I pushed my head back a little so that I could see Mom’s face without moving my eyes. I knew I was raising my eyebrows at her, but I couldn’t help it.
“Really?”
“Yes. He keeps a pack of cigarettes in his underwear drawer.” Mom put her hand under her cheek, lifting her head up ever so slightly.
“You’re okay with that?” I asked. In truth, Mom hated smoking. As with a lot of other things, she’s pretty judgmental about it, actually. She rolls her eyes and hacks when someone lights up in front of her. I usually try to distance myself when she starts into her don’t-smoke routine.
“Oh yes. He doesn’t think I know, and he’d just about die if he knew I was telling you.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t kick him out of the house or something when you found out.”
Mom’s tone turned serious. “Your father is so good in so many ways, Lizzy. His sense of duty is sharper than just about anyone I know. He works so hard. Sometimes I think he’ll drown in responsibility. I’ve thought about it and, honestly, I think it’s a release for him. I may not love the habit, but I just don’t have the heart to take it away from him.” Mom let out a small sigh. I must have looked puzzled because Mom readjusted and pointed her face straight at the sky again.
“He smokes—as a release?” I questioned, looking at Mom’s profile. With her glasses off, she looked younger and prettier. It wasn’t hard to imagine how Dad could’ve fallen in love with her.
“That’s my guess.”
“Why don’t you tell him to stop? Or at least tell him that you know about it and that it’s okay and that he doesn’t have to hide it anymore.”
“I guess that’s my point, Lizzy. It’s his secret. And secrets are a part of life,” Mom said. Her words startled me. I turned my head toward her and could feel the damp sand on my cheek. Mom turned toward me, too, so that our faces were inches apart. I had no idea what she was getting at, but I was growing uncomfortable with the direction. “Everybody has at least one,” she continued.
“But it doesn’t bother you that Dad’s never told you? That he thinks he has to keep it from you? What if he isn’t telling you about a bunch of other things?” I began to wonder if Mom and Dad’s relationship was as rock solid as I thought it was.
“I think sometimes people need their secrets to be exactly that—secret. Communication is important, of course, but we all need a private life … We all need something that’s just ours and ours alone.” Mom lifted up her head and put both hands behind it, like she was relaxing on her imaginary raft. Maybe I hadn’t given her enough credit.
Was it possible that Mom knew I was a Death Catcher? That Bizzy was?
“I have my share. Have I ever told you that when I was little, I never learned how to read?”
“No.” I was shocked. I always figured Mom came out of the womb with a book in her hand.
“I never learned and then I got left behind. As each semester passed, I lived in constant fear every day that my teacher would find me out. It was torture. Finally, I broke down one day and told my mother everything. I thought she’d spank me or yell at me, or worse. Of course she didn’t. She only marveled that I had been able to fool everyone for so long. The next morning, my mother woke me up an hour before everyone else in the house, and brought me down to the kitchen table. She began my first lesson—teaching me how to read, until my father woke up. Then she would stop, hide the books we were working with, and pretend that we’d both awakened moments ago. I caught up before long. No one ever knew.” Mom wasn’t a natural storyteller, but under the dark gray clouds, there on the sand, her words came out smoothly. Her voice had a different quality to it than it normally had—like she was thinking out loud.
“Is that why you love to read? Because you couldn’t for so long?” I asked.
“I’m sure that’s part of it. It’s funny. Years later, I asked my mother if she was upset I never told her I couldn’t read for so long. I’ll never forget what she said. ‘All secrets have wings,’ she told me. ‘Your secret just wasn’t ready to fly until that afternoon in the kitchen and there’s no way I can blame you for that.’ My mother was right, but I think I just didn’t realize early enough that mine was ready to fly … all those anxious nights I spent crying in my bed. All those days I spent cowering in the classroom. Everyone needs a private life. I truly believe that. But I also believe that saying something out loud to someone who loves you can make all the difference. Sometimes, the hardest thing to do is to recognize when you need help and then ask for it.”
A single seagull flapped its wings in the sky above us. I stared at it and I could feel hot tears on my cheeks. I wasn’t sure what Mom knew and what she didn’t. But she’d been watching me. I mean really watching me. She’d noticed. Maybe she’d noticed everything. It was frustrating because as much as I wanted to tell her all of it, starting with that first day when I saw Jodi’s death-specter in the paper, she couldn’t possibly understand.
Sure, most secrets have wings. But this one I was keeping from her had been born deformed, I was sure of it. Either that or it was so big and heavy that its wings could never lift it—like an ostrich or an emu.
Mom sat up so that she was sitting with her hands around her knees. The back of her sweater was covered with sand. She stared out at the ocean waves making their way to the shore.
“I have a secret now, Lizzy. I don’t want it to be a secret anymore. I want to say it out loud to someone I love.” Mom turned to look at me. I could see all the worry lines on her face. “I’m more concerned about you now than I’ve ever been,” she said. Her words were coming quicker now. “You’re not eating, you mope around most days. You keep leaving the house and going off by yourself. I can’t sleep because I think about you. I don’t know what it is, but I know you. You’re not the same Lizzy. The only person you talk to is your grandmother. I know Bizzy Bea’s one of those magnetic people, but I’m not sure that a teenager’s closest confidante should be a woman sixty years her senior.” Mom never took her eyes off mine. They started to pool with tears of her own. “As much as I want you to be safe, to intervene and protect you, to force you to tell me whatever it is that’s inside you, I also want you to know I trust you, I love you, and most of all, I’m here for you, always, whatever it is.”
Silently, my mother raised herself out of the sand. Without brushing the grains stuck to her back, she turned toward the sandy path that led up the hill and back to our house. I didn’t get up, but I shifted my head so I could see her walk away. When she’d traveled a few feet, she turned around once more. “Hopefully this goes without saying,” she started. Her voice had none of the tentativeness it had had when she was talking about Dad’s secret and her own. “But just because your father smokes does not mean that you should start, under any circumstances.”
Almost in a flash, she left and my tears returned.
Suspending Disbelief
When I was in fifth grade, Mom gave me my first fantasy book to read, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, from the Chronicles of Narnia. She let me know that most children were crazy about the series and read every single volume. I think she wanted me to believe I was crazy if I didn’t like the book.
I read a couple of chapters, but I couldn’t get into it. In my mind, there was no way some kid could travel to a magical world full of talking lions and goat-men, simply by going through a wardrobe in the closet. It didn’t make much sense.
When I told Mom, she laughed and suggested that I needed to work on suspending my disbelief. She explained that it meant I should “buy into the story” and let my imagination do the rest. She said that if I went with the premise, imagining it was possible, even for a moment, I’d enjoy the story. It’s still hard for me to let go of the belief that magical worlds don’t exist at all, yet alone in wardrobes.
Which is to say that I had it coming.
Because a few months ago, I never could’ve imagined who was waiting when Bizzy finally came home from the hospital. I kn
ocked and stood outside Bizzy’s door, anxious to discuss our evolving plan.
“That you, Lizzy-Loo?” I heard Bizzy shout through the door.
“Yes,” I responded.
“You alone?” she asked. I could hear her wheeling around in her room.
“Yes,” I answered, growing curious. Bizzy unlocked the door and cracked it open for me.
“Quickly,” she whispered, beckoning me inside.
I closed the door behind me.
Then I gasped.
Sitting on Bizzy’s bed were two women cloaked in hooded satin frocks, one blood red and the other canary yellow. Both sat upright, unflinching, when I entered. I couldn’t judge how old the women were, but their eyes were clear and bright. The one in yellow smiled at me. The one in red, with long dark locks spilling from the hood of her cloak, peered at me curiously. Bizzy’s room smelled like apple-cinnamon oatmeal.
“Lizzy.” Bizzy wheeled to the side of the room so that she was facing both the women and me. “It’s my pleasure to introduce you to two women who have traveled a very long way to see us.” Bizzy motioned to the woman in red. “This is your great-grandmamma, many times over, Morgan le Faye, and her sister, Fial,” she said nodding at the woman in yellow.
Facing Morgan le Faye and Fial, I knew it was time to suspend my last shred of disbelief. A few months ago, I would have assumed I was dreaming—that there was no way I was actually staring at two satin-cloaked women who were my ancestors from a mythical and magical island. But after two death-specters, Jodi’s near death, Drake’s being revealed as the Last Descendant, and Merlin’s appointment of me as Drake’s Keeper, life was beginning to seem like one big suspension of disbelief. Heck, my disbelief hadn’t been suspended. It’d been expelled.
“Hullo,” Fial said, looking squarely at me. Her voice was high pitched, sweet, and smooth. She spoke with an accent that I couldn’t quite place. Her rosy cheeks, in combination with her stout frame, made her seem like the friendlier of the two women. Fial removed her hood. Her pale hair was swept into a bun on the top of her head. “Please forgive us for arriving so suddenly, but it could not wait a moment longer.”
Morgan le Faye looked at the brainstorming wall and then back at me. Though she was seated, I could tell she was quite a bit taller than Fial. She had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen—like piles of freshly cut grass floating atop two glasses of milk—set deep within her face.
“What do you know of us, Elizabeth Mortimer?” Morgan le Faye asked. Her voice was deep and rich, with the same accent as Fial’s.
“Um,” I said, trying not to stutter, “I know that you live on the Isle of Avalon, that you are a gifted sorceress, you once saved King Arthur’s life, and—”
“Wait a moment!” Fial insisted. “I am the one who nursed Arthur back to health. Morgan had very little to do with it!” Fial stomped her foot on the floor. When she did it, I saw a golden sandal poke out from beneath her yellow robe.
“Fial, we do not have time for your petty concerns,” Morgan admonished.
“Easy enough for you to say. You’re the one who’s been getting undeserved credit for the last thousand years!”
Morgan rolled her eyes as if she’d heard Fial’s complaint hundreds of times before.
“What else do you know, Elizabeth Mortimer?” Morgan questioned.
“The legend goes,” I said, trying to remember exactly what I’d read in The Last Descendant, “that your half-mortal daughter was the first Death Catcher.”
“Death what?” Morgan said, rising from her seated position. She put her hands behind her back and began pacing. Her ebony hair and pale skin made her appear as if she’d never spent a single minute in the sun.
“It’s just a name we came up with, Bizzy and me, for the Hands of Fate,” I explained, growing nervous.
“I see,” Morgan said disapprovingly.
Fial nudged her sister playfully. “I think it’s clever,” she said. Morgan ignored her sister. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned Bizzy and me.
“Is that all you know of our legacy?” As she spoke, I assumed Morgan le Faye was looking at us wondering where the gene pool had gone off the track in the generations between herself and us.
“Oh, Morgie, you’re scaring the poor child with all this legacy talk,” Fial said, coming over and wrapping her arm around me. Though I appreciated the gesture, her arm was heavy and dry-ice cold.
“I’ve read about you in The Last Descendant.”
“What is this now?” Morgan said, clearly confused.
“Merlin Ambrosius, right before he was turned to stone, wrote down everything about Avalon’s history and King Arthur, hoping it would reach the person destined to protect the Last Descendant.”
“That sly dog!” Fial said, clapping her hands excitedly. “Perhaps he’s not as dim witted as I once thought!”
“Let us not forget he was dim enough to allow himself to be turned to stone by Vivienne,” Morgan said coolly.
“Well, at the end of the day, he is still a sorcerer, and we all know a sorcerer can be quite gull—”
“Where did you come across this book?” Morgan le Faye interrupted.
“Agatha’s cottage,” I responded. “So it’s all true?”
“I’m not sure you can trust any story a sorcerer tells … we all know Merlin was a little off-kilter when he wrote whatever is in The Last Descendant.”
“That is quite enough, Fial,” Morgan commanded. She turned to me. “If Merlin’s little account imparted all of this to you, then you may also already know part of the reason we are here.”
I turned to Morgan le Faye, trying to drum up all the confidence I had in me. “Are you the one who sends Bizzy and me the death-specters?”
Morgan le Faye sat back on Bizzy’s bed. “I am, indeed,” she said. Fial put her hand to her mouth and murmured something in a language I couldn’t understand.
“Why?” I asked.
The sisters of Avalon each took a deep breath and locked eyes. Morgan le Faye, still wearing the hood to her red satin cloak, removed it. Her hair had an unnatural shine to it and her pale skin seemed to glow in the dim light of Bizzy’s bedroom. She was quite beautiful, even if she was over a thousand years old. She focused her green eyes on me.
“Perhaps you are aware from Merlin’s account that there was a time, long ago, when I desired to be free of Avalon forever. I had come to care deeply for a mortal named Lancelot du Lac. When Vivienne cut his thread before his time … it changed me.” Morgan’s voice grew quieter. “You must understand my whole life has been in the service of death and the transition between this world and the next, and yet I never understood it before I lost Lancelot. When Vivienne cut his thread, I realized why death unleashes such despair. It is not the loss or transition of the mortal’s soul itself that causes pain, but rather the uncertainty and longing of those who remain behind. Soon after my daughter arrived here in Crabapple more than a thousand years ago, I discovered my special skills would allow me to communicate with my own flesh and blood while I was still in Avalon.”
“Just a minute,” I interrupted, “so Crabapple is more than a thousand years old? Is Old Arthur in the cemetery actually King Arthur himself?”
“There are most likely many things about Crabapple you do not know. We will not have time to discuss them all,” Morgan said dismissively before moving on. “As I was saying, at first I sent the specter to spare my daughter some of the suffering I had experienced. Each time I realized someone close to a descendant of mine, no matter where they were located, was to die unnaturally, I sent a death-specter.
“But I have continued sending death-specters for a much more important reason. I realized that, although I could not leave Avalon because of the Great Truce, by communicating with my lineage, I would always have a representative here in this world, able to save the Last Descendant when he arrived … someone perfectly equipped to protect him. Someone who would not fail in the way Guinevere did. Sending the death-specters helped me feel
I was atoning for my offense of leaving Avalon for Lancelot.” As Morgan finished, her voice wavered slightly. “The time has finally come for me to right my wrong.”
Fial placed her hand over Morgan’s, gazing at her sister sympathetically. “There is no use assigning blame, Morgan. Vivienne broke the laws of Avalon as well, by cutting Lancelot’s thread prematurely,” Fial said. She turned to Bizzy and me. “What is important for you both to realize, though, is that Agatha’s prophecy about the Last Descendant was a direct result of Morgan’s and Vivienne’s actions. The world has been put on the path toward Doomsday and we must now fix it. The first step was initiating the Hands of Fate equipped to deal with Arthur’s descendant when he arrived. That descendant, as you may know, is Drake Westfall.”
I had already realized as much, but to hear it said out loud was another thing entirely. It knocked the wind right out of me.
“Before Agatha’s last prophecy … long before my actions, as well as those of Vivienne, had altered fate permanently, the boy with the Mark of Arthur had already been destined to bring peace to the land during a time of darkness and great upheaval,” Morgan said.
Fial perked up. “Agatha’s last prophecy also revealed how my sisters’ interference so many years ago changed fate, leading to Drake’s premature death.”
Morgan peered at me with a startling intensity. “Did Merlin’s account impart what Vivienne le Mort is planning? Her evil plans for the threads she has cut?”
“Yes,” I said, shuddering at the thought of Vivienne le Mort and her army of lost souls. “But how in the world is Drake supposed to stop all that?”
“Drake is necessary because only the one with the Mark of Arthur can wake Merlin from his stone slumber. That is all you need to know for now,” Morgan said.
“He has the perfect balance necessary to lead,” Fial explained, ignoring Morgan’s dismissal of the subject. “First, although I hate to admit it, we will need Merlin. Personally, I find Merlin Ambrosius to be insufferable, with an ego the size of Pangaea, but he knows of Vivienne’s weaknesses, and his power and knowledge will be of immeasurable value to a king.”
The Death Catchers Page 20