I don't own Doyle. I don't own the Secret Saturdays. I don't own Van Rook. (You knew that's who that was, right?)
I own Fae, Corbin and Zander and the rest of the household, Dr. Perez, the members of the Mulo clan, and Vadoma and Jacob (though those two only appear in the course of Van Rook's discussions).
Another chapter with some of those Romani terms that may or may not be used accurately. I'd appreciate assistance or verification, if anybody else knows a suitable source.
Stray
"And where is this Jonathon now?" Corbin asked.
"I don't...I don't know," Van Rook replied, his mind only half on the question, only vaguely aware of Corbin's suspicion. He shifted his gaze from the knife that Fae held, to the child in the bed, and back again. "I had not seen them in years, though we'd kept contact for a time. I'd heard they were heading for the mountains some while back for some kind of...some kind of specialized training."
He hesitated, then chose not to elaborate. Fae snorted, and he glanced up at her; from her expression, he realized that he might not divert her so easily. Later, he mouthed, shaking his head at her. She lifted one eyebrow, but did not press the issue.
"Jonathon is devoted to his family; he would never put them in danger. And the man is a superior fighter. He has few enough enemies that could try him; I would not have thought that any would dare harm his family. But now I must wonder." Van Rook sighed. "Look, you. I have seen such things as a single glimpse would give most people nightmares. I face such things on a daily basis. But seeing the boy alone, without Jonathon's protection.... I cannot begin to imagine how he had been separated, but it unsettles me." He gave another wry smile. "Perhaps I am only being paranoid; Powers know I've made a career of it."
"Perhaps not," the chovihano muttered.
Corbin and Van Rook both rose halfway out of their seats.
"You have something?" Corbin asked.
"You know what is wrong?" Van Rook asked at the same time.
They glared at each other.
"Give it a rest, will you?" Zander growled, startling the two men out of their hostility. "Both of you." He turned to the chovihano. "Do you have a theory?"
The chovihano replied, "I have been tracing the pollution in this child—Doyle, was it?" Van Rook nodded. "In Doyle's soul—his aura—to its source. Very little was from them like those villagers." The chovihano took a deep breath. "The boy reacted when you began speaking of enemies. And when you mentioned the separation—I felt a twitch, a surge in that taint. I think that something did happen, something that was not...innocent. And I believe this child may know what happened."
"How the boy—Doyle—was separated from his family," Corbin began. He cleared his throat and tried again. "This would help in treating him?"
"I cannot guarantee it, but if the boy does remember how he was separated, and if we determined that cause—" The chovihano shrugged. "I believe your Dr. Perez would understand that knowing the cause of an illness is more useful in the healing than merely treating the symptoms. Even when neither cause nor symptom is of the physical sort."
Dr. Perez inclined his head in agreement.
"So what do we need?" Corbin asked. "The police? A detective? A—" Fae and Van Rook gave him odd looks.
"No, I would need to know what the child knows," the chovihano replied. "I would need permission to put him in a trance...you might say, hypnotize him."
"Permission?" the servant repeated. "Your Rom Baro authorized—"
The chovihano shook his head sharply. "I do not mean the Rom Baro. Ordinarily, I would need the subject's permission for this. If I do not, even with good intention, I risk introducing more taint."
"And of course, since he's a child—" Zander began.
The chovihano smiled. "Age is not a concern. I have performed this on children half his age and younger without problem. But not in his state." He nodded towards Doyle's near-catatonic body. "He is ill, he is feverish; he may be delirious. In this, it reverses that 'mind over matter' difficulty; his mental health would need to be well enough for him to accept this type of spiritual healing. Even if I could rouse him enough to agree, he may not understand what he is agreeing to. But without that permission—it would corrupt every spell I might cast from then on."
A crash! sent everyone diving for the floor. Van Rook looked up to see Corbin lift his chair, and leaped back to his feet to stop the man from flinging it back against the wall.
The warrior grabbed the chair away from Corbin, then helped the mercenary wrestle him outside of the room.
Fae followed them out. "What is wrong with you? " she hissed. "Have you forgotten that was a sick room? Since when do you throw tantrums, anyway? Or did you think that maybe that commotion would make things better? Would scare the child out of his shock?"
"What good are you people?" Corbin snarled at the warrior, ignoring Fae. "You come here, saying you can help the boy, you raise my hopes with talk of this treatment, only now your shaman says he can't do it because he can't get the child's permission? Why bring it up at all? What the hell good are you?"
"If you had bothered to listen—" Van Rook hissed into his ear, and immediately dodged a flailing arm. "If you would listen, I'm sure the chovihano would have explained. He can do it if someone else will speak for the boy, give that permission on Doyle's behalf."
Corbin stopped flailing. "What? Speak...on his behalf?" He twisted to face Van Rook. "How would you know?"
"My wife is Romani," Van Rook replied. Fae twitched at the remark; he caught her gaze, then glanced again at the knife she had taken. "This vitsa, this clan, is not like her people, but some of their ways are the same."
Van Rook and the warrior dragged Corbin to his feet and they went back into the room. "Is he at peace again?" the chovihano asked. Corbin mumbled a reply and sat down, and the chovihano confirmed that, yes, he could perform this hypnosis if one of them could speak for the child.
"Exactly what would happen if someone gave that permission?" Zander asked. "Someone who maybe shouldn't have? This taint...."
"Would affect whoever spoke for the child," the warrior replied. "Which is why the chovihano does not do this without that permission. But so long as that person is not the healer, it would not affect the healing."
"Then how come you haven't told us before?" Zander asked. "You've been treating him for a week; if you knew you had this option—" He frowned in thought, and glanced at Van Rook, then back at the chovihano. "Or did you need to know about his parents, first?"
"No, lad," the chovihano replied. "I had known of this option the whole time; truth, it could have been the most effective way of learning about his parents. But given the boy's condition, it was not to be considered except as a last resort...until now."
"Why?" Zander asked. "Any of us would've spoken for him. Taint or not. Why couldn't—"
"Because not one of us has that right," Fae replied.
The warrior nodded. "Perhaps if he had been in your household for years, if he saw you as family, as his vitsa. But no...." He followed the chovihano's gaze to Van Rook.
"You, puyuria Van Rook, you have sworn an oath to your gods, have you not?" the chovihano said. "That oath has bound you to the boy's fate. I can see it in your soul."
Van Rook nodded. "I...named only a single entity in that oath, but yes." He stared for a moment at the knife in Fae's hands, then tore his gaze away with an anguished cry. "The child must come first," he whispered, his voice nearly a sob. He took a deep breath and nodded to the chovihano. "Do it. Whatever you think you need. If there are consequences...." He looked at the knife again. "I will deal with them as I must."
—
Doyle had responded to the hypnosis better than they had any reason to hope, but none of them could have expected the answers he'd given.
"I should stop being surprised by what they will to do," Van Rook said.
"You know these grey demons, then?" the chovihano asked the mercenary. He took a sip of the tea Corbin had given them, and tried to settle his nerves. What the boy had described at the beginning was beyond anything he'd experienced in the worst of his visions. The chovihano could not imagine such a monster as the one that the boy had remembered for them.
And then the boy told them about the second attack, after his mother had found him.
If anything good had come of the session, is was that the boy rested properly now, no longer in a catatonic state. Perez had been pleased at how quickly he'd recovered from the blood loss, and impressed at how well the infection had healed on its own; as well that he was impressed, for without any knowledge of his medical history, he still saw little choice but to let that infection continue to heal on its own.
"Grey demons. An apt name for them." Van Rook snorted. "Some of these others, I don't know. Maybe I've met them, maybe I haven't. They blend so well together, I wonder at times if they breed these people to look alike. But this woman who lived—" His face twisted in pain. "She is one of those responsible for slaughtering my family...my Vadoma's family."
The chovihano followed Van Rook's gaze to the knife in Fae's hands. "She gave you that, didn't she?" he asked. "Your wife's vitsa gave you that blade, when they welcomed you into the family." Van Rook gave the chovihano a questioning glance, and the other man shrugged. "It is a rare enough custom for any clan; most cultures believe that the giving of a blade is a poor omen, but there are some few clans who still practice it as the sharing of the hunt."
"They did not give much of a welcome," Van Rook replied, "but then, in-laws tend to be that way. Yes, they gave me that blade, and Vadoma wore its twin."
Fae frowned at the remark, but she did not yet have time to pursue it.
"That is hardly surprising," the warrior remarked. "It is rare enough in some clans for a man to wed a gadje, but a woman...." He shook his head. "I am astonished that they welcomed their own daughter back to the clan, much less accepted you into it."
"I did not have another family, to take her away from her own," Van Rook said with a smile. "And my mentor had...words with them, when I had first begun to court her."
"Ah," the warrior replied, with a glance back into the sickroom.
"Some of these memories trouble me," the chovihano said. "There is one stain, associated with the parents' death, or at least he believes it is related."
"One that troubles you more than knowing they were murdered?" Van Rook asked. "More than knowing that he was tortured, and that they were murdered before his eyes?"
The chovihano nodded. "This one is blocked."
Van Rook and the warrior gasped.
"How do you mean, blocked?" Fae asked. "Blocked, how? That he blocked the memory? Though if he didn't block out seeing his parents'—"
"Not that kind of block," Van Rook replied.
"Not that could stop the chovihano from seeing it," the warrior added.
The chovihano shook his head. "I believe this one was deliberate. Someone or something with greater power than I has blocked this particular memory from my sight." He sighed. "I can break through to see it; the block was not made to be permanent, only to delay one like myself."
"If it will help the child—" Van Rook began.
The chovihano cut him off with a gesture. "I will not risk it, not even with your permission, puyuria. Not until the child has recovered further, at least." He shrugged one shoulder. "He will need more rest before I investigate the rest of the taint, anyhow. Perhaps he will have recovered enough to speak for himself. And before then—" He rose to his feet and summoned the warrior. "I will need to speak to the Rom Baro and the council with what I have learned. Then we shall see where this leads."
After the chovihano and the warrior left, Fae turned to Van Rook. "This woman you are seeking...." She handed the knife back to him. "She wore a knife like this one. Like enough to be its twin."
"Vadoma?"
Fae shook her head. "I did not hear her name, or the name of the man that guarded her. I only know that they seemed fearful, as though they were pursued by the demons of the deepest levels of hell." She looked at the floor. "They were so very fearful, and in such poor shape from the stress, that it is a miracle that she did not lose the baby long before they ever met Benton."
Van Rook blinked a few times.
His thoughts tumbled to a halt.
His mind finally latched onto a single word.
"Baby?!" He stared at Fae.
She nodded. "Benton said she seemed only a few months pregnant when they sheltered with him, but that it was difficult to say under the circumstances. When they left only two months later, her health had improved so much, that he thought she might have been further along than he had first guessed."
"Where—where did they go? Is she all right? Did the baby make it? This man she was with...who is he?" Each question followed in rapid succession; not even a breath passed between them.
Fae shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir, that's really all I know. Benton is the one that sheltered them. If he were here, he could give you more useful answers. Though it's perhaps as well that he isn't here; he can't afford to get in trouble with the law again."
"How do you mean?"
Fae smiled wryly. "Benton is one of the sweetest, gentlest men you could ever meet—though if you do meet him, don't tell him I said that." She tried to hide a smirk. "He's a...hunter by trade. He catches meat for them as can't get it themselves, or can't afford it, otherwise. His livelihood depends on him staying calm and patient." She scowled. "Of course, so does Corb's, but you saw his tantrum, and that's where the problem comes in."
Van Rook nodded, still dazed.
"They are both usually very calm and patient, but if either one's personal sense of justice is violated.... Well, the difference between the two is that Benton is strong enough to do something about it; he could even give you a challenge, if you cared to try him. He's the one that taught me to fight, by the way." She smiled, but the expression quickly left her face. "If he'd heard what even one of those villagers had done to that child, suffice to say there might not be a village left to interrogate."
—
Van Rook believed that if he brought Doyle on his search, he would likely bring the child into greater danger. But he feared to delay that search any longer, and decided that Corbin and the others were trustworthy enough; he waited for the two Romani to return, so that he could officially give Corbin and the others permission to speak on Doyle's behalf. Once he had reassured himself of the boy's safety, the mercenary set off.
Doyle was still quite ill in a few days, but he had recovered sufficiently that Dr. Perez and the chovihano agreed that the treatment could continue.
Before the chovihano could begin, however, the warrior came into the room and held a whispered conference with Corbin. The warrior looked anxious for some reason.
The chovihano frowned. "There is a problem?"
"I apologize, but the Rom Baro has an...ulterior motive for looking into the boy's fate." He held out a small bracelet.
The chovihano looked at the thing and gasped. "That belongs to the Rom Baro's daughter!"
The warrior nodded. "I found it among the boy's things when we had first come." He forced himself not to look at Doyle. "I have not told the Rom Baro. We are here for the boy, of course; his well-being comes first. But if he knows anything about the Rom Baro's daughter, or of the other missing children—if it will not strain him...."
Corbin thought for a moment. "If it will not strain him," he agreed. "I cannot fault you for wanting to know the fate of your families."
The chovihano set the trance before Doyle was fully awake. The child immediately tried to look around. "Where's—where's the...the pard?" He glanced at Corbin and frowned. "I mean...the lion?"
"On another hunt," the chovihano replied.
Corbin smiled in spite of his fear. So the child had learned some lessons, though he still did not understand their need. "Why does he call him that?" Corbin asked the warrior. The warrior glanced at him. "Doyle...he calls that mercenary a lion; why?"
"Mister Van Rook told me his mentor believed his spirit was that of a lion," Fae said.
The warrior gestured for them to follow him outside. "That one's spirit is a lion." He tilted his head back and gathered his thoughts. "Look, you know we are not like most Romani, yes?" Corbin nodded. "This vitsa, our clan, is Romani, but our tribe is not. Our tribe has many clans, across the globe and beyond. We have not just Romani, but the Aborigines of Australia, the bushmen of Africa, the Inuit and Aleutians and others of the northern lands, the many peoples called 'Indians' in the Americas, and more. We are a tribe of many peoples, bound by spirit. Some of us are called to leave the clans we know and journey to others, or to wander alone, as one kind of shaman or another. Other times, there are those who are called to leave their tribes to join one of ours—usually for specialized training." His eyes flicked back to the bed, and he frowned, remembering the mercenary's words. "They would first stop at one of our sacred spirit-homes to make the transition to the new magics, and be on their way." He frowned. "Doyle and the mercenary agreed that Doyle's family had been in the Himalayas when they were attacked; Jonathon was probably trying to reach the spirit-home in Shangri-La."
"And this animal spirit?" Corbin asked.
"Yes, apologies. I don't often lose the trail like that. Our tribe is made up of clans from so many places, and we are bound in spirit even to those we may have never met. It is easy to acquire pieces of one culture's belief or another and incorporate those into the tribe's teaching as a whole. One of those beliefs is that people have a dual-soul, one human and one animal. The mercenary's animal soul is that of a lion; during these sessions, and perhaps also in his fever, the boy sees not the man, but the lion. And as well he does; I do not think he trusts people very much, not after everything that has happened."
They returned to the room to find Doyle in a troubled sleep and the chovihano shaking in anger.
Yeah, yeah, I know, "show, don't tell." I had to work that description of this Romani clan somewhere, and I didn't really need to make Doyle recite everything I've already written in previous chapters, did I?
That explanation of this Romani clan is one I would like to use (in some form or other) in my original fiction. Please review! (Fishing, again.)
This was probably the most difficult one to edit. See, my original version had the New Job arc immediately after the Avalanche arc...and Van Rook knew full well that Doyle's parents were killed, even though he didn't know the circumstances, or Doyle or Drew's fates, until now. (He still doesn't know Drew's fate, but I digress.)
The new version is that he doesn't know that anything had even happened until the hypnosis session in this chapter. And the conversation couldn't be "slightly" modified to accommodate, the way some other references had been; no, this conversation had to be seriously revised.
Then the question became that of how to keep the original tone while changing the basic subject.
Some of my "short" story ideas (as in, not the Skinwalker, Mulo, or Sierra storylines) may refer to Van Rook's oath, and he may even mention it in one of those "main" ones. (Or not, considering the end of "War of the Cryptids.")
In most such references, however, he would use it as the reason for certain actions, but the choice to act that way is entirely his. (Trying to excuse himself to certain characters by claiming he's just keeping a promise...even if he has other motives.)
But in the "main" storylines, I think it probably only influences the situation once...in a scene where the nature of that oath forces his hand. As he puts it, he doesn't have the will to refuse, even to figure out an alternative solution. (If I can get around the WotC ending, that is.)
Like my remark about Solés back in chapter 9, Francis' reveal in "Unblinking Eye" and Van Rook's remark about the grey demons (originally posted before the episode aired) makes me wonder if I had an "aha! I knew it" moment or a really weird coincidence.
And speaking of that reveal, I think I've finally figured out why the grey demons (*ahem* I mean Grey Men) are after people like Doyle. And Zak. And Vadoma (or rather....) And whoever else I decide they're after.
And if the context didn't give that last paragraph away, I refuse to elaborate.
Why? Because it might not ever come up in the fanfic. Think of it as the fanfiction version of the difference between "author opinion" and "official canon."
Fanon.
Whatever.
You know what I mean.
Anyway, this one isn't one of those speculations I want to work in to my fanfic somewhere, it's just purely my opinion. As such, it holds no more weight, even within my own writing, than any readers' opinions.
So far.