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Sunday, August 13, 1995

BODY OF LOCAL BOY FOUND IN RIVER

St Paul - Maintenance workers at the hydroelectric plant got an unpleasant surprise late Saturday night when they went to investigate a blockage in one of the plant's turbines. The foreign object in the turbine was found to be a human body, badly mangled by the machinery, its head missing. Though positive identification is impossible at this point, the body is believed to be that of Marshall Reed, a local teenager who was reported missing on Thursday. His backpack was found on a foot bridge upstream ... (read more, pg B7)

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I'm here. Please, come and rescue me. Right here.

Marsh's fingers touched the stone tablet, its surface carved with a rune that resembled - a whip? It came easily free of the wall, changing even as it fell to a whip, its handle wrapped with leather and its lashes tipped with white beads.

I'm not an it, the voice snapped, changing abruptly from soft pleading to chilly, haughty demand. I am a lady. A princess. You will get that right and you will listen to me. You will call me Miyako-hime.

Marsh stared at the weapon in his hand, startled by the rapid mood alteration. He couldn't resist. "Well, ex-cuuuuuuuse me, Princess."

He got an outraged huff in response, and a shrill tirade that lasted till well after he'd got out of the Cove, but it had been worth it.

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They were all dead. He'd failed. He hadn't even been able to heal one of them in time. When the portal reopened, he stumbled back through alone, numb and shaking, clutching his broken arm and covered in blood.

Why had it left him alive? Why only him? What kind of a ******** hunter was he if he couldn't even land one hit before it was too late?

Pathetic, Miyako whispered in his head, and rage rose up in him suddenly. "No, ******** you very much, princess! If you hadn't fought me back there, maybe you'd've actually got to feed for once! Maybe I could've ******** done something! You know what? From now on, when I say you do something, you do it, or God help me - " Marsh choked on anger, trembling.

Miyako said nothing, stunned into silence and flinching from his fury.

The Life hunter setting the cast on his arm ignored the outburst. The kid was barely promoted, fresh off the assembly line, given a Fear weapon for whatever reason Velda had decided on that day. He'd learn. Or die. The older hunter had no particular preference.

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They all died eventually. Marsh stopped actively trying to make friends. It hurt too much.

He liked the solo outpost assignments best. He could do his job and not have to worry about other people.

Miyako bent to his will, stubbornly at first, then more softly. They were partners, not friends; but still, she was part of him now, and she came grudgingly to admit that perhaps he was part of her as well.

That made it easier. A little.

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They'd woken up a few hours before dawn, snuck into the lab complex, grinning and shushing each other like little kids doing something naughty, and found a secluded spot to put the mural up. Lowe had brought a walkman and turned it up loud enough that they could hear the tape playing tinnily through the headphones that sat on the floor.

Marsh liked this song. He couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but he sure as hell could air-guitar, and he'd stopped the important task of drawing mustaches on some of the more uptight hunters in the photos to perform an awesome radical air guitar solo. When he'd finished, he grinned cheerfully at his friend and leaned over to steal a kiss. He'd never kissed a guy before tonight, but so far so good.

In a couple of hours they'd be off for whatever big mission was so important that most of the island had been called back. For now, though - Marsh hadn't smiled this much in ages, and he thought he liked it. A pessimistic part of his mind informed him that it'd never last. <******** you, he told it.

Miyako stirred and grumbled, but Marsh could tell she was grudgingly amused.

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He hadn't thought about his family in ages. He could see them clearly now, Mom at the table grading papers, Dad cooking pancakes - was it Saturday? New Year's Day came on Saturday this year, he remembered. That was right. He could see them, but he couldn't reach them. But that was okay. They were smiling at each other. Maybe they didn't miss him at all. Brady would be home from college for the weekend, and Julie would be watching cartoons in the living room. They didn't need him there; without him, life could go back to normal.

It should have been a depressing thought, but he was glad. That was what he was here for, after all. To let the ones he'd left behind live safely and without fear. He turned away from the peaceful scene, looking out into the dark.

There was a dim light far away, and he walked towards it until it burst into day. He stood on a footbridge over a little tributary that fed into the Mississipi; it was summer, hot and sticky and brilliant, the smell of hot dirt and pavement, plants and sunscreen all around him.

Someone was holding his hand. He looked down, and found a petite, pretty girl in a white kimono looking up at him. She looked so sad. Her white fox ears had folded back against the raven-wing fall of her hair; the fan of tails behind her drooped to the ground. Tears trembled in eyes the color of citrines. "Marshall," she said, her voice soft and demure and as familiar as his own voice, the way he heard it inside his head.

"Hey, princess," he said, and smiled. "Maybe your next hunter won't be such a dumbass. You know - I love you." It surprised him as he said it, but it was true; perhaps it had been true all along. He lifted her hand, kissed her fingers, and gently let go. "Sayonara, Miyako-hime."

Someone was waiting for him at the other end of the bridge, smiling wide and bright and familiar. He grinned helplessly back and jogged across to the other side.

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He was gone, slipping from her grasp, and Miyako was alone in the dark again, alone as she'd never been. She'd been alone without her senses once before, waiting for someone; but she hadn't known, then, that it should hurt. The place in her mind where Marsh had been, warm and familiar, infuriatingly human, her master and her partner and maybe even her friend, yawned open, a gaping, gnawing void.

She didn't want another hunter. She wanted her Marshall back. She had loved him, she understood, suddenly and too late; hated the human girls he'd courted for being there, for being able to touch her Marshall. She hadn't expected a boy. She hadn't expected the brilliant happy cheer of Marsh's mind in their last hours together.

Marshall, she cried, Marshall, and stretched out into the endless dark, reaching after a touch no longer there. She reached again and again, keening her loss. Farther - and she felt herself fraying, and snatched herself back in instinctive terror, knowing in that instant that she could die.

She could die.

Marsh, she called into the darkness. Wait for me. I'm coming, and she stretched out and out and out, forcing herself past the fear and the pain, until she strained and frayed and finally broke.

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The tablet that lay beside a broken body on a rooftop melted away to nothing in the rain.