Chapter Eight

I don’t remember leaving their garden. For days afterward I almost thought I could smell it--like roses laced with lightning—the scent lingering in my nostrils. I don’t remember arriving in my room that was not mine, but I remember staring at the ceiling as shocks of coolness and blasts of heat rode through me, beginning and ending with nothing. Timothy said that I was sick, that I had something he called a lurgy and it would take a long time for me to recover fully. When it started, I was not sure I wanted to recover. I think I threw something at him, but he probably caught it.

I read my old books, or the electronic versions of them, skimming over the beginnings and endings, flipping the digital pages, not really caring what I found or didn’t find. My hands and my eyes did this without asking permission, afraid of gathering dust maybe. Perhaps they feared that I would not come back and were trying to learn to do the job of living alone.

In fantasy novels, there is nearly always someone dead or missing, with circumstances ranging from terrible to mysterious, but never sadly ordinary. My father was not murdered by monsters or villains, but I recognized that I still fit the pattern rather neatly. Once I saw this, I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before. I resolved in the future to be more mindful of the fact that I was probably living out the plot of an urban fantasy and the usual conventions would apply. Though now, the knowledge was too late to help.

In books, when people die in the first few chapters, there usually follows a lot of mental turmoil and blame and indecision, which some way or another culminates in the lift off of the main story. I think I understand why authors do this: it’s an effective method of cutting the reluctant hero’s ties to his past so he can find the magic sword, or fulfill the ancient prophecies. It is also an easy technique for developing audience empathy. Everyone alive has either lost someone they loved or fear they will so when this happens to the protagonist, it is a sure bet that the reader will be able to understand what he is feeling. It doesn’t work if the book is just bad, but then, nothing does.

As a plot device, I never liked it. I cringe a little bit every time there is an unexplainable fire that claims the hero’s only parent. It’s too easy. Why can’t there be a hero with a comfortable home life and a nuclear support structure? That sort of unheard-of character would probably be better balanced emotionally and able to go about saving the world in a much more orderly fashion than the other.

However, reading and thinking about it did help distract me and distraction is what I needed. The first week was hard. There was no funeral, no memorial. The last sight I had of him was in the hospital, and it would be the last I ever had. I wouldn’t talk to either sorcerer, not that Milton was incredibly solicitous, but when he did say something, I ignored him. Timothy was a little harder to hate. He brought me meals when I wouldn’t come down to eat, and he never said anything after I didn’t respond to the first few attempts. He smiled at me, but there was apology in it, and he didn’t try to force me out of my room.

I drank a lot of Soma and idly pondered whether or not I was becoming addicted. It filled an empty place in my chest, right under my breastbone, and relief spread like thin tendrils of released tension under my skin. I started to depend on it making me sleepy. Then I became sick and Timothy gave me all I asked for--smiling his sad smile--while I drifted in places of grey twilight, colored by restless dreams. Most often, when I awoke, there would be a full glass waiting for me on the computer desk.

It looked like water, but it was not.

The second week was better because my mind started to work again but worse because of my dreams. The two nightmares had not been haunting me, but in the second week after my father’s death, they returned with full force. Actually, they were stronger. More than once I woke in a place different from where I had gone to sleep. I might be in a room I didn’t recognize, or outside on my way to the mountains. I could be sitting, standing, or in mid-stride when I woke, like I had been sleepwalking.

Timothy suggested it was a symptom of my lurgy, once we were talking again, but he was not particularly clear on what a ‘lurgy’ was. He said it was a sickness that only came to those who were already open to it, which didn’t sound very medical to me. I would fight it off on my own as soon as I was willing. I told him it sounded like there were things he wasn’t telling me and he said if there were, there was nothing I could do about it so I might as well not worry.

I was not pleased with him, but it was Milton I couldn’t forgive. He had taken me from my home and from my dad when I was needed most. Maybe I couldn’t have done anything. Milton told me he never woke up, even at the end. “You were there!” I accused him, but he shook his head. He had someone keeping an eye on my dad in the hospital. It was this person who had contacted him as soon as it had happened.

“He left easy, Abigail, as the long dreamers sometimes do. Acton’s spirit gave up his body and it ceased. I still do not know what brought this on, and the lumpen doctors are ignorant as always, but there are many worse ways to die. I did everything within my power to keep him with us, believe that. There was nothing I could do.”

He gave up trying to placate me. I know he felt it, too, this loss. If I could believe Timothy, they had been brothers for ten times as long as I had been a daughter. That didn’t change the fact of what he had done--taken me away, given me hope, and then taken that away as well.

I sat in my room, brooded, and slept in fits and starts. I read and reread books I cared nothing for, remembering nothing. Timothy came and went, bringing meals, but mostly leaving me be.

I recognized that I wasn’t handling my grief well and that cloistering myself away wasn’t going to make anything better. Knowing this did not deter me. I carried on this way until one day, when rereading The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, I skipped to a passage that affected me strongly. The unicorn comes across a woman, not old but aged, and instead of being glad to see this beautiful myth for real, the woman goes into a rage.

‎ “How dare you!” she cries. “How dare you come to me now, when I am this?”

The woman had waited for a unicorn when she was young and pretty, but none had ever come. None had come until her hope was years dead and no longer pained her. The unicorn brought that pain to life again.

I realized that her mistake was not that she wanted to see a unicorn, but that she had waited for one to come to her instead of going hunting for it herself.

So…I couldn’t go home again. My life was forever changed. However, if I would accept it, Milton’s ranch would be my new home and Timothy like the brother I never had. My dad... my dad was gone just as I was beginning to discover who he really was. I couldn’t change that, and it’s useless to dwell on the things we cannot change. I resolved not to waste any more of my life on death, not unless I thought of a way to stop it.

The summer was half done when these thoughts came to me. I looked from my window out over my uncle’s land to the mountains beyond. I saw a flash of white. It was gone as soon as I glimpsed it, not a light in itself but like light reflected off a bank of snow--except there was no snow so low in the mountains, only sturdy trees and stubborn shrubs and many, many rocks.

Naturally, I thought of unicorns, which was ridiculous. Still, I wondered what it would take to get all of my things from home--my posters especially.

I went downstairs to ask Timothy just that. He was in the kitchen where I always seemed to find him, bustling around a few pans on the stove. I smelled spaghetti sauce.

“Isn’t that kind of heavy for lunch?”

“When you are doing the cooking,” he said as he stirred, “as you should be, you will decide what is heavy and what is not.”

“Should be?” I took my usual stool. “Why? Because I’m the girl?”

Timothy cut off the stove and prepared to drain the noodles. “No,” he said, “it’s because the apprentice always does the cooking.”

I was confused for roughly three seconds. “You’re still going to teach me?”

“Assuming you are out of your funk. That goes without saying. Are you out of it?”

I wasn’t about to honor that characterization with a reply, however accurate it might be. Excitement and nervousness frothed in me at the idea of learning magic. We had talked about it only sparsely since that day in the garden. I had been too busy pushing them away to begin any lessons. All I knew was that we would start with a language course and that I wouldn’t be able to do anything I thought of as magic for what would feel like a very long time. He had said it could take years before I was able to accomplish the simplest spells, like making something seem to glow. He said it had to do with the universe getting used to my voice before it would listen to what I had to say. Even just the language, though, even if I couldn’t really do anything with it, was still a magic language.

Now that I’d gotten used to it, now that it had fully sunk in, that I was going to know magic, the feeling of anticipation was awesome. It was almost better than Soma. I forgot all about the question that had brought me downstairs. After lunch, Timothy led me through such a mind-boggling series of rooms that I would never be able to find my way back without him. Then we found ourselves in the library.

The room was a cube, maybe forty feet to a side, and every one of those feet were occupied by either books or shelves or some combination of the two. This would be impressive enough, especially as the books had a very serious, never-seen-the-inside-of-a-printing-press, hand bound look about them. Stranger still, there were five “bookcases,” including the collection on and around the door we came out of; one for each wall and one for the ceiling.

“Uhm,” I said, neck craning to take in the surreal arrangement on high. “How does that work?”

“Oh,” said Timothy. “That is where they go when they are not in a mood for being read. It keeps them out of the way.”

“Hmm,” I said, and that was all.

There were several comfy chairs with excessively deep cushions and a handful of round tables like a study hall. He said he would have to go scouting for the book he wanted and set me down in one of the chairs to wait.

“Don’t touch anything,” he said. “The books get nervous around people they don’t know.”

“Yes, sir,” I agreed. Above, one of the books was walking across its fellows, sort of waddling from corner to corner, ostensibly looking for a free space. There were none handy, so it squeezed its way in between two smaller volumes which afterward looked very uncomfortable. How does a book look uncomfortable? I am not sure, but they managed.

A heavy book, no, a tome, was placed on the table in front of me. Thicker than “Les Miserables” and bound in an oddly bumpy sort of scaly leather, it settled in its place like a haughty little square man daring me to open it.

Timothy stood beside the table, hand near but not touching the tome. He was still smiling, but it was nearly apprehensive.

“Books,” he said slowly, “must be respected.”

I nodded. “I love books. I don’t even dog-ear the pages.”

“These,” he continued, “must be feared.”

Because of the ceiling, I was one step ahead of him.

“This one,” he caressed the cover, and it almost seemed to shiver, “is called The Book of the Wyrm or else simply Wyrm . It tells a very old and extremely important story. It is written in one of what we call the ‘lesser tongues’ and you are going to try to read it.”

“But how can I…?”

“Shh,” he cut me off. “There will be a day when you are allowed to ask questions. But that is not today. A certain amount of knowledge is required to even be able to fathom what to ask. You do not possess it. Try to read.”

He pushed the tome to the edge of the table of dark wood. I narrowed my eyes but didn’t protest his snubbing. He said I had to learn, so I would do that. There would be time to be annoyed later.

I gingerly ran my palms around the binding of the book, and Timothy nodded his head in approval.

“Familiarize,” he said, “exactly. Don’t surprise it.”

Gaining confidence, I took Wyrm into my lap and flipped through the pages to somewhere in the middle. Nooks were nice, but it was something else to have a real book in my hand again. The lettering was strange and handwritten, but it almost looked like English.

My eyes settled on a particularly dense paragraph. So close to English I could almost…

Fire, fire, everywhere, fire in my limbs and dark, so dark, sudden cold comes with the bells, the carillon is calling in the earth, deep, down in the dark, the dark shadow of a black flame, deep, slick stone like melted clocks, deep, slug moves like a wave rolling, dark, rock splitting with a sound like cracking glass, light, slug splits with the rock and twin, dark, they can hear you breathing, deep, pale man with red eyes shining, light, long fingers end in talons reaching, light, the mirror cries, light… light…

The book slammed shut with a sound like a slap. It was in Timothy’s arms and then back on the table. I was shaking with cold, and the memory, no more than a jumble of images and sounds, cascaded behind my eyes.

I blinked. Timothy’s hand was on my cheek, bringing me back. “As I told you,” he said, “not just respect; fear. You never begin a book of magic in the middle. It offends them. If they feel you are taking liberties with them, they may take them back with you. Wyrm is touchier than most.”

I nodded, lesson learned, but was too numb to speak. My whole body tingled like a leg does when regaining circulation, waking up. You could have warned me! I thought but couldn’t speak. My tongue felt like a chunk of ice in my mouth.

“Now,” said Timothy, donning his customary smile, “we try again.”

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