Chapter 53: Shape the World

“It wasn’t easy, but I managed to make it happen,” said Bob.

They were in his office at City Hall, with only two days left before the president and others arrived. It would take Wil at least that much time to do the leg work. It might not be enough.

“Thanks Dad,” said Wil as he buried his inner critic deep within his psyche. “I know how much of a risk this is, and I couldn’t do it without the help of the community. If this works…”

Bob laughed. “I’ve heard that one before. You don’t have to convince me, son. You’ve got this. But if you don’t, I might be one of the very few one term mayors in Harper Valley. I’d be the third, I think.”

“But if it does work,” said Wil with a growing smile.

“Then clearly it’s due to the McKenzie family leadership, and we will form a dynasty that will last for centuries,” said Bob in his usual laid back drawl. They laughed together, and Wil’s anxiety eased. “If it does work, then I’m pretty sure we could get away with anything. The amount of community trust we’ll have will be second to none.”

“We’ll need to redo the roads if you want me to make Manifee City’s trolleys, but better,” said Wil. He stole a piece of candy out of Bob’s jar and popped it into his mouth. “I’ll be happy to do it once it works and all the hoopla dies down. I’m pretty sure that we’ll get a bigger budget for it.”

Bob waved him off. “If it works, slow the hell down and enjoy it. You don’t have to always be moving all the time. If you keep it up like this, life will pass you by. You’re about to be a father. You should be fighting for less work to spend time at home, not promising yourself to the next big project.”

Wil’s face heated up. “You’re right,” he said with an awkward chuckle. “I’m looking forward to that, but…”

“It is a lot of waiting and just looking at a little critter that cries, eats, sleeps, and craps all day,” said Bob. “There’ll be plenty of time or work, but take your time and enjoy things. You’ll appreciate slow and quiet soon enough. Especially if you and Darlene have more after this. You want busy, boy? Try having three kids before you’re thirty.”

“You know,” said Wil, “I think I’ll pass on that. But don’t tell Mom; she wants as many grandkids as possible.”

Bob laughed. “She does at that. Is there anything else I can help you with? I know you must be eager to get to it.”

“One question,” said Wil. “Did you manage to get the mayor of Gallard Springs to get me a permit to move things around?”

He knew right away by the pained expression on his father’s face that something went wrong. “About that. Turns out Mayor Pam is not too happy with us for extraditing McGinnis and the others for their crimes. I’m guessing she was given plenty of incentives to protect them from us, but Sheriff Harrington was pretty persuasive. So, you might run into trouble there.”

Wil frowned, but nodded. “I’m pretty sure I can handle anything they throw at me. I might have to bend a few personal rules, but I’m getting this done, and no one will be hurt.”

“I’m glad for that,” said Bob. “If you do, I’m the one who’s going to have to deal with it. Keep your head on straight, son, and get it done.”

Wil went downstairs, mind full of the next two days’ of tasks. His mother knelt on the floor, rubbing Isom’s tummy while he rumbled his pleasure and his six paws kneaded the air. “Am I interrupting anything?”

Isom scrambled back to his feet. His ears flattened against his head, which Wil took to be the wampus cat’s version of a blush. “Your mother understands respect,” he said imperiously.

“Oh hush,” said Sharon as she continued to scratch the back of his neck. He couldn’t resist the purr that came tumbling out. “You got what you need, then? Good. We’re almost done with prep, and the president’s security detail should be here tomorrow. Is there anything you want me to tell them if they ask after you?”

“Yeah,” said Wil. “I’ll be available tomorrow night for any discussions they need, but I’ll be much too busy before then. C’mon Isom. We got a lot of work ahead of us.”

It took Isom all of his willpower to pull himself away from Sharon, but the big cat followed Wil, and soon they were off, to the south center of the basement, where the road led south to Appleton and beyond.

This was where it got tricky. The leyline ran north to south, and he needed it to go east to west. It took a full hour of digging his feet in and twisting the land to change the flow of power. Where there had been flat land and road, there was now a spiral of rock jutting from the earth, and the roads were all but destroyed as Wil moved them further south to give more space for the leyline.

“Your plan is foolish,” said Isom as Wil finished up and had to take a break. Sweat ran down the wizard’s face as he rested and fought for air. “If it takes this much effort each time, it will take you a month.”

Wil shook his head. “It’s not going to be this hard every time. I knew going in some would be hard, but others, they’ll basically be a flyby if the Faerie leyline is any indication.” Of course, he didn’t want to rip any more open. That would end his plans, and he was fortunate enough to not need the one still mending.

True enough, the next three leylines were a lot easier. It had been an ordinary effort to go from one to another, tearing up just enough of the land to pull and stretch on each leyline and snap them together. It wasn’t a perfectly straight line, as Wil occasionally had to zig or zag to keep the chain unbroken. After three hours, he made it to the southwest corner of the map, right where the river ended, flowing off into a chasm between mountains, where the lake he’d made nearly a year ago waited.

“You are destructive, aren’t you?” Isom goaded him. After a few hours of sticking nearby and keeping an eye and ear out for bystanders, he’d grown bored and cranky. “And you reminisce loudly. I can see it all as you remember it.”

“Yeah,” said Wil. He took a sip of lukewarm water from his canteen, before he magically chilled it and took a longer drink. “Can’t help but think about everything that happened. Just think, my destructiveness brought you to me, and now you have all the beef you can eat.”

Isom said nothing and looked away, but his tail lashed behind him. Wil knew cats well enough to know that Isom was never going to admit how much happier he was now. He didn’t have to.

“Break’s over,” said Wil. “Time for the first rune in our simple array.”

Simple it may have been, but this sort of thing had never been tried with leylines. Enchanters used it for their work, as did some alchemists and ritualists. Runes in the land made perfect sense for a one time ritual, but at large? Well, Wil would either go big and win, or fail. No point in worrying about it.

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Wil tapped into the leyline and observed it. From its odd, tangled shape, he reached out into the world and moved rock, dirt, trees, and animals and twisted them around. It wasn’t about forcing his will into the world so much as using the leyline to make a proclamation that the land would hear and respond to. It was a promise to care for the land as well as for the people.

The leyline untangled, and then wrapped up around itself again. The shape wasn’t right, and it wouldn’t be right for another forty-five minutes of steadily altering the land until the ends of the leyline not only stretched east to the previous leyline, but north along the river in the path Wil would go next.

Then came the rune itself, picked by Bram. At this point, Wil trusted his friend’s judgment on arrays and configurations better than his own. It was a simple, boxlike shape, with two tendrils stretching out and a few nubs. It didn’t look like much, and when he finished it, it didn’t feel like much either. The Awaken rune would do nothing until they were all linked.

Wil allowed himself enough of a break to lay out a blanket he’d brought for a short nap, while Isom hunted and kept an eye out for anything dangerous. After an hour, he realized he didn’t want to get up, but forced himself to move on, dreading the fact that he’d only done about a quarter of the work and it was nearly six in the evening. Oh well, the work continued.

Luckily, the river made his work easy. By providing a natural split in the land and a direction life went, most of the leylines went north to south, and it wasn’t too bad spending the next two hours working his way up along the forest and farmlands. By the time he made it to the next spot for a rune, he barely had anything left in him.

It took all of his remaining strength to shape the rocks and trees and a well known cave into the next leyline rune: Unite.

And then he went home and passed out.

“You’re not going to kill yourself doing this, are you?” Darlene asked at breakfast. She wasn’t much of a cook, and she didn’t like standing for too long anymore, but she’d still made them passable eggs.

Wil devoured them. “Probably not,” he said through a mouthful of food. “But there’s always that possibility. I’ll leave you the house and the Thunderhawk.”

“Oh please,” said Darlene. “The only way I’m going to be able to ride that without you is if both you and Bram succeed. And if you die, chances are that’s not happening.”

“Fine,” he said. “Bram gets my Thunderhawk.”

The next day wasn’t much better. It was like working out too hard, and being hardly able to move the next day. Too much leyline exposure could be dangerous or addictive, but Wil was long past that point, he felt. If there was going to be any issues, it was too late to worry. Not when he still had a job to do.

He flew to the northwest corner and started the line east. In theory, this would be the easiest part of his mission, but also the longest. By noon, he’d made it halfway across the basin along the north border, which meant he was half done with stage one. Occasionally people watched or talked to him on his breaks, but most of Harper Valley had gotten used to his shenanigans by now.

The trouble came, predictably, when he crossed the border into Gallard Springs. His father hadn’t managed to get cooperation from the government there, which meant that by the time he was close to the foothills in the northeast, Isom sent him a mental warning. Local law enforcement had come for him.

“What do you think you’re doing now?” A man with a gold star on his chest came forward. He had a trimmed, dark mustache and salt and pepper hair. He was lanky, and even taller than Wil.

“A big magic experiment,” said Wil. He hoped he could talk his way out of it, but if he couldn’t…well, he had other methods. “I’m not causing any problems, am I?”

“I dunno,” said the sheriff. “Are you?” His two deputies fanned out around him, not explicitly threatening Wil so much as inspecting his work and getting closer, just in case.

“Not at all, sir. Just twisting the earth a bit and getting…I suppose you can call them samples, but in a few days, everyone here in Gallard Springs will benefit.” Wil gave his best trustworthy smile.

“That’s private property, son. You’re damaging peoples’ land, and they’re not happy about it.” The sheriff put his hands on his hips. His fingers brushed over a gun, but his tone remained even and calm. Wil wasn’t fooled.

“I actually have a permit for the work,” he lied. “Let me get it out for you, if I may.”

“Slowly.”

Wil held his hands up. They were empty, but not for long. A ball of light appeared in his hand, bright enough to be painful to see during the day. And then it started blinking. Slow, fast, in between, it flashed in sharp bursts of light and dark.

The sheriff’s hand left his gun. He leaned over further, and his deputies swayed in place. Wil kept it up until their wills turned to jelly, then he spoke. “Everything is fine. No laws are being broken. You met a kind young man who gave you a reasonable explanation, and then you took the day off and visited family. Maybe you should have a nice meal out. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

None of them answered, though the sheriff nodded blankly. Wil kept the lights up, and his tone soothing. “Good, good. Just remember, everything is fine. Today’s a lazy day. In fact, I bet you want to go home and nap right now. So…walk home, see family, take a nap.”

A working like this wouldn’t last too terribly long, and it could be broken through by almost anyone. Wil didn’t need to violate their psyches in order to buy some time. As far as mind magic went, this was as simple, unobtrusive, and safe as it got. It still came too close to controlling other people for Wil’s taste.

You are not like the other one. Isom had kept out of sight and only reappeared when they wandered off. Wil was pleased with his increasingly good behavior, and grateful for his words.

“I’m going to make sure I never am,” he said. “C’mon. We’ve got a time limit now, and I’m exhausted. We have to finish our work soon.”

But there was still half the day’s work remaining. He rushed along, linking more leylines until he got to one high above the others, on a hill he had to use magic to scale. It was all earth here, tons and tons of it, but when Wil extended his senses he felt the complex cave system below, and the life in there.

He had to be very careful to not collapse the hill itself. It still took an hour and a half to get the rune just right, and the land required the fewest obvious changes. The rune Embrace flowed above the mountains on the northeast side of the basin.

That took about everything out of Wil. When he continued linking to the south, again aided by the land’s natural borders, he found his strength faltering and his nerves on edge. He made it halfway to the southeast corner before discomfort turned to pain.

It was like a sunburn on the inside, and tapping into the leyline filled his veins with molten lava. He had to release it and take a break. He sat on a boulder and ate a snack. That’s when the sheriff found him again.

“Get down off the rock and get on the ground. Hands behind your head!” The sheriff yelled from a couple dozen yards away. His deputies stayed back this time.

“Nice job Isom,” Wil muttered, but the wampus cat was just outside easy contact range. He still projected his need for help. To the sheriff, he took one of the last couple of bites of apple and said, “Did you enjoy your nap?”

The sheriff was not amused. “Whatever you did to me terrified my wife and kids. They couldn’t wake me for hours!”

“Sounds like a good nap, then. Sorry I had to do that, Sheriff, but I fear it might’ve been for nothing.” Wil finished his apple and threw the core behind him. “If I can’t finish up tomorrow, I’m screwed. But for now? I’m all tapped out.”

“I told you to get on the ground. I’m not going to tell you another time, wizard.” He pointed his gun at Wil, and so did the other men.

“You ready to murder a man because you were mildly embarrassed?” Wil did as he was told, more or less. He slid off the boulder and landed next to his Thunderhawk. “I’m going home. I suggest you put your guns away, or else he might eat you.”

“Who?”

Isom made himself known by sneaking up behind the three policemen and giving his best wildcat howl. They jumped and whirled around, firing their guns at the spot Isom had been before he teleported away.

Wil hopped onto his ThunderHawk and powered it on. It took twice as long as usual, and the pain flared back up. This wasn’t a good sign. “Farewell, sheriff! Next time I’ll come back with a permit.”

He flew off as fast as he could, serpentining just in case they decided to shoot at him after all. Isom caught up with him a minute later as the dashed through the center of Gallard Springs. They went over and by surprised townspeople as they put as much distance between him and the police as possible.