by Davis Ashura
Afterward, she and William stood alone on the driveway to his home.
“See you tomorrow night,” she said. “Movie night, right?”
“I never thought we’d have one of those again,” William agreed with a smile.
“I think your favorite part is listening to Lien complain about your choices,” Serena said with an unfeigned grin. She tucked a strand of hair behind an ear, knowing how much William enjoyed that simple motion. However, even in the midst of the movement, Serena mentally chided herself. William thought of her as a friend. Nothing more. He’d been pretty clear on the matter.
Although . . . Serena tilted her head in thought. She’d caught William staring at her a few times, a speculative gleam in his eyes, and she worried he might have started to think of her as something more. For his sake, she hoped not. While such a change in their relationship would likely ensure the success of her pilgrimage, she didn’t want to see William hurt.
He’ll be hurt no matter what you do, said the reedy voice of her conscience.
“See you tomorrow,” William said. Thankfully, he hadn’t noticed her distant thoughts. “Or tonight, if you’ve got nothing better to do.”
“We’ll see,” Serena said. “I’ve got a lot of homework, and you know how I hate getting it done at the last minute.”
“Or maybe you like making the rest of us look bad?”
“Says the guy with straight A’s.” Serena forced a laugh past her troubled thoughts. “Some of us actually have to work for our grades.”
William chuckled. “I guess I’ll see you later then. Have fun with your homework.”
Serena rolled her eyes before heading home. Regret at what she had to do to William filled her thoughts.
Isha put down the paper he’d been reading as soon as she entered their house. Even seated at the kitchen table, his broad, heavily muscled form seemed to shrink the room. “What’s wrong?” he asked with a frown on his bearded face.
Serena wanted to kick herself. She had failed to school her features to stillness, and instead allowed her troubled emotions to remain visible for anyone to see.
“William. I don’t want to see him hurt,” Serena said, unafraid to admit the truth to Isha.
Her relationship with her mentor had changed after Kohl had entered her life. Serena trusted Isha as she trusted no one since the death of her mother.
“I know your feelings for him have grown,” Isha said. “The Far Abroad can be seductive, but it also makes a person fragile and weak, especially for those of us pledged to Lord Shet and his Servitor, your father.” Isha held up a cautionary finger. “Neither of them abides weakness.”
“Yes, sir,” Serena said, accepting the mild rebuke.
“Remember, sometimes we have to do those things we would rather not in order to rise in this world.”
“I won’t fail,” Serena promised, “but it doesn’t mean I won’t have regrets along the way.”
Isha stared at her for a moment. “Sometimes we have to decide whom to hurt if we are to save the ones we love.”
Serena settled her features into one of polite interest at Isha’s not-so-subtle implication. “Meaning what?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Isha said. “Word reached me last night. Your father sent a dream.”
A flutter of panic winged within Serena’s stomach. “What did he say?”
“He says that our time grows short. He demands answers. He wonders why we haven’t yet captured William, especially since it was my idea to come here. I was the one who convinced the Servitor that William might be a raha’asra.”
“We haven’t taken him because we aren’t yet sure what he is,” Serena said. “As long as he wears that stupid nomasra—the locket on his necklace—we can never know. Besides, he might contain the blood of a necrosed. I doubt my father would praise us for bringing something so monstrous to Sinskrill.”
Isha waved aside her concerns. “Even with his nomasra, if the blood of the necrosed had entered him, it would have either transformed him into one of them or killed him by now. Since neither has occurred, it means he’s overcome it.”
“You’re sure?” Serena didn’t allow her joy to show. While she could trust Isha, old habits of hiding her emotions died hard.
“Of course,” Isha said. “As to your other statement, ‘never’ is a powerful word. You claim we can never know. I disagree. Nomasra or not, early on we both knew what William most likely represented.”
“We can guess what he is, but supposition isn’t the same as knowing,” Serena replied, stubbornly clinging to her earlier point.
“You really believe William is nothing more than a potential asrasin?” Isha asked, his tone scornful. “You’re certain of that? Or perhaps it’s your affection for him that drives you to defend him so vigorously.”
“It’s not,” Serena answered, mentally flinching at her defensiveness. She took a breath, and took a second to organize her thoughts. “Logic drives me,” she said. “We would look very foolish if we brought a simple asrasin back to Sinskrill. We need more than mere supposition.”
“We would look foolish,” Isha agreed with a nod. “But as you said, we won’t know what he is so long as he wears that nomasra. Which means we have to remove it.”
“How?” Serena asked. “It’s more than a mere locket hanging from a thin, gold chain. Only William can take it off, or someone incredibly strong, like Kohl Obsidian.”
“And we lack Kohl’s strength,” Isha mused before trailing off into silence as he stared at the tabletop. He looked up after a moment. “Has there been any time when William has taken it off?”
“Not that I know of. I even asked to see it one time, but he left the chain around his neck and passed the locket over to me.”
“Then we’ll have to nullify the nomasra,” Isha said. “Or, barring that, destroy it or trick him into removing it.”
“How?” Serena asked again.
“Allow me to think on it.”
A large part of Serena hoped Isha would never find a way. Her father might consider her pilgrimage a failure if that happened, but it would probably be a forgivable failure. Going against six magi, surviving a necrosed, and seeing the creature killed . . . her pilgrimage already had to be considered some kind of success, didn’t it? In any case, at least she would see her sister, Selene, again.
Feburary 1987
I heard Mrs. Clancy is sick,” William said to Serena as he slipped into his seat for English. He had to speak loudly in order to be heard over the hubbub throughout the room as other students carried on their own conversations. “She’s supposed to be out for the rest of the semester.”
“What happened?” Serena asked.
“Something about her pregnancy,” William answered. “Bedrest, I think. I didn’t even know—”
He broke off when a bowtie-wearing, middle-aged man with a gray beard as long as Mr. Zeus’ strode purposefully into the room. The man—he had to be their substitute English teacher—wore a red, argyle sweater that stretched heroically over an ample middle and a cheery, rosy-cheeked grin. He could have been Santa Claus.
The rest of the students quieted down as well, and their din diminished to a general mumble.
“Good morning, class,” the man said after the room eventually silenced. “I’m Mr. Cleating, and I’ll be filling in for Mrs. Clancy for the remainder of the semester.”
He spoke in a clipped, self-important manner, and Serena flashed a smirk and roll of her eyes before she delicately tucked a strand of hair behind an ear.
William leaned forward, distracted and arrested by the motion. Tucking a strand of hair . . . such a delicate, graceful gesture. Her lips pursed, and his pulse quickened.
Serena glanced his way and flashed him a quick smile, and William smiled in response, hoping it didn’t come across as sickly, and also hoping she hadn’t noticed the interest in his eyes. She could usually figure out what he was thinking without any difficulty.
“We are meant to cover
C.S. Lewis during the next few weeks,” Mr. Cleating said. He clenched an unlit pipe between his teeth and sat upon the corner of his desk. It creaked ominously whenever he shifted his weight. “However, I would rather read something different. Something still in the realm of the mythic but far more interesting: The Lord of the Rings.”
William started, not sure he’d heard right. He replayed Mr. Cleating’s words in his mind and realized he had heard right.
“You’re probably loving this,” Serena whispered.
William grinned in response. He’d be required to read Lord of the Rings? Best reading assignment ever!
“The reason I chose Lord of the Rings is because it and C.S. Lewis’ master work, The Chronicles of Narnia, are both deeply Christian allegories, which is difficult to find in the realm of mythic, secondary fantasy,” Mr. Cleating said.
William’s brow creased. He’d never noticed any Christianity in Lord of the Rings.
“And choosing a Christian-themed mythic novel seems apropos here at St. Francis, yes?” Mr. Cleating continued.
William raised his hand.
“Yes . . .” Mr. Cleating shuffled through his student list. “Mr. Wilde. What is it?”
“How is Lord of the Rings Christian?” he asked.
Mr. Cleating smiled, and his entire face lit up, glowing and transformed by his humor. His eyes crinkled with delight as he jabbed his pipe at William. “You’ll have to read the book and find out,” he said, “but I promise, we’ll all discover them together. A word of advice, though. Tolkien sought to create a modern myth containing elements of Christianity, similar to how paganism contains elements of Christianity, or vice versa. Remember that and his vision becomes more clear.”
“What do you mean?” William asked.
“Some Christians believe that pagan stories are imperfect representations of the Logos, of the Word of God,” Mr. Cleating said, still wearing his eye-crinkling smile. “But a pagan might feel the opposite. As we’ll discover, Professor Tolkien played around with those themes in his singular book.”
“Books,” Steve Aldo said from the other side of the class.
“What did you say?” Again Mr. Cleating referenced his student roll. “Mr. Aldo.”
“You keep calling Lord of the Rings a book, but it’s a trilogy,” Steve explained.
William raised his eyebrows in surprise. When had Steve read Lord of the Rings?
“It was published as a trilogy,” Mr. Cleating said. “The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. But Tolkien intended his masterwork to be read as a single massive, majestic volume. It is, in fact, three volumes in one.”
He addressed the rest of the class. “Now, as I said, both Narnia and Lord of the Rings are definitively Christian, but one obvious difference between the two works is that Tolkien wasn’t quite the Christian apologist that C.S. Lewis became. Obvious allegories, such as Aslan as Christ, aren’t as easily found in Lord of the Rings. Instead, Tolkien’s work is multilayered, deeper, and more resonant. In fact, it is deeply Catholic, which again is quite apropos for this institution.”
William raised his hand again and was called upon once more. “I still don’t get it. I’ve read Lord of the Rings—”
“Nerd,” someone muttered, to a chorus of chuckles.
William ignored it. “—and I never saw the Christianity in it.”
“You never saw the Ring as an anti-sacrament?” Jake asked, appearing surprised.
William’s mouth dropped, and he faced Jake with eyes wide in shock.
“Or saw the symbolism of Morgoth as Lucifer or Satan as Sauron?” Jake continued. “And when Gandalf becomes Gandalf the White, he becomes like the pope. He doesn’t have authority over kings, but they still listen to what he says.”
William continued to stare at Jake Ridley in slack-jawed amazement. Jake Ridley had read Lord of the Rings? And he apparently had an even deeper understanding of it than William did. What the hell? In that moment, William would have been less surprised if a dog had walked into their class wearing clothes, like in The Far Side.
“You aren’t the only one who likes to read,” Jake said to William, wearing a smug smile.
William couldn’t help but continue to stare at Jake as if the other boy had grown two heads and four arms.
Sonya apparently felt the same.
“What? You know I like to read,” Jake said to his girlfriend.
“I guess you have someone else you can talk to about all your nerd stuff,” Serena whispered to William with a teasing grin.
“Quiet,” he hissed.
Mr. Cleating, though, was smiling broadly. “You are exactly right, Mr. Ridley. The Ring is an anti-sacrament, and in many ways Gandalf is the pope. He has no specific right to rule, but kings and stewards bow to his will. Or at least they try not to annoy him,” he added with a dry chuckle and clap of his hands. “There is so much for us to learn.”
After class, William cornered Jake in the hallway. Students buzzed past them and Steve, Sonya, and Serena waited nearby. “How’d you learn all that stuff about Lord of the Rings?” he demanded.
“I read a critique,” Jake said. “It cleared up a lot of things I didn’t understand the first time I read the book. And Mr. Cleating is right, it is a single book.”
“You read a critique?” William asked.
“Yeah. Once someone points out the Christianity, it’s obvious,” Jake enthused. “But there’s all sorts of deeper stuff Tolkien was trying to get across, like how Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn are characters, but they also represent the mind, heart, and will.”
“Maybe I should read this critique,” William said.
“I can bring it to school if you want.”
“Thanks.” William felt faint. The world could have tilted on its axis and the sense of wrongness would have been no less. Jake Ridley had studied Lord of the Rings, which meant somewhere in that arrogant ass of a person, a decent human might lurk.
“No problem,” Jake said.
Jake and his friends left, and Serena and William made their way to Biology. They sidestepped small groups of students damming the hallway like boulders in a stream and bent close in order to be heard over the between-bells ruckus permeating the lengths of St. Francis.
“There were three of us against Kohl,” Serena said. “You, me, and Jason. Which roles do you think we played?”
“I never thought about it,” William answered, still mulling over what Jake had said.
“I think I was the mind, because clearly I was the only one with a brain.”
“Clearly.”
“And you were the heart. We went where you guided us. Jason was the will.”
“I guess,” William said, still troubled by his potential misreading of Jake over all these years.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Serena asked, breaking into his distracted thoughts.
“What?”
“I’m actually going to have to break down and read Lord of the Rings.”
“I told you to read it months ago,” William protested.
“Back then I thought it was nothing but a straightforward adventure story, like Conan or Barsoom.”
William did a double-take. What the hell? Had he stepped into some kind of alternate universe? Conan he could accept Serena knowing about since Arnie and all that, but Barsoom?
“You know about Barsoom, right? John Carter?” Serena asked. “The Martian books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Don’t tell me you’ve never read them.”
“Of course, I’ve read them. Or at least some of them,” William muttered. He made a mental note to check out a few of them from the library when he had time.
A gathering of students, including Serena, William, Daniel, and Lien, shuffled about in front of St. Francis’ gothic entrance. They waited to board one of the school buses parked before them. A field trip had been planned for a number of freshmen and seniors as part of their religious studies class.
“I loathe the bus,”
Lien said, quoting Molly Ringwald from Sixteen Candles, as she climbed aboard and stared down the aisle at the disorderly flock of students. A spit-wad almost clipped her in the head, and she grimaced. “There has to be a more dignified mode of transportation,” she huffed.
Serena silently agreed. She’d never ridden a school bus before, and based on the behavior of the mixed bag of students, she didn’t figure she’d missed much. “Where is this church located?” she asked William after they took a seat.
“Over-the-Rhine. The ghetto,” William answered.
Serena made a moue of distaste. “How fun.” She stared out the window and let the conversation wash over her as the bus lurched to a start, and they began their journey downtown.
While they traveled, she considered what to do. Thus far, Isha hadn’t yet come up with a plan for removing William’s nomasra, and his lack of success left Serena torn. For William’s sake, it would be best if she and Isha failed at their task, but then what about Selene? What would happen to her little sister? Would their father punish Serena by taking Selene away from her?
Her thoughts tumbled over one another, and she couldn’t come up with a good answer to any of her concerns. On either path someone she cared for would be harmed, and Serena sighed in frustration.
“It is sad, isn’t it?” William asked, gesturing to the people on the streets. He’d apparently mistaken her sigh for an indication of sorrow.
They’d reached the ghetto, and Serena paid closer attention.
Some folk sat on their front door stoops, watching their neighborhood with tired, worn-out visages. Others shuffled by with shopping carts full of stuff and fearful, darting eyes. A few, however, strutted about like wolves on the prowl, deciding which sheep to prey upon.
Serena recognized all the various archetypes represented here. They were as familiar as a hereditary enemy. The ghetto in Over-the-Rhine was a microcosm of her own home.
“It’s cruel,” Daniel said. “All these people stuck in ghettoes like this. It’s only so the rich don’t have to see them and can pretend they don’t exist.”