Dandelion Fire (42 page)

“Mushrooms,” Caleb said. “That makes more sense of his strength, though it may not help me.”

“Caleb?” a voice cried. Henry watched old Eli hurry toward them through the shadows.

“Eli,” Caleb said. “You look pure and unspoiled. How have you passed the battle?”

“With Lady Hyacinth,” he said. “In the hospital. Ask her if you doubt me. But now she sent me to tell you that the table is set, and the priest waits.”

“Priest?” Caleb asked.

Eli nodded. “For the christening.”

“And about time,” said Fat Frank.

was very happy. But she was a wise woman, and an old enemy had returned. She did not think her happiness would last.

There was a window in her room, a large window that saw the sun's path most of the day. She had borne nine children, and for each of them, she had tended a sapling tree on its sill. She had woven all of the magic of motherhood into those trees, and as they grew large enough, she planted them in the courtyard behind the house. There were five trees in the courtyard now. Three had died when her oldest sons had fallen. Her daughters' trees blossomed every spring and were still small. The trees of three living sons led strange lives. Their leaves changed and fell, not in Hylfing's autumn but whenever autumn found her sons. And when spring sun was on their faces in some far part of the world, leaves budded and grew through any winter that might fall on their mother's house. But there was one tree, more twig than sapling, that still sat in soil in Hyacinth's window. It was Henry's tree, though it had never known his name. Not
once had it ever produced a leaf or bud, and yet it had never died.

She looked at it and ran her hand over its surface, humming. It was supple, wick with hidden life.

Downstairs, she heard loud voices and knew the others had arrived. She turned and walked to the stairs.

Uncle Frank and Caleb carried Monmouth into the house.

Zeke and Henry stopped in the doorway and stared into the front room. Richard, in baggy clothes, came and stood beside them. Tables had been brought in from somewhere, strung together, and set. There was a dusty bottle of wine, larger than Henry had thought possible, and huge plates of cold meat. Aunt Dotty was bustling around the table with a steaming bowl of apples in each hand. Her face was flushed red, like the first time Henry had seen her, and her hair, once pulled back, fell down onto her cheek.

When she saw Henry, she set the bowls down and rushed to him. She was softer than his mother, and she wrapped him in the smell of apples. She smiled and kissed him and couldn't speak, and then led him to an old white-haired woman, already seated at the table. The woman was blind and spreading smiles through the room.

Henry's cousins and sisters were seated around her.

“Your grandmother Anastasia,” Dotty said, and the
woman found his face with her hands, squeezed his cheeks, and kissed his head. Little Anastasia sat beside her.

Monmouth was tended and laid on cushions in the corner, where he slept. Fat Frank refused a seat and instead crouched nervously by the door, fidgeting and gnawing on his fingernails.

The wine was being poured. Henry's mother took him by his elbow and directed him to a seat as she had already done for Richard. Zeke was on Henry's left, and his uncles were seated at either end of the long table. A bowl of warm water and a cloth were passed for washing. Another bowl of water, wooden, sat in front of Henry, and he rinsed his fingers in it. The seat beside him was empty, and his mother stood behind it, pushing hair away from a glowing face. She was saying something, but Henry was a little dazed. He watched the smiling, serious faces. He watched the fat faerie squatting nervously by the door.

Then a man in black, a priest, stood up beside his uncle Caleb and spoke while everyone was silent.

“A table laden in the face of enemies,” he said. Henry heard little else. The man continued, and when he had finished, everyone laughed. Henry laughed as well and didn't know why. He didn't need to know, because it was real, and it came from within and without. Henry watched the food on the table travel around and the people at the table smile and take of it. He smiled, but he could hear little of their words. His mind and his eyes were sensing other things. He heard rain on the
windows and wind through the cracks of the house. He watched the thunder shake his glass and felt the sea pounding the coast. And none of these things were as loud as his uncles' laughter. Zeke was talking to Caleb, and Caleb was telling him that he would give him a bow. Hyacinth was smiling at Henry, and Grandmother Anastasia stared toward the ceiling. Her smile was gone, and her food was untouched. Uncle Frank was trying to explain baseball and ketchup to whomever might listen.

And Henry found that he was eating as well, and drinking something extraordinarily red out of his glass.

The eating passed quickly. The mounds of food grew smaller. Henry was full, and he felt warm.

Caleb stood, and the conversation quieted.

“My nephew, brother-son, eats with us today. He returns to us in a storm. Some of his brothers sleep in the earth, as do some of mine, and others, now away, he shall someday meet if this storm breaks. He is the seventh son of a seventh son and more. His inheritance is rich. May he make it richer for those behind him. His father, long lost, is gone, but his mother tonight shall name him.”

All eyes, especially Henry's, went to his mother. She stood slowly, smiling, but her eyes were sad.

“I have long lacked this son and knew not what had become of him, as I know not what became of his father. But now I know in part and am grateful even for the providence that took my son away an infant, because he has retrieved a lost brother and uncle.”

Dotty began crying, but Hyacinth continued.

“A name is meant to shape and mold. To destine. And yet my son has already found shape. This is not the naming of an infant. This is the naming of a young man with feet already on a path. His name shall still be Henry, and it is a good name. He has dwelt away from us in the home of another father, descended from another line. This house would honor that, and we would not try to remove the mark of his young exile. It has shaped him and is woven in his story. So he shall have the name that those other fathers bore. He shall be Henry York. But another name he still lacks. It is the name on which he will stand, the river on which his other names will travel.”

Grandmother Anastasia pushed back her chair and stood up, weakly, still staring at the ceiling. She opened her mouth to speak, swaying as she did.

“This is Henry York, seventh son of Mordecai West-more, seventh son of Amram Iothric, in the line long faithful to the Old King, farmers of the earth, husbands of the sea. Through him shall kingdoms find new birth. Through him shall the earth find balm for hidden wounds. He shall not be a man of blood, though he shall shed it. He shall not be an angry man, though he be angered. An old enemy has risen through him, but he shall be its curse. It marks his flesh, but he shall break its back. He shall be called Maccabee, for his strength has been hidden away, but it shall become a hammer that burns in the night, both green and gold.”

The room was silent as Grandmother settled into her chair, smiling. She began to eat.

The priest rose to his feet and walked slowly around behind Henry. He set his wineglass on the table and picked up a plain wooden bowl filled with water. Henry twisted in his seat, looking up at the priest and his mother.

“I think I might have washed my hands in that,” he whispered.

“Even better,” the priest said.

“Is it holy water?” Henry asked.

The priest smiled and bent his mouth to Henry's ear. “It will be when we've done.” He straightened back up.

“Who fathered this child?” he asked.

“Mordecai Westmore,” Hyacinth said.

“Who bore him?”

“I did.”

“What path is meant for his feet?”

“The one true path.”

“What God shall walk before him?”

“The true Gods shall be the God before him.”

“What shall be his life?”

“Death.”

“What shall be his end?”

“Life.”

“What is his name?”

Hyacinth paused, looking down at Henry and then at his grandmother. “Henry York Maccabee,” she said. “May he be a true son to a true father.”

Henry felt a tingle in the air, like metal in his mouth. Beside the door, the faerie squirmed and covered his ears.

The priest cupped his hand in the wooden bowl, and it rose dripping.

Fat drops splattered on his plate, and then Henry felt the wet beneath the man's palm settle on his already wet head. The priest's voice rang out in a slow but short chant, rolling an unknown, ancient tongue into a song that Henry felt he knew. A song his bones could recognize. Then the priest handed Henry his glass.

“So he is, and so he shall be,” the priest said. “All of you, drink.”

With water dripping off his nose, Henry drank, and he watched as the rest of the table did as well, even Zeke and little Anastasia, who coughed, and the policeman.

The wine made his eyes water.

Henry had been christened.

Upstairs, on the sill in Hyacinth's window, there was a sapling that knew Henry's name. A single bud stood out at its tip. By morning light, it would spread its first leaf.

Henry looked around at the table, and the table looked around at him. He wasn't sure what had happened, but he was glad he was still Henry, though Mac-cabee was a little strange. The rain rattled on the windows, and laughter once again spread its way down the table. Isa and Una jumped up to fetch pies, but wind stopped them.

The door to the street blew open, and rain and wind spilled into the room. Frank the faerie cowered beside it.

While Henry watched, a tall shape, cloaked and hooded, stepped into the doorway. Panic froze him.

Darius had come.

The man stepped into the room, dripping, and looked about himself. No one moved. Henry waited for Frank, for Caleb, for anyone to do something. His heart was in his throat. The hood turned, and Henry could see black hair beneath it. The man was looking for him.

Pressure surrounded Henry, holding him still, holding them all still, a magic that didn't want them to move.

“Knife!” Fat Frank sputtered. “Throw a knife!”

An enormous weight sat on Henry's chest and pinned his arms to his sides. But he fought it. He broke it. He leaned forward and grabbed the blade of a long knife from a platter of meat. He didn't know how to throw a knife, but it didn't matter. His hand was hot. The blade was hot. He twisted in his seat and threw it.

The man looked at him.

“No!” Caleb yelled, and Henry watched the blade spin toward the man's head. He didn't move as the knife, threaded with Henry's gold, passed above him and stuck in the wall above the door.

The pressure was gone. People around the table gasped for air.

Grandmother Anastasia laughed.

The man reached up and pushed back his hood. His face was hard, and wet hair hung around it. He looked
like Caleb, but younger and older at the same time. Like Frank.

“There is no magic stronger than naming,” he said. “But only my son had strength enough to move.”

“Mordecai!” Hyacinth cried, and she was in his arms.

Beside them, Fat Frank burst into tears.

Darius walked across the plain, and the world died into silence around him.

He has come.

“Yes,” he said.

Begin the end.

“How is this possible?” Caleb asked, laughing. “Now, of all times, Mordecai, you walk through the door of a house so long empty of you.”

“Faerie magic,” Fat Frank said, wiping his eyes. “When I heard the committee feared a christening, I knew what they'd done. They'd laid you up in a barrow, no mistake there, and left an unchristened child, the fools.”

Mordecai looked down at the short, rounded faerie. “You told him to throw the knife,” he said. “You've betrayed your own and revealed their magic.”

Fat Frank snorted. “My own? The way I see it, the committee betrayed the rest of us, not to mention you.”

Mordecai smiled and looked around the room. “Francis?”