Sandra McDonald - The Heirs of Cenpa.pdf - Sandra McDonald - widez2

The Heirs of Cenpa

by Sandra McDonald

He left Cenpa in the dark hours of the morning and found himself in a parking lot somewhere on

Earth. Vince didn't like parking lots. They sealed in the fertile earth, diverted precious drinking water

and accumulated nothing but trash. Dishonorable things happened in parking lots: drug sales, rapes,

murders and, of course, his specialty, kidnappings.

Rescues , he reminded himself.

The parking lot belonged to a concrete and glass hotel set back from a highway by a line of

scraggly trees. Vince didn’t think much of Earth hotels, either. He preferred the sturdy inns back home,

where a man could down fresh-brewed ale with dinner and trade bits of gossip with other travelers. The

beer in Earth hotels tasted bad, and guests rarely talked to one another. The hotel sign was written in

English, which cheered him a little. He hoped the stones had taken him to America, because in

America--

A pair of headlights blinded him. For a moment he was back in the Gray Room, inhaling the sour

stink of bleach, oatmeal and soiled underwear. Scuffed linoleum stretched out like a sea beneath his

feet. The sea separated him from the hallway, the staff and the locked cabinet where the Stones of

Cenpa lay quietly calling to him. Only with their help could he return to his quest--

Vince squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the passing car had vanished and he

was alone under the starless sky. He pulled the stones from his pocket. Their reassuring green glow

guided him to the back of the building, where a swimming pool shimmered within the confines of a chain

link fence. Towels hung from several balcony railings. The stones tugged Vince's hand toward the

second floor and he imagined a little boy sleeping peacefully in bed, his body lax and warm between soft

sheets and his face so very innocent.

They were always innocent, the Heirs. Then frightened. Then angry. How could he blame

them? He had been only eight years old when the comfort of family was ripped from him. He

remembered standing in a driveway with his parents on a bleak, slate-gray day. His mother's face was

red and her eyes swollen. His father frowned as he leaned down to button Vince's coat against the chill

wind.

"I've failed in my mission," Vince's father said. "You must go now and be this man's apprentice.

Find the Queen's Heirs."

Those people and that winter were fifty years behind him. Vince shrugged off the memory and

considered his options for taking the boy. If the Heir's family had stopped only for the night, they might

drive off at first light. If they were in town for a few days, he could rent a room. Either way, the stones

would lead him. He checked his pocket and pulled out five Cenpa coins, each forged in a silver foundry

and etched with the Queen's profile. In his wallet he found ten British pounds, thirteen francs, two

thousand lira and four American dollars. He would need much more than that.

Vince began walking. The air was warm and Earth's smog left him short-winded. The job of

rescuing the Heirs belonged to a younger, healthier man with better knees. The parking lot led to a road

and the road led to a turnpike of car dealerships, furniture stores and outdoor malls. At an open-all-night

gas station he saw road maps for New England. The clerk was a young man with red hair and black

tattoos on both forearms.

"You going to buy something?"

Vince wondered if the tattoos ran up the clerk's arms to his shoulders and chest. Body art had

obviously come back into fashion while he was gone, as had long hair and earrings and rudeness.

"If you're not going to buy stuff, leave," the clerk said.

Vince left. A half-mile up the road he saw a fast-food restaurant and a sporting goods store.

The restaurant opened just before dawn, and in a corner booth he ate a breakfast of rubbery pancakes

and strong coffee. He skimmed The Boston Globe . He juggled the stones compulsively in his pocket

and found, deep within his coat's folds, a small plastic bottle full of pills.

HALOPERIDOL, 10 mg, the label read. DR. ELIZABETH JACKSON. She had issued him

the prescription months before she turned him over to the guards of the Gray Room. Vince put the pills

back into his pocket and sipped his coffee. Despite her assertions to the contrary, he wasn't crazy. He

wasn't schizophrenic. He had simply sworn an oath to take back what had once been stolen.

* * * *

The sporting goods store opened at ten o'clock. Vince gathered sunglasses, a duffel bag, a

bathing suit and a handful of clothes. He used the stones to compel the clerk to hand over the cash

and if the short trip irritated the driver, he forgot his annoyance under the stones' magic spell. The

air-conditioning in the lobby bathed Vince in coolness and the stones burned against his thigh. Still here,

the Heir, and so very close.

"Good morning," he said to the clerk. "Would you happen to have any accommodations on the

second floor, perhaps something overlooking the pool?"

"I'll check," she said, and began typing on a keyboard. "What's that you've got, a Polish accent?"

"Russian," he lied.

The peach-and-green room she rented to him smelled like stale cigarette smoke. Vince pulled

open the balcony door and let fresh air blow in. The cigarettes of Earth were full of suspicious additives.

He preferred Cenpa tobacco, dark leaves grown on mountains and cured by the fires of farmers, not

chemists. Vince leaned over the balcony railing and peered down. Three dark-haired children frolicked

in the pool under their mother's supervision.

"Mom, watch this!" One of the boys, perhaps only seven years old, dove underwater to perform

a handstand. His small feet wagged in the air for several seconds before he resurfaced. "How was that?"

"Nine point eight, Robby," his mother said.

"I can do better." Robby's sister, a pre-teen with budding breasts, performed the same trick.

Their mother said, "Nine point three. You didn't point your toes."

"Like this, Carrie." Robby dove and illustrated. He returned to the surface with a grin. "See?

You didn't do it right."

"Shut up," Carrie said.

"Both of you shut up," said the third sibling, a teenage boy with a stud in one ear. "You're lame."

Robby was the one he sought. The Heirs were always young and impressionable, torn between

the comfort of mother and the rough, bruising ways of other boys. Vince changed into his swimsuit,

donned his sunglasses and went down to the pool. He felt cumbersome and pale in the sun, a beached

whale on a strange shore. Shortly after he sat down, a blonde woman with a toddler arrived and staked

out two chairs under an umbrella. The mothers struck up the kind of friendship women formed in

supermarket lines or at village wells.

"Staying long?" Robby's mother asked.

"Until tomorrow. You?"

"Friday we head up to Maine. I don't know which will be worse--the drive or visiting my

mother."

"Mom, I'm hungry," Robby said.

His mother fished for dollars and quarters in her purse. She gave the money to Robby's brother.

"Mike, take them to get some snacks."

Barefoot and dripping water, the three siblings ran inside.

"Isn't it a shame about that Chicago girl?" the other mother asked.

"Which Chicago girl?"

"Disappeared in the middle of the night. The mother found the back door open in the morning.

They think the neighbor took her."

Vince recognized the story as a warning hidden as gossip, a reprimand disguised as sympathy.

Mothers could be very cruel to one another. Robby's mother swung her gaze toward the hotel but didn't

move. He wished he could hide behind a newspaper or towel.

"Perverts," the other woman said. "Everywhere you look. She was only six."

Men who took little girls only wanted them for obscene, destructive reasons. Vince's own

motives fell so far from that description that he couldn't even begin to imagine how such a wretched mind

worked. With relief he saw the children return - Mike first with potato chips and soda, Carrie following

with root beer and chewing gum, and Robby trailing a moment later with chocolate on his face.

"I'm sure they'll find her," Robby's mother said.

"Dead, I bet," the other woman said.

The candy obviously didn't affect the children's appetites, for a half-hour later they started asking

about lunch. At noon, just as Vince felt himself begin to pinken with sunburn, a tall man in a business suit

arrived carrying sacks of Mexican fast food. Robby did an awkward back flip to celebrate.

"Dad's here!" he said.

"How was the presentation?" the mother asked.

"Hideously boring, but my part was brilliant." The father clapped his hands. "Everyone come

eat."

While the children tore into tacos and nachos, Vince took the opportunity to cool off in the

water. The chlorine stung his eyes. In Cenpa, children swam in clear blue lakes or slow-moving rivers.

Their parents made home-cooked meals for them instead of buying food from assembly lines. As an

apprentice, Vince had dined when his master dined and played only when given permission. The old

knight had loved him, in a way, and taught him what he needed to know to carry on the quest. Vince had

been happy enough.

"You said we could go to the movies tonight," Mike reminded his father. "I get a window."

Carrie's head jerked up. "I get a window."

Robby protested with his mouth full. "I get a window because I get carsick. Right, Mom?"

Once Robby was gone, the family would never again argue about window seats. His bedroom

would become a preserved shrine of sorrow. Holidays would be impossible to celebrate. Disturbed

individuals might call and dangle fabricated clues, but neither the family nor the police would ever

discover how the unborn Heirs of Cenpa had been scattered across the Earth like the fluffs of a

dandelion dispersed by wind. They would never understand that as many Heirs as possible had to be

reunited so the kingdom's enemies could be defeated.

Vince went to the hotel restaurant and ordered a sandwich. He picked over the dry bread and

tasteless meat while watching traffic speed by on the highway. After eating, he scouted out the vending

machines and found them in an alcove across from the gift store. Back on his balcony, Vince watched as

Robby did handstands, belly flops and cannonballs. At four o'clock Robby's mother took the children

inside, and Vince gave them a few minutes to settle in before he went down the hallway with an ice

bucket in hand. A slow stroll and careful monitoring of the stones led him to room 242.

Through the door he heard Carrie say, "Quit it!" and her mother say, "Robby, don't do that."

"I'm hungry," Robby complained. "Can we get some candy?"

The door swung open. Caught dead-on, Vince could do nothing but stare at Robby's older

brother, who reared back from the sight of the stranger in the doorway.

"Mom," Mike said. "Some guy's here."

The mother appeared. "Can I help you?"

She wasn't a pretty woman, but she had bright eyes and an easy smile and freckles on her nose.

Vince imagined her holding the newborn Robby in her arms after hours of backbreaking labor. She had

changed his diapers and fretted when he was sick. She had sung him lullabies. If Vince succeeded at his

task, she would have a gaping hole in her heart for the rest of his life.

"I'm sorry." Vince clutched the ice bucket more tightly. "Wrong room."

He forced himself to move away. The door shut behind him. Wiping sweat from the back of his

neck, he went down to the lobby and pretended to peruse a rack of tourist brochures. Neither Robby

nor his siblings appeared with shiny quarters in hand. He took some of the brochures to the pool, where

he sat in the late afternoon sun with an eye on the parking lot. At four-thirty Robby's father returned in a

black sedan. At five-fifteen the family departed for dinner and entertainment. Mike and Robby got the

window seats.

Vince returned to his room and stretched out on the bed. He only intended to sleep for a short

time, but a dream of the Gray Room sucked him under like a riptide. Dr. Jackson's legions had

tormented him with interrogations and drugs, but the worst of his ordeal had been the monotony of

routine, the lack of purpose and the drudgery of being the only sane man in a sea of fools.

"Magical kingdoms aren't real," Dr. Jackson would tell him, over and over again. "They exist

only in fiction."

When Vince opened his eyes the room was dark. Only the barest of breezes stirred the balcony

curtains. The stones looked ordinary and dirty on the mattress beside him. The memory of the Queen's

kiss burned against his forehead.

"Find my Heirs," she had commanded, and his journey had begun.

For an uncertain moment he wondered if both the Queen and Dr. Jackson were figments of his

imagination, but the stones were evidence of the Queen's existence just as the pills were evidence of Dr.

Jackson's. Vince retrieved the vial from his coat and studied the label again.

"What you do is wrong," Dr. Jackson had told him.

"What you do, you do for the entire kingdom," the Queen had said.

Vince splashed cold water on his face and went to sit on the balcony. Robby's family returned at

ten-thirty. Robby's father carried the sleeping boy inside with one hand curved fondly over his son's

head. Vince knew the weight of small bodies slung over his shoulder. He knew how to keep boys quiet,

lest they summon unwanted attention. He considered pulling the fire alarm and luring Robby away in the

confusion, but compassion won over. Let the parents have one more night with their family whole and

undamaged.

Restful sleep eluded him. He dreamed of Robby cursing him for taking him from Earth. Robby

became Justin Wolcott, became Carl Lopez, became dozens of other young boys. In the morning he

woke drenched in his own sweat and uncertainty, and the morning news was full of pictures of a smiling

little girl.

"The K-9 dogs discovered this shirt from a pair of pink pajamas Elizabeth was wearing when she

went to sleep, but no body has been discovered--"

"--lawyer has called for restraint, saying his client is innocent until proven otherwise--"

"--said the chances are very slim she'll be found alive."

Vince pulled on his shoes and buttoned his pants. In the lobby, a few business guests mulled

around a sideboard covered with pastries and fresh coffee. At the phone beside the vending machines he

made a long-distance call.

"Is Dr. Jackson there? This is an emergency."

"Dr. Jackson? She left a few years ago."

Sandra McDonald - The Heirs of Cenpa.pdf

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