Understand the Unknown Read online

  "David Boreanaz," April said.

  "David what?"

  "Angel. You know, from Buffy? He's got his own show now, bad vampire turned good vampire. This merman looks like him.

  From the waist up, I mean."

  "I don't watch much TV. I watch the Bulls and the Bears and Northwestern whenever they have a game on TV."

  "David's too mature to watch TV.” Christopher said.

  "I'm sorry I'm not up on all of April's latest teen crushes." I snapped

  April laughed. "David's a little tense."

  "Yeah. I wonder why," I muttered.

  "So, April, what you're saying is that you like a guy with no hair on his chest? Kind of that girlie-man look?" Christopher went on. "You don't go for someone more, I don't know, virile, manly? Someone like our general here?"

  "No, I like a man with a definite feminine side, Christopher.

  So there's hope for you."

  Christopher brayed a watery laugh.

  I was glad they could joke around. Really was. But I wasn't feeling relaxed myself. How exactly were we supposed to escape from this place? I had no illusions: Our ability to breathe underwater was magic, Neptune's magic. Magic that could be withdrawn at any moment.

  The merman led us to what might have been a typical house of ancient Rome or Pompeii or whatever. I wouldn't know.

  The two of them stood — or floated — by the door and motioned for us to go on in. They took up positions as guards, already looking bored.

  Inside the house we found a small, open center courtyard surrounded on all four sides by columns that helped support a series of small rooms. To go from one room to the next you had to cross the courtyard or move around the inner perimeter. An inconvenience if it rained. Not a problem here.

  The walls were painted with pictures of birds and flowers, fish and coral reefs, surprisingly realistic landscapes and seascapes. Also, pictures of men and women and mermen and mermaids, average people by Neptune's standards.

  In at least one, no, two of these pictures, the mermen and maids were engaged in blatantly erotic activities. The pictures were framed by borders, a sort of interlocking key pattern, and by painted architectural features, like columns, windows opening onto vistas, and moldings.

  One wall panel, though, painted like the others with a deep, strong red, black, a kind of dark yellow, showed what April figured was some kind of ceremony or triumphal procession starring Neptune and his wife. The two gods, wearing what looked a lot like halos around their heads, both naked to the waist, were standing in a chariot drawn through the sea by four large horses. Around them cavorted various types of flat fish, octopuses, and less usual specimens that looked like small aquatic dragons. Flying above Neptune and Amphitrite were two fat little angels with tiny wings holding either end of a billowing piece of fabric so that it formed an arch over them.

  The floors were done in mosaics, small pieces of colored tile arranged to depict everything from bunches of grapes to barking dogs to some conch-blowing god who seemed, from the context, to be Neptune's son.

  What was amazing was the fact that Neptune and Amphitrite and Triton were not idealized images drawn from imagination. They were portraits of the real individuals.

  Other than the rich decoration of walls and floors, with themes from above and below the surface of the sea, the house was empty of all but the essential furnishings, like a few short, narrow beds in a few of the rooms around the courtyard, simple chairs, and a table.

  "A typical ancient Roman dwelling, I'd imagine," Jalil said.

  "Except for the fact that it's underwater. Someone want to explain how you paint underwater? Why are the roofs slanted?

  So the rain will run off? For that matter, why is it light? Does anyone see a sun? And why do I keep asking these questions?"

  "Because you like to remind us how smart you are?"

  Christopher asked with false innocence.

  "Oh, yeah, that's right. That's why," Jalil said.

  "I'm liking our place on Olympus better," Christopher said

  "The staff was a lot more friendly, great room service, and the humidity way less of a problem."

  Underwater. No way to get used to that.

  Breathing water, living in water made me feel powerless, unanchored, sapped of strength, not able to feel my proper weight or place in space. Like when you're in a swimming pool, and you feel suspended, light, like you weigh almost nothing, although that experience can be pleasant, because you're not battling lunatic despot gods.

  This feeling was more like when every underwater motion you make is frustratingly slow and somehow delayed. When watching your own fingers try to pick up a quarter from the bottom of the deep end of the pool you feel a bit like a baby who hasn't gotten down his coordination, who can't quite direct his thumb and forefinger to pick the Cheerio up off the highchair tray on the first try. That experience is never pleasant.

  "Guard!" I yelled.

  One of the merman swam in, eyes flashing, angry at being summoned. Fine. Nice to know he wasn't impervious.

  I said, "We're not fish. Do you think it's possible for us to stay someplace where we can breathe air?"

  "Yeah," Christopher said. "Us being surface-dwellers and all.

  Lungs, no gills."

  The merman's anger was replaced by insolence and contempt. He didn't deign to answer. With a flamboyant flip of his golden tail, he left, the door closing behind him.

  But suddenly... air! Like the merman had thrown a switch.

  April's red hair. Senna's blond hair ceased to float around their heads and stream behind them, and fell to their shoulders.

  Earth-girl hair once again. My shirt, what remained of it, no longer billowed, now lay flat against my chest and stomach. I saw this all more clearly now, vividly, not through a piece of film that rendered everything slightly hazy, softened at the edges, colors dimmed.

  Gravity. I felt the heaviness of my body, solid thigh muscles, feet firmly planted on the ground, skin dry and chapped from elements other than water, from cold air and biting wind and rough rock. This was better. I put my hand on the hilt of my sword. Could actually feel the metal, the rotted leather. Touch had returned, the full spectrum of touch and tangibility.

  Jalil shook his head. "Impossible." He walked to a window, pulled open the shutters. "Unbelievable "

  All around the house, pressing up against the air that filled the house to the invisible physical place where the inside of the house met the outside — water. Not rushing in to swamp the house, just there, seeming to press, threatening to embrace, to overwhelm. Jalil placed his hand against the wall of water, let it ship into the water. It looked like his hand had slipped inside the skin of a giant soap bubble, the kind that kids make by dipping a perforated plastic pan in soapy water and waving it through the air. But the bubble didn't break, still no leak or flood. He withdrew his hand, shook it dry.

  "Okay, that's not too weird. My hand passed right through.

  There's not even a sheath or some other sort of barrier between the air and water. Nothing's holding them apart. That I can see, anyway. Equal and opposite forces..."

  "Of course something's holding them apart." Senna. She stood leaning against the far wall, arms folded. "Neptune is holding his natural atmosphere and ours apart. Neptune is letting us breath in water. Neptune is filling this house with air.

  Magic, Jalil, deal with it. Neptune is granting us life. He decides to withdraw his support, we're dead. Your instinctive defiance isn't really very helpful now."

  Senna laughed and moved away from the wall. "You are all so naive, so stubborn. And so blind. Don't you see the beauty of it all? Are you all completely unmoved by this?"

  "The fishies are very nice," Christopher said.

  April was wringing the water from her hair. "That's not what she means. It's the power that's beautiful to Senna. She's looking at all of this and imagining having this power herself."

  Senna didn't deny it. April was right, of course.<
br />
  "Look," I said, "we might as well try to catch some sleep. If anyone can sleep. We'll try to hook up on the other side. Try to...

  I don't know." I was suddenly just exhausted. "I've got first watch.

  We're the minstrels, right? Guess we'd better be ready to put on a show."

  Jalil touched one of the beds. Felt the thin blanket. "It's dry."

  I let them go to sleep. I stepped out into the courtyard and looked up. The wall of water hung above me. A mile or more of water.

  How do you win a fight when your opponent has only to withdraw the magic that keeps you alive?

  Chapter

  VIII

  "Oh, son of—!"

  I turned the wheel sharply to the right, brought the Buick Beast back into the lane, winced as the guy coming the other way, the guy in the ten-year-old gray Mazda I'd almost hit head on, leaned on his horn, gave me the finger as he passed.

  Okay, I deserved that. CNN: Breaking News. I was in my car, driving along Sheridan Road, minding my own business, whatever that means, when wham, I'm flooded with information from Everworld David.

  All at once, enough craziness to make me swerve into oncoming traffic, almost kill the other driver and myself, which brought up the eternal question: If I died here, in the real world, would Everworld David continue to live? And the other scenario, if I died in Everworld, would there still be a real-world David to drive this monster of a car?

  Merlin, Neptune, a freak storm and shipwreck, April stepping in just in time to keep me from being skewered by a genuinely psychotic Roman god. Having to step in because I'd spoken stupidly, without thinking.

  I slammed the steering wheel with the palms of my hands.

  And then I saw her, suddenly, as if summoned by the sound of my hands hitting the wheel, as if waiting for her cue. Not one hundred percent sure at first, but as the car pulled out of a side road and swung into my lane, about three car-lengths ahead of me, I had no doubt it was her, the maid, the middle-aged lady I'd seen once before, just after another Everworld update. The short, chunky middle-aged lady who'd stood in the rain, ignoring the fact I'd just vomited in her driveway, or her employer's driveway, the black-eyed lady who'd asked me what message I brought. Asked me if the gateway had been opened. Told me to close it. Close it.

  I'd told myself then that she was talking about the actual, physical, wrought iron gate at the foot of the driveway, not about Senna, the gateway between two worlds. I'd told myself the woman was just some superstitious soon-to-be-old lady from Poland or Mexico or someplace less sophisticated than the good old U. S. of A. I'd told myself that and not believed a word of it even for a minute.

  And then, later, I'd mentioned part of that encounter to Jalil. I didn't plan on telling him and afterward wasn't sure I should have. I think I did it because Jalil is smart, his mind keen and focused on provable truths. He has no time for psychic phenomenon or uncertainties or what he would call primitive mumbo jumbo.... Well, he had no time, when we first crossed to Everworld.

  Now, I'm not so sure Jalil hasn't made his own concessions to magic; we all have. But the point is, Jalil didn't seem to find my story all that interesting. I found that comforting. Knew I was telling myself lies but felt comforted all the same. If Jalil didn't think my encounter with the foreign lady was meaningful then it probably wasn't.

  And yet, here she was again. Definitely her, though I wondered what the "maid" was doing driving a black Mercedes S Class with tinted glass.

  Maybe I should find out. Follow her. Not much choice anyway on Sheridan, which is two-lane.

  Some guy in a Jag was crawling up my but , looking to pass. I slowed down. I'd let him pass, let him get between me and the Mercedes. Didn't want to drive on her tail, wanted to seem innocent.

  The Mercedes slowed. Matched my speed. I drew a shaky breath and told myself it was coincidence.

  The Jag punched it and zoomed around both of us.

  I glanced at my watch. Four-thirty in the afternoon. The sky was almost dark now, not quite, and the air had grown appreciably chillier. The top was down on my car and the cotton, button-down shirt I had on was not cutting it as protection against the evening air. Nice. In Everworld I was lucky to get a small piece of unmoldy bread a day to eat and have a rag of clothing to wear over my shivering butt. Here, in the real world, my body cried out for a sweatshirt, a jacket, a sweater, anything to keep my precious self toasty warm.

  The Mercedes was pulling off the road, not an easy or safe thing to do on this narrow road, a road with no real shoulder.

  Why? She must have seen I was following her. I'd gotten too close, been too conspicuous. Had she recognized me? Had she just thought I was some creep and already called the cops on the car's cell phone?

  I passed her, thought I'd better keep going, look innocent.

  But no. This had to happen. I had to know.

  I pulled over, too, forty, maybe fifty yards ahead of her. Cut the engine and sat for a moment, wondering if she'd get out of her car, come to me, or if she'd pull out, engine racing, tires screaming, speed away.

  Nothing. Almost two full minutes of nothing and that's too long to sit and wait. I got out of the car. Checked for traffic coming up my back, and walked slowly back toward the Mercedes. As I got closer, I realized the maid had cut her engine, was just sitting there. As I got closer still, the driver's-side window slowly slid down. My stomach sank and goose bumps rose on my arms. I was close enough now to speak.

  "Ma'am? Is there some trouble with the car? Do you need help?"

  Yeah, that was believable. Nothing weird here, lady. Just a helpful Boy Scout.

  Definitely her. A squat, gray-haired, middle-aged lady in a black, shapeless dress and black baggy sweater. Hardly able to see over the steering wheel. She looked up at me, her dark eyes focused on mine, and I felt I couldn't pull away. Was she for me or against me? Would she enchant me, kill me, or help me? My hand reached of its own accord for a sword that wasn't there.

  She noticed the motion and revealed a faint smile.

  "Have you closed the gateway, David?"

  I shivered, hoped she didn't see that involuntary weakness, that bodily response to the cold evening air, only that, "I don't know what you’re talking about, ma'am," I said, faking a slight, condescending smile, a polite teenager talking to a batty old woman.

  She smiled back, a nonthreatening smile, probably calculated to put me at ease, to make me drop my guard. A strangely young smile.

  "You are wise not to trust, David. Please, follow me to my home. I have much to discuss with you."

  While we'd been talking, only a minute, evening had truly fallen. The sky was now charcoal, the temperature plummeted several degrees. Or had this woman meddled with the passing of time or with my perception of the passing of time? I was nervous, full of misgivings and questions, angry about being nervous. But I would follow her. It was better than living on and knowing nothing, letting this short, fat woman in black scare me.

  "All right," I agreed, looking at her round, suddenly kindly face, now illuminated like a moon in the surrounding darkness.

  "I'll follow."

  I did. I followed, wanting not to, wanting to overtake her car, pass on a two-lane road, dangerous but maybe not as dangerous as following her home. But I followed. After a few minutes, she turned into a long driveway. The gate opened automatically, just a sensor, not magic. Maybe. We approached the house I'd glimpsed last time but not really studied.

  I wasn't surprised to see it was one of the fairly typical old-money, late-nineteenth-century homes that were common along this part of Lake Michigan. A house for a single family but built on a palatial scale to accommodate staff, guests, and, in those days, members of the extended family who came to stay. Elderly grandparents, tubercular sisters, ne'er-do-well cousins.

  There was something dark and a bit forbidding about the house, though that feeling might have been caused or at least exacerbated by the weather and time of day. And by my being just generally creep
ed out. The house was made of stone, limestone, I think, weathered, and looked kind of like it could have been found in England. I counted four levels of windows aboveground, not including minuscule windows in a sort of turret on top.

  Much of the building was covered with clinging, climbing ivy, which added to the sort of dark romance of the place. I could see no lights on above the ground or main floor, and even those seemed dimly lit.

  The Mercedes's brake lights glowed and I pulled up behind her at the top of the driveway. She got out of her car and waited for me at the front door of the massive stone mansion.

  Waited while I put the top up on the Buick. It would be colder going home.

  When I joined her, she turned and inserted a key into the lock. Wordlessly, I followed her inside, where she tossed the key on a small table in the foyer. She's not the maid, I realized.

  We walked past a large, central, swooping staircase, built of some dark, gleaming wood, down a narrow hall floored with marble tile and lined with prints or paintings framed in gold, to the back of the first floor of the house, to the kitchen. It was something out of those home decorating magazines my mother was always leaving open around the house.

  "Let me make you some tea," the woman said as I stood just inside the door, awkward, silent. She motioned toward the table and I walked over, sat in one of the chairs. I noticed the room was warm, not overheated, but cozy. In spite of my nervousness, I noted that.

  "Thanks, but, I don't drink tea," I said, vaguely afraid of being poisoned or charmed or... Caution, suspicion, be wary, David.

  She turned from the stove and smiled. "Well, then, something else hot? You look frozen in that thin shirt."

  I shook my head, embarrassed. Noted now that this old Polish or Mexican woman had no accent. I mean, she'd had an accent, at first, but not anymore, "No, thanks."

  She shrugged, completed making a small pot of tea for herself, slowly, deliberately, then joined me at the table. Took a sip, no milk, no sugar, then put the big white cup down in its sturdy saucer.

  "I am Brigid," she said. Her eyes were on me again, watching, waiting.