Reflections of a Runner

By Tiffani Collins

“This is not a mystery novel!”

“It’s no secret that people got hurt. That some of them were arsewipes. That I was betrayed or did the betraying. That I pulled off the first escape from the most powerful family of enchanters in over a century—how else would I be here to tell you my story?”

So says Danny North Star (a.k.a Danika Anna O’Connor Ó Griohtha); fugitive, thief extraordinaire, and the woman Alice Sinclair finds herself writing to through a magical journal—though it, and Danny, could just be a sign that Alice should go back on her meds. She’s sure that’s what her psychiatrist would say if Alice admitted her new pen pal was a woman who claimed to live in an alternate reality and who belonged to a rare breed of human, called a Conduit, who can do miraculous things with magic.

Alice has spent her entire childhood wondering if she was insane or if all of the weird things that happen around her are real. She knows she didn’t start that fire and she wasn’t the one who almost killed the neighbor’s boy, but she’s never had proof and no one has ever believed her side of the story. So when Alice suddenly finds herself hiding out from an underground magical society its inhabitants call Wonderland, she still isn’t one hundred percent certain if her fears are another check in the crazy column or a very real threat.

One thing she does know is that the only one she can turn to for help is Danny, who says she has a contact in Alice’s reality who might be able to go to her aid. There’s just one problem. It’s going take a few days for this mysterious contact to get to her.
To keep all her worries and self-doubts at bay, Alice loses herself in Danny’s story of how she gained her freedom in the face of impossible odds. It’s a cautionary tale of just how far those in power will go to keep their place on top and the steep cost for those the powerful exploit who strive to change their fate. Reading Danny’s accounts of enslavement and torture at the hands of one magical society, Alice realizes she shouldn’t be asking herself if she was crazy or sane...

...but whether or not madness was better than the alternative.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tiffani Collins
• Release date: Dec 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370590698

Tiffani Collins

A California Native, Tiffani Collins grew up in the Sierra Mountains surrounded by dogs, cats, rats, alligator lizards, iguanas, parakeets, horny toads, horses, goats, king snakes, ferrets, chickens, fish, ponies, and hamsters - is it any wonder she went on to be a Veterinary Technician or to write about talking animal people? As an adult, she's found her second home braiding hair while wearing tight bodices and voluminous skirts amongst many other history geeks all speaking Elizabethan English and wishing it was still 1593. She's also earned her black belt in Tai Kwon Do and an Associate of Science degree, studied the violin, and nursed a voracious addiction to the written word.

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BOOKS BY TIFFANI COLLINS

The Traveler’s Journal Novels

Reflections of a Runner

The Worlds of Danny North Star

Dark Wood

Table of Contents

BOOKS BY TIFFANI COLLINS

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Chapter 1

Who are You?

Chapter 2

Worlds of Possibilities

Chapter 3

The Ó Griohtha

Chapter 4

Wheels and Deals

Chapter 5

Candle Flames and Brushfires

Chapter 6

Not A Spell But a Want

Chapter 7

The Three Truths

Chapter 8

In and Out of Focus

Chapter 9

Rabbit Trumps Greyhound

Part Two

Chapter 10

Down the Rabbit Hole

Chapter 11

An Interruption Intercepted

Chapter 12

The Toppling Tower

Chapter 13

A Kelpie in Brownie Clothing

Chapter 14

Waiting

Chapter 15

Shattered Trust Trapped in Amber

Chapter 16

Rattling the Bars

Chapter 17

Three Fold Law

Chapter 18

The Hurricane vs. the Cliff

Chapter 19

A Victim of Success

Chapter 20

Dragon Slaying

Chapter 21

Underhill

Chapter 22

Where the Hearts Reside

Chapter 23

The Price of Happiness

Chapter 24

When the Student Becomes the Teacher

Chapter 25

Strictly Business

Chapter 26

Enough

Chapter 27

Let it be War

Chapter 28

Stating Terms

Chapter 29

Breaking Point

Chapter 30

Queens, Knaves, and Playing Cards

Part Three

Chapter 31

The Path to Take When the Destination is Unknown

Chapter 32

Trust Me?

Chapter 33

A Dose of Humility

Chapter 34

Deathbed Promises

Chapter 35

Legions

Chapter 36

Wolf and Hare Final Match

Chapter 37

Danielle North Star

Chapter 38

Not Madness—Simply A Different Reality

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

Copyright © 2017 by Tiffani Collins

All rights reserved

Cover art and design by Paramita Bhattacharjee

Interior text design by Tiffani Collins

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

REFLECTIONS OF A RUNNER. Copyright © 2017 by Tiffani Collins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Tiffani Collins.

Dedication

This one goes out for my niece,

Amaya Lynn,

a toddler with a true abundance of vibrant personality –

and all that implies!

Part One

The Crazy Ones

Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels, the troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones we see genius because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

~ Steve Job

Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes fifty years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.

~ Henrik Ibsen

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.

~ Kofi Annan

Chapter 1

Who are You?

Either the journal was magic or everyone was right all along and she really was insane.

God, please don’t let them be right.

That plea cycled through Alice’s thoughts pretty much on a daily basis and definitely after every instance of Weird. This particular instance had her staring down at a seemingly innocuous book, a mélange of wonder, shock, trepidation, and intense curiosity making her head spin and her breath come short.

The journal really didn’t look like much, which was one reason she’d picked it out of the musty box at that yard sale.

Her latest psychiatrist insisted keeping a journal would be good for her, and since any words out of Dr. Pamela Richards’ mouth might as well have resounded from a burning bush for her parents, they had been even more insistent than the doc.

So Alice picked one up at the Hallmark store while her mother did the grocery shopping next door. It was crisp and new, spiral-bound with a pink cover decorated with flowers and a cute white kitten. She called the journal Fluffy, in honor of the cat but also because the neatly lined pages were going to be filled with nothing but fluff. Alice didn’t trust her parents not to snoop.

In fact, Alice suspected the whole keep-a-journal thing was really just a ploy for her parents and Dr. Richards to find out if she was lying about not having any more hallucinations or hearing voices in her head.

On the other hand, she decided that writing down her experiences for her own purposes might be useful. She didn’t have anyone she could talk to, no one to bounce thoughts and ideas off of who wouldn’t give her a squiggly look and whisper behind her back later. It would be really nice to have someone to confide in, even if she had to write it out to a make-believe pen pal in the form of a journal, a journal no one knew about but her.

She’d chosen the green leather-bound book because of a feeling. One of those feelings, the kind that wouldn’t be mentioned in Fluffy. Alice was certain the journal was special. For one thing, it had a very subtle halo, a faint, nebulous silvery glow about it.

Alice sometimes saw a halo-like aura around some people and things or a funky haze over certain places. When she was younger she told people about it. At first her parents and doctors thought it might have indicated she was prone to migraines, but Alice never got headaches. Now they suspected the halos were visual hallucinations. Alice hadn’t mentioned halos since she was eight and they started her on antipsychotics.

The journal also seemed to be unusually forgettable. Not because the green leather was faded and scuffed, the pages yellowed and slightly frayed around the corners, or that it wasn’t too big or too little, too thick or thin. The green journal simply faded from memory as soon as you stopped looking at it.

The woman putting on the yard sale had thrown it into the paper bag with the used novels Alice had grabbed and forgot to charge her for it. When Alice tried to pay for the journal the woman didn’t know what the money was for and Alice had to show it to her before she remembered bagging it.

Alice hid behind her airhead mask during the odd exchange, but inside she was quivering with suppressed excitement and jangled nerves. Somehow she knew that the journal might possibly be one of the few tangible pieces of evidence that what she saw and heard and felt weren’t all just in her head.

At the same time, it still could be a delusion. The woman, after all, hadn’t noticed anything odd about the journal. And really, was it so weird that she forgot one old ratty book when all her attention was clearly divided between answering questions about pricing and keeping track of three small children careening through the modest crowd and under the tables heaped with yard sale goods?

"Okay, maybe the forgetful thing and the halo are all my imagination, but I am not imagining this!" Alice muttered to herself, pressing her palm to the journal cover. The leather warmed under her hand as though her skin were a heat lamp. She’d noticed the phenomenon as soon as she plucked it out of the box, a tactile confirmation of a vague intuition.

But, then again—how did she know she didn’t only think the journal warmed under her touch?

"Please, please don’t let them be right," Alice repeated, aloud this time for extra oomph.

Alice slid her fingers over a shallow score along the bottom right corner, tapped it nervously with a nail, bit her lip, and snuck a furtive look around. She was in her room, sitting at her desk before the window. Her mom was out back working on a rock wall, her dad didn’t seem to be back from golfing yet, and she could hear the familiar strains of music from the TV in the living room. The twins were watching their favorite cartoon. Again.

"Let it burn! Let it buuuurn! Let that damn movie gooooo!" Alice sang under her breath absently, making sure no one was at her end of the house. Tapping the cover one more time, Alice flipped the book open to the first page. It was blank, unlined, the paper’s texture like that of a good quality sketchpad. Those open pages were one of the reasons she’d wanted the journal. Some of the things Alice had seen… Well, she wasn’t the artist the twins were, but she wasn’t half-bad either. She’d tried to take pictures of some of the things she saw, but almost nothing ever came of it. Just one more tally in the crazy column.

Alice pulled the cup with her colored pens closer, considered the mellow yellow tone of the paper, the evergreen leather, and selected a pen with green metallic ink. Either way, the journal was special: because it really was magical or because it was an outlet for all her secrets. Alice thought it was only appropriate that she use her good gel pens when writing in it.

What to write though? Maybe she should start by giving it a name. She liked naming things, though she didn’t think she had a knack for it. It gave her comfort, a feeling like she was creating a handle she could grab hold of when she found herself facing something she had no way of understanding or explaining. She’d named Fluffy out of a sense of perversity, but this journal needed a good name, a fitting name for its purpose.

She’d been sitting there, holding the pen poised at the top of the page for several long moments, thinking, when it happened. The warmth saturating the paper under her hand pulsed once and a foreign symbol emerged in the upper right corner, glowing a soft golden yellow.

Words began spilling across the page, the ink stark black and glistening before absorbing into the paper. The writing was slanted and rushed, the letters running into each other in a bastardized cursive.

Hello?

Don, are you there?

Alice jerked her hand away from the journal and shot out of her chair, her heart racing. She stared at the words, black and so very there!

More words skidded onto the page, faster now, frantic and jagged.

WAIT!!! Don’t go! I need to know if I’m in the right spot

They aren’t here and it’s been 2 days and there are constant patrols

I need to know if the exchange has been moved

Was this really happening? How could Alice know? It could all be in her head, couldn’t it? But…what if it was real? What if there really was another person talking to her through the journal—someone who could tell Alice that magic was real and she wasn’t insane. Alice shifted her hand back to the paper, pen tip touching, but then she stopped. What if it was a delusion and, by engaging with the imaginary person, she slipped into a fantasy she could never escape?

Hey, ink the page already!! This is not the time to keep me waiting!! There’s a patrol due through here any minute!!!

Oh screw it, Alice thought as she started to write. It’s better to try than not.

"Hello? Wh—" Alice was going to write Who is this? But the other person cut her off.

Yes! Hello! Oh, thank Danu! I thought I had the wrong channel.

Where are my passengers? Are they still with their last conductor?

"Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about or who you are—"

This is Danny North Star

I was told to contact you as soon as I had my passengers on board for directions to the next station but they’re not here

What’s going on???

The urgency coming through the jagged and rushed writing was infectious. Throat dry, her heart pounding, Alice wrote back, I’m sorry, but I’m not Don. I don’t know what you’re talking ab—

You’re not Don? Who are you then?!

"My name is Alice Sinclair, but everyone calls me Allie," Alice wrote back. And then she dashed out, Is this real? Are you actually a real person writing back to me through a magic book???

Never mind any of that!

Have you seen a middle-aged man, with black hair, hazel eyes, and medium build? He’s supposed to have hawkish features and a scar over his left eye. Most people say he’s very charismatic and hard to forget. Was he the one to give you the book? Did he leave a message for me?

"No. I found the journal at a yard sale," Alice wrote back.

Shit!!! What am I suppo

The ink of the unfinished word hadn’t even dried when the paper beneath Alice’s hand flashed cold and the symbol in the corner winked out. There was a powerful impression of disgust and impatience in how abruptly the conversation was cut off. A second later, the writing faded until there was no sign of Alice’s conversation with someone named Danny North Star.

Alice slumped back in her chair, staring at the blank pages. Well, crap. Alice sighed. They’re right. I’m bug fuck crazy.

Chapter 2

Worlds of Possibilities

Alice didn’t hear from Danny again for three days. She took the journal everywhere she went, even slept with it tucked under her pillow, her hand resting on its cover.

She knew it was a good thing the leather-bound book escaped all attention from her family or they would have been worried. Or more worried, as it were. Alice was convinced her mother, Jean, lived in a constant state of apprehension rooted in Alice’s state of being. That her daughter was obsessing over a ratty old journal would have had Jean cramming Alice into the car for an emergency session with Dr. Richards in nothing flat.

The few times the twins or her parents noticed the journal, they assumed she was toting Fluffy around with her and thought nothing of it, which made it easier for Alice to have the book out where she could watch it. If Danny wrote to her again she didn’t want to miss it.

Alice had the journal open in front of her on the kitchen island where she sat on a stool the third morning after Danny had first written. She stared at its blank pages, hoping desperately that she hadn’t imagined the entire encounter. As the days slid by, the hope was starting to wear thin and desperation was growing into a low grinding ache in the pit of her stomach.

If the journal was just a journal, that meant she was slipping deeper into her delusions just like Dr. Richards had warned her might happen if she went off her meds. If that was true, what kind of life could she have?

Alice was on the verge of graduating high school. Her eighteenth birthday was hurtling toward her like a runaway train and she had no idea what she was going to do with her life. Other girls her age were busy dreaming what kind of career they wanted to build, spazzing out over whether or not they could get into the college of their choice, taking the classes they needed to complete whatever degree they wanted. Alice had a long history of mental illness that would haunt her every college application. That she’d been institutionalized three times in seven years would plague every background check and job interview for the rest of her life. She was doomed before she could even drink, vote, or sign her life away for God and country.

Her mother was making French toast for the family and the rich aroma of vanilla and cinnamon made Alice’s mouth water. Jean was humming Hakuna Matata from The Lion King to herself. The twins weren’t the only ones obsessed with Disney. Alice and her entire family were unabashed addicts, and her mother humming that trademark ditty made her smile.

As did watching her mother do her own silly little dance as she made breakfast. Alice didn’t dance. Not. At. All. Couldn’t stand knowing she looked that ridiculous in front of people. Her mom had no such qualms. Alice adored that about her, but it was only one of several differences between them. Most people recognized the biggest difference the moment they saw mother and daughter side by side.

The most remarkable thing about Alice’s resemblance to her mom was that they did not resemble each other at all. Jean was a small curvaceous woman in her middle years, her red hair cut in a saucy bob. At nearly eighteen, Alice was head and shoulders taller than her mother and her straight brown hair fell past her hips. Alice’s eyes were almond shaped and blue-gray. Jean’s were chocolate brown with long thick lashes. Her mother had a round face with deep laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. Alice’s face was longer and her jaw was squarer. Jean was Irish-Mexican. Alice didn’t know what she was, mainly because she was simply listed as Non-Hispanic Caucasian on her adoption papers, though she liked to think her generous helping of freckles meant she was part Irish too, that she had even that much in common with her mom.

Jean and her husband, Jeromy, were high school sweethearts who married as soon as it was legal for them to tie the knot in California. They had both wanted the all-American package: lots of kids, a menagerie of pets, the white picket fence. The whole shebang.

So both were devastated when the doctors told Jean she couldn’t conceive. After trying everything they could to have their own baby, from herbal remedies to fertility clinics, they decided to adopt. Alice had been found on the doorstep of a hospital when she was a little over a year old. No note of explanation, no information on the sticky note stuck to her chest other than her name. But she tried to look at the bright side—at least she hadn’t been tossed in a dumpster.

And, after all, she had gotten to come home with Jean and Jeromy, who were the world’s primo example of how everybody’s mom and dad should be. They loved her and supported her even after the fire and all the injuries Alice could never explain. Which was why, when they got the stunning news nine years later that not only was Jean pregnant but with twins, Alice was just as thrilled as everyone else. No one deserved children more and never once did Alice feel her parents loved her any less than Theo and Tessa.

Sometimes Alice thought Jean cared too much, in fact. Her mom was her fiercest defender when kids at school gave her a hard time, and she was her most enthusiastic cheerleader when she despaired of ever having a normal life. It didn’t matter what weird shit happened around Alice, Jean was determined her daughter would have her fullest support and encouragement.

But all Alice ever wanted was for her mother to believe her about what really happened to cause that fire or how her neck got slashed or how that kid got knocked out. Instead, she got extra sessions with head shrinkers and a change of antipsychotics. Then, when the dust seemed to settle, Jean and the rest of the family would try to pretend everything was normal—like Alice should be worried about her career path, boys, and dresses for prom. Not the Shadows, or the Laughing Man, or the Stench. Never the actual threats Alice perceived around her every day. It was enough to drive a girl crazy. If she wasn’t already, that is.

And as if on cue, Jean asked, Have you figured out what classes you want to sign up for yet?

Alice shrugged, staring at the blank pages of the journal to avoid her mother’s eye.

Allie. Jean sighed, turning to her daughter with a fist on her hip and the spatula wielded with exasperation. Registration is less than two weeks away. You don’t need to decide your major this semester, hon. Just sign up for some basic prerequisite courses if you don’t know what you want to do for now. I’m sure you’re going to need English and some sort of math no matter what degree you end up going for.

I guess, Alice muttered, picking up her pen to doodle in the margins of a page to make her look busy.

Well, that’s settled then, Jean said, turning back to the French toast. We’ll get online to the local community college this afternoon and sign you up for some basic, transferable classes. That way you can keep your options open for whichever four-year you want to apply to.

Yeah, okay. Sounds good, Alice said, adding big buck teeth and small whiskers to the face she’d drawn. It consisted of a wide jester’s grin and round dark eyes. Sometimes Alice saw that face leering out at her from shadowed niches or reflected behind her in dark glass. Aside from laughing at her quietly and making her feel watched and paranoid, the Laughing Man hadn’t done anything to her. Not yet.

The journal abruptly flared with heat under her hand.

Hello?

Ten B?

Alice froze, staring at the bold black calligraphic handwriting. She shot a glance at her mom, but she had her back to Alice as she tossed toast from the frying pan to a waiting plate.

Taking a fresh grip on her pen, Alice wrote, My name is Allie, remember?

Right, sorry.

Look, I wanted to apologize for how I spoke to you yesterday.

I was under a lot of stress, and when I found out I was talking to a Ten B native instead of my contact I got a little carried away. It doesn’t excuse my bad manners, I know, which is why I wanted to say I am sorry.

The black writing was as real looking as the metallic green sheen of her own ink, and the handwriting wasn’t nearly as rushed or frantic as previously. Danny sounded calmer. Maybe she (and Alice was only guessing that this person named Danny was a girl because therewas a feminine look about that black script) would be willing to give Alice answers this time—answers she was desperate for.

"Hold that thought! BRB!" Alice scrawled hastily then slapped the journal shut and jumped to her feet.

Uh, Mom, I think I’m gonna eat my breakfast in my room and, uh, go over Sierra College’s class catalogue. You know, consider my options.

Jean looked surprised, and then relief waltzed with hope across her face as she flipped a few slices of toast onto a plate for her. Sure, honey. Here you go! Her mom drowned the plate with syrup, just the way Alice liked her French toast, and passed it to her.

Alice grabbed it and a fork and hurried back to her room where she threw herself into the chair at her desk. Syrup slopped over the edge of her plate in a slow-motion avalanche in her hurry to open up the journal again. She saw that Danny had written back already.

What does ‘BRB’ mean?

"It means ‘Be Right Back.’"

"My turn."

"Am I crazy? Is this really happening???"

"Who ARE you?? And what were you talking about yesterday? Passengers? Contacts??"

"And why did you call me Ten B? What’s that mean?"

As an afterthought, Alice added, And how did you know I was here? She thought she had an idea about how, but she wanted to hear, or rather read, Danny’s explanation.

That is a lot of questions, but then I imagine you would want to know what was going on. Lucky for you I have some time to kill and no one else I can talk to. I’ll start at the top of your list.

First, no, you’re not crazy. Second, my name is Danny North Star, like I told you yesterday. And third, I knew you were there because my book got warm. The enchantment on these books responds only to those who can work magic, and they get warm to the touch when they’re in the hands of someone like you or me.

Alice felt a thrill go through her like being shocked by an electric fence. Her pen raced across the page, her handwriting as rushed as Danny’s had been.

"Like you??? Like I can do magic? Real MAGIC??? Magic is REAL???"

Of course magic is real, and yes, if you can work the traveler’s log book that means you are Gifted, or maybe a Conduit like myself, though I’m told Conduits are even rarer where you are than here.

As to what I meant when I called you a native to Ten B… Well that’s a big question. I guess the best place to start is with an explanation of the different worlds. Your people like to call them alternate realities or universes, which is as accurate a way to describe them as ours, I suppose. The basic theory behind these alternate worlds is that, as history unfolds, different possibilities come up, such as who wins a battle or what the effects of natural events like earthquakes are.

Different possible outcomes exist, but they can’t both exist in the same world and so what happens is the world splits into two or more new worlds. Now you have a world where one side won and another world where they lost, or a world where the earthquake demolished a major city and a world where the city survived.

This is, of course, an over-simplification but I think you have the gist of it.

Alright, now the next thing you should understand is that we organize these worlds into series. Each series is a grouping of worlds that share certain key elements. For instance, we’re both in series Ten because we share a large number of commonalities, a major one being that the English language developed as it did and came to be one of the most commonly spoken languages in our worlds. Makes things convenient, right? I mean, I don’t speak Latin so it would be difficult to hold this conversation with someone from Twelve G.

"What about the magic though? There doesn’t seem to be much of it in my world, and I would think that would be one of those similarities."

Actually, magic is another key commonality between us; otherwise, we wouldn’t be talking right now. The difference is that in your world the Nulls out-bred the Gifted and so the tables were turned. The Gifted were not only the minority, which of course meant that the Nulls shaped your cultures and governments, but persecuted. Gradually, the majority of your more powerful civilizations came to view magic as nothing more than fantasy, but it still does exist.

If a world doesn’t have magic, it’s almost impossible to send travelers over there. We don’t really bother to include worlds without magic in our filing system at all really.

"Travelers?"

People who explore other worlds and report back to our side.

We like to see how other people do things, to learn from their triumphs and mistakes.

I’m sure you’ve seen one before, that odd person who’s dressed a bit off and has a funny accent you can’t quite place, the person asking you simple things like how to use a smart phone or who act all amazed at how advanced technology over there is. Mostly you Ten B people treat them like…like back wood bumpkins or people from the sticks, wherever that is, but really they’re from here, Ten A.

Anyway, they write down their findings in their logbooks, which feed into a network that our books on this side can access. Sometimes they bring back some of your more clever inventions as souvenirs when they rotate home.

I’m more interested in your stories, personally. You know, the ones where people solve all their problems without magic. I also love your fantasy stories. Some of your writers’ ideas about the fey are very funny. Where did you ever get the idea the Tuatha de Danaan couldn’t lie? They certainly have you fooled.

But back on point. You probably want to know about the Gifted, Nulls, and Conduits. That is a simple enough answer but will spawn a great number of complicated questions.

The short of it is this: the Nulls are people unable to access and manipulate magic, which is why they are at such a disadvantage in our world. The Gifted are those who can use magic, the magic within themselves and the magic within others or within their environment. Really, the only limitations to what a Gifted can do with magic are her capacity to channel magic, her imagination, the extent of her knowledge, and the strength of her will.

We Conduits have a far greater capacity for magic than the Gifted, but we’re very limited in our ability to work spells as the Gifted do. Our attempts at traditional spellcrafting usually fail or go awry—sometimes spectacularly so. This has led to the misconception that we cannot work magic at all, which is of course untrue but still results in the fact that we, like the Nulls, are at a loss in most societies. Only for Conduits it is worse.

"Why’s that?"

Because the Gifted can use us to enhance and augment their own magic. They use us like witches use familiars.

"What’s a familiar?" Alice asked. And what an inane question! But it was the only question that occurred to her because she was feeling overwhelmed, and never in her life did that feel so good. Magic was real, and she had someone who could tell her all about it. Alice was literally on the edge of her seat, eagerly waiting for the next revelation and wishing Danny could write faster.

I guess you wouldn’t know what a familiar is.

Well, let me break it down for you another way.

Say a Gifted is a stream, larger than a creek but smaller than a river. It can swell with rainfall just as the Gifted can draw magic from their immediate surroundings, but mostly it is only ever just a stream.

Now imagine that this stream is fed by a dam holding back a reservoir, its waters vast and deep. Imagine massive floodgates opening into that stream and suddenly it is not a modest ribbon of water but a raging torrent capable of washing boulders and trees from its path, of carving out a new course for itself. To the Gifted we are that reservoir, their access to magic powerful enough to move the skies and mountains.

I’m sure you can see now why our position might be worse than that of the Nulls. They are bondservants, as we are, to the Gifted (or if they are free, they are lowly peasants), but they at least have some hope of gaining their freedom in most cultures. In societies that are more progressive Nulls can actually make comfortable lives for themselves even if they are not exactly equally represented.

We Conduits are too highly prized, our services too greatly coveted, for there to be much hope of freedom. In the miraculous event that we do achieve that elusive dream, our safety and liberty are never certain. But the idea of freedom hardly ever occurs to most of us. The best we can hope for is that our Gifted masters might treat us with some human kindness and that they don’t plunder our reserves too greedily.

"So is that what you’re doing right now? Working to help free Conduits and Nulls?"

There was a long pause after Alice asked that and she began to think she may have scared Danny off. She wanted to kick herself. If Danny were part of a top-secret movement to free slaves, talking about it at all would probably expose her to all kinds of danger, which Danny confirmed when she finally replied.

I’m not sure I should answer that question.

My logbook is defective and can’t connect to the network anymore, only to channels linked to your world since it’s so close, and then only to a few other books published by the same house in the same year as mine. I wonder how your logbook even survived. I thought there were only three others currently in your world.

Anyway, I still shouldn’t take any chances that what I write to you might be intercepted.

Of course, at that point Alice would die of unsatisfied curiosity if Danny left her story there. And besides, their first harried conversation already blew Danny’s secret out of the water, a point she was quick to write down.

There was another long pause, then: True. I guess at this point the changeling’s a log in the cradle.

Yes, when I thought you were Don and spoke of conductors and passengers I was speaking of some fugitive Nulls and of a system put in place to help them escape their bondage.

"We used the same names for people who were in the Underground Railroad here about a hundred years ago!"

I know.

We stole the terms from your history. We developed the ley roads about the same time as your railroads became popular, and in one of those quirky coincidences, the people who navigate our lines have also come to be called conductors.

When we set up our network to ferry fugitives out of slavery, we thought it was only fitting to use the terms that served you so well in yours, though we call ours the Phantom Lines.

"And you’re a conductor?"

No, I’m a rarer breed of operator. We’re called thieves here, but in your world you called them abductors. We specialize in infiltrating the Gifteds’ strongholds to steal away the Conduits held in bondage there. Though betimes I volunteer to assist in guiding Null fugitives through enemy territory, as I am currently attempting to do.

"Is that how you got free?" Alice asked, excited. I mean, you must be free already if you’re part of the underground too.

Yes, I am a free Conduit. But there was no organization like this back then. Our system came along later.

Danu, it was terrifying!

I ran away from my family when I was twenty-four and if it weren’t for Bran, I would have thought turning runner would end in nothing but blood and tears, and yet despite all odds I succeeded.

But my continued freedom is far from assured. I have been in hiding ever since, afraid to so much as whisper my given name on the vast empty plains for fear that it might be heard and I would be found.

"But then how did you do it?"

That is a long story, and just as I was reluctant to tell you about passengers and conductors, I’m thrice again as hesitant to tell you my story.

If you knew who my family was, you would understand. I’m afraid that, if I wrote down my name, or theirs, even in this decommissioned and faulty logbook, they might find out and trace it back to me. Only a handful of people know who I am and how I escaped my fate. I’ve not told anyone else who wasn’t there to help me do it. To speak of it in the open air is too much of a risk…

The pause was very long this time.

If Alice had been on tenterhooks before she was frothing at the mouth now. Her pen tapped out a syncopated rhythm on her desk, spattering green ink over the lacquered wood. She didn’t notice.

Should she write to Danny? Nudge her to keep going with the story? Or would that only shut her up for sure?

It was hard but Alice went with silence. She remembered some kind of investigator on a crime fighting show saying that most people feel compelled to fill a silence and will volunteer information if one waited long enough.

So Alice waited. More metallic green stained the desktop, going unheeded until, finally, the black cursive began to slowly unfurl across the page.

Still, it is hard and lonely to keep such secrets, and I have been holding this one for a very long time. It would be a relief to finally confide in someone. You aren’t even part of our world. Your logbook isn’t registered and I would be writing, not speaking aloud…

Besides, it might take my mind off what’s going on now. I haven’t been this worried in years. Not since my own escape. Don got in touch with me this morning. Somehow, the channel I was supposed to use got messed up

Alice let out an incredulous laugh, her excitement and nerves coming out as giddiness as she interrupted Danny’s justifications. Wow that must have been a little embarrassing!

The silence after that felt somehow irritated.

Funny how you leap to the assumption it was a mistake on my part. Do you think I would still be free and at liberty to continue as a successful conductor for decades if I made such thoughtless blunders?

"No, no! I’m sorry! Please go on!"

Thank you.

Anyway, once I tuned to the correct channel, he said we had to change locations for the exchange because the patrol was watching the switch-off point.

This isn’t the first time our plans have been compromised. No one else is saying it, but I’m afraid we might have a spy in our midst and the constant worry is driving me half out of my mind as I sit here, holed up in this rat’s nest of a roadside inn.

Don told me the fugitives are being guided overland and it will take them a week to get here, and the whole time I’m supposed to sit and hope the mercenary innkeeper and his stingy wife don’t get too curious. If they so much as suspect who or what I am, they will report me to the Harpies in a blink for the bounty on my head.

Not that this is anything new, but when I dwell on the idea that we may have a traitor amongst us… There’s so much at stake now. Events have been escalating in recent years. War is coming. I can feel it.

Gah!!! I don’t want to think about it anymore right now.

All right, I’ll tell you my story, but give me a moment to think. I need to figure out where to start.

"Why don’t you start at the beginning," Alice suggested as she pulled her breakfast plate closer. The toast had long gone cold and the butter and syrup were starting to congeal, but she was too caught up in Danny’s story to care.

Well, of course I should start at the beginning, but which beginning should I use?

Should I start with the night I took my first step toward freedom and how I was so terrified I could barely breathe?

Or maybe my story begins with the moment I made up my mind to escape my family and started to make my plans?

I don’t think either of these beginnings will do.

You’re a native of Ten B. You can’t know what my life was like, how our world works. You can’t know or understand why my heart was made heavy by the choice to leave my family or the guilt and conflict I still feel over abandoning my duties and obligations.

No, for you to understand the whole of it, my story must start at the very beginning. I should start by telling you about my family.

The Ó Griohtha, clan of the griffin.

Chapter 3

The Ó Griohtha

Iwant it known up front that, in many ways, I am still very proud of my family.

The Ó Griohtha is one of the oldest families to come over from Eire to what you would call the Americas. Following a dream, our founding father, Bran Ó Griohtha, fled the Sìdhe Wars for the shores of this fair and bountiful land back when there were still scarcely more than Norseman steadings dotting the northeastern coastline. He and two of his sons were Druids and powerful enchanters.

That legacy has stayed with us through the centuries. We’ve made some of the greatest breakthroughs in mirror enchantments, and our mirrors retain their potency long after others have lost their luster. If there is a mirror in your household that, after generations, still shows you true visions, still relays clear messages, still takes you to your destination without incident, look at the seal on the back. Likely you will see a griffin bearing a yew branch and a hand mirror.

In addition to being heirs to strong magic, our family has also been a pillar of society since time immemorial. Sanctuary, the capitol of the Wabanaki Province, is centered on our family estate. Our Druids have provided council to chiefs and lords for generations. We founded the first Druidic university on this continent and we consider it our duty to send our brightest to teach and spread our knowledge amongst those willing to learn. It should also be said that, while we have made our not inconsiderable fortune by manufacturing enchanted mirrors for all purposes, we take pride in making our wares affordable for all, not just the privileged or wealthy.

For decades the Ó Griohtha have advocated for better treatment of the Nulls in our societies and have striven to improve relations between Nulls and Gifted.

That said, there is no other body of people I fear more.

Clearly, you can see how much power and influence my family wields. And with their specialty being mirrors, is it any wonder that I am terrified to breathe a word of who I am?

But I forget. You don’t know the significance of mirrors.

Let me put it like this. Mirrors are to us what the microchip is to you. The microchip makes possible your phones and computers, your televisions and satellites, your planes and cars. From what I read, practically every piece of machinery you use has some kind of microchip in it.

Mirrors are almost as universal here. We use them to travel, to communicate, and sometimes to look forward or backward through time. There are mirrors to deceive and mirrors to reveal the truth, mirrors to find things and mirrors to hide them. Mirrors are everywhere and on practically every person, and no one knows mirrors better than my family.

Even if some of those mirrors don’t bear the Ó Griohtha’s seal, our scryers can still tap into them. Our enchanters are terribly skilled. Under the right circumstances, they can tap into almost any reflective surface, such as still water or shiny metals.

I wish I’d had the opportunity to pick up a few of those skills. It’s one thing to have an academic knowledge of a concept. It’s another to know how to put that concept into practice—and if there’s one thing that is forbidden it’s allowing a Conduit to practice active magic.

On the shiny side, at least I received a formal education. That is exceedingly rare for a Conduit in Ten A. In my family, though we are treated better than other families treat theirs, we Conduits are not usually allowed any education. It’s reckoned a waste of effort and time, possibly even dangerous. Conduits are viewed as dim. To use one of your terms, you might think of us as mentally challenged.

We’re not, of course. It’s just that we… I don’t know how to really explain it. I like to think of it like this: we experience the world more fully than either the Gifted or the Nulls, and it’s… Well, I guess you could say we have more to distract us.

And I suppose we also come off a little crazy. Some of us can’t bear to be touched and will shy away if you get too close, sometimes even lashing out violently. Others wear a perpetually glazed and distant expression, tracking something in motion with their gaze that is invisible to everyone else. I myself have been thought to be hard of hearing, and I get caught humming along to music that doesn’t exist for anyone else.

When I was young, I used to try to explain that the music was real, that maybe they should try to listen more carefully, but that only earned me oblique glances and placating smiles and so I gave up trying to make any of them understand.

You see, the Gifted use magic to perform tasks daily. They can perceive it around them and can feel its lack, but not like we Conduits can. A Gifted’s sense of magic is vague and imprecise at best. If you equate magic with scent, then you could say that a Gifted’s sense of smell is as weak as a human’s, unable to detect anything but the most overt smells. A Conduit has the nose of a bloodhound, able to pick up the subtlest distinctions and faintest traces of scent.

And for some Conduits, magic is literally a scent, telling them if a spell is nefarious or benevolent, who created the spell, what mood the caster of the spell was in, how long ago that spell was cast, and if it was well wrought or bungled. I can tell all those things and more, only for me magic is perceived as sound, as music.

I think that has to be my earliest memory: listening to my Aunt Galina’s magic, which was like gentle piano accompanied by deep mellow drums and her voice, her magic’s voice, was a clear soothing alto.

I was having a nightmare, something to do with being chased by a massive green dog. I woke up crying and Auntie Lina was there. She picked me up and rocked me, cooing in my ear that everything was all right and I was safe. I remember being more comforted by her music than her words, because the music never lied and if her music was calm and safe then I must be too if I was in her arms. Auntie Lina used to make me feel better just by being near. That effect on me was probably one reason she was made my caretaker.

The Conduits in my family are not raised by their parents. To our chieftains, the heads of our family’s three branches, that would be like handing a delicate and extremely valuable instrument to a thoughtless child. Instead, we are given to caretakers, whose duty it is to see to our every need and to make sure we don’t hurt ourselves or anyone else.

Aunt Galina married into the Ó Griohtha clan from a prominent Rus family here on a diplomatic mission. Though she was not of the blood, my family thought she was a suitable match for me because she was steady and patient, traits that were essential in someone set to the task of watching over an excitable, dim, and sometimes unreasonable Conduit. Her magic was strong in earth with just the right touch of water, making her well grounded and in tune with others’ moods and needs.

Anyone who looked into her comfortably plump features and her large brown eyes could tell she was a kind soul, warm and compassionate. One might say she was a natural mother if it hadn’t been for the unfortunate fact that she was barren. I think more than anything it was her inability to conceive that convinced the family Aunt Galina was meant to be the caretaker of one of their precious Conduits.

I thank whatever god, goddess, or spirit that sent me to Auntie Lina and not someone like Aunt Ceridwen. That’s Awnt Ceridwen, by the way, not Ant Ceridwen, and certainly never Auntie Ceri. I tried calling her that once. My cheek bore her handprint until the next day.

Aunt Ceridwen is the caretaker to my cousin Shania. If ever there was a more ill matched pair I haven’t come across it. Shania was a sweet, gentle little girl who loved puppies and kittens and colts. Aunt Ceridwen was curt, severe, and completely unsympathetic, her thin horsy face always set with stern lines when it wasn’t pinched like she’d just bitten into a lemon. She browbeat poor Shania relentlessly throughout our childhood for the slightest provocations, most of which I never understood.

I remember the first time I realized how lucky I was to have the caretaker I did, when I was eight or nine.

I was sitting on the lawn at Auntie Lina’s feet, teasing a kitten with a ball of yarn out of her basket while she knitted. We were in the Rose Garden, so named for the masses of rose bushes studded with blooms of every hue. The roses lined the white gravel paths and clustered in colorful islands surrounding the central fountain.

It was a gorgeous spring day and the perfume of roses was almost as heady as the music of the sun and flowers and people and the light breeze playing over me. It was the place our caretakers liked to use for our exercises when the weather was nice because it was situated directly over one of the largest ley lines running through our estate. Ley lines are basically rivers of magical energy that crisscross the earth in something of a helter-skelter web. Where they cross are nodes, and where three or more lines intersect, you have a nexus. Nodes and nexi are centers of immense power, and that’s why most large cities and inter-world portals such as stone circles or the great traveling mirrors are situated over them. Unfortunately, the Gifted can’t make use of these power sources away from the lines or nodes themselves, and that is where we Conduits come in.

Conduits can draw upon magic wherever we are, even from ley lines miles away. With the aid of certain enchantments, the Gifted can draw that magic through us for their own purposes, again just like you would use a familiar. How much and how fast they can draw that magic depends upon the Conduit’s scope and range.

Mostly these factors are predicated by our genetics, our breeding. The more Conduits in our ancestry and the more crosses between Conduits, the broader our scope and the greater our range. The other thing that helps to determine our ability is conditioning. Up until our mid-to-late teens, our channels are still developing. With careful training and conditioning, those channels can be expanded beyond what they would be if left to their natural inclination. The more efficiently we are able to channel magic to the Gifted, the easier it is on our minds and bodies, improving the quality and length of our lives. That is why our caretakers spend so much time and energy expanding and conditioning us from the earliest age.

Thus the Rose Garden.

Auntie Lina and I had been there most of the morning. She’d already knitted one bright yellow bootie for my newest Conduit cousin, Sabrina, born only a week past, and was working on the second. I was done with my stretching exercises for the day so I was left to hum along with the kitten’s music of mews and purring in peace, but several of my cousins were there still working with their caretakers, including Shania and Aunt Ceridwen.

Again, Aunt Ceridwen ordered tersely.

They were sitting at the small table situated on the other side of the pea gravel path from me, and I didn’t need to look up from playing with the kitten to know that she wore her stone face. I could hear it in her music, which was full of harsh cellos and a relentlessly throbbing bass drum. The voice of her magic was guttural and grating on my ears. I tried to tune it out by focusing on the other music around me, but it was hard and I winced every time she snapped at Shania. A Gifted or Conduit’s magic is closely tied to their emotional state, and the sound of her temper flaring scratched at my ears.

It’s too bright, Aun’ Cer-wen, Shania said, and hearing the discomfort in her voice and discordant twang of her music, I couldn’t help but glance over at her. She was rubbing at her eyes with her little fists and tears were streaming over her chubby baby cheeks. Shania saw magic like I could hear it.

I cringed in sympathy for her. I remember the first time Auntie Lina brought me to the Rose Garden. I was about the same age as Shania, maybe a little younger. Until that point, Auntie Lina had been careful to avoid taking me near any of the lines, and especially the main nexus, to avoid over-stimulating me until I was older and could bear it. That first time, the music was so loud I thought my head would shatter. My ears wouldn’t stop ringing for days and everything sounded dull and garbled. Withstanding all that power got easier with practice, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have all that happening to my eyes.

Of course, Aunt Ceridwen didn’t know about any of that, and even if she did, I don’t think she would care.

Nonsense, she told Shania from where she sat perfectly upright in her straight-backed chair, her hands folded neatly in her lap, right index finger tapping at a ring on her left hand. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the lighting here. Stop your complaining and try again.

Shania gulped back a sob and lowered her hands by slow painful degrees until she could squint over her knuckles, her eyes blinking furiously. It’s burning my eyes, Aun’ Cer-wen. Please, can we stop? I could barely make out her words through her tears, and her hands were pressed to her mouth.

No. We still have three more draws to do. If you insist on this whining, I will be forced to check you. Do you want that, Shania? The finger tapping the ring stilled on the garnet set in the center and I held my breath. The rings of the Gifted were enchanted to create links to the necklaces we Conduits wore, chains of silver dripping with talismans and charms. It enabled them to draw magic through us from a distance. It also enabled other things, such as the delivery of varying degrees of sharp shocks when our caretakers decided to chastise us for something. They call it checking.

Shania hunched her shoulders, trying to shrink in on herself as she shook her head, the harp and violin in her music sounding out with high quivering notes.

Aunt Ceridwen nodded, once down and once up, never a wasted motion. Good. Again, she said, and she reached out to touch a toy, a brightly painted wooden top, resting on the table next to her. She set it up and started it spinning. At the same moment, Shania gave a whimper and wrapped her arms around her thin chest.

I wasn’t paying any attention to the kitten now. All of my focus was on poor Shania. As she began to rock on her chair and her whimpers grew into stifled cries, I rubbed at my sternum.

Mostly we Conduits experience magic through one of the five senses, but even for those of us who share the same sense, the experience is different. But to say one of the senses is the only way we experience magic would be misleading. Though I hear music as the first and foremost way I relate to magic, I can also feel it as a sensation, see it, or smell it to some minor degree.

In this case, magic had a feel, or more accurately, the movement of magic had a feel. When a Gifted draws magic through us while our channels are still tender and stretching, it’s as though the magic is made up of coarse hemp strands and it’s being pulled in through our skin and senses to be twisted into a thick cable that is then drawn out a raw and abraded hole in our chest. Until the edges of that hole are deadened by persistent conditioning, building up a kind of callus, the magic passing through is very painful and my chest burned in sympathy for Shania.

Only when Shania began to keen did Aunt Ceridwen let the top wobble to a halt. You must make some effort to stifle that noise, Shania, Aunt Ceridwen told her young charge as she brushed an errant strand of iron gray hair away from her face. It is unbecoming in a Conduit of the Ó Griohtha. Be silent this time or be checked. Again.

I couldn’t watch anymore. Make her stop, Auntie Lina, I said, turning to her and clenching my fists in her skirt. Make Aunt Ceridwen leave Shania alone. She’s just a baby.

Auntie Lina shook her head, her eyes on her knitting. It’s not our place to interfere, Danny, she told me, and the tone of her voice matched her words; but the concerned frown, the way her needles stabbed into her knitting, and the anxious jangle of high-pitched piano keys spoke differently as Shania began to keen again.

My cousin’s sharp cry spun me around in time to see Shania fall out of her chair to the ground where she curled herself into a tight little ball, hands clutching at her neck and the silver necklace collaring her.

I shot to my feet, not caring where anyone thought my place should be, and flung myself down at Shania’s side. Curling over and around my little cousin’s shivering form, willing the power of the line to bend fractionally around us in the frantic wish to ease some of her pain, I glared up at Aunt Ceridwen through the tears that had sprung to my eyes.

Stop it, Aunt Ceridwen! It’s not her fault she’s crying. She’s little and you’re pushing her too hard. It hurts!

The last words weren’t out of my mouth before Aunt Ceridwen stood up and grabbed my upper arm hard, hauling me to my feet and away from Shania. She took two lunging steps that I had to hop to keep up with before she shoved me toward Auntie Lina, saying, Really, Galina, keep better control of your charge or I will have you up before the chieftains for negligence and interference.

Auntie Lina pulled me against and a little behind her as she faced the other woman. "I think family chieftains might consider causing our solnyshko some injury by being too aggressive with her training to be even more negligent on your part, Ceridwen. My Danny makes a good point, da? The child’s first gen and is not five years old. This is her first time in garden. Maybe you’ve pushed her far enough for one day."

Her Rus accent, always present but normally so faint I didn’t pay any attention to it, had gotten thick, and she almost never said anything in her mother tongue. Now she’d said two words in the same breath. I needed no further sign Auntie Lina was upset.

And perhaps you should see to your own charge’s training instead of interfering with how others carry out their duty, Aunt Ceridwen told Auntie Lina, her pale gray eyes flat and hard as granite. "You’re a disgrace to the family, Galina. That Conduit could