Dragon's Met
Part Three
by peregrin anna
c. 2001


(Disclaimers and notes may be found on the introductory page .)
 




Chapter 18

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
      ~ William Butler Yeats


When Cat mre-owed the next morning, there was a brief instant between heartbeats in which Gary didn't remember the previous day.  As awareness crept up on him, he hoped it had been a dream.

Then he knew it hadn't.

He didn't even have to open his eyes.  The ache in his muscles and the stiff cold in his bones, the scratch of rough cloth against his legs, the rustling straw beneath him--that kind of stuff never bothered him in his dreams.

It wasn't a dream.  It was real, and the damp nose licking his ear was his only connection to who he was and where he came from.   

Well that, and the...

...the paper, where was the paper?

His eyes shot open.  Pushing himself up on the lumpy mattress with halting, stiff movements, Gary blinked into soft light streaming through shutter cracks.  The fire had burned down to embers sometime during the night, and, except for Cat's purring, the cottage was quiet.

"All right, all right, I'm up."  He scanned the floor around him, then peeked under the wool blanket.  Cat tried to crawl into his lap, but Gary pushed it back to onto the mattress.  "It's a little late in the game for the buddy-buddy act, don't you think?  Where is it?"  Content in the still-warm bedding, Cat didn't even blink.

"Good morrow."  

Running a hand over his face, Gary twisted around to face the speaker behind him.  "Maris--?"  But no, that was Morgelyn peeking around the curtain, the corners of her mouth lifted in a drowsy smile.  Besides, he realized as his sluggish brain processed what he'd heard, Marissa had probably never said the word "morrow" in her life.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Uh--yeah, yeah, I guess so."  Except for the fact that he was wearing itchy wool, needed a shower, and was, just by the way, hanging out in a time that didn't exist anymore.  A whiskered, furry head butted against his hand.  Cat was still here; that meant something important was happening.  So where was the paper?

Cat squeezed only a glint out of its sleepy eyes when Gary lifted its limp form off the bed and deposited it on the floor.  He tore off the blankets, lifted the straw pallet...still no paper.  Maybe it was somewhere else in the cabin...

When Morgelyn cleared her throat, Gary found himself on his hands and knees, peering under the table for some sign of the Chicago Sun-Times --or whatever the equivalent was in this time and place.   

"The door..."  He tottered unsteadily to his feet, still aching from his tumble down the waterfall.

"Gary?"

He threw the door open, shivering in the cool air that rushed into the cottage, and scanned the stone stoop and the surrounding garden.   

"What are you searching for?"

Scratching the back of his neck, itchy from straw and stubble, he turned back into the cottage to face Morgelyn.  Bemused, she clutched a shawl or blanket or something around her shoulders, over a long white...nightgown?  Dress?  It was hard to tell.  Clothes seemed a lot more interchangeable here.

"M'paper," he mumbled.

"It is where you left it last night."  Edging past him to pull the shutters back against the wall, she gestured at the pile of Gary's things, folded neatly atop one of the chests.

"No, today's--I mean, tomorrow's.  I mean, the one I'm supposed to get today that tells me what's going to happen, the one everyone else gets tomorrow."

"Oh!"  Morgelyn's eyes widened, and she too looked around the room.  With a tiny shrug, she reached back to weave her hair into a thick braid.  "Perhaps it is not supposed to come to you here.  It would certainly be out of place."

Grumbling under his breath about "supposed to"s, Gary folded the blankets into haphazard lumps.  He kept his eyes open for the paper while he hauled the pallet back onto the spare bed, but it simply was not there.   

Morgelyn tied off her braid with a ribbon from a nearby shelf, then patted Gary's arm as she passed.  "You look so lost."

He threw up his hands.  "That's because I don't know what I'm supposed to do!  How can I help if I don't have it?"  After all, he thought bleakly, without that paper he was just another guy.  Surely whatever or whoever had the power to bring someone so far from home wasn't looking for just another guy.

"You are hardly awake.  Let the day start itself before you try to save it."

It was true that Gary had never been a morning person.  But damn it, he did need to know where his paper was.  What if someone else had it--or worse yet, what if they didn't?  What would his friends think if, with Gary missing, it didn't come to one of them?  He heaved a resigned sigh.  "You got any coffee?"

Morgelyn shook her head, her expression perplexed as she disappeared behind the curtain.  "I will make breakfast.  Give me a moment to dress."

A moment was all it took.  She reemerged in seconds, tying the laces of the same green overdress she'd worn the day before.  Gary checked his clothes, his real clothes, relieved to find them dry.  He headed for the curtained room to change, but Morgelyn blocked the way.

"'Twould be better if you kept those out of sight.  Especially the--the--"  She waved her hand at the top of the pile.

"The jacket?"  Gary patted his leather bomber.  It kept him so warm, and the early summer here was colder than the Chicago fall he'd left behind.  Besides, it had plenty of room for the paper and made him look good to boot.

"Jacket.  Yes.  Metal fastenings like that are unheard of here."   Morgelyn reached over and fingered the zipper teeth.  "How does it work?"

He showed her, and let out a surprised chuckle when she took it to the table and sat, fascinated with pulling it open and closed.   

"C'mon, it's just a zipper.  What's the big deal?"

"A z-z-zipper?"  Morgelyn echoed, still absorbed with the jacket.  "It is very interesting, the way you talk."

"Yeah, I was--I should ask you about that."  Gary set the rest of his clothes on the table and sat down next to her.  "Have you really tried to listen to what's going on here?  I have, and when I--when I really listen to you and me--"  He waved his hand between the two of them.  "This might sound nuts, but I don't think we're speaking the same language."

Morgelyn's hands stilled.  "Probably not," she said evenly, but from the way her forehead crinkled up, Gary could tell she was doing the same thing he had the night before--trying to listen, and finding his actual words incomprehensible.  "I can speak--and read--a number of languages, but I never saw words like those in your newspaper."

"And that's the only one I know--the only language, I mean.  So what the heck is going on?"

She raised her eyebrows at that.  "I must admit, some of your words confuse me.  Sometimes, though I understand them, you put them together oddly."  With a little sigh, she handed him his jacket and stood.  "I know not how we comprehend each other, but I suppose, since you are here at all, there must be a reason for this as well."

Oh, yeah, like he hadn't heard that one before.  Gary rolled his eyes.  "Just once, I'd like to know what the reason is."

"My grandmother would have said that the reasons for a gift are not as important as what we do with it."  Morgelyn moved to the shelves and reached for a bag of oats.  "At any rate, we need to go into the village today.  You will no doubt cause a stir no matter what you wear.  If you are dressed so unusually, there is no telling what people will think or do."

"Why would I cause a stir?"

"Your height, for one thing."   

Gary frowned at her.  Sure, she was tiny--the same size as Marissa, who, without her heels, didn't even reach his shoulder--but that didn't mean *he* was so out of line, did it?  And if he was, just for being tall, then what about the fact that she was African-American?

No, wait, that wasn't the right term, not here, not now.  Every moment he spent here left him more confused.   

Morgelyn scooped meal into the kettle, oblivious to Gary's inner wranglings.  "More important is the simple fact that no one in town will know you.  At one time strangers were welcomed here, but things have changed in recent years."  A shadow crossed her face, but before Gary could ask why, a new voice startled them both.

"The lady is correct, as always."  Like some demented puppet, Fergus grinned at them through the open window.  "The less attention you draw to yourself, the better."  He cocked his head and pointed at the kettle.  "Breakfast?" he asked hopefully.

"Not until I make it."  Morgelyn tied on an apron.  "Go, check your lines.  Perhaps we can have trout along with the porridge."

Fish for breakfast wasn't unheard of; Gary had eaten it once or twice before on camping trips with his dad.  But it wasn't exactly Au Bon Pain, either.  No coffee, no shower--how was a guy supposed to wake up around here, anyway?

As if she'd read his mind, Morgelyn added, "Take Gary with you."  She pushed a small knife in a leather sheath into Gary's hand and nudged him toward the door.  "I daresay he'd like to clean up and shave the shadows off his chin."

"Uh, yeah, thanks."  Appearances or not, Gary's feet were still feeling abused from all the rock clambering he'd done the night before.  He snagged his boots and socks from the pile on the table.

Fergus drummed his impatience on the window sill.  "Come along, my good man.  The sooner we get there, the sooner we can return and dine."

Grunting at the effort it took to bend over and tie his boots, Gary pushed himself off the bench.  "Okay, okay."

"Okay."  Morgelyn tilted her head, a smile teasing at the corners of her mouth.  "Agreement?"

"Yeah," Gary told her, managing a grin as he headed out the door.  He looked back at Cat, but it was curled up by the fire.  Gary had a flashback to Wild Kingdom; he was Jim, sent to wrestle with dangerous creatures while Marlin--aka Cat--watched from the sidelines.  Or, in this case, dozed.  

"You cannot talk like he does in Gwenyllan.  I mean it, Morgelyn,"  Fergus chided.

"Okay!" she retorted from inside the house.

Gary fell into step with Fergus, inhaling the sharp, fresh tang of the air, and listening for the sound of the ocean.  The day was dawning behind them; the rising sun cast their shadows into the thin mist on the forest floor.  "What's the big deal?" he asked the peddler.  "I mean, why do you care how she talks in the village?  And why do both of you care so much about what I wear?"

"The large deal, my friend--"

"Big.  Big deal."

Fergus harrumphed and flashed Gary a dark look.  "The problem is that you are far more different than you seem to realize.  I know nothing of your own time and place, but here and now, being different can lead to a big deal of trouble."   

That was another thing that he'd been wondering about.  "Speaking of that--"  Gary faltered, his steps slowing.  This wasn't going to be the most tactful question he'd ever asked, and he had no idea what was politically correct around here.  "Isn't she kind of out of place, too?"

"Morgelyn?"

"Yeah.  I don't know much about history, but, uh, wasn't it--I mean, isn't it kind of unusual for someone who's--"

"Unwed?  Female? Literate?"  The wry twist of Fergus's mouth said that he'd already read Gary's mind; these were the least of Morgelyn's differences.  He kept up a brisk pace, and Gary had to hurry to catch up with him.

"Look, it's just that--I--I didn't even know that there would be bla--that there were people from Africa living in England back--uh, right now."

Fergus shook his head ruefully.  "I knew we would get around to this sooner or later--to tell the truth, I am surprised you did not ask yesterday."

"There were too many other questions, I guess."  Gary jumped when a starling swept across the path, just inches from their faces.  "So how'd she get from Africa to Cornwall?"

"That, my friend, is the crux of the matter.  Morgelyn is not from Africa.  She was actually born on a ship in the Irish Sea.  I believe her arrival was somewhat--unexpected.  Her parents were on something of a wedding trip, running gold from Ise in Nigeria up to Edinburgh with part of her grandfather's fleet, but the trip took longer than they'd planned."   

Fergus told the story with relish, waving his arm as he spoke.  One of the branches he swept out of the way brushed back across Gary's face.    

"Long before all this happened, her grandparents had spent many stormy winters in Ireland and up and down the English coast.  Eventually they settled here--there was a wise woman who befriended them, and Amalia, Morgelyn's grandmother, adopted this land as her own.  So 'twas here she raised her daughter--when she could keep the young woman off the ships--and her granddaughter as well."  He stopped to scratch his calf--still in tights, Gary noted, though today's were a bright yellow.  "Morgelyn is as much a part of this country as any villager; her name, her language, and her ways are all Cornish."

"So her parents just left her with her grandmother?"

"No.  They both died when she was young."  Fergus gave his head a sharp shake, as if to say that this particular matter was closed to discussion, and started walking again.   

Gary could take a hint; he returned to his original question.  "So it really doesn't matter to anyone here that Morgelyn's--that she's different?"

There was a split-second of hesitation before Fergus said, "By rights, no, it should not matter.  She has belonged here all her life.  Morgelyn is still accepted because her family has been a part of the village for three generations.  Cornwall is a seafaring country, and many of the villagers have traveled to the coastal towns; Polruan and even Plymouth."  He flung one hand toward the river, and the other away from it; his voice became a tiny bit more strident, and Gary wondered if Fergus was trying to convince them both.  "They have seen more than one African, and of course her grandparents had an established reputation here, one they fought for and earned.  But times have changed, with the coming of poor crops, and then pestilence.  The tin mines that were once prosperous stand empty, and crops that once were plentiful have dwindled in our short, cold summers.  There must be, as Amalia always said, a reason, but I fear they are looking in the wrong place for it.  They are looking for someone to blame."

A scapegoat, Gary thought.  The mist was thicker, the dull roar of the falls louder, as they closed the distance to the river, and the green world around him didn't seem so pure anymore.  "And you--you think it might be Morgelyn?"

"I was actually thinking that it might be you."  They emerged from the thicker forest to the river bank, and, once again, Gary felt every bruise and ache intensify when he saw the waterfall.  He winced, but Fergus, intent on picking his way down the mossy slope of the bank, didn't notice.  That didn't stop him from talking, though.  "But if Morgelyn were to try to live anywhere else in Britain--a woman alone, a black woman who can read--'tis likely she'd be run off, possibly even killed."

The words had been spoken offhandedly, but they stopped Gary in his tracks.  He grabbed an overhanging branch as a thought struck him: did this have something to do with the save he'd made the morning before, those suburban kids fighting over the colors of their skin?  Fergus went a few more steps ahead, then turned back.  "This surprises you?"

"I--I just never thought--where I come from, most of the time it's no big deal..."  But it was to some people, even six hundred years in the future, even after the Emancipation Proclamation and the civil rights movement and Nelson Mandela, even after everything.

"Difference is a very big deal."  Fergus waggled his eyebrows, then motioned Gary down the bank.  He held out a hand to help when Gary slid in the mud.  "These are simple people.  After everything that's happened, here and in the rest of the world, in the past few years, they are afraid, and they see the differences as cause for alarm.  Sometimes they see it as a cause for the things that ail them, as if the presence of a stranger, or an unfamiliar cat, or even an oddly-shaped cloud, is a harbinger of doom."

"Doom?" Gary asked warily.  Fergus fell to hauling his fishing lines out of the river.    

"Death, pestilence, the failure of crops.  I am sure that a man in your position understands that anything may happen in this uncertain world."

"Yeah."  Gary stared at the knife in his hand, wondering if he'd be able to shave without cutting off his nose.  "Anything can happen.  I'm starting to get that."


 


 Chapter 19

I told you, when rocks break, it happens by surprise.
And people, too.
      ~ Dahlia Ravikovitch


The Taurus he'd rented lacked the power of his Lexus, but that didn't stop Chuck from weaving in and out of Chicago's morning rush hour with impunity.  It wasn't that he was in a hurry, really.  He just didn't want to dwell on anything right now.

He was cruising down the Eisenhower, nearly downtown, when he realized he didn't even know where he was going.  Typical of him, to jump off the dock without testing the...

An unpleasant electric shock tickled his spine, and Chuck decided that he didn't want to think about water today.  The last expressway exit deposited him in the thick of morning traffic, and before he could spend too much time pondering options, he headed for McGinty's.  His experience with these--these situations--had been limited to wakes for older relatives, but he remembered everyone gathering in living rooms, then drifting to the kitchens, seeking comfort in food and drink.  And what was McGinty's, if not a great big comfortable kitchen?

There was room to park in the alley, but he had to go around to the front to get in.  Eleven in the morning and the back was locked up tight, the morning's deliveries still stacked next to the door.  Chuck kicked an empty beer bottle as he left the alley; it shattered against the wall with a satisfying crash.  He'd kept his key, of course, but it was sitting in a drawer in his L.A. apartment.  There was always the spare that Gary kept hidden in the lamp out front, just in case he got locked out after a save.    

Out front the "Closed" sign hung in the window.  Chuck reached for the door, then drew his hand back.  He turned to watch the El rattle by--he needed a second to gather his courage.

This wasn't what he'd planned.  For months now, he had imagined a triumphant return to home base, where his friends would cheer him on after he hit one out of the park out in L.A.  But he had yet to find that kind of success, and if he ever did, that imagined homecoming wasn't going to happen.  How could it, when one friend, his best friend, wouldn't be there?

Whipping around to face the door, Chuck dislodged the thought.  Better to be impulsive after all; brooding never solved anything.  At least, that's what he'd always told Gary.  Besides, if he didn't go in soon, he'd freeze.  In the mad dash out of his apartment, he'd forgotten a coat--heck, he hadn't even worn one since he'd moved to LA.  After so many years in Chicago, though, he should have remembered how cold October could be.

He should have remembered a lot of things.

This door was unlocked, so he didn't need to retrieve the spare key from its hiding place.  He was wiping imaginary dirt off his shoes in the foyer when the sounds of a tense discussion stopped him in his tracks.

"N-no, I told you, she didn't call.  There were lots of messages, and I wrote them all down, but none from Miss Clark."  Chuck didn't recognize the speaker, and he couldn't see anyone.  They must have been at the other end of the bar.

"Well, then where the hell is she?"  Now that voice, he knew.  Laden with an irritation that had been directed at Chuck more than once, Crumb's gravelly Chicago growl was unmistakable.

Oh, he really didn't want to do this.  Steeling himself for an emotional scene, Chuck clenched his jaw and shut his eyes.  Maybe it was all a mistake.  Maybe he'd open his eyes and Gary would be there, laughing at him.  Maybe they'd planned this as some kind of wicked surprise party.  Yeah, that was it.

"Maybe she--she went back to the--"

"I already checked there, Quinn."  Crumb was nearly shouting.  Somebody should really get in there before things turned ugly.

Squaring his shoulders, Chuck pulled the door open and slipped into the dining room.   

Neither man noticed his entrance.  The ex-cop paced in front of the bar, clad in a tan canvas windbreaker.  Chuck didn't recognize the kid behind the bar.  Sporting a headful of spiky blond exclamation points, he gaped at Crumb like a fish out of water.  He must have been an employee, but he wasn't on duty right now; instead of the casual McGinty's uniform, he wore blue jeans and a bulky crew-neck sweater that looked like something an overzealous aunt might have made for him.  He was tall, probably taller than Gary had--Chuck shoved his hands in his pockets, unable, for the moment, to get a greeting past the lump in his throat.   

In the seconds that it took the kid to find his voice, Chuck's gaze darted around the dining room.  It was still the same McGinty's.  Same polished walnut bar, same filtered morning light, same sounds of traffic and El trains, same tall table where he'd sat so many mornings drinking coffee out of those same cream-colored mugs.  Crumb's coffee was probably the same bitter sludge.  But there was a hollowness in the sounds, an edge to the light, a cutting sharpness to the scent of the coffee, that he'd never noticed before.

"Wh--where would she go?" the young man asked nervously.

"That's what I'm asking you, Quinn!"  Crumb threw up his hands, scowling a hole into his forehead.  "What, am I talking to myself here?"

Twisting a bar towel in his hands, the kid stammered, "It's just--I--I don't know, Mr. Crumb--"

Chuck couldn't take it anymore.  "Not that anyone's asked me, but I don't know, either."

Crumb spun around.  "Fishman."  He looked just as uncomfortable as Chuck felt, but he drew closer and extended his hand.  "Thanks for coming."

Tongue-tied by the strangeness of being thanked, as if he was doing Crumb some kind of favor by showing up, Chuck accepted the handshake.  Both men stared down, realizing--or at least Chuck did--that they'd never done that before.  He released Crumb's hand with a gulp.

"I didn't know where to go, exactly, so I just..."  Nervously scanning the sterile, quiet bar, Chuck caught himself calculating money how much they'd lose by staying closed today.  But it wasn't his business anymore, was it?  A sigh came from the soles of his feet, and he shrugged.  "This is the only place in Chicago that's really home anymore, at least--at least for now."

"Mr. Fishman?"  The young man behind the bar spoke up, relieving Chuck of the full weight of Crumb's ponderous assessment.  With eyes the size of superballs over a beak of a nose, the kid reminded Chuck of an emu.  "I just--I wanted to say I'm sorry.  I know Mr. Hobson would have--it would have meant a lot to him that you came back."  Following a wave of his towel, Chuck was surprised to see a framed photograph of himself and Gary, caught mid-laugh, hanging behind the bar.  His chest tightened as if he'd been punched, and he found himself gasping for air.  He'd have to be careful here, very careful, or he'd end up in a puddle on the floor.

When he finally caught his breath, both men were staring at him.  It was too hard to look Crumb in the eye right now; he was already sizing Chuck up like the ex-detective he was.  So Chuck turned to the kid.  "Thanks, uh--"

"I'm Patrick."  He wiped his hands with the towel and held one out to Chuck.  "Patrick Quinn."

"He bartends for us, does a good job, too."   

Shaking the kid's still-damp hand, Chuck didn't miss the surprised glance Patrick turned on Crumb.  Good to know the old grouch was still inflicting his charm on everyone around him.  Apparently shocked into silence, Patrick stared from one man to the other.  No one, it seemed, knew how to broach the subject that was on all their minds.  

"So."  Chuck traced the top of a barstool, pretending fascination with the whorl of its wood-grained back.  "What's--uh, what's going on?"

"They're still dragging the lake."  Crumb finally looked away, studying the dark recesses of the dining area.  "Nothing yet."

"When do you think--"  Chuck swallowed.  He just couldn't say it.

"I don't know."

Nodding, Chuck bit his lip and stared at his shoes, realizing for the first time that he was wearing one black Italian loafer and one brown topsider.  Well, shit.

He looked back up at the photo, and was overcome with the need for a drink.  A very stiff drink.

Stumbling through the thick silence, Chuck pushed past Crumb to get behind the bar.  The best Scotch was still under the counter, to the left of the gin.  The tumblers were on the same shelf.  Everything was the same.  

Except that Gary wasn't going to come running in after a save, out of breath or smelling like smoke or cranky or drenched or hungry or--or anything.  Still dry from the plane, Chuck's throat burned when the first shot went down.  He poured three more fingers and left the bottle open on the counter.   

Patrick shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, watching silently.  Crumb cleared his throat.  "Anyways, his--Hobson's parents are down at the lake now, if you want to go there."

Oh, no.  Not Bernie and Lois, no way.  Chuck shook his head so hard his teeth rattled, then gulped more Scotch.  "I don't see the point."

"Then you can help me."  Crumb pulled car keys out of the pocket of his jacket.  "I need to find Marissa."

The tumbler froze halfway to his lips.  "What do you mean, find Marissa?  Where'd she go?"

"Hell, Fishman, if I knew that, I wouldn't need to find her, would I?"

"But where--why would she disappear at a time like this?"  Chuck met Crumb's steely gaze and winced.  The Scotch was doing a number on his empty stomach, and that, no doubt, was why it was churning.  He glanced over at Patrick, whose eyes were, impossibly, wider and more worried than ever.

"Alls I know is, she isn't at home, she isn't at the lake, she's not here, and nobody's seen her today--not her family in town or her friends, at least the ones I know about.  And the way she was acting last night, I'm not sure this has really hit her yet."  Fidgeting with his keys, Crumb muttered, "She's not herself, Fishman.  It's like she can't even take it all in."

"Well, maybe she just needs some time alone."  Chuck couldn't say the same for himself.  He'd had more than enough time to think since Crumb's phone call had yanked the bottom out of his world.  Right now he wanted people, and something to do, but with Marissa, you never knew.   

"Near as I can figure, she had that all night last night, unless she went somewhere after the last time I talked to her."

There was something wrong with this scotch.  He wasn't numb enough yet, if the memory of those calls could still sting.  "She called me a little after you did."

Eyes narrowed, Crumb closed in on him.  "What'd she say?"

"Nothing.  Nothing, she just wanted to tell me about Gary, I guess."  Had that been all?  He hadn't listened very closely.  Through the fog of exhaustion and shock, Chuck frowned, wondering if all Marissa's jabbering about the paper, the cat, and oh, yeah, by the way, Gary, had been about something more.  But what more could there be?  Blinking down at his glass, he was surprised to find it empty.  He reached for the bottle again, but Crumb covered the rim of his glass with a meaty palm.  Defiant, Chuck glared at the older man and yanked the glass out from under his hand.  Crumb stabbed a finger in his face.   

"You'd better get something straight, Fishman.  You have a job to do here."  He pulled the finger back, keeping Chuck pinned with his glower.  "I know you're hurting.  Believe it or not, I've been here a time or two.  But this is no time to go crawling into a bottle.  There are people here who need you."

Who did this guy think he was kidding?  Gary didn't need anyone at this point, and Chuck was the last person in the world Marissa would ever need.  "You're the one who needs to get something straight."  The bottle spun when he slammed it back down on the counter, and some of the Scotch splashed onto his hand.  "You have no idea what this feels like.  Nobody does.  Gary was my best friend.  I know you think I bailed on him, but that guy was--he was--"  He couldn't even find the words.   

He didn't have to.  "Uh, sir?  Mr. Fishman?"

"What?" Crumb barked.

The younger bartender pointed out the front window.  Through the mottled glass, they could see two figures, one human, one canine, exiting a cab.   

"Thank God."  Crumb hurried to the front door, while Chuck poured and gulped another shaky shot.  There was a brief, quiet conversation in the foyer before Crumb, Marissa, and Spike entered the main room.  Chuck sucked in another breath for courage and headed toward them, but Patrick got there first.

"Miss Clark--"  Patrick reached out for her arm, but then faltered, his hand suspended in mid-air.  Now, instead of an emu, he seemed like a lost puppy.

"Patrick?  What are you doing here?"  Her hair was shorter, the dozens of tiny braids gone, but Marissa's voice was still--well, still Marissa's.  Chuck didn't know what he'd expected.

"I--I guess I just didn't know what to do.  Mr. Hobson was--he was a good boss, and I want to help."

Marissa sighed.  "I understand, Patrick.  Thank you."

The kid looked as if he wanted to tell her something else, but he locked eyes with Crumb, and spoke to him instead.  "The deliveries are out in the alley.  I'll take care of them if you want."

"Good idea," Crumb said.  Nodding, Patrick stared at Marissa for another moment.  He turned abruptly, blinking furiously at the floor all the way to the kitchen.

Chuck wished that he, too, could escape Crumb's intense, prompting gaze.  He knew that he was supposed to make a move; trouble was, he had no idea what that should be.  Gary would have known, he thought bleakly.  By the time he found the wherewithal to speak, Marissa had shrugged off her coat and draped it over one of the bar stools.  Chuck took a couple of steps closer and was greeted by Spike's familiar growl.   

"Well," he mumbled uneasily, "somebody still remembers me."

Marissa gasped.  "Chuck?  Is it really you?"  She held out her hand and he reached for it, but this, too, was unprecedented.  Should they shake, or what?  Marissa settled the matter, pulling him close enough to give him a quick hug.  Despite what Crumb had said, she seemed to be more in control of herself than anyone else.  "It's all right, Chuck," she whispered.  "I promise, it's all right."

Something about the way she said it, some note in her voice that he didn't understand, sent chills up and down his spine.  He pulled away, and his stomach tightened into a knot.  Marissa was--God, she looked--well, not happy.  She was clearly too tired for that, the lines around her mouth deeper than he'd remembered.  But there was some kind of a light, a spark on her face that Chuck didn't understand, not in these circumstances, and it frightened him.

So he stalled.

"Your hair's all--different.  It's really...really fluffy."

"Fluffy?  Oh, Chuck..."  Her shoulders slumping a little, Marissa took a step back.  Crumb's nervous cough sounded like a sharp crack of thunder.   

Okay, so, no stalling.  "Marissa, what happened?"  His throat was tight, but this time Chuck forced the words out.  "To Gary, I mean.  How did he--what happened?"

A shadow crossed her face.  "I don't know.  But I need to talk to you, because it's not what everyone else thinks."

How could it not be?  From what Crumb had told him...Chuck shot a helpless glance at the older man, who looked just as worried as Chuck felt.  Tears and grief would have been easier than this.

"There are some things that we need to do today," Marissa continued, almost as if they were discussing a grocery-shopping excursion.  Chuck, however, was close enough to see her hands tremble when she pulled her cane out of the bag she'd stowed on a bar stool.

"C'mon, take it easy."  He put a hand to her elbow and steered her toward the nearest table.  "Just sit down, okay?  You can't handle things this way."   

She shrugged his hand away, and her voice shot up the scale.  "Don't tell me what I can't handle.  You don't even know--"

The tension between them was crackling, electric--and there was no Gary to ground them.  It would have turned into a doozy of an argument, but Crumb wasn't finished bullying everyone around.  "For once, the little guy's right."  He joined the pair at the table and pulled out a chair.  "Sit down.  Why don't you tell us what you've been up to?  Where'd you go this morning?"

Her jaw tightened.  "Crumb, I don't want--"

"Sit."  One hand on her shoulder, he pushed her into the chair, though not, Chuck noted, ungently.  "Coffee's brewing in the kitchen.  I'll go get some."

Marissa slumped back into the chair and snapped her fingers at the floor.  "Sit, Spike."  The guide dog settled himself at her feet.  Crumb headed for the kitchen, but not before he waved Chuck to another chair at the table.   

What was he supposed to do now?  The peanuts he'd had on the flight were jitterbugging through the scotch in his gut, and he couldn't think of the first thing to say to her.  

Apparently the feeling was mutual.  Marissa barely masked her impatience with the whole situation when she asked, "So, how are things in California?"

Her pathetic attempt at small talk cut through the fog and fear that had kept Chuck's ravaged emotions at bay.  "What the hell difference does that make?"  He whacked his palm on the table.  "Gary's gone, and I want to know what happened!"

"Good."  Pushing back from the table, Marissa practically jumped out of her chair.  She reached into her bag, pulled out her cane and snapped it open with a flick of her wrist.  "Come with me."  She started for the office with Spike at her heels.   

"Whoa."  Chuck followed, stumbling into a table.  Marissa didn't seem to notice; she certainly didn't slow down.  "What are you doing?"

"Please, Chuck, I know you're confused, but there's something we have to find."

"But--"

"We may be running out of time," she insisted, calling the words over her shoulder.  Spike trotted alongside, still wearing his harness.  Chuck couldn't remember Marissa ever neglecting her dog like that.   

"O--okay." Not knowing what else to do, he decided to play along.  He followed her into the office, where she promptly began patting the top of Gary's desk.  Chuck just managed to catch a pile of unopened mail that toppled over the edge.  "Take it easy, let me look."   

Stiff as a board, Marissa froze, then lifted her hands, then took a couple steps back.  Her brow crinkled into deep furrows.

Chucked looked from her to the usual jumble on Gary's desk.  "What are we trying to find, here?"

"A letter, an old letter.  I don't know if Gary left it here, or if he had it with him when--when he left yesterday."  She twisted her palms around the handle of her cane.  "It would be addressed to Lucius Snow."

"Snow?"  Chuck gulped.  He'd tried so hard to forget the creepier aspects of his best friend's life.  "Oh, c'mon."

"I'm serious, Chuck.  We need that letter."

For now, it seemed the better part of valor to play along.  He scanned the contents of the desk, lifted a few piles, shook the ledger that lay open underneath a couple day's worth of junk mail.  "I don't see anything like that here."

Pressing her lips together, Marissa turned and started up the steps to the loft.  Her movements were stiff and purposeful, her thick heels clomping on the wooden steps like the echoes of doom.  Spike followed with a quiet whine.  Chuck dropped the mail and followed, concern vying with exasperation as he tried to figure her out.  Maybe what Crumb had said about her odd behavior was more than just overprotective ex-cop paranoia.   

"Marissa--God, will you just *tell* me?" he demanded when they reached the landing.  She traced her cane in wide arcs before the door.  "And no, there's no--"  Acid and scotch burned up from his gut.  "There's no paper.  Let's go back down--"

But Marissa reached for the doorknob.  "He stayed out of the bar for a while after that Gillespie girl left.  He could have come up here."

Oh, yeah, that was helpful.  "What Gillespie girl?"

Without answering, Marissa opened the unlocked door to the loft and walked in.  Chuck stopped just inside, frozen in that expansive space by a rush of memories and fresh loss.  

Marissa made for the coffee table, perching on the edge of the sofa while she groped piles of newspapers, mail, and pristine TV Guides--pristine because Gary never had time to watch the television that sat on the metal shelves near the windows.  He was always too busy.  Inching forward, Chuck swallowed another wave of nausea.

"Do you see it?  Is it here?"  Marissa waited, her palms resting flat on David Duchovny's face, but Chuck couldn't find his voice.  "Chuck?  What is it, what's wrong?"

"I don't think this is a good idea," he finally whispered.  "I really don't want to be here."

"But Chuck--"

"You don't know what it's like.  I can see all Gary's stuff, and it's like he just left and he'll be back any minute.  I--I can't handle this."

She drew in a deep breath, then sat back, reaching up to finger the fringe of the Navaho blanket that was draped over the sofa.  "You think it isn't difficult for me?"  For the first time, he heard a catch of sorrow in her voice.  "All the things I can smell, hear--the way this blanket feels, the way the El sounds through these walls...I know it hurts, Chuck, but that's why we have to be here.  You have to help me."

"Help you do what?  Marissa, there's nothing--"  His knees turning to Jell-O, he too sank down on the sofa.  "There's nothing either of us can do."

"No."  She stuck out her chin--shoot, she was so deep in denial that they'd need a tow truck to get her out.  Fear turned the jitterbugs in his stomach into a frenzied bunch of whirling dervishes.  Sad Marissa, even angry Marissa, he could find a way to handle.  But not crazy Marissa, who said, "No, there's a great deal we have to do.  Chuck, I know you weren't ready to listen to me last night, but now you have to."

He fought the urge to kick the coffee table, settled for twisting his heel into the rug.  "The only thing I want to listen to right now is an explanation of how my best friend, who knew about everyone else's catastrophes before they happened and managed to stop them, didn't know about his own.  How'd Gar miss this one?"

"He didn't, not exactly."  Marissa drew back her shoulders so that she was sitting perfectly straight as she faced him.  Once again, her expression lit with that strange hope.  "Chuck, I think Gary's alive."



 


Chapter 20

Now I am in Arden; the more fool I.
      ~ As You Like It, II.iv


The footpath into town wound along the river in the opposite direction from the one Gary had taken the night before.  Rocky steps, difficult to navigate now that Fergus had insisted Gary change his own boots for the old-fashioned ones, led to the top of the waterfall, where the land leveled out.  The sun's rays were just beginning to burn away the mist that rose from the river, curling off the boulders like smoke.  Gary's shoulder throbbed in time with the rushing water, and the panic he'd felt while tumbling through it nearly returned.

What would his friends be thinking at this point?  And his parents...

If the story in the Sun-Times was the real thing, they would be frantic by now, unless they'd already resigned themselves...but he didn't want to go there.  He couldn't go there.  There was nothing he could do about it at this point.  His best hope was that time here moved differently than his own, as it had when he had spent a couple of days in October, 1871.  Or had that been a dream?  He had never been sure.  At the moment, all Gary knew was that this experience, the same and yet so different, couldn't be a dream.  His ribs hurt too much for that.   

Of course, it had hurt like hell when Sullivan's men had beat him up, too.   

Shaking his head, Gary told himself that there was no point in worrying about any of that right now.  Here was where he was, and what he had to change was here somewhere.  He had to trust that when he'd changed it, there would be a way to get back where he belonged, preferably a way that didn't hurt as much as the arrival had.

He blinked back to the present, where the river's track, and their own path, had flattened out.  Gary grinned as he took in the scene in front of him.  There was plenty here to distract him from the deeper weirdness.  Striding just ahead of him, Morgelyn and Fergus were engaged in another round of cheerful bickering.  Her long brown cape and his short red one billowed like sails at their animated gestures.  Fergus had his pack, a rough canvas bag that bumped and bulged with the wares he sold, slung over one shoulder.  He also wore the hat that he'd had on yesterday, ostrich feather and all.  Chuck had always been a hat kinda guy, but Gary had a feeling he would have drawn the line at that red beret.  But he would have approved of this guy's sales initiative.

"That is ridiculous, Fergus."  Morgelyn gave her head a vigorous shake that whipped her braid from side to side.  "No one is going to believe that you have holy relics to sell!"

"I tell you, I have a bone from the foot of St. Patrick himself--"

"If it was the real thing it would have walked away from you as fast as it could."

Fergus put a hand to his chest.  "You wound me."

"Not as much as Father Ezekial will if he finds you selling blasphemies."

"I'll have you know--"

"Oh, campion!"  Her tone shifting from exasperation to delight, Morgelyn crouched to touch the dark pink petals of some wildflowers.  They all looked like weeds to Gary, but then again his mom had fired him from gardening chores when he'd mistakenly pulled up all her peas one July.  He was clueless when it came to plants, but Morgelyn was greeting them as if they were old friends.   

Fergus rolled his eyes.  "You are hopeless."

"But it has been a year since there's been any--and buttercups, oh, look--"  She veered toward a patch of yellow blooming at the edge of the river.  Moving more slowly here, the water snaked out of the forest ahead.  "You see, Fergus," Morgelyn said as she snapped a sprig of the creamy yellow flowers, "it really is summer at last."  Standing on tiptoe, she tucked the flowers into her friend's hatband, winking at Gary before they all started off again.   

Soon the path turned away from the river and into deeper shade.  Competing for sunlight and space, the trees were skinnier and taller here, and the undergrowth crowded the path.  Lush and cool and full of green life, the forest was a living thing with a language all its own.  Morgelyn gave every indication of being able to read it; she reached for vines and flowers to check their progress, and even broke off leaves to chew.     

Fergus stuck a thumb over his shoulder.  "How is it that a few blossoms can make you this happy, when things are far enough amiss that you were able to send for him?"   

"I am happy because he is here."  Turning to walk backward, Morgelyn smiled at Gary and held out a dull green, saw-toothed edged leaf.  "He said he would help.  Here, chew this.  It is good for the blood."

"I could do a better job if I knew what the problem is," Gary pointed out--not, he thought, for the first time.  He pulled in his cheeks when his first bite of the leaf set off a sour explosion in his mouth.   

"I, too, would like to hear what you think he can do."  Fergus's smug air said he thought perhaps there was no good answer to the question.  

Gary swallowed the leaf, hoping he hadn't just been poisoned.  

"I did not understand what a dragon slayer was going to do to save the village in the first place," Fergus went on, "seeing as there are no dragons.  Now that you have the wrong hero, what do you think--"

"He is not the wrong hero."  Morgelyn stopped, one hand on her hip, to scowl at Fergus.  Gary could barely make out her expression in the green-tinged shadows, but he knew that face well enough.  "He is here for a reason."

Shaking off the chill that ran up his spine, Gary asked, "When do you plan to tell me what that reason is?"  He really didn't want to stick around here any longer than he had to.

The scowl faded, but she just turned and started off again.  "I want you to see the town for yourself."   

Fergus snorted.  "That is hardly an answer."   

Morgelyn let him get ahead of her and fell into step with Gary.  "Our village, Gwenyllan, has been here for hundreds of years.  It used to be a mining town, and before that, no one really seems to know what it was.  Just a trading center at the edge of the moor, I suppose, since the river is too narrow here to be a usable harbor.  We are fortunate in that we are a free village.  Many of the settlements and towns here are the property of English lords."

"And ladies."  Fergus flashed a wicked grin over his shoulder.   

"And ladies," Morgelyn acknowledged.  "Over on the moor, Lady Nessa has had the running of her husband's estate since she was left a widow.  The people who live in her village, and many others, are bound to the manors as serfs."

A vague memory of history class surfaced.  "Like slaves?"  Immediately sorry he'd said it, Gary gave Morgelyn an apologetic look, but she seemed unaffected.  That's right, he thought, that particular horror was at least a hundred years away, maybe more.  Thank God.   

"Oh, they are free, in law at least--but only up to a point."  Fergus had picked up a thick branch and was using it as a walking stick; its leaves stuck out from top to bottom and made him look like a walking tree.  "Not to the point of, say, ever being able to leave, or to own the fruits of their labors."

"Everything they grow goes to the lord of the manor," Morgelyn explained.  "Everything but enough to keep them alive, and working his land.  'Tis the same everywhere.  Only a few towns have been granted charters by the king guaranteeing their freedom.  Gwenyllan is been lucky to have such a charter.  The people who live in servitude to the landholders suffer terribly and--"  

The leaves on Fergus's stick rustled as he waggled it back at Morgelyn.  "A wise teacher of mine, a bard from Ireland, once told me that I would lose my audience if I lost the point of my story."

"I was the one who told you that," Morgelyn snapped.  "And I am getting to the point, but how can I explain it if he doesn't know the whole story?"

"Oh, the whole story?  Perhaps you should start with Adam and Eve."

"You are impossible," she sighed, brushing the leaves of his branch out of her face.  "Put that thing down before you hurt someone."

"It is a staff for protection, m'lady--yours as well as mine."

"Against what?"  Gary looked around nervously, wondering if wolves or bears were about to come bursting out from the underbrush.

Fergus's grin broadened; he held his staff out like a sword.  "Badgers and dragons."

"Put it down," Morgelyn insisted, and pushed it away.  "Here we are."   

They'd come back to the river--or rather, it had looped back to them.  The path led across a stone bridge that had no railing, just slightly raised ridges along each edge.  The road widened as it wound down a mild slope and into the town.   

After they'd crossed the bridge, the trees thinned out.  Staggered cottages and huts lined their path as they neared the village; those on the left were half-hidden in trees, but those on the right fronted gardens and, as they neared the village, small farms that sloped up to a purple-dotted grassland.  Wheat and barley and rye, Morgelyn pointed out to him from the bridge, just pushing up in gold and green carpets.  Gary could see men working in the fields, and oxen and cows grazing in pens.  Ahead there were bigger houses, even a few with two stories, crowded in a rough circle at the center of the village.  Like the hub of a bicycle wheel, a large well stood in the clearing; short lanes, three or four houses deep, formed its spokes.  Directly across from Gary, on the other side of the circle, the land rose again, and at the crest of the hill was a steepled church that seemed to watch over the collection of huts and houses like a mother hovering over a baby's crib.

Two hundred souls, Morgelyn had said the night before, but this place looked as if it was designed to hold two or three times that many.  However many people had lived here once, many of them seemed to be gone now.  Shutters, where they existed, were loose, doors hung on single hinges, weeds choked the house-paths, and some of the walls were crumbling away.  The trio passed no one on the path that lead to the heart of the village, though a couple of chickens did watch them from an enclosure near one of the houses.   

"Where'd everyone go?"  Gary kept his voice hushed.  Fergus and Morgelyn exchanged a cryptic glance, but neither one answered his question.  Instead, Fergus turned and pointed a short finger at Gary's nose.

"Remember what I told you.  No introducing yourself, nothing about where you come from, and for the love of heaven, speak as little as possible."

"Yeah."  Gary shrugged.  He was hesitant to make any promises, but it wasn't as if he'd know what to say, anyway.

After the confines of the forest, the direct sun and blue sky of the village proper were intensely bright, but their warmth was welcome.  Morgelyn tossed her cape back over her shoulders.  A strange, odorous brew of wood smoke, baking bread, and the lack of a sewer system assailed Gary's nostrils.  Little knots of people, pairs and trios, stood near the larger buildings, absorbed in quiet conversation.  One child, part of a small group that was playing a game at the foot of the church hill, looked up from the pastime, saw the newcomers, and pointed.  As if by some prearranged signal, all the children jumped up at once.

"Morgelyn!  Morgelyn!"  The swarm came upon them in a joyful, chattering chorus; the children made enough noise for twice their number.  They ranged in age, by Gary's guess, from two to about eight.  Some wore outfits that were smaller versions of Morgelyn and Fergus's garb; others were dressed in little more than burlap sacks with holes cut for arms and heads.  All were barefoot.  Gary assumed that the boys were the ones who looked as if their hair had been sliced at with a weed-whacker.  A few of the girls wore their hair in long braids, but most had loose, tangled masses of tresses.  

Some of the adults who were scattered around the town center broke off their conversations and stared, mostly, Gary was sure, at him, then fell back to whipsering and shooting glances at the little group.  But he didn't have time to worry about that too much; a sticky hand curled around his fingers, and tugged him toward the others, who were gathering around the well.  It was bounded by a broad ring of stones about the height of Gary's knees. When the melee settled, Morgelyn was sitting on the edge of the rock wall, children at her side, at her feet, and in her lap.

Gary looked down to find his own hand grasped by a young boy with a shock of red hair, staring up at the stranger with eyes like hazel saucers.  "It's--it's a giant," he breathed, so stunned that he forgot he was holding the giant's hand.

"Nah, I'm not a giant," Gary said with what he hoped was a friendly smile, but the hand slipped out of his and, one finger in his mouth, the little boy edged away, toward a taller girl who put an arm around his shoulders.

"Do not worry.  He is Morgelyn's friend," she whispered, and now the whole gaggle of kids was staring up at him.  Gary shifted from one foot to the other, beginning to understand what Fergus had meant about being different.  This wasn't Chicago, where he could just disappear into a crowd.  This was the only crowd in town.

"That is right, Halfred," Morgelyn said, and many of the heads turned in her direction.  She smoothed the straw colored hair of the little one in her lap--Gary wasn't sure if it was a boy or girl.  "Gary is a friend, and he is here for a visit, so we all need to make sure he feels welcome."  She held out a hand to the redhead.  "Will, how fares your arm?"

Darting a wary glance at Gary, the boy scuffled over to Morgelyn and held out his right arm for inspection.  She took it in her hands, gently twisting it this way and that, and bending it so that his hand touched his shoulder.  "Good as new."  Will smiled, then plopped down into the dirt at her feet.  Morgelyn scanned the little crowd, asking after cut fingers and bruised shins, while Fergus dropped his pack and pulled up a bucket of water on one of the thick chains draped over the well.  He scooped water out with his hands and splashed it on his face, pulling an exaggerated expression, mouth gaping, nose crinkled up, and the children giggled.

"Where is Tolan?" Morgelyn asked, and her voice was sharper, her brow creased; her smile became just a little more forced.  The children shrugged or shook their heads.  "Well, I suppose his mother needed him."

"Shouldn't these kids be in school?" Gary asked Fergus in a whisper.  The other man's eyebrows climbed to his hairline.   

"They are a mite young for schooling, wouldn't you say?"

Who knew, around here?  Gary decided it wasn't worth pursuing, at least not now.  A skinny girl, so thin Gary couldn't even guess her age, sat on the ground, tugging on Morgelyn's skirt.  Her auburn hair dragged in the dirt when she tilted her head up.  "Tell us a story!"

"A story?" Morgelyn asked with feigned innocence.   

The tow-head in her lap nodded eagerly and bounced.  "'tory!  'tory!"

A mischievous twinkle lit Morgelyn's eyes as she glanced at the men.  "Perhaps you should ask Fergus.  He is going to be a real bard, after all."

"No!"  The cry was nearly unanimous.  Fergus's features sagged in an exaggerated crush.

"My mama told me that I couldn't listen to him never again."  Will wagged his head emphatically.

"Did she?"  Morgelyn was laughing now, but the girl sitting next to her, the one Gary guessed to be Will's sister, nodded in serious confirmation.

"'Zounds, tell one tale that's a bit off color--" Fergus mumbled.

Morgelyn raised an eyebrow.  "A bit?"

"Well, they said they wanted to hear about my travels in India."   

The girl on the ground covered her ears, and Gary cringed.  He could just about imagine.  Morgelyn waved in the direction of one of the stone buildings.  A wooden sign hung out front, with a barrel painted on it.  "Go, find our friend some refreshment," she told Fergus.  "He looks parched."

"Wise as always, m'lady," Fergus replied, with a sweeping bow that made the children giggle.  He clapped Gary on the back.  "Come, friend.  Allow me to introduce you to the wonders of the Kettle and Keg."

A few minutes later, Gary decided that he wasn't ready to call them wonders.  He'd harbored hope that the tavern would be a familiar spot, something like home, like McGinty's, but this place was no more than a dingy room half the size of his loft.  It was dark as a cave, and just as confining with its warm, musty air.  Against the back wall, a fire that looked as if it really didn't have the heart to burn offered the only light.  A burst of laughter erupted, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Gary saw four long trestle tables that filled the space; three men sat clustered at the far end of the table closest to the fire.  Closer to the entryway, another manned a large keg and a haphazard collection of pottery and pewter steins.

Fergus sauntered over to that man, who, Gary supposed, was this place's version of a bartender.  He was seedier-looking than his customers, who stopped their hushed conversation to stare at the new arrivals.  Built like a fire plug, with dark, greasy hair and a crooked nose that had to have been broken more than once, the tavern keeper greeted Fergus with a brief nod.  A wave of disappointment hit Gary.  Not even Crumb could manage such a suspicious sneer.   

"MacEwan.  When did you come back to these parts?"  He looked Gary up and down.  "And who've you brought with you?"

Gary hadn't noticed it in the children's chattering, but this guy's accent was so thick he could barely make out what he was saying.  But the words didn't matter as much as the undisguised hostility he was getting from this guy and from the men at the table, who fell silent and turned their eyes on him.

Fergus twisted his cap in his hands, but he forced out a jocular request.  "Ale, please, John, and two of those meat pies for which your lovely wife is so famous."  The other man grunted, grabbed two steins from the table, and turned to fill them from the keg behind him.  "This is Gary Hobson.  A friend from--uh, from the west." Fergus proclaimed, looking back over his shoulder to make sure the other patrons were still listening.   

Somehow, hearing his own name spoken aloud in this place gave him creeps on top of the creeps he already had.  Gary was more than happy to follow directions and keep his mouth shut.  He managed a nod at the seated men, stuck out a hand to the bartender--and was roundly ignored.

Dropping the steins in front of them, apparently unconcerned over the ale that splashed out onto the table, the bartender rolled his eyes.  "That's fascinatin', MacEwan."  He turned to the fire and used a huge wooden spatula to pull something off a shelf that was tucked at the inside back of the fireplace.  Gary jumped back when the spatula swung in his direction; the barkeep turned it over and two hunks of bread tumbled to the table.  Fergus dropped three coins on the table and snatched up a stein and one of the bread things.  Gary picked up the other stein and followed him down the row of tables.  They sat at the one closest to the door.   

"What is this thing, anyway?"  Gary let the pastry, which looked a little bit like a calzone, fall on the table, shaking and blowing on his fingers before taking a drink of the ale.   

"Lunch," Fergus answered between gulps.  "Drink up, man, and we'll get out of here."

Like the stuff he'd had the night before, this didn't taste like the beer Gary was used to.  It was flatter and sweeter, and refrigeration, of course, was centuries away.  At the other end of the room, conversation resumed; the men were joined by the barkeep.  They kept their voices quieter than before, and Gary didn't miss the curious glances that were sent his way.  Everything in here was browns and greys, dirt and wood, coarse clothing and coarser laughter.  He had never felt so out of place in his life.

"It's not exactly Cheers is it?" he mumbled, even though he knew the reference would go over the other man's head.

"No, not cheerful at all," Fergus agreed.  "They need entertaining, but I shall save my skills for later in the day.  Finished?"  He stood, waving nervously at the group on the other side of the room.   

Draining the last of his drink, Gary followed Fergus's example and picked up "lunch" as he stood.  "You said this was a meat pie or something?"

Fergus nodded, holding open the door as they stepped into the light, and Gary felt his shoulders relax with relief.  "Kestra makes them with venison or hare."  He took a large bite and puffed out his cheeks.  "'S 'ot!"

Biting back a grin at Fergus's facial contortions, Gary was about to turn toward the center of town when a new sound, a wracking cough, caught his attention instead.  "What was that?"  It came again, from a passageway between the tavern and a candle shop, if he was reading the picture signs correctly.  Gary stepped closer, peering into the shadowy space.

"Where are you going?" Fergus demanded.

At first, Gary couldn't make sense of what he was seeing and hearing.  The cough came from what he might otherwise have thought was a bundle of rags, camouflaged by the stones and debris that littered the ground.   

But it was human.  Tufts of white hair peeped out from the rags, moving in time with the hacking.   

"Who--who is that?" Gary demanded.

Fergus shook his head.  "Poor creature.  Ever since his family died, he has lived like this."

Gary had seen homeless people all over Chicago, of course; he did what he could to help, but here--"There are empty houses all over this place.  Why's an old man sleeping on the streets?"

"This is the way he wants it."  Fergus tugged on his arm.  "Let's go."

Gary indicated the rest of the village with a sweep of his hand.  "Don't these people take care of each other?"   

"Not everyone wishes to be taken care of.  And where else would a man who's--who's--"  Fergus spun toward the center of town.  "Let us see what Morgelyn is up to."

But the bundle stirred.  The man sat up, revealing white hair, pocked skin, and his eyes...with a chill, Gary realized what Fergus couldn't tell him.  The man's eyes were clouded over, completely sightless.  Despite Fergus's frantic head shake, Gary stepped closer.  He could smell age and filth; the man's face was gaunt, skin pulled tight over the cheekbones.   

"Who's there?" he asked in a voice congealed with age and illness.

Gary put his meat pie on the ground near an arm-shaped mound of the rags.  "It's a friend."  Still staring, still feeling more than just sorry for the guy, remembering how Fergus had reacted when he'd told them about Marissa, he let Fergus pull him back toward the sunshine of the village center.

"What are you doing?"  Fergus stared at him in abject astonishment, as if he'd grown another head.

"Just trying to help."

"But..."  Fergus trailed off, looking from Gary to the alley and back.

"I wasn't hungry anyway."  If Fergus couldn't figure it out for himself, he wasn't going to explain it.  The look Gary got from the peddler was so like Chuck that, for just a split second, he expected it to be followed by a crack about the world's oldest Cub Scout.  Instead, Fergus sighed and then disappeared into the alleyway.   

"Neither was I," he said when he returned empty-handed.



 


Chapter 21

Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity
Our reason co-exists with our insanity
As we stand upon the ledges of our lives
With our respective similarities
It's either sadness or euphoria
      ~ Billy Joel


While Chuck paced the loft, Marissa told him everything that had happened the day before, relieved beyond measure to be able to talk about this without filtering every word.  Her heart felt lighter, though the mood in the room was not.

When she finished there was only silence, so deep that she wondered if he hadn't walked out on her somehow.  Shifting on the sofa, Marissa laced and unlaced her fingers and tried to keep from sinking into the overstuffed cushions.  She knew he needed time to absorb it all, but she was confident that he'd come around and help.  This was Chuck's best friend they were talking about, after all.

"Okay, Marissa."  His voice drifted from the other end of the sofa.  She turned in his direction, trying, as she had since she'd arrived, to place the missing element, some quality that had always made Chuck--well, Chuck.  He sounded frozen and distant, as if he were trapped in an igloo.  "You've told me what you want to think happened.  Now, I need you--I really need you to tell me the truth."

If he'd stepped up and slapped her, she couldn't have been more surprised.  "I--I just did that, Chuck."

He turned and paced a little more; she could hear his footsteps cross the hardwood and stop by the window.  They were uneven, somehow, as if one foot was heavier than the other.  "You know what I did this morning?  I bought the Sun-Times at the airport.  That version might have had holes, but at least it was halfway believable."

That was what was missing, she realized.  Chuck's hopeful spark, his willingness to jump in and go with the flow.  It was as if this news had robbed him of faith in anything other than cold, hard facts.  "No, it didn't, it wasn't--"  

He cut her off harshly.  "It was right there in the paper.  The same paper that Gary supposedly got yesterday."

"Supposedly?"  She couldn't force her voice above a whisper.

"I want to know why Gary missed it.  You were there, Marissa--why didn't he see it?"  Chuck's question came out strangled.   

"I--I think it's because he wasn't meant to."  She rose and took a couple of steps toward him, wishing she could convey belief with a touch.  Her words didn't seem to be getting through at all.  "Because whatever happened, wherever he is, the paper wanted him to be there."

"Bullshit!"   

Flinching, Marissa pulled her hand back.

"Tell me the truth."  His footsteps pounded closer, until she could feel his breath, whiskey-laden, on her face.  "Do you think it's possible that Gary could have seen this and just--just let it happen?"

When the full weight of his meaning sank in, Marissa couldn't breathe.  It was more than she could bear, to think that Chuck would think...her voice wouldn't go above a whisper.  "What are you saying?"

"You know what I mean.  I had a lot of time to think on the plane, and there was only one way I could figure out that something like this could have happened."  He paused, swallowed; the edge was gone from his voice when he continued.  "Was it all just too much?  All the neediness, and the ingratitude and the danger?  Did he decide to just get it over with?"

"Chuck, no."  It was worse than what the police had implied the day before.  Even though Gary had complained about the city wanting too much out of him...no, that was just Gary blowing off steam.  She reached out, but couldn't find Chuck's arm, and her hand fell back to her side.  "No.  Gary would never--not with me right there, I'd never let him."

"Like you could stop him if he wanted to?"  

Shaking her head, Marissa backed away--away from Chuck's confused despair, away from his insinuation.  The backs of her knees hit the sofa, and she sat down again, starting when Spike nudged his wet nose against her hand.

"You have to admit it's one explanation that makes sense.  Unless you think he's down in the sewer system somewhere playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."  The smart-aleck, throwaway comment lacked Chuck's usual ease, and the sarcasm was so sharp that she half-expected to find bite marks as she rubbed her arms.  "Marissa, it's--it's the only thing that tracks, if you buy the whole next-day's-paper thing."

"If?"  What was he implying?  She clawed at the edges of the sofa cushions while the world she thought she knew turned inside out.  "How can you say that?  This--this is crazy.  And he didn't want to.  I told you what happened.  Why won't you believe me?"

"Because you haven't really told me anything, nothing concrete, nothing that makes any sense.  Besides that, it's completely impossible."

"More impossible than getting tomorrow's news today?"

"Crystal balls, ancient legends, a dragon slayer?  Yes!  Yes, it is, and Gary would have said the same thing."

"No, Chuck--please, if we can just find that letter--"  She gestured at the coffee table, choking back the lump in her throat.   

There was a moment of silence, heavy as lead.  "I don't see anything like that around here.  Nothing at all."  Chuck sighed, and the doubt in his voice turned to bitter kindness.  "Look, I know you're upset.  I am too.  We're both looking for reasons, but it would be better if you faced reality."

"The reality is, Cat is still around."  Hadn't he heard her the first time?  "And the paper, Chuck--none of us got the paper, so it must be with Gary."

"Maybe it's already gone to someone else."  Chuck's voice got louder, more strained.  "Someone who cashed in on the market and is now residing on a beach in Jamaica."

She drew her hands into her lap, willed her fingers to stop trembling.  "I don't believe that."

"You're gonna believe yourself right into a nuthouse!  He's not coming back, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner we can deal with this and everybody can get on with their lives.  This--this guilt, you have to let it go."  He sat down next to her, and covered one of her hands with his own.  "I'm sorry, but you have to let Gary go."

She didn't move.  She couldn't move.  He didn't believe her, the one person she'd thought she could rely on, and he wouldn't even try.  "Don't you understand what I'm saying?"

"I understand how you must feel."  He squeezed her hand.  "I know it must have been awful--being there when it happened and everything--but whatever it was, there's nothing you could have done."

Shaking off his hand, she jumped to her feet.  Her voice rose with incredulity.  "You--Chuck, you think that I--that I couldn't--that this is my fault?"

"No, no, I don't think that at all," he insisted.  "I think you think it's your fault, and that's why you're doing this.  It isn't the same thing."

"Oh my God."  Her stomach twisted into a knot, and Marissa backed away.  She kept her hands behind her until she bumped up against Gary's entertainment center; wrapped her fingers around the metal support posts until their holes and edges dug into her skin.  "You don't believe a word I said, do you?"

"Look, it's okay, I understand.  You're using it."

"I'm--what?"

"You're using the paper as an excuse to hang on."  He spoke slowly, as if to a small child.  As if he was the one with the psychology background.  "To think that--that--Gary's still--Marissa, it just can't be true."

She knew he was tired and grieving, and that alcohol had muddled his thinking.  Her patience, however, was ready to snap.  He'd accused Gary of the unthinkable, and now he was accusing her of being unbelievable.   

"Chuck, listen to me."  She let go of the posts, drawing herself in tight.  "Gary didn't let this happen."

"Oh, c'mon."  He marched past her, toward the window.   

Marissa turned, reaching out a hand, pleading through her anger.  "He didn't know, and there's a reason it happened, but it wasn't the reason you seem to think.  And I didn't let it happen, either.  I know that.  This isn't about misplaced guilt.  This is about Gary, who he is, and that he needs our help; this is about you opening your mind just a little, just enough to consider the possibility that the facts mean something.  They haven't found him, Cat showed up last night, there's no new pa--"

Whiskey-laced air exploded in her face.  "There's no new paper because he's gone."

"Gary is not go--he's not.  How can you say that?"

"I'm trying to help you, here!"   

They were both shouting now, inches apart. In the midst of her anger and her fear that she was in this alone, Marissa felt her heart cracking for the man in front of her, for how much he must have been hurt by the news.  "Gary is the one who needs your help, and you can help by dragging your head out of your butt and listening to me!"

 "Well, at least my head isn't buried in the sand like some goddamn ostri--"

"Fishman, what the hell are you doing?"

The fumes around her face cleared, and Crumb's heavy tread crossed the hardwood.   

"They can probably hear you two up at Wrigley, for cryin' out loud.  What's the matter with you, Fishman?"

"I'm not the one you should be to talking to," Chuck grumbled.   

Marissa had her arms crossed tight over her ribs, and she knew Crumb could feel her shaking when his hand brushed her shoulder.  "Is he bothering you?"

Bothered didn't seem like a strong enough word for what she felt--heart tripping double-time, ears ringing, stomach twisting in on itself.  But she didn't need to be protected, not from Chuck.  "We're just..."  She trailed off, unable to find any way to explain this to Crumb.  "Chuck, I didn't mean to hurt you."

No response.  He brushed past her,  stalking into the kitchen area.   

"Yeah, get something to eat, maybe the low blood sugar's getting to you," Crumb muttered.   

Marissa sighed.  "How much of that did you hear?"  He didn't answer at first.  Across the loft, cupboards banged open and closed.  She hadn't thought she could feel any worse, but now her knotted stomach was doing flip-flops.  She wanted to know what was going on between Chuck and Crumb, what the looks they were probably exchanging over her head signified, what the silence that pressed down upon the loft meant.

To her surprise, it was Chuck who broke it.  "He heard enough that he's looking at you like maybe he ought to stick you full of Valium or something."

"Fishman!"

"Well, you are."

"That's not what I was thinking at all."  Crumb lowered his voice, speaking directly to Marissa.  "But I don't understand what this is all about.  What did you mean when you said you had to help Hobson?"

Crumb wouldn't have been her first choice to try to convince.  But her first choice had slammed the door in her face.  Crumb had been so sincerely kind, and he--he had been there when the whole thing started.  Maybe he wasn't such a long shot after all.  "Do you remember that woman who came into the bar a few days ago, looking for Gary?  She came back.  She gave Gary--that thing that they pulled out of the lake yesterday, it was from her.  I think it means something.  Something important ."   

Crumb muttered something under his breath; it sounded a lot like, "Not again."   

"And what do you think?"  Crumb called to Chuck.

The only response was a rattling of dishes and silverware, and more cupboard-banging.  "How am I supposed to make a sandwich with moldy bread?"

"Chuck doesn't agree," Marissa told Crumb, "but I don't think he's looking at this clearly."

"Look who's talking!"

Crumb sighed.  "Look, there's bread down in the kitchen.  Why don't you go get some?"

"Fine."  Chuck's uneven footsteps echoed through the loft, then he clomped down the stairs.

"You want something to eat?" asked Crumb.

She shook her head.  "But I could use a glass of water."

He touched her elbow, steering her over to the kitchen.  "Marissa, what exactly is it that you think happened?"

"I don't know, not exactly, but I think it's something very unusual, and--"  She swallowed hard.  "Look, Crumb, I can just about imagine what you're thinking right now.  Despite what Chuck might think, I'm not crazy, and I'm not trying to deny anything.  I know it appears that Gary--that he's--drowned.  I know all your evidence points that way.  But we--I--have other evidence.  Whatever's happened to him, I think he can come back."

"What other evidence?" Crumb asked.  When she hesitated, knowing that prevarication was beyond her, he made a strange snorting noise, then said as he ran the water, "You're holding something back.  You have that same look you always got when you and Hobson were talking about his mumbo-jumbo and I'd interrupt."

"I--I don't know where to start."   

He handed her a glass, and she used both hands to steady it and raise it to her lips.  It was lucky that she'd swallowed before Crumb muttered, "I always said that guy must've had a crystal ball to tell him what was gonna happen."

Before Marissa could form a response, footsteps pounded up the stairs double time.  "Hey," Chuck called, "I--I think I found your letter."

"It's Gary's," Marissa corrected automatically, but hope tingled through her, fluttering like birds' wings against her skin.  She held out her hand and took the envelope, thin and creased with age.

"Technically, it's--" Chuck hesitated.  "It's neither," he finished lamely.  Well, at least he still remembered to keep his mouth shut.  "It was under the desk."

"You looked under the desk?"   

"I had to tie my shoe."

She very nearly smiled, and just like that, their annoyance fled.  Neither one would apologize after a spat, but this was close enough.  In spite of everything, Marissa felt better.   

"You're going to have to read it."  She held the letter out to Chuck again.

"I'll be downstairs," Crumb said.

"You don't have to leave."

"It's all right.  I know when to back off."

"No."  Marissa's denial surprised even herself.  "I don't think you should back off this time, Crumb.  I--I don't want you to."  She turned to Chuck, who had as much right to make this decision as she did.  Before this went any further, they needed to have an understanding, and some ground rules, but she was tired of trying to do this all on her own, and she hadn't even begun.  "Chuck, I think--I think Crumb should hear this.  But I don't know what's in the letter about--about Snow, and Gary, and it's up to you to decide what to read, and what--what to--"

"What she means is, leave out the stuff about the newspaper."

Marissa's heart skipped a beat.  Chuck started choking and coughing, and in a second she could hear a hollow thumping.

"Okay, it's okay, it was just a grape."  After another bout of coughing, Chuck whispered, "What did you--what did he just say?"  

"Aw, c'mon," Crumb grumbled.  "It's not like I never figured out that whatever was up with Hobson had to do with that damn paper.  They didn't make me a detective because I'm stupid, ya know."   

"But--but how did you--"

"No one in their right mind carries a newspaper everywhere they go, especially not the Sun-Times.  Hobson may have had a few screws loose, but he wouldn't have had friends like you guys if he'd really been out of his gourd.  I figured out a long time ago that the way he knew stuff ahead of time had something to do with that paper."

"You always said you didn't want to know," Marissa managed to choke out.  They'd always been so careful...

"And I don't, not the heebie-jeebie details, okay?  But I couldn't help but notice the damn thing.  Don't look so shocked."

"It's just--"  Marissa managed a faint smile.  "Well.  I think we underestimated you."

Crumb's grunt said that the matter was closed.  "Yeah, well, now that's over, let's get on with it.  Is this letter your evidence?"

"Part of it..." She wanted a stool, and was feeling underneath the table when Crumb pulled it out for her.

"Sit down and talk to us here.  Fishman, no comments from the peanut gallery unless you have something worthwhile to add."

"Believe me," Chuck muttered through a mouthful of food, "I don't have anything to add to this."

Settling onto the stool, glad for something solid underneath her, Marissa chose her words carefully.  "Crumb, you know how Gary is.  He knows about things ahead of time.  I don't think that he--that his gift--would have let something like this happen to him.  But I know that that's not enough; if all I had were that feeling, then you and Chuck would both be right about me."

"Hey, don't lump me in with him," Crumb protested.

"Yeah, well, just wait until you've heard the rest of her spiel."  From Chuck's direction, she could hear paper being unfolded and handled.

"There's more," she insisted.  "Gary's cat showed up at my place last night.  I can't--I don't know if I should tell you why that matters; you just might have to trust me that it does, that this cat isn't--it wouldn't do that unless it wanted something."

"Kibbles?"

"Chuck!"

"Fishman, I warned you once."

"Chuck knows better.  He's just being..."  Marissa bit her lip, determined that she wasn't going to start bickering with Chuck, not again.  "He knows Cat doesn't come around unless it's something to do with Gary."

"Okay," Crumb said slowly, "so you've got a feeling, a cat, and a letter?"

"And Kelyn Gillespie."

"Who?"

"That girl, Crumb, the one who was here looking for Gary.  She gave him the letter, and the...that thing we pulled out of the lake yesterday.  I think she knows something, more than we do, anyway, and I want to go talk to her after I hear what's in the letter.  This morning I had a friend help me find her address; it was Morris, Chuck, down in the archives at the Sun-Times."   

He sighed in response, then affected a New York accent.  "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

"You're no Pacino," Crumb told him dryly.

"Please, Chuck," Marissa said, "you don't even have to believe, I guess, just tell me what it says.  Then I'll go talk to the girl and see if she can help."

"We'll all go," Crumb corrected.   

"You don't have to--"

"Hell I don't.  I don't care what's going on, or how spooky it is, if this girl has anything to do with what happened to Hobson, nobody's going to see her alone."  Underneath Crumb's bluster, there was a foundation of granite.

"You--you believe this?"  She gestured toward Chuck, toward the letter.

Crumb snorted.  "Not really, no.  But I trust you, and for right now that's good enough."

Marissa bit her lip.  It wouldn't do any good to cry now.  She ducked her head, fighting back waves of exhaustion and faint hope.   

"Read the letter, Fishman, and then we'll go see this Gillespie girl.  Crumb gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder.  "Together."

The first thing he wanted to know, before Chuck even got into the body of the letter, was who Lucius Snow was.

"He was a...a friend of Gary's," Chuck offered.   

"He worked at the Sun-Times, too.  He was a typesetter."

"So this letter--your evidence--it wasn't even addressed to Hobson?"

"No, Crumb, but that doesn't matter.  It explains what that globe is all about.  It was passed down with it--Kelyn Gillespie gave it to Gary yesterday, too."

He grunted, maybe not satisfied, but still willing to listen.  However, as Chuck read the letter, which didn't contain any surprises other than what Gary had told Marissa the day before, she could sense, in his tense silence, a backing away from the door he'd begun to open only moments before.  Believing in her wasn't the same as believing that something magic was going on here.   

The uneasy silence lingered after Chuck finished reading the letter.  He finally cleared his throat.  "This doesn't sound like...it doesn't sound like much to go on.  It's even less believable than Gary's usual...brand of...supernatural..."

"Hocus-pocus," Crumb finished.

She could feel it, the unspoken conversation taking place between them, the looks they were shooting each other, the doubt, the way they were calculating just how far to let her run with this before reeling her back in.

Crumb's voice was gentle, measured, and oh-so-careful, as if she were a thin china plate that he had to carry with his words.  "I need your help understanding this, Marissa.  When I hear that letter, all I hear is a story of a family heirloom and a woman who, what, years ago, right?--gave it to a guy she was sweet on.  What is it that you hear that makes it different, that makes you believe that Hobson's still alive, after all this time?"

All this time?  But it hadn't been any time at all; it hadn't even been a full day.  Yesterday at this time Gary had been downstairs, talking to her, gulping down coffee, running out to save the world, and--when she caught her breath and brought herself back to the present, her hands were curled up in fists, locking in her faith.

"Because I know Gary.  And if this had been an accident, he would have known it was coming."

Crumb guffawed.  "Doesn't that sort of defy the definition of accident?"

"This letter implies that there's something different, something special, about this thing--and that Gary might have been able to help someone, someone far away, who was in real danger."

"From a dragon?" Chuck asked.

She sat up straighter, her spine stiffening as she braced herself for another battle.  "If anyone wanted to find a hero, who better than Gary?"

Crumb snorted.

"Then where is he now?" Chuck wanted to know.   

"They haven't found him yet, have they?  Crumb, can you tell me you're convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Gary drowned yesterday?"

Chuck answered instead.  "There's nothing reasonable about what you're saying, Marissa."  He was close enough that she could smell peanut butter mixed with the whiskey in his breath.  "Nothing remotely like this has ever happened before, not even with the--the newspaper."

"Just because there is no precedent, that doesn't mean it can't happen."

"Okay, okay.  We go, we talk to this Gillespie girl," Crumb said reluctantly.  "But that's it, okay?  If she doesn't know anything, you'll let this go?"

"I can't make that promise.  But if she doesn't know anything, and you want to drop it after that, I'll understand."  Marissa got down from the stool and reached for Spike's harness.   

It was a compromise none of them was comfortable with, but it would have to do for the time being.  She just hoped that, wherever he might be, Gary would know that they were trying to bring him home.





Chapter 22

An event of great agony is bearable only
in the belief that it will bring about a better
world.  When it does  not...disillusion is deep.
      ~ Barbara Tuchman


None of the little group gathered by the well noticed when Gary and Fergus approached, hovering on the outskirts of the storyteller's circle.

"Many more adventures befell Oisin in the land of Tir na n-Og, while he lived with Niamh and her people.  After some time had passed, he found himself longing to return to his home and visit his companions."  Morgelyn's voice was low, but it wove a spell that had trapped all the kids.  Silent as stones, mouths half-open, they were hanging on every word.  "Niamh told him that he could go, but only if he would promise not to set foot on the earth; he must remain at all times on the white horse she gave him.  Oisin agreed, for he did not think that he would have cause to disobey her.  But, as is the case with the instructions of fairies and all the Tuatha, it is folly to think they are given without reason--"  

Fergus coughed, and Morgelyn broke off, staring over the heads of the children at Fergus and Gary.  Confused by her startled expression, Gary looked from her to Fergus, who jerked his head at Gary, one eyebrow lifted.

"What next?" demanded Will, who was standing in front of Morgelyn, his elbows on her knee, chin on his fist.   

Morgelyn gulped, blinking down at him.  "I--I forgot."   

"No you did not!"  He stomped his foot indignantly.

The toddler on her lap put a hand on her shoulder, staring solemnly into her eyes.  "You canna forget.  Who will tell the stories if you forget?"

"I remember," the little girl at her feet said helpfully.  "Oisin found that the land had changed, and everyone he knew was gone.  He came upon a group of men in a field who were trying to move a huge stone, and they asked for his help."  She paused for breath, and all the children started filling in the story with an avalanche of words.   

"He tried to reach down and help them--"

"But the saddle broked--"

"Not the saddle, idiot; the girth!"

"And he fell off!"

"That is enough."  Morgelyn rose, placing the child who'd been on her lap back on the rock wall.  She lifted another and tugged her folded-up cloak out from underneath her, then handed the cloak to Fergus, who stowed it in his pack along with his own.

"But you forgot the ending!" Will complained.   

"We must save it for another day."  She grabbed Gary's arm and started to pull him away.  "Farewell, children."

Fergus was trying, with little success, to hide his laughter.  Caught between his mirth and Morgelyn's unease, Gary didn't know what to think.  Something about that story seemed kind of familiar, though.  "I want to hear the ending."  He planted his feet in the dust.

"He wants to hear the ending," Fergus sing-songed.   

Morgelyn clicked her tongue.  "No, he really doesn't--Tamsyn, no."

"But I know the ending."  The girl who'd been sitting on the ground tugged on the hem of Gary's vest.  Solemn grey eyes gazed up at him from a sea of freckles.  "Oisin tried to help the people from his horse, because he was kind and strong.  But the stone was too heavy.  He fell, and he broke the fairy's spell.  He turned into an old man, and then he died, because his own time was gone, and he never got back to the in-between time in Tir na n-Og, where Niamh was waiting for him.  And all because he wanted to help."  She frowned at Gary as if it was his fault.  "I don't think that's very fair."

"No--no it isn't," he agreed.  The back of his neck was prickling, and he wished he could sit down.

"Gary."  Morgelyn put a hand on his arm.  "It is only a story, and if it has any lesson at all, 'tis that children should obey their elders."  The last bit was delivered firmly in Tamsyn's direction.  "We really should go."

This time the children stayed behind.  Morgelyn led the way down a short lane, a few doors from the tavern.  Fergus's chuckling bubbled over, and he leaned against the side of a stone shop building, one hand over his stomach.   

"It was not funny," Morgelyn chided.   

"Oh, but did you see the look on his face?  And you, you looked as if you had heard a banshee."   

Dismissing him with an impatient shake of her head, Morgelyn started off again.  Gary caught up in a few long strides, and Fergus, who probably didn't want to miss the punch line to this private joke of his, was close behind.

"What happened to him?" Gary asked.

"Who?"  Morgelyn wouldn't look at Gary, and Gary couldn't look at Fergus.  It might have been funny to the peddler, but Gary couldn't shake off the uneasiness he felt.

"That ocean guy--"

"Oisin," Fergus corrected.

Try as he might, Gary couldn't hear a difference, but that wasn't what was making his skin crawl.  "Yeah, him, the guy in the story, the one in the wrong time.  Hey--"  He grabbed Morgelyn's upper arm and turned her around to face him.  "It sounded a little familiar, you know?  Too close for comfort.  I want to know what happened."

"Tamsyn told you," Fergus kept his voice matter-of-fact, as if he were reciting a history lesson instead of some old fable, but there was a mad, teasing twinkle in his eye.  "He left his horse and set foot on the Earth, an Earth that had changed utterly since his own time.  He was trapped there.  Not for long, though.  He was so aged after all his time in Tir na n-Og that he died an old man.  He never knew if his father and friends had searched for him; they were dust long before he returned."

Releasing his hold on Morgelyn, Gary gaped at the peddler.  "You--you're making this up."

"It is as old and true as any legend about a dragon slayer."

"Fergus, stop."

Seconds ticked past in a quiet broken only by shouts and laughter from the children.  A stench wafted from behind one of the houses on a breeze that tickled the back of Gary's neck.   

"But he didn't do anything wrong," Gary finally managed.  "Not on purpose."

Morgelyn had barely opened her mouth before Fergus continued,  "No, but he broke the rules nevertheless, and his intentions didn't matter.  And Niamh, his true love, never knew what befell him."

"Stop."  Although quiet, Morgelyn's command cut through Fergus's teasing.  She looked Gary in the eye; somehow, it made him feel less comfortable than she must have intended.  "It is only a story, Gary."

"It'd better be."

"It is, I swear it."  She reached over and squeezed his arm; they continued their walk down the lane.

"Still, friend," Fergus told him, "I would keep that cat of yours close at hand."  When he saw Morgelyn's ominous frown, he snapped his fingers.  "Oh!  Tom the miller asked me to bring him cloth for new grain sacks," and ducked down the nearest lane.  

"Hey--"  Gary called after him, to no avail.  Annoying as Fergus was, he wasn't half as disconcerting as Morgelyn could be, and Gary felt all out of balance now.

"He will find us again.  Come with me."  Morgelyn led Gary behind one of the empty houses to an open meadow, and gathered wildflowers as she spoke. "You should not heed him, Gary; he loves to tease and unsettle people, and you are not meant to take him so seriously."   

"I don't know how to take anything these days," Gary admitted.

After filling the crook of her arms with flowers--purple, yellow, blue, and crimson--she turned back toward the village proper.  Once again, they skirted the village center, then climbed the hill to the stone church.  Although it was certainly imposing in relation to the rest of the village, Gary could see now that it was little more than a chapel, its windows uncovered slits in the stone walls, its steeple and bell tower slightly out of proportion to the building that supported it.  

"Is it Sunday?" he wondered aloud.  

Morgelyn shook her head.  "No, two days past."  All of a sudden she was tuned out, her expression distant and abstracted.  Maybe they were here to pray or something.  Now that would be like Marissa.  

But when they reached the doors of the church, Morgelyn turned to the left and followed a dirt path that led to the clearing behind the church. The yard was surrounded by a low stone wall, no higher than Gary's waist.  An iron gate swung open with a weary creak at Morgelyn's touch, and she stepped into the churchyard--the graveyard, Gary realized with a gulp.  

It was dotted with old oak trees, new wooden crosses, and stones set into the ground in no pattern that Gary could discern.  Most of the graves had no carvings to indicate who was buried beneath.  A few were strewn with flowers.  The unnatural quiet of the place was broken only when a cool breeze stirred through the leaves.  

Their path wound among the markers and mounds, and they were at the back edge of the clearing when Morgelyn halted near a spreading oak.  She handed some of her flowers to Gary, who stayed where he was, keeping a respectful distance.  A stone slab was planted under the shade of the tree, intricately carved.  The pattern was a circle with twining curves in a pattern rather like that of the base of the crystal ball--scrying glass, Gary corrected himself. Kelyn had called them Celtic knots.  Even  here, even now, the patterns looked old, though the cuts in the stone did not.  Morgelyn knelt easily, laying the flowers in front of the stone.  Others grew there on their own, white and delicate.   

There was a low hum, the whine of bees going about their work, but somehow it just added to the stillness.  One hand in the center of the intricate circle, Morgelyn whispered words in a language Gary didn't understand, not even with the translation effect.  "Seanmháthair, an mafóir de dragan..."

He shifted from one foot to the other, feeling like a misplaced flower girl with his arms full of blossoms.  If Chuck could see him now, he'd be rolling down the hill, laughing his butt off.  Gary bit back a wistful grin, knowing it was out of place, a nervous reaction because he was so out of place, out of time--out of his mind for thinking that he could make a difference when he didn't even understand what was going on around him.  Morgelyn fell silent again, head tilted to one side as if listening for--or to--something.  When she stood, she darted a look around the churchyard and made a quick sign of the cross.  She added some of the white flowers to the bundle when she took it back from Gary.

"This is where my grandmother lies," she said in response to his quizzical look.  Rather than breaking the quiet, her words blended with the soft noises around them.  "Not her true self, of course; just her body.  But I can feel her spirit here, too.  Sometimes other places, but always at the shore, and always here."    

"Fergus told me this morning--he said she raised you."   

Morgelyn nodded.  "My parents died when I was young, as did my grandfather.  We had each other--sometimes we had little else."  

"How--um--how did she--"  Gary tried to stuff his hands in the pockets of his bomber, before he realized he wasn't wearing it.  

"How did she die?"   

He nodded, wishing he could take back the question when he saw the pain that flashed across her face.   

"A disease swept through the village."  Turning on her heel, she resumed her path among the gravestones.  A few yards away they stopped again, this time at a barren mound of earth about ten feet square.  Morgelyn pulled a dozen flowers from her haphazard bouquet and scattered them over the dirt.  Reaching for the pouch that hung from her belt, she produced a small piece of linen.  She held it in one palm, unfolding it carefully, revealing a small pile of seeds.  "Flower seeds," she explained.  "Poppy and heather and daisies, hardy flowers, but there is little hope they will sprout."  For a few seconds, her hand remained poised, palm down, over the mound, then she let it fall back to her side.  "This is the second summer, and still nothing grows here."  

The way she said it, so quiet and bewildered, sent ice water down Gary's back.  The empty houses, Fergus's dire pronouncements that morning, the grave in front of him--he was looking at a mass grave, he realized with a sick lurch of his stomach.  "The second summer since what?"  

Morgelyn slipped into her storyteller's voice, but it lacked the warmth it had held when she spoke to the children.  "It started in the fall, and bloomed all through the winter and early spring.  A disease, a pestilence, that took the lives of half the villagers here.  It spread like fire in a dry season, and no family was left untouched."

"Pestilence?"  Fergus had used that word, too.  "Like in the Bible?"

"Like the plagues of Egypt, yes, but this took more than just the first born.  Once one person in a house had the black boils or the cough, it was nearly certain that they would not be the only ones to die."  She pivoted so that she was looking directly at Gary, looking for an answer, he thought, that he surely did not have.  "There were so many dead, so quickly, so much pain and fear, that those of us left alive little knew how to care for ourselves or comfort the dying.  Some of them, like my grandmother, had family left to bury them, but many did not.  Those we buried together here, whole families, and a single Mass was said for all their souls.  That was two years ago, and still nothing grows on their burial mound.  I fear it is a sign."  

"Are you talking about the--the plague?" Gary stammered.  "The Black Plague?"  No one had told him he'd need shots for this trip.  

"That is not the name we give it, although it would fit.  We dare not give it any name at all."  Her movements were stiff and robotic.  "It seems strange to say, but we were fortunate.  Fergus tells me that it spread through all the known world; he himself saw villages that were left entirely empty.  In one he found three men dead in the churchyard; they'd been trying to bury their brethren when they'd succumbed as well."   

This was no history book.  This was no video.  It was real.  He was standing there talking to someone who'd lived through a worldwide disaster.  But she'd lived--they all had lived, everyone he'd met here--and surely that had an effect on the kinds of people they'd become.   

"You survived, though--you didn't get sick, right?"

She winced as if he'd said something that hurt her.  "No--I mean, yes, I did fall ill.  But I recovered."  She ducked her head and looked back at the barren grave.  "I know not why, when so many others were taken."  

"Like your grandmother?"  

Morgelyn nodded, still not meeting his eyes.  "Yes.  The only one of us who knew how to ease any of it.  Many of these are here because she is gone, and I cannot..."  Trailing off, she started walking again, toward the church.  "Life has not been the same since.  It never will.  Grandmother said, even when she was dying, that there was a reason I recovered.  But I still do not know what it is."  

Trying to offer what comfort he could, Gary said, "If it helps, I kinda know what that's like--not knowing the reasons for stuff, I mean.  Like--"  He spread his hands out wide.  He felt helpless, but what else could he offer in the face of something like this?  Half a village gone..."Like what I'm doing here."  

"Then we are two of a kind."  They wound their way through the churchyard and made a third stop at a freshly-dug grave.  This one was also bare, but that was because the earth was still moist and new.  Gary wondered if Morgelyn knew as many people in here as she did out in the village.   

It was a small disturbance of earth, dug for a child.  There was no wooden cross here, no headstone.    

Gary fought a rising tide of anger inside him at whatever had brought him here--too damn late.   

But who was he kidding?  He couldn't have stopped the Black Plague.  He hadn't even been able to put out the Chicago Fire.

Again Morgelyn knelt, placing all of the remaining flowers at one end of the dark rectangle, thrown into sharp relief by the surrounding grass.  Closing her eyes, she fell silent for a moment, and this time when she spoke her voice was so low that Gary had to duck his head to hear her.   

"This is the grave of Ronana Styles.  Last week she was among that group of children you saw in the village.  Five days ago, her mother sent for me.  She was ill, and I--I tried to help her, I did what I could, but--"  She clutched the bag of seeds so tightly that Gary could see her knuckles turn pale.  He knelt, too, so he could better hear her choked whisper.  She shook her head, her gaze focused on the seeds that she was scattering, brushing loose earth over them with her free hand.  "I could not save her.  She died that night.  My grandmother could have cured her, I am sure of it.  But she left me before she could teach me enough."  Morgelyn sat back on her heels, and he was nearly bowled over by the absolute grief and self-doubt he saw in her eyes.  "Ronana died, and Iam afraid it is all beginning anew.  Another plague, or some other curse, and this time I do not think we can withstand it."  

"And that's why you--you called me?"  

She nodded.  

"Fergus said you didn't know why it worked this time, why you were able to get me here."  The logic here, the logic of magic, followed rules that Gary was only beginning to learn.

Morgelyn drew her hands into her lap.  "Fergus does not know about Ronana.  It is difficult for me to tell--to speak about--"

"It's okay," Gary said quickly.  "I can understand why.  What I don't get is why I ended up coming now.  Why not when everyone else was sick?"  

She turned a desperate expression on him.  "I tried then--not two days went by when I did not try.  But I did not know what to do--I still do not know exactly why it worked this time, rather than any other.  It frightens me, to think that worse could befall us than what has already happened."  Her eyes widened as if she'd just had a hopeful thought.  "Perhaps this new disease is something you can cure."  

Gary drew in a sharp breath.  He was definitely not equipped for this kind of rescue.  "Morgelyn, I--I'm not a doctor.  A healer," he amended when she looked puzzled.  "I don't know about medicines or how to heal people, anymore than I'm a dragon slayer or a--a knight in armor or something.  When we need medicine, we just buy it.  Someone else makes it, and I'm not that someone.  I'm not--I can't--"  His hand fumbled in the air while he fumbled for the right words.  "Look, you gotta stop with the cryptic show and tell, here.  What do you want me to do about this?"  

"That is the trouble.  I do not know why you are here.  It is my fault, I have done so many things wrong since Grandmother died..."

He didn't know where the question came from, but it was there, and it was right.  "How many people are *not* in this graveyard because of you?"

Her eyes widened.  "I--I do not know, but I--"

"But some?"  This time it was Gary who held her eyes--for the first time, he felt as if he had something to offer, an idea born of his own experience.

"Yes."  Her expression brightened; her voice took on more confidence.  "Yes, some."

"Then you haven't failed at all.  If you hadn't tried," Gary said, lifting his hand to indicate the grave, "this little girl would have died anyway.  You have to keep trying for the ones that you can help--"

"Morgelyn!"  The call came from the gate.  Gary stood stiffly, offering a hand to Morgelyn and pulling her up as a woman in worn clothes, hair tied back with a kerchief, skidded up to them.  "Morgelyn, I--"  Her breath caught as she looked past them.  She put a hand over her mouth and gulped back a sob.  "Ro--my little girl..."  

"Anna?"  Morgelyn took a step toward the woman, who tore her gaze away from the grave with difficulty.    

The woman gasped.  "You cannot let this happen again."  She grabbed Morgelyn by the arm and pulled her back toward the gate.  

"What is it, Anna?  What's wrong?"  

Gary had to hurry to keep pace with the women.  Something was happening, but he had no clue what it was.

"'Tis Tolan, you have to help him."  Anna stumbled on a low stone marker and Morgelyn pulled her to a halt.

"All will be well," said Morgelyn, half out of breath.  Her grief and doubt were gone, a fierce calm in their place.  "Tell us what is wrong."  

"Us?"  Anna's frantic, darting gaze finally landed on Gary.   

"Anna Styles," Morgelyn began formally, "this is--"

"Oh, it matters not, come *now*, before Mark comes in from the fields, Morgelyn, you know how he is, please--"  

"Collect yourself."  Morgelyn grasped the woman by the shoulders.  "What is wrong with Tolan?"  

"He is coughing, just like Ronana did, and he has a fever.  He woke up hot as embers this morning.  I swear, he was not sick yesterday, not at all!"  

Furrowing her brow, Morgelyn asked, "Is he alone now?"  

Impossibly, Anna's pale blue eyes widened even further.  "There was no choice!  I saw Fergus in the village, he said you might be here, Morgelyn, *please*--"  The woman was nearly sobbing now, her face splotched red with emotion and the effort she'd made.  

"All right."  Morgelyn clasped Anna's hand as she turned to Gary.  "Go and find Fergus.  Tell him to meet me at Mark and Anna's home.  He will need to bring lungwort, sage, bettony, and elecampane--can you remember all that?  Whatever he does not have with him, he can gather from the fields."  

Messenger boy? Gary thought.  That was all he was supposed to do?  "Can't I help?"  

"Believe me, this is the best thing you can do right now."  Morgelyn repeated the strange list, then made Gary repeat it.  "We will figure out the rest later," she added in response to his unspoken question.  "Try the tavern first.  Please hurry!" she called over her shoulder, as Anna pulled her down the hill.  The two women broke into a run, skirts flying, and were soon out of sight.  Gary spared one last glance at the quiet resting place before starting off for the village proper.  This was hardly a task requiring a hero, or even him, and certainly not one that needed a man from the future who knew tomorrow's--  

That brought Gary up short.  He slowed to a walk, ignoring the strange looks he got from passers-by, keeping an eye out for Fergus.  He hadn't known.  Would it have helped if he had?  Of course it would, he should have known, that was what he did.  But how--if there was no paper--he shook his head.  There was a sick kid to deal with.  The paper would have to wait.   





Chapter 23

Non-magic people (more commonly known as Muggles)
were particularly afraid of magic in medieval times,
but not very good at recognizing it.
      ~ J. K. Rowling


Gary found Fergus in the tiny tavern, regaling a handful of men with a tall tale about pirates.  "Come for more stories?" the would-be bard asked when he entered.  

"No--it's--" Gary faltered, not sure who was supposed to hear this.  They were all watching him.  He inclined his head toward the door.  "We need to talk."    

Fergus must have read something in his posture or his tone, because all pretense of teasing vanished.  "Gentlemen, urgent business calls me away."  He ignored the snorts that followed them out of the tavern.  

Gary relayed what had happened, and what Morgelyn wanted, hoping he'd remembered everything correctly.  Fergus dug in his omnipresent pack and pulled out a clay jar and a muslin-wrapped packet.  "Take these to her.  I can find the others in the woods over yonder."  

Great.  Now he was the porter.  "But I don't know where--"  

"Just past the baker's.  Follow your nose, and then to the second house behind it."  Fergus pointed across the village, up one of the spoke roads that lead toward farmland.   

"I--uh--okay."  He was gone before Gary could be sure that he'd located the right house.  At least there was smoke coming from its roof; that was a start.  More frustrated than ever, he started off in the direction Fergus had indicated.  

The thatch-roofed hut was rounded, little more than a pile of stones fronted by a small, weed-choked garden.  It had no door, just an opening covered with a dirty burlap-bag of a curtain; soft murmurs drifted through.  Gary hesitated before the curtain until he identified one of the voices as Morgelyn's.  

Inside wasn't any cleaner than out; a fire in the middle of the dirt-packed floor and a hole in the roof to let the smoke out provided the only sources of light.  In the corner, barely distinguishable at first from the bundle of blankets in which he coughed and tossed, was a small boy, five or six years old by Gary's guess.  Morgelyn lifted his head and tried to get him to drink something from a pottery cup, while the mother stirred a large kettle over the fire.  The whole place smelled of wood smoke and mildew and--Gary wrinkled his nose--not having been cleaned in a long time.    

When he cleared his throat, Morgelyn rose stiffly.  Whispering her thanks, she took what he offered, and nodded when he told her Fergus had gone for the rest.  But really, for all the attention she paid Gary, he might have been invisible.  She was completely wrapped up in her task.  Gary felt too big for the room, and because it seemed the least obtrusive spot, he moved to the doorway.  He was watching her instruct Anna as to which herbs and powders to place in the pot when Fergus came in, holding what looked like a bunch of weeds and wildflowers.  

"This is what you wanted?" he asked without preamble.  "I found some tansy as well, I thought--"  

"Possibly."  Morgelyn handed the bundle off to Anna.  "We need to make an infusion with the lungwort--"  The boy's cough grew harsher, and she hurried over to his pallet.  

Fergus hauled Gary out of the dim, confining hut.  He picked up two jugs that sat just outside the door and started for the village again, but he turned when Gary didn't follow.  

"They will need fresh water."  He said it as if it were something even a child should know.   

"Okay."  Staring back at the house, Gary didn't move.  He heard Fergus heave a sigh and then retrace his steps.    

"What is it?"  

"That boy sounds pretty sick."  Gary had a feeling that something was wrong, something more than just the obvious.    

"If anyone in these parts can cure him, 'tis Morgelyn."  Fergus's laconic confidence was a sharp contrast to the self-doubt Morgelyn had expressed in the churchyard.    

One arm outstretched in the direction of the cottage, Gary tried to explain--to himself as much as to the other man.  "But she--Morgelyn said the little girl--his sister--died.  And that guy, that guy in the alley, the one who was blind, he was coughing like that..."  

"One thing at a time, my good man."  A tiny frown crinkled around his mouth, but Fergus tilted his head toward the village center and handed one of the jugs to Gary.  "Water."    

Reluctantly, Gary followed him back to the well.  The village was quiet; the children had disappeared and no one was wandering among the shops now.  Fergus let the bucket down on its chain, hauled it back up, and filled the first jug with the water.  He handed it to Gary and was lowering the bucket again when Gary felt something walk over his feet.  Startled, he dropped the jug, dumping water all over Cat.  

"Sorry, buddy."  Gary bent down to retrieve the indignant tabby, but it darted between his legs and out of the clearing, back toward the house.    

"What--" Fergus began, but Gary was already hurrying after Cat, his jug forgotten on the ground.  "Gary, what are you doing?"  Puffing, Fergus overtook Gary a few yards from the garden that fronted the house.  Cat had disappeared through the curtain.  Gary was determined to follow, but Fergus grabbed his arm, refusing to be shaken off.    

"What is wrong with you?"

"Something's going to happen," Gary insisted.  "I gotta--"  

"MacEwan!"  Both of them whirled at the booming call.  A barrel-chested man, shorter than Gary but with thicker arms and legs, lumbered up the path.  

"Oh, damn," Fergus breathed.   

Gary frowned at him.  "Friend of yours?"  

No answer; the man was upon them, arms akimbo as he stared down at Fergus with hooded eyes framed by a dark beard and thick brows.  "Don' be tellin' me yer come here with more harnesses to sell.  The last tore three days into the fall harvest."  It was harder to understand this guy than anyone yet; his words were thick in Gary's ears and his brain was slow to process them.   

"No, today I brought--something very fine, I thought particularly of you when I first saw it." Fergus pawed blindly through his pack, locking eyes with the newcomer as if his gaze could will the man into immobility.  Finally, he extracted the dagger he'd tried to sell Gary the day before.  "From darkest India, it--"  

The man snorted and pushed past Fergus.  "I have a knife, MacEwan."   

Gary's frown deepened as Fergus darted between the man and the opening to the house. He held up his hands, palms out.  "Truly, Mark, you do not want to go in there."  

"'S my house, man, get out of the way."  A sweep of the log-like arm sent Fergus stumbling into the nearest tree.  His head hit the trunk with a "thump", and Gary hurried over to help him stand.  

"Why shouldn't he go in?" Gary asked.

Before Fergus could do more than shake his head, the man bellowed again from inside the hovel.  

"What have you done?  Get her out of here, now!"  

"Mark, no.  Tolan is ill."  Anna's voice was high-pitched and shrill.  

"No thanks to her, just as my daughter is dead, no thanks to her!  She's cursed us, I tell you, and I know how to stop it."  

That was enough for Gary.  He rushed to the doorway, Fergus stumbling behind.  "Gary, take care.  You do not understand this."    

He understood enough.  Cat had gone into the little house; he should have followed it all the way.  He was reaching for the curtain when everything happened at once.  He heard Morgelyn's voice, loud and clearly annoyed.  "For heaven's sake, Mark, what are you--"  She finished in a gasp, but Gary couldn't make it inside, because Cat came flying out, leaping against Gary's knees.  Morgelyn followed, stumbling; she would have fallen if Gary and Fergus hadn't reached out and caught her.  Gary twisted toward the doorway, toward the threat, and flying spittle hit him in the face.    

"Stay out of my house, and take your witchcraft with you!"  The man hadn't been lying about having a knife; he waved it in their direction, point forward.

"Mark, no!  She is not like that!"  Anna's head peeped out from behind her husband's bulk, but he kicked her back into the room.  

"Silence, woman!"  

Shaking off her friends' hands, Morgelyn turned back toward the house and called, "Anna, do just what I showed you.  You have to--"  

"I said begone!" Mark thundered.  He narrowed the gap between them.  Gary could smell rot in his teeth and see the dirt caked and cracking on his hands.  At that point, he would have gladly done as instructed, but Morgelyn lifted her chin, meeting the man's eyes in a black hole of a stare-down that sucked away Gary's breath.   

"You will kill your child," Morgelyn finally retorted, and spun on her heel.  Without another word, without a look, she hurried past the others, past the bakery and out onto the village common, making a beeline for the forest path that led to her home.  Gary followed, but Fergus stopped to collect his pack.  

"What happened in there?" Gary demanded.  She didn't answer, just kept walking, so fast that Gary had to take extra-long steps to overtake her.  He planted himself in her way as they passed the bakery.  Her lips were pressed together, needle-thin, and her eyes were clouded with anger.  "What did he--?"  Gary broke off when he saw the blood trickling out between the fingers she held clamped over her right arm.    

"Pay it no mind," she told him from between clenched teeth.  "We should leave."  

"But what--did he do that to you?"  Gary gestured at the man who was still watching them, glowering from the road that led to his tiny cottage.  Anna was nowhere to be seen.  

"It is not what you think, Gary."   

Well, what the hell was he supposed to think?   

Huffing, Fergus joined them.  "Home, now."   

There was no way Gary was going to just let this thing go.  "He hurt you, he can't do that.  Why would anyone want--you were just trying to help!"  

Morgelyn's eyes, solemn as Ash Wednesday, held him rooted to the spot.  "'Tis no matter."   

It was a very great matter indeed, but he had no idea how to handle it.  From out of nowhere, a crowd began to gather, the children from the impromptu storytime joined by shopkeepers who drifted out of their stores.  At Gary's side, Fergus fidgeted.  "Let us be gone," he insisted, his eyes wide as he nodded back over his shoulder.   

Mark had followed them, ranting some nonsense about curses and witchcraft.  Gary couldn't make out half of it.  There were murmurs and questioning eyes all around them, but none too close, yet; people were keeping a wary distance from the strange scene.  Gary pointed over Morgelyn's shoulder.  "Shouldn't there be a--I don't know, a sheriff or something, somebody who can stop this?  That guy oughta be locked up."  

Craning her neck in the direction he pointed, Morgelyn clutched her arm in tighter.  Her face went from warm brown to almost ashen.  Fergus put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her forward, but Mark moved more quickly than Gary would have thought possible and planted himself in front of them.  "You will answer for this, Morgelyn."

"Answer for wha--" Gary started heatedly, but Fergus overrode him, raising his voice.

"You have what you wanted, now let us pass."

Heedless of the circle that was starting to close in on them, Gary pushed himself between the lunatic and his friends, the only friends he had in this place, while Mark brandished his knife to get the villagers' attention.  "She's cursed my family, I tell you!  First my daughter, and now my son!"    

"You cared little enough for your daughter while she lived."  Though quiet, Morgelyn's words carried through the crowd.  Gary blinked at her for a split second, but whirled back when Mark took a step closer.  

"You--you keep away from her!"  Gary spread his arms wide, keeping Fergus and Morgelyn behind him.  There was a muffled whimper on his right; two little kids had their faces buried in their mother's skirt.  Why were they all just watching?  "Somebody stop this guy, he's crazy!"  

"Who are you to interfere in the business of this village?" Mark snarled, raising the knife.    

Gary's voice rose, cracking on his incredulity.  "It's business to attack someone who tried to help your kid?"  

Mark's eyes glittered with suspicion.  The crowd seemed to pull in even closer.  There was nowhere to run, and no one seemed inclined to help.

"Pay him no mind; he does not understand our ways."  Fergus let out a half-hearted obsequious chuckle that convinced no one.  "He hails from a remote island west of Ireland, and he...he came here...uh..."

"By the blood of our savior, Mark, what have you done?"  The new voice tolled from behind Gary with the command of a church bell.  Its accent was just as thick as the others', but something about it froze Gary in place and popped goosebumps on his arms.

The crowd behind them parted, and, jaw twitching, Mark brought his knife down.  The man who strode through the circle of villagers was dressed in heavy brown robes that reached to his ankles and a cowl that nearly engulfed his head.  "Good heavens, child," he mumbled when he saw Morgelyn.  She was hard-pressed to keep her composure now, Gary saw; there was a watery sheen in her eyes, and her chin dimpled with the effort to keep it at bay.   

Gary's protective instincts were warring with his anger when the newcomer pushed his cowl back--and Gary's jaw dropped halfway to the ground.  In mute stupefaction, he watched Fergus shuffle aside, giving the man room to reach for Morgelyn's arm and pry her covering hand free.

"'Tis only a scratch," she insisted quietly, head tipped down.    

The priest turned a scowl on Styles.  "I thought you knew better than to live by superstitions and old wives' tales."  

"My son is ill," Mark growled, not unlike an angry guard dog.  "'Tis the same thing that killed Ronana.  Once again, sickness has invaded our village.  She's cursed us, I tell you, her with her potions and spells!"    

Morgelyn shook her head, her voice more strained than Gary had heard it yet.  "Father, I did not--"  

He held up a hand, and she fell silent.  "Of course not. "  Turning to the knife-wielding psycho, he said, "If your son is ill, Mark, perhaps you should go tend to him."

"Woman's work," Mark spat.   

The older man raised a smoke-grey eyebrow.  "Then why interfere when a woman tries to do it?"

Caught in his own logic, Styles scowled at the ground.  He held his arm stiff at his side, still clutching his knife, but he made no move until another rough-looking man clapped him on the shoulder, jerking his head toward the tavern.  The two stalked off together.

Heaving a sigh, the priest put a hand to Morgelyn's elbow, steering her toward the villagers.  "You'd best not walk home like that."  He paused when he saw the woman with the kids, who were peeping out at him now.  Lifting his voice so that even the people behind him could hear, he said, "Take the little ones home, and spread no word of this foolishness."   

"Come."  Fergus nudged Gary, but he was too stunned to move.  The villagers were dispersing, melting away like April snow now that the show was over, but Gary kept his gaze fixed on the back of the man who was leading Morgelyn away.  His totally overwhelmed brain was trying to make sense of some part of this, any part of this, but it couldn't even form a coherent sentence.    

Insistent tugging on his sleeve finally broke his trance. "Now, Gary."   

He pointed toward the priest.  "Who-who-who--"  

"Now you are an owl?"  Throwing his hands up, Fergus started after the pair.  

Gary trotted after him, able to move only because he was sure now that none of this could be real.  He must have wandered onto a movie set somehow.  "Who's that?" he demanded.

"Father Ezekiel--come on, man," Fergus called over his shoulder, for Gary had stopped again.  

"E-zeke-iel?"  No wonder he--oh, for crying out--Gary started when the church bell rang.  

"What ails you?"  Fergus was back, pulling at his arm.  "'Tis the Angelus, nothing more.  Come."  

Gary followed, his thoughts whirling.  Sleeping on the ground was one thing.  No showers, toothbrushes or indoor toilets--those he could handle.  Chuck and Marissa as characters off of the History Channel, he could eventually get used to.  

But Crumb, the former Chicago Police Detective, as a priest, here--  

That was more than he could wrap his brain around.  




Feedback:  'Tis a consumation devoutly to be wished.   peregrin_anna@hotmail.com


  On to Part 4