Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light

by Tanya Huff

  Rebecca, Roland realized, probably read for pleasure more often than the majority of college graduates.

  Daru spread the map out on the table and Rebecca bent over it.

  “Are the parks the green bits?” she asked.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Sometimes,” Rebecca sighed contentedly, “things make sense. Parks are green bits,” she explained to Evan as he joined them.

  The table was small, the apartment was warm, and Roland, who’d never had much interest in parks anyway, soon decided he’d rather watch from a distance than be part of the crowd. From the sound of it, Rebecca did, indeed, know every park in the city, how many trees each contained, and who—or what—lived in each tree.

  Tom leaped up on the sill, balanced for a moment in the open window, then disappeared. Roland assumed he wouldn’t have jumped if he hadn’t thought he could make it safely to the ground, so he continued strumming and didn’t mention the cat’s departure.

  Probably has to take a leak. In fact, that’s not a bad idea.

  He wandered into the bathroom, did what he had to, and returned to find the other three still poring over the map.

  “… no, that’s all up and down and there’s too many trees …”

  “Parks,” he muttered. And, “Parks!” he said louder. There was one park he knew about … “Rebecca, does this tv work?”

  “What?” she looked around the apartment, as if unsure who’d spoken.

  Roland repeated the question.

  “Oh, yes, it works. But it only works on channel five and channel nine.”

  “That’s great, just great. I need channel nine. Can I turn it on?”

  “Sure.” She bent back over the map. “No, that one’s too long and skinny.”

  Like everything else in the apartment, the small portable television on the shelf over the radiator was spotless. Roland unwound the cord from the hooks on the back—Rebecca, apparently, was not a big tv fan—found the nearest outlet, and plugged it in. If he remembered the starting time correctly, he shouldn’t have missed much more than the opening pitch.

  As the picture faded in, black and white and a little fuzzy, he saw he’d judged it just about right; top of the first with one out and a runner on second. With the volume turned low, he settled down to watch something he understood.

  In the bottom of the third, he felt the couch shift and heard the soft chime of Evan’s bracelets as the Adept settled down next to him.

  “Who’s winning?”

  “Detroit—one, nothing.”

  “The Jays’ prima donna still benched?”

  “Yeah,” Roland sighed, “he … Wait a minute!” He spun to face the Adept, found him almost unbearably close, and successfully fought the urge to discover whether his hair was as silky as it looked. “What do you know about baseball?”

  Evan waited until the Bluejay at bat popped out before answering. “Television signals pass easily through the barrier.”

  “You mean you watch tv in heaven or elfland or whatever you call the place you come from?”

  “I call it home. And yes.”

  “What on,” Roland asked facetiously, unable to help himself, “crystal balls?”

  “Of course not, balls roll all over the place. Any good sized piece of crystal with a reasonably flat surface will do.”

  “You’re not serious.” He took a closer look at Evan’s face. “You are serious. Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Evan grinned and stretched. “Not likely,” he said.

  Roland found himself mesmerized by the pulse that beat at the base of Evan’s throat. He heard the crack of a bat and the crowd at the stadium yelling but couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away. He noticed Evan had the same clean smell as Rebecca’s apartment. He sighed and closed his eyes, seeing again the vision of great white wings.

  “Daru and the Lady have gone to the store. I hope you didn’t want anything. You seemed pretty involved in the game.”

  Opening his eyes, Roland glanced around the apartment. He and Evan were alone. “No, nothing.” He watched the sunlight glint on the golden tips of Evan’s lashes. They were sitting very close. Desperately, he searched for something to say as the silence was beginning to say too much. “Why do you call her that … Lady?”

  “It’s a term of respect.”

  “Not of endearment?” Roland asked suspiciously.

  “Aren’t they often the same thing?”

  “You know, it’s next to impossible to get a straight answer from you.”

  “The Light has never provided easy answers.”

  Roland snorted, “That’s exactly what I mean.” What’s wrong with this picture, he thought as with an effort he turned his attention back to the broadcast. The women folk go shopping while the men folk watch the game. Except that one of the women folk is a few pickles short of a barrel, the other keeps wondering what rock I’ve crawled out from under, and one of the men folk is an angel. Of sorts.

  “Daru, why don’t you like Roland?”

  Daru picked up a third can of lemonade concentrate, studied it for a moment, and dropped it in the basket. “What do you mean, Rebecca?”

  “Well,” Rebecca squeezed the rye bread gently while she spoke, “you show him your government face all the time.”

  “I don’t dislike Roland. Have you got mustard at the apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “I just don’t know him very well.”

  “Then you should get to know him better. Roland is nice.”

  Daru sighed; three years as Rebecca’s case worker and almost that long as her friend enabled her to leap ahead to what Rebecca actually meant. “I’m not going to sleep with him,” she said quietly. “Get a head of lettuce please.”

  Rebecca obediently picked a head out of the pile, weighing it in her palm before passing it over, “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know him.”

  “But you would get to know him if you slept with him.”

  The woman at the cash register looked up, interested. Daru felt herself flush, glad her complexion was too dark for it to be easily seen. The most obvious, and annoying, manifestation of Rebecca’s disability was her lack of a volume control. Everything she said, she said in her normal speaking voice. Her normal, fairly loud, speaking voice.

  “He wouldn’t sleep with me.”

  “Rebecca, hush.” Daru’s opinion of Roland rose upon hearing he’d refused Rebecca’s offer—the odds were better than good that Rebecca had been the one who’d offered—and simultaneously fell for she felt she knew why. Rebecca might appear to be a precocious ten-year-old, but she was an adult woman for all that and Roland had no right to think of her as a child. Of course, she was amazingly childlike and Roland deserved credit for not taking advantage of that. Except she wasn’t a child and … Tangled up as usual in Rebecca’s sexuality, Dam sighed and paid for their groceries.

  But after they’d left the store, while she was still thinking about it, she asked, “Are you remembering to take a pill every day?” God knew she’d had enough trouble getting the pills approved; considering mentally disadvantaged adults as sexually active gave most of the department spasms.

  “Don’t worry, Daru,” Rebecca shifted the grocery bag and smiled reassuringly, “there won’t be any babies.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. She didn’t exactly say she took the pills. Daru just wouldn’t understand that babies came when babies came and little pills wouldn’t make any difference. Rebecca wished she could explain it, then everyone could stop taking the little pills.

  “He’s there. He’s at the ball park.”

  “What?” Roland whirled to stare at Evan. “Look, just because the outfield misses an easy catch doesn’t mean he had anything to do with it. The Jays have been known to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory before.”

  “And have balls changed direction as they fell before?

  “Sure. The stadium�

�s right on the lake. It’s one of the windiest in the league.”

  “Look at the flags, Roland.” Evan pointed at the screen and Roland had a sudden vision of the ghost of Christmas yet to come at Scrooge’s grave. “There’s no wind.”

  “Yeah, but …”

  “And that earlier decision …”

  “He could’ve been out; after all, the second base ump was right there.”

  “But he looked safe, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah.” Roland had to admit it.

  “And what of that error that the umpire just didn’t see?”

  “It happens.” But even to his own ears he didn’t sound so sure.

  “It’s him.” Evan rose, lips set in a thin line. “He’s there. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing, but he’s there. I have to try to find him. We may never get this kind of a chance again.”

  “I hope he arrives a little more conventionally than he left,” Roland muttered, suddenly alone in the apartment. He reached out and with a trembling hand touched the empty indentation smoothing out of the couch. “Gone. Just like that.” He laughed nervously and went back to watching the game. It was the only thing he could think of to do.

  “Well, hello, Becca.” The large-blonde-lady-from-down-the-hall beamed as Rebecca and Daru came into the small lobby of the apartment building. “Have we been grocery shopping, then?” she asked brightly, wiping at her face with a large square of pink cloth. Not waiting for an answer, she turned to Daru and added in the same artificial tones, “It’s just so sweet of you to come here on your day off and help our Becca out.”

  Daru smiled tightly.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’m waiting down here. Well, my sister’s boy is coming to pick me up and take me out to their lovely house in Don Mills. They have central air conditioning.”

  “He must be very strong,” Rebecca said, intrigued.

  “Who must, Becca dear?”

  “Your sister’s boy who’s coming to pick you up.”

  “Isn’t she just precious?” the large-blonde-lady-from-down-the-hall asked Daru in a stage whisper. A horn honked at the curb and she lumbered to her feet. “You be a good girl now, Becca. And you,” she waved a pudgy finger at Daru, “you let me know if I can do anything to help.”

  Rebecca watched as she made her way out to the street and sighed. She’d been looking forward to seeing someone pick up the large-blonde-lady-from-down-the-hall, but the sister’s boy had come in a car instead.

  “I guess Evan made her a dream that worked,” she said as they climbed the stairs.

  “I guess,” Daru agreed. “Rebecca, do you want me to talk to her again?”

  “You can talk again, but she won’t listen again.”

  Daru had to admit that she wouldn’t.

  “I don’t mind,” Rebecca continued, “‘cause mostly I feel sorry for her.”

  “Sorry for her? Why?”

  “’Cause she always has to be her and that mustn’t be very nice most of the time.”

  Daru was still mulling that over as they entered the apartment which felt almost cool after the baking heat of outside.

  “Where did Evan go?” Rebecca asked, setting the bag of groceries on the table and pulling out the package of ham.

  “To the ball game,” Roland said shortly, not taking his eyes off the television.

  “Why on earth …” Daru began.

  “Because he’s at the ball game.”

  “Oh.” She sat down beside Roland and peered at the screen.

  The crowd roared as a pitch swerved and the umpires inspected both the ball and the Tigers’ pitcher, The crowd roared louder when both passed the inspection.

  In the bottom of the sixth, a Jays’ runner slammed into the Tigers’ second baseman and in the screaming match that followed both managers were tossed from the game.

  As Rebecca handed out ham sandwiches—“People still have to eat.”—a ground ball leaped out of the shortstop’s glove, rolled between his legs, and away. The roar of the crowd had become a constant and ugly background noise.

  During the seventh inning stretch, BJ Bird stepped backward and fell off the dugout roof. The announcer said he thought the mascot had been trying to avoid a bottle thrown by a Detroit fan when it happened.

  “I didn’t see a bottle, did you?” Daru asked.

  “No,” Roland told her. “I didn’t.”

  Several fights broke out between fans wearing headphones, the radio announcer having said the exact same thing.

  In the eighth inning, two obvious errors went uncalled and a star player, a favorite with the fans, put up an argument over his third strike and got thrown out of the game. The roar became a snarl.

  The Tigers hit the only home run of the game in the ninth but the Bluejays couldn’t seem to find the ball.

  The final score: three to two, Tigers.

  From the general admission seats came screams of “Cheat! CHEAT!” and the stands erupted.

  “This is so fucking un-Canadian,” Roland muttered. “A riot? I don’t believe it.”

  They watched in silence as the camera zoomed in on the seething mass of people, some screaming in anger, some screaming in panic. The play by play announcer did his best to report what he saw;

  “The exits appear blocked with bodies … I can see parents trying to lift their children up out of danger … The police are trying to regain control … My god, that man has a bat …”

  The color commentator kept repeating, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit …” until someone turned his microphone off.

  As the camera swept the stadium, it found one tiny island of calm. Up behind home plate, a double row of empty seats, between him and the riot, a dark haired man watched and waited and, as he felt the camera focus on him, he looked up and smiled.

  “That’s him!” Roland and Rebecca yelled together.

  Daru felt her heart thud as the bright blue eyes on the screen met hers.

  Then suddenly, a blaze of white light burned out the image and the television went dark.

  Chapter Six

  “… And to recap our top news story of the day, a riot at Exhibition Stadium results in four dead and seventeen injured. No charges have been filed yet in the incident. Police are withholding the names of the dead until next of kin can be notified. I’m Heather Chan and this has been the news at six.”

  The constable who had the desk turned the radio down as the news ended, and shook his head. It all sounded so tidy once it hit the news; four dead and seventeen injured, no muss, no fuss, no mention of the noise, or the stink, or the hopeless feeling you got facing a riot involving almost forty thousand. Of course, that was from a cop’s point of view and no one ever seemed much interested in that.

  He pulled a stack of arrest reports over to his terminal and began inputting the information they contained. The thing that really pissed him off about what had gone down at the stadium was the paperwork. With all divisions undermanned—the flu bug sweeping the city seemed to have a preference for the police—the last thing they needed was a doubling of the workload. He squinted at a colleague’s scrawl, decided the name had to be O’Conner, and hoped Fourteen Division appreciated what the other stations in the city were doing for them.

  “Hey, Harper.” An auxiliary dropped another pile of paper on the desk.

  “Hey, yourself,” he grunted. “There’d better be a stack of those for you, Wojtowicz, or you’re toast.”

  She patted the pile beside her own terminal and for a few minutes the only sound was the faint click click of the keyboards. “So, have they figured out what caused the riot?”

  He glanced over, envying the effortless way her fingers moved over the keys compared to his own hunt and correct method. “Didn’t you hear the news? The Jays lost.”

  Wojtowicz snorted. “That’s not news. And no cause for a riot.”

  “Not all by itself maybe.” Harper ticked the points off on his fingers. “One, the Jays lost to the Tigers. That upset a lot of people. Two, the umpires called a bad game. It happens. It upset a lot more people. Three, which may also be the reason for two, it’s hot out there; you could fry an egg on a batting helmet if you wanted to. In hot weather people get irritated faster and are more likely to do something about it.” He grinned at her skeptical expression. “They teach us that psych stuff at the academy. A hot, angry crowd like that and I’d have been more surprised if there hadn’t been a riot.”

  “But what about all the tv cameras burning out?”

  “What cameras? I didn’t hear about that.”

  “There was a flash of bright light, and all the tv cameras burned out. I was watching the game at home before I came in.”

  “Aliens,” Harper said dramatically.

  Wojtowicz rolled her eyes, “Right. Little green Bluejays fans.”

  “Okay, terrorists.”

  “Up from Buffalo for the game? Get real.”

  He spread his hands in surrender. “Okay, I give up. I don’t know why the tv cameras burned out. Nor do I particularly care.”

  “What about the way the riot stopped, as suddenly as it began?”

  “Who can tell what a mob will do?”

  “No,” she shook her head, remembering her reaction while watching the game. “Something about the whole thing felt wrong.”

  “It was a riot,” Harper pointed out. “It’s not supposed to feel right.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He thought about it for a moment, but finally shrugged. “Hot weather makes people do strange things.” “But it’s only June!” she protested.

  “Yeah, I know.” He looked out the glass doors and watched the heat shimmer up off the road. “God help us in July and August.”

  Daru turned off the television. The news had told them nothing they didn’t already know and Evan still hadn’t returned. “Well …” she said, with a helpless shrug at the other two.

  “Deep subject,” Roland murmured, reaching for his guitar, “turn it sideways and you’ve got a tunnel.”

  “Oh, that’s a lot of help!” Daru snapped at him.

  “Turn what sideways?” Rebecca wondered.

  They ignored her.

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