Night of Endless Portals

Pearl sat with Tia and Malia, teaching them the runes needed to ward. I’d been right about Malia. Her Djinn nature gave her a leg up on learning magic. As for me, Amanda and Kain were my teachers.

“Here now, we use oil because we have plenty of that along with soot. Makes the scribing process simple enough. But wth your help we can add blood to the mix.” Amanda’s grin provided a contrast to her words, as if she described her favorite cookie recipe rather than adding blood to a magical protection spell.

“How can I help with that?”

Kain pointed to my shawl. “You can heal better than either of the moms. And without healing, taking on a cut intentionally is too dangerous.”

“He’s right. Without antibiotics and antiseptics, we can’t risk injuring ourselves on purpose.” Amanda used her finger to scrawl a rune on the floor.

“Witches can’t heal?”

Amanda shook her head. “I think we could, if it were Spring or Summer and we could gather the right ingredients. But without those, we’re left robbing pharmacies.” Sticking her finger in her cheek, Amanda added, “And we already tried that. Teehee.”

I looked at Kain, who nodded solemnly and I accepted what Amanda had said. Robbing a pharmacy after the Collapse didn’t seem so wrong to me.

“How did you two learn all of this?”

“Books, mostly.” Amanda shrugged and looked into the distance. “I was surprised to find that so much of what we’d learned became this effective.”

“You… you mean you were witches before the Collapse, don’t you?”

“Sweetie, I’ve been a witch for thirty years, before Jeremy was born. It wasn’t until what you call the Collapse that the Lord and Lady chose to bless us quite this much.”

“I… didn’t know that worked.”

“Neither did we. Good thing though or more…” Amanda paled and shook her head as if throwing water off. “I mean we would have died.” Tapping the rune she’d drawn on the wood with her finger. “Enough history, for now you need practice.”

As stern and hateful as Pearl acted, Amanda was just as harsh an instructor. Kain and Amanda explained that the runes would more than fail if drawn even slightly wrong, and Kain knew more of the runes than Amanda did, though he claimed he had no power with them. We focused on warding runes. Demons, dragons, giants, fairies, and a few other monsters were our focus.

“There’s no way to ward against… I don’t know, evildoers?”

Kain shook his head. “Sorry gal, but nope. The runes can distinguish the blood, but they’re trash at reading the heart.”

“What he said. We tried warding against violence and ‘those who would cause us harm,’ but it made everyone in the area ill no matter what we tried.” Amanda shrugged and pointed at a section of my drawing I’d messed up.

“That’s what happens if you mess a rune up. Normal people in the area can get sick, so you want to pay special attention to what you’re doing. Splash the rune with salt water if you need to remove it, you don’t have to even wipe it off.”

“Right, but wiping it off or breaking the runes works too.” Amanda pointed to heavy wooden slab. “That’s why ours is on that big ol thick piece of wood. And in the center of our little home.”

“To keep it safe, right?”

“Right. Now focus on what you’re doing. We can’t move onto empowering the runes until you get them perfect and yours are still terrible.”

I glanced over at Tia and Malia. Pearl had abandoned her surly attitude by then and joked and laughed with the other two. How did I manage to get the pissed off one, no matter what I did? Not that I minded Amanda’s serious-business manner. I’d rather learn what I was doing properly than mess it up when it mattered.

Jeremy checked in with the moms occasionally. Based on the questions he asked and the tasks Amanda set him to, he was responsible for gathering food, wood, and general security. Other than Kain, he was the only adult male in the group.

“There! That looks perfect!” Amanda raised her voice along with her tone as she stared at my latest attempt. It was supposed to be the anti-demon ward. As I stared at it, the rune lacked the animation of the controlling runes on the desk in the office, but it still tried to slide out of my vision as I stared after it. Despite the fact that I’d drawn the thing, my eyes had trouble focusing on it.

“It’s hard to look at now.”

Amanda and Kain stilled. She spoke first. “That means you instilled power into it. How did you do that?”

“It doesn’t look all crazy and slide-y to you now?” I glanced between them and Kain nodded.

“The edges of the rune fuzz when I look at them.”

Amanda said, “I seem to possess a knack for rune-craft, so they never look funny to me. But I can almost always tell when you’ve made them right.”

Was that why Amanda chose me as her student? I’d already decided that Pearl hated me, but maybe there was more to the division of labor in the shop. “That’s pretty handy, isn’t it?”

Amanda blew a lock of hair out of her face. “It’s kept us alive so far, so I’d say yes.”

That evening, we dined on canned, pre-collapse food. I ate canned peaches while the others ate “hearty meaty chili.” It was the slogan on the side of the can.

“Sorry I can’t eat meat.” I was sorry, especially after how angry Pearl had grown.

Malia sat next to Jeremy, which only served to foul my mood further. But she leaned across the rickety folding table where we sat and said, “It’s because they treat the fruit like dessert around here. Don’t take it personally.”

I glanced at Pearl, who still scowled over her can of chili. She made it personal, no matter what I did, I wasn’t going to soothe the matter. At least not with Pearl.

Amanda beamed over me though. “Ms Harriet,” Pearl’s scowl deepened at my name, “was able to scribe and empower her first rune already. We should have reinforcement for the barrier in no time.”

The more things that tried to pass a runic ward, the weaker it grew. Stronger, more powerful monsters strained the rune magic even further. That meant a single group of demons with a leader and a good deal of determination could penetrate Amanda and Pearl’s barrier in a night. It hadn’t happened yet, but based on the stories Jeremy told to the little kids off on the children’s smaller table, the time when the demons gathered their forces would come sooner rather than later.

Alaric made the final addition to our group. Malia and Jeremy helped him with his can, which he locked to a distant work bench using a vice. Alaric grumbled and glowered at his food the entire time he ate it, and drank from a tin cup non-stop. I’d made a passing effort to speak to him, but the reek of alcohol and acetone overwhelmed me when I approached. Alaric’s angry, slurred growls did little to encourage me to linger.

It was another problem I would have to find a solution to. At least with Pearl and Amanda here, I got to slough off my mantle of leadership for a while. I didn’t want to lead anyone in the first place, so letting the burden pass to others suited me just fine.

Amanda and Pearl retired to the only private room in the shop right after dinner, leaving the rest of us alone with the kids.

“What are they doing in there?” I leaned in to Malia and asked with a lowered voice. But I’d spoken too loudly.

“They’re kissing, duh.” Tia answered my question with a hissing non-whisper. Kyle and Ricky laughed behind their hands while Jeremy rolled his eyes.

Malia quirked an eyebrow at me and whispered successfully. “They’re a couple, partners they say. I think they’re married, but I haven’t had a chance to ask.”

I stared at Malia’s face during that delivery. Any part of her olive toned skin could have betrayed disgust or disapproval for Amanda and Pearl’s lifestyle there. I prayed I wouldn’t find it in her eyes, and I hoped I would find something else there: approval and maybe a bit of envy. Instead she delivered the news with a lack of passion, the way she might have reported stock prices. When she raised her eyes to mine and we found ourselves closer than I’d expected, she stared into my eyes with a curious glint in her own.

I coughed and leaned away from her, unwilling to embarrass myself in front of a bunch of strangers, no matter how I felt or how little something like my sexual interests mattered in the face of the end of civilization.

“Alright, you two lunkheads. It’s time for bed!” Jeremy stood up and clapped at the two boys. Tia scrambled away from them on all fours and skidded between me and Malia. “I don’t have to sleep now, do I?” She swept her head from Malia to me as if asking her own two moms for permission. I would have given my shawl for that to be true in the moment.

I looked at Malia, who shrugged. “It’s up to you, Mama H. This little monster is your sister.”

My heart fluttered at the way Malia chose to address me. With it thumping through my brain, I hesitated before I answered.

“Harriet, puh-lease!? I’m not tired and I don’t want to sleep with a bunch of stinky boys!” Tia still failed to lower her voice sufficiently.

“Hey! We’re not stinky! You’re the one who stinks!”

“Oh yeah, you smell like a dog’s poop!” Tia stood up and responded in kind to the two boy’s opening salvo.

Jeremy had to drag them away while they hurled childish insults back and forth. Tia wasn’t exactly wrong, the two boys did stink, but she shouldn’t have said anything. “Don’t antagonize them, Tia.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tia folded her arms and pouted. “They are stinky.”

Malia tossed her blanket open and wrapped Tia up in the loose end. She nodded to me to scoot in, so I joined Malia and Tia under the blankets. The move managed to stifle any other complaints Tia had while our little troika struggle to get close enough to the fire to stay warm in the freezing weather.

“You shouldn’t call people stinky even if they do stink.” Malia gently nudged Tia with her shoulder.

I squeezed Tia from the other side. “Especially not if they do stink. You’ll only upset them more.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, I’d want to know if I was stinky.” Tia jutted her chin up and pointed it at me as if to make up for the fact her hands were caught under the blankets.

“And that’s fine for you. Unless someone tells you they want to know if they stink, don’t be telling them so.” Especially now. As the supplies of shampoo and super market soap ran down, fewer and fewer people would smell like flowers or perfume as the normal course of their daily routine.

“Hey Malia, speaking of stink. How far do you think things have fallen out there?” It was a pretty serious subject change, but the question rose in me with the notion of failing hygiene standards.

“I’m not sure. I mean… we definitely lost smart phones and super computers for a generation. But maybe only for that long.”

“You think?”

Malia shrugged, but opened up her blanket and scrawled in the ash near the fire. “Think about it, most phones and fancy computers are made overseas with a super complicated supply chain. If the same thing is happening over the oceans as over the land, then shipping is about to come to a dead standstill. No raw materials going into Asia means no manufactured ones coming out, even if shipping worked in one direction.”

“Okay, that makes sense, but why only one generation?”

Malia opened her mouth as Jeremy emerged from the two boy’s bedroom. “One generation of what?”

“Oh, Harriet was asking me about the Collapse and what I thought of how far things fell. I was just saying that we’d have smart phones and stuff back in a generation…”

Jeremy snorted and shook his head. “No way. Unless you mean fifty years.”

Ha! I thought to myself as Jeremy made that declaration. He was sure to have pissed Malia off with that challenge. One point against you! As if to prove my private victory hollow, Malia patted the ground next to her and said, “I’d be interested in your thoughts.”

“Alright, let me see if our resident lush drank all of the hooch today. One sec.” Jeremy walked over to Alaric’s heap of blankets and filth. After a hushed exchange, Jeremy grabbed a flask and walked over sipping it. “Want any you two?”

Malia held her hand out and shook it. “I will take that and two more if you have them.”

“I’m good.” I waved my hand. Kain might be wrong about my taboos, but I worried that meat was only one of several. And I wasn’t in the mood to throw up everywhere if he was wrong.

“More for us and our discussion then.” Jeremy handed the flask off to Malia who drained several swallows of the flask’s contents before she handed it back to Jeremy. He took his own sip and continued. “Now what were you two talking about, right, technology or whatever.” Raising the flask as if saluting, he motioned to a complicated set of pulleys and armatures. “You see that thing over there?”

“Sure.” Malia took another hefty swig. I could already smell the alcohol reek on her breath. “What about it?”

“If I told you that was a thermo frabulator, would you believe me?”

Malia giggled. “Not when you put it that way, no.”

“Good, but in a few years, that’ll be as good a name for it as any. And in ten years, that thing, if it’s still around won’t be worth more than the metal its made of. Best case, some smart guy or gal,” he shook the flask at us, “will figure out what it’s really called or give it a fancy name when he or she figures out how to use it. But more than likely, whoever comes after us will tear that thing apart and make a weapon out of it.”

“But it’s a hydraulic lift, or whatever, right? Wouldn’t that be more useful than a weapon?” I knew the objection to what I’d just said before I spoke. But on some level, humanity’s ignorance and backsliding saddened me.

“You got it right there, good job! But now that you know what it’s called, do you know how to make it work? If some murderous and yet delicious beast is coming for you or Tia, are you going to respect how valuable it might be or are you gonna rip it apart to get at the sharp and pointy bits in inside?”

“Shit.”

Jeremy leaned over, his arm rubbing against Malia’s knee where she clutched them for warmth, “Shit is right. People are hella stupid in a group. And hungry people don’t care if they’re using an encyclopedia to start a fire, they’re just going to be happy they found a way to do it in the first place.”

Malia handed back the flask and said, “I still think that at least a few small communities will end up surviving this thing. Maybe even some states. You can’t tell me that everywhere in Texas is like this.”

“You told me that you lost some time, right? You’re not sure what day it is or whatever?”

“Right…”

Jeremy drained the flask in a single go and wiped his mouth with a plosive blast of air. “Well then you’d hate to learn that we lost sat comms day seven or eight. Not sure which. There’s no local cable anymore and I haven’t seen a cop in months. Society is well on its way to total collapse, if it hasn’t reached that point already. If the US can’t keep its shit together this whole time, there’s no reason to think China or India, or whatever country did.”

Between Malia and I, Tia had already performed her own version of the Collapse, which was why none of us had been chided for our language.

Malia yawned as Kain walked in from the outside with Reggie in tow. Jeremy looked back at the open door with a start. But then he slapped his knees and stood. “Gotta go watch the borders of the wards now. Sorry to be a bummer.”

He eyed Malia as he rose and she waved him off. I was flattered that she curled up behind me for the night when she did it, but after how she’d interacted with Jeremy, I figured I was nothing more than a warm body in the night.

My dreams consisted of petty events, many of them involved in slapping Jeremy for a bundle of perfectly good reasons, like checking out Malia’s ass too obviously. It felt good to chase him away from my territory, until I considered who it was I treated like territory. Then I felt like a nasty little jerk.

The feeling lingered when I woke early. It should have been obvious to me, but the Collapse disrupted my sleeping schedule pretty majorly, so I was up before anyone else. With the windows to the shop covered with sheet metal and tarps, I couldn’t guess at the hour from the angle of the sun.

Tia stirred, but only mumbled something about cake in her sleep as I stood up and set her back in Malia’s arms. Kain snored near the door with his hat cocked forward on his head. I suspected if I whispered his name, he would come up with a pistol in his hand.

Instead of disturbing him I scurried off to the restroom to take care of some matters. As I did, I crossed in front of Amanda and Pearls’ bedroom. If they hadn’t been speaking with raised voices, I wouldn’t have heard them. There was no reason to eavesdrop. “…not a real woman. I don’t care what you think about it, ‘Manda. I don’t trust him.”

My shoulders tightened and I froze with a sick spot in the middle of my stomach. Amanda answered Pearl’s tirade. “Come on P, you wouldn’t even know if the little one hadn’t slipped up. I don’t see why it matters.”

“Have you seen how he dresses? Like a slut from a Vallejo painting. I’m not okay with him around the boys.”

I knew who they were talking about now. Too many clues added up to me and every one of those clues pricked me in the chest and drew blood. Rather than stay and try to bear Amanda’s half-hearted defense of my nature, I rushed away from the spot where my feet had frozen in front of their door. A part of me hoped they heard the bathroom door slam, it would make them wonder who heard them in the early morning.

I sat on the commode and wept. I hadn’t asked for this, not for the body, the Collapse, or my shawl. I couldn’t help anything but the way I dressed and I didn’t want to change it to make Pearl hate me less. In a way, I knew if I had found a way to change myself, she would have been just as angry with me, maybe more.

It was more than the way I was born. After almost two decades, I knew I’d been born into the wrong body. Getting to experience the real me changed everything for the better, it healed a part of me I hadn’t known was broken. And until I heard the argument between Amanda and Pearl, I hadn’t questioned who I was for a moment, except to mourn what could have been between Malia and I. And even those feelings failed to make me wish I’d stayed a boy. Nothing would do that now, not after knowing the difference. It wasn’t fair for Pearl to hate me over this.

When the tears ran out, I wiped them off on Roo’s corner and sniffled at the mirror. This was a luxury I’d all but forgotten. This new body made me feel strong and beautiful for the first time in my life. Tears continued down my cheeks, but I enjoyed the silky softness of my hair, of the way the blackness shone in the thin light.

Roo did more than protect my modesty. My shawl accentuated my form, curling around my gentle curves and giving them depth they might have lacked otherwise. I was shorter now than I’d been as a man and I’d finally gotten used to the length of my legs. I preferred it now, it made me feel dainty, petite.

When I slipped out of the bathroom finally, Amanda and Pearl had ended their heated discussion. I hoped they both fell asleep. In another life, I might have wished ill upon Pearl’s head. But she’d been kind to Malia and Tia while teaching them. Pearl would suffer to protect this little enclave, myself included. I couldn’t wish ill for her, not in light of those facts.

Instead I prayed for her to see me as I saw myself. Maybe it would help a little. I nodded to the door as I tiptoed away. My efforts had carried me out of the bathroom in silence, so the lone figure standing before our fading fire didn’t notice me enter.

Jeremy stood next to Malia and Tia. From the way he bent his head, I guessed he directed the brunt of his attention to Malia. I froze again and let my unnatural dark vision take over. He licked his lips and scratched his thigh as he stood over Malia. A primeval piece of my being roared and urged me toward him, as if to beat my chest and scare the intruder away from my prize female. But such feelings only proved Pearl right and I wouldn’t act a party to such offensive thoughts.

I slipped back into the hallway to the bathroom and noisily closed the bathroom door. After a few seconds, I returned to the main room and found Jeremy huddled on the other side of the fire feigning sleep. The fact he had to conceal what he’d been doing only made me want to pounce on him and butt our horns together more. But he’d at least stopped leering at Malia while she slept.

Snuggling back into the covers, I pressed Tia between Malia and me while I tried to catch an hour or two’s sleep. Nothing happened though. My body refused the call to sleep and I spent the three hours waiting in vain for the sun to rise. Kain left the room a few minutes after Jeremy entered, having visited the bathroom himself in the interim.

Outside a renewed storm laid more and more snow on the ground. If not for the wards I’d learned at Amanda’s direction, I would have been certain a fresh herd of wendigo had surrounded us. Such thoughts also contributed to my lack of sleep that night.

Two preadolescent boys made enough racket that morning to shake the metal sheets on the windows and jar the whole room awake. Malia, usually a violent morning person, leaned over me and whispered, “good morning Harriet. Good morning Tia.” Malia tapped me on the nose in greeting and proceeded to tickle Tia into full alert. A seven-year-old’s blood curdling shouts worked fine to pull the rest of us out of sleep.

Kyle and Ricky cocked their heads in wonder at the way Malia woke Tia up. It set my own mind to pondering whether Momma M or Momma P were ticklers. Some people weren’t.

Jeremy rushed into the room with a panicked look on his face and a pistol in the air. The chill he brought with him hushed Tia and Malia, though it brought a grin to my face. When he saw that no one was actually hurt, he made a scoffing noise and slammed the front door to voice his displeasure.

Breakfast was fresh biscuits, curtesy of a sack of flour and butter Jeremy had scavenged from nearby. As much as I disliked him, I wanted to accompany him on one of his collection missions. It would help me to learn the area. Besides, we needed supplies and I could help carry things.

Maybe if I suggested it to Malia, she could convinced our hosts. If I mentioned it directly, I had a feeling I would be shot down summarily.

Our group ate together, no guards walked the perimeter as the first thing the moms did when they woke was reset the wards and control runes. As a result, Kain, Malia, Tia, me, and the moms all trekked out into the snowstorm and found the small stones they used to mark the border of the wards. These runes weren’t as important as the central runes. They gave the barrier a clear boundary and a small power boost. When I stared at them, these runes hardly moved or danced, even after Amanda reinforced them.

There were four exterior runes and a single set of central control runes. Once the border runes were re-scribed, Pearl reset the central rune. A whispered argument preceded the event, but neither Pearl nor Amanda offered an explanation to their spat when it ended. They finished setting the control rune in place and we ate breakfast.

“What’s the plan today, Jeremy?” Pearl spoke after washing down her biscuit with morning wine. Neither Amanda nor Pearl had offered a glass to me or Malia, so we didn’t ask.

“Gonna go scrounging again. Might try hunting for a deer or something meatier to eat.”

Kain raised his head from his biscuit. “You ever bring down a deer on your own before, kid?”

Jeremy puffed his chest out and opened his mouth. He snapped it shut at a sharp look from Amanda, “No sir, I haven’t.”

“Then let me come with you. You don’t want to drag a full grown deer back here on your own. And besides, I’ve an idea on how to catch us at least one.” Kain’s eyes sparkled as he winked at Jeremy.

Reggie groaned and shook his head. “Why do I feel the cold hand of death on my fricking shoulder?”