Henry Neff - The Maelstrom

“Then I’m sure she’d want you to have it.”

The boy considered Scathach’s words while turning the pearly glass over in his hands. “I won’t keep it forever,” he concluded. “When I’m old, I’ll give it to someone young and tell them all about her.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” said Max. “Do you want to walk back with us or stay out here?”

Jack stayed behind, sitting back down on the damp earth and touching Tam’s name with the heartglass. When they had walked out of earshot, Max shook his head.

“Did you see that medal on his chest?” he asked.

“I did,” said Scathach, gazing out at the sea.

“A bad bargain,” Max remarked. “Swapping a friend for a medal.”

“Such things happen in war.”

“I told them I’d see them after,” he muttered, recalling his words to Tam and Jack as they’d huddled in Trench Nineteen. “What a stupid thing to promise.”

Scathach took his hand. “War breaks many things,” she sighed. “It can break bodies and hearts. It can break promises, too. But it can’t break spirits, Max—not if those who are fighting believe in their cause. Jack may grieve for a long time, but I don’t think war has broken his spirit. And I know it never broke Tam’s. That girl was very strong and she knew what she was about.”

Trench Nineteen had been filled in with earth and smoothed flat. All that remained was a discolored seam along the ground, and even that was disappearing as workers laid out stakes and twine to mark the gardens that would come. Ms. Richter had declared that all the land between the citadel and the outer walls would be transformed into groves and orchards to honor the fallen. Even with the aid of dryads and druids, it would take many years for such an undertaking to reach fruition, but once it was completed, it would be the greatest garden on earth.

Trench Nineteen was gone, but a monument had been erected for its battalion. There were memorials for every Rowan battalion at the places where they had fought. One could see them here and there across the grounds or at the base of walls and towers, larger white obelisks set upon blocks of rose granite. Each memorial flew its battalion’s flag and bore the names of the fallen around its base. Max gazed at the Trench Rats’ standard flapping in the wind. He counted four hundred and eighty-seven names inscribed beneath it. When he murmured the number aloud, Scathach spoke up.

“I’m no mathematician, but I believe that means there are over seven hundred names not inscribed on that stone.”

“It’s still too many,” said Max.

“How many more would there be if you hadn’t trained them, or fought with them, or acquired that iron on their behalf? Your losses were half that of the other trench battalions. They were volunteers, Max. Their deaths are sad, but they are not tragic. Look at me.”

He did so, studying the sharp planes of her face and the shining gray eyes that studied him in turn.

“You are no stranger to war,” she said. “You are grieving, but there is something else bothering you. What is it?”

Max nodded and quietly told Scathach how close he had been to summoning Astaroth.

“I’m glad you did not,” she remarked. “A blood debt is ugly business and you must not play the Demon’s game. There is a reason he chose you for such a thing, my love. I do not know what it is, but it was no accident. You must be wary of his words.”

“I am,” said Max, bowing his head. “But there are times, Scathach, when words don’t matter to me. There are times when I could turn the entire world into that dead black chasm. It scares me.”

“It should,” said Scathach sagely. “Some people are born great, but no one is born good. That is a choice they must make for themselves. You were born greater than others. Your choices will be harder and you are not infallible. I know … I’ve read your poems.”

Max grinned and pressed his forehead against hers. She kissed him as Old Tom chimed eleven o’clock. When it had finished, she smiled and gazed for a moment at her shadow on the grass.

“Come,” she said. “We have honored the dead. It’s time to honor the living.”

Max would have known the healing ward blindfolded. He knew the number of steps down its hallway and the acoustics of its high ceilings and archways, but most of all he knew the smells. The air in the ward was always warm and faintly scented with the aromas of hearths and oils and innumerable herbs that were laid on tables and patiently mortared into medicines.

The ward was crowded, but it was easy to find the bed they sought. It was in the back, separated from the others and walled off with panels of runeglass whose sigils gave off a soft white glow. Walking quietly to it, Max and Scathach slipped between a slender gap in the panels to gaze at William Cooper.

The man was fast asleep, lying peacefully beneath a white blanket stitched with Rowan’s seal. Miss Boon was also there, snoring lightly in a bedside chair and half mumbling some sentence from the tome that was slipping from her fingers. Stepping lightly forward, Max took the book from her hands and laid it on a table. Cracking open her eyes, Miss Boon sat up abruptly.

“I must have dozed off,” she said, blinking and looking about. “Forgive the mess.”

She gestured absently at several coffee mugs and plates of half-nibbled sandwiches.

“David’s had a bad influence on you,” Max teased, offering the other chair to Scathach. “How’s our guy?”

“Remarkable,” she declared, taking Cooper’s hand. “He opened his eyes for the first time last night. And whenever I read aloud to him, he groans. It must be therapeutic. It’s very nice of you two to visit, but do be careful, Max—you’re about to step on Grendel.”

Glancing down, Max spied the Cheshirewulf lying at the foot of Cooper’s bed. The animal was almost wholly translucent as it dozed, only appearing now and again when it exhaled. There was something standing atop its head, however, perched like an Egyptian plover upon a crocodile. Looking closer, Max saw that it was indeed a bird, a brightly colored kingfisher with mismatched eyes.

“And who is this?” he wondered.

“That’s my charge, Aberdeen,” explained Miss Boon, laying her wrist on Cooper’s forehead. “I was afraid Grendel would eat her, but they get along famously! She chirps; he growls. It’s very charming.”

Stepping carefully past the two, Max stood over Cooper’s bed and looked down at him. The wound from YaYa’s horn had closed and the pentacles upon his skin had faded away entirely. His head had been shaved, but already there were scattered patches of short blond stubble. The man’s countless scars, boxer’s nose, and grisly burns would have appalled many a stranger, but Max merely smiled. William Cooper looked precisely as he should.

Miss Boon reached for the book on the nightstand. “If you two don’t mind, I’ll continue reading him some Middlemarch ,” she said. “It’s just so hefty and satisfying.”

Tossing slightly, Cooper groaned as if having a nightmare.

“Quick,” said Max. “Start reading!”

Mistaking his urgency for a shared love of George Eliot, Miss Boon quickly found her place. “ ‘Here and there, a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind.…’ ”

Gasping, Cooper suddenly opened his pale blue eyes.

“William!” cried Miss Boon, flinging the book aside and taking his hand.

The man grimaced as he struggled to sit up.

“Prop some pillows behind him and give me a hand,” ordered Miss Boon, tossing one to Max and helping Cooper lean back against the headboard.