Victories Read online

  If there was a later.

  “Okay,” she said, “Let’s grab the guys and get out of here.”

  “Unless you want to see if the— The you-know-whats are here,” Addie said with a faint smirk.

  “Sure,” Spirit said mockingly. “Probably in with the small appliances, right?”

  * * *

  When they found Burke and Loch, they were at the back of the store, in what seemed to be the “General Junk” department. Burke had a copy of Huckleberry Finn in his hand, frowning faintly at it. Loch was looking through a stack of Archie Comics.

  Behind the two long tables of unloved books and magazines was a collection of battered cardboard boxes, some stacked precariously against the wall, some propped against the legs of the tables, some open on the floor. It was clear the boxes had once contained donations, and now had been used to consolidate the discards. A sign taped to the cinderblock wall behind them said “Fifty Cents Each.”

  As they approached, Loch dropped the comics back to the table. “I think I’ve found where Yard Sale rejects go to die,” he said, and gestured toward the boxes.

  “You’d be surprised at what people will waste good money on,” Burke said absently, setting the book down and bending down to look into the nearest box of discards.

  “I wonder if that’s per item or for a whole box,” Loch said, indicating the sign, “because if it’s per box it’s definitely a bargain.…” He walked over to a stack of battered boxes and pulled out a VCR tape. “If you’re an archaeologist, of course.”

  “Burke?” Spirit said quietly. She was sick with sudden fear. He didn’t look right. He didn’t look right at all. Something was happening. Something that shouldn’t be.

  Loch looked up sharply at the sound of her voice. She saw the movement out of the corner of her eye, and wanted to say something—anything—but she couldn’t look away from Burke. He’d gone utterly still. Not like waiting, or even like holding as still as you could and trying not to be noticed. Burke was as still as if he’d been turned to stone. She couldn’t even see him breathe.

  Loch didn’t seem to notice either the strangeness of Burke’s immobility or Spirit’s sudden panic. He walked over and waved his hand back and forth in front of Burke’s face jokingly. “Hellloooooo?”

  “No. Wait,” Spirit said in a small airless voice. But even as she spoke, Loch poked Burke in the chest with a careless finger—and froze into the same stillness.

  “Loch!” Addie cried.

  She dropped her armload of clothes to the ground. Spirit grabbed for her, but Addie was already moving. Spirit lunged after her, and this time got a good grip.

  But Addie had already touched Loch.

  And suddenly Spirit was … somewhere else.

  * * *

  It was almost as if she’d been suddenly blinded, though all around her was the gelid grey light of a rainy afternoon. She could see her body, but there was nothing else.

  “Hello? Loch? Addie? Burke? Hello?”

  No answer. Her friends were gone. The store was gone. Even the sounds and smells of the real world were gone. She stood in a formless grey space.

  Just as she formed that thought the grayness swirled and parted as if it really was fog. She had no time to wonder who was responsible—was this an attack or just some weird new consequence of having magic?—when she realized she was staring at her bedroom.

  Her real bedroom. The one in the house in Indiana, the one that was gone the way her whole family was gone. There was a poster on the wall for the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the one that had come out when she was thirteen, it had only survived a couple of months, because Fee’s birthday was in August.…

  As if the memory had possessed some sort of force, suddenly Spirit wasn’t looking at it from a distance. She was standing in the middle of her bedroom—her bedroom as it had been four years ago. She saw a scattering of DVDs on the bedspread of Fee’s bed. The moment she saw them, Spirit’s cheeks flushed hot with shame, and she could hear—really hear, not just remember—the sound of Fee’s voice.…

  “She ruined them! She ruined all of them!”

  “She stole my lace blouse—the one I worked on for weeks! She ruined it!” Now it was her own voice, filled with fury and self justification. For Fee’s tenth birthday, Mom and Dad had gotten her DVDs of her favorite movies. All secondhand, but all in good condition. Fee had been thrilled, and all Spirit could think of, seeing her happiness, was how the day before, Fee had “borrowed” the lace tunic Spirit had spent weeks making, and climbed a tree and fell out and tore it to shreds.

  And so she’d taken a pair of scissors and scratched each one of the disks, ruining them.

  “Who are you? Why is this happening?” she shouted, while inside her mind she cried: I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Fee! I didn’t mean to hurt you like that—

  But the room melted away around her as if it were fog, and something new began to take shape.…

  She turned and ran, holding her hands out in front of her in the hope she’d feel any obstacle instead of running into it. There was nothing in front of her, nothing beneath her feet but flat smoothness. The mist swirled in front of her. She staggered to a stop, backing away slowly as the mist parted again to show.…

  Her bedroom again. Early evening on a cold dark spring night. There was a wide red stripe of tape on the floor, marking her side of the room separate from Fee’s. She’d been five when Fee’s crib was moved into her room; she’d demanded the boundary line. Over the years it had gotten frayed, and she’d pulled it up one year and didn’t bother to replace it. But it had still been there when she was eight.

  When she was eight.…

  “No, no, no!” she screamed. She didn’t want to see this. She didn’t want to remember this.

  But suddenly she was standing in the empty room, hearing the frantic barking coming from outside.…

  When she was eight, they’d had a dog named Mister Wiggle, a stray who just showed up one day. He was terrified of storms. He’d been outside one day when it started to thunder. Dad was in his studio, Mom was out, Fee was spending the night with friends. Spirit was the only one who heard him, and she was curled up in bed with a book, warm and comfortable. So she’d ignored the frantic barking until it stopped.

  And they never saw Mister Wiggle again.

  “I’m sorry!” she shouted. Tears were running down her face now. “I didn’t know you’d run away! You must have been so afraid.…”

  She turned and ran again, this time with her eyes closed, running as fast as she could. She ran for long enough that if she’d been in the real world she’d have left the store, crossed the parking lot, the street, run for block after block. At last she was forced to stop, panting, winded, gasping for breath.

  And as soon as she opened her eyes, the mist before her swirled and changed again, forcing her to remember—to relive—the scene it showed.

  Flat Rock Elementary School. Her fifth grade classroom. She’d had Mrs. Beech.

  Flat Rock Indiana was the closest town to where they’d lived, and it was where she’d gone to school until eighth grade—the high school was a two-hour bus ride from home, and Dad had been fighting with the school board anyway, so after that she’d been homeschooled. But she’d gone to school in Flat Rock until she was twelve.

  She looked around the empty classroom. She could hear the whisper of children, the scrape of chalk on the blackboard.

  “Stop it!” she yelled.

  But she could hear Mrs. Beech announcing the test, and heard the rustle and shuffle of papers as the tests were handed out. It was a math test. And she’d cheated.

  She’d known the answers—she was good at math—but she was bored and didn’t want to go to the trouble of solving the problems. So she’d cheated. And accused the boy she’d copied from of being the cheater. And gotten away with it.…

  “Yes!” she shouted, as the classroom dissolved and another image began to form. “Yes, I did those things! All of them! But th
ey were wrong! And I was sorry! That’s not all I am! That’s not who I am!”

  She didn’t know why she was being forced to relive all her worst moments—not the bad things that had happened to her, but the bad things she’d done: every time she’d been mean, or cruel, or selfish; every time she’d disappointed Mom, or Dad—or herself. She knew they were being dragged out of her memories, and each one was more horrible than the last. There seemed to be no end to them. She knew—somehow—that they’d continue until she broke under the weight of her guilt and her shame.

  And who would stop Mordred then?

  She had to fight back.

  How?

  That’s not all I am! That’s not who I am!

  Then prove it.

  The second voice, the second thought, seemed to be her and not-her, and for an instant Spirit thought of the woman she’d glimpsed in her dream. But she had no time to trace that thought to its source. The mist was parting again. She could smell the smoke of an autumn bonfire.…

  She closed her eyes and concentrated, summoning a different memory.

  She was standing in her bedroom, looking at the shredded paper that covered the floor. Her posters. All the books she’d saved up her money to buy.…

  Fee had torn them all to shreds, even though Spirit had confessed about the DVDs and apologized. And when she’d gone back to her room afterward, this was what she’d found. She’d cleaned up the mess and never said a word about it. And she replaced every one of Fee’s birthday presents, even though it took all her allowance for the next six months.

  She still smelled the bonfire, and felt the cold October wind. She summoned another memory.

  Jayce Bingham at school, showing off his new cell phone, something Spirit could never hope to own. Annie Morgan was looking at her sympathetically. Spirit knew Annie thought she had a hard life. She sympathized with Spirit every time something like this happened. It would have been easy for Spirit to agree, to complain about her parents forcing her to live in the Dark Ages: no cable, no cell phone, no iPod, and only dial-up at home. Secondhand clothes. Her parents’ weird hippie friends.

  She never did, no matter how tempting it was.

  Was the wind dying down? Was the smell of burning leaves fainter? She didn’t dare open her eyes to check.

  She remembered the night she hadn’t gone to the eighth grade dance. Davey Logan had asked her, but there’d been no money in the budget for a prom dress, or even for the fabric to make one, so she’d turned him down. Dad had known she was disappointed. He’d cajoled her into making fudge—a special treat. And while the pans were cooling, he’d asked her what she’d think about doing high school at home.

  She’d hated the thought. I’ll be buried alive and never see anybody! But he’d looked at her hopefully, and she knew it was what he wanted for her, so she took a deep breath, and forced herself to smile, and said it would be great.

  She thought of every time she’d been proud of herself, even if it was a secret she never told. When she’d seen what she should do—honesty, kindness, perseverance, keeping her word—and done it for no other reason than it was right.

  She didn’t give up in the hospital, or in rehab, even though it hurt and she hated it and she didn’t see any point.

  At Oakhurst, she didn’t give in to being who they were trying to turn her into. She was scared and confused, but she kept trying to do the right thing, not the easy thing.

  Even when it looked like the right thing would just get her killed.

  She was scared, but she’d faced the Demon Lord of Hell, even though she’d been so terrified she could hardly stand up. Because it was the right thing to do. And this was an even bigger fight, and she didn’t think she was the right person for it—that any of them were—and it would even look like being smart to try to get to Addie’s trustees for help instead of trying to do this themselves. Nobody would blame her if she said she’d changed her mind.

  But it would be wrong. This is our fight, and I have to stop telling myself nobody expects me to be a hero. It doesn’t matter if I don’t think I’m a hero, either. I’m going to do everything I can, no matter what it is.

  “Do you hear me?” she shouted. “I don’t care what you do! I’m not giving up! I may not be Oakhurst’s definition of a winner, but I’m not what you’re trying to say I am! I won’t give up! I won’t!”

  Suddenly a Voice sounded in her ears: stern, kind, loving, severe. Merciful and unforgiving, filled with a thousand contradictions.

  “You have been found worthy, you will be consecrated for the Hallows.”

  She opened her eyes in surprise—the grey space was gone, she was surrounded by golden light, and warmth, and she could smell flowers. And just like that—before she could really think about it—she was standing next to Burke, blinking at the harsh fluorescent lights.

  “You kids want that box, you can have the whole thing for a buck.”

  They all jumped at the sound of the floorwalker’s voice. The woman stared at them with a tired, suspicious look.

  “Uh … yeah,” Burke said. “We’ll take it.”

  “And those,” Addie said quickly, as the floorwalker turned to pick up the things she’d dropped. “Those too.”

  THREE

  “I’d been hoping there’d be something in there you’d like. You know, just a little thing. I knew you blamed yourself for … for what happened to Muirin, and for not telling us about Merlin.…” Burke said slowly. “I knew you’d done right, and done all you could, and you couldn’t see it. I wanted to cheer you up. And then … I was in a place that was all grey, and … I saw every time I’d ever used my size, my strength, to get my own way. No. Worse than that. To bully somebody because I knew they could never fight back. To get what I wanted because they were afraid of me. To hurt someone just because I could.”

  They were sitting in the back of the van, all four of them, with the box between them. It was a little crowded, because the space right behind the seats was filled with bags from their earlier trip to the grocery.

  “Me, too,” Loch said quietly. “Not bullying. Not that way. But manipulating people. So they’d look like they were in the wrong, even though I’d pushed them into doing.… I saw all of it. I saw all the times I just turned my back on something I knew was wrong, because I wasn’t willing to fight for what I knew was right.”

  “I just.…” Addie raised her hands, and let them fall into her lap again. “I don’t know what to say. I saw … every time I just went along with things. Everybody else seemed to know what I should do, and … even when I didn’t think they were right, I just went along with it. And … that’s okay when you’re five. But I knew I could spend the rest of my life just doing what I was told. And never doing anything that mattered. And I don’t want that!” she finished fiercely. “I want … I want to make my own mistakes!”

  Spirit reached out and took her hand. Addie squeezed it gratefully.

  Loch opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, looking thoughtful.

  Spirit had gone first, telling them what had happened—or what she thought had happened. She wasn’t really surprised to hear the same thing had happened to all of them. “But you all found a way to— To fight back, right? To tell the, the whatever-it-was that what it showed you might be true, but it wasn’t the whole truth,” Spirit said.

  “I heard an angel speak to me,” Burke said solemnly. “I prayed for strength and guidance, and it said I was worthy.” He looked sheepish and awestruck at the same time.

  “Worthy to be consecrated to the Hallows,” Loch said softly, nodding. They’d all heard the same words at the end. “I don’t know if it was an angel or not, but … it was something big. Something powerful. And it wanted to know that I understood the difference between right and wrong and to know that when I’d done wrong, I turned around and made up for it. It wanted to know if I … I don’t know … was mature enough to say that since we know we’re the only hope Merlin has, that I wouldn’t let him
down.” He sighed. “I don’t like fighting. I’ve always run away, and when I couldn’t run any more, well, things never went that well. But I’m not going to run. And I’m going to fight.”

  “Me, too,” Spirit said.

  “And I—I’m going to stop being nice,” Addie said firmly. “Um, well, you know,” she added awkwardly.

  Everyone laughed. Loch nudged her and grinned. “‘She is intolerable curst, And shrewd and froward,’” he quoted (it was Shakespeare), and Addie stuck her tongue out at him.

  “So … where are these ‘Hallows’ we’re all worthy of?” Spirit asked. The box that had started all this was too small to hold a cauldron, let alone a sword or a spear.

  “Here,” Addie said. She dug around in the box for a moment, and withdrew a set of car keys. The tag was a battered old GM logo on a plain steel split ring with a set of worn keys. But somehow—Spirit blinked as she looked at them—they were more real than anything else around them. “This one’s mine. I don’t know what it has to do with a cauldron or cup, but I know it’s mine. Your turn,” she said, nodding to Loch.

  Loch approached the box much more tentatively than Addie had, as if he suspected whatever was in there might bite. He picked through it gingerly. Spirit saw a couple of refrigerator magnets, a battered deck of playing cards, some poker chips, a litter of pens and pencils, plastic Mardi Gras necklaces, worn action figures, six-sided dice.… Nothing but junk. Finally Loch plucked out something too small to see.

  “Phone charm,” he said, holding it out on the palm of his hand.

  It was a tiny plastic arrowhead, no longer than his thumbnail, with the usual long loop of cord to attach it to a cell phone. “Presenting … the Spear. Fitting, I suppose, given my name,” he added. “Although if I’m going to use it, I may need a slingshot. Now you,” he said to Spirit.

  “No, I.… Could.… Burke, could you?” Despite her vow in the grey space, despite having been pronounced “worthy” by whatever the Voice had been (Burke said it was an angel, but Spirit lacked his easy faith), she felt strangely reluctant to find out which Hallow was going to be hers.