The Death Catchers (20 page)

“I have a secret now, Lizzy. I don't want it to be a secret anymore. I want to say it out loud to someone I love.” Mom turned to look at me. I could see all the worry lines on her face. “I'm more concerned about you now than I've ever been,” she said. Her words were coming quicker now. “You're not eating, you mope around most days. You keep leaving the house and going off by yourself. I can't sleep because I think about you. I don't know what it is, but I know you. You're not the same Lizzy. The only person you talk to is your grandmother. I know Bizzy Bea's one of those magnetic people, but I'm not sure that a teenager's closest confidante should be a woman sixty years her senior.” Mom never took her eyes off mine. They started to pool with tears of her own. “As much as I want you to be safe, to intervene and protect you, to force you to tell me whatever it is that's inside you, I also want you to know I trust you, I love you, and most of all, I'm here for you, always, whatever it is.”

Silently, my mother raised herself out of the sand. Without brushing the grains stuck to her back, she turned toward the sandy path that led up the hill and back to our house. I didn't get up, but I shifted my head so I could see her walk away. When she'd traveled a few feet, she turned around once more. “Hopefully this goes without saying,” she started. Her voice had none of the tentativeness it had had when she was talking about Dad's secret and her own. “But just because your father smokes does not mean that you should start, under any circumstances.”

Almost in a flash, she left and my tears returned.

 

Suspending Disbelief

When I was in fifth grade, Mom gave me my first fantasy book to read,
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
, from the Chronicles of Narnia. She let me know that most children were crazy about the series and read every single volume. I think she wanted me to believe
I
was crazy if I didn't like the book.

I read a couple of chapters, but I couldn't get into it. In my mind, there was no way some kid could travel to a magical world full of talking lions and goat-men, simply by going through a wardrobe in the closet. It didn't make much sense.

When I told Mom, she laughed and suggested that I needed to work on
suspending my disbelief
. She explained that it meant I should “buy into the story” and let my imagination do the rest. She said that if I went with the premise, imagining it was possible, even for a moment, I'd enjoy the story. It's still hard for me to let go of the belief that magical worlds don't exist at all, yet alone in wardrobes.

Which is to say that I had it coming.

Because a few months ago, I never could've imagined who was waiting when Bizzy finally came home from the hospital. I knocked and stood outside Bizzy's door, anxious to discuss our evolving plan.

“That you, Lizzy-Loo?” I heard Bizzy shout through the door.

“Yes,” I responded.

“You alone?” she asked. I could hear her wheeling around in her room.

“Yes,” I answered, growing curious. Bizzy unlocked the door and cracked it open for me.

“Quickly,” she whispered, beckoning me inside.

I closed the door behind me.

Then I gasped.

Sitting on Bizzy's bed were two women cloaked in hooded satin frocks, one blood red and the other canary yellow. Both sat upright, unflinching, when I entered. I couldn't judge how old the women were, but their eyes were clear and bright. The one in yellow smiled at me. The one in red, with long dark locks spilling from the hood of her cloak, peered at me curiously. Bizzy's room smelled like apple-cinnamon oatmeal.

“Lizzy.” Bizzy wheeled to the side of the room so that she was facing both the women and me. “It's my pleasure to introduce you to two women who have traveled a very long way to see us.” Bizzy motioned to the woman in red. “This is your great-grandmamma, many times over, Morgan le Faye, and her sister, Fial,” she said nodding at the woman in yellow.

Facing Morgan le Faye and Fial, I knew it was time to suspend my last shred of disbelief. A few months ago, I would have assumed I was dreaming—that there was no way I was actually staring at two satin-cloaked women who were my ancestors from a mythical and magical island. But after two death-specters, Jodi's near death, Drake's being revealed as the Last Descendant, and Merlin's appointment of me as Drake's Keeper, life was beginning to seem like one big suspension of disbelief. Heck, my disbelief hadn't been suspended. It'd been expelled.

“Hullo,” Fial said, looking squarely at me. Her voice was high pitched, sweet, and smooth. She spoke with an accent that I couldn't quite place. Her rosy cheeks, in combination with her stout frame, made her seem like the friendlier of the two women. Fial removed her hood. Her pale hair was swept into a bun on the top of her head. “Please forgive us for arriving so suddenly, but it could not wait a moment longer.”

Morgan le Faye looked at the brainstorming wall and then back at me. Though she was seated, I could tell she was quite a bit taller than Fial. She had the greenest eyes I'd ever seen—like piles of freshly cut grass floating atop two glasses of milk—set deep within her face.

“What do you know of us, Elizabeth Mortimer?” Morgan le Faye asked. Her voice was deep and rich, with the same accent as Fial's.

“Um,” I said, trying not to stutter, “I know that you live on the Isle of Avalon, that you are a gifted sorceress, you once saved King Arthur's life, and—”

“Wait a moment!” Fial insisted. “
I
am the one who nursed Arthur back to health. Morgan had very little to do with it!” Fial stomped her foot on the floor. When she did it, I saw a golden sandal poke out from beneath her yellow robe.

“Fial, we do not have time for your petty concerns,” Morgan admonished.

“Easy enough for you to say. You're the one who's been getting undeserved credit for the last thousand years!”

Morgan rolled her eyes as if she'd heard Fial's complaint hundreds of times before.

“What else do you know, Elizabeth Mortimer?” Morgan questioned.

“The legend goes,” I said, trying to remember exactly what I'd read in
The Last Descendant
, “that your half-mortal daughter was the first Death Catcher.”

“Death
what
?” Morgan said, rising from her seated position. She put her hands behind her back and began pacing. Her ebony hair and pale skin made her appear as if she'd never spent a single minute in the sun.

“It's just a name we came up with, Bizzy and me, for the Hands of Fate,” I explained, growing nervous.

“I see,” Morgan said disapprovingly.

Fial nudged her sister playfully. “I think it's clever,” she said. Morgan ignored her sister. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned Bizzy and me.

“Is that all you know of our legacy?” As she spoke, I assumed Morgan le Faye was looking at us wondering where the gene pool had gone off the track in the generations between herself and us.

“Oh, Morgie, you're scaring the poor child with all this legacy talk,” Fial said, coming over and wrapping her arm around me. Though I appreciated the gesture, her arm was heavy and dry-ice cold.

“I've read about you in
The Last Descendant
.”

“What is this now?” Morgan said, clearly confused.

“Merlin Ambrosius, right before he was turned to stone, wrote down everything about Avalon's history and King Arthur, hoping it would reach the person destined to protect the Last Descendant.”

“That sly dog!” Fial said, clapping her hands excitedly. “Perhaps he's not as dim witted as I once thought!”

“Let us not forget he was dim enough to allow himself to be turned to stone by Vivienne,” Morgan said coolly.

“Well, at the end of the day, he is still a sorcerer, and we all know a sorcerer can be quite gull—”

“Where did you come across this book?” Morgan le Faye interrupted.

“Agatha's cottage,” I responded. “So it's all true?”

“I'm not sure you can trust any story a sorcerer tells … we all know Merlin was a little off-kilter when he wrote whatever is in
The Last Descendant
.”

“That is quite enough, Fial,” Morgan commanded. She turned to me. “If Merlin's little account imparted all of this to you, then you may also already know part of the reason we are here.”

I turned to Morgan le Faye, trying to drum up all the confidence I had in me. “Are you the one who sends Bizzy and me the death-specters?”

Morgan le Faye sat back on Bizzy's bed. “I am, indeed,” she said. Fial put her hand to her mouth and murmured something in a language I couldn't understand.

“Why?” I asked.

The sisters of Avalon each took a deep breath and locked eyes. Morgan le Faye, still wearing the hood to her red satin cloak, removed it. Her hair had an unnatural shine to it and her pale skin seemed to glow in the dim light of Bizzy's bedroom. She was quite beautiful, even if she was over a thousand years old. She focused her green eyes on me.

“Perhaps you are aware from Merlin's account that there was a time, long ago, when I desired to be free of Avalon forever. I had come to care deeply for a mortal named Lancelot du Lac. When Vivienne cut his thread before his time … it changed me.” Morgan's voice grew quieter. “You must understand my whole life has been in the service of death and the transition between this world and the next, and yet I never understood it before I lost Lancelot. When Vivienne cut his thread, I realized why death unleashes such despair. It is not the loss or transition of the mortal's soul itself that causes pain, but rather the uncertainty and longing of those who remain behind. Soon after my daughter arrived here in Crabapple more than a thousand years ago, I discovered my special skills would allow me to communicate with my own flesh and blood while I was still in Avalon.”

“Just a minute,” I interrupted, “so Crabapple
is
more than a thousand years old? Is Old Arthur in the cemetery actually King Arthur himself?”

“There are most likely many things about Crabapple you do not know. We will not have time to discuss them all,” Morgan said dismissively before moving on. “As I was saying, at first I sent the specter to spare my daughter some of the suffering I had experienced. Each time I realized someone close to a descendant of mine, no matter where they were located, was to die unnaturally, I sent a death-specter.

“But I have continued sending death-specters for a much more important reason. I realized that, although I could not leave Avalon because of the Great Truce, by communicating with my lineage, I would always have a representative here in this world, able to save the Last Descendant when he arrived … someone perfectly equipped to protect him. Someone who would not fail in the way Guinevere did. Sending the death-specters helped me feel I was atoning for my offense of leaving Avalon for Lancelot.” As Morgan finished, her voice wavered slightly. “The time has finally come for me to right my wrong.”

Fial placed her hand over Morgan's, gazing at her sister sympathetically. “There is no use assigning blame, Morgan. Vivienne broke the laws of Avalon as well, by cutting Lancelot's thread prematurely,” Fial said. She turned to Bizzy and me. “What is important for you both to realize, though, is that Agatha's prophecy about the Last Descendant was a direct result of Morgan's and Vivienne's actions. The world has been put on the path toward Doomsday and we must now fix it. The first step was initiating the Hands of Fate equipped to deal with Arthur's descendant when he arrived. That descendant, as you may know, is Drake Westfall.”

I had already realized as much, but to hear it said out loud was another thing entirely. It knocked the wind right out of me.

“Before Agatha's last prophecy … long before my actions, as well as those of Vivienne, had altered fate permanently, the boy with the Mark of Arthur had already been destined to bring peace to the land during a time of darkness and great upheaval,” Morgan said.

Fial perked up. “Agatha's last prophecy also revealed how my sisters' interference so many years ago changed fate, leading to Drake's premature death.”

Morgan peered at me with a startling intensity. “Did Merlin's account impart what Vivienne le Mort is planning? Her evil plans for the threads she has cut?”

“Yes,” I said, shuddering at the thought of Vivienne le Mort and her army of lost souls. “But how in the world is Drake supposed to stop all that?”

“Drake is necessary because only the one with the Mark of Arthur can wake Merlin from his stone slumber. That is all you need to know for now,” Morgan said.

“He has the perfect balance necessary to lead,” Fial explained, ignoring Morgan's dismissal of the subject. “First, although I hate to admit it, we will need Merlin. Personally, I find Merlin Ambrosius to be insufferable, with an ego the size of Pangaea, but he knows of Vivienne's weaknesses, and his power and knowledge will be of immeasurable value to a king.”

Bizzy, who had been unusually quiet, her eyes on me, chimed in for the first time. “I'm sorry, ladies,” Bizzy said. “I hate to break it to ya both, but you've been gone a while and we don't really have many kings anymore.”

“Perhaps a different name is used today,” Fial said, “but so long as the world turns, there will always be kings or leaders—the most righteous of which, like Drake, possess a perfect balance of logic and feeling. He will assemble the Round Table and defeat Vivienne le Mort.”

“I'm not sure I get it,” I said. “What exactly do you think is going to happen? Are you two going to equip Drake with the Excaliber, give the water polo team some spear guns, and let them have at it?”

“Foolish child, of course not!” Morgan said. “The sword never makes the man. It is the man who makes the sword. The Excaliber was only a powerful tool because Arthur possessed the judgment necessary to make it most effective.”

“Well, does Drake know any of your big plans for him?” I asked.

“Of course not.” Morgan frowned. “It is not time for him to know and you must not tell him. For now, he must just stay alive.”

“Agatha only granted us leave to spend a few minutes here and I am afraid our time is running out, Morgie,” Fial said, wearing her concern on her unlined face. “You best get to it.”

“The true purpose of our trip here is to warn you about Vivienne. As you may know, our sister does not want to restore fate to its proper balance. Once Arthur's last descendant dies, there will be no one left to stop her. When she has an army of evil souls to do her bidding, she will be the most powerful of all the sisters. Thus, if you do not save the boy, nothing else will matter, because the earth will be on a course for Doomsday, I assure you.”

“You have to excuse Morgie. Sometimes she plays up the fire-and-brimstone aspect of all this a bit much,” Fial said. “We honestly came to warn you. We believe that Vivienne now knows you Hands of Fate exist,” she said as she looked knowingly at me, “which is why Agatha allowed us to leave Avalon and come here.”

“If Drake's death is that important, why doesn't Vivienne just kill him now?” I asked, fearful that Drake might be in immediate danger as I spoke the words. “Why hasn't she killed him already? Why wait?”

“Mortals always have a tendency to see the world as a series of discrete incidents,” Morgan said, sounding impatient. “But destiny is a most delicate pyramid of the smallest of circumstances.” My eyes connected directly with those of my distant great-grandmother, for the first time. Her expression wasn't warm, but it wasn't cold, either. “You see, Vivienne is, and will always be, beholden to fate. She cannot be sure cutting a thread before its time will not alter fate once again—and perhaps send the world on a different course entirely.”