| Buses
are a strange thing, you crowd onto them with dozens of people from
your neighborhood to travel to the same place with spirits of all kinds
who don’t wish to travel in the open. And although everyone pretends to
have no connection as they avoid sitting next to each other most of the
time. All the while the bus and its passangers create their own spirit,
a sort of diety of safe passage that vanishes when they get off and
loose their connection to each other. Thus I feel the little temporary
Deity fading as I file off the bus with a number of other passengers.
All
groups of people create a spirit between them, especially when they
have a similar goal, most people cannot feel it, however, but Fern
could so when the door closed she suddenly felt dizzy as her mind
joined the temporary spirit which all the people on the bus shared. She
nearly fell down beside the boy who put his hand on her arm to
stabilize her, causing the Rusalka to giggle with delight, a giggle
which escaped through Fern’s lips.
“Are you okay?” the boy repeated with concern.
“Just a little tired,” Fern lied as she glanced down at the fairy in her hand to make certain it was still incapacitated.
“So how are you doing?” Jacob asked again a little more anxiously than before.
Fern
knew that he was really wondering why she had disappeared before the
summer was over and hadn’t come back to school. She was certain there
had been a lot of rumors and she was curious about what they were, but
she didn’t know how to ask or how to answer any questions he might have
so she suddenly felt very awkward. She glanced down at her hand again
to make certain that he spirite in it wasn’t moving yet and bit her lip.
“I imagine people have been guessing where I went,” Fern said at last, hoping that one of the guesses would be good.
“Yeah well, most of them seem to think you have brain cancer,” Jacob told her carefully.
Fern
shook her head, she could understand of course why they’d think that,
being possessed for the first time had involved throbbing headaches
along with the sudden madness. It was a good excuse but it would worry
her friends too much. I sort of got into an exchange program, Fern told
him as she realized that she should have stayed in better contact with
her friends. She’d texted them constantly through the summer and then
after she’d first been possessed she’d stopped all together, and now
the house she stayed in had spells to keep the cell phone signals out
because evil spirits could change into the same waves cell phones used
in order to sneak into peoples electronics or into places that might
otherwise be secured against them.
“It’s been really busy, and they don’t let us have our phones very often,” Fern told him to explain the lack of texts.
“Is it some sort of military school?” Jacob asked with surprise.
Fern
laughed, sometimes the training seemed like it. “No she assured him,
its just really strict, but its fun and I’m learning some cool things.
You know how into science I was.”
“You had an interest,” Jacob smiled, “but I didn’t think it was that much of one. You're having fun though?”
“Yeah,”
Fern nodded as she glanced out the window to see where they were. “I’m
only in town for a little while so I’m going to meet my sister at the
zoo.”
“This
is my stop,” Jacob told Fern as the bussed stopped just a little before
the zoo. “Next time you come into town let us know so we can all get
together.”
“Okay,” Fern agreed uncertainly as he got up and squeezed past her.
She watched him go for a moment before glancing down at the fairy which was in her hand.
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