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


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





Chapter 30

"It appears to be paranormal in origin."
"How can you tell?"
"Well--it's so shiny."
          ~ Joss Whedon


Marissa had been planning to take a cab to the university.  But when she called Patrick early that morning to ask him to take care of deliveries at McGinty's, he pressed her for details, insisting that he had to know where he could find her.  

"Patrick, it doesn't matter.  I'll be at the bar later."  She drummed her fingers impatiently on the foyer telephone table.  She wanted to be gone before Chuck could stop her, but since he was currently sawing logs behind a closed door upstairs, there wasn't much to worry about in that department.

"It's just..." he said hesitantly, "It's just that yesterday he nearly killed me when I didn't know where you were."

 "What?  Who nearly killed you?"

"Mr. Crumb.  He's a good guy, and I know he was worried about you, but he can kind of--well, it's just that sometimes he reminds me of my Uncle Sean, you know?  He's kinda loud, and boy, if he wants something, nobody better get in his way.  He always used to scare us kids, even when we weren't kids anymore."  

Twisting the phone cord around her fingers, Marissa wondered if Patrick had an off switch.

"I remember once I was teaching my cousin Bridgit to drive and there was this cow on their farm and it--"

She sighed.  "The University of Chicago."

Patrick switched gears without so much as brushing the clutch with his toe.  "Oh, you're working on something for a class?  Why didn't you say so?"

Why, indeed, Marissa thought, shaking her head at the Patrickleap of logic.  At least now he had enough to keep Crumb at bay.  "I'll be there as soon as I can, but there's supposed to be a shipment from our meat supplier today.  It's important that someone be there to let them in.  You know where to find the spare key, don't you?"

"Yeah, sure, it's under the door mat, but--"

"We don't have a door mat."

"Oh, that's right, that's where my mom keeps her key!  I remember now; there's a metallic key box under the dumpster.  Or, no, wait, that was my frat house--"

"Inside the coach light by the front door."  They'd be there all day if she waited for him to guess.

"That's it, yeah!  Okay, but Miss Clark?  How are you getting down to the university?  Because, because," he hurried on before she could wedge in an answer, "I think I should take you there, if you're going by yourself."  

"I'll be fine in a cab, Patrick."  She refused to think about all the times Gary had said the same thing, all the late nights when he wouldn't let her take the El home.  Between that and Patrick's eager offer of help, her heart would just give up and break.

"There's a couple of hours before the bar has to be open," he pleaded, "and you really shouldn't go down there alone.  The U of C's not in the best neighborhood.  Let me take you.  I have an extra helmet."

The thought of zooming down Lake Shore Drive on the back of a Harley, clinging to her bartender for dear life, left Marissa more alarmed than gratified.  "Patrick, I appreciate you trying to help, but Spike can't fit on your motorcycle.  I'll be fine."

"Then I'll stop by McGinty's and get the van.  I know Mr. Hobson won't care if--I mean, he wouldn't have--"  Patrick choked in horror at his gaffe, and warning bells sounded in Marissa's head.  She had to be careful; she couldn't hurt anyone.  Regaining his voice, if not his composure, Patrick went on.  "He--he let me drive it all the time.  It'll just take me a few minutes to get it, and I can take you wherever you want to go.  Please, Miss Clark, I know that--that Mr. Hobson would have wanted me to help you out however I can."

The almost-desperate, aching twinge in his voice cut through her emotional exhaustion and caught at her heart.  Knowing that this was more a favor to Patrick than the other way around, Marissa finally gave in.  

She used the computer, still humming from the web search that had led her to decide on the University of Chicago, to compose a note for Chuck, then slipped outside with Spike to wait for Patrick.  Her next-door neighbor "Yoo-hoo"ed at her from across the fence.  

"Good morning, Mrs. Gunderson," Marissa called back, and they had a quick conversation about the weather--just as if everything was perfectly normal.  Luckily, the van pulled up before Helen Gunderson got started on the fall of '74, now that was a cold fall...

Patrick, still learning all the ins and outs of guiding a blind person, nearly fell over himself, Marissa, and Spike in his clumsy attempt to help her into the van.  When she finally shook off both his hands and his apologies and settled into her seat, Marissa pulled her bag into her lap, reaching inside until her fingers met metal and glass.  Even as she breathed a sigh of relief, she wondered why she needed the reassurance that the strange little globe was still there.  

"So, uh, why U Chicago?"  Patrick wasn't comfortable with silence; Marissa had known that since he'd first interviewed for the job at McGinty's.  This time he hadn't even buckled his own seat belt before he launched into conversation.  "Aren't your classes at Northwestern?"

"They have a better archaeology program at UC, and I need to do some research at the Regenstein library," Marissa said, as if that should explain everything.  

"Why--"

"It's kind of a complicated...project," she added.

He got the van going and pulled away from the curb before he said, "You know, whatever it is, I'm sure your profs would understand if you didn't get it done on time."

Resisting the urge to squirm under the weight of the half-truths she was telling, as well as the thought that time could easily be running out for Gary, Marissa gave a nod.  "Maybe, but I'd rather finish--"

"You know, my cousin, she knows this guy who has a friend whose girlfriend's brother's roommate died in a car crash the last month of their senior year, and he didn't have to take exams."  Patrick was breathless by the time he finished the lineage.

Lost, Marissa frowned.  "The boy who died?"

"No, his roommate.  It's like an unwritten university law, if your roommate dies, they let you off the hook.  Not that--oh, gosh, Miss Clark, not that Mr. Hobson was like your roommate, I didn't mean that!  It's just that, you know, since you worked together, and you were really close, I bet you could explain--or I could explain for you, if you want me to."

"Really, Patrick, it's all right."

"Okay, but if you need me to talk to them, you just let me know.  I'm really good at changing people's minds.  My mom says I should be a lawyer, but I don't know, it's taken me this long to get almost through undergrad, and law school on top of that might just kill me..."  

Patrick kept up a constant stream of chatter as he navigated the van through the downtown area and toward Hyde Park.  Her mind focused elsewhere, Marissa lost track of what he was saying.  She made what she guessed were appropriate noises here and there, cracked open the window and let the damp morning air cool her face.  A few minutes later, she realized that Patrick had leapfrogged from tangent to tangent, as he was wont to do, until he'd ended up back at the heart of the matter.  The last time she'd tuned in, he'd been comparing Pilsners and Ales, and somehow he'd come back to Gary.

"...and Mr. Hobson always liked domestic beer.  He was such a--such a regular guy, you know?  I told all my friends I had the best boss--the best bosses--in the whole city.  I don't know how I got so lucky, until--until the other day, that is."  He gulped to a full stop.

What was she supposed to say to that?  "Patrick, I know Gary thinks very highly of you, too."  Gary probably would have snorted at that one, but Marissa didn't care--she wanted to give some kind of comfort to this poor guy, who was doing his best to help.  Just a few months at the bar, and he already worshipped Gary like a kid brother would; everyone but Gary could see it.

"Really?"

"He wouldn't have hired you if he didn't."

"But you're the one who hired me."

"Well, he told me later that he was glad I did."

Patrick's whisper, sorrow-laced, drifted to her as the van pulled to a stop, the engine still idling.  "Thanks, Miss Clark."  He cleared his throat.  "Where to now?"

"You can just let me off here, if you'll point me in the direction of the Social Sciences building."

"Are you kidding?"  The engine stopped; the keys rattled when he yanked them from the ignition.  "I know this place like the back of my hand.  I was here for three semesters before I transferred to Northwestern.  Don't worry, Miss Clark.  I'll take care of everything."  Marissa barely had time to undo her seat belt between the moment the driver's side door slammed shut and her own was opened.  Patrick gave her a hand out and opened the sliding door at the same time, so that Spike was at her side as soon as her feet touched the ground.  

Patrick's stream of conversation about everything and nothing continued as they crossed campus.  It was still early, but they passed plenty of other people--mostly students headed for morning classes, she guessed from the groggy sounds of their voices.  Though it was fall, the sun still held some warmth, and she could feel the temperature shifts as they walked in and out of shade.  Four blocks from where they'd parked the car, Patrick tugged her to a stop.

"This is it," he told her.  "Just to your right here, there's a step up, and then a door."  He was already ahead of her, opening it and holding it for Marissa and a couple of students who'd come up behind them.  Once they were inside, and the others had gone past, he said, "Here's a directory.  Which office are we looking for?"

"There's a Dr. Hazor who's the head of the archaeology department."  The building buzzed as offices and classrooms came to life.  

"Might as well go straight to the top!  The directory says he's just down this hall."  

Before Marissa could try, again, to shake her determined escort, he'd grabbed her free arm and was leading her forward.  "Okay, now when we go in there--"

"When I go in there," Marissa corrected.

"But Miss Clark--"

She planted her feet; pulled Spike to an emphatic stop.  "Patrick, I appreciate your help, I really do, but I can manage this on my own.  I'll be fine--and besides, I need you back at the bar."  

"You--you do?"

She nodded.  "I'm counting on you to make sure everything goes smoothly today."  Gesturing toward the door, she added, "They can call me a cab when I'm done."

"No way, Miss Clark.  You tell them to call me, okay?  No, wait, I'll tell them."  

"Well, I'm not exactly sure when I'll be finished--"  But Marissa, who knew a thing or two about being stubborn, realized Patrick wasn't going to give in on this one.  He marched through the doorway and introduced them both to the receptionist.  Before Marissa could get a word in edgewise, he'd given McGinty's phone number to the befuddled woman.  

"You're sure you don't want me to stay?" he asked one more time.  

"Yes, I'm sure.  Thank you."  

"Okay, well, don't work too hard!"

Marissa let out a sigh of relief as the door swooshed shut behind her.

"What--what did he say you needed for your class?"  The receptionist's hesitant voice fell into the stillness of Hurricane Patrick's wake.  

Marissa pulled herself up to her full height and stepped closer to the voice, to what she assumed was the reception desk.  "Actually, I'm not here for a class.  This is a personal errand.  I have an artifact that I'd like someone to take a look at."

"Oh, well, Dr. Hazor isn't in today, but maybe one of the grad students can help you."  The young woman's words ended in a curious inflection, an uplift of pitch at the end of each sentence that made it sound as if everything was a question.  "They seem to know as much as their professors do, and Andrew's probably down in his office already."

"Is he?"  Immediately chiding herself for the sarcasm that had slipped through, Marissa shifted the strap on her shoulder, adjusting for the extra weight in her bag.  "Does he know anything about British archaeology?  I think what I have might be from England or Ireland."  

"Oh, then you want Josh.  Andrew's all about the Mayans, but Josh knows more about the European stuff, you know?"  There was the creak of ancient chair springs, then the muffled slip-slap of soft-soled shoes, around the desk, then at her side.  "His office is in the basement.  I'll take you there.  My name's Ruby, by the way.  Do I--uh--I don't want to be un-PC or anything, but how do we do this?"

"Go on ahead; Spike and I will follow."  

"Okay, cool."

Wondering if she'd sounded so young in her own days as a receptionist, Marissa let Spike take the lead, and they followed the girl down two flights of stairs to the basement--perhaps the sub-basement, if it was this deep in the earth.

"You look kind of familiar."  The receptionist's voice bounced off the walls of the stairwell.  "Have I seen you somewhere, like on TV or something?"

"I--no."  Marissa had a pretty good idea where Ruby might have seen her; all that press had been down on the pier during the search for Gary.  But she wasn't about to discuss it with a stranger.  The stairway door clanged behind them, its echo rushing past Spike's clicking claws and Marissa's tapping heels to announce their arrival.  She shivered as they slowed, then halted.  The hallway air was cold and stale, but surely the feeling that mysterious secrets were suspended there, brushing against her face, was just her own overtaxed imagination.

"Hey, Ruby."  The voice that greeted them when the receptionist knocked on a metal door frame was warm and friendly, although more than a bit groggy--kind of like Chuck's had been in the middle of the night.  "What's up?"

"Did you sleep here again?"  Ruby sounded half-annoyed, half-amused.

"Not exactly slept, but yeah.  My roommates were having a party and I need to finish grading midterms for the 206 class."

"Bummer.  You want coffee?  I just started a pot."

"You're my hero, Ruby, you know that?"  

The girl giggled, then touched Marissa's elbow, coaxing her forward.  "Josh, this is--um--Melissa--"

"Marissa Clark."  She held out her right hand; it was grasped by long, thin fingers, even longer than Patrick's, but callused and work-worn.

"Josh Gardner."

"She brought something for Dr. Hazor to look at, but she didn't want to wait."  Ruby's voice came from right over Marissa's shoulder, and Spike pressed up against her leg in the tight space left to them.  "It sounded like it might be right up your alley."

"Oh, yeah?"  The grogginess lifted, and tentative excitement charged the air.

Marissa shifted Spike's harness in her hands.  She'd already determined, from the low tones the others were using and the way sound fell on her ears, that this so-called office wasn't much bigger than a closet; it definitely wasn't big enough for the three of them plus Spike.  Trapped between the grad student and the receptionist, Marissa had a hard time collecting her words.  "I--I know this is going to sound strange, but it's really important, and I don't have much time to figure it out."

"Archaeological emergency, huh?  Don't worry, we get those all the time.  We're like the ER of Chicago archaeology--but I'm no George Clooney."  

"Don't sell yourself short."  Marissa tried to smile, but the gesture felt unfamiliar and strange.  "For all I know, you look just like him."

Ruby giggled again; Josh laughed, warm and genuine.  "Trust me, the guy's got nothing to worry about.  How 'bout coffee?  There's gotta be an extra mug around here, right, Ruby?" he added when Marissa nodded at the idea of a caffeine boost.  Despite her long sleep the night before, she felt weariness hovering, waiting to catch her off guard.

"Sure.  Back in a few."  

Ruby's soft footfalls receded toward the stairwell.  In the little office, chairs scraped on the tile floor; one of them banged into something metal--maybe a file cabinet.  

"C'mon in, uh--here, chair's just to your right, uh, three o'clock, does that help?  Cool dog."  The long fingers barely brushed her elbow indicating direction, and Marissa sat in a squeaky office chair whose padding had long since petrified.  Spike settled down next to the chair, nudging her foot with his nose.  A fluorescent light hummed overhead, and the heating system clanked and banged inside the walls.  Somewhere farther into the room, possibly even inside the wall at the back, there was a faint drip, which probably accounted for the musty smell.  Something told Marissa they didn't keep many valuable artifacts in here.  Those were probably treated better than the department's graduate students.

She reached into her bag.  "I guess we should just get started."  

"Yeah, let's have a look at--whoa," Josh breathed when she pulled out the globe Kelyn had given Gary.  "That's--uh--wow."

"It belongs to a friend of mine."  Marissa rubbed the base with her thumb as she held it out in her open palms.  The connection grounded her, kept her from fumbling the explanation she'd rehearsed.  "He just discovered it recently, and he needs--we need--to know what it is, what it's for, how old it is, where it came from--that kind of thing.  But most of all, there's this."  She took a deep breath, then turned the contraption over so that she was cradling the glass sphere in her hands and Josh could see the inside of the stand that held it.  "I think there's some kind of writing there.  I need to know what it says."

"May I?"  She could feel Josh's fingers on hers, the slight pressure, but he waited for her nod before he took it.  The thought crossed her mind that it was like letting go of Gary, somehow, but Marissa knew that wasn't true--it couldn't be true.  Her empty hands remained poised in the air for a moment, then dropped to her knees, and she entwined her fingers, forcing them still.

Josh let out a soft whistle.  "This is old--not just antique store old, but old.  Could be Celtic, maybe Scottish or Irish, but that's hard to tell at this point.  What do you know about its history?  Anything you can tell me about the context would help."

"The context?"

"Where it was found, what else was with it, what it's been doing all this time--context."

Marissa wondered if a recent dunking in Lake Michigan counted as context.  "I don't know much at all," she admitted.  "It belonged to another family--my friend received it from someone who inherited it from--from her grandmother."  No way was Marissa going to bring Lucius Snow into this.  

"Hmmm...so not much to go on.  Hey, did you know this base is real silver?"
 
No, she hadn't known that.  Not that it made much difference.  Shaking her head, she reached down to stroke Spike's head, digging her fingers through the wiry hair on top to the softer down beneath.  "Frankly, that's not what interests me."  Trying to give him some information he could use, she added, "The family had all kinds of stories attached to it that nobody quite seems to remember anymore, something about--about--"

"Dragons?"  

Her hand froze between Spike's ears.  A dragon slayer, the letter had said.  "How did you know?"  

"It says so right here."  Josh's initial excitement had spun itself into absorption with the task at hand; his voice, while interested, was more detached.  "You were right; there is an inscription.  It's hard to read.  I'm surprised you could feel anything at all."

Marissa pulled her hands back into her lap.  "What does it say about the dragons?"

 "Hmm--well, the problem is, it's not in any form of English.  Looks like one of the Gaelic languages--which makes sense given the design--and the only word I can make out right now is d-r-a-g-a-n...which, of course, means dragon."  

If Gary really was battling dragons, he would definitely need help...Marissa shook her head so fiercely her earrings rattled against her cheek.  Where had that thought come from?  "What is it, what's it for?"  

"They--the people who first made it--would have called it a scrying glass.  The druids had them made; from what we know, they used them to find out what was happening across long distances, or to tell the future."  The scrape of his chair against the old linoleum floor covered Marissa's sharp intake of breath.  A file drawer slid open, and his voice was muffled.  "Let me find a flashlight and see if that helps."  There were sounds of rummaging in the drawer while Marissa tried to sort out what he was saying, what she had already heard, and what it all had to do with Gary.  Was this some early version of the paper?

"They really couldn't--could they?  I mean--could they see anything in that?"

"Well," Josh said, and the scavenging stopped, his voice growing more animated.  "It's like this.  We've been conditioned for so long to see the world one way: the rational scientific point of view.  A causes B, but only if you can prove it through the senses or with mathematics.  We look down our noses at any other way.  We think of pre-Enlightenment cultures--except maybe the Greeks and Romans--as fearful, cowering people who didn't understand the natural occurrences we explain away with science.  But the thing is, those people didn't live in fear of nature and the wrath of their gods.  They lived in harmony with the world as they saw it.  So maybe that way of seeing things, that lens, led them to see things that we can't.  And maybe the way we explain it today, our translations of the little written record that exists, can't really convey what they meant when they used words like 'scrying' and 'dragon'."

"You mean they were speaking in metaphors?"

He was on his feet, his voice coming from above, with minute variations that made Marissa suspect he was pacing--not far, of course, not in this tiny room.  "Kind of.  But it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, for us to understand what the metaphors meant to them, not without better points of reference.  It's like--when I say 'circle', I see a shape in my mind, a picture, but your mental image is going to be different, because you experience circles in a different way than I do--with your hands mostly, I'd guess.  Or words--when I read, I see the words, but you feel them, so we have different images for them in our minds, and you have textures where I have pictures.  Does that make any sense?"

Hands clasped, Marissa traced a circle on one palm with the opposite thumb.  "You're saying we can't understand what they believed without knowing more about the context in which they believed it."

"Yeah, exactly."  He sounded surprised, happy that someone was on his wavelength.  "I don't mean that they only thought this kind of stuff was pretty decoration, though.  On some level, it was real to them.  Obviously the Celts who made this saw something valuable in it; no society goes on repeating dead-end patterns of behavior for centuries, it just doesn't happen..."  He trailed off.  "Sorry.  It's just...well, my dissertation's all about that stuff, and I've had to fight pretty hard to get some of the faculty to go along with it.  I end up preaching way too much."

Marissa smiled.  "It's okay.  Really.  If I understand what you're talking about, I think I agree with you."

"Any one way of looking at the world and how it works is going to be limited once it sets boundaries, you know?"  Josh was in front of her now, near his chair and the file cabinet.  "Right now science can't explain everything, and it won't be able to if we keep our boundaries too narrow.  I mean--all kinds of stuff happens, every day, that we never hear about because it just doesn't fit the rational scientific point of view, and if we ignore it enough, we think it'll go away--"

"But it doesn't."  Marissa didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  He'd just described Gary's daily predicament.  "There are more things in heaven and earth..."

"Exactly!"  The file drawer slammed shut and Josh plopped into his chair.  "But try to get a bunch of academics to buy into this.  If you can't prove it with statistics or cite at least five previous examples from the literature, forget it.  Even the ethnologists--"

"Oh, great, you set him off again, didn't you?"  Ruby had returned, bringing the smell of the coffee with her.  "Now he'll keep going all day, just like a wind-up toy.  Here ya go."  

Warm ceramic brushed her fingertips; Marissa wrapped her hands around the mug and sipped, losing herself for a moment in the heady scent.  "Thank you," she said, "this really is wonderful."

"Gotta be better than Josh talking your ear off," Ruby said.  After a brief pause, she added, "Um, Josh?  Could I see you out in the hall for just a sec?"

"Sure.  Excuse me."

Marissa nodded, and tuned out the whispered conference that took place down the hall.  She sipped at the coffee and tried to make sense of the bits and pieces she'd learned so far.  If the scrying glass really could help people see the future, it would explain the connection to Gary and Lucius Snow--though the significance of dragons and Celts still confused her.  And how could it have made Gary disappear?

"No, Ruby, it's all right.  Doesn't make any difference."  There was a firm  note in Josh's voice, and then he was back in the room.  "Sorry about that.  Anyway, where were we?  Oh, yeah, flashlight--you know what?  I could see more if we took this into the lab and cleaned it up a bit.  And by then Coop will be in, and she can take a look--Betsy Cooper, she's another grad student here.  She'd love this stuff.  She's on the archeo-linguistics track, and she knows the ancient variations of the languages."

"That would be wonderful, if you have time--but what do you mean, clean it up?"  Marissa's jittery instincts warred with her reason.  Just knowing that someone else had Gary's talisman was making her nervous--even though the someone else was only a few feet away.  It was a perfectly ridiculous reaction, and probably justified everything Chuck and Crumb thought about her current state of mind.  

"Just polish it a bit, that's all.  Get the tarnish out so we can read what's carved there."  After a pause, Josh added, "Trust me, Ms. Clark, I'm not going to do anything that would take away from its value of the artifact.  I would never want to damage anything like this."

"It's not that," she assured him quickly.  "I don't care what it's worth."  She reached out and found the desk, set the coffee mug down.  "Okay.  But may I go with you?  How long will it take?"

"Sure.  And I don't know.  Not too long.  Unless--if you want, you could leave it with me and we could take photographs and do an x-ray, maybe scrape for carbon dating--"

"No," Marissa gasped.  "No.  I can't leave it here."

There was a brief pause, and she knew he'd read something in her reaction.  "Where did you say you got this?"

"From a friend."  Marissa's spine went stiff--he was definitely not disinterested anymore, and what if he thought she couldn't tell him because--"I didn't steal it, if that's what you're thinking."

"No!"  He gave a half-laugh, and she relaxed, but only until he said, "It's just--this friend, it wouldn't have been a friend who--"  Josh's chair creaked again as he sat down, and his voice went soft and quiet.  "Ruby remembered you from your picture in the paper, and she told me what happened out at the lake."

Marissa sucked in air between her teeth.  One hand reached for Spike's harness, and the dog stood.  "Mr. Gardner--"

"Does this change the context?"  When she didn't answer, he added gently, "Is there anything else I should know?"

Lifting her chin, Marissa set her voice in stone.  "No."  Her hand tightened around the harness.  She would bolt if she had to--but then she remembered the way he'd fended off Ruby, kind of like Crumb had held the reporters at bay near the pier, and that brought her back to Gary.  She couldn't let pride or fear or whatever was making her feel so unnerved here stand in the way of doing what she could for him.  "I just need to know what this thing is, and what those words mean."

After a few moments of silence there was a slap, palm against wood.  

"Okay.  Let's go to the lab and see what we can find out."





Chapter 31


In the middle of the journey of our life
I came to myself within a dark wood
Where the straight way was lost.
          ~ Dante


Loud bird song woke Gary; fresh cool air teased over his face.  He sat up and stretched, frightening away a robin who'd been perched on the sill of the open window.  

Definitely not Chicago.

From the low bed, only a patch of pale blue sky laced with thin cirrus clouds was visible out the window.  Keeping his grunts low as he tested his stiff rib cage and battered shoulders, Gary glanced around the tiny, curtained-off room.  No Cat, no paper, at least not yet.

He'd slept on the larger of the two beds.  Larger, of course, was a relative term; it was about the size of the twin bed he'd had as a boy, and the straw-filled mattress certainly wasn't going to do much for his back and shoulders.  Still, he was sure he was better off than that guy Robert.  Shivering as much from the memory of the previous night as from the chilly breeze, Gary grimaced.  When they'd returned to the cottage, Morgelyn, stone-faced and speaking through a tightly clenched jaw, had insisted that he take the bed.  She'd stayed up to read--whether it was about her herbal remedies or the scrying glass, she hadn't said, and Gary hadn't dared to ask.  Fergus had tried to talk to her, but one "Good night," delivered with steel in her voice and lightning in her eyes, had been enough to send both men scurrying.  Gary had fallen asleep listening to parchment pages turning and the fire crackling, his thoughts worrying over crazy warnings and moonlit moors.  At least he'd slept, though.  Stumbling out into the main room, he became convinced that Morgelyn had not.  

Open books were strewn over the table; there wasn't even a small space where she might have dropped her head to doze.  Two stubs of beeswax candles had gutted out, but the fire was blazing, and something that smelled like oatmeal was bubbling in the cooking pot.  Otherwise, the cottage was quiet and Gary was alone for the first time since that night at the ocean.  He wondered where the others had gone, but figured they were cleaning up at the river, like yesterday.

Running his tongue over his front teeth, he wished for a toothbrush--heck, he thought, scratching the back of his neck, any brush.  Even the small comb he usually carried in his jacket had been lost in the river.  But he might as well do what he could; pocketing the little knife he'd need to shave, he stepped through the open front door into the hazy brightness of the morning.  A riotous, ravenous squawking rose from a nest above the door--that must have been the robin's family.  He was halfway to the garden gate when he heard voices from the trees beyond, quiet but intense.

"I think--no, I am certain--that it is a bad idea.  After what happened yesterday, how can you think of going at all?"

"That is exactly why I should be there, Fergus.  If I stay away, what will they think?  Mark and Simon will spread tales about me, saying I'm off at the standing stones dancing with the other witches."

"What other witches?" Fergus asked suspiciously.

They were at it again.  Out of habit, Gary started toward the voices.  He still couldn't see them; they were just around the bend in the path.

"There are none--that is my point!"  Morgelyn's voice was exasperated, with an undercurrent of weariness.  "If we go, they will see that I am the same woman I have ever been."

"But--"

"We will go, Fergus."

"What do you mean by 'we'?  You cannot take Gary."

He froze, one hand on the gate.   

"'Twould be a disaster," Fergus continued.  "He stands out almost as much as--"

"As I?"  Morgelyn's cold tone dared her friend to agree with her.  

"He is half a head taller than anyone in Gwenyllan, and the moment he opens his mouth he could doom us all."

"He will not, and the simple truth is, we cannot leave him here alone.  And if what I learned last night is true, then he should spend time in the village with us."

Was she talking about what the old man had said, or something she'd found in her books?  What did it have to do with him?  Didn't she trust him by himself?  Gary wasn't sure he wanted to know what it all meant.  His face was getting warmer by the minute.

"Morgelyn, be sensible.  Father Ezekiel is already suspicious, Mark Styles is--well, he is simply insane--and Lady Nessa is looking for ways to get her claws into this town and stir up trouble, you said so yourself.  Did you see the way she went after Gary yesterday?"

"Like a hawk after prey, yes.  But I am sure Gary is used to such attention.  He will not be offended if Nessa--"

"I care little for his feelings."

"Fergus!"

"It is you I worry about.  Why give them more cause to doubt you?  Leave him here, and tell them he has gone away.  He will never fit in, and how will you explain him?  You could not carry off a lie if I handed it to you in a bucket!"

Twigs snapped and leaves rustled, punctuating the argument.  

"Morgelyn, wait, come back--"

"I do not have to listen to you!"

The thrust and parry continued, fading out of Gary's hearing.  He knew it was cowardly, but he didn't follow.  His mother had always told him that eavesdroppers heard what they least wished to know about themselves, and once again, she'd been proven correct.  Besides, after last night, he just didn't have the will to play peacemaker.  He'd reached this point with Chuck and Marissa once or twice, and--well, a guy had to know his limits.

Since going to the river was out of the question, Gary drew a bucket from the little well in the front garden and cleaned up with that, shivering anew at the cold water on his skin.  Wasn't this supposed to be early summer?  Didn't feel much like it, but then, what did he know of English--Cornish--weather?  Or history, or medicine, or anything?  

He wandered back into the cabin and stirred the porridge for the heck of it.  Maybe he should go ahead and eat--who knew how long those two would be arguing, or what they'd decide.  Or how long this particular bungee jump into the past was going to last...he straightened up and glanced longingly at his own clothes--Chicago, 1998, folded neatly on a shelf on the far wall.  Maybe if he did stay here today, they wouldn't mind if he put them on.  If he could just feel like himself for a little while, he might be better able to figure everything out.  

But wasn't that what the paper was for?  He'd never been without one for two days in a row.  The old one, the one he'd brought with him, wasn't with his clothes, and looking around for it gave him something else to occupy his time.  Finally he found it on the table, under Morgelyn's books.  

So she'd been trying to read the Sun-Times, along with everything else.  Probably couldn't get more than the pictures, not with their versions of English being so very different.  Still, the story she'd left it opened to didn't have a picture.  

Missing...Presumed...

"Oh, damn."  Gary sat down on the bench with a thump.  He didn't know what to hope for anymore.  He wanted to help, but despite his resolve, it was wrenching to think that people back home thought...what that article said they thought.  Of course, if the rules of time were suspended enough, maybe if--when--he got back home, no time at all would have passed, and the story would change.  Maybe that's why a new paper hadn't come.  Or maybe it was because they didn't have newspapers here.  

Or maybe he was just losing his mind, Gary thought, rubbing his forehead with the thumb and first finger of his right hand.  He half-wished Fergus and Morgelyn would bring their argument back to the cabin; having all this time alone to think might not be such a good thing.

Okay, think good thoughts.  There was a way home, right?  But according to what Morgelyn had told him, he couldn't return unless someone back home helped, and in order for that to happen, they'd have to know he was gone, so time had to be passing in Chicago, too--time in which they all thought he was at the bottom of Lake Michigan.  

No matter what, the choices seemed bleak.  If everyone at home thought he'd drowned, would they even look for, or be able to find, that scrying glass?  Was it even there--and then--or had it been lost to them in his wild trip through water and time?  

Gary stood again and walked toward the fire, his gaze focused on the crystal globe which sat on the nearby shelf.  After a moment's deliberation and a deep breath, he lifted the glass from the shelf, turning it in his hands, considering.  Something told him Kelyn Gillespie hadn't known what this thing was capable of, and so, while he couldn't blame her for what had happened, he also couldn't expect her to know enough to get him back home.  Crumb hadn't had a clue about what was going on, just that Kelyn had seemed, in the ex-cop's words, "a little spooky".  That left Marissa.  She was the only one who could possibly guess at the truth--the question was, would she?  If only they'd had more time to figure it out together before all this started.  If only there was some way to talk to her now...

His breath caught in his throat when a ray of sun shot from a break in the clouds through the window and right into the center of the sphere.  Gary fumbled with the globe, nearly dropping it on the rushes.  There were colors inside it again, whirling around in the glass like some demented rainbow.  He moved closer to the window, his heart pounding in time with the pulse and swirl of colors, brilliant jewels, soft pastels; bright and soft mixed and separated, swirled and parted.  It looked....it looked....

It looked just like it had right before he'd fallen in the lake.  

But this time there was more, there was a...a feeling.  It hit him in the gut, sorrow and fear and someone needed him--not just someone, Marissa needed him...

What if she was in trouble, what if...

Gary couldn't get to her, but he could get to the next best thing.  He had to know what this meant.  Cradling the ball in an uncertain hand, he left the cabin and headed for the river.





Chapter 32

Antiquities are history defaced, or some
remnants of history which have escaped
the shipwreck of time.
          ~ Francis Bacon


"This is great!  There's writing all over this thing.  The metalwork and the style of lettering ought to give us a clue as to how old it is..."

Josh's voice trailed off, as it had several times already.  He was trying to explain the cleaning process and what he was finding, but he trailed off, his thoughts unfinished, every time he found something new.  He'd make a great absent-minded professor, Marissa thought with a wry smile.  She was perched on a stool, one foot hooked behind the bottom rung and the other swinging back and forth, the thick heel of her shoe hitting the stool's leg in a tight rhythm.  Her hand rested on the metal top of a lab table for balance.  Josh was working a few feet down the table.  

"I hope you're not offended or anything, but I'm really amazed you were able to figure out these were letters.  Nobody else told you about them?"

"No, no one else knows," Marissa said softly, and pushed that ache back in place, behind the hum of the overhead lights and the chemical tang of the silver polish.  "Can you make out anything besides the word 'dragon'?"

"It might be an incantation."  He let out a long breath, like a diver coming up for air.  "I'm not sure, though.  I mean, I know a little Gaelic, both Irish and Scots--enough to read the signs in the pubs when we're there on a dig.  But this...this is older.  I'm not sure I can make out more than a word or two.  It's like trying to translate Middle English into modern Russian.  It's gonna take a while, and it's gonna take Betsy Cooper."

"You said she's a student?"  Marissa didn't mean to sound dubious, but it was important to get this right.

"Yeah, but Betsy knows more than most of her profs about the archeolinguistics of these civilizations.  She puts the languages and the archaeology together, and she's really focused on the Celtic cultures.  The big boys upstairs mostly care about the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Mayans--the moneymakers at the museums, you know?  Like that Bastet exhibit last winter.  Boy, did that rake in the bucks."  He chuckled softly.

Marissa had to grip the tabletop with all her strength to keep from toppling off the stool.  Josh didn't seem to notice.  "I'm gonna go see if Betsy's in her office, okay?  I'll be right back."  

"Sure," Marissa mumbled distantly.  There was the clink of metal on metal as he set the globe down on the table, followed by footsteps, and then the door clicked open, fell shut.

When she felt steady enough to move again, Marissa hopped off the stool, made her way to the end of the table, and felt through tins and jars and clothes until she found the...what had he called it?  A scrying glass.  She couldn't explain her relief when she cradled it in her hands again.  "Dragons, magic...what are we going to do?" she murmured, to Spike if no one else.  "How does all this help Gary?"  Just saying his name out loud sent an aching jolt through her--the soft twang of his voice, that cheap after shave he sometimes wore, a rare laugh--she would have given anything at that moment for those.  Whatever was going on, whether he was coming back or not, she missed her friend.  

Swiping the heel of her left hand across her eyes, Marissa pulled the globe in close to her chest with her right.  Unbidden thoughts brushed at her like butterfly wings--timebound, she thought, and wondered what it meant.  Timebound, firetorn, salve nos...

"What--" she whispered, but no question would come.  Firetorn...   The glass felt warmer than it had before.

The soft swoosh of the lab door swinging open announced Josh's arrival.  "Coop wasn't in her office, but--hey, what's going on?"  Josh's question rose into the register of incredulity as he stepped closer.  "What did you do to it?"

Ad adjuvandum me festina...

"Do?"  Marissa shook her head, and the strange words went scattering, rearranged themselves, but still, it was her own voice she heard--timetorn, firebound...  She held the glass out so that he could see.  "I didn't do anything."

"Then why is it changing color--how is it doing this?"  Josh lifted the scrying glass out of her hands, leaving her fingers treading empty air.  "It's like a whole rainbow in here."

Changing colors--just like when Gary had--oh, no.  "Josh," Marissa said through a lurch of fear, "Josh, put it down.  Please."

Little-boy wonder was stronger than Marissa's growing alarm.  "This isincredible.  How did you do it?"

"I didn't do anything, and that's why it's dangerous--Josh, please, give it to me now.  You shouldn't be holding it--please, put it down, or hand it over."

Finally, her panic must have registered.  "What's the matter?" he asked.

"I don't know, but--but please, give it back to me."  

Warm glass and warm metal, vibrating slightly, filled her hands-- firebound, timetorn--and Marissa's breath caught in her throat because for a minute, just for a minute, it was so warm and real that the strands of metal at the base of the scrying glass didn't feel like silver.  They felt like--

...ad adjuvandum ...

--though it should have been impossible--

...me festina...

--like Gary's fingers reaching for hers.

"Oh my God," she breathed, half in wonder, half in supplication.  "Gary?"

"Hey, what--"

Spike woofed.  

Cat yowled from the table next to her, right at her elbow.

Marissa spun toward the sound, and a pair of claws sank into the flesh between her thumb and first finger.  Cat had never hurt her before, but now it scratched again, so sharp and deep that she gasped and dropped the crystal ball onto the table.  Hissing and meowing, Cat butted its body between her outstretched hands and the ball, and it rattled away against the metal surface.

"What's--why--how--what the--"  Josh sounded even more confused than Marissa felt.  "It stopped, as soon as you dropped it, it just--blinked out, it--what did you mean, dangerous?  And how the hell did a cat get in here?"  He reached past Marissa as she shook her head and cradled her injured left hand in her right, wishing the sting would ease.  "Nothing like this has ever happened before--but then again, artifacts don't just burst into--pyrotechnics, or whatever that was just now."  Josh paused, waiting for a response that Marissa still couldn't form.  "Not unless it's some kind of modern fake...but no, I'm sure it's not, it can't be...and why would you...but I still don't know where this cat could have come from."

She swallowed hysterical giggles; didn't tell Josh that no one ever knew where Cat came from.  "It didn't want me to hold that thing," she murmured, thinking out loud.

"Want?"  Cat was mewling in Josh's arms, but not angrily, not now that the crystal ball was out of her hands.  When she didn't answer, he asked, "Did the cat have something to do with--what am I saying?  Let me get rid of it, and I'll find the first aid kit, okay?"

"No--wait."  She held out her arms.  "Let me have the cat."

"But it drew blood," Josh said, baffled.

"I know this cat, it didn't mean to hurt me, it'll be all right, it's a good cat, really," Marissa babbled while she tried to figure out what had just happened, what it all meant, and why Cat didn't want--really didn't want--her to hold the globe when it was like that, any more than she'd wanted Josh to.  Cat settled into her arms, licking her scratches apologetically and purring against her wrist.  Pulling the warm bundle of fur in close, Marissa had to blink back more tears.  "It's okay, Cat," she murmured into its neck.  "It's okay now."  

With a grunt that Marissa interpreted as, "Suit yourself," Josh walked across the lab, rattled around in a cabinet for a moment, and returned.  "First aid kit--told you we were the ER of archaeology.  Here, give me your hand."

Spike whined as Marissa settled herself back onto the stool, his way of asking if there was anything he could do.  She held out her left hand toward Josh's voice, but kept Cat encircled in her right arm, holding onto it like a promise.  A tiny gasp escaped her when the cleaning solution on the towelette Josh applied stung deep into the cut on the back of her hand.  

"Sorry."  Josh dabbed up the residue with a gauze pad and started applying bandages.  "We only have the little ones right now, it's gonna take three.  How--what just--how did you know it was your cat?"

Why did her hand have to start shaking?  It was a perfectly reasonable question.  "I know what Cat sounds like."

"That's it's name?  Cat?"  

"It's the only name Ga--the only name I've ever heard."

"Okay..."  Josh drew it out, as if he still wasn't satisfied with her answer.  When she didn't elaborate, he went on, "Don't all cats sound the same?"

"No.  And they don't all smell like this cat, either."

"So it's like, what, your familiar?"  His voice was only half joking, but Marissa couldn't answer; couldn't tell him that in a strange way, that's what Cat was, for Gary.  Swallowing hard against the lump in her throat, she scratched Cat behind the ears.  Securing the final bandage with a pat, Josh released her hand and took a step away.  "Hey, whatever was happening with that thing before, it's stopped now.  Okay if I pick it up?"  

Nodding, Marissa let out a sigh, part relief, part regret for what might have happened, if not for Cat.  It had been Gary, for that brief moment; somehow, they had connected.  She could feel the weight of Josh's determined curiosity as he asked, "You want to tell me what that was all about?  More context?"

More context than she could ever explain.  "Something like that.  Can you see anything on it that might have caused it to change?"  

"No.  But--wow.  I mean, wow.  It's one thing to theorize about magic and all that, but to see it happen right in front of me--"  A stool scraped across the floor.  "Do you mind if I just get a little freaked out here?"

"Only if I can join you."  

Cat mewed and wriggled against her arm.  Knowing that it would find its own way to wherever it was supposed to be next, Marissa let Cat slip down, and it padded away across the lab floor.  It was beyond difficult not to follow, not to plead with it for something, anything that would lead her to Gary.  But Cat did things in its own time, and for now Marissa supposed she would have to trust it.  

"Geez, it just--I mean, this thing was going all Finian's Rainbow right there in your hand--but there's no way, there's nothing here that could have caused it.  Do you think that you could do it again?  Because I could get the video camera and--"  Josh must have read something in her face.  "Okay, yeah, wrong idea."

"Honestly, Josh, I promise you--I have no idea how it happened, or why it stopped."

"Has it ever done that before?"

"Just--"  The echo of Gary's voice on the pier, telling her the globe was changing, glowing, mixed in her head with residual words-- ad adjuvandum, timetorn--"Just one time," she finally managed, and held out her hands.  Josh understood right away; he gave her the globe without protest.  Cool and unresponsive, it rested impassively in her hands.  "I don't understand this," she said, meaning the words she'd heard as well as what Josh had seen.  "I don't understand any of it."

"This has something to do with your friend, doesn't it?  Your friend who died."

"Disappeared," Marissa corrected, tracing circles on the glass.  "They haven't found him yet."  She wondered if she should ask Josh about the words that had come to her, but they were so strange, not even words, really, and some of them in a language she didn't know...Latin, they'd sounded like Latin.  It wasn't that she didn't trust Josh, but she was afraid to give the words her voice, to give them weight--she was afraid of what they would cause.

Silence spiraled through the room; finally, Josh must have realized that she wasn't going to elaborate.  "Is there anything more, anything at all, that you want to tell me about all this?"

"I--I'm sorry," she murmured, fingertips brushing the scratches under the stand that meant something, that somehow meant Gary.  "I've taken up so much of your time already.  Maybe I should go."

"Wait, I shouldn't have brought that up.  Don't leave."  She had half-turned away, but Josh stopped her, barely brushing her shoulder with his hand.  The genuine sympathy in his voice couldn't disguise the edge of desperation, and she knew he feared losing the find of a lifetime when he continued, "Look, I know this isn't easy for you--whatever 'this' is.  I'm sorry I got weirded out, but whatever's happening, well, it is freaky, and you and I both know it.  But I do want to know more, and I--I want to help if I can."

So much like...Marissa gulped.  How could she say no?  "You can help by telling me what the inscription means."  

He sighed.  "There's gonna be a little delay there.  Betsy's taken her freshmen out to a dig site.  But if you let me show this to her when she gets back tonight, I'm sure she can come up with something."

"No."  Even though it pulled against the cuts on her hand, she tightened her grip on the scrying glass.  "I can't leave it."

There was a pause, then: "Okay.  That's fair, after...whatever just happened.  Let me write down what I can see, and take a picture or two before you go, okay?  It won't hurt anything, I promise.  And I'll corner Coop as soon as she gets back in.  Deal?"

It took a moment, again, before Marissa could relinquish the globe to Josh.  "Deal," she finally said, wondering if the library had any Latin dictionaries in Braille.  





Chapter 33


I dreamt I brought a book for you to see
Page after page were familiar faces
Walking behind in a joyous line
Heroes, saints, and some so old
Their names had been lost in the fog of time
Hand in hand, we stepped on in
True and forevermore
         ~ Carrie Newcomer


Gary could hardly be bothered to look at the path ahead of him, so caught up was he in gazing at the colors in the crystal ball.  It felt different in his hands, warmer, as though the metal was alive, was becoming--something else, he wasn't quite sure what--and then, just for a moment, he thought he heard Marissa's voice.

"Gary?"

That was when he ran into the tree.  His head hit the trunk with a "clonk".

"Yow!"  

Both hands came up to cradle his head and stop the spinning world.  Reaching through his muddled mind for the lost voice--it had been Marissa, no accent but Chicago's, no language but his own, so sad and scared--he felt the scrying glass roll over his feet.  It was a moment before he could catch his breath, blink the light back into his eyes, and bend to retrieve the globe, which had landed in a patch of something green, dotted with little white flowers.  He held it up to the sunlight.

Nothing.  It was empty again.  

Gary blew out an exasperated breath, rubbing his throbbing forehead one more time.  If ever he got home, he vowed, he'd never go anywhere without a few aspirin in his pocket.  Gritting his teeth, he marched determinedly down to the river.

Fergus was sitting just out of reach of the waterfall's spray, his back against one of the willow trees that overhung the river.  A kind of miniature harp sat on his lap, its strings sticking up crazily.  For some reason, they reminded Gary of Patrick's hair.  Fergus held a half-eaten loaf of bread in one hand and a small knife in the other.

"Where is she?" Gary asked without preamble.  

"Morgelyn?" Fergus asked through a mouthful of bread.  He shrugged, then swallowed and held out the loaf.  "Off in a temper somewhere.  Breakfast?"

Ignoring the bread, Gary scratched the back of his head.  "You were giving her a hard time again, weren't you?  I heard some of that this morning," he added when Fergus lifted an eyebrow.  

"I told her the truth."  Fergus turned a pointed stare on the object in Gary's hands.  "Are you thinking of going home?"

Is that what they'd been worried about, arguing over?  Did they really think he'd just run out on them?  "No, it just..."  He paused.  After Fergus's tirades the day before, Gary wasn't sure it would be a good idea to discuss something so obviously magical with him.  "You don't know where she is at all?"

Fergus set the bread down on the ground and started sawing away at one of the longer strings with his knife.  He nodded down the path to the ocean.  "That way.  She usually goes to the shore when she wants to think.  Hopefully," he added dryly, "the walk will put her in a better mood."

"Okay.  Thanks."  Gary took a couple of steps, then turned back.  "I'm not going home until this thing is over."

Fergus shrugged.  "Well, see if you can talk any sense into her.  Though between the two of you, I don't know who's the worse fool."  He was absorbed in untangling his strings before Gary could form a reply.  

As he walked--keeping an eye out for trees this time--Gary tried to puzzle through what he knew.  The strange little globe had changed once before, when Morgelyn had brought him to her time.  Yesterday she'd said that she'd succeeded because there was a threat, trouble in the making.  Well, what if...what if he really had heard Marissa a few minutes ago?  Did that mean she was in trouble, too?  How could he keep the promise he'd just made, if she...but it was two different times, wasn't it?

He reached the cliff, the boulder he had found that first night, and in the light of day he could see the gentler slope off to his right, with rocks fitted in like stair steps down to the broad shore.  It was only when he started down the slope that he realized he was wearing the soft-soled boots Morgelyn had given him, and not his own, sturdier shoes.  He hadn't picked them out consciously.  Must be acclimatizing, he thought ruefully, and then shuddered.  God forbid he should ever get used to this.  Picking his way down the slope as carefully as he could, he watched each step until his feet hit damp sand.  He guessed it was low tide; the strip of beach was wet, littered with shells and beds of kelp.  

The ocean was even louder down here.  The immensity of the roiling blue-green water stretched before him and to either side.  It dwarfed the boulders, the cliffs, and the tiny figure down the beach, little more than a silhouette against the morning sun.  Squawking gulls scattered when Gary called her name, and she turned from gazing at the sea to wave, one hand shading her eyes.   

The soft boots couldn't protect his feet from the cold salt water, colder than Lake Michigan in November.  The closer he got to Morgelyn, the sloshier his walk became.  She stood at the very edge of the water, the waves just covering her bare feet as they rolled in, then receded.  The hem of her skirt was tucked up in a belt, exposing her ankles, and Gary realized that if he'd had any sense he would have stopped to take off his own shoes and roll up the wool pants.  Way too late for that, he realized, when a particularly eager wave snuck up the beach, dousing him halfway to his knees.  Damn, that water was cold.  Morgelyn's chuckle at his wordless exclamation cut through the low roar of water over sand.  He hurried up the beach a few feet before the next wave could get him, removed the sodden shoes, and rolled up the legs of the pants as best he could with the scrying glass tucked under one arm.  Wool might be itchy, but wet wool would be unbearable.

"I meant no offense, you just looked so surprised," Morgelyn said with a smile as she stepped over to join him.  "What are you doing down here?  You were dead to the world when I left the cottage."

"Yeah, well, I'm definitely awake now."  Gary forced a wry grin past his exasperation.  "I wanted to talk to you, and Fergus said you might be down here."  At the mention of her friend's name, Morgelyn's shoulders sagged, the smile dropped off her face, and she turned to watch gulls circling over the barnacle-crusted boulder that stuck up from the water a few yards out.

"Did he also mention that he told me I should stay down here and hide from my own neighbors?"  Up close, Gary could see that she was tired, deep lines etched around her eyes and mouth.  "He has gone beyond reason in his cautions and warnings.  I am not a child."

"Whoa."  Gary held up a hand.  "I didn't come here to argue with you, okay?"  

"No, of course you did not."  Clutching her plaid shawl around her shoulders, Morgelyn turned back to him, shaking her head.  "I'm sorry, Gary; he started pestering again the moment I stepped out to the garden this morning, and after last night it was...too much."

"Yeah, I understand that."  Gary had spotted a flattish rock a little way down the beach, with what looked like a basket on top.  Assuming it was Morgelyn's, he started walking that way, and she fell into step beside him.  "How's your arm?"

"Healing.  It was never more than a scratch."  Her voice was distracted, and they walked quietly for a few moments, the rolling of the ocean filling the silence.  Grateful for the wind in his face and the way it cleared out the cobwebs from his brain, Gary focused on sidestepping erratic waves until they got to the rock, inky basalt cropping up from the sand like a turtle's back.  Morgelyn turned away from the breeze, leaning back against the
rock, and one eyebrow came up as the object Gary was carrying finally registered.

"I need to talk to you about this."  Gary held the globe upright on his outstretched palm, and the bright sunlight shone through the crystal and set diamonds dancing inside it.  But there were no colors, no vibrations.  There was no warmth.  "I--I was looking at it earlier, and it did it again."

"Did what?"  The way her gaze darted from Gary to the glass and back told him that Morgelyn had a pretty good idea what he meant.

"It changed."  He held the glass out to her, hoping she'd take it, hoping she'd explain away what he feared it might mean.  "There were colors inside it, and it got kinda--kinda warm, and it was--it was weird."

Morgelyn searched his eyes for a moment, then took it carefully into her hands.  She didn't say anything as she examined it, and Gary shifted uncomfortably from one wet foot to the other.

"I'm not making it up."

"Of course you are not."  Morgelyn twisted the globe one way and another in the light.  "Someone else must have it," she said, and Gary caught the note of trepidation in her voice, the slight crease in her brow.  "In another time.  Your time, most likely."  Her glance was quick and skittish.  "When I called for you, this last time, the time it worked, it happened as you just described, right before you appeared in the river."

Gary nodded.  Somehow, it seemed perfectly logical to think that the thing could be in two places at once, since it wasn't really 'at once'; technically, it was in two different times.  "It looked like that on the pier, right before I--I fell in the lake."  He, too, turned and leaned back against the boulder, accepting its shelter.  His legs stung as the salt water dried on his skin.  "It was Marissa.  I was thinking about her when this all started happening, and I--I know this sounds crazy, but I swear, just for a second, I heard her voice.  Of course, then I ran into a tree and dropped it and it all stopped."  Deep in contemplation of the metal strands around the base of the globe, Morgelyn didn't respond.  Gary took a deep breath and asked, "Do you think she has it?"

"I think that is entirely possible."  She didn't look up, wouldn't meet his eyes, though her voice was clear and steady enough.  "It would seem, Gary Hobson, that you still have a way to get home."

His heartbeat sped up at that, for two different reasons.  "If I hadn't dropped it, do you think I would have gone back?"

The way she winced at that was the best clue so far to Morgelyn's state of mind.  "Perhaps," she whispered, barely audible under the wind, gulls, and waves.

"Well, then I'm glad I did run into that tree," Gary said, and he was only partly lying.  He did want to help, and despite Fergus's doubts, there had to be a way he could.  Morgelyn's startled eyes met his.  "I'm gonna see this through.  I won't just leave you in the middle of whatever's going on."

"That is a good way to put it.  Whatever."  Morgelyn sighed, tilting her head back against the boulder.  When she opened her eyes, she turned and smiled at Gary, a weary smile, but a real one.  "Thank you.  I do not know if I could do the same in your place."

"You could," Gary told her simply.  "Look, uh, Morgelyn--"  Now it was his turn to avoid an unnerving stare; he looked down at his hands, rubbing one palm with the opposite thumb.  "You don't think she's in trouble, do you?  I mean, what if someone there needs me and I can't--"

Morgelyn touched his arm.  "I've no doubt your friends miss you.  But I also have thought a great deal about what you said yesterday, about this magic being not entirely in our hands.  I believe you were correct."  She indicated the shore, the rocks, the tumbling waves, with a sweep of her arm.  "If God can make all this, He can certainly take care of us as He sees fit.  And I do not believe that God would be so cruel as to keep you from your friend if she were in true danger."

Gary wasn't sure how to respond to that.  Connecting God with the paper and everything that went with it had never been comfortable for him.  But he latched onto the rest of her meaning, trusted it the way he usually trusted Marissa's advice.  

"Oh--okay.  Thanks."  He gulped, looking down at his hands.  "I'm glad you think that's true.  I won't go--you know you, uh--"  Morgelyn frowned at him, perplexed, and the words came tumbling out.  "You can trust me, you know."

Brown eyes wide, she faced him straight on.  The wind pushed her hair back from her face.  "Of course I trust you, Gary."

"Yeah, but I heard what you said to Fergus this morning.  About not leaving me alone."  And it had stung, more than he liked to admit.   

"You heard that?  Oh, Gary, I did not mean--No, I--oh, dear."  She dropped her hands to her sides, even though one still held the crystal ball.  "When Fergus starts to argue with me, all good sense goes out the window."

Gary's grin was faint.  "Really gets to ya, huh?"

"Like a nettle's sting."  Morgelyn shook her head ruefully.  

"That's because he doesn't want to see you get hurt."

"I understand that, but he does not see this situation clearly.  He does not know what it is to have been given a trust like this."  She brought the globe out, balancing it in her hands so that they both could see it.  "I will not fail--I cannot--not like--"  Her last words were whispered, and Gary wasn't sure that he'd heard correctly.  He followed her gaze as she turned to look out at the sea, at an irregular polygon of white that must have been some configuration of ship's sails.  They both watched it glide, smooth as a figure skater from this distance, toward the west.  Finally Morgelyn cleared her throat and snapped her head back, meeting his eyes again.  "If what I learned is true, I fear for all of us."  

Gary spread his hands wide.  "What is it?  What else do you know?"  

Searching his eyes, Morgelyn didn't answer at first.  The wind gusted, stalling a gull so close to their heads that Gary could have reached up and touched it.  "There is more," she said when the bird had beat itself free.

"More?  More what?"  Gary didn't even try to hide the sinking suspicion in his voice.  Of course there was more.  Less would have been far too easy.

"More to this."  She nodded at the glass.  "When Grandmother gave it to me, there was not time for her to tell me everything, but Gary--it is not only for bringing you here and getting you home.  It may be part of a story, and if so it has a name."  She shifted her hands, so that she held the globe cupped gingerly in her palms.  Biting her lip, she turned, set it oh-so-carefully on the flat top of the rock, and backed away from it.  Two steps, three, four.  She clasped her hands behind her back and sighed with a stiffness that Gary didn't understand.  

"Fred?" he joked, trying to break the tension.

"What?"

"Its other name, it, uh, wouldn't be Fred, would it?"

"Of course not."  Blinking away a confused look, Morgelyn began to pace in a wide circle, restless as the sea.  "I did not fully understand until last night--and I am still not sure I understand it all.  I was looking for something, anything--I wanted a cure, and to know the reason you are here, and how to help save the village, and--and I know there has to be a reason for all of it."  Morgelyn stopped in front of him and clasped her hands behind her back.  

"You would say that," Gary muttered.

She tilted her head, brow furrowed.  "Something Robert said last night gave me an idea."

"Fire--he said to beware of fire."  The memory drove shivers up Gary's spine.  

Morgelyn turned her face to the sea.  "No--yes--I mean, when he said that, he called me Amalia.  He thought I was my grandmother, and I think he thought you were her husband.  Time confuses him now; he muddles it up, crosses the threads."   

"Yeah, I noticed."  Time wasn't the only thing mixed up in that guy's head.  

"If he was right, if Enora told them about dragons and warned them about fire--well, they would have written something like that down for safekeeping.  I knew nothing of the scrying glass until the day my grandmother died, and I know that she would not have left me this without some clue, some help.  Last night, when Robert said Enora told them both, I finally realized that perhaps it was not Grandmother who wrote it down.  Grandfather's logs have been sitting at the bottom of a chest for years, and in all that has happened in recent years, I had forgotten he recorded more than his sea travels."

Gary nodded.  "Fergus said he was a sailor."

"He was a captain."  Morgelyn stood up straighter; Gary half-expected her to salute.  She lifted the basket from the rock and pulled out a small, leather-bound book, offering it to him.  "This was from the time when my mother was born."

The cover was aging, spotted leather.  Gary opened it gingerly, telling himself that it was maybe fifty years old, not the six hundred that it seemed to him.  The thin vellum pages were the color of weak tea.  Each was covered from top to bottom, edge to edge, with tiny writing in an ink that was once black, now turning brown.  "What language is this?" he asked, holding it up to his nose and squinting at the lettering.  

Morgelyn chuckled.  "It is the reason--one of them--that Grandmother taught me so many.  He writes in English--as we know it--as well as the languages he learned from his early days on pirate ships, before he became respectable, and of course his own language from Ire, in Africa."  

"He couldn't just stick with one?"

"Grandmother always said that some tongues had better ways of expressing certain ideas than others."

"Like the Eskimos and all their words for snow," Gary said.  Morgelyn squinted at him, but he waved it off.  "Not important."

She took the book back from Gary, turning pages delicately.  "Where was that entry...here."  Turning the book so that Gary could see it, she traced one line of chicken scratch with a finger.  When he shook his head, helpless, she turned it back to herself.  "He says that Enora died and left them not only her cottage, but a...a freagracht, a responsibility, or trust.  He is not sure if Enora's stories are true, but Amalia is.  She believes that in the time of greatest need, an marfiór de dragan--the dragon slayer--will come through the Eye of the Dragon, an inscription will appear, and a treasure will be found."  Brow knit, Morgelyn looked up at Gary.  "Enora was speaking of you."

"Ooooookay..."  Gary was still muddled by the combination of family history and crazy legends.  He latched on to the easiest question first.  "Who was Enora?"

Morgelyn pointed again at the writing, holding down the pages that tried to turn themselves in the stiffening wind.  "She lived in the cottage before we did.  Like Grandmother, she was a healer--it is more true to say that Grandmother became a healer because of her.  I never met her, of course; Grandmother was a young woman the first time they came here.  The lord of the manor in that day, kin of Lady Nessa's husband, wanted to hire Grandfather to ship his tin, and so they came to Gwenyllan to meet him.  They had to walk from the harbor down in Polruan--a port town a few miles away."  She nodded past the boulder, indicating the west.  "On their way into Gwenyllan, they passed by the cottage, and said hello to the woman who was working in the garden there.  Enora took one look at Grandmother and told her that her life lacked roots.  It was enough to make Grandmother stop and take notice, and the two of them became friends.  The rest is a long story."  Morgelyn's smile was sheepish.  "Though of course I am making it long enough already."

An old story, one she knew well, one that was important.  Gary flashed a grin.  "I'll let you know if you lose me.  So this Enora, she gave your grandparents that thing?"  He pointed over his shoulder, where the scrying glass rested on the rock.

Nodding, Morgelyn said, "Grandmother told me Enora knew the old ways, the ways of the people who were here before the Christians.  They understood the seasons, the earth, the ocean--the things that never change, even though people do.  And Grandmother understood those things, too, though she had learned them in a different land, in a different way.  But even though she was different, people accepted her because she had Enora's blessing."  She paused, wrapped one hand over her arm where it had been cut the day before, and drew it in close.  "I think it was easier, then, to live with differences.  There were no droughts, no famine, no pestilence.  The people felt blessed, and did not turn on one another."

Gary leaned back against the rock, the wind blowing salt water mist and the occasional grain of sand into his face.  "But they don't feel blessed now."

"And that is why they need the treasure Grandfather writes about.  So they can feel blessed, so they can be blessed, so that we can feel like--be--a real village, together again, and face down the dragon."  Gary opened his mouth to ask what all that meant, but Morgelyn continued, gesturing at the crystal ball.  "Grandmother gave this to me before she died; she said she had failed, but she could not have--"  She swallowed, pulling into herself, against the pain of the past, Gary thought, but he didn't know what to say.  "By the time she gave it to me, she was feverish, near delirium.  She did not tell me it was the Dragon's Eye, but Grandfather did, last night.  Now I just have to find the right story."

Dizzy from the rush of information, of stories and family history and way too much for a regular guy from Chicago to understand, Gary fumbled for the right question.  "Morgelyn--what stories?  What treasure?  What dragon--and this is its eye?"

"I know it makes little sense to you, and there is still much to explain; I am still learning myself."  Morgelyn sighed.  "Will you--can you trust me?  Long enough to stay while I work out what it all is?"

He thought about the ball, tugging him back to his own present.  He wanted to ask how long it would take to work all this out.  But he knew there would be no answer, so he simply nodded.

"There is one clue we might find right now."  These words came out more slowly, tentatively.  "The inscription.  If Grandfather was right, if what I am reading into his words is correct, then it should be under the base of the scrying glass.  It would have appeared when you did."  She stepped closer to the boulder, and Gary turned; both stared at the globe, but neither one reached for it.  Morgelyn's voice dropped to a whisper.  "I did not know to look, but if something was there I would have seen it, over the past years of trying.  Of course, if the story is correct, it would not have been visible until now--until you."

Rubbing his still-tender ribs, Gary wondered if whatever was inscribed on this thing, if it really was there, was worth all the trouble it had caused.  He also wondered why his hostess, who seemed as curious as a cat, hadn't checked the object for an inscription as soon as she'd read her Grandfather's words.  "Why didn't you look last night?"

"I have been gathering my courage.  I am half afraid of what it would mean.  It would mean that what is coming is worse, worse than the illness that struck before, worse than losing half the village, worse than losing Grandmother--and certainly, I think, it would mean something worse than what Fergus fears.  I cannot help but think that it would mean the end of the world, at least for us."

"The end of the world?"  Gary was now thoroughly chilled from the wind and his wet legs, but that wasn't why he was fighting off the shivers.  "Even with a magical crystal ball, I'm not sure I can stop that."





Chapter 34

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me
          ~ Loreena McKennitt


It was a long time before Morgelyn answered Gary, and when she did, she was staring at the crystal ball.  "What do any of us know of magic, now?"  She twisted her fingers together.  "Gary, what have I set free?"

He chewed on his lip, considering.  There was no explanation he could possibly give, and Morgelyn was so scattered that he wasn't sure he'd get a straight answer about inscriptions, dragons and treasure no matter how many times he asked--he wasn't even sure he wanted one.  On the other hand, he had seen the ball change, and he was living through what it could do.  It seemed to him, standing in Cornwall, Thirteen Fifty-Something, talking with someone who spoke a language he shouldn't have been able to understand, that the thing to do with magic was to go along with it, trust it and see where it led--end of the world or not.  It wasn't a philosophy he'd always followed willingly, but when he did, it seemed to work.  Covering the top of the ball with his hand, he lifted it, turning the underside so Morgelyn could see it.  

She closed her eyes, and the gulls fell silent around them.

"If it's there, it's there," Gary said quietly.  "Not looking isn't going to change that."  

Another moment of silence.  Morgelyn opened her eyes, and they grew round.  "Oh..."

"It's there?"

Morgelyn nodded.  Gary swallowed and tried to sound more calm than the eerie, crawling sensation at the back of his neck would allow.

"What does it say?"

Taking the ball back, she tilted it so the light fell on the under-base, and peered at the carved glinting letters that Gary could faintly see.  He moved around behind her to get a better look, but the writing was even less decipherable than the scrawl in the log book.  Morgelyn's hands shook as she angled and turned the base, following the twisting path of the words.  She read them as if they were a poem, or, he thought as goose bumps chased up and down his arms, like a spell.

"Aon de misneach, aon de creideamh,
Aon d'amharc glan;
Fite fuaite in am an ghátair
Beidh siad an mallacht dragan."

Gary blinked at Morgelyn.  "That was not English, not even your version of it."

She shook her head solemnly.  "No, it was not.  'Tis a good thing that I know some of the old tongue.  There were days Grandmother wouldn't let me speak anything but--"

"Morgelyn!"  Gary rubbed the back of his head in frustration, then held out a hand, waiting for some kind of answer.  "What does it mean?"

"Oh.  Of course."  She thought for a minute, then translated.

"One of courage, one of faith,
one of clearest sight.
Intertwined in time of need
Shall break the dragon's curse."

"People?" Gary asked.  "Is that talking about people?"

"I believe so.  And then there is the name carved--"  She traced some of the letters with a finger.   "Efflam."  Morgelyn brought one hand up to her mouth.  Gary hadn't thought it possible for her brown eyes to grow any larger, any rounder, but now they looked like marbles.  "Efflam is the name of the river, our river."

"The one that coughed me over the waterfall?" Gary asked.  "Great, because more spooky coincidences are exactly what I need right now."

Dismissing his grumbling with a twist of her lips, Morgelyn turned the glass over in her hands, staring into the crystal as if she truly could read the future in the sphere.  "It really is the Dragon's Eye.  And you really are--you are the Dragon Slayer, and I--oh, blessed saints..."

Her hands shook with more violence, and Gary reached over and rescued the scrying glass, the Dragon's Eye, whatever the hell it was, before it could fall onto the sand.  He set it in the basket, then turned back to find Morgelyn staring out over the ocean, one hand covering her mouth again, the other arm wrapped under her ribs.

"Hey--and you what?"  He put one hand on her shoulder, and she jumped.  "I thought you were pretty sure about that already.  What is it now?"  Gary hadn't meant the "now" to sound as sharp and impatient as it did; he was simply tired of being unable to follow the path of all this, and, most of all, of being unable to help.  At last, after he counted three long horizontal rolls of waves spreading and collapsing out beyond the breakers, after several gulping breaths, Morgelyn's hand dropped away from her mouth and her shoulder relaxed under his hand.  He decided to ask again, more civilly this time, "And you?"

"The freagracht, the trust that Enora passed on to my grandparents.  It truly is mine now, I must care for all of them, even if they believe I am what Mark claimed.  That is what Grandmother was trying to tell me when she died.  She said--I should have known..."  Lost in the past and a tangle of promises and stories, she trailed off.

Gary cleared his throat, trying to bring her back.  "Is this a bad thing?"

"It is if I cannot do it."  

He had to duck his head a bit to look into her eyes.  In the past few days he'd seen Morgelyn in a lot of moods, but this one was the strangest--a mixture of excitement, hope, and fear--no, more than fear.  Terror.

"Why wouldn't you be able to do this?"  Whatever this is, he added silently, then shook his own confusion away.  "Trust me, I know what it's like to have a heavy-duty responsibility, but it sounds like you come from a long line of very responsible people."

"No."

"But your grandparents--"

Morgelyn sighed, rubbing her upper arms under the shawl.  Her eyes were still unfocused, distant as the story she was telling.  "They left Africa for reasons they would never discuss with me--it was like a shadow that they both ignored, and pushed into the woods.  I never knew if it was because of something that was done to them, or because of something they did.  And then there was my mother, who had a responsibility entrusted to her, and did not fulfill it.  What if I turn out the same?"

The weight in her voice, the sadness that mixed with all the other emotions in her eyes, the bits and pieces that he knew of her life so far--Gary could guess what she meant.  But he asked anyway.  "What was your mother's responsibility?"

"It was me," she said flatly.  "She had me to care for, and she would not--or maybe she could not..."  Morgelyn met Gary's eyes only briefly, then stared out at the sea again.

I'm sure she wanted to, Gary started to say--but he didn't know for sure, so he kept quiet--just gave her shoulder another squeeze, then dropped his hand.

"In my seventh summer, my grandfather and my father were both lost when their ship sank in a storm.  It was just off the coast of Plymouth, east of here, and some of the sailors made it to land.  When they brought the news to us, I thought I had lost everyone."  In a gesture that Gary already recognized, she reached for the pin that held her cloak closed--but she wasn't wearing her cloak, and her fingers traced air, then fell away.  "I had never seen Grandmother so grim and silent, but Mother screamed and cried for two days straight, and then she, too, stopped speaking.  I was young and confused, but I knew enough to understand that two of the people I loved most in the world would not come again.  I needed my mother, but she was lost in her own grief."  

Turning to the cliffs, Morgelyn pointed at the boulder which Gary had discovered two nights ago.  "She spent months sitting up on that rock, watching for a ship that would never return.  She had loved the sea, and traveled with my grandfather, and then with Father--she met him on one of Grandfather's voyages.  Grandmother may have found her roots, but Mother never did--Grandmother always said she was more kelp than tree.  But now Mother cursed the ocean in every language she knew."

"That--that must have been hard, if you were that young."  Once again, Gary felt helpless, bereft even of words in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

Nodding, Morgelyn turned away from the cliffs.  "I used to follow her to that rock and plead with her to speak to me, but she was so silent and still.  In my child's mind, I thought she was trying to become part of the stone itself.  Finally, one day when I was begging her to come home, she spoke to me.  She said she could not face a shipwrecked life without my father, without hope.  She kissed me on the forehead, and sent me back to the cottage--and never came home."  Squeezing her eyes shut, Morgelyn pulled her shawl so tight around herself that Gary could see the plaid pattern warp with the strain.  "Grandmother found her body here on the beach the next morning."

Gary looked up to the height again.  No wonder she'd been worried about him that first night.  "Morgelyn, I'm sorry--"

With a quick sniff, she shook her head, opened her eyes, and the tension in her shoulders eased.  "It was long ago.  She was younger than I am now.  In a way I understand it, but I still have trouble wondering why she could not stay for her own child--and I wonder if I will do the same.  This responsibility is for far more than a single child."  Her voice cracked as she asked, "What if I fail them?"

"You won't.  I know what kind of person you can be."

"Gary, just because your friend back home--"

"No, you," he insisted, pointing at her with two fingers.  "I saw what you did yesterday, last night--I know."

"None of us knows ourselves, let alone another, well enough to say with any certainty what we will do in times of trouble and tragedy.  Believe me, I have seen enough of both to know that much."

"And I've seen enough of you to know that you're strong enough to do...whatever it is you're supposed to do," Gary told her.  He moved to stand in front of her, facing her squarely.  "You've already come far enough to--well, heck, you've already got me here, and you didn't know if you could do that, did you?  You're not walking away--I'll bet Fergus can't even drag you away."

That earned him the ghost of a smile.  "Very well, Dragon Slayer.  What do you suggest we do first?"

"I was thinking dry clothes," Gary said, with a rueful look at the soaked hems of his pants.

"A good thought."  Morgelyn snuck one more look up at the cliff, but squared her shoulders and nodded.  "You cannot dance at the festival in wet trousers."  She went back to the boulder and deposited the Dragon's Eye in her basket.  

"Dance?"  Gary shook his head as he picked up his boots, then took the basket from Morgelyn.  Together, they picked their way across the beach, back toward the stone stairway.  "Please tell me I don't have to save the world by dancing, because if that's the case, the world is definitely in trouble."





Chapter 35

It's all right, it's okay, if I freeze I can't decay
You touch, and I freeze, there is ice
Where my heart should be
I'm a snow man, cold is all I understand
If you can't hurt me, no one can
          ~ Nerissa & David Nields


Chuck woke to the sound of the bedsprings beneath him creaking and the unfamiliar sensation of wan, half-hearted sunlight on his face.  

Well, it was unfamiliar these days.  It had been familiar, once upon a time.  

He knew right away where he was--there was no moment of disorientation, no wondering what he was doing here.  Maybe it was because he was still wearing the same khakis and Oxford shirt he'd had on for--God, how many hours had it been?--at least two days, since before Crumb had called him with the news.  He'd brought the t-shirt and shorts he usually slept in, but hadn't thought to change into them last night...this morning...whenever.  

The pale fall light was filtered through cloudy skies, he saw as he dared to open his eyes, just halfway.  Through cream-colored lace curtains--geez, Marissa could be such a girl sometimes--Chuck could see enough of the Chicago sky to know that they were probably in for a day of low, slate-grey dreariness, interrupted only by occasional bouts of drizzle.  That would be fine.  It suited his mood.

Funny how he could remember something as dumb as the weather, and come up with a pinpoint forecast from a small, blurry square of sky, when he'd spent the night before using the stupid television to block out his own fruitless attempts to remember what Gary's voice sounded like.    

He rolled onto his back, punching a pillow, but he couldn't get comfortable on the narrow twin bed.  Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea, rushing out to Chicago like this.  Sure, he'd promised Gary he'd cover his back, that he'd return if there was trouble.  But trouble had come and gone without him, and now what was the point?  Now he was just stuck here, dreading the morbid, inevitable finale.  

Tom Petty had been right.  The waiting really was the hardest part.  Waiting for...

Gary.  One way or another.

No.  Don't go there.

Blinking blearily, he opened his eyes wider and focused on his watch, propped up on the night stand.  Shit, it was after ten.  Not that he had any big plans, any meetings or people to see or a bar to run or--

Chuck sat up quickly, hoping to dislodge those thoughts before they got the better of him.  Rubbing his face, he decided a shower and shave would be in order.  He could think that far ahead, but refused to think any farther.  

Twenty minutes--and probably the entire contents of Marissa's water heater--later, he was toweling off, digging one-handed through the small bag that held his toiletries for the razor he knew he'd packed, somewhere, when the whole thing slid off the vanity and hit the floor.  The rattle and thump echoed in the silence, and then, for the first time, he noticed that silence, pervasive and still.  It had been there since he'd got up, now that he thought about it.  He would have expected Spike, at least, to come and see what he was up to.  Opening the door just a crack, letting some of the steam escape into the hallway while he spent a minute listening, Chuck realized that it wasn't just his imagination.  The place was eerily quiet.  

Well, it wasn't that big a deal.  Marissa must have gone somewhere--probably McGinty's.  He'd finish getting dressed and then figure it out.  

As it turned out, Marissa had made it easy for him.  When he went downstairs, he found a note, a printout from her computer--the regular printer, not the Braille one--propped up by a coffee cup on the kitchen table.  It didn't say much, just that she'd gone to the library to look something up, didn't know when she'd be back, and that he should make himself at home.  

"The library?" Chuck muttered, shaking his head.  What could possibly be so important in a bunch of old books?  Heck, most of them she couldn't even read, could she?  He was lucky she hadn't tried to drag him along to help.  Of course, that might have had something to do with the way he'd acted yesterday, then earlier this morning.  He'd seen it on her face--she'd pretty much given up on him.  

Well, if it meant he wasn't going to be nagged and harassed, badgered into accepting something completely ludicrous, he was all for it.

A curtain stirred in a faint, chilly draft, and Chuck reached across the sink to close the window.  It had only been open a couple of inches, just enough to let some air in, but somebody should remind Marissa that it wasn't a good idea to leave a first-floor window open in a city like Chicago.  It was trusting and naive and just plain stupid.

Especially now, now that Gary wasn't around to stop bad things--

Breakfast.  He needed breakfast.

He was searching the cabinets for coffee and something to eat, something other than oatmeal or granola, when the phone rang.  He hurried out to the foyer and picked it up just before the answering machine could click to life.

"Marissa?"

Oh, good one, Chuck, he thought when there was silence on the other end of the line.  "I mean--uh--Marissa Clark's residence--"

"I know who lives there, Fishman."  Crumb's dry, impatient tone implied that he wasn't thrilled to be talking to Chuck.

"Geez, Crumb, good morning to you, too."  A soft, insistent beep caught Chuck's attention; he glanced down at the answering machine and saw a light blinking.  He pressed it, and a computerized voice told him that there were twelve new messages.  Twelve?  "Must have slept right through all the fun," he murmured before remembering that he wasn't exactly alone.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Nothing, I--uh--is there any news?"

"No."  

Chuck let out a breath, shakier than he'd expected.  

"No," Crumb repeated, but this time his voice had softened.  "Nothin' new.  How was your night?"

"Interrupted," Chuck muttered.

"Huh?  What's going on over there, Fishman?  I've called twice this morning and I didn't get an answer."

"Nothing, it's fine.  I just overslept and didn't hear the phone, I guess."

"Where's Marissa?"  

Chuck told him.  

"The library?"

"Hey, I don't know what it's all about either."  The thought occurred to Chuck that, had he not been so closed off and unwilling to listen, if not believe, he might know more.  But did he want to, really?  "There was just a note on the kitchen table when I got up."

"Which library?  How long ago did she leave?"

Chuck sighed.  The only thing missing from this interrogation was J. T. Marley.  "I don't know.  I got up maybe half an hour ago, and I'm pretty sure she was gone by then.  She just said the library, not which one.  Said Patrick was taking her."  

"Quinn?  Oh, that's just great."  Crumb muttered something under his breath about an overgrown leprechaun.

"You know," Chuck said after a pointed pause, "she's already got a watch dog."

"Not funny, Fishman."  

Resisting the urge to respond, "No, sir," Chuck shrugged instead, as though Crumb could see his attempt at bravado.  "I just meant--"

"I know what you meant.  Look, at some point today, I gotta talk to her--she's gotta talk to the police.  They need her to come downtown and give a formal statement."

Chuck couldn't keep his snort quiet.  "About what, crystal balls?  That oughta be a good one."

"What, you think she's gonna go blabbing about Hobson's heebie-jeebie circus tent act to the cops?  Sheesh, Fishman, you oughta know better than that."

"Yes, si--yeah," Chuck admitted.  He did know better than that.  He wished, again, that Marissa had kept him in the dark too.  This stuff was damn confusing, and he was getting a headache just thinking about it.  

"Okay, well, you see her, tell her to call me, okay?"

"Yeah."

"What are you--"

"Talk to you later, Crumb.  Bye."  Chuck hung up the phone before Crumb could ask him what he planned to do with his day.  Beyond getting out from under the weight of silence that pressed down upon Marissa's home, he honestly didn't know.

He grabbed his keys and his new suede jacket from the coat tree in the entryway.  Couldn't throw a fastball in this town without hitting a Starbucks, and coffee was as good a place to start as any.  He could relax, have a cinnamon roll, and figure out what to do next.

As long as he didn't have to look at a newspaper, he'd be fine.




Chapter  36

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps contained in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
          ~ T. S. Eliot


"Make haste!  The fair has already begun."

"You said that you did not want to go."

"I said that neither of you should go--but I have a living to make."

Gary sighed at the bickering voices on the other side of the curtain.  The two of them had been at it since they'd all shared a late breakfast.  Now, though he felt awkward in the little bedroom, he was thankful for the sheltering curtain.  Picking aimlessly at a loose thread on his tunic, he tried to decide which was worse--refereeing those two, or his outfit--and decided it had to be the outfit.  He looked like a costuming experiment gone horribly awry. 

He was wearing bits and pieces salvaged from Morgelyn's trunks and Fergus's pack.  They'd done their best to find medieval stuff he could wear comfortably, but as far as he was concerned, the only clothes he'd be at home in were his own Levis and plaid shirt.  At least he'd talked them out of the black and white tights--one leg of each.  There was no way he'd wear those.  None whatsoever. 

"Go on ahead, then, and spare us your impatience," Morgelyn told Fergus.  "We can find you later.  You worried about Gary standing out, and I want to make sure he is properly dressed."

"Very well--close your eyes, woman," Fergus advised, and threw back the curtain with a flourish.  "Voila!"  He presented Gary with a sweep of his arm, like Vanna White with a new puzzle.  "He looks just like a villager--as long as the village is in a land of giants.  Ah, well, I suppose he will do." 

"Of course he will," snapped Morgelyn, who hadn't closed her eyes at all.  She stood near the table, tucking a cloth over the top of her basket.

"Ho, ho, ho," Gary growled, and clomped out into the room.  No one got the joke, of course; not even Cat was there to send him a derisive sniff. 

Morgelyn pursed her lips and swatted at Fergus as she pushed past him so that she could primp at Gary, which made him feel like a first-class idiot.  As if she were dressing a store mannequin, or a doll, Morgelyn tugged at the dark blue woolen tunic, trimmed with gold embroidery, that Gary wore belted over a long-sleeved cotton shirt and a pair of tight brown woolen pants.  Renaissance Faire Ken, he thought.  Ren Ken.  This had to be the final indignity of this whole trip.

"'Tis a bit short."  Morgelyn reached up to brush nonexistent dirt from Gary's shoulders.  "Hopefully no one will notice."

"Short?"  Gary gaped down at the tunic.  "The thing hangs almost to my knees!"

"True, but if you slouch a little, no one will notice."  Fergus demonstrated, hunching his shoulders and bending his knees. 

"I'm not going to walk around like a hunchback all day."

"Never mind that.  Boots."  Morgelyn held out a hand, into which Fergus flopped a pair of--well, hell, they looked like the hip waders Gary's dad used for trout fishing. 

"I never thought I would find the feet to fit these," Fergus said, shaking his head in amusement as Gary scowled at him.  The boots were a little short, but the leather stretched to accommodate his feet, and they only reached his knees, not his hips.  Morgelyn explained how to criss-cross the ties of sturdy cloth around his calves, from ankles to just under the knee.  Gary just hoped he wouldn't have to take them off and retie the damn things at any point during the festivities. 

With a satisfied nod, Morgelyn stepped back to survey him.  "And all we need now is the hood." 

"Hood?  Now, now wait a minute, I'm not cold or anything--"

But Fergus muffled his protest by standing on tiptoe and shoving a circlet of wool over Gary's head.  It was the same shade of gold as the embroidery on his tunic, with blue stitching around the edges.  A sort of mini-cape, it hung just over his shoulders and around the front and back in a loose circle, with the hood--which Fergus insisted on pulling up over his head--covering all but his face and chin. 

"I am not," Gary declared, glaring at Fergus as he yanked the hood back and off his head by its stupid blue tassel, "wearing this on my head.  I'd look like--like--I don't even know what I'd look like."

"Let it hang down the back then."  Fergus tried to arrange the hood, but Gary elbowed him away.  "We'll tell them it's all the rage in Paris.  Who will know the difference here?"

"You look positively dashing," Morgelyn said, arms akimbo, and the fact that some of her weariness and fear seemed to have evaporated amid preparations for the trip to town was almost consolation for the way Gary was dressed.

Almost.

"We shall have to be careful that the fairy queen does not steal you away, like Tam Lin," she told him, eyes twinkling. 

"Tam Lin?"  Though he had no idea what she was talking about, Gary had another one of those lurching moments of one time overlapping the other.  She reminded him of Marissa teasing him out on the pier, about being a knight in shining armor.  That tin can would have been better than this.

"'Tis another story.  May we go now?" Fergus demanded with a toddler's impatience.  "I would like to arrive in Gwenyllan before the good people of the village have spent all their coin on other merchants' wares and some other entertainer has sung all my songs."

"There will be plenty left for you.  You can hardly expect me to arrive at a festival in my beach combing dress."  Morgelyn disappeared behind the curtain while Fergus rolled his eyes and plopped onto the bench next to Gary.

"Are all women so exasperating in your time?"

Gary shrugged.  He picked up the Dragon's Eye from the table and examined the writing under its base.

Fergus raised his voice, aiming his words at the curtain.  "Is this woman so exasperating in your time?"

Flashing Fergus what he hoped was a derisive glare, Gary went back to tracing the words with one finger.  He couldn't read them, of course--except for the one that was close enough to ordinary English to be recognizable--"dragan".  Then "Efflam"--the name of the river, Morgelyn had said.  Finally, a bit of empty space at the end of one metal strand, before the twisted circle of words started up again.  Gary turned the Dragon's Eye around in his hands, an idea forming, gaining strength with each twist.

"You got something sharp?" he asked Fergus.

"Ah, let me see..."  The peddler dug into the pack at his feet, and came up with a small vial.  "Cloves!  Sharp, spicy, and good for toothaches, as well."

"No, like a--like a knife or something.  A small one."  Gary spread his thumb and first finger to indicate the size he had in mind.

Eyebrows knitting together, Fergus reached back into the pack and pulled out a jewel-handled knife that fit into his palm.  "What do you want with it?"

Gary took it without answering.  He put the point of the knife to the blank spot of silver on the inside of the base.  And thought.  Chewed his lip for a moment.  Looked up to see Fergus standing over him, eyes wide, shaking his head. 

"Morgelyn?" Gary called.

"Mmumph?" 

"This inscription here.  You think it's around in my time?  Could someone there--I mean then--see it?"  He ran his thumb along the metal, noting the tiny scratches that seemed so important.  He couldn't remember having seen them back in Chicago, but it seemed now like such a long time ago that he couldn't be sure.  But if Marissa had it, maybe she would notice.  "Or feel it?"

The curtain swished open.  Hands on hips, Morgelyn frowned at the spectacle of Gary about to mar the precious globe.  The gold net that bundled her braids up off her neck, the deep, dark-red shade of her dress, and the way its skirt swept the floor, slightly longer behind than in front, all added to an air of regal poise that was more than a little intimidating. 

"I swear, I did not know why he wanted the knife!" Fergus declared, backing as far away from Gary as he could.  "I thought he wanted to clean his fingernails."

Gary ignored him.  He and Morgelyn stared steadily at each other for a moment; then her shoulders relaxed as understanding dawned in her eyes. 

"Do you think it would work?" Gary asked.

Morgelyn glanced down at the globe, her expression doubtful.  The word "no" was on the tip of her tongue--Gary could almost see it.  But he needed to do this.  It was the only way he could think of to send some kind of signal, some kind of promise, to anyone back home who might be waiting for him.

"I don't--I don't want to mess this up, but I thought--there's not much room, just something to let them know..."

Deliberately pacing the distance to the table, her swishing skirt the only sound in the room, Morgelyn sat down on the bench next to him.  She took the glass for a moment, examined the base, and then touched a finger to the same space Gary had spotted. 

"Morgelyn..." Fergus warned, approaching the pair, staring down at them with trepidation, "Do you think it is safe to meddle with this?"

"It has already survived a waterfall, and hundreds of years."  She nodded to Gary. 

He took back the Dragon's Eye, held it in his hands for another moment.  His thoughts were so full of home--Chicago, McGinty's, loft, friends, even the much-maligned newspaper--that he expected it to start changing again, but it didn't.  It struck him that this was like playing cosmic phone tag with Marissa or whoever was on the other end of the line.  If so, maybe he could leave a message on this answering machine.  There wasn't room for much, and he wasn't great with a knife.  But what he had in mind didn't take much room or talent.

Hovering over Gary's shoulder, Fergus sucked in a breath when the knife point touched silver.  Nothing happened, and Gary pulled the point across the metal, three times in the same pattern, each time applying a little more pressure.  It was deeper than the older carving, deep as his fear that he'd never get back home. 

G.H.

He sighed when it was done, and Morgelyn squeezed his arm. 

"Well," said Fergus, "it neither erupted nor exploded.  I take it that is a good sign?"

"It means that Gary is part of its history now, as well."  Morgelyn cocked her head, and her forehead creased into a frown. 

"Yeah, let's just hope I don't stay--" Gary mumbled, but broke off when Morgelyn lifted up his arm a little and pulled back his sleeve, revealing his watch.  He'd worn it all this time, concealed under the long sleeves of the various get-ups which had been inflicted on him.  Not that the time of day mattered here, but he'd been extremely reluctant to take it off.  The sleeves on this new shirt were a little shorter, apparently.

"What is this?"

"It's a watch.  It tells the time."  

"It is very odd."  Morgelyn traced a finger over the dial, frown deepening.  "Another wonder from the future?" 

"Well, yeah."  Gary yanked his arm back and was going to cover the watch with his sleeve, but both his friends were shaking their heads.

"You cannot wear this into the village," Fergus said.

"Why not?  I did it yesterday, twice."

"And what would have happened, had anyone out there seen it?"  His voice rising, Fergus waved an arm toward the window.  "There would have been more than a knife-scratch, I can promise you that."

Gary looked to Morgelyn to defend him, but the worried look hadn't left her face.  "Fergus is right.  It is a marvel, but you cannot risk having someone see it.  Who knows what they would think?"

"It's none of their business!"  He didn't know how to explain to them that he felt naked without the watch, that he slept with it on most of the time, that to take it off here and now would be like leaving his last shred of connection with home.  Bad enough he'd been walking around for two days without a newspaper in his back pocket.

"Were you listening to anything I said yesterday?" Fergus exploded, throwing up his arms.  "They will make it their business.  They will seize any excuse to drum up trouble and manufacture accusations.  Your very existence, if they knew who you really were, would be enough to get us all hanged in the village center, and that is if they were merciful."  He bent down until his nose was less than a centimeter away from Gary's.  "Morgelyn does not need this."

Nothing like a little guilt trip to start the afternoon off right.  Gary set his jaw and held Fergus's gaze steadily, even though it wasn't really the peddler he was angry with.

"Fergus," Morgelyn began, "perhaps--"

"No, he's right."  Gary said reluctantly, and pulled the watch from his wrist.  He got up and walked over to the shelf where his clothes had been stored.  "I don't suppose," he began, tucking the watch into the pocket of his jeans, "there's somewhere in your basket we could tuck that?"  He pointed to the Dragon's Eye, which was now the only link to home he might be permitted.

"It would be better if you left it here," Morgelyn said, but her eyes were sympathetic.  She, at least, understood what all this meant to Gary.

"But what if--what if we need it or something?"

"What if they find it or something?" Fergus asked in a mocking tone.

Gary clenched his jaw and was about to shoot back a retort, but he remembered the angry, triumphant voices he'd heard from the tavern the night before, and how very little it had taken to provoke them.  Still, leaving everything of himself here was harder than he liked to admit.

 "It is for your safety," Morgelyn said.  "T'were best if all those things were out of sight."  She opened a trunk in the corner. 

"Yeah, okay."  Gary picked up the pile of clothes, and placed that, and the Dragon's Eye, in the trunk.

"Expecting unwelcome visitors?" Fergus asked Morgelyn when she pulled a skeleton key off the mantel, locked the trunk, and tucked the key into the little embroidered pouch that hung off her belt. 

"One never knows."  Retrieving her cloak from its peg by the door, she added, "I never expect you, and yet you continue to turn up without warning."

"Wounded again."  Fergus slapped a hand to his heart, then shouldered his pack.  "Gary?  Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be," he said, shaking his head ruefully at the outfit.

"You look very handsome," said Morgelyn, "but the effect would be greater if you could smile.  This is supposed to be a merry occasion--the longest light of the year, the turning of the sun, and the flowering of the forest."

"And the feast of St. John," Fergus added.

"That too," Morgelyn said with a smile.

Clapping a hand to Gary's shoulder, Fergus pushed him out the open door.  "We will not be able to keep the ladies away from you, especially once the dancing begins."

"I told you before, I don't know how to dance."

Picking up a basket from the table, Morgelyn followed them, pulling the door closed behind her.  "Just follow the group and keep your feet moving--"

"And your mouth closed," Fergus finished.  He strode down the path ahead of them, whistling a jaunty tune.

"You look very fine," Morgelyn assured Gary again.   "And you will fit in.  Trouble will have to search high and low just to find you."

Gary shook his head, then reached back to scratch the back of his neck, already itchy from the woolen hood.  "Why do I get the feeling it already has?"





Chapter 37

Why, this is very Midsummer madness.
          ~ Twelfth Night , III.iv


Gwenyllan was positively bustling by the time the trio arrived.  Obviously this festival had nothing on, say, Taste of Chicago or the Blues Festival, but Gary hadn't known, from his two previous experiences, that there were so many people--and so many colors--in the little village.  The town center was circled by stalls draped in bright scarves, and as they wandered through the crowd of people, horses, dogs, and even a few pigs and chickens, Gary noted the variety of goods for sale: candles, bread, cloth, shoes, wheels of cheese, leather, knives and other utensils and tools he couldn't identify, ale, pottery, ribbons, fish...everything, he supposed, that the medieval home could need.  Bright flowers were everywhere, draped over the bridge and the market stalls, crowning heads, twined around basket handles, and covering the well. 

The townspeople were decked out in their finest clothes--which ranged from shirts with only a few patches to dresses and doublets of violently bright silk, some of them in color combinations that made his eyes ache.  Orange with green seemed to be a favorite.  Maybe they'd all been wrong to worry about Gary standing out.  Next to some of these folks, his get-up was positively subdued.  Except for being a head taller than almost everyone there, he didn't think he looked all that different.

But he felt different.  Crowded in by unfamiliar scents and voices, by elbows that brushed his and dogs that ran right over his feet, Gary started to feel as if the whole of the village was pressing in on him.  He was about to ask Morgelyn if they could pull off to the side somewhere when a strident voice, worse than rusty nails on a chalkboard, screeched in his ear. 

"Mussels!  Fresh mussels and lobster!" 

Gary jumped back, stumbling into Fergus and starting a chain reaction that nearly toppled everyone around them.  Untangling himself from the fray, he turned toward the source and found himself staring down into a pockmarked face, framing bright blue eyes and a partially toothless grin.  "Lobster, love?" the old woman asked, holding a dripping, snapping crustacean in Gary's face. 

"Uh, no thanks," he stammered, and let Morgelyn, who was trying desperately not to laugh, lead him away from the fishmonger and her wooden barrels. 

"Maybe you should have bought one for a pet," Morgelyn told him, a wicked grin still plastered on her face.

Gary snorted.  "I don't think Cat would like the competition."

They kept moving through the crowd, taking a wider, less crowded path, until Fergus stopped near a spreading oak.  "This will do nicely," he said.  The tree stood behind the circle of stalls, tucked between two larger houses.  On the ankle-deep grass Fergus laid out a stained, worn cloth, and began removing everything from his pack for display.  Before he'd finished, prospective customers had come to look--or, it seemed in the case of one freckle-faced young woman, to flirt.

Gary and Morgelyn backed away from the crowds, into the double shade of the tree and the neighboring house.  On tiptoe, Morgelyn scanned the stalls and faces in the market, while Gary, finally free of the press of the crowd and random lobsters, tried to relax.  From what he'd been told over breakfast, he knew the buying and selling would go on until late afternoon, when a bell-ringer would close the stalls and other festivities would begin.  Since he wasn't exactly up for shopping, he wasn't sure what he should do in the meantime.  "We just gonna hang out here, or what?" he asked Morgelyn.

She opened her mouth, then looked beyond Gary and snapped it closed.  He swiveled his head, and saw Fergus watching them with one eyebrow raised, talking out the side of his mouth to a man in a velvet tunic who was asking him about one of the belts he was selling.  The freckled girl was still there; she'd made herself comfortable, sitting on Fergus's tarp and watching the exchange with interest.  When she saw Gary watching, she twittered her fingers at him and giggled so hard her tight curls bobbed.  He managed a weak smile and looked away.

"I saw a ribbon back there that I want."  Morgelyn pointed toward a hub of activity around two brightly-decorated stalls.  She didn't meet his eyes, and the twinkle she'd had just a few moments ago was gone.  "I will be back soon."  With that, she slipped back into the crowd; in just a few seconds, she was out of sight. 

Shaking his head, Gary ambled over to where Fergus was trading the belt for quite a few silver coins.  The glint in his eyes was unmistakable, but the man who'd bought the belt either didn't realize or didn't care that he'd paid too much.  Scratching the itch that was going to be permanent if he had to wear this damn thing around his neck much longer, Gary wondered exactly what it was Morgelyn was up to.  From the serious look on her face, he was pretty sure that she'd gone looking for more than a hair ribbon.

"Here."  Fergus nudged him with an elbow, then dumped the silver coins in Gary's hand.  "Go and buy us some lunch.  Try..."  He chewed on his lip as he surveyed the stalls, then pointed to one near the tavern.  "That one.  But watch first, and do not pay more than anyone else.  Some of these people will take one look at that face of yours and double their prices."  Freckles giggled again, twirling a leaf between her fingers, and Fergus spared her a brief grin. 

"What's wrong with my face?" Gary demanded.

"Nothing," Fergus told him matter-of-factly.  "That is the problem."

"I thought you didn't want me to talk to anyone."  He pointed at the mad giggler.  "Why don't you send her?"

"Cecily has very graciously offered to help me here."  Fergus's grin broadened, and he seemed to have completely forgotten his objections to bringing Gary in the first place.  "I do not know where Morgelyn's off to, and I cannot watch over you all day.  I have--"  Strange grunting erupted behind them, and the girl squealed, leaping to her feet.  "Shoo!"  Fergus spun around, waving away a grunting, stubborn pig.  "Get away--no, come back!  Those mushrooms came from Avignon!"

Bouncing the coins in his hand, Gary watched Fergus run down the pig--which amused the villagers around them as well, but probably wasn't the kind of entertainment Fergus had planned on providing--then walked off into the crowd, not without some sense of trepidation.  The voices around him blurred into a brogue-laden symphony that he wasn't even going to try to understand.  Still, this wasn't too hard to figure out, this operation--it was a street market, and prices were set by bargaining.  Gary strolled around the broad, crowded ring between the stalls and the well, stopping often to let others get by.  Some of those people smiled and nodded at him as he passed; one or two shot mistrustful, narrowed gazes, but most were too preoccupied with their shopping to worry about strangers, and he guessed he wasn't the only one around on a day like this.  Happy greetings flew back and forth, and children and farm animals ran rampant through the crowd. 

Once or twice he had the strangest sensation that he was being watched, like when Cat stalked him at home.  But Cat wasn't here, and wouldn't hide if it wanted his attention.  Though Gary spun around every time he felt the creeping sensation on the back of his neck, he never did catch anyone in the act. 

He stopped at the booth Fergus had indicated.  A young woman was selling meat pies and roasted apples under an awning of rough cloth, while a boy behind her cooked them over an open fire.  Waiting and listening carefully until they'd taken a coin for feeding a flock of six raggedy children, Gary put on a smile and asked for three of each.  But when the young woman asked for two of his silver coins in return, he balked.  "You just charged those kids half that for twice as much food!"

"Ah, but these are my special pies, sir," the redhead cooed.  "A secret recipe, just for you."  When Gary shook his head and was about to walk off, she grabbed his sleeve, pulled him in closer and whispered, "But I'd be willing to let you have them for one coin--and a few kisses."

"I--uh--I--" Gary stammered.  Was he being propositioned?  Right here, in the middle of--he gulped. 

"Do not be shy."  She put a finger on his lips, blue eyes twinkling.  "We can always meet up in the woods if you'd rather do it there."  The boy at the fire snorted.

Despite the hand clutching his arm, Gary took a step back.  "I don't--that is, I shouldn't--"

"Do not fool with this one, Nia.  He is Morgelyn's friend."  The gravely voice rose all the hackles on the back of Gary's neck; a hack of spit just missed his boots.  The young woman's sky-blue eyes narrowed; she dropped his arm and took a step back--Gary wasn't sure if it was him or Mark Styles she was backing away from.  Styles stood just behind Gary with the man who'd pulled him away the day before, and both glared at him with flint in their eyes. 

"One coin will be more than enough, sir," the girl said, her gaze darting from Gary's hardening jaw to Styles's looming bulk. 

"That's all right," Gary said, staring not at her, but at Styles and his friend.  "I've lost my appetite."

"There is something very strange about you," the redheaded man said, advancing a half-step toward Gary. 

Surveying the crowd behind the two men, Gary felt more abandoned than ever; he couldn't even see Fergus from here.  Beyond their little scene, the merriment continued, but passers-by stared. 

"No doubt you would seem strange, Simon Elders, if you had lost your memory in a shipwreck."  The girl's voice was sharp and defiant, and Gary turned to her in surprise.

"He is probably a devil's helper, here to bring us all to ruin," growled Mark.

The girl laughed, dismissing the accusation with a wave of her hand.  "Next you will tell me that Piran here has turned into a pixie.  Get on with you."

Styles opened his mouth to say something, but started coughing, nearly doubling over.  His friend thumped his back.  "You need ale," he muttered, and once Styles had stopped coughing the pair stalked off toward the tavern, where tables were set outside and bustling with drinkers. 

The problem was more than a dry throat; Gary could tell from the sound of the cough.  As he watched them go, he rubbed the coins against each other, so hard that the friction warmed his hand.  Should he tell Styles to get help?  Oh, yeah, that would go over really well, wouldn't it?  Who knew what that would lead to?

Well, certainly not Gary, because he didn't have the paper.  Damn it, where was Cat?  And where had Morgelyn got to?  If she ran into those two--

"They are awful." 

Gary turned back to the girl.  All trace of flirtation was gone from her face; she stared after the men with eyes almost as hard as their own, and her fist clenched at her side.  "Stirring up trouble on a day like today, over Morgelyn, of all people--'tis truly--"  She shook her head and repeated, "They are awful."

A wave of relief nearly knocked Gary over.  She was serious.  Maybe not everyone believed the man and his wild accusations.

"Yeah, they are."  He smiled at her, for real this time.  "I'm Gary."

"Nia."  She blushed up to the roots of her fiery hair, and her hand uncurled, extended in apology.  "I am sorry--had I known you were Morgelyn's friend, I would not have acted as I did."

"Well, it's--it's not like that."  Gary hoped he wasn't blushing as well.  "We're just friends."

Nia's crooked grin did nothing to hide her prematurely yellowing, chipped teeth, but Gary thought it was a great smile anyway.  "You should not give a whit about their silly accusations.  I like Morgelyn.  She saved my brother's leg last year," she said, gesturing at the boy stoking the fire.  "Piran fell on a scythe, and the cut was so deep we thought it would never heal, but Morgelyn knew just what to do." 

Gary nodded.  "That sounds like her.  Listen, what you said to those guys--"  He jabbed a thumb in the direction Styles and Elders had gone.  "How did you know about me?"

"The shipwreck?"  Nia's eyes lit with excitement, and Piran left off tending the fire, not even pretending to work anymore.  "Stories spread faster than sickness here, especially on festival days.  I must say, though, that no one told me just how handsome our forgetful stranger was."

"Is it true that you were in a shipwreck?  It must have been exciting," the boy said.

"I--uh--I don't remember," Gary stumbled, trying to remember the story Fergus had conjured the day before.  "It probably was," he added in a weak attempt to make up for the disappointment etched on Piran's broad face.  "I'm just glad I found some people to help me out."

"Not all of us are so narrow minded that we would refuse welcome to a stranger.  Gwenyllan is still a free town, after all."  Nia's voice had grown louder, and hurried footsteps behind him made Gary's stomach squirm.  A flock of elderly ladies, whispering behind their hands, walked away from Nia's stall.  "Never mind them," she said, wrapping the pies and apples in a coarse cloth, and tying it with a loose knot.  "Oh, goodness, no."  She waved away the coins that Gary held out.  "I canna take them now."

"You've earned them," Gary told her seriously.

Lifting an eyebrow, Nia took one coin from his palm, then pressed the bag into it.  "What about your kisses?"

"I--uh--you know, I don't remember if I--if I'm--uh--"  Gary gave up with a sigh.  He just wasn't any good at this.

Clucking her tongue, Nia shook her head ruefully.  "Ah, well, a dance tonight, perhaps?"

Why, Gary wondered, was everyone suddenly obsessed with dancing?  "I don't know how," he admitted, grateful that in this, at least, he could be completely honest.

Nia beamed.  "I am an excellent teacher!  All the lads say so."  Piran snorted again and went back to his fire. 

"Then--uh--I guess we'll see what happens tonight.  Thank you."  Gary lifted the bag in salute, and left Nia to her next group of customers.

He brought the food back to Fergus, keeping an eye out for Morgelyn as he wove his way through the crowd.  But there was no sign of her, and by the time he reached the tree, he was full-out worried.  Fergus was engaged in negotiations with the freckle-faced girl, but it wasn't over the price of his wares.  More the kind of thing that Nia had originally had in mind.  She had one hand on his shoulder, leaning in to whisper in his ear.  Fergus's grin was lascivious as a wolf's.

Clearing his throat to get their attention, Gary dropped the pies and apples next to Fergus.  "Lunch," he muttered.  "Help yourself." 

Freckles dove for the bag, and Gary turned his back to the pair, scanning the crowd for a red dress.  Ribbon, hell.  He'd walked by that booth twice and never seen a sign of Morgelyn.  "Where'd she go?" he asked Fergus. 

"Mmrrow--"  Fergus's mouth was already stuffed with pie; Freckles bent over him and wiped his chin with the corner of her shawl. 

"Thanks, you're very helpful."  Gary's attention was caught by a large figure in brown robes.  Before he could talk himself out of it, he called, "Father--Father Ezekiel!" and waved the priest over.  Behind him, Fergus sputtered, but Gary ignored him.  Maybe he could make an ally.  The way Mark Styles and his buddy were acting, he was going to need one.  The robes turned his way, and Gary saw the older man wasn't alone.  His companion, similarly attired, was tall, his blond hair scraggly, and--he swallowed what little was left of the suddenly-scarce air.

Maybe he was imagining things.  Maybe his overtaxed brain was seeing what wasn't there. 

But that little-boy eagerness was unmistakable.  Fergus got to his feet, looked at the pair, looked at Gary, and used his index finger to lift Gary's chin and close his gaping mouth.  Freckles just giggled again.

"MacEwan," Ezekiel acknowledged the peddler with a curt nod, then turned to Gary.  "And--"

"G-Gary..."  He barely managed to get his own name out.

"Hobson.  I remember."  The dark, narrowed eyes were impossible to read.  The priest indicated his companion.  "This is my nephew, Declan." 

Goofy and lanky, half-kid, half-golden retriever, the young man greeted Gary with an hopeful, friendly smile.  "Good day, sir!  You have chosen the best of all possible days to visit our town."

"I--uh--hello," Gary mumbled, fighting to hide his shock.  His gaze shifting from Ezekiel to Declan and back, searching for the sense in all this--Crumb, related to Patrick?  And he hadn't throttled him yet?--he fought for more to say, but nothing came to his overloaded mind.

"He must have lost his manners along with his memory," the priest huffed.

"He is a bit--"  Fergus touched his temple with a finger, whistled two notes.  "The shipwreck, you know."

Father Ezekiel snorted, and Gary jumped at the familiar sound.  "Well, then these two have something in common."  Ezekiel wagged a finger between Gary and Declan.  "I have always said my nephew is touched as well.  But," he added, his expression softening, "as it turns out, he is doing well at the monastery in St. Goron.  They are saying that one day he will be chief scribe."

Watching as Declan beamed at the praise, bouncing on the balls of his feet, Gary was now sure that the world was off-kilter. 

"That is no doubt due, uncle, to my experiences before I took my vows."

Ezekiel nodded.  Baffled, Gary turned to Fergus, who explained, "Before the pestilence came, he was the town crier."

"Ever since he left to follow his calling," Ezekiel said, "there has been no one to take his place.  Still, when he can visit us, he brings us what news he can." 

"And how have you been, my good man?" Declan asked Fergus.  "Still barding all over the world?"

Gary ignored Fergus's enthusiastic response, while he tried to adjust to this new revelation.  "The town crier..." he muttered, putting two and two together and not liking the particular four he came up with.  He started at a hideously off-key jangling behind them; it perfectly matched his nerves.  Freckles had picked up Fergus's harp and was plucking the strings with random vigor.  The distraction did nothing to loosen the intensity of the moment for Gary, but still, the way he saw it, he had a choice.  He could do the idiot gaping act for the fourth time in a few days, or he could find out what he needed to know. 

Trying to banish the idiot face, he pulled himself together enough to ask Declan, "Where do you get it?"

Stopping in mid-sentence, Declan turned from Fergus to Gary.  His broad smile was tinged with befuddled amusement.  "What?" 

"The--the news, the information, the town crier stuff, the stuff you--you cry--where do you get it?"

The other three men stared at Gary as if he were a lunatic.  Even Freckles stopped her aimless strumming on the harp.  Gary grabbed Declan by the robe and leaned in until their noses were just a millimeter apart.  "Where does it come from?"

Eyes widening with a nervous chuckle, Declan said, "The same place as I do: the monastery, up beyond the moor.  We chronicle what we can glean from the travelers who come to us."

"How often?" Gary demanded.  Fergus cleared his throat, and Gary looked down at his hands, released the young man--the young monk.  Patrick was a monk.  This could not possibly get any stranger.

Declan shrugged, bemused.  "Every few days, every few weeks--when God sees fit to send it to us."

Oh, that was a good one.  Someone, somewhere, was looking down on Gary and having the laugh of his--her--its life.  He just knew it.  "What news is there now?" he demanded.  And was this kid going to show up at Morgelyn's doorstep one morning with Cat?

"None of interest, sir.  I must say, 'tis very kind of you to take an interest.  Uncle says I speak too often, but no one has ever asked so many questions, except for that time that the Abbot was questioning me about an unfortunate incident with a goat and a barrel of indigo dye..."  The young man went on, but Gary wasn't listening.  He turned to Fergus, grinning. 

"There, ya see?  Nothing to worry about." 

Fergus raised an eyebrow, and Gary realized that Father Ezekiel was still staring at him with something more than casual interest. 

"Why have you accosted my kin?"  His tone wasn't exactly dangerous, more like interested, and Gary took that as a good sign.

"You don't want to know," he assured him, still grinning, lightheaded with relief.  Freckles finally managed something like a tune, one note at a time, on the harp.  It sounded a little like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star".

The old man's forehead creased itself into furrows and valleys as he swept his piercing glare from Gary to Fergus and back.  "Where is Morgelyn?" he finally asked. 

Gary's relief vanished as quickly as it'd come.  He snapped his head around, scanning the crowd, but still no red dress.  He scratched the back of his neck through the hood--his skin felt all crawly, and the sense of being watched had returned. 

"She went to buy some ribbon," Fergus answered the priest.

"Too long ago," Gary muttered.  "You know what, I'm just gonna go see if I can find her."  It was as good an excuse as any to escape the suspicious look fixed on Father Ezekiel's face.  He started off in one direction, but the priest grabbed his arm and nodded in the opposite, his sharp gaze directed like a laser past the bakery, toward the ramshackle cottage tucked behind it. 

"You might as well try the most likely place first," he said, still scowling. 

"She didn't--"  Gary turned to Fergus.  His good mood was disappearing as rapidly as it had come.  "She wouldn't--"

"Of course she would," Fergus said with a disgusted shake of his head. 

"What's the trouble?" Declan asked brightly.

"Mark's in the tavern again, at least," Gary mumbled.  He started off for the house anyway.  

"Foolish," spat Father Ezekiel.   Gary stopped, swallowed a retort, and then resumed his path through the market, never having turned around.

He muttered to himself, too far under his breath for any but the closest passers-by to hear.  "Buy a few things at the market, tell stories, dance...yeah, right.  Merriment for all, my great-aunt Fanny."  He strode up the path to the Styles home--"Hut, not a home, guy can't even take care of his own family," he growled--past the tree that Fergus had been knocked into the day before.  The sprigs of St. John's flower at the door were wilting, the yellow drained to a dirty cream color.  Gary raised one hand to knock on the door frame, but stopped when he heard a soft voice inside.

He'd heard Marissa sing a couple times.  This was--it was like her voice, and yet it wasn't.  Or maybe it was just the song, or the fact that it sounded, to him anyway, like nonsense--kind of like the words Morgelyn had read off the Dragon's Eye that morning.  The tune was soft and bittersweet.  He pulled the curtain back from the entryway.  His eyes took a few minutes to adjust to the gloom, but he managed to ascertain that neither Anna nor Mark was inside.  Morgelyn knelt in a corner, singing the wistful lullaby, and in her arms she cradled the limp, rag-wrapped form of Tolan Styles.

Gary stepped inside and let the dirty curtain fall back over the opening, darkening the cottage even more.  "Morgelyn?" 

The song broke off.  Light from the smoke hole in the ceiling lit her face, and the boy's, and Gary froze.

Tolan's head lolled to the side, his eyes closed.  And Morgelyn, well--Gary's heart dropped to his stomach.

Her face was streaked with tears.





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