Ancient, Strange, and Lovely

by Susan Fletcher

  The lunch bell rang. Sasha stood up. “It’s brutal out there. ’Specially for kids like us. Not so much the joiner material, you and me, huh?”

  She smiled that sweet smile again, brushed a hand across my shoulder, picked up her tray.

  “Do yourself a favor, kid,” she said. “Hang on to that shell.”

  5

  TRIPLE SHOT

  EUGENE, OREGON

  My phone rang when I was halfway home from school. Dad, maybe? I stopped, turned my back into the sideways rain, and checked caller ID.

  Taj. From Mom’s lab.

  Dad, Taj, and I had exchanged numbers after Mom disappeared. But he’d never called me before.

  I picked up. “Taj?”

  “Hey, Bryn. How’re you doing?”

  “Uh, okay,” I said. Feeling suddenly awk. Not only because both of us knew I wasn’t really okay—couldn’t possibly be okay. But also—and this was dumb, I know—because Taj was kind of cute. Too-old-for-me cute. Married cute. But still. Sometimes the cute ones were harder to talk to than the not-cute ones. Proof of the randomness of the universe.

  “Listen, I’ve been trying to reach your dad. He’s still in Alaska, right?”

  “Uh, yeah.” All at once, I had this like massive urge to spill to Taj about the egg. Make it his problem, not mine. But no, better not. There were so many secrets in our family. Mostly connected to kenning, but they seeped into other places. I’d better wait and check with Dad tonight.

  “I thought I had his number, but I can’t get through.”

  “Dad can be hard to get hold of. Mom …” I heard myself say it. Hardly hesitating at all. “Mom had the sat phone, so all he’s got is a cell, and there are huge coverage gaps up there.”

  “Oh, jeez, Bryn.” Silence on the line. A car swished by, splashing water on my shoes. I moved toward a bookstore window. Took cover under the awning. Pushed my hood off my head. “I forgot about the sat phone,” Taj said. “God, I’m sorry.”

  “I know you are,” I said. “I know you miss her too.”

  “Yeah, well.” Rain thumped down on the awning. Breathe, I told myself. Just breathe.

  “But he’s in touch, then,” Taj said. “Your dad.” It was a question.

  “Yeah, I talk to him every night.”

  “You know he sent me some samples at the lab.”

  “He told me about that.”

  “Do you know if there’s any more? Of those dirt samples he sent? Or any notes or anything? About exactly where Robin got them?”

  Something funny in Taj’s voice. “He sent some boxes,” I said. “Aunt Pen put them in her basement. Dad said it’s mostly dirt samples. He sent some to you and the rest to Aunt Pen, just to be safe.” Redundancy. Mom was big on redundancy. I hesitated. “What’s going on, Taj?”

  “Oh, probably nothing important. Just something odd I found.”

  “What? What did you find?”

  “Oh, just … nothing really. Anyway, nothing I can talk about yet.”

  “’Cause I think I know what it is. And I found one too.”

  “One what?”

  Uh-oh. If Taj had found one of those eggs, he wouldn’t have had to ask.

  “What did you find, Bryn?”

  “What did you find?”

  “Just a strange result. Not like a thing.”

  “Oh.” I felt myself slump. A drop of water splashed on my forehead and dripped into one eye; the stupid awning leaked. I had so wanted to fork over the whole egg-thing to Taj. Or at least talk to him about it. Talk to somebody about it. But if Dad had wanted Taj to know about the egg, he would have sent it to him. Wouldn’t he?

  “Hey, Bryn. I’m on your side. I’m on Robin’s side. You know that.”

  I did. Taj was devoted to Mom. After she had disappeared last fall, Dr. Reynolds had taken over her lab—just temporarily, he had said. Trying to save her research grants, he had said. The dean had gone along with it. Mom had megaquantities of grant money, and the department didn’t want it all going away. So they told the granting foundations that her work would go on, under Dr. Reynolds’s so-called capable supervision.

  But Reynolds started steering things toward his own research. Some of Mom’s equipment showed up in Reynolds’s lab, and his grad students started invading Mom’s lab, using her stuff. Plus, Reynolds was making snarky comments about her work. Taj and a couple of Mom’s other grad students had protested to the dean, but it hadn’t done any good. After that, most of Mom’s grad students had left. When Mom’s lab manager finally quit in disgust, she’d called Dad and told him everything. It was an out-and-out power grab, she said. Usually Dad wouldn’t talk about stuff like that to me, but this time he was seriously cheesed.

  “Bryn?” Taj said.

  “Yeah?” The canopy was bulging down on one end, sagging with the weight of the rain. I moved toward the door, away from the bulge, but right then a woman came out so I had to move back. The door slammed shut behind her, something went pop, and a truckload of water dumped down on my head.

  Crap! I was soaking, soaking wet all over. And my sleep-dep headache was back again, and the only thing I’d done to deserve it was try to be responsible. It wasn’t fair to put me in this position. Of having to keep a secret like this, not knowing who I could and couldn’t tell. Running off like that—both of them, Mom and Dad—and leaving me here to deal.

  Taj was talking in my ear. “Bryn? What’s going on there? Bryn?”

  “I found an egg,” I said.

  “A what?”

  “An egg.”

  “Like what kind of egg?”

  “I don’t know. A big one.”

  “Goose egg big?”

  “Volleyball big.”

  Silence on the line. Somebody came out of the shop; I gave up and just moved into the rain. “Listen, Bryn,” Taj said at last. “You busy right now?”

  I was so pathetically not-busy.

  “’Cause I’d like to see this egg,” he said.

  I felt a little twinge. I shouldn’t have told. I should have waited for Dad. “Aunt Pen’s home this afternoon,” I said. “And I don’t think she should find out about it. She wouldn’t want it in her house. No telling what she’d do. She might give it to the cops—or the Audubon Society.”

  “Oh.” Taj sounded disappointed. “Well, can I at least buy you a bagel or something? Ice cream? Coffee? A beer?”

  I laughed. Surprising myself. It would be good to go someplace that wasn’t school or Aunt Pen’s or the sad, haunted spaces of my own empty house. With a semi-cute guy, safely old and married, and not all that hard to talk to.

  “I think I can work you in,” I said.

  It wasn’t until I was sitting across the table from Taj—warming my hands on the ceramic cup, breathing in the steam from my triple-shot caramel macchiato, feeling the caffeine lighting up the circuits of my brain—that I noticed that he looked tired too. Dark, leathery circles rimmed his eyes, which were kind of pinkish at the edges, and his face seemed, I don’t know, older. More serious. Worried.

  He’d ordered a triple-shot too.

  Now he asked me again how I was, really looking at me, like it mattered what I said. I didn’t want to blow him off with a perky “fine,” or even just “okay.” But I couldn’t think of a way to put it that was true, yet still something you could say in a coffee shop to someone you actually didn’t know all that well. I shrugged.

  He nodded. Like that was all he needed.

  “Tell me about the egg,” he said. “Everything.”

  I did. Starting with those thumps I’d heard. Then Piper and Luna and the boxes. I didn’t tell about the kenning, of course—that was strictly verboten. But I described the egg itself as well as I could.

  “Vibrating?” Taj asked. “More like a little trembling pulse kind of thing, or more like something actually moving around in there?”

  “Like a pulse, I think. Or maybe humming, sort of.”

  Taj looked thoughtful. I took another sip of macchiato. T
here was a soft buzz of voices in the coffee shop, and a clattering of ceramic cups and plates on granite tabletops, and the sudden, harsh hiss of the espresso machine. It smelled damp in here—damp coats, damp boots, damp hair—blending with the dark, skunky musk of coffee.

  “It’s strange it should be alive,” Taj said, “with nothing down there to keep it warm. How warm is your aunt’s basement?”

  “Not very,” I said.

  “Hmm. I don’t know what to say. We raised chickens in India, when I was growing up. When the eggs are near to hatching, you can hear the baby chicks in there. You can feel them, moving around. It’s not exactly a vibration, though. It’s more like a wobble. Did you feel anything like that?”

  I took another sip, trying to remember. But no. It hadn’t wobbled. Not that I had felt. “But maybe it wobbled before,” I said. “There were those thumps. And it fell out of the box.”

  Taj shrugged. “Many things can go bump in the night,” he said. “And you don’t know how that box was put there. It could have been off balance to begin with. Maybe it’s decomposition you felt. Or the egg matter settling.”

  Maybe. It hadn’t seemed like that, though. And there was something itching at me, way back in my mind. Making me edgy. Squirmy. “How long before they hatched?” I asked. “Those chicken eggs. I mean, once you felt them move.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A day or so?”

  So if Taj was wrong and the egg was going to hatch, it could happen anytime. And I couldn’t take care of it. Aunt Pen would find out. Besides, I didn’t know how; I’d probably kill it. “I think maybe you’d better come get it,” I said. “The egg. Like, tonight, if you can.”

  Taj looked at me. Seemed puzzled.

  “Aunt Pen’s going to be home all evening. But she takes out her hearing aid when she goes to bed. I can let you in, and—”

  Taj held up a hand. “Whoa,” he said. “I do want to see this egg. And I also need to take a look inside those boxes. But sneaking into your aunt’s house in the middle of the night? I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Then I’ll bring it to you,” I said. “Park outside. I’ll take it to your car.”

  “And what would I do with it then?” Taj asked. “I don’t have anywhere to put it.”

  “You can take it to the lab!”

  “There’s no place I can hide something big like that. Reynolds won’t want it there. He’s made it clear that I’m not to bring any more of Robin’s …” Taj sighed. Looked at me with those tired, older-than-I-remembered eyes. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Bryn. But he’s shutting down all of Robin’s experiments. Letting me wrap up some of what we’ve started but not begin anything new. I’m already taking a risk—” He broke off. “Well. Anyway. He wants me to finish my work quickly. Get my doctorate and get out.”

  Shutting down Mom’s experiments? I gaped at him. “All of them?” I asked. “Nothing she’s worked on will be left?”

  “Not in … that lab, no.”

  I had a moment of vertigo, as if the planet had lurched, dropped away beneath me. Dropping down and down through black nothing.

  “And I can’t take the egg home,” Taj was saying, “because I have a tiny apartment and a very pregnant wife who hates that I work with toxic chemicals and won’t let me bring in anything from the lab.”

  “But—”

  “Look,” Taj said. “You said you didn’t feel it wobble.”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “So even if it is going to hatch—which I doubt—we probably have some time. Your dad will call tonight, and he’ll have some ideas, and I’ll ask around, too, to find a place for it. The zoo might be an option, I don’t know. I have a friend there. I’ll talk to him and call tomorrow. It’ll be fine, Bryn. Don’t worry.”

  He smiled and patted my hand. Like I was a little kid. I snatched my hand away.

  Like a baby.

  But it wasn’t just about the egg. Not anymore. It was about Mom. About her work. Which was so much of who she was. And if that went away—everything she’d ever worked for …

  I knew it didn’t make sense, but this is what it felt like:

  It would mean she was really dead.

  6

  KISS OF DEATH

  EUGENE, OREGON

  Dad called at nine, like always. Piper got him first, like always. In the Brynworld, Piper always goes first. It was good to see her happy, though. Chatting away about her day. Gold stars and holo art and crayons. The yeti dance and monkey bars and swings. ’Cause it hadn’t all been good, poor kid. She’d really been sucking on the inhaler. There’d been a break when the hard rain came and cleaned the celumbral junk out of the air, but now the cloud was back.

  I listened in to make sure she didn’t spill about the egg. Aunt Pen’s ears were flapping. Seriously, you could practically see them twitch. When it was my turn, I took the phone upstairs.

  Aunt Pen gave me a look.

  “It’s my dad,” I said.

  I closed the door, set Stella on my shoulder. “What’s this about the egg?” Dad asked.

  I told him.

  “Vibrating?” he said. “I didn’t feel that. It was cold when I found it. Not moving at all. I thought it was dead.”

  “I’m just telling you what I felt.”

  “I believe you. You feel things I can’t.” He hesitated.

  Stella climbed up a strand of my hair and started nibbling at the top of my head.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What kind of egg?”

  “Not sure. Listen, I’ll contact Taj. He’ll take it off your hands.”

  “No he won’t. I talked to him today. Didn’t he get back to you?”

  “He left a couple of odd messages. But I wanted to call you girls first.”

  I’d let Taj break the news about Reynolds. “Well, he won’t take it. Unless you can talk him into it, I’m stuck. Can you picture Aunt Pen if she knew there was some monster bird egg in her basement? Alive?”

  “Oh, God, please don’t tell her.”

  “What’s it worth to you?”

  “No, I mean it. No telling what she’d do.”

  “Yeah, well, what am I supposed to do if it hatches?”

  “I’ll make some calls. Nothing’s going to happen tonight.”

  “How do you know?”

  “What are the chances, Brynster? It was in the storage locker for at least six months. It’s been in the basement for the past two weeks. Nothing’s been keeping it warm. What are the chances it’ll hatch at all, much less pick this very night—out of however many nights it’s been around—to hatch?”

  Never, ever say stuff like that. Just don’t. It’s called tempting fate, and when you do, it’s like the kiss of death.

  ‡ ‡ ‡

  Three hours later, I still couldn’t get to sleep. Which makes zero sense because I was in serious sleep-dep mode already. My whole body felt antsy, and a ragged, low-grade static crackled just below the surface of my so-called thoughts.

  Triple shot: maybe not such a great plan.

  Deep in the distance, I heard the stuttery growl of thunder. I watched the giant rhododendron shadows seethe across my wall, until lightning strobed the room.

  Stella let out a whistle. The unhappy kind.

  I groaned, turned onto my stomach, pulled my pillow over my head. Stella clicked back and forth on her perch, whistling like a maniac.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Go to sleep.”

  More thunder. Quiet. Then …

  Clank. Clankity clank. Clank.

  I raised up on an elbow, peered through the dark at Stella. She was pecking at something: the door latch of her cage. I stilled my mind, tried to synch with her.

  Edgy, agitated. Borderline alarmed.

  I could feel the buzzy storm energy now; I could smell the coppery tang of rain.

  Stella didn’t like thunderstorms. I knew that. But she was going at the latch so hard, I was afraid she might get hurt. Maybe crack her beak. I got up, wrapped my index
finger in PJ cloth, and pressed it against the place where she was pecking. I kenned her to stop, calm down.

  Not happening.

  I eased the cage door open, thinking maybe I’d stroke her tummy feathers, maybe coax her back onto her perch. But she slipped out through the cage door and took off flying.

  I watched, totally plexed, as Stella circled the room, whistling hysterically.

  A soft tap at the door. It opened. There was Piper. “Luna escaped,” she said. “She went downstairs.”

  Thunder, again. Louder. Stella veered toward the opening in the doorway and sailed right through.

  “Piper, look what you’ve done!” I snapped—and instantly regretted it. Piper’s lower lip began to quiver. She put the inhaler to her mouth and dragged in a long, rattley breath.

  Oh, jeez. I held out my arms. “Sorry. Come here?”

  She leaned in toward me; I folded my arms around her. She was bony and bird-light. I could feel her quivering. I reached for a Kleenex, wiped her nose. “C’mon,” I said. “Let’s go find those birds.”

  But we both knew where they’d be.

  We sat together on the bottom step, watching the birds peck at the basement door. I could feel Stella’s impatience. I sent her a calming kenning; she flicked me off.

  Piper took another drag off her inhaler. “I think the egg is hatching,” she said.

  I turned to stare at her. “Why do you say that?”

  She shrugged.

  “Piper?”

  “I peeked,” she said. “After school. When Aunt Pen was on the phone.”

  “Did Aunt Pen find out about the egg?”

  “No.”

  That was a relief. “You didn’t tell anyone else, did you?”

  Piper shook her head, then seemed to reconsider. “Maybe I told McKenzie.”

  Piper’s kindergarten buddy. Both girls were known for their “lively imaginations,” so probably no one would believe them. But I wondered how long before McKenzie’s mom sensed something strange about Piper and cooled the friendship. Which happened to everyone in our family, eventually.