Maple Street Revisited part 5

Before she could respond he turned back, his muscles coiled and ready. If he could just get to the first man, throw him back into the second. They'd all end up off balance, and with any luck on the ground. Esmerelda would have enough time to be out the door and gone. Then, whatever happened, happened. He pushed off, thankful his weight was on his good ankle, accelerating like he was stealing home and then, things stopped. He could feel her hand on his arm. It was suddenly cold, ice cold, even the air in the bar smelled different. Was this the adrenalin rush of all adrenalin rushes he found himself wondering. How was he noticing all this? Why wasn't he moving? He'd heard stories about time standing still for people, but it hadn't been that way for him in that damn fire.

Then it was over. He was standing up straight, looking at the two men. They both had blank expressions, then they started looking around, like they had just woken up. The second man seemed surprised to find a knife in his hand. He closed the blade and tucked it back in his pocket. Then they both found their way to the bar.

He looked back at Esmerelda, she was behind him, shaking, tears forming in her eyes.

"Are you OK?"

She shook her head, "We need to go, the alarm doesn't work."

He put in arm around her, supporting her, half carrying her down the hallway and out the fire door. Sure enough the alarm didn't sound. He got her into the car and was soon racing back to the hotel.

She sat there, tears streaming down her cheeks. He reached over trying to comfort her as he drove.

"I didn't want to have to do that" she said in between the sobs...."I'm so, so, sorry."

"It wasn't your fault, none of that was your fault," he tried to console her.

She shook her head and the sobs returned. They pulled into the hotel, and Jeremy practically leapt out of the car. Racing around to the passenger door before the valet could get there. He handed the surprised young man the keys and opened the door. He helped a sobbing Esmerelda to her feet and the valet looked back and forth between them, confused at first, but he fixed his eyes on Jeremy and their was fire in them.

"It's OK, Marcos," Esmerelda said between sobs. "There was an accident...and I'm just a little shook up." "Do you need anything, should I summon a Doctor, Ma'am?"

"No, I'll be fine, we weren't involved directly, it was just...tough to watch." She forced a smile, "but thank you."

He seemed to accept her answer, closed the car door and went to park it.

Jeremy ended up carrying her back to the cabin, he laid her on the bed and removed her shoes. She had stopped crying, but now she was just silent, staring at something only she could see. He tried to sit beside her, she pushed him away gently, but firmly. He took the hint and wandered into the living room, then found his way into the kitchen. He discovered there was beer in the fridge and grabbed one before he headed for the patio. He stood by the pool staring out into the night slowly drinking the beer.

He heard the door open behind him and Esmerelda came out. She had changed clothes, She wore a T-shirt, one he quickly recognized as one of his, that hung down to her mid-thigh.

He took a deep breath, "What happened tonight?"

She just stared at him, and he continued. "I'm not mad, or upset or anything, but...something happened. I was moving, things were happening...and then they weren't. I'm not crazy, am I?"

She burst into tears, he dropped the beer bottle and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, gently kissing the top of her head as she sobbed.

"I...I...I'm so sorry..." she finally managed to say.

"It's not your fault, none of this is your fault. Hell, I don't think it was really about you. I'm the one they hated, the one they wanted to embarrass and humiliate. I'm just some stereotype they want to lash out at, if you hadn't been there, they'd have started a fight with me for some other reason."

"It's not that," her sobs subsiding, "I mean, it's my fault we were there in the first place, but it's not that...it's what I did."

"What did you do?"

"I made them stop."

"I don't understand any of this, but I'm thinking making them stop was a good thing."

She let out an almost laugh, then pulled away from him.

"Can you sit down for a minute."

He looked at her for a moment, then walked over to one of the pool chairs. She pulled another over by it and sat.

"You aren't crazy, but this is going to sound crazy."

He smiled a little, "Start at the beginning?"

"Yeah, the beginning...so, I'm a Witch."

He laughed, "Well I guess that makes as much sense as the rest of it."

Then he saw the look in her eyes, and he stopped laughing.

"The night we met; I wasn't wearing a costume. I mean, it was a costume, but not really."

She saw the confusion on his face now.

"You wanted to be a baseball player since you were a little kid right?"

He nodded.

"And you were on a team, playing baseball, right?"

Another nod.

"OK, so you were a baseball player, even as a kid, right?"

"Yeah, a little leaguer, but still a baseball player I guess."

"Did you ever dress up as a baseball player for Halloween?"

He blushed a little, "Yeah once."

"You were a baseball player, in a baseball player costume."

"Yeah, but...I WAS a baseball player. Witches are just made up."

"Are they now?" There was something strange, almost dangerous in her tone.

"Sure, everyone knows that," he replied cautiously.

She gestured towards the door back into the cabin. He watched as the door closed on its own. Then the handle turned, and the door opened again.

He stared at Esmerelda, not sure what to think. The wind? Some kind of trick, the purpose he couldn't understand, but maybe the door was automated somehow? There had to be a reasonable explanation. She shook her head at him, made a small motion with her hand, wiggled her nose slightly, and he watched in shocked fascination as the beer bottle he had dropped rose off the ground, floated over to the end table by his chair and landed gently on it. He picked the bottle up, examining it carefully. Then he stood, pacing about the patio, looking at the beer bottle for several minutes.

"You're a witch."

"She's a witch," he said to no one in particular.

He stared up at the night sky for a moment, and yelled, "I'm in love with a witch!"

She was off the chair like a shot, running at him, she hit him with enough force he almost fell into the pool, the beer bottle clattering to the ground yet again. She threw her arms around him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

He recovered his physical balance, his mind was still struggling, realizing she was crying he held her close, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."

She looked up into his eyes, "no you idiot, I'm happy..."

She buried her face into his chest again. Finally pulling away, she smiled weakly at him. "I think we have a lot to talk about."

"I guess so."

"Why don't you start a fire, I'll see if I can get us something to eat."

She came back as he had finished positioning several of the logs and was searching for a lighter.

"Good news," she said, "kitchen was still open, so we have some snacks on the way."

"Bad news," he replied, "I can't find a lighter."

She shrugged, looked at the logs for a moment and with a small wave they burst into flame.

"That's going to take some getting used to."

"It's nice, not worrying about hiding it."

They sat back down, snuggled together watching the fire.

"Is that why you can't get divorced," Jeremy finally asked, "your husband is a witch too?"

"Oh, no he's mortal, but that is why I can't, at least not right now."

"You said he's mortal, that sort of implies there is another option, are you not mortal?"

"You are more than a pretty face, but yes... depending on what your definition of immortal is. I can die, many of us have. We just don't die of old age, at least not that anyone knows of, it's never happened before. Some of the Old Ones were well over a thousand years old when they decided to Retreat."

"Retreat?"

"It's hard to explain but think of it as becoming a monk who lives on a mountain in a cave or something. Anyway, we don't get sick, mortal diseases don't really affect us. I could drink a glass full of ebola, bubonic plague and smallpox and I'd feel like you would with a mild cold, for about half an hour. We heal remarkably fast, and we age...differently than you do."

"How different?"

"You know the whole dog years thing?"

"Sure, one dog year is 7 people years."

"Well, it's different when we are young, up through puberty we age and grow just like a mortal. None of her classmates will ever notice a difference between themselves and my daughter, but after puberty things slow down. A lot. The consensus is that the ratio is about 25 to one. It takes us 25 years to age as much as you do in one. Then at some point it just sort of stops. If you were to meet one of the oldest witches around, you'd probably think she was an active 65-year-old.

She paused while he considered that.

"How old are you then?"

She smiled at him nervously, "Well, you knew you were messing around with an older woman, right?"

"Of course, but I figured you were 32 or 33, you don't look it, but from your stories, the timeline with you and Endora and college and how old I figured your daughter was, that kind of made sense."

"I can see that," she sighed a little, "I'm 143."

She watched his reaction carefully, he finally spoke, "Probably just going to put the number candles on your birthday cake, if that's ok?"

She laughed and kissed him again.

"But back to the original question, he's mortal, but our daughter is not, and that's the issue. She paused for a moment, "Let me explain in more general terms, and maybe it will make more sense."

"I don't think it could make less sense."

"Witches mostly bare female babies, the rare exceptions, warlocks, are sterile. So in order to not die out we take a mortal mate. Back in the old days they would seduce some poor shepherd or something and disappear back into the night. Probably how lots of stories got started. The problem they discovered was that our children grew up... disconnected from the mortal world. All too often that disconnect resulted in contempt, witches who thought because they were more powerful than mortals, they were better than them, so they deserved to have power over them. They started to see people as things, and that is the surest path to evil. It took a terrible toll in blood, mortal and witch, to stop some of them. So, they came up with a plan, and part of it was from then on, our children would be raised with the mortals. We'd take a mate, get married according to whatever custom was appropriate to the area, and live as a mortal while we raised our daughter until at least her 18th birthday. She would grow up with mortal friends, experiencing their lives, seeing them as people not things. Some chose to stay a little longer, but it works. The custom is more than 250 years old, and we haven't had an incident with anyone raised that way."

He nodded, it sort of made sense he thought. He knew he'd grown up wealthy and some of his classmates were really snobs, thinking money made them better than other people. Who knew what actual power would do to those people? Playing baseball, he'd always been surrounded by kids from every background, and he'd met good people from every walk of life, this sort of seemed like the same thing.

"Seems logical, but..."

"But what does that have to do with me?"

"Yeah."

"Well Tabitha is only 4, we've got at least 14 more years to go. Right now, things are easy, her powers haven't started to manifest. That's the tricky bit with all of this. Witches come into their powers in childhood, usually pretty weak at first, and their maturity stays a little ahead of their ability. Starting that fire was exceptionally simple, imagine an 8-year-old that can do that, because some of them can."

"Makes keeping the matches out of reach pretty pointless."

"That it does, so we have to keep another witch around almost all the time. A great deal of planning goes into all this. It's one reason Endora and I have daughters the same age. There are several witches on staff at the school they will start next year. If I were to get divorced, then custody becomes an issue. Assuming I get full custody, he would still have her on weekends, summer vacations and the like, and it would be impossible to keep someone around. What if she does something? Uses her power in a public way, or plain seriously hurts someone?"

The patio speaker chimed, "That's probably room service," Esmerelda observed.

"I'll get it."

Jeremy returned pushing the cart and they moved to the pool side table. It was more of the nachos and a different, but equally excellent bottle of wine.

Esmerelda continued her story in between bites of nacho, "There are ways around that in extreme cases. Some men have met with fatal accidents, others their families just disappeared. But Robin doesn't deserve that. He's not a bad man, and he hasn't really done anything wrong. Just like tonight, this is all because of my decisions."

Jeremy took her hand again giving it a squeeze. She smiled bravely at him.

"What did happen tonight? What happened to those two?"

She took another swallow of wine, "I sort of erased their memory."

"Like Men in Black?"

"If only it was that easy, but essentially yes. You can't just zap out the last 5 minutes, you have to go in there and find the last 5 minutes. Everyone's brain is a bit messy, everything is alphabetized, but imagine if everyone used their own alphabet. I was trying to find what I needed, to make them forget they'd seen us. But there were two of them, and things were happening so fast, and when I looked inside the second man's mind...his buddy is a jerk, but that one...he's evil. He'd have happily killed you. When you started to turn, I froze you. Then I went to work on the other two. When you have time, you can remove memories very cleanly. The effect is no different than when you forget your keys, they were in your hand a second ago and now they're gone. But when you are in a hurry, I don't know how much I erased, or what it was. I just torched the file drawer that had us in it. Whatever else was in there went with it, hopefully I wasn't important. And the whole cabinet might be wrecked. I have no idea how badly I hurt them."

"I'm sorry, I really am, but they don't deserve your sympathy. If you were a normal girl, they'd probably have beaten the hell out of me for no reason at all. And if you had made the mistake of not running like I told you to..." he shook his head and winced at the thought. "All for no more reason than they didn't like the look of me. I wish you hadn't had to do it, but they made you do it, that's on them."

"I know, I mean you're right but I still...it's dangerous to get comfortable doing things like that. Can we talk about something else?"

"Sure," he thought for a minute, "witches are real, does that mean other things are real?"

"Some of them, yes."

"Oh my God, tell me Bigfoot is real!"

"Sorry, and no Loch Ness either, Yeti are real, or at least they were."

"Were?"

"Yeah, they went extinct about 1919. We did everything we could, I think that still haunts father. One of his best friends was a Yeti, his name was Choden. I'm pretty sure they were the first two sentient creatures to summit Everest, climbed it in 1912."

"Are you being serious?"

"Absolutely."

"Hang on, you usually talk about your dad in the present tense, he's still alive, right?"

"Had lunch with him on Wednesday."

"And male witches are sterile, so how can he be your dad and have climbed Everest over 100 years ago?"

"Males warlocks are born sterile, but a mortal man can, cross over is the simplest way to think of it. They don't become a warlock, or a witch, they are...something else. They don't have the magic we do, even the warlocks don't really. They can do some of the simple things, but the important thing, their bodies do change, they are no different than us in that respect, unfortunately it also renders them sterile. So, what sometimes happens, what my Mom chose to do, was to petition to have my father brought over. Being so long lived, we are generally limited to 2 children in our lifetime, but a woman can choose to forgo a second child and bring her mate across. In theory any other male, but I'm not sure that has ever happened."

"Petition? Who do they petition?"

"There is a sort of, council, of Senior Witches, most are very old, but some are there because of their deeds and reputation. They set the code we all live by, and they are the final authority on bringing someone over. It's a big decision, and mother is ultimately responsible for him. If Dad were to ever violate the code, she would have to end his life, or they'd go together."

He finished the last nacho and stood up," I've got to stretch my legs."

He stood by the fire, then tossed two more logs on. Esmerelda had refilled their wine glasses and moved to the double chaise lounge chair. He took his place beside her, and she handed him a wine glass.

He took a drink and asked, "What happens now?"

"I don't know. I need to talk to my Mom."

"I can't imagine having that conversation with either of my parents."

"Things are a little different for us, for a lot of reasons. Stuff we won't get into tonight."

He nodded, taking another drink.

"But I do know what I want to get into tonight, it's our last night here and we haven't taken advantage of that hot tub."

She sat the wine glass down, stood up and pulled the T-shirt over her head revealing it had been all she was wearing. She picked the wine glass back up and stepped down into the hot tub.

Jeremy added a few more logs to the fire before taking his own clothes off. He grabbed the wine bottle and joined her in the hot tub. They finished off the wine, not saying much, Esmerelda leaning back onto Jeremy, his arm over her shoulders.

The fire was getting low again, and he looked at her, "You look exhausted. I think it's time to put you to bed."

She nodded, he helped her out of the hot tub and they retired to the bedroom.

For the first time Jeremy was awake first. He stole quietly out of the bedroom and was in one of the incredibly comfortable recliners in the living room reading a book when there was a knock at the door. He glanced at his watch, it was 9:04, and went to investigate. He opened the door to find Endora standing beside a room service cart.

"Good morning, Slugger."

"Good morning, Endora."

He stepped out of the way, and she wheeled the cart in, taking it directly to the dining table. She started arranging the contents of the cart onto the table, a large plate with an omelet and bacon in front of one seat, another with a single egg over easy and an English muffin in front of another. A carafe of what smelled like coffee and another of orange juice and the appropriate glasses completed the breakfast.

She rolled the cart back out the front door, leaving it there, returned and took the seat with the egg over easy.

"Sit down," she said, motioning to the chair opposite her, "we have a lot to talk about and you're going to need your energy."

He took the seat, and she poured him a glass of orange juice.

" Thanks for breakfast and all, and it is nice to see you, but... why are you here?"

"I'm here," she said in the tone one used for explaining something to a particularly recalcitrant child, "because my best friend is in trouble, and she needs my help."

She sighed, "I'm sorry, that came out wrong, look, you are clearly in the deep end of the pool right now, and that isn't really your fault, but she needs my help right now. And I need your help, I need to know what happened. I need to know everything; with every bit of detail, you can remember. Esmerelda and I don't have any secrets, maybe someday you too will have some that she doesn't share with me, but today isn't that day. Do you understand?"