gryphons_quill

Rachel was surprised by spring every year. Even though she knew that eventually the snow would start to melt and the ground would thaw, the first really warm day always came as something of a shock—as though she had gotten so caught up in slogging through the eternal gray days of late winter that she really forgot they would come to an end. She stood in the sun and took off her jacket, raised her hands to its warmth, and felt something inside her thaw. A morning like this made everything else seem unimportant.

It was a short walk to the brick sidewalks and narrow streets downtown. She walked slowly, at first just enjoying the rhythm and routine of it. After a while, though, thoughts began to intrude. Something strange had happened. No, not just strange—impossible. Unless David was lying, was playing some strange sort of game with her. As much as she wanted a rational explanation, she knew better: in nearly ten years of marriage, David had never even stretched the truth. He was unfailingly, annoyingly honest; he would never be intentionally manipulative. It would be easier for her to believe he'd been replaced with an alien wearing his body than that he was doing this to her.

So... it wasn't David.

She was a science teacher. What she was considering was completely impossible. She groped about for another explanation... but no. She was a science teacher, and she understood science better than that. In science, no matter how impossible something seems, you have to keep an open mind and see if you can test it empirically.

Okay. Hypothesis: something very strange is going on.

More specifically: I can make things happen by thinking them very hard.

Rachel, feeling a bit silly, cast about for some way to test her hypothesis. She didn't want to try to do anything that might hurt someone, even though she was deep-down sure she was being silly. Still, that first night, what was it she had been thinking? It had seemed like a pretty normal argument at first.

“Honey? Can you give me a hand here?”

Rachel sighed and put down her pen. “What is it?” she called back, trying not to let her frustration color her words.

“It's the computer again...”

She put the paper she was correcting back on the pile and walked into the office. The computer definitely wasn't working—she could see from the doorway that the screen was frozen in the middle of some sort of animation. On the TV, an enthusiastic young man tried to sell her a new Dell. David almost always had the TV on while he worked. He knew it drove her crazy, so he kept the volume down. One of the secrets of a good marriage, right? Compromise.

“What did you do before it stopped working?” Rachel asked.

David got up from his chair so she could sit, and muted the television. “Nothing. I swear, I was just watching the clip and it froze.”

That had been the story, more or less, the last several times the computer had crashed, but it seemed to be true. Maybe it really was time to replace the thing, but it was a fairly new one and had never had any problems before. She poked at it for a while, then gave up and hit the reset button. “I have to get back to my papers,” she said, and this time she couldn't keep the frustration from bleeding through. “I have about sixty left to grade.”

She could tell he was unhappy, but he didn't say anything. Sometimes, when he was being so obviously careful to be patient and understanding, she wanted to scream at him. If he would only value her work as much as he did his own, or learn to deal with problems himself, he wouldn't need to be so patient all the time. He never seemed to understand that perspective, though, and Rachel felt guilty for not appreciating him more: he did his share of the dishes, paid his half of the bills, and never complained.

Ten eighth-grade research papers later, sure she'd scream if she had to deal with fourteen-year-old spelling for another minute, she walked back into the office. “Dave, seriously. I need to talk to you about this feeling I have that you just don't value my time or my work...” She trailed off, following his gaze to the TV, where a very-made-up woman was discussing some sort of mysterious disturbance in a nearby town. David didn't even turn to look at her. It's like I'm not even here, she thought vehemently, surprising herself with the depth of her anger. The colors on the TV screen warped, twisted into a psychedelic spiral swirl, and disappeared with a “pop.” David frowned at the set, pushed the buttons once or twice, and unplugged it. He didn't seem to notice her at all. She considered taking off her clothes, or shouting at him, or throwing something at his head—anything to get his attention.

Instead, she took a book to bed and tried not to think about her marriage, or her life, or the stack of research papers she still had to read and grade.

When David finally came to bed that night, Rachel was still awake. He looked at the bed with a strange expression on his face, and didn't quite meet her eyes. She didn't speak--afraid she'd be too angry to make sense, or that one of them would say something that would change them, something that couldn't be unspoken--and eventually he curled up on his side of the bed without saying a word. He tossed and turned most of the night, while she lay awake wondering why they couldn't just talk. Several times, he had seemed to wake up long enough to blink groggily at her, but even when she tried to say something, to reach out to him, he'd just turned over again and closed his eyes.

Rachel shrugged off the shadows clinging to the memory and tried to concentrate on the task at hand. It's like I'm not even here, right? If it worked on David, maybe it would work on someone else. There were plenty of people downtown, crowding around the edges of parks made out of oddly shaped lots, enjoying the warm weather. It wouldn't hurt them not to see her.

She tried to remember how it had felt, both times she might or might not have done this strange thing, this magical thing she was only even entertaining as a possibility because she was open minded and believed in the scientific method. She knew she had been angry both times, and that there had been a depth to her anger, a sort of certainty that what she said was true. She wasn't particularly angry anymore, but she tried anyway, thinking I'm not here as hard as she could, making a sort of internal chant out of it while she counted the bricks under her feet. It was like being a child again, making up rules about walking on cracks or stepping in shadows, making up silly little rhymes. The rhythm of it distracted her for a while, let her think about nothing important. She played with the idea of being invisible, wondering in a way she knew wasn't at all serious if magic could really happen. When she was little, she'd believed that wishes could come true, and wanting something could make it be. Half of her students seemed to believe the same thing even now. Well, she wanted this to work. She wanted answers, and she didn't want the answer to be that there were problems looming in her marriage, problems that hadn't even been hinted at before. Of all the explanations she could think of for their last two arguments, she liked magic the best. If it had only been that night, she could have dismissed it, but the next day, when she got home from work, had been harder to explain.

The look on his face when she walked in the door had been priceless—a moment of pure joy, before a shadow moved in his eyes and his face grew more guarded. “I was so worried,” he said, but he didn't move to touch her.

Rachel was confused. “I'm not late,” she said.

He looked at her quizzically. The part of her that always seemed to be observing her life noticed the humor in the moment, the two of them standing with equally puzzled expressions, speaking across each other. They were like mirror images of each other, but somehow the act of reflection had caused a gulf of understanding too broad to cross.

“But... you left. Last night. You were just gone.”

She blinked in confusion. “No I wasn't. I was here. In bed, beside you, all night.”

She watched him very nearly get angry. “No you weren't,” he said firmly. “You weren't here at all. Why would you tell me you were here when you weren't?”

Rachel had no idea what to say to that. She stared at her husband from under lowered brows. Her mouth hung open, uselessly. Words wouldn't come.

David was clearly struggling with his anger, and she could only watch as he took several deep breaths. His tone when he finally spoke was just a hair short of lecturing. “Listen, I know things haven't been great lately. It seems like everything just keeps breaking down, and you've been under a lot of strain. And if you feel like I'm not doing my part, we can definitely talk about that. But you can't just leave like that, in the night, without telling me where you're going. I was so worried about you I hardly slept all night, and at work today--”

He would have gone on, but she cut him off, angrily, words and thoughts finally coming together. “I. Was. Beside. You. All. Night.” The words fell into the air, where they sat with a finality that seemed to make any more discussion not only unnecessary, but impossible.

Rachel would have said more anyway—she rarely backed down--but the carefully contained anger drained away from his face, leaving a strange, blank expression that took her words away. Another instant and it was gone, so suddenly that she wasn't sure it had been there at all. David beamed down at her; his everyday, familiar smile felt like a safe harbor from her confusion.

“So, sweetie,” he said, leaning forward to drop a quick kiss on her unresponsive lips, “what do you want for dinner? There's that leftover chicken from the other night... I thought I could toss together something with rice and beans and... is something wrong?”

Bemused, Rachel shook her head. How could she argue with him? He'd given in completely. It seemed like he'd forgotten the argument had even happened. She went through the motions of fixing dinner, talking about her day, and getting ready for bed—without touching the stack of papers—all the while wondering what had happened. She was sure something had.

That night, David slid into bed beside her, kissed the back of her neck, and fell comfortably asleep. She'd been, thankfully, too exhausted to think about anything at all.

Rachel blinked, looked up, saw the people on the sidewalk ahead of her—and immediately forgot all her worries and what she was trying to do. At first she thought a circus had come to town, or that someone had revived the idea of the sideshow. There were clusters of people gathered in several spots, staring at others, photographing them, engaging in rapid, intent conversation with them. One of the people Rachel could see was a girl with long blue-black hair, pointed ears, and skin the rich green of clover. She was holding court over a dozen or so people with cameras and notepads, and her arch smile made it clear that she loved it. A man near her was juggling several small items—a lighter, someone's keys, a watch, she couldn't see what else—without moving his hands at all. People near him were cheering and tossing money into his hat. Another man sat at a small table with a sign that said “Small Repairs, $1.” A line of people snaked away from the table; she spotted two cracked vases and three pairs of broken glasses, their owners clearly willing to risk a buck.

Rachel immediately tried to dismiss it all as legerdemain, but a tiny old woman in a flowered dress caught her eye. Try as she might, Rachel couldn't explain her away: she was inarguably drawing pictures in the air with a stick. They stayed, bright colors catching the sunlight, for a few heartbeats, before fading back into nothingness. Rachel watched, fascinated, as she used the stick and the air to illustrate a story she was telling a small crowd of listeners, mostly children. A bright green turtle swam through a blue river in search of a golden fish. A child's vision of the sun, complete with alternating long and short rays, appeared and was eclipsed behind a gray-blue cloud. Rachel watched, too far away to hear, as the turtle successfully found the fish and the sun came out again. Those listening cheered.

Suddenly Rachel was nearly knocked off her feet by a large man—all she saw was his shoulder, a flash of red tee-shirt near her face--who walked straight into her. She recovered her balance quickly, arms flailing, but he was already walking away. Before she even had time to get angry she remembered her experiment. It only took a few more collisions for her to convince herself: they really couldn't tell she was there. It was inconvenient and uncomfortable—and really, she found it unsettling, being invisible—so she thought here I am like normal a few times. No one looked surprised at her sudden appearance, but a few seconds later a woman with dreadlocks and a quilted cotton sundress gave her a beaming smile and the woman's toddler son used her leg to pull himself up. He stood beside her, holding on below her knee, beaming at the world. Whatever else was going on, whatever wonders had made their way to the city, it was a beautiful spring day, and people felt like smiling.

Telling herself that the crowd seemed pretty willing to be exposed to the unknown, Rachel experimented for a while. It wasn't hard, once she had the trick of it, to make herself appear and disappear. She looked up into the brilliant spring sunshine and an odd thought made her grin. I'm a tree! she thought, and imagined an oak, lifting its leaves toward the sun. If she squinted, she could see a tangle of branches above, and rough gray bark. She wasn't sure if moving would break the illusion—a walking oak tree would look strange, after all—so she just waited a few minutes to see if anyone would notice the new tree. No one looked startled, but a young man with a guitar sat at her feet and leaned comfortably back against her leg. He started playing; she stood, treelike, enjoying it until her feet started to hurt. When she thought herself human again, the guitarist jumped up and began to apologize frantically. She laughed and hugged him, and after a bewildered few seconds, he laughed too.

Rachel found she could change other things too, or at least the way other things were perceived, if she just put enough effort into imagining the details. She gave a dog a pair of fluffy wings but took them back when it kept chasing itself in circles trying to catch them; she put an illusory raven in the branches of a real tree, where it watched everything going on below it. If she unfocused her eyes slightly, she could see her own illusions. She wasn't sure, but the only limitation seemed to be her own imagination. Eventually she sat down with the toddler who had hung onto her leg for a while, idly making a shining, sparkling shape appear and disappear in the little boy's hands.

“What's going on?” she asked his pretty young mother.

She just smiled. “We don't know, but isn't it cool?”

Rachel nodded and left it at that. Somehow in the middle of all these marvels, all she really wanted was to sit in the sun and make a little boy laugh. There would be time to think about it all later. It was almost palpable, the pressure to enjoy the moment, forget her problems, believe what she was seeing without question.

Only... belief without question was not Rachel's habit. She was scientific, rational, occasionally hot-tempered maybe, but basically a reasonable person. She thought of herself as comfortably skeptical, just enough to ask questions, not enough to be depressingly cynical. The golden ring of light vanished from the boy's hands as she concentrated instead on this inner contradiction, and she realized that it felt familiar. There was a tickle at the edge of her thoughts just like when she was holding onto the idea of an illusion, only she wasn't. Anger flared. This was not happening.

Rachel mentally glared at the nagging bits of her thoughts that she could tell weren't actually hers. It seemed almost a shame to get rid of them, when she'd been having such a lovely time, but she thought no, no I don't believe in you, and that was enough. The world visibly dimmed—it was still a beautiful day, but the spring sunlight looked weaker, watery, and didn't shine off every surface anymore. The crowd's good spirits suddenly seemed sinister. How real was happiness if it was forced on you? It was like they'd all taken the pills, all drunk the kool-aid. She wondered if it was because they didn't want to resist, or because they couldn't.

She wondered why she could.

More intentionally now, she made herself not-there, not only invisible but difficult to sense at all. Anyone who ran into her, she was sure, would immediately forget they had. They wouldn't see her footprints or hear her breath. If she took something, they wouldn't see that either; maybe they wouldn't even notice it was gone. The sense of power was overwhelming. She walked around the edges of the crowd, looking with narrowed eyes for some clue about who or what was doing it—who had the crowd under this strange spell of acceptance and contentment. How would she recognize them? What would she do then? She had no idea.

In the end it didn't matter, because Rachel had no idea where the warm glow was coming from. Her anger faded as she realized that it was possible whoever it was didn't even know it was happening. She hadn't meant to vanish that first time—maybe whoever was doing this was just enjoying the day so much the enjoyment was being broadcast to everyone in range... whatever that meant. Rachel sighed and stretched, only to pause mid-stretch, realizing that she might be able to dispel the excessive joy that was clouding everyone's minds. The more she thought about it, the more she thought she could—that if she just thought about it in the right way, with intent, the whole bubble of pretty colors and warm feelings would burst and be gone, vanishing like a dream when the alarm goes off.

She couldn't do it. They were happy. Maybe it was false happiness, but it didn't seem to be hurting them, and... well... she just couldn't look at them--dozens of people all laughing, dancing, singing, children listening spellbound to people telling stories, old men letting sunshine soak out the frown-lines on their faces, babies crowing and burbling but not crying—and see that it was wrong. Well, it was wrong, but not wrong enough. Still, the bubble had burst for her if for no one else. She turned to go home.

On the walk home, Rachel's mind wandered. She wondered about how quickly she had accepted this strange new talent. It seemed so natural, so normal—like playing make-believe, only she could make everyone else believe too. It was hard to imagine teaching on Monday, facing a roomful of kids who were mostly preoccupied with each other or the nice weather outside or both. The few kids really paying attention would include at least one of the wise-ass mouthy ones, always ready with a quick and (to a 14-year-old) hilarious comment. Secretly, Rachel liked the smart-mouthed kids, the clever troublemakers: they were creative and interesting people. Of course, they were also frustrating, and if she didn't keep on top of them no science would ever happen in her classroom.

She realized that if she wanted to, she could prevent the wise-ass kids from interrupting ever again. For that matter, she could have the best-behaved, most attentive classroom imaginable. She could make the kids enjoy science class just by thinking at them hard enough. It was a tempting thought, and she set it aside with a half-suppressed sigh. She was pretty sure that being a wise-ass and hating science class were both important developmental experiences. Still, she could at least make sure the really troubled kids, the ones who were hiding dangerous and frightening secrets, felt a strong urge to talk to a responsible and trustworthy adult about whatever they were hiding. That would help.

And she was fairly sure that enchanting your boss into failing to notice if you were a little bit late or occasionally missed an all-staff meeting was an ethical gray area in the same realm as lying to your parents when you were a teenager. Not right, exactly, but more or less a survival strategy.

Rachel felt buoyed up by her new knowledge, which was strange, because it seemed to come with a heavy dose of responsibility. She stepped carefully between the sidewalk-cracks again while wondering if maybe the influence from earlier had left some sort of residue. A few minutes exploring what her thoughts felt like—she realized she was going to need a new vocabulary for all this, even just to talk to herself about it—convinced her that she wasn't under anyone's influence but her own. No, it was really just that she'd always wished she was one of the gifted people, not just moderately smart and reasonably good with kids, but somehow special. The kind of person people called a “genius” and meant it. Now, well... she had no way of knowing how many people could do what she could, but she had a feeling, a very unscientific sort of hunch, that she was finally unusual.

The house looked unremarkable in the thin spring sunlight. A breeze stirred the buds on the forsythia growing beside the front porch, and a little bird, probably a chickadee or sparrow, flew swiftly across her field of vision and away around the house. Everything looked completely normal, welcoming and familiar—but somehow fresh and new. She noticed details she hadn't seen, really seen, in years: a chip of paint missing from the trim around the door; the way the six smooth pieces of slate she'd laid down for stepping stones had been partially devoured by clover; the rattling, scraping noise the forsythia branches made rubbing against the house's siding whenever a breeze touched them. Nothing had changed, but it all seemed much more important than before, somehow.

Rachel walked in the door with half a smile on her face, and tiptoed to the office doorway to see if it was a good time to interrupt David's work. She realized partway there that she didn't have to tiptoe any more, or ever again—she could just think you can't hear me walking and it would be true. She didn't, though, preferring to just walk quietly up behind her husband where he sat with his back to the door. He was bent over a pile of paper, looking at one page after another, now and then making a notation on a notepad. The television was on one of the 24-hour news networks; even though she hadn't been home, the volume was down very low. She watched him work for half a minute or so and then finally spoke.

“Sweetie?” she said. “I'm home.”

“Oh!” He turned, seemingly startled. “I lost track of the time. How was your walk?”

“It's gorgeous out,” she said. “It was strange, though—I saw people in the park that were...” she trailed off. There was so much to describe that she hardly knew where to begin.

“I know,” he said, and pointed at the TV. “It's been going on for a few days now, but you never watch the news and you seemed so distracted that I didn't want to bring it up.”

Surprised, she watched the news anchor, a solemn-looking young man. David obligingly turned up the volume so she could hear him better: “...and with us to discuss the official response to this phenomenon is Dr. Dorothy Haynes. Dr. Haynes, thank you for being with us today.”

Rachel missed the first part of the interview because her attention was caught by the words crawling by at the bottom of the screen: hotel workers strike over mysteriously missing pay; FDA raises questions about food safety when apple becomes pear; Southern Baptist Convention declares end times are upon us. There was more, but she turned to her husband. “Wait, you knew? What is it? What's happening?”

“I don't know, really,” he said. “No one does.” He coughed. “It's been only a few days, but all kinds of people are discovering they can do things that can't be explained. There's a lot of research but so far all that's happened is the President has chosen not to declare a national emergency and we've all been told to go about our lives as usual.” He smiled wryly. “That's sort of something I was hoping to talk to you about.”

“Oh? Um, me too.” Rachel shook her head in amazement. “I mean, you were?”

He nodded and looked away from her, studied a patch on the wall that looked like all the other patches of wall. “You know how the computer keeps crashing?”

She nodded and waited.

“I didn't mean to lie to you.... I was lying to myself too, really. It only happens when I'm concentrating hard, though. Every time I try to use anything complicated, if I get really interested in it, it stops working.” He sighed ruefully. “So every piece of electronic equipment only works if I'm not really paying attention to it. Like the TV.”

Rachel actually smiled then. “I thought you just turned it down to be considerate.”

“I did! Honest!”

“I know, silly. That was ages ago.” She frowned for a moment. “So you're sort of a walking jinx on complicated machinery? I guess that makes sense.”

He nodded. “Yeah, but it's going to be a pain, you know? It's already caused problems at work and I don't know if they're going to be able to keep me on if I can't use the computers. Law isn't all about paper anymore.”

“Good point,” she said.

David smiled. “Damn, I feel better now that it's out in the open and you know.”

Rachel almost laughed. He was so predictable, always the good guy, the clear communicator, the reasonable partner. She cleared her throat and waited for him to look at her expectantly. “I wanted to tell you something too. You know the other night, when you thought I wasn't there and I said I was? I understand it now, and I can show you...” she stopped talking when she noticed that he looked, not interested or excited, but puzzled.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “You've been home every night. Haven't you?”

“Yes,” she said. “But you didn't see me one night.”

He didn't say anything.

She smacked herself in the forehead. “Oh, right, I made you think you did, later, when we argued about it.” Horror dawned. “Shit. Shit shit shit. Honey, I swear I didn't mean to.”

His eyes were wide. “You... did what? I haven't heard of anything like that. What are you talking about?” For the first time, he looked afraid.

She just said “watch,” and made herself invisible—you can't see me. He reached toward her, his eyes even wider, and she took his hand. “This is what I can do,” she said from the empty air. “At least, this is the part of it I've practiced.”

He held tightly to her hand and then closed his eyes. “Could you... do you mind?”

“Oh.” She let go of the thought, so that he could see her again. “I'm back.”

“Thanks.” He paused for a long moment, studying her face, as though trying to capture it in case it was going to vanish again. “But what did you mean, you made me think I saw you when I didn't? You were in bed with me every night this week—every night this month! I would have noticed if you weren't there. I would have remembered!”

“I didn't mean to do it, but you were so sure I had left and you were angry, but trying not to show it, and I just... I just said the truth. And you... believed it.” She was afraid too, afraid and sickened.

“Oh God,” he said. “I think... I think I might be sick.” He let go of her hand and pulled away; she reached toward him but he shrugged off her hands. “No! Leave me alone.”

Rachel watched him walk out of the room. She tried not to think too hard about wanting him to come back, wanting him to listen to her, understand and forgive. All afternoon, she tried not to want anything at all, afraid her desire would slip into his mind, a tickle he couldn't feel, a compulsion he couldn't resist. They sat in separate rooms, he with his work and she with hers, trying to pretend that life was going to go on as usual, giving each other time and space to think.

Rachel couldn't grade papers, but she felt like she should make a token effort to do her work, so she mechanically sketched out lesson plans for the week, and then, again acting on an unscientific hunch, wrote sub plans. Just in case, she told herself. Things were strange, after all—who could say what might happen next?

When she ran out of work to distract herself with, Rachel went out to the backyard and sat on the barely-greening lawn. She didn't want to think about David, how he must be feeling, what she hoped he was thinking... she was, on some level, terrified that if she thought about him too much she would change him again. She forced the thought down, focused on the clover sprouting instead of grass. With idle attention, she combed through the plants, looking for a four-leafed clover just as she had hundreds of times as a child; it was a habit that had stayed with her, and she found the type of attention necessary—exacting, noticing details, but unfocused and unhurried—to be very soothing, almost meditative. No four-leafed clovers appeared, but Rachel hadn't expected any. She let her mind wander while green leaves slipped between her fingers.

Her earlier intuition had to be correct: her sort of ability couldn't be common, or everything would have been far more disrupted. Sure, the news was full of odd happenings, but there were still news organizations; grocery stores might be plagued with shapeshifting produce, but there were still grocery stories. Rachel had no desire to undermine society or otherwise wreak havoc, but she knew that even one person with her talent and a destructive bent could do a lot of damage. She didn't know what kind of limits there were to her power—it seemed so easy to use, no matter how many people she was affecting, just a flick of intention, a thought given a little extra weight. She thought of the man doing small repairs for a dollar. He had held each item, turning it in his hands for a minute or two. He'd smiled and closed his eyes, and then handed the item back, whole. That seemed like a useful talent, not one that could bring about the downfall of society. The others appeared to be similarly benign. And a lot of people didn't seem to have any strange new talent at all. Her mind struggled to put numbers around “a lot,” but she had to accept that she simply didn't have enough data. Maybe later, David would...

Rachel cut off the thought. Later, she and David would talk, and figure out what had to happen next. She abandoned that line of thought, and instead allowed herself to daydream about what it might be like, living in a society where some people could do what she really did not want to think of as magic. What other talents would appear? How would she frame scientific experiments into the nature of these abilities? Would it be possible to ascertain their source? Maybe they'd always been there, only latent, hidden somewhere in the genetic makeup of humanity, waiting for a trigger. Maybe the world had changed dramatically for some reason she couldn't begin to imagine. Maybe everything they thought they had understood by measuring the universe in greater and greater detail was flawed, because it didn't take the power of wishing into account.

Things would have to change somehow, no matter how much people tried to pretend that life was going on as usual. Human beings had an amazing ability to accept change and simply redefine “normal” to fit. They'd probably be all right in the long run—and maybe even in the short term. A few people making pretty pictures in the air were hardly a threat to society as a whole. People like her, though—they could be. Rachel's mind returned again and again to that theme as though reprimanding her for trying to avoid the difficult subjects. She, by herself, had the potential to do a great deal of harm if she wanted to—or possibly even if she didn't want to.

That was the point she kept coming back to, like it or not: she didn't know how to control what she could do, not really. She'd already influenced David (there, the other thought she'd been trying to avoid) more than once without meaning to, and she still thought whoever had been making the crowd happy earlier hadn't meant to do it. Thinking of herself up in front of a roomful of unruly fourteen-year-olds, Rachel shuddered. It wasn't safe; she knew herself to be an ethical person, but even if she didn't intend to change anything she might do it. The first time she thought I wish that kid would sit down and shut up, a thought she had at least ten times a day, the kid might well suddenly sit and get noticeably quieter.

And David... David hadn't deserved any of this. Yes, he was an annoying boy scout of a husband; he was too perfect, so it was impossible to be angry with him without guilt. But his mind was, should be, his own. Of course he was staying away from her for now; she would too. When he came to talk to her, she told herself, she would be quiet, would sit and listen until he was done. She would be accepting, apologetic, and would try very hard not to want anything else. She would reassure him if she could... but how could she? What assurance did she have to offer that she wouldn't do it again?

When David finally came to her, Rachel was in the back garden, pulling up dandelions before they could get really firmly rooted. She felt him walking toward her the way she'd always known he was near her, but the sense of his presence was more defined now. She held her breath while she waited for him to speak.

“Rachel.” She thought he sounded calm, or perhaps determined; there was resolve in the way he said her name.

She didn't turn, but let out the breath she'd been holding in a long sigh, and pulled up another dandelion. “Yes?”

He moved closer, sat on a pile of firewood. “We should talk about all this.”

She nodded and turned her body toward him slightly, but kept looking at the long green leaves and dirt-covered taproot in her hand. “Yes. I think we should.”

“I don't know what to say,” he said. “I've been thinking about it for hours and I still don't know.”

She transferred her gaze to his foot. Bare. He always went barefoot as soon as the snow was gone. “Neither do I. But... David... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I never meant...” she trailed off helplessly.

“I know.” He was reassuring her. “I know you would never do... that... on purpose. I'm not even angry anymore.”

His toenails were long and starting to curl, with dirt under them. They needed cutting badly. She cast about for something to say, anything. “So if you're not angry, what does that mean?”

“It means I want to be fine with this, to say everything will work out, that I love you and we'll find a way.”

Rachel's breath caught in her throat and a tear came to her eye. She wanted it to be true and she didn't. She could hear that there was more, so she waited.

“But I'm not fine,” he said, “I'm not anything like fine. Every time I think about it I feel like throwing up.” He paused long enough to take a couple of careful breaths. “I'm afraid, Rachel. Really, really afraid.”

“Of me.” Rachel knew her voice was flat from swallowing tears.

David flinched. “I didn't want to say it like that.”

“It's true, though. You're afraid of me, because I could make you think whatever I wanted you to, and you'd never know your thoughts weren't your own.” Rachel's words fell into the air and landed, heavy, sitting between them like a wall. David's toes had curled down into the dirt; the tendons of his lower legs stood out. She thought he was bracing to run and her stomach turned over in horror that this man, this good, sweet, kind, often infuriating man, could be so frightened of her.

“I don't want to give up on us,” he was somehow saying, and she could tell he meant it, that he was impossibly good and sincere about this too. “I think I can figure this out, I've always trusted you and you'd never hurt me, not on purpose, I know that...”

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. Rachel finally looked up and met his eyes. They looked the same as always, surprisingly normal. She wondered what he saw, looking at her—his wife? The monster who could rewrite his memories at will? Both?

“I love you, David,” she said. “I love you and I wish to hell it was enough.”

He looked scared, but it was a normal scared, the look of someone hoping he hasn't just heard something with distressing connotations. “It is enough. It has to be.”

She sighed and held his eyes. “It isn't, though. I don't know how to know, for sure, that I'm not... influencing you.” Please understand. “I want--”

He interrupted. “I understand.”

Oh shit. “No, wait, I think I just made you say that, made you think that, by wishing you would.

His eyes widened a minute, then narrowed again. “I don't feel different.”

“You wouldn't. That's the horror of it. I don't think you'd ever know.”

This time he was the one who looked down. “I can't live like that, never knowing.”

She nodded, touched his hand gently with hers. “I know.” She paused until he met her eyes again. “That's why I'm leaving.”

“No.” His protest was half-hearted. “No, there's another way to do this, you don't have to leave...”

“Listen, David, please.” She waited for him to stop protesting. “It's not just you. I'm afraid of what I'll do to the kids at school. I'm afraid of what might happen if I get angry at someone for cutting me off in traffic, even. I don't think I could deal with it if I killed someone. And I don't think I could live not knowing, always second-guessing myself.” He was really listening now. “I need to get away from people, somewhere I can't do any harm.”

He nodded with an outward show of reluctance, but she saw relief in his eyes, and heard guilt in his voice. “Where will you go?”

“I don't know. Camping. I'll take the tent and gear.”

“I'll... I don't know, Rachel. This is so sudden.” Any relief was gone. He looked like a lost little boy, bereft and alone. “I don't want you to go.”

“I know,” she said. “I don't want to. God, I don't want to leave you.”

His hands came toward her and she rose on her knees as he leaned down. He was as solid and warm as always, his arms as strong around her. She forgot everything but this man, this wonderful man she loved to distraction and had to walk away from when they needed each other most. She cried then, choking on her own tears, with her face buried in the side of his neck. He was trembling. He pressed his cheek against the top of her head and she felt his tears slide through her hair.

It seemed like forever that they held each other and wept, but eventually it ended. Rachel wiped her nose on her sleeve and stood up. “I'll just... I'll just go,” she said.

His eyes looked empty. “Will you call? Is that safe?”

She nodded. “I think so. I'll call you, later. We can talk about the rest of it then.” She felt his eyes on her while she walked away from him. An hour of later, when she was packed and ready to go, he was still sitting by the garden with a wilted dandelion in his hand.

She didn't say goodbye.