Door Into Faerie

by Edward Willett

  Mostly.

  “Well,” Ariane said, “I think I see a coffee shop up ahead. At least we can get out of the rain.”

  The shop had just opened and the young woman behind the counter, who looked to be no older than Ariane and sported hair as red as Wally’s – which was about as red as human hair could be – seemed more than a little startled to be entertaining Canadian tourists that early, but the coffee was hot and so were the sticky buns, and Ariane and her mom sat contentedly and watched the village come to life outside the rain-spattered windows.

  For the life of her, Ariane couldn’t have told anyone later what they talked about. All her thoughts were elsewhere, down the road and up the hill at Castle MacPhaiden, where by now, if all had gone as expected, Wally must have met his mother.

  She’d promised they’d be waiting for him at the church at noon, but that still gave them – she glanced at the clock on the coffee shop wall and sighed – four and a half hours to kill.

  She spotted some tourist brochures in a rack by the door, and grabbed one and brought it back to the table, only to discover that everything listed as being of interest was a several-kilometre drive away. The village itself apparently had little to offer except a pub with a few hotel rooms upstairs, a post office, a general store, a druggist’s, the coffee shop, a bicycle repair shop, a petrol station, and the ancient church, which predated even the castle by a century.

  The latter, at least, was open, and so after they’d lingered as long as they could in the coffee shop – the girl at the counter kept looking their way as if wondering when they would ever leave – they went back out into the rain and trudged down the cobblestoned street to the squat grey building. It didn’t take long to tour its dark-stone-and-darker-wooden-beams interior. The stained-glass windows, installed in the fifteenth century, were supposed to be rather fine, but with the outside light so wan they looked as washed out and dull as everything else in the village.

  It wasn’t anywhere close to noon when Ariane and her mother stepped back out into the street – more like 8:30 – but as they hunched their shoulders against the rain again, she saw Wally at once, splashing through puddles toward them as though pursued by a demon – as she should know, because in her dreams she’d once been pursued by a demon, sent by Merlin to frighten her into giving up the quest.

  He reached them and stopped, panting and dripping, his usual geeky T-shirt – today's showed a green sea monster above the words "Don't Mess With Nessie!"– clinging to him like a second skin.

  “Did you see your mother?” Emily Forsythe said.

  “Yes,” Wally gasped out.

  “And?” Ariane said.

  He leaned over, hands on his knees, breathing hard. “I saw her, but I didn’t talk to her.”

  Ariane blinked. “Why not?”

  He raised up. “Because,” he said, “Flish is with her – and so is Rex Major.”

  Ariane felt as if she’d been slapped. “What? How?”

  “I don’t know.” Wally sounded almost angry. “I saw my mom arrive, she got out of the car, she was coming around the corner of the castle, I was going to let her find me there. Then another car drove up and I heard Flish yell, ‘Mom,’ and when I looked there she was – and Rex Major was getting out of the car she’d just pulled up in.” No “almost” about it, Ariane realized – he was angry. “She managed to screw this up for me, too. She screws up everything.”

  “She didn’t know you’d be here, Wally,” Ariane’s mother said. “She didn’t do it on purpose.”

  Ariane frowned at her mother. Reasonableness from a grown-up at a moment like this was always irritating, but somehow grown-ups never seemed to grasp that simple fact. She looked back at Wally. “We should just get out of here, Wally. We can find your mother alone some other time, some other place.”

  Wally shook his head. “No, we can’t,” he snapped. “Don’t you get it? Flish isn’t here just because it’s Mother’s Day. She’s here because she knows Mom is researching family history. And that means Rex Major thinks there might be something in that history that will lead him to the hilt.”

  Ariane frowned again, this time at Wally. “I know we kind of joked about your mom finding out something about King Arthur in your genealogy, but don’t you think it’s really a long shot?”

  “Maybe it’s not,” Wally said. “If Major’s here, maybe it’s not a long shot at all. And even if it is, what if it’s a long shot that pays off, and Flish gets information from Mom that points to the location of the hilt, and we don’t? Merlin would have the last piece of the sword before we knew what hit us.”

  He had a point. “So what do we do?”

  “We have to find out if Mom has learned anything yet.” Wally’s expression hardened. “And at the same time, maybe we can do something else.”

  Ariane stared at him. “What?”

  “What if we could get Flish away from Rex Major?” Wally said in a low, intense voice. “We can’t steal his shards from him, but what if we could steal his personal heir of Arthur? We know he needs her to use the power of the shards he has, just like you need me. Without her…well, he’s too rich to be powerless, but at least he’d be less powerful magically. It might just give us the edge we need.”

  “You’re talking about kidnapping your sister!” Ariane’s mom exclaimed. She shook her head. “No. It’s not only dangerous, it’s illegal. I forbid it.”

  Ariane’s anger flared up again, fed by the shards she carried, sure, but not originating with them. “Dangerous? As opposed to everything else we’ve done? And I’m sorry, Mom, but what gives you the right to forbid anything? You refused the power of the Lady of the Lake.”

  “Ariane!” Mom looked shocked, but Ariane turned her back on her.

  “There’s a pond just outside of town, much closer than the loch,” she told Wally. “Wait for me there.”

  His eyes flicked from her to her mother, and he nodded. Then he turned and ran off.

  “Wally –” Ariane’s mom called, but whatever else she was going to say was cut off by Ariane grabbing her arm. She looked down at Ariane’s hand, looked up at Ariane, and opened her mouth to protest –

  – but a moment later she had no mouth, as Ariane took to the clouds.

  She sped them back to Barringer Farm in minutes. They emerged in the slough, and she led Mom to dry land, ordering the water off of them as they emerged onto the weed-grown bank. Mom glared at her. “Ariane, just what do you think you’re –”

  “Sorry, Mom,” she said. “But I need you safe. Happy Mother’s Day.”

  And then she plunged back into the water and away.

  No more than twenty minutes after leaving the steps of the church, she re-emerged in the pond on the edge of the village, to find Wally waiting for her as instructed. She waded out and wished herself dry.

  “I’m sorry to ruin your Mother’s Day outing,” Wally said.

  “It’s okay,” Ariane said. “It’s a really, really boring town. Dull as dishwater. But trying to kidnap your sister? Now that sounds like fun.” She grinned at him. She was only slightly joking. She and Flish had history, none of it good. Flish’s gang of girls had bullied her in the school, tried to strip and shame her by the lake, and ambushed her on the tennis courts. She’d broken Flish’s leg in that last encounter, and almost lost Wally’s friendship as a result. She’d promised him she wouldn’t hurt his sister again – but they could kidnap her without hurting her, couldn’t they?

  And besides, it was Wally’s idea.

  “What’s your plan?” she asked him.

  He shrugged. “Simple. We watch. We catch her outside. We run up, we grab her, we all fly away.”

  “To where?” Ariane said. “We don’t dare take her to Barringer Farm. If she managed to get away or get a phone call out to Major…”

  “We can’t hold her prisoner indefinitely anyway,” Wally said. “But if we can just get her away from Major so we can talk to her – so I can talk to her – then maybe…” His voic
e trailed off.

  Ariane said nothing in response, but based on her experiences with Flish, she thought it a fool’s hope to believe they could talk Flish out of her new, rich-celebrity lifestyle. Still, if they could hold her for even a few days, keep her away from Rex Major, and if they also had a lead on the hilt…

  “You still need to talk to your mother,” Ariane said. “You need to find out if she’s learned anything about your family history that might actually help us.”

  “But how do I do that with Rex Major hanging around?” Wally said. “I’ll bet you anything he’s funding this shoot. There’s no way I’ll be able to convince my mom that he shouldn’t hear us talking about what she’s learned in her research.”

  Ariane chewed on her lip for a minute. “I think I have an idea,” she said slowly. “If Rex Major sees me, but thinks I don’t see him, he’s going to think I’ve got a lead on the hilt. He’s going to come after me to see what I’m up to. And he’s going to bring Flish with him so he can use the shards’ power if he needs to. I’ll lead him on a wild-goose chase while you talk to your Mom. Then I’ll disappear and double back. Major and Flish will come back to the castle, tails between their legs, you’ll have learned whatever your Mom knows…and then we can grab Flish and run. How’s that sound?”

  “Vague,” Wally said. “Very, very vague.” He grinned as he said it, though. “But it just might do the trick. So…where do you show yourself that will draw Major’s attention?”

  Ariane had been asking herself that same question, and studying the valley. Something caught her eye, up the slope from the castle, a white trail – water, leaping over rocks down from a mist-shrouded summit. “Up there,” she said, pointing. “He’ll expect the hilt to be hidden in water somewhere, like every other piece has been. He’ll think I’m looking for it in the stream. How can he resist?”

  Wally followed her finger. “Could work,” he said. Then he looked back at her, face serious. “But be careful,” he warned. “He can’t kill you without destroying the sword – we think – but you know he’ll hurt you without a second thought.”

  A warm feeling at Wally’s concern turned to a hot flame of sword-driven rage in Ariane’s heart. “The feeling,” she snarled, “is mutual.”

  Wally nodded. “And don’t hurt Flish.”

  “I won’t, Wally,” Ariane said. “I promised you I wouldn’t, and I meant it.”

  “Good.” Wally took a deep breath. “I guess that’s our plan, then.” He looked along the road to the old keep clinging to the top of its cliff. “Time to storm the castle.”

  The rain hadn’t slackened as the day aged; if anything, it was raining harder, which made for miserable walking, since Ariane didn’t dare use her power to keep them dry this close to Rex Major. On the plus side, though, it also made for poor visibility, which suited them while they tried to get back to the castle unseen, even if it didn’t particularly bode well for Ariane’s attempt to attract Major’s attention. “I’ll just have to start closer to the castle to be sure he can see me,” Ariane said. “He won’t catch me. But I’ll bet he chases me.”

  It all seemed like a reasonable plan. But Ariane had once read a famous military dictum to the effect that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and as they began climbing the road to the castle, they proved that rule, because they made contact with the enemy long before they’d expected to – headlights glowed in the fog ahead, and they barely had time to scramble to the side of the road and crouch down in the ditch before a black Jaguar rolled by.

  Wally jumped up and stared after it. “Rex Major was in that car,” he said. “But not Flish.”

  Ariane had been too busy hiding to try to see who’d been driving. She got to her feet and stood beside him, staring down the wet road at the disappearing red taillights. “You’re sure?”

  He nodded.

  Ariane felt a thrill – and was also very glad she’d rushed her mother back to Saskatchewan, because if she’d left her in the village and Rex Major had chanced to see her as he rolled through, he would certainly have grabbed her. And if Major got hold of any of them again, he wouldn’t make the same errors he’d made in the past. Rescuing her mom a second time would be far, far harder.

  As it was…

  “This may be easier than we’d hoped,” she said. “Lead on, Macduff!”

  “Actually, the quote is ‘Lay on, Macduff,’” Wally corrected, but he led on all the same, especially after she swatted the back of his head. “Probably bad luck to quote Macbeth anyway,” he added over his shoulder, and she laughed.

  They hurried up the steep road toward the dark bulk of the castle, slowing as they got close to the gate. “Let’s not be quite so obvious about it,” Wally said. “While I was exploring this morning, I found another way in. Follow me.”

  He led her around the outside of the castle wall, along a narrow path with a terrifying drop on the left and the wet grey stones of the wall on the right. Ariane looked nervously down at the valley floor a hundred metres below. “I’m the Lady of the Lake, not a mountain goat,” she said. “Is it far?”

  “Not far,” Wally said. “It’s a tunnel through the wall.”

  “A tunnel? In a castle wall?” Ariane stared at the back of his head. “Isn’t that a security risk?”

  “Lots of castles have them,” Wally said. “Originally it would have had a door sealing it. A postern gate.”

  “A what?”

  “A postern gate. Sometimes when you’re in a castle you want to be able to get out without opening the main gate, especially if there’s, say, a hostile army camped outside.”

  “But what keeps the hostile-army people out of the postern gate?”

  “It’s locked and guarded, and only one person can fit through it at a time,” Wally said. “You can’t storm a castle one man at a time.”

  “Huh,” Ariane said. “Well, thank you, Mr. Medieval Dictionary.”

  Wally stuck his tongue out at her.

  They found the tunnel, which was fortunately missing the “locked and guarded” door it presumably had had once upon a time, right where he said it was. It would have been a surprise if they hadn’t, since he’d already been through it once. Now they passed through a short tunnel and up a flight of worn stone stairs to the strip of land between the keep and the wall. Lights shone through four high-arched windows. “Mom said she’d be shooting in the Great Hall,” Wally said. “Flish is bound to be in there with her. We can’t grab her from there.”

  “Maybe we don’t want to,” Ariane said. “Maybe this is the chance you were hoping for, to talk to Flish, try to reason with her. With your mom there…”

  “We can’t talk about anything that’s happened with Mom there,” Wally said. “She’ll think we’re crazy. “

  “But maybe that’s better,” Ariane said. “Maybe the only way you and Flish can figure anything out is if you have to deal with each other strictly on a brother-sister level, not on an Heirs-of-King-Arthur-pursuing-the-shards-of Excalibur level.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?” Wally demanded.

  “Then we grab her and teleport her somewhere out of the way,” Ariane said. “Without Rex Major around, who’s going to stop us?”

  Wally looked unusually uncertain – for Wally. His face had become a bit more angular, a bit more grown-up, over the past few months, even as he’d somehow managed to overtake her in height. He’d lost most of his freckles over the winter, and his ears even seemed to fit his head better than they used to. But he still, more often than not, had the patented Wally-grin that she used to think was spectacularly ugly and now found spectacularly endearing. Though the grin did not appear this time – in fact, he was chewing his lip, which she didn’t think she’d ever seen him do before.

  “I don’t know,” he said, and she hadn’t very often heard him say that, either.

  “Wally, I know it’s hard. You know I know it’s hard – you were there when I found Mom at the Empress. Magical quests are easy; family is h
ard.” She smiled a little. “And friendship. And love. And all that other stuff. It’s all hard. But you can’t avoid dealing with it just because it’s hard. And you wouldn’t want to if you could.”

  “‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,’” Wally muttered.

  Ariane blinked. “What?”

  “Nothing. Ancient history.” He took a deep breath. “All right. I’ll talk to her.” He hesitated. “Will you…will you come in with me? I’d like Mom to meet you.”

  Awww, Ariane thought, but she had to shake her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea – not with Flish there. Not if there’s going to be any chance of a reasonable discussion. Your mom doesn’t even know I exist. Having to explain me would just complicate things.”

  Wally sighed. “I was afraid you’d be all reasonable and say that.”

  Ariane smiled a little. “I need to be outside anyway. Both to keep watch in case Rex Major comes back, and in case we want to snatch Flish after all.”

  “Also very reasonable,” Wally said. “Very mature. Must be a side effect of being an old woman of sixteen.”

  She stuck out her tongue at him.

  He laughed a little. “All right.” He looked up at the castle windows, then down and to the left. “This way.”

  He led Ariane up a bit of a slope to the main wall of the castle, then around one end of it, where he got down on his hands and knees and crawled forward through a screen of heather. At least, she guessed it was heather. Not that she’d ever seen heather before, but she figured any bush growing in Scotland was likely to be heather, wasn’t it? She was sure Wally could have told her, but he was preoccupied.

  On all fours on the wet ground, she looked out through the probably-heather over a kind of courtyard, the rain spattering on its cobblestones. No one was in sight, but a car and van were parked just at the foot of the surprisingly narrow steps that led up to the castle’s main entrance. The stairs boasted steel handrails that were clearly far more modern than the building itself. Ariane wondered how much – or how little – of what she was looking at really dated back to the fourteenth century. What was that old joke, about the axe that had been in the family for a hundred years? The handle’s been replaced six times and the blade twice, but it’s still the same axe!