House of Secrets

by Chris Columbus

  The stone wall materialized behind him.

  Will and the Walkers hit it and fell to the floor.

  The Wind Witch was not pleased. She didn’t have words for this indignity, just a high-pitched keening that she let ring through the chamber. She stepped forward, put her good hand on the stone table, and raised her disfigured one. Lightning started crackling out of the gnarled skin at the end. Cordelia knew a bolt was coming.

  She spotted the metal chain that was draped on the floor. She snatched one end and tossed it in the air as the lightning darted toward her. It forked down and hit the chain. CRACCKKKK! The bolt traveled back along the length of the metal and down to the iron ring . . . which was resting beside the Wind Witch’s good hand.

  The Wind Witch didn’t have time to scream. The bolt zapped her with a fierce white crackle that made everyone shield their faces—

  And when they had the courage to peek again, the Wind Witch was gone.

  Only a puff of smoke remained.

  For a moment no one spoke.

  “Did we . . . kill her?” Eleanor finally asked.

  “Doubtful,” said Will, standing and patting the stone wall. “She’s too clever. I think she took evasive action because Cordelia outsmarted her.”

  “Who cares?” Cordelia said, rushing over to her brother. “None of it matters if Brendan’s hurt!” She knelt down and cradled him. He had a pulse; he was breathing. But he was out cold.

  Cordelia hung her head. Something about this fight was worse than the ones before. She felt hollow inside: no excitement, no joy at staying alive. She heard sniffling and turned around to see Eleanor crying. Will had a hand on her shoulder.

  “Help Bren,” Cordelia said to Will as she knelt in front of Eleanor. A tear hit her arm. It was hot. Cordelia said, “I’m sorry I was so mean . . . about you not being able to read. . . . I was wrong. What I know is, you are a good reader, who will someday be a great reader.”

  Eleanor nodded.

  “Do you believe me?”

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Believe me.”

  Cordelia hugged her. We have to get off this ship or we’re going to lose it. We’re going to lose everything.

  “Ahemmm.” Will interrupted the sisters. “Brendan’s okay. He took a rough knock, but I’ve seen worse.”

  “Still my fault,” said Cordelia. “You should put me back in that pigpen.”

  “Nonsense. You did what you did because of this.” Will picked up The Book of Doom and Desire. He meant to get rid of it, but when he held it in his hands, he suddenly thought, Maybe I’ll just peek—

  “Will! What are you doing?” Cordelia asked.

  “Nothing!” Will said, realizing he was still holding the book. “I’ll just throw this in the ocean.”

  “Except you created a magical stone wall between us and the ocean.”

  “Oh yes. Viribus fenerat ipsa terra!” The wall collapsed into thin air, and the stained-glass window became visible again. Outside, Kristoff House was still being towed by the Moray, bathed in moonlight, but now the water had covered the roof, and only the chimney was visible.

  Will tossed the book out the window.

  Cordelia was amazed at how simple it was. All that trouble, all that fighting—and it could be stopped by throwing it away, as if the book were an old Starbucks cup or an empty tuna-fish can. The book opened while it sailed through the sky, its pages flapping . . . but then the wind underneath caught it, lifted it a little, and dropped it into the chimney of Kristoff House. It fell out of sight.

  “Bah,” said Will.

  “That’s crazy!” Eleanor said. “Right down the chimney? You couldn’t do that again if you were LeBron James!”

  “The book’s not gone,” said Cordelia, shaking her head. “It’s caught somewhere in there, high and dry, waiting to be found. Now that I’ve opened it, it doesn’t want to leave.”

  “You opened it?” Eleanor asked. “What happened?”

  “I don’t really remember,” said Cordelia. “I remember it was dreamy, and beautiful, but the contents are a blank.”

  “What happened was her face started changing,” said Will, “and not for the better.”

  “What are you holding in your hand, Deal?” Eleanor asked.

  Cordelia looked at the piece of paper the Wind Witch had given her. She unfolded it and read, “‘Dahlia Kristoff will be able to open The Book of Doom and Desire.’ That’s it.”

  “That’s all it says?” Will asked. “What is that, a wish?”

  “Maybe that’s the power of the book,” said Cordelia. “Maybe if you open it up and put a wish in . . . ”

  “It comes true,” said Eleanor.

  For a minute Cordelia, Eleanor, and Will thought about it. A book that could make real anything put between its pages. It would be the most powerful book ever made. It would turn people into gods.

  “Forget it,” said Will. “We’re not going to find out if that works, because no one is to go near the Kristoff House chimney. When we reach land tomorrow, we’ll have the whole house dismantled and the book burned. Now . . . I’m going to look for some smelling salts to rouse poor Brendan.” Will started to leave the chamber but stopped and looked back. “And Cordelia . . . ”

  She stared at him. His eyes were filled with warmth and true kindness. “I never should have locked you up. I’m sorry.”

  “I accept your apology,” said Cordelia, “and promise not to get all weird again.”

  Soon after, Brendan was roused by the truly heinous smelling salts on the Moray, which Tranquebar said could raise the dead (a turn of phrase that Cordelia, Eleanor, and Will found amusing, considering their experience in that area). When Brendan tried to sit up, everyone yelled for him to stop, worried that his neck might be broken, but he leaped to his feet.

  “I’m fine, guys,” he said. “Yeah, I slammed into that ceiling pretty hard, but I’ve been hit a lot worse in lacrosse.” And to prove his point, Brendan did a few impromptu dance moves, including a pretty decent moonwalk that he had picked up from seeing all those Michael Jackson memorial specials on TV.

  An hour later they were all in bed—or what passed for bed at sea. Will started out in the quarters Tranquebar had arranged for him, but when a rat crawled onto his cheek, paused, and started to nibble at the hairs inside his nostril, he switched rooms. He ended up on a cot next to Cordelia, Brendan, and Eleanor. The last thing he did before going to sleep was identify whose breathing was whose.

  The next morning, Cordelia woke up last. It was rare for her—she was an early riser—but the constant battering and exhaustion that had been her life for the last few days had made her sleep almost until noon. She rubbed her eyes (she missed brushing her teeth) and went up to the deck. The ocean air woke her more than the coffee she snuck in before school every morning. Will, Brendan, and Eleanor were standing at the side of the Moray.

  “What are you doing?” Cordelia asked.

  “Looking for Tinz,” Brendan said. “We should be able to see it somewhere on that land over there—”

  “Land?” Cordelia said. Sure enough, a sliver of gray stretched out in the distance. “Oh my God! Land!”

  “I know, right?” Eleanor said. “I forgot what land feels like!”

  “Tranquebar spotted it at dawn,” said Will, nodding to the first mate, who stood in the crow’s nest at the top of the mainmast. “He’ll be the first to spot Tinz, too. But one of us can be second.”

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n!” said Cordelia. “But what do we do when we get to Tinz?”

  “I’ve got a trading meeting set up,” said Will. “But before we arrive . . . there’s something I need to discuss with you.”

  “What’s that?” asked Brendan.

  “I have an idea about how you can see your parents,” said Will, slipping away from the edge of the deck.

  The Walkers all exchanged looks of intense hope, overcome with excitement.

  “When?” asked Cordelia.

/>   “Soon,” said Will. “Maybe immediately.”

  “Well, go on, tell us—how, how?” asked Brendan.

  “First, you need to ask yourselves one question,” said Will.

  “What’s that?” asked Eleanor.

  “Are you prepared for the consequences?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Eleanor. “Like if they’re dead? I could never be prepared for that!” Her voice trembled.

  “Me neither,” said Cordelia. The thought of her parents being dead erased any emotional maturity that she had over her sister. “But if we can know . . . we should.”

  “I’m with you,” said Brendan.

  “Me too, I guess,” said Eleanor, mustering all her courage.

  “Very well,” said Will. “Wait here.”

  Will went belowdecks as the Walkers tried to see the first sign of Tinz; they imagined it would be a glint of glass, spiky ships’ masts, or the flutter of a flag. When Will came back, he held a spell scroll with trembling fingers. He slowly unfurled it. The Walkers crowded around him, trying to read the Latin.

  “Hold on,” said Cordelia. “I can translate this one. . . . In Latin, it says, ‘Show me the ones who brought me the world.’”

  “Very impressive,” said Will. He paused and looked at the Walkers.

  “Shall we give it a shot?”

  On the deck of the Moray, Will instructed the Walkers to read the spell in Latin. Together.

  “Ostende mihi isti qui, introduxisti me terrarum,” said all of the Walkers in perfect unison.

  A small ball of light appeared in front of them. Will used his body to shield it from the pirates. The light grew to the size of a basketball. The Walkers looked inside the glowing orb—and what they saw sent them into a state of shock.

  It was Kristoff House—but not the Kristoff House being towed behind the ship. This was Kristoff House as they had left it in San Francisco: destroyed by the Wind Witch. Eleanor gasped.

  It was an aerial view, far above 128 Sea Cliff Avenue. It looked like the house had been ripped open by a tornado. Wooden beams splayed out from the first floor in a wide flat heap. There was no second floor. All of the furniture had been blasted to bits and was strewn across the lawn.

  “I don’t understand . . . ,” Brendan said. “What are we looking at? How can that be Kristoff House? Kristoff House is right there, underwater!”

  “There must be two versions,” Cordelia said. “The house that was transported here by the Wind Witch, and the one that stayed behind in San Francisco . . . the one that still exists in reality.”

  “So this is reality?” Will asked, pointing at the ball of light.

  “For us, yes,” said Brendan.

  “Wait . . . stop,” Cordelia ordered, suddenly realizing what she was about to see.

  “Terrarum me introduxisti, qui isti mihi ostende!” said Will, shouting the spell in reverse.

  But the ball of light did not disappear. The spell continued.

  “What’s going on?” asked Cordelia. “Why can’t you make it stop?”

  “Obviously the spell can’t be stopped in progress!” said Will.

  Inside the bubble-like ball of light, the house grew larger, as if an aerial camera were zooming in. Now the Walkers and Will could see yellow police tape around the house. There were gray placards marking evidence locations. And there, in stark white against the splintered wood—

  Two chalk outlines of bodies.

  “No!” Eleanor said. “No! Make it stop!”

  It was clear that the Wind Witch’s attack had killed the Walker parents.

  “No!” Eleanor disintegrated into tears and hugged Brendan. Brendan tried to stay strong—“Nell, it’s okay”—but once he felt his sister literally shake his body with sobs, he broke down too.

  “It’s not okay!” Nell screamed. “It’ll never be okay again!”

  Cordelia hugged them both and stared at the magical bubble Will had created, at the simple and final accessories of death that pervaded the real world: tape, chalk, and wreckage.

  “Try again, Will!” Cordelia yelled. “We don’t need to see anymore!”

  Will again said the spell in reverse, and this time the bubble disappeared. The Walkers sat on the deck, staring at the ocean.

  “Will,” Cordelia said quietly, “maybe you should leave us.”

  Will nodded, but he had something to say. “I just . . . ” He made his voice quiet. “I wanted to try the spell on myself, too. To see my own mum and dad. I don’t know if they’re alive or dead. I don’t know anything.”

  Cordelia was going to say no, but then she reconsidered, wiping away one of the tears that was streaming out of her eyes. She would take any excuse to see something different from what she had just witnessed. “You do that, Will. Try it out.”

  Will said the spell again; the ball of light reappeared. But this time there was nothing inside. Nothing but light.

  “I don’t understand,” said Will. “Does it mean my parents are dead?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Cordelia solemnly. “I think it means that you don’t have parents.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Kristoff never wrote any parents for you. They don’t exist.”

  Will suddenly got angry, despite how heartbroken and grieving the Walkers were in front of him. “That’s rubbish! I can picture ’em! I remember crystal clear!”

  “Are you sure?” Brendan asked.

  “Well, Pa had a . . . he was bald, wasn’t he? No, he had gray hair . . . or was it auburn? And Mum had . . . blue eyes . . . no, wait . . . ”

  Will tried to look tough, but he was crumbling inside. It was true. The place where his parents were supposed to be in his mind, where he’d seen them before, or thought he had—because who doesn’t have parents?—that place was blurry and slithering.

  “Well, who needs ’em anyway?” Will yelled. But then he saw the Walkers: They did. They needed their parents more than anything. And they were never getting them back.

  He sat down with them. They all stayed in this position for a long time. They stayed quiet as Tranquebar announced the first sight of Tinz, which turned out to be a golden dome on its biggest church. They stayed quiet as they watched the town grow—at a rate so slow that it almost felt like they were traveling backward—from a tiny speck into a busy port that filled their vision. They stayed quiet as they saw the wooden homes, taverns, marketplaces, and docks. The smoke rising from chimneys. The horses blocking lines of sight along narrow streets.

  As they made their final approach, the pirates furled the sails and discussed which adult establishments they would hit first. The Walkers and Will watched them drop anchor, pile into smaller boats, and row ashore, whooping and hollering. Then Cordelia finally said, “We should go. The fact that our parents are gone doesn’t change what they would want from us. They would want us to live. To succeed. To—”

  “To get revenge against the Wind Witch,” Brendan said in a cool, calm voice. His sisters had never heard him sound so determined.

  Eleanor couldn’t believe she had made it to land. Even after she got off the Moray and into the small rowboat that ferried them to a dock under Tranquebar’s supervision, and after she got off that dock and onto the beach, it still felt like the ground beneath her feet was moving with the push and pull of the waves. It was almost a different kind of seasickness. She lay down.

  “What are you doing?” Brendan asked.

  “Making a sand angel,” Eleanor said. “Remember? Dad used to show us how to do this on beach vacations.”

  Brendan smiled—and a minute later he was on the ground with Eleanor, making sand angels and acquiring sand boogers. Every time he laughed, he thought about how he was fighting the Wind Witch. Maybe she had killed his parents, but she hadn’t killed him. Not yet.

  Meanwhile, Tranquebar was hanging around. He had covered for Will when the captain and his mates were in obvious distress on the Moray and he stayed close now. “The trading partners will be here in two
hours, Captain,” he told Will. “They’ll want to meet you . . . if you’re feeling up to it.”

  “I am,” Will said flatly.

  “And what about you, Mate Cordelia? Do you want to go to town?” Tranquebar gestured to the thrumming town of Tinz. Greasy smoke came out of the buildings.

  “I’ll stay with Will,” Cordelia said, drawing close to him. She wanted to be close to anyone right now. Anyone who understood what she was going through.

  For ten minutes the Walkers and Will stayed on the picturesque beach, trapped in beautiful weather and dark thoughts. Then Brendan got restless.

  “I can’t sit around all day thinking about what we just learned,” he announced. “I’m going exploring in the town.”

  “Me too!” said Eleanor.

  “We shouldn’t split up,” said Cordelia. “That town could be dangerous.”

  “Oh, come on, Deal . . . when has that ever stopped us?” Eleanor said. Then she stopped and yelled, “Horse!”

  The Walkers all looked. In the distance, a horse with a man on its back traipsed past the beach—a beautiful palomino with sheer, slick muscles.

  Eleanor took off running. “Hey! Wait! Sir! Hold on! Can I see your horse?”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her!” Brendan yelled back to Cordelia.

  Will put his hand on Cordelia’s. “Let them go. We’re the oldest. We’ve got to stay here and take care of this trading-partner business so we can keep moving. If it’s revenge you want.”

  It is. And I’ll never be satisfied until I have it.

  Brendan caught up with Eleanor in town, next to a bakery, as she stared up at the horse. It was ridden by a tall man who looked down at Eleanor with concern.

  “Miss, are you all right?”

  “Oh yes,” said Eleanor. “Your horse . . . she’s beautiful! I always wanted a horse like that! Do you think I can ride her?”

  “Have you ever been on a horse, little one?”

  “Once,” said Eleanor. “At a carnival. No, wait . . . I think that was a pony. But it doesn’t matter; I’m not afraid. Not if I ride with you.”