The Twelve tpt-2

by Justin Cronin

  He felt himself smile. “Five years. A lot can change.”

  “Well, it suits you.” A sudden yawn seized her. “Seriously, if she gets to be a bother …”

  “She won’t. Now, will you go? Get some sleep.”

  Sara left them alone. Peter lowered himself into the chair, shifted Kate to his lap, and turned her body toward the winter sky. “So what do you want to talk about?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Not tired at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about we count some stars?”

  “That’s boring.” She shifted, making herself comfortable, then commanded: “Tell me a story.”

  “A story. What kind?”

  “A once-upon-a-time story.”

  He wasn’t sure how, having never done this before. Yet as he considered the girl’s request, a rush of memories flowed through him: his days as a Little in the Sanctuary, sitting in circle with the other children, their legs folded under them; Teacher, her pale, moonlike face and the stories she told, of talking animals in waistcoats and skirts and kings in their castles and ships crossing the sea in search of treasure; the drowsy sensation of the words passing through him, carrying him away into distant worlds and times, as if he were leaving his own body. They were recollections of another life; they were so distant as to feel historical; yet sitting in the winter cold with Sara’s daughter on his lap, they did not seem apart from him. He felt a mantle pass and, with it, a twinge of regret: he’d never told Caleb a story.

  “So.” He cleared his throat, stalling to assemble his thoughts. But the truth was, he had nothing; every story from his childhood had suddenly fled his mind. He’d simply have to wing it. “Let’s see—”

  “It needs a girl in it,” Kate said, helpfully.

  “So it does. I was just getting to that. So, once upon a time there was a little girl—”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Hmm. Well, she was very pretty. A lot like you, actually.”

  “Was she a princess?”

  “Are you going to let me tell this or not? But now that you mention it, she was. The most beautiful princess who ever lived. But the thing is, she didn’t know she was a princess. That’s the interesting part.”

  Kate frowned bossily. “Why didn’t she know?”

  Something clicked then; he felt the contours of a story emerging in his mind.

  “That is a very excellent question. What happened was this. When she was very young, not much more than a baby, her parents, the king and queen, took her on a picnic in the royal forest. It was a sunny day, and the little girl, whose name was Princess …”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Princess Elizabeth, saw a butterfly. An amazing butterfly. Her parents weren’t paying attention, and she followed the butterfly into the woods, trying to catch it. But the thing is, it wasn’t a butterfly. It was… a fairy queen.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s true. Now, the thing about fairies is, they don’t trust people. They pretty much keep to themselves, and that’s the way they like it. But the fairy queen was different. She’d always wanted a daughter. Fairies don’t have children of their own. It made her very sad not to have a little girl to take care of, and when she saw Princess Elizabeth, she was so moved by her beauty that she couldn’t help herself. She led the child away, deeper and deeper into the woods. Soon the little girl was lost and began to cry. The fairy queen landed on her nose, and brushed her tears away with her delicate wings, and said, ‘Don’t be sad. I’ll take care of you. You will be my little girl now.’ And she took her to the big hollow tree where she lived with all her fairy subjects, and gave her food to eat and a table to sit at and a little bed to sleep in, and before too long Princess Elizabeth had no memory of any other life, except her life among the fairies of the forest.”

  Kate was nodding along. “What happened then?”

  “Well, nothing. Not right away. For a while they were very happy together, the fairy queen especially. How wonderful it felt for her to have a little girl of her own. But as Elizabeth grew, she began to feel that something wasn’t right. Do you know what that was?”

  “She wasn’t a fairy?”

  “Exactly. Good for you, for figuring that out. She wasn’t a fairy, she was a little girl, and not so little anymore. Why am I so different? she wondered. And the taller she grew, the harder this was for the fairy queen to conceal. Why do my feet stick out from my bed, Elizabeth would ask her, and the fairy queen would say, Because beds are always small, that’s just how they are. Why is my table so tiny, Elizabeth asked, and the fairy queen said, I’m sorry, it’s not the table’s fault, you’ll just have to stop growing. Which, of course, she couldn’t do. She grew and grew, and soon she barely fit inside the tree anymore. All the other fairies complained. They were afraid she’d eat all their food and there’d be nothing left. They were afraid she’d accidentally squash them. Something had to be done, but the fairy queen refused. With me so far?”

  Kate nodded, enthralled.

  “Now, the king and queen, Elizabeth’s parents, had never stopped looking for her. They’d combed every inch of the forest, and all the lands of the kingdom besides. But the tree was very well hidden. Then one day they heard a rumor about a little girl living in the forest with the fairies. Could that be our daughter? they wondered. And they did the only thing they could think of. They ordered the royal woodsmen to cut down all the trees until they found the one with Elizabeth inside it.”

  “All of them?”

  Peter nodded. “Every last one. Which was not a good idea. The woods were home not only to the fairies but to all kinds of animals and birds. But Elizabeth’s parents were so desperate, they would have done anything to get their daughter back. So the woodsmen got to work, chopping down the forest, while the king and queen rode out on their horses, calling her name. ‘Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Where are you?’ And you know what happened?”

  “She heard them?”

  “Yes, she did. Only the name Elizabeth didn’t mean anything to her anymore. She had a fairy name now, and had forgotten everything about her life. But the fairy queen knew what she was hearing, and she felt pretty awful about it. How could I have done this terrible thing? she thought. How could I have taken Elizabeth away? But still she couldn’t make herself fly out of the tree to tell Elizabeth’s parents where she was. She loved the girl too much, you see, to let her go. ‘Be very still,’ she said to Elizabeth. ‘Don’t make a sound.’ The woodsmen were coming closer and closer. Trees were falling everywhere. All the fairies were afraid. ‘Give her back,’ they said to the fairy queen, ‘please, give her back before they destroy the entire forest.’ ”

  “Wow,” Kate gasped.

  “I know. It’s a pretty scary story. Should I stop?”

  “Uncle Peter, please.”

  He laughed. “All right, all right. So, the woodsmen came to the tree with Elizabeth and the fairies inside. It was an especially magnificent tree, tall and wide, with a big canopy of leaves. A fairy tree. But as one woodsman reared back with his axe, the king had a change of heart. The tree, you see, was just too beautiful to cut down. I’m sure the creatures of the forest care about this tree as much as I care about my daughter, he said. It wouldn’t be right to take it away from them, all because I’ve lost something I love. Everybody, put your axes down and go home and let me and my wife mourn for our daughter, who we will never see again. It was very sad. Everybody was in tears. Elizabeth’s parents, the woodsmen, even the fairy queen, who had heard every word. Because she knew that Elizabeth could never be her real daughter, no matter how hard she wished it. So she took her by the hand and led her out of the tree and said, ‘Your Majesties, please forgive me. It was I who took your daughter. I wanted a little girl of my own so much that I couldn’t help myself. But I know now that she belongs with you. I’m so very, very sorry.’ And you know what the king and queen said?”

  “Off with your head?”

  Peter stifled a
laugh. “Just the opposite. Despite everything that had happened, they were so happy to have their daughter back, and so moved by the fairy queen’s remorse, that they decided to reward her. They issued a royal proclamation that the fairies should be left to live in peace, and that all children of the realm should have one special fairy friend. Which is why, to this day, only children can see them.”

  Kate was silent a moment. “So that’s the end?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.” He felt faintly embarrassed. “I haven’t really done this before. How’d I do?”

  The girl considered this, then said, with a crisp nod, “I liked it. It was a good story. Tell me another.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve got another one in me. Aren’t you tired yet?”

  “Please, Uncle Peter.”

  The night was clear, the stars shining down. Everything was still, not a trace of movement or sound. Peter thought of Caleb, realizing with a power that startled him how much he missed the boy, how he longed to hold him in his arms. Alicia was right, and Tifty too. But most of all, Amy. He loves you, you know. The truth filled him like a breath of winter air. Peter would go home and learn to be a father.

  “So, okay …”

  He talked and talked. He told her every story he knew. By the time he was done, Kate was yawning; her body had gone slack in his arms. He unzipped his coat and swiveled her on his lap, pulling the flaps around her.

  “Are you cold, sweetheart?”

  Her voice was soft, half gone. “Nuh-uh.”

  She nestled against him. Just another minute, Peter thought, and closed his eyes. Just another minute, and I’ll take her inside. He felt Kate’s warm breath on his neck; her chest moved gently against his own, rising and falling, like long waves on a beach. But a minute passed, and then another and another, and by that time Peter wasn’t going anywhere, because he was fast asleep.

  In the lavatory of the apothecary shop, Lucius Greer was shaving.

  The day, and most of the night besides, had disappeared under an avalanche of duties. A meeting of the Council of Lodges, during which Eustace had attempted first to reexplain and then once more justify the lottery procedure for evacuation; the tallying of census data, which had revealed numerous duplicate forms, some made in error, others with deliberate intent by individuals trying to increase their odds of being chosen; a brawl outside the detention center when a group of three cols, half-starved after weeks of hiding in an unused warehouse, had attempted to turn themselves in, only to be intercepted by the small crowd that kept vigil outside the building; nine weddings over which he’d been asked to officiate when one of the JPs had taken ill (all Lucius had to do was read four sentences off a card, yet it surprised him, how weighty it felt to say them aloud); the first official gathering of the evacuation support teams, and the partitioning of their responsibilities in preparation for the first departure; and on and on. A day of one thing and then another and another; Lucius couldn’t remember what or even if he’d eaten, he’d barely sat down all day, and yet here he was, past midnight, gazing at his grizzled, hirsute face in the mirror, holding a blade in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.

  He began with the scissors. Snip by snip the wild torrent of his hair and beard fell away, their white leavings gathering on the floor by his feet like drifts of feathered snow. When this was done he warmed a pot of water, soaked a rag and wrung it out, and lay it over his face to soften the bristles that remained. He smeared his cheeks with soap, harsh and chemical-smelling, then went to work with the blade: first his cheeks, then the long arc of his neck, and finally his head, working backward from brow to crown to the base of his skull in short, measured strokes. The first time he had shaved himself in this manner, the night before he’d taken the oath of the Expeditionary, he had cut himself in about twenty places. It was commonly said that you didn’t need to look at the uniform to know a fresh recruit; all you had to do was look at his head. But with time and practice, Greer, like all of his fellows, had gotten the knack, and it pleased him to discover that he hadn’t lost his touch. He could have done it blindfolded in the dark if he had to, yet there was satisfaction to be had in observing a ritual that after so many years still possessed the power of a baptism. Scrape by scrape his visage was laid bare, and when the task was complete, Greer stepped back to examine his face in the mirror, running his hand over the cool pinkness of his rediscovered flesh and nodding with approval at the image he beheld.

  He wiped himself down, cleaned and dried his blade, and put his supplies away. Many days had passed since he had properly slept, and still he was not the least bit tired. He drew on his parka and boots, let himself out the back, and made his way down the alley. It was nearly one A.M., not a soul about, yet from all around Greer sensed a kind of molecular restlessness, a subaural hum of life. He moved past the ruined Dome, down the hill, through the flatland to the stadium. By the time he arrived, the moon was down. He chose not to enter the structure, rather to stand in the absolute quiet and take it in whole, this blot of darkness against the starry sky. He wondered: Would history remember this place? Would the people of the future, whoever they were, give it a name, one worthy of the events that had transpired here, to record it for posterity? A hopeful thought, a bit premature, but one worth having. And Lucius Greer took a silent vow. Should such a future come to pass, should the final battle for earth’s dominion be taken in victory, he would be the one to put pen to paper, to give the story words.

  He did not know when this battle would be. Amy had not told him that. Only that it would come.

  He understood, then, what force had led him here. He was looking for a sign. What form this sign would take, he could not say. It might come now, it might come later, it might not come at all. Such was the burden of his faith. He opened his mind and waited. An interval of time moved by. The night, the stars, the living world; all passed through him, like a blessing.

  Then:

  Lucius. My friend. Hello.

  And on this night of miraculous things, Peter, sitting outside the shoe store, awoke to the feeling that he was, in fact, not awake at all—that one dream had simply opened into the next, like a door behind a door. A dream in which he was sitting with Sara’s daughter in his arms at the edge of the snowy fields, all else being the same—the inky sky, the winter cold, the lateness of the hour—except for the fact that they were not alone.

  But it was not a dream.

  She crouched before him, in the manner of her kind. Her transformation was complete; even her raven mane was gone. Yet as their eyes met and held, the image wavered in his mind; it was not a viral he saw. It was a girl, and then a woman, and then both of these at once. She was Amy, the Girl from Nowhere; she was Amy of Souls, Last of the Twelve; she was only herself. Extending a hand toward him, Amy held her palm upright; Peter replied in kind. A force of pure longing surged in his heart as their fingers touched. It was a kind of kiss.

  How long they stayed that way, Peter didn’t know. Between them, in the warm cocoon of his coat, Kate slept soundly, oblivious. Time had released its moorings; Peter and Amy drifted together in the current. Soon the child would awaken, or Sara would come, or Hollis, and Amy would be gone. She would lift away in a streak of starry light. Peter would return the sleeping child to her bed, and lie down himself, even attempt to sleep; and in the morning, in the gray winter dawn, they would stretch their bones and load up their gear and continue on their long road south. The moment would pass, like all things, into memory.

  But not just yet.

  EPILOGUE

  The Golden Hour

  69

  The driver this time was a woman. Amy put down her sign and got into the car.

  “How do you do, Amy?” She offered her hand. “I’m Rachel Wood.”

  They shook. For a moment Amy was rendered speechless, arrested by the woman’s beauty: a face of delicate, well-made bones, as if honed with the finest tools; skin that glowed with youthful health; a trim, strong body, her arms articulated with lean
muscle. Her hair, pulled away from her face in a taut ponytail, was blond with golden streaks. She was wearing what Amy knew to be tennis clothes, although this knowledge seemed to come from elsewhere, the idea of tennis itself lacking any meaningful reference. Sunglasses with tiny jewels embedded in the arms were perched on top of her head.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to get you before,” Rachel continued. “Anthony thought you’d like a familiar face the first time.”

  “I’m very glad to meet you,” Amy said.

  “That’s sweet of you to say.” She smiled, showing her teeth, which were small and straight and very white. “Buckle up now.”

  They glided away from the overpass. All was the same as the last time—the same houses and stores and parking lots, the same glowing summer light, the same busy world flowing past. In the deep leather of her seat, Amy felt as if she were floating in a bath. Rachel seemed thoroughly at home at the wheel of the immense vehicle, humming a shapeless tune under her breath as she guided them confidently through traffic. As a large pickup braked ahead of them, blocking the lane, Rachel flicked on her blinker and deftly swerved to pass.

  “For goodness sake,” she sighed, “some people. Where do they learn to drive?” She looked at Amy hastily and returned her eyes to the road. “You know, you’re not quite what I imagined, I have to say.”

  “No?”

  “Oh, not in a bad way,” Rachel assured her. “That’s not what I meant at all. Honestly, you’re just pretty as a picture. I wish I had skin like that.”

  “So how am I different?”

  She hesitated, choosing her words. “I just thought you’d be, you know. Younger.”

  They continued on. Amy’s abrupt arrival in this place had brought about a mild disorientation and, with it, a muting of emotion. But as the minutes passed, she felt her mind opening to her circumstances, the images and her responses to them growing more defined. How remarkable everything was, Amy thought. How very, very remarkable. They were inside the ship, the Chevron Mariner, yet she had no physical awareness of this; as before, with Wolgast, every detail of the scene possessed an absolutely firm appearance of reality. Perhaps it was real, in some alternate sense of the word. What, after all, was “real”?