Chapter Sixteen

My resolutions were interrupted on entering my room. I found Timothy standing at the window. He was running one hand along the cracks where molding met frame, murmuring under his breath. It put me instantly on guard.

“What’s going on?” I asked as casually as I could manage. He was a long time in turning around. When he did, his eyes were the depthless dark I had begun to associate with his use of magic.

“Your friend left behind a few tracks outside, not much, but the wards told their tale. I was only checking that he hadn't been in here as well.” My mouth opened, but as “Oh, crap” didn't strike me as the most excellent rejoinder. I stayed silent.

“Good girl,” Timothy said. “No point in denial. Milton wants me to bring you to him, willing or not. That will be done, but he didn't specify that I could not fill you in first.”

“Timothy, what…”

“Shush, and I will explain.” He grinned and shook his boyish head. “The impatience of youth,” he sighed, his eyes lightening to their usual blue. “Milton spoke with the Fae. They told him what they told you and what you felt about it. Don't look so horrified. They did not betray you. Fae cannot lie. They can conceal, of course, but as soon as Milton caught a hint of what had happened, he forced the full tale from them. You cannot honestly expect to have gone tramping through our masterpiece and not leave your mark.” He paused. “Well, I suppose you can, but you would be wrong.”

I was becoming colder and colder as he spoke, a block of ice lodging in my stomach.

“My,” Timothy said, “I never thought I would see you so pale. It doesn’t suit. You must not panic. Never panic. You can still salvage this.”

“What?” What are you, Timothy, enemy or friend?

“Sneaking into the garden isn't so bad. If your reaction had been different Milton might even have been pleased. The only thing to do now, to return to his grace, is to be open with us about this intruder, the Fae's Darkhorn. Tell us everything you know, apologize, drink a glass of Soma with a toast and all will be well. You are his niece, after all. Even if you weren't, you would still be valuable to his plans once you are trained. Milton hates to throw away potential...”

“No.” I cut him off, thinking not just of their wicked garden but of Bolton and Nessa. How many others had there been? I knew nothing of whatever end Milton's “grand schemes” achieved, but I knew the means. I would not be like them. Not ever.

Timothy grew serious. “Ponder twice again before you say so to Milton. He will not hurt you, but if he cannot use you--if it seems you mean to work against him--he will hand you over to Malice. It is a favor he would be rewarded for many times over.”

“Malice?”

“The woman you saw us speaking with.”

“Oh. Her.” Malice , I thought. That’s almost as subtle as Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty . Who would actually go by that? “That’s a stupid name,” I said, distracted and annoyed by yet another artifice that should exist only in a fantasy novel.

“It is , isn't it?” Timothy grinned. “I would so miss you if she killed you and drank your blood.”

That brought me very abruptly back to the matter at hand, but I couldn't give in.

“I won't do it, Timothy.” I thought I had seen real feeling in his eyes again, as if he cared for me. I would have to test that intuition now. “Can't you help me?”

For a moment, I felt I'd reached him. There was uncertainty in his gaze, sympathy too. But then the cheery mask settled down again. He was complete in himself, no need for connections to other humans.

“For now,” he said, “I'm afraid you are going to have to depend on someone else to save you. Perhaps, even yourself.” There was no more argument. He took my wrist in an iron grip and dragged me downstairs, striding down the hall so fast I could hardly keep up. My requests to stop or just to wait were predictably ignored, and after a handful of transitions, I was sitting across from Milton in the dining room where we had had tea only a few nights before.

Looking at him, I could barely recognize that he was related to my father. It was no mystery at all why they had been estranged. His hands were folded neatly in front of him on the table, and the gold of his eyes was cold and dark.

“So,” he said, “we have a few difficulties to discuss. I sincerely hope it has been a misunderstanding, and I have allowed my admittedly pessimistic imagination to lead me astray. I do not know , though, and that is why there can be no delay.” I said nothing. “You entered our sanctuary without permission. How do you excuse yourself?”

“I didn't know I needed permission.”

“Perhaps not, but in order to reach my garden you had to use a special sort of door, a door you were expressly told never to open on your own.”

I glanced at Timothy. His arms were crossed over his chest as he leaned against the wall, his face uncharacteristically blank. He would not help me.

“I thought that was just for my own safety.”

Milton stretched his mouth, more of a crease than a smile. “If it was such an interdiction, is that any justification to ignore it?”

“I could have closed the door if it opened to where I didn't want to go. I've seen it done.”

“So you think,” he paused, changing tactics. “Why did you wish to see the garden again, without supervision? Why go to the risk, even a small one, when you could have asked Timothy or me to take you along on our sojourns?”

This wasn’t going the way I had assumed it would. If he had taken whatever answers he wanted from the Fae, he should already know why I had gone there, shouldn't he? It was Li who suggested I go, but they wouldn't have been able to tell any more than that about Li because I knew less than they did, but the sorcerers couldn't be sure. Milton wanted to find out if I would lie to him before he asked me about Li directly, which meant he didn't realize that Timothy had partially filled me in upstairs. What did it mean? Why did sorcerers have to make everything so complicated? If they already knew that Li had been trespassing, then it couldn’t hurt him to admit that we had met. I didn't have enough information to be able to hurt him. It might still hurt me, unless they already knew we had spoken and Timothy had only been guessing to call the trespasser my friend. In which case lying would be worse...

I wasn't up to this. I told them how I had met Li, coming out of a dream. I told them how he had characterized them and how he had given me a chance to see for myself. I told them everything I had seen in the garden and what the Fae wanted me to do. When they probed deeper about Li, I gave them the truth, just leaving out that he could disappear and that the Fae had called him “Darkhorn.” I knew absolutely nothing they couldn't have figured out on their own. I knew they couldn't hurt him with anything I gave them. That was the only significant fact of the whole mess. With that I would be satisfied, whatever the outcome.

“And what have you decided, Abigail? Now that you have seen this aspect of our work, what do you say of sorcery?”

“I don't know about sorcery,” I said, “but I know that what you are doing is wrong.”

Milton “hmm'd” as if he were considering this possibility for the first time. “What would your verdict be if I told you we use the Fae, indeed we use all our power, for purposes far greater than any you have seen? What if I say we seek to change the world, and change it for the better?”

“I would say it doesn't matter what you’re doing, if you are doing it wrong.”

Milton laughed at this, a rolling cascade of sonorous booms. “Very pithy,” he said. “Very pithy. Where did you hear it?”

“Dad used to say it.” When he could remember to care, I thought to myself. I didn't even look at Milton. Not an ounce of my earlier resolution remained. What, after all, could I do? This was their territory; they had abilities, magic I couldn't dream of. They knew about Li, and if he tried to come again they would surely catch him. I hoped he forgot about helping me and ran back home, wherever that was. I was resigned to being at the sorcerer’s mercy.

With this conclusion came a wave of contempt for myself so strong it almost could have come from two people. Some heroine I am, caving under the first pressure. I felt a headache building at the back of my skull.

“That is his voice, more the fool.” Milton’s laughter had subsided. “Sacrifices are always made for any grand endeavor; it must be so. No recompense attained before its labor. The Fae would not be as they are if men had not made them so. The energy that invested awareness in them, the birth of their race was due to sorcery, and now it is for the cause of sorcery that we take it back. If you had seen more of life you would understand. You would not be so hasty in administering the labels of subjective morality. The animal world is nothing but a theater of dumb suffering, and humanity is not much better. I can change that Abigail. I could remake the world, if I had the power, for good. There is a way to gain that power, to regain what was the right of the sorcerers of old.” Unconsciously, one hand clutched the flask of burgundy around his neck. Had it hung there this whole time? Immediately he realized what he was doing and dropped that hand. “Whatever I sacrifice toward that aim is scarcely notable against the vastness of what I hope to accomplish.” The grandiosity of all this was nagging at me and the fervor with which he spoke. Milton sounded more than a little mad.

“You want to be a god?”

There was no hesitation. “I do.”

I couldn't say anything to that. If a person starts out wanting to make positive changes, but doesn't concern himself about the right or wrong ways to do it, he can easily lose sight of what is good in the first place. Listening to Milton, I doubted our definitions of ‘good’ would ever have agreed. You can't talk down irrational beliefs. Either your side is stronger than theirs, or you've lost, and compared to Milton, I wasn't even in the running. Still, my headache was getting worse, and looking up, I saw Timothy had disappeared. Where could he have gone?

“I can give you a choice now, but it is not a nice choice.” he said. “I cannot trust that you would not aid this “Darkhorn” if he were to slip by our wards again and dare to ruin what I have fought to create. That leaves me in a dire quandary, for you are my blood, but the work of my life is worth more than that. If I must, I will leave off protecting you, send you to your father’s empty house, and allow those who hunt you to find you. It will not take long, now that you have been exposed to magic and are coming of age, you will shine like a beacon to those with the sight. It will not be pleasant.” He allowed this to sink in, to let me ruminate on our previous conversation detailing the possible uses of my blood. “Or,” he said, “yo u will allow me to hypnotize you, to place a suggestion in your mind that will prevent you from betraying me until after we have dealt with the present threat. Aside from that, it will not alter you, you will not notice; your life will not change. In fact, I am only giving you this explanation now so that after I have hypnotized you, you will remember it clearly enough to assume you have given your assent.”

“No!” I couldn't even get to my feet, as if that could have helped. Drawn from nowhere, Milton was holding an orange flower that I now knew was actually a Fae being used against her will. Knowing could not alter the effects. Within the cup of the blossom was a soft bloom of yellow light. As I stared, the radiance pulsed and grew until I could see nothing else, and lethargy clutched at me like a restraining wind. I could hear Milton speaking but understood none of what he said. His voice was buzzing hives and the stately, inevitable advance of time. My body was too full of numb feeling to obey my commands, as my mind was too quickly muddled to give them. The soft yellow brilliance was all I knew, but it began to fray at the corners.

Images came then, memories of meeting Milton at the hospital and what happened after. Realization came to me like rain sliding down a shield of glass. This wasn't the first time I had been hypnotized. He had already done what he said at least once before. Milton had altered my memory to make me more biddable; maybe even altered my mind so that magic would be easier to accept. My anger was a distant thing, raindrops on the glass. There was only the flower and the light in the entire world. Soon I would forget this--forget again--and be the perfect little tool for him to use.

I wasn't much of a protagonist. A real hero would be resisting now, futilely, but with all of her might. I was just giving up. Maybe I'm not the main character. What a depressing thought; not even the focus of my own story. Who would it be then? Timothy? Even my curiosity was distant, more water on the glass.

There was only the light and the flower--then the sound of a mirror cracking. A shadow in the light, small at first, was hissing. Milton’s expression, half- lidded so that he seemed to be a bear working his way toward hibernation, abruptly turned to shock. The hiss became louder and more forceful; the noise of a rattlesnake that happened to be the size of a truck and was feeling threatened. More shocking still, the hiss had issued from my throat. Milton looked like a golem had just turned on him--all the golems--but he couldn't have been more alarmed than I was.

As far as I could tell I was back to myself, memories intact, but I couldn't do that. The flower had disappeared and Milton’s hand went to the flask around his throat, but before he had a chance to try anything nastier than hypnotism, the door nearly flew off its hinges as Timothy burst into the room. “She’s here!” he roared and in almost the same instant I was hauled to my feet by my arm and Timothy was holding out an open hand to Milton. “I'll hide them both,” he said, “no time for anything else.” The sorcerer seemed to vacillate, eyes brightening with rage.

“I can feel her,” he said as if he couldn't believe it possible. But he recovered instantly, swooping out of the room so fast I could hardly follow him with my eyes. When he was gone, I saw the flask in Timothy’s outstretched hand. “Malice is here,” he said blandly, “on a surprise visit. I am going to put you in your room and not expect to hear from you again.”

“Timothy! He was going to hypnotize me, but something…”

“No time!” he silenced me, yanking my arm to hurry me through the nearest threshold. I was too worked up to bat an eye at the fact that we segued instantly into my room. He stepped backward out of it, the flask clutched tightly, triumphantly in his left hand. There was lightning glimmering in his eyes that killed all of my questions before they could leave my lips. He appeared to be fighting down a maniacal grin, but only barely. “All's well that ends well,” he said, slamming the door in my face.

‎