9. Rituals
Truth hurts.
In every sense that matters, there is quite a bit of magic to a simple campfire. On the deepest level of elemental truth, the basic act of forcing dead, cold matter to give forth light and heat is the very heart of what magic is and will forever be. Life from death, action from the void.
Between human beings there is magic in the campfire as well. The flickering light scaring away the shadows can act as a portal for wisdom. Can allow truths to be told that would sound false in the light of the sun.
The Smoke Man obeyed the ritual as he sat at Hope’s fire. He nodded a greeting to The Cat and his army. They accepted his presence with silent politeness. He brought forth a pouch and a pack of rolling papers. To an offered fire, one brings their own offering: be that a drink, a bite, a smoke or a story.
"Care for a smoke?" he asked.
"I don’t use tobacco." Hope informed him.
"This isn’t tobacco." he admitted with a smile.
"I don’t smoke pot either."
"Nor is it cannabis." His fingers rolled with simple deft motions.
Hope smiled. "What is it?"
"Called dreambreak. Only grows in the Borderlands. Some say it opens the mind and the memory when they’d rather stay closed." His eyes were unreadable when he finished the smoke and put it to his lips. He lit it and took a long, crackling drag. Hope smelled the herb then, faintly. It hinted at spice and something deeper. A musky scent, like the den of a burrowing animal.
"You still don’t know how you came to be here, do you?"
She shook her head no.
"This could help." He offered her the smoke.
She considered a moment, before finally taking it. She had little to fear from the Smoke Man, who was the only person in the Borderlands who had ever answered any of her questions.
She didn’t choke. The dreambreak was surprisingly smooth. Spice and musk, yes — and the surprise of a peppermint aftertaste, that turned sweet as it lingered on the tongue.
She took another drag. She held the smoke until it expanded to the point of pain in her lungs. She let it go, and watched the ghostly whorls emerge from her mouth, dancing through shifting focus, bright and somehow…significant.
It’s already affecting me, she understood.
Across the fire, the Smoke Man’s grin seemed to grow. "Just let it come. Don’t fight it. Relax and let it come."
"Why are you helping me?" she asked, while she still could. Around her, the night grew distinct.
"Maybe you’re helping me." he said.
And then she was gone.
In the first vision she and the cat are in a very familiar hospital room. She recognizes the room, having spent two horrible weeks there. She doesn’t know why the cat is with her, but she appreciates his company.
They stand in a corner and watch. In the bed, invaded by tubes and dying, lies her father. Sitting before him, all weeped out, holding a shoe box, is herself.
How small and thin and weak she looks, Hope thinks. How feeble.
"You brought it." her Father says. It isn’t a question.
The old Hope simply nods.
"You’re a good girl." her Father tells her. He always told her that. His voice is thin and weak and raspy. The cancer has taken all of his strength, all of his energy and vigor. It hasn’t taken his will, yet. That much she knows. If it had, he couldn’t have requested this final favor from her.
She sits the box on the nightstand. She kisses her Father goodbye. She hugs him for a long moment and even finds a few more tears to shed into his chest. Finally, she stands. She hesitates. She leaves, unable to say anything more.
From the corner, Hope and the cat watch what follows. Hope knows what is coming, and — in her old life — often wished she’d been strong enough to stay by her father’s side as he did what he had to do. That she’d had the will and strength to hold his hand as he’d taken his life. He’d ended the pain as a sane man, with his mind and memory intact. She’d been too weak to do so. Too weak and too scared and too childish.
But she isn’t that person any more. She’s not weak, or scared, or childish now. She’s a woman of iron and cordite, a dealer of death and justice. She’s grown and ancient in the way of the hard path.
She and the cat step up to her father as he struggles with the box containing his old gun. The tubes that get in his way are torn unceremoniously out, and he ignores the increase in pain. All that will be over in a moment.
As he places the gun to his temple, hand shaking but sure, something focuses in his eyes. She steps as close as she can. She wills him to see her.
Her ghost hand takes his free hand. That big strong hand that protected her for so long.
A smile flickers at the corner of his mouth. Perhaps he sees her. A little. Enough.
"I love you Daddy." she whispers, and he pulls the trigger.
It is messy and awful and sad, but she doesn’t look away. She owes him that much.
As the flurry of the aftermath happens, she is surprised when the ghost stands up from her father’s dead body, the ghost of his gun still clenched in his hand. He looks insubstantial but somehow stronger in death than in those last moments of life.
He sits there on the bed, as nurses and doctors rush and sigh and shake their heads in sadness and pity. He seems to listen to a faraway voice. Finally he nods, and smiles.
He stands up and, carrying the gun, walks out of the room.
She follows him, with the cat. They follow him as he leaves the hospital, and the manicured grounds, as he finds a road and heads west. His stride is determined, his manner happy and purposeful. As she follows him he seems to grow ever more substantial. More solid.
After a long time, he comes across the old truck. She begins to understand when he takes the gun belt and holster from the front seat, and straps them on. As he drops the now familiar gun into place.
She climbs into the passenger seat as he takes the wheel. As they drive into the desert. He navigates by that unheard voice for a while, until it apparently tells him to stop. He does so. He settles back, to wait.
He will wait here for a long time, she knows.
She gets out of the truck, opening and closing the door unnoticed by the ghost of her father. A ghost that is no longer a ghost here in the Borderlands. A flesh and blood man who will wait past a second death, and turn to bone, and finally dust, waiting for her. To deliver that gun to her hand.
She smiles at him there. He looks patient, content even. A little smile lingers on his face. His head is cocked as he listens to that unheard voice, and his eyes are closed as if hearing a lovely melody. Perhaps the voice is singing to him. She hopes so.
"I love you Daddy." She says again, and starts to leave.
Reality warps and folds in upon itself.
She is sitting at the campfire again. The tears on her cheeks surprise her.
The Smoke Man reaches the still smoldering dreambreak to her again. She is not finished.
She takes it. The taste this time is one of citrus, and a slight burn like cayenne as the flavor fades. The smoke from her mouth eddies in a great whorl, shifting color from white to blue, to join the black of night as she fades and travels again.
The courtroom is as silent as the grave.
"Guilty." the foreman of the jury announces.
The silence ends and the great circus erupts. The judge bangs for order with no success. It is over, at last — after months of testimony and tears and accusations. It is over and the husband killing bitch has been found guilty, just as she was judged by the media and the public before she ever set foot in this courtroom.
Her tales of rape and abuse were not believed. Her stories of why she killed her husband and his three friends. To make matters even more horrible, all four of her victims were decorated police officers. Paragons of virtue and pillars of their community. Their records were spotless and their names respected. The idea that they had gathered every weekend to rape and humiliate the small and quite plain woman before them was ridiculous. It was obviously part of the murderous psychopathic fantasy that her deranged mind had created. She was jealous of her husbands success and reputation. The suicide of her dying father had been the final push over the edge of madness. Three noted psychiatrists testified to this.
She and the cat sit in the back, lost amidst the circus of the guilty verdict. Hope keeps her eyes on the timid and washed out woman being led, handcuffed, from the courtroom. The woman who shows not a single emotion. Who rarely even blinks those puffy, sleep starved eyes.
She and the cat stand and follow as the bailiffs lead her towards her cell. The sentencing will take place the very next day, the judge has decreed. The most predicted outcome is the electric chair. There is a certain grim satisfaction to the reporters as they make note of this, as they prepare the news for a slew of special editions.
Hope follows the woman. She knows what is coming.
She sees the wife of one of her victims before anyone else. Watches as the red haired, scarecrow thin woman steps up, face a mask of hate and pain, and shoots the murderess three times.
"Die you murdering whore!" the red haired scarecrow screams, before the bailiffs tackle her, releasing the bleeding, silent murderess, who crumples to the floor.
She is not surprised this time, when the ghost stands up from the dead body. She simply follows as her past self discovers that the handcuffs are gone. She remembers thinking how lucky she was that all three bullets missed her. How she had a chance to escape. How she took it and ran.
Hope and the cat follow, easily, knowing every step now, but curious. Drawn to watch.
They follow, as she flees through the streets of the city. As she steals an outfit from a clothesline. She grows substantial as she does so, already in the Borderlands, the city but a copied memory.
As she makes her way to a Salvation Army, where she outfits herself for a trip.
As she hitch hikes west, forgetting as she goes, remembering only the terror and the reckless desire to flee.
Miles from the city she encounters Char — old Charon — who picks her up and ferries her across a Styx of solid black flow, a river of asphalt.
Into the Borderlands proper. Into the great Inbetween. She runs, seeking revenge and retribution against the bastard who continued to hurt her even after she’d killed him.
Chasing the ghost of her husband into the land of the unquiet dead.
Reality demanded attention.
She gasped. The still burning stub of the dreambreak singed her fingers.
Her body tingled with an almost electric charge as she emerged from the throes of the vision.
It was near dawn. Mellow grey light seeped up over the horizon. The rising mountains of the Free West were etched in shadow in the distance.
The Smoke Man regarded her. She tossed the stub of the dreambreak into the guttering remains of the fire.
"So. Now you know." he said. His voice was gentle.
"Yes." she told him. "Thank you."
He shrugged and stood up. She followed suit.
"Now what?" he asked.
She considered. After a moment she smiled. "Nothing has changed." she told him. "I just know why I’m doing what I’m doing. I still have to hunt the bastard down and put him away. Not just for myself, anymore. Whatever evil he carried in his heart he brought here to the Borderlands. He harried the people as The Boss for however long it was before I crossed over on his tail."
"That’s not a very Hope-ful attitude to take." The Smoke Man reminded her.
She nodded. "That’s the truth. But maybe the time for Hope is gone. Maybe I’m yet another person now."
He chuckled, shaking his head. "Names as a tool and a purpose."
That struck her as proper. "It’s not just for me, now. It’s for those he abused after I sent him here."
"Charity."
"Charity." she agreed. "From now on I am Charity."
The sun broke over the horizon and the day dawned clear and bright, the beckoning mountains beneath a cold blue sky. She gathered her supplies as the cats prepared for travel.
She turned the offer of a ride down. "I give Charity. I don’t accept it."
"As you like." The Smoke Man said. She watched him head back east. She knew she was not done with him yet.
West they moved, Charity and her army. The day brightened, the clarity of her purpose pushed her on.
West, towards the Ends. Towards revenge. Towards conclusion.
To spread the Charity of a cold, hard heart.
