by Danny Lasko
“I’m here,” says Linus, popping through the door, catching his breath. “What happened?”
“Our hero fell off a building,” says Annie.
“Thrown off a building,” I correct. I like that she’s having fun with this. “Is my mother out there?”
“No. Your dad is, though.”
“Would you go get her, please?” I ask Linus, pulling out a paper and pencil and beginning to sketch. Annie looks over my shoulder and whispers in my ear to be easy on them.
“What’s going on?” calls my dad, charging his way in.
“In a minute, Dad.”
“Where were you, and why is there blood on your shirt and the floor?!”
“In a minute, Dad.”
“Your mom’s coming,” says Linus, popping through the door.
My mother enters a few minutes later, holding her hand up to her turtleneck, cautiously walking through the door and into the room. She spots the blood on my shirt.
“Horatio.”
“Mom, I need to see your neck, please.”
“What, why?” calls my dad, standing in front of her.
“Dad,”—I stand up—“get out of my way and let me talk to Mom.”
“Horatio, I am still your father. Your mother does not need this kind of—”
“Alistair,” interrupts Valor as he steps into the room. He gives my father a look that makes my father back off.
“Mom, can I see your neck?”
To my surprise, my mom smiles. She folds down the turtleneck and reveals a series of scars running the length of an otherwise unblemished, long, and elegant neck.
I hold up the sketch on my paper. A series of eleven stars lined up in fives in a wave pattern with the last one leading the way. A perfect match to my mother’s scars.
“I remember seeing it as a kid. I remember because it was the only time I ever saw you without a turtleneck.”
“What was I doing?” she asks.
“You were just standing out in the sun, in the early spring, in a sleeveless shirt.” It’s still one of my favorite memories. She looked so peaceful, as if the weight of the life she led had fallen away.
“I found this burned onto the arm of my teammate who was forced to not protect me,” I continue. “He told me how he got it, you know, after he stopped sobbing.”
Both my father and Valor rise up to speak. I stop them.
“So the rebel children are still around, huh? You think that might have been something I should have known? Something you should have told me? Something like, ‘Horatio, you should know that there’s a powerful group of children out there who don’t want the Soul returned, so you might run into some trouble along the way?’ No, wait, I know. You didn’t tell me because you were more afraid that I would want to join them, weren’t you.”
“Yes,” says my dad, finally.
“You’re afraid the idea of keeping the Soul would be more appealing to me than giving it away.”
“Yes,” repeats my dad.
“Look,” I say, rubbing my face. “You either trust me or you don’t.”
“I’d like to speak to my son, please. Alone,” says my mother. It surprises me, the authority in her voice. The mother I know is not the authoritative type. She is timid. Hesitant. Nervous. None of which burden her now.
“Kathryn, are you sure you want to do this?” asks my father.
“Yes. I think it’s about time someone was honest with our son.”
The others relent, and soon it’s just me and the one who is more important than all other life, according to Valor.
“Wizards,” she says once we’re alone. “They call themselves wizards, playing off the ancient myths and children’s books of magical beings with supernatural powers. A group of selfish, uninspired, irresponsible, hoodwinked, spectacularly powerful Children. They make the Synarch look like schoolyard bullies. Their leader is protected and identity kept secret. His or her identity is even hidden from the majority of the wizards.”
I like this new mom. It’s as though she is speaking for the first time after years of holding her breath. She’s bold and confident. Even angry.
“So this fire girl?” I ask, feeding the interaction so rare in our lives.
“One of them. But not the leader. Wizards have infiltrated the highest levels of government and society, but we can’t track the head. We just see our people, youth mostly, being picked off one by one.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’?”
“That’s my ability. I track the Soul. Family history, records, sometimes a feeling.”
“So you can spot one of the Children just by looking at them.”
“Sometimes.”
“Valued above all else. That’s what Valor called you.”
“Nothing is more important than connecting with every Child of Hamelin, Horatio. You would not believe how many in this world have power inside them and don’t even know it.”
“Like the Walkers,” I add.
“Yes.”
“So you stayed in Allen to hide from the wizards. They were looking for you.”
“The wizards learned after 1807 that the more PureHearts alive and identified, the greater their advantage. In order to recruit, they needed to be found.”
“But you refused.”
“Not exactly. I was raised a wizard.”
“Raised? What happened?” I ask.
“Your father,” she says, smiling. “He was the objective. The Wizard King wanted an inventor. A builder. I found your father, tried to recruit him. Instead, he convinced me I was wrong.”
“He did not,” I say, trying to remember the last time my father convinced me of anything. My mother simply smiled.
“It was the way he put it. He said we couldn’t afford to be selfish. Because even if I couldn’t see it, it still didn’t change the fact that this world isn’t all there is.”
I can feel my father’s words twist inside me, fighting with the promise to hate whatever the Children loved. Is it selfish? To want to save the people I love, innocent people, before I want to save anyone else, even if that anyone else is a lot more in number?
“And you?” I ask, hoping she knows what I’m asking. My guilt prevents me from elaborating.
“Why the distance between me and my son?” she mercifully finishes. All I can do is nod. She sighs. “I was afraid, Horatio. Afraid of the sins of my past. Afraid that you loved this world so much that if you knew about a group who wanted to keep the Soul here, out in the open, you would flee to it. That I would lose you. I know that by keeping my distance, I lost you anyway.”
I shake my head. “I’m still here. But,” I say to her as she stands, “no going back to the distance thing. I like you this way.”
I open the door and walk my mother out onto the porch. Nearly everyone has left. Only Linus and Annie still loiter about. My mom reaches her arms up and around my neck.
“I’m very proud of you,” she whispers.
I lean myself against the door frame, watching my mother walk away. My chest wants to explode with love and regret all at the same time.
“Did you know we have wizards among us?” I ask Annie when she and Linus return.
“Linus filled me in. You okay?”
I nod.
“That’s what you meant, wasn’t it?” I say to Linus.
“Meant when?”
“That day in Mrs. Sterling’s class, you told me not to play. You knew if I played, the wizards would know where I was. And where you were.”
“Yeah.” He watches a reaction, which amounts to a head nod. I’m about as stupid and self absorbed as they come. All this time I thought Linus was just ticked off that I refused to believe what he believed. I should have given him more credi
t.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
“Yeah. I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
I listen to the clapping slats of wood fade away. Annie stays with me. I’m glad. Peaceful, beautiful nights like these, I don’t know how many more of them there are going to be. I want every second to be spent with her. Not sure how many of those are left either.
She wraps herself under my arm, her fingers locked with mine. I feel my heart beat against her body. I inhale the scent of her hair mingled with the smell of pine. Pretty soon, I’m going to have to kiss her just to keep my chest from exploding.
“Well, Sooth,” Annie begins in that tone of voice that quickly tells me kissing her won’t be necessary, “since the beginning of the school year, you’ve managed to raise Allen out of poverty, then put them in mortal danger, single-handedly win your first League match, even when your own team was against you, get all of New Victoria loving you then hating you or at least scared of you, survived an 800 foot drop and learned that you are the only threat left to the most powerful group of beings this world has ever known and they know it. What is your power again?”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening. What was the question?”
“You left on your own. Bad things happen when you do that. Don’t do that again.”
“I won’t.”
“Raysh,” she says, turning me toward her. “Don’t leave me again.”
I take her hand in mine. “I won’t. I promise.” My throat closes a little bit so that it’s painful to swallow. It’s not that I’m lying to her. I just don’t know if I’m really in charge of that choice. I shake it off and hide it from Annie. She wraps herself back under my arm.
“Good,” she says. “If you do, I won’t follow you.”
I leave well enough alone and we spend the next several minutes in the pleasure of the quiet tree tops. Feeling her nuzzle into me, her cheek next to mine, smelling the creaminess of her skin, listening to our heartbeats find each other and beat in rhythm, I feel safe. I’m home. I make the promise again. This time to me. I won’t leave her.
She kisses the corner of my mouth and heads to her hut. I’m not ready to go in yet. Don’t think I could sleep anyway. Alone with only my thoughts to keep me company, the weight of what’s coming bears down on me like a mountain of brick. The odd thing is, I have no idea what’s coming.
“You returned to Allen.”
I spin to find Talia standing half in shadow behind me. Her stoic face seems just a bit softer than before.
“Though thousands were looking for you, you put your life risk.” She pauses. I watch the thoughts swirl around in her mind, as if she’s trying to convince herself of saying the words. ”They will use Allen to force you to forsake your quest. The choice will come, Horatio Gaph. Whether you believe it or not and you must decide—Allen or Mira.” Nothing passes between us but the rustling of the leaves in the dark. Her eyes never flicker, never wander. They peer deep into mine.
“We will protect Allen,” she says finally, “so you can protect the Soul.” Then the hope and understanding I had wished for passes between us before Talia disappears into the dark without even the sound of her footsteps left behind. I breathe, leaning heavily onto the railing and stare into the dense green of the trees. And for the first time, I have hope.
The shadows and faint lines of dark branches make shapes that play tricks on me. I step forward to the railing, peering into the dark, trying to make out the form amid the branches and pine bushels. My eyes focus in on it all at once. I see its eye first, reflecting the lamplight. Then a curved nib off its head, a dull yellow. Its head is dark, painted halfway down its broad chest where it meets a body of brilliant white, standing on a pair of wide, intimidating talons. It’s an eagle. And unless I really am seeing things, it’s a blue eagle.
9
Garden Farewell
WHETHER THE BIRD WAS REAL OR SIMPLY THE NIGHT PLAYING TRICKS ON ME, I DON’T SEE IT THIS MORNING. Nothing but branches and bark. I had asked Linus and Annie to meet me in the music room. At least, that’s what we’ve taken to calling it.
I’ve fallen in love with the mornings here. The crisp, clear air, thin and sharp, awakens me. It’s a smell that I can’t get in Allen or Revolution. It’s the smell of freedom. Or the closest thing to it.
Linus is there when I open the door, ring on, already poring through Pock’s nine notes.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he says without looking up. I don’t think he cares whether I mind or not. And I don’t. That’s why he’s here.
“You should see what he’s already found,” Annie says, walking through the door with a basket of bread and fruit along with a mug of hot chocolate. “A gift from my dad.”
“Thanks,” I whisper, taking the mug. I sip. The smooth warmth slides down my throat and into my gullet, coating them with a joy only cocoa can bring.
“Salted caramel,” she adds. “Your favorite.”
“How long have you two been here?”
“Not sure,” says Linus, never taking his eyes away from the notes. “Look at this.” He hands me a few notes. “They’re numbered from one to nine. You see that? It appears that there are four main clues: one, seven, six, four. The rest of the notes seem to support those. And look, they all have a set of these odd characters. All different, but all part of the same, what, alphabet?”
I peer down and run my finger over the swirling characters, while I sip. I’ve never seen anything like them. The fact that Linus has never seen characters like these either makes me wonder how on earth we’ll ever figure them out.
“There’s no way of really translating them—if it’s a language at all—until there’s a key,” he explains, “so it does no good to worry about them now. What I would focus on are the notes we can decipher.”
“Like what?”
“You tell me. Anything look familiar?” He passes two of the notes over. I expect that with all of them, these are the two I would be likely to recognize something. I don’t. And I don’t hide it, either.
“Annie, did you bring the books I asked for?” asks Linus.
“Yeah,” she says. She hands over a transparent digital slate, the same as at the academy. Linus runs his finger down the seven-inch screen, scanning through the contents.
“Here it is.” He taps on the screen and hands the slate to me.
“The Wizard of Oz?” I ask, reading the title.
“Yeah, keep reading.”
“By L. Frank Baum. Baum!” I look down at the note with a big number six in the upper right corner. In the center left of the note are the words “Baum’s Life,” circled with branches sprouting from them, connecting with descriptions and names of places. Some I know, like California and New York. South Dakota & Kansas I can only assume were states of the old republic.
“You think that he’s talking about the guy who wrote The Wizard of Oz?”
Linus just points to a list in the upper right corner: architect, engineer, writer, wizard.
“Baum lived in all of those places and was all of those things. Well, he was a writer who wrote a book about a wizard, in the traditional sense. But the clincher is here and here. He uses the name Lyman. Lyman! That’s the ‘L’ in L. Frank Baum!”
“Was Baum one of … ”
“Us?” asks Annie. “That was our first thought, too. But no. No record. We just checked with your mom. So Pock refers to Baum being a wizard but not in a ‘the wizards are trying to kill you’ sense. We think.”
I think I’m starting to get a feel for how these notes work, at least how this one works now that I have a bit of context. The words “emerald crown” at the top of the page next to a couple of numbers jump out at me.
“So this is a crown, then,” I say, pointing to a large diagram in the center of the notes. A sovereign style, Linus tells us, w
ith eight branches that start at the crown’s base and curve up to meet at the top center. The drawing splits it in two, the front and the back.
“I think if we find the crown, we’ll find whatever it is we’re looking for,” says Linus.
“And it appears,” says Annie, “that Pock doesn’t know exactly where it is, either, only that Baum was involved. Pock tracked down his life, narrowed it down to four, then two areas that it could have been. Of the four places, only California and New York have not been crossed out.”
“Which is a good thing,” I say, “because South Dakota and Kansas don’t exist anymore.”
“Exactly,” agrees Linus. “I think he crossed those out because neither of those states had a coastline.” He points to another note with a large “2” in the corner, referencing a “castle on the coast.”
“He drew the castle, see?”
“Any matches?”
“Nothing in New York’s—at least pre-unification New York’s—coastline has anything someone could consider a castle. But in California, we have a winner.”
Linus flips through the index in the slate and pulls up another book, a biography of Baum.
“Baum had a house on a peninsula called Coronado on the coast of Southern California. Before that, he loved to stay at a hotel there. We believe that hotel is our castle on the coast.”
Linus presses a button, and a holographic model of the hotel suddenly floats above the slate’s screen—a large, striking building with a red roof and white exterior constructed around a lush courtyard, built in the Victorian days of the state. Its main building, a cone-shaped tower sitting on the sea side of the structure and laced to the tip with white-paned windows, just as Pock drew it, gives it its royal air. Castle, indeed.
“We’re certain the crown’s there?”
“Oh, yeah,” says Linus. “But there’s a problem.”
“What?”