Bedtime Story Read online

  “Matthias?” a voice called gently, before the door opened a crack. “Might I come in?”

  He recognized the voice as that of Loren. “Yes,” he said, standing up from the bed, straightening the covers. “Come in.”

  The gaunt old man slid into the room, barely opening the door. He smiled. “I trust you rested,” he said. He crossed the room toward the fire.

  “A bit,” he said, watching the old man carefully.

  The magus settled in the chair closest to the fire, his grey robes settling around him. He began unpacking the bag he had been carrying over his shoulder.

  “I thought you might have some questions. I’ve brought books and maps.”

  Matthias sat in the other chair by the fire. There was a low table between them, which the magus was piling with books and scrolls. “I tried to follow along with what you were saying this morning, but—”

  “That’s understandable,” Loren said. He seemed to have finished unpacking the bag and was now tamping golden tobacco into his pipe. “Where to start?” he asked himself. “Where to start?”

  Loren drew a long splinter of wood from inside the folds of his robe and, after extending it into the fire, lit his pipe, puffing huge clouds of sweet-scented blue smoke as he considered his words.

  “Perhaps the Brothers of Thomas,” he said slowly. “Well.” Another puff on the pipe. “For as long as there have been kings and queens in Colcott, there have been magi. Scholars. Historians. Advisers.”

  “Sorcerers,” Matthias said, thinking of the stories he had heard when he was younger.

  Loren smiled. “Our magical powers have been greatly exaggerated.”

  “Then what about the Sunstone?”

  “The Sunstone is something altogether different,” he said. “Gafilair, the first high mage of Colcott, wasn’t the founder of the Order. In fact, he was little more than an adept when he rode into battle with Stephen the Bold. The Order had been around for hundreds of years, even then. He was the one, though, who forged our relationship with the royal family, with the kingdom. He was the first to ride with a king of Colcott into battle. And he saved him, with the Sunstone.”

  “But how—”

  “No one really knows. The true Sunstone is shrouded in mystery. It is the tradition of our order that adepts go out into the world, beyond the frames of any maps, to explore, to discover themselves and the worlds beyond. When they return—if they return—the knowledge they bring is added to the knowledge of the Brotherhood. Only then are they considered for advancement.” He puffed on his pipe. “When Gafilair returned, he brought with him not just knowledge, but the Sunstone itself. He never told anyone where it came from, and he spent years investigating the full extent of its powers.”

  “So what does it do?” Matthias asked, feeling a thrum of excitement.

  “It’s an object of almost unparalleled power. It lent that power to the army of the King. It shielded them from the perils of the battle. It might”—Loren paused—“it might even have the power of life everlasting.”

  “What?”

  Loren smiled. The air was fragrant with smoke from his pipe. “There are stories. It is said that during the battle of Corindor Field, Stephen took a Berok arrow to the breast, that he fell in the opening moments of the fighting.”

  Matthias straightened in his chair.

  “According to some who claimed to have seen it, the magus leapt from his horse and, without a moment’s hesitation, pressed the stone to Stephen’s heart. Moments later, Stephen took his mount and led the next charge himself. The stone had healed him, even from the point of death.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Impossible?” He puffed at his pipe. “Perhaps. But there are many who believe that story. The King is one of them. He needs the stone to protect the kingdom.”

  “To heal himself.”

  The magus’s lips curled around the stem of his pipe.

  “Why didn’t King Stephen keep the stone?”

  “Its powers made him cautious. So he ordered Gafilair to conceal the stone, to keep it safe in a place where even he would not be able to retrieve it.”

  “And only one person—”

  The magus nodded. “And that person is you.”

  “I can’t,” Matthias said, shaking his head. The words that he had been holding back since the morning came flooding out of him. “I don’t know how to fight, I barely know how to ride. I’ve never even seen a Berok. It can’t be me.”

  “As I said, the descriptions which Gafilair left are very detailed. I compared them against the records kept by the Brotherhood. A child of common birth, born under the sign of the Wolf with the evening star in its ascension …” He lifted his hands to show how effortless the whole process had been.

  “It’s you,” he said plainly. “I know you don’t believe it, but it’s true. I could show you the charts and calculations.”

  Matthias shook his head. “No,” he said, slumping back into the chair. There was no point in arguing, no matter how terrified the idea made him. “So what do I have to do?”

  The magus reached into his bag. “First this,” he said, laying a knife in a leather sheath on the table between them.

  Matthias stared at the knife, then up at the magus.

  “It’s yours,” the magus said. “Wear it in your boot. Keep it with you always.”

  Matthias thought of the captain, taking care to lock him in the room when he left. He was virtually a prisoner, and now the magus was offering him a weapon.

  “You will be well protected as we travel,” the magus said slowly. “But there are great dangers ahead, and you must be prepared to protect yourself, should it come to that.”

  He looked at the knife again.

  “Take it,” the magus said. “Keep it close. Keep it hidden. No one else needs know.”

  Dale and I met outside Ferris’s, waiting in the short line for a table.

  “You know,” he started, as we inched forward. “Neither of us has an actual schedule. Is there any reason you insist on having lunch at the same time as everybody else in the city?” We’d had the conversation before. At this point in our lives, we’ve had every conversation before.

  “Routine is important.”

  He nodded. “Right. But why can’t one-thirty or two be the routine? Let the cubicle dwellers get back to their desks?”

  I was going to answer, but he stepped into the doorway and exchanged a few quick words with the host.

  “Are you hungover?” he asked me over his shoulder.

  “What? No.”

  “Outside is fine,” he said to the host.

  The host led us to a sunny table in the corner of the back patio.

  I sat with my back against the wall, looking out at the outdoor room. The place was full, tables of people in suits and ties, a small sea of blue against the plants on the far wall. There was a lightness, a whirl of conversations punctuated by laughter. Everyone seemed to be smiling, moving with a casual pleasure in the warm sun, jackets over chair-backs. There was still a slight coolness to the air, but it felt, finally, like spring, and the …

  Dale was smirking at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. I felt compelled to apologize, but there was nothing I could do to change: there’s a part of me that’s always writing, always mentally capturing a scene, trying to determine how best to present it, what details are important, what can be glossed over. Even when Jacqui and I were at our worst—fighting, crying—part of me was outside of the moment, watching the words as they moved back and forth, noting the way Jacqui tightened her hands into fists as she spoke.

  “You always are,” he said.

  Every day—multiple times every day—David was reminded of just how much the universe must hate him.

  The school assigned lockers by grade, then alphabetically by last name, which meant that he was two metal doors down from Darren Keneally.

  Most of the time he tried to avoid making eye contact. He would walk slowly up the hallwa
y, timing his arrival for a moment when it seemed like Darren was focused on something else, then lunge for his locker, spinning the combination lock and swinging the door open as quickly as he could. He would tuck himself behind the light metal door as if it were a shield.

  The only problem was, if he was tucked behind the door, he couldn’t keep an eye on what Darren was doing. More than once he had swung the locker door closed only to find his nemesis standing right behind it, inches away, a cruel smile on his face, his laughing friends shifting and bobbing around him.

  David had delayed his departure from the science lab for as long as he could after the lunch bell rang, giving Darren and his friends time to get to their lockers and head down to the cafeteria. When he assumed he had waited long enough, he crept out into the hallway.

  He sighed. It was mostly deserted. No problem.

  He was almost smiling by the time he got to his locker and opened it. Stacking his books carefully on the shelf, he grabbed the lunch that his father had packed and his Nintendo and headed down the corridor toward the exit at the end. His best friend Liam had detention, so David was on his own, but the sun was shining. No reason not to eat out in the corner of the athletic field, far from anyone who might bother him.

  “So how’s the book?”

  I shook my head. “It can’t possibly be a month already.”

  Dale smiled. “I put it in my Palm. ‘Ask Chris about book.’ ”

  I had suggested, the year before, that perhaps asking me about the book every time we met might be counterproductive. Too much pressure. So he had decided to take me at my word and only ask me once a month.

  “So?” he prodded.

  “It’s going fine. I wrote four pages this morning.”

  “Any closer to finding the end?”

  I puffed out a long breath. “No. Not even close.” I opened the menu.

  Dale, however, was not to be put off quite so easily. “Can I suggest, again”—he stressed the last word—“that perhaps your … domestic situation … isn’t entirely conducive to your work?”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I wrote a great column this morning. I think—”

  “Your column isn’t your writing,” he said, undeterred.

  “Did you miss the part where I wrote four pages on the novel this morning?” I tried to keep the defensive tone out of my voice; it didn’t work.

  He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  “Seriously, it’s fine.”

  He made a point of waiting until I had started looking at my menu before speaking. “I just wonder …” He let the words trail off as he buried his nose in his own menu. It seemed like he was distracted, but I knew better.

  “Wonder what?” There was no point in resisting; it had been almost twenty years, and Dale always ended up saying what he wanted to say.

  “Have you considered the possibility that it’s time for a new start?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t,” I said. “There are too many people waiting for it. And I’ve already spent the advance.”

  “That’s interesting,” he said, still poring over the menu.

  “What?” I asked, resigned.

  He lowered the menu. “I think it’s interesting that neither of those reasons were about the book itself. They were all about obligation and expectations and money. Not about the book. Nothing about how good it was, or how strongly you felt about it. Not a bit of passion.”

  He shrugged and closed the menu.

  I wanted to argue with him, but he had me dead to rights and we both knew it. “Yeah,” I sighed.

  “I wasn’t talking about the book, though,” he continued. “I was talking about you and Jacqui. And my guess is that if I asked you if it was time to make a more permanent change with Jacqui, you’d give me exactly the same sort of answer. Expectations. Obligation. Money.” He shrugged. “That’s all.”

  He had timed it perfectly: before I could respond our server had arrived at the table, her wide smile at odds with the words in my mind.

  By the time David looked up from his Nintendo to see them coming across the field toward him, they were already between him and the school. With the fence at his back there was nowhere for him to run. He blinked slowly and shook his head: nothing he could do now but take it.

  He was thankful that he had time to tuck his Nintendo into his hoodie before they got close enough to notice.

  “Sitting out here with all your friends?” Darren called as they grew closer. It was him and three others, the usual crew. The three laughed at the joke, one of Darren’s favourite lines.

  David didn’t know if he should respond or not. Sometimes it was better if he said something, sometimes it was better if he kept quiet—there was no way to know for sure.

  He kept his eyes low as they approached, watching Darren’s shoelaces flopping on the grass, the cuffs of his pants dragging.

  “Hey, loser, I was talking to you.”

  Clearly not saying anything wasn’t the right choice.

  “Are you deaf, too?”

  As David lifted his eyes to where Darren stood looming over him, the boy kicked at his lunch bag, knocking the plastic container that had held his sandwich several feet away.

  “Aw, did your mommy pack your lunch?” His friends laughed.

  Trying to control his breath, David stood up. It was a no-win situation: if he stayed sitting he wouldn’t be able to get away if Darren decided to kick him too. But standing up put him in range of his fists.

  “Did you hear me, loser? I asked if your mommy packed your lunch.”

  David shook his head, not daring to meet his eye. “No. My dad—”

  “Aw, his daddy made his lunch. Isn’t that sweet?” Guffaws from the hyenas behind him.

  Darren shoved him first, almost knocking him off his feet. “Where’s your daddy now?” he asked.

  As David righted himself, he came within arms’ reach of one of the other boys, who shoved him again.

  They kept him spinning, off balance. David did his best to close his eyes, hoping they would get bored soon and stop.

  Dale and I had gone to school together our whole lives, but it wasn’t until our first year at UVic that we got to know each other. We lived in buildings in the same quad, a bleak expanse of sharp angles and brutal concrete. A perfect place for warehousing hundreds of hormone-addled, hard-partying, emotionally fragile seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds. The next summer we ditched work for almost a month. The plan had been to follow the Grateful Dead around for a few weeks, but plans, as they do, had gone awry. It had gotten a little hairy, but I had come out of it with a blood-brother, and a novel. Coastal Drift was all about that summer. About Dale and me. His Dean Moriarty to my Sal Paradise.

  He knew me better than anyone.

  I chafed with words building up inside me until we had ordered and the waitress walked away.

  “It’s not like that,” I said. “Jacqui and I—”

  “I’m not sure this quasi-separation thing is the best idea.”

  “Well, tell that to Jacqui. It was her idea.”

  “That’s not what I mean. This whole thing with you living in your studio but spending most of the day at the house—it’s been, what, six months now? I think you need to retire any fantasies of reconciliation you might have and think about getting a little distance. It’s not doing David any good to have you guys fighting all the time. It’s not doing you any good, floating in limbo like this. And it’s not doing Jacqui any good.”

  I sagged into the chair, incapable of speech.

  I want to say that the words took my breath away, that they hit me like a punch, that they were a sudden piercing insight: none of that would be true.

  If I were honest about it I would have to say that the marriage had disintegrated long before I’d moved out of the house. We had spent years growing further and further apart, not really fighting, but not really talking either. We had spent less and less time together, both of us with our attention elsewhere, more roommates tha
n a couple.

  There hadn’t been any single point where it all fell apart; the marriage had been worn away by apathy, by the slow grind of things not said. Money brought it to a head, a conversation about renewing the mortgage turning into the same fight we always had. I had slept in my office that night.

  And I had spent every day since then trying to get back.

  “And furthermore,” he continued, his tone changing. “It’s not doing me any good.” He smiled, trying to break the tension. “Seriously. I love both of you guys, and this whole thing …” He shook his head. “It’s not healthy.”

  “Jacqui and I—” I said, “it’s just … we’re in a rough patch.”

  He nodded slowly. “Here.” Reaching into his pocket, he placed a manila envelope, smaller than a credit card, on the table beside my water glass. An address was written on it, in Dale’s careful hand.

  “What’s this?” I asked, looking at it, deliberately not touching it.

  “It’s a key,” he said. “To one of those live–work places in Dragon Alley. Three floors, big enough for one, space for a pullout for Davy when he spends the night.”

  I shifted uneasily in my chair.

  “I’ve been trying to find a buyer, but the seller is willing to settle for a rental.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I can make it work,” I said. The idea of moving, of that sort of finality between us, sickened me. It wasn’t that bad, was it? We couldn’t be at that point already.

  The way Dale looked at me, the sadness in his eyes, made me think that I was the only one who thought so.

  The captain burst into the room without knocking. When he saw Matthias sitting across from the magus, the table between them heavy with books and maps, he stopped.

  “My apologies,” he said grudgingly.

  The magus waved away the comment and rose slowly to his feet. “It is no matter,” he said. “I think young Matthias’s head is probably full enough for one afternoon.” Setting his satchel on his chair, the magus began to pack the books.

  Matthias was reeling from all the old man had told him, the blurring together of truth and legend.