J. Calvin Pierce, page 40
Breksin took his pack off and dropped it to the ground. He talked to Marcia without looking at her.
“So you were dining at the castle, and then you went for a little walk?”
“No,” said Marcia wearily, “I just stepped outside to the balcony for some fresh air. The stars were very bright and the snow was beautiful. Then I saw Lord Shilmer through the window ….”
Breksin reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “What did you say about the snow?” he said in his softest shout.
Marcia was trying to keep a clear head. She certainly didn’t want to start talking about following the old man, which was sure to sound completely crazy to Breksin.
“Well, that’s really how I got lost. I have a very good sense of direction, but I was counting on following my tracks in the snow back to the castle. Then when it turned so warm, the snow just melted, or else the rain washed it away.” She looked around. The sky was clear, the morning air springlike. “It’s really hard to believe that yesterday we had to come to the castle in a sleigh.”
Breksin sighed and looked as helpless as it was possible for someone his size to look.
“What’s wrong?” said Marcia.
Breksin shouldered his pack again. “Well, for one thing,” he said, “there’s no castle back that way.”
Marcia looked down the road, then out across the fields. Nothing looked right. She tried to recapture her feelings of last night about where the castle should be. She was unsuccessful.
“Then it must be this way,” she said.
Breksin nodded silently. “Come on, Father,” he said in his unintentional shout, “it’s time to move on.” He looked around. “Now where’s that cat?”
The old man got up, yawning and scratching.
In the early-morning chill, Marcia had been glad of her warm vest, but before they had been walking long, she took it off. Despite her protests, Breksin insisted on adding it to his pack.
“You just carry yourself, little miss. I can manage the burdens,” he said, scanning the road and fields behind them. “I wonder where that cat is.”
By the time the sun was halfway up the sky, Marcia had formed the conclusion that something was badly wrong. This was definitely not the road to Arrleer, and Breksin had assured her that within a day’s walk there were no other roads than the one they were on.
“There is but one road,” he had said, looking a little startled by the question.
“But what if you don’t want to go where the road leads?”
“Why then, Miss Marcia,” the giant had explained patiently, “you stay home.”
There’s a bit of good advice, thought Marcia. She gazed ahead on the little rutted path that Breksin insisted went everywhere there was to go. The road to Arrleer had been much wider than this, she was sure. And the lay of the land had been different—hillier, and with a less distant horizon. Of course, the landscape had been covered with snow, the sky cloudy, but Marcia was not prepared to believe that she was being fooled by a change in the weather, no matter how dramatic.
Nor, when she stopped to consider it, was she actually prepared to believe that this dry road and these meadows with warm breezes blowing over them had been frozen when the sun set last night. She looked at the landscape with a fresh eye.
It was so obvious. Somehow she had crossed to a different Region. According to Annie, that’s just what the two of them had done when they went from the brownstone to the garden and the cottage in the trees. This is also what Hannah and Daniel had talked about last summer. She wished that Annie’s explanation of the subject had been more complete. Marcia had the impression, though, that Annie had explained as much as she herself understood. She had treated it as though it were a theoretical matter of little practical importance. That’s fine as long as you know where you are, thought Marcia, who was beginning to realize she only knew where she wasn’t. Not only was she not in her own world, or on the mountain where Annie’s cottage was, now she wasn’t even in Arrleer.
No wonder Breksin was giving her funny looks. She undoubtedly sounded as nutty as the old man. She thought of the things she had been saying, chattering on about a castle that didn’t exist—three hundred rooms, she had told him—footprints in the snow …. She pictured the expression on his face when she had first brought up the snow. He had looked so terribly serious. Then what had she said? Had she mentioned Lord Shilmer? No, that was before; she had told him about the sleigh ride. She began to giggle. Ah yes, my good man, we were delivered to the castle in a sleigh. No snow, you say?
Don’t let that bother you. It’s all completely logical—there’s no castle, either.
Marcia brought her hand to her mouth in an effort to stifle her laughter. She looked furtively at Breksin. He was watching her out of the corner of his eye, but looked away quickly at her glance. Stuffing her fist into her mouth did not stop her increasingly loud laughter, but it did make her look even more unbalanced than she would have otherwise. Breksin stopped and stared helplessly at her. He clearly thought she was having a fit of some kind. For some perverse reason, this made Marcia’s laughter more uncontrollable than ever.
Down the road the old man was stalking on ahead. He walked slightly bowlegged, like a seaman, swaying from side to side with each step. Feeling as if she were in front of an audience, Marcia took her hand awkwardly from her mouth. As her laughter subsided, she breathed deeply and tried to look rational.
“Are you all right now?” asked Breksin.
Marcia started a sober reply to the effect that she had merely thought of something amusing, but her words were suffocated by renewed laughter. She gave up any thought, for the moment, of convincing Breksin of her sanity, and started down the road after the old man. After a moment she heard the giant’s heavy step behind her.
It was not until their shadows had begun to walk on their right instead of their left that they came within sight of anything more well populated than two or three farms together. Marcia had been walking along in what had developed into a daze of doubt and unease. How had she been able to laugh, she wondered. It probably really was a sign that she was unbalanced. She was completely adrift—alone in a world where she was acquainted with only two people, one an incoherent old man, the other a kindly giant who had every reason to think she was insane.
When Breksin turned to her, he pretended not to notice her tears.
“You see. Miss Marcia, ahead there”—he pointed with a massive arm—“a village. There’s sure to be a tavern. We’ll sit under an awning out of the sun and have a nice rest and a meal.”
Marcia blinked and tried to look cheerful. Ahead, at the bottom of a long, gentle hill, next to a creek glinting in the sunlight was a cluster of single-story buildings.
There was a tavern, and an awning. When Marcia settled herself into a cushioned chair, it seemed a very great luxury. Though she felt slightly wicked doing so, she took a tentative sip of the cool wine that the girl had brought them as soon as they sat down. Breksin sat opposite her on a heavy bench and sipped with a thoughtful expression. He exchanged pleasantries with others, all men, seated there. Marcia scarcely heard the talk of weather and inns. The wine was pale and weak, but had a lovely flowery aroma and a pleasant sparkle on the tongue. Without exactly meaning to, she emptied her cup. Breksin refilled it with an encouraging smile. She lowered her eyes.
The old man did not eat with them. He drank some wine without sitting down, then walked off to stare at the creek. They lunched on boiled eggs, small loaves of bread with salt-studded crust, and dried smoked fish that Marcia tasted with reluctance and found to be addictive. Considering his size, Breksin ate daintily, and at a leisurely pace, like a restaurant critic more concerned with analysis than nourishment.
Though the food and the wine improved her mood, Marcia left the tavern no more optimistic than she had arrived. Over lunch, Breksin had asked her first where she had come from, and then, failing to get an answer, where she was going. Marcia was grateful that he did not press her for answers, though she knew it was only because he thought she was a lunatic.
“Don’t worry,” he had said as they left the village, “this evening we will reach a big market town. It may be that you will know someone there.”
Marcia doubted it.
As they walked on, Breksin would frequently check behind them, looking for the cat. For her part, Marcia kept wishing she would see Annie catching up to them. But she didn’t expect it. Annie herself had told her that she possessed only the ability to pass from one Region to another by means of established, well-marked passageways. The strange old man with no aura had led her, whether by accident or design, on a path that Annie would not be able to follow. But for one thing, Marcia knew that she would be in the grip of utter despair.
She looked down at the ring on her finger. While she wore it, she was not adrift and lost. It was her connection to Elyssa, and whatever Elyssa was—goddess, angel, some kind of mother superior of witchcraft—her ability to travel did not depend on passageways.
It was that reassuring thought that made it possible for her to continue to follow the old man without any particular preference about where he might lead her. It was, she realized, the old man that was her other source of reassurance and comfort. The one impossible, inexplicable thing about him saved her from the distress of wondering if she had made some silly mistake. There could be nothing more strange than a person without an aura. Sometimes, in certain light or when she was tired, auras did not catch her attention. She could ignore them in the same way she might not notice the color of a person’s hair or eyes. But to look for an aura and find nothing, no trace of color or form … Marcia had no fear that she was pursuing the wrong mystery.
Then there was the matter of crossing Regions. The old man, whether consciously or not, had managed to pass, or at least to blunder through, a border that few could navigate. That meant that he had access to power of more than a trivial variety.
By the time they reached the market town the sun had fallen behind the clouds that bolstered the horizon. Breksin engaged two rooms at the inn, one for himself and the old man, and one for Marcia. She did not obey her impulse to protest, remembering in time that the alternatives to accepting Breksin’s charity were few and unattractive. She did have a handful of coins from Arrleer that he at first did not want to take, but did after examining them with curiosity.
It wasn’t like a steaming sudsy tub at Annie’s, but Marcia was able to get a quantity of tepid water and some gritty strong-smelling soap for an awkward but thorough bath. Her clothing she had to be content to shake out and brush.
Breksin, with the old man following him, had gone out to change her coins. She heard his thunderous conversational bass echoing up the stairs from the common room when he returned.
She hurried to get back into her clothes, expecting to be invited to dine. She was still barefoot and fastening her blouse when she heard him come up the stairs. He stopped at her door and called to her,
“We’ve a table below. Miss Marcia,” he boomed.
“Thank you,” called Marcia. “I’ll be right there.”
For a moment there was silence.
“Miss Marcia?”
“Yes?”
“Hello? Are you there?” Breksin tapped on the door. Marcia pictured him filling the hallway, his eyes level with the top of the door. She began to answer again, then realized that with the combination of his poor hearing and the closed door, she would have to shout to make herself heard. He was rapping again when she opened the door. She could only see him from the chin down. He backed up and bent over.
“Couldn’t you hear me?” he asked.
“I tried …,” she began, then paused. “No,” she said.
“Hmmph. That’s funny, I was practically shouting,” he said. He brought a small pouch of soft leather from his pocket and handed it to her. “Your money,” he explained. “The money changer didn’t recognize your coins, but they were all true, and can be melted, so he gave you full weight.”
The pouch was surprisingly heavy. Marcia was sure her few coins had not weighed nearly so much. She supposed these might be smaller denominations, except she had thought her Arrleer money was only small change to begin with. She thanked him and put the pouch on a table. Breksin nodded toward it.
“I’d keep that by me, miss. You don’t want to lose it.” He turned to the stairs. “I’ll wait below, then,” he said. “Father has started on the wine without us.”
Dinner was quiet. The old man ate with unseemly haste, and made a number of cryptic remarks that Breksin couldn’t hear and Marcia couldn’t understand. Finally he wandered out a side door and into the night. Marcia looked after him anxiously; it just wouldn’t do to lose track of him. She leaned back in her chair to peer from the window just behind her. In a moment she was relieved to see the old man saunter across the road and seat himself under a tree.
At midday the wine, though agreeable, had been pale and weak. The wine in Marcia’s glass now was so intensely red that it seemed to be tinged with blue. She was not at all surprised to find it potent and authoritative. It reminded her of the old man’s rambling talk of a banquet where the wine had been “like blood.” Nonetheless, she enjoyed it. It went well with the spicy sausage, chopped cabbage, and fried potatoes. Marcia stared at her plate in sudden delight. Here she was, she thought, in … another universe, eating soul food. She thought of lunches fifteen years before in the Purity Pork, a corner restaurant near her office that had been staffed entirely by overweight black women who called everyone “honey.” She had finally persuaded her mother to meet her there for lunch. Marcia had a black-and-white memory, like an old movie, of watching her get off the bus just as a warm rain had started to fall. She wore a scarf like a wimple, with her face back inside it somewhere, eyes nervous, lips pursed. Her smile when she saw her daughter was a formality and did not brighten her expression. She had looked like an acquaintance, or an aging distant relative who would feel compelled to trace the details of kinship through a chain of unknown third cousins, and collateral great-uncles who had moved to Cincinnati.
“A fine cask,” said Breksin, considerately refilling her glass. Marcia smiled politely. She was self-conscious about talking loudly enough for Breksin to hear her, and anyway was wary of conversations about wine, which in her experience had a way of becoming capriciously metaphorical and never failed to sound pretentious.
They talked little during the meal. Marcia drank perhaps a bit more wine than she should have, but she was finding it a comfort. She leaned back in her chair, let her shoulders relax. After all, she thought with a private little smile, she was doing a job. For what purpose, she couldn’t tell, but she had found—surely she had found—the unmistakable thing she and Annie were to look for, and she was keeping it—him—in sight. She glanced out the window. The old man had not moved from his spot under the tree. She looked at her ring. Elyssa would come for her, or send Annie, or something, she was certain. There was no reason for her to worry at all. Besides which, she had no choice. At this point, all that she could do was follow … Father, as Breksin kept calling him. She couldn’t see, really, why something shouldn’t happen pretty soon. The door could open right now and Elyssa could walk in. Marcia straightened up in her chair. She wondered if Annie would be with her. Maybe tomorrow night she would be back at the cottage—maybe tonight.
The old man came back and joined them. He was carrying a fresh glass, which he filled from their beaker.
“Well, Father,” said Breksin, “you may eat like a horse, but you drink like a fish.”
The old man narrowed his eyes as though he were looking at something far away. “The fish are quick in the sea,” he said. “The deeps are blind.” He took a thoughtful drink. “I had a feast,” he said, looking up with a smile. “A pig. On a spit. And wine. Virgin wine, it was, but the woman—”
“Now, now. Father,” said Breksin, interrupting hastily, “you’ve told me all about the woman already.” He nodded in Marcia’s direction. “But our young lady”—Marcia rolled her eyes and dropped back in her chair theatrically—“she wouldn’t like to hear such a tale.”
The old man gazed at Marcia with a quizzical expression. She found it hard to meet his eyes, which was odd because they didn’t seem to be focused on her, particularly. She raised her glass and hid behind it as she drank.
The old man went outside again. As Marcia and Breksin sipped the last of the wine, he explained the currency to her. Marcia, it seemed, had enough money in her purse for many nights of lodging and meals. It was clear to her that Breksin was serious about caring for the “loose-wilted.”
“Now,” he said in a kindly but thunderous voice, “you will be able to make your way home, I hope.”
Marcia’s forlorn smile was involuntary. She stared into the wine in the bottom of her glass. “You can’t get there from here,” she murmured.
“Did you say something?”
Marcia looked up. What a nice giant the old man had found. Her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head.
“Not a very promising first date, is it?” She dabbed at her cheeks with her napkin.
“Huh?”
Marcia sat up straight and took a deep breath. One incoherent lunatic was enough for Breksin to have to put up with, she decided. “I said I must take care of the old man.” She tried to make her voice audible by intensity instead of sheer volume. Breksin was staring at her lips. “I can’t go into detail,” she said, speaking a little louder, “but I have to stay with him. I don’t have any idea where he is going to go.” She looked around. No one was paying any attention to them.
Marcia could tell by Breksin’s expression that he was reminding himself that she was the woman who had told him the tale of the castle and the beautiful snow.
“There are only two ways to go,” he replied. “Ahead are a few more villages, then empty hill country.” He leaned across the table toward her. “But if you go back, you’ll cross the border in two days. Then pretty soon you’ll come to the sea. Turn left. In a couple more days, if you keep moving, you’ll come to the capital.” He lowered his voice to an almost conversational tone. “Here’s what you do,” he said, glancing at the nearby tables. “Go to the palace, wake up the guard at the gate, and get directions to the cellars. There you’ll find a boy named Jason. Tell him I said to take care of you and Father until I get back.”
