Eden Mills Writers' Festival 2011

1
 
 
David’s eyes gleamed as I set the package on the coffee table in front of him. I had wrapped it in the comics pages from last Sunday’s paper, the way my mother used to wrap all my birthday presents.
 
“I wonder what this could be,” he said, bouncing the package in his hand, teasing me.
 
“Only one way to find out.”
 
Jacqui was clearing the far end of the table, stacking the cake plates, crushing the torn wrapping paper into a Thrifty Foods bag.
 
“It feels like a book,” he said, running his fingers around the edges of the package.
 
“From your father?” Jacqui asked. “How odd.”
 
David giggled as he tore at the paper. He looked up at me when he saw the leather cover and a corner of a faded, silver-embossed seal, and I smiled. He pulled the rest of the paper off with a flourish, no longer able to bear the excitement.
 
Then his face fell.
 
“Oh,” he said, turning the book over in his hands. “To the Four Directions,” he read, furrowing his brow. “By Lazarus Took.”
 
I forced myself to keep smiling. Jacqui shook her head and plucked the comics in which I’d wrapped the book to tuck them away.
 
“He’s a good writer,” I said, leaning toward him. “I haven’t read this one, but I used to read his books when I was your age.”
 
He looked down at the book, then back at me.
 
“You’ll like it,” I said, hopefully. “There’s a quest, and—”
 
“Is it as good as Lord of the Rings?” He ran his fingers over the silver seal on the cover.
 
“It’s—it’s different.”
 
“Oh.”
 
I probably should have expected this reaction. I probably should have bought him a copy of The Lord of the Rings, like he wanted.
 
“What do you say to your dad?” Jacqui prompted.
 
“Thanks, Dad,” he said weakly, coming over for an obligatory hug.
 
“You’re welcome,” I whispered into his hair.
 
“And this one’s from me,” Jaqui said, placing the last box on the table.
 
Separate gifts for David. Something else I’d never expected.
 
Under the bright paper was the box from David’s latest pair of sneakers. She had taped the edges of the lid down, and David grinned as he tore at them. There was nothing forced about his reaction as he worked the box open.
 
“A new glove,” he practically shouted. “Thanks, Mom!” He almost knocked her over with his hug.
 
“You’re welcome,” she said breathlessly, ruffling his hair. “I got some oil as well. It’ll need to be broken in.”
 
He looked at the glove, studying every stitch and seam. “Rob Sterling says that if you put a ball in it and put it under your mattress it helps.”
 
“Sounds like that would make it pretty hard to sleep,” I said, as lightly as I could.
 
They both ignored me.
 
“You can do that,” Jacqui said. “We’ll look up some other ideas on the computer.”
 
“Cool,” David said, before spontaneously throwing his arms around her again. “I love you, Mom.”
 
“I love you too, Davy,” she said, looking at me over his shoulder.
 
“Can we go out and have a catch?” he asked her, bouncing on the couch.
 
“Sure we can,” Jacqui said without hesitation. “Just a quick one, though. You don’t want to be late for your game.” He was already wearing his jersey.
 
David bounced to his feet and started toward the front door. He stopped partway and looked back at me.
 
“Do you want to come too, Dad?”
 
Both of them waited for my response.
 
“Not right now,” I said, feeling a little raw from his disappointment. “I’m gonna finish cleaning up in here. Maybe later, though.”
 
He didn’t look surprised, or particularly disappointed. Clearly he’d expected that answer.
 
Minutes later, listening to the sound of leather on leather through the front windows, I crumpled the last of the wrapping paper into the plastic bag and took it and the stack of plates into the kitchen. When I came back, I picked up the book, riffled through the pages.
 
Seeing it through Davy’s eyes, it really didn’t look like much: just a novel, no movie or videogame connection, nothing he could talk about at school. And it was used, at that: someone had written their name on the inside of the front cover.
 
Not much of a present for an eleventh birthday.
 
I turned the book over in my hands.
 
It was a thick hardcover, bound in brown leather, with a ding in the upper right corner, where it looked like someone had dropped it. The round symbol on the front cover was faded silver, with a band of strange lettering, almost Arabic-looking, circling a star in its middle. Within the star was another circle, which looked like it had been red at one time, but the colour had faded, leaving just a rusty mark against the brown leather.
 
The symbol also appeared, in miniature, on the spine of the book, separating the title from the author’s name.
 
To the Four Directions.
 
Lazarus Took.
 
I had found the book at Prospero’s on my way for my weekly lunch with Dale the week before. I had had to look twice at the spine when I first saw it: I had never seen a Lazarus Took hardcover before. The four books I had read had all been paperbacks: this was something new. Well, not new—the copyright page read: Alexander Press, 1951.
 
Turning to the first chapter, I couldn’t help myself: with the first sentence it was like I was eleven years old again, reading in the apple tree or the hayloft at my grandparents’ place in Henderson.
__
 
TO THE FOUR DIRECTIONS
 
 
“I’ll get a beating if I am late to the stables,” Tamas complained. But that didn’t stop him from following Matthias through the winding alley in the dark.
 
“You worry too much, Tamas,” Matthias said. “You have time for a little food. The stable-master will be asleep for hours yet. Besides,” he said, hopping over the short wall into the back garden of The Mermaid. “I would be more worried about my mother.” Matthias flashed his best friend a sly grin.
 
“Oh, I am,” Tamas muttered, heaving himself over the wall. He almost fell on a stack of discarded bottles.
 
“Shush. We don’t want to wake—”
 
The water hit Matthias in the face as the back door swung open, soaking him from head to foot.
 
“What—?” he sputtered.
 
“Oh, I am sorry,” Mareigh, said, smiling sweetly. “I thought you must be a thief. No respectable person would be stealing through the yard at this hour of the night.” She passed the bucket to Arian.
 
Matthias tried not to stare at the serving girl.
 
“And you, Tamas, what are you looking at?” Mareigh demanded, glaring past her sopping son, hands on her hips. “Does your mother know where you are?”
 
“She knows I am with Matthias.”
 
“Sad thing for a mother to give up on her son like that.” She stepped back from the door. “Well, come on,” she said. “You’re better off inside. Someone has come looking for you.”
 
Matthias glanced at Arian, but she was already busying herself at the stove. He sat down at his usual spot at the table, Tamas across from him.
 
“So, would either of you know why I had Zekariah and Jarrett and their friends pounding at the door an hour after closing?”
 
Matthias hid his hands, with their scraped knuckles, on his lap.
 
“He said he was looking for you, son of mine,” she said. “And he seemed to have fewer teeth than when he was gracing us with his custom earlier.”
 
He tried not to look at Tamas, not wanting to give anything away, but his mother noticed something in his expression. “What did you do?” she asked, sounding defeated.
 
“Nothing,” he said. As Arian leaned past him to set cups on the table he became almost dizzy from her closeness, the sweet smell of her.
 
His mother brought her hand down on the table with a hard smack. “This is not funny,” she said. “If there are people looking for you in the middle of the night, I should at least know why.” She turned to his friend. “Tamas?”
 
Matthias almost groaned.
 
“There was a fight,” Tamas said quickly.
 
“And I suppose they had it coming.”
 
Tamas risked a nervous glance at Matthias, and Mareigh caught the look.
 
“Matthias,” she said, her voice dropping sternly.
 
“He did have it coming,” Matthias said weakly.
 
Arian had stopped her work, holding a cloth in one hand as she listened, ready to spring into movement should his mother happen to look her way.
 
“These are customers,” she said, not waiting for him to explain. “They put the bread on our table, and a little coin in our pockets.”
 
He looked at Arian again. His mother always claimed poverty, but one as poor as she claimed to be didn’t have a servant like Arian to jump at her every command, to keep the bar and the taps in the tavern shining. And she was the only woman to own one of the taverns on the island, close to the castle, safe behind the walls.
 
She sighed heavily. “You know what you need to do.”
 
“I won’t,” he said.
 
“You will,” his mother stressed, in the voice that had settled hundreds of tavern fights. “You’re fifteen years old—when are you going to learn there are consequences to your actions? You will give them a few hours to sleep off the worst of it and then you will apologize.”
 
“I will not,” he said, pushing back from the table. “They had no right—”
 
“Matthias, they are our livelihood.”
 
“And that gets them as much ale as they can buy. It doesn’t give them the right—”
 
Again his mother turned to Tamas. “What did they do?”
 
Tamas sank on the bench. “You know how they get when they are in their cups. Joking and bragging.” He glanced at Arian, who was making a good show of wiping the counter. “They started in on Arian. Saying she would make a good wife. Someone to come home to. And then Jarrett said that there was no reason to marry her, when you could just pay her by the hour.”
 
As Tamas spoke, Matthias watched Arian, the long, slow stretches of her arm with the cloth, the way the raven hair that escaped from her kerchief fell over one eye.
 
He and Tamas had been drinking at a table close by, had heard every word the fat drunkard had said about Arian, every piggish laugh that his friend had given in response. Arian had kept her head down, her eyes averted, but he had seen the scarlet on her cheeks.
 
He had almost come to his feet when Jarrett’s clumsy paw circled her waist and tried to pull her close. But Arian moved lightly away, made off to the kitchen, to safety.
 
Both men laughed, and Jarrett said, “It’s more fun when you have to chase them a little.”
 
That decided it for Matthias. He slapped Tamas’s arm as the two drunks left. Tamas did not even try to argue—he had seen that look in Matthias’s eyes before, and he followed his friend out the door.
 
They trailed behind Zekariah and Jarrett for a while, putting some distance between them and the tavern. They each picked up a good-size chunk of wood from in front of the butcher’s shop, and when the two men staggered into the noxious alley behind, Matthias simply nodded at Tamas.
 
The drunks were leaning into the alley wall, looks of hard concentration on their faces as they pissed, trying to keep their balance.
 
“So,” Matthias said, and both men started. “You think it’s funny to mock a bar girl, do you?”
 
With a glance between them, Zekariah and Jarrett straightened up, fumbled with their belts, and pulled themselves to their full height. “And what are you, then? Her prince come to her rescue?”
 
Jarrett laughed. “Looks more like the bastard cur of that tavern wench, come for a beating.”
 
His laugh faded when he saw the wood in the boys’ hands.
 
The fight was quick and dirty, and left the two men in sodden heaps in the muck of the alley.
 
“Is that true?” his mother’s question jarred Matthias out of his reverie, but she wasn’t talking to him. She had turned to confront Arian.
 
The girl paused a moment, not able to meet the older woman’s gaze. Finally, she nodded.
 
“You should have told me,” she said, in a voice as close to understanding as Matthias could ever recall hearing. “I would have taken a round or two out of them myself. You need never tolerate that, do you understand?”
 
Arian kept her eyes on the ground, looking more uncomfortable with the sympathy than she would have been with Mareigh’s temper.
 
Tamas sighed and deflated a little, obviously relieved.
 
Matthias, though, knew that it was not yet over.
 
“And as for you,” his mother said, rounding on him. “What business is it of yours if some customers have a little fun at the expense of the help?”
 
“She was—”
 
“That is her business. And mine. It has nothing to do with you.”
 
She took a long look at his face, and he willed himself to be stony, to give nothing away. But she had seen something. And she did not like what she saw.
 
“Unless—”
 
A furious pounding at the front door seemed to shake the whole tavern.
 
“Open in the name of the King.”
 
“Matthias,” Mareigh whispered hoarsely, turning toward the front room.
 
“Mother, I didn’t . . .”
 
She shook her head. “I’ve told you your temper was going to be the end of you.” She looked at the serving girl, who shrank under her gaze, and back at Matthias. “You’ve brought this down on all of us.”
 
He could barely breathe.
 
Mareigh tied on a fresh apron. “I’ll get the door, and pretend that I don’t know exactly why they’re here. You two”—she looked at Matthias and Tamas—“take the back door. Don’t go home,” she said sternly to Tamas. “They’ll be looking for you as well. Find a place, maybe on the shore, to wait this out.”
 
Matthias was stunned; the idea of running from the King’s Men had not occurred to him, and now to have his mother suggest it . . .
 
“Go,” she snapped, pushing her way through the swinging door into the tavern.
 
He didn’t move. What was she doing? She had worked so hard to build this place, and now she was suggesting that he run. It could ruin her. If anyone even suspected that she had helped in his escape, the Royal Fiat that allowed her to run the tavern on the island, inside the walls, would disappear like a night of drink. How could he have been so stupid?
 
But then he looked upon Arian, and he realized that he’d really had no choice. He would do it all again, and damn the consequences.
 
Her eyes were wide and dark, shining against her ivory skin. She was looking at him as if she was about to cry.
 
Tamas tugged at his sleeve. “Matthias, come on,” he whispered frantically.
 
He could hear his mother shouting, “All right, all right, give a poor woman a chance . . .”
 
Matthias wanted to go to Arian, to say something to comfort her, but there was no time.
 
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
 
They ran out the back door and retraced their steps, again not bothering with the gate. It seemed like hours since they had tumbled over the stone wall. This time they pushed themselves over it—
 
—and into a small group of King’s Men, facing them in an orderly row.
 
Waiting for them.
 
The captain of the King’s Men stepped forward. “I command you halt, in the name of the King.”
 
The soldiers lowered their halberks toward the boys, backing them against the wall with the gleaming metal blades, then herded them into the tavern kitchen.
 
Mareigh was already sitting down, her hands on the table in front of her. Arian was sitting beside her; she bit her lip as Matthias walked through the door.
 
More of the King’s Men stood surrounding the table, their halberks at their sides.
 
When Mareigh saw her son, her face fell.
 
They had caught him anyway.
 
“Matthias,” the captain said, grasping the boy’s sleeve. “Take a chair.”
 
Matthias shook off the captain’s grip, then stumbled as the captain pushed him onto the bench across from his mother. How did the captain know his name?
 
The captain turned to Tamas. “You, boy.” Tamas wilted under his gaze. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the stables?”
 
Tamas looked blank at the question, then nodded.
 
“Then I suggest you hie yourself over there and not give the master further cause for a whipping.”
 
Tamas barely hesitated. Matthias watched his friend race out the back door—it was only right. Following the men from the tavern, the beating in the alley—it had all been Matthias’s fight. It was better that Tamas avoid the consequences.
 
And given the number of King’s Men gathered in the kitchen, the consequences would be dire indeed. He tried not to think of the stories he had heard of the dungeons, buried deep within the castle. The stories of men who went in and never came out.
 
The captain stepped to the head of the table, and with both hands lifted the bronze helmet from his head. His hair was long, damp with sweat. He had bright blue eyes and a short, well-trimmed beard.
 
He set the helmet carefully on the table, and nodded toward Matthias’s mother.
 
“Good morning, Mistress Mareigh,” he said.
 
“And to you, Captain Bream.” Matthias’s mother met the captain’s gaze and held it.
 
Matthias looked between them: his mother knew this soldier? Matthias had seen him in the street on occasion, but he wasn’t one of the soldiers who frequented The Mermaid’s Rest.
 
Arian shuddered next to him, close enough to touch.
 
“I trust you are well,” the captain said.
 
Mareigh looked pointedly at the men ringing the kitchen. “I’ve had better mornings.”
 
Matthias flinched at his mother’s tone. He expected the captain to lash out at her, with either words or, more likely, his hands.
 
Instead, he looked at the guards. “Gentlemen,” he said.
 
At the single word, the men broke rank and filed out through the swinging door.
 
“They’ll wait in the tavern,” he said. “Out of sight. I am aware that the sudden appearance of the King’s Men can be bad for business.”
 
Mareigh nodded. “I appreciate that.”
 
“We’re here about your son,” he said, turning to look at Matthias.
 
Matthias pushed back from the table, starting to rise to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t . . .” He glanced at Arian, then back at his mother. “My mother, she told me to wait here while she answered the door, but I was scared so I ran.”
 
The captain listened to him, his face set in a dark scowl that broke, surprisingly, into a smile. “What are you talking about, boy?”
 
The question stopped him. “About what happened this morning.”
 
The captain took a satchel from one of the men. He tossed the bag as if it weighed nothing, but it landed on the table in front of Matthias with a heavy smack.
 
“About Zekariah and Jarrett.”
 
“That is none of my concern. There are clothes in there. Boots. You’ll need to clean up.”
 
Matthias glanced at his mother; she seemed as puzzled as he.
 
“Clean up,” the captain repeated. “The Queen has summoned you.”
 
__
 
The sound of the door slamming brought me back to myself. Davy’s footsteps were already fading into the house, up the stairs toward his room. Jacqui was standing in the doorway, her keys in her hand, her purse under her arm.
 
“You’re not coming to his game?”
 
It wasn’t really a question, and I didn’t answer. I just closed the book slowly.
 
She shook her head. “You should have bought him The Lord of the Rings.”
 
She walked away before I could say anything.
 
__
 
Mareigh swept aside the heavy curtain and stepped into Matthias’s sleeping room without warning. He hurriedly finished pulling the new shirt over his head.
 
“I’m worried for you,” she whispered, so as not to be overheard by the guard at the foot of the narrow staircase.
 
Matthias was scared too, more than he would let his mother see. His insides had turned to water when the captain delivered his summons, and the feeling was only getting worse.
 
“You know the captain?” he asked.
 
“Captain Bream,” she said. “He served with your father.”
 
“But . . .”
 
She squeezed his arm so tightly it hurt. “Stop,” she said firmly. “We don’t have much time.”
 
He pulled his arm away from her and took a step back. His legs pressed against his low bed.
 
She moved closer to him. “You have to be careful,” she whispered. “The Queen . . .” She shook her head as if she had decided something. “She gets what she wants.”
 
Of course she gets what she wants, she’s the Queen. He didn’t dare say so; his mother’s face was white and taut.
 
“I’ll be all right,” he whispered, though he feared the words were a lie.
 
He hugged his mother close, holding her tight until Captain Bream called for him from the tavern below.
 
“Be careful,” she said, as he started down the stairs.
 
The captain looked at him appraisingly as he descended. “That will have to do, I suppose.”
 
Matthias had hoped to see Arian one last time, but the captain led him directly into the street, where the King’s Men formed a tight circle around him. There was nowhere for him to turn, no way for him to run, and he fell into step with them as they led him away, up the sharp rise of the island, toward the castle.
 
__
 
“Are your teeth brushed?” I asked, up to my elbows in soapy water. “Nolan fed?”
 
“Yup.” He was already in his pyjamas, and his face was red and shiny from a recent encounter with a washcloth.
 
“Okay. I’ll be up in a sec.”
 
I finished the dishes and opened a bottle of red wine, leaving it on the counter to breathe as I went upstairs to read David his story.
 
Jacqui and I passed on the stairs: she was coming down after kissing David good-night. I tried smiling at her, but her face displayed the same stony rigour she had maintained since dinner.
 
I tried to put it out of my mind before I got to David’s room.
 
Davy’s bedtime was my favourite part of the day, and we had stumbled into it by accident. When Jacqui had gone back to work at the ER after her maternity leave, we had talked about the importance of consistency and routine. Knowing how crazy her schedule was going to be—shifts all over the map, on-call so often—we had decided that it would be best if bedtime were my domain.
 
It worked for me, too. I was at home, busy with the new book, and finding routine was essential for both my writing and my sanity.
 
At first it had been easy. Babies don’t need much of a bedtime routine. As Davy got older it became more involved: fights about tooth-brushing, constant negotiations for extra time, arguments about TV shows.
 
That was before we discovered reading together.
 
Standing in front of the bookshelves beside his door, my back to him, I asked, “So, what shall we read tonight?”
 
“Daaaad,” he said, drawing out his exasperation. Playing along.
 
“All right . . .” I slid the hardcover of The Hobbit off the shelf and carried it over to the chair beside the head of his bed.
 
He was already nestled under the covers. Nolan the hamster was running merrily in his wheel.
 
The bookmark was leather, rough-cut and almost rectangular, with faded, painted letters, some of them backwards, that read, “To the best Dad in the world.” He had made it for me for Father’s Day when he was six, and we used it in all of the books we read together.
 
“We’re getting pretty near the end of this,” I said. “We’ll have to figure out what to read next.” I didn’t want to be the one to suggest the book that I had given him, still sitting on the coffee table in the living room.
 
“The Lord of the Rings?” he asked. Again.
 
We had watched part of The Fellowship of the Ring on DVD, the parts before it got too violent and gory, and he had been wanting to read the book ever since.
 
“We’ll see,” I said measuredly. “Those are some pretty meaty books, so we might want to wait for a bit.”
 
He pouted deliberately.
 
“There are plenty of good books out there.” Not hinting. Not really.
 
David had always been a reluctant reader, only doing his Language Arts homework under duress. We learned why when he was eight and his teacher sent him for some testing: dyslexia. Reading was a struggle for him, and since then we had done everything we could to make it easier.
 
But our nightly ritual wasn’t about work, or learning, it was all about pleasure.
 
“Dad,” he said tentatively, before I could start. “None of my friends get a bedtime story every night.”
 
“No?”
 
“Darren Kenneally says stories are for babies.”
 
“Do you think he’s right?”
 
He shook his head.
 
“Good. Because I know for a fact that he’s wrong.”
 
“Because you write stories. For grown-ups.”
 
I smiled. “Right. And you know what? Darren Kenneally doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
 
His face brightened.
 
After that he was quiet for so long that I was about to start reading when he said, “Dad?”
 
“Yeah?”
 
“When am I going to be too old for you to read to me?”
 
The thought brought a thickness to my chest. “Someday. That’s up to you.” Hoping silently that day would be a long time coming.
 
He watched me carefully for the first few minutes I was reading. Every time I looked up our eyes would meet, and he would grin a little and press himself deeper into the pillow. After a while he turned onto his back, folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. His breathing slowed.
 
He never fell asleep when I was reading, but he always closed his eyes. Once when I asked him why, he explained, “When I close my eyes I can see what you’re reading. It’s like a movie inside my head.”
 
Although it took more than an hour, we finished The Hobbit that night; there wasn’t really a good place to stop in the last few chapters.
 
I was slipping the book back into the space on the shelf by the door when he said, “Lord of the Rings next?”
 
I turned back to him, setting the bookmark on the edge of the shelf. “Maybe,” I said, trying not to sound hurt. “We’ll have to see.”
 
He snuggled more deeply under the covers. “Okay.”
 
“Time for sleep now, though.”
 
“Yeah.”
 
“Sweet dreams,” I said as I stepped into the hallway. “Happy birthday.”
 
I left the door open a foot or so, the way he liked it.
__
 
The soldiers marched Matthias quickly toward the castle, their boots echoing off the cobbles and the stone walls. Few people were out so soon after sunrise, but those who were gave the men wide berth, stepping into gutters or doorways to let them pass.
 
He gasped when they rounded the corner and the castle came into view.
 
The castle gates were closed.
 
For as long as he could remember, the gates had stood open, guarded, but swung wide onto the broad castle boulevard, the gardens within, and the towers that always seemed to shine against the blue sky. People would come and go freely. But this morning the entrance was blocked with towering wooden doors braced with iron.
 
Matthias stumbled slightly when Captain Bream stopped at a narrow iron door cut into a shallow recess in the castle wall, a short distance from the gates. The captain tapped three times on the door, and an eye-slit opened. The eyes behind the door surveyed them carefully, and after a moment a tumbler chunked into place and the door opened.
 
Matthias peered into the narrow opening, expecting to see the castle grounds on the other side of the wall. Instead, there was a dim tunnel, lit with torches, sloping into the depths of the castle. Armed guards stood inside.
 
“Come on,” the captain said, directing him through the door.
 
Matthias’s heart jumped into his throat as he stared ahead, his mind filled with his worst imaginings of the castle dungeons.
 
The captain dismissed his men, and they swung the heavy iron door shut as they left. The captain took a torch from one of the guards and started down the hallway.
 
Matthias followed silently, the torchlight wavering on the walls. The tunnel angled downward for a while, the walls growing damper, the air thick. Men stood guard at the openings of other tunnels, and they straightened as the captain passed.
 
Then the tunnel began to climb. In time, the air became fresher, cooler. The walls and the floor dried. Matthias had lost track of how long they had been walking when they came to a sudden stop at a dark archway, covered by what seemed to be a heavy curtain.
 
The captain pushed his torch into a bracket on the wall, then led Matthias through a barely noticeable seam in the middle of the curtain.
 
No, not a curtain, Matthias realized as he passed through it: a tapestry.
 
He found himself in a wide corridor, flanked on one side by a row of tapestries down the length of the stone wall through which he had just passed, and on the other by a series of high windows. A breeze blew cool from outside.
 
Matthias stopped in the middle of the corridor. The captain turned to him. His face was hard, and his mouth opened to speak, but he stopped himself.
 
Matthias was overwhelmed, and confused. To go from the backroom of the tavern to the heights of the castle . . .
 
He looked first at the wall.
 
The tapestries were all about the kingdom. He was standing in front of a weaving of his home: the island at the mouth of the Col River with the walled lower city rising toward the castle, and on the shore, Colcott Town. The next tapestry over was a battle scene, soldiers fighting, and falling, the Sunstone crest bright on their standards. One soldier was rising from his mount, driving his sword deep into the chest of a Berok warrior, the blade piercing the bearskins the savages wore instead of armour.
 
He took several steps toward the windows and looked down, first, on the castle and its gardens, then, beyond the castle wall, on the narrow streets of the lower city winding down to the protective wall at the shoreline. From this direction there was nothing but the sea beyond the outer wall; if the corridor had been on the other side of the castle, he knew, he would have been able to see Colcott Town on the shore.
 
“It is difficult to tell how far you’ve walked in the tunnels,” the captain said. He looked toward the windows. “Or how high you’ve climbed. Only the royal chambers and the battlements are above us now.”
 
The royal chambers? Matthias glanced down the hallway at the huge double doors, the pair of guards standing in front of them. His heart thrummed in his chest.
 
“The Queen’s receiving rooms. Come.”
 
The guards pushed the doors open as they approached.
 
Inside, the heady smell of spices and flowers and perfumes filled the bright, sunlit air. Without warning, the captain fell to one knee, bowing his head so it almost rested on his other knee.
 
“My Lady,” he said.
 
Not having any idea what else to do, Matthias copied the soldier. He didn’t dare look up. His stomach lurched, and he trembled with fear.
 
“Rise.” The voice, rich and melodious, had come from the far end of the room.
 
Matthias waited until Captain Bream started to his feet before he stood up. He kept his eyes fixed to the floor, knowing better than to look on the Queen unbidden.
 
“Come,” said the voice, and Matthias followed Captain Bream forward.
 
He glanced about surreptitiously, curious about his surroundings. The room was large, but seemed cozy, with tapestries on the walls, low couchettes in the corner, carpets over much of the floor.
 
“Matthias.”
 
He couldn’t help but look up.
 
The Queen was the most beautiful woman Matthias had ever seen, with long dark hair and pale skin that seemed to shine in the light. She reclined on a low divan on a raised stone platform, a small bowl of dried fruit and a goblet close to hand.
 
“Y-yes, Your Majesty,” Matthias choked.
 
“Has Captain Bream told you why we bid you come?”
 
He shook his head, conscious of every motion. “No, Your Majesty.”
 
He tried to look away as she stood up. Her blue-grey gown trailed behind her as she stepped down carefully from the platform.
 
“You’re here because we need you, Matthias,” she said, close enough that he could smell the sweetness of her breath.
 
He almost jumped when she reached out and took his hand, holding it warmly between her own.
 
“The kingdom needs you.”
__
 
When I got down to the kitchen, I poured Jacqui and me each a glass of wine. As I carried the glasses and the bottle into the living room, I pictured myself passing the glass to Jacqui, reminding her of what we had been doing eleven years ago right now, the night that David was born. I imagined a moment of shared history, of tenderness.
 
She had been flicking through channels, but she turned the TV off as I set her glass on the end table next to her.
 
She didn’t say anything.
 
“Davy’s to bed,” I said as I sat down. Anything to break the silence.
 
She picked up her glass.
 
“We finished The Hobbit.”
 
I wished she had left the television on, for the noise, the distraction. I lifted my glass toward her.
 
“Eleven years,” I said.
 
She smiled a small, sad smile, and sipped her wine.
 
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Odds were the answer was going to involve me somehow, but I couldn’t bear the silence, the feeling of things hanging in the air.
 
She shook her head. “It’s the same old stuff,” she said dismissively. “Is it really worth getting into it, all over again?”
 
I could feel myself deflating. “Okay.”
 
“I mean, seriously, Chris. You couldn’t even be bothered to come to his ballgame? On his birthday?”
 
“I—”
 
“And that book. It’s like you don’t even know him. You spend more time with him than any other dad I know spends with his kids, and it’s like it doesn’t even register.”
 
“That’s not—”
 
“Do you even know who Rob Sterling is?”
 
She was so quick with the question, I knew that she had been waiting to use it. And I couldn’t answer.
 
“I didn’t think so.” She shook her head and looked away. “He’s his coach, Chris. Coach Sterling. David talks about him every day. Do you even listen?”
 
I leaned forward on the couch. “Of course I listen.”
 
“Really? Then why didn’t you get him what he wanted for his birthday? Instead, you get him that . . .” She nodded toward the book on the coffee table. David had taken all of his other gifts upstairs to his room.
 
“He’s going to like it,” I said, aware even as I was speaking the words that they weren’t going to make any difference. “When I was a kid—”
 
“Exactly,” she said, so loudly I almost flinched. “That’s exactly it, Chris. When you were a kid. This isn’t about you. This is about David. It’s his birthday. And you couldn’t even be bothered—”
 
“Right,” I said, leaning forward to set my wineglass on the coffee table and pick up the book. “You’re right.” I stood up. “It’s probably not worth getting into it all again. I’m gonna go.”
 
“Chris,” she said to my back as I turned out of the room, but I didn’t respond.
 
I walked through the house and out the back door. I navigated the narrow path in the spill of light from the kitchen window and unlocked the door in the back of the garage.
 
 
He sat up slowly, listening to the faint sound of his parents’ voices as they rose up the stairs, drifted through the partly open door.
 
After a few moments, the voices grew louder, not really shouting but definitely upset. It was impossible to ignore them, to tune them out. He couldn’t make out actual words, just a texture of voices raised in anger.
 
Biting his lip, he stood up and walked across the room, careful to be quiet. He closed his door fully, and darted back to bed in the dark, pulling the covers up to his chin and burying his head in the pillow.
 
He could barely hear the voices, now.
 
I’m not gonna cry, he told himself. I’m not gonna cry.
 
 
The narrow staircase was dim with the light from my desk lamp, which I left on from four in the morning until I went to bed. In the shadows of the small kitchen, I filled a glass with vodka from the bottle in my freezer. I set the glass on top of the morning’s pages and sat down at my desk.
 
Why did it always have to go so bad so fast?
 
I pulled my cigarettes out of my pocket and set my lighter on the desk next to this morning’s work. The engraving caught the light. After tapping a cigarette out, I put it to my lips, savouring the feel of it there, its light presence.
 
For a long time, I had allowed myself a single cigarette each day, just before I turned in. It was a holdover from my days as a smoker, and was supposed to be a reward, a way of recognizing a good day’s work, a capstone to a productive time. Now, I was smoking compulsively again, my hands shaking as I flicked the lighter, as I held the flame to the paper waiting for that subtle crackle.
 
As I drew in the first smooth lungful of smoke, I ran my thumb across the lettering on the lighter.
 
Coastal Drift
Christopher J. Knox
Spring 2000
 
The Zippo had been a gift from my Canadian editor. He had lit my cigar with it at the launch party for my first book, then handed it to me with a broad grin and an arm draped drunkenly across my shoulders.
 
“To the first of many,” he had toasted me.
 
“Right,” I muttered to the memory, throwing the lighter onto the desk and taking a healthy swallow of the icy vodka. It chilled all the way down, and when the burn hit my stomach I shivered.
 
That had been a perfect night: my life was on track, unfolding as I had always dreamed it would. My novel was just out, and already on the best-seller lists. Jacqui and I had just bought the house, and every time I met her eye across the crowded bar, she smiled. The future was wide open.
 
And this was where it all led: me sitting in what once had been my office over the garage, trying to ignore the bed in the tiny adjoining room. There had been no more books, no more launch parties. And, over the last couple of years, precious few of those smiles from across the room.
 
I sat quietly for a moment, watching the shadows of the smoke play along the desk in the pool of golden light. As I opened David’s book to where I had left off—since I had started reading it, I’d been sneaking in a few pages whenever time allowed, and when it didn’t—I deliberately kept my back turned to the bookcase next to the desk, the top shelf with the different editions of Coastal Drift, the second shelf stuffed with bulging notebooks, stacks of loose-leaf, battered files. Ten years in the life, waiting for a match.
__
 
It felt like the floor had tilted beneath his feet. Matthias couldn’t think, could barely breathe, with the Queen so close to him, holding his hand, staring into his eyes.
 
“Let us sit,” she said, turning him toward a cluster of divans and chairs against the wall.
 
“That’s better,” she said, a smile of comfort softening her face as she settled on a divan. “Sit.”
 
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Matthias said as he sat, not sure of how to speak.
 
“Comfort is a fine, fine thing,” she said, almost to herself. “Save for the price that must be paid.”
 
Her smile disappeared as she looked at Matthias again. “Five days ago, the watchtowers fell. Three of them. All under cover of a single night. The Berok have taken them.”
 
Matthias stole a glance at Captain Bream; the man’s face was hard and still.
 
“Our most feared enemy is at the borders of the kingdom, less than two days’ ride from the city. From this castle—” She broke off as handmaidens entered the room with wine.
 
Matthias’s mind reeled: the Berok?
 
Matthias and Bream waited while the maidens tasted from each cup before serving them, and then until the Queen had taken a sip before they drank. The wine was cool and strong.
 
“The King has brought you here today,” the Queen said, “because we think you can help.”
 
Matthias bit back a protest. He knew only tavern fighting, and all he knew of the Berok were the stories his mother had told him when he was a boy. The country to the north was the stuff of myths and children’s stories, of blood-thirsty warriors and epic betrayals. Surely there was nothing he could do. He drowned the words he was tempted to say with another swallow of wine, knowing better than to argue with the Queen.
 
“I know you believe there is nothing you have to offer,” she said, seeming to read his thoughts and expression. “But others think differently. Loren,” she called, barely raising her voice.
 
From a doorway at the far end of the room a man appeared, a long, grey beard falling to the middle of his chest. Within the folds of his tattered robes, Matthias could see he carried a large, leather-bound book.
 
“Loren is an historian and a scholar. One of the King’s most trusted advisers,” the Queen said, not even glancing at the man as he took his place beside her. “He has been working in the libraries, both in the castle here and at the monastery,” the Queen said. “He has found some startling information.”
 
The monastery: the old man was one of the Brotherhood.
 
“I am a translator,” Loren said in a thin voice, “of the ancient texts. When I learned of the attacks on the watchtowers, I was reminded of a manuscript that I translated, some years ago. Not a book. Private papers, from the reign of King Harkness.”
 
“And why did it remind you of that?” the Queen prompted.
 
“Because of when the attacks happened,” he explained. “On a night when the moon was swallowed by the dark.”
 
Matthias remembered the night, almost a week before, when he had stood outside the tavern next to Arian as the moon seemed to disappear momentarily into the night sky. He sat forward to listen more closely to the translator.
 
“There is a prophecy,” the old man said. “In those scrolls. A prophecy which I am only now beginning to understand. It is mostly fragments, scattered within another text.” He opened the book in his hand, balancing it carefully as he turned the pages. “It begins:
 
The fall of man shall come,
As a fall comes to all things.
The mighty walls of Colcott shall crack
And bleed
On the night the moon dies in the sky.”
 
The old man looked up from the book and fixed his eyes on Matthias. “There is more. Much more. And it concerns the boy.”
 
“Me?” Matthias asked, before he could stop himself.
 
“You,” the translator said.
 
“But—”
 
The old man shook his head, and Matthias closed his mouth. Loren continued speaking, but Matthias barely heard him over the rushing in his ears. It couldn’t be him. He was . . . nobody.
 
“Hidden as it was, the prophecy has long puzzled scholars. But the confluence of events, the attack on the watchtowers on the night of the disappearing moon . . .” His voice trailed off. “I believe I know what it means.”
 
Matthias shifted, uncomfortable in his chair.
 
“The prophecy describes a treasure, a relic so powerful that it was hidden away before the time of King Harkness. A relic that will save this kingdom. The Sunstone.”
 
“A sunstone?” Matthias asked. It was the symbol of the kingdom, on every flag, every gate, and sewn onto the shoulder of Bream’s tunic.
 
“Not a sunstone,” the scholar corrected. “The Sunstone. The first Sunstone, carried into battle by Stephen the Bold, before he was the First King.”
 
There was a long moment of silence before the captain said, “That’s just a myth. A children’s story.”
 
“It’s much more than that,” the old man said. “Do you know why the Sunstone is the symbol of our kingdom? Not because it was Stephen’s sigil, but because of what it could do. What it did, in our darkest hour.”
 
“What could it do?” Matthias heard himself asking.
 
“It is believed the stone held great power. How else to explain the victory at Corindor Field, when the brave five hundred broke the army of the Berok, more than ten thousand strong, turning them back and forging this kingdom in blood and iron?”
 
Matthias recognized the last few words from a poem that every child was taught, the chronicle of the founding of the kingdom.
 
“Tactics,” the captain said. “Bravery. Loyalty. As battles have always been fought and won.”
 
“You would believe that, of course,” the old man said. “But the truth is much stranger. The truth is that Stephen rode into battle with the Sunstone, the first Sunstone, on his breast, and a magus at his side.”
 
“Are you talking about magic?” Matthias asked.
 
“Indeed I am. A magic so powerful it can render an army unbreakable. A magic so powerful that King Stephen, even in the flush of victory, could see its dangers. After Corindor Field, he ordered the Sunstone hidden where no one, not even he, could find it. He entrusted his dearest friend Gafilair, the first of the Brotherhood to be paired with the king, the first high mage, to hide the stone. To wrap it in mysteries and magics such that no man could ever find it.
 
“The magus did as the new king instructed, hiding the stone away where it would remain for more than a thousand years, until the kingdom once again was in such grave danger that the stone’s powers would be its only salvation.”
 
“If it is hidden so well—” Captain Bream began.
 
“There is one who can find it,” the scholar said. “That is the reason for the prophecy. That the Brothers of Gafilair, his heirs and followers, might follow the signs, might find the right person at the right time to recover the stone and return it to the King. The clues to finding the stone are in here,” he said, gesturing to the book. “As is the information we needed to find the one who could retrieve it.”
 
“Me?” Matthias asked incredulously.
 
The captain nodded.
 
“Captain Bream has selected a troop of his finest men,” the Queen said. “His most loyal and true. You will ride out with them to find the Sunstone, and bring it back that it might protect the kingdom once more. Loren will ride with you to decipher the signs left by the first high magus.”
 
“But it can’t be me,” Matthias blurted.
 
The magus spoke slowly: “There are signs, portents, in this book. We have studied them. Studied you. The signs of your birth. Your parentage. There is enough for us to be sure.”
 
“Matthias,” the Queen said. “You’ll ride out at dawn in three days’ time. You’ll be well cared-for, well protected. And when you return with the Sunstone, you will receive a hero’s welcome. Do you understand?”
 
He nodded slowly. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
 
He had no choice.
 
“Come,” she said. “The importance of this journey cannot be overstated.”
 
The Queen led the three men around the stone platform at the end of the room, to a double door hidden behind a tapestry. The captain opened the door, and stepped back to allow the Queen to enter. Matthias followed.
 
In the centre of the room stood a huge bed. The man lying on it was tiny, and clearly sick, his skin yellow and waxy, his hair missing in patches. He lay facing the door, considering his guests with pale, milky eyes.
 
Loren took several steps toward the bed before falling to his knee. “Your Majesty,” he said, almost in a whisper.
 
Matthias looked at the Queen.
 
“This,” she said, “is why we need the Sunstone so badly.”
 
The crumpled figure on the bed raised a shaky hand. “Loren,” he said weakly. “Loren, my friend.”
 
The mage rose to his feet and stepped to the bedside. The King took his hand.
 
“Have you found the boy?”
 
Matthias could feel his heart in his throat.
 
“I have, Your Majesty. He’s here.”
 
The King’s eyes searched the room, and prompted by a gentle push from the Queen, Matthias stepped to the old man’s side.
 
“This is him?” the King asked.
 
“It is, Your Majesty.”
 
A weak smile came to the King’s face as he took Matthias’s hand. The King’s grip was sticky and cool, and Matthias tried to breathe mostly through his mouth; the air near the bed was sweet and acrid with the smells of sickness.
 
“Yes, so it is,” the King said, as if finally able to see him. “It is all yours to do now,” he said to Matthias. He winced and strained with each word. “The future of the kingdom is in your hands.”
 
Dumbstruck, Matthias nodded. The King’s grip tightened, then fell away. His eyes sank shut. For a moment, Matthias’s hand hung in the air where the King had held it. But then a rough, wet breath brought a sense of relief. The King was only sleeping.
 
“The great secret at the heart of the kingdom,” the Queen said slowly.
 
Matthias turned back to face the Queen and the Captain of the Guard, both still standing in the doorway.
 
“No one knows of the King’s illness. Your mission, therefore, must remain a secret, known to as few people as possible. You cannot go home. Not now. Not before you leave. Do you understand?”
 
“I do, Your Majesty.”

One
 
You know when people say, “It was all worthwhile because I learned so much”?
 
I hate that.
 
Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. I wouldn’t change a thing. That kind of education is priceless.
 
Sure, that sounds mature, but really, who wouldn’t rather get it right in the first place?
 
I know what I’m talking about. I’m a dancer. Dancing takes practice, but no one ever thinks, Wow, I’m so grateful it took me eighty-four tries to get the timing right on that turn. No choreographer will ever chassé up to me and say, “Well, Alya, you’ve been here three hours, and you still don’t know the combo, but I can feel that you’re changed, so we’re going to keep you.” No one. Not even those touchy-feely lyrical-contemporary types.
 
“You have to be honest,” they’ll tell you.
 
“You have to pour yourself into the choreography.”
 
“Those may be my steps, but that’s your life story you’re dancing out there,” they’ll whisper, before wiping away a sweaty little choreographer tear.
 
You’re supposed to be backed by a lifetime of training. It supports you. And in that big moment— the time-stands-still nanosecond when the spotlight finally falls on you—you’re even supposed to be a credit to it.
 
But training can betray you, too. I had so much of it behind me, it was all my life amounted to: a training life. Like I honestly believed that if I practised enough, I’d get to have a real one someday— if I was ever ready to take off the extra wheels or pull out the padding.
 
When my moment came, my training was useless. Learning is nice and everything, but I want a redo.
 
 
I know exactly the day I’d use my time machine to revisit. I can practically see the Reset button. It was last April, a week after my sixteenth birthday.
 
I’m in this b-girl crew (“breakdance,” if you’re trapped in the Eighties, but don’t feel bad if you are) called the Hydra Force. It’s made up of me, Alya (aka Phat Al); my best friend from grade one, Madi (aka Slasher); this hardcore chick from the T-dot, Nadine (Lady Six Sky); and my immature older brother, Devin, who avoids giving out his b-boy name (Typ0) because he’s afraid someone (our mom) might notice all the walls he’s tagged it on around Rivercrest, where we all live (for now, anyway).
 
In case you haven’t guessed already, the Hydra Force is one of the best crews ever to come out of the Greater Toronto Area, or maybe even the entire East Coast, if not the World.
 
Because of our all-encompassing awesomeness (and practice, and Nadine yelling at us all the time), this other, more established (that means old) crew, Infinite Jest, invited us to practise with them and do shows. Someone has to carry the flame— the almost unbearable flame of undeniable freshness.
 
That’s how I came to be stretching in my best white track pants on the highly suspect floor of an iceless hockey arena, backstage at a festival who-knew-where in Montreal, with Madi pointing out theoretically hot guys and me pretending to care.
 
“What about him?” Madi said, pointing as she reached for her ankle, twisting at the waist so it wouldn’t look like she was staring.
 
“Where?” I pretended not to see. I mean, I didn’t see. But I could guess. Madi had her types. Indie Fanboy: lanky, unruly hair, puppy-dog eyes, underground band T-shirt. The Digital Camper: medium build, attempted goatee, laptop bag, hiking shoes. Base-Model B-boy: baggy pants, hat over eyes, mp3 phone in use at all times, tattoo in indecipherable script on left forearm. The Post-Reggae Hottie: tall, dark, big easy smile, dreadlocks.
 
The dude standing at ten o’clock over my left shoulder was a solid P-RH: Madi’s favourite type to push on me. I looked up just as he turned our way. He smiled. I thought I recognized him from the sound check. I nodded back.
 
Madi looked down, giggled, and blushed. “See? Am I right or am I right? He likes you. You should totally get his number,” she said, as if I should automatically have been into him because we might be cute together in a matchy-matchy way; as if I was supposed to want him because I was a girl and he was a guy. Memo to world: that’s not always how it works.
 
I’d have told her she should get his number, but I knew she wouldn’t. Madi only ever fell for orange-tanned Abercrombie alpha-jocks— the perma-sneering kind who never returned her calls because they were too busy polishing their own abs.
 
We both needed to broaden our horizons.
 
Dreadlocks turned back to the amp he was carrying. I looked back to the floor and deepened into my stretch, partly to avoid Madi’s eye, and partly to remind her that my hips were more flexible than hers. She yawned and manoeuvred into a gymnastic contortion I was too dignified to react to, much less attempt. She didn’t notice Dreadlocks watching her from across the room.
 
“Dix minutes, Hydra Force! Scène A.”
 
I was startled out of my stretch by the headset-wearing stage manager shouting our ten-minute call— ten minutes for Madi to puke her nerves out three times, ten minutes for Nadine to get herself wound up tight enough to explode, ten minutes for Devin to chatter incessantly, ten minutes for me to stay out of everyone’s way and find my happy, focused place.
 
Backstage was a circus. It had the clowns, the jugglers, and a freak show more entertaining than anything on the three stages that backed into it. Security was practically nonexistent, so every local group had an entourage of twelve friends hanging off them, eating the free food, playing hacky sack, and hitting on people from other acts. A gospel choir was spread out, practising in small groups, trying to harmonize over the speaker distortion spilling from the stage. There were instruments and band gear in every corner, a cluster of DJs who would talk only to each other, and a weird magician’s box that was roped off with yellow caution tape. All we were missing were the bears on unicycles and a trapeze artist or two.
 
On the far side of the tent, Devin recklessly tagged along after Nadine as she paced through her pre-show anger ritual.
 
“I hope we do a good show,” said Madi, starting to fidget beside me as the opening act came off stage. “Do you think we’ve rehearsed enough? I didn’t try my flares once in practice this week. I just hope they like us. Do you think they’ll like us?”
 
“Whatever. Good luck,” the exiting lead vocalist said to Madi. “It’s wall-to-wall lamewads out there. They’re dead. DEAD.”
 
The drummer rolled his eyes. “Don’t listen to him. He hates everybody.”
 
But one look at Madi told me that she was already about eight seconds from losing her Larabar lunch to the row of porta-potties to my left.
 
“C’mon.” I grabbed her by the elbow. “Let’s walk.”
 
 
Those last ten minutes before getting on stage are always the worst. Ten minutes is exactly the wrong amount of time—generally for anything, but especially for waiting your turn to astound an audience with the brilliance and sheer heat of your dancing fabulousness. Run back to the van to get your lucky bandana and you’ll miss your call. Eat and you’ll be either indigesting or covered in ketchup by the time you get on stage. Read and . . . nah, forget it. Your head’ll be in the wrong place. But just try to sit calmly and wait it out, and you’ll see: it feels like three hours. The only way to cope is to find your zone. Mine is in my headphones. Bershawn Sera. Whatever his most recent single is. I have adored him since I was thirteen. (Who cares what Nadine says? Music snob.) I want to be him when I grow up. (But with breasts, of course.) With Bershawn energy surrounding me, I can only do good things.
 
I steered Madi to a quieter-ish area not too far from the stage entrance, between a napping yoga priestess and a six-foot-tall cupcake set-piece. I handed her an earbud and began the futile quest to find a setting that would actually allow us to hear Bershawn over all the chaos.
 
“Cinq minutes, Hydra Force,” called the SM, the stage manager. Five minutes.
 
Someone yelped across the room, and I spun around just in time to catch Nadine forcing Devin into a headlock. Madi and I exchanged a worried look, but I was secretly relieved. Tearing the two of them apart (again) would give her something to do. At times like these, it was best to keep her busy.
 
“Children! Please!” she yelled, running to separate them.
 
And miraculously, at T-minus-one-and-counting, we were all standing together beside the SM booth at stage right: one unified Force, done battling one another and ready to take the stage.
 
“Hydra Force en scène, maintenant, maintenant, NOW!” the SM yelled, practically chasing us up the short, shaky staircase to the hulking wood-and-pipe-and-lights-and-vinyl-signage stage. Huge but crappy, but huge, it rattled as we walked to our positions. Still, it was a step up from the crowded gyms and filthy clubs we were used to.
 
The crowd— about three hundred strong— sat on bleachers looking bored. “Give it up pour Le Hydra Fooooooorce,” bellowed the MC. I liked his style.
 
The audience clapped politely, and I made up my mind right there to do whatever it took to shake them to their feet. I don’t ever want polite. I want ovations and thunder. Preferably, people should weep, but cheering is okay too. No one sits on my shift.
 
A very long second went by as we waited for the music to start. That moment is pure torture— but in the best way possible. If you play it right, the anticipation makes you stronger.
 
My knees shook involuntarily as I took my spot. They always do that, no matter how prepared I feel, even if I don’t think I’m nervous. To my right, I could feel an almost deadly calm where Madi should have been. As soon as her nerves leave her, it’s like everything else does too, and she’s able to perform because she’s a zombie on stage. To my right, energy radiated off Nadine. On the other side of her, Devin was no doubt fighting to keep his hands still— his nervous habit of clenching and un-clenching amplifies the closer he gets to a stage. But we were there, and we were ready, and we had it under control. So many crews crack up and break up before they ever even get to that point. Not us. We were in it to win it.
 
At last, the speakers crackled to life and our music kicked in. It was an old-school medley, heavy on the funk— a bunch of James Brown and something called Scorpio and a little Vitamin C and some more of Nadine’s favourite old-school breaks. I would have preferred Timbaland or Kanye, but I couldn’t fight her on everything. She had the seniority in the b-girl department, and in her eyes, I was probably still just a lowly hip-hopper with light skillz and inferior taste.
 
I counted to four, waited for the snare hit, and then—bang!—exploded into action. I couldn’t really gauge the audience response over the music, but I told myself I heard a gasp as we launched into our perfectly synchronized top rock, then dropped down to the floor for a bit of coordinated monkey business. We polished it off with each of us hitting a unique freeze, twisted and upside down, and then we broke apart so we could do our solos.
 
My biggest challenge at this point was to act enthusiastic and interested for sixty-four counts during which I had nothing to do but clap and react as if I hadn’t seen the routine four hundred times already.
 
Nadine went first— she always has to— then Madi ramped up the crowd’s enthusiasm level with a handless flippy cartwheel thing, a throwback to her gymnastics days. I was up next. I jumped out of my spot and ran across the front of the stage, pumping my fist to keep the audience clapping.
 
I don’t have the same big moves that Nadine and Madi do, but I work with the music better. That’s why the coolest part of our music was right in the middle of my solo. The music was going through this happy-go-lucky breakbeat bit with lots of brass and cymbals, and I was going all boppy along with it like, Hi, I’m a cute hip-hop girl like in all the music videos, but with way more talent and slightly less ass-shaking. And then the sound of a needle scratching the record sliced clear through my routine, and whoa, hey, what? The bass kicked in, so deep that you felt it before you heard it, and then I changed personas, from cute Phat Al to phat Phat Al, and I got all serious— not serious like studying for biology, but serious like: You—opponent, hater, wannabe— you are about to get schooled.
 
Devin went last. He did okay. He gets by on stage because he’s funny, and the crowd can never get enough of funny, even if funny is the Funky Chicken. That wasn’t in his run last time . . . I could already hear the lecture Nadine would yell out in the van later about not changing our act to bring back moves her mother might have done in a velour catsuit at one horrifying time in her life.
 
We came back together for our grand finale, struck our final pose to the trumpeting close of our music, and . . . the crowd— while not exactly made up of losing-their-ish types of people— they cheered! They stood and they cheered. So much for “lamewads.” No one can stay lame for long in the presence of the Hydra Force.
 
Pumped up by the reaction, we bowed seven times each, and then leaped down the stairs to the backstage tent.
 
The guys from Infinite were waiting back there to high-five us like always.
 
“Thanks for warming up the stage for us,” said Ender, their de facto leader.
 
“Watch out— you’ll be warming our stage someday,” said Nadine, laughing and ducking as he moved to knock her hat off her head.
 
“KID-ding,” she said, but I didn’t see why it couldn’t be true. I’ll admit it— sometimes, in between biology exams, I had dreams about making it bigger than Infinite ever had, about taking the Hogtown Throwdown, about getting invited to the Battle of the Year and flown halfway across the world to compete, about shoe sponsorships and TV spots and danc ing in movies, the movie they would make about us: small suburban crew overcomes lack of cred with surplus of heart. I could see the trailers in my mind. I could see myself in them. I could imagine how smart I’d sound in interviews, and the outfits I’d wear to award shows, and even the airport, and how, if I were famous, I’d be one of those celebrities who always look spotless and sound mysterious, and whom everyone loves because they are so gracious to fans and co-stars alike.
 
It was a super-long shot, and I wasn’t crazy enough to actually put eggs in that basket, but was it really so far out to believe we could pick up where Infinite left off and do a little bit better? I didn’t think so.
 
“All right. Enough chit-chat,” said Ender. “You guys hit the change rooms. I want you ready to go as soon as our set is done.”
 
“Do we have to?” Madi asked.
 
“Now!” he answered.
 
“Sir, yes sir!”
 
Nadine saluted and ran off, with Madi close behind her. I slowly gathered my stuff and started to follow.
 
Never mind tour buses and hotels and seeing the world. I’d come to accept that we would never get to see the end of whatever show we were doing, let alone hang out in any of the cities we performed in. No matter how far we travelled, our world would never be any bigger than the inside of the Infinite van, which, I have to say, was a lot smaller than its name would suggest.
 
But I was not going to rush. Maybe we were nobodies. Maybe I wasn’t even getting paid as much as I would have made staying home and teaching a couple of dance classes at the Movement Spa, my part-time job. But a show well done was its own reward, and I wanted to savour it— at least until my heart rate returned to normal and I stopped sweating, so my track suit wouldn’t stick to my back all the way home.
 
“Al, I mean it—” said Ender. But he got pulled away before he could finish his sentence.
 
“Yeah, yeah, fine,” I said, picking up my bag. I spun around, irritated at being rushed, and—wham!—I practically knocked Tall Dreadlocks over with my bag.
 
“Urgh!” he said, crumpling in the middle. “Whoa, whoa, what’s the rush?”
 
My hand flew to my mouth. “I am so sorry!”
 
He smiled and bent to pick up the cable I’d made him drop. “I come over here to tell you how hype your show is, and this is the thanks I get?”
 
I laughed. “Uh, yeah. I mean, usually we like to greet fans with a punch in the face but . . .”
 
He laughed. “Seriously, you guys were wicked. All the tech guys were losing their minds.”
 
“Thanks,” I said.
 
He craned his neck to look past me, around the tent.
 
“So, where’s your friend? That blonde chick who did the flippy thing?”
 
“Madi? She’s changing.”
 
“Oh. That move was insane.”
 
“Yup. She’s pretty strong,” I said.
 
And then Dreadlocks said nothing. The conversation had taken a turn for the awkward.
 
“Uhm . . .” he finally said. “Tell her congratulations for me?”
 
A slow grin spread across my face. He was totally into her. Not me. Her. This was good. He was—what?—maybe eighteen? Just older enough. And friendly. Cute. Responsible enough to hold down a real job. He gave off a good vibe.
 
“Here,” I said, taking out a pen and scribbling Madi’s number on the back of the show flyer. “Congratulate her yourself.”
 
I could worry later about whether she’d kill me when she found out.
 
Dreadlocks smiled, a little confused, like maybe he wasn’t used to strange girls handing out their friends’ numbers with no provocation. Then he looked at the number again.
 
“This is long distance?” His smile faded a little.
 
“Not that long.” I waved it off, feeling just a little sorry for him. “We’re here pretty often.”
 
“Thanks,” he finally said. “I’m Trevor, by the way.”
 
“Al. Later?”
 
“I’ll see what I can do.”
 
And there was that smile again: broad, warm, friendly, somewhat shy-ish. Any feelings of potential remorse I was developing evaporated. There was something right about this guy. Just not right for me. As he walked away, I mentally patted myself on the back for a good deed well done.
 
Then, Madi came out of the tent.
 
“Hey, why aren’t you—?” She trailed off as she noticed Trevor walking away, slipping the flyer into his pocket. “You gave him your number?” she squealed. “You did, right? Do I have a good eye or what? Omigod. Alya gave out her number to a guy. On her own. An actual living, breathing guy!”
 
I smiled. “His name is Trevor,” I told her, and I ducked into the change room.

Deep Thoughts

It’s a typical day with the usual conclusions: life sucks, and the only way out is the final exit, the big blue beyond. I’m not thinking of killing myself, really. I’m just weighing the possibilities. I like to know what my options are, especially when things get intolerably dull – which they do – a lot. It’s kind of a rock, paper, scissors game I play with myself: pills, guns or trains.

People think it’s morbid to talk about dying but, personally, I find it very liberating. It’s all about choice and individual expression. It’s also the biggest “F-U” a person can send out to the world. I find that comforting. I’m sure there are concerned committees and legions of high school principals who would be horrified by my attitude. They’d point a self-righteous finger at my parents and decide I wasn’t loved enough, or that they fed me too much sugar or cholesterol or something, but that’s just a load. What can I say” I was born on a Wednesday; I’m full of woe.

The truth is, my parents aren’t that bad – unless you call being completely naive a bad thing. They’re just a couple of hippies who love the planet and everyone on it. They belong to all kinds of societies and groups to save the environment, which is a waste of time if you ask me because it never seems to make any difference. People keep harpooning whales and polluting the water and driving bigger, stupider cars as if global warming were just a rumour. And that’s only the tip of the melting iceberg. Yet my parents keep trying to save things. It’s like I’m the only one on earth who can see things as they truly are. And it’s not as if this is a recent revelation for me or anything; I’ve been wearing black since I was three. I mean, my favourite book was Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax. And he wrote that back in the Seventies. I must have read it five thousand times as a kid. I had it memorized. Even then I realized that people are awful and the world is doomed. But nobody else seems to get it, especially my parents.

Here’s some background:
• Mom’s a part-time English teacher who tutors ESL students for free on her days off.
• She majored in Dead White Guys at university.
• She thinks it’s funny to talk like Shakespeare. (It’s so embarrassing, especially when she does it in front of my friends. I think she really wanted to be a writer but she made the mistake of having kids instead. She’s all hopeful for me because I like to read and spend all my time writing in my journals.)

Dad, on the other hand, would rather I “become” something. He’s a lawyer for Social Services, providing legal counsel for people who can’t afford a real lawyer. For every person he helps, there are at least a thousand more waiting in line. It’s so pointless.

In any case, my parents are pretty harmless compared to most. The only thing I can really resent them for is sticking me with the most boring name in the universe: Sue Smith. It’s like they were so concerned about the environment and everything else, they just couldn’t be bothered thinking of something more original to call me. In my opinion, this mortal coil is hard enough to take without the added burden of some lame name. To make matters worse, they called my little sister Peggy. So together, we’re Peggy—Sue. How sad is that” Naturally, I felt obligated to change my name as soon as I was cognizant. I call myself Sioux. That way everyone is happy. And that’s the great thing about homonyms.

Anyway, thinking about the final exit is a fascinating sociological study if you choose to look at it that way. And I do, because I have an assignment due for Cultural Paradigms and I need a topic that interests me or I may as well just drop out of high school altogether. Which would be absolutely fine by me. I don’t see the value in school, even though I’ve been a straight A student from kindergarten all the way to grade 11 – my current year. It’s not that I don’t like to learn. But high school is just a primate zoo, a giant Barrel of Monkeys with intricately balanced chains all swinging independently of one another.

Rarely, if ever, do the chains intersect. There’s the jock chain, and the PIB chain (people in black). There’s the goth chain, the stoner chain and the geek chain, the skater chain and the loser chain. And then there are the strays: monkeys so marginalized they never even make it out of the barrel.

The teachers are another story. Half of them are just putting in time, while the other half are certifiable. My philosophy teacher, Mr. Chocko, falls into the second category. I’m convinced he’s truly bent. He pretends to be all “free and easy” and nice, playing music in class and droning endlessly about nothing under the guise of getting us to “think outside the box.” He has a goatee and he’s always talking about football and hockey with the jocks but I’m sure he’s never played either – ever – judging by his armchair physique. He has a reputation for having parties at his house with students, which I’m sure parents would love to know. He’s got everyone fooled into thinking he’s so fabulous and great. Except me. I think he’s demented. I mean, what kind of teacher wears sunglasses in class” So I’ve taken it upon myself to be his personal nemesis – mostly because it’s one of my favourite words. If you look it up in the dictionary, you’ll find something like this:

Nemesis ('nemisis) n., pl. — ses (-,si:z). 1. Greek myth. the goddess of retribution and vengeance. 2. (sometimes not cap.) any agency of retribution and vengeance. {C16: via Latin from Greek: righteous wrath, from némein to distribute what is due}

And this goddess is determined to distribute what Chocko has due. Consequently, he’s always trying to pin me down. Which would be a problem if I were a monkey like everyone else. But I’m not. I’m a bird, flying overtop of everything.

I like to imagine I have wings instead of arms, and feathers where my fingers should be. Sometimes, I feel like I could actually fly if I concentrated hard enough. But I would never tell anybody that. They think I’m a monkey like everyone else. So I play along to keep up appearances. My friend, Sharon, she’s definitely a primate, but she’s not a total knuckle-walker. Mostly, she shows signs of intelligent thought, though I do have my doubts. I think she secretly likes living in Sunnyview, which, in my world, is a sign of psychosis.

Simians aside, if you want to know the truth, I don’t believe in anything, really. Except gravity. It’s the only thing of value I learned at school. Invisible forces, manipulating everything. It’s the biggest mystery of all time. No one’s figured out how it works. Not Newton or Einstein or anyone. At one time, people were burned at the stake for trying. Of course, I have my own ideas: somewhere, in the universe, there’s a diabolical machine, belching out black clouds of gravity. And depending on the day, or whose hand is on the lever, the levels fluctuate wildly.

Obviously, I would never tell anyone this, either. Especially not my physics teacher, Dr. Armstrong. He has a more banal take on the world. Here’s what he wrote on the board in class:
Gravity is the general force of attraction between two objects with mass, independent of other forces. Not only Earth has gravity, but the Moon, planets, stars and all other objects with mass in the universe have it as well. The larger the mass, the greater its gravitational pull. Weight is a measure of gravity. Even light and time are subject to its force.
So everything exerts influence on everything else. What more do you need to know” In my opinion, nothing. But if I ever want to escape this crappy town, I’d better graduate, which means I have to do my Cultural Paradigms project for my teacher, Miss B. And I think dying is a good place to start, especially since there are relevant gender issues.

For instance: women like to leave a beautiful corpse behind, whereas men could care less who sees their stew. In other words, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, as Miss B.’s favourite self-help book says, even when it comes to offing themselves. Examples:

• Marilyn Monroe took pills; Hunter S. Thompson blew his head off.
• Lupe Vélez took pills; Kurt Cobain blew his head off.
• Anna Karenina took the train; Ernest Hemingway blew his head off. (Though Karenina doesn’t really count because she’s fictional.)

Virginia Woolf waded into a river, which seems to be the exit of choice for literary types everywhere (especially poets). I think drowning takes the most guts, although God knows I find water pretty much irresistible. Which is why I’m standing on the edge of the Sunnyview Dam, watching the hypnotic flood of grey liquid gush through its concrete teeth. The water looks thick, like gelatin, with bits of twigs and leaves studded here and there. It’s so mesmerizing, it makes me feel all dizzy and light.

I take up my journal to record my impressions: dark, limitless, nothingness, the vast and endless void. I underline these last words as I ponder one of the great and unanswerable questions in the universe:

Do suicides regret their choice at the last minute” How will we ever know?

I add these thoughts to my notes and continue my research. Taking another step toward the edge of the dam, I feel the spray against my face. The water thunders in my ears. I can barely hear my own thoughts. The air smells funny. My mascara starts to run. I must look horribly tragic. I ponder more questions to put myself in the right frame of mind:

Why are we here “
What’s the point of life “
What’s the point of high school “
Can anyone really know anyone else “
Can we ever know ourselves “
When is my Cultural Paradigms project due “
This pretty much does it for me. I’m ready to throw myself in.

But it’s hungry work thinking about this stuff. I decide to get something to eat before third period and think about dying later. As I turn to go, I notice two things: an old woman who looks like Miss Marple charging toward me, and three squad cars wailing down the road. The old woman is smiling like she knows me, even though I’m sure I’ve never seen her before in my life. The squad cars screech to a stop beside the dam and a bunch of cops tumble out like clowns. One has a bullhorn. He crouches down as though to lure a cat from under a car and all the other cops do the same.

“Don’t do it!” the bullhorn blasts.

A crowd starts to gather. Some geeks from my school show up to rubberneck, including Tod Cummings, top monkey on the loser chain. He thinks he’s in love with me and won’t leave me alone no matter how I try to get rid of him. It’s like he has a homing device in his head or something because somehow, wherever I go, there he is on his stupid moped wearing this giant gold helmet that makes his head look like a thumb stuck in a bowling ball.

It’s not as if he has to try very hard to find me, though. You couldn’t avoid someone in Sunnyview if your life depended on it. It’s not a real city, like Paris or New York or Toronto, where you have all these cool neighbourhoods and landmarks and stores. Our only claim to fame is a giant statue of some prize-winning cow. Every year at Hallowe’en, the yahoos paint it purple, like it’s the funniest thing ever.

Everything in Sunnyview is only a few blocks from everything else. What’s more, we have only one main street, which everyone calls The Drag, for obvious reasons. I mean, it takes less than half an hour to walk to the city limits from my place. A moped is all you really need, end to end. Except that mopeds have to be the lamest transportation on earth. But obviously nobody told Tod. Only a loser would be misguided enough to ride one, let alone own one. But Tod’s proud of the fact. He even keeps a matching gold helmet strapped to the back, just in case he convinces some other loser to take a ride with him, I guess.

He’s the editor of our school newspaper, The Peak, which everyone calls The Puke, because it sucks so bad, and he’s always asking me to submit something. He’s the kind of guy parents call “nice,” but really he’s the kiss of death to anyone hoping for a social life of any kind. I’d be nicer to him if it were possible, but if I so much as glance in his direction he asks me to marry him. It’s so irritating. I feel sorry for him, though, because he has an even worse name than me. There are no homonyms for Tod. The only logical derivative is Toad, which some jock already figured out, and now Tod is stuck with it for life.

The cops inch closer.

“We can help you,” the bullhorn blasts. “Life is worth living!”

I try to explain that I’m just researching a sociology project, but a gust of wind hits me and I lose my balance. My notebook flies from my hand into the gushing water, an unrecoverable victim of the gravity machine. The crowd gasps. The old woman keeps coming. I’m flapping my wings like an idiot, fighting the invisible forces, when Miss Marple grabs me by the shirt, pulling me from the mouth of certain death.

She says, “Marie! I’ve been looking all over for you,” in this British accent, then tries to wipe the mascara from under my eyes with a snotty old hanky.

I’m so stunned, all I can do is stare at her. I almost died! My whole body is shaking. I wish I had my journal so I could write this feeling down.

“Dear girl, you were supposed to meet me at the library at noon,” Miss Marple says. “It’s well past one o’clock. Did you forget?”

“I’m not Marie,” I say.

The cops surround us.

“Dear, dear, dear,” the old lady says, stabbing at my eyes with her hanky. “Have you been crying?”

“What seems to be the problem?” the officer asks through the bullhorn, even though he’s standing right next to me.

“Officer.” Miss Marple steps in. “This is my daughter, Marie. She was supposed to meet me at the library this afternoon. It’s just a misunderstanding.”

The cop looks to me for confirmation. I open my mouth to tell him I’ve never seen the old lady in my life when I realize the out she’s given me. So I smile instead, tilting my head back and forth in a noncommittal, I’m-not-lying-but-I’m-not-telling-the-truth kind of way.

The officer turns his bullhorn toward the crowd. “Go home, folks. There’s nothing to see here.”

I have to wonder if this expression is in some kind of manual they hand out at cop school, or if they learn it from old TV shows like Dragnet. I’d like to write that thought down, too, but unfortunately, my journal is at the bottom of the Sunnyview Dam.

The crowd looks downright disappointed that I’m not going to jump to my death today. They shrug their shoulders, kicking pebbles as they slowly leave. A few geeks and younger kids hang around, just in case I change my mind, I guess.

Tod fires up his moped, puttering toward me. I turn to exit, stage left.

“Aren’t you coming for lunch, Marie?” Miss Marple asks.

“I’m not Marie,” I say again.

“I was so looking forward to seeing you, dear.” She reaches for my hand but I pull it away.

“I’m sorry,” I say, as I leave her standing on the dam. I don’t look back because I don’t want to encourage her, and because I know everyone is staring at me. Walking away, I pull out my Gauloise, the preferred smokes of Jean-Paul Sartre. They’re the only good thing available in this lame town. Striking a match, I light a cigarette and inhale deeply. I always use box matches, not a lighter, and never a disposable. Disposables are déclassé. Besides, there were no disposables in Jean-Paul’s time.

Tod cruises up beside me. “Was that your grandmother?”

“As if,” I say, tapping ashes in his general direction.

He swerves to avoid a stone on the road. “Were you really going to jump?”

“What do you think, Tod?”

“I don’t know. But there are people who can help you. Hotlines and things like that. You shouldn’t smoke, you know.”

I want to freak out on his head, but when I turn to look at him, all I can see is the spit collected at the corners of his mouth. He pushes his Clark Kent glasses up on his nose.

“There’s a superhero festival at the Cineplex.”

“Not interested.”

Most people would be put off by this, but not Tod. He just says “Okay,” then continues to coast along next to me. It doesn’t matter how mean I am to him, he just keeps trying. It’s enough to make a person crazy.

“Have you thought about submitting an article to The Peak” ” he says.

I sigh, blowing a particularly large plume of smoke in his face. “I almost died today, Tod.”

We’re getting dangerously close to school and I’m about to tell him to moped along when I notice he’s driving straight toward a manhole cover that’s missing a big chunk from one side. Before I can say anything, it’s already too late. He hits the hole and dumps his ride. I’m so embarrassed, all I can do is cross the street and leave him flopping like a fish on the ground.

Back at school, the skaters are in their usual spot, making relentless attempts at impossible manoeuvres along the retaining wall at the front of the building. It doesn’t matter how many announcements the principal makes, they just do it anyway. I have to admire their indifference. I nod to the PIBs in their strategic location across the street, then run the gauntlet past the groups of stoners and jocks who line the sidewalk leading to the stairs. One of the stoners whistles as I go by. One of the jocks calls me a freak. I could care less what they think; I just hope they didn’t see me with Tod.

I haven’t even reached the stairs when Chocko draws first blood, bursting from the school.

“Smith! You know the rules about smoking on school property!”

I toss my cigarette to the ground, grinding it beneath my shoe.

“Pick up your trash,” he demands, pointing at the spent butt.

I pick it up and toss it into the garbage.

“That’d better not start a fire,” he says, trying to get a rise out of me.

But he’s wasting his time. I totally ignore him as I walk past, cool as a retributional goddess can be.

The second I step through the school doors, my friend Sharon grabs me.

“Oh my God, I heard what happened at the dam. Steve Ryan said you almost jumped. Hey, your mascara looks great – in a Marilyn Manson kind of way.”

I notice instantly she’s got a purple nylon wrapped around her wrist. Sometimes I really wonder about her.

“Steve Ryan is an idiot. Why are you wearing nylons on your arm?”

Sharon holds up her hand. “My aunt gave me all her fishnets from the Seventies. I’m wearing it in honour of our bra-burning sisters of old. I brought one for you, too.”

She produces the withered leg of an old stocking from her purse and begins wrapping it around my wrist, securing it with a knot as the bell rings. The zombies flood into the school and we have to fight our way to our lockers. When I get to mine, I see something sticking out of the grille. It’s the corner of a small envelope. I pull it out and discover my name printed neatly on the outside in gold metallic ink.