Chapter 11 – Connections

Kurtis’s face hardly changed. I studied it closely enough, but all I noticed was a slight tensing of the muscles at his jaw and a hardening of his grey eyes. Damian beside me flinched, but neither of us turned. My mind was racing. I didn’t quite know why, but somehow I felt I should recognize the voice.

“I’m sorry, Hymie, did we have something to talk about?” Kurtis asked, his voice thin and cold.

I stared at my hands clenched on my lap, knuckles white.

“Oh, no. I was just passing by and heard my name. Thought these two might have been looking for me.”

Damian glanced at me sidelong. I heard Dr. Balson take another step, coming into the room. All the vibrant spirit had gone out of Kurtis’s face, leaving it fixed like a mask, bland and unmoved.

“I think we’ve got it covered.”

“But this is really far too intriguing for me to let pass. What could possibly have brought these young people to darken these hallowed halls?”

He stood between us and the door. I don’t know why I thought of it, or why I was so worried that another professor had joined us. Maybe it was Kurtis’s warning still ringing in my ears, giving voice to the void look on his face. Or the fact that Dr. Balson was so curious about us – overly curious – but at the same time didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in who we were. As if he already knew.

He took another two steps to stand at the window behind Kurtis’s desk. Finally I could see him. He was tall and gaunt, in a perfectly fitted charcoal grey suit. The only thing that didn’t fit was his skin. It drooped in dark folds on his neck, and creased in wrinkles on his bony hands. That was all I could see, in that moment when he made his crucial mistake and went to the window. He gazed down at the mall, and I didn’t wait to see his face. I sucked in a breath, snatched at Damian’s hand, and bolted out the door.

I heard the door slam and risked a glance over my shoulder. Damian and Kurtis were both in the hall, Damian hauling back on the doorknob while Kurtis fumbled with his keys. He nearly dropped them when he found his office key, but then he had it twisting in the lock. I pounded on down the hall. Kurtis overtook me and grabbed my arm, directing me to the fire exit. On the stairwell we paused, and I nearly collapsed from the terror.

“You okay?” Damian asked me. “Who on earth was that?”

I stared at him grimly. He closed his mouth hard.

“Oh, no. You don’t think…”

“Someone mind clueing me in here?” Kurtis interjected. “What was that all about? I hope there’s a good reason why we just locked one of my peers in my office.”

“Can’t he unlock the door from the inside?”

“Both sides are locked with a key,” Kurtis said, but he didn’t seem much encouraged by the thought.

He studied me expectantly, but when something banged upstairs we all jumped.

“I’ll explain it, but not now. We need to go! Damian, please tell me you drove over here.”

He shook his head slowly, wide-eyed.

Kurtis started to glance at his watch but checked himself. “You two won’t be getting anywhere fast if you go on foot. Come on, we can take my car.”

* * *

I don’t know how long we’d been driving. Damian sat up front in the passenger seat, and I could hear the low murmur of his voice over the rain pattering on the windshield. I had fallen asleep once we left town – I just couldn’t help it. I felt like I’d gotten jet lag a hundred times over. Now, leaning my head against the window, I tried to concentrate my still groggy thoughts on what Damian and Kurtis were saying.

“So strange…really not sure…” Damian rubbed his forehead and tilted his head back. “Of course it’s one of those things…can never really be prepared…”

“Like something….a novel or something. But…convinced, huh?”

“Can’t explain…otherwise.”

I sat up, wondering if I had heard them correctly. Kurtis saw me awake in the rearview mirror and smiled.

“Morning!”

“You don’t mean that, do you?”

“No,” Damian laughed. “You only slept about half an hour or so.”

“Mm.” I yawned. “Where are we?”

Kurtis shrugged. “I figured I should just drive, just get away from the university. I didn’t really think about where to go.”

I stared hard at Kurtis’s face in the mirror. I could only see his eyes. I studied them as they peered fixedly out at the road, but they were impossible to read. My gaze shifted down to his hands resting on the steering wheel.

“You still have it, right?” he asked suddenly, glancing at me in the mirror.

“Have what?”

“Pyelthan.”

I tensed instantly. He still watched me through the rearview, steadily, indifferent. Then his attention turned back to the road, and my hand groped toward the door handle. My thoughts reeled, and so did my stomach.

“C-can you pull over? I don’t feel good.”

It was true. I probably could have suffered through it, but I must have appeared ill enough, because Kurtis took one more look at me before slowing and pulling off the road. I stumbled out of the car and Damian jumped out after me. I exchanged a glance with him, then held out my hand as though to ward him off.

“I’ll be okay…”

I slid clumsily down the hill and collapsed behind a tree. The ground felt damp under the tree boughs, but I didn’t care. I was shaking uncontrollably, swallowing back the bitterness in my throat. I took a few deep breaths to try to calm myself and collect my thoughts. But they wouldn’t be collected.

“Damian!”

I heard him say to Kurtis, “…just make sure she’s all right,” and Kurtis’s quick reply, “Of course!”

It seemed ages before Damian was crouching beside me. “Mer, you okay? You know we can’t risk Dr. Balson catching us up.”

“Damian, I never told you about Pyelthan. I told you about the coin, but I never called it by its name. How did Kurtis know?”

His eyes grew wide, then narrowed as he thought. “I told him most of what you told me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to know anything about it, but maybe he was just bluffing me. I should have kept my mouth shut! He seemed trustworthy, but still…” He peered around the brush. “He’s still by the car. What are you thinking?”

“How much does he know? And how? Mr. Dansy knew it by name, but he also knew about Onethyl and Yatol, I’m sure of it. But Kurtis…I don’t know!” I leaned over my knees with my head in my hands. “Do you think we should run for it?”

“If we run too far we’ll leave our cover and he’ll see us. He’ll be able to catch us.”

“What if he’s with Dr. Balson? Or one of them? Where was he taking us, anyway? Let’s just run, Damian. We have to.”

“All right. You ready? Let’s go!”

He jumped to his feet and I started to follow him, but my strength failed me. I collapsed back onto the ground, shuddering, furious at myself for my weakness. It felt like a nightmare. Everything did.

Damian hovered over me, ready to begin our escape as soon as I could gain my feet.

“I can’t, I can’t.” I reached up to take his hand. “I can’t run anymore. I can’t do this! What am I doing, anyway? I couldn’t think I could do anything…”

“Oh, Mer, don’t think! Don’t think at all, just get up and let your legs do the rest. You know how to do it. It’s the 800.”

I glanced up, saw the encouragement in his eyes. I let him help me to my feet, and gave him a slight nod. We turned to run. And ran full into Kurtis.

Damian had the presence of mind to dart sideways, but I slowed up instead and found Kurtis’s hands gripping my arms.

“Wait! Look at me, Merelin!”

Damian came back for me, but Kurtis had let go of me and I felt no need to move. He touched two fingers to his heart and then swept his arm open. I’d seen that salute before. Yatol.

“Mer!” Damian whispered. “What…”

“It’s okay, Damian.” To Kurtis, “I’m sorry we tried to run away. It just kind of freaked me out to hear that name. Especially when Ya…when I’ve been warned against speaking it to just anyone.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just wanted to tell you that I knew, but it was an awkward way to do it.”

“Yeah. We almost didn’t give you a chance to explain. But you have it now, so explain.”

Kurtis sat down cross-legged on the damp grass, and after a moment Damian and I joined him there.

“Your father,” he began, then faltered and stared at his hands. “The last time I saw him was just before he disappeared. I was supposed to meet him in his office for a meeting about my thesis. Well, when I got there, the door was unlocked, but your father wasn’t there. He was always on time, so I was a little worried, especially because I had just seen him the night before in the library. He had come in with his notebooks and copied a few things out in such a hurry, then left as quickly as he had come.

“I decided to go in and wait for him. His office was a mess. Papers everywhere, books open on the floor. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat down and tried to pick up some of the books. Then all of a sudden he comes crashing in. He looked like a wreck. His face was almost grey and he was stumbling like a drunk. ‘Kurtis,’ he said, shaking me. ‘Kurtis, I’m going. I’m going for the last time. I’ve stayed too long as it is.’ He looked around his office, then broke a chain around his neck and slid this little metal object off of it.

“‘Take Pyelthan, hide it somewhere. There are people here in this faculty who know about it and are trying to find it.’ I was so confused at that point, I didn’t know what to think. But he kept insisting that I take it somewhere they wouldn’t discover it and saying something like, ‘it will be needed again someday. This is the only way.’ And then he told me, ‘You can trust Charles Dansy. He owns the corner shop on Main. He knows Pyelthan and its uses. And he knows to whom it must go.’ He pushed it into my hand, grabbed the papers off his desk, and was gone.”

I took the coin out of the pouch at my belt and stared at it numbly, twirling it between my fingers. Kurtis reached out to touch it.

“It sounded crazy, but I respected your father too much to take his words lightly. I was its guardian for the last four years. I kept it secret all through my graduate studies, then I returned here to teach. But I got stupid and careless. One day Dr. Balson saw it in my office, and he started asking about it, wanting to see it and take it to study. I put the matter off but I realized I couldn’t keep it safely anymore, so I took it to Charles and told him what was happening. The next day I found my office turned upside down.” He laughed grimly. “They never found who broke in.”

“And Mr. Dansy gave it to me, one day out of the blue.” I sighed. “I remember that night you mentioned. That was the last time I saw my dad.”

Damian took my hand, closing my fingers around Pyelthan. The rain picked up, piercing the branches above us, but none of us moved.

“How did you know the greeting they use?” I asked.

“That gesture?” I nodded. “I wasn’t really sure what it meant. But I saw Charles do the same thing when your father went to the shop one day. I don’t know if they knew I was there or not. It seemed important, so I tried to remember it.”

“I wish I could talk to Mr. Dansy. I want to know what he has to do with all of this,” Damian said.

Kurtis pulled out his cell. “Why don’t we, then? We could try calling in for his number. I’ve been wanting to know the same thing.”

Damian and I waited in silence as he called, but after a moment he closed the phone, brows drawn.

“No answer?” I asked.

Kurtis shook his head.

“Mr. Dansy’s always there,” Damian said. “Even after the shop closes. I think he practically lives there.”

“I don’t know that he wasn’t there,” said Kurtis. “The line’s been disconnected.”

“Like, disconnected disconnected? We should go back and make sure he’s all right! If he’s in danger…” My voice trailed off, and I glanced anxiously from Damian to Kurtis. “We have to.”

“We can’t just go rushing back,” Damian objected. “We’ve spent all day trying to get away.”

“But if we don’t…” An image flashed into my mind – Yatol with his arms spread against the night, guarding an empty tent. “Of course!” I cried. “I’m so stupid. Mr. Dansy guarded the portal here on Earth! He must have. It explains everything!”

“And if he’s in danger…” Damian said, continuing my thought.

Kurtis jumped to his feet. “Let’s go.”

We left the meager shelter of the tree and ran out into the pouring rain.