He accepted that this was the way it must be if he was to stop being a Knight of the Word. Whatever ties had bound him to the Word’s service were apparently severed. The magic was gone. The dreams had nearly ceased. He was a normal man again. He could go about finding a normal life.
But he remembered Owain Glyndwr’s words about how, by becoming a Knight of the Ward. Ire had been transformed and things could never be the same again. He found himself thinking of a time several years earlier in Hopewell, Illinois, when Josie Jackson had made him feel for just a few hours of his nightmarish existence what it was like to be loved. and of how the had walked away from her because he knew he had nothing to give her in return. He recalled how Nest Freemark had asked him in despair and desperation if he was her father, and he remembered wishing so badly he could tell her that he was.
He thought of these things’ and the wondered if anything even remotely resembling a normal life would ever be possible again.
CHAPTER 9
It was already dark when John Ross and Stefanie Window exited the offices of Fresh Start, turned down Main Street, and headed for Umberto’s. Daylight saving time was over for another year, and all the clocks had been reset Sunday morning in an effort to conserve daylight-spring forward, fall back-but the approach of winter in the northwest shortened Seattle days to not much more than eight hours anyway. Streetlights threw their hazy glare on the rough pavement of the roadways and sidewalks, and the air was sharp and crisp wrath cold. It had rained earlier in the day, so shallow puddles dotted the concrete and dampness permeated the fall air. Traffic moved sluggishly through a heavy concentration of mist, and the city was wrapped in a ghastly pall.
Ross and Stefanie crossed Second Avenue and continued west past Waterfall Park, a strange, secretive hideaway tucked into an enclosure of brick walls andiron fends that abutted the apartment building where they lived. One entire wall and corner of the park’s enclosure was devoted to a massive waterfall that tumbled over huge cocks with such a thunderous rush that conversation attempted in its immediate vicinity was drowned out. A walkway dropped dawn along a catchment and circled back around to a narrow pavilion with two additional features involving a spill of water aver stone,, and a cluster of tables and chairs settled amid a collection of small trees and flowering vines. In better weather, people employed in the vicinity would come into the park on their lunch breaks to watch the waterfall and to eat. John and Stefanie did so frequently. From their bedroom window, they could look down on the park and across at the offices of Fresh Start.
Adjoining Waterfall Park was Occidental Park, a broad open space paved with cobblestones that overlapped Main from Jackson to Yesler and fronted a series of shops and restaurants and a parking lot that serviced the entire Pioneer Square area. The new Seattle was built on the old Seattle, the earlier version of the city having burned to the ground in a turn-of-the-century fire. An underground tour of portions of the old city began just a few blocks to the north. By passing through a nondescript door and descending a steep, narrow flight of stairs, you could step back in time.
But the present was above ground, and that was what most people came to see. Pioneer Square was an eclectic collection of art galleries, craft outlets, bookstores, bars, restaurants, souvenir shops, and oddities, funky and unassuming and all-embracing, and John Ross had felt at home from the day he arrived.
He had come to Seattle with Stef more than a year ago. They had been together for several months by then, were drifting more or less, and had read about Fresh Start and thought it would be a good place for them to work. They had came an a whim, not even knowing if there might be jobs available, and there hadn’t been, not at first, but they had fallen in love ,with the city and particularly with Pioneer Square. They had rented a small apartment to see how things would go, and while he had been pessimistic about their chances of catching on at Fresh Start-they had been told, after all, treat there were no paid openings and none expected anytime soon-Stef had just laughed and told him to be patient. And sure enough, within a week Simon Lawrence had called her back and said he had something, and within a month after that, after spending his time doing volunteer work at the shelter, Ross had been offered Full-time employment, too.