Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails

by John G. Hartness

  She jerked to a halt as she came face-to-chest with Mr. Murden at the bottom of the steps.

  “Do you think that is appropriate behavior for a young lady of your stature, Miss Dimont?” Murden’s voice rumbled over her.

  She looked up, but the anger she expected to see on his face wasn’t there. Instead, he looked…disappointed. That was worse, of course. Adults always knew how to twist the knife. And Murden had been around a hell of a lot longer than any other adult she knew, so he had plenty of practice.

  Gwen hung her head. “No sir, probably not. But I’m not going to apologize,” she added before Murden even made the ludicrous suggestion. “I’m tired of putting up with crap from Scott and Liam and all those close-minded goons. I don’t have to anymore, and I won’t. Period.”

  Murden sighed and shook his head. “I do hope that you will come to a better understanding of the Code before you do something you’ll regret.”

  “Don’t worry, boss. I promise not to regret anything.”

  She shot him a grin and skipped all the way to the picnic table set up with box lunches. She grabbed a veggie sub and took a seat apart from the other students. No point setting herself up for abuse. If Lance and Max weren’t going to be there, she might as well just eat alone. Gwen pulled out her phone and opened the e-reader app. The new Jim Butcher book was out, and she’d made sure to download it before leaving home. A few moments later she was immersed in the world of Harry Dresden and his talking skull Bob.

  “What’cha doing?” the small voice jolted Gwen from the world of dark wizards and noble, if flawed, heroes.

  She turned to see a small boy kneeling on the bench across from her, his elbows on the table. He was a cute kid, she thought, with his straw-blond hair and blue eyes. He smiled at her and waved, dimples appearing in his cheeks when she looked at him.

  “Hi there,” Gwen said. “I’m reading.”

  “My mommy reads to me every night before I go to sleep,” the boy said. Gwen guessed he was about five or six from the looks of him.

  “Do you like her reading to you?”

  “Yeah. She reads big books. I can read. But not big books. I can only read little books.”

  “That’s okay. Someday, you’ll be able to read big books, too.”

  “You’re pretty.”

  Gwen felt a rush of warmth to her face, and she ducked her head to hide her watering eyes. “Thank you. You’re a very handsome young man.”

  “I like your hair. It’s funny.”

  Gwen smiled and looked up at the boy. He pointed to her pigtails, long dark hair with vibrant streaks of pink and blue intertwined throughout. Her smile faded as she heard footsteps crunch on the gravel behind her.

  “Beat it, kid,” a deep voice came from over Gwen’s shoulder. She recognized the voice as Jared Forman, the third in her mental Unholy Trinity of eleventh-grade assclowns. The little boy got down from the bench and ran off to a pretty blond woman, who swept him up in a big spinning hug. Gwen watched him go with a little regret. She certainly had a better chat with the kindergartener than she would have with Jared and his pals. Sure enough, Liam and Scott came around either side of Gwen and sat on the bench opposite her. Jared sat down beside her, way farther inside her personal space than she’d normally allow, but the short picnic table didn’t give her any room to scoot away. Besides, she was tired of running from these dicks.

  “What’s up, G?” Jared said, reaching over and plucking an apple slice from the zip-lock bag on the table in front of Gwen. “You don’t mind sharing a little dessert, do ya?”

  “Not at all, Jared. Just like we used to do in elementary school. Wasn’t it Ms. Howell that taught us all to share in second grade?”

  She hoped by reminding Jared that they’d literally known each other since first grade that he might back off a little, at least for a day. School wasn’t easy on her best days, but away from her safety net of teachers she could count on to cover her, and friends she could vent to when it got to be too much, the field trip was way harder on Gwen than most days.

  “Yeah, those were the good ol’ days, G. Back when you knew what was what. You know, line up to go to the bathroom, boys on one side of the hall, girls on the other. Freeze tag at recess, boys against girls. It was all easy then, wasn’t it?”

  “Not for everybody, Jared,” Gwen said in a rare moment of honesty with the jock. Fuck it, she thought, let’s see if we can make this a teachable moment. “I knew I was different even in second grade. I just didn’t have a word for it. I knew I wasn’t like you. Or Scott. Or Lance. Or any of the boys. I knew that something didn’t match. Didn’t fit. But I was a kid, and I didn’t know the words for what I was feeling.”

  Scott looked at Jared, and for a second, maybe two, she thought she saw a hint of the little boy she used to play on the swings with back at Winterfield Elementary. Then he opened his mouth, and everything went downhill from there.

  “What you were feeling, Gareth, is that you’re a freak. Because you are. You’re just a freaky little sexual deviant that oughta be locked away from normal people, and never be allowed around little kids. What were you doing with that little boy? Telling him it was okay to wear dresses? Play with dolls?”

  “Worse, Scotty. I was telling him it was okay to read. You’ve heard of that, right? Not that you’ve ever done it. By the way, how are your balls?”

  “How are yours, Gareth? They shouldn’t even let freaks like you go to school. You oughta be locked up.”

  “You gonna lock me up, Scotty-boy?” Gwen stood and stepped back from the table. “Come on, asshole. Let’s let the whole class see you get your ass beat by a girl. Again.”

  “I’d feel bad about breaking your face if you were a real girl, bitch. But come on, let’s do this.”

  Scott got up and came over to Gwen, getting chest-to-chest with her. Gwen was almost tall enough to look him in the eye, but her slight frame gave up significant weight.

  “Scott…” Jared

  “Nah, bro. I’m tired of Gareth here acting like a girl when he wants to be a girl but acting like a dude when he wants to scrap. You want to throw down with me? Bring it. But I’m not going to fight like you’re a girl. I’m gonna beat your ass just like I did back in seventh grade gym class.”

  Gwen gave him a little smile and reached for the power she knew bubbled just below the surface of her life. She could feel it, the power of the Knights of the Round Table that coursed through her, Rex, Lance, and Kyle. The ability to get stronger, faster, more skilled when they needed to go into combat. She felt the power, the soul of Sir Gawain, the Knight of legend, but…something was wrong. She couldn’t reach it. She couldn’t touch the power. Something was blocking her, and now Scott was about to break her face.

  “Is there a problem here?” Mr. Murden’s voice cut across the picnic area like thunder, all low and rumble through the still air.

  Scott took a quick step back and sat down hard as the bench hit him right behind the knees. “Nope, nothing at all, Mr. Murden. Gwen was just sharing her apples with me and the boys. She’s super-nice that way, you know.”

  “I am aware that Miss Dimont is very nice, Mr. Golbert. I am also aware that it is time to begin our ascent into history. So if the four of you would please dispose of your garbage in the appropriate receptacles and join the rest of the class, we shall depart post haste.”

  Murden gave them a steady look that brooked no disagreement, then turned and walked to where the rest of the class was gathered, watching.

  “I guess we’ll finish this conversation later, Gareth,” Scott said, stomping off after the teacher’s stork legs.

  Gwen gathered the last scraps of her lunch and shoved everything into the brown paper sack she’d carried on the bus with her. The whole time she cleaned up after herself, her mind whirled. Why couldn’t I get stronger? Can I only become Sir Gawain when we’re all together? Or maybe just when Rex is around? Am I not a knight without Arthur? What the hell? With no answers forthcoming from the
universe, Gwen tossed her trash in the green barrel by the table, slung her backpack over one shoulder, and joined the rest of the class.

  Mr. Murden stood at the trailhead, delivering a lecture about the importance of the Battle of Kings Mountain to the colonials’ cause in the Revolutionary War. Gwen smiled to herself, knowing that while Murden had technically lived through the American Revolution, he was as dependent on the history books as the class he taught, since he’d been asleep in a tree for the whole thing. Not to mention the centuries on either side of it. Murden’s former life as Merlin, archdruid of England and chief advisor to King Arthur was useful for a lot of things, but his firsthand knowledge of American History was pretty lacking.

  “Now, please welcome Mr. Richard Gualtieri, our guide for the next portion of the tour.”

  Mr. Murden stepped aside, and a guy that looked more like a suburban dad than a historian stepped up, a broad grin splitting his round face.

  “Good morning,” he said. “My name is Rick Gualtieri, and I’m a ranger in the U.S. Park Service. Yes, I am, in fact, Ranger Rick.” He looked around, as if expecting a laugh, then pulled out a red bandanna and mopped a few beads of sweat from his gleaming bald head. “Anyway,” he went on. “Today we’re going to hike up this trail about half a mile, then we’ll get to the actual location of the battle, and you’ll be able to see why the conditions very much favored the colonists, who were familiar with hunting and trapping in these hills. The redcoats, or British Army, were much more accustomed to fighting on at least somewhat level ground, where large groups of men charged at each other over huge fields, supported by swift cavalry and thundering munitions.”

  Ranger Rick started walking up the inclined trail backward, never looking behind himself or paying any attention to where he put his feet. He just kept up a steady stream of monologue as he led the students up the graveled walkway and into the dense woods. Gwen hung back a little, giving the rest of the class a little separation as Mr. Murden dropped back to join her.

  “Is everything all right, Miss Dimont?” Murden asked.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Gwen replied. “Todd and those jerks were just giving me the normal crap. You know, I’m a freak, I’m not a real girl, I shouldn’t be allowed to live like a girl, all that shit. Oops, sorry.”

  “I suppose we can excuse the language as long as the rest of the class is beyond earshot,” Murden said, a kindly smile stretching across his narrow face. He glanced ahead of them, where Gwen’s fellow students followed Ranger Rick’s beaming face and khaki cargo shorts farther up the mountain. “But that isn’t all that’s bothering you, is it? You deal with their close-minded opinions every day, and while their treatment of you is often reprehensible, I have seldom seen it trouble you to this degree.”

  Gwen sighed, trying to figure out how to put into words what was bugging her. “Yeah, there’s something else. When I was getting ready to fight Scott, I was ready to kick his ass once and for all. And now that I can turn into Sir Gawain at will, I finally have the power to. But when I went to change, I couldn’t. I could still feel the Gawain-Gwen there, but it’s like she was just out of reach. Like something was blocking me.”

  “Did Scott instigate the fight?” Murden asked, his blue eyes sharp under the bushy white brows.

  “Of course he did!” Gwen’s voice rose, and she quickly dropped her volume as a couple of the students near the tail of the procession glanced back. “I mean, he came over and started calling me names, and saying stuff like he always does. He totally started it.”

  “I don’t doubt that he was the first to begin the confrontation, but did he choose to initiate the actual fight?”

  Now Murden’s eyes seemed to bore into her very soul, and Gwen could see why Merlin was often credited with having even more magic than he actually did. With that gaze on you, the truth seemed to be the only thing you could speak.

  “Well…no,” she admitted. “I mean, he started with the shit-talking and harassment, and I finally had enough, so I was going to get all Green Knight on his ass and teach him a lesson.”

  “But you couldn’t,” Murden said.

  “Yeah. I couldn’t. What the hell? Can I only be Gawain when Rex is around to be Arthur? Is it like a Wonder Twins thing?”

  Murden’s brow knit at her cartoon reference, but he shook his head. “I have no idea what a Wonder Twin is, but the explanation is much simpler. The power of the Round Table is not lightly granted, and it does not allow itself to be lightly used. Perhaps your intentions were not worthy of a knight.”

  Gwen stopped cold, her hands on her hips. “Come on! I’m not allowed to defend myself? I thought knights were all about defending the innocent!”

  “They—you are,” Murden said with a slight smile. “But were you actually defending an innocent in this situation? Or were you seeking retribution?”

  Gwen didn’t speak for a long time. She just stood there in the middle of the trail, looking up into her teacher’s now-kind eyes.

  “So what am I supposed to do?” she finally asked, tears welling in her eyes. “Am I supposed to just take it? Ignore it? Be the bigger person? I’m tired of being the bigger person, Merlin! It fucking hurts, the shit they say to me. About me. You don’t know what it’s like, trying to just live like everybody else, when the first thing people think when they meet you is ‘what’s in her pants?’ Do you know how goddamn exhausting it is, to explain who you are every single day?” Gwen turned away, dashing away a runaway tear with the back of her hand.

  Murden put a hand on her shoulder, and when she turned back to him, she saw moisture rimming the old man’s eyes. “No, my dear, I do not. I cannot understand. I can only tell you that I am sorry that people are not better, and I can hope that someday they will be. But I can tell you this—” His jaw set and his voice became firm. “A Knight of the Round Table, in my time or today, does not begin fights for their own retribution. She does not seek revenge, but justice. She does not attack for herself, but defends the innocent. No matter what Scott has said to you, he did not deserve to be beaten, perhaps severely injured, by a trained warrior such as Gawain. He may well deserve a thrashing from Gwendolyn Dimont, but not with the assistance of a Knight. I believe that is why you were not allowed to transform.”

  “Because I wasn’t good enough.” Gwen didn’t bother to try and keep the bitterness from her voice.

  “Because your motives were not chivalrous. Had Scott and his friends attacked you with more than words, you likely could have transformed to defend yourself. Had they sought to harm another, you could have acted in that person’s defense. But to escalate a war of words into a battle of blade against flesh? That is not the way of a Knight.”

  “Then the way of a Knight sucks. Because Scott definitely deserves an ass-kicking.”

  Gwen stuck her chin out, everything in her posture screaming defiance. But if Murden pressed her, she might have to admit that there was a little bit of doubt in her mind.

  “I have no doubt that is true,” Murden said, a smile touching his lips. “But wouldn’t it be all the sweeter coming from you than from Gawain?”

  Gwen opened her mouth to respond, but a scream stopped her cold.

  Her head whipped around, looking for the source of the cry. The cry for help came again, down one of the side trails to a “scenic overlook.” Gwen and Murden sprinted down the narrow graveled path, coming to a halt at a wide flat area surrounded by wooden guardrails. A frantic blond woman stood at the edge, alternately looking down and whipping her head around as if looking for help.

  “Oh thank God,” she panted as they arrived. “Tommy ducked under the railing, and now he’s gone!”

  Murden stepped to the panicked woman and took her by the shoulders. “What do you mean, he’s gone? Has someone fallen over the edge?”

  “My baby!” the woman wailed. “He just slid right over!”

  The woman collapsed, falling to her knees in the dirt and sobbing against Murden’s shoulder. Gwen didn’t want to look
, didn’t want to see the broken form of a child at the bottom of the fifty-foot drop, but she forced herself to slowly walk to the split-rail fence that was more a suggestion than anything else. She peered over, leaning a little farther out than she really felt safe doing, trying to see any hint that the child was still safe.

  The edge of the drop-off was ragged, and she could see the rounded patch of mud where it collapsed under the child’s weight. There was a rounded section of fresh muddy dirt revealed where his little rump had hit the edge and slid down. A soft sound drifted up to Gwen’s ears, and she forced herself to lean out farther. There, on a ledge a little less than ten feet down, lay the little boy she’d talked to at the picnic tables. The one who said her hair was funny. He was conscious, but looked disoriented, like maybe the fall knocked the wind out of him.

  “Don’t move, Tommy!” Gwen shouted. “We’re coming to get you! Just stay right where you are and don’t move a muscle!”

  Gwen pulled back over the guard rail and turned to Murden.

  “He’s alive. There’s a ledge a few feet from the edge. It looks like he slid down and got the wind knocked out of him. He might be hurt, but he’s moving.”

  Murden nodded at her, helping the mother to her feet. Gwen’s heart broke as she saw the hope bloom in the woman’s eyes, and knew she had to do something. Without any further thought, she vaulted the railing, lay down on her belly, and wrapped her hands around the post holding the decorative fence up. Gwen slid her body around, letting first her feet, then her whole body dangle over the side of the overlook. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and dropped.

  Her sneakers slapped into the stone outcropping a few feet down, and she knelt beside the little boy. He looked up at her, tears welling in his eyes. “My arm hurts. It hurts real bad.”