Chapter 035: Breaking The News
"And
thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I
look upon one child or t'other there
And
wonder if she stood so at that age -
For
even daughters of the swan can share
Something
of every paddler's heritage -
And
had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And
thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She
stands before me as a living child."
Among
School Children - William Butler Yeats
Benedict took the news of my children rather stoically, as is usual for
him. Of course he had already known what they would look like, so it was only
the number of kids that was a slight surprise to him.
"Six children," was his first comment.
"You must be a brave man." I smiled weakly, not feeling very brave at
all. The next one I was going to have to tell the news to was Deirdre, and I
guessed that she wouldn't take it all so calmly.
Imperturbable as he was, Benedict reached out quickly, grabbed Nicholas
by the nape of the neck and placed him gently back inside the basket. That
little adventurer had of course jumped out at the first moment when I had opened
his prison and had further embarrassed me by using Benedict's cloak as a
climbing rug. Benedict didn't seem to mind very much, though. I guess I'd better
get used to them doing stuff like this.
"Is it your intention to take them to Amber?" Benedict
inquired.
"Yes," I replied, "I want to
introduce them to everyone first. Then I'll start looking for a quieter spot for
them to grow up in." He gave me a slight nod of approval. I asked him about
recent developments in the area, but there wasn't really much that had happened.
He told me he would stay in the vicinity of Cardane, but he also needed to keep
an eye on some other Shadows, so there would be some travelling to and fro in
store for him. His camp would remain here permanently, though, for the situation
in the Courts could still go critical at a moment's notice, with all kinds of
possible consequences for the civil war here in Cardane.
After a couple of minutes more of small talk, I decided that I couldn't
put it off any longer. Leaving Benedict to watch over the children for a moment,
I found a quiet spot where I trumped my Mother. The image formed quickly; I saw
her sitting in her chambers in Amber.
"Yes, what is it?" she said.
"Ehm, could you come over for a minute? I've
got something to tell you."
"I assume you're somewhere in Shadow?"
"Yes." She shrugged and extended a hand.
Rainbow colours flowed and faded, leaving her the usual black and silver. She
was somewhat surprised to see Benedict there as well and greeted him first,
before turning back to me.
"What's going on here?" she asked.
"Well, I'd like to introduce you to
these," I said pointing at the kittens. I named each of them in turn, and I
could tell that Deirdre was already beginning to suspect what this was all
about. Of course I had to open the basket again to give her a good look at her
new grandchildren, and before I knew it Laura and Dennis were off and running.
Grumbling and muttering Anna immediately went after them. I didn't have time to
worry about them myself, though, I had other trouble to face.
"As you may already have surmised by now," I said, "these
are my children." Deirdre was silent for a moment, clearly busy trying to
work out the best way to react to this news. It would have been easier for her
if Benedict hadn't been there, I knew, which was exactly why I had chosen to
contact her at that moment.
"Well, what can I say?" she said,
finally. "You have taken it upon you to double the number of Amberites,
have you?" In a calm voice I tried to explain the circumstances to her.
"Remarkable!" she exclaimed. "We
live in these turbulant times, yet still you have decided upon this precise
moment to have children. Not child, single, but children, plural!"
"I must admit that I hadn't really counted on
so many all at once," I said.
"You didn't stop to ask her before you got
started, did you?"
"I don't think it's something people normally
ask at that particular point."
"It's nice to know what you're getting yourself into all the
same," she snapped. In the basket the four remaining children glanced up at
her timorously; they were not used to having such angry grown-ups around.
Nicholas decided to escape again, and paws firmly on the ground he started
sniffing at the angry woman's dress. Fortunately, Deirdre picked him up before
he could repeat his earlier performance of climbing skills.
"So this is Nicholas," she said in a
softer voice. She shook her head while the object of her scrutiny employed his
most mollifying expression, silently pleading, no demanding her to like him. In
a way it appeared to work, for she thoughtlessly started to stroke him.
"Six!" she sighed. "Well, what are
you going to do with them?"
"First I'm off to Amber to introduce them to
the Family, then to a quiet Shadow to raise them."
"Well, at least we're going to give them a
sound education." She sounded very resolute about this, but I wondered how
much `we' that `we' would really be. We would see.
"Do they remain like this, or do they shift to human form as
well?" Deirdre asked. I told her about the things Wylde had explained to
me. "That's something at least," she said. "It would be very
difficult, in terms of protocol at least, if they were to remain cats all the
time. Flora would be quite upset." She smiled.
At that point Anna walked in with a kitten in both hands. She put them
back in the basket, did the same with Nicholas, just taking him from Deirdre's
hand without even asking, and closed it with a small bang.
"You'd better be more careful from now on,
sir," she said sternly to me. Deirdre regarded her with interest.
"Okay," I sighed, "I think it's time
we'd continue on our way to Amber." We said goodbye to Benedict, and
Deirdre took out her Trump to transport the lot of us. I should have realised of
course what she had in mind, but I was just too distracted at that moment, so I
was quite surprised when we didn't appear in the great hall of the castle, but
in some quiet field somewhere in Shadow.
"Alright," Deirdre said, "now that we're alone: how the
hell did you get it into your head to have children? You knew the dangers! You
were aware of the risks! And still you went ahead and did it! What were you
thinking?" Anna quietly took the basket from my hands and walked off a
little bit to spare the children this scene.
"When this all happened," I replied, my
voice growing colder with each word, "I didn't yet know that anything was
wrong. Nobody had told me, remember? If a certain someone had thought about
telling me a few things, I might have done things differently."
"But it wasn't in your interest to know these
things back then!"
"Well, I guess that it was!" I'd show her
that two could play at this shouting game.
"One child was manageable," she sighed.
"We could keep tabs on one child. But seven! How quickly do they
mature?"
"Very quickly," I spat.
"Oh, Unicorn!" she said and turned away.
Well, so much for her being the happy grandmother. She had to understand,
though, that I really hadn't known about the curse at the time when Wylde
revealed herself to me. If only Caine had warned me in some way. He must have
been aware what was going on...
Silently, I waited for Deirdre to resume the shouting match again, but
she kept staring into the distance for a while. Finally I said: "Are you
done? Can we go on to Amber now?" She sighed once more and nodded. I
beckoned for Anna while she found her Trump (the right one this time), and a
moment later we were back in the castle.
Okay, best inform the head honcho first. As we entered Random's study,
our King looked up inquiringly from his paperwork. His gaze lingered a while on
Anna and the basket with kittens, drifted towards Deirdre, and finally fixed
itself on me.
"Guess what?" I said.
"You tell me," he replied.
"I just happened to run into Benedict on my
way to Shadow Cardane. We talked a little bit, and from what he told me about
the situation there I thought it best to bring my children safely with me to
Amber."
"I hope that was some complex metaphor or
something," Random said wearily.
"No," I said. I found that I couldn't
suppress a slight smile. With an inquiring look Random pointed at the basket. I
nodded.
"How many did you say?" he ventured.
"Six," I replied proudly. Yes, damn it, I
did feel proud. Deirdre's reaction may have been less than satisfactorily, but
it sure as hell wasn't going to stop me from being the proud father. Random,
meanwhile, had put his head in his hands and sighed deeply.
"You really want to go and break the record, don't you?"
"No, I don't," I said.
"You could have fooled me. Seven children in
barely half a year, that's quite an achievement. Do you plan to continue in the
same rate? Then maybe you should start thinking about finding a Pattern of your
own somewhere."
"No, no," I said patiently, "I think
these will do... for now." I proceeded to show the kittens to their
great-uncle the King.
"Well, well," he muttered, "in
cat-form, no less. Something new every day." He rang for a servant to call
Vialle, saying she should see them as well. As it turned out Vialle was the
first one to be really enthusiastic about my children.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "they're so cute! They'll be perfect
playmates for my child when it will be born." That was due sometime soon, I
could see. I handed the kittens to her one by one, so she could `see' each one
in turn. When I told her about my intention of finding some Shadow where I could
raise them, she protested loudly, saying that the kids should spend as much time
in Amber as possible. Meanwhile Random had also called in his head of security
and explained the situation to him, introducing Anna and the children. The man
didn't look too happy about suddenly having six intelligent shape shifting
kittens to worry about, but he was a professional: he would do his duty.
The next few days saw me and the kittens settling in, and the Elders
getting used to the idea of their strange new relatives. Most of them were a bit
put off by the fact that they were dealing with shape shifters here. Shape
shifting in Amber is simply not done. The one who suffered most from these
aprehensive feelings was Uncle Corwin (not surprisingly, considering what I had
heard of his dealings with Dara). On the other hand, however, he couldn't not
love Deirdre's grandchildren, now could he?
My dear aunts all found the children a little bit too wild and
hyperactive to their taste. Oh, they liked them well enough, but even after a
few days Llewella, Flora and Fiona tended to withdraw after spending something
like half an hour in one room with the kittens. Flora had a soft spot for
Rowena, though, and Fiona said that she considered Miri to be rather intelligent
and therefore quite promising material.
Then there was Caine. I still hadn't really decided how to behave towards
him, so I settled on simply being polite, if a bit cool. His behaviour towards
me was more or less similar, but I was horrified to see that he and most of the
kids seemed to be getting on rather well. I would have to warn them about him as
soon as was reasonably possible. Caine proved to be very quick and agile, and he
could easily keep up with the kittens on their forays through the castle. One
thing he didn't like, though, was them making any sudden and unexpected
movements. It made him jumpy.
It's very hard not to like Uncle Bleys, and since he seems to get on with
most people as well, the kittens hardly had any problems with him. He played and
romped with them whenever he ran into them, but he never seemed to go out of his
way to see them, though.
The two uncles the kittens seemed to like best, and
vice versa, were Gerard and Julian. To Gerard the children were simply a
delight, and he spent many an hour in their company. He even loved to carry them
around with him through the castle with their claws hooked into his cloak.
Julian's behaviour was rather different, but in his own way he seemed to
understand the kittens very well. He appeared to have less problems with the
shape shifting aspect than any of the others, and his vast experience with
animals also proved to be an advantage. He treated the kids less tenderly than I
might have liked, but it appeared to work and they liked him all the same.
In Martin the kids found a perfect companion, one who would take their
side whenever one of the Elders chided them for being too noisy or rowdy. Why
not jump onto the table when that man with the funny hairdo always put his heavy
boots up there as well?
Still, for all their nice behaviour Vialle was the only one of the Family who always treated the kids as if they really were children and not just as some kind of intelligent pets. I tried to follow her example as much as I could, but it was pretty hard not to slip up now and again. Hopefully it would all become easier as they grew older and started taking on their human forms more often.