Logan leaned on his staff. He was hot and stiff, impatient and tired.
"What are you trying to tell me? Because I'm not understanding."
Two Bears sat cross–legged on the rocks at the edge of the bluff and peered out across the river. Logan hesitated, then joined him, setting the staff on the ground beside him.
"Look around, Logan." The big man made a sweeping gesture. "This park was beautiful once, a haven watched over and protected by a sylvan, a gathering place for creatures of magic. But it is dead and empty now. No sylvan watches over it. All the sylvans in the world are gone. They were destroyed along with their forests. What will it take to bring them back? What will it take to make the park beautiful again?"
Logan waited a moment, then said, "Time."
"Rebirth." Two Bears looked directly at him. "Do you know what lies in this park? My ancestors. Almost all of them, buried in the earth, right over there."
He pointed to a series of dark mounds visible through the trees not far from where they sat. Logan wondered where this was going.
"I have strong memories of my people, but stronger memories still of a little girl who now also rests here. I met her in this park almost a hundred years ago, when I was younger than I am now." He smiled. "She lived in a house close by the entrance. She was a friend to the sylvan who tended the park. The park was her playground. When she was in it, she was at her happiest. She was followed everywhere by a spirit creature, a huge wolf dog born of magic. The creature, it turned out, was a part of her. Bad and good, it was a part of her.
She was the most important human being of her generation, but when I met her, she was still just a girl."
One eyebrow lifted quizzically. "Her name was Nest Freemark. Do you know of her?"
Logan shook his head. "No."
"I found her first, but two others were searching for her, as well.
One was a Knight of the Word named John Ross. The other was a demon. One had come to save her, the other to subvert her. She possessed great magic,
Logan. She was the linchpin to the future of the world, able to change the course of history because of who she was and what she might do. She didn't know any of it. She discovered a part of the truth of things over the course of the next fifteen years, but she did not ever know the whole of it."
"Why was she so important?" Logan caught sight of a pair of feeders lurking in the trees and forced himself to ignore them. "Is she the reason we're here?"
Two Bears nodded. "She rests in the cemetery just over the rise, behind the burial mounds of my people. She has been gone from the world for a long time now, but her legacy lives on in the form of a child born to her in the fall of her thirtieth year. It was her only child, a child she hadn't even known she would produce. It was born of magic, a creature of enormous power, her gift to the world we now live in because it is that world's best hope."
"Must be a rather old child by now," Logan observed.
"Almost eighty, but still only a child. It is not a human child–at least, not as we think of human children. It began life as a gypsy morph, a creature of a very powerful, wild magic. Gypsy morphs can assume any shape, take any form.
No two have ever turned out exactly the same. Only a handful of morphs are conceived in a human lifetime, and most are never even glimpsed. But John Ross trapped this one on the Oregon coast, and after it had gone through its changes and taken the shape of a small boy, he took it with him to this town to find
Nest Freemark. Its purpose in life was to become her child, born to her in the aftermath of the battle that took Ross's life. The morph entered Nest Freemark in one form and emerged in another. Only she knew its origins and its secrets.
Only she knew what it really was."
He paused. "Knowing what it was, she kept it apart from the rest of the world, living mostly alone. It stayed with her for a time–we don't know how long exactly–and then it disappeared. I kept waiting for it to resurface, but its time had not yet come. By then, the world was drifting toward anarchy and the seeds of the Great Wars had begun to take root. I searched for the child without success; wherever it was, it was well hidden. Very few can hide from me, but this one did. I could not track its magic because I could not define what it was. The magic of each gypsy morph, like the morph itself, is unlike that of any other.
Wild magic is unpredictable; it may turn out to be either good or evil. The demons sought to capture and make use of this morph, aware of its potential. But
Nest Freemark saved it."
Logan looked out across the river. "You're about to tell me that it's reappeared, aren't you?"
Two Bears nodded. "Its time is now, after all these years. Its purpose is known. The Lady has divined it. But it is still a child, still in a child's form with a child's mind. It will know what to do when it is time, but not how to survive until then. It must have help for that. It must have a protector."
Logan sighed. "That would be me?"
"Whoever goes to the aid of this child will be attacked from all sides.
The demons will do anything to destroy it or to stop it from fulfilling its purpose. I know of no one better able to withstand the demons than you, Logan.
The Lady has made her choice. I think she has chosen well."
The owl hooted softly, closer now. Sylvans had once ridden owls, Logan remembered. Six–inch–tall fairy creatures with long life spans and tiny bodies made of sticks and moss, their given task was to care for trees and plants. He had never seen one. Were they really all gone?
"What makes this child so important? What is it supposed to do?"
Two Bears leaned forward and rested his elbows on his crossed legs. His copper face dipped into shadow. "It is going to save humankind, Logan."
"That's a tall order." He tried to keep the incredulity from his voice.
"How is it going to do that?"
The Sinnissippi considered his answer for a moment. "I told you earlier that the climb out of the abyss would be long and difficult. What I did not tell you is that only a few would make that climb. Most will perish in the effort.
The demons have won their war against the old world, and no amount of retribution is going to change that. The evil has penetrated to the core of civilization. A fire is coming, huge and engulfing. When it ignites, most of what is left of humanity will vanish. It will happen suddenly and quite soon."
"Sounds biblical." Logan shifted his weight toward the other man. "You're telling me the demons have managed to get their hands on nuclear weapons and intend to use them? On a massive scale?"
The black eyes glittered from out of the shadow of the heavy brow. "What the demons either do not appreciate or do not care about is that it will prove indiscriminate in its destructiveness. Bad and good alike will be consumed. Most of the demons will perish, too."
"That part sounds pretty good. But the morph can prevent all this in some way?"
"No one can prevent it. Nothing can stop it. But the morph has the means to survive it, the means to transcend the destruction and allow a handful of the world's inhabitants to start anew."
"How is it going to do that?"
The Sinnissippi rocked backward slowly. "By opening a door that leads to a safe place."
"For a chosen few?"
"For a scattering of men, women, and children who will find their way to you."
"The remnants of humankind."
"Some. Not all will be human."
Logan hesitated on hearing that, but decided not to pursue it. "Where will the child find this door?"
"The child will know."
Logan felt a keen sense of frustration. Nothing about any of this seemed very clear. "One problem. If you can't find this child, how am I supposed to? I don't have the skills for that."