“Huh?” That was about all the argument I was capable of by that point, my head felt increasingly foggy.
“Prove you’re not afraid of her, Liam. Come here. Right now.”
“I’m…supposed…to…wait…here.” My feet were trying to move again, to get me closer to James, but I literally dug in my heels to hold them in place.
“What, like you’re her dog? Wait here, Liam. Good boy, Liam,” James piped in a high-pitched voice. “You don’t have to do what she tells you to do.”
“No. Stay…here.” James’s arguments had changed, I realized. It was like we were five years younger and daring each other, calling each other chicken, trying to get the other to do something stupid. Guys do that. It’s how we show we like each other.
James flickered for a moment, like an image on a computer that couldn’t maintain the frame rate, causing me to blink rapidly at him, and then his arguments changed, too. “You’ll lose that spare bedroom, Liam. You’ll lose the new TV, and you’ll have to share everything with a girl. Including the bathroom, which she’ll fill up with girl stuff. She’ll take everything that’s yours by rights. Just come here now, and we’ll go back to the way things have always been, the way you deserve them to be. You with all your stuff for yourself.”
I faltered again, and one foot took another step, but that made me really mad, because suddenly I was thinking of Kari standing there facing those wolves because she trusted me and here I couldn’t even defend her against some pretty stupid and selfish arguments. My anger hit the fog filling my brain and my thoughts cleared a little. “What’s the matter with you?” I demanded. “You sound just like—”
It hit me then, and I had to stand there staring at him for a moment before I could finish. “You sound just like me.”
Every argument that James had made, everything he had brought up, had been lurking in my own head.
Talk about looking into a mirror and really seeing yourself.
“Hey,” James said, his image flickering again in a funny way. “Why is that bad? Come here so we can talk about it.”
“Without Kari?”
“Right. Come on.”
James was only talking about crossing the stream, but somehow it felt like a lot more than that, like if I crossed the water I’d be leaving Kari for good. Leave Kari, who was counting on me to watch her back, like I had against the wolves, and in the keep, and when we faced off against those elves. Abandon her…like she had been by the elves. I remembered the elves and those cold, disinterested eyes empty of anything I could connect with, and when I looked at James I saw the same thing in his eyes. My brain really cleared, at that point, fear and anger working together to get my neurons firing right again. “Listen. I’m not leaving Kari. End of discussion.” I thought I could hear someone yelling, off in the distance, but I couldn’t turn away from watching James.
James waved his hands. “That’s it. I’ve had it. Me or her, man. You decide. Right now.”
“I already did decide. Who are you? James wouldn’t act like this.”
“You know who I am, Liam.” He flickered a third time, then Tina was standing there instead of James, smiling at me and holding out her hands. “Hey,” she said, “Come here.”
“Tina?” This had gotten really weird, but my brain had become cloudy once more and couldn’t figure out just what was wrong with it. And Tina was smiling at me and beckoning to me, and man did she look good.
“Come here, Liam,” Tina whispered, one hand going to the buttons on her shirt. “Help me get this off.”
“Uh…” I was standing right near the edge of the stream now, my resolve totally crumbling along with my ability to speak coherently. But a tiny part of my brain must have still been working, because I suddenly wondered why Tina would be acting all hot and eager toward me when she wouldn’t even talk to me this morning. I don’t understand much about girls, but that still didn’t make any sense. Trying to understand her changed attitude, I looked into Tina’s eyes…and saw the same emptiness. That brought me back to my senses. I wouldn’t take another step, no matter what.
Whatever it was that looked like Tina held out her hand, reaching for me across the water still separating us. “Come here,” she urged, reaching farther. I stared at her hand, noticing for the first time that it seemed a whole lot thinner than Tina’s hand ought to look. Almost skeletal.
“What are you?” I said, too terrified to move. The yelling behind me was louder, but I still couldn’t understand it, or take my eyes off of the image of Tina before me.
“Last chance, Liam.” But her voice had become thin and weak. The hand kept reaching and kept getting thinner, the bones showing clearly now, but something seemed to be keeping it from crossing the stream between us. I looked at what I had thought was Tina, and before that James, and saw that whatever it was had gotten a lot thinner, too. Just skin stretched over bones, one arm reaching out way too far, grasping for me. Behind her, or him, or it, or whatever, a large hole loomed in the dirt.
“I don’t need a last chance,” I said. “I’m not stupid enough to listen to you.”
The thing seemed to get pulled back into the hole in a flash, then the hole sealed up with a snap, disappearing without a trace, and I was staring around wondering why I felt so cold.
“Liam!” Kari was running full tilt toward me, her drawn sword held in one hand, looking frightened for the first time I could remember. It had been her yelling, I realized. “Brother! Are you all right?”
I stepped back from the stream, shaking my head to try to clear it. “What happened?”
Kari skidded to a halt near me, still anxious as she looked at my face, gasping with relief as she saw that I was okay. “I am so sorry, dearest brother. I saw it, but I was too far away to help you. I should have guessed that a wight might be around here. That is why there were not any birds.”
My brain was getting back to normal, but it took a little bit of time for what she was saying to make sense. “A wight? That was some kind of monster?”
“Could you not tell at the end? They take on the appearance of someone you trust and try to lure you into their hole. Fortunately, that one was on the other side of the stream and could not cross running water to grab you while you were confused by its glamour.”
Kari was gasping for air as she tried to catch her breath after an all-out run. She must have been totally scared for me. I stared at her, then at the place where the hole had been. “How did it know so much?”
“About what?”
“Me. You. The stuff we’ve been doing. It told me all sorts of things about that.”
“Oh.” Kari nodded, then tapped her head with one finger. “It knew nothing. It said nothing.”
“Kari, I was here, you weren’t, and that thing was talking to me! We argued about all kinds of stuff!”
“No! Really! Liam, the wight does not speak at all. It makes you create something in your own head that expresses what you fear or desire. It makes you see the person or creature most likely to convince you to come to the wight. You were not arguing with the wight, you see. You were arguing with yourself.”
Of course. I had already figured that out but hadn’t yet connected the dots. “James” had been bringing up everything I had been worried about, even things I hadn’t admitted to myself I was worried about. I really had been my own worst enemy.
And Tina. Oh, man. It had almost nailed me there.
“Who did you see?” Kari asked.
“James. My best friend. You met him at Hillcrest.” She nodded. “And, uh, I saw…this girl.”
“Oh.” The way that Kari said that made it sound like she knew what that vision might have involved. “Your girlfriend?”
“I don’t really have a girlfriend. At the moment,” I added quickly, as if I just happened to be between girlfriends right now.
Kari smiled reassuringly at me. “It is well that you are so strong, my brother.”
Strong? Me? All I had done was…face up to my fears
and refuse to listen to them. And use my head when my hormones just wanted to get down to business. Hey. Not bad.
But now I looked at Kari and got worried again. “You’re really Kari?”
“Yes, Liam.”
“But you said the wight makes itself look like someone you trust, and…” I didn’t want to come out and say it, but I had to. “I think you’re the person I trust the most now.”
Her face lit up with understanding, but instead of saying anything Kari took a couple of steps to stand in the stream.
“And?” I asked.
“Running water, Liam. It would destroy the wight, cause it to come apart like fat in a fire.”
“It would make the wight dissolve?” That would have been cool to see. Too bad the thing hadn’t leaned a little too far over the water when it tried to get me. I grinned at Kari. “Thanks.”
She walked out of the water and gave me another one of those affectionate shoulder punches. I was going to have one serious bruise there before the day was over. “You are most welcome.” Kari glanced at where the hole had been. “A wight’s hole is cold, with nothing of fire to it, so that cannot be the guardian of the second object we seek. You and I should try to dig the wight out of its hole and destroy it, but that would be too dangerous a task for just the two of us, even had we the time. I will tell the unicorns of the wight and they will see that it is dealt with.” She gave me a worried look and bowed slightly toward me. “I hope that you will forgive me for leaving you alone, dearest brother. If we had only stayed together—”
I slapped my forehead. “Oh, man! I just realized. We broke the ’don’t-go-off-by-yourself rule!’”
Kari stared at me. “The what rule?”
“The ’don’t-go-off-by-yourself rule’,” I explained. “In movies, when there’s a group of people and something scary is after them, they always wander off one by one and when they’re alone the scary thing nails them.”
“Always?” Kari was looking baffled again. “If this always happens, why do the people go off alone?”
“Because they’re, like, not thinking! Just like you and me! I don’t know how many times I’ve watched that happen.”
“Oh.” Kari nodded slowly. “The rule means you should stay together for safety?” I nodded back. “That is a wise rule. How many of your friends have died because they did not heed it?”
“Uh…none. That I know of.”
“But you said that you have seen—”
“Not for real.” I grinned as Kari glowered at me. “Sorry. I’ve just seen a lot of stories that teach lessons like that.” I wondered if Mom would believe me when I said those flicks had taught me something important.
“Oh. Like the lessons the Archimaede gives me?” Kari smiled again, mollified, and reached into the big pockets on the sides of her shirt and pulled out a bunch of small apples. “I found these. I hope they will do.”
“They’re a lot better than nothing. Thanks, again.” I took several of the apples, and we started walking. I was warming up again pretty fast under the bright sun. I looked back once to where the wight had tried to get me. If I hadn’t had enough sense to recognize when my own fears were getting out of hand, I’d be in that hole right now.
Still, there were a couple of things I maybe should be concerned about. “Kari?”
“Yes?”
“Do you keep a lot of stuff in the bathroom?”
She gave me a disbelieving look. “That is a very personal question!”
“It’s my bathroom, too!”
“What does that have to do with it?” Kari demanded.
“I just want to know!”
“It is personal! It is private! I cannot believe that you asked that!”
“Excuse me for living,” I grumbled. Girls.
“Boys,” Kari muttered.
Chapter Seven
A Walk Through the Well of Fire
Kari was still steaming from the Great Bathroom Argument when our path entered another forest, which I guess was free of elves because she didn’t seem especially worried. In her anger, she was setting a pace that I feared would literally be blistering my poor feet. “Kari?”
“What?”
That one word scorched me almost as bad as the ordeal in the mirror, but I had kept going during that and I could keep going now. “Don’t you think it’s a little funny? We must have set some kind of record, a brother and sister on the first day they met arguing over a bathroom we haven’t even started sharing yet. As a matter of fact, we were arguing over sharing a bathroom that isn’t even in the same world as we are.”
Kari frowned, then the storm clouds gradually began to lift from her face and a reluctant smile showed. “I once asked the Archimaede how I would know my brother when I met him,” she said solemnly, “and the Archimaede answered that I would know he was my brother by the way in which we related to each other. I thought perhaps it was only a play on words, but now I think there was another meaning there.”
I laughed. “Yeah. I do, too. I can’t recall ever having a more ridiculous argument over anything.” I looked over at Kari, who had slowed down a little bit. “Did you know about me? Before today I mean? Because I didn’t know about you. I mean, before today I didn’t know I knew about you.”
Kari gave me a wistful glance. “No. White Lady and the Archimaede knew. I don’t know how. But they did not tell me because they knew of no way to reunite me with you. Why torment me with knowledge of a family I could never join? But then the walls between worlds weakened. The Archimaede saw the danger, and the opportunity. With the walls weakened, I could cross them, and I could bring you back to help do what was needed to restore the walls. So you see, I only learned of you a short time before you learned of me.”
“How’d you find me? How’d you know to go to Hillcrest?”
Kari shrugged. “I am not entirely sure. Again, the Archimaede understands. He said I would be drawn to you when I walked through the walls between worlds. Like to like. I walked and thought of you, which I tell you was very hard because I had no idea what you looked like, and when the trees thinned I found myself in front of the grim fortress of Hillcrest. I felt I should walk inside, which I did, and then someone called my name (alas, it was not you, but the evil Lady Meyer) and you know the rest.”
That I did. What had Alice said in Wonderland? Curiouser and curiouser. Or maybe weirder and weirder. I guess those mean the same thing.
Kari bit her lip, looking nervous. “Our honored mother seemed nice.”
“She is,” I admitted. “I mean, for a mom.”
“She…seemed discomforted when she met me.”
“You might say that.” I wasn’t being very helpful, and I could tell that Kari was worried. “She just acted that way because she was a little nervous.”
Kari’s alarm faded into relief. “I see. Is Mother often nervous?”
“No. I think that only happens when Mom has a fourteen-year-old daughter appear out of nowhere.”
“Elsewhere,” Kari corrected. “Then it should not be a problem again, should it?” But she still looked worried.
Something finally clicked in my head. The sister I didn’t have had been born to an elven lady who wanted nothing to do with her. “Mom’s not like that.” Kari turned her head and stared at me. “She’s, well, it’s been sort of a pain lately, but she really cares about me and I know she’ll care about you.”
“Why is that a sort of a pain for you?”
“You know.” I looked at her face and it was obvious she didn’t know. “I’m not a kid anymore. I want to live my own life and be a little more independent, and she wants to keep tabs on me. You know how the eyes of those elves looked? Mom’s eyes will never look like that. They might be mad or happy or whatever, but they always care about me. I know that. And they’ll care about you.”
“Thank you, Liam.” Kari smiled wanly. “I never thought to meet my real mother. How would she regard me? Would she be anything like the elven lady who wanted nothing
to do with me? Would I like her? It is so important, and I know so little.”
“Yeah. I guess that would be scary. But don’t worry. Seriously. Mom’s okay. Just don’t tell her I said that.” How’s that for irony? I’d been the one who wanted to ditch Kari, but she’d never shown any signs of thinking I felt that way. Instead, she was worried about Mom, and if I knew Mom at all, I knew Mom would never toss out a girl like Kari even if Mom doubted she was actually her daughter. But then I hadn’t been rejected at birth by someone who literally couldn’t love me. “Kari, can I ask something personal? You don’t have to answer.”
“I think we have been speaking of personal things already, Liam. What is it?”
“There were people back at that castle. Humans. At least, they looked human. How come the Archimaede didn’t take you to a human mother instead of to the unicorns?”
Kari frowned, but she answered me. “I was one apart. She Who Is Apart. That is another one of my titles, you know, but I do not like to use it.”
Titles. I’d heard them, but I hadn’t quite connected that. My little sister had titles. Go figure.
“She Who was Born to Elven-kind is clear enough,” Kari continued. “Though I share nothing with the elves as you saw. Humans also would have treated me as an outsider. But that was not the only thing. The Archimaede believed that my arrival portended future events in which I would play a role. Being raised by the unicorns would give me skills and knowledge I could never acquire from other humans. Such as the skills to walk between worlds.”
“He knew we’d be doing this someday?”
“No. That is not how it works. He sees probabilities. Different paths which the world may take. From these the Archimaede can judge what may be done to prepare. But he knows whatever he does, even simply examining the paths, will change the paths and probabilities, even if only a little, so every action must be carefully considered.”
“Wow. I’ve heard of something like that. Heisenberg something. Yeah. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.” I couldn’t believe that I remembered that. “The act of measuring changes what is being observed. Or something like that.”