The Order of Edges

A Grandma, A Grandson, A Vampire, A Werewolf

On the sort of foggy autumn day in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania where one could not even see the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania —making any attempt at description futile and pointless— Grandma Kate drove her grandson to school. Having already endured a long drive to the airport in Tucson, a longer flight to Chicago O’Hare, a still longer flight to Munich, not to mention the exhaustion of their flight to Cluj and negotiating a rental car in a language she didn’t speak... finding her way in the fog in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania daunted Grandma Kate not at all.

No matter how many times her grandson asked her if she could see.

“Can you see anything, Grandma Kate?” he asked.

“Yes. The road,” said Grandma Kate.

“What if something jumps out into the road?” he asked.

“I’ll stop,” said Grandma Kate.

“Do you think I’ll be late?” he asked.

“The job starts when we get there,” Grandma Kate reminded him.

“Isn’t this place supposed to be spooky?” he asked.

“Every place is if you go at the right time,” Grandma Kate grunted.

They camped for an evening on the side of the road. Grandma Kate made a fire and they roasted hot dogs over it on sticks. Somewhere deep in the unseen mountains, a bat screeched and they heard something that sounded like the cackling of a witch. Tendrils of fog reached out toward the fire and made as if to grab at them.

“Are you scared, Grandma Kate?” the boy asked in a whisper.

“Eat your hot dog,” Grandma Kate snapped.

The old woman stood, walked a short distance into the darkness and wrote an ancient word in the dirt where the boy could not see. The fog retreated. If there had been a witch it no longer found anything funny, and the bat —if that’s what had made the sound— found other people to bother. The old woman sat back down in the light of the fire and took out supplies to make s’mores.

“What did you do, Grandma Kate?” the boy asked.

“Reminded the world that magic isn’t real,” murmured grandma Kate.

“Did you do voodoo?” the boy asked.

“Eat your s’mores,” said Grandma Kate.

“My dad said you had magic powers,” the boy insisted.

“Well, then he listened about as well as you,” said Grandma Kate.

The next morning they drove several more hours and finally found roads that weren’t on any maps. Grandma Kate gave a rare smile at this discovery. It is very easy to find roads that are on maps, especially roads that one isn’t intending to be on, but very difficult to be sure when finding a road one has not expected to find that one isn’t simply lost. Having finally arrived nowhere, Grandma Kate felt immense relief that her journey had not been in vain. She’d worried her quarry had grown too good at hiding from her, but the boy had flushed them out. He was too tempting a morsel.

Prey always drew out a predator.

They continued driving in amicable silence.

It was nearing night when the fog parted enough that the two could spot a solitary mountain slope in the distance. Taller and steeper than should have been geologically possible, which was another hopeful sign. Grandma Kate dared think their journey almost over, but after a few more hours of driving through the offensively twisty geography of the dirt roads she became reluctantly disabused of this notion. Nowhere turned out to be just as remote as somewhere had been.

The two set camp again, this time near a dark cave. Grandma Kate took out some tinfoil and they roasted some ham and vegetables in a makeshift bowl. The boy announced it was hobo casserole and that he’d made it at scout camp. Grandma Kate allowed that he could call it whatever he wanted as long as he ate it quietly. They washed it down with water from a nearby stream but not before Grandma Kate had boiled it.

“Aren’t we going to run out of gas, grandma Kate?” the boy asked.

“There’s extra in the trunk,” Grandma Kate grunted.

“Boy that cave sure is scary, isn’t it Grandma Kate?” the boy asked looking in the maw of the cave, disappointed he had failed to frighten the old woman.

“Oh? I suppose so. I’ll take care of that before we tuck in,” said Grandma Kate.

Indeed, something in the cave started to move and a shadow approached the light of the fire. The shadow revealed giant horns and terrible long claws. Grandma Kate walked toward it with the slow, stiff-legged stride of someone who was nearing seventy —biologically, anyway— and had been driving all day for the last two days, and made a motion with her hands. The shadow departed back into the cave, the light of the fire seemed to swell and expand, and the low grumbling noise that had accompanied the shadow quieted.

“Was that magic?” the boy asked.

“No,” Grandma Kate grunted, “I just reminded the world of what it is. How many times do I have to tell you that? The only magic is knowing how the world works.”

The next day, it took them four hours of driving, a battle with a startlingly aggressive and bewilderingly intelligent thornbush, and a lot of turning of a broken sign this way and that to finally find their way to the school. At last, when they parked in a dirt patch sectioned off by three broken lengths of rope, which was the school’s parking lot, Grandma Kate quietly hoped that the journey was over and closed her eyes to steal the last moment of rest she might ever have.

“I didn’t know there was a staircase that long in the whole world!” the boy exclaimed.

Grandma Kate opened her eyes, every muscle suddenly knotted and tight.

The flight of stairs leading up to the school was some seven-thousand stairs long.

“There’s not,” Grandma Kate grunted, “not in our world at least.”

“Come on Grandma Kate,” said the boy, for he was eager to learn, “last one to the top is a rotten egg!”

“Pace yourself,” Grandma Kate murmured.

Grandma Kate set a slow but steady pace and shook her head as her grandson raced right by her at a sprint. Fifteen minutes later, she passed him where he lay in a puddle of his own sweat on a landing approximately a thousand steps up. She did not pause and offer sympathy. Lessons were not learned that way. Instead, she continued up the merciless stairwell undeterred. Slow and steady. Three quarters of the way to the top she stopped to wait for her grandson and they both had a small dinner of some egg salad sandwiches on sourdough bread, and a bottle of water saved from the previous night.

“How about we both reserve our strength instead of racing?” Grandma Kate finally suggested.

“Yes ma’am,” grunted the boy.

The school was an old castle that had been built in a forbidding gothic style that was a bit too forbidding and a bit too gothic to have ever actually been from a real historical period. It also looked more like a prison or a dungeon than a place of learning. When they at last reached the top, they were both sweating and even grandma Kate was breathing hard. A doorknocker presented itself to them, a large iron dragon head the size of a hubcap.

The boy ran to it eagerly.

“Grandma,” said the boy, “you are my best friend. Thank you so much for this opportunity to learn! One day I hope to be as wise and Valiant as you. But I was wondering if maybe we could do this one together, seeing as how you’re so powerful and wise and I’ve never—”

Lightning struck everywhere it seemed, illuminating the fierce gargoyles and indifferent angels that constituted the castle’s statuary.

“Bass Marshall Reeves, do not try to butter me up! What have I told you about courage?” hollered Grandma Kate, whose thunderous anger was not lessened at all by the fact that she was also going about the business of drying off as best she could with the handkerchiefs in her purse.

Always be presentable and respectable was another thing that Grandma Kate said.

“You told me that courage only counts when I’m afraid,” Bass sighed.

“Then stop smiling, pay attention and have courage. Now, make use of the knocker. I believe three times is traditional.”

Bass had to use both of his hands to pull the knocker back from the door. It turned out his feet also became necessary, as he had to plant them on either side of the door for leverage. After a moment of straining his back, he let go of the knocker. Bass only had to drop it once, as the knocker bounced twice against the plate. Grandma Kate gave him a mint as reward and he took it happily.

“Thank you, Grandma Kate!” said Bass.

“On guard now. I’ve warned you about what comes next. Keep to your gods. Keep the ways of our world and above all be Valiant,” whispered Grandma Kate.

A shuffling, scraping sound came from behind the great doors and both Bass and Grandma Kate took an involuntary step back when the doors finally opened. A spindly man stood there, with eyes so dark and pitted that were it not for the nose and cheeks his face would have looked like a skull. His long and wispy white beard fluttered outward as a foul wind rose out of the castle as though the entire building had belched. Bass put his hands over his mouth when the wind rushed by him to stop from vomiting but Grandma Kate managed a very tight, very thin smile.

The spindly man wore a long brown robe and aside from having the whitest skin Bass had ever seen his eyes were even paler, as if blind with cataracts, though they seemed to see everything. The man’s arms, little more than bones, held the thick oak doors without wavering. Both Bass and Grandma Kate were too polite to notice the Skeleton Man had no shadow and was standing about a quarter inch off the ground.

“May I help you?” crooned the Skeleton Man

“Yessuh, I came about the position for cook. I spoke with a Miss Ella on the phone. She tol’ me that the position was open to me if I should make myself presentable,” Grandma Kate said in a voice Bass only heard her use rarely and only with people whom she held in deep, almost unfathomable contempt.

Grandma Kate smartly delivered a copy of her resume to the Skeleton Man. Grandma Kate always kept her resume in a protective plastic cover so it wasn’t even a bit wet. The paper was tinged blue, smelled very faintly of lavender and had a distinctive watermark in the corner in the shape of a wolf.

“I am afraid Miss Ella is no longer here. She had other business to attend to. But we have some hungry children who will be very happy to have you,” the Skeleton Man laughed. The laugh seemed to echo throughout the entire school and the storm clouds above. It made Bass shiver and grandma Kate smiled with the corner of her mouth when she noticed, though she also couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

“Thass wonderful news!” said Grandma Kate without missing a beat, again in a strange accent Bass hated to hear come from her mouth, “will you be so kind as to show me to my, uh, accommodations? Also, I’ll need to enroll my grandchil’ with the other chillrun. He’ll want to be in the dormitories with the other chillrun, of course.”

“Oh, the children will be starving to see him as well. Please, do come in,” said the Skeleton Man.

Grandma Kate grabbed Bass’ upper arm and forcibly walked him into the school. She squeezed his arm, and nodded to him. He did not have to hear her warning to take it to heart. He held his backpack tightly and knew he must not let it go. Not when it held his only chance at survival.

There were pictures on the walls of the school, but not the kind you’d usually see in an Elementary School. These were pictures of dark, crude runes and ritual sacrifice in colored pencil. Coal executioners cutting off heads done in red crayon. Watercolor goats died on pastel pentagrams. Bass looked at these pictures and steadied himself. He clutched the amulet about his neck and followed the Skeleton Man and Grandma Kate down the dark corridors.

He knew he couldn’t fail here.

Worse than the thought of death, Grandma Kate might not ever let him hunt demons ever again.

“Grandma Kate told me this is a religious school,” said Bass.

The Skeleton Man shuffled down the corridor, slowly. Grandma Kate had left Bass to find his own way once she had located her rooms. She’d explained her hip was sore and made some fuss about getting a heating pad on it. All in that same accent that sounded so strange on her lips. They’d left her in a room up by the front door and then descended. The castle was darker here. The light from the Skeleton Man’s lantern faint and inadequate.

“It is indeed a school of religion. The oldest religion,” said the Skeleton Man.

“I didn’t know Christianity was the oldest religion!” Bass exclaimed. Grandma Kate had kept his education of gods to purely practical matters. Which ones were useful, which ones were not. And which ones were dangerous. And which ones were very, very dangerous. She’s said very little on the subject of the religion of this school.

“The faith of the dead man on the tree? The faith of the foolish corpse? Hardly! Here we teach children the mysteries of the Dark,” hissed the Skeleton Man.

“What do you mean?” asked Bass.

“The Dark is the oldest religion. The Dark was there before the light. Before All, there was Nothing. One day All will die and Nothing will remain. The Dark will remain after the Light goes. The Dark was the first place that man saw visions. The Dark is the place where the first men were born down in the caves. The Dark is the last place every man must go. The Dark is the beginning and the Dark is the end. It is eternal and in the end it always, always wins,” crooned the Skeleton Man.

“I never thought of it that way before! The Dark as a religion! That’s so interesting!” exclaimed Bass, forcing a smile on his face.

The Skeleton Man stopped, turned, and held the light very near to Bass, obviously disappointed in the reaction. White eyes, corpse eyes, stared at Bass, wanting to know the reason for his cheer. Finding nothing of importance the Skeleton Man sniffed and opened a door.

“Your room,” said the Skeleton Man.

“Thank you,” said Bass.

“Oh, no need to thank me. In fact, you might hate me later!” the Skeleton Man laughed and slammed the door shut. Bass heard a bolt lock slide into place.

Bass walked further into the dark room. He could see absolutely nothing. Walking back to the wall, he fumbled for the light switch, found it and turned it on. When the room was illuminated, Bass saw three dozen children, pale as snow, watching him with all-black eyes. They were all huddled in a semi-circle around the door, all within a few feet of Bass. No one moved. No one even breathed. Bass regarded all of them for a minute, silently.

They kept on not breathing.

“Hey fellas!” said Bass, after a moment. “Which bunk is mine?”

“What does its blood taste like?” whispered one boy.

“I see, there’s one in the back there with no blankets! But not to worry! I’ve brought my own!” said Bass holding up his bag.

“Shall I eat its eyes? Shall I bite into the gristle of its eyes and feel them pop in my mouth? Such sweet liquors are in the eyes! Shall I devour its tongue? Shall I taste its tongue with my own? Shall I cut it into bits and pieces?” said another boy when Bass shoved by him.

“Excuse me,” said Bass, “it’s a bit cramped in here.”

The boys followed him as he moved deeper into the room, keeping a tight circle. When he reached the bed, Bass put his bag on the bed and opened it. The zipper sound was hidden by the sudden hissing of all the boys.

“Its blood! I must know what its blood tastes like! Is it hot like the stones of the mountain before it gives forth fire? Or is it warm like the hated sun through a summer window?” a boy screamed.

“Pennies, I’ve always thought. At least whenever I get a papercut, that’s what I always think. Grandma Kate says it’s because of the iron. She said it’s hemoglobin. Have you ever heard of that? Always makes me think of a little goblin named Hemo,” said Bass.

“And what of its black flesh? I shall tear into its black muscles with my white teeth and find the red secrets inside them? How shall they taste?” said another boy.

“Garlicy, I’d guess. Or maybe like fish oil. Grandma Kate says I’m to take supplements because it’s good for my immune system,” said Bass.

Bass pulled a rattling bottle of garlic supplements from his luggage. The other children backed away at once, several of them hissing.

“I don’t much like them either,” Bass said as he opened the bottle and dry-swallowed a few of the pills. He coughed, breath thick with garlic, and one of the boys tripped over another bunk in an effort to flee, “Grandma Kate said until I’m used to this climate I’m to have them three times a day.”

“Does it fight us? Does it think it can defeat us? Does it dare? Does it dare bring light to the Dark? Does it not know this place belongs to Seeder of Corruption, Patriarch of the Family? Brother and Husband to Ella, the Full Knowing Choice of Evil? Is it a fool?” the boys chanted.

Bass dug farther into his luggage and pulled out several amulets which he hung from his bunk. The boys retreated farther away from him, till they were in the dark corners of the room. Smiling, Bass hung the emblems, admiring the way they twirled. He’d always appreciated the way they sparkled even when there wasn’t any light.

“What is it doing? It burns!” the boys screamed.

“Oh? These are my Traveling Gods! Grandma Kate says it’s best to hedge your bets. Never know who will care enough to show up. So this is the Red and White Ram of Jakuta. This is Vajra the symbol of Indra. This is the drum and mallet of Lei Gong. Oh, and this is a Thunderbird. I used to have a hammer for Thor but I gave it to a British boy in the airport. I’ve always been partial to Lightning gods and they’ve always been partial to me. Would you like to see them up close? It looks like all of them are interested in what’s going on here,” Bass held the amulets in one hand like a lantern

The boys retreated back to the locked door of the room, pounding on it and moaning. Only a single boy remained near Bass, with black hair and eyes which were transforming moment by moment from black to blue. Bass watched the retreat of the other boys with relief and then dread at what Grandma Kate would say if any of them got away. It was his responsibility to remind them of what world they came from. It was his responsibility to Keep the Edges.

“I… I think I’d like to see. But it hurts me to look upon them. Why should it hurt me?” said the last boy, who coughed and then drew a single dusty breath and coughed again as though the breath had been painful.

The amulets sparkled with electricity now but it didn’t hurt Bass. In fact, it seemed to make him stronger. Bass tried not to let the sensation go to his head. Grandma Kate had told him to expect this when they walked between Worlds. Still… he felt like a Lightning God and his laughter boomed as it filled the room. It wasn’t him, though. He had to remember that. It was his World, through him, at war with the invading World.

“Because you sold your soul,” said Bass gently, “but not to worry. I’m here to help you steal it back again!”

Grandma Kate held a hot pad to her hip and sighed, and at least this wasn’t an act. The mattress she lay on was as soft as a sack of gravel and the last two days of travel had caught up with her. Her bones hurt her something fierce, as they always did this time of the month. She’d thought once when she was a girl that maybe with age that the ache would go away, that she’d be less temperamental, or that at least it would hurt less but none of that had proven true.

If anything, it hurt more.

“I cannot help but remark what big ears you have, Miss Reeves,” crooned the Skeleton Man from behind the bed.

She supposed she should have feigned fear, alarm that the Skeleton Man had appeared without warning, but she couldn’t be bothered.

“It’s the hearing aid. They always make the damn things flesh-colored. Of course, when I was young they only made it for white people. Now they match me too. I never understood that. As if it’s better for people to think you have some kind of crazy tumor in your ear than to think you’re deaf,” Grandma Kate grunted.

The Skeleton Man’s face was now visible over the headboard.

“Even so, surely you must admit that you possess eyes of an unusually large size,” said the Skeleton Man.

Grandma Kate had done her very best to pretend she didn’t see the Skeleton Man slink into her room through the secret door behind the painting over her bed, but she found her acting abilities didn’t extend to terror. Besides, at her age there had been so many paintings that were actually secret doors, the only thing she’d felt was agitation and annoyance that no one was even trying anymore. She’d dropped her accent without even realizing it, she was so tired.

“It’s my prescription. Macular degeneration is a terrible thing,” Grandma Kate grumbled.

The Skeleton Man hovered over the bed, in obvious defiance of gravity, and brought his horrible face close to grandma Kate’s.

“And what big teeth you have, Miss Reeves!” said the Skeleton Man.

“Dentures,” Grandma Kate growled, “ate too damn much candy when I was a girl.”

The growling continued although Grandma Kate did her best to suppress it. Oh it hurt now. It hurt so bad, even here. This time of the month was always agony. Ever since that damn thing from another world had bit her and tied her to the moon and made her sensitive to the Edges between the Worlds.

“But what a big mouth you have, surely even a woman your age must want a— lycanthrope?” the Skeleton Man said at the last moment in horror and astonishment.

Grandma Kate reached out with two clawed hands and grabbed the Skeleton Man around his throat.

“What was your first damn clue?” roared Grandma Kate.

The Skeleton Man beat at Grandma Kate’s ever-strengthening hands as his face turned from pale white to purple. It wasn’t that he was choking or needed to breathe. It was that Grandma Kate had imposed her will on this World that choking someone caused them to die and her will was iron and all magical beings hated iron.

“Seeder of Corruption, Grandfather Thomas, Husband and Brother of Ella and Patriarch of the Family of of Fang and Claw, I have come for you! Taste the wrath of Katherine Reeves, Lady of Edges, Warden of Boundaries, and Ever Valiant!”

She lost her grip on him after another minute or so, when the transformation was at its strongest. Remarkably, having your entire body torn apart and reassembled into a wolf-creature felt a lot like having your entire body torn apart and reassembled into a wolf-creature. She howled when the transformation was complete and chased Seeder of Corruption deeper into the castle.

“I will break your name!” she roared. “I will break your name and scatter your ashes into the Below!”

“My Grandma says Krav Maga has the best chokeholds,” said Bass as he threw one of the children to the ground, his voice magnified and still booming. Lightning crackled down his throat and it tasted sweet, like spring rain.

“How does it hurt us?” a boy whispered as Bass picked him up and sent him sailing across the room. The boy stayed down, hurt, like a real boy would be hurt. Yet it wasn’t the throwing that had hurt him, it was the lightning. The lightning and the world it restored.

“Grandma Kate says that when a World is young, that Elder Beings from other Worlds come in to protect it while it finds its name. Grandma Kate says that some of them keep an interest even as that World gets older and will show up to drive away what doesn’t belong. That means the Lightning gods aren’t hurting you, they’re making you well enough to feel how hurt you already are,” said Bass as he struck fistfuls of lightning every which way.

“I love the dark and the dark alone! I am kept safe and removed in its safety and—” the boy would have said more, but for the first time ever Bass managed to throw a bolt of lightning with accuracy. It struck the boy in the heart and sent him to his knees.

“Grandma Kate says that’s because you’re being turned into a demon. She said the Family is abroad and it’s the job of the Valiants to beat them back. She said it is the duty of the Order of Edges to protect the boundaries of our world. And that means getting you out of this mess you got yourselves in,” said Bass.

The boy he’d struck in the heart sat down on the floor and whimpered.

“They made me do such terrible things. I killed my own dog and ate its heart. I slit the throat of my mother and my father. I turned their bodies into puppets to obey my will and tricked all of my bloodline into a fiery hell where they will burn for all eternity. I stared into the darkness at creatures with a billion eyes the size of galaxies. I listened to their dark poetry and my mind expanded to fill the eternity in which they whispered. You cannot hope to beat them. They are the Family and the Family is the Dark. They are eternal. And they will always, finally win.”

Bass put his hands on both sides of the boy’s head and sent electricity blazing through the ears.

“Grandma Kate says fatalism is overeducated rich people nonsense, and you got to get your ass in gear and make the world a better place or no one will!” said Bass.

Lightning flashed everywhere.

As tall as the spiraling tower of the castle had been from the outside, the stairs inside of it were longer still. Grandma Kate was grateful she was a werewolf in moments like this, because there was no way she would have been able to get her hips up this many more steps in one day. She would have been more grateful but the steps kept crumbling underneath her, necessitating she give full concentration to not falling and also keeping the steps ahead of her where they were.

She’d never felt a will as strong as this one, and it was all she could do to keep most of the stairs where they were. Oh, these Worlds hated each other. Like fire and ice. Then, she supposed every World hated the World of the Family.

“You dare? Little girl who was touched by the magic of another World, you think yourself great enough to challenge one of the Family?” the Skeleton Man screamed from several turns ahead.

Grandma Kate howled and kept running.

[A boy, with no reason to hurt anyone, slicing the throats of his mother and father. His brothers and sisters watching, horrified and hurting in ways that will take the rest of their lives to understand.]

A stair crumbled and she almost tripped.

[An old woman, alone and bitter, making poisonous candy on Halloween. She tells herself she’s helping the children, by making them sick. That way they learn not to want too much candy. A few dead children are hardly any price to pay at all for keeping that many healthy. And the children horrified and puking and their school assemblies for the dead children.]

A series of stairs crumbled and Grandma Kate clung to a single step with nothing but her forepaws. The step began to crumble and she yelped as her paws slid backward.

“Do you see now? I have killed a billion worlds. We have spread corruption far and wide. What are you to that?”

[A grandchild-]

Grandma Kate howled again.

(A young girl who was bit by a goddamn werewolf who literally had the ravenous forces of another world flowing through her goddamn veins telling her to kill every damn thing in sight, yet who had never killed any-goddamn-one because she’d taken responsibility for the tragedy that had happened to her that she’d never asked for and made the best of it and done her best to raise a strong son and a good grandchild! So take that you old dusty skeleton! I refuse to give up!)

The step steadied and Grandma Kate pulled herself up, growling. She launched herself up the stairs, faster. Ever faster. Till her snout burned with the exertion of breathing.

“You cannot defeat me. Always heroes crumble! Always!”

[A man who hurts children, thousands, and all the children grow—]

(—up and decide to be better than whatever it was that man did and do the hard thing they should never have been asked to do and decide that life is worth the pain and doing their best by other people because that’s all there is in life and it’s precious! It’s so precious it burns and it feels like pain, but it’s life! It’s life tearing away the rot! So shove it you old pile of bones! I won’t let you hurt anyone else and I’ll keep on believing in people even if they’ve stopped believing in themselves!)

He was there, suddenly, in front of her. All the bits and pieces of him. Grandma Kate seized his neck in her jaws. Whatever it was he had for blood made her want to gag even as a werewolf, but she refused to let go. In fact, she threw them both down the center of the tower.

Into the Below.

(Now Bass! Do it now! Break his name!)

“Let me tell you a story about my mom and dad,” said Bass in a sad voice he had always tried never to show the outside world, “and how they became obsessed with my Grandma Kate’s magic. And how it proved their undoing.”

Bass no longer crackled with lightning, but the other boys still recoiled in fear from him. It was a human fear now. And it was a human silence into which he spoke.

“My father wanted long life and power and was jealous his mother hadn’t passed it on to him. So he went looking for it, even though he should have known better. And because of who his mother was, he knew how to look. That’s how he met my mom. In the long and dangerous journey he had undertaken to find the power of another World, she was the only person he ever met who wanted that power as much as he did. They both loved power so much they thought they loved each other and then they had me.

“There are a lot of things that will take a baby beyond the boundaries. Every world has babies, and every world has monsters hungry for them. And what is a baby really, they thought? People in our world throw babies away all the time. Everywhere in every society, in every World, people throw away children. They don’t do it on purpose, mostly. Except my parents wanted to throw me away on purpose. That’s what gave that act power. Their malice and intent. Enough power to summon what they were looking for. They wanted the same creature that had given my Grandma Kate her power. They found an Edge and they walked into it, with me barely even a day old.

“It gave them what they wanted, and it even let them keep me, because I was the price. You see, my blood would be the final sacrament of their power. All they had to do was make me their first meal and they could keep what it had given them. You know what it feels like when your parents only had you so that they could eat you later? Do you have any idea how messed up that is?

“My Grandma Kate came and stopped them. People who want power can’t ever be as strong as someone who finds it by necessity and accepts responsibility. You won’t risk the power if you wanted it. You’ll hesitate. You won’t risk yourself if you’re the most important thing in the world. Two of them together weren’t half as strong as she was. So she won and… she didn’t kill either of them.

“There’s a World Grandma Kate knows, beyond this World or the World of the Wolf, and she says it’s the cruelest world because it’s a world where when you go there you have to see who you really are. It’s a world all of Truth, where lies are pushed away like flies in a gale. She brought them there and they saw what they were. Saw what their love of power had made them. It didn’t make them all better but it made them stop wanting to eat me. She told them they had to go on and live their lives.

“They wanted power... and she gave it to them so they could try to make up for what they had done. There is a bit of that World in them now, a bit of Truth, and they will both always and forever see who they really are no matter how hard they try to look away.

“My dad is homeless and every time I try to see him he won’t even look at me. He’s too ashamed. My mother is the same except she can’t stop finding ways to hurt herself, trying to punish herself for what she tried to do to me. Except they know what they did is wrong and they know that nothing they can do to themselves will make it right. You know what I want to say to them?”

Bass looked at all the gathered children with tear-filled eyes. They watched him, afraid. More afraid than they had been when he had first entered the room. More afraid than they had been when lightning crackled on his skin.

“I want to tell them that I forgive them. That I love them. I want to tell them there’s nothing they can do to hurt themselves that will make it right. It was wrong and they did it but they can’t hurt themselves and make it right. I want to tell them to find some courage and take responsibility for what they did. I want to tell them they still have to go live their lives and try. That they were given knowledge of what they were so that they could try and be better, not just sit around and wait to die and feel guilty!”

The children flinched and looked everywhere but at Bass.

“Do something good! All of you did this to yourselves, I know that. Grandma Kate says the Family never crosses paths with someone who doesn’t bring it on themselves, but don’t you see what that means? You can choose, too. You can step away and come with me and try to be better. That will destroy the thing that did this to you. That will break his name and his name is all that he is. He’s just the empty space where you failed to do the right thing. And the second any of you chooses to do what’s right, he’ll die. The empty place he lives will be filled up and that will be the end of him. That’s the power you were all born with. That’s real power. And that’s why you’re all so afraid. Because you know what I’m going to ask next, don’t you?”

One boy sobbed, but the rest didn’t say anything at all.

“Think hard. You won’t get the choice again. Which of you will try to do the right thing?” asked Bass.

There were over thirty children in the cramped room.

Only one took Bass’ hand.

All it takes is one.

The castle became an old schoolhouse with a mere seven front steps, which was all it had been all along. The lonely mountain became a modest hill some ten feet higher than its surroundings. The roped off parking lot became asphalt.

Grandfather Thomas, husband and brother of Ella, disappeared.

He went wherever the dark goes when the lights are turned on.

Which is even less than nowhere at all.

Grandma Kate poured the last of the fuel into the car and scowled over the map, trying to determine where the next town was located. The mists had parted and the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania were breathtaking in their beauty. Green in every valley, blue and white in the sky, and a fresh warm breeze running over it all.

“Do you know where are?” asked Bass from the backset.

“Yes,” said Grandma Kate.

“Where?” asked Bass.

“Earth,” said Grandma Kate.

She coughed suddenly and spat some wolf hair to the ground at her feet.

“How old are you?” asked the boy in the backseat next to Bass, who had not shared his name and who had not said much of anything at all since leaving the building.

Grandma Kate considered this question and shrugged in an uncharacteristic manner.

“Not as old as that old fart at the castle, if that’s your question, but old. I’ve lived longer than a human was meant to live. My first love was a man who became famous for an apple falling on his head. The world was just starting to figure out what it was then. There were still gods roaming about everywhere, except they were all afraid of him. He’d been born to give the world its name and they knew when he found it that they must all be sent away. He knew what the world was and he spent his whole life trying to figure out a way to write it down. Between the two of us, we figured out how to keep out the things that didn’t belong here.”

Bass never saw Grandma Kate smile like she did then.

The boy frowned.

“Wasn’t he gay?”

Grandma Kate laughed sweetly and the sound so startled Bass that he jumped.

“Not while I knew him, at least. I think I was the only person to ever get close to him and no one ever saw me. I was invisible back then —no Bass, not literally. Damn boy, how many times do I have to tell you? People just overlooked me back then. We could have been caught in the act and no one would have ever said anything. It was, in that time, unthinkable. But he was always one to think the unthinkable. You would have liked him. At least when I knew him, you would have.”

Grandma Kate rubbed her hips as she crawled back into the driver’s seat.

“What do I do now?” asked the boy.

“Tell him Bass,” said Grandma Kate.

“You take responsibility for yourself and you do your best to be Valiant,” said Bass.

And they drove off into the sunrise.