Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy)

by Ari Berk

  “My rooms? This is the door to my house. In Lichport.”

  “Yes?” said Lars. “Yes. We are in Lichport. Well, just at the edge of it. In your family’s house. And these are your rooms. Silas? Are you all right? Your face has gone positively white!”

  Silas stepped up to the door again and ran his hands over the painted wood. It was the door to his house. Here was a patch of chipped paint; he’d picked it away one day waiting on the porch for . . . for someone he couldn’t quite recall. The handle of the door was familiarly worn. It was the same door. Where am I? he thought with rising panic. I am in Arvale. I am a part of this house. This is an illusion, an image. The house is showing me that we are connected, that I am a part of this place. That I belong here. Nothing more, he told himself, trying to soothe his fraying nerves. But Silas still felt somewhere down in his gut that what he was looking at was more spider’s web than welcome mat.

  Lars was standing behind him, clearly worried by Silas’s abrupt change in mood. Silas composed himself and clapped Lars reassuringly on the arm.

  “It’s okay, cousin,” Silas said to Lars. “Let’s go in.”

  Past the door, the room before him was familiar as well, but only in portions, as though certain pieces of the rooms from his house had fallen into this one, or been laid over it. There was his father’s desk, but behind was a paneled wall, much older than the wall of his house back in town. Here were bookshelves with familiar carvings, but these were nearly empty, whereas his shelves at home were spilling with volumes.

  “It will feel more homely once we lay a fire,” Lars said, moving to the hearth, taking dry wood from a copper bucket and arranging it on the grate. He took out a tinderbox and a moment later small flames licked at the little branches at the bottom of the pile.

  Other objects in the room at first seemed new to him, but as he gazed upon them—the medieval chest and table; the large, elaborate Jacobean mantel; the tapestries on the walls—everything began to feel familiar, and a voice in his mind said, This is your room, Silas. It has always been your room. It always shall be.

  Silas shook his head. “Show me the rest,” he said to Lars, trying to focus. In the far corner, a small staircase led to an upper floor. Ascending, Lars showed Silas a bedchamber holding a massive four-poster bed and a smaller but no less elaborate fireplace. On the far side of the room, stairs that were little more than thick stone blocks protruding out of the wall led to yet another floor above.

  “Tower room,” said Lars. “They must like you. You’ll be able to look over the whole front of the estate from here. A room with any kind of view is rare here, most are taken, but a little tower all to yourself must be accounted very fine.”

  Curious, Silas climbed the stairs and emerged onto the roof, which was surrounded by a low circular wall about three feet high. It was open to the air. Silas looked out over the wall, over the battlements of Arvale. Night had finally come in and he could see lights in the hundreds of windows in other parts of the house. Beyond the forest, there were even tinier glimmers, perhaps from Lichport. There were cries of birds coming from beyond the woods, from what might have been the salt marshes. It was hard to identify now what anything was beyond the estate. Silas’s sense of place had been turned upside down. Even if that was Lichport away in the distance, was it his Lichport? Or the Lichport Lars knew? In his walk to Arvale, how far had he actually come? He gazed at the lights, willing his vision through night’s obscuring veil, trying to see something, anything, familiar. He couldn’t, but as he closed his strained eyes, Silas told himself it was his Lichport in the distance. It had to be. He needed it to be.

  Lars stepped up to Silas’s side.

  “If I may say, I’m glad you’ve come to live at Arvale, Silas. There aren’t really any other people my age here. I’ve just been sort of waiting for the right time to go home. Just seemed easier to stay on at Arvale, though it’s not really a life, if you take my meaning. But now that you’re here—”

  “Lars, I’m not staying at Arvale. I was asked to come. It’s sort of a family tradition. I won’t be here long. I am obligated to this house, in some way, but when that obligation is met, I’m going home. People are waiting for me back home. My mom sometimes needs my help. It’s been hard for her lately, and I don’t want to leave her alone longer than I have to. I have work waiting there for me too. It’s difficult to explain, but I feel like I shouldn’t stay away from Lichport too long.”

  “Oh, I understand,” said Lars, retreating. “I mean, I know that on your side of the family, there are duties that I don’t understand, could never understand. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .” Lars’s words broke off, his face going long and Silas could see that now neither one of them was entirely at ease. Silas felt awkward. He’d only really ever had one friend. In that moment, Silas realized he wasn’t very good at making living people feel comfortable. Maybe Lars hadn’t noticed—maybe he was a loner too. One thing was certain: Silas needed Lars’s help at Arvale and hoped there might be some way, at some point, he could help Lars in return. He looked at Lars and said, “I am really glad you’re here. The others, you know they’re not like us.” But the half-truth tasted ashen in Silas’s mouth, for how much did he and Lars truly have in common, really? They were both from Lichport, and must be close in age, but did they share anything more than that? Anything at all?

  “I know,” Lars replied, looking away at the tiny lights in the distance. “The folk in this house are strange, but I try not to think about it. Everyone is queer in their way, aren’t they? It’s easier being here if you just go from one moment to the next and don’t ask too many questions. It’s hard to remember things sometimes too. Hard to remember how long you’ve been standing somewhere, or how long you’ve been talking to someone. Hard to know where in the house you are at any one time, though I’ve gotten better at that.” Lars paused and looked down at the earth far below them. “I’ve stayed only because it never seems just the right moment to go back and, I guess, because the forgetting has become a comfort to me. There are some matters I’d rather not think about.”

  “I understand. I’ve felt like that too. Lots of times. Not being able to feel one day slip into the next. Have you never tried to go home?”

  “Yes, but I got lost. Took a wrong turn, I guess, and after a long night in the woods, I found myself back at Arvale. I don’t suppose I really wanted to go back to Lichport anyway.”

  Lars looked up, and he seemed embarrassed.

  “Lars, it’s okay. Really. You can tell me anything you like,” Silas said. Then he had an idea. “You know you could come back with me, right? It’s not easy going back to where you started. Believe me, Lars, I know. But we could go back to Lichport together and maybe if we help each other, we could both find what we’re looking for.”

  Almost as soon as the words left Silas’s mouth, he regretted them. What would he be taking Lars back to? Lars’s state of existence remained a point of confusion, but Silas guessed a few things: Lars was not a ghost of the house. He was like him, a living person. This also seemed to imply that the world Lars had once known had long since passed away while Lars lingered, outside of time, at Arvale. Still, maybe there was some way to help him go back home, even if it could never be the Lichport Lars had left.

  “Silas, I couldn’t go back.”

  “Everyone has problems at home, Lars. They get better only when you face them.”

  “It’s not just that. Things happened back in Lichport, Silas. Things I don’t like remembering, things I can’t fix. I’m a coward. I fled and didn’t look back, and I know that because of me, terrible things happened.”

  Silas looked at Lars. He was shaking, and had brought his arm up to hide his face.

  “It’s okay, Lars. Come back with me. I’ll help you all I can.”

  “I can’t, Silas,” said Lars. He wiped his face and looked up, sniffing. “I can’t go back and I can’t tell you what happened.”

  Silas put his arms around Lars’s
shoulder. “That’s fine. But if you change your mind about talking about it, my offer stands. I want to help.”

  After they returned to the bedchamber below, Lars said he’d come back later to get Silas for dinner, and that he should rest, since it had been such a long walk to Arvale, and that the evening’s revels would certainly go very late. Lars descended the stairs and Silas could hear the door close.

  Weary, Silas lay upon the bed. As soon as he closed his eyes, a dream caught him all up in its strange, strong arms and held him down. He was sitting at the desk back in his study in Lichport. On the other side of the window, rain threw itself against the glass. On the desk in front of him stood a brimming goblet of greenish water. Mrs. Bowe was standing next to him.

  “Let me help you,” she said slowly.

  “No!” Silas insisted. “I don’t need your help.”

  “Don’t be so proud, child! If you’re thirsty, Silas, drink!” With that, Mrs. Bowe pushed the goblet over on the desk. Water poured from its mouth, gushing forth out of all proportion like a river through a burst dam. The weedy water quickly covered the floor, and when he looked up, Mrs. Bowe was gone and the door to the study was closed and locked, and the water was rising. A familiar shadow arrayed itself on the floor and stood up from the now swirling waters, growing lithe. Who was it? Silas could almost recall. The room was becoming a whirlpool as Silas leapt on top of the desk. The shadow drew substance from the churning foam and water-weeds and though it had no mouth, it hissed enticingly in a girl’s voice. “Speak my name, Silas! Silas, speak my name!” Silas knew there had been a name and that he’d once known it, once breathed its syllables like the very air. But the more he grasped for it in his throat, trying desperately to pull the name up into his mind, the further down it fell inside him, lost again in the lightless dungeon of his fear-twisted guts. All the while, the waters rose, and beneath where the shadow stood, a black, swirling hole pierced the water’s surface and drew everything down into its depths. Then, even as the desk was pulled toward the eye of the whirlpool, a bell rang out, and the waters grew quiet and the shadow sank away. There was only the bell, and in its sound, a name clanged and rang; his own name, but no other. He followed it away from the water.

  THE SOUL BELL IN LICHPORT WAS RINGING.

  Silas turned his face toward the sound, eyes still closed.

  Then a knocking began, somewhere below the carved bed on which he lay, below the floor, in a lower room. Silas opened his eyes. He sat up and heard someone close the door and then come up the stairs to the bedchamber. A feeling of helplessness lingered from his dream, but he was used to that sensation and he fought against it, breathing deeply as he stood up, regaining his center, his inner calm. With every breath, he felt better, more himself, but as he looked around at the queer semi-familiarity of the room, Silas remembered where he was, and his stomach dropped back into a state of queasy, nervous expectation. He needed to eat.

  “Time for dinner, cousin Silas.” Lars smiled as he got Silas’s coat from the chair and held it up for him.

  Silas put the coat on over his jacket and pulled his fingers through sleep-tousled hair.

  “This will have to do. I’m ready, cousin Lars,” said Silas, trying hard to put a good face on his apprehension about what might await him downstairs.

  They descended the stairs and made ready to leave, but just before Silas opened the door, he paused, unsure of what was on the other side. He wondered for a moment if he would open the door and look out and onto the Main Street of Lichport. Lars pushed past Silas, opening the door for him. Silas looked out. The dimly lit corridors of Arvale awaited. Still here, thought Silas. Not a dream. Not home.

  Silas followed Lars down the long corridor, the bell ringing all the while. The route they took looked different to Silas from the one they had taken before. Different paneling. Different portraits on the walls, different passages. This was a much longer walk. “Taking the scenic route?” he said to Lars.

  “Not at all. This is the most direct path to the great hall.”

  “But this is certainly not the way we came earlier. . . .”

  “True. But it is later now, and that path is no longer available to us.”

  Silas was also wondering why they weren’t seeing anyone else on their long walk to the great hall. Weren’t others coming to dinner?

  “Where is everyone? I thought the way to dinner would be crowded with so much of the family dining at once?”

  “You’ll see them in the great hall. That is a place of assembly. If you want to meet others, you’ll have to seek them out in their own manses, or rooms.”

  “But never just around the house?”

  “The halls and corridors are filled with voices and shadows, so who can say? But you and I, we’re different, aren’t we? No one here is interested in me. If you were walking alone, you might have a very different experience.”

  “No, thank you,” said Silas. “I am more than happy with your company! Indeed, though we’ve known each other only a short time, I’m sure I’d be lost without you, Lars!”

  “Truly, you would be lost.”

  “However did you get used to this place?”

  “I told you. I just keep going. I don’t stop to ask questions. Not that anyone would answer my questions anyway. I was hoping you might tell me a little more about this house.”

  “Lars, I just got here. . . .”

  “But this is your sort of place, isn’t it? I mean, as Undertaker.”

  So he knows something of this business, then, Silas thought. Why wouldn’t he? People in Lichport have always known what an Undertaker was.

  “You don’t find it all just too strange, then?” Silas asked, testing him.

  “I was born in Lichport, Silas. Very little seems strange to me. What surprises me is your surprise, and you an Undertaker and all!” Lars clapped Silas on the back. “Come along, we’re almost there!”

  As they approached the great hall, Silas could hear the noise of a gathered company. Loud exclamations, snatches of song, the orchestra of sounds made by plate and glass and silverware. The light coming from the entrance to the great hall was exceedingly bright, and as he approached, Silas covered his eyes to shield them from the glare. Lars took Silas by the other arm and led him through the archway.

  The great hall was lit by a thousand golden candles. Silas squinted and looked around, trying to take in the details as they emerged out of the glow. What he saw was more dream than dinner party, more phantasmagoria than family reunion. The harder he looked, the more he recalled the vision his great-grandfather had had when they were searching for his father: the high resplendent hall, the rich tapestries . . . the gathered familial throng. On and on their numbers went. It may have been a trick of the candlelight, but the hall seemed longer than when he first arrived, the front door, nearly a mile away to Silas’s distorted vision. All the particulars began to blend into a riot of sensation and color and texture suffused with an inexplicable and intoxicating joy, for in this hall he was no longer one person in isolation, but a part of a continuum, a family, a real family, so very much bigger than himself. The mighty presence of kin made him feel there was only clan, only tribe, only the long line of names stringing back to the first lighting of the world.

  The glow of the fire playing off the crystal drinking glasses, shining off the silver settings, glinting off the jewels of the family’s rich attire, swirled before his eyes and colored the air of the hall with a prism, as though the entire scene was being viewed through an ancient, iridescent shard of Roman glass.

  Maud rose from her chair and walked over, welcoming Silas and Lars into the hall. She showed Silas to a chair on the dais that stood before the fire at the high end of the table. He was to sit between Maud and Jonas. All the other seats were taken. Indeed, some members of the family sat upon the floors and stood about the hall, eating from trenchers they held in their laps and hands.

  When Silas saw there was no seat for Lars, he said, a little dreamily,
“Aunt Maud, I would like to sit with my cousin Lars, if it’s not too much trouble?”

  Maud looked as though she was about to complain, but then said, “Silas, you are the guest of honor, so tonight, let it be as you wish.” She raised her hand and one of the grooms left the hall and returned at a trot with a chair that he placed between Silas and Jonas. As Silas and Lars sat down, Lars whispered, “You shouldn’t have done that. They won’t like it.”

  Silas whispered back, “In large rooms, it’s best to keep your friends close. Besides, I’m going to need you to tell me what half this stuff is on the table.”

  Lars put his hand on Silas’s shoulder and said, smiling, “Cousin, it will be a pleasure.”

  “What’s this?” Silas asked more loudly than he’d intended, pointing at two bowls that had been placed in front of him as soon as he sat down.

  Before Lars could answer, Jonas leaned over toward Silas and said, “Spelt and salt, as is fitting.”

  “Am I supposed to eat that?” questioned Silas.

  “Be easy. It is for you, but not for you to eat. The grain and salt are offerings. This is customary.”

  “Offerings to me?”

  “Offerings to the Janus. But very shortly, it will all be one and the same.”

  More and more food was being brought in, and everywhere, people were piling it onto plates and into bowls. As Lars whispered into Silas’s ears the names of foods and drinks and delicacies of every sort, Silas’s feeling of inebriation grew, even before his third cup of spiced wine had been emptied. He wondered briefly about the safety of tasting the food at Arvale, the food of the dead, but Lars was eating with gusto, and the very air grew wonderfully heavy with music and familiarity, and all his questions swiftly dissolved. His blood mellowed and slowed, perhaps from the proximity of so many kin, so much consanguinity, as though the house was the one heart beating for all. And the wine was good and the air was warm and filled with voices and all of them spoke his name. It was hard to see where any one voice came from. All mouths were moving at once. Everyone was drinking, singing, and exclaiming, and the bright candlelight played on Silas’s vision, making the forms of some folks appear almost transparent. He could see bodies through bodies, every person framed within the form of another.