Bedtime Story (33 page)

We both looked at her, equally puzzled.

“There is more here,” she said, “than meets the eye.”

Sarah repeated the process with the pan of water, this time setting it carefully atop the open pages of the book. Nora dropped her crystal into the pan and I watched in silence, waiting. Time slid by as the three of us sat, staring at the words on the page.

“I’m not seeing anything,” I said carefully.

“It’s not just you,” Sarah said. “Mom?”

“Watch.” With what seemed like exaggerated care, Nora flicked the side of the pan.

As the water moved with the impact of her finger, I sucked in my breath: the lines of text, refracted through the water, seemed to waver, and as the black lines shifted, flashes of brilliant purple appeared where they had been hidden by the text. Purple letters, words, sentences.

“It looks …” Nora said, still staring into the water as it gradually stilled, as the purple lines settled back under the black print. “…  like there’s more than one text here. There’s more than one book to your book.”

She tapped the pan with the back of her knuckles. Harder, this time, the water sloshing. Again the moving black lines revealed the purple letters underneath, but this time, with the greater motion of the water, the purple lines also wavered, revealing more purple lines. And more. And a fourth layer. And more.

“By the Goddess,” Sarah whispered.

“How many are there?” I asked.

Nora shrugged and looked at me, her face pale, her eyes dark. “There’s no way to tell.”

In the silence that followed I thought back to my conversation with John, the words I had written, the clues my subconscious had left for me. I hadn’t wanted to say anything before I had heard them out, to be sure they wouldn’t dismiss me as a madman.

Still, it was difficult to finally put my question into words. “If the book
is
a trap, do you think it’s possible that my son’s consciousness, his soul or his essence or whatever you want to call it, has been trapped in this book? That he’s somehow in
there?”
I gestured at the splayed pages. “While his body is in the hospital?” I almost cringed, but there was no other way to express my suspicion. My own words:
While I was reading, I ceased to be little Christopher Knox. I became someone else entirely
. It was the only idea that made sense.

Once I got past the fact that it was insane.

Nora didn’t even hesitate. “Yes. I think that’s exactly what’s happening.”

I was so relieved, I almost wept. If I was crazy, at least I wasn’t alone.

“From what I know of the Brotherhood,” she continued, “it sounds like exactly the sort of thing they would do.”

Sarah looked stunned. She didn’t seem entirely convinced, but clearly had too much respect for her mother’s wisdom to disagree. “And what’s more,” Nora said, reaching toward the pan and rapping it with her knuckles again, so hard that the water almost spilled over the pan’s edges. The black and purple lines swayed wildly. “I think one of these purple lines is your son’s story, the life that he’s living within the book.”

“David,” I whispered.

“If his consciousness, and his soul, are trapped within the book, then his free will is trapped in there as well. There would be no way for the author to control his actions. He’s within the world of the book, but able to react autonomously. Independently. Within its strictures, of course.”

“The ultimate character with a mind of its own,” I muttered.

“And his storyline would have to be present within the book as well as the author’s storyline. Hidden by it, but present nonetheless.”

It all made perfect sense, except for one detail.

“If David’s storyline is one of those purple lines, what are all the other ones?”

My heart sank: in asking the question, I had intuited the answer.

“Other children,” Sarah whispered.

David sipped from the cup of hot wine, trying not to gag, to buy himself time. If his only hope of getting out of this world was to get to the end of the book, it was important that he pretend to be the Dafyd that these people had known. That meant he couldn’t tell Bream and Loren anything about Matt, or the shades in the cave. He couldn’t say anything about the story they were all trapped in: not if he wanted to get safely out of it.

So he limited himself to a chronology of what he had done to get the Sunstone, and to escape from the cave once the water had started pouring in. He broke up the story every so often with sips from his cup. How could his mom and dad drink this stuff?

“And you managed to hold on to that”—Captain Bream pointed at the cylinder—“even as you struggled under the waves?”

David nodded slowly. He didn’t like the way the captain was looking at him. Had he always been this distrusting and Dafyd had just never noticed it?

To his surprise, the captain reached over and patted David heavily on the shoulder. “Nicely done, Dafyd,” he said. “I’ll be sure the Queen learns of your bravery.”

He bent forward and picked up the silver cylinder, looking at it for
a moment before handing it to David. “It seems only right that you should be the one to carry it home.”

David took the cylinder. He touched the stone tentatively, brushing his fingertips across the smooth surface, still half expecting it to shock him.

The Stone and the disk looked much different than they had in the chamber. The Stone seemed small and dull by the light of the sun, flat and unremarkable.

“This doesn’t—” David began, before he could stop himself. Once the words were out of his mouth, all he could do was hope that no one had noticed them.

“What?” Bream asked, looking more closely at the Stone.

David was vaguely aware of the magus rising and walking away.

“I was expecting it to look more important, I guess,” David said, touching it with his fingertip.

The Stone sat at the centre of what looked like a sunburst or star, radiating out in four long points at the top and bottom and sides of the circle, with smaller points between them. Around the rim of the disk was a narrow band of writing that David couldn’t read.

The magus returned holding his book. He sat and thumbed through the pages as David lingered over the strange inscription. The letters seemed distorted somehow. Familiar, but strange.

“It’s mirror writing,” he exclaimed, causing the magus to close his book with a surprised snap.

The captain leaned in close to look.

David pointed at the faint writing. “It’s written backwards,” he said. “You need a mirror to read it.”

Both the magus and the captain slowly lifted their eyes from the Stone to look at David.

Be careful, David
, Matt warned.
In this world—

“I’ve heard stories,” he muttered weakly. The captain held his gaze a moment longer, then looked away.

The magus took both the cylinder and David’s cup of wine. Leaning toward the fire, he held the cylinder face down above the wine, adjusting its position to reflect the firelight into the mouth of the cup.

Once he got the angles right, he peered intently into the glass.

David leaned forward, catching a glimpse of the reflected silver disk, which seemed to float on the dark surface of the liquid.

“This,” the magus said heavily, “is not the Sunstone.”

Something in the air seemed to change whenever Sharon Cahill came down the two floors to the editorial bullpen. A hush would fall, starting with the junior editor closest to the elevator, a palpable stillness of people not just working, but staring deeply at their monitors in an attempt to look like they were
really
working. She wasn’t an imposing presence physically. She always had a warm smile if someone happened to meet her eye, and she’d stop occasionally, inquiring casually after a project, or someone’s family. But as she made her way through the warren of desks, the usual hum of conversation disappeared, and a wave of silence rolled over the room in advance of her like ripples spreading out from a thrown stone.

In his office at the far end, Queen’s
Greatest Hits
playing low from his iPod speakers, Tony Markus was completely unaware of his publisher’s stately approach.

“Dammit,” he muttered. He had spent most of the day trying to amass as much information as possible on Lazarus Took. What he had assumed would be a simple search had turned out to be anything but. Aside from the usual antiquarian value sites (which all seemed to agree that Took’s books were worthless) and a low-budget home page, he hadn’t come up with much of anything. Certainly no mention of a previously unpublished book (which he hadn’t expected to find) or any reference to the dead author’s estate (which he certainly had).

He tried another term in the search field, and came up with no results yet again. “Dammit,” he repeated.

“Stymied?” Sharon asked from the doorway.

He spun to face her so fast he almost tipped his chair. “Sharon,” he said, trying to effect a tone of fond surprise.

She was leaning against the door frame with a casual ease that was entirely at odds with her aura. Tony wondered how long she had been standing there.

“Is that to do with the kids’ book?” she asked, glancing at his monitor.

He nodded. “I’m trying to collate as much information as I can before I present it to the board.”

“And how are things looking for the fifth book?” she asked.

It had been only four or five hours since he had brought her the idea in the first place—he had clearly piqued her interest.

“I’ve got lines in the water,” he said, as vaguely as he could. “I’ve got an intern from Rights trying to dig up any existing contracts we might have had with Lazarus Took. And”—he gestured toward the computer—“I’m trying to get in contact with someone from the estate.”

“And not having much luck with it,” she observed, bemusement on her face.

“I am having a bit of trouble on that front,” he admitted. “There’s not a lot of information out there about it.”

She nodded slowly. “And I suppose you’ve already tried the telephone book? I know it sounds old-fashioned …”

He raised one eyebrow: as if he would overlook something that simple.

She started out of his office.

“Oh,” she said, turning back, treating it like an afterthought. “I spoke to Peter a little while ago, and he’s definitely on board,” she said. “Depending on the book, of course.”

“Of course,” he agreed.

No additional pressure there.

After Sharon had gone, he brought up the national phone directory website and searched “Took” in Oregon.

Less than a second later he had eight results.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Is there any way to break the spell?” I asked, looking at the book, now closed in the centre of the green cloth in the middle of the table.

“I don’t think so,” Nora said apologetically. “Without being able to translate the symbols, it’s impossible to develop a counter-spell—it would be like trying to make an antibody with no idea of what we were trying to cure. Do you see?”

I nodded, suddenly weary. Heartsick.

“And even with a lexicon, and a translation, I’m not sure if I would be able to create the spell.” I must have looked surprised or confused. “This is powerful magic, Mr. Knox. I’m not sure that I have it in me to counter it.”

“But you might be able to?”

“If I had the lexicon, I might be able to do something. Maybe.” She looked down at the book. “But this is dark stuff. And beautiful, in its own way. Lazarus Took spent a lot of time creating this, a lot of effort, a lot of magic.” Her tone was almost admiring.

“What if we destroyed it?” I asked, returning to her earlier, instinctive reaction. “Wouldn’t that release all of the trapped … energies?”

Nora shrugged. “It might. Or it might destroy them, along with the world they’re living in.”

All of the hopes that I had allowed to build in my mind, however guardedly, crashed back to earth.

“Thank you anyway,” Tony Markus said, forcing a smile into his voice. “I’m sorry for taking up your time.”

He hung up the phone and scratched the fourth number off his list. He deeply resented this cold-calling, this spade-work. Surely there had to be a better way.