Shifting Fields
I replayed the argument. I sat there next to the same stool at the bar and felt the words like they were hitting my face. I felt the sound of his voice again, saw his skin flushed from running the perimeter of the cabin—flushed in human form from keeping his nose to the ground as the black dog. The black dog that faces down bears had gone into the blackness alone because he thought he should. I had told him to go.
And it was none of my business. I nodded at Brooks, who poured another and passed it across the bar to me without comment. I looked into the surface of the whiskey where my face was reflected. Disgusted, I threw my gaze to the TV blaring the national news down from the bracket holding the screen to the ceiling.
I tried to focus my mind on the anchorwoman's face and hear her words, but I heard Black's. There was someone out there. You can't stay. I can't stay. I heard my own: then go. But leave me out of it. I squeezed my eyes against the memory for a moment. Just get out. I was fine here without you and I'll be fine when you're gone.
I put my elbow on the bar and drew my hand down my face, no longer caring what Brooks thought. I stared up at the woman speaking on the television. An image I couldn't make out floated in the inset screen over her left shoulder. She said something about London.
The camera flicked away from the woman. A night shot of the Thames filled the screen—for a moment it was inexplicable, as there wasn't a thing moving—and then the sky erupted. It was the veil. I stared. The veil in the skies over London?
I sat taller in my stool and listened hard. The lights had been seen over London and Sydney both. Scientists disagreed on the cause. Something about shifting magnetic fields, some claimed. A man in an ill-fitting suit with a chart made of black and white bands said something about historical shifts in the earth's magnetic poles. The north would become south, the south north. It had before, he said.
Another man walked on screen with an image of the earth. This one boiled with colors ranging from deep blue to orange. He set the image in motion as he spoke, again claiming the earth's magnetic poles were flipping; the colors broke into a confusion of ovals and swirls.
He paused the image and pointed at the islands of the UK, suddenly so small against the angry motion of the fields. And here we see the anomaly… My hands clenched. The man rotated his image of the earth to show Sydney. Here again, a similar pattern…
"Guess the world's ending, Dempsey." Brooks slouched against the other side of the bar. His voice was flat, but his face showed some strain. I looked at him a moment.
"Rain of fire?" I said at last, aware I wasn't quite making sense.
"Better than famine, maybe." Brooks said. He picked up a stack of beer mats and moved it to a shelf behind the bar. "Maybe not. Better than war, though." He paused in his straightening. "Can't remember the other two horsemen. War, Famine…"
"Neither one of them was called 'light in the sky,' man," I joked feebly, my mind still very far from the conversation.
"I figure something else is going to get me first, you know?" Brooks said, turning back to me. "This is like being afraid of lightning when you could always walk out in the street and get hit by a bus."
"Not here you can't." I returned, trying to focus on what he was saying. The veil wasn't my problem, I told myself. Black wasn't my problem. London wasn't either.
"All right, all right." Brooks allowed, brushing his hands through the air. "But you hear me. You can worry about the lights hitting Australia or you can figure whatever gets you is going to get you."
"I'm not disagreeing with you," I smiled and raised my hands.
"Of course you aren't, Dempsey, you've got some sense." Brooks declared. I snorted and took a pull of my drink.
"I don't know about that," I said, shaking my head, "every time I leave here I halfway think a bear'll eat me."
"Pestilence!" Brooks shouted, slapping his palm down on the bar. I jumped.
"What?" I stared at him.
"Pestilence. That's one of the other horsemen." Brooks gave a satisfied nod.
"It isn't," I frowned at him. "War, Famine, and a flea problem? Come on, man."
"It is." He insisted. "And fleas carried the Black Death." So they did. I mulled.
"Think there're rats on the cruise ships?" I smirked at him. He snorted.
"They're called senior citizens, Dempsey. Please. Have some respect." Brooks grinned at his own wit again. He was half drunk on the job, I could tell, and his Boston accent was pulling to the surface. I tossed back the rest of my drink. I needed to get out before I was drunk enough to start flirting back.
"I'm out, Brooks." I declared, setting my empty glass on the bar and gathering my coat up from the neighboring barstool.
"So soon?"
"Yeah," I said, "We've got a load of rats coming in tomorrow." I shoved my arms through the sleeves of my coat as I walked toward the door.
"Don't get eaten by a bear," Brooks called behind me. I flipped him off over my shoulder as I walked out into the night.
The moment the door cut the stream of light from the bar off behind me my mind flew back to Black and the lights. I blinked hard, telling myself to focus on the walk and the woods. I was there without a dog, stupidly enough, and I had to get home without meeting a bear. "It's not my problem," I insisted to the night.
I walked toward the edge of town, my eyes flicking to the sides of the trail. All I had to do was get far enough out of town to be out of earshot of the residents. Then I could apparate. I felt for my wand in my pocket and gripped it for a moment. When I looked back up I knew something was very wrong.
An undulating curtain of color hung over the clear cut and extended beyond it. I blinked hard, hoping it'd be gone when I looked again. But it was there. It was all wrong: the wrong time of year, the wrong position, and most importantly of all the wrong color. It had a green cast. Against my strong attempts to stop it, my mind flew to my mother's stories. Green for return of the lost. The veil.
A sick feeling clawed up my throat. I shot a puff of air out my nostrils and strode forward, clutching my wand in my pocket. I pushed myself down the trail, careless in my speed, and apparated nearly mid-step. When I arrived at the cabin I strode for the exercise pen with my wand in front of me. The air was heavy and too warm, almost like breath. And there weren't any sounds coming from the pen.
So quickly I barely registered the change, another color joined the green. A glare of orange fading to black stretched up from the trees. Fire. A scream ripped out of my throat when I saw it. At the sound Blue and Delphine came to me. Their tongues lolled in the heat, but they pawed at my legs urgently. I followed them only a few steps before I saw it.
I felt another scream leave my mouth and I grabbed at the fur on the backs of the dogs' necks. The straw where the dogs usually slept was trampled heavily into the mud, and atop it were bodies. Corpses. Human and animal. My arms shook as I held the dogs. The rest of the pack laid scattered on the ground, their legs twisted and their tongues flat against the mud. The human bodies—maybe five, maybe more—rested in heaps as though they'd been dropped upright and had shattered under their own weight. My eyes flew to a sharp angle of a dry leg bone. The leg stood upright, driven into the mud by the force of the impact. The lattice of ribs had fallen around it. And on the ground I could tell the body had been wearing a robe.
I dropped to my knees, still holding my wand and the two remaining dogs. The heat from the fire increased against my face. With my arms tight around Blue and Delphine, I apparated to Juneau and the Golden Spike.