All the Colors of Magic
an excerpt

"Careful up there, Charlie!" John called as he steadied the rocking ladder.

Charlie Peterson grinned down at him, still wearing his rodeo clown make-up. "Don't you worry, John. Ol' Charlie's indestructible."

John smiled up at him. If Charlie wasn't indestructible, he was the luckiest bastard John had ever met. Rodeo clowns were a tough lot by anyone's measure, but Charlie had been at it longer than most and had yet to get more than a bruise, if you could believe his stories.

"Be careful anyway, you old goat."

Charlie clucked his tongue and fished along the edge of the stable roof. "Got it!" he said, holding the Frisbee up triumphantly. He turned and flipped it toward the kids standing in the stable yard. "And you boys go play somewhere else, hear me?"

"OK, Charlie," one of them yelled as the whole lot ran away.

"Boys," Charlie puffed as he hopped off the ladder a couple rungs from the bottom. He scruffed John's hair. "I remember when it was you and Matt and Jed giving me trouble."

John's smile faded a notch, and he turned to look out over the pasture so Charlie wouldn't see. Matt was a sore point for him these days. "Yeah, well. I'm all grown up now. I could have gotten that down, you know."

"Course you could have. But so could I." Charlie clapped a hand on John's back. "And now I'm going to go talk some sense into your Melanie."

John turned. "I told you, Charlie, she's not mine anymore. And she's none of your business."

A stab of guilt shot through John when Charlie's face fell, but he didn't want to encourage him to continue this campaign to get him back together with Mel. She'd made her choice, and John had accepted that. But Charlie looked suddenly tired and old to John, who'd grown up with the jovial old man who'd always had more time for him than John's own father.

"Why don't you let me buy you dinner, Charlie? You did an amazing job today, and it's been a while since the two of us got to sit down and talk."

Charlie nodded and the two of them started walking toward the clubhouse. "Did you see Norm's ride?"

A horse's scream interrupted John's reply, as both of them spun to see what was going on. Jackson's Pride reared, pawing the air over the red plastic Frisbee that must have hit him. Max Lawson, his trainer, went flying as the stallion kicked him a glancing blow and charged the boys standing a hundred feet from John and Charlie.

John shouted and took off for the boys, and Charlie dove into a roll before the horse's charge, skittering the stallion off track and giving him a new target. The boys ran, scattering in three different directions, and John turned back to see a dozen handlers arrive through the stable doors. They got ropes over Jackson's Pride and pulled him away from Charlie, who lay unmoving in the dirt.

John blinked. The screaming horse faded out of his awareness as he walked toward Charlie's vivid-colored clown pants. His sluggish steps made him feel like he was wading through thick spring mud, or a nightmare. John hit his knees and reached out for Charlie's shoulder to roll him over.

Bright red blood covered half of his white-painted face. A deep divet of skull sunk under the top edge of Charlie's curly orange wig, now stained red as well. A dozen other people surrounded the two of them now, but John had eyes only for that divet and the soft, grayish stuff exposed within it. Something explosive seemed to be building in his chest, keeping him from drawing a breath.

He threw his head back, mouth open, maybe to scream, but nothing came out of his mouth. The tight ball of hurt in his chest blew. A rainbow of light seemed to well up in his vision as it exploded within him, soundlessly.

Screams, not his own, echoed through his ears as the rainbow colors faded from his eyes and John looked around. The people near him had been thrown back a dozen feet, like a real explosion had happened. They were looking at him with wide, fearful eyes, but they all grew silent again as Charlie sat up and looked around.

"John?"

The handlers and rodeo folk started to murmur.

John gripped Charlie's arm, pulled his clown wig off and brushed the blood back to look at where the divet had been. Nothing. It was as flat and smooth as a skull ought to be. "I thought..."

"John, what did you do?"

"What? Me? No, I..."

Several of the rodeo folk came up and started pulling on him, trying to get his attention, but John shook them off.

"Charlie, I didn't- I couldn't have-"

Hands forced him to look away from Charlie, look up into Melanie's face. "We all saw it John. You healed him."

"No--" People were pulling on him, crying, pleading with him.

Charlie came to his rescue. "Back off, the lot of you!" He had a voice fit for a parade ground or a battle ground, and when he gave an order, people obeyed without thinking. He got to his feet and pulled John up.

"I don't know what you did, son, but I thank you."

Sirens caught the edge of John's hearing, and the edge of his fear, too.

"I think you better get yourself out of here, Johnny boy," he said, pulling him away from the crowd at a jog. He shoved a set of keys into John's hand. "Take my truck, go out to my farm and get in my old Corvair. Don't go home and don't talk to anybody. Don't stop running, John."

"Charlie-"

"Don't argue with me, boy. I don't know what all you can do, but I know enough to know that there are people who will want it, and they'll dissect you to try to get it. Find a place to hide and don't ever look back." Charlie shoved him on toward the parking lot and turned to corral the few people who had thought to follow them.

John kept on toward the parking lot, a few stumbling steps, then started to run.