The Golden Thread (15 page)

“You kids,” she said, and she marched out.

I jumped onto the stage. The chair, made of ancient, bescribbled school oak, had a jagged crack down the center of its upper back-support. Rough little beads of pale, sticky stuff oozed down into a small puddle of what looked like varnish on the hardwood stage below.

That old oak chair, after years of drying out in classrooms and storerooms, was bleeding fresh sap from where Bosanka had lashed it.

 

12
Vandals and Huns

 

 

I
FOUND LENNIE OUTSIDE
on the school steps. “Where'd you go?” I said. “You scared me to death!”

“Out the side door to the other corridor,” he said. “Ssshh, look.”

Bosanka stood with Michael Scott at the school's front steps: trucklike, booted Bosanka and the beautiful Michael in stone-washed jeans, golden curls, and mountaineer parka. It was a distressing sight.

I turned back to Lennie. “Are you okay?” I said. “Did you see what she did to that poor old chair—?”

“Don't remind me,” he said painfully. “She opened up a raft of possibilities that I don't even want to think about. Like, what life was like in her world for the people who weren't ‘highborn,' or who weren't even people, to her.”

“Let alone the animal life,” I said.

“I know,” Lennie said, wincing. He had always been sensitive about the cruelty to animals.

But I was wound up, I just couldn't stop. “All that stuff about hunting—in the sea and the air—maybe they tore their forests apart, too. Maybe all their plants had consciousness that a ‘highborn' like Bosanka could wake with her magic and abuse whenever she felt like it! The girl is a total
barbarian
, like the Huns and the Vandals all wrapped up in one big package.”

He started to say something—maybe a defense of Bosanka, as he'd defended her before—but just then Michael and Bosanka started walking away.

“Come on,” I said. “We still have to talk to her.”

“Right now?” Lennie said, hanging back. “I don't know, Val. She's pretty upset.”

“Listen, Lennie,” I said, “even Bosanka might soften up after spending time with Michael Scott. I mean, she is a girl, right? And you have to admit, Michael is gorgeous.”

“And he's walking around with somebody we know might be a more or less lethal person,” Lennie said with a sideways look at me. “You really think us being around will protect him from her bad temper?”

“Who knows,” I muttered. “Come on.” The thing about your good friends is that they know you so well—even the parts you don't particularly want them to know.

We followed Bosanka and Michael to the park through the chilly afternoon. Bosanka didn't have any books for him to carry for her. She didn't need props.

“How come she didn't turn
you
into a deer, or worse?” I asked Lennie.

He zipped his parka shut. The afternoon sunshine didn't have much warmth in it. “I don't know,” he said finally. “I said to her, ‘Look, we have to talk about this, and I can't talk if you turn me into a dumb animal.' She said, ‘You are already dumb animal,' and stomped out.”

Lennie had a lot of guts, but if I said so I knew he'd get all embarrassed, so I didn't. Privately, I thought he was amazing.

“Not that there aren't animals that could talk to you, if you could just crack their code,” he went on. “My dolphin project is about some scientists who are teaching dolphins to talk. Well, communicate, anyway.”

I said, “Lennie, that sounds great.”

“They let you swim with them in the tank,” Lennie said, warming to his theme. “On Saturday afternoons, when the training sessions are over for the week.”

Up ahead of us, Michael and Bosanka walked the length of Rumsey Playground. No point trying to talk to her with Michael around, and she was obviously in no hurry to get rid of him. We were going to have to be patient. This is not my strong point. Lennie is one of the most patient people I know. We have had our differences about this.

“I hope I have a chance to get into this project,” he said worriedly, “even though I'm only in High School. My ear infection is clearing up, but what if they don't want to take any chances with it?”

“They'll let you in,” he said automatically.

Behind the arbor at the end of the playground, we found Michael and Bosanka rehearsing
Hamlet
together on the little stage of the concrete band shell. They paid no attention to us or to the guy with a push broom who was sweeping up trash in the seating area. Lennie and I wandered around, keeping an eye on the band shell.

I noticed some pebbles lined up in long wavelike lines across the pavement—just before the push broom wiped out the pattern. Barb had said something about peculiar designs turning up in the park—magical designs, maybe. Could this have something to do with Bosanka?

If it did, the clean-up guy had just swept up a mess of magic without even knowing it.

If only we could deal with Bosanka herself as easily as that!

We walked over toward the statue on the southwest side, two eagles with flapping wings fighting over a droopy, obviously dead sheep. There are a lot of statues on predatory themes in Central Park—the stalking puma crouched above the East Drive, the falconer over by Strawberry Fields, the Indian and his dog hunting at the foot of the Mall.

No wonder the First Hunter felt at home here.

“Lennie,” I said, feeling a little teary even, “I'm really sorry about all this,”

He said, “Hey, it's okay. Gives me something to think about now that I've started swimming laps again.”

“I'm serious,” I said.

Lennie looked surprised. “Me, too,” he said. “Swimming laps is boring.”

“You don't understand,” I mumbled. “What if this is all happening to teach me a lesson for thinking I was special, having the family talent and everything?”

“To teach you a lesson?” he said thoughtfully. “What about the rest of us, and whatever talent we've each got?” He hesitantly put his arm around my shoulders and gave me his best werewolf grin. “Don't be so nervous, okay? You're scaring me. Let's figure out what we can say to Bosanka if we do actually get a chance to talk to her.”

Up on the band-shell stage, Michael waved his arms and declaimed while Bosanka prowled around with her script pages flapping in her hand: the fake prince who was pretty and easy-going, and the real “highborn,” who was impulsive, violent, arrogant—like a true aristocrat of olden times, I guess. The real thing without the romance people added later, and the real thing was powerful and ruthless.

I looked at the fighting eagles. That was how we would have to be—red in tooth and claw—if we were going to be able to stand up to her.

I said, “Lennie, we're changing the plan. We've got to get Bosanka cooled out about the people missing from the committee, and persuade her to let Barb in and to give us more time to wait for Joel and locate Mimi. Then, when Bosanka does call the committee together, we all concentrate on making a sort of laser out of our power and—and use it on her, or try to.”

Lennie looked shocked. “You mean—incinerate her?”

“Well, I wouldn't say that, exactly,” I backtracked. “But—well—yeah, something like that. We've got to stop her, Lennie. And I don't know how else to do it.”

He moved away from me, frowning. “I thought we were going to try to send her back where she came from.”

My mouth was suddenly dry. I was as scared of what I was saying as I was of Bosanka, because I had an awful feeling that what I was proposing we could actually do, if we put our minds and wills to it. And it
was
horrible.

And necessary. Boy, was it necessary.

I said, “We've got to be hard-nosed about this. She's as wild as the eagles in that statue, Lennie. If we can't stop her or hold out against her and she
does
hook up with her people, wherever they are, maybe they really could take over, just like Mimi said.”

“Everybody knows Mimi's a ditz,” Lennie pointed out.

“Sure,” I said, “but even a ditz can be right. Look at her! Would she settle for being just a regular person? Did you hear her say those lines? Did you hear that—that
chair
? She's a natural bully, a tyrant—she'll want to be queen of the world!”

“Well, then,” Lennie said patiently, “why doesn't she just do it, if she has that kind of power?”

“Because she doesn't,” I said, “not on her own, or she wouldn't need us. But what about these ‘people' of hers? What if they're all like her? And how long have they been here? How much do they know about us, and who knows anything about them? Everybody worries about nuclear war, but who's seriously on the lookout for a bunch of aliens smart enough to fit right in? Even Bosanka hasn't been able to find them!

“We have no choice. We've got to take her by surprise and hit as hard as we can—make a, what's the word? A pre-emptive strike.”

“Now you sound like Peter,” he said.

“So maybe Peter's not completely crazy,” I growled. I'd come up with this plan and I hated it. It didn't help a bit that Lennie obviously hated it, too.

He quoted softly, his pained-looking eyes on Bosanka and Michael up on the stage, “ ‘What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?' ”

“Self-defense isn't murder!” I said. “Lennie, if she didn't need us, she'd wipe us out without a thought.”

“There's got to be something else we can do.”

Lennie is very competitive in sports, but in every other way he is one of the gentlest, least aggressive people I know. Maybe because he's really strong, he doesn't have to do the macho thing.

Normally I really appreciated this quality in him. Now it made me feel like a monster by contrast—but a monster who was
right
. However awful I was, Bosanka was a lot worse. This was not the time to get all squeamish about her.

Lennie walked back to the band shell, head down, shoulders slumped, and I followed.

Some team, I thought bitterly. There's me, and there's the rest of them. Nobody in the committee had had any experience of magic but me (except Joel, who was locked up; and Barb, maybe, but she was too furious to ever speak to me again so it didn't matter).

Lennie had never seen a duel between sorcerers that ended with one of them turned into dry paint, or a rogue wizard sinking in an oily pool of his own evil plans, or for that matter a gallant hero dying in the muddy wreckage of the sea monster he had just killed.

I had.

The others would react like Lennie, recoiling from what had to be done. I even recoiled myself. I felt like the bad guy. It was a repulsive feeling.

Well, what if somebody on the committee really did come up with a better idea, how would I feel about that? If it came from Tamsin, for instance? I got kind of stuck on that thought, and not in a nice way.

Bosanka and Michael had apparently finished their impromptu extra rehearsal. Michael grabbed his book bag and walked away whistling, and something in me died a quiet little death that I almost didn't notice. If the Divine Michael could spend time with Bosanka and not feel anything of the menace of the girl, well, how divine was he?

A man in a trench coat strode past swinging his briefcase and listening to his headset. The guy with the push broom had left.

Bosanka sat on the edge of the stage ignoring us, though I was sure she knew we were there. She didn't have a coat on, just that thick sweater she wore all the time. Her lips looked blue. More toughening-up for leadership, that was all. I wasn't falling for her facade anymore. I couldn't afford to.

We walked toward her.

“So?” she said.

We stopped. Lennie grabbed my hand.

I cleared my throat. “We have to talk, Bosanka, honestly. We want to help, but there are some problems.”

“Problems,” she said, looking north toward the Bethesda Fountain and the rowboat lake beyond. The sculpture angel on top of the fountain ignored us all, observing its own feet as usual.

I said, “Lennie and I are all set to go, and Lennie's sister Tam, and Peter, I'm sure, when you—when he comes back. That's four of the original committee, which is not bad.”

“But,” she spat. “I hear ‘but' coming. Why should I listen to ‘but, but, but'? I want to hear
yes
. I want to hear, we are ready, tell us what to do, make this show on the road!”

“You already know part of the trouble,” I said. “We told you. Beth Stowers is in Ohio. There's no way we can get her back.”

Bosanka's lips tightened.

“Also, Mimi is gone,” I said doggedly, “the girl with the, uh, little mustache, and a mole on her cheek?”

Bosanka looked blank—good grief, did we all look alike to her?—then nodded. “She ran,” she said indifferently. “She runs still, but not far. On Saturday she will come, more willing this time.”

Lennie said anxiously, “She is okay though, isn't she?”

“Of course,” Bosanka said. She studied her fingernails, which I saw with surprise she had covered with purple polish. “She is needed, like the stupid Peter-boy, so I keep harm away. But this Beth—”

“For Beth,” I said as firmly as I dared, “we want to substitute my friend Barbara.”

“The black one,” Bosanka said, curling her lip.

“That's right,” I said, “the black one.” The important thing was not to blow up.

She set her jaw stubbornly and looked over our heads.

“Bosanka, come on,” I coaxed. “Do we need a whole committee or don't we?”

“What else, ‘but'?” she said harshly.

“Joel,” I squeaked. “Joel is stuck in Boston.”

“So, bring unstuck.”

I tucked both my hands in my pockets because they were turning into fists. “I can't, not right away—not by tomorrow! Maybe you can. You're the one who's in charge around here.” I was not doing this very well, maybe because I wanted to punch her as hard as I could.