"Fuck spunk."
She laughed. "What do you have against spunk? My father always said he admired a woman with spunk."
"Then fuck your father and all his wise sayings too."
"You know, Freddie, you can be a real pain in the ass."
"Easy for you to say, Miss Sunshine and Light."
Her face turned red and she leaned closer, inches from my nose. "You don't know anything about me. You have no right to-"
Just as she was getting revved up, the ferry's engine grew to a roar as the captain backed the ship out into the harbor. She stopped talking while it executed its turn, accelerated into the sound, and began fading into the fog. By that time, her mood had changed. Despite the breeze blowing hair across her eyes, the difference was easy to see. The color had drained from her face.
I waited, unsure whether to ask her to go on. When she stayed silent, I thought it best to apologize. She was right after all. I'd been an ass.
"It was being around the court, Becky. I just-"
A half smile. "Apology accepted."
"What were you starting to say before the ferry throttled up?"
She shook her head slowly. "Doesn't matter, Freddie. All that matters is that you get it into your thick skull."
"Get what?"
"How much I want you to get better. If you can't do it for yourself, do it for me."
***
Following lunch, we went back to the van and drove another half hour. Cape back roads all looked the same, narrow and winding, lined with old trees and weathered houses turned gray by the salt air. I had no way of telling where we were. At least not until we turned onto that familiar, single-lane road, and I felt the speed bump.
I shouted to the driver, "Stop. Turn back."
The driver tapped his brakes, but Becky waved him on. Then she swiveled around in her seat and faced me.
"It's for me, Freddie. I want to see it."
"Why?"
"It's the way you spoke about the garret. I want to see the ocean through that little window your mother loved."
"Did you bring Gloria and the music box too?"
"Come on, Freddie. You won't do anything I ask you to do in PT, even though it's for your own good. At least do this one little favor for me."
She pulled a photograph from her pocketbook, pointed to the far side, and directed the driver around the green and past the tabernacle. She must have had Ralph sneak into my room while I was at PT and rummage through my personal stuff to borrow the picture. The van came to a stop. The panel doors opened. The driver shifted my wheelchair to the lift and lowered me to the ground.
And there it was. The gingerbread house.
For an instant, I was no longer the wounded warrior but a young architecture student studying for spring exams and hoping to someday build a house as beautiful as the one I grew up in. I recalled the first day I saw it. Ten years old. The family whole and together. I thought we were moving into a fairy tale.
The new owners hadn't changed much. Mom's hydrangeas still framed the walkway, but this late in the season the blue had been bleached out of them, and the blossoms had become ragged.
Everything else seemed the same. Steeply pitched roof with scalloped trim. Frosted windows with the clear palm fronds. White fence with the tulip-shaped cutouts. Despite the years away and the damage to my brain, all was as I remembered it. I almost expected Richie to come running out the front door.
But even he would take one look at me now and realize how much I'd changed. Enough to stop asking if I'd dunked. Those days were gone, like the rest of the family.
My daydreaming ended abruptly when I heard a noise from inside, an odd clicking sound like a bolt being pulled back and released. A dog barked and the war took over. I surveyed the houses surrounding the green, checking for faces in the windows and snipers on the rooftops. A middle-aged couple sat on a park bench on the green, feeding breadcrumbs to pigeons from a paper bag. I strained, staring at the bag, trying to read the intent on their faces. My hands began to sweat.
A window opened in the house next door. Mrs. Miller stuck her head out to see what the racket was all about. She was a gracious, silver-haired lady, a deacon in the tabernacle and a close friend of my mother's.
"Well, I'll be," she called from the window. "Is that you, Freddie Williams?"
A moment later her door swung open and she came out.
"I heard you were in Iraq. Are you okay?"
Despite my irritation at Becky, I was pleased to see Mrs. Miller. She'd always been kind to my family. Though I hated her seeing me in the wheelchair.
"Getting better," was all I managed to say.
"I hope so," she said. "Lord knows your family has had its share."
Becky came out of the van with the crutches. I glared at them.
Mrs. Miller held out her hand.
"Hello, young lady. I'm Helen Miller. Are you Freddie's wife?"
Becky flushed and shook her head.
"This is Becky Marshall," I said. "My physical therapist. She's trying to get me to walk again."
"Well, I'll pray for you to succeed. How is Richie doing?"
"I haven't seen him," I said. "Not for a long time."
"Richie used to follow Freddie around like a puppy dog," Mrs. Miller explained to Becky. "The two of them, different kids, but they looked a lot alike and were always together. Two peas in a pod."
I didn't have the heart to tell her that one of the peas had fled. I thanked Mrs. Miller, told her good-to-see-you.
After she'd god-blessed me and returned to her home, I whirled on Becky.
"Now what do you think you're doing with those crutches?"
"Just a quick look inside."
"You know I can't climb stairs?"
"It's three stairs, Freddie. Should be a piece of cake."
"Easy for you to say. Besides, you can't barge in like this. It's not my house anymore."
"I'm not barging. I called in advance."
She left me with my mouth open, skipped up the front stairs, and knocked on the frosted glass.
A young mother answered with two kids hanging off her legs. Becky explained that she was the one who had called, that I'd grown up in that house and this was my first time out of the hospital since being wounded in the war. I did my best to shrink into the wheelchair.
Then despite my protestations, Becky handed me the crutches and helped me to stand. I wobbled, more furious than unsteady.
"I'll look like an old man," I hissed.
One of the kids asked his mother why I was so mad.
"Hush, Johnny," she said. "He's a war hero."
"No, I'm not," I muttered as I took my first step.
"Well you will be to me," Becky said, loudly enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, "if you climb those stairs."
The odd clicking got sharper as I approached the first step. Clickety-clack. A golden retriever ran to the door wanting to play-friend, not enemy. The mother grabbed his collar to keep him from knocking me over. I had an urge to see the inside again and started to climb.
For the first time in a while, I neglected to check my surroundings. The gingerbread house had always felt safe and I didn't want to embarrass myself. I focused on one step at a time. At the top, I was rewarded with the old living room.
When I lived there last, reminders of my family had been scattered everywhere. Mom's notepad hanging from a hook on the wall, filled with her scribbled proverbs for the day. Dad's reading glasses she'd refused to throw away, left half-open on an end table. Next to them, the pipe he'd occasionally smoke. And the sofa where I'd found him the day he died.
Thankfully now, the furniture had changed. A playpen occupied the space where the sofa had been. In the kitchen doorway, a baby slept in one of those wind-up swings. It rocked slowly back and forth. Clickety-clack. On the floor, a box with wooden cars, crayons with a coloring book left open to a half-finished picture, a dollhouse with dolls inside. Plastic toys and stuffed animals littered the hall. The
young mother must have seen how I eyed them and cleared a path for me.
The only remnants of my family's home were the two paintings that hung on the wall by the stairway to the upper floors. Old paintings my mother had found at Pick of the Litter, portraits of sea captains with their backs and mouths stiff, their caps peaked and tilted to one side, and their eyes narrowed like they were staring into a stiff breeze at sunset. The first couple of years after we moved to the Cape, I would fantasize about being a sea captain. Seeing them now felt like meeting old friends.
At the base of the stairway, I stopped and looked up. Ten stairs to the next landing, wide enough for my crutches, shallow risers. And I knew the flight to the garret was the same.
Becky caught me staring at the stairway.
"You did great, Freddie. I didn't intend-"
I shifted the crutches to face her. "I thought you wanted to see the ocean."
"I was kidding."
"Well, I'm not."
"We can come back another time."
"You said I could do a lot more."
"You can."
"Well, now's the time." I shuffled to the edge of the stairs so that my shoes touched the riser and lifted the crutches onto the first stair.
"Are you sure I can do this?"
"I know you can."
I took three quick breaths like I used to when heading into an abandoned building on patrol. "Back me up just in case." One more breath. "Up with the good."
I stepped onto the stair with my good leg, pulled my bad leg even, and paused to steady myself. Becky followed like the mother of a toddler who'd recently learned to walk.
"One," I said.
It wasn't easy, but I was driven. I needed to see the garret, to show Becky the ocean through the oculus window. I needed to search for insurgents in my childhood home, to confront an assassin or an elf on the stairway, to know if Richie was hiding in the eaves.
I was in a zone, last ten seconds of the game. Score tied. Ball in my hands. Freddie the point guard. Pass or take it to the hoop. Clock winding down.
I was breathing hard. My hands began to go numb. I looked up.
The garret.
"So this is it?" Becky said.
I nodded, shocked at how small it was, almost surprised my mother wasn't still sitting by the oculus, watching for a sign from my dad.
Becky rushed forward like she was about to catch me from falling. When she threw her arms around me, I was filled with her energy, a life force renewing me.
The trip down was scarier because the zone was gone. I was back to being a gimpy veteran. Neither of us had much to say until I was back in the van with my wheelchair locked into place. Becky asked the driver to wait a second before driving off. She left her seat and squatted next to me.
"You did it, Freddie. See how much you can do?"
I lifted my chin and straightened, getting as tall as I could in a wheelchair.
"You win, Becky. Your little scheme worked. But I'm never doing it again."
"Why not?" she said. "You're only going to get stronger. In a month or two, I'll have you climbing those stairs with a cane."
"That's not what I meant."
"Then what?"
"I meant I'm finished with that part of my life. Time to move on."
Chapter Eighteen
Heroes and Flowers
Twelve days until my anointment or the end of all things, yet still no progress. The door to the second trial was locked, the key nowhere to be found. Following that morning's session with the spinning wheel, I dashed down the stairway eyeing the shadows, expecting each to bring doom.
At the bottom, I paused in the archway, held my breath, and listened. I could hear the wind whistling through the arrow loops, but neither scrape nor scuffle on the stairs. I was alone.
I staggered to a bench in an alcove and sat with my sword across my knees, back to the wall-the defensive posture Sir Gilly had taught me. I was considering I might be safe when a chill ran through me, and I felt the sensation of a cold hand on my shoulder.
Impossible. Nothing behind me but wall. When the feeling persisted, I jumped up and spun around, my sword at the ready, pointing foolishly at the stones.
As I squinted, the stones began to blur and a man appeared. A warrior, it seemed, garbed in a uniform I'd never seen before. Not the armor of a knight or the chain mail of a foot soldier, but a jacket of blue cloth. Not a helmet, but a peaked cap as blue as the jacket. Brass buttons paraded down his chest, and he bore an insignia of gold over his heart. But most surprising, he had shape but no depth, and his movements were not movements at all but ripples like a tapestry in a breeze.
"Are you the one searching for the boy?" a voice said, though the warrior's lips never moved.
I straightened my arm until the point of the sword scraped the stone behind the apparition.
"Are you spirit or demon?"
"They told me someone like you was searching for the boy."
I lowered my arm. He had no physical presence and was deaf to my words. I turned to go.
"I may know where he is," he said. "If you come with me, I'll show you."
His right hand reached out in a gesture of beckoning. Some memory within me stirred, a vision from the spinning wheels. Snow skittering across a hard, black surface.
"What boy?" I pleaded. The wall was fast returning to stone.
I took a step closer, desperate for more. But the soldier had faded, leaving no more than a blotch of blue. Then as I stared open-mouthed, he rippled one last time and was gone.
"Why is your back exposed?" A more familiar voice behind me said. "Do you expect an attack from the wall?"
I turned to see what appeared to be Sir Gilly. But wisps of gray flew out from his temples, and his face was the color of chalk. He looked more like his own ghost.
"What happened to you?" I said, checking for the telltale aura of a shapeshifter.
"We must speak, Frederick. I've been visited by a spirit of my own."
I studied his features, then glanced past him, searching behind the pillars for hidden enemies.
"What spirit?" I said.
"This morning, when I went to the lord chamberlain's office, I found the door open. I was sure I'd locked it the night before as I have for over forty-one years. Was I less likely to be vigilant in these days of dread? Of course, I entered with trepidation. And what I found . . . Only now, after all these years, do I appreciate what the princes of Stormwind endure."
He wavered, nearly stumbling. As I caught his arm to support him, we came close, his eyes only inches from mine. I peered into them and my suspicions vanished. Here was my rock and my mentor, but with a weariness as deep as my own. I sheathed my sword and brought him to the bench, warily watching the wall behind.
"What did you find?" I said when he was seated.
His features sagged, making him look old beyond his years.
"I often wondered how we go on, with the dreadlord and his Horde looming over us and the watchtower forming but a thin line in between. Yet in the courtyard, the people come and go, taking for granted that each generation will prevail."
"What did you find?" I asked more urgently.
"A spirit with a message for you."
"But why would he give it to you and not to me directly?"
"He said he was barred by the demons from speaking with you ever again."
"Again?" My mind raced. "What did he look like?"
"A large man with an overarching brow and a shaved head that was mostly skull." He stared into the distance as if he could see the spirit hovering over the parapet wall. His voiced trembled. "His chest was shorn away. No clothing or skin covered it, only the strangest of medallions floating in the air. And behind it, his beating heart."
I was afraid to ask, but his silence lingered. "The medallion. Was it in the image of the World Tree?"
His face brightened with recognition. "Aye. That's it. The World Tree."
"And what did the message say?"
/> "His words were odd, Frederick, spoken with a deep sorrow. He said he bore a clue to the key you've been seeking. But I'm a poor advisor with nothing to add, not the least insight into what he meant."
He stopped, unable to go on. I squeezed his arm and repeated my question, enunciating every word.
"The message. What was it?"
"Just this." He drew me closer and whispered, as if to mimic the spirit. "The new pipe is for heroes."
***
I led Sir Gilly to his quarters and ordered two stout knights to attend him, making them swear to stay by his side should the dreadlord himself appear. Once he was settled, I rushed to the lord chamberlain's office in the hope I might find the spirit and speak to him. After convincing myself he was gone, I sat at the lord chamberlain's table and scratched on a parchment a list of all I had learned.
Seek the white rose. But no roses bloomed in the kingdom at this time of year.
Embrace the shadows. The simpleton's map had led me to the crypt where the shadows of my parents rested. The great elf himself had confirmed the entrance to the second trial. But the door was locked, to be opened only by a special key.
The new pipe is for heroes. The clue to finding the key.
The conclusion was clear. I was barred from the second trial for want of a key, and the key was connected to the pipes. The answer must lie in the chamber where I'd first met the spirit. I stuffed the parchment into my tunic pocket and headed for the armory.
As I strode down the familiar tunnel, I watched for signs that might foreshadow a change, a draft of air on my face or the slightest slope downward. I listened for a hint of the spirit, the clanging of pipes or the sound of his singing. Nothing. Only the crash of steel on steel as swords were stacked in the armory.
When I arrived, I queried the armorer to learn what he knew about a hidden chamber.
The old man rubbed the stubble along his scar and gaped at me.
"A chamber with pipes?" he said. "None that I recall."
"Or a tunnel sloping downward to a steep ramp?"
He shook his head. "For thirty-five years, I've come here each morning in service to your father, and the tunnel's always stayed level for me. But who am I to say? These are strange times."
Along The Watchtower Page 10
