by Ted Sanders
Gabriel stood where he was, as if he might stay there forever. Chloe took a seat on a large rock, and Horace joined her.
“Sorry,” Chloe mumbled, glancing down at the Fel’Daera. “You know I’m not doubting you, it’s just that this daktan sucks. It’s like a fistful of miserable. I want this to be over with.”
“It’s okay,” Horace said, and left it at that. He was getting used to plans being dependent on his powers, but he preferred not to dwell on it. In the silence, night noises rose around them—pulsing frogs and crickets, the whisper of leaves, the murmur of the river. Only the distant hum of traffic reminded them they were still in the city.
“Anybody got marshmallows?” Chloe said after a while. “We need to start bringing food to our stakeouts.”
“So now it’s a stakeout?” Horace asked.
“Stakeout . . . trap . . . welcome home party. Helpless human . . . hordes of Riven . . . who knows? I’m just worried that Bo Peep will turn out to be a human who’s playing for the wrong team. Remember Ingrid?”
Gabriel shifted uncomfortably but said nothing.
“Ingrid helped us escape from the nest,” Horace reminded her.
“Ingrid helped Gabriel escape from the nest,” Chloe said.
“Same difference.”
Gabriel stirred again, and now he did speak. “No. Chloe is right. It’s true that Ingrid freed me from the golem that night in the nest, but her actions were . . . personal. After she released me, she begged me never to go back to the Wardens.” He drew a line in the dirt with the tip of his staff, then scribbled it out. “She has chosen her side, and it isn’t ours.”
This was the most Gabriel had said about what had happened after he’d been captured in the nest. “But . . . why?” Horace asked. “Why would she choose that side? Why would anybody, for that matter?”
Gabriel looked straight at him with those ghostly eyes. “Why does a blade of grass bend one way and not the other?”
“Whoa,” Chloe said, waving her hands and frowning. “Let’s keep our floaties on, Dr. Deep End. The point is, being human does not guarantee that Bo Peep is on our side. But what will we do if she’s not? Do we destroy the daktan?”
“I don’t know,” Horace said, instinctively recoiling against the idea. “I guess that’s why Mr. Meister gave you the daktan in the first place. Only you can keep it safe without destroying it.”
“You could do even better. You could send it traveling again. It’d really be safe then.”
Horace hadn’t thought of that. “For a while, yeah—”
“No,” said Gabriel. “Mr. Meister gave the daktan to Chloe not just because she can keep it safe, but because she can truly destroy it if need be.” Horace and Chloe stared at him for so long he seemed to feel it. He shrugged. “I know how Mr. Meister’s mind works. He’s prepared to find a permanent solution if he has to. The Fel’Daera is not a permanent solution.”
“He’s right,” Horace said. “Remember the malkund?”
He watched Chloe realize it was true. In order to get the malkund—a cruel, traitorous gift of the Riven—away from Chloe’s father, they’d first sent it through the Fel’Daera. But sending it through the box had only delayed their problem, not solved it. And when the malkund returned, Chloe had utterly destroyed it by embedding it in solid steel, a trick she’d learned with the dragonfly. Melding, she called it. Afterward, she’d admitted that she should’ve melded the malkund in the first place. Chloe opened her hand now, revealing the little flower, black and fragile and hideously sad.
“I’m not positive I could bring myself to do it,” she said. “I don’t think I could destroy part of a Tan’ji.”
Gabriel seemed as surprised by this as Horace was. “You destroyed the crucible,” he pointed out.
Chloe hugged herself, hiding the long dark scars on her forearm. “That was different. That was in self-defense. To save my dad.”
“But if Little Bo Peep is allied with the Riven, why would you hesitate?” Gabriel asked.
She swung on him, scowling. “Have you ever destroyed a Tan’ji?”
Gabriel was silent for several long seconds. “Yes,” he said. “But I have learned to accept certain truths that you—”
He cut himself off, turning to look back through the trees. A second later, Horace heard cautious footsteps approaching. He saw the glint of Mr. Meister’s oraculum in the gloom. Mrs. Hapsteade walked beside him like a shadow of a shadow, her jithandra tucked away.
“Pardon our interruption,” the old man said. “I’m assuming we have no news?”
It had barely been five minutes since the last check, but Horace oriented himself and looked anyway. Nothing but the gleaming river, himself and Chloe side by side, and Gabriel standing watch. “Still waiting,” he said, snapping the box closed. “But that’s what I expected. It’s too early for Bo Peep. We’ve got at least another fifteen minutes before I’ll see anything.”
“I trust your judgment,” Mr. Meister replied. The old man walked over to a nearby tree and slowly sank to the ground at its foot, folding his legs neatly beneath him. He let loose a deep sigh of satisfaction. Mrs. Hapsteade stood rigidly nearby, not even bothering to find a tree to lean on.
“I grew up in the woods, you know,” Mr. Meister said, peering up into the leaves overhead.
Horace had no words to respond to that. The idea of Mr. Meister being a child was all but unfathomable.
Chloe, however, clearly felt no such reluctance. “To be fair, it was all woods back then, wasn’t it?” she said.
Mr. Meister chuckled warmly. “You are funny. And you are at your funniest when you are under duress, it seems.” He gave her a kind look. “Would you like me to hold the daktan? I could take some of this burden for a few moments.”
“No, let me take it,” Gabriel said.
“I could hold it for a while too,” Horace chimed in.
Chloe glanced around at them. “So chivalry isn’t dead after all. It’s just really slow.” Then she shook her head. “No, I’m fine. But it might help me if I knew some things.”
“Such as?” Mr. Meister asked.
Chloe looked him in the eye. “All those daktan you have back in the Warren—have any of them ever come to life like this before?”
The question seemed to make Mr. Meister uncomfortable. He picked at his slacks and flicked an invisible mote of something away. At last he said, “Once.”
“And what did you do?”
Another pause, and then: “We destroyed the daktan in question, before its Keeper could find it.”
Horace hid his surprise—so a daktan had been destroyed before. And as far as he knew, there was only one reason to commit such a troubling act. “Was the Keeper a Riven?” he asked. “Or with the Riven?”
The old man shrugged sadly. “I do not know.”
“But . . . if you didn’t even know who the Keeper was, why did you destroy the daktan?”
Mr. Meister leaned his head back against the tree and sighed. “This was long ago. At the time, it was not my decision to make. But I was told—and briefly believed—that it was an act of mercy.” He looked at them and lowered his voice. “You’ve seen Tunraden, Brian’s Tan’ji. You’ve seen what Brian can do.”
“Yes,” Horace and Chloe said together.
“Should the opportunity arise, I have hope that Brian can reattach the daktan Chloe carries tonight. But when the first daktan came to life—this was long before Brian was even born, you understand—no such hope existed. Tunraden had no Keeper, and most of us doubted she would ever find another. And as long as Tunraden remained without a Keeper . . .”
“You had no way to reconnect the daktan,” Horace finished.
“Just so. We could not have repaired the broken instrument, even if its Keeper had been an ally. He or she would have remained incomplete forever, always feeling the burn of that missing piece, always crippled by that wound.” He shrugged sadly. “And so the decision was made to destroy the daktan.”
&n
bsp; Horace felt Chloe recoil slightly beside him. He leaned back, looking up and spotting an open patch between the trees where a few unidentifiable stars shone. How must that Keeper of long ago have felt, searching for their lost daktan, only to have it destroyed before it could be found? What pain must that have caused?
Again he thought guiltily of Bo Peep, and his own rash decision to send the flower daktan traveling. Surely she must have assumed the missing piece was destroyed. Surely it must have hurt. Horace tried to imagine the sensation: a piece of the Fel’Daera—the silver sun, perhaps—stripped from the box and shattered, crushed, melted, obliterated. He shuddered and blushed with private shame. He tried to imagine whether Mr. Meister had felt that same shame so many years ago.
“I have another question,” Chloe said.
“As you wish,” Mr. Meister said, sounding melancholy.
“How many daktan are there altogether, back at the Warren?”
“Nearly two hundred.”
“Two hundred! But in a very long period of time—” She interrupted herself and glanced at Mr. Meister. “No offense. You’re super old, right?”
“Outrageously old,” Mrs. Hapsteade said. Mr. Meister smiled and nodded in agreement.
“Right,” said Chloe. “So in a very, very long period of time, only two out of two hundred daktan have come to life. Only two of the instruments those daktan came from ever found a Keeper. Why?”
“Partly because broken instruments are less likely to draw potential Keepers near. But even then, the Find is more difficult with a broken instrument—often impossible.” He sighed and stroked his chin. “Many Keepers remain trapped in the early days of the Find. They never discover their abilities. They never become Tan’ji.”
Silence fell over the clearing. Horace knew they were all remembering the early days of their own Finds, the frustrations and agonies of not yet knowing what had to be known. He could scarcely imagine being trapped in that state forever.
Suddenly, startlingly, Mrs. Hapsteade began to sing. Her low voice was surprisingly sweet. The words were “Little Bo Peep,” but with extra verses Horace had never heard before, and set to a tune both lilting and sad at once, eerie and light, a tune that trickled out into the woods and sent goose bumps thrilling up and down Horace’s arms:
“Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep,
And doesn’t know where to find them.
Leave them alone, and they’ll come home,
Wagging their tails behind them.
Little Bo Peep fell fast asleep,
And dreamed she heard them bleating.
But when she awoke, she found it a joke
For they were still all fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook,
Determined for to find them.
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
For they’d left all their tails behind them.
It happened one day, as Bo Peep did stray
Unto a meadow hard by—
There she espied their tails side by side,
All hung on a tree to dry.
She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye,
And over the hillocks went rambling;
And tried what she could, as a shepherdess should,
To tack again each to its lambkin.”
Mrs. Hapsteade fell silent. No one else spoke. Not even Chloe had anything to say. At last, after a full minute, Mrs. Hapsteade sighed and said, “There are miseries in what we do.”
Mr. Meister hummed thoughtfully in agreement. “Yes, but there are triumphs, too. I have hope that tonight will bring us no new regrets.”
Horace knew these words were meant to be inspiring, but once they were out an even deeper silence seemed to settle over the little group. They sat and watched the river slide by, each Warden lost in private thoughts. Horace checked the Fel’Daera every few minutes, but very little changed. It was now getting closer to eleven, and his best guess placed Little Bo Peep’s arrival sometime around midnight. With the breach at fifty-nine minutes, he ought to be seeing something soon. But what would he see?
At ten minutes to eleven, Mr. Meister stirred and lifted his head to the sky. A moment later Neptune swept heavily into their midst, sailing in from over the river and coming to a running halt. Her eyes were like moons as she gazed around at the group.
“Not to be a drag,” she said, “but we have a problem.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Witness
EVERYONE SCRAMBLED TO THEIR FEET, THE OLD MAN JUST AS quick as the rest of them. “What happened? Did you find our lost Keeper?”
“Almost definitely. There’s a canoe on the river with three people in it. Humans. I didn’t get a good look at them—I only sensed them. One is a young kid, but the other two were bigger.”
“What, then, is our problem?” Mr. Meister asked.
“For starters, two hunting packs of Mordin are following the canoe. They’re creeping along the bank, hanging well back. I don’t think the people in the canoe know they’re there.”
“Two packs?” Chloe said. “What’s so special about Bo Peep that they send six Mordin after her?”
Mr. Meister waved his hand dismissively, as if this was a stupid question. “The Riven know she is seeking her daktan, and they rightly assume the daktan is in our possession. No doubt they hope she will lead them to the Warren. That is why we are here, and not back home.”
That seemed reasonable to Horace, but he had another question. “Is Dr. Jericho one of the Mordin?”
“Yes,” Neptune said.
Horace tightened his grip on the Fel’Daera. With Dr. Jericho around, of course, using the box was risky. For reasons not even Mr. Meister seemed able to explain, Dr. Jericho was especially attuned to the Fel’Daera, able to sense the box being used—not only in the present, but also through time, from the other side of the glass! And Horace had been using the box steadily since they arrived. Had he already given them away?
“Like I said, though,” Neptune continued, “that’s just for starters.”
“Explain,” Mr. Meister demanded.
But before Neptune could speak, Chloe said bluntly, “You’re all wet.”
It was true. Her cloak was heavy and clinging, her wet hair dangling limply. She was soaked through.
“Am I?” Neptune said innocently. She grabbed her cloak and wrung out the end, spilling water onto the ground. “I was following behind the canoe, trying to get closer, and then I—” She made two fists, as if she could not endure what she was about to say, then threw her hands out, fingers spread. “I was cut off.”
Mr. Meister took an alarmed step forward. “You were severed?”
“Yes. One second I was drifting over the river, and the next it was like I was in the Nevren. I couldn’t feel my tourminda. I got heavy and I fell. I was only about twenty feet up when it happened, but I’m lucky I was over the water.” Her eyes grew wider, her gaze sliding into the distance. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve fallen? Even slipping on the ice, or tripping on the stairs? I never fall. I almost forgot what falling even is.”
“But how could you be severed like that, out in the middle of nowhere?” Horace asked, afraid he knew the answer.
Neptune shuddered. “Whoever our Little Bo Peep is, she’s got a Tuner with her.”
Though he was half expecting to hear it, the word hit Horace like a blow. Gabriel stroked his chin and thumped his cane against the ground. Mr. Meister gazed into his own hand, opening and closing it slowly. His gray eyes were huge with shock. When he spoke, though, his voice was icily calm. “If I may ask, for how long were you severed?”
“I’m not sure,” said Neptune. “Who can be sure? A long time, I think—minutes, altogether. But coming out of it wasn’t sudden, like the Nevren. It was slow, like I was . . . tangled up—fighting my way up out of a giant bowl of spaghetti.”
Mrs. Hapsteade and Mr. Meister exchanged a look, then moved together into the shadows, where Mrs. Hapsteade whispered
urgently as the old man dug through the pockets of his vest.
Chloe turned to Horace, clearly unsettled. “A Tuner,” she said. “Like your mom.”
Neptune’s mouth dropped open. “Goodness,” she said to Horace. “Someone’s been keeping secrets.” Gabriel, on the other hand, looked unsurprised.
“It’s not my mom out there,” said Horace.
“No kidding,” Chloe said. “But whoever it is can do the same stuff. Maybe it’s the Tuner your mom told us about.”
Horace had already considered that possibility. How many Tuners were there in the world?
“There is no reason to think any Tuner means us harm,” Gabriel said.
“Yes, I certainly can’t imagine a reason to think that,” Neptune said airily, wringing another dribble of water out of her cloak.
“Preach it,” said Chloe.
Off in the trees, Mr. Meister and Mrs. Hapsteade seemed to be arguing quietly. The sight made Horace wonder if Chloe was right—maybe this Tuner was the same one the Wardens had banished years before.
“Tuners are our allies,” Gabriel said with conviction. “Perhaps the Tuner on the river didn’t even know Neptune was human.”
“Perhaps,” Chloe said, crossing her arms. “But these Tuners could be seriously bad news if they wanted to be.” Chloe tipped her head apologetically toward Horace. “No offense to your mom.”
“None taken,” Horace said, only half listening to her. Mr. Meister seemed to be winning whatever argument he and Mrs. Hapsteade were having.
“I mean, a Tuner who wanted to could pretty much wreck us, right?” said Chloe. “And if anybody should be worried, it’s Neptune and me. Not you two.”
“Wait, what?” said Horace.
She looked at him flatly. “Neptune. Me. Not you. What happens to us if we’re using our instruments and we get severed with no notice? Have you seriously not thought about this yet?” She sounded insulted. “You already heard what happened to Neptune. She got lucky landing in the water. And then there’s me.”
