by Scott Duff
Still smiling and nearly exhausted himself, Gordon lifted a half-asleep Martin out of his chair. “Oof!” he grunted and mumbled to his father, “Kid’s heavier than he looks.” Felix chuckled and turned back to us.
“Gentlemen, we’ll leave you to your reunion in private,” Felix said, cheerfully but tiredly. “It has been a long day for all of us, so we’ll be retiring now. Enid went ahead to make some preparations for you. I suspect you will sleep in tomorrow, in any case.”
“Thank you, Felix. Good night, then,” I said. “Good night, Gordon, and again, thank you for all of your help. I couldn’t have gotten my father and mother back without it. Good night, Mr. Bishop, Mr. Harris.”
I was about to move us to the infirmary, just outside my mother’s room, when Ethan beat me to it. He was very close to where I would have put us, too. Sitting down beside her bed, I filled a small paper cup with water from a rolling table nearby just as she started to stir. There were plenty of weaknesses in her system right now, but certainly nothing that time couldn’t heal with rest or exercise. Finally.
And finally, after close to a year, I was going to have my parents back.
“Seth?” Mother whispered through a dry throat, snapping me out of my reverie. I stooped over her bed, offering the little paper cup.
“Morning, sunshine,” I said easily and softly, smiling. Pressing the cup to her lips, I said, “Drink a little water for me.” She sipped slowly, taking in maybe a third of the cup, gagging slightly at the now-unfamiliar act of swallowing. I could feel Dad at my back, watching and worried, knowing it was taking quite a bit of self-control to keep him near the door.
“It’s gone,” Mother said quietly. I knew the “it” she referred to.
“Yes, we found the key,” I said, gently. “Are you ready for your surprise, then? I promise it’s a good one.” Dad was already moving to the bed at the word, “ready.” Not that I blamed him.
“Olivia?” he whispered hoarsely, tears streaming down his face again.
“Bobby?” she replied, trying to rise. I’d never heard her refer to Dad by that diminutive before, always as “Robert.”
“Easy there, Mom. You’re still weak,” I cautioned as I slipped a hand behind her shoulders and back to support her attempt to sit up. Peter came around behind me and adjusted the bed, so that she could sit upright while Kieran picked up the second chair and moved it around to Dad on the other side of the bed. I released her as Dad’s arms swung around to hug and hold as tightly as he dared. I fell back in the chair and let them have a few moments.
Enid appeared in the doorway on the heels of the Gaelic doctor I’d argued with. “Robert,” Enid said casually, coming into the room. “Felix and I, on occasion, found it necessary in Gordon’s later teenaged years to remind him of certain necessities of daily life that needed attention. As much as we believed he knew, they do believe they’re indestructible at that age.” Then she slipped away down the hallway. While I knew what she said, I had no idea what she meant.
“Seth,” Dad said, amused, across the bed, “she’s saying you need to go to bed, son. You’re exhausted and from what little I’ve seen you should be. We’ll be here when you get up.”
“Yeah, but will I?” I mumbled, standing up. “I’m sorry, Mama, but they’re right. I’m exhausted. I should head for bed before I pass out in this chair, so I’ll leave you in Dad’s care for a while.” She was still a little lost in the situation. Time would heal that quickly. I leaned over and kissed her forehead lightly, noticing how badly I needed a shave. “Good night, Dad.”
Kieran moved us this time, each to our rooms. Glancing through the walls as I walked to the bathroom, it looked like we all had the same feeling: dirty. All four of us were heading for the showers. I turned on the water and started shedding clothes. Stepping in, the warm water cascaded down my body, heating muscles I didn’t remember having and reminding me of exactly how hard the day had been. I scrubbed off the dirt and grime first, but I couldn’t talk myself into leaving too quickly.
“You haven’t fallen asleep, have you?” Peter called through the glass door.
“No,” I answered sluggishly. “This just feels too good.” I cut off the water and opened the shower door. Peter held out a towel for me then stepped out of the bathroom, leaving me to my naked privacy. I followed a moment later with a dry towel wrapped around my waist. Kieran sat on my bed and Ethan sat in the chair in the corner. Peter handed me a tee shirt and shorts.
“Peter, you are a disturbing individual,” Ethan said, tossing a piece of paper into the air and setting it on fire. I laughed while Peter once again looked haughty.
“It worked, though,” he said smugly, sitting on the dresser.
“We are concerned that you may decide to disappear again in the night and we won’t be able to find you,” Kieran said, evenly. Emotionally, his aura was far less even.
“Hey, Alabama wasn’t my fault and you know it,” I snapped. “And I have no idea what was blocking you after London. We were looking for you by then.”
“He doesn’t understand what happened there,” Ethan said, staring at Kieran’s back. “Neither do I, for that matter. What happened, Seth? What happened that you got jerked out of my memories?”
Whatever the mojo the Twice-Dead God worked on me, still worked. I forgot how to talk again. This was far more frustrating than I originally thought it would be.
“I can’t say,” I answered absently after a moment. “Hopefully, soon, I’ll remember everything and I’ll be able to talk about it, but till then…” I shrugged. There wasn’t anything else I could say about that.
“That is no different from shutting me out,” Kieran said facing me and letting some of his anger out, but only some. He wasn’t wound as tightly with the release he had with Dad, but he was still controlling his emotions. He was still angry.
“If you’re referring to blocking you after an argument, I disagree—that’s not the same thing at all,” I answered, trying to hold my own irritability in check. “We both needed the time apart to consider and calm down. You chasing after me immediately was not going to help the situation. Anything else was outside of my control.”
Too angry, he was too angry. “Poppycock!” he exclaimed. Where’d he get that word? “You ran away! It’s the closest thing to teenaged that you’ve done.”
His façade slipped. Just for a second, I saw under the surface and saw what was driving the anger so high. He was afraid. I didn’t see what he was afraid of—I wasn’t a psychic after all, but I could put the pieces together.
“Oh, I get it,” I said, understanding finally falling into place. I walked over to the bed and stood in front of him. “It’s hard to imagine you as that kid.” I reached out with one finger and pushed on the center of his forehead lightly. “Or that the insecurities that you held that long ago would hold sway over who I see sitting here now.” Kieran looked up at me, trying to get angrier but failing when our eyes met. Those big green emerald eyes were still so innocent in so many ways, even with all that he experienced with Des’Ra’El.
“I’m not leaving you, Kieran,” I said, sitting on the bed beside him. “I’m not going to toss you out like yesterday’s trash just because I got what I wanted. Not because I’m apprenticed to you, but because you are my brother and I love you. And over the years, we will no doubt argue and fight and be jerks to each other. But in the end, we will reconcile and get over it because we love each other, because we’re brothers. We made that connection. The four of us forged that connection together. We fought hard to make it and by God I’m gonna fight hard to keep it.”
Kieran turned exceptionally quickly and hugged me tightly. I hugged back, up until the sparkles indicating a loss of consciousness started. Kieran was a strong man and he was squeezing the air out of me. I pulled away both grinning and gasping for breath. He wiped away a tear or three on his shirtsleeve.
“All right, then,” Peter said, pushing off the dresser. “One more thing to cover before you
crash from exhaustion. Show us.”
“Huh?” I said, certainly worth a couple a hundred thousand dollars in tutors for that kind of elocution. Dad would be proud.
“Oh come now, Lord Daybreak,” said Ethan from behind me, “Certainly you haven’t forgotten so soon.”
“Oh,” I said with equal elegance as my previous question. “You’ve seen it before. It hasn’t changed much.”
“You said it was growing,” Kieran reminded me. “There’s no telling how much it may have changed in your absence.”
“All right,” I said and shrugged. “I’ll have to leave the door open, though, just in case someone here needs to find us.”
I stood up with Kieran and we went to the nearest blank wall. Thinking about the Pacthome, I had difficulty making the connection to form the portal, but when I changed the thought to “home” instead, it was just there in front of us. Kieran showed me how to push and pull on the opening to make it stay in place indefinitely. From there several other ideas about portals and doorways to other dimensions became evident to me, almost elementary.
Then we stepped through the looking glass.
Epilog
We stepped through the door in pairs, first Kieran and me, then Ethan and Peter. It was very dark on this side, still nighttime. Dad said it would be bitterly cold so I had expected to make a mad dash for the house to start a fire, but it was only moderately cool for shorts, maybe mid-60’s. We came out in front of the Pacthome’s gate, but the road we stood on wasn’t here before and it led around the home, not to it.
“That’s new,” Kieran said pointing up at the bright starscape overhead. “So is the road. Where’s it go?”
“I don’t kn-…” I said, stopping in the middle of a word, because just as I said it, I did know. And it was a shock. I walked up the road a few feet, staring into the darkness, speechless, then turned around and stared at them, again speechless. I went back and forth at least three times pointing and gaping wordlessly. Shaking my head in exasperation, I finally managed to get a few words out, “You’re just gonna have to see it! Wait for me, please,” I asked and ran back through doorway. Once there, searching for Dad took a moment through the wards. He was a brighter target than Mom, but they shared proximity. I was conflicted about interrupting them, but they could have all the privacy they wanted in a far more idyllic place than that room in less than an hour. I didn’t feel too bad about it. I stepped into the hall outside Mom’s room and knocked on the doorframe.
Dad heaved out a heavy breath. “What now?” he said, low and grumbling, then louder, “Come in.”
I stepped in grinning ear to ear, couldn’t help myself. They were both laying on the bed, Dad on his side, their fingers’ intertwined. “Sorry to intrude,” I said, lightly.
“Seth, you’re still up,” Mom said, instantly worried in that mothers-always-worry way. “Is something wrong?”
“No! No, everything is great!” I said. “There’s just something I have to show you. It’s the first time this has ever happened and it promises to be glorious! And even if you don’t understand it all right now, it won’t affect this in the least.”
“What’s going on, Seth?” Dad asked as they got out of bed.
“Call it a family outing, Dad,” I said, still grinning. It may never come off. “My brothers are with me so I want my parents there, too. We’re gonna have to move fast, though, so I’ll take care of the transportation, okay?” They both nodded and somewhere between the first down sweep and up-sweep, I was reaching into my closet for a windbreaker to give to Mom. It was more for modesty than warmth considering the size of it compared to her.
“Isn’t that a bit light?” Dad asked, suspecting where we were going.
“Uh-uh, not at all,” I answered. “We will have to step through the door.”
“Are we going to Faery?” Mom asked walking closer to the door and examining it, enchanted by the blurry and slightly sparkling structure of the space that formed the warp. “I’ve not crossed the veil before.”
“Um, well, that’s a complicated answer,” I replied. “Technically, yes, it is a Faery realm, but I have a lot of questions about what and why that is.” I walked through the door, hoping to encourage the talk to continue en route.
“Would you come on!” urged Ethan from a few dozen feet down the road. When Mom walked out with Dad fast behind her, he calmed down. “Oh, hi!” he called and trotted back to us.
“Welcome, Lord Daybreak!” a thousand amazingly high voices cried at once all around us, startling Mom terribly. Dad wrapped his arms around her, gently and slowly, murmuring in her ear explanations of what she was seeing
“Hi, guys! What are y’all doing up at this time of day?” I asked the four-inch figures in the grass, turning in a slow circle to try and see them all.
“We wouldn’t miss the first, Lord Daybreak!” they chimed, again in unison.
“Better hurry, then! Here, let me help,” I said. With a flick of my wrist, I threw a doorway a dozen feet up the road between here to a split in the road about three miles up. “That’s where you’re going, right?”
“Yes, thank you, Lord Daybreak!” they cried out and a great caterwaul began as waves of grass took off down the stone road like a lawnmower was after it and they were the grass that finally figured out how to run.
“Kieran! Peter! Where are you?” I yelled, not that I really had to. I knew exactly where they were. “We need to be there in a few minutes! We’re short on time, guys.”
“Coming!” I heard Peter call from behind the gate. They’d gone to check the hole behind the house. I could have told them it was perfectly solid. When they finally showed up, we weren’t going to have the time to walk, so I dismissed the tunnel I put on the road and wrapped us in portals, moving us all through into almost total darkness—a loud total darkness.
Kieran brought out a small globe of pale blue fire, illuminating the immediate area. Not much of an increase, the new light only showed a large rock sitting on a promontory with a vast black nothing on all but the way off of the promontory. The rock was large enough to offer seating for my parents and a place for us to stand behind them without obstructing any views. Simply a perfect viewpoint. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect either.
As I got Mom and Dad seated and stood behind them, the first rosy bands of sunlight began to light the night’s sky and obscure the starscape above, burning away what little cloud cover still existed. And the six of us settled in to watch the first Dawn this world had ever seen.
More and more stars disappeared as the sky went from black to indigo to blue to pale blue and the first bright rays of orange and rosy light burst over the horizon faster than the eye could follow. That single shaft of light hit our giant noise-maker—a huge waterfall—splitting millions of times in the spray at the top as it cascaded down the mountain top. Huge rainbows fell down into the valley, giving it a surreal presence as the morning sun revealed more below. The waterfall beat against three different levels of rock face, deflecting further sprays out, before feeding into a large, deep lake of clear water.
With the sun just a sliver of bright light on the horizon, the valley burst forth in vibrant living color as if it was the only place in the universe worth living. And I couldn’t deny it.
The grasses around the lake stood straighter to meet their first day, blooms on flowers unfolded elegantly to greet their first sight of the sun. Even the trees sunk roots deeper into the ground and seemed to stretch a bit more and relax in the warmth. As the sun continued on its rise, we began to see evidence of insect life, small butterflies and grasshoppers of various kinds in the grassland, mayflies along the shore. The more I looked the more I saw. Amazing.
Elbowing Peter, I pointed up, past the waterfall where no one had chosen to look just yet. His reaction would draw everyone else to the other half of this event: the palace. That was the only word for what that building was. It was three times the size of the Arena and looked like it was carved from the m
ountaintop itself. The stone face held an inset dome—a dark indigo on the outer edges, spiraling in to a paler, more dominant sky blue. At the center, it reflected the morning sun down into the valley as if the palace itself were the dawning star, its very own daybreak, echoing the sun to itself. The angle on it was perfect, too, as that affect was as brief as the dawn.
Tall spires marked the outside corners of the domed center with four smaller towers on the outside wings. Steps leading up to the front explained why we could see it from this angle when the promenade in front of it should have blocked the view. We were at least a hundred feet lower than the base of the platform that extended slightly out from the mountaintop. The platform promised an amazing view of the valley, too.
I just couldn’t stop smiling.
“What the fu—,” Peter started to say as he took a step back, shocked at the sight of the palace, but he was too near the edge and lost his balance. He tripped off the small platform of rock we stood on, landing hard a couple of feet below on another ledge. A chorus of high giggles sounded as a troop of brownies surrounded Peter to see if he was hurt and Dad and I turned and moved to help him up off his butt. He had a hard time deciding whether he wanted to stare at the mountaintop or stand up first. Dad’s eyes got huge when he finally looked up himself.
I turned and started up the path, admiring the flora in the morning light around me as I went. Everyone followed, mouths still agape and eyes still wide.
Behind me, I heard Mom say, “This is not what I expected from a Faery realm.”
Dad chuckled, “What were you expecting?”
“Something darker, I suppose,” she said. “Daddy described the Fae as such awful creatures. I was brought up on the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, not the Mother Goose kind.”
