

Spelled Out in Paint

by Tina Mikals

Copyright 2015 Tina Mikals

Smashwords Edition

Discover other titles by Tina Mikals

The Painted Room

Cover design is a cropped image from

_The Love Potion_ by Evelyn de Morgan

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

this book is dedicated to

my daughter, Sam, who laughs at my silly jokes and

to my husband, Bert, and my son, Michael,

for their unwavering support and patience

### Chapter 1

### A Wrong Turn

Duncan saw the one-way sign too late. Since he couldn't back up into traffic onto the busy street he had come from, he said a silent prayer that no cars would turn down the short one-way alley before he could make it safely out the other side.

He was about half way down when his luck ran out.

In the gray light between the buildings at the end of the street, he saw the boxy silhouette of an automobile enter, blocking him in. The straight, high roof of the vehicle hinted at a set of emergency lights.

"It's just a ski rack," said May in the front passenger seat next to him.

The alleyway lit up bright blue for several seconds then returned to wintery gray twilight.

"Or maybe not," she said, twisting around to glare at her brother, Charley, in the back seat.

As the mini-van ground to a stop, Charley said, "Hey, don't blame me. The GPS didn't say anything about this being a one-way."

In the seat next to Charley, Sheila pointed to the cell phone in her hand with the sparkly blue nail of her pinky finger. "What about that arrow there? And wasn't I supposed to be reading the GPS for him?"

Charley was silent as he took the cell phone from her, turned it upside down, and frowned at the screen.

May said, "Any dumb idiot could see this was a one way, Charley, but you just kept screaming at him to turn. You've been back seat driving this whole trip."

Duncan was surprised to hear so many words strung together from the girl in the front passenger seat, though he was glad at this particular moment that they weren't aimed at him. But she was right about her brother back seat driving and when he wasn't doing that, he was bickering with Sheila.

Just what Sheila saw in Charley, Duncan couldn't figure out, but he had never known his cousin to make brilliant choices when it came to boyfriends anyway.

From inside the van, they all watched the police officer squeeze himself out of the squad car, trying not to ding the side of a red Subaru with the Taser on his hip. Duncan ran the palms of his hands down the thighs of his jeans. The cop looked close to retirement and there were hard lines on his face. He had probably heard every excuse in the book, and he looked like he hadn't believed any one of them.

Charley said, "Dude, that guy's seen a lot of donuts."

Silently, they all nodded in agreement.

At the very back of the minivan, Duncan's little brother, Shane, blurted out, "Is that a real cop car? Dunc, are you gonna get 'rested?"

Sheila answered sweetly, "No Shanie, the nice officer's just going to talk to Dunc a little."

Duncan wished she sounded more sure.

So far it had been one of those dry Decembers, too bitter cold to snow, and Duncan decided to wait until the cop got to the van before pressing the button to roll down the window. Not that the cold would have affected the girl in the front passenger seat; she hadn't removed her puffy white parka the entire trip even with the heat cranked. With her skinny legs sticking out, it was like driving around with a giant cotton swab.

The cop seemed to be taking his sweet time getting to the van. When he finally got close enough, Duncan clicked the control to the window but nothing happened.

The cop looked blandly through the glass, gnawed some gum in his mouth and waited.

Duncan tried the button again, but the window still didn't budge. He tried to remember if his mother had been having trouble with it; the van was ancient.

"I'm sorry, officer," Duncan yelled through the glass, holding his hands up helplessly.

The cop raised his eyebrows, drawing up the tired hoods of his pale gray eyes. He lifted a finger and pointed to the back of the van.

From behind him, he heard Charley say, "Thanks for the fresh air, dude. Why don't you try rolling down your own window now?"

Duncan felt, more than saw, the girl next to him roll her eyes as he looked down, moved his hand to put up Charley's window, then pressed the correct button for his own.

The officer's eyes scanned the interior of the minivan as the window came down. He said routinely, "License and registration, please."

"Oh right." Duncan unclasped his seat belt, wrestled his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans then offered it to the cop. The wallet was made of duct tape.

The officer chewed his gum at it. "Could you take out the license, please?"

Duncan dug out his license and handed it to him, then watched the cop look it over.

"And I'll need the registration," said the cop, not looking up.

"Oh, right, I forgot," Duncan shot a hand out to the glove compartment and the girl next to him startled like she'd heard a gunshot.

He snapped his hand back, then excused himself twice before gingerly reaching in front of her again to flick the clasp of the compartment.

At his touch, the door flew open and exploded papers all over her knees and onto the floor. Mixed into garage repair bills and a decade's worth of van registrations, there was a mutilated owner's manual and an unwrapped orange tootsie-pop.

He stretched out his hand to take some of the papers off her lap but then stopped himself, suspecting that he might get it slapped this time. She bent her head down and started pawing through the pile like she was looking for a missing lottery ticket before he could make another attempt to enter her body space.

The officer, reading from the license with the trace of a smile on his purplish lips, announced, "Duncan Fergus O'Callahan. That you?" The man poked the name badge on his uniform. "I'm Officer James O'Reilly, Duncan. Could you take off your hat, please?"

Duncan removed his faded red baseball cap. Unsuccessfully, he tried to smooth down the ends of his dark hair that curled up where the edge of the cap had been.

O'Reilly inspected his face, comparing it to the picture on the license in his hand. "I didn't know you young guys were still wearing your sideburns so long."

The girl next to him made a funny noise in her throat like a little cough.

"You drove up from Mass?" asked O'Reilly.

"Mass?"

"Yes, Mass. This is a Massachusetts license, Duncan. This is yours, isn't it?"

"Oh, right, Mass. No, we left from Masobesic Bay."

"Maine? Are you vacationing?"

"Vacationing?"

"Yes, vacationing. Are you on vacation?" The cop was getting annoyed.

"Vacation? No, we just moved up from Boston."

"When was that?"

"Um... I don't know," said Duncan slowly, watching the cop flip the license over in his hand. "A week?"

O'Reilly looked up sharply. "So you're saying you don't know if it was a week ago that you moved? I think I would remember—"

"No, sorry. I mean, a few weeks." Duncan swallowed. "Why? How long do I have to change it? I was going to get a Maine one tomorrow, I swear. Don't I still have a few days?"

"Take it easy. You've had this license about seven and a half months, Duncan?"

"For sure."

"Is that a 'yes'?"

"Yes, I mean, yes."

O'Reilly raised an eyebrow at him.

Duncan shrank in his seat. "Sir? I mean yes, sir. Is... is there a problem with the license?" When the cop didn't answer right away, he added weakly. "Sir?"

"No. Not necessarily. Where are you all off to today?"

"Art museum, sir?"

"Are you asking me or telling me, Duncan?"

"Art museum, yes sir."

O'Reilly nodded. "This is the wrong street, Duncan. It's around the corner, next street over."

Duncan had already figured that out. "Thanks, sir."

"How old are you, son?"

"Sixteen, sir." Couldn't he tell from the license? He was looking right at it.

"Do you know why I stopped you, Duncan?"

Charley grumbled something about not knowing how to drive that was audible to everyone, including the cop.

There was a thump from the back of the van as Shane kicked the underside of Charley's seat.

"Um, not really, sir," said Duncan, widening his eyes, trying to look innocent.

"Did you happen to see that sign on the corner, son?"

"Sign, sir?"

O'Reilly sighed, turned to face his squad car and motioned to both sides of his thick body with his hands, one of which still had Duncan's license in it. "Okay, Duncan, do you see that all the parked cars are facing in our direction on both sides of the street? And do you see how your vehicle happens to be pointing the opposite way?"

Duncan nodded, watching his license move up and down in the cop's hand.

"You're traveling down a one way street in the wrong direction."

"Duh," breathed out Charley.

Shane kicked the underside of Charley's seat again, which made it about the hundredth time since leaving Sheila's house.

"Bingo!" shouted May, holding up the orange tootsie pop.

When everyone just stared at her, she pointed to the piece of paper stuck to the lollipop. "I finally found the registration to the van."

She passed the tootsie-pop to Duncan by the very bottom of the stick. He took it from her carefully, trying not to touch even one of her slender white fingers. Then he offered the lollipop with the registration to O'Reilly.

Both sides of the officer's mouth went down. "Could you remove it from the sucker, please?"

Duncan tugged a few times on the registration until it let go with just a small tear out of the corner. The wrinkled paper fluttered as he held it out to O'Reilly.

May said suddenly, "It's really not his fault, officer, my brother gave him the wrong directions. He's a total back seat driver. You should try playing a video game when he's around."

"I'll consider myself warned," mumbled O'Reilly, reading over the registration.

"The GPS was incorrect," insisted Charley, who hated being wrong about anything. Luckily for him, but unluckily for others, he was not wrong often. Sheila pointed again to the phone with the painted nail of her little finger.

"Sheila, that's the next street up. The GPS is simply in error."

"Oh," said Sheila. Then to everyone, she said, "You know, I think he's right."

"Thank you," said Charley. He smiled and handed the phone back to her.

Duncan closed his eyes and exhaled. Charley seemed to have that effect on everyone eventually.

"I'll be back in a minute," said O'Reilly. "Don't go anywhere."

As he watched O'Reilly saunter back to the cop car, Duncan slumped in his seat and stuck the lollipop in his mouth. In the ten minute wait that followed, Sheila and Charley argued, and Shane announced that he needed to go to the bathroom. The girl next to him said nothing of course.

He turned on the radio to drown out the sound of Charley and Sheila and Shane in the back. What he really wanted to do was to scream at them all to just shut up already. He pressed about a dozen buttons on the radio, got nothing but talk—some obnoxiously political, some obnoxiously inane, some both. Finally, he gave up and turned it off.

What was taking the cop so long? Wasn't it always bad if they took a long time? Duncan was going to lose his license, he just knew it. He had finally passed the written test on his third attempt, made it past the six month mark and the passenger and night restrictions, and now his license would probably be taken away until he was thirty, maybe forty even. He'd be practically dead by then.

What's more, he had some sense to realize what a moron he looked like being dressed down by this cop. But it didn't really matter because the girl (what was her name again?) was on a date with a 'dumb idiot' that couldn't read street signs anyway.

Duncan was starting to deeply regret agreeing to go along on this trip. He realized now that he had made a mistake. When he first met her, she had seemed so different to him; but he saw now that she just wasn't his type.

Okay, really, he saw now that _he_ just wasn't _her_ type. She looked down her thin nose at him whenever he said anything to her. At the start, he had tried to make small talk, even attempted a few jokes, but after getting back only one word responses for over an hour, he had given up.

He supposed it was just as well. After all, she wore way too much make-up, obviously had no sense of humor, and to top it off, had an obnoxious, know-it-all, back seat driving brother who had rattled him into making a completely stupid mistake which might cost him his license. The only reason he had ended up driving was because his mom's minivan was big enough to carry all five of them. His little brother had insisted on coming along and, as usual, had gotten his way. Shane was smart, smarter than himself at that age, Duncan realized, and he had a persistent will that wore down their mother completely.

Duncan also suspected his mother wasn't above using his little brother as a spy.

He watched the girl trying to organize the stack of papers from the glove box. He should tell her not to bother. The van was usually a dumping ground of soda bottles, paper cups, and empty snack bags.

He crunched the rest of the lollipop and chucked the stick at his feet.

"You know, you don't really need to do that," he said, picking some candy out of a tooth with his finger. "The whole van's usually a pig sty. I've tried to clean it once or twice, but it's usually a junk heap a few days later."

Her Highness didn't even look at him. All she said was, "Oh?" like he didn't need to tell her what she already knew. Then she just went on fiddling with the papers on her lap. Duncan wanted to reach over and mess them all up on her.

As he was looking at her, she touched the edge of her eye and came away with a smudge of black goo which she gave a disgusted look to before taking another paper from the pile.

Why hadn't he guessed it? Of course the makeup was all his cousin Sheila's work. The heavy eyeliner and bright lipstick, which seemed just a part of Sheila (he couldn't even remember her without it), seemed out of place on this girl. She looked like a tarted up librarian. He suspected she knew it.

About the only good thing Sheila had done was to put the girl's hair up in a bun. Curled lengths of glossy brown hair bounced around the back of her head every time she moved. His eyes followed one shiny lock down to the nape of the girl's slim neck. He had the impulse to reach out and run his fingers down the length of it.

She faced him suddenly and gave him a wide eyed look. Her almond shaped eyes were a strange shade of light brown on the edge of orange.

Duncan felt heat rush to his face and hated himself for it. He quickly looked out the driver's side window.

It wasn't like he hadn't ever stared at a girl and got a nasty look in return. But those were girls who knew they were pretty and just acted offended. This girl really was offended, as though he had stared at her like she was a side show freak.

He was almost glad when O'Reilly's wrinkled mug appeared at the window.

"Could you please step outside the van?" he said, before Duncan could even get the window down all the way.

His stomach dropped. He rubbed his hands over his face, opened the car door and got out.

The cop led him midway down the side of the minivan. Duncan leaned his back against the cold metal and shuddered.

Officer James O'Reilly had three boys with his ex-wife. Two of them were in college and one was a senior in high school. He wasn't taking any chances. So far the kid was keeping it together, but he didn't like the thought of him losing it in front of everyone in the van, especially his girlfriend.

Or the girlfriend's brother, who reminded him of his ex-brother-in-law.

The kid's story had checked out. O'Reilly hadn't smelled or seen anything unusual in the vehicle either.

Damn GPS. At least a dozen people made a wrong turn down that one-way street each week. Why couldn't people just go back to reading maps and paying attention to road signs?

O'Reilly's nicotine gum had lost its flavor, but he kept on chewing it anyway. He crossed his arms, looked down the street at his squad car, deciding what to do, then looked back at Duncan.

"Look, kid, I can't find anything on you, but you need to know that Maine isn't Mass. Namely, it's a bit longer before you can have a gang of people in your vehicle if you're under eighteen."

Duncan tilted his head back, reached up with both hands and folded them together over the top of his head. It seemed to stop his head from spinning, but his eyes were starting to sting. He stared up at a gray cloud that seemed to have followed him all the way from Boston.

"Relax," said O'Reilly. "This is still a Mass license but you need to change it pronto. I want you to find a ride for a few of your passengers, like your girlfriend's brother there. Make some phone calls, but not on the road. Do it at the museum."

"She's not my ... she's not ... I just met her."

O'Reilly waved his hand impatiently, motioning for Duncan to get back in the van. "Date, friend, BFF, whatever you all say now." He pulled a pad of paper and a pen from his inside jacket pocket and started writing.

As the door closed, O'Reilly ripped off the sheet from his notepad. "And another thing. I noticed you got a skateboard in there. Word to the wise. The property owners around here don't like skateboard punks ripping up their walkways and piazzas. You get?"

"I'm just storing it for a friend."

"For sure," said O'Reilly, holding out the sheet of paper. "This is a ticket."

Duncan just stared at it.

"Relax. It's not for you." He reached into the window and passed it to the back seat.

"For me?" said Charley, taking it from him.

Sheila leaned across Charley's lap and read out loud, "'Speeding ticket for running your mouth. Your Fine: Silence for the rest of the trip. Advice: No one likes a back seat driver.' Ha! That's pretty funny."

Charley crumpled the paper up in his hand and added it to the food wrappers at his feet.

"Back up and I'll wave you out into the street," O'Reilly said, giving a final pat to the window ledge.

Duncan put his seatbelt on then started the ignition. Placing a hand at the back of May's seat, he set the minivan in reverse.

She noticed that he wore about a dozen multicolored friendship bracelets on his wrist. His hand next to her smelled of scented soap, and his eyes were bloodshot like he'd been crying.

Great, she thought, the sensitive type.

### Chapter 2

### The Doomed Date

Like many small art museums in rural states, along with the shock of a lesser known Picasso or Van Gogh in the regular collection, from time to time there are exhibitions of other pieces of famous and rare art. Northern New England drives to Boston for culture, but time brings culture in the opposite direction as well; though somewhat more slowly than traveling on I-95, depending on the traffic.

May checked the time on her cell phone again and was frowned at by a passing security guard who seemed to think that all cell phone usage meant that people were taking photos—a big no-no at the museum.

She was on the never ending date. Doomed to wander around an art museum with a guy with whom she had nothing to talk about, who made stupid jokes about every painting, and who had made it obvious that he didn't think she was even remotely attractive. Since she had been forcibly stripped of her parka by Sheila at the coat check room, Duncan had ceased to look at her whatsoever aside from brief glances. He rarely stood in one spot long and when he did, he shifted on his feet like he was going to bolt off any second. He seemed twitchy for the date to be over, which was fine with her. Didn't she want it over herself? So what did she care if this guy was making it completely obvious that he thought she was dull and unattractive?

Shortly after splitting up from Sheila and Charley, she had excused herself to the restroom and washed off the makeup that Sheila had puttied on her while getting ready for this last minute escapade. May couldn't get all the eyeliner off, but at least her eyes had stopped itching, and she felt less like she belonged in a circus.

Before she left the restroom, May stuck her tongue out at her reflection in the mirror as she adjusted the top of the low cut tank she was wearing. She was glad she could at least tuck the tank top into her pants because the sweater Sheila had made her wear was just weird. It didn't even go all the way to her waist. Sheila called it a 'shrug', and it was rightly named since she'd like to shrug it off. Thankfully Sheila didn't have any hot pants or high heels that would fit her, so May had been allowed to wear her own jeans and sneakers.

When Duncan wasn't avoiding looking at her, he was usually trying to keep track of his little brother. The open spaces of the art museum and the vanilla shake at the burger joint they had stopped at for lunch were wreaking havoc on the nervous system of the five year old. The kid was zooming around like a jet engine.

Literally.

Luckily, it was almost closing time and most people were finding their way out of the museum into the gloomy winter evening to find a restaurant. In a plea bargain deal, Shane had avoided having to hold his older brother's hand by agreeing to stay in the same room.

"That sure is a lot of blood," said Duncan, twisting around to catch sight of Shane. "Are they nurses?"

"Not likely." She pointed to the placard on the wall. " _Judith Beheading Holofernes_ by Artemisia Gen-til-es-chi, yup, Gentileschi."

"By who?"

"By whom," she corrected.

She's got a little of her brother in her, thought Duncan. "Okay. By whom?"

"Artemisia Gentileschi."

"Not ringing any bells."

"Maybe because she's a woman?"

This date just keeps getting better and better, thought Duncan.

Shane buzzed by as a mock airplane. He wore a red Superman cape leftover from Halloween and it trailed out straight behind him as he zoomed around. He stopped making engine sounds for a second, halted in his tracks and said, "Look at all that blood!"

"They're cutting off his head," she told him. She sounded glad.

"Awesome!" said Shane before resuming his flight around the room. After a few seconds, the engine sounds cut out abruptly.

Duncan looked over his shoulder and caught sight of Shane prodding a spider on the floor with the toe of his sneaker. "Leave that alone," he said as his eyes traveled over the walls of the room, making sure there wasn't anything he'd have to explain to the kid later.

The rest of the paintings were pretty innocent looking: mostly still lifes of flowers and fruit, some ratty yellow tapestries in frames, a few portraits of people, (none of whom appeared to be living now and a few others, not when they were painted in the first place).

A couple paintings in the room were more interesting, like a peculiar one of a dog-faced girl and the one they were standing in front of which was of a guy getting massacred by two women.

Duncan thought he might know how the guy felt.

"What is this room supposed to be again?" he asked.

"The room is called 'Women in Art'," she answered primly, reading from the museum guide in her hand which she hadn't let go of since they'd arrived.

"Oh right. Now, I get it. I thought it was—" He waved his hand. "Never mind."

It took her a moment. "Oh, you mean you thought it was pictures of women, not _by_ women?" Without looking directly at him, she widened her eyes as though she thought he had expected the women to be naked.

"But ... it's not like I thought ... you know ..."

"No. What do you mean? Thought what?" She pursed her lips as she leafed through the guide.

"Never mind," he mumbled.

She found the page she was looking for and started reading out loud.

Again.

Every painting got the full treatment. He had hoped she would put the guide down somewhere so he could sneak it into a trash can, but she held onto it like it was a shield. The edges of the glossy paper were wrinkled and curled from how tight she was gripping it; he would have had to pry it out of her hands to get rid of it.

She read in a flat tone: "'Here we see Judith with her maidservant beheading Holofernes in order to save her people. The _Book of Judith_ is generally considered apocryphal by the protestant church and is not included in most Bible versions. Holofernes, a general of Nebuchadnezzar, de ... um ... " her voice slowed down, "... d—desired the beautiful widow, Judith. One night, getting him drunk and ...." She wrinkled her forehead and started reading silently to herself.

The story was just getting interesting. "And?" Duncan prompted.

She closed the guide. "Yeah. He was bad. She chopped off his head."

"Maybe the dude should have headed for the exit?" said Duncan.

"Right."

Right, he thought, watching her check the time on her cellphone again.

He was aware suddenly that there was complete silence in the room and spun around on his heel. There was no sign of Shane. "That little puke. I think he went into the next room. I'll be right back." As he walked to the door, he said, "Let's find the other two and head for the exit ourselves. They're just about to close the museum anyway."

"Sure," she answered, and he swore he heard relief in her voice.

The next room he walked into had an assortment of artwork in a mish-mash of styles, some unrecognizably shaped sculptures and for some unknown reason, a huge flat screen television—probably one of those modern art displays. The room did not, however, have any people whatsoever in it and definitely no five year olds in Superman capes.

Shane must have gone the other way, Duncan realized. He turned back around and felt the girl's eyes pinned on him as he continued straight through the room to the opposite door.

The room he entered was softly lighted and full of pottery and antique weapons. After checking around all the displays and glass stands, Duncan made up his mind to kill his little brother when he found him.

There was a security guard in the room. "Lose something?"

"Did a little kid run through here?" Duncan held a hand to his waist. "This high? Red cape?"

The guard shook his head.

Duncan must have missed Shane in the first room. He had only just glanced in it. Shane must be hiding behind one of the sculptures. The kid was probably just bored out of his mind and wanted to watch television. Heck, Duncan wanted to join him.

But he was still going to kill him anyway.

He turned around and nearly ran into the girl. They danced back and forth a few times before they finally skittered out of each other's way. She followed after him along with the security guard.

The room with the television was on an end. Besides the entrance doorway which led to the rest of the museum, there was only an emergency exit to the outdoors. Duncan made a circuit around some modern sculptures which looked like mutant cats. When he came up with nothing, he headed for the emergency exit.

"I wouldn't do that," warned the guard loudly.

The alarm went off throughout the museum as Duncan skidded onto a frost covered fire escape. Covering his ears with his hands as the alarm continued to sound, he leaned over the railing and peered down through the winter darkness at the lighted street below. His breath huffed into frozen nothingness, then in and out harshly as the cold air stung his lungs.

### Chapter 3

### The Search for Shane

Duncan Fergus O'Callahan sat on a bench in the lobby of the Museum of Maine with his elbows on his knees, his right leg bouncing, his forehead supported by his hands, and his gut acutely feeling the two burgers he had eaten several hours before. Next to him, his cousin Sheila rubbed his back until he finally held up his hand, motioning for her to stop.

He would give anything if Shane would only come out of hiding.

He might not even kill him.

The museum guards had reviewed every security tape, interviewed every patron on leaving, made a clean sweep of the museum and no little boys in superhero capes were found anywhere. The last footage they had of Shane was when he was in the same room with Duncan and May. He was seen leaving the room and after that—nothing. That was all the museum had of the five year old because the security camera of the last room he went into had malfunctioned.

The front desk attendant, Beverly, finished talking to Officer James O'Reilly and glided over to Duncan. She was a fiftyish blonde, on the plump side, with a sympathetic Carolina accent, French manicured fingernails and more rings than she had fingers for.

She put a light hand on his shoulder. "Honey, we've just called your parents." Duncan's face turned a shade of green May had only ever seen in a cartoon. Without completely standing up, he bolted across the lobby into the women's restroom.

After throwing up for the second time, Duncan flushed the toilet and sank down onto the cool tiles of the restroom floor. He couldn't imagine a more miserable day in his life. He had thought that losing his license was about the worst thing that could happen to him—that is, until he lost his little brother. What was he going to say to his mother? As far as his father was concerned, Duncan suspected it would just confirm what the man already thought.

Duncan was a screw up.

When he was eight years old, Duncan had lost a baseball card and he still wondered where it had gone. What happened when you lost a person? What was it like to always wonder where somebody had gone? Someone you had been responsible for keeping safe?

Where could Shane be? He was only a kid. He was lost. He was probably scared out of his wits.

Or maybe Shane was with some creeper.

And it was all his fault.

Duncan's throat hurt.

He fished out a pack of cigarettes from the front pouch pocket of his sweatshirt. He was down to his last two smokes. He had milked this last pack and then after it was done, he had intended to go cold turkey. It had been half a day since he'd had one. Why had he ever started in the first place? He got them from that old vending machine in the back room of the bowling alley. All the brightly colored packs looked like candy in that thing and the machine had gold knobs. Gold knobs! The old guy that ran the place didn't care. He looked like he'd been smoking since he was nine. Sounded like it too.

It wasn't like Duncan had even thought about it when he had put the money into the machine for the first time. It just kind of happened. Okay, maybe he had just let it happen. Or maybe, he just hadn't stopped it from happening. Anyhow, that was months ago. He wasn't in Boston anymore. He lived in the sticks now. The boondocks.

He was resourceful enough to find another source of cigarettes he realized, but it wouldn't be remotely legal and his parents had moved him here to stay out of trouble, not to get back into it.

And he was in enough trouble as it was. He couldn't afford to get into more.

He had always imagined that it would be easy to stop smoking when he wanted, but the fact that it was turning out to be so hard scared him. It scared him almost as much as Shane going missing.

But how could Shane have disappeared in such a short amount of time? Where could he be? A five year old doesn't just vanish into thin air.

Duncan gazed up at the fire sprinkler above the bathroom stall as he tapped out his second to last cigarette. He got his disposable lighter out of his jeans pocket and shook it. It was down to fumes. He had to spark it three times before he could get a pathetic little flame.

He took a long drag, leaned his head back against the side of the stall and blew the smoke out in a slow steady stream. He decided that he needed to start over, to go back to the room with the television. That was the last place Shane had been. He felt sure that's where he would find him.

It didn't make much sense, but there it was.

He heard the metal hinges of the heavy bathroom door creak. "Hey kid, are you okay?" He recognized the gruff voice of Officer O'Reilly, only his tone was different now—more good cop.

"Be out in a minute, officer."

"Come on, kid. Put it out and let's go."

The cop must be part bloodhound. Duncan took one last drag. Coughing, he chucked the butt into the bowl and flushed it.

May looked around the room in which Shane had disappeared. It held a hodge-podge collection of art. There were some modern pieces, but most were from the two previous centuries. Duncan had talked about there being a television in the room, but there wasn't any television that she could see. And that had her worried.

Because there was, coincidentally, a large painting of three knights galloping on horses through the mist down a forest road. The canvas was at least four feet high by six feet long, and chock full of chiaroscuro and rich dark colors. She recognized the painter's style from across the room before she even got close enough to read the flamboyant red signature.

He just loved drama.

As she came closer to the painting, she noticed that there weren't just three knights on horseback, but three knights and one small dark-haired boy in a red cape. One of the knights had a bulky arm around the boy's middle.

"What is this room called?" asked May without turning around.

"'Native Sons'," said the security guard who had escorted them all upstairs. The badge on his shirt labeled him as 'Bob'. He had a round, rubbery face, and looked about forty but was probably closer to thirty five.

"It doesn't look like Native American art," said Sheila.

"People mistake that a lot. They should really change the name. I wish they'd just call it 'Maine Artists', but I guess they think that's not fancy enough." Bob hitched up his belt then spread his hands out sympathetically. "Look, I know how you all must feel. But we've already searched this room. He's not here."

"Yes he is," insisted Duncan, standing next to May now. "He's right there." He pointed at the painting.

"That's just crazy, kid."

Charley snorted. "In that painting? Look, I fully understand that you want to find your brother, but you've lost your mind. We should go back to the lobby. Let the police do their job. This is ludicrous." Charley made a dismissive wave at the floor as he and the security guard headed for the door.

Nobody else moved. "You see the signature?" May said softly to Duncan. "This painter is Francis Carlisle. His real name was Francis O'Callahan. He's your great uncle. I don't know why, but the painting will let you inside it if you ask. Sometimes even if you don't."

"What are you talking about?" said Charley, stopping abruptly at the door, the rubber soles of his boat shoes giving out a loud squeak on the wooden floor.

"How?" asked Duncan.

"I know how it sounds..."

"No, I mean, how do I do it? It was moving before. I saw it when I went looking for him. I thought it was a t.v.." Duncan had very quick, dark brown eyes. He must have splashed his face with water before leaving the restroom. The ends of his hair, his lashes and his thick eyebrows were wet.

He should have called her crazy. What she had just said was nuts. "I can't. You have to be a blood relative. But Sheila can. She's done it before."

"What?" said Charley.

"There's no trick to it," said Sheila, stepping toward the painting. "Just try to—"

Duncan put his palms flat against the surface of the canvas and pushed.

"Hey kid, you can't do that!" Bob screeched, darting toward him, then stopping short when he saw the canvas flow around Duncan's hands as though he had plunged them into the surface of a pond. Green and silver light danced off the walls of the room.

Duncan pulled his hands away and backed up until he was pressed against the wall behind him. The fingers of his hands twitched momentarily, then stopped as though he had come to some decision. May watched his body lean forward slightly and sensed what he was about to do. She was ready when he took several long strides, leapt with both feet onto the bottom of the frame and jumped.

### Chapter 4

### A Bumpy Landing

She's trying to choke me to death, thought Duncan, as he saw the ground rushing up to meet him. If she didn't let go of the hood of his sweatshirt soon, they both might break something—elbows smashing ribs, knees smashing teeth; heads colliding, fracturing skulls.

Already her knobby knees were stabbing him in the kidneys.

He grabbed at the neck of his sweatshirt. The only consolation was that he might lose consciousness before he hit the ground and maybe it wouldn't hurt so much.

The last thing he'd expected was for her to come with him; her eyes had looked panicked when he'd last seen them.

Finally, he felt her let go of his hood, and he readied himself for impact. In the next few seconds, he would feel the ground against his feet. He would absorb the force of the landing with his knees and transfer the falling energy into a somersault roll over his right shoulder. Someone looking on would think it was a miracle that he ended up back on his feet.

That was how it was supposed to happen anyway. He didn't see the patch of loose rocks until it was too late. His solid landing turned into a crazy skid and a struggle to stay upright, his arms making manic windmills in the air.

The stones under his feet ended abruptly. His lower half stopped short while the rest of him pitched forward. His perfect landing turned into a belly-flop onto hard packed earth.

For a few moments he lay there, not moving, waiting for the sensations that would tell him if he had broken a bone. From experience, he knew that it was better to have an arm in a cast than a concussion, but by some miracle he seemed to have avoided both this time.

He checked around him for the girl as he staggered to his feet, saw her sprawled out in some weeds at the side of a rutted dirt road. She didn't seem to be moving. She might be hurt, possibly even dead, and he felt his stomach tighten.

He was about to walk toward her but stopped when he felt the earth vibrating under his sneakers. A second later, the vibrations turned into a rhythmic thumping. He looked quickly up and down the road and spotted a horse and rider coming straight at him. As he stared at them, judging whether to move left or right, the horse and rider saw him and changed course.

Duncan felt a rush of relief until he realized that the horse and rider were headed straight for the girl who was invisible in the tall grass.

May felt the ground tremble under her body, understood through a fog that she was in danger, but couldn't get her head together to do anything about it. She teetered in the gray zone between the light of consciousness and the blackness of a dreamless sleep.

At her feet, she heard hooting and yelling and lolled onto her back. Duncan was waving his arms and jumping up and down like an insane jack-in-the-box, making about the biggest racket anyone could. In her giddy state, she almost laughed.

Several thundering beats later, horse's hooves plowed past, only inches from her head. She shrieked, threw her arms over her face and scrunched herself into a ball. Clumps of hard packed dirt and pebbles stung the side of her face, her body, her legs.

After it was over, she felt Duncan grab her arms and shake her. "Get up!" he yelled. The urgency in his voice was echoed by drum beats of more horses' hooves. Without waiting for her to respond, he yanked her to standing, giving her a sensation of being airborne for an instant. He placed a hand to the small of her back, prodded her along, then pushed her behind a tree.

From a position of safety, they watched the white, silver and black blur of two horses race by. Trailing behind the last horse was the flaming red flag of a cape.

"Duncaaaaaaaan!" Shane's voiced bounced up and down with the motion of the horse.

Duncan bolted after them, but the horses just got farther away with each step. When they transformed into just a puff of dust on the road, he slowed to a jog and then stopped. Staggering, he bent over, clasped his knees, then sank down and flopped onto his back. One of his hands went to his forehead, and an elbow stuck up in the air. He didn't look like he was going to move anytime soon so May walked to him and stopped at his feet.

"I hate horses," she said.

Still on his back, he lifted his hand to block out the sun and gazed up at her with one eye closed. "I thought all girls loved horses."

"They scare the crap out of me."

"Aw, they're alright," he said, sitting up. With his legs open and his hands on the ground in front of him, he looked like a slumped puppet.

"You couldn't have caught them."

"It doesn't matter now. They won't make it long that way." He got to his feet and pulled his faded red baseball cap from the front pocket of his sweatshirt. "They'll have to stop soon to rest the horses."

"If they all don't break their necks first," said May with a snort.

He glanced at her strangely before dusting himself off with his hat.

Too late it occurred to her that his brother was on one of those horses.

She scratched her head and took her cellphone out of her pocket. The device wouldn't even turn on. She smirked at her face in the black void of the screen with her hair falling out of the bun in fuzzy whiffs.

"Does that thing work? Shane's got my cellphone." His voice sounded hopeful.

"Not likely. You need satellites and cell towers for that, Einstein." She put her cellphone in her pocket and tried to judge how long the road ahead was, as if she could tell by just looking.

"Oh, right, that was dumb," he said.

She watched him walk away from her in sullen silence, his bony shoulders protruding in right angles from his back.

If she had said the same thing to Charley, he would have dished something equally caustic back at her. Her parents did the same to one another. She was used to a volley of verbal arrows at her house.

And if some occasionally hit too close to the mark, she knew how not to make it show. But not this guy.

She made a mental note to watch her tongue. Who knew how long they'd be stuck together and there was only so much pouting she could take.

### Chapter 5

### Charley Takes the Plunge

In the few seconds it took Charley to cross the room after May and Duncan disappeared into the painting, he watched the surface of the canvas snap back from a swirling, living thing into a motionless work of art again. He had seen it with his own eyes and still wasn't sure what had happened.

He couldn't even begin to fathom the implications of what it might mean to science.

He imagined himself writing his MIT graduate thesis on the quantum reality of parallel worlds. Envisioned himself stepping up to receive his award...

He shook his head clear. What was he thinking?

His sister was in there!

Come to think of it, what was she thinking, grabbing hold of Sheila's cousin like that and plunging into some unknown quantum reality? Mousey May. He never would have guessed she was capable of that.

Only she might be dead right now. Or teleported into the future. Or the past. Or maybe her atoms were scattered across the time space continuum of the universe. Hopefully this universe.

Or she might just be all in one piece like Sheila kept telling him. And all alone with Sheila's cousin. The guy who was a half-wit from what he had gathered. Didn't Sheila say he was going to have to repeat a grade? A flunk out.

Alone with May, God help him.

How had that bony necked twig managed to jump like that anyway? Charley played baseball, basketball and lacrosse. He went to one of the top five public schools in the state; his lacrosse team was ranked third in the country.

Boston boy looked like he played video games in his basement.

Sheila had been staring at the painting for several minutes, wincing like she had a headache.

"Come on Sheila, hurry up! What's taking so long?"

The security guard had run downstairs in a dither right after everything happened. He would be back any second with the cavalry headed up by that surly cop, O'Reilly. Charley was glad his father was a lawyer.

Okay, he was a tax lawyer, but the point was, he knew people.

"Quickly, Sheila!" Man, she was slow about things.

"Stop hassling me, Charley. I'm doing my very best."

"That's what worries me," he said under his breath but loud enough for her to hear.

Charley spotted the museum brochure May had dropped on the floor and picked it up. The brochure was curled into the shape of a telescope. He flattened it out. She always held onto everything so tightly.

The canvas had stopped moving as soon as Boston and May had gone through it. The boy in the painting (it really had looked like Boston's brother) had disappeared. Now in the painting, only three knights galloped down the forest road on some unknown, but important looking mission. That was all. The boy had vanished from the scene, and no one else had showed up in it either.

Sheila was putting all her limited powers of concentration on the painting, but still nothing was happening.

"Come on Sheila! They'll arrive here any second."

"I know that."

"May's in there."

"And so are Duncan and Shane."

"But—"

"Charley!" she screamed, glaring at him to be quiet. She actually stomped her foot. Her eyes were so bright and blue that in spite of everything, he wanted to smile. She really was beautiful in a temper, he couldn't help thinking.

He nodded at her once. "Fine." Shoving the museum guide in his pocket, he paced up and down, keeping one eye on the door.

"See?" said Sheila, grabbing his arm suddenly. "You just needed to shut up."

"Oh Baby!" said Charley watching the moving canvas.

But then sheer logistics posed a problem. The painting was at eye level. How were they both to get in together? If he lifted her over the frame, he'd lose her completely. From how he understood it, he'd never make it through himself. Worse, as soon as he let her go, the painting might close up. Half of him might be lost in this world and half in another dimension. Charley shuddered.

Hurried voices could be heard from the room next door. No time to lose. He hoisted himself up so that he sat on the edge of the frame and clung to the side. He held out his hand and motioned to Sheila. "Come on," he yelled at her.

Sheila's sport of choice was swimming. She had toned muscles under soft curves that kept her afloat.

She was no gymnast.

Sheila halved herself on the bottom of the frame and tried to swing her right leg over several times. On the last try Charley caught her calf and pulled it over the side.

Sheila yowled like a cat, but at least some of her was where it needed to be.

Charley felt sure that if only her backside could make it over the edge of the frame then the rest of her would logically go with it by the sheer force of gravity.

There would be faces at the door any second. No time for niceties. He leaned forward, grabbed hold and hauled with everything he had.

He had been right, he thought, as they both toppled backwards together.

But then he usually was.

Charley was blasted all at once by a rush of cold water against his back that took his breath away. Then he was being pushed along, sliding over rocks while his eyes were assaulted by bright flashes of knife-edged sunlight. Coming out of the muted dimness of the museum into this hell of sudden light was a torture for Charley, and he shut his light blue eyes against it.

Sheila slipped from his grasp, wrenched away by the flowing water. He forced his eyes open for a second and caught a glimpse of her a few feet away. Like him, she was trying to get a handhold on the slimy rocks as she rushed past them.

The riverbed dropped out from under his feet and he could just touch bottom now, but there was no getting a foothold on anything solid. The smooth soles of his deck shoes skidded over the water worn rocks below. There didn't seem to be any sand or silt to sink into. The river ran even faster here and the current was strong enough to carry away any loose soil downstream. He forced his eyes open and saw mist rising up past a sheer drop ahead of him. He knew that could only mean one thing.

Charley redoubled his efforts and ground his heels against the rocks of the river bed. He turned around and fought the current, but he was no match for thousands of gallons of flowing water. He tumbled onto his back again, trying to decide how one should go over a waterfall and decided face-out would probably be best, though he didn't have one good solid reason why. He made a note to google it in the future if he survived. Though he was a devout atheist, if he had known any prayers, he would have said them.

Next, he was cresting the top of the falls, whooshing along with the water, falling, falling a distance of feet, a few yards, then mercifully into water deep enough to plunge into full length, touch bottom, push off to the surface again, where he burst up, breathed deeply, then treaded water. He felt a coolness of shade against his face and opened his eyes.

Sheila had already made it to the surface. When she saw him, she swam over, then clung to his arm as though she needed to make sure he was real. She smiled at him.

Feeling the pressure of her fingernails through his shirt and the pull of her weight, unbalancing him in the water, he had the impulse to shake her off. Instead, he gestured with his head to the riverbank. She let go of him and they swam over to it together.

### Chapter 6

### In the Dark Woods

Duncan swatted another mosquito, this time on his neck. Ever since entering the forest, a barrage of insects had descended on him with a vengeance.

Her Highness didn't seem to be bothered by them at all.

The mosquitos were even able to sting him through his tee-shirt. He could feel one on his back right now. "Oh come on!" he gasped, doing a little dance, twirling around with his arms scissoring over his head. His sweatshirt, which had been slung over his shoulder, fell to the ground.

"Why don't you just put on your sweatshirt again?" she asked when he picked it up.

"Too hot," he said miserably.

"I feel fine."

He massacred another insect on his chest then brushed the mangled body off his shirt.

"In case you're wondering, it's because they don't like me," she said.

"Who doesn't?"

"The bugs, Duncan." She managed to say his name in the same tone as he imagined that she would have said 'moron'. "Or you could say it's really that they like you better. As long as there's someone else around they would rather bite, they don't bother me at all."

He wasn't surprised. By the look of her, her blood was probably water. "So you're saying I'm like your personal bug zapper?"

She took her eyes off the ground for a moment and flashed a smile. "Yeah." Then as quickly as it had appeared, the smile vanished.

When he was seven, Duncan's dog had chased a kitten under his neighbor's porch. As a small boy, he had spent several hours coaxing the animal out of the dark crawlspace. He had managed it in the end, but not without getting a few scratches. Without knowing why, he wanted to chase her smile to wherever it had gone and bring it back out again.

He heard the hum of another mosquito fly in for a kill. When it landed on his forearm, he left it there. "Hey..." He still couldn't remember her name, so he tapped her shoulder lightly. "Hey you, there. Watch. If you flex your muscle, they get stuck and can't fly." He let the mosquito gorge itself until it was bloated—until it looked like a ball with two puny wings and strings for legs. When the insect struggled to lift off, he flicked his index finger at it. The delicate membrane of its body burst, spattering micro-droplets of his blood into the air.

Her eyes almost doubled in size. "It exploded!" She looked disgusted and impressed at the same time. Then she laughed. "That was completely gross!"

Watching her face, he rubbed his arm. The bug bite was already starting to itch, but it had been worth it.

Catching him grinning at her, she stopped smiling suddenly and pinned her eyes on his left shoulder so that he wondered if there might be something on it. "But you shouldn't let them bite you like that. They carry diseases like West Nile Virus and Triple E. You know, Eastern Equine Encephalitis. It can cause brain swelling." The smiling girl had turned into a textbook.

He smacked the back of his neck. "Bzzt." Then his forehead. "Bzzt." His elbow. "Bzzt."

"Funny," she said, beginning to walk again.

"Just doing my job, bzzt," he said, following her.

"You can stop now."

"Bzzt."

"No really."

"Bzzt."

"Duncan?" It was a tone of warning.

"Fine," he said sullenly.

In reality, he didn't even mind arguing with this girl. Talking kept his mind off Shane and off of how he felt—which was all wrong. Duncan realized he wasn't as worried as he was angry at his brother. Why couldn't he have just listened for once?

On top of this emotional confusion in him was a growing list of bodily aggravations. The mosquitos swarming all over just added to Duncan's growing list of internal complaints. He was thirsty from running, from walking the good part of an hour, and from roasting alive in his jeans and black tee-shirt. Starving beyond belief, he felt like a piece of scrap paper torn in half, and grinding underneath it all, there was the itching drive for nicotine in his blood that was driving him insane. Normally at ease in his body, he felt like he had left his skin out overnight and it had shrunk before he put it back on.

In addition, accustomed as he was to having a constant (if not always welcome) companion in his little brother, he was not used to silence, nor was it his natural default. But he resolved as he walked that he would not talk unless she talked to him first, recognizing that he was in danger of falling into a stream of complaining, something his father always accused him of doing. Somehow he didn't want this girl thinking of him in that way.

The canopy of leaves above let in glimpses of sunlight that dappled the road ahead in shades of green and yellow. Barring all his internal annoyances and worries, the walk might have been called enjoyable. It had been a while since he'd been in the woods and Duncan was aware of the background sounds of chirruping and buzzing. From farther away, he picked up the sound of water from a shallow river playing over rocks. It reminded him of old ladies gossiping at the street market in Boston. If he tried hard enough, he felt like he might be able to catch a few words. Unfortunately, the only word he imagined he heard was 'water' which only made him feel that much thirstier.

It might have helped to take his mind off things if the girl would at least start a conversation once in a while, but she didn't seem to have any need.

Without intending to, he said, "This is so different from the city."

"Missing all that gray, you mean?" She never seemed to look up from the ground as she walked.

He shook his head. "For sure, there's gray. But Boston is old. It's got a lot of red brick."

"Gray and red. I stand corrected then."

"Plus yellow from the cabs."

"Okay, gray, red and yellow."

"Blue awnings."

"Awnings? Ha!"

"What?"

"I'm just surprised you know that word. Okay, gray, red, yellow, blue." She ticked them off on the fingers of her right hand.

"And there's green, too."

"Is that from the overpass bridges?"

"No, the park. They run the duck boats there."

Her thumb shot up in the air.

"And there's also gold," he said. "There's this building covered in glass and when the sun hits it just right, it looks like it's on fire."

"I'll need another hand for that." She held up all of the fingers of her left hand and wiggled them. "Fire." She lifted her eyes from the ground and grinned at him, but not like before. She looked like she was calling him a fool.

He realized he'd said too much when he hadn't even planned on saying anything at all. He felt a rush of blood to his face and looked away, not sure if he was embarrassed or angry, then realized he was both.

She dropped the smile and her hands at the same time. From out of the corner of his eye, he saw her frown. She made little shakes of her head that made her hair bounce around at the back of the bun. She said, "I went on a duck boat tour once. It was fun."

"Maybe you should go again sometime." His tone said plainly, 'not with me'.

"Maybe," she said softly. In fact, she said it so softly, he almost didn't hear it.

He felt a pang in his gut for the tone he had used. She was such a strange girl, sullen and sarcastic, but it wasn't like she chose to be. She just didn't seem to know how to be any different.

He blew out his breath. "You should go in the springtime. I don't think they run the duck boats in the winter—you know, because of the ice."

She nodded. "That makes sense. Maybe when I get my license."

"They've slowed down," said Duncan.

"The boats?"

"The horses."

"How do you know?"

"Poop looks different." He nudged her over with his shoulder so she wouldn't step in a steaming pile. "Still warm, too. They must be close."

"Yuck."

"That would have been crappy if you'd stepped in that."

She nodded.

"It would have pooped you out trying to get that off your sneaker."

She flashed him a warning look and a shaft of sunlight caught her amber eyes in a glow. He felt a flutter in his chest.

I really am a fool, he thought, staring at her.

Her eyes went to his left shoulder again. She lifted a finger and pointed it weakly at him. "Um ... there's a mosquito on your neck."

"Where?" he said, lifting his hand to the wrong side.

"Oh, here," she said almost peevishly, hitting him with more force than she looked capable of having in her entire body.

He chuckled as he fingered the spot. "That's gonna leave a mark."

She shook the dead bug off her hand, then brushed her fingers together with a pinched up face. "You're sweaty." She rubbed her hand on her hip.

Duncan thought he heard the river gossiping again, but this time it wasn't in the soft swishing tones of old women's voices, but lower, like men's—and getting closer by the second.

The girl looked up with wide eyes and swept the forest with them. He waited until her eyes stopped on his face, then he put a finger to his lips. He glanced behind him, then backed up into the forest and motioned for her to follow.

To say that Duncan 'saw' the tree stump too late would be incorrect since he never 'saw' it at all. He did however feel it against the back of his heel just before he tripped over it. On his way down, he fought to regain his balance and was aided for a moment by the girl grabbing the front of his tee-shirt. They held upright for a second then toppled over together into the ferns and saplings at the forest edge.

### Chapter 7

### Three Knights

May watched Duncan rub his left side where her elbow had made impact with something yielding under his rib cage. Hopefully not his spleen. She tried to remember which side that was on. Otherwise, he had made a lousy cushion, more like falling onto a floor strewn with Legos than a human being.

By some instinct, Duncan had grasped both of her shoulders on the way down and held her a little away from himself so that they didn't knock heads. Since he didn't appear to be able to avoid falling in general, May reasoned that he must have developed the ability to do it with the least amount of bodily damage.

She looked around at the three knights surrounding Duncan and herself. There was no sign of Shane anywhere.

The oldest knight was the most impressive of the three. He had a full reddish beard, golden hair long to the shoulders, and large blue eyes that sparkled with the wary cunning of an old soldier. He was of average height, broad shouldered and with the muscular bulk of a man in his forties used to physical labor. He was the only knight wearing full silver armor, if it could be called silver. Tarnished as it was, he might have pillaged it from a dead warrior's tomb. He held Duncan's arm firmly in a hairy bare hand, mottled purplish-red by scars.

Duncan doubled over, put his hands on his knees and moaned. May hoped he wasn't going to throw up again. The last time he did that, in the restroom of the lobby, the whole museum had heard him and it hadn't sounded pretty.

"What ails him, father?" asked a tall young knight in a white tunic, taking a step backward. "Has he a disease?" The knight had pale blond hair and a sparse young man's beard in a filmy frowse on his chin.

"I think not," said the father in a voice that sounded like fighting, whiskey and disappointment. In the disappointment there were traces of kindness. "What ails you, lad?"

Duncan looked up across the circle at May. His eyes caught hers.

May understood from his look that he was faking it, hoping she would run. Supposing she was no threat, no one held her; a distraction might allow them both to go free.

She shook her head slightly at him and said pointedly, "He'll be alright in a moment."

Duncan looked at her insistently, seeming almost angry that she refused to take the hint.

Let him be angry, she thought. If he wants to find his brother at all, he needs to know what these three have done with him.

Standing next to May was the last knight, who really wasn't a knight at all, but a golden haired boy of about twelve. He stood about May's height and wore chain mail over an oversized tunic. A dagger was suspended at his hip by a baldric of black and white tartan plaid.

Duncan decided to take matters into his own hands. Still hunched over, he mouthed the word, _run_ , to May. Then he twisted his arm out of the grasp of the older knight, managing to wrench himself free and putting several feet of distance between them before the knight got hold of him again. Duncan's arm snapped back suddenly like a catapult and whacked the man in the face.

The old soldier put his brawny hand to his nose and a foot out at the same time. Duncan didn't even get started running. Both legs got knocked out from under him by a single boot to the back of his knees.

Blood dripped through the knight's fingers as he stomped once and swore—or May assumed that's what he was doing, since he didn't seem to be speaking English. Flat on his back, Duncan cringed on the ground and made a move to get up, but the knight placed his boot on Duncan's chest, pushed him back down and pinned him there like a skewered butterfly.

May listened to the birds cawing and scattering into the air, mimicking her own desire to run. She tried to gauge if the knight would draw his sword next.

Her eyes went to the hilt of the dagger worn by the boy next to her. He seemed to have the same wary cunning as his father, for the boy put his gloved hand to the gilded handle at his hip and checked her with a sideways glance in case she got the bright idea to take it.

The older knight swore some more in another language, then said in English with a broad Scottish accent, "You damned stupit callant! Bones of the martyr, that smarts!" Then, incredibly, still with his hand to his nose, he began to laugh loudly, making bubbles of blood foam through the mess on his face and causing a torrent of blood to rush down.

He stopped laughing, then tipped his head back to staunch the flow. Blood gushed to his ear in a red rivulet.

He's doing it all wrong, thought May. "He's going to need water," she said to the boy next to her. Still with his gloved hand over his dagger hilt, the boy nodded once and ran off. To the young knight, who stared at his father's blood in pallid horror, she said, "Do you have a handkerchief? If anyone looked like he might be carrying a handkerchief, it was this guy, and she would lay good odds it was monogrammed.

The young knight swiveled his head on his thin neck to face her. Maybe it was the fact that he didn't turn his body when he did it, but there was something silky and unnatural in the way he moved which made her hair stand on end. He slowly blinked lidded blue-white eyes as he felt around in a sleeve and brought out a handkerchief which she almost didn't take from him.

The wounded knight, still bleeding, sat down next to Duncan who was instructing him where to pinch the bridge of his nose in the right spot. Thick red blood was oozing down the knight's face and dripping out of his beard. In between directions, Duncan winced several times and apologized a half dozen more.

The boy made it back with water from the stream in a small bottle and began cleaning away the blood from the knight's face with the handkerchief May handed him.

Duncan apologized again.

"Ach, I've taken worse, lad, though it was a good solid sock, if I do say, and I dinnae wonder at what you might have done if you'd meant it."

This prompted Duncan to apologize again.

The man peered at him quizzically from under his pinched fingers. "I would no have hesitated to ha' done worse in your boots. So think no more on it. I'm Sir Ulric, Lord of Carterhaugh. This is my son, Ron, and this young lad," here he put his free hand on the boy's shoulder kneeling next to him, "is my young squire, Kevin. I'm guessing you'll be looking for the wee lad?"

"He's my brother," said Duncan.

"Yes, I see it. There's a familiar-like look to you both. I would have told you what you wanted to know before now had I not been accosted with such a vehemence."

Duncan opened his mouth and May decided to cut in before he could apologize anymore. "Where is he now? Do you still have him?"

"Nay, lass. We tried to protect him, but we failed."

"We did our best," said Ron. "We ran our horses ragged while you left a young boy here to be eaten by wolves and spirited away by witches."

"Witches?" said Duncan breathlessly, the color draining from his face.

"We? It was you that had him, Ron," said Kevin, tossing down the bloody handkerchief and getting to his feet. "He was in your charge when we went to tie up the horses." His body held the tenseness of a cocked crossbow. Someday he would be more than a match for the older boy, but right now it was in spirit rather than size.

"Sir Ron, to you, squire," said the knight, glaring at the boy with sinister eyes and a little smile twitching the corner of his mouth.

"Watch yourself, Kevin," cautioned Ulric. "Ron has already told us she sent a spell over him, as we all ken she can do."

May felt like she was in the middle of a family squabble. She held up her hands. "Can you just tell us where he is?"

"The Faerie Queen has him," said Ulric.

"Aren't fairies supposed to be good?" said Duncan.

Ulric cast a glance at Ron before answering. Seeming to choose his words carefully, he said, "She has looks that can beguile a man at first, and I still think there is more mischief than evil in her, but her hoard of minions are hideous to look at and cast spells and crafts of the most sinister designs. I am sorry we couldnae keep the boy from her, but I dinnae think the lad is in bodily danger at the present."

"What could she want with him?" asked May.

"Her own son was taken from her," said Ulric. "Mayhap, she took him as a changeling."

"A changeling?" said Duncan.

May said, mostly for Duncan's benefit, "You mean, she took a human child to replace the one that was taken from her?"

Ulric nodded.

"What will she do to him?" asked Duncan.

Ulric took a moment before speaking. "I think, for now, she would make it so he doesnae want to leave. The longer he stays in the fairy world, more and more he will forget where he's from, forget all the ones he knows and loves. It takes patience and love to bring one back from that."

Duncan said, "He won't forget his big brother. He doesn't go anywhere without me."

From what May had seen, it was closer to the other way around. The kid worshipped him. Duncan probably couldn't lose the kid if he tried.

But somehow he had lost him, and he hadn't even been trying.

Duncan could have been thinking the same thing; he was looking more confused by the second.

Kevin asked, "But Sir, what about the tithe? It's the seventh year."

"Ach, I had forgotten," said Ulric. He drew his hand away from his nose slowly. His eyes were starting to blacken underneath, but the blood had begun to congeal and the bleeding had slowed to a trickle. "You see, every seven years, all that power must be paid for. The tithe we speak of is to the devil."

"But father, I hardly think—I can't think—she will sacrifice the boy, do you?" said Ron.

"Sacrifice?" said Duncan.

"Normally, I wouldnae think so since he is scarcely at the age of reason, but where in her wide kingdom is there anyone she can? The devil doesn't want what he already owns," said Ulric.

"Sacrifice?" repeated Duncan, looking around for an explanation from someone—anyone.

Ulric answered his look. "In three nights time it will be Halloween Eve when the tithe needs to be paid. Until then, your brother is safe, but you'll need to find him and coax him away before then, and make no mistake—it will be no easy task. The sacrifice has to be a willing one, and you may be sure that she'll try her best to ply him with her devil tricks."

"Will she...?" Duncan went white.

"Kill the boy? Worse. Once the tithe is paid, then your brother is like one lost forever. He'll be added to her wicked hoard, forced to do her bidding and all manner of evil."

"Will you help us?" asked May.

"By the saints," cried Ulric, clanging a fist against his chest. "I swear it."

"But sir, your horse is lame," said Kevin.

"Ach, so it is. My horse has lost a shoe. We must catch up with you on the road. Can ye ride?"

"Yes," said Duncan.

"No," said May, a beat too late.

"You will borrow my squire's horse," said Ulric.

Kevin flung a dire look at Ulric. "But sir—? Sir! Why mine? It was his fault!" He pointed at the culprit.

Ulric flashed him a fierce look, and Kevin pinned his eyes on the ground while Ron hid a nasty smile. "Go on," Ulric ordered.

Kevin rubbed a sleeve over his eyes once, then walked to where his horse was fastened to a tree branch.

"We'll catch up in a thrice," said Ulric. "Keep you to the lane. Its guide is the river, so you'll always have fresh water. When you get to the well at the crossroads, you will see the way to the Faerie Queen's castle."

Watching Kevin bring the horse to them, May asked, "Can't we just walk?"

Sir Ulric shook his head. "It is a two day's journey by horse, four to walk." He bid them goodbye, and he and Ron went to examine their horses.

May had only seen horses from a distance at the state fair. She remembered the smell of hay and manure mostly, and the buzz of flies, and the sheer massive looming size of the animals. At least this one seemed shorter than the ones at the fair, but its hind quarters were restless and its hooves pattered the ground as though it sensed its owner's unease. It scampered side to side as Kevin held the bridle steady.

"I know she's not so big," he said, stroking her neck, then nuzzling her blaze. "But she's unco spirited."

Duncan said, "I won't let anything happen to her, I promise. What's her name?"

"Evangeline." Kevin might have whispered it out of a dream by the way he said it.

This boy is way too attached to his horse, thought May.

Kevin came a little out of his daze, and said in an altogether different tone, "It's not the name she came with. I think that was Mabel or something."

Duncan held out his hand to the horse and she snorted into his palm. "Hello, Evangeline. I'm Duncan." The horse flicked her head and knocked off his baseball cap. "I think she likes me," he said, retrieving his hat from the ground. He turned to May. "Don't you want to introduce yourself?"

The hide of the young animal glistened russet tones that stretched over taut muscles. May shook her head. "No thanks."

Duncan looked disappointed. "Are you sure?"

"I'm good."

Kevin took hold of the bridle and nodded. Duncan took a breath and widened his eyes before tucking his sweatshirt in front of the saddle. He put his foot in the stirrup, then pulled himself up neatly into the saddle.

The horse whinnied and fidgeted under the unfamiliar rider but steadied as he got the animal under control.

"Hold her steady," said Kevin. He let go of the bridle and making a cup of his gloved hands so May could mount, he said, "You next, Miss." When she didn't step forward immediately, he said over his shoulder with an impish look, "Faith woman, she doesnae bite!"

She half expected him to add, 'much', but she stepped forward and placed her foot in Kevin's makeshift step.

Leaning down, Duncan held out his hand to her. One of the bracelets on his wrist was orange and the untrimmed strings of thread that shot out of it reminded her of fireworks. He wiggled the fingers of his hand. "Come on. She's fine now."

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. After all, he _had_ managed to get the horse under control.

Duncan snatched her hand suddenly before she could lose her nerve and with a boost from Kevin, they hoisted her up into the saddle before she even got a chance to do anything. She might as well have flown onto the horse's back.

Immediately, the horse began fidgeting and whinnying.

"This is not comfortable," she yelled as her hands searched around for a secure place to grab hold and found none.

"You're telling me," said Duncan, as he tried to control the horse. "I should have told you to sit off the back of the saddle."

"Oh, sorry," said May, sliding backward as she still searched around for a place to hang on.

The horse whinnied and shook her head at Kevin, who made his voice soft as though he were comforting a crying baby. "Wsht, wsht. There, there now."

Not only was May closer to a horse than she had even been in her life, but she was also much closer to any boy of her own age, and that included her brother who by mutual agreement had kept a respectful distance since puberty. Had the horse not been skittering underneath them both, May would have leapt off its back and run into the woods.

Once Evangeline calmed under the extra weight, Kevin started yelling at May. "Bones of the martyr, miss! You'll be goin' over the ass end for sure. You'll need to clasp ahold of your sweetheart there."

She was being scolded by a twelve year old Rob Roy. "Excuse me?" she said.

At her look, he checked his tone. "Begging yer pardon, miss. Only, I thought ye both were—"

He dropped his apology suddenly and went back on chiding her. "It's just that the weight's too funny for her. She's used to one rider, not two going in different directions. With your hands going windmill-like she'll be like to bolt an' hurt herself! Don't you ken anything?"

His scolding tone appeared more aimed at protecting his beloved horse rather than for her own safety.

She wanted to tell him off but was afraid her yelling might upset the horse who had finally calmed down. She stared at Duncan's bony back. Was he smiling or grimacing? She had no idea whether he might not just shrug her off if she attempted to put her arms around him.

"Go on," said Kevin, waiting with the bridle in his hands.

Duncan turned his head to the side. She watched his Adam's apple bob up and down in his skinny neck. "He's right, you know. It would help."

She slid one hand around him and felt his body tense. She followed around with the other and he hunched over like he was in pain.

"What's wrong?" she asked, taking her hands off him.

She heard him giggling. Given the usual low sound of his voice, it was an unexpected contrast and she couldn't help smiling. "No really. You're ticklish?" she said.

He nodded, then inhaled a breath.

She replaced her arms around him, this time firmly. His tee-shirt was really soft like it had been washed a million times. Nothing seemed soft underneath the tee-shirt though: all girders and wire cables. In the hollow where his stomach should have been, she felt a gurgle and suddenly remembered they hadn't eaten for a while.

"Is there anything in these saddlebags?" she asked Kevin.

"There's a little bread and cheese, a goodly amount of carrots—for the horse—a little beer. No beer for her, though, it makes her bilious and believe me, you dinnae want that! It's no much, but you're welcome to it. Sir Ulric will give me more. He talks a' bluster, but he's got a kind heart."

"You look just like him," she said. "Maybe he just expects more of you than your brother."

"Brother? Ron's no my brother. Son o' that witch he is from under a black spell over Sir Ulric." He made an unfamiliar motion with his hand which she supposed was some kind of charm against evil.

"Ulric's not your father?" she said in a disbelieving tone. The resemblance was so close that Ulric might have spit on the ground and formed the boy out of the resulting mud. "Are you sure of that?"

"Would he were! No, my father went to the Holy Land before I was born. Long dead now, I suppose. Sir Ulric took me in when my mother died. God rest her soul."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said May. "I guess we both assumed wrong."

"Take good care of her," said Kevin, stroking the horse's flank.

"I promise I won't let anything happen to her," said Duncan.

"To the horse or your sweetheart?"

"Both," said Duncan, and then realized what he'd said. "No, I meant—"

"I ken what ye meant," Kevin said, winking. He smacked the back end of the horse lightly, starting her into motion.

What a cheeky little devil, thought May, hanging onto Duncan for dear life.

### Chapter 8

### The Fog

Sheila's clothes were almost dry now. It was getting easier to walk in them. After getting out of the river, she and Charley had been hiking through a rugged forest, with no road or trail to follow.

She hoped it wouldn't be too long before finding the others, but in her heart she wasn't completely unhappy about this exciting turn of events. Life had grown dull over the last few months. School was an endless round of getting up earlier than any human would normally have any desire to and learning about stuff you would never use in probably a century—like what a predicate was and just about all of algebra.

She watched Charley threading his way over logs and through trees with his long legs and once again thought he was handsome in that Downton Abbey kind of way that made him look like he could carry off an English accent if he wanted. Funny how May was kind of like him and yet not, too. She was a lot smaller for one thing, delicate even, and Charley had a fine bigness to him all over that gave Sheila the shivers when she thought about it, only in a good way.

Trouble was, he was always so serious about things. But it was only the things that he thought mattered, never about the things that mattered to her. It wasn't all bad, though. Going steady with him, her grades had improved over the last few months, and that was good. And he had helped her study for her driving test. That was good too. And she had seen a lot more PBS than with any other boyfriend that she'd ever had, though if she watched another documentary on string theory or time, she might just die.

She had originally thought that the documentaries he wanted to watch were just for background noise, as an excuse so they could cuddle, but he actually wanted to watch them and couldn't seem to concentrate when she touched him at all unless she was just holding his hand. Even nibbling an earlobe was completely out of the question.

It wasn't that he wasn't interested at all in cuddling, he just had certain circumscribed times and places for it, which were, she admitted, very short and very circumscribed, and during documentaries was neither the time nor the place, in his mind. For that matter, he probably would have been surprised to find out that it was either the time or place for anybody else.

Just recently over the past three weeks, she kept waking up with the same dream of riding on the back of Tony Enrico's motorcycle. The dream seemed so real that she woke up actually feeling his darkly tanned and tattooed skin under her hands, warmed from the sunshine. Just thinking about it, she could feel it now. She turned the palms of her hands over to look at them to see if they were red because they were burning as much as her face.

She feared for a moment that Charley would ask her what she was thinking all of a sudden, as other boys always did now and then, making sure she was only thinking of them she imagined. Boys could be so self-absorbed.

She knew what a bad liar she was, and she never seemed to be able to get better at it. Luckily however, Charley was rarely interested in any thoughts that might run through her head. She was beginning to suspect he either didn't care or didn't think she thought anything at all when she wasn't talking out loud.

Tony had been so forward when she saw him last. He was hanging on the street corner and said something completely scandalous to her. But he was always fresh like that. He had a way of looking you over like you were the only thing that existed in the world: like you were a glass of water and he was dying in the desert and only you could save him by giving yourself up.

But what a way to go!

She began to notice that the trees had thinned out and were being replaced by marshland to her left. Ahead she saw sand, and as they walked forward, dark rock and the jagged, edgy coastland of Maine appeared out of a murky gray fog bank. They stopped at the water's edge, and she heard the jangle and clank of an ocean buoy from somewhere out at sea and then a foghorn sounded.

She turned to watch Charley gaze at the fog, frown at it as if it were placed in his way on purpose, put both his hands on his hips. Sucking a tooth, he looked to his left down the coastline, and then to his right. You could see for miles in either direction, but what you couldn't see was what was directly in front of you for more than a few feet.

Charley was always trying to figure everything out in his brain as if all that mattered about the world was what sense he could make of it.

What was he thinking? she wondered. Probably nothing that she would ever think of in a million years.

The foghorn sounded again. After it ended, she heard gulls crying overhead and looked up. The birds appeared miraculously out of the fog like they had condensed out of their cry, then returned to the gray again as though they had never existed at all.

She inhaled and smelled sea roses, fresh kelp and the ocean. The sun was setting and made the fog glow orange and red. It was all so beautiful and yet so sad at the same time. Gulls always sounded to her like they were crying for someone who was dead or lost forever.

It seemed funny to her that here she was with Charley, and she realized she would have felt less alone if he hadn't been there at all. How was it you could feel more alone when you were with someone than without them? As the foghorn sounded again, she left him standing there trying to figure it all out, what to do next instead of turning to her, perhaps telling her how beautiful the mist looked, how beautiful she looked, how in spite of everything right now, he was glad she was here with him. Something. Anything.

She walked up to the waves which, like the gulls, seemed to coalesce out of the mist and return back to it like a mystery. She was wearing a short ruffled skirt which made her legs cold in the winter and which picked up the icy wind in a way that annoyed and hampered her when she walked, but which she had chosen this morning because Charley thought it was sexy. She slipped out of her high heeled boots, peeled off her striped black and white thigh high stockings, and stepped into the waves.

The iciness of the water stunned her. The undertow sucked at her heels and emptied the sand around them, scooping it away from underneath her feet. She felt the tickle of the sand whisking away, back into the sea, and felt inexpressibly sad. Then with all the sand gone from under her feet and nothing left to stand on, she stumbled. Regaining her balance, she saw her vision blur into a haze and began to cry without making a sound.

Half a dozen tears dropped silently into the water. She watched them become part of the sea and wondered how tears could be so much like the ocean that it was as if you only just borrowed them for a time.

She shed one more tear into the sea, and that made the seventh.

The fog backed away from Sheila like smoke blown away from a fire. At the same time, the sky darkened and the moon began to glow like a lantern through the sheer white curtain of fog.

She heard Charley moving up behind her with his slow methodical steps like the beat of a metronome, and she quickly rubbed at her face as though she were only tired. He would only tease her if he saw her tears.

Sounding pretty pleased with himself, he said, "I think we might be able to locate a ship if we just wait long enough." He showed her the museum brochure in his hand and pointed at a picture. She could barely see it in the dark. "See? _Moonlight Fishing Scene_ , by Mary Blood Mellen. Thank goodness that foghorn finally stopped. It was driving me crazy. It must be from the lighthouse, though it's probably occluded by the fog."

"There's a lighthouse?" she said, squinting. "How can you tell?"

"There's supposed to be anyway, according to this. The foghorn is a good sign, but maybe the lighthouse beacon isn't working."

"Hey Charley, I have an idea."

"I thought I smelled something burning."

How come he never seemed to make it sound like a joke?

"Oh, stop it, Charley. It's just that Duncan and I used to play games outside at night in the dark."

"Oh, really." He raised his eyebrows as he put the brochure away in his pocket.

She didn't like the way he'd said it. "That isn't funny, Charley. That's going too far. He's like a brother to me, you know that."

"Come on. It was only a joke. Kissing cousins and all that."

"It wasn't funny." Most of his jokes weren't. "Anyhow, we used to play hide and seek and flashlight tag, ghosts in the graveyard and stuff. All I was going to say is that when my mom wanted us to come in, she would flash the porch light."

"So?"

"Like a signal."

"Morse code?"

"What?"

"Oh right. I daresay your mom wouldn't know what that is. Go on."

"It was just our own signal. Short, short, long, short, short. Like that. It just meant 'time to come home'."

"Wait a minute," said Charley. "I have an idea. Maybe if we can get the lamp to work, we can make that signal from the lighthouse, then your cousin can see it and ascertain where we are."

"But how will we get out there?"

"There are fishing boats in the painting," said Charley. "Maybe we can flag one down if they approach close enough to shore."

"Hoy," shouted a strong voice cutting over the waves.

"Hello?" said Sheila, peering out into the darkness and fog, reaching for Charley who had stepped forward, her fingers not finding him.

A fishing dinghy came gliding in on a wave, emerging out of the mist like a bogle. The man inside of the small boat said, "You there, grab hold." He was speaking to Charley. She knew that just by the tone. A man used a certain tone to another man. The words were harsher, more abrupt, but plainer, too. Men usually talked to you different: quieter, sweeter, almost like they were talking to a child.

Of course, once they really got familiar, then they didn't seem to feel the need to be so polite or sweet anymore. Then they seemed to say all kinds of things to you. Some of it you liked, some of it you didn't.

When Charley stepped forward and held the boat steady in the waves, the man said, "Climb aboard, miss. I'm headed to the lighthouse."

She looked to Charley who gave her a nod and snapped, "Well, what are you waiting for?" She jumped forward then remembered her boots and socks with a little cry and ran back for them.

"Come on, Sheila, hustle it up," nagged Charley. To the fisherman, he said, "You'll have to pardon her, she takes forever about everything."

"I'm going as fast as I can," she said, throwing her boots and socks in the rowboat and climbing in after them. As soon as she sat down, the fisherman pushed off the sandy bottom with his oars, leaving Charley splashing after them through the waves.

### Chapter 9

### The Fisherman

"Hey!" Charley called out indignantly.

"Another boat'll be round for you," the fisherman called back.

Sheila saw another rowboat glide past them going in the opposite direction and relaxed. In the moonlight, she could see there was an old woman at the oars.

"Thanks for picking us up," said Sheila to the fisherman.

"Not a problem," he answered in a clear voice with a strong Maine accent. The moonlight was at the man's back and Sheila could only see a vague silhouette of a man, but what she could see was nice. In the first place, he wasn't wearing a shirt; and in the second place, he wasn't wearing a shirt. Perhaps it was just the veiled moonlight reflecting off the rounded curves of his muscles, but he had the sheen of a sea creature just come from the sea, still slick with the wetness, and the white glow caught and played on his smooth skin in a pleasantly distracting way as he rowed.

She picked a stocking off the floor of the boat and caught a strong scent from the nets at the bottom. She waved a hand in front of her face. "Oooo-wee."

"Did you think you was ridin' on the Queen Mary? This is a fishin' boat." He sounded amused.

"You're telling me!"

She didn't find his accent at all unpleasant. The hard sound of it reminded her of the jagged Maine coastline and the uneven cadence of alternately clipped and drawled words was like the sound of waves hitting the shore.

"Wasn't there any room in the boat for the both of us?" she asked.

"Easieh to row."

"Oh, you don't look like you would have much trouble," said Sheila, giggling. She suspended her long leg in the air and conspicuously glided a stocking onto it.

She felt that he must be watching her, but she heard the oars beat against the water evenly without a hitch or change.

Flicking his head to the boat carrying Charley, who was now drilling the old woman about information on the lighthouse, the fisherman asked, "What are ya doin' with an odd fish like that?"

As she put on her other stocking, she said, "Odd fish? What do you mean?"

"He don't seem like your type."

"And what type is that?" She put her left leg into a black boot, placed the heel to the side of the boat and zipped up the length of it.

"He's like a lake fish, like a trout with a pouty mouth, and you, you're like a ocean kinda fish."

"You mean like a dolphin?" she said brightly.

"Dolphins are mammals. You're kinda messin' up my metaphor."

"Can't I be a dolphin? I like dolphins."

He shrugged. "Okay, you can be a dolphin."

"Oh, goody! Go on." She clapped then put both hands on her knees and leaned forward. She had a notion that the moonlight, which was full in her face, set off her cleavage to a nice effect.

"The point is this: he can't figure out why you can't live in a lake. Now I got nothin' against your lake fish or anything, though they're not that good for eatin' unless you catch the right one, but they got no clue about the ocean and figure the whole dang thing's just nothin' but a biggah lake. See, it's cause they ain't never seen the ocean. You followin'?"

"Wow. Wow. No, not really, but go on."

"Look, it ain't that hard. Now, a dolphin can't live in a lake, and a trout can't live in the ocean without gettin' sick, and they might be able to live in the brackish watah for a while, but eventually they'll both get sick; only it's like a slow, kinda, painful sickness until the both of them just kinda flop over and gasp, then twitch and kinda gasp some more." His silhouette made a little spasm. "Then they both die."

"Okay. Let me get this straight. So you're like saying, I should break up with him then?"

"I'm just talkin' about fish here. I don't like to intrude on anyone's life."

"Sure you don't. Could you hand me my other boot, please?" she said, holding out her hand.

He stopped the oars, found the boot and held it out to her. In a moonbeam, she saw that there was a gossamer membrane between each finger like the webbed foot of a sea creature. She gasped and drew her hand back. "What are you? A ... a ... mermaid? I... I mean a merman?"

"And just where would I be hidin' my swishy tail?" he said. "Are you gonna take your boot or what?"

Charley's boat glided by and she saw his wooden face plainly. Somehow he had managed to get the oars from the old lady and was rowing now. He really did look a little like a trout. A handsome trout, but a trout.

She took the boot from the fisherman. "Then what are you?"

"I'm a selkie-man, of course!"

"I don't know what that is."

"You don't—?" He sounded offended. "Well, a lonely lass that cries into the sea should damn well know what one is! Where's your education?"

"Algebra, yes. The Declaration of Independence, yes. Selkie-men? No."

"Let me teach you somethin' then. A selkie-man is one of the seal people who comes ashore when the moon is full and sheds his seal coat and becomes human."

"No kidding?" she said, sounding impressed.

He held his head erect. "They say we're wicked fetchin'."

She smiled. "Well, now that you mention it, you are just a little bit 'fetching'."

"Anyhow, when a lonely lass cries seven tears into the sea, that will summon a selkie-man who will make her fall in love with him."

"Oh, a love story! I just love those!"

"Then aftah she has his child, he leaves her flat."

"What? That can't be it. Gosh, that's just awful. Is that really how the story goes? Is there any more to it than that?"

"But can you think of a bettah way to go?"

She made a little gasp and straightened up in her seat. "You know, you're just a little too fresh, I think."

"Really? Most o' the ladies just love it, but let me finish my story. Then he goes back into the sea and frolics and such in the waves and waits for more lonely girls to cry seven tears into the sea so he can—"

"Stop right there! What a rotten story."

"I'm sorry you don't like it. But there's more. If he does decide, sometimes he comes back aftah seven years."

"To finally meet his love again?"

"Naw. He takes the kid and returns to the sea and leaves her all alone. Then she'll probably cry some more lonely tears into the sea, and well, you get the rest."

"I don't like that story at all," said Sheila.

"But he does give her some money for the kid, as what you call, 'compensation'."

"What a terrible love story."

"I never said it was a love story. That were something you said," he cried.

"How do you all live with yourselves?"

"Well, we're not so bad as all that. It's just those lonely tears that call us. It's just in our nature."

"But how can you live with yourselves taking the kid away from its mother?"

"Well isn't that fine and dandy. She had the kid for seven years. What about a father's rights? I suppose it were better to grow up without a father, then?"

"No, I would never wish that. It's not better to...." Her voice trailed off as she realized she couldn't see Charley's boat anymore. One minute his boat had been just there to the side of them, and now it was gone.

She listened for the oars hitting the water, but she couldn't hear them. Maybe he was already at the lighthouse, but where could that be? The beach and mainland were swallowed by the fog and if the lighthouse was anywhere close she certainly couldn't see it. Nothing seemed to be able to pierce through this fog, nothing. And what had happened to the fog horn? She suddenly realized that she hadn't heard it since they'd left the shore.

Breaking the silence, the selkie fisherman said, "It's lucky for you I know the waters around here like the back o' my webbed hand. You'd never make it on your own in this soup. Just what were you saying before?"

"Oh? Well, I was saying that it isn't better to grow up without a father."

"Ah, but what would you know about that?"

"Oh, but I do know. My father was a lobster boat fisherman."

"A fisherman!"

"Yes. And my mother said he was handsome and wild, and he had the finest singing voice she'd ever heard. Sometimes I even think I can remember him singing to me, but he left when I was just a baby. You see, she hated him being out on the boats. She worried about him all the time and he was away a lot. She said that he tried to find another job, but he couldn't seem to stay on land for very long without getting into trouble.

"The funny thing is, I think his being so wild was the reason why she fell in love with him, but it was also the one thing she wanted to change about him most." She shook her head and gave a short laugh. "I'm sorry. I guess that's not much of a love story either."

She saw the fisherman shrug, his shoulders lifting up and then settling back down into the blanket of fog again. "Maybe it is a love story, but they just don't all have happy endings. Take my story for instance. If a selkie can't be happy on land, and a woman can't live in the water, what happens to the little-un?"

"Well, he could at least visit now and then."

The foghorn sounded so loudly that Sheila jumped and sent her hands over her ears. They must be right on top of the lighthouse, but there was still no flash from the beacon. With her heart beating wildly from the shock of the noise, she thought, what a stupid lighthouse that didn't light up and show you the right way to go when you were lost! She drew her hands away from her ears as the selkie-man began talking again.

"Do you think the kid would want that?" he was saying. "Half breed selkies are mostly shunned. They're plenty handsome and charming, o' course, but ... " He took one of his hands off an oar, held it up in the dark, "they've got some webbin' between their fingers even though they live on land. It's like a mark o' shame from their parents, and most people want nothin' to do with 'em. They always have to hide what they really are. Maybe it's bettah for a father to just stay away and not be some sore reminder of what can't be helped."

"What a complete lie," cried Sheila hotly. "You aren't doing it for the kid! You're just protecting yourself. I think it's you that's scared your kid is going to hate you because of what you are."

"Hey, this is just a story, remember? No need to get personal."

"But don't you understand? The kid is going to think you stayed away because you just didn't want her. Because you were ashamed of her. Because you didn't love her."

"You're right," said the fisherman. "I nevah looked at it that way before. Why that's exactly what she'd think. She'd think I didn't love her, but that wouldn't be it at all. She'd be totally wrong."

"Yes," she said. "She'd be wrong and how would she ever know different unless you actually told her so?"

"Right, just how would she know?" He chewed his lip and thought a bit. "Well, maybe there's some sense to you after all, and here I thought you was just a chippy."

The foghorn sounded again. This time it was accompanied by a blinding flash of light right behind the fisherman who had been headed for the lighthouse the whole time.

### Chapter 10

### Alone Together in the Deep, Dark Woods

Any second now, she was going to fall off the horse. For some time, Duncan was aware the girl was dozing off. He was pretty sure she was out cold at this point, judging by the relaxed way she lolled against his back.

He had gone over the alphabet in his mind three times already and had lingered over the M each time. He seemed to recall it started with an M. That had to be it.

Her name started with an M.

Marianne, Mavis, no most people don't name their kid Mavis anymore, Maribel, Mabel (no that was the horse), Mariposa (where did that come from?), Meagan...

Wait! It could be Meagan. She looked like a Meagan, kind of. She looked like she read a lot of books, anyway. Though why he thought that, he wasn't sure. She didn't smile a heck of a lot, and she didn't giggle much either, maybe that was why. He was used to girls that giggled a lot at the grocery store he worked at. They were usually talkative, too, the ones that giggled a lot, if they purposely weren't trying _not_ to talk to you. There were a lot of those. Had he known any Meagans at the grocery store? He didn't think so.

He really liked the name Marianne. He wished her name might be that. It sounded like a sweet name. A girl with a name like Marianne would never double-cross you.

But he had to admit, she didn't look like a Marianne.

The females in his family; his mother, his aunt, his cousin; were curvy and rounded with an affection for anything soft, fluffy or pink. They cooed over puppies, kittens and babies. She didn't seem like a cooer.

Right now this girl's pointed chin was skewering a nerve between his shoulder blades. The rest of her he didn't mind one bit. It was like she was a combination of rigid angles and soft curves, inside and out.

Suddenly he was skateboarding in the dark and falling into a black void where he didn't know how far away the ground was ...

He caught himself in time before falling off the horse, shook himself, yawned cavernously, rubbed his face all over.

She probably had some kind of upper-classy sounding name like Claire or Grace or Eve or Lynn or ... or... or...

"May!" he shouted, jolting awake, catching himself from falling off the horse again. Groggily, shaking his head clear, he patted the girl's arm around his waist several times to wake her up and himself at the same time. Her skin felt velvet cool smooth.

"May?" he said again softly, trying to wake her without startling her.

He broke out in a panic, wide awake now. What if that really wasn't her name after all?

"What? What do you want?" she said drowsily.

He felt the same way as when he had landed his first ollie on the skateboard.

So it was May! "You fell asleep," he said, drawing the reins to bring the horse to a halt.

She pushed lightly away from his back and became an animate separate being again, and he felt a twinge of regret for that even though he could straighten up at last.

"Oh, sorry," she said. "You didn't need to scare me half to death though." He heard her yawn then suck in her breath sharply. "It's almost dark!"

"For sure."

"What were you thinking? We need to gather firewood. We'll need water. We'll need to build a shelter." He could feel her winding up to a hurricane in back of him.

"Slow down. You're going to freak out the horse."

"Why didn't you stop before this?"

"Take a breath, already. We'll be fine, scouts' honor."

"You were a boy scout?" She sounded doubtful.

"Up to third grade." He was stretching it.

"Third grade?"

"What? We covered the basics. I kicked ass in the Pinewood Derby."

"That should come in handy."

"You should get down first," he said, holding out his hand.

"How do I do this?" she asked.

"Take my hand. Just swing that leg over, hang on though. Just don't ... "

"Oof." She landed in a bundle on the ground.

"Or you could just fall off," he said, smiling down at her.

"Ow! Everything hurts." She picked herself up in a huff and smacked dirt off her backside.

"For sure," he said, watching her. Then he slid off the horse, patted Evangeline and took her by the reins. "Bingo," he said. "Underneath that rock. Come on, there's a perfect spot over there."

Apparently they weren't the only travelers to pass the night in this location. By the side of the road was a massive rock, and at the top of it, a shelf of shale created a cave-like hollow underneath where pine needles formed a soft bed. Within the hollow, previous wanderers had created a stone hearth out of rounded stones which were blackened with smoke. He couldn't have imagined a better spot if he'd tried.

May hung back suspiciously. "Too perfect, I'd say. Are you sure it isn't made out of gingerbread?"

"Gingerbread! Ha! I wish!"

She caught up to him. "I am not a camper." It was part statement, part disclaimer.

Life was just full of surprises, thought Duncan. "Lucky for you, I am," he said.

### Chapter 11

### The Lighthouse

As she felt around for the door of the lighthouse, Sheila heard the selkie fisherman singing. Between the crashing waves of the Atlantic trying to wear away the rock island that the lighthouse was perched on, she caught a few bars about women and rum and decided he had a nice voice.

The lighthouse flashed out its beacon again, and she was able to find the door several feet to her left. She waited for another flash to light her way into the house, but this time it didn't come. Nor would it, she decided after a few minutes. The lighthouse had gone dark again.

When she looked up, she could just make out the straight white of the tower looming above her, and at the top, a small yellow light moved through the darkened lamp room; now here, now there, like a fairy in a jar. Someone up there had a lantern.

Why hadn't Charley waited for her like any normal human being would do?

She opened the door and didn't realize how hard she had pushed it until she heard it smash against a piece of furniture behind it.

"Charley?" she called. Her voice sounded strange, quivering up into the tall void of the tower. Far above, the fairy light she had seen from outside moved at the sound of her voice and she heard a few footfalls, hollow-sounding on metal, echoing off the stark stone walls.

She was relieved to hear Charley's voice, even if it sounded annoyed, "Hey there, is that you finally? There's a lantern on the table down there with some matches."

She was almost going to ask him how she was supposed to find anything in the dark, but through the open door there was just enough moonlight to spot a small table a few feet from the entrance. She went to it and lit one of the matches. She used the first match up trying to figure out how the lantern worked. She did the same with the second. By the fourth match, she was about ready to give up, but just before her fingers scorched to black, the wick caught fire.

With the lantern lit, she was able to get a good look around the lighthouse which was in a state of neglect. Bits of debris and litter covered the floor as though nature had begun to take back what was hers. How the snail shells and kelp had found a way inside the lighthouse was a mystery Sheila did not want to unravel in the dark, especially if it involved anything furry that scurried. She headed for the stairs.

Charley smirked when he saw her enter the lamp room. "What took you so long? Late for your own funeral again?"

"What an awful thing to say right now," she breathed out, swallowing and looking around her with huge eyes.

"You sound like you're out of breath. That wasn't too many stairs for you, was it?"

"No, of course not."

He had the sleeves to his collared shirt rolled up and his hands were covered in black grease. "Anyhow, check it out. It's pretty cool." He crouched down in front of a huge metal box. Inside of it were a lot of large shiny gears and a cylinder which was wrapped in a thick cable like an enormous spool of gray thread set on its side. At the end of this spool hung the final length of cable which disappeared into a long shaft below the box.

"What is it for?" she asked, setting the lantern on the floor.

"I don't really know how these old lighthouses operate exactly," answered Charley, "but from what I can gather, all these gears are kind of like the insides of a clock. There's a long cable with a weight at the end, and once you wind it up, it uses the weight and the cable just like a cuckoo clock does to keep all these gears in motion."

Sheila stifled a yawn.

"Only it's not for keeping time in this case, it's for making the light turn around and to keep it spinning at regular time intervals." He pointed above him. "Have you checked the lightbulb out yet?"

When Sheila shook her head, Charley picked up his lantern and stood. "Watch your eyes. It's just glittery now, but when it's lit inside, it's blinding." He held his lantern up above his head, and Sheila saw hundreds of gleaming planes of glass.

"It's beautiful. It looks just like a huge diamond," exclaimed Sheila.

"That's not a bad comparison; it's got facets just like a gem, but you can see how each side has all these angled pieces of glass. It's called a Fresnel lens. It takes the light from inside the lamp and when it goes through these special bull's-eye lenses on the faceted sides, it creates a concentrated beam out of the light and voila! You get a flash." When she didn't respond, he said, "That's ... that's kind of a joke; because Fresnel was French."

"Oh," Sheila faked a giggle, but she really wasn't sure what part was the joke. In the lantern light, she noticed that Charley's eyes were shining almost as much as the huge lightbulb. He seemed to be having the time of his life. She liked watching him enjoy himself, though she wasn't quite sure how he was getting any kind of kicks out of this.

Charley rushed over to some copper metal plates that looked like enormously long salad bowls. "I'm pretty sure these are for creating spaces between the flashes. You can cover some of the flashing lenses to create a longer time interval between each flash." He scratched his head quickly and left black smudges on his forehead with his fingers.

"Now the old lady in the boat told me this lighthouse hasn't worked for years. And that's kind of a good thing actually, because each lighthouse is different. If we screw around with the light sequence people might be a little confused and it could cause some shipping accidents. But there hasn't been a keeper here in a long while. The old lady was the last one after her husband died, but she says she's getting too old for it and her kids don't want to take it over either. I don't know why. Wouldn't it be great to be able to live in a place like this?"

"This is a rock, Charley. I think it would be kind of lonely after a while. I don't even think they have Wi-Fi."

He shrugged, then resumed talking. "Anyhow, I figure if I slow down the turning interval and we use some of those light shields, we can probably get a flash sequence like the one you told me about, but you'll have to tell me when it looks right."

Sheila smiled at him. He really was cute all worked up like this. She licked her thumb and reached up to rub off the grease smudges on his forehead.

Charley made a face and backed away. "Gross, Sheila. You could just tell me if I have something on me." He rubbed at the smudge on his head with the back of his hand as he walked away from her to the metal box.

"Bring that light over," he said.

She went and stood next to him with the lantern and noticed that he had rubbed the smudges into a huge black smear all over his forehead. She didn't feel like telling him that though.

He sighed peevishly. "Could you try not to move the light?" He stood and positioned her arm the way he needed it until she was completely uncomfortable. Then he held up both his hands and said, "There. Now don't move a muscle."

"Sure thing."

She watched him plunge his head into the gear box mechanism, then come out smiling with a golden gear in his hand. "No wonder it didn't work. This wasn't even connected."

Sheila's arm was getting tired already. "Charley, what's 'brackish' mean?"

Scowling over the gear in the light of the lamp, he mumbled, "It's a mixture of salt water and fresh water, like in a marsh."

"Don't marshes smell bad?"

"Usually."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

"Sheila, the light!"

She sighed and lifted the lantern up higher.

### Chapter 12

### The Spark

The firewood was gathered, stacked. Kindling was as expertly placed as he could have placed it. Duncan had created a small nest of downy fuzz from shredded pine bark, ready to receive the flickering spark of life. The little nest waited in the heart of the kindling tee-pee in the midst of the circle of round stones.

Waiting.

Just waiting.

The fire was ready to be lit. But there was nothing to light it with.

Across the circle of cold blackened stones, May folded her hands, looked around and waited. She just waited. And in her pathetic excuse for a sweater, she shivered. Her lips looked blueish, and he couldn't even see them.

The temperature was dropping like a stone; getting colder by the second, so fast that the mosquitos fell out of the air, immobile, dead. The horse whickered, snorted frost where she was tethered to a tree at the edge of the rock shelter. Duncan thought of offering his sweatshirt to May but wasn't sure if she would accept it. He was worried she might think it was icky.

May.

Now that was a nice name for a girl. It was even better than Marianne. May was a name that reminded you of springtime.

And she smelled a little like springtime.

"Sure wish we had something to start this fire with," she said. Even her voice was shivering.

She pretended the fire was lit, held her hands in front of it. "Mmm. Sure is toasty." She shuddered with the effort, folded her arms back across her chest.

He sighed and almost stood up so he could reach into his pocket for his lighter, then stopped himself.

Because he was positively certain that she would think that smoking was icky.

She breathed out a big puff of cool mist. She pointed and exclaimed, "Did you just see that? I can see my breath! It's almost too bad one of us doesn't smoke. Maybe one of us would have a match?" Her voice went up at the end and there was a pleading note to it.

He stood and dug his lighter out of his jeans pocket. She held out her hands, and he tossed it to her.

"What a disgusting habit," she said.

He sat down morosely. "How did you know?"

"Duh. I could smell it at the museum when you came out of the bathroom. Yuck!"

He watched her turn the lighter around in her bloodless hands a few times, trying to figure out how it worked. She held it with one hand and with the other she flick, flick, flick, flick, flicked. With each flick, she seemed to draw her nose closer to the lighter.

If she ever got it going (Duncan had his doubts), she was going to start her hair on fire.

He couldn't take it anymore. "Give it here," he said, holding out his hand.

"No really. I have this."

Flick, flick, flick.

"Watch it. It's almost out of juice."

"I got it!" Her eyes looked huge and gleeful in the light of the puny flame before it died a moment later.

"You've got to hold the button—"

"I figured that out."

"But there's not much left to it," he said.

Silence.

"You'll have to be fast. Do you want me to ... "

Flick, flick, flick.

It was slow torture. He got up from where he was sitting and came around the back of her. He rubbed the side of his face, took off his hat, put it back on, turned in a circle.

Flick, flick, flick.

He got down on one knee next to her. If she had been Shane, he would have just placed his hand over hers and guided her, but she wasn't. He put his hand out and mimicked what she needed to do in the air next to her. A shivering lock of her hair tickled his cheek. She probably had that scowl on her face that she got when she was concentrating on something.

He tried to not think about how good she smelled. It was a wonderful mixture of flowers and _girl_.

Flick, flick ... finally, a flame! But so very low down and close to the lighter, they would need to hurry.

He reached into the circle of stones and took up the small downy nest in his hands. Cradling it like an egg, he shielded it from drafts while she held the tiny flame to the shredded wood.

Neither of them spoke. Neither breathed. The stillness of the moment reminded Duncan of church when the priest blesses the wafers and the wine.

The nest caught fire briefly. It died a moment later but left a glow behind at the heart of the nest. He blew on it gently with rounded lips; and with each exhalation, it glowed back a vivid orange. He continued to blow on the nest as he placed it in the center of the kindling, fed it pine needles from the ground which flamed up instantly and died down quickly. He blew on it still as the transient pine needle flames licked at the kindling and then held on.

Duncan sat back on his heels, lightheaded, and fed the fire from a pile of thin sticks he had beside him, adding gradually larger and thicker twigs as the flames grew in strength and size.

The smell of the wood smoke caught his stomach off guard; his next thought was of food. Breaking a stick in his hands, he looked up from the fire and asked, "Have we eaten everything already?"

May blinked her eyes and reached for one of the leather bags without looking, feeling for it like a blind person.

She's bone tired, he thought.

"It's too late to boil water." She yawned. "We'll have to do it in the morning. Here's the beer," she said, pulling a corked pottery jug out of the bag.

"You go first." He brushed off his hands as he nodded his chin at her.

She uncorked the jug, wiped off the rim with the edge of her sweater and took a swig. "Ugh," she said. She wiped the rim off again, then handed it to him.

He had already found out that the beer was a bitter flat unfiltered ale, and the fact it was warm didn't make it taste any better.

"What is a kid doing with beer?" he said, before he tipped the bottle back slowly. It was getting toward the bottom where the fermented solids were settled and any sharp movements caused them to dislodge and give the beer a pudding like quality. The beer didn't quench your thirst, but it was hearty enough to take the edge off your hunger and got your blood singing a little.

He stifled a huge burp. There was that, too.

"Saves on having to boil water all the time probably. Alcohol. Nature's disinfectant. But that stuff is just nasty." She looked in the sack. "There's a piece of bread left."

He was half tempted to eat it but shook his head. "We should probably leave that for the morning."

"Oh, and I almost forgot." She stuck a hand in her front jeans pocket and pulled out a small bag of cookies. Or what had once been cookies. Right now it looked like a bag of sand.

"You never ate them?" he said sharply, finding himself irritated, but not sure why.

She shrugged.

That was all she had wanted at the burger joint they had stopped at for lunch. That and a diet cola. The dreadlocked redhead behind the counter assumed the two of them were a couple and had added both items to Duncan's receipt.

"You didn't eat them because I paid for them, right?"

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. He wished he could reach out and snatch the words out of the air.

### Chapter 13

### Not Out of the Woods Yet

He should be glad she never ate the stupid cookies.

"No, not because you paid for them," she said. It really did have something to do with it, but she was confused by his annoyance at her. Frankly, she hadn't thought he was that perceptive.

"Don't you ever get hungry?" he asked. It sounded like an accusation.

"Not very much," she faltered. Why did she feel like she had to defend herself?

He nodded, smiled in a self-satisfied way. "It's your brother," he said, like he had just solved a cold case.

"What has my brother got to do with it?"

"For sure. He's always on Sheila about her weight. In the van, at the house, outside the museum, inside the museum. Always poking her, making snarky little comments. I've never seen her order just a salad before! And by the way, there's plenty of guys that wouldn't mind having my cousin steal a few french fries off their tray."

Charley really had been an ass.

"What's your point?" she said, putting her chin up, preparing for some sermon about how she shouldn't be worried about being fat. Guys always talked out of both sides of their mouth when it came to that. Just accept the way you are, blah, blah, blah, oh but isn't that super skinny supermodel hot?

He exhaled. "What's my point?" He was sitting on the ground with his legs crooked, his elbows on his knees and one hand grasping the other. He hung his head down and adjusted his cap. "I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm itchy. And I could really use a smoke. Oh, and my butt hurts from riding around on that horse all day." He looked up at her. "Eat the cookies. Please. I'm pretty sure I ate everything else today."

"Are you sure?"

"For sure."

She opened the bag delicately.

"I'm trying to quit," he said.

"Eating or smoking?" she replied before tipping some of the crumbs from the bag into her palm.

He fished in the pouch of his sweatshirt and pulled out the pack of cigarettes. "One left."

"Good thing you're quitting."

"For sure," he said, turning the pack, watching the firelight play off the cellophane.

She knit her brows together. "So, like, who pays for things with a roll of quarters?"

"Someone who owns a vending machine. Or owned, anyway. I had to leave it in Boston."

"People can own vending machines?" She tipped back the last of the crumbs into her mouth and went into a coughing spasm. He looked around for the beer bottle, found it and passed it to her.

"For sure. For sure. Some are owned by big companies, but there are some you can own, too. Some people own like twenty."

She belched loudly, then clamped her hand over her mouth, looking mortified.

"Nice one."

"I didn't mean ... it just sneaked out."

"No worries. Anyhow, I used to run errands for this old guy who owned a bowling alley down this back street. He had this ramp and rail combo that made for these sweet jumps." He motioned with his hands in the air, up and up, then stopped and dropped his hands back on his knees. "You could get so much air it was ... it was just sick. Anyhow, most places just kick you off, you know, mostly 'cause of the insurance, but he didn't care. I don't think he had any insurance probably. Anyhow, he used to have me run errands for him like a messenger. He came out one day and I thought he was going to ream me out, but instead he said," (he made his voice raspy), "'Hey kid, ya wicked fast on that skatebawd. Ya wanna make a buck?' And I said—"

She interrupted him. "Errands? What kind of errands?"

"You know, like packages."

She raised her eyebrows.

"No. No. No. Not packages. Envelopes, you know, with paper in them."

She still looked at him skeptically.

"I saw Joe put the papers in. They were papers. Papers! I don't know. I think he was a bookie maybe. Okay, I'm pretty sure he was a bookie. People were always coming in talking to him, and he would write things down."

May's hair hurt. The bun that Sheila had put in had kept the hair off her neck and out of her face throughout the hot day, but now her hair and her head were aching. She took the clip out of the bun, then began feeling through the jumble of her hair, pulling out bobby pins and placing them in her mouth as she found them. Just how many had Sheila put in? A bazillion?

She realized Duncan had stopped talking and was just staring at her. She mumbled through the bobby pins. "Sorry. Go on. Really, I'm listening."

He cleared his throat. "Um ... it was the same people like every day, even on Sunday, cops even. Even ... even Father O'Malley would come in. More people came in to talk to Joe so he could write things down than to bowl."

She put the bobby pins in her pocket and lay down on the pine needles.

"Sorry, am I boring you? My dad is always saying that I talk more than a.... Well, the fact is I talk too much, especially when I'm tired."

"No, I'm just ... no. You can keep going." She doubted she was catching half of what he was saying. She had stopped listening to every word, it took too much effort, but she liked the deep tone of his voice; it relaxed her and made her drowsy.

"Anyhow, Joe's friend had this vending machine in the pool room. He had others all over the city, too. But this was a dumpy old thing. It didn't make much money, and he was tired of stocking it. It just sold snacks and stuff. I bought the machine and his contract with Joe. But I had to leave it when I left Boston. It was a janky old thing, always breaking down, too. I got pretty good at fixing it, but I was always having to give people back their money, and I think at least one guy wasn't being very honest. Seems like every day he would leave a nasty note on the machine and I'd constantly be refunding him money."

"Did you take inventory?" she asked sleepily.

"Yeah, you know, I guess I never thought of that. But like I was saying, if a machine kept ripping you off, why would you keep trying to get stuff out of it?"

Duncan looked over the fire at her, but this time she didn't answer. Her eyes were closed.

He made his voice quieter. "Joe bought it from me for more than it was worth, which was nice. I still have the check for it." He felt for his wallet in his back pocket, found it was still there. Well, of course it was. That explained why that butt-cheek was so sore and why his back was killing him. "Thing is, I don't know if I should buy another one or make a down payment on a car."

At this point he knew he was really just talking to himself, so he was surprised when she mumbled, "Buy another machine."

He smiled. "Hey, I thought you were asleep."

When she didn't answer him, he went over to her. He bent down, leaned closer and listened to her soft regular breathing. "That's weird," he whispered.

She shivered once in her sleep.

Why did God make females have such a hard time keeping warm? It seemed like such a major design flaw in half the human race. In the alcove of the rock, the cold air whipped through and whisked away the heat from the fire as soon as it got going. There wasn't a lot to her. Once the fire died down overnight, she would get even colder.

She was curled into an S shape like a spoon on its side, and he would have fit perfectly next to her, but he didn't want to think about how _that_ would be perceived.

He decided he would just have to gather more firewood.

He hadn't worn a winter jacket since the fifth grade, even in January. He took off his hat, grasped the back of his sweatshirt and pulled the shirt over his head. He took the cigarette pack from the pocket, then draped the sweatshirt over her carefully so that he wouldn't wake her up.

It reminded him of tucking in Shane, which the Rugrat had insisted on from the time he was two years old. He wouldn't go to sleep until Dunk-man had tucked him in. It had started as a pleasant ritual, but lately, it had gotten to feel like a chore.

Duncan had been by himself for so long before Shane came along. He had looked forward to having a brother. He hadn't counted on the wriggling, crying, clinging creature that had entered his life. And he certainly hadn't expected to become a built in babysitter. Now that Duncan had his license, he was even hauling the kid to karate.

After his mother got done with her teaching job and made supper, (if she made supper), she corrected papers until seven. His father, an architect, either stayed at work until eight or hid in the basement in the evenings, where he worked on a building plan for a dream home and a bottle of whiskey. The building plan came along slowly, out of proportion to the bottle of whiskey. Duncan knew because he monitored both regularly when the old man wasn't around, holding the amber liquid up to the light from the basement window; checking the level against what he remembered, trying to decide if it was yet another new bottle.

He had begun to suspect Shane was a last ditch attempt by his parents to save their marriage and it wasn't working. In fact, it had made everything worse. Now neither of his parents seemed to have any energy for each other, to deal with Shane, or himself. Part of him didn't mind being blamed for moving back from Boston. Hopefully, the change would get them out of the rut they had fallen into.

Shane really was hardly like a brother at all, thought Duncan, sliding out the last cigarette from the pack. As he straightened out a kink in the shaft of the cigarette, Duncan tried to picture where Shane might be at the moment. One of the knights had mentioned wolves and witches. He tried again to picture something in his head, but all Duncan got was a sense of dread, vising him around his ribcage.

How would the Rugrat get to sleep if his big brother wasn't there to tuck him in?

Duncan put the filter of the cigarette in his mouth, crumpled the empty pack and threw it in the fire. After this, it would be cold turkey. He got a stick from the fire that had a small flame going at one end.

Then two things happened at once. The horse whinnied, and a twig snapped in the woods.

Duncan's hand stopped short with the lit stick on the way to the crooked cigarette hanging limply from his lips.

The horse snorted out, shook its head and pattered the ground with its hooves. Duncan finished lighting the cigarette and threw the stick in the fire. He walked over to the horse and stroked its side.

"Wsht, wsht," he said as he and the horse eyeballed the woods together.

From far away, he heard a lonely, mournful sound drift on the cool air like the cry of a ghoul. Closer by, another howl answered it.

Wolves.

Duncan swore softly.

The cigarette tasted funny and he dropped it at his feet. He put the cigarette out under his heel then set to work gathering more firewood.

### Chapter 14

### Morning Thoughts

May smiled at the boy sprawled languidly on the ground, one shoulder on the horse's saddle with his head tilted over the back of it, one leg crooked over some sticks with his foot almost in the fire. His mouth was wide open. Duncan looked to have been dropped from the sky into that uncomfortable position. She couldn't imagine how anyone could sleep that way unless they had been knocked unconscious.

She had been up for at least an hour. Mist still clung to the ground under trees and in low spots. Sitting crossed legged in front of the fire, she pushed up the sleeves of Duncan's sweatshirt and once more considered waking him up. The sun was lightening the sky but hadn't come up over the horizon yet. She could let him sleep a little longer, she decided; he looked like he needed it.

May unfolded the pocket knife in her hand. It had been a gift from Charley at Christmas and she had taken to carrying it everywhere. Somehow it made her feel safe. She took up one of the straight tree limbs she had gathered after waking, then began fashioning a sharp point at one end. From time to time she checked to see if Duncan had woken up and when she satisfied herself that he hadn't, she went back to work.

He was a lanky creature, especially all spread out like he was. He was pale right now and frowzy in the first light, his whiskers making a smoky haze over the lower half of his face. She had never asked Charley when he had begun to shave. It would have been considered too personal a question in her family. Anyhow, it's not like you could notice with Charley; he was blond. Whereas Duncan had more dark, wiry hair than he knew what to do with. It curled from under that faded red ball cap he always wore, grew out from thick eyebrows, peeked from the top of his threadbare black tee shirt, grew softly rampant along his arms, poked out from the braided friendship bracelets on his wrists and, she imagined, probably all down his spindly legs.

All of a sudden, May felt like she had entered someone else's house when they weren't home. She went back to work, placing the sharpened end of the spear in the embers. It caught fire right away. She let it blacken a little, then blew out the flame.

"What the hell is that?" said Duncan, his voice cracking.

"Breakfast, hopefully," she said, whittling the black away from the sharpened end.

He sat up and rasped a hand over his face.

He's probably checking for drool, she thought. "If you're thirsty, there's water. I poured out that sludge in the bottle and boiled some." Luckily, the bottle was made of glazed terra cotta. She had worried about putting it in the fire, but it seemed to have survived the heat without cracking. "It's probably still warm, but maybe that's a good thing. Are you cold?"

He certainly looked it, hunched over with his hands hugging his bare arms, watching her make the spear.

"Do you want your sweatshirt back?"

He shook his head and it seemed like his whole body moved with it. "No, you wear it. I'll be okay in a minute."

"Did you stay up all night?"

He didn't answer her.

"You look like you did. Couldn't you sleep?"

"I thought I heard wolves. I don't know, maybe I was imagining it."

"Why didn't you wake me up? I could have taken a shift."

He just shrugged, barely shook his head, stared at the fire. "I'm fine. I'll wake up in a second." He passed his eyes to where the horse was tethered. "How's the horse?"

"Evangeline? I gave her some carrots."

He smiled. He was pallid in the morning light and there were dark circles under his eyes.

"She's starting to grow on me," said May, inspecting the pointed end of the spear closely. "Where did you learn to ride?"

"You can thank Camp St. Sebastian de Wampanogagog."

"Geesh, that's a mouthful."

"You should hear our camp song."

"Is that where you got the bracelets? I was beginning to think you had a thing for embroidery. You don't still go?"

"I'm a counselor now."

"Oh, that reminds me." She reached into the neck of the sweatshirt and lifted a necklace over her head. "Is this yours?"

He felt around the collar of his tee-shirt, looked down at himself.

"It was on the ground when I woke up. I hope you don't mind I put it on. I didn't want the chain to get tangled. It's a St. Christopher medal, isn't it? Is he still the patron saint of travelers? We wouldn't want to lose him!"

He looked unsure if she was making fun of him. He held his hand out over the fire, palm up for the necklace.

Ignoring his outstretched hand, she stood up and placed the necklace over his head. He tucked the medal into the collar of his tee-shirt as she sat back down.

She handed him the finished spear and got to work on another.

He touched the pointed end, then shook his hand out. "Sweet."

"Did they teach you how to fish at camp Whatsamanogagog?"

"For sure," he said. "Though we usually used a fishing pole."

### Chapter 15

### Hunting with an Old Friend

May asked to sit up front in the saddle this time to get the hang of working the reins. Duncan didn't seem to need to put his hands around her, but rested them lightly on his thighs. He fit easily around the edges of her, touching in some spots, his clothes brushing against hers, but not restricting her in any way.

Occasionally, he reached forward and tugged on one or another of the reins, keeping her and the horse on track. The rest of the time, he scanned the woods and moved his head sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other, always talking about something, like places he had seen in Boston, what he did at the camp he worked at over the summer, skateboarding. Occasionally, he would ask questions about what kinds of things she liked to do, shows she liked to watch, places she had been...

He sure does like to talk, thought May.

They never urged Evangeline beyond a trot, partly because as Duncan explained, they weren't sure how hard or long the rest of the journey was, and she was only a medium sized horse with two riders on her back.

What May suspected was that Duncan was no expert horseman. He knew the basics of riding, and she gave him credit for not tempting fate with no vet and no hospital within a hundred miles or years.

There was still no sign of Sir Ulric and his sons, who hadn't yet caught up to them on the road. As for other travelers, far from being few, they were completely non-existent. To May, this seemed partly a good thing; they never had to worry about being robbed of what little they had, but neither could they get more information or directions.

Along the way, she told Duncan about his great uncle, Francis Carlisle, and the journey she and Sheila had taken through his painting and through others several months ago.

He listened and then said, "It's just like the story Sheila told me." The vibrations of his voice tickled her ear.

"Really? She wasn't supposed to tell anyone. I haven't. Who would believe a story like that anyway?"

"Well, Sheila's a few things, but she's never been a liar. So maybe I thought she was a little crazy. Anyhow, she certainly seemed to believe the story herself. I wasn't quite sure of this friend she kept talking about. No worries, though, you check out so far."

"Gee, thanks." Since she had both hands on the reins, she tossed her head to get her hair out of her eyes which she had been unsuccessful in placing back into a bun, but the hair just fell in front of her face again.

Duncan did a strange thing then. He took some of her hair that had fallen forward and tucked it behind her ear.

She was glad when he began talking again.

"Anyhow, I know what it's like to have no one believe you, so maybe I didn't want to think too much about it. Sheila seemed sane enough in every other way. Well besides—" He didn't finish.

"Besides going out with my brother?"

"Sorry. Never mind. Anyhow, I've known her my whole life, but then she tells me this nutty story. Well, I said, what do I know? I only know what I've seen, and that ain't a lot. For all I know, maybe it did happen."

"And here you are."

"For sure. And here I am."

Sheila must have a lot of faith in him. But on the other hand, Sheila wasn't always able to keep her mouth shut.

May was starting to worry that they had gone into another painting without realizing it, only nothing had changed for the longest time. The forest looked the same to her, the road continued on like it had for miles, she still heard the gurgling and playing of the stream to her right. To give her thoughts substance, she said, "I guess we must still be in the same painting."

"Whoa," said Duncan, reaching on both sides of her to the reins and drawing Evangeline to a stop. "There's a guy up ahead with a shotgun."

May shielded her eyes to look. There was a man sauntering down the road towards them, one hand carrying a shotgun to his shoulder, the other hand in his pocket. He had a great mop of dark hair and a pipe protruding out of his mouth. A great big chocolate lab, its tongue flopping sideways out of its mouth, was running down the road towards them.

"Let me down," said May.

Not only did Duncan not help May get down, he kept his hands on the reins to each side of her and cornered her in.

"Get back here, you big, dumb mutt!" yelled the man in the road.

"Please, Duncan, let me down!"

"Screw that. The guy's got a shotgun."

"Don't be silly. He's just out hunting. It's your Uncle Frank!"

### Chapter 16

### Uncle Frank

The late Francis Carlisle, railroad tycoon, architect, painter, woke up that morning with a sense that something significant was about to happen and an overwhelming desire to hunt rabbit.

Rufus, his dog, was initially disappointed that they weren't out for pheasant or duck or some other water bird, being that he was a sporting breed, but after several disappointing attempts to coax his man to the pond, the dog gave up and got fully into the spirit of the rabbit hunt.

Rufus had only digressed from the hunt twenty or so times; once to nose a robin's nest that had fallen to the ground (the man sadly restored the nest to the tree it had tumbled from before the dog could paw it thoroughly) and all other times; to make water on trees, ferns and any other unmarked plant or rock he happened upon.

Carlisle did not often meet fellow travelers on this road, and when he spied two of what he took to be sweethearts trotting along on a little chestnut colored beauty of a pony, he had the intuition that these young wayfarers did not belong here in his forest. When he saw alarmed motions from the boy, he remembered the shotgun perched against his shoulder, went to the edge of the forest and propped the gun lightly against a tree trunk.

And what next to find, but that he recognized one of the travelers as an old friend and thought he recognized the other, but had lost the name somewhere in his mind.

May! Could she be so amazingly young still? She was hardly older than when he'd last seen her. Why, soon his own daughter would catch up to her—his daughter was already nine years old—and he himself had grown into middle age, gray at the temples and stout about the middle.

When he'd last said farewell to May, she'd left him with a reserved handshake, but now, as soon as she slid from the horse, she cleared the distance between them, encompassed him with both arms, and hid her face in the folds of his shirt.

A fresh scent came up from her hair like that of a spicy hedge rose from his wife's garden, which always was what reminded him of May. Mixed into that was a strong dose of wood smoke and a few pine needles which pricked his chin. He smoothed her back and murmured, "There, there, May. Have you got yourself lost again?"

He felt her nod against him, rubbing her face against the linen of his shirt.

Looking over her head to the lad who now stood awkwardly beside the pony, fiddling the reins in his large bony hands, Carlisle asked, "Who is this that you have with you?" His hand lingered a moment on her elbow as he walked toward the boy, his straight dark brows knit together into one bushy line.

Carlisle noted that the boy at least had the good breeding to take several steps forward and offer his hand, though on first attempt he'd got the reins around his sooty thumb and yanked the pony's head, making it whinny. Carlisle took the hand once it was free of the reins and the boy began an introduction, but Carlisle stopped him immediately. "No, no. Let me guess."

Taking one turn around the lad, he clapped him on the back with enough force to straighten his spine. Carlisle judged him to be close to May's age. He had not yet achieved his full height, though the grand size of his red shoes (red!) showed that nature would remedy that soon. That put him a couple of inches shorter than Carlisle, who stretched out at a little over six feet when he wasn't slouching, which wasn't often. The artist's eye noticed an elastic quality in the boy which caused a slight swaying motion even when he was just standing still.

The boy evaluated him back with eyes equally quick and dark as his own, but which had the tenderness and vague uncertainty of a young man.

Carlisle shuddered like a spook passed through him. He said at last, "Well, there's no denying the O'Callahan blood!" He placed a hand on one of the youth's bandy shoulders, gave it a shake and said, "Don't worry, O'Callahan, you'll grow into those beetle brows eventually."

May darted forward and said, "This is Duncan, Duncan O'Callahan, your great, great, great nephew." She presented him as though he was a prize turkey at the Maine State Fair, and Carlisle had the ability to grant a blue ribbon.

"And this is your Uncle Frank." Casting her hand back and forth between them, she said, "Duncan, Uncle Frank; Uncle Frank, Duncan."

"Duncan," declared Carlisle. "I had a few uncles and cousins with that name—a good family name."

"I was named after my grandfather," said Duncan.

May nodded quickly. "Phew! Glad that's over with. Anyhow, yesterday, we got sucked into another one of your paintings. I didn't think it could happen with all of your paintings. I just thought the one, you know. But anyway, oh well, I guess they're all defective. So, here we are!"

Carlisle's dark eyebrows shot up like two caterpillars being fried in a pan. "Yesterday, you say?" Frowning, Carlisle looked down the road and past them. "Are you two on your own?"

May smiled and nodded.

"Just the two of you?"

"Yeah and man, am I glad we ran into you."

"Well, you've had quite a journey. Have you eaten?" asked Carlisle. The boy looked pale, from lack of sleep most likely and food certainly, judging by his general gauntness. "I'm roasting some game. Do you want some?"

There was no mistaking the glance that Duncan shot his way. "I thought I smelled something."

"We had some fish for breakfast," May said.

Carlisle's eyebrows jumped even higher. "Breakfast, you don't say? My, my, my. So you've eaten then?"

"But they were really little and bones everywhere." May gave a disgusted look.

Duncan said, "May made some great spears, but the fish were pretty slippery, so we didn't catch many."

"Yeah, I made a few spears when I was waiting for sleepyhead here to wake up, but I didn't know how hard it was to spear fish. He's pretty good at it though. He caught way more than I did."

"But ... but you cleaned them. That was just ... " Duncan stuck his tongue out a little way and made a face.

"Yeah, they were nasty. All bones."

"Well, well, never mind; you're in luck," said Carlisle, draping a hand over Duncan's shoulder. "I know I was always hungry at your age. The rabbits should almost be done. I had this strange notion I was getting visitors."

"Rabbits?" Duncan said in a meager voice.

"Do you like rabbit?" asked Carlisle.

"I don't think I've ever had it."

"Oh then, you're in for a treat." Carlisle whistled loudly through his teeth. A shrub rustled at the edge of the woods and Rufus blundered out into the road. He called over his shoulder, "May dear, could you bring the pony along? I just need to get my gun."

### Chapter 17

### Two Fat Rabbits

Sitting on a log with his elbows on his knees, the skinny youth stared at the two furless, now crisp, rabbit-like forms skewered over a fire hot enough to roast the devil himself. Grease dripped from the fat animals, sung and hissed in the fire. The smell of them, savory and strong, filled the air of the forest glade and made it smell like a kitchen on Christmas day.

"They're almost done," said Carlisle, watching his nephew's face contort in confusion.

Everything is there to see, thought Carlisle wistfully. The callant was as green as a new dollar bill. He didn't have the art yet to hide anything. Whatever he was feeling, whatever he was thinking, danced and twirled there on that face for everyone to see in a grand show of shape and color, all burlesque and feathers.

Right now, thought Carlisle, he isn't sure whether to eat the rabbits or pet them.

"Is that coffee?" asked May, sounding hopeful.

Carlisle took up the metal coffee urn in his hands, lifted the lid and peered inside. "Was," he said. He handed the urn to May without looking at her. "I don't suppose you would mind getting some water for us, dear, and I'll make some more. Just dump out what's there."

The river rushed more loudly here than near the road, and there was no need to tell her in which direction to go to refill the urn. She hesitated, vacillating with the coffee pot suspended in her hands, a suspicious look on her face.

She knows I'm sending her on a fool's errand, but she won't deny me, thought Carlisle. Then he thought wryly, but I doubt she'll take long about it.

May stood and shook the urn. "There seems to be quite a bit still, and it's warm. Why don't we just heat it up?"

"Oh, but it's ancient. I won't have you drinking mud." Carlisle smiled up at her.

"Fine," she sighed out, heading in the direction of the stream, then warned, "But I won't be long." She parted some ferns at the edge of the glade, looked back once then disappeared with Rufus at her heels, tramping down the foliage.

Duncan got to his feet to go after her.

Carlisle put a light hand on his arm and said, not unkindly, "Relax, Romeo. I wouldn't send her where there was any danger. Besides, the dog is with her."

The boy gazed down at him. "You don't think—? It isn't like that," he said, sitting back down slowly. "I only just met her yesterday."

"Well then, may I commend you on making such a good acquaintance in such a short time."

Consternation played across Duncan's face. He shook his head slightly. "We're just friends."

"Friends? That garment she's wearing—is that your shirt?"

"She was cold."

"Last night?"

Duncan parted his dry lips, licked them, put them back together. "You've got it all wrong. Like I told you, we're just friends."

Carlisle turned the rabbits on the spit, causing the fire to hiss.

Duncan said, "Besides, it's not like she'd be interested in someone like me."

Carlisle almost did a double take but realized just in time that his nephew was trying to feel him out on the subject. So maybe there was more art to the boy than he figured him for, though it was still clumsy and fledgling. Anyhow, his nephew seemed more naïve than dumb. He could figure it out on his own without Carlisle's help. And the longer it took, the better.

Unfortunately, the problem was also May. In his experience, any girl with common sense and a practical mind usually used neither in matters of the heart.

"Oh, you're absolutely right," said Carlisle. "You're not her type at all. What would she want with you? She's intelligent, brave, resourceful... and have you ever seen eyes of that color? I painted her once. What can I compare them to? Liquid sunshine? Whiskey in a glass?"

"Yes, that's it!" cried Duncan, as though he had been wondering the exact same thing himself.

Carlisle glowered. "Just friends?"

"Look, I—"

"You know, in my day, just a hint of a night in the woods alone with a young man would ruin a girl's reputation for good."

"I swear to you nothing ... "

"And by the color of your face, am I to suppose that nothing even crossed your mind last night?" Of that fact, Carlisle now had no doubt and he fixed the young man in a bald stare. "You may be my nephew, but May is more important to me and don't you forget it. She saved my life more than once, more than twice even. I wouldn't want to see her hurt, and I would take it even more ill if it came through any of my blood." He nodded once then glared, knowing just how menacing his dark eyes could be when he put his soul into the task.

And because Francis Carlisle saw from his nephew's face that he had finally got his point across and because he had just shot two fat rabbits that morning, he shook out a flannel rag from his pocket, and reaching to the side of him, picked his gun off the ground to clean it.

The youth went from a ruddy red turnip of a color to tombstone gray. He put his forehead down suddenly on the back of his hand, swayed in his seat, and nearly toppled over.

Carlisle clamped onto the boy's shoulder, holding him upright. "Damn it, man. What's the matter?"

Rufus appeared out of nowhere to nuzzle the boy, and Duncan drew his face away from the wet nose of the animal like a drunkard. At the same time, Carlisle heard the coffee urn clank as May fairly dropped it at their feet when she knelt down next to them.

May's eyes went from Duncan to wash over Carlisle, finally focusing on his hand—the one that wasn't holding his nephew from falling in the fire.

Carlisle realized he was still holding the gun.

"What did you do to him?" she said as though he had committed murder.

"Uh, nothing, I ... well, nothing." Then he nearly shouted, "Well, for heaven's sake, I didn't think he would— " Leaving a steadying hand on his nephew, who was still not quite right, Carlisle leveled the gun down to the ground and spread out his hand to her. "It's not even loaded. I'm out of shot. I only picked it up to clean it."

She hissed, "Nothing? You've scared him half to death." Then, in a tone dripping with sugar, she said, "Duncan, try putting your head down between your knees."

Carlisle clamped his lips together. He turned his head away.

She went after him like a banshee. "Just what are you smiling at?"

"You. Molly-coddling him."

"I'm glad you're so amused. He's hardly eaten anything for almost two days, he's dehydrated, and he's exhausted from keeping the fire going all night! Oh, I also forgot to mention that he's had the emotional shock of losing his little brother in one of your paintings."

Sobering up, Carlisle glared at her briefly and breathed out once through his nose. "You should have told me."

"You didn't give me the chance!" shrieked May. Taking Duncan's hat off his head, she fanned him with it.

Carlisle placed his free hand on his nephew's face and patted it. "Come on, son. Wake up. There's a lad."

"You're hurting him," said May.

"He's fine."

"Duncan? Can you hear me?" She stopped fanning him and peered into his eyes.

Duncan blinked several times, then smiled at her like an idiot.

"Oh, geez," said Carlisle, patting his nephew's face again, this time harder. "Are you alright?"

"For sure," slurred Duncan.

"Sure you are, you're an O'Callahan." Slowly, Carlisle took his hands away, watching his nephew the whole time to make sure he wouldn't fall over. "Let's get some food and coffee into you," he said, putting the metal urn on a grate near the fire. "And let's hear it from the beginning this time."

### Chapter 18

### The Duel

Right after he ate, Duncan fell asleep. Pointing to him, Carlisle stopped his conversation with May and led her to the edge of the forest path. Rufus got to his feet to follow, but Carlisle held up his hand, and the dog lay back down on the grass next to Duncan.

"Shouldn't we wake him?" whispered May.

"Give him a half hour to get his head back together from that dizzy spell or he'll be wretched all day. You two will make better time if he has a clearer head and his feet properly under him."

Before entering the woods, May sent one look back into the clearing where Duncan slept; Rufus guarded; and the horse, saddleless, munched lazily on grass.

Carlisle noticed her look and as though she had asked his opinion, said, "He's no fighter, May. I suspect if he ever harms anyone, it will only be by accident. On the other hand, he seems a decent lad and an O'Callahan and a good Catholic besides." He had established that by exacting a prayer from his nephew before eating the rabbits.

"What does that matter? I'm a Unitarian."

"Ah well, that can't be helped."

Coming to a willow tree near the stream, Carlisle's eyes took on a sparkle. He patted the sheath of the hunting knife at his belt and discovered he had left his knife by the fire. "You wouldn't happen to have a knife on you?" he asked.

May handed him her pocket knife and he cut two lengths of wood. He tested them, arching them between his hands to make sure they were supple but not too flexible. He seemed satisfied and nodded approval at them.

"What do you want those for?" she asked, folding her knife and putting it in her pocket.

"You told me you've been taking fencing lessons?"

"Oh, no, no." She shook her head.

"Let's go to the road where there's more room." He positively gleamed, following his own suggestion, leaving her behind to argue with thin air.

"Can't we just talk instead?" she asked, watching his broad back cut through the woods in front of her, green and yellow light reflecting off the white linen between the dark lines of his suspenders.

"I thought we had."

"But... but you haven't told me about your daughter yet."

"Oh she's a beauty, May. A real beauty. It must have come through Cora's line, not mine."

May supposed mentioning that he had married his own cousin probably wasn't what she should do right then.

"Though, come to think of it, she might take after my mother. But I've only just seen the one portrait, and it was poorly done." Carlisle's mother had died when he was born.

"Well, go on, what does she look like?"

His eyes went to the treetops and wandered around among the leaves. "Let's see, her hair is autumn chestnut and her eyes are blue sky, only brighter. She just turned nine. Each year I paint her portrait and each year she seems more lovelier than the last to me."

May tried to think if her own father would ever say the same of her and decided not.

"We named her Evangeline."

"Hey, that's the name of—" May stopped herself in time.

"Of what? Cora says it means 'angel'," said Carlisle.

"Yes, that's just what I was about to say," said May. "Angel."

"But she's wild, May. Spirited like a young pony." He picked off the last of the long leaves from the willow stalks in his hand as he walked.

"You know, it's a funny thing you mention ponies. Do you know those three knights wandering around here?"

"Know them? I painted them. Though they are quite a bit different than I imagined."

Coming to a low branch barring their way, Carlisle held it aside for her, releasing the sharp scent of pine into the air.

"Well, they were supposed to catch up with us on the road. In fact, they lent us that pony we're riding. It belongs to Kevin, Sir Ulric's squire."

"Squire? Is that what they're calling bastard sons now?"

"That seems harsh from you."

He didn't meet her questioning gaze. Rubbing at some pine sap on his hand, he said in a rumbling tone, "Maybe you're right. It's just that he's always asking after my daughter every time I run into those three."

"Oh, is that all?" She laughed. "Well can't you just send them away or something? What are they doing hanging around here?"

"What do knights without a war ever do? Looking for the Holy Grail, I suppose." He whisked one of the willow switches through a stand of ferns.

"I should have guessed. After all, you painted them."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Knights of the Round Table and all that stuff. Did you know they've labeled you a Romantic? Let's see if I can quote from memory. 'Carlisle's use of rich color, dramatic lights and darks, theatrical subject matter, emotional—'"

"Faugh! Enough!"

"So why doesn't Ulric just tell Kevin he's his son?"

"To protect him, I think. No one is supposed to know for sure. There's only just rumors. If his wife knew for sure, she might come after the boy and she's not a forgiving woman. You see, Ulric is married to the lady that kidnapped our swooning lad's brother."

"The Faerie Queen?"

"She comes from a family of witches, some good, some bad. She chose the latter. Anyhow, shortly after they married, Ulric trod off east to the Holy Land."

"In search of the Holy Grail?"

"He didn't find it there. Then when he finally came home, he had a seven year old son and a wife that would make any man's hair stand on end."

"Instead of his ...?" She didn't intend to finish, but he rewarded her with a dark warning look.

"She had transformed all his men and his castle into some den of evil. With no way and no men to get it back from her, he left. But not before taking the one thing that was most important to him."

"So that explains the eldest and creepiest son?"

"I see you've met one another. Ulric's been trying to keep him out of trouble, but maybe he started seven years too late."

"And Kevin?"

"Takes after his father; warrior stock through and through. He's a clever enough boy as long as he's got a weapon in his hand, or a horse under him."

"Who was his mother?"

"Some village woman. Quite handsome from what I understand."

"Kevin said she died. Ulric took pity on him and took him in."

"That must be what he's been told. She disappeared actually. Some say she drowned, some say she ran off with a fisherman, and some say she found her seal coat and went back to her own people."

"What story do you believe?" As if she needed to ask.

"Oh, my money's on the selkie, even if it isn't true."

The forest lightened ahead of them, as though they were approaching a glade. Carlisle parted some underbrush, revealing the road. He handed her one of the willow switches, then he turned, and facing her, took several steps backward into the center of the lane.

She dragged the stick on the ground behind her and followed after him. "Do I really have to?"

Raising the branch in his hand like a sword, he pointed it at her, then poised his other hand above his head to the back of him like a hovering serpent. "I want to see what you've learned."

"Oh, come on."

"You come on," he said, opening his eyes wide. He stepped forward and tapped the switch in her hand with his own a few times, then backed up and leveled his switch at her again.

"I've only had a few lessons. We mostly went over safety and some footwork."

He didn't answer, but just held his switch pointed at her, looking determined and waiting for her to join him.

She sighed once and stood in the on guard position. It was daunting to stand against someone who you knew could easily slice you in half without breaking a sweat.

He looked her over and pointed at her foot. "Straighten your front foot out," he said. "Good. Now don't move. Keep your feet still." He went to her and turned her by the shoulders gently until only the side of her body would be visible to anyone opposite. Then standing in front of her again, he surveyed his work and seemed satisfied with the effect. "There now. That's one of your strengths; you're hardly wider than the spine of a book like that."

"Actually, they don't really—"

"And that back hand needs to be up higher," he said, squinting one eye.

"No one does that anymore."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Because it's stupid?"

He lowered his back hand to a comfortable position. "Well, thank god. That's what I always thought."

"Can we just go now?"

"Right. Ready when you are. Torso only, now. No head, no limbs, no abdomen. And look, I'm handicapped. I'm using my right hand." He wiggled the fingers of his left hand behind him. "Just to give you an edge." With the same hand, he reached down and slapped his thigh once as the signal to begin, then returned his hand to the air at his back.

May signaled him that she was ready. He took a few advance steps toward her, his body loose and sloppy, inviting her to attack, his switch waggling in his hand, making himself a human target to her inexperience—like fencing a drunk.

She lunged at him. The point of her switch fell short by an inch to his chest. He touched the extended shaft of her switch briefly with his own, lightly as a kiss, then touched the point of his switch to her shirt.

"Parry, riposte," he said. "My touch. Nice form on your lunge though."

With a little effort, she recovered herself from lunge position, backed up and went on guard again. Once again, she executed a perfect lunge. Once again it fell several inches short of his chest. He reached his switch over hers, grazing hers briefly, and touched her shirt lightly with the tip of his switch.

"I know," she huffed, getting back into position. "Parry, riposte, your touch!"

"Can I give you a pointer?"

"What?" she snapped.

"Try taking an advance step before the lunge so you won't fall short. To be blunt, you don't have the reach."

"What you mean is, I'm short."

"You are," he admitted. "So you're going to have to make up for it with your footwork."

The next time she attacked, she followed his advice and almost succeeded, but as her switch point was about to touch Carlisle's chest, he parried it off to the left, then touched the end of his switch lightly to her midriff.

She spun around and threw her stick as far as she could. The spindly green wood made a whistling noise as it cut through the air sideways then bounced down a few times on the road before coming to rest.

"Pick that up," said Carlisle.

She didn't need to though because Rufus was already lopping down the road to retrieve it.

"I suck at this! I really, really suck," she yelled.

"Yes, yes. Everybody sucks at first. Don't you even try to quit, or I'll come and haunt you." He smiled broadly at her. "Well, as soon as I figure out how. Of course it's frustrating. But guess what, you can have speed and agility and know all the right attacks and parries and you can still suck at it. Because it's really about this." He tapped his index finger to his temple. "Every person you're up against is a different puzzle. Figuring out what he's going to do next, figuring out how to trick him, his weaknesses, his strengths, how to get through his pattern of defenses, that's really what it's about. It's about thinking, and I know you're good at that. Come on, try again."

Rufus was already nudging her hand with one end of the switch in his mouth. He had dragged the other end behind him as he walked, and there was a curvy dark line along the dirt track of the roadway for several yards.

This time she ditched the deep lunge for a short one that she could recover from easily. When Carlisle parried her off and went in for his usual riposte attack, she backed up quickly, making the tip fall short of her chest. She parried his switch to the side of her, then lunged deeply. The lunge was hard enough to his stomach to produce an umphing sound from Carlisle and to bend the switch into a wicked arc between them. The tip let go suddenly from his midriff and smacked the underside of his chin.

"Did I hurt you?" she cried.

Carlisle rubbed his hand on his chin. "No, I'm fine." Looking down, he pulled at his shirt, examined it and whistled once. There was a diagonal streak of sappy dirt up the length of it, from midriff to collar. "You know Cora's going to be mad as a wet hen trying to get that out. I'll be listening to that for weeks."

May winced. "Sorry."

Duncan had roused to the sound of voices and sticks hitting together and had made his way to the road to see what all the noise was about. He pushed his elbow away from the tree against which he had propped himself to watch the show. He smiled and clapped. "That was awesome!"

"Oh hell," May said, her face falling.

Carlisle saluted him with his willow branch.

Duncan had more color in his face now after having eaten and rested. His hat brim was off to the side, and there was a goofy grin on his face. "Are you ready to go?" he asked May. "I saddled up Evangeline."

"Evangeline?" said Carlisle, smiling awkwardly.

Duncan said, "Evangeline. I know. Silly name for a horse right? He said it used to be Mabel, but I kind of agree with him. She really does look more like an Evangeline."

"He?"

"Kevin. The kid that lent the horse to us."

Carlisle said slowly, "You mean to say that Kevin named his horse Evangeline? That little ... "

May waved a finger at him. "Ah, ah, ah."

"That little... _boy_ had the gall to name his horse after my daughter?"

"Now, now. I'm sure it's just a coincidence," said May.

Two spots of color had kindled into flaming circles on Carlisle's cheeks. The rest of his face was ashen.

"It's a very nice looking pony," said Duncan. "And he takes very good care of it. He's practically in love with it."

Judging by the look Carlisle gave him, that was probably not the best thing to say right then.

"I'll go get the horse," said Duncan, spinning back into the woods, bumping into a tree before fighting his way to the path over some ferns.

May was right behind him.

### Chapter 19

### Evangeline

Carlisle wandered out into the middle of the road and waved one last time to May. She gave him a wave before the pony turned a corner and rode out of sight.

Looking after them, Carlisle put his hands in his pockets, smiled down at the sappy dirt- streak on his shirt, and realized he had forgotten his pocket watch. He cast his eyes up at the clear blue sky, framed at the edges by green leaves, and judged it to be a little past noon; not yet too late to shoot another rabbit before heading home. His wife, Cora, would be expecting something to cook when he got back.

Then he remembered he was out of shot.

He felt Rufus bump into his knee, with something in his mouth.

Carlisle sighed, looking down at the foamy slobber on his brown hunting trousers. "No, I don't have time to play fetch."

Rufus bumped him again with the top of his head, then peered at him with playful brown eyes, wagging his tail.

"What's that you've got boy?" said Carlisle. Bending down, he removed a delicate patent leather shoe from Rufus's mouth. It was shiny with saliva. "Where did you get this?"

The dog lumbered to a maple tree at the edge of the road, circled round the back of it and brought out a match to the shoe.

Carlisle peered up into the maple tree's umbrella of green leaves and noticed that one of the boughs was shaking. As he watched, another began to shake farther up the trunk.

"Evangeline May!" he yelled.

The bough stopped trembling.

"You heard me Evangeline!"

The tree was still and silent.

Still peering up into the branches, Carlisle came to the back side of the trunk, dropped the shoe by a pair of dirty balled up stockings and caught a glimpse of white lace shifting from one branch to another. He heard the rustle of a starched petticoat. "I can see you," he warned.

Backing up a step, he spotted two muddy little feet on a branch, clutching the tree limb with what appeared to be monkey toes. On the next bough up, frozen in place; pale, slender fingers grasped a thick branch, fingernails showing dark moons of dirt under the broken nails.

She was trying not to breathe.

Carlisle began counting. "One ... two ... "

Through a fan of green maple leaves poked a small white face framed by a mass of tangled chestnut curls. Two large blue eyes gazed down at him. They matched the color of the sky, but with a touch of cream, so that they appeared luminous. The bridge of the straight nose and the top of the high cheekbones were dotted with freckles.

The eyebrows above those milky blue eyes drew together and up; the light pink lips rounded. "Papa! Oh, Papa. Please don't count. Please don't be angry."

"What have I told you about climbing trees? And where is your bonnet? You're starting to freckle."

Trying to remember, she bit her lower lip. "By the stream?"

"You will have to go get it."

"Yes! Oh I will. But just who were those people, Papa?"

"I won't answer until you get down."

She smiled widely. "I know that pony, I think. Doesn't it belong to that nice squire boy?"

"Never-you-mind that boy." He scowled and wagged a finger at her.

"Okay, Papa. Yes, Papa."

"Well, are you coming down?" he yelled.

She didn't answer him and she still didn't move. Instead she said, "I saw you skin those rabbits."

"I'll skin you if you don't get down out of that tree. I've told you I don't want you out when I'm hunting. It's too dangerous."

"Like sword fighting?" she said.

"Yes, and climbing trees. Does your mother know you're here?"

"I saw you saved those rabbit pelts. Is Mama going to make me a new muff?"

Carlisle exhaled a sigh.

Evangeline's face lit up in a smile.

"It was supposed to be a surprise." He sounded disappointed.

"I knew it," she cried. The small muddy feet bounced the branch a few times, causing the stems and leaves to shake.

Carlisle gasped and held up both his hands. In a silky tone, he said, "Come down now, pet, please?"

At the softening of her father's voice, Evangeline finally said, "Okay, Papa, I'll come down."

The girl sat on the thin limb on which she had been standing and dropped backwards, hanging down by her knees, her skirts raining down over her face.

Carlisle caught his breath in sharply, but all he said was, "Evangeline, a lady doesn't hang upside down like that."

Her muffled voice came through three layers of muslin. "Why not? I have on bloomers."

Carlisle scratched his head. "It just isn't ladylike. A girl's not supposed to show her ... her bloomers."

"That girl wore bloomers."

"Those weren't bloomers. Those were pants."

"Can I wear pants?"

"No."

"But ... "

"No. You can't. No."

Evangeline said absolutely nothing for a few seconds, letting the moment become full of suspense. She said dramatically, "Are you ready?"

"Ready for what?" asked Carlisle, his voice cracking.

"To catch me." She let go of the branch with her knees.

Carlisle ran forward and caught his daughter in a rose bloom of white skirts and petticoats.

"That was fun!" she said.

"For who?" said Carlisle, spitting out some muddy lace, placing her on her feet.

She smoothed down her skirts, folded her hands together, fixed her blue eyes on his face and smiled.

"Get your shoes and stockings," he ordered.

"Yes, Papa," she said obediently and did as he asked. After which, she took up his hand, and they started walking together.

When they had gone a few paces, she asked, "Papa, what's a ... a bastard?"

He stopped short and gawked at her. "Evangeline! You've been eavesdropping again."

She stared at the knot in his green silk tie and bit her lip. "No I haven't." She squeezed his hand once and coaxed him into walking again.

"It isn't right to eavesdrop," he said.

"Well, Papa, you and Mama don't tell me anything. Like, who were those people?"

"I would have told you if you'd asked properly. One was an old friend and the other was a nephew, one of your cousins."

"They're sweethearts aren't they?"

"No, they're just friends."

"Papa. You must think I'm stupid. Why, she lit up like a candle flame when he was around."

"Candle flame? What an imagination you have." Then he lowered his brows and looked sideways at her. "You haven't been reading some of your mother's books again, have you?"

"I've seen you read them too."

"You have not."

"You move your lips."

"I do?"

"Anyhow, you always say that an artist needs to notice things. And I would say that that boy looks at that girl like you look at Mama when you think I'm not watching."

"Oh he does, does he?" Carlisle scowled at the forest floor.

"Oh yes. So of course they must be sweethearts."

"You notice too much," he said gravely.

"Yes, I do. So you see, I'm ready."

Carlisle felt his chest tighten. "Ready for what?" he asked, frightened of what might come out of his daughter's mouth next.

"To paint people."

"Oh," he chuckled. "Is it that again? I've already taught you how to paint."

Sounding dead disappointed, she said, "Oh Papa, flowers? Really? I don't want to paint flowers."

"And what's wrong with painting flowers?" he asked as they entered the glade. "You're very good at it."

She let go of his hand. "Ugh."

He gestured around the glade. "Flowers, birds, wildlife. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a good subject of study for a lady."

"Then I don't want to be—"

He pointed his finger at her. "Don't you even— "

"—a lady." Glowering back at him, she threw her shoes and socks to the ground and stamped her foot.

Putting both of his hands on his hips, he set his jaw and glared at her.

Her face melted suddenly. Tears welled up in her blue eyes. With her hair wild, she looked like a desolate water nymph. "Oh, Papa, please. Important artists paint people, not plants." He might have been teaching her to paint skunk grass by the way she said it.

Carlisle turned his head to the side. "That's isn't always true. You don't know what you're talking about."

She put a hand on his arm, went round him, sought his face. "Maybe I don't, but anyhow, it isn't what I want to paint."

Carlisle broke away from her watery gaze to watch some bees buzzing over a stand of forget-me-nots, only he wasn't able to escape the color of her eyes there.

She had been uncommonly quick at learning. Anything he showed her, she seemed to imitate with a skill that astonished him.

On the other hand, she was his daughter, why shouldn't she be talented?

He couldn't say he liked to paint flowers either, it had been a torment of boredom even teaching her. Something rankled in him about the whole nonsense of not teaching her something she was fully capable of learning—excelling at even—and he grumbled, "Well, I suppose it would be all right to do portraits."

She clapped her hands together. "Oh, Papa!"

Then his face was very serious. "But... but listen, angel, not a word to your mother. Not yet anyway." He would have to warm Cora up to the idea slowly. "We'll tell her when she's ready."

Evangeline jumped a little, shot her hands around her father's middle and squeezed him until he gasped. "Oh thank you, Papa."

"Come on," he said, taking her by the shoulders, holding her away from him a little. "Get on home now, you little trouble maker. Your mother's probably worried sick. I'll be home soon. And take the coffee pot with you. Your mother's probably wondering where it got to. I suppose I will hear no end to that when I get home." He bent down and kissed her cheek, then released her.

She seemed to suddenly come to herself regarding the sorry state of her clothes. She looked down and wiggled her mud covered toes.

"Oh yes, and you'll not hear the end of that either," he said.

Evangeline dawdled, picking up her shoes and stockings. "Papa?"

Something about the way she said it gave him an inkling he was going to regret his previous decision.

"Yes, pet?" he said, pouring the rest of the cold coffee on the dying ashes of the fire.

"Can I paint some people without their clothes on?"

The coffee urn went flying into the bushes. "What?"

"Isn't that what real artists do? How will I know what's under people's clothes? You know, just to get the shape right. Don't I need to—"

"You can just paint the cloth." Then, he was suddenly worried. "You, you haven't seen anybody without their clothes, have you?"

"No. But that's the trouble. What if I want to paint Adam and Eve, or Cupid and Psyche, or Hercules or David or—"

"Portraits," cut in Carlisle harshly. "Neck up."

Taking the handle of the coffee urn from Rufus's mouth, Evangeline gave the dog's head a pat. "Okay, Papa, if you say so. We can start with that."

### Chapter 20

### Foghorn

A few hours ride after they left Carlisle, May and Duncan happened on a bridge. It was made of gray granite and spanned the stream where the water lulled in slow full eddies, swirling darkly around the bridge's arched stone pillars. Mossy and worn, the bridge looked to be a thousand years old and built to last a thousand more. The flowing water stirred the breeze which sent down an occasional yellow leaf from the trees in a twirling decent to the ground.

May was reminded of a late August day when the heat has caused the weakest leaves to give up their green early before the start of autumn, and it seemed to her that she and Duncan must be traveling in time as well as miles. Mid-summer had yielded to the golden days before the start of fall, and she sensed that cool bitter winds awaited them further down the road.

Duncan slowed the horse as they approached the bridge, then drew the reins. He held out his hand to May, and she took it as a sign to dismount.

"I don't know what she's like on a bridge," he explained, sliding down from the horse. "She might get spooked."

The bridge was wide enough for them to walk across, one to each side of Evangeline, Duncan leading her by the reins. At the top of the gentle arch in the stone bridge, a shaft of sparkling sunlight glimmered in front of them.

The horse pulled back and snorted loudly at it.

Duncan sent a look to May, then up and down the shaft of light. "Well, here goes," he said, before plunging his hand through it.

"Ahhh!" he cried, wincing.

"What? What's wrong?" she said, grabbing his arm.

He stopped wincing and smiled at her. "I don't know. It doesn't seem to hurt, but it feels kind of strange."

"You idiot! Don't scare me like that. Like what kind of strange?"

"Kind of jangly, like riding an old lawn mower." He pulled his hand out of the light shaft and examined it. "Looks like we'll survive. Hopefully the horse is okay with it."

Evangeline resisted at first, but Duncan calmed her, and she finally let herself be led along. After they were through the shaft of light, the horse shook her head and whinnied.

"I wouldn't mind doing that again," said Duncan with a wild smile on his face.

"You are so weird," said May, feeling goose bumps all over.

Duncan walked the horse another mile to rest her, and then they rode again. Gradually, the landscape changed from forest, to ferns and blackberry bushes and then to field.

Each turn in the road brought another new change in the landscape. Eventually, the green fields became golden marshland, followed by dunes with tall grasses like whiskers growing out of the sand, shivering in the wind. May smelled the familiar scent of beach roses, which grew close by her home in Maine, wildly rambling along roadways and ditches among weeds and wildflowers.

By degrees, the afternoon turned gloomy and damp, with somber gray clouds above them, pregnant with moisture, and May began to worry about rain.

A particularly sharp bend in the road opened out into a wide vista to the right of them overlooking the ocean. Glimmering like a white candle in the distance, flashing its beacon, a lighthouse sprang up from a stark island of black shale which sat so low in the water that the ocean in a storm must slam the very lighthouse walls. Even now, tall crests of foaming water battered the small island, sending up enormous fingers of white trying to drag the lighthouse down to the bottom of the sea.

"Funny," said May.

"What is?"

"They have the foghorn going. Why do you suppose that is? There isn't any fog."

It was a strange kind of foghorn, too, sounding in short bursts of different lengths. There was a pause like it was taking a breath, and the same pattern of bursts started over again.

Duncan said, "What do you make of it?"

The foghorn seemed to take a breath again. The silence was followed by two long bursts on the horn.

"Didn't you say you were a boy scout? That's an 'M'. It's Morse code." Following a short burst followed by a long burst on the horn, she said, "A." Then came the series of bursts for 'Y'.

"Someone's sending you a message," said Duncan. "And you know what's funny? My aunt used to flash the porch light just like that to call Sheila and me in at night. Do you suppose she could be in there?"

"Then my brother must be in there, too. She couldn't rig that up on her own."

Duncan swore softly and suddenly. "I can hear someone coming."

May heard it too. They both began looking around for a place to hide, but there was nowhere on that flat expanse of sand and scrub that could have hid anything larger than a Chihuahua, let alone two humans and a medium sized pony. Duncan was about to turn the horse around to make a retreat, when Ulric appeared around the bend atop his large white steed.

Both of his sons shared a smaller black horse behind him. They looked miserable.

Before the black horse could even be drawn to a stop by Ron, Kevin slid off the back of the animal and came running at them. Evangeline might have been riderless for all the attention he paid to May and Duncan. All of Kevin's energy was directed toward his chestnut colored pony.

"I told you I would take care of her," said Duncan.

Kevin felt over the horse's legs, then smiled to himself and nodded. "You're okay," he said to the horse as though he couldn't quite believe it. "You're fine."

Ulric's face was black and blue from Duncan's smack to his nose, but he gave them a smile. "It took longer than we expected. My pony lost another shoe and we had to find another smithy. But we're here now."

"We'd like to try to make it to that lighthouse. We think some of our friends are out there," said May.

Ulric pointed to the shore. "Down by the water, there's boats that will take you for a fee. If I didnae have the horses, I would take one myself, for it cuts the traveling time in half. We can wait for you on the far side."

May had only a few dollars on her. The trip to the museum had been completely spontaneous.

Duncan made a search of his pockets. He found four quarters and some curled orange paper. He showed what he had in his hand to Ulric.

"Och, that should be enough," said Ulric. "They dinnae seem to care what you give them, as long as you pay them something. Now get down to the shore before this weather worsens. Already it's blustering out on the bay and all of us have no little traveling to do."

### Chapter 21

### The Sea Witch

The old woman they hired to row them to the lighthouse squinted at Duncan and May from the front bench of the rowboat through eyes which were once blue, but which now had opaque lenses of milky white. She was a scrawny old hag, with wiry white hair that scraggled out of her gray wool hat and down past her shoulders.

The skiff they were riding in heaved and tossed on the waves that were forming in front of a headstrong wind, but the old woman plunged her oars into the choppy surf all the same, and didn't even seem to notice the buckets of spray in her face or the boat making negative headway in the water.

"Would you like me to row for you?" asked Duncan, watching one of the woman's chicken wing arms struggle with an oar. His offer was as much for expediency as charity. It was going to take this woman forever to get to the lighthouse—a trip she had told them would take no longer than half an hour.

She blew out some salt water from her mouth and smiled. "Nah, nah. It keeps me young!" Duncan noticed she had three or four teeth left.

He had already accepted that May wasn't normally super talkative, but she had been silent as a stone since they'd left the shore and about as immobile. Acting statue-like, he imagined she was trying to pretend nothing was wrong. But her eyes dancing over the frothy water and the rigid whiteness of her fingers gripping the side of the rowboat made a liar of her.

She kept her right hand in her lap like a queen, but more than twice he'd seen it clench into a tight ball as they mounted a wave, then by what appeared to be sheer willpower, she'd forced her palm flat against her thigh a moment later.

Once again, he felt struck by the smallness of her.

As for himself, the tossing of the boat seemed like a variation on a motion that was welcome and familiar to him. He felt the rowboat like a skateboard under him, only without the vibration or the sound of the wheels grinding on the tar of the street. He swerved, dashed, rose again sharply with tiddly-bumps in his gut, and descended again in a smooth arc; each wave and rush a little different each time, in a random, yet always repeating, pattern.

Only, when he was on his board, he felt like he could control where he was going. This was more like a carnival ride—there was no way to get off, and no way to control the flow, and you weren't even sure it was entirely safe. Duncan looked over the churning greenish soup of the sea and marveled at the sheer power and force of it.

His left hand was holding onto the few inches of bench between him and May, and on the drop from an especially high wave, he felt the clutch of an icy hand on his wrist. May didn't even look at him when he turned to her, and he wondered if she even knew she had taken hold of him. She just watched the water as before with restless eyes, but in their whiskey colored depths, he now thought he saw real panic.

He lifted his feet and braced them against the sidewalls of the boat, one foot next to him, one spanning the width in front of May to the opposite sidewall, pinning her knees to the bench with his leg. He took his right hand off the side of the boat next to him and placed it over hers on his left wrist.

He feared she might yell at him to get off of her. Instead (though maybe it was just his imagination) it seemed like the hand digging into his arm relaxed, and he felt her body lean into him a little.

May turned her head, and he read by her look that she had something to say, so he bent his head down in front of her. Locks of her hair brushed against his face in silky whirls. She yelled over the keening wind, "I almost drowned last year."

He squeezed the hand on his wrist once, to show that he had understood her words, and when he lifted up his eyes, saw the old lady smiling crookedly at him with her puckery mouth.

The wind picked up in a howl and the old hag lifted her head and cried at it, "Ha! Here she comes now in a right good frenzy, the wicked wench! I just love it when it's tossy!" Then the old witch laughed like a crazy old loon.

Duncan passed a look to May as much as to say the woman was a nutter, but he smiled in fun when he did it, and she even smiled back at him before a wave dropped the boat into a trough.

He was having such a good time. A much better time than he'd had in a long, long time.

The boat heaved suddenly sideways, and next he knew (he was never sure exactly how it happened) May was clinging right to him, and he had both of his arms wrapped tightly around her.

Looking up suddenly at the old woman to see how she fared, he saw the smiling old wench wink at him before drawing hard on the oars.

"Ha, ha, ha," she laughed into the wind. "I just love it when it's tossy!"

### Chapter 22

### The Lighthouse Keeper

Charley had pulled the blessed cord of the lighthouse foghorn most of the morning. He had let Sheila try it the night before so he could get a break, but she couldn't seem to get the timing right, so anyone knowing Morse code out on the bay heard who-knew-what message, if they could make any sense of her gobble-de-gook at all. He had been unable to automate the foghorn, so he had continued all through the night until from sheer fatigue, he was no more use at it than Sheila had been. He fell asleep where he sat in the midst of signaling the letter 'A'. When the morning sun woke him, he started up again.

There were times in the night that he simply had to stop yanking on the cord to the foghorn, as much as he didn't want to. There had been the lamp in the lens to keep going which burned some kind of oil, though he didn't know what kind. It might have been whale oil for all he knew, but it smelled a lot like rancid cabbages. Every six hours, the oil needed to be filled in the lamp by hauling gallons of the flammable stuff from the oil shack outside, over the wet rocks, up the greasy stairs of the almost eighty foot tower in the chill darkness. The oil burned black and smoky when the wicks in the lamps got long, and every few hours the soot had to be cleaned from the inside of the lenses until Charley had figured out to trim the eight lamp wicks every few hours. That kept the smoke and the dirtier task of wiping the lenses to a minimum.

All that was more than enough to keep him busy and sleepless, but there had also been the clockworks to be wound every four hours to keep the Fresnel lens rotating.

Charley was starting to reconsider any romantic notions he had previously entertained about lighthouse keeping.

He hoped that Sheila had remembered the right light signal from when she was a kid. It was just like her to make that kind of stupid mistake. Even if she did have it right, her dimwit cousin still needed to be able to make sense of it.

That's why Charley kept the foghorn going. If May was anywhere that she could hear it, he felt sure she would be able to figure things out.

Why did a sensible girl like his sister have anything to do with Sheila, who must be about the biggest airhead in the world?

The letters M, A, and Y in Morse code were written on the sooty table in front of him and this allowed his mind free to wander, since he no longer needed to even think when he pulled on the foghorn cord. Nerve signals went directly from his eyes to his hand in a reflexive, continuous loop.

He had the museum brochure open and spread out on the table but had yet to figure out why the weather was always sunny on one side of the bay and stormy on the other. It was like the lighthouse stood on the border between two paintings: the first painting being the one that he and Sheila had entered last night in the moonlight, while he suspected that the other side of the bay represented another painting called _Approaching Storm Off the Maine Coast_ by Harrison Bird Brown. Both paintings were listed as being housed in the same room as the painting that had originally brought them here. It seemed to make a kind of sense, but Charley just couldn't be absolutely sure, and that bothered him.

Even more perturbing to him, however, was something insidious that had been niggling at Charley's brain for a while now and wouldn't let go. The restless night and long stretches of repetitive, mindless acts had sent Charley into a monk's trance and he sensed an impending epiphany. His mind began to recollect a story Sheila had told him months ago about a friend of hers who lived in Boston. At the time she told him, he had really been focusing on why anyone sane would eat two chocolate cupcakes with a diet coke, and he hadn't been paying too much attention to her chatter as he watched her stuff the last of the cupcakes in her mouth.

Also, Sheila had gotten blue frosting on his sleeve.

Charley's hand wasn't pulling on the foghorn cord anymore; it hadn't been doing so for some minutes, but he was too busy thinking to notice.

At the time Sheila had told the story about her 'friend' from Boston, Charley had felt kind of sorry for the guy, even though Charley thought he must be a major kind of stupid, too. And now—now that Charley suspected that this same guy might be out there somewhere with his little sister—Charley realized he wasn't feeling sorry for him at all anymore.

No, not even one little bit.

This was what had been going on in Charley's mind when he heard the old crone's muffled laugh through the panes of glass of the lamp room, just as clearly as Charley could see through them the two small figures in the rowboat teetering on the surging whitewater below. Charley stood up at the table to get a better look, and his wooden chair screeched against the floor tiles behind him.

He recognized the same old woman who had brought him to the lighthouse just the night before. The dotty old gorgon was piloting the rowboat around to the calmer side of the island, but so close in to the shore that the small vessel threatened to be shattered into splinters on the jagged rocks.

Still disbelieving what he was seeing, Charley walked along the inside curve of the lamp room windows, following the small boat with his eyes all around the island until the skiff landed, and he could get a better look at the two passengers inside.

The damned reprobate had his hands all over her!

Charley ran out of the lamp room, slipped down the first few steps of the stairway, caught himself, then with his heart in his throat from his near miss, skuttered down the rest of the long winding staircase to greet his little sister.

### Chapter 23

### Approaching Storm

The landing of the rowboat on the small island was as white knuckled a business as the rest of the ride, only worse now that the churning surf threatened to smash the vessel into pieces of splinter on the shale. The old woman went at it fearlessly, however, and May considered the wild thought that the old lady was so close to death anyway, it made little difference to her how and when she arrived at that final destination.

When the woman had landed the rowboat at last, Duncan unhanded May gently and helped her out of the boat. Not seeming to know suddenly what to do with his hands, he slipped his thumbs in his pockets and stood in front of her awkwardly.

May dug a trembling hand in her front pocket and came out with two dollars which she gave to the old woman. The crone shoved the money inside her wet shirt and pushed away from the rocky island, laughing and winking.

"There. We're even now for the soda and cookies," she said to Duncan.

"I didn't really want to be even," he said, looking over her face as though he were trying to memorize every line and corner of it.

She felt exposed, too much the center of attention. She gazed beyond him to the lighthouse.

"Don't," he said softly. "You always look away."

Emboldened by the adrenaline rush of the landing and their earlier embrace, Duncan reached out to take her face in his hands just as May caught sight of Charley walking out of the lighthouse like a marine. She backed away so that Duncan's hands were left suspended in the air.

The look on May's face and the sound of angry footfalls to the back of him told Duncan all he needed to know, and he let his hands drop.

From somewhere, Charley had found a dark blue vest. He hadn't buttoned it, and it buffeted in the wind as he marched toward them. May smiled at first, but he didn't smile back, only kept on purposefully with Sheila right behind him. Her eye makeup was smudged, and the whiteness of her skin gave her the look of a vampiress.

May stepped around Duncan, putting him to the back of her, stopping Charley in his tracks. "You're here!" she said, "Gosh, am I glad to see you."

Charley greeted her without a smile, but he seemed genuinely relieved to see her. He had an enormous black smudge on his forehead and looked as though he hadn't slept all night, or if he had slept, then badly. To May, he looked like he was trying to hold himself together by one silken thread, and it was beginning to unravel strand by strand. He flicked his eyes past her to Duncan.

Oblivious to the electricity in the air, Sheila greeted May and Duncan each with a hug, then took them both by the hand and led them to the lighthouse. "Come on, you must be starving. There's food here. All canned, but at least you can eat it. OMG, there's so much Spam! Charley even ate some. Didn't you Charley? He said he'd never had it before. Doesn't your family ever buy Spam?"

May cast a look over her shoulder. Charley was a few paces behind them, scowling like a jailer, and she went from surprised to angry. Regardless of what he might have seen, it was frankly none of his business. She wanted to get him alone as soon as possible and tell him so.

On entering the lighthouse, Sheila let go of their hands and May followed her until they were in the keeper's quarters where there was a galley kitchen.

"We better get a move on," said Sheila going to a cupboard. "We need to get out of here and find Shane. I don't want to spend another night on this rock."

May heard the front door slam and got a sinking feeling in her gut when she realized no one had followed them into the kitchen. "Weren't the boys right behind us?" she asked.

"There's a boathouse at the back. They're probably just getting the boat out so we can get off this heap." Sheila was rummaging through the cupboards as she spoke. She pulled out a can and put it on top of a table covered by a red and white tablecloth.

May crossed the room and peered out the small square window overlooking the yard. She heard Sheila opening and closing the wooden cupboard doors behind her. The kitchen smelled heavy with a mixture of cooked Spam and a mildew odor coming from the rotted window well in front of her. A drip from the old faucet at the sink rang out sharply off the bare walls.

The boys weren't anywhere near the boathouse, wherever that was. In fact, she could see Charley out the window plain as day, and she didn't like the look on his face as he was talking. She couldn't see Duncan from where she was standing, but at that very moment if she could have, she would have seen him facing Charley with one hand at his back groping around for the doorknob to the front door.

Sheila was saying: "What an awful night! The wind just howled, and I couldn't sleep; the bed smelled like an old cellar. I think something bit me, too."

Outside the window, May could see Charley glowering with both hands on his hips. He was doing that prowling walk he did when an opponent had fouled him on the basketball court, looking like if the referee didn't hand out a penalty, he would go after the guy himself. She couldn't make out any of the words he was saying, but she could read his lips enough to know that he was doing a lot of swearing.

Charley made a sudden rush toward the building and from the outer room, she heard the front door slam shut. Now she was finally able to see Duncan through the window, but only because Charley had him in a headlock and was dragging him away from the door.

May dashed out of the kitchen leaving Sheila talking to a can of cooked carrots in her hand. She ran to the front door and burst it open.

Out in the yard, her brother had Duncan pressed flat against the outside wall of the lighthouse with a forearm across his neck. Duncan's hands were in the air, his fingers curled limply, his body sandwiched between the rough brick of the lighthouse and the other solid wall that was Charley who outweighed him by more than twenty pounds and who had a good three inches on him in height.

They both looked over at her like two schoolboys caught fighting in the schoolyard. Aside from that one shared guilty look, the two boys couldn't have been more different. There was Charley, built like a Viking, with his ice blue eyes and blond hair; and Duncan, wiry and thin, with his dark hair and dark eyes that right now were saying that he wanted to be anywhere else but there.

May stepped out into the yard, which since it had no actual dirt or grass, could only be called a yard in the very loosest sense of the word. Folding her arms, she said coolly, "What do you think you're doing, Charley. Let him go."

Instead of talking to May, Charley glared at Sheila, who had come out directly behind her, still holding the can of carrots in her hand. Charley's pale eyes looked colorless. "This is him, isn't it? The one you told me about."

Sheila's face seemed all in a jumble. "The one?"

"The guy you told me about who knocked up some girl in Boston."

Sheila was struck suddenly dumb. Her pretty mouth made rounded shapes and then stopped without any sound coming out.

Duncan forgot Charley was choking him for a moment. Sounding more hurt than angry, he said to Sheila, "You told him? Who else knows? The state?"

"No, I swear, I never did. I... " Sheila stopped dead like she'd been shot then began again in a rush, "I never used your name. It was months ago, when you were still in Boston. How was I to know you were going to move back? I said you were a friend. I didn't even say you were my cousin. I don't know how he figured it out."

Leave it to Charley to never add two and two and get five, though the computation on this occasion didn't require any special genius.

May tried to keep her voice level and almost succeeded. "What's this all about?" she asked.

"I'll tell you what it's about," said Charley, still holding Duncan pinned to the wall. "He got some girl pregnant in Boston, then he runs up here to let her deal with it on her own."

"That wasn't how it happened," said Duncan, his eyes appealing to her.

Charley moved his elbow so that it pressed into Duncan's neck. "Did you think she was an easy mark because she's little and plain?"

"Charley!" shouted Sheila, dropping the can of carrots.

May said, "Nothing happened, Charley. Why would it? He did nothing. Let him go."

Duncan rasped out, "Dude, remind me which one of us is the jerk."

Charley let his arm fall and Duncan collapsed like a folding chair, coughing into a fist.

"May, I didn't mean—," began Charley.

"Just forget it, Charley. Just...." There suddenly didn't seem to be enough air in the world to fill May's lungs as she rushed into the lighthouse. She felt like she was going to suffocate to death.

When Charley came in after her, she turned on him. "Don't! Don't you dare follow me," she yelled at him. "And don't you even try to tell me you're sorry."

Charley hung in the doorway with his fingers drifting on the jamb, watching her back as she launched herself up the steps of the spiral staircase. A minute later, May heard the door close as he went back into the yard.

A little less than halfway up the tower, the interior of the staircase was dim enough to grow mushrooms. Just as May was thinking she should have taken a lamp up with her and possibly an oxygen tank, she came upon a small window which let in light.

Stopping to catch her breath, she looked out and saw Duncan making his way around the back of the lighthouse. Peering down at the top of his head, she saw the red cap turn sideways as he sent a look over his shoulder. Then he dashed into a structure off the back of the building which she assumed must be the boathouse.

Coward, thought May. He was checking behind him to make sure Charley wasn't following.

As she was about to put her foot on the next stair, she heard a faint click echo up to her. A door was being closed softly and she cursed to herself, realizing that the boathouse was another way into the tower.

"May?" called Duncan in a stealthy whisper.

She couldn't believe the gall of him trying to talk to her. What was he after anyway?

He called again, this time a little louder, but she still didn't answer him back. She put her foot on the next stair up so quietly that even she couldn't hear it, and began mounting the stairs silently, hoping he thought she was already at the top.

Somehow he seemed to sense her presence and started talking as though he knew she was listening. What he said didn't make much sense to her at first.

He said, "It was snowing, May. Do you remember that freak storm we had at the end of April?"

Sure, she remembered it. It lasted for days. What was his point?

"It had just started. It was after work. Ten o'clock. Her car wouldn't start, and she had used up all the minutes on her phone. I didn't realize my mom had taken the snow tires off the van already."

He stopped talking, listened for a moment. "May? Are you there?" His voice sounded a whole lot closer than it should have. She looked down and saw his hand on the spiral railing several turns below her. Damn him! He was coming up the stairs and by the look of it, he must be taking them two at a time.

"And then it turned to ice."

She remembered the ice. May's family had been out of power for three whole days.

She leaned over the railing and saw him looking right up at her. She ducked back from the edge with her heart pounding.

"Please," he called. "Can't you say something?"

She ran up the stairs now.

His voice became louder. "And then we ended up in a ditch. This guy in a pick-up pulled us out, but I didn't get her home until after midnight."

May was out of breath again. She rested her back against the cool stone. Why couldn't he just leave her alone?

"I swear to you, May, I swear to you, nothing happened. I think I'm one of five guys listed on that paternity paper. She was broken up with her boyfriend at the time, and she won't say whose it is, and I think her parents would have listed all the guys in Boston if they could. I wouldn't have left if I thought for a moment it was mine. I tell you, it just couldn't be mine because nothing happened."

"Was she pretty?" she asked. May closed her eyes and cursed under her breath. She hadn't meant to speak at all, let alone have that come out of her mouth.

His voice sounded brighter when he answered. "That's not why I gave her the ride, May. And I was so happy to be rid of her, you don't know. We were stuck in a snowbank for two hours. Two hours! I've never met a girl with so many problems, and so few nice things to say about anyone." He waited a moment for a response but got none. "Your brother should never have said that about you. It's not true."

She inched her face over the railing. He was sitting on a stair. She watched the top of his head as he took off his cap, fingered it, then put it back on. She heard him whisper, "I think you're lovely." The words hadn't been meant for her, but he didn't realize how easily sound carried up the bare stairwell.

She watched his hands clasping and unclasping one another in front of him. He said loudly, "Why can't you just give me a chance?"

"Just why's it so important to you?" she asked with a perplexed look.

He tilted his face up. Returning the same look back to her, he said, "Don't you know?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Because with some people, it matters what they think of you, and somehow I just can't live with you thinking I would do something like that. I don't give a rat's ass what your brother thinks. But I do care what you think."

"I don't know what I think," she said. "You need to give me some time."

He stood and grasped the railing with both hands, "For sure. Take all the time you need."

"I'd really like to be by myself right now. I won't be long."

"For sure," he said, running his hands along the railing as he spoke. "I need to go help with the boat anyway. I'll see you outside."

As she turned back up the stairs, a horrible thought entered her head. There had been something in the way he had looked at the railing...

She screamed, "Don't!" just as she heard several loud footfalls, and a soft thud like a body hitting a stone wall. After a few seconds, she heard a groan.

"Are you okay?" she yelled down.

"For sure," he called out weakly from the bottom of the spiral staircase.

Sure you are, she thought, starting back up the stairs, you're an O'Callahan.

### Chapter 24

### The Trouble with Charley

May stood at the rail of the lighthouse balcony and looked out over the bay which stretched out, glittering and cresting white on one side of the island and on the other, flat and smooth as a mirror. She could just make out the old woman, very tiny now in her boat, rowing back to shore, returning to her hut on the beach among the grass and dunes.

May circled around the balcony to the side which faced the mainland. On the coast she saw a flattening out of the land where the mouth of a river emptied into the ocean, and where Ulric had agreed to meet them. A dirt road ran along the shoreline for several miles then zig-zagged into a forest beyond it. Over the treetops of the forest she could see rolling mountains. In the distance, a tower stuck up tall and gray from the slope of a peak. The top of the tower caught the sunlight for a moment and made it shimmer.

Charley's voice drifted up from below, barking out orders to Duncan and Sheila as they attempted to get the clumsy rowboat out of the boathouse. Eventually, everyone got drafted into Charley's private army whether they wanted to or not. Even those who objected at first usually ended up following Charley's orders once they realized that he really did have a knack for knowing the most efficient way to get something done.

She thought it was strange that Charley and Duncan were on the same side of the island, let alone working within a few feet of one another. It was as though the two schoolboys caught fighting at recess had returned to class, their fight put on hold until the bell rang.

Charley was already coming in to get her by the time May had descended the stairs. When he ran into her at the interior entrance to the boathouse, he closed the door behind him, then stood in front of it so that she would have to talk to him in order to get by.

"I'm sorry, May," he said. He really looked ill. His eyes were bloodshot and set off by dark circles.

She tried to move him aside, but it was like a chipmunk trying to move an oak tree. "You're such a hypocrite, Charley. You haven't got a right to say anything to me. Now get out of my way."

"Oh, I don't? You're my little sister."

"Give me some credit, Charley. I might be plain, but I'm not stupid. Believe it or not, I can take care of myself. Now let me by."

"May, I'm sorry I said that, but I'm not sorry about going after him."

He still wouldn't budge from the door, so she stomped on his foot.

"Ow! Cut that out!"

"He didn't try anything if that's what you're worried about. And he says that nothing happened with that girl."

"And just what did you expect him to say?"

Charley had a point.

"And just when did he—?"

They were interrupted by a knock on the other side of the door. Sheila's voice came through, muffled, telling them the boat was ready, the tide was turning, and were they coming or what?

"We'll be right there," May called.

"Let her wait," said Charley, then attached a word in reference to a girl that May had never heard him say before. Sure, Charley could swear, but there were still some words he wouldn't say in front of his _sister_ , especially about her best friend.

"Charley!"

The final strand of thread that was keeping her brother from unravelling snapped all at once. He put both his hands, which were blackened with grease, over his face and started _sobbing_.

She said breathlessly, "God, Charley. What's wrong?"

"She broke up with me," he said through his hands. "I don't know how I screwed up so bad."

For months, May had dreamed of what she would say to Charley when Sheila broke up with him. But right now, 'I told you so', just didn't seem to fit. Other than not saying that, she wasn't exactly sure what to do.

A million thoughts ran through her head at once and they all had conflicting emotions attached to them. She hadn't seen Charley cry since he was hit in the chest by a baseball in first grade. He was always big for his age, and her father had moved him out of T-ball early, so Charley was scared to death the whole first season. When he got hit by the ball, her father had told Charley that he was an embarrassment and to just suck it up and shut up.

Her father's words had been so effective that Charley hadn't cried since.

Until now.

May was frightened watching Charley like this. Because as annoying as her brother could be, no matter what, he would always take charge, he always knew what needed to be done, and you could always depend on him. Now as she stared at his big hands covering his face she realized just how much she had always taken that for granted.

Right now she absolutely needed to get Charley to pull himself together, but she knew she wasn't going to tell him to suck it up and shut up even if she had to row the boat all the way to shore by herself.

Hell, she would even row to China if she had to.

She wasn't sure whether she should touch him and her hands made little experimental motions in the air around him before settling lightly on his upper arms.

She said: "Oh Charley, it's not your fault. It's just her. She finds something to like about every guy. Did she find somebody else?" She tried to make her voice sound comforting.

He shook his head in his hands. His voice came through to her muffled and distorted. "I don't think so. She said she wanted some time to be on her own. She kept going on about brackish water and dolphins and finding out what it was like to be by herself for once, then going off to find another dolphin, instead of a tuna or a salmon. I don't know. I think I must have screwed something up, but I swear I don't know what I did wrong."

Trying to keep a straight face, May rubbed his arms a little. "That ... doesn't make a whole lot of sense, Charley."

"I think she called me a trout."

May tried not to laugh, but he heard her and peeked through his hands.

"That's got to be the weirdest thing I ever heard," she said, still trying to keep a straight face.

"I know," he said, nodding into his hands. "I thought so, too."

She pulled his hands gently away from his face, then looked them over. "This is a first. What have you got all over you?"

After sniffing them, he wrinkled his nose and said, "I think it's cabbage oil and soot. I can't get it off. I put this vest on so I wouldn't get any on my shirt."

"You didn't even get any on the vest. How do you manage to do that?" May had seen him paint entire rooms without dripping a spot of paint on his clothes.

"I don't really know. I'm glad though; I kind of like this vest."

"Yes," she said, buttoning one of the buttons and patting his chest lightly. "I think it looks very smart on you. Why don't you go to the kitchen and splash your face with cold water. I'll cover for you."

He sniffed once. "You know, I kind of liked having a girlfriend."

May had to admit that he did mope a whole lot less when he'd been going out with Sheila. "What about that girl in your calculus class, that one you're on student council with? Clara somebody. The redhead."

"Claire? You mean the one who's always telling me where to get off?"

Perfect! "Yeah, that's the one. She seems like a fellow trout."

He raised his eyebrows. "Well, she's cute since she got her braces off, but she thinks I'm a jerk. I don't even think she'd be interested." He shrugged, then went out of the room.

### Chapter 25

### Footbridge in the Wilderness

It happened this way that Charley and Duncan ended up rowing the boat. In order to get to the shore quickly, they needed two people at the oars but, though no one said it out loud, Charley didn't want to sit next to Sheila; May didn't want to sit next to Duncan; May was too much of a mismatch in strength for her brother; and Sheila and Duncan might have been able to make a go of it, but no one, including Charley, wanted Charley to be just a _passenger_.

Plus, the guys just plain thought they would be better at it because they were, well, guys. Luckily for everyone, they didn't voice that thought.

So after a few awkward moments of dancing and seat shifting around the boat, everyone by mutual and silent agreement took their seats like they were in some kind of improv ballet in which the performance manages to work out in spite of there being no choreographer.

During most of the short trip, May wasn't sure where to rest her eyes, and no one else seemed to be sure either. The ocean was gazed at a lot, telling looks passed between Sheila and Duncan, and occasionally between Charley and May. No one spoke.

She was aware that Duncan glanced at her cautiously from time to time, trying to judge what she might be feeling about him, and she made sure to give him absolutely no encouragement.

Ulric and his sons were waiting impatiently for them at the mouth of the river along with a wooden wagon pulled by a work horse which had been procured from a local farmer. Ron paced the shore like a scrawny tiger cat as they approached.

Ulric's wagon was loaded with kegs, barrels and hay. As soon as they climbed aboard, Ulric set off over the bumpy road. Both of Ulric's sons on horseback took positions to the front and back of the wagon; Kevin scouting ahead and Ron at the rear. Ulric's enormous white stallion was tethered to the back of the wagon, and it munched from one of the hay piles next to May, several times nibbling her sweatshirt before she could yank the sleeve away.

"Do you want to trade spots?" asked Duncan, who was closer to the front of the wagon and away from the horse's mouth.

At his words, which had been almost whispered, Charley, who was riding shotgun next to Ulric, turned a little in his seat, checked over everyone in the back of the wagon, then frowned as though he must have only imagined he'd heard a voice.

After Charley faced forward again, May nodded at Duncan, and they quietly swapped places in the tight quarters.

Over the next few hours, Duncan's expression turn sullen. His hand plucked absently at the hay underneath it as his mind wandered into murky corners.

A few times, Sheila pressed his hand. She said once, "Don't worry. Shane'll be alright."

"How much more time do we have?" Duncan asked after they had traveled several hours. He looked up at the autumn leaves which lit up his face in bronze shades of red and orange.

May had been right about traveling in time as well as miles. Colored leaves drifted down regularly now as the wagon made its way down the winding forest road, and rained down in bursts when the cold wind blew the trees. May's hands were freezing and she put them in the front pouch of the sweatshirt.

Very soon, it would be Halloween Eve.

"Don't worry, we're almost at the castle," said Sheila, and her tone said she hoped that were true at least.

May sat up and tugged on Charley's sleeve. "How much longer?"

Charley consulted Ulric, then turned back to her. "Just a few miles," said Charley. He had the museum brochure in his hand as though he were studying it again.

"Which one?" asked May.

He tapped on the open page in his hand, then passed the guide to her.

" _Footbridge in the Wilderness_ by Charles Codman?" she read doubtfully.

Charley had a much better view of the road from where he sat because next she knew, Ulric was stopping the cart and getting them out to cross a narrow footbridge while he forded the stream with the wagon.

On the other side of the bridge, they stopped to rest and eat. Sitting on a log with her brother, May told him her suspicion that they had entered another painting after going over the footbridge. Charley and May examined the brochure together. Many of the rest of the paintings in the room of Maine artists were seascapes, and they were far from the sea now, so that eliminated almost all of them.

May took the guide from him and flipped a page. "Maybe we've gone into a different room."

A tall shadow fell over the guide in her hand. Duncan was standing behind them, blocking the light. "I remember that one," he said, before shoving a forkful of something pink and gelatinous into his mouth.

"What are you eating?" said Charley, looking over him from head to foot with disgust. At the same time, a pungent smell hit May's nose.

Duncan dug his fork into a rectangular blue can in his hand, then opened his eyes wide as though Charley should have known already. "Spam, hello?" He crammed a forkful of pink mush into his mouth again.

"Get that away from me, Boston," ordered Charley, looking nauseous, pointing a finger in the direction of Siberia.

Duncan rolled his eyes. He took one last bite and since he was finished anyway, he threw the empty can and fork on the ground a couple of yards away so he could continue to look at the museum guide with them.

This was hardly an adequate solution to Charley and his face showed it, but he held up the brochure and asked, "Which painting, Boston?"

Duncan pointed at the guide and said, "That one, Chuck."

May held in a smile. No one called him 'Chuck'. No one.

After a pause, Charley said, "The kid with hair on his face?"

"It's a girl actually," said May. "Can you believe it was painted in the 1600's? It's—"

"I can't believe it was painted at all," said Charley. "That's got to be the weirdest picture I've ever seen."

"Not as weird as that cat," said Duncan.

It was easy to figure out which painting he meant. It was of a beautiful woman dressed all in gold holding up a cup of potion, adding the last drop of a mysterious elixir to it. At her feet was a spooky black cat with eyes that looked out at the viewer as though the feline could see into their very soul.

They all seemed to give a little shudder at once.

" _The Love Potion_ ," read May. "Evelyn de Morgan. Well, I certainly don't think we're in that one."

"As long as we don't go through the one with the guy getting his head chopped off by the two chicks, I'm cool," said Duncan.

Sheila joined them. She was putting her hair back in a ponytail as she said, "Could it be one of the wall hangings?"

"The tapestries? Doubtful," said Charley without even a glance at her. "But it could be one of these paintings of birds. There's birds everywhere. Look at this one of some gulls."

May shook her head. "Yeah, but you can see the ocean in that."

Charley exclaimed suddenly, "Hey, look at this painting. She's hot! I hope we go through that one."

" _Lamia, The Serpent Woman_ by Anna Lea Merritt. You always did go for gingers," said May. "Says here that she's part snake. Her child was taken away, so she goes around snatching children and..." May didn't finish.

"What is it?" asked Charley, taking the guide back. "Let me read it ... 'she goes around snatching children and... and seducing young men into her bed.' Oh man!" Mocking a lurid tone, he continued, "... 'where she sucks off their youthful energy '... I'll just bet! Then ... then ..." And then even he stopped reading.

"What?" cried Duncan, "Why does everyone just stop when they're getting to the good stuff?"

Charley lifted up the brochure with his finger on the place.

Duncan read, "... 'then she drinks their blood and eats their flesh'."

Everyone was silent for a moment.

"Gross," said Sheila on a quiet note.

"That's got to be a metaphor," said Charley.

After that, both he and May agreed they must be in one of the landscapes by Julie Hart Beers.

### Chapter 26

### The Crossroads and the Castle

The spider crawled up the rough stones of the ancient well, the white stripes on its back catching the pale October light.

With no covering or roof, the stone well was open to the elements and rainfall, the only adornment being a bucket attached to a rope which lay on the ground at the side of it. None of the people in the village knew just how deep the cool water went below. Perhaps it bubbled up from the center of the earth itself. No one knew who had built the well, though most of the townsfolk, of whom only a handful remained, said trolls built it long ago at the formation of the world and that it had magic powers.

The only trolls anyone knew about now lived at the castle of the Faerie Queen. She had been a woman once, but since she had taken up sorcery many years ago, most of the townspeople had left because that's when the disappearances of young men started: sons, husbands, and fathers. Now the town stood mostly deserted, its shops and streets empty.

The spider felt the pull of magic as it skittered across the top of the well wall, then descended down the mossy stones, slippery with wet. Shadows deepened at the edge of the water, where the creature stopped nine or ten feet down, resting its sticky feet on an outcropping of stone. A backswimmer bug floated by on the surface of the placid dark pool so close that one of the spider's hairy legs trembled, then dared to reach out, tempted by the prey.

Peering down into the well, May watched the spider disappear into the water. A diagonal white flash passed across the water's dark surface. Then the surface of the water glassed over again, darkly mysterious.

For a moment, May gazed down at her own reflected silhouette before looking over the top of the well at the gray castle no more than a quarter mile away. She studied the castle wall a moment before crouching down to join her companions who were in the midst of a hurried discussion. The well was overgrown with prickly blackberry bushes, bracken and poison ivy. She stared at one of the ivy plants; it was dangerously close to her foot.

Duncan grabbed the plant she was looking at, sat a heavy stone on the stem to pin it to the ground and said, "Well, we found the castle. Now all we have to do is get in."

Charley sat next to him, leaning his back against the stones of the well with his long legs stretched out straight. "And how are we going to manage that? It looks like there's only one way to enter, and there are about a dozen guards at the gate."

"A dozen good sized guards," said Sheila appreciatively.

Aside from making a face like he had tasted something bad, Charley acted like Sheila wasn't there and just continued, "Even if we can take them, Ulric says there's more inside. We don't want the whole palace waking up. This needs to be a stealth mission."

"You mean like Ninja?" said Duncan, raising his eyebrows.

"That's correct, Boston. We have to be like Ninja."

Duncan peeked over the top of the well at the castle. "Parkour?"

"Dude, that wall's got to be twenty feet high. Are you nuts?"

"All I need is a boost."

"You can't go in by yourself," protested Sheila.

Charley ignored her. "Okay, Spiderboy, let's say we help you up there. What's next?"

"Once I'm at the top of the wall, you can boost the girls up to me. Then up goes Ulric, Ron and Kevin."

"And just how am I supposed to get up, genius? Fly?"

Some bracken spoke a few feet away. "Someone needs to stay with the wagon. Leave Ron."

May wondered how such a bulky man as Ulric could hide himself so completely in a bunch of ferns.

"Okay. That settles it," said Charley. "Once we're over, then we'll find the brat post haste and make our escape. There must be some means inside that we'll be able to use to get back over the wall again. But that's if, and it's a big if, no one catches us." Charley brushed a spider off his leg. "Now let's get out of here. These spiders are freaking me out."

The smell coming up from the ground was moistly fungal, reeking of leafmold. May held in a sneeze, then put one eye up to the hole in the castle wall where she had worked out a loose stone with her pocket knife.

She saw a pie slice of empty courtyard paved in blueish cobblestone. She could just make out the back inner portcullis of the castle. A sleepy looking guard crossed in front of the portcullis then disappeared into an enclosed walkway.

She had never seen a troll in real life before, but she felt sure that the sentry on duty must be one. Even while she knew that he must be absolutely that, at the same time, he wasn't exactly what she expected. Mostly, she would never have thought that trolls could be handsome, and this one was—albeit in a brutish way. He had leathery looking gray skin, a wide nose, and greenish black hair. And yet the face had a pleasing balance amidst its sheer ugliness. She wondered if this creature might have been human once; if so, he had probably been truly beautiful then.

She checked out his weapons and armor. The troll had a shield, a dagger at his belt, a long bow, and a quiver of arrows on his back. Judging by the size and look of him, she assumed he was capable of using every single weapon to lethal effect.

The troll guard yawned once, showing rows of pointed carnivore teeth before he shook himself awake and entered into the alcove of the building.

She waited, counting to herself.

The troll came out of the alcove right on cue. She watched him a while longer to be certain that his patrol and his timing never varied. After a few minutes more of watching and counting, she decided it didn't.

Duncan had his face to her when she turned from the hole in the wall, and not expecting to see him there—and staring at her so intently—her heart gave a leap at the sight of him. He had been keeping a respectful distance from her since Charley had attacked him at the lighthouse, and he was crouched a few yards away. He seemed to be able to fold his thin body into itself like he was made of paper, sometimes taking up almost as little room as even she could.

Sheila was close on her other side; May could sense that without even turning her head. She knew this because of Sheila's body heat warming her shoulder in the frosty air and also because she could smell cookies. Sheila's shampoo gave off a vanilla scent, and for some reason that escaped May, if guys associated you with cookies, that was always a good thing—at least in Sheila's mind.

Behind her, May could hear Charley hissing in whispers to Ulric and Kevin. Thankfully, Ron had been required to watch the cart and supplies and stayed on the road, out of sight of the castle and far enough away from May to avoid having to endure his creepy vibe.

May guessed that Ulric wanted to keep Ron and the castle separated for reasons that only he knew. What she suspected was that Ulric feared the lure of the sinister place would be too tempting for his eldest son who seemed touched by a finger of evil already.

"Well, do I have a chance?" Duncan asked her, and the soft look and tone he gave it seemed to layer the practical question with additional meaning.

Charley stopped talking to listen.

May said: "There's a guard on patrol to your left. He disappears into part of the building, then you have about three seconds before he shows up again. One potato, two potato, three potato ... like that."

"That isn't enough time," said Charley, shaking his head. He said it as quiet as another person might speak to themselves, but people paid attention to his voice and he knew it. "We'll never get everyone over without being detected."

"None of the other dozen places we checked are any better." May spun on her heel to face him. "We're running out of time. This is the best spot so far."

Ulric spoke. "If that sentry spies any one of you, then the whole castle will know what you're about." His helmet was off and several ferns stuck out from his hair. It might have been comical on someone else, but it gave Ulric the look of a Caesar. "And we're not just talking about her usual bumbling hoard of demons; there's hunderts of men—fighting men—in there as well. Right now she's got all of Nebuchadnezzar's army put up inside those walls."

"It's just too dangerous," said Charley, looking them all over and shaking his head.

"What if we wait until dark?" asked May.

Duncan stood. "I don't want to wait that long. Who knows what they're doing to him. Let me just go."

"It's too dangerous," said Charley.

"He's my brother."

Duncan seemed to have hit on the one argument Charley couldn't dispute with logic. Charley crossed his arms over his chest and didn't say anything as he considered whether brotherhood amounted to a divine right to be an asinine fool. He said finally, "Okay, Boston. I won't stop you. But what happens if you get caught? Are you asking us to risk our necks trying to get you out?"

"No. Plan B."

Charley snorted. "I think I missed Plan A."

"Forget Plan A. Plan A is crap. Plan A is that I make it inside, manage somehow to locate Shane without being seen, and then by some miracle, smuggle him out. But I don't know how I'm going to do that unless I start the castle on fire. Maybe I could scale the wall from inside, but unless Shane's learned how to fly, it won't be easy if I have to go around searching for a ladder or a catapult."

Shane would probably enjoy the catapult, thought May.

"Okay. So what's Plan B?" ask Charley.

"I let myself get caught—"

"No!" cried Sheila.

"—and you meet us both on Halloween Eve," finished Duncan.

Ulric smiled. "By God, the lad's right! Everyone will be out of the castle for the tithing festival."

"Charley, don't let him go. It's too dangerous," said Sheila.

"It's settled then," said Charley. "Where should we meet?"

"The old magic well at the crossroads," said Ulric.

"And what about all of Nebuchadnezzar's army? Won't they be there too?" asked Charley.

"I have some friends who might take an interest in helping us," answered Ulric.

"Just how many?" said Charley.

"A whole army's worth. They're who the supplies in the wagon are for. They're holed up in the mountains, have been for a goodly long time. The only way to them is through a wee narrow pass. Nebuchadnezzar's army won't let them out, and the whole of his army can't get in without being ambushed. It was a cunning hideout until Holofernes gave the order to stop up their water supply. They and their children are dying of hunger and thirst as we speak."

Duncan said, "Holofernes? Where have I heard that name before?" He turned to May. "Wasn't that the name of the guy getting his head cut off in that picture?"

"He's the general of Nebuchadnezzar's army," said Ulric. "My friends would jump at a chance to catch that army unawares and out o' the protection of this castle wall. They would love it even more if they could put Holofernes's head on a stake."

"We could use a good distraction. You think they would help us?" asked Charley.

"I know it," said Ulric.

This was more than enough planning for Duncan. "Meet me and Shane tomorrow night by the well." He tried to hand off his hat to Sheila, but she refused to take it. "I promise I'll be fine," he said to her. Sheila flung herself at him and hugged him a few moments, then reluctantly took his hat.

Looking up at the top of the wall, Duncan backed up and rubbed his hands together. "Tell me when." He nodded to May. "Make it look good—I don't want them to think I want to get caught."

Charley went to the stone wall and made a cup of his hands to give Duncan a boost.

Putting her eye up to the hole in the wall, May felt like the weight of all the stone in it was sitting on her chest. For all she knew, she could be sending Duncan to his death. She held up her hand as a signal, waiting for the troll sentry to make his rounds. She watched the guard's back, his quiver of arrows tilting from side to side with each heavy plodding step. Then, she saw him turn on his heel.

Her fingers straightened, tensed, getting ready for her hand to drop. Just as the guard entered the alcove, May sent her hand down in an arc.

Duncan charged at the wall a few feet away from Charley. He placed a foot on the wall about hip high, thrust upward, placed another foot on the wall, thrust upward again, then clasped his two hands on the edge at the top. Clinging by just his fingers, he scooted both feet under him and held there for a moment before bouncing on the balls of his feet and hoisting himself onto the top of the wall.

Charley uncupped his hands and stood. "Frigin' showoff."

May turned to Sheila, "Did you know he could do that?"

"Well, yeah, but I've never seen him make it before!"

Crouching on his heels at the top of the wall with one hand supporting him and one hand folded across his thighs, Duncan watched the movements of the troll guard.

From inside the courtyard, there came the sound of men shouting. May placed both of her hands to the sides of the hole in the wall and peered inside to the yard. Guards were flooding into the courtyard, mostly trolls, a few human, all of them with weapons drawn.

May heard the rushing sound of an arrow rocketing through the air. She looked up at the figure of Duncan illuminated in the afternoon sun, saw the arrow plunge into his shoulder, heard him cry out once in surprise.

Next to her, Sheila made a small shriek. Duncan crumpled forward, and May gasped as he disappeared from the top of the wall and fell into the courtyard.

### Chapter 27

### Trolls and Bones

It wasn't the arrow in his left shoulder that was the worst of it; Duncan somehow knew that was true even before the real pain started. He lay still for a moment, waiting for the body signals that would tell him where and how bad the damage was.

He went hot all at once and then felt a searing pain in his right thigh. He tried to look down at his leg, but felt sick with the effort and instead, lay his head back against the cold cobblestones.

Through the hole in the wall a few feet away, he heard May's frightened voice, high pitched, tremulous. "Duncan?"

Charley was urging her to leave, and not just with his voice. Duncan heard her screech like a polecat, "Let me go!"

Get them out of here!

"Duncan, are you alright?" she asked.

"For sure," Duncan said, clear and strong. He did it so well, he almost believed it himself.

Then the monsters were swarming all around him, with their gray skin and green tinged hair in shades of brown, black, and yellow. They roiled around him like fishhead soup, in and out, hideous phantoms from a bad dream. He closed his eyes and rolled his head against the cobblestones. He heard a groan, tried to place where the sound had come from, then realized it was him.

A voice, gruff, authoritative: "Let's bring him in. The queen's been expecting him."

Next, a voice of disgust: "What wrong with him? The arrow's a clean shot, only needs to come out. Hardly a scratch."

Duncan felt his shoulder lifted roughly off the bumpy cobblestones, heard a snap at his left ear then felt the pull of the arrow sliding out of his flesh. "You there, get the other shoulder. Someone take a leg." The troll's breath reeked of rotten teeth, and Duncan moaned, sick in his stomach at the stench, but was too weak to move away.

The trolls were at his legs now. He felt a trickle of sweat from his forehead trail into his hair, then a rising panic in his chest as one of them took hold of his left leg and another bastard took hold of his right.

"On my count," ordered the troll captain. "One, two, three."

"No! Don't move me," Duncan yelled before he entered the darkness.

### Chapter 28

### Bethulia

For about a half hour, the wagon rolled and bumped along the rutted road that wound its way through autumn forest, only the hardiest leaves left on the trees in shades of brown and russet. Gradually the wagon began to climb as the way became steeper by degrees, until, eventually, May and Sheila had to hang on tight in the back of the wagon, bracing their feet on crates and boxes to keep from tumbling out.

Charley sat with Ulric on the front driver's bench. Both of them had hit it off into a comfortable comradery. This, in itself, was highly unusual. Above everything else, Charley valued intelligence and he judged that no one was smarter than himself. Most people, in fact, he considered rank morons.

Not surprisingly, this attitude put a damper on making and keeping friends. Even though Charley played sports and was the captain of the baseball team, he had almost no friends and the one's he did have were only those that shared a mutual interest of some kind. Most people treated him with respect to his face and derision behind his back since he generally annoyed people and was annoyed by them in turn.

Yet inexplicably, he and Ulric had fallen into an easy and natural friendship. Ulric answered his questions (and there were many) about the Crusades, about being a knight, about weapons, about the place they were going, even about brewing beer. There was a circumspection in his answers that upended Charley's usual method of judging intelligence, and whatever Ulric lacked, he made up for in his vast experience as an adventurer.

Neither May, nor Sheila, said much to one another at first. Both were feeling somber about the same event—the loss of Duncan to the trolls on the other side of the wall. May could only feel that she had sent Duncan to his death. At least that's as much as she understood of the leaden ice that had settled inside her chest.

Sheila had wept until her sleeves were wet, keeping her head turned away. She sat across from May in the wagon and was so silent, even about crying, that May thought she must be feeling awkward because she had broken it off with Charley.

Or perhaps she too blamed May for sending Duncan over the wall. In either case, it seemed clear that Sheila didn't want to speak with her.

When Duncan fell from the wall, guards had not only surged into the courtyard, but had streamed out of the castle in search of his accomplices. Charley was right to drag them all away, but she still cursed him for making her leave. Her ear had been right next to the hole in the wall, and she had heard a cracking noise like a dry stick being snapped in half as Duncan hit the cobblestones.

"We shouldn't have left him," said May out loud.

"I know," said Sheila. Fresh tears streaming down her face. She wiped them away with her drenched sleeves. Sheila could always be counted on for tears, but May could excuse her this time. Sheila was now missing two of her cousins, and not just the distant type that abounded in May's family, but the actual close kind that mattered to one another.

May wanted to tell her that everything would turn out all right, but she couldn't get the words out because she didn't believe them herself.

Sheila blubbered, "He's not like Charley said. Charley always sees the worst in people. He's not some kind of player like that. I don't think he's ever even kissed a girl. He only left Boston because that girl's boyfriend went crazy. He kept getting in fights at school."

May pictured Duncan wincing at Ulric's bleeding nose and apologizing for the umpteenth time. She saw him squashed limply against the wall of the lighthouse with Charley's forearm pressed against his neck. "You mean fights like the one he had with Charley?"

"Yeah," said Sheila. "Just like the one he had with Charley, only with lots more blood. He was skipping school."

"Is that why he's got to repeat a grade?" At Sheila's look, she said, "Charley told me."

"He just needs a few credits." Sheila made it sound very important that May understand that.

"Why should it matter to you what I think of him?"

"Because I think it matters to him."

Hadn't Duncan said the same to her? May trained her eyes outside the wagon, watching the trees going by one after another. The motion of the cart jostled the darkened trees up and down in her line of sight. The air was colder now that the sun was almost set. She hunkered down in Duncan's sweatshirt, stashed her hands inside the front pocket and realized that she had never even thought to give his shirt back to him. She wondered if she would ever get the chance.

"Are you angry at me for breaking up with Charley?" asked Sheila, bringing May out of her thoughts.

"I was, but I'm okay with it now. Actually, I'm glad. You know what it was like being in the middle of my best friend and my brother?" She answered her own question. "It sucked."

The black shapes of the trees quitted without notice; the wagon shifted under them and a scrunching sound replaced the bump of the hard earth under the wooden wheels. May got to her knees and looked over the side at an ocean of sand. The burnished glow of the sun just below the horizon revealed purple silhouettes of sage brush and cactus on far dunes. As the air temperature plummeted, May felt the vestiges of desert heat rising up from the sand and bathed her face in the last of the warmth.

She heard voices at a distance. They were angry voices, frustrated voices, violent voices. Alerted, she realized that the source of those menacing voices was where Ulric was leading the cart; in the direction of two sheer cliff faces, the very tops of which glowed brassy in the last rays of the sun. Between the two cliff faces was a narrow passageway cloaked in shadow.

Admittedly, May knew nothing of war but thought that here was as perfect a place for an ambush as she could ever imagine. She sent her hand under the cloth of the sweatshirt to the hilt of Carlisle's hunting knife which he had given to her before their parting, and unsnapped the leather strap that held it fast in the sheath.

As they neared the narrow passage between the cliffs, a man's voice called out sharply, "Who is it that arrives at this late watch?"

"It is I, Sir Ulric, Lord of Carterhaugh and a friend of Bethulia."

The male voice returned to them, jubilant. "Lord be praised! Sir Ulric! Come and enter, friend of Bethulia." From the narrow, darkened pass, other ebullient voices joined with him.

"He is revered here," said Kevin, riding his horse close to the cart. "We will be welcomed like kings."

"Why are we wasting our time on this lot of beggars?" snapped Ron, drawing his black horse up beside Kevin. "It is only a matter of time before Nebuchadnezzar's army starves them to death. The Assyrians are well fortified within the walls of the castle. They can wait until these lot are only food for vultures and rats, and they needn't fire a single arrow. My father spends money on the dead." He spurred his horse on ahead.

Kevin said, "They've been without water for more than a fortnight. I doubt they will last much longer, but I do not think they will yield."

"Yield to what?" asked Sheila.

"Yield to worshipping King Nebuchadnezzar as a god and forsaking their own. They're a proud people, loyal and faithful to their God, I only hope their God will pay them back in kind."

As the cart made its way between the wind-battered stone walls of the narrow desert pass, Kevin dropped his horse back to give the cart room.

Vague shadows in front of the cart coalesced into the shape of men as the wagon entered the pass, and a man with a lantern approached them. Famine had made his dark eyes huge in his narrowed face, like a restless waif. The lantern underlit his chin and made him appear ghoulish when he smiled as he recognized Ulric.

Ulric stopped the wagon and more men like the first came up to the wagon. Even until long afterward, May couldn't shake her first impression that the clinking of the lanterns was actually the sound of their skeletons rattling under the cloth of their robes. The angry voices she had heard before were louder inside the pass, but still remained at a little distance from them.

Ulric knew the captain of the watch and greeted him, then tilted his chin in the direction of the angry voices. "What is the trouble there?"

The captain answered in a hoarse voice. "You come to us on a bad night, old friend. There are some cowards that have lost heart and desire to yield to the Assyrians."

"They mustn't," said Ulric, "Others ha' sought peace with the Assyrians that way and were trampled down even in surrender. Nebuchadnezzar cannae be trusted."

"Ulric, you have come to us like an answer to prayer. I am going there now to speak to these faithless dogs. You may yet talk some sense into them. And your supplies may give them heart." The captain turned and assigned his second to take his place as leader of the watch, then mounted his horse to accompany them.

### Chapter 29

### Judith

The narrow mountain pass began to open up gradually until they came to the gate of a walled city. Passing through the gate, they went down a wide lane lined with closed up stalls. The canvas covering the stalls had a dusty look, as though there had been nothing to sell for a very long time. May became aware of eyes on her from every direction and looking up, she caught the movement of curtains in windows.

As the wagon drew closer to the center of the once thriving town of Bethulia, May saw a cluster of ragged men knotted up before the steps of a stone building which looked like a temple. Ancient men with long gray beards, better clothed than most of the surrounding mob, stood at the top of a great series of steps coming out from the temple.

She noted that there were no women in the street or in the square, so assumed the clandestine activity from the windows must account for the women and children of the township. In the furtive movement of the curtains, she thought she saw the same desperate apprehension as rang out in the angry voices of the waiflike men arguing in the city square.

The captain of the watch who had led them through the pass dismounted his horse in a passion. He pressed through the crowd, shouting loudly in their language and pushing men aside.

Emaciated onlookers at the fringes of the frenzied mob had already marked the arrival of the supply wagon. Ulric ordered his sons to guard the wagon from looters, before he followed through the crowd after the captain of the guard. Charley called for the girls to stay with the wagon, ordered Kevin to make sure that they did, jumped down, and took off after Ulric.

May removed the museum guide from the driver's bench and sat back down next to Sheila. She turned several pages. In the shifting light of the street lanterns she showed Sheila the painting of Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes. "We need to find this woman," said May, pointing to the painting.

"What an awful mess," cried Sheila.

"It's the way this is all going to end. Judith cuts off the head of the general and brings it back here. Then Bethulia attacks and the Assyrians have no one to lead them into battle."

"But how will we find her? It's like all these women are under house arrest," said Sheila.

"She's supposed to be a wealthy widow. Maybe we could look for a house that looks better than the others."

Humble buildings made of mud plaster brick framed the central square. Most were of one story but a few were of two levels with open roofs to look out over the city or upward at the desert stars.

"She doesn't look old enough to be a widow," said Sheila.

"She probably got married when she was twelve to some wrinkled up old geezer. It's the good old days, remember?"

"Gross."

"Come on," May said. She crammed the museum guide into the front pouch pocket of Duncan's sweatshirt. Crouching on her heels, May chicken-walked to the end of the cart and dropped over the side to the ground. Sheila had a leg over to come after her when they were both scolded by Kevin.

"You two are to stay with the cart," cried Kevin. "It's no safe for a girl in this mob."

Mocking his accent, May cried back, "Are ye kidding? It's no safe for _anyone_ in this mob!"

"I told yer brother that I would— "

"Relax, Ivanhoe, we aren't getting anywhere near that cluster of crazy men. It's just that Sheila's got to go to the bathroom. She's got to take a pee."

Sheila put her hands between her legs, "Oh yes, wicked bad!"

Kevin hadn't been schooled about this possible event in the fulfillment of his duties. Moreover, being raised exclusively among males since he was five he had a natural aversion to the whole subject as it regarded females.

"Well ... ah ... don't be long," he said in a commanding tone.

But as to what _long_ meant to the fulfillment of that necessity for a female, May judged that he had utterly no clue. She calculated that they had a good twenty minutes at least: ten before he started to get nervous, fifteen before he would even begin to think about looking, twenty before he would dare to leave Ron to guard the supplies. At this moment, she wished Kevin could be more like his creepy older brother who appeared to be polishing his fingernails on his tunic with the dull look of complete disinterest in the plight of any other human beings on the planet.

"What are we looking for?" asked Sheila, when they were out of earshot of the wagon.

"I don't know," May said, looking up into the windows around the square. "She's probably in one of these two story houses. She never leaves her house, and she is supposed to have a lot of servants."

"What about that place?" said Sheila, pointing to a house, and as she spoke, out of the front door of the neat structure, a small bent man appeared in the simple gray sac-cloth tunic of a servant. He shut the door gently behind him. They watched him glide across the square, insinuate himself through the mob and then speak to one of the officials at the top of the stairs. As the official listened, he cast his eyes upward to the second story of the home from which the servant had emerged, and nodded.

Following the official's gaze to the window, May said, "Someone up there has some clout."

"Do you think it might be Judith?" asked Sheila.

"I'm thinking it might. Come on, follow me," she said, leading her across the square. She stopped the servant just in time before he reentered the house. "Excuse me sir, I'm looking for a woman named Judith."

At first surprised, the man whose servile back was rounded like the crook of a cane, shifted his eyes down when he saw her. "You are not from around here," he said in a reedy voice, "or you would not have called me 'sir' or spoken to me in the street. My lady does not see visitors."

Staring at the top of his bald head, she took a more commanding tone with him. "Never-the-less, is she your employer? Your mistress?" May covered part of the painting on the museum brochure in her hand, and pushed it under his hooked nose, showing him the face of Judith. "Is this she?"

He flicked his eyes to the page, then ran his gaze along the ground again. "I do not know. That woman is certainly lovely, but as to whether she is my mistress, I cannot say. My mistress never leaves her upper chamber and sees only her handmaidens."

Now May knew she was on the right track. "But her name is Judith?" she asked.

The servant bent his back a fraction of an inch lower to the ground and held there for a second. May took that as an answer.

"Please tell her we need to meet with her."

"I am sorry if you are seeking an audience. She never meets with anyone. Please now, I must return."

"We have very important information for her, and we must speak to her tonight." May shoved the museum brochure into his wrinkled hands. "Here, give her this. Tell her it's a matter of life and death. We'll wait outside."

His eyes widened at the page, but he nodded once and then went inside the door.

Outside, they waited in view of the second story window, trying to attract as little notice as possible from passersby. For May, this wasn't hard, dressed as she was and with her hair tucked under Duncan's hat, she could easily be mistaken for a boy of Kevin's age, even if her clothes seemed foreign.

Sheila was another matter, however. Her outfits were always designed with male attention in mind and right now that was the last thing they needed. She was dressed in a tight fitting top, a short ruffled skirt, thigh high stockings and long black high heeled boots. May thought she looked like a hooker, and she wasn't the only one. When an old man tried to offer Sheila some money, May managed to shoo him away, but the incident made it clear how much notice Sheila was attracting. May pushed her friend into the shadows of an alley and stood in front of her.

The excited, angry voices of the mob continued, but the men had organized themselves into knotted factions instead of the hurly-burly melee at the first. May gathered that the city's aqueduct had been destroyed and their water supply depleted over the last month. Water was being measured out daily from the dregs of the cistern, reeking from stagnation and causing disease. A partial resolution was reached that should improvement not occur by some divine intervention or otherwise within five days' time, they would surrender to Holofernes. Some argued convincingly that it was better to be alive as a slave to Nebuchadnezzar than to become dust.

Ulric spoke up, "That's a devil's bargain. You will not be allowed to worship any other god but King Nebuchadnezzar himself."

"That would be blasphemy!" hissed a few voices.

Another voice spoke up and said, "This comes from the mouth of a crusader! Why should we trust him? Nebuchadnezzar wants our land, our children and our wives, not our god."

"I speak the truth," cried Ulric.

One of the officials on the top stair, whom May had learned was named Ozias, said, "Ulric has been a good friend to us always. Even now he brings us food and water to ease our hardship. I know he speaks the truth. Nebuchadnezzar will not rest until he has consumed the whole earth and all people are subject to his will. He will not suffer a god above him."

Judith's front door opened and sent a long beam of light across the stones of the square. May lifted her face to the high window and saw a gray clad figure looking down at her. In the open doorway, the hunched servant stood with a lamp in his hand. He beckoned to May.

As soon as she and Sheila entered the house, the servant stood aside and a young woman stepped out of the shadows. "My mistress would like to speak with you." The woman's eyes took them in from the tops of their heads to the soles of their shoes, as though she needed to know for herself what had made these particular humans worthy of such an unusual honor as her mistress was granting them.

"My brother will wonder where we are. Can someone tell him we're safe?" asked May.

The young woman nodded to the male servant, and May spoke to him. "He's about this tall," she indicated Charley's height with her hand, "and he's blond."

"Bah-lond?"

"Like this," she said, taking a hunk of Sheila's hair in her hand. "Only natural."

"Ouch! This is natural," cried Sheila.

"Ah, yes. I know of whom you speak. He is tall as a tree with hair the color of desert sand," said the servant. "I will tell him."

After he left, the woman took them up a flight of stairs. Her bare feet were noiseless on the steps, as was her gown which didn't even rustle, and which gave off a pleasant scent of floral musk. It was hard not to avoid staring at her rear end, which swayed gracefully from side to side in a sing-song rhythm as though she had spent a lifetime practicing just how a woman should walk up a flight of stairs to the best effect. May decided she would never be able to walk like that even if she practiced for a thousand years.

At the top of the stairs, the serving woman brought them into a room, which was almost entirely bare of adornment. Standing in the corner, hidden in the darkness, was the gray clad figure May had seen from the street below.

The female servant bowed low and said, "Mistress."

"Thank you, Sarah. Please leave us," said Judith solemnly.

Bowing again, the serving woman left, closing the door on her departure, and taking the lamp with her. This left the room in almost complete darkness with the exception of one meager flame in a dish on a wooden table. Judith stepped out of the shadows and into the circle of light it cast.

Judith, like a spirit draped in its own funeral shroud, shook the museum guide in her hand. "Why do you give this to me?" The veil in front of her face fluttered at each word she spoke.

"Because you have the power to stop this," said May. Waiting in the street, she had rehearsed what she might say and the words came easily.

"It is like my dream. I know this man," Judith said, holding out the guide. "In my dream, I go to the Assyrian's camp, and... I kill him." There was horror in her voice.

May stepped forward. "Yes! You kill General Holofernes. That's exactly what you do. And then when your people attack the Assyrians, they lose the battle because they have no one to lead their army."

There came a gentle knock at the door, and Judith held up her hand to May so she would say nothing more. When she called for the person to enter, it turned out to be the handmaiden again.

"Mistress, they are here."

"Stay for this," said Judith.

Three men entered the room and May recognized Ozias and the two ancient men from the steps of the temple in the town square. They seemed oddly humbled by the stark interior of Judith's room and entered as solemnly as though it were a church and not a woman's chambers, hardly lifting their eyes.

After bowing in greeting, Ozias spoke, "We have made a decision."

"And ... ?" said Judith.

"If the Lord does not relieve the people's suffering within five days, we will surrender to Holofernes," he said quietly.

Judith gasped. Her veil trembled. With her hands clasped in front of her, she made a noise in her head, then started to pace the floor. She said derisively, "You faithless men! This is the decision that you have made? Five days? You dare give God an ultimatum? You appoint him a time as though he comes to do your bidding? Fools. We have kept the commandments. Where is our sin that God will not reward our faithfulness? You must have patience. You must have faith!"

Without warning, she grabbed May and Sheila by their wrists and dragged them in front of the men. "These young maidens have more courage than any of you so called men. Tomorrow at dawn, they come with me to the Assyrian camp. You will let us go freely and ask no questions until we return."

May felt the color drain from her face.

### Chapter 30

### Duncan Meets the Faerie Queen

Duncan blinked his eyes open and sucked in a breath at the same time, startled from a nightmare, the memory of it lost upon waking in a white ocean of silky blankets and the blaze of morning sun streaming in through tall arched windows. At the luxuriant feel of the fabric under his hands, he looked down and ran his fingers over it, momentarily caught by the sensation, before rational thought took over.

Where in the hell was he?

Forgetting he had broken his leg, he tried immediately to get out of bed, experienced a dull pain in his thigh, and sank back down. His eyes went to his left shoulder, expecting a gaping hole or a bandage there. All there was of his arrow wound, was a purplish mark the size of the head of a nail. He touched the puckered scar and was surprised that it didn't hurt at all.

How long had he been out cold?

And just where the hell was his shirt?

In a moment of panic, he lifted the white duvet cover off his body and saw with relief that he still had on underwear.

As he placed the cover back down over himself, he spotted a dark lump at the end of the bed. Recognizing what it was, he pulled himself to sitting and reached for his tee-shirt and jeans. They were just out of his reach. The effort of bending and stretching, called back a dull pain to his right thigh, which given the fact that he knew he had broken it, was remarkably bearable. He moved his leg under the covers. It was free of any splint or cast.

He had broken it, right? Or had it just been his imagination?

In a pleasant rush, the sound of May's voice came back to him. She had been worried for him, even to the verge of tears. She had fought against her brother to make sure he was okay, without regard for her own safety.

Outside of his family, he had never had a girl care two sticks for whether he was alive or dead, let alone hurt. Of course, you could always depend on nurses to be professionally caring, friendly and polite, but that was their job. This felt different.

Fingering his St. Christopher medal, he listened to her voice again in his head and smiled.

Without warning, the door across the room flew open and banged against a tall white dresser behind it. Shane launched himself over the foot of the bed, landing right on top of Duncan's legs.

Duncan felt the ache in his leg again, but didn't care. He clutched at his brother's clothes, and dragging him across the feathery white duvet, crushed him in a hug.

Shane's voice was muffled. He squirmed. "You're holding me too tight!"

Breaking the embrace suddenly, Duncan pushed him away and shook his brother's shoulders roughly. He scowled, ready to yell at him.

"You're not mad, are you?" asked Shane, looking innocent as a cupid.

Duncan forced his mouth to relax. "No, I'm not mad," he said huskily, pulling his brother close again. When he opened his eyes, _she_ was sitting there at the corner of the bed.

"You see," said the Faerie Queen to Shane. "I told you he'd be alright, didn't I, darling?" Her voice was as silky and smooth as a clarinet; it reached into Duncan's chest like music, warming and relaxing. His own reaction to the sound of it put him on edge, and he tried to close himself off from it.

Letting his brother wriggle out of his grasp, his eyes went over her red hair, smooth complexion, dancing sapphire eyes. There were small sparkling decorations in her hair, which hung long and loose around her shoulders. All natural discernment left him regarding her age. To him, she seemed twenty. In actuality, he wouldn't have been able to guess it within a decade.

She showed a row of small pearly teeth. "My poor dear boy, you look like you've seen the boogieman. Regardless of what you may have been told, as you can see," she held her hands out delicately in the air, "I am no evil apparition." She was dressed in a white brocade dress with a golden bodice studded with diamonds, accenting a figure that needed no ornamentation to be beautiful.

Duncan became aware that he was clutching the covers at his waist like a drowning man at a rope. He pulled the duvet up to his shoulders, intimidated by his own nakedness and the boldness of her gaze.

A look flickered across her face for no more than an instant, but he recognized it for what it was—pleasure at his discomfort—and he decided right then and there that he didn't like her.

"Your brother missed you," she said, still in that falsely sweet tone he knew he must close his heart against. "We were waiting for you to arrive."

"Oh, Dunc, I've had the best time," cried Shane. "And she says if I stay, she's gonna teach me how to fly!"

The Faerie Queen picked up Duncan's tee-shirt from the end of the bed and held it out to him. She leaned forward abruptly as he took it, and he reacted by clutching the shirt and startling backward into the pillows behind him.

Her eyes flashed and she laughed. She said in a devouring tone, "Oh, my dear, dear, boy. I think you and I will get along famously."

She got up from the bed with her back turned, her wavy long hair running down the elegant length of her body like an auburn waterfall. Her hand lingered for a moment on the post of the bed. She looked back at him once over her shoulder and pictures flickered across his mind. He rubbed his eyes.

She walked to the tall white dresser by the door and with her back to him he hurriedly slipped his tee-shirt over his head, pulled it down to his waist. Then he patted Shane's upper arm with the back of his hand to get his attention, and pointed to his jeans.

Shane crawled over on all fours to the end of the bed, picked up the jeans and threw them as hard as he could.

Duncan caught them one-handed by a pant leg, then shoved the jeans under the covers and wiggled them on. The ache in his leg was starting to wear off, replaced by just stiffness now. Even he knew he didn't have those kind of powers of recovery; she must have done something to him.

She turned around just as he zipped up his fly under the covers.

He watched her play with a silver hair brush in her hands, her long sharpened fingernails shiny with polish. "How is your leg feeling?"

"I thought I broke it."

"You did. It's a remarkably simple spell. I could teach it to you sometime."

"No thanks."

"Very well," she said with a pretty pout. "You know, you're a bit ungrateful. It would be customary to say 'thank you' right now."

Duncan didn't feel like saying it, but did anyway.

"You're welcome. After all, under the circumstances, I could have just thrown you in the dungeon. That's what I usually do with trespassers."

Shane had been watching the verbal exchange like a tennis match. He asked her, "What's a truspesser?"

Smiling down at the boy, she began stroking Shane's hair with the hairbrush. Shane rarely sat still for grooming of any kind, and Duncan was amazed his little brother was even tolerating it, but the boy stared straight into her eyes like some kind of mesmerized rodent.

Duncan wanted to ask what the usual punishment was for kidnappers, but he didn't. "Sorry," he said hoarsely, the word sticking in his throat as his eyes went around the room. There was an electric guitar in one corner with a white bow at the neck. In the other corner of the room was a brand new skateboard. On the nightstand next to the bed was a pack of Marlboro's and a sterling silver lighter. His eyes stopped on a set of keys by the lighter. He leaned down to get a better look and felt a pain in his chest.

They belonged to a Mustang.

And as though she whispered it in his ear, which was impossible because she hadn't moved from across the room, he heard, "1966, cherry red."

The Faerie Queen stopped brushing Shane's hair and looked the boy over, holding him under the chin and tilting his head this way and that, surveying her work. She smiled. "There! You will look splendid for the festival tonight, but I suppose I will just have to brush it again later today, you naughty boy."

"Festival?" said Shane, looking deeply into her sapphire eyes.

"It means 'a big party', my love."

"A party!"

"And guess who the guest of honor is?"

Shane frowned in concentration. "You mean, like the birthday boy?"

"Exactly like the birthday boy, only even more special than that." She touched his nose playfully with her forefinger.

"Is it me?" asked Shane.

"Well, who else? Do you think it would be your big brother here? Certainly not! All he's done is scowl at me this morning. Tell me, is he always so grumpy?"

Shane turned around, leaned over the bed and whispered so loud that only a deaf person wouldn't have been able to hear him, "Oh Dunc, please don't be grumpy. She's ever so nice." Then Shane turned back to her and asked, "Will there be presents?"

"Oh, lots and lots, sweetie."

Duncan found all of it nauseating. "I'd like to talk to my brother alone," he said.

The woman draped a hand over Shane's collarbone to either side of his neck, and the sharply honed fingernails shone against the red of his cape like daggered icicles. There was a nasty glimmer in her eyes.

Then realizing that his tone had been far less than civil, Duncan added, "If ... that's okay."

Her face melted into a smile that didn't change the nasty glimmer in her eyes one bit. "Of course you want to talk to your brother," she said, "and there'll be plenty of time for that, but right now it will have to wait. It's time for his lessons."

"Yay, lessons!" shouted Shane.

The kid hated going to preschool; he would rather play video games all day. "What kind of lessons?" asked Duncan.

Jumping next to Duncan on the bed, Shane exclaimed, "She taught me how to snap my fingers, Dunc!"

Duncan felt a plummeting twinge of disappointment. He had been trying to teach Shane to snap for months, but his pudgy fingers just didn't have the muscles or control to get the clicking sound at the end.

"Watch," said Shane. Staring at his fingers and biting his plump bottom lip, he snapped once, making a nice loud click. At the exact same time, a tongue of flame shot up from his thumb. A diamond of light shone in both of his large dark eyes.

Backing away from his little brother, Duncan accidentally tangled himself in the covers and fell off the other side of the bed.

### Chapter 31

### Preparations for Battle

In contrast to Judith's own stark quarters, the accommodations for guests in her house were richly sumptuous, but May couldn't sleep. All night her mind was tormented by the knowledge of the perils and moral pitfalls that awaited her the next day, plunging her into dread of the morning light.

Somehow they must gain entrance into the castle, insinuate their way into the Assyrian encampment, contrive to get an audience with the general of a hostile army, get the awful deed done then slip out of the encampment without anyone even suspecting their crime until they were safely away. To May, the whole plan was absurd, ludicrous even. There was everything to go wrong and only the sliver of a chance that anything might go right.

And in the going right, a man to be killed.

Worse, she was aware that the cold fear she felt for her own safety, completely eclipsed her repugnance at the human offense she was going to help commit. For a surety, she knew she should feel a sense of moral disgust, yet could not muster any, and this sent her into a panic, wondering if she really was the good person she thought she was for the last sixteen years.

When the dawn finally came, bringing morning voices and street sounds through the open window, she rose with the detached sense that some stranger had slipped into her body overnight.

Sheila was still asleep in the room next door when May went to go in search of breakfast. She was discovered in the hall by a middle aged serving woman who, by gestures, led her down to a breakfast table in front of an open window with a view of the town square. The table was set with apples, dates, cheese and bread. She recognized the food as being from the supplies that Ulric had brought in the wagon, and that set her at ease, not trusting the famine-like conditions of the food and water of Bethulia.

As she ate, she listened to a man singing in the temple. It was a song of prayer, and it gave the morning an ethereal quality like something out of a dream.

After about a half hour, a handmaiden came to call her to Judith's chamber, and putting down the teacup in her hand, May pushed away from the table and followed the woman up the stairs.

Judith was poised at the window with her back to the room as May entered. She had changed out of her widow's weeds, the gray shroud covering which she had worn for the previous three and a half years since the passing of her husband, Manassas. She was clothed now in a shiny satin dress of Artemisia gold which shone radiantly in the morning light. Her dark hair was braided and arranged about her head with pearl jewelry.

In Judith, May saw a dark and sensual angel of destruction. There was no looking at her without sensing it somehow.

"What is this garb you wear?" asked Judith, looking her over head to foot. She flicked her hand at May, causing her bracelets to jingle softly.

May just shrugged. "Clothes?"

"They distress me. Surely you are not mourning a husband already? Well, there is no way you can travel with me like that. We would be suspected for certain." Wordlessly, she bid three handmaidens to tend to May and they came at her in a swarm.

Over the next few minutes, she felt their butterfly hands on her, lifting her hair and at her body in various places, gently removing her clothes. She found the staggering mix of their perfumes overwhelming. She protested at first, but they had the advantage of superior numbers and speed, and worked with determination even as she swatted their hands away.

Then as quickly as her clothes were off, she felt the press of other garments on her body, to be stepped into, slipped over, cinched at her back, making her suck in her breath. Then she felt hands deftly working buttons along her spine and she knew she was now trapped. There would be no getting out of the garments she was now wearing without help unless she cut them off and went naked.

The women drew up a burnished bronze mirror when they were done, and May looked at herself first suspiciously, then almost appreciatively. She put her hands on her hips. She had on a white linen shirt, a short plum colored kirtle and under it, a blue floor-length skirt.

Judith spoke. "You see? Such a pretty figure. But alas, the rest!" She clapped twice.

The handmaidens came at May again. One swooped at her face with some small instrument that flashed wickedly in the sunlight, and May felt a sharp pain at her eyebrow.

May yelled and rubbed the spot.

The woman came at her again, the shiny tool poised in her hand. One of the woman's eyes was closed and the other was focused right between May's eyes.

"Get that thing away from me," May yelled, fighting her off until the woman backed away.

Her victory lasted only a moment. After the brief skirmish, Judith took the tweezers from the flummoxed handmaiden and fixed her coal dark eyes on May who saw that she would be given no quarter. May drew in a breath, clenched her fists and accepted her fate, but screamed and swore about it copiously after it was done.

For the rest of the serving women's ministrations May sat still and grouchy, looking like a petulant poodle until they were done a short while later. Her hair was brushed painfully free of snarls, was styled into an up-do, a white turban was fastened to her head, the merest trace of makeup was applied to accentuate eyes, cheeks and lips, and then Judith chose golden earrings with dangling cabochons of amber for May's ears to match the color of her eyes. When all was done, Judith seemed satisfied at last.

May actually smiled at herself in the mirror this time. Not all artists work on canvas and clay.

As May was being dressed up, Sheila, who had joined them after being woken by May's screaming, was being dressed down.

Sheila was as equally petulant as May throughout her ordeal, though less vocal and more pouty. Judith refused to let Sheila make up her own face, insisting that she was going with her as a handmaiden, not as a dancing girl. Sheila's chipped nail polish was removed using a caustic salve, her nails were clipped to a length that 'wouldn't remind men of chicken talons' per Judith, and no polish was reapplied.

Now that the handmaidens were done with her, Sheila appeared in modestly elegant attire and the discreetly applied cosmetics made her look even more beautiful than ever, but she didn't know it. Sheila's attitude about makeup was like an inexperienced fighting man's about armor— the heavier, the better. Regarding herself in the mirror, she told them all she felt positively 'naked'.

Then for the first time in three and a half years, Judith, rich and beautiful widow of Manasses, put on her cloak, walked down the stairs of her home and out her front door into the street. People gawked as she walked through the alleys, commenting on how beautiful she was.

She was followed by two young handmaidens. One carried a bundle of food and wore her borrowed silk cloak loosely off her shoulders, showing a little skin. The other wore a bright green cape and carried a flask of wine. Hidden under the folds of her skirt, strapped tightly to her thigh, was a sheathed hunting knife.

### Chapter 32

### The Fool's Errand

The morning had devolved from brilliant sunshine when Duncan had started out from the Faerie Queen's castle, to sour and wet as the day advanced. His injured leg, which he had imagined was completely healed when he began his journey, ached painfully now with the effort he'd expended and from the creeping coldness and damp of the woods. Feeling the fierce chill in the air, Duncan closed and buttoned the quilted white jacket he had thrown on before departing his room at the castle.

He stopped short as he came upon what looked suspiciously like the same huge, silver trunked maple tree he had seen only a quarter of an hour earlier. Normally he wouldn't have noticed one tree among thousands in a forest, but this one was remarkable in that it still retained most of its leaves all in a vibrant shade of red, so that it stood out like a lighted torch in the damp gray cave of the day.

On the ground in front of the silver maple, he saw a straight line of footprints trampled through the leathery, wet leaves and had a bad feeling that his own feet had something to do with the slogged path.

He lifted up one of his chili-pepper Cons and saw shiny red leaves clinging to it, almost invisibly camouflaged against the same color canvas of his sneaks, and obscuring some of the brand's white star and detailing. Putting his foot back down, Duncan breathed out a sigh, adding the mist of his breath to the already misty air. He rubbed his face all over in frustration, then looked around him at the array of darkly skeletal trees in every direction and decided he was lost.

The errand he was on was only supposed to have taken an hour at most. He had been sent to retrieve a book from an old witch living in the woods. Her hut was to be found easily on a 'well marked path, and no more than a stone's throw into the forest', according to the Faerie Queen.

Right.

He was sure now he must have been given the wrong directions on purpose, and he cursed himself for falling for it. Before he had started out, he already had felt that the task was designed more for getting him out of the way for a while than to accomplish anything of real importance. Unfortunately, he wasn't in a position to say 'no'. The Faerie Queen had an advantage over him in the form of Shane and she knew it. Duncan had felt he had no choice but to go on this fool's errand. Only he never imagined that it would take this long.

She probably just sent me to get a cookbook, he thought wryly, then was struck in the next instant by his own poorly chosen joke.

Oh God, I hope not! he prayed, as a chill ran up his spine.

Now that his neverending internal monologue was shocked for the moment into silence, his external senses had the chance to take over, and he heard something he had missed on his numerous passes by this same silver maple tree on previous occasions.

It was the sound of crying.

And it seemed to be coming from the maple tree itself.

Prone to a wild imagination and occasional attacks of superstition, Duncan's first inclination was to run. On the other hand, given everything else that had happened in the last few days, who could blame him.

But the crying was so sad and lonely sounding, that by a monumental effort of will, he stayed where he was. Feeling right then like all the blood in his body was speeding through his veins hell bent on bursting the capacity of his young heart, he turned and faced the tree. All he could hear now was the internal rush of his pulse making the sound of the ocean as though he were holding a seashell to his ear.

He crept up to the maple tree with his trembling hands out in front of him and placed them on the trunk. Since he didn't get snatched up by angry branches or spoken to in a low sinister voice, he went further to put his ear to the smooth silver bark. As his pulse calmed, he heard the sound of crying again. But now he sensed that the noise wasn't actually coming from the tree, but from inside the tree.

He stepped around the broad trunk, and there at the base near the roots was a rational explanation. The tree was hollow and the sound was coming from a split in the trunk just wide enough to fit a small child. He crouched down and peered inside.

Judging by the long brown hair, and purple skirt over the child's knees, the child Duncan had stumbled on was a girl. She was tucked into a small ball in the darkness of the hollow, knees crooked up against chest, arms tucked over knees, face hidden.

He thought that she most likely was lost. Why else would she be crying? He wondered what he could possibly do for her. After all, he was lost too.

A sound of whistling came to his ears, and rude catcalls in a taunting and malicious tone. All at once, the girl's crying ceased with one sharp intake of breath. The girl froze in place, waiting silently, so she could listen to the voices which had fanned out at all sides.

"Here little doggie!"

"I have a dog bone for you!"

"Do you want a treat?"

Peeking around the trunk of the tree, Duncan spied several children. They were dressed raggedly. There were three of them, ranging in ages from seven to nine. All looked unwashed, with hair sticking up and out like straw, starved like scarecrows; two boys, one girl. Duncan tucked his head back behind the trunk.

In a teasing tone, the girl of the ragged bunch said, "Oh! I guess the little doggie doesn't want to play." Then the voice was closer all of a sudden. "But I bet I know where she is!" In hushed tones, and giggling, Duncan heard the child gather her tattered comrades behind the tree for a final assault.

The child inside the tree lifted her face suddenly with the fear of being found in her hiding place. Duncan winked at her before standing to his full height.

When the raggedy girl and her two companions came around the trunk in a smiling group, Duncan was waiting for them with his hands coiled into menacing claws. Rolling his eyes around like a crazed maniac, he growled in the lowest, most terrifyingly fearsome monster-voice he could grate out, "Raaaaargh!"

The lot of them screeched in chorus, their dirty straw-like hair standing up straight as they went rigid in place for a moment. They started yelling, crying and stumbling over one another in their attempt to scatter like frightened meerkats.

After they were gone, Duncan tossed up his hands, wiggled his fingers, and maniacally laughed out, "Mwa, ha, ha, ha!" then yelled to the heavens, "That was awesome!"

He bent down at the hole in the tree with a crazy grin. The face that looked back at him had huge eyes now, not sure whether she should be thankful or not that she had been saved from her tormentors.

"Hi, I'm Duncan."

She put her chin in the air. "My name is Miss Antonietta Gonzalez," she said, holding her hand out of the trunk to him like royalty, expecting her fingers to be kissed.

He bowed and kissed her hand. "Glad to meet you, Miss Gonzalez."

"I thank you, kind sir, for scaring away those beasts."

"No problem." He made a point of peering around inside the hollow trunk. "Looks a little janky in there for a lady. How about coming out?"

Her eyes looked worried. "Do you think they'll be back?"

"Not in this lifetime."

She held out her hand again and Duncan helped her out of the tree.

"So why's that nasty crew after you anyway?" he asked.

She was about half his height, and as she looked up at him, she crooked her finger and motioned him closer. He bent down until he was about a foot away from her face.

"Are you blind, dear sir? Can't you see my face? I'm hairy."

He feigned surprise. "Oh, so you are! Hey look, I'm hairy too." He pulled up his quilted jacket sleeve and brushed a hand over the thick brown hair on his forearm. "See?"

She was impressed. "Verily, you are most hairy."

"I told you so," he said, then seeing the look on her face, he coaxed, "Go on."

Shyly, she ran a few fingers lightly over his hair. It tickled. When she finished, he pushed down his sleeve.

"But my hair is on my face," she said sadly, "and I'm a girl."

"You know what I think? I think they're just jealous," he said.

"Jealous? Of what?"

"Well, look at you in your fine clothes." He pushed one of his hands towards her. "All dressed up in your pretty dress and dainty little slippers."

She smoothed a hand over her satin skirt.

"Still doesn't make it right for them to tease you though," he said. "Just because you're rich and they're poor."

"No," she agreed. "But it's also because I look so different."

"Someday, I bet they'll wish they could look just like you."

"Why would anyone want that?"

"Why? 'Cause you're not all humdrum same like everyone else. People can't help but notice you. You never know what might happen. Maybe you'll get your picture painted by some famous painter someday. I bet you might even get invited to meet the king."

"Do you think the king would invite my sisters, too?" Antonietta said hopefully.

"Are they all hairy too?" Duncan asked.

"Oh yes, most hairy."

"Then, for sure," he said. "Why not? Now let's see if we can't get you out of here." Looking all around him at the woods, he scratched his head and put his hands on his hips then frowned at some trees.

"Sir, are you lost?" she asked.

"Totally."

"Where are you bound?"

"I'm supposed to find a witch."

She slipped her arm through his. "Follow me," she said, tugging him along through the woods.

### Chapter 33

### The Love Potion

Antonietta led Duncan to a gray stone cottage which was surrounded by a white picket fence. Inside the yard, to both sides of the cottage, firewood was neatly stacked to the height of the mossy roof. With a vapor of wood smoke curling from the ivy covered chimney, the cottage looked downright cozy. It did not look like there could possibly be an evil witch inside.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Duncan whispered to Antonietta.

She squeezed his hand. "Yes, most certain. This is the house of the witch. I cannot go any farther, sir. I must stop here at the gate, but I will wait for you." She looked to her right and left and said, "I must tell you something important though. Her husband is very jealous. Do not be overlong; he will be back soon for lunch."

"I wasn't planning on staying for tea or anything," he said lightly.

She said seriously, "No, you must listen to me. He is a woodcutter. He is big, big, big!" She inflated her hands by degrees for emphasis. "And he carries an enormous ax wherever he goes. If I see him coming, I will signal you like this." She cupped her hands around her mouth. "'Hoo-hoo', like an owl."

He nodded that he understood.

"And hear me, you must not eat anything while you are there. Also, whatever you do, do not kiss her. Oh no, no, no, and you must especially not let her kiss you."

"Will I turn into a toad?" he said only half joking.

"I do not know. Perhaps. I only know you must not. And remember, 'hoo-hoo'."

"'Hoo-hoo', got it." With an uneasy fluttering in his gut, he unlatched the gate and passed into a garden full of herbs and flowers.

A few steps on a stone path brought him to the front door. He knocked and heard someone call from inside then waited for what seemed a very long time.

Finally, the wooden door was opened by a wrinkled old lady in a long black dress that hung loosely around her body like a lumpy sac of apples. She had a crooked cane in her hand, which she clung to with a knobby, corded hand. Toothlessly, she smiled at him. He noticed a black mole on her chin that had spikey little hairs protruding from it.

Was Antonietta crazy? Kissing was the last thing on his mind.

"Excuse me, ma'am. My name is Duncan O'Callahan. I don't know if I'm in the right place. I'm supposed to get a book from here, I think." He searched in his jeans pocket and pulled out a piece of folded black paper, opened it and held it out to her.

Clutching the door with her clawlike fingers and opening it wider, she said, "Oh dear, hang on. I just need to get my glasses. Won't you come in and sit down?"

He waved his hands. "That's fine, ma'am, I can wait on the doorstep."

"What?" she shouted.

"I said I can wait on the doorstep."

She pointed to an ear. "Speak up, dearie. My ears don't work like they used to."

He leaned over the threshold and yelled, "I said I can wait on the doorstep. My shoes are all—" He stopped and sniffed. "Is that ... is that chocolate chip?"

A kitchen timer started going off loudly.

"You're too what?" she said, staring at him.

"I think your cookies are ready," he shouted at her, pointing inside the cottage. "I can hear beeping."

"You hear sheep bleeting?"

"No!" He pointed to his ear, then with the same hand made a motion like he was counting to fifteen by fives, splaying out his hand three times in the air next to his ear. "I can hear beeping," he shouted as loudly as he could.

"Cheeping?"

"Beeping!" he screamed.

"Oh no! My cookies!" she cried in a state of panic, her hand fluttering in a dither. "Come in quickly! I've got to get them out of the oven or they're going to burn." She dragged him in off the doorstep and shut the door behind him, then went stumping off into another room, leaving him alone in the parlor.

He fingered the note in his hand. The room she had brought him into was richly decorated in shades of dark red, blue and green. A fire crackled in a hearth to the left of him next to the door into which the old woman had disappeared. Just to his right, there was a tall open cabinet with shelves.

On the shelves, colorful liquids in jeweled shades twinkled in delicate crystal bottles, reminding him of stained glass in a church. On the lowest shelf, were two brass goblets, a mortar and pestle, and several baskets of dried plants, mushrooms and mosses.

He picked up one of the dried mushrooms and smelled it. It was spiral shaped and had a musty odor, rank and swamp-like. He tossed it back in the basket suddenly and wiped his hand on his jacket. It looked an awful lot like a dried up troll ear.

On the opposite side of the room under a large open window was a bench seat covered in red velvet. At the back of this bench, built into the wall under the window was a bookcase with a dozen or so leather bound volumes.

Duncan came into the room a few feet and peeked into the kitchen. He saw the old witch's large backside as she leaned over a table, humming a tune, having just removed the cookies from a brick oven.

He shot across the room. Dodging a circular table, Duncan skulked to the books arranged under the window. He hastily checked the titles against the writing on the slip of paper in his hand, trying to match up the words. It might have been easier if the words had been in English, but they were written in a foreign language.

He felt something draw across his leg. His heart leapt, and he dropped the paper in his hand. A black cat jumped onto the bench in front of him and sat right on top of the slip of paper before he could snatch it back up again.

The cat slitted its eyes at him, and Duncan realized that he'd seen those spooky green eyes before.

He patted the cat's head with one finger, then nudged its body a few times. But instead of moving, it only just purred, twitched its tail, and put its ears back. Any second now, that old lady was going to hobble back into the room with cookies and probably some poisoned tea.

A corner of the paper was poking out under the cat's rear end. He got hold of it and pulled. The cat lifted its back end into the air, then settled back down on the cushion and rubbed its face against his thigh.

Normally Duncan wasn't allergic to cats, but this feline was of a different breed altogether.

He sneezed loudly. Rubbing his nose on his sleeve, he backed away from the animal and bumped into the round pedestal table behind him. Feeling it wobble, he turned quickly and caught it from toppling over, but not in time to stop a deck of cards from scattering all over the floor.

He rushed to pick them up, crawling around on his hands and knees, shooing the cat aside when it tried to rub his face. As he stifled a sneeze, he became conscious that he was being watched.

Standing at the doorway to the kitchen was a woman who appeared neither very young, nor very old. She wore a gold gown and a red turban headdress over her braided strawberry blonde hair. She was very lovely, but the drooping corners of her brightly painted mouth made her appear tired, or perhaps, sad.

No, not sad—lonely, corrected Duncan, remembering her face from the painting he had seen at the museum. The recognition must have showed on his face.

"You are thinking that I look like my sister," stated the lady, lifting an eyebrow.

"Your sister?"

"The Faerie Queen."

"For sure. That's right, I was." He spotted one last card by the hearth. As he crawled to it, he asked, "Where did that old lady go?"

"Granny? That's just my housekeeper. I sent her out to buy more tea." The Faerie Queen's sister came into the room and with a rattle of dishware, plopped the silver tray in her hands onto the round table. "I hope you're hungry."

Standing up, Duncan set the deck of cards on the table next to the tray. It had been a long and thirsty morning and his stomach rumbled, but he remembered Antonietta's warning. "No thank you. I can't stay long."

The witch sat down on the window bench, then patted the place next to her. "Nonsense, have a seat."

"Someone's waiting for me, really. I only came for—"

"I don't get a lot of company," she interrupted. "Can't you just stay for a few minutes?" There was a pleading note in her voice with a touch of desperation mixed in. "My husband is always working you see."

The house was so quiet there wasn't even the click of a clock in the room. She really did look lonely. And he doubted the cat was much company.

"Well, maybe just a minute," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bench. She smiled and thrust a plate of chocolate chip cookies into his hands then asked how he took his tea.

The cookies smelled incredible, but he remembered Antonietta's warning again and set the plate on the table. "You know, on second thought, I really shouldn't stay." He was just about to stand when the cat jumped onto his lap.

"Three it is," she said, dropping three sugar cubes into his cup.

Holding back a sneeze, he lifted the cat off his lap. It went completely boneless on him, forming a furry horseshoe around his hands, like picking up a warm vibrating slinky and about as easy to hold. He placed the cat on the floor, where it purred and rubbed against his leg.

As he tried to nudge it away with his sneaker, the woman asked, "Well now, what is it this time?"

"Excuse me?" He could barely concentrate on what she was saying. The cat was kneading the side of his leg with its paws, pricking his skin.

"My sister. What did she send you for? A spell? A potion?"

"A book. She gave me a piece of paper with the title." He looked down at his empty hands. What had he done with it? He stood and felt through the pockets of his jeans.

"Check your doublet," she said.

"My what?"

"The jacket you're wearing, silly."

"Oh." He felt around inside the doublet, but the paper wasn't there either. He looked where he had been sitting and patted the red velvet. Lifting the lace cloth, he peered underneath the table, scanned the carpet with his eyes, then looked on top of the table, lifting up the silver tea tray. His eyes came to rest on the deck of cards. He set the tray back down and sat, nearly squishing the cat.

Following his gaze, she said, "You don't mean that you think you put the paper in the deck of cards?" She gave a little laugh and picked up the deck, then began turning the cards over one at a time. After turning over the third card, she pursed her lips. "You've lost something dear to you, and I don't mean a piece of paper." She moved the teapot aside and turned another card. "No. Not something. You've lost ... someone. Someone you love very much. And I sense you are capable of much. A young boy." She looked at him directly. "Your brother perhaps?"

He nodded.

"And there's a girl involved. Three girls in fact! My, my. You see here, queen of clubs, queen of hearts, queen of diamonds, all in a row. One leads to another." She turned another card and held up the queen of spades. "And here is the Faerie Queen." She laid the card sideways, below the others, then picked up the queen of clubs. This one did you wrong." She tossed it down again, pointed to the red cards. "As for these two, one of them you love like a sister, and the other one you are in love with."

He didn't respond.

"I'm right, am I not?" The witch looked him over with a raised eyebrow. "What? Nothing to say? No matter. Your face shows me the answer." She turned back to her cards.

"I only just met her," he said. "I wouldn't say I was in love with her."

"Yes, yes." She waved her hand without looking at him. "Have it your way. You're in like with her." She stopped waving her hand in the air suddenly. "Oh my. Whatever did you do?"

"Nothing. Why? What does it say?"

"Whatever it was, this girl that you love—"

"Please don't say—"

"Fine. This girl that you like does not trust you anymore! So sad when this happens. It's one of the hardest impediments to love, ah, I mean, like."

"Im—. It is?"

"Impediment means obstacle."

"I knew that," he said quickly.

She got up and crossed the room to the shelves of colored liquids.

When her back was to him, Duncan snatched his teacup off the table and dumped his tea out the open window behind him.

The witch brought back a heart-shaped bottle of bright red potion and placed it on the table in front of him where it glowed in the sunlight like a ruby.

He set down his teacup on the saucer next to the bottle.

She pointed out the window and said, "Watch."

As though out of a dream, Duncan saw a man and woman appear in the garden outside. They kissed for a long moment. The witch waved her hand and the apparition disappeared.

His eyes went back to the red potion on the table. He shook his head at it. "No, thank you."

"Winning back her trust will be hard. This is so much easier."

"No, thank you."

"Gracious! What's the matter with you? Don't you want her?"

"Not that way."

"Why should it matter to you how you get her?"

"I don't know. Because it isn't real?"

She sneered. "Isn't real? Is love ever real? You are talking about something you can't even hold in your hands. Real! You romantic fool. There is only the wanting of someone you desire and the getting of them. And with this potion, you don't even need to settle for this common girl. You can have any girl you want, no matter how beautiful or rich."

He shook his head again.

"I see. The problem is that you don't want any other girl, do you? That really is a problem."

The cat was suddenly back on his lap, and Duncan was becoming annoyed at the both of them. He tried to pick up the cat, but it dug into his jeans with its claws, taking along some of his skin. Loudly, he said, "And I don't want her to love me just because I made her choke down some potion! I want her to love me just because... well... just because I'm me."

The witch made a short hissing noise through her teeth. The cat's ears went back and it jumped down onto the floor.

The witch said, "Ah. Now I see. What you want is 'true love'. Many books have been written about that, some very important and famous ones, so I won't bore you with the regurgitation. But I will tell you something you may not know. Do you see all these spell books behind you? And all those potions over there? Every spell, every potion, even this one on the table, can be broken by true love. True love is the most powerful spell of all and you're right, you can't get it in a bottle. Remember that."

She sat down again and looking over the spread of cards on the table said, "And so what of this girl you love? This queen of diamonds. Is she worthy of your true love?" She made an explosive sound with her mouth. "So hard headed. I wonder why you love... sorry, I mean, like her so much. But yes of course! I see now."

"See what?" said Duncan, watching her face carefully.

"Diamond is the hardest substance on earth but it is also the most enduring. This girl of yours, to most everyone else she seems... well, she is quite the queen of diamonds! She loves very few people, but for those she does love, she would die for them; and yes, yes, even kill to protect them, I think. In any event, I would not trifle with her affections if I were you unless you mean to keep her for a very, very long time. Perhaps even forever."

She interpreted his silence as a lack of understanding, "Trifle means to play."

"I figured that out," he said, staring at her blankly.

"Are you feeling all right?" she asked, putting a hand to his forehead. "You look a bit green. The timing's bad, is it?"

"The worst."

"Alas, I can't help you there," she said, waving at the spread of cards. "It's a pity you being so young, but there it is. Look at it this way; perhaps it is better to fall in love with the right person at the wrong time, than the wrong person at the right time. Ah well. True love is never simple. Perhaps you should eat something. You might feel better."

She put a cookie in his hand. He took a bite of it.

Going back to the cards, the witch turned over the ace of spades next, and right after it was the small black paper. She picked up the paper, read it silently and gave out a small woeful cry. "But why must she need that book?"

Crumbling the paper in her hand, she reached behind Duncan and took a small blood red book from the shelf.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Has it been seven years already?" She flipped the stiff pages of the book frantically.

The writing was in another language. Duncan asked, "What? Why? What's going to happen?"

Before the witch could answer, he heard Antonietta make her owl like warning signal from outside the cottage.

Duncan and the witch met each other's eyes over the book.

"The window would be quickest," she told him.

With a glance at the door, he chucked the rest of the cookie and then himself out the window and landed in a hydrangea bush. After he had crept along the cottage a few feet, he heard the witch call from the window, "Wait, you forgot the book!" and rushed back to her.

As she handed him the small volume, she said, "Remember what I told you. True love is the most powerful spell of all." Then she kissed him quickly on the cheek and pressed his hand. "And thank you for staying to tea. I get so lonely here."

Stashing the book in his doublet, he made his way around the corner of the house and ran smack into the woodcutter. It was like hitting a tree.

Duncan found his eyes level with the third button of the woodsman's red flannel shirt and stared up at him slack-jawed. Tall, blond, handsome, with a great reddish beard, the woodcutter took one look at Duncan, then sent a deluge of logs he had been holding in one arm to his left and an ax into a chopping block to his right.

Duncan heard Antonietta's owl-like call again, louder and more insistent. Well, he didn't need a warning now.

"Hello?" said the woodcutter, glowering. It was as much a question as a greeting.

Duncan smiled amiably and stuck out his hand. "Well, hello there. Just the man I wanted to see. My name is Duncan... ah... Duncan O'Reilly."

Duncan should have thought better about offering his hand. The man had a bone crushing grip. The woodcutter said, "What are you doing here, Mr.? What was your name again?" The man squinted his eyes and pumped Duncan's hand up and down like he was still chopping wood.

"O'Reilly. I'm the wood inspector," Duncan gasped out.

"Wood inspector?" The man finally let go of his hand.

"It's our job to go around to the woodcutters in the area and make sure they are—-"

Antonietta's owl was starting to sound manic. Duncan could hardly concentrate.

"—make sure they are chopping down the right kind of trees and not taking too many from the forest."

"They never came around before," said the man, putting his thumbs through his suspenders and furrowing his low brow.

Duncan was counting on that low brow.

"It's totally new! We're trying to make a more eco-friendly forest. You know, save the earth and all."

The man looked at him blankly. "Eco—?"

"Friendly. Eco-friendly. Now during my inspection, I noticed you were taking the right percentages of pine and oak and ah ... bamboo ... and, well, you know, all the other types of trees, but I also noticed that you are taking far more than the eight uh ... piles? "

"Cords?"

"Yes, that's it, eight cords allowed. If I were you, I would think about taking some time off. You never know, it might be good for you. Spend a little time with the wife. Maybe take her out to dinner. In fact, I would think about taking this afternoon off for starters, and then, gosh, there's a lot of wood here. What about going on a vacation?"

"Vacation? I haven't had a vacation in years." The man's face lit up. "We could go to the petrified forest. I always wanted to see that."

"Sure, the petrified forest." Duncan poked an elbow into the man's belly button. "Though I wouldn't bring your ax if I were you."

The man placed a weighty hand on Duncan's shoulder, shook him until his teeth rattled, then threw his head back and laughed. "Bring my ax! Ha!"

Duncan laughed along with him.

"That sounds like a great idea!" said the woodcutter.

"For sure. I mean, why not?" agreed Duncan. "And then maybe, I don't know, you could take your wife to Venice or Paris or Cleveland or something."

"Oh right. The womenfolks." The man winked. "They like that mushy stuff, don't they?"

Antonietta's owl must have gotten caught in a blender.

Duncan winked back. "Well, it looks like my job here is done. It was nice to meet you," he said, nodding and attempting to walk around the woodcutter.

The man put a hand on Duncan's chest. "Hang on," he growled, squinting at him hard. "What's that on your face?"

Duncan thought about the witch's bright red lipstick. He thought about the goodbye kiss she had given him and felt lightheaded.

The woodcutter took his enormous hand off Duncan's chest and brushed it against his cheek.

Duncan went down into a pile of woodchips.

"Oh gosh!" said the woodsman, holding out his hand to him. "Sorry about that. I didn't mean to knock you over. I don't know my own strength sometimes. There was just some cookie crumbs on your cheek."

Duncan let the man lift him to his feet, thanked him, and holding his cheek in his palm, ran off to meet Antonietta at the gate.

### Chapter 34

### An Invitation to Dinner

As it turns out, trolls are not a particularly brilliant bunch, which May was pleased to find out. They accepted Judith's claim that she was a turncoat who wanted to rat out her people, and that gave her entry into the castle.

Of course, Judith had an edge. She was clothed in a kind of celestial aura that augmented her already considerable charms. Judith probably could have told them she had come to murder them all in their sleep and the troll guards would still have let her into the castle.

One piece of knowledge that May wished she never had the opportunity to know (and which would haunt her to her grave) is that trolls don't just drool figuratively if they find a member of the opposite sex attractive, they do it literally as well. They also smell bad—really, really bad—like something wet left in a gym locker for a month. And it wouldn't matter if they wore male body spray to the point of nausea.

Getting into the Assyrian camp was even easier than snowing past the trolls. The Assyrian army was camped in tents inside the walls of the castle, but not inside the castle proper. Judith walked up to a tent, presented herself as an emissary to a man who seemed to have a glimmer of authority and a couple of fancy epaulettes, and requested to talk to General Holofernes. Word was relayed up the chain of command and eventually the buck stopped at the general's tent.

General Holofernes took one look at Judith and drooled, figuratively, not literally this time (thank heavens). Holofernes was one scarred up brawn of a man, in his late thirties, dark haired, dark bearded, dark eyed and dark souled. He carried death with him in his glance and in his manner. Underlings quivered when speaking to him, messengers made peace with God before delivering news to him, those in his mercurial favor dared say nothing to offend him. Holofernes represented the powerful arm of Nebuchadnezzar, and Nebuchadnezzar (at least in his own mind) was god. Holofernes sat at his right hand and delivered his cruel judgments of torture, agony and death.

Now, it was not the custom of the Assyrian army to let a woman pass through their hands figuratively, without passing through their hands literally. The general, believing Judith had valuable information to divulge about how to defeat her own people, put his carnal needs on the back burner, where they simmered for an entire afternoon. For Holofernes, who was used to patience on the battlefield, but not in the bedroom, this showed some fortitude on his part. But by midday, Holofernes's fortitude was wearing mighty thin. He judged he had simmered long enough. He requested Judith to join him for dinner. He sent her a corsage and a note.

When Judith received the note and broke the wax seal, May looked it over. It read: "You are beautiful. Please join me in my tent for dinner. We will talk." It was signed "The Honorable General Holofernes, your humble and devoted servant." It was written in elegant cursive, which is always a pleasant surprise for a woman from a man's hand—especially a hand as roughly calloused and tainted with blood as was the general's.

How romantic, thought May, smirking, wondering what kind of talk the general had in mind.

And the corsage was a tiger lily. Rargh.

May wanted to puke.

She was sick partly because of the note, and partly because dinner meant death, and she would have to serve her own part in that unpleasant meal. In order to get some air, she went out of the tent and wished she hadn't, because what she saw outside made her even more ill. The Faerie Queen was coming to talk to Holofernes, and May saw that she was beautiful beyond words. She had Shane with her, and he was dressed in blue velvet like a little prince. He looked like he was enjoying himself immensely.

May wondered if Duncan might be enjoying himself that much too. She watched the queen several moments, hating her guts.

But maybe May had it all wrong. Maybe Duncan was festering in a moldy dungeon in the bowels of the castle. She felt sure his leg was broken.

He would have no medical attention!

In the next moment, she was furious with herself for even caring what was happening to him whether good or bad. He was a louse, after all.

The queen left Shane outside Holofernes's tent with some guards. May rushed back into Judith's tent in order to get Sheila, but the Faerie Queen and Shane were already walking away by the time they emerged.

As May watched Shane walk away, she thought that he seemed happy at least, oblivious to any danger. His red cape trailed behind him, swinging as he bounced along beside the witch. His small hand sought the Faerie Queen's as they walked, and she took it, smiling briefly at him.

"At least he's okay," said Sheila.

"Physically, anyway," said May. Shane seemed completely caught in the queen's web. Perhaps Duncan was caught in that same web, too.

Then in the next instant, May thought that it shouldn't matter to her what was happening to him. In fact, she wished she had never met him at all.

### Chapter 35

### Duncan Makes a Resolution

Duncan gave an elaborate bow and a final kiss to the hand of the lady Antonietta Gonzalez whose silky wrist now wore a green and gold friendship bracelet. Antonietta had led her new friend from the witch's cottage in the heart of the forest to the road which would take him back to the Faerie Queen's castle.

Once on his own, Duncan's mind started manufacturing thoughts to plague him. The errand had taken much longer than it should have. He could see the late autumn sun low on the horizon and picked up his pace. He cursed the wasted day. They needed to leave the castle before the festival, but Shane would never come willingly. The evil witch had his little brother's head turned around.

Of course, he could just tell Shane he was leaving and that if he didn't come with him, he would never see Duncan again. The Rugrat was like glue; he would never let Duncan leave without him.

Only now cracks were beginning to form in the certainty of that conviction.

On Shane, the Faerie Queen had lavished more than gifts. She had given him her undivided attention. Whether that would continue after tonight, Duncan doubted, but for now she had Shane wrapped around her spikey little finger, and Duncan just couldn't compete.

He realized now that he often just tolerated Shane's company, sometimes enjoyed it, often was indifferent to it, more often was aggravated by it when he would rather be doing something else than watching his little brother.

In one of those spontaneous insights that break through all at once, Duncan understood that Shane took his attention where he could, like a stunted plant growing from a crack in the pavement, surviving in sand and on traces of rainwater.

And in another moment of insight, Duncan realized that Shane's dependence on the queen's attentions was a situation that couldn't be entirely blamed on him (for once). Duncan was, after all, Shane's brother. If his parents hadn't been so involved in their own personal problems and work, maybe Shane would have been able to see through the Faerie Queen's tricks. He wouldn't even have considered staying a day with her, let alone an eternity. He would have been begging to go back home as soon as possible.

Duncan rubbed his face all over. His hand sought out the bill of his cap, which wasn't there.

If the damn book had only been written in English not some weird foreign language, at least he would be able to prepare for tonight. The book might even have told him what he should do to break whatever spell the queen was planning to cast. If only it had some illustrations at least! Duncan would have been able to guess what he should do. But there wasn't even that.

He cursed, wishing he hadn't resisted the temptation to grab that pack of smokes off the nightstand.

Somehow he needed to get Shane alone, then in a way that didn't attract attention, drag him kicking and screaming out of the castle. They might get caught, but he had to try because the alternative was unthinkable, unknowable, but bad, Duncan felt sure, very bad.

What had Ulric called her? Eldritch. He'd never heard that word before, but that's exactly what she was. Evil seeped out of the Faerie Queen like vapor out of a bog.

Shane was coming back with him, whether he liked it or not. The Rugrat would hate him forever, but he was too young to understand, and it was up to his big brother to decide for him. Like a turbulent storm that was finally over, Duncan was done thinking about the matter.

For two whole minutes Duncan's mind was clear. During that time, his leg started bothering him, and he began to limp until his mind began turning over new thoughts.

With a pang of conscience, he realized that he had started something with May that he really shouldn't finish. If May had just been like other girls and not so serious! But given what the witch had told him, he decided that he couldn't let their friendship go any further than that.

Friends.

It wasn't that Duncan would have minded having a steady girlfriend, someone to hang out with and have fun with, but he had expected that eventually the both of them would move on after a couple months, or a year—or even maybe a few years—hopefully with no hard feelings. After all, they had their whole life ahead of them.

He still wasn't sure what 'trifling' involved exactly, but if May wasn't the type to let go easily, then it meant she would be the one with the broken heart, instead of the other way around. Somehow he hadn't planned on that.

May's cold-blooded brother had done him a favor, really. Let her go on thinking he was a loser. It was for the best. Then nothing more serious could ever begin between them.

And yet he still found himself wishing that it could be for some other reason than the one he was accused of. He could accept that things would never go further, but he didn't like her having such a low opinion of him.

Duncan gave out a sigh and reminded himself that the more vile she thought him was really for the best.

He would just act like he had only pretended to like her. He had done it before with a few other girls that he had liked (though not quite so much as her, he admitted). When it was clear that they weren't interested in him, he had just acted like he didn't care. After all, he didn't want to get a reputation as a stalker.

He resolved for the future to keep a distant and respectful manner between May and himself, as far away and as icy as the one she had maintained since her brother had called him out for being a scumbag.

Well, except for that one time when he fell off the wall that is. (He caught himself smiling at the memory of her voice and squashed it immediately.) But he was in a state himself at the time. He probably just imagined there was more to her tone than just kindness. She probably hadn't given him another thought after that.

Kicking a loose rock down the road, he told himself that if she never gave him another thought ever again, then that was a good thing. Yes, a very good thing.

So maybe something good had come from the paternity suit after all the misery it had caused.

The paternity suit! He felt tagged and branded, having to let 'the parties involved' know his exact whereabouts when he moved from Boston. He couldn't remember if he was the party of the second part or the third part or the tenth part, but someday soon, he would just be Duncan again and for that, he was grateful. One more month and he was in the clear, and he wouldn't get those looks from his parents anymore like he was the biggest disappointment of their lives.

Momentary weakness his father seemed to understand; lack of responsibility, rank stupidity, and wimpishness; his father could not. Duncan could not figure into which category he had been placed, but suspected it was all of them.

And Duncan was aware that his father was angry at him for a lot more than that. His father had been in the process of becoming a Deacon in the Church. Just how was the man supposed to deliver a homily on abstinence when he wasn't even able to make his own son practice it? Hadn't his father been told as much? And a position at a church in Boston was somewhat more auspicious than the little parish in the backwoods of Maine that had finally been offered him.

Duncan had always maintained his innocence to the charges against him, and his parents said they believed him, but at least from his father, Duncan sensed the undercurrent of doubt and the kind of resentment that can only be elicited by a traitor. Even when the results of the paternity suit must certainly come back negative, bearing out that fact that he was not now and never was, the baby's father; Duncan sensed that the rift of distrust between them would persist forever.

And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

### Chapter 36

### The Altar Boy

As the afternoon faded, it was necessary for Judith to go out of the castle gates to say her prayers and wash in the river, a customary rite of her religion which she had insisted on. As May, Judith and Sheila walked by the old well at the crossroads, Judith stopped in her tracks. She pointed at a plant that had shiny green leaves and purple flowers which was growing among the weeds.

Judith clasped her hands together, closed her eyes and said words of thanksgiving, as though the plant had appeared as an answer to a prayer. After she was done, she bent and grasped as many of the broad leaves as she could hold in her two hands and yanked with all her might. The root was vehemently tenacious; it didn't give up the earth easily, and when it did come, it came out all at once so that Judith stumbled backwards.

With a trembling hand, Judith gave May the plant. "Do you see this plant? Gather as many as you can. I need the root."

May turned the plant over in her hand. The root was similar looking to a brownish purple carrot with smaller roots dangling off the main shoot. The smaller shoots reminded her of little arms and legs and gave her the impression that she was holding a twisted little man. There was something poisonous looking about the root, as though a human could know just by looking that it should not be eaten. May held it to her nose and sniffed. The root had a bitter, earthy smell, more so because damp earth clung to the fibrous tendrils in clumps.

"Take that one with you," instructed Judith. "So you make no mistake. I will go wash and say my prayers. Sheila must come with me; I do not want to arouse suspicion." In Judith's time, a woman rarely traveled alone, and a woman of Judith's rank would never do so, having always a servant with her.

After they left, May searched for more of the plants around the well, but could find none, so she turned off the roadway into a field nearby with grass so green it matched the vibrant green color of the cape Judith had given her to wear. May thought it strange that the vegetation in this field was still so verdant, when in all the others around, the autumn frost had shocked the plants and grasses into shades of brown and rust.

It was in this green field that she found that the plants she needed to gather grew most abundantly. She didn't know how many Judith needed, but she pulled from the ground as many as she clapped eyes on.

As May struggled to pull up one of the plants, she heard someone behind her ask if she needed help. She was about to answer, when the root let go all at once, exploding out of the ground and sending her flying backwards, knocking the asker off his feet onto the grass, and plunging her into his lap.

Taking one look at each other, May and Duncan both scrambled to standing and backed away like they'd been shot through with an electric charge.

Duncan's eyes wandered over May's dress, her green cape, her white turban (now askew), her mouth forming a pretty oval of surprise, and the dirty purplish root dangling forgotten in her hand.

Something in him ached at the sight of her. Fate seemed to be firing cannons against the flimsy walls of Duncan's resolve.

In a small voice of relief, she said, "You're okay?"

"For sure."

"I thought you might have broken your leg."

"I think the Faerie Queen cast a spell on it."

"How awful!"

"No. It didn't hurt or anything. How about you?"

She nodded and her turban bobbed over her eyes. She pushed it up with the back of her hand. "Uh-huh. I'm fine."

There was silence as neither of them spoke for a moment.

Duncan asked, "What's with the plant?"

Her eyes went lustrous. "I think it's poisonous."

He wasn't sure what he should say in response to that, so he just said, "No kidding?"

There was more silence. "I'm staying in the castle," she blurted.

"You are?"

"And Sheila's with me." She peered at the roadway with a faraway look. "You just missed her."

"That's too bad."

"We saw the Faerie Queen today—"

"Was Shane with her?" He sounded angry, and she was glad of it.

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes." Scowling in the direction of the castle, he unbuttoned the top of his doublet in a hurry. "She doesn't let him out of her sight. She hasn't let me talk to him at all—there's always some lame excuse. This morning she sent me away to get this." He pulled the witch's spell book out of his doublet. "I didn't dare tell her 'no'—I don't know what she'll do to him. It's taken me all day to get it."

May tossed the plant on the ground with the rest she had gathered, brushed her hands off, then took the book out of his hand. She opened to the title page.

"There's a bookmark," he said.

She went to the page that was marked and pulled out a playing card. "Queen of Diamonds. Does that mean anything?"

He removed the card from her hand. "I don't know," he said. "She was in a hurry."

"She?"

"The woman who gave me the book." He added, "She was really old," in case May got the wrong idea.

Duncan watched her brow furrow in concentration as she tried to read the page. He said, "It's just all gobble-de-gook."

She said nothing back to him, then as if remembering suddenly that he was still standing there, she said, "Not gobble-de-gook, actually. It's Latin." As she read, she undid the tie on her green cloak and dropped it onto the grass next to her.

"Can you read it?"

"A little. My dad wants me to go into law."

"I knew it! I said to myself, if anyone can figure it out, May can."

She drew her eyes away from the book and looking into his face with the same frown of concentration she had given to the page, she said. "You did?"

He nodded then came around her back and peered at the book over her shoulder. "It's a spell book, isn't it?"

"I think so," she said slowly.

"That kind of looks like a recipe," he said, watching her slender white finger run under a few words.

"If you don't mind drinking goat's blood in which three bats have been drowned during the full of the moon," said May.

"She's not going to make my brother drink that, is she?"

"It's not to drink. It's for preparing the devil's altar."

"Just what is she planning to do to him?" Duncan's voice cracked and May wished she had chosen her words a lot more carefully.

May gave herself a few seconds before she answered him this time. "Duncan, I don't think you need to be worried about your brother. The words are all wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"For instance, this word here. It wouldn't be used for a kid your brother's age. It's more like, youth ... young man ... callant."

"Oh, is that what callant means? I thought it was a swear."

"And the sacrifice has to be willing which means someone has to actually choose to sacrifice themselves. Remember Ron said something about the age of reason? It's usually considered around seven years old. It's mentioned in this spell too, and Shane is just too young. She can't use him. He isn't responsible for his choices yet. The spell won't work."

"Then why would she make me believe that she's going to sacrifice him?"

"I think it's because the Faerie Queen knows that at the moment she's about to sacrifice your brother, you're going to offer yourself instead."

Surprise crossed Duncan's face. "I never thought of it," he answered honestly.

"Because you probably didn't think that far ahead. I did. And so did she."

"Is there any way out of it?"

"An escape clause? Good question." Curious herself, May scanned down the page to the end. "No, it doesn't say anything about how to break the spell."

"But she must have dozens of... of callants in the castle. Why would she want me?"

May went back to her former place on the page and went on reading. "Okay, it says that the sacrifice has to be willing, blah, blah, blah, a voluntary offering and ... "

"You stopped reading again," he reminded her.

"I did," she admitted. "Are you sure you want to hear it? For sure? It isn't bad. Do you want to hear it?"

"For sure." His tone and his words didn't exactly match, but she went on anyway.

She found her place again. "Let's see, willing, blah, blah, blah, voluntary ... here we go. It says here that the sacrifice needs to be virtuous. See, I bet that's her problem. As Ulric said, 'the devil doesn't want what he already owns.' I lay good odds that virtuous callants are in short supply in that place."

"Virtuous?" questioned Duncan.

She squinted her eyes at him. "Do you do any reading at all?"

"Not if I can help it."

"I'll paraphrase then. She's looking for a ... a boy scout ... an altar boy."

His silence was telling.

"No really?" she squawked.

"Well, I was when I was younger. It's not like anybody else wants to be one." And then he added as an afterthought, "Besides, my parents made me."

She went back to translating the page, shaking her head. "Okay, virtuous ... virtuous and pure. Pure of ... heart, pure of ... mind, pure of body, a ... "

"You stopped reading again. A what?"

"Shhh, I'm trying to figure out a word. When is your birthday? September?"

"Promise not to laugh?"

She shrugged. "Okay."

"April first."

She smiled.

"You said you wouldn't laugh."

"No. That isn't it."

"What then?"

"The word I was trying to figure out is 'virgo'."

"Yeah so?"

Even though no one else was there, she whispered, "It means 'virgin'."

He rewarded her instantly with a rush of color that made it all the way into his hair.

Closing the book on her finger to mark the place, she threw both her arms around his neck. She felt his hands make their way around her waist.

Belief is fine if that's all you've got, thought May, melting against him, but proof is so much better!

From the castle came blasts on a trumpet for the changing of the watch, and she and Duncan remained perfectly still as she mentally counted to six blasts. After the last trumpet call, she could feel him become unwillingly restless under her hands.

"You need to go?" she asked, releasing him.

He nodded.

"But we need to figure out how to get you out of this."

"There's no more time. I don't know what she'll do if I don't return. I was supposed to be back hours ago." He picked up her cloak which she had dropped on the grass. "Here, you might forget this. You can hardly see it; it's as green as the grass. You'll need it tonight if it gets any colder."

"What did you just say?"

He shook out the cape. "I said you might—"

"No, before that."

"It's as green as the grass? Well, it is." He placed the cape around her shoulders.

"As green as the grass," she echoed. The phrase was familiar, words from a story she had read a long time ago. May tapped her foot. "Do you know if this field has a name?"

Tying the ribbons of the cape into a bow at her throat, he said, "Same as the well and the castle and everything else around here. But I can't pronounce it. Carterhock?"

"Carterhaugh!" She bit her lip and tasted salt from where her mouth had brushed his neck.

"Yeah. That's it," he answered.

"'As green as the grass of Carterhaugh'," she said. The old story was starting to slowly come back to her.

"It sounds like a sneeze." He smiled. "Or maybe a furball."

"The sound is in the back of the throat," she said.

He said 'Carterhaugh' a few times, bending over each time to finish like a cat hocking up a furball, and she laughed. He took the blood red book out of her hands and closed it.

"Where did the card go?" she asked, looking around at the ground.

He patted his thigh. "My pocket. The Faerie Queen can find the spell on her own without our help." Putting the book in his doublet and buttoning it, he said sourly. "I can't believe she actually made me get this book for her. What kind of a person makes you dig your own grave?"

"An evil one, but don't give up. We'll be there tonight—all of us. I promise we'll get you both out of this."

"How?" he said hopelessly.

And as she watched him walk away, limping toward the castle, she thought that she just might have an idea.

### Chapter 37

### Captain Achior

They had to plan dinner with General Holofernes just right so that Judith could make it back to Bethulia in enough time to rally her people but with not so much time that his headless body would be found before the tithing festival at midnight. With some deliberation and prayer, Judith sent word that she would meet the general at nine o'clock for a late dinner.

Under Judith's direction, May had the task of preparing the roots she had gathered earlier that afternoon. Before May began, Judith took May's hands in her own, closed her eyes and said a prayer, which May thought strange considering the fact that they were about to kill a man. May sent a look to Sheila to indicate as much, which Sheila returned with an anxious face. After Judith was done praying, she turned May's hands over and inspected them from her wrists to the tips of her fingernails.

May asked what she was looking for.

"You must not have any cuts on your hands for the juice of the root to enter your body. You must be very careful with the knife. You understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

Judith instructed her to wash five of the roots, and to scrape off the rind. She was to mince the rind as fine as she could and drop it into a small amount of wine Judith had brought from Bethulia. There it would steep for several hours and be strained out later.

The pocket knife was not adequate for paring off the tough outer skin of the roots. May put it aside and took the hunting knife from the sheath under her skirt.

"Will this be enough to kill him?" May asked, working and wondering at her own calm.

"No. It is not to kill him. This will make it so that he will feel nothing when I cut him."

Sheila cried, "He'll still be alive when you ...?"

Judith looked first at Sheila and then at May as she asked, "Is that what you thought too? You thought I was having you poison him?"

May nodded at her.

"And yet you said nothing!" Judith marveled at her. "I would never ask that. This is not your fight. When we are in his tent, I will add this tincture to his wine. In my experience, when a man drinks, he either becomes overly friendly, or clumsily amorous, or violent. I cannot take any chances."

"He doesn't seem the friendly type," observed Sheila quietly, watching the preparations with a pale face.

"How do you know how much to put in?" asked May, dicing the root with the sharp edge of Carlisle's hunting knife. The lamplight reflected off the polished blade, glittering around the tent.

"I don't. I can only guess. It cannot be too strong or it will make him ill, and he will not keep the tincture down. Also, it will depend on how much it takes for him to get drunk."

"By the look of him, I'm guessing a lot," said May.

Judith considered and said, "If I add the infusion by the glass, it will be easier to judge how it is affecting him, but I do not dare to do it in case he finds me out. No, I must add it all at once to the carafe."

A shouting and a commotion came from outside the tent—a man screaming as though his soul was in torment—and the sound of other male voices along with it.

May, Sheila and Judith all looked sharply at one another, and Judith, taking a cloth, covered over the roots and knife, then went to peek outside the curtained doorway of the tent.

In a hushed voice, Sheila said to May, "It's murder."

With her hand on the way to the knife under the cloth, May said, "It's war."

"War is when you fight people on a battlefield. This is murder."

May slid the hunting knife back into the sheath on her thigh. "If Judith doesn't return with the general's head, then Bethulia won't attack. And if they don't attack and cause enough of a diversion at the festival tonight, then we'll never get Shane and his brother back. Do you want your cousin to be sacrificed?"

"There just has to be another way. This is wrong."

Sounds of men's shouting became louder outside the tent. May watched Judith hesitating on the balls of her feet as she peeked out the doorway. At last, Judith tugged the canvas aside and left, and May and Sheila went after her.

Outside of General Holofernes tent, a man was being held by his arms in front of the general. Holofernes looked bored, both hands on hips, and restless as though he had other duties that needed his attention. Around the camp and castle grounds, torches were being lit in preparation for night; but some sunlight remained in shades of violet over the castle walls.

"Will you shut that man up already?" grated out Holofernes. "Knock him on the head if you have to."

An officer who appeared to have some rank stepped forward and struck the man with an open hand across the face. The prisoner let out a groan and was quiet after that.

"Peace at last," said Holofernes. Then addressing the man who had struck the prisoner, he said, "Why do you bring him to me, Captain Achior? What is his offence?"

"Falling asleep on watch, my general."

Holofernes gave the captain a look that could have frozen lava. "What's the matter with you? We have penalties for that! Just carry them out." The general swore and made to go.

"But—!"

"But?" repeated Holofernes, turning around. The word carried a threat.

"The penalty is death, my general," the captain faltered.

"What is your point?"

The officer gave a low bow and stayed there, staring at the ground. "My general, he is but young."

General Holofernes lowered his brows to feign anger, but his eyes twinkled. He found something entertaining in the captain's words, yet he also seemed curious, "Why should that matter?"

"Twenty-two, general. And his wife just had a baby."

"Please," pleaded the prisoner. "I don't care for myself, but how will she and the baby live?"

Looking sardonic, Holofernes said, "If she's as young and pretty as you, I'm sure we could find a place for her at camp. She and your brat won't starve."

"I beg of you, don't bring her here!"

The general gave the prisoner a crooked smile. "In fact, she can stay in my tent—until I tire of her."

The barb was designed to provoke and it hit straight on. The young man's pleading turned to anger. "You'll never get the chance! The Jews will crush you into the ground."

Captain Achior licked his lips and cast a worried glance at Holofernes. "Shut up, you young idiot!" he shouted, darting forward with his hand raised to strike the prisoner into silence again.

Holofernes put a hand on the captain's shoulder to stop him, then said to the prisoner, "What? That miserable collection of half-starved zealots? And how do you suppose that will happen?"

"It is said that they cannot be defeated. Their god protects them!"

"What god is that, pray tell? There is no god but Nebuchadnezzar." Holofernes turned and addressed the captain. "He says to me, 'it is said'; what does he mean by that, Captain Achior?"

Cautiously, Achior answered, "It is what the men are saying around camp, general."

"I see. So the men are talking, are they? And do you believe it also?"

"It is true that other armies have tried to defeat them and have failed. They have a powerful god. When their people were slaves in Egypt, their god sent plagues and famine over the land until Pharoah let them all go."

"And I have sent plagues and famine over _them_!" Holofernes forced a brief laugh. "But Achior, I asked, do you believe it to be true?"

Achior chose his next words carefully. "General, I ... I do believe so, yes. For our own sake, I think we would do best to leave them alone."

Judith said softly, "Truly this man has more faith than my own people."

Looking at Achior with hard eyes, the general said, "You realize this is blasphemy?"

"General, you asked what—"

"I know what I asked," shouted Holofernes, cutting him off. "But this, this is even worse than blasphemy which I will thankfully leave to priests. This is subversion. How many of the men believe as you do?"

"I don't know, general. Many, I think."

Holofernes shook his head and smiled without mirth. "You, Captain Achior can join in the punishment of this young fool. You will both be put to death—to make sure everyone knows that blasphemy and cowardice will be punished."

Judith came out of the shadows. "But surely general, the one man is young, and if it is as he says—and for such a small offence! And the other only tells you the truth for which you asked."

At first, General Holofernes showed surprise to see her standing there, even annoyance at her interference, but then his eyes burned over her from head to foot as the torchlight danced off her voluptuous figure. He inclined his head slightly and said, "Madam, these are tedious affairs of an army. I wouldn't expect a woman to understand."

"But general, there must be some clemency you can deliver. If not for their sake, then I beg you for the sake of their wives. Remember, I am also a widow."

He smiled and strutted towards her, stopping only when he was at a distance reserved for husbands and lovers, of which he was neither. Then, taking up her hand and kissing it, in the sleazy tone of one offering a bribe, he said, "Nay, say not for the sake of their widows, but say for your own sake, and I'll do it."

Meeting his look full of implied meaning, she replied. "For my sake then."

Raising his eyebrows once, he positively leered. Then he turned around, and putting his hands behind his back, called out, "Twenty two lashes for this one to pay for each year of his young life. Double for Achior. If he survives, take him to the desert, tie him to a tree—a cactus if there isn't one—and leave him for a day or two. Perhaps the fire ants will talk some sense into him."

Holofernes gave an impatient wave of his hand at the assembly. "Dismissed." Then he spun on his heel into his tent.

Judith turned around with her eyes smoldering. Where Holofernes's lips had touched her skin, she wiped off her hand in a sweeping gesture. "The disgusting pig," she hissed, before dashing into her tent.

May and Sheila's eyes met. "It's still murder," said Sheila in response to her look.

"Maybe. But if it's any consolation, I doubt he'll be missed."

### Chapter 38

### Preparing for Battle

Several hours later that evening, the tincture was ready to be strained. The mixture smelled vile, bitterly pungent of warm wine and poisonous earthy root. Using some of the muslin underskirt ripped from her dress, May strained the liquid into a wooden bowl, separating out the solids from the wine. The root must have contained a small amount of starch, acting like a thickening agent. The wine had a viscous quality.

In the light of the dimly lit tent, the red fluid dripping from the cloth in her hands reminded May suddenly of blood and a cold sweat came over her. She caught herself in time before dropping the cloth and its contents, so that all of her work might have come to nothing.

Sheila was right, wasn't she? If this wasn't murder, what then fit the definition? As aggravating as it was, May couldn't fault Sheila for her convictions. Hadn't May been taught all her life that killing another human being was wrong, too? And to say it was just "war", well that was just mincing words as finely as May had minced the root in the concoction she was now straining.

Murder by any other name would (and did) smell as vile.

But Judith had her own convictions too. And May couldn't argue that they weren't just as valid in their own way. Judith saw herself as the instrument of God's justice and an angel of salvation to her people.

May remembered back to that morning when all of the inhabitants of Bethulia, not just men, but women and children, too, came out to watch Judith (with May and Sheila trailing behind her) walk down the street and out of the gates of the town. May had never seen such wasted and pathetic looking human beings. Even worse, though the men and women were bony, the modesty of their clothes hid the majority of it, while the children wore few coverings in the hot climate. May, after glimpsing the first few starved elfin bodies, kept her eyes set in front of her, afraid that she would be cursed with seeing their tiny skeletal forms forever in her sleep.

What did General Holofernes care if every single one of those children died? Hadn't he been the one to give the order to cripple Bethulia's water supply? And Holofernes knew what he was doing. He knew that it wasn't just Bethulia's army his orders were dooming, but those who had never picked up a weapon against him or his army in their short lives.

If that was the general's idea of battle, then that wasn't something glorious on a battlefield—that was something insidiously evil. Why was his miserable life worth more than those innocent ones who had never wronged anyone?

But then why couldn't God, if He wanted the rotten man out of the way, have just given Holofernes some slow lingering plague-like disease? Something suitably ironic, like syphilis. Instead, God had chosen Judith as his Holy Spirit's corporeal manifestation in the act of chopping off the general's head.

To May, it all seemed so messy for a divine being.

But who was she to question it? She was not a theologian.

As May watched the dark wine trickle from the cloth slow to a steady drip, she realized that she wasn't going to find the solution to the maze in her mind by continuing down this aimless path of reasoning, so she decided to explore a different line of thought that seemed less of a dead end.

Judith believed herself to be in the right as much as Sheila believed herself to be so. If May sided with Judith, then her complicity in the crime amounted to sainthood. If she sided with Sheila, then she was going to hell for sure; though Sheila was Catholic and maybe such moral dilemmas only landed you in purgatory for a while. (May wondered if there was some special dispensation made for an immoral act done for moral reasons. In any event, May really was giving it her careful consideration. That had to count for something.)

Trying not to touch any more of the noxious liquid than she had to, May twisted the cloth around itself to squeeze out the last of the juices into the bowl. The thick red liquid gushed out at first, then began to drip steadily.

And what conclusion would May reach if she just examined her own mind?

Earlier, May had said to Sheila that what Judith was doing was not murder, but war. May hardly knew what she had meant when she said it. It just seemed a handy way to respond at the time, designed to shut Sheila up more than anything else. May realized now that it was also designed to allay her own doubts about the morality of what she herself was doing.

Sheila had said that wars were fought on a battlefield. May had been unprepared and the words had hit her like a fencing attack that she couldn't parry.

But now, her mind did parry it—by challenging what she and Sheila had both assumed was undeniably true.

Namely, was it really true that wars were only fought on a battlefield? Maybe the only people who believed that axiom of truth were people who had never actually fought in one.

May began to wonder how much of war was actually fought in private skirmishes like this one, clandestine poisonings and silent beheadings done behind closed doors?

If Judith had been a man, she would have been built with a fighting man's stature and strength. Instead, Judith's physical strength was in the form of her beauty, no less of a powerful weapon when enhanced by intelligence and a certain amount of natural skill. Judith could have used her beauty selfishly for power, or wealth or prestige, but she had chosen to use it in the defense of others.

As May dug a hole in the dirt floor of the tent and dropped in the crimson stained cloth, she decided that, while not perfect, the act of killing the general was no less moral than not killing him, and that when all was said and done, her conscience would be as crystal clear as ice water.

But never—under any circumstances—never, ever, ever, must Duncan know what she'd done.

### Chapter 39

### Dinner with the General

"There's the trim little piece now," slurred a bleary eyed General Holofernes reclining on an elbow, reaching out a surprisingly well directed hand towards May's buttocks which she deftly avoided at the last second.

May set down the carafe of wine in the center of a blanket spread out on the floor of Holofernes tent. The picnic style dinner was Holofernes idea. May imagined that he thought the closer a man and woman were to actually lying down at dinner, the quicker the deed would take place.

To this carafe of Assyrian wine, which was his fourth, May had added all that was left of the tincture. Judith had drunk none of the wine, because as she explained to the general, and which was no lie, her religion forbade her to take food that was not Jewish.

Considering he had downed three carafes all on his own, the general, even as pie-eyed and toxified as he was, was still not as intoxicated as he should have been. In point of fact, he probably should have already been dead based on the alcohol content of his blood alone, notwithstanding the addition of the intoxicating root.

Prior to this one reach for May's rear end, he had saved his unsavory pawing for Judith, who played along as much as she could without actually removing any of her clothing. May wished she could have said the same of Holofernes. His manners (what there were of them) and his clothing seemed to be disappearing by the layer.

In fairness, this may have been due to other considerations apart from lust; the man was sweating at an alarming rate and had a milk-white cast over his complexion that augured poorly for his continued existence.

It was remarkable that he was able to stand at all, but he stumbled to his feet and held up his glass. "To you madam and to the trim little piece there and the other shapely wench outside the tent." He laughed and added some rude comments about Sheila's attributes, then heartily wished they might all enjoy the night together, though he said on reflection and a hard look (as much as he was able to deliver) at May, "On second thought, not her. She looks like she might stab me in my sleep!" After that he laughed uproariously at his own joke and drank deeply of his glass, draining it to the dregs.

He pulled the glass away from his lips with a perplexed look. "Curious wine, this is," he said. "We must be getting to the end of the cask." He opened his mouth, picked a particle of root off his tongue, pulled his hand away and looked cross-eyed at his fingers. "It's getting chunky."

Judith stood up. "Oh general, I don't think I could bear to share you with anyone!" she cried enthusiastically. "Tonight it's just you and me!" Judith pushed him forcefully onto the soft bed behind him. He made a grab for her and they both flopped down together, the red canopy above the bed ripping down over the both of them.

In the next moment, May nearly jumped for joy, because from under the fallen canopy, there came the miraculous sound of loud snoring.

Judith threw off the thick cloth and sprung out of the bed. "Ugh! The disgusting pig."

May came to the bed and waved her hand in front of her face. "I'll say! You would have thought he'd have washed up if he knew he had a hot date."

Judith sniffed her own sleeve with a sour look.

"Yeah," said May. "If I were you, I would just burn it."

"Ugh," said Judith again over the sound of the man's snoring. She went to the post of the bed where the general's scabbard hung and took the sword from it.

May stared at her with a slack mouth, frozen in place.

Judith said, "Now it is time for you to go. I told you, this is not your fight. You have done your part. I will never forget it." When May didn't move, she cried, "Go! Stay outside the tent with Sheila. I will call for you when I am done."

As May was leaving she saw Judith fall on her knees in front of the bed, the murderous looking blade in her shaking hand. Meanwhile, the general continued to snore.

"What is she doing now?" asked Sheila, quite white even in the orange torchlight outside the tent.

"Praying, I think."

Sheila made a sound in her throat. "For what?"

May waited for some guards to file by, then whispered harshly at her, "I don't know! Strength to do what she thinks is right. What she thinks is her duty? What she thinks she's been commanded to do by God? Success, salvation, absolution, power from on high, cupcakes! What the hell do I know! All I do know is that if anyone suspects what is really going on in this tent, you and I had better get praying as well."

She stopped ranting as more guards walked by the tent. Two of the men looked like she had seen them before. When one of them gave Sheila the once over with his eyes, she realized he must be making circles around the tent with his wingman.

"Buzz off," May called to him.

"Why do you have to be like that?" said Sheila after the men were gone.

"How many times has he done that? If he keeps circling around here like a vulture, and you keep encouraging him, the next thing you know, he's going to start getting chatty, and we don't need him getting too close to—"

A noise came from inside the tent: a gurgling, strangling kind of noise and a groaning at the same time.

"Did you just hear that?" asked May.

Then there came a woman's shriek. May swore softly and turned to face the closed curtain that was the door to the tent. Her hands wandered over the canvas, not knowing if she should enter—not knowing if she _could_ enter.

Louder sounds came from inside, more groaning.

"People are starting to notice," breathed out Sheila. Already, some soldier's heads had turned in their direction. The sounds were attracting attention.

May burst into the tent all at once and drew the curtain behind her. She was greeted by a grisly scene. Holofernes—the canopy and bedclothes twisted around the lower half of his body— writhed on the bed, groaning as Judith cut the sword deeper into the sinew of his thick neck. His blood flowed down the white sheets onto the dirt floor. Holofernes, only partially coherent, had his huge hands wrapped around Judith's neck.

"He woke up!" rasped out Judith, catching sight of her. Her face was a mix of fear and desperation.

May would remember later to her shock that the one thought that entered her head as she caught that glimpse of hell was that Holofernes needed to be dead pronto, or they were going to be dead shortly themselves.

She rushed around the bed and dug her fingers under Holofernes's hands, prying them loose from around Judith's neck. The enormous power of the man was halved by the drugged wine and the blood he had lost, and it still took all of her effort to peel his hands away.

Then standing over him, she pushed his hands down to his chest, and adding her knee and the weight of her body, pinned his arms there. His muscular legs writhed like wounded snakes, his face tortured into purple, his hands and arms pulled and pushed under her own, continually squirming out of her grasp as soon as she regained control of them. It was like kneading human bread.

As Judith made the cut in the general's throat deeper, blood spurted from his neck in a potent stream like water from a hose—only this water was dark red and smelled of iron and death.

Outside, Sheila was facing her own battle in the form of two of the general's guards who had been told they would not be needed for several hours while the general was entertaining 'the Jewish slut'. Now those same several hours had elapsed and the two guards were back to resume their guard duty and to deliver to the general his attire for the night's festival.

"Look buddy," said Sheila, putting a hand on the taller guard's chest to stop him from entering the tent. "I don't think you quite understand. The festivities have already started if you get my drift." She gave a telling look to the guard and pointed with her thumb to the tent in back of her as Holofernes let out a strangled cry.

The guard shot an anxious look to his fellow who was carrying the general's celebratory tunic over his arm. "We had very strict orders," he faltered. "The general is usually very punctual. If we don't get this uniform to him, it could be our heads."

"It'll be your heads if you disturb him right now. I'm just saying, he will not be happy if either of you go in there at this particular moment."

Just then, Holofernes moaned in anguish.

Both of the guards stared at the tent, then at each other.

"Thank goodness things are finally heating up in there," said Sheila. She made a drinking motion with her hand, "Kind of slows things down, if you know what I mean. Why don't you come back in a few? Though I wouldn't hurry if I were you. Could be a while yet with the amount he's had. In fact, why don't I just take the tunic for you?"

"Maybe you better," said the guard passing Sheila the garment and listening with wide eyes to the sounds from the tent.

"Wow," said Sheila, elbowing him in the ribs. "Listen to that! Maybe you boys should think about taking the night off."

The guard smirked, raised his eyebrows and nodded to his friend as they left.

When they were gone, Sheila, whose knees were wobbly, blew out a breath and patted her brow with the general's tunic. Hopefully the two guards would grab a drink and spread the story of the general's wild night all around camp. Then, maybe no one would check on him until morning—if they were lucky.

Back in the tent, Holofernes, general to the army of the mighty Nebuchadnezzar, felt his life draining out of him. He gave one final jerk of his hand, freeing it from May's grasp, and sent it to the bodice of her kirtle. He pushed her away and yet held her in place, joining her to him in the final moment of his existence. May felt his life force leaving through the shaking spasms of that once powerful hand against her chest.

When his shriveled soul finally departed his body, May turned her face away, and Judith, taking the general's dark greasy hair in her left hand, made one final slice with the sword, severing the head from his body.

Judith set the head down on the bed, then helped May uncoil the general's still clutching hand from the bodice of her kirtle which afterward remained wrinkled and darkly stained.

They emptied the remnants of bread from the basket, wrapped Holofernes head in a portion of cloth cut from the red canopy, and into the basket went his head, fitting better than any plump round loaf. His body they covered with the sheets and canopy, the red of the cloth masking the wet blood.

They left one of his meaty arms draped over the side of the bed. It was a ghastly white color, and would be ghastlier still come morning light, but for now, in the lamplight, it still looked capable of movement.

### Chapter 40

### Escape From Camp

The army camp was in a state of disorder, preparing for the festival. Most of the men had started drinking already, anticipating a night of unbridled debauchery as more and more women wandered into camp. The women flirted and smiled, sniffing out men with a little money in their pockets or seeking out a handsome face to make up for the lack of it. Their caustic laughter ringing around the camp made them sound like witches, but May saw them as angels sent to speed them to salvation for they provided just the right distraction needed to get out of camp.

With Judith leading the way, Sheila and May following behind, they sauntered down the narrow camp streets with the general's head wrapped in red velvet, solidly perched on May's hip in a bread basket.

May smiled and glanced boldly with the rest of the women, taking her cues from the others in the camp. They seemed to have flirting down to a science even though many of them were equally plain as she thought herself, and some could be called downright ugly. Others still were actual trolls.

The female trolls seemed to be favored by the older men, and May could only guess that what troll women lacked in looks, they made up for in other ways which May did not want to think about. At least they didn't smell as bad as troll men.

As for the younger men, they seemed to avoid the troll women not so much from revulsion as from a fear that bordered on awe.

Past the main part of the camp, the crowd of revelers thinned out, and May felt the promise of freedom as they neared the wall of the castle. But instead of breathing easier, May experienced the torment of being so close to freedom that she felt a white pain at the possibility of getting caught in sight of her goal.

Judith stopped and held up her hand. "What is that up ahead?"

In the moonlight, they saw two poles as thick as the masts of ships jutting up into the night sky. Something draped from the poles like two sailcloths.

It was Sheila who understood first what they were seeing. "It's those two men."

As soon as she said it, May suddenly could make out what they were too. Not sailcloth hanging limply from the poles, but human beings made inhuman.

Judith looked all around, checking for guards. "Do you still have your knife?"

May clutched the basket tighter at her hip. "We don't have time to help them."

"It will only take a minute to cut them down," said Sheila in a tone that made May feel like an insect from the underside of a rotted log.

May gritted through her teeth, "Hold this." She pushed the basket into Sheila's gut, then reached under her skirt and drew out the hunting knife. Glancing around her to make sure no one was in the shadows, she crossed the road to the men and heard Judith and Sheila padding behind her.

The men were suspended a foot above the ground by thick ropes around their wrists. The rope was greasy and wet to the touch and smelled of the blood that ran down their arms as the cords bit into their flesh. Aside from the torturous position they were in, the men appeared unharmed, their real punishment of flogging not yet having been meted out.

May went to the younger man first. The full moon glowed off fine beads of sweat on his features. Holofernes was right—he really was beautiful—and the grimace of pain lining his forehead, far from marring his face, only made it all the more exquisite. At first she took him for unconscious, but he blinked his eyes open as she stood watching him.

Even though he was being punished, he was still a soldier in an enemy army so she shoved the knife into his face. The moonlight danced off the blade. "Swear to me that you won't tell on us, and I'll cut you down."

His voice was a husky whisper, "I swear to you on my life."

"No. Swear on your new baby's life."

"I swear it."

"And you?" May said, turning the knife on the captain. He raised his eyes to her. They glittered like black glass in the torchlight.

"I have no child to swear on anymore, miss. My family was murdered by the Assyrians, and I was forced to serve them, but if you cut me down, I swear I will help you escape and do everything in my power to defeat them. If you don't cut me down, I beg you to kill me."

"That's good enough for me," said May. With her eyes, she followed the white trail of rope from the man's wrists to the top of the pole, through an iron hoop, then followed it back down again where it wrapped around a peg at the back of the pole. She sliced the hunting knife through the rope just above the peg and Achior tumbled to the ground. She did the same for the younger man, then cut the ropes that bound them both hand and foot.

Achior staggered up first, saying huskily, "Come. I know the way to the gate."

"No," cried Judith, "we can't. We must go over the wall. The gate is too dangerous."

"Madam, they watch the wall more than the gate. There are guards posted every few yards. But look." He pointed to a man stumbling out of a tent with a bottle in his hand. "The night is full of revelers that will be making their way out of the castle to the crossroads. We can be some of the first." He followed after the drunken man, whispering back to them, "Stay here and wait for me."

May felt the basket thrust at her by Sheila who was eager to be rid of it. Reluctantly, she took it and put Carlisle's knife into the basket, hiding it amongst the folds of cloth.

From somewhere in the darkness, May heard a dull thud, like a watermelon being dropped on the ground. A short time later, Captain Achior returned to them with a bottle in his hand.

He took a swallow from the bottle, swished the liquor around in his mouth then spat it out over his bloody wrists where the rope had cut into his flesh. He hissed through his teeth and it was a moment or two before he spoke again. Giving the bottle to his companion, he said, "Swallow some down, Cyril. It'll brace you. You'll need it. It burns like the fires of hell."

The young soldier drank once from the bottle, then began coughing. Achior took the bottle back from him and drank deeply. Before the young man had even recovered from coughing, the captain grabbed his wrists and sprayed the liquor in his mouth over them.

Cyril gasped and went down on his knees, his hands balled into fists. Achior gave him a moment then pulled him to his feet.

Leading them back through the crowded knot of raucous soldiers and loose women, both Achior and Cyril made a show of talking loudly and profanely. They fought comically over the bottle, winked at all the women they passed, and stumbled over their own feet.

As they strolled up to the gatehouse, Cyril encircled May and Sheila around their waists, then tottered between them like a complete buffoon. May only saved Holofernes head from falling out of the basket and rolling past the guards by a well-timed placement of her hand over the cloth.

"What's in the basket?" asked one of the trolls with his fat nose in the air, clearly sniffing for a bribe.

"It's an offering," replied May quickly, turning the basket aside.

Achior took the troll around the shoulders and breathed on him mightily. "Oh these girls'll be offerin' more than that tonight," he said. Then he whispered something lecherous enough to make the troll leer at the girls and which May was glad that she hadn't been able to hear.

With abysmal aim, Achior patted the guard on the chest several times, hitting him in the face twice. "There's only a moldy head of cheese in the young wench's basket. That's not what you want! I know what you want." He handed the half full bottle of liquor to the troll who took it with a broad smile.

Then Achior put his arm around Judith's shoulder, called her a 'comely wench', smiled sloppily at her, then smacked her soundly on her rear. She let out a little cry of surprise.

After that, they were summarily waved through the gate, and the trolls resumed their dice game, passing the bottle around now, especially encouraging the troll to drink who, up until that moment, had been the luckiest in the game.

Once clear of the gate, Achior released Judith and begged her pardon.

"For what, captain?" she asked.

"For ... for mishandling you, madam."

"For that, you already have my pardon, and I will add that you also have my gratitude for getting us out of that awful place."

"What is in the basket?" asked Cyril.

May pulled aside the cloth, showed the men Holofernes's moldy head of cheese, then covered it up again.

"Perhaps I should ask for your pardon again, lady," said Achior to Judith.

"Come," she said, "We must hurry to my people. There is not much time before the stroke of midnight."

### Chapter 41

### The Prisoner in the Tower

From a high tower of the castle, a pair of dark eyes watched May and Sheila leave through the gate. The owner of those eyes tried to decide if the men he saw them leave with were Ulric and Charley. But after squinting until his head hurt even worse than it already did after being held in a damp and dismal room for four hours, Duncan passed a hand over his eyes and dismissed the thought.

It just couldn't be them; the men were too dark, though the poor light made it hard to be certain. And then there was a tall woman with them, too; and he had no idea who she might be.

As long as he had felt May and Sheila's presence in the castle, Duncan had been hopeful, but now they were leaving him!

He fought himself back to reason and some semblance of calm. May had told him they would all meet at the crossroads tonight, but he had never been able to talk to Shane about their plan.

Duncan had been tricked, lured to this high room, told that he would meet Shane here. But the door had been locked behind him, and he had been left alone for hours and seemingly forgotten.

Once, a grouchy troll had hunkered in and dropped off some food in silence, carelessly sliding the meal onto the greasy table, sloshing the bulk of it over the tray. Ignoring Duncan's questions, the troll had only grunted at him then stuck two dirty fingers in the soup. Licking them as he left, he sealed the door behind him.

The meal, unsurprisingly, sat there still, cold and untouched, the candle near the tray burned down to a stub, the long wick smoldering blackly.

Angry voices bubbled up from below the tower window—a drunken brawl over a dice game. Duncan leaned his head against the cold wall next to the window frame, and gazed at the queen of diamonds card in his hand. He felt that the Faerie Queen's sister had left it to him for a sign, but just how a playing card was supposed to help him out of this jam, he had no idea. Nor had Duncan any idea of how true love was supposed to help him and Shane out either.

Duncan knew how much he loved his brother, and he knew now that he would do anything for him, but he just couldn't figure out how that could help them in this situation. Duncan couldn't see how more than one of them would be getting out of this awful place.

One of the two of them was out of luck, Duncan was pretty sure of that. And he already knew in his soul who it would be.

And that was as it should be, thought Duncan, because Shane was going to be a heck of a lot more than Duncan was. Couldn't he read already? (Sometimes Duncan felt like he was still learning.) And Shane could already do multiplication, and he was only five years old. Their parents were even talking about having him skip a grade, and the kid was just in preschool.

For sure, Shane would be going places in his life.

While Duncan would be lucky enough just to graduate high school.

Shane was going to grow up to be somebody. He was manic on flying. He could end up a pilot or even an astronaut. Maybe he could be one of the first commercial astronauts. Why, by the time Shane was grown up, regular people would probably be taking flights to the moon. Maybe he'd even fly his big brother up there someday.

That thought caught Duncan up short.

Shane really was smart. Could May be wrong about the spell? May had said that the age of reason was considered to be seven years old. Did she mean it was flexible? What if a kid was really, really smart? Maybe Shane had already reached the age of reason! Then the queen wouldn't need Duncan at the festival at all.

Maybe he would be kept in this tower until he died or went crazy, and Shane would never get to fly to the moon. Instead, he would end up in this place forever doing her evil bidding.

Duncan went to the small cot in the room and touched the clothes that had been left out on the damp coverlet—a motley jester's costume that must have been the Faerie Queen's idea of a joke.

Duncan Fergus O'Callahan, the fool of Carterhaugh.

He felt the cloth of the costume. Another joke. It was as scratchy as steel wool.

He remembered that the fabric of May's dress had been so very soft, and her body had fit against his like a matching puzzle piece.

And now he might never see her again.

If he could just have that moment to do over!

He wished now that he had kissed her.

With a sweep of his arm, he whisked off the motley clothes from the bedspread, causing a musty powder to erupt into the air from the unwashed coverlet. He heard the jingle of bells as the ridiculous cap hit the stone floor.

Duncan was out of every prayer he had learned from his catechism. He had even said some he didn't know very well, filling in misremembered words with as likely substitutions as he could imagine. As he heard the evening watch toll eleven, he decided he needed another prayer quickly and there was nothing in his memory that suited. He would just have to wing it.

A wing and a prayer or was it wingin' a prayer? Wasn't that a punchline to an old joke? He wondered if May would find it funny or not and made himself promise to tell her the joke if he ever saw her again.

Right after he kissed her, that is.

### Chapter 42

### Bethulia Attacks

Looking up at the full round moon that lighted their way back to Bethulia, May said her own prayer, thanking god that She had the foresight to put a nightlight in the sky. May didn't understand much about religion, didn't get why everything couldn't run in a more orderly fashion, but she appreciated common sense when she encountered it in the universe; especially as it related to her, the small set of human beings which met with her approval, and the even rarer ones that she loved.

May asked Judith to conceal her part in the killing of the general. May had already told a lie to Sheila, saying that she only helped clean up after Judith beheaded the general. May wasn't sure if Sheila entirely believed her, but it didn't matter. She couldn't dispute what she never saw. No one must know for a certainty her part in the killing itself. No, not anyone she knew and least of all, Duncan.

Oh, Sheila would forgive her, she knew; Charley would understand the necessity; but Duncan, she felt sure, would think she was a monster even if he never said so.

The moon was high as they came to the narrow pass between the two cliff faces that led into Bethulia. In some way that May couldn't put her finger on at first, Bethulia seemed a changed place when they arrived. The mood was more buoyant. The watchmen of the pass recognized Judith and treated her with deference at first, and then when she showed them the general's severed head in the basket, with reverence.

As they made their way into town, a few of the watchmen ran ahead shouting the news to all the inhabitants and calling an assembly together. Once in the town square, May put her hand under the water fountain before the temple, splashed her face, and knew suddenly what was different about the town. It was something so simple and elemental, so easily taken for granted.

Water.

Not the life preserving water that tasted of Ulric's oaken casks, but soul purifying water, cool and sweet. Flowing water, and in abundance. Enough water to clean a filthy body so you could feel human again. Fresh water to drink until you were so full of it you felt like you would pop. Just the sound of it alone, murmuring a tune in the fountain, restored her spirit.

As she washed her hands clean, Charley came up next to her and sat on the edge of the fountain. Watching her, he said, "Hiya, Mayfly."

She smiled, glad to see him. "Why do I have the feeling you had something to do with this?" she said, flicking water at him.

He looked down and brushed beads of water off his shirt, "Someone had stoppered up the supply to the aqueduct with a huge boulder."

She dried her hands on her skirt, then sat down next to him. "So how did you get rid of it?"

With an air of mystery, he said, "Ancient Chinese secret."

"You blew it up?"

"Sky high."

She looked him over. "And not a black smudge on you."

"It's a gift," he admitted, putting up his white hands.

Gently, she took one of his hands out of the air, and he looked at her, surprised, but curious. "I need to talk to you about something, Charley," she said on a serious note. She patted his hand several times and let it go. Then she stopped and stared down into the swirling water of the fountain with her brows together.

She began telling him all that she knew about the spell and the festival, about the story she remembered, about the part Duncan would play and about the part she herself would play. Charley folded his arms across his chest, listening.

By the time she had finished talking, men were spilling into the square and knotting up in front of the temple steps, talking and calling to one another, but not in the same tones of alarm and despair as last night, but of excitement and the promise of victory.

There were so many people coming out of their houses, that they overflowed the square. Rows of humans trailed snakelike down shadowed streets, as more men, and even women, joined the gathering mob, craning their necks to see the woman who had defeated the mighty general of the army of Nebuchadnezzar.

As the tale of Judith's grisly conquest became broadcast throughout the town, people began to press against Charley and May and so the two of them fought their way through the packed bodies to Judith's house where they could see better and wouldn't feel the press of other human beings.

Standing on one of Judith's outside window ledges, over the top of Charley's head, May could just see the uppermost temple stairs where Ozias, Achior, and Judith stood and addressed the people. May could just barely make out Ulric and his sons at the front of the crowd. She could see the tall and willowy form of Ron to one side of him, and the shorter, stolid form of Kevin on the other side. She searched for Sheila, caught sight of a woman's turban near Ulric, and when the turban turned around for a moment, May got a glimpse of Sheila's pretty oval face before it was obscured by beards and turbans.

At the top of the stairs, May saw Judith pull the graying head of the general from the basket. The eyes were rolled up so that only the whites showed and the swollen tongue protruded from a purplish mouth. He now looked like a stone gargoyle, not human at all, and that was how it should be, thought May for a man who was hardly human in life.

Holding the head high for all to see, Judith shouted, "Here is the once powerful General Holofernes whom God chose to destroy by the hand of a woman!"

She sure looked beautiful and mighty there.

A cheer went up from all, hands and voices sailing aloft together. After the voices died down into silence, and ears strained to hear what would come next, Ozias shouted, "The time is ripe for us to attack while their army and their general are headless!" The crowd responded with urgent cries and laughter. "Get your weapons! All you can find! Tonight God sends us into battle, and we must not delay!"

The people were already starting to scatter to homes and armories for weapons before Ozias had even finished his speech. May saw Judith give the head in the basket to Ozias, then saw her join Sheila and descend the steps to walk back to her house.

At Judith's, May and Sheila had little enough time to change their clothes, let alone to say a proper farewell. For a goodbye, Judith took both of them by the back of the neck, drew them toward her, put her forehead to theirs and said a blessing in her own language. After, she said to them, "I will never forget the bravery you both showed tonight," and to May, "especially yours."

The words affected May strangely, like being awarded a medal she didn't deserve. Her courage at the beheading had been nothing less than stone-hearted self-interest and cold cowardice.

As she left Judith's home, May reasoned, "These people are glad that the general is dead; so much good will come of it. Why should my motives matter if the result is the same?"

But the effect of Judith's words lingered around her heart for a long time afterward.

### Chapter 43

### Midnight

Standing next to the well at the crossroads, May watched Charley give a little start, then brush a spider off his sleeve.

At another time, she would have found the expression on his face hilarious. Right now, she just dodged out of the way of the hairy-legged missile and yelled, "Well, don't fling it at me—I hate them too!" Her nerves were jangled enough.

Lining the roadway on both sides were a hideous collection of fairy creatures intermingled with Assyrian soldiers, most in a lecherously drunken state as suited the profane ceremony.

They moved sinuously like hundreds of slithering eels. Scantily clad fairies with bad teeth and melted or kissed off makeup stood next to tarted up cackling old witches and squat, boar-faced creatures pork-rolled into taffeta suits with lace collars and cuffs stiff with dirt. Female trolls in pastel ball gowns danced with heavy featured jesters, their long pendulous noses and white painted faces giving them the look of soul-less dolls.

But of all of these devilish creatures, the tall silent bogle men frightened May most of all and for no particular reason she could name. When one came too close and his cool dark clothes brushed against her, she dashed behind Ulric.

Many of the dark fairy beings that lined the roadway carried torches or other sources of light more ghoulish in nature: lost souls trapped in crystal bottles, glow worms glued on poles or skewered on strings as a necklace, jars of toxic looking glowing green goo. All of these makeshift lights illuminated the edges of a road which trailed snakelike from the castle to the crossroads, then continued further on to Carterhaugh field where a flat stone served as an altar for the tithing ritual.

As time wore on toward midnight, the crowd began to smell more keenly of alcohol. Most of the soldiers were now just flat out drunk, too inebriated to do much of anything but slobber over their partners. Other creatures hissed and scratched at one another, and some fought openly, stumbling and flinging themselves at each other like feral cats, while everyone else looked on, jeering and laughing.

May thought that she must be seeing the very dregs of the fairy world, creatures who just couldn't cut it in the light; the ones who found that the moral ride downhill was a hell of a lot easier than the hard trek up.

That is, until they all abruptly collided together in the pit at the bottom and had to feed off one another to stay alive.

At last, the Faerie Queen exited the castle in front of her procession, and as May watched the line of horses and riders tramp out of the gate slowly toward them, too far away yet to make out any familiar faces, the breeze brought her discordant dirge-like music that made her hair bristle.

She unbelted the knife sheath from where she had fastened it around her waist. Her hand was shaking as she put the knife and sheath into Kevin's glove and told him it was to be returned to Francis Carlisle.

"But will you no have need of it tonight?"

She shook her head. "Not for what I have to do. Will you return it to him?"

He frowned at the weapon in his glove. "But I think he doesnae like me."

"You tell him from me that there is nobody else I would trust more to take care of something precious. Make sure you mention me and tell him I said so. No one I would trust more. Oh, and I would call your horse Mabel when he was within earshot."

Kevin told her he would do as she asked, then fastening the belt at the very end, he placed it over his shoulder diagonally as a baldric.

"I can't see Duncan or Shane yet," said Sheila anxiously, trying to look farther than her eyes could see in the night. "They're too far."

"You have the plan?" May asked her.

"Yes. I think so. Me and Ulric will get Shane while you're distracting the Faerie Queen. Charley will wait for us by the well. When is Ulric's army going to arrive?"

"They're here already."

"What? Where?"

"All around us. In the bushes. Behind stones. Waiting in the forest. Everywhere."

"I would have never guessed," said Sheila.

"They wait on Ulric's signal, and he waits on me. Once the procession gets close and the time is right, I'll give him the signal."

"That music is horrible," said Sheila.

"And so is everything else here," said May.

The cacophony was getting louder by degrees, and May began to make out faces she knew in the procession. The beautiful Faerie Queen led the macabre parade, haughty and serene on a white mare. Right behind her came a pumpkin shaped carriage pulled by a huge jet black horse. May suspected that Shane was inside the carriage, but she couldn't be sure. The procession was still too far away.

As the parade wound its way toward them, the fairy creatures joined the procession as it passed, until all of the watchers became participants, willing accomplices of this horrible ritual.

May thought about where it was all going to end. It would be on the green, green field, on the large flat stone, carved with mysterious symbols, etched deep with lines that allowed not one drop of innocent blood to run off the sides of the stone and fertilize the green field, but to be caught in a large crystal goblet for the Faerie Queen to drink. Every drop must be spared because the objective was not to kill, but to enslave. That was what the spell book said.

By drinking the blood of the innocent, the Faerie Queen would retain her power for seven more years and the soul of the sacrifice would belong to the devil.

The pumpkin carriage finally glided next to May, and she peered into the rounded windows as it passed. Through metal bars, she saw Shane huddled inside on the orange cushions with his legs drawn up to his chest. His dark eyes, so like his brother's, flitted in terror from one horrific sight to another even more terrible outside the carriage. The whites of his eyes caught the moonlight and flashed like lightning in the darkness.

Good, May thought. Finally. He sees how the Faerie Queen really is and is frightened out of his wits. That is as it should be.

She saw that Ulric had seen the boy also, but it was not time yet to give Ulric the signal.

After the pumpkin carriage came a brown horse carrying a knight in full armor. His face was covered by his headpiece, and she looked over his body and wondered if it might be Duncan. She hadn't planned on Duncan possibly being covered in full armor. If he was, how would she know him when he passed by? This knight seemed too broad shouldered and stout to be Duncan, but amidst the flickering light and shadows, her eyes might be playing tricks on her. She had to be sure.

May ran up to the knight on horseback and grabbing his hand, ripped off the glove and knew for a certainty that this knight was not Duncan. The back of the hand and wrist were covered in sandy colored hair. She threw the glove back at the knight and retreated to the side of the road, so she could continue to watch the procession carefully.

After a few trolls rode by on black goats, another knight passed on horseback, this time riding a gray horse. This knight was also clothed in full armor, his identity covered under a hard silver casing. He was thinner than the previous knight, but when she dashed up and removed his glove, she saw that one of his fingers was a scarred stump and she knew again it was not Duncan.

She waited a little longer. Animals passed; a tiger paced in a too small cage, spitting at the crowd, a baboon with a human face screamed obscenities. Following them, came a knight on a white horse.

Unlike the other two knights she had seen, this one peeked from his visor at the onlookers to the left and right of him. Were those Duncan's quick brown eyes?

She ran up to the horse and tore the knight's hand from the saddle horn. Ripping off the glove, she saw about a dozen multi-colored bracelets peeking through the dark hair on the knight's wrist.

She yanked as hard as she could, dismounting the knight from the horse who made a sound like a teakettle hitting the ground. May helped him to his feet as he struggled to get up in his heavy armor.

Duncan removed his headpiece and let it drop. Then, in spite of all of the chaos that was going on around them, May saw his eyes focus on her lips. He closed his eyes and dipped his head toward her.

Up shot one of her hands between his lips and her own, so that he kissed her fingers and opened his eyes in surprise. She yelled at him. "What are you thinking? This isn't the right time!"

At first, the procession continued on without him, the Faerie Queen oblivious to what was occurring behind her. But the musicians behind Duncan noticed. First the accordion dropped out, then pan flutes and whistles, drums next. When the tuba gave one last bellowing outburst like a sick camel, the evil procession ground to a standstill.

The Faerie Queen looked over her shoulder into the silence. When she took in what had happened, saw May and Duncan standing together, her eyes glowed red. She slipped from her horse and glided toward them, the red velvet of her gown trailing after her like blood spreading from an open wound.

Except for his head, neck and arm, all of Duncan was completely covered in metal. May placed both her hands on the sides of his neck and planted her feet squarely on the ground in front of him.

"What are you doing?" he asked her.

"Saving you," she said, feeling his strong pulse beat under her fingers.

The Faerie Queen was now so close to them that May could smell her sickly sweet breath like the scent of raw meat. The queen hissed, "You are too late. He has already consented."

May felt inspired by the moment. She lifted her chin in the air. "Then I challenge you for his soul!" She wasn't sure that was what she was supposed to say, but it sounded right.

And it must have been, because when a dozen of the queen's troll guards rushed toward them, the queen shrieked, "Get back! You must not touch them!" She thrust a spell from her hand so that the troll guards scattered like blown leaves.

Participants and onlookers alike had fallen so silent that the long eerie call of a prowling wolf could be heard coming from the forest. The Faerie Queen reached up and gathered the wolf call out of the night air then cast it at Duncan. "Just try to hold onto him now."

May felt the sinew of Duncan's neck stiffen as he screamed in pain. His body crumpled and his forehead crashed down on her shoulder. He shook as the queen's spell tore and transformed the flesh of his body, rearranging his organs and bones into those of a wolf's.

"I'm so sorry," May whispered into his ear, holding onto him tighter.

May felt thick hair sprout from between her fingers on his neck. Duncan picked his head off her shoulder. He was half wolf now, his nose elongated into a muzzle. His armor dropped away like an eggshell, and Duncan was newly born into a wolf.

May tangled her fingers around the hair under her hands. Growling and snarling on his hind legs now, the wolf-Duncan pushed her to the ground onto her back and held her there with his front paws. Still, she held onto him, clenching her fists now around the hair which was softer than a mink's.

The wolf-Duncan bared his teeth and growled, ready to tear the flesh out of her thin white neck.

From behind her, May heard Shane's voice. From the barred windows of the locked pumpkin carriage, he screamed out, "Duncan!"

The wolf snapped his head up, taking in Shane. He stopped growling and looked back down at May. She stared into Duncan's eyes which the Faerie Queen had been powerless to change and thought she saw a glimmer of recognition.

"Duncan?" she said. "Are you still in there?"

The wolf blinked. The snarling lips softened over the bared teeth. The tensed body of the animal relaxed.

Yes, you're still in there, she thought, relieved until she noticed a mischievous glint come into the dark eyes. The lips drew back again over the canine teeth. She sucked in a breath and winced as the muzzle darted to her throat.

Starting from the base of her neck, then from her chin all the way into her hair, the wolf licked her with his long tongue.

"Yech!" she cried, opening her eyes.

The Faerie Queen let out a strangled cry. Balling her hands into fists, she looked all around her, pacing and running her eyes over the ground. She spotted a snake by her foot, scooped the animal up with one hand and flung it at the wolf's back. The serpent slithered through the luxurious hair until it found the backbone, then burrowed down like a worm into the hide and disappeared.

Wolf-Duncan threw his head back and howled.

Shane screamed, "What are you doing to him? Leave him alone, you witch!"

The silky fur under May's fingers receded back into the flesh, and she unclenched her hands to encircle the neck of a great snake with smooth red scales. Still pinned to the ground, she felt the tail of the snake slide underneath the small of her back, wrapping around her waist, twining around her over and over in a spiral death grip.

The muscles of the reptile's neck contracted suddenly under her hands. May gasped out a breath as the coils tightened into a knot around her ribcage. For what seemed like a very long time nothing entered or left her lungs. She could hear a commotion at the edge of the roadway, and recognized the voices of Sheila and Charley arguing. May had warned them not to interfere no matter what they saw. Now she wished she hadn't.

Her mouth was open, but she was unable now even to gasp. This is just like drowning, thought May, as she gazed in utter silence into eyes that were both serpentine and yet as warmly brown as Duncan's own.

She mouthed his name, and as she closed her eyes to the outside world which had shrunk to black nothingness, one tear trickled down and splashed on a bright red coil of the serpent's body.

The snake loosened her roughly all at once.

May sucked in a noisy, raspy breath and opened her eyes. But then she felt the coils tighten around her again and panic rose in her chest. This time, however, the coils stopped short of squeezing the life out of her, instead they held her in a supporting embrace. She saw unsnakelike concern in the warm eyes of the serpent. The tail moved from her ribcage, slid sinuously up to brush her cheek, and then smoothed the hair off her brow as life came back into her, breath by breath by breath.

As she looked into the depth of those slotted, yet still Duncan-like eyes, the tender concern she saw there turned to curiosity, and the eyes left her face and flickered over the rest of her. Coils slackening, Duncan's ruby red tail began to glide over her body—not in the menacing way of before, but caressingly—and with a distinct tendency toward exploration.

May squeezed snake-Duncan's neck in her hands and shook him until the tail stopped moving and the eyes of the creature were locked back onto hers. "Watch it!" she warned.

But Duncan was already changing again. Snake-Duncan hissed and writhed as she felt the coils slide from around her, shrinking and compressing into themselves like a telescope, until the only part left to hold onto was the thick neck. Then even that shrank, and she felt her hands come together.

The Faerie Queen had turned Duncan into a creature so small that only by making a cup of her hands could May keep hold of what he now was.

And this would be the hardest animal of all for her to hold, because she felt a tickling and crawling sensation in her hands that made her blood run cold.

May opened her hands for a fraction of a second, glimpsed the beast inside then closed them again. In that brief instant, she had seen eight little beady Duncan eyes peeking back at her and eight hairy brown Duncan legs trying to jump out at her.

With her cupped hands at arm's length, May ran around screaming at the top of her lungs. She did not run to any particular place or in any particular direction, only around and around, zigzagging the torchlight roadway in the random pattern of a beetle on a hot stove.

The Faerie Queen, the soldiers, and all the fairy beings watched May's lunatic frenzy with slack jaws.

In the commotion, Ulric tapped on Sheila's shoulder to get her attention then motioned to the pumpkin carriage. Sheila nodded back to him that she understood. Following Ulric to the carriage, she thought how smart May was by coming up with the exact distraction they needed at that moment to free Shane.

The real genius of the plan was that the diversion had occurred to May through no thought process whatsoever on her part, but as the product of absolute chicken-hearted panic.

After several minutes, when May was exhausted and could run and scream no more, she tumbled down on her knees, crying, with her cupped hands pressed to the underside of her chin and her eyes squeezed shut, while the terrified spider ran over the inside of her hands, frantically searching for a way out. May rocked back and forth and whimpered, and after a while, the spider in her hands quieted with the motion of her rocking until it rested weightlessly serene against her palm.

To give the Faerie Queen credit, she had borne this show with more equanimity than she normally possessed, but now her patience really was at an end. Stretching her arms to the sides of her, she tilted her head up at the sky and growled, "I grow tired of this!" Then looking at the crowd assembled around her, she ripped a torch out of the hand of a fat troll, and pointed the end of it at May.

A red flame shot from the torch, and hit May's cupped hands.

"See if you can hold onto this!" yelled the Faerie Queen.

At first May felt nothing different, but then she saw that her slender white hands glowed with a pinkish light coming through her fingers. And next came an almost unbearable bright pain and a smell came up from her hands like burning flesh.

She shrieked and opened her hands. A red hot ember glowed in her palm. All of her instincts told her to throw it away, but she clamped her hands together again. This was the moment she had been waiting for and she must not, must not drop the ember.

Giving Ulric the signal for the army to attack, she screeched, "Now, now, now!" and got to her feet.

She heard Ulric shout a bellowing cry, and as she ran to the magic well, the sounds of the battle were suddenly all around her.

### Chapter 44

### Headless

The guard tripped over an empty bottle as he was running. As he picked himself up, he heard it spin off into the darkness behind him.

He stood in front of the general's tent, squared his shoulders, smoothed down his hair, then rubbed at his face and ran a hand across his mouth. In the light from the almost burned out torch by the tent door, the guard checked his hand for traces of lipstick.

"General?" the guard said softly. He turned his head to the side and listened. Could the general still be with that Jewish tart? If General Holofernes was sleeping (or worse), and he disturbed him ...

The camp was deserted and quiet aside from the gentle tinkling of empty bottles on the cobblestones, their rims being nibbled and licked by tipsy rats. At a distance could be heard the sounds of the battle raging outside the walls of the castle.

The guard licked his lips and patted his forehead with the sleeve of his tunic. The striped canvas of the tent swam in front of him, and he was almost overcome by nausea. He was going to have a ghastly hangover in the morning—if he made it to morning, that is.

After swallowing bile, he cleared his throat loudly several times, then listened at the tent door again but heard nothing. He let out a breath. Why had he drawn the short straw? Surely the old troll at the guardhouse must have tricked him.

In a burst of inspiration, he clapped his hands a few times quickly. He stopped and listened to the silence, then swore under his breath.

Finally, he said loudly, "General Holofernes, sir! I'm sorry, but you are urgently needed."

Yet still he received no response.

Cursing the day he was born, the guard drew aside the curtain of the tent and went inside.

### Chapter 45

### The Magic of the Well

In a blur, as May ran, she saw Charley and Sheila waiting for her at the well with Shane, who was crying as only a heart-broken five year old can.

Shane blubbered, "What has she done to him? She shrunk him to nothing! He's all little!"

May brushed past the hysterical child and slammed her stomach on the stone wall of the well. She flung the hot ember that was Duncan into the dark circle of water below where it sank like a drowning firefly.

At Shane's entreaties, Sheila picked the boy up so he could see into the well, and they all watched the ember become fainter and smaller until only darkness remained in the water.

Shane's voice was husky with desperation. He sounded beyond reason. "He's dead! I killed him! I killed him!"

"What are you talking about?" said Sheila, tears starting on her own face. "You didn't kill him. It was—"

"But I did! It's all my fault! I was hiding from him, and I saw him come into the room, and then I saw the picture move!"

May grabbed hold of Shane's arm and shook it. "You were hiding from him?" she yelled, aware she was scowling at the boy, and that he was cringing from her.

Shane closed his eyes and nodded miserably with tears streaming down his face. May pushed his arm away roughly, and he put his head down on Sheila, hiding his face. "He's dead. He's dead. He's dead," blubbered Shane, his words muffled on his cousin's neck.

Sheila shook her head at May with a look that told her to go easy.

Breathing deeply, May glared down into the dark water. "Why isn't it working?" she said, smashing her fist on the stones.

As she peered down into the well, little ripples stirred into life on the surface of the water. They formed into small concentric waves that pushed out to the sides of the well, lapping at the stones.

"Look," May said, pointing into the well.

Shane stopped crying. She heard him sniff and then hiccup.

Duncan burst up from the water with an enormous gasp.

They called his name and cheered.

And then he went down again.

They waited a few seconds.

"Where did he go?" cried Shane.

"What's happened to him?" gasped May, instinctively looking at her brother.

Charley didn't get a chance to say anything before Duncan burst up from the water again. This time May saw his white hand claw at the side of the well. He clamped onto a square stone projecting out a little further than the others and clung to it. Pulling his head and shoulders above the surface, he choked out, "It's dragging me down."

Shane was crying down to him, not making much sense, but he sounded happy that his brother was alive and that he had not killed him.

May shouted, "The bucket! We need to throw him the bucket." She began feeling in the dark for the rope.

Inexplicably, she felt herself lifted into the air. Charley had her under her back and knees.

"What are you doing, Charley?" She kicked her feet. "Put me down! I need to get the bucket."

"These spiders—I saw them in the museum."

"What are you talking about?" she yelled, pushing at his chest and wriggling.

Charley called down to Duncan, "Move back against the wall. Get ready to grab her." Charley lifted her over the edge of the well and suspended her there.

May screamed. He was going to drop her into that wet black pit. She stopped kicking. She clung to her brother's collar and her voice was husky with pleading and panic, "Don't Charley! Don't! Please!"

"Calm down and listen. I think this well is a portal into our world." Charley said it loud enough for Duncan to hear. "It goes back to the museum."

May clutched at her brother's neck, his shirt, his vest. "But—but what if you're wrong?"

She saw his smug look in the moonlight and wanted to smack him.

"I'm never wrong," he said, just before he dropped her.

May felt Charley's collar slide from between her fingers. Her stomach somersaulted as she fell through space. For several seconds, she called Charley every swear word she could get out, until she felt the cold hit of water against her back and went under. Her nose stung and she blew out through her nostrils what little air was left in her lungs after screaming out profanity the whole way down.

She knew immediately that she was in dire trouble. She kicked her feet against the undertow dragging her down to the depths and knew already with the certainty of an appalling swimmer that she was no match for it. She pictured her skeleton at the bottom of the well, joining the pile of others that must certainly be there.

Strangely, in her mind, she and her companion skeletons were all drinking tea together.

A hand searched for her blindly in the black water, found one of her flailing arms and grabbed onto it firmly. She felt herself pulled above the surface and she inhaled deeply.

Duncan had her. He wasn't going to let her drown. And he really, really was alive.

Like Shane, she too had thought she had killed him.

She threw her free arm around Duncan's neck and clung to him. He still had hold of her other arm and he draped it over his shoulder so he could use both of his hands on the stone that supported them from going under.

Charley called, "Let the water take you down."

"No," she got out weakly almost as a sob.

"But what about Shane?" Duncan yelled.

"He's a little shook up, but we've got him," called Sheila.

"I love you," blubbered Shane.

"I love you, too, Rugrat."

"Don't worry, we'll take him through," said Charley.

"But I think I can take them both," said Duncan.

"Dude, are you crazy? That's my sister. You're going to need two hands."

Duncan was suddenly aware May was crying softly against his neck at the same time she must be trying to choke him. He said in her ear, "Hush, now. For sure. We're going to be just fine." He took one of his hands off the rock that was supporting them both. "Can you take my hand?"

He could not see May shake her head 'no', but he felt the movement of her wet cheek on his own, so he put his hand back on the rock. "Then we'll just go like this. Now, I'm going to let go with my hands. Before that though, I want you to take a bunch of deep breaths, like this." He inflated his lungs with air several times. "Then when I bounce out of the water like this, take a really deep, deep breath and then down we go. Do you have any questions?"

She just shook her head against him. He could feel her lashes flutter on his cheek and was pretty certain her eyes were shut tight. "Okay, so once more breathe with me, and when I come out of the water a little way, take a really big breath, and then I'll let go of the wall. Got it?"

He felt her nod.

They took some fast breaths together, then Duncan pulled them out of the water a little and she shrieked in his ear, "Don't! Not yet! I'm not ready!"

He let out his breath. His voice cracked. "I can't hold on much longer, May. We have to do this."

"I know. I know. I know. But just, can we just practice once?"

"Sure, okay. This time we'll just practice, and then next time we'll do it for real."

So they took some practice fast breaths together, he pulled them out of the water, he heard her take a huge breath and then he let go of the stone.

As soon as they were under the water, he felt her push off his shoulders, her foot kicking him in the groin, headed for the surface like a panic-stricken cork. He reached up and managed to find both her wrists, pulled her back down. She struggled to free herself, but he drew her towards him and put one arm over her shoulder to keep her from shooting to the surface again. The other arm he clamped around her waist as she kicked and squirmed and thrashed.

The pull of the water under them became stronger and just as he thought they were about to die, they were sailing through air and then tumbling and rolling over and over on a hard wooden floor, bruising elbows, hips and knees. Duncan rounded his back and encompassed his body around her, trying to take the worst of it until they crashed against a wall which brought them to an abrupt and painful stop.

May opened her eyes and looked down into Duncan's face. His wavy hair was sticking practically on end. His eyes danced with a kind of wild light in them. "Are you okay?" he asked, slowly releasing his grip on her.

Now that she had sufficient space to work her arms, she whacked him half a dozen times on his chest and shoulders. "Don't you ever do that to me again!"

There was a great whooshing sound in the room, and May and Duncan got their feet under them quickly as Charley, Sheila and Shane burst out of the serpent woman's portrait in a bundle of thrashing limbs. When they hit the floor, they lost their grip on one another and rolled individually in different directions like bowling pins. Duncan ran to Shane as May helped Sheila to her feet.

They found to their surprise that nobody was wet, but they all could have used a mirror and a comb.

From outside the room they were in, came voices. The gravelly voice of Officer O'Reilly was saying, "Come on, Bob. Maybe you should take the night off. Beverly can close up. You know, teenagers are pretty sophisticated now with all that technology stuff. Maybe they were just playing a trick on you."

Charley hissed out, "Quick! Look natural."

Everyone whipped their cellphones out of their pockets and leaned against the nearest wall. Except Duncan, who had given his phone to Shane. After Shane searched in his pocket and handed the cellphone to him, Duncan just stared at the ceiling with the phone in his hand like he was trying to remember something. Shane reached up and keyed in the code to unlock the screen.

Sounding disgusted, Charley said, "I haven't used it at all in three days and the battery is dead."

They all grunted.

Bob's voice was sounding more anxious and insistent as it got closer. "But I know what I saw, and I'm telling you, the kid went into the painting. His girlfriend, too. I saw it with my own two eyes."

Bob entered right after his voice, his fingers still pointing in a vee shape to his eyes. Officer O'Reilly entered directly behind him with a hand on the security guard's shoulder, saying, "Sure, Bob. I'm sure you did. We'll get to the bottom of this."

Duncan looked up from his phone, pushed away from the wall and smiled. "Hey! Guess who we found? Turns out the little puke was here all along."

Shane waved at Officer O'Reilly. "Can we take a ride in your cruiser?"

### Chapter 46

### Return

Even the implacable Beverly was starting to look annoyed.

Opposite to her, leaning over the front counter in the museum lobby, May plunged her head in her hands.

Looking up from some paperwork, Beverly flicked her eyes to the three people occupying a once quiet corner of the lobby beyond the restrooms.

May turned around again, propping her elbows on the counter to the back of her and took a long look at the O'Callahan family. Duncan was slumped against the wall with his head down, eyes focused on the floor, thumbs in his pockets, while his two parents whispered at him in harsh tones, sounding like they were sanding down metal with their voices.

Duncan nodded now and then, and more infrequently muttered. His words were so indistinct that his parents had no hope of understanding them, and that seemed to make the two of them all the more frustrated with him.

Because that's what they were—frustrated. It showed in every one of their movements. The way his father, a tall, thin man with dark brown hair, dug his hands down deep into his long camel hair coat until it was stretched tight from his shoulders to the clenched fists in his pockets.

It showed in the way his mother held her hands clamped together in a vice in front of her with an expectant look, waiting for some kind of response from her son that made enough sense to formulate an excuse that would appease his father.

Now and then, Duncan took a thumb out of his pocket and passed a hand over his face. A few times, he peeked over at May, then glanced away quickly when he saw that she was gazing back at him.

It was like he was on some trial in a Russian novel, presumed guilty without a hope of being found innocent. This irked the lawyer's daughter in her, and she felt roused to deliver a defense for the accused who had already clearly resigned himself to a guilty verdict.

Shane had finished buzzing like an airplane all around the lobby. He had found the custodian's broom and decided the lobby looked enough like a scene from his older brother's video game to start some imaginary gunfire, dodging loud invisible bullets behind a 'no smoking' sign and a potted palm.

"How long has it been now?" Beverly drawled softly.

"Long enough," said May, pushing away from the counter and walking toward the O'Callahans.

"... responsibility ... " his father was saying as she got closer, " ... that's all we ask. He's five. You've got to watch a five year old all the time."

May passed Shane in the midst of destroying the potted palm with the handle of the broom.

His father had his back to May, but she didn't have to see the redness of his face to know that he was working himself up into a heart-attack. He had left off whispering and his voice was getting louder decibel by decibel.

"All the time! And ... and I know this isn't the right time to say this, but what the hell are these!" From out of his pocket he took a pack of cigarettes. He shook them at Duncan. "Your mother forgot her purse in the van, and when I went to get it for her, I found these under the seat. This isn't my brand! You know how many years I've been trying to quit! You know! And unless your mother has taken up smoking recently, which I highly doubt," (his father's voice was approaching an eleven on an amplifier), "just whose the hell are they?"

"They're mine," said May.

Duncan's father spun around with his eyes blazing. Used to her own parents, who were somewhere in their geriatric mid-fifties, Duncan's father seemed young in comparison. He had the same brown eyes and the same bushy eyebrows as the rest of the O'Callahans, but that was as far as the family resemblance went. Frankly, that was enough to brand him anyway.

Man, did he look pissed.

"And who are you?" he said, in a tone that at any other time would have been unpardonably rude, but under the circumstances she cut him some slack. After all, he was having a pretty bad day.

His wife went to explain who May was, but May jumped in ahead of her. "I'm May Taylor. Glad to meet you." She sucked wind through her teeth and winced. "Geez, I'm kind of embarrassed. I can't believe you found those." She would have preferred to use metal tongs, but she removed the pack of cigarettes from his open hand.

Gazing down at the pack with what she hoped passed for shame instead of revulsion, she said with the words almost sticking in her throat, "I've been trying to quit for a while now and you know how hard it is. Well, I don't have to tell you now, do I? You know already, don't you? I should never have started. Your son here has been trying to get me to quit."

May walked to one of the large garbage cans in the lobby. "Well, here goes." She opened the swinging trap door of the garbage pail lid and chucked the pack inside. With her mouth turned down, she brushed off her hands neatly. "Phew," she exhaled. "It sure does feel good to get that monkey off my back. You were so right, Duncan."

Duncan's father stood there staring at her with his hand still out and his thick brows down, looking like he wasn't exactly sure what to make of her.

She felt a little awkward with him like that, so she shook his hand. "Glad to meet you too." She turned to Duncan. "Hey, Dunc? Could I ask a favor?"

Duncan was slouching against the wall, smiling at her. He nodded.

"Charley's catching a ride home with Sheila and your Aunt. And well, you know how she drives a Mini-Cooper and all? Well, your aunt's driving, and Charley will be in the back seat and oh, did I mention that there are also two Chihuahuas involved? I can't be sure, but I think they're wearing tutus."

"You need a ride home?" said Duncan straightening up.

"Do you think you could?"

"For sure."

She pointed her thumb to the back of her. "I'll just go tell them." She went to leave, then stopped and said, "Oh, I almost forgot." Shane had abandoned the broom on the lobby floor and was buzzing by at the moment. She snatched him by the hand, then stood him in front of his parents. "Shane has something to tell you guys, but he's afraid you'll be mad at him."

May shook Shane's hand a little, prompting him. She said sternly, "Go on. Tell them what you said before—about when Duncan walked into the room."

The boy looked up at her with a face as white as a glass of milk, and the thought occurred to her that he might well piddle on her feet. She took a step away from him and let his hand go. "Go on."

"Promise you won't be mad?" he asked his parents.

"Never, Shanie, not if you tell the truth," said his mother sweetly, sliding a look to her husband.

"Right," agreed his father, nodding.

"I was hiding."

Duncan took a step forward. "You were what?"

"Hiding. The first time you walked in the room. I saw you and ... and I was hiding behind those statues that look like this." Shane held up his hands like claws and made a face like a possessed cat.

Duncan's father looked like he could've really used a cigarette right then. He ran a hand through his reddish brown hair. Using the O'Callahan eyebrows to spectacular effect, he pointed a finger at his youngest son. "If you ever do that to your brother again ... "

Shannon O'Callahan cautioned, "Now Harvey, you said you wouldn't be mad if—"

"No, I didn't say that; you did. And you're staying out of it this time." He pointed again at Shane. "If you ever try it again ... " He waggled the finger. "If you ever try that again... " He opened his mouth to speak. He waggled the finger again.

"Video games," prompted his wife.

"No video games for a year!"

"Harvey, that's not even realistic, let alone ... "

His finger shot up higher. "No video games for a month!"

Shane started bawling. He could have lived with a year, but a month seemed so much longer to a five year old.

My job here is done, thought May.

### Chapter 47

### A Letter for Sheila

Sheila and her mother, Bonnie, having just checked on the welfare of Bingo and Bongo, two quivering Chihuahuas in a warm and running Mini-Cooper, strutted through the glass doors of the museum bringing some of the frigid cold from the parking lot into the lobby with them.

Bonnie gave one last look out the glass door to the parking lot. "I hope my babies don't get too cold."

"They'll be fine, Mom," said Sheila as they headed to a bench in the lobby across from the men's bathroom.

As Beverly watched the two of them stroll by the front counter of the museum, she looked at her watch and said sweetly. "Oh my, will you just look at that. It's closin' time."

"What a beautiful accent you have," exclaimed Bonnie, sitting down on the lobby bench. "Are you from Virginia?"

"North Carolina," answered Beverly.

"It's just delightful," gushed Bonnie. She waved her hand. "Don't worry about us. I promise we won't be long. We're just waiting for my daughter's boyfriend to come out of the restroom." She cupped a hand by her mouth and stage whispered. "He's a boy. We won't be a minute."

Sheila said softly, "Actually, Mom, we broke up."

"Oh dear," said Bonnie taking her daughter's hand. "Darling, are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine. Literally, I broke it off. It just wasn't working out."

Bonnie bent her head down and said, "Well really, I'm not surprised. I thought good old Charley might end up being a little less sparky than you're used to." Then she said brightly. "Oh well, I knew it was too good to last. I guess I won't be getting any super smart grand-children. Time to cross that off my bucket list." She giggled.

"I'm only sixteen, Mom."

"Well of course you are. I was only joking, honey."

Then there was an awkward silence because Bonnie had been sixteen when Sheila was born.

That unsaid thought between mother and daughter brought Bonnie to a duty she had avoided, and to which the pregnant silence had created a sufficient segway. She opened her purse (which matched her leopard print coat perfectly) and pulled out a wrinkled envelope. She handed it to her daughter.

The envelope was addressed to Shiela O'Calahan and bore her street address. The handwriting was in pencil and the letters, (uneven in size, some darker than others) appeared to be formed by a child. The number three was written backward like a cursive uppercase E. The return address was from Main Stait Prizon.

"He never could spell worth a damn," said Bonnie watching her daughter smooth out the envelope on her lap. "I don't know why he's writing you now when he's never had a thing to do with you since he left. Who knows, maybe he's found religion or something. Ain't that what they're supposed to do in there besides lift weights or become lawyers? I've kept it in my pocketbook for three days, not knowing if I should give it to you."

Sheila murmured, "I'm glad you did."

"Now don't feel you need to write him just 'cause he wrote you. You don't have to have anything to do with him if you don't want. You keep that in mind."

Charley came out of the restroom, and Bonnie patted Sheila's hand. "Read it when you get home, darling, but only if you want to."

Getting up from the bench, Bonnie took one look at Charley and said, "Oh dear! I think you have a spot on your shirt, Charley! However did that happen?" She turned to her daughter and wrinkled her nose playfully.

Charley looked down at his shirt, then flung up one of his hands. "That kid put his sticky fingers all over me!" He brushed at the stain as they headed for the door.

### Chapter 48

### The Ride

The new police trainee named Smith, took a sip of his coffee, swore and set the styrofoam cup back on the dashboard of the cruiser.

"You got to let it breathe for a while," said O'Reilly. "It'll cool faster if you take the lid off." Smith picked up his coffee cup and took the cap off, then put the open cup back on the dash with the cap next to it. Steam started to collect on the windshield.

"In the cup holder," griped O'Reilly.

"Why are we here again?" asked Smith, moving the cup. "They found the kid already, didn't they?" Smith was in his early twenties and had been on the job for two months.

"Watch and learn," said O'Reilly.

"Ain't there security guards at this place?"

"Went home early," grunted O'Reilly. "The guy went off his nut. I've seen it happen before. Solid guy, too, only I think the wife just left him. Maybe could use a vacation. I just want to make sure the place gets locked up safely."

In the lighted interior of the lobby, they watched Beverly set the museum security alarm, touching the buttons with her knuckles so as not to break even one of her professionally manicured nails.

"Oh, I see," said Smith, smiling over at O'Reilly. "Ri-ight. You got a thing for her."

"Shut up, Smith."

Beverly glided out of the building like she was a movie star.

Southern women must practice how to walk, thought O'Reilly.

Opening the door to her car, she tossed her purse carelessly on the passenger seat, then got in. The Volvo was already warmed up from her remote starter, (she had bought it with money from her dead husband's insurance policy from what O'Reilly understood) and in less than a minute, only pausing to adjust the direction of the car's heat vents, she drove out of the parking lot none the wiser that anyone was watching her, so completely had O'Reilly hid his cruiser out of the glare of the building's floodlights behind a row of small trees of the kind planted for a windbreak.

As far as O'Reilly was concerned, the windbreaks were as handy a hiding place for cops trying to catch muggers and rapists, as they were for the muggers and rapists themselves.

Smith said, "Great. The lady's safe. Now we can go."

"Hang on, Squirt," said O'Reilly, stopping him. "You notice anything else?"

"You mean the two teenagers screwing around in the minivan? We don't really need to—? I don't call that police work."

"Come on. Haven't you got eyes?"

"Yeah. Blue last time I checked."

"Well, and so what did you see?"

Smith sucked in a breath. "Let's see. A boy and a girl went into a van and the thing hasn't budged since."

"Exactly," said O'Reilly as if that should be enough of an explanation. "It hasn't budged."

"What I said."

"It hasn't budged," said O'Reilly again.

"Oh. So you're saying you think something else is going on? Okay, so now what?"

"We wait."

May fiddled with the zipper pull on her parka.

"Are you cold?" asked Duncan suddenly. "I... I could start the engine again." She could hear the keys clank and jingle in the dark as his hand went to the ignition. The museum floodlights slanting through the front windshield cast Duncan's features in a blueish glow.

"No, don't bother," she said.

"Or I could .... "

She waited, but he didn't finish. "Or you could what?"

"Nothing." He ran his hands down the thighs of his jeans. After a minute, straightening up, he asked, "Do you want me to turn on the radio?" He reached for the buttons.

"No. This is fine."

May thought it was strange that after everything they had gone through together, suddenly they felt so awkward just because they were back to their normal lives again. May felt the frost was forming both outside and inside the van at the same time, and felt a little settle inside her as well.

Duncan pulled his sweatshirt sleeve down and held the cuff in his hand. He leaned forward and wiped some of the fog off the inside of the windshield. The visor of his cap hit the glass and knocked his hat off his head. May picked it off the seat behind him and held it as he finished clearing a circle from the inside of the window glass. When he was done, she handed it back to him.

He sighed as he took it from her. "Why don't I just drive you home."

"No," said May, feeling the last three days slipping away. "It's fine. This is fine."

He sat back in his seat and put his cap back on, wiped his cold nose on the back of his sweatshirt sleeve. It smelled like beach roses, only muskier. He wondered how long the smell would cling to the cloth and just how long he could get away with not washing it. "Hey, I forgot to thank you. You know, for the ... for the thing at the museum."

"Thing? What thing?"

"You know ... about the ... the smokes."

"Oh that," she said, then quickly, "You are going to quit, aren't you?" It was only part question. The rest was a command.

"Oh yeah, for sure."

"It's bad for your health," she informed him.

"Oh, I know!"

"Anyways, I wouldn't thank me too much," said May. "I'm pretty sure your mom didn't believe a word of it."

"You don't think so?"

She snorted. "No."

Even in the vague light, she could see that Duncan was confused.

"What is it?" May asked.

"She asked me to invite you over for dinner on Sunday!"

"Oh?"

He didn't even look at her. His tongue darted out once to lick his lips. "Would you come?"

"Do you want me to?" she asked the glovebox.

He nodded at the steering wheel. "For sure."

"Oh." She sounded disappointed.

"I mean, yes. Yes, I would like that a lot. A whole lot."

"Can you pick me up?"

"For sure. We eat early on Sundays. One o'clock alright?"

She told him it was and then immediately started thinking about what she should wear.

Duncan reached between them to the back of the minivan where he kept his skateboard on the floor. "I think the coast should be clear now. Are you ready?"

### Chapter 49

### Maple Frosting

O'Reilly watched Smith test his coffee again, and seeming to find the temperature no longer in the seventh circle of hell, he put the cap back on then opened the bag of donuts on his lap.

"What did you get?" asked O'Reilly.

"I don't know," said Smith, "I asked the girl to surprise us."

"The maple frosted's mine."

"How did you even know there was one?" asked Smith, bringing out a maple frosted donut from the bag.

O'Reilly tapped his nose and reached for the donut in Smith's hand.

As he took his first bite, the doors of the minivan opened and out of it came the wrong-way kid from the museum and his girlfriend with the backseat driving brother. The kid had a skateboard under his arm and O'Reilly silently cursed whoever had designed the ramp and stairs of the museum; the skateboard punks couldn't seem to get enough of it.

"What did I tell you?" said O'Reilly. If O'Reilly had a dime for every time his instincts were right, well, he wouldn't even have to wait two more years to retire. It would be palm trees and golf tomorrow.

Actually, he didn't really like golf. What was the point of hitting a little white ball all over the place on a nice day when you could be taking a nap on the beach?

He wondered if Beverly liked golf. He decided he could learn to like it.

The boy with the skateboard was looking all around him like just maybe this wasn't the first time he had done this kind of thing before. He started the skateboard on the ramp while the girl found a spot to sit at the top of the stairs.

"What are we going to do?" asked Smith.

"Well, right now, I'm going to eat my maple frosted," said O'Reilly.

After the kid began showing off in front of his girlfriend with the first few tricks, Smith said, "They call that an ollie."

"Kick-flip," corrected O'Reilly, before taking a bite.

After building up some speed, Duncan made a little hop in the air as he whizzed by May. Somehow, he made the skateboard appear to be glued to his feet. He did a few more hops, and May sensed he was warming up for something better.

On his next pass by her, Duncan crouched down, then he and the skateboard popped into the air. He rolled the board horizontally under him, landed back on it and kept on going. May actually clapped.

She liked the way he made it look so completely effortless, and she knew that it couldn't really be. She liked the way his sweatshirt whirled against his body and how that easy, slumpy way he had of carrying himself suddenly worked when he was all loose and lanky on the board. And she liked that there was power there too.

Duncan held out his arms as his jumps got higher, using them to balance himself, especially when he landed. He twisted sometimes, looking like he would fall off the board any second, and at those times she felt her stomach flutter.

Even as his jumps gained in height and speed, he still managed to keep the board inches away from his feet, pushing it back down to the pavement as he landed. May watched closely, but she couldn't figure out how it was done.

He made it look like the board was connected to his feet by magic, but of course the magic was in the illusion itself. The trick was the result of practice, dedication and skill, and that was the real magic of it. Not all artists work on canvas and clay.

He started circling on his board at the top of the stairs, and she sensed he was building up to something really big. Then after scrunching his body down low, he and the board launched into the air.

He landed the middle of his board on the stairway railing, and balancing with his arms out, he rode the board on the rail, shooting sparks, down to where the rail ended. He gave a small hop at the end and landed in a crouch on his skateboard.

His hands bobbled as he straightened to standing, then his torso leaned backward, his spine curving like a gymnast's, tipping the board almost out from under him. He overcorrected in the other direction, leaning forward at the waist then shot backwards again a second later as his hands made crazy motions in the air.

At last, weaving frontwards and backwards a few more times, he regained control and went sailing down the sidewalk.

May pried her hands off her head, where she had involuntarily flung them when her heart went into her throat.

She decided that it was time to go home.

But Duncan was already on his way by her, zooming up the handicap ramp again. Impossibly, he was calling to her, "That was a lame landing. I'm going again." His eyes had that wild light in them. Already, he was at the top of the stairs headed for another run down the rail. Before she could stop him, he popped his board in the air and connected with the railing.

Nothing about the manoeuver looked pretty this time. His balance at the start was sketchy, his feet looked like they were riding a small teeter-totter down the rail in fast motion. At last, the board turned under him, took one spin around the rail then flew sideways. It bumped down the rest of the steps and went zinging riderless into some shrubbery.

Duncan's body went in the exact opposite direction as the skateboard. He came down on his feet at the bottom of the stairs. His sneakers skidded on the frosty cement, flew out from under him, and he landed flat on his back.

May shrieked and ran to him. His eyes were closed. Kneeling down, she shook his shoulders and in a state close to hysteria, called out his name. He still didn't open his eyes.

Thoughts ran quickly through her mind. She checked for blood around his head. She couldn't even call for help; her phone was dead. Was there a phone nearby?

She saw his smile even before he opened his eyes.

"Oh!" she growled out, pushing away from him.

Grabbing hold of her parka, he pulled her back.

She breathed out once through her nose, her blood boiling. Glaring at him, she said, "If you plan on going out with me, you need to wear a helmet!"

He looked surprised, then serious all of a sudden. "For sure."

"No! I don't want to hear that lame answer. Is it yes or no?"

He smiled. "Yes!"

"Yes?" She looked at him sideways, slanting her eyes suspiciously. "Look me in the eyes and say the whole thing."

"Okay. Yes, I'll go out with you."

"What?"

"You... you just asked me to go steady, didn't you?" He seemed confused.

"Oh. Well, I guess I did. And... and you just said 'yes'."

"I did!"

But then she remembered she was angry at him. "But you have to promise me you'll wear a helmet. And I want you to say the whole thing." She squinted her eyes into his and watched his face very closely.

Looking straight at her, with all seriousness, he said, "Yes, May Taylor, as long as we go out together, I promise to wear a helmet."

She could see that he meant it and relaxed. "Good. Because it's for your protection," she told him.

Duncan only half heard her words, because he was watching snow sift down like powdered sugar on her hair in the halo of the flood lamps.

"Did you hear what I said? It for your..."

"God, you're beautiful," he said without thinking.

After a short silence in which neither of them spoke, May sent her hands to his ribs and tickled him until he got hold of her hands and screeched, "Stop already!" Then as he was giggling, she planted her lips onto his.

Duncan stopped giggling. He stopped moving altogether and went completely rigid as though she had stabbed him in the chest instead of kissed him. The only thing he did do was suck in enough air through his nose to deoxygenate the entire space around them for several feet in every direction. May had to break it off just so she could get some air.

Pulling away from him, she searched his face for signs of pain. "What happened? Did I hurt you?"

His mouth was slightly open, he shook his head feebly. Then his eyes went to her lips and he drew her back to him.

In the cruiser, Smith, who had been ready to call for an ambulance, hung up the receiver to the squawk box.

"Time to break it up," said O'Reilly calmly, before sucking the last of the maple frosting off his fingers. He dried his hands on a napkin, then turned on the blues of the cruiser for a couple seconds.

The two young love-birds shot up about ten feet into the air.

O'Reilly grinned. "I love that part."

"How come no girl ever threw herself at me?" asked Smith.

O'Reilly shrugged as though it should be obvious. "You lack charisma."

As the two kids ran for the van, O'Reilly started the engine of the cruiser. In the glare of the headlights the falling snow came down fine and thick. "Little snow, big snow," said O'Reilly, starting up the wipers. "Gonna be a hell of a storm."

"I thought it was too cold for this," said Smith.

A shadowy scarecrow crossed quickly in front of the squad car, startling both of the cops. O'Reilly took his hand off his gun holster when he realized it was just the kid retrieving his skateboard from some bushes.

On his way back with the skateboard under his arm, the kid skidded to a stop in front of the cruiser's headlights. He smiled and waved at O'Reilly through the glass. Then he took off again, leaving two dark streaks behind him in the layer of white already accumulating on the tar.

"What a crazy kid," said Smith.

Officer O'Reilly laughed softly and shook his head. "For sure."

As Duncan ran and slipped madly across the parking lot, he wondered if his mother had ever made an appointment to put snow tires back on the van.

###

Thank you for taking this journey with me! If you enjoyed my story, please give it a good review at your favorite ebook retailer and feel free to email me at t.mikals@rocketmail.com.

I am always trying to improve. Please email me right away if you notice any typos!

I know how valuable time can be, and I so appreciate that you have chosen to spend your time with me!

Acknowledgements

To my brilliant mother, my editor in chief, and author in her own right. Thank you for your valuable input and hawk-like eyes. It is still hard to believe that you were right all those years about not feeding the seagulls.

To Mark Coker and the folks at Smashwords. Amazing that Smashwords didn't even exist when I began writing my first book! Thanks for providing authors a way to share their ideas and creativity with others and for allowing readers to decide what is worth reading.

To the kindly readers of _The Painted Room_ who took the time to say how much they liked the first book, recommended it to their friends and on web sites, who gave constructive criticism, and even contributed some insights and ideas for its revision and this sequel. A huge thank you!

Helpful Resources

The first resource I would like to mention is a book that my daughter and I read many times when she was younger. _Tales of Wonder and Magic_ , collected by Berlie Doherty, illustrated gorgeously by Juan Wijngaard, published by Candlewick Press, 1998. A few of these tales caught firm hold of my imagination and wouldn't let go, not the least of which is _The Woman of the Sea_ retold by Helen Waddell and most especially, _Tamlane_ retold by Winifred Finlay.

A beautiful rendition in music of the tale of Tamlane (who also goes by the name of Tam Lin) is sung by Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer on youtube and can be found under _Folk Alley Sessions: Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer - "Tam Lin (Child 39)"_. Please note that it is slightly less G rated than the written version mentioned above.

I would also like to mention Diana Durham's book, _The Return of King Arthur_ , (published by Tarcher, 2004) which does a wonderful job explaining the symbolism of the King Arthur legend. It was a great resource in the writing of my first novel _The Painted Room_ , and Francis Carlisle owes the mending of his sword to Ms. Durham. I hope that she will accept both his and my delayed gratitude.

There are so many wonderful folks out there who generously share their passion and expertise on the web. Here are just a few:

Lighthouses and Lighthouse Keeping

The United States Coast Guard has many interesting articles on lighthouses and lighthouse keeping throughout history. I was surprised by the fact that quite a few lighthouse keepers were women!

Lighthouse Digest has some interesting articles. I especially enjoyed Jeremy D'Entremont's article _Ken Rouleau's Year at Halfway Rock_ and Ken's observation that "Anything is beautiful if you don't have to do it."

Parkour and Skateboarding

Too many to mention! Thank you to all the courageous people who share their knowledge, artistry and adventures on the web. Truly amazing, if not borderline insane!

Paintings in the Book

_Judith Beheading Holofernes_ (Judith Slaying Holofernes), Artemisia Gentileschi, (1593-1656)

_Approaching Storm Off the Maine Coast_ , Harrison Bird Brown, (1831-1915)

_Footbridge in the Wilderness_ , Charles Codman, (1800-1842)

_Lamia, the Serpent Woman_ , Anna Lea Merritt (1844-1930)

_Moonlight Fishing Scene_ , Mary Blood Mellen, (1819-1886)

_Portrait of Antonietta Gonzalez_ , Lavinia Fontana, (1552-1614)

_The Love Potion_ , Evelyn De Morgan, (1855-1919)

Art and Art History

figurationfeminine.blogspot.com

The-atheneum.org

artmagick.com

Explore! There are so many wonderful artists throughout history who never achieved widespread notoriety but who were amazing in their own right. They are waiting to be discovered by you. Each has a unique vision all their own. I hope you find one that touches your soul.

About the Author

Tina Mikals is a native of New England. She admits now that she took the advice of "follow your bliss" too seriously. After getting a bachelor's degree in linguistics, she spent her youth traveling and working menial jobs. She is a little more settled now and prefers traveling in her head. She has a wonderful and supportive husband and is the mother of two easy going and wonderful children of the art, math and science breed. She has given up trying to get any of them to read books, so she is a reading tutor to others. In addition, she has a Jack Russell terrier and a pug, a quasi-feral cat, and a late twentieth century Volkswagen which has become another member of the family. Her first book _The Painted Room_ was published through Smashwords in 2010 (Revised 2015) and is available there and at most other ebook retailers.

Now that she has finished this book, she is going to go clean her house. After the cobwebs are all dealt with, she will begin work on her next book, which will be the final one in this series.
