by M. E. Eadie
Chapter Six: New Skills
“Spike, you will clean the bathrooms, sinks, tubs, floors, and walls, but you will pay particular attention to those disgusting toilets. Colin, you will scrub the stairs, and Melissa, you will assist Ofelia in dusting the house, and then, if there is anything that Ofelia needs you three to do, you will do it, and you will do it promptly!” commanded Grizzelda, her wills trying to annihilate any free will that existed in her charges, but behind the nodding heads it had the opposite effect. Engrossed in her own agenda, Grizzelda slipped into her cloak, hat, and gloves -- all black, her signature color. Colin couldn’t remember a day when his aunt had not dressed in black. With a final jab of her finger in their direction--which meant ‘You’d better follow my instructions!’ -- she left. Indeed, even though she had departed, she left behind a black overcast cloud.
The three of them turned and looked at Ofelia for pity, but all she did was shrug. “What can I do? I am only the house-keeper,” she said, before bustling cheerfully off to the kitchen to get their cleaning supplies.
Soon, Spike was muttering something discontentedly as he carried the pail, plunger, scrub brush, and cleaning supplies towards the downstairs bathrooms. He discovered, much to his chagrin, that all thirteen of them were filthy --the porcelain turned to a sickening, deep rust color by age and disuse.
Melissa, of the three, was by far the more upbeat. Being told to assist Ofelia had instantly put her in a good mood. The two made an immediate connection; kindred spirits, they were. With white dust masks capping their noses and mouths, and large pink feather dusters in hand, they looked like bizarre witch doctors heading for the jungle of Horwood House.
Colin with his own bucket sloshing with sudsy water, took his appointed position at the top of the wide stairs. If he worked fast, he could probably have it done in a few hours, the problem was there were at least three sets of stairs--on each level, and there were three levels to the house.
After about ten minutes of intense scrubbing he found, by accident, an easier, much quicker way. While dipping the brush into the bucket he spilled some water out onto the wooden stair. He went to wipe up the water, and as a result, the stair was left clean. It appeared that by soaking the stairs first, the dirt came easily off the rich wood surface. In the bubbles, his blurred but glossy image stared back at him, and all of a sudden, he was falling past the image and into the very suds. Millions of little bubbles spun and vibrated around him. They were moving so fast that many of them were just splotches. If they would only stop he could get a better look. As though he had given a command, the bubbles abruptly stopped in mid air. He reached out and touched one.
“Oww!” he said, pulling back his stinging finger. As suddenly as he had left, he was back again kneeling by the scrub bucket, staring at his finger. Where had he gone? His knees felt painfully cold. He looked down. The water on the stairs was frozen along with the water in the bucket. Trying to stand, he slipped and fell, sliding and bumping all the way to the bottom of the stairs. He lay there on his back, staring up at the frozen tip of his finger. It wasn’t melting! Then it hit him: he had done this by willing the little bubbles to stop! He began to wonder, what would happen if he could make the bubbles go faster? Flipping himself back up onto his feet, he glared at the ice on the stairs and fell into it. Again he found the frozen bubbles and told them to move faster, as fast as they could. A sudden mist and hiss of hot steam hit him full in the face sending him staggering back. He blinked, clearing his vision. The stairs were dry and cleaner than he could ever have imagined!
Running to the kitchen, he found a big, stiff bristled broom, refilled his pail with water and soap and ran up to the top of the stairs. For a moment he hesitated, then with one deft motion he upended the pail sending the soapy water cascading down over the stairs. Working the broom furiously, he pushed it back and forth, mixing the dirt with the water and soap until he had finished. Then he made the water evaporate turning it into a massive steam cloud that curled up into the air where it dissipated, leaving the stairs pristine and sparkling.
“Wow,” he said, awe struck with his newly discovered ability. Now he knew exactly how his aunt had opened the rusted lock! He too could change the nature of how things behaved.
He could barely contain his excitement. The longest part of the job would no longer be the scrubbing but the refilling of his mop bucket. Within a half-an-hour he finished all the stairs. Admiring his work, he turned and ran to tell Spike. He found him stooped over a toilet, his ear positioned just above the water in the bowl, listening attentively.
“I didn’t know that toilets could talk,” joked Colin.
Spike waved him down eagerly.
“You’ve got to listen to this. It’s really strange,” said Spike returning his ear to the water.
At the best of times Spike was strange, thought Colin, as he looked apprehensively into the dirty bowl of water. Spike’s superficial cleaning attempt was obvious. The water was, with the cleaner in it, a stagnant milky orange color. He listened carefully, but all he could hear were the bubbles of the cleaner in the water. Maybe the fumes were getting to Spike.
“No, no, don’t you hear it? It sounds like the water somewhere – outside. Odd, eh?” said Spike fascinated.
Colin was about to tease Spike but stopped himself. If he could really hear the water lapping on some unseen, distant shore . . . Colin decided to try to enter the murky water in the toilet like the water on the stairs. Again the bubbles vibrated and spun about, but these were interlaced with a murky orange substance. He tried pushing through them and, in doing so, slipped into a long, dark tunnel. His view, or the feeling of being constricted, exploded out onto a wide-open plane. In a bit of a panic, he was ready to pull back; then he noticed a dark brown sluggish weight that he guessed to be the shore. He must have reached the river. By the edge, swinging out and in, two strangely glowing translucent bars of light flashed. They had the feel of a Nix about them, but different. Instead of jealousy, greed, and bleakness, these were feelings of compassion, generosity, and joy. He was about to attempt a closer look when a hand on his shoulder brought him back into himself.
“You heard it! I knew you would hear it!” exclaimed Spike.
Whatever IT is thought Colin, nodding.
“What do you think it is?” asked Spike.
Colin shrugged. “I don’t know. It felt like a Nix, but it was different. There was no shadow.”
“I know what you mean,” he said, the excitement of discovery animating his features. “Do you think there are such things as Water, or Light Nixes?”
“I don’t know, but listen…”
Colin told him about his experience with the water-- slowing it down and freezing it, speeding it up and vaporizing it, changing it with his thoughts from a liquid to a solid or to vapor. A wide eyed Spike nodded, adding that his enhanced ability to hear and see was like looking into waves and being able to ride on them, allowing him to get closer to what he was focusing on. He wondered if this would eventually apply to their sense of smell, taste, and touch. And, of course, Melissa was able to snatch music out of the air. The boys wished they understood why these things were happening to them, but for now the novelty of their newly-discovered gifts kept them from worrying.
“So,” said Spike, “do you think you could do your trick and loosen up some of the gunk on this bowl?”
“How many bowls have you done?” asked Colin.
“None,” said Spike sheepishly, “this is my first one. I got listening to the Water Nix, or whatever it was, and sort of lost track of time.”
Colin peered into the bowl. “I can give it a try.”
First he heated up the water so that the grime on the enamel expanded, allowing the cleanser to get at it; then he cooled it down. “Try it now, give it a stir.”
Spike stuck in his brush and twirled it about then flushed. The enamel sparkled as the water flooded back into the
bowl. Spike looked up mesmerized. “This is most excellent!”
The other twelve bathrooms were done in a haze of euphoric cleaning. Never knowing cleaning could be such fun, they were almost about to dance, and that’s when they heard it--the singing, accompanied by the melodious notes of a piano. Spike had felt the music first, like gentle ululating waves, but not sure of it, he remained silent until Colin heard it too. It swelled and rolled down the long, dark hall they were in, wrapped about them and melted like liquefied honey, it was so sweet. Following it, they turned the corner, stepped into the library, and stumbled onto a strange scene.
Melissa and Ofelia were waltzing about the room, turning and gliding among the numerous tables and chairs. They moved effortlessly, Ofelia leading, Melissa following, with the smooth polish of much practice. Even with the muffling effect of the rows and columns of books on all the walls, the music was clear and permeating. What Colin and Spike found riveting was that neither Ofelia’s nor Melissa’s mouths were moving. Where was the singing coming from? The piano over in the corner of the room played on without any visible pianist, but where was the voice? Above their heads, working furiously on the top row of books, two large pink dusters flared in the middle of a dust storm. Perplexed as to the source of the voice Colin craned his neck surveying the room. A particular high note in the operatic waltz punctuated their ears like the prodding of a painfully sharp needle, and finally gave away the singer’s location.
On the mantle above the large fireplace, at the end of the library sat a bust of a narrow-faced woman who, oddly enough, looked like Aunt Grizzelda, except kinder looking. The statue’s mouth was making wild contortions as it sang.
Ofelia and Melissa saw Colin and Spike and abruptly stopped dancing. The room dropped into a cold, embarrassed silence; the statue going from animate to inanimate.
“Awesome,” said Spike nearly dropping his pail.
Like deer caught in the headlights, Melissa and Ofelia just stood there. For the first time, Ofelia did not have a smile on her face; the whites of her eyes stood out starkly against her dark brown skin, possessed by an inexplicable fear. Melissa, shaking off the static discomfort of the moment, picked up a pad and pencil and wrote a note and handed it to Spike: “We didn’t expect you to be done so early. She’s like us.”
“What do you mean, she’s like us?” asked Spike.
Melissa grabbed the pad away from Spike and impatiently scribbled a few more lines: “She’s like us. Just like a sister.”
“A sister! No way!” retorted Spike, not meaning to sound rude, but sounding that way anyway.
Melissa’s blue eye became dominant, cold frost settling on it. She set her chin defiantly.
“All right, a sister,” conceded Spike.
“I don’t think he meant anything by it,” offered Ofelia. “I think he just thinks I’m a bit too old to be your sister.”
“That’s what I meant,” said Spike who had stepped back defensively from his bridling sibling. He knew better than to get her mad. “I’m glad Grizzelda didn’t get rid of the piano.”
Melissa smiled, nodding her head emphatically.
Ofelia looked at them apologetically. “It’s hard to keep a job when you’re…different…Let me explain.”
Beneath the gaze of the bust that resembled Grizzelda, sitting in the cushy library chairs in front of the fireplace, they talked.
Ofelia explained how she had been able to make things sing, how as a little girl she made her dolls perform entire operas, until the day she was caught by her stepmother. Her stepmother, a very pious and self-righteous woman, with hair that always seemed too tightly bound up, thought Ofelia was possessed, and immediately took her and the dolls to the local priest. After a lengthy interview, the kind, old man, concluded that he was simply dealing with a very intelligent, very talented young girl. Just how the dolls were made to sing, he had no idea, but given the stepmother’s highly stressed condition, he deduced she must have been seeing things. He provided some words of comfort and told Ofelia’s stepmother he didn’t think the phenomenon would repeat itself. However, Ofelia’s stepmother was a very influential woman and as such insisted that he conduct an exorcism on the dolls.
The second time Ofelia was discovered, she was conducting “Die Walkure,” from Wagner’s Nibelungen Cycle. Her stepmother stuffed her and her dolls into the car and drove for days. On a cold, wet night she abandoned her and her dolls in the middle of the wilderness. There was no champion to rescue her, her father having died two years before. Ofelia, being so young, was never able to find her way home, but her skill of making things sing kept her safe. People who might have hurt or abused her fled when her dolls started to sing. One particular unctuous fellow turned himself in to the police after her dolls came at him singing from the “Ride of the Valkyries.” She liked the idea of women flying about the air with protective and vengeful zeal. When he saw a female officer, a large blond women, he started screaming. The police sent him for psychiatric testing.
Eventually, Ofelia fell in with a touring circus of entertainers that appeared one night when the moon was full and she was all alone. She had asked them what language they were speaking only earning a smile as a response. Over time, she learned the strange language known only to them, and there she made her home for a while. But always, deep inside, she yearned for a real home and a loving family. By becoming a housekeeper, she was able to have a real home, of sorts, and that helped.
“Now, what about you two?” said Ofelia. “I know what Melissa can do, but not what you can do.”
“I have real good hearing,” volunteered Spike with enthusiasm, trusting Ofelia without reservation. “We’re talking about really awesome hearing, not just your average human hearing! And I have super-excellent sight. It’s all rather recent…since we left the Park…”
Colin caught him with a warning look, but Ofelia, much to her credit, didn’t ask anything about Pansy Patch, or where they had come from. To her, it simply wasn’t important enough to put their newfound trust in jeopardy. The children were beginning to feel that they had found an ally, and a friend.
“And what about you?” asked Ofelia of Colin.
He shrugged. “I can change things.” Not really intending to, he told her about his ability to affect water in different ways. He blurted it all out to her, and when he was done, he felt relieved.
Still, there was an uncomfortable silence when they ran out of things to talk about. Ofelia slapped her hands on her thighs, ready to push herself out of the chair.
“So, what are we going to do now?” she asked.
Colin and Spike misunderstood the question becoming suddenly tight wondering if she was going to tell their aunt.
“No, no! Not what are we going to do about you, but what are we going to do right now? I’m assuming you have no cleaning left to do?”
They grinned.
“Well, then. If you’ve gotten all the work done, you can either stay here, or come grocery shopping with me.”
Melissa decided to go with Ofelia, while Colin elbowed Spike to get him to stay behind with him.
“Why did you do that?” complained Spike rubbing his arm as they watched Ofelia and Melissa leave the house. “I wanted to go. You know, FOOD!” he said euphorically, contemplating the last word.
“I’ve been wondering,” said Colin stealthily, “about the gold. I mean, where did Grizzelda get it? We certainly didn’t have any while we were in Pansy Patch, so…”
“So,” said Spike, his eyes sparkling, “it has to be somewhere in the house!”
“Exactly!”