Chapter Fifteen
"That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold; What hath quench'd them hath given me fire." - Lady Macbeth, Act II, Scene II
It's amazing, and a little frightening, how much can happen in a single day. In twenty four hours, lives can be saved or ruined, families can grow or tragically shrink, the faithful can become the faithless. In the few minutes that I spent being shocked by Maisie's apocalyptic promise, I was escorted rather firmly off of the premises by a man whose face I couldn't bother to notice, a nameless minion of this epitome of evil who called herself my kin.
I stood on the sidewalk. People moved all around me. Children shouted, mothers corralled their young, fathers tried to help while unable to keep their wandering eyes from the beach and thoughts of easier, more carefree times. The cacophony of people, cars, the city itself surrounded me. And I was alone. These crowds, these people, innocent and guilty, could die. They could all die, because I didn't doubt for one moment that Maisie wouldn't do what she said she would if someone to blame for her imprisonment, some descendant of those responsible, wasn't given to her. She would do it because she was evil. She was evil in a way that the word meant before it was carelessly tossed around and used to label everything from third world dictators to a cranky teachers. In a world where evil is a word used by supposed religious beacons to describe a love they don't happen to agree with, the thing that called itself Maisie MacFarquhar could not be adequately described by anything less.
These people, and everyone I would never meet, would die if I didn't find the answers that Maisie had been unable to find. They would be snuffed in an instant, never knowing why, unless I did something, unless I was able to find one more miracle. It was too much. This was too much. Everything couldn't stand on my shoulders. I was twenty years old. I was a kid. I was a child trying to do the best I could with the powers that had been handed to me through a birthright, a resurrection, a fate that I didn't understand. I accepted them, I knew my burden and my gift. But I wasn't ready. These two years were not enough, these previous tests when I had thought that stopping a man from killing his wife so that she could go on to give the homeless man she passed just a little bit of hope that lifted him into the world once more and found a winter shelter that saved hundreds of other street dwellers was the height of my capability and accomplishments. Now, in twenty four hours, I had been handed an ultimatum that would decide whether this world, not neighborhood, not hospital, not school bus of children, but world, survived.
In the face of this responsibility, or perhaps spitting in the face of it, I did the only thing that I could do at the time and maintain any idea of sanity. I walked across the street, and I watched a boy play basketball.
I didn't know why I was standing there, hand on the chain link fence as I watched this olive skinned teenager toss a ball through the netless hoop. I was lost. Maisie demanded the impossible, and threatened the unimaginable. I had to find Often and Carter. We had to come up with some kind of plan. But instead, I stood completely still and watched the rhythm of the ball as though mesmerized. My responsibility, my duty, my life was too much. So for a moment, just for a moment, I stood still and let the world itself continue on without me. Hate me for that if you will, loath me for my weakness because my only excuse is that for all the power that weighs my hands, I am human. I am flawed, and I am emotional. Your world, our world, is not in the hands of an immobile bastion standing in a river of sin, blocking the tide of darkness with shield raised. She is a girl, barely more than a teenager, who hardly knows what she's doing half the time and has no clue the rest. I got a C in World History. My high school soccer coach said, of my athletic ability, that I was average. Your champion, ladies and gentlemen.
"The trouble is seeing the whole thing." Watching the ball bounce off the rim, acting for one moment as though I didn't have these responsibilities, I almost didn't realize the voice was speaking to me. Turning, I saw the boy watching me as the basketball rolled past him. A very slight smile seemed to tug at his lips. On closer inspection, his features seemed more chiseled than those of a neighborhood park rat. Though he still looked young, he was obviously strong. His light, sun streaked blonde hair curled very slightly.
Reaching down, I picked up the ball as it rolled closer. I turned it over in my hands before throwing it back to him. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
He caught the ball and spun it between two fingers, then up onto one and down his arm, showing off. "I said, the trouble is seeing the whole thing. It's like this." Turning, the boy rose smoothly onto his toes and threw the ball easily through the hoop. "I see the circle, and I put the ball there." He walked forward and picked up the ball before turning back to me. "This other stuff, the opposite basket, the pavement, that fence, other players, audience, that guy on the bench playing chess, I know they're there. But what matters, what really matters in that moment, is the basket. If I let that other stuff, the score, how stupid I'll look if I fall on my face, or what the cute girl standing by the fence thinks about me, I'll screw up. Because," He paused and in the relative quiet, bounced the ball from one hand, down to the ground and back to his other hand. He repeated this a couple of times before speaking once more. "The problems in the world aren't meant to be seen all at once, any more than they're meant to be solved that easily. No one expects you to single handedly save humanity, Macbeth."
That brought my gaze up quickly. "What? What did you-- how do you know my name?" I was, understandably I would think, cautious. Yes, Often had already known who I was, but even factoring that in, my track record in the past 24 hours with people who knew more than I did about any given situation wasn't exactly spiffy.
Holding the ball in both hands as though considering the question, the boy then bounced it over to me. "I've known your name for a long time. I've known you as you were and now as you are. I've gotta say though, I prefer the upgraded version. The old you didn't have a sense of humor. Then again," He smiled with a certain wry self-awareness. "I suppose not many of us did at that point."
I held the ball tightly, staring at the boy. "Are you saying you're one of the old... that you were alive back then?" He looked even younger than me. Often looked young too, when she was actually over two hundred. But this boy was claiming to have been around for so long that I couldn't even calculate it. "You're like us then, right? You were..." I looked around and lowered my voice, feeling more than a little daft. Here Maisie had handed the future of life on Earth to me, and I was afraid of some random park stroller thinking I was loony. My priorities are straight, they just wiggle a little bit. "You were resurrected?"
The boy's only response was to raise an eyebrow. Then he went on without actually answering. "The point is, you're looking at this all wrong. You're seeing everything at once. You're focusing on fate of humanity." He held his hands out for the ball.
Throwing it back to him, I frowned. "That's kind of the important part of this little quandary, isn't it?"
"Not really." The boy laughed a little as I gaped at him. He turned to shoot the ball once more, putting it perfectly through the hoop yet again. "Macbeth, in your first little mission, did you save the lives of all those people that will eventually end up in the hospital?" The boy waited until I shook my head slowly. Then he picked up his ball and continued. "You saved the woman, the woman will teach the doctor, and the doctor will save those people. You didn't walk into that hospital, learn to practice medicine, develop an experimental treatment, and personally save their lives. But when they are saved, it will be because you rescued that teacher." He smiled as he met my gaze. "You focused on the basket, Macbeth, and that's the entire point. That's what you've been learning. Cause and effect. If you do one thing, if you tip the right domino in the right place at the right moment, you can change the world. Or rescue it. Stop worrying about how heavy the boulder is and push the lever."
"So..." I shook my head, folding my arms over my chest. "What do you think the domino is that's going to stop Maisie from killing Nine and destroying humanity?" He stood impassively and watched me for several seconds before I got it, and I immediately felt stupid. "Wait. Oh my god, you're right. I've been focusing on the world. I've been thinking about humanity. I've been thinking about everything that's going to happen if I screwed up. I don't need to think about that." I had been looking past the boy into the distance, and now returned my look to him. "I don't have to rescue humanity from the dynamite. I need to rescue the dynamite. I can't save humanity. But I can save Nine."
Grinning with a perfect little row of teeth, the boy nodded once. "Stop trying to be responsible for every single piece on the board. Focus on what you can change, and use that to help what you can't."
I started to turn, then stopped to look at him once more. "You know a lot about me. You know about all of this. You said you knew me before I knew me. So," I hesitated, wetting my lips before asking. "Am I doing this because it's my choice, like I want to believe. Or am I doing it because fate said I would? Is my life dictated by my choices or by prophesy?" I didn't know why, but I felt as though I wasn't going to get a better time, or a better person to ask that question.
The boy raised his gaze to the sky for a moment before fixing his eyes on me. "Macbeth." His tone was ancient, a voice from ages long past. "You fall into the same trap as so many others. You make the same mistake. You assume that fate and choice are two contradictory things."
"Uhhh." I squinted at the boy, trying to understand him. "I'm pretty sure they kinda are. If you're fated to do something, you don't have a lot of choice in the matter. It's kind of one way or another. Either we have prophesy or we have free will."
He gave a slight, amused laugh that was not mocking. "Do you read mysteries, Macbeth?"
Confused by the question, I nodded. "Sure. I mean, not all the time, but of course I've read mysteries."
Looking down at the ball as he rolled it between his hands, the boy continued. "Have you ever looked at the last few pages right off the bat and spoiled the answers for yourself, given away the murderer before you even get halfway through?"
Slowly, I leaned back against the fence, thinking about his words. "I... guess so. Yeah, I've read the ending first. I mean, everyone does sometimes."
He gave a very short nod. "When you read the ending first, does the murderer become who he is because you read it? Does the author's entire story, the words they wrote change because you flipped to the end?" When I shook my head, he put a hand out and touched my arm. "Macbeth, prophesy is not about a man foreseeing what his descendant will do and thus forcing every choice throughout the history between the two to follow what he foresaw. Prophesy is about flipping to the end of the book. It doesn't change the middle, and it doesn't force the ending, the revelation, the twists to conform in any way. Fate is about seeing the result of choices, not about taking those choices away."
I was silent for a moment, absorbing his words before speaking hesitantly. "Who are you, anyway?" There was something about him, something that had tickled the back of my brain since before I laid eyes on him. Something that had drawn me to this spot. It felt as though I knew exactly who this was, like I had known him before. But it was in the back of my mind and refused to come out and be understood.
The boy smiled with a mysterious glint in his dark eyes. "Everything in its time, Macbeth. You know that." Then he looked over my shoulder. "Your friends are here."
Turning, I saw Often and Tavelli crossing the grass toward us. When I looked back, the boy was already on the other side of the blacktop court. Squinting, I could barely make out the letters on his shirt. On the back of the pristine white jersey was the name Musagetes. And then he was gone. The sun seemed to turn up a few notches, forcing me to squint and cup my hand over my brow, and when I could see again, the boy had vanished.
"So Mr. Lawman asks me," Often was saying conversationally as the two approached. "He says, Oh dear, smart, beautiful, daring, sensitive, gorgeous, charming, beautiful--"
Obviously rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses, Carter muttered. "You said beautiful already."
Without sparing him a glance, the dryad shrugged. "Is it my fault when you repeat yourself?"
Flailing both hands up, Tavelli protested. "I never said any of that. Quit ad libbing."
"Who's telling this story, me or you?" Without giving the flustered detective the slightest opening to respond to that, Often turned back to me. "Anyway, he asks me where the best place to find you would be. So I asked myself, what is the most insane, reckless, ridiculous place for my little Macin-tush to be right now? Then it came to me: right under the font of all evil's potty room window. And here we are. Ta da."
They explained that between the two of them, once the threat of the bus explosion was taken care of, they had managed to subdue Emily. She was now hogtied, handcuffed and gagged in the back of her own van, and the explosives had been quickly transferred to what Often mysteriously called a safe location. Then I caught them up on what Maisie had done, and what she was threatening. I have to say, they both took it pretty well.
"Are you ****ing kidding me?! That **** is--she's actually, you're not... she's going to... What the **** are we supposed to do?! What the hell is--is this even--is there even--are you ****ing--What?!" The words kept piling up inside Carter's mouth as he spat them out with increasingly frantic hand gestures. Huh, apparently he was cool with reincarnated Greek legend saving lives through prophesy, but humanity being wiped out with a single bullet sends him into raving lunatic land. I wondered momentarily where the exact line had been. It might have been good to know for future reference.
"Have your breakdown on your own time." Often gave the man a little push before looking back to me. "So what now, Chief?"
I opened my mouth, then stopped. Because I knew. It wasn't a vision of the future, it was a sudden knowledge of the past. It was a truth that had been revealed to me between the spaces of memories. I looked to my new friends in this life, and my epiphany was complete. I knew what I had to do. I knew what had to happen. The only thing I didn't know, is if I had the courage, the strength, the spirit to do it. And yet, I did know.
A boy becomes a man, and a girl becomes a woman not through a single moment, but through a lifetime of them. Every choice they make is a step through this sinuous labyrinth of reality. Throughout our days, we are children, making our wayward path in the maze that is life. Each action we take, good or bad, brings us toward the zenith of our existence. And it is only in the moment that we reach that vertex of this life, between our last breath in this journey and our first within the wondrous path that lays beyond, that we can truly say that we have done all that we can. Until that penultimate exhalation, if there is at least one more yet to come, it is every person's duty to make the next choice, to take the next step.
Despite my powers, I do not know what lies beyond this life. But I do know, that when at last my personal journey is over and I stand on the cusp between the world traveled and the world unseen, I will join those before me in saying that I have done all that I can do. And I will do so without regrets, because the footprints, the choices which have lain and will lay behind me, are my own. None are perfect and many seem ridiculous, but they are mine. Whatever has gifted us with the lives we lead, I believe, asks only one real thing of us: that we live them the best way that we can. So, despite my fear, I would do what I knew was right. Because when I take my last breath, it will be with the knowledge that I did what could. And that is all that anyone can ask.
"Macbeth?" Often's voice was soft as she watched me carefully. "What are we doing?"
I straightened my back slightly and looked to her. I tried to smile, but I was afraid. Despite my understanding, or perhaps because of it, I was still afraid. "Now, we save Nine, and we stop Maisie by trapping her in the same prison that she was lost in before."
Now Tavelli asked. "How are you going to do that? You don't know who trapped her in the first place."
"Yes I do." I bit my lip, then lifted my gaze to the hotel where my two sisters, one pure, one evil, dwelled. "I did."
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(pssst, look up the name on the jersey if you need to.
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