked me to tell you, when you came into your power, that he owes you a debt. The gryffs take that sort of thing very seriously."
"This is going to be very hard to explain to my parents," Mary told Brey.
"I understand," Brey nodded. "Shawn was trying very hard to find a way to leave his mother. She isn't very rational, and wouldn't have dealt with it very well. But very few talented children can stay with their parents once the power awakens."
"I don't want them to forget me," Mary warned.
"I think your parents may surprise you," Brey smiled.
Mary's father walked her down the driveway, which wasn't necessary. But she hadn't had the heart to tell him that. He'd taken it all very well, as had her mother. She'd made her good-byes to her mother already, and the woman had refused to watch her leave, claiming some old superstition. Sometimes her Polish mother was more Irish than her Irish father.
"We'll expect you back for your birthday, Easter, the Fourth, Thanksgiving, and Christmas," he told her gruffly.
"I'll be back," she promised. "Please be happy for me, Daddy."
"I am," he smiled sadly. "Tell you the truth, I was at my wits end, trying to figure out how to send you to college to be a vet."
"Brey knows a lot about animals and healing," she told her father. "I'll be able to do things vets can't."
"So you've told me," he grinned.
"And you can finally be rid of these two pests," she added, motioning to the gryffs that gamboled on the breeze ahead of them.
"But we'll be missing one pair of wings instead," he told her. She looked up at him in surprise. "You've always been an angel to me, Mary. I've always known you were special. I know you got a late start, but I always knew you'd get there."
"Daddy, do you remember Shawn, the boy who proposed to me?" she asked.
"Oh, is he going to be there?" he grunted. "I should have known I'd lose you to him sooner or later."
"No," she said quietly, looking at the ground. She looked at him. "Nobody else is going to remember this Daddy, but I want at least one other person to know. Shawn sacrificed himself, to save the school and another man."
"Oh, so that's why they sent you all home early last week," he nodded. "I thought that gas leak story was bullshit." He sighed and looked off to the horizon. "I never spoke about my time in the Army, or the War. But I'm going to tell you the hardest lesson I ever learned. Do you want him to be a savior or a martyr?"
"What?"
"We saw lots of martyrs. People who got killed, saving other folks. And then other guys would get hot to avenge them, get even. And they'd get killed too. But a savior, he saves lots of other people, sometimes even people they didn't know, or didn't like. But they did it because they thought it was the right thing to do. And other people see that, and they try to follow their example, not by getting killed, but by doing the right thing." He looked at her. "So, do you want him to be a martyr or a savior?"
Mary pulled a ring out of her pocket, and held it up to the light. "I never told you about this. He gave it to me the day he proposed to me." The four emeralds, shaped in the leaves of a shamrock, shone bright.
"Is that thing real?" her father asked, eying the shimmering diamond.
She smiled and slipped the ring onto her finger. "It fits." She looked up at her father, tears coming to her eyes. "I'm sorry, daddy, but I disobeyed you. I never told him no. I kept the ring, and asked him to give me time. I was hoping, when we got older and went off to college, we could make it real. I couldn't tell him no, daddy, not even for you."
He grinned and shook his head. "Kind of hard to think of my daughter as a widow," he replied. "But at least she found one worth having for a little while." He rubbed his chin. "I was kind of hoping for lots of grandkids, you know."
"You'll have a lot," she promised him. "It's just that most of them will have four feet."
"Most of them?" he grinned wider.
"The rest will have wings," she winked at him. She walked away, waving at him, and she, Brey, and the gryffs disappeared in a shimmer of light.
"Then they'll be the spitting image of their mother," he whispered, wiping away the tear in his eye.