The Silenced Tale, стр. 15
“Up by Beacon Hill Park,” I confess, brain whirling.
The young man nods and types something into his smartphone. “All right, the car will be here in about ten minutes.”
“Allow me to-to—” I try, fumbling for my pocket, and my wallet, but the young man shakes his head and pats my arm, brotherly, reassuring.
“Naw man, on me,” he says. “Just get home safe, okay?”
“I, yes. Thank you,” I mutter. And then the young man is on his way down the street, a gallant knight with an urban swagger.
“Do you want me to wait with you?” the woman by the stroller offers. She’s now standing to the side, just watching as Alis and Pip reassure one another.
Pip peeks up at me over her arm and shakes her head subtly.
“No,” I say, trusting her lead. “But thank you.”
“All right. Be safe,” the woman says, and then she too disappears into the foot traffic of the high street around us.
I place my hand gently on the small of Pip’s back, meaning to reassure, and she gasps and jerks again. I remove it immediately, concern swirling up.
“Pip?” I ask, but say nothing further, giving her space to decide when and how to answer me. What I can see of her face is ashen, pinched, and creased with the aftermath of pain.
“It wasn’t a seizure,” Pip eventually whispers.
“How do you know?” I ask, just as softly.
Pip turns wet eyes to me, and tries to grin, but she can’t. “I . . . I just . . . I just know,” she says with a finality that makes it clear that further prying into that particular topic would not be welcome just now.
“Pip,” I ask. “What are you not telling me? Now you’re having fits on the street alongside your preparations for war?”
“I . . .” Pip says, and then hesitates. I look down at her, and am surprised to see that her face is buried in her scarf, her lashes fanned against her cheeks. “I’ve been . . . I’ve been having dreams.” She says it softly, like a confession, like a fear.
“Dreams of what?” I slide my fingers between hers.
“Indistinct things. At first, I thought it was, you know, memories of . . . of then.”
Ah, things begin to make sense. “Hence the increased sessions with your therapist.”
“Yeah.”
“Yah, yah, yah!” Alis says, clearly determined to be a part of the conversation. Her head is thrown to the side, her little Sheil-purple toque scrunched against the back of the pushchair, her gray eyes watching us with careful intelligence.
“What are the dreams like?”
“Pain,” Pip says bluntly. “At first, the . . . you know, the cutting and the carving, but then the itch and pull of the healing, and now they’re . . . I don’t know. Not tingling. Not scratching. It’s under my skin, and in it, and on it, and . . . I can’t seem to get any relief from it. I wake up and want to go roll in a bath of ice. I work myself to death at the gym so I’m exhausted enough to sleep through it.”
I tug my wife close against my side, careful to keep my arm up on her shoulders, and she presses the side of her face into my coat to hear my heartbeat.
“I have not noticed.”
Pip peers up at me, suspicious. “You never ‘not notice’ anything.”
“What else?” I croak, my joints stiffening with the chill of the cement under us, the breeze around us, and the fear crawling up my spine.
“Green,” Pip says softly. “Green flame, or . . . or acid . . . or maybe . . . magic?”
I suck in a surprised breath, and Alis stills, watching us with fearful, wide eyes, sensing the unsettled feelings that have dropped over her parents like a cloak of morning fog.
“But it’s occurred to me,” Pip presses on. “What if they’re not memories?”
“What else would they be?” I ask, and this time, it is a real question instead of a leading one, because if they are not memories, I do not know what her dreams of blood and pain and green flame might otherwise be.
“Magic doesn’t exist in the Overrealm,” Pip says, but it is like a mantra.
“Correct,” I say. “We tried it all when I first arrived. Every Word in my mind, every spell I know, every rune and potion. Nothing worked.”
Pip twists our joined fingers, fidgeting. “I’ve been thinking . . . what would happen to creatures of magic, though?” she says. “What if, I don’t know, let’s say Capplederry or Bradri came into the Overrealm?”
“’derry!” Alis shouts, looking around her in delight. “’derry!”
The Library Lion does not appear, however, and Alis kicks her feet and howls, angry at us for bringing up her companion if the creature is not here. She shoves her plush lion toy into her mouth defiantly, mulishly. Her glare reminds me of Wyndam’s, dark and betrayed.
“Would they die?” Pip asks. “Would they fall apart, or crumble, or . . . ?”
“Or would they live?”
“Could a creature of magic bring magic to the Overrealm?” Pip asks, voice tremulous.
“Bao bei,” I say softly. “Reader though you may be, I do not think that you qualify as magical.”
“But there is magic carved on my bones.”
“They are just pictures now,” I say. “No more potent than the herb soups my spells become, or the Words that cannot be Spoken here. They are meaningless.”
“Are they? Are you sure?” Pip asks, pleading, folding my hands between hers.
I am not sure. How can I be? It is not as if my Writer knows for sure. He may be the inventor of our systems of magic, but its evolution has clearly outstripped even