by Vered Ehsani
“Let me out,” the dwarf yelled, banging on the door with his entire body. “You can’t lock me up. You need me…”
“To shut up,” I finished for him.
“It’s that dwarf?” Gideon asked, and despite his crumpled, de-energized form, a dark glitter formed in his eyes.
“Yes, but we have other things to worry about,” Lilly interrupted me.
I turned to look out the front window panes. We were perilously close to tall cliff walls on one side and a jagged extrusion of rock on the other. Below us, surf pummeled the shore.
“Go up,” the dwarf bellowed as Lilly veered us away from the cliff, aiming for the gap between the cliff and the tower of rock.
At that order, the engine coughed, spluttered, made a valiant effort to resume its task, and died a noble death. In the ear-tingling silence that ensued, the crash of waves flowed in.
“We’ll be fine,” I assured everyone. “We’ll just float down…”
The zeppelin careened against the rock tower. The entire gondola jerked upward. As the floor became a wall, I fell down the length of the room, landing on Lilly who was draped over the wheel.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Gideon quipped, just as a vicious tearing sound, followed by a loud explosion, announced the demise of the balloon.
“Let. Me. Out,” the dwarf screamed.
“Isn’t hydrogen explosive?” Gideon asked.
“Fortunately for the situation, the engine’s out of fuel,” I pointed out as I pushed myself off of Lilly and landed on a window.
“Auxiliary. Tanks,” Nameless shrieked.
“Oh, is that what the blinking button meant,” Lilly said as she swiveled about to sit on the wheel. “It was labeled Auxiliary. I just assumed…”
“Oh bother,” I said and pulled myself off the window and onto the wheel just as something on the other end of the zeppelin exploded.
The force of it shattered the rock holding us in place and we plunged downward. Gideon was the only one not screaming, although he might have done so but I couldn’t hear him over Lilly yelling in my ear.
The windows up front shattered against rock, and the floor went from a vertical position back to horizontal with a back-jarring force that reverberated through every tooth and bone in my body. The balloon collapsed over the gondola and water gushed through broken windows.
With a grunt, I eased myself upright and peered about. “The good news is that the fire will soon be extinguished,” I announced as I hopped off the wheel. “Of course, the bad news is we might drown.”
“We can’t be in deep water, surely,” Lilly said as the water covered the floor and began to rise with such rapidity as to be miraculous.
Usually I associate miracles with events that save people, not drown them. But it was still awe-inspiring.
“Either way, I believe our zeppelin adventure is over,” I said, splashing toward the back of the room.
“You’re not going to let that little fiend out, are you, my dear?” Gideon asked in his whispery voice.
“I can’t very well let him drown,” I said and pulled up the latch.
“Where’s the jar?” Nameless demanded as he pushed past me. “You imbecile of a woman, you crashed my ship.”
“You imbecile of a dwarf, you kidnapped my wife,” Gideon hissed.
The dwarf scowled at us all and reached under the surface of the dark water, feeling around.
“You can’t possibly find it now,” I told him as I went back to the front windows. The water had ceased its meteoric rise, and I could see we were close enough to shore that we couldn’t have sunk too deeply.
I clambered up onto the back of the wheel and began to kick out the shards of glass still left. Waves splashed against me, followed by a warm breeze.
“Why can’t we use a door?” Lilly asked as I gestured to her.
“The force of the water outside won’t allow us to open a door,” I said. “Come on, we’re not far from the shore.”
Leaving Nameless to his fruitless search, Lilly and I exited the zeppelin and battled waves and the weight of our wet clothes to clamber onto a sandy beach and collapse onto the soft, warm sand. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation.
The gently gritty feel of sand between my fingers reassured me that I was alive, as improbable as it seemed. Gideon floated nearby, less crumpled with each passing moment in the sun.
“We made it,” Lilly breathed out.
“It would seem so,” I said. “A miracle did indeed transpire.”
A shadow fell across my face.
“Lilly, you’re blocking the sun,” I complained and opened one eye.
Brutus stood over me.
Chapter 30
“Oh bother,” I muttered. “What do you want?”
Brutus hesitated.
“Maybe he doesn’t want to hang around with that tyrant of a dwarf,” Lilly said.
“Maybe we don’t care,” Gideon hissed.
“Maybe you can go fetch Mr. Timmons and Nelly,” I said.
“Since when did I become the messenger?” Gideon asked, still eyeing Brutus as if plotting how to exact revenge.
“Since you died and began haunting me,” I replied. “Now off you go before that beast from the jar finds us.”
Gideon’s shoulders shuddered. “That was one nasty piece of work. If we’re lucky, it drowned.”
“And if we’re not lucky, it’ll be back,” I said. “Just like you will, once you alert Mr. Timmons.”
Gideon gave me a look that informed me clearly what he thought of my ordering him about and faded away.
“Well, Brutus,” Lilly said as she brushed sand off her dress. “Would you like to join us or go swim after your little friend?”
Brutus peered down at her, frowning in concentration. With a resigned grunt, he turned to face the ocean and marched in, the waves no deterrent to his bulky frame.
“Poor thing,” Lilly cooed.
“You’re beginning to sound like Cilla,” I said.
“Is that a bad turn of character?” she said, cocking her head.
“Not at all. It’s just that excess sympathy isn’t your style,” I said. “It would be like me wearing a frilly lace dress. It wouldn’t suit me at all.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” she admitted. “Should we leave before any of those misfits out there,” and she waved to the half-sunk zeppelin, “make it to shore?”
I glanced around. The coastline in both directions was soft, glittering sand. Behind us were the cliffs topped with a forest of coconut trees. “I’m not sure where we’d go and we’re all far too exhausted for any more shenanigans, at least for today.”
With that, we lay back on the sand, waiting for a rescue.
Chapter 31
The rescue was quick to arrive and rather uneventful as far as rescues go.
Nelly and Mr. Timmons landed on the beach with a great sandy thump; the horse proceeded to nibble at a strand of seaweed that had made its way ashore.
After clutching me to him in a most inappropriate manner, Mr. Timmons handed me my walking stick. “Jonas found it in the Bazaar,” he explained as I hugged my weapon to me. “We’ve all been driven to distraction trying to find the two of you ever since.”
A few moments later, we were joined by a giant bat who forgot to change back into a man, so agitated was Mr. Elkhart. He scooped Lilly up in his wings, screeching and growling.
It was fortunate that Brutus hadn’t surfaced with Nameless, for both Gideon and Mr. Timmons were of the same mind: to thrash the two kidnappers into bits of ocean suds. While I wasn’t above using my walking stick to knock some sense into a wayward beast, I’d had quite enough for one day and wished nothing but to bathe, change my clothes and climb into a soft bed.
“A sentiment I heartily concur with,” Lilly added, sniffing delicately at her worn and grimy sleeve as she clung to the giant bat’s thick neck.
“If we’re really lucky, that beast from the jar will find them first,” I s
aid as I climbed up onto Nelly, behind Mr. Timmons.
Gideon was the only man who understood what I meant, but we weren’t questioned any further, and my wish for a bath and clean clothes was granted, along with a hearty supper.
“Ah, my dear bed,” I murmured that night as I sunk into it, curling up under the blanket. When I lay my head down though, I found the pillow lacking in its usual comfort.
“What’s this?” I grumbled as I felt under the pillow and retrieved a leather sachet.
Prof. Runal’s bag.
“Well, that’s no good as a pillow,” I said, turning it over in my hands. I could feel the weight of the journal.
Down the corridor, Prof. Runal snuffled about in the living room, everyone else having retired for the night. He’d been oddly restrained when I’d returned with Mr. Timmons that afternoon, and hadn’t inquired deeply into my adventure or the whereabouts of the dwarf. He’d only nodded and mumbled something when I’d alluded to Nameless in passing. Perhaps his reticence was due to the presence of Mrs. Steward; she believed I’d been staying with Lilly, not being kidnapped by a delusional dwarf.
I opened up the sachet. “I really shouldn’t,” I murmured even as I slid out a voluminous diary.
I glanced toward my closed door, as if the werewolf would spontaneously decide to burst into my room for no explicable reason.
The door stayed firmly shut.
I flipped through the leather-bound book. From a quick perusal of the first few pages and the last written page, I deduced that Prof. Runal wasn’t a dedicated diarist, but had written sporadically. The thick volume spanned more than two decades, and there were still some blank pages at the end.
Idly, I flipped the pages back and forth, not really focusing on them but wondering what events had inspired the professor to write, for there seemed to be no pattern to the entries. A year could pass by between two consecutive entries, and then only a sentence or two jotted down in his scrawling penmanship.
Something stopped my thumb from letting more pages slip by. I looked to find the corner of a folded piece of paper jutting out slightly. The quality of the paper was different from the journal’s; it was the thin, cheap stationary of a telegraph.
I opened the professor’s journal to the page onto which the telegram was adhered, and stared at the date.
I inhaled sharply.
I leaned across to my side table and pulled my own diary to my lap. The letter my mother had sent to Mr. Elkhart’s father was tucked inside. I retrieved it and studied the beginning. Something had seemed so important yet allusive about the date when I’d first read it.
How could I’ve forgotten? I wondered.
It was the same day Drew had been snatched from our lives.
I considered the professor’s journal entry. It had been written a month or so later:
Telegraph to Penelope was intercepted. They have forced our hand and now I fear we must take action. What a great pity, but the Fourth Mandate must be upheld.
Below these obscure lines was the telegraph. With a rising sense of foreboding, I unfolded it and read.
DEAREST P. LETTER RECEIVED. COME YOU CHILDREN AT ONCE JAVA, C/O INDO HOTEL. AM WAITING. JE.
My hands trembling, I laid my mother’s letter next to the telegraphed response. “JE,” I whispered.
James Elkhart, my mother’s dear friend and the father of Tiberius Elkhart the Popobawa.
Mr. Elkhart Senior had responded after all.
Too late, he’d extended his assistance, an offer she never received.
Telegraph to Penelope was intercepted.
The painful lump that had wedged itself into my throat softened as a bitter rage oozed into my limbs.
They’d intercepted Mr. Elkhart’s encouraging response to Mrs. Anderson, and she’d lost not only her son but also her only hope at escaping her gilded prison.
…now we must take action.
“What action?” I whispered.
I was out of bed and wrapping my worn housecoat about me before I could muddle through the emotions that wracked my shivering frame. I tore the telegraph out of the journal, for it had been sent to my mother, which made it by extension mine.
Breathing hard, I stuffed the journal back into the leather bag and paced the room, my lungs unable to draw sufficient air in for the blood that rushed through my system.
“Can’t sleep?” a voice whispered behind me.
I spun about and waved the telegraph at Gideon. “They wouldn’t let her go,” I hissed out between clenched teeth. “She tried and…” Tears burned paths into my cheeks but I was too preoccupied with the onslaught of emotions to banish them.
Gideon studied me, his beautiful face shining in the dim light of my lamp. “Do you care to explain?”
“No,” I growled. I placed the strap of the sachet over my left wrist, tucked the telegraph in between my metal fingers and grabbed up my walking stick. “What I care to do is to wallop the truth out of a certain dog.”
Gideon grinned. “What a delightful distraction,” he said as he followed me.
I stormed into the living room and thumped shut the door separating the main room from the bedroom area. Prof. Runal leaped off the sofa, a book in hand, his eyes blinking in astonishment, as I stalked toward him.
“Gideon,” he said, nodding to the ghost. “Beatrice, my dear.”
“Don’t,” I said, the word falling from my mouth in a venomous tone. I held up his bag. “Your journal.”
I let the bag slide off my hand; it hit the floor with a heaviness beyond its natural weight, the sound filling up the air between us.
“James Elkhart’s telegraph,” I snarled as I held up the thin sheet, each typed word a condemnation against the professor, the Society, and a betrayal of everything I’d held dear.
The wolf energy formed by my side, its eyes glowing with the heat of my rage. It was all I could do to resist the temptation to command the beast to attack.
Prof. Runal sat down on the sofa, his entire being shrinking from me. Or was he shrinking away from the truth of the past that I held before him?
On the off chance that wasn’t convincing enough, I shook the bronze-plated steel fist at the top of my stick toward his face. “Speak,” I commanded.
He held up his hands, as if such a sign of surrender could ever placate me. “Beatrice, I am sorry but what’s done is done. I had no choice in the matter…”
“What. Did. You. Do?” I whispered in a voice I didn’t recognize as my own.
Prof. Runal’s warm, puppy eyes pleaded for understanding; I gave him none.
With a sigh, he said, “The Council enacted the Fourth Mandate.”
“Which means what?” I said, my voice still soft and low. The wolf lowered its head, its hackles rising. Gideon floated beside me, a silent, reassuring presence.
Sighing again, he closed his eyes and said, “Do you recall the Mandates?”
Gideon snorted beside me. Even he had memorized them.
“Of course,” I said, wondering if the werewolf was trying to distract me. I hefted my stick, tempted to thump it against someone’s big, wolfish head.
Whenever I thought of the Mandates, I thought back to the time when, as a child, I’d entered Prof. Runal’s office for the first time. My father thought he’d brought me to a doctor who could cure me of my unnatural visions and vibrant imagination.
Little had he known that he’d condemned us all.
I could still see my hand tracing the S-shaped dragon insignia at the bottom of a framed parchment, upon which the first three Mandates were written in beautiful calligraphy.
Nothing in them suggested a need to intercept private correspondence between two friends, or to kidnap a child.
Prof. Runal continued to speak. “The Fourth Mandate is enacted whenever a breach in one of the previous three occurs.” He cleared his throat and said as if quoting a sacred passage: “Failure to comply with the previous Mandates will result in pain of death or similar punishment.”
/> A coldness entered me. It reminded me of the time Mrs. Cricket had possessed me, except this cold started from deep within my core and spread outward.
“You see, my dear, your mother and Mr. Elkhart had already and numerously disobeyed the commands of the Council, despite knowing the consequences.” He peered up at me. “I tried to protect them, I truly did try, but there was only so much I could do, given my own tenuous status on the Council, being a werewolf and all.”
His mouth relaxed into a smile but it was a small, sad expression, a diminutive reflection of his usual larger-than-life enthusiasm. “And then there was you, dear Beatrice.”
“What about me?” I breathed out, deliberating if I should smack him with my stick, my metal hand or my wolf energy.
“We couldn’t lose you, you see,” Prof. Runal explained. “You were too important, your powers too precious to be squandered or put at risk by an emotional mother or an ambitious husband.”
“What about me?” Gideon demanded.
Prof. Runal started, as if he’d forgotten entirely that there was the ghost of a husband — apparently an ambitious one — floating about the room.
“Well, I mean…” he stuttered.
“Prof. Runal,” I said, my words slow and measured. “What did you do?”
“It wasn’t me, exactly,” he said, his large shoulders slumped.
“It was the dwarf,” I guessed.
He again looked up startled. “Yes. Yes, it was. Did he tell you…”
“You had him kill my parents,” I continued to guess, hoping my theories were ludicrous, but the professor’s crestfallen face proved me correct. “Mr. Elkhart had already removed himself from your reach, and you prevented my mother from doing the same. My father was inconveniently there when it happened.”
Prof. Runal nodded his great, shaggy head, unable to look me in the eyes. “Yes, my dear, that’s what we did. But it was all for a higher good, a good cause, I swear.”
“And me?” Gideon pressed.
I glanced down at my wolf.
“No, Beatrice, my dear Beatrice,” Prof. Runal whispered as much as an overgrown werewolf can. “It wasn’t you.”