Magisterium (16 page)

“Arno and Felix,” Kevin said.

Opal inclined her head. “Felix was a boy. He idolized Cort.” Her hand fell to her lap and smoothed a wrinkle out of her skirt, then closed her hand into a fist to stop it from shaking. “There was a trial of sorts, a sham presided over by the black witch’s handmaiden. Cort and his friends were led up a scaffolding and hung, one by one, outside the palace gates.”

Opal faltered. Her hands trembled.

“I was told that Cort held Felix’s hand and whispered to him the entire way up to the noose. The younger boy was terrified, crying. Even facing his own death, all Cort wanted to do was comfort him.”

Opal said nothing more for a time. She seemed smaller, crumpled.

Kevin set his teacup down and leaned over the edge of the woman’s chair. He kissed her forehead and squeezed her shoulder.

“He was thinking of you,” Kevin said, almost too quietly for Glenn to hear. “He loved you very much.”

Opal raised her hand to Kevin’s cheek and then let it fall. Small tears glistened on her cheeks.

“Thank you,” she said.

Glenn looked away. The Kevin that stood there leaning over the old woman was like no one she had known. Kevin Kapoor was an avalanche. Chaos and noise. This person seemed older and smoothed by the wind like a weathered hill. The strangeness of it filled Glenn with barely understood fear.

“You must be tired,” Opal said finally. “I have rooms for you both. You can stay the night and then —”

“We should go,” Glenn said quickly, standing up. “Shouldn’t we, Kevin?”

Kevin glanced out the window above Glenn’s head, his hand on the back of Opal’s chair as if the two of them were sitting for a portrait.

“It’s … cold,” he said, his voice dreamy. “You’re soaked. We don’t … we should stay. Leave tomorrow.”

“Kev—” But before Glenn could finish, the front door slammed open and struck the wall beside it, shaking the house to its frame.

“Glenn! Kevin!”

Glenn turned, relieved to see Aamon Marta striding through the doorway.

“It’s okay,” Glenn called. “We’re okay! Aamon, this is Opal. She

—”

Before Glenn could finish, there was a blinding flash of white light and an ear-stinging explosion. Aamon flew backward and crashed onto the floor. Glenn turned to see that Opal had risen from her chair and was wielding a long silver-handled knife. Its needlelike tip was pointed directly at Aamon’s heart and glowing an eye-piercing white.

“Opal, no!” Glenn said, dumbstruck. “He’s our friend.”

“He’s a black and murderous thing,” Opal growled, not moving the tip of the blade in the slightest. “Aren’t you? Aamon Marta.” She spat out his name as if it was diseased. “Tell me, do you like being back? Do you like the world you helped make?”

Aamon slowly rose to his feet. “Opal,” he said.

“You know each other?” Kevin said.

“Leave here and go about your business,” Opal commanded, “or I’ll show you I have more than parlor tricks left in me.”

“My business is with these two, Opal. I didn’t come here to cause you any harm.”

A cruel grin raised Opal’s lips. “How many people have died after hearing those exact words?”

“Stop it!” Glenn said. “Opal, put down the knife. Please. Aamon is our friend. He’s taking us to Bethany. That’s all.”

“You don’t know who you’re dealing with, child.”

“Yes, I do,” Glenn said, matching the steel in Opal’s voice. “Now put it down.”

Opal gripped the hilt of the blade tighter, rolling it in her palm. “I won’t have him here,” she said. “I have a clean house.”

“Fine,” Glenn said. “We’ll go, then. Kevin —”

“No,” Aamon said from his place at the doorway. “Opal, the way to Bethany is long and these woods aren’t safe. For their sake, let them sleep here tonight. I’ll stay outside. We’ll be gone tomorrow.”

Opal didn’t move. Kevin put one hand on her arm.

“I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him,” he said. “If you push him out, I’ll leave too.”

Slowly the brightness of the knife’s tip faded and she lowered it, muttering something under her breath that sounded like a curse but was in a language Glenn didn’t understand.

“Go,” she said to Aamon, seething. “Sleep in my yard with the other animals, traitor.”

Aamon backed away and locked eyes with Glenn. “Tomorrow,”

he said.

Glenn nodded, and then Aamon ducked under the door frame and disappeared outside.

“There are rooms for you both,” Opal repeated.

The fire popped behind her as a log was consumed and slumped into ash. Glenn said nothing as Opal led Kevin out of the room and down a dark hallway.

“A black and murderous thing.”

Why would she say that about Aamon? What did she think he

had done?

A door opened and closed down the dark hallway. Kevin hadn’t even looked at her as Opal led him away.

Glenn stood alone in the still house, wondering where she would drift off to if all the anchors that held her down were gone.

That night, Glenn sat on a small bed in a room down the hall, shaking even though she was mostly dry. She lay under the bed’s handmade quilt. The thin mattress crinkled beneath her.

Glenn tried to imagine herself in her own bed, tried to call up the sounds of Dad working in his shack out behind the house, tried to tell herself that she would be back there soon, but it was no use. Everything was so far away.

“Hey.”

Glenn jumped, startled. A thin silhouette, framed in orange candlelight, stood in the doorway. Kevin.

“Thought you might be hungry,” he said, holding a plate out in his hands.

As he came in, Glenn sat up and pushed her back up against the wall.

“No,” Glenn said, hugging her knees. “Thanks.”

“You still cold?” Kevin asked. “I could ask Opal for another blanket.”

Glenn shook her head without looking at him. The bed rippled as Kevin sat down and put the plate between them. For a while he said nothing, just stared down at the bed in the same distracted way as earlier, his hand rubbing the back of his neck.

“Thanks,” he said.

“For what?”

“Diving in after me,” he said, with a small unconvincing laugh. “I didn’t even know you knew how to swim.”

Kevin toyed with the bread on the plate, lifting a piece and letting it drop.

“We have to talk about it,” he said.

“About what?”

“Aamon,” Kevin said. “We heard what he said in those ruins, that it was his fault. We can’t ignore what Opal said. We don’t really know him.”

“I know him!”

“You know him at home,” Kevin said. “Not here.”

“And you don’t know Opal at all.”

“Glenn —”

“What happened to you?”

Kevin opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Glenn took a scrap of the bread off the plate and twisted it between her fingers. “What did it feel like?”

“A dream, kind of. You know? The ones that are so real you

wake up and wonder if they really happened. And then for the whole day, you walk around in this fog like … pieces of it are clinging to you and won’t let go.”

“But how did you know those things? About Cort?”

“Because for a little while, I was him.”

“Kevin —”

“Don’t,” Kevin interrupted. “You don’t know everything, Glenn.

Not about this place, you don’t.” He looked down at the bracelet on her arm. “Not with that thing on anyway.”

Kevin reached out for it, but Glenn yanked her sleeve over her hand.

“You should take it off,” he said, his voice dry and flat. “With that thing on your wrist, you’re not really here. Think of it as an experiment.”

Kevin sat there a moment, waiting, then shook his head. He

swept the plate from between them and stood up at the edge of the bed.

“It’s a pretty amazing world out there, Morgan. I just thought you should see it.”

The door shut behind him with a dull
clap
.

A bit of moonlight came in through the window behind her,

filling the tiny room with a cold glow. Glenn lay listening as floorboards squeaked, voices murmured and then went quiet. The only other sounds were the moans and creaks of the settling house and the wind outside Glenn’s window. The shadows of the bare trees waved and shifted all around her.

Glenn turned over on her side, and saw that a wooden box sat on the floor beside the bed, a deeper shadow in the dark room. Glenn slipped off the bed and undid the catch. Inside, Glenn found a patchwork doll made of sewing scraps bound together with ragged stitches. Its hair was corkscrews of soft yarn. Glenn set it down and lifted out a handful of rocks and a wooden toy sled. At the very bottom sat a sword cobbled together out of sticks.

Glenn held the sword up into the moonlight. How did Kevin

know? Glenn laid all of Cort’s things out in front of her, side by side.

They were the bricks and mortar any kid would use to build a world up around himself. Things that were his and no one else’s.

Glenn put all of Cort’s things back in his chest and closed the lid.

She swept her fingers across her bracelet, wrapped her hand around it, feeling its warmth, its faint vibrations. She turned toward the door and listened. Nothing. Glenn eased the bracelet down until it crested the rise of her thumb. She paused, a buzzing hum in her chest, then drew her fingers together and slid the bracelet off.

It seemed an alien thing sitting there in the palm of her hand. The fine hairs along Glenn’s arm were damp with sweat, chilling her. She set the bracelet on top of Cort’s chest and waited.

The long fingers of trees, blown by the wind, still scraped against the side of the house and tapped the window. There was still the faint rushing of the water down by the shore. The world was still the world.

Glenn closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to quiet her expectations. As she did, she became very aware of the rise and fall of her breath, the thump of her heart, and the brittleness of her fire-dried hair. All around her was the empty stillness of the room, hemmed in by thin walls.

Glenn stood up, eyes still closed, and set her palm against the rough plaster wall. What was the difference, really, between it and her hand? Different molecules. A different arrangement.

It seems so trivial
, Glenn thought.
Funny, even. The faith we put
in the difference between one thing and another.

Glenn breathed a long sigh, emptying herself of millions of bundles of oxygen and carbon dioxide. They crashed against the wall’s surface and rebounded, blowing back against her cheeks. Glenn pushed against the wall. There was a second’s hesitation and then a kind of slump, a give, as her flesh eased into the plaster like a body slipping into water. Glenn’s fingers found the border of the wood behind the plaster, slipped quietly through, and emerged on the other side of the wall to wave in the cool air outside.

Glenn stepped forward and the wall accommodated her; they

moved around each other like two bodies sleepily arranging themselves in bed. The plaster was smooth and cool. It smelled clean. The wood shell of the house beyond it was like sandpaper brushing past her skin.

When Glenn opened her eyes, she was standing outside in the narrow space between the house and the forest. She glanced over her shoulder. The wall was whole. Unmarked.

A chorus of insects called in the darkness, the in and out of the forest’s breath. The moon hung white in the sky, surrounded by the glitter of stars. Glenn flexed the muscles in her ankles, rising up onto the tips of her toes, and arched her neck back. Her lips parted. Her arms stretched upward.

Molecules of air, scented with pine, wrapped themselves around Glenn like a sheet of silk and drew her off the earth and into the sky.