The River of No Return

She slammed the book shut.
    Julia hauled the dictionary back to the shelf and pushed the two volumes into place. Then she positioned herself in front of the closed door. “‘Hark, hark, the watch-dogs bark,’ Eamon!” He gaped blindly at her, and she laughed. Then she started time up again.
    Words spilled from his lips: “Get out of here!”
    Julia curtseyed low. “I am sorry to intrude upon you, Cousin. I wondered only if I might search for a word in the dictionary.”
    “Get out!”
    * * *
    The problem, she decided five minutes later, as she stared out the window of the yellow saloon, lay in the definition of the word character . If she was a magical character in her own right—“the person with his assemblage of qualities”—then she was in control of her talent. It was hers to use and no one else’s. And indeed, she was clearly able to use her power herself. But if she was a magical character in the sense of “a representation, or a letter used in printing,” then her talent could be used by someone else. Writing was a method for channeling meaning from one mind to another, and she suspected that a talisman worked like writing—to channel magic, not to make it.
    She was like Ariel, in other words. A magical character in and of herself, but also bound to do the will of another, should she meet and fall afoul of a Prospero.
    Pretend, Grandfather had said. It was the only thing he had ever said to her that might be information about her power, and it was beginning to seem like sound advice, indeed.
    Julia sighed onto a windowpane, then drew a sweeping J in the mist.
    * * *
    Nick pushed open the door to the house in St. James’s Square, half expecting to find Alice and Arkady waiting for him, like angry parents. But the foyer was deserted. Nick headed to the kitchen to make himself some tea and eventually found the two older people in the parlor, sitting cozily around their own tea tray. “Nick!” Alice looked delighted to see him, as if he hadn’t broken her rule about leaving the house.
    Arkady twisted around and beamed.
    “Hi,” Nick said. “How are you guys?”
    “Fine, fine.” Alice held out a hand, and Nick strolled over and took it. She squeezed his fingers. “I see you have a cup of something—won’t you join us?”
    Nick settled into the chair that matched Alice’s and took a sip of his tea. He eyed his hosts over the rim of his cup. They wore matching expressions of almost comical benevolence. So they were playing Mommy and Daddy after all, just in an amiable vein. They looked like June and Ward Cleaver, getting ready to deliver the moral lesson of the episode. Don’t wander too far from home, Beaver, or Mr. Mibbs will control your mind!
    “So,” Alice said, “what did you do today? Go anywhere in particular?”
    He gave Alice his thinnest smile. “Come now. You know what I did. I ran away.”
    “But of course,” Arkady said. “We knew you would. What kind of man would stay, day after day?”
    Nick leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. “So this was a test of my manhood. Well played, me.”
    “Bah! Of course it was not a test. I only say, how strange it would be if you did not break free. And you did. Off you went. All my wife does, like a civilized person, is ask: Where did you go?”
    “You know perfectly well where I went. You had me tailed.”
    Alice laughed. “How wonderful that you noticed. You see, Arkady? I told you he would realize. He’s very clever.”
    “Do you mean to tell me your man was supposed to be subtle?” Nick snorted as Mibbs’s villainous yellow socks rose up in his imagination, the hair like Donny Osmond’s, the psychedelic Bertie Wooster suit.
    “I’m pleasantly surprised, that’s all.”
    “Okay . . .” Nick frowned, wondering what joy she could possibly be deriving from the misery he had endured by the gates of the Foundling Hospital. “Whatever. The point is, you know exactly where I went. And you know what happened.”
    “Yes,” Arkady said. “That— how should I put it?—that mishap in Guilford Street.”
    “We’re so relieved it came to nothing.” Alice leaned forward, her teacup cradled in her hands like an egg. “We weren’t having you followed for the fun of it. It was for your own safety.”
    “Is that how you’re going to spin this?”
    “It’s true. Alone all day in London—eventually you were bound to get sucked into your emotions.”
    That fear at Euston