Opal lifted her teacup and blew across its rim. “My son,” she said.
“What happened to him?”
A wind rose outside. The tree branches raked the top of the house like fingernails.
“One day when he was twelve, he found a deer in the woods. It had been injured by a hunter in a neighboring village, but not killed.
Cort was new to his Affinities — he had such promise as a healer -
and he spent the next month nursing it back to health. After that — ”
“He challenged the hunter to a duel,” Kevin said.
He was looking at Opal, his teacup cradled in one hand, his eyes clear and intense, focused in a way Glenn had never seen before. She expected him to offer some explanation, but it was as if she wasn’t even there.
“He made a sword out of sticks,” Kevin added.
“Yes,” Opal said with the ghost of a smile. “He marched right to that man’s house and pounded on the door with his tiny fists, screaming that he was a monster, that it wasn’t fair. The hunter thought it was all a laugh until he made the mistake of stepping outside and took a couple licks from Cort’s sword.”
Opal shook her head.
“After the Magistra returned, I pleaded with Cort not to join Merrin Farrick’s cause with all of the others, but there was no hope. He was what he had become. We putter about with alchemy — thinking we’ll turn base things into gold — but what happens inside a gentle boy, who sat outside for nights on end nursing a frightened doe back to health, that turns him into an outraged young man with a sword? How does it happen? He wasn’t gone a month before he was taken by the Menagerie near Grantham with his friends….”
“Arno and Felix,” Kevin said.
Opal inclined her head. “Felix was a boy. He idolized Cort.” Her hand fell to her lap and smoothed a wrinkle out of her skirt, then closed her hand into a fist to stop it from shaking. “There was a trial of sorts, a sham presided over by the black witch’s handmaiden. Cort and his friends were led up a scaffolding and hung, one by one, outside the palace gates.”
Opal faltered. Her hands trembled.
“I was told that Cort held Felix’s hand and whispered to him the entire way up to the noose. The younger boy was terrified, crying. Even facing his own death, all Cort wanted to do was comfort him.”
Opal said nothing more for a time. She seemed smaller, crumpled.
Kevin set his teacup down and leaned over the edge of the woman’s chair. He kissed her forehead and squeezed her shoulder.
“He was thinking of you,” Kevin said, almost too quietly for Glenn to hear. “He loved you very much.”
Opal raised her hand to Kevin’s cheek and then let it fall. Small tears glistened on her cheeks.
“Thank you,” she said.
Glenn looked away. The Kevin that stood there leaning over the old woman was like no one she had known. Kevin Kapoor was an avalanche. Chaos and noise. This person seemed older and smoothed by the wind like a weathered hill. The strangeness of it filled Glenn with barely understood fear.
“You must be tired,” Opal said finally. “I have rooms for you both. You can stay the night and then — ”
“We should go,” Glenn said quickly, standing up. “Shouldn’t we, Kevin?”
Kevin glanced out the window above Glenn’s head, his hand on the back of Opal’s chair as if the two of them were sitting for a portrait.
“It’s … cold,” he said, his voice dreamy. “You’re soaked. We don’t … we should stay. Leave tomorrow.”
“Kev-” But before Glenn could finish, the front door slammed open and struck the wall beside it, shaking the house to its frame.
“Glenn! Kevin!”
Glenn turned, relieved to see Aamon Marta striding through the doorway.
“It’s okay,” Glenn called. “We’re okay! Aamon, this is Opal. She
– ”
Before Glenn could finish, there was a blinding flash of white light and an ear-stinging explosion. Aamon flew backward and crashed onto the floor. Glenn turned to see that Opal had risen from her chair and was wielding a long silver-handled knife. Its needlelike tip was pointed directly at Aamon’s heart and glowing an eye-piercing white.
“Opal, no!” Glenn said, dumbstruck. “He’s our friend.”
“He’s a black and murderous thing,” Opal growled, not moving the tip of the blade in the slightest. “Aren’t you? Aamon Marta.” She spat out his name as if it was diseased. “Tell me, do you like being back? Do you like the world you helped make?”
Aamon slowly rose to his feet. “Opal,” he said.
“You know each other?” Kevin said.
“Leave here and go about your business,” Opal commanded, “or I’ll show you I have more than parlor tricks left in me.”
“My business is with these two, Opal. I didn’t come here to cause you any harm.”
A cruel grin raised Opal’s lips. “How many people have died after hearing those exact words?”
“Stop it!” Glenn said. “Opal, put down the knife. Please. Aamon is our friend. He’s taking us to Bethany. That’s all.”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with, child.”
“Yes, I do,” Glenn said, matching the steel in Opal’s voice. “Now put it down.”
Opal gripped the hilt of the blade tighter, rolling it in her palm. “I won’t have him here,” she said. “I have a clean house.”
“Fine,” Glenn said. “We’ll go, then. Kevin — ”
“No,” Aamon said from his place at the doorway. “Opal, the way to Bethany is long and these woods aren’t safe. For their sake, let them sleep here tonight. I’ll stay outside. We’ll be gone tomorrow.”
Opal didn’t move. Kevin put one hand on her arm.
“I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him,” he said. “If you push him out, I’ll leave too.”
Slowly the brightness of the knife’s tip faded and she lowered it, muttering something under her breath that sounded like a curse but was in a language Glenn didn’t understand.
“Go,” she said to Aamon, seething. “Sleep in my yard with the other animals, traitor.”
Aamon backed away and locked eyes with Glenn. “Tomorrow,”
he said.
Glenn nodded, and then Aamon ducked under the door frame and disappeared outside.
“There are rooms for you both,” Opal repeated.
The fire popped behind her as a log was consumed and slumped into ash. Glenn said nothing as Opal led Kevin out of the room and down a dark hallway.
Why would she say that about Aamon? What did she think he
had done?
A door opened and closed down the dark hallway. Kevin hadn’t even looked at her as Opal led him away.
Glenn stood alone in the still house, wondering where she would drift off to if all the anchors that held her down were gone.
18
