THE BLUE BOY
by Lynn K. Hollander
Chapter 3 -- Appearances and Disappearances
SUNNYDALE
"Ann," Spike said, hurrying into the library. Ann was examining Darcy's original clothing and boots. "Hey, where'd those come from?"
"I moved them here when I took them off him," Ann said, looking at the fine stitching on a french seam in Darcy's shirt. "Linen shirt and wool pants, dyed with natural dyes. Linen thread on the boots and beeswax as a finish. Interesting. Low tech and practical, but not primitive. The colors are beautiful and fine for Darcy's coloring; someone dressed him carefully. What is it, Spike?"
"Right: I've upset the cubs. I didn't mean to and I don't know how I did, but I'm pretty sure I've upset them."
"How? Are they hurt?"
"I was reading The Jungle Book," the vampire said. "I was part way through "Mowgli's Brothers" and I saw they were all staring at me."
"Ah, that would upset them. I can explain," Ann said. She started up the stairs. Spike walked up by her side. She smiled over at him: "Why The Jungle Book?"
"People don't read enough Kipling," Spike said seriously. "And it sort of struck an echo, given the situation."
"I can see that."
"What's happening?"
"They're used to hearing about a different kind of tiger."
"Oh?" Spike asked.
"It's a little abstract."
"Oh?" Spike asked again, patiently. Getting information out of Ann was always difficult, even if she didn't just stop breathing in mid-sentence.
"The tiger is a yin symbol. It's often paired with the dragon, a yang symbol. They also represent east-west, fire-water; many dichotomies. The cubs will have seen depictions of tigers all their lives, but they may not know about non-symbolic tigers, even in the vague way they know about prosaic lions and Pekinese dogs. The cubs would find a tiger who threatens the hero and his friends upsetting."
"Especially," Spike realized, "when the hero and his friends are so young."
"Good point," Ann said.
"Maybe I should pick a different book."
"You have to finish this one," Ann said. "Not tonight, though." She walked through the sitting room in the west suite, into the bedroom, where Darcy and the cubs were in a big, low bed with guard rails on the sides. "Hi," she told the cubs.
That was the last word Spike understood for a while. Ann cuddled Darcy, sat him up and handed him a glass of warm milk, scratched Gina's ears, and switched to Chinese, which was not one of Spike's languages.
"Step over here, Spike," Ann said, just before a pair of African lions appeared at the foot of the bed.
Spike, standing beside Ann, stayed very still. He didn't know if lions liked vampire meat, in the first place and he had absolute confidence in Ann, in the second place, but why take chances?
The cubs' noses twitched and their short manes and tails fluffed. The lions disappeared, replaced by a Pekinese that barked at the cubs, who moved to the foot of the bed and sat in a row, peering down at it. Ann spoke a little more, then the Pekinese was replaced by a Bengal tiger, which was replaced by a white Siberian tiger and her cubs.
Gina and her siblings looked at the tiger and looked at the tiger cubs. Gina stood up, Ann spoke sharply to her and the cub settled back down. The tiger and her cubs disappeared.
Spike relaxed, moved over to the chair by the bedside, and sank into it.
"So," Ann said, "that was the kind of tiger Spike was reading to you about."
"Jingwu! We don't look anything like that dog," Gina said indignantly.
"You don't look anything like the lioness, either," Ann pointed out. "All you youngsters go to sleep now. Darcy, if you wake in the night, just call my name, and I'll come to you." Ann turned on the night light.
"OK, Jingwu," Darcy said.
"G'night, Spike," the young lion said.
"Good night, kids," the vampire said.
Ann waved one hand over the four children. The cubs curled around Darcy, who shifted to the blue toddler, stuck his thumb in his mouth and fell asleep. Ann frowned, and pointed one finger at him. A bulkiness under his pajamas seemed to indicate a diaper.
The vampire and Ann left the bedroom, leaving the doors ajar so the cubs could get out if they wished. "We need an au pair," he told Ann.
"I'll ask the lioness to stay in the sitting room while I'm out."
"You're leaving?"
"I have to see a telephone pole to put a flyer on it," Ann said. "I'm going for a long walk."
"I'll come with you."
Ann looked at the vampire, about to say something, then she obviously changed her mind. "Sure, I always enjoy your company, Spike."
"What did you start to say?"
"Something short sighted, ill-omened, hubristic and ungrateful," Ann shrugged. "You do have to be careful in Sunnydale."
MINDO
In the castle town of Mindo, the disappearance of Ingelram, nicknamed variously Bargomiliskan and Darcy, was noticed after breakfast when the nursemaid discovered an uneaten bowl of porridge. Since this was the only bowl sweetened with an approximation of brambleberry jam, the nursemaid went to Ingelram's room, where she found his bed empty and neatly made. The nursemaid checked the three other beds in the room, still unmade, sighed, and went directly to the governess.
The governess inspected the bed and the bowl, then summoned the three small boys who shared Ingelram's room, the five oldest boys under her governance, and the captain of the guard.
The three small boys said they hadn't done anything and they hadn't seen Ingelram since just after supper. The governess dismissed them. The five oldest boys looked up at her with such innocent faces that her internal alarms went off. Without too much trouble and a minimum of foot shuffling from the squirming boys, she extracted the story of what had happened the night before.
The captain ordered all but the next night's guards out on search, then went to Simio, the foremost of King Sagard's advisors. Simio listened, clutched his head, tossed his cap in the fireplace, listened, put on a new cap, and went to the king.
The captain of the guard, whose name was Baudier, walked up the hill, using the service road, which had a gentler slope but was much longer than the direct road. Moving amid the delivery wains, he found the walk relaxing after the events of the morning. At the kitchen door, the supplies were unloaded by the servants and carried away into the castle, and Baudier suddenly wondered if anyone had searched the storerooms.
Attempting to do it himself, he was rebuffed by the butler, who claimed that the pantry had been searched twice already and that he, the butler, wished to report pilferage by the searchers. Baudier told him to file a complaint and went out to sit in the kitchen gardens.
Most of the activity in a well-tended kitchen garden takes place in the morning --vegetables are gathered, the plot is weeded and watered before the sun gets too high. From the kitchen door, Baudier could see the vegetable beds, the fish ponds, and all the way to the south end of the enclosed area, across the service road, the orchard. Off to his left, in the wall of the keep, was a private door. Just south of the keep proper was a high secondary wall, enclosing the fane of the Order of Walahfrid the Scholar. Selecting a bench against this wall, the captain sat down and thought. The quiet failed to help him.
Ingelram had not stolen a horse and ridden away. No carter admitted to giving him a ride or to having seen him. The boy was not in one of the apple trees or lurking in the stables. Baudier was supposed to report back to Simio before early dinner. He did not have anything positive to tell him.
Baudier's attention was arrested by a muted shriek from within the walled fane, followed by a hurried exit. He glanced up as one of the weedy novices, dark robe hiked up, raced out of the garden and through the private door into the keep. The novice failed to shut either the gates to the garden or the door to the keep.
That was unusual, Baudier thought. This was certainly not one of the festivals of the Scholar. The festival dates were scheduled years in advance. What had alarmed the novice? Baudier walked through the gates into the garden. The white marble circle set into the mossy ground was glowing softly, and even more faintly, above the circle, a silver ring, upright in the air, also glowed.
At a bustle from the keep behind him, Baudier looked around. The novice, actually all the novices, the three wardens, and the Sage, crowded into the small, shady area.
"What happened," Baudier asked. "Why is the circle activated?"
"We don't know yet," the Sage said.
"I am in charge of security. If something got in, I need to know about it."
"Nothing got in," the Sage said.
"Walahfrid be praised," the first novice said. "What escaped? What got out, then?"
"Out?" Baudier asked.
SUNNYDALE
"It occurs to me," Ann said, gesturing at the last windbreak on Cerro Reynaldo and nodding as Willow's flyer appeared in a checkerboard pattern over the textured concrete, "that we should become a bilingual household, and you don't speak the other language."
"Which language?" Spike asked. "I do know one or two, other than English."
"Alvish."
"You just taught the boy English."
"And we are attempting to return him to his home, where they speak Alvish. At his age, it's almost as easy to get rusty in a language as it is to learn one. I was thinking English while the sun is up and Alvish at night."
"And what about the cubs' Wednesday night TV? They aren't going to forgo that, even to play with Darcy."
"It's August, they're still in reruns. Do you want to learn Alvish? I can teach you."
"The way you taught Darcy?" Spike asked warily.
"With a difference. The student learns best if he is comfortable, secure and relaxed. I could put you into a learning state, but you'd be able to wake up whenever you wanted."
"Sounds like hypnotism."
"It's similar."
"Does Gang Long speak Alvish?"
"Yes, he learned when we went to Brezeliande to meet Berengar the first time. I taught him the same way I'm willing to teach you."
As Spike thought about Ann's offer, they walked on down the hill, Ann plastering telephone poles and retaining walls with the flyers. "All right," the vampire finally said. "And you're the only person I trust enough to even try this with."
"When we get back to the house, then."
"But I'm not sure anyone can hypnotize me," Spike said.
"We'll give it a try," Ann said.
***
In the library, Spike sat up on the long sofa and looked over at Ann. "Sorry," he said. "I told you I wasn't sure if I could be hypnotized."
"How do you feel?" she asked.
"Fine."
"You're sure?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Your accent is just like mine. That will probably change over the next few days. I put another spell on the house, we'll all be reminded, subtly, to switch languages at sundown and sunrise."
Spike frowned at her, thinking. He replayed the conversation in his head. "Oh," he finally said.
"I taught you formal Alvish, what Berengar would speak at his sister's court. If you decide to visit him, you'll fit right in."
FERENC
In the sunny minster-complex of Yakeshon, in Ferenc, Ingelram's cousin Æduin gasped as his hired assassin seemed to materialize out of the shadows in front of him.
Magal was beautiful and strange. Shorter than Æduin by a head, the assassin was several shades of metallic taupe--skin, hair and eyes, his eyes being darkest and most brilliant. He had a strong, round, jaw, emphasized by a narrow, neatly trimmed ring-beard. His brows were straight and angled up at the ends, following the sweep of his strong cheekbones. He had small lobe-less ears, slightly pointed at the top and pressed neatly against his head.
"Gireg!" Æduin called.
His secretary opened the door from the anteroom and entered, stopping short as he caught sight of Magal. "Your grace! I didn't know you were..." plotting politics, being murdered. Gireg, realizing there was nothing he could say that the other people in the anteroom should hear, let his voice trail off
"Get out," the assassin said.
Æduin waved Gireg out. The secretary pulled the door shut behind himself.
Magal was coldly angry. "I do not hunt as part of a pack." He tossed three blond heads at the duke's feet. "Your friends have complicated and possibly compromised this operation."
"No friends of mine," the duke lied.
"The quarry has ported into a new world," Magal said. "Transdimensional assassination requires patience. The schedules of inter-world gates are even more restricted than those for intra-world travel and they does not change on demand; that fact should be obvious even to you. Now, I will proceed to Earth, locate and terminate your young cousin; as agreed, there will be no body and no way for anyone to know what has happened to him. You will keep your friends out of my way. Do not yield to your impatience again."
"Is he gone?" Gireg asked
"He left these," Æduin said, indicating the three heads.
"Oh, god."
"Do something with them."
"Uh, Æduin? Where's the other one?"
"What? What do you mean?"
"Four of them went: Ardon, Leger," he pointed at the middle head, "Deron," the first head, "and Rhomo," the last head. "Ardon isn't here."
"Well, I hope he's dead, wherever he is."
*******