by C. A. Gray
“Wait. What about my dad? Bruce Stewart?” Peter interrupted urgently. “He got here too, didn’t he?”
“Hmm,” Eustace scrunched his face in consternation. “He might’a come when I was bailin’ hay… or maybe he used the Commuter Station, y’ know…”
Peter breathed again. Of course he used the Commuter Station. He was familiar with Carlion. There would be no reason for him to use the main road. “Come on!” Peter called to the others over his shoulder, tossing the reins to Eustace. As he turned he caught a very odd expression on Kane’s face, like he knew something that Peter was about to find out. But Peter was too eager to see his dad to give it any thought.
When they got closer to the Great Hall from the entrance, they could hear familiar voices.
“Polly, for heaven’s sake! Calm down!” The voice sounded clipped and irritated.
“Why aren’t they here yet? What could be keeping them? How can you not be worried, Henry? In this city absolutely anything, anything could happen! How do we know they haven’t been eaten by some wild beast or… or turned into toads or something?”
“I believe,” said Isdemus’s patient, familiar tone, with just a hint of amusement, “you may be confusing Carlion with those fairy tales in the outside world written by the Brothers Grimm.”
“But… but what if they get turned into something like that?” she spluttered. “Henry, don’t you see that thing?”
“Hmm? Oh,” said Henry irritably.
“My name is Fides Dignus,” came Fides Dignus’s haughty voice. “And your boys are no more likely to turn into me than into toads!”
“Dad! Mum!” Brock interrupted when they rounded the corner. Mrs. Jefferson was standing in the middle of the Great Hall, wringing her hands, while Mr. Jefferson stood at the hearth, one arm lifted uncomfortably over his head in order to rest his elbow on the top ledge. Isdemus sat patiently in his chair at the head of the table, his fingers pressed together in steeple fashion. Fides Dignus fluttered over Mrs. Jefferson’s head, arms crossed over his little chest, looking miffed.
“Mum!” echoed Cole. He ran to her, and she let out a little sob of relief as she met him halfway and threw her arms around him. Brock meanwhile took a few tentative steps towards his father, but suddenly seemed self-conscious, and stopped. Mr. Jefferson removed his foot from the ledge, but made no further movement towards his sons. Peter crossed halfway through the room to where Isdemus sat, half distracted by the reunion of the brothers with their parents. Lily lingered in the doorframe, looking very out of place.
“I’ve been so worried! What happened?” Mrs. Jefferson exclaimed, pressing Cole against her.
“Didn’t they tell you?” said Cole, confused. “Isdemus told us last night that one of the Watchers went to get you and Dad and told you what happened –”
She shook her head and prattled almost deliriously, “Thomas told us you’d all been in an accident, and he told us the wildest story about creatures that attacked you, and a car that almost flipped on top of you, and he hasn’t been the same since! Then this lovely older man with a goatee came and had tea with us (and it’s a wonder I was able to make tea because I was all a-fluster), but at any rate, he said you couldn’t come home because you were in danger, but he said you’d come to this city we’d never heard of! And then he asked if we wanted to come back here with him! Asked, can you imagine? As if we could do anything else! Then he told us about all these fantastical creatures – the very same ones Thomas talked about, although after a while he wouldn’t talk about them anymore and started saying he might have imagined the whole thing, he really wasn’t sure – but the man with the goatee said –”
Peter tuned out the rest of Mrs. Jefferson’s story, and crossed discreetly to where Isdemus sat at the head of the table. “Where’s my dad? Isn’t he here yet?”
“The nimbi could not find him,” Isdemus said, his expression unreadable.
“Couldn’t find him?” Peter echoed nervously. “What does that mean? Can’t they just appear wherever he is? How can they not find him?”
“They can only do that if he calls them by name,” said Isdemus, “which he had no reason to do. Barring that, they’d have to find him the old fashioned way. He wasn’t at your house or at his lab last night, nor all day today.”
“But he never goes anywhere else!” Peter spluttered. His heart began to beat faster with some emotion he couldn’t identify right away, until he found himself shouting. “He should be here! Why isn’t he here?”
Everyone else in the room fell silent and turned to stare at Peter, who clutched the back of a wooden chair as he tried to catch his breath.
“We will find him,” Isdemus said. He tried to sound calm, but he looked haggard.
“Well, hurry up!” Peter shouted, and he blew past Lily, who still lingered in the doorframe, as he stormed out of the room.
Once in the corridor, Peter found that he could breathe again. He tried to calm himself and collect his thoughts.
There had to be a rational explanation for why they couldn’t find his dad, but he was desperate for answers. He needed to know why Bruce had never told him about all of this. He needed someone familiar to help him navigate and make sense of everything that had happened. The fact that his dad had not yet come made him angry, and hurt… and scared, though he wasn’t sure exactly what he was afraid of. Written in the foreboding in Isdemus’s face was something he wasn’t telling Peter, and that made him nervous.
Peter wasn’t paying attention to where his feet were taking him. When he was several feet from the front entrance of the castle, he realized that he was desperate for fresh air; somehow, at that moment the castle felt like a prison. The night watchman raised his eyebrows when he saw Peter approach.
“Going somewhere, sir? It’s dark out already…”
“I’m… not going far,” Peter blustered and walked right up to the doors as if he expected them to open automatically. When they didn’t, he turned to the watchman and said plaintively, “Please?”
The way he said ‘please’ seemed to catch the watchman off guard, and obediently he cranked the rope just wide enough to let Peter slip out into the night. Peter could barely hear him mutter, “Isdemus is going to wring my neck for this…”
The courtyard didn’t feel far enough. Absently he moved in the direction of the stables, half-hoping to meet his dad as he rode into town, even though he knew that was impossible, or at least highly unlikely. He would be more likely to use the Commuter Station if anything. Still, he hoped.
When he reached the stables, he cried out, “Eustace!” When there was no answer, he pushed the stable door open and the mingled smell of hay and manure assaulted him. “Eust–”
“Eustace is off-duty for the night,” said Lily. Startled, Peter turned around and saw her standing next to Candace’s stall, a shaft of moonlight falling across her face, illuminating the traces of tears that streaked her cheeks and still clung to her eyelashes. Her hand stroked Candace’s white mane again and again. She turned away from Peter.
“Oh,” said Peter. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to –”
“What do you want with him?” she sniffed.
“Nothing, I just… nothing,” he finished lamely. Then he shook his head. “I just needed to get out of the castle is all.”
“Me too,” she muttered. “And don’t you go saying anything about me crying again! I can cry if I want to, so you can just –”
“I didn’t say anything!” Peter protested. After a few seconds of silence, during which it seemed as if she calmed down a bit, he added, “Although for someone as aggressive as you are, you sure are emotional.”
Lily groped around for the only object she could find, which turned out to be a fistful of hay. She threw it at him, but it fluttered harmlessly to the ground.
“Why come here?” asked Peter flatly.
“I like horses,” Lily muttered. “They’re comforting. No judgment, they’re just patient and wise…”
“W
hat are you crying about?” Peter interjected.
She paused, and then finally answered softly, “I’d just hoped my foster parents would come, that’s all. But they only just met me, so it was silly to hope…”
“That’s not silly,” said Peter. He sat down on a bale of hay several paces away from her. He crossed his ankles first, and arms in front of his chest, and then he rearranged and rested an ankle on his knee, and both hands on his knees. It reminded him of the day they met, because then, too, he’d suddenly felt acutely aware of his arms and legs. “What… er, happened to your real parents, anyway?”
“They were murdered right in front of my eyes. I was six.” She sniffed again.
“Oh.” Peter didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to say something comforting, but everything he could think of sounded all wrong in his head.
She turned to look at him. “Ever since they died, I’ve been able to see the penumbra, but I was the only one. Nobody believed me, and that’s why none of my foster parents ever kept me. I tried to be guarded with everything I said, but sometimes I couldn’t separate what I knew about people from how I knew it. They always ended up thinking I was crazy, no matter what I did.” She turned away and added softly, “Things are different now, though. I don’t have to hide anymore. Not here.”
“So… you’re not going back?”
“I can’t imagine going back,” she said. “I think I always knew this place existed, and I’ve spent my whole life looking for it. I still hoped they’d come, though… you know, to say goodbye.”
Peter absorbed that for a long moment. Then, in a sudden flash of inspiration, for once he knew exactly what to say.
“Lily?”
“Yeah?” she sniffed again.
“You belong here.”
She looked back at him and smiled, the streaks of tears glittering on her cheeks in the moonlight. “So do you,” she whispered.
Chapter 15
When Peter made his way back to the Great Hall, he found that the Jeffersons and Kane had left, but Isdemus spoke to three new people Peter didn’t recognize: two men and a woman. The woman was heavyset and appeared to be in her forties. One of the men was also in his forties and had salt-and-pepper hair and a goatee, and the other man looked like he was in his sixties, with hair almost as white as Isdemus’s. All three of them wore stern expressions and looked as if they could be quite formidable if they so chose. They were speaking to Isdemus in hushed tones.
“Er, sorry to interrupt,” Peter said awkwardly.
The man with the salt and pepper hair and goatee glanced at Isdemus and said discreetly, “Don’t you think we should tell him?”
That got his attention. “Tell me what?” Peter demanded.
The three strangers exchanged uneasy glances.
“We are merely guessing at this point,” said Isdemus, sounding exhausted.
“Guessing about what?”
The heavyset woman glanced at Isdemus and he nodded imperceptibly, as if giving her permission to share her theory.
“You are aware that all people, except Seers and yourself, have one of the penumbra following them around all the time in the outside world?”
“Yes, yes,” Peter said impatiently.
“Well,” she said, “that means that although you and Lily did not have one, Cole and Brock both did, and so did their driver, Thomas. Their penumbra were therefore in the car at the time of the accident.”
“So what?”
The man with the goatee cut in. “So, they saw what happened. They saw that you stopped the accident from happening. Also, because Cole and Brock had both known you for a long time, their penumbra knew certain facts about you as well.”
“Like who your father is,” finished the woman.
Understanding dawned on Peter’s face.
“We don’t know for sure,” Isdemus repeated. “Even though all of you warped to the castle, some time still elapsed between the accident and the time I was notified and dispatched a messenger to find Bruce.”
Peter closed his eyes. “Kane,” he said.
The three strangers exchanged more uneasy looks. “What about him?” said the man with white hair.
“This is all his fault! He caused the accident! None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for him. I’ll kill him!” He turned to run out the door, but instead ran full-force into what must have been at least 190 pounds of the white-haired man, who had been ten feet away only seconds before. In spite of the full impact of Peter’s weight, he did not even flinch.
Momentarily Peter forgot himself and said, stunned, “How did you do that?”
“Sully’s a space specialist,” said the man with the goatee, as if that explained everything.
“I think there are a few things you need to know about Kane before you run around making death threats,” said Sully, and gestured for Peter to have a seat. Peter glared at him, realizing that he had no choice but to stay, though he defiantly refused to sit down.
“Sully, please,” said Isdemus, sounding very tired. “I realize that Kane is troubled, but he has never given us reason to suspect that he would go that far –”
“All due respect, sir, but Kane may not be as harmless as he would like you to believe,” said the heavyset woman firmly. “Even you admit that given what we know of Kane’s obsessions, our concerns under present circumstances are quite reasonable. Peter must be put on his guard.”
“What present circumstances? What are you afraid he’s going to do?” Peter demanded, looking from one face to the next.
Isdemus sighed, and turned to the three Watchers, all of whose faces looked resolute. “Very well,” he said, sounding haggard. “I suppose I owe you all that much.” Then he turned his clear blue eyes on Peter. “I cannot answer you all at once. I beg your patience once again while I give you the background.
“Aside from watching for and protecting you, the purpose of the Watchers, from the days just after the fall of Camelot until the present, has been to seek out those promising young people who can, like your friend Lily, see into a dimension beyond their own. The reason I say young people is because, almost without exception, once a human has lived with a certain worldview into adulthood, it is nearly unheard of for them to change it, barring some catastrophic outside force – which sometimes happens. But I digress. My point is that Kane was such a young person, and easier to find than most. More often than not, young people who can see beyond the physical world believe themselves to be insane, unless there is someone present to make sense of it for them, and so they hide their gift as best they can.”
Peter nodded mutely, remembering Lily’s tear-stained face.
As if reading his thoughts, Isdemus went on, “Kane, on the other hand, was orphaned at a young age, spent two years in a state home after that, and never remained in one foster home for long. He freely described the appearances of the penumbra to anyone who would listen, as if the fact that he could see them made him better than everybody else, rather than of questionable sanity.
“It’s a marvel that it took as long as it did for me to find him,” Isdemus went on. “I finally did find him and brought him to live here in Carlion when he was eight. I attempted to find a foster family for him, but he had a disturbing streak of independence –”
The man with the goatee snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”
“The people in the city seemed to like him well enough,” said Peter, remembering Dolores who gave them the snapdragon samples, and frowning.
“That is because most of them have known him since he was very young,” said Isdemus. “I did my best to instruct him in morality. In terms of facts and principles, Kane was a model pupil, of course. He was intelligent enough to not only learn rules of conduct and decency, but also to apply them deftly to any situation.”
“But to Kane, rules of conduct and decency are still just rules, and rules are meant to be broken,” interjected the man with the goatee, whose name seemed to be Dan.
Peter glowered at Isdemus. “This isn’t making me not want to kill him.”
“It isn’t necessarily meant to, although naturally I would prefer you didn’t,” said Isdemus, with a tight smile.
“It’s meant to keep you on your guard,” repeated the heavyset woman.
Peter’s brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Kane can be very charming when he wants to be, which is partly why the people in the city think so highly of him,” Dan explained. “We think that if you understand him better you’ll be less likely to fall for it.”
Peter shook his head, not comprehending. “Fall for what?”
“Let me continue, and you will understand presently,” said Isdemus. “Like most of the other boys in Carlion, Kane had romanticized ideas that the Watchers still operated on the same principles as the Knights of the Round Table: performing great quests as of old and seeking valuable lost objects such as Excalibur. It was inevitable, given his upbringing here in the castle, that he would learn more about the secrets of the Watchers than any other child in Carlion. The idea excited his imagination, but in what I regarded as a rather unhealthy way. Kane seemed to believe himself to be superior to his classmates, and saw the Watchers as a means to distinguish himself. I deflected his questions about the secrets of the Watchers as best I could, but I failed to anticipate the depth of his curiosity. Somehow, Kane managed to uncover the location of a secret library within the castle where we kept documents hidden from all except the most senior members of the Watchers. Over a period of almost two years, he would steal into it after the rest of the castle had gone to sleep. He spent his nights there, voraciously devouring all the information he possibly could on the history of the Watchers, and in so doing, he learned a great deal about a prophecy.”
