Finders Keepers

by Peter Speakman

  But he kept at it anyway. The books were in weird languages and the pages were brittle. He was occasionally swept up into a story, but for the most part he was just skimming, checking words against the list the professor had left for him. “Something will jump out at you,” she said, tapping him right on the temple. “Something will click.”

  Theo was hunting for any references to the Elicuum Helm or anything that looked like it might be the Elicuum Helm. He plugged whatever he found into a computer spreadsheet that plotted the date, location, and parties involved in each sighting of the Helm or any of its pieces. It was sort of exciting when he actually found something. Which had been a whopping two times so far. Moving on.

  At first, Theo thought it was only going to be one afternoon. Professor Ellison brought out four books for him to start out with. But, as with anything Professor Ellison–related, magic and trickery was involved. Every one of the books contained sub-volumes, each with hundreds of years’ worth of collected knowledge. Theo wound up going back to the library’s endless bookcases to check stories of unexplained phenomena that went back to the beginning of the written word. Sometimes having a teacher who was three thousand years old was a straight-up pain in the butt.

  Theo squinted through the magical eyeglass that translated all languages into the reader’s native tongue. Pieces of the Helm had been involved in some of the most famous battles of the last few centuries, but they always disappeared in the chaos that followed. The pirate Blackbeard was the last person seen with a piece of the Helm, and that was back in 1718. After that there were only rumors.

  Theo yawned. He had managed to work backward all the way to 1900. That only left him another two thousand eight hundred years. He started flipping the pages as fast as he could. There was so much information! No one could ever get through it all!

  He stopped at random and looked down. It was a chapter about burial rites in France. Who cared? He tried again and landed on the brutal and bloody campaign by Napoléon Bonaparte against the Egyptians. The French general encountered particularly strong resistance during the siege of Jaffa. At one point, the massive Napoleonic forces were turned back by a small contingent of Egyptian soldiers who had been surrounded on the outskirts of the city. It should have been a disaster for Egypt. Instead, the advancing French garrison was somehow massacred as they closed in for their final assault. The Egyptians carried their own leader off the battlefield bleeding from his nose and ears and whispered stories that he had used some kind of magic passed down directly from the Gods. The French eventually took Jaffa and executed the leader and his men, but disease and attrition cost the French their ultimate goal. When they finally left Egypt, soothsayers searched desperately for the artifact that had given the Egyptian leader such power. They tore up the city and its surroundings, desecrating graves trying to find the piece of the Helm.

  It was that way for decades, but the piece was never found. And now, here Theo was, reading about French exploits in Egypt and burial ceremonies in Paris and…something clicked.

  He could almost feel it in the spot Ellison had tapped on his temple.

  14

  IT WAS SO EASY. ALL THEO HAD TO DO was follow the script. “It’s a research paper on the Abenaki tribe,” he was supposed to say. “It’s due on Monday.” Just enough to show they were together to work on a serious homework assignment with a subject too dull for anyone to offer any help. It was a recipe to be left alone. Simple.

  But, of course, Theo had gotten nervous. “We’re just going to, you know, hang out?” he stammered. “I have this game Echo Realms on my desktop and Reese wants to play it?”

  It was all Reese could do to keep from wincing. Martha Merritt and Kathleen Quarry observed the three seventh graders crashed out in Theo’s room from the doorway and narrowed their eyes. Reese knew that look. It was a universal mother cue, meaning I do not approve of whatever is happening right now.

  “I suppose that’s all right,” said Martha, looking to Parker’s mom. “Isn’t it?”

  Kathleen nodded weakly. “I suppose so. I kind of wish you had let us know a little earlier. That you were…you know. Having Reese over.”

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” said Theo. “We hang out with Reese all the time.”

  “I know, sweetie, but on a Friday night, in your room, it’s just…different.”

  Parker and Reese were both squirming now.

  “Mom,” Parker said, “it’s okay. I swear. We’re just going to drink some sodas and play Theo’s weird game. I guess if you wanted we could set up the computer in the dining room and do it down there….”

  Thankfully, she didn’t call Parker’s bluff. “No! No. It’s fine. Really. If you need anything just call downstairs.” Kathleen winked at Reese in solidarity before the moms closed the door (halfway) and walked down the stairs.

  When they were gone, Parker turned on Theo with a what-the-heck? look.

  “What? What’s the problem?” Theo asked.

  Reese fought the urge to bop Theo over the head with one of the now-useless books about the Abenaki she had hauled from the library to her house and then over to the Merritts’. Once again, they would have been better off if she had done the talking herself.

  Kathleen and Martha joined J.T. and Kelsey at the card table in the living room. As Kelsey clumsily shuffled the cards, J.T. turned to his wife. “Anything we should be worried about?”

  “No,” she said with a shrug. “At least not yet.”

  “The problem is that now they’re going to be checking up on us all night,” Reese said, plopping down on the desk chair.

  Theo mumbled, “They would have anyway. They’re moms.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Parker. He threw a protein bar and a bottle of Gatorade into his book bag and threw it over his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. I have to go and I have to go now.”

  “I still don’t see why we can’t all go together,” said Reese. “It seems weird that you’re doing this without us.”

  Parker said, “How would we explain it? The math club trips are one thing, but this has to happen tonight. It’s easier for one of us to sneak out than all three of us. It might be different if we could have Professor Ellison magic us up some more doppelgängers….”

  Reese frowned. She didn’t want to go through anything like that again.

  “Besides,” Parker said, “Theo doesn’t even want to go.”

  Theo didn’t say anything, but Parker was right. He was still shaken from watching Ellison in action the last time. He had no problem sitting this one out.

  Parker threw open the window and checked out the night. “Guys, this isn’t a huge deal. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. All you have to do is cover for me.” He put on his blue Dodgers cap and climbed out onto the roof. “Wish me luck.”

  Reese and Theo stuck their heads out the window and watched Parker as he scrambled down the roof, dropped lightly onto the lawn, and ran off into the darkness.

  “Good luck,” said Reese under her breath.

  “So, what do you think?” asked Theo. “Echo Realm?”

  She sighed. “Why not?”

  Parker found Professor Ellison’s gleaming black Jaguar sedan parked under a canopy of trees far from the road. He climbed into the back and threw his book bag onto the tan leather seat. “Nice,” he said. “Is this the XJ?”

  “It is, and I’ll thank you to treat it gently, please,” the professor said from the driver’s seat. “It was special-ordered from the factory in Birmingham and I am quite fond of it.”

  She looked from Fon-Rahm in the passenger seat to Parker in the back.

  “What?” Parker asked.

  “Just looking to see if there were any side effects to cutting the tether. You never know.” Her eyes twinkled. “Perhaps you’ll explode!”

  “That’s funny. Can we just get going, please? Some of us have to get back before anyone realizes we’re gone.”

  Fon-Rahm remained sullen. “I do not understand why we cou
ld not make use of my automobile. It was carefully chosen for its ability to avoid attention.”

  “It does blend in, but I for one am not arriving in Paris in a beige Toyota. I have a reputation to protect.”

  “I thought our purpose was to arrive unnoticed.”

  “Come on, Fon-Rahm, live a little,” said Parker. “This car is the bomb.”

  The genie frowned. “I was not aware this conveyance was also a weapon. Let us hope we have no use for it.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Parker. “Buddy, you know I love ya, but you have got to get with the times. Try to keep up, okay? Use your endless ocean of power to learn a little something about pop culture. Pick up a little slang. It’ll make you seem less fussy.”

  “If you command it, it shall be so.”

  “I command it.”

  Fon-Rahm’s eyes clouded. “I have absorbed one hundred years of your so-called popular culture and will now endeavor to assimilate this knowledge into my vocabulary.”

  “Yeah, see, that’s a perfect example right there.” Parker realized how much he missed poking fun at his genie. Did Fon-Rahm miss him when they were apart? Was he even capable of missing somebody?

  “It seems as if you two have some deeper issues to discuss. Out of a spirit of cooperation and generosity, I’ll offer once more to make this little trip on my own.”

  “Not a chance, Professor Ellison. It’s not that we don’t trust you. It’s just that…You know what? It is that we don’t trust you.”

  “How hurtful. In that case, do you think it might be possible to start our little treasure hunt? I’d like to be back before the sun comes up. I have delicate skin.”

  Parker nodded. “Take her up, Fon-Rahm.”

  Smoke pooled around the genie’s eyes and a mist enveloped the big British car. The Jaguar lifted into the air.

  “As you wish, daddy-O,” said Fon-Rahm.

  Parker grimaced. “I’m going to regret the whole slang thing, aren’t I?”

  Fon-Rahm pointed east and the black car took off like a rocket into the night sky.

  15

  PARKER HAD SEEN THE PICTURES IN Professor Ellison’s book and had read the entries Reese found online. He thought he knew what to expect. He thought he was prepared. It wasn’t until he took his first steps into the catacombs that he realized there was no preparing for something like this.

  Fon-Rahm had landed the big Jag in a cloud of magic fog in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. They had followed the professor’s confident lead down Parisian side streets and into an alley behind a cheese store that smelled to Parker like a house-sized pile of wet gym socks. They went through a secret door with rusty hinges and down a staircase illuminated by flaming torches they lit along the way. The stairs ended and Parker once again found himself in dark tunnels underground. This time, though, the tunnels were lined with human skulls and Parker knew that it wasn’t just in his head. Everything that was happening was actually real.

  Professor Ellison took a flaming torch for herself and handed one to Parker to carry. “Are you all right, Parker? You look a little peaked.”

  “I’m fine. I’m just…I feel like I’m in a horror movie.”

  The catacombs that run underneath the city of Paris form a massive underground graveyard. Over six million of France’s dead can be found there, their bones mortared into walls, their skulls in stacks and pyramids and built into altars. It’s known as the world’s largest cemetery and it attracts morbid-minded tourists from all around the world. Of course, not even the most seasoned tour guide knew about this hidden section of the catacombs, and even if they did, they would know better than to explore it at night. A sign at the catacombs’ main entrance proclaimed ARRÈTE! C’EST ICI L’EMPIRE DE LA MORT. In English it meant “Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead.”

  “I can see how you might find it unsettling,” said Fon-Rahm. “I have learned that humans have an uneasy relationship with their own mortality.”

  Parker shined his torch at a mosaic of bones set into the wall in the shape of a cross and shuddered. “If you mean we’re afraid of death, then, yeah, that’s true. Some of us aren’t immortal.”

  “Immortality means eternal life. I am not immortal, as I am not what you might call alive.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along, dear boy,” said Professor Ellison, shifting her bag full of magic amulets from one shoulder to the other. “It might seem as if Fon-Rahm cares about you and your friends, but it’s an act. He isn’t any more human than a cactus or a microwave.”

  Parker looked to Fon-Rahm, but the genie said nothing. Parker remembered the wound on the Jinn’s arm. It was hard to know just how injured Fon-Rahm was.

  They walked slowly down the dank tunnel, avoiding the puddles of standing water on the limestone floor. There was a stench of mildew and rot.

  “It was the smell, you know,” the professor said. “There used to be cemeteries all over the city, but they were overcrowded and the bodies began to pile up. Eventually the stink became so upsetting that they dug up all the bones and moved them down here.” She peered thoughtfully at a skull. “I probably knew a few of these people.” The professor looked around to get her bearings. “All right. I think this is the way. I haven’t been down here in two hundred years. Aha. There we are.”

  She led Parker and Fon-Rahm into a shallow room and used her own blazing torch to light the torches set into the walls. The room was constructed entirely of skulls yellowed by age.

  “Oh good,” said Parker. “Skulls.”

  “I do not see any piece of the Elicuum Helm here. Are you certain your book is accurate?”

  “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.” Professor Ellison stared into the empty eye sockets of a skull covered with the flaking remnants of blue paint. She spoke as casually as if she were ordering croissants in a sidewalk cafe. “Avez-vous ce que je cherche?”

  Parker held his breath as the skull, without a jaw or a tongue, answered her in a voice as dry as the dust in a desert. “J’ai beaucoup de secrets. Quest-ce que vous cherchez?”

  “You see,” said the professor with a smile. “The French aren’t rude at all. You just have to know how to talk to them.”

  “What did you say to it? What did it say back?” Parker asked.

  “Parker! Do you really not know any French? I’m shocked. Just what are they teaching in public schools?”

  Parker turned to his genie. “I wish I spoke French.”

  Smoke pooled in Fon-Rahm’s eyes and Parker felt the rush of an entire language flooding into his brain in the space of a millisecond. Parker shook his head to get himself straight and smiled back at the professor. “Je en sais assez pour se en sortir.” I know enough to get by.

  The professor spoke to the skull. “Are you the keepers of the Elicuum Helm?”

  The skull answered, “We are.”

  “Relieve yourselves of your burden. Give the Helm to us.”

  “You must prove you are worthy to receive it. You must put forth a champion.”

  “What does this mean?” asked Fon-Rahm.

  “They want one of us to step up and face some sort of test,” Professor Ellison said. “It could be anything. A feat of strength, an impossible puzzle.”

  “Well,” Parker said, “I mean, I could do it, but—”

  “So be it,” the skull rasped. “Step forward and face your challenge.”

  Professor Ellison put her hand to her forehead in pure exasperation. “Oh no.”

  “Who, me?” Parker spoke directly to the skull. “No! No, I was just saying that I’m probably not the best choice. Look, we have a genie right here—”

  “Step forward and face your challenge.”

  Parker turned, panicked. “Professor, can you help me out here, please?”

  “It’s too late. You volunteered.”

  “I didn’t really…”

  “It thinks you volunteered. There’s no use arguing with a skull.”

  “Fon-Rah
m! Help me!”

  “I do not think I can interfere. This situation is most puzzling.” The genie shook his head. “It is a real lulu.”

  The seventh grader was at a loss. “What am I supposed to do?”

  The professor shrugged. “Step forward and face your challenge?”

  Parker took one last look at the Professor and Fon-Rahm and reluctantly took a step closer to the blue skull. The groan of shifting weight shook the room. With shocking suddenness, another wall of mortared skulls crashed to the floor behind Parker. When the dust settled, Parker saw that he was surrounded by empty eye sockets and completely cut off from his genie and Professor Ellison. He was on his own.

  Kathleen loved pitch, and this was the first game she’d gotten to play with her husband in literally years, but she could tell J.T.’s thoughts were elsewhere.

  “Maybe I should go check on the kids,” J.T. said.

  “What?” said Martha, half joking. “You don’t trust your own son?”

  “Sure I do. It’s just that, you know, he’s getting older….” J.T. started to stand. “Maybe I’ll just pop my head in.”

  “You stay here,” said Kathleen. “I’ll go and check on them.”

  Kelsey raised his eyebrows as Kathleen got up from the table and headed upstairs. “Those poor kids are never going to get a minute’s peace.”

  “Well, I can’t speak for you, buddy,” said J.T., “but I was no angel when I was Parker’s age.”

  Martha smiled. “Neither were me and my sister.”

  Parker’s mother climbed the stairs and stood outside Theo’s room, straining to hear anything beyond the blaring pop music and video-game sounds coming from within. Finally she poked her head through the half-open door.

  “Hey, guys, do you need anything?”

  “No thanks, Aunt Kathleen.” Theo was on the bed reading a comic book.

  Reese was on the computer battling an army of ogres. “Yes!” she cried. “Parker, look up what I’m supposed to do with orcs!”