Gatefather Read online

  “There’s nothing wrong with us,” said the younger boy. Pat thought back to what Danny had called him in previous conversations. Enopp. The silent older one was Eluik.

  Danny had told her that Enopp thought he was a gatemage, while it seemed Eluik had some of the powers of a manmage, like his mother, because during the boys’ terrifying confinement in separate caves in Iceway, on Westil, Eluik had somehow sent his ba into his brother, to comfort him. Now he was stuck there, because, in his inexperience, he did not know how to return; or, fearful now himself, he was afraid to let go of his brother. Danny had speculated that, no matter how it began, it wasn’t the older brother comforting the younger anymore. It was Eluik now who was afraid to let go, and instead he communicated with Enopp and Enopp spoke for him to the others.

  Only now Pat could sense things that were beyond the reach of other mages. She and Danny were the only living souls who had been to Duat and then returned. In the process, not only had they become capable of detecting each other’s inself and outself, but now they understood that the inself, the ka, was the original self, while the outself, the ba, the wanderer, the doodlebug, was really someone else, an independent entity or entities that their guide in Duat had taught them to call “pret.”

  The pret or prets that made up a mage’s outself had entered into this close bond voluntarily, but now it could not be broken. That’s why, as soon as Danny gave them back to themselves, the wild captive left-behind gates immediately returned to Duat, to rebind themselves with the masterful pret to whom they had bound themselves before he or she was born. They could be kidnapped, as the Gate Thief had done, or lent out, as Danny had done when he “gave” his gates to Loki; but they could never belong to anyone but the ka to whom they had bound themselves as ba.

  So what Pat should have seen, expected to see as she looked at the two boys from Westil, was that Eluik’s ba was inside Enopp’s body, riding him like a heartbeast.

  But this was not the situation at all. Eluik was not a manmage, half dwelling inside his younger brother. Instead, it was Enopp whose ka, whose very self, had left his own body and now dwelt inside his older brother. Until now, Danny had completely misunderstood who was riding whom. Eluik was silent because he had as little access to his own body as Danny had had when Set was controlling him. And Enopp knew what his brother wanted to say because he was inside him, intercepting all his attempts to speak with his own voice.

  Meanwhile, Enopp was able to use his own body freely, because even though only his ba—the thousands of prets that proved him to be, in all likelihood, a potential gatemage—was inside his body, there was no rival trying to control it. It was his own body that he rode like a heartbeast, using his outself to control it.

  Danny looked at Pat searchingly. “Do you see?”

  “The opposite of what you thought,” said Pat.

  “Say no more than that,” said Danny. “Nothing more can be said aloud.”

  For a moment, Pat wondered why Danny didn’t trust the Silvermans. Or did he think that naming the situation for what it was might damage the boys further?

  Then she realized that there was a seventh person present—Set himself, dwelling silently inside Danny North. At the moment, Danny seemed to have him under control, but there was no assurance of that continuing. It was quite possible that Set would realize that Enopp’s body had no ka dwelling in it, and he would take it. Or perhaps the very process of helping Enopp bring his ka back into his own body would teach Set how to take full possession of a body—and he might use that understanding to take control of Danny again, only this time deeply and irrevocably.

  Whatever could be done to restore Eluik and Enopp had to be done without Danny, and therefore Set, present.

  “I have no idea if I can do it,” said Pat.

  “We only learned how to do the things we can do now by experiencing it,” said Danny. “Maybe Enopp and Eluik can learn the same way.”

  And there was the warning, almost explicitly stated: They could not afford to let Set see, or he, too, would learn.

  “Leave, then,” said Pat. “And I’ll do my best.”

  “That’ll be good enough,” said Danny.

  “You don’t know that,” said Pat, mildly amused.

  “If it’s all we can do, it’s good enough,” said Danny. “We can’t do more than is within our power.” He went to Leslie Silverman and kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused you.”

  “If Pat can do the job,” said Mr. Silverman, “then we’ll still need to find another hiding place for the boys.”

  “And for yourselves,” said Danny.

  “In time of war,” said Leslie, “sometimes you have to become a refugee in order to survive. We’ve made arrangements for a friend to tend the cows. They’ll miss me, but they’ll be well cared for.”

  “It’s a good mage who leaves her heartbound for the sake of strangers,” said Danny.

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Leslie. “These boys are not strangers.”

  “We like them much better than you,” said Marion. “They’re way less trouble.”

  “Only because on average they talk half as much as I did,” said Danny.

  “That’s probably it,” said Marion.

  “Plus, they stay where we can keep an eye on them,” said Leslie.

  “I was a brat, wasn’t I. You poor, patient oldsters.”

  Marion winced at “oldsters.” “What a horrible word,” he said.

  “A brat, yes? We agree on that?” Danny grinned, and then he was gone.

  Pat stood looking at the boys, who were seated beside each other, Eluik in a wooden side chair, Enopp on the floor beside him.

  “Eluik won’t sit in soft chairs,” said Leslie. “And Enopp won’t stray far from him.”

  No wonder, thought Pat. Enopp wants to keep his own body close by, since he uses it for all his talking.

  Did Enopp understand that he had captured his brother’s body? Almost certainly not.

  “Maybe this will go better,” said Pat to the boys, “if you close your eyes.”

  “I don’t like surprises,” said Enopp. “And Eluik only closes his eyes when he feels like it.”

  “I’m afraid I won’t be able to do this clearly enough for you to understand what I’m doing,” said Pat. “And since it can’t be seen by physical eyes, I thought you’d want to be undistracted by visual stimuli.”

  Enopp shrugged and closed his eyes. Eluik’s remained open, but since he didn’t seem to be focusing on anything in the room, that would probably be all right. It’s not as if Pat had any idea what would or would not work, or what might interfere with a good outcome.

  Instead of saying anything to them, Pat sent her ba—a group of her prets, she now understood—inside Eluik. There she probed until she found Enopp’s ka, his inmost self, with the roots he had sunk into his brother’s body. Not as deeply as the roots of Eluik’s ka, of course, since the body belonged to him, but Enopp was definitely more closely entwined with Eluik than Set had been with Danny North.

  It occurred to Pat that maybe Eluik had spent years in deep frustration, as Enopp controlled and silenced him, while speaking for him. Yet it might be that Eluik really did want to comfort and protect his little brother, and if he had to sacrifice his own ability to speak in order to do it, maybe he didn’t resent it.

  Would he resent being liberated?

  Was he being liberated? Ultimately, it would be up to Enopp. Would he understand what Pat was showing him?

  Still she did not speak with her mouth, but rather communicated as This One had communicated with Danny and her, showing the boys her understanding of what she was discovering inside Eluik’s body. This is you, Enopp. You are in him; he is not in you. You can give him back to himself, by pulling away here. And here. And here.

  Then Pat sent part of her ba into Enopp’s own body, showing the empty place—if it could be called a “place”—where Enopp’s ka should be, and how inadequately his thousands of
gates substituted for Enopp’s missing inself.

  Time seemed to have no meaning when communicating ka to ka like this; Pat was very thorough in her demonstration, and she could sense that Enopp understood well enough to pull parts of himself, tendrils of his control, out of Eluik’s body. But as for moving his entire ka back where it belonged?

  It was time for Pat to give him a choice, which meant also giving him time to choose. She pulled her ba back into herself, and then murmured, “It’s time to let Eluik have his body back, Enopp. He has served you so kindly, and you have also been his friend. You didn’t know what it was costing him, or even where you were. But now you know. Will you give him his freedom back? Will you take up your own bones and live?” She kept up this low incantation, always asking, never demanding, but still urging him to decide.

  “Shhhh,” whispered Enopp. But whether that was a command for her to be silent or simply an escape of air, Pat could not tell.

  “Eluik,” murmured Pat, “it’s all right now for you to tell him what you want. To let your brother resume his place. His body isn’t a lonely cave, it’s his inheritance, his kingdom to rule alone. As yours was also meant for you alone. Stand beside each other now as brothers, not inside each other with all this confusion, with one of you helpless and the other lost.”

  She realized that now she was urging an outcome; but why not? Neither of them could have any kind of life until this conjoinment at a metaphysical level was replaced by the proper distribution of souls in bodies: one for one.

  And then, having said all she could think of several times over, Pat wearied of her own words, and fell silent.

  The boys sat unmoving, expressionless, Enopp with his eyes closed, Eluik with his eyes open but focused on nothing.

  Pat turned to Marion and Leslie Silverman, intending to shrug, to communicate her helplessness, her growing certainty that this had been beyond her ability after all, that if Danny could not do it, then it could not be done.

  But their faces stopped her from shrugging, for Leslie was openly weeping, tears flowing down her cheeks as she looked unwaveringly at the boys. And Marion, though tearless, was no less focused on the boys. How much had they seen and understood?

  A sound from the boys turned Pat back to them, and to her surprise, Eluik was looking at her, his eyes focused. His face still expressed nothing, but Pat could see that his lips were moving slightly, and a few sounds emerged, like a phone coming in and out of a good reception area.

  At the deepest level, she could sense Enopp’s action as he withdrew his ka almost completely from Eluik’s body. Pat could only imagine what it felt like to Eluik, to have his body back, to have it now respond to his will, for the first time in years.

  But to Pat’s consternation, then worry, then fear, Enopp’s ka, coming free of Eluik’s body, was not returning to his own body. Instead, Eluik seemed to be gathering his ba out of his own body and drawing it back to himself. And Pat realized: He is starting to die. He is preparing to make his way back to Duat.

  “No,” she said aloud. “That is wrong,” she said. “Enopp, I forbid you to die. This body has been waiting for you all this time. Don’t abandon it now.” And to reinforce her words, she sent her ba into Enopp’s body. She could feel that the body was preparing to die, as its controlling mind and will withdrew from it. Back and forth she sent her ba, from Enopp’s ka-and-ba to the body he was leaving derelict.

  It couldn’t be that Enopp did not sense what she was doing—if he had understood her before, he could surely understand her now. No, he was doing this because he didn’t want the body. No, not that. As her ba drew near to his ka-and-ba, surrounding it, she could sense his answer to her words. It was overwhelming surprise and shame at what he had done to his brother.

  You didn’t know, Pat told him silently. There is no blame, no shame; no harm was intended, and so no guilt ensues. It’s not time for you to return to Duat now. Take up your body and live the life you were sent to live. You still have much to do, and it can only be done with a body, with the power of the gatemage you were born to be.

  Enopp seemed to ignore her—he made no move to reinhabit his body—and yet he also did not rise up to make the quick voyage across the lightyears to Duat. Is it because he wants to stay alive, but doesn’t think that he deserves to have a body after depriving Eluik for so long? Or am I holding him here by surrounding him with my outself?

  I have no more right to hold his ka than he had to inhabit his brother.

  Pat pulled her ba back inside herself.

  And then felt Enopp’s ka-and-ba start to rise. His last connections with Eluik’s body began to attenuate and break. He had chosen. He was going to die.

  At that moment, Eluik threw himself clumsily from his chair to land on top of Enopp, where he sat on the floor. It knocked Enopp over. Eluik lay on top of him, embraced him awkwardly, and he began shouting something. Weeping and shouting.

  Pat was not a gatemage. She had no gift for languages, and did not understand the language of his cries.

  But she did understand—for who could fail to understand?—what Eluik’s ka was communicating to Enopp’s ka. So much force. It felt like shouting. This One had not used even a fraction of this power when communicating with Pat and Danny on Duat. And the message was simple and pure: Stay with me. Live.

  Enopp’s ka stopped its upward movement.

  Eluik began clumsily punching and slapping Enopp’s arms and chest, as if to wake up his senses, or even to provoke him into striking back.

  Pat felt it, empathically, as Enopp’s ka returned to his body and thrust its tendrils, or rather its influence, into every place in his body where those connections needed to be complete.

  And as he did, he let go of his last few connections with Eluik’s body. In a moment, Enopp’s ka-and-ba existed only inside his own body, and almost at once his connection was deep and complete. More complete than most people’s self-connection. Now he was connected to himself as Pat and Danny had learned to connect with their own bodies.

  Eluik, too, had learned how it was done, and his ka reached deep inside himself. Like Danny, his domain could not be usurped again.

  The hitting and punching stopped. Eluik rolled off his brother and they both lay on the floor against the wall, their bodies touching at many points, but their inself and outself completely distinct for the first time in years.

  “Good choice, Enopp,” said Pat. “Eluik, you were the reason he stayed. You saved your brother again.”

  A single great sob convulsed Eluik’s body. And then he lay there, weeping desperately, like a heartbroken toddler.

  Enopp half-rolled so he could reach his hand to touch his brother’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said in English. “I didn’t know.”

  Eluik answered him in another language, but this time Leslie saw that Pat didn’t understand, and murmured a translation. “He’s saying that it’s all right, he didn’t mind. Neither of them had to be lonely in the caves, and that was good.”

  Not for the first time, Pat thought, Loki has much to answer for. Imprisoning these boys, almost forcing them into the tortuous intertwining they had lived with all this time.

  Then she remembered: Loki had been commanded by his queen, by his lover, to kill them. And yet he decided he owed more to his conscience than to Queen Bexoi. He kept them alive. And now here they were, tormented and suffering … but alive. Still able to choose, to act, to live their lives. All the entanglement was now untangled. They were themselves again.

  Danny had trusted her to do this, and even though she hadn’t known what she was doing, she muddled through, and what she couldn’t control, the boys had settled for themselves, between themselves.

  “I’m just wondering,” said Leslie, “when people are going to start thinking about lunch. Now that we’ve all decided to stay alive.”

  Enopp rose easily to his feet, but Eluik was out of practice controlling his body. Marion had to lift him up, and then Eluik leaned on his little brother and on
Marion to make his way to the kitchen table, where Leslie had stacked plates and was now setting out slabs of homemade bread and various sliced meats and cheeses, vegetables and spreads.

  Once the boys were seated at the table, and Eluik had proven that he could put together a sandwich and bring it to his mouth, Marion came to Pat in the kitchen doorway. “Well done,” he said softly. “You did things I didn’t imagine were possible. I saw things—well, understood things in a way I never did before. You were brave and patient and wise. Danny’s a lucky boy. I hope he’s smart enough to know what you are.”

  “If he isn’t,” said Leslie, “I’ll tell him in a way he can’t mistake.”

  Pat smiled in relief, feeling tears coming to her eyes. She didn’t like to cry in front of other people, but she also didn’t want to leave.

  “Oh, don’t worry about a few tears,” said Leslie. “Sit down and let them salt your sandwich.”

  So Pat sat at the table with the boys as they ate their first meal together as independent souls, each bound to his own body, each free to make his own choices and act on them.

  What they just won, with such effort, is possessed easily by almost every human being on Earth and Westil, thought Pat. The difference is that, having been without that independence for so long, they know what they have.

  I hope they never forget. I hope I never forget. How precious it is to be alive, to have a body of my own, to be free to act on this physical world in whatever way I choose.

  “What I want to know,” said Enopp, “is whether you can sing.”

  Eluik answered in the other language, and both boys laughed until they cried.

  Marion interpreted this time. “What he said was, ‘I never could before.’ And apparently that’s hysterically funny.”

  Pat couldn’t help grinning—a huge grin, stretching her cheeks because she rarely called on them to show so much happiness.

  “And I see that you agree,” said Marion.