Chapter 22
Denny and I meet in the middle. He held the blossom close to his chest.
“I take it these dogs aren’t on your side, either?” I asked Denny.
“No.”
There wasn’t any question that he was at least as scared as I was. The dogs surrounded us in a tight circle, but something seemed to stop them from pouncing for the kill. When one dog threatened us more than the others, I stood in front of Denny to protect him if the dog attacked.
“I thought you were my friend, Denny.”
“I don’t think so. You left me behind.”
I remembered how he hung around, hoping to be asked to join our group, and we didn’t do it, and I understood his feelings.
“I’m sorry, Denny. I know it hurts to get left out of something.”
With the dogs prowling so close to us, we were hardly in a position to talk any further. I wondered if I could accomplish anything by singing. There wasn’t anything to lose, so I sang a lullaby my mother sang when I was little. I didn’t sing it very well because my throat was pretty tight from fear, but I got the song out. Denny took out his drums and accompanied me with a soft patter.
“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra,
Too-ra-loo-ra-lie.
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra
It’s an Irish lullaby.
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra,
Too-ra-loo-ra-lie.
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra
It’s an Irish lullaby.”
“Nice going,” said Denny.
It was hard to believe, but the dogs started to look sleepy and sluggish. I took a couple of steps toward one of them as a test. The dog growled lazily, but didn’t react to me. I started singing the lullaby a second time and, when some of the dogs flopped down to the ground, I took a couple more steps toward those dogs. When they only wagged their tails slowly, I waved to Denny and he followed me as I walked past the dogs. We hadn’t gotten very far before a line of large, prickly beasts suddenly appeared in front of us. They looked like live cactus plants with fiery eyes and smoking mouths, Riding these monsters were men in red capes. Behind us, a line of the same beasts appeared, ridden by men in yellow capes. This time, I saw no escape. I was pretty sure I couldn’t put the monsters and their riders to sleep fast enough to save us. Denny took off, aiming at a spot in the middle where the two lines had not yet converged. That gave me no choice but to run after him and protect him if I could, hopeless as it seemed. The riders yelled at me and I heard the rumbling of the monsters’ feet coming after me and Denny. We ran up a hill and a stone building with high pillars in front of it appeared so suddenly that I almost tripped over the first steps before I knew it was there. I picked myself up and ran up the stairs behind Denny to a heavy metal door that opened for us. Denny ran through it, and I scooted in behind him before the door slammed behind me. Instant silence. I could hear neither the lumping cactus monsters nor the yelling riders.
Denny and I stood on a rose-colored marble floor. Across the room, sat a small group of people sitting on velvet chairs with high golden arm rests. Most of the faces were familiar, and I didn’t like the looks of any of them. One of them was Masteress Jakelyn. Seated with her were Master Galleon, and the Master Superior Gifted Judge who had declared the horrible judgment against me. Howard, Charna, Parrison, and Marilyn grinned at me like cats who were expecting to make a meal out of me. Most frightening was a woman in a white cape. Like Master Shamsky, she looked like a mummy who had come back to life. Unlike Master Shamsky, her eyes were nothing more than two black holes that I feared had no bottom to them. From her, I felt nothing of the calm I got from Daryl or the Gifted Mystic I met in the Archives. In the middle of the group sat a fat, bald man in a rose-colored cape whom I’d never seen before. I had heard neither of a rose clan nor a guild that used that color. Although the small group of people was dwarfed by the room’s size, the inside was still quite a lot smaller than I expected from its imposing facade. The walls were washed with a shade of pink that matched the marble floor. Lights floated in the room to make it rather bright. Simon squirmed inside my cape. Obviously, he didn’t like this place. I had a feeling that I’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire, or maybe from the fire back to the frying pan.
“Denny,” said Masteress Jakelyn, “do you have something for me?”
“No.”
That was encouraging. Maybe Denny believed I really wanted to be his friend.
“Are you sure?” Masteress Jakelyn asked in a tone of voice that suggested she didn’t buy Denny’s answer.
“Yes, quite sure.”
“What do you think, Masteress Leclercq?” the man in the rose cape asked the Gifted Mystic.
I felt as if an icy skeleton had just plunged its hand into all my bones when I remembered what Master Shamsky had told me about her presumed fate.
“My vision tells me that Denny has a gift that must be given to Masteress Jakelyn this very instant,” said Masteress Leclercq in a voice that sounded like the hinge of a door that had been buried for a hundred years.
“Denny,” said the man in the rose cape, “I suggest that you give the gift identified by Masteress Leclercq to Masteress Jakelyn.
Looking a bit pale, Denny walked slowly up to Masteress Jakelyn and handed her the twig with the blossom.
“Thank you so much for bringing the very last blossom from a windmere willow,” said Masteress Johnson.
“You’re welcome,” said Denny, sounding rather mechanical.
“Masteress Jakelyn,” I said. “I will have fulfilled my healing quest if you give me the blossom, and allow me to return to my fellow Guild Members.”
“That will not be necessary,” said Masteress Johnson, eyeing me cooly. “I have now completed my own healing quest, and there is no need for the windmere willow’s blossom, nor for your singing.” Having said that, she crushed the flower in her hand with a small puff of black smoke. When she lifted a finger, the blossom was gone. Then she snapped the twig in two, broke each of those pieces in two, and dropped them to the floor.
Turning to me with a look of frigid satisfaction she said, “Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown, your healing quest has come to an end.”
That put out the light in my heart like nobody’s business. I could hardly believe that it had come to this, especially after coming so close to completing my quest. All of the horrible tings that had happened to me would have been worth it, if I had ended up making the medicine to heal the strangling pestilence. To have all of that suffering go for nothing was the kind of downer that would keep me miles below the surface for the rest of my life.
“Would you like me to pick up the pieces for you?” asked Denny.
“That would be nice,” said Masteress Jakelyn coldly.
Denny bent over and picked up the twigs, then slipped them under his cape like a boy who likes to collect worthless treasures.
“So, Nathaniel, you are not as voiceless as we thought you would be by now,” said the Master Superior Gifted Judge.
“No thanks to you,” I replied.
The Master Superior Gifted Judge chuckled coldly.
“I don’t need any thanks when no thanks is due.”
“After what you have gone through, perhaps a word of explanation would be fair before we send you off,” said the fat man. I stared at him blankly. I wasn’t much interested in explanations about why he and Masteress Jakelyn saw fit to destroy my healing quest.
“I gift you with my name of Master Kingsley,” said the man. “I am the founder of the Guild of Gifted Rulers. As you can see, we are a clan-transcendent guild, and it is from other clan-transcendent guilds that I have garnered most of my support so far. For years, I have hesitated to take on the responsibility of ruling over the whole Gifted World, but I have come to the conclusion that I have no choice if the Gifted World is to be saved from certain destruction.”
Master Kingsley sounded so soothing in the calm way he spoke and his smile was so warm, that I had to listen carefully to what he was actually saying. He seemed to be the kind of politician who could promise to take away everybody’s freedom and everybody’s money and possessions and still get everybody to vote for him.
“You have seen for yourself the destructive effects of warfare between the Gifted Clans and the horrible pestilence that this last series of battles caused,” said Master Kingsley. “In the heat of battle, not all members of clan-transcendent guilds could avoid joining the feud on one side or another.”
“Master Lesentrange, for example, clearly favoring the Scarlet Clan in his treatment of choristers,” said Master Galleon, his face as dreamy as ever, “as his choice of Denson Scarlet over Pollo Mansrat as master chorister shows. For your part, you sided with boys from the Amber and Blue Clans.”
“I was forced to proclaim the devastatingly unjust a judgment against you,” said the Master Superior Gifted Judge, “or else suffer the same fate that a member of my guild suffered many years ago.”
I felt like asking the Gifted Judge why he preferred to make me suffer rather than suffer himself, but I sort of knew the answer to that, and I knew he wouldn’t admit it. Now that I’ve had a chance to think back on that awful trial, I see it’s kind of like what happened to me at school from time to time. Sometimes guys, or groups of guys, who hated each other would get together to attack somebody, and sometimes that somebody was me. I even remembered one time when I probably could have gotten a group of guys to go after a kid who was even more unpopular than me, but I didn’t do it, no matter how tempting that was. I could live better with getting knocked around a bit than I could with making it happen to somebody else. But what if I’d been in that Master Superior Gifted Judge’s position, and known what had happened to Master Shamsky long before him?
“I myself have been a martyr for the sake of the Gifted World on account of my role in that judgment,” said Masteress Leclercq in her deep, gurgling voice. “My own guild turned against me when I executed the judgment the Master Superior Gifted Judge is referring to. My fellow guild members did not understand how necessary it was for me to do what I did.”
I wanted to say something about Daryl to that woman, but I didn’t, for fear that she might seek to harm the boy who had saved me from the fate the Master Superior Gifted Judge tried to inflict on me.
“As you can see, Nathaniel, it has become quite clear that the only solution to this recurring problem in the Gifted World is for a strong hand to take charge of all the Gifted Clans and Guilds and regulate all the Gifted for the good of all the Gifted,” said Master Kingsley.
“This is why I can not allow your healing quest to succeed, now I had perfected my own spell that will relieve all symptoms of the strangling pestilence,” said Masteress Jakelyn.
“The symptoms?” I asked, knowing full well what almost certainly meant.
“I will offer to heal the symptoms of the strangling pestilence to all who will accept the rule of the Guild of Gifted Rulers,” said Masteress Jakelyn.
“Are you nuts?” I blurted out.
Masteress Jakelyn smiled faintly. Master Kingsley showed no sign of being offended by my outburst.
“No, I am not a nut that grows on a tree,” said Masteress Jakelyn. “Neither am I worthy of the insult your tone of voice suggests you intended to make against me. I am being quite practical in the situation we are faced with.”
I’d realized by then, I should have asked her if she was evil, but she wouldn’t have admitted to that, either.
“You are betraying your guild,” I said to Masteress Jakelyn.
“No,” said the Gifted Healer, “I am being true to the Guild of Gifted Rulers to which I have made my vows. If the pestilenced victims wish to be relieved of their symptoms, and if their loved ones wish for that, then they will accept the authority and rulership of the Guild of Gifted Rulers. If they do not want the symptoms of the strangling pestilence to return, or see their loved ones pestilenced, they will continue to accept the rulership of the Guild of Gifted Rulers.”
“Perhaps you would like to join us,” suggested Master Kingsley. “Your Singing Gift would greatly strengthen our rule and help us keep the those disposed to violence in line. I really think that you could even have put the prickly bears and their riders to sleep, as you did with the yellow and red dogs, if you had persevered with your singing spell out there.”
“No way,” I said.
I wasn’t the least bit tempted by the offer. I hated everybody in that room and I wasn’t about to throw in my lot with any of them.
“Well,” said Master Kingsley, “I guess that answer is clear enough.”
“In that case, Nathaniel,” said Masteress Jakelyn, “as your ultimate superior in your guild, I ask you to depart. As you walk back to the door through which you came, think of where, in your world, you would like to be. Then, when you walk through the door, you will be in that place you wished for. Once you have left, your cape will disappear.”
I thought of tons of questions I could ask those people. Questions like how a Gifted Mystic could support a man who obviously wanted to be a dictator, or how a Gifted Healer could act like companies that overcharge the people they help. But I said nothing. They did not deserve my words, and they weren’t about to get them. I turned around and walked slowly to the door. My mind was a pretty numb jumble by this time, and I didn’t have a very easy time thinking of where I wanted to end up when I walked through the door. I kind of just wanted to be home, and I kind of didn’t want to be there right off the bat.
I opened the door, and stepped out on to a sidewalk where slow traffic was moving in the street in front of me. There was a pale light in the sky and I could make out the houses near me. I looked at the street signs. I was only about three blocks from home. As Masteress Jakelyn said it would, my cape was gone, but I held Simon in my arms. Only then did it occur to me that I should have looked at my cape clasp to see if the light had really gone out when Masteress Jakelyn declared the quest at an end. It was too late now. Like I said, my own light had gone out, never to be lit again in my life. I looked at my watch. It seemed to be working again. According to the readout, two days had passed since I ran the errand that turned out so strangely. It was about seven in the morning. The day was Friday, a school day.