Orphans of Chaos

1.

As we continued to hike, my duffel bag got heavier and heavier with every step. The little white clouds of breath hanging before my lips began to turn into puffs. I asked for a break.

Victor called a halt for lunch. We sat in a circle on a patch of dry ground beneath an overhanging rock erected by some ancient peoples. We rummaged through our bags, trying to find the most perishable things to eat first. Unfortunately, the things every housewife knows, none of us knew, so we just sort of guessed that maybe the peaches should be eaten first, as well as some of the hors d’oeuvres, fish paté and caviar, and little spicy hot dog things.

“The most elegant escape ever,” commented Colin, passing me a cracker with caviar on it.

I bit into it. “Bleh. This might have gone bad already.”

“No, it’s supposed to taste that way,” Colin asserted.

Vanity said to Quentin, “So is Headmaster Boggin an enemy, or is he trying to help us, or what?”

Victor answered her: “He’s an enemy. An enemy who is nice and polite is a nice, polite enemy, not a friend. We have a tool to blackmail him, though: we can tell the other factions that Boggin intended to use us in the war against them.”

I said to Quentin: “What is your name?”

He smiled back at me. “Quentin Nemo.”

“No, I mean, you said Dr. Fell told you what your real name is.”

“If you promise not to tell anyone my real name, I’ll tell you. You all must promise.”

Four voices spoke at once: “Sure, I promise.” “I’ll do whatever you say, Quentin.” “I’ll never talk, Big Q. Bring on the naked torture girls!” “Not knowing what information is useful to the enemy, it is only logical to tell them nothing.”

Quentin said, “I was born Eidotheia, son of Proteus.”

Four faces stared at him blankly. Colin shrugged. “Are we supposed to recognize that name? Is it one of the women Zeus ravished or something? I lost track in class after the bull, the swan, and the shower of gold.”

“Proteus is a man. The Old Man of the Sea. The greatest of seers and magicians who ever lived. He could take any shape as pleased him, and his wisdom is as deep as the ocean.”

Vanity said, “Who is your mother?”

“Dr. Fell said I had three mothers. Do not ask me the biological arrangements, Dr. Fell did not go into details. Their names are Enyo, Deino, and Pemphredo.”

Colin said, “You are not honestly expecting us to recognize those names, are you?”

I said, “Isn’t Enyo a singer? I love her music.”

Colin said, “Yeah, and Dino is the dog on the Flintstones.”

Quentin looked a little miffed. We were talking about his mothers, after all. “We read about them in Hesiod’s Shield of Hercules and in the Pythian Odes of Pindar. You did those assignments, right? They were the Graeae, the three women, gray-haired from birth, the sisters to the Gorgons. Don’t you remember the Perseus myth? The three Gray Sisters had but one eye and one tooth to share between them, and they passed it back and forth between them to see and to chew. Perseus stole the eye until they told him the secret way to the cave of the Medusa, whom he slew.” He looked back and forth between us.

We returned blank stares.

“Well,” he muttered, “there is a constellation named after him, and one for Andromeda. We’re not exactly talking about the most obscure of Greek myths here. It’s in Hyginus, the Poetica Astronomica.”

I said, “We didn’t have to do the Hyginus. Mrs. Wren let us translate Sappho instead.”

“Well, I did that one on my own.”

Colin said, “And what myth is Proton from? I thought that was the name of a molecule or something.”

“Proteus is mentioned in the Odyssey of Homer. Menelaus tells Telemachos how he found his way home from the Trojan Wars. Menelaus hid under a seal skin, and when Proteus came by, Manelaus leapt from hiding. Proteus turned into a lion, a bull, running water, raging flame, but Menelaus kept hold of him, and he had to answer his questions. It was said Proteus knew the past and future, and all things.”

Colin asked in a lofty tone, “All things except the fact that there was this guy sitting under this seal skin waiting to jump out on him. I don’t remember that part of Homer at all. Was it before the Cyclops thing?”

Said Quentin, “The first part of the story where Telemachos is looking for his father, Odysseus. I think you skipped that part and went on to the sea adventure stuff in the middle. You paid me in honey bread to do your first four books of translation for you, remember? It was the thing we did right after the Iliad.”

“My first and worst don rag. I still have nightmares,” reported Colin. “What was I doing while you did my homework?”

“You were writing love letters to actresses in—Hey! Did I tell you? Those Hollywood girls wrote back. Virginia Madsen and whoever else you wrote to. Boggin intercepted them.”

“Well, well!” said Colin, looking as pleased as I ever have seen him, folding his arms behind his head with a look of infinite satisfaction. “I really do have psychic powers after all.”

Vanity said, “And a photographic memory like Victor! Hey, dodo, you don’t have to worry about grades ever again. It doesn’t matter what is on our permanent records. We’re all princesses and sons of kings from other dimensions or beyond the edge of space and time. No more lessons! No more books! No more Grendel’s dirty looks!”

We all sat in our circle on the ground, looking smug and well pleased.

I said, “You know, there is one thing that worries me.”

Colin said, “Oh, don’t spoil it. Britney! Tiffany! Natalie! Did they all write me back?”

I said, “However our home dimensions are run, they cannot be Democracies. There’s no point in holding the daughter of a Prime Minister hostage.”

Colin said, “Look, who cares how they run things? If our families have psychic powers, they’d end up running things. And now it’s clear we all have powers.”

Victor stood up. “I am not sure we do. Watch this.”

He stood up and dropped a fork on the snow.

Then he stooped, picked up the fork again, and dropped it again.

Colin said, “This is supposed to mean something to us, for what reason, again?”

“It didn’t float,” said Victor.

Colin said, “Forks don’t.”

Quentin put his hand out to where his walking stick lay on the ground, frowning. He didn’t touch the stick; he just frowned at it.

Victor said, “Powers off. We must be too far from the school boundaries. Amelia, did you say your bag was getting heavier?”

2.

Quentin was looking more and more pensive as we walked on, staring left and right across the snowy tree scape, as if searching for something. Colin trudged along, scowling and answering any comments with curt sarcasm. Vanity was happily depicting her future life in London as a model or actress. I was daydreaming about the new Age of Discovery that would follow once I told the men on Earth that there were other dimensions to be found and named and mapped, and other worlds in them. Victor marched without pause and without fatigue, slightly ahead of us, expressionless.

Vanity commented to Colin, “There’s no need to be so bleak! Everyone else on Earth gets by without magic powers. We can live our whole lives as normal people, free, doing whatever we want!”

“Great,” Colin muttered back, “there’s a zenith for you. I can climb the adverse cliffs and after fateful struggle find what’s shining at the utmost peak: the triumph of being ‘normal.’ Write that down in the history books. They’ll name cars after me.”

Vanity said, “Well, for you, getting to the level of ‘normal’ will involve a climb.”

“Sure. And your dream for your new life is what again? To be a clerk in a shop, or wait tables, and haunt bars after hours to find a lonely butcher or an investment broker to marry?”

Vanity snapped back: “It will be better than your new life as an inmate in the psychiatric hospital for the criminally stupid.”

I said, “Actually, we do not know if we are interfertile with human beings. Or, for that matter, with each other. We’re not the same species.”

Colin said, “If we must test it, we must. I’ll make the sacrifice for Science. Do you girls want me to do you both at once, or one after another, or…”

Quentin said suddenly: “It doesn’t make sense.”

Colin said, “I’ll say it doesn’t. What does ‘species’ mean to shape-changers? We should be able to alter our sperm and sexual organs to be able to…”

Quentin said quietly, “Why didn’t they build the school here?”

Colin said, “What? In the woods?”

“In a spot where our powers didn’t work. Why raise us on the estate grounds, if our powers worked there? Why not raise us five miles East or West? Or in Timbuktu?”

I said, “I can think of several reasons. One: We might have needed our powers to keep us healthy when we were babies; Boggin said something to that effect. Two: Our powers might have arisen back so slowly, that they don’t even know we have them yet, and the original estate was wide enough to keep the boundaries out of range. Three: Boggin actually wanted us to develop our powers, because he wants to use us on his side of the war. Four: Our powers only work when there are Greek gods around, and, no matter where we were raised, Boggin had no choice but to be nearby himself to…”

Quentin interrupted me, which was unusual. “Or we are under a curse. Remember how you said Mrs. Wren stopped Dr. Fell. We crossed a ward of some sort, or violated a prohibition. It was just after lunch.”

Vanity said, “Dr. Fell. He could have put something in the food.”

Victor stopped. We all stopped.

He was a score of yards ahead of us, climbing a gentle slope where broken rocks protruded through the snow. Ahead of him, we could see the tops of the trees growing on the far slope. The far slope must have fallen sharply away before Victor’s feet, because the crowns of these trees were no higher than he was.

He turned his head, and shouted (for he was many yards ahead), “We missed the highway entirely. I see the bay.”

I shouted up, “Which bay? Rhossili Bay, Port Eynon Bay, or Oxwich Bay?”

He shouted back, “It’s not labeled in a prominent place!”

I shouted up again, “If you see Cornwall across the Channel, you’re looking South. If you see Worm’s Head, you’re looking West!”

I paused to look upward as I said it, but the sky was still as gray as old cotton, and the clouds were no brighter in one direction than the other. I said aloud, “How could we reach the water without going through Penrice, or the campgrounds? Even if we were headed due East instead of South, we should have crossed the B-4247 between Rhossili and Scurlage.”

Colin stomped up the slope past me, kicking snow from his boots at every step. He gave me a dark, sinister smile, saying, “Anyone can make a dot on a piece of paper, write a name by it, and pretend there is a town there.”

I stepped into motion again, toiling up the slope next to him. “But we’ve all been to Abertwyi. Where is Abertwyi?”

Colin said, “We were led there. We didn’t go there under our own power.”

“Why would that make a difference?”

“They changed the paths there. If there is a there.”

“How?”

“The girl who believes in the Fourth Dimension is asking me to explain it?”

“Look, there has to be a world somewhere. What about France?”

“What about Slumberland, Narnia, and Oz? France is obviously a made-up place. Those places only exist if we believe in them.”

“You’re more skeptical than Victor is.”

Colin just snorted at that. “Hmph! Vic? Well, I should jolly well hope so.”

And in a tone of voice that made it clear he thought Victor was both (1) the most naïve and (2) the most dogmatically pigheaded boy in our group or, maybe, in the world.

At that point, Vanity and Quentin (who had forged ahead of Colin and me while we slowed to talk) achieved the brink of the slope where Victor stood.

Vanity let out a shriek of pure joy. “She came! She really came! All my life I’ve been waiting, and I didn’t even know it… and, and… Victor! You idiot! Why didn’t you tell me she was here!”

Colin and I raced up the last few steps of the slope.

A silver ship, a trireme sleek as a spear, lay shining atop the waves below. By the prow a painted eye gravely gazed toward shore, wise and watchful. I think it was painted.

“Oh, she came!” Vanity breathed in breathless joy, and her whole soul was in her eyes.

3.

The land fell very sharply down. A few trees clung to the far slope, and then, in a sudden brink, a cliff fell to the sea. White and gray water surged among the rocks; white and gray seagulls hopped from stone to stone, or shivered in the chill wind. One or two birds skimmed the waters on crooked wings, silent.

About a quarter of a mile out in the water was a ship. Perhaps I should call her a boat, she was so small.

She was silvery-white, with a prow like a Greek trireme, sloping like a sleek nose into a bronze-jacketed ram at the waterline. Two eyes had been painted on the prow, one to port and one to starboard. A mast like a white finger rose from blocks amidships. Aft, a small deck rose into a shape like a peacock’s tail.

She was slender and sleek, built for speed like a racing scull, but the rail and the fantail were set with hammered silver, and the bench at the stern was carved and polished and set with white cushions held by silver nails, and all so finely crafted as to make the whole vessel shine like a lady’s jewel. The mast held nothing but a lamp, intricate with silver wire and nacre. There were no oars; there was no steering board or rudder.

The whole vessel was perhaps forty yards long, four yards broad at the waterline, with planks forming outriggers perhaps six yards wide above. She lay as lightly on the waters as a swan, as slim and finely crafted as a Japanese sword.

4.

Vanity exclaimed happily, “She can take us anywhere in the world in a day and a night!”

She started down the steep slope, moving quickly, almost running. The snow began to slide and curl around her legs, so that little growing snowballs were trickling down the slope with her.

Colin said, “Hoi! Careful!” And, ignoring his own advice, with that axe still in his hand, went pelting and sliding down the slope after her.

Victor said mildly, “We should approach with care, if that ship was seen by the enemy.”

Quentin said in a hushed voice, “There is something ill afoot here. Vee and Coll usually aren’t so rash.” Then, shouting: “Come back! You two! Come back!” And he started down the slope, slipped, and fell, sliding at least two dozen yards before he spread his arms and legs and caught himself in a little wash of snow. His duffel bag went rolling and bounding and gliding down past where Vanity was skipping gaily down-slope, past where Colin was half-skating, half-stumbling. As it tumbled past, the bag began to spill canned goods from its unraveling mouth.

I saw Quentin’s walking stick, his precious walking stick, go shooting over a hump in the snow like a little toboggan, and vanish into the trees.

Victor said, “My wits, at least, are not clouded. Amelia, follow me. We are going to go left and circle this slope, and go down along the gentler slope over there, where those pine trees are. You see where I mean?” And he picked up Colin’s bag, which Colin had left behind. Vanity’s duffel was about forty yards down-slope from us. She had abandoned it, and it had rolled to catch up against a leafless tree, bringing down a little shower of ice particles.

In a moment, Victor and I were among the spruces, jogging quickly down a somewhat more level slope. We could still hear Vanity squealing and Colin cursing. Even quiet Quentin was bellowing to them to shut up. I felt an impulse to shout at them, and call out, and the impulse grew stronger until I had to put my glove in my mouth and bite down on it to prevent myself from yelling at them.

Victor looked at me oddly.

I said, “Something—a hypnotic influence—is trying to get me to call out. Quentin’s right. There is a spell here.”

Victor did not seem affected. All he said was, “Let’s hurry. We can cut across this slope as soon as it levels out, and rejoin them.”

Unlike the leafless trees we had been walking through all morning, the spruce pines blocked our view with their thick needles.

Fear gripped my throat when the voices of Colin and Quentin fell silent, and Vanity let out a long scream.

Victor said, “Maybe we should run. Let’s drop the bags. We can come back for them.”

We ran. Victor simply put his hands in front of his face and pushed through the snow-laden needles of the spruce, letting branches whip him. I followed in his wake, ducking whipping branches, letting him trample a path clear for me.

We broke into the clear. Now I began to pull ahead of Victor. Even with my powers turned off, I was still a swifter runner than he was.

Then I slowed, looking up. Victor came up behind me.

We could see Colin and Quentin on the brink of a little cliff, but we had passed them, somehow. A little empty round glade filled with snow lay between us and the foot of the cliff. The cliff was up-slope and above us, a wall of icicle-dripping rock, atop which Colin and Quentin stood.

There was a cleft which cut the cliff into two cliffs, as if a giant with an axe had chopped it neatly in half. On the far side of the cleft was Vanity, alone on a little island-cliff of her own, with snow in her hair, and her garments mussed. She was standing, gazing back at the slope down which she had just toppled, as if trying to see a way back up the slope, across, over, and down to where Colin and Quentin were.

In the seaward direction, behind us, away from Quentin and Colin, was another sharp drop, this one not as tall, leading down to a rocky beach. The ship, gleaming silver-white, was clearly visible behind us, delicate as a cloud, pale as starlight. It seemed closer than the quarter-mile she had been before. The eyes on the prow seemed to be watching us.

Vanity shouted, “I can see a path down from here; there is a set of rock shelves, almost like steps, leading to the beach.”

Colin shouted, “We’re stuck here. Up-slope is too slippery, and I don’t see any way down left or right. Is the rope in your duffel bag? We could tie it off to the rock here and rappel down. Heck, we could practically jump it.”

Victor made a little trumpet out of his fingers and bellowed up at them, “Amelia and I will go back and get the rope, and throw it up to you. Vanity, you stay right where you are. Do not leave each other’s sight.” I could hear his voice making flat, metallic-ringing echoes from the cliff we faced.

Victor turned. I said, “I could go around the foot of the cliff to see if I can find the bottom step of Vanity’s staircase.”

“Let’s not split up,” he said. Again, I felt a strong urge, almost dreamlike, telling me to leave Victor and go off to find where Vanity would be going. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine or visualize the little dot of light in my own head, my own monad, snapping back into place the way I had done for Quentin, when his memory had been influenced. It did not seem to work. The tugging impulse would not go away.

I said, “Victor, something is trying to stop me. You’ll have to drag me.”

At this same time, I heard Quentin yelling something across to Vanity. I did not hear what it was, because I was distracted by the sensation of Victor putting his hand around my upper arm, pulling me after him. Victor is much stronger than the other two boys, much more swift, definite, and precise in his motions. Much stronger than me. I wondered what it would be like to have him pin me down, as Colin once had done.

I heard Vanity call out in a solemn voice: “Bran! I call upon our agreement! Let open the boundaries which hem us in! Let the Four Powers of the Four Worlds of Chaos come forth from their homes to this place!”

At once, I could see my monad, my noumenal self, hovering in the fourth dimension above and inside my nervous system. I could sense the pattern of energies rippling through them, and detect a disturbing force. I tilted the rotation of my monad, to bring the identity/meaning axis back into alignment. The disturbing forces blocking my proper nerve-path flows flickered and went down, but I could sense them changing, gathering forces, moving into another position to attempt to set up another nerve block. It was not the system Dr. Fell had used; this was not an infection of dark matter; it was different. It was self-correcting in nature, organic, perhaps self-aware.

I turned my head. From somewhere, Quentin had found his walking stick. He had not had it a moment ago. Now he did.

Colin was staring down at the snow below. He said something to Quentin. It was too far for me to hear the words, but it was something about the snow being deep enough to break his fall if he merely believed hard enough that it was. Quentin knelt, looking left and right nervously, and put his hand on Colin’s arm, and was urging him to crouch down and hide.

Victor looked up. I looked up, too, and saw nothing but heavy, gray clouds. He said, “Boggin. I recognize his magnetic signature.”

“He’s here?”

“I think the masquerade is over. They are going to reveal their powers.”

“What do we do?”

“Go get the rope for Colin and Quentin. If you make us both lighter will that let us go faster? I get the feeling we are not going to have much time.”

We made it back up through the pines in record time. Of the cluster of world-lines leading from our bodies and snaking through the trees, certain ones had higher potential, and occupied a smaller time-depth. These were the faster paths. I selected one for myself and Victor. For some reason, even though I did not tell him which trees to dodge around, or where the path I’d picked was, his feet found the path swiftly and without error.

There were little metal aglets holding the bag laces shut. Victor squinted at them, even while we were several paces away. The bag’s mouth opened of its own accord. I could see the dark-matter particles like little specks flying out of his forehead and applying magnetic force to the bag.

I got to the bag first. He turned around while I was grabbing the coil of brightly colored mountaineer’s rope from the mouth, and he was ahead of me as we raced back.

We pushed through the trees, and were once again in the little bowl of snow beneath the feet of the two cliffs. Atop one cliff was Quentin and Colin. The other cliff was bare.

Vanity was gone.