by A. L. Tyler
“Yeah,” Lena smiled, “I know.”
“And…um,” Pete leaned in closer to her and squinted his eyes a little, “Are you…um...” Lena saw him pull something out of his back pocket and glance at it on the other side of the barn door. “Are you, um, Lena-Eden Collins-Daray-Corbett?”
Lena rolled her eyes. “Was that note given to you by an overly thin vegetarian wearing too much makeup?”
He gave her a suspicious look, squinting up his eyes. “Maybe.”
Lena reached for the note, but Pete pulled it away. He smiled lightly, and Lena had the intuition that his playful nature would be a good addition to Waldgrave.
“Yes, I’m Lena-Eden whatever, just give me the note. And please don’t tell anyone about this.”
Pete handed the note over, and Lena quickly unfolded it. She wished she could have asked where Pete had gotten it, but knew that anything she knew would be public knowledge via Griffin, sooner or later.
Hey You!
The honeymoon was great. Just wanted to let you know that I’m okay. Ditched my cell so they couldn’t track me; like an idiot, I forgot to get your number out of it first. Hope everything is well, and I hope to talk again soon on a disposable cell phone if I can get my hands on one. So long until then…
Hesper
P.S. He’s a cute kid, isn’t he?
“She thinks I’m cute?”
Lena looked back at Pete, who was standing on his tiptoes trying to read the note. Lena was taken aback; the ten-year-old was already better at thought-speak than she was.
“She’s married, so don’t get your hopes up.” She replied tartly, tapping the top of his head with the note.
“Does she have a sister?” Pete cracked a sideways smile. Lena was relieved to see that he hadn’t lost his sense of humor in the last few weeks of his life.
“It was great to meet you, Pete. I know exactly what you’re going through, so if you have any questions, please ask. I’ll see you at dinner.” Lena started walking back up to the house.
Behind her, Pete was yelling, “It was nice to meet you, too!”
The next morning, Marie and Cheryl, whose names Howard had been getting wrong for a month now, were dropped off by Mr. Crittenden. He was a short, balding man with an inconspicuous jalopy and kind brown eyes. Cheryl, 12, and Marie, 9, were both tired looking and wearing Dickensian type attire. Mrs. Ralston ushered them inside and into the room off the side entrance. Lena didn’t see either of them until several days after the initial introductions.
She had come down from the study, where she had been discussing her exposition with Howard, to make herself a snack before dinner. Silenti families from all over the world would be arriving at Waldgrave within the next week, and Lena had precious little time to finish preparing. When she walked into the kitchen, Marie was sitting by the prep table reading a book. She jumped to her feet when she saw Lena walk in.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you…” Lena said.
Marie continued to stare at her. Lena looked down at the book in her hand and saw a familiar cover.
“Is that Peter Pan? Or one of the adaptations? I loved that book when I was little. I read it again last year—it’s amazing how different it was. Do you like it?”
Marie’s eyes fell to the floor.
“Marie? Are you okay?”
Her eyes came up to meet Lena’s. I’m sorry, Miss. I don’t speak your language. I’m trying really, really hard to learn.
Lena was shocked. She didn’t speak English? Did Howard know? Where are you from?
South, I think. La Paz, Miss.
You don’t have to call me ‘Miss.’
“Yes, she does.”
Lena spun around. Griffin, looking less and less as she tried to remember him, was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Marie had averted her eyes again and ducked back off towards the side entrance hall. Lena glared at Griffin.
“She’s just a kid. Leave her alone.” She scoffed.
Lena went to make the sandwich she came for. Griffin still stood in the doorway. He wasn’t smiling.
“You could make her do that for you.” He said.
“She’s a kid, Griffin. And her life’s just been turned upside down, and she probably doesn’t know what’s going on. Leave her alone.” She said.
Griffin cocked an eyebrow. “Well, you have a maternal instinct. That’s good.”
“I have a decent human being instinct, that’s all.” Lena rolled her eyes and went back to her sandwich. Griffin watched. When Lena had finished making her sandwich and was sitting down at the prep table to eat it, and Griffin was still just standing there, she started to worry.
“Why are you here?” She asked.
“Why shouldn’t I be here?”
“Because you’re supposed to be upstairs waiting for my grandfather to kick it.”
Griffin flinched. “You could show a little compassion. He only wants what’s best.”
“Best for you.” Lena said.
“Best for all of us. For every Silenti on the planet. Did you ever stop to wonder if maybe, just maybe, it’s all true? What if it’s true, Lena?”
“Maybe it is true. But there’s one thing that all world religions have in common, and it’s faith. Faith because there’s no proof. There will never be any proof, Griffin, not in either of our lifetimes, and probably not ever. It’s all a beautiful mystery, and that’s all it will ever be.” Lena ate her sandwich, eyeing Griffin because he was still standing there. She finished and put her plate in the sink. “Okay. Why are you here, really?”
“He asked me to get you. He wants to talk to you before the Representatives start arriving.” Griffin said seriously.
“Well, good luck with that, because I don’t want to talk to him.” She said.
“He just wants to talk. That’s all. You’re expected to come up tonight after dinner.”
Lena turned and looked Griffin in the eye. “And who the hell are you to tell me when I’m expected to do anything?”
Griffin turned and walked away. Lena watched him silently walk back up the stairs toward the library. When you talk to Hesper, tell her she can come back. They won’t be welcomed, and Eric Mason will never sit on the Council again, but they can come back. Tonight after dinner. He’ll receive you in his office.
Lena sat across the desk from an empty chair. Dinner had been over twenty minutes ago, and she really wasn’t fond of hanging around in Daray’s office. It was a truly disturbing place; everything in it was decrepit. She didn’t exactly have fond memories attached to the office anyway.
Aside from the preserved skeleton of a giant feline lizard, there were many other oddities that evoked a sense of unease in her. There were mirrors that Lena couldn’t see herself in, artifacts that appeared to be made from human hair, books she couldn’t open, and even a shelf of skulls that didn’t have ear canals. The whole room reeked of mold, dust, and mothballs.
A door across the room opened, Master Daray stepped into his office, and Lena caught a glimpse of a small spiral staircase before he closed the door again. He was walking with a cane, but otherwise looking well. It wasn’t until he sat down on the other side of the desk that she noticed he was too clean—he had showered just before coming down. It was a show for her benefit.
He didn’t look directly at her, instead fiddling with the cane he used to walk. “Eden, I know—“
“Lena.” She corrected.
“—we’ve had our differences. I’ve had a good run, a hard fight, and it’s coming to an end. Griffin has been a good son to me, but there are things that even he can’t do. Family business. Which is why I’ve asked you here.”
The look in his eyes was getting deeper. However, Lena was still fairly sure he wasn’t going to die any time soon, no matter how sick he claimed to be.
“I had long hoped to pass this on to a grandson, and someday I expect you to pass it on to my great-grandson, but you’ll obviously have to do for now. I do
n’t trust you to keep them as they need be kept, so I’m leaving their safe keeping to Griffin in case of my death, as I am all of the artifacts that I have safeguarded. But you’ll need to access them, so you two will have to work that out for yourselves.”
Lena kept her anger checked. “That’s a very convenient arrangement considering your motives.”
“My motives? Oh, Lena,” Daray clucked. Lena was shocked that he had actually used her name. Her real name. “My motives are by far the least of your concern. At least you know my motives. If I were you, I’d be much more concerned with the motives of others. I’ve been nothing but forthright with you since our first encounter, and if you were a perceptive one, you might have noticed that all the lies—all of them—have come from the other side of your heritage.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Lena asked.
Daray turned and looked her in the eye. She immediately wished she hadn’t asked, because she was almost sure she wasn’t going to like what she was about to hear. “I don’t know how you go on being so blind. Ignorance is bliss, I guess. Do you even know how Howard came to safeguard this family? I thought not. I used to spend long hours with your other grandfather researching and documenting Silenti history. Our children spent much more time together than I would have preferred, given your father’s…condition. As a young man, Howard was quite taken with my daughter. Much more so than your father ever was. I think it broke his heart when the two of them ran off together, and when she left your father he all but moved in here. She begged him to speak on our behalf in the Council when Thomas was murdered, and she’s the only reason he’s here protecting us now. It’s quite pathetic, actually.”
Lena looked down at her feet to avoid Daray’s intense stare. She wanted to believe he was lying.
“It’s all true, I assure you. You can ask him about it. In fact, I encourage you to ask. It’s time he stopped living the fantasy that you’re somehow his daughter.” Daray said with a cruel disregard.
Lena looked up. “You’re a liar.”
Daray ignored her and went on. “Since the origins of the Silenti, my ancestors have kept a detailed record tracking our history and the known whereabouts of the portal. Many of these precious volumes were burned to ashes with my own parents and wife in a fire several years ago.” He stared at Lena unblinkingly. “It was set by unbelievers with the intention of killing us all. Your mother and I barely got out alive.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Lena said emotionlessly.
“Not nearly as sorry as I was for the loss of my father and the texts he devoted his life to preserving. I wish to pass on to the next male in my line what remains of them. Some of them are so old that only those descended of the noble family line can read them, and these are the ones that I am particularly concerned with. Your mother was no great student, but I’ve noticed you have a certain aptitude for literature. In case of another…disaster, I need you to memorize what is contained in them.”
“Memorize?” Lena said with disbelief. “I don’t think so…”
“You need to know them. The older ones are in Latito, which Griffin or I will instruct you in. You will write the passages out in Latito, then translate them in English line by line until I am satisfied that the knowledge will not be lost.”
Lena rolled her eyes. “That’s the most time consuming, stupid, pointless undertaking I’ve ever heard of. I don’t even believe in the portal anyways, and I’m not going to do it.”
“You might change your mind after you’ve read some of them. And you’ll do it if you want to get onto the Council. And believe me, if that’s not enough, there are many other persuasions we can explore regarding your future here.” He shook his head with a sickly smile.
They stared each other down for a minute, and then Lena sighed. “Can I go now?”
Daray smiled. “I knew we’d work something out, Eden. Now, these are sacred manuscripts, and no one outside of the family can know about them for reasons of safety and security. You’ll start tomorrow.”
*****
CHAPTER 14
The call from Hesper arrived with the forerunners of the Council meeting. Lena told her what Griffin had said; Eric was crushed, but Hesper seemed fairly pleased that they hadn’t been entirely exiled. She asked if the marriage would be recognized.
Lena froze, unsure how to answer. “Recognized? What do you mean?”
“Did he say anything about a ceremony? A consecration ceremony?”
Lena thought back. “No, he didn’t. But then, he didn’t exactly give a lot of details. I think he was just trying to bribe me to…do something.”
There was a quiet pause. “Wow.”
“Not like that!” Lena blushed. “Geez. Sick mind, Hesper, sick mind. So when are you coming?”
Hesper laughed. “I don’t know. Tomorrow, I guess.”
“Tomorrow? That fast?” Lena asked.
“Sure. We’re only fifty miles away right now.”
They said their goodbyes and hung up. She arrived the next day, as promised, but even though there was still room inside Waldgrave, Griffin insisted that she sleep in a tent outside. Later that day he asked Lena to meet him in Daray’s office, where they began the tediously mind-numbing process of translating the texts. As Griffin couldn’t read any of the older ones, and Lena couldn’t read Latito at all, they decided to start with a more recent account. It was written in the early 1940s.
“Is eram tunk ut miles militis venit sumo nos absentis…It was then that the soldiers took us away…miles militis eksuro domus kod panton in is…They burned the house and everything in it…Are you getting all of this?”
Lena had been staring at the giant cat skeleton again. “Burned the house and everything in it. Yep. Continue.”
“Say it in Latito.”
She looked over at Griffin and cracked a smile. He had become a real jerk, but now that they had the chance to be alone, she could see he was still the kind of jerk she remembered him being before. “Griffin, as long as I have you, why do I need to learn it? I’m just a stupid female after all, right?”
He went on as if she hadn’t interrupted the lesson. “Miles militis eksuro domus kod panton in is. Say it.”
“Miles militis eksuro…something, something, blah blah blah. Can’t you just paraphrase it for me? He just wants me to know what it says.”
Griffin snapped the book shut and sighed. He indicated she was giving him a headache and started to rub his temples. “You’ll never get through the older ones. I can’t help you with those.”
“So I’ll rewrite them out so you can read them and then you can tell me what they say. What’s the big deal?” She shrugged.
“I could understand if this were boring material, but it really isn’t. These are your ancestors. They’re being taken away by Nazis and you don’t even care.” Griffin shook his head.
Lena looked at the disappointed expression on his face and sighed. “Fine. Let me see the book.”
She copied down the phrases as Griffin read them in Latito and English. Everything was going perfectly monotonously until Griffin reached a phrase that piqued her interest.
“Instituo prodigium inhumatus in kinis kineris…They had found the portal, unburned, in the ashes. Keperunt prodigium. Is eram absentis eks meus os inskeko duos annus laksus…They took the portal, and I never saw it again until two years later.”
“Wait—“ Lena looked up from her notebook. “What?”
“Keperunt prodigium—“
Lena raised a hand to stop Griffin. “No…he actually had the portal? I mean, the portal?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Griffin asked.
“Well, I mean, the forties weren’t that long ago…” Lena puzzled.
“And?”
“And…it was real? Like, a real physical object, that you could put your hands on and touch, and it was…real?” Lena asked.
Griffin turned his chair so that he could face Lena. He was half smiling, and Lena had never seen his eye
s light up so vividly. “Real. A real object, like you like, because you don’t believe in faith. It was so real that the Nazis actually took it and tried to open it…that’s one of my favorite parts. They burned everything in that house, and one of the only things in Dobry Daray’s house that didn’t burn was the portal. It wouldn’t burn. They wanted to know why it wouldn’t burn, so they took it.”
Griffin was almost giddy. It was bizarre to watch.
“…And they couldn’t open it. A few years later they found Dobry and took him out of the concentration camps because they wanted him to tell them where he got it, but he didn’t, and he couldn’t open it for them, and so they shot him. That part is in…” Griffin looked over the stack of books sitting on the floor next to them and pulled one out, “This one. It’s his son’s, naturally. Obviously Dobry couldn’t have written about his own death, so his son—your great-grandfather—wrote it down. It’s amazing that we have as much as we do, given Dobry wrote most of it from inside the camps. These are actually recopied journals, done by his son, because the originals were all scribbled on stuff that wasn’t real paper—clothes, walls, he even scratched his last words into his skin.”
Lena looked at Griffin, so happily clutching the personal diary of Master Daray’s father, and tried to smile a little for his benefit. Somehow, she just couldn’t get as happy about a man scratching his final epitaph onto his own hide. “What happened to the portal?”
“Ah…nobody knew, until just recently when your mom found it.”
“In Ecuador.” Lena filled in.
“Off the coast, technically.”
“Might I ask how it got all the way from Europe to Ecuador?”
“Oh,” Griffin looked slightly crestfallen, “Well, we don’t have any first-hand accounts of how that happened. I suspect that it was probably taken by a fleeing Nazi officer. Some of them wound up in Central and South America.”
