Pebble shook her head hard. “I still care about Uncle Ivor. But that doesn’t mean I think he’s right.” She stared into Van’s eyes. “I knew that I could use this chance to watch him. I could find out how he kept his Wish Eaters, and about what he was planning to do next. And then I could reach out to you.”
Van studied Pebble’s face. He often learned more from people’s eyes than from the words that came out of their mouths. And Pebble’s eyes were wide. Intent. Desperate for him to believe.
“I wasn’t leaving the Collectors,” she went on. “Not for good. That’s why I hid those clues at Uncle Ivor’s house, so you’d know I was still on your side. But I had to be careful, to make sure Uncle Ivor never suspected, or all of this would be pointless. I just had to wait and hope that you understood. And that you hadn’t just . . . just forgotten about me.”
Pebble stopped, breathing hard.
“Nobody forgot about you,” said Van.
Pebble took her hands off the arms of his chair. She pushed herself upright, looking away and blinking rapidly. Van wasn’t sure, but he thought he even saw her sniffle.
“So,” she said, meeting Van’s eyes again. “Do you believe me?”
Van took a turn keeping quiet.
This Pebble had made wishes. Dangerous wishes. This Pebble was defending Ivor Falborg, who may or may not have tried to murder Van with a wish and a train. This Pebble looked and even smelled different from the girl he remembered. The girl he’d trusted with his life.
“I want to believe you,” he said at last.
Pebble nodded. Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. “Then I have something to show you.”
9
Wishing Well
They left the house by a back door.
Pebble charged across a narrow back lawn and into the woods, with Van jogging after her. Van had never set foot in these woods before, and yet, all of this felt oddly familiar. How many times had he let Pebble lead him into something he didn’t understand? He’d chased her across city parks, up water towers, through underground passageways. If he made his eyes unfocus, he could almost see her old bulky coat flapping behind her, the puff of a silvery tail hanging over her shoulder. Van’s heart ached.
“I wish—” he said aloud.
Pebble stopped so suddenly that Van smacked into her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, wide-eyed. “Are you wishing?”
“No, I . . . I just . . . ,” Van stammered. “Not a real wish. I don’t have anything to wish on, anyway.”
“Oh.” Pebble’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “I thought you might . . .” She looked down at Van’s empty hands. “Never mind.”
“Would it even matter if I did make a wish?” Van asked. “I thought Wish Eaters usually stay in towns and cities. Except for the ones in your uncle’s house, anyway. Are there even any Wish Eaters out here?”
Pebble gave Van a brief, needle-sharp look. “Eaters do keep to towns,” she said, turning back to the woods. “Most of the time.”
They were only a few yards into the trees, but the forest was so thick that the vast brick house had already disappeared. The bracken around them was dense and green. Pebble plunged through it, hopping over fallen logs and dodging thorny bushes. Her ponytail waved behind her like a flag.
She glanced back, saying something Van couldn’t catch. “What . . . issue . . . ?”
“What did you say?” Van asked.
Pebble turned her head a bit farther but didn’t slow down. “What were you going to wish for?”
“Oh.” Van stumbled over a mossy fallen trunk. “I just thought it would be nice if Barnavelt was here.”
For a moment, Pebble didn’t speak. Van couldn’t catch sight of her face, but he saw her shoulders fall, as though something heavy had settled there. . . . wish seer too, he thought he heard her murmur.
That was something he’d missed about Pebble, Van realized. Her big eyes, the shape of her mouth, and her posture told him so much. Even when he couldn’t catch what she said, it was easy to understand what she felt.
It was easy for someone who bothered to look, anyway.
They threaded through the trees, snapping twigs beneath their shoes. Cool wind gusted around them. Each fresh breeze set off a wave of rustling, shivering, swaying motions that hit Van from all sides, like a flood threatening to close over his head. It made Van catch his breath.
He didn’t like this: being surrounded by unpredictable movement, never knowing which way to look. He missed being in the city, where at least the walls around you stood still.
They walked for what felt to Van like miles, until at last they reached a patch of forest where the trees grew sparser and larger. Giant oaks towered around them. Breaking through the moss beneath their feet, Van spotted the line of a well-worn path.
Pebble slowed her steps at last.
“Good,” she said, turning back toward Van. “No one’s here.”
Then she bolted down the path, with Van running behind her.
They stumbled out into a clearing.
Van stared around. The clearing was wide enough that the leafy canopy unraveled above them, allowing slips of sunlight to tumble through. The ground was soft with moss. At the clearing’s center, a pool of fallen leaves surrounded something made of wood and stone. At first glance, Van thought it was a tiny house—someplace just the right size for raccoons, or possibly trolls. But as he edged nearer, he saw that it was something else entirely.
It was an ancient well.
Its stone walls formed an uneven circle. Its shingled roof sagged, covered in moss and tiny mushrooms. A broken wooden handle stuck out from its side, although there was no rope and no bucket.
“Was this what you wanted to show me?” Van asked. “An old well?” He craned cautiously over its stone wall. The well was too deep for him to see its bottom. It made him think of the Collection, its pit plunging down, down, down into the dark. Only here, from somewhere far below, he caught the faintest silvery twinkle. “Is there even any water in here?”
Pebble stepped close to him.
“It’s not just a well,” she said. “It’s a wishing well.”
Van looked from Pebble’s mossy-penny eyes back to the twinkling depths. “So people wish on coins and throw them down here?”
“Exactly.”
Van glanced at the shadowy woods, the thousands of trees swaying between the two of them and anyone else. “What people?”
“This well has been here for hundreds of years. Uncle Ivor’s been researching it. A long, long time ago, a little village was built right here, in the woods. Eventually all the people moved away. But some of them remembered the well and would come here to make wishes. Some people still come, following the paths through the woods.”
Van touched the lip of the well. The stones were cool and damp, as though the earth was exhaling straight through it. He pictured centuries’ worth of coins piling up down there in the watery dark.
“What happens to the wishes?” he asked. “I mean, if there are no Collectors or Wish Eaters around here . . .”
“There are,” said Pebble.
“Okay. One Collector.” Van nodded at Pebble. “Is that what you’re doing here? You’re going to collect all the old wishes? Does that even work?”
“No.” Pebble shook her head sharply. She leaned even closer to Van, so he could feel as well as hear her voice on his skin. “One Eater.”
A blossom of frost filled Van’s stomach.
He could almost feel little Lemmy, misty and cool and practically weightless, curling up in his hands. And at the same time, he could hear the roar of the monstrous Eaters in the Hold, with their alligator jaws and their staring white eyes.
“Down at the bottom of that well,” Pebble went on, “is the biggest, oldest, strongest Wish Eater left in this half of the world.”
The frost in Van’s stomach spread. A chill prickled down his legs and up into the roots of his hair.
“It’s st
ayed hidden down there, feeding on the wishes people give it, for hundreds of years.” Pebble’s eyes were wide. “And it’s probably been alive a lot longer than that.”
“It’s right down there?” Van whispered. He squinted uneasily at the glittering dark. “Can it hear us?”
“And smell us,” Pebble murmured back. “And feel us.”
For a beat, they both kept silent. Van pictured the beast stretched out far below them, a massive body winding through the cold dirt like the roots of an invisible tree.
A tremor traveled up through the soles of his shoes.
“Did you feel that?” he asked.
Pebble blinked. “Feel what?”
“That. Something under us.”
Pebble shook her head. “I don’t feel anything.”
But something underground had stirred. Van was certain. The slow, shifting motions trembled up through the earth, straight through the spot where he stood. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. It was a little like standing on a grave and feeling the soil beneath your feet start to move.
Pebble grasped him by the arm. In a few quick steps, she’d dragged him out of the clearing, back into the cover of the trees.
“That is why we’re here right now.” She faced him head-on, speaking in a louder, quicker voice. “That’s why Uncle Ivor bought that house to begin with. He’s been buying up the woodland all around it. A few weeks ago, he bought this spot too.”
Van stared into Pebble’s eyes. “What’s he going to do?”
“He’s playing too close to the well,” she answered. As she rushed on, explaining about finding Uncle Ivor’s building plans, and about construction starting next week, Van realized he’d misheard. He’s planning to enclose the well.
“He’s pretending that he’s starting a spring water bottling company,” said Pebble. “But really, he just wants the Eater.”
Van glanced toward the clearing. “But Mr. Falborg already has everything anyone could want. Why does he need more?”
“Because,” Pebble leaned close. “He wants the things that he can’t have. The things he can’t get just by wishing.”
“Like the Eaters?”
“Like the Eaters.” Pebble nodded. “Like access to the Collection. Like the dead wishes—he used to be obsessed with getting one of those. Like me.” She paused, folding her arms tight across her chest. “Uncle Ivor isn’t a Collector. He can’t gather wishes himself. He can’t control them. He can only use someone else’s power.” Her eyes flicked back to the clearing. “And this Eater is one of the most powerful things on earth.”
Van couldn’t hold back a shiver.
Pebble’s sharp eyes watched him. “This is why I need your help,” she went on. “We have to stop him. You have to get word to the Collectors. They need to come and trap the Eater before Uncle Ivor can take it for himself.”
Van swayed, unsure if the unbalance he felt came from another movement deep underground or from something else entirely.
So Pebble was still a Collector. She was working against Mr. Falborg. She wanted to catch a rare and ancient being and imprison it forever.
And she needed Van’s help to do it.
“You want me to get the message to the Collectors?” Van asked.
“That’s why I wrote to you,” Pebble rushed on. “You’re the only one who can do it. I have no way to get to the city. And the Collection is wish-proof, so I can’t reach them the way I reached you. I need you to go to them in person and tell them to get here next Friday. Uncle Ivor will be home all week, but he’ll be busy on Friday night. He plans to start building on Saturday, so it’s the only chance we have.”
“Next Friday,” Van repeated. He imagined the hush of the clearing demolished by the Holders’ iron hooks and spiderweb nets. He imagined the Collectors driving a huge, howling creature from its home and into a tiny cell where, centuries or millennia from now, it would finally disappear for good.
An ache chewed the edge of his heart.
“If the Wish Eater has been here for centuries,” he said, “hiding in its well, not hurting anyone, couldn’t we just leave it there and try to stop Mr. Falborg instead?”
Pebble shook her head. “You can’t stop Uncle Ivor when he wants something. That’s why he does dangerous things. When he finds something he wants, it’s like nothing else exists.”
Van felt a twinge of recognition. He knew how it felt to spot a treasure. To have the world become a blur around you, to ignore the busy traffic and your mother calling your name as you reached out for the only thing that seemed to matter.
“Okay,” he said. “But maybe we could trick him somehow. We could hide the deed to the land. Or maybe we could lead a bunch of people here on a big picnic, so when his building crew comes, they—”
But Pebble just shook her head harder. “No. He’s not going to give up. As long as that Eater is down there, everyone is in danger.”
Van stared down at Pebble’s feet. Her shoes weren’t the battered, squashy-looking canvas sneakers he’d always seen her wear before. These shoes were brand-new and obviously expensive, with sturdy soles and green accents on their leather sides. So much about her had changed. But underneath the clothing, so much hadn’t.
Pebble touched his arm. “Van,” she said. “I know you feel sorry for the Eaters. But you’ve seen what they can become. My uncle can’t have something like this in his collection. He can’t.”
“He can’t,” Van agreed, very softly.
“So you’ll help me?” Pebble’s grip on his arm tightened. “Please?”
Van took a breath. The scents of the woods—moss and mud and pine—swirled through him. His thoughts swirled even faster. He wasn’t sure what was safe, or what was kind, or what was right anymore.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get to the city,” Van hedged. “My mother took a job here for the whole season. I don’t know when we’ll be going back. . . .”
Pebble’s hand slipped from his arm. Her body seemed to deflate, shrinking, until her eyes couldn’t even meet his anymore. “I thought you were on my side,” she said.
Van barely caught the words. He’d never seen Pebble look so small.
“I am on your side,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure he meant it. He just couldn’t stand to see Pebble looking like that. Not when he was the only one in the world who could help her. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll get them the message.”
Pebble’s eyes flashed to his. They blazed so brightly that Van could feel himself catching fire too. “I knew you would,” she said.
She straightened up, her shoulders falling, her spine unbending. “We’d better get back.” Before Van could speak again, she had whirled away.
Van raced into the trees behind her. He kept his eyes fixed on her ponytail as they ran, trying to shove the sense of that presence underneath the well down into the deepest, darkest corner of his mind.
10
Through the Woods
“Mom?”
Van’s mother glanced up from the musical score spread out on the piano rack. “Yes, caro mio?”
Van slid off the couch and sidled closer. He’d been waiting for the perfect moment to broach the subject, which had meant not rushing to find his mother until she was done with the day’s rehearsals, keeping quiet all through dinner with the directors, and strolling patiently back to their suite as though he didn’t have a question waiting to burst out of him like a cat being released from a kitty carrier.
Now everything was calm. He would have his mother’s full attention.
Or eighty percent of it, anyway.
“You said we could go back to the city whenever we need to, right?” Van asked.
“That’s right!” His mother circled a run of notes with her pencil. “We’re just a pleasant train ride away. Aren’t we lucky?”
“Then . . . could we go back tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow!” His mother laughed. “We just got here!”
“I know, but . . . I need something
.”
His mother’s eyebrows rose slightly. “What do you need?”
Van leafed through a pile of mental options. Clothes? She’d never believe it. A book? She’d say it could wait, or tell him to look for one in the mansion library. Medicine? Too dangerous. But maybe . . .
“I think something might be wrong with my hearing aids,” said Van.
His mother’s eyebrows folded into a frown. “Really?” She pulled Van closer to the piano bench, examining his ears as though she might be able to see a broken piece in the tiny machines. “I’ll call the audiologist.”
“No,” said Van quickly. He’d chosen wrong. He’d have to back carefully out again. “I probably just need to change the batteries.”
“And we brought plenty of those,” said his mother. “Try that, and let me know if it doesn’t get better.” She turned back toward the score, lightly touching a trio of keys.
The sounds of the piano bumped Van’s thoughts out of order. He chewed on his lower lip. “So when do you think we will go back to the city?”
His mother tilted her head, playing another ripple of notes. “Probably two . . . maybe three weeks.”
“Weeks?” Van burst out.
“Yes.” His mother glanced at him, eyebrows raised again. “There’s so much to do here, getting ready for the first production. Hansel and Gretel opens in just over a week. After that, you’ll start meeting with your tutor, and soon you’ll be just as busy as I am!”
“But . . .” Desperation pushed Van into unexpected places. “I really—kind of—miss Peter.”
Now his mother took both hands off the keyboard. She turned to him, eyebrows rising even higher. “Peter Grey?” she said, as though Van might have meant Peter Pan, or Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater.
“Yes,” said Van. “We had plans. To do some fun things together.” Mixing a few true ingredients into the lie couldn’t hurt. “But we left so suddenly, Peter and I didn’t get the chance to do any of them.”
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