LITMIR.BIZ

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go yet,” he said quickly. She looked at him. “I…there’s no one else I can talk to. I need to touch base. If you don’t mind.”

      “I said call me. I meant it.” She flushed a little.

      He sighed. “I did try, actually, middle of last night, to see if I could feel anything. Problem is, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing, or controlling. Maybe I do need a Jedi Master.”

      “Not me, Young Ned. I can give you an essay, though. Want me to email it?”

      “That’d be good.” She took out her notebook and he gave her his hotmail address, and added his new cell number.

      “Reminds me,” she said. “You asked about Celts, where they were around here?”

      “And of course you found out. Google is your friend?”

      “Google is my midnight lover.”

      “I’m not sure I’m ready to hear that, actually.”

      She laughed. “They were all over the area. Which figured. There’s one place I’ve seen that we can walk to if you want. Above the city.”

      The waiter came by and they paid for their drinks.

      “Might as well,” Ned said. “Can’t tomorrow, we’re going to Arles.”

      She nodded. “Day after? Thursday? Meet after school, say, outside Cézanne’s studio? Can you find it? We have to go that way.”

      “I’ll find it. Where are we going?”

      “It’s called Entremont. Where the Celts were based before the Romans built this city.”

      “Okay. I’ll be outside that studio at five. I’ll call you tomorrow, when we get back from Arles.”

      “Cool.” She got up, stuffed the notepad in her pack. They walked out together. On the street he turned to her.

      “Thanks, Kate.”

      She shrugged. “Down, boy. You may not like the essay.”

      “Now who’s joking?”

      She made a face. “Okay. You’re welcome. Call me.”

      She gave him a little flip-wave with one hand, then turned and walked along the cobblestones. He watched her go.

      Inside the café, the man in the grey leather jacket, two tables over from where they’d been, puts down his newspaper. There is no need to hide his face any more.

      He might have learned something here, he is thinking.

      A thread, a way into the labyrinth. This is a possibility, no more than that, but it is that. When you were in urgent need and time was very short and your enemy had most of the weapons—at this point—you used tools like these two children, and prayed to your gods.

      In one way it is obvious; in another, the girl is entirely right: there are too many choices here. And from where he is—outside the fires—he has no easy way to narrow them down.

      There are still too many places, that hasn’t changed, but he’s decided something, sitting here—and these two are at the heart of it, despite what he said to them yesterday.

      The boy, from the start. From before the baptistry, since he’s being truthful—and he always is, with himself.

      He isn’t certain about the girl. He’d waited and watched them from a distance yesterday, after leaving the cloister. Saw them walk here. Made an assumption they’d be back. If he’d been wrong, if they had met elsewhere, not after school, or not at all, he wouldn’t have been unduly disturbed. Few things affect him that much any more. When he is in the world again, when he returns, his is an entirely focused existence.

      He is only ever alive for one thing. Well, two, really.

      At the same time, he wasn’t surprised when they did show up here. Nor by what he heard the girl say, from behind the screening pages of Le Monde. They have no business going where they are going two days from now, but he might.

      He might have many lives’ worth of business there. Or not. He might lose this time, before it even begins. It has happened. It is unfair, an unbalanced aspect of the combat, but he has long since moved beyond thinking that way. What is fairness, in this dance?

      His sitting here is, in the end, just a feeble reaching out for signs—from two children who have nothing to do with the tale. At the same time, he has learned (he’s had a long time to learn) that little is truly coincidence. Things fall into patterns. You can miss patterns, or break them, but they are there. He’d acted upon that yesterday, and now.

      He finds a few coins, drops them on the table, rises to go.

       “Why didn’t I know you were here?”

      He looks up. His way out is blocked. He is actually startled. The sensation is truly strange, a lost feeling remembered. For no easy reason he suddenly has an image of his first time here, walking through the forest from the landing place, invited but uncertain. Afraid, so far from home. Then coming out of the woods, the lit fires.

      He sits down again. He gestures. The boy is standing between the table and the door. He sits gingerly opposite, edge of chair, as if ready to bolt. Not a bad instinct, all things considered.

      The newspaper lies on the table between them, folded back. He’d been reading the forecast. Wind, clear skies. There will be a full moon Thursday. He’d known that, of course.

      The boy has spoken in English. The man says, gravely, in the same language, “You have surprised me again. Brave of you to come back. I take it you sent the girl away?”

      Ned Marriner shrugs. He has dark brown hair and light blue eyes, a lean build, medium height, wiry rather than strong. Barely old enough to shave. His face is pale; he will be dealing with tension and fear. Fair enough.

      Welcome to my world, the man thinks, but doesn’t say. He doesn’t feel welcoming.

      “No, she just went. I don’t send her places. I didn’t know anything till I was outside. And besides, I’m the one feeling…whatever this is. If you’re dangerous, there’s no reason for her to be here.”

      “Dangerous?” He smiles at that. “You have no idea. I said I wouldn’t kill you, but there are others who might view your presence differently.”

      “I know I have no idea. But what does ‘my presence’ mean? My presence where?” He stops, to control himself. His voice has risen. “And why didn’t I know you were here until I got outside? Yesterday I…”

      That last he decides to answer.

      “I was careless. I was screening myself from you, after yesterday in the cloister, but I thought you’d gone and so I let it down.”

      “I had gone. I don’t even know why I checked inside. I was halfway across the market square.”

      He considers that. “Then you are stronger than you knew.”

      “I don’t know anything,” the boy says again. His voice is lower now, intense. There was someone like this, long ago. A vague sense tugs at him. But there are too many years between. He has been here so many times.

      Ned Marriner leans back, folding his arms defensively across his chest. “I have no idea who you are, or what happened to me yesterday or today, if you heard us talking about that.”

      He nods. The mountain.

      “So what is this about?” the boy demands. He really shouldn’t be using that tone. “You said we were an accident, had no role to play, but you followed, or waited for us.”

      He is clever, it seems. “Followed yesterday, waited just now. I took a chance you’d come back.”

      “But why?”

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