Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [173]
A disembodied voice spoke next, one he did not recognize. There was no face attached to this voice, no presence to identify its source. The voice sounded very old. It told him the story of the boy and his children, the one Owl had told the Ghosts piecemeal. Only this version, while essentially the same, was different, too. It was more complicated and larger in scope. He was still the boy and the Ghosts were still his children, but there were others, too.
Together, they traveled a long way to find a place where the walls were built of light and the colors were no longer muted but bright and pure. In this place, there was a sense of peace, a promise of safety and a reassurance that the bad things in the world couldn’t reach them. He heard his name spoken over and over.
Hawk. Hawk. He didn’t know what it meant, and he couldn’t see who was doing the speaking. But the sound of it made him feel wanted.
Further images appeared. He saw monsters and dark things rising up to confront him. He saw himself running from them and saw them giving chase. The Ghosts ran with him, and with them a scattering of others. The pursuit went on, a long and arduous race against a death that rode on the back of a fiery wind that followed in the wake of his pursuers.
There were other visions, as well—other voices—coming together out of the awakening that the finger bones had generated, out of the resurfacing of his memories and the foretelling of his future. Some of them stayed with him; some of them were lost. He understood that this was necessary, that it was all part of restoring his identity. Revelations came in the form of small touchings, in the form of fingerprints of his life’s passing. But where the past was fixed, the future was fluid and could not yet be fully defined. He understood why this was so and was not troubled by it.
When it was done, his mother was there again, bending close to kiss him on the cheek, to reassure him anew, to let him feel her presence, which she would not deprive him of again.
Trust in me, she whispered to him as she faded.
Mother, he called after her.
Yes, the nature of his awakening was perfectly clear to him afterward—the visions and voices, the story of his birth and parentage, and the arduous nature of the journey that lay ahead. He even understood for the first time what it was that had happened between Cheney and himself when the dying animal’s wounds had mysteriously healed in his presence. As the gypsy morph, as a creature of magical origins, he apparently possessed some innate ability to heal. Although why that ability had never manifested itself before still confused him.
But what wasn’t made clear to him, what he didn’t understand, was what he was expected of him. He was trapped in this cell with only a few hours of life left. Logan Tom had told him on leaving that he would be back for him, that he would not let him die. But Hawk wasn’t sure about this. Logan Tom did not seem strong enough to break down walls and gates of concrete and steel. He did not seem powerful enough to take on the entire population of the compound. He was one man, and however well intentioned or determined he might be, however formidable his skills, it did not seem possible that he could do what was needed.
Yet Hawk’s future was there in the visions, and it did not end with his death at the bottom of the compound walls. For that future to happen, he would have to break free of his prison.
Was he meant to do this on his own?
He tried to make sense of it, to determine if there was something that he could do, but he couldn’t think of anything. If