The Poisoned Crown (44 page)

“Do you believe in God?” Nathan asked carelessly.

“I’m not sure. If He exists, why does He let people make such a mess of things?”

“Free will,” Nathan said. He had studied philosophy—from close up. “Gods shouldn’t rule. They should simply … advise.”

“The Grandir rules,” Hazel said. “He acts like he’s God. We’re less to him than fleas.”

“Fleas bite.” Nathan’s mind was elsewhere.

“How do you bite someone like that?” She lapsed into speculation. “I suppose … In magic, one of the ways you can break the hold of a master wizard is by using his spell-name. The Grandir keeps his name very secret, doesn’t he? Everybody calls him by his title, even what’s-her-face—the sister. You ought to try and find out his name—his true name. Names obviously have a
lot
of power in that world. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so careful about it.”

Nathan returned slowly from thoughts of his mother and Pobjoy. “How could I find out?” he said. “Anyhow, that wasn’t what I came to discuss. About Mum …”

“I was just trying to change the subject,” Hazel said. “Before you get really boring about it.”

“You should talk.”

The conversation ended, predictably, in a quarrel.

athan needs to know the truth,” Bartlemy said. “The Three are recovered, currently hidden at Thornyhill, but no doubt soon he will have to return them to the place from which they came. And then—well, we’ll see. His task may be over—or it may not. However, he must know everything that has a bearing on his position. Without that knowledge, he is defenseless.”

“I was going to tell him on his birthday,” Annie said. “He’ll be sixteen. It seemed—sort of appropriate.”

“Ah yes,” said Bartlemy. “In legends and folktales, it is at sixteen, not eighteen, that you become an adult. It is at sixteen that you prick your finger on a spindle, or slay your first dragon, or go out into the world to seek your fortune. But we live in a different age, an age where, in many respects, our children must grow up fast. Even in fiction, no one waits for sixteen anymore. It is as children that they go through the wardrobe, or seek the Philosopher’s Stone. And Nathan has been killing dragons, metaphorically speaking, for some time now. He needs this knowledge. He is involved in a Great Spell, and what part he may have left to play I do not know—no one in our world knows anything about Great Spells—but there is a time of uncertainty approaching,
perhaps of danger, and Nathan must have
all
the information we can give him, to know enemy from friend. Tell him tonight, before he goes back to school.”

“I’ll try,” Annie said.

“No,” said Bartlemy, with unusual firmness. “In this instance, trying is not enough. You
must
do this. For his sake.”

The previous night, she and Pobjoy had managed an entire date, an uninterrupted evening of movies and pub, when he had laughed at two of her jokes and agreed to read a book of her choice—
“The Wind in the Willows,”
she said. “We’ll start small”—and had kissed her goodbye, a kiss that had taken quite awhile.

“Remember,” she had told him, “you’re not to hold it against Mr. Toad that he’s a criminal on the run. Go into the story with an open mind.”

“I’ll try,” he had said.

Trying isn’t enough
, Annie thought unhappily after she left Bartlemy.
He’s right. Sometimes trying just means I’ll make an effort to show I’m willing, but it doesn’t matter if I fail. I’ve put this off too long …

At home, Nathan was finishing an essay with one eye, so to speak, and watching television with the other.

“We have to talk,” his mother said.

Ominous words at any age. Nathan assumed the expression of someone who was bracing himself for bad news.

“You mean, about—about James,” he said. “Are you going to marry him?”

“Good God, no! I haven’t even …”

“Only I saw you kissing last night, and—”

“Nowadays,” Annie said, “people do quite a bit of kissing without getting married. Society has gone downhill since the Victorians. If I saw you kissing a girl, I wouldn’t expect immediate news of your engagement. I know you don’t like James, but—if you just look at him as a temporary fixture, couldn’t you give him a chance?”

“I’ll try,” Nathan said.

Those words again.

“Oh bugger,” Annie said—she hardly ever used strong language.

“Funny how we always say that when we mean we won’t really try at all.”

“I
will
try, honestly, but—”

“Not you. Me. There’s something I suppose I should have done a long, long time ago, but I kept putting it off, saying to myself:
Not yet, not yet.
And earlier today I told Barty
I’ll try
, but I don’t know that I meant it. And James said it last night, about Mr. Toad, but I’m not sure he meant it, either.”

“Mum,” Nathan said, “you’re rambling.”

“No, I’m not. It just sounds like it.” She stood up. “I have to get something. I won’t be a sec.”

When she came back, he was making tea.

“I thought we needed it,” he said, “if we’ve got heavy stuff to discuss.”

“Yes,” Annie said. “It’s heavy.”

She sat down again, waiting for the tea. When it came she said: “Have you ever … felt the need … for a father?”

Nathan looked startled. Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t this. A lecture on drugs, contraception, safe sex, the meaning of life—but not this.

Were they heading back to Pobjoy again?

“Not really,” he said. “Even though Dad’s dead, I’ve always felt I had someone. You talk about him sometimes, and you loved him so much. And I have Uncle Barty.” He added with a glint of humor: “I’m not short of male role models.”

“This isn’t about role models,” Annie said with a sigh. “Daniel was kind, and good, and I loved him, yes, so very much. I told you we weren’t married—we just didn’t get around to it. My parents were old-fashioned: they disapproved—but they kind of tolerated the situation. And then he died, and you came, and they weren’t so tolerant after all.”

“That was because he was Asian, right?” Nathan said. “They didn’t like you having a mixed-race child. You didn’t exactly say so, but—I always thought that was why we didn’t have anything to do with them.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Annie said. “I suppose I should contact them at some point—they’re getting older now. I call my cousin
every year, just to check they’re all right, but being out of touch gets to be a habit, one it’s hard to break. And going back would be … difficult. Painful. They never understood.” She paused. “But then, I didn’t understand, either.”

“Understand … what?”

“About you. Daniel was in the car crash—the police said he fell asleep at the wheel, but I didn’t believe it. He was always so
careful.
He wouldn’t have driven if he was that tired … Anyway, they took him to the hospital, and I sat by his bed, watching him die.”

“Mum …”

“No. Don’t interrupt—please. I have to tell you. I have to tell you
now.”
Her eyes were like dots in her face—gray dots in the blankness of her pallor—staring and staring into the past. “When he died, I
knew.
I felt him go. I went after him—through the Gate—I didn’t know about such things in those days, but I do now. I loved him so, the Gate opened for me, and I followed him … I went
through
, between the worlds … and when I came back, I was pregnant.”

“Are you … sure?” Nathan asked tentatively. “I mean, you could have been pregnant before …”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I’m sure. I was so glad when I realized—so glad. And when you were born, even though I knew at once things weren’t right, it was the happiest day of my life.”

“What wasn’t right?” It was his turn to stare, baffled by her tone. She talked as if he were a mutant, someone with six fingers on one hand, or thirteen toes, but he was normal—as normal as anything.

Except for the dreams …

“Here,” she said, passing him the item she had fetched from her room. A photograph. A photograph he had never seen before. “That’s Daniel.”

“He looks … nice.” An inadequate word. It was a gentle face but not weak, as honest and true as Annie’s own. But…

“He’s white.”

“Yes,” Annie said. “That was the problem.”

“He’s white
…”

“When they saw you, my parents thought I’d been with someone else. But I hadn’t. There was only that moment when Daniel died … My mind shut it off, sort of sealed it up, for years and years. And after the birth I started to see
Them
—the gnomons—I thought I was going mad. So we went away, and somehow we came here—it was an accident, or so I thought at the time—and Bartlemy took us in, and … you know the rest.”

“He’s not my father.” Nathan was still gazing at the photograph. “Daniel Ward isn’t my father …”

“When you were older,” Annie said, “I tried to remember what had happened when the Gate opened. Love is so strong, stronger than death”—
oh Daniel, Daniel
—“I reached out for him, and Someone was there, waiting for me, in another place, another time. You were conceived—between worlds. Your father …”

“My father comes from another universe,” Nathan said. “That’s why I dream.”

There was a silence that seemed to go on a long time. Nathan had left the television on mute and Annie watched the actors going to and fro, their faces moving in shock, horror, drama—all silent. And in this little room there was Nathan’s face. No shock, no horror, no drama. Only the silence.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” The inevitable question. “Why did you—
lie?”

Annie never lied. She saw herself in his eyes, diminished, degraded, touched with cowardice and deceit. It hurt her more than anything she had ever known.

“I wanted you to be normal.” She was almost pleading. Pleading for him to understand. “I wanted you to have a normal life. Not to be saddled with all this doom-and-destiny stuff…”

“It’s all right.” His voice was curiously empty. “I can deal with it.”

At least, she thought, snatching at crumbs, he’s only seeing this from
his
angle. Not mine. He sees what was done to him—not what was done to me. And she was grateful—so grateful—for the blind self-absorption of youth.

He said: “It’s the Grandir. It must be.
He’s my father …”

He wasn’t looking at her, or he would have recognized the expression on her face. That look of
Nevermore.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s possible.” She didn’t tell him about the witch from the East who had sacrificed her own child. Right now, Annie felt as if
she
were standing there with the knife in her hand …

“I need to go and think,” he said.

It wasn’t late, but it had been dark for hours. She knew where he would go. Up on the roof, to look at the star.

“You can miss school tomorrow,” she said. “We can talk about things …”

“No,” he responded. “Normal boys go to school. You wanted me to be normal, remember?”

He said it without malice, but it stabbed.

He climbed up to the skylight, and Annie sat in the chair, waiting for him to come down, until at last she fell asleep.

U
P ON
the roof, straddling the skylight, Nathan didn’t think. He just sat, his mind as blank as if it had been wiped. The sky was overcast, furred with gloom from horizon to horizon. All other stars were obscured, but
his
star was still visible, below the cloud, a fixed, unwinking light. The casual observer might have assumed it was shining through a gap, or, more accurately, might have labeled it a UFO, but Nathan surmised it was simply lower down. A spy-globe from another universe, watching him like a solitary eye. His father’s eye….

Images came and went in the emptiness of his head. The first time he had seen the Grandir, in his semicircular office—his face, unmasked, touched with concern—the feel of his hand, skin on skin—a bottle of cloudy liquid, glittering with leftover magic—Osskva’s words as he lay dying:
You must save all your seed …

And Osskva’s words at the end, the very end:
We have no youth anymore but he is there … youth our savior, last of our children …