Limbo's Child (33 page)

“Nephys?”

“Aah!” Nephys nearly jumped out of his cross-legged position and dropped his reed pen. The clatter on the stone floor drew the attention of thousands of scribes whose pens now fell silent. Somehow the blue-tinged little Roman had snuck up on him, but Falco didn’t look mad or upset at all, instead he was smiling.

“Y-Yes master?” Nephys stammered as he stood up and bowed quickly.

“Gather your things, please,” Falco said plainly. It was the “please” part that scared Nephys the most. Falco turned and started walking away. Nephys knew by experience that this was the little tyrant’s way of telling you to follow him. He quickly gathered his pens and ink palette, tidied his station and jumped up to follow. Usually Falco just stormed off and you had to chase after him. Even with his tiny legs he had a purposeful stride that could outpace Nephys every time. Yet this time, Falco slowed to a leisurely pace so that instead of having to chase after him, Nephys could walk nearly beside him with no difficulty. A few paces on, Falco stunned him again.

“How are you enjoying the Russell?”

Falco was asking his opinion on a text? This was so out of character for Falco that it took a while for Nephys to recover.

“Um…um…very much, Sir,”

Falco smiled. “I thought you would like him. The 20
^th
C. humanists are so rational, so certain of themselves, it’s all very…reassuring.” He paused here to let Nephys give his opinion. Nephys could only nod in mute agreement. He had no precise idea what Falco was talking about, but he liked the way Falco was talking to him, as if he were a colleague and not an underling. Falco continued, “Pity they were all wrong about there being no afterlife.” Nephys had to admit, he had had that thought himself more than once. He thought to say something intelligent just to prove he could, but Falco spoke again.

“I have recently come into the possession of a first edition of Petrarch’s translations of Virgil’s eclogues illustrated by Simone Martini. I was wondering if you would be willing to work on it for me?”

Nephys was stunned. “
Me
?! Sir, you want
me
to work on it?!” Nephys had never in more than a thousand years seen any indication that Falco appreciated his work or any scribe’s work for that matter.

“Yes, of course,” Falco said apparently earnestly. “You don’t think I’d trust my native Latin to some pigtail schoolgirl that couldn’t conjugate
vedere
, do you?”

Nephys shrugged. Now that he thought of it that
did
make sense.

Falco continued, “After all, you’re a
proper
scribe, not some ink-stained print monkey tending an errant machine.”

“Really?” Nephys was a bit incredulous at this new praise from Falco, but he liked it.

“Yes, of course,” Falco stated as if the fact were self-evident.

Nephys felt a small swelling of pride and satisfaction inside himself. Perhaps Nephys had been wrong about Falco. Maybe he wasn’t an imperious little social-climbing tyrant. Perhaps Falco had only pushed Nephys to be his best…through nearly a millennium of abuse…and feigned contempt. Nephys looked carefully at Falco. Falco looked sideways at Nephys and smiled a satisfied smile himself.

“Nephys,” Falco began again, “I have been the master of the Scriptorium for a very long time, but eternity is always longer. Someday I hope to move on to
other
tasks for the Great Master.” Falco paused, he didn’t specify what other tasks these might be, but Falco’s ambition was hardly a secret. Falco continued, “I will have to find my own replacement. Someone will have to become the new master, someone who has been here longer than all the others, someone who is a
proper
scribe.”

“A proper scribe?” thought Nephys, “A proper scribe like me?”

Nephys’ doubt grew. What was Falco driving at?

Falco looked at Nephys like a cat eyeing a mouse.

Nephys wasn’t quite certain anymore, but he liked the new Falco far better than the old one, and even this faint praise made him feel more confident in spite of his doubts.

Nephys’ new confidence evaporated when they reached the front of the scriptorium. The massive soldier was like a wall of chain mail with tree-trunk legs all hung in bloody, black armor, and above it all, that horrifying, truncated head staring down at you with the empty space where his scalp, eyes and nose used to be.

“Ah yes, here we are,” Falco said indifferently as if introducing Nephys to a new stack of copy work. “This is the Sergeant-at-Arms to the Courts of Death, Chief Herald to the Great Master Himself and Grandmaster of all his Knights and Soldiers.”

Nephys froze. He didn’t know whether to bow or throw himself flat on the floor and beg for mercy. If his inaction was a breach of protocol neither the giant soldier without a face nor Falco gave any indication.

“You have been summoned, Nephys, to the courts of Death to see the Great Master himself, a singular honor.”

Frozen in terror, these words came to Nephys’ ears slowly, as if spoken underwater and from several miles away. The words wormed their way down his ear canals gradually like pouring molasses into a tiny funnel; it took forever to get through. Recognition was dawning painfully sluggishly on Nephys when finally the words gushed forth into his brain like a spurt of molten lava. The back of his neck got boiling hot.

“Excuse me, M-Master?” Nephys weakly uttered, unbelieving.

“Yes, Nephys,” Falco said in an almost paternal, reassuring way, “You have been called by the Great Master himself for a personal audience. His Herald is prepared to take you there…
now
.” Falco added the “now” with a terrifying finality.

With that the soldier turned slowly, like a boulder grating on the bedrock, his metal-shod boots scraping the floor. Then it started walking away. Nephys gaped, jaw slack, uncertain what to do. No one ever saw the GREAT MASTER! Certainly not a lowly scribe like him!!

Nephys thought hard. This had something to do with that
stone
! The other day they must have known that he could tell it was a different color. WHY HAD HE PAUSED OVER THAT STONE?! He had known at the time something was wrong. He thought he had fooled them into thinking he hadn’t seen it, but they had known. Somehow, even without eyes or a face to put them in, that bloody, horrible soldier had known. And now Nephys was on his way to see
DEATH
himself. He should have realized. He should have known. No one ever tricks Death–EVER! Maybe if he had just come clean earlier and admitted he could see the stone…But it was all too late now. What was he going to do?! What were they going to do with him?! He thought about running, he thought about saying “No, thank you,” but that would never do. What was he going to do?!!

Panicking, he looked at Falco who only nodded comfortingly in the soldier’s direction and gestured towards him indicating that Nephys should follow the great brute out the door. Nephys was petrified. He tried to will a leg, a foot,
a toe!
to move, but none of his body parts would obey him. Finally, Falco walked towards Nephys and gave him a tiny push. Nephys stumbled forward, numb, first one leg and then the other. As he made his way out the entrance like a man half asleep, he looked back at Falco.

Falco was giving him a tiny wave as if he were sending Nephys away on his first day of school.

“Remember, Nephys,” Falco called after him, “That copy of Petrarch will be waiting for you
when
you come back.”

Chapter Twenty-One
The Smoothie

“Are you ok, Lucy? You keep looking at that smoothie like you expect a monster to jump out of it.”

The elegant lady in black smiled a little at Lucy from behind her stylish black-framed tinted glasses and raised a cappuccino to her lips.

“Oh, that’s good!” she said a little too indulgently to herself as if she hadn’t had one in a very long time.

The woman was certainly enjoying her drink selection. All Lucy could do was stare at her pink, strawberry smoothie. She had hardly touched it, and it wasn’t just because she was still digesting a brick of lime Jell-O the size of her head. Lucy
was
expecting a monster to leap out at her, but not from her drink.

“If you don’t like it I can get you something else.” The lady across from her leaned over gracefully –
everything
she did looked graceful – and recovered a stylish, black alligator clutch from an equally stylish, black calfskin briefcase. She was already unsnapping the clasp to show her willingness to purchase another beverage when Lucy protested.

“No, no!” Lucy said a little too urgently, and then forced herself to remain calm. “That’s ok. I really like it.” Then she made an effort to take a few sips from her strawberry smoothie. It
was
good. She drank some more, but she didn’t drink more because she liked it, she did it to avoid suspicion or at least to avoid letting the lady know that
she
was suspicious. The lady smiled at her in a genuinely friendly way. Lucy could tell because the corners of her eyes moved and not just her mouth. Nothing the woman did betrayed any intentional deception, but still there was something horribly unsettling about her. Lucy suddenly became aware that she was staring at the lady again, so she quickly looked down, but almost against her will her eyes darted back up at her. The beautiful woman just leaned back and smiled knowingly at Lucy as she slowly stirred her coffee. Lucy’s eyes shot back to her smoothie.

The lady had offered to buy Lucy an iced coffee but she had refused and got the smoothie instead. Lucy had always wanted to try an iced coffee actually, but her mother always thought she was too young. Now that her mother was gone and she could have one, it seemed like a betrayal of her mother’s memory to get one. She wondered if she would ever be able to drink one even when she was an adult, but right now she had bigger concerns. There was Yo-yo of course, and her impending escape which she still didn’t have a plan for, but the biggest problem was sitting opposite her with a stylish, short bob and high-end, oblong, chunky-framed, amber-tinted glasses and black leather gloves. Lucy couldn’t explain it, but something about the woman sitting opposite her, who
called
herself Amanda Tipping, was just plain wrong.

She was fine enough Lucy guessed. She hadn’t even given Lucy any reason to be suspicious, and yet, there was something about her, a presence she couldn’t describe. Her glasses obscured her eyes and who wore gloves in May anyway? The tinted glasses and fine leather gloves were one thing, but even without those the woman stood out. The coffee shop was filled with doctors, nurses and a few odd patients and visitors. They were all dressed in the usual scrubs, brightly patterned uniforms and lab-coats, but she looked more like she belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine. The hospital coffee shop was just a little past the main lobby. The woman, Amanda, had said she wanted to talk to Lucy in a more comfortable setting, but Lucy wasn’t comfortable anywhere near this woman even while sitting on a cushy leather chair in a trendy coffee house.

And it wasn’t just that – it was her whole demeanor. Every move or gesture Amanda made was beautiful and…well…perfect, geometric and flowing. Even though she was dressed in high-end contemporary clothes and shoes that must have cost a small fortune, she seemed like something from another time. Sometimes she was stern and officious, forced and cold and humorless like a Victorian nanny. Other times she was warm and friendly, pretty and sassy or genuinely funny like a favorite aunt, or at least how Lucy imagined a favorite aunt should be. It was like she was two completely different people. At first Lucy thought this was just a product of her being a lawyer, but now she wasn’t so sure.

They had spent the first twenty minutes going over the same territory the social worker had gone over this morning. Lucy had given Amanda – she had insisted Lucy call her by her first name – her entire history: her name, age, address and all known relations. On this point she was far more thorough than the social worker had been. She filled up several pages of notes on a big yellow legal pad with an old-fashioned tortoise-shell fountain pen. It looked like an antique. Even her handwriting was gorgeous. She had pumped her for information about her mother, her father and her grandmother. She even asked if her grandmother had kept any records or any genealogies. Lucy didn’t know.

Boxing up all of grandmother Holveda’s stuff and moving it up to the attic, down to the basement or out to the garage had been job number one when they had moved into the crummy old house more than a year ago. Her mother had insisted on it and it had been quite a chore. Just like the social worker that morning, she had asked specifically if Lucy knew anything about an uncle or great uncle. When Lucy said she knew nothing about any uncles, she seemed almost pleased. It was all very odd, but if she really was here to help Lucy find a new home she guessed it made sense to scout out any possible relations, but it still didn’t feel right.

After that, Amanda tried to make small talk in an effort to get to know Lucy better. She had asked Lucy about her opinions on clothes, school and even
boys
, but Lucy wasn’t feeling chatty. After a while, Amanda just decided to spend the next few minutes in silence. Even that was unnerving. Most of the adults here didn’t know when to shut up, but after a while she apologized for talking so much and told Lucy she could just enjoy her smoothie in peace while she read the paper. It was like something her mother would have done. Some of the best conversations with her mother were spent in total silence over a couple of milkshakes. Usually, there was nothing Lucy would have liked better than to just sit and enjoy a natural silence over a strawberry smoothie and a coffee. It would have been comforting after a full day of forced talking, if only the company were different. Now it made Lucy feel edgy. How did this woman know Lucy so well?! Amanda had gotten her almost instinctively. Lucy tried to rationalize away her fears. True, Amanda did have a file on Lucy, but she seemed to know her right down to her soul.

Amanda went back to her newspaper, (a copy of Le Monde – even her newspaper choices were sophisticated) and Lucy stared forlornly at her slowly melting smoothie. Lucy risked a peek, and just at that moment, one of corners of the paper bent down to reveal one of Amanda’s amber-tinted eyes staring right at her. Lucy jumped.

Amanda just smiled, folded the paper neatly and put it down on the table. “Ok, what is it? What did I do wrong?”

Lucy just gaped. “Huh? What? Oh! Um…
nothing
.” She nervously tried to brush her hair behind her ears. That was pointless because she had done that several times already.

Amanda went on, “Ever since I met you you’ve been looking at me like I’m some kind of
alien
. I obviously did something to put you on edge. What was it?”

Lucy just retreated back into her chair as far as she could. Amanda gave her an inquisitive, penetrating look from behind those amber lenses. Lucy desperately wanted to find somewhere to hide but didn’t dare move. Suddenly Amanda’s face softened. “Look, Lucy, I know you’ve been through a lot lately, and I know no one can replace your mother, but you really need to trust someone if we are going to help you. I know you don’t know me very well yet, but I really do want to find the best possible home we can for you, not just a foster home, but a permanent home. A loving home where someone can provide you with everything you might need,
but
I need your help to do that.”

She paused and Lucy considered what she had said. She sounded totally sincere and caring. Lucy wanted to believe it was true, but after all that had happened in the last two days, she just didn’t trust anyone anymore. How could she explain to this lady about everything that had happened to her? How could she explain to this woman about Yo-yo or the long-haired, grey-eyed, phantom woman?

The second she thought about the long-haired woman Lucy realized what she was feeling. Amanda was giving her the same strange sensation of terror that the long-haired woman did! Lucy had a crazy, impossible thought. What if
Amanda
was the long-haired, grey-eyed woman?!! That didn’t make any sense. This woman didn’t really look much like that woman. She had short hair, for one thing, and she seemed, well, far too graceful to be the same woman as in the menacing vision. But then hair could be cut and she really couldn’t see her eyes. No, that was crazy. Even if she had cut her hair, how could she lunge out at her from a water stain? That was nuts. Or was it? Lucy was so confused. Only Amanda’s next question shook her out of her own befuddled thoughts.

“So tell me,
Ms.
Miller, what do I have to do to make you trust me?” Amanda smiled a disarming smile that was nearly identical to one Lucy’s mother constantly used when she wanted to get Lucy to do her chores.

Lucy shifted uncomfortably in her seat a little; then she had a thought. “Um…could you…um…”

Sensing her nervousness Amanda broke in, “No, go on, it’s ok, tell me.” She seemed sincerely happy to do anything for Lucy.

“Um…could you take off your glasses?” She winced as she said it, like someone expecting a blow, then added quickly, “Um…please?”

Amanda looked incredulous but she was still smiling. “My glasses? You want me to take off my
glasses
?”

“Um…yeah,” Lucy said it a little defensively. “I want to see your eyes…I want to see what color they are. I’m curious, if that’s ok?”

“My eyes? Really?” Amanda seemed more amused than angry.

Lucy nodded. Amanda snorted a little and then said, “Well, ok then, if that’s all.” She reached up and pulled the glasses off her face as gracefully as if she were a movie star, but then she did something ungraceful. She scrunched up her face as if the light hurt her eyes and blinked several times. She squinted her eyes to help her focus on Lucy’s face, and then satisfied she was looking in the right direction, she leaned over the small table and made huge, googly cow eyes at her so she could get a good look. Her expression almost made Lucy laugh a little. The eyes were tinged with a little gray around the pupils but otherwise they were an inoffensive, warm, golden brown. Somehow the eye color and the goofy way she had done it made Lucy feel a little relieved.

Amanda leaned back and smiled. “So…anything else?”

Lucy looked at her gloved hands. Without even having to speak, Amanda picked up on Lucy’s next request.

“Ah, the gloves! They are kinda silly aren’t they? I mean who wears gloves in warm weather?”

That was exactly what Lucy had thought. She began pulling the fingers of the fine leather glove on her right hand to loosen them. “Well, you may have noticed I’m a tad bit
self-conscious
about my appearance
.
” She gave Lucy a sideward glance and a little half-smirk. Lucy smiled at Amanda’s self-effacing sarcasm. It was like something her mother would have done. She went on, “Well the other day I was trying to find a stray cat and got scratched for my troubles.” She pulled off the glove and held up the back of her hand to view. It did have quite a few nasty cat scratches all right. They were ragged, red, and deep with purple edges indicating infection. Lucy wrinkled her nose at it.

“That must have been some nasty catfight,” thought Lucy.

“No good deed goes unpunished, right?” Amanda declared. That was also something her mother always used to say. “And I just couldn’t cover it up with foundation.” Amanda smiled again and she began wriggling her fingers back into the glove. “But it’s not all bad. As you may have guessed, I’m a bit of a neat freak too, and the gloves keep the newsprint ink from coming off on my fingers.” She folded her hands on the table and looked at Lucy intently. “I only wear the amber-tinted lenses because these fluorescent lights give me a headache, but without them I’m blind as a bat.” Her tone had become soft and conversational again. “I can’t even see your pretty green eyes from here without them.” As she said this she slid the chunky, black frames back on. She looked at Lucy and smiled as if admiring a beautiful work of art. Lucy had to look around to make sure Amanda was really looking at her.

Lucy’s bright green eyes widened in embarrassment. “You think my eyes are
pretty
?
Really
?” Her mom had always said so, but she had never believed it. This was the first time anyone other than her mom had ever said it.

“No, I don’t think they are pretty,” she said a little coldly before she said, “I think they’re FABULOUS!” with genuine overflowing enthusiasm. Lucy almost blushed. “With eyes like that you’re going to have beat the boys off with a stick.”

“Boys?!” thought Lucy. Why did she have to bring boys into it?! Lucy tried to scrunch lower into her chair.

“What’s the matter, Honey?” Amanda said quietly, “Did I say something wrong?”

“Oh, nothing.” Lucy looked away. “It’s just that…I don’t really think I’m all that pretty.” She said it barely above a whisper and stared back at her smoothie.

“Oh, dear, listen to me.” Amanda reached across the table and raised Lucy’s chin so that she could look right into her eyes. “You are
one
gorgeous young lady. You’ve got great bone structure, a cute little nose and a fabulous pair of peepers. You’ve just got to grow into it a little bit.”