The Kinlea Keeper Story Society (Msr. Timothy R. Jamison Presiding)

Copyright © 2009 by E. Grace Diehl. All Rights Reserved

Originally Published by Kettlestitch, an imprint of Drollerie Press

Second Edition Published by Woven Weird Press

 

 Prologue

 

i

He had been told that he was very ill. In fact, everybody said so. Sometimes they said so two or three times in a day. It was quite certain to all observers that he would die within the fortnight, and it had been this way since his second birthday. He was now a solid ten years old, and he was not dead yet, but everyone said that it was only a freak of chance that he’d lasted so long. In two weeks, it was certain that he would be gone from the world.

Naturally, nobody wanted to get too attached to the boy. Who would want to start a friendship with someone who would surely die? It was all too depressing for anyone to think about, so nobody did. That is, people would catch glimpses of him when he snuck downstairs to watch his parents’ parties and would never fail to comment on his decided ill health, but then they would move on to a more pleasant conversation about the weather, or current politics, or even the finer points of how to instruct servants to make the perfect pot of tea.

The doctors and specialists who visited also made it quite plain: there was nothing available in all of modern medicine that could improve the boy’s situation. He was too far-gone. He was past hope. So, for the past eight years, everyone had stood back and waited for the big event: the event that would doubtless occur within the fortnight, no matter how many fortnights had passed since the first time that particular comment had been made.

Consequently, Kinlea Waltham woke every morning fully expecting a near-ritual routine of this gloomy rephrase. The maid who cleared his breakfast dishes usually clucked with her tongue and told him that she had younger brothers and sisters who weren’t dying who ate less than he did and that the cook thought it would be a shameful waste except that everyone had to feel sorry for him, what with the fact that he wasn’t long for the world. “Who doesn’t deserve a last meal?” she might comment under her breath, or “can’t say we starved him to death when the time comes.” He knew that at least once every day, his parents would talk about his impending mortality between themselves within earshot, but then his mother would avoid looking at him to the point of running away if he decided to approach her. He knew that if he made eye-contact with his father of a day, the imposing, stoic man would nod stiffly, say as little as possible, and then send immediately for a clergyman. Kinlea knew just as well exactly what the clergyman would say about death and God and salvation, though it had ceased to have much meaning over the years because, while he knew what people had to say on the matter, he never woke in the morning expecting to actually die. It hadn’t happened to date, regardless of the doom-saying, and he could only conclude that he was doomed to a long and tedious life of dying.

His life was so tremendously consistent, in fact, that he couldn’t even conceive of his condition growing worse.

One particularly gloomy morning, Kinlea woke at the usual time to the sound of pounding rain on his window, mixed with the sound of his parents’ voices across the hall discussing the tragedy of their unfortunate son’s ever declining state of health. The occurrence itself was not out of the ordinary, but it was a bit earlier than he might have expected, and his mother’s voice sounded like it was perhaps a little less strained than usual. He listened for a short while, exploring the peculiar counterpoint of voices to rain, and then he pulled himself out of bed to discover that his nurse (who had never told him her name “in order that they shouldn’t become too close”) had laid out clothing for him that he had never seen before. In fact, unlike the rest of his wardrobe, it looked quite new and it looked like it just might be his size. His parents didn’t buy him clothing very often because they didn’t expect him to live much longer to use it, and his father didn’t like to waste money in such a frivolous fashion. Kinlea wasn’t sure what to think about this bizarre event, but it was the first different thing he had seen in his life for a very long time. He dressed himself warily, thinking that his parents must have purchased the clothing for his funeral. It was the only plausible explanation that came readily to mind.

“Ah, ye’ve found the traveling clothes, have you?” said his nurse, popping her head into his room without knocking. Kinlea, who had been tying his shiny new shoes, jumped and turned to meet the eyes of the chubby, grizzled woman.

“Traveling clothing?” he asked, surprised to the point he thought it really might kill him this time. He couldn’t remember ever traveling farther than the dining room in his entire life. “Am I going somewhere?”

“Well, young man, since you’re sure to die within the fortnight, your parents have decided to send you off to visit with family friends in the country. Give you a nice change of pace, and you can die in cleaner air.”

“You mean I’m to go outside of the house?”

“Well, yes,” said the elderly lady, shaking her head. “What a funny boy you are. The Lord knows we couldn’t take the entire house to the country with us, now could we?”

“You’re going too, then?”

“Well, no,” she said. “I’m to take you as far as the next station on the train, and the daughter of the friends’ household is to take you the rest of the way. At any rate, I’ve packed you enough clothing and clean underwear to last you out your last fortnight.”

“Mother and Father aren’t coming?”

“No. They have important business to attend to. They’re sending you with a note and strict instructions to send your body back here for proper rites.”

“Ah,” said Kinlea, looking down at his remarkably shiny shoes. “If I’m to leave the house, should I comb my hair today?”

“As you like,” said the nurse, “But goodness knows your hair never stays neat for longer than twenty seconds.”

It was true. Kinlea had an untamable mane of wavy, red-brown hair that stuck out in every direction no matter how short it was cut. It was currently at a fairly standard boy-length and it looked like he had just walked out of a wind storm.

“I suppose I should try, though,” persisted Kinlea. “First impressions are important, they say.”

“First impressions hardly mean anything if you die shortly thereafter.”

“Well, I’m not dead yet,” snapped Kinlea, who was immediately surprised at his boldness. He’d never said anything nearly so rude for as long as he could remember.

“Well, I never!” said the nurse. “It’s a right good thing you’re going away if you’re going to make a bother of yourself in your last days. Eat your breakfast and don’t forget to wash your face and hands. We’ll be leaving in two hours time.”

Kinlea followed her instructions without reply and mulled over the day’s great events in his head. He hadn’t even finished his toast, and he was already having the most exciting day of his life. He had shiny new shoes that pinched his toes a bit, and in two hours he was to travel outside of the house and meet with new people. Granted, they were new people who would doubtless tell him that he looked terribly ill and would surely die within the fortnight, but they would be new people from a different place, and Kinlea could feel the excitement welling up inside of his normally calm spirit. There was the glimmering of a possibility that at least one day in his life might become an adventure.

***

It wasn’t long before Kinlea realized that he was terrified of trains. He had been stricken with euphoria when he had walked out of his lifelong prison and into the rain, and he had reveled in every drop that touched his skin when the umbrella his nurse carried shifted, but this train thing was completely different. Kinlea had seen other buildings and vehicles outside of his window, but he’d never seen anything so imposing and sinister as the train. It was gigantic, and black, and billowing clouds of evil smoke. He pulled back on his nurse’s hand the moment he saw it and refused to budge.

“What’s wrong with you now, boy?” she asked, a vexed edge creeping into her voice. “Are you going to die here and now before we even make it to Nevensworth Station?”

Kinlea had a very difficult time finding his voice. “Do we have to go into that thing?”

“The train?” asked the nurse, baffled by the child’s behavior. “Well, of course. There’s no other way to get from here to there unless you intend to walk, which I certainly don’t.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it,” the lady said crisply. “But you do have to ride in it. Now, stop dragging your feet or we’ll miss it.”

Kinlea grudgingly did as he was told, and he regretted it immediately upon entering the scary black mass of steel and iron. Every eye in the train’s small compartment was on him, and the initially jovial-seeming conversation (about a misplaced telegram and someone’s pet goat) promptly turned to the usual topic of how ill that strange little boy looked and how he would surely die within the fortnight. Moreover, they were all pinched-faced and unfriendly looking people, and worse, his nurse felt the need to add her penny’s worth of agreement and keep the conversation going for far longer than Kinlea might have liked.

The worst, however, was yet to come. The train jolted into motion with an ear-piercing squeal and the most terrible cacophony of metal on metal, and it clanked up and down every couple of seconds or so. All of Kinlea’s senses were overloaded with terrible things. Nasty sights, ear-tearing sounds, piercingly foreign smells, that ceaseless jolting, and the sour taste of leftover breakfast in his mouth made him, for the first time ever, feel every bit as ill as everyone always told him he was.

He sat in terrified silence next to his composed and visibly unsympathetic nurse and struggled not to lose his breakfast in the presence of strangers. He didn’t like this adventure anymore. He would be better off at home in his dull little room with his dull little shell of a life. Dull was better than terrified and ill.

But, as with all things, it eventually came to an end. The monstrous, noisy metal beast they were riding came to a stop, and Kinlea was able to stumble out of the compartment on his own power, which surprised him even more than it surprised his nurse, who noted that he looked even more like death itself than usual.

The oddly matched pair were the only two to step out of the train onto the platform at Nevensworth station, and Kinlea felt infinitely better to be back on solid ground. His sense of adventure returned in full force when he realized that he’d never been on an empty train platform in the country before, and his curiosity soared as his eye caught the only other person in sight.

The girl was very tall, thin, and fair, with raven black hair that was coiled up neatly under an unassuming brown hat. She had the most amazing blue-violet eyes Kinlea had ever seen. He guessed her at four years his senior, and she had a very mysterious expression on her face as she looked back at him. She looked like she didn’t think he was ill at all, Kinlea thought, and his heart turned somersaults at the notion. She looked like she might actually like him.

“April Norins, I presume?” said the nurse, extending her hand. The fascinating stranger rose with grace and took the older lady’s hand in both of hers.

“Why, yes,” she said, and Kinlea was enthralled by her voice. It was light, but it was deeper and richer than he had expected it to be coming out of such a delicate-looking face. “April Norins the seventh, actually. And this must be Kinlea.”

Everything about her gave the impression of confidence, and Kinlea couldn’t believe that she’d just said more than a sentence without mentioning how ill he looked. He was so stunned that he completely failed to notice that she was extending her hand in a friendly gesture he’d never before seen directed at him. He was frozen where he stood when she laughed a light and silvery laugh and reached down to grasp his hand and bring it forward without his help. The most amazing person in the world was actually touching him.

“Boy!” exclaimed the nurse, jamming her elbow into Kinlea’s side and bringing him back into himself with an uncomfortable abruptness. “Don’t be rude to a lady showing you such a charity. Daydreams are for people who have more than a fortnight of days left to dream in.”

“I…” stammered Kinlea, staring at his captive hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Norins.” His voice caught in his throat, and he couldn’t manage another word.

“Well, that’ll have to do. I must catch the train in the other direction, and I leave the boy in your care. Heaven help you if he dies before the day is out.” The nurse turned without waiting for a response and bustled off toward the platform opposite the one on which they were standing.

Kinlea felt like he might panic. He was being left in a very unfamiliar situation with a person who was completely different from everyone he’d ever met, and his fortnight had suddenly been decreased to a day in his nurse’s estimation. He considered running after her and going home, but before he could move a muscle, the tall girl crouched to meet his eyes and brushed an unruly strand of hair off his forehead.

“So, Kinlea, did you know that your eyes aren’t brown?”

Kinlea had no idea how to respond to such a question. He was loath to call the girl a liar, but he was quite sure his eyes were brown. At least they had been when he’d looked in the mirror to comb his hair several hours before. “No,” he managed. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, then,” she said, suddenly standing and giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. “I suppose I already knew you didn’t know that. I shouldn’t ask such silly questions.” Then she pulled him toward the stairs that led down to the street in front of the station. “It’s high time you got some exercise. They’ve kept you in that house for far too long, and it’s shameful that it’s taken us this long to convince them to send you to us.” Then she stopped again and looked back down at her new companion. “It’s a shame, really. You were born to have such a strong energy, and I can’t see any of that in you right now.”

Kinlea felt very uncomfortable under the girl’s gaze, and he turned his focus to the street that rose in front of them. It was gravel, unlike the streets he had walked in the city earlier that morning, and he could only see two houses. Both of them were in the distance. Between him and the houses were two trees, an endless expanse of grass, and an occasional sheep. He’d never seen more grass than his neighbor’s small lawn, and he’d certainly never seen anything like a sheep before. One of them bleated loudly, and he jumped in surprise.

“Mother will fix you.” April said with confidence. “I’m sure that if anyone can, she can. I don’t see a death of illness written on your forehead, so somebody has to be able to fix you.”

Kinlea didn’t have words in him to respond. He had no idea what she was talking about, and it was all he could do to follow her when she started walking down the empty street. His legs hadn’t seen so much use in years, if ever, and he felt like they were going to collapse from under him after only a few short minutes. He was angry with himself for showing weakness to this girl who hadn’t told him he was going to die before reaching maturity. He was ashamed. He braced himself to walk farther, but he barely managed a mile before his legs finally buckled under his weight in spite of his determination. He felt a pain unlike anything he’d ever felt, and he was dizzy.

“Kinlea?” He heard April’s voice, but it was very far away. His ears were ringing, and his head felt fuzzy. He decided that he really must be dying. “Kinlea, try not to breathe so fast. Put your head between your knees. Good. Breathe. Now, look at me.”

Kinlea raised his heavy head with a great effort and looked into the girl’s blue-violet eyes. A wave of something he didn’t know how to feel swept over him when he saw the certainty and reassurance in her expression, and the dizziness was replaced by a great weight of weariness. He found that he didn’t want to look away from the girl’s eyes, but before he knew it, he was sound asleep.

ii

Much to Kinlea’s surprise, he woke. To his greater surprise, he was in an unfamiliar room with fresh, clean air pouring in through at least three windows to mingle with streaks of unfiltered sunlight. The bed was enormous and soft, and so were the covers. He knew immediately that he must be in heaven.

“No, silly, you aren’t dead,” said a now familiar voice, and he turned to see his young hostess in his doorway. She had removed her hat and was wearing an embroidered apron over her dress. “This is my home. Mother will be home momentarily, and Father and Alexi, my older brother, will be here somewhat later, so rest up while you can. The enchantment took a lot out of you when you let yourself think you were dying.”

“I‘m sorry, the what?” Kinlea asked, bewildered and confused, but happier than usual to be alive.

“It’s very powerful magic,” said April, playfully bringing a finger to her lips and winking at her younger companion. “I probably shouldn’t be talking about it, really. Don’t worry, though, you’re going to be stronger than it in time, and it’ll flee in dread.”

“You really think I have time, then?” demanded Kinlea.

The girl gave him a very strange look, and then she smiled at him. “Do you know what? I can’t tell. I can’t tell what your time is, and that’s never happened before. You must be a very powerful keeper to have so uncertain a fate.”

“Keeper?”

“Yes,” she said, offering no explanation. “Keeper.”

“Are you confusing that poor boy?” asked another voice from the hallway. Moments later, a dark-haired woman who looked very much like April, only older and with rather rosier skin, stepped through the doorway to join the conversation. “He’s never been out of his home before. You can hardly expect him to understand that sort of thing without clarification.”

“Hello, Mother!” said April, embracing the newcomer and kissing her lightly on the cheek. “Kinlea, this is my mother.”

“The one who’s going to fix me?”

“Well, I don’t have more than one mother.”

“I’m sorry,” said Kinlea. “I suppose I can ask silly questions, too.”

“April, stop teasing the boy.” The lady turned to Kinlea and placed a gentle hand on his forehead, pushing back his wild hair in the same motion. “My name is Analie, and my daughter likes the sound of her own voice.” Mrs. Norins turned to the younger girl with a look of frank concern that Kinlea didn’t like to see. “It’s very strong, isn’t it? They’ve even taken his eyes away.”

“I noticed that,” admitted April. “But you can fix him, can’t you?”

Mrs. Norins pursed her lips. “I’m not sure. It depends on how strong the boy is.”

“I’m not strong at all,” interjected Kinlea, pulling the covers over his head and lying back down. “I can’t even walk without collapsing.”

“He’s unbelievably strong,” said April, obviously not having listened to Kinlea’s declaration. “I can’t even see his time. Where are Father and Alexi?”

“Come now, you already know.”

“Only when I bother to think about it.”

Mrs. Norins turned to the lump in the covers and said, “They’re fetching dinner. We’ll be eating outside this evening. The weather’s been lovely, and you need to be spending more time in sunlight and fresh air.”

“Me?” asked Kinlea, coming out from under the covers.

“Yes, you,” said Analie. “Now, would you like me to fix your eyes before then, or would you rather wait until we’ve explained everything?”

“He wants them fixed now,” said April, before Kinlea could open his mouth to respond.

“That’s terribly impolite, April,” the girl’s mother chided, turning to glare at her. “Let him say these things for himself.”

“Did you really know that?” asked Kinlea curiously, “Or were you trying to make the decision for me?”

“It was the decision you’d already made, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then I really did know.”

“How?”

“I’m a seer guardian.”

“I told you not to confuse the boy,” scolded Analie, turning his face toward hers with her hands. “Now, Kinlea, this is going to hurt quite a bit. Be brave.”

Kinlea wanted very much to be brave, but that was very hard to do when he’d been told that it was going to be painful. He clutched his covers to his chest and tried to focus on April’s mother’s eyes. They were very different from April’s. They were much darker, and they appeared to be a sort of off-plum color. Kinlea found that odd. He wondered what color his own eyes were supposed to be, and then he had little room left in his mind for wondering. A searing pain was tearing through his head, and he would have screamed if the pain hadn’t caught in his throat and choked the sound. He tried to think about something else, but the pain wouldn’t let him. He couldn’t even see, but he could hear a ringing in his ears, and that hurt, too. Finally, he managed a thought. It was a very little thought, and it only lasted a moment, but he decided that his eyes were worth it. The pain promptly stopped.

Kinlea blinked as his eyes came back into focus, and shook his head out of Mrs. Norins’ hands. The pain was completely gone. He had expected some of it to last, but he actually felt better than usual. He blinked. “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he mumbled, staring at the lady’s serious face. “But were those markings there before?” April’s mother’s cheeks were streaked with thick lines of blue and silver, and several of the lines traveled as low as the sides of her neck. They were delicately curved and very precisely symmetrical, but they didn’t look like they were the result of paint or makeup.

“They’re beautiful!” exclaimed April, jumping up and down and clapping with glee. Kinlea turned to her and was amazed to see that her face was marked as well. Two streaks of gold arched over her cheekbones and down toward her chin, forming what looked like the separated halves of a heart-shape. “And no, Kinlea, these aren’t tattoos. We were born with them.”

“You shouldn’t answer the questions he hasn’t asked before answering the questions that he has asked,” said April’s mother, but her scolding didn’t sound as sharp as it had previously. She smiled at Kinlea as he turned his attention back to her, and she pushed his hair back behind his ears with her hands, which Kinlea noticed were marked in much the same way as her face. “Yes, they were there before, but you couldn’t see them without your eyes. April’s right. They’re beautiful.”

“April was talking about my eyes?”

“Yes, she was.”

“Would you like to see them?” asked April, fishing around in one of her pockets. She produced a small, round, silver mirror and handed it to the boy.

Kinlea, in a manner of speaking, couldn’t believe his eyes. The ones he saw in the mirror not only were not brown, but they weren’t any one color at all. They molted and shifted, swirling through all the colors of an early evening sunset. It was like looking at a reflection of the sky. To Kinlea’s slight relief, his pupils were the same as always.

Looking in the mirror, he also noticed that his nurse had been right. His hair hadn’t stayed combed, and it was flying in every direction. He tried to smooth it with one of his hands, but he failed.

“I haven’t any markings on my face, then?”

“If you can’t see them now, they aren’t there,” said Mrs. Norins.

“So, does that mean I’m not magical like you?” Kinlea had never asked so many questions in one day before. Granted, he’d never been faced with much of anything worth questioning.

“Magical might not be the right word for you, but April seems quite sure that you’re going to be powerful. Keepers manipulate magic, but don’t have any innate ‘magic’ of their own. My power is drawn entirely from me. You’ll most likely be able to draw your power from everywhere outside of you and do what you like with it. You see, magic does things to people who have it. It makes April see things, and it makes it so that I can reach into things and return them to their natural state. I can’t change what my magic can do and neither can April. The difference between us is that magic tells both April and me what to do, and you were born to tell magic what to do.”

“Pardon?”

“Keepers mediate between the magical and non-magical worlds by telling magic what to do. It’s fairly important,” said Mrs. Norins, standing and brushing off her skirt. “I suppose this is a little much for one day. April, what time will your father and brother be home?”

“Thirty-six minutes from… now.”

“Well, then, I’ll go stir the fire in the oven. If you’ll excuse me, Kinlea, I imagine that if you have any more questions, my daughter is likely to answer them before they reach your tongue.” With a swish of her long blue skirt, she was gone from the room.

“No, not everyone outside of your parents’ household is like this,” said April, true to her mother’s word. “Most people in the world can’t safely exist in both the magical and non-magical realms. I don’t think any human being can live entirely in the magical realm, either. Yes, magic is a place as well as a talent. It’s a wonder you even know the word magic. They’ve honestly never taught you to read?”

“No. I was always going to die in a fortnight or so, so nobody thought it worth the time and effort.”

“That’s complete rubbish, you know,” scoffed April. “There’s never a good reason to keep somebody ignorant. And yes, I’ll teach you to read since you thought to ask so nicely.”

“Can you hear everyone’s thoughts this well?” In self-defense, the thought flew out of his mouth the exact moment he thought it.

April paused. “No. To be perfectly honest, I started hearing and feeling you while you were still on the train. Either you have a very powerful and very loud mind, or I’m more sensitive to you than to anyone else I’ve ever met. I can’t feel or hear Alexi or Father at all, even if I can see pieces of their futures and pasts, and everyone else is somewhere between you and them. Maybe that’s why you were so vulnerable to enchantment in the first place. All of your power and thought is right on the surface for anyone to tamper with. And yes, Kinlea, you’re still enchanted even if your eyes have been fixed.”

“How am I enchanted, then?”

“It’s the way people see you and treat you, mostly. People’s perceptions of you are continually being tampered with. It’s like somebody is forcing you to wear a very weak and sick-looking costume. It takes some pretty weak-minded and unkind people to think a sick person isn’t worth their time and love, though. It’s shameful that people are too afraid of getting hurt to reach out to someone for however long they’re here.”

“I don’t think it’s their fault though,” objected Kinlea. “If I’m enchanted, it affects the way people think, right?”

“Kinlea, you’ve lived your life in a very limited environment. You’ve obviously never met much of anybody strong-minded and kindhearted. I’ve met people who would have taken you into their arms and cried having seen what most people are forced to see in you. Then they’d have taken you away from that house and tried to make what they thought were your last days as wonderful as possible.”

“So I’m not really going to die, then?”

“Of course you are. Everyone dies. I don’t really expect you to die before reaching a mature age, though.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Kinlea. Life and death were more complicated than he had originally thought. “So…”

“There’s a quick way to get to the magical side from here, and I’ll show you tomorrow sometime after you’ve settled.”

Kinlea was a little taken aback that April expected him to be settled by the very next day, what with so many new things to take in. He was half of a mind to think all of today a peculiar dream, except he was certain he wasn’t creative enough to dream a day so unlike what he’d grown to expect.

April laughed. “Oh, Kinlea, this isn’t the half of it. Nothing should be like what you’ve grown to expect. In life, when you’re actually living it, there are new and unexpected things every day. You grow, and you learn, and there are always surprises. They aren’t always what you might call good surprises, but those often make you stronger, and they certainly keep things interesting. I don’t expect you’ll have a single boring day for the rest of your life.”

Kinlea grinned in wonder at the thought. If his life henceforth was to be no less interesting than today, and he was to have a long life of it at that, he was sure he was going to enjoy it very much.

April threw her arms around his shoulders and hugged him tightly. “Yes,” she agreed, and she laughed again when she noticed how surprised he was to be the object of such a simple display of affection. “I think you will.”