Bedtime Story (48 page)

David didn’t know what to think. “What should I do?”

The captain set down his plate. “Don’t
do
anything. Just continue as you have been, but be aware of what he is, and who he represents. Trust none of what you hear, and less of what you see. Do you understand?” The captain rose to his feet.

“I think so,” David said hesitantly.

“Good,” the captain said. “And remember that I am here. My only goal is to find that Sunstone, and to protect you. If trouble comes, look to me.”

I passed out on the plane, a fractured sleep perpetually wavering between unconsciousness and uneasy wakefulness, slipping in and out of fragmented dreams to the rhythm of coffee carts and stewardesses interrupting.

I don’t know what Marci had slipped into my drink, but the dreams were awful: visions of pursuit, the unshakable sense of failure, of loss. Somewhere over the Rockies I dreamed that David had died, and that it had been my fault. I had no idea what I had done, or hadn’t done, to cause his death, but I was holding his limp body in my arms, his smooth,
pale face gone still and lifeless. I snapped awake, on the verge of tears.

It was clear that Marci had stolen the book, and that Tony Markus probably had it by now. One day I practically have to pry it out of his hands at lunch, and the next day a beautiful woman sits down beside me and introduces herself. I should have known that something wasn’t right. Things like that don’t happen to me.

I was such an idiot.

The plane landed in Victoria shortly after noon. The sleep had burned off most of the headache, but it was all I could do to drag myself to the baggage carousel.

I made a couple of phone calls as I waited for my suitcase. Jacqui first, telling her I had arrived. Then Tony Markus.

Straight to voice mail.

“Tony, hi, it’s Chris Knox,” I said after the beep, forcing calm joviality into my voice. “I’m sorry we didn’t get another chance to get together while I was in town, but my time got away from me. I’m headed for home now. Why don’t you give me a ring tomorrow and we can figure out how to proceed from here. Thanks, Tony. I’ll talk to you soon.”

The forced good cheer made my face ache.

The night had seemed like it might never end.

You have to sleep
, Matt said, at various points, as the trees creaked in the dark forest.

David knew that Matt was right, and there was nothing he would have liked more, but sleep wasn’t coming.

And it got worse. As David dragged himself through the camp in the pale light of the morning, his body heavy and uncooperative, he began to feel a tightening ache in the back of his head, behind his ears, a dull throbbing that was difficult to ignore.

Shortly after dawn, he left camp with Bream, the magus, and several soldiers.

The woods were deep and glossy with the night’s dew, birds singing and chirping overhead, as they pushed their way through the underbrush and down the trail, moving in the direction of the river.

“It’s not much farther,” the magus said. He was walking two strides behind the captain, just ahead of David.

That’s not too comforting
, Matt said.

David agreed. The farther they walked, the more his dread grew, a sickly combination of fear and anticipation settling low in his belly. When they reached the river’s edge, his clothes were soaked from the leaves and the long grass, chilling him even more.

This was a tributary to the mighty Col, which they had followed during their first few days. Slower moving and narrow, the tributary’s waters fed into the Col more than a day’s ride downstream from the Rainbow Canyon.

The magus must have seen him looking at the water. “The Brotherhood has always held rivers sacred,” he explained. “Water is one of the elemental forces, powerful yet yielding, finding strength in its seeming weakness.”

The captain snorted, but the magus ignored him.

“Water will always break around a stone,” he continued. “On the face of it, it is the earth that endures, that stands fast while the water surrenders. But over time, the water will wear away the stone. There is little that can resist its power. The Order is drawn to rivers. Nowhere is the power of water more in evidence than at a river’s edge, as the water shapes the very land around it. That’s why the temples and the schools and the shrines are always built at a river’s edge. Like this one.”

He had stopped moving at the shore, not far from the rise of a gentle, mossy hillock.

David looked around. He was expecting some sort of building, something like a church or a memorial, but he saw nothing of the sort. Just the forest behind him, the river beside him, and the small hill on the shore.

“There,” the magus said, pointing at the hillock. “That’s what we’ve been looking for.”

David looked intently at the rise.

“The land has started to claim back its own. It has, after all, been a thousand years. Come.”

David followed him around the side of the hill closest to the river.

“You see?” the magus said, pointing.

There was a slight indentation in the bed of moss covering the hill. The moss had been cut away from the smooth green surface to reveal a heavy, metal door. Etched into it was the symbol of the Sunstone.

“I never would have found this,” David muttered.

“Nor would most,” the magus said, glancing toward the captain, who was still around the curve of the hill. “Thankfully,” he continued, his voice now little more than a whisper, as if he did not wish to be overheard, “the young soldier assigned to this area has a brother in the Order. He was familiar enough with the stories to pay special attention to the river’s edge, and clever enough to recognize the hillock for what it was.” He took another glance at the captain. “We are truly blessed in this discovery. As if we are being guided by forces greater than we can understand.”

“Dafyd,” the captain called. “We should get underway.”

I took the stairs to the front porch slowly and knocked lightly on the door. Even my knuckles ached.

I could hear Jacqui’s footsteps inside. She opened the door cautiously, peering out, then swung it wide when she saw it was me.

“Since when do you knock?” she asked, a smile breaking across her face.

She threw herself into my arms, embracing me tightly. I moved my hands uncertainly up to her back, no longer familiar with even the simplest of things: how to enter my own house, how to greet my wife.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she whispered.

“Me too,” I said, feeling myself relax, soften in her arms, despite everything.

She pulled away from me gently, and took my hand. “Come on in,” she said, pulling me. “David will be so happy to see you.”

I followed her into the house.

“Look who’s home, Davy,” she announced in an aggressively cheerful voice as we walked into the living room.

I almost expected him to answer, and it was a shock to see him again
as he’d become, after having only memories for so long. I had put out of my mind the way his head lolled, his neck loose, the flat pallor of his eyes, the way his hands jumped with spasms.

He was sitting up in a bright, cold hospital bed that had appeared in the living room. He was facing the television, which was playing the
Teen Titans
, but it was obvious that he wasn’t actually watching.

“Your dad’s home,” she said, more quietly this time, as I stepped toward him.

“Hey, sport,” I said, touching his shoulder, flashing back for an instant to my dream on the plane. “I missed you while I was gone.”

He probably had no idea that I had been gone at all.

Jacqui’s smile narrowed. Her face was care-worn.

“You got him dressed.” I hadn’t noticed it right away, but he was wearing jogging pants and a T-shirt.

She nodded. “That’s one of our goals for every day. To get him dressed, get him fed, make sure he gets some exercise. We’ve already had our walk around the block this morning, haven’t we?” Pitching the question to David’s unhearing ears. “I couldn’t bear having him in a hospital gown all the time. It made him seem too much like a patient.”

I nodded. Seeing him dressed in his own clothes made him seem a bit more like our old David.

“And the bed?”

“It’s just a temporary thing.”

I wondered how many other parents had used those exact words for a piece of hospital equipment that eventually became part of their lives. “We’ve been working on the stairs. It’s not going to be too long before he’s able to sleep in his room.”

I had been holding his hand, feeling it pulse in mine. “Is his temperature …”

“He’s still got that same fever. He’s hovering, 100, 100.5. It’s not dangerous, but the doctors are watching it. And his hands”—we both looked down—“the spasming seems to be getting a bit more severe. The doctors don’t know what’s causing it. And he’s starting to have small seizures in the night.”

I’m so sorry, David.

“Of course, they don’t know what’s causing any of it.” Her smile twisted in on itself. “It’s so hard, Chris. I get him dressed, I prop him in front of the TV.” Her voice was jagged. “Sure, he walks, he helps me dress and undress him, we go to the bathroom together, but whatever was there, whatever made him … 
him
, it isn’t there anymore.”

My knees buckled and I stumbled over to the couch, falling into it as tears started to come. If only she knew how right she was.

She came over and sat down next to me, and we held each other awkwardly as we cried.

“It’ll be better,” she said. “Now that you’re here. We can take turns. We can make it work.” Trying to convince herself. “Something’ll happen. Something’ll give.”

I couldn’t tell her that I had figured it all out, come up with a way to help David, only to lose our only chance. She still had hope, however small.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped. It was all I could say.

“We’re a hell of a pair, aren’t we?” she said.

I choked back a tearful chuckle. “That we are,” I said.

I held her for a long time, trying not to think about what the future held for us, about how I had screwed up, the way a bedtime story had cost us everything.

And then I saw it, right there in front of me, half obscured by two magazines, but right there. If I hadn’t been stuporous from whatever Marci had given me, I would have remembered sooner.

On the coffee table there was a rough stack of photocopied pages more than an inch thick: the copy of
To the Four Directions
I had made before I left for New York.