by Tim Akers
She turned and marched down to the waiting Owen, then paused and turned around.
“Be seeing you!” I called after her.
“Not if I’m doing my job right,” she answered, then got in the car. Owen asked her something through the open window, glared up at me, then somehow folded his bulk into the vehicle and drove off. I watched them go, straining my eyes as the car’s trickery took hold, trying to keep it in sight. When they were gone, I pulled her business card out of my sleeve and tapped it against my palm. Gabrielle Rodriguez, it read. Mundane Actual. The Knight Watch logo was embossed in the background.
“They’re making mechanics a lot prettier than they used to,” my mom called from the porch.
“Soldiers, too,” I muttered, then spun on my heel and walked up the stairs. Mom was staring at me with funny eyes. “What? Your car’s back. Be happy for one minute, will ya?”
“Mm hm,” she said as I passed. “Maybe the young lady has your phone, as well.”
“Oh! Hadn’t thought of that. Maybe she does,” I said. “Is there any dessert?”
Chapter THIRTEEN
BARD HAS LEFT THE PARTY
I tried calling Eric first thing in the morning. Since my phone was MIA, I used the landline in the kitchen downstairs. Mom was baking an apple pie, which is quite possibly the most Mom thing she could do. My mom, at least, was deeply in touch with her mythic identity.
It took me a minute to remember Eric’s actual number, since these days I just pushed a button on my screen to get ahold of him. The phone rang and rang, long enough that I began to wonder if I had somehow broken their answering machine just by calling, or maybe misdialed. Mom walked through the kitchen to check on her pie. She was still busying herself at the stove when someone finally picked up. There was a long moment of silence on the line.
“Hello?” I said. Whoever had answered took a deep breath. “Hello, Mrs. Cavanaugh? Is Eric there, please?”
The line hissed. For a second, I thought I had been cut off, but then a tumbling, hissing, static-laced avalanche of sounds came out of the phone. I heard the line disconnect, then pick up again.
“John?” Eric’s voice cut through the clutter. He sounded like he was at the bottom of a well, and maybe not an empty one. “John, where have you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you, but...but...”
“Eric, what the hell’s going on?” I asked. My mom straightened and looked over at me reprovingly. I turned away from her, tucking myself into the hallway for a little privacy. “Eric? Can you hear me?”
“There’s just so much darkness, John. I don’t know what to—”
The line went abruptly dead. The cacophony of other sounds lingered in my head like an echo. I hung up and immediately redialed, fingers fumbling through the keys. Not even a ringtone this time. I gave it two more tries before my mom stuck her head around the corner.
“Is everything alright, John?” she asked in a voice that made it clear she knew something was wrong.
“Fine, Mom. It’s fine. No one’s home.” I held the receiver against my chest and smiled at her unconvincingly. We stood like that for a long time before she sighed and went back into the kitchen. I called Chesa.
“I swear to God, John, if I ever wake up in a trunk with a bag on my head again—” she said on picking up.
“Chesa, please, just listen,” I said quickly. She didn’t hang up, so I rushed forward. “I think something is wrong. With Eric.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, “I tried calling him first thing when I got home. Didn’t even get a ringtone,” she said. “I figured he didn’t pay his bill.”
“Well, someone or something just answered,” I said. I tucked the phone against my chest and made sure Mom wasn’t listening, then continued in a whisper. “Something Esther might be interested in.”
“So call Esther. Or that cute soldier girl, assuming you have the same contact I do. She might be willing to fall for this kind of nonsense, but I have better things to do.”
“Ches, I’m serious. I think we need to check it out.”
“This isn’t some kind of trick, is it? Some ploy to get me to spend time with you? Because that ship’s sailed, John. The only reason we’re still talking is because it might finally get me into elvish princess heaven. Don’t take advantage of that.”
“I’m not, I swear. I just think something’s wrong. All we have to do is head over there and check it out. If it’s serious, we call Knight’s Watch. Honest. I’m sure it’s probably nothing. But we owe it to Eric to look.”
Another long pause. She sighed.
“I’ll meet you there,” she said, then hung up.
“Mom,” I yelled over my shoulder. She was standing right behind me, like some kind of creepy corn child. I dropped the phone. “Mom! Jesus!”
“How is Chesa?” she asked.
“Justifiably pissed,” I said. “I need to borrow the car again. We’re going over to Eric’s for, uh...for something.”
“Not a chance, young man. I just got that car back. There’s no way I’m giving you the keys.” She turned her back on me and went into the kitchen. “Maybe Chesa could give you a ride.”
“To hell, maybe,” I muttered. I followed her into the kitchen. The smell of apple pies was nearly overwhelming. I had to wonder what sort of nostalgia demon my mom was trying to summon. “Well, how am I supposed to get there?”
“Your bike is in the garage,” she said. “Last time I checked, you still had two healthy legs.”
“Mom, I haven’t ridden that thing since high school. Surely—”
“Bike or walk. Or call Chesa back,” she said without turning around.
I thought about calling Ches and asking for a ride, then shivered.
“Bike it is,” I said.
Shadowfax was mounted on the wall in the garage like a stuffed antelope made of rust and decaying foam pads. I reached up and unhooked the bike. A cloud of dust and the dry husks of dead bugs filled the air. It took a while to get the wheels reinflated, and by the time I started clanking down the driveway, I was both sweating and late.
Shadowfax had seen me through a lot of long rides, especially in high school. Eric and I used to ride our bikes out to the park and ride in circles, talking about the things guys that age talked about. And sometimes we would stop talking about girls long enough to venture into books, or knights, or games.
Honestly, I was scared to see Eric again. I was scared to tell him about Knight Watch, and even more scared to try to hide it from him. I had it on my mental checklist to talk to Esther about him, try to convince her to let him into the club. I still wasn’t sure why they had picked me and Chesa off the field and brought us into their little secret, but not Eric. Something to worry about later, I suppose, because now something might be wrong with my wayward, semi-literary, bard-aspirant friend.
Something was definitely wrong with my bike, though. At first, I thought it was just the fact that it was old and in disrepair, but it soon became clear that Shadowfax was ailing. That’s the kind of day it was. I have a history of breaking technology, from toasters to cell phones to videogames and beyond. I spent most of my freshman year of college trying to convince my science professor that I wasn’t intentionally ruining everything I touched, that centrifuges just naturally pirouetted across the floor whenever I got close to them, but he never believed me. And my glorious and undoubtedly successful career as a major player in the eSports world was cut short when my Call of Duty account somehow developed a catastrophic error that briefly gained sentience and crashed the system’s servers worldwide.
That kind of nonsense usually only affected complicated technology, but ever since my brush with Kracek the Hosier, things had gotten worse. Today, that worseness included my trusty bike, Shadowfax. Misery knows no bounds.
I tried to change gears, and something popped off the rear wheel and went bouncing down the street. My feet spun wildly for a few revolutions, then the chain caught and I lurched forwa
rd, nearly tumbling over the handlebars.
“Damn it, Shadowfax!” I shouted. The same trio of soccer moms that had been loitering on the corner when I came by to pick up Eric three days ago were still at their posts. They lowered their macchipoccolitos and narrowed their eyes as I, slowly, passed. I gave them a wave. “Ladies,” I called. They turned sharply away.
Something gave deep in the heart of Shadowfax. The gearing, drive chain, pedals, frame, brake lines, spokes, tires, and rims all surrendered their grasp on this mortal realm at the same time. Shadowfax went in a dozen different directions. A handful of gears circled sadly in the street, a tire bounced over the curb and started its new life as trash in someone’s yard, and the seat skidded across the asphalt like a base runner. I stood in the middle of the street, holding the tasseled handlebar in my clenched fists as I watched my bike settle into a pile of junk.
“And so his soul goes to the far shore, and leaves us here to feel the ache of his absence,” I said solemnly. “Fly on, Shadowfax. Your journey is at an end.”
A car rolled up next to me. Another embarrassment, but at least I didn’t know many of Eric’s neighbors. And what did I care what a stranger thought?
“That was impressive, Rast,” Chesa said. She was in full regalia, feathered crown brushing against the ceiling of her hatchback. I wondered if I should have brought my knight’s kit, then realized that would have only made this entire situation more intolerably embarrassing. “A real shitshow of a bike trick.”
“Yes, of course. Of course, it’s you,” I said, nodding. “Hi Chesa. Gimme a lift?”
“No way. I’ve seen what you do to cars,” she said. “But you’re free to walk alongside.”
We went the next couple blocks that way, me carrying Shadowfax’s handlebars in one hand, Chesa’s hot hatch idling at my side. We got our share of stares, even without an elvish princess in the driver’s seat. I wondered how long it would be before someone called the cops on us. It was that kind of neighborhood, where you might draw a SWAT team for wearing white after Labor Day.
“So, how are your parents taking the news?” I asked.
“That I’m going to be an elvish princess? They’ve known that for a while. What did you tell your parents?”
“Nothing, really. I’m trying to find a way to explain it.”
“Dear Mom and Dad, I know you paid for my college, but instead of being a doctor or lawyer, I’m going to live in your basement and pretend to be a knight.” She pitched her voice into high geek dialect. “It’th importanth!”
“I don’t live in the basement,” I grumped.
“Uh huh,” Chesa answered. She sped up just enough that it was awkward for me to walk beside her. I broke into a jog, so she slowed down again. She gave a deep and bone-rattling sigh. “Look, I’m just going to meet you there. This is weird.”
“But we’re almost—”
She sped off, laying rubber for the two houses remaining in our journey, before turning hard into Eric’s driveway, tail-end drifting wide in a long, screeching arc. I sighed and jogged the final dozen yards. I tossed the last of Shadowfax’s mortal coil at the foot of Eric’s yard and followed Chesa’s car up the driveway.
Except Eric’s house was gone. I stumbled to a halt next to Chesa’s car. She got slowly out of the car and stood next to me, gawking up at the spectacle before us.
There was a period of American exceptionalism when a lot of people suddenly found themselves with a lot of money, or at least access to the kind of debt that looked like a lot of money, but without the taste that good money requires. This led to vast tracts of the American wilderness being converted into houses that were very large, if not very nice. Vast foyers with corkscrew staircases led to beige carpeted hallways that bristled with bedrooms whose only purpose was to serve as the host organ for enormous bathrooms and closets larger than most apartments. Chandeliers were big back then, especially the kind of chandelier that looked like it was in the process of falling painfully apart in midair.
All of these houses shared one distinct feature. They all had a single layer of bricks across the front. The rest of the house was cheap siding, seen only by the underpaid lawn service, and of course the neighbors, who also had cheap siding. It was the clearest expression of fake money. They had just enough money to look like they had money, all built on a shell of tricky banking and down payments and linoleum.
Eric’s house was such a house. Or it had been last week. Before it was a tree.
The trunk of this particular tree was as wide as Eric’s former house, erupting out of the manicured Elysium of the Cavanaugh front lawn. It rose into the sky like a cloud, branching out into a cloud of twisted, writhing branches, bare of leaves and bark. A storm crowned its boughs. Lightning flashed through the naked canopy of the tree, scoring the hardened flesh of its wood and filling the air with smoke. Thunder rolled down the gnarled bark of the trunk and echoed over the yard.
“What. The. Hell,” I whispered.
“Don’t think we’re going to have to explain things to Eric after all,” Chesa answered. The thunder grew second by second, echoing like the laughter of a mighty god. “Do you think—”
A car horn beeped behind us. We turned around to see two luxury minivans/urban combat vehicles, both of whom were driving right on the centerline of the road. They patiently beeped at one another, slowly rolling closer and closer, until their bumpers lightly brushed together. Both drivers rolled down their windows and started yelling about right of way, car horns stridently sounding. We stared at this spectacle for long minutes before realizing something strange.
“The thunder?” Chesa asked.
“It stopped,” I said. I turned back to the tree and was immediately buffeted by thunder and the cackling of a mad sky god. I looked back to the street and heard nothing but rich mothers squabbling in the street, hugging their babies and complaining about whiplash. Back to the castle and it was thunder.
“Huh,” Chesa said.
“So we call MA for this, right?”
“Seems like it.”
I took out my cell phone which was obviously still a deck of tarot cards. I shuffled the cards between my hands, hoping one of them was the Seven of Oh God Help, or the Nine of Esthers, but no luck. Chesa stared at me for a long moment.
“It’s complicated,” I said. “You better make the call.”
Chesa sighed and reached into the open window of her car, fishing her much larger and much nicer phone out of the center console.
It was now a much larger and nicer tarot deck. Embossed leather, gold-foil illuminated face cards, even a suede case. But still equally useless in this situation.
“This is somehow your fault,” she said.
“Probably. Guess I’ll call from home.” I looked at Shadowfax’s handlebars, sticking out of the shrubs nearby. “Um. Can I get a lift?”
Chapter FOURTEEN
LEVEL ONE
There were a couple of fraught moments when it didn’t seem like Chesa’s car was going to start. She glared at me out of the corner of her eye while the engine grated and moaned, then finally it roared to life and we rolled down the street. We rode in silence. When she pulled up to my house, there was a long pause.
“What are we going to do?” I asked. “Call MA?”
“My contact didn’t seem too interested in hearing from me,” Chesa said. “Something about not calling until Fenris’ unholy jaws were closing on the moon.”
“Sounds familiar. Maybe we just mention it to Esther the next time we go in for training?”
“We could call the police.”
“And tell them what? That our friend’s house has been replaced by a giant tree? We’re better off just checking directly into the mental ward.” I shifted in my seat. Mom was in the front window of the house, grinning ravenously at the two of us. “I gotta go. Mom’s going to get the wrong ideas.”
“Yeah, well. Let me know when you hear from Esther,” Chesa said. “And don’t you go disappearing on me,
too.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. The last time I had disappeared on Chesa, it was by text message from college as I was leaving another girl’s apartment. Finally, I just cleared my throat, muttered something noncommittal, and got out of the car. She drove off without another word. At least her car didn’t magically disappear before my eyes.
I spent the rest of the day trying to get myself grounded in the real world again, and nowhere was as real as my mother’s kitchen. I ate a chicken sandwich, took a nap, and only woke up screaming about dragons and attorneys and janitors maybe twice that night. That seemed normal enough. Everything seemed normal. Dad slept in front of the television, Mom worried about everything I ate during dinner, and the rest of the day passed.
My phone arrived in the middle of the afternoon, stuffed into our mailbox in a tattered envelope covered in fading ink script and a pair of day-glow orange stickers that warned CONTAINMENT HAZARD and REAL WORLD across the front. I stuffed the envelope into the trash before Mom could find it, then tossed the replacement tarot deck in after and hoped the whole incident would be forgotten.
Chesa didn’t call. Chesa didn’t text. Chesa didn’t do anything but lurk in the back of my mind, along with a lot of guilt and a fair share of karma. I thought again about calling the police about Eric, but I managed to come up with enough excuses that I never did.
I woke up the next morning in my old room. Thursday, I thought. I’ve always liked Thursdays during the summer. As good as the weekend, without the need to make plans or the disappointment those plans always produced. The breeze was blowing in through the open window, the air smelling of cut grass and woodsmoke, the curtains fluttering lazily against my childhood bed. The room was full of the artifacts of my well-spent youth. Plastic knights and Soviet tanks, clumsily assembled and painted with more enthusiasm than skill. The collected armada of WWII fighters, early era rockets, fanciful spaceships, and improbable zeppelin gunships that hung over my bed rattled quietly against one another. I sat up and spun one, the cracked Saturn V booster that I had broken during a failed launch, involving four bottle rockets and an imperfectly cut fuse.