"My true education?" said Rose. "And ... a Dragon? But ... there aren't any more! Unless you mean Samaranth."

"No," said Mother Night. "There is another. He is an apprentice, who has not yet chosen to become a Dragon. If he chooses not to be, all will be lost. You must help him to choose."

"What happens if he chooses not to? Become a Dragon, I mean?"

"The Shadows will be coming for you, child," Mother Night said. "They are coming for you now. Be ready."

"I'm not afraid of shadows," Rose said with self-assurance. "I defeated the Shadow King with the sword Caliburn, and I used it to free the shadows of the Dragons. My teachers have told me about what shadows can do, and I've learned to never be afraid of them."

"Afraid you may not be now," said Mother Night ominously, "but you will be, child. You will be.

"The shadows you have fought were only the servants, not the masters. The Shadows we are speaking of are those of primordial darkness-the Echthroi. They have labored long to keep this world in darkness, and have tried again and again to create a champion. Again and again they have failed. But there are those more powerful, who may yet be Un-Named and come to serve the Echthroi, and help them destroy the world. You are one of these, Rose."

Rose blanched. "Me? But all our enemies have tried to kill me, not convert me, or steal my shadow."

"And they were defeated," said Mother Night. "Now the attention of the Echthroi will turn to you. You will either be named, or Un-Named. You will become either the Imago or the Archimago. But you are our daughter, and it will be yours to choose."

"Mine?"

"You are the Moonchild," said Mother Night, "and this is your destiny, to use the greatest ability given to the Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve: to choose."

Rose lowered her head and closed her eyes. "What if I don't choose?" she asked softly. "What if I see a better path to take, or what if I simply don't want to choose? What then?"

There was no answer. Rose opened her eyes and looked around. The attic was empty.

A rumble sounded in the distance. The wind had died down, and the storm was passing. All that was left of the strange encounter was half a sandwich and a glass of milk, the glowing ball of string Mother Night had called Ariadne's Thread, and about a thousand questions. What journey was she supposed to be taking? To seek out a Dragon's apprentice and tell him a riddle? And what was this about Echthroi ... or Echthros ... She couldn't quite remember. Whatever else Mother Night had said that was confusing, that part was clear. The Echthroi, the true Shadows, would be coming for her. And perhaps already were.

"Are you going to eat that sandwich?" a broad smile said from atop one of the curio cabinets. "The storm woke me, and I smelled liverwurst."

"Grimalkin!" Rose said, happy to see a familiar face-or a part of one, at least. The Cheshire cat's smile filled out with whiskers, then nose and eyes, and ears, by the time he climbed down to the floor. He had attached himself to her uncle John, who was the Principal Caretaker of the Geographica but spent most of his time at Tamerlane House.

"Were you expecting a guest?" said Grimalkin, noting the extra glass of milk.

"Not really," said Rose, "but it's yours if you want it. Saucer?"

"Please."

She poured the milk for the cat and scratched its neck under the thick leather collar. The runes on it glowed faintly as she touched it.

The cat finished the sandwich and milk in pretty short order. "Anything else?" he asked, licking his lips.

"Not up here," Rose replied. "It'll be breakfast soon, anyway. Join us?"

"Perhaps later," said the cat, who had started to disappear again. "I was just looking for some ways to kill time while the storm was doing its blustery thing. I think I'll go downstairs and scratch on Byron's portrait."

With that Grimalkin vanished, although she could never really be sure he wasn't still lurking about somewhere. That was the only problem with a Cheshire cat-even when they weren't there, they might be.

Rose pulled on a sweater and some slacks, then brushed a few tangles out of her hair before heading downstairs. Almost as an afterthought, she tied the loose end of the thread to her bedpost and set the faintly luminescent ball on the floor. She wasn't certain what she was meant to do with it, but at least, she decided as she closed the trapdoor to the stairs, if she tied it to something, it wouldn't get lost.

"That was no ordinary storm," Bert proclaimed as the Feast Beasts cleared away the platters of food from the breakfast table. Ever since Rose had arrived as a resident, it had become traditional for several of the Caretakers Emeritis to take breakfast together in the southern dayroom. Bert still needed to eat on a routine schedule, and while Verne didn't, not eating still made him vaguely uncomfortable.

The rest of the Caretakers, who resided within their portraits in the Pygmalion Gallery, did not require food or drink at all-but they missed the memory of dining, and so were more than happy to accept Bert's invitation to have breakfast together.

Mark Twain was almost always there, as were Charles Dickens, James Barrie, and Alexandre Dumas. Jonathan Swift would occasionally join them, as would Rudyard Kipling, who, like Verne, was not a resident of the gallery but a tulpa-a younger, virtually immortal version of himself.

More unusually, Franz Schubert had often joined them as well, although he never spoke. Schubert virtually never joined in any of the activities at Tamerlane House unless they were a matter of official Caretaker business, for which his attendance was compulsory.

"I agree," Charles Dickens said, picking at his teeth with a pewter toothpick. "Something has changed."

"What do you mean by that?" Rose asked as she came down the stairs to join them.

"Ah, Rose, my dear!" Bert proclaimed, jumping to his feet. "When you didn't come down at six, we assumed you wanted to sleep in, especially with such an eventful day ahead. I'll summon the Feast Beasts back," he finished as he started to reach for a silver bell.

"No need," she replied as she took a crust of bread and sat down next to Twain. "I ate a snack rather late, so I'm not all that hungry. What did you mean when you said that something had changed?" she asked, looking through Twain's smoke at Dickens.

"It's the storm last night," Dickens answered, with a surreptitious glance at Bert. "Storms are omens of change, especially in the Archipelago. And after all the Time Storms that had battered the lands in recent years, we were keeping a close watch on this one."

"I thought the Time Storms had nearly stopped?"

"They had, young lady, indeed," said Twain. "That's part of the bother and the worry. Their absence meant that the energy was going elsewhere, not that it had disappeared altogether."

"Perhaps it was an Echthroi ... or is it an Echthros? I can't remember." She looked at Bert. "Whatever it is that the primordial Shadows are called."

All the Caretakers sitting at the table, including the dead ones and the nearly immortal ones, had gone white.

"Where, pray tell, my dear Rose," Twain said, having regained his composure first, "did you hear those names?"

"I had a strange visitor in the night," Rose replied. "You'd be quite pleased, Bert. I was very hospitable, although I don't think she really liked the liverwurst and cream cheese sandwich I made for her."

"What did this visitor say to you, Rose?" asked Bert, still a bit shaken. "How did she come to mention the Echthroi?"

"She told me that history was broken, and that it would be up to me to fix it, otherwise the Echthroi would win, and the world would end," Rose said as she reached for the silver bell on the table. "Does anyone mind if I request something more to eat? It turns out I'm feeling hungrier than I thought."

The table was soon restocked with baked goods of all kinds and fresh fruit. The Caretakers waited patiently as Rose heaped a pile of crepes, strawberries, and whipped cream onto a plate-which she put on the floor for Grimalkin, who wandered in preening with his just-sharpened claws. For herself, she made a sandwich of lettuce, mayonnaise, and crunchy peanut butter.

"It's when I watch her eat," Dickens confided to Twain, "that I suspect Bert and Jules are teaching her all the wrong things."

"Never mind that," said Bert, more irritated at the pause in the discussion than the fact that he agreed with them about Rose's dining habits. "Tell us about your visitor, Rose."

As she ate, Rose recounted the discussion that had transpired in the attic, occasionally pausing to answer questions or clarify points she wanted to make. When she was done, she had some questions of her own.

"What is this about a Dragon's apprentice?" she asked. "I thought they were all gone. I would know-I freed most of them myself."

"All the Dragons in this world, save for Samaranth, were corrupted by the Shadow King," Bert said with a still tangible melancholy, "and any apprentices they might have had were lost long ago."

Rose waited patiently for Bert, or any of the others, to continue. Twain leaned over to Dickens and whispered something, which Dickens wrote on a piece of paper and passed to Grimalkin under the table. The Cheshire cat's eyes narrowed as it scanned the paper, and it seemed about to protest about being a mere messenger, but a sharp look from Twain silenced it, and the cat disappeared.

"It's possible," Twain said into the silence, "that there are still Dragons somewhere, somewhen, in the Summer Country. But as Samaranth said, they would likely never return to the Archipelago, even if they exist."

"Mother Night said he wasn't a Dragon yet," Rose reiterated. "That he was an apprentice, who still had to choose."

"There have been rumors of such men and women," said Verne, who was looking cautiously at Bert as he spoke, "but none since the Histories have been recorded, and none since the creation of the Geographica."

"That we know of," said Twain.

"That we know of," Verne confirmed. "Although there's one possibility, which would make a strange sort of symmetry if it were true-"

"I'm more concerned about what this moon told Rose about the Shadows," Bert said, interrupting. "For her to have even spoken the name of the primordial Shadows ..."

"Echthroi," another voice said. "Echthroi. Echthros."

It was Schubert.

Up to now he had been silent as he usually was, and so everyone had ignored him as they usually did. The Feast Beasts had dutifully placed trays and platters of food in front of him, but most of it remained untouched, save for a few cherry tomatoes, which he ate when no one else was looking.

"The Shadow. The Darkness. The Many-Angled Ones," Schubert said dully. "The Lloigor. The Nameless. The Unwritten. The Anti-Erl Kings. The Un-Makers. The Un-Namers. By all these names and more are they known. Against these, by any name, we fight. But they are always the same. ..." He stood, looming over the table.

"They are the Enemy. And we must be strong, for they will not relent."

For the first time since Mother Night's visit, Rose felt genuinely frightened. For the Caretakers Emeritis to be taking this discussion so seriously was alarming, but for Schubert to be so actively involved sent a thrill of fear up her spine. Bert had once explained to her that he was more attuned to the supernatural than any of the rest of them, with the exception of Poe himself. And for Schubert to speak meant that there was something dangerous brewing.

"The Echthroi," Twain said gravely, "are why there must always be Caretakers, my dear Rose. They are who we protect the world against."

"But the Winter King-," she began.

"Was merely their agent on this planet," Twain interrupted, "and he had a mere fraction of their power."

"Why are they worse than anything else the Caretakers have faced?" Rose asked. "We've defeated shadows before."

"We've defeated their agents," Dickens corrected. "We have not yet faced the true Shadows. But," he added with a tense expression on his face, "it seems that time is finally upon us."

"Rose, dear girl," said Twain as he laid a reassuring hand over hers, "don't worry. This is what we do, we Caretakers. And we are going to use all the powers at our disposal to protect you."

That may be part of the problem, Rose thought. If I am able to choose, and I don't because I know you'll try to protect me, will that be a mistake? Will we all pay a price, just because I'll be afraid to act on my own?

"At any rate," Bert said as they all stood, "we should be discussing this with your three uncles when they arrive for the party. They'll feel terribly left out if we don't."

"Agreed," said Barrie. "I'm looking forward to their return as well."

"The storm has passed," said Dickens. "Take some comfort in that, Rose."

"What do we need to do now?" asked Rose.

"We have to prepare the banquet hall," Verne said as he swept past her into the foyer. "Today Time finally catches up with itself, and we want to make the Caretakers' return to the Archipelago a day they won't forget for centuries."

CHAPTER THREE.

Chronos & Kairos

Celebrations, like many things, are happiest after a long separation, or a period of trials and tribulations-and the event at Tamerlane House came at the end of decades of fear, and conflict, and dark days. Several of the Caretakers Emeritis had come into the front reception hall to receive the new arrivals, and everyone was moving about in a swirl of hugs and handshakes, greetings and salutations.

"Rose!" Jack exclaimed as she hugged each of the companions in turn. "You've cut your hair!"

"It has been seven years, Jack," said Charles as he kissed the young woman on the top of her head. "I'm surprised we even recognize her."

"Seven years for you, you mean," Rose corrected as she hugged John a second time. "For me, just days."

"Hugo is sorry he couldn't come," said Jack. "Warnie, too. They've both missed you terribly. You should come to visit as soon as possible."

"Now, lads," Bert said, even though they were well into middle age, "we shouldn't go rushing to make plans so quickly. We've got time to do things now."

"We've waited a long time," Jack protested. "What's wrong with a short trip to Oxford?"

"We'll discuss it later, Jack," Bert said, trying to change the subject. "Let's just enjoy the celebration, shall we?"

"Fine," said Jack as he hugged her again. "But Rose will be coming to see us shortly, I think."

"I agree," said Charles.

Rose folded her arms, closed her eyes, and smiled. "That's what we're going to do, then."

Jack grinned at Charles. "That's it and done," he said. "There'll be no persuading her otherwise, not now."

"Well enough and good," Bert said, knowing he was beaten. "But we'll still be having a discussion before you leave."

"What's this?" a gruff voice said. "I smell Caretakers about."

"Hello, Burton," said John, reluctantly offering his hand. "It's, ah, good to see you again."

Behind the self-professed barbarian were his two colleagues, the former Caretakers Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle, who were arguing about something.

"Three is a good number," Burton had said when the Caretakers Emeritis had pressed him for the whereabouts of the other members of the Imperial Cartological Society. "Consider us the Society's version of your three Caretakers-emissaries to an unknown region."

"All secrets out, Sir Richard?" Twain had asked him. "All trust, in the open?"

"That's a journey, not a destination," Burton had replied. "We should just focus on the progress we're making, and not on what we expect of the future."