Her death had extinguished a light inside Oliver’s father. From that time on, he had become more sentinel than parent, grimly watching over his children, but seeming to take little joy in them. Oliver, in particular, had vexed the man. His father had steered him away from fanciful movies and discouraged cartoons. On one birthday, Julianna had given him a magic set. Oliver had played with it for hours, but when he woke in the morning it had vanished. He had ransacked the house searching for it, thinking Friedle or the cleaning woman had put it away, but no one could recall having moved it at all. It had taken Collette to make him see the truth-their father had gotten rid of it.
Later, other items vanished in similar fashion. Neither father nor son would say a word, but the gulf between them widened. His complete set of The Chronicles of Narnia disappeared a week after Christmas, the year he turned fifteen. When his high school English teacher had assigned Charles Dickens’s Hard Times to the class, Oliver had found a distressing echo of his own relationship with his father. The diatribe that opened that book had remained with him all of these years: Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: Nothing else will ever be of any service to them.
Oliver had taken to hiding away in the town library, reading mythology and fantasy and all sorts of other things his father would never have approved of. And whenever he had a part in a play in school, or with the Kitteridge Civic League, his father would never be in attendance. More than once, he had forced his son to quit the drama club, only to relent when teachers intervened on Oliver’s behalf.
And Julianna thought his father had done all of those things to protect him?
“It’s true,” a softer voice said.
Collette had stopped trying to take the wall apart. On tiptoe, she looked at him through the grate.
“She died because of what she was, Oliver. It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Collette said. “Dad was afraid we’d end up dead, too. He feared what we were because he didn’t want to lose us.”
“Funny way of showing it.”
“Do you remember when I gave you Phantastes?”
As painful as the memory was, Oliver laughed softly.
“How could I forget?”
As cold and distant as his father could be, it had given him a certain amount of pleasure to piss the man off. Any kind of emotion revealed that his father was still human, even anger.
Collette had read George MacDonald’s nineteenth-century fairy tale-about a man who slips from the ordinary world into one full of magic and fairy courts, a tale that now resonated powerfully with Oliver-for a college course, and had brought it home for her brother on a break from school. One morning, Oliver had come down to the kitchen to find his father standing by the table, reading the back cover of Phantastes. Oliver had left the book there the night before, forgetting to return it to his room.
His father had glanced up at him, his expression almost bewildered. Anger had flashed in his eyes and he had held the book up and begun to tear pages in half.
“Enough,” he had said. “Haven’t you learned by now? That is enough of this shit. You keep your head in the real world, son, or you’re never going to have much of a life. No more of this dreck in my house. I’m telling you now, and you’d better believe I’ll tell your sister as well. No more.”
Oliver had snapped, then. Years of hurt and rage over things that his father had made vanish bubbled over. He had screamed at the man and called him a dozen vile names. When he ran out of steam, his father dropped the book-in two halves now-onto the table, crossed the room, and grabbed Oliver by the front of his shirt.
“You may not like it, but I’m your father. I’m all you’ve got. You curse and shout all you like, but a father’s supposed to look out for his children, and that’s what I’m doing for you and your sister. If you want to hate me, there’s little I can do about it, and it won’t keep me from doing what I think is best for your future. Take your head out of the clouds. Wake up, Oliver.”
Collette called his name.
Through the grate in his cell door, he stared at her.
“All this stuff about Melisande…it gives that morning a different perspective, don’t you think?” Collette said.
“Maybe it does,” he admitted. Julianna and Collette were right. It would be foolish for him to try to deny it, especially to himself. All his life, he’d nurtured bitterness and resentment toward his father, and loved him in spite of it. Now he knew his father had had reasons they never could have guessed, and that only made both his love and his resentment grow. There must have been a better way for him to protect his children.
“Keep trying the wall,” he said.
Julianna smiled at him. Oliver closed his eyes, fingertips finding the grooves between the stones again.
Night fell. Damia Beck went on foot into the Oldwood. Sprites and pixies flitted up in the branches of trees, giving off glimmers of light like multicolored fireflies. The colors were soft and lovely, a bright bouquet of butterfly wings that danced through the darkness and then disappeared.
Things snorted in the undergrowth, rustling in the tangled branches, but did not emerge. Her hand gripped the pommel of her sword, but it seemed as though the creatures that lived in the Oldwood had been warned away from her.
Dark shapes watched from the branches and from the darkness of the thick wood. Some were low to the ground and misshapen-little goblin things with gleaming eyes-and others were clearly animals, or legends in the skins of beasts. Many of the animals in the Oldwood were not what they seemed. Some were legends, but others would be ancient demigods, wood deities. In a world full of legends, many were little more than names to her, and there must be countless things on this side of the Veil that she had never heard of at all.
But the master of the forest-that legend was quite familiar.
Damia tried to ignore the lurkers in the dark. She had set off at a steady pace, working her way through the woods on a westerly course. At some point, she would meet the one she had summoned, but when? Damia had begun to grow impatient.
“Hello?” she said, into the trees.
Leaves rustled. No path had opened before her, so she forged her own, relying on her instincts to keep on course. An owl cried mournfully above her and she glanced up. Something growled just off to her left.
When she focused once more on the trees in front of her, moving between two tall rowans, she saw a tiny man in a blood-red cap. He had a thin beard and leaned against a tree with his arms crossed, a grim expression on his face.
Damia cocked her head and studied him. “You’re not-” she began to say. Then, fearful of causing offense, she started again. “Are you the master of the forest?”
It was all she could do to keep the disdain and doubt from her voice.
The little man snorted with derisive laughter, shook his head, and turned away, disappearing into the Oldwood.
Frustration growing, Damia continued. For a time the ground trembled with the footfalls of something enormous, and she heard branches snapping loudly in the distance. More owls cried, and she tightened her grip upon her sword.
Back on the road, three-quarters of her battalion awaited. Likely they would be wondering why they were sitting around. Doubt filled Damia. Had Charlie misled her? Was this simply a waste of time? Images filled her mind of a Yucatazcan ambush falling upon her battalion while they waited on the road.
“Damn it,” she whispered.