The Mantis Synchronicity - Book Five - 36. Chapter 36 - The Spell

An urgent banging came from the front door of the house where the mystic lived with his husband and daughter. He peeked through the peephole and saw a neighbor whom he recognized but did not know by name. He opened the door.

“Hello, friend,” the mystic began.

“Is your daughter alright?”

The mystic did not know what that meant. He looked back at Lahari, who was sitting at the dinner table with Theolan. “She’s fine. Why do you ask?”

“Three Shift women who live upstairs from me all just passed out at the front of our building. I thought of you because I know you are a healer and your daughter is a Bio-Shift. Then on my way to come get you, I saw two other people unconscious in the street. One of them was definitely a Bio-Shift, and I think the other was also a Shift. Something’s happened.”

The mystic turned to his family again. “I’m needed. I’ll be back for supper as soon as I can.”

“Here!” Theolan called out, jumping from the table with two biscuits. “These’ll tide you over. Sorry the rest of it isn’t ready yet.”

The men kissed, and the mystic added to his daughter, “Love you, Lahari!” Out in the street, he said to his neighbor, “Lead the way. Friends call me mystic. What’s your name?”

“I’m Torgin. I’m so glad your daughter wasn’t affected by…”

The pair of them came upon the unconscious body of a man lying on the pavement, and the mystic knelt to examine him. “Hmmm, he’s not dead. He’s breathing. I think he fainted. Let’s help him before going back to your building.”

“What in the world is going on here?” Torgin asked the city at large.

A woman came running up the street, and she paused as she approached the mystic, Torgin, and the unconscious man. “It’s the same back there,” she stated, pointing in the direction she came from. “Something’s happened to the Shifts. My wife’s one, and I need to go check on her at home.” The woman ran off and around a corner.

“What happened?” the mystic said to himself.

“And why wasn’t your daughter affected?” Torgin asked.

The mystic stood and scrunched up his face in thought. “We didn’t even know anything had happened until you showed up at our door. I don’t know why Lahari was unaffected.” He looked down at the unconscious man. “What should we do with him?”

“Oni!” a voice cried out from above them.

The mystic and his neighbor looked up in time to see a woman’s head disappearing into a window. A moment later, she appeared on the street and fell beside the unconscious man. “Oni! Oh no…” She looked up at the mystic and Torgin. “He’s my brother in law. Please help me get him inside.”

After carrying the man into the building, the mystic and his neighbor headed back to where Torgin had left the trio of Shift women. By the time the two of them arrived, several of their other neighbors had already gotten the three unconscious women back to their apartment.

The mystic did not know how else he could help, and he was growing more concerned about his own daughter; he wanted to get home to check on Lahari. On his way, he came upon two other fallen Shifts, and he helped them both. When he finally made it to the street that led toward his house, over an hour and a half had passed, and the mystic was very hungry, but Lahari was on his mind. He looked up and was surprised by who was heading toward him from the other direction.

“Thech, Jzuna!” he called out to them as they approached. He was surprised to see that the two were not affected by whatever had happened.

The lumbering boy let out a grunt, and his hovering sister with ribbons tied on her slimy tentacles waved several of them at the mystic.

“Hi, mystic, Peggy and Dot sent Thech and me to come get you!” Jzuna’s voice sounded upset. “A bunch of the other kids at the center won’t wake up.”

The mystic stepped right up to the pair, and he took Thech’s gooey hand in his own. “Are you two alright? How come both of you aren’t asleep too? Do you want to come inside?” He added, “Lahari also wasn’t affected either by whatever caused all this. I’ll come with you to the center, but let me check in with her and Theolan first.” He waved toward the front door.

Jzuna did her best to answer the mystic’s questions. “Yes, please, we’ll come in with you if that’s okay, and we don’t know why we didn’t fall asleep like the other Shift kids.”

Thech huffed.

“And Thech says we’re okay.”

“Glad to hear it,” the mystic replied. He led the pair into his home, but they did not find his husband or daughter. He turned to Thech and Jzuna. “Let’s go.”

They headed back out to the Shifton streets where, to the mystic’s relief, they found Lahari and Theolan. The two of them were with a group of their fellow neighbors talking about what had happened to all the other Shifts.

“Dad!” Lahari called out, and she added, “Thech and Jzuna!” She was very excited to see that the twins also had not succumbed to the mass unconsciousness.

The mystic kissed his daughter’s scaly blue cheek. “Glad you’re still okay. I need to go to the outreach center to check on the children.”

“A bunch of them won’t wake up,” Jzuna’s disembodied voice declared. She sounded on the verge of tears.

Theolan and the mystic hugged, and the little round man left with the two young Biological Shifts.

The mystic was very curious about the three who had not been affected, and he asked, “Jzuna, Thech, do you have any guesses as to why you two and my daughter didn’t fall asleep? Do you think it has something to do with waking her up from that coma a while ago?”

Jzuna’s one huge eye opened wide like she had thought of something. “You mean, when we were with her in the imagination place, and we needed to tell her mantis gland to let little Lahari go?”

The mystic did not quite know what Jzuna meant, but another question bubbled up in his mind, and he looked from Thech to Jzuna. “Do both of you have mantis glands?”

Jzuna paused and her hovering mass rotated so her one enormous eye was facing her brother, and the two of them fell still.

The mystic also stopped walking. He knew Thech and Jzuna could communicate together in a special way while in the psychic realm they referred to as the imagination place, and he waited patiently.

A moment later, Jzuna turned back to him and said, “We don’t have one. The child who was us before we became Thech and me was named Mai, and Mai was born with a mantis gland, but it went away when Mai became us.”

The mystic looked back in the direction of his daughter. “Okay, so,” he gathered his thoughts, “you two did something to Lahari’s mantis gland that may have changed it, and you both don’t have one at all, so something must have happened to the Shifts with unchanged mantis glands.” He focused on the very unusual pair. “I guess we’re lucky. Now, let’s go see if we can help the sleeping kids.”

By the time they arrived at the Shifton Youth Outreach Center, Auntie Peg and Dotty Marbles had gotten all the unconscious Shifts into their beds. They had even managed to take care of Muunith, whose entire epidermis raged with heat that was intense enough to burn even Auntie Peg’s nigh-invulnerable skin.

“Welcome back, you two,” Dotty Marbles said to Thech and Jzuna, “and thanks for getting the mystic.” She gave the little round man a peck on his cheek and left a lipstick mark. Auntie Peg was not in the lobby of the outreach center. “Any ideas about what’s happened?” Dotty Marbles asked.

“It seems like only Shifts and Bio-Shifts were affected by whatever it is,” the mystic replied. “Lahari was also unaffected.”

“Glad she’s okay!” Dotty Marbles declared. “Why didn’t whatever this is knock her out too?”

“Thech and Jzuna and I were discussing it on our way over here,” the mystic continued. “They did something when they brought Lahari out of that coma she was in.”

Auntie Peg and little Fennah came down the stairs from the second floor, where the other youths were asleep in their rooms. Muunith, Nunyani, Sumi, Harakin, and the two new arrivals, Tygo and Filiou, were all unconscious.

“Thanks for coming by, hunny,” Auntie Peg said to the mystic, wrapping him in a hug. “This is much bigger than just us here. At first, Dot and I thought this was another attack on the center, but we quickly realized whatever caused this was much further-reaching.”

Dotty Marbles took her beloved’s hand and recommended, “Someone should go to the Teshon City outskirts and see if there are any Shifts there who are awake. Maybe it’s got something to do with this neighborhood.”

“That’s a good idea,” the mystic agreed. “I helped several fallen Shifts in Shifton. Maybe it’s something regional.” He turned to Thech and Jzuna. “If Lahari is awake because of something the two of you did, do you think you could do something similar to wake up other Shifts? Can you wake up Muunith?”

Thech breathed hard, and his sister turned to him. “Thech is scared,” Jzuna’s disembodied voice informed the grownups.

“Scared?” Dotty Marbles replied. “Scared of what, hunny?” She knelt beside the boy and took his slimy hand in hers.

Jzuna explained. “We already tried earlier to wake up Nunyani, the imagination place felt all prickly to us, and we couldn’t get to her. Thech didn’t like it, and I didn’t either. Thech can feel the prickliness on all the other Shift kids upstairs. He doesn’t like it,” Jzuna repeated.

The three adults inadvertently looked at the ceiling, and the mystic began to say, “It’s almost like…” but he paused.

“What is it?” Auntie Peg asked.

The mystic furrowed his brow in thought. “I don’t know. It feels like something from my early Demifae training. It almost feels like a charm,” he mused, and he looked at the queen. “You remember, right Peggy? You’ve done a good bit of study too. Doesn’t it feel like some sort of spell? But there’s no way to perform a casting over a whole city, is there?”

Auntie Peg did not reply.

Dotty Marbles turned to the twins. “Jzuna and Thech, you two did something to Z’Matri too, here at the grand opening for the center. I wonder if he was also unaffected, but he’s so far away now.”

Auntie Peg then declared to the others. “I’m going to go see how far this stretches. Why don’t the rest of you stay here in case the kids wake up?”

“Sounds good, doll,” Dotty Marbles replied, and the two queens kissed.

Auntie Peg headed out into the city, and she began to make her way toward the old Oselian gates. In the rundown shanties, she found more unconscious people. Some of them had been tended to by others, but several Shifts just lay in the streets and the gutters. Auntie Peg walked until she was beyond the city limits, and she began along the path that led off to the fishing villages in the south. The nearest one was a day’s journey, and the sun was already beginning to set.

Auntie Peg stopped and turned back toward Teshon City. The peninsula upon which the old base stood was not large, but she knew the mystic was right. “There’s no way to cast a spell over an entire city,” she said to herself.

After leaving the Lovegood cult of Messiahs, Auntie Peg had trained in the healing arts of the Demifae, in order to ease those who suffered from the blood corruption disease. She also established her shop, which had carried only secondhand products. She was not adept with spells and charms, but she knew several basic ones, and like the mystic, Auntie Peg was also starting to be convinced that what happened to the Shifts had something to do with magic.

She turned back to the path that stretched south again. The Shifts who were able to communicate with others over far distances had been incapacitated by the spell. There was no way to quickly find out what was happening in the fishing villages, and there was already enough to deal with in Teshon City, so Auntie Peg headed back toward the outreach center. When she arrived, she informed the others that the mass unconsciousness seemed to have spread to every Shift in the greater Teshon region.

“What a tragedy!” Dotty Marbles cried. “And how are we supposed to help the children?”

Auntie Peg wrapped her arms around Dotty Marbles. “We’re going to do whatever we can, and we’ll be there for them when they wake up.”✪