by Holly Lisle
She reached out a trembling hand and scratched the cat under the chin. He butted his head against her hand and closed his eyes and purred like a chainsaw.
“Murp?” she whispered. The cat chirruped.
Cautiously, because Murp loved to be picked up and cradled — but plenty of cats took offense at that sort of handling — she picked the cat up. He flung his head back into the crook of her arm and sprawled, all four legs sticking up in the air, and the volume of his purring doubled.
Jesus Christ. She was shaking so badly she was afraid she might drop him. She rolled him against her chest so she could get a good look at his left hind leg. It couldn’t be Murp. But Minerva would be able to tell easily enough. Murp had a white stripe that ran completely across his left flank high up — sort of a racing stripe.
So did this cat.
“Murp!”
“Row-w-w-wr.” Murp always spoke when spoken to.
She sat on the log, scratching the cat’s belly, snuggling him as close as she could. The questions raced through her mind. Where had he come from? How? How?
She looked at the drawing, lying on the ground at her feet — the drawing of Murp. Perhaps it was not a coincidence, after all. Still holding Murp close to her chest, she walked to the bit of underbrush where she had drawn the cat. Perhaps she could see pawprints — if Murp had walked through that precise spot, she would write off chance occurrence completely.
But there were only more leaves under the vines. Not pawprints — no conclusive proof.
And then she thought — If I drew the kids, would they come here?
She ran back to the fallen tree, the cat still cradled in her arms, and put him down to pick up the art supplies. “Oh, Murp,” she whispered, “could it be this simple?”
She sketched — closing her eyes from time to time to bring each little face before her. It was so hard, so very, very difficult, to get the features fixed in her mind — for she never saw her children as faces with fixed features, as having noses of a particular length, or eyes with the eyelid creased at a specific angle, with the shadows falling just so over soft, smooth, freckled skin. She thought of them as movement, as voices, as personalities; fragile as sunbeams, transient as hope, always changing. How could she draw that?
But she drove herself to remember the exact line of each jaw, the precise curve of each mouth — and she could hear their voices in her memory as she worked, and remember their hands in hers, slight and fragile.
“Mommy?...” a voice whispered into the gentle breeze, so faint Minerva first believed she’d imagined it.
“Barney?” she answered. Her voice caught in the lump in her throat. “Barney, where are you?” She looked around her wildly.
“The bad man has us,” Carol said. “He won’t let us go, Mommy.” Her words were no louder than the rustling of leaves.
Then Minerva made out three faint shapes — ghosts standing in front of her in the clearing — and she fought to hold in a scream. Barney and Carol and Jamie stood only inches away, insubstantial as shadows. She reached out a hand to touch them, willing them to her with all her heart.
“Come get us, Mommy,” Barney whispered.
“Please, Mom. Please don’t let this guy have us,” Jamie pleaded.
“I’ll be there as fast as I can,” Minerva said, and then the children were gone as if they’d been erased, and something dark and towering replaced them.
“So you are here,” the huge shadow said. Its voice encompassed the horrors of her nightmares and made them all real. “How convenient.”
Then it, too, vanished. Minerva became aware that beside her, Murp hissed, the fur on his back and tail standing straight out, his ears pressed flat against his skull.
The Unweaver.
She reached out and stroked the cat. “We’re going to get them back, Murp,” she said. Her voice trembled. “We’re going to stop him, too. I’ll figure out how this all works.”
* * *
Darryl finished replacing the window in the boys’ room and looked out across his backyard at the last scattered colors of sunset. Birkwelch sat on Jamie’s bed, picking up and putting down toys. He was uncharacteristically quiet.
“I’m tired. I’ll paint it later,” Darryl said, and leaned against the wall. “After I get Minerva and the kids back. I just wanted to get the hole fixed so the room would be ready for them.”
The dragon stretched out on the bed and started running a toy truck up and down his scaled belly. “Things might not work out that way, Darryl, old pal.”
“I’ll get her back.” Darryl tightened his grip on the putty knife. “She’ll learn whatever she needs to know. You’d be surprised at how talented she is. She’s a wonderful artist, and she’s smart—”
The dragon put down the truck and picked up a G.I. Joe. “She’s going up against the Unweaver. And you aren’t doing anything to help her. She may not survive — and if she doesn’t, you won’t and your kids won’t.”
Darryl said, “What am I supposed to be doing to help her? What can I do from here?”
The dragon sat up again. “Where you are doesn’t matter. The two of you are linked by the rings. You want to know what you can do? I’ll tell you. You can believe in Minerva — and just as important, you can believe in yourself. What matters in this fight is your faith in the value of life, your conviction, your ability to carry on. You are fighting the master of chaos and discord and despair. You fight him with courage and determination, and by setting goals and winning through to them, no matter what the cost.”
Be a Boy Scout, save all of space and time, Darryl thought. “That sounds very nonspecific. Can’t I do magic, too?”
The dragon didn’t meet his eyes. “There are complications. In life, you get to set your own goals. Your problem is you gave up on them when things got too hard.” The dragon licked at his teeth with his forked tongue and blew a gentle puff of smoke into the cold room. “You didn’t want them enough. You didn’t act on them. And even that wouldn’t have mattered — most people flush their dreams down the toilet when reality sets in. Except you and Minerva had the rings. When the two of you got disillusioned and gave up hope, bits and pieces of the Universes gave up with you — and the Unweaver got his edge. You sold your dreams for easy jobs you didn’t care about. For a bigger house sooner. For safety. You sold your dreams far too cheaply.”
“You’re telling me time and space depended on whether I became a successful playwright? On whether Minerva sold her paintings? The survival of the Universes depended on two kids’ ability to make their pie-in-the-sky daydreams come true?”
Birkwelch stared at him and said nothing.
“That’s a stupid way to run things.”
“Not when it works.” Birkwelch put down the toy soldier and picked up a stuffed rabbit. He looked at Darryl and said softly, “If you want something — and believe in what you want — you can overcome every obstacle. You can do anything.”
Darryl was surprised. Birkwelch, at that moment, was not his usual loutish self. He seemed to really believe in what he was saying. “Like getting my wife and kids back?” Darryl asked.
“That is what you now desire most of all? Your dreams have changed,” the dragon murmured, almost to himself. “Ah, well.”
Downstairs, someone knocked — a firm, authoritative knock. Darryl headed for the stairs.
“You don’t want to get that,” Birkwelch said.
“It can’t be Cindy again.”
“The Weird? No. Not so soon.” The dragon watched him, eyes narrowed. “Worse than her, I’d guess.”
Worse than Cindy, the cheap thrill from hell? He peeked out the window at the top of the stairs. He could see the landing below, stained yellow by the porch lamp. Two police officers stood in the puddle of light, one of them studying the line of footprints Birkwelch had left in the snow.
Darryl glared at the dragon. “So much for portents and mysteries,” he snapped. He shouted, “Be right there,” and ran down the stairs tw
o at a time.
Believe and want, and the Weavers’ rings will make it real, he thought. Fine. I believe the police found the kids, and all three of them are all right, and will be home soon. I believe this whole disaster with Minerva was a mistake, and something will work out, and there won’t be any funeral tomorrow.
He threw the door open and stood panting. “Have you found them? Won’t you come in?”
The police officers came in. Their faces were solemn.
The older officer said, “I’m Lieutenant Sandow. This is Sergeant Tomay. He asked to come along.”
It’s going to be okay, Darryl thought. I believe. I believe. I can make it okay if I only believe.
“Please have a seat, Mr. Kiakra,” Lt. P. Sandow said
The other man nodded. They waited until Darryl walked into the living room and sat in the big wing-backed chair.
“The news is bad. A couple on the other side of town found your children.” Sandow rubbed the thumb of one hand against the index finger of the other. He looked miserable, Darryl thought. “When they arrived home from their vacation in Florida, they discovered a window in the top floor of their house had been blown in, but in exactly the same manner as yours was blown out.”
Sandow stared off into the distance. Tomay studied his shoes.
Darryl gripped the arms of the chair. His heart thudded. I believe they’re safe. I believe they’re alive. They’re going to be coming home any time now. “Where are my kids?” he asked.
“We found all three of them with a cat in the upstairs room.” Sandow took a deep breath. Darryl could see the man swallow hard, could see the brightness of welling tears in his eyes. “None of them survived, sir,” the officer said softly.
Darryl froze in the chair. No, he thought. No. If I believe hard enough, they’ll be fine.
“That can’t be,” he said. “They have to be alive.”
Tomay, who hadn’t said anything until then, spoke. “I understand what you’re feeling. I lost my little girl last year to cancer. When the doctor told me she was gone, I knew he had to be wrong. She was so young, and so brave — and I knew that she was going to get better. But she didn’t. That’s why I asked to come along to get you. I thought maybe it would help if you had someone with you who knew what it was like to lose a child.”
Darryl’s throat ached, and his eyes and nose burned. He couldn’t breathe. “How can they all be gone? My wife, my kids — they’re all I have. They can’t be dead. I have to have something left. I have to.” He gripped the arms of the chair so hard his fingers went numb. “This is a dream.”
“I wish it were,” Tomay said.
Sandow said, “We do need you to come to the hospital and identify them. I’m terribly sorry. I wish there were some other way—”
“I want to see them,” Darryl said. “They’re my children. Goddammit, I want to see them. I want to say goodbye.” Tears ran down his cheeks. “Let me get my coat.” He stopped in front of the coat closet. “I don’t know that I can drive myself,” he said.
“No, sir.” Tomay went to the front door. “We wouldn’t ask you to. We’ll drive you there, and bring you back. Would you like to call your family before we leave?”
The family. Her parents. My parents. Oh, God, what am I going to tell them?
“No. I can’t talk to them yet. Let’s just go.”
No one talked on the ride to the hospital. The officers didn’t take him to the emergency room. This time the nursing supervisor met them at the back door of the hospital and led them all to the morgue.
Darryl dragged through the horror that followed as if someone else had control of his body. The calm other person answered questions and gave information, and all the while, the real Darryl inside wept and screamed and raged and his heart shredded into ribbons. He could comprehend only pieces of the whole picture — the rows of aluminium refrigerators, the coldness of the room, and his children, slid out on flat aluminium trays and shown to him one by one. He felt himself fading inside, felt a part of himself dying — and when the three men walked away from the hospital to get into the police car, Darryl knew he’d left every bit of himself that mattered behind. The shreds of him that remained had no value, to himself or anyone else.
“You need to call your parents,” Tomay said. “Have them stay with you tonight. I remember those first few days. You shouldn’t be alone.”
They went into the house with him. Darryl wanted them to leave. He had no intention of calling his parents. They would only try to stop him. He had decided on the way home that he knew what he had to do. It was the only solution, really.
But the officers weren’t taking any chances. Sandow fixed him a cup of coffee. Tomay called his parents’ house when he refused to do it and asked them to come over. Both waited until the older Kiakras arrived, gave them the news, and directed them to Darryl, who sat unmoving in his wing-back chair.
Just like busybody small-town cops, he thought, to keep a man from killing himself. But his parents wouldn’t be babysitting him forever.
He went into the bathroom. His father followed him to the door. “I’m going to take a leak,” he told his dad, and his dad just nodded.
“That policeman told me what he went through. So I’m going to wait right here and break the door down if you aren’t out of there in three minutes.”
Darryl looked at his father’s ashen, tearstained face. “Fine, Dad. I’ll be out in three minutes.”
He looked into the medicine cabinet when he was done — just a quick survey. But it was empty. No good.
Minerva was in the mirror. You’re dead, he told her silently. You are dead. Gone. They’re going to bury you tomorrow, and the kids in a couple of days. And I’m coming with you. I’m not staying here by myself. I tried hope and faith and will, and they were all so much bullshit. So that’s it. I quit.
She couldn’t hear him, even if he talked to her out loud. He couldn’t touch her. She wasn’t real. She was just a picture. He’d lost the real Minerva, and his kids, and his life, the moment he decided to walk away from what he knew was right. And not all the hope and faith and will and dreams in the world could make that kind of wrong right.
He came out of the bathroom and found his dad getting ready to kick the door down. “I forgot to synchronize my watch, Dad,” Darryl snapped. He walked past his father, into the living room. His mother sat there, crying and carrying on. Darryl couldn’t speak to her. He couldn’t look at her, or at his father. He walked past them into the kitchen to get himself a beer, then stomped up the stairs, past the kids’ rooms and into his own. He lay down on his bed, sipped his beer, and stared at the ceiling.
His father followed him into the room.
“I’m going to sleep, Dad.”
His father nodded. “That isn’t a bad idea. I’m going to sit here and keep you company.”
“No!” Darryl clenched his fists. He wanted to scream. “I want to be alone.”
His father sat in the chair next to the nightstand. “And I don’t want to lose my son.”
“Dad—” Darryl felt himself losing control. “I can’t sleep with you staring at me. And I have to get some sleep.”
Something of his desperation got through to his father. The older Kiakra stood, and took a pillow from Darryl’s bed, and walked to the doorway. “Leave it open. I intend to sleep in the hall.”
“Great,” Darryl muttered. But that was better than having his father standing watch over him.
No sooner had his father moved out of sight than Birkwelch materialized. “It isn’t over, Darryl,” he said. “You haven’t lost yet.”
Darryl raised his head off the pillow and looked at the dragon in disbelief. He kept his voice low. “It’s over, Mary Poppins. I’m just waiting for my parents to get out of my house so I can get the rope and hang myself from the balcony without interruption.”
“You can’t kill yourself,” the dragon said.
“Why? Because the universe is counting on me?”
; “Yes.”
“Well, screw the universe.” Darryl put his beer on the nightstand and turned his back to the dragon. “If the universe wanted my help, it shouldn’t have killed my wife and kids.”
“You can still get them back.” The dragon moved around the bed to stand in front of Darryl again.
“Go screw yourself, dragon. I’ve listened to your stories long enough. I’m not listening anymore. This is the end. Game over. Find somebody else — or better yet, just let the whole universe go up in a puff of smoke.”
“Let everybody cease to exist — husbands and wives and children, grandparents, newborn babies? All of them, Darryl? When you could save them all, and your own family, too?”
Darryl turned and glared at Birkwelch, then chugged the rest of his beer. Silently he lay back and closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.
He wouldn’t dignify the dragon’s wheedling with an answer.
* * *
Barney glowered at his brother. “I don’t want lasagna. I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And I will make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
“That’s stupid. You can have anything you want. Anything.”
“Yes. And I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
“I want pizza,” Carol said. “With pepperoni and black olives.”
“Okay,” Barney said “How many slices?”
“Two. No — three. And Cheerwine.”
Barney made them for her. He didn’t get tired making food. Food was just little stuff, he thought. Bathrooms were much bigger. He was going to have to see about one of those pretty soon, too. But first, dinner.
For himself, he created a tall glass of very chocolatey chocolate milk, the way his mother would not let him have it — so much chocolate there was still a layer of syrup down at the bottom when he was done. Then a peanut butter and jelly sandwich — smooth peanut butter, so much grape jelly it squished out the sides when he picked it up, and white bread. The right way to make one, he thought.
He took a bite of it and closed his eyes. It was perfect.
“What about me?” Jamie said.
“You are mean and bossy,” Barney answered.