Chapter 14

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Just kidding. On with the chapter!

…

Emiko and Towa, as soon as they had dashed out of the kitchen, promptly had Kosuke and Dark pick Daisuke up and carry him over to the couch in the living room. The boy's nose dripped blood the entire way, and the cut above his eye fared no better. Emiko seemed to be frantic, and her movements were quick, but her voice remained calm and just a bit stern. Towa had gone off for bandages and other supplies, and I was left in the kitchen, the tempting scents of food now ignored by all but me. I fought with myself for a moment, remembering there was only an hour until Argentine came back. Then I shook the scents out of my nose and followed Kosuke's retreating back.

Trailing slightly behind the group, and to their right, it was possible for me to see a small, yet bright green, feathered something sticking out of Daisuke's shoulder. It looked like it had broken in half when Dark had rolled his brother over, and I quickly pointed it out to Kosuke.

"Wait," I said as he lowered Daisuke onto the couch, "Look." I pointed at the object with my nose, and everyone looked at it. Dark swore, apologized, and spoke. His eyes looked bloodshot and glassy, as though he'd been crying, or trying not to.

"Well, we know what happened," he said. "Looks like a blow dart. Hopefully just a tranquilizer, and not…" Dark shook his head, obviously not trusting himself to finish his sentence. "Hopefully they were after you, Rue, and missed. Sounds like a bad thing to say, but… if they were after you, they wouldn't… y'know, be aiming to kill." Emiko was busy resetting Daisuke's nose, and putting pressure on the cut above his eye while Towa kept a hand on the carotid artery in his neck, keeping track of his pulse.

"We're lucky he fell at an angle," Emiko said softly. "The break of his nose is clean, and none of the cartilage is pushed back. Dark, Kosuke, Rue, go eat. We'll tell you if we need any of you." Dark was practically glaring at her.

"I'm not leaving," he snapped. He sounded like a stubborn child, and at that moment, I truly saw just how afraid he was. In just a few minutes, his cool personality had completely evaporated, leaving a totally different version of himself in the Niwa's house.

"Dark," Emiko said quietly, "You will only get in our way here. What I want you to do is go eat, and then take Rue to see the queen. If anything happens, even if Dai only twitches, I will send Towa to the two of you instantly. Towa, you're up to that?" The girl saluted.

"Always am, Miss Emiko!" Towa chirped, and just to prove it, she turned into a bird, flew twice around the room, and landed next to Daisuke before turning back into herself and beginning to check the redhead's pulse again. She frowned, shifted her fingers slightly, and sighed. "He's still doing fine," she reported. "Pulse is steady."

Emiko looked sternly at Dark. "You heard Towa. Now go eat. Rue, Kosuke, you too." Dark wilted a little under her gaze, and Kosuke didn't even try defying her. Together, we slowly trudged back to the kitchen, where the still delicious food sat. And despite everything that was happening, I was still absolutely starving.

Thankfully, Dark noticed. Giving me a weak smile, he asked, "What d'you want Rue?" Kosuke was already heaping a plate high with eggs, and I smiled.

"I suppose I'll just eat whatever you'll give me," I said. "If you don't find that odd." Dark laughed, grabbed two plates, and started piling them high with everything on the table.

"Not odd at all," he replied. "You're a wolf; you're probably going to eat like one. Harlem could eat a horse as one meal, if he hadn't been trained to stay away from 'em." The thought of the huge warhound sent shivers up my spine, and I quickly pushed him out of my thoughts.

Dark set a plate at my spot at the table, sat down, and gave me a look that clearly said 'dig in'. I leapt lithely up to the chair at Dark's left, and saw that he was already eating. I followed his example, at first awkwardly chewing, then beginning to understand slightly more how my fangs worked.

Needless to say, breakfast was a short meal.

…

We finished eating in about twenty minutes, and as soon as the table was cleared Dark was sitting on the couch near Daisuke's feet. I curled up near the fireplace, still amazed by all of the throw rugs that made such a lovely, soft carpet, and watched Emiko try to shoo the violet haired young man off.

"Dark," she said, exasperated, "you are only going to get in our way here. Please; Daisuke's going to be okay!"

"How do you know that?" Dark snapped. "You saw that dart, it wasn't anything I could identify and I've never seen feathers like that before!" Emiko sighed.

"Dark," she said again. "Daisuke is going to be fine. I've already checked it out, whatever whoever shot him with was not poison. It was a fairly strong sedative, but not poison." The look in her eyes said 'and that's final'. Dark took the hint, and stood somewhat reluctantly.

"C'mon Rue," he said. "I'll show you around outside." I stood, and limped after him. I glanced up at the vase that held red, yellow and orange flowers like a torch, and wondered if he'd tell me about the strange and bright gardens I had seen when Daisuke showed me this house for the first time. But Dark ignored the flowers for the time being, and walked around to the back of the house.

The area was much larger than I had first thought, with a small pond and a very large garden taking up only about a third of the huge fenced in yard. Dark grinned at my shocked look, and nodded for me to follow him. We walked about for a bit, and Dark explained to me how the pond (in truth, a spring) irrigated the garden, and how the garden grew enough food to feed half of Algernon. It had originally been Emiko's idea, he said, but now he and Daisuke were stuck weeding and harvesting crops.

When Dark mentioned Daisuke, he paused briefly, and then began walking over to a tall oak tree in the far corner of the yard. "I want you to see this," he said. "I think you'll like it." As we got closer, I saw that there was a tall ladder leaning against the tree, and a medium-sized basket sat on the ground next to it, attached to a system of pulleys.

"Back when Dai was young, mom didn't want him climbing up and down a ladder all the time," Dark explained. "So I got some help from my dad and we rigged up this basket." I glanced up into the tree's branches, and caught a glimpse of wooden planks high above my head. When I brought my attention back to the ground, Dark was gone. A moment later, I found him halfway up the ladder.

"Jump in the basket!" He yelled down. I stared at the item in question suspiciously. It seemed a bit… delicate, for lifting a wolf what I guessed was about fifty feet in the air. It was a wicker basket, and the bottom had been reinforced inside and out with wood, but I wasn't sure I trusted Dark enough to get in…

"You're sure it's safe?" I called back. "What do you want to show me, anyway?" More vicious warhounds that might actually kill me this time around, I guessed. Or maybe you'll just shove me off of that platform or whatever's up there and be done with it. Say it was an accident. Kosuke had told me Dark hadn't wanted to kill me, but now I wondered how much I could really trust him. Could he be lying just to help his son?

"It's fine!" Dark replied, "I've brought Harlem up here a few times; he's gotta be at least twice as heavy as you!" Well, that answered my first question, and I figured I'd have to actually trust Dark a bit in order to find the answer to the second. There was a really old saying I had found in a book that said 'you can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs', and I'd interpreted that as 'you can't do anything worthwhile without taking a few risks'. Deciding this was one of those times, I cautiously stepped into the basket and sat down. I barked, and the basket quickly began ascending. It swayed, and twirled, and didn't seem safe at all, but I arrived at what I found was a large platform of wood in one piece. Dark was tying off the end of the rope, and I jumped out of the basket awkwardly to see what this place was like.

On two sides, the back and the left, there was nothing but tree branches. Huge, sturdy oak limbs swayed gently in the breeze, making their leaves rustle. I could hear birds calling. To my right, there was a wall, with a door in the center of it. I saw, to my surprise, that it was locked. Why would a door be locked here? However, as I focused my attention to what was directly in front of me, I quickly forgot my question.

"Nice view, isn't it?" Dark asked. I nodded, stunned. "This isn't even the whole place, only the half the garden helps feed." Stretched out in front of us was a scene from a painting. What looked like hundreds of small cottages were dotted about on the landscape, each with a thatched roof and a large area of land that was often fenced in to hold (I figured) animals. Off in the distance, I could see the castle, standing high and proud like the royalty who lived within it. Later, I learned there weren't nearly as many buildings as I first had thought, and that Algernon was really a rather small kingdom, but for now, I felt like I was on the top of the world.

Sadly though, I had to ruin the moment. Curiosity killed the cat, as the saying goes. "Dark" I asked, "What's behind that door?" I indicated the door to my right, with the lock on it.

Dark stiffened, and for a moment I thought he'd refuse to tell me. "It's where Dai normally works," he said at last, and I could tell he was still extremely worried about his younger brother. "He's a genius, Rue," he continued, "but he's so damn clumsy… I can't stop worrying about him. He's practically killed himself three times I can think of, and he always walks out of it with this goofy smile on his face…" He grimaced. I didn't know what to say. If you had asked me about Dark three hours ago, I would have said that he didn't care about anyone or anything but himself. Now… I wasn't sure what to think.

"C'mere," Dark continued, standing and heading towards the door, "I'll show you what I'm talking about." I followed. I wanted to take one last glance at the kingdom that lay below me, but at the last second I remembered Satoshi's words and stopped myself, instead focusing on Dark as he pulled a thin chain from under his shirt. Strung on the chain were two keys: one thick and silver, the other a thin, beautiful copper skeleton key, which he used to unlock the door. It swung out, towards us, and I saw another door behind it.

This door appeared to be heavy steel, or possibly iron, and I saw something very familiar sitting in the middle of it: a keypad. The thought of home reminded me of the hole in me that had been there since Lyra had killed my uncle, and I whimpered softly as Dark quickly entered a code. With a quick triple beep, the door swung open on hydraulic hinges to reveal a dimly lit room.

I walked in slowly after Dark, expecting him to seek out a light switch or a book of matches. He did neither. I watched as he let the door swing closed behind him, plunging us both into complete darkness. I stood absolutely still for about five seconds, until I heard a very, very faint buzzing noise that I recognized as electric lights warming up.

"The switch is in the door," Dark said conversationally. "It won't activate the lights unless the right code's been entered though." As the lights finally flickered to life, I was able to see what was around me.

On the walls hung beautifully detailed blueprints for things I could never describe, for flying machines (which had, admittedly, once existed, but were long gone from the skies now) and moving stairs, both powered by humble steam. I saw working miniature models of engines sitting on tables that were made of wood, and one metal table that held several beakers. However, these were empty, and shone in a way that told me they were seldom (or never had been) used. As I turned, I saw more of the artfully detailed blueprints, and several nearly picturesque sketches of the view Dark had shown me only a few minutes ago.

I couldn't think of what to say, or if I should say anything. However, as I finished surveying the room, I couldn't help but gasping, "H-how?"

Dark smiled, and shrugged. "He's a genius," he repeated, "and, clumsy as he is, he learned how to build watches when he was ten." He gently lifted a small pocket watch off of one of the tables, and showed it to me. "This was his latest project, as a gift to our mom. She was always complaining about the one she'd been given with her duties being too big." He grinned, and set it back on the table. "I'm guessing that's how he knows how to build these little mini-engine thingies."

"That's amazing," I said. I could hardly believe that anyone could learn how to build a watch, but after seeing this… if it was a lab, and if it was Daisuke's, I knew that was something I wanted to see.

Dark continued the tour, pointing out a great many things that I can't recall, and several that I still can. There was a wolf-sized version of the flying machine blueprint (Daisuke, as I later learned, was quite taken with the idea of flight), and a small mechanical bird that gazed at me with cameras that it used for eyes. Dark told me that Dai (as he so fondly called his brother) had begun building it with the intent to use it for spying in the war that had never happened.

There were several things that I recognized, and they, like the electric lights and keypad, tugged pathetically at my heart. There were several pieces of what looked like the ancient machinery, rusted gears and what could have been half of a steering wheel (which I only recognized from pictures in books). I also saw a disassembled item that looked somewhat like a keypad, but with a screen (lying slightly further away from the other pieces) that took up slightly more than half of the space it shared with the numbers and symbols. My uncle had once shown me something like that, when I was very small. He had called it a 'phone'. It seemed as though Daisuke shared his interest with certain items from the Other Times.

I think it was about this time that I realized Dark had fallen silent, and was sitting on the sill of the only window in the room (the shades had been closed when we first entered, but were now pulled to the sides). This window didn't have glass in it, but that didn't seem to bother the eldest Niwa.

"I'm so worried about him," he said to no one in particular. He obviously wasn't talking to me. "I keep dreaming about an eagle, the eagle that always appears before a war, and for this to happen to Dai… the start of it all…" he sighed. And then I saw a blonde-haired boy, walking calmly down the road.

Argentine was back.

…

AN: Oh yes, I didn't forget about Argentine. My, am I having fun writing this… anyway, if anyone has a review that they don't want, please feel free to give it to me! There's a lovely little drop-off box just below (if you aren't reading this on a phone or tablet), and any reviews I receive will be given the best of care!