Virginia Hamilton (23 page)

Justice’s eyes appeared lighter, flecked with blue, so cold were they with anger.

“Come,” she said kindly, to Levi.

“Let me go home,” he said weakly. He found himself sitting on the ground in the weeds. “How did I get down here? What happened?”

“These tricks of Tom-Tom’s make you feverish,” Dorian explained. “You fell right after the rain magic.”

“I’ll go home and lie down,” Levi said.

“You’re not strong enough to make it back up the hill,” Justice told him. “You need rest. There under the shade trees is a good place for you to lie down for a half-hour. Then I’ll deal with Thomas!”

“Don’t hurt him, don’t fight,” Levi said. “He doesn’t mean any harm, really. But he’s never done it like this before, from outside my mind.”

As Justice and Dorian helped Levi to his feet, Thomas’ illusions came, one after the other.

Levi gasped for air as his windpipe opened and closed in spasms. Out of the sunlight came two large birds. Flapping yellow wings about his head, they picked at his eyebrows until they had plucked them clean. At the last, Levi ceased to exist. He couldn’t see his arms stretched before him. When he tried to touch his own face, it, too, had disappeared. His fingers passed right through his chin and mouth.

“Where—?” Nothing was left. He was air, light, day. He was no longer.

“Justice, get me! Come find me! I’m gone, I’m out here somewhere. I can’t find myself—help meee!”

He has power,
traced Dorian to Justice, about Thomas. He and Justice still had Levi by the arms.

Yes, Thomas has power,
Justice answered, but pushed back thoughts of her own strength growing. She was busy trying to get Levi to walk.
Pull him forward. You may have to lift his feet for him,
she traced.
We have to get him to the river and cool him with water.

They could see through the air—Dorian and Justice—see where Thomas let loose his powerful images like silken sails. They had no choice but to let the images flow unhindered. To weave protection in Levi’s mind while he was so weakened might cause him further damage. They had to get him to the shade where they could make him comfortable.

Thomas wants to hurt him,
Dorian traced.

Maybe he only hopes to make me show myself,
Justice traced back.
That’s the reason he lured Levi back here. He must have
—
Levi was much too weakened to come on his own.

You can’t let it go on,
Dorian traced.

But she shook her head, desperately holding on to who she was and unwilling yet to admit her strength. She and Dorian half carried Levi, as Thomas’ power hit them full force.

They saw monsters moving, decaying. They leaped through space where frightening worlds spun out of control at them through the blackness. Stars came too close, burning them to crisps. They were reborn, felt life, only to burn up again.

They could not have escaped such powerful illusions if not for the Watcher growing on its own. The Watcher was Justice developing on a higher plane. While it knew its power, its source and its destiny, Justice did not. Not yet. But she now had gathered enough of its energy to break through Thomas’ illusions to protect Levi. It was for her like taking a broom and sweeping away cobwebs.

Worlds and darkness, suns and free-fall gave way to the Quinella, where she and Dorian still stood in the heat clutching the weakened Levi between them. They were at the riverbank. Levi was alert; and, gently, they let him down to sit on it. His breath came in ragged sighs. His eyes were bright and feverish, and he did not perspire.

In the middle of the black river sat Thomas in water up to his neck. It was no illusion of him, although, blinking, Levi believed it was. Ever so carefully, Thomas lifted his arms out of the water. They glistened, black with leeches.

Floating toward them, they saw he had rolled up his pants legs and had taken off his shirt. Like one of his own nightmares, he stood up on shore, with his legs, arms and chest an evil of leeches, pulsating. Feeding on his blood.

Thomas grinned.

For it was Levi who felt the pain.

Levi began scooting over the dry bank, slapping at his arms and legs. Moaning, he struck at invisible leeches and let out short, piercing screeches.

Awful to hear in the hot, heavy stillness of the summer countryside.

You would do that to your own brother
—
give him the pain and not take it yourself?
Justice traced to Thomas. The fearful sight of him covered with leeches turned her stomach.

He has the pain, so do something about it,
Thomas traced to her.
Show me what you think you can do.

If you don’t stop it at once, I’ll have to show you,
she traced. Yet she dreaded the growing change, the becoming.

Thomas made no reply, but stood there, twenty feet from them, with leeches sucking at him. Levi grew visibly weaker. He had fallen on the ground, half unconscious; moaning and twitching. It was the sight of him that caused Justice to overcome her dread. She knew what she must do.

For the Watcher was completing itself within her mind. At once, it knew she knew it was she.

She tasted fear. “Ahhh,” escaped her lips, a sigh of resignation. She knew anguish. She understood the source and destiny of herself, Justice, the Watcher.

She knew her power.

Wavering motion. An enormous tremor of light and dark was her thinking, hugely magnified. Observing.

Thomas doubled over, picking at the leeches. At once, Levi stopped screaming. He lay still; then sat up. He was weak but calm now.

At first, Thomas wouldn’t scream, wouldn’t admit that Justice with her power had turned back the pain where it belonged. He fell, tearing leeches from his arms. It hurt him unbearably. “Justice!” he cried out, coughing, screaming: “I … I … o-only—g-g-get ’em off—guh-guh ooofff!”

Leeches appeared to combine in a flowing movement. They streamed down Thomas, making a pile at his feet. The pile rolled toward the water; it leaped in, as though a vacuum had sucked it under.

Thomas was flung about on the flat bank of the Quinella. He landed on one shoulder, on his back, as if someone had taken him by the arm and had hurled him. His face rubbed in the dust. Soon, he was caked with it from head to foot. He snorted, he coughed and spat, as dust filled his nostrils and coated his tongue.

The hard earth swirled into a dust devil as tall as Thomas. It lifted him higher than the shade trees. Up there, in the swirl of dust and air, he saw the day divided into yesterday, today and a day of future. In all moments, time flowed through continuously. What happened yesterday mattered today and would affect tomorrow.

Thomas was brought down again as quickly as he had been lifted up on high. Dust settled back to dry earth. Thomas stood, transfixed. Out of the air, a brittle branch came forth from the future. Sometime during yesterday, he had torn the very same branch from a tree. Today, it lay dying with its sap oozing into the ground. And tomorrow, it would become the dry, dead thing now poised before him.

The branch soundly thrashed him. It quit only when his legs and back showed welts. Thomas took the beating without flinching. He made no move to protect himself. Finally, the branch disappeared into thin air.

Only the sound of the Quinella waters, sluggish, slow ripples on the silence. Thomas panted heavily, his eyes on the ground. His skin oozed blood from the leeches and the thrashing. But he was a powerful, strong boy and he would heal, Justice knew.

So. Is it proved?
Justice traced to Thomas. She opened the way for Levi to connect mentally with them. Dorian had already connected.

Silence, in which Thomas waited, hoping the red marks of the thrashing would fade from his body. But they were no illusion. They didn’t disappear, nor did the pain. He gazed at Justice and down again. Truly, she had power, and he pondered the likelihood of her having more fabulous gifts.

Pausing to swallow once, he traced,
You’ve proven it. You win.

It’s a war between us, to win or lose?
Justice traced back to him.

Bitterly:
I won’t be second.

Then you’ll have to leave us,
she traced.

When?

In the future.

You’re sure it’s me who’ll have to leave?
Thomas traced.

Well, it’s you who won’t be second,
Justice traced.
Your choice today decides tomorrow.

That’s the way you read it,
bitterly he traced again.

That’s the way the future reads, believe me,
Justice traced back. And then:
Come, Thomas, help us with Levi.

Lee!

Thomas had completely forgotten his brother. Quickly, he crossed the space between them and, kneeling, gathered the weakened Levi in his arms. Thomas winced under the weight. His muscles flexed too tight and the leech and thrashing wounds oozed again. Still, he didn’t falter. Gritting his teeth, he lifted his brother and carried him into the shade.

Justice was holding Thomas’ shirt cradled in her arms. She and Dorian with their gifted hands had cleared a small area of water of pests and had wet the shirt. The liquid Justice wrung from the shirt into Levi’s mouth was as fresh and clean as spring water.

Thomas couldn’t remember a time when he had liked Justice much. Now, admitting her greater power, he knew they would never be close. Yet he did care about Levi. He had abused his brother. He had toyed with him, as a cat with a mouse. For all his cruelty—and Thomas knew he had been terribly cruel to Levi—there was still a part of him that would protect his brother. Regretfully, he would one day abandon Levi to his sister and Dorian, if Justice was to be believed. To think of leaving his identical behind, even in some far-off future, brought him a depth of sorrow that no singleton would understand.

Lee!

They had never known life without one another. They had been a world unto themselves.

Put him down here,
Justice traced to Thomas.

He had carried Lee deep into the shade, avoiding snake nests at the edge of the low branches. He set Lee down with his back against the aged, thick trunk of a mighty buckeye tree whose shade held the scent of cool earth. Justice smoothed Lee’s face with the shirt. Dorian removed his steaming tennis shoes and his socks. Levi smiled wanly at them as the coolness of shade brushed his toes.

“Feel better?” Justice asked, smiling at him.

“Much, much better,” he said softly.

Lee!
It was Thomas. Levi turned to look at him, his exhausted eyes locked on his brother’s. As though looking into his own self, Levi saw anger—what didn’t he see? He saw fear, pride, loneliness, a bit of caring. There was not to be seen a large amount of love in Thomas. But Levi knew that he cared, deep down and in his own way. Before Thomas could speak again in his mind, Levi took hold of his palm in a wordless handshake. It was enough.

Justice commanded Dorian and Thomas to take places against the tree.

The way Levi is sitting,
she traced,
backs to the tree.

Thomas was about to protest when he sensed something watching in his mind. He did as he was told.

On the opposite side of the tree from Levi,
she traced to him.
Dorian, you on the opposite side from me, while I take the side facing the river.

She reached out and clasped Thomas’ hand on one side of her and Levi’s on the other. They, in turn, clasped Dorian’s hands. In this way, Justice’s sentience—her power of observing and knowing through the senses—coursed its way through the four of them in an unbroken circle. They saw what she saw.

This, the first chance she’d had to reflect since self-awareness. She was set free in a space-time inner universe, at the heart of which was the Watcher of her power.

Explain how we have come to be this way,
Thomas traced. His voice echoed through darkness.
Who are we?

The first,
Justice traced.
We four are the first unit. I’m the Watcher.

And Dorian?
Thomas traced.

He sensed a removal as Justice pulled herself back and pulled back the sensations that were Levi’s. What remained were the selves of Thomas and Dorian. Thomas recognized himself. Then what was unhealthy within him drained away. His anger and hate poured out of him. What few physical ills he had were not serious, but were nonetheless soothed and repaired by Dorian.

Justice, with Levi, came forward again. She explained that it was her wish to add Dorian to their unit for obvious reasons.

But why us?
Thomas persisted.
Why are
we
the first?

We
aren’t what’s important,
she traced.
Someone, something is always “first.” The first dawn, the first cellular creature. First people
.

Their alteration must have been an accident. The difference in one chromosome was enough to alter a few inherited characteristics. Into existence could come sensory and physical changes, the release of genetic information far beyond the ordinary.

Sentience. Telepathy. Telekinesis—motion produced without the use of force. And clairvoyance—ability to see objects or actions beyond the natural range. The four of them each had one or more of these capacities. But Justice’s power was exotic, giving her the energy to combine these forces.

Our place isn’t here,
Justice traced.
Our time isn’t now, but in the future.

Eyes closed, hands touching, the four of them were quite invisible, camouflaged as they were by the old shade tree.

In the future, we’ll be too old and weak,
Thomas traced.

We’ll be just as we are now,
Justice traced.

What?

I can get us there. Now,
she traced.

While we’re under this tree, we can be in the future, too?
Thomas traced.

She traced no more. There was no need for her to.

Show me the future,
at last, Thomas traced.

Justice sensed something disbelieving in his tone.
Do you wish just to see it,
she traced,
or do you want to go in it?