The Wounded World
A Story of Mantra
By Aladdin
Originally written 2006
Revised May. 20, 2021
Revised May, 21, 2021
Revised May, 22, 2021
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ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

Edited by Christopher Leeson
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Chapter 11

In the universe, there are things that are known,
And things that are unknown,
And in between, there are doors.

William Blake
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I touched the boy’s shoulder. "Gus, it really is me."

Like a light switching on inside his skull, his eyes gave a verdant flicker. Both Evie and Lauren had described seeing something like that when Gus channeled magic.

"Why do you think that I’m dead, Gus?" I asked softly. "Did you dream it?"

"Y-You are dead," he insisted. "I shrunk Mantra and shot her -- you - - with ultra power!"

"So, Mantra was in your dream?" I was trying to sound innocent.

"You're Mantra. I hate her! She promised to change me back, but she never did!"

“Mantra is a wonderful magician," I explained, "but she can't do everything. I'm sure she never realized how difficult it is to break spells cast by fairies."

"She always liked Evie better than me!" he declared bitterly. "She saved Evie, but didn’t save me! Evie wasn't even in any bad trouble!"

All I knew about the fairy affair was what Evie had said. “Gus, Mantra didn't know what sort of trouble you and Evie were in. Mantra must have chosen to protect Evie first, because she's so little and weak. As soon as Mantra found Evie, she came to help you, didn't she?”

He twisted his glance away, his hard-looking lips tightly shut.

"I also hate you because you hit me!"

"What?"

"You slapped me for no reason!"

"Oh, that," I said with a head-shake.

This was a bum rap. The local Mantra had struck him, not me.

"Grownups sometimes get angry,” I told the boy, “just like children do. I’m sorry, but what would you have done if some bully at school had grabbed Mr. Paws from Evie, tore his head off, and made her cry?"

Just then, my foot touched something soft; I glanced down. Evie’s favorite toy, her teddy bear, was lying there. I picked up the little fellow, thinking how inappropriate was the bland smile on his face.

I showed the stuffed animal to Gus. "Look, here's Mr. Paws. Evie couldn't come herself, so she sent her best friend to stay with you."

"Is Evie okay?" Gus asked.

I regarded him, glad to hear the lad say something that didn't sound angry. "Evie is fine. You didn't hurt her at all. She hopes that you get better soon and can come home with Mr. Paws."

He changed the subject. “I hit you hard. How come you didn't die? Is it because you're Mantra?"

I tried not to wince. Aladdin was surely running a video recording of our entire conversation. If they took what Gus was saying seriously, I'd soon end up in a cell next to Blythe Ashwin!

“I’m not Mantr, Gus.”

“I tied you up with magic, then you suddenly turned into Mantra!”

"Mantra was only a part of your nightmare. How could a little boy like you beat up on someone as powerful as Mantra? Did you dream that Evie was an ultra hero, too?"

"Yes! She hit me with a shot of magic once. I don’t know how she did it. But Lauren was an even tougher ultra than either one of you!"

"So you dreamed Lauren Sherwood was an ultra, too?" I asked.

“She was wearing a costume and zapping me with magic that hurt a lot!"

"Wow, Gus! Me in a cracker box? Lauren an ultra hero? Evie using magic? Darling, Evie and I are only your family. And Lauren is your babysitter. I know for a fact that she was at home with her dad all Friday evening."

"It happened!" he insisted.

"Yes," I said, "some of it is true. You did get magic. It was just like when Hardcase and the Strangers got -- zapped – by ultra lightning and got super powers! That same lightning made you into an ultra, just like them. When Evie went to your room and saw you using sorcery, she was so surprised that she called me in. You used magic to tie me up and then stood there shouting angry things. That was very naughty of you, Gus."

"You turned into Mantra! Your clothes changed!"

"Gus, being full of bad magic is like being full of bad drugs. While you were standing there, I saw you get a funny look on your face and start to talk to people who weren’t really there. As soon as that happened, all those magical ropes you'd put on me fell off and I got loose. Then I took Evie and the two of us ran away. We were afraid to go home until the police sent us a message saying that you'd gone out into the neighborhood and started a fight with a patrolman. Because of that, you were arrested and put into jail."

"Mantra was there!" he exclaimed.

I was still thinking about the Aladdin's eavesdropping when I said, “I have a super secret to tell you, Gus. Mantra couldn't have been at our house Friday night. She was arrested and locked up last month. People said that she robbed a museum and now she's in jail because of it. That's how the world is, Gus. No matter how good and famous an ultra is, he has to obey the law like everybody else, or else he gets into a lot of trouble."

"It wasn’t just a dream!" the boy said.

I stroked the lad's hard, sunken cheek and kissed his beetling brow. The more the two of us spoke, the more he seemed like the old Gus. "I know how good you usually are," I told him, "but when that magic zapped you, it made you angry and wild. I’m so sorry, because if you had behaved well Friday night and used your magic to help people, maybe the UltraForce would have already come by to ask you to join them. According to what they wrote in the Ultramate Source, they’ve been wanting to find a powerful wizard for their team."

The look he flashed rended my heart. "Do you think they'll still ask me?"

I squeezed the lad's hard shoulder. "Oh, honey, UltraForce has a rule not to recruit any ultra who get angry easily or get into trouble. You were an ultra for only a little while before you misbehaved and got arrested. Now all those heroes are going to think you’re a bad guy and you’ll have to be good for a very long time before they’ll ever trust you enough to let you on their team.

“What were you thinking, Gus? No matter how powerful a little-boy ultra is, a grownup officer is always going to get the better of him. There's lots of bad ultras in jail right now because they weren’t friendly and respectful around the police.”

"Is this a jail? They said it was a hospital."

"It's both. I'm sorry, Gus."

"When can I go home?"

I made a needed effort to control of my voice. "I wish I knew, precious, but the police have rules. You either have to stop being bad, or else you’ll have to stop being an ultra. Otherwise, people are going to keep saying that you’re a bad ultra."

"No! I don’t want to stop being an ultra! I always wanted to be one!"

I blinked, my burning eyes. "Gus, there's still a chance that things can be fixed, but it’s going to take time. We’ll have to talk to a lot of lawyers and see what they tell us.”

Gus now began to cry. He had asked his mother to get him out of trouble, only to be told that there was nothing she could do except see a lawyer. For a boy his age, that would be a giant step toward understanding how the world worked.

"I'm going to visit you just as often as I can," I promised. I didn't dare hold out the hope that Evie, his grandma, or his dad could come, too. Aladdin would only allow what it felt like allowing.

"Gus, is there anything I can do to help you feel better?"

He didn't answer.

The cell door rolled open and Dr. Sarn came back in. Standing over the capsule, she studied the face of the child who scarcely still looked like a child.

"I think that's about all you can do for the little guy today," Sarn said. "If the psychoanalysts decide that your visit has had a positive effect, we'll have you come and talk to him again soon."

I nodded dully. What did Aladdin’s top brass know about broken and suffering families?

"Can the boy's sister visit him, too?” I asked. “She's four years younger than he is -- just a tyke."

"This is a high-security installation..." Sarn began. Then the hard-as-nails director stopped sounding like a brass wind-up toy for an instant. "Well, if she's really that small, we'll consider it."

As a departing gesture, I placed Mr. Paws atop the capsule. I hoped that the stuffed toy would remind Gus that he had a family waiting for him and they still loved him very much.

“Please don't throw away this bear,” I asked Sarn. “It's my daughter's favorite pet. If you can’t permit her brother to keep it, I'd like to take it back to her.”

“Are you up to turning in your report now, Blake?" she asked without addressing my request.

"Report? Ah, no. Sorry, Doctor. My mother came in last evening. Then a friend called, wanting to be filled in on what happened Friday. She took me out to lunch, and then I got your call. It's all too much."

Dr. Sarn nodded. "Stay a while, until you settle down. Get the report written as long as you’re here. You can sleep over and we’ll line you up with a helicopter ride back to the city in the morning. This place has plenty of beds, at least."

"Sure, why not?" I replied resignedly.

But my insides were in a roil. I wanted to pound my fists against the walls and yell. A family was getting hammered by grief and Sarn was obsessing over some meaningless bureaucratic report!

We went out and the doctor had me linger near the cell until an aide came and led me across the complex. We went into an office in the administrative wing, where he left me alone with a word-processor. Wanting to get all the silly paperwork behind me, I sat down and stared at the interface, trying to concentrate my thoughts. Gradually, using Lauren's testimony as a guide, I managed to input a page of self-serving fiction before I lost my train of thought. How was a young boy expected to endure doing time in a place like Alcatraz? I wracked my brain trying to puzzle out some means of making this disaster a little less disastrous.

I didn't know it then, but I was only about ten seconds away from being lambasted by another disaster.

#

I suddenly saw two sets of hands in front of me. The one pair was striking the keyboard, causing everything that I had written up to then to disappear. I tried to rise from my swivel chair, but couldn't. In a flash, the office around me was filled with people moving at blurring speed, everyone running backwards. Then the whole scene blanked out.

The next thing I knew, though I was still sitting, something was cramping me. A man was speaking, but I could hardly hear him, so loud was the whirring noise around us.

"Mrs. Blake?" he was saying. "Are you feeling faint?"

I sat up and manged to make sense of what I was seeing. I was inside another helicopter and a seat-belt was holding me in place. Outside, I saw a sunlit harbor trimmed by a cityscape. Who had put me into another helicopter? Had I blacked out and was being taken back to the mainland -- for medical attention, perhaps?

"Mrs. Blake? You're as white as a ghost."

I looked the pilot’s way. He was a short-bearded man in his twenties, and definitely not the same pilot who'd escorted me to the island a couple hours earlier. My disorientation was like a smothering blanket. How much time had passed? Was this my morning ride back to the mainland? Had I passed a whole night on Alcatraz Island?

"Ah, I f-felt woozy for a moment," I stammered, playing for time while my mind raced. "Please, excuse me. I've -- I've gone through hell lately. It’s almost more than I can take."

The young man nodded. "Some pretty bad things went down last night, they say, and not just here in San Francisco. The only thing that I saw myself was that the sky had a crazy color to it. As usual, the brass isn't explaining anything.”

When I looked out the window again, the water and the city were still there. Why was my memory full of black spots? What bad things was the pilot talking about?

"Uh, excuse me -- what -- what day is this?"

"Ma'am?"

"What day is this? I'm a little confused."

"It's Saturday."

"Saturday? The 23rd?"

He blinked in surprise. "No, ma'am. It's the 16th."

The 16th? My head spun. I had gone out to the prison on Thursday the 21st. Now it was five days earlier! Had I experienced another time-shift! If the young serviceman was right, I had slipped five days back into the past -- sort of. As a matter of fact, I was still two days ahead of the date where this craziness had first begun, at the Mall on Thursday the 14th.

What had shoved me ahead in time, and then dragged me back --partway?

All I could think was that some kind of unknown force was still messing with me. What was it going to do next? I didn’t have a clue.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 12