THE BLUE BOY
by Lynn K. Hollander
Chapter 12 -- Arrivals
SUNNYDALE
Magal, looking as if he was just walking to his BMW to go to a game of handball, in khakis by Dockers, short boots by Florsheim, and a really nice dark green turtleneck by Malo under a tobacco leather blazer by Calvin Kline, walked around a windbreak and surveyed the area. Humans, he remembered, were what the natives were called. What a lot of colors they came in. A weapon was concealed on his body, but ready for quick use, should he get the opportunity. He carried a leather duffel which did not contain sports equipment, but did contain other useful objects.
Two women with black hair were approaching the playground, accompanied by their children. One woman had a warm, amber skin, while the other, taller, woman had a pale, cold complexion. The three children were mixed, and displayed very different hair colors, two of them obviously artificial.
Passing them on the way out of the playground was a solid young woman with dark tan skin and dark red hair. She wore a backpack and sturdy sandals.
Magal decided he could take a quick survey. He sat down at a picnic table and opened his leather duffel. He removed the locator and unfolded the screen. "Perspex", he said, and the pale gray grid appeared on the screen, coincident with the searching magic which the object utilized to find its targets. Two glowing, overlapping circles, one blue and one orange, appeared on the surface, nearly touching the white dot at the center which represented Magal's location. Blue! Right here! Almost on top of him! Orange, too, he realized. Someone from Mindo is also here? And has already found the boy? That made his job a little harder, a little messier, but one he could still perform.
Kailea sensed the magical surge, recognized what it was, stopped, and turned around. If someone from Ferenc was here, searching for Ingelram, she could explain that she was here to help and even suggest joining forces so the boy could be recovered sooner.
Ann, Jiding and Binwen also felt the tracking device power up. They did not know what was happening, but Jiding stepped back and around Darcy, so the children were inside a triangle of adults.
"Ann?" Dawn asked, taking Darcy's hand.
"I don't know, Dawn." After a moment, Ann said, "Let's go back down."
Binwen took up her mirror, which she was wearing as an earring. Jiding glanced over at her and removed her mirror from her necklace.
"No magic yet," Ann ordered.
"All right," Binwen said.
"Jingwu?" Jiding said quietly, as the woman hiker neared them.
The blue dot suddenly disappeared from the grid. Magal smacked the base and said, "Perspex!" again. The grid blinked out, then reformed with a misty white glow over the entire screen. Through the haze, the orange dot, now pale and fuzzy, was moving towards him. The Mindoan had to be a witch! He left the picnic table and walked east, looking down at the women with their children and the woman hiker, now all standing in a loose group near the entrance to the area with the strange metal pipes and chutes.
Ann, Binwen and Jiding glanced carefully at Kailea as she walked past them. There was a trace of power about her, but nothing like the flux that had swept over them. This time, however, Ann noticed the fine linen shirt and the heavier linen pants, cut in the same style as Darcy's wool ones.
Kailea walked past the locals, intent on the source of power she had sensed. There was a man on the top of the hill, near the source. He was short, a mix of shades of grayish beige, and very attractive, in a strange, foreign style. He was neither Ferenckian nor Damasi, but he was intriguing, certainly. Strange. Maybe he had nothing to do with the missing hostage at all.
Darcy clung to Dawn's hand.
"Take Darcy and walk back toward the car," Ann told Binwen. "Be ready to port directly home."
"Jingwu?" Darcy asked.
"Binwen and Jiding are going to take you home, Darcy," Ann told the boy. "You can show me where you arrived another time. Go along with Binwen."
"OK," the little boy said.
"Come on, Dawn, we're going this way. Walk on my other side, please."
"Ann?" the girl asked, letting go of Darcy's hand.
"He'll be fine, Dawn," Ann said, leading Dawn over to the old fashioned steel slide. "Sit down and tuck your legs up."
Magal's locator suddenly cleared, showing the orange circle below him and a blue circle moving south away from him. His eyes moved along the path leading down towards the parking lot. The amber skinned woman with black hair was carrying her younger child, the one with purple hair, while the older child, the one with the strange red and black hair hurried along by her side. None of them could be his target--his target had blue or blond hair.
He looked directly down the hill. The orange circle was moving toward him, the blue circle still moving farther away. The other local woman and her child had disappeared.
Artificial! That crazy native, not content with painting her own child's hair those clashing stripes had turned the target's hair that weird purple for some reason. He closed the locator and stowed the small box in his inner jacket pocket. Gripping his duffel, he set off after the target. He would have to kill the native and her child, but he would get the job done and return to Ferenc in record time. He drew the air pistol.
Kailea, nearly at the top of the hill, saw the gun. Why would anyone so carefully dressed carry around gardening equipment? "Excuse me," she began.
Magal pointed the weapon at her.
Kailea stared. Maybe it wasn't a plant sprayer. She flung her hand up and shouted one word. The man did not freeze, as she expected, but he did slow down. Right, one part of her mind recognized. I'll need to adapt my magic for this world. She turned and ran down the hill
Magal flinched back as his Maolian amulet rose off his chest and flared, then recovered and struggled to free himself from the remnants of the damned witch's stasis spell. The amulet dropped back to his chest, its glow slowly fading. Gods of all stars, he hated witches. He hated all magic.
"Stay put," Ann told Dawn. "I'm going to take a closer look."
"Ann?"
"They won't see me," Ann reassured the girl, and slowly turned invisible.
"Oh."
Ann ported up the hill, ending up near the man coming down the hill. The man turned his back fully on Ann as his gaze followed Binwen, Jiding and Darcy as they moved clockwise around the hill, back toward the parking lot. She watched the woman with the backpack freeze the man, then turn and run down the hill. What had brought that magical attack on? Ann wondered. She switched her attention back to the man, who was not, in fact, frozen. Ann watched the man, ignoring the running woman, at first very slowly, then with increasing speed, continue after Binwen.
Ann shape-shifted--becoming a very young--and she hoped a very non-threatening--woman, slender, shorter than Willow, with a shining cap of red-gold hair, huge turquoise eyes under darker brows set at a slant in a pale, ovoid, elfin face, and changed her clothes. Now she wore a bright turquoise dress with a flared skirt and long sleeves, with high purple boots and a purple and gold print vest--and ported between the man and Binwen, Darcy and Jiding, becoming visible as she landed.
Binwen, Darcy and Jiding vanished.
The man looked down at her, surprised into stillness for a moment, then raised the strange device in his hands as if it were a weapon. Ann waved one hand. The weapon, if that is what it was, vanished, reappearing in one of the cells beneath Ann's house on Los Robles Road.
What? Where was his weapon? Magal took in the girl in front of him. She didn't look like a witch. She looked innocent and outdoorsy, like a picture book young milk-maid, with a dusting of freckles, even. Where had she come from? There was a readiness and confidence about her that worried him. He started a hand strike, which should have killed her. The girl's own hands flickered, then she caught his hand and held it, without hurting him at all, as if it were cast in stone. His feet seemed mired in thick mud. Stepping forward and keeping him off balance, she spoke:
"Talk with me," Ann urged gently, softly. "I mean you no harm. We must talk."
Her voice was beguiling, seductive. Magal started to speak to her, wanted to obey her, but his Maolian amulet flared again. He freed his arm and stepped back, his feet suddenly free.
Ann made no effort to hold him.
He turned and ran around and down the hill, veering west. He sped past St. Agonie's School, where the monks and students in their robes of dusty rose stared at him, then up the hill to see what he was fleeing.
Kailea, feeling several almost overlapping surges of magic, risked a look behind her. Who was that, where had she come from and what was she doing here? Later, she decided, and ran.
Ann glanced over at the woman who was running down the hill, angling away from Magal. People in the parking lot watched her go. From Dawn's school, a group of children ran out the door and up the hill in a noisy pack. Some adults followed them more slowly.
This was getting entirely too public. Ann walked to the top of the hill, shifted back to her usual self as she walked around one of the tall windbreaks, and walked down to Dawn. "Hi," she said. "Let's go."
Before Dawn could respond, the new contingent of children had climbed the ladder to the top of the slide. Ann and Dawn walked north out of the playground, down to Dawn's school, joining in the straggling incoming line of new guests.
"What happened is this," Ann said, and spoke briefly.
"Oh, my god!" Dawn said. "Really? Oh, my god!"
"Yes. You know," Ann said calmly, "being your trustee is much more educational than I had imagined it could be. I'm always learning something new. I certainly didn't expect an open house, even at a magnet school for creative and original students, to be this exciting."
Dawn giggled.
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