by Kevana on Sun Nov 01, 2009 12:47 pm
Our SUV's tires hummed along the slick pavement with reassuring stability, just as they were meant to do, and for a few moments I could close my eyes and pretend the world was the way my parents said it would be.
I was one of those "gifted" children, which meant not a great deal to me as long as I got to read my books and chase my brother around the yard with a water gun on Saturday afternoons. At the time, being gifted meant I had to go to special classes where kids I neither knew well nor liked tried their hardest to make the teachers like them more than me.
I never knew what their problem was, but now, after a doctorate in psychology (and a master's in meteorology, but that's delving back into the other-life), I know it was just the need to be accepted, despite being told by everyone around you that mattered, that you aren't normal. You are something different from the center. You are on a different part of the chart, and the people around you don't and probably won't understand--but that's okay, because they're special too.
How the hell can you tell a child something like that and expect them to grow up normal? I didn't. But that had less to do with spending Tuesday and Thursday afternoons with another bunch of geeks and more to do with what happened when I was 17.
Was it really ten years ago? Hard to believe. 20 passed unnoticed, 21 in a drunken haze, and here I find myself staring down the barrel of 30 and wishing more than ever to hang on to the simplicity of life: sun and surf and good tea and bad fast food. Stability and permanence. Things that can't be changed with the seasons, or swept away in a flood.
In the world outside our truck, kids would be getting on yellow school buses to shuttle off to brick and cinder block buildings, to come up with excuses about their homework, to count the minutes until lunch and recess. Adults would be buckling up their seat belts to rush to work, in some office somewhere or a factory, or maybe they'd be bellying up to their computer and preparing for an e-commute.
I tried to imagine myself in their shoes, and found I couldn't.
As far as my parents knew, I was a successful therapist, counseling people with or without a variety of mental illnesses and issues. I'd even won an award from the American Psychological Association last year for my study on seasonal affective disorder.
I was the person with the office, the 401K, the vacations to Alaska or Hawaii. I was the person with a nice wardrobe and all the gadgets and toys I could want, and the woman who dated nice men with dreams and plans of their own.
But the reality of my life was so much more. In an ironic way, I thought, I suppose my parents had been right, though not in a way they could have imagined.
Dale's voice, humming a song, broke into my dozing, which had threatened to turn into a full-out nap as I stretched out on the seat. Horribly unprofessional, not to mention dangerous on a day like today. I didn't particularly care.
"You ever wish things could go back to the way they used to be?" I asked him, groggily, from my place in the seat behind him. "That you could forget about all of this and just be normal?"
He couldn't turn around and look at me while he was driving, but I could tell he wanted to.
"Is this one of those signs of instability they tell us to look out for?" he jibed me, and I snorted.
"If the Department had its way, everything would be a sign of instability," I said, but half-heartedly. I wasn't in the mood for another professional rant against our bosses. I shrugged. "Not saying that's a choice I ever want to make."
Dale chuckled and continued to drive. That was an old and weary conversation that had long ago worn out its interest for either of us, truthfully. You either toughened up and survived in this business, or you ended up...well. You ended up, and that was as far as I was willing to pursue that line of thought. Even psychologists have their hangups.
The radar in the seat next to my partner was pinging wildly, and the quiet voice of a local weatherman on the radio took on tones of urgency. I peeked through my eyelids; the Kansas sky was nearly pitch black at nine in the morning. We were heading toward the thickest of the clouds.
"Got the direction right, at least. Timing might be a bit off," Dale said, all business-like. Dale's a good man. I'm lucky to have him.
We drove in the heavy morning traffic for another ten minutes, perhaps, drawing looks from other drivers. I knew what they would be thinking after they spotted the equipment on the roof, the "I brake for twisters" bumper sticker. Crazy stormchasers, out risking their lives again. It made me grin.
Dale turned off the highway and moments later, parked the car in a visitor's space at the Edgemont Community College. Based on the reports I'd printed earlier, and my better-than-average hunch, this seemed to be our morning's destination. Not a particularly good one, I mused. Too many people around who could be hurt if a funnel cloud dropped here.
The next rumble of thunder reverberated deeply enough to shake the ground, and I let go the tatters of a normality that was never meant to be mine and opened the car door, stepping out into the pouring rain. I hadn't gone ten steps when a red-black bull, maned like a lion and as big as the sky, snorted and stuck one paw-foot in my way. The claws alone were longer than my entire body.
I looked up and smiled, as the few people braving the bad weather walked around us on the college campus, oblivious to the world-bending going on right under their noses. Sometimes, I thought, being a little left of center wasn't all that bad. I buried my face in the furry paw, which, as always, smelled like ozone and pineapple, and felt like rushing water and warm sunshine under my fingers. The giant bull's-head leaned down to sniff me, star-spangled eyes rolling with excitement. There is going to be a hunt today, he said without words.
"Hi, Erasmus," I whispered, stretching up to pat the soft fur on his nose. Totally unnecessary; he would know what I was feeling even at the times when I didn't want to admit it to myself. It was a consequence of his being keyed in to whatever peculiar biological frequency my thoughts operated on. But I petted him anyway, grateful for the solid reassurance of knowing that a powerful inter-dimensional creature had my back.
His monstrous head, as beautiful and terrible as a Grecian bull on some ancient urn, blocked out my view of the thundering sky as he leaned down and nudged me with the delicacy of a mother bird tending her flock. His curled, pointed horns could have cradled the sun, they seemed so big. We didn't get to see each other as much these days, and we both missed this. I hugged him tighter.
"Terri, we've gotta get going," Dale warned me, as he pulled on his waterproof trenchcoat and then locked the car door. We would be working without radar from here on out, a time the Bondsmen called the blackout zone: no communications with the outside world would be possible, this close to a Calling. The college was no doubt having problems with their electronics, and I knew without looking my digital watch had stopped. Time behaved strangely around Erasmus, as if he was his own black hole.
I never quite grasped the physics of it, "gifted" student or not, but based on what the scientists with the Bondsmen had figured out, a black hole wasn't too far from the truth of what the Callings are. But then again, most black holes, as far as I know, aren't sentient. Nor are they territorial, or prone to attaching themselves to humans like some overgrown hound dog looking for a home.
But they sure as hell had the capacity to be just as destructive, something I couldn't forget. Didn't dare forget. Particularly not on a day like today.
Dale stopped several paces behind me, squinting upwards. He couldn't see Ras, just as Erasmus couldn't see him; he couldn't see me, either, while I was touching my Calling, but the long practice and familiarity of the Bondsmen--and his five years' partnership with me--taught him to read the signs.
"All right, all right," I told them both, and stepped back. "We've got work to do."
Erasmus danced on his front-paws and hind-hooves, just as eager to be off as Dale was. I laughed and thought leather-blue-sunflowers at Ras, and he unfolded great wings made of dust and nothingness. With a bellow that would register as thunder on the ears and minds of humans for miles around, he jumped back into the sky.
I brushed a few pastry crumbs from my shirt and donned my sunglasses before falling into step with Dale. We were on a mission today, because somewhere on this campus was a person--male, female, old or young, there was no telling--who was going to learn the hard way that they weren't as normal as they believed.
The problem was, we didn't know who it would be.
The bigger problem was, neither did they.
Since the Callers, and yes, I am one, have no way of knowing that Callings exist before the moment they actually see theirs for the first time, they have no way of knowing the signs of what's about to happen to them. For the emergent Caller, they go to bed normal one night, and wake up the next morning to a raging headache and a cloudy, threatening sky.
When a person became a Caller, or "emerged" in Bondsman parlance, the event was invariably stressful for everyone involved. That was why Dale and I were on the prowl, acting as the ground crew, first response team. It would be our job to find the new Caller, get them away from civilization, and then help them through the transition period.
But first, we had to find them.
