Wow, thanks for the review, Lamarquise! There's more for you, and anyone else potentially bothered by this, after the chapter.

Chapter Six

If you wait long enough beside the river you will see the bodies of your enemies float by.

- Ying Chu

Jane's coffee preparation was disrupted by the mechanical, jangling invasion of the telephone. The unexpected noise hung in the deadened air like a shanked penalty kick, sailing nauseatingly over the crossbar in slow motion, and then both Peter and Annie dove for the white receiver. Annie, who well knew her older brother's ticklish spots, poked him swiftly between the ribs. Peter yelped, and his slight second of contorted spasming was enough to hand Annie the easy victory. She triumphantly lifted the receiver.
"Hello?"
It was Uncle Simon and Uncle Barney, calling from someplace called Asamankese, where (as they told an awed Annie) it was almost nightfall. She related this stunning revelation to Peter, who shrugged and looked maturely superior and knowledgeable. Jane heard something about "a salmon keys" and came running from the kitchen, her now-forgotten coffee growing cold upon the stove. Annie was then ignominiously deprived of the hard- fought-for receiver as her mother snatched it heedlessly away.
"Simon? Barney? Oh thank god." And she floated down upon the couch and put her forehead in one hand.
There were several minutes spent in comparing and exchanging information, and then several more of I-wish-you-were-heres. "What are they telling you there? . . . Really? No, that's not what we've heard. Everything here's a mess. . . . Any problems getting back home? No? . . . Oh, that'll make me feel better, good idea. Dad was planning on visiting around then, too. The fourth to the twenty-fifth I think. Hold on, let me get some paper and pencil. . . . Six o'clock? On the 3rd? Ok, we'll be there. . . . Travel safely, I'm sure everything will be fine. . . . Yes, yes, I love you boys, too.") Afterwards, Jane handed the receiver to Bran, who spoke quietly to his brothers-in-law for several minutes. He then handed it over to Will and silently mouthed Barney and They're coming. Will took the phone with an eager smile and talked almost cheerfully for some time. Then the smile faded.
"He does? Sure, put him on. Hello, Simon, how are – ? . . . Well, I'm lecturing at a college nearby next semester, so I decided to come visit Jane and Bran for a while. . . . Yes, three years is a long time. And sudden visits are my forte. . . . They have grown a lot, but I would know them anywhere. Peter especially. . . . A week, maybe two. The house I'm renting won't be ready till then. . . . Jane's fine, just fine."
Jane was perched on an armrest, listening. She scowled. "Really!" she muttered. "The protective older brother routine becomes somewhat overdone once the fragile younger sister passes thirty."
Will was still talking. "I'm not planning on anything at the moment, Simon. . . . I promise. . . . Sure, sure, all right." He grimaced and offered the phone delicately to Jane with two fingers, as if it threatened to bite him. "He wants to speak to you again," he stage-whispered.
Jane grabbed at the phone, giving Will an apologetic and frustrated look. "Will, I'm sorry he's an ass sometimes, but you know he's just upset you're here and he's not – "
Will grinned. "So he could throw me out, yes." He seemed indifferently amused at the prospect.
Jane sighed, glared at Will, and put the phone to her rear so that she could play peacemaker and placate her older brother's wounded jealousy.
Other phone calls piled up throughout the day, an incorporeal lump of communication that squatted invisible upon their living room floor. There was Grumpy Drew, as well as several of Jane's colleagues, who were all nerves and stress shouting hysterically from the receiver. Will himself sat hunkered in the corner with his cell phone, hand cupped around the mouthpiece and shouting, as one long0distance call after another came in from the widespread Stanton clan.
It was early afternoon when Peter answered the kitchen telephone, and John Rowlands' faintly distant "Hullo? Anyone there?" greeted him. The farmhand's familiar, gravely voice brought sudden tears to the boy's eyes. He wiped them hastily away, before anyone else could see, and asked about Brynne in a falsely cheerful manner. She had had puppies two months ago, Rowlands said. Five of them, three girls and two boys. Davie and Gwennie had already picked out theirs, a pretty little brindle-colored thing they had named Rhiannon. They wanted him to tell Peter they said hello, and wondered when he would be coming back for a visit. Rowlands' easy conversation brought back all the homesickness that Peter felt he should have outgrown years before. The world was mad, and all he wanted was to return to that safe, warm farmhouse, with the sheep bleating in the background and his friends calling him from outside the window.
There were visitors, too, neighbors who brought commiseration and gossip. Julie McKinley, a young brunette lawyer from across the street, brought the news that Wraithfell's Christmas celebration was being moved up to tomorrow night. "Kind of an affirmation of life and peace type of thing," she told Bran, grinning. "And a way for us all to get together and remind each other that we're still human. I don't know 'bout you, but I've been feeling distinctly statistical all morning."
And Mrs. Reynolds spent the afternoon with them. She was a widow who lived down the street in a grey house covered by wild roses. She had befriended Jane immediately upon their arrival, showing the grateful younger woman how best to prepare her own rose bushes to meet the horrible, icy onslaught that was a Wraithfell winter. The trick, she had explained, was to cut the plants down brutally and then pack dead leaves around the remains to keep in the warmth.
Perched upon their couch, the normally strong woman now looked old and angry and weary. Her iron-grey hair escaped in wisps fro the long braid hanging down her back, and her rough gardener's hands clutched at her hemp bag.
"I tell you," she said harshly to Jane, "I never thought I'd live to see the day. Of course, we had bomb drills and all that back when I was a girl, you know. Hiding under desks and other such nonsense. But still, I never thought . . . I always told myself I'd be dead and buried long before anything like this happened."
Jane reached out o pat the elderly woman's arm.
"Dearest Jane," Mrs. Reynolds smiled, and covered the younger woman's hand with her own. "I feel sorriest for you, and for your children. But who would've thought this could ever happen? There hasn't been this much sorrow and disbelief in Wraithfell since those murders at the school all those years ago."
Peter and Annie had been laying on the floor, flipping between news channels, studying the different photographic tits that each station gave to the identical footage of the distantly burning city. (CNN had a bright, orange-red hue, while MSNBC was more of a bluish-grey. Peter thought the contrasting colors made the events all the more distant, as if they were actually occurring in different dimensions from his own. Anything that had an appearance so easily changed and manipulated couldn't truly be real.) He was no longer overwhelmed by what he saw. The images of the dead had vanished, vetoed by some tenderhearted CEO who felt that some forms of reality were simply inappropriate for network news. Now, aside from the Distant Rubble Footage, it was mostly maps and statistics and probabilities, all accompanied by instant "experts" who tried to predict where and when and if Muscharch would strike next. Peter and Annie had been listening to the news with one ear, while they other tuned into the conversation between their mother and her visitor. When Mrs. Reynolds mentioned "murders" Annie, always eager for gruesome stories, turned her head abruptly and asked, "What murders, Mrs. Reynolds?"
"Annie," Jane admonished softly. "I don't think this is the best time . . ."
"But Mom . . ."
"Oh, I don't mind talking about them, m'dear." Mrs. Reynolds tossed her head and smiled brilliantly, if waveringly, at Annie. "Besides, I always enjoyed a good horror blood fest myself when I was a girl. Takes your mind off your real troubles, I always said. And that's what we really need now, isn't it? I always used to read murder mysteries by flashlight under my bedcovers once my parents were asleep. They didn't approve, of course. Such reading wasn't proper for young ladies. But then again, if your parents approve of everything you do in life, I say you haven't really lived." She let out a shaky laugh and shot Jane an abashed, apologetic look.
"But the murders. These would be up at the Thornhart School . . .say, about thirty years ago. Maybe sometime around '72 or '74. Long before you arrive here. I'm guessing you strangers didn't know that the Barry mansion used to be one of those fancy prep schools for boys?"
"I heard something about it once," Peter said, rolling onto his back and propping himself up on his elbows. "Some kid at school has a dad who went there. Seems to think it makes him better than everyone else."
"Well, Thornhart was a very grand place. I remember how it was when I was a little girl, with all those limousines and beautiful parents driving into town at the end of summer to drop off their precious little ones. For days they'd swarm Wraithfell, and then all of a sudden vanish, like colorful migrating butterflies, and there would be another quiet winter ahead of us all.
"The murders changed all that, naturally. The first boy had his skull crushed in, or so we heard. He was found floating in the river down in the valley. He had gone right over the waterfall in the middle of the night, straight through the middle of town, and no one had seen a thing. Two days later, there was another boy in the water, this one strangled. And a week after that, a third, who had had his throat slit."
"Ugh," Peter said, scrunching his nose up.
"What happened next?" Annie breathed.
Mrs. Reynolds leaned forward. With her long grey hair, green eyes, and blood-chilling voice, Peter thought she looked very witchy. It was a delightful effect. "Well, they never could find nary a clue o' who-dun- it," she said in her best story-time voice. "And so all the lovely parents came and whisked their boys away, and the school closed, and Wraithfell has been quiet ever since."
"I never heard that story," Jane said, frowning.
"Well," Mrs. Reynolds said, suddenly sitting back and sounding eminently practical. "No one liked to talk about it much, I guess on account of they're never finding the guilty party. The police always suspected, you see, that it was one of the students, some kind of boyhood revenge scheme gone awry. And the beautiful parents wanted no scandal to smear the bright aspirations of their future little senators and businessmen. They had the sons of some pretty important people studying there. Maybe even a few foreign princelings, I heard once or twice. Bottom-line, the school shushed the story, and few, or no, parents, complained."
"Wicked," Annie said, and turned back to the television.

While Mrs. Reynolds was busy hypnotizing the Davies children, Will Stanton and Bran Davies were tearing through the guestroom in search of an address book. Will hadn't heard yet from Paul (who was in New York on tour) and he suspected that his dreamy older brother had lost his phone number once again. Will decided he would rather call himself than wait for his brother's head to come down from the clouds and realize that something had gone terribly wrong with the world. But he didn't have the number in his mobile, and that blasted address book was missing yet again. Bran, hearing Will's curses from downstairs, had prudently volunteered his assistance.
As Will pulled his bag out from under the bed, his thoughts were in a raging disorder. This was going to be difficult. He didn't really have a plan for what he was about to do, and he suspected that Bran might be mulish and suspicious. Will knew exactly where the address book was, hidden away in the small pocket of his brown backpack. Still, he made a show of helplessly fumbling through the bag, and feigned an expression of disbelief when he felt the cool smoothness of the stone beneath his fingers.
"Hey, Bran!" he cried, straightening up. "Remember this?" And he casually tossed the pebble through the air towards his best friend, the man to whom he was just about to lie shamelessly.
The blue-green stone flashed through the sunlight, and Bran reached out one pale hand to catch it with ease. He held it in his palm for a second, staring, and then his sudden smile blazed across his face.
"My, my," he said, pleased. "I didn't know you had kept this little thing all these years. Jane still has hers, you know." He had a silly smile on his face, the same that Will had first noticed when they were fourteen and Jane Drew had hesitantly asked the strange, white-haired boy to play something for her on that pretty harp of his.
"Really?" Will replied, trying his best to sound as if this was something he didn't already know.
"Why did you bring it with you?"
Will reached out an open hand, and Bran placed the stone back in it. He hefted it thoughtfully and sat down on the narrow, guest-bedroom mattress. It wouldn't do to say that the stone was something he carried with him always. Not that he had thought he would ever have a use for it, of course, but its mere presence comforted him.
Bran was leaning against the wardrobe, watching and listening in that silent, cat-like way he had. Will was no longer sure he knew how to interpret Bran's quietness. It had been many years since he had been the Welsh boy who was the only person ever that Will could tell everything to. If now was like it had used to be, they would be in this together. If now was like it had used to be, things would be . . . different. Will wondered how it was that Jane, human Jane, always knew what the man was thinking.
"I was reading an article by one of the Heidelberg anthology professors. Kind of a professional courtesy thing, you know? It's his house I'm renting while he goes abroad on some excavating trip in Patagonia. Anyway, he written a lot about some Welsh digs he did, and his article described some stones that sounded a lot like this one. So I figured I'd bring it over and have him look at it, see if it's the same thing he was talking about. If so, it's probably worth a lot of money."
"What were the stones for?" Bran asked. He tossed his white head and looked at his friend with curiosity.
"Oh, just the usual spiritual stuff, you know. One color of stone would symbolize land, another water, another fire, another air, and so on. The blue-green ones, like this, were supposed to be water. They were used mostly for ritual decoration. That's the weird thing about them, this article said. The Celts apparently used the quite often, they were very common. But they've found far fewer than they would have supposed."
"Interesting. So you think Jenny's stone may be one of these elusive Welsh artifacts?"
"Perhaps. That's what I'm hoping Dr. Elroy will tell me."
Will could see the instant the idea formed in Bran's head, as well as the cautioning uncertainty that immediately followed. He saw the man fighting with what he wanted to do, and what he knew he probably shouldn't do. Still, boyish curiosity and a sense of possibility won out over prudence, and Bran's golden eyes lit up. "Hey, let me go get Jenny's stone, I know just where it is. She keeps it in her oaken box. If these things really are magical – "
"I never said that."
"Well, if they are, I want to know. Would this Elroy guy look at ours, too, you think?"
Will did his best to appear surprised and obliging. He should be happy this was going so well. He had expected that he would have to wheedle Bran into giving him the stone, and here the man was practically shoving it at him of his own free will. He should be grateful, but he still felt like a rat.
"Oh, sure, if that's what you want me to do, Bran. I'm positive he won't mind. Like I said, it might be worth a lot of money."
Bran waved a hand dismissively. "I don't care about money, Will. You know me better than that." He grinned crookedly. "Anyway, you know I'm fascinated by everything Celt."
"Yes, I know," Will murmured.
"Besides, we could all do with some healthy excitement. Make us remember that we're still living, like Julie said, that there's still new things for us to discover." Bran blushed somewhat as Will raised his eyebrows at the uncharacteristically sentimental words. "Don't laugh like that, Will. You know what I mean. Besides, I'd like to read that article, if you could tell me where to find it."
Will stammered. "Um, I don't recall the citation off the top of my head. But I'll let you know once I get settled."
"All right. Let me go tell Jane. She'd go spare otherwise." Bran quickly left the room.
Will stood, paced the room swiftly a few times, sat down again, and buried his head in his hands. He had to remember that this was all for the best, and absolutely necessary. It didn't matter that he had just manipulated his best friend into giving him one of Jane's most cherished objects, and that neither would probably ever see the keepsake again. Perhaps he should have waited for nightfall and stolen the stone while everyone was asleep. There would've been more complications, but he would've felt better about it. Mere burglary couldn't compare to the betrayal of a friend's trust.
He was still sitting there when Bran returned, much sooner than Will would've expected. He snapped his head up, panicking, and plastered a cheerfully inane smile on his face.
"Jane's talking to Madeleine downstairs. The poor old girl seems to be pretty upset, so I didn't want to interrupt. I'll tell her later. Here it is." And he offered the blue-green stone to Will in the palm of his hand.
"Thanks, Bran," Will said, holding his hand out for his friend to dump the pebble in. As the smoothness touched his skin he felt its warmth, the resonance of the Lost Land that responded to the man now holding it. He swiftly closed his fingers, doing his best to ignore the beckoning tingle. He smiled falsely at Bran (who couldn't tell that the smile was false) and placed both stones carefully in a leather pouch. He turned and his it away in his backpack, whispering the words of concealment under his breath as he did so. He let his fingers accidentally brush against a leather cover. "And look! Here's my address book."

End of Chapter Six

I guess I should use this space to proclaim, now and forever, that I have absolutely NO pretensions concerning science. I have been a little lazy researching this aspect of the story (well, no research has been done, actually, unless you count watching Dr. Strangelove late night on TCM), and I simply picked a particular apocalypse that I thought may work. Two of my great fears in life are nuclear war and air-born hemorraghic fever (read The Hot Zone, scariest book in the world), but I didn't think that placing my hero and heroine upon their white steeds and sending them off to fight a microbe would work very well.

Anyway, I picked up The Sum of All Fears to see what it was about (I deliberately avoided the movie. I'm not too fond of Ben Affleck if Matt Damon isn't by his side, and I'm still getting over the nuclear war scene in Terminator II, where Sarah Connor has that nightmare about the play ground and all that stuff). I made it to about page thirty, or wherever it is that Clancy has the braless "stupid btch" reporter tear off her blood-soaked blouse hysterically, forgetting that there's nothing underneath. I couldn't read anymore after that. I'm not a raging feminist or anything (I'll always love Dumas' books and movies like Fight Club and Master and Commander), but there's a line I have that can't be crossed, and that scene crossed it. And then I skimmed the book and in about fifteen minutes found at least three different scenes where Ryan's wife bemoaned the smallness of her breasts. Please. So I don't think I'm going to be making it through that book (I read Tim O'Brien's The Nuclear Age instead. And while it wasn't very informative, it was pretty amazing and psycho and awesome all around). But I'll get the Sum of All Fears movie and see how that works instead : ). Sorry for the feminist rant, but that book really pissed me off, and I had to let off some steam somewhere. Unfortunately, this was the only forum open to me at the moment. Most of my friends know by know to plug their ears and turn away when I start getting into books. Bottom line, THANKS for such a great review, I really did appreciated it! I hope you keep reading. : ).