The Magic Rain

Chapter Eleven: "How’s It Going, Mel?"

The day finally came. On a morning about three weeks after we’d taken him in, Jo-Bri walked into our kitchen wearing one of my dad’s sloppily cinched bathrobes and casually asked: "How’s it going, Mel?" My parents and I glanced at each other and we all knew he was ready for the next stage.

"I’m fine, Jo-Bri," I said. "But I think my work is done."

He frowned. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"She means," my mother said, amazed, "that after three weeks of her special tutoring, you sound like someone who’s been living here practically all his life."

"Except for the accent," my father added.

"Don’t lose the accent," my mother said, quickly. "Whatever you do, don’t lose the accent."

"Mom’s right."

Jo-Bri shook his head. "But if I have an accent, doesn’t that mean that I’m not pronouncing the words right?"

"You’re pronouncing the words exactly right," I said and my mom and I glanced at each other and started giggling.

My father rolled his eyes, knowing exactly what was going on.

"Anyway," I said, trying to recover my dignity, at least in front of my father and Jo-Bri, "I think it’s time you went public."

Jo-Bri nodded. "Yes, but first we need to talk."

I frowned. During the three weeks since he had arrived, Jo-Bri had allowed two crazy females to shape his life, tell him what to do, how to do it and when, and now for the first time he was making a request, and there was an authority to his voice that belied his years. I thought of the images he had shown me both on that first day and in the days since. I realized that though he was "only" a teenaged boy, he had gone through more than most adults had in their entire lives, including the deaths of everyone close to him, including his parents and his lover, not to mention fighting battles with some crazed wizard named Hodon and his freakazoid wizard underlings.

My parents glanced at each other, and then waited to hear what Jo-Bri had to say.

"I came to your world –"

"America," Mom said. "If you say you came to our world outside of this house, they’ll put a straight jacket on you and drag you to the local loony bin."

"They’ll think you’re crazy," I translated.

Jo-Bri smiled. "I know what a loony bin is," he said, and then let that amazing, wonderful, intoxicating smile fade away. I needed to get out more.

"I came to America almost against my will. When the witch – "

I suppressed a chuckle. I still couldn’t get used to the idea that witches actually existed.

"When the witch sent me here without asking my permission, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had spent the past year just trying to survive, going from one day to the next, one battle to the next, one escape to the next, trying to stay alive and trying to cope with the memories that followed me no matter how fast I ran."

Damn, there go those heartstrings again. I wanted so much to hug him, to mother him, to kiss those lips – okay, so maybe that last part had nothing to do with mothering.

I cleared my throat, as if that would somehow clear my mind as well.

"But last night…"

He hesitated and I felt a stab of fear in my belly.

"I felt Hodon."

The fear flared, spreading throughout my body.

"What do you mean you felt him?" my father asked.

"Is he here?" my mother asked, the fear clear in her voice.

"Not yet," Jo-Bri answered. "But… Hodon brings fear," he said, and I got the strange feeling that it was a phrase Jo-Bri had used before. It was an ominous phrase: Hodon brings fear.

"And I sensed that fear last night. Not strongly, and if he were anywhere near it would have been a much stronger feeling. I think that he is creating a new portal."

"Portal?" I said, trying to suppress the feeling of panic inside me. I wondered what worried me most – the thought of losing Jo-Bri (would he use the portal to go back home?) or the thought of gaining Hodon.

"The witch opened a door for me, a door she threw me through, into your – " he smiled and wryly corrected himself, "into your America. I think Hodon is creating a new door, and has succeeded at least enough for some of his evil essence to leak through to this world."

"How strong is that essence that it can leak from one world into another?" my mother asked.

Jo-Bri took a deep breath. "Hodon is a fear monger."

"We have those here too," my father said. "They can be destructive, but –"

"No," Jo-Bri interrupted. "I know the term you’re using, and it’s used differently in my world." He glanced at my mother. "In my country."

My mother smiled, but it was a tight, perfunctory smile.

"No-one in my ‘country’ knows where Hodon came from. He appeared many years ago, seemingly out of nowhere. And immediately he began to spread fear. Not just… ‘Normal’ fear, but fear so deep that it paralyzed everyone who felt it, or caused them to panic and flee or even commit suicide in despair. It’s how he began to gather an army and to defeat local lords on the edge of the Empire. Then he began to conquer entire provinces, until finally he was marching on the capital with the largest army ever assembled. And his followers showed the loyalty that fear inspires, because they knew he could literally frighten them to death with a simple look. They had seen his enemies die by the hundreds and thousands, their faces fixed in expressions of abject terror."

He hesitated.

"And pain."

I frowned. "Pain?" I asked. Great, I’m the biggest sissy in the world and I fall in love with a guy whose biggest enemy inflicts pain and terror. And the guy was on his way. Here!

One look at Jo-Bri, though, and I knew that I would never let either fear or pain stop me from being by his side, and at least trying to keep him safe, even if I had to face down Hodon to do it.

Jo-Bri nodded. "We call him the Dark Wizard, but he doesn’t just weave spells, he creates fear and physical pain in his enemies and victims."

He hesitated. "My father battled Hodon," he finally resumed, and I could see the pain on his face as he spoke of his father, "and nearly defeated him, many years ago, when Hodon first overthrew the Emperor. My father said that when Hodon approaches, he creates a wave of fear and pain that moves ahead of him, blanketing the enemy. He increases the fear and pain until it seems unbearable, then he suddenly stops, and there’s a moment when you feel nothing and that, my father said, is the most terrifying moment of all because you have time to realize how bad the pain and fear was, and to realize that it’s about to start again. That’s the moment in which people go mad and give their life essence willingly rather than face the pain and fear again."

"Give their life essence?" my mother asked, visibly shivering. I reached across the table and placed a hand on hers, perhaps as much to comfort myself as to comfort her.

Jo-Bri nodded. "Hodon" takes the life essence of his victims and adds it to his own, increasing his power that way."

"Great," I said, "A spiritual vampire."

"I met a village elder several months ago," Jo-Bri went on, and I imagined Jo-Bri in that other world -- a world of wizards and witches, war and terror, "and he believed that Hodon might actually be well intentioned."

"What?" I blurted out. "He creates walls of fear and pain, slaughters entire villages, sucks out their life essences, and he’s well-intentioned?"

Jo-Bri held up a hand. I sighed in frustration but sat back, letting him continue. He looked so sexy, his huge hand held up, in charge…

"The elder told me of the two worlds and said that he believed Hodon was trying to protect our world from yours."

I glanced at my parents who were staring at Jo-Bri in concern now.

"How could we be a threat to you?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer to that question.

Jo-Bri took a deep breath. "I’ve only been here three weeks," he said, and I drank in his slight but wonderfully exotic accent and the masculine richness of his voice, "and you have been so wonderful to me that I have barely missed my own world, I’ve felt so at home here."

I smiled, as did my parents, but I think we all felt the impending "but…"

"But," Jo-Bri said and my heart sank, "I’ve watched a lot of television, as you know, as part of my learning your world, and…"

"You can’t judge us by that," my father objected, though I could hear the shame in his voice. Was he actually ashamed of being… what? Human?

"It’s not about judgment," Jo-Bri said quickly, obviously uncomfortable with the subject. "It’s about danger. The village elder said that in our world there was one Hodon, but that your world…"

We waited and when he didn’t go on, my father asked, sounding irritated, "Go on."

"He said that yours was a world of Hodons."

"That’s not fair!" I said.

Jo-Bri shook his head and I felt as if suddenly I were being vilified and judged along with the rest of humanity. Part of me was infuriated, like my father was, part of me was horrified because it was Jo-Bri, the boy I loved, who was doing the vilifying, and part of me simply felt ashamed, wanting to deny that I was part of whatever it was that Jo-Bri had seen on that damned television.

Jo-Bri smiled, trying to soften the blow. "I’ve seen in your minds that you have been shaped by your world and by things like television and movies, to accept a level of violence and evil that in our world would have caused us to want to commit suicide."

I stared, in shock. Was he being literal?

Jo-Bri turned to me. "Yes," he said, and I realized he was reading my mind, or at least it seemed like he was, "I mean that literally. The shame of doing something as evil as what occurs on nearly every television program in your world would have destroyed us. In fact…"

He hesitated again, and again I felt an even greater dread than before.

"The evil in your world is seeping through to our world, somewhat in the same way that Hodon’s fear mongering is seeping through now to yours. The witch told me that it would eventually destroy my world."

My father sat forward. "Wait a minute," he said, sounding even angrier now. "Are you saying that the only way to save your world is to destroy ours?"

"Is that what you’ve come to do?" my mother asked.

"No!" I said loudly, "Jo-Bri would never do that."

He glanced at me then, with a look of what might have been pity on his face. I remembered that he knew exactly how much I loved him.

"No," he said. "That is not why I am here."

I realized he had side stepped the real question.

"It might not be why you’re here," my father said, as if reading my mind, "but the question is, would you destroy us in order to save your home, your people, your world?"

Jo-Bri stared at him a long moment and the fear grew in me. Why was he not replying quickly and confidently to that question?

"Would you?" he finally asked my father, and we all sat back as if he had slapped us.

"No," I finally said. "I wouldn’t kill someone else to save myself."

And now I was angry because suddenly I didn’t know who this person was, this boy with whom I’d fallen so deeply in love that I realized that I had not even known what romantic love was before I met him.

"Neither would I," he said, smiling at me with a smile that actually made me dizzy.

"But Hodon would," my father said, softly.

Jo-Bri nodded.

"Could he?’ my mother asked. "Does he have the ability to?"

Jo-Bri cocked his head and thought about that a long moment. "It might seem as if magic breaks or ignores the laws of physics as you know them in your world."

I noticed that my mother was no longer correcting his use of the term "my world" or "your world." I think it was because as he stood before us, speaking to us in perfect English, we had suddenly realized just how other-worldly he really was.

"It doesn’t," Jo-Bri continued. "It merely works along physical laws you don’t yet know about. Electricity would be magic in my world, because we don’t understand the physical laws behind it. I don’t know if Hodon can use his magic to destroy your world, but it’s possible."

"Could you?" I asked. "Destroy the world?"

"Theoretically," he said, completely serious. "I’ve seen in your mind some references to what you call nuclear fission. That, to me, is magic, even though you call it science – the ability to destroy an entire city with a single weapon in the blink of an eye. We don’t know of that kind of magic in my world, but I think that if I were able to figure out the mathematics, if I understood the process of fission well enough, I might be able to use my magic to recreate your magic."

My parents and I glanced at each other.

Jo-Bri closed his eyes. "If I could picture the atom and its nucleus, reach in there to split it, stripping it of its neutrons, then smashing those neutrons into other atoms, and on and on, the fusion reaction building --"

"Stop!" I said loudly. The fear had actually made my arms numb.

Jo-Bri opened his eyes, staring at me in concern.

"I’m sorry," he said. "You asked."

"Yeah, I know. Sometimes I do stupid things like that."

"Where did you find out about nuclear fusion?" my father asked, tense.

"Melinda," he replied.

"I know about nuclear fusion?" I said.

He looked at me strangely then.

"You don’t realize how much you know, do you?" he asked.

I blushed.

"Girls aren’t supposed to know about nuclear fusion," I said. Damn, where did that come from?

He shook his head. "In my world girls know as much as men, are nearly as strong as men, hunt with us, help us build our homes…"

"Now that’s what I’m talking about," my mother said.

"Manual labor?" I said, horrified. "Hunting?"

"Oh, Mel," my mother said, obviously disappointed by her overly fem daughter.

"Could Hodon learn about nuclear fission?" my father asked, not willing to be distracted by my foolish comments. But seriously – hunting?

I tried to focus.

"I don’t know," Jo-Bri replied. "But it’s not just nuclear fusion that we have to worry about. You see, in a way our magic is no more powerful than one of your large machines. One of those cranes I saw on television could lift far more than even a great magician could with even the most powerful spell. A car moves as quickly as any magician could. A bullet travels as fast as a spell. You already have so much magic of your own in this world."

"But?" I said, growing used to predicting the direction of his thoughts.

"But," he said, nodding, "magic has one advantage over your technological magic. It can act without having to be connected to or even within sight of a target and doesn’t require the need of any machine, material, or weapon. A crane can lift more than I can with my magic, but I can lift things without touching them, with nothing but my thoughts."

"And you can make them disappear," my mother said dryly.

"So you can already affect the nucleus of an atom," my father said. "You can make it disappear."

Jo-Bri nodded. "I have only Melinda’s knowledge to draw on here, but if I could reach down through the earth to the core…"

"And start a nuclear chain reaction there," my father said, nodding. "Is that really possible?"

Jo-Bri shrugged. "I don’t know. But again, it’s not just nuclear fusion we need to worry about. If I can reach things at a distance, I can set dangerous chemicals free from their containers. I might be able to cause existing nuclear weapons to explode. Influence world leaders to launch those same nuclear weapons…"

I shook my head. "But won’t that affect your world too?" I asked. "I mean, if our ‘evil’ is seeping through to your world, won’t tens of thousands of nuclear weapons going off have some effect?"

Jo-Bri tilted his head. "It might. I guess the question is, can I destroy this world without destroying my own? The risk involved might seem too great."

"Unless you know your world will be destroyed by ours anyway," my mother said.

Jo-Bri nodded again. "Our magic has reach," he said, "but your technology has power. We can move a boulder with our thoughts, but you can destroy a city with your bombs. We can manipulate matter on the visible level. You can manipulate matter at the level of atoms and neutrons and nuclear binding energies. And that’s because you know about atomic theory. We don’t."

I shook my head. Did I really know about nuclear binding energies? Then why did I do so poorly on all my science tests?

Focus, Mel, I yelled silently at myself.

"And if Hodon learns about atomic theory he might be able to use his magic at a distance –"

Jo-Bri nodded again. "If he combines our reach with your knowledge, our magic with yours…"

"Does he have to destroy the entire world?" I asked, and he smiled tightly at me. Was he actually impressed by me, I wondered, because that was the impression he gave me with that smile. Or was he just being patronizing?

"No," Jo-Bri replied. "Your world has been around for thousands of years but it’s only now that you threaten my world. That’s probably because your population has grown so large that even if the percentage of evil people stays the same, the absolute amount of evil has increased. If we – if Hodon can destroy a large enough portion of the population, it would probably be enough to save our world, at least for now."

I stared. We all did, and even Jo-Bri seemed stunned by it all. I realized that he had not seen the full picture until just now; had not known the full extent of the threat.

How did it go from losing my Datsun to losing the human race?

I glanced up at Jo-Bri and suddenly his stunning good looks weren’t quite as important.

"So what do we do?" I asked.

Jo-Bri frowned. "I’m not sure. I know that I have to be ready for Hodon, ready to stop him from destroying your world."

"But that’s only half of it, isn’t it?" my mother asked. I suddenly felt so proud of her strength and intelligence.

"Yes," Jo-Bri said.

"And the other half," my father said, "is that you need to find a way to stop our world from destroying yours."

"No," I interrupted, and they all looked at me. "We need to find a way to save both worlds."

They frowned at how excited, upset, and determined I seemed to be.

"Don’t you see?" I asked. They stared. Obviously they didn’t. I rolled my eyes. Then Jo-Bri smiled and our eyes met. It sent a jolt of electricity through me.

"We are tied together," he said, and I wondered for a moment if he were speaking of me and him or of our worlds.

"Our worlds are joined," he said, quickly dispelling that little fantasy of mine.

"That’s why Hodon’s evil can seep through to us and our evil can seep through to Jo-Bri’s world," I added. "Saving only one world means destroying both of them.”

Jo-Bri nodded, smiling again. "Mel is right," he said. I felt as if I were literally glowing in the light of his approval.

"We live together or we die together," my father said grimly, and I realized I’d never noticed what a buzzkill my father was. Or maybe I had.

* * *

I lay in my bed that night, staring up into the darkness, and thinking of Jo-Bri lying in the guest bedroom down the hall.

In the three weeks since Jo-Bri had dropped into my life, a lot had happened. Jo-Bri gone from a non-English-speaking stranger to almost a member of our family with the vocabulary of an intellectual. He had brought us the news that a super-powerful wizard was probably on his way to destroy our planet or at least a significant part of the human race. And I had I fallen completely, madly in love with this stunningly handsome, charming, brilliant boy, who could never be mine because he liked me too way much to risk a relationship.

I shook my head. Yes, many things had happened, the kind of things that just didn’t happen in real life. Maybe in "Harry Potter" or "Twilight," but this was the real world, the real United States of America, and the real Dillon, Montana. Things like this definitely did not happen in Dillon, Montana.