The Silenced Tale, стр. 20
“I . . . I don’t know. A friendly voice?” Elgar says, feeling small and slightly silly when he realizes he has no way of explaining what, exactly, it is that’s unnerving him. He doesn’t want to admit that it might just be his own imagination working against him.
“No,” Forsyth says kindly. Right. Elgar had written Forsyth Turn to be a regular Sherlock Holmes of the fantasy realm. “Elgar. The truth, please.”
“Were you the only ones who came through?” Elgar blurts.
“I beg pardon, I don’t . . . ah,” Forsyth says, after figuring out which track Elgar’s train of thought is traveling. “I see. Something has happened that makes you question if we were lying to you when we said it was just the three of us.”
“Not lying,” Elgar says hastily. “Just . . . I don’t know. There’s been some freaky stuff happening, and I can’t explain it. There’s the typewriter—”
“Yes.”
“And there was . . . god, now that I’m saying it out loud, it sounds stupid.”
“Tell me, anyway.”
Elgar regales him with the horror of the salad, Linux’s strange reaction to it, the man in black, and the odd behavior of Maddie. He tries not to embellish too much, the way his writerly brain likes; he struggles to just stick to the facts, the way Forsyth prefers.
“Hmm,” Forsyth replies when Elgar has reached the end of the tale. Silence filters down from Canada for a moment, pregnant with thought. Elgar imagines Forsyth with his index finger on his chin, nail pressed into his bottom lip, the way he holds himself when he’s thinking hard. He doesn’t seem to realize it’s a habit, either, and is always confused when Lucy mimics his thinking pose to tease.
“So, am I crazy?”
“I hesitate to say yes . . .” Forsyth says slowly. “But you must understand that we left those who would wish to do you harm powerless, and back in my realm. If there is a plot here, it is an entirely mundane one. And since what you have described to me seems to include the hallmarks of magic—”
“You think it’s all in my head.” Elgar deflates, rubbing down Linux’s back, dejected.
“I did not say that.”
“But you implied it heavily.”
“Elgar—”
“Okay, maybe I am stressed out. And maybe I’m paranoid about my missing typewriter. I’m paranoid that somebody is going to try leaking the scripts, and Shuttleborn is out in like six months. And the marketing is just starting to go into drive, and I’m already bonkers, and I don’t know how I did this when I was younger, except clearly, I was younger, and maybe I’m not sleeping as much as I should be?”
“Perhaps.”
Elgar sighs. “Okay. Thanks for listening, anyway.”
“Both my duty, and my pleasure,” Forsyth says, and then, “Hmm? What’s that sweeting? Hold on a moment, let your da . . . Alis!”
There’s a bit of a thump and shuffle, which sounds like a phone being dropped, and then a sweet, high voice says, “Gar?”
“Hello, darling,” Elgar says, trying to infuse his voice with warmth, disguise his fatigue and worry with false smiles. “How are you today, Alis?”
“Gar Gar, hi-hi!” Alis babbles, sounding natural and bright. She had five teeth when Elgar saw her last, and he can imagine how they look as she grins at the phone. “Frog ’issess ’ook Bev ’ook Dah Bev!”
“Is that so?” Elgar replies.
There’s a click, and her voice goes hollow in the way that means Forsyth turned on the speakerphone. “Yah, yah, yah!”
“Yes, sweeting,” Elgar hears Forsyth correct her. “We absolutely did watch The Princess and the Frog yesterday, but against your firm insistence, your Uncle Bevel did not, in fact, write every story that you enjoy.”
“Yah!” Alis says back, stubborn in her refusal to change the way she says the first word Bevel taught her.
“Oh dear,” Forsyth says with a theatrical sigh. “Such a battle.”
Elgar laughs at his dramatic despair, and it feels good. The laughter dissolves some of the worry, makes him feel lighter, more alert. Linux grumbles and butts Elgar’s chin with his head, disapproving of the way his chuckles bounce the generous stomach on which he’s perched.
“Sounds like she’s getting to be more of a handful.”
“And I am delighted daily,” Forsyth says over more of Alis’s thoughtful, introspective babble.
“Frog ’isses! Rib, rib, iiiib!” Alis calls from beside the phone, and there is a smooching sound. “You, you!” she says next, which is followed by a bigger smooching sound.
“What was that?”
“Apparently, we were both frogs that needed kissing to turn us into princes.”
Elgar snorts, and more of the frustration and fear floats away in the wake of the warmth the sweet, domestic image paints for him. “I can’t imagine you as a prince.”
“Absolutely not,” Forsyth agrees. “I haven’t the ego for it, nor the legs for the stockings. And I am terrible at flattering the stupid.”
“And you’d never—” Elgar begins, but cuts himself off.
“I never?”
Even after a year, Elgar’s reflex is still to say something disparaging about Forsyth not being charming or handsome enough. He snaps his teeth down on the insult just in time. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember that Forsyth is real, and not the man he could make cutting remarks about with Kintyre and Bevel for fun. Elgar has gotten a lot of comic relief at Forsyth’s expense over the last three decades, which leaves him feeling faintly ashamed when he banters with the man now. And he certainly isn’t going to be cruel to his face.
“I was going to say you’d nail the politics, but you’d be too honest with the ambassadors,” Elgar lies. And Forsyth laughs like he knows, anyway, that that wasn’t what Elgar was going to say, which makes Elgar feel about six inches high. “Sorry.”
Elgar can practically hear Forsyth rolling his eyes. It’s a very young gesture for a new father and a Shadow Hand, Elgar