Twist of the Blade (8 page)

She remembered how upset he had been whenever she’d threatened Flish. What would he be feeling now that she’d actually
hurt
her?

And I didn’t go see him last night
, she thought, some of the shine suddenly disappearing from the morning.
I didn’t even call.

She finished shampooing and started soaping, in a race to get clean before the rapidly cooling water raised goose bumps. Just as it turned ice-cold, she reached for the tap to turn it off – then laughed at herself, exerted a little of the Lady’s power so she no longer felt the chill, and gave her hair a second shampooing just because she could. Then she ordered the water off her body (though she kept her hair damp for easier brushing) and, both thoroughly clean and wide awake at last, stepped out onto the bath mat.
They’ll probably let him out today
, she thought, pulling on her robe.
I’ll go by his house after school. I have to tell him about the second shard. He’ll understand about Flish...and why I couldn’t come see him.

Won’t he?

But when she finally made her way downstairs, her plans changed. Aunt Phyllis, resplendent in a bright green dress, hair swept up into a formidable grey wave, was just setting out cereal and milk on the kitchen table. She straightened as Ariane entered and faced her, hands on her hips, mouth a thin, straight line.

Uh oh
, Ariane thought. That look could only mean one thing: her aunt had somehow found out about last night.

The situation seemed to call for a preemptive strike. “I need to tell you something, Aunt Phyllis,” she said. “I didn’t tell you the truth yesterday. I wasn’t late because of polynomials.”
Hey, I said it right!
“I was attacked.” Ariane told the story as simply and completely as she could, leaving out only her confrontation with the demon, since she’d never told Aunt Phyllis about that problem in the first place. “I didn’t have any choice,” she finished. “It was the only way to save myself and the shard too.”

Aunt Phyllis listened without speaking. When Ariane was done, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“I was so tired, and scared and...I just didn’t want to deal with it. I’m sorry.”

Aunt Phyllis looked away from the table, at nothing in particular, then looked back again. “Ariane, you have to start trusting me,” she said. “I’m the only adult who knows your secret...well, except for Rex Major,” she flashed a small smile, “and despite what children’s books would have you believe, adults can be a great deal of use in the real world, especially when you’re not even old enough to get a driver’s licence or hold a full-time job.”

“I know,” Ariane said. “I’m sorry.”

Aunt Phyllis turned back to the table and continued laying out spoons and bowls. “Those poor girls,” she said. “Ariane, this power of yours...I know you were defending yourself and the shard, but...what if you’d killed one of them?” She stopped, leaning on the table with both hands. “I don’t care about your quest,” she said, her voice sounding old and strained. “I care about
you
. I don’t want you hurt. And I don’t want you hurting other people.” She suddenly slammed her palms on the table, making Ariane jump. “Damn the Lady of the Lake! Why couldn’t she leave our family alone? First your mother, and now....” She pressed her lips tightly together again.

Ariane said nothing. She had no answer.

After a long moment, Aunt Phyllis took a deep breath, straightened and turned toward Ariane. “Promise me,” she said. “Promise me you won’t hurt anyone else!”

Ariane thought back to how it had felt on the tennis courts, the way the shard had seized on her anger, amplified it. She remembered its rage-filled call:
Kill your enemy!

“Aunt Phyllis, I...” Her throat closed on the words. “I...I promise,” she said at last. “I promise to try.”

Aunt Phyllis’s mouth quirked. “‘There is no try,’” she said. “‘Do, or do not.’” The tiny smile vanished before Ariane had quite gotten her head around the fact her old-fashioned aunt had just quoted Yoda. “But I suppose that’s the best I can hope for.” She snorted. “And even though I wish you hadn’t hurt them, at least maybe now Felicia and her friends will leave you alone.” She went back to the counter and picked up a bowl of bananas, grapes and apples. “Any...” she hesitated as if searching for the right words, “...um, news on the location of the second shard?” She put the fruit bowl on the table and gestured for Ariane to have a seat.

“I think so,” said Ariane, pulling out her chair and sitting down. She reached for the cereal. “In the shower, I...heard it. And when I held the first shard, I heard it a lot better. It’s somewhere east. A long way east.”

“How far?” Aunt Phyllis said, taking her own seat.

“Europe, at least,” Ariane said. “Maybe even farther.”

“Oh!” Aunt Phyllis paused in the act of pouring cornflakes into her bowl. “Not a problem for Rex Major. But...airplanes are expensive, Ariane. And hotels, food, transportation.... We don’t have that much money.”

“I know,” said Ariane. “I’m going to talk to Wally about it today. He might have an idea. They should be letting him out of the hospital –”

Aunt Phyllis set the milk back down on the table with a thump. “Wally’s in the hospital? Ariane, how many other bombshells are you going to drop on me this morning? What happened?”

Ariane blinked. She’d completely forgotten she hadn’t told Aunt Phyllis about Wally. She hurriedly explained. “I wanted to go see him last night, but after everything else...and I was so tired...so I thought I’d go to his house after school –”

Aunt Phyllis smiled a little. “No need to wait that long,” she said. “School’s been cancelled.”

Ariane blinked. “What? Why? It’s not a holiday –”

“Water-main break,” Aunt Phyllis said. Her mouth quirked again. “Under the tennis courts, if you can imagine. No water in either Oscana or St. Dunstan’s, therefore no bathrooms. Can’t pen up several hundred teenagers all day without bathrooms.”

Ariane smiled weakly. “Oops.”

Aunt Phyllis chuckled. “I doubt any of your classmates would hold it against you, if they knew. In any event, you can go see Wally this morning. He must be wondering why you haven’t been to visit him.” Her voice softened. “And you can check on Flish while you’re there.”

Ariane stared at her in shock. “She’s not going to want to see
me!”

“She can’t stop you,” Aunt Phyllis pointed out. “Go see her, Ariane. Someone needs to extend an olive branch. She’s Wally’s sister, after all.”

“I’d rather chew glass.”

“Ariane –”

“All right, all right!” Ariane lifted her hands in surrender. “I’ll talk to her. But if she throws a bedpan at me…especially a full one…I’m out of there.”

“Good girl.” Aunt Phyllis stood up. “I wish I could come with you, but I’m going to be late for my committee meeting if I don’t get going.”

“Be careful,” Ariane said. “I bet one of Rex Major’s cronies is keeping an eye on us.”

Aunt Phyllis gave her an odd look. “‘Be careful’? Isn’t that my line?”

Ariane paused. She hadn’t told Aunt Phyllis about the demon, so she couldn’t tell her she was worried that Rex Major might try something more...
direct
...now the demon was gone.

“It’s just that, after last night, things seem even more dangerous than I thought,” she finally said.

“Certainly for anyone who tries to attack
you
,” Aunt Phyllis said, “but I doubt Rex Major is going to have mercenaries storm the basement of First Presbyterian Church to get at
me
. But all right, yes, I’ll be careful. Now finish your breakfast, then go see Wally and Flish. If they do let Wally out, see if he’ll come to dinner. Then we can talk about this second shard and how you’re going to get to...wherever it is you have to go.”

She bustled out, leaving Ariane alone with her cornflakes and thoughts.

Visiting hours at the hospital didn’t begin until ten. It was only a fifteen-minute walk, so she had well over an hour to kill. She spent part of it experimenting with the first shard, trying to pinpoint the location of the second, but it remained maddeningly imprecise: somewhere over the ocean, not due east, but a bit south. She also sensed, without really knowing how – this whole magic thing was still awfully new to her – that although it wasn’t close to the coast, it wasn’t an immense distance inland. She
thought
that pointed to Europe rather than somewhere even farther east.

She couldn’t use the computer to check: Aunt Phyllis had cancelled their Internet service. Considering Rex Major had used it to send a demon disguised as a computer-game monster into Ariane’s bedroom, she couldn’t really blame her. But in the third bedroom upstairs – in a room nobody had slept in in years and which had therefore collected all kinds of junk – Ariane had seen an old, dusty globe. She retrieved it and took it into her room. Sitting on her bed, she ran her finger from Regina along the fiftieth parallel of latitude across the Atlantic, her finger coming to rest more or less on the city of Frankfurt in Germany. Then she pushed her finger a little ways south –
not too far,
she thought – and encountered France.

She removed her finger and looked at it.
France
, she thought. It looked small compared to Canada, but then most countries did. If she remembered correctly from geography,
the country was roughly the same size as Saskatchewan.
I just need to get to France
, she thought.
Then I’ll be close enough to pinpoint the location of the second shard...and use streams and rivers to travel to it.

We’ll talk about it tonight
, Aunt Phyllis had said. Ariane
glanced at her clock radio. Time to go see Wally...and Flish.
Aunt Phyllis is right
, she thought.
She hates me, and I hate her...but she
is
Wally’s sister.

During the walk she debated which Knight sibling to see first, finally deciding, as she climbed up the slight hill that led to the main entrance of Regina General Hospital, to start with Flish. That way when she saw Wally she could tell him she’d already been to see his sister, and maybe then he’d be more willing to forgive her for putting Flish in the hospital in the first place.

They started it
, she thought defensively.
I was only protecting myself and the shard.

Or was the
shard
protecting itself?

She stopped just inside the sliding doors of the main entrance so suddenly she was almost run over by an orderly pushing an empty wheelchair. “Sorry,” she said, and stepped to one side.
Was I using the shard, or was the shard using me?
She wasn’t sure which idea was more unsettling.

She pulled herself together and went to the information desk.

Five minutes later she was staring at the open door of Flish’s room. A passing nurse gave her a suspicious look, but it took Ariane another minute or two to work up the nerve to finally step inside.

Flish lay on the bed in her private room, face pale, head bandaged, one eye swollen shut. She had an IV hooked up to her arm, and her right leg was elevated by a metal contraption hung from the ceiling. It looked rather like a medieval torture device. Ariane gazed at her silently for a moment, then cleared her throat.

Flish’s good eye opened. She blinked, then turned her face toward Ariane. At first she had a confused, vulnerable expression that made her look like a small child, but as soon as she recognized Ariane that look hardened into pinched fury. “What do
you
want?” she snarled. “Come to finish me off?”

“I came to say I’m sorry,” Ariane said. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
That’s a lie
, an inner voice said, but Ariane ignored it; it would have been more accurate to say she’d never wanted to hurt Flish
this
badly, but she could hardly say
that
. “You forced me to.”

“You and your tricks. I don’t know how you did it, but sooner or later...”

Ariane shook her head, exasperated. “Flish, stop! You’re not the only one I hurt last night. Next time it could be worse. Let it go. Leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone.”

Flish’s angry expression didn’t soften. “Get out,” she said. “Or I’ll call a nurse to throw you out.”

Ariane felt a flash of fury. The shard against her skin blazed in response, and she gasped in sudden fear, using the terror of what she might do to tamp down her rage before it could blossom. “Have it your way,” she choked out. “I came to see Wally anyway.” She turned and headed out the door.

“Stay away from my brother!” Flish shouted after her, but Ariane ignored her.

I tried
, she thought, anger bubbling inside her again, despite her best efforts to control it, as she strode toward the elevator.
I tried to make peace. It’s up to her if she wants to or not.

Then her fear rose to the top of her emotional cauldron again, pushing aside the anger.
For her sake, she’d better. I almost killed her with just
one
shard of Excalibur. What would have happened had I had two...or the whole sword? If just the
tip
of the sword could overpower my own judgment, how will I ever handle the whole thing?