The Reckless Oath We Made

by Bryn Greenwood

  “That’s kind of cool,” Zee said, which I thought was sweet. I appreciated that she seemed interested.

  “Then after he graduated high school, he got very serious about historical medieval battle, with the swords and the armor, which I am not fond of. He’s been injured a few times, as you know, but no more gallivanting around in search of knightly adventures. We like to keep him close to home.”

  From the front room, over the drone of the television, I heard Bill say, “Hey there, little man.”

  Then Marcus said, “Mommy! Aunt Zee, Mommy’s on TV.” When all the blood drained out of Zee’s face, I could see how much she looked like her sister.

  She jumped up and ran toward the family room, and I went after her.

  CHAPTER 9

  Marcus

  I wanted to stay and watch Mommy on TV, but Aunt Zee took me back to the bedroom.

  “Mommy’s famous now!” I said.

  “I guess, kind of. Come here. Get in bed.”

  “Is that why Mommy isn’t home yet? Because she’s on TV?”

  “Yeah, that’s part of why Mommy can’t come home yet. Look, I need you to listen to me for a minute.” She made me get in bed, and pulled the covers up over me.

  “Can I call Mommy?” I said.

  “Not right now you can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Aunt Zee put her hands up over her face, so I knew I was talking too much and making her head hurt.

  “You know how Mommy is busy on Monday nights, right?” she said.

  “Yeah, because she’s volunteer.” I didn’t know what volunteer was, but she didn’t come home til after my bedtime on Monday nights.

  “Right. She volunteers at the prison. Remember how she told you it’s the prison where your granddad Leroy used to be, right?”

  “Because he did a bad thing. He stole something. That’s why it’s not okay to steal things. You can go to prison.” There were lots of things you weren’t supposed to do. Daddy went to prison, too, because Mommy said he made a bad decision. You could go to prison for that.

  “Well, something happened at the prison on Monday. Some bad guys made Mommy go somewhere with them,” Aunt Zee said.

  “What bad guys? Did they steal something? Why did Mommy go with them?”

  “She didn’t want to. She wanted to come home, but they made her go with them. That’s why she can’t come home yet.”

  “When is she coming home?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But if she’s on real TV, she can come home, right? If she’s on real TV, she’s somewhere,” I said. We talked about that at school, how some stuff on TV is real and some stuff on TV is not real. Like SpongeBob and My Little Pony. They’re not real.

  “Well, yeah, she’s somewhere. I don’t know where, but the police are going to find her and bring her home,” Aunt Zee said.

  “When are they bringing her home?”

  “I don’t know, buddy.”

  I didn’t like Mommy being gone. Or bad guys taking her with them. Aunt Zee didn’t like it, either, and I didn’t like her to cry. I sat up so I could hug her.

  “But why?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I wish I had more answers, but you should go back to sleep now. Maybe we’ll know more tomorrow.” Aunt Zee pulled the covers up over me again.

  “What if Mommy calls and we don’t answer because we’re asleep?”

  “My phone is on. If she calls, it’ll wake us up. I promise.”

  “What if—what if—” I wanted to be brave, but it made me so scared I cried. “What if bad guys come while I’m asleep and take you?”

  “Me? No. Nobody’s gonna kidnap me. I’m so big, how would they carry me away?” Aunt Zee said.

  “But what if it was someone bigger than you?”

  “Then I would scream for help. Gentry’s right next door, and he has his swords. He would come and protect us from the bad guys. Remember how he picked you up when those guys were bothering us at Grandma’s house?”

  I nodded, but I wondered if Gentry was big enough to pick Aunt Zee up like he did me. Because maybe he could take her away.

  “I’m going to stay right here with you, okay? So you know I’m here,” Aunt Zee said.

  “Okay.”

  It was a little bed like mine at home, but Aunt Zee laid down next to me and put her head on my pillow. Her hair was all long, and it tickled my face. I tried to go to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw bad guys coming to kidnap her away.

  CHAPTER 10

  Gentry

  ’Twas long my habit, after a night’s labor for the Duke of Bombardier, to pass the keep where Lady Zhorzha dwelled with her sister. As they weren not there, I passed instead by the dragon’s lair. All was still, but there was a man in a car that was strange to me. When I came to his door, he looked at me not, tho I stood before him. His window was open to release the smoke from his cigarettes. From the leavings upon the ground, he had smoked for many hours.

  “What is thy purpose here?” ’Twas ill-mannered of me, but there was no reason he should be there unless he meant harm.

  “None of your goddamn business, kid,” he said.

  “Certs ’tis.”

  “Public street. I can park here if I want.” He closed his window.

  I walked back to my truck and thought upon what to do. Behind the seat lay several weapons—a sword, a mace, a dagger—but they could not serve me for the nonce. I returned to the man’s car with my phone that I might make an image of his license plate. Then he would leave, making a wanton sign with his hand ere he drove thence.

  For a time, I stood in the street and thought of the lady dragon enthroned upon her hoard, alone. More alone than I, for when I departed the dragon’s lair, I followed a clear path to my father’s keep, where my lady mother prepared the morning meal at the hearth. There also, in the safety of my father’s household, was Lady Zhorzha. Lest Gawen should mock me, I held the thought for only a moment, but she glowed as ember in a heap of ash.

  “Good morrow. Slept ye well?” I asked, upon finding my parents breaking their fast.

  “Well enough,” my father said. “That CPAP may save my life yet.”

  “If only because I won’t be tempted to smother you with a pillow,” my mother said.

  “And the lady? How fared she?” I dared not speak her name, for she was still an ember to me, and I felt the warmth of her presence unseen.

  “She had a hard time getting the little man settled down,” my father said. “He was pretty upset.”

  “They must be exhausted, and the news about her sister isn’t great,” my mother said. “They found her car abandoned near the Nebraska border.”

  “Her sister yet liveth?” I believed not that my parents possessed sure knowledge, but I longed to hear they held some hope for my lady’s sister.

  “Well, it seems to me that if they’d done something to her they would’ve left her with the car when they ditched it. So I think that’s promising,” my father said.

  ’Twas my habit to bathe ere I broke my fast, but as I went down the passage, Lady Zhorzha opened the door of the guest chamber and stepped out. She wore naught but a blouse and her braies. I would spare her my gaze, but mine eyes caught upon the sight of her bare legs. Her right thigh was covered in black markings that graved her pale flesh. I knew not why. As a punishment? As a claim upon her?

  “Oh, hey,” she said. “I was going to take a shower, but if you need the bathroom first, that’s cool. I can wait.”

  “My lady.” I would assure her that she might do as she wished, but words came not to my tongue. Fearing that I gave offense, I bowed to her, but she retreated to her chamber.

  Before my staring eyes, as she turned from me, the marking upon her shank gained the form of a fantastical beast—the hindquarters and tail of a drag
on. In the strike of my heart, she leapt from ember to flame.

  “Scarred like a pagan,” Hildegard said.

  “Like a pagan priestess.” Gawen was right, for there was power in such graving.

  In the bath, I opened the spigot and chastised myself for the heat in my blood. Hildegard lashed me, saying, “Art thou ashamed for thine eyes’ offense?”

  “I averted my gaze,” I said.

  “Wert thou pure of heart, thou wouldst not need to avert thine eyes. Thou couldst look upon her naked without shame.”

  I protested not, tho ’twas untrue. I might do no such thing with a pure heart.

  “She is thine to protect and no further,” Hildegard said, but the Witch said naught.

  Gawen laughed and said, “The lady inflameth thy liver. Thou shalt have no relief but by thine own hand.”

  Sooth, he was right.

  CHAPTER 11

  Zee

  People say, “Stay as long as you need,” but they don’t mean that literally. Most people don’t even mean it past a week. No matter how good a guest you are, how cheerfully you help out around the house, eventually, your host starts to frown at the pile of blankets you try to keep out of sight when you’re not actually sleeping on the couch.

  Even with LaReigne, I sometimes felt like she was giving me that look: Oh, you’re still here, sitting on the couch, waiting for me to go to bed so you can go to bed, even though I’d like to finish watching this movie.

  Except for the year I was with Nicholas, I’d been living like that since I left home. Even before that, I felt like an invisible guest in Mom’s house. Our house had always been cluttered with her stuff, but it got a lot worse after Dad went to prison. By the time LaReigne graduated from high school, Mom was off the deep end into hoarding. Like if she couldn’t keep LaReigne at home, she was going to collect stuff that couldn’t leave her.

  LaReigne went off to Seward County Community College on a cheerleading scholarship, while I stayed at home trying to keep Mom’s stuff at bay. My living space was a twin bed, while the rest of my room got taken over by boxes of collectibles and books and craft projects. I had to start keeping my clothes in a canvas bag hung on a hook from the ceiling above my bed. Otherwise, I’d come home from school and have to dig it out from under whatever new treasures Mom was “just storing” in my bedroom.

  When the sink faucet stopped working, Mom wouldn’t let a plumber in the house, and we couldn’t take showers, because of the stuff stacked in one end of the tub. I’d fill up a bucket from the kitchen sink to brush my teeth and take what Mom called a whore’s bath with a washrag.

  Then one day at the beginning of my junior year, I came home from school and, after squeezing through the gap in my bedroom door and crawling over the beaver dam of clothes and magazines, I found that my bed had been taken over by three plastic bins of old bridesmaids dresses and half a dozen cardboard shipping boxes. Mom had put them there because my bed was one of the last empty spaces in the house.

  At first my friend Mindy and her family were cool with the fact that I was “having trouble at home,” but that only lasted a week. Then I was out on my ass, toting my sleeping bag back to my mother’s house, where I slept one night in the hallway, wedged in between the wall and stacks of magazines all the way up to the ceiling. I couldn’t even turn over, so I laid there all night like a mummy with my arms tucked across my chest, listening to mice scurry around.

  I burned through eleven friendships in high school. Eight my junior year. Three my senior year. Those were the early days, before I figured out that people didn’t mean I could stay as long as I needed. Before I figured out that sex made a difference. It’s harder for people to kick you out when you’re having sex with them. Or their dad. Or whatever.

  One of the first things you learn from sleeping over at people’s houses is that everybody’s family is weird. Maybe not your family’s kind of weird, but weird.

  So Gentry’s family was super nice, and it was great to have my own bed, and for Marcus and me to have our own room, but I knew Charlene didn’t really mean we could stay as long as we needed. Plus, living with LaReigne for the past two years, I’d forgotten how much hard work it was being a guest.

  I missed having the option of going back to sleep. That was the trade-off to being a perpetual guest. You got to eat and not worry about where it came from, but you didn’t get to lie in somebody’s guest bed all day and cry. You had to get up.

  I had to get up.

  I guessed Gentry had just come home from work, because he was wearing steel-toed work boots and jeans instead of cargo shorts. I was wearing the T-shirt and panties I slept in. So that was awkward. After he finished in the bathroom, I took a shower and put on the last pair of clean clothes I had. That was the first thing I needed to do: go by the apartment to get clean clothes for me and Marcus. Before that, I had to get Marcus up, which, considering he’d been up half the night crying and having bad dreams, was almost impossible. It was only eight o’clock, though, so I had a couple hours before work. If I could get him up and take him to Mom’s house by then, it would be okay.

  When I went out to the front room, Elana was there watching some kind of educational video, and Charlene was in the kitchen.

  “Good morning, hon. How do you feel about French toast for breakfast?” she said.

  “Oh, you don’t need to fix me anything.”

  “Well, it’s already cooking, so you might as well have some. Does Marcus like French toast?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s just having a hard time getting up this morning.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll fix him some breakfast when he gets up. Go on, sit down, and I’ll bring it to you.”

  In the dining room, Gentry was reading the newspaper, but he folded it up when I sat down.

  “How slept thou, Lady Zhorzha?” he said.

  “Oh, okay.”

  “My mother said thou passed the night ill, that thy nephew was much distressed, and for that I am sorry.”

  I don’t think Gentry understood I was trying to tell a polite lie. “Well, he had to find out eventually, I guess.” That was what I said, but then I spent a whole minute trying not to cry.

  Charlene carried in a baking pan with these huge, fluffy slabs of French toast on it. It was the most beautiful French toast I had ever seen. Golden brown and bubbly and dusted with powdered sugar. After the first bite, I cut a second one, but didn’t eat it. I stuck the syrupy mess in the middle of my palm and stood up.

  “It thee liketh not?” Gentry said, and he actually looked at me, so I knew I was acting pretty kooky.

  “It’s perfect. It’s the most amazing French toast I’ve ever had.”

  It was so incredible, I carried it down the hallway to Marcus, and waved it under his nose.

  “If you get up now, you get French toast,” I said. “Otherwise, you’re getting oatmeal for breakfast.”

  That probably wasn’t true, but it got him up. I led him down the hallway with the bite of French toast like bait on a hook.

  “Look who decided to get out of bed,” Charlene said.

  He ate two whole pieces without saying a word, which was a record for him. After he finished the second piece, he said, “When can I go see Mommy?”

  I’d been thinking about having a second piece of French toast, too, but that killed the urge. I felt like the whole night had been a terrible dream, and I was going to have to live it again. Like Groundhog Day.

  “Buddy, I don’t know.”

  “But you said the police were going to bring her home. When?” He had a little mustache of syrup and powdered sugar that was so cute I would have laughed, but it was just fucking sad right then.

  “They are,” I said. “They’re gonna find her and bring her home, but I don’t know when. I hope really, really soon.” All the same stuff I’d told him last night.

&nb
sp; “Can we go to the prison and look for her?”

  “She’s not there. I told you, they took her away. We’re gonna go to Grandma—”

  “You don’t know she’s not there if you didn’t go look,” Marcus said. It was the kind of thing LaReigne told him when he’d lost a toy. How do you know it’s not there if you didn’t look? I guess he thought it worked for everything. He sniffled, but instead of crying, he shouted, “You don’t know! You don’t know!”

  “Master Marcus, be not wroth with thine aunt,” Gentry said. I wanted to tell him to mind his own business, but I was a guest in his house. Plus Marcus stopped yelling and looked at Gentry, who took the newspaper and unfolded it. “’Tis here, writ in the paper. Canst thou read?”

  “No. I can only do my alphabet.”

  Marcus was still sniffling, but he got up on his knees in his chair to look at the paper. Gentry cleared his throat and started reading: “As the manhunt for escaped inmates Tague Barnwell and Conrad Ligett enters the third day, authorities have widened the scope of their search, following the discovery of hostage LaReigne Trego-Gill’s car in a rural area near the Nebraska state line.”

  More than a few times I’d wondered if Gentry ever spoke modern English, but I wasn’t sure if this counted. After all, he was reading the newspaper, not making up the sentences himself.

  I’d never thought of letting Marcus hear all the news, I guess because I was trying to protect him. Plus, normally, when you read him a story, he asked a hundred questions, and I didn’t have answers. He listened to Gentry read the article all the way through in the same slow, steady voice. When Gentry finished, he pushed the paper across the table so Marcus could look at it. Marcus put his finger on LaReigne’s picture, and I waited for him to ask something, anything, but he started crying.

  I pulled him onto my lap and let him cry. I put my cheek down on the top of his head and took a deep breath. He always smelled like my two favorite things about grade school: recess and art.