The Winter Place (2 page)

“Oh,” Axel said. He shot his sister the briefest look. “Please,” he said.

The boy smiled and let go of the shield. “That's right,” he said.

“Come on,” Tess said, unable to meet her brother's eyes. “You're going to be late.”

They locked up the A-frame and cut across the yard, heading for the Mud Lake gates down the road. Soon Tess began to hear the first strains of lute music drifting through the park. Flags and banners whipped in the breeze, flashing through the canopy. Axel hurried ahead, Sam's heavy shield bouncing across his narrow spine.

“He doesn't look that sick to me,” the boy said. “At least not, you know, not
physically
.”

This brought Tess up short. Rumors regarding Axel's condition were rife in Baldwin, but no one had ever confronted her so directly.

“He's not sick at all,” she said. It sounded like the lie it was, but the boy had sense enough to leave it at that.

They reached the park gates, where a cloth billboard was draped over the Mud Lake sign, brightly announcing the start of the Renaissance Faire. Sam's picture was on the billboard—the good white knight. For the next two weeks he'd battle the evil black knight twice daily. Sam would win and lose on a predetermined, rotating schedule, as committed to his own defeats as to his victories.

Axel showed his performer's badge to the leather-capped steward at the ticketing kiosk—shaped, unsurprisingly, like a castle battlement—and nodded his head in the direction of Tess and the boy. “They're with me,” he said.

“Pass, then, young sirs,” the steward responded in a piss-poor, strangely piratical English accent. “All is well. You may pass. But mind you make haste. Their majesties convene the contest on the hour!”

Translated from high-nerd, this meant: “You're late.” Axel didn't have to be told twice. He gave Tess a parting glance and then raced into the faire, disappearing among the interpretive displays and vendors' tents that had spilled out of the parking lot and into the meadows. Tess made to turn and go, but the boy took her lightly by the arm.

“If you think I'm missing this, you're crazy,” he said.

Oh well. The boy was such a bummer at kissing that watching the joust with him was probably as good a way to spend their afternoon as any, even if it was just so that they could laugh at Sam and Axel. Tess certainly wasn't above this. Never mind that last year she'd been right there with them, done up as an adventuring princess. She'd grown out of all that. Maybe “grown” isn't the right word. It was more an act of will than an act of nature. Tess had
decided
to grow out of it. High school had come for her. It was every kid for themself.

“It's not going to be as fun as you think,” she said, pulling her arm from his hand and stepping past the kiosk.

“I don't think it's going to be fun at all,” the boy said, his smile sharp and hungry.

The jousting field was set up in a meadow at the far end of the fairgrounds, just beyond the ax-throw and court-of-foods. On almost any other day of the year you could see whitetail deer grazing here, or maybe a skunk nosing through the wilted growth. But today every sensible animal had found its way to the deeper woods and marshes. A ten-foot riser had been erected at one end of the field, flanked by miniature cardboard towers, and bleachers lined both sides of the jousting green. Tess and the boy found seats on the lowest level, where a sign warned:
YOU WILL GET MUDDY!
in cheerfully ornate script.

A sudden commotion rippled through the crowd, and some people started clapping. It took Tess a moment to realize that this was for her brother. Axel stepped out from behind the riser, joined by an older boy who must have been playing the squire for the evil black knight. They certainly looked the parts of grim, downtrodden urchins. The knights themselves appeared moments later, galloping out of a large opening at the center of the riser, down to the end of the jousting green and back. The costumed crowd erupted, shooting to their feet, hollering and wolf whistling. Sam gave them a wave, then unsheathed
his sword and twirled it in the air, the sun bright upon the blade. He accepted his jousting shield from Axel with a curt nod and turned to give the king and queen, seated on thrones atop the riser, a deep bow. Tess was struck, all at once, by how strange it was to be watching her father from the audience like this. Every inch of Sam was concealed. Tess couldn't see his face, or his fingers, or even a thread of his long graying hair. But he wasn't
hidden
—that was Sam up there. That was her father's truest self. He may as well have been naked as covered in plates of tempered steel.

For as much time as they'd all spent practicing, the joust didn't last very long. The knights retrieved their lances and charged leisurely at each other, while their squires led the crowd in coordinated cheers. The boy not only participated in this but, much to Axel's chagrin, he way overdid it. Whenever Sam scored a point, the boy would jump to his feet, fist pumping the air like he meant to bruise it, hooting with luxuriously insincere delight. Whenever Sam lost a point, the boy would boo and hiss, spitting on the ground. His contempt for the proceedings wouldn't have been more obvious if he'd dropped his pants and shown his ass to the gathered crowd. Tess tried her best to ignore it, staring blankly across the field. Axel did no such thing. He couldn't exactly interrupt his performance, but he made a
point of passing by their bleachers between the runs and staring daggers at the boy. Tess wished Axel wouldn't—nothing good would come of it.

Nothing good did. After the joust was over, Tess and the boy went to the makeshift stables, where Axel had just finished putting the horse their father had been riding into her stall. Tess could tell that her brother was still fuming. The boy slapped Axel's back a little too hard. “Not bad,” he said. “You were by far the least stupid part of that.”

“This one's a bigger jerk than usual,” Axel said. It would have been a brave and rather foolish thing to say, had it been in English.

“Hell is that?” the boy said, his hand still on Axel's shoulder. “Elvish?”

“Suomea,”
Axel answered. It was Finnish, for Finnish. Only Tess understood what he'd said, on account of she spoke it too.

“Snow-ma?” The boy glanced back at Tess, a hint of irritated confusion behind his pasted-on grin. “I forget; they were on our side? Or did they fight for the Klingons?”

“Shows what he knows. They fought the
Russians
,” Axel said, shrugging out of the boy's grip. That he thought he could score a point with this distinction was a little pitiable, and besides, he was still speaking in Finnish. But if he meant to get under the boy's skin, he'd done so.

“Don't be like that,” the boy said, more a threat than a plea. “Come on—what's that you're speaking?”

“What do you care?” Axel said, finally switching to English.

“Be nice,” Tess said.

Axel turned to look at her, and at once Tess realized that this had nothing to do with the fact that the boy had been nasty to him. This was happening because the boy had made fun of their father. Then he looked back at the boy. “You know that she's going to be bored of you in a week or two,” Axel said. “So I wouldn't bother trying to learn it.” His eyes went wide, blazing with certain awareness of his own foolishness. “Not that you could, anyway.”

The boy snatched the collar of Axel's tunic, backing him up into a broad patch of horse-trod mud. He seemed almost sad as he did this—the boy must have realized that he'd been checkmated. Nowhere to go from here but down, so he gave Axel a hard push that sent him sprawling feet over face into the mud. Axel landed flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him so hard that Tess could actually hear his lungs empty. She knew that this was restraint on the boy's part. He could have done a lot worse.

“Stop it,” she said, pushing past the boy and stepping into the mud to help Axel sit up. He was
gulping air, trying very hard not to cry. “I think you should go,” she said, not even turning to look at the boy.

That was restraint, too. It wouldn't have been impossible—or even all that difficult—for Tess to have put that bully back on his ass. She had the advantage of staggered puberty, to say nothing of the element of surprise. Because who expects to be leveled by a willowy girl with thin arms and post-goth hair? Certainly not this boy. But Tess could have done it.

She should have.

She knew that.

They found their father waiting in the employee lot, the engine of his rattletrap pickup running, his armor and weapons trembling in the bed. Sam knew that something had happened the moment he saw Axel's muddied costume and bloodshot eyes—the look of bruised pride was not uncommon in their house. He reached across to open the passenger door.

“Get in,” he said.

“I'll get the seat dirty,” Axel said.

Sam smiled lamely. “The seat's already dirty.” His expression darkened as he turned to Tess. “You too.”

They pulled out of the lot without uttering another word, Sam flashing his high beams at the
attendants, all of whom tipped their feathered caps respectfully—he was, after all, a knight of the realm. The drive home didn't take two minutes, but it was a long two minutes. Their house lay just ahead, all alone between the park and the surrounding farmland. It was a boxy little single-level, above which their father had erected a sort of high-peaked, timbered bivouac, designed to keep the winter snows from flattening them. From the road the house appeared to be a traditional A-frame, but from up close it looked more like a shanty under a wooden tent. Sam turned down the driveway and put the truck into park, leaving the engine idling. “There are potpies in the freezer,” he said. “Tess will make you one.” There was a long silence. Nobody got out of the truck or said anything. “Give us a second, little man.” Sam had been calling Axel that for years, but only recently had the phrase taken on an air of unintentional mockery. Because Axel was little—too little.

“She didn't do anything,” Axel said, loyal to a fault.

“Obviously, she did.” Sam waited, but Axel didn't move.
“Out,”
he said, his voice loose and gravelly; about as close to yelling as he ever got.

Axel slid across Tess's lap to dismount the truck. He whispered over her, light as Pinocchio, hardly bending the grass when he landed woodenly in the
yard. He accepted the key without a word, leaving them to it.

“So I take it that's the kid's idea of flirting with you?” Sam said. “Who is he?”

“Nobody,” Tess said.

“Not nobody. Somebody. Somebody who'd hurt your little brother.”

“Yeah. Because I knew he'd do that.”

Sam gave her a look. “And now that you know?”

“I'm not going to talk to him anymore.” The answer was automatic, but it was also true. The boy, who'd meant little to her before, now meant nothing at all.