Five Odd Honors (31 page)

Somewhat less than three full days later, they emerged from the wall of water into a zone where water and fire fought for dominance, creating a narrow stretch that steamed but did not burn.

“There’s the next element,” Riprap said, squeezing water from the wool of his hair with hands on which the skin was as wrinkled as prunes. “Fire.”

The burning coals stretched as far as the eye could see. The heat rising from them warped the landscape, making any judgment of distance impossible.

“Fire,” Des repeated. The force of the falling water had undone his hair from its usual neat braid, and now it fell in bedraggled strands across his naked torso. “I can hardly wait.”

Despite Parnell’s
ominous warning, the young man did not ask Brenda to accept his own claim to a less than normal heritage. Instead, he gave her time to think.

Back in her room, trying to fall asleep while staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars she’d glued to the ceiling over the top bunk, Brenda considered.

After all, what good would I be to anyone if I cracked up under the pressure of believing six impossible things before breakfast? I mean, that habit didn’t do much good for the White Queen . . . or was it the Red Queen?

Brenda avoided being alone with Parnell for the better part of the next week. She saw him in classes—noticing for the first time that his schedule pretty much overlapped her own: not always the same classes, but always in the same floor of the same building. Him walking with her between classes was as natural as could be.

Perfect for a bodyguard,
she thought uneasily.

Brenda saw Parnell at the weekly meeting of the Celtic Culture Club, and often at meals in the cafeteria. A few times, she considered asking him to tell her more, but chickened out.

Then Gaheris called. “I’m going to be downstate seeing a client tomorrow. When’s your last class?”

“It’s over at two-thirty.”

“Interested in coming home for the weekend? We could surprise Thomas for his birthday.”

Normally, Brenda would have made an excuse; early term was a great time for socializing. This time, she jumped at the opportunity to get away from Parnell and the uncomfortable problem he posed.

“Great! I can meet you out front at three.”

Brenda told Shannon, and wasn’t surprised to see her roommate’s eyes brighten. After all, Brenda being away meant that Shannon and Dermott would have some serious private time. Brenda wondered just how well Shannon’s Catholic resolve was holding up under the pressure of Dermott’s adoration, but she decided that was none of her business.

Parnell looked momentarily concerned when he heard Brenda was going away, but when he heard she was going home, he relaxed so visibly that Shannon grinned.

Shannon probably thinks Parnell’s relief is because he has a crush on me, and everyone knows I don’t have a boyfriend at home. I wonder what she’d think if she learned that his relief had more to do with his being my bodyguard, keeping me safe so I can do something the sidhe think is important somewhere down the road.

On the car ride home to Greenville, though, Brenda started regretting her decision. Other than the most general of generalities, Dad would not discuss anything to do with the Thirteen Orphans. He wouldn’t even talk about Pearl’s “accident” other than to express relief that Auntie Pearl hadn’t been seriously hurt, and to confirm that Nissa was going to move to San Jose so Pearl wouldn’t be alone.

The weekend home went well. To Brenda’s surprise, Thomas actually was glad to see her—and not just because of the tee shirt with the USC gamecock that she’d bought him as a last-minute birthday gift.

Privately, wishing that Dad was being open enough that she felt like sharing the joke with him, Brenda admitted to herself she’d picked the shirt because the jaunty fighting chicken reminded her of Des Lee.

After Thomas’s birthday party, Brenda tried to get Gaheris alone, but her dad steadfastly avoided her. Brenda didn’t think it was a coincidence when Keely volunteered to drive her daughter back to Columbia on Sunday afternoon.

“Give you some mother-daughter quality time,” Gaheris said brightly when Keely suggested it, but Brenda heard his words as “Avoid more father-daughter uncomfortable time.”

Gaheris’s stubborn silence, combined with Brenda’s growing suspicion thathe ’d issued an ultimatum to the other Orphans, demanding that they keep his daughter in the dark, changed her feelings about learning more about Parnell and his strange heritage.

The last couple of times I’ve called San Jose,
Brenda thought,
I could barely get confirmation that the scouts had returned to the Lands, and that Des had managed to check in when they crossed that petrified forest. That’s it. Fine. If I can’t learn anything from my so-called friends, maybe I can learn something from people who at least think I’m worthy of being courted as an ally.

Of course, now that her resolve was set, when Brenda got back to the dorm no one was around. She’d phoned Shannon, giving her an estimated time of arrival, so at least she didn’t catch her friend and her beau in amorous embrace, but she did feel a little hurt that no one was there to welcome her back.

Shannon came back an hour or so later, Dermott-less.

“He’s playing soccer with some of the guys,” she said. “Boring . . . I have reading to do for English and History.”

Brenda realized she did, too, but as she tried to immerse herself in Arthur Miller, she found herself resenting a salesman who couldn’t understand where his own kids were coming from, resenting golden boys who didn’t do what they were expected to do.

Brenda didn’t see Parnell until the next day, after her second class. He ambled up to walk with her to the cafeteria for lunch. She nearly hugged him, an impulse which surprised her as much as the actual act would have surprised him.

“I want to know more,” Brenda said.

“About?” A teasing light in his eyes.

“You know.”

“I do,” Parnell said, relenting, perhaps hearing from the tone of Brenda’s voice that she’d had her fill of witty fellows that last weekend. “But not here, not now. How about I drop by this evening and offer to take you for a stroll?”

“I’ll be ready,” she said.

Parnell was as good as his word, showing up as twilight was gathering, complaining that American students took their studies far too seriously and his Irish brain cells needed a rest.

Brenda saw the hope in Dermott’s eyes—he and Shannon had been “studying” since dinner—and had to swallow a grin as she said she’d be glad to go out for a while.

Parnell also saw the look the young couple exchanged and was less kind, filling the time that it took for Brenda to grab her sandals and a room key by making comments so loaded with double entendres that they were nearly single.

Brenda grabbed Parnell by the arm, rolling her eyes at a blushing Shannon.

“Sure and begosh and begorrah,” Brenda said in a very, very bad imitation of an Irish brogue, “here I am wishing to take a break myself, me lad, and you stand there a-prattling. Will you be interested in buying me a latte and studying the stars rather than dry words on a page?”

“Gladly, fair colleen.”

Giggling, they left, but the giggles stopped as soon as they were outside the immediate vicinity of the dorm.

“Okay,” Brenda said when they were well away from eavesdropping ears. “Tell me more.”

“Better than telling,” Parnell said. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you a couple of things that should assure you that I’m not just spinning a yarn, not assuming you’re a credulous reader of myth and legend and occasional bits of fantasy fiction who will swallow any tall tale.”

“All right, then,” Brenda said. “Lead on, MacDuff .”

“Isn’t it ‘lay on’?” Parnell quoted with as wicked a grin as he’d ever given Dermott and Shannon.

“When I say lead,” Brenda said, hiding her embarrassment at his double entendre with mock hauteur, “I mean lead.”

Parnell took Brenda to one of those overlooked spaces that during the day would be filled by ample foot traffic as students passed back and forth to classes, but at this hour, when even the night classes were over, was deserted.

Parnell paused, turned slightly away from Brenda, scanned the immediate area, appeared to listen. There was something foxlike in his alert demeanor. Brenda found herself remembering her dream meetings with the green-eyed woman of the sidhe she’d come to think of as Leaf.

Leaf’s ears had been slightly pointed.

When she was a horse, too,
Brenda thought with a suppressed giggle.
I wonder if Parnell’s ears are pointed. Hard to tell under those curls. I wonder if that’s why he wears his hair so long. I mean, longer hair seems to be coming back in, but it’s hardly universal.

At last Parnell murmured, in a voice so soft Brenda wondered if he was talking to himself, “Right. All clear. Here goes.”

He turned toward Brenda and motioned to the lawn beneath the tree. “If you would have a seat upon this grassy sward?”

Brenda lowered herself onto the lawn under the oak, anticipating the slightly prickly feeling of the close-cropped blades, wishing she’d thought to change into long pants. The university kept its lawns in beautiful shape, but that meant hardy strains of grass and frequent mowing, neither of which made for softness.

To Brenda’s surprise, this grass was almost as soft as moss. There were tiny flowers growing in it: pale blue with gold centers, the stems as insubstantial asspiderwebs . She lifted her hand, horrified that she might have crushed some of the miniature beauties, but the flowers rose up again as if they had never felt her weight.

She looked at Parnell and realized that she could see him more clearly, his image no longer dimmed by the gathering dusk. Had a nearby streetlight gone on all of a sudden? She glanced around, noticed the surrounding area still cradled the blue-grey threads of twilight. Her heart began to pound harder. Parnell answered the question in her eyes.

“A wee bit of enchantment, yes . . . How can I convince you what I’m telling you is true if afterwards you’ll be able to tell yourself you were fooled by the darkness? Don’t worry. We’re not spotlighted here—the opposite, in fact. I’ve thrown up a ward around us. To any who pass by, this space under the spreading oak is unoccupied—as in a sense it is.”

The last was said with a note of challenge, and Brenda rose to it. “You’ve moved us a little into somewhere else. That’s why the grass is so soft and the flowers aren’t all smushed.”

“Your experiences as a scion of the Thirteen Orphans have served you well, acushla,” Parnell said. “Keep your heart firmly rooted in those memories. Last time we spoke, I spooked you some, I think.”

“Well, you
were
talking about otherworldly creatures, and pronouncing warnings of doom and destruction,” Brenda said tartly.

“I didn’t say you were wrong to be spooked,” Parnell replied. “I knew what I had to tell you would not be easy to take, and as I told you then, I had hoped to have more time to work you around to liking me so maybe you’d trust me a bit more easily, but Pearl’s ‘accident’ was too much of a warning to ignore.”

“I remember,” Brenda said. “So, go on.”

“I want to start by presenting you with my bona fide character as a weird alien creature not in the least human,” Parnell said. “That means later you can’t get angry at me for holding out on you.”

Brenda felt her fingers clutching the turf and forced them to relax and straighten. She gave Parnell a curt nod.

“Okay.”

He shifted slightly, bringing his right arm out in front of him, turning the hand so the palm faced upward.

Brenda tensed again, expecting almost anything other than what happened. Parnell took a pocketknife out of his left pocket with his left hand, opened the blade with an ease that spoke either of much practice or ambidexterity, and then, before Brenda could move or protest, cut himself across the ball of his right thumb.

“ ‘If you cut us,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘do we not bleed?’ The difficulty is . . .”

He bent, wiped the knife on the turf, folded it, stood, and slid the blade back into his pocket. Then, with his left hand, he gently squeezed the ball of his right thumb.