Gatefather (23 page)

Compare that to how Danny and Pat first met—at a high school lunch table, hiding her bad acne under long straight hair, and Danny's first action was to heal her by passing her through a gate. And what was her response? Not helpful.

Here was the huge question that nagged at Pat all the time. Danny knew Hermia. Danny had learned from Hermia. So why was Danny in love with Pat, when Hermia was right there? Hermia was everything Pat had always wanted to be—pretty, outgoing, clever, funny, smart. What did Pat have that Hermia lacked?

It couldn't just be that Hermia was years older than Danny. Nor that she was from a rival family. Neither fact had kept them from being friends. Danny was a normal heterosexual boy, he couldn't possibly have missed Hermia's prettiness. It was quite possible he was oblivious to the way Hermia made herself look available to him—the occasional touches, the looks, the covert eye rolls. As if she and Danny were the only two who got the joke, whatever it was. She was always including Danny in her conversation—even on the balcony, when she had already betrayed him, she was flirting—no, not flirting, but—yes, she was
including
him, making it clear that in some way she belonged to him. He couldn't possibly be unaffected by that, even if he wasn't consciously aware—Danny's ability to remain oblivious was quite remarkable. Yet because Hermia was far better at it than Xena or Laurette or Sin, Danny never had to speak up to shut it down. Therefore he might be perfectly aware but simply chose not to respond.

Why didn't Danny North fall in love with Yllka Argyros—called Hermia because she was a gatemage?

And was Hermia really in love with Danny, or was she just playing with him? Or was it something even more nefarious—was she
playing
him, running some sort of Greek-god con?

I'm jealous of her, even though Danny has never given me the slightest sign that he's interested in anybody but me. I'm jealous because I know that she is the kind of woman who
deserves
a man like Danny, and I'm not.

Crazy thoughts, Pat knew. Yet they kept coming back.

Danny doesn't have a crush on Hermia.
I'm
the one who can't stop thinking about her. Wishing I could be like her. Knowing that I never can. Not believing that anyone could prefer me to her.

“I'm no threat to you,” said Hermia.

Pat was so startled that the book she was reading flipped out of her hands. “I didn't think you were,” said Pat, retrieving the book.

“You keep studying me,” said Hermia. “I know what you're thinking.”

“Do you?” asked Pat.

“You're thinking, Danny North is going to fall in love with this amazing Greek bitch goddess, only you have nothing to worry about, it'll never happen.”

Pat would have denied it, but since this was exactly what she had been thinking, she didn't bother. “If he hasn't fallen for you already, I expect he isn't going to.”

“Oh, he will, someday. When all this nonsense is over and he's able to concentrate on something other than saving the world and keeping control of that devil he's got trapped inside him. But don't worry. I'll wait to let anything happen until you're already out of the picture.”

Pat shook her head and returned to her book.

“You don't fool me,” said Hermia. “You aren't actually reading, you're just trying to keep from making some acid retort to my teasing you about how faithless the gods are.
You're
the one who's right, I admit it. Danny North isn't your typical strutting god-boy. If there's anybody in any of the Families who might actually make a decent, reliable husband, who might actually be there to help raise his kids, I think you've found him.”

Pat felt tears begin to well, or at least that thick feeling around the eyes that told her it was about to happen, so she turned away from the feeling. “Hermia, I'm really not trying to answer you tit-for-tat, but … it seems to me that the real reason you keep taunting me about how Danny and I are doomed not to last is because you really are hoping that he'll turn to you someday.”

“Well, of course I am,” said Hermia. “He's the best—and believe me, I've seen
all
the godlings, so I know. Of course, when my Family brought me along to look at the Norths, Danny didn't exactly stand out. I didn't know he was the maker of all those gates until long after. The day he made that abortive attempt at a Great Gate and sent all those schoolboys flying into the air over the high school. But since then, I've had a chance to compare him to all the others and I'd be a fool not to want him.”

“I'm sure you make all your romantic decisions based on such stringent analytical processes.”

Hermia laughed. “‘Romantic,'” she repeated. “Oh my, you
are
such a drowther.”

Maybe this was why Danny didn't like Hermia so much. “The thing that we poor ignorant drowthers call ‘romance' is the fundamental human longing to be part of a pair bond. You gods may pretend not to have that desire, but you have it. Don't most of you marry and remain faithful?”

Hermia was about to answer scornfully, but then she turned thoughtful. “Well, you have a point. And you're right, we have all the fundamental human drives and desires. So all right, Pat, I'll call it ‘romance,' too. In fact, let me go way out on a limb and admit that I ‘love' Danny North.”

This was not something Pat wanted to hear. “You say ‘love' as if you were putting air quotes around the word.”

Hermia took just a moment to respond, and so Pat demonstrated air quotes, drawing the first two fingers of both hands downward to make quotation marks in the air. “Love,” she said, giving it the air-quote intonation. “I admit that I ‘love' Danny North.”

Hermia giggled like a girl. “Oh, yes, I really
did
that. As if I have to deny the admission even as I make it. No, Pat, I'm not lying in bed pining over the boy, but yes, I care about him and the worst thing in my life right now is that I've given him every reason to hate me forever and I don't know what I can do about it.”

“Don't look to me for advice,” said Pat. “I think he doesn't hate you enough.”

“Well, he
is
Danny North. He doesn't hate
any
of his enemies enough.”

“Are you one of his enemies?” asked Pat.

“
He
thinks so, and with good reason,” said Hermia. “And he's not surrounded by people urging him to forgive me. Why couldn't he have fallen in with a Christian crowd in high school?”

“We're Christian,” said Pat. “More or less.”

“Point proven,” said Hermia. “But yes, I still put ‘love' in air quotes because I don't know if what I'm feeling toward him really is love or even all that romantic. Fascination bordering on obsession—but that's easily explained by his power. He
cannot
be ignored. He's the ultimate mage, the Gatefather beyond all Gatefathers, and now what you and he can do, gateless gating, how can I possibly
love
him when I have no choice but to
worship
him?”

Pat thought about that without answering. Worship. Is that what I feel about him? That's Xena and Sin, even Laurette, but not me. I don't worship anybody. I've never been able to even be a fan—no actor, no singer, no athlete,
nobody
that I admired enough to shiver and be all excited to see him in person. I know other people feel that, but …

“I don't see you as a quivering worshiper of Danny North,” said Pat finally. “You've always treated him as an equal.”

“Oh, I've treated him as being somewhat beneath me. I'm not talking about how I act. I'm talking about what I feel. We're having a discussion about ‘feelings.'” Hermia made the air quotes again.

“How very high-school of us,” said Pat.

“When you think about this discussion later, you'll conclude that I was just playing you to try to get you to bond with me so I can be excused from this house arrest you and Danny have me under.”

“Never crossed my mind,” said Pat. “Until now.”

“It would have,” said Hermia. “Because you're smart, and it's true. Until you like me, you won't trust me. I want very much for you to trust me.”

“I've been pissed off all afternoon because I already like you and I find that shameful and annoying.”

“Teach me how to do the gateless gate thing that you and Danny do.”

And there it was. Cut to the chase. Here's what she really wants—not Danny, not me, not trust, not friendship. Power.

And yet the power came to me because I was stupid and got myself killed, and for some reason This One decided to let me come back to my dead body and revivify. Why should I guard it?

Because Hermia has already proven her willingness to use whatever power she has to hurt Danny.

“I don't think I
can
teach you,” said Pat. “If Danny couldn't teach Veevee…”

“Veevee is
not
a quick learner,” said Hermia. “She's not dumb—gatemages are never
dumb
—but she's so full of her own thoughts and her own ego that she really can't observe anything. I know that about her because she and I worked together trying to learn how to move gates and other useful skills back when Danny had gates and we were still on the same team. You notice that
I
learned how, and she didn't.”

“Yes,” said Pat.

“I'm just as full of my own thoughts and my own ego,” said Hermia. “But I know that about myself, and I can switch it off long enough to really concentrate on things outside myself. I've spent this afternoon concentrating on
you
.”

Pat found this flattering, which annoyed her. She hated being so manipulable. “I haven't done anything,” said Pat.

“Oh, you've sat there not-reading that book whenever you wanted to not-talk with me. When you and Danny brought me here, I should have been baffled because there was no gate. But I already knew that you hadn't made any gates in all your moving around back on the island. So when Danny took me—I know it was Danny and not you, because you followed an instant later—I didn't look for a gate. I'm not a cat, constantly trying to catch the laser pointer. I didn't look for anything outside myself at all. The things you had told me—you led me to look inside myself. To see if I could sense, could
grasp
, whatever it was that Danny grabbed hold of in order to drag me here to Florida.”

Pat had to admit that this sounded far more sensible than anything else Hermia might have done.

“And I think I did sense it. Not the way you sense something outside yourself, like a smell or a sound. And not even the way you see yourself in a dream, in the third person, as if you were hovering just over your own shoulder, watching what you do. No, what I sensed was the part of me that Danny tugged on. Only it wasn't a tug. It was more like an invitation that was so powerful that I fell into it. Like gravity. I fell here. That's what it felt like.”

And now that Hermia had put it into those words, Pat realized that it was true, or at least truish. She thought of the headlong rush to Duat and yes, it was like falling. As inevitable as gravity. And so was coming back to her body.

“So I thought, ‘That's who “I” am,' and yes, I'm putting air quotes around ‘I' because it's
not
the thing I've thought of as myself for my whole life. It's not this face or these hands or this body that eats and pees and walks and reads, it's not my eyes or any of my senses. But when Danny tugged on it and I fell here, it was
me
doing the falling, and all those other things came along with. So it's me. It's who I am. But there isn't much of it, is there? If I were really stripped down to that tuggable thing that fell, it wouldn't really be
me
, would it. Just a fragment.”

“The fragment that makes all the decisions,” said Pat.

“Ah. Yes. That's what it comes down to, doesn't it. Whatever part of us
decides
, that's our true self.”

“Ka,” said Pat.

“Inself. Or … pret,” said Hermia. “Names for the part of myself that's always listening to my thoughts, always observing me. The judge who evaluates everything I do. But whenever I've ever been aware of that watcher, that judge, it flies away, recedes out of reach. Until now. Now I know where it is. I can tug on it too. Because Danny showed me how to find it.”

Because of what Hermia said, Pat felt her own inself in a curious new way. In Duat, that's all she had been, just that ka, naked and almost but not quite alone. Because Danny was there. She was always aware of him, and therefore always aware of where
she
was in relation to him.

But now she was also aware of Hermia. Not of the woman, but the ka within her. The way she had been able to sense the ka and ba of Enopp and Eluik. Those, Danny had shown to her. And now Hermia was showing herself to Pat.

Showing it for a purpose. Showing it so that Pat would tug on it.

Only Pat didn't know how. She had never done it.

Except that even as she thought this, she made the contact—just as she had contacted Enopp and Eluik, as she had communed with This One. Only she didn't want that kind of intimate wordless communication with Hermia. Hermia was too strong and dangerous, she could not be trusted. And so Pat recoiled from her, and instead of that recoil taking a physical form, Pat moved her ka across the room and she was standing by the window facing into the room.…

And Hermia was not sitting where she had been sitting. She was standing only a few feet away from Pat. Smiling.

“I see,” said Hermia.

“I didn't mean to do that,” said Pat.

“I don't care,” said Hermia. “You were running away from me, I get that. But you were in contact with me. I felt that. Not a tug, just a touch. But when you moved, I kept the same position. See? I'm exactly as far from you as I was before. You're standing, so I'm standing, but the
distance
is the same.”