to know them, but Dad seemed to. I remember this weird, rather non-existent path that we drove along coming here, as if the trees were making way for us.
Does this have something to do with his undercover work? MY father, more than just a repairer of cell phones? And what did he mean by telling me to find my water father? I am going to get to the bottom of this. This place he’s sent me to…Why? Something fishy’s going on here. And I’m not just talking about this woman who is obsessed with Lady Macbeth; although she is a prime suspect.
In the meantime I am taking an increased interest in the work I must do for Yersnia’s social climbing banquet. She says she is so frustrated and cannot understand why she always slips down the rungs of the society ladder again. In her opinion, this is so unfair, seeing that she is looking more and more like Lady Macbeth, whoever that may be. My only interest is THAT GIRL, the one from the corridor. She often hangs out in the kitchen with Amoran’s sister Shamare. (Not much other place for hanging out here – how sad.) I do not quite know why she always seems to pitch in my thoughts. No! I am NOT falling for her or anything, so you need not sit up straight, or go get your pop corn or something. Why should I tell you her name? In any case, it’s not that I really like her or anything like that. It’s just… well… she is so… interesting…
Captivating.
She takes my breath away.
Amahl’s terrible fright
Jack, I saw that….that look in your eyes. Jack, let me just remind you that I have experience in this kind of thing - thousands of years’ experience in fact. Jack, will you LISTEN TO ME! Will you STOP that staring into sweet nothingness? You know I am not allowed to interfere with your choices, - no, sorry, you don’t even know I exist - else I would whack you over the head with a lightning bolt. (It seems someone else has already done that for me.) Jack! Please! No! Oh no, Jack. Jack, how can you be so STUPID? Oh Jack, do you realise I can’t help you here? Oh no, Jack. Do you really think I do not care?
Jack? What happened to your holey T-shirt? Where is it?
Video clip, from some obscure garden camera
“Jack Gullible! The one and same who could have been the Extractor of Blood, but chose water, is looking for company! How pathetic! You should be banished from this place altogether. I wish I could throw you out into the Wood of Words so that one of those trees can strangle you!”
Her eyes flash angrily at Jack.
“Don’t bother. Just strangle me yourself if you hate me so much. I’m Gullible enough to believe it’s an embrace. And the name of my killer would be … Delinquency, am I right?”
“None of your stupid business. And no, I am NOT going through the rose garden to pick the silly little blueberries on the other side. That’s your job, Hector Protector, dressed all in green. You look like a mamba! [Ouch! ] You think I was going to fall for your silly pick-up line? I know them all and I know the end of them all.”
“Oh really? And what might the end be?” Delinquency is not softened one bit.
“You boys, men, whatever. You think you can have anything you lay your greedy little eyes on. You think you can just take any woman you want, and throw another away, and you don’t care about breakages. So just take your despicable little self and be off!”
Jack, taken aback by the words that are spewed like venom at him, puts his hand on the GPS that he carries in the pocket of his jacket. Suddenly his mouth opens and he says something, quietly and calmly, that he did not plan to say at all. In fact, he did not intend replying to her outburst at all:
“What did they do to you, Delinquency?”
She does not reply. She just looks at him from head to toe, then turns and walks away.
Someday she will be free, will have her own skateboard and she will go down that mountain…
Amahl
It’s just as well she said no. Jack will come to his senses.
In any event, Jack mostly won’t be allowed into that treacherous rose garden, because he is the wearer of that water mark, but it is still so important for him to make the right decisions; water mark or no water mark! If only I was allowed to decide for him, make a few choices for him! This is serious stuff. That girl is NOTHING compared to this so-called garden.
Isn’t she just so sensible, so intelligent? She says no so very eloquently.
I actually like her – a lot.
Delinquency, I mean. Who else?
In Yersinia’s Office
“Ah, it’s so good to be my bionic self again.” Yersinia turns a few times in front of a mirror that reflects a strange purple light. She has just finished “massaging” her lower right arm while looking at a slip with some cell ‘phone airtime code on it. [Yersinia had a few electronic implants – a cross between a facelift and being in touch with herself and the universe, using airtime, but she has this sorely buried secret: she is technologically challenged.]
“Molluscum! Let’s see that list!”
Molluscum Contagiosum comes ambling into the office with a long list of names in his hand.
“Well, hurry up! I don’t have all day!” She looks at the list and then disdainfully throws it on the desk.
“Why are Professor and Mrs. Evilunion not invited? When last was my database updated? Did you run the query again this morning, like I told you to?”
“Yes, Ma’am”
“Let’s see the servants’ list.”
Molluscum hands over another list.
“What? Not a single rubbish Gullible yet! Why doesn’t Jack fight? I’m having all my plans thwarted by that little apology of a …SPY.! I have his son right where I want him – under my battlements - [Lady Macbeth – again] and yet…This is impossible! Someone must be protecting him – right under my nose!”
“He does not care about fighting much, madam, although that Wesley boy taunts him quite often.” [Yersinia cannot, by the severely restricted power of Pestis, put someone on the “entertainment” list, unless they are fighters]
“This has never happened before…there are usually brawls of all kinds…wait a bit, who is this? Amoran Rafada…Wesley Southbound…interesting.”
She runs her finger down the list.
“What about….yes, yes! Delinquency Taylor. What an excellent idea! I shall simply force them to fight. We’ll have our blood, by hook or by crook. The snake wants the little critters’ blood. He promised me I would look just like Lady Macbeth, if I do this for him. “ Yersinia says the words dreamily, with a faraway look in her eyes. She turns to Molluscum.
“Molluscum, do you notice the resemblance already? I’ve been looking at myself in the mirror this morning.”
“Well, …maybe…around the nose… it’s just that it’s still a bit,… crooked.”
“WHAT! You’re lying! That is impossible! Open your eyes, you fool!”
The snakes start appearing, hissing at Molluscum.
“Of course, madam. Now I ..s.. see. You are right!”
He looks at the provoked snakes on her head.
“You are the spitting image of Lady Macbeth, Madam…I don’t know WHAT I was thinking. I ..need to fetch some more …airtime?.”
She looks into her wall mirror, and her mean smile vanishes instantly.
Jack and Amoran scheme in the dorm
“Shamare asked me to give this to you.” Jack hands him the little notebook.
“Do you write each other letters in it? You must be careful. If Yersinia…”
“No,” interrupts Amoran. “That’s not what we do. Shamare just wanted to see our mother’s handwriting.” He opens the little book, so that Jack can see the neat, precise writing:
But thus saith the Lord, even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children. [From the Star Breather’s Word]
“Did your mother write this? What does it mean?” asks Jack.
> “I don’t know, but she wrote it, and this is all that we have of her.”
“Did she die?”
“I don’t know, but I think so. When I was about seven years old, my father came home one day, and he was very sad. And my mother was just gone. He loved her very much. That was clear to me since I was very small, but my grandparents did not like her too much. We lived with my grandparents. From that day on, my aunt looked after us and when my father died, she brought us here. I think she just got tired looking after us.”
“So where did you get this notebook from?”
“My mom gave it to me the day she disappeared. She told me to hide it and not to let anybody see it, but I do not understand the writing.”
“Yeah,” says Jack absent-mindedly “It seems everybody who ends up here has some kind of mystery about their parents.” He is staring at the screen of his GPS. It is not often that he has enough privacy to do this.
“Jack, what is all this secret studying about, just like a proper nerd! Don’t you know the rules in this place about studying? Will you stop staring at that gadget? Where did you get it from?” Amoran asks.
“My father,” Jack replies quietly. “If you tell anybody, you are dead meat, you understand?”
“OK, OK, but why is it so important?”
“I am not sure, but I think it shows the way to get us out of here. And also the way to my water father.”
“Your WHAT?”
“Well Amoran, it seems my father has some secrets. He is a funny lemon, but this goes beyond anything normal. It turns out this job is more than I thought. I don’t