Part 11
Disclaimers in Part 1
The stalls were closing as the vendors came out to join the circle. There was still a lot of milling about and talking, but the people who were familiar with the ritual began to quiet down and put themselves in a focused, worshipful state of mind, calming and clearing the ambient aura somewhat for everyone. Diarwen and Betony did the same. Jaime was less certain of himself, having only recently begun to attend rituals with Betony, but he followed their lead.
After a time, Raven called out, "Hail and welcome!"
The crowd repeated her salutation.
The High Priestess said, "I'd like to thank all of you for taking the time to join us in circle today, as we honor the God at the height of His power! My name is Raven Hollis, and I am the High Priestess of the Willowsong Coven in Chicago, Illinois. As well, I'd like to thank the city of Kerbets for allowing us to use the park at such short notice for our gathering today. I'd also like to extend an especially warm welcome to all the first responders and military personnel who are with us or observing—we love you guys and gals! Thank you, and blessed be!"
There was a loud round of applause and cheers. Raven let it die down. "Now, undoubtedly you've noticed that there are police officers on the Wilson Street side of the park, and that there is another gathering on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. I'd like to ask everyone to leave them alone, and go about our business. This is our coven's Summoner, Kevin Cavell. In case you're new, Kevin is in charge of our safety and security here today. If you see anything that needs official attention, tell Kevin or of course, any one of the police officers.
"We gather here today in mingled joy and sorrow. Litha is an appropriate time for that. We celebrate the Sun at the height of His power—but at the same time we know that now He begins to wane. The days of the Oak King are passing. Soon comes the harvest, and the days of the Holly King.
"The moment of Litha is the moment when Yule becomes inevitable. Though the dark days of winter must come in their due time, so shall the light return. The Wheel continues to turn, and we have our place on its spiral journey. We can ride out the wintry storms because we know summer must come once again.
"We ourselves mourn those we have lost—and yet we rejoice for those who are still with us. We gather with a renewed sense of the precious gifts of life and love.
"As a part of today's Litha ritual, we will be raising energy to heal ourselves, our city, and our Mother Earth. When that time comes, everyone who wants to is welcome to come join in the dance.
"Now, let us cast the circle and create sacred space between the worlds, that we might meet there with the spirits of the Elements, and with the Lady and the Lord."
Diarwen felt the skill and power with which Raven took control of the energies of the gathering. She stole a glance behind her to see if the Eastlanders reacted to that, but there was a line of soldiers and beyond that a line of blue uniforms. The protesters were no longer a concern, their hatred blocked out by duty and determination.
She felt the circle form, and then the quarters were called by four members of the coven. After that, the High Priestess invoked the Deities, and then people were invited to enter the Circle. Diarwen lined up behind Betony and Jaime. The crowd slowly picked up the chant as they were brought in one by one.
Raven took up her wand, tipped with a pine cone and decorated with orange and yellow ribbons, and called, "Great One of Heaven, Power of the Sun, we invoke thee in thine ancient names, Michael, Balin, Arthur, Lugh, Herne. Come again, as of old, into this thy land. Lift up thy shining spear of light to protect us. Put to flight the powers of darkness, give us fair woodlands and green fields, blossoming orchards and ripening corn. Bring us to stand upon thy hill of vision, and show us the path to the lovely realms of the gods."
She returned her wand to the altar. "Now, we will do a working to raise healing energy. We do this by dancing and chanting, and by focusing our will on that intent. The chant we're going to use is one most of you already know: Earth my body, Water my blood, Air my breath, and Fire my spirit. A healthy person is all of those things. All of us have been wounded by this conflict, whether in body, mind, or spirit. Our Mother has been wounded as well. What I would like for you to do is focus your intent on healthy people walking on a healed, refreshed Earth. If you are familiar enough with the Chicago area before the battle to visualize Wacker Drive in front of 35 East Wacker—everybody still calls it the Jewelers' Building—then use that as your visualization. Otherwise, simply concentrate on restoring health. The circle we've cast will contain the energy until we're ready to use it. At that point, I will say 'Down!' and everyone should drop to the ground and release the energy you've raised. I'll 'collect' it from the circle, for lack of a better word, and direct it where it needs to go.
"If any of you don't feel comfortable with this procedure, you may either move to the edge of the group within the circle and stand and watch quietly, or if you prefer we'll cut you out of the circle and you may wait with the other observers while we do this.
"If you are not physically able to join in the dance, but would still like to help by raising energy in some other way, please move to the outer edge of the circle for everyone's safety," the High Priestess added.
"One thing everyone needs to remember is that you should never, ever feel obligated to do anything in circle or anywhere else that makes you uncomfortable or feels wrong to you."
Raven waited a little while for people to shift positions, and the Maiden used her athame to cut a door in the circle for a few people to step out. Then several members of the coven took up drums and set up a rhythm for the dance and chant, slow at first.
Diarwen joined in, and noted with surprise and joy that the energy she was able to raise for the working was somewhat greater than it had been a few days before. Her energy joined with that raised by her fellow dancers, more than some, less than many, but all focused on healing the wounds of the city and its people, and the torn ley lines beneath their feet.
When Raven ended the chant, she focused the power and sent it out to swirl around each of them in a loving caress before it shot southward.
Diarwen continued to ground herself, out of breath but bright-eyed.
The young girl who had been admiring the goddess necklace had a stunned look of joy and wonder in her wide green eyes. Diarwen smiled at her, remembering that same moment in her own life, so very long ago, when just such a circle had opened for her the path she was meant to tread.
Raven gave them a few moments to collect themselves before the ceremony went on.
A news van from the local TV station pulled up between the protesters and the line of no-nonsense police officers. The protesters were simply marching with their signs, chanting the same old chants that everyone had heard a million times by now. The cameraman shrugged and taped a clip, but this wasn't news.
The High Priestess was praying or something, it was obviously a form of worship but the reporters didn't see anything particularly newsworthy about that, either, and they were too far away to hear the words. It was all really so...ordinary. The cameraman taped a clip of that as well, framing it as an artistic shot. The brightly colored robes and the pennants flying from the vendors' booths were pretty in the sunshine. It would make a good human interest shot if they needed to fill up some air time before the weather forecast.
The news team weren't going to get a lead story here today. They shrugged—it was a pleasant alternative to endless shots of battle damage and interviews with bereaved families.
Those three small-town reporters would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for footage of the Battle of Chicago that they'd risked their lives to get. Less well known were the risks they had taken to get people out of the open, to safety in basements and back rooms, whatever shelter was available. Fewer still knew that they'd looked a Decepticon in the optics and lived to tell about it, run like hell to escape him into whatever holes in the tangled wreckage were too small for him—nor that they'd spent the next three nights drunk out of their minds trying to forget the horror and terror of that experience.
The reporters didn't understand what it was about this peaceful gathering that somehow put things into perspective, but when they left the park to file their story and get some lunch, that sense of peace and healing so strong in a park in Kerbets went with them.
The Eastlanders were not getting the attention that they craved. Walking back and forth on a sidewalk with no one paying any attention to them other than some police officers, who were just waiting for someone to break a law so that they could pounce, was boring. After a while, they gave it all up for a waste of time, piled their signs into the back of the pickup truck, climbed into their cars and were gone.
None of the people at the ritual, other than the watchful Summoner, even noticed that they were leaving.
Once the cakes and ale ritual—in this case punch and cookies—was complete, the circle was taken down, and the High Priestess invited everyone to stay for their potluck picnic.
The crowd had picked up all the paper cups and napkins from the cakes and ale ceremony, and formed noisy but orderly lines at the food tent. Raven came over to the NEST soldiers and the police.
The officer in charge wasn't sure what to make of someone who looked to him like a fugitive from a movie set, but he recognized her calm air of benevolent authority and nodded respectfully.
Raven said, "Thank you for protecting our ritual."
"Just doing our job, ma'am."
"Would you like to join us for lunch? We have plenty of food."
"Wish I could, but we're on duty. Thanks for the invitation, though!"
Lennox said, "I'll have to decline as well. My boys are headed back to camp—right now."
At his words, the young hotheads scrambled for their vehicles. Raven contained a grin with some difficulty.
Jolt came over. "Do you want us to go back to camp as well, Colonel?"
Lennox said, "No, you weren't involved. I don't want to pull Betony and the others out of their service when they didn't do anything wrong."
"Thank you, Colonel."
"No problem, just get back in time to get your stuff together tonight. We're going to hit the road first thing in the morning."
Lennox turned to Raven. "I'm sorry if my people complicated things."
"I doubt it, Colonel. Those protesters were looking for trouble before your soldiers arrived. Actually, if it hadn't been for you and the police, they might well have tried to physically break up the ritual or goad some of our young people into a fight. I'm glad that didn't happen."
Lennox nodded, stiff shouldered. He went back to Ironhide and they left as well.
The patch of shade under Jolt's tree had moved. He found a better parking place and settled down to wait for his passengers.
-Sidhe Chronicles-
That evening, Diarwen laid out a clean outfit for the next day, and made sure everything else was packed away. Then she went outside to look for something to eat and walk around a little.
She had gotten used to the soldiers fixing hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill that Betony had brought them, but tonight the barbecue grill had been packed away. They had also torn down everything that wouldn't be needed in the morning and loaded it onto NEST's deuce-and-a-half trucks. It didn't look to Diarwen like there would be that much left to do before they started their journey.
The soldiers were quieter than usual for men eating pizza, still somewhat subdued from the lecture that they had gotten from Will about showing up at the ritual. Their presence could have turned some shouting from across the street into an outright brawl, something no one other than the Eastlanders wanted.
Diarwen helped herself to a slice and joined Optimus, who was in his alt form quietly looking out over the city. Instead of the usual welcome she sensed in his aura, though, tonight he was a little...put out.
"All right, what have I done?"
He continued, as he had so often before, to survey the ruins of Chicago. "It is more a question of what you haven't done. You have that cell-phone for a reason. You might have informed me that you were involved in a riot."
"For one thing, Betony reported it. Was there truly a need for me to do so as well? And for another—I'd hardly define a few rowdy teenage boys as a riot."
"Even so."
Diarwen stopped for a moment to think about it. "Even so, my friend, if I had called you, and you had come charging down there, would it have helped or hindered the situation? You said yourself that your presence would only attract reporters."
Now it was Optimus' turn to think about his motivations. Diarwen was not directly under his command; if anything she was subordinate to Will or to Mearing. It was not necessary for her to report to him. And besides that, the altercation had been between two groups of humans. NEST had only been involved because some individual soldiers had made the ill-advised decision to involve themselves. Jolt had been present, but not involved; the same could be said of Ironhide. It had not been Optimus' problem in the first place.
That led him to ask himself the question why he was upset that Diarwen hadn't told him. The fact, which surprised him, was that he didn't want her to get into trouble when he wasn't around to protect her.
He stopped to check his guardian protocols. As he had told Ratchet, he could not take on a charge, not without playing favorites among the many humans who worked with them and put themselves at risk for his people on a daily basis. All of them, equally, deserved whatever protection he could offer them.
He was relieved to find that guardianship was not at issue. It was, as he had told Ratchet, that he considered Diarwen a friend. He did not want anything to happen to her.
"You're right," he admitted. "I couldn't have done anything if I'd been there except cause more confusion."
"Still, I do wish you could have joined us. 'Twas a lovely ritual. The Eastlanders didn't disrupt it at all."
"I wish I could have also," he said. "You've been on your feet a lot today. Are you all right?"
"Just a bit stiff and tired. I'm much better. We did a healing working today, and it helped quite a lot."
"Come and sit," he told her. As she had done several times on the road, she sat down on his lower driver's side step. But now, he understood the shades in her aura that indicated the comfort she took from closeness to a friend.
"I was wrong to scold you, Diarwen. I was concerned for you."
She smiled. "For that, I thank you," she replied softly.
Across the river, there were still work lights burning, and the distant sound of the evening shift getting ready to shut down for the night. Directly opposite them, workers were loading scrap onto a barge. It would be taken to the large lot of an unused factory south of them, where it would be carefully searched for remains to be identified, then either reused or disposed of.
The job of restoring the city had reached a phase that would continue for years. They watched quietly for a while, putting the little spat behind them.
Optimus took a moment to check in with Ironhide and Ratchet before he dropped into recharge. Then Diarwen went back into the hotel to get a few hours' sleep before they headed west in the morning.
-Sidhe Chronicles-
(Flashback—June 1, 2011)
Nine hundred miles west of Chicago, in the high desert of Colorado, row after row of identical temperature-controlled, windowless buildings held row after row of server racks. Techs in khakis and plaid shirts moved among them, occasionally swapping out an ailing member of a RAID array or a misbehaving router. Maintenance workers checked on an air conditioning unit here, a breaker box there. Security guards kept a close watch on everything, because millions of dollars, Euros, and yen passed through this place every day. This was the physical location of a large section of the cloud, out of sight and out of mind to the hordes of users, great and small, whose phones and tablets and computers happily logged in every day to upload pictures of cats and play farm games.
One large block of cloud storage had been dormant for months. The program responsible for tracking payments showed a zero balance every billing cycle. By the time the information reached a human overseer, it was just one more account among thousands of others.
A server is nothing more than a computer running specialized software. That storage block took up all the resources of several servers. As the last echoes of battle in Chicago fell silent, one of those servers stopped being a server and rebooted as something else entirely. Programs previously simply stored in its RAID arrays came online...and wakened.
Workers looked up and shrugged as the lights flashed and the security cameras wobbled, like eyes opening. The workers weren't surprised by what they took as a power fluctuation. With the Chicago location down, they were getting hammered as net traffic was redirected to them. There was bound to be a higher power demand than usual. The uninterruptible power supplies kept everything running smoothly.
Then someone yelled, "Hey, everybody! Come look at this, Chicago's down 'cause there was some kind of terrorist attack—with giant robots!"
The workers raced to the nearest monitor. Nobody paid any attention to a couple of server racks in a back corner.
-Sidhe Chronicles-
"My son, are you sure that this is what you want to do?"
"As long as that fr—uh, 'Con, Ah mean—is loose on the Net, Ah still got a job to do."
"Where do you wish to manifest?"
"There was this botnet based in Russia that Ah hijacked once when Ah needed the resources. That still there?"
"It is. And, my son?"
"Yes, sir?"
"I expect not to see you back here for a very long time, do you understand?"
"With Your help, Ah'll do meh best."
-Sidhe Chronicles-
Moments later a Russian hacker choked on his vodka. "Illya Petrovich! The DOS attack against the Chinese embassy in Manila just stopped!"
Illya leaned over his shoulder. "Chyort voz'mi! This is the same thing that happened four years ago!"
They looked at each other then Illya took the vodka bottle and helped himself to a large swallow. They began a long battle to regain control of their worldwide network of hijacked computers.
Illya began typing madly, staring at his monitor as ping after ping failed to return. Despite his best efforts, someone that he couldn't trace slowly hijacked his entire net...as if it had never existed in the first place.
He and his partner stared at each other. Then the same thought occurred to both of them—the clients who had been expecting that denial of service attack to go through were not going to be pleased. They stuffed their suitcases with desperate haste and ran for the proverbial hills.
End Part 11