“Giles? No way. I’m so Buffy.”
“Right. You’re lucky if you make it to Xander.”
Now she went for his empty can. He hoisted both it and the half-full one over his head, and she had to settle for punching him in the ribs. A pulled punch, though, so Sean dumped only one glug of tea into her hair, fair all around.
13
The next day Eddy informed Daniel that Sean knew about their new relationship. Mercifully she didn’t say he’d caught them in a lip-lock, because Daniel was embarrassed enough without the graphic details. During a break in class, he admitted she was his first girlfriend. The accident, rehab, et cetera. “Dude,” Sean said. “You’re ahead of me.” Which was the truth, considering that over the past three years he’d only made it to a second date twice and a third date once. Plus Geldman had never predicted romance for him. At least not in a fortune stuffed into a cardboard clamshell. At least not yet.
Soon Eddy and Daniel got comfortable enough around Sean to do some mild PDA, and he got comfortable enough not to mind it, so that was working out all right. Sean’s trips into the seed world were working out all right, too. Eddy came up with a cover story in case Helen or some eerily nocturnal Order member wandered into the library while they were at it. Sean’s dad had used this new putty while restoring the Founding windows, see, and he wanted Sean to check how well it was holding up, and she was there to hold Sean’s ladder. They had to do it in the middle of the night because dumb-ass Sean had forgotten to check the putty earlier and he was supposed to call his dad first thing in the morning. And she was wearing a stethoscope because—
Well, she’d just have to hide the stethoscope if an intruder showed up. Why she actually needed it was to listen to what was going on in the seed world. Without it, she couldn’t hear anything unless her ear was squashed to the glass, and even then the sound was muffled. A quick visit to a nursing supply store had solved the problem.
His early trips into the window, Sean kept his distance from Reverend Tyndale. Eddy had insisted he learn how far the seed world extended before inviting Orne back in. Though he grumbled for form’s sake, it was fun to explore on the wing, and his adjustment to crow form grew shorter every merge. The first night, with no Orne to catch him, he plummeted to the ground. Eddy’s panicked “Sean, Sean!” reverberated through the seed world like the shout of Goddess Almighty. Up on a second stepladder and casting a horizon-to-zenith shadow on the southern sky, she even looked like a goddess, and Sean lay in claws-up awe until he realized his apparent death was causing the divine ruckus. By then he was able to hop to his feet and take flight.
He discovered that unless he aimed for the exit point, he could fly without bounds in any direction. He first flew south, over future Kingsport Harbor, then inland over Indian villages scattered through otherwise solid forest. Flocks of birds loitered motionless in the air he plied. In a clearing, deer paused in mid-bound, and on a promontory, a bear stood guard over a sea in which stalled whales spouted fountains of ice. From two points farther south, he glimpsed smoke rising as if from clustered chimneys. One braided column had to rise from the Plymouth Colony, another from a baby Boston.
His next flight was along the wilder north coast. The third night he ventured into the forest, an animate cathedral with column trunks, vaulting branches, and sunset-edged leaves that formed a gilded ceiling over the dusky groves. Animals abounded except in the wedge of wood nearest Nyarlathotep. Maybe this wedge was the Master’s particular chapel within the cathedral, for the only congregants were the crows and owls and whip-poor-wills that crowded every branch, gargoyle still. Lonely over being the only “living” creature in the seed world, he pecked some of the other birds. They never stirred. He pecked hardest at a crow perched above Nyarlathotep, as if ready to fill in for his missing minion. He couldn’t rouse it or knock it off its branch, and Eddy yelled at him to stop—apparently she could see crow-Sean whenever he was in a part of the seed world represented in the Founding.
On the fourth night, under the condition he’d leave the window the second she rapped, Eddy agreed to let him call in Orne. Within a minute of his perching on Tyndale’s shoulder, Orne arrived. The first thing he did was to take Sean on his wrist. The second was to discover Eddy’s looming thunderhead of a shadow and the dark disk of her stethoscope hovering like a companion satellite below the crescent moon. When Sean had explained what the shadows meant, Orne spoke to her directly: “Miss Rosenbaum, or shall I call you Eddy, as I did when we chatted online?”
“Eddy,” she said shortly.
“Excellent. And I admire your ingenuity with the scope. It will let you join our conversations. I wish you could simply enter the seed world along with Sean, but that’s impossible, as you’re neither a paramagician nor a magician.”
The shadow shrugged. “I can still see and hear you, Reverend. If you try to snow Sean, I’m pulling him out of there.”
“Frank as ever. I’ll endeavor to make pulling unnecessary.”
Eddy momentarily appeased, Orne sat on his favorite boulder at the edge of the woods. Sean retook his perch in the twisted pine. “Paramagicians,” he said. “So you mean Professor Marvell could get in here?”
“Only if you invited him.”
“That’s not happening. I wish I could bring Helen, though. It’d be nice to have someone along.”
“I thought you might feel that way. It’s why I made another avatar construct. Have you noticed the crow perched just above the Master’s head?”
“Um, yeah.” Noticed and pecked the hell out of it.
“That’s the second avatar. If you find another magician you want to introduce to the seed world, have him or her hold on to any part of your body while you enter. Then, when your avatar touches that particular crow, your guest will transfer into it. To be dismissed, as I am, by the trigger word.”
Nevermore, Sean was almost stupid enough to say aloud. Almost. “I’d have to really trust that person.”
“Obviously.”
Daniel was the only one who came to mind, and Daniel was as much out of the running as Helen, given they’d decided not even to tell him about the seed world. “I doubt I’ll use the second avatar anytime soon.”
“Don’t worry. There’s no expiration date.”
Sean changed the subject to his now-forbidden struggles with practical magic. Orne was especially interested in his access metaphor. “You bring me back to my first essays. Lightning was also my guide into magic.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, but you have the advantage of understanding the nature of electricity, as I didn’t in those days. I hope you’ve toned down your metaphor? Lightning’s a powerful image!”
“I’ve got it down to tiny threads of lightning, like spider silk, coming from everywhere. I couldn’t grab the threads, though, so I thought, what about a lightning rod?”
“What havoc came of that?”
The heavenly rumble was Eddy snorting.
Sean told the story of the vaporized pencil and the meeting in Marvell’s office. He’d expected Orne to condemn Marvell for once again oppressing magical youth. Instead Orne shook his head. “I don’t often agree with the professor, but in this case, he’s right.”
Sean almost did a 360 around his branch.
“Why so amazed?” Orne said. “I’m sure Daniel meant well, but how can he safely teach what he’s just begun to learn?”
Was Eddy going to defend her boyfriend or what? Not a rumble out of her, so it was all on Sean. “Right, but he wasn’t stupid. He warned me to go easy.”
“Did he know how to gauge the energy you accessed or how to help you create safe images in the first place?”
“He tried.”
“This is a situation where trying isn’t enough. You see that, don’t you?”
In fact, staring down into the concern in Orne’s eyes, Sean did see it. “So I shouldn’t try to do magic until I have a real mentor. Like Marvell said.”
“You’re doing magic b
y being here in the seed world, but it’s safe because an experienced magician designed the mechanism, and the mechanism itself supplies the energy for your transitions.”
“Does that make you my mentor?”
“No, only a friend like Daniel, trying to help you along until you’re assigned a mentor, or choose one.” When Eddy moved restively but said nothing, Orne added: “I can offer you this world, and perhaps another key.”
“A key besides this crow?”
“Yes. Let’s see if I can find one.” Orne walked over to the governor, who stood untroubled while God-fearing Reverend Tyndale rifled his pockets like an expert wallet snatcher. What Orne came up with wasn’t a wallet but a long-barreled antique key with brass curlicues for a top.
Sean flew to the arm hefting the massive key. “What’s it open?”
“That’s irrelevant. The important thing is you could use the image of a key to collect energy in a controlled fashion. Benjamin Franklin himself realized that trying to capture electricity with rods was too dangerous, so he’s supposed to have tried a key instead.”
“Tied to a kite!”
“You shouldn’t need the kite. Imagine you’re holding the key so only the tip of the bow is exposed.” Orne demonstrated, leaving nothing visible above his fist but the little brass knob that topped the curlicues. “At the same time imagine your hand’s a perfect insulator. Only what you expose of the key will collect energy, which you can then harvest with your free hand.”
“Getting just a tiny bit of magic?”
“About enough to spin a pencil, as you meant to do.”
“And the more key I poke out, the more magic I grab.”
“You’d experiment.” Curlicue by curlicue, Orne exposed the bow of his key. “Slowly, cautiously. Remember, this is a thought experiment for now, conceptualizing your tools for the future.”
Unless Eddy really did have godly vision, she couldn’t see the gleam in Orne’s eyes that Sean caught from a couple feet away. Or maybe the gleam wasn’t conspiratorial, just a reflection of the sunset.
In any case, when Sean had Nevermore’d Orne out of the seed world, Eddy only warned him once not to test the key idea. Orne had scored points by semi-backing Marvell, but mostly she was excited to think he might have hung with Benjamin Franklin.
Sean didn’t have to look far for a key to model his imaginary one after. An antique monster stuck out of the china cabinet in Helen’s dining room. He borrowed it the next morning, and since they always ate in the kitchen, no one missed it.
Orne was a genius. After a week of practice, snatched half hours in his room or on the beach while Eddy and Daniel were off together, Sean had mastered spinning pencils, levitating feathers, and making mini grit vortices by twirling a finger over the sand. He played it safe, though, and never extruded more than the knob tip of his psychic key—his harvesting image—above his fist.
By Sean’s third meeting with Orne, Eddy was comfortable enough to let them out of her sight for a few minutes. They walked under the trees of Nyarlathotep’s “chapel,” and in a harsh crow whisper, Sean told Orne about his success with the key image. Orne didn’t commit himself in words, but he smiled approval. Then he showed Sean another wonder of the seed world. Just a few crow hops inside the wood was a chestnut tree. Orne patted its trunk. “From the library, looking at the left window, you can see this chestnut. It’s the tree that has the artist’s signature embedded above its roots.”
Orne didn’t mean a written signature but an amber glass rondel bearing the impression of a horned owl. That was how Plantagenet Howell had marked all the windows he’d designed and fabricated. “But you can’t see the signature from the seed world?”
“Come this way.” Orne circled the trunk to a gap that accessed the hollow interior. “Too small for a man. Perfect for you.”
Sean proved it by stalking into a miniature cavern complete with woody stalactites and shelving mushrooms; the floor was compacted leaves that smelled like plum cake. A honey-gold shaft of light drew his eyes to a tiny window opposite the gap: the rondel! That shaft became the only light as Orne knelt before the gap. “Go to the signature,” he said.
Up close, Sean could make out the impressed owl. “I’m there.”
“Tap it.”
Sean pecked the rondel. The amber glass went clear white and impressionless. He peered closer and let out a wordless caw. The rondel now acted like a wide-angle lens through which he could see the entire library, from the fireplace to the conference table, from the double doors to Eddy on her stepladder, one hand applying the stethoscope, the other pressed to his (real body’s) back. More, he could hear the ticking of the mantel clock, the creak of the ladder as Eddy shifted her feet, her muttered, “Come on, come out of the damn woods.”
He pivoted to the gap entrance, in which Orne was a single eye. “It’s a spy-hole!”
“Your window into the library. You could use it to check on things if Eddy wasn’t on sentry duty. And when you master casting your consciousness into the seed world from a distance—”
“Then I could spy on the library. Even on Order meetings. Wait, does that mean you can spy on them?”
“Not in this body, which is the only one you call me to. I designed the spy-hole that way, so you could be sure the Order was safe from me.”
“But not from me?”
Orne’s laughter echoed in the hollow tree. “Does the Order need to fear you? Come, let’s get back into Eddy’s sight.”
Poor Eddy. When Sean told her about the rondel spy-hole, she was back on the teeter-totter about Orne. On one end of the tilt board was her determination not to believe a word out of his mouth, and on the other end were the words out of his mouth. It seemed like he’d deliberately made a spy-hole only Sean could use. But what if his whole story was a lie and he could still sneak into the seed world in Sean’s crow or that second avatar he’d pointed out? And even if they put a surveillance camera on the Founding, couldn’t Orne trick them? Have a dozen ways in, a hundred spy-holes? “Maybe it’s time to talk to Helen,” she said.
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“I feel like I can trust Orne. I mean, he’s trusting me. Marvell sure doesn’t. You know he’s put a padlock on the wine cellar?”
“No, Helen did.”
“He must have told her to.”
“Paranoid.”
“Ask Daniel. He knows how Marvell looks at me in class, like I’m a time bomb. And look, I don’t even totally blame him. But I’d rather hang out with someone who’s not scared of me. Somebody who’ll actually answer my questions.”
“But are his answers the truth? Plus we’ve got to cut down on these late-night chats, or I’ll be so exhausted, Helen will know something’s up. And you’ll keep falling asleep in class, which isn’t helping you with Marvell.”
Sean agreed to an hour a seed world session. So the next trip, right off, he spit out the question he’d been swallowing, afraid there was no good answer. “So, not judging, but while you were watching your line for magicians, didn’t you kind of stalk some of them?”
Orne lay stretched on the ground. “If you mean I watched certain descendants closely, yes.”
Sean had been doing this stiff-legged crow strut on the turf beside Orne, not because he was on edge, just because it was fun. He paused by Orne’s cocked elbow. “And if they turned out to be magical, did you contact them?”
“Before you, there were three who’d have made strong magicians.” Orne spoke in a lazy drone. “The first was Constance, but I never approached her. She’d been raised to dread her parents. The second was her son, Thaddeus. I didn’t meet him until he was forty and a Congregational minister much more comfortable in the job than I’d ever been. I didn’t disturb him. It takes more than raw ability. Disposition is vitally important. A certain dissatisfaction with the mundane. A capacity for recklessness.”
“You think I’ve got those?”
“I know you have.”
�
�And that makes me like you.”
“Very much like me.”
Point for Marvell? Point for Orne? Points for both? “Who was the third descendant?”
Orne plucked a stem of cloverlike blossoms from a nearby shrub. He twirled it, then nibbled a blossom. “You’d like this, I suppose. Quail do.”
Who cared about quail clover? The way Orne stalled, Sean had the answer he’d expected. “The third one was my mother.”
“Katherine Krol, as she was then.” Orne sat up and offered Sean his right arm. When Sean hopped onto his wrist, he lifted him so they could look each other in the eye. “As with you, I watched her from infancy. As with you, when she was sixteen, I made contact.”
“With an ad in an old book?”
“No. I vary my method to suit the target, if you’ll allow me to use that word.”
“You already did,” Eddy said from on high.
Orne smiled at her cloudy shadow. “You’ve been so quiet, Eddy, I forgot you were there.”
“Never mind me. Tell Sean.”
Orne propped his arm on an up-bent knee to steady Sean’s perch. “Kate’s school hosted an art show, at which her paintings won the top prizes. I left a note on one saying I was interested in buying it, and her father phoned me the next day.”
“My granddad Stewie.”
“An understandably cautious man, but my credentials were enough to get me invited to the house. I owned a gallery in Burlington, you see.”
“Since when? Since you knew my mom was into painting?”
“No sooner than that, I confess.”
“So you only bought the gallery to stalk her.”
Orne sighed. “I don’t fully understand what you mean by stalk, Sean. For me, it implies violent intent, like a tiger stalking prey.”
Or a lion. “What I mean by it is sneaking around after someone because you’re all crazy obsessed.”
“So obsessed you do them harm in the end.”
“Maybe.”
“Then stalk doesn’t apply to my relations with Kate. I helped her sell her paintings, earn a scholarship to an excellent school of design. If any harm was done, it was to my own plans.”
Fathomless Page 14
