Dark Souls

CHAPTER ONE

Miranda and her mother caught a taxi from York station, with three suitcases stuffed into the trunk, and the extra luggage piled between them in the back seat. Even though the sky was an ominous gray. Rob and her father said they'd walk.

Miranda's mother opened her mouth to object, but then she changed her mind and said nothing. Miranda knew what her mother was thinking. It was a frigidly cold winter's day. The mist looked close enough to touch. They were in a foreign country, and a strange city built on the ruins of an old Roman fort, an old Viking capital, a medieval stronghold. Its thick stone walls loomed over the station's parking lot. The streets were narrow and winding: there was a river to cross.

"They're sure to get lost," her mother murmured, tugging the hem of her coat so it wouldn't get slammed in the door. "But...." She didn't need to finish her sentence. Rob hated sitting in cars, especially small European cars where someone tall like them had to hunch. The only way they'd managed to drag him to the airport back in Iowa was because one of the neighbors drove a school bus. Rob spent the flight roaming the aisles or standing around the back of the plane, looking out the window at the endless clouds. On the train across the Pennies, Rob paced the entire length eight carriages multiple times, until Miranda complained he was acting like a demented polar bear.

Ever since the accident, Rob couldn't stand small, confined spaces. Whenever he felt trapped or surrounded, he got dizzy and sick.

"He'll be okay, Mom." Miranda would have squeezed her mother's hand but there were too many bags in the way. She did this kind of thing a lot these days trying to reassure her parents that everything was okay, really,  even when nothing was okay anymore. But she was tired of talking to doctors and listening to people ask how she felt.

There was nothing anybody could do about it. Nobody could bring Jenna back. And nobody could take away the guilt. Why was Jenna gone, and why was Miranda still here? And why had Miranda staggered around the smashed up car like a dizzy fool when she could have tried to help Jenna, to save her? The only useful thing she'd done was dial 911

Miranda and Rob's doctor thought a family vacation far, far away was just what Rob and Miranda needed. Far, far away those were his exact words. As though they'd be staying in a castle in a fairy tale land, not a rented apartment in some wintry English city. 

They were here in York because their parents wanted to be here. Jeff, their father. was a history professor, and he was giving a paper at a conference on Richard III, one of his scholarly obsessions. He was planning to come alone until Peggy, their mother, was invited last minute to fill in as a guest, conductor at the music festival held each December in York Minster. 

"It's on a street called the Shambled," Peggy was telling the taxi driver, fumbling in her bag for her reading glasses and the directions she'd printed out. "Do you know it? It's near something called....Coppergate. Is that one of the city gates? "

"Don't worry, love," said the driver. "I know where the Shambles is. And a "Gate" is what we call a street here it's an old Viking word. Coppergate, Petergate, Stonegate." 

The River O use a name that once upon a time would have made Miranda snicker was a steely gray, glazed with patches of ice. Bare trees lined the riverbank. Even the geese taking shelter beneath them looked cold, their feathers bristling in the wind. A garish tourist boar, with an open top deck of red plastic seats, was moored on the dar side. The chalkboard propped on the deck read No Tours Today.

"You see," the driver went on, "What you're calling a gate, we call a bar," 

"A bar?"  Peggy echoed. 

"Bootham Bar, Monk Bar. Some of the old entryways to the city. And what you'd call a bar, we call a pub. Plenty of those in York."  The driver shot them a grin over his shoulder. "Just remember streets are gates, gats are bars, bars are pubs."