The Silenced Tale

by J. M. Frey

  Gil, however, seems unaware that he is poking the Bulldog of Bynnebakker and keeps on. “Oh, this is going to be fun. I like you . . . Bevel.” He forces a business card into Bevel’s hand.

  “I make no promises,” Bevel grunts at length.

  “No, I get it,” Gil says. “I do. I don’t . . . let me be clear, I don’t want you to replace Elgar, okay? Nobody can do that. You’re not runner-up to him. But you . . . you both . . . please. When he’s up and around. What a resource you could be. Just think about it?”

  “I will,” Bevel reluctantly promises.

  Gil takes the time to shake everyone’s hands, and then rushes out after Juan, grinning like Alis when confronted with a whole mountain of paper to crumple to her heart’s delight.

  “Well,” Pip says, slumping into the chair beside the bed. She reaches out and brushes a lock of hair off my brother’s forehead. “That was a circus. You sure missed something just there, Kintyre Turn.”

  Bevel hands me the business card, and I explain the process of getting in contact with Gil, if he wants to.

  “Should I?” Bevel asks, sitting on the edge of the bed and laying a hand on Kintyre’s knee. He is rarely out of physical contact with his trothed for long. I do not know who this is meant to comfort more, but I suspect that it is not the man asleep in the bed. “He wants me to help.”

  “Only if you want to,” Pip says, grinning up at me. “Consider his offer, Bev. Once Kin’s up and at it, you two will want to do something to keep you busy. I know you don’t miss being Shadow Hand, not the way Forsyth does, but you’re going to have to find some way to occupy yourself. This might be a good opportunity.”

  Bevel chuckles a little to himself. “You know as well as I that Kintyre Turn will never be content with simply telling people how things must look or happen. He will pick up the prop sword and wade into the choreography himself.” Bevel groans and rubs his forehead. “And I will have my hands full with the ruddy great brute while he does, won’t I?”

  “Will that be so bad?” Pip asks softly. I look away from Bevel to find her patting Kin’s arm. “Just like old times, right? Just like that time with the King’s Players.”

  “Yeah,” Bevel croaks. He swallows hard, clears his throat, and then adds: “I’m dying for a pipe. I’ll, uh . . .” He gestures awkwardly at the window over his shoulder, indicating his intention to go to the courtyard. He was quite put out to learn that he was not allowed to smoke indoors, at Kintyre’s bedside.

  I wait for Bevel to exit, then take one of the seats. Pip offers me the paperwork from the lawyers to read and, ah, yes, I do see the reason for her outburst. That is a veritable flock of zeroes.

  “He passed the series on to you,” I say, conversationally, as I peruse the rest of the document. I will read it seriously later, when we are back in our hotel room. “Why did you not speak up?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind. I . . . Juan and I are emailing, a bit,” she confesses. “Mostly about the legal stuff, but they’ve mentioned wanting a new story consultant. I didn't say anything because . . . I don’t know, it will be good for Bev and Kin, don’t you think? To have a link back to Hain, to Turn Hall?”

  “Or it may break their hearts,” I point out.

  Pip bites her bottom lip and nods, looking away from me and back to Kin, where he is quiet and still. I rifle through my memories, but I cannot think of an instance when he hasn’t been rambunctious, fidgety, opinionated, or loud. He even grumbles and shifts in his sleep, and more than once when we were adventuring together, his restlessness would wake me.

  “Will you do as Elgar asked? Will you write more stories? Of Wyndam and Caerdac?”

  “No, I couldn’t. I . . . I’m the sole repository of magic in this world now,” Pip says softly. Her voice is reverent and sad. “You understand, right? I will never Write. Never. I couldn’t bear to hurt anyone we love. Even unknowingly. Even accidentally.”

  “Very well,” I say softly, pulling her against me. “No one is forcing you to do it. However, as you are now the keeper of Elgar’s Authorial Intent, if the series is to happen, you should accompany Bevel into the meetings. If only to . . . ensure that nothing goes awry.”

  Pip is quiet for a long, long moment. “You’re saying I should be the midwife?”

  “It may help you,” I suggest, deciding to try another tack. “It may offer . . . closure.”

  Pip chuckles at my poor attempt to replicate the cadence and tone of our therapist.

  “It’s not . . . it’s not a bad thought. After all, according to the Viceroy’s summoning spell, I am the person who knows the most about the series,” Pip says. But she smiles thinly, still a little too hurt by the events of the past three years to really make light of it. “What’s your opinion of Newfoundland?”

  “I hear they have a vibrant filmmaking community and many fascinating museums and award-winning restaurants for me to take Alis to while you’re on set,” I answer, as lightly as I am able. “I have experienced one coast of my adopted nation. I should rather like to experience the other.”

  Pip scuffs her feet, chews on her bottom lip, looks at the floor, and says: “I’ll think about it.”

  Kintyre is allowed to wake at the end of three weeks. It is a longer process than I thought it would be, for even after the medicines that held him in stasis have been lifted, he dozes in fits and starts. And when he is finally, properly wakeful, he is confused about where he is, and what’s happened. It takes him several days to be able to stand and walk unaided, and even then, they make him depart the hospital in a wheelchair. He is dour, and grumpy, and hates the clothing Pip has procured for him. He wants Turn Hall, and dislikes all the food just to be contrary.

  But Alis greets him at the door to our suite, standing on her own and holding a ridiculous bouquet of Gerbera daisies so large it obscures her face. Kintyre smiles for the first time in my presence since he woke, and against the doctor’s explicit orders, he scoops my daughter up to smush kisses on her cheeks. Alis is startled, as she barely remembers Kintyre, and Martin laughs and steals her away, distracts her with Library before she can decide she wants to have a proper cry about what just happened.

  Kintyre lets Bevel fuss him into a seat on the sofa, and takes the offered glass of wine—also against doctor’s orders, when Kintyre is on the pain medication he’s been prescribed. But old habits die hard, and Bevel is still mildly distrustful of the tap water.

  “I’m never going to see him again, am I?” Kintyre asks softly, eyes on his lap as he wraps a careful fist around the stem of the glass. “Wyndam. My son.” He is looking at his niece. “I’ll never see him again. Or . . . or Caerdac, and Bradri, or Pointe, or . . . any of it. Will I?”

  “No,” Pip says gently. “I’m sorry.”

  “Can you . . . can I have some time with Bev?” Kintyre asks softly.

  “Yeah,” Pip says. “C’mon, Mom, Dad, let’s go back to your room.”

  “Come, sweeting,” I say, holding my arms out for my daughter. “Let’s go.”

  “Bye bye bye!” Alis says over my shoulder when Martin passes her over. She opens and closes her fingers adorably, apparently forgetting that, just a moment ago, Kintyre was a man to be suspicious of.

  I do not know what Bevel and Kintyre discuss, but they are in their room when Pip and I return several hours later, Alis flopped, dead asleep, over Pip’s shoulder. The next morning, Kintyre is more gracious, more patient, more generous, and I offer Bevel a thankful handshake when Kintyre isn’t looking.

  “So this is how the adventure ends, yeah?” Bevel asks as we all pack up the following day. “How all our adventures end? The Happily Ever After, and all that?”

  “Surely not all, Bev,” Kintyre says with a smirk, waggling his eyebrows at his trothed and pinching his bottom hard, and . . . uhg, yes, I am absolutely glad that we have settled that Bevel and Kintyre will be moving to Seattle. I definitely could not live with my brother making that face at his trothed in the same house. Not even in t
he same town. Yes, a whole different country is a very suitable distance between me and that, indeed.

  I must be making my own face of disgust, because Pip laughs at me, free and joyful in a way that I haven’t heard in months. Alis takes the opportunity of her mother’s distraction to “help” us pack by pulling our pajamas out of the suitcases and throwing them on the floor.

  I despise flying, so of course my brother simply adores it. It took some jigging within the airline’s system, but I managed to get us all on the same flight and seated together. Kintyre flirts shamelessly with the flight attendants, using his injury to procure a pencil and paper so he can sketch what he sees out his window, and Bevel grumbles and giggles, and generally is quite pleased with the world now that Kintyre is back by his side.

  We part ways with Martin and Mei Fan at the airport—they’re taking their car back to Victoria—and the rest of us hire a van service after they’ve handed off Alis’s car seat. The drive from the Vancouver airport to our home is three hours, but it is better than taking a second plane to Victoria, I think. Kintyre is starting to look a little gray around the edges, and being sat in one place without having to do the shuffle through the airport is good for him. Additionally, the van drops us all directly at our own doorstep, which is convenient. My ribs twinge as I help the driver unload our admittedly few bags, and then Bevel and I steady Kintyre as he steps out into my driveway for the first time.

  He looks up at the house with a critical eye, his gaze sweeping across the windows of the upper story, the lush landscaping that Pip lovingly tends and which has been left to grow out of all control in the weeks we’ve been absent, the cheery front door Pip insisted we paint Turn-russet.

  “’Small,” Kintyre sniffs, and Bevel pinches his arm.

  “Yow!” Kintyre protests, and then laughs, his mock-disapproval melting away. “Looks nice, actually. A place that’s all your own.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “And soon enough, you will have one for yourself, as well. For now, let us get you settled on the sofa, hm? Give you one of those lovely little yellow pills.”

  “Yes, please,” Kintyre sighs. He’s rarely so polite as when he’s in pain and someone else is in control of his potions. I steer him toward the door, and Bevel drops back to let me unlock it, then I take Kintyre’s hand and help him across the threshold.

  “Well come to my home,” I say, and squeeze Kintyre’s fingers. “And well met.”

  “Temporarily,” Pip says, coming in behind us.

  There is a bit of a squeeze as we all drop our bags on the bottom of the stairs and kick off our shoes. Pip sets Alis down on the floor. Our toddler is squirmingly full of energy after being forced to sit on airplanes and in vans all day. She has nearly mastered walking without needing to cling to something, and she is off like a crossbow bolt toward her reading chair.

  “This is cozy,” Bevel says, as I help Kintyre get comfortable in the corner of our sofa. He runs his hands appreciatively along the backs of our reading chairs, the edge of the book shelf, the dusty mantelpiece. “Kinda Turnish, but not too grand.”

  He stops and looks up with wide eyes at the large painting of Turn Hall that hangs above the sofa. Elgar had commissioned it from one of the fellows who did the artistic design on the Lord of the Rings films as a gift to mark Alis’s birth.

  “Oh,” he breathes, and Kintyre cranes his head up and around to get a good view of the painting as well.

  “Huh,” he says. “Good likeness.”

  “Indeed,” I agree. “I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first, but I must say it’s become my favorite wall hanging in the house. It reminds me of home, but it does not try to replicate it.”

  “The Turn family tapestries wouldn’t fit in here,” Kintyre says gamely.

  “And I wouldn’t want that horrific tapestry of the Bloody Battle of Bigonner, anyway,” I point out.

  Bevel chuckles. “Yeah, I hated that damned thing, too. Who in the hells wants to stare at that sort of thing over dinner?”

  Exchanging a knowing look, Kintyre and I both smile, and at the exact same time, say: “Father.”

  “Right,” Bevel says. “Well, I need coffee. Anyone else?”

  He’s become a bit of an espresso fanatic since Pip introduced him to it. He loves the efficiency and variety. Kintyre hates the noise of it all, the grinding and the beeping and the whirring.

  We can see into the kitchen from the living room, and I chuckle when Bevel slaps his palm on the countertop in a fit of pique. “This hells-damned contraption is different in every place I’ve been. Show me how to make it sing.”

  Alis demands to be lifted “up up up, ’Lis up, Bev!” and my brother-in-law complies, hoisting my daughter onto his hip so she can smack the counter in imitation.

  “Oh, lord,” Pip groans, but she is smiling.

  I find that I am smiling, too, a great wide stretch of a thing, probably foolish and dopey-looking, but it feels so good that I cannot begin to imagine ceasing. The tight knot of grief in my chest unfurls and softens and warms, just a bit.

  It doesn’t dissipate completely.

  I don’t know if it ever will, though I hear that, eventually, one stops thinking about a beloved friend’s death, that you think of them first every moment, then only once an hour, then once or twice a day, then once a week . . . but never lose the deep, bone-weary ache of their absence entirely. The knot doesn’t dissolve like potions ingredients in a cauldron, but rather unclenches, just a bit, just a little, slowly and over a lifetime.

  Pip laughs, and kisses Alis’s cheek, and pulls the quality coffee beans out of the freezer. “I can’t believe I’m introducing Kintyre Turn and Bevel Dom to the pleasures of domestic appliances in the twenty-first century. Jesus. Ha. Just think of the fan fiction.”

  EPILOGUE

  Six Months Later

  Pip sets her new, ever-present leather satchel down on the floor of Turn Hall’s foyer. The sconces are unlit, the elaborately woven silk wallpaper lacking it’s usual jewel-like gleam in the false gloaming. The house is silent, hushed, holding its breath. Waiting for its inhabitants to arrive.

  She stares upward at the grid of steel pipes, cables, and massive shuttered lights, and I follow her gaze. It is very odd to be stepping into my own home, only to look up and find that the ceiling is gone. There is no second floor to this Turn Hall, no rooms at the top of the stairs, no apartments. The grand staircase continues upward, splits at the wall, where it always has, and then flows further up to the left and the right. But those staircases end in metal railings and yellow warning signs.

  The library is off the foyer, to the left as it always has been, my private study behind it. To the right is the morning parlor, which leads to the salon. There is no grand hall further back, though, no ballroom-cum-gymnasium, because none of Kintyre’s scripted adventures are meant to happen in what were once the most important rooms of the house for me. Kintyre’s suite of rooms exists on another part of the sound stage. Mine do not exist at all.

  Kintyre’s life did not happen in the same places mine did.

  I set Alis down on the freshly swept floor—even the pattern of the marble mosaic is perfect, eerily and exactly as I recall it—and she immediately makes a break for the staircase.

  Alis is now so confident in her walking that she rarely wants her parents at all. She has tumbled headlong into her “just so” phase, and Bevel has become a horrible enabler. Stairs must always be climbed.

  “Ah, ah!” I say, and direct her toward the library instead.

  “Want—” she starts, and then cuts herself off mulishly when I shake my head.

  “Don’t let her wreck anything,” Pip says, grabbing up her satchel and following after us. “I promised we wouldn’t wreck anything.”

  “Me good!” Alis protests.

  “I am watching her,” I tell my wife, and Pip pinches my arm when she catches me rolling my eyes.

  The library, too, is exactly as I recall it. Alis’s penchant for climbin
g seems to be satisfied by one of the chairs by the fireplace, so I take a moment to peek into the set of the study. Here again, everything is eerily right, and just that little bit wrong. A crystal whiskey decanter set sits on the credenza, but it is not my set. The blotter is green, but not Carvel-green. Everything is close, but not correct, and it is enough to make the whole place feel flesh-shiveringly eerie. Though perhaps that might also be the chill from the air-conditioners and the high ceilings.

  Newfoundland in January is bleak, and gray, salty and snowy and gorgeous. Air-conditioning wouldn’t be needed in the studio at all, save for the fact that the professional-grade stage lights are apparently extremely intense.

  Pip has been teaching me a lot about the film industry these past few months, since she has taken a hiatus from her position at the University of Victoria. This past half year has been a crash course for Pip on how television is made. She’s diving into readers and textbooks like the education enthusiast that she is, as well as the behind-the-scenes videos on DVDs. She approaches her task with all the fervor that has, in the past, gone into her academic studies. Thus, she was fully prepared when we relocated to St. John’s just after the start of the Overrealm’s new year. Our house in Victoria is currently being looked after by my in-laws, and occasionally rented by short-term stay travelers, while we ourselves have taken a very charming set of rooms in a flat on Jellybean Row.

  “This is uncanny,” I say.

  “I thought so, too,” Pip says.

  “Mama, book!” Alis demands once she’s properly seated in the wingback chair that is at once mine, and formerly mine, and not mine at all. We have trained our daughter well.

  “Be gentle,” Pip says, and pulls a much-annotated and post-it note-ed The Serpent of the Sleeping Vale from her satchel, handing it to Alis. As if our daughter is ever anything but utterly gentle with books.

  Content with just one of the eight be-flagged books Pip jokingly refers to as her “Neo-Excels,” Alis opens it up—upside down—and starts quietly flicking through the pages, pausing to run her fingers along each of the illustrations she comes upon.