Down a Lost Road (16 page)

Damian nodded and we followed him to his
office in silence. I paused just outside his door, unable to keep
myself from gazing farther down the hall. I counted the doors, like
I always had, down to the third door from the end, on the left. My
heart filled my throat. I didn’t want to see what nameplate was on
the door now. It didn’t matter if it didn’t make sense, if hundreds
of other professors had come and gone before. That was Dad’s
office. They had no right to give it to anyone else.

My eyes stung with tears, but then Damian’s
touch on my shoulder called me back to our task. I swallowed the
grief and trailed him into Professor Hurtsinger’s office.

I could tell he was a new professor. His
bookshelves stood only partially filled, and his desk spread out
bare and lonely. Unlike Dad’s office he had no pictures or
souvenirs anywhere, only an untidy stack of students’ essays
sitting precariously on the corner of the desk. Professor
Hurtsinger flipped on the light and tossed his satchel on the
floor.

“
Here we are! It’s not
much, but it’s home.”

He waved us to a pair of rickety seats in
front of the desk, then dropped into his own creaking desk chair
and propped his feet on the file cabinet.

“
Now, I don’t often get
office visits from your age group, so I’m intrigued to find out
what you wanted to see me about.”

“
Professor Hurtsinger, you
were a student here, right?” I asked.

“
Indeed. About eight years
ago. One of the best decisions of my life. Are you two considering
going here for college, perhaps?”

“
Undergraduate?” Damian
asked instead.

“
Right, got my bachelor’s
in literature here, went on for my doctorate at Toronto. Still
working on the never-ending dissertation. Hence the
‘professor-not-doctor’ thing.”

“
Texas to Canada? That must
have been a big switch,” I remarked, feeling a little more at ease.
Then, abruptly, “Did you ever take a class from Dr.
Lindon?”

He regarded me with sudden curiosity. “He
was my advisor. Why?”

“
Did you know him well? I
mean, if he was your advisor, you must have known him somewhat,
right?”

“
I knew him pretty well. I
would have loved to work with him as a peer at this university. He
was one of the most fascinating people I have ever
known.”

“
Could you say what his
specialty was?”

He leaned forward, staring intently at both
of us. “Would you mind giving me some indication why you want to
know all this?”

My gaze flickered to Damian, who nodded
subtly.

“
He’s our father,” I
said.

“
Oh, good God.” He put his
hands to his head. “I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what to tell
you.”

“
You could tell us what he
did,” Damian said. “We need to know.”

“
Have you heard any word of
him? Do you know where he is?”

“
I might,” I said. “But
please, Professor Hurtsinger…”

“
Just call me
Kurtis.”

That would just be weird, so I skipped it.
“We know he studied and taught literature. But what was his
specialty? Or focus, or whatever you call it.”

Kurtis sat back, folding his hands behind
his head. “Mythology. Scandinavian, Greek, even Tolkien’s invented
mythology. That was his real passion. He got some static from the
other professors for teaching it as a genuine mythology, but he
claimed it was as real as any of the others.”

“
Tolkien had a mythology?”
I asked, my interest sparked.

He leaned over and pulled a book off one of
his shelves. “The bulk of it you can find here,” he said, handing
it to me. “It belonged to your father.”

I received the worn book almost reverently,
running my fingers over the tattered dust jacket. “
The
Silmarillion
,” I read. “The Epic History of the Elves.”

“
Do you know why he was so
interested in it?” Damian asked.

“
What do you know about
mythology, of whatever sort?”

“
A lot of it is very
similar,” I said, absent-minded. “Some are so similar, that you
could just change the names and some of the details, and it would
be almost the same story.”

“
Exactly. Know of any
examples?”

I thought a moment, then said, “Well, every
culture seems to have an account of creation.”

“
The Flood,” Damian added.
“I read a bit of Gilgamesh last summer, and there are a bunch of
other versions of the same story. And gods or supernatural beings
walking on earth with men, things like that.”

I shivered.

“
Excellent!” Kurtis said.
“And Dr. Lindon – your father – wanted to find those similarities,
and then from there see if there was an actual historical source
for them. Like a common heritage of all mankind that would make
them create these similar stories. Tolkien had done something akin
to it, at least as far as the first part goes. He found some of the
common threads, but then used them to create an additional
mythology, a unique mythology for England.”

“
No!” I cried, setting the
book down harder than I meant. “Well, maybe that’s what he thought
he was doing…but what if he was actually a lot closer to the truth
than he realized? Maybe his myth was really almost a piece of
history that the world had lost…it just wasn’t
quite
all the
way true. He didn’t have all the facts – because they had been
lost. And Dad had the missing pieces! He had what Tolkien needed,
but needed what Tolkien had. The other half of the puzzle!” I shut
my mouth when I saw the expression on Kurtis’s face. “Sorry. I must
sound like an idiot.”

“
No, not at all. I’m just
curious, because you say your dad had the other pieces. I know he
had some revolutionary theories about the ancient myths, but do you
really think he had access to some kind of knowledge or facts that
Tolkien – or any scholar of mythology – wouldn’t have?”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

To my surprise, he didn’t laugh or dismiss
my statement. He measured me carefully. After a moment he leaned
back, tucking his hands behind his head.

“
Your father really was
revolutionary, how he taught. He pursued a sort of
cross-disciplinary study, melding history and literature. Not just
studying literature in history, or history in literature…but
literature, or mythology more particularly,
as
history. He
seemed to think he had good reason for it. We never had a chance
for a real discussion about it, though.”

“
Would Dr. Balson know more
about his work, do you think?”

Kurtis straightened up with a frown. “You
guys aren’t students here, so you haven’t had any classes with him.
Here’s a little heads-up. Balson came to the university the year
after your father started teaching, and they never got along. I
don’t know why. He isn’t very popular with the students either,
whereas most people loved Dr. Lindon. Balson’s the reclusive sort,
almost impossible to work with. I just have a bad feeling about it.
I don’t think you should talk to him, especially about this.”

The doorway darkened behind us.

“
What is this, Kurtis? What
should they not talk to me about?”

Chapter 11 – Connections

Kurtis’s face hardly changed. I studied it
closely enough, but all I noticed was a slight tensing of the
muscles at his jaw and a hardening of his grey eyes. Damian beside
me flinched, but neither of us turned. My mind was racing. I didn’t
quite know why, but somehow I felt I should recognize the
voice.

“
I’m sorry, Hymie, did we
have something to talk about?” Kurtis asked, his voice thin and
cold.

I stared at my hands clenched on my lap,
knuckles white.

“
Oh, no. I was just passing
by and heard my name. Thought these two might have been looking for
me.”

Damian glanced at me sidelong. I heard Dr.
Balson take another step, coming into the room. All the vibrant
spirit had gone out of Kurtis’s face, leaving it fixed like a mask,
bland and unmoved.

“
I think we’ve got it
covered.”

“
But this is really far too
intriguing for me to let pass. What could possibly have brought
these young people to darken these hallowed halls?”

He stood between us and the door. I don’t
know why I thought of it, or why I was so worried that another
professor had joined us. Maybe it was Kurtis’s warning still
ringing in my ears, giving voice to the void look on his face. Or
the fact that Dr. Balson was so curious about us – overly curious –
but at the same time didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in
who
we were. As if he already knew.

He took another two steps to stand at the
window behind Kurtis’s desk. Finally I could see him. He was tall
and gaunt, in a perfectly fitted charcoal grey suit. The only thing
that didn’t fit was his skin. It drooped in dark folds on his neck,
and creased in wrinkles on his bony hands. That was all I could
see, in that moment when he made his crucial mistake and went to
the window. He gazed down at the mall, and I didn’t wait to see his
face. I sucked in a breath, snatched at Damian’s hand, and bolted
out the door.

I heard the door slam and risked a glance
over my shoulder. Damian and Kurtis were both in the hall, Damian
hauling back on the doorknob while Kurtis fumbled with his keys. He
nearly dropped them when he found his office key, but then he had
it twisting in the lock. I pounded on down the hall. Kurtis
overtook me and grabbed my arm, directing me to the fire exit. On
the stairwell we paused, and I nearly collapsed from the
terror.

“
You okay?” Damian asked
me. “Who on earth was that?”

I stared at him grimly. He closed his mouth
hard.

“
Oh, no. You don’t
think…”

“
Someone mind clueing me in
here?” Kurtis interjected. “What was that all about? I hope there’s
a good reason why we just locked one of my peers in my
office.”

“
Can’t he unlock the door
from the inside?”

“
Both sides are locked with
a key,” Kurtis said, but he didn’t seem much encouraged by the
thought.

He studied me expectantly, but when
something banged upstairs we all jumped.

“
I’ll explain it, but not
now. We need to go! Damian, please tell me you drove over
here.”

He shook his head slowly, wide-eyed.

Kurtis started to glance at his watch but
checked himself. “You two won’t be getting anywhere fast if you go
on foot. Come on, we can take my car.”

* * *

I don’t know how long we’d been driving.
Damian sat up front in the passenger seat, and I could hear the low
murmur of his voice over the rain pattering on the windshield. I
had fallen asleep once we left town – I just couldn’t help it. I
felt like I’d gotten jet lag a hundred times over. Now, leaning my
head against the window, I tried to concentrate my still groggy
thoughts on what Damian and Kurtis were saying.

“
So strange…really not
sure…” Damian rubbed his forehead and tilted his head back. “Of
course it’s one of those things…can never really be
prepared…”

“
Like something….a novel or
something. But…convinced, huh?”

“
Can’t
explain…otherwise.”

I sat up, wondering if I had heard them
correctly. Kurtis saw me awake in the rearview mirror and
smiled.

“
Morning!”

“
You don’t mean that, do
you?”

“
No,” Damian laughed. “You
only slept about half an hour or so.”

“
Mm.” I yawned. “Where are
we?”

Kurtis shrugged. “I figured I should just
drive, just get away from the university. I didn’t really think
about where to go.”

I stared hard at Kurtis’s face in the
mirror. I could only see his eyes. I studied them as they peered
fixedly out at the road, but they were impossible to read. My gaze
shifted down to his hands resting on the steering wheel.

“
You still have it, right?”
he asked suddenly, glancing at me in the mirror.

“
Have what?”

“
Pyelthan.”

I tensed instantly. He still watched me
through the rearview, steadily, indifferent. Then his attention
turned back to the road, and my hand groped toward the door handle.
My thoughts reeled, and so did my stomach.