Kam had just gotten off his night shift and was sitting across the table. His Greatfull Dead T shirt was hypnotic in its bright tie-dye colours; teddy bears spiraling down to infinity. His big hands gently cradled his cup. He had big arms, a big face, and a big smile. Everything about him was big, and he nodded at my untouched cup.

“`Okole maluna, drink you cacao. It’s good. Best place on campus. It’s also a good place to be seen.”

 When a nearly three hundred pound Hawaiian tells you to drink, you drink whatever he’s offering. I did as Kam suggested, and drank. Its flavour was surprisingly good.

“See, feel better?”

“I wasn’t feeling bad, Kam.” I lied. Whenever I was around him I wanted to seem tougher than I really was.

He took another long pull gazing at me over the rim of his cup. “Your face doesn’t agree with you.” He held up his wall like hand to cut off my protestations. “And I hear things. If you’re thinking on going out again, just let me know when and where, all right.”

“I think I know who one of my attackers was. He’s in my British Literature course. His name is Evans. I think he plays basketball.”

Kam shook his head. “White guy, kind of skinny? Bit of a prep? Square head with a dimple in his chin that makes it look like someone’s butt?”

Everybody to Kam was skinny.

 “Yes,” I said tentatively."That sounds like him, especially the butt part." I knew Kam had delusions of becoming a private investigator and was taking some online course. Kam had a right to be whatever he wanted to be, however he wanted to be something different each week. Last week he had wanted to be an archeologist. I knew concussions could alter the way a person thought...

Kam shook his head. “It’s not basketball. I know some white guys that play basketball, but he’s not one of them. Must be volleyball.”

“Volleyball,” I repeated. It sort of made sense.

Kam got up and stood staring down at me. I was surprised he was leaving so soon. He usually liked to talk. He waved a big finger at me. “Now, you promise...”

“I promise to call you if I decide to go out again, scouts’ honour.”

Kam laughed. He held out his left hand for me to shake and like a fool I tried to use my right hand. “You were never a scout.”

“Fine, I promise. Where are you going?”

Kam’s grin was infectious. “Oh, places to be, people to see, that sort of stuff, besides three is a crowd.”

As he walked away I was able to see past his colourful, Grateful Dead teddy bear shirt and saw Ingrid. She looked a lot better then the last time I saw her. For a moment it looked like she was about to turn around and leave, but then she stepped forward, and in a rush, sat down in Kam’s seat. She stared at me in silence.

“What’s up?” I asked. She didn’t look like she was going to speak any time soon. “Does this have anything to do with the green girdle and Professor Zultner?”

She nodded. Now we were getting somewhere, but I wasn't actually sure where that was. I was trying to put the entire episode of Evans flying into the wall, behind me. For some reason he blamed me for his humiliation and was promising a matching set of black eyes for me.

Still, she refused to talk and just continued to stare expectantly, very unnatural for someone of Ingrid’s usually pushy disposition. “So, does it have something to do with the duality of the green girdle, how although it save Gawain’s life, it also marked him as dishonest? How, according to the rules of the game, he was supposed to turn the girdle over to Lord Bertilak?”

Nothing, and then she spoke.

“I’m not sure you really understand the rules of the game.” She reached into her coat and pulled out a letter and slid it to me across the table.

It was an old paper folded and sealed with a blob of red wax. I had seen this stuff in movies, not for real. Hind sight is perfect, and had I been paying attention to the little inner voice that was now screaming at me not to touch it, I would have raced out of there, but I didn’t. Instead I  touched the embossed seal.

“What is that? A cross?”

“The order of the Teutonic Knights, but they are different now...not the way they were.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I picked up the envelope and turned it around, examining it. The wax felt smooth but hard beneath my fingers. “What do you mean? As the way they were.”

“They are now much like...” she tried to find the words but failed. “Like the funny ones with the fez caps that march in parades and wave around practice swords.”

I knew exactly what she was talking about, but they weren’t marching around in parades anymore. Most of them rode on plush seated wagons and waved liver spotted hands. There would be no sword play for those octogenarians. “Shriners, you mean, the Shriners. I used to love those guys when I was a kid. They sponsored circuses.”

Ingrid nodded. “Yes, very much like the Teutonic Knights, but without the circuses.”

Holding up the letter I examined it against the light. “So, this is a letter from the Teutonic Knights?”

“No, it is from Professor Zultner. It is a letter – for both of us.”

“Both of us?”

She continued to stare at me expectantly.

“But you want me to open it?”

She nodded, but when I went to break the wax seal she reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “You must use this to open the seal.” With that, Ingrid handed me a small sharp dagger, point first.

“Careful with that, you could poke someone’s eye out.” I placed my hand over hers, glanced about surreptitiously pushing the blade to the table. “You’ve got to be careful. Somebody might think you’re trying to stab me. You’re likely to get us both arrested and expelled. Where did you get a knife like that...wait, let me guess, Professor Zultner. You know, the more I find out about Zultner the less I like.”

“You must open the letter with the blade. It is how it is done,” she said in such a matter of fact way that she gave the impression that everyone would know this.

“So, what is in the letter is for both of us?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“But what if we don’t like what’s in it?”

A bewildering look flooded into her eyes. “But it is already started...” she blurted out.

Her expression was so distraught that I squeezed her hand in an effort to comfort her, forgetting that she was holding the dagger. She gave a sharp gasp of pain and I saw small drops of blood pooling onto the envelope. Then something strange happened. The paper seemed to absorb the red blood and restore itself to its old sepia colour. She placed her cut finger to her lips.

“I’m sorry,” I stuttered and grabbed a paper napkin for her finger. “I didn’t know it was so sharp. I thought it was just some fancy letter opener.”

“No, it is very sharp. It has to be.” She nodded at the letter. “We should go somewhere, somewhere private where you can open it.”

I didn’t mention the vanishing blood, or the growing feeling that we were being somehow observed. We walked down from the cafe, across the road and away from the rail transit. The fresh scent and soothing sound given off from the running water of the brook massaged the tension out of our bodies. We sought refuge on the grass beneath the pedestrian bridge that spanned the water.

The letter lay on the grass between us.

“So, you really want me to open this?” I asked hesitantly. “You saw what happened when you bled on the letter, didn’t you.” It was more a statement than a question.

She nodded. “It is how you open it.”

I scratched my head which was beginning to swim. “What do you mean? It’s how you open it. But it’s not open.”

“No,” she pulled out the dagger again and placed it on the grass between us. I was loath to touch it. There was something dark about the thing that disquieted me. “The letter needs the blood of the two.”

The hairs on the nape of my neck tingled as though someone was reaching for me, with murderous hands, out of the dark. Hands that were about to wrap their fingers around my neck. I knew the presence of a group of students that ran around at night, meeting in circles beneath the moon, whispering their spells, desecrating sacred places and such: you know, just common extra-curricular stuff. There was a noise behind us like somebody purposely rustling a bush. I twisted around and looked. Nothing.

“You don’t belong to the Bat People Association, do you?”

She shook her head somberly, eyes wide, a little offended. “No, I am not one of them.”

I gazed down at the sealed envelope. Innocuous in itself, couched against the green grass, but now it seemed somewhat sinister. I tentatively picked up the dagger and was surprised.

“It’s warm.”

Ingrid nodded. “It senses that its purpose is about to be fulfilled.”

Once when I was a kid I had the opportunity to visit a circus. We had gone behind some curtains, and there, practicing throwing knives at a pretty girl spread out against a target, was the hairiest man I had ever seen. His black hair from his head and beard made no sign of stopping at the nape of his neck but continued to advance down his back and chest. He even had hair on the backs of his hands. Strangely enough he turned to me, just me when he had an entire class of kids to choose from, and handed me one of the knives.

“There you go, kid. Give it a toss.”

“What if I miss?”

He winked at me. “I’m hoping you will. Don’t worry about it. The knives have a will of their own. I can tell they like you. If you tell them not to hit the pretty lady, they won’t.”

I had thrown the knife only because all the kids were staring at me and I wanted to seem cool. Fortunately, I had missed the pretty lady, and the hairy fellow had given me a pat on the back. For a moment, just as the knife left my hand, I had indeed asked the knife to miss. The knife had felt warm.

“It’s listening to me,” I whispered to myself, caught up in the moment.

Then suddenly I felt Ingrid’s fingers were on my hand. I felt a sharp prick and watched as a pearl of crimson blood beaded out against my skin. It hung there for a moment. I looked at Ingrid questioningly and let her guide my hand. The drop fell directly onto the letter. It splattered out and then vanished. A strange smoke rose from the wax seal and the embossed cross was consumed by liquid wax. The letter sprung open.

I went to wipe off my finger, but it was no longer bleeding: Just another strange thing. I was hoping that whatever was inside the letter would help clear up the many questions. I held it out to Ingrid.

“Shouldn’t we read it together, after all, it has both our blood.” I meant to be funny, but it just sounded creepy.

I wouldn’t have been able to understand it anyways, not because it was written in large gothic letters, but because it was in German. As Ingrid read the words, they swam before my eyes becoming transformed into English.

“The evil once thought contained has escaped. The Knights that have slept have been summoned. The battle that once drenched the land in blood begins again.”

Dorothy Zultner,

The Priestess and Flame Barer of The Knights of Z.