“Our great-great-grandfather caused the San Francisco Earthquake?” Eleanor asked.
“I don’t think he purposely meant to—”
Brendan was interrupted when the room suddenly went dark. The Walkers and Will looked at the windows. A huge shape completely blocked their view.
“What is that?” Eleanor shrieked. “A dinosaur?”
“I hope not,” said Brendan. “I always wanted to see a real dinosaur but not so much anymore.” Cordelia rushed to one of the bedroom windows.
“It looks like . . . a wall,” she said. They all nodded: it appeared that someone had placed a slightly concave wall that stretched up, blocking the sun, six feet from Kristoff House. The wall looked textured and tan, almost as if it were made of sandpaper. And while it hadn’t been there a minute before, it appeared perfectly still, as if it had been there forever.
“Wait a minute,” Brendan said, “that looks like . . . no way.”
“Like what?” Cordelia asked.
“I was reading Savage Warriors, and the warriors run into big problems when—”
“Follow me,” Will interrupted. “Let’s get out of here. You three saved my life. It’s my duty to keep you safe.”
Will led the Walkers out of the master bedroom. As they came to the stairs, they looked out another window: the wall was there too. It was the same size and color—but the texture looked different. The wall was still covered with fine, grooved lines, but the lines here were different from the ones outside the bedroom.
The wall quivered.
“Ah!” Brendan pointed. “Look!”
As he spoke, the wall disappeared, shooting up from the window.
“Where’d it go?” Eleanor asked. They heard a huge crunch outside. “Is that the Wind Witch again?” They heard more crunching sounds, each fainter than the last, before the birds and bugs started up again.
“What was that?” Cordelia asked Brendan.
“I’m scared to say,” he said, “and I could be wrong. I’m going to keep reading Savage Warriors to learn more.” He bolted back toward the library. Cordelia had never seen her brother run to read a book.
“I’m going to keep reading The Heart and the Helm!” said Eleanor, following.
“What’s that about?” asked Cordelia.
“Pirates.”
Cordelia smiled. “Go for it, Nell.” It seemed pretty clear that they wouldn’t be encountering any pirates in the forest.
Day crept into afternoon. Will took on guard duty at the front door as Cordelia joined her siblings in the library. Brendan read Savage Warriors, while Cordelia skimmed as many Kristoff books as she could—Gemstone Mine, The Great Snake—looking for characters or situations that matched the world they were in.
“You know what?” Brendan said. “During the Wind Witch’s attack, there was this moment when these three books were hovering in front of my face, and then they started to grow bigger and bigger. I bet those are the books we got sent to.”
“And one is Savage Warriors, and one is The Fighting Ace,” said Eleanor, “so we’re just looking for the third.”
“That’s right!” said Cordelia. “That makes sense!” When they weren’t fighting, it was amazing what the Walkers could accomplish. “The problem is we have like fifty more books to go through. But at least we know we’re trapped in a world that fuses books.”
“Like a Denver Kristoff mash-up,” said Brendan.
They went back to reading, but after five minutes Brendan couldn’t take it anymore. “Deal, can you take over Savage Warriors? It’s getting terrifying, and I need a break.” Now that he had done it once and hadn’t spontaneously combusted, he was more comfortable admitting to his sisters when he was scared.
Cordelia took the book. She knew how important it was to know it from front to back. Every sentence could potentially hold the secret to the Walkers surviving, or even getting home. When Cordelia looked up, Brendan was gone.
Meanwhile, at the front door, Will watched the shadows of the trees lengthen. He had to stay focused on every snap and rustle in the woods, every smell and sound. Guarding was hard work.
“Will!” shouted Brendan. “Can I relieve you?”
“Absolutely not,” said Will. “You just want to get your hands on my gun.”
“That’s not true. I want to get my hands on your Webley Mark Six.”
Will sighed. “Why are you so eager for one of these, Brendan? You think it’s a toy like your little technological games?”
“What you call a toy, I call a simulator.”
Will shook his head. “There’s no simulation for firing a gun. It bites back. Cuts into your hand. It’s hot and nasty . . . and that’s if you miss your mark. Think what happens if you hit.”
“What?”
Will leaned close. “People don’t flash and disappear. They lie on the ground and bleed.”
“C’mon! I thought you were my friend!”
Will smiled. “I appreciate that. Since I found out I’m only a character in a book, I’ve been wondering if any of my old acquaintances—Frank Quigley, Thorny Thompson—even count as friends. But you still can’t have the gun.”
Brendan sighed. “What about the knife?”
Will scrunched his lips. “I don’t think so—”
“Come on. I use a knife when I eat dinner!”
“That is true—”
“And I don’t need a license for a knife.”
“You do not.”
“So what’s the big deal?”
“Here, then.” Will handed Brendan his Sheffield bowie knife. “Take guard, and treat this very carefully. Understand? I’ll just take a small break.”
“Thanks, Will!” Brendan couldn’t believe his good fortune. But then he realized something. “Let’s say we got attacked by someone really big. Then the knife wouldn’t be much help.”
“Possibly . . . How big are you talking about?”
“Say, eight hundred feet tall?”
Will laughed. “If we get attacked by something that big, nothing will help.”
“I agree. But your grenade might.”
“My grenade? How do you know about that?”
“I know pilots in the Great War sometimes carried grenades. I don’t want to get you worried, but I read some stuff . . . and I have a feeling that we’re being hunted by something that’s pretty freakin’ big, something only a grenade might be able to stop.”
“Very well,” Will said, pulling an oval-shaped hunk of metal out of his jacket. Brendan’s mouth dropped open.
“Seriously?”
“Yes. Pull the pin, count to three, and throw. I assume you can throw?”
“Four years of Little League, starting shortstop!” said Brendan. In response to Will’s blank expression, he added, “Baseball?”
“Just keep safe, Brendan. And if you see anything out of the ordinary, call me.”
Brendan gave Will his knife back and left, tossing the grenade up and down in his palm.
Will went inside to find Cordelia and Eleanor. They had moved from the library to the living room, following the sun so that they could keep reading Kristoff’s books. “Your brother has taken over guard duty,” Will told them.
Cordelia closed Savage Warriors. From the moment Will had entered, she’d seen him with her peripheral vision, but she wanted to make it clear that he was less important to her than her book. “You trust my brother with our lives?”
“For a little while anyway. Have you found any clues?”
Eleanor explained their theory about being in a mash-up of three Kristoff books and showed her progress with The Heart and the Helm—she had made it to page 50.
“Wow!” Will said. “You’ve gotten very far!”
“Well,” Eleanor said, embarrassed, “I’m not reading everything. Reading is hard for me. So I just read a little on each page and skip ahead.”
“But she’s doing great,” said Cordelia.
“Not that great,” said Eleanor, “because n
othing in this book can help us.”
“Then take a break,” said Will. “We need to stay sharp.”
“Good idea,” said Cordelia.
“Yeah!” Eleanor jumped up. “I’m going to play with my American Girl dolls in the dumbwaiter!”
“Wait, Nell, don’t climb in—” Cordelia started, but her sister was already out of the room, leaving the book flipped over on the couch. Cordelia sighed, smoothed out the pages, and replaced the dust jacket. “We have to be respectful,” she explained to Will. “These are rare books, and obviously very powerful. If we’re trapped in them, maybe one wrong crumpled page could cause a typhoon. Or an earthquake.”
“Have you finished the book about me?” Will asked.
Cordelia looked away. “I did,” she admitted.
“Well, then . . . shouldn’t I be permitted to read it?”
“No. That would be like meeting yourself in a time-travel movie,” Cordelia said. “Besides, we think your fate has changed now.”
Will gave a slight smile. “In other words . . . I die at the end.”
Cordelia stayed stone-faced.
“And do I fall in love?”
Cordelia stammered, refusing to answer. She didn’t want to tell Will about Penelope Hope. If his fate really has changed, then this is a good test. Eventually she said, “You do a lot of heroic things.”
“Like fight? That’s not so heroic,” said Will. “It’s the war. Everyone fights. D’you mind if I sit?”
“Absolutely—I mean, no, please do.”
Will sat next to her on the couch, but not too close. He left enough space between them for a phantom person to occupy. He surveyed the room. It was still full of rubble. The coffee table lay splintered in a pile of glass next to the piano. On the wall was a dark stain: Mrs. Walker’s blood.
“I imagine this was once a beautiful room,” Will said.
“It was. And my family just moved in, too! We didn’t even get a chance to really live here.” Cordelia thought of how gorgeous Kristoff House had been when she’d first stepped inside it.
“Shall we clean up the mess?”
“Right now?”
Will nodded.
“I don’t know if I have the energy. . . . I mean, we can leave it for a while. . . .”
“I see,” said Will. “If the room remains in tatters, you can pretend this is all just a bad dream that you’re waiting to wake up from. But if it’s back to normal—”
“It reminds me of my parents,” finished Cordelia. “And if I think too much about them—”
“It makes you weak. You worry that you may not be strong enough to go on.”
“It’s impressive how well you can read people.”
“Have you ever heard the expression ‘You learn a lot by listening’?”
“Sounds like something from a self-help book. Did you read that somewhere?”
“No. I heard it from Frank Quigley.”
“Who?”
“RFC captain. One of the aces of Squadron Seventy. Canadian, too, so I wasn’t inclined to listen to him, but he had real presence. During mealtimes, even though he was a popular chap, he never uttered a word. Once I asked him why, and he told me an expression that he said had helped him immensely: ‘You learn a lot by listening.’ So I try to do that with you Walkers. And I’ve learned that you, Cordelia, bear the burden of responsibility.”
Cordelia nodded, transfixed.
“Your siblings look to you. They respect you. And that puts pressure on you. To lead, to find the answers . . . to get their lives back. That sort of pressure can be overwhelming.”
Cordelia sighed. “All true.”
“Well, I’ve been in the Great War. Sometimes you can’t get your life back. Sometimes you have to take it back.”
Will stood and offered his hand. Cordelia took it.
“The fact is,” Will said, “we may be stuck in this house for a long time. It’s all we have. There’s no point in letting it fester around us. We’re going to have to start catching our own food, washing our own clothes, getting regular exercise . . . ”
“And cleaning this room,” Cordelia said.
“I’ll start with the heavier items,” Will said, indicating the legless piano. “You take care of the busted bits of wood.”
They began to clean up, Cordelia glancing every now and then at Will, unable not to. The few times she caught his eye, his smile was an expression of comfort, something a father or teacher would offer a youngster. He still thinks I’m a kid. Maybe it’d be better if he didn’t think anything at all. . . .
Meanwhile, outside, Brendan hadn’t detected any suspicious activity to guard against, but he had become slightly obsessed with the grenade. He wanted to blow something up. It’s crazy, he thought. I’ve seen so many explosions in movies and games, but I’ve never set one off in real life. And besides, I’ve been through a lot today. I even almost died a couple of times. I deserve to have some fun.
He left his post at the door. The forest was feeling a little safer now; he hadn’t seen the wolf or any nasty dragonflies or heard any hoofbeats. He headed into the woods past the downed trees that the Wind Witch had left. He wasn’t going far. Just far enough.
As he walked, Brendan wondered how he had ever been scared of the forest. It was a beautiful day full of bright air and fresh smells . . . like being in a shampoo commercial, he thought. He came to a small cliff, a twenty-foot rock face that rose out of the forest floor to meet the top of a slight hill. There were trees above the cliff and beside it, but nothing on its gray surface.
“Perfect,” Brendan said. He remembered, years ago, being fascinated on a family trip to Colorado as his dad drove along a treacherous mountain road. Their car had been inches away from a cliff! Brendan had asked his father, “How’d they put the road through here?” And his dad had said, “See those little hollowed-out cylinders in the rock? That’s where they put the dynamite.”
Now Brendan was ready to do some dynamiting of his own.
He pulled the pin on the grenade. He threw it at the cliff. He spun behind a tree, shut his eyes tight, put his hands over his ears—
BOOM! Even through his flesh, his eardrums felt almost pierced.
Inside the house, Cordelia and Will abruptly stopped cleaning when they heard the sound.
“What was that?” asked Cordelia.
“Uh-oh,” said Will, dashing out of the room, “I knew I shouldn’t have given him the grenade.”
“You gave Brendan a grenade?” shouted Cordelia, running after Will. “Are you completely insane?”
Outside, Brendan slowly opened his eyes and peeked at his handiwork. He had a blown a hole in the bottom of the cliff. Shards of stone were scattered around as if pointing to it. The hole didn’t go deep—it was about the size of a fireplace—but as the smoke cleared, Brendan saw something inside.
A book.
No way, he thought, but as he approached, it came into focus: The Book of Doom and Desire. Sitting right there in the hole.
Because I did something for myself. Because I listened to my own selfish desires.
Brendan remembered that he had warned Cordelia about this book, that finding it for the Wind Witch was an obvious trap . . . but none of that mattered now. It was right there. Just one look at it told him it was magical, more magical than anything he had seen in his life. It wasn’t its shape or its size; it was something he couldn’t put into words. Power was the closest word.
What’s inside? If it’s blank, then what in there is so powerful?
Brendan ran to the book. Grabbed it. The ground around his hands was hot and smoking. He was about to open it—
When he heard a thundering crunch in the forest. Very big, very close.
“Oh no . . . ” Brendan looked at the book as he thought of his sisters. All of a sudden he knew he’d made a big mistake. His desire to open the book was too strong, too weird. Leaving his post at the door, coming out here to blow up a cliff . . . he’d left his sisters vulne
rable—abandoned his duty, as Will would say. And now something was coming.
Brendan flung the book down. “You stay away from me,” he said. “You’re totally evil.” He ran back to Kristoff House.
Cordelia and Will burst through the front door and stopped dead, trying to process what they were seeing. Two enormous, crusty, bare feet were planted in the clearing in front of them. Each foot was nearly as big as Kristoff House itself. The legs that came up from them were redwood-sized and just as naked.
“A giant,” Will said.
“Bigger,” said Cordelia. “A colossus.”
Cordelia was terrified to look up and see more naked parts, but when she did, she saw that the colossus was wearing a loincloth, tied under him like a diaper—and he was even taller than the trees. Cordelia couldn’t see past the loincloth.
Brendan suddenly appeared, racing out of the forest. He looked up at the colossus, saw Will and Cordelia on the front porch, and didn’t stop running. He knew the monster could stamp him flat with one step—but he couldn’t risk getting separated from his family.
“Rrrrrrr?” he heard from above, a huge sound like machinery, as the colossus picked up one foot—
But Brendan was already on the front porch, dashing inside with Cordelia and Will.
“Bren! Where were you?”
PTOOSH! The foot hit the ground outside the door.
“I’m sorry!” Brendan said. “I got distracted with that grenade—”
“Distracted? You set it off!” Will shouted, as the colossus thudded its huge hand into the ground outside, shadowing the hallway.
“Sorry,” Brendan said. “It was something I’ve always wanted to do—”
“Please tell me you used it for something that will help us?” said Will.
“Not exactly,” said an embarrassed Brendan. “I wanted to see how big of a hole I could blow in the side of a cliff.”
“You wasted a perfectly good grenade because you wanted to see something explode?!”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“Bren!” Cordelia said. “Maybe that grenade could’ve stopped the colossus!”
House of Secrets Page 11