by Linda Howard
“You called me here for a purpose,” she said, trying yet again to extract from him the reason why she was here. “What is that purpose?”
A look of intense unhappiness crossed that cherubic face, but all he said was, “I’m hungry,” then he opened the door and cautiously looked around before leaving the small dressing room.
Lenna followed, stepping into a bedchamber that was gently lit by an early-morning sun beginning to share its glow through large windows. She didn’t take the time to examine her surroundings, though normally her curiosity would be high. “Your hunger can wait, child,” she said. “Tell me—”
“My name is Elijah,” he said without looking back as he left the room. Lenna fell into step behind him. “Elijah Tilley. What’s your name?”
“Lenna Frost. Strength of the Major Arcana. You know who I am,” she continued, puzzled. “You called me, you brought me here.”
“No, you just showed up.” This time he did glance over his shoulder at her, and his brow wrinkled. “You’re wearing your nightgown. I didn’t mean to wake you up. Sorry,” he added in a small voice.
Nightgown? Lenna looked down at herself. She was not wearing nightclothes. When she did sleep, it was without any clothing at all. Her dress was made of the finest white Nilean silkine available in Aeonia or any other world. She had been immersed in some interesting studies, so the dress had been chosen with comfort in mind; it hung loosely, in lustrous folds that never wrinkled. She doubted the child cared about her fashion choices, though, so she merely reassured him.
“No apology is needed. You did not wake me.”
She followed him down the stairs, through another room, into a room that was—as the bed chamber upstairs had been—lit by the soft, faint light of dawn coming through the windows, a dawn that showed a world of white. “Now, what sort of help do you require?”
He stopped in the middle of the room—a kitchen, if she was correct—and turned to look up at her with wide eyes that held an overbright sheen. Tears spilled down his little cheeks.
Somewhat bewildered, she stared at him. What had she said to cause this reaction? How could she make him stop? “Cease,” she ordered.
Rather than stopping, his lips quivered and he began to sob, his slight shoulders heaving. Ordering him to stop didn’t work.
“It wasn’t a dream,” he said, the words shuddering out between sobs. “I thought I’d come downstairs and be in my house and everything would be the same, but it’s not! I’m not home, my mom is dead—he killed her.” He sat down on the floor and the sobs turned to wails.
Finally, a fact to work with! Not a good fact, but still something substantial. Now she had a direction. She crouched beside him and put her arm around his shoulders, touched by his slightness. “Where is this man who killed your mother?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s still at my house, but he doesn’t usually stay all night so he might’ve gone home.” Her touch seemed to comfort him because the tears began to subside. He turned his liquid deep brown eyes up to her. “He knows I saw. He’ll want to kill me, too.”
Lenna felt a sudden and unexpected wave of protectiveness. “Not if I kill him first.” She wasn’t Justice, but she knew how to mete it out, for what was Justice without Strength?
Elijah blinked hard. “You’re going to kill Uncle Bobby?” The idea seemed to astonish him.
“Isn’t that why I’m here?” Why else had he called her? She would do what was needed.
He managed to look surprised, terrified, and pleased all at once. “I just wanted a cell phone to call 9–1–1.”
That made her pause. What was a cell phone? Who was this 9–1–1? From what she knew of life on Seven, people were not named with numbers. Granted, she had been preoccupied this last little while with her studies, and time was irrelevant on Aeonia, but she normally made an effort to stay abreast of life in all the worlds. What had happened on Seven while she was distracted, that she wouldn’t know what Elijah was talking about? But if he had a friend, that was good. She would focus on that. “Who is 9–1–1?”
“The police. They can put Uncle Bobby in jail, when I tell them what he did.” The tears threatened to start up again, but he fought them back to ask, “Do you have a cell phone?”
The cell phone again. Whatever it was, she didn’t have one, because she had come into this world empty-handed. “No, I have no cell phone.”
The negative answer was too much for the child, because he dissolved into sobs again, crying until he was almost choking, his almost unintelligible cries of “Mom!” telling Lenna he grieved for his mother. Without warning Elijah threw himself at her; driven by instinct, she stretched out her arms and caught him. Her action was as much pragmatic as it was sympathetic; it was either catch him, or allow him to knock her to the floor. She went to her knees and tightly wrapped her arms around him, cuddling him to her, offering the comfort of her nearness.
He was warm and soft, his bones thin and fragile under her hands. The smallness of him bemused her; the beings of Aeonia had neither childhood nor old age; they simply were. The humans of Seven, on the other hand, grew from tiny infants to full adulthood, then began growing smaller again as they aged. From afar, whenever she turned her curiosity to the other worlds of other planes, she had been interested in the tiny infants, who seemed so pliable and incomplete yet adorable. Elijah wasn’t that tiny; he seemed to be fully formed, though not yet at his full size. He would be helpless against an adult, she thought, and felt anger grow that someone would hurt this little person.
His tears damped the sleeve and shoulder of her dress, and she patted his back, as she had often observed Seven females doing through the ages. “I will find your 9–1–1,” she said, doing her best to comfort the child. “I will see that Uncle Bobby is, as you have requested, in jail.” And if that was not possible, she’d kill the murderer herself. “When that is done, you must send me home.”
Elijah pulled away, a puzzled look on his little face. He hunched his shoulders up around his ears and asked, “How do I do that?”
He didn’t know? Oh, dear. “The same way you called me here, I imagine.” Surely he remembered; it hadn’t been that long ago, she didn’t think, though as an Aeonian she experienced time as a theory rather than something that had an effect on her.
He hunched his shoulders again. “I don’t know how I did that. You just appeared. In the closet. Dressed in your nightgown.”
Lenna went still as she absorbed an unwelcome truth. This situation might be more serious than she’d first imagined. Elijah was the cause of her appearance here, but he had no idea how to return her where she belonged.
It wasn’t just that she wanted to go home; it wasn’t that she didn’t fit in here—at all—an immortal being who had no idea how to navigate a world as tumultuous as Seven.
Five days.
If she wasn’t home in five days, Aeonia would crumble.
Aeonia and all the Major Arcana—including Strength—would cease to exist, and there would be no structure in the universe.
Lenna spent some time studying the clock—or rather, clocks. This kitchen had several, and it was the oddest thing, but they each showed a different time. That small detail was irritating, simply because it displayed a lack of order in this household. For the concept of time to be efficient, it had to be regulated and be the same in each designated area. In this one kitchen, however, time varied from one appliance to the other. These were unlike the timepieces she recalled from her earlier studies of Seven, but surely they could be properly set just as the older clocks and watches could be.
Elijah had patiently answered her questions about each appliance that displayed time—the stove, the coffeemaker, the microwave, the wall clock that had numbers in a circle, which made her wonder if time perhaps ran in a circle instead of linearly, as she had assumed. At least he had stopped crying, and she was glad for that.
Now he sat at the counter eating a meal of what he called “cereal,” which consisted of
flat pellets in colors that did not exist in nature, as well as a “juice box,” the contents of which he sucked up through a narrow tube. She thought that was interesting, so he’d given her one, too, and she sucked the too-sweet beverage while she thought about the disturbing inconsistencies of time.
For instance: time on Aeonia was not the same as time here, but because she paid no attention to it she wasn’t certain exactly how it differed. She knew she had five days to return, and by all logic they had to be Seven days. She had studied this world in the past. Even though she was not current in her knowledge, the length of a day would not have changed. Twenty-four of their hours constituted a day. Sunrise to sunset, and then a few hours of darkness before the sun rose again.
Abruptly she noticed that Elijah had stopped eating and was simply sitting there, his head down. His withdrawn state worried her, though she knew she shouldn’t be worried about someone who wasn’t of her world. That was not how things were ordered. She embodied Strength, which existed for other beings to call on in time of need, to endure, to fight, to support. Why hadn’t he called in the Empress? She had strong maternal instincts and would have known what to do to soothe the child.
For whatever reason, he had called forth Lenna. She wasn’t particularly maternal, though she was sympathetic. If someone needed willpower, that she could offer. She did possess physical strength, as well, but it was mental strength that was her hallmark.
She sighed, and the mental strength that was at the core of her makeup brought her to acceptance—and determination. The Empress might’ve been best for caring for Elijah, but it was Lenna who would do what he required and see this Uncle Bobby to the authorities—or dead.
She turned that determination to practical matters. Before they left the house, Elijah needed to be functioning at full capacity, and she needed to fit into this world so as not to draw unnecessary attention to herself.
“We must get dressed,” she said, pulling him out of his sad thoughts. “Come with me to the upper chambers.”
He blinked. “Huh?”
She pointed upward. “Clothing. It is required.”
It would also be easy. There was an abundance of it in the dressing room through which she had entered this world. The knowledge she needed would not be as easy. To function here, she had to know how things—all of them—worked. It wasn’t just clocks that differed from coffeemaker to microwave; it was understanding the function and operation of each. A coffeemaker made coffee, obviously, but she didn’t know how to operate it. A microwave … that would be tiny waves, yes? But of what possible use could tiny waves be? And those were just examples. There were many things in this world that hadn’t been here the last time she’d paid attention to it.
She loved studying, she loved learning new things, but she liked to do it at her own pace. She couldn’t afford leisure in this instance. She needed knowledge. If there were grown humans here she had only to lay her hand upon one and absorb all she needed to know, but there was only her and Elijah. He was too young; he would not suffice.
As she made her way up the stairs, with him close behind her, Lenna constructed a plan. She wanted to see the scene of the murder for herself. Elijah seemed certain that his mother was dead, but perhaps she was merely wounded and had recovered, or would recover with the proper treatment. That was unlikely, but not impossible. When she was convinced that a crime had taken place, she would seek out the authorities—Elijah’s 9–1–1—and hand the child and the problem over to them. She had her own problems to solve.
How was she to return home?
It would be easiest if Elijah could return her as he had called her in, but he seemed to have no idea how that might be accomplished. It would be nice to think she might be able to slip back into Aeonia without anyone noticing she’d been gone, but given the importance of her presence there, that was unlikely.
If Elijah couldn’t send her back, a Hunter would be sent to collect her. She didn’t look forward to that—Hunters had a certain reputation, a ruthlessness that allowed them to operate in all the worlds on all the planes, to keep order as directed. Perhaps one had already been sent, or was on the way. Having never been collected before, she had no certain idea exactly how the Hunters operated. She did hope to finish the job she’d been called here to do, before that happened.
Any Hunter would surely accede to her request if she asked for a bit more time. On occasion the Hunters were hired by the residents of Aeonia to do what they could not: travel. They were not subservient; it was not so simple as that. But they were … rarely called upon but valued employees with special skills. It came down to a simple question: Did a Hunter’s standing orders supersede her wishes?
She had to assume they did. Therefore, she had to be prepared to either evade the Hunter, or resist. She was not without power, and she would use it if necessary.
But until she knew exactly what she faced, she would do well to concentrate on the present. In the bedchamber, Elijah turned on a bright overhead light. Lenna, who had marched through this room a bit earlier with her eyes on the child, this time studied her surroundings more closely.
While she was not familiar with the culture of the current time, she had studied Seven’s history, most particularly its occult history. The residents of this world had always searched for knowledge, for magic, for proof that there was more than met the eye—and for a way to manipulate that more. Evidence of that search was, surprisingly, strongly present in this otherwise ordinary room.
She recognized things, powerful things. A pair of carved animals from the continent of Africa had once belonged to a powerful wizard who swore that he could make them come to life. He had done so, on more than one occasion. Lenna walked to a dresser to more closely study a necklace that contained a stone from a mine in what had once been the Persian Empire. The stones from that mine had magical qualities, in the right hands. She scanned the room. There were other old objects here, some of them imbued with magic, others simply old, but age carried its own power.
It could not be coincidence that these things were in one place.
“Elijah, how well do you know the people who sleep in this room?”
“Zack’s mom and dad?” He shrugged his shoulders. “They’re nice, I guess. Zack’s mom always buys pizza when I spend the night. I like pizza.”
“Do either of them dabble in the occult?”
Elijah stared up at her, red-eyed from crying, looking even younger than he had when she’d first arrived. “Huh?”
That word again. Already she knew it signified a lack of understanding; perhaps it was best, with a child, to ask as simply as possible. “Is either of them a magician, or perhaps a witch?”
Those dark eyes widened in shock. “Huh? Zack’s mom isn’t a witch. She cooks and everything. She’s nice.”
“What about his father?”
He scratched the side of his nose. “Zack’s dad is gone a lot. Zack said he has a job that makes him travel. He brought me back some chocolate last time he went to Ireland. It was awesome. You want me to see if I can find some still here?”
“No, that will be fine. Where does Zack’s dad go?”
“All over,” he said promptly, unhelpfully. “Zack’s mom gets mad, sometimes, because she says she doesn’t have room for all the junk he brings home from his trips, but he keeps bringing stuff home, anyway.”
Ah. That explained that, then. Was it merely an accident that this man returned from his journeys with powerful objects, or was he collecting them on purpose? At least she now understood how he had come to possess the Alexandria Deck. Well, perhaps not how, but definitely why. The man was obviously drawn to power, whether or not he understood the nature of the power. After all, if Zack’s father had realized what he had in that deck, would he have stored it, open and unguarded, on the floor of a closet? Lenna would think not, but humans were—and had always been—strange and unpredictable.
Lenna walked toward the closet, but a bereft sound from behind her stopped her i
n her tracks. The child was crying again. Her heart squeezed; he had lost his mother, and he was frightened and alone. Did he have other relatives? A father, or perhaps grandparents? There was only one way to find out.
She turned to face the boy. “Elijah, where is your father?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t have one.”
Now was not the time to point out that every human had a father. She understood that Elijah’s sire was not a part of his life. It didn’t matter if the man was dead or simply elsewhere, not for the purpose of this conversation. “What of your grandparents?”
The child did not react well to that question. There were more tears, and a barely audible, “I don’t have any. I just had Mom, and now she’s gone and I don’t have anybody.”
Lenna knelt down so she was face-to-face with Elijah. Her heart broke for him. No child should be alone. Gently she cupped his face.
“You must be strong now,” she said.
He sniffled. “But Mom …”
“I know. Loss hurts, whenever it strikes. No one is immune from it, or from the hurt.” She paused, wondering if a child would care about that. Probably not. Abandoning that avenue, she sought to distract him. “Where I come from, we have soldiers who are called Hunters. They are the fiercest of the fierce. They deliver justice to those who have committed a wrong.” And sometimes to those who had made the mistake of crossing a being more powerful than they, but that was not necessary information for the child, nor was it all that the Hunters were or did. For Elijah, she would focus on the positive. “Today you and I will be Hunters.”
Elijah’s chin came up slightly. His eyes suggested that he was, at least, interested in this new concept.
“Hunters are strong and dedicated,” Lenna continued. “They commit themselves to the job at hand. You and I will be no less committed. We will deliver justice for your mother. We will avenge her.”
