The Children(48)

“She’s not crying about that,” Ennis barked.

Guinevere was gratified, though it wasn’t strictly true. “There’s a lady in the woods,” she said. “She kissed Ennis on the lips! She knew his name!”

Llewellyn’s expression seized, then emptied. “Did she, now.” Blowing out slowly, he cut a look at the house. He did it the way he always did, like a bantamweight fighter sizing up a beast.

“We’d better go talk to your mother.”



* * *




This was unprecedented. The three of them walking together to the third floor, Llewellyn knocking at the door of the writing room. Waiting for a count of ten. Knocking again.

Edith’s voice, aggrieved: “What?”

“We’re coming in,” Llewellyn said, opening the door. But they didn’t. They clustered there in the entrance.

Edith’s expression, venomous as she turned, became uncertain when she saw the children. “Oh. Did something happen?”

“Yes, Edith, something did.” Llewellyn put a hand on Ennis’s shoulder. He shrugged it off. “One of your foot soldiers is wandering the woods, frightening our children.”

Her brow furrowed. “One of my what?”

“Readers,” Llewellyn said succinctly.

“She kissed Ennis on the mouth!” Guinevere said angrily.

“Shut up,” he muttered. His face was flushed, chin trembling.

Edith was sitting very straight. “Readers,” she repeated.

“First of many, I’m sure. And what can we do?” Llewellyn sounded tired. “Get a dog? Arm the children? We don’t have the money to fence the whole place.”

“We do, actually.” Edith stood and moved to the window, fingers pressed to her mouth. “I can’t believe it. A reader found me? I honestly can’t believe it. How far do you think they came from?” Her face was solemn as she turned, her eyes bright. “I’ve got to call Jonathan.”

Jonathan was her editor. No one in the family had met him yet, but she said his name a dozen times a day. Like a schoolgirl and her first boyfriend, Llewellyn said.

Now he looked faintly stunned. “Fucking hell, Edie. This isn’t opening night, it’s a privacy violation. Your children’s privacy. You asked for this, it’s here. Drop the ingenue act and tell them.”

Guinevere was hugging herself. She noticed and let go. “Tell us what?”

Edith’s gaze spidered between Guinevere and Ennis. Nodding slowly, she said, “Yeah. No, you’re right.” Her voice took on an aspartame tang. “That must’ve been really uncomfortable, En. I’m so sorry it happened.”

Ennis rolled his eyes and spoke tightly. “Whatever. Just, why?”

“Why did she . . . know your name? Yeah. Okay. I should—I want to show you something. Something incredible.”

She crossed to her desk and pulled on one of the little gold hands. From its drawer she took a book. Wordlessly she passed the book over the threshold to her son. Guinevere pressed up alongside him to see it.

Printed over its top in a carnival arch of gold lettering: the ninth city. At the bottom, leveled and smaller, edith sharpe. In between was a beautiful drawing of a tree. Its trunk was fantastically furrowed, its roots thick and wild. Hanging among its leaves were keys of all kinds, in shades of silver and copper and gold.

On either side of the tree was a child. In the foreground, a boy wearing a green windbreaker and a determined expression, blond hair over his brow and feet planted on crooked roots. In the background a girl in wide-legged jeans and a rugby shirt, looking straight toward the viewer. Hair cut in a schoolgirl bob, one hand braced on the trunk.

Ennis still had that green windbreaker. Guinevere had grown out of the jeans, but she wore the rugby shirt all the time. It was a hand-me-down. These children were them. Their clothes, figures, faces. The artist had captured the interior cast of Ennis’s expression and managed to inject a sense of mischief into her own. Finally it reached her brain, why even their poses were familiar. The illustration was based on a Polaroid Llewellyn took.

Guinevere looked at him, leaning against the wall in the hallway, head down and arms crossed. She looked back at Edith, who was staring at her fixedly, biting a nail.

“Why do they look like us?” She said it too softly, and nobody heard.

“Why.” Ennis said it louder. He stabbed a finger at the boy’s face, then the girl’s. “Why?”

Book Guinevere’s hair was better than hers, she noted. Book Ennis’s skin was clearer. This was the first time she would think of them this way. Book Guinevere, Book Ennis. Those wonderful fictional children who would live out their shadow lives alongside the real Sharpe siblings. Or maybe they were the shadows, she and Ennis. She didn’t know the extent, yet, of her mother’s theft. The knowledge was coming, though. It made a pricking in her thumbs.

“It’s a story.” Edith spoke in a weird placatory singsong. “About a brother and sister who find their way into another world. They’re brave and funny and smart, and they have amazing adventures there. And I . . .” She faltered. “Because I care for you and admire you and find you really interesting, I—”

“Used us.” Ennis’s words were two cold jabs.

Edith pursed her lips. When she spoke again the sugary tone was gone, the false patience. “I borrowed certain things to make fictional characters based on you.” She spread her hands, tried a smile. “Who else? You’re the only kids I know.”