Chương 48: “June Names the Guardian”

She took three days. This was not unusual, since she had taken two days with Gerald and he had never regretted letting her have the time. She thought about names just as she thought about serious things, quietly and privately. She told him on a Tuesday evening.

"June's guardian," she said.

"But that's too long. So just — June." She paused.

"A different June. Like a name that sounds like mine but means something else." He wrote on the water glass: it does mean something else. She looked at it.

"What does it mean?" Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. He wrote: in an old language. Worthy of wonder. She was very still for a moment.

"That's what it means?" One glow. She looked at the window, beyond which the guardian stood in the garden in the dark.

"Worthy of wonder," she said quietly, not to Vorrath, to herself, as she absorbed things that were too large for an immediate response. Then she looked at him.

"Is that what you think? About the guardian?" He wrote: it is what I thought when I built it. She read this again. He watched her read it twice and understand what he was not saying, which was that he had built something called worthy of wonder before he became something that consumed everything else, which meant the before-before was still in him somewhere even then, even at the beginning, even before the decision on the second floor. She didn't say any of this out loud.

She just nodded, once, like the way Cecile nodded when she'd finished deciding something.

"June," she said to the garden. Outside, the guardian straightened slightly.