The
Failure of Debbie Macky
She
was working at being human and she was very pleased with her results.
She had even chosen her name and liked how it sounded. She said it
over and over again. Things had been left for her and she could
always find them in times of need. Documents, papers and even
photographs. The human who might have been Debbie Macky didn't need
them any more. She laughed and skipped about. Her hair was dark and
her eyes the same.
She
stood before the mirror saying her name and smiling. Then for a
moment the room flickered and the mirror went black.
She
swore and hit the deck as a javelin came through the mirror and
impaled in the wall behind her. The mirrors surface was still as
smooth as it had been before.
She
reached out with her mind and grabbed the tooth paste and flicked a
large blob all over the silvery surface. The room was perfectly still
and nothing moved. Standing slowly she released the breath she was
unaware she had been holding. She retrieved the javelin from the wall
with effort.
It's
smooth white shaft was covered in hotly glowing runes. It's flint tip
had covered in an iron and lead mix but the craftsmanship was
beautiful. It's grace showed that some of her race were now working
for the enemy. Had she been the other-side she could have tracked
down the assailant and made them talk. Here though she was still
unsure of how strong she was. She raised her slim arms and cast a
protective circle around the room, cutting her thumb on an old razor
she sealed it with a drop of her blood.
She
was angry with herself for allowing herself to be seen. She would not
be able to make direct contact now. Debbie licked the blood from her
thumb. She sat down cross-legged on the floor of carpet tiles and
placed the javelin before her. It look familiar but she couldn't
place it. She began to clear her mind and try and work the
remembering. Where had she seen those marks before? She could read
all of their languages and that of the enemy. The work on the shaft
brilliant, it's magick's shone with gold like radiance but were cool
to the touch. Someone of great wealth and knowledge had made it. It
didn't have her true name on it, but the power for it to pierce the
Veil this deeply was worrying. Passing through was one of the hardest
things she had ever done, and only her ring had come through with
her. Someone knew she had come through. Someone powerful enough to
send things through the Veil. She knew she would need to use this to
track her mark this side. The poor fool whom the enemy was using like
a puppet to find the Golden One.
How?
How could they have planted someone so close, with the whole world to
look in? How had they know she was coming she was the best but it had
been hidden from all but a few.
Bile
arose in her throat. We have a traitor.
She
was repulsed. She had no love of humans herself, they were blind for
the most part but they were so young and we had all be that way once.
Yet the others wanted them destroyed. She
knew that this century had been the worst, many of their own side
turning after the great blackness had cut into the earth so deeply.
She was not a narrow minded bigot, and there were more subtle plays
of power in the courts than she hadn't a head for. This was after
all, the second war.
Centring
her mind she examined the javelin again, and there it was. Proof. The
court seal on the shaft half obscured by the magicks but there none
the less. A traitor in the court.
She
had to warn the Golden One. Yet her mission was more important. She
must keep her safe from the other agents first.
A
shiver rippled up her spine. Was the traitor using the Dark magick to
control the puppet?
“Helfa
yr Helwyr”
The
javelin began to wobble and then slowly rise from the floor. It
jerked violently towards the mirror and then slowly moved like a
compass.
More
proof that the traitor was controlling the puppet. Debbie felt a
flicker of recognition, the traitor knew someone was using his
magicks. She clapped her hands and the spear dropped onto the ground.
The connection severed.
She
looked around the room for a bag to put some things in, then looked
at the spear. She grabbed her handbag and with a word dropped the
circle and sucked the rest of the energy into her ring.
She
rushed out of the door and went out into the world of people.
Debbie
grinned to herself as they sweetly and quietly assumed she was one of
them. She walked until she found what she was looking for. The
snooker hall was badly lit and she had to walk up steep stone steps.
The place crackled with a power. Opening the door she smiled at the
guy on the door.
In
ten minutes she left with a brand new over priced snooker cue, in a
long hard case.
On
the way back to to Debbie's place, her place, she stopped at a local
shop and bought a packet of cigarettes and a mental lighter with a
leaf motif on it.
In
the disorderly hedges she placed her finger tips onto the trees and
asked directions. Their minds were not used to being spoken to but
they were delighted.
“My
thanks”
She
said with a courtly bow and skipped down the road. There were some
plants growing outside her house and the weeds reached out for
Debbie. Smiling she plucked them as tenderly as she could.
She
wrapped them in a soft velvet bag she had found when she got here.
Making sure no-one was looking she went into the house. It was a
cheap student let with bad furnishings and the smell of damp and over
warm plastic.
Everything
was as she had left it and she drew a smiley face in the toothpaste
in the mirror. The bedroom had a sink and mirror in it probably
because there was not enough life in the boiler to heat enough water
for the large chipped enamel bath. She thought it unlikely she would
stay here anyway. She marvelled at how difficult people made their
lives in the name of comfort.
After
the ritual she managed to blend the snooker cue and the javelin into
the same temporal place. It wasn’t as hard as it sounded as the
javelin wasn't supposed to be on this plane at all. It was roughly
the same size and weight. The cue adopted the colour of the javelin
and the runes still shimmered across it's surface. The tip became
heavier and the brass was the leaden colour of the dipped flint.
Debbie could have made it invisible but knew that this was better.
People didn't not see things like this. They did notice invisible things.
Then she began to hunt.
After
three weeks of the same routine she frustratingly had very little. At
night she went to the park or the common and allowed the compass to
direct her. Still she found no trace. One night at half moon she
touched a tree just to speak with someone and found it was already
awake. They spoke at length in the old language. Then the pine tree
gave her the break she had been looking for.
“They
put the people who can see in a pen like cattle and try and blind
them with poison. They think this medicine.”
“Where
is this pen? What is this medicine?”
“I
do not know what medicine it is but the place lies over there.”
The
tree sent her the map in her mind through the tangle of roots and
soil. She had found him. She was sure.
Now
she set about finding the things she needed. She would have to do an
information sweep to be sure and to get anything she might need.
Debbie would need to steal documents and forge her own too. She
buried the cue and case under the tree that helped her and asked it
to protected it for “Our Lady”.
Behind
some tall pine trees in the hospital garden she hid some of the
things she might need later, in her duffel bag.
She
allowed herself to be less, to shrink all the spark and magick within
herself until she didn't even register to people, and she walked
around the hospital.
Listening
she could hear all the different groups of people. The doctors, the
nurses, the patience, and finally the “other staff”. The others
here didn't speak much English. Everyone did their best to ignore
them and gave them a wide birth due to some of the unsavoury aspect
of their job.
Debbie
smiled. Perfect. She watched for the shift changed and listened to
the Polish and Portuguese laughing at jokes in their own language. As
Portuguese was similar to spoken word she already knew she decided to
learn that. The orderlies and porters were complaining about the
cleaning staff, who had been moaning about the nurses, this made
everyone erupt into laughter.
Debbie
didn't understand why.
The
next night she went to the hospital in an orderly uniform and gave
her new I.D. To the duty desk. Her hair was tied back and she smiled
apologetically at the nurse who waved her in the direction of someone
who had been there a long time. Debbie guessed right, the orderlies
organised themselves and with a quick glance at her paperwork Ania
Nowikci began her first shift on the “crazy” ward. Nelka was her
supervisor and ward she seemed please that Ania kept trying her
broken English to talk to her. She chatted with people and smiled and
muttered with others. She helped give out medicines and organise the
meals. She helped with the paperwork too.
Debbie
took some blank forms and merged them with her uniform. It looked as
though some ink had smudged onto it. She walked the ward and found
the day-room and sat in it was “harmless Gregory”.
After
her shift she got everything she needed ready.
Debbie
Macky was going to be crazy.
At
home she placed the papers before her and visualised the words and
the blank forms filled with the untidy writing of Nurse Hixs. Debbie
Macky was being transferred to the blue ward do to overcrowding else
where. She sat herself on the wheelchair and rolled into the ward.
A
few days passed before she found an enemy agent looking for Gregory.
He was a nurse, but the patients hated him. She knew she must be on
her guard, that she had to get rid of him.
She
contrived the assault as she lay in bed hearing a woman down the hall
sob into the darkness.
The
place seemed to pull her in many directions at once. The patients had
such power and fierceness. Some where plane touched others had Varx
latched onto them, some were huge, sucking their life force away.
The
pity for them welled up in her but her warrior instincts told her to
use it, turn it to rage and cleave the place in two. If she could
draw the agent out in the open she could make him leave.
It
had never dawned on her that the puppet was a person. He had been a
threat, yet here a sadness that one of her kind had brought him to
this place, had stolen his life to end the war sickened her.
Getting
up she opened the locked door with a thought and walked down the
hall, silent as a shadow.
She
saw the agent leave her room and knew how she would end him.
She
had shadowed him all shift until she knew he would be making his way
to the day-room.
Slowly
she walked up behind him. She placed her hand on the small of his
back and she whispered.
“Come
now to the whisper tree where the war was ended,
Come
now the truce has been made and all is whole between us.
The
Golden One has been reborn and she will reunite the worlds.”
The
song was in the Oldest of their tongue and the nurse snapped around
to find Debbie had paralysed his lower body.
His
mouth open, a well of anger and rage in his reddening face. With that
she ran full pelt into the day-room.
He
howled in pure rage. She could place the accent but it was in the
guttural snare of the lowlands, near the west coast. Debbie began her
crazy raging and screaming. The nurse lunged at her but she was the
better warrior by far she broke his nose, pushing him into the Veil
with such force a it almost made him lose his balance. As she
predicted the other nurses were behind her now, she tried to push the
riotous energy in the room reaching to the women he had hurt. It
worked the room went wild. Her fingers still sticky with the blood of
her enemy she allowed the others to take so as not to blow her cover.
She kept her eyes on Gregory the whole time, and fell into the
blackness.
She
could feel him near her, the drugs slightly suppressing the raw power
in her.
Debbie
copied the others a she had seen dosed with such drugs. Numb and
pale, hollow with the fog. She answered the questions as though she
had been the woman down the hall.
The
doctors looked worried and looked at the nurses, then left the room.
She
had won and now she needed to see, should she kill the puppet or try
and save Gregory. She watched him. Came and sat near him. She tried
to decide, but could not.
Should
ask the court for it's council knowing it was poisoned from within?
No she was alone and she would free them both. Inside the bathroom 2,
in one of the cupboards was Ania Nowikci, her passes her uniform and
her shoes.
She
left and went to get her money and papers as Debbie and Gregory
sorted. Once they were out she could take the javelin to the Golden
One show her the proof a then heal Gregory. She left them in the bag
that was still under the tree untouched by anything even rain. She
smiled.
She
slipped back into Debbie’s bed and no-one knew that she had been
gone.
Everything
went to plan and as she sat on the park bench, in her thin summer
dress she looked at Gregory as though for the first time. No, people
must be protected, they are so weak and vulnerable compared to us. We
are right in this.
After
she left him she retrieved the cue case and made her way to the
Golden One. As she walked across the city it began to rain heavily.
Her hair plastered it's self to her her head and her dress clung to
her, but she kept moving.
“There
is a traitor, I must tell her. I must warn her."
The
growing dark of evening was all the quicker for the bullet coloured
clouds and the threat of lightening made the street lights fizz. Cars
streaked light angry fireflies through the wet streets but she was
almost there. The Golden was waiting for her, she could see her, she
ran Debbie ran towards her and then; the sickening thud and crush.
The truck hit her sending her spinning down the road. The Golden One
ran. The lights were around her and Debbie Macky was gone.
