The Black Reckoning

by John Stephens

  In any case, the news that Dr. Pym was gone, that he was gone beyond any ability of Michael’s and the Chronicle’s to bring him back, had shaken Emma in a profound way. “No,” she’d kept saying. “No! You must’ve seen it wrong! You gotta be wrong! He can’t be dead! He can’t be!” In fact, the purity and keenness of Emma’s distress had allowed Michael and Kate to forget, momentarily, their own recent, conflicted feelings about Dr. Pym and mourn the loss of someone they’d considered a dear, devoted friend.

  Now Michael said, “I still can’t believe he lied to us.”

  “I know.”

  In the end, that was the hardest to swallow. Their entire lives, growing up in orphanage after orphanage, Kate and her brother and sister had learned one lesson by heart: trust no one but each other. Anyone else, adults especially, would lie to them. But Dr. Pym had gotten inside; he’d won their trust. Now it turned out that he too had deceived them.

  Kate still believed he’d cared for her and Michael and Emma; the certainty she’d felt the night before, looking at him across the courtyard, hadn’t gone away. But that didn’t mean she trusted him. And she could feel herself building up, once more, the protective wall around her heart.

  “You wouldn’t leave him,” Michael said. “Even after the Dire Magnus told you how Dr. Pym had lied, you wouldn’t leave him there.”

  “I just couldn’t.”

  Michael nodded, then said, quietly, “I hope Wilamena’s okay.”

  “You said that she and Captain Anton got tossed away by the tornado. I doubt she was still possessed or controlled by then. She must’ve escaped.”

  “I don’t mean that.”

  Kate understood. He meant that Wilamena, under the control of the Dire Magnus, had been forced to kill Wallace. How would she deal with that guilt?

  “Do you think he was telling the truth about the prophecy?” Michael asked, changing the subject. “That there’s more to it?”

  “You mean that there’s some way we won’t all be killed? I don’t know.”

  “So what do we do about the Reckoning? Should we try to find it? Or…”

  He trailed off, but Kate knew what he meant; it was the same question that was swirling around her own mind. Did they believe Dr. Pym, who had by his own admission been lying to them, that finding the Reckoning was the only way to kill the Dire Magnus and that there was some secret wrinkle in the prophecy that would allow them to survive? Did his having sacrificed himself mean they now had to believe him? Or did they believe the Dire Magnus, whom they’d been struggling against for so long, and who said that bringing the Books together would lead only to her and Michael’s and Emma’s deaths?

  It was all so confusing, and without Dr. Pym, there was no one to tell them what to do.

  “I don’t know.”

  Before Michael could ask anything else, she stood and looked down at the shrouds of mist that clung to the bottom of the valley, half obscuring the lakes.

  “I’m thirsty; there must be water below. As soon as Emma and Gabriel are back, I’ll take us to Loris. King Robbie will know what to do next. And hopefully we’ll get some word of Wilamena and Captain Anton.”

  “Kate”—Michael was looking up at her—“why did you come to the fortress? How did you know we were in trouble? Or where to go?”

  She didn’t respond right away. She knew her brother. She knew he would already have come up with his own theories and hypotheses. She wondered if he’d guessed the truth. Maybe. But it would only be a guess. He couldn’t know for sure.

  She shrugged. “I just had a feeling. And then I told the Atlas to take me there.”

  He nodded. “Kate…”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “How was it…seeing him?”

  She knew what he meant: How was it seeing Rafe, the boy she loved, their enemy?

  She said, “It wasn’t him.”

  Michael nodded again, then went back to rearranging his piles of rations. “Well, be careful. Don’t go too far.”

  Kate started down into the valley. The ground was soft, and as she descended, she dug her heels into the spongy covering of heather. Soon, the mist had swallowed her, and when she glanced back, she could no longer see her brother on the slope above her. She came to a stop near the bottom of the hill where a small stream trickled past. She didn’t drink at first, but sat down on a large rock and let herself sob, biting her hand to stifle the sound.

  Why had she lied to Michael? Why hadn’t she just told him the truth? How were they going to get through this if they didn’t trust each other completely? A small voice in her head asked whether Dr. Pym hadn’t faced a similar dilemma as he’d struggled with how much to tell her and her brother and sister. It wasn’t fair, to want only the best for those around you, while at the same time knowing there were things they wouldn’t understand. For what could she tell Michael? That Rafe, or the ghost of Rafe, had appeared and warned her that Michael and the others were walking into a trap? Even now, if she closed her eyes, she could see him, standing in the shadows of the tree.

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” he’d said. “Like how can I even be here? And aren’t I your enemy? All I can tell you is that you have to trust me.” He’d been so close that despite the darkness she’d been able to see the deep emerald green of his eyes, and she’d known that this was Rafe, her Rafe. She’d even imagined that he’d smelled the way he had the night the church had burned, of smoke and sweat. She’d wanted to ask him how it was possible that he was there with her, but she’d been speechless, his presence filling her with a terrible, guilty joy.

  “I’m not a ghost, and I’m not your enemy.”

  He’d reached out, his fingertips seeming to touch her forehead, though she’d felt no pressure, just a sort of tingling, and she’d gasped aloud, for she’d seen an image in her mind: a fortress in a wide valley, surrounded by mountains.

  “Only you can save them.” He’d leaned in, and she’d thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he’d put his lips to her ear and whispered, “Trust me.”

  Then she’d been alone.

  And she had been right to trust him. She had saved Michael and Emma.

  But what were they to do now? Kate felt the pressures of leadership descending on her, and for the millionth time she wished her parents were there, that they could make the decisions so that she didn’t have to.

  Kate knelt down, holding back her hair with one hand, and with the other bringing up handful after handful of water. It was clean and very cold, and she drank till her teeth ached, then sat back on her heels and wiped her mouth.

  This time, when she felt the presence, she knew what it was.

  “You’re there, aren’t you?”

  And she turned and saw Rafe on the large stone beside the stream.

  —

  “Nothing,” Emma said. “Just sheep. Sheep sheep sheep sheep.”

  She and Gabriel stood peering through the early-morning mist at the cluster of whitish blobs in the distance.

  “But this place can’t be totally deserted. There’s gotta be, like…” Emma searched for and failed to find the word, finally settling on “some sheep guy.”

  Gabriel merely nodded and gestured that they should move on. They were making a wide circle around the camp, and so far they had seen nothing to give any sign about where the Atlas had brought them.

  Emma had woken in the dark, trembling and gasping for air. It had taken her noticing Kate on the ground beside her to remember where she was and all that had happened. For some moments, she’d just sat there, letting her breathing slow, letting the dream and the voices fade.

  Out on the hillside, she’d found Gabriel keeping watch and had hugged him.

  “What has happened?”

  But she’d only shaken her head, wiping away the tears still clinging to her eyes.

  Gabriel had understood and not pressed her.

  “Have you figured out where we are?” she’d asked.

  “I am waiting for your brothe
r or sister to wake. Then I will search the area more fully.”

  Hearing this, Emma had gone and shaken Michael.

  “Emma?” Michael had rubbed his eyes groggily. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Will you watch Kate while Gabriel and I look around?”

  “Huh?”

  “Great. Oh, thanks again for rescuing me.”

  And she’d kissed him on the cheek, then padded off with Gabriel into the predawn gray.

  Emma had never been one for sitting still and working through a problem. That was Michael’s way, and a pretty boring way, in her opinion. She had always found that if something was bothering her and she tried not to think about it, if she kept moving and doing other things, then sooner or later the answer would present itself.

  Or she’d just forget about it, which was almost as good.

  In this case, not thinking about it was proving difficult because every time her mind strayed, she would again have the sense of part of herself drifting away, of that force out there, pulling her on; she would see the land on fire, the cliff, the bird-headed creature; she’d remember touching the book—

  “Are you warm enough?”

  Emma glanced up and saw that Gabriel was looking down at her.

  “What? Oh. I’m fine. Why’d we stop?”

  “We did not stop. You stopped. And you are shivering.”

  “Oh. I thought I saw something. Over there.” She pointed at a random hillside, and Gabriel obligingly turned to look.

  “I see nothing.”

  “Huh. It must’ve moved—Shepherd! That’s the word! There’s gotta be a shepherd here, right?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Well, where is he? He shouldn’t just let his sheep run all over! We should steal some of ’em just to teach him a lesson!”

  Gabriel knelt, bringing his eyes level with hers, and took her small, cold hands in his large, callused ones. She saw the wounds that he’d dressed on his arms and side, the bandages now dark and stiff with dried blood.

  “There is something you must know.”

  Then he told her what the wizard had hidden from them.

  For several moments, Emma couldn’t speak.

  “He—he lied to us?!” she finally sputtered. “Dr. Pym lied to us?! And—and we’re just gonna die?! After all this we’re just gonna die?!”

  “It may be,” Gabriel said slowly, “that the prophecy does foretell your deaths. But I think the wizard was sincere, and that he truly believed there was a way you could survive. He and I spoke only yesterday, and he told me there was more to the prophecy than any of us knew, and that when fully revealed, it would explain how the Keepers might unite the Books and live. He spoke of this again just before he died.”

  “Then he should’ve told us that! He shouldn’t have lied!”

  “I agree. But we must deal with what is, not what we would wish could be.”

  “I’m glad he’s dead!”

  Gabriel said nothing.

  “I mean it! He deserved it! He—”

  She had been crying and shouting, and she realized that in her fury she had been hitting Gabriel’s wounded arm and making it bleed, while Gabriel simply let her vent her anger. Emma threw her arms around his neck and sobbed.

  “He should not have done what he did,” Gabriel said quietly. “But do not doubt that he loved you. That was not a lie.”

  Emma pulled back. She could feel the tears running down her cheeks, but she made no move to wipe them; her hands stayed clenched into fists.

  “It’s the Dire Magnus! We just gotta kill him! We gotta find the book and kill him! I’ll do it! I’ll—”

  Gabriel said, “What happened last night?”

  “Nothing. He tried to make me find the book for him. And it almost worked! Then Michael brought my spirit or whatever back. I feel fine!” But even as she said it, Emma knew it wasn’t true.

  The sky was now fully light. There was the bleating of sheep in the distance.

  Gabriel was still watching her, waiting. She kicked at the earth with her toe.

  “I think I felt it, the book, out there somewhere. Or my spirit felt it.”

  “And you had a dream this morning?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You were upset when you woke.”

  Emma nodded. “But…I don’t know if it was a dream or I was just remembering from last night. Wherever he sent my spirit, I was flying over this place, and it was all on fire, the land, I mean. Then there was this cliff and a kind of a monster; it looked like a man but had the head of a bird. Really, really creepy. Then it was all dark, like I was in a cave or something, and I…I knew the book was close, but I couldn’t get to it ’cause there were these shadows crowding me; they were begging and shouting. I couldn’t hear myself think.” She looked at him, pleading. “What’s it all mean?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “I am not sure. We must return to Loris. Someone there can perhaps explain.”

  Emma nodded and dug her toe deeper into the dirt.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Just…I know we need to find the Reckoning, to beat the Dire Magnus and all. I just—I don’t think it’s like Michael’s and Kate’s books. I think it might be, I don’t know, bad. Evil somehow.” Then she added, “Not that I’m scared.”

  Gabriel gripped her hands. “Whatever it is, I will be with you. Come. Your sister will be awake.”

  But as they started walking, the earth shook, and Emma, off balance, teetered and slipped down the hillside, tumbling into a shallow depression. Gabriel was there in an instant, reaching for her.

  “What was that?” she asked, taking his hand.

  “I do not know—”

  He stopped; he was looking, Emma saw, at the hole she had fallen in.

  “We must find your brother and sister,” he hissed. “Now!”

  —

  “So do you trust me now?”

  Kate was sitting beside Rafe on the large stone next to the creek. In the early-morning light, he looked somehow even more real and solid than he had in the Garden the night before.

  “Because if helping you save your brother and sister doesn’t make you trust me, then I might be in trouble.”

  His tone was light, but he was staring at her, as if trying to read every emotion and thought that flitted across her face. Kate held his gaze for as long as she could, then looked down, her heart feeling like a piece of paper that might blow away.

  “I think,” she said, “you were trying to help.”

  Rafe nodded. “I’ll take it.” Then he said, “So you saw him.”

  It was a statement, but also a question.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  How to answer that question? She’d told Michael that the Dire Magnus was not Rafe, but that was a lie. He’d looked like Rafe, talked like him, and though she had steeled herself beforehand, had told herself she knew where her loyalties and affections lay—with Michael and Emma, entirely and always—she had felt herself pulled toward him.

  “He’s you.”

  “But?”

  That was the thing. There had to be a but, some way the Dire Magnus was not Rafe. Only what was it?

  “I don’t know. I guess he’s the dark version of you.”

  “Dark Rafe. I kind of like it.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  Because if that was the only difference, then there was no difference, for all the darkness and anger she’d sensed in the Dire Magnus the night before had been there in the boy a hundred years ago.

  But how could that be? Dr. Pym had said that because Rafe had known love, the Dire Magnus would be different. So where was the Rafe she’d loved? Who’d loved her? Was any of him in the Dire Magnus? Or was he only this apparition now beside her?

  “None of this makes any sense. Even your being here—how is it you can appear wherever I am?”

  “I’m not sure I can explain it myself. It’s just that…we’re connected. We have been ever since
that moment in New York, when I sent you back.” He paused and corrected himself. “When he sent you back.”

  “How can you talk about the Dire Magnus as him?” Kate was keeping her voice low. She didn’t want Michael hearing her arguing. But would he hear Rafe? If he came down here, would he see him? “The Rafe I knew became the Dire Magnus! He did it—you did it—to save me! So who are you? Or are you just a figment of my imagination?”

  She was angry now, and angrier still that Rafe seemed so calm.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t explained it better. You’re right: I am him. You have to understand, when you become the Dire Magnus, you don’t just take on the powers, you take on the memories and experiences of each Dire Magnus that came before, going back thousands of years. All those lives were laid into and built on top of the Rafe you knew. I’m in him, but he’s not me! I don’t have all those other memories! I’m just me!”

  Kate shook her head. “You can say all that but I still don’t understand—who you are—why you’re helping us—any of it!”

  He looked at her, and it was unnerving to see the same green eyes she had stared at across the courtyard the night before.

  “I’m the part you loved. The part you changed. The night I became the Dire Magnus, I built a wall around it, and then I hid.”

  “Hid where?”

  He shrugged. “Where else? Inside of him. And all this time, I’ve been waiting for you.”

  There was a long moment in which neither spoke, and the only sound was the trickling of water in the stream. Kate could feel the last of her resistance crumbling. She wanted so badly to believe that what he said was true.

  “And I’ve been able to stay hidden because I’ve never contacted you. Now that I have, he knows.”

  “Knows what? What do you mean?”

  Rafe gave a sardonic half smile. “Knows I’m alive. That I held something back.”

  “So what’s going to happen?”

  “He’ll start looking for me. He already has.”

  “Will he find you?”