by John Eubank
“Where’s Angelica?” Will said.
“Here!” she called, coming down the steps with a bundle in her arms. “I have Gus. Maybe he’s poisoned, too. He was acting so strange.”
As before, a high-ceilinged room in a wood and stone house came into view, framed by a large glowing circle. Alfonz peered in.
“Ya, goot,” he said, turning to Will. “Go!”
“Wait,” Will said. “Someone should stay behind to open the world hole and let us back.”
“Leave it open.”
“Dad’s journal says not to. They could find us.”
Giselle and Angelica looked queasy.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” Giselle said.
“The timer,” Angelica said.
Alfonz’s face wrenched with concern. “Timer?”
“We tested it. It reopens the world hole.”
“Go, then. Set it.”
Hands shaking, Will began going over the timer settings on the control board.
As before, the scuffed, ancient lettering confused him. Why had they abbreviated everything? He knew “S.” stood for “seconden” or seconds, but it only went to 240, which wouldn’t be enough. He had no idea what the other markings meant. Then, he spotted a pair of scratched letters that seemed to clearly read “UU.” That had to mean “uuren,” he thought, which meant hours in Dutch.
“Will, vershneelen!” Alfonz urged. Hurry! “The cure zo fast is, ya? But the poison, stronger is getting!”
“Yes,” he shouted nervously, trying not to imagine what the venom was doing inside his body. “Go!”
Carrying Gus, Angelica hopped through the world hole, followed by Giselle. Just as Alfonz stepped through, a blood-curdling scream filled the air.
Even back in Beverkenhaas Will could hear it over the noise of the machinery. He set the “UU” timer dial to “1” and hit the button marked “BEGINNEN.” Turning off the world hole while grabbing his father’s journal and a sword, he ran through, the verltgaat closing right behind him.
***
“Gevoor!” shrieked a female voice. Hey! “Ik ben in de baadkoop!” I’m in the bathtub!
An elderly, somewhat heavy woman sat in a large wood and copper tub in the corner of the room. Scrubbing her face, she hadn’t noticed the verltgaat opening until people arrived. She plunged herself deep into the bubbly water while reaching blindly to a nearby side table for something to use as a weapon.
“Perzak!” Alfonz cried. “Ik ben de Alfonz! Alfonz Zeldemthoos mit de Steemjammer kinter!” Peace! I’m Alfonz! Alfonz Zeldemthoos with the Steemjammer kids!
The lady pushed her long gray, soapy hair out of her face and felt around for a pair of glasses. Huge and round, with copper frames, they made her searching eyes look like those of a great barn owl. At last they focused on the people who’d suddenly appeared in her bathroom.
Anxiety melted away, and a big smile spread across her broad face as she recognized Alfonz. A flurry of excited Dutch flew between them.
“He’s saying he warned her about taking baths in here,” Giselle explained. “She’s saying it’s the warmest room in the house, being above the boiler.”
Alfonz and the woman’s conversation continued.
“She wants to know if we’re really Steemjammers. I think she’s a relative.”
Indeed, her large eyes and slightly bulbous nose reminded them of Henry. As she realized who they were, she became so excited she almost came out to hug them, forgetting for a moment she was in the bath.
“Kinter,” Alfonz announced majestically, indicating the elderly lady, “this your Great Beetle, Klazina.”
“Beetle?” Angelica said.
“Bumble bee?”
“He means your Great Aunt,” the lady in the bathtub said with a mild accent and pretend frown, “and I’m glad to know you think of me as an insect, Alfonz.”
“Oh, ‘ant’ and ‘aunt,’” he said, face turning red. “At the English, not so goot.”
“That’s all right. Oo bent goot waar de rekent.” You’re good where it matters.
He grinned bashfully as she complimented his loyalty and skills at finding and delivering things.
She turned to the kids and smiled warmly. “Zo, kinter, call me Tante Klazee, neh? Not Oudtante, please, even though that’s ‘Great Aunt.’ It really means Old Aunt, and who needs that? And you? Let me guess.”
She studied the older girl.
“French hair, ya?” she said. “Yvette Steemjammer’s half French, so that would make you Giselle, neh?”
“De is loyk je te ontmooten, Tante Klazee” she answered flawlessly. It’s nice to meet you, Aunt Klazee.
The lady in the tub squealed with delight.
“Ah, such goot Dutch. You have the prettiest eyes I think I’ve ever seen, and if your steem’s even half as goot as your Dutch, you gonna make your moyder and vader very proud. And you.”
She faced Angelica, who stood before her in the oversized leather jacket and cap.
“Oh, please,” the old woman said. “Lift up those vleegbril.” Goggles. “Let me see you, leef.” Dear.
Angelica raised them.
“Such big eyes! Henry’s little one, ya? Angelica?”
“Ya, Tante Klazee,” she said. “But moyne Dutch is not so goot.”
“You’ll learn, kint. You’ll learn zo fast.”
She turned to Will.
“Zo tall, with your mother’s eyes and father’s hair. You have to be Wilhelmus – Will, they call you. Zo, let your tante finish her bath, neh? Then, we get to know each other behoorlink.” Properly.
Feeling weak, Will clutched his side and grabbed a table. Her eyes narrowed with concern. “You’re sick?”
“Yes, Tante Klazee,” he said. “Shadovecht cut.”
She made a face. Fourteen different sentences tried to come out at once. With effort she pushed aside all but the important one and turned to Alfonz.
“Get de teggenminkel!” The remedy. “Top left shelf! In de kooken!” The kitchen.
“This like a map, up here,” he said, tapping his head and signaling Will to follow. “We find!”
***
“Gack, it’s horrible!” Will’s muffled protest came from the kitchen.
“Ya, but all you must be taking,” Alfonz insisted.
“Poor Will,” Angelica said in the next room. “He’ll be all right?”
Giselle forced herself to sound confident. “They seem to know what they’re doing.” Privately she worried.
Having seen and smelled the foul spoonful of black, tar-like goo that Alfonz offered Will, the girls had decided to give them privacy and explore the old house. Built of thick timbers and cracked, gray stone, it seemed very old. Antique furniture filled the rooms, and the wooden floor, which warped here and there, had a scattering of threadbare carpets.
Faded paintings lined the walls. Angelica noticed a windmill, a young woman in a black dress lined with white lace who stood by a purple penguin, and a very odd looking locomotive going past a field of shaggy red cattle with enormous horns. A mix of strange and familiar scents filled the air, dominated by machine oil.
Like in Beverkenhaas, a network of steam pipes, belt drives, gears, and chain drives cluttered the walls and ceilings, only not so many. Still, this house had a noise and feel all its own, and it reminded them very much of home.
Angelica pointed. “Look.”
In the parlor stood a short, chubby bronze-and-copper man with a silver moustache and goatee. Ticking and tocking like a clock, it swished a broom across the floor while slowly walking along.
“A little wind-up man,” Angelica said, spotting a key in its back. “He’s adorable.”
“Hoy!” yelled a startled voice from the entry.
A boy about Will’s age had just come through the front door. He reached for a seemingly blank patch of wall. The girls guessed what that meant: a secret compartment with a sword in it.
“Perzak!” Giselle said, mimicking Alfonz. “Ik ben d
e Giselle Steemjammer mit moyne neef, Angelica!” Peace! I’m Giselle Steemjammer with my cousin, Angelica!
He stared, slack-jawed. Grinning, he wiped imaginary sweat off his brow in relief. He rattled off some Dutch so fast that even Giselle couldn’t understand.
“What?” Angelica asked.
“You speak English?” he said with a slight accent.
“And Dutch,” Giselle said, “but apparently I need to practice.”
“Your accent is so strange. Ah! You’re from the other side. You came through the verltgaat!”
“Yes. I should think you’d be used to people dropping in, living here.”
“No, it’s not very often that it opens.” He smiled. “If you’re Steemjammers, that must make you Onkel Henry and Onkel Deet’s girls. We’re second cousins.”
They hugged, and the cousins studied each other a moment. He had white-blonde hair and a triple cowlick like Will’s, large blue eyes, and a hint of Henry’s nose. Like them, he wore homespun clothing and homemade shoes. Angelica wondered if everyone here looked like this, if she could step outside and fit right into this world.
“Call me Cobee,” he said. “What’s it like being a real Steemjammer? I mean actually having the name?”
Puzzled looks spread across their faces.
“Gaaf!” he exclaimed before they could answer. Cool. “I’m so jealous. My real name’s Jacobus Steemjammer Vanderslyce, but we’re pretending we’re Rensinks so we don’t fall under suspicion. My groesmoyder – your Tante Klazee – her maiden name is Steemjammer.
“Oh, why couldn’t she have been a boy? Then, I’d be a real Steemjammer, like you!”
“Cobee,” laughed Alfonz from the hallway, “if goot steem you’re having, your name matters not, neh?”
“Alfonz?” he said, astonished. “Is that really you?”
“Ter naar de vlees!” In the flesh!
Cobee went to the doorway and hugged him.
“Names do matter, Alfonz,” he chided. “You know that. But we’re lucky to be in the Steemjammer volkstaam.” The clan. “You really don’t speak Dutch?”
This was directed at Angelica.
“Ene beetya,” she said. A bit.
“Ach, we’re supposed to use English now, anyway,” Cobee said. He spoke quickly when he was excited. “The Raz don’t suspect you as much that way.”
“Raz?” Angelica asked.
“Cobee!” Alfonz warned.
“Rasmussen agents,” Cobee said, making a face and lowering his voice to a whisper. “Verdoor, I shouldn’t say things so loud – and close to the window.”
He cautiously peered through the curtains out into the street. The girls got a glimpse of a few stone buildings nearby and a church steeple in the distance. They guessed they were somewhere in New Amsterdam.
“They’re always looking for us,” Cobee whispered, closing the curtains and leading them away from the window. “No one was there. We’re safe.”
Will entered, already looking better and holding a poultice to the wound. Relieved, Angelica had to laugh at his grimace. The remedy left such a foul taste in his mouth that he scraped his tongue with his fingernails.
Alfonz introduced him to Cobee, who was greatly impressed to hear how they killed two Shadovecht, even if one had been taken out by a closing world hole.
“Gaaf,” he said, still keeping his voice low but glowing with admiration, “you’re Steemjammers voor zeeker.” For sure. “Destroying two of those horrible things! You didn’t run?”
“Oh, we ran at first,” Angelica said.
“No, the fear aura. They say people freeze up in terror or run away. That’s why they’re so awful.”
“I froze up,” Will admitted, “but I snapped out of it.”
“Gaaf! You actually got close enough to get cut?”
He nodded and, reminded of the poison, turned to Alfonz. “I drink that stuff, and I’m okay? That’s it?”
“The doctor you’ll see,” Alfonz said, “but ya.”
“There’s something I have to know,” Cobee interrupted. “Sorry to change the subject, but this has been bothering me for years. Old Earth – is it really what the legends say? A big ball? What happens when people fall off?”
The girls blinked and stared blankly.
“‘Fall off?’” Angelica said. “There’s gravity.”
“Oh, then people only live on top. Yes?”
“It pulls down evenly all around, towards the center,” Giselle explained, using his confused silence to get in a question of her own. “Where exactly are we?”
“You’re in my thoos, my home,” said a rich voice from the top of the stairs.
Having finished her bath, wearing a simple homespun dress, house slippers, and a pink towel wrapped around her wet hair like a towering turban, Klazee shuffled down the steps to hug her newly arrived nieces and nephew.
“So goot to see you again,” she said. “It’s been zo long. You two were only this tall.” She held out her hands to mark Will and Giselle’s heights eleven years earlier, and she faced Angelica. “This is my first time to see you.” She hugged them again and ushered them into an interior parlor where it was safe to talk. “Come. Als de moyren oren habben, de fensters zingen sopraanen.”
“Sorry, Tante Klazee,” Angelica said, “but what?”
“She said if the walls have ears, the windows sing soprano,” Giselle translated. “Right?”
“Ya,” Klazee nodded. “Even a whisper goes ‘singing’ out of glass.” With a satisfied sigh, she looked them over and smiled. “Far too long this day was in coming. I see you met Cobee. Will, where’s your radish?”
Trying to scrub the foul taste off the roof of his mouth with a cotton dish towel, he paused to stare at her blankly.
“Didn’t Alfonz get you one?” She laughed. “Apparently not.”
“Forgetting,” Alfonz said, rushing to the kitchen.
“A radish will clean out the taste, but eat it all. Even the leaves.”
“Tante Klazee,” asked Angelica, furrowing her little brows with worry, “is Will going to be okay?”
“Of course, leef, of course. That tonic is made to counter Rasmussen venom, and I have them brew it triple strength for me. He’ll be fine. The real question, my dears, is what are you doing here?”
***
“Hendrelmus missing?” Klazee said with disbelief after being filled in. “And Deetricus kidnapped by Marteenus? How could this be?” She pressed her hands to either side of her jaw and frowned in deep concentration. “Rasmussen treachery, this is!”
Concerned, Angelica got her attention. “You don’t know where my dad might be?”
“He was here last week. He met with Oskar – that’s another cousin – and they discussed things.”
“The invasion,” Cobee whispered.
“Yes, as always, but there was something else.” She could see the worry on her little niece’s face and decided to distract her. “Little one, why do you still wear that silly hoot?” Hat. “Let Tante Klazee have a goot look at you.”
Angelica took off her leather cap, and slowly her golden hair began to stand straight up. Klazee gasped with joy and put her hands to her mouth.
“Look, she has de haar!” The hair.
Quickly Klazee unwrapped the towel from her head. Her long, white hair was still damp and much like the “medusa” strands Angelica’d had a few days earlier.
“Let me get it dry,” she said excitedly, rubbing briskly with the pink towel. “Zeedaar!” There!
Her long, white hair stood straight up, just like Angelica’s. The little girl had never before seen another person with such hair and smiled with delight.
“We got Steemjammer hair, you and I!” said Klazee. “Only mine’s turned white. It used to be golden flax-colored, just like yours.”
“Won’t that mean they can find us easier?” asked a worried Angelica.
Cobee grinned. Giselle, who stood at the window peering through a crack in the curtains, signale
d for her little cousin to come over. Hesitating, she looked out and had to take a moment to process what her eyes showed her.
She saw dozens of Beverkenverlters on the street, most dressed in homespun clothing just like hers. Even more astonishing, almost every one had a hair issue.
A red-headed lady had a giant mop of wild curls so thick they couldn’t see her face. How she could walk without crashing into things was a mystery. A black-haired man with dark skin, thin as a beanpole and over seven feet tall, had his hair shooting straight out to the left, like Marteenus, while a blonde lady’s hair went straight back over a foot. Twin boys, though they had short haircuts, clearly had Angelica’s cowlick situation: their brown hair shot straight up, as did their mother’s.
Klazee gently closed the curtain and led them deeper into the house. “See? You’ll fit right in.”
“Good,” Angelica said, “but what about my dad? You really don’t know where he is?”
“Alles komt op zin teed. That means all things come with time, so be patient. Be sterk.” Strong. “We’ll find him.”
“We should go to the Steem Museum,” Cobee suggested excitedly. “That big room filled with old stuff they talked about, they have places like that there.”
“The Steem Museum?” Will asked.
“Henry and Deet’s children walking the streets of New Amsterdam?” Klazee interrupted with shock. “Are you mad?”
“But we have to do something,” Cobee insisted. “Onkel Henry was there, searching. We could find a clue.”
RING RING RING. RATTLE. WHEET. A cacophony went off all over the house. The hour had struck.
In the room they were in, a large three-dimensional landscape of snowy mountains hung on the wall. At the top a tiny red sled went zooming down a groove in the snow, through a tunnel, past a tiny working waterfall, and down the mountain course. Nine more tiny sleds went down, meaning it was now ten in the morning.
On a table in the entry stood a small birch forest with a clear pool and a lodge made of sticks. A tiny porcelain beaver came out the lodge, and one by one it seemed to chew at the little trees until nine had fallen over. When the hour finished chiming, the beaver went back into its home, and wires inside the trees tightened, causing them to stand back up.