“I’m trying to figure it out. . . . In the dream, Camelot was right here, so . . . do you think this is where Camelot used to be, or where it’s going to be?”
“What?”
“Remember when I asked Father Crombie if Camelot could ever be real again?”
“No. . . . Well, yeah, maybe.”
“He said it could come back if people believed in it like they believe in money. Remember? Well, maybe Arthur showed me Taubolt in the dream so I would know this is where he’s coming back to.” Joby turned back to face the window again. “You know what I dreamed last night, Benjamin?”
Benjamin waited, wondering if Arthur had talked to Joby again.
“I dreamed I was in the dark with candles burning all around me. . . . Hundreds of them, as far as you could see. Like Father Crombie’s talk. Remember? About being lights in the dark?” Joby looked back out the window. “I have that dream a lot.”
Benjamin just stared at Joby, thinking he’d never seen him farther off in that world of his than he was now.
The inn clerk had told them they were in luck; spring tides were exposing even more of the sea floor than usual. They’d had to rise just after dawn to catch the ocean’s lowest ebb, but for Miriam it had been worth it just to watch the tiny smile come and go on her husband’s face all morning as he’d watched their son and his best friend crouch side by side among the weed-draped rocks, pointing, exclaiming, and occasionally thrusting a hand into the water after some darting creature or bit of shell.
Earlier, they’d been able to walk out to the closest rock stacks in what locals called Smuggler’s Bay. Miriam had forgotten how much color the ocean hoarded. Pink, lavender, yellow, orange, brilliant red, violet, and blue flashed everywhere from beneath heavy shrouds of iridescent brown algae or bright green mermaid’s hair. Glinting shards of abalone shell were wedged into every crevice. They’d found several of the sun stars Miriam remembered from her childhood visit. Kelp and porcelain crabs, like armored alien tanks; slithering brittle stars; bright red sea bats; sculpin like tiny water dragons; bright purple urchins as thick as carpet in the larger pools; huge fluorescent green anemones, and beds of smaller lavender ones. Joby seemed to know all their names, and had made it clear that seeing his library books come to life was the best birthday gift they could have given him.
Hours earlier, pale spring sunlight had gilt the town, then crested the surrounding cliff tops to cast a brilliant glamour over the glimmering liquid landscape at their feet. Breathing the salt air, listening to the swish of surf and the cry of gulls wheeling in the clear sky above her, Miriam was overwhelmed by Taubolt’s loveliness and wondered why her father had ever left it.
She supposed he’d fled the isolation. Taubolt seemed even farther from the real world than mere distance accounted for. The inn didn’t even accept credit cards! Fortunately, they’d brought checks. Their rooms were furnished with large, four-posted feather beds, glossy mahogany wardrobes, and end tables that looked like real antiques, making Miriam feel as if she’d stepped back in time to her own grandmother’s house in Salem, Oregon. There’d been lace curtains and fresh-cut flowers in every room. Yet the prices were so reasonable. She wondered if the proprietor was aware of how much such lodging went for in the larger world these days.
The night before, after the boys had been settled into their own room, Frank had taken her for a candlelit nightcap in the richly appointed bar beneath the inn’s grand old staircase. There they’d met a few of the other guests and been amazed to discover that none of them had come to Taubolt intentionally. They’d all been drawn aside by whimsy or curiosity on their way to someplace farther up or down the coast. Later, in the privacy of their room, she and Frank had shared a good laugh over the bartender’s almost frightened expression when they’d told him they’d actually come looking for Taubolt. “Like he’d seen a ghost!” Frank had laughed, suggesting it might be time to get a more effective chamber of commerce.
“He didn’t even have the nerve to deliver it himself,” Gabe reported indignantly. “There’s some terrified little functionary outside, trembling so badly that I’m tempted to take his hand and help him find his mommy.”
“Stress management, Gabe. Remember?” the Creator said, still perusing Lucifer’s letter. “So . . . My wayward angel thinks he’s caught Me violating the terms of our wager. I guess we’d better go dash his hopes before he gets too attached to them. I’ve no intention of letting him win that easily.”
“Or at all, I should think,” Gabe said pointedly.
To the angel’s discomfort, the Creator only said, “Go tell Lucifer’s messenger that we’ll come resolve his master’s misunderstanding. Suggest that park in San Francisco. I haven’t been there in ages. It should be lovely this time of year.”
“ . . . Happy birthday to yooooooou!”
Everyone around them clapped and cheered as the singing ended. The waitress had brought out a chocolate cake festooned with candles, and Joby was determined to eat half of it himself, despite being stuffed already. The White Tern was the most amazing restaurant he’d ever eaten at. White beets, hearts of palm, quail stuffed with saffron and chanterelle mushrooms; Joby had never heard of half the things they served here! When he’d found boar meat listed on the menu, he’d nearly flipped. Taking his first bite, thick, savory, and as tender as custard, he’d felt just like a knight of old.
“You gonna blow those candles out?” his father chided. “Or you tryin’ to seal that cake in melted wax for later?”
Joby laughed as he puckered up to blow and had to take another breath.
“Don’t forget to wish!” his mom warned. “And don’t tell, or it won’t come true.”
Joby stopped to think. When I grow up, I want to live here, he thought. Then he blew as hard as he could, knowing every candle must go out if he were to get his wish.
“Just the candles on this table!” his father teased, leaning back as if against a gale.
It had been Joby’s best birthday ever. They’d picnicked on the headlands by a thicket of wild lilies and bramble rose, then gone hiking beside a shallow brook through a canyon full of redwood trees. It had taken Joby a while to realized that these were the same trees he’d seen in Arthur’s solemn grove, though the ones here were smaller. He’d even heard the same strange bird-song, though he’d still never seen the bird that made it.
They’d run into more animals that day than he’d seen in his entire life: deer, and herons, wood ducks, otters, a fox, and too many hawks to count. And that was just the big ones! There’d been a gazillion smaller, even more exotic creatures flitting and wriggling through the water and the undergrowth! To Joby, Taubolt seemed as good as Africa!
In the end, his father had the waitress wrap the remaining cake, not even offering her his credit card. By now it had become puzzlingly clear that no one took them here.
There really was something strange about Taubolt, and Joby didn’t think credit cards were the half of it. The locals all seemed very warm and helpful, but he’d seen the knowing smiles and cryptic remarks that passed between them when they thought no one was looking. At first Joby had figured it was just because they all knew one another. But he’d been to lots of places in the city where he’d known no one but his parents, and still never felt so much like an outsider as he did here, as if there were some kind of invisible barrier—nothing unpleasant, just . . . always there.
The shops were strange too—full of shells and glass fishing floats, telescopes and teakwood chests, large colorful candles, sticks of incense and dried apple dolls. Not one thing you’d see in department stores back home. The old buildings themselves seemed magical somehow, with high, beamed ceilings, creaking staircases, dark, spiderwebbed corners, and half-open doors into shadowed rooms that customers were clearly not meant to ask about. Joby thought Taubolt would be an awesome place to Christmas shop.
During their after-dinner walk through town the streets were eerily quiet. From within the other restaurants, Joby
heard the laughter of diners through amber-lit windows, the clink of glasses, silverware on china. But outside, they encountered no one at all until they neared the west edge of town, where they passed a young man sitting on a split-log bench outside a closed quilt gallery. Joby could tell he was local. He wore weathered jeans and a red plaid flannel shirt. His flaxen hair tumbled from beneath a gray baseball cap that shaded eyes bluer than the sea. A fine gold stubble glittered in the late light on his chin and upper lip. He smiled as they walked past, following them with his blue, blue eyes. Joby wanted to turn and ask him for an answer to the riddle he felt so strongly all around him, but that barrier was there—outsiderness—and Joby couldn’t bring himself to cross it.
Michael watched them pass, saw Joby turn, then give up and go on in silence. The angel looked away in sadness. If only the child had asked.
The word had come that fall, on the sighing wind, in the sprouting grass, the rustle of leaves, and the splash of raindrops, to every spirit or creature that still recognized the Creator’s voice. The lords of Heaven and Hell had made a wager, its fulcrum a little boy whom any serving Heaven should assist if he should ask it of them directly, but whom none serving Heaven might assist if he did not. Nothing further had been offered.
Then, just yesterday, Michael had scooped the hellish wraith from a boy’s slight shoulders at Taubolt’s southern border, as was his charge, being Taubolt’s guardian, then followed Joby, curious to learn why such a delightful child should have borne such a loathsome burden. The gold-brown gull following high above them as they’d entered Taubolt had never drawn their notice. Nor had the tawny field mouse peering at Joby and his friend from underneath the wardrobe in their room last night, and again as they whispered together at dawn.
Only after hearing the boys’ whispered confidences that morning had Michael realized who Joby must be, and been plunged into confusion.
His Lord had said the time was many years away, and that Michael would know the candidate when he came. Yet not one full year had passed, and Michael had not recognized Joby in time to let his filthy cargo enter with him as his Master had instructed. Had Michael misunderstood? . . . Had he failed?
Time after time that day he had cast these questions toward Heaven, and still there was but one answer in the rustling breeze and the whispering sea:
All things happen as they must.
Anxious and confused, Michael had remained cautious until now. The seal watching from out in the swell that morning, the hawk circling high above their picnic on the headlands, the squirrel following their progress through the woods that afternoon; in all these forms, Michael had meant to elude Joby’s attention. But this time . . . this last time, Michael had hoped the boy would notice, would ask the question Michael had seen burning within him throughout the day. For, in this at least, his Master’s will was clear. If the boy should ask, assistance could be offered. . . . If only he had asked.
Joby eased the door carefully shut behind him, then tiptoed past his parents’ room toward the stairs. He knew they’d have forbidden him to go out alone, but once they were up, there’d be no time for anything but breakfast and packing. If he wanted to see the beach again, it would have to be now. He had awakened before sunrise again, filled with an urgent need to go out and say good-bye to Taubolt. He’d thought of bringing Benjamin, but his friend had still been dead to the world, so he had let him sleep.
At the lobby, Joby abandoned any pretense of stealth, bounding through the inn’s leaded-glass doors out onto the sidewalk. The air was chill for spring. Taubolt’s buildings huddled in blue silhouette against the pale dawn behind them, and a single fraying shoal of fog climbed in wispy tendrils over the wooded hills flanking the river mouth. The sea smell was strong in Taubolt’s empty streets, the silence thick and secretive, as if there were no one left in all the village but Joby.
He trotted past blank-eyed shop fronts, through a gate in the fence across the street, and out onto the grassy headlands still heavy with dew. Halfway to the cliff tops, Joby turned to look back at the sleeping town.
“Good-bye,” he whispered.
Then he turned and ran toward the cliff-side trail that wound down to the beach. The tide was not as low as it had been before, but he ran out as far as he could without getting his shoes too wet, and gazed into the tide pools all around him, sensing the myriad creatures crawling, darting, swaying at his feet, though he could not see them.
“I’ll be back someday,” he said fervently. “Don’t forget me.”
He loped across a flat expanse of mussel bed to the edge of a deep fissure washed by foaming surf and stood peering down into its green, semi-opaque depths. Long dark strands of kelp writhed and curled in the current. As the wave receded, the water fizzed like soda, then began to clear. He bent closer, hoping to glimpse some secret treasure trove of shells, or perhaps . . .
But something large was moving there—zooming right toward him!
Joby leapt back in alarm as it burst the surface, and found himself staring down at a brown-haired boy near his own age, whose startled expression mirrored his own! For a moment they both froze, openmouthed and speechless. Then, as another wave rushed through the trench, the swimmer plunged back beneath the surface and disappeared. When the fizzing water cleared, Joby saw no sign at all of the astonishing boy. In stunned disbelief, he began to scan the bay around him. There was nothing.
Where could he have gone—or come from? What was he doing there? The water was freezing, and he’d been wearing almost nothing! Had he drowned? Twining strands of panic tightened around his gut. Joby was about to run for help when something splashed to the surface hundreds of feet away near a small cave mouth at the base of one of the bay’s towering rock stacks. It was the boy! He bobbed on the surface, staring at Joby with a worried expression visible across the distance. Then he dove again and vanished . . . like a seal, Joby thought in utter wonder. How could anyone have swum that far so fast, without even coming up to breathe?
For a long time Joby simply stood and stared out at the bay, wondering if the boy would reappear. But he did not, and Joby realized that the sun had risen, and his parents might wake at any moment. A boy who could swim like that was not in any danger of drowning. He turned and raced for the cliff-side trail, hoping his absence had not been noticed—even by Benjamin. He couldn’t imagine how he’d explain what he’d seen to anyone—not even his best friend—and he didn’t want to have to try.
Gabriel and the Creator sat on a bench near the band shell in Golden Gate Park; two ragged transients feeding an aggressive crowd of sparrows and pigeons from a greasy dollar bag of stale popcorn. Lucifer was late.
When he finally arrived, dressed to the nines as always, he walked up, intentionally scattering the birds.
“With all due respect,” he drawled, “may I ask that You dispense with the bird feed, Sir? I have no wish to be shat upon at the end of this conversation.”
“Lucifer,” the Creator replied amiably, “it’s lovely to see you again too.” He tossed the remaining popcorn onto an overfull trash can behind the bench, where the birds set upon it instantly. “We were only trying to amuse ourselves while we waited.”
“Traffic,” Lucifer said blandly as he joined them. “I hope you two didn’t get all dressed up on my account. Is that what passes for holy raiment these days?”
“Your invitation took us by surprise,” the Creator apologized. “All our good clothes were in the wash. But you can’t have called us here just to critique our sartorial image.”
“No, I did not,” Lucifer replied, looking away with disdain. “It seems that our boy, Joby, has vanished on his way to someplace that doesn’t exist. In fact, his entire family and a little playmate seem to be gone as well. I mean, really quite, quite gone.” He looked frostily at the Creator. “A rather remarkable achievement for mere mortals, wouldn’t You say?”
“If you’ve an accusation to make, Lucifer, please make it,” the Creator answered.
“You c
annot just remove him from the game whenever it looks like he’s losing!” Lucifer snapped.
“Careful. You’ll scare the birds,” the Creator said, glancing back at the trash can. “Besides, it didn’t look to Me like he was losing. I’d say he’s been doing better than ever. Wouldn’t you, Gabe?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Our agreement states quite clearly that You will not intervene in any way,” Lucifer rasped, “and that Your servants be commanded to refrain from intervention too!”
“Unless he requests their assistance.” The Creator turned to Gabriel. “Isn’t that right, our official witness?”
“It is,” Gabriel confirmed.
Facing Lucifer, the Creator asked, “Are you certain Joby made no such request?”
Lucifer glared at his Lord with naked ire. “Did he?”
“No.” God smiled.
“Then how do You explain—”
“I assure you, it was completely coincidental. Joby and his family happened to cross a barrier that has nothing whatsoever to do with our wager.”
“Coincidence!” Lucifer shouted. “You expect me to believe that?”
The birds scattered nervously before hesitantly returning to finish their feast.
“Do you suggest I lie?” the Creator asked quietly.
With obvious effort, Lucifer reined in his temper.
“If you are suggesting such a thing,” the Creator continued dangerously, “I would be happy to convene a full celestial court, and try the matter. . . . If you’re proven wrong, of course . . . Well, you know the consequence as well as I do, and it wouldn’t be very sporting of Me to win our wager that way, would it.”
“What coincidental barrier is this?” Lucifer demanded more moderately.
“It’s none of your business.” The Creator smiled.
“If it’s on this earth it’s my business!” Lucifer spat. “You gave this planet to me!”
The Book of Joby Page 15
