Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [101]
What remained of the morning light faded into gloom as the clouds arrived overhead. Lights snapped on down below on the streets, and windows began to glow with lamps and overhead lights. A slow roll of thunder, much closer, and a light rain began to fall in the city. She took off her boots and socks, and tossed them back to the small shed that housed the emergency stairs, trusting that they would fall under the overhang and not be ruined by dampness. She thought about putting the jacket there too, but kept it on despite the sweat prickling under her arms and down the line of her spine. It was comfortable. Comfort was important, too.
Now. Center yourself. Feel the ground under your feet. She could hear her mentor’s voice in her ear, although the memory was over a decade old. And although there was tar and concrete underfoot, and more concrete beneath that, she could feel her connection to the earth intact, taking her down past the bedrock which made up the island of Manhattan, spreading runners and setting roots in the solid strength of the living dirt, anchoring herself in the memory of atom to atom, mud to mud. Center. Ground. Anchor. All words meaning the same thing: remember yourself.
When the first flash of lightning cut through the sky, Wren was ready for it. Deep in a receptive state, she reached up to touch it. But it was too faint, too quickly faded for anything other than a pleasurable sizzle. The rain increased, quickly soaking Wren through to the bone. Her jeans and jacket were a sodden weight, but she didn’t feel it. Her toes curled, as though digging themselves into rich, muddy loam. Her head tilted back, her hair slicked to her skull, rain washing her face as she laughed up into the storm. Another roll of thunder, then a crack of lightning. The storm was closer, sailing into Manhattan like a queen ascending her throne. Elementals buzzed in the wires, singing their happiness as static. Wren could feel it building inside her, a tension from stretching too far, anticipating too much. Back off a little. Wait.
Center. Pause. Check grounding. Wait for the thunder. Focus. Reach.
It was like sticking your tongue into an electrical socket, the adrenaline of a roller coaster’s free fall, the instant of solitary orgasm. The reason wizzarts chased the essential moment, the philosopher’s stone of transmutation, crude flesh into something transcendendant. Raw power filled her, surged through her body. The temptation was there to ride it, just let it take her where it would.
No. Control. Focus. Bring it in. And slowly, slowly, painfully-pleasant, Wren forced the current to go where she directed it. They quarreled, and she held firm. It resisted, a tangible, almost-alive force, then submitted to the power of her will, and the protocol-raised walls.
The rain slowed to a faint pattering. The clouds still hung directly overhead, but the sun was beginning to glint again across the Hudson River, and the darkness was cut through by slightly less threatening-looking clouds moving in. Wren drew in a deep breath, feeling the answering surge of magic settling into her body and pooling into the reservoir she had made for it. Satisfied and satiated, she raised her arms high overhead in a full body stretch. And, as though in sympathy, a narrow rainbow appeared, arching from dark cloud to lighter one, almost directly overhead.
“How do you do that?” Sergei asked, part in awe, part in irritation.
Wren shrugged, not surprised, having sensed him somewhere in the back of her brain, when he came out to join her. “Magic.”
She wasn’t kidding. Mostly.
He made a sound that might have been a snort, and she felt him coax the wet jacket off her shoulders, tossing it aside with a sodden thunk. Then his arms wrapped around her, fitting