Page 51 of Thirsty
“The diner?” Charlie asked. Lorenzo rolled up his window and turned the car onto a small, bumpy dirt road.
And he didn’t bother to answer Charlie, because in the next moment, as the trees to the side thinned out, he realized where they were. “A drive-in theater?” Charlie said, aghast with delight. Two huge screens stood to their left, on either side of a wide grass lawn that had been divided into neat rows with narrow driving paths. There were a good number of cars in front of each screen, one of which looked to be showing the latest superhero movie, the other a classic Miyazaki.
“This is amazing,” Charlie said, leaning far over the center console to peer out Lorenzo’s window. Lorenzo stiffened and pulled back as much as he could, trying to concentrate on the road. “How have I never been here before?”
His pulse was beating inches from Lorenzo’s face. “Don’t know,” he managed, his voice husky.
Eventually they reached the low, squat building where the kitchen and bathrooms were. Charlie was still craning his head around, fascinated, as they entered the diner, which was really more a cross between a greasy spoon and a concession stand.
A long line of customers were waiting for their candy and fried goods, but Dylan was working the counter, and he spotted Lorenzo and Charlie after only a moment, waving them through. “Hey man, you came!” he greeted them, wrapping Lorenzo in a quick hug.
“Thanks for inviting us!” Charlie said happily. Lorenzo glared at him a bit, in suspicion—Dylan looked much more fetching in his apron and the constant sheen of sweat from the ovens than in his scrubs from the clinic—but Charlie didn’t seem to be checking him out. Lorenzo felt himself relax a smidge.
“So,” he asked, “is tonight still a good time to...”
Dylan grinned, like he wished he could join them. “Yeah, they’re back there doing their thing.” He waved his hand, and on the wall behind him, a narrow door creaked open. Charlie’s eyes widened.
“Tell them to hurry up, wouldja? We got a full house,” Dylan said, though he winked at Charlie. Then there was a loud clang and the sound of sizzling oil. “Shit, gotta go.”
“So they’re...druids,” Charlie asked Lorenzo lowly, as they made their way to the door. “But they run a...drive-in?”
“They have many businesses,” Lorenzo said. The diner was packed, and he allowed himself a brief touch to the small of Charlie’s back to steer him. Charlie glanced up at him, and he dropped his hand quickly, clearing his throat. “It’s more profitable for them than, well—”
“Nature magic?”
“Hm.”
They walked through the door Dylan had shown them, and as they passed through, a small rock that had been holding it open skittered back around to the other side and pushed it shut behind them. “Whoa,” Charlie said.
The door led to a small gravel yard behind the diner, hemmed in by trees. From around the corner they could still hear the distant sound of the movies filtered through a few dozen car radios, and the chatter and laughter of people walking around. Floodlights on the diner roof and the reflected flicker of the screens illuminated the space, and the whole yard smelled thickly of grease.
Standing in the clearing was Dylan’s cousin Jude and three young druids. Lorenzo had known their family for a few decades, and Jude had always been a bit more...spiritually inclined than his cousin, or anyone else in their family for thatmatter. He had a feeling the rest of them wished that Jude would pitch in a bit more with the human business side of things, but Jude marched to the beat of his own drum.
The young druids with him, all about high school age, were wearing their best approximation of formal initiate robes; one of them looked like a nightgown. Jude’s robes were ornately sewn, and he wore a eucalyptus crown on his head as well as ivy wrapped around his forearms and the backs of his hands. “Lorenzo!” he said when he saw them. “You came.”
“Thank you for letting us observe,” he said. “Jude, this is Charlie.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said to Jude. “And—just to make sure—I don’t have to make any kind of...offering, do I?”
Jude blinked at him, while Lorenzo stifled laughter. “A donation, hon? We take Venmo, but truly, your presence here is enough.”
Charlie glared at Lorenzo again, who simply stared at the ground, trying to will the smile off his face.
“Um, can I ask—what is all this?” Charlie asked Jude. “If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all! It is an initiation for our eldest pupils as they become full members of our sacred druidic circle. And of course, as with all of our ceremonies, it is a celebration of nature,” Jude said solemnly. In the distance, there was some kind of explosion from the superhero film.
“Wow,” Charlie said. “I can’t wait to see.”
“Of course. Initiates!” Jude cried, and the kids did their best to stand at attention. “We have guests for this evening’s ceremony. So please, let’s give them a show.”
Charlie and Lorenzo took a respectful step back as the ceremony started. It began with Jude rattling off some formalopening remarks, and then the kids started performing small feats of nature magic on his prompts: pushing and pulling small rocks as Dylan had done, coaxing leaves and vines to spring up from the earth before them, summoning small gusts of snow. Charlie reached out a hand to catch a few of the snowflakes before they faded back out of reality. “This is amazing,” he whispered to Lorenzo.
“Nnh,” Lorenzo grunted, keeping his eyes fixed on the druids.
As the ceremony wore on, it became more and more uncomfortably clear that there was a divide in the class—two of the initiates seemed fairly competent in their nature magic, while the third failed at almost everything Jude set out for him. “Poor kid,” Charlie muttered.
“And for our last endeavor,” Jude said, his arms held aloft, “I am a salmon in the pool.”
