Catch Me In Sezalle

Sticky rivulets ran down the side of the popsicle and then traced small tracks of red juice over Jess’s hand. The buzz of conversation surrounded her. Jess was frozen in place, her eyes fixated on the other side of the street. One flicker, and it had appeared, as unavoidable now as it had been three years ago. As much as she loved the frozen treat, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. The popsicle continued to drip, and in a delayed, preoccupied manner, she licked her hand clean. The all-fruit, all-natural, strawberry treat was sweet on her tongue, but her eyes never swerved. 

“Earth to Jess.” Her friend Tanya reached over and waved her hand in front of Jess's face. 

Jess startled and Isla giggled, “You’re spilling all over.”

Jess made a vague motion with her hand to show that she had heard, and held her popsicle over the pavement. “Uh, huh…”

She wanted to blink, to make the hovering Way-gate just a trick of the hazy heat. She knew better. 

Four red splashes hit the concrete. She tore her eyes away from the glowing spectacle that was for her eyes alone and looked down. Her popsicle was a soggy misshapen mess. She took the wad of napkins that Sophie shoved at her and made a half-hearted attempt at mopping up the picnic table. 

It was a small bench, situated under the shade of a tall poplar on the historic main street. The concrete was hot from the glare of the sun. Her friends were feeling the heat. Tanya had a bad burn over her bare shoulders, and Sophie hid her pale skin from the relentless sun by burrowing into the shade of the tree. At any moment she was about to become one with it. Isla’s dark skin protected her, but she soaked in the sun’s rays with languid pleasure. 

Jess stood and made her way to the black garbage can. A wasp buzzed around her hand, but she scarcely noticed its presence. A couple young kids pointed and squealed at the undesirable insect. Jess bit her lip to hide her laughter and tossed the napkins into the void. 

She then hesitated a moment, shooting a pained glance at her popsicle. It was slurp or toss, and slurping required a carefree relaxation that she could not emulate. She tossed.

When she turned away from the garbage can, her spine was straight, her glance wary. She brushed her bangs from her eyes, and purposefully avoided looking across the street as she returned to her seat at the table.

Did she wait until the reunion was over? 

Did she cross the street now? 

Did she come up with some lame excuse for leaving?

Did she bust into a revelation of unbelievable truths?

Tanya told an amusing story about the superiority of biology students around bites of her coffee flavored Drumstick, but Jess couldn’t concentrate on her friend’s words. 

How was she going to put it?

Hey guys, all this time you thought I was at college? Yeah… I lied. I was actually busy saving other worlds from almost certain destruction. 

They would laugh her out of the friend group.

-

Her gaze drifted back across the street and her fingers tapped out an uneasy rhythm on her bare thighs. The gold gateway blinked. She had wanted to meet up with the girls so badly. This was supposed to be her chance to belong, to reconnect, and feel fully grounded in the world she had been born into. 

Now she was an outsider, on yet another conversation. She put her back to the golden emblem and tried to focus on what her friends were saying. 

Sophie perched her sunglasses on her head and shot Jess a quizzical glance. Are you okay?

Jess nodded and forced a smile. She was fine, better than fine. That was part of the problem. She didn’t have crazy roomies, and she didn’t have a crazy work schedule. Her health was better than ever, and she lived on her own most of the year. Her worries tended to involve split-second, life-or-death situations. It was a moment to moment existence, and between moments, all was well.

Tanya reached over and swatted her shoulder. “Okay, so how do you do it? You look amazing… tan… fit…”

I’m nearly constantly on the move, mostly running away from things, or toward them when I’m sure of a win. I’ve traveled across almost three whole branches of the Ways. 

Instead, she just grinned and shrugged. They all knew she was an outdoors nut. In high school, she had talked them into all kinds of hikes, archery classes, canoe trips, and even some horse riding lessons. 

Jess flashed a sheepish grin. “I still spend a lot of time outside.” 

That was the understatement of the century.

I spend 90% of my time in the wilds of strange lands. Towns aren’t usually safe, and cities best avoided. 

Isla shook her head with a smile and twisted her phone between her blue-painted fingernails. “I wish I still had time for that kind of thing.” She pointed to the small bump that gave away the necklace Jess had tucked under her high-necked tank-top. “What’s that?”

Oh, this? This is a pendant that allows you to access the Way’s, store magical reserves of energy, and it complements your powers as a sorceress.

That was not the answer Isla was looking for. Jess forced herself to relax. She pulled the ruby pendant from under her shirt and let them admire the way it was inlaid in a gold feather carving.

“Is that real gold?” Tanya breathed, as she squinted at the necklace from under her camo ballcap. 

Nearly 24 carat. And the ruby is authentic too. 

Jess shook her head automatically, then flushed. The truth was too unbelievable. Isla raised her phone and snapped a picture of it. Jess covered it slightly with her hand, hoping that with the sun's glare Isla wouldn’t notice the faulty photo until it was too late. It seemed to work, and Isla shook her head in awe as Jess tucked her necklace away. 

“I’m going to tell Daryk to get me one of those in blue for my birthday.” She winked at Jess. “Don’t tell him where you got it. I want him to have to work for it.”

Jess smiled, but it was strained. 

I won’t say a word. It’s not exactly a Pandora specialty item, and I don’t think he wants to have to traverse the Caves of Insight. Nothing named 'insight' is ever pleasant.

“How is Daryk?” Sophie pressed with a sly wink.

Isla grinned and pushed her Slurpee straw through the blue ice. “He’s good. We’re going camping next week. Just us.”

Tanya mock scowled at her. “You should have invited Ryan and I. It would have been the perfect double date.”

Isla shrugged, unapologetically. “Not this time. Besides, you’d bring your guns and we wouldn’t have a moment of peace.”

Tanya flipped her midlength-strawberry blonde hair over her shoulder. “I got Jess to pull the trigger once.”

Isla glared at Jess as if it were her fault for encouraging Tanya’s obsession with killing things. Jess shrugged with a wan smile, but it wasn't exactly apologetic.

I’ve pulled many triggers since, and not at a painted target on an old barn door either. I don't believe in hunting for sport, but I do believe in survival.

Sophie leaned across the table, switching the subject back to a topic that was safer than guns. “What about you Jess? Do you have a man now?” 

Her gaze was gently teasing. Sophie had sworn off boys until she was at least done college. She was too busy with her art to bother with relationships. Her golden-blonde hair caught the sunlight, but the ends were still bright purple from when she had died it in grade eleven. Of all of them, Jess supposed that Soph was the most likely to believe her.

Jess shook her head. “There’s someone, but we didn’t part on good terms.”

He hadn’t wanted her to come home. Well, he was okay with her going home, he liked her parents well enough, but he hadn’t wanted her to meet up with her friends. 

-

She could still see him now, standing with his feet balanced in that careful rover’s stance. Balanced somewhere between fight and flight. His dark green cloak was tossed over his shoulder and his brown eyes clouded with anger. 

“You’re a rover, Jess. It worked when you were in High School, only short trips, small hints, and a part of them was still able to believe in the magic.”

He paced away from her in frustration. “But not now. Look at you and look at them. I know what Modern Earth is like. They won’t kill you for what we do, but they’ll laugh you out of the room.”

He spun to face her with dizzying intensity. “Either you’re in, or you’re not. Riding the fence is going to get you killed, and I can’t see you being happy going back to life on Modern Earth life, university, a dead-end job.”

She had walked away. Furious that he would talk to her in such a way, and terrified that he was right. Now she didn’t know if she would ever find him again. Who knew what world he had gone to next? He was committed to roving. He believed in being an outsider.

-

Jess twisted her hands together underneath the table. She wasn’t ready to give up roving yet. It was her purpose, her life. Roving was a part of her. She wanted the magic, the adventure, the sense of doing some real good in the world, or a world. 

She bit her lip; there-in lay the conflict. She also wanted to belong, to fit in, to feel accepted. She glanced over at the glowing Way-mark. It forced her to make a decision, to take a stand. 

Her three friends still stared at her sympathetically. Jess jerked herself roughly out of her thoughts and shook her head savagely. Her long hair whipped across her shoulders. “It’s fine, really. We argued too much to ever be a good couple.”

Only Sophie’s blue eyes remained on her face, as if sensing there was a whole lot more to this story than she was picking up. 

Tanya pressed her lips together, already prepped for tracking him down and giving him the talking to of a lifetime. The thought made Jess want to laugh.

“What was his name?”

“Corwin,” she acceded grudgingly.

“What is he? Student? Macdonald’s worker? Construction guy?”

Jess smiled tightly, “Backpacker.”

I guess if you call a professional world-walker a backpacker then that describes Corwin pretty well.

Isla laughed, and her tightly curled brown hair bounced, “Only you would end up with a backpacker.”

Jess tried to smile, but in the end, she just ended up ducking her head. “It didn’t work… I don’t want to talk about it.”

Tanya rocked back slightly, but then she exchanged a loaded glance with Isla and grinned. “Well if you ever need to track him down again, Isla is our comp. sci girl.”

They still thought she was incompetent when it came to technology. Admittedly she had avoided phones in high school, but it was more due to a lack of interest than real incompetence. Even now, she preferred the medieval worlds to the technological ones.

Jess hid a bitter smile. 

I can work a mobile, as well as hack some pretty epic highspeed tech. The internet? Phones? That’s all considered Neanderthal in Galatia.

Sophie came to her rescue and changed the subject. “I got a new cat…”

Jess leaned forward, happy to have an excuse to show engagement in another part of the conversation. Maybe if she got Soph by herself, she could explain the whole thing, tell her the whole story. 

-

You were already doing this ‘thing’ during High School?

Bits and pieces, I started my training over the summer. The timeline between the worlds makes it a little confusing.

How is this possible?

I don’t know. Magic, I guess.

All the worlds?

Every world every written. It gets a bit confusing because then those worlds write about worlds, and then those worlds go on to write about worlds… yeah. Modern Earth, our world I mean, is usually considered to the apex. Usually.

And it’s a tunnel system?

Sort of... No... Yes... Ish.

What about your parents?

I’m from old roving blood. First in a couple of generations but the stories get passed down. They respect what I do.

What do you do?

I save worlds, I help preserve the Ways. I guess I’m kind of like an otherworldly guardian angel. Or, more accurately, a shunned, under-paid, and over-worked, heroine. A member of the Night Watch.

Why come back?

Because I was lonely, and I don’t like the way people look at us. Here no one believes, and in other other world’s we’re hunted. We never have a chance to belong.

-

Even Soph wouldn’t buy it. Jess traced a groove in the top of the table with her pointer finger. Maybe she didn’t need to tell anyone, maybe she didn’t have to explain to feel valued. Corwin could be right, and wrong.

She was wrong to go seeking somewhere she fit in, but she was right to reconnect with her old friends. She needed the closure. She was only human after all.

Perhaps she would visit Sophie and her cat next summer. She doubted she would ever see Isla and Tanya again. They were moving on, totally embracing the Modern Earth reality. The thought of goodbye was not as painful as she expected it to be. It was more like an acceptance of the inevitable. It was freeing.

Jess stood and stretched. Her long, dark hair fell straight down her back. There was only the faintest trace of the emblem on the other side of the asphalt. 

“I should go,” she told the girls. “Things to do.”

They accepted her cryptic explanation, as if also aware that the inevitable had arrived. There was now a barrier of life experience that separated them.

She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and waved it at them. “This spot, next year,” she teased. She wondered if they sensed that it was an empty promise, made on false optimism.

Isla watched her carefully, her wide, brown eyes suddenly as perceptive as Sophie’s blues. “You weren’t at college were you.”

It was a gently a framed accusation. 

Jess looked up, and her heart skipped a beat. She hadn't intended to lie, but it seemed the simplest thing to do at the time. This was so much worse than facing the angry Wizard's Collective. Her stomach twisted as she uttered one word. “No.” 

Tanya's eyes flashed in indignation. “Why would you lie about that?” Her voice picked up volume with each hard syllable.

Jess looked across the street, the Way-gate gained in color and form. She met Tanya’s enraged gaze. “Too many questions. I didn’t know how to explain.”

She stepped back, carefully avoiding the red marks she had dripped onto the concrete. The wasp greedily feasted on her clumsy mistake. She should leave. She couldn't answer their questions, and they deserved more that cryptic answers.

Sophie stood, and skirted the table. She placed her hand on Jess’s shoulder. “You don’t have to explain, Jess." Her blue eyes were compassionately insistent. "But we’re here for you, if you ever need to talk, or anything.”

Jess bit her lip to hide the sting of tears that came to her eyes. She nodded dumbly. “I know.” 

At that moment she did know. Tanya was dying to know what on earth she’d been doing this whole time, but the fiery girl managed to keep her curiosity at bay. Just because they didn’t know the truth made them no less hesitant to support her. They might have grown apart, but they would never turn on her. She still belonged.

Jess began to really smile. “I do have to go, but I’ll be back next year, for a popsicle I promise to eat instead of melt.” 

This time it felt less like a hollow promise, and more like a real possibility.

“Of course,” Sophie told her and squeezed her arm.

“We’ll hold you to that,” Isla teased, raising her blue Slurpee as if to toast her.

Tanya punched her shoulder lightly. “If you ever need help tracking down that boy, I volunteer Isla…”

Jess laughed and waved her off. Sophie dropped her hand and reclaimed her seat in the shade. Jess turned her back and set her eyes on the Way-gate. She took in a deep breath. Excitement flooded through her. This felt right.

-

She walked across the street, one hand on her phone. The common device distorted, flexing at the corners until it resembled a folded parchment map. She reached under her shirt and pulled out her Way-pendant. The emblem before her flared brightly. The gleaming, graceful lines arced around her as she stepped into the center of the complex design. Red sparks flashed across the ruby. Jess grinned in anticipation. 

A white sedan hummed past, separating her from the bench and the other girls. It masked the brilliant flash of light, and when it had cleared the intersection, the street was empty.

Sophie frowned and stirred her now runny ice-cream sundae. Isla and Tanya exchanged puzzled glances, but eventually, the conversation turned to the latest gossip, and how best to avoid the worst of the heat. 

Heat doesn’t bother me much. I've walked across the burning alkali plains of Sezalle, nothing has felt hot since.

On the sidewalk remained the four red splashes of the melted popsicle. There was always next year, and there were always other worlds.