Song of the Sword (19 page)

Wally’s heart raced. He still wasn’t entirely convinced they could trust the Lady. Travelling through the water with Ariane had been terrifying, and the thought of a face-to-face confrontation with Rex Major – Merlin! – was more frightening yet. But there was no way he was going to let Ariane go by herself. “I’m coming. But I don’t want to get caught off-guard like we were this afternoon. We should take some camping equipment with us...”

Ariane shook her head. “I don’t think we can. I barely managed to get both of us to Hudson Bay. I don’t think I can drag much more along.”

“One backpack, that’s all I’m saying. Lightweight tent, survival blankets, some high-energy bars, matches, flashlight, that kind of thing.”

“Well...” Ariane paused in thought. “Okay. I think I could manage a single backpack. But I’ll have to carry the backpack, not you. It seems...it just feels like it will be easier that way.”

“I’ll make a list and email it to you. You can add anything else you think of.” Wally took a deep breath. “What time do you want to go?”

“Let’s aim for half past seven. I’ll tell Aunt Phyllis we’re going to a movie. You come by around six-thirty and we’ll pack everything up, then head down to the lake. We can get anywhere we want from there, and it’d be real hard to explain both of us going into the bathroom at the same time – even if we didn’t follow it up by disappearing into thin air!”

“OK,” Wally said. “Now you really had better get out of here – before Ms. Carson comes back.”

He saw Ariane out the front door and then hurried to the garage, where they kept the family camping equipment. He had a lot to do in the next few hours.

Wally Knight, Sidekick to the Lady of the Lake
, he thought as he pulled a backpack down from the shelf above the washing machine. He frowned. Somehow “sidekick” didn’t sound distinguished enough...

He grinned. “Wally Knight,” he said out loud. “Companion of the Order of the Lady.”

Much better!
He unzipped the backpack and started packing.

~ • ~

Twenty minutes after leaving Wally’s house, Ariane reached her block. During her walk, she had rehearsed various explanations, trying to figure out what she would put in the note she was going to leave for Aunt Phyllis before she set out with Wally for the “movie.” She had no idea when they would be back.

Or
if
they would be back.

She stopped suddenly.

A mud-splattered brown Buick that she didn’t recognize was parked in front of her house – and the driver was on the front step...

...talking to Aunt Phyllis.

There was no mistaking that gray-streaked ponytail: it was the man who had chased her that morning.
How many cars does he have, anyway?

Ariane didn’t know what to do. If she gave in to her instinct to dash up the walk and protect Aunt Phyllis, the ponytailed man would just grab her – and Rex Major would win. Besides, it didn’t look like he was threatening her aunt. As far as Ariane could tell, they were just talking.

But...about what?

The ponytailed man had his back to her, and if Aunt Phyllis had noticed her, she didn’t give any sign of it. Ariane ducked behind the hedge between Aunt Phyllis’s house and the one next door and, half-crouched, crept closer.

The neighbour’s dry, brown lawn crunched under her feet, and she had to stop farther from the porch than she’d hoped, afraid the ponytailed man would hear the movement in the bushes. Snatches of his words drifted in her direction through the thin screen of red and yellow leaves still clinging to the hedge’s dry brown twigs. If she cocked her head just right, she could see the back of his head through a gap in the foliage.

“...principal has instituted...policy...following up all suspensions...concerned by...attitude not what it should be...”

“I understand.” Aunt Phyllis’s voice came through loud and clear; she sounded like an actress projecting to the back row of a theater. “But it’s not my problem anymore.”

“I don’t understand...your niece...” the man’s voice disappeared into mumble.

“She’s gone,” Aunt Phyllis said. “Moved out. She’s old enough to live on her own, she said, and off she went. I couldn’t stop her. Didn’t really want to. She’s been nothing but trouble since she got here.”

Ariane couldn’t believe her ears. Aunt Phyllis was protecting her – but how did she know Ariane
needed
protection?

The man ran his fingers through his hair. “...saw her yesterday...didn’t say anything...”

“Why should she? She probably doesn’t want the school to know where she’s gone. She certainly didn’t tell me.”

“...irregular...school board must be notified...”

“Notify away. I’ve washed my hands of her. It’s got nothing more to do with me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. Good day.” And she turned and went into the house, closing the door firmly behind her.

The man stood on the step for a moment. He raised his hand as though intending to knock again, then abruptly turned and strode back down the walk to the waiting Buick. Ariane scurried in closer to the hedge and scrunched down as close to its prickly branches as she could. If he spotted her now...

He didn’t. He started the Buick and roared down the street. The tires squealed as he ran the stop sign at College and turned left toward downtown.

Ariane straightened up to stare after him.

“I think you and I should have a talk,” Aunt Phyllis said from behind her.

CHAPTER NINE

Attack of the Lizardoid

The short walk to the house
seemed to take forever, but it still wasn’t long enough to give Ariane time to figure out why her aunt had lied to the ponytailed man. Aunt Phyllis, after looking up and down the street and locking the front door, followed Ariane into the living room. She pointed to the overstuffed armchair in the corner, and Ariane obeyed the unspoken instruction to sit down. Then Aunt Phyllis sat on the couch, took a deep breath, and said, “You’ve seen the Lady of the Lake, haven’t you?”

Everything Ariane had been thinking about saying scurried away like cockroaches caught in the light. She gaped.

Aunt Phyllis sighed. “I’ve hoped – prayed – this wouldn’t
happen. I’ve hoped that our family’s curse had skipped a generation. It often does, at least in legends. But it hasn’t, has it?”

That broke through Ariane’s befuddlement. “My mother saw the Lady of the Lake?”
I was right!

“So she told me.” Aunt Phyllis’s expression softened and her eyes unfocused a little, as though she were looking at something far away. “And so did I…almost.”

“What?”
That
was so unexpected that it felt to Ariane like she’d been slapped across the face with an ice-filled rubber glove. “You saw the Lady of the Lake?”

“Almost,” Aunt Phyllis said. “It happened when I was about your age, and your mother was barely six – about a year before our mother died. We were staying at the family cabin at Emma Lake. I went for a walk along the shore. And I heard…singing. Chanting. The water was…calling to me. It wanted me to wade into it. I looked out at the lake, and I saw a…a swirling in the water, and then it opened up, like a doorway…”

She sighed. “And I ran away. I was terrified. Even though I could hear the water’s call, I turned my back on it.”

Hope kindled in Ariane, hope that she’d found another –
completely unexpected – ally. “Did you tell Mom?”

Aunt Phyllis nodded. “I couldn’t tell
our
mother, so I told Emily. I told her it was just a story, a fairy tale, but she knew I was lying, that I’d really seen something. Then I tried to lie to myself, tried to convince myself I hadn’t really seen anything at all, that I’d imagined it. I kept away from the lake for the rest of our stay, and the next day, we went home. And that was that. Until…” She sighed. “Until I got this.” She reached inside her apron pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “A letter from Emily...mailed from the hospital just before she disappeared.”

Ariane’s heart skipped a beat and anger heated her cheeks.
“And you’ve never showed it to me?”

“It wasn’t for you. It was for me. And I didn’t want to upset you. It was...distressing. I thought it meant your mother
really
had
gone crazy, and I didn’t want you to think that.
I
didn’t want to think that. But when that man showed up on the doorstep twenty minutes ago, asking after you – representing the school, indeed! On a Sunday? – I didn’t believe him for one minute. I have a feel for people, you know. I can tell when they’re lying. And that’s when I realized I have to show you this.” She held out the paper. “Read it.”

Fingers trembling, Ariane took the letter and unfolded it. She recognized her mother’s handwriting, and her eyes blurred. But she blinked away the threatening tears and began to read.

Dear Phyllis: I have hesitated to write because I don’t want to worry you, but now I feel I must. After all, you saw her too...the Lady of the Lake. At Emma Lake, the summer before Mom died, remember? You tried to pretend you were just telling a story, but I knew better.

If you ever saw her again, you never told me. And as the years went by I hardly thought of it anymore. Until...

Phyllis, I saw her. I talked to her. Not at Emma Lake, but right here in Regina, in Wascana Lake. I went for a walk around the lake, same as I’ve done a thousand times, but this time...I heard singing. I heard the water calling to me. I went down to the shore, and I saw an opening in the water, like a trapdoor, with steps, leading down...just like you told me about all those years ago.

And the singing...I wish I could describe it to you. It was breathtaking. It pulled at me. I couldn’t resist it. I don’t know how
you
did. I went down the steps, into a kind of throne room under the water, and there was a woman...a woman made of water. She talked to me. She told me she was the Lady of the Lake, from the days of King Arthur, and that I had to help her retrieve the shards of Excalibur from their hiding places all over the world, and re-forge the sword before Merlin could claim it. She said Rex Major, the computer guy, is really Merlin, but I could defeat him with the power of the Lady of the Lake, that all I had to do was accept it, and I would have all the power I needed...

But...it was all too strange. I didn’t listen any more. “I don’t want your power!” I told her. “I reject it!”

And then she grew angry. “Reject it? Without it, you are helpless,” she told me. “Rex Major will be able to find you. Though you reject my power, a portion of it will still cling to you for a time. He will use it to track you down. He will track down your daughter. She, too, is my heir. If you reject the power I offer, you are defenceless against him.”

“I don’t want your power!” I screamed at her again. “I just want my normal life!” And then I turned and ran.

The water closed in on me, almost drowned me. I stumbled home, half-drowned, freezing, and Ariane called 911...

The letter broke off in mid-sentence, as though Ariane’s mother had thought better of what she was about to write.

I have to go away,
she continued in the next paragraph.
I have to. Before Merlin – Rex Major – finds out who I am, finds out I have a daughter...or a sister.

I know this sounds crazy. I’m just asking you, Phyl, to be careful. Be on the lookout for strange men asking strange questions. And...take care of my little girl. Don’t tell her anything about this. She already thinks I’ve gone crazy. This would just confirm it.

Goodbye, Phyl. I don’t think we’ll see each other again. I love you.

Emily.

Ariane gulped air. “She ran away to protect me.”

Aunt Phyllis nodded. “As she saw it, it was the only thing to do.”

“Did you show this letter to the police?”

Aunt Phyllis shook her head. “It makes her sound crazy. And I actually thought she
was
, when I read it for the first time while I was in hospital for my first surgery. I mean…Rex Major is really Merlin? And he’s searching for the shards of Excalibur? I thought she had just taken the story I told her when we were kids, a story about something I’d convinced
myself
never really happened, and she’d woven it into her delusion.” She folded the letter and slipped it back into her flowered apron. “But then...” She stopped and took another deep breath. “Last week...the night after the school told me you were suspended...I had a dream.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I saw the Lady, a woman all in white, in Emma Lake, right where I heard the singing so many years ago. She rose to the surface, her face broke the water, and she said, ‘Beware of Merlin. He is searching for you…and he knows I have visited Ariane.’ And then she melted away.” Aunt Phyllis raised her eyes and looked at Ariane steadily. “She came to you, didn’t she? And spoke to you? Just like she did to your mother. But unlike your mother – you didn’t run away. You accepted the power.”