Bindings (12 page)

O
KAY, NOW DEATH HAD REALLY
ticked Tim off. “Oh, I'm so stupid,” he retorted. “Us
people
, we're all so bloody stupid. Right. Thanks, then.” Tim stood up, but realized he had nowhere to go.

Death flipped open the lid of the trunk and started taking things out. A bag of nails. A stack of postcards. Mismatched socks. “I wish you'd stop putting words into my mouth. I don't think you're stupid. Not you in particular anyway. Just confused.”

“Easy for you to say,” Tim muttered.

“Yep. It is.”

She continued rummaging. It infuriated Tim. She was so casual. This was big stuff to him. Didn't she get it?

“
You
don't have to worry about anything,” he said in an accusing tone.

“Nope. I don't. Oh, look! I found it!” She held
up an envelope and grinned.

Tim didn't care what she had found. She didn't seem to be paying attention to what he was saying. She was more concerned about that stupid little envelope than she was about him.

“Nobody can make you do anything you don't want to. Not adults, not fairies—nobody!” Tim complained. “And you can't get lost, and you know what you're doing and stuff. You have your weird mission.” He shook his head and glared at her. “You're so happy, it's bizarre.”

“Weird mission?” She laughed. “That's pretty good.” Finally her expression grew more serious and she looked straight at him. “Tim,” she said, “everything you said is true. Maybe you should ask yourself—” She cut herself off and looked as if she were hearing something in the distance. “Oops, too late. Sorry, Tim. It's weird mission time.”

Tim gaped at her. She was just about to tell him something important and she was leaving? “B-b-b-but—it's not fair!” he sputtered.

“You're right,” she agreed. “It's not.”

Tim collapsed as everything went all black and swirly again.

 

The pain
, Tamlin thought.
It is only pain. Soon it will end. The death he would have died is mine now
. Tamlin moaned in agony, writhing in his
thronelike chair.
When the sacrifice is done, my life will be his.

“Tamlin?” Death appeared in front of him. “You can let go now.”

Her voice was gentle and true, the tones bell like. Tamlin felt himself rise out of his body and go to her.

“Lady? Will the child be—”

“Oh, Tim will be fine,” the woman assured him. She cocked her head to one side. “It's too bad the two of you couldn't talk a while, though. There was something he wanted to ask you.”

Tamlin gazed down on his son. Already, the life Tamlin had sacrificed was now reanimating the boy. Tim's limbs untwisted, color returning to his skin.

“Must we leave him here to face Titania alone?” Tamlin turned back to the girl he knew to be the angel of death. “Titania believes she loves me and she will blame him for my death. She will be vicious. Cruel.”

“Tim will handle it,” Death said. “You'd be surprised at that boy's resources. Let's go.”

Tamlin nodded, and then they were gone.

 

Tim stirred. His movement toppled a candle, dripping hot wax on his hands. “Ouch!” he exclaimed. He sat up and took in his surroundings,
confused. “Huh? If this is supposed to be my funeral, someone's going to be disappointed.”

He swung his legs over the side of the platform he was laid out upon and dropped to the floor. “How did I get back to this place?” he wondered as he gazed around the manticore's mansion. “Someone should recommend a good maid service,” he commented, kicking aside some broken glass.

Now I just have to remember where the door is
, Tim thought as he made his way through the mess. He froze when he saw the twisted figure in the thronelike chair.

His heart thudded. He recognized that leather gauntlet, that long hair. Suddenly he realized what must have happened.

“You jerk!” Tim shouted. He stumbled to Tamlin's twisted, dead body. “Why did you do it? I was dying just fine and you had to go and butt in.”

He sank down beside the chair and wept. Hard, rasping sobs racked his body in waves. He felt for the Opening Stone Tamlin had given him, and he cried for his dad in London and for this father he had just discovered, who had sacrificed himself for him. For all of his own confusion, and sorrow, and exhaustion.

Finally, depleted, raw, he wiped his face with his T-shirt. He leaned against the chair and
hugged himself. He felt so cold. Tim felt as if he knew even less now. Understood nothing at all. All he could think was how much he wanted to see Molly. He shut his eyes, still holding the stone, and fell into sleep, exhausted.

When he awoke again, he was back in his room in London and the phone was ringing. The Opening Stone was still in his hand.

Disoriented, he automatically picked up the receiver. “Hello?” he said, his voice rough and hoarse.

“Tim?” Molly said. “Are you okay?”

“What?”

“Did you talk to your dad yet?” she asked. “About, you know, what we talked about a little while ago?”

“When?” He knew he sounded like a right idiot, but she was confusing him. Wasn't his conversation with her days ago?

“Tim, what's going on? You seemed sort of all right when you left here an hour ago. Now you sound shook up again. What did your dad say to you?”

An hour ago? Then Tim remembered that time went all funny in magical realms.

“You promised to ring me after you talked to your dad. Have you done it yet?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I've talked to him. Sorry
not to have gotten back to you—I got a little caught up in something.”

“So is it true?” Molly asked.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Tim replied. He put a hand in his pocket, and his fingers wrapped around something that felt like paper. He pulled a small envelope out of his pocket. Tim stared at it. “What's this?”

“What's what?” Molly asked.

“Nothing,” Tim said. He opened the envelope that he realized he had last seen in Death's apartment. The thing she'd been looking for. For some reason, she had given it to him. He poured out the contents into his hand. They looked like seeds.
How weird
.

“Listen, I think I should probably go now,” Tim said.

“Do you want to come over?” she offered. “I could make you some tea. Mum swears it has calming effects.”

He did want to see her, but there was something he wanted to do, and he figured he should do it alone. “Nah. It's late. Your parents would freak if I showed up now. Oh—and Molly?” he added. “To make a really good cup of tea, don't let the water boil too long.”

Molly laughed. It was a nice laugh. “Well, expert, I'll be sure to ask your advice on all cooking
matters.” Then her voice grew soft. “If you want to ring back…no matter how late…”

“Thanks, Molly. I'm okay now.” And he almost felt as if that were true.

They hung up. Tim stared at the seeds lying on his palm. Closing his hand around them, he tiptoed out of the house. All of the lights were out. His dad must have already gone to bed.

The streets were dark and cold, but Tim barely felt it. He moved quickly, sticking to the shadows, because the dark was where he felt stronger right now. He covered ground quickly and finally arrived at the cemetery.

Never letting go of the seeds, he hoisted himself up and over the gate. He dropped onto the icy dirt and crept toward the familiar little mound.

He knelt at his mother's grave and gazed at her tombstone. “Hey, Mum. I really wish you could tell me how this all happened. But I guess it doesn't really matter now, does it? You're gone. Tamlin is gone. But I'm still here. And no matter how it happened, you meeting up with a man who is also a hawk, I mean, well, I guess I'm still me. Nothing changes that.”

Tim cleared a spot of dirt on top of his mother's resting place. He dug a shallow hole and sprinkled the seeds into it before covering them up.

He sat a moment longer, enjoying the dark
night, enjoying the feeling of being alive. Then he stood on much steadier legs than he'd had when he arrived. “Good-bye,” he said to the tombstone. “For now.”

He left the cemetery without a backward glance. Still, he couldn't help wondering as he made his way back home in the dark, what he had just planted. What would grow from those seeds?

And what would become of all of his new knowledge? And new questions? Discovering that your dad wasn't really your dad, what impact would that have—on both of them? And knowing that his real father had sacrificed himself so that Tim might live…Tim shook his head. How was he ever going to process that one?

Tim turned a corner, and the angle of a street lamp illuminated his reflection in a darkened store window. He stopped and stared at himself.

“So, Timothy Hunter, who are you?” he asked himself. “That's okay, go all closemouthed,” he teased his reflection. “Or are you just keeping things close to the vest? Probably a good idea in these strange times.” He grinned. “Maybe you're not as dumb as you look, Hunter.”

Hunter. Tim realized that his last name was Hunter only because his mother had married Mr. Hunter. If she'd married Tamlin, Tim's name would be…what?

It dawned on him. Timothy Hunter, then, couldn't be his “true” name. It
was
just what he was “called.”

So what
was
his real name?

“No, thank you,” he told his reflection. “I've had enough of questions for the time being.”

He headed home. For once, he let his mind empty and simply enjoyed the fact that the cold air reminded him that he had lungs, and that the night sky was full of stars, and that somehow, he had saved an entire world.