A man stood precariously on top of a milk crate, the crisscrossing plastic bowing beneath his feet as he rose animatedly up on them and waved his arm above the crowd. A couple of people watched him with interest, holding plastic jugs and containers of water at their sides. They nodded along and leaned to the person next to them to whisper some commentary about the spitfire, incendiary speech bellowing out of him. Most people deliberately ignored him, casting irritated or nervous glances his way but focusing resolutely on something else as they waited in line.
“He’s been there every day,” the guy next to Moira said, shaking his head. “There was a big riot over him about a week ago, but now people just ignore him.”
They were in the refugee camp just outside DC. After grabbing Rose from Jersey and loading her on the back of their bikes, they decided to avoid highways and follow a route mapped out on a paper map to get back down to Virginia. They hadn’t known it would take them right through a camp set up on a vast golf course of all things, rows and rows of people who used to live in the suburbs nearby but were transplanted because of a gate nearby. And to their surprise, they found a good friend of theirs, Nick, who was there with the Red Cross.
The man on the milk crate was shouting about how the water they drank was cursed Satan-water, something about how the devil offered Jesus water in the desert, but he had not been tempted. All because the water station that he was set up near, the one which people were waiting in line for, was supplied by a rotation of people who had gotten highly efficient at conjuring water and providing it to the masses on a large scale.
“The issue isn’t that there is any water.” Nick had told them when they first got into line, “It’s that there’s this debate over whether it's really okay to drink since it's conjured by magic. So, you have people in the not-okay camp – people not down with magic in general, religious stuff, clean-eating people who have this idea in their heads that it’s worse than GMOs. And then you have everyone else who’s just thirsty. At first, it was a struggle, but now there’s enough water. But the news is not really addressing the whole debate over whether the water is good enough; they are just saying there are water supply issues.”
Derek stood there with his arms crossed, shaking his head gravely. “The news never wants to tell the complicated story, do they?”
“Well, that’s a pretty big generalization,” Rose argued. She had her hair braided back from when they had been on the motorcycle and stood a head shorter than everyone else, looking around with wide, surprised eyes. It had been her idea to actually go into the camp to see if they could link up with Nick because she had heard through the grapevine that he was working with the Red Cross in this area. “The major news companies are just slapping ‘water supply issues’ on it, but I’ve seen some pretty in-depth articles about the moral panic that is being spread over magic and how it has the potential to be really dangerous.”
“Moral panic aside, water supply issues aside,” Nick waved his hand, “The real problem is going to be food shortages. They’re already starting.”
“The real problem is where are all of these people going to go?” Derek argued. The line moved forward, and so all four of them stepped up with it. “What are they going to do?”
Rose rolled her eyes, “There you go, off worrying about months from now when everyone is just worried about getting food on their plates right now.”
She nudged Moira, who rolled her eyes in solidarity. Honestly, she just wanted to get back on her bike and keep going back home because she was not a huge fan of standing in line with an empty sweet tea gallon jug to help Nick with his water run. He had joined the Red Cross. She had not. But Derek had been interested in seeing the camp first hand, and Rose had wanted to see if she could find Nick, and all that together meant they were probably going to spend some time here, listening to this guy rant and rave about the evils of magic. She had half a mind to turn into a dragon just to see how he would react but did not really feel like dealing with the village mob that might cause.
“He’s up there screaming at everyone,” she said, “How come nobody is up there talking about how good magic is? I don’t see him set up by the medical tents where the healers are working. How come there isn’t somebody up there teaching people how to conjure their own water so they don’t have to stand in line?”
“There is somebody in the water tent teaching anyone who wants to learn.” Nick offered. Moira scoffed. She could not understand why there was still a line then. They moved forward a couple of feet. Derek suddenly put an arm around Moira and squeezed her into his side. She wheezed and wrapped an arm around his back.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re brilliant, babe.” Derek grinned down at her. “That is what these people need. They just got displaced, so they need safety and a purpose.”
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“And food,” Nick muttered.
“And food.” Derek agreed. “There’s all kinds of monsters popping up all over the place, right? Ones that need to be taken care of, or they are going to keep killing people or eat through the power grid. The military is overtaxed. What we need is an adventurer’s guild.”
“What?” Nick’s face scrunched up, and he and Rose exchanged a glance.
“No, just listen!” Derek let go of Moira so he could use both his arms to gesticulate, “We could create an adventurer’s guild. We could set up basic instruction for magic, for anyone, just to demystify it and combat all that nonsense.” He flapped his hand at the guy on the milk crate. “Then, for people who want to actually do something, we can give them weapons and send out teams to take care of any monsters that are giving people problems.”
“We could contract with people. Like the power companies!” He clapped his hands together in excitement. “I bet they would pay a bounty to have people take care of those metal-eating creatures. And then people could get paid for the jobs they go on. And we could get food supplies and provide extra rations to them. If food shortages are already popping up, that would be a great incentive and could help people get more food beyond what the Red Cross is going to ration out.”
He pushed his jug into Moira’s arms, then pulled out his phone, “I just have to make a few calls.”
He wandered away from the line and started talking animatedly into his phone.
“How on earth do you put up with him?” Rose’s eyes moved back and forth like she was watching a tennis match as she observed him pacing. “I mean, he just…he didn’t even. Is he really going to try to do all that?”
Moira shrugged. “Probably. Once he’s decided something is a good idea, he gets really stuck on it.”
“I could never get along with someone that stubborn.” Rose shook her head. She probably could not, being a stubborn person herself. She was perhaps the nicest person that Moria knew, but she was also the type of person to agree with you to your face, then go off and do whatever the hell she wanted anyway. Derek did not do underhanded shit like that. He was who he was, and he did what he wanted to do.
“You just have to know how to put ideas into his head and make him believe they are his own sometimes.” Moria shrugged. “If he weren’t like this he never would have gone against his parents to go to med school and start dating me so blatantly. I like it.”
She was more used to people like Rose, and she herself tended to be more like that: passive-aggressive. Derek was refreshingly not. And refreshingly optimistic, always coming up with ideas and believing wholeheartedly that they would work.
“If he goes about it right, it’s not a bad idea,” Nick said. “I guess you guys are sticking around for a while, then?”
Moira sighed. “I guess.”
“I’ll sit down and workshop with him. I’ve worked with a lot of NGO start-ups.”
They moved forward in the line a couple more feet, almost to the tent by then. Moira tilted her head at Nick, looking him up and down. He wore a pair of mint green scrubs under a black fleece jacket and muddied sneakers on his feet. He and Derek had met back in their undergrad days and realized that Nick actually had known Moira and Rose when all three of them were younger. Their parents had all been friends and through Derek, Nick had reconnected with them. He and Derek had been taking similar paths by abandoning the family business for the medical field, except Nick’s career choice was not nearly as scandalous because he was one of five kids instead of an only child.
“How come you don’t just conjure your own water?” Moria asked. “Why are we even waiting in line?”
“I focus everything on healing spells.” Nick shrugged, “You get better at them faster if they are what you practice instead of just doing a bunch of different types of magic. Or, at least, that’s how it seems to work.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Do you know about the council?”
“Oh, you’ve found out about that?” he said casually.
Moira’s jaw dropped. When she brought it up to Rose, she’d just looked befuddled, then laughed and wondered if maybe her aunt’s family was involved. They were the weird bunch, after all.
“I can’t believe you knew about it.” Moira put her hands on her hips, fists wrapped around the handles of the gallon jugs.
“I can’t believe you didn’t. You should have been inducted last year unless…” his expression dropped, “Your parents died and all that. I’d forgotten. Oof. Well, now you know.”
Moira shook her head at him.
“It was never really on my radar, to be honest,” Nick said. “I mean, I’m more interested in the advances in medical technology, right? And the council…it was just a bunch of old farts sitting around and reading fortunes about the stock market or whatever. Never interested me. They did not do healing magic, that’s for sure. Except, maybe to keep themselves alive longer or something, I don’t know. I just thought they were obsolete in the face of technology.” He chuckled. “Now look where we’re at.”
“Have you figured out how to use magic to heal cancer yet?” Rose asked.
“Not out here.” Nick grinned, “But I bet they are working on that in the hospitals.”
Derek came back over and joined them. “The ball’s rolling. I’ve just got a couple more calls to make, but Juan and some of the folks we trust who actually know a thing or two about practical magic are going to head this way, and we can start shipping equipment and supplies soon. Hey, Nick, who runs this camp? I need an extra tent and a place to set up.”
“I’ll put you in contact with some people.” Nick said, “We’ve got to –”
Moira leaned down to mutter in Rose’s ear, “Still glad we came here and found Nick?”
She smirked. “You know I’m glad to see him.”
“We might be stuck here for a while.” Moira crossed her arms and pouted. “Sleeping in tents.”
“We aren’t actually going to stay in the camp, right?” Rose crinkled up her nose. “I mean, there has to be a hotel somewhere nearby.”
“Nick has been staying in the camp.” Moira pointed out, and Rose rolled her eyes.
Moira was once again suddenly crushed to Derek’s side as he threw an arm around her and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “And Moira, here will be our mascot! If people need proof that we are serious about magic and know what we are doing, the fact that she can turn into a dragon should convince them!”