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

What's past is prologue.
(The Tempest, II.i)


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


Chapter I

I am the safety of the people, says the Lord; when they shall have cried to me from
tribulation I will hear them...Almighty and merciful God, prevent the fury of cruel
death from coming upon us.
    ~ Salus Populi,  A Mass to Drive Away Plague


"Sum--sum--"

Morgelyn put a hand to her throat and waited for the coughing fit to pass.  She stood frozen on the forest path for a few seconds afterward, but it did not return.  She was simply hoarse after weeks of illness, nothing more.  It had been too long since she had allowed herself to sing.  Finally the song came, shy at first, but gaining strength with every note.

"Sumer is a-cumin in
Loudly sing cucu,
Groweth seed and bloweth--"

A wild flapping of wings startled her, and she dropped her basket.  Sprigs of rosemary, strips of willow bark, and tiny yellow primrose heads scattered at her feet.   Bending to retrieve them, she shook off a cold shiver at the thought that it was wrong, somehow, to be singing at a time such as this.  

The trouble was, it had been such a time for many months now, and surely, even at the worst of times, joy in sunshine and the return of green growing things couldn't be wrong.  Spring was a sign of hope, it had to be--a promise that the world would go on despite the devastation the past months had wrought.  Squaring her shoulders with fresh determination, Morgelyn set off again, humming and swinging her basket.  She did not bother to hide a grin at the thought of how vexed Father Malcolm would have been to see her now.  Before he had left for the north with Lady Nessa he had told her--pulling a face that was somehow even longer than usual--that she should repent all her sins, for the world was surely coming to an end.  Morgelyn sent up a prayer of thanks that he was not the village's only priest.  The man was as dour and bitter as tansy.

Who could possibly believe in the end of the world on a day like today?  The sun burned in a shot-silk sky, the air blew fresh with spring's promises, and the forest shone greeny-gold with new leaves.  Good it was to be alive on such a morning, even--or perhaps especially--after the illness she had only recently escaped.  She had missed the earliest days of spring, the tiny tender shoots peeking from the forest floor.  Now, in what would soon become a riot of color and life, the plants that had grown from those shoots were greedily soaking up sunlight and rain before the leaves overhead became a canopy that would shroud the lower growth in shade.  

She rounded a bend, and the sun shone full in her eyes, momentarily blinding her with its reminder that the day was passing.  It was time to turn her feet for home.  There was one more forest clearing to check, a glade where she had often played as a little girl, but even there she found no sign of the broad leaves and pink spikes of flowers that her grandmother had asked her to search out.  They both knew it was futile, that dragon's wort had not been seen since before Morgelyn was born, but she had promised to look anyway.  She would have promised Grandmother anything today; the old woman seemed more weary than she had since the last lingering days of Morgelyn's own illness, and small wonder.  There were more villagers sick now than there had been in the winter, and Grandmother's efforts to cure this awful illness, or at least ease the pain it caused, were exhausting the only healer Gwenyllan could claim.

If only they could find dragon's wort.  The stories said it was a curative against all kinds of plagues, and perhaps it would heal the rest of the sick, the way Grandmother's poultices and prayers had cured Morgelyn.  It would not matter, then, that she had survived; the villagers would cease to look at her so strangely.  Some of them always did, of course, but most had grown used to her dark skin years ago.  Today had been different.  They knew she had survived the same illness that had taken so many, and they wanted to know why.  She had felt their stares keenly, some sharp and suspicious, some pleading.  Wishing she had answers to give them, she had finished her business quickly and hurried back to the more comfortable expanse of forest that lay between Gwenyllan and her home.  

Soon, she told herself.  Soon this pestilence would run its course--for it could not possibly grow any worse--and when life returned to normal, her neighbors would forgive her for surviving when so many had not.  Grandmother said it had happened for a reason, though she could not tell Morgelyn what that reason might be.  It was enough that one existed, enough that there was hope, with Grandmother at the village helm, dispensing prayer and wisdom and bread along with her potions.  Soon there would be an end to this; soon people would stop dying, and fearing death.  They would celebrate life.

And so, though only the birds would understand her need to break into song, she let the whim have its way once more.

"Sumer is a-cumin in
Loudly sing cucu,
Groweth seed and bloweth med
And sings the wode anew;
Sing cu cu!"

A curlew call responded to her song, and Morgelyn smiled up at the bird, felt the sun fall on her face between the new, barely-green leaves of the oaks and ash.  But the bird up and flew off at the next sound, which dropped Morgelyn's heart to her toes and seemed to chase the few clouds that speckled the sky right over the sun.

The tolling of the church bell on a weekday afternoon could only mean another funeral.

Morgelyn squeezed her eyes shut and tried to recall who she had not seen in the village that morning, but the list was too long--the commons had been nearly deserted.  Who could it have been?  Her friend Cordelia was rumored to be ill, but surely if she had been, Robert would have sent for Grandmother.  What if it was one of the children?  What if it was Father Ezekiel?  Shuddering at the possibilities, she resumed the path.  These days the funerals followed hard upon the deaths, and few stopped to pray over the dead.  Those who had in the beginning had all followed their loved ones to the grave within days, sometimes hours.  In all likelihood, Grandmother had been there, trying to ease the suffering she could not cure.  Morgelyn must have missed her in the village.  Grandmother had seemed so tired this morning, and now to lose another...she would need comfort, and perhaps some sorrel soup, Morgelyn thought, stooping to retrieve a few stalks of the herb that grew by the river.  

The breeze chilled as more clouds blew in off the sea, and, her fingers damp from the sorrel stalks, Morgelyn adjusted her cloak.  She repinned it with her brooch, a gift from her father after his last voyage--second to last, she reminded herself--so many years ago, back when the nearly-closed circle of the pin had been bigger than her palm.  She could not remember her father's face, always so far above hers, but she could still see his hands, and the scar on his left thumb that he teased her mother was the bite of a mer-woman who wanted him for herself.  When she thought of those words, she could almost conjure his voice, warm like August sun, mellow and strong.  

Remembering her own dead, she whispered a silent prayer as the bells faded; tossed a few sprigs of the rosemary out to the river and let the current carry them away.  Her father and grandfather had gone into the sea, left the rest of the family shipwrecked here--but no, not wrecked.  Grandmother had built a life for them, even though her mother had not stayed to live it.  Now Morgelyn could not imagine another home, another life.  And, one by one, the people who made up that life were being swallowed by a darkness that no one understood--not Grandmother who knew every healing plant, not Father Ezekiel who was acquainted with God's purpose, not the physician at the manor across the moor--not even the pope, who was said to have fled Avignon in fear.  No one knew how to stop it.

There was a way.  There must be a way.

With that stubborn thought, she hurried up the riverbank and through the finger of forest that surrounded her home.  When she reached the gate to the cottage garden from the path, she pulled up short.  Someone was emerging from the cottage, and it wasn't Grandmother.

"Father?"  

Father Ezekiel, solemn-faced and more haggard than she had ever seen him, blinked at her for a moment, then pulled the door shut behind him.  Morgelyn stopped just inside the gate, her feet frozen to the flagstone path.  She stared at the black-robed priest as he approached, and fear at what she read in his face turned her muscles to water.  Too many times in the past months she had seen that look directed toward others, when...

The basket slipped from her grasp.  Sorrel, rosemary, and willow spilled again, over her skirt, onto the path...she could see them fall, but she could not stop them.  She could not stop what was about to happen, if it had not happened already.  No, she thought.  Please no, not--no.  It was all she could think over the hammering of her heart in her chest.

Stooping to collect the contents of her basket gave her a reason to look away from the pity and sorrow in the priest's cragged face, but he would not let her escape.  Grasping her wrist as she reached for the basket, he hauled her upright and pinned her with his solemn gaze.  "My dear child--"  He hesitated; even he could not bear to say it.

"Grandmother."  They had shared this news often enough to convey certainty with only a word.  But never about--her hands were shaking, Morgelyn realized with distant surprise.  "She was very tired this morning--she spent all day yesterday with Lara Elders--the babe was turned..."  Morgelyn could hear her own voice, hoarse, as if she had already shouted her denial to the sky; she could feel the thick fingers on her wrist, but it was as if she were not truly there.  She was floating somewhere above it all, as she had when she was in the delirium of her illness.  Even Father Ezekiel's stout shape had lost its solidity.  

"It is more than weariness, Morgelyn."  His words were so distant, they might have been coming from London.  "I stopped by for a visit and found she had taken to her bed, coughing and feverish and--"

"No."  If she did not hear it, it would not have to be true.  "Not so quickly.  Grandmother would have known.  It cannot be."  But it could.  She had seen it happen, had held a child in her arms who had collapsed in the middle of Mass and died before the next sunrise.  

"Morgelyn," Father Ezekiel said, squeezing her wrist as if he knew she was not truly there, as if he wanted to pull her back to earth, "she has the deadliest form of the sickness.  'Twould be miraculous if she lived through the night."

"But, no..."  Like a storm-battered gull, her heart searched for some truth she could bear, some bit of hope.  "She sent me away this morning.  She told me she only needed rest."  How much time had they lost, how much was left before...

"I am sure she did not know.  She thought she was tired--we all thought she was tired."

Far away but insistent, the church bell tolled again.  Once, twice, three times....Morgelyn closed her eyes to count better, to hear the toll instead of the voice of the man beside her.   Insistent, he tugged on her hand in rhythm with the bell.

"You must be strong," he was saying.  "You must accept this as God's will."

Her eyes flew open.  "God's will?  How can it be God's will that all my family be gone, that our only hope in the face of this pestilence--that--that my grandmother--"  Biting her lip, Morgelyn turned her face toward the closed door of the cottage that had always been her home.  "She is all I have, Father.  She--she saved my life, can we not--"  

"There is naught to be done," he whispered.  She knew he was trying to be gentle, but his voice was as rough as her own.  "I am so very sorry."

If only she had found the dragon's wort--she had to try--she took a step toward the door, but the priest pulled her back.  "Perhaps it would be better if you stayed away.  This follows so soon on the heels of your own recovery--"

All her strength returned as she plummeted back to earth; she glared at him with stubborn disbelief.  "You cannot mean that I would not help her!  You, who have never left the side of a single dying man or woman?  And Grandmother, she--she never left anyone--even when their own families have abandoned them, neither of you would leave a dying person to a lonely end.  How could we possibly do that to her?"  

Father Ezekiel held her with that same steady gaze--his eyes were the very color of chestnuts, she thought wildly; why had she never noticed before now?  Finally he nodded.  "I had to try," he said simply, and let go of her wrist.  "She asked me to."

"You both should have known better."

He shook his head, and a faint glimmer of his usual humor returned to his eyes.  "You are as stubborn as she.  Do you want me to come in with you?"

Morgelyn glanced at the doorway.  She shook her head, though part of her wanted nothing more.

"I must tend to the burials, but I will be back before evening.  Morgelyn," he added when she turned for the cottage, "she loves you very much.  And even now, our Lord will not abandon you.  Never doubt that."

"Not for a moment."  She heard, rather than saw, the old man bend down to retrieve her basket and its contents, but she no longer cared.  Only Grandmother mattered now.

The cottage door swung silently on its hinges.  Morgelyn paused to prop it open with a stone, needing the light and fresh air.  Her home was already changed, already cold and dark, though Father Ezekiel had left a fire blazing in the hearth and the sun shone through the open windows.  The pall, the smell of death, the chill that gripped a home just before someone was taken--she knew them all too well, but she had never expected them here.  The curtain that usually hung between the sleeping area and the main room of the cottage was pulled aside, and Grandmother lay in her narrow bed, hands moving restlessly over a coarse woolen blanket, her lips working, eyes closed.  

Morgelyn unpinned her cloak and reached behind her to hang it up, but in her haste she missed the peg and left the brown wool puddled on the floor.  Kneeling at the side of the bed, she rested her hand on one of Grandmother's, stilling its pointless movement.  Warm brown like walnut shells, the crooked fingers closed over her own, and Grandmother's eyes opened.  Her lips curled upward slowly, as though smiling took all the strength she had.  It was not right, Morgelyn thought--only this morning those hands had stirred porridge and written careful script in her book, those lips had been full of admonitions and instructions...

"I could not find it, Grandmother," she choked.  "I looked everywhere, I truly did--"

"Hush."  Grandmother's thumb stroked the back of her hand, and tears stung Morgelyn's eyes.  "'Tis of no importance now."  

"But if I can find a way to help you--"  Squeezing her grandmother's hand, unable to tear herself away from the piercing stare in those warm brown eyes, she asked for permission.  "Let me start the poultices, the tea you made for me--"

"No, dearest, you must listen to me--"  Coughing into a worn cloth--a blood-stained cloth, Morgelyn realized with horror--Grandmother fought for words.  Grandmother, who never lacked for anything to say to anyone, who always had kind words and helpful advice or stubborn rebuttals--Morgelyn reached up and stroked the soft grey curls, limp against the flaxen bedcover.  

"You need rest, and then you will be well."  It was a lie, and Morgelyn knew it as soon as she touched her grandmother's coal-hot forehead.  

"Let us not fool one another.  You know what will happen as well as I--"

"I know it can be stopped."  There had to be something, some cure she had not yet learnt.

"Morgelyn, listen to me.  This is not your fault.  I will not have you blame yourself.  You must do what you can to help, but you must know that you cannot turn the tide of this disease all by yourself, any more than you can stop the ocean waves from coming to shore."

It was not the second coughing fit, nor the grip that crushed her fingers together, that frightened Morgelyn into silence.  It was the desperation and fear in those eyes, eyes she might forget someday, as she had her father's...

...No, she would not forget, she promised herself.  She would never, ever forget.  

There was a bowl of scented water on the floor by the bedside, and a fresh cloth.  Blessing Father Ezekiel, Morgelyn freed one of her hands long enough to dampen the cloth and pat it over her grandmother's forehead.  

"Where did it go?"  Grandmother blinked away the drips that had rolled down over her eyes.  She patted the bedclothes around her feebly, but with increasing vigor when she could not find the object of her search.  "I must...you need..."  The distress in her voice cracked Morgelyn's heart.

"Let me, please."  Morgelyn gathered up the old woman's hands and covered them gently with one of her own, feeling the blanket for anything unusual.  To her surprise, she did find something--down near Grandmother's knee there was a hard, round lump.  Pulling the blanket away, she gasped at what she saw.  A perfectly round sphere of glass, or some kind of crystal, clear as spring water and no larger than a man's fist, rested atop a silver base consisting of a queer circle of strands, each the width of her finger.  Those metal bands were knotted and twisted around each other like the beautiful patterns that had been carved on the ancient standing stones out on the moor, like the design in her own brooch.  Sorrow lifted for a moment, replaced by surprise; Morgelyn picked up the treasure, turning it this way and that to watch the sunbeams from the window dance in the sphere.  Though she could not see how they were joined, it did not roll off its base.  "Grandmother, what is this?"

"Yours, now--"  More coughing, and Grandmother let her head fall back against the pillows, exhausted from the effort.  

Guilty at her lapse, Morgelyn set the sphere down next to the bowl and would have gone for tea, but gnarled fingers snagged the hem of her sleeve and would not let go.  Eyes closed, Grandmother whispered, "Trust...Morgelyn, you have faith.  They will need you, you must call--"  

"Hush, Grandmother, please, all will be well."  Whatever the story was behind the strange treasure, it was not worth such distress, the last of Grandmother's strength.

"No."  The old woman's eyes flew open, and for a moment they were neither glassy nor confused.  "I tried, but the dragon slayer did not appear.  There must be worse to come, and it is up to you--I was entrusted, but I have failed..."

Morgelyn shook her head, finally dislodging the tears that burned the back of her eyes.  "I do not understand.  You have never failed anyone."

Grandmother's sigh, more faint than the beating of a robin's wing, held a mere hint of her perpetual impatience.  "I should have told you sooner.  I thought there would be time.  You must care for the village, as I have taught you.  You must stand between them and disaster."  

"Why can I not stand between it and you?"  It was too much to bear.  All determination fled, and Morgelyn knelt and rested her head on the familiar shoulder.  She wrapped her arms around her grandmother, wishing she could give her warmth and strength.  "You mustn't leave me.  Please, Grandmother, I cannot do this alone."  She did not know what she was to do, let alone how.  It was too soon.  Not yet, she pleaded with the heavens, with God, Mother Mary, St. Bridgit, and even with the older spirits--please, please, not yet.

"You will not be alone if you stand with them.  They will need you, and--"  Grandmother shook in Morgelyn's arms with more coughing.  Raising her head and wiping tears off her cheeks with her palm, Morgelyn swallowed the legions that threatened to follow.  There would be time for grieving later, oceans of time.  She settled the pillows and bedclothes around her grandmother, wondering at how quickly a strong body could come to seem frail and vulnerable.  Her hands shook as she wiped sweat from the dark brow, and Morgelyn had to force a deep breath to calm herself.  She had to do everything she could to make Grandmother comfortable, until...

Another deep breath, another hard swallow, and her hands steadied, then busied themselves pulling damp hair off the dear face.  Soon there would be no more talk, she knew; the dying lapsed into oblivion for hours, sometimes days, before breathing their last.  She had to make sure that her own words did not upset Grandmother any further, that she was strong and kind, as she learned from watching the healer who raised her.  

"Promise me."  

Morgelyn did not realize that she had closed her eyes until the croaking whisper intruded upon her thoughts.  Blinking into the sunshine, she watched her grandmother struggle for words.  

"What must I do?" she asked simply.  She would do anything to ease this pain, anything.  

"You must do all you can, and you must believe--call the dragon slayer.  There is...there is a reason, Morgelyn."  

Dragon slayer?  That was the second time Grandmother had said--Morgelyn bit back one more "I do not understand."  It did not matter now.  What mattered was reassuring the haunted eyes, the worried frown.  What mattered was granting her grandmother peace.

Their hands touched, and Morgelyn rubbed the damp palms against her own, trying in vain to warm them.  

"Promise..."  

Morgelyn raised the gnarled fingers to her lips and kissed them.  She would keep her eyes open from now on; she would memorize every detail of her grandmother's face.  She would never forget.

"I promise."



   

Chapter 2

In what annals has one ever read that the houses were empty, the cities deserted,
the farms untended, the fields full of corpses, and that everywhere a horrible
loneliness prevailed?...Where are our dear friends now?  Where are the beloved
faces? What lightning bolt devoured them? ...We should make new friends--but
how, when the human race is almost wiped out; and why, when it looks to me as
if the end of the world is at hand?
    ~Francesco Petrarch, Epistolae Familiares , 1349


"You should know better, mate.  Takin' your life into yer own hands, y'are."

Shifting his heavy pack on his shoulder and willing himself not to look back at the white sails of the Santa Anna receding on the horizon, Fergus shuddered.  He wanted to dislodge the memory--not merely the words of the sailor who had tried to stop him from deboarding, but also the terror in the man's eyes, as if he had seen a ghost.  As far as the sailor was concerned, Fergus was a ghost indeed.  The ship's captain had swept his keen, practiced gaze over the nearly-deserted harbor town of Polruan and declared that anyone who set foot on shore would not be allowed back on board, upon pain of death.  

But it was not the captain's threat that kept the men on board.   Compared to the agonies of the pestilence that had decimated this tiny corner of Cornwall, along with most of the world, being run through by a blade of Spanish steel would have been a mercy.  The captain knew it, as he knew that allowing one diseased man on board could wipe out an entire crew before the next landfall.  So it was that, once the cargo was unloaded from the rowboats and left on the docks, and the payment was handed over to the first mate at the end of a long-handled shovel, only one man--one fool of a peddler and a bard, Fergus thought ruefully--had left the lulling safety of the wave-rocked boat to put the harder, and infinitely more dangerous, ground under his feet.

He took the quickest route through Polruan, avoiding the temptation of trying to somehow talk his way back on board the Santa Anna, and of making contact with the few souls who roamed the town's cobbled paths.  They watched as he hurried past, their haunted eyes asking unspoken questions, but Fergus would not stop to give them news from the rest of the world.  He had not outrun the plague in four different countries only to let it catch up with him now.  Despite this current detour, his plan remained the same as it had been when he had formed it well over a year ago: keep moving, keep away from the ill, and head for the west--into Ireland, or even beyond. 

Heaving a sigh of relief, he left the town behind him and followed the beach until he struck upon the path that led up the river and into the woods. 

In the year it had taken him to come this far, he had been stunned by all he had witnessed.  He had traveled out of Italy, through France, and along the southern coast of England, tracing a path that, had anyone cared to map it, would have resembled a knotted tangle of rope, now twisting in on itself, now taking unexpected turns.  His wanderer's life left him free to evade the pestilence as best he could, but somewhere along that twisted path, his freedom had become more a curse than a blessing.  Fergus had searched everywhere for shelter, for any of his long-time acquaintances who had survived this curse, hoping one would offer him a place to wait out the danger until the world could resume its normal course. 

That hope, however, had died months ago. 

Village after village, town after town, the pestilence had preceded him.  Numbed by the scope of the disaster, he had found himself on the trail of ghosts.  Men who had been like brothers, women who had been his lovers, children who had listened to his songs and stories, old ladies who had purchased his wares...they were all gone.  Some said the world was ending, and he was inclined now to believe it. 

Those few who had been left untouched by the disease offered no hospitality.  As a stranger and a wanderer, he was often shunned.  Perhaps, people said, he would bring the disease to their door-stoops.  In some cities it was now illegal to enter the gates if one lacked the proper papers or connections.  Fergus had no papers, and while he might have connections, they were not the kind that those in power would consider proper.

So it had gone, month after lonely month, until he found himself here, and still, even with his feet marching steadily in the direction of a tiny cottage on the edge of an equally tiny inland town, he could not have said why he had taken the risk this time.  This last time, he told himself firmly.  This was the last time he would dare hope for a friendly welcome.

Not everyone in Gwenyllan knew him, but some did, and would take him in out of sheer kindness.  At least, they had in the past.  The dark girl, Morgelyn, and her grandmother.  They might be different--not only in the color of their skin, but in the way they looked at the world--but they had a reputation for never refusing anyone help.  They would never turn him away.  That, he told himself, was the reason he was going there--that, and to lighten his pack and line his pockets.  The old woman had asked him to bring her several rare herbs the last time he'd seen them--how long ago had it been?  Nearly winter, two years ago, and he had been on his way to warmer climes, anxious to be on Mediterranean shores before the English cold and damp settled into his bones.  Since then, everything had changed.  A small, nagging voice in his head suggested that his real reason for coming here was not purely mercenary.  Perhaps, the voice mused, he just wanted to reassure himself that one place in the wide world not been changed by this disaster.

The track to their cottage, at least, remained the same.  It was still a difficult course to negotiate from Polruan, especially with a fully-loaded pack.  A pair of wayward gulls followed him along the riverside path, which rose gradually from the ocean and through the forest, on its way to the barren Bodmin Moor.  Crying plaintively, the birds swooped back toward better pickings along the shore when Fergus reached the forest fringes, where the early-morning sunlight was filtered by a leafy canopy of oak and hawthorn. 

Though he had a great many interesting acquaintances, Fergus had to admit that these two were among the most unlikely.  Grandmother Amalia, as all and sundry called the old woman, was from somewhere in northern Africa--near Egypt, he thought, but not right in it--she had ended up in this part of the world when she had accompanied her sailor husband on his travels.  She had raised her granddaughter in the ways of the Isles, and Fergus could never think of Morgelyn as African, no matter her dark skin and hair.  Her name, her speech, and most of her ways were Cornish.  She was not a girl, either, but sometimes Amalia treated her that way--certainly she sheltered her more than was necessary--or so Fergus had thought, until all this business with the pestilence had begun.

When he had first come through Gwenyllan, he had been meandering, stumbling on the village only by chance.  He had been pleased to find a customer for some of his more exotic wares.  The color of Amalia's skin did not bother him, any more than it did the villagers who came to her with one complaint after another.  The stories she had told him of her travels had prompted him to compose a song, one which Morgelyn had shot down with a comment as sharp and poisonous as a Tartar's arrow. 

With a faint grin at the memory, Fergus turned off the main path onto a smaller strip of bare earth that led away from the river and over its sloping banks.  From there, it was just a short hike through the trees to the cottage.  If things really hadn't changed, he ought to spend the rest of his walk sharpening his wits.  Morgelyn had a serpent's tongue when provoked, and he had to admit he enjoyed doing just that.  It had been too long, in this dark time, since he had spoken with anyone who was his conversational equal.  Just the thought brought a whistle to his lips.

But his whistle faded when he crested the hill.   No trace of smoke billowed from the familiar chimney, and his footsteps dragged, as if to keep him in the sheltering forest.  It took a deep sigh and all his resolve to compel him forward.  It was a warm spring day, he told himself; there was more than one explanation for a cold hearth.

Warm day or not, a chill stole into his bones when he first caught full sight of the cottage.  The morning sun had just crested the moor beyond it, casting its rays through the trees and throwing gloomy shadows over the front of the cottage and out into its garden.  There was something dark and shuttered about the home, something lost and wild about the overgrown garden and the gate swinging open in the stiff ocean breeze, that drove hope from his heart. 

Fergus stopped, resting one hand on the broad base of an oak tree.  He had not been able to outrun death here any more than he had elsewhere.  Every instinct he possessed urged him to turn away.  Even if he circumnavigated the cottage and went into the village, there was no guarantee he would find better news.  Sighing in resignation, he decided it would be better to leave this last good-bye unsaid.  The ritual of laying flowers on graves had ceased to have any meaning, and if there were no graves...well, things could only get worse from there.  He would go to Ireland, where, he heard tell, the plague had only scuffed the eastern coast; where he knew no one, and could wait out the end of the pestilence--or the end of the world, whichever came first--in peace.

Then a shadow moved in the darkened cottage doorway, uncurled itself just a little from a huddled position on the stone stoop, and his breath caught in his throat.  Something more than a shadow was there, a hunched outline that might even be human.  Still unsure, drawn inexorably forward, Fergus gathered his courage and ventured up to the fence.  Peering into the shadows, he could see that he had not imagined it--there really was a human figure, sitting on the floor just inside the doorway, wrapped in a black shawl, head bowed, dark hair falling over her--it had to be a her--arms and down to her ankles.  Somehow, in this cold, dark shade of a morning, knowing who it was did not ease his mind.  He ventured into the garden, pulling the gate closed behind him, but there was no movement, not even when his footfalls slapped down the stone path and stopped an arm's length away.

"Morgelyn?"  Fergus swallowed the fear in his mouth, then set his pack down and dropped to a crouch, hoping to catch a glimpse of her face.  "Morgelyn, are--are you all right?"

Her head came up slowly; she blinked, and Fergus found himself looking at a transformed woman--and she was definitely a woman now.  There was no innocence at all left in her face.  Her mouth opened, but no sound came out, and for a moment he was not sure she recognized him.  Shifting from foot to foot, Fergus waited for her usual sharp, saucy greeting, but it didn't come.  He flashed a sardonic smile.

"An eloquent welcome, m'lady.  I know I have been away a long time--"

"A long--" she echoed, then seemed to choke and swallow her words.  "Fergus, we thought--"  Unsteady and slow, she rose to her feet.  Fergus, too, straightened up, mimicking her as if they were attached at the shoulders.  The woolen shawl tightened around her like a shroud as she shivered and pulled it closer.  The grief in her eyes rooted him to the spot.  "We thought you had died.  When you did not come--"  Swallowing again, she stopped, looking down at the ground. 

The twittering of birds in the trees around the house seemed loud, too loud by far.  Uncomfortable with Morgelyn's halting silence, Fergus finally asked, "What has happened?  You were not crying over me; I have a better sense of my place in this world than to believe that."  Gesturing at his pack, he tried to keep his tone wry and light.  "If it is any consolation, I have brought the anise and coriander your grandmother asked for the last time I--"  Morgelyn gasped, and, too late, Fergus realized his misstep; the fresh, sharp stab of pain in her eyes told him all he needed to know. 

He fought back the self-protective instinct that screamed at him to turn and run, run now, run away...no, not just yet.  Her grandmother had been old; it could have been a perfectly natural death.  "When?" 

"Two--two days ago.  We buried her yesterday..."  There was a pause while Morgelyn reached out from her shawl to brush a hand over her eyes, and Fergus fretted about what to say.  He had learnt that times like these were not made for his sense of humor, but what they did require was beyond him.  Morgelyn, however, was too bereft to notice his hesitation.  Forcing the words out between shaky breaths, she whispered, "Oh, Fergus, you--you do not know how good it is to see a friend right now." 

Fergus stared at her, taking in the weight of her meaning.  There were a number of things he could honestly call himself--orphan, peddler, minstrel--but friend, the kind of friend she meant, was something he had never considered.  Friendship implied bonds, it implied roots, and he had always vowed that he would succumb to neither.  He had survived in this dark time by staying free, and by avoiding...he gulped, and the question was voiced before it was fully formed.  "Did she die of the pestilence?"

Bleak, dark eyes met his.  "Yes.  She--it happened so quickly.  We have already lost half the village."  Fergus looked fearfully past Morgelyn to the open doorway, which gaped at him like the maw of some mythical beast.  He took a step back, and Morgelyn's eyes widened as understanding dawned.  "You need not fear," she said in that same hoarse whisper.  "I have been ill as well, but I recovered."

It took no small effort to stand still.  He curled his hands into fists.  "Forgive me, but I have stayed alive this long by steering a wide path around the pestilence.  They--they say that the very air is poisoned, that the only way to escape it is to avoid breathing the air of the sick houses.  I merely--"  Shuffling feet that wanted to turn and run, Fergus nodded again at his pack.  "Do you still want the herbs?"

There was a pause, so brief as to be immeasurable, before Morgelyn nodded, but he read betrayal in her eyes.  Fergus braced himself for a barb, a chastisement--Morgelyn was not patient with him at the best of times.  Instead, there was weary resignation in her reply, a hopelessness that was all-too familiar in these God-forsaken times.  "I understand.  Your payment is inside."  She set an object that he had not realized she had been clutching beneath her shawl, a ball of crystal bound at the bottom by a base of silver Celtic knots, on the step before she disappeared into the dark cottage.

Fergus was left stunned, inwardly cursing his cowardice.  For a moment, a door had opened between them, and now he was not sure which of them had closed it.  When Morgelyn re-emerged, she held out a bag that was twice the size he had expected, jiggling it a little so that he could hear the coins inside.  "Grandmother would have wanted you to have this.  For you to keep your promise after all this time, despite the danger--everything is so much dearer these days, and I know it must be hard for you to find work..."  Trailing off, she followed his stare to the bag in her hand.  She read something in his silence that he had not intended; with another resigned nod, she set the bag down on one of the path's border stones, and backed toward the doorway. 

Despite his own misgivings, Fergus could not retrieve his payment, could not turn his feet toward the gate.  This was not the first time he had been faced with such overwhelming grief, and it was not her barely-suppressed tears that melted the cold wall he had built around his own feelings.  It was what she had called him, and all that implied.  Before he could think it through, he took one step nearer Morgelyn, then another.  "Not as hard as losing friends," he said, imitating her earlier emphasis on the word.  Morgelyn winced; there was a hitch in her breathing, then a sob, and then, before either of them knew what had happened, they were embracing. 

"I loved her so much."  Her voice was muffled in his cloak.

Fergus had comforted women before, of a certain, but generally it had been in the hopes of seducing them.  Perhaps, if he'd had a sister...but he had never known a  family.  He patted Morgelyn's back awkwardly, as he had seen women do with their children.  But the tears that were soaking his shoulder did not respond to his calming.  "She was a remarkable woman," he finally said, his belated admission the only comfort he could offer.

What he did not tell Morgelyn, not then, not ever, was that he was numbed by too many deaths, too many sorrows, to fully share in her grief.  No, what he felt, at that moment, was a curious lightening of his heart--relief at finally finding a friend, there at the end of the world.



 


Chapter 3

Great storms announce themselves with a simple breeze.
    ~ Edward Khmara


McGinty's was quiet.  The lunch crowd had cleared out an hour ago, the cold, incessant rain was keeping tourists out of the city, and the dinner rush wouldn't start until four.  Crumb always liked this space of time.  He enjoyed chatting with the customers, sure, but he also liked putting the bar in order, creating a place for everything and putting everything in its place. 

For a nowhere bar on a nowhere street, Hobson's place wasn't all that bad.  Classic brick and woodwork, framed with the brass detailing he was currently polishing, made the place seem warm even on the bleakest days, while block glass windows let in light and repelled nosy sightseers.  The food was decent, the beer was cold, and the atmosphere was so relaxed that he could actually see the tension melt off people's shoulders when they sat down.  The place had that effect on Crumb, too.  Since he'd started working here a few months ago, his spot behind the bar had come to feel like a second home.  Not that Crumb would ever say so to Hobson, but there it was, undeniable and completely nuts: he belonged here.

Maybe it was the job as much as the bar itself.  The tidiness and instant closure of bartending were immensely appealing after decades of paperwork trails, long-term manhunts, and unsolved cases.  Here, he either had all the glasses clean, or he would soon.  He either talked with the customers until they felt at home, or he left them to stew in peace.  He either made the drinks right, or he watered them down when certain patrons reached the limits of their tolerance and common sense.

Then, he went home.

Cut and dried.  No strings. 

This afternoon there was a bonus.  He had company--company he liked.  Marissa was studying at the end of the bar, her fingers moving as quick as his eyes could follow over the pages of a Braille text.  Smart as a whip, that kid.  Too bad she'd had to cut back on her course load to help run this place when Fishman had gone chasing rainbows out in La-la land.  Thanks to the little guy's windfall, it would be that much longer before she could finish her degree, but she didn't seem to mind.

Of course, that probably had something to do with the overwhelming sense of responsibility she felt for his other employer.  Crumb had the feeling she would have a hard time striking out on her own and actually using that degree without more than a twinge or two of guilt.  With Fishman gone, Marissa was the only friend Hobson seemed to have around, and the guy definitely needed someone to look after him and his crazy--whatever it was he did.

He could tell from the context clues he'd picked up in the past few months that they hadn't been friends for more than a few years--about the time Hobson's police file had appeared and expanded like an accordion, if he was guessing right.  There wasn't any doubt that Hobson needed a damn good friend, but sometimes Crumb wondered why she needed him.  This gig had to be something like being a cop's--well, not wife.  Sister, maybe.  Had he met her before he'd known Hobson, Crumb would have thought that Marissa had a better sense of self-preservation than to walk into something like that. 

Then again, he thought as he put away the polish cloth and started arranging glasses on the shelves behind the bar, she had hired Patrick Quinn.  The fact that the galomping giraffe wasn't working today was another thing to be grateful for--that, and the fact that Hobson hadn't dragged Crumb into any of his crazy escapades in well over two weeks.

Crumb, he kept telling himself, was not Hobson's friend.  Just an employee.  An interested employee, yes.  A sympathetic employee, sometimes.  But not an employee who wanted responsibility for his boss's emotional well-being.

That would not be cut and dried, now, would it?

Oh well.  Crumb shrugged and turned to the shelves under the bar.  No use borrowing trouble.  No doubt Fishman would be back in a couple of months at the most.  No way would he last out in Hollywood, especially with his chosen mission.  The thought of that guy making wholesome, family-oriented movies and television shows was enough to start Crumb chuckling all over again.

"What is it?"  Marissa asked, her fingers finally pausing in their relentless skimming.  One eyebrow raised, she turned her head in his direction.  "What's so funny?"

Oops.  Crumb straightened up with a sheepish smile that he was glad she couldn't see.  "Oh, nothing, I was just thinking about--"

Before he could explain, the door opened and a customer walked in.  Crumb flashed a welcoming smile to the woman who came through the double doors, rain dripping off her oversized navy blue trench coat.

"Welcome to McGinty's.  What can I get you?"

Pausing at the end of the bar, she took off her denim hat and crumpled it into a ball, then stuffed it in her pocket.  She swept a quick look around the room while she shook raindrops out of her curly chestnut hair.  Maybe he shouldn't have offered her that drink, Crumb realized once he got a good look at her.  He wasn't sure she was old enough to be legal. 

Her hand emerged from her pocket, cupped around something that Crumb couldn't make out.  "I--oh, I'm not here for a drink.  I'm looking for someone."

Crumb glanced at Marissa, who had abandoned her book entirely and was listening with her head cocked to one side.  "Are you meeting a friend?" she asked.

"No, I--"  The newcomer did a double take at Marissa's cane and Braille books, but blinked the surprise out of her expression and kept looking around the bar, as if she expected someone else to pop out of the woodwork.  She turned whatever she held in her hands--some kind of container, maybe--over and over.  Slightly bigger than a baseball, it appeared to be metallic, maybe glass, but Crumb couldn't see any more than that.  The movement of her hands was mesmerizing, and Crumb's heart raced just a little faster, the old adrenaline rush starting for the first time in months. 

Their visitor cleared her throat and flashed a guilty--or maybe it was apologetic--look at Crumb.  "This is going to sound nuts, but I--I saw this guy on a bridge yesterday.  The Madison Street bridge, and he was driving a van that said McGinty's, so I thought he might work here, or...something," she finished with a shrug.  "He had brown hair, and he was kind of tall.  He was directing traffic around an accident--or, it was going to be an accident, but he--he stopped everyone before it could happen and..."  Her voice trailed off and she heaved another shrug.

Crumb didn't miss the way Marissa went stiff, her eyebrows knitting together.

"Gary?" she asked.

"Hobson," he muttered at the same time.  "Who else?"

"How did you--" Marissa began, but the woman interrupted her, taking a step closer.

"So you do know him?  Is he here?"

Crumb shook his head.  Her fidgeting was making him nervous.  He wasn't sure what she wanted with Hobson, but he didn't trust her.  There was something...something not-quite-settled about her.

"No," Marissa told her, "he's out right now, but if you leave a message, I'll tell him you came, and he can get in touch with you." 

"Oh, well, no, I can't--I mean, he doesn't know--he wouldn't be expecting me and--"  She closed her eyes and shook her head.  "I'm sorry.  This is a mistake.  I'm going about this all wrong."

"Going about what?  Does Gary know you?"  Marissa's voice was tense, reserved.  Protective, Crumb decided.  He didn't blame her. 

"No, he doesn't."

"But you know him?"

"Well, sort of--I mean, I don't really know who he is, but I know who he is." 

At that, Marissa's expression changed to one of near-alarm,  but the visitor didn't notice.  Sighing, the young woman placed whatever was in her hands into the deep pocket of her coat.  "When would be a good time to find him here?"

Crumb snorted.  He couldn't help it.  The hours Hobson kept were about as predictable as the weather in Chicago.  She stared at him for a moment, but her wide-eyed gaze swiveled to Marissa at the cold tone in her reply.  "I really don't know what to tell you.  I think he'll be around later this evening, but it's sometimes hard to tell.  Can I give him your name, or a phone number?"

Backing away from the bar, she shoved her hands back into her pockets.  "No, no, I--that's okay.  I'll just come back.  Thank you.  I'm sorry to have bothered you, I'll just--I'll come back."  Wood and glass rattled as she beat a quick retreat out the door.

"I wonder what that was all about."  Marissa's fingers worried at a page corner.  "She sees Gary on a bridge, and suddenly she has to find him?"

Crumb told her about the object their odd visitor had held in her hands and her uneasy body language.  "I don't know what it was she had there," he concluded, "but I think Hobson's life just got a little spookier."

Her frown deepening, Marissa said, "I think one of us should be around when she comes back." 

"Darlin'," Crumb replied as he went back to arranging glasses, "you took the words right out of my mouth."

So much for cut and dried.


   


Chapter 4

You wouldn't know a burning bush if it blew up in your face.
And you ask, What am I not doing?
She says, Your voice cannot command. 
But in time, you will move mountains--
It will come through your hands.
    ~John Hiatt  
 

There were times when Gary Hobson really liked his life.  Really. 

Sometimes he'd walk into the bar--his bar--after a day of saves, and be grateful for everything in it: the relaxed crowd celebrating a late-season Cubs' victory; Jake and Elwood begging "Gimme Some Lovin'"; Crumb--Zeke Crumb, of all people--laughing at a customer's joke; Patrick Quinn's easy, ongoing flirtation with every waitress on their payroll; the smell of decent burgers wafting from the kitchen--all that, plus a friend waiting for him who knew what he'd gone through and was ready to listen if he needed to let off a little steam.  He liked all that, and days like that, he liked his life.

This wasn't one of those days.

That morning he'd asked for--not a vacation, even, just some good news instead of a constant barrage of disasters.  All he wanted was a sign that he was doing the world some good, that hurling himself out of bed at 6:30 every blessed morning and going at full tilt for eighteen hours trying to change the next day's news was actually worth it. 

"I'm not trying to rationalize myself into a day off," he told the cat, a split second before the absurdity of rationalizing with an itinerant house pet hit him.  "And I'm not being lazy, but look, it would be nice to know if I was making a difference--if two solid years of this meant anything." 

It didn't work.  Leaving Gary with the paper, Cat padded blithely over to its food.  No one else had heard, or maybe no one was there at all.  The words marched across the page, unrepentant generals barking out commands to an army of one. 

Gary obeyed; of course he obeyed.  How could he not, when to do otherwise would mean tragedy for the handful of Chicago citizens who would make their way into the stories he saw?  The paper had led, he had followed, and now, though he'd saved the day, he had done nothing to stop the ancient hatred that had caused one of the problems in the first place.

He stopped outside McGinty's, his hand on the door pull, and tried to figure out what to do next.  Marissa would be waiting; last night she and Crumb had corralled him with some story about a girl who'd come in looking for him.  Marissa, especially, had seemed concerned about what the unidentified visitor had known about Gary and what she could have wanted with him.  To Gary, the kid sounded like a bit of a crackpot who didn't have anything better to do than hang around Chicago's streets watching stuff happen.  Still, Marissa's "Be careful, Gary" had been more insistent than usual when he'd left this morning.  Now she'd be expecting a rundown of what had happened.

She wasn't going to get it.

Think, Gar, he chided himself as he stepped aside to let a group of business suits enter.  Lunchtime--it was a fifty-fifty tossup as to whether she'd be in the kitchen or bar.  With the menu changes this week, he guessed kitchen, and hoped he could sneak through the office and get upstairs unnoticed. 

The moment he walked into the bar, Gary knew he'd made the wrong choice.  The gantlet of heads that turned toward him included the one he least wanted to face right now, and she knew he was there.  She always did.

Maybe if he took a little detour, going around the tables instead of right along the bar...

"Hey, Mr. H!" 

Too late.  He tried waving at Patrick, intending to dismiss him, but it only encouraged the kid. 

"We're getting a lot of compliments about the new potato skins.  You really should try some!  Here, they just brought out a sample tray."  Patrick held the platter high above the heads of the crowd at the bar. 

Gary wasn't hungry, but he could hardly refuse to eat his own food in front of his patrons.  He ran a hand through his hair and snuck a glance at Marissa.  She sat a few stools down from the one in front of him, poised to ask a thousand questions that he couldn't--wouldn't answer.  Not this time.  Not about this save.

"Mmm...yeah."  Choking down a mouthful of hot baked potato and cheese, he tried to sound as if he actually cared about how it tasted.  "Those are great, Patrick."  Gary backed away, thinking maybe he could skirt the danger zone, but the area around the tables was filled with coat-draped chairs and briskly-moving waiters.  He was forced to walk right past Marissa. 

"Gary?"

"I--uh, I have to run upstairs," he muttered.  "Be back in a--"

He wasn't fast enough.  Marissa reached out to stop him as he passed, and Gary stared down at her hand on his jacket as if he'd never seen it before.  He could sense Patrick's curious frown, but refused to look at the young man.  Instead, he tried to block out the words that streamed through his brain at the sight of Marissa's hand, warm mocha against the black leather.

"What is it, Gary?  What's wrong?"

He lifted his gaze to her face.  She couldn't see him, or the differences between them, but she knew what was important, what was real.  How could anyone think--how could anyone say--he looked at Marissa, and wanted to apologize on behalf of the human race.  But he didn't want to tell her why.

"Nothing's wrong."

"You don't sound as if nothing's wrong."  Her grip tightened, as if she knew he'd take off the first chance he got.  "What happened?"

He leaned in closer, not wanting to broadcast it to the whole bar.  "It was ugly.  I don't want to talk about it right now."  Not now, not ever, and not to Marissa.  He wasn't sure that he could say those things at all.  Before she could ask more questions, or even tell him that she understood, he shook off her hand and pulled away.  "I'm headed upstairs; I'm gonna--I need to just--take a shower or something."  Yeah, that was it.  Wash away the ugliness.  Maybe he could find a ball game to watch, so he wouldn't have to think about it.

"Gary?"  He was two steps away, almost home free, but he turned back at her bewildered, insistent tone. 

"What?" 

Marissa bit her lip, and Gary could have kicked himself.  He wasn't nearly as impatient as he'd sounded--not with her anyway.  Her mouth opened and closed once, but in the end she only said, "Don't forget to sign the payroll checks."  

"Yeah."  Gary pushed his way through the crowd and let himself in the office with a deep sigh of relief.  He hung his coat--with the paper tucked inside--up on the rack and walked over to his desk.  He'd make it up to Marissa somehow, but right now all he wanted was to get the pictures, the voices, out of his head.  Signing paychecks was mindless; maybe that would work.  He flopped down in his chair and pulled out a pen. 

But the morning wouldn't leave him alone.  Even as he scrawled his name over the light green strips of paper, it played out in his mind.  It had started with the guard, all huffy and crabby in his little hut at the entrance to the gated community on the outskirts of Lake Forest--and it had gone downhill from there.

"Look buddy, I'm not here to steal anything.  I'll only be here a couple of minutes, but if you don't let me in, you're gonna be sorry."  Gary's pleas fell on deaf ears until the school bus pulled up to the gate and two groups of kids--one Caucasian, one African-American, got off, hurling racial epithets at those left on the bus and at each other.  Luckily for Gary, the shouting match diverted the attendant.  He was able to sneak past the guardhouse and a few blocks over to the so-called wooded section of the community--really just a couple of unsold lots with a finger-thin creek running behind them. 

This was where those same kids took their fight, away from the prying eyes of their parents and the guard; this was where two of them would have ended up with broken bones and concussions.  Gary's interference stopped the fight and kept LeVon Jackson and Geoffrey Kantz out of the hospital, but not without a tussle.  The words he'd rehearsed about getting along and acting like civilized human beings weren't enough, and he'd had to pull them apart and push them each on their separate ways.  He suspected the kids had bowed more to his size than to his authority as an adult.  There was nothing he could do to change the attitudes that had started the fight in the first place.  They went off, grumbling, in different directions--but not before the white kids threw a few of their slurs his way.  While they'd been indifferent to his words, he had carried theirs all the way back to his home.

Gary shuddered and looked down to see that he'd pushed the pen right through Patrick's paycheck.  Great.  Now he'd have to explain to Marissa why she needed to print out a new one--or figure out how to do it himself. 

Maybe he should tell her about it--after all, there was no one else to whom he could blow off steam.  Calling Chuck might be an option--but the last time he'd brought up the paper, Chuck had changed the subject faster than he usually changed girlfriends.  He'd left Gary with the distinct impression that the paper wasn't a comfortable subject for a would-be Hollywood producer.  Crumb might have understood--he'd had to deal with an awful lot of this kind of stuff as a cop--but he always claimed he didn't want to know what Gary did when he was away from the bar.  So that left Marissa.

No, Gary told himself, tapping the pen against the edge of the desk.  He couldn't do it.  She'd be mature about it, she'd sympathize with him, she'd say the right things.  But Marissa, who couldn't practice in front of a mirror, wouldn't be able to hide the horror that would flash across her face at this prejudice.  He wasn't going to set this out in front of her just to relieve his own feelings.  All of that hatred could just as easily have been directed at her as she made her way down some Chicago street, and that bothered Gary most of all.  Why couldn't he do something to change stuff like that?

He rubbed his face with both hands and sat back in his chair.  Maybe he really should go take a shower--but then there was a tapping on the office door, and he sighed.  "Come in, Patrick."  Gary didn't even have to look up.  No one else did the "shave-and-a-haircut" knock.

"Hey, Mr. Hobson, there's somebody here to see you.  She said it was important." 

What now?  They really needed to rethink their open-door policy, Gary decided as he got to his feet.  He pushed the morning's events to the back of his mind and nodded at Patrick, who pushed the door farther open and let a young woman through.  She was barely taller than the divider, and she bit her lip nervously when Gary lifted an eyebrow.  Her face, pale and sprinkled with freckles, wasn't one he recognized.  Pausing behind Marissa's chair, she twisted the brim of a denim hat in her hands.

"Uh, hi, Miss--?"  Gary stepped closer and held out his hand; she stared at it for a second, then stuffed the hat into her trench coat pocket.

"Kelyn."  She gripped his hand and pumped it as if she were trying to start a well.  "I mean, Gillespie.  Kelyn's my first name, it's a family thing."
 
"Are you here about a job?  Because usually my partner takes care of that, and she's--Patrick, where's Marissa?"

Patrick was staring at Kelyn with his mouth half-open, looking as moony as a cartoon character.

"Patrick?"

"Huh?" 

"Where's Mar-is-sa?"  Disentangling his hand from Kelyn's and shaking it time to his question, Gary enunciated each syllable.

"Oh!"  The bartender shook himself out of his trance.  "Uh, still out in the bar, Mr. H.  Want me to get her?"

"No!"  The young woman shook her head, her eyes pleading with Gary--for what, he had no idea.  "I'm not here about a job.  I need to talk to you, Mr. Hobson." 

"You do?"

"Yes, but--"  She glanced back over her shoulder at Patrick, who was watching the whole exchange like a Ping-Pong match.  "Could I speak to you alone?"

"Oh!" Patrick exclaimed, when Gary turned a pointed stare his way.  "Oh, yes, I have to, you know, tend the bar, because that's what I do, I'm the bartender, and the bar's out there..."  He trailed off, then clapped his hands together.  "Yeah.  Okay.  Well, nice to have sort of met you, and--"

"Good-bye, Patrick."  Gary fought the urge to push him out the door.

"Right.  Bye!"  Patrick backed out the door, half-nodding, half-bowing.

"Thank you, Mr. Hobson."  Kelyn's stance relaxed a little bit, but she didn't say anything else.

"He can be kind of--well, he's, he's Patrick, is all," said Gary with what he hoped was a reassuring smile.  Whatever she wanted to tell him, she was having a difficult time getting started.  Pulling out Marissa's chair, he added, "Here, why don't you sit down, Ms. Gillespie?"

"Oh, call me Kelyn.  Please.  Ms. Gillespie sounds like I'm a teacher or something."

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, then fled.  Gary sat in his own chair while she perched on the edge of the other, ankles crossed, her right foot jiggling up and down so quickly it was almost a blur.  It would have been funny, if it hadn't made him so nervous.

"And I'm Gary.  So, you--you wanted to talk to me?"  He held out a hand, palm up.  "I'm sorry, I don't remember meeting you."  Which didn't mean a thing, actually.  He ran into a lot of people in his...line of work.

"No."  Kelyn shook her head, then nodded it.  "I mean, yes, yes, I wanted to talk to you, but we haven't met, not exactly." 

Gary rubbed an eyebrow with his thumb.  "Not exactly?"

"I saw you two days ago at the Madison Street bridge.  I was walking home from work, and I saw how you stopped the moving van from hitting the messenger who had fallen off his bike." 

So this was the kid that Crumb and Marissa had been so worried about?  She didn't look as if she'd hurt a fly.  What had she done to get them so riled up?  At the moment it didn't matter--anything was better than sitting here thinking about...what he'd been thinking about before. 

Kelyn spoke rapidly, her head down, and watched her own fingernail worry at a chip in the edge of Marissa's desk.  "You were nearly hit yourself, and it takes guts for anyone to stop traffic in downtown Chicago during rush hour, but the thing is--"  She swallowed hard, and finally lifted her head, her blue eyes boring into Gary's.  "The thing is, you stopped your own van and were getting out when the guy on the bike fell over.  Not after.  You knew it was going to happen, didn't you?"  Her hand dropped back into her lap.  There was no more fidgeting as she waited for his response.

Gary, on the other hand, had to fight the urge to stand and pace away from Kelyn.  He remembered the accident she was talking about.  He'd hoped to be at that bridge in time to stop the messenger from falling, but traffic had been so heavy that he'd been lucky to get there at all.  If he hadn't it would have been bad--the bike messenger killed, a five-car pile-up on the bridge, and...Gary gulped, recalling the end of the article.   One pedestrian, an unidentified young woman, critically injured when a SUV whose driver had swerved to avoid the pile-up jumped the curb...

Was that what this was about?  Was Kelyn the one who would have been hit?  But how could she have known?

She still had him pinned with her expectant stare.

"Well, I--it was slick and he looked like he..."

Gary broke off as Kelyn shook her head vehemently, curly brown hair swinging wildly into her face.  "No!  No, I saw it, Mr. Hob--Gary.  I saw it.  You stopped before anything happened.  You knew."

"Now, now, wait a minute."  Rolling his chair back just a little, Gary held out a hand.  Who exactly was she, anyway?

"It's all right," she rushed to assure him, eyes wide and disconcertingly blue, almost like--they reminded him of Chuck's, Gary realized.  "Really.  I think I know how you knew, and that's why I have to talk to you.  I--I have something that belongs to you."  Reaching into her coat pocket, Kelyn was about to say more when the office door opened and Marissa stepped in.

"Gary?"

Kelyn drew her hand out of her pocket and clamped her mouth shut. 

"Right here."

"Is everything all right?"  Marissa stopped just behind Kelyn, hands folded atop her cane, a small frown creasing her brow.

"Sure, it's fine.  This is Kelyn Gillespie.  She came to, uh--see me..."

Marissa held out her hand, but the expression on her face was a mere ghost of her usual welcoming smile.  Kelyn flashed a strange, unreadable expression at Gary before she stood and shook Marissa's hand.

"I was just leaving," Kelyn filled in when Gary couldn't decide how to finish the introduction.

Gary pointed at the pocket where she'd stowed whatever it was that she'd been about to show him.  "But you said--" 

She was edging for the aisle, aiming to go around Marissa.  "It's all right, really.  You're busy."

"I want you to stay and explain what you meant."

"I didn't mean to interrupt," Marissa said, smoothing her features into a serene mask, but Gary knew better.  She'd entered the office with no other purpose. 

"It's better if I go now," Kelyn insisted. 

"No, Gary's right, stay."  Marissa flashed that tight, tense smile again.  "I just need to borrow him for a moment.  We have a little problem with one of the wait staff, so if you'll excuse us, just for a minute--Gary?"  She tilted her head toward the kitchen.  "Care to join me?"

Gary didn't want to leave, and he knew that Kelyn could see through the lie as well as he.  Marissa might be good at a lot of things, but telling fibs wasn't one of them.  "Can this wait?"

"No."  Marissa had already made her way to the kitchen door and was holding it open for him.

This time Gary didn't bother to hide his sigh.  For a guy with no romance in his life, he sure got plenty grief from the women in it.  "Look, Kelyn, I'll be right back, okay?"

Gary's guest looked from him to Marissa and back, bit her lip, and finally nodded.  She lowered herself back into the chair.  "Okay."  As Gary left, he heard her say under her breath, "I've waited this long, what's a few more minutes?"

Her back to him, Marissa had stopped to wait for Gary a yard or so away from the door.  He pulled her into a tiny opening behind the shelving, out of the path of kitchen traffic.  The bustle of the cooks and their assistants was enough to cover their conversation.  "All right, what's the big deal?" he whispered between his teeth.

"Gary, that's the same woman who was here yesterday when Crumb was working, the one we told you about."  Marissa's voice was low and insistent, her mouth tightening into the firm line that indicated she was in full-blown bossy older sister mode.  Unfortunately, between what had had happened that morning and the weird hints his visitor was dropping, her protective attitude only brought out the rebellious teenager in Gary.

"And she seems to have something she needs to tell me, so why did you pull me out of there?"  Gary reached out his hand and braced himself against the shelf just above his head. 

"Because I don't quite trust her, and neither did Crumb, and you know how good his instincts are.  He was a cop, he knows about people."

"He's paranoid about people--"

"Not without cause--"

"--and you're starting to sound just like him." 

It was a good thing they weren't in the cooler, because the look Marissa flashed him would have curdled the milk.  She set her chin at a level that Gary recognized as dangerous, even in his aggravated state.  "What has she said to you?"

"She didn't get a chance to say much of anything yet!"

"Gary--"

"Okay.  Okay."  He ran a hand through his hair, crossed his arms across his chest, and checked to make sure there was no one else listening to their conversation.  The cooks were all at the far prep table, absorbed in chopping onions and slicing tomatoes.  "She was at the bridge the other day, the thing with the bike and the moving van."

Marissa nodded without a trace of surprise.  "I told you before, that's what she said, and she also said she knew who you are."

"It's more than just that, Marissa."  Scanning the kitchen again, he dropped his voice even lower.  "She said she saw me get out of the van before the guy on the bike fell.  I think she knows something."

Marissa's expression changed from suspicion to surprise, her eyes going round.  "What could she possibly know?  Does she think you're a psychic?"

"That's what I was trying to find out before you showed up, which is why I need to get back in there."

"I'm going with you."  Marissa started for the door, but Gary grabbed her arm.

"No, no, you saw how she reacted when you came in."

"Not exactly," Marissa reminded him dryly.

"I meant--"

"She was going to leave, yes, I did notice that."

Releasing Marissa's arm, Gary shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back.  "She wouldn't say two words while Patrick was there, either.  I don't think she'll tell me anything if you're standing guard like a pit bull."

"Gary!" 

Oh, man, he was batting a thousand today.  Wincing at the hurt tone in her voice, he tried to explain.  "I didn't mean that.  It's just, I need to know what she knows, or what she thinks she knows, and it's pretty obvious she won't talk with other people around."

"But what if she's dangerous?"

Gary snorted.  "Her?  She's just a kid, and she's half my size!  I can take care of myself.  Trust me.  I do it every day."

Marissa put one hand on her hip and cocked an eyebrow, eliciting a strange look from the waiter who went past with a tray of the infamous potato skins.  "I don't mean physically."

Their voices had risen.  Passing waiters weren't the only ones in the kitchen paying attention to the debate between their bosses.  Gary heaved sigh number--oh, he didn't even know any more--and forced his voice back down to a whisper.  "Look, I really don't think she's here to hurt anyone.  But if it turns out she's a hired assassin, you'll be the first to know, okay?"

"You don't need to be sarcastic, Gary.  I'm concerned about you, and about what this means." 

Gary looked over his shoulder; he could see Kelyn's wavy outline through the mottled glass of the office door.  "I know.  It's strange.  But strange things seem to happen around here a lot.  If I need anything, I'll give a holler, okay?  If I don't go back in there alone, I don't think I'll ever know what this is all about."  The frown remained etched upon his friend's forehead.  "Trust me, Marissa.  I can take care of myself." 

"I do trust you.  It's her I'm not so sure about."

"Marissa--"

"Go."  She waved him toward the office.  "I'll be out in the bar."  But she was still there, listening, when he pulled the door closed behind him.

Shaking his head, Gary stepped around the chair to face his visitor.  "Sorry about that."

"Your friend's not a very good liar."  Kelyn searched his face for some sign of...what?  He couldn't tell.

"She's not used to it," Gary muttered. 

"And she doesn't like me."

"No, it's not like that."  He wanted, really wanted, to pace around the office a bit, but he figured that wouldn't get him very far with Kelyn.  Instead, he picked up a stapler from the desk and turned it around in his hands.  "She's just...she's wondering what you're up to.  I mean, strangers don't come in here asking for me every day."  Especially not strangers who dropped hints like Kelyn's.  "No one's going to bother us now, so will you just tell me what it is you're here to--to tell me?"

Hitching a lock of hair behind her left ear, Kelyn let out a determined breath, then began again.  "What I saw on the bridge was real, wasn't it?  I meant what I said: I know what you know, and how you know it."  She peered up at him, gauging his reaction with a keener gaze than she'd had before.  "I know about the paper."

Had the proverbial feather been in the room, it wouldn't have been needed to knock Gary over.  The breeze of its drifting down from the sky would have been enough.  The stapler fell to the floor; he sank slowly into his chair.  "Wha-what paper?" he stammered, but he knew that it was a feeble attempt at deflection.  At least the evidence was safely hidden in his coat pocket.

"The Sun-Times," Kelyn said in a matter-of-fact tone.  "It comes to you a day early.  You know what's going to happen, and you choose to stop whatever you can--the bad things, that is.  I even saw the cat the other day, watching you from the railing of the bridge."  Right on cue, Cat slid out from behind a filing cabinet and leapt into Kelyn's lap.  She started, then smiled and rubbed it behind the ears and all the way down its back--Cat's favorite form of attention.  "Hey, sweetie," she cooed.  "I've missed you."  Cat snuggled its head under her chin like a missing puzzle piece finding its place.

Gary watched the whole thing with his mouth hanging open.  She didn't know something.  She knew everything.

Kelyn reached out a hand and probably would have patted his leg, had he been sitting any closer.  "Don't worry.  I haven't told anyone, and I won't.  Mr. Snow explained it all to me a long time ago, how important it was that no one know.  That's why I didn't want to talk with your friends around."  Kelyn leaned over the comfortable bundle of feline in her lap while Gary, still dumbfounded, gaped helplessly at the pair.  "I'll keep your secret, I promise.  It's so good to finally find you, and to be able to give you this."  She sat back and was reaching into her pocket again when Gary finally found his voice.

"Wait, wait--you said--you knew Lucius Snow?"  As far as Gary had known, his predecessor hadn't had any friends at all, and Kelyn couldn't have been much more than a child if she'd known him. 

"Actually, my grandmother did.  Mr. Snow saved her life once at Union Station.  Someone bumped into her and she nearly fell onto the tracks, but he caught her.  She bought him a cup of coffee, they got to talking, and became friends."  Kelyn smiled, her eyes taking on a distant cast as she told the story.  "Grandma came to live with my dad and me after Mom split, and she was always taking in strays--animals and people.  I think she realized how lonely Mr. Snow was, and she sort of adopted him, too.  He'd disappear for months at a time, but she'd always manage to run into him again, eventually.  She told me that he accepted all her dinner invitations, but only showed up for half.  One night--I think because he was tired of being accused of insulting her cooking--he told her about the paper."

"Just--just like that?"  Over the past two years, it had been hard for Gary to share his secret with anyone. 

"It was more than that."  Kelyn's expression turned serious; she stroked Cat in a soothing rhythm.  "He was tired of covering it up.  I think it all got to be too much for him.  He had missed something, something in the paper that he'd wanted to fix.  He came over for dinner, that night, and he was just so quiet and sad..." 

Kelyn bit her lip.  Her fingers traced circular patterns through Cat's fur.  Gary read pity in the girl's face even now, and he cringed at it, cringed for Snow and what it must have been like for him to fall short of the paper's demands.  He'd had a few tastes of that in the past two years.

"Afterward, while they were in the living room, Grandma must have just asked the right question, because it all came tumbling out, all the stories, the explanations--as much of an explanation as he had."

Gary could still hear Renee laughing at his confession about the paper.  "How did your grandmother react?"

Kelyn chuckled.  "She hardly even blinked.  I don't know what he expected.  Probably that she would call the police or the mental hospital, but she didn't.   She just said, 'Everyone has a job to do, and they can make it a burden or a blessing.'  And then--"  Her face lit up in a mischievous smile.  "And then I must have sneezed or coughed, because they realized I'd been hiding on the landing--I heard the whole thing!  That's when he made me promise not to tell anyone, and I never have.  I never will, either."  With a twinkle in her eye, she traced an X over her chest.  "Cross my heart."

Gary stared at her for a moment more, unable to form coherent words.  She knew too much for it all to be some kind of joke.  He stood, paced, ran a hand through his hair and over his mouth.  He had no idea what question to ask first.  "Why--what--so, how long did you know him?"

Head cocked to one side, Kelyn thought for a moment.  "I was nine when that happened; we saw him off and on the whole time I was growing up.  When my grandmother died, I was away at college, but I came back for the funeral, and he was there.  And, and I realized--"  She blinked bright eyes at him.  "--that here was the man who had given her to me, all those years ago, when he pulled her out of the path of that train.  That even though she was gone now, if it hadn't been for Lucius Snow, I wouldn't have known her at all.  He did things like that for people every day, and he almost never got thanked for it."

She hitched a shoulder.  "We corresponded a little while I was in college.  Then, after I graduated, I came back here to look for a job, and I stopped to visit him one day at that old hotel where he lived.  He was sick.  I think he knew then that it wouldn't be long before--"  Swallowing hard, Kelyn flashed a sad smile at Gary, who was leaning against a filing cabinet for support in the face of this onslaught of information.  "Well, of course he knew.  Even if it wasn't in the paper.  He gave me something for safekeeping, and said that I would know what to do with it when the right time came."

Setting Cat down on the floor, Kelyn got to her feet.  This time when she reached into her pocket, she pulled something out.  Two somethings, actually.  A wrinkled blue envelope, and...

Gary stared down at the proffered items.  "What the heck is this?  A crystal ball?"

"I--I don't know.  No one seems to, not exactly anyway.  Take it," she prompted, thrusting the...whatever it was...at Gary, who accepted it reluctantly.

Great.  Another mystery, just what he needed.  Gary turned the object over in his hands.  A glass globe, about the size of a tennis ball, rested on a base of tightly-woven metal strands.  It reminded him of a snow globe music box he'd bought the year before, except it didn't have a scene or a winding key--or snow, for that matter.  Down on the floor, Cat was rubbing against Kelyn's ankles and purring. 

"Those are Celtic knots."  Kelyn traced one narrow path of tarnished metal.  "They symbolize eternity, I think.  This whole thing is...it's old.  Very old.  It's been in my family for generations, apparently, but we're just...caretakers.  I didn't know anything about it until Mr. Snow gave it to me.  The letter is from my grandma to him, but I don't think either of them will care if you read it." 

She watched Gary; he knew she was waiting for a response, but he had no idea what to say.   "What is this thing supposed to do?" he finally managed.

Kelyn frowned.  "I think it's more a matter of what it needs you to do, if you're the right one.  But it's all in the letter."  She held the envelope up again, and, when Gary took it, pulled her hat out of the other pocket and squashed it down over her curls.  "That's all I know about it, and all Mr. Snow ever knew, as well.  When he gave it to me, he told me that he was too old for magic.  I don't know if he meant this, or that paper of his.  Yours, now," she added with a wry smile that widened as she added, "You have no idea what a relief this is.  I never thought I'd find anyone else like Mr. Snow."

"Did he know about me?"  Gary set the little globe on his desk, unsure that he had any business taking it.  It mattered a heck of a lot less to him right now than learning more about Lucius Snow and the paper.  "Did he know that anyone at all would get the paper after him?"

"He didn't say.  He certainly never mentioned your name, or you would have been a good deal easier to find.  So you--"  She waved her hand in the air.  "You run around Chicago doing good deeds, too?  Just like him?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess so."

"Well, then, it looks like the city's in good hands.  Mr. Snow would have been glad to know that.  I think he would have liked you, Gary Hobson."

Gary was still trying to put it all together, to figure out why in the world he would need a crystal ball.  Or, if Kelyn was right, why it would need him.  Either way, it didn't make much sense.  To make matters worse, as he shook her hand again, he read something in her eyes--the same pity she'd had for Snow.  This kid felt sorry for him.

Because of the paper.  Because she didn't see just him, she saw what he could be, after a few more years of days like today.  A lonely stray who'd be lucky to be taken in by a kind-hearted stranger.  Kelyn looked at her watch and clucked her tongue.

"I really have to go,: I have to be at work in twenty minutes.  If there's ever anything I can do, if you ever want to hear more about Mr. Snow, not that there's a lot to tell, just look me up, okay?  I work at the Regenstein Library over at the University of Chicago.  Bye, Cat," she added, scratching the top of the tabby's head.

"Sure, sure, I'll do that."  Gary wasn't sure if he meant what he was saying.  He didn't know if he could take that look again.  "I--uh, thanks."  With a wave of his hand, he indicated the contraption on his desk.

"Don't thank me until you've read that letter."  Kelyn waved as she rounded the divider, and was gone.

Gary scratched the back of his head furiously, until he remembered how Chuck had always said he'd get a bald spot doing that.  Sinking heavily into his chair, he stared for a moment at the objects on his desk, then picked up the envelope, pulled the letter out, waited for a couple seconds to make sure it wasn't going to self-destruct, and propped his feet up on the desk and read.

The handwriting was neat, precise; black ball-point on unlined, pale blue paper.

My dear Lucius,

This is something that I think should rightfully go to you.  It has been in my family
for as long as anyone I can remember was able to remember.  There are interesting
stories associated with it, most of which are probably pure baloney, but the idea
that comes through in all of them is that we hold this as a trust, until we can find
the right person to do what needs to be done. 

My family came from Cornwall, which, interestingly enough, is also where the legends
say King Arthur was born.  Depending on which stories one believes, our ancestors
were either bards, gypsies, or common thieves.  The truth is, they were probably all of
the above, and more.  Or less, depending on your point of view.  But I digress.  Which,
I am sure, does not surprise you in the least.

What all the layers of legend, malarkey, and pure bull boil down to, is that there's
something special about this--and no, it's not a crystal ball; or at least, no one I know
of has ever seen the future with it.   The story goes that once, long ago,  it could be used to
call for a hero in times of great need; that some special magic would allow it to send a cry
for help across time and distance, if only the right person, a hero, had the glass in hand
to receive the call.  Our family was charged with finding a hero to fulfill the duty.

I know of no one more heroic than you, Lucius.  When my mother gave this to me we laughed
about the old stories, and I thought it nothing more than a family heirloom.  But knowing
you has changed all that.  I see now that the knights and dragon slayers never really died out;
they've only taken on new guises.  I've no wish to add to your responsibilities, and I honestly
don't know if there's any truth or magic left in the stories and the globe.  Probably it is no more
than a talisman.  I want you to have it because you, my dear friend, deserve something to mark
the fact that one person here in Chicago knows and honors who you are--a dragon slayer with
a newspaper for a sword.

Your friend,
Amanda Gillespie

Gary frowned at the letter as he read it through again.   So what was the big deal?  Sounded like a crazy family story to him, the kind of thing that people who kept trunks in their attics passed down like a multigenerational game of "Operator".  Whatever the thing had meant, it surely was nothing more than a relic now.

He pocketed the letter and picked up the glass globe.  It was nothing important, not compared to the disturbing fact that someone else knew about the paper--which could complicate his life at some point down the line.  Or maybe not.  Kelyn Gillespie seemed to take the fact that he got tomorrow's news today in her stride, at the same time respecting the need to keep it quiet.  She'd never caused Lucius Snow any problems.  She'd even hesitated to say anything to Marissa--Gary had to smile at that. 

He really ought to go out and talk to her.  But that would mean explaining his earlier behavior, and he still hadn't figured out how to keep the details of the save from her.  Maybe he should--

The smile fell from his face as he stared at the item in his hand.  Right before his eyes, as he was holding it, the clear globe began to change, to swirl with colors, so faint that he was sure, at first, that he must have imagined them.  But when he held it up in the sunshine streaming through the back office window, the colors went right on changing--blue, purple, red, gold, green.  Though the window wasn't open, a cold breeze brushed the back of his neck, and Gary jumped, dropping the crystal ball.  It rolled under the desk, and the energetic swirl of color blinked out, as if someone had thrown a switch.

"What the--" he whispered, but he broke off when, from the file cabinet where it had definitely not been a few seconds ago, Cat leapt into his arms.  They shared a split-second, wide-eyed stare, and then Cat jumped the rest of the way to the floor, pawing at the globe until Gary bent to retrieve it.  Cat pawed at his hair and mewed loudly in his ear while he rolled the thing out from under the desk.

"Cut it out, would ya?  I don't know what it's for, either."  Gary brushed cat hair off his shoulders and stood up, globe in hand.  Cat's mewling rose to a yowl and it jumped from the floor to the desk in a blur.  Perched atop a pile of Braille printouts, it fixed Gary with a look that said it wanted something, and that if only they both knew Morse code, it would be tapping its paws to get the message across.

Gary looked at the globe again, but the colors had gone.  If not for Cat's odd behavior, he would have chalked up the whole thing to his own frustrating day and the overactive imaginations of Kelyn Gillespie and her family.  Cat was still making noise, though, and Gary knew that, no matter how little the thing had meant to Snow, it was probably going to make his own life more complicated.

Because he needed that. 

Damn.

Why couldn't whoever ran these things just put what it wanted in print?  Why did he have to figure all this stuff out on his own?  It wasn't bad enough the paper came between Gary and his love life, his best friends, even his parents--now it had to throw another wrench into the works.

"Well, I'm not doing it, whatever it is," Gary declared firmly.  He set the globe down on the desk next to Cat.  "I'm going upstairs and I'm going to order a pizza and watch ESPN, even if it's Australian Rules Square Dancing."

But Cat made it to the stairs before Gary, blocking his way and hissing indignantly.  When Gary would have stepped over it, the animal went nuts, yowling and pawing at him.  It actually got one claw up under his pants leg and left a painful scratch.

"What is your problem?" 

In response, Cat bounded back onto the desk and nudged the globe with its nose.

"Oh, no.  Huh-uh.  You think you're gonna keep me from relaxing in my own home?  I'm just gonna go out to my bar and have a drink."  He'd find something to tell Marissa.  Dodging her questions would be easier than whatever the heck was going on here. 

Cat leapt to the divider, screeching in Gary's ear as it launched itself toward the door. It landed on Gary's hand, claws out, and took several layers of skin along with it as it dropped to the floor.  "Damn!"  Gary bent double, his left hand covering the scratches on his right.  "What the hell is--"

The door swung open, catching the top of his head with its edge, and the world went black.

"OW!"  Gary stumbled back into the office, blinking through big dark splotches.

"Gary?  Oh my God, I didn't know you were there--what's happened?"  Marissa came through the doorway, but stopped before she rounded the divider.

"Door hit me on the head.  Cat's insane," Gary spat through clenched teeth and a driving, pounding headache. 

"Cat?  What's he yowling about--Gary, what is going on?"  Marissa had to raise her voice over the cat's insistent cries.  Gary blinked dark spots away and snatched the globe just to shut the feline up.  He pulled his coat off the hook, shoved his arms through the sleeves and the crystal ball into a pocket, and started for the door.  This was his chance to escape.

Marissa reached out a hand.  "Where are you going?  Are you okay?  Let me help you."

"I'm fine."  Gary edged toward the door.

"Nothing about this sounds 'fine'."  She caught his sleeve as he edged past her.  "What is Cat so upset about?  Why won't you talk to me, Gary?  What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he snapped peevishly.  The last thing he needed right now was to rehash the past few hours of his bizarre life.  "Just--just drop it, okay?  I gotta--I gotta go think."

"But--Gary--"  The hurt look on her face--how many times was that today?--was enough to send him out the door even faster.  Yeah, he was being a jerk, and he knew it.  But there were more important things than hurt feelings going on here.  Well, stranger things, anyway.  And right now he wanted to put as much distance between himself and his pathological cat as he could.  Oblivious to the stares from Patrick and his customers, Gary stalked through the bar and out onto Illinois Street, headed for the lake.



 


Chapter 5

I could cut you off with a shoulder of stone,
Smoke all night and leave the party alone,
Screw myself with an inscrutable pout,
But I just want you to come figure me out.
I don't want to be another mystery, oh no.
    ~Dar Williams


Gary was exactly where she had suspected he'd be.  Technically, it was Spike who found him, but Marissa knew this lakeside park and this particular bench well enough to get to it unassisted.  It was Spike's "woof" of greeting, and the squeak of leather and the scrape of denim, that told her it was her friend on the bench.

"Gary?" she asked, just to be sure.

"Yeah."  His voice was distant, as if filtered through a phone line.  She tugged Spike around until they stood in front of the bench, a gentle breeze from the lake hitting her back, making her shiver in her thin cotton sweater.

"Want to tell me what's going on?"

"I would if I could," he mumbled. 

"But you can't so you won't?"  His earlier irritation was gone, but he wasn't making this easy.  Marissa took a deep breath.  "Come on, Gary, it's not as if there's nothing you can tell me.  Start with what that girl said to you.  If--that is, if you trust me."  Gary didn't respond, and she wasn't picking up any clues as to his emotional state, so to be safe, she added, "If it's not something you want to talk about, that's okay, but it just seemed--well, from the way you acted when you left, I thought maybe you needed a friendly ear.  If not--"  She shrugged as casually as she could.  "Just tell me to get lost, and I'll be out of here."

"So you--you just came here to help?"  There was an undertone in his voice, wry, but not angry or sarcastic.  "You're not curious at all?"

"Well, maybe a little curious," Marissa admitted with a smile.  "But I'll go if you want to be alone."  She waited for him to tell her that he had left the bar precisely because he did want to be alone, but the reprimand never came.  Thrown by his silence, she blurted out, "Gary, are you all right?"  It was all she wanted to know; it was the only reason she'd come looking for him.

"Yeah."  Gary's sigh was barely audible.  The scrape of leaves on the pavement behind them was a reminder that summer's hold on the city had broken during last week's cold snap.

"You don't sound all right.  Back in the bar you sounded all wrong."

There was a momentary pause; when Gary spoke, his voice was more definite, more--more there, with her instead of lost and brooding.  "I was wrong.   I shouldn't have--"

"But you did, and rather than an apology, I'd like a reason.  What happened this morning, and then with Kelyn Gillespie--it's got you upset, and I'd like to help if I can."  Gary didn't answer, and for a moment they both fell silent.  A group of children--young children, from the sounds of their voices--ran by, shouting at the gulls overhead. 

Leather squeaked; the toe of Gary's boot brushed her ankle as he shifted his long legs.  "You know," he finally drawled, "I come out here when I need to think.  It feels so far away from everything."

Nice try, Marissa thought.  Why couldn't he just come right out and say what was bothering him?  "What is it you want to get away from?"

He didn't answer that.  Instead, he stood.  "Hold out your hand." 

Marissa shifted Spike's harness out of the way and extended her palm.  In it Gary placed something heavy, compact, smooth--there was a spherical surface, a globe of something polished, marble, maybe, or glass.  Supporting it was a stand, almost like a candle holder, made of metal that had been carved or twisted into a thick filigree. 

An overwhelming sense of sadness, centuries old, came over her.  Whatever this was, it felt--ancient, worn, as if many hands had held it before hers, smoothing its surfaces over the course of centuries.  Marissa shivered.

"You cold?"

"No, it's just--what is this, Gary?"

"She said it was from Lucius Snow."  His voice was nearly a whisper, though Marissa couldn't hear anyone nearby.  "She knew to give it to me when she saw what happened at the bridge the other day.  Look, can we walk or something?"  Knowing how antsy he could get when he was upset, Marissa nodded.  She and Spike fell into step with Gary on the path to the lake shore, hurrying to keep up while Gary outlined his conversation with Kelyn, and what he'd read in the letter.  By the time he'd finished, they were nearly to the pier.  Fine sand from the beach just off the path gritted under her boots.  The strange contraption balanced in her free hand seemed heavier than it had at first.

"My God, Gary, this is so...so strange.  What are you going to do?"

Taking refuge in sarcasm, he snapped, "Well, I don't know, but I'm sure if I ask the cat it will be glad to type up some directions."  Stone scattered across the pavement.  Marissa bit back the impulse to tell him he'd scuff his shoes, kicking gravel around like that.  "This is so typical," Gary continued.  "Just when I have things under control, sort of, the damn thing throws me another curve ball."

"Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.  Isn't this better than being bored?"

"B-bored?" he sputtered.  "Right, Marissa, it's a real yawn running from disaster to disaster, and I just wish there were more of them.  But since there aren't, I'll settle for this little complication, no problem."

"You don't even know what it is!"  Marissa forced herself to calm down.  She wasn't going to lash back at an attack that she knew was not really directed at her.  "It's more than just this that has you upset, I know it is, because you were out of sorts before Kelyn showed up.  What's got you so frustrated?"
 
He didn't answer.

"What happened this morning?  I thought it was just a neighborhood tussle that you had to stop."

"It's not that."

He was such a liar.  She just wished she knew why.  "What is it, then?"

There was a long pause; their footsteps slowed in unison.  "Everything.  The responsibilities--sometimes it's all too much.  Sometimes it feels like this city's alive, and there's no end to what it wants from me." 

Marissa didn't have a response to that.  He wouldn't want to hear that she thought he had taken on at least some of that responsibility himself, that it was his to accept or reject.  If he'd been snappy with her before, *that* little gem of wisdom would probably get her head taken off.  She juggled Spike's harness and the globe as they walked, trying to find some clue, wondering what it all meant and when Gary would be able to see past his own funk and figure it out.

"How many times is this gonna happen?" he groused.  "Not just the paper, but all this guy's unfinished business?"

"You mean Lucius Snow's?" 

Gary grunted. 

"I don't think you have any right to be upset with him, not if he didn't even know what this thing was."

"Then why the hell did he pawn it off on me?" 

"He didn't.  He didn't even know you."

"Well, Kelyn, then.  What gives her--what gives anyone the right to--"

"All right, stop right there."  Marissa reigned Spike in and they all came to a halt.  This was about more than some family heirloom.  "Would you please tell me what's really bothering you?"

"It's hard to explain."  Gary's voice was going over her head, out to the lake, as if he wasn't even looking at her.  "I don't know, it's just--that girl kept talking about Lucius Snow, and I could tell she felt sorry for the guy.  She didn't think he was crazy, but she called him one of the strays her grandmother collected.  And she looked at me the same way, because she knew what the paper had done to him, and what it had taken away from him, and she knew it was doing the same thing to me."

"Well, she's wrong.  You are not Lucius Snow, Gary, not by a long shot."

"Give me one good reason why I won't turn into him in the next...oh, however many decades this paper is going to be coming to me."

One?  She could give him a dozen.  "What about the fact that you have a life outside of the paper?  You have your family, you have McGinty's, which, I might add, you have because of that paper, and--"  Not sure she wanted to continue that line of conversation, Marissa bit her lip and started walking again.

"And what?" Gary asked.

Out of habit, Spike turned onto the pier when they reached it, and she followed.  "Never mind." 

Gary was right on her heels.  "No, really, what?"

She sighed.  "You just don't get it, do you?  You make all these comments about how rotten the paper has made your life and you don't even realize--"  This was definitely the wrong time to bring this up.  He was already out of sorts.  She never should have opened her mouth--but the truth was, taking the brunt of his moodiness wore her out sometimes.

"Realize what?"  Instead of impatience, there was genuine curiosity in Gary's voice.  Well, at least she'd gotten his mind off whatever gloomy track it had been on for the last little while.

"Gary, does--"  Pulling Spike to another halt, Marissa turned so that she was standing face to face with Gary, letting him know that this was important.  "Does the fact that we're friends mean anything to you?  Anything at all?"

Her question shocked him into his trademark stutter.  "Of--of course it does.  You know it does.  But what--"

"What does that have to do with the paper?  Everything."  Marissa emphasized her pronouncement with a sharp wave of the crystal ball she still held.  "Without that paper, you would have just walked out of Strauss and Associates on the day you quit--and you would have quit, paper or not, because that job was making you miserable--and you would have said good-bye, and that would have been it."

"Well, not necessarily--"

"Not necessarily."  Marissa tugged Spike between them, hoping Gary would be reminded of the day they'd come to be more than co-workers.  "But probably.  You know how those things go."  She waited for a few moments, but Gary didn't answer.  "As much trouble as it's caused, I'm grateful to that paper.  I'm thankful that it picked the right person to come to, and that I'm fortunate enough to be someone you trust with your secret.  I owe you so much, Gary," Marissa continued in a gentler tone, "but above all, I owe you my friendship, and my honesty.  And to be honest, I think you're being a coward about this."  She thrust the globe toward him.  "Take it.  You'll know what to do with it when the time comes." 

He lifted the globe from her hands.  "Marissa--"  His voice was thick, but he fell into step as she continued down the pier. 

"Don't say it."

"But I--"

"I know.  Just--just worry about this thing now, all right?"  She hadn't meant to cause a scene, and she wasn't about to let it go any further.

"Yeah.  All right."  But Gary reached over and squeezed her shoulder, an awkward acknowledgment of all that lay unsaid between them.  He still hadn't told her everything, but she was satisfied for the moment.  Relief brought a smile to her face, and a renewed determination to help him, if she could.

"So," she said briskly, "what we're dealing with here is some kind of old--"

"Very old."

"All right, very old, maybe even ancient--what?--a promise, a spell, an obligation?"

"A-a charge, the letter said.  Some kind of duty." 

"One which may not be yours to fulfill, if it even exists anymore.  Kelyn and her grandmother were just guessing.  You and Lucius Snow seemed like helpful types."

"Helpful," Gary echoed with a snort. 

"Okay, so that's an understatement."

"Maybe I should just get rid of it.  I'm not sure I trust it.  Earlier, right before I left the bar, it--"  Gary paused.  "This is gonna sound nuts."

"That's okay," Marissa deadpanned, "I've taken courses in nuts." 

"Huh."  Gary's elbow nudged hers as they walked.  "The thing is, I swear, when I picked it up in the office, it--it changed colors.  I mean, I could see colors inside--it's clear.  The glass part," he explained belatedly.  "But for a while there, it wasn't.  I didn't know what was happening, and that's when Cat started going nuts."

"Nothing else happened?"

"No, and it stopped when I dropped it.  I don't know, I might have imagined it."

"It's not doing anything now, is it?"

"Uh, no, don't think so."

"Well, I wouldn't worry about it."  Marissa imbued her voice with all the confident common sense she could muster.  "Whatever it is, it's not evil."  With a chuckle, she added, "From the way Crumb talked about it, I was afraid she had some kind of neutron bomb, and now it turns out it was only a crystal ball."

"Only a crystal ball?"

"Well, it's not as if you don't get one of those every day."  Spike stopped and refused to go any further--they were at the end of the curving pier.  The breeze picked up, teasing her hair off her shoulders.  "If by some strange chance it turns out to be magic, I guess you'll deal with it when the time comes.  After all, if somebody needs a hero, I can't believe there's anyone better suited to the role."

"Thanks a lot.  Next thing I know you'll be measuring me for armor." 

Gary offered his elbow as they turned to walk back to shore, and Marissa hooked her hand over the familiar leather sleeve.  He walked on the side closest to the lake--he always did that, always sheltered her from the wind off the water, or the traffic if they were walking down city sidewalks.  He probably didn't even realize what he was doing.  He just did it because he was Gary Hobson, Chivalry's Final Frontier.  Grinning at the thought of Gary clanking around in a tin suit, she told him, "You might look good in armor.  Of course, I hear it could get pretty hot in those on summer days, and it wouldn't do to be all sweaty by the time you got to the damsel in distress--"

"Marissa?"  Gary pulled his arm free of her hand.  Their footsteps slowed, then stopped together.  "Marissa, this thing is--it's changing.  I think something's happening."  The tone of his voice, wonder and consternation mixed with a healthy dose of fear, told her he wasn't joking.

"You mean like it did in the office?" 

"Yeah, it's--here, feel it."  He held the globe out to her, placing it within her reach but not relinquishing it. 

"It's warm."  She ran her hands over the smooth glassy surface.  "Warmer than it should be, just from your hand, and it sort of--it's kind of tingling."  A faint vibration trilled through the metal and glass to her searching fingers.

"Yeah."  Gary's voice was cautious, wary.  "And inside it, Marissa, there are--there are colors."

She paused and swallowed hard, suddenly chilled to the bone.  "Are you sure you didn't just trigger a switch somewhere?"

"Believe me, this thing doesn't have any switches.  And it's--it's glowing..."  He stepped away from her; she felt the breeze pick up between them. 

"Maybe you should--"

"Uh, Marissa, I don't know what's going on, but I think--"

He never finished.  There was a loud splash, and then nothing.  For a moment she froze, and then Spike barked his most urgent alert.  Marissa took a step toward the spot where Gary had stood, then another, while her guide dog tried to keep her away from the edge of the dock. 

"Oh no--Gary?  Gary, are you there?  Hush, Spike!"  The dog stopped barking, but that didn't change the fact that there was nothing else to hear.  No struggle, no splashing, nothing.

"Answer me--this isn't funny!"  Marissa got down on her knees and felt for the edge of the pier; she held out her hand, leaning forward as far as she dared.  "Take my hand, Gary!  We'll get you out, come on, please, just take my hand..."

The only response was the lapping of little waves against the pier.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Take my hand!"

Gary could hear Marissa, her voice warped by the water between them, but he couldn't answer her. 

Air.  Air.  He needed--his lungs were screaming, points of light were bursting behind his eyes, and he knew that if he didn't open his mouth soon, he would explode.

This, he knew with what little was left of his rational mind, was his main problem.  The rocks were secondary, even though they were all around him, slamming into him--no, he was slamming into them-- tumbling through the darkness, the water, that dragged him forward but not up.

Not that he was even sure where up was anymore.

Hip, knee, rib--the stones seemed intent on colliding with every bone in his body.  His shoulder smashed into a sharp outcropping rock, the pain so sharp that he opened his mouth in an involuntary gasp.  Water rushed in, but the force of the collision rebounded him off the rock and above the surface.  Coughing, gasping, Gary managed to suck in one quick breath before the rushing torrent carried him over an edge, and he fell into a dizzying black nothingness.



 


Chapter 6


first the thunder
satisfied, if the past it will not lie
then the storm
torn asunder
the future you and i get blown away
in the storm
in a lifetime
    ~ Ciaran Brennan


"Gary?  Come back--take my hand!"  Marissa's voice rose above the traffic and gulls and wind; rough cement dug into her knees through her thin wool pants.  Why wouldn't he answer?  Frantic barking sounded in her ear in counterpoint to her own calls.  "Where is he, Spike?" 

Someone heard them.  Heavy footsteps pounded toward her; hands helped her to stand. 

Not Gary's footsteps.  Not Gary's hands. 

"What happened, lady, are you all right?"

"He--he fell in, my friend is down there in the lake--do you see him?"  Stay calm, instructed a monotone voice in her head.  Don't panic, get help...Gary had to be there.  He wouldn't just disappear.

"Someone fell in?  Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!  He was here, right here, and we were talking, and then there was a splash, and--and nothing.  Please, he's already been in there a couple of minutes; why can't I hear him?"

More someones made their way onto the pier, jostling for position, passing the story on to newcomers.  One man used a cell phone to call 911; another started shouting at the water, as if Marissa hadn't done that already, as if she hadn't done everything she could...and it still wasn't enough.

"Can your friend swim?" asked a female voice from behind her.

"Yes--I mean, he knows how, but he's not--I didn't hear him come back up.  Don't you see anything?"  She thrust her hand out toward the lake, and bumped someone on the shoulder. 

"Hey, lady, chill, okay?  We'll find this guy.  What's he look like?"

"Duh, Adam!"  There was a mumbled apology, and more shuffling of feet, but none of it really registered with Marissa.

She wrapped her arms around her stomach, trying to hold herself in.  No need to worry about holding onto Spike; his concern and the press of people kept him glued to her side.  "His name's Gary.  He's down there-- find him."  There had to be some way she could help him.  It had all happened so quickly--what had he said just before that splash, about the crystal ball and what it was doing?  It was too hard to remember, with all this activity buffeting her, with fear blossoming in her chest.  Even if Gary had been there, she wouldn't have been able to hear him over the voices and the gulls and her heart pounding all the way up in her ears. 

"I'm going in," said the first man who'd stopped.  There was a thud of something landing near her feet--shoes, she decided when she nudged them with her toe--then another splash, and then a few seconds of brief, breathless silence while everyone waited. 

"There's no one down here, not that I can see."  A collective sigh escaped from the crowd--when had it become a crowd?--around Marissa.  "The w-w-water's pretty deep," he chattered.

"He was right here," Marissa insisted, panic leaking through the cracks in her voice.  "Can't you find him?  Isn't there anything at all?"

The woman patted Marissa's shoulder.  "It'll be okay, hon." 

But would it?  How long could Gary hold his breath?  How long before he'd have to open his mouth and let the water rush in and-- 

Marissa swallowed hard and reached for Spike.  One hand atop his head, she could feel the vibration of his whining, though she couldn't hear it through the maelstrom of noise and movement that surrounded them.  "Gary, please..."  Biting her lip, she offered up a quick, wordless prayer, a frantic entreaty that was broken by the wail of sirens, closing in fast.

The noise and her fear nearly pushed her over the edge; for a moment, she could feel herself disconnecting from the scene, searching for a numb cocoon to enfold her, to keep her safe from the frenzy.  But she couldn't retreat, not if Gary--he needed--she needed help, needed a friend, before this nightmare spiraled completely out of control. 

"Cell phone..."  The words burst out of her mouth before they were fully formed in her mind. 

"What's that?" asked the woman at her side, yelling over the banshee sirens.

"A cell phone--please, I need to use a phone!"  Midway through Marissa's shouted plea, the sirens cut off.  Her desperation left everyone around her silent for a split second--and then three different people tried to press phones into her hand at once.

She called Crumb.  It wasn't as if he could help search--he couldn't even swim--but she needed someone there, someone she trusted to be her eyes and advocate, someone who knew Gary and maybe even cared about him a little.

Someone she could trust to listen to, if not believe, the whole story.

He wasn't home.  She left a message, befuddled by the cacophony of questions flying around her as the rescue teams pounded onto the pier. 

"What's going on?  Who're we looking for, here?"

"Who was here when it happened?"

"How long ago did he go in?"

She told them what she could, what little there was to tell, and was led farther down the pier--farther away from Gary--to wait while they did their jobs.  She knew they needed the space, but she needed to know what was going on, she needed to understand how this could have happened, she needed...

She needed her friend, she thought, and swallowed back a sob of pure, terrified confusion.  Every passing moment deepened her fear for Gary--Gary, who was sure-footed and a strong swimmer; Gary, who prevented everyone else's disasters; Gary, who would never, despite what one or two of those who stopped out of curiosity suggested, play a dirty trick like this on a friend...

Gary, who was nowhere to be found.


 


Chapter 7

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion...
Here, in the intersection of this timeless moment.
    ~T. S. Eliot


Sharp blows pounded his back.  "Breathe, will you?"  The voice, thickly coated with some kind of British accent, sounded familiar, but Gary couldn't focus enough to figure out why.   All his attention was devoted to moving air in and out of his lungs and giving silent thanks that it was air, and not water.  Darkness still filled his vision.  Sitting up, he draped his arms over his knees, hanging his head.  Inhale, exhale--that was how it worked, right?  Simple, involuntary--

It shouldn't hurt so much. 

"You should take more care when choosing a spot to bathe.  You tangled up my lines and now--breathe,"  the voice reminded him.

Trying to inhale set Gary on a fit of coughing which didn't remove the tang of lake water from his mouth.  The blackness cleared slowly, leaving him aware of painful bruises, wet clothes clinging to his skin in cold air, and, thank goodness, solid ground underneath.  He lifted his head, blinking into bright sunlight; the rays glinting off the water and playing among the shade of the trees were enough to nearly blind him--

--Shade?  Gary looked straight up, blinking into a green-leafed canopy. 

There were no trees along the pier.  He must have come out of the lake somewhere else--

Wait a minute.  Green leaves?  It was October, wasn't it?  Gary shook wet hair out of his eyes.  If he was sitting under trees, he should have seen the brilliant fall colors of the maples and oaks of Lincoln Park.  And yet, above him the oak leaves were new, mixed in with the bright yellow-green foliage of a droopy willow tree.

"Egads, have I rescued a mute?  Are you deaf?"

Still puzzled by the scenery, Gary focused on the voice--hard not to do, when the face that belonged to it pushed its way into his line of vision.  More lake water ran out of his mouth as he gaped in shock.  What the hell was--

"CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

Gary jumped from his sitting position, only to bash his head against something far too solid.

"Ah, damn!" he spat as he dropped back to the ground, pushing willow fronds out of his face and clapping both hands to the top of his head.

"Have a care, or you will undo my sole good deed for this day," cautioned the man who squatted on the ground beside him, brows raised over twinkling blue eyes. 

Gary wanted the world to stop spinning.  He wanted to know who had placed a thick tree branch directly above his head.  He wanted to know whether he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. 

Most of all, he wanted something to make sense, and soon. 

"Ch-Chuck?"

The man before him certainly looked and sounded like Chuck.  Sort of.  Kind of.  Longer hair, but then Gary hadn't seen Chuck in a couple of months.  A mustache,  and some kind of goatee.  That he could deal with.  The accent was strange, though knowing Chuck, it could have been an affectation.  The clothes, though...the clothes were another matter altogether.  Gritting his teeth to push away his second wood-induced headache of the day, Gary spat out, "Chuck, what the hell did they do to you out in Hollywood?"

The man--Chuck, it had to be Chuck, that was Chuck's face under the extra hair, supported by Chuck's scrawny neck--smiled at him, but looked perplexed.  "The Holly Wood?  I do not believe I have heard of that.  Is it in Wales, perhaps?  They do tend to go on about their holly there." 

Gary frowned.  There was something funny about the way the way Chuck's words were sounding in his head--but maybe he'd just got water in his ears or something. 

"And I am not certain what a 'Chuck' is," he went on, "but I am fairly certain that I am not one.  Perhaps--oh, there goes my line."  He hurried over to the water's edge and began fussing with a tangle of twine and hooks, tugging against whatever was at the other end of it.

Still too dumbfounded to do more than stare, Gary finally took a good look around him.  The sun was warm, already starting to dry his clothes and hair.  He wasn't on the North Avenue Beach--the lake was nowhere in sight.  Instead, he was sitting on a gravelly riverbank a few yards wide.  The roar to his right came not from traffic or boats, but from a steep waterfall.  There was not a car, not a road, not a speck of cement or a skyscraper in sight.

There were, however, plenty of trees.  Trees climbed the hill that rose sharply on the other side of the river; trees lined the bank that Gary sat on for as far to his left as he could see; tree roots formed rough steps in the steep path that led up the side of the waterfall.  They were huge, their trunks bigger around than Gary could have reached with both arms, their topmost branches seriously headed for the sky.  The worrisome thing was that many were trees that Gary, who'd been a Boy Scout for more years than Patrick had been in college, had never seen before.  It was almost as if he wasn't in Chicago at all--but he'd heard Marissa, hadn't he?  Back when he first fell in, before he'd run into all those rocks.

"Chuck?"  Scooting out from under the willow before he rose, Gary climbed awkwardly to his feet--and instantly regretted the movement.  Twinges and aches became knives in his ribs and shoulder, and he spoke through clenched teeth.  "Where'd Marissa go?  Where are we?"

Giving up his struggle with the lines, Chuck turned to Gary and raised his eyebrows.  "Perhaps a better question is, who are we?  I know who I am, of course, but who are you?  And what were you doing getting caught in my fishing lines?"

"F--fishing?  You were fishing?  Why are you talking like that?  Why are you dressed like that?"  Somehow, Gary had never expected to see his best friend in--well, that certainly wasn't an Armani suit.   Red beret, floppy linen shirt, leather vest, loose brown drawstring pants that stopped at the knees and..."Are those--are those *tights*?"

"They may have a few holes, but they are certainly more seemly than your apparel."  Arms folded across his chest, Chuck considered Gary with frank curiosity--and a bit of eager greed.  "Are you a spirit?  Perhaps a genie, who will grant me three wishes?"

"I'm not--"  Shivering in the breeze that cut through his wet clothes, Gary peered at--at the man who looked too much like Chuck to be anyone else.  "Don't you remember?  It's me, Gary, your best friend."

"Gary?  What kind of a name is that?  And believe me sir, were you my best friend, I think I would recognize you, even if you did come tumbling down the waterfall."  He nodded at the drop, behind Gary's back now, but all Gary's attention was focused on the man before him, on figuring out what the hell was going on.

"You--you're not Chuck?"

"I told you, I do not know what a Chuck is."

Then who--oh, wait a minute...not again...

"Morris?  Morris Best?"  Not that Gary wanted to relive the Chicago Fire, but at least he'd know...

"My name, good sir," the man, said, shaking his head, "is Fergus.  Fergus MacEwan, at your service."  He bowed, sweeping his red felt hat with a flourish.  A couple of feathers were attached to the back.  Oh, brother.

"Fergus?  I'm supposed to call you Fergus? What kind of a name is that?"

"Because it is my name, it is what most people call me."  Chuck--no, Fergus--stood on tiptoe and peered at the top of Gary's head, parting the damp locks of hair with one hand.  "How hard did you bump your pate?"

Gary brushed the man's hand away.  "Maybe not hard enough.  Look, can't you just tell me what's going on?"

"My question exactly," said another almost-familiar voice behind him.  Gary stiffened.  It was too much to hope...

"Fergus MacEwan, what are you doing with my dragon slayer?"

Bracing himself for another shock, Gary pivoted on his heel, then took a step backward.  "Marissa?"

It was Marissa--and it wasn't.  The woman before him had Marissa's face and her hair--except longer than it had been a few minutes ago, falling in tight waves to her elbows.  She wore a dark cloak, fastened with an elaborate silver brooch, and under that, a dark green dress that laced up the front, its sleeves dripping wet.  And though she cocked her head to one side the same way Marissa sometimes did, she was looking right at Gary.

Looking at him.  Seeing him.

Not Marissa.  Just like Eleanor hadn't been Marissa, and Morris hadn't been Chuck.  The disappointment was enough to sink Gary's heart to the soles of his feet. 

Not Chuck.  Not Marissa.  Not home. 

Not even close.



 


Chapter 8

And there on the deck of the rotting, leaking ark
The little family gathered in the rain and cold and darkness
One little family, shivering in the gloom
Waiting for words of doom,
Waiting for words of doom.
    ~Stephen Schwartz


The message on his machine was so short and disjointed that Crumb had to replay it--not just to get the information straight, but to make sure that the speaker really was the normally calm, self-assured Marissa Clark.  She certainly wasn't hysterical, but the quiet urgency in her voice and the fact that she didn't complete her sentences were more alarming than any histrionics would have been. 

Hobson was in trouble, he got that on the first pass.  Not much new there, but when Crumb listened again and figured out what kind of trouble, he was out the door as fast as his feet would carry him.  He climbed back into his still-warm car, cursing as he checked his watch against the time of the message. 

Fifteen minutes ago...if she'd called him shortly after it had happened, there was still hope.  Though by the time he got to the North Avenue Beach, ten minutes away...clenching his jaw, he pushed the accelerator to the Buick's floor. 

Make that five minutes. 

In all his time with the force, the speed at which a water rescue could be mobilized had never failed to amaze Crumb.  He knew what to expect, and a quick inventory of the melee as he parked and hurried to the pier told him exactly what stage the operation had entered.  They were all there: police cruisers parked at random on the beach; search and rescue divers on the pier and in their boats; curious onlookers; bloodthirsty reporters; the EMTs waiting near the ambulance.  That meant they hadn't found Hobson yet.  Damn. 

Marissa stood in the midst of it all, a rock in a river of people and activity.  Positioned where the park path turned onto the curving pier, planted in the sand on the civilian side of the yellow tape, she wasn't speaking to anyone, just standing with her face toward the water, her dog at her side.  Even her outfit--a pale grey sweater and black slacks--was a muted contrast to the riot of colors in the trees and the clothing of the people around her.

Pushing through a knot of teenagers on roller blades who'd stopped to check out the action, Crumb hesitated a few feet behind Marissa, reading the tension in the set of her shoulders and trying to decide what to say.  Spike must have sniffed him out; the dog's head turned and his tail started thumping when he spotted Crumb.  Marissa jumped.  "What is it, Spike?"

"Hey there."  Crumb moved closer, stepping around the dog to get a good look at Marissa's face--but first he shot a scowl at the eavesdropping teenagers.  They beat it back to the cement path with their skates and spiked hair.  "It's me.  I was at the store when you called.  What's going on?"

"They can't find him."  Her eyes, that deep brown that always reminded Crumb of Guinness, were even more unfocused than usual, and her lower lip quivered.  "I don't know what happened.  One minute we were walking along, we were just talking, and then--"  She shook her head, clutching Spike's harness so tightly Crumb was afraid she'd snap it.  "And then he wasn't there, and there was a splash, and that--that was it.  I--I called him and I tried to reach him, to get help, but there was nothing..."  Swallowing hard, she finished, "I don't understand.  They won't tell me anything.  I know they have to--to--but it's Gary, and--"

Another diver splashed off the pier. 

"What was that?"  Her voice turned sharp, scared to death.  Crumb watched small orange buoys appear in the water as the searchers covered the lake in a grid pattern, radiating outward from the dock.  He didn't know what to say to allay her fears, so he took refuge in SOP.

"That's the divers; they're still looking.  They're doing the best they can.  These are the experts, and you gotta let them do their jobs."  It was a rote speech, one he'd given so many times it had lost its meaning--and she knew it.  Turning fractionally away from him as she nodded, Marissa set her jaw and squared her shoulders, the picture of desperate determination not to fall apart.  Crumb's first instinct was to put an arm around her shoulders, to lend what strength he could, but she seemed too brittle for that.  She wouldn't lean.  She would shatter.

"They told me to stay out of the way.  Politely, of course, but...How much longer will they search?" she whispered.  "Crumb, is there any hope that he's still...that he's not...?"

Crumb stared at the activity on the dock.  He knew the drill.  Stay back, shut up, keep out of the way, let the experts do their job.  Don't ask questions, don't interfere. 

Bullshit, he decided, looking from the cops and divers mingling on the pier to the woman at his side.  He was an expert, too--that's why she'd called him--and those were tears in her eyes.

"I'll see what I can find out," he promised.  "I'll be right back."  He spoke deliberately and waited for some kind of acknowledgment before he would step away.

"Crumb?  Gary had--"  She bit her lip, shivering. 

"What?"  Frowning, he hesitated, but she changed her mind, shook her head.

"No.  No, go, see if they'll tell you anything, it's not--it can wait."

"You sure?" 

"Yes."  She waved him off, her hand coming to rest on Spike's head.  The dog nuzzled it affectionately, protectively--almost as if he knew what was going on--and Marissa shivered again. 

Crumb took a step back and shucked out of his windbreaker, then draped it over her shoulders with a little pat.  "I'll be right back," he promised.  Marissa nodded, but her attention was focused beyond him, on the pier and the lake.  He couldn't tell if she felt the coat or not. 

None of the rescue team noticed him step over the cautionary tape, so intent were they on their mission.  Good.  That was the way it should be.  Striding purposefully through the thicket of grim faces that lined the pier, Crumb cleared his throat and tapped the nearest uniformed shoulder before he realized that the officer was talking on a cell phone.

"Yeah, we're still working this call at the North Shore and--hold on."  Flinging off Crumb's tap with an elaborate shrug, the woman whirled, her long black braid nearly catching him in the face as it whipped around.  "What the he--?"  She broke off, eyes widening.  "Zeke?"

"Hey, Nick--Sergeant," Crumb corrected himself with a wan smile as she told whomever was on the other line that she'd call him back.  "Congratulations on the promotion." 

"Thanks," she said curtly, blinking and pocketing her cell phone.  "What the hell are you doing here?"  That was Nicoletta Piovani, always had been, even when she'd been a beat cop.  Right down to business; cut the formalities and get on with what had to be done.  So he did.

"I know the guy you're looking for."

"Gary Hobson?  Aw, crap, Zeke."  Her shoulders lowered a fraction as her expression softened, and she brushed short, curly bangs off her forehead.  "I'm sorry."

 "Yeah, me too."  Crumb looked out over the water, at the buoys bobbing in response to the system of tugs the divers used to communicate underwater.  "What happened?  How long has he been in there?"

"He fell off the pier--"  She interrupted herself to address a patrol officer who was pointing at the EMTs and their ambulance on the shore, answering his question before he could voice it.  "They're on standby for another twenty minutes.  I don't care if we have to work around 'em.  I want them close."  Nick shook her head once as the junior officer went to relay her orders.  "Sorry, Crumb."  Her gaze flickered down to her watch, then back up at him.  "It's been about twenty-five, thirty minutes since we got the call.  Apparently he was just walking along the pier and fell in.  Never resurfaced.  Probably hit his head or got caught on something down there; that would be my guess, anyway."

Crumb ignored the way his stomach tightened at that.  "Divers haven't found anything yet?"

She blew out a breath.  "Not a goddamn thing." 

"You look for blood on the side of the pier, piece of torn clothing, stuff like that?"

"I know my job, Crumb."  Both hands on her hips, the sergeant frowned out at the water.  "There's a steep drop-off here, and you know how weird these things can get, down there with the currents and the weeds and the trash.  We're doing the best we can on what little information we've got.  I mean, the only real witness isn't much of a help.  She's--"  Piovani waved toward the shore, toward Marissa, but Crumb held up a hand before she could go any further.

"That's why I'm here, Nick.  She's a friend of mine.  Look, I think if you ask the right questions, she can tell you more than you think.  You just gotta--aw, shit."  Following Nick's squint to the end of the pier, Crumb saw a group of three reporters and what looked like, from this distance anyway, a television camera attached to a pair of jeans--all closing in on Marissa like a pack of damn hyenas.  He should have known better.

"Hey, I didn't mean offense."  Out of the corner of his eye, Crumb saw Piovani shake her head as he stepped around her to get back to the shore.  "Go get 'er, Galahad," she muttered with a grin.

"Slow news day, fellas?"  Crumb elbowed his way through the little group, realizing as he got past the camera man that the only reason they weren't right up in Marissa's face was the large, muscular, growling bundle of fur and teeth that stood in their way.  Spike's mistress didn't look any less ferocious than he did; she stood her ground, one fist clenching Crumb's coat closed just below her neck while the other gripped the dog's harness.

"I told you, there's nothing more to the story!  Why don't you just back off?"

Now that was more like the Marissa Clark he knew.  "You heard the lady, clear out," Crumb insisted, turning on the pack with the fiercest expression he could muster.  Spike relaxed his guard as the vultures, tape recorders and Palm Pilots in hand, took a couple steps away.  Crumb turned his back on them.  He didn't know which threat they were responding to, and he didn't care.

"Crumb?"  Marissa's voice dropped to a near whisper, but she'd recovered a good deal of her composure.  At least those morons had been good for something.

"Right here."

"Have they found anything?"

"Well, no, not yet, but they're still looking."

"It's been so long..."  Releasing its grip on the coat, her hand dropped to her side, but Crumb reached over and took it, determined, this time, to make sure she knew she was not alone, not by a long shot.

"C'mon," he said, "I know the sergeant in charge, and we're gonna go see if we can help her out.  There's gotta be something you can tell them that they forgot to ask about."

A look he couldn't quite interpret crossed her face, and he started to ask what it meant, but the reporters were still too close.  The TV camera with legs was inching nearer and nearer.  "Let's get away from these yahoos." 

At Marissa's silent nod, he guided her onto the pier, holding up the tape so that they could pass under it.  It took a little maneuvering to get past the smaller groups that had dispersed along the dock, but Marissa and Spike followed his lead easily--until they stopped, their path blocked by a diver who was changing his oxygen tank.  They caught the tail end of his conversation with one of the search coordinators. 

"How much longer?"

"Hour's almost up.  Gotta change over from rescue to recovery operations soon."

"Too bad, man..." 

Crumb stole a glance at Marissa, hoping against hope that she hadn't understood.  But she was too smart not to, too smart by half.  Her face crumpled, and he knew she'd figured it out.  There wasn't a whole lot he could say.  With a sigh, he started forward, but it took a couple seconds before Marissa--or Spike for that matter--would follow.  Her hand tightened around Crumb's in a vise-like grip.

"It isn't fair," she whispered fiercely. 

Crumb sighed.  "It never is."


 


Chapter  9

Una had set out to look for a champion who would face
the terrible dragon.  She had traveled a long, long way before
she found the Red Cross Knight....she had to find him and
guide him back to the path.
    ~Margaret Hodges, Saint George and the Dragon


"Fishing again, were you Fergus?"  Although her tone was light, the young woman's jaw was clenched, and there was a tightness around her eyes that indicated exhaustion.  Please, Gary thought, please be Marissa, somehow.  As if she had read his mind, she whirled on Gary.  "Did he hurt you?"

"No, I--do you know me?"

"Of course I do."  Her tone was forced, Gary thought, and she didn't look nearly as sure as she sounded.  Their gazes locked for an endless moment, and what he saw in hers--wonder, but also fear--sent shivers up and down his spine.  "You--" she began, then swallowed.  "You are--"

The strange little man who should have been Chuck stepped between them, waving his red hat toward the waterfall.  "He just appeared in the river; tumbled right over the fall and into my lines!  I promise you, m'lady, I did not do anything to him."  He patted his hat back onto his head, feather bobbing madly, and shrugged.  "If he truly is yours, you are more than welcome to him.  I cannot understand half of what he says, and the half I do understand is all questions."

Well, that settled it, Gary decided.  Chuck would never call Marissa anything as deferential as "my lady"--not that she didn't look every inch the part, sweeping past the hapless fisherman to stand before Gary. 

"Fergus, there are great matters afoot," she informed him, tossing the words over her shoulder, "and if you have interfered in any way, if you have brought any harm to my dragon slayer--"

"Your what?"  Fergus spurted out a laugh.

"--I promise you, I will see to it that your pack disappears into the nearest bog, and that you vanish right along with it."  Her voice, like the man's, sounded strange in some way Gary couldn't quite define.  It was more than just the accent, which was somewhere between British and brogue, but he couldn't pin down what he was hearing, exactly.  It was all too much to work out.

"Now, now, wait a minute," Gary interjected, squirming under her gaze.  It was bad enough that Marissa could read him without seeing him, but to have her--or her doppleganger--staring at him so intensely was--well, it was discomfiting, to say the least.  "He's telling the truth, I think."

"You think?" she prompted. 

"Yeah."  Gary grimaced and tried to shuck off his coat.  The sleeves were twisted around his arms, and he could barely move in the darn thing--but then, maybe that wasn't his jacket's fault.  Moving his shoulder hurt, moving his arms hurt--hell, even breathing wasn't comfortable.  Must have bruised a couple of ribs, and that shoulder--much as he hated to admit it, he might have to see a doctor on this one. 

"Here, let me help you."  The woman moved behind him, standing on tiptoe to help him pull off the jacket.  Frowning, she turned the dripping bomber over in her hands, examining the snaps and zipper, but she set it on the bank without comment.  "What was that you said about the truth?" she said instead when she looked up again, one eyebrow arched.  "And Fergus?  Two words one would never normally associate."

"Well, he did pull me out of the river.  I was unconscious at the time, but--"  Gary glanced at Chuck-not-Chuck, who was nodding encouragement.  "But when I came to, he was here, telling me to breathe, and I think he just wanted to help."

"Help?"  She snorted indelicately, flipping her hair back over her shoulder with an impatient toss of her head.  "Surely you jest."

Indignant, Fergus glared right back at her.  "I did more than most would, to help such a strange...stranger.  Where did he come from?"

She had no answer; Gary saw it in the uncertainty that flashed through her eyes, and heard it in the split-second silence in which the roar of water over the fall seemed to grow louder.  And birds--there were birds, singing like crazy in all the trees around them.  Then she set her jaw and turned back to her sparring partner.  "Fergus, you could have ruined everything!"  She nodded at Gary, one hand out in a sweeping gesture.  "Just look at him!  Dripping wet and half-frozen.  This won't do at all." 

"I am looking at him," Fergus countered.  He walked around the pair in a slow circle and plucked tentative fingers at Gary's sweater.  Gary slapped his hand away.  "'Tis difficult to believe what I see.  I have never seen clothing like this, not even on the continent.  The only things that might pass for normal are his boots, and even those are more than passing strange."

"What's wrong with my boots?"  Gary folded his arms tightly across his chest.  The sleeves of his turtleneck sweater flopped over his hands, hopelessly distorted by the soaking they'd received.  He ought to write a letter to Lands End about their so-called water repellent wool.

"There is nothing wrong with your boots.  Fergus is not accustomed to seeing someone in old-fashioned clothes."  Gary's jaw dropped at that, coming from a woman in a get-up straight out of a Robin Hood movie.  She unfastened the pin that held her cloak closed, making some kind of clucking noise deep in her throat as she looked Gary up and down.  "You could have saved yourself part of the soaking and most of the bruises you will have if you had taken my hand and let me pull you out when you first appeared in the water.  Where is your sword?  Pray tell, did you lose it in the river?"

"Sword?"  Confused, Gary looked toward the rushing water and wondered why he'd need a weapon.  "I don't have a sword."

"Never mind.  We will find you one if it is needed, though I rather doubt it will be.  It's not as if we have an actual dragon here."

Reeling from the sheer volume of context clues, Gary had no answer except a silent sigh of relief that he wasn't about to be devoured or roasted like a marshmallow.  The man who'd fished him out of the river, however, only became more agitated.

"Now it is you who jest," he told the woman.  "A dragon slayer?  Him?  Even if dragons had ever existed, except in song and story, he hardly looks the part of the knight triumphant.  I would wager he could not slay his way out of a chicken coop."  He stood back, hands on hips. 

"You are a fine one to talk!"

Fergus cocked his head and lifted an eyebrow.  "At least he will not be singed, as he is dripping like a leaking roof.  If he is a legendary hero, then I am the Archbishop of Canterbury." 

Gary punctuated Fergus's insult with a sneeze and sniffle, wiping his nose with the back of his hand when he realized there wasn't any part of him dry enough to function as a makeshift handkerchief. 

"However, if you are interested," Fergus added in a confidential undertone to Gary, "I have a wonderful dagger back in my pack."  He pointed at an oversized burlap bag that sat atop the riverbank.  "Jeweled.  Very old.  Very nice.  'Tis yours for...oh, I like you.  Only three pieces of silver."

"Which means it is worth two copper coins."  The woman shook her head as she pulled a square of white cloth out of a pouch that hung from her braided leather belt, and handed it to the still-sniffling Gary.  Using the rough cloth was kind of like blowing his nose with a dish towel, but it was better than nothing. 

"Fergus," Morgelyn continued in her exasperated tone, "had you been a dragon slayer in days of old, entire villages would have been set to ruin while you devised a scheme to charge for water to put out the flames."  With an impatient flick, she pulled off her cape.  "The poor man is soaked through and freezing to death, and you--you are calculating how much to charge him for whatever rags are lining the bottom of your pack!" 

Fergus opened his mouth to protest, but clamped it shut at the glare she flashed in his direction.  Turning to Gary, the woman tossed the cloak over his shoulders, then stepped back to survey her work, nodding briefly as she rubbed her wet arms.  "That should warm you until we get back to the cottage.  We can find you something dry to wear there.  I am sure Fergus will invite himself for a meal, whether or not he is welcome."  With a defiant toss of her head, she strode back up the river bank and into the woods that lay beyond, following a well-worn trail.

"What--who--?"  Gary stared after her, dumbfounded, while Fergus smirked. 

"She," he told Gary, gathering lengths of twine into a hopeless tangle, "is Morgelyn.  She seems to know more about you than you know yourself.  We might as well go with her.  If you can bide her tongue, she is not altogether unpleasant company."

"I heard that!"  The sharp call came from somewhere deep in the trees, and Fergus went after it, scrambling up the bank.

"I do not know who you are," he called over his shoulder, "but you certainly have her in a snit."

"But I didn't do anything, I just--"

"With her, you do not have to do anything to provoke it.  But she does make a wonderful stew--as long as you do not ask what it contains.  Some mysteries are better left to the imagination."  Chuckling at the indignant "Fergus!" that snapped back to them and shouldering his pack, he followed the woman into the forest. 

Befuddled, shivering in the cloak that smelled like a hundred campfires, Gary gaped after the pair.  None of this made any sense at all.  Where--where was the lake, the pier, that stupid crystal ball thing, the skyline--and where was Marissa, the real one? 

He sighed and ran a hand through his dripping hair.  This wasn't the first time he'd come 'round after a mishap and found himself somewhere--somewhen--other than home.  At least the last time he'd been in Chicago.  Somehow he had the feeling that this wasn't anywhere near the Windy City--1998, 1871, or otherwise.  The trees were different, the smells were different, everything was different. 

So what was he supposed to do, and what choice did he have but to follow?  It only took one long stride to surmount the riverbank, and realized he'd not yet begun to locate every bruise from that tumble down the waterfall.  He picked up his jacket and felt inside for the sodden mass that was his paper, but pulled his hand out when he heard a rustling in the underbrush ahead of him.

Morgelyn stepped out of the leafy forest shelter, her brow furrowed.  "Is something amiss?"  Instead of the crackling irritation of a few moments before, there was genuine concern in her voice.  "You mustn't mind Fergus.  He is not half the pest he seems."  She smiled at him, and for a moment her expression was so like Marissa's that Gary was almost convinced he'd found her, just had some temporary waking dream or something. 

But her hair--that dress--and she was looking at him.

"It's--it's just--"  He fumbled for words, then sneezed so hard it hurt his ribs.  "You don't even know me, I'm not sure how I got here..."

"But I do know who you are--oh!"  She jumped and lifted her skirt, revealing an sleek blur of orange and ginger that had tried to wind around her legs.  "Just another cat."

"Uh, that's, uh--Cat?"  Gary blinked down at the animal and found himself pinned by an enigmatic, green-eyed stare.

"You do have cats when you come from?"  Morgelyn clicked her tongue and pushed the tabby away with her foot.  Cat took off into the forest, disappearing along the same trail Fergus had taken, the trail which Morgelyn now indicated with a tilt of her head.  "Do not worry, 'tis gone.  Are you coming?"

Gary sighed and wondered when he'd lost complete control of his life. 

"Yeah."  He pulled the cloak around him as the breeze knifed through his damp clothes.  She turned down the path, and he followed.  "Yeah, I guess I am."


 


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