by Tanya Huff
“And I’ll have to hand him over to four years of that. I don’t think I can. Millions, no, billions are going to die, and I’d let it happen rather than have Jack suffer at the Courts for four years.”
Allie wanted to say, “No you wouldn’t.” She didn’t. There was less than no point in arguing a certainty. Instead, she shrugged and said, “Maybe they won’t be able to teach him.”
“And how fucked up am I that losing a chance to save the world would be good news. What kind of world are your babies going to grow up in, Allie-cat?”
“One without a diaper service is my guess.”
“Allie . . .”
She tugged one of Charlie’s hands away from her phone and laced their fingers together. “My boys are going to grow up in a world where they’ll know that you did everything you could to make it the best possible world they could grow up in. Regardless of how many people we manage to save.”
“You’re sure . . .”
“I have always been sure of you.”
Charlie’s sigh sounded a little shaky, but her lips were warm and soft and, well, sure. After a moment or two, she sighed again, but more in relief, Allie thought. As if she’d set aside at least some of the burdens she carried. “I’m a little surprised the aunties aren’t trying to figure out a way for you to pop the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale out in time to save the day.”
“They don’t even know what he’ll be able to do.”
“They’re fairly certain he’s going to be something spectacular.”
“How do you know they’re not trying to figure out a way?”
“Good point.” Allie could tell without looking that Charlie was staring at the other lounger and wondered how often she’d met Jack up here after a night out. Wondered what they’d talked about. Didn’t wonder where Charlie’d found the strength to do the right thing because it was Charlie.
“I guess I know how he felt all those times when I left him without saying good-bye.” Her voice was matter of fact.
“How do you feel?”
“Like I must have done something wrong.”
Allie winced. “You haven’t . . .”
“I know, sweetie, I know. Fortunately, and I recognize the irony, fortunately, I’m not seventeen. And,” she added after a moment, “that asteroid is one hell of a distraction. Or it would be if every possible way of stopping it didn’t involve Jack and I getting screwed. And not in a fun way.”
Maybe Katie . . . except maybe meant fire. A little afraid of how much she was willing to risk Katie to save Charlie further heartache, Allie shivered.
“Are you cold?”
“A little. And I have to pee.” She stood, hip pressed against Charlie’s shoulder and tucked the blue strand of hair behind her cousin’s ear. “You coming in?”
“No.” Charlie’s hand closed around hers for a second, then let her go. “I have some thinking to do.”
“You used to go to crappy bars to think.”
“I used to think about different things.”
Charlie didn’t relax until Allie reached the bottom of the stairs—ignoring the fact that Allie was not only a healthy young woman who had a perfectly normal pregnancy once before, for certain values of the word normal, but that she was a Gale and the universe didn’t allow pregnant Gales to trip and fall. Although it seemed to have no trouble dropping enormous rocks on them.
Rock.
Singular.
With all they could do, she couldn’t believe they couldn’t stop a falling rock.
Surviving it wasn’t enough, she had to save Jack, and, if truth be told, herself. Not being able to touch him outside of ritual having touched him within ritual would flay pieces off her soul every time she saw him. The only way to keep them out of ritual was to solve the problem.
Problem? Right.
A pigeon strutting back and forth on the edge of the roof froze as her laugh slid toward cackling thirty years too soon. When an auntie started cackling, the rest of the family battened down.
Solve the problem, save the world.
Save not only her family, but Gary and Kiren and Dan . . .
Dan.
“Remember the bears, Charlie.”
She hadn’t given the last thing she’d heard Dan say much thought at the time. Given Calgary’s proximity to the mountains, it wasn’t that surprising a thought for him to have overheard and some poor bastard running into bears in the wild would probably have provided the focus necessary to get through her earworm and into his head. Except . . .
It wasn’t a random thought. It was a thought directed at her.
“Remember the bears, Charlie.”
Charlie squinted at a pigeon strutting along the edge of the roof. His head bobbed forward into the sun, the bit of garbage dangling from his beak both blue and fuzzy.
The universe arranged things in the Gales’ favor. Occasionally, it smacked them upside the head.
Smacked her upside the head.
So she remembered the bears. The bears staring out the windows. The bears freed when she broke the glass. Auntie Jane’s phone call . . .
Remember the bears. Remember what had been said about them.
The pigeon sidled away as she stepped toward him, giving her an impressive hairy eyeball considering his total lack of hair. “Come on, bird, I’m not going to hurt you.” He didn’t look like he believed her. She could make him believe her if she wanted to stoop to compelling pigeons. She stepped closer. The pigeon spread his wings. “Stay there!”
Apparently stooping wasn’t a problem.
The emphasis snapped his wings down.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” She’d have told him not to be frightened, but he didn’t look frightened; he looked pissed off. Bending slowly, she tugged the dangling bit of fuzz out of his beak. “Okay then. I can smell bacon from the diner on 13th. You should head over there and try to score. Or not,” she added, jumping back as her field of vision filled with wings beating out an angry rhythm on the air.
Pale blue polyester fuzz. Incredibly filthy, pale blue polyester fuzz; probably home to the kind of bacteria normally found only around the toilets of the sort of bars that hung chicken wire in front of the stage. Fortunately, Charlie had a charm for that.
She dropped the fuzz, flipped off the pigeon watching her from the roof of the garage across the alley, and tried to remember what Auntie Jane had said about the bears.
Mostly they’d spoken about the creature who’d been holding them. She’d asked if she was in trouble for taking him out and Auntie Jane had told her not to be ridiculous, that he was nasty piece of work.
“Once they’ve started on bears, the world is a better place without them.”
She fumbled her phone out of her pocket. Auntie Jane’s number had moved into the top spot in her contacts list. Charlie shifted her weight from foot to foot as it rang. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
“This had better be important, Charlotte. In case you hadn’t heard, the world is about to end.”
“Why is the world a better place without them once they’ve started on bears?”
Auntie Jane sighed and turned away from the phone. “Thank you, Meredith, I’d love a tea. Christie is with Arthur again.”
Auntie Meredith’s voice was a quiet background rumble.
“I know the ritual is still five days away, but if she wears him out, I will charm her knees together. Bears, Charlotte, in the last hundred odd years . . .”
“And some of them were very odd.” No rim shot. Charlie frowned.
“. . . have come to symbolize the security of innocence. Did you know emergency services give teddy bears to children in accidents to comfort them?”
“I didn’t.”
“Did you know it works?”
“I didn’t.”
“
Don’t ever underestimate the power of an agreed-upon symbol, Charlotte. The only reason red lights stop cars is that we have agreed they will.”
“So the old guy in Vermont, he was removing innocence and security from the world?”
“As you didn’t bother to check before you blew the seals, we have no way of knowing for certain, but, given that we know he was a nasty piece of work, it’s a valid assumption. Now, as thrilled as I am that you’re actually asking questions, however after the fact, I need to deal with Mary and her belief that allspice will substitute for . . . Back away from the spice cabinet, Mary!”
Charlie slid the phone back into her pocket and headed downstairs.
It took her the rest of the day to find what she needed—and not only because the twins kept calling to tell her about spiders. And snakes. And Australians. So far, at least four of the Australians were as athletic as advertised. Four of the Australians, and six of the spiders.
* * *
The scent of lasagna and garlic bread rolled out over her as Charlie opened the door to the apartment. She shrugged out of her jacket and stood for a moment watching Allie and Auntie Gwen and Katie dip and weave in the movements of a familiar dance. Gale girls seldom cooked alone. By the time they could use the stovetop without a step stool, they knew how to share the space with knives and fire and sisters and cousins and aunts. Charlie could hear the music they danced to even if she’d never learned more than the basic steps herself.
Joe was still in the store. Auntie Gwen would take two plates down and they’d eat together on the glass counter, not even the most mundane of bargain hunters daring to interrupt their meal. Graham sat in one of the big armchairs, his sons curled up on his lap listening to a story of a raccoon who got on the LRT at Southland and off five stops later at Bridlewood, waddling out into the dark as though he knew where he was going. Charlie could hear the truth in the story even if the twins could only hear the funny voices their father made as he told them about the reactions of the other passengers.
She touched the empty spaces that should have been full of Jack and moved away from the door, into the twins’ line of sight.
“Cha Cha!”
Dropping to one knee, Charlie waited for impact. Edward reached her first, but Evan followed close enough behind they hit essentially as one and she toppled amid shrieks of laughter. After a moment filled with sloppy kisses and four dimpled knees that seemed determined to nail her in the boob with every other movement, she grinned up at them. “I wonder if there’s a present in that shopping bag.”
She still wasn’t sure how many words they actually understood, but present they knew. Sitting up, she pushed her hair back off her face and scooted back until she could lean against the sofa as Edward all but dove into the bag, passing the first plush toy back to his brother.
Evan’s bear had a dark green head and body, its arms and one of its legs brown-and-white-striped. The second leg was striped pink and green. Edward held a bear with a blue head and body, its arms pink-and-purple stripes and its legs a pale lime green. Both tails—one green, one blue although not on the expected bear—sounded like a duck call when squeezed.
“These are special bears,” she explained as the boys returned to her lap. “When I’m not here . . .”
“Gone.”
“Yes, when I’m gone, these bears will remind you of me. When you hug these bears, you’ll know I’m with you no matter where I am.”
Edward cocked his head and pushed the blue bear against her chest. “Here.”
“Yes.” She pressed a kiss to his hair, amazed he’d made the connection. But then Graham and Allie did a stupidly cute got my heart when Graham left for work so maybe he’d picked it up from that. “That’s right. When you hug the bear, I’m in your heart. And when you’re all grown up . . .”
“Big!”
“That’s right, when you’re big, too big for bears, you can give them to your little brothers and . . . Ow.”
Evan’s remarkably pointy foot dug into her thigh as he launched himself toward his mother. “Brothers!”
Fortunately, avoiding kids was part of the kitchen dance.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Charlie . . .” Graham leaned forward, muscular forearms braced on his thighs. “. . . but you couldn’t have bought uglier bears if you’d tried.”
Charlie smiled and settled Edward against her heart. “I know.”
Later, she danced the bears into their crib with a rousing—albeit edited—version of “Rocket Scientist” by the Teddybears. Maybe someday the boys could meet Kiren. Before Allie could come in and remind her that no one appreciated toddlers whipped into a frenzy right before bed, she segued into “To Know Him is to Love Him” by the Teddy Bears—the space between teddy and bear making all the difference.
“When you hug the bears, I’m in your heart,” she repeated quietly, kissing their foreheads as they blinked sleepily up at her. “No matter what happens.”
Allie and Graham both were waiting for her outside the boys’ room. “Charlie . . .”
Charlie could hear tone and timbre of a complicated question behind Allie’s hesitant voicing of her name. Fortunately, shared history kept it from needing to be put into words. “No, it’s too weird missing Jack while I’m in bed with you.”
“Weirder than wanting Jack while you’re in bed with us?” Graham wondered.
“Weirdly, yes.”
“We could just sleep,” Allie pointed out, digging an elbow into her husband’s ribs.
“No, I . . .”
“For comfort.”
Graham rolled his eyes, leaned past Allie and kissed Charlie good night. “She’s not looking for comfort,” he said, his fingers warm on Charlie’s shoulder. “Not yet.”
He meant well, but Charlie walked away thinking about needing comfort later, and by the time she reached her room, she’d realized her life wasn’t country music, it was Götterdämmerung. Her one true love was a seventeen-year-old half dragon she’d never be able to play naked love nest with—except for in vaguely religious scenarios under the supervision of her entire family—who’d gone missing and the best case scenario involved him arranging to be emotionally tortured for four years by basketball loving escapees from the Silmarillion. Meanwhile, she’d set up a third act with the leads still in diapers and the harmonies provided by someone she didn’t entirely trust. Not to mention there was a good chance the finale would involve an asteroid impact large enough to shake and bake the planet.
The background music soared into Brunhilda’s Immolation Scene.
“I’m not making this up, you know,” Charlie muttered, opening the bedroom door.
To her surprise, Katie was sitting cross-legged on the bed wearing a black tank and orange pajama pants covered in black witches’ hats.
Charlie toed off her boots and kicked them into the corner. “I’m sleeping on the roof. I came in to change.”
“Really? On the roof?” Katie set her tablet on the bedside table, stretched, and stood. “It’s almost the end of October. You’ll know when Jack comes back regardless, so get into bed.”
“Katie . . .”
“I know, it’s like every other note has been silenced, right? Every other string taken off your guitar? Every other hole plugged in your piccolo?”
“Katie . . .”
“You shouldn’t be alone. More alone,” Katie amended before Charlie could speak.
Truth be told, she didn’t want to be alone. More alone. “If you steal the covers . . .”
She slept an hour or two at a time, woke to the hollow pain of Jack’s absence, and allowed Katie’s even breathing to lull her back to sleep for another hour or two. Second verse, same as the first. Jack wasn’t back when dawn painted the bedroom in pale grays, so she slid out of bed, grabbed her quilt, and headed for the roof. She watched the sun come up, listened to the traffic
below on 9th, refused to surrender to the scent of Mexican dark that wafted up every time the door to the coffee shop opened, and she waited.
“Allie says no one’s getting French toast until you come in, so get your ass down to breakfast.”
Charlie shuffled around until she could peer over the edge of the quilt at Graham. As every Gale who successfully made it to adulthood knew, French toast was significantly harder to charm than pancakes. Her stomach growled as she gathered the quilt around her and stood. She could wait inside for a while.
“That was Carmen,” Auntie Gwen declared, putting her phone away as Charlie followed Graham into the apartment. “The Courts have dialed back the pain-in-the-ass behavior. Nothing new since the basilisk at the Rideau Town Center. Meredith drove over and dealt with it,” she added as Charlie’s eyebrows went up. “She wanted to try out a new lemon pepper stuffing. Apparently, they do taste like chicken.”
“Maybe the Courts are being more discreet. Yeah, like that’s happening,” Charlie snorted before anyone else could. Tossing her quilt over the end of the sofa, she dropped into her usual seat at the table. Were the Courts so distracted by Jack’s pain that they’d forgotten to poke the MidRealm?
“Or they’re distracted because basketball season starts tomorrow.”
No surprise Auntie Gwen had followed her line of thought. A little surprise she followed basketball. “How do you know?”
“Bea’s been going on about it. If it’s an attempt to keep me from asking what Jane had to say to her, it’s working.”
The boys had brought their bears to the breakfast. The green bear fell in the syrup. “Sing, Cha Cha!” Evan demanded, handing it to her.
“Fell in the syrup, drenched from head to toes. When I tried to clean up, my paws stuck to my nose . . .” Presley’s “Hound Dog”: world’s easiest tune to adapt, she acknowledged as she sang and danced the bears around the table while both boys shrieked with laughter.
After breakfast, after green bear, now named Grrr, had been cleaned, Charlie took her phone back to the roof.
Her mother called. Her sisters called. Uncle Richard called because he’d found an old hammered dulcimer in the attic and wanted to know if it was worth keeping. She made a quick trip to Ontario, told him it wasn’t, and dropped in on Auntie Ruby long enough to hear Auntie Jane call the dying woman stubborner than a tree stump.
