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"You look like a potato," Black informed Merroth, clearly critical of this fact. "Has that inbred t**t never heard of sunscreen?" She sighed. Her precious little toy, her beloved plaything, was in total shambles. He had a tan. He had always been a few shades darker than Black due to not living in a UV shield, but now it was positively striking and Black hated the mark for dividing her so thoroughly and blatantly from Merroth. "Come along then, we'll get you cleaned up."

There was no choice in the matter. Black deftly dragged Merroth along behind her as if she were pulling a large piece of meat, perhaps the haunch of an elephant. Merroth had gone limp as a ragdoll. All semblance of will was gone from him. His eyes were blank and his mind reeling. The places where his knees and elbows hit things would bruise later, a collection of dark purple blemishes on his tanned skin.

Black washed him, which was nothing new, her movements too forceful to be gentle as she scrubbed his hair under the cold spray of the shower. She scrubbed at him with misdirected fury, growling under her breath at the marked difference in skin tone between the areas he had been clothed and the areas exposed to the sun. She hated suntans, even those that were just a healthy glow from receiving the correct amount of vitamin D. When Merroth was dry, she slathered him with skin creams. It was almost obsessive compulsive. "Can't let you go out like this," she huffed as she worked. "What would people think."

She dressed him, since he was not helping, and left him in the DVD room, alone. He slumped against the wall, unmoving.

It would be some hours before he finally ventured to play the DVDs, thinly stumbling along with the happy songs. "Kookaburra sit inna olgum tree, merry merry king uva bushishee. Laa, Kookaburra, laa..."

~ ~ ~

Black chewed her lip and paced. She had felt the tug of something praetorian on that island, but it had not been Merroth. After all this time, it had not been her adopted son. She had chosen wrongly, or fate had sent her along a meandering path.

So she went back. Nerys was gone from the pebbled path, but Black could make out the noise of her wails from inside the house with her keenly enhanced hearing, as well as the murmurs of Ejay's comforting. She might have eavesdropped on them, but Generys did not interest her. Women never did.

She walked across the water to find him drifting aimlessly with his face towards the sun. He was weak from lack of food, in his own s**t and urine, lips cracked and face burnt at least three times as bad as Merroth. Edward John Garmondsway, former member of the British Army and the aristocracy, who had survived countless adventures only to be reduced to this by a woman and a brat. Black hated him. She also loved him.

Standing there on the ocean beside the little dinghy, she surveyed the far horizons. She could sense every corner of this world. It was a seeming paradise, but a more accurate term would be prison. There was nowhere to go, no one to play with, nothing but the island belonging to the brother and sister. Black stepped onto the boat, avoiding Edward John's refuse, and touched Edward John's burnt face.

"Your sister has done wrong by you," she murmured, her own form of comfort. "You have been a prisoner. Let me set you free." His eyes moved almost invisibly behind crusted slits, a silent signal, as he could not speak. Black smiled and bent over him, kissing him on the forehead.

She could see it now, the man he could become with the proper guidance. It was a long time since she had guided anyone, and she was not particularly good at it, but the pathetic state of him summoned in her an almost sexual, sadistic longing that stretched from below her navel up to the center of her chest.

How much had the Realverse praetors taken from her? How much had she, in her uncaring state, let them take? She had lost nearly a dozen of her wards, babbling incoherent madmen the praetors of the Realverse thought they could fix. And now, here, was one of theirs, broken in the manner of a marionette, ready for her to claim and fix.

They could have Daub, they could have Captain Halk, they could have Tom Henry. She was going to take Edward John. Shedding some bit of her mortal coil, Black embraced him, and on wings alight with darkness she carried him home.

As a member of the Board of Directors for both the Liberty Center and PietTech's Biotechnology Lab (not to mention PietTech itself) there were few things outside Greyhaven Taylor's notice, especially when she chose to make them her business.

There were now over sixty children placed into Gaia-class homes by the Lab's adoption project, and while Grey had a passing interest in most of them, she had a more than passing interest in two. The first was Ylaine, Grey's legal ward, and the second was Tenebras Merroth, legal ward of Grey's mirror opposite, Em the Black. So when paperwork was filed on Merroth, Grey's automated search functions noticed it, and an alert appeared on her screen. She clicked it, reviewed the data, and began to calculate.

Grey was a very busy women between her directorial and praetorian duties, but she had the benefit of a highly compartmentalized mind. She set the calculations running as a background process in her mind, one of four such background processes currently running, and resumed her business work: checking with her broker, reviewing research and news reports, communicating with investors.

It took her all that afternoon and evening to complete the calculations. When she lay down to sleep next to her husband that night, the answer was waiting for her in her mind. She smiled. She had a plan. She was going to have a very busy day tomorrow.

There was a massive explosion of power. It was as if the champion had stepped on a landmine. Dust exploded into the air around her, obscuring everything outside the Liberty Center's entrance. Whatever invisible barrier had stopped Black from mounting a rescue also held back the dust, creating a swirling grey wall of wind and microscopic particles. Merroth shouted, both to encourage Black and because he was upset he could not see, and then the dust began to sweep aside like a great glass orb had grown up from inside it, and in the center of the orb was the champion, her wand at the ready and her robes and hair billowing around her. Her lips were moving, but her words were lost on the tornado of the wind.

The dust cleared and Merroth could see Black then, standing totally still, not a hair out of place on her head. The champion's wand stroked the air and sent a wave of crackling energy, but Black cast it aside with a mere blink, not flinching as the energy split around her and flowed off in two ribbons of meaningless power.

As the howling of the wind died down, the words of the champion could be heard: "Caremqueo Versasummum!" Her wand dipped and danced in the air, drawing invisible symbols of power punctuated by quick thrusts. The worry-faced man in suspenders stepped up to the edge of the Liberty Center's boundary, wringing his hands in worry. Not-Black's hand rose to his shoulder to hold him back but she might as well have been a feather in a hurricane. He could not move from his spot, wincing painfully at each blast of power.

The champion sent spikes of earth rising through the air with an upward stroke of her wand, calling out the words, "Qiyyamter!" Specks of dirt shuddered from the rising forms. They jutted fiercely and quickly, thrusting forth in the blink of an eye. Black was knocked back, but a moment later seemed to regain her footing, casting against the ground a fierce gravity well that pulled the champion to her knees and collapsed the earthen spikes. "Alladum Nascretus!" The gravity well pulled her further still, threatening to pull her wand from her hand, and the champion strained against it, retaining her grip only by sheer enchanted will.

"Premundus!" There was a force behind her spell above and beyond the others she had spoken. Things around her began to unwind, first the gravity well dispersing and the disturbed grass reknitting into its lattice of roots, then grass beginning to shrink and devolve, along with all the animals inside it, worms emerging from the topsoil and writhing into nonexistence. "Finicanta! Sanctum Sanctore!" The reversion ceased, the air seemed to shimmer with light, and Black slung at the champion little whorls of errant gravity that flared and died around her, pulling her hair and robes in different directions, jerking her limps about in ways Merroth understood from experience.

"Take a bit of that!" taunted Black, face split with excitement. Suddenly, she began to form in her hands a ball of dark energy, so dark it was not black but nothing: a complete absence of light and sound. It grew in Black's hands, a hole in the universe through which you could see straight to the other side and discover there was nothing.

"Incarcerous!" cried the champion, and from the tip of her wand sprung ropes of hemp, hair, and silver. They shot towards Black like fingers, grasping and reaching.

Black easily knocked them aside. "As if ropes could contain me," she sneered, suddenly pressing her hands together and collapsing the ball of nothing into a single point.

There was a deafening roar as the nothingness exploded, and then total silence and darkness. Merroth tried to say something, but he had no voice and could hear nothing, even though the darkness only lapped at the edge of the Liberty Center's boundary. The world seemed dim around him, like the sun had been covered, an eclipse in progress. Waves of light were being removed from the local spectrum. The world was turning into tones of sepia and navy.

And abruptly, there was light, brilliantly blinding like the light of ten million stars and Merroth was blinded, for he could not draw his arm up to cover his face when the strongarms were still restraining him. He realized the noise in his ears was his own screaming and stopped. He could see only spots amidst the light.

The worry-faced man cried out the name of his lover: "Peri!"

She had been there, at the very beginning, when Black had taken him from the Nursery. It was eons and ages ago and Merroth did not remember her, but she had been there back in the beginning prepared to at a moment's notice halt the fateful exchange that had entrusted Merroth into Black's care, and now she was attempting to correct her apparent mistake.

Merroth whined, not knowing whether anyone was still there for him to call out to, not knowing what was going on at all any more, hearing only Peri's voice cry out: "Allamdaya! Jurisdicta Aftma! Diffindo!" His vision began to clear to where he could make out the fight.

Black was still standing, flicking pieces of things at the champion: little bits of nothing, gravity, and stars that burned lines across Peri's skin as the flecks passed her, like burning ashes. Her skin immediately blackened and boiled. Black sliced her hand through the air and the figure of Peri was gashed across her middle, her body opening one moment and a single breath later her entrails spilling out. Then Black's hand sliced vertically and her head split open.

It was the most purely terrifying thing Merroth had ever seen, and he realized suddenly that there were so many times Black could have killed him. His stomach wrenched. The worry-faced man did not so much as breathe. There were noises from the Center's grounds, everyday noises: the song of birds and far-off screams of playing children in the playground on the other side of the premises. It was surreal.

And then the quinsected shape of Peri fizzled and popped and exploded into a thousand tiny starbursts of color that disappeared on the air.

Even Black was surprised, never having seen such a death in her long history of killing things through various means. She likened it to a dispersal of atoms, but even that was not an effective explanation for the phenomenon. It was more like a dispersal of light waves.

And then the light waves reformed, a thousand tiny starbursts in reverse coming together to form the shape of Peri. She was standing some feet away from where she had been, untouched. It had been her first spell, the one whose words were lost in the roar of the dusty maelstrom: "Ayedu Deceptem". A mere whisper on her lips, and her body and image had become two separate things. A convincing illusion.

Black started to sling a new wave of destruction at Peri, but she had not noticed the ground. The ropes of silver, hair, and hemp, which had seemed so worthless at the time, had not fallen to the dirt mere twists of woven material. Instead, they had crawled and unraveled out across the battlefield into a huge set of circles with a two-triangle star in the center. Peri stretched her wand high.

"Praeadma!"

The ropes suddenly spread out threads, like tree roots, that slapped against the ground and filled in the circle of power. Runes and arcane shapes of intricate detail spread out to cover the ground, a tapestry of three colors forming across the whole area, filling in every available inch. The three colors wove together into a carpet of power.

"Petrificus!"

The word was like existence itself in its power. Black's hand stopped in the air, frozen as the curse struck her. The battle was over. The champion had won.

Black retained her mental focus, her voice resounded in their heads: "You cannot do this. This is impossible."

Peri's voice rang out over the field. "You rewrite the rules of the universe. I have bound you to the laws of mine. Order shall always triumph over chaos. Relinquish your claim."

There was a groan, Black trying to struggle against the curse, but she was well and truly bound. Black's ability to manipulate the fabric of the universe had become enslaved to the physical laws of Peri's universe, where such powers were shaped by a knowledge of magic Black did not have.

The struggle was an answer. Black did not relent. Peri closed her eyes, lip trembling with an unvoiced prayer, and flicked her wand at Black. "Praeruptus!" There was a crackling snap as the bone of Black's forearm broke. Peri tried again. "Relent!"

"Never."

"Praeruptus! Praeruptus! Praeruptus!" One by one, Peri bent Black's limbs backwards, breaking the bones, forming bizarre ninety-degree angles akin to some grotesque modern art using the human body as canvas. Under different circumstances, it would have been the kind of art Black appreciated.

The next call came from not-Black, who crossed the invisible barrier from the Liberty Center to the battlefield and commanded of Black: "Relent."

There was a pause. "I relent."

"We may have the boy?"

"I relinquish my claim."

Merroth watched and heard all this and what little strength he had left in him failed. He sagged in the arms of his detainers. Black had failed him.

The tapestry of threads unwove, returning the battlefield to normalcy and releasing Black from the Ordered prison. Her limbs snapped back into place and rebounded, the only expression on her face one of extreme annoyance. "You will regret this," she informed not-Black and Peri.

"We shall see," said not-Black, and she and Peri walked back towards the Center. Black turned away and stalked off, not sparing a single glance for Merroth as she went. She was Black. She would lament briefly the loss of her favorite toy, but she would not miss him, not in any meaningful way.

At least, though he would never know it, Merroth would have his revenge on Edward John, who would take the full brunt of Black's frustration when she returned to her office, and unlike Merroth, Edward John would not share in this violence willingly or happily.

Peri hugged the worry-faced man upon crossing back to the Center, the universe of the battlefield vanishing behind her. No one would ever know what had happened there except those who had just witnessed it. Merroth was angry to see the battlefield disappear. He would have liked to have walked upon it, to be at the place where it had happened, terrible though it was. It was his last connection to Black, and it had just vanished.

Kneeling down, Peri took Merroth from the guards and hefted him up in her arms, the worry-faced man right behind her. Merroth did not so much as react to this, his mind still reeling, replaying all the details he could remember, but mostly the expressions on Black's face, the last time he would ever see her. He slumped in Peri's arms, dead weight, and did not care when she whispered into his ear, "I'm going to take you where it's safe now."

There was no such thing as safe.

The little cabin sat in the middle of nothing, or close enough to it. Miles of land stretched out around Merroth, empty but for the grass and rocks of the prairie. It was almost unconceivable to Merroth. It was just so empty. Far in the distance could be seen the shapes of mountains, jutting up unfamiliarly from the earth, but he did not even have words for them, and did not ask either of his "hosts" as he had come to think of them. His only thought was on trying to make their lives hell.

He ran away the first day, thought he would die of exhaustion the way the sun beat down on him, and Peri found him and brought him home. He broke everything he could get his hands on, and Peri repaired most of it. Some things she just shrugged off and said were unimportant. She and Steven lived a life of simplicity, everything very basic and rustic, things worn to the edge of durability charms. They spent their days doing chores, and Merroth spent his making messes and undoing chores when he could. There were all sorts of animals, "fellow residents" Peri called them, but Merroth was distracted to notice.

Finally, they could take no more of it. "Something has to be done," said Steven, after Merroth had overturned the week's milk. "We can't go on like this. He needs professional help, or some school for special children."

Peri chewed her lip, thought of the Liberty Center, but knew that was not what Steven meant. She had envisioned teaching Merroth everything about the land and how to care for it, a totally different education than what the Center offered, but in the end she had to conclude he was not interested. There could only be one solution to the problem.

It was many years later that Merroth would recall the woman he came to know as his mother and say:

"She had sunny hair. Soft and curly. Dad used to say it was like a poodle's, that she had a poodle's hair. Mum hated that, but you could tell she didn't, because every time he said it she'd crinkle her face up in this secretive little way that said she liked it because it was dad's special teasing for her. He was always teasing her, and she liked it, because she liked his attentions. Any of his attentions. And he loved giving attention to her.

"Anyone else, and mum wouldn't like it. She didn't like strangers or 'outsiders' as she called them. She had very few people she trusted, she never really said why, didn't want us to know. I dug around in her past a bit, or tried to, because there wasn't any. That was mum. She'd just turn up on your doorstep out of nowhere like the wind had blown her, and she used to stand on the hillock with the wind blowing through her hair and I'd worry she'd blow right away. She was that kind of person. The wind could shift her every which way, in mind and in body. She was very spontaneous. Never liked being tied to anything, loved the freedom that dad could give to her. And he loved that about her, that freeness, that open invitation to go anywhere and do anything or not do anything at all. I think so many people had always expected such strict things of dad, he'd never before found anyone who expected absolutely nothing of him but to do what made him happy.

"Mum loved golfing, but she was always worried about golf balls polluting the environment when they got lost. She cared about things like that. I think that's why she didn't like a lot of people -- the more people she knew, the more people she felt she had to care for, and it was a terrible burden on her. She worried constantly about dad. Whether he'd been eating, whether he was happy, whether he was thinking about the past. She was always pulling him forward.

"She was such a small woman that two hands of her equaled one of dad's. And she bit her nails, constantly. Dad would always get after her for that, and I think it made her feel bad, because she knew she oughtn't to do it. She didn't want to do it. It was just a nervous habit she had, and worrying over things made her a nervous person. You couldn't let her sit still for more than a few minutes, she'd get nervous and start chewing her fingernails.

"When I first met them, I had no idea what to expect. I know most kids would've jumped at the chance to be the child of Boston and Emma Clark, but I was too young, had never read the newspapers, didn't have the slightest idea who they were. To me, they were just the newest in long line of people who were trying to take care of me, piss me off and get in my way. That's all I thought you were supposed to do as a parent or guardian. That's all it seemed the previous homes I'd lived in had done for me. To me, I suppose.

"I think the moment I knew this was different was sitting in the car with them right after getting off the plane, I'm sure you've seen the pictures. They were all over the papers. I saw them in some microfilms at the library. It was a moment, I hope you'll forgive me, that I've no wish to share or explain. Yes, a private moment, because they were private people, and I don't think anyone ever really knew them except for me and Lev and Silas, because privacy means family-only."

~~~

Peri Stilbrook frowned at the letter but conceded it was right. She looked at Merroth, napping like a cat on the back of the sofa, one of the few pieces of modern furniture they enjoyed. They hadn't even got a bathroom, for gods' sakes, just a hole in the ground in an outhouse, and those lights that weren't magic burned oil only. Steven wasn't going to like this, not in the slightest, but she supposed she would have him come with her, so she showed him the letter. He only chewed his lip and nodded. "How long do you think we have?"

"The plane leaves in an hour and a half."

"No. Until the little beast wakes up."

Peri might have chided Steven for it, but she didn't, not now. Not after she had seen the bite mark on Steven's hand. He was a monster, Black had made sure of that. Black's last, gasping laugh. She imagined the mirrorverse tyrant laughing now, winner in her own twisted delusions.

It wasn't that Merroth was important. Ridley was important. Merroth could have been any child, anyone, because to the likes of them he was a mere game piece on a giant board, something to be bartered and traded like so many other souls. He had importance as an individual, as a person, but in the grand scheme of things the fact they had reacquired him was politics, pure and simple. Of course they cared for him, of course they did, they cared for everyone on their side of things, but it wasn't the reason they had saved him. If they had saved him. Peri wasn't so sure.

She picked up the sleeping Merroth and he stirred but did not waken. He had two sleep modes, timed and disturbed, and this was a timed nap. He would wake up after whatever arbitrary period he had decided for his internal clock and not a moment before. Maybe would have slept through a nuclear catastrophe in this state.

Peri could just touch at the fringes of his dreamstate and did not like what she could see, but kept silent about it as they walked out the house and down the steps and through the little portal she had erected. There were no roads leading to and from the house, no form of transportation, so they had to teleport out to where Peri kept the towncar hidden, an unassuming little run-down garage behind a dozen charms of obfuscation to keep Muggles from finding it. It was paid up in full where property taxes were concerned, just like their ranch lands, theirs to keep forever.

Merroth woke in the car, but couldn't do anything except scream at Peri and Steven, who looked away and ignored it. Merroth couldn't break anything in the back of this car. Steven fidgeted the whole ride, hating this horseless carriage technology, and then they were at the airport, which Steven hated even more. Peri kept close and held her husband's hand. "You can stay here," she told him. "I wouldn't blame you."

He brushed her hair aside and kissed her on the forehead. "No." Yes, he hated it, but he had vows to keep, the promise they had made to stay together forever.

They got Merroth onto the private plane after a struggle, had to hold him until the thing took off, endured a stream of curses that would make a sailor blush until Merroth noticed the window.

He had never seen anything like an airplane, and certainly never been in one. He could tell only that they were flying, truly flying, and something in his hearts skipped a beat in excitement. It seemed to say to him almost that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't just through space that they were flying. Merroth stared out the window at the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds and became unmoving. He did not even want to blink. To miss one moment of this suspended sensation would have been unbearable. Hanging, flying, falling, everywhere and anywhere at once. He stared and stared out the window, his little fingers pressing against the plastic glass, leaving jealous smudges of desire.

Peri held Steven and they murmured to one another in low voices, glad to say this was over, to return to their little piece of Heaven where things remained unchanging through the centuries, their perfect little hideaway from the changing world and passage of time. They nodded off on the plane together, arms around each other, as perfectly matched as plum and pudding and complete in all ways together.

Merroth had the flight time at one hour and fifty-three minutes, because that was when they landed, grinding and scraping to the earth, and Merroth's heart broke at the sheer mundanity of the earth. One hour and fifty-three minutes of magic, nevermore. A big tear rolled down his cheek, then disappeared during the struggle as Peri and Steven tried to get Merroth off the plane again.

It was at the top of the steps that Merroth realized something unusual as happening, because the minute he emerged, it was like a lightning storm had gone off. Flashes and crowd noise assaulted Merroth as surely as the hot, sticky air outside. It was like a wall of light and sound and humidity striking him. It was too loud, too bright, too much everything.

Coming up the steps towards them a voice was bellowing, "When I find out who bloody tipped them their a** is fired!" The voice that answered was washed away in the noise of the crowd, lost forever. A moment later something was standing between Merroth and the sea of flashing lights and yelling, blocking out the sun. "Dammit!" Then the man was swooping down on Merroth, wrapping his big overcoat around them both, pulling Merroth away from Peri. The roar of the crowd drained away under the coat, reduced to muffled noises. Merroth was too grateful to have something between him and the crowd to complain much. All he could hear under the coat was the man's heavy breathing and each clomping step as the man carried him down the runway stairs.

At the bottom, the man deposited him on red carpet, and the voice that had gotten drowned away in the crowd earlier urged him: "Here, take my hand!" Merroth didn't have much time to argue because the hand found his and pulled him along, three people dashing towards a waiting car door under an overcoat, fleeing in a little shadow of sanctuary amidst the chaos. The girl's hand was cool and small.

The man who bore the giant coat picked Merroth up at the last moment and lifted him up into the car, a smooth motion timed to Merroth's step that made it feel almost like he had suddenly bounded a great distance with no effort. Then they were all three of them inside, the door closing behind them, and the noise and the flashing lights were reduced suddenly to nothing more than a distant ******** circus!"

"My god!" laughed the girl.

"Thank god we made it, I almost thought we wouldn't for a minute there, eh, Merroth?"

For the first time, Merroth was able to take stock of his apparent saviors. The man had sandy blonde hair. His sun-lined face had the evidence of both happiness and sorrow, laughter and anger. Little wrinkly lines framed bright blue eyes. His brow had a perpetual knit in it, giving him the appearance of constant concentration, and he had a tendency to squint. When he smiled, it was with pressed lips that hid photogenic white teeth, his way of holding something back of himself from a world desperate to pry him open. There was a little brown birthmark, just a small spot really, between the cheek and jaw near his right ear. He wasn't handsome, not particularly, nor was he kempt, but there was something inherently good about his appearance, a vestige of charming mask held up to the world, worn away through the years to expose some of the truth underneath. When he spoke his voice was warm and deep. There was a wry humor to his tone and expressions, the mark of someone who knows that most people aren't going to get the joke.

The girl was a small, thin thing, with a bushel of long, pale, curly blonde hair overwhelming her. Her hair was soft and powdery to the touch, bangs cut low to her eyebrows. She was wearing clothes several sizes too big for her, like a scarecrow with limbs of sticks in the farmer's old clothing. Her tan capris showed calves pocked with little injuries, scrapes and bugbites, the sort of wounds you expect to see on the legs of children accustomed to playing outside. There was an excitability in her warm brown eyes, wide with hope and optimism.

The pressed Merroth into the seat between them, the girl with her arm across Merroth's shoulders and the man with his arm around them both. The girl leaned her head down to Merroth. "Good thing we're away from them, right?" Merroth didn't offer anything in response to this, because while he was glad to get away from that hideous throng of shouting people and their flashing lights, he had no idea who these people were or what was going on or anything.

Except...

He had this feeling, this strange sensation, that something was going on here. Sealed up, the world drowned out to near-nonexistence, they were the three of them alone amidst some hundred people. All those people out there, all those people in the universe, but it was just the three of them. Even if there had been four other people in the car, Merroth somehow knew that it would still have been just the three of them sitting there in the seat together. Pressed in on either side of him, he could feel their warmth, their breathing, like extensions of himself.

There were moments, long-ago moments, when for just a brief period of time, he had been that way with Nerys. She used to hold him to her side so he could feel her breathing as she told him sea stories, or described to him the stars, or had pulled him, laughing, in a dance along the sand and then they collapsed together, exhausted, under the brightness of the sun. Perfect moments of together, them separate from the world.

It had been that on the plane, but without anybody else. Merroth, alone and suspended, just him and the sky for an hour and fifty-three minutes. Now he was Merroth in the car, suspended, with two strangers who were in this moment as close to him as Nerys had been, as the sky had been. As his numbers had been.

The car started, pressing Merroth back into the seat, and he heard them introduce themselves. "I'm Boston." And then the girl's, "I'm Emma." He realized he had been let in on a conspiracy, the conspiracy of Boston and Emma versus the world. Boston, Emma, and Merroth versus the world, that was what they were doing. Nerys and Merroth versus the world. Merroth and numbers, against the universe. There had even been, for a time near the end, that it was Merroth and Black taking on the universe, when Merroth had watched the battle with such intensity it had seemed like he himself was standing out there with Black.

Nerys. Black. The sky. His numbers. But it never would last, it was always leaving him, just like this would leave him, too. "********," he said, when he realized he was crying, and doubled over with his arms over his head.

They never said anything, not a word, just rubbed Merroth on the back and sat there beside him.



Boston would later recount, with great amusement, that Merroth's first word to any of them was '********.' "I knew right then the kid belonged in this family. He's a Clark, born and bred, and I don't care where he came from or who his parents were. He's a Clark, pure and simple." Then he would sit back and smile, the pride on his face as plain as the lines of grey in his hair, pride not only in Merroth's achievements but also in the fact that he, Boston, had been lucky enough to know the boy that came before the man. "People won't remember me," he was once quoted as saying, "as anything except Merroth's father. Fifty, a hundred years down the line, no one's going to care there was once a man who inherited a fortune and ran the world's largest company for sixty years. They're just gonna say I was Merroth's father, and Emma's husband, but mostly Merroth's father. And that's the way it should be. That's all I've ever wanted to be remembered as."

Merroth woke up, surprised to find that Emma was asleep on the couch next to him, and that Boston was sitting on the floor next to them both, and that he had been using Boston's arm as a pillow, which meant Boston must have been sitting there all night. Boston was already awake, but looked fairly exhausted despite whatever sleep he might have gotten, and delicately extricated his arm. "Last time I do this, champ. I'm getting too old for the sleeping on the floor thing."

It's not like I asked you to, Merroth's head swirled angrily, but then Emma was awake with a stretching yawn and Merroth quickly discovered something about his new guardian.

Emma Clark was a whirlwind.

It took her perhaps ten seconds to get her bearings, remember where they were and what had happened yesterday, and then she popped off the couch with a squeal, clapped her hands, and said, "Today we're taking you to the house! Do you want something to eat? Let's have an orange, or some grapefruit." She bounded off to the fruit basket, which of course came with a bit of everything you could possibly want in a fruit basket, and then was gone into the kitchen, slicing fruit open.

Said Boston: "Merroth, do yourself a favor. Never, ever marry a woman who is fifteen years your junior." Actually, it was more like eighteen years, Merroth would later figure, but Boston liked to trim away the age difference anywhere he could.

Boston rose, groaning, heading towards the shower just as Emma arrived with a plate of sliced oranges and grapefruit. "Here we go! Breakfast!" Boston just mumbled something and Emma laughed, saying as she sat down next to Merroth, "Boston's never awake until after he's had his shower, he says it's his substitute for coffee. Do you like oranges?"

Merroth just glowered. He did like oranges, but wasn't going to give Emma the satisfaction of knowing that, so he took a bite and tried to pretend he hated fruit, only it was a really, really good. Better than back-on-the-island good.

"We've got a long journey ahead of us, Boston wants to take the boat in, it'll take four or five hours to reach the island."

Merroth could have dropped his jaw onto the table. "Island?"

"Mm," said Emma, picking at individual pieces of grapefruit pulp, "'s where we live, Clark Island. You'll like it! It's huge and there's nobody there, except some people who work for us. But mostly it's just a big, empty island."

"Does it have sand?"

Emma laughed. "Of course! It's in the gulf, it has lovely beaches!"

Merroth thought a moment. "Trees?"

"Tons for the climbing."

"Boar?"

A pause, Emma's face momentarily clouding. "I don't think we have boar."

Merroth relaxed. No boar meant no reason he couldn't go off anywhere he wanted. "Vultures?"

The cheeriness returned. "Just seagulls and some songbirds! Or something. Boston knows birds better than I do. If you want, you can try and grab one of the bird books and a pair of binoculars..." There was really no stopping Emma once she got started, so Merroth just listened and tried to imagine how wonderful it would be once he was back on an island, with the ocean breeze and the waves and the sand in his toes.

Plan revised. First get to the island, then ruin their lives.

DISCLAIMER: I do not speak Spanish well enough to write it. All Spanish dialogue present here is the result of cobbled-together Google translation. I apologize in advance.


The boat was beautiful. Giant and white, like a humongous sand-worn shell. It was shady and breezy at the pier, then windy all the way across the ocean. Emma took Merroth up to the front and told him to close his arms and hold his arms out, "like an airplane." Merroth made the connection.

"If you close your eyes like this," said Emma, demonstrating at first, "it feels like you're flying."

It did feel like flying. Wind whipping past his ears, it made Merroth feel for a moment like he was somewhere else, not flying over the ocean, but flying... He couldn't understand where. He opened his eyes after a few moments, dismayed at his inability to figure out the sensation. He only knew that it wasn't enough, this imaginary wind-flying, that there needed to be more.

Merroth left Emma standing at the prow with her arms like an airplane. Boston waved him over to the table under the second-story overhang. There was a stranger standing at the ready, towel on arm. Boston patted the adjacent chair. "C'mere, champ." Distrustful, Merroth sat. To the stranger, Boston said, "An iced tea for my son. Unsweet." With a nod, the man was gone.

Boston had a drink already, something amber-colored in a short glass with ice. He rolled his glass in his hand, the ice clinking. "You like the boat?"

When they had said they were taking a boat to the island, Merroth had imagined the little washed-up dinghy Nerys and Edward John owned, not a giant white shell with three above-deck levels, a crew, bedrooms, tables, and chairs. He only shrugged.

"Fastest and smoothest ride of any yacht built," said Boston, more meaningless words that washed over Merroth like the wind. The iced tea arrived. "Wanna go up to the bridge?"

Merroth did not have an answer to the question, but Boston wasn't waiting for one. He took his drink, handed Merroth the iced tea, and tugged Merroth up insistently. To Emma, Boston yelled over the wind: "Emma! Don't fly off! We're going up to the bridge!" Emma looked back with a smile just long enough to let them know she had gotten the message and Boston herded Merroth up the stairs.

There were two people on the bridge, both uniformed and wearing hats. "Monsieur Clark," said the older, bearded man, his jacket navy and pants white.

"Jean-Pierre," said Boston, deftly nicking the hat from Jean-Pierre's head and dropping it on his own. "I am temporarily relieving you of command." Boston theatrically waved for Jean-Pierre to step aside. Jean-Pierre did so with a raised eyebrow, taking Boston's drink. "And Merroth is going to be my first mate. Claude?"

The other man, in white from head to toe, made a bit of a grumble, but at a sign from Jean-Pierre dropped on his knee and put his hat on Merroth's head. Claude and Jean-Pierre then went and stood to the side. Boston was motioning for Merroth to join him at the wheel.

"This," explained Boston, "is our navigational readout. That's our course, showing local wind and currents, those are weather indications, and those dots are other ships spotted from satellite, and airplanes. Over here is our engine display. RPM, fuel consumption, temperature, diagnostics, fuel level. This is our current speed, and our trip time elapsed and remaining, along with average speed. You can even see the angle of the boat in the water."

Merroth pretended not to care and sipped at his iced tea, which was nice.

Boston put his hand on a big lever. "And here's the throttle, so if I do this..."

There was a sudden shift in the noise of the engine, rising from dim hum to low rumble, and Merroth could feel the boat pull under his feet. The low rumble increased to a steady thrum vibrating up through the floor. Boston grinned. "Here, come on, you get up here."

Merroth had only to venture within reach and then Boston scooped him up and sat him down on the captain's chair in front of the wheel. From here Merroth could see out the windows better, to the horizon of the ocean.

"That little smudge right there," said Boston, pointing, "is Clark Island. Just steer towards it. Hand on the wheel."

Merroth put one hand on the wheel and Boston took one hand off. Sipping at his tea, Merroth turned the wheel experimentally to the right, and watched the little smudge on the horizon move in the opposite direction. He turned the boat back and the smudge returned to the middle.

"There's a trick here," said Boston. "Fastest way between two points?"

"A line," said Merroth automatically, and Boston nodded. Emma had said the boy liked math.

"But in the ocean, that's not true. See, the currents on the readout here, they affect how fast we're going. Current plows into us, it slows us down. The wind, too, is important, moreso in a sailboat, but this is a pretty tall boat, so it matters. It always faster to go with the currents rather than against them."

Merroth didn't even think about it, he just looked at the display and plotted a curve. He was so surprised he almost dropped his tea, but he held on to both the glass and the image of the course in his head, unable to recreate the phenomenon. For a moment, just a moment, he had glimpsed his maths again. He sipped at his tea to cover his inner turmoil, but no one had noticed everything.

"That's it, nice and easy," said Boston, but Merroth wasn't really listening, too intent on making his course predictions a reality and vainly hoping for another mathematic flash.

There were no more flashes, and eventually Jean-Pierre and Claude took over again to dock the boat, but Claude let Merroth keep his hat, even though it was sizes too big. Jean-Pierre complimented Merroth's course when he relieved Merroth from the helm, but Merroth was too angry about the lack of further mathematic flashes to care. Emma turned up on the bridge and Boston laughed at her hair as they made their way down the stairs, Merroth finishing his iced tea. "Poodle in a wind tunnel," was Boston's comment, and Emma punched him lightly in the arm.

The house was up over a small hill from the dock. There was another shell-white boat tied up at the dock, much smaller, no crew, covered with a blue tarp. No dinghies anywhere.

"Captain Paul's coming in," said Boston, and Merroth found the speck of another boat where Boston was looking. "Jean-Pierre! Rendezvous with Paul and take whatever catch you like off him. Charge it to my tab."

Jean-Pierre tipped his hat as they released the moorings and the motor of the yacht began slowly driving it back towards the ocean. The ocean leg of the journey was over. The rest of the way would be on foot.

The island was not huge, a bit smaller than Nerys and Edward John's sanctuary, but it seemed bigger because most of it was open, grassy field. You could see clear across to the ocean on the other side of the island. The path from the docks to the house was just a foot-worn dirt trail, but it crossed a ribbon of pavement that ran around the edge of the island: a giant driving track.

"Do you have a nickname?"

Merroth was beginning to get seriously annoyed with all the confusing questions. Nickname?

"Do you prefer we call you Mer? Or--"

"NO," said Merroth, instantly thinking of the only person who ever called him that: Edward John.

"-- Roth or something?"

Merroth grumbled and shrugged. Whatever.

"Roth?"

"That's a good nickname," appraised Emma, squeezing Merroth's shoulder.

"Roth it is, then," said Boston, and Merroth still could not have cared less. He just wanted to get inside, be by himself, and clear his head. Then, some plan would come to him. He was still intent on getting his misplaced vengeance.

===

To say the mansion was enormous would have been an understatement. It was three stories high, four in the center, with turrets. Windows stretched across the whole of the building. It was about as big as the Liberty Center. In fact, Merroth thought it was a school until they got inside and were greeted by a handful of servants lined along the entry. The interior was plainly a house and not a business.

There were six servants total. Six people for the whole of the house. There were four more caretakers who dealt with the exterior and the gardens, but they did not form part of the main household like the six people standing there.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Boston, "this is Tenebras Merroth, you treat him like the lord of the house, except keep him out of trouble. Got it?"

In unison, "Yes, Mr. Clark," except for one craggy-faced maid who said "Sr. Clark" instead. Boston went down the line in rapid succession. "Arno, the chef. Li, the head gardener. Kendall, manager. John, maintenance. And Rosa and Mirlande, the maids." Rosa was the craggy-faced one, who scowled deeply at Boston. "You treat them fairly and they do what you want. They do not have to clean up after your crap, so I suggest you make it a habit to be good to them. Got it?"

Merroth made a noise that might have indicated an impending bowel movement, but Boston took it as consent.

"Okay, then, so, I'll be in my office, Rosa, you take Merroth and Emma to pick out his bedroom, Arno, Captain Paul's thirty or forty-five minutes out, I had him pick up those white truffles you wanted, the rest of you go do whatever it is I pay you to do. Kendall, you're with me."

"Duizendmaal dank!" exclaimed Arno, throwing his hands into the air with happiness and running off to the kitchens.

"Why the hell did I hire a chef who speaks Dutch?" remarked Boston as he and the business-attired Kendall headed up the main stairwell. Li, John, and Mirlande all disappeared off to places. That left craggy-faced Rosa.

"Mi nombre es Consuela," said Rosa strongly. "El Sr. Clark es un cerdo encabezados por el hombre y que sería bueno no seguir su ejemplo."

"Uh, bien," said Emma, whose grasp of Spanish had not markedly improved in her time with Rosa. Her maid was Mirlande, not Rosa.

"What?" said Merroth.

"It's Spanish," said Emma.

"Why don't you speak English?" It didn't matter to Merroth what kind of English was spoken, he had grown up with both British and American variants, it just mattered that he understand it.

"Porque soy mexicana," said Rosa, grim-faced as ever. She was a scary woman.