Rick Shelley: Son of the Hero

Mother's note didn't say which way to follow the path, just to bear left at the fork. I didn't see the fork. I assumed-initial hypothesis-that I wanted to head toward the forest. The temperature was comfortable, the breeze perfect. "Nice day for a hike," I mumbled as I started. Sometimes I can't help being sarcastic even when I'm my only audience.

I don't know what I expected. After the lizard, I don't think anything would have surprised me. I felt relieved that the forest looked so normal when I got into it. The bottom twenty or thirty feet of the trees were bare trunk, giving it the air of a pillared hall with a thick canopy. Firs, some oaks, other types I didn't recognize. From the new green, I assumed it was spring there too. Birds sang somewhere. I didn't recognize the calls, but I only know about half-dozen. A flaw in my education as an outdoors-man. The only birds I've ever been interested in watching are beyond singing-usually brown and steaming, on their backs on a platter on the dining-room table… or in one of the Colonel's boxes or buckets.

There was a heavy earth smell of recent rain in the air. The path was soft, spongy but not muddy. Part of the time, I moved slowly, observing, checking out the scenery. The rest of the time, I stepped out smartly, trying to cover ground fast since I didn't know how far I had to go-and I might have to backtrack to try the path in the other direction.

It was a pleasant place to walk. It gave my nerves a chance to unwind a little, gave me time to start breathing normally. I might almost have been down in the Land Between the Lakes, or any of a dozen other places where Dad and I had gone hiking and camping over the years.

I had walked about a quarter of a mile before I saw any animal life on the ground in the forest-another one of the damn lizards. It disappeared too quickly for me to be positive, but with the better light, the lizard appeared to have rudimentary wings folded back along its sides. Crazy-there's that word again, but it's hard to avoid. I stopped and listened, not nearly as nervous as I had been when I stumbled on the lizard in the cave. I was out in the open and this one was farther off than the first had been. The beast wasn't very quiet. I drew my pistol again and kept it ready until I was long past where the animal crossed the path. I've never liked reptiles.

The fork in the path was about three-quarters of a mile from the cave. The track to the left was the less well traveled, no more than a footpath. There were thick brambles, knotty vines, along both sides for quite a distance. The trees seemed shorter, meaner. Low branches needed ducking under. Uncle Parker-Parthet-evidently didn't get a lot of company.

The farther I went, the more disorganized the forest became. It made me think of a PBS show a long time back that showed the crazy webs spun by spiders on drugs. Smaller, twisted trees forced the path to detour back and forth. The underbrush got thicker, thornier. Stickers reached out to poke me. I was glad I was wearing good fatigues. Those thorns would have shredded the leggings of a Robin Hood costume.

I almost missed the cottage. It was concealed better than our house, almost invisible among the trees and brambles. The cottage was small (well, cottages are supposed to be small, aren't they?) and had a thatched roof with new greenery growing out of it. I was surprised that Dad hadn't tried for that effect at home. It would have been the crowning touch. The two windows I saw had no glass. Warped wooden shutters stuck out and creaked in the light breeze.

"Uncle Parker?" I called. "Uncle Parker?"

"Is that you, Carl? Are you back? Did Avedell find you?" The questions tripped over each other before the door opened and Uncle Parker-Parthet-came out. Carl was my father, Avedell my mother.

"It's me, Gil," I said. Parthet squinted up at me. He was barely five feet tall and had acquired a stoop since I last saw him.

"Gil?" He came closer and squinted so tightly that his eyes seemed to be closed. "How'd you get here?"

"Mother left a note. What's going on?"

"What's going on? What's going on?" He snorted and shook his head. "Come in, lad, and I'll try to explain."

The cottage was even bleaker on the inside than it was from out front. Everything was wood, gray with age. The planks in a small table were all warped differently. Some of the wall planks were missing completely. The floor was dirt. A fireplace at one end of the room provided the only contrast to the ash gray-soot black. A single door led to another room-a bedroom, I guessed, since there didn't seem to be much chance that the cottage had indoor plumbing. Parthet sat me on a bench at the table. I found a splinter immediately, the hard way.

"Young Gil, is it?" He sat across the table from me and leaned across it-as far as he reached.

"It's me, Uncle Parker. Mom left a note that said Dad was overdue and she was going after him, and she told me how to find you."

"Ah, yes, she would." Parthet nodded. "And what do you propose to do?"

Good question. I'd been asking myself the same thing. "I don't know what the hell's going on," I said. "I don't even know where I am."

"You're in my home, not that I use it all that much. This is the Forest of Precarra in the Kingdom of Varay."

That didn't help much.

"I didn't think it was Kentucky. Nobody gave me a script to this madness. Those doors in our basement. All this nonsense. What the hell is it all about?" I may have started sputtering. It was so insane that I wasn't even sure what questions to ask.

"Your father was going to tell you soon," Parthet said.

"All I know is what was in Mom's note." I dug it out of my pocket and handed it to him. Parthet looked at the paper, sniffed at it, turned it over, then handed it back to me.

"Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced my spectacles and I haven't been able to find them," he said.

"Don't you have a spare set?"

"I have trouble enough keeping track of one pair, let alone two."

I read the note to him, with some difficulty. There wasn't much light in the place. Parthet listened and nodded a lot. The nodding continued after I finished.

"It's so hard to know where to begin," he said.

"Well, let's not go back all the way to Adam and Eve." It was meant to be a joke, but it didn't sound that way, even to me. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded, Uncle Parker." I couldn't call him Parthet yet. He had always been Uncle Parker, and the habit was hard to break.

"That's all right, lad," he said. "I was never much of a storyteller. I could never remember which bits go where." He shrugged, a peculiar gesture the way he was stooped. "I was never even that much of a wizard."

"Hold it! Time out! What do you mean, wizard?"

"Well, yes, I think that's still the word." He paused a moment, then said, "Conjuring, spells, potions, the odd bit of magic. That sort of lot."

And I'm the King of Siam, I thought. Okay, the whole family was crazy. That was the obvious explanation. And I just happened to pick my twenty-first birthday to join the club.

"My eyesight's always been bad, and getting worse all the time," Parthet continued. "Weak eyes are a terrible handicap to a wizard. So much of the craft depends on being able to see what you're doing. A wizard who can't see the end of his nose isn't worth much." He sighed, rather theatrically, I thought. "I was so glad when spectacles were invented. It gave me the chance to do a spot of business now and again."

"Uncle Parker, I think glasses were invented more than six hundred years ago, back in the Middle Ages."

He looked toward the ceiling for a moment, then nodded. "That sounds about right. As soon as I heard about this newfangled invention, I went and had a pair made for me. I got this last pair-wherever they've gotten themselves off to-while I was visiting the World's Fair in St. Louis in your world."