He burst in through the falling water, pounced on her like a lion capturing its prey, he cuffed her, boldly laughing. She struggled free and rolled him over and cuffed him good, too, and he let her. Battling and laughing, pushing each other out into the water, they were soon soaked.
“Let up,” he said at last, but she didn’t. “Let up! Listen! They found Amson.”
She stopped battling him. “They got him? He’s in jail?”
“No need.” Pan smiled. “He’s dead. Knife blade through his throat.”
“Oh, my,” she said. “Who did that? Oh, not Debbie?”
“Not Debbie, but they picked her up, she’s in jail. Charlie called Ryan and Clyde, and we came over to tell Pedric and Lucinda.”
“If Debbie’s in jail, what about Tessa?”
“She’s fine,” Pan said. “She’s more than fine, I’ll get to that. On the way over, we stopped by Wilma’s.” Kit imagined the homey scene as they pulled up in front of Wilma’s stone house, Pan and Joe galloping through Wilma’s deep English garden to the carved front door.
COME IN BEFORE the fire,” Wilma said, opening the door, “what can I get you? Coffee? A drink? A snack for you two tomcats?” She bent down to stroke Pan and Joe.
“Nothing,” Ryan said. “We can’t stay.” Joe leaped to the couch beside Dulcie, thinking a small snack wouldn’t take much time, but Ryan said, “We’re on our way to tell Pedric, we thought you two would want to know.”
“What?” Wilma said, pulling back her loose gray hair and tying her plaid robe tighter around her.
“They found Amson,” Clyde said. “Sheriff’s deputies found him out on Valley Road, dead in Debbie’s car, his throat cut. Looks like he was robbed. No other fresh tire tracks on the dirt shoulder, maybe someone traveling on foot, maybe some homeless person. They found grocery sacks in the car full of cashmere sweaters, upscale costume jewelry, new handbags, all with the tags still in place, and all too bulky for a person on foot to carry away.”
“They picked Debbie up at home,” Ryan said. “Her prints match those on the store tags—from four upscale village shops, and even two small pieces from Melanie’s, and their security’s pretty tight.”
“It’ll do Debbie good to cool her heels in jail,” Wilma said. “But what about the children?”
“Emmylou has them,” Ryan said. “We took the girls up to her, helped her fix them some supper. Left both girls tucked up in Emmylou’s bed, Emmylou making up a bed on the couch for herself. Every time Vinnie opened her mouth to sass her, Emmylou scolded her. By the time we left, the kid wasn’t saying a word, she’d crawled into bed and curled up around her pillow, real quiet.”
“They’ll be all right with Emmylou,” Wilma said, smiling. Though what the girls’ future held, no one could say.
It was after the Damens left, that Wilma returned to the computer to read Dulcie’s newest poem, and the lines made her very sad. But one doesn’t choose a poem, the poem chooses the writer. Dulcie couldn’t help that this one left them both filled with a dark mourning, a strange uneasy balance, tonight, to the sadness of Birely’s unfocused life that was now ended, and to their satisfaction that Vic Amson would not torment and hurt anyone else.
A shadow in the somber stillness
Sways serenely.
The river in its roaring race
With the waning, woeful wind
Laughs loudly, luxuriously at the loser.
A mockingbird, moved by the midnight moon,
Trills tender notes
To the shadow standing silently now
Before a ruined barbican and bail
Now dead, decayed
Only the devil left within its fallen ranks.
The shadow sways,
Slumps sadly to the dark and hoary ground.
Nothing left but emptiness.
No bird sings now
No castle stands
Where ran the laughing river.
Dulcie herself didn’t know what to make of the poem. It just happened, a shadow of the lost Netherworld. Wilma put out the fire, stifling the cheery gas logs, and they tucked up in bed, Dulcie stretched out quietly on her own pillow. “What will happen to the children now? The law won’t let Emmylou keep them, an older woman without a husband. And their aunt won’t want them.”
“If the court lets Debbie out on her own recog,” Wilma said, “and then if she gets probation, maybe Emmylou would keep the girls during the day. Debbie will have to get a job, or try to, that will be a condition of her probation.” Stroking Dulcie, Wilma smiled. “Tessa would have a little more love in her life, with Emmylou. And Pan would be there for her, too. Emmylou won’t throw him out.”
“Maybe,” Dulcie said, “if Pan has his little girl back where he can be with her, maybe he won’t long to travel so far away. He knows Tessa needs him.”
“And Kit needs him,” Wilma said. “What’s that sigh about? What are you thinking?”
“Thinking how strange life is. Still thinking about that dark world where Pan wants to go, so different from our world—and thinking about that long-ago time in our world, where Misto once lived, that was so different from today. Two strange and different places,” she said, “but each is only part of something bigger. So many centuries, so many chains of life, and each one unique and different. So much we don’t know,” she said, “and in the end, what’s it all about?”
“It’s about the wonders,” Wilma said. “That’s what it’s about.”
Dulcie looked at her, purring.
“Wonder, and joy,” Wilma said. “No matter where you are in time or place, joy and wonder are what stand between you and the evil of the world. That, and love, are all we have against our own destruction.”
AND AWAY IN the night, in the dark garden, there was wonder, too. Kit and Pan, coming out from beneath the waterfall, sat on a rock away from the mists, licking themselves dry. “Maybe,” Pan said, looking around the garden, “maybe this world is pretty amazing, maybe what Joe Grey says is true.”
“What does he say, that pedantic tomcat?”
“That the greatest adventure of all is right here in our world,” Pan said, twitching the tip of his tail. “That the biggest thrill of all is to outsmart the bad guys right here, not go chasing off somewhere that’s already destroyed and beyond help.” He looked deeply at Kit, his amber eyes gleaming. “Maybe Joe’s right that it’s more fun to work the system right here, take down the bad guys right here. ‘Hold the fort,’ Joe says, ‘and make our own world better.’ ”
“Maybe,” Kit said. “But what if somewhere in the Netherworld, down among those dark caverns, some small portion of those lands did survive undamaged, as Kate thinks might have happened? What if there is some small country there that’s still strong, some hidden village that managed to escape the dark?”
Pan said nothing. They sat thinking about that. Maybe it was the enchantment of the garden that made everything seem so different tonight, that made them come together in their thoughts, that helped the two resolve their conflict. Sitting close together looking around at the garden and down into Pedric’s lighted hospital room watching their human friends, they no longer bristled at each other; they sat thinking about the amazing world around them, and about their roles in it. And when, at last, they returned through the narrow window, their ears were up and they were ready to move on, to trot boldly on into whatever amazements waited, there ahead of them.