Grey Lore

by Jean Knight Pace

  The kid next to Sam had been nodding off almost since class began, and now he had fully given it up and was leaning his head forward, drooling over his notes. Mr. Dillimon kept shooting him dirty looks, which Sam figured were pretty ineffective considering the kid’s state of consciousness.

  Sam managed to keep his eyes open, but his head was somewhere else. He thought of Ella, and how he was supposed to stay away from her. He thought of Zinnie and her strange number.

  Over and over he sketched the number the old woman had given him. He wrote it in a circle, then backwards, inside out, upside down.

  Sam knew he needed to think about the numbers in a different way, but he couldn’t figure out how. He had looked for a pattern between the numbers; he’d added, subtracted, multiplied, square rooted. He’d taken to running past the Havensborough Unit in the evenings after it closed and trying each new number in the keyboard. If they’d had a security camera outside, they surely would have admitted him by now.

  Sam felt almost sure that the number Zinnie had given him would lead him to another number that would let him in. But why hadn’t she just given him the number if she knew it? And what was the number? Sam hated a problem he couldn’t solve. He hated a pattern he couldn’t find.

  Mr. Dillimon droned on about World War II, and then there it was. The answer.

  During the Second World War, the U.S. used a group of Navajo men who were also fluent in English to out-code the German and Japanese codebreakers. Navajo was so little known that these men—the Navajo code talkers—would nickname a plane, say, “Hummingbird,” and then use the Navajo word, Da-he-tih-hi, to talk about it. In this way, the Americans stayed a step ahead of their enemies.

  Zinnie wasn’t speaking Navajo, but Sam felt certain she was giving him a word. And then that word…? Sam thought about it for a minute—that word would be typed into the keypad in the same way you’d type 1-800-PAPAJOHNS into a phone. The letters would match up with certain numbers on a keypad.

  But first Sam had to figure out the word.

  While his teacher went on about the conclusion of the war, Sam wrote out the number Zinnie had given him:

  1891471121681

  It would be tricky to crack it because the numbers could match up to letters of the alphabet as single digits or double digits—1 2 could be A B or it could be the 12th letter, L.

  He wrote out the alphabet with the numbers underneath:

  Then he wrote the number code as if each number was its own letter:

  That was a lot of 1’s/A’s. Some of them were surely combined, but there were combinations of numbers that wouldn’t work like 47 or 81. That meant that the last letter had to be an A. He’d try the rest as combinations.

  18—R

  9—I

  14—N

  7—G

  11—K

  2—B

  16—P

  8—H

  1—A

  That gave him RINGKBPHA. Sam cocked his head to the side and looked at it.

  RING.

  RING something. Something in plain sight that he was just missing.

  He looked at the numbers again. And then he saw it. Instead of 11, he could leave the first 1 as an A and combine the 12 that followed it. That would give him RINGALPHA. RingAlpha. The Ring of the Alpha. The mob his father had mentioned—that was Zinnie’s code. But why? And why was she making him work so hard for this?

  He’d figure that out later. For now, he needed a number. If RINGALPHA was the letter code and he typed that into a keyboard with numbers, he’d get:

  746425742

  There, the number was in his head. Unfortunately, no information about the last half of Mr. Dillimon’s lecture was.

  “Samuel,” Mr. Dillimon said, tapping Sam’s desk. “I see that you are anxiously engaged in your notes. Could you please explain to the class the cultural reasons for Japan’s resistance to the idea of surrender, even when it became clear they would lose the war?”

  Sam cleared his throat and felt the sweat prick up along his back. He was sick of losing face in every class that didn’t involve numbers. Suddenly, he looked up. “The Japanese did not want to lose face,” Sam said, glancing at the previous day’s notes. “Their image and honor had been culturally important to them throughout the war.”

  Mr. Dillimon glanced down at Sam’s notebook just as Sam closed it.

  “Yes, Samuel, that pretty much sums it up.” Mr. Dillimon looked disappointed.

  Sam didn’t mind. Mr. Dillimon had given him something this history class had never given him before. It had opened a door. At least Sam hoped it had.

  Sam showed up at Ella’s house as the sky broke into orange streaks and the temperature began to drop. No one was home. He’d wanted to show her—show her he wasn’t crazy before he told her they were cousins. He knocked on the door three times before giving up and walking slowly down her street. He was wearing faded cargo pants and the old tennis shoes he always wore. Walking past driveways with hybrids and Lexuses he became somewhat more aware of himself as he walked faster and faster, slipping into a run the way some people sink into sleep.

  When he got to the Havensborough Unit, his hands were shaking.

  746425742

  The click was quiet, but solid. Sam pushed open the door and held it for a moment before letting it fall closed behind him.

  He stood in a waiting room—a stark, geometrical office that contained a desk with a flat screen computer. The door to his right would lead to the main hospital. The door to his left—he had no idea—doctor’s offices probably with the patients’ rooms on the floors above. The light was fading fast and Sam was starving. He shivered.

  The bareness of the room was odd. There were no pictures of loved ones, no cat memes or cute calendars. There wasn’t so much as a coffee mug.

  Sam moved the chair away from the computer—he didn’t want to sit in it. Instead he knelt in front of the desk. The computer asked for a password. Sam typed in the code again and just like that the screen whirred into action.

  “Well, that was easy,” he muttered to himself, frowning.

  After having to navigate a code that went from number to word and back to number to get here, something didn’t feel quite right about easy.

  He began looking for Zinnie’s name among the lists of patients with room numbers.

  She wasn’t there.

  Sam realized that that didn’t surprise him at all. And yet he felt sure Zinnie was in here, hidden beneath another code he didn’t understand.

  Sam clicked through patient after patient—there were pictures, home addresses, even next of kin. There were diagnoses—depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders I and II, narcolepsy, phobias, anxieties, and psychoses of various types. Two types of psychosis appeared more often than anything else: icanthropy and pTr4. Sam had never heard of either of them.

  Perhaps even stranger was another diagnosis—listed only once, at the bottom of the page. It was not attached to a patient name, and not a common word.

  Still, something felt familiar about it, some memory Sam couldn’t grab.

  Miscegenatosis.

  Underneath the word Sam read the name of a single medication with the words ‘patent pending’ beside it.

  Sam clicked an icon in the right corner hoping for more information about the diagnosis. Instead, he came to a screen reading, “Further identification required; please insert disc.” Sam tapped his finger against the desk for a minute, but the sound was too loud for the room. Pinching his lips together, he back-clicked and tried another link. There he found spreadsheets for billing, telephone numbers, death certificates. He found everything.

  Except Zinnie.

  Outside the sun hung only a pale wisp over the horizon. Soon it would be completely dark. Sam shut down the computer and stood to leave. There was something wrong about tonight.

  Obvious. But out of sight.

  Like any good code.

  Chapter 39

  Ella sifted through her mot
her’s papers, looking for a bit of inspiration for her own retelling. She’d always loved Beauty and the Beast as well as Sleeping Beauty. Rapunzel was cool, too.

  But her mother just wrote wolves. Wolves, wolves, and wolves.

  Once, in a land turned on its head, two sons were born to a Lord of the Silver—he who could handle the potent metal, drawing strength from it, instead of harm. The Silverlord had possessed a powerful stone, but it was not his to bear, and when the right time had come, he’d given it up to a human boy.

  This stone now haunted the sons of the Silverlord—calling to them, though in different ways.

  The oldest watched as his kind were driven from the land—forced back by the human queen’s penchant for silver. From the woods the oldest son gathered his kind, rousing them to action, fighting so hard for equality that he began to forget the balance of the word—too eager to tip the scales in the favor of his people, to restore them to what had been. He remembered the myths of the stone, the stories that sang of the Promise Giver—the great Sarak who had touched the stone, sacrificing himself, and leaving his mark. Because of the small power Sarak had infused into the stone, the shifters might have power to turn back the worlds, igniting their fates and changing the tide. But they would need both the stone and the Bearer.

  The younger brother sought the stone for different reasons. He recognized that, though it had brought some evil, the stone had also given much good. The humans and shifters could now be equal partners. And many were—working together to build and run cities, to farm, to industrialize, marrying and bearing children. The dogs and wolves had run of the land and its bounty. And the attachment of some of the canines to the humans had grown into bonds of friendship that often lasted through generations. Thus, the younger son did not seek the stone to keep or use it, only to uphold his father’s legacy, to protect the stone and with it the stone Bearers.

  Time went on. As the older hunted, the younger shielded. As the older sought out, the younger concealed. As the older rallied shifters, the younger tried to still them.

  The sons grew into fathers and grandfathers. Their lineage spread. Among their progeny, few could handle the mighty silver as their father had been able to do, although occasionally one would arise among them able to touch the untouchable.

  And so it is to this day. The sons of the first seek the stone—its power and ability to change the sun and with it the balance of power. While the sons of the second seek to protect the stone and the Bearers—to fulfill their duty as Silverlords, to save the humans and their own.

  Ella smiled. Her mother had often ended her stories that way. “To this day…” as though beasts and princes still wandered among them. Ella sighed—holding the papers to her chest. She missed her mother. Missed her like she would the sun if it fell from the sky.

  The Rogue walked in to the post office and quietly slid a key into the post office box. The package had come today just as promised. Another shiny bullet double-wrapped and placed in a tiny copper box. Tied up with a bit of red floss.

  The Rogue smiled, glad the silver supplier was so punctual. The Rogue did not wish to have bits of silver sitting around for any longer than necessary. A bullet would be needed this month. And the next. Tomorrow night would be especially busy. After that, the Rogue hoped there would be no more worrying about what to do with the council.

  The Rogue walked several blocks, slipped into an old coffee shop and found the corner booth.

  Napper had been annoyingly prompt in recruiting new members for the council. There were several in town right now who could, if Napper wished, take their place among the Ring. Still, they both knew that the new members could not possibly learn everything it had taken decades for the old members to know. That, of course, was a practical matter—an advantage to the plan.

  The revenge, on the other hand, that the silver bullets had given—that was purely sweet. The Rogue sipped the espresso, quietly licking the empty holes where four sharp canine teeth should have been.

  Chapter 40

  Ella walked home with her coat tight around her. Fall was slowly closing its doors, and the days were so short that by the time school let out dusty pinks were already rising from the horizon—gentle for another hour or so until the weight of the sun darkened and deepened into the reds and purples of dusk. The steam from her breath misted around her face and she burrowed deeper into her coat.

  Vivi would be home in an hour. She’d taken to buying Ella pizza on Monday night, though Vivi usually just had a chicken breast herself.

  Tonight Ella had a different idea.

  She walked past the still-green lawn of the country club and up her aunt’s trim little street. Her street, Ella reminded herself. Her street, her house, her aunt. She and Vivi still didn’t connect well, but Ella was trying to do better.

  She walked up to her bedroom and took off her shoes. Vivi often went to the country club in the evenings. Tonight, instead of bumming a ride from Sarah to go to the farm, Ella intended to ask Vivi if she was up for a game of tennis.

  Ella’s mother had loved tennis and taught Ella at a young age. Even when money was tight they’d throw on their Goodwill shorts and old t-shirts and head to the free courts to play. Her mother had not often spoken of her estranged family, but sometimes on those cracking, weedy courts, her mother would tell stories about her older sister teaching her to play.

  Ella didn’t have to wear an old t-shirt and shorts now. When she’d told Vivi she liked tennis, her aunt had bought her a white tennis skirt and matching polo. She put it on and hurried down to catch Vivi as she came through the front door.

  Her aunt looked up as Ella came down. “Hey,” Vivi said, walking toward the kitchen. “You headed to the club?”

  “Yeah,” Ella said. “Well maybe.” She tried to catch her aunt’s eye. “I was hoping to catch a ride with you. I thought maybe we could play a few rounds of tennis together.”

  Her aunt smiled. “Oh, that’d be great, Ella, but I actually have some work to catch up on tonight.” She pulled out a bag of lettuce.

  Ella felt the openness of her smile fade.

  Maybe Vivi noticed Ella’s response because she put down her tomato and said, “You go today without me. Maybe next week we can go for a swim together.”

  Ella looked at her aunt for a minute. “You don’t want to play tennis?” Ella asked.

  “Well,” Vivi said, still smiling with so many white teeth that Ella wished just one would turn brown right then and there. “The truth is, I’m just not that good.”

  Ella did her best to hide her reaction—the anger pushed from her stomach, like fire into her lungs and then burst into her skull. “Oh, um, okay. Maybe another day.” She turned quickly. A look of concern crossed Vivi’s face. Ella didn’t care. She ran up the steps two at a time, then stripped off her clothes and threw on a flannel and jeans. Why would Vivi lie like that? Right to her face? Ella knew her aunt could play tennis. It was the one precious detail her mother had bothered to share about the aunt that would one day show up and become her guardian.

  Ella took several deep breaths, trying to think it through. Maybe her aunt had gotten injured at some point. Or maybe she was out of shape. Or maybe—Ella felt her body slump on the bed and the explosion in her head turn to a black hole—maybe Vivi didn’t want to. Maybe tennis reminded her of Ella’s mother. Just as quickly as the rage had burned through her, Ella felt it snuff out—a trail of ashes through her guts.

  Ella heard a soft tap at the door.

  “Ella,” Vivi’s voice said. “Why don’t you go to the club today? I’m sure I can spare a few minutes to give you a ride.”

  “No,” Ella said loudly enough for Vivi to hear through the door that she wasn’t quite ready to open. “It’s okay. I’ll text Sarah and figure something out.”

  “You sure?” Vivi said.

  “Yup,” Ella chirped, all the brightness she could muster in that one little word.

  Ella listened to her aunt’s nearly soundless footst
eps pad down the hall before she texted Sarah. “Wanna take me to the farm tonight? I’ll introduce you to the dogs.”

  “Sounds good, but I can only stay a few minutes. I have dance tonight at 5:00. I’ll pick you up after and we’ll do something.”

  “K,” Ella tapped back.

  “Maybe I’ll bring Sam.”

  Ella smiled and texted an emoji with a fat pair of lips back to Sarah. Maybe she and Vivi would never be normal, but she had friends at least—slightly crazy friends, yes, but friends who could do normal things like crush on each other and try to pretend they weren’t.

  Sarah texted back—“