Page 41 of Soulmates

“The kind caused by another nature mage,” Cricket replied. “It was the mid-seventies, and we got the call that there were terrified rabbits running all over Alligator Alley, which is the main road that takes you across the state through the Everglades. You were on part of it to get here. A local mage spotted the rabbits, and so did a bunch of nonmagic users. By the time I got here, there were rabbits splattered everywhere.” Cricket shook his head, pausing for a moment.

Maddox was horror-struck. “Splattered? As in, dead?”

“So many dead. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen or even imagined was possible. Truckers and travelers alike use the road, and there’s no light but what comes from the sky, and it wasn’t particularly bright that week—new moon and all—and their headlights weren’t enough to pick up exactly what they were hitting. The midnight travelers barely knew what they were running over. They reported feeling bumps, and some of them finally stopped, carefully getting out, as alligators were well-known to occupy those roads. They found dead rabbits in their wake and live rabbits everywhere. There weren’t fences back then. Nature had free rein to occupy the road, and that night, it did. The travelers had no choice but to keep going or stay and become alligator food.”

Cricket shook his head as if haunted by the memory. “Officially, the cause was a drought and fire that drove them to the road. But that many thousands of rabbits should never have been in the same place at once.” He paused and seemed to steel himself.

“There was a nature mage who had lost his way. Places like this draw nature mages of all kinds. Especially those with an affinity for earth and water. You can feel the earth here in a way you can’t in other places. It calls to you in your bones and blood. Nature here is so untamed and old and wild, and it can be intoxicating. It can enhance magic and even increase it for some. He was like that. He dug his magic into the earth and let it take him over.”

“What did that do exactly?” Maddox asked.

With a shrug, Cricket said, “He drastically altered the balance.” He let the enormity of that sink in. “He moved the water because he could. It wasn’t what he meant to do when he came here, but it’s what he turned into. He messed with the animal population. He changed the habitats. He went unchecked for years. By the time I got here, his mind was warped into something it wasn’t before. He talked in riddles and threw enormous amounts of magic at me, trying to get rid of me. It would have killed a less skilled mage.” Cricket said this with no sense of ego, just fact.

Maddox nodded. “You stopped him.”

“I did.” Cricket seemed disinclined to discuss further. If he had to do what Maddox thought he did, it was no wonder Cricket didn’t want to talk about it.

“It took years to help undo what he did to the ecosystem here. And over time, I found that being here is heady. It doesn’t increase my power but lets me use it to keep nature balanced from what humans are doing to it. The swamp doesn’t want to be tamed. And in this place, nature fights back. I thought about leaving nearly twenty years after I arrived, but the python trade started to boom, and Hurricane Andrew destroyed a python breeding facility and released an unknown number of them into the swamps.” Cricket shrugged again, a hint of pain painting itself on his face, just for a flash, as if he relived an old injury in the span of a heartbeat.

Maddox wondered if there was more to the story of why Cricket stayed.

“Now we have almost no rabbits, which is ironic, being that I came here due to too many. The snakes are uncontrollable. They breed quickly and often and eat everything in sight. Between the pythons and invasive fish and plants, I have plenty to keep me busy. And it’s a perfect hiding spot for my archive. The history can’t be lost, and I can protect it and hide it here,” he said, letting out a sigh, his brows knitting together for one quick beat, almost a flinch, before he added, “So I stay.”

“I can feel the earth. And something else. I’m not sure what, but it’s powerful here,” Maddox said.

“I would expect that from you,” Cricket said.

“How so?” Maddox said.

“Your affinities are strong. And your access to magic is vast. It would make sense for you to feel it here.”

“I don’t feel anything different,” Santiago said.

“You might in certain areas. Strength calls to strength. But you don’t have any elemental affinity at all.”

“Right. Jake, do you feel anything?” Santiago said.

“Something, but it’s deep. It’s like it’s in my subconscious, but it’s not familiar.”

“Interesting,” Cricket said but stood before they could ask more questions. “I want to try something.”

“Anything,” Maddox said.

Cricket grinned. “Careful what you agree to.”

They started with a meditation. Santiago ended up being sent from the room because she couldn’t hold still and kept distracting them. She took a stack of books with a huff and went upstairs to her room.

Cricket had them sit on the floor facing each other and holding hands—holding both hands. He directed Maddox to mentally reach inside himself and feel Jake’s soul. Not that Maddox was convinced it was a soul, but it was something, so soul would do. He was to feel it but not mess with it, just notice it and note how it sat in his chest. Did it have a shape, a texture? To which Maddox replied, “Texture?”

“Metaphysically, Maddox. Work with me here.”

Cricket directed him to find his own piece of soul and note the differences.

“Find where it attaches to your being. Where it attaches may be where it detaches,” Cricket said as if this was the most reasonable conversation anyone had ever had.

Jake was to then sense inside Maddox and feel for what he gave over to him. Again, to touch and seek but not tug on it or attempt to move it. He was also to try to find Maddox’s version. Find it and imagine how it would feel in his own empty chest.

Cricket then instructed Maddox to push out his senses and find the hole in Jake’s chest. Imagine filling it with Maddox’s soul. Imagine it filled with light.

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