On the Edge te-1 Read online

  Declan began to intone something in a steady monotone. She didn’t recognize the language, but she felt his effort and the roiling current of magic vibrating within the sigil.

  He chanted for almost a half hour, his face quaking with the strain. She sank next to him on the grass. The sound of his voice lulled her into a kind of trance. Shrouded in clouds of fragrant smoke, he seemed otherworldly, like some arcane sorcerer from a fairy tale.

  Then Declan clasped his hair in a tight grip, drew the knife, and sliced it off.

  “Aaaa!” It happened so fast, all Rose could do was gasp.

  “What?” He threw the hair into the flames.

  “Your hair!”

  “That’s why I grew it,” he said, glancing at the water in the pool. “Power reserve. Three years’ worth. But it’s not enough.”

  Rose stood up, gathered her hair, and held out her hand.

  He handed her the knife. She severed her hair with one sharp stroke and threw it in the fire.

  “Most women would rather die than cut their hair,” he said.

  “It’s just hair,” she said. “I would sacrifice a lot more to keep Georgie alive.”

  The water within the pool bubbled up, rising, twisting into a huge translucent dome.

  Something bumped Rose’s elbow, and she jumped. “Jack!”

  He regarded her with solemn eyes and held out his hand.

  Declan passed her the knife, and she handed it to Jack. He sliced a lock from his head and tossed it into the fire. It went up in flames.

  “Smells awful,” Rose said, ruffling Jack’s hair.

  The water swirled, geysered up one last time, and snapped into shape.

  SOMEONE was coming up the attic stairs. Georgie looked away from the picture. The attic belonged to him and Jack. It was a wondrous place. Huge piles of junk gathered against the walls: books, weapons, rusty contraptions, drawings, parchments . . . Down in the house, Rose cleaned up any hint of dirt and clutter, but here everything was messy and dusty. He liked it up here. It was quiet, and he could dream. Sometimes he imagined himself to be a pirate like Grandpa in the hull of his ship filled with treasure. Sometimes he was an explorer like Dad. Sometimes he was a demon . . .

  A blond head emerged, followed by the rest of Declan. His long blond ponytail was gone, and his head looked lopsided, the hair on one side longer than on the other.

  The blueblood paused for a moment, taking in the gloom and treasures, and looked at Georgie on his seat on a punching bag by a narrow window. Georgie sighed. There would be another talk about letting things die and “take their natural course.” He’d nod and do what he always did. A waste of time.

  Declan crossed the floor, crouched by him, and looked at the metal frame in his hands. George offered it to Declan.

  Grandpa Cletus stood in the picture. Very tall and red-headed, he wore loose dark pants and a light shirt, with a triangular hat set at a jaunty angle. A carbine, an ancient musket, rested across his shoulders, the stock held in his right hand, the barrel passing behind his neck. In his other hand, he held a long rapier, leaning on it slightly as if it were a walking stick. His eyes were alight with crazy mirth. Grandma said he looked like a grown-up version of Jack, wrapped in pirate garb. When he first dragged this picture down to show her, she clicked her tongue and said, “Fiercely loyal and utterly unreliable.” She didn’t smile for a whole day after that, and he hid the picture in the attic with the rest of his stuff.

  “Grandpa,” George said, in case Declan failed to figure it out.

  “I see.”

  “What happened to your hair?”

  “I got tired of it.”

  George nodded and looked at him, waiting for a lecture.

  “I’ve made something for you,” Declan said. “I’d like it if you came to see it with me.”

  George followed him outside. A kiddie pool was in the middle of the lawn. Around it was a big complicated design made with rope and sticks. They climbed through the ropes. Declan stepped over the lines, while George ducked underneath, and they stood together at the rim.

  A transparent dome rose in the middle of the pool, all the water bound together tightly by the magic. Within the dome sat a small settlement of crooked huts. Fields and forest surrounded it, giving way to a green plain. The top of the dome glowed with soft silvery light, and he could see every detail of the village, from the stones on the well to tiny creatures scurrying about. Shaped like little human-looking foxes with red, brown, and black pelts, the creatures went about performing small tasks, carrying water, tending the fields, fixing the thatched roofs. Georgie stared, mesmerized.

  “What is that?” he asked finally.

  “It’s a willworld. Do you know what a computer is?” Declan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This is similar. It’s the Weird version of it, only unlike a computer, the willworld has a very specific purpose. It only does one thing, but it does it really well. I made it for my graduation project when I finished gymnasium.”

  “Did it take you a long time?”

  “A couple of years. The willworld itself is back at my house. This is just a facsimile . . . a copy. It’s an exact image of the device, made of water and magic and linked by magic to the original. You might say it’s a three-dimensional reflection. For all practical purposes, it’s pretty much like having the real thing at your disposal.”

  George watched the foxes as they carried long stalks back to their huts. “Are they alive?”

  “No. They’re magic constructs. Strictly speaking, they don’t actually exist. If you were to break the dome, you couldn’t pick one up. The whole thing would simply go dark. Look here.”

  Declan walked over to the side, where a watery control panel protruded from the dome. “The willworld is a simulator. It lets you study the progress of civilization and see how it might develop. You control the world. You can make it rain or you can cause a drought. Here.” He turned a dial.

  Water rose within the dome, streaming over the fields. The foxes climbed atop the huts. He turned the dial the other way, and the waters fled.

  Declan tapped the keys. The inside of the dome swirled and formed a small white-walled city with gardens and carved white towers. “This is a standard city, a kind of default. Everything is going well. There is plenty of food, the weather is mild, and the civilization prospers.”

  Georgie watched the city for a few minutes. Tiny foxes in bright robes lectured before their students in the gardens, strolled through the marketplace, and danced in a square while two other foxes played oddly shaped instruments.

  Declan pressed another key.

  “See this sign?” He pointed to a horizontal double loop in a small window. “I just set their generation length to infinity. They are now immortal. They can kill each other, but they won’t die of natural causes. I also sped things up a little, so we don’t spend all night watching a single scenario. Now this city is stored within the willworld. Anytime you wish to return to it, push this button right here and the world will be reset.”

  For the first few minutes nothing happened. Then the city began to grow. It filled the fields, spreading, sprawling, growing higher and higher. In twenty minutes the city completely swallowed the dome. Streets became tunnels. Towers turned into tall contraptions. Creatures stumbled about in crowded streets. The city had grown filthy and dark, its buildings decrepit.

  “What’s happening?” George whispered.

  “Overpopulation. There are too many of them. There is not enough food or space. The old ones won’t die, and they keep making more children.”

  In thirty minutes, the creatures began falling on the streets, crawling through the filth, searching for scraps of food. Declan reached to reset the dome.

  “No. I want to see,” George said.

  “It won’t be pretty,” Declan warned.

  “I understand.”

  Declan let it go.

  Fires broke out. The creatures formed gangs and began ripping each o
ther apart, feeding on the severed limbs.

  George stumbled away from the dome and closed his eyes.

  “Are you unwell?” Declan asked.

  Georgie shook his head. They ate each other. The little foxes ate each other.

  “Let us continue then. Take two.”

  George looked at the dome in time to see the darkness swirl. The perfect little city reappeared.

  Five minutes into it, one of the foxes began to cough. The cough spread, first to the neighbors, then farther, engulfing the entire city.

  “The plague,” Declan explained. “They’re sick, but they can’t die. Sometimes death is the only way to stop the spread of infection. This sickness can’t quite kill them, but there is no cure.”

  They watched the foxes shamble about in the dark, coughing in misery. When they started falling from exhaustion, George asked him to reset the dome.

  The third try went well for the first ten minutes, and George began to have hope, until a group of older foxes started smashing the new building with sticks.

  “Why are they doing that?” Georgie asked.

  “They don’t want the city to change,” Declan said. “They’ve realized that if they keep growing, they’ll run out of space.”

  Five minutes later, some foxes were chained, marched to the lake, and forced into the water.

  “Why?” Georgie whispered, watching them drown.

  “They are probably the ones who wanted the city to grow. The others must have decided that the population should remain the same. The city can only support so many foxes. This is their way of controlling it.”

  “But . . .” George bit his lip, as the foxes brought out little fox babies and one by one threw them into the lake. That was just about enough of that. He marched to the control panel and hit a reset button.

  Declan straightened. “I’m going to go inside now. You know how to reset the dome back to default. The spell will probably hold through the night, but I doubt we’ll get more than twelve, fifteen hours from it, so if you want to run it a bit more, best to do it now.”

  GEORGIE felt Rose’s arms close about him. She hugged him. “It’s almost midnight. You should come inside.”

  He shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said, staring at the dome. “A little longer.”

  “Declan and I decided to sleep on the porch tonight to keep an eye on you. If you run into any trouble, you come and get one of us, okay?”

  George glanced back. On the porch, Declan and Grandma were arranging some blankets.

  “Okay,” he said, reaching to the control panel. If he reset it just one more time, maybe it would be fine. It had to be fine. There had to be a way for it to end well.

  ROSE awoke when the first hint of sunrise colored the sky. Georgie sat on the steps, hugging his knees. She stirred. At the other end of the porch, Declan’s eyes snapped open. He looked at her from above the back of a small lynx who curled by his side. Jack must’ve taken off his bracelet in the night. Probably to keep an eye on his brother.

  Rose untangled herself from the blankets and went to sit by Georgie.

  “How long did you stay up?”

  “The whole time.”

  She glanced at the pool. A beautiful city shimmered within the dome. Declan had explained the concept to her last night, while she trimmed his hair so it didn’t look lopsided. She had watched Georgie from the window for about an hour, while Grandma hemmed and hawed and threw up her hands in disgust trying to trim Rose’s own butchered hair into some semblance of a decent haircut. In that hour, Georgie had cried twice. Rose had desperately wanted to go and comfort him. But her sympathy would do more harm than good. Something profound was happening to Georgie, and he had to go through it alone.

  Now, as he sat next to her, he seemed older. Somber and almost grim.

  “It went wrong every time.” He wouldn’t look at her.

  “The city looks fine now,” she said.

  “That’s because I let them die. I set the dial back to fifty years. I had to. There was no other way.”

  She hugged him and kissed his hair.

  “Life is so precious because it’s short,” she said. “Even the most resilient people are fragile. Life isn’t about dying or not dying. It’s about living well, George. Living so you can be proud and happy.”

  Georgie hunched his shoulders.

  “I’m ready,” he said. “I just want to see them all. For the last time.”

  Behind them, Declan rose quietly and picked up his sword.

  They released Grandpa from the shed and headed into the Wood, Jack padding ahead, a lithe, feline shadow, then she and Georgie with a look of intense concentration on his face, then Declan, and finally Grandfather, snarling and mumbling to himself.

  They came to a large clearing, where last year Donovan’s trailer had burned to the ground, nearly setting the entire Wood on fire.

  Georgie sighed and spread his arms.

  A minute passed. Then another. Sweat beaded on Georgie’s forehead.

  A rustle troubled the bushes. The branches bent, releasing a small raccoon into the open. A bird swooped down and landed on the right. A litter of young kittens scampered into the open, followed by an old three-legged black Lab. Several squirrels emerged, scuttling . . . A puppy with an oddly shaped head . . . They came and came, dozens of mangled, broken creatures, repaired by Georgie’s will. They came to their master and sat in a semicircle around them.

  Rose drew a sharp breath. So many. Oh, dear God, so very many. It’s a wonder he’s alive at all.

  Georgie approached Grandfather sitting in the grass and hugged him.

  “It’s time to leave,” he said.

  The creature who used to be Cletus looked at him with rheumy eyes. “Will I see you again?”

  Georgie shook his head. “No.”

  Grandfather hung his head. “I’m tired,” he said.

  Georgie rested his hand on Grandfather’s shoulder and looked at the wall of creatures.

  “Wait!” Grandma’s voice rang.

  Rose turned. Éléonore stood behind them on the path. She swallowed and slowly walked past them. Grandfather saw her. Tears swelled in his eyes. Éléonore stood by him, and he hugged her legs. She patted his matted hair.

  “Okay,” she said, her voice trembling. “You can do it now.” Georgie’s lips shaped one quiet word. “Bye.”

  A faint sound emanated from the semicircle as if the undead who couldn’t breathe exhaled in unison.

  The creatures dropped to the ground. Grandpa toppled forward softly. A sweet sickening reek of decaying flesh filled the clearing. Rose gagged. The beasts melted, their ruptured carcasses leaking fluids into the ground. Another moment, and they decomposed down to their bones.

  By Éléonore’s feet, Grandfather had become dust. She emptied one of the herb pouches she carried in her pockets and gently scooped some of the powder into it.

  Georgie swayed. Before Rose could reach him, Declan picked him up. “Is that all?” he asked.

  Georgie nodded.

  The four of them turned and headed back to the house.

  “Rose?” Georgie raised his head from Declan’s shoulder.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to be George from now on,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said. “That will be fine, George.”

  He nodded and said, “I’m hungry.”

  TWENTY

  ROSE sat on the porch, a cup of tea in her hand. Inside, George ate like he hadn’t eaten in years, and Grandma was overjoyed to pile more food into his and Jack’s dishes.

  The screen door opened, and quiet steps approached her. Declan sat next to her on the steps.

  For a long minute they said nothing, then she leaned to him and brushed his cheek with her lips. “Thank you for saving my brother.”

  She pulled away before he could touch her.

  “You don’t seem happy,” he said.

  “I am. It’s just . . .” She ducked her head. “I’ve lived with this
fear for so long. He started raising things when he was six. He’s ten now. For four years, I watched him fade. I know that it hampered his growth. He probably never will be as tall or strong as he should’ve been.”

  “Children are resilient,” Declan said. “Given the right diet and exercise, he’ll hold his own.”

  “I’ve tried to help him,” she told him. “I’ve done everything I could think of. Once Grandma and I put him to sleep for ten days, hoping that all of his creatures would die. But they just kept on sucking the life out of him. This will sound so terrible, but I’d convinced myself he couldn’t be helped. I think that’s the only way I could deal with it. I never stopped hoping and trying, but deep down I sort of came to terms with knowing that one day he would just burn down, like a candle.” She covered her face. “You saved him. You saved Georgie. I’m so grateful. I don’t want you to think that I take it lightly. It’s just that I don’t even know what to say. I’m scared to believe it. I should’ve tried harder . . . I should be thrilled, but I’m just so . . . lost. Stunned.”

  “Like a runner whose race had been cut short,” Declan said.

  “Yes. It’s selfish and terrible of me, and I’m ashamed of it. I don’t know why I’m even telling you this.”

  He pulled her to him, wrapping his massive arm around her back. She pushed away.

  “Let me hold you,” he said. “I won’t ‘maul’ you. You need it. Just sit with me.”

  There was a quiet strength in the way he held her, and she drew on it, wrapped up in his warmth and the scent of his skin. She’d never had anyone to lean on, not like this. He made her feel so safe that she was afraid to let go, terrified that she would break into tears if she did.

  “I felt that way when Casshorn rescued William,” he said. “And felt like scum for it. I was sure nothing good would come of it. I knew it then, but what could I say? No, Will, take the death instead?”

  “Why did Casshorn do it?” she asked.

  “Me. I think he was planning the beginnings of this insanity back then. Casshorn is older than me by three decades. He’s well trained and he’s dangerous and skilled, but he always lacked the perseverance and discipline necessary to truly master a weapon. In his best moments, he’s brilliant, but it will do him no good in a direct fight. If we cross blades, I’ll cut him down. He’s well aware of it. He wanted William to use against me. William’s deadly with any blade, especially knives.”