SciFi and Fantasy Stories: Ch 4 The Circle of Ice & Fire

Written by Alice "Muffin Girl" Smith

Part one finished May 25, 2005

Two and Three: 3/5/06 6:23:03 PM

^_^

Part One (Grammar Lesson) - *

Part Two (Feather Monsters Heart New York) - *

Part Three (Tackim eats the damn gruel) - *

"Mellow." The disappointed voice resounded in my head, breaking my fragile grip on sleep. "Mellow, Mellow, Mellow." I didn't open my eyes, but by God I could just feel the guy shaking his head like some sad mother.

"Hey, Crew. Nice day, isn't it?" Without the drunken slur on his words, my conscience had a pleasant voice. Like an opera singer's, but not the glass-breaking kind.

"Mellow." The noisy guy repeated. I heard the jerk from last night get up, and I opened my eyes in time to see him reach his cell bars. "Mellow." I was right; the noisy guy was on the outside, shaking his head. As an added bonus, he was dressed in a carefully ironed black uniform. Military drones were exactly what I wanted to wake up to every morning...

"On the bright side," my conscience said brightly, not dignifying my presence with so much as a shifting of weight from foot to foot, "at least I didn't kill anyone."

"Shut the hell up, wouldja?" I said it pleasantly enough. Fit for a granny's ears. Or a girl scout with a skinned knee wrapped in a hankie. "At least I wasn't drunk off my a-"

"Quiet, please." The noisy one didn't turn to me, raise his voice, or change his tone at all. My mouth snapped shut of its own will, the last half a syllable muffled by my own flesh.

"-ssh." To say my eyes bugged would have been a grave understatement. My conscience cackled happily, still not turning to grace my existence with his hung-over gaze.

"Never interrupt a Beacon, Tough K-"

"Mellow."

Snap.

"-id"

"I am not very pleased with your actions, Mellow."

"Mph."

"Do not try to talk. Unless you care to dislocate your jaw again? I thought as much."

"Mph!" That one was mine. I blinked back surprise. Surprise had never been useful to me, not once in my life. I took that God-awful emotion, and funneled it down the fuel tanks for some nice productive rage. "Mph!" Concentrate. That was the key. Dip did this kind of crap to me sometimes when she got seriously ticked. I'd been surprised--Christ, I hate surprises!--by some old guy pulling the same trick, but that was all. A little bit of boiling anger was all I needed. If there was something absolute fury couldn't conquer, I'd yet to meet it. "Ain't your mother told you it's rude to interrupt?" I piped in, my voice every bit as toneless as his had been. He turned a more than startled gaze upon me, and I happily gave him a one-finger salute. I debated on upgrading to a two-finger salute, but decided against it. One finger can express volumes; two is just a lack of class. And baby baby, anyone who didn't think I had class could just kiss my white-trash behind.

"What's your name?" He asked me with a satisfactory narrowing of the eyes.

"Perz. Perz Mather." A cocky smile and a seated bow. Told ya I had class.

"Perz." He rolled the name over on his tongue, adding to much 'peeer' and not nearly enough 'zzz.' It was the z's that gave my name all the flavor: you didn't just go around handing out snow cones without the blue stuff poured on top, now did you? "Perz Mather." He shook his head, a thoughtful glaze coming over his eyes. I watched myself get reclassified from nuisance to test subject in two seconds flat. "Mather is better. It has more dignity to it."

"Mph." Mellow mumbled, motioning to his mouth with a less than happy expression inhabiting his face. "Mph mph." His friend waved him a nice motion of dismissal.

"Now, Mather. Do you know what I am?" I debated answering, but figured point-blank ignoring was a better tactic. That's what I got for talkin' with a military drone in the first place. A conversation. No thanks, Mister, and keep your stinkin' rain check. I flopped back onto the bed, yawning elaborately. "Mellow, do you know why our good friend Mather here is in jail, perchance?"

"Mph." I suppose the drunkard nodded, but the bleak gray ceiling was no confirmation.

"Do tell."

"Ahh..." Mellow worked his jaw so loud that I heard him work his jaw. "He, ah, killed someone last night. Spent about an hour trying to scrub off the poor sap's blood." Hiding my pink hands would have been to show shame. Rule number one: never let anyone know that you're ashamed of anything.

But I did want to hide them. I really, really did.

"Is that so?" I could practically hear the noisy fellow frowning. "It's going to be a trick getting him out of here with that on his record."

"And why would we want to do that...?" Mellow didn't sound too pleased. I yawned again. What was the noisy geezer playing at? If he could get me outta here, though...

"I did not release him, Mellow. He broke free."

"He's a-?"

"Beacon, yes." The guy was off his rocker, but he sounded confident enough to make me miserable about it. This might be why Dip tells me to keep my damn trap shut.

+++

Military holding cells weren't nicer than your typical jail cells, per se. But they were cleaner; I had to give them that. Much, much cleaner. Almost disturbingly so. It made me feel like filth, walking into that place. Something about a perfectly white concrete floor could really make a guy feel how dirty he was. I waited 'til the bars rattled shut behind me, and then I turned around.

"You gonna un-cuff me, or what?" I lifted up my hands, with their steel kisser. The old guy shook his head again, in that parentally disappointed way of his.

"Manners, Tough Kid. If you ask me politely, perhaps I will see what I can do. In addition, 'gonna' is not a word. Say 'going to,' instead." For a long time I could only stare at him, with his gray hair and grandfatherly face. This guy couldn't be real.

"Man, who's your dealer? I gotta get me some of that." I finally quipped back. The guard who'd escorted us down here scowled at me, but the old guy just shook his head again, utterly unfazed.

"'Got to,' not 'gotta.' In that particular case, something along the lines of 'I would like to have some of that' would have been a better choice. Really, Tough Kid, where were you during English class?" I wouldn't have minded cracking a knuckle on his face just then, but he had managed to stop exactly outside of my range. I wiggled my hands, instead.

"I would like to have you take these things off, Gramps. That's what I'd like."

He nodded encouragingly. "Yes, that was correct. Though in the future, I'm generally called 'Crew,' not 'Gramps.'"

"And I ain't Tough Kid, or Mather. It's Perz. You got me?"

He shook his head sadly, and walked off. I slammed my cuffs against the bars; "Hey, you gonna let me outta these? Hey!"

Crud.

"Screw you, too!"

Gramps didn't even turn around. The guard trailing him did; a nice 'You're a dead man' look. Well screw him, too.

I dropped my butt down onto the slab bed, and let my head bang back against the bars to the next cell. I just got myself recruited, didn't I? Perfect. Abso-friggin'-lutely perfect. Crappy bit of living in a military state, part one; you went anywhere near one of those uniformed drones, and you were a proud new member of This Man's Army. I dropped my head into my pink-scrubbed hands, and dug my fingers into my hair.

It did seem like they'd be a bit nicer than the civilian court system, but still, I did not need this. Dip sure as hell better not have been looking for me; there was no way I was gonna drag her into this. I laughed under my breath at that. If there was one thing I didn't have to worry about, it was Dip trying to help me out of here.

"Did he get caught, too?" A half-strangled voice whispered behind me. I turned on my wonderful new bed, looking for the speaker. The empty row of cells to my back was definitely frown-worthy.

"Where are ya?"

"He is under. Did he get caught, too? He got caught."

I frowned for another long moment, then crouched down next to my wonderfully flat bed; sure enough, there was a kid on the other side of the bars, crammed under his own military-issued slab. "What?"

"He got caught. Did he get caught? He does not know the way back. Does he know the way back?"

I stared at the kid; it was a boy, maybe ten or so. Blondeish hair, smallish bones. Wherever he was from, he hadn't gotten fed too well there. He had his hands clasped in front of his face like a prayer, and I could see the bones in his wrists, like his skin was just wet paper.

"Hey, slow down. I can't understand you." I muttered softly, dropping down so I could wiggle under my own bed.

"He can not find the way. Does he know the way?" The boy said with clear enunciation and deliberate slowness, his hands clenching against each other so hard that I was afraid those little bones would break clean through his pale skin.

Okay... so I wasn't going insane. The kid really was making no sense. "Who's 'he'? You mean me?"

"He and he! He is he and he is he and he is not from here!" His hands stopped wrestling with each other; it was like someone cut all the strings in his body. He just went totally limp, hands falling away from his face as his body relaxed into the concrete. The only tension left in him was around his eyes; he still had them clenched shut. "He is from here." The boy muttered. "He is caught, but he was caught here. He is still alone."

"You ain't making sense, kid."

The boy opened his eyes; green eyes, too bright to be real. "Don't breath near him."

"Gaa-!" The ceiling spun for a second, and then the pain kicked in. I could feel blood trickling down the back of my head, and I could just imagine the little smear I'd have left on the bars as I'd slid down. I was on the opposite side of the cell. And the kid's eyes were shut again.

Great. Dip's sort, but out of his friggin' mind.

I inched myself up into a sitting position, and poked at the gash in my scalp. Wince. Bad idea, bad idea!

"Think you're hot stuff, kid?" I barked across to him and his shut up eyes, too. "It's 'cause you do crap like that that they caught you. What, did you walk up and do that at the recruiting office?" Wince. ACK! Stupid gash-thingie... I clapped a hand over it. Partly to stop the bleeding, but mostly to stop the poking. I really, really don't get why I do that. "Man, they musta loved you."

"He should not speak." The pale brat whispered, curling into a ball. I'd never seen so many bones jutting out.

"You're a wreck." I muttered.

"He is loud. He should leave him alone, or he will make him be quiet."

That made enough sense. "Go ahead and try, runt. Can't see it doing you any good." Besides, I wasn't half bad at dodging that sort of crap, when I knew it was coming. Living around Beacons was like living around cats--you got used to them trying to eat you while you slept.

"It is always good to kill them. Then they cannot kill." Pale boy informed me, quite reasonably.

True enough words to shut me up.

"Hey, Bones," I gabbed, "you should eat something."

The pale boy turned his head towards my voice, a thin smile on those thin lips of his. "He will live longer if he eats."

I slucked down another spoonful of millitary-grade gruel, staring at the back of his head again. He'd come out from under the bed, moved an entire three feet, and collapsed on his back by the bars that separated our cells. That put him right next to the spot the guard had kicked his food tray in through, but pasty over there wasn't fast enough to grab the man's foot. Wasn't all that slow, either. It'd been a fun show.

"Hey, Suntan," I called, "if you don't want yours, pass it over here."

"He is very noisy." The pale brat commented, sounding more than a little resigned. Oh yeah, I had his number now--two or three times whacked into those lovely cell bars wasn't the best thing for my head, but he couldn't touch me now. He wasn't as good as Dip, and it was a cheerful day in hell when she could surprise me with all that Beacon crap. Unless she was seriously angry. But it took a lot to get Dip angry, and I was pretty sure she couldn't get at me while I was in the tender loving care of the uniformed drones. Pasty over there wasn't half as strong as her on a good day to start out with, and his angry wasn't anywhere near hers. Yeah, sucker, deal with it: you've been recruited to Perz's fine ranks of Can't Touch This.

"So you want yours, or not?" I prodded again, licking a little at the edges of my bowl for the trace bits my spoon wasn't so good at catching. I'd forgotten about the whole regular meals thing. Prison, like most things that made me want to vomit on someone, had a clear upside.

Pasty sat himself up slowly. His head swiveled towards me, those eyes of his still shut. "He is being very annoying."

"He is being very hungry. You don't want yours, then don't leave it to rot. Pass it this way." I finished off my water. Good, boiled water. Maybe even run through a purifier. Prison--really, it didn't get better than this. Course, I was completely screwed when Gramps figured out his mistake. A lot of people accused me of being a Beacon. Dip and the others, they were the Beacons. Me? I was just an angry person. It was a hell of a lot more useful than psychiatrists wanted you to believe.

The pale boy leaned his head against the cell bars, as if the effort of sitting upright was too much for him. Shallow breath, tired face--I could believe it. I didn't want his food. I wanted him to get peeved enough to eat it out of spite. Spite is something I'm good at inspiring.

"Com'on, Raggedy Andy. My gruel is getting cold. Pass it here."

"Will that quiet him?" Yonder bag of bones exhaled.

I grinned, though the effort was wasted on his shut eyes. "I can guarantee you a solid five minutes of slurping sans speech." Sans--it was a fun word. I'd picked it up from one of the Fishmongers back in the river valley. The greaseball's motto had been 'Food sans Papers'. For a minor fee, of course. Dip made sure we never had to go near his humble hotel, but the river valley doesn't call folks Fishmongers because they sell fish. Each of them had an infamy all their own.

One of those incredibly green eyes slid open. I had just enough time to figure out he wasn't trying to throw me around again--

--before I was wiping cold slucky military-grade gruel out of my eyes. Funny. Very, very funny. At least the bowl hadn't fit through the bars. That might have shut me up for awhile. Fun fact of the day: gruel cannot be removed from the hair by rubbing. Who'd have thunk it...

Over on his side of the bars, the pale brat was smiling.

"You suck." I informed him cheerily.

"He can give him all his meals, if he wants."

"No thanks."

"It will be his pleasure."

"Oh, wouldn't want to trouble him."

"He does not find it troublesome."

"He does."

"But he asked for it, did he not?"

"He--"

Down the hall, the main door swung open with a little squeak. One set of closed eyes and one pair of gruel-glunked locked on with enough animosity that my conscience stopped in his tracks, blinked twice, and let out a low whistle.

"It's just a wonderful day in the neighborhood, isn't it?" He asked charmingly. "Hate to break up the party, kids, but Crew wants a word with--did you stick your face in your bowl?"

"He's noisy." I pointed out.

The pale boy nodded solemnly. "He and he agree."

+++

"Percy Lauren Mather." Gramps read off his computer screen. From the chair next to mine, my conscience started to cackle.

"Percy? Lauren?" Mellow was having way too much fun. A guy can't help his own name, can he? Much like he can't help his own parents, and that's more to the point. Hey, mom and pop--you do not name your kid Percy Lauren.

Unless you really did want me to get beat up at school. Huh.

"So you're fourteen?" Grandpa Crew looked away from his screen for a second, and weighed me on those little internal scales of his. For my part, I made sure to slouch even lower in the lovely metal chair they'd provided me and my handcuffs with. "You look older. Would you please sit up straight? That posture is terrible." I grinned, and slid down until my head was making a right angle with my back. The old man just shook his head, and went back to staring at my file. "This is hopelessly outdated." He rubbed at his temples, and I showed a few more teeth. Outdated? Damn straight. With a last glance at the info of ten-year-old me, he stood up.

Beside me, I heard Mellow stand, too. That guy couldn't make a quiet move to save his life. "Up-see-daisy, Tough Kid." He chimed. I yawned and stretched my way to my feet, taking my nice sweet time. If they were gonna keep me handcuffed like this, then they were gonna have to put up with me in all my glory. Err, except the 'not walking' thing--been there, tried that, not much glory in getting slung over my conscience's shoulder. You don't realize how many bones are in a shoulder until all of them are grinding into your stomach. "Where to?"

"Would you please take Mather for his physical, Mellow? Then, perhaps, a shower." Old Grampa Crew dropped me on those scales again, and didn't seem too happy. "Use the disinfectants."

Mellow snorted a laugh, and placed a 'hit him, and you're over my shoulder again' hand on my arm. Fine, whatever. Maybe that'd get the blood off my hands, finally.

Crew went his own merry way, so it was just me and my grinning conscience walking along the hall. Now would have been a good time to bolt, if every escape plan that jumped into my head didn't land me on Mellow's shoulder, kicking and screaming. They were just lucky I wasn't a Beacon, or I'd have been gone so fast not even Mellow would be laughing. Course, I wasn't exactly thrilled by the prospect of what'd happen when Gramps realized he was just an old geezer who'd made a mistake.

"What're you thinking about, Tough Kid?"

"Grannies and girl scouts," I snapped. "Why?"

"No reason." He shrugged amiably, and let us walk in silence. For about five seconds. "Did the scrawny kid do that to you?" He tapped at the back of my head.

Not. Very. Nice of him. I ducked away with a wince. "Maybe."

"'Maybe'?" He gasped melodramatically. "How terrible! The damage is so grave, poor Percy Lauren cannot even remember who dealt him this blow!" I eyed him side-ways, which just made him laugh again. "You really ought to lighten up, Tough Kid. You look like you just killed someone."

Not very nice of him at all. I stared ahead at the charming white halls of this charming military nest. Door, door, door, over stressed guy with clipboard, door-

"Who was it?"

Shut the hell up, door, uniformed drone-

With a self-content grin, my conscience dragged me to one side of the hall by the arm and ushered me through one of the nondescript metal doors.

"Ooo, is this our new little godlette? Or is he a demonling? My, he's dirty." The thing with the technicolor wings purred. It was out of its chair and into my face in two seconds flat. Yeah, I punched it. But hell no, I couldn't help it.

I got an elbow into Mellow's gut and a pretty solid kick to his kneecap, but he wasn't happy and he wasn't letting me get out that door. "What the hell is it?"

"Stop it, damn it! Tough Kid! Stop!" He shouted in my ear. Meanwhile, the thing with the technicolor wings was flat on its butt looking rather curiously at the blood on its hand. It wiped at its nose again, and turned the glistening red coat this way and that, watching with supreme interest as the thick red drops started trailing down its arm. Another wipe, and it was wearing a glove. You do not do that when your hand is covered in blood. You do not look so damn happy.

Holy crap, it was standing up. Its feet had claws. Scaly-ass claws. It was wearing an 'I heart NY' T-shirt under its lab coat. Holy. Crap. "Let me go!"

It ran that glistening hand over its nose--could've looked human if you just saw its face, and if you didn't notice its hair was feathers, maybe--and the blood that was ruining its cheerful tourist shirt stopped running. In fact, it did this sort of weird thing where it dried up, flaked off, and spontaneously combusted in the air. Face, shirt, hand--perfectly clean. Floor--a little dustier. It just lit its blood on fire. Holy. Freaking. Crap.

It smiled at me, and said quite profoundly: "Beats dry-cleaning, doesn't it?"

"Funny, Quip, funny. Could you sedate him now?" My conscience complained. Doctor Evil-Feather-Monsters-Heart-NY whipped out a syringe from his pocket with a merry little twinkle in his golden snake eyes.

He waved it in the air--tsk-tsk--and gave me a special smile. "Am I going to have to use this, little godlette?"

Stand still, shake head, big wide eyes of innocence. All things I recommend if you're ever confronted with an Evil Feather Monster who Hearts New York and Syringes. I really don't like syringes.

"See now, Mellow? He's not such a bad little fellow." It took a step closer, and ruffled my gruel-glued hair as it lowered its head to my eye level. "I'm sure we won't have to use Mister Syringe, now will we?"

Mister Syringe. Oh dear God. "No," I piped up.

"There, now. Why don't we try letting him go? I'm sure he wouldn't want to run."

Mellow let me out of his stifling bear hug, and leaned himself back against the door. I stared at the Self-Healing New-York-Hearting Evil-Feather-Monster With-The-Syringe. I looked at its face, at the syringe, and at its face again with Mellow ready to pounce behind me.

"That thing's empty." I pointed out.

It straightened back up, face positively beaming. "Rationality returns!" Mister Syringe went back into Mister Pocket. "Are we ready to overcome our fight-or-flight instincts, little godlette?" It inquired with an alarming amount of good cheer.

"Sure." I answered. It clapped its hands together merrily--I did not jump--and cut a formal bow.

"Then may I be pleased to introduce myself, the god whose name you have no chance to correctly pronounce, known on this--you call them 'Circles', right Mellow?--this Circle as Quip, for reasons I can assure you are both self-explanatory and unjust. It is I who will be your doctor." It paused dramatically for effect before standing upright again.

"Uh-huh." I muttered numbly. "...Mister Syringe?"

"It is a god's privilege to name those things under his command." It explained, puffing out its chest somewhat.

"So creative." I commented.

"So sarcastic." It countered me dryly. Then it clapped its hands again, and said with far too much happiness: "Well then! Let's have ourselves a physical, shall we?"

Mellow would not let me out that door.

My hair was wet and gruel free, my skin was about three shades less like muck, and there wasn't any blood left on my hands. Holy crap, it's hard to believe how good a shower feels. Mellow had me use the disinfectants. I sniffed at my arm. Pine fresh...

"Would he like his food?" The pale brat questioned every-so-innocently as our dinner server retreated down the hall with a curse and a very pronounced limp. He'd have to find a better way to get food into the boy's cell--kicking obviously wasn't going to cut it. Still, it was pretty damn surprising that a bag of bones could draw blood like that. Made me disinclined to sit over on that side of my cell.

"No thanks." I replied, wasting a toothy grin on those closed eyes of his. "Why the hell don't you just eat?"

"He said it already. He will live longer if he eats."

"Yeah, well, his stomach is growling." I pointed out.

He leaned his head back against the bars separating our cells. "He is being noisy. He thinks he wants his food again."

"He wouldn't mind staying clean for ten minutes, if it's all the same." I frowned. "Crap. Why the hell am I talking like you?"

"He is easily impressed to conformity."

"Yeah, fair enough." I slurped at my dinner gruel. You could tell it apart from breakfast gruel because it had that trade-marked Thrice-Cooked aftertaste to it. I think I missed out on my lunch gruel somewhere between the Feather Monster with no respect for personal space and that lovely lovely shower... "Why do you talk like that, anyway?"

"Why does he talk like that?"

"It's 'cause Gramps chewed out your grammar, isn't it?" I grinned at my little flash of insight. "What, was he all like, 'Your use of pronouns is atrocious, blah blah sit up straight and eat your gruel'? Heh. I can picture that."

The pale boy was quiet for a moment. "How can he talk?"

"...Vocal chords?" I hazarded.

"No. He talks like them. He talks like him, too. He cannot understand what they say. How can he understand him?"

"See, there's that thing where you're not making sense, again." I motioned with my spoon. Doubly useless, since he probably had his eyes closed and I know he had his back turned. Anyways, it's pretty hard to point a spoon at that abstract figure of speech thing. "Could you at least toss in some proper nouns, or something? Like for me; don't give me any of that 'he' crap. My name's Perz."

He turned his head just the slightest bit towards me. "Percy?"

"Hell no. Not 'Percy'. Perz."

"Percy."

"Perz."

"He does not hear the difference."

"Yes, he does. Perz can see that damn smile."

"Percy is very noisy."

"Perz is going to kill Mellow for callin' him 'Percy' in front of you. Oh yes, Perz is."

"He would like it if he killed him. He could not. Then he caught him, and the Masters did not come to help him."

"'Masters', huh? That sucks."

"Yes." The pale boy agreed.

I scrapped at the little running globules of my dinner gruel, and sucked idly on my spoon. "You're from one of those other places, right? The ones that tried invading. That's what those 'Masters' were using you for, right?" The pale boy went a little stiller, like he expected to get hit, or something. Just what had the drones been doing with him, anyway? A guy doesn't starve himself to death for kicks. "Is that why you ain't eating?"

He nodded.

I leaned to the side, and looked off down the hall. Couldn't see anyone. I sat back again, and stared at him. "You're a Beacon, you know."

"He knows."

"Why the hell don't you just break out of this place?"

"He did. He could not find the way back. They caught him again."

I fiddled with my spoon. "So you want to go back to wherever, huh?"

Blondey stared me down without even opening his eyes. "He is being noisy."

"Yeah, well, just sayin'." The hallway was still empty, and the far door was still closed. "There's some people like you that I know. They're getting pretty close to getting out of here." I waved my hand, motioning at the world in general. I let my hand fall mid-gesture. Closed eyes. Right. "We figure that all of us can just get the hell out of here. Go someplace where nobody knows about Beacons and other worlds and crap."

"Why?" He asked.

I looked at my hands, and shrugged. "Dunno. But it would be sorta nice, don't you think? Just disappear out to someplace different and never think about any of this again. Dip's snuck up here a lot to watch the military guys, and she's figured out how to open up a Circle. We've just got to finish getting everyone together, and then we're gonna go." My hands were shaking a little. The boy shouldn't have been able to see it. Just gotta get everyone together. Crap. I banged my head back against the bars. It hurt, even though the Feather Monster had done that weird healing voodoo crap of his and made everything all better with my head. Whatever. "I can give you directions to some places you can usually find them. You get out of here, I'm pretty sure Dip won't mind taking you with 'em, as long as she thinks you're cool."

"He will come with him?"

"Naw, you can find them on your own."

Eyelids shouldn't be able to stare like that. "Percy will come with him. They will go somewhere else. Everything behind them will disappear when they go away."

"Disappear." I rolled the idea over my tongue. Yeah. Disappear. If she didn't kill me on sight, then maybe I could just disappear. "Hey. He should eat his damn gruel, if they're going to do this thing."

"Tackim."

"Huh?"

"Tackim. His name."