Elizabeth linked arms with Abernathy, grinning conspiratorially. Abernathy felt stiff and uncomfortable. “You look very nice in Dad’s clothes,” she told him. “Very distinguished. You should dress like this all the time.”
“He should smile more, too,” Questor Thews added before he could think better of it.
“This is so incredible, Abernathy, you being here again,” the girl continued, hugging his arm affectionately. “Look at you, just look! Who would believe what’s happened? Isn’t it wonderful? Aren’t you happy?”
“Very,” Abernathy acknowledged, putting on his best face, though in truth he was still wondering what the price would be for his remarkable but still unexplained transformation. There was always a price for those things. He thought back to the mind’s eye crystals of Horris Kew. Always a price.
Elizabeth was wearing a powder-blue sweatshirt that said something about Seattle grunge, a pair of jeans, and worn sneakers. Her hair was tousled artfully, and she was wearing violet eye shadow and dark magenta lipstick. Abernathy thought she had grown up awfully fast, but he kept it to himself.
“Do you have family?” she asked him suddenly. “A wife and children?”
He shook his head, a tad downcast.
“Father and mother?”
“Not for many years.” He could barely remember them.
“Brothers and sisters?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Hmmm. That’s rather sad, don’t you think? Maybe I should adopt you!” She grinned brightly. “Just kidding. But you really could be part of my family, since it’s rather small and could use another member or two. What do you say? An unofficial adoption, okay?”
“Thank you, Elizabeth,” he replied, and was really quite touched.
They strolled up the road, the older man with the electric white hair and beard, the younger man with the rimless glasses and the pensive face, and the curly-haired girl who seemed in charge of them both, closing on Graum Wythe like Dorothy and her companions at the Emerald City of Oz. Except, of course, that Graum Wythe, though castle like and imposing, was in no other way anything at all like the Emerald City. It was not green or bright but stone-gray and dreary. No yellow brick road led to its entry, just blacktop. No fields of poppies surrounded its walls, although its working vineyards still showed touches of green. It was medieval and fortress like with no pennants flying from its parapets, only the flags of the United States and the state of Washington to announce its entrance.
Not that either Abernathy or Questor Thews knew anything about Oz or the Emerald City. Had they given the matter any consideration, they probably would have contrasted the drabness of Graum Wythe to the brightness of Sterling Silver, for instance. They were thinking, in fact, of very different things entirely. Abernathy was trying to conceive of what his life would be like now that he was no longer a man in dog form but a man for real. He was trying to picture himself in his new role in various situations. Questor Thews, on the other hand, was recalling his friend’s question of the previous night concerning what his change from dog back to man had to do with their coming to the High Lord’s world and hoping that his suspicions, unvoiced as yet, would be proved wrong.
The little company came to the low stone wall that encircled the castle and passed through the open iron gates to the drawbridge. Graum Wythe loomed before them, a massive cluster of towers and parapets. The drawbridge was down and the portcullis up, so they moved into the shadow of the castle wall, through the gate entry, and out to the castle’s parking lot. Graum Wythe seemed empty of life. A single car was parked in the rear of its visitors’ lot. The souvenir stand, ensconced in what used to be a guardhouse, was closed and shuttered. Graum Wythe seemed deserted.
“It’s all right,” Elizabeth assured her companions. “The museum hasn’t opened to the public yet, but we can get in.”
She took them across the parking lot and up the steps to the iron-bound front doors. She rapped the heavy knocker on its plate and waited. A moment later the door opened, and a man she greeted as Harvey smiled in recognition and let them inside. They entered the same foyer where several years earlier Ben, Willow, and Miles Bennett—Ben’s old law partner, pressed into service for the occasion—all three dressed for Halloween night, had engineered Abernathy’s escape from Michel Ard Rhi’s dungeons. Abernathy looked around with foreboding, but the menace of Michel and his guards was long absent and the foyer itself had been redecorated with bright tapestries, pamphlet stands, and an admission desk where Harvey held forth. After giving the same explanation about Questor and Abernathy that she had given Mrs. Ambaum, and exchanging a few pleasantries with Harvey, Elizabeth led the wizard and the scribe into the bowels of the castle.