A Knight Of The Word

She had not told him of Two Bears. Of the reason O’olish Amaneh had come to Seattle for Halloween. Of the terrible responsibility the last of the Sinnissippi bore for having given him the Word’s magic.

She finished the sandwich and a glass of milk and carried her dishes to the sink. The contracts for the sale of the house still sat on the kitchen counter. She glanced down at them, picked them up, and carried them to the table. She sat down again and read them through carefully. In the hallway, the grandfather clack ticked steadily. When she was finished reading, she set the contracts down in front of her and stared off into space.

What we have in life that we can count our own is who we are and where we come from, she thought absently. For better or worse, that’s what we have to sustain us in our endeavours, to buttress us in our darker moments, and to remind us of our identity. Without those things, we are adrift.

Her gaze shifted to the darkness outside the kitchen window. John Ross must feel that way now. He must feel that way even. day of his life. It was what he gave up when he became a Knight of the Word. It was what he lost when he discovered the truth about Stefanie Winslow.

She listened to the silence that backdropped the ticking of the clock. After a long time, she picked up the real estate contracts, walked to the garbage can, and dropped them in.

Moving to the phone, she dialled Robert at Stanford. She listened to four rings, and then his voice mail picked up.

At the beep, she said, “Hey, Robert, its me.” She was still looking out the window into the dark. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m home again. Call me. Bye.”

She hung up, stood looking around her at the house for a moment, then walked back down the hallway, pulled on her parka, and went out into the cold, crisp autumn ought to find Pick.



It was just after four in the morning when John Ross woke from his dream. He lay staring into the empty blackness of his room for a long time, his breathing and his heartbeat slowing as he came back to himself. On the street outside his open window he could hear a truck rumble by.

It was the first dream he had experienced since he had resumed being a Knight of the Word. As always, it was a dream of the future that would come to pass if he failed to change things in the present. But it felt new because it was his first such dream in a long time.

Except for the dream of the old man and the Wizard of Oz, of course, but he did not think he would be having that dream anymore.

He closed his eyes momentarily to gather his thoughts, to let the tension and the fury of this night’s dream ease. In the dream, he had been stripped of his magic, as he knew he would be, because he had chosen to expend his magic in the present, and when he made that choice, the price was always the same. For the span of one night’s sleep, there was no magic to protect him in the future. He often wondered how long the loss of magic lasted in real time. He could not tell, for he was given only a glimpse of what was to be before he came awake. If he used the magic often enough in the present, he sometimes wondered, would he at some point lose the use of it completely in the future?

His eyes opened, and he exhaled slowly.

In his dream, he had run through woods at the edge of a nameless town. He had a vague sense of being hunted by his enemies, of being tracked like an animal. He had a sense of being at extreme risk, bereft of any real protection, exposed to attack from all quarters without being able to offer a defence, at a loss as to where he might go to gain safety. He moved swiftly through the darkened trees, using stealth and silence to aid him in his flight. He tried to make himself one with the landscape in which he sought to hide. He burrowed into the earth along ditches and ravines, crawled through brush and long grasses, and edged from trunk to trunk, pressing himself so closely to the terrain he traversed that he could feel and smell its detritus on his skin. There was a river, and he swam it. There were cornfields, and he crept down their rows as if navigating a maze that, if misread, would trap him for all time.

He did not see or hear his pursuers, but he knew they were back there. They would always be back there.

When he awoke in the present, he was still running to stay alive in the future.