Family

by Emily Thompson

  “Wish if you want my help,” Idris said, his voice going cold. “I’ll give you nothing more than that.”

  “Then get back into your prison, djinn,” Storm said darkly.

  Idris’s form snapped instantly into a pillar of purple smoke, which flew swiftly toward the acorn, disappearing entirely into the shiny brown shell. Storm grumbled to himself and stuffed the acorn into his trouser pocket. Then he lifted the piece of the panel back to his mouth and spoke into it again.

  “Gentlemen?” he asked with false pleasantness, his voice echoing off of the city. “Think about this. I have Idris, you know. And I know this city well. I’ve been here many times. I will find you. Just come out, and let’s talk.”

  “Right,” Jonas said with a sigh. “We need a plan.”

  After a few minutes of discussion, Twist and Jonas discovered that, although they had the power to see much of the city and keep an eye on Storm, they had very little in the way of control, being stuck in a broom closet. They were hidden for the moment, but it surely wouldn’t take long for Storm to work out all of the possible hiding places they might have gotten to. With Idris at his command, the boy could easily overpower them both in a moment, once he’d found them.

  “I can see many panels like this one, all over the city,” Twist mentioned, following his Sight through the hidden veins of the city once more, with his hand pressed against the panel. “But there’s also a major center of this system. Everything leads into it and out again. If we could get to it, we might gain more control.”

  “Where is it?” Jonas asked.

  Twist adjusted the controls on the panel, changing the image in the glass to an overview of the whole city, outlined clearly in blue and white. He pointed to a large rotunda that stood at the very center of the city.

  “It’s in here,” he said with a sigh. “I can’t imagine how we could get there without Storm seeing us.”

  “We could make a run for it if the lights were out,” Jonas offered. “He can’t see in the dark. He was feeling for the statue with his hands when I dragged you away.”

  “Well, I can turn the lights out,” Twist said with a shrug. “But he can turn them on again. He’s already done it once.”

  “Can you do anything to disable his panel? Even if he knows this city like he says he does, it would still take him a minute to find another panel in the dark.”

  Twist thought for a moment but couldn’t think of any way to do what Jonas suggested. “I only have control over the watching and listening devices, here,” he said, shaking his head. “I can turn the lights off and on, and a few other systems, but nothing like that.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jonas said, shaking his head with a smile. “What am I thinking? He’s only a boy. I mean, even if he’s a satyr, he’s still only the size of a ten-year-old. I could take him.”

  “All he needs is to make one wish,” Twist said, shaking his head.

  “How’s he going to see me coming?” Jonas asked, gesturing to his left arm and the tattoo visible beneath the edge of his rolled-up sleeve. “Idris can’t even tip him off now. He stuffed him into the acorn.”

  “Of course!” Twist gasped. “Why didn’t we think of that before?”

  Twist adjusted the controls again, looking for where Storm had gotten to. He found the boy still crouching down to work at his own panel behind the statue, flipping quickly through images of the city. He was clearly looking for Twist and Jonas, the same way that they were now watching him.

  “Right,” Jonas said with conviction. “I’ll take care of this.”

  “Wait,” Twist said, before he made it to the door. Jonas paused to look back at him. “You can’t let him make a wish. Not even one.”

  Jonas nodded and snatched a cleaning rag from a pile on a nearby shelf. “Don’t come out until I have him.”

  Twist nodded, turning back to watch the image in the glass as Jonas slipped silently out of the broom closet. Storm remained at his panel, flipping through image after image of the empty city. Twist saw Jonas step quietly up the staircase and onto the platform toward Storm. Just as expected, Storm didn’t seem to see him at all. Jonas moved slowly, having the luxury of time, clearly being extremely careful not to make a sound.

  Twist unconsciously held his breath, watching Jonas stalk closer to the boy. Jonas moved behind him, came well within reach, and then paused. He stretched out the rag between his hands and then lunged suddenly. He caught Storm with the rag held tight against his mouth, while the boy gave a muffled, startled cry. As Storm flailed for freedom in clearly panicked confusion, Jonas forced him forward, the boy’s chest against the ground and one arm pinned behind his back. Storm’s other arm tried to push him away from the ground but couldn’t succeed against the weight of Jonas leaning heavily on his back.

  Jonas struggled to hold the boy in place while also not releasing the two ends of the rag that he held tightly behind Storm’s head, the cloth gag turning the boy’s frantic cries into unintelligible gibberish. Twist’s instincts screamed at him to rush to aid Jonas, but he dared not. Storm was still wearing the contraption over one eye. If he somehow slipped away, Jonas could easily remain hidden from the boy, but Twist could not. In a moment, Jonas managed to quickly tie off the ends of the rag tightly to the back of the boy’s head and was free to take a solid hold of both of his arms.

  “Twist, bring me some rope or something!” Jonas called.

  Twist didn’t hesitate, turning to find nothing like a rope around him. He snatched up two other rags and hurried out the door, tying two ends of them together tightly as he hurried up the staircase. Jonas had let Storm sit up on his knees, but the boy seemed unable to free his hands from Jonas’s grip. The instant Twist appeared at the edge of the platform, Storm’s cries grew louder and more frantic behind the gag, his eyes pleading with Twist for aid. Jonas took the contraption off of the boy’s face with a swift motion before returning both hands to his grip on Storm’s wrists. Storm closed his eyes, sobbing now while large tears tumbled down his face.

  “Here, there wasn’t anything else,” Twist said, holding out the two tied rags to Jonas.

  Jonas nodded and took the makeshift rope, using it to tie Storm’s wrists together. “That should hold him,” he announced with a heavy breath.

  Storm’s head had fallen forward while his tears ran down his face and soaked into the gag over his mouth. He’d fallen silent as well. He’d clearly realized that he was well captured and seemed to give up his fight, at least for now. Jonas reached into the boy’s pocket, took the acorn out, and then stepped away, taking Storm’s contraption with him. He looked to the acorn in his other hand.

  “Idris?” he asked it.

  As if in answer, a stream of thick purple smoke erupted out from under the top of the acorn, building into a pillar that stood before Jonas. The smoke cleared into Idris’s solid form. Idris looked to Jonas, startled, and then glanced around until he saw Storm still kneeling on the ground a few steps away. Storm looked back at him miserably.

  “Oh, good show!” Idris declared with a wide smile, reaching out to pat Jonas approvingly on the shoulder. “Shall we get the hell out of this dead city? Your wish is my command, you know,” he added with a deep bow to Jonas.

  “I wish we were in back with Mama, in France,” Jonas said, sounding relieved.

  Idris smiled at him proudly and raised his hand to snap his fingers. Then he seemed to paused, his smile fading. Twist glanced around at the city of Atlantis that continued to not transform in a French forest. Idris frowned darkly.

  “What’s wrong?” Jonas asked him.

  “I have no idea,” Idris said, looking down at his pure white hands. “Try it again.”

  Jonas obliged, holding the acorn firmly in his hand. Once again, Idris simply stood before him, unmoving. Then he looked to Storm in alarm.

  “What the hell did you do to me?” he demanded of the boy.

  Storm’s misery seemed to have eased now. He stared forward impartially, his head h
eld high and his damp pink eyes filled with silent victory.

  “What, you can’t grant wishes now?” Jonas asked Idris.

  “Let me try,” Twist said, taking the acorn from Jonas. He repeated Jonas’s wish, and yet again, nothing happened.

  “But I was forced to grant his wish,” Idris said grimly, still glaring at the boy. “I thought that spell he used to trap me sounded strange.”

  “So, what then?” Jonas asked Idris. “You can only grant his wishes? No matter who holds this?” he asked, pointing to the acorn in Twist’s hand.

  “There are a few different spells one can use to trap a djinn,” Idris said heavily. “The most common of them are not so specific. They just simply make the djinn grant the wish of the one who holds the prison,” he said with a nod to the acorn. “All spells limit the wishes to three. But I’ve heard of older ones, spells I’ve never even seen myself, that can lock the djinn to one owner at a time. I don’t think he even needs to hold that to control me.”

  “Wait, he said he only had two more wishes,” Twist said. “What happens once he’s used all three wishes?”

  “Then I should pass to the next person to hold that,” Idris said, glaring at the acorn in disgust. “And I’d be bound to grant him another three wishes before passing to the next.”

  Twist put the offending acorn into his pocket, to get it out of sight. Idris watched him pocket his prison, and then glanced away sourly.

  “All right,” Jonas said with a sigh, rubbing at his brow. “Then we have to find another way out of here.”

  “Sure, go find freedom for yourself,” Idris grumbled, his arms crossed sullenly. “Must be nice to have free will…”

  “Idris,” Twist said, speaking gently to the djinn, “you are our friend. We will do whatever we can to free you. You know we will. But we can’t do anything here. Can’t you help us get back to civilization, so that we can find a way to free you as well?”

  Idris listened to him quietly and then nodded. “Yes, you are my friends, aren’t you?” he asked softly.

  Jonas gave a shrug.

  Idris smiled slightly. “Well,” he said with a sigh, “how shall we get back into the world, then?”

  It was decided that they should start by going to the central control hub, as Twist had suggested before, in search of any information or obvious means of freeing themselves from Atlantis. Now that there was no need to fear being seen, they walked through the city with ease. Storm was taken along with them, being led by Jonas’s hand on his shoulder. While the boy clearly couldn’t see or hear either he or Twist, he could seem to feel Jonas’s touch easily.

  Twist gazed around them in wonder as they walked along a long, wide boulevard that led deeper into the city. Though the colorful pools of light made it easy to see, Twist couldn’t find a single sign of life anywhere under the glass dome. The only sound he heard was the footsteps of he and his companions. Occasionally, a huge behemoth would move by in the shadowed depths of the ocean above them, adding no comfort to the eerie and empty silence of the city.

  “Idris?” Twist asked after a long silence. “This is really Atlantis, isn’t it?”

  “I granted his wish,” Idris said with a nod. “I suppose it must be.”

  “Why is this place so empty?” Twist asked, peering down another pristine but desolate street as they passed an intersection.

  “Well, that depends on which legend you believe,” Idris answered with a shrug. “I wasn’t on Earth when this place fell. I don’t know firsthand.”

  “I thought Atlantis sank,” Jonas mentioned with a frown. “But the air in here is still clean and easy to breathe. And it looks to me like the place was built down here, not on the surface.”

  “The sinking is only one legend,” Idris said. “There’s also the one about the plague.”

  “Plague?” Twist asked, his fear rising.

  “Oh, that was ages ago,” Idris said with a wave of his hand. “I’m sure it’s safe by now, if there ever was a plague here at all.”

  “I’ve never heard of that legend,” Jonas mentioned. “But shouldn’t there be bodies all over the place if there was a plague?”

  “No, no,” Idris said, shaking his head. “The Atlanteans all got rid of the bodies as they transformed themselves. You know, to stem the spread of the disease. At least, that’s what I heard.”

  “Transformed themselves into what?” Jonas asked curiously as they all continued to walk along the perfectly clean and uncluttered streets.

  “Some say crystal,” Idris explained casually. “Some say clockwork. Some say both. Some even say that it was an Atlantean who built Myra’s clockwork puppet and placed her soul inside it. Then, when his people were hit with a plague, they all put themselves into clockwork bodies as well, to stay alive.”

  Twist’s mind raced after this new information, instantly recalling the city of crystal under Indonesia, where he’d met a population of clockwork people. Their bodies had ranged in design, from crude to equally as refined as Myra’s puppet, but there hadn’t been a single man or woman of flesh and blood among them. He looked up once again at the dome of glass above his head and frowned. Surely, the people who’d built this city and those people of clockwork and crystal couldn’t be the same.

  “But why would they leave, if the disease could no longer kill them?” he asked Idris.

  “Maybe they’re all on holiday,” Idris said with a shrug. “Maybe they never survived at all. I told you, I wasn’t here. I don’t know.”

  “Well, then again,” Twist said, continuing to speak as he thought through his logic, “Storm said that he’d been here before. And they don’t want to be found—”

  Twist stopped himself sharply, his heart thundering in his chest, as he suddenly realized what he was saying. In payment for Myra’s replacement crystal heart, the only part of her puppet that Twist couldn’t repair himself, he’d promised the beautiful, golden governess of the clockwork people that he’d never speak a word of their existence to anyone. He wasn’t even allowed to speak of them to Myra. He’d carried the burden of their secret since that day, without ever betraying them. Even when Aden had directly asked Twist if he knew of any other clockwork people beyond Myra, threatening Twist’s freedom and Jonas’s life, Twist had held his tongue.

  Jonas glanced to Twist curiously, clearly noticing his sudden anxiety.

  “I mean,” Twist went on hurriedly, “if they wanted to be found, then Atlantis wouldn’t be such a big mystery, now would it?” Twist forced a light laugh, which came out very awkwardly.

  Jonas’s curiosity turned to confusion and mild alarm.

  “Anyway, that’s just an idea,” Twist muttered, looking away from him.

  “Sure, I suppose,” Idris said with a shrug. “It’s all just legends. You’d need to ask someone who was here at the time for the whole story.”

  “Say,” Twist said, anxious to change the subject quickly, “where on Earth do you suppose we are?”

  “Jonas, can’t you see where we are?” Idris asked him.

  Jonas shook his head, finally looking away from Twist. “All I see is water and sky and stars above us. I can’t see anything to tell me where we are on Earth. All I can guess is that we’re more or less near the equator, by the stars I can see.”

  “Can you tell if it’s day or night right now?” Idris asked.

  “It’s daytime,” Jonas answered with a nod.

  “Then we must be under the Atlantic,” Idris said thoughtfully. “It was daytime in France, less than an hour ago.”

  “Good point,” Jonas agreed. “Well, that’s fitting, isn’t it?” he asked with a smile. “Atlantis really is under the Atlantic. They named the ocean accurately, after all.”

  To Twist’s silent relief, the subject of clockwork people failed to resurface in conversation as they continued on though the city. Jonas also didn’t mention Twist’s reaction to the subject or his probably very odd-seeming choice of words. Twist did his best to put the whole incident out o
f his mind, in hopes that his secret might be buried over swiftly once again in his own thoughts. The entire time that they walked into the center of the city, Storm continued on in silence, his pink eyes dismal as he walked with them.

  Even knowing that the boy was truly a magical creature, most likely bent on Twist’s destruction, Twist couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for him. Whether or not he was hiding horns under his bushy white hair, he looked like nothing more than a boy with a tear-stained face and puffy eyes to Twist. Jonas refrained from looking on Storm’s face, as he continued to hold his shoulder to lead him on.

  After quite a while, they finally reached the center of the city. A huge, towering, domed structure of stone stood in the center of a wide clearing. The blue and green lines of light drew decorative patterns in the ground around it, reminding Twist of the palace of Versailles, south of Paris, where long, wide, neat lawns, flower beds, and civilized forests surrounded a palace in perfectly pleasing order, devoid of any wildness or true nature. Tall, strong columns held the domed roof of the great building aloft, with no walls inside the otherwise four or five-story-high structure.

  They walked up the stone stairs, which surrounded the base of the building in a complete and unbroken ring, to find a huge, open, flat floor of decorated stone lying under the vaulted dome above. The underside of the dome seemed to be covered with flashing blue-and-white light, but there was no discernible pattern to it. At the very center of the floor stood a statue like the one they had seen before, of a man in flowing robes, his arms outstretched. This time, a panel of controls stood before him, on a dais that was easy to reach.

  “This is the big central control hub?” Jonas asked, sounding skeptical as he appraised the panel.

  Twist stepped up to the panel and switched it on, like he had the one in the broom closet. Once again, the glass lit up with an image of the city, this time as seen by the eyes of the statue before him. Twist pressed his hands to the surface of the glass, willing his Sight deeper.

  “Oh,” he muttered, frowning. “We’re almost there. Hang on…”