Spirit Quest Chapter 7: Sacred Circle by DreamWeaver
Author's note #1: Although SPIRIT QUEST is a sequel to SHADOW MAN in which Logan's trip to Alkali Lake pits him against Magneto, Mystique and Toad, it is an independent story in its own right.
Author's note #2: Hey, if Marvel first says Logan has blue eyes, then in Ultimate X they're black, I can have them green here for the purpose of the story to make them more unusual and distinctive.
"What the hell happened?"
Connor's eyes were too bright and his mouth was so twisted and distorted Logan could hardly understand what he was saying. "I dunno. These . . . This car came, stopped, like to ask directions. There were three -- three guys and . . . " he gulped, took a shaky breath. "This big blond, hairy guy leans out the window and, I dunno, blows something and Mom gives a little jerk and falls back and . . . "
He dropped his head, dug at his eyes with the heel of a hand, pulled her closer to him, finally looked up at the man. "Is she gonna be okay?"
"Let's see." Logan gently drew Kia out of the boy's arms and muttered a curse. She was so light it was scary! She'd worked herself down to nothing but sinew and spit, and he was convinced the only reason she'd kept going this long was for the sake of the children.
He carried the woman over to the grass, laid her down and knelt beside her. Connor followed on his heels with Kevin. A quick, initial examination, then a slower, more thorough one revealed no damage, no wound, no blood, yet the woman remained unconscious, almost comatose. Her heartbeat was faint but rapid, her breathing shallow, her bronze skin had paled to an ugly yellow. Logan's brow drew down and his hands curled into fists. If only it was something he could fight! But with this he was helpless. He could find nothing wrong, yet something only too obviously was wrong. A stroke maybe? Heart attack? "Gotta get her to a hospital fast," he decided and bent to pick her up.
Kevin now struggled to be set down and Connor numbly complied. After that initial scream the baby had made no sound. As if the cry had been one of warning rather than fright, was Logan's sudden thought. He watched the baby toddle to his mother, fall to all fours putting his head on her breast, then he rolled up to sit on his bottom and looked Logan in the eye.
"Ganda," Kevin said clearly and incomprehensibly. "Ganda."
Logan felt a chill jigger down his spine like a little, icy lightening bolt. Kevin, who last night knew Logan was restive, troubled. Kevin, who had been 'developed' by a medical doctor and scientific genius. Kevin, who supposedly was in tune with the spirit world. Kevin, who now was doing his best with his baby body to tell Logan something, while urging him to obey with the adult intensity of his green eyes.
That Sabertooth had been the attacker, Logan knew from the stench of rotten meat and Connor's description. So maybe this had something to do with mutants. Kia had visions. A kind of psychic shock maybe? Hospitals wouldn't be able to handle that.
"What's a 'ganda'?" he demanded of Connor. The kid sat on the grass, arms locked tight around drawn-up knees, looking like he was in shock himself. Logan pulled him roughly to his feet. "Come on, kid, snap out of it! We can't help her by sitting on our butts. What's 'ganda' mean?"
"Granddad! Grandfather!" the boy shouted on the verge of tears. "It means Grandfather. Now lemme alone!"
"I thought your grandfather was dead," Logan protested.
"Not my grandfather. Grandfather! The old guy in the village."
Logan shot a glance at the baby. "We gotta take your mom to this Grandfather guy." And when Kevin climbed to his feet and started for the truck, Logan knew he'd guessed right. He gathered Kia to him and he and the kid lifted her into the back of the pickup. Connor insisted on staying there with her. Now that they were taking action the boy appeared more in control of himself and gave clear, accurate directions to the village.
"Going to Grandfather is a waste of time," the kid objected as Logan headed for the front of the truck. "Mom says he's a medicine man and is always talking about his 'herbal remedies.' But the guy's just a crazy old coot that picks weeds. We ought to take her to the hospital in town!"
"Yeah, well, Grandfather's closer. We'll try him first."
With Kevin under one arm, Logan climbed into the cab, closed the door, slid behind the wheel. He looked at the baby and had progressed so far into the surreal that he didn't think it strange when he addressed the two-year-old like an adult. "So you want to go behind the seat again, or sit in my lap?" For answer, Kevin crawled over Logan to stand between him and the driver's door.
"Okay, I guess you know what you're doing, bout'chou." He reached across, rolled up the window and locked the door, figuring that and an elbow would keep Kevin fairly secure. "Hang on to something." The baby gave a chubby-cheeked grin and grabbed a fistful of whiskers.
Their route went back past the cabin so Logan whipped in, picked up the twins and continued on. No telling how long they'd be in the village and he didn't want to leave the girls alone if Sabertooth was running loose. They were as shocked and frightened as Connor had been to find their mother unconscious, but then Kevin crawled over Logan to sit between them, holding their hands, and their tears subsided to hiccups and finally silence.
It was early afternoon by the time the truck arrived at the outskirts of the village to wind through a graveyard of dead cars before finally halting in front of a ramshackled, one-story structure all but hidden by trees. Connor hopped down from the back, pounded on the door jamb. The length of faded blanket covering the doorway twitched, drew aside, and the oldest man Logan had ever seen hobbled out. He was so wrinkled and bent that Logan decided Connor was right -- they should have gone straight to town. This old codger wasn't much better off than the woman; he could barely make it over to the truck. What possible help could this medicine guy give Kia? The last thing she needed now was a mess of mashed leaves. No, they ought to toss the geezer in back with her and take them both to the hospital.
Then Grandfather looked at Logan and the whole world shrank to two bottomless, black, piercing eyes. Logan reeled against the seat as if he'd been punched and his heart bucked behind his ribs. He felt like one of those insects pinned to paper -- trapped, examined, helpless.
"Wolverine." The voice was surprisingly deep to have come from that caved chest.
Logan gave a stiff, jerked nod of acknowledgement, breathed again when the eyes moved from him to the twins where they softened, then moved on to Kevin and stopped for what seemed minutes as old man and baby silently regarded each other. Kevin stretched out his arms and Grandfather opened the passenger door to pick him up.
How the hell did the guy know about Wolverine? Logan wondered, scowled, and was still scowling as he followed the old man and the kids into the shack, Kia in his arms.
The place was bigger than it looked from the outside with passages rambling off into the gloom at odd angles leading to low doorways and through cramped rooms to yet another corridor. It was as if a dozen or so shanties had been haphazardly nailed together among the trees, openings cut between them for the convenience of the inhabitant rather than for any reasons of style or design. The structure wasn't a house so much as a sprawl and it gave Logan the odd, unpleasant sensation that the conglomeration? warren? burrow? had just sprouted there in the shadow of the trees like a clump of mushrooms.
He felt jumpy, trapped, and the sweetish haze of smoke that all but obscured the clutter they wandered through only added to his unease. It was some kind of incense -- pine and sage plus the cloying spicy/sweet something he couldn't name. Whatever it was the smoke not only gave him the beginnings of a headache, but screwed up his nose, dimmed his sight and messed with his sense of direction as well. Or maybe it was just this tangled maze of twists and turns that was confusing.
By the time they arrived at a large, round chamber Logan was sweaty. Not from carrying the woman all this way, she was no burden. Rather it was as if the world was closing in on him, and he didn't like it one bit. His enhanced sight, scent, and even his hearing had somehow been deadened by the smoke and he felt tense, vulnerable, stripped of his defenses.
His eyes flicked around the room and he made out at least three entrances including the one they'd come through. But there might be more because blankets hung on the curving walls and some of them moved in a breeze he couldn't feel as if there were a passageway behind. The old man stopped, with a gnarled finger indicated a black blanket on the earthen floor and after a moment's hesitation Logan approached, laid Kia down. He felt like snatching her right back up and running for the truck if he only knew which way to go. Turning, he searched for the doorway they'd just entered, but now there were no openings, only a ring of smoke gray blankets that gently stirred as if they were breathing. He spun back around, his heart racing.
"Wha -- What is this place? Who are you?"
"Sit, Wolverine."
His legs suddenly gave way and he collapsed on a rusty red blanket, realizing for the first time that Connor and the twins seemed dazed, caught in the same kind of stupor he was fighting. Each sat motionless on his or her own blanket in a ring around Kia, while he, Logan, made a fourth spoke of that wheel. Only the baby was alert, still in the arms of the old man who was seated on a storm-colored blanket to the left of Kia. Now Kevin slipped free and went to a white blanket spread out on the right side of his mother.
Everybody's blanket is different, Logan saw, bemused. Whatever that might mean. In the center a triangle of purple, black, and white blankets with Grandfather, Kia and Kevin cordoned off a small fire. Around that triangle, a circle with himself on red, Casey -- deep blue, Connor -- sand yellow, Kelly -- sage green. Was that last supposed to be a joke? Kelly green . . . Thinking had become an arduous struggle. He surreptitiously slid out a claw tip and dug it in his thigh. The pain shocked him awake.
"Who are you?" he demanded again. "What's going on here? What's wrong with the kids? What's wrong with Kia?"
Grandfather looked at him sharply, began to laugh with genuine humor. "So many questions! Medicine Bundle told me you would fight for them. Will you, Wolverine?"
"What's a medicine bundle? Fight for who?"
The old man leaned over to touch the baby's thatch of black hair. Kevin was curled in a little ball and appeared to be asleep. "This is Medicine Bundle. It is a powerful name for a powerful spirit. He will aid you in the other world."
"What other world? And what the hell's wrong with Kia, dammit?"
"Be silent and see." Grandfather took a pinch of grayish powder from a little bag, offered it with mumbled words to each of the older children who gazed at it blankly, offered it to Logan who snarled, presented it to the sleeping baby then sprinkled it in the air above Kia. Despite the smoke, the powder caught the firelight and shimmered down in a translucent veil to cover the woman's still form like a diaphanous shroud.
"Bone dust," he said, anticipating Logan's next question. "Our daughter is trapped in the spirit world, the land of the dead. But she herself is not yet dead. See here." His hand hovered over a shadow projecting from Kia's breast, almost as transparent at the veil itself but still solid enough to hold up that bit of powdery film. "A soul dart pins her in that world. Slowly it will work its way deeper and deeper until she is truly spirit."
Logan leaped to his feet, grabbed at the ghostly, arrow-like thing, succeeded only in stirring up air currents which scattered the bone dust. His empty hand clenched into a fist. "Get the damn thing out! You're supposed to be some kind of medicine man, aren't you? That's your job!"
"It is your work, Wolverine, if you choose to undertake it. Your work and your children's, but only if you all agree. Sometimes love is stronger than death. This is one of those times. But death is greedy, eventhough it will have us all in the end. For Kia to return, one of you must take her place in the spirit world."
"What? That's crazy! These are just kids. You can't ask them to sacrifice themselves like that. They wouldn't even understand!"
"Then since you do understand, you must choose one of them. Or offer yourself."
Logan sank back cross-legged on the blanket, unconsciously imitating the old man. Despite the chamber's stuffiness, he was suddenly seized by a chill and his breath lodged in his chest as if death already clutched him tight about the throat. "I don't even know her, hardly." He gave a weak laugh. "I just came here by chance . . . "
"Nothing is chance, Wolverine. Kia told me of you. She dreams true -- "
"Bullshit!" Logan took refuge in profanity, bringing all these airy-fairy fancies down to earth with a thud. "I have dreams too! And they made me . . . come here . . . "
"What were your dreams?"
Logan's eyes shifted from side to side as if seeking escape. "Killing people. My friends," he mumbled at last. "But it didn't happen 'cause I left! Did Kia have anything to do with my dreams?" he demanded suspiciously.
Grandfather shook his head. "Kia is given dreams, she does not send them. But did you talk to no one of this, no wise man of your people? To me it would seem such evil dreams must be sent by the enemy to drive you from your friends, leaving you alone and unprotected."
Logan stared at him openmouthed. It made sense. Any way he looked at it, what the old guy said made sense. And now he couldn't understand why he hadn't gone to Chuck right off.
"This is what Kia last dreamed," Grandfather was saying. "She saw you attacked, attacked and destroyed by three together: Serpent, Rock, Cougar. But before that battle in the wilds she saw you at a drinking place in town and told me she would try to find you there. You are not dead. She succeeded in thwarting those enemies who sent you evil dreams. But now in revenge, they have struck her."
"Why the hell didn't she tell me all this . . . before?" His protest began as a shout, dwindled to a whisper when he suddenly knew the answer. Because he never gave her the chance. No, he had scuttled off like some chicken-shit, little coward, afraid of being tied down to wife and family, afraid of being Daddy. Maybe, yeah, even wanting to believe the dreams meant he was a threat to everybody as an excuse not to stay. Kia wasn't crazy after all. The so-important thing on her mind wasn't convincing him that the kids were really his. Instead, it was to warn him of these unknown enemies. So while he was high-tailing it into the woods, she waited in the pickup like a sitting duck for the death dart intended for yours truly. It should be him lying on that black blanket, still and pale.
Sabertooth -- That mangy alley cat must be in cahoots with Snake & Co. Not only had the bastard succeeded in striking down Kia today, but he had attempted to do so in the parking lot last night. Last night . . . A shiver seized Logan as he recalled what the woman had said about her visions -- change one little thing and it changes the whole. Grandfather had it all wrong.
Last night at the tavern, today on the road, Sabertooth hadn't attacked the woman out of vengeance. In Kia's vision, he, Logan, had been slated to die, but because she had kept him out of danger by taking him home, she had become the quarry. But not in revenge. No. The moment Kia sent Connor into the Pit Bull, she had altered the future, unwittingly offering herself as the enemy's target instead of Logan.
He looked at the kids. Now they were all curled up on their blankets. Kevin with thumb in mouth. The girls so soft and pretty -- Kelly smiling slightly, Casey with a tiny frown. Connor -- Connor was the real man of the family. Impossible to pick any of them to die instead of Kia.
Logan didn't know the woman, it was true, except maybe in the Biblical sense, and he didn't even remember that. But who did the kids need more -- a mother who wanted them, had 'planned' them, had worked and cared for them the past fifteen years? Or a footloose father, a stranger, who drank, fought, and screwed around? No, there was only one throw-away card in this hand he'd been dealt. Dammit, there had to be another choice! Scowling, Logan turned on the old codger to demand just that, heard himself say fast before he could change his mind -- "Okay, I'll do it. I'll take her place."
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