Gatefather (18 page)

“And vice versa,” said Veevee.

Hermia laughed. “Oh, really. Pat can have all the secrets she wants, because it doesn't matter what she's doing.”

“She's the one who insisted on taking you out of captivity,” said Veevee.

“My point exactly,” said Hermia. “What happens to me isn't even interesting, in a world that has Danny North in it.”

“But for a couple of minutes a few days ago,” said Veevee, “it didn't have Danny North in it. He was with her, in the land of the dead. So Hermia, you can try to hurt Pat or offend her or impress on her how unimportant she is, and it's not going to matter, because she's already done more with her life than you and I will ever do.”

True enough. But when Hermia looked at Pat again, she could see that the girl had tears in her eyes.

“I'm sorry,” said Hermia. “I can't help being catty.”

“Meaning you're proud of it and don't want to quit being bitchy,” said Veevee.

“Sorry,” said Pat, brushing a sleeve across her eyes. “I wasn't listening. Were you talking about me?”

“If I didn't hurt your feelings,” said Hermia, “what were the tears about?”

“The children. The boys. Danny's with the boys. It just makes me sad.”

“Hal and Wheeler?” asked Veevee.

Pat shook her head.

“Oh, you mean the boys from Westil,” said Veevee.

“Sorry,” said Pat. “I think he needs me.”

“Meaning you need him,” said Hermia.

“Meaning that he just said that he needs me,” said Pat. And she was gone.

Hermia sat on the balcony, watching Veevee bake in the sun. “Florida does have its advantages in the winter,” Hermia said.

“Oh, sweetie, you don't have to stay out here and talk with me,” said Veevee. “I think you're a despicable traitor and I don't enjoy your company right now. So why don't you go make yourself a sandwich or watch something on YouTube? Indoors, with the air-conditioning. Or go shopping.”

Hermia was beginning to think she wasn't wanted. She went down the elevator to the beach and walked for a couple of miles. She knew perfectly well where the gates were, but she couldn't really celebrate her new freedom by using gates that were under the control of the Gate Thief. It was walking aimlessly that made her feel free. Something that any drowther could do.

Danny was right. Everything that matters, drowthers can do, and probably better than any Westilian. But the games of power, those belong to us, and when we play, everybody loses.

 

8

Pat did not know where she was going. She simply went where Danny was. Ever since her passage to Duat and back, enfolded—or so it seemed to her—in Danny's inself, she knew at every moment where he was, and could join herself to him, taking her body with her.

She found herself in a living room—no, a parlor—with Danny, two boys, and two adults.

“Thank you for coming,” said Danny.

“When did you invite her?” asked the woman.

“And why?” asked the man.

“I thought about her, and the fact that I needed her, and she came,” said Danny.

“What kind of magery is
that
?” asked the woman.

Instead of answering, Danny made the introductions. But now Pat remembered them from the Great Gate in Maine, when she made her momentary visit to Westil and awoke her latent windmagery. Marion and Leslie Silverman, Danny's foster parents. And they seemed to know exactly who she was, which was encouraging—it meant that Danny had talked about her. And had said good things, because they were warm in their welcome to her, though Pat also suspected there was a tinge of pity in the way Mrs. Silverman spoke to her.

“We're glad to have you here,” said Mr. Silverman, “and especially so if Danny needs you.”

“Though I hope you don't sit around doing nothing, waiting for his call,” said Mrs. Silverman. “Devotion is fine, but he'll lose interest in you if you don't have a life of your own.”

“That's not an issue,” said Danny. “It's impossible for us not to be aware of each other at all times, and she carries on her life just fine.”

That was not actually true, but Pat knew that Danny had little knowledge of what her life had been before she died and he brought her back, so how could he compare?

“She's not agreeing with you on that,” said Mrs. Silverman.

Pat was startled. Nobody could read her face; what had she given away? “Mrs. Silverman,” Pat said.

“Leslie,” said Mrs. Silverman.

“Miz Leslie,” said Pat. “Nobody's life is ‘just fine' right now.”

“A southern girl,” said Leslie. “‘Miz' Leslie. I like that.”

Mr. Silverman cleared his throat. “Are we all friends now? Can we move on?”

“Grump,” said Leslie.

“Why do you need her here, Danny?” he asked again.

“Because I can't fix what's wrong with these boys, and there's a good chance that she can.”

Pat's immediate thought was, And there's an overwhelming chance that I can't. But she said nothing, because she had no idea what kind of fixing they needed, or why a windmage would be involved in it.

“There's nothing wrong with us,” said the younger boy. Pat thought back to what Danny had called him in previous conversations. Enopp. The silent older one was Eluik.

Danny had told her that Enopp thought he was a gatemage, while it seemed Eluik had some of the powers of a manmage, like his mother, because during the boys' terrifying confinement in separate caves in Iceway, on Westil, Eluik had somehow sent his ba into his brother, to comfort him. Now he was stuck there, because, in his inexperience, he did not know how to return; or, fearful now himself, he was afraid to let go of his brother. Danny had speculated that, no matter how it began, it wasn't the older brother comforting the younger anymore. It was Eluik now who was afraid to let go, and instead he communicated with Enopp and Enopp spoke for him to the others.

Only now Pat could sense things that were beyond the reach of other mages. She and Danny were the only living souls who had been to Duat and then returned. In the process, not only had they become capable of detecting each other's inself and outself, but now they understood that the inself, the ka, was the original self, while the outself, the ba, the wanderer, the doodlebug, was really someone else, an independent entity or entities that their guide in Duat had taught them to call “pret.”

The pret or prets that made up a mage's outself had entered into this close bond voluntarily, but now it could not be broken. That's why, as soon as Danny gave them back to themselves, the wild captive left-behind gates immediately returned to Duat, to rebind themselves with the masterful pret to whom they had bound themselves before he or she was born. They could be kidnapped, as the Gate Thief had done, or lent out, as Danny had done when he “gave” his gates to Loki; but they could never belong to anyone but the ka to whom they had bound themselves as ba.

So what Pat
should
have seen, expected to see as she looked at the two boys from Westil, was that Eluik's ba was inside Enopp's body, riding him like a heartbeast.

But this was not the situation at all. Eluik was not a manmage, half dwelling inside his younger brother. Instead, it was Enopp whose ka, whose very self, had left his own body and now dwelt inside his older brother. Until now, Danny had completely misunderstood who was riding whom. Eluik was silent because he had as little access to his own body as Danny had had when Set was controlling him. And Enopp knew what his brother wanted to say because he was inside him, intercepting all his attempts to speak with his own voice.

Meanwhile, Enopp was able to use his own body freely, because even though only his ba—the thousands of prets that proved him to be, in all likelihood, a potential gatemage—was inside his body, there was no rival trying to control it. It was his own body that he rode like a heartbeast, using his outself to control it.

Danny looked at Pat searchingly. “Do you see?”

“The opposite of what you thought,” said Pat.

“Say no more than that,” said Danny. “Nothing more can be said aloud.”

For a moment, Pat wondered why Danny didn't trust the Silvermans. Or did he think that naming the situation for what it was might damage the boys further?

Then she realized that there was a seventh person present—Set himself, dwelling silently inside Danny North. At the moment, Danny seemed to have him under control, but there was no assurance of that continuing. It was quite possible that Set would realize that Enopp's body
had
no ka dwelling in it, and he would take it. Or perhaps the very process of helping Enopp bring his ka back into his own body would teach Set how to take full possession of a body—and he might use that understanding to take control of Danny again, only this time deeply and irrevocably.

Whatever could be done to restore Eluik and Enopp had to be done without Danny, and therefore Set, present.

“I have no idea if I can do it,” said Pat.

“We only learned how to do the things we can do now by experiencing it,” said Danny. “Maybe Enopp and Eluik can learn the same way.”

And there was the warning, almost explicitly stated: They could not afford to let Set see, or he, too, would learn.

“Leave, then,” said Pat. “And I'll do my best.”

“That'll be good enough,” said Danny.

“You don't know that,” said Pat, mildly amused.

“If it's all we can do, it's good enough,” said Danny. “We can't do more than is within our power.” He went to Leslie Silverman and kissed her cheek. “I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused you.”

“If Pat can do the job,” said Mr. Silverman, “then we'll still need to find another hiding place for the boys.”

“And for yourselves,” said Danny.

“In time of war,” said Leslie, “sometimes you have to become a refugee in order to survive. We've made arrangements for a friend to tend the cows. They'll miss me, but they'll be well cared for.”

“It's a good mage who leaves her heartbound for the sake of strangers,” said Danny.

“Don't be absurd,” said Leslie. “These boys are
not
strangers.”

“We like them much better than you,” said Marion. “They're way less trouble.”

“Only because on average they talk half as much as I did,” said Danny.

“That's probably it,” said Marion.

“Plus, they stay where we can keep an eye on them,” said Leslie.

“I was a brat, wasn't I. You poor, patient oldsters.”

Marion winced at “oldsters.” “What a horrible word,” he said.

“A brat, yes? We agree on that?” Danny grinned, and then he was gone.

Pat stood looking at the boys, who were seated beside each other, Eluik in a wooden side chair, Enopp on the floor beside him.

“Eluik won't sit in soft chairs,” said Leslie. “And Enopp won't stray far from him.”

No wonder, thought Pat. Enopp wants to keep his own body close by, since he uses it for all his talking.

Did Enopp understand that he had captured his brother's body? Almost certainly not.

“Maybe this will go better,” said Pat to the boys, “if you close your eyes.”

“I don't like surprises,” said Enopp. “And Eluik only closes his eyes when he feels like it.”

“I'm afraid I won't be able to do this clearly enough for you to understand what I'm doing,” said Pat. “And since it can't be seen by physical eyes, I thought you'd want to be undistracted by visual stimuli.”

Enopp shrugged and closed his eyes. Eluik's remained open, but since he didn't seem to be focusing on anything in the room, that would probably be all right. It's not as if Pat had any idea what would or would not work, or what might interfere with a good outcome.

Instead of saying anything to them, Pat sent her ba—a group of her prets, she now understood—inside Eluik. There she probed until she found Enopp's ka, his inmost self, with the roots he had sunk into his brother's body. Not as deeply as the roots of Eluik's ka, of course, since the body belonged to him, but Enopp was definitely more closely entwined with Eluik than Set had been with Danny North.

It occurred to Pat that maybe Eluik had spent years in deep frustration, as Enopp controlled and silenced him, while speaking for him. Yet it might be that Eluik really did want to comfort and protect his little brother, and if he had to sacrifice his own ability to speak in order to do it, maybe he didn't resent it.

Would he resent being liberated?

Was
he being liberated? Ultimately, it would be up to Enopp. Would he understand what Pat was showing him?

Still she did not speak with her mouth, but rather communicated as This One had communicated with Danny and her, showing the boys her understanding of what she was discovering inside Eluik's body. This is you, Enopp. You are in him; he is not in you. You can give him back to himself, by pulling away here. And here. And here.

Then Pat sent part of her ba into Enopp's own body, showing the empty place—if it could be called a “place”—where Enopp's ka should be, and how inadequately his thousands of gates substituted for Enopp's missing inself.

Time seemed to have no meaning when communicating ka to ka like this; Pat was very thorough in her demonstration, and she could sense that Enopp understood well enough to pull parts of himself, tendrils of his control, out of Eluik's body. But as for moving his entire ka back where it belonged?

It was time for Pat to give him a choice, which meant also giving him time to choose. She pulled her ba back into herself, and then murmured, “It's time to let Eluik have his body back, Enopp. He has served you so kindly, and you have also been his friend. You didn't know what it was costing him, or even where you were. But now you know. Will you give him his freedom back? Will you take up your own bones and live?” She kept up this low incantation, always asking, never demanding, but still urging him to decide.