The Larion Senators

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  ‘What can we do? Tell me honestly, and I’ll stay with you.’ Jennifer looked to Steven for support.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hannah said. ‘I honestly don’t – but that’s why I think we need to stay. And come to think of it, how on earth will you manage to keep warm out here all day? You’ll freeze to death in this wind. You need the car.’

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ Steven said. ‘We can break the lock on the restaurant, or that concession stand. Once we’re out of the wind, it’ll be warm enough – we’ve got the kerosene heater, or we can build a fire.’

  ‘And what if Mark doesn’t arrive today?’

  ‘We’ll stay until he does.’ Steven was adamant. ‘There’s got to be a payphone somewhere around here, so if it looks like we’re going to be camped out here for a few days, I’ll call your mother’s cell phone and you can ferry out food and more blankets, but we’re staying. This is the place; I’m sure of it.’

  Hannah sighed. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but take these, in case you get bored later.’ She took some sheets of folded paper from her back pocket and handed them to him. ‘I’ll explain it all tonight.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Steven asked.

  ‘A little surprise for you,’ Hannah said. ‘I had my suspicions when I first met Gilmour and Garec. This clinches it.’

  Confused, Steven tucked the pages into his jacket and took Hannah in his arms and whispered, ‘Please, go now. I just want you safe. Soon this’ll all be a distant memory.’

  ‘Promise?’ Hannah said.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, when it is, I want to go someplace and get naked.’

  ‘As long as it isn’t in Eldarn, I’m right there with you.’

  As she kissed him, Steven felt the tension leave his shoulders; his legs threatened to buckle. The wind off the water brushed the hairs on the back of his neck and he would have been content to stand there all morning, feeling her body pressing up against his.

  Garec shattered the moment when he asked suddenly, ‘Where’s Milla?’

  Alen said, ‘She’s right—’

  ‘Shit!’ Jennifer pushed past the others on the boardwalk and ran to a little pile of clothes: the pink snowsuit topped with the little girl’s matching hat and mittens. ‘Milla!’ she screamed, panicked.

  ‘There she is.’ Garec pointed down the beach at the distant figure making for the water.

  ‘Holy Christ,’ Hannah said, running for the steps, but Alen was already ahead of her, bounding wildly across the sand. Steven, Gilmour and Garec followed.

  Steven cast off his own jacket as Milla dived into the surf.

  The gull was still cawing when Mark woke, the side of his face dusted with a layer of white sand. He blinked his eyes into focus and searched as far as he could see without moving. At the edge of his peripheral vision, the ancient stone tripod supporting the Larion spell table stood unattended. The hilltop was quiet.

  Nearby, Mark spotted the branch he had used to kill himself – his former self. It was within reach and, with a fluid motion, he rolled over until he could reach it, grabbed it and rose to a wary crouch. He checked out the side of the dune he had been unable to see, but still there was nothing.

  ‘Where are you, shithead?’ he whispered, following the slope into the marsh and around the confused tangle of banyan roots where he had hidden from the coral snake.

  He was alone.

  Standing over the table, Mark hacked impotently at it with the branch until, sweating and frustrated, he gave up and tossed the battered limb back into the swamp. Then he tried to tip the table over, hoping to stand it upright and roll it downhill. He thought perhaps it would crash through the brush and sink in the enchanted pool, where it would be guarded for ever by tumour-ridden tadpoles and sentient diamond-headed serpents. But it was too heavy; Mark couldn’t get it to budge.

  He leaned on the table edge and considered his options. He couldn’t stand by while evil used the table to open the Fold and bring about the end of Eldarn, nor could he defeat himself. Lessek’s key was missing, and it would take days to excavate enough of the hillside to shove the granite artefact into the swamp – and even then, there was no guarantee it would shatter, or sink forever out of sight. He would have to go back to the marsh, maybe use one of the banyan roots to dig up and then drag loads of slick mud and rotting leaves, enough to grease the hillside, making the slope slippery—

  ‘Mark?’ a voice called from somewhere behind him.

  He leaped to one side and crouched down, expecting another fight, then he heard the strange voice again.

  ‘Mark, is that you?’ The voice was gentle, non-threatening. It appeared to be coming from the opposite side of the dune, the side he had forgotten, the side leading out to the azure sky and freedom. ‘Mark? Mark Jenkins?’

  ‘Who’s there?’ he asked softly, inching his way across the hilltop. ‘Who is that?’ When he stood, Mark could see down the other side, to the beach.

  His father, young and lean, wearing his old bathing suit and carrying a beer can, was looking up at him.

  ‘Dad?’ Mark slipped in the loose sand and tumbled to the base of the hill. Embarrassed, he regained his feet and shook the sand off himself. ‘Dad?’

  ‘Mark? Where have you been?’ His father leaned over to help him up. ‘Your mother and I have been looking for you for an hour. She’s convinced you drowned out there somewhere.’

  ‘What?’ Confused, Mark hugged his father like he had as a five-year-old, throwing his arms around the older man and clinging as if it was the last time they would ever see one another.

  ‘Whoa, whoa, sport,’ Arlen Jenkins said as he hugged him back, ‘you’ve only been missing a little while, but your mom is upset. You know how she always tells you not to wander off. There’s too many people out here, Mark, too many strangers.’

  ‘Too many—’ Mark looked beyond the dune. Thousands of people were on the beach. Hundreds of beach umbrellas dotted the strand, a flowing garden of vibrant flowers. The North Atlantic heaved and rolled, its waves crashing in the throaty roar Mark had heard before falling asleep. ‘Jesus, it’s Jones Beach,’ he whispered.

  ‘Of course it’s Jones Beach, crazy person. Where else would we be today? You didn’t hit your head or anything, did you, son?’

  ‘Not here,’ Mark stammered, ‘it can’t… no, this can’t be it.’

  ‘You all right? You need some water or something?’ His father took him around the shoulders. The feeling was reminiscent of every comforting thing he had ever known in his life.

  ‘Wait, Dad.’ Mark looked between the sand dune and his father. ‘I need your help with something. Come here, it’s not far. Come with me, quickly.’

  ‘All right, but it’ll be both our butts if we miss lunch.’ Arlen seemed simultaneously amused and concerned at his son’s antics, but he followed Mark up the dune regardless.

  ‘It’s just up here, Dad,’ Mark said. ‘We need to shove this stone—’

  The table was gone.

  Out of breath, Arlen pulled himself up beside his son. ‘What is it, sport? Pirates? Cowboys? Not the New York Yankees!’

  ‘No, Dad, it’s— It’s nothing, sorry.’ He checked the sandy hilltop, then crossed to the marsh side and looked down into the tangle of brush and rotting foliage. Maybe I pushed it hard enough, he thought. Maybe it was sliding a bit and I didn’t notice.

  But the marsh had disappeared as well, no humid maw of foetid organic decay, no swamp filled with coral snakes, banyan trees, or mutant tadpoles, just the scrub pine and scraggly brush that lined the boardwalks of Jones Beach State Park.

  He was home.

  Behind the sea of beach umbrellas, blankets, sunbathers and children digging in the sand with a rainbow array of plastic toys, the roads were crowded with big sedans and slat-sided station wagons. It was the height of summer in New York. Beyond the stone tower in the middle of the roundabout several big trucks turned in to the amphitheatre. There was a concert tonight.

  For a
few seconds everything was frozen in a sun-baked tableau. Only the breeze moved, brushing sand from his clothes and hair. Beside him, his father was young and strong, a fit, healthy thirty-year-old, the Arlen Jenkins Mark knew only from glimpses of black-and-white memories. Now, with his father’s arm around him and the sea breeze caressing his tired limbs, Mark felt the tension, the anxieties and fears, the anger and especially the hopelessness of the past several months begin, slowly, to seep away. He started searching the beach in front of the Central Mall, looking for his family’s yellow umbrella. It was eight feet across, difficult to miss, even on a crowded beach. His mother would be there, and his sister, and, presumably, a four- or five-year-old version of himself, another Long Island kid digging for China.

  ‘Can we go back?’ he asked himself.

  ‘Of course,’ his father answered, ‘getting down off this thing’s going to be a lot easier than climbing up. But you go first.’ He ushered Mark towards the windward side of the dune. ‘I think your mom’s got tuna in the cooler. I do love a tuna sandwich with a cold beer.’

  ‘I know,’ Mark said, checking once more for the missing table. It should have been there; it couldn’t have disappeared in the two minutes that he was away. Something was wrong, but being home had eased his sense of foreboding until there was just a faint trace of discomfort.

  ‘Come on, Mark,’ his father said, sliding through the sand, heels first, his beer can in one hand, ‘and after lunch, we’ll go and find some ice cream.’

  Mark followed, entranced by the gentle grip of déjà vu. As he passed, people talked, radios clamoured, children shrieked, he even heard a dog barking; the summer fugue clouded Mark’s senses and dragged him further from his marsh prison and the Larion spell table.

  Gerrold Peterson, his high-school German teacher, sat in a collapsible nylon-web chair reading a dog-eared Günter Grass novel. He looked old, even here, in whatever year this was: 1981 or 1982. He wore the same buttoned-down short-sleeved shirt he had worn every Friday of every week of every year that Mark had attended Massapequa Heights High School. He lifted his pointed sunscreen-smeared snout far enough over the edge of his book to frown and say, ‘Wie ist die Suppe heute, Herr Jenkins?’

  Mark didn’t answer. Hurrying to keep up with his father, he caught sight of Jody Calloway, looking as she had when Mark had known her in high school. Jody, trapped in the taut young body of a fifteen-year-old, was in a bikini and playing volleyball with some friends. Mark thought he would slip past her unnoticed, but Jody tossed the ball to him, smiled an alluring grin and waved him over. She was every bit as sexy as Mark remembered, as buxom as a woman, yet still as thin as she had been as an adolescent. He was nearly twice her age, but he toyed with the idea of taking Jody up on the offer; if this was a hallucination, the sex would be sandy, perverse and exciting, a far cry from the clumsy fumble they had shared behind the columns in the Schönbrunn Gloriette.

  ‘Of course, that’s a felony,’ Mark told himself. He rolled the ball back and waved. Maybe next time, he thought. Jody’s body, like Herr Peterson’s old shirt, would remain unchanged in his memory for ever.

  ‘You’d better move along,’ a familiar voice warned from nearby. ‘That girl is too young for you now, soldier.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Mark searched the beach. His father was disappearing into the throng; there wasn’t time to waste.

  ‘I’m over here.’ The reply came from several places at once.

  ‘Brynne?’ he said, hesitantly, ‘Brynne, where are you?’ He turned a tight circle, praying one of the beachgoers would transform into the attractive knife-wielder.

  ‘I’m here.’ She was behind him now, closer to the water.

  Mark took a last look at his father and ran for the surf. ‘Brynne!’ he shouted, ignoring the irritated sunbathers. ‘Brynne! Where are you? Please, Brynne, wait!’

  ‘I’m here, near the waves.’

  ‘I can’t find you!’ Mark jogged into the foam. ‘Brynne?’

  A young girl in a bright yellow bathing suit kept pace with him. She couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. She had a head of rowdy curls that blew hither and yon in the breeze. ‘Do you want to watch me swim?’ she called as she splashed into the breakers.

  ‘What? Who?’ He was only half-listening.

  ‘Who? You, silly,’ she cried and ducked beneath a rolling wave. When she popped up, she brushed the hair from her face and said, ‘I can do the scramble!’

  Mark moved along, still searching the myriad faces for Brynne. ‘That’s nice, dear,’ he said, ‘but you shouldn’t talk to strangers. This is Long Island. Where’s your mother?’

  ‘Watch this!’ she shrieked, paddling excitedly towards Galway, but fifty yards out, she ducked beneath the surface, then emerged again and turned back towards the beach. She made a halfhearted attempt to stay calm, paddling and kicking tenaciously, then disappeared again.

  ‘Hey!’ Mark stopped. ‘Hey, kid! Hey!’ He ran a few steps up the beach, pointing and calling, ‘Anybody know that little girl? Anyone? Out there, in the yellow!’ A few sunbathers heard him, lifting their heads and looking around, but no one replied, and no one went in after the girl.

  ‘Ah, shit,’ Mark spat. ‘Shit and shit. I don’t have time for this.’ He kept an eye on her while shrugging Redrick’s tunic over his head. She was in the throes of a panic attack now, clearly drowning in the undertow. ‘Brynne,’ he called into the crowd, ‘stay here. I’ll be right back.’

  He sprinted into the waves, diving over incoming breakers and towards the struggling child.

  Milla ran until the waves reached her waist. She dived beneath an incoming breaker, holding her breath and paddling furiously for deeper water. The ocean here was icy and rough and her body felt like it was being stung with a thousand prickly needles. When she finally went numb, it was worse, because then it was nearly impossible to get her arms and legs to keep going. She was cold and scared and she sank twice before giving up and casting a spell to warm the water. She knew she shouldn’t use magic here; they’d all told her she mustn’t, but it was too cold to go on otherwise. Beyond the breakers a man struggled, drowning, flailing and shouting for help.

  ‘Look at me, Hannah,’ Milla said, but she wasn’t sure anyone could hear. ‘I’m doing the doggy-scramble.’ Her tangled curls matted on her head in twisting coils; she kicked her way towards the drowning man.

  ‘Hold on,’ Milla shouted to him, ‘I’m coming.’ The water was still rough, but at least it was warm now. Alen and Hannah followed, swimming through cold waves, trying frantically to catch up. Milla didn’t wait for them. So far, none of the others seemed to realise she was swimming out to greet them.

  Steven pulled up just short of the waves. It was happening, now. The sand and surf blurred, melting into a bluish-beige canvas. ‘Shit, this is it,’ he shouted. Alen and Hannah were already in the water. Milla was paddling out past the breakers; why, Steven had no idea, but he needed them all back. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen, not with three of them in the water, for Christ’s sake. What the hell was going on?

  The elderly beachcomber appeared suddenly, tugging gently at his sleeve. ‘It’s time, Steven Taylor,’ she said. Are you ready?’

  ‘What?’ He nearly lost his footing in the wet sand. ‘Who are you? How do you—? Mrs Winter?’

  ‘Hello, Steven. I’ve been waiting for you to get back.’

  ‘What? Mrs W? You can’t be here; this isn’t right. What are you doing here?’ Despite the waxy backdrop that had been Jones Beach State Park, Mrs Winter, the woman who owned the pastry shop next to the First National Bank of Idaho Springs, was standing there, in sharp focus and looking at him expectantly. ‘I don’t understand,’ was all he could manage to say.

  ‘I’m here to see you through this,’ she said. ‘Now, pay attention.’ She gestured with a bony finger, out past the place Milla was determinedly swimming towards.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’ he asked, bemused.

&
nbsp; ‘Exactly what you came here to do, Steven.’ Mrs W spoke as if the answer was obvious. ‘Close the Fold. You can do it.’

  Knee-deep in roiling grey surf, Garec shouted over the wind, ‘There! Steven, Gilmour, look!’

  A muscular black man rose from the water until he was chest-deep. Apparently oblivious to the cold, he studied the length of sand. He didn’t look like he was treading water to stay in place; it was more like he was sitting on something, a pedestal, maybe, or a submerged bench. His arms hung calmly at his sides; he was obviously waiting for something.

  As Steven felt the magic rise, he tried to remember everything Gilmour and Alen had taught him about the ash dream. The sea blurred beyond recognition; but Milla’s tiny form, still swimming, remained. She paddled towards the newcomer, shouting to him and reaching out, but all the while, the man – Mark Jenkins, presumably – ignored her.

  In a moment, Steven understood why.

  Three rips, the ones he had come to expect, formed in the paraffin backdrop, just as they had in Idaho Springs, and again in the glen when he had faced Nerak. The irregular edges were like ragged tears in cloth. The ocean rolled and broke, lapping steadily at the beach, until it encountered one of the tears. Then it simply ceased to be.

  Inside the first of the jagged rips, Steven saw what could only be Welstar Palace. Stark and forbidding, sitting atop a short rise above the river, the great keep stood sentinel over a massive military encampment. Alen and Hannah’s descriptions had not done the place justice. Steven was glad he had never reached it. Thousands of shadowy figures stood in patient formation, division after division, all awaiting their lord’s summons.

  Inside the second rip, Steven saw what he expected: a mirror image of the state park, complete with him, Gilmour, Jennifer and Garec. The Ronan bowman was running up the beach, his feet kicking up sand as he hurried towards the Central Mall. Through the Fold and from over his shoulder, Steven heard Gilmour shout in stereo, ‘Garec, wait!’