The Forgotten Tale

by J. M. Frey

  Wyndam attempts to write for a few frustrating moments, and then he throws down the quill with a silent, resentful snarl. There is a blotch on the page that might have been an attempt at a drawing, but I cannot be sure.

  “Whatever it is that has stolen your voice, you cannot write it down, either,” I say. “You cannot even sketch it.”

  Wyndam nods, face crumpling in guilty misery.

  “Did you do this to yourself?”

  He nods, then shakes his head, then nods again. He rubs his left pinkie finger and scowls. And then, suddenly, Wyndam’s eyes go round. His right hand shoots out, grasps mine hard, and he pumps it once, twice, meaningfully. He looks me in the eye and keeps shaking my hand.

  “Oh, Writer’s calluses,” I hiss, realization flooding over me, making my knees wobble. Wyndam, grim, just nods. He waits, and watches, as the puzzle pieces come together, slotting like Tetris bricks as each clue, each observation I’ve made over the past week come together to form a whole picture.

  “Oh,” I say again, and grope for the nearest chair to flop down into.

  Wyndam curls in on himself, ashamed.

  “Oh, Wyndam Turn, you p-poor, fo-foolish boy,” I whisper, face in my hands. “What have you done?”

  Water

  Solinde returns to Cinchside for more water and rest. When she has taken her fill from the well, she tucks herself into a shaded corner of the public garden. It is a peaceful place, filled with the scent of green, growing things, and blooms reaching for the skies.

  Birdsong weaves a lullaby that, combined with the dappled sunlight, fills Solinde with a warm sort of lethargy. It reminds her of the days when her son was small, before his magic had begun to manifest, and her husband was away at market. Those days, Solinde would bundle her son into a patchwork blanket she had made of work-torn clothes, and in the shade of the barn, whisper the secrets of her sisters into her boy’s ear.

  She cannot afford the loss of moisture that weeping will inflict, but all the same, she cannot hold back her bitter sobs. It is cruel, unaccountably cruel that the Writer would bless that egotistical, violent Kintyre Turn with family and progeny while her own son is reviled and shunned and now, missing. Taken.

  A jerk against her pinkie finger pulls Solinde out of her miserable contemplation, and in her mind, she follows the golden thread of her power. She cannot see or hear anything happening around Wyndam Turn, but she knows, without a doubt, that he is at that very moment attempting to circumvent the conditions of their Deal. She took his words and his Words, and she will not allow the boy to communicate it any other way. Solinde will allow him no leeway.

  She tugs on the thread, pulling the little brat off balance, deliberately interfering with whatever attempt he is making.

  Wyndam Turn alone is no threat. But working with his father, and that annoyance Bevel Dom, he could swiftly become one.

  And that would not do. Not at all.

  Eleven

  When Pip comes to bed later, she is just on the sensible side of drunk.

  “Okay, Bevel Dom?” she slurs, voice a pleasant, buzzing blur. “Amazing storyteller. I finally get all the hype.”

  I have been abed for a few hours already, wearied by my conversation with Wyndam, and undesiring of returning to the taproom once my nephew made it clear that he wanted to be left alone for the rest of the night. I have been thinking, which my wife will say I have always done to excess. The fact that I have not yet fallen asleep perhaps proves it.

  I war with my desire to tell her everything I have learned, and the unerring sense that Wyndam would not like his follies shared. On top of the blanket, I turn the compass that Wyndam gave me, over and over. Its needle is broken, deliberately bent, and I know that this is one of the items he used to summon the Deal-Maker Spirit who took his voice in return for . . .

  Me.

  When I had asked him what he bargained for, he had simply and straightforwardly reached out and poked my chest. When I asked why, Wyndam had grimaced and turned away. He could not, or would not, explain.

  When I had asked him to draw the Deal-Maker Spirit’s sigil, the quill had juddered and jumped again, and it had turned out an unintelligible splotch. Wyndam had raged then, silent and heartbreaking, and thrown the ruined papers into his fire. He had slumped to his knees, sobbing with horrible, ugly hiccupping sounds, and I had held him for as long as he allowed it.

  And then, before I departed, he had given me this. A broken compass. Without my library or the sigil, I could not know the particular Spirit he had summoned, nor could I research her preferred tableau and summon her myself to undo his Deal.

  I had no answers. Only more questions.

  I was left alone to ponder Wyndam’s motivations for summoning me. What did he require that I alone could provide for him? What did he need that was so great it cost him his voice? And for that matter, how had he convinced a Deal-Maker Spirit to perform such a costly act of magic?

  The Viceroy had been in possession of a vial of Deal-Maker Spirit’s blood, And that had given him power over Neris. In forcing her to drink her sister’s blood, it also would have doubled her magic. And the Viceroy was the only warlock I knew who was powerful enough to compel a Deal-Maker Spirit like that.

  What had Wyndam done, or said, or given that could have been enough to pull not only me, but Pip and Alis back into this world?

  My thoughts are an ever-churning flood of concern, and fear, and facts that are tumbling through my mind like the cascade of a waterfall smashing into the talus of boulders below it.

  Pip flops face-first onto the pillow next to mine, reminding me to pull out of my mind and pay attention to the present. Something I am sometimes not very good at. “Where’s Alis?” I ask Pip instead, trying to distract myself.

  “Kintyre and Bevel were kind enough to babysit,” Pip says, slipping under the covers and pressing in close to my side, flinging an arm over my chest and a leg across my thighs, proving that she is entirely naked.

  “Oh?” I ask, and the familiar smell of Pip’s skin, the soft, wet feel of her tongue against my neck, manages to still the rapids of my mind enough for me to breathe deeply, set aside the compass, and turn to wrap my wife in my arms.

  This will solve none of my current problems, but it certainly will make me feel better. And perhaps allow me to relax enough to fall asleep. As my wife has pointed out many times, the brain works on problems while one sleeps—defrags as a computer does—and every problem that seemed impossible to overcome, or every concern that was unfathomable the night before, always seems easier to circumvent or solve in the light of morning.

  “Oh,” Pip agrees, and then her wonderfully warm mouth is on mine. She tastes of the scrumpy she likes so much, and I lick the taste of apples from around her teeth.

  Pip doesn’t let up on the kissing enough to allow me to properly shuck off my sleeping clothes, and I find that I don’t mind. She curls on top of me under the covers, pulling them up over our heads. Everything feels sensitive, hushed, and serious, and I want this to be right, want to burn off everything extraneous, burn every worry that I carry in the furnace of heat in Pip’s mouth, the fire of her touches, the humid, close air under the blankets. The bone-melting burn of desire in my veins leaves me trembling under my wife’s hands, desperate for connection.

  Pip, however, seems intent on taking her time, pressing her lips to the sensitive underside of my chin before dragging her nose down to the hollow of my throat. Pip probes the dips and planes of my neck and shoulders, tugging aside the collar of my night shirt, mapping my skin with her tongue as I sigh and moan and arch beneath her.

  Ah, ah! My lovely, pushy, bossy, beautiful wife.

  Pip’s legs wind around my waist, an instinctive move as natural as breathing, and my cock is hot, pulsing against my stomach, trapped beneath my sleep shirt but unmistakably present. The aching heat of it is making its demands known in the lift of my hips.

  “Patience,” Pip says, and though I cannot see it, I can hear
her smirk.

  The first touch of Pip’s tongue leaves me moaning, too wrapped up in pleasure to be in the least embarrassed by the sounds I’m making and desperately pleased that our daughter is visiting her uncles tonight. I’m barely aware of my own impending orgasm before it’s ready to crash over me like a wave.

  “Up, up,” I beg, stymieing my climax, tugging at her wrists, her elbows, one hand winding soft and sweet into the mop of her hair. “Please.”

  Pip hums and obliges, pushing my sleep shirt out of the way, writhing up and then, oh. Yes. That.

  It should look ridiculous, the way the blanket tents over her head like a Halloween costume, the way that the firelight that seeps in around the edges. Instead, it paints her nude body in orange and black stripes, guilds the soft edges and curves of her.

  “Bao bei,” I moan.

  “I know,” she pants. “Me, too.”

  And then we are falling together, so perfectly it leaves me reeling. A sob startles me, unexpected and choked sounding, and I realize that it came from me. In the wake of such a spectacular climax, my defenses are blown, and every anxiety, every worry, every secret I’ve been holding on to, every fear that has been plaguing me since we arrived here surges up and out of my throat. My weeping is raw and harsh.

  “Oh, bao bei. Forsyth,” Pip says, sliding off and alongside me. Sweat slicks her way, and she clings to me, wrapping her limbs around my torso as if she could fend off the sadness with her own flesh. She pets my hair back off my forehead, running the tip of one finger over my scar, worried.

  And I cannot do it. I cannot carry this secret, this fear, alone anymore.

  “Wyndam has done something foolish,” I sob. “And I am terrified by what it means.”

  And then, in the cathedral of our bed, I confess.

  ✍

  As this Station of the quest ought to be relatively peaceful, Goodwoman Farthing grants Lanaea permission to travel with us to the Lost Library. The Goodwoman waves us off from the front step of the tavern, and to stay a few days when we have retrieved what we need from the Library. Capplederry licks Thoma’s hair up into a ridiculous coif in farewell, and I cannot help the involuntary gesture I make, smoothing down my own now-clean hair in remembrance of all the times the Library Lion has done the same to me.

  “Of course,” Pip sighs, as Lanaea climbs into the cart with us. “The damsel in distress who shouldn’t, but somehow does, become part of the party. I should have known.”

  “Known what?” Lanaea asks, clearly having only caught the second half of what Pip said.

  Pip just shakes her head, grinning, and when Lanaea holds her hands out for Alis, Pip happily hands our child over. Pip has spent the last week being Alis’s climbing frame, entertainment device, and feeder. I can well imagine she is restless, and ready to focus on her Excel or studies. Maybe even ride Karl later.

  I very gently, under my breath, suggest to Wyndam that if he were to ride in the cart with Lanaea and Pip, he could accomplish the dual goal of spending time with the maiden he is so obviously smitten with and study reading. The lad promptly joins the ladies. Like Wyndam, Lanaea has had little formal education, and so Pip is happy to practice her own letters by showing them to the two young people, even though she thinks she is only teaching the one.

  The children’s primer is bound like a book, and Alis is thrilled to see one of those. “‘Ook, ‘ook, ‘ook!” she chants from Lanaea’s lap, clapping her hands as Pip runs through the runes. “Yah, yah!”

  The Lost Library is only a day’s ride away from Gwillfifeshire, and Capplederry seems to know exactly where we are going, for the creature moves at a faster pace than I have seen it go since we set out from Law Manor.

  We encounter no trouble on the road this day, though Kintyre and Bevel are both sharp-eyed and vigilant, even as they engage in their normal teasing banter from horseback. This leaves me to steer the cart, though it is hardly necessary to do so, and gives me time to mentally review the question of the constellations, the missing books, and now, the added complication of Wyndam’s Deal. What had the lad meant to do? And had it happened as he had hoped, or was my presence a misfire?

  And more than that, how are we to reverse it?

  We reach the Lost Library at dusk, and though, from afar, it looks the same, I see when we get closer that the once wild vines protecting the outer walls have been tamed, and the front gates are now flung wide and welcoming.

  I direct Capplederry to the side of the fountain, nearly exactly on the spot where Pip and I camped out during our first trip to the Lost Library. The great cat is eager to be free of its yoke, pawing at the straps and grumbling. Wyndam jumps down, and I wince just thinking about the way it must have jolted his gash, and obliges the lion. Capplederry yowls in joy and bounds around the courtyard, paws spread wide and head tossing, tail lashing. The cat rubs itself along the green wall, leaving behind tufts of road-dusty fur, and the vines rustle in welcome.

  There is another set of travelers in the courtyard, though they are in the far corner, and the tents they have erected are the thick, oiled-canvas kind that generals and princes use on the battlefield. These must be the quarters of the scholars and wizards who have been summoned to help restore the Lost Library. The number of chairs and portable desks scattered in the sunlight—and the way large, long pieces of fabric scrawled over with notes and maps are pinned to the side of the tents—reinforce that guess.

  Kintyre swings down off Karl, and Bevel hands him Dauntless’s reins once he has dismounted. My brother leads the horses over to the fountain basin for a drink, and then sets about the tasks of currying, brushing, walking, de-saddling, and all the processes of making a horse comfortable that we all know, but prefer to leave to him. For Kintyre it is, I think, a ritual, a way to relax after a long ride. He murmurs to the horses in the evenings, re-braids their manes into the tight buds that keep them clean and free of debris, and generally pampers them. In return, Dauntless and Karl seem happier, more energetic, and more inclined to behave.

  Wyndam returns to the cart to hand down Lanaea, who hobbles over to the fountain’s side with him to refresh herself. Wyndam is still nervous—and unfortunately, still silent—but at least he is no longer gawking at the lass. I have hopes that even if things do not work out romantically, he takes this opportunity to become more confident in himself and his romantic prowess, while still respecting Lanaea and her own personal individuality. Will he find happiness and perhaps a wife in the first young maiden he has ever met that he is not related to? Probably not. But I shan’t stand in his way if he wants to date her.

  Date. I chuckle at myself, and the strange way Pip’s world’s vocabulary has leaked into even my own inner dialogue.

  The flap of one of the side tents opens, and a young man approaches us without haste across the flagstone of the courtyard. As he is in no hurry, I take the time to observe the Library and note the changes. The flagstones have been swept, the weeds pulled, and the fountain has been cleaned. The walls of the Library have been scrubbed of their mold and moss, and shine sandy-golden once more. In short, the Library has been returned to its years of glory.

  Even the large circular stained glass window at the top of the portico has been restored. The last time I was here, it was so dusty and overgrown with weeds and dirt that I had barely even registered it as a window. Now, it sparkles in the spring sunshine, filaments of thin silver and flecks of gold melted into the glass to give it extra shine. The work is very fine, the lead between the individual panes so thin as to be nearly invisible from the gates, and the jewel-toned colors of the glass are rich and luxuriously deep.

  The scene depicted is, of course, that of the Writer at His Desk. In the bottom third of the pane, Elgar Reed sits with a quill in his hand and a pensive look on his face, a great tome laid out before him. Of course, this is not the Elgar Reed I know; this is the Writer. He is berobed in swirling silver cloth, his beard long and white, his eyes sparkling diamonds of depth and knowledge. Above his h
ead, dynamic, glittering lines of lavender and turquoise glass—which represent the Magic of Imagination—shade into richer, plummier shades and transform into the recognizable shapes of trees, lakes, mountains, a landscape dotted with fish and fauna, seasons and spirits, flora and fairies. In the top third of the window, all the colors shade toward the saturated, and are limned in gold. Here, it depicts the Great Races: the centaurs, goblins, dwarves, elves, merfolk, and of course, humanity.

  “Well, that’s not even remotely unsettling,” Pip says, following my line of sight. “It’s a Jesus-Elgar. Pffft, he’d love that.”

  Bevel, winding the reins and generally settling things around the cart to his liking, startles and blinks at her. “I forget, sometimes,” he says. “That you . . . know him. That you’re a . . .” He trails off, reluctant to say it out loud when we are in public. Which we both appreciate.

  Instead, he jumps down and begins unloading the things we’ll need for camping overnight. Before Bevel or any other family member can snatch her away, I lift Alis into my arms, settling her on my hip.

  “Hello, sweeting,” I say. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Dah da,” Alis agrees, sighing and tucking her head under my chin, resting on my clavicle. “‘Ook, yah, mama, ‘itty, ‘ook, Beh,” she continues, obviously trying out every new word she’s acquired lately. “‘Isses?”

  “Kisses,” I agree, and put one on each of her cheeks. “Kah-isses.”

  “Kah-isses,” she parrots readily.

  “Kah-itty,” I say, pointing to Capplederry.

  “Kah-itty.”

  “Beh-v.”

  “Behv bev bev.”

  “Bah-ook.”

  “‘Ooks!” she says stubbornly, gesturing at the books piled in the cart and favoring me with a look that clearly says that she fears too much time on a horse has scrambled my brains.