Arrival of the Traveler (Waldgrave Book 1) Read online

  Mrs. Ralston looked uncertainly at Lena, who was doing her best to ignore Ava’s comments.

  “You just…Fine. Fine. Howard wants to talk to you.” Ava practically threw the cell phone at Lena, and then went stomping off. “I need a coffee…”

  “Howard?” Lena’s throat had gone dry at some point, and she heard her voice crack.

  “Do you know where Hesper is?” He asked calmly but urgently.

  Lena paused. She considered her options carefully. “Yes.”

  Howard’s voice became somewhat distanced as he turned away from the phone. “She says she knows where she is…” And then he was back. “Is she okay?”

  Lena considered her options again. Mrs. Ralston was watching her quizzically. Somewhere, something was about to hit a fan.

  “Lena?” Howard asked.

  “Uh…Is Griffin in the room with you now?” She asked.

  “No.”

  “Okay. You might want to sit down. Are you sitting down?”

  There was a pause and then, “Yes.”

  “Now, if I tell you this, you have to do me a huge favor. And I mean a really, really big favor.” Lena said.

  “Lena, this is not a time for games! You need to tell me where Hesper is now before—“

  Lena closed her eyes. “Howard! Just, please! All I want is for…Just tell Griffin. I don’t want to be the one to tell him.”

  “Fine.” Howard replied quickly.

  “You’re sure you’re sitting down?”

  “Lena!”

  She licked her lips. “She gave me a note before I got on the plane. I didn’t read it until a minute ago. She ran off with Eric Mason and got married.”

  There was an audible gasp from Mrs. Ralston. Howard went dead silent.

  Lena went on. “I don’t know where she is because she didn’t tell me. She said she’d keep in touch, though.”

  Howard took a deep breath. Lena could imagine the face he was making—his eyes would be all squinty like he had a headache. He might even have one palm pressed to his forehead, if it wasn’t already wrapped around a glass of something alcoholic. “Please tell me you didn’t know about this.”

  Lena thought back to all the things Hesper hadn’t told her. It was almost embarrassing to her to admit that she hadn’t known—Hesper was her closest friend. “No. I didn’t know.”

  “Okay…okay.” Howard took a deep breath. “I’ve got some things to do now, so I’m going to hang up. Try to steer clear of your mom for a while, and I’ll see you back here later. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Lena clicked the phone shut. Mrs. Ralston’s jaw was still slightly ajar.

  “It’s that Serena Mason! Oh, she is a bad influence! Running off like thieves in the night…it’s not proper!”

  Lena shrugged. She looked down the terminal and saw Ava, sitting on a bench and holding a large latte, glaring at her.

  By the time the three women arrived back at Waldgrave, Griffin still hadn’t left. He had been granted a reprieve of circumstances due to his “family situation” so that he could be near Master Daray in what were possibly “his last hours.” Lena didn’t buy it, and Ava just didn’t seem to care. Several other Representatives had apparently shown up to discuss Hesper’s recovery with Griffin—his “Butt-Kisser Brigade,” as Hesper had so aptly termed them. As the one person who should have seen it coming, Lena was almost terrified for her life.

  Meals were particularly uncomfortable. Griffin had usurped the position at the head of the table and conversations were dominated by talk about Daray’s health and Hesper’s wellbeing; both of these topics inevitably led to disturbingly long silences when everyone turned to look at Lena. After dinner on the second day, she decided to make an appeal to Howard. He was in his office on the third floor.

  “Can’t I just eat in my room, like he does?” She begged.

  If Howard had been affected at all by Griffin’s extended stay or entourage, he wasn’t letting it show. “He’s very sick. And if you want to get onto the Council, I strongly suggest you get used to people looking at you. Shying away from a few of Daray’s cronies doesn’t exactly exude confidence.”

  Lena flopped down into a chair. “Well, can’t I just go back to Australia until they all leave? There’s nothing to do here…”

  “I doubt the Council will let you go anywhere since the ordeal with Hesper.” Howard said wryly.

  Lena sighed. It wasn’t fair. There wasn’t anything to do at Waldgrave; she would read, eat, avoid people, and sleep. Griffin wasn’t the distraction he was before, and spoke to her very little because he was so busy with the politics of his situation.

  Shrugging over a stack of papers on his desk with a highlighter, Howard wasn’t compelled. “I know it’s boring, but maybe you’ll make new friends.”

  “I believe that would require that I meet new people, Howard.” Lena replied.

  “Fred Crittenden—he’s a social worker—found some kids and was looking to place them. Well, as I no longer have David, Rosaleen and I figured we might as well. The boy, Pete, got here while you were in Australia, and—“

  “I haven’t seen him around…” Lena said curiously.

  “Oh, he’s on vacation. David used to get two paid weeks a year to do whatever he wanted. He’ll be back next week.”

  “Oh.” Lena said.

  “And we’re expecting two girls. I think the names are Charlotte and Mary. They should also arrive sometime next week. Of course, we’ll all be walking on eggshells for a while just like we did for you. Be careful what you say and try not to walk through too many doors in front of them, use your voice and not your thoughts as much as possible, and whatnot, until they’ve adjusted.”

  So Lena resigned herself to reading and helping Mrs. Ralston around the house. Lena got funny looks from the visiting representatives whenever they saw her doing laundry or vacuuming, and Griffin even expressly told her to stop once, but she didn’t care. She was bored out of her mind.

  The end of Viator kod Venefikus was fascinating. The hero, a Venefikus referred to only as Viator, “the traveler,” organized those of the Venefikus who had not been killed off by disease. It was rumored that he had been a great king before passing through the portal. They were deaf and dumb, because in their homelands they communicated using only thought-speak, and became a troop of roaming gypsies; they performed magic tricks, read peoples’ minds, and foretold the future to earn their living. As time went on, they fractured and integrated with the humans, and most of the original Venefikus abilities were lost in part or whole. The remaining community of human-born Venefikus still communicated using thought-speak, which earned them the name Silenti—“silence”—from the Romans.

  Howard became less and less available as time wore on, and Hesper’s situation was seemingly getting worse and worse. At first people were worried, and then they were angry.

  “Well, I don’t know what will happen to her. It’s up to the Council. They haven’t practiced leniency in these situations in the past.” Mrs. Ralston pulled a sheet of dinner rolls out of the oven and set them on the counter to cool.

  “But she’s Griffin’s sister…I mean, don’t you think…” Lena looked up from the soup she was stirring. Mrs. Ralston sighed.

  “When your mother ran off with Aaron, I thought I’d never see him again. And I didn’t. Marriage is a public affair for women of a certain station in life, and breaking that tradition results in expulsion from the community.” She said simply.

  “If you don’t like it, then you can leave?” Lena said.

  “Exactly.” Mrs. Ralston grabbed a head of lettuce out of the refrigerator and started to hack it into salad. Lena took the soup off the burner and got the dinner plates out of the cabinet; Mrs. Ralston started to arrange rolls and green beans onto the plates.

  “So where are the new kids going to stay?” Lena asked, fetching the soup bowls from the cabinet by the sink.

  Mrs. Ralston didn’t look up. “Well, the barn is still avail
able, but I expect they will stay with me in the room off the side entrance.”

  Lena hadn’t even known there was a room off the side entrance, but suspected that it wasn’t designed for three. “Why don’t they just get their own rooms? It’s not like we have a shortage of space.”

  “Those rooms are for accommodating Council members and their families.” Mrs. Ralston said.

  “But you can’t be comfortable…” Lena insisted.

  “I’m fine, I assure you. The room is quite too big for me already. When Waldgrave was built, Master Daray intended a staff of fifty.” Mrs. Ralston grabbed a plate of vegetables and started chopping them up and tossing them into the salad bowl. When she saw that Lena still looked concerned, she continued. “Human-borns are inherently more gregarious and sympathetic than full Silenti. We prefer company to privacy. It’s one of the reasons I always found David a little…strange.”

  Lena considered this for a moment. “He made the room for fifty?”

  “Of course.”

  Lena had finished spooning soup into the bowls and had distributed the rolls. She checked the timer on the oven; the pork chops wouldn’t be ready for another five minutes. Lena watched Mrs. Ralston as she chopped up a carrot, scooped it into the salad bowl, and then started creating decorative ringlets out of a red onion.

  “Mrs. Ralston, does Howard pay you?” She finally asked.

  Mrs. Ralston paused. “Pay me? For what?”

  “For the stuff you do around here. All the cooking and the laundry and stuff.” Lena said.

  “Well,” Mrs. Ralston raised her eyebrows as she finished decorating the salad and brushed a loose lock of hair out of her face. “The Council funds his expenditures for looking after you, your mother and Master Daray. On top of living expenses I do get a modest allowance, so yes, he does pay me.” Mrs. Ralston looked directly at Lena. “I’m here because I choose to be, so that I can be close to you and Howard. I’ve been looking after Howard since he was born, a few years after I was brought into the Collins’ household. The Council never recognized it as more than a simple found child placement, but they raised me as their daughter. I was fifteen when Aaron came around, and then Howard a little later.” She leaned in toward Lena with an uncharacteristically warm expression. “I was a third parent to them, and they needed one with all the hell they raised. We’re family.”

  “But…Howard is on the Council.” Lena shook her head. “People talk to you like you’re a servant. If you’re like siblings…”

  Mrs. Ralston smiled again, the same warm smile she’d had when talking about Aaron and Howard as boys. “Lena, as I said, human-borns are more social. We don’t isolate ourselves to protect our political images or sensitive hearts. I made a choice a long time ago that I didn’t want to become one of those women who sit at the tables in the dining hall. Howard is on the Council with a mission and a purpose, as are you.” She wiped her hand on her apron before reaching out to touch Lena’s cheek. “You have appearances to keep up, so that people will take you seriously when you say people like me deserve more respect than we have. But you’ll always be welcome to eat in this kitchen when you want.”

  Lena smiled; she had known that Mrs. Ralston had been caring for Howard for a long time, but hadn’t known it had been forever. “What about the kids?” She asked. “The ones you’re taking in?”

  “I’m a little old to be a mother now, and I won’t bother spoiling them like a grandmother would.” Mrs. Ralston sighed. “They’ll live here free of charge and receive a Silenti education. They’ll have my guidance, and each other’s friendship. A family.”

  “And Howard pays them.” Lena said.

  “Yes, but not for helping out around the house. They earn their own keep doing that. Paying them is more about giving them a start in the Silenti world—so they don’t wind up spending a whole lifetime earning their keep.” Mrs. Ralston explained. “The Collins began as household servants, and worked their way up and into the Council. We want to give them that same chance, if they want it.”

  Lena nodded. That was the argument that the Council used to bring in children; they had potential to rise in the Silenti world, and to live a fuller life than they possibly could while living among humans. "Was Ralston your first name? Before you were adopted by the Collinses?"

  Rosaleen had just turned the faucet on, and her hands paused inches from the running water as she looked straight ahead. Her mouth opened slightly and her eyes darted back and forth, but then she looked back at Lena, and her expression fell resolutely back into order. "No. I was a Collins before I got married, and then I was a Ralston. My husband died, a long time ago, but I kept his name."

  Her face fixed in determination, Rosaleen went about the business of washing and drying her hands, and then started to wipe down the kitchen counters. Without a word, Lena picked up a hand towel and started to help, taking Rosaleen's diverted gaze to mean that the conversation was done.

  He died in a riot.

  Lena looked over her shoulder, but didn't stop scrubbing. Howard had stopped in the kitchen doorway, caught between one obligation and another, and overheard their conversation. His gaze was distant.

  There was rioting after Thomas died. Howard went on, unnoticed by Rosaleen as she started washing out the sink basin. Suspicion fell on the human-borns because they had access and they were easy to blame. They didn't want them at the funeral, and someone accused him of murdering Thomas, and then the riot started and someone shot him.

  He raised his hand to wipe his face. She doesn't ever talk about it.

  Lena frowned, turning back to Rosaleen, and Howard started to walk back towards the stairs, sleepwalking through his daydream of memories. Rosaleen looked over and smiled at Lena. She tossed her cleaning rag into the sink, pulled a few loose strands of hair back into the bun on her head, and then crossed her arms and sighed in satisfaction.

  The oven timer went off and Mrs. Ralston pulled the chops out of the oven. They finished making up the dinner plates together, and then Lena ran upstairs to get dressed for dinner. When she came back down, she took her place next to Howard, Ava, Griffin, and the visiting Representatives as Mrs. Ralston served the table.

  It was Lena’s first autumn at Waldgrave, and it was spectacular. In light of Master Daray’s impending death, Griffin hadn’t had time to deal with Hesper’s situation, which had remained blissfully out of the spotlight. She still hadn’t called.

  While Griffin was sitting at Daray’s bedside, or wherever he was on the upper floors, Lena had exhausted her book supply and took to walking the grounds. The row of trees that surrounded the perimeter of the lawn were all yellowish-orange and had begun to shed their leaves. The garden that Griffin had planted only earlier that year had prospered; the perennial flowers were all dead, but looked to have rooted decently enough that they would be back next year. Lena sat down in a drift of leaves next to the garden; it was positively eerie to think that she had sat there so short a while ago. The wind cut through her jacket just as it had that day. Could she keep a secret? That’s what he had asked her.

  She shivered in the wind and watched the leaves blowing around on the dead lawn. Off in the distance, the aspens were turning on the mountainside; the sun was setting a crimson red, and she half expected to see fireflies out, but it was both the wrong season and the wrong region of the country. She didn’t know why she thought fireflies should have been there.

  Lena sighed. The sun was almost down, and if she wasn’t inside soon, Ava would come looking for her—but she wanted just a moment longer. The wind was starting to blow harder and she curled her knees up to her chest. It was so cold, and it was only early September. She had barely gone anywhere since January, and somehow her life felt like it was moving faster than it ever had before, barreling forward and careening out of control.

  Something brushed her shoulder and she jerked around. Daray’s cat was already trotting back up to the house. Her gaze lifted to the upper windows, where a dark figure was watching
over her.

  It’s time to come in, Princess.

  “Why should I? I’m under surveillance twenty-four seven.” But she still got up, brushed the dying leaves off of herself, pulled her coat a little tighter, and followed the cat inside.

  Lena chose to sleep in the next day, much to Griffin’s chagrin. She had become lazier and more anti-social than he had ever believed possible, and it wasn’t befitting of a Daray. But, she reminded herself, she wasn’t a Daray…she was going to become a card-carrying Collins when she was accepted into the Council. But then, Howard wasn’t very happy with her lethargy either—she wasn’t acting like Council Representative material. She couldn’t tell him that her entrance was practically ensured, but she was sure he wouldn’t care anyways because he took the position very seriously. So she tried to clean up her act.

  Pete arrived back from his vacation late one night, and on Howard’s urging, Lena walked down to the barn the next day, where the boy was reorganizing some gardening supplies, to introduce herself. She knocked, and a moment later the door was opened by a squirrelly looking boy with blond hair and freckles. He looked to be about ten, and immediately developed a deer-in-the-headlights gaze when he saw Lena.

  “Pete?” She asked gently.

  “Yeah…”

  “I’m Lena. We haven’t met before, but I’m pleased to meet you now.” She held out her hand, but Pete didn’t take it. Lena looked a little closer and saw that he was still experiencing the shell-shock of a major life transition. She pulled her hand back. “How was your vacation?”

  “Vacation?” He repeated.

  “Where you just came back from…”

  “Oh,” Pete looked wide-eyed back at the house. He fidgeted in his clothes, as if they were too tight or rigid, and Lena realized that he must have been given new ones—as she had—when he had arrived. “Oh, it was okay. I stayed with a really nice family. They told me all about…you know.”