Intangible

by C. A. Gray

  When they were halfway across the bridge, suddenly Cole gasped, “Look!” He was peering over the edge of the ravine, and his expression was so compelling that even Brock obeyed. Below, clear spring water glistened in the streaming sunlight, and even so far below, they could see that it was teeming with tropical life.

  “It’s the moat,” Peter murmured in disbelief.

  “What moat?” said Cole.

  “My dad told me that Merlyn turned Arthur into a fish in the moat that surrounded Camelot, to teach him about the hierarchies of the animal kingdom,” Peter whispered back, “when Arthur was still just a servant.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Brock muttered.

  Cole ignored his brother and turned to Peter, hardly daring to breathe. “You mean people can turn into fish here?”

  “Not literally,” Kane called behind him. “It’s the gift of one of the science teachers at Paladin High: the gift of the mind. He can merge one mind with another and induce experiences so real that they literally become memories.”

  “Like virtual reality?” Peter asked.

  “Better,” said Kane, “because he’s not making it up. Two minds become one. All of the creature’s senses actually become yours.”

  Cole and Peter exchanged a look, and Cole said in awe to the group in general, “Can we please go to school tomorrow?”

  “We don’t even know if we’re still gonna be here tomorrow, tosspot,” Brock snapped. “When Mum and Dad get here I’m sure they’re not going to believe any of this rubbish. Dad’ll take us straight home.”

  Cole arched an eyebrow at Brock and then turned to Kane. “Is he in Stage Three yet?”

  Kane smiled sardonically. “Stage Three is acceptance. So I’d say no.”

  Peter leaned toward Lily and whispered, “Is it me, or is the idea of a guy who can merge minds seriously creepy?”

  “Depends on how he uses it,” said Lily, but she didn’t look too excited about the idea either. “Does that mean he can also read minds, I wonder?”

  They were past the bridge now, and Cole turned around first. His jaw fell open, and the others followed his gaze.

  “What happened?” he managed.

  It wasn’t hard to see what he meant. Suddenly the sturdy drawbridge they had just crossed was made of rotted slats leading precariously up to the gatehouse entrance, which was in a state of equal disrepair. The place looked completely deserted, and entire sections of the previously imposing gatehouse had eroded away from the weather, giving it a forlorn and blunted look, a shell of its former glory.

  “Did we just miss the passage of about ten centuries?” said Brock. Even he couldn’t hide his surprise.

  “It’s another means of protection,” said Kane. “Not that anybody ever makes it through the forest if they don’t know Carlion is here anyway. Even if they did, though, they’d think it was just a ruin on the other side of a ravine too precarious to cross.”

  “Trick of the light or something?” said Peter doubtfully.

  “Some trick,” Brock murmured. He looked sick to his stomach again.

  As they headed towards the tree line, Peter noticed that the cheerful sunshine had also faded into dreary cloud cover that threatened to rain. “I think we’re leaving the safe zone,” he whispered to Lily.

  “What have I been telling you?” she hissed back. Then with one more anxious glance at Peter, her expression changed to determination.

  “Don’t do it!” Peter whispered immediately. He didn’t know what she was planning, but he was pretty sure he should talk her out of it.

  Lily ignored him and set her jaw. “Kane?”

  Kane turned around expectantly.

  “How come today you’re acting normal, when yesterday you were completely horrid?”

  Peter closed his eyes, wishing she could take it back.

  Kane barely missed a beat. “I like that about you, Lily. You say exactly what you think.”

  “And you say only what you think is most likely to benefit you.”

  He raised his eyebrows but went on pleasantly, “Sometimes when people first meet me, they tend to think I’m…”

  “A dodgy little toerag?” Lily cut in.

  Kane actually grinned back. “Something like that,” he said, and shrugged good-naturedly. “But I’m not really. We just got off to a bad start is all.”

  “Bad start?” Lily demanded. “Is that what you call nearly killing us?”

  “Lily, come on, it wasn’t his fault. It was an accident,” Cole protested uncomfortably. “Let’s just go explore, all right?”

  Kane continued to stare at her, the smile never leaving his face. Lily broke eye contact first.

  “I wish I had a sword right now. I would so love to fight him,” Lily muttered, loudly enough that Peter overheard.

  “Are you kidding?” he balked. “Did you see him last night against the penumbra?”

  She shrugged dismissively. “Yeah. I could take him, though.”

  Instead of a thicket full of ordinary trees, those of the Enchanted Forest had impossibly skinny trunks that were green and supple like leaves. They looked as though they could not possibly support their own weight, and a good strong breeze would finish them off if not for the intricate web of connections they had with one another at their canopy. Once they entered the forest and looked up, the canopy appeared delicate, like ferns, and the light that trickled through them seemed to dapple the forest floor like a flashlight through a fabric of lace.

  “So this is the Enchanted Forest!” Cole said in wonder. Then he murmured to the group in general, “Have you ever seen trees like these before?”

  “Of course you haven’t, because they aren’t trees,” said Kane.

  “Oh!” cried Lily. “Look down!”

  At their feet, there were different varieties of what looked like moss and fungus. Instead of green and brown, it was brilliantly colored, in fuchsia and orange and even a strange shimmer that turned from green to blue to an iridescent red as they moved past it, like the wings of a beetle.

  She crouched down very low to the ground and whispered, “Hello?”

  Kane saw her and started laughing. “They’re on duty. They won’t talk to you.”

  Cole ran up ahead as best he could on the steep incline and called back, “Look up here! They get bigger!”

  The others hurried to catch up with him. Iridescent shoots that looked like a cross between bamboo and banana leaves rose from the thicket. When they looked beyond, they could see that the entire forest seemed to be alive with an internal vibrancy the further in and the higher up they went.

  “Shouldn’t we turn around soon?” Lily called.

  “Yes,” said Brock vehemently.

  Kane called back, “Nah, the forest goes on for miles.”

  “But,” Lily shot a worried glance at Peter, “surely we’ve seen what there is to see. And we’ve been gone most of the day.”

  Peter leaned over to Lily and whispered, “What can Kane do to us with all these witnesses around?” indicating the trees.

  “Nothing here,” Lily said, “but if we get to the other side, remember what Isdemus said? We’re completely unprotected. If we hadn’t been right next to the Grandfather Tree, we probably wouldn’t have made it out alive.” She glanced instinctively to the left and she saw Kane’s eyes fixed right on her face as she said it, and she turned magenta. He pursed his lips and pretended not to have heard.

  In the distance, suddenly Peter heard the sound of popping, like firecrackers.

  “What’s that noise?” said Brock, frowning.

  “Sounds like a sonic boom,” said Peter.

  “A sonic…” said Cole.

  “…Boom. It means something moved fast enough to break the sound barrier, like cracking a whip,” Peter explained.

  “Who would be cracking a whip in here?” Cole wondered aloud.

  “He didn’t say someone was cracking a whip, he said it’s like cracking a whip,” said B
rock irritably.

  “Somebody’s looking for us, I think,” said Kane, craning his neck behind him. Sure enough, with a crack loud enough that they all jumped, an elf nimbus appeared before them, smoothing back his white-blond hair.

  “Finally! I’ve been looking all over for you. Your father,” the nimbus pointed at Brock and Cole, “demands that you both return at once.”

  “Dad is here!” said Brock, and then said fretfully, “Is he mad? What did he say, did he say anything?”

  “What about Mum, is she here too?” Cole asked the nimbus.

  “I presume you mean the blond woman who arrived with him and prattles endlessly,” returned the nimbus with a raised eyebrow. “Yes, she’s here too.”

  “What about my dad?” said Peter anxiously. “Is he here?”

  The nimbus shrugged. “Isdemus sent me as soon as he spoke with Henry Jefferson. That’s all I know.”

  “Well, that’s that, then,” said Kane. “Let’s go back.”

  “Finally,” Brock murmured, just as Cole whined, “Aww, really?” and skipped back to where Peter and Lily stood. “Can’t we sleep out here? I bet this place looks amazing at night…”

  “Dad says we have to go back, so we’re going back,” Brock snapped.

  “Oh, all right… Mum’s probably worried too…”

  “I’m kind of anxious to get back myself,” Peter said to Lily under his breath. “I have so much to talk to Dad about.”

  Lily pursed her lips and looked away. “I’m sure you do,” she said stiffly, and sped up so that he couldn’t see her expression.

  Chapter 14

  Most of the shops were closing for the day by the time they reentered Carlion on foot and made their way back to the main square. The sun streaked pink across the sky in its descent, and shopkeepers pulled their wares back into their stores and drew the blinds closed. One little girl of about ten years old sat out front of the stone and masonry specialist shop while her father closed up shop. She was levitating a brick several feet in the air. When she caught sight of the group watching her, she grinned and made the brick do a somersault, just to show off.

  “Didn’t you say your gift was telekinesis too?” said Peter to Kane.

  In lieu of a reply, Kane glanced at Peter, and with a sly smile, he looked back at the little girl. The grin instantly disappeared from her face and was replaced by one of terror as she found herself hovering about five feet off the ground, brick and all.

  “Put her down!” Lily shouted, alarmed.

  “Okay, okay!” said Kane, and the little girl landed gingerly on the ground. “She’s not hurt. Are you hurt?” Kane approached the girl and bent down to her level with an innocent expression. The little girl backed away and ran into the shop, slamming the door behind her.

  “You’re sweating,” Peter observed. Beads of sweat had collected on Kane’s forehead and rolled down his sideburns and into his eyebrows.

  Kane’s expression hardened. He wiped the sweat away and continued down the street out of the city without responding.

  Peter’s mind churned. “That cost you something, didn’t it?” he persisted, jogging after Kane. “You can’t just levitate anything you want. It’s like bench-pressing. You can only lift as much with your mind as you could physically lift with your muscles!”

  “That’s not true,” Kane snapped. Then he took a deep breath, as if collecting himself. His expression cleared and he turned back to Peter, his tone rigidly pleasant. “Not entirely. I can lift more than I can bench-press, but you’re right in saying that there may be a certain natural limitation.”

  “May be, or is?” Peter demanded.

  “May be,” Kane said firmly, and although he was still smiling, he spoke through gritted teeth. “For most people, there is.”

  “Explain that,” Lily ordered, catching up with Peter on his other side. Cole and Brock followed her, also curious.

  “I think I understand,” said Peter slowly. “It’s the first law of thermodynamics, isn’t it? Energy can be neither created nor destroyed!”

  “Peter, thermodynamics? Seriously?” said Lily, exasperated.

  “No, no, this makes sense! The power to levitate that little girl has to come from somewhere. So it comes from his own body,” said Peter, and pointed to the beads of sweat on Kane’s forehead. “That little girl is heavy. And the further away from her you were, the harder she was to lift. Am I right?”

  Kane pursed his lips, looking like he was trying not to scowl. He said grudgingly, “In the past, if I tried to lift something too big or too fast, it would knock me unconscious. Isdemus always warned me that it could even kill me if I wasn’t careful.”

  “You mean the total energy of the system, including yourself, had to remain the same, and the total entropy still proceeded toward chaos,” said Peter. “Right?”

  Kane rolled his eyes. “Sorry. I don’t speak geek.”

  “I think he means to say you’re not invincible,” Lily translated.

  A secretive smile curled the corners of Kane’s mouth. “I didn’t used to be. But now, all that has changed.”

  “What do you mean?” Peter demanded.

  Kane’s feral brown eyes appraised Peter silently, and then he pointed his index finger at the rough, jagged scar on his cheek. “See this?” he said softly. “It’s a battle scar. I always knew that the law did not apply to me. I tried to prove it.”

  “But you were wrong, evidently,” said Lily.

  Kane’s expression was unreadable. “Until now.”

  “What do you mean?” Peter repeated. His heart was racing.

  Kane leveled him with his gaze. “Well, somebody broke the law last night.”

  Before Peter could process what he meant, Kane turned and kept walking down the street. Peter stood motionless for a long moment until Cole took his elbow and yanked him forward.

  “Come on, Pete. What’s the matter?”

  “Lily’s right. He thinks it’s him,” Peter murmured, more to himself than to Cole. Cole stared at him anyway, trying to understand what he meant. Peter turned to Cole suddenly and hissed, “Kane thinks it’s him! He thinks that he stopped that car, and not me!”

  “It was you,” Cole said flatly.

  “How do you know?” Peter demanded.

  “Because I saw you –”

  “Doesn’t it make sense, though?” Peter interrupted heatedly. They were trailing far behind the others now, although Lily occasionally cast a look in their direction. “His gift is telekinesis, and that car definitely levitated! Maybe he was speaking the Ancient Tongue during the accident – it’s not like any of us could hear him!”

  “Maybe your gift is telekinesis too,” Cole countered. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “Or maybe I don’t have a gift because I don’t belong in this place, and everybody made a huge mistake!” Peter shot back.

  “Don’t be silly, Pete. Everybody has a gift. Didn’t you hear what Isdemus said this morning?”

  “Fine,” said Peter shortly, and spun around three hundred sixty degrees, searching for an object, any object. He found a crate of oranges left out in front of a produce stand. He approached the oranges deliberately and said, “Up.” He held out his hands, stared at the oranges intently, and commanded, “Up!” Then he put his hands on his hips and turned to Cole with an I-told-you-so smile. “You see? Not my gift.”

  “Maybe if you haven’t already learned to control your gift, you can only use it in moments of crisis,” said Cole thoughtfully. “Like in the accident last night.”

  “Even if it was my gift, I couldn’t possibly have had enough energy in my body to stop that car! I would have died trying, and the Land Rover would have crushed you all anyway!” Peter snapped. He was angrier than he could account for.

  “Either one of you would have died trying,” Cole pointed out. “So he must be right. One of you did break the law.”

  “That’s not possible! You can’t break laws! Nobody can!”

  Lily had sl
owed down to join the conversation and put her hands on her hips. She looked at Cole. “Is he in Phase One of the Schism Response?”

  Peter glared at Lily. “If you weren’t a girl, I think I’d have punched you by now.”

  Lily threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, please. You’d be flat on your back before you ever made contact.”

  “You think I can defy gravity and reverse entropy, but I couldn’t land a punch?”

  “Apples and oranges,” said Lily airily.

  Cole let out a nervous giggle.

  Peter’s eyes darted towards Kane’s receding figure, and he took a deep breath. There was no sense in being angry with Cole, he told himself. None of this was his fault. He had simply arrived at the same conclusion that the other Watchers had come to – all except for Kane.

  “Okay. So let’s just… say one of us did suspend that car in mid-air and reverse its trajectory,” said Peter.

  “We all saw it, Pete,” Cole pointed out, exasperated.

  “Do we even know for sure that this Child of the Prophecy is supposed to have super powers?” Peter persisted stubbornly. “There could be some totally different explanation. Yes, one of us stopped that car, but we don’t know who it was. It could have been Thomas, for that matter! Maybe the prophecy doesn’t refer to any of us!”

  Cole and Lily stared at him for a moment, and then Cole nodded at Lily sympathetically. “Definitely a Schism Response,” he agreed.

  They untethered their horses at the post just at the entrance to Carlion, and rode them back to the castle. When they arrived, the sun had almost finished its descent, casting great red streaks across the sky. Eustace met them and took their horses back to the stable with a huge smile.

  “How did you like Carlion? Is it anything like your world?” he asked eagerly.

  “We’re from the same world,” Brock muttered.

  “No way, it’s totally different!” said Cole enthusiastically.

  “That’s what the others said too! A man and a woman just got here from th’ outside, said they were your parents, though I didn’t know whose they meant exactly, ‘cause you’re not all related to each other, right? The man didn’t say much, and he seemed to be in a right foul mood. But his wife went on and on, and she was all worried, wantin’ to know where you were and what you were doin’ and if you were all right, and then about th’ city and th’ sun and th’ nimbi, and I hardly got a word in edgewise to tell her you were all right –”