The other guardians are all in the same age range as my dad was—forty or older—except for Anaya, a twenty-two-year-old girl from India who always makes it a point to smile at me. There’s also a guardian-in-training, a boy from Romania named Valentin who, along with his mother, looks like the descendant of Van Helsing in his leather jacket and perma-scowl. He tried to talk to me about American movies once, something about John Hughes and the Brat Pack movies being his “favorite of all time,” but his mother hissed at him to act professional, and he fell silent. I haven’t really gotten to know anyone, at least not well enough to move beyond the awkward realm of acquaintance. It isn’t like we all stand around the watercooler after these meetings are over. Still, they nod at me in greeting as I take a seat in the back with Uncle Joe.
Even now, nearly two years later, there is still pity in their eyes when they look at me. At first, it was nice, to know that my dad was being missed, that others understood on some small level what I was going through. But now, it just reminds me all over again what I’ve lost, and I want to scream at them that their sympathy isn’t helping. How can I expect to even start the process of moving on if all they ever see when they look at me is the girl who lost her father, forcing her to become the youngest guardian in over a hundred years? When they look at me like that, I just want to crawl under my bed and pretend the world doesn’t exist.
The council members enter last, taking their seats on the dais behind a long stone table. I don’t know how old they are, but unlike Uncle Joe, their hair is all white, and their skin is thinner than parchment, making it appear blue or purple or green depending on the color of their veins.
I glance at the empty space to my left on the bench, and I can almost see Dad sitting there, looking like he did the first time he brought me here, shortly after my tenth birthday. “They looked that old the first time your grandfather brought me here, too,” he whispered, making me giggle. “I was surprised clouds of dust didn’t spew out of their mouths when they spoke.”
At that time, he’d already explained the basics to me of who these people were, of who Uncle Joe really was, but I was still fascinated to be in a room filled with an immortal race of people who weren’t really human. At least not if your definition of human was someone born in our world.
Now, one of the council members, a man with a long hooked nose named Alban, taps the gavel against the table, officially calling the meeting to order. He waits for the hushed conversations around the room to die down.
“We have some troubling news to bring forth today,” he says. “Two of our council members, Augustus and Celia, of House Tara’né, have gone missing. They were last seen at our previous meeting.” He raises his voice to be heard over the sudden whispers. “We have no leads as to their whereabouts at this time, but we are investigating the matter. Anyone who has any information of their whereabouts or who would like to help in the search, please see us after this meeting is concluded. Now then, Guardian Ballinger, please stand and give us your report.”
Tom Ballinger, a guardian from Cornwall, stands and recites the number of travelers he sent home in the past week from his patrol sector. Seral, the council member on the far left-hand side of the dais, records his words in her ledger in shimmering gold ink. When he is finished, Guardian Kamali Okorie, from Nigeria, stands and does the same.
I glance at Uncle Joe. “Has this ever happened before?”
“What do you mean?” he murmurs.
“Two council members disappearing like that?”
He nods. “Sometimes we can lose track of time, forget where we’re supposed to be. It’s an easy thing to do when you’ve lived as long as we have. It’s too early to worry. I’m sure they’ll turn up somewhere.” But the skin between his eyebrows pinches and he speaks a little faster than normal, and I know he’s worried anyway.
“So … you don’t think this has something to do with…” The words claw into my throat. I can’t force them out, but I don’t have to. Uncle Joe can read my mind like a scrying mirror.
“Your father?” I nod. He’s just like Dad in that way, always knowing what I’m thinking, feeling. I guess you can’t bottle-feed or potty-train a person without becoming weirdly attuned to them.
“No,” he says. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” It was silly of me to hope anyway. To think that maybe if they found Augustus and Celia, they’d find my dad, too. It doesn’t make sense—I know that—but if I’ve learned anything these past twenty months, it is that grief and logic don’t usually go hand in hand.
When it’s my turn to stand, I’m horrified to find my voice is thick and scratchy, and that my eyes are burning. My thoughts went to that place again, where all I can think about is how unfair it is, the fact that I could go to sleep one night with a father and wake up the next morning without one. It’s a dark, dangerous hole of a place, easy to stumble into but difficult to crawl out of.
I take a deep breath, force the pain and anger away behind a thick cinder-block wall of denial. “I sent home ten travelers this week.” I list all the places and times they were from—San Francisco, 1923; Heian-kyō, late 1100s; Thebes, 2300 BC—finishing with the boy from Brightonshire, England, this afternoon. The scratch of Seral’s quill underlines my words.
Alban nods and waves, permitting me to sit back down and allowing the next guardian to speak, but I remain standing.
“Was there more, Guardian Parish?” he asks, his old voice gritty like wet sand.
“There was a problem with one of the travelers,” I say. “I’m not sure how, but he seemed to know things about the wood that no traveler I have ever encountered before has known.”
“Such as?”
“How the portals work, what my job as a guardian entails, that sort of thing.”
Alban tilts his head, thinking. “That is not so unusual. There are many families who still pass down tales of the wood in the oral traditions, even to this day. Most assume they are fables, works of fiction, but sometimes a child will look deeper into the stories and search out the thresholds for themselves.”
“Yes, but he wasn’t just in the wood to check out the scenery,” I say. “He wanted to use the thresholds to cross over into another time.”
One of Alban’s white, fuzzy eyebrows curves like a caterpillar. “Do you know where it was he wished to go?”
“No, but I think he’s going to try again.”
The other council members sit up a little straighter.
Alban narrows his eyes. “Do you have reason to think this boy is a threat to the wood’s survival?”
I think about what Uncle Joe said, how dangerous it can be for the council to forcibly close a threshold. How it could open up a giant hole through which hundreds of travelers could appear. And then I think about the boy—Brightonshire. The paleness of his skin and the dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
I have lost everything already.
“Guardian Parish?” Alban asks.
“I’m not sure.”