Chapter Twenty-Two: The Cry of the Dart
Guardians of the Twilight Lands -- The Sixth Book of Unexpected Enlightenment
Early the next morning, Rachel bounded from her pink canopy bed and settled at her desk, near the hearth where her mottled bronze and black salamander lazed, to write letters on her pale green and lavender stationery. Mistletoe came padding over, rubbed against her leg, and then curled up upon her feet. First, she penned a thank-you note to Vladimir for helping Sigfried. Then, she wrote chatty letters to Nastasia and Astrid. With a sigh, she wrote quick notes to Zoë, Joy, and Valerie. Finally, more carefully, she wrote a short letter to Juma O’Malley, inquiring how he had been. She had not heard from him in some months and wondered how he was doing now that his mother was trapped in OI’s demon-containing substance. She addressed the first six and put the last in an envelope, hoping her father could arrange for it to be delivered to the safe house where Juma now lived.
Her bedroom was a huge chamber of dark wood with a ceiling that slanted along with the roof. There was a giant fireplace, a walk-in dollhouse, a rocking horse, a collection of stuffed animals neatly arranged on a trunk at the bottom of her bed, including Mr. Muffin, Splashdown the Dolphin, Alfred the Crocodile, and Torture the Penguin. Around the walls were four bookshelves, a pretty window reading nook looking out on the hedge maze, and French doors leading to a balcony, from which, on clear days, she could see the back lawns with the elephant herd topiary, live albino roe deer, paddocks of Friesian and Gypsy Vanners—surely two of the most beautiful horse breeds in the world—and Gryphon Tor rising above the moors beyond, with the ruins of the family’s original keep atop it. If she went out on the balcony and looked straight down, she would see a stone statue of an unknown giant carrying a child.
Outside her window, rain poured down. Mist covered the grounds. It was so thick she could hardly see the hedge maze, a hundred yards away. The noise of the rain, pounding against the stone of the house and running down the gutter in the corner, where the main building met the east wing, was rhythmic and comforting, as if the weather itself were welcoming her home.
It was the Ides of March, and, that evening, her father would be officiating the celebration of Anna Perenna, the goddess of the year. Rachel, who had felt uncomfortable about attending sacrifices ever since she had almost been sacrificed herself, had bowed out, claiming she wanted to show Siggy the grounds, and they would just be in the way. She almost relented when she was offered the role of Anna, where the goddess pretends to be the virginal Minerva and then throws back her veil to laugh in the face of the god of war, but Laurel had previously played that role with such flair that Rachel felt it would be a crime to rob her of it.
She chatted with Gaius over her black bracelet for half an hour, while he performed his morning chores, watering cows and feeding chickens. She lay on her pink canopy bed as they spoke, her eyes half-closed as she imagined their future life together, once they were married and living in Bavaria, where Gaius worked for Dread. She liked that mental image better than living in Detroit so he could work for O.I., though, of course, with glasses, there were many places they could live and he could still commute. Still, Bavaria with its stark Alps and green valleys was her first choice.
Once he went in for breakfast, she jumped up and put aside her Victorian flannel nightgown in favor of a black and white checkered A-line dress with a lacy Peter Pan collar—under which she donned a pair of black pantaloons in case she needed to ride her broom—and ran down in hopes of meeting up with Sigfried at breakfast.
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