Terry Brooks - A Knight of the Word

Her thin voice drifted on the autumn breeze and was lost in a rustle of dry leaves.

Nest walked back through the park, lost in thought. Pick rode her shoulder in silence. The afternoon was lengthening out from midday, and the park was busy with fall picnickers, hikers, a few stray pickup ballplayers, and parents with kids and dogs. The blue skies were still bright with sunshine, but the sun was easing steadily west toward a large bank of storm clouds that were rolling out of the plains. Nest could smell the coming rain in the soft, cool air.

`What are you going to do?' Pick asked finally.

She shook her head. `I don't know.'

`You're seriously thinking about going, aren't you?'

`I'm thinking about it'

`Well, you should forget about it right here and now'

`Why do you feel so strongly about this?' She slowed in the shadow of a large oak and looked down at him. `What do you know that you're not telling me?'

Pick's wooden face twisted in an expression of distaste, and his twiggy body contorted into a knot. His eyes looked straight ahead. `Nothing:

She waited, knowing from experience that there would be more.

`You remember what happened five years ago,' Pick said finally, still not looking at her. `You remember what that was like with John Ross and your grandparents and your … You remember?` He shook his head. `It wasn't any of it what it seemed to be at first glance. It wasn't any of it what you thought it was. There were things you didn't know. Things I didn't know, for that matter. Secrets. It was over before you found out everything:

He paused. `It will be like that with this business, too. It always is. The Ward doesn't reveal everything. It isn't His nature to do so:

Something was being hidden from her; Pick could sense it, even if he couldn't identify what it was. Maybe so. Maybe it was even something that could hurt her. But it didn't change what was happening to John Ross. It didn't change what was being asked of her. Did she have the right to use it as a reason for not going?

She tried a different tack. Ariel says she will go with me, that she will help me,'

Pick snorted. Ariel is a tatterdemalion. How much help can she be? She's made out of air and lost memories. She's only alive for a heartbeat. She doesn't know anything about humans and their problems. Tatterdemalions come together mostly by chance, wander about like ghosts, and then disappear again. She's a messenger, nothing more'

`She says she can serve as a guide for me. She says that the Lady has sent her for that purpose:

`The blind leading the blind, as your grandmother used to say'

Pick was having none of it.

Nest angled through the trees, bypassing the picnickers and ballplayers, turning up the service road that ran along the backside of the residences bordering the park. Her mind spun in a jumble of concerns and considerations. This was not going to be an easy decision to make.

`Would you come with me?' she asked suddenly.

Pick went still, stiffening. He didn't say anything for a moment, then muttered in a barely audible voice, `Well, the fact of the matter is, I've never been out of the park'

She was surprised, although she shouldn't have been. Why would Pick ever have gone anywhere else? What would have taken him away? The park was his home, his work, his life. He was telling her, without quite speaking the words, that the idea of leaving was frightening to him.

She had embarrassed him, she realised.

`Well, I'm being selfish asking you to go; she said quickly, as if brushing her suggestion aside. `Who would look after the park if you weren't here? It's bad enough that I'm gone so much of the time. But if you left, there wouldn't be anyone to keep an eye on things, would there?'

Pick shook his head quickly. `True enough. No one at all. It's a big responsibility:

She nodded. `Just forget I said anything'

She turned down the service road toward home. Shadows were already beginning to lengthen, the days growing shorter with winter's approach. They spread in black pools from the trees and houses, staining the lawns and roadways and walks. A Sunday type of silence cloaked the park, sleepy and restful. Sounds carried a long way. She could hear voices discussing dinner from one of the houses to her right. She could hear laughter and shouts from off toward the river, down below the bluff where children were playing. She could hear the deep bark of a dog in the woods east.

`I could do this trip in a day and be back,' she said, trying out the idea on him. 'I could fly out, talk to him, and fly right back'

Pick did not respond. She walked down the roadway with him in silence.

She sat inside by herself afterward, staring out through the curtains, thinking the matter over. Clouds masked the sky beyond, and rain was starting to fall in scattered drops. The people in the park had gone home. Lights were beginning to come on in the windows of the houses across Woodlawn Road.

'What should I do?

John Ross had always been an enigma. Now he was a dilemma as well, a responsibility she did not want. He had been living in Seattle far over a year, working for a man named Simon Lawrence at a place called Fresh Start. She remembered both the man and the place from a report someone had done in one of her classes last year. Fresh Start was a shelter for battered and homeless women, founded several years, ago by Lawrence. He had also founded Pass/ Go, a transitional school for homeless children. The success of both had been something of a celebrity cause for a time, and Simon Lawrence had been labelled the Wizard of Oz. Oz, because Seattle was commonly known as the Emerald City. Now John Ross was then?, working at the shelter. So Ariel had informed her.

Nest scuffed at the floor idly with her tennis shoe and tried to picture Ross as a Maanchkin in the employ of the great and mighty Oz.

Oh Carl. What should I do?

She had told Ariel she would think about it, that she would decide by evening. Ariel would return for her answer then.

She got up and walked into the kitchen to make herself a cup of hot tea. As she stood by the stove waiting for the kettle to boil, she glanced over at the real estate papers for the sale of the house. She had forgotten about them. She stared at them, but made no move to pick them up. They didn't seem very important in light of the John Ross matter, and she didn't want to think about them right now. Allen Kruppert and ERA Realty would just have to wait.

Standing at the living room picture window, holding her steaming cup of tea in front of her, she watched the rain begin to fall in earnest, streaking the glass, turning the old shade trees and the grass dark and shiny. The feeders would come out to prowl in this weather, bolder when the light was poor and the shadows thick. They preferred the night, but a gloomy day would do just as well. She still watched for them, not so much afraid anymore as curious, always thinking she would solve their mystery somehow, that she would discover what they were. She knew what they did, of course; she understood their place in nature's scheme. No one else even knew they were out there. But there was so much more–how they procreated, what they were composed of, how they could inflict madness, how they could appear as shadows and still affect things of substance. She remembered them touching her when her father had made her a prisoner in the caves below the park. She remembered the horror and disgust that blossomed within her. She remembered how badly she had wanted to scream.

But her friends and her grandparents had been there to save her, and now only the memory remained.

Maybe it was her turn to be there for John Ross.

Her brow furrowed. No matter how many ways she looked at the problem, she kept coming back to the same thing. If something happened to John Ross and she hadn't tried to prevent it, how could she live with herself? She would always wonder if she might have changed things She would always live in doubt. If she tried and failed. well, at least she would have tried. But if she did nothing …

She sipped at her tea and stared out the window fixedly. John Ross, the Knight of the Word. She could not imagine him ever being different from what he had been five years ago. She could not imagine him being anything other than what he was. How had he fallen so far away from his fierce commitment to saving the world? It sounded overblown when she said it, but that was what he was doing. Saving the world, saving humanity from itself. O'olish Amaneh had made it plain to her that such a war was taking place, even before Ross had appeared to confirm it. We are destroying ourselves, Two Bears had told her; we are risking the fate of the Sinnissippi - that we shall disappear completely and no one will know who we were.

Are we still destroying ourselves? she wondered. Are we still travelling the road of the Sinnissippi? She hadn't thought about it for a long time, wrapped up in her own life, the events of five years earlier behind her, buried in a past she would rather forget. She had been only a girl of fourteen. Her world had been saved, and at the time she had been grateful enough to let it go at that.

But her world was expanding now, reaching out to places and people beyond Hopewell. What was happening in that larger world, the world into which her future would take her? What would become of it without John Ross?

Rain coated the windows in glistening sheets that turned everything beyond into a shimmering haze. The park and her backyard disappeared. The world beyond vanished.

She walked to the phone and dialled Robert Keppler. He answered on the fourth ring, sounding distracted. `Yeah, hello?'

`Back on the computer, Robert?' she asked teasingly.

`Nest?'

`Want to go out for a pizza later?'

`Well, yeah, of course' He was alert and eager now, surprised. `When?'

`In an hour. I'll pick you up. But there's a small price for this'

`What is it?'

`You have to drive me to O'Hare tomorrow morning. I can go whenever you want, and you can use my car. Just bring it back when you're done and park it in the drive'

She didn't know how Ariel would get to Seattle, but she didn't think it was something she needed to worry about. The Lady's creatures seemed able to get around just fine without any help from humans.

She waited for Robert to say something. There was a long pause before he did.

'O'Hare Where are you going?'

`Seattle:

'Seattle?,

'The Emerald City, Robert:

`Yeah, I know what it's called. Why are you going there?'

She sighed and stared off through the window into the rainy gloom. `I guess you could say I'm off to see the Wizard.' She paused for effect. `Bye, Robert:

Then she hung up.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 29

John Ross finished the closing paragraph of Simon's Seattle Art Museum speech, read it through a final time to make certain it all hung together, dropped his pen, and leaned back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. Not bad. He was getting pretty good at this speech–writing business. It wasn't what Simon had hired him for, but it looked like it was a permanent part of his job description now. All those years he had spent knocking around in graduate English programs were serving a useful purpose after all. He grinned and glanced out the window of his tiny office. Morning rain was giving way to afternoon sun. Overhead, the drifting clouds were beginning to reveal small patches of blue. Just another typical Seattle day.

He glanced at the clack on his desk and saw that it was rearing three. He had been at this since late morning. Time for a break.

He pushed back his chair and levered himself to his feet. He was three years beyond forty, but when rested he could easily pass for ten years less. Lean and fit, he had the sun–browned, rawboned lank of an outdoorsman, his face weathered, yet still boyish. His long brown hair was tied back with a rolled bandanna, giving him the look of a man who might not be altogether comfortable with the idea of growing up. Pale green eyes looked out at the world as if still trying to decide what to make of it.