“Shoulder, not from now. I had to fight a dog this afternoon.”
“What? Ned, what have you been doing?”
“I got mixed up in something. He said after that they were just playing games. With him, not me.”
She was still a moment. Then, “Who said that, Ned?”
“The man from the cathedral. He’s part of all this, I think.”
“Well, of course he is. That’s why you’re being tracked. Can you reach him?”
“What? Like a text message?”
She actually chuckled, briefly. She was cool, he decided, even if aunts weren’t supposed to be. “No, not that. Can you see him the way you saw me, looking inside?”
He hesitated. “I have done that. Seen him. Twice. He said he can screen himself.”
“I’m sure he can. I can’t see him. You try.”
Ned tried. He had the same foolish feeling as before, though not quite the same, if he thought about it. His aunt was here, and he could sense the glow of her, within.
Only that, however. Not the scarred man who’d told them in the cloister that he had no name. He shook his head. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he said.
“Why should you?” she replied, gently. “That’s a reason I came, to tell you it’s all right not to know.”
“That’s why?”
She nodded. “And a few other things.”
The wolves hadn’t made a sound since she’d spoken, or since he’d cracked one of them with the branch.
“Have they gone?” he asked.
Kim turned and looked out. He had a sense she wasn’t really looking, or not with her eyes.
“They’re waiting,” she said. “I really wish I knew what this was about. How’s your shoulder?”
“Never play tuba again.”
She made an exasperated sound. “How terribly funny. You are just like your mother.”
“Mom joked like that?”
“At your age? Endlessly.”
It was news to him, that was for sure.
“What are they waiting for?” he asked.
“We’ll know soon enough. Keep trying to find your friend.”
“He isn’t my friend, believe me.”
A sound behind them. A voice in the same instant.
“He is not. You would do well to remember it.”
They whipped around together. To see something that never left Ned—even with all that was to come. What appears to us first on a threshold is often what lingers afterwards.
A very big, broad-shouldered man stood in front of the broken opening in the tower. He had long, bright hair, a heavy golden necklace, and golden armbands. He was clad in a tunic and a darker fur-lined vest, with leggings, and sandals tied up around his calf.
And he was antlered like a stag.
It wasn’t a horned helmet or anything like that, which was Ned’s first thought. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. The antlers grew straight out of his head.
It was in that moment that Ned Marriner finally accepted that he had entered into a world for which nothing in life had prepared him. There was no denial left in him; he felt fear coil and twist like a snake in his body.
“How did you get in there?” he stammered.
“He flew down. Most likely as an owl,” said his aunt, with what seemed to him an awesome calm. “Why not take your own form?” she added, almost casually, to the man-beast in front of them. “Playing at shapes is a game. And this form is disrespectful. Even sacrilege.”
“Not wise the thought,” the antlered figure said. They were speaking French to each other, in an oddly formal way. “In my own guise I am too beautiful for you, woman. You would beg me to take you, right here, with the child watching.”
Ned bristled, clenching his fists, but his aunt only smiled.
“Unlikely,” she murmured. “I have seen beautiful men, and managed to keep my self-control.”
She paused, looking up at him, and then added, “I have also seen the god whose form you are copying, and his son, who commanded wolves far more deadly than these weak spirits.” Her voice changed again. “You have some small shape-shifting power. I see it. Do not expect me to quail. I knew men and women with so much more than that, there are no words for the telling. Do not ever doubt me. I am offering iron-bound truths by moonlight at the edge of an oak grove.”
Ned shivered. He couldn’t help it.
This is my aunt, he thought.
The yellow-haired figure with the antlers of a stag stared at her for a long time. “If you speak of the wolflord or the god so carelessly, one or both might make you pay a price.”
“True enough. If I did so carelessly.”
The figure in front of them hesitated. “You are very sure of yourself, woman. Who are you? Why have you come into this? It is nothing to you, nothing for you.”
Kim shook her head. “I haven’t come into anything, except to guard my sister-son. He has no power, only the beginnings of sight, and is no danger to you. He is to be left alone.”
“Ah! She makes a demand. And if I do not accede?”
Ned heard his mother’s older sister say, quietly, “Then depend on it: I will summon powers that will blast you out of time to an ending. And you will never do what you have come to do.”
Silence in front of them. Nothing from the wolves behind. Ned wondered if the others could hear the thudding of his heart.
“It is a wise man who knows his true enemies,” Kim added, softly.
“You do not even know what this is about. What I am come to do.” But there was doubt in the deep voice now. Ned could hear it.
“Of course I don’t,” Aunt Kim said crisply. “Nor do I care. Do what you must. I have told you my only purpose. Accept it, and we are gone. Do not, and you have only yourself to blame if all you dream of goes awry.”
“The boy fought this afternoon beside a man I must kill.”
“Then kill that man if it is your destiny to do so. But the boy is mine and will remain untouched. He has no wish to interfere.”
“Is it so? Can he speak for himself, or does a woman do all for him, as for a suckling babe?”
Aunt Kim opened her mouth to reply, but Ned, angered, said, “I can speak just fine. I have no idea what that was this afternoon, but someone I’d had a drink with was attacked. Would you have stood by?”
Another silence. “The cub has a tooth,” the man said, laughing suddenly, a deep-throated, genuine amusement. The rich sound rolled over them. “Of course I would not have stood by. Shame to my family and tribe, to do so. That does not mean you might not have died.”
“He said you were playing games.”
Another explosion of laughter, the antlered head thrown back in delight. It was thrilling, as much as it was frightening.
“Truthfully? Did he say that?” The fair-haired figure looked at Ned. “Ah, you give me pleasure! By all the gods, I am his master. He knows it with every narrow breath he draws. And as for you: children have died in games-playing.”
“Games like that, I can imagine.” Ned was still furious. “So tell me, give me pleasure now, did I kill your four-legged friend today? With the chair?”
He felt Kim’s hand on his arm, cautioning him. He didn’t feel like being cautioned.
The antlered figure said, “He was in a form he’d taken for the moment. No more than that. He is behind you now in another shape. Tell me, foolish child, what do you think this is about?”
“We told you,” Kim snapped. “We don’t know what this is. And will not claim any role. Unless you compel it.” She paused, then added, her voice going colder again, “Will you compel me? Shall I summon Liadon from his sacrifice?”
Amazed, Ned saw the tall figure take a quick step backwards in shocked surprise, the head lifting again, the antlers caught by moonlight.
“You know a name you ought not to know,” he said after a long moment. His voice had gone quiet. “It is guarded and holy.”
“And I am one with access to it,” Kim said
. “And I have seen the one you mock with your horns.”
“I do not mock,” the man protested, but he sounded defensive now.
“Playing a game dressed in his antlers? No? Really? Are you the child, to be forgiven by your elders? Not yet come of age?”
The man before them said, “Have done, woman! I have been among these groves and pools, coming and going, returned and gone, for past two thousand years!”
Ned swallowed hard. He heard the man say, “Is that a child, to you?”
Ned was intimidated now, really afraid, wondering at his own recklessness a moment before, but Aunt Kim said only, “It can be. Of course it can! Depending on what you have done, coming and going. Show me otherwise: go from us, and not in his shape. I wish to return to my own home. This is your place, not mine. Swear to leave the boy in peace and I am gone from your games. And your battles.”
The tall, glorious figure stared down at her, as if trying to penetrate through moonlight to some deeper truth. “What is your name?”
Kim shook her head. “I will not give you that tonight.”
He smiled then, another unexpected flash of teeth, and laughed again. “A sorrow to my heart. I would give you the gift of mine, and freely, bright one, if I had a name here.”
Kim didn’t smile back. She said, “You are waiting for one?”
“She will name me. She always does.”
“Both of you?” Kim said.
Ned had been chasing the same thought.
A hesitation, again. “Both of us.” He looked down at her. “And then it begins, and I may kill him again, and taste the joy of it.”
He looked at Kim another moment, ignoring Ned entirely now; then he lifted his great head and rasped words in yet another tongue Ned didn’t know. They heard a growling sound in reply; twigs snapped on the ground behind them as the animals left.
“You will not enter into it?” the antlered man said again to Kim.
“Not unless you force me,” she repeated. “You will have to live with that as sufficient surety.”
His teeth showed again. “I have lived with less.”
He turned, ducking through the opening into the round, tall tower, twisting his head so the horns could pass through.
They stood a moment, waiting. There was a quick, sharp sound and they looked up and Ned saw an owl fly through the open tower top and away, to the north.
They watched it go.
Kim sighed. “I told him to change his shape. He does like to play, I guess.”
Ned looked at his aunt. He cleared his throat.
“That was extremely close,” she murmured. She leaned against his good shoulder. “I haven’t tried anything like that in a long time.”
“What do you mean?”
Kim stepped back and looked at him.
“Oh, dear. Ned, did you think I could do any of what I said?”
He nodded. “Um, yeah, I kind of did.”
She sighed. “Fooled you, then,” she said.
He stared at her. He felt cold. “You were bluffing ? Could . . . could they guess that?”
Her mouth twitched in an expression he actually knew well, from his mother. “I guess they didn’t. But damn it all sideways and backwards, I so wish your uncle were here.”
CHAPTER VII
Afterwards, Ned Marriner was to think of April 29 of that year, mostly spent in Arles among Roman and medieval ruins, as the last day of his childhood.
It was an oversimplification; such thoughts always are. But we make stories, narratives of our lives, when we look back, finding patterns or creating them.
We tend to change in increments, by degrees, not shockingly or dramatically, but this isn’t so for everyone, and Ned had already learned in the two previous, difficult days how he seemed to be different. Most of us, for example, don’t see our aunts as a green-gold light within ourselves.
On a sunny, windswept morning among the monuments of Arles, he wasn’t actually dwelling on this. He was—although being of a certain age, he’d have hated to admit it—having a good time, nerdy as that might be.
The Roman arena was seriously, no-messing-around impressive.
He’d never been to Rome. He understood the Colosseum there was way bigger than this, but the one here would do fine for Ned. Twenty thousand people, two thousand years ago, watching men fight each other, or wild beasts, in a place this massive. And it was still standing.
Even Larry Cato might have had to concede it was cool, sort of.
They’d driven here first thing, about an hour in morning traffic. His father and the others had gotten busy immediately to use the early light, setting up an exterior shot where the high stone walls of the arena were being restored: gleaming, almost white on the right-hand side, revealing the grimy evidence of centuries on the left.
With plenty of notice from Melanie and Barrett Reinhardt, the city authorities had removed the scaffolding for them, leaving Ned’s father a clear line. The spring sunlight was brilliant, intensifying the contrast between left and right, the untouched part and the cleaned-up side.
It was going to be a terrific photograph, even Ned could see it, and his father’s body language as he moved around, setting up, gave it away anyhow. Edward Marriner was watching the clouds scud past in the breeze: he was going to try to time the shutter releases, to have one of them in the background, half in, half out.
Ned had left them to their work.
He’d gone inside the arena and wandered among the seats, looking out over the bright sand below. They used this place for bullfights these days. Everything changed, nothing changed: huge crowds of people coming here to watch a battle.
In the Middle Ages, the guidebook said, there had been a kind of ghetto inside these curved walls, shabby, falling-down hovels within a structure that had celebrated the power of Rome. If you liked irony, this was for you, Ned thought. Larry would definitely have liked it.
He looked at an artist’s sketch of that medieval slum in the book Melanie had given him. He wondered what that would have been like: to live in a world sunken so low, struggling just to stay alive, with the towering evidence of glory all around you, looming above your collapsing little walls and muddy alleys.
You sure wouldn’t have a feeling that the world was progressing or getting better over the years, he decided. The book reported that one time, during a plague outbreak in here, the authorities of Arles had surrounded the arena and had killed anyone trying to get out of the slum.
The world might be a little better than that today, Ned thought. Parts of it, anyhow.
Making his way along the seats, he circled all the way around to the chute where they released the bulls. He was able to get down from there, jumping a barrier onto the sands.
There were people inside the arena—including a big Japanese tour group—but no one seemed inclined to tell him to leave. He saw people taking his picture. He actually thought about that sometimes: how we end up as background faces in some stranger’s photo album or slide show.
Had he been a little younger he might have pretended to be a gladiator or a bullfighter, but not at fifteen with people watching him. He just walked around and enjoyed the sunshine and the size of the place. The Romans were engineers and builders, his father had said on the drive here: roads, temples, aqueducts, arenas. Whatever else you thought about them, you had to give them that.
Ned wondered if Kate Wenger had been here, had seen this place. He thought of calling her, then remembered it was a school day. Besides which, it was too soon, majorly uncool, for that kind of call.
Thinking of her sitting in some classroom made him grin, though. He’d have been in school himself back home at this hour. Without wanting to actually give his father the satisfaction of knowing it, Ned had to admit this was way better.
He took out his own Canon and snapped a couple of pictures. He’d email jpegs to Larry and Vic and ask how biology class had been today and how much homework they had. Maybe he’d get Steve to take a picture of hi
m in the pool at the villa to send. They didn’t need to know it was freezing cold in there. With his friends, you had to grab the moments when you had the upper hand.
Ned considered that for a moment. Grabbing moments with the upper hand: Mr. Drucker would have labelled that a mixed metaphor and probably marked him down for it. Ned smiled to himself. Mr. Drucker was on the other side of the ocean.
They had lunch at a restaurant with a terrace overlooking the Roman theatre ruins, near the edge of the city centre. Oliver Lee, the writer for the book, joined them there. He lived in the countryside to the north.
Lee was in his sixties, tall, rumpled, and stooped, with pale, pouchy eyes, reading glasses on a chain about his neck, and long, not very disciplined silver hair that scattered in various directions and gave him a startled look. Every so often he’d run a hand through it, to mostly negative effect. He wore a jacket and a diagonally striped tie and smoked a pipe. There were ashes on his tie and jacket. It was almost as if he’d been cast as a British author.
He was funny, though, a good storyteller. It seemed like he knew a lot about wine and Provençal food. He also knew the chef, who came hurrying out to greet him with enthusiastic kisses on both cheeks. Lee’s French accent and grammar weren’t good—surprisingly, after thirty years here. He put almost every verb in the present tense. He was rueful about that. Called it Frenglish.
“Stubborn Brits, my generation,” he said. “Still regretting we lost Calais back to the French five hundred years ago, too superior to take the time to learn any language properly. Point of honour, almost, to be ungrammatical.”
“Why move down here, then?” Edward Marriner asked.
He was in a good mood again. The morning had gone well, obviously. He had switched to water after one glass of wine, startling the Englishman, but there was a working afternoon ahead for him.
Oliver Lee gestured towards the gleaming marble of the Roman theatre across the way, pine trees scattered among stones and dark green grass. “Sun and wine, ruins and olive trees. The ancient, all-knowing sea an hour away. And truffles! Have you tasted the truffles here?”
Ned’s father shook his head, laughing.
Lee drained half of his third glass of wine and smiled affably, fiddling with his pipe. “Mostly it was the sun, mind you. Ever lived through a winter in Oxfordshire?”