“Well, it’s been many years since we devised it and added the magic. I think I can find it. Once we’re in, we’ll have a few encounters if the guards are still around, I imagine. You and I will freeze them up or some such thing; then we’ll seal the palace so that if Justine makes it out of Artimé, she’ll have lost her ‘power,’ so to speak.”
“The palace is her power?”
Mr. Today furrowed his brow. “Not exactly. Her power is the fear she instills in people. She hides behind the palace so that Quill can’t see that she is afraid too.”
“What is she afraid of?”
The mage laughed bitterly. “She’s afraid of losing her power to make people afraid. She’s afraid of not being in control. Appearing weak.”
Alex thought about all of this. It was hard to imagine that the stately woman was afraid of anything. But there was another question in his mind that had been eating away at him since the night he’d gone to the gate. He hesitated, not sure if he should ask, but finally gathered up the nerve as they sped along, rounding a particularly jutting piece of the island.
“Mr. Today?”
“Yes, lad.”
“You said that you made the people of Quill forget.”
Mr. Today nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. I did that.”
“Why?”
He scratched his chin. “To keep them from dissenting when Justine began to rule. Because back then I believed in Justine’s plan when she took the title of High Priest—that the best way to rule people was to protect them from everything and frighten them into obedience. I believed in it so much that I gave my full trust to Justine for years, and didn’t always notice what she was up to. And because of that failure on my part, she came up with the plan to segregate the least useful in our society. I offered my services, because I was a better mage than she. It wasn’t difficult to render them useless. I just had to put the Unwanteds in a splatterpaint spell, or paralyze them, or make them fall asleep, then let them stand around on the lawn outside the walls of Quill. No mess.” He shook his head sadly, horrified at his own actions, as tears glistened and seeped into the wrinkles around his eyes. “But then Justine wanted to go a step further. A step too far, in my opinion, at the time. She convinced me to create the Great Lake of Boiling Oil, and then she proceeded to eliminate the Unwanteds permanently. I was horrified, but I didn’t let on—she was so powerful and power hungry by then that she wouldn’t have hesitated to eliminate me if I defied her. And I knew I had to stop her. So I pretended to be behind her actions fully, and I offered to take over the business of dumping all the remaining bodies, which allowed Justine to have more time to do the rest of her job.” He sighed. “So I hid them using magic and, every year, froze and hid the newest group that had been purged.”
“What …” Alex bit his lip. “What made you decide to make Artimé?”
“There was a little girl,” he said softly. “You see, Alex, you have to understand how it all started. Fifty years ago I was young, just a little older than you, and I was foolish. I went along with Justine, disappearing every Purge day to put spells on the Unwanteds. By the time Justine wanted to actually eliminate them entirely, I had a wife, a child, some dear friends in the government—one, especially. And each year, once I took over, I pretended to eliminate the Unwanteds but merely did as I’d done before, casting spells on them and then hiding them with another spell so Justine couldn’t see. But it became hard to cast these spells on children I had grown to care about. One little girl in particular. And I knew it was wrong—all of it was so, so wrong. I decided that if I were to change things and be a better man, I had to release them from these spells and let them live their lives. I had to create a secret haven for them, but I couldn’t just create it and then leave them. So I did what I had to do. I left my life, my friends, my family in Quill and created Artimé. And I sold the idea to Justine as a way to build even more fear in the hearts of the children and scare them into submission—I would hermit myself away and become the dreaded Death Farmer that no one actually saw unless they were Unwanted.”
“Wow,” Alex said, and took it all in. After a moment he looked up at the mage. “So originally you chose power like Justine, back when you were young, but then you changed,” he said. “You became good. So maybe Aaron …?”
Mr. Today smiled. “We will never lose hope, my boy.”
Alex puzzled for a long moment, gazing over the water. “Were you … um … were you secretly in love with Justine or something? Is that why you went along with her?”
Mr. Today afforded a chuckle. “No, Alex. Not in the slightest. Not any more than you could be secretly in love with your twin.”
Alex stared at the mage. “Wait. You mean …”
The old man nodded sagely. “You and I,” he murmured, “have a lot in common.”
They closed in on the south side of the island, where the ground grew hilly. Alex thought that they were probably near the palace, but not a thing could be seen of Quill because of the hideous wall.
“Who was the little girl?” Alex asked presently, although he thought he knew.
“My daughter, Claire. Ms. Morning.”
Alex nodded. “You couldn’t cast the spell.”
“No.” Mr. Today looked away, a wistful expression on his face.
“And so you created Artimé … for her.”