Twist of the Blade

by Edward Willett

  “Yes,” Wally said hastily, ear-tips burning.

  “Good,” the nurse said briskly. “When you’re finished, or if you find you do need help, press the call button.”

  Wally started to nod, remembered to stop himself just in time, and said, “Thank you.” He made his cautious way into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He managed to do what he needed to do, but by the time he had finished washing his hands and pressed the call button he was more than ready to return to bed, and eager to take the painkillers the nurse offered.

  As the nurse helped him lie down again, he couldn’t help thinking there was something he needed to do, something important...something about Flish...My loving sister who won’t even come see me in the hospital, he thought bitterly...but he couldn’t remember what it was.

  I must have hit my head really hard.

  The painkillers began to take hold, pushing down the ache in his skull but also filling his brain with fuzziness.

  Ariane will come see me...once she knows. The thought seemed to come from far away.

  Ariane. Whatever he was forgetting had something to do with her...and Flish...

  But the memory wouldn’t come, and a moment later he slipped once more into the dark waters of sleep.

  ~~~

  Ariane, despite another sleepless night, dragged herself to school early on Thursday morning and hung around the front steps, hoping to catch Wally when he arrived. She wanted to apologize for not showing up for lunch the day before, but this time it was Wally who didn’t show.

  She kept looking for him in the hallway between classes, without success. At lunch, though she desperately wanted to find a quiet corner of the library and take a nap, she sat at their usual table – but still, no Wally.

  It wasn’t until the first afternoon class break that Ariane finally found out what had happened to him. She was getting a drink from a water fountain when she heard a girl behind her say to a friend, “Did you hear about Wally Knight? Slipped on a patch of ice behind the gym. Split his head right open. You can still see the blood on the ground!”

  “Gross!” said her friend, although she sounded more fascinated than disgusted.

  Ariane, shocked, spun around. “Is he all right?”

  The girls, both ninth graders, looked surprised. “Nobody’s saying,” said the girl who had spoken first.

  “I bet he’s in a coma,” said the second. “Probably a vegetable. I saw this documentary once about head injuries...”

  “A vegetable?” The first girl giggled. “What kind?”

  The second girl laughed too. “Probably a radish. With his red hair –”

  The shard strapped to Ariane’s middle blazed, flooding her with the urge to wipe those silly grins off the girls’ faces. Water gurgled from the fountains, even though nobody was twisting the knobs. The girls didn’t notice, and Ariane clamped down on her anger. But something of her rage must have registered on her face, because the girls blanched and skittered away, whispering and looking over their shoulders as they fled.

  Ariane leaned her forehead against the cold tile of the hallway wall. He’s not dead, she thought. He’s not a vegetable. He can’t be.

  She straightened and hurried to the main office.

  “Is he a good friend of yours?” the secretary said with a sympathetic smile, after Ariane had asked about Wally. “Well, the woman who’s looking after him while his parents are away, Mrs....” she hesitated.

  “Carson,” supplied Ariane.

  “Yes, that’s right. Mrs. Carson said he suffered a concussion and needed a few stitches. They’re keeping him at the General Hospital for observation, then he’ll be recuperating at home for a few days. I don’t think we’ll see him at school before next week.”

  “Thank you,” Ariane said. The bell rang as she went out into the hall, which meant she was late for Social Studies, but right now she didn’t care. She couldn’t go visit Wally right after school, since she had two hours of remedial algebra with Mr. Merle. But maybe after supper...Aunt Phyllis would surely want to go, too; she’d drive her....

  Social studies dragged by, and physics after that, details of Canadian human rights legislation and the properties of waves lost in the fog of her fatigue and worry. When physics ended, other students fled home or headed off to practise football or fencing or French horn, but she plodded down to Mr. Merle’s classroom for remedial algebra...although as far as she could tell very little remediation was occurring. Her fatigue-dulled mind still couldn’t get a solid grip on the subject.

  Those two hours, too, eventually ground to their end. At last, Ariane headed toward the side exit of the school.

  Her footsteps echoed in the empty but brightly lit corridors. She pushed open the metal door and emerged into the drive between Oscana Collegiate and St. Dunstan High School, the Catholic school next door. The drive was blocked at one end by a swinging gate, locked to keep cars out of the alley behind the school...the alley where Wally must have fallen and hurt himself, Ariane thought as she reached the gate. For a moment she considered walking down to the corner of the gym where the accident must have happened (“You can still see the blood!” the girl had said), but she pushed the notion away, disgusted by her own morbid curiosity. Instead she headed in her usual direction, toward the city-owned tennis courts behind the Catholic school. On the other side of them she could nip across Winnipeg Street to 17th Avenue, then duck through a couple of alleys to get to Wallace Street. It had become her favourite shortcut. It not only saved her half a block’s walking – and these days, even half a block seemed like a very long distance indeed – it let her approach her house without being seen by anyone who might be watching it from the street.

  The two courts, side by side inside a chain-link fence, lay in deep shadow cast by the rows of small trees that bordered the fence to the south, east and west. Against the lights of Winnipeg Street just beyond they looked more like black cardboard cutouts than real trees. Ariane exhaled white clouds, and the cold bit her cheeks, making her feel more alert than she had all day.

  She entered the courts through an opening in the west side of the fence and started across to the matching opening on the eastern side. But just as she stepped from the first court to the second, four figures, black cutouts against the streetlights, rose in front of her, blocking her path. She stopped, a surge of adrenaline scouring away her fatigue. “Who’s there?” Is Major trying again?

  “Guess,” said a familiar voice.

  Ariane’s fists clenched. “Flish. Shania. Stephanie. Cassandra.”

  “Got it in one,” said Flish.

  Feet crunching on the court surface, the four spread out to surround her, menacing, shadowy figures trailing clouds of breath-fog. Ariane turned this way and that, trying to watch them all at once. “Shouldn’t you be with your brother at the hospital?” she threw at Flish.

  “I hate hospitals,” Flish said.

  “Then you’d better leave,” Ariane growled. “Or that’s where you’ll end up. You know what I can do.”

  As she spoke, Ariane listened for nearby water. A faint, faint song, metallic, constrained, came from beneath the ground, probably a pipe feeding the sprinkler system in the sports fields behind Oscana. But exhaustion was like a straitjacket constraining her powers. The water ran too deep. She couldn’t call it.

  “Oh, we know you can do all kinds of tricks with water,” said Flish. “But look around, Airy-Anne. There’s no water here. Nothing but you...and us. And we owe you, Airy-Anne. We owe you big time.” Her eyes, two yellow sparks reflecting the school’s lights, were all Ariane could see of her face. Behind Flish, a car drove down Winnipeg Street, trailing wisps of exhaust.

  Ariane’s heart pounded so hard she thought Flish must surely be able to hear it. The last time these girls had caught her outside, they had tried to strip her, intending to send humiliating photos to classmates. She’d fought them off with her newly awakened powers. She’d made them run away again when they’d threatened her in a
school hallway just after she and Wally had returned from Yellowknife. This time...well, despite the location, she didn’t think they intended to challenge her to a friendly game of tennis.

  I want to visit Wally, she thought, but not by joining him in the hospital!

  Worse, what if they found the shard strapped to her waist? If they took it, and Rex Major found out, he’d have it the next day. And he wouldn’t hesitate to kill them to get it.

  As sudden as the flick of a light switch, her fear flipped to anger – anger fuelled by the shard. Haunted by a demon, a target of one of the richest, most ruthless men in the world, saddled with the impossible task of finding the five shards of Excalibur before he could – she didn’t have time for these petty, bullying, stupid children.

  The sword-tip, hot as a brand against her skin, poured strength mingled with rage into her, and she embraced them both, welcoming the hot, furious energy, so different from the Lady’s cool power.

  The faint song of the water in the pipe beneath the courts crescendoed, pianissimo to fortissimo, offering itself to her, begging for her command. Come to me, Ariane sang, silently and without words. Come to me!

  The ground shook. Flish, Shania, Cassandra, and Stephanie, tightening the ring around her, staggered. Come to me! Ariane sang again. Come now!

  Three metres behind Flish, the tennis court erupted. The four girls spun, mouths agape. Water geysered ten metres into the sky, hurling pieces of pavement like shrapnel. A chunk of asphalt smashed into Stephanie’s face, knocking her flat on her back. She staggered to her feet, clutching her bloody nose, and fled, weeping.

  One down, three to go, Ariane thought, keeping her gaze on Flish. Always before she had held herself back. Not this time! She formed the spurting water into a taut, swirling tendril, and cracked it like a whip against Flish’s side. Wally’s sister flew through the air like a rag doll. She hit the pavement with a sickening crunch, rolled over and over, slammed into one of the net posts, and lay very still.

  The violence she had unleashed shocked Ariane out of her fury. For an instant, the shard’s power stuttered. What have I done? I’ve got to stop, I’ve got to –

  But the moment passed. The shard’s power roared through her again, drowning her doubts. She turned contemptuously from Flish to Shania and Cassandra.

  They had frozen in place, but as Ariane raised the whip of water they fled. A flick of her hand, and the water swept their feet out from under them. They thudded to the pavement, and something cracked like a breaking twig. Screaming, sobbing, Shania stumbled back to her feet, cradling her left arm against her side, and staggered away. Cassandra lay on her back, mouth open, gasping for the breath the impact had knocked from her lungs.

  Ariane spun back toward Wally’s sister. Flish stirred a little, moaned. Ariane raised the tendril. Its tip turned to ice and the ice to a glittering blade.

  An arm of liquid hung above Flish, wielding a crystalline sword...wielding, Ariane realized, Excalibur. And the ice-blade had a voice: a deep, imperious bass that thundered in Ariane’s head. Strike! Strike now! Kill your enemy!

  But another voice spoke up in response, clear and high as a sustained violin note singing out above the rumble of bass and timpani in a symphony. You...can…not...do...this, it said, every word emphasized. You can’t. It’s murder. She’s not your enemy. Rex Major is your enemy. She’s just a girl. A bully, but just a girl. She’s Wally’s sister.

  Kill your enemy! the sword thundered.

  No! the other voice shouted in response, and this time that denial came not only from the part of her that was fifteen-year-old Ariane Forsythe of Regina, but the part of her that was the ageless Lady of the Lake. “I wield Excalibur! It does not wield me!” she screamed into the night; and then she slashed the sword down.

  The ice-blade shattered against the pavement well clear of Flish’s head. The arm of water fell apart, disappearing into the glittering pool welling harmlessly across the courts from the broken pipe.

  Ariane strode over to Flish, who managed to turn her head to look up at her with wide eyes, the blood streaking her face black as ink in the dim light. Her breath came in pain-filled gasps. “Leave me alone,” Ariane snarled. “Once and for all, leave me alone! You don’t know who or what you’re dealing with. And next time, I might not be able to stop myself.”

  She reached down to Flish’s belt and pulled the girl’s cell phone out of its case. “I’m calling 911,” she said. “But I won’t be here when they come. You can tell them the truth, if you want to. They’re not going to believe you.” She dialed, told the operator there had been an explosion in the tennis courts, and hung up before he could ask more questions. She returned the cell phone to its case, then strode away without looking back.

  She walked half a block along 17th Avenue, then turned north into an alley. In the shadow of a tree that hung over a sagging wooden fence, she sank to the ground beside a garbage bin and began to sob, her body shuddering as the sound of sirens approached.

  CHAPTER THREE

  NEWS TRAVELS FAST

  The next time Wally woke, his hospital-room window was dark. A clock stared at him from the wall at the foot of his bed. After 5:30, he thought. Ariane will be finishing remedial algebra. Give her time to get home, have supper...then she’ll come. Maybe Aunt Phyllis, too. His stomach growled at the thought of Aunt Phyllis’s fantabulous chocolate-chip cookies, and he suddenly realized how hungry he was.

  A few minutes later a silent green-clad orderly delivered a metal-covered plate on a pink plastic tray. Wally lifted the cover to discover flabby Salisbury steak, lumpy mashed potatoes and limp green beans. He inhaled the food as though it were the best meal of his life.

  But even his appetite drew the line at the amorphous brown blob served for dessert. He thought longingly again of Aunt Phyllis’s chocolate-chip cookies as he poked at the whatever-it-was with his fork, just to see if it would crawl out of the bowl. It quivered as if it would like to, but stayed put.

  The orderly returned and cleared away the dinner tray. An hour went by, then another. By half-past seven Wally had his eyes glued to the door, expecting Ariane to appear at any moment. Even Flish would have been a welcome face by that point. But when someone finally did come to visit, it wasn’t Ariane or his sister. Instead, a plump, middle-aged woman, graying hair tied up in a severe bun, bustled into his room.

  Wally stared at her red, blotchy face. “Mrs. Carson?” Mrs. Carson crying because he’d banged his head? Maybe I’ve misjudged her.

  “Oh, Wally,” Mrs. Carson gasped. “What a terrible thing.”

  “It’s really not that bad,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “It hardly hurts at all as long as –”

  “It’s your sister,” Mrs. Carson went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “A broken leg, two broken ribs, a wrenched back, a nasty cut on her head, scrapes and bruises all over...the doctor says she’ll be fine, but she –”

  “Wait a minute,” Wally said. “Flish is in the hospital?” I should have known Mrs. Carson wasn’t here to see me. Even though his sister had moved out of the house two weeks ago, after their father had made it official that he and their mother were separating, Mrs. Carson still fawned over her. “What happened to her? A car accident? Shania drives like a maniac –”

  “An explosion!” Mrs. Carson said, wringing her hands. “A water pipe under the tennis courts behind St. Dunstan’s High exploded just when Felicia and her friends were walking across it. The impact threw your sister halfway across the court and she hit one of the net posts. Stephanie has a broken nose, Cassandra is scraped and bruised, and Shania broke her wrist.” Mrs. Carson’s voice shook. “When I think what could have happened....”

  Tennis courts? A water pipe? Since when do water pipes explode? Some of the fog in his head cleared, and Wally remembered what he hadn’t been able to the night before: hearing his sister and her friends plotting to jump Ariane on the tennis courts, far away from any water, on Thursday...today!

  He’d never
warned Ariane. But...

  Broken ribs? Broken limbs? It wasn’t Ariane I needed to warn. Anger swelled. “Where is she?” he choked out. “Can I see her?”

  “She’s sedated,” Mrs. Carson said. Her lip trembled. “Poor girl...”

  Wally looked out at the dark sky. Ariane couldn’t have meant to do it, he thought. She was just protecting herself...things must have gotten out of hand....

  He could keep telling himself that, but he really needed to hear Ariane tell him. Now, more than ever, he needed her to come see him.

  But first he needed to see Flish for himself. He turned back to Mrs. Carson. “Could you ask?” he said. “Ask if I can see her?”

  Mrs. Carson smiled a little. “Of course,” she said. “Wait right here.”

  I’m not likely to go anywhere, am I? Wally thought. He bit his lip. He wanted to believe Ariane had only hurt Flish by accident, didn’t want to think she had done so deliberately...but blowing up the tennis courts? It was overkill, like trout-fishing with dynamite.

  In the back of his mind, a worm of doubt stirred itself. What if it hadn’t been an accident? What if Ariane had chosen to hurt them? After all, hadn’t he seen her try before?

  Mrs. Carson pushed a wheelchair into the room. “They said it’s all right for me to take you up to her room,” she said. “She won’t be able to talk to you, but at least you can see her. She should be awake tomorrow and then you can visit properly.”

  Wally nodded. He was able to get out of bed on his own this time, using the wheelchair handles to support himself during his one brief, dizzy moment. He grabbed the robe that had been lying at the foot of his bed and pulled it on over his hospital gown, cinched the belt around his middle, and then sat down in the wheelchair, put his slippered feet on the footrests and let Mrs. Carson push him out into the hall.

  She wheeled him past the nurse’s station, maneuvered him around an old woman clutching an IV pole as she shuffled along one tiny step at a time and pushed him into one of the elevators. Two floors up, they got out, turned right and rolled down another hall that looked pretty much the same as the one outside his room except for a different collection of bad artwork on the off-white walls.