by Nick Lake
Oh no, says Mark from behind me.
I turn, and I see what he has seen.
Chapter 60
Everything happens very fast.
Wolves pour onto the rope bridge from behind us, then just flow along it toward Mark, a gray flood of teeth and claws. Mark turns to me. Go, he says. This time, I will stand.
You can’t—
This is not a discussion. Run.
He turns back to the wolves, and despite myself, as the first of them barrels into him, I find myself moving backward and away from him, toward the castle. Jaws snap—and close on thin air, as Mark twists and ducks, then powers up, sending three wolves tumbling over the side. They disappear before I see them hit anything.
But more of them fall on him, then, and there are hundreds more behind …
Go, shouts Mark. Just remember, you’re an adult. You’re not—
But his voice is cut off as a wolf barrels into him, and he focuses on grappling with it.
I start to turn, as I do so I see Mark fall—
No—
He isn’t falling, he’s shrinking into himself, and dark red fur bursts from him, and he is Coyote, leaping at the wolf before him, teeth closing on its throat; blood sprays wildly, like a water hose turned on. More wolves press in on him then, worry at him, there is snapping at ankles and noses and more blood flies and Coyote takes the eyes from another wolf with a swipe of his claws and batters another with his head; it scrabbles at the planks and then plummets, and—
Now, says the voice in my head, as Coyote finally disappears, buried beneath a moving blanket of gray.
Tears in my eyes, I turn and run, the rope bridge swaying beneath me, no longer seeing the horrific abyss below me.
Until …
I am maybe twenty feet from the other side, the castle walls rising from a dead black lawn. The crying of the Child is very loud now. Very loud.
I slow down. I can see the glass structure on the grass in front of the castle more clearly now. It is maybe thirty yards from me. I can see that it is a little palace, I was right, complete with towers and flags fluttering in the breeze, only they are not flags because they are made of glass too, the fluttering is an effect of the shifting clouds over the moon, the whole thing is made of glass, shimmering in the starlight.
Glass walls, sloping glass roof, glass buttresses.
And inside …
Inside is a child. Sitting on the grass, facing away from me, is a tiny child, no more than two years old. It is shaking, racked with sobs, and I realize that this is the source of the crying, this is the Child, sitting in a prison of glass.
Hey, I call. Hey, I’m here.
The Child stops crying for a second, then starts again.
Hey! Kid! Hey!
Slowly, still crying, the Child shuffles around to look at me.
The breath turns to stone in my chest.
It is the child from my dream, the girl, the exact one, from the dream I have had over and over since I was a child myself, the one that sits in the hospital waiting room, crying for someone, anyone, me, to come and pick it up. I stare at it, at her, horrified—but at the same time, I kind of knew, I always knew, that it was going to be.
I knew the first time Mark mentioned a child.
I’m coming I’m coming I’m coming, I say, and I launch myself forward, the Child had stopped crying for a second when it saw me but now her pudgy little arms are reaching out toward me, stiff with need, and she is crying again, screaming really, the sound like an icicle in my heart.
Then I stop dead, the crying echoing in the canyon all around me, pressing in on my skull, as if it could burst my brains.
I can’t go any farther.
I’ve come so far and the child is right there, the child from my dreams, the Child Mark wants me to save, that Coyote wants me to save, and I can’t get there.
I can’t get there.
In front of me is a six-foot gap in the rope bridge, farther than I could ever jump, where there are no planks.
Chapter 61
I look at the hole, and below it the yawning vacancy of the chasm.
I could try to hold on to the rope and haul myself along it, hand by hand, but I know I don’t have the arm strength.
I’m going to have to jump.
I stand there, hesitating, and then I sense the air shift behind me, and I turn and see the wolves coming, the pack streaming toward me.
Mark, I think.
In front of me, the Child’s arms are still outstretched, as if straining to reach me, across the thirty yards that separate us, across the glass walls of its prison. Her cries echo against the rock walls.
There’s no time to think—I give myself as much of a run up as I dare, then I sprint to the edge and jump—
for a moment I am in free fall; weightless—
then my forearms land on the planks on the other side and my fingers find a hold and I swing there, panting.
I glance back and see the wolves stop—not quick enough; the momentum of the pack pushes two of them off the side and down.
Ha, I think. You just try to—
The ropes spanning the gap, the ropes green with algae, snap.
My part of the bridge is still attached to the other side, but now I’m the weight of a pendulum; now I’m swinging fast toward the rock wall of the moat. There’s ten feet of bridge between me and the side, and I know the formulas to give you the speed and the force, (Mom) taught me them, but there isn’t exactly time to work them out, and when I hit the rock I hit it hard, and it smacks the breath out of me.
I dangle there, for a second, then the plank I’m holding snaps, and I fall.
My hands windmill, looking for purchase; I am maybe screaming but I can’t hear it past the rush of air. Little trees and weeds and patches of ivy whip at me as I plunge down and then—
Crunch. I hit a hard branch, a thick one, and I manage to get my arms around it in like a headlock kind of move, and cling to it. I see that it’s a tree, jutting out into the air. It’s strong; it will hold me.
But that might not help.
I look up. No—I didn’t fall that far. I can see the top, maybe fifteen feet up. And there are handholds too—little crevices in the rock, and other branches and roots; things I could cling to.
It’s just …
If I fall, and I don’t snag something again, I will die.
I hang there, cursing silently. Then I try to reach up for the next handhold I can see; a root snaking out from an earthy crack in the rock, forming a loop. But my hand trembles—I can’t do it. I’m too scared, and too tired.
I’m stuck.
There’s a bottomless drop below me, and a hard climb above me. And I’m no climber, and if I make a mistake, it’s the end.
I’m so sorry, Child, I think. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ll find a way to come back and I’ll get you out of there, I promise.
Then I do the only thing I can think of.
I concentrate very hard, and I step back—
through the air—
into my other nightmare.
Chapter 62
The whole of the next morning, over breakfast and everything, Jennifer keeps touching Michael, as if he faded into nothingness once, briefly, and so she wants to check now that he is still substantial.
Me, I feel ghostlike too, only half there. One half of me is still seeing the Child in its palace of glass, reaching out to me across the chasm, wanting me to comfort it.
The thought makes me shiver. I have to save the Child from the Crone, I think. It’s totally crazy but I know that I have to do it.
Then I see Jennifer look at me with concern bruising her eyes and I try to shunt back into the room, like a train changing tracks, to cancel the image of the crying Child from my mind.
I smile at Jennifer, and she smiles back, then does that touching-Michael thing again.
I think I know what’s going on with the two of them. He was the one who was broken; she had her hop
e, her faith, her god, and he didn’t. Now she thinks she can see him mending, and she is feeling him out, like prodding a cup that you have fixed with superglue, to see if it is holding.
It’s true too, he seems better. There’s more color in his cheeks, he looks less like some kind of addict. He has switched, quite suddenly, into a more positive mode, like a negative number being squared.
–12=1
And the thing doing the squaring, the factor of multiplication, would appear to be baseball. Ever since it came up, he’s been—well, not happy, but a whole different person. Me too, I have to admit. Because it always seemed odd, you know? That I loved it so much—me, with my overweight mom who never did any exercise in her life. Now I think: I got it from him. It’s something concrete he gave me, even if I look at his face and I can’t for the life of me see any physical resemblance. It’s something in my blood, passed down.
In my DNA.
And that makes me think of the eagle, or Eagle, whatever, and him saying how there was one unbreakable line of DNA between me and …
Between me and my dad.
My real dad.
I think of Mark saying that there are a billion years of ancestors inside me.
James can see it too, the unbroken-line stuff though obviously not the eagle stuff or the Mark stuff and he looks pleased, but also a tiny bit jealous. He doesn’t like baseball, I know, and I wonder if this is making him feel left out. Maybe. He definitely seems closer to his mom than to his dad.
Anyway, I don’t want to get into the politics of it. The fault lines of the family. I’m just glad to have a plan for the day.
So when we’ve finished our bagels, Michael grabs his wallet and his shoes and hugs Jennifer. We’ll be back in an hour, he says. We’ll keep it short.
It’s okay, says Jennifer. I waited fifteen years for her. I can manage without her for an hour. She is looking at him with such love, this man who she must have come close to losing too.
Well, then, says Michael. He opens the door for me, and I go through. James waves from the couch, where he’s reading about French painters.
In the hallway, we bump into Summer from the CPS. She does a small double take. You’re going out? she says.
To the park, says Michael.
I don’t know if that’s advisable. There’s [ ] and [ ]. You don’t want to be recognized.
I turn to Michael. No one knows what she looks like, he says.
For now, says Summer.
Well, precisely.
I would still—
What do you want? I mean, what about when we get home? You want us to keep her inside for the rest of her life?
No, we just—
Michael is fully a positive integer now; all that defeat has left him. It’s as if he inhaled a ghost and it spread out to fill his whole body, puffing him up like a balloon, taut. I’m taking my daughter to the park, he says.
Summer sighs. Fine. In that case, do you mind if I come with you?
Yes, says Michael. Yes, I mind.
Summer does NOT know what to do in this situation and it is all kinds of awesome. It is fifty-four flavors of awesome.
Uh, right, she says. I’ll [ ] then. Jennifer and I can discuss some of the arrangements for—
Do what you want, says Michael. Then he walks past her.
And I follow.
Chapter 63
After we’ve stopped at a store where Michael buys a bat, a ball, and a glove—I could tell him that my DeMarini was in the cabin, so the Feds must have it, but it seems a lot to say out loud—we walk to a small park a couple of blocks from the apartment. It takes a while because of my foot. Though having said that, the pain is already a lot better. Sometimes I’m even forgetting to take the codeine, which is good since (Mom) ground up half my supply and dumped it in Luke’s wine.
What bat do— did you have? he asks.
DeMarini, I say.
He nods approvingly. I like that.
Then, suddenly, when we are standing waiting for a pedestrian light, it hits me that this is the first time I’ve been alone with a man, ever. I mean apart from Mark, and he doesn’t count, he’s Coyote. I stop.
Everything okay?
I nod, just. My blood is pounding a danger signal. I know what men are like. I know what they can do.
Then I think: But do I know? Or did Shaylene tell me, and I believed her? I close my eyes for a second. I think: anyway, he’s my dad. He’s my dad.
He’s not going to hurt me.
Slowly, I open my eyes again and give him a faint smile. He is looking at me, concerned. Come on, I say.
And we cross.
We walk to a wide patch of grass where no one is sitting or playing, and Michael hands me the bat. Here you go, he says. I’ll pitch.
Good, I say slowly. I can’t pitch for shit.
He stares at me for a second and then laughs, and it’s like someone up above has just lassoed us both with the same ribbon.
Don’t curse like that in front of your— in front of Jennifer, he says.
I snap a salute off my forehead.
Wise-ass, he says.
I do like a low bow thing, my hand giving a flourish, like a courtier in a costume drama. Then I fall, because of my leg, and wind up on my butt.
Alarm widens Michael’s eyes and he helps me to my feet—his arms are strong, I notice. It’s weird—it gives me what I can only describe as a DAD feeling. I mean, I never had a dad growing up. But something about him picking me up … it is an action, but in the action is the word “dad.” I don’t know, I can’t describe it.
You okay? he asks, making sure I can see his mouth, see him mouthing the words.
Fine, I say. I smile.
You did kind of deserve that, he says.
Yep, I say.
You really want to bat? he asks.
I nod.
He shrugs, like, okay then. He walks a few paces away from me. I roll my eyes and gesture at him, my hand flapping—farther, farther. He backs away, raises his eyebrows.
No, say my hands. Farther.
He adjusts his shoulders fractionally, but goes back. Then he tosses the ball up and catches it a couple of times before nodding to me. I nod back, and he pulls his arm back, then curls himself around the ball as he pushes it through the air toward me.
He throws fast—the ball comes flat and low, right in the sweet spot, and I swing, feel the bat connect and the ball soar over his head, bouncing behind him. I wince—you can’t hit without turning, and the torsion has twisted pins against bone and flesh in my foot.
You okay? shouts Michael, or at least I assume he shouts.
I nod.
He gives me a thumbs-up, turns, and jogs for the ball. He may drink a lot but he moves easily. When he has snagged the ball he sends it at me again, a little tighter to the body this time. I hit it true, send it up and into the sky to my right.
Michael goes and gets the ball again, throws it to me.
I think of Shaylene, that time when I was young, that time I have always remembered, taking me to the park and pitching me ball after ball, despite hating exercise, despite the sweat pouring off her. I think: Was that real? I mean, was that love real? Or do her other lies make everything untrue?
But no, it must have been real—her desire to make me happy, to do the thing I wanted to do.
But if she could do that for me, could think about my feelings like that, how could she turn a blind eye to the feelings of my parents? How could she take me from them?
It makes me feel dizzy and I try to put it out of my mind, shut it out, like a muddy dog on the other side of a door.
Michael throws, and I swing with the bat.
Again.
Again.
And every time I knock it far and high, even though I can tell he’s mixing it up to test me, throwing in the odd curve ball now.
It’s a bright day, just a few low clouds overhead, sometimes catching on the peaks of the mountains in the distance, disintegrating, lik
e this sentence, into suspension dots …
Me, I’m just standing still, keeping the weight off my bad leg as much as I can. But Michael is running to get the ball, quicker each time, and I see the sweat coming off him.
Another throw—this one I batter down at the ground so it bounces back to him.
Another, clearly meant to trick me—he hides his hands before he throws it, and it curves misleadingly in the air. But I swipe it up and into the blue sky; it’s as if it flies over the mountains, before clattering down through the branches of a tree behind Michael.
He frowns.
He returns to his imaginary mound and crouches, then sends a ball in a flat line, very fast, right at my body. I watch it come—so much slower than the batting cage, and I sort of jump the weight off my bad leg so I can get myself around it, and then I send it back to him on the same trajectory, hard.
He sees it coming just in time to twist away from it, watches it bounce away over the grass.
For a second, he looks at me. And I know he meant to bodyline me like that, and he knows that I meant to return the favor. He smiles and runs for the ball.
The next one works. He hides his hands again, but this time they do something very clever, because the ball seems to be coming to one place, and at the last moment, it dives, like something living, and slams into my waist. I double up, winded, and this makes me lose my balance, so I fall and land on my hip.
I look up at the sky, furious.
Then I see Michael’s face, filling my vision, that first person POV shot you always see in movies when the protagonist has been knocked out.
Are you hurt? he asks.
No, I say. Which is not precisely true. In either sense of the word.
He lifts me to my feet again. As he does so he has to kind of hold me, and when he does I breathe in and a memory shoots through me like a blazing star lighting up the night; him hugging me, as a child, the scent of pine trees, which I can still smell. I may not remember his face, my mind may not have kept any pictures of him, but before I was two I must have breathed him into my bloodstream, that northern forest smell of his.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe memory does live more powerfully in smell, more deeply.