Peaches and the Shadow

“Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado…”

—Edgar Allan Poe, “Eldorado”

Ethan Aur, sitting on a large grey rock beside a California stream and wearily shaking a pebble out of his boot, saw the ghost at the corner of his eye. The shade flickered onyx in green-gold forest light, and vanished.

Ethan said, boot in hand and without any real hope, “You could come back, I’m not going to hurt you, and I’d quite like your help, you know.” Nothing phantasmal reappeared, but then again he’d not expected it to. Sunshine skittered across his shoulders and bounced away amid tree-trunks and rivulets and his sword and his motorcycle back on the highway, turning them all to gilded treasure on the way out.

His phone made a sound. This was the sound he generally associated with his older brother; he flung a hand that way, fumbled noises out of his pack, managed to hit accept just in time. “What?”

“What did you just do? Why are you wasting your time with ghosts?” Philip gazed out at him from the phone’s flat screen: golden-haired and broad-shouldered and judgmental. “You’re a Knight of Eldorado, not an everyday medium. And you’re going to miss the museum opening if you’re still in California by tonight. Are you holding someone’s boot?”

“It’s mine.” He hastily put it down. Stuck toes into footwear. “How’d you know about the ghost?” And, belatedly, “I’m not going to be late. For the opening. I know it’s important.”

“It was your idea.” Phil crossed arms, regarded him with exasperated affection. “Mom’s doing it for you.”

“I know.” He did. “I’ll make it back.”

“You said that about my birthday.”

“Phil—” He did not have a good argument. No leg to stand on. Certainly not while only properly wearing one boot. “I’m sorry. I followed a trail. An idea. The newspapers, and the acrostics—”

“Historian.” Phil proclaimed this with fondness, and if there’d been a hint of annoyance about the birthday failure it wasn’t personal. Only concerned: his scholarly and wayward little brother kept missing family obligations. “No one expects you to find Eldorado.” He said it as a single word, the way the writer Poe once had, the way their ancestors had spoken of the tale to the poet: a land of wholeness, of brilliant gold, of ease and wealth and all needs met and satisfied. In the present, the stream’s ripples ruffled themselves into incandescent sunbeam ribbons.

Ethan, out of sheer contrariness, kicked off his other boot and socks. Dangled a foot into the river. Felt water kiss bare toes. “Tell me how you knew about the ghost.”

“The—oh. He’s been there for ages. Speaks in riddles. ‘Ride, boldly ride, over the Mountains of the Moon, down the Valley of the Shadow,’ all that. The usual. No one knows how to get rid of him.” Philip was, Ethan noticed, avoiding direct eye contact. A story, perhaps. A different sort of failure, not having been able to banish a ghost? Or not having bothered to try? “And your Telltale Heart-monitor in the office did that thing it does. When you get close to the supernatural. It’s only a ghost. Eldorado isn’t a place. It’s a metaphor.”

“The City in the Sea was real.” He swung toes through sunshine and river-current. The leg of his jeans got damp. “The Haunted Palace was real. The Red Death—”

And then he stopped. He could see Phil trying not to flinch.

He said, cold under woodsy California sunshine, honest as genuine gold sifted from a clumsy stream, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“I know. Don’t worry about it.” Phil waved a hand; the motion swept across the camera, blurry for an instant. “You weren’t there. But we need you to be. Here. Come back and use your ridiculous expensive degree and run our shiny new museum. Put on that harmless face and pretend the Knights are a powerless fairytale relic. Catalog Mom’s artifacts. Answer my calls when I’m trying to advise the National Security Committee about the history of demon relations and the admissibility of Mesmerically raised-from-the-dead corpse testimony. It’s what we do best. You and me.”

“It’s what you do.” He tucked up knees, wrapped arms around them. “Politics. Power. Secrets. I’m not you or Mom. I’m sorry again. If I’d been—”

“If you’d been old enough to fight the Red Death we might’ve lost more than just Dad.” Philip sighed. “We’re not having a discussion about it, are we? Or are we, later, again? After you’re home. Bring the Pendulum Sword back without a scratch. You know how Mom hates it when we break artifacts.”

“I promise.” Ethan eyed the hilt of the terror-edged Sword, which pretended hard to be innocuous. “And we’re not. Having a discussion. I know how you feel. You were—you couldn’t’ve been any better at taking care of me. You still are.” He considered the weight of this emotion, and quickly tacked on, “Even when I’m twenty-four, I’ve got a PhD, I’m better than you at extrasensory perception and actually knowing howto use a library—”

“You remember that time,” Phil said, “when you tried to learn the Montresor spell, and you ended up making actualwine and not the illusion kind, and Ihad to figure out how to sober you up and get all the stains out of the sofa before Mom got home? I’m just saying that maybe you aren’t the most gifted Knight we’ve ever had in the field. Unless you plan to drown ghosts in wine.”

Ethan made a very rude gesture at his phone, and by extension his sibling, and his sibling’s expensive tailored suit and irritatingly detailed memory.