“Magnus, thou didst promise,” Gwen warned.
Agatha frowned, looking up at the tent roof. “Mayhap old Elida… She is bitter but, I think, hath a good heart withal. And old Anselm…” She dropped her eyes to Rod, shaking her head. “Nay, in him ‘tis not bitterness alone that doth work, but fear also. There is, perhaps, old Elida, Lord Warlock—but I think…”
“Magnus,” Gwen warned.
Rod glanced over at his son, frowning. The baby ignored Gwen and went on happily with what he had been doing—juggling. But it was a very odd sort of juggling; he was tossing the balls about five feet in front of him, and they were bouncing back like boomerangs.
Rod turned to Gwen. “What’s he doing?”
“Fire and fury!” Agatha exploded. “Wilt thou not leave the bairn to his play? He doth not intrude; he maketh no coil, nor doth he cry out! He doth but play at toss-and-catch with my son Harold, and is quiet withal! He maketh no bother; leave the poor child be!”
Rod swung about, staring at her. “He’s doing what?”
“Playing toss-and-catch,” Agatha frowned. “There’s naught so strange in that.”
“But,” Gwen said in a tiny voice, “his playmate cannot be seen.”
“Not by us,” Rod said slowly. “But, apparently, Magnus sees him very well indeed.”
Agatha’s brows knitted. “What dost thou mean?”
“How else would he know where to throw the ball?” Rod turned to Agatha, his eyes narrowing. “Can you see your son Harold?”
“Nay, I cannot. Yet what else would return the apples to the child?”
“I was kinda wonderin’ about that.” Rod’s gaze returned to his son. “But I thought you said Harold was an unborn spirit.”
“Summat of the sort, aye.”
“Then, how can Magnus see him?” Gwen lifted her head, her eyes widening.
“I did not say he had not been born,” Agatha hedged. She stared at the bouncing fruit, her gaze sharpening. “Yet I ha’ ne’er been able to see my son aforetimes.”
“Then, how come Magnus can?” Rod frowned.
“Why, ‘tis plainly seen! Thy son is clearly gifted with more magical powers than am I myself!”
Rod locked gazes with Gwen. Agatha was the most powerful old witch in Gramarye.
He turned back to Agatha. “Okay, so Magnus is one heck of a telepath. But he can’t see a body if there’s none there to see.”
“My son ha’ told me that he did have a body aforetime,” Agatha said slowly. “ ‘Twould seem that he doth send outward from himself his memory of his body’s appearance.”
“A projective telepath,” Rod said slowly. “Not a very strong one, maybe, but a projective. Also apparently a telekinetic. But I thought that was a sex-linked trait…”
Agatha shrugged. “Who can tell what the spirit may do when it’s far from its body?”
“Yes—his body,” Rod said softly, eyes locked on the point where the fruit bounced back toward Magnus. “Just where is this body he remembers?”
Agatha sighed and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and resting her head against the high back. “Thou dost trouble me, Lord Warlock; for I cannot understand these matters that Harold doth speak of.”
“Well, maybe Gwen can.” Rod turned to his wife. “Dear?”
But Gwen shook her head. “Nay, my lord. I cannot hear Harold’s thoughts.”
Rod just stared at her.
Then he gave himself a shake and sat up straighter. “Odd.” He turned back to Agatha. “Any idea why you should be able to hear him, when Gwen can’t?”
“Why, because I am his mother.” Agatha smiled sourly.
Rod gazed at her, wondering if there was something he didn’t know. Finally, he decided to take the chance. “I didn’t know you’d ever borne children.”
“Nay, I have not—though I did yearn for them.”
Rod gazed at her while his thoughts raced, trying to figure out how she could be barren and still bear a son. He began to build an hypothesis. “So,” he said carefully, “how did you come by Harold?”
“I did not.” Her eyes flashed. “He came to me. ‘Tis even as he doth say—he is my son, and old Galen’s.”
“But, Galen…”
“Aye, I know.” Agatha’s lips tightened in bitterness. “He is the son that Galen and I ought to have had, but did not, for reason that we ne’er have come close enough to even touch.”
“Well, I hate to say this—but… uh…” Rod scratched behind his ear, looking at the floor. He forced his eyes up to meet Agatha’s. “It’s, uh, very difficult to conceive a baby if, uh, you never come within five feet of one another.”
“Is’t truly!” Agatha said with withering scorn. “Yet, e’en so, my son Harold doth say that Galen did meet me, court me, and wed me—and that, in time, I did bear him a son, which is Harold.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“The depth of thy perception doth amaze me,” Agatha said drily. “Yet Harold is here, and this is his tale. Nay, further—he doth say that Galen and I reared him, and were ever together, and much a-love.” Her gaze drifted, eyes misting, and he could scarcely hear her murmur: “Even as I was used to dream, in the days of my youth…”
Rod held his silence. Behind him, Gwen watched, her eyes huge.
Eventually, Agatha’s attention drifted back to them. She reared her head up to glare at Rod indignantly. “Canst thou truly say there is no sense to that? If his body has not been made as it should have been, canst thou be amazed to find his spirit here, uncloaked in flesh?”
“Well, yes, now that you mention it.” Rod leaned back in his chair. “Because, if his body was never made—where did his spirit come from?”
“There I can thresh no sense from it,” Agatha admitted. “Harold doth say that, when grown, he did go for a soldier. He fought, and bled, and came away, and this not once, but a score of times—and rose in rank to captain. Then, in his final battle, he did take a grievous wound, and could only creep away to shelter in a nearby cave. There he lay him down and fell into a swoon—and lies there yet, in a slumber like to death. His body lies like a waxen effigy—and his spirit did drift loose from it. Yet could it not begin that last adventure, to strive and toil its way to Heaven…” She shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. “And how he could be eager for such a quest is more than I can tell. Yet indeed he was”—she looked back up at Rod, frowning—“yet could he not; for though his body lay in a sleep like unto death, yet ‘twas not death—no, not quite. Nor could the spirit wake that body neither.”
“A coma.” Rod nodded. “But let it alone long enough, and the body’ll die from sheer starvation.”
Agatha shrugged impatiently. “He’s too impatient. Nay, he would not wait; his spirit did spring out into the void, and wandered eons in a place of chaos—until it found me here.” She shook her head in confusion. “I do not understand how aught of that may be.”
“A void…” Rod nodded his head slowly.
Agatha’s head lifted. “The phrase holds meaning for thee?”
“It kind of reminds me of something I heard of in a poem—‘the wind that blows between the worlds.’ I always did picture it as a realm of chaos…”
Agatha nodded judiciously. “That hath the ring of rightness to it…”
“That means he came from another universe.”
Agatha’s head snapped up, her nostrils flaring. “Another universe? What tale of cock-and-bull is this, Lord Warlock? There is only this world of ours, with sun and moons and stars. That is the universe. How could there be another?”
But Rod shook his head. “ ‘How’ is beyond my knowledge—but the, uh, ‘wise men’ of my, uh, homeland, seem to pretty much agree that there could be other universes. Anyway, they can’t prove there aren’t. In fact, they say there may be an infinity of other universes—and if there are, then there must also be universes that are almost exactly like ours, even to the point of having—well—another Agatha, and another Galen. Exactly like yourselves. But their lives took—well, a different course.”