Besides, she told herself, he’s your partner in this quest thing. The Lady said so. And he’s Felicia’s sister. He needs to know what his sister is capable of...and what I’m capable of, too.
Wally’s eyes widened as he listened. “Wow,” he said when she finished. “No wonder Flish looked like a wet cat – and was madder than one.”
Ariane grinned.
“So you can make water...do things,” Wally said. “That makes sense, I guess, if you’re the Lady of the Lake. And at least if we ever do come face to face with Merlin, maybe you can save our butts.” Wally gave her another of his lopsided grins. “But I still don’t see how we’re going to find the shards of Excalibur before a wizard does!”
Even with her new determination to carry out the Lady’s quest, Ariane felt embarrassed to hear their goal stated so baldly. It sounded like bad dialogue from a straight-to-video sword-and-sorcery flick. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Maybe the Lady would have told us, if she hadn’t been pulled away so suddenly. But I’ve got an idea. When I...connected...with the lake, I could kind of sense everything in it. The fish, the rocks, even the trash. And the Lady said I would hear the…um, ‘song of the sword.’ So maybe if I try, I can figure out how to, you know, see...or feel...or whatever...the shards. Somehow.” I don’t even know the right words to talk about magic! “But I’m not sure how to start.”
Wally looked thoughtful. “What you need is a séance.”
Ariane blinked. “What, with spirits rapping on the window and levitating the table? Get real.”
“I think we can do without the rapping spirits...although that would be a great name for a hip-hop group in Harry Potter’s wizarding world...”
“Wally!”
“Sorry.”
“Séances are for communicating with the dead. How is that going to help me? I don’t want to talk to any dead people.”
“Did I say anything about dead people?
“But a séance –”
“So don’t call it a séance. Look, the way I understand it, the point of a séance, or a crystal ball, or any of that other psychic mumbo-jumbo, is to help you concentrate. Even though most of the ‘mediums’...” He frowned. “Or should that be ‘media’? Well, anyway – even though most people who do this stuff are frauds –”
“Most?”
“– that doesn’t change the fact that sitting in the dark, holding hands, and concentrating on a candle is a great way to focus your mind. You – we – need to explore your power. There’s just the two of us to do for Excalibur what all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t do for Humpty Dumpty. We have to know what abilities you have. And we’re definitely going to have to know where to look!”
“Even if we figure out where to look, I don’t know how we’re supposed to get there,” Ariane said. “Unless you happen to have a private jet stashed away somewhere, we’re pretty much stuck in Regina.” She paused. “You don’t, do you?”
Wally laughed. “Afraid not. Well, one thing at a time. What do you say? A séance? Tonight?”
“Why not now?”
“I think it will help if it’s dark. And besides...” He blushed. “I have to be home by four to clean my room. Ms. Carson made me promise.”
Ariane laughed.
“Hey, a promise is a promise!”
“I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you.” It was almost the truth. “I’m supposed to clean my room too. It’s just – it’s all so silly. We’re on a quest to find a mystical sword and save the planet from the most powerful sorcerer of all time – but we can’t get to it right now because we have to clean our rooms!”
Wally’s scowl turned to a grin, then to a laugh. Ariane joined in, and in a moment both of them were laughing so hard that Ariane’s laugh turned into the unfortunate snorting sound she’d never been able to control – and that just made them both laugh harder.
“Well, you two seem to be having a ball!” Aunt Phyllis’s voice cut through their mirth. She was standing in the French doors that connected the hallway to the living room, holding a bag of groceries with both arms. “Who’s your friend, Ariane?”
Aunt Phyllis’s tone made it clear that Ariane was on shaky ground. She realized two things at the same time. First, Wally was a boy. And second, though her aunt and she had never discussed the rules about having boys over, Ariane was quite sure the rules would be strict. She hurried to make introductions before Aunt Phyllis got entirely the wrong idea. “Aunt Phyllis, this is Wally Knight. Wally, this is my Aunt Phyllis.”
Wally stood up, wiped his hand on his jeans, and held it out to Aunt Phyllis. “Pleased to meet you. Oh...sorry.” Apparently realizing belatedly she couldn’t shake his hand while she was holding groceries, he awkwardly withdrew it again.
Ariane watched Aunt Phyllis’s face, and felt relief when her aunt smiled. “Nice to meet you, Wally.”
Struck by sudden inspiration, Ariane said, “Aunt Phyllis, can Wally come for dinner?” She really should have asked Wally first, but it made sense. “That way we can get started on our...um...homework project even sooner.”
“You two are partners?”
Wally, after one startled glance at Ariane, caught on quickly. “Yeah,” he said. “Partners.”
“What kind of project is it?”
Oops. “It’s...um, a kind of, uh, cross-grade, cross-curriculum thing. Younger students working with older ones. We’re supposed to combine, um, history and, uh, English. We need to do some research. On my computer. On the Internet.”
“Mine’s broken,” Wally put in.
“Oh. I see,” Aunt Phyllis said, in a voice that made it clear she didn’t – not entirely. She made her way into the living room, still holding her bag of groceries. “What are you researching?”
“King Arthur,” Ariane said.
Aunt Phyllis stumbled. Ariane jumped to her feet in alarm, but her aunt had already caught herself. A can of tomatoes fell out of her bag and hit the carpet with a thump.
Wally picked it up and put it back into the bag. Aunt Phyllis hardly seemed to notice. She was staring at Ariane, her face so pale Ariane worried she might be getting sick. Ariane was about to say that maybe dinner wasn’t such a good idea when Aunt Phyllis blinked a couple of times, then seemed to gather her wits. She looked at Wally and smiled, though it looked a little forced. “Thank you for picking that up, Wally. Honestly, sometimes I think I have two left feet.” Her smile grew warmer and more sincere. “Now, about dinner. How does six-thirty sound?”
“That’ll be perfect!” Wally said, with a grin. “I’d better go now and get started on my room. I’ll see you for dinner, Ariane, Mrs....” He stopped, and blushed. (He blushes at everything, Ariane thought. It’s kind of sweet.) “I’m sorry. I just realized I don’t know your last name.”
“It’s Forsythe. The same as Ariane’s. But it’s not Mrs....I’ve never been married.”
Wally didn’t say anything, but Ariane felt she had to explain. “My mother didn’t change her name when she got married. And since my father didn’t stick around long enough to see me born, she wasn’t about to give me his name.”
“Oh.” Wally obviously didn’t know how to respond. “Well. Uh, thank you, Mrs….Ms....Forsythe. For the dinner invitation. I’ll see you at six-thirty.” He gathered up his coat and went out, whistling the theme to Star Wars.
Aunt Phyllis gave Ariane another odd look. “Homework partners?”
Wally wasn’t the only one who blushed easily. “Homework partners,” Ariane said firmly. “That’s all.”
“Researching King Arthur.” Aunt Phyllis’s eyes moved away from Ariane to the mantelpiece. Ariane followed her gaze – and found herself looking at a photograph of her mother when she was only a little older than Ariane, laughing against the backdrop of a sunny lake.
“Yes.” Ariane frowned. “Why?”
Aunt Phyllis didn’t answer. She looked at the photograph for another moment, then turned away as if she hadn’t heard. “I’d be
tter put the groceries away.” She disappeared into the kitchen.
Ariane got up from the couch and went to the mantle. She’d seen that photo of her mother all her life. Oddly, she never felt sad when looking at it. Maybe because it had been taken ten years before Ariane was born. Looking at it was almost like looking at a stranger...but a nice stranger, a girl Ariane felt she would have liked to have known.
The refrigerator door slammed in the kitchen, and then Ariane heard Aunt Phyllis say a most uncharacteristic swear word. A moment later she emerged into the hall, face flushed. “Would you believe I forgot to buy milk? Ariane, would you mind running up to the 7-Eleven?”
“Uh...sure.” Ariane went into the front hall and pulled on her spare jacket, already missing her ruined leather one. She was more than a little surprised at her aunt’s language. Aunt Phyllis might have “the Forsythe temper,” but she didn’t actually seem angry. It was more like she was on edge. Ariane would’ve asked what was going on, but Aunt Phyllis had already returned to the kitchen.
Ariane unlocked the inner door, crossed the porch, and stepped through the outer door into the chilly air. She was glad to have the excuse to slip out for a few minutes, not only because she needed some fresh air and to stretch her legs, but because it would give Aunt Phyllis a chance to calm down.
Was it Wally? she wondered. Maybe she’s worried we’re going to be more than friends...or already are. Though why would Aunt Phyllis care? You’d think she’d be happy if I found a boyfriend.
Well, maybe. But I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want me to invite him to my bedroom.
She shook her head as she crossed the yard. As if there could be anything like that between her and Wally. He wasn’t exactly handsome, he was a year and a half younger, he was a head shorter than she was, he was a geek, his sister was her mortal enemy, and...
...and it had felt really good to laugh with someone like that.
Not a chance, she told herself firmly. Not...a...chance!
She strode north along Wallace Street to College Avenue. As she jaywalked across the street, a car turned south behind her. On the north side of College, she glanced back, just in time to see the car make a U-turn halfway down Wallace and park in front of her house.
It was a white Ford Focus – just like the car she’d seen with the mysterious blue glow inside the night before. It was facing her, engine still running, lights on.
Ariane picked up speed, not exactly alarmed, but definitely weirded out. She walked a block west to Winnipeg Street, then turned north to walk the four blocks to Victoria Avenue and the 7-Eleven which did a brisk business selling junk food to the students from the two nearby high schools. Today, though, she ignored the racks of potato chips and candy bars and went straight for the refrigerators in the back. She bought a two-litre container of one-percent milk, and headed outside.
As she ran back across Victoria Avenue, she again saw a white Ford Focus, this time parked on Winnipeg Street half a block from the intersection, facing her. Its lights were off and there was no one inside that she could see, so she kept walking toward it. There are lots of Ford Focuses. She frowned. Ford Foci? That didn’t sound right, either. She shook her head. Anyway, this isn’t necessarily the same one. Still, as she reached it, she glanced at it as casually as she could.
What she saw made her stumble a little. It had a corporate logo on the door: gold letters in Old English script spelling out ECS.
Below the letters was the image of a golden sword.
She couldn’t help looking over her shoulder every few steps all the way back to her house. The car stayed parked, and by the time she got home she’d managed to convince herself she was just being silly. It probably had nothing to do with her. She delivered the milk to Aunt Phyllis – who seemed to be her usual self again – then settled down in front of the TV for a couple of hours of mindless entertainment.
When Ariane saw that the movie channel was playing Monty Python and the Holy Grail, she sighed. It figures, she thought, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged on the couch while she watched. It figures.
~ • ~
It didn’t really take Wally long to clean his room, because it wasn’t very messy to begin with. (He knew he was unusually neat for a teenage boy. It kind of worried him.) At around five o’clock, with an hour and a half to kill before he was due back at Ariane’s house for supper – Ms. Carson had raised no objection to his going; in fact, she seemed rather glad to be rid of him – he sat down at his computer to find out everything he could about King Arthur and his contemporaries.
An hour later, he’d had his fill of Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, The Lady of the Lake, Merlin, Mordred, Morgan le Fay, the Knights of the Round Table, the whole murderous, adulterous, incestuous, backstabbing lot of them. It wasn’t that he couldn’t find any information: he found thousands of pages of it. But it was all contradictory. There seemed to be a hundred different versions of every Arthurian legend – a thousand, if you counted all of the novels and plays and movies and TV shows and even musicals, for crying out loud, from Camelot to Spamalot – and nobody had anything definitive to offer on what had really happened. Or even if it had really happened. Those who believed Arthur had existed thought he was some kind of British war leader who managed to stave off the ongoing Saxon invasion of England for a few years, within a century or two after the departure of the Roman legions. Merlin might have been some sort of shaman – or might not have existed at all. And the Lady of the Lake was either some kind of pagan priestess, or as mythical as Merlin.
Except he’d actually met the Lady of the Lake...
...or someone claiming to be the Lady.
He frowned, wondering why the thought hadn’t occurred to him before. Just because she said she was the Lady didn’t mean she was. And just because she said that Merlin was evil and they had to stop him didn’t make those statements true, either. After all, in most versions of the legend Merlin was a good guy and it was the Lady who was shifty and unreliable, pursuing her own hidden agenda.
The clock at the bottom right corner of his screen flicked to 6:04. Wally, who was pretty sure his sister searched his room regularly in search of blackmail material, cleared his browser history and re-opened his home page, a news site. He bent over to pick up his runners, which he had kicked off under the desk when he sat down. He glanced over the headlines as he put on his shoes. Suicide Bomber Kills 12...Civil War Looms in Famine-Plagued Country...Terrorist Threat Considered High...Habitat Loss Threatens Endangered Species...
Wally wasn’t very interested in politics, but he’d heard his parents arguing about it often enough. His mother supported one party, his father another, and over the course of his short life both parties had been in power. But the one thing he’d taken away from his parents’ arguments was that no matter who was running things, no matter how big the majority, the government could never get everything done that needed to be done. His mother wanted fines for polluting companies, his father wanted a reduction in the size of the civil service, and both of them hated the fact that the prime minister couldn’t simply issue decrees and make things happen, but instead had to deal and cajole, “caving in to special interests!” as his mother put it or, in his father’s words, “bribing the public with their own tax money!”
Maybe the whole world would be better off with one strong leader in charge, he thought as he pushed his chair away from the desk and headed out the door. Someone who actually knows what he’s doing. Just like England was better off under King Arthur.
Twenty minutes later, he stepped through the open outer door into the porch of Ariane’s house, and rang the doorbell. “I’ll get it!” he heard Ariane shout, and a moment later the front door swung open. “Come in!” she said, stepping aside to let him enter.
As he did so, a savory smell set his mouth watering. “Mmmmm. Something smells good.”
“Mustard-smeared protein,” Ariane said.
“Huh?”
Ariane laughed. “That’s what Mom
used to call it. Smear any kind of meat or fish with mustard, sprinkle on a few herbs, stick it in the oven. Works every time.”
Wally smacked his lips. “Yum! And tonight’s protein is...?”
“Pork tenderloin,” said Aunt Phyllis, coming to the door of the kitchen. “And it’s almost ready. Ariane, could you set the table?”
“I’ll help,” said Wally, earning a surprised glance from Ariane.
A few minutes later, they were seated before a feast of “mustard-smeared protein,” peas, rice, and salad.
“Your mother didn’t mind you missing dinner?” Aunt Phyllis asked, pouring teriyaki sauce on her rice. She handed the bottle to Wally.
When in Rome, he thought, and anointed his rice likewise. “My parents are both away right now. Ms. Carson, our housekeeper, is fixing our meals and sleeping over. And the way Flish and I have been at each other’s throats lately, I think Ms. Carson was relieved I was going out.” Wally handed the teriyaki sauce to Ariane, then looked back to catch Aunt Phyllis’s bemused face. “Um, I probably shouldn’t have said that...”
“Never mind, dear.” Aunt Phyllis delicately cut a slice off her pork. “And Flish is...?” She popped the pork into her mouth.
“My sister. Felicia.” Wally took a bite of teriyaki-laced rice. Not bad! Not bad at all.
“Younger?”
“Older. By almost four years.”
Aunt Phyllis nodded sympathetically. “That’s an awkward difference in age during the teenage years. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be best friends when you’re a few years older.”
“Maybe,” Wally said. Sure. And the Devil will be hosting skating parties in Hell. “Maybe.”
~ • ~
Ariane, thinking about what she and Wally planned to attempt after dinner, hardly heard the small talk. But she refocused in a hurry when Aunt Phyllis asked, “So you and Ariane are working on a project on King Arthur?”
Song of the Sword Page 7
