by Mikki Lish
Hedy speculated that the way up to the belvedere from inside was probably through the attic, but the door to the attic was firmly locked.
“Doug, you could open it, couldn’t you?” Spencer asked the bear hopefully, after they had recounted their exchange with Nobody.
Doug looked uneasily at the forepaw he had used to open the door to Simon’s room. The patch of fur that had turned pale brown was now white and was even bigger than before. “I’m worried this paw is older than the rest of me after that bit of magical breaking and entering.”
“Remember how limp he was the last time?” Stan fretted to the children. “He was like a big fur sock that’d been worn too many times. Let’s not sap him completely. Bad enough he’s a skunk without a tail. I don’t want him turning into a comatose polar bear.”
Hedy drifted to the wings on the wall of Doug and Stan’s room and ran a finger down the silvery-brass feathers. Max had made them work—sort of.
With Spencer’s help, Hedy got the wings on and bobbed up and down on her toes. But a sudden vision of herself plummeting from the roof, dragged by the weight of the metal wings, made them wrench downward, many times heavier than a moment ago. Her knees buckled, and she fell to the floor. That decided the matter; this was no time to start experimenting with flying.
Which left only one option: climb.
After lunch, Hedy and Spencer told Grandpa John they were going to explore the garden, and he was preoccupied enough with whatever device he was working on (curiously, it was staining his hands blue) that he cheerily left them to it.
They sneaked a rusty-looking ladder from the garage—which was tricky to do without scratching Grandpa John’s car—and crept to the side of the house that was farthest from Grandpa John’s study. There, they pushed the ladder out to its full length and leaned it against the brickwork.
“It doesn’t go anywhere near the third floor,” Spencer pointed out, “and some of the steps are missing.”
Hedy thought hard. She looked up at the roof and then peered around the corner. On this side, the gutter of the first floor was within reach of the ladder. From the gutter, she could see a way up using a drainpipe and a windowsill, to the bit where the two gables met. Once she shimmied up that, it would be easy to pick her way through the stone grotesques on the roofline to the belvedere and climb over its railing. She pictured what she was about to do, trying to ignore the clenching of her stomach.
“You stand guard,” Hedy told Spencer.
“Again?”
“Do you want to go up there? Just tell Grandpa John I’m getting a tennis ball if he comes out.”
Hedy’s legs felt shaky as she started climbing up the ladder. She did her best not to dwell on the wobble in some of the rungs, nor look down. When she reached the gutter, she had to stifle a yelp of surprise at a large beetle that crawled out from under some moist leaves. The wind was up, and it tossed Hedy’s hair but luckily it also blew most of the snow from the roof, so that it wasn’t so slippery to climb. Her hands were very cold, though.
She reached for the gable and then pulled herself up onto the roof. Light as a feather, she told herself as she stepped across the tiles that appeared to be in the best shape. She made it to the drainpipe near the windowsill and told herself that if she fell from it, it was only a very short fall. Taking a firm grip on the drainpipe, she pushed up from the windowsill, found her footing on a decorative brick, pushed up from that, and then edged up between the gables until, miraculously, she was threading her way through the stone grotesques, using them as handholds. The belvedere was within a few steps.
Hedy allowed herself a moment to enjoy the view. The few winding streets of Marberry’s Rest, the surrounding patchwork of fields dusted with snow, and the stands of leafless trees looked like a large toy play set from up here.
Peeping over the railing of the belvedere, Hedy saw not only the five piano keys that Nobody had taken from Simon’s piano but a brown furry stub of a bear’s tail. She grinned and clambered into the belvedere, wondering if Mrs. Vilums would be able to help her sew Doug’s tail back on. Once the keys and the tail were secure in the inner pocket of her jacket, Hedy checked the single windowless door that led from the belvedere into what had to be the attic of the house, but it was locked.
“You made it. Well done,” said a now-familiar voice behind her.
Hedy turned, and for one heartbeat saw the wisp of a man’s face hanging in the air. It faded from view the next instant. “H-hello,” she said. She told herself the shiver was the frosty wind up here. “I’m taking the piano keys and the bear’s tail back into the house.”
“If you insist,” Nobody said agreeably.
“What did you find up here about Grandma Rose?”
Nobody laughed. “I found out what happens to those who seek.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your grandfather has a remarkable security system. Crude but remarkable. Try not to break the roof as you fall off it.”
“What have you found?” she cried.
There was no more taunting from Nobody. The cold wind whistled around the belvedere emptily. But then, out of the corner of her eye, Hedy saw one of the grotesques on the other side of the belvedere—a stone imp—move. It flexed its muscly little shoulders and stood straight, letting loose a guttural croak. Beyond the imp, a scrabbling noise came clicking over the roof, and a small pack of grotesques slunk over the tiles.
“Finders!” said the imp in a harsh, stony voice.
“What?” Hedy said faintly.
“Enemies!” sneered a griffin.
“I’m—I’m not an enemy!” she stammered. “I’m the Master’s granddaughter.”
But the grotesques kept coming closer. Hedy crawled over the railing of the belvedere, her breath coming fast, and shuffled as quickly as she could back toward the way she had ascended. In her fear, she slipped and let out a small scream. The stone dragon she caught hold of to stop her fall shifted under her hand, awakening as well. With a moan, Hedy dropped to her hands and knees and crawled.
“Protect her!” grated the stone dragon closest to her. For a second, Hedy thought it was coming to her aid. Instead it tried to nip her foot. She kicked out as hard as she could, startling the dragon, which retreated toward the safety of the group. But kicking that way made her lose her grip on some lichen, and she skidded down the tiles a little way before a gable broke her slide. The stone creatures were still coming. This is it, she thought, I’m going to have to scream for Grandpa.
Just as she drew breath, something fluttered from above and landed before her. It was a raven. A raven that rippled from stone to white feather and back. The same huge raven that had led their car to Grandpa John’s house on that first day, Hedy was sure of it. She steeled herself for the raven to peck her, but it shot into the air and swooped on the grotesques in menacing circles. It was helping her! The little stone monsters nipped and snarled at the bird, but it darted up and down expertly, claws outstretched. Stone chips went flying, and the creatures, now wary, backed away.
Hedy clambered down, resting her feet for a moment on the windowsill below. Her nose was pressed to the dirty glass of the locked window. Through it she could see mannequins wearing magician’s outfits and, in the shadows of one corner, a faint gleam of something metal. This was the attic.
The raven swooped back to Hedy, fixing her with a severe eye. The grotesques were beginning to slink back toward her.
Caw, squawked the raven urgently.
There was a faint noise inside the attic. Hedy peered in. Was there movement in the shadows?
And then in the grime of the window, just like in the dust of the photo frame, appeared three words: YOU ARE NEAR.
Grandma, Hedy thought. She was near Grandma!
The raven gently swooped at Hedy then, urging her away. She carefully slid and scurried down to the first-floor roof until she reached the top of the ladder that Spencer was still holding steady. “I’m coming down!” she shouted.<
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Spencer’s jaw dropped as he saw a gargoyle and a griffin evade the raven and leap down the slate tiles in pursuit of Hedy. “Watch out!”
She flung herself downward as fast as she could. Looking up, she saw the small heads of the grotesques, but they did not give chase. They obviously had been given one job by Grandpa John: to keep people from the top of the house.
“What happened? Hedy, are you okay? Those things were chasing you!”
Panting, Hedy dragged Spencer away from the side of the house, feeling like her heart was trying to beat its way out of her chest. They could see the grotesques returning to their spots along the top of the roof and freezing into position. No one would suspect them of being anything but stone carvings now.
Caw. The raven glided down to the fence and studied them with its intelligent eyes.
“Is that the raven from the first day?” Spencer whispered. “The one that led us to Grandpa’s house?”
“I think so,” Hedy murmured, “and I think it’s a friend. It helped me up on the roof.”
The raven scratched its back with its beak, then with a final caw it flew off back up to the roof.
They returned the ladder to the garage. Spencer had seen some of the chase lower down on the roof, and now he pestered Hedy with questions about what had happened higher up, until he noticed her hands trembling. He offered her a candy from the stash in his pocket, saved from Portsall; the sweetness helped to ease the tightness in her stomach. But a lingering dread made Hedy want to put some distance between herself and the house. They scampered to the bottom of the garden, where at least they knew the statues would stay nice and motionless, unlike the grotesques. At last, sitting on the knee of one of the three stone figures on the stone bench, Hedy felt calm enough to fill Spencer in.
“If Grandma Rose said you were near, then does that mean we have to go back up there?” Spencer asked with an anxious squint at the roof of the house.
“I couldn’t do the roof again,” Hedy said heavily. “Nobody must have known they’d attack me. We need to find a way into the attic from the inside.”
Although a bitter wind was blowing, they stayed in the statue graveyard, working their way through Spencer’s candy and thinking of how to break into the attic, until an hour or so later they heard Grandpa John calling them. They met him halfway up the yard.
“Are you trying to catch frostbite out here?” he asked. “Come inside. I’ve got something for you two to do that doesn’t involve freezing your noses off.”
In the living room, Grandpa John had set up a square table with wooden rims, small wooden drawers, and green felt across the top. On the table was a large box filled with puzzle pieces.
“Is that a puzzle table?” Spencer asked.
“It’s a mah-jongg table. It’s a family hand-me-down,” Grandpa John said, his gaze wandering over the green felt for a moment. “Mah-jongg’s a Chinese game, but don’t ask me to teach you. I couldn’t remember the rules for the life of me. I thought it would be perfect for you to do this on, though. Two thousand pieces.” He lifted up the top cover box and showed them the image they had to put together: a Christmas scene with Santa in a laden sleigh, fir trees, and tons of snow that would be difficult to tell apart.
“Two thousand is a lot of pieces,” Hedy muttered. “Mom and Dad’ll be back … tomorrow night!” She could hardly believe it: Tomorrow would be Christmas Eve already. With everything that had been going on, she’d completely lost track of the days.
“Well, I’d say you’d better crack on, then.” He smiled. “You don’t want an unfinished puzzle nagging at your brain once you’ve gone home.”
Unable to argue, Hedy and Spencer sank into two chairs at the sides of the table and reluctantly began sorting pieces into piles. By the time Grandpa John left them to it, however, they were beginning to lose themselves in the activity.
They had pieced together two edges of the puzzle when Grandpa John surfaced and headed to the kitchen, where he began loudly rummaging through the cupboards. “What’s he doing with that funnel and the jug?” Spencer wondered as Grandpa John walked back toward his study.
A moment later, however, there was a loud smash as Grandpa John dropped what he had been carrying and very clearly swore, which they had never heard him do before.
Hedy leapt to her feet and, with Spencer close behind, dashed toward the noise. “Grandpa John?”
But he hadn’t fallen. He was standing in the doorway of his study, broken pieces of the stoneware jug in a puddle at his feet, and the funnel dangling from his hand. At the sound of Hedy’s and Spencer’s footsteps, he turned with a troubled look on his face. “Did you come in here while I was in the kitchen?” he snapped.
Both children shrank back and shook their heads. “We were doing the puzzle,” Hedy said. “Promise.”
Grandpa John sagged and ran a hand through his hair so that it stood in jagged tufts. “Of course. I’m sorry,” he said, looking it. “I didn’t mean to speak to you like that.”
“What happened?” Spencer asked.
“Something broke while I was in the kitchen … I suppose I must have knocked it when I turned around.” But Hedy could tell Grandpa John himself didn’t believe that that was what had happened. He backed out of the doorway and pulled the door closed, but not before the children had managed to glimpse inside the study and see a messy, half-built something on his desk. It looked like a double helix of undulating scaly tails, surrounded by metal rings and hinges, and half a Spam tin.
Grandpa John asked them to continue the puzzle while he took care of his study, so they half-heartedly flicked pieces of puzzle to and fro without saying what they were both thinking—that Nobody was still at large.
By bedtime, Spencer’s wrestling figurine had been beheaded again, and this time the head was nowhere to be found. When he wound a scarf around his neck and insisted Hedy do the same to protect themselves from decapitation, she didn’t have the heart to tell him a scarf would be nothing against whatever might cut a head off. Having been tricked into almost falling off a three-story roof, though, she decided she’d take any defense she could get.
“I need to take a drive today,” Grandpa John said the next morning when they came downstairs.
“To Mrs. Pal’s?” Hedy asked hopefully. “Can we come?”
“No, it’s someone else. A bit farther away than the Palisade and … well, I’ll need you to stay in the car when we get there.”
Spencer frowned. “Why?”
Grandpa John fell silent while he doled out some food to the hungry liar bird chicks, whose bright crests bobbed up and down with excitement. Eventually, he sighed. “I’d rather you didn’t come into this place, that’s all. Don’t ask me why. It’s simply not a place for children.”
Hedy’s mind turned quickly to the bear’s tail and piano keys under her pillow, which she hadn’t been brave enough to take back during the night. With Grandpa John gone, they could use the time to hand Simon his missing keys, somehow reattach Doug’s tail, and, with any luck, find a way into the attic. “Is Mrs. Vilums coming today?”
“She should be here any minute,” Grandpa John said. “She said she was bringing some last-minute things for Christmas.”
“Can’t we stay here with her?” At Grandpa John’s hesitation, Hedy said gravely, “Kids aren’t allowed to be left alone in cars.”
“You can’t even leave a dog in the car!” Spencer piped up.
“So if we go with you, you’ll have to let us go inside too.” Although Hedy was trying to convince Grandpa John to let them stay, a little part of her yearned to see this top secret place where children were not allowed.
Grandpa John said they could stay if Mrs. Vilums agreed. It was an anxious wait until her arrival after nine o’clock. She greeted Grandpa John as normal but was distinctly cool in tone to the children. “They want to stay here with me?” Mrs. Vilums asked with a raised eyebrow as she thumped some sweet potatoes down on the worktop. “Not planning any misc
hief on my watch, I hope.”
“They know better than that, Mrs. V,” Grandpa John said, with a stern glance at Hedy and Spencer. Less than ten minutes later, he was driving away, having smuggled something from his study to the car that may have been the double helix artifact from his study.
It was horribly awkward the way Mrs. Vilums ignored them today as they hovered around her. Hedy felt her planned plea for help shrivel up as the woman walked around them, silently and very precisely, to polish the dining table, making them feel like intruders.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Vilums?” Hedy eventually said. She wanted to ask about the attic, but instead she asked, “Do you know if Grandpa John has a needle and thread?”
“I believe there’s some in the laundry room.”
The children sidled out and, after poking about in the cupboards over the laundry baskets, found an old sewing kit with a large needle and some thread.
“Let’s go and fix Doug,” Hedy whispered.
They slipped upstairs and retrieved the tail from Hedy’s bed before sneaking into Doug and Stan’s room.
“You got it back!” the bear exclaimed as Hedy held the tail aloft.
“You should’ve seen Hedy on the roof,” Spencer said. “She was so cool dodging all those little monsters up there.”
Hedy was startled by Spencer’s open admiration. She shrugged modestly and opened the sewing kit on Doug’s back.
“Goodness,” Stan said, his antlers waggling side to side. “You must regale us with the tale of this heroic recovery! And how are you going to reattach Doug to his tail?”
“Gah!” Doug had just spied the needle that Hedy had pulled out. “You’re not going to use that great stinking lance on me, are you?”
On the wall, Stan dissolved into a fit of laughter. “Now you’ll know how I felt, Douglas. What color thread will you choose? What about a royal purple?”
After suggesting Stan royally sew his lips shut, Doug chose sensible brown thread and gave Hedy the go-ahead to stitch his tail back on. He winced at every pass of the needle through his hide, which was so thick that Hedy’s fingers grew sore from the effort of pushing it through. She was glad to let Spencer have a turn while she told Doug and Stan what had happened on the roof.