Twist of the Blade

by Edward Willett

  “What if we’re followed?” Ariane said.

  “On that road? If I drive the speed limit and a car stays behind us without passing, that’ll be a dead giveaway. We’ll be more at risk of being rear-ended for driving so slow.”

  Wally grinned, but had to point out the obvious flaw. “If he’s smart he will pass us and then pick us up again in Chamberlain or Davidson.”

  “So we take careful note of which cars pass us on the way to Chamberlain,” Aunt Phyllis countered. “And if we see one waiting, we’ll come up with a Plan B. There are other towns where you can catch the bus.”

  “I just thought of something else,” Wally said. “We’ll need passports. I’ve got one.” He looked at Ariane questioningly.

  She nodded. “I’ve got one, too. My mom took me to Mexico once, before she...” She trailed off.

  Wally cleared his throat. “Good,” he said. “Good.”

  And so it was settled. Aunt Phyllis would go to the bank and get a large cash advance on her credit card, then book a hotel in Lyon over the phone and pay for a week’s stay in advance. As he walked back to his own house through the cold night, Wally reflected on the comforting fact that Ariane hadn’t objected to his joining her in France, once they’d established she wouldn’t have to try to transport him through the clouds.

  She still needs me, he thought. At least for now.

  ~~~

  After Wally left, Ariane went through the usual going-to-bed motions, but she might as well have been a robot: she found herself under the covers without any clear memory of how she had got there. All her thoughts kept circling around what she had just promised to do.

  Fly. Through the clouds. Across the Atlantic. Like Charles Lindbergh, but with something a lot less substantial than The Spirit of St. Louis to keep her in the air.

  There were clouds all the way to Winnipeg, but what would happen when she hit a cloudless patch? Or if she ran out of strength halfway across the Atlantic?

  She wished she could have flown with Wally. But the first shard, which she did not dare check in her luggage – what if Major knew they were coming and arranged to have it intercepted? – made that impossible. She was almost surprised she’d thought of the problem before she was standing in the security line at the airport. She’d never been very good at planning ahead. Mostly she just reacted.

  Rex Major, on the other hand...

  Merlin, she thought. Call him by his real name.

  Merlin thought so far ahead that he had had plans in place for Excalibur for centuries. Even as Rex Major, he had the reputation of always being one step ahead of his competitors: that was why Excalibur Computer Systems was so successful.

  He’s thinking ahead now, Ariane thought. He’s thinking of how he can beat me to the next shard...and the one after that...and the one after that.

  The thought unfurled butterflies in her stomach. She and Wally believed their plan was sound. But what if they were wrong?

  Oh, sure, they’d beaten Merlin once. But then they’d had, at least to a certain extent, the element of surprise. They’d never have that again. He knew who they were. He knew what she was capable of. What worried Ariane was her suspicion that they had yet to fully experience what he was capable of. But what choice did they have? Ariane reached under her pillow and, as her fingers touched the cold steel of the first shard, felt a surge of confidence. Yeah, we did beat him once, she thought. And now I have the first shard, and all its power. I’m going to be even harder to beat this time. And with two shards...he won’t be able to threaten me at all. Or Wally. Or Aunt Phyllis.

  France on Sunday, she thought. It’s after midnight now. That means tomorrow.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ROAD TRIP

  Early Sunday morning, Wally and Ariane, wearing gloves and heavy jackets, stood outside Aunt Phyllis’s house, looking dubiously at the mini-van she had rented. It hadn’t come from Avis or Hertz or even Rent-a-Wreck; it had come from a guy who rented cars out of his garage in an alley in north-central Regina.

  Cash only, of course.

  The van was a dirty blue and had tinted windows that made it impossible to see through...which was exactly what Aunt Phyllis had been looking for. How she’d found the below-the-radar car-rental guy was a mystery. Well, she knows a lot of people, Wally thought. I guess she knew a guy who knew a guy who....

  Aunt Phyllis had been cranking the motor for about a half a minute, and finally it caught, belching blue smoke and steam. The engine faltered, but Aunt Phyllis gave it some more gas, and after another smoky burp it started chugging steadily. It sounded to Wally as though only five of its six cylinders were firing...but at least it was running.

  “We’ll be lucky if we don’t break down before we get out of town,” Ariane whispered to Wally, who couldn’t disagree.

  They’d loaded the van with their suitcases and a conspicuous amount of camping equipment...even his dad’s fishing rod, which Wally suspected he wasn’t supposed to touch. But Dad’s not around, so why not? Wally looked up and down the street, certain they were being watched, even though he couldn’t see anyone. All the other cars parked along the street looked empty. It was only half-past seven and the sun wasn’t even up yet, though grey light filtered through the low clouds scudding overhead. The temperature wouldn’t climb as high as freezing for hours...if it got there at all.

  Aunt Phyllis got out of the van and came around the front. “Climb in! We’ve got a long drive ahead of us,” she said loudly, sounding like an enthusiastic but not-very-talented actress trying to make sure her voice was heard in the back of the auditorium.

  “Can’t wait,” Wally said, then winced. He’d taken the last of his prescription painkillers the night before. This morning he was getting by with Tylenol, and his head, he’d found, ached more than when he had been on the good stuff. Forty-eight hours having passed, he’d taken off the gauze pad covering the stitches on the right side of his forehead. He was stuck with the stitches themselves for another week, and the darn things itched like crazy, but he resisted the urge to scratch. At least my hair mostly covers them, he thought, so I don’t look too much like Frankenstein’s monster. He touched them gingerly. He wondered if he’d have a scar. He kind of hoped so. It would give him a Harry Potter-ish air.

  Despite the doctor’s warning, he hadn’t had any dizzy spells. (Well, maybe he’d been a little unsteady on his feet once or twice, but the moments had passed quickly, so that didn’t count...right?) Whether his reaction time was affected or not, he couldn’t say. He hadn’t told Ariane about the doctor’s warnings. He didn’t figure she needed to know. He was fine.

  He glanced sideways at her and bit his lip. He also hadn’t told her about Rex Major’s phone call. He hadn’t told her he suspected they might be fighting for the wrong side. He hadn’t told her that he wasn’t sure he could trust her – no, not her, her powers – not since she’d hurt Flish so badly.

  I’m helping her, aren’t I? he thought defensively. I’m going to go to France to help her find the second shard. She’ll have plenty of opportunities there to prove she deserves my trust.

  Thinking of Flish made him think of his phone call to her the night before. He hadn’t mentioned Ariane, just said that he would be gone for a few days “with a friend.” Flish must have guessed whom he meant, but she hadn’t reacted at all; just grunted, as if she didn’t care.

  Mrs. Carson hadn’t cared either. Wally got the distinct feeling she was happy he was going away so she wouldn’t have to think about him for a while, and could devote all her energy to worrying about Flish. Which she certainly was. “She’s just lying there, brooding,” Mrs. Carson fretted to Wally. “Her friends still haven’t come to see her. I don’t understand it. Flish has always been so popular.”

  Unlike you, Wally was sure she meant.

  He wondered what Mrs. Carson would say if she knew he was really planning to fly to France and stay in a hotel with a girl, just the two of them. He wondered what she would say if something happe
ned to him while he was there. How would she explain it to his parents?

  He snorted. It would almost be worthwhile if something did happen to him in France, just to find out what she’d say.

  Well, assuming whatever happened wasn’t...final.

  Aunt Phyllis opened the side door of the van. Ariane climbed in first, Wally clambering in behind her. Aunt Phyllis slid the door shut, went around to the driver’s seat, slipped behind the wheel, and then they were off.

  “Anyone following us?” Wally asked as they rolled along College Avenue toward Albert Street, which would take them north to Highway 11.

  Aunt Phyllis checked her mirrors. “There are a couple of cars back there,” she said. “But I can’t be sure.”

  Wally nodded and winced again.

  They made good time through the nearly empty streets of the Sunday morning city. More than one car emerged onto the highway behind them, any of which could contain one of Major’s spies. But they’d planned for that. Aunt Phyllis started out driving ten kilometers an hour over the speed limit (though the van shook so much at that speed it worsened Wally’s headache). After a few minutes, she slowed to 10 kilometers under the limit. Since pretty much nobody drove at or below the speed limit between Regina and Saskatoon, only someone following them was likely to stay behind them. And sure enough, they were quickly passed by one car...two cars...three cars.

  “Blue Taurus, silver Volvo, and something I think was a 1976 Oldsmobile,” Wally said.

  “Nobody behind us now,” said Aunt Phyllis. “I think we can relax.” She increased her speed back up to the limit.

  Wally was quite willing to relax. His head throbbed, so he leaned back and closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again they were rolling into Chamberlain.

  Highway 11 from Regina to Saskatoon was four-lane all the way...except for where it passed through the village of Chamberlain. There, it narrowed to two lanes and the speed limit dropped from the highway’s 110 kilometers per hour to 50 kilometers per hour. The whole place was only six blocks long and extended only two blocks to the northeast of the highway. That was pretty much as far as it could extend, since it was perched on the rim of a valley.

  On the southwest side of the highway, to their left as they drove into town, Highway 2 led toward Moose Jaw. Just past that intersection there was a single grain elevator that doubled as a billboard (currently advertising Casino Regina), and a broad flat area where semis could park while their drivers ducked into the restaurants, gas stations and convenience stores that seemed to make up the bulk of the village’s industry.

  Traditionally, those driving between Saskatchewan’s two largest cities either stopped in Chamberlain or in Davidson, another half an hour or so up the road. Neither was exactly the halfway point, which really fell somewhere in between.

  His family had always been Davidson-stoppers, since it was the larger of the two communities, but every once in a while they’d pull into Chamberlain. When they did, they always gravitated to Bennett’s, a gas station, convenience store, garage and who-knew-what-else that also doubled as the town’s bus station. Although Bennett’s now sold gas from two pumps on its southeast side, two much older pumps still stood sentinel out front, broken, rusty relics. Wally had never understood why they hadn’t been torn out.

  There were already a couple of cars right in front of Bennett’s, so Aunt Phyllis pulled over in front of the empty building next door. Although its windows were papered over and its front door boarded up, it boasted a giant painted Canadian flag on the wall facing the Saskatoon-bound traffic.

  Yesterday, Aunt Phyllis had gone down to the bus depot in Regina and paid cash for two one-way tickets from Chamberlain to Regina. Now she dug in her purse for the tickets and handed them over. “The bus leaves here at 10 a.m.,” she said, “so you’ve still got a while to wait.”

  “We can see the sights of Chamberlain,” Ariane said.

  “All two of them,” Wally put in.

  They had packed just a few clothes and other essentials – including their passports and a considerable stash of $20 bills and an even larger stash of Euros, drawn from Aunt Phyllis’s credit card – into backpacks. Wally opened the side door of the van and climbed out, then pulled the backpacks from behind the back seat. They put them on. “I’ll come in with you to get a cup of coffee,” Aunt Phyllis said when they were set.

  They all went into Bennett’s. The convenience store part, which took up the front of the building, just behind two big windows overlooking the highway, held racks of junk food and glass-fronted refrigerators full of soft drinks and bottled water. The rear of the building, behind the wall of refrigerators and past the coffee counter, contained auto parts and other garage stuff. Aunt Phyllis took a Styrofoam cup, filled it with coffee, then went over to the desk to pay. Wally, hungry, bought an enormous pre-packaged cinnamon roll. Ariane settled for a granola bar.

  “I guess this is good-bye,” Aunt Phyllis said.

  Conscious of the old man behind the counter watching them stoically from beneath the shade of a green John Deere baseball cap, Wally said, “I guess so. We’ll let you know how it goes.”

  “You’d better.” Aunt Phyllis looked at Ariane. “Be careful,” she said softly. “I know I said you can take care of yourself, but...I’m supposed to be your guardian.”

  “You can’t guard me from what I have to do,” Ariane said. She gave her aunt a hug and Wally, surprising himself, gave Aunt Phyllis a hug too. Aunt Phyllis looked a little teary-eyed as she pulled away, but all she said was, “Take care.” Then, rather abruptly, she turned and left.

  Wally started to follow her through the door, thinking he’d wave good-bye as she pulled away. But when he looked toward the van he saw a blue Taurus pulling in behind it – one of the cars that had passed them right after they left Regina. He jerked back so fast he stepped on Ariane’s feet.

  “Hey!” she protested. “I need those toes!”

  “He’s here,” Wally whispered urgently to Ariane.

  Ariane stared at him. “Who?”

  Wally glanced at the man behind the cash register, who was now reading a newspaper, apparently uninterested in them. Wally took Ariane’s arm and pulled her to the end of the convenience store farthest from the counter. A gigantic moose head guarded an open doorway leading to what Wally knew from previous visits were two tiny, one-person washrooms. “Rex Major’s man,” he said in a low voice. “One of the cars that passed us just pulled in. He must have pulled off somewhere and then come back on the highway after we’d gone by.”

  Ariane stared at the door. “Aunt Phyllis –”

  “I don’t know if she’s realized it yet,” Wally said. He looked out the nearest window, just in time to see the mini-van drive past, heading on up the highway toward Saskatoon. But the Taurus didn’t follow. Wally swore. “I think he’s coming in here. We have to hide –”

  “Only one place we can,” Ariane said. “Come on!”

  She ran under the moose head toward the bathrooms. Wally headed toward the men’s, but Ariane grabbed him. “He could be going in there!”

  “Right,” Wally said, annoyed at himself for not thinking of that, and followed Ariane into the women’s room instead. It was a tight fit with their backpacks, but they made it. Ariane bolted the door...and then they listened, barely breathing.

  They heard voices. One sounded like the man at the counter, the other was unfamiliar.

  “What if he’s asking about us?” Wally hissed. “The man will tell him we headed to the bathrooms....”

  Ariane looked at him, then grinned. “I can fix that.”

  She twisted herself around and turned on the water in the sink.

  There were footsteps outside the bathroom. Ariane whispered, “Grab hold of me.” Wally, suddenly realizing what she intended...and wondering why they had bought bus tickets in the first place, when they could have done this all along...took hold of Ariane’s arm as she quietly unlocked the bathroom door, then plunged her h
and into the stream of water.

  The bathroom vanished around them...though Wally thought he saw, just before the water took them, the door beginning to swing open.

  Wally had travelled through the water with Ariane several times, but the sensation wasn’t something you got used to. One minute his body was there, solid as always, clothes, shoes and the weight of the backpack pressing against it, his weight pushing the soles of his feet against the floor. The next, all those sensations vanished. Darkness swallowed him. He could feel that he was rushing somewhere at a great rate of speed, but he couldn’t tell where: he had no sense of direction, left or right, north or south, up or down. But what was most frightening of all was the sense that his mind was dissolving along with his body, slowly melting away into the water that he had somehow, impossibly become. He wondered what would happen if Ariane let go of him.

  But she won’t, he thought. She would never do anything to hurt me.

  Unless the Lady’s magic and the shard change her. And then, suddenly, his body became solid again, submerged in water tinged with chlorine. He straightened convulsively; his feet found bottom, and his head broke the surface. Gasping, water streaming from the hair plastered to his skull, he stared around him.

  They were in his house, in his swimming pool. Ariane turned to look at him. “I guess we didn’t need the bus tickets,” she said, echoing his earlier thought. Wally laughed a little shakily.

  They climbed out, and Ariane drove the water from their bodies, leaving them and everything they wore and carried as dry as though it had never been wet. “Will Mrs. Carson be here?” Ariane said.

  Wally shook his head. “She goes to church early on Sundays, and then she goes out for lunch with some friends. She won’t be back until dinner.”

  “And when is your flight?”

  “Not until 4 p.m.” Assuming there are seats left, he thought. There had been when he’d made the anonymous (he hoped) phone call to figure out the flights that would get him to Europe, though, and that had just been the evening before. If for some reason the planes had filled up, they’d have to delay at least another day, heightening the risk of Major figuring out what they were up to.