Witch Clan: Warriors! by John Stormm (good book club books txt) 📕

said it was to test me as a Sidhe,” he said. “He warned me that if I was truly human, I couldn’t pass these tests. They would decide on just how fae I really am. I’m okay now. Just a little grossed out, I guess. I don’t think I did anything wrong. It was a bad thing that happened, but I did my best.”

“When you have these tests of his,” she said tenderly, “you be sure to talk to your grandma about it afterwards. I’ll do what I can to help you sort things out. Okay?”

“Tiggum,” he replied, hugging her.

"So, what was your impression of what happened?" she asked.

"Something cruel and awful happened there," he explained, "Somebody hated this man more than just wanting to kill him. They wanted to hurt him so bad that it would go beyond just dying and taking what ever he left. They had even took his head and hid it in some bushes down the street. It seemed that the man didn't want to be taken away without it."

"Why, do you suppose this?" she asked.

"Because the wind begged me not to let this happen to him." He continued, "The only thing I could see that I might do to put some small part to rights was to find his head and put it near his body. When I did this, the wind said 'Thank you,' and I was done there."

"Let's go over this," she said. "First, you see a crime was committed. Did you see who killed him?"

"No, it was already done and the cars were all driving away," he replied.

"Next, you heard spirits on the wind, and responded to some kind of need," she surmised. "Did you think that maybe he had deserved what had happened to him?"

"I didn't think about it," he said. "I never met this person before. I couldn't say what he was like. I was simply there and I thought I could help just a little bit and make things not as bad."

"So you used some kind of sense to find his head and return the gory thing back to his body," she concluded. "Was this something you understood?"

"No," he said. "It just seemed like the natural thing to do at the time. I'm not sure I wouldn't have felt worse if I had just walked away and turned my back on it all. It happened. It wasn't my doing. What I could do to make it a little better, I did. It makes me a little sick, but I feel better for it. Doesn't that sound crazy to you?"

"It sounds like my boy is somebody's hero whether he feels like one or not," she said, brushing his hair back and looking into his eyes. "Do you think you can make school today?"

"I think with a little breakfast, I'll feel better," he said. "Thanks, Grandma."

"You just remember to talk to me," she said. "I think I might just learn a few things too. Other people might find you strange, but I think none of them will ever know you as well as I do. I want us to stay that way."

"I love you, Grandma," he said, squeezing her hard.

"I love you too, Son," she replied with a gasp, "but you've got to let me breathe. You're getting quite a grip as you're growing up. Maybe, Little John knows something to help you gauge that strength of yours."

"I'll ask," he said, smiling.
Flight Night

"We're losing the baby," a woman's voice snapped and the majority of the team of masked medical professionals left the woman on the delivery table to help.

Most of them passed right through Johnny who had found himself in the delivery room of some hospital barefoot and wearing only his pajamas. He never had a clue where Master Shabriri would leave him next. He was a little shocked that people could walk through him and not even see him. It all seemed so real. He could see, hear, feel and smell everything going on around him from the musky, cloying scent of amniotic fluid, right down to the sensations of warm, slippery blood and fluids on the cool tile floor beneath his bare feet. This was obviously where a woman was giving birth, but something was wrong. The woman who was laying on the monstrous bed with the stirrups was also standing and weeping in the corner where the team were frantically trying to get the baby to breathe again.

"My baby," she sobbed. "Please save my baby. Don't let this be for nothing. She must live or my husband will be so shattered. Little boy, can you help her?"

She could see him. She was looking right at him and he hadn't any idea of how he might help those who were so much better trained than himself. Why would she even think to ask? He looked around, hoping that some idea might present itself. The infant was already turning blue on the table with the doctors working in an organized panic.

A silvery cord rose up from the table towards the ceiling. Following it with his eyes, in the far corner of the room it ended in an irregularly shaped pink balloon that was trying to lift through the ceiling. Immediately he ran over to the table, ignoring all the people who could not see or feel him and grabbed the silvery cord and pulled hand over hand to retrieve the baby's spirit. It was slippery to the touch but he willed as much as he pulled and the bemused infant soon came to hand. Gently he pushed the tiny spirit back into the inert body on the table. Her little eyes never leaving his own as he tapped her chest and nose lightly. The two images of the physical and spiritual merged and the tiny eyelids began to flicker.

"I think she's coming around," a hopeful voice said.

"Get that Oh Two over here, stat," commanded another. "We may yet save at least one of them."

In that moment, Johnny began to understand as he looked towards the head of the table and the woman's figure receded slowly from view.

"Thank you," she said as she faded from sight.

A cough and then a lusty wail followed as the infant on the table made her connection with the world around her. The team cleaned, measured and weighed her as he watched to see that she wouldn't leave her body again. He looked back to her mother on the table who looked as if she were sleeping peacefully, but he knew she no longer resided in that body. This little girl would grow up without a mommy. Johnny wept and followed the infant to the nursery, hovering over her until he could see her eyes open. She blinked and squinted at the light but continued trying to look about until her gaze fell on him. For a timeless moment they looked into each others eyes and shared their all too brief lives.

"Are you going to lay there all day," Grandpa said with his gruff chuckle, "or are we all going to have breakfast together before school?"

"I'm awake," he said, pulling himself up dreamily and headed for the bathroom.

"Whoa, lad," his grandfather said in alarm. "What have you stepped in? Are you bleeding or something?"

Looking down at his feet and wiggling his bloody toes, reality slapped him in the face.

"I'm alright, Grandpa," he said thoughtfully. "I don't think this is my blood. It was another one of those strange dreams."

"Good Lord," Willard exclaimed. "Not another murder, is it?"

"No," he said smiling a moment. "This time it was a baby born with a problem."

"You know, Son," his grandfather said. "I accept that what most people think is 'normal' just doesn't happen much in this household, and I can handle that. What concerns your old grandpa is that seeing people getting their heads blown off and bloody baby birthings is quite an intense thing for a ten year old boy to be right in the middle of. If this starts to get to be a bit too much for you, I'll understand, but will you talk about it with me? I don't like the idea that you're out there alone and I can't help you."

"I think I'll need that talk," he said, sniffing, "after I get a shower. Everything smells like blood and pee."

* * *

In the wee hours of the following morning, Johnny was searching through the rubble of a burned out shell of a house for the corpse of its owner. The next night he called up a small whirlwind to bring attention to a man suffering a heart attack in an alley behind a bar. Each night there was a different scenario to deal with that was beyond his imagining and some of it real enough to make the newspapers the following days, minus any mention of his own involvement, of course. Grandma and Grandpa, and sometimes even John Little Fox listened patiently and discussed things as much as they were able. Like the doctor in the delivery room, he felt he had his own team