Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

if I was making a mistake. But of all the people I knew, at that moment there was only one I truly wanted to talk to. I pushed open the door, crossed the threshold of the Sylvan Community Center, and asked for Talena Michaels.

A young woman welcomed me, and asked me to wait in the common area while she consulted with Talena. As she walked away it dawned on me that she’d pulled loose her curls and braids, letting her hair flow as free as Dinah McIntire had at the festival. I wondered how quickly fashion trends traveled the globe.

While I waited, I stared at the walls, covered with hanging files stuffed with informational brochures. Voting rights, renter’s rights, free clinics, and guides to the city for newcomers fought for space with support networks for any one of a dozen different addictions, traumas, and fears. Almost all the brochures highlighted some sort of inspirational prayer—Talena’s activism had always been tied to her fervent faith. Any free space was festooned with photos of smiling clients at rallies and picnics, protests and religious ceremonies. All of them wore the ba, the symbol of the Path. It was like the Bullpen, but the workers were twenty years younger and the photos were beaming faces rather than corpses and mug shots. It would have been moving, if Weylan hadn’t made me doubt everything it was based on. From across the room the woman I’d spoken to waved me over.

Talena didn’t have a separate office. Her desk merged in with all the others. But the respect and deference the others showed her was evident by the glances they sent my way, as if warning this aging stranger that he’d better not have ill intentions toward their leader. The child I’d helped raise had become a woman whose influence was growing as fast as the list of people she’d helped. And I was about to tell her it was all based on a lie.

She didn’t stand as I approached, but she did look up from a list of names on her desk. Most likely she’d been doing some fundraising.

“I don’t know why you always think I can help with your cases,” she said. “Contrary to your way of thinking, not everyone in this city knows each other.”

“No, I . . .” The open layout meant that anyone could potentially overhear us. But what Weylan had told me wasn’t the kind of thing I could keep to myself. “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

“Is this serious? Because I’ve got a lot to do tonight. And the last time we talked, you were halfway into one of your barroom blackouts.”

“It’s serious,” I said.

She sighed, but called out across the room, “Hey, Elaine, is there a consult room available?”

A petite Gillmyn in thick-rimmed glasses responded without looking up from her filing. “Room B is open.”

“Follow me,” Talena said, moving to the rear of the center, passing Elaine on the way.

There was a table and three chairs, one of which Talena plopped into before propping her elbows on the table. “What do you want to tell me? Or do you want me to do some kind of favor for you?”

“I just got back from talking to Weylan,” I said. Her eyebrows went up, probably as close to impressed as she’d be willing to give me. “And I need to tell you about it.”

I told her everything.

As I spoke, Talena began to look away. Her eyes moved around the room, to the volunteers and information and photos, none of which would be around if not for her faith in the Path. By the end, she simply stared at the table between us. When I was done, she was quiet for a long, long time. Finally she raised her head.

“Do you remember when I was a kid, and kept sneaking out to the arcade? Mom flipped her shit at the idea of me going out alone.”

“Oh, I remember.” Jenny’s temper had been fierce, and the idea that anyone would put her daughter at risk, even if it was Talena herself, made her quick to fury.

“Yeah, so remember what she told me?”

I did. “Grannie Greenteeth.”

“Grannie Greenteeth who lived in the sewer, waiting for little kids walking alone at night.” She trailed off for a heartbeat, then smiled. “When Mom got it in her head to be colorful, she could get downright harsh.”

I remembered Jenny’s colorful language when she was upset with me. “Yeah.”

Talena pushed back a loose shirtsleeve and rolled it tight against her forearm. “Granny Greenteeth wasn’t real, but the danger was. If we can use things like that to steer kids right, why can’t we use a story to steer all of us in the right direction? And if someone did, some Barekusu con man storyteller who figured that all these new species popping up and threatening the world needed some guidance, is that a bad thing?”

“It isn’t real,” I said.

She grinned. “You know what’s real? This.” She pointed at the walls of the community center, and the letters and pictures that lined them, each one a story of loss and hope and redemption. It was unchanged from when I’d seen it earlier, but now instead of a litany of false promises, I recognized it as a catalog of real, verifiable change for the better. A hundred candles lighting the night as a blizzard raged all around. “Every one of these stories is true, Carter, no matter what inspired them. And those stories? They’re what can change the world.”

“Everything you do, everything you risk. Can you honestly say you’d still do that if you’d have known that the Barekusu were making it all up, that there’s no Path, no Titan, none of the saints and demons and things that matter?”

She looked away, lips twisted, as if she were truly giving it some consideration. When she spoke, it was with complete confidence. “What do you think I’m going to do when you leave here? Do you think I’m going to stop?”

I