The Silenced Tale

the fear, cracking it apart piece by piece, pounding it into silky ash.
“The first time I went, I was there for nearly a year, but only a few weeks had passed here. The second time, we were there for well over a month, and it was only eight hours. And yet, time had passed in Hain at the same rate it had here—it had been about two years for them since Forsyth and I left, too. It’s a weird sort of slipstream thing, I think. Time passes at the same rate, unless a Reader is present? I don’t know.”
“It’s something to think about.”
“To be fair, I try not to,” Lucy admits.
“Sure,” Elgar allows. “Okay.”
“Listen, I’ll bring it up with Forsyth, and if he thinks it’s something to be concerned with, he’ll call, okay? Otherwise, I think you’re travel-tired, and worn out, and this hit you harder than you thought it would. I think you’re good.”
“I’m going to back up everything I’ve ever written by emailing it to myself, anyway,” Elgar says.
“If that makes you feel better, then do it.”
“Okay.”
“But I think you’re fine. I think this was a one-off.”
“But . . .” Elgar says, and then hesitates. There’s a corner of clear tape on the window, from when he and Juan had plastered his living room with the concept sketches Flageolet sent over, and he picks at it now with his fingernail. “What if . . . what if it actually isn’t nothing?” Elgar asks again, voice small and doltish in that way that Lucy’s confidence and insight always makes him feel.
“Then something else will happen. And then it will be a pattern. We can decipher a pattern.”
The tiny triangle of tape comes away from the glass, sticking to the pad of his finger. “That’s true. Though, I thought two was ‘a coincidence’ and three was ‘a pattern.’”
Lucy chuckles. “You have the best spymaster in the known world on your side here, Reed. Two’s enough for him to find the pattern. If there is one. There might not be. But if there is, we’ll figure it out. Trust us.”
“I do.”
“Okay, then.”
“Okay.”
They both linger on the phone, listening to each other breathe. It’s cowardly. Elgar’s too afraid of his own fear, of being alone with his admittedly vast imagination, to want to sever the call and, with it, his only connection to someone who understands.
“Elgar. You’re fine,” Lucy says eventually, and her voice is warm, comforting. She’s lost the haughty distance she sometimes has when he’s surprised her. “I promise.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Go get some sleep, all right?”
“All right. Bye.”
“Bye,” she says, and ends the call. Outside, the perpetually gray clouds open up again, and the world is pummeled in earnest by the rain.
Forsyth
Pip comes home smelling of her time after school at the gym. The look on her face and the fact that she did not shower before she came home says clearly that she is bursting to inform me of something. She crooks her finger at me, bidding me follow even as she entreats me verbally to go in the opposite direction.
“Hey, Freckles,” she says as she drops her satchel and coat on the bottom stair in a heap, a practice she knows I find frustratingly slobby. “Pour me a glass? Then come up?”
Both confused and intrigued, I rise from where I was reading the newspaper on the sofa and head into the kitchen to provide Pip with her requested libation. While I’m there, I pour a second glass for myself.
“Bao bei,” I call through the door of our en suite when I have the requested after-work wine in hand. “Why did you not shower at the school?”
“Come in,” Pip says. “I want to have this conversation face-to-face.”
I oblige, and my wife sticks her hand out around our shower curtain for her glass. Amused, I pass it to her and sit on the closed lid of the toilet. The shower wall has a small window in it that looks out over our backyard, and the light of the sunset behind Pip throws an extremely enticing silhouette against the curtain.
“Mmm, shower-wine,” she says. “Way better than shower-coffee.”
“I know it is ‘date night,’ but surely you can’t be this eager, can you?” I chide.
Pip pokes her head around the curtain, her hair a froth of suds, and waggles her eyebrows at me. “I wasn’t before, but you did bring me shower-wine. Wanna climb in?”
“Absolutely.”
Pip quaffs her wine and hands her empty glass to me, a Malbec mustache painting her upper lip. I lean forward to kiss it away, then quaff my own wine. Pip leers at me as I strip off my day-wear—a pair of warm, stretchy yoga pants and a freshly cleaned hoodie.
“Oh, you spent the day commando. Such thoughtful foresight,” Pip comments as I step into the spray. She slides her soapy hands over my shoulders and down my back to grab a double handful of her most favorite part of my physical assets.
“Alis was with her grandparents all day,” I say, grinning at her eagerness. “And I didn’t have to step out to the store, so I thought there was no point in making extra laundry for myself.”
Pip gives my backside a firm squeeze to show me just how much she appreciates my thoughtfulness. I return the favor, and soon things are slippery, and soapy, and lovely.
“What conversation did you want to have face-to-face?” I ask between kisses, and Pip makes a face.
“No, no, I’ll tell you after. Not while we’re naked.”
“Pip,” I say, backing off a little. “Whatever it was, you thought it urgent enough that you chose to come straight home instead of showering at the university.”
“It’ll keep,” Pip promises, pursuing my lips again.
But now I am curious, and curiosity has always been a more potent addiction than desire. “Then why the initial rush?”
“I didn’t want it going around and around in my brain while I was showering there.” Pip steps into me.
I step back again. Pip pouts. “What is it?”
“It will keep,” she insists, and