The Tiny Mansion

by Keir Graff

  “Alpha! Beta! Stop!” yelled Blake as the bigger dogs pounced on Russell, who meekly flopped onto his back and offered his belly.

  Fortunately, after some sniffing and barking, the mastiffs decided they weren’t going to eat the intruder—they were going to play with him. All three dogs began bounding around the room and knocking things over.

  Vladimir came out of the basement, wiping his hands on an oily rag. His face was smudged and dirty.

  “Generator is working, but I don’t know for how long. We must leave soon.”

  “What are we waiting for?” asked Blake. “Let’s get in the cars and GO.”

  Vladimir shook his head. “Road is impossible.”

  “I think he means it’s impassable,” I clarified.

  The big manny nodded. “Yes, impossible. It goes into fire, and trees fall across. We saw on screen when you were gone.”

  Reynold was now in another room, yelling into a phone that apparently worked over the internet. The woofing dogs had moved off to another part of the house, making it easier to hear.

  “Your father is speaking with the helicopter pilot,” said Anjali. “It will be here soon.”

  Summery crouched down to pet Carl, who kept winding his leash around my legs. “Will there be room for everyone?” she asked.

  “I’m sure there will,” said Anjali. “Reynold always orders the best. He’ll certainly ask for the largest helicopter available.”

  “But what about Lyndon?” I asked, just as Reynold came back into the room and ended his call.

  “Lyndon turned his back on all technology,” he said. “The man wouldn’t climb into a helicopter to save his own life.”

  “He turned his back on you,” said Penelope, “because you turned your back on him, and because of what you represent. If you asked him, I think he would come.”

  “I’m not asking him anything,” said Reynold with finality.

  “You guys are unbelievable,” I said. “Blake, can we at least find Lyndon on the surveillance system to see if he’s okay?”

  Blake shook his head. “There aren’t any cameras on his land.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vladimir and Reynold exchange a guilty look.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, walking right up to Reynold as Totoro wriggled his head out of the scarf and looked at him, too. “Are there cameras on his land?”

  Reynold Berthold the billionaire looked like someone had slipped an ice cube down the back of his shirt. “Well, there’s one. It’s not like I spy on him or anything—”

  “HA!” said Penelope.

  “But I just wanted to make sure, you know, he wasn’t trespassing on my land, or doing anything, you know, dangerous.”

  “Argue about it later,” I said, racing for the office. “We need to find him now.”

  The screens were up, and the cameras were working, although most of them were blinded by smoke. Reynold reluctantly showed us how to access the secret camera, which was high on a tree and aimed directly at Lyndon’s wooden house. We couldn’t see him at first, so Blake grabbed a joystick and started panning the camera left and right and up and down.

  Finally we saw him. He was up on the roof, using a block and tackle to raise a rain barrel up to the very top. His muscles strained as he pulled on the rope, but the barrel was nearly there.

  “He’s trying to soak the shingles so sparks don’t set the roof on fire,” I said.

  “See? He’s very resourceful,” said Reynold. “He’ll be fine.”

  Even though the barrel must have held fifty gallons of water, I didn’t see how Lyndon could slow the raging fire for more than a moment.

  Penelope obviously agreed. “It’s never going to work,” she said. “We need to take him with us.”

  “Impossible,” said Reynold. “The helicopter will be here any moment, and so will the fire. There’s no time.”

  As I was calculating whether we could make it to Lyndon’s house and back, the power went out again. Every screen in the room went dark.

  “This house needs new batteries,” said Santi.

  Reynold Berthold glared at him.

  “Or maybe it needs to work without electricity altogether,” I added.

  “Will you rebuild if it burns down, Reynold?” asked Anjali. “I don’t want to be homeless.”

  “We have other houses, Mom,” Blake reminded her.

  “We should get ready for helicopter,” said Vladimir.

  “Good idea,” said Summery before asking Penelope, “Can I carry your coati?” She had obviously taken a liking to Carl.

  We trooped out of the office to the front door, which had again sealed tight as a vault during the house’s latest reboot. Even the muscle-bound Vladimir couldn’t get it to budge.

  “Looks like we’d better wait by the pool,” I said, hoping the helicopter had a rescue basket or at least a rope ladder.

  While Blake went to round up the dogs, the rest of us passed through the sliding glass doors to the deck. Smoke billowed and churned while glowing, hissing embers landed in the pool.

  We made quite a crowd, with me, Santi, Reynold, Anjali, Penelope, Vladimir, Summery—and of course Carl, Farrell, Yma, and Totoro. Not to mention Blake, Alpha, Beta, and Russell. I hoped Anjali was right and Reynold had ordered the biggest and best helicopter, because we were going to need a lot of room.

  Reynold still clutched his phone and tablet, even though they were useless without Wi-Fi. Despite the fact that I’d been basically living without a phone for weeks, it was weird seeing that many people just sit there without tapping and staring at screens. Vladimir leaned on the railing, watching the sky as if it was possible to see something, while Reynold and Anjali sat next to each other on an ash-covered couch. Penelope, Summery, and I petted the animals to keep them calm—not that the fat cat making my chest all sweaty seemed to have any problem relaxing. Totoro liked being swaddled so much, I think he must have been a human baby in a previous life.

  Then Penelope turned pale as a new moon. “Look,” she whispered.

  The gray smoke brightened as an orange wall of fire broke through only a couple hundred yards from the house. Before, the approaching fire had just been a bright glow, but now I could see individual flames hungrily licking the sides of trees and devouring the dry grass and bushes. It really did sound like a train, so loud all it needed was an air horn to be complete.

  High above, we heard the WHAP WHAP WHAP of helicopter blades.

  “Finally!” squeaked Santi.

  Where was Blake? He still hadn’t come out with the dogs. I ran back inside, yelling his name as loud as I could.

  “I’m in here,” he answered, and I followed his voice to the garage.

  He had Alpha and Beta on leashes, but Russell’s homemade version had gotten lost somewhere, probably while the three of them were playing.

  “I’m trying to find another collar and leash for Russell so he doesn’t run away from the helicopter,” said Blake, frantically digging through a drawer in the workbench.

  If you asked me, the workbench had never been used for actual work. The tools still had price tags, and some of them were in the original plastic.

  “There’s no time,” I said. “The helicopter’s here. Penelope will have to keep him calm.”

  Then I called Russell, “Come on, boy! Come on! Who’s a good boy?”

  The scarred brown-and-white dog trotted toward me, wagging his stump of a tail, and we all ran back outside.

  The helicopter was lower and louder, the churning force of its blades whipping our hair and clothes and actually clearing some of the smoke. But we still couldn’t see it—and it couldn’t see us.

  “We’re here!” I yelled.

  As everyone else joined in, jumping up and down and waving their arms, we looked like the saddest exercise class you’ve ever seen
.

  “HERE WE ARE! RIGHT HERE! WE’RE UNDERNEATH YOU!”

  But there was no sign if the pilot heard us. She seemed to be hovering in place, looking for somewhere to land or lower a line. Without being able to talk to her, there was no way we could tell her how close she was.

  The smoke shifted, and for a moment I saw the orange-and-white body of the helicopter—farther above and to the side than I’d thought—and then the smoke came back, and it disappeared.

  The WHAP WHAP WHAP became a WHAP WHAP WHAP and then a WHAP WHAP WHAP.

  “It’s flying away!” I said, my heart sinking as fast as the helicopter was rising.

  “Get back here!” raged Reynold. “I’m not paying you to fly away! I’M PAYING YOU TO RESCUE US!”

  But it was no use.

  “If pilot cannot see us, pilot cannot rescue us,” said Vladimir quietly. “Too much risk for crew.”

  Without the helicopter noise, the fire roared louder than ever. It looked closer than ever, too.

  I think Santi summed up the way we all felt when he started crying, his high, thin wail barely audible over the rampaging wildfire.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Not Rescued

  What do we do now, Dad?” asked Blake, looking truly scared for the first time.

  In the living room, Reynold stared at the useless tablet in his hands, his expression completely blank, and suddenly I saw how he would have needed his brother and sister. He may have had the bossy personality of a leader, but he didn’t seem to have enough ideas of his own. I think he literally had no clue what to do next.

  “Don’t quit on us now, Reynold,” said Anjali, gripping his arm.

  “Maybe Vladimir can try to get the generator going again,” he said in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. “If we can get the Wi-Fi working, we can tell the helicopter our coordinates . . . Maybe they’ll come back.”

  The big manny shook his head. “Generator is impossible.”

  Penelope rolled her eyes. “This is so typical of you, Reynold. You’re great at building something amazing, something people desperately want, but you never think about how it will work in the real world. You constructed this perfect glass fortress in the forest, and now what? When the power goes out, you might as well be living in a cooking pot, waiting to boil. Well, guess what? Nobody’s coming to rescue us. Sometimes you have to do things yourself!”

  Just then, there was a loud THUMP.

  “Was that a tree? Did a tree just fall on the house?” asked Summery in a shaky voice.

  As Alpha and Beta started barking, there was another THUMP, and then another. And then still another. The sounds were coming from the front door.

  “Those aren’t trees,” I said, pushing past Reynold and running toward the door with Blake and Santi right behind me.

  As we reached the entryway, there was the loudest THUMP yet, followed by a ripping sound as the head of an axe tore through the stout wooden door. The axe head wiggled, squeaked, and disappeared, then sliced through again, sending long splinters flying.

  By now, everyone was behind us, and all three dogs were barking furiously. The axe was working its way around the locking mechanism—finally, the blade did enough damage that a big kick, delivered by a large booted foot, was enough to swing the door inward in a cloud of smoke.

  In the doorway stood Lyndon Berthold. A wet bandana covered his nose and mouth, and ashes and soot covered everything else.

  “Sorry, but the doorbell didn’t work,” he said.

  “Do you know how much that door cost?” demanded Reynold.

  Lyndon shook his head. “Don’t know, don’t care. I heard the helicopter and figured you were leaving without me. You would have, wouldn’t you?”

  “I figured you wouldn’t want to go!” shouted Reynold. “I thought you were going to stay with your precious wooden house!”

  “I’ll build another—after all, I have plenty of ideas,” said Lyndon.

  “Don’t you start with me,” warned Reynold.

  “Why shouldn’t he start with you, when you’re always starting with him?” said Penelope, moving closer.

  She had always seemed like the calm one to me, but now she looked like she was about to lose her temper, too. Siblings have a way of making you do that, but in the middle of a forest fire, even I could postpone my issues with Santi until we got back to the compound.

  If we got back to the compound.

  Suddenly the little guy didn’t seem so bad. I patted him on the head, and he looked up at me hopefully.

  I turned to Blake, Vladimir, and Summery. “We need to leave in two minutes. Are you all ready to go?”

  “Born ready,” said Summery.

  “I am hired to protect Blake, and that is one job,” said Vladimir with a salute.

  “I think you mean ‘job one,’” I said. “But I know what you mean. Now let’s go.”

  While the siblings argued in the living room and Anjali looked on helplessly, the rest of us gathered the supplies we needed for one last dash through the forest. Blake found backpacks, and we loaded them with bottled water, flashlights, and a first aid kit. Then we cut sheets into squares, soaked them in water, and tied the makeshift bandanas around our mouths and noses as Lyndon had done.

  “Now get in shower,” said Vladimir.

  “Can’t we shower after we get out of the forest fire?” groaned Blake.

  But I saw what his bodyguard wanted.

  “Quick, Blake. Do it with all your clothes on. Let’s all get soaking wet. It’s going to be hot out there.”

  We hurried to the nearest bathroom to wet ourselves down—but the shower controls were electronic. The water wouldn’t even come on.

  “Jump into the swimming pool!” said Santi.

  We yelled at the other grown-ups to join us, but they were lost in their argument. I heard phrases like you always and you never and for the last time, and it made me think that, if they didn’t get moving, it really would be the last time they argued. Were they going to stand there screaming at each other while the house burned down around them?

  I tried not to think about Santi’s pee as we all plunged into the pool, the dogs too, and then climbed out, getting a second soaking as the dogs shook water out of their fur. Totoro wasn’t happy about getting wet, but I wanted to keep him safe, and he didn’t mind too much as long as he stayed swaddled in the carrier.

  We went back into the living room. If Reynold, Penelope, and Lyndon noticed the water streaming from our clothes, they didn’t show it.

  “All I ever wanted was to be recognized for the code I wrote!” said Lyndon.

  “And I just wanted you to acknowledge the design concepts I came up with!” added Penelope.

  “You wanted money!” screeched Reynold.

  “We wanted to work together!” chorused his siblings.

  “Time to go, dorks,” I interrupted.

  “We’re not going anywhere until we settle this!” said Reynold.

  “You might want to reconsider, Dad,” said Blake as we all noticed an orange flicker on the walls.

  Outside the window, the trees were burning like giant torches.

  “Jump in the pool, and then let’s get going!” I yelled.

  And for once, Reynold, Penelope, and Lyndon didn’t argue.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  WE HAD TO get back to the compound to warn Trent and Leya the fire was coming. But with the forest quickly becoming a smoke-filled inferno, I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to find the path. What if I accidentally led us right into the flames?

  Fortunately, Blake and Lyndon had been over this terrain hundreds of times and could probably recognize landmarks even in the worst of situations, which was definitely the situation we were in.

  “Come on, Uncle Lyndon!” said Blake, pulling him awa
y from Reynold before the brothers started bickering again.

  Blake and Lyndon led the group, with me and Santi right behind, and Penelope, Reynold, Anjali, and Summery in the middle, and Vladimir making sure no one fell behind. Blake held the leashes for Alpha and Beta, Summery carried Carl, and Penelope walked with Russell while Yma clung to her shoulder and Farrell burrowed into her pocket. I still had Totoro in the sling and was surprised at how much a cat could weigh—my back was starting to hurt a little.

  As we hurried along, fire leaped from treetop to treetop on either side of us, and flaming branches and pine cones dropped like missiles, igniting small fires wherever they landed. It made me sad to think about how this forest, which must have taken hundreds or even thousands of years to grow, was going to get wiped out in just one day.

  Reynold was sad, too, but for a different reason.

  “I’ll never find another forest like this,” he moaned to no one in particular. “Do you know how much it will cost to buy one? Old-growth redwood forests on private land don’t exactly grow on trees, you know.”

  Even Anjali seemed to be getting tired of him. “Hopefully we’ll live to go forest shopping another day,” she snapped.

  Lyndon and Blake stopped so fast I almost bumped into them.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I think we’re going the right direction, but I’m not a hundred percent sure,” said Lyndon, scanning from side to side. The smoke was now so thick it was hard to see fifty yards ahead.

  “I think it’s that way,” said Blake, pointing right.

  Lyndon nodded to the left. “Pretty sure it’s that way.”

  Seeing a perfectly sized walking stick just a little distance from the group, I went over and picked it up, thinking it would help relieve the pressure on my aching back. It was just the right size, but no sooner had I put it down than it was yanked out of my hand so violently I almost fell over.

  I stared, mouth agape, as the stick flew up into the sky, whipped by a taut rope snare that had been entirely undetectable under the layers of forest dandruff and ash. My ankles twitched as I recognized the same kind of trap that had caught me.