[20] Peasants Dream Well

"It's all changed now."

He said that while she was crying. She felt like a shriveled thing, and in the darkness she could be anything, everything, nothing she wanted to be, a total black to blot herself out, saved from the pattern of her own skin. His hand touched her naked form, stroking from shoulder to hip.

"It's different now, nothing will be the same. Sansy. You saw him. He's—he's the hero."

Her hands were to her face. As if to push the tears back into her. It only made her eyes burn like two flames set into her skull. It hurt elsewhere, too. She hadn't expected it to hurt so much. Nobody ever told her it would hurt so much. Nobody had ever touched her before.

"He can take my place. Sansy. I'll be free. I'll finally be free to go wherever I want. You've traveled this world, haven't you Sansy? We'll travel together. You and me."

Why? Why? Why? Why say these things? Why? He couldn't possibly believe them. He couldn't. She couldn't. She knew his reputation. She was not his first woman... did she expect to be his last? She was weak.

"I know you've traveled high and low Sansy. You may just know this world better than anyone alive. Whitecrosse isn't your home and you know it. Well! It's not my home either Sansy. We're alike in that way. A perfect match, aren't we?"

He would say anything. Anything he wanted. His hand caressed her. It touched her cheek; she buried her face into the sheets.

"With the hero it can be done. The hero can make anything happen. No more impossibilities."

And she was weak. Just like her mother; she was weak.

"How's it sound Sansy? Come on. Gimme a smile. I do hate to see a pretty girl cry, y'know. It's so unbecoming. You've no idea how much a lady's slightest smile can lift a man's spirits, do you?"

And she was weak, because she smiled, crushing her eyes through the tears she smiled, and even though he could not see her in this perfect darkness he knew she smiled nonetheless, because they all smiled, all his girls smiled. And she was weak, because she smiled too.

"It's simple. We take the hero to the monastery, save my stupid sister."

The smile died. Save his sister. Save his stupid sister.

"She's a veritable little cunt in truth, but she shares my blood—and my looks. Despite herself, she'll make him fall in love with her. And if he's the one who rescues her, she'll fall in love with him too."

They'll fall in love. A fairy tale romance, a knight and his fair lady. Even a fair lady's slightest smile can lift a man's spirits.

"They go back to Whitecrosse arm in arm, get wed, a new lineage is formed—and Prince Mack slips into the dark, never to be seen again. And who better to slink away with but the queen of the dark herself, the sly and mysterious Sansaime?"

His palm gave her rear a playful smack. His body slithered up to her, enfolding around her.

"A happy ending for everyone."

Mayfair must die, her employer told her. She simply must. Now, everyone including the prince knows you know that forest better than anyone. He'll bring you along—it helps you're a woman, too. You stay by his side, stay silent, and you'll have the perfect chance sooner or later. Kill her and you'll get what you want—you'll be set back to the way you were. Which is quite far back, you understand. Are you certain you wish to go that far? You'll lose nearly all of your memories. You'll be a child.

...Aye. That far.

Very well. Nothing new under the sun and all that. Godspeed.

A happy ending for everyone.

His body was warm. It covered her completely. He was strong, and he held her. He brushed back her hair, he was gentle and he could be rough too.

If she could only believe in his happy ending. If she could only believe he told the truth. That he would leave with her, and they would travel the world together, and be happy together. If she could only believe, there would be no need to complete her mission.

If she could only believe in Makepeace.

—

Avery was sitting in the driver's seat of her car, in her garage. She had the address where Jay and Shannon went. She needed only to drive where they were and they'd be safe. She knew this with absolute certainty. Yet her car would not start.

The key turned but nothing happened. Not even the whirr of an engine failing. Not even a click. There was no resistance, as though the key were floating in air instead of being lodged in a keyhole. Turn and turn and turn and nothing happened. Why did nothing happen? She only needed to drive away. Come on... come on!

She looked over her shoulder. Through the open garage door the world outside was dark, but she recognized her culdesac street. Recognized the neighbor's house across from her, although she could not name the neighbor. As she looked her hand turned the key again and nothing happened. Then she saw it.

A man was standing on the sidewalk across the street.

He was staring at her.

He was a tall man and a dark man. Dark not as in black, well he was black, but not the race, he was black like a shadow. Even though it was dark out there he was somehow darker and a chill spread over her because she felt the malice radiating off him. That man wanted to hurt her. He was there specifically to hurt her.

The car wouldn't start.

The man began to run at her.

Her frenzied mind snatched a coherent thought: the garage door! She reached up and struck the button to close it. This button would work, she thought. With absolute certainty the button would work even if the car did not. And the button did work. The garage door started to close.

The door closed slowly but the man seemed to be running in slow motion, or rather the road he was crossing was really wide, extremely wide for some reason. Close door, close, she thought. The door had to close. It had to. Halfway closed. Three-quarters closed—

The man ducked under the door. He was in the garage.

No. No! For some reason her car door was open. It had always been open. She had to close it! She reached out to close it. Her hand seized the handle. She turned—and the man was right there, right in her face, spreading wide a big black smile and saying:

"I want to stress that this is not a weight loss pill. Slimmetica is a safe, easy, inexpensive diet supplement that not only curbs your appetite but gives you extra energy to burn. Slimmetica makes you want to work out."

Avery woke up.

Her neck hurt. It hurt because she was sleeping on the couch. In front of her, pale in the dim pre-dawn light, the television screen expelled a wave of warm and friendly whiteness. There was a man in a baby blue polo, a friendly-looking man with a wide smile and a dad-esque demeanor, who held a big pill bottle up to the camera.

"For three easy installments of nineteen-ninety-nine you can bring Slimmetica into your own home. That's two full months of high energy and low appetite. But wait! Viewers of this program are entitled to a special offer..."

How...? Oh, right. Avery slept on the couch and she couldn't sleep, she was consumed by anxiety and the couch was uncomfortable, so she turned on the TV just to play something, to soothe her nerves. She forgot what was playing, some movie. Now it was an infomercial.

She slept on the couch because she let that girl, Sansaime, sleep in her bed. Right. The events of the previous day flooded to her like a migraine that has lasted so long you forget about it until you move just a little too strenuously and it stabs your brain again. A low groan escaped her.

Sansaime's arm got hurt in the scuffle. Avery remembered tepidly suggesting something about a hospital, which Sansaime brushed off. "No leeches," she said. Avery remembered that funny term, leeches. "It's not broken anyway is it." She spoke this while shoveling spoonfuls of cereal into her mouth, cereal being the only meal Avery was in the correct state of mind to prepare. After devouring an entire box of Froot Loops, Sansaime wanted to sleep. Considering her wounds Avery thought she should sleep in a real bed, but didn't want her to sleep in Jay's bed, so she offered her own. Then Avery herself didn't want to sleep in Jay's bed—it just felt weird!—so she chose the couch, and now here she was.

Avery wanted to go back to the nightmare. Even if it was a nightmare, she had been so certain she only needed to drive to some address and there Jay and Shannon would be waiting. For a few seconds after waking, even through the fear, she still believed in that certainty, and only once she reclaimed her sense of time and place did the truth become clear, at which point the certainty felt like a betrayal, a nasty trick someone pulled on her, her own stupid subconscious.

"Why would anyone want to lose weight."

The voice made Avery jump. Where—there! The corner of the room! It was him, the tall dark man, she was still in the nightmare, she was—

Sansaime. Puffing her pipe. Why was she in the corner? There were other seats around the television that weren't the couch. She was standing in the darkest part of the room.

"Uengh?" Avery said.

"Eat less. Feel more energy. Miraculous medicine, as this man describes it. I'd have use for that. Yet he speaks only of losing weight. Why? To what purpose?"

Avery looked at Sansaime, then the TV. She thought: Oh. That girl probably doesn't know what a TV is.

"Ah, wait, don't worry. He's not really here. He's... he's talking... from a long way away." Avery realized she didn't exactly know how TVs worked. "Or, I think, he probably said all this a while ago, but it was recorded—er, saved—uh—"

"I understand he's not actually here," said Sansaime. "I figured that out fast enough. I asked a different question."

"Oh. Sorry.—Um, what did you ask again? Sorry, sorry!"

The light amplified by degrees. By degrees, the woman in the corner became more clear. The white blotches on her face shone in the effervescence.

She wore a hoodie. The hood was pulled up around her head with the drawstrings tight so only part of her face peeked out. She looked ridiculous. Like that character in that one show, the rude show that was so popular back when Shannon was in kindergarten. The animated show. Avery had let Shannon watch it because it was an animated show... she didn't realize what a bad show it was... Sorry, Shan-bear. At least she learned her lesson and only let Jay watch the Disney Channel.

Where did Sansaime get the hoodie anyway? She must have found it in Avery's closet. it did look kind of familiar, although Avery had more clothes than she could remember. Still, asking permission would've been nice...

"Never mind," Sansaime said. "Have you any more of those—whatever they were called. 'Froot Loops.'"

"Well um, well, let me check."

She rose. The extra blankets—three of them—she fished out of the linen closet fell off her in a ridiculous, staticky tangle that sent a zap straight up her skin. Oh, and now her hair was sticking out, absolutely perfect, simply what she needed. She felt Sansaime's eyes eviscerate her as she walked past and into the kitchen, fumbling around and flicking the light switch with the back of her hand.

Sansaime made a "Yaaaaah!" sound and Avery yelped, or maybe shrieked, in response, whirling around and asking what was wrong, what was the matter, only to see a now-illuminated Sansaime with arms folded around herself and hands raised to cover her face.

"That—it—how is it so sudden?!" Sansaime said.

"What? The light?" Why was this a surprise now? There had been lights in the office building and the parking garage. Although Avery hadn't turned on any in the house when she brought Sansaime home afterward. "Lights in this world run on, uh—electricity. Do you know what electricity is?" Didn't Benjamin Franklin discover electricity? "Er, well, basically, you can turn the lights on or off just by flipping this switch. That way you don't have to stand around in the dark... if you don't want to."

Sansaime had nothing to say to that, but did shift behind part of the wall that divided the kitchen from the TV room to keep out of Avery's sight. Did she care so much about her appearance? At least Sansaime didn't have bedhead to deal with.

"Let's see... Froot Loops. Froot Loops." She opened the usual kitchen cupboard. Sansaime finished an entire box the night before but maybe there was a second box somewhere.

"I already checked there," came Sansaime's gruff voice.

"Yes, well, you didn't check with the lights on did you?"

No response. It would have been a nice "win" if Avery then found a second Froot Loops box that Sansaime missed, but sadly there was none. "I have oatmeal though. Want me to fix you some oatmeal?"

A grunt was all Avery got, so oatmeal it was. After pouring the packet into the bowl, filling the packet with water, and pouring the water into the bowl, she microwaved it for two and a half minutes then placed the hot, maple-smelling concoction on the counter for Sansaime to eat.

Which, after some tepid sniffings and tastings, she did. Avery herself went for one of those yogurt cartons that was supposed to help her digestion. Not that her digestion had anything wrong with it. Just to prevent there ever being anything wrong with it, that's all. Also she liked the taste.

Avery spooned her yogurt and leaned back against the fridge door. "Is your arm feeling better?"

"Aye."

"I'm glad." She had debated taking Sansaime to a hospital, but what would the doctors say? The girl had elf ears. How do you explain that?

And she needed Sansaime. Sansaime had the key to that gate—and she knew where Shannon and Jay were.

But Sansaime was a quiet person. Cloistered within herself. Just look at the way she wore that hood, like I Killed Kenny or whatever his name was. It wouldn't work to simply ask a favor, would it? Maybe someone else would go hardline: I scratched your back, so you scratch mine! She imagined a Hollywood actor shouting it. Avery couldn't do something like that, just the thought terrified her—one glare from the eyes set deep within the hood and she'd melt.

"You know," she said cheerfully, "they don't have elves in this world. You're an elf, right?"

"Aye."

"Isn't it funny, though? We make up elves on TV and stuff. And Santa Claus has elves in the North Pole—but um, that's make believe too." She felt self-conscious saying that and shifted her eyes down at her half-empty yogurt carton. "Isn't it strange that there's some other world where elves are real? Wouldn't it be a weird coincidence? We made up this fictional... uh, species. And then it's real in another world?"

Sansaime's spoon chopped up the oatmeal. "Weren't always elves in Whitecrosse either."

"Huh?"

"We were fae. That's what they say, at least."

"Fae? Like—faeries? Oh, I love faeries. They're cute! But, uh, they don't exist here either."

"There was a man," Sansaime said. "John Coke. He came from this world. Do you know him?"

Avery's first instinct was to ask if he made the drink Coke, but a second's thought told her that was not correct, and also very dumb. "No, I don't."

"Well he came to Whitecrosse," she said. Avery assumed Whitecrosse was the name of the other world. "He did a few things, others would know exactly all what. But I know one thing he did."

"What's that?"

"He fucked the elf queen."

"Oh, I uh, I see..."

The words had come from Sansaime with pungent vitriol, an emanation of hatred that made Avery's heart tremble. The face remained stoic, but the aura could not be contained.

"Fae mustn't mingle with humans—they say. So since then, there's been a curse on the race, doomed to be neither fae nor human, something in between. The bastards of Whitecrosse, filled with bastard blood. Are your... Santa Claus elves that way? A race despised by all thinking beings?"

"Um... no." Avery's spoon stirred and stirred. "In this world, they stopped caring about stuff like that. Stuff like—what your race is. We stopped racism in the 60s I think."

"That so?" Sansaime laughed in a harsh way, a bitter way, but Avery heard in that laugh something else, something hidden under the cynicism. She couldn't place her finger on what exactly it was, but it didn't matter. This was a thread.

"People here don't care... what color your skin is."

Sansaime's eyes hit Avery with the glare she so feared, but somehow Avery only flinched a little, maybe because the fridge behind her stopped her from doing much else. "Oh? Even my skin? Even my lovely, lovely skin?"

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"That's right. I even saw on the internet the other day a woman who had—well she had multiple colors of skin on her body, she looked kind of like a cow. I mean—I don't mean 'like a cow' in a mean way—she looked very nice actually. She was a model I think."

"A model."

"Uh—someone who wears clothes and gets photos taken of them. Er, photos are—uh... That doesn't matter. Models are important people and everyone thinks they're beautiful."

"Ha."

Now might be the time to say something like "You look pretty." Some kind of compliment... Sansaime didn't seem prepared to believe whatever Avery said, though, whether it was spoken with conviction or not. She was someone too convinced of their own ugliness to believe a word anyone said to them. Avery remembered being that way as a teenager. She had just the worst acne. Horrible! Who would ever look at her? She was like a monster! And her mother said "You look beautiful, dear," and Avery cried because she knew it was a lie.

"Sansaime... I don't think it's beauty you're looking for, is it?"

Sansaime said nothing. Her face drooped down to her oatmeal.

"You feel lonely, don't you? You... feel alone."

Still nothing.

Avery moved closer. She put the empty yogurt carton on the counter and leaned over it. Sansaime's head turned away, but she did not back up. She allowed Avery to close the distance, although a full countertop remained between them.

Still, there was a wall. Sansaime wore a wall around her, a very strong one. Avery knew this wall. It was the wall Jay wore. The way he never talked to her, never said anything except the bare minimum. And it was the wall... it was the wall her husband wore. In the time before he... he...

"My husband is dead."

Sansaime looked up. Looked straight at her. Something in her eyes showed Avery she touched somewhere she did not intend. Avery considered backing away—but continued.

"I felt alone for a very long time. Both of my... both of my children are missing now. But I've felt very alone even before then. I've tried to smile it away, I've watched movies and TV and read books, but... But it's always been there. I don't think it'll ever go away."

"Why—why tell me this." Sansaime realized she was looking at Avery and turned her face away again.

"I want to find my children, Sansaime. They are—they're all I have left. I never had a life before I found my husband, and after he was gone all I had was what remained of my life with him. This house, a few acquaintances, and—them. My children. It's... It's very important I find them, Sansaime. Which is why I want to ask a favor of you."

"You want me to take you back there."

"No. I—I understand you have a mission of your own. One I—one I can't help you with. I won't ask you to come with me. Just—give me the key. I'll go myself and find them. You can stay here and—and do whatever you want. You can even stay in my house. I'll buy you as much Froot Loops as you want. Please, just... just let me..."

"Okay." Sansaime's eyes went furtive. Almost shy. She was struggling to look at Avery, and that might be because Avery had started to cry, tears that came so easily and readily as if on command. "Okay—okay."

There was something else in that final "okay," though, a new flavor of feeling, Avery could sense it on her skin, tiny hairs bristling along her forearms. Immediately she knew her words had worked a magic even beyond what she intended, that by "okay" Sansaime didn't simply mean she would hand over the key. No. Of course not. This was what Avery had always been good at, right?

After all. When a professor in his thirties accidentally knocks up his eighteen-year-old freshman student, the next step isn't usually marriage, is it. It hadn't been Daniel's first proposal, at least. Oh, he was caring, he was understanding, he was nice about it, and he admitted it was his mistake. He said he would take responsibility. He gave her money, he said he would go with her to the clinic, he would stay with her and help her through it. He was so very kind about it... and then she cried.

And twenty-four years later, when the life her tears saved stood before her in the TV room, Avery cried again. She needed someone to look for Jay. Shannon was smart, she was competent, she was the opposite of Avery in every conceivable way, to the point that Avery sometimes got the absurd, fanciful, and yet strangely compelling—compelling the way a dream you're having is compelling, where no matter what stupid thing is happening you believe it wholeheartedly—notion that Shannon was not actually Avery's daughter, was not the creature that had grown inside Avery's womb, but something else entirely, an alien. She got that notion a lot in the years after Daniel... died. Alongside the notion that Shannon had played a part in his death, a notion stemming solely from a look she once gave him...

"But you'd not last an hour in that world," Sansaime said. "You seem hardly fit to last an hour in this one. So—I'll guide you there. I'll help you bring your children back. The fact you care for them at all means—it means you're a good enough mother to deserve that much, I suppose."

Avery sniffled, she rubbed the corners of her eyes to wipe away the tears. There'd been something in that last part, she could sense it, the word "mother" was spoken with more heat than the other words. Avery remembered the little girl. Mayfair. She'd said something about mothers too...

It didn't seem appropriate to probe deeper. Or maybe it was more than appropriate. Sansaime kept herself aloof, but not fully. She did speak. She wasn't like—she wasn't like Jay.

There was a pathway into her heart. Still, a guarded pathway. Avery had delved as deep as she could for now.

"You don't intend to go after that little girl again?" she said.

Sansaime's face resolved into harsh blankness. "Maybe I never should have gone after her to start. Maybe I should have trusted Mack—Who can say."

And that was all.

They finished eating, then Avery showed Sansaime how the shower worked, and before she could also show Sansaime how the toilet worked Sansaime barked at her to get out so she did. Avery waited for her to finish showering, which took only five minutes, and then showered herself for the next hour. When she emerged with freshly blow-dried hair she found Sansaime sitting stooped on the couch in front of the TV, which had switched from infomercials to an animated show that looked familiar.

"Oh," Avery said, "you're watching The Simpsons. I used to watch that show."

Sansaime gave her a look of complete contempt. "Futurama."

"Huh?"

"The man said I am now watching Futurama. On the Syfy Channel. Up next: More Futurama. After that: Even more Futurama."

Maybe Sansaime was like Jay after all. On screen, a spaceship dropped onto an alien planet. Could Sansaime even understand a show like that? Somehow, she seemed to watch intently...

In fact, it took some coaxing to lure Sansaime away from the screen. Once done, Sansaime suggested they pack food and other supplies, and in the packing process Avery opened the silverware drawer to grab the Tupperware and discovered all her knives were missing, even the butter knives. She decided not to ask Sansaime about that.

They got in the sedan and took the hour-long drive across Cleveland to the downtown area. She only took a wrong turn once at which point Sansaime immediately said "This is not the way. Are you an idiot? You went the wrong way," and Avery had to say sorry about ten times. (Sansaime also complained about Avery's music, at one point claiming she herself could make a better song than Paula Cole).

They reached the office building and delved into the parking lot, Sansaime alert despite the continued lack of significant human presence, it being early Saturday morning still. By the time Avery put the car in park Sansaime was already out the door.

Maybe they should keep the car though? From what Avery remembered the gate to the other world had been wide enough for a car to fit through. That would be easier, right? Or maybe it would be bad to bring future technology to a medieval fantasy world? She decided to ask Sansaime about it but when she got out of the car she saw Sansaime standing in the middle of the parking area staring at where the gate to the other world was.

Or where it should be.

Because it wasn't there.

"Oh," said Avery. "I must have parked on the wrong floor. That's okay. We'll—"

"It's the right floor," said Sansaime.

"Oh."

So it was the right floor. But the gate was not there. A paper rustled across the pavement, swept by the vortex caused by air funneling up the ramp outside. Sansaime caught it, looked at it, discarded it, and then it flapped into Avery's face. She peeled it off sputtering and read: PLEASE MOVE YOU ARE BLOCKING MY PARKING SPACE.

Someone listened. The gate had been moved. But where?

—

"There."

Pastor Dwight Jeremiah Styles of the Cuyahoga Baptist Church conducted his arms like a maestro to direct the six men carrying what Lady Mayfair termed "the Door" into the correct angle and position, then bade them set it down so that it was as unobtrusive as possible within his garage. The men did as instructed and rose with grunts and dust-clearing swipes of their hands. The six men were all members of the pastor's congregation. So far, only two of them had listened to Mayfair speak. That would change—tomorrow was Sunday.

Well—it would change if she wanted to speak. So far, when he brought up the subject, she said she would prefer to spend more time "attending to her business." She had important things to do, she said, and was uninterested in giving a sermon she was ill-equipped to give. Plus she was injured. Well, maybe Styles could wait another week. Maybe. If that assassin somehow found her again...

Not to mention, Styles had others he needed to convince too.

He owned a fine home, nothing ostentatious: cozy, one might call it, if not slightly too large now that both of his daughters were at college most of the year. When it became dark the lights made any room feel like it was lit by fireplace, even though it wasn't. The shelves contained books, religious texts mainly, or commentaries on religion ranging from Augustine to Lewis, with three different editions of Pilgrim's Progress and seventeen different Bibles. But there was also secular fare—Knausgaard a particular favorite. Not to mention all the young adult fantasy his daughters loved growing up, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.

It was those latter books Styles stared at now, seated in the lounge chair that all members of his family knew belonged to him and him alone, one leg crossed over his knee and one forefinger tapping, tapping, tapping in a slow and easy metronome.

Harry Potter. Now that took Styles back. It would have been... 1999, 2000 perhaps. Colorado Springs. Within a church so large it became a sports arena. Rows and rows and rows of chairs. Who would've been speaking then? Any interchangeable number of names, declaring in one voice the same condemnation: Witchcraft. Magic, sorcery, wizardry, fantasy. As a still-young man who found Christ more through Narnia than Sunday School, their arguments and scriptural interpretation never impressed him. But the fashion was the fashion, and Styles said what was expected to be said—in 2000.

Fantasy came from the Christian spirit. That, Styles believed. It was no coincidence the genre's founders, Tolkien and Lewis, were so devout. (Many knew Narnia as allegory, but few realized it was Tolkien's influence that salvaged Lewis from the spirit of eternal negation that was atheism.) Fantasy was a Christian movement. A Christian reclamation of human imagination and spirit against the backdrop of illimitable technological and scientific progress. Oppenheimer: "I am become Death..." When man can mimic miracles and explain them to every precocious schoolchild, where remains the awe that enraptures their hearts and minds in service of the holy and on high? Fantasy. It remained in magic. Only there could a modern man escape the explicable. Only outside of the explicable did God's presence overpower human ego.

When Mayfair stepped forward during his funeral service, Styles had thought nothing of it. Mild annoyance at an interruption. He, too, in those seventeen years since Colorado Springs tumbled into the mechanical nature of the world, the clean and shiny and well-understood metal pieces that slotted together in such organized array.

But when the man rose from his coffin, stagnation shattered in an instant.

"And where is she now?"

"Upstairs," said Styles. "We refitted the guest bedroom for her. She's busy with her papers."

"Can we see her? Speak to her? Dwight. You keep saying we just need to speak to her, but—"

"She doesn't want to be disturbed right now. You'll speak to her later. Though I recommend you let her speak to you more than the other way around."

"Dwight. How can we—I mean, what you're saying is—it's quite extreme. Bringing someone back from the dead?"

Arranged before him in his lounge/study were three of his colleagues, Baptist pastors from the Cleveland area with whom he'd worked before, one under and one over and one merely on the level. Old, young, and—like Styles himself—middle aged.

"Allow me to ask you all one thing," Styles said. "If you saw a miracle. Saw with your own two eyes—would you believe it?"

"Certainly. Of course. If it were a real miracle," said the middle-aged one. "But you know Dwight, with all these phones and computers and whatnot, it's easy to—"

"Yes, yes, I know. I know. But if that's the way you think," said Styles, "how would you recognize a miracle anyway? If Jesus Christ himself came to Earth right now, what would he have to do for you to believe it was really him, and not a camera trick?"

Silence. Because they all knew. They all must know bringing a man back from the dead would do it.

But for Styles, it wasn't just that. It was everything else. The Door, the devil or elf with the knives. The pages of weathered parchment on which words appeared without having been written.

"Dwight, look, I understand what you're saying. And I believe you saw what you saw, I mean, you trotted out all those people that were there at the funeral with you. But—look. I mean, how can we be sure? It could be—I dunno—the devil—"

"It wasn't bread, or worldly dominion that girl showed me. Those are the temptations of the devil. Those are what the devil showed Christ in the desert."

Two of the three demurred. All tones were low in this falsely firelit space. It was the third who spoke, the youngest, bespectacled but vibrant with natural athleticism. He wasn't looking at Styles or the others, his eyes peered at one of the bookshelves, perhaps it was Harry Potter he saw as well.

"Maybe that is what she showed you though, Dwight." His eyes lifted and looked. "And I don't mean the bread."

Colorado Springs again. Those palatial megachurches, where a hundred thousand eyes could gaze upon the pastor, who then had the gall to ask donations. All in service of God, wasn't it? All in the name of Jesus. Camel through the eye of a needle, alright, but perhaps a rich pastor could be worthwhile in his damnation if his work brought a million more souls into the fold.

"Dwight, I just think you should be careful," the middle-aged one said. "Do you even know where this girl came from? Where her parents are? Forget miracles. What will the law say? It'll do nobody any good if you're in jail for—I dunno, abduction or whatever."

"The law," said the oldest. With a snort. "In this country. Where it's perfectly legal to murder an unborn baby."

"I'm only saying—"

"What are you saying?"

All four heads in the room turned. But as he turned, Styles' eyes closed. He knew who stood in the entryway to the lounge.

"Miss Mayfair," he said grandiloquently, rising, bowing slightly. "Do you require anything? Are you hungry? Thirsty?"

She brushed aside the offer with a motion of her hand that was dignified, not dismissive. In the shadows at her back the form of her omnipresent bodyguard Dalton Swaino lurked.

"I needed a walk to clear my mind. There are certain problems involving my work with the papers. Unexpected complications..." Her voice trailed off, before she recaptured herself. "In any case, some lively conversation may prove most refreshing. Was it theology you were discussing?"

"Politics more like," the oldest said. "Or sociology, or whatever you wanna call it. God is what we know. It's this world that's so confounding."

"Yet all within this world operates under God's will, does it not?" Mayfair stepped out of the dark and into the warm light. She melded into the conversation at once, even though Styles caught brief flutters of trepidation on the faces of his peers. This was all well and good, though. Let them speak to her directly, the way he had. Then they would know.

"True, very true," said the oldest. "True indeed. I suppose a line like 'God is what we know' would be considered prideful, presumptuous even, although it is our profession to interpret the Word."

"I'd debate the point anyway." The youngest leaned forward in his seat. "That everything operates under His will, I mean. Isn't it critical—essential even—to His designs that man is free to choose their own path in life? He may know what each man will choose but it was their choice that brings them either to salvation or—or the opposite."

"An age old debate. Age old. Is this really what we want to talk about now?" said the middle-aged one.

Meanwhile Styles looked to Mayfair. "Miss Mayfair, how's your injury treating you? It's not still hurting, is it?"

"No, the medicine you gave me has worked in ways I could never imagine. I thank you most graciously, Pastor Styles."

"Well, don't move around too much. Wouldn't want those stitches to come undone."

Mayfair patted the spot on her shoulder where the wound began. After they escaped the assassin, there had been debate among the congregation as to whether they should go to a hospital or not. It was Styles who decided to avoid any needless bureaucracy. He knew people, after all. A quick phone call and an old friend, a venerable female doctor (he figured a female doctor would be best, given Mayfair's wound crossed her chest), and everything was handled quite neatly and tidily. Styles was not present for the operation, but afterward the doctor shook her head in wonder and muttered, "Her curiosity knows no bounds," apparently in reference to the innumerable questions Mayfair asked about modern medical practices.

"Keep the wound bandaged and dry for the first day," the doctor had instructed. "Luckily, it was a shallow cut, but avoid any strenuous movement. After the first day, wash the wound with clean water—only water—twice a day. I'll visit soon to check on her." And as she left for the door: "That's an odd girl you have there Dwight. A very odd girl. I hope you know what you're doing."

He didn't know what he was doing. No. He was like Jonah, commanded from above to embark on a quest he little understood, even feared. But he would learn from Jonah's example and keep to his ordained route. The girl was a weaver of miracles and none could have sent her to him but God himself. Already he was crafting a story. She was an orphan, she had been homeless, he took her in... Would it work? He had to have faith it would work.

"What we were discussing, then," said the oldest pastor, "was the tenuous relationship of this country with the Christian religion."

The others shook their heads and murmured.

"Is that so?" said Mayfair. "I well understand the intricacies of spiritual and terrestrial power myself. It may, in fact, be a specialty of mine."

Some uncertain looks spread between the pastors. The girl was fourteen. What could she possibly be a specialist in? Teenagers, as everyone knew, thought they knew far more than they did.

"And what are those intricacies, Miss Mayfair?" asked Styles.

Mayfair cleared her throat. The three others watched dubiously, but Styles leaned forward. The girl had such a beautiful voice to match her beautiful appearance, but what really thrilled him was the words she said, the way she articulated herself. She began:

"In the Old Testament, spiritual health is linked almost inextricably to the spirituality of the leadership. Consider when Moses went atop the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments. He was gone for but forty days and nights, yet in that time his heedless and headless people crafted for themselves a golden calf and resorted to the most wicked idolatry. The Books of Kings reaffirm the connection between the ruler's moral potency and that of those over whom they rule. Again and again it is reaffirmed, is it not? Nadab, 1 Kings 15:26: 'And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of his father, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin.' Baasha, 1 Kings 15:34: 'And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin.' Zimri, 1 Kings 16:19: 'For his sins which he sinned in doing evil in the sight of the Lord, in walking in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin which he did, to make Israel to sin.' Omri, 1 Kings 16:26: 'For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin, to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger with their vanities.' Need I bring up Ahab and his wife Jezebel? See you not the pattern, clear as any other, in these words? These kings are not simply wicked for their own sins, but because they made Israel to sin as well. It is the king who commands the sins of his subjects. If the king is wicked, the people cannot be pure. And the prophets of God, Elijah and the others, cast down those wicked kings so that their blood splattered the walls and dogs feasted on their corpses. Only then was moral order restored to Israel."

The words came cleanly from her mouth. Like flowing water, like a bell's chime. The eyes of the pastors widened. They exchanged glances in the silence that followed her point.

"Well, you know your Scripture," said the middle-aged one. "Well done! It's rare to see someone your age so enthusiastic."

"We're not ruled by kings anymore, though," said the youngest.

"Oh?" said Mayfair. "Is that so? Then by what, may I ask? Judges, perhaps?"

"Judges! Pah," interjected the oldest. "You could say that. The tyranny of Roe v. Wade!"

His quick and canned remark glossed over the oddity of Mayfair's question, a question any American kindergartener could answer. The oddity to not escape the sharp eyes of the youngest pastor, who gave Styles a look before responding coolly: "A president. We elect a president by vote."

"By vote," said Mayfair. "By vote? Truly? By vote?"

The young pastor nodded. "That's democracy for you."

"Democracy..." Mayfair stood in awe of the word. "Democracy. I can't—I cannot even imagine such a unusual form of governance. Is it not fickle? Is it not perpetually malleable, changed on a whim? Are the people not misled, or are they not so ignorant? What of the peasants, are they allowed to vote as well? No—certainly not. Certainly!" The looks on the faces of the pastors informed her it was, certainly, true, and her smile turned unusual. "How—how queer."

"Queer, that's a good word for it." Who else but the oldest? "A queer government we have, gay marriage legalized—"

"It's true, our government has been drifting more and more toward the—secular," said the youngest.

"Drifting, well. A bit more than drifting. One might say Christianity is under attack—by our own government, no less! Can't even say Christmas anymore, companies closed down because they don't want to a bake a cake that pushes the gay agenda. And I hear those liberal wingnuts talking about taxing churches now. What is happening to this country? That's what I want to know. When will the persecution of Christians in this country stop? Well, little girl? You have an answer for that?"

The old man's vitriolic gaze turned toward her. Slowly, the others looked too. She stood rigid and straight, balanced upon her cane or staff or whatever it was, and the faint outline of the giant man behind her formed a thin layer of daunting.

Styles knew this face of hers. She used it before, when she first met him. In his church, when she revived the old man in the casket. She used this face as she exhorted the few people gathered in the pews, when she spoke to them on their tepid, empty faith. That face was the only unappealing thing about her, and when she wore it even her fair features turned bitter. The face of someone who thought they knew better.

The only thing was, Styles knew she did know better.

"If this nation elects its leaders," said Mayfair, "then it is not the leaders who you should cast judgment upon. Democracy! Power concentrated in the people, even the lowliest peasant, even the most ignorant sheep—yet you, who sit here complaining rather than guiding them to righteousness, call yourselves shepherds? Pathetic. Utterly so. The failing comes from you, good sirs. This is the land of God, and yet you cannot convince the people to see what can be seen in its every blade of grass. Hmph. That is all. I must return to my papers now."

She turned on her heel. The clean shoe squeaked the varnished wood, but she did not take a step, her back to them as her finger flicked in a moment of realization. Her head tilted to eye Styles sidelong.

"Pastor Styles, you mentioned your Sunday service tomorrow. I do believe I have reconsidered—I should very much like to speak to your congregation then. If the people truly hold power in this nation, then the path could not be clearer. Hah! Democracy. Democracy!"

She walked away and soon disappeared into the dark. The pastors remained watching with bewildered expressions. Dwight J. Styles looked from face to face, and finally they all looked at him, and before any of them could say a word he gave a shrug, with his palms turned skyward. Inside, though, he knew. This was something giant. Mayfair Rachel Lyonesse Coke—she would revive the faith in this country. And he would do all in his power to help her make it so.