"Ysabel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER VI

The others were on the terrace having a drink as Ned came up the gravel drive. The sun, west over the city, sent a long, slanting light. It fell on the cypresses, the house, the water in the pool, and on the four people sitting outside, making them look golden, like gods.

“You should see yourselves,” Ned called, keeping his tone cheerful.

“The light’s amazing.”

In a moment like this, he thought, you could get a pretty good idea of what people loved so much about Provence.

He kept on moving; he didn’t want to get close to the others until he checked himself in the mirror. “I’m gonna shower, be right out.”

“Dude,” Greg called out, “you were supposed to phone me for a ride!”

“Too nice a day,” he shouted back, going around the side of the house to enter through the front, not from the terrace doors where they were.

“Ned, are you all right?” his father called.

They’d told him about earlier, obviously. He supposed they’d had to. He’d been pretty sick.

“I’m fine,” he said, not breaking stride. “Down in twenty minutes.”

He passed Veracook in the hallway and she didn’t seem too alarmed at the sight of him. He looked in the bathroom mirror upstairs. His shoulder hurt, he’d have a bruise, be sore for a couple of days, but nothing worse than what you got in a hockey game, and he didn’t think his cheek looked too bad. They might not even notice.

“OH, MY GOD, Ned! What happened to your face?” Melanie cried, the second he walked out on the terrace with a Coke.

Melanie, he thought. He bet the three men wouldn’t have seen a thing.

He shrugged. “Stupid accident. I got rushed by a dog near the fruit-and-veg market and fell over a caf#233; table.”

“A dog?” his father said.

“Big one, too,” Ned said, taking a chair and stretching out his legs casually. He sipped from his Coke and put it on the table. Larry Cato had told him years ago that when you lied you cut as close to the truth as you could or way far off. One or the other. It was aliens with ray guns, or a dog and a caf#233; table. Larry was the type who had theories about these things.

“What the hell?” Steve said. “Did you, like, get bit?”

“No, no, no. I just fell. He ran off when people yelled at him.”

Melanie had gone into the kitchen. She came back out with ice cubes in a plastic bag, a dish towel wrapped around them. She handed it to him, wordlessly.

“My own fault, probably,” Ned said. “I was jogging through the market and who knows what the dog thought I was. A terrorist or something.” His father looked dubious. “I’m okay, really. A bruise. I’ll live, Dad.” He held the ice dutifully to his face.

“What about earlier?” his father asked. “On the drive?”

He really did have a lot to explain. “That was weird,” Ned said.

“And then it totally went away. Don’t say food poisoning or Veracook will kill herself.”

“We all ate the same food, anyhow,” Melanie said. “I’m thinking motion sickness after jet lag.”

Ned managed a grin. “You just keep thinking, Butch, that’s what you’re good at.”

Steve laughed. Movie joke. Ned saw that his father was still eyeing him.

“I’m fine, Dad. Honestly. How did it go at lunch?”

Edward Marriner leaned back in his chair. “Very pleasant. Perfectly likeable man. Likes his wine. He said he saw the book as more mine than his, so I said the opposite and we got on like a house on fire.”

“Where does that expression come from, anyhow?” Greg asked, of no one in particular.

No one answered. Ned relaxed a little. He heard birds from the slope above the house. Aix gleamed below them, down the valley in the late daylight.

“This,” said Steve, looking the same way, “is pretty cool, have to say.”

It was, Ned thought. There were at least a couple of more hours before sunset, but the light was already turning everything an amber hue and the shadows of the cypresses were falling vividly across the grass.

“I told you,” he said, “you guys were a photograph up here—for your own albums.” A thought occurred to him. “Dad, if you tried Barrett’s money shot right around now the mountain would look pretty goddamned unbelievable.”

“Language, Ned,” his father said, absent-mindedly. “Your mother’s calling soon.”

“Right. And God forbid I swear within an hour of talking to her. She’ll know!”

Steve laughed again.

His father grinned. “Touch#233;. Steve said Barrett’s would be a tourist shot.”

“Maybe not at this hour,” Steve said. “Ned could be right. And those plane trees we told you about—if you didn’t shoot down the alley but across, from the west, with the sun on them, their shadows, maybe an hour later than this…”

“We’ll have a look,” Ned’s father said. “One day when the light looks right we’ll drive out. If I buy it, we can arrange to set up another time. It’s only—what? — twenty minutes from here.”

“Bit more,” said Melanie. “Ned, keep the ice on your cheek.”

Ned put the ice back. It was really cold. He knew what she’d say if he said that. How did someone with a punk look and green-streaked hair get so efficient, that’s what he wanted to know.

“How was the hot date?” Greg asked. “Before the dog had to beat you off her.”

“It wasn’t hot or a date. But it was fine,” Ned said, repressively. There were limits.

“Who is this?” his father asked, predictably.

Ned gave him a look. “Her name’s Lolita LaFlamme, she’s a stripper at the HotBooty Club in town. She’s thirty-six and studying nuclear physics in her spare time.”

Melanie giggled. Edward Marriner raised an eyebrow.

“I do sometimes forget,” his father said slowly, brushing at his moustache with one hand, “that amid the blessings of my life, which are many and considerable, I am raising an adolescent son. Having had your brief moment of dubious wit, my child, could you enlighten me more cogently?”

His father talked like that to be funny, Ned knew. He wasn’t actually upset. You had no doubts when his dad was really angry.

Ned sighed, rattled it off. “Kate Wenger, my age, here for a term at school, exchange from New York. Met her yesterday. Student-geek type. Giving me some help with one of my essays.”

That last, he realized—too late—was a mistake.

Larry Cato would have shaken his head sorrowfully. Dude, never tell more than you need to, he’d have said.

“Ah. Some help? I believe I know what that means. Are you going to copy her paper?”

His father asked it mildly. His mom would have gone ballistic.

“Of course he’s going to copy her paper!” Greg said. “Jeez, cut him some slack, boss, he’s in the south of France!”

“I do know his approximate geographic location,” Ned’s father said, trying to sound stern. He looked at his son a moment. “Very well. Here’s our deal, Ned: you can get notes for one paper from this girl, the other two you write yourself. Fair?”

“Fair.”

It was, especially since they had no way of checking on him. Larry would have called it a no-brainer, flat-out win.

“And no one tells your mother or we’re both in trouble.”

“You think I’m going to tell her?”

“I might,” said Melanie cheerfully, “if some unnamed people aren’t nicer to me.”

“Blackmail,” said Ned darkly, “is a crime, threatening the peace and security of the world.”

On cue, the phone rang inside.

“Shall I get that?” Melanie said sweetly.

But even as she spoke, Edward Marriner was out of his chair and moving through the terrace doors.

They all looked at each other. He’d gone in very fast. It made Ned think for a moment. He wasn’t, obviously, the only one worried about his mother, waiting for that call.

After a bit, as the other three remained silent, he got up and went quietly into the kitchen. His father was at the table they’d set up against the wall in the dining room where the main computer and a telephone were.

Bending to grab an apple from the fridge, Ned could hear his father’s voice. He washed the apple at the sink. Veracook smiled at him again.

Ned heard his dad saying, “That’s not especially far from shelling, Meghan.”

And after a pause, dryly, “Oh, fine then, if someone said they’re going the other way.”

Ned took a bite of the apple, unhappily. He heard, “I’m sorry, Meg, you have to allow us to worry. You can’t stop that any more than we can stop you going.”

He thought about heading back outside. Wasn’t sure he felt good about hearing this. His stomach was tight again.

“Ned’s fine,” his father said. “A bit jet-lagged. Yes, of course he’s concerned, tries to pretend he isn’t.” A pause. “I think he likes the set-up well enough. Who knows at that age? He’s made a friend already, it seems.” Another silence. “No, he hasn’t started his essays. Honey, we’ve been here three days.” He stopped again. “Yes, I’m working. Doesn’t mean—”

His father stopped, and then, surprisingly, laughed.

Edward Marriner’s laughter was different when he was talking to his wife, Ned realized.

“He’s out on the terrace with the others,” he heard, and moved back through the kitchen door, to be out on the terrace with the others.

Melanie glanced up. She didn’t wink or anything, just looked at him.

A little later he heard his father call his name and he went back in and took the phone. His dad walked away.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, honey! How are you?” The connection was pretty good. His mother sounded the way she always did.

“I’m cool. Nice house. A pool and stuff. Come visit.”

She laughed. “Wish I could. Send me jpegs. There’s a satellite link at our base.”

“Okay. So, hey, you all right?”

“I’m fine, sweetie. Busy. There’s lots to be done.”

“I’m sure.”

“They badly need doctors here.”

“I’m sure,” he said again. “Well, all right, okay then, good talking. You take care.”

“Ned?”

“Yeah?”

A little silence. “I really am fine.”

“I believe you.”

A small laugh; he knew that laugh. “Make your father believe me.”

“Not easy, Mom.”

And that was about as much as he intended to say. She was smart, though, she was really smart, and he could tell from the silence that she was trying to think how to reply. “Leave it, Mom,” he said. “Just keep calling.”

“Of course I will. Dad says you’ve made a friend.”

“Yeah, I’m quick that way.”

Another silence, he was a bit sorry about that one.

She said, as he’d been pretty sure she would, “Ned, don’t be angry. Doing this is important for me.”

“Sure,” Ned said. “And you’re doing a lot of good. Stay cool, keep phoning. Don’t worry about us. I’ll get started on my essays soon.”

She was silent again, he could hear her breathing, far away, could picture her face right now.

“Bye, Mom,” he said, and hung up.

It had become necessary to get off the line. He stared down at the phone and took a few deep breaths. He heard his father come back in. He turned around. They looked at each other a moment.

“Damn it to hell,” said Edward Marriner.

Ned nodded. “Yeah,” he said, quietly. “Exactly.”

His father smiled crookedly at him. “Watch your language,” he murmured. And as Ned smiled back, he added, with a rueful shake of his head, “Let’s go for dinner. I’ll let you have a beer.”

THEY WENT TO A BISTRO on the road east, a place out of town towards the mountain, but not so near as to worry Ned about what had happened earlier.

Melanie had picked the place. She had about twenty restaurants in her notebook: phone numbers, specialties, hours. Probably all the chefs’ names, Ned thought. In green ink.

Everyone else had some kind of special asparagus appetizer, and fish, but Ned stayed with steak and frites, a chocolate mousse after, and was happy enough. His shoulder hurt but he’d known it would. His father did actually offer him half a beer but Ned passed. He didn’t much like beer.

His new cellphone rang as they were walking back to the car.

“Damn,” said Greg. “Damn! I knew it was a hot date. How does he get chicks to call him so fast?”

“Better swim trunks,” Melanie said.

“Right. And how would she know that?”

“Women know these things,” Melanie said. It was dark in the parking lot, but Ned was pretty sure she winked at him.

The stars were out by then, winking themselves in a blue-black sky, and the moon, nearly full, had risen while they were inside. He walked away from the others, his sandals crunching on gravel, and answered the phone.

A woman. Not Kate Wenger.

“Hello, is this Ned? Ned Marriner?”

Not a voice he’d ever heard. Speaking English, slight British accent.

“It’s me. Who is this, please?”

“It is you. I’m so glad. Ned, listen carefully. Did anyone hear you ask that question? You need to pretend you’re talking to someone you know.”

“Why do I need to do that?”

It was curious, he really had never heard this voice, but there was something about it, nonetheless. A variant, a riff.

“I’ll answer later, I promise. Can you make an excuse to go out for a bit when you get home from dinner? Running, maybe? I’ll meet you.”

“How do you know I run?”

“I promise answers. Trust me.”

“And how do you know this number?”

“The woman at the house gave it to me. I called there first. Ned, please? We need to meet, somewhere without people.”

“That’s a bad movie line.”

She chuckled at that; it made her sound younger. “It is, isn’t it? Meet me alone by the old oak tree?”

“Then why? Why with no one there?”

She hesitated.

He had, with every word she spoke, more of that sense of something almost recognized.

“Because I can keep track inwardly of anyone approaching,” she said.

“What? How do you…?”

“You know how I do that, Ned. Since yesterday.”

That silenced him pretty fast. He walked a bit farther away.

His father called. “Ned! You’re keeping people waiting. Bad manners. Phone her back from the villa.”

He lifted a hand in agreement. “I have to get back to the others. And you still haven’t said who you are.”

“I know I haven’t.” He heard her draw a breath. “I’m nervous. I didn’t want to do it this way.” Another silence. “I’m your aunt, Ned. Meghan’s older sister. The one who went away.”

Ned felt his heart thud. He gripped the phone tightly. “My…her…? You’re my Aunt Kim?”

“I am, dear. Oh, Ned, where do we meet?”

HE WAS WALKING in the night under that nearly full moon. They’d dropped him at the bottom of the hill where their road wound through trees to the villa. He’d said he wanted to take a walk, it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. His mother probably wouldn’t have let him, his father was easier that way. He’d reminded them he had the cellphone.

He couldn’t jog, he wasn’t wearing running shoes, which gave him more time to think. He listened for a car behind him. He’d given her the best directions he could. She’d said she’d find it. She might be ahead of him, too: he had no idea where she’d been when she called.

He was still in shock, he decided, whatever that actually meant.

He had believed her, on the phone.

Reckless, maybe, but there was no real way not to believe someone saying she was your aunt, the one you’d never met. And it fit with things he’d known all his life—adult talk overheard before sleep, from another room. It also made sense of that feeling he’d had that the voice—accent and all—wasn’t as unknown as it should have been.

It was close to his mother’s, he’d realized, after hanging up.

Things like that could make you believe someone.

The road went up for a pretty fair distance, actually, when you weren’t running. He finally came to the car barrier again. There was a red Peugeot with a rental licence parked there. No one in it. Ned walked around the barrier, came up to the wooden sign again, under stars this time, and turned left towards the tower.

After a few minutes he saw it, looming darkly at the end of the path. He hadn’t been able to think of any other place. It wasn’t as if he knew his way around here. She’d said she wanted to be where no one could sneak up on them.

No crowds here, that was for sure. He was alone on the path. Or he assumed he was. It occurred to him that it would have been smart to bring a flashlight—and in the same moment he saw a beam of light beside the tower. It flicked on and off, on and off.

His heart was beating fast as he walked towards it. Impulsively, feeling a bit stupid, he tried to reach inside himself, to whatever had let him sense the man in the cloister yesterday and again in the caf#233; this afternoon.

He stopped dead in his tracks. He swallowed hard.

The awareness of a presence ahead of him was so strong it was frightening. Once he’d looked for it, there was this glow in his mind where she was: green-gold, like leaves at the beginning of spring.

“That’s me, dear,” he heard her call out. Same voice, same very slight British accent. “Interesting you found me. I think it must be a family thing. I’m going to screen myself now. I don’t want them to know I’m here yet.”

“Why? And who? Whom?”

The man in the caf#233; had talked about that screening thing too. Ned started walking, towards the flashlight, and to where he could sense the glow of her. Not a shining so as to illuminate the night, but within him, placing her in the landscape like some kind of sonar. Then, a moment later, the green-gold went out.

“It’s ‘whom,’ I think,” she said. “Your mother was always better at that sort of thing. Hello, Ned Marriner. Nephew. May I please hug you? Is that unfair?”

She’d been sitting on a boulder beside the low barrier ringing the tower. Now she stood up and came towards him, and in the moonlight Ned saw his aunt for the first time in his life.

He wasn’t sure, actually, how he felt about being hugged, but she opened her arms so he did the same, and he felt her draw him to her, and hold on.

He became aware, after a moment, that she was crying. She let him go and stepped back, wiping at her eyes with the back of one hand. She was slim, not too tall, a lot like his mother.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. This is so uncool, I do know that.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, aunts aren’t usually cool.”

He saw her smile. “I thought I’d try to be,” she said.

She looked at him. For some reason Ned found himself standing as straight as he could. Stupid, really.

“You look wonderful,” she said. “I haven’t seen any pictures since your gran died two years ago.”

Ned blinked. “Gran sent you pictures? Of me?”

“Of course she did, silly. She was so proud of you. So am I.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Ned said. “You never even knew me. To be proud or anything.”

She said nothing for a moment, then turned and went back to the boulder and sat on it again. He followed a few steps. He wished there was more light so he could see her better. Her hair was very pale, could be blond but he was guessing grey. She was older than his mom, six or seven years.

She said, “A lot of things in families don’t make sense, dear. A lot of things in life.”

“Right,” Ned said. “I get that. It’s kind of in my face now.”

“I know. That’s why I came. To tell you it’s all right.”

“How do you know?”

Choosing her words, she said, “Yesterday you entered a space I’ve been in for some time. When it happened I became aware of it, of you, from where I was. The family thing, I guess.”

“Where’s that? Where you were?”

She wasn’t hesitating now. “England. In the southwest. A place called Glastonbury.”

“That’s…where you live?”

“With your uncle, yes. That’s where we live.”

“Why? Why did you go away?”

She sighed. “Oh, Ned. That’s such a long answer. Can I just say, for a bit, that I feel easier there than anywhere else? I have…a complicated connection to it? That isn’t a good answer, but the good one would take all night.”

“Fine, but why did you cut yourself off from…from us?”

It had happened years before he was born, before there’d been any “us,” but she’d know what he meant.

She had clasped her hands loosely, was gazing up at him. It was weird, but even in moonlight he could see how much she looked like his mom. That gesture was his mother’s, even, when she was listening, making herself be patient.

“I didn’t, really. Cut myself off. We always kept track of you three through my mother, your gran. I told you, families are tricky. Meghan felt, rightly I suppose, that I’d done something totally unexpected in getting married so quickly to someone she didn’t even know, moving to England right away. She felt I’d abandoned her. She was…very angry. Didn’t want phone calls, or letters, or emails later. Hung up on me, didn’t write back. She was only seventeen when I left, remember?”

“How can I remember?” he said.

He saw her smile. “Now that sounds like Meghan.”

He made a face. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be, but you do know what I mean? Big sister marries a stranger, city hall, no proper ceremony, moves across the ocean, changes all her life plans? Without any warning. And there was…there was more to it.”

“Like?”

She sighed. “That gets us to the all-night part. Let’s say I was involved in something connected to what you felt yesterday. It runs in our family, Ned, on the maternal side, as far back as I’ve been able to trace, disappearing, showing up again. And in me it included some other things that turned out to be really important. And really, really difficult? That changed me. A lot, Ned. Made it impossible to be what I’d been before. Or stay where I’d been.”

It sounded, weirdly, as if she were asking his forgiveness.

He thought about how he’d felt by the mountain earlier today, and in the cloister before. The impossibility of explaining, making sense of it. “I might be able to understand some of that,” he said.

“Thank you, dear.” She looked up at him. “I thought you’d be feeling afraid, and confused, so I came to let you know you aren’t alone. Not the first. In this.”

She stopped. It seemed she was crying again. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I swore I wouldn’t cry. Your uncle said I didn’t have a hope. I actually bet him.”

“You lose, I guess. Where is he? My uncle.”

She wiped at her eyes with a Kleenex. “I don’t know if I should tell you,” she said.

Ned shook his head. “Too many secrets. Gets screwy.”

She stared up at him. “You’re probably right. Between us, Ned?”

He nodded.

“Dave is north of Darfur.”

It took him a moment. “The Sudan? But that’s…my mom is…”

“Your mother’s there, yes. Your uncle’s watching over her.”

His mouth had dropped open, comically, like in a cartoon. “Does she…does my mom know that?”

His aunt laughed aloud. A burst of amusement that made her seem much younger. “Does Meghan know? Are you crazy? Ned, she’d…she’d spit, she’d be so angry!”

He honestly couldn’t imagine his mother spitting. Maybe as a ten-year-old…but he couldn’t picture her as ten, either. Or seventeen, feeling abandoned by her sister.

He said, really carefully, “Let me get this. My uncle is there secretly? To keep an eye on my mom?”

Aunt Kim nodded. “I told you, we’ve been keeping track of all of you. But she’s the one I worry about.”

“Why her?”

She was silent.

“Too many secrets,” he repeated.

“This is your mother, dear. It isn’t fair, this conversation we’re having.”

“So it isn’t fair. Tell me. Why?”

Gravely, his aunt said, “Because I think Meghan does some of what she does—the war zones, choosing the worst places—as a response to what I told her I’d done, just before I went away. I made a mistake, telling her.”

Ned said nothing. He couldn’t begin to think of what to say. He felt shaky.

She saw that, went on talking, quietly. “She’d thought…I would be an ambitious doctor, try to do good in a big way. I’d talked like that to her when she was young. Big sister, kid sister, sharing my future. Then I…had that experience, and everything changed. I went off to some village in England to spend my life doing country medicine. Childbirth and checkups. Runny noses, flu shots. Everything scaled way down. After the one very big thing she never understood, or accepted.”

“That’s…what you do?”

She smiled. “Runny noses? Yes, it is. I also have a garden,” she added.

Ned rubbed at the back of his head. “And you think…?”

“I think Meghan’s been showing me, and herself, what she believes I should have been like. What I rejected. Along with rejecting her. And she’s proving she can do it better.”

Ned was silent. After pushing to hear this, he wasn’t sure he’d been right, if this was something he really wanted to know.

“Ned, listen. People do wonderful things for complicated reasons. It happens all the time. Your mother is a hero where she goes. People are in awe of her. Maybe you don’t know that—she probably doesn’t tell. But your uncle knows, he’s been there, he’s seen it.”

“He’s done this before?”

“Only when we knew she was going somewhere very bad.” She hesitated. “Three times, before this one.”

“How? How did you know where she was going?”

He thought he saw her make a wry face in the darkness. “Dave’s talented at quite a few things. Computers are one of them. He could explain it better than I can.”

Ned thought, then he stared. “Jesus! My uncle hacked Doctors Without Borders? Their server?”

Aunt Kim sighed. “I’ve never liked that word. Hacked is so illegal-sounding.”

“Well, it is illegal!”

“I suppose,” she said, sounding cross. “I’ve told him I don’t approve. He says he needs to know what she’s doing with enough time to get there himself.”

Ned shook his head stubbornly. “Great. So he just drops his own life and goes there too. And…and what was Uncle Dave going to do if Mom was attacked or kidnapped by insurgents? In Iraq or Rwanda, or wherever? The crazy places.”

The anger he lived with, the fear, dull as an ache, hard as a callus in the heart.

His aunt said, quietly, “Don’t ask that until you’ve met him. Ned, you won’t ever know anyone more capable of dealing with such places. Believe me.”

He looked at her. “And he does this because…?”

“He does it for me. Because I feel responsible.”

There was something different in her voice now. Ned looked down at her, where she was sitting on the rock, hands still clasped.

“Wow,” he said finally, shaking his head again. “That is controlling. I thought my mom was bad. Is it another family thing? Last I checked she was forty-something years old. And you still feel responsible for her?”

Her laughter again, rueful this time. “If I plead guilty to being a worrier, will you let me off with a reprimand? And please—Ned, you mustn’t tell her!”

“She’ll spit?”

“She’ll want to murder me with a machete.”

“My mother? Are you—?”

“Shh! Hold on!”

Her tone had changed completely; there was a command in it, startlingly. Ned froze, listening. Then he, too, heard a sound.

“Shit,” whispered his aunt. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You swore,” Ned pointed out, a reflex; it was what he did when his mother’s language slipped.

“Hell, yes!” said his aunt, which wasn’t his mother’s reply. “We may be in trouble. Damn! My mistake, a bad one. But why would they attack us? What have you been doing here, Ned?”

“Why would who attack us?”

“Wolves.”

“What? No way. Wolves are mostly vegetarian. I learned that in school last year.”

“Then tell these to go find the salad bar,” said Aunt Kim, grimly.

Ned heard a crackle of twigs and leaves from the woods north of them, near the place where the path sloped down towards the city.

“Do you have anything? A pocket knife?” Aunt Kim asked.

He shook his head. The question chilled him.

“Find a stick then, fast, and get back towards the tower.” She flicked on her flashlight and played the beam on the ground between them and the trees.

Ned caught a glimpse of eyes shining.

He was very afraid then, unreal as it all seemed. As Kim ran her beam across the ground nearer to them Ned saw a broken branch and darted forward to claim it.

As he did, he heard his aunt, her voice hard, icy, speaking words in a language he didn’t know, followed by silence from the darkness.

“What?” he mumbled, hurrying back beside her, breathing hard.

“What did you just…?”

“I asked why they’ve come to trouble the living.”

“The living? You mean humans, right? Us?”

“I mean what I said. These are spirits, Ned, taking an animal shape. They have come early, they aren’t as strong as they will be in two nights.”

Two nights.

Right, Ned thought. He knew that part. Beltaine. Hinge of the year, when souls were abroad.

Or so his gran had told him, along with other tales of the old ways. His gran had been named Deirdre and had grown up in Wales, half Welsh, half Irish. The woman beside him now was her older daughter. Things he needed to deal with were coming really fast and he didn’t know what any of it meant.

There was a green-gold presence inside him again, though, when he looked. That was Kim. She wasn’t screening herself any more.

“Were you speaking Welsh?”

“Gaelic. Closer to what they’d have spoken back when. I hope.”

“You speak Gaelic?” A dumb question.

“Took me long enough to learn. My accent’s terrible, but they’ll understand me if I’m right.”

Back when. When was that? he wanted to ask. Sometimes when you had this many questions, Ned thought, you didn’t have a clue where to start.

Another sound, to his right this time, back up the path. They were a long way from the car barrier and her car, from the road, lights, from anyone.

“You didn’t answer me,” Kim said. “Ned, what have you been doing to draw these to you?”

“Nothing on purpose, believe me. I met someone in the cathedral. Who…he…it’s complicated.”

“I’m sure,” she said dryly. “It tends to be.”

She motioned, and they moved together, stepping over the low rail towards the curved tower wall, backs to it, facing outwards. For the moment her words in that other language seemed to have frozen the creatures out there.

She flashed her beam at a sound again, found another wolf. Four of them, five? They were both peering in that direction when Ned heard a scrabbling sound to his left, beyond his aunt.

Without stopping to think, an entirely instinctive movement, he stepped past her and swung the branch up and around, hard, like a baseball bat.

He cracked the wolf on the side of the head. It was heavier than the dog had been this afternoon. It didn’t spin or flip, but it went down. Ned cried out as his injured shoulder felt the impact.

His aunt swore again. Ned heard her snap something, almost snarling it herself, in the same tongue as before, and though he couldn’t understand a word he felt himself go cold with the ferocity of what she said.

Cold in fire, he thought. There was a word for that, the sort of stupid thing you got asked on English tests.

Kim repeated whatever she’d said, same cadences, more slowly. Ned almost felt a collective intake of breath in the night, as if the very darkness was reacting to her. He was down on a knee, holding his shoulder. The wolf lay near enough for him to see it. It wasn’t moving.

“Well done,” his aunt said to him quietly. “Are you hurt?”

“Shoulder, not from now. I had to fight a dog this afternoon.”

“What? Ned, what have you been doing?”

“I got mixed up in something. He said after that they were just playing games. With him, not me.”

She was still a moment. Then, “Who said that, Ned?”

“The man from the cathedral. He’s part of all this, I think.”

“Well, of course he is. That’s why you’re being tracked. Can you reach him?”

“What? Like a text message?”

She actually chuckled, briefly. She was cool, he decided, even if aunts weren’t supposed to be. “No, not that. Can you see him the way you saw me, looking inside?”

He hesitated. “I have done that. Seen him. Twice. He said he can screen himself.”

“I’m sure he can. I can’t see him. You try.”

Ned tried. He had the same foolish feeling as before, though not quite the same, if he thought about it. His aunt was here, and he could sense the glow of her, within.

Only that, however. Not the scarred man who’d told them in the cloister that he had no name. He shook his head. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he said.

“Why should you?” she replied, gently. “That’s a reason I came, to tell you it’s all right not to know.”

“That’s why?”

She nodded. “And a few other things.”

The wolves hadn’t made a sound since she’d spoken, or since he’d cracked one of them with the branch.

“Have they gone?” he asked.

Kim turned and looked out. He had a sense she wasn’t really looking, or not with her eyes.

“They’re waiting,” she said. “I really wish I knew what this was about. How’s your shoulder?”

“Never play tuba again.”

She made an exasperated sound. “How terribly funny. You are just like your mother.”

“Mom joked like that?”

“At your age? Endlessly.”

It was news to him, that was for sure.

“What are they waiting for?” he asked.

“We’ll know soon enough. Keep trying to find your friend.”

“He isn’t my friend, believe me.”

A sound behind them. A voice in the same instant.

“He is not. You would do well to remember it.”

They whipped around together. To see something that never left Ned—even with all that was to come. What appears to us first on a threshold is often what lingers afterwards.

A very big, broad-shouldered man stood in front of the broken opening in the tower. He had long, bright hair, a heavy golden necklace, and golden armbands. He was clad in a tunic and a darker fur-lined vest, with leggings, and sandals tied up around his calf.

And he was antlered like a stag.

It wasn’t a horned helmet or anything like that, which was Ned’s first thought. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. The antlers grew straight out of his head.

It was in that moment that Ned Marriner finally accepted that he had entered into a world for which nothing in life had prepared him. There was no denial left in him; he felt fear coil and twist like a snake in his body.

“How did you get in there?” he stammered.

“He flew down. Most likely as an owl,” said his aunt, with what seemed to him an awesome calm. “Why not take your own form?” she added, almost casually, to the man-beast in front of them.

“Playing at shapes is a game. And this form is disrespectful. Even sacrilege.”

“Not wise the thought,” the antlered figure said. They were speaking French to each other, in an oddly formal way. “In my own guise I am too beautiful for you, woman. You would beg me to take you, right here, with the child watching.”

Ned bristled, clenching his fists, but his aunt only smiled.

“Unlikely,” she murmured. “I have seen beautiful men, and managed to keep my self-control.”

She paused, looking up at him, and then added, “I have also seen the god whose form you are copying, and his son, who commanded wolves far more deadly than these weak spirits.” Her voice changed again. “You have some small shape-shifting power. I see it. Do not expect me to quail. I knew men and women with so much more than that, there are no words for the telling. Do not ever doubt me. I am offering iron-bound truths by moonlight at the edge of an oak grove.”

Ned shivered. He couldn’t help it.

This is my aunt, he thought.

The yellow-haired figure with the antlers of a stag stared at her for a long time. “If you speak of the wolflord or the god so carelessly, one or both might make you pay a price.”

“True enough. If I did so carelessly.”

The figure in front of them hesitated. “You are very sure of yourself, woman. Who are you? Why have you come into this? It is nothing to you, nothing for you.”

Kim shook her head. “I haven’t come into anything, except to guard my sister-son. He has no power, only the beginnings of sight, and is no danger to you. He is to be left alone.”

“Ah! She makes a demand. And if I do not accede?”

Ned heard his mother’s older sister say, quietly, “Then depend on it: I will summon powers that will blast you out of time to an ending. And you will never do what you have come to do.”

Silence in front of them. Nothing from the wolves behind. Ned wondered if the others could hear the thudding of his heart.

“It is a wise man who knows his true enemies,” Kim added, softly.

“You do not even know what this is about. What I am come to do.” But there was doubt in the deep voice now. Ned could hear it.

“Of course I don’t,” Aunt Kim said crisply. “Nor do I care. Do what you must. I have told you my only purpose. Accept it, and we are gone. Do not, and you have only yourself to blame if all you dream of goes awry.”

“The boy fought this afternoon beside a man I must kill.”

“Then kill that man if it is your destiny to do so. But the boy is mine and will remain untouched. He has no wish to interfere.”

“Is it so? Can he speak for himself, or does a woman do all for him, as for a suckling babe?”

Aunt Kim opened her mouth to reply, but Ned, angered, said, “I can speak just fine. I have no idea what that was this afternoon, but someone I’d had a drink with was attacked. Would you have stood by?”

Another silence. “The cub has a tooth,” the man said, laughing suddenly, a deep-throated, genuine amusement. The rich sound rolled over them. “Of course I would not have stood by. Shame to my family and tribe, to do so. That does not mean you might not have died.”

“He said you were playing games.”

Another explosion of laughter, the antlered head thrown back in delight. It was thrilling, as much as it was frightening.

“Truthfully? Did he say that?” The fair-haired figure looked at Ned. “Ah, you give me pleasure! By all the gods, I am his master. He knows it with every narrow breath he draws. And as for you: children have died in games-playing.”

“Games like that, I can imagine.” Ned was still furious. “So tell me, give me pleasure now, did I kill your four-legged friend today? With the chair?”

He felt Kim’s hand on his arm, cautioning him. He didn’t feel like being cautioned.

The antlered figure said, “He was in a form he’d taken for the moment. No more than that. He is behind you now in another shape. Tell me, foolish child, what do you think this is about?”

“We told you,” Kim snapped. “We don’t know what this is. And will not claim any role. Unless you compel it.” She paused, then added, her voice going colder again, “Will you compel me? Shall I summon Liadon from his sacrifice?”

Amazed, Ned saw the tall figure take a quick step backwards in shocked surprise, the head lifting again, the antlers caught by moonlight.

“You know a name you ought not to know,” he said after a long moment. His voice had gone quiet. “It is guarded and holy.”

“And I am one with access to it,” Kim said. “And I have seen the one you mock with your horns.”

“I do not mock,” the man protested, but he sounded defensive now.

“Playing a game dressed in his antlers? No? Really? Are you the child, to be forgiven by your elders? Not yet come of age?”

The man before them said, “Have done, woman! I have been among these groves and pools, coming and going, returned and gone, for past two thousand years!”

Ned swallowed hard. He heard the man say, “Is that a child, to you?”

Ned was intimidated now, really afraid, wondering at his own recklessness a moment before, but Aunt Kim said only, “It can be. Of course it can! Depending on what you have done, coming and going. Show me otherwise: go from us, and not in his shape. I wish to return to my own home. This is your place, not mine. Swear to leave the boy in peace and I am gone from your games. And your battles.”

The tall, glorious figure stared down at her, as if trying to penetrate through moonlight to some deeper truth. “What is your name?”

Kim shook her head. “I will not give you that tonight.”

He smiled then, another unexpected flash of teeth, and laughed again. “A sorrow to my heart. I would give you the gift of mine, and freely, bright one, if I had a name here.”

Kim didn’t smile back. She said, “You are waiting for one?”

“She will name me. She always does.”

“Both of you?” Kim said.

Ned had been chasing the same thought.

A hesitation, again. “Both of us.” He looked down at her. “And then it begins, and I may kill him again, and taste the joy of it.”

He looked at Kim another moment, ignoring Ned entirely now; then he lifted his great head and rasped words in yet another tongue Ned didn’t know. They heard a growling sound in reply; twigs snapped on the ground behind them as the animals left.

“You will not enter into it?” the antlered man said again to Kim.

“Not unless you force me,” she repeated. “You will have to live with that as sufficient surety.”

His teeth showed again. “I have lived with less.”

He turned, ducking through the opening into the round, tall tower, twisting his head so the horns could pass through.

They stood a moment, waiting. There was a quick, sharp sound and they looked up and Ned saw an owl fly through the open tower top and away, to the north.

They watched it go.

Kim sighed. “I told him to change his shape. He does like to play, I guess.”

Ned looked at his aunt. He cleared his throat.

“That was extremely close,” she murmured. She leaned against his good shoulder. “I haven’t tried anything like that in a long time.”

“What do you mean?”

Kim stepped back and looked at him.

“Oh, dear. Ned, did you think I could do any of what I said?”

He nodded. “Um, yeah, I kind of did.”

She sighed. “Fooled you, then,” she said.

He stared at her. He felt cold. “You were bluffing? Could…could they guess that?”

Her mouth twitched in an expression he actually knew well, from his mother. “I guess they didn’t. But damn it all sideways and backwards, I so wish your uncle were here.”