The Child Eater (30 page)

But as with the scholars in the libraries, no one could help him.

If all these places were wrong, he decided, then maybe the right place was somewhere older than the Wise and all their traditions. He began to trace his way through forests and rivers, deserts and mountains, searching for the oldest tribe, the truest teachings. He followed stories and rumors, moving from one tribe to another. He watched ceremonies where people danced with drums, dressed in long carved masks and layers of cloth, all to invite the First Ancestors to enter their bodies. When he stood up in the dance, however, and demanded that these leaping, howling spirits teach him to fly, they were as useless as the wizards and scholars.

They arrived at the Institute on a cloudy afternoon. The sky pressed the long stone building into the earth. It reminded Simon a little of his school. Like the school, the Institute had pearly gray walls and a clock tower rising above the second story, with a lawn and scattered trees in front, and what looked like a wood behind it. Maybe it was supposed to look reassuring. Like going to a new school. It didn't work. Simon just stared at it and sank down into his seat. Dr. Reina came and opened the door for him. “You may leave your backpack and suitcase in the car,” Dr. Reina said. “Someone will bring them to your room.”

As they walked toward the entrance, wide wooden doors with brass handles, Simon wondered where everybody was. Where were the other children, the doctors and nurses? The wide lawn, the flowers along the front of the building, the oak and silver birches along the sides—they all looked cared for yet somehow ragged, as if the woods behind the building would rise up and reclaim the land and the Institute at any moment. And everything was silent.

Inside looked nothing like school. It was more open and fancier, with wide windows, black and white tiled floors and ivory-painted walls, with occasional carved chairs or small marble statues of children standing or running. The whole place appeared to be very nice, yet at
the same time cold and kind of
slippery
. The statues—they all looked happy at first, but if you looked closer they seemed scared, or maybe desperate. “Where are all the other kids?” Simon asked.

Dr. Reina nodded. “A good question. Now I will tell you a secret.” He smiled, with what Simon guessed was supposed to be reassurance “You, Simon, are the only one here. Do you see now that you are very special?”

“I don't understand.”

“I wish to give you my full attention. And so I have sent home all my other cases.” He bent toward Simon, who had to fight not to run, because really, where could he go? The doctor's teeth were so white they glowed, but there were dark spots, as if he'd brushed and brushed but couldn't remove old stains. Simon couldn't stop staring at them. The ones at the back looked chipped.

The doctor said, “I have even sent home the other doctors and the nurses. It will be just you and me, working together to make all the bad dreams and bad feelings disappear.” He spread wide his fingers like a magician releasing a bird. “Gone forever. Do you see?”

Simon didn't answer.

Simon's room was large, slightly bigger than his dad's bedroom at home, but simple where the hotel rooms had been fancy. There was a wooden bed covered with a green bedspread, an oak desk with nothing on it and a high-backed plain wooden chair. There was a small bathroom off to the side. There was so little in the room, just those few pieces of furniture, no telephone, computer or television. Simon wondered what he was supposed to do here. Stare out of the window at the lawn and trees off in the distance? The room's only decoration was a painting in a gold frame. About two feet high, it showed a pair of trees, one with long white flowers that looked about to burst, the other with blackened leaves on droopy branches. Simon couldn't help staring at it. He did his best not to look at the dead leaves and see only the bright flowers. Except, as he held his eyes on them, the flowers looked over-ripe, almost diseased. He made himself turn away.

“Can I call my dad?” he asked.

“Later,” Dr. Reina said. “First you must settle in. Rest. Have dinner. This is very important.”

“I want to speak to him. He's going to worry.”

Dr. Reina held up a finger. “Simon,” he said, “your father has given you to me. You must follow and do what I say so that healing will come.”

“When can I call him?”

“We will see tomorrow. And that is all we will say about it for now.” When he smiled, this time the white teeth reminded Simon of the flowers, the ones on the edge of rotting. “Now, you must be hungry,” the doctor said. “Rest, please, and in a little while we will eat.” He left the room and closed the door behind him.

As soon as he was alone, Simon took out his cell phone to try to call his father. “No signal” read a box, and below it a picture of an old-fashioned table phone had a red X over it.

He tried to open the window but it wouldn't move. Could he break it with the chair? It was the ground floor, he could just climb out, run for it. But where would he go? He started to cry.
No
, he told himself, and wiped his eyes. Crying like a baby wasn't going to help. He needed to pay attention. That's what his mother had said. Pay attention and not eat anything.

He lay on the bed, trying not to cry, until Dr. Reina returned, now dressed in a white suit. “Come, Simon,” the doctor said, “it is time to eat.” At that moment, Simon discovered he was terribly hungry. He jumped up, filled with desire for fried chicken or hamburgers or ice cream. Or chocolate cake! Wouldn't it be wonderful to eat a big, thick slice of cake? He'd gone
days
without eating—wasn't that enough?

Simon followed Dr. Reina down a long corridor lined with statues. Children again, in odd poses, about to jump, crouched down, reaching for something. Simon ignored them, drawn by the smells of hot food. The dining room was large, with big windows overlooking the lawn, and several long tables with red-lacquered wooden chairs. Simon looked only at the table in the center, for it was filled with everything he wanted—chicken and cheeseburgers and hot dogs and ice cream and the biggest, gooiest slice of cake he'd ever seen. He felt a surge of happiness and would have hugged Dr. Reina if he hadn't wanted to start eating right away. Dr. Reina said, “It's all for you, Simon. Special, just for you.”

Simon was about to pile food on his plate when suddenly he heard a soft whisper inside his head. It said:

But I'm so hungry. I'll be sick if I don't eat something
.

“Pay attention,” the voice said. “Do not eat or drink. Not anything.”

Simon put his hands under the table and clenched his fists. His body shook a little as he said, “I'm sorry. I don't think I'm very hungry right now.”

Dr. Reina stared at him with a look that made Simon turn away. “Not hungry? After so long a journey? And eating so little on the way? This is foolishness, Simon. I have tolerated your refusals while we were on our travels. But now we are arrived. We must be serious. We cannot begin your cure if you refuse to eat. Your father will be very disappointed in you.”

Though delicious smells filled Simon's whole body, he said, “No, thank you. I'm not hungry.” As soon as he said the words he discovered it was true. The hunger had vanished, and now the smells disgusted him.

Dr. Reina pointed a finger at him. “You must eat.”

Right then, Simon heard a scratching noise at the window. He looked and almost shouted with joy. The squirrels were there. They stood on the windowsill and clawed the glass as if they were trying to break in.
She sent them
, he thought. His mother.

Dr. Reina was furious. “Get away!” he shouted, and swept his arm across his body. The squirrels continued to
tap-tap
at the window. Dr. Reina opened the window to grab them, but they only ran to the next sill. He rushed to the doorway. “Stay here,” he ordered Simon. “I will chase away these pests. It is your father's wish. And it is his wish also that you eat, so you can make yourself strong.” He ran down the hall.

Simon dashed to the window and was about to climb out when a soft voice said inside him, “No, you cannot escape that way.” When he looked at the squirrels, the red one nodded. The voice said, “Use your napkin to put some food on your plate, then drop it out of the window. Make sure you don't touch it.”

With the white cloth napkin, Simon grabbed a chicken wing, a cheeseburger and a hot dog. Even through the cloth the touch made Simon feel a little sick. He thought of the pieces of children from his dreams, the fingers and tongues. “No,” the voice said, “this is not them. But nothing here is what it appears to be. Hurry.” When Simon had dropped the food out of the window, the voice said, “Now pour some of the drink into your glass, then out of the window. Don't let a drop touch you.” There was a large pitcher on the table filled with red fruit
juice. Very carefully Simon poured some into his glass then walked it to the window and spilled it out.

He was just back in his seat when he saw Dr. Reina come around the side of the building, shouting something Simon couldn't understand. The squirrels ran away while Dr. Reina shook his fist.

When the doctor returned a minute later, Simon was at his place, his hands folded neatly on the table. Dr. Reina still looked angry, but when he saw that some of the food and juice were gone, he smiled. “Good, good,” he said. “You have eaten. Soon we can begin your treatment.” Then he narrowed his eyes and looked at Simon, who did not dare to look back. He picked up the plate, stared closely at it, even sniffed it. He did the same with the glass. When the doctor went and looked out through the window, Simon had to fight the desire to run. To his surprise, Dr. Reina smiled happily, then patted Simon's shoulder. “Good boy,” he said, and Simon shivered. Dr. Reina said there was nothing more to do that day and sent Simon back to his room.

Matyas kept searching. In a distant, forgotten library, he heard of a place known as the Birth of the World. He set out immediately, across oceans, on a grand ship, and then along rivers and streams in a small, hand-paddled boat made from a dead tree. After that came a desert where he had to dig insects out of the cracked dirt to have anything to eat. Finally he found it, a giant rock so big it would take hours to walk around it. It sat all alone on a flat desert of red sand that blew all over the rock so that it shone like blood in the evening sunlight.

There were paintings on the rock, circles and lines and spirals and dots, so old even Matyas couldn't decipher them. When he tried to trace one of the designs with his finger, his skin became so hot he thought it had burst into flames, but as soon as he pulled his finger away it was fine. That was his right hand. When he tried with the left, his fingertip froze. He smiled, and after that was careful just to look. After he'd seen all the signs at ground level, he found cracks and handholds where he could climb up to the top. The wind flapped his robe around him, and he had to weave a quick shield to avoid being coated in dust that would fix him in place so that future wizards who might come here would think him a statue, or just an extension of the rock.

He closed his eyes to try to speak to the elementals in the rock. All he could hear was a rumble that might have been thunder. Or the growl of some huge animal, as if the rock itself was a sleeping beast. Then he heard a loud buzzing sound, and when he looked again he discovered himself surrounded by men and women sitting in a circle, chanting in a tuneless drone.

Matyas stared at the group, trying to understand how they could have come up here and settled into whatever it was they were doing in the short time he'd had his eyes closed. They were naked, but covered in paintings and scars. Daubs of color, jagged lines, angular boxes and concentric circles all formed some kind of code Matyas could not begin to decipher. So old—and then it struck him.
Maybe they knew the secret!
Maybe he'd finally found the right place. For an instant, excitement made him forget his shield and the wind nearly carried him off the rock, but then he steadied himself.

The people didn't look at him or speak to him, only sat on the rock and continued that nasal drone. Matyas wanted to wait for a chance to speak to them but his head began to hurt, his skin tingled and soon his bones were vibrating so intensely it felt like he was going to break apart.

Savages
, he thought. How dare they threaten him? It was some kind of trick to keep him from finding out how to fly. He stared at the paint on their bodies. It was all for show, he decided, ignorant squiggles that didn't mean anything. How could they? There were no sacred names, no sigils, just blotches and lines. Fantasies of ignorant children.

Damn them. His head hurt so much he nearly screamed. He tried to call up fire demons to force them to their feet. Nothing happened. He shouted for lightning. Nothing.

He stared again at the paint on their bodies, trying not to see it as writing or individual symbols but instead as something whole and complete. Then he understood. The lines and blotches were not about flying, they were the history of the Earth. Their chant was the song the world sang to itself when it first awoke. But didn't that mean they would know all the secrets? As so many times before, Matyas felt the pull of knowledge. If he just surrendered his purpose there was so much to learn. He could stay and study with them until he surpassed everyone, even Veil.

No! No more distractions. He focused his eyes on what he hoped was the leader, an ancient woman, short, lumpy, with drooping breasts and layered hips, her face a mass of black stone painted with red and
yellow ochre. “You!” he said, and sent a sharp jab of energy directly at her forehead.

If it hurt her, she gave no sign, but she did open her eyes and get to her feet. None of the others took any notice. The woman herself just stared calmly at him.

Matyas opened his mouth before he realized he had no idea of her language. He could gesture, or try to draw a picture, but maybe she understood the Old Tongue, the common language of wizards that Joachim was said to have learned from the plants and stones. He said, “My name is Matyas.”

“Yes,” she said, her accent surprisingly soft. “I have been waiting for you.”

Ridiculous. He knew nothing of her or her strange tribe, so how could she possibly—? She was just trying to impress him, of course. She was no different from Veil, and indeed, when she smiled, it was so slight, and quick, she really did remind him of the old woman hidden away in her tower.

“I want to fly,” he said. “Tell me the secret of the True Ladder.” The wind blew so hard he could barely hear his own voice.

“I cannot do that,” she said.

“You can!” he shouted. “Don't lie to me! Do you want to become part of this rock that you love so much? Do you want to stay here forever? A living statue? Tell me how to fly.”

She looked at him for a long time, calm and unafraid, while the chants continued, and all around them blew the red desert wind. Finally she said, “I cannot satisfy your desire. Forgive me. But I can tell you something almost as precious.”

Matyas started to say there was nothing else he cared about, but curiosity stopped him. “Tell me,” he said. “What is so rare and wonderful that you can compare it to the one thing everyone hides from me?”

“The name of the Child Eater.”

His mouth opened so wide bits of sand flew into it and he had to spit them out on the rock. Finally he laughed. “No one can possibly know that. He removed it from the world.”

Her head moved from side to side on her wattled neck. “No. Buried, not removed. If he removed his name, he would have destroyed his power. His knowledge. And then he could no longer perform the Spell of Extension.”

Matyas thought back to when Veil told him about the spell, and Joachim's
other
disciple. What were her actual words?
He buried his name inside a great red rock
.

No,
Matyas thought,
it's not possible
, then foolishly stared down at his feet. When he looked up, he worried he'd see the woman laughing at him but her face had hardened, as smooth as if he really had turned her into stone. He said, “Why would I want that? What good is it to me?” She didn't answer, didn't move, until finally his own mind answered him. Knowledge. Truth. Things he'd come to love just for themselves. “Tell me, then,” he said. “What is it? Tell me the name of the Child Eater.”

“His name is Federaynak.”

For a moment Matyas held his breath, as if the sky would open, or the rock pour forth demons. When nothing appeared to have changed, he began to laugh, only stopping when the rock shifted under him and he nearly fell off. No, it wasn't the rock, of course not, it was just a wave of dizziness. He was fine now. He squinted at the old woman. Was she laughing at his clumsiness? No, she just stood there, dumb and stolid, her dense hair and black face lit up by the afternoon sun. What was going on?

Images flooded him, words, histories. He could hardly see as everything whirled around him. The Spell of Forgetting! Veil had said there was a spell all around the history of the Child Eater to keep people from remembering whatever they might learn about him, but she was wrong. It wasn't a spell at all, it was just an effect. From when he hid his name from the world. When he buried his name, he buried his history. And now Matyas could see it, all of it. All the murdered children, their screams, their terror, the stone knife rising and falling, over and over and over.

“Stop it!” he cried, and fell to his knees before the unmoving woman, who just stared at him. Matyas heard again the voices, the long-ago prophecy. Not the part he'd obsessed over all this time, where it said he could fly, but the second part.

Was
that
why he'd come here? Not to fly but to stop the Child Eater? He had no idea what he could do, but he had the name and that must mean something or why would
Federaynak
hide it?

But what did it have to do with him? Why did
he
have to be the one? The woman knew it, didn't she? Why didn't
she
stop him? Why should Master Matyas give up his life, his destiny? He stood up now, stared back into her mountain range of a face. For it was clear to him that it had to be one or the other, fly or fight Federaynak. Wasn't that what the prophecy said? “
Or
will you try.” He could choose.

And after all, what did the Child Eater have to do with him? For hundreds of years the great Masters in all the Colleges and Academies and hermitages had allowed themselves to forget as they pursued their own knowledge, their power. He took a step toward the woman, but if he'd hoped she might step back, frightened, he was disappointed. “Why me?” he said. “Why should I have to give up everything?”

She spoke so softly the wind nearly carried her words away before they could reach him. “You found the hiding place. You found us.”

Yes
, Matyas thought. He'd done what no one else could do. Didn't that mean he was better than all of them? “What if I do both?” he said. “Fly, and then fight the Child Eater.”

She said, “There are times we may take our desires and times we must choose.”

“Exactly!
My
choice.
I
get to choose.” And why couldn't flying be the right choice?

They all said no one could fly. All the teachers, all the scrolls, all the books. Even Veil said it, over and over. If he could show them they were wrong, didn't that give the world something just as valuable? And suppose he sacrificed his own deepest purpose and
tried
to stop the Child Eater—and couldn't? What good would he have done? If the Creator Herself had to accept that She could not create a world without the Spell of Extension, how could one wizard, even the greatest of them, imagine he could put a stop to it? All he knew was a name. Maybe once he left the rock he would forget again, just like everyone else. And if this stone woman did tell him the secret of flying, would he forget that as well? Tricks. Too many tricks.

Suddenly he almost laughed. Why should he think about the Child Eater at all? He wasn't a child anymore,
it had nothing to do with him
. The whole thing was just another excuse to keep him from finding out how to fly.

When he was sure he could control his desire to burst out laughing, he told the woman, “You said I could choose. So this is my choice. I don't care about the Child Eater. Do you hear me? He has nothing to do with me. I only care about flying.
That's
my choice.”

The woman closed her eyes a moment, and when she opened them again Matyas was astonished to see she was crying. In a gentler voice than Matyas would have believed possible for her, she said, “Then there is nothing I can give you.”

“I don't believe you. Teach me the True Ladder.” She said nothing, and her silence seemed to make the drone louder all about them. Matyas wanted to walk around the circle and slap their blank faces, one after another. Or maybe just cast a silence spell to freeze their vocal cords. Instead, he turned back to the woman and said, “If this is the wrong place, send me to the right place. Send me where I can get what I want. Now!”

Still no answer. Furious at ancient women who refused to tell him what he needed to know, Matyas stepped toward her, his hand raised. As he got closer, the colors on her body began to shift, move together, flow into forms. Matyas felt dizzy, sick. Another step and he no longer saw a human form at all, but a picture of a garden, with bright flowers and a waterfall. One more step and he was staring at grass, surrounded by poppies and calla lilies. Sweet perfume ran through his body, mist from the waterfall moistened his face and arms which had become dry and cracked in the desert winds.

Matyas lost his balance and fell against a tree. Confused, he stared all around him. There were actually two trees among the flowers, very old and bent. Where was he? How had he got here? He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to think. He'd been traveling. A long way, a long time. There was something he was supposed to remember. Something he was supposed to do.

When he stood up again, a naked boy and girl were looking at him. The boy had golden hair, the girl silver. “Who are you?” the boy said. “What are you doing here?”

Matyas ignored him. He looked around, sniffed the air so light and sweet, stared up at a sky that was layers of color and light. “I know what this is,” he said. Florian, his great Master, had written about this. She'd come here. Florian, and Joachim himself, and . . . and the other one. They'd come in a group, as if it needed all three of them, but now Matyas had come by himself.

He smiled at the two trees that looked like grand old dames at a manor house. “Those two,” he said, “they're called the Tree of Constancy and the Tree of Variance, yes? Am I right?” The children said nothing. “And this place,” Matyas said, “it's where Joachim and the first wizards came, when they changed the world. This is the Garden of Origins.”

The children backed away a step, and Matyas thrilled at the fear in their faces. “Yes. You didn't think anyone would ever find you again, did you? You thought you could hide here and be safe. But I found you. You're the Guardians. The ones who didn't leave. The Day and the Night. The Sun and the Moon.”

The boy said, “We don't know who you are but you don't belong here. You have to go.”

Matyas stood up straight, nearly twice as tall as the children. “I am Master Matyas!” he cried out. “I have traveled the world, I have searched out its mysteries. And now I have come to learn how to fly.
I will not be refused
.”