The real Chapter Four

Mary Malone heard the young man enter the house, and as soon as he the door closed, she felt his puzzlement. This in turn, puzzled her, for usually, in fact every time for the last three year, he had come in on midsummer's night sulky and worn. He had never cried, no, he never cried, but the deep sadness, the inner sadness, came to the surface on midsummer.

But today was different.

From the living room she heard him walk into the kitchen, start to make himself toast, stop, walk in circles. He muttered thing under his breath, and for a moment Marty thought he had been threatening to do, or Lyra had not shown up and he had waited for hours, and still could not feel her presence.

But no, that wasn't it either.

The former physicist took out the I Ching from a desk drawer and smiled. This would calm her nerves.

As she sunk into the trance she felt a tugging at the back of her mind. "Remember this… " It said. "Remember…" But she couldn't remember, and her frustration broke the abstraction.

Trying again… "Something about angels…find the memory…"

There it was! But the mystical cloud that seemed to wash over her was swept into air.

"Way back…think…the machine…dust…angels…"

Dust and Angels?

So much for the I Ching calming her nerves.

But a cup of tea might.

Will was still in the kitchen, and, from what Mary could gather, still puzzled.

"What's wrong?" She asked him, but she was really just thinking out loud. Her own disturbance weighed most heavily on her mind.

"Nothing." And she knew he was lying, and he knew that she knew, and so she waited, and he submitted.

"When you were a physicist, " he asked after a few moments, " did you or your colleges have any multi-terricular (Multi = many/much, terra = earth) theories? "

"No, well, I believe there was one, why?"

"What was his name?"

This was obviously a question to avoid asking the true question, so she waited, and again he told her…

But before he could start, she, against her better judgement, jumped in,

"Will, if this is about inter-world travel, sorry. And I hate to say this, but deal with it, Ok? "

Maybe it was her own spite that made her say these words, maybe she was simply stressed, but she regretted them as soon as she said them.

And even more so when she met Will's gaze.

Will stared at her, as if somehow it would erase what had been said. But his bubble had been broken. All the sadness that he had hidden over the years came together to give the boy the look that he had now, a kind of look that expressed sorrow, but was even beyond that to the point of true regret, as if he was looking back at his life and regretting the things he had done.

But in a moment it faded, and was taken over by an expression of annoyance that didn't quite fit the situation. In a terse voice he snapped," Well, if you don't want to know…"

"Oh, Will, I'm sorry, just… forget what I said, Ok? "

But Will couldn't forget, even though the patch had been sewn on to his imaginary bubble. So even as he told the story of the world's curtain dropping, her words rang in his ears,

"…Get over it, ok?"

And even as Mary listened to Will tell the story of the world's curtain dropping, she kept thinking about how exactly wrong her words had been as they echoed through her memory.

"…Get over it, Ok?"

And as Will listened to her tell the story of the I Ching, he still thought,

"How could she jump to conclusions like that? I can't believe…"

And as Mary told the story of the I Ching, she still thought,

" How could I jump to conclusions like that? I can't believe? "

In Will's closet, the upper right shard of the knife glowed blue, levitated, and fell, just as the tip had done.

(Authors Note- Thank you Ax and Ceres Wunderkind for your reviews. And the rest of you, of course!)