It could be those things from the river. It could be the snowman. It could be anything. He should go back to bed and pretend like nothing ever happened. That’s what he gets for leaving the journal in the attic.
Not tonight.
He wants to know who’s out there. If Grandmother catches him in the kitchen, he’ll say he needed a snack. He’s diabetic, after all.
He squeezes the wooden orb. Courage seeps up his arm.
It takes all that courage to not pass the stairwell and flee for the room, but he makes the turn. One step at a time, he descends.
Standing at the sink, he can see the garage. The light is still on. Other than that, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe Grandmother left the light on by accident. Another ten minutes at the sink and still nothing.
It’s during those ten minutes that Oliver has another thought.
Never in his life has he done something like this. When his dad had parties, Oliver hid in his bed. When there was a bully after school, he stayed in the classroom. He played it safe. The chances of getting hurt are slim if you stay in bed.
Just ask Malcolm Toye.
But he made it to the North Pole. He met the elven.
Stay in bed and nothing happens. Ever.
The journals.
There are three of them out there. He could wait until tomorrow and find a way to get them. There’s always tomorrow. Oliver’s lived his whole life waiting for tomorrow.
He goes to the mudroom and slides on his boots, carefully closing the back door behind him. The night air seeps beneath his shirt. He folds his arms, eyeing the square of light splashing across the lawn. Oliver follows the maze of exposed grass, avoiding the snow. He stops short of the window.
Nothing inside moves.
He moves to the left, taking tiny steps, almost shuffling, until the edge of his boot is touching snow. From here, he can see almost half of the garage. No one’s in there.
The car is gone!
The door must’ve been Grandmother leaving the house. She must drive the car when no one is watching. Molly’s right; she’s a private person. Maybe she does her joyrides in the middle of the night.
Again, this would be a good time to beat a retreat back to bed.
Oliver races around the garage, past the large door to the entrance. He opens it quietly. It’s strange to see the car missing. The garage seems so big without it. And the concrete where the car usually sits is so clean and smooth.
He wipes his boots and ducks beneath the workbench. His breath is loud, and his heartbeat thuds in his ears. He digs past the coat and yanks the remaining three journals out, stuffing them inside his pants. Without breaking stride, he races out of the garage, leaving on the lights.
Quickly, he returns to his bedroom and slips the journals beneath the dresser. Adrenaline pumps through him. He should check his blood sugar, just in case. But for now, he lays in bed.
Something bothers him, something’s not right.
He assumes it was the risk he took. It was stupid, but it worked.
In the morning, looking out the kitchen window as he rinses his plate, he realizes what was nagging him before he fell asleep. It wasn’t the danger of being caught or the journals hidden beneath his dresser. It’s the snow around the garage, just outside the big garage door where the car would pull out.
There were no car tracks.
F L U R Y
fifteen
Molly dazzles at tea.
She tells a story about a dog named Peanut at the shelter where she volunteers on Saturdays that only poops when no one is looking. And when she cleans it up, Peanut barks at it.
She actually used the word “poop.” During tea. And Grandmother smiled.
Remarkable.
They go for a walk afterwards. Oliver stops about halfway to the main road and, sort of whispering, tells her about the car. The next morning, it was in the garage like it had never moved. Molly starts asking questions, and he gives her the quiet sign.
“Let’s go somewhere safe.”
He leads her through the trees until they reach the field. The windmill churns behind them. Snow is drifted in the shadows, but the field is exposed and sloppy. April has arrived, but winter refuses to leave.
“I brought something.” Molly’s got a magnetic compass. “I saw it at the store, thought we might test the hunters’ theory.”
Oliver knows exactly how that test will go.
He warns her about the sinkholes. They hike through the trees, every once in a while checking the compass. North is never the same direction. Sometimes the needle settles in one spot and, before she puts it away, moves to another.
Molly stops at a pair of maple trees leaning against each other. The bark is misshapen and molded into a grafting kiss where the trunks touch.
“Test one more theory.” She unties two friendship bracelets from her wrist, putting the red one around the smaller tree. Oliver attaches the blue one to the other.
She stands back. “The kissing trees.”
It has been over a month since Oliver has been this far.
Snowmelt has transformed the stream into a river. The icy blue water crashes off the rocky shores, carrying debris in the white-tipped waves. The river speaks through the earth. They can hear it through their feet.
“Be careful.” Oliver stops several feet short.
They walk parallel to the river until the bend appears up ahead. This part of the forest still looks like Nature’s battle zone, with branches spearing the ground or hanging from above. Oliver points at the stack of stones across the water.
“The hobbit house.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.” He can feel the water’s draft from where they’re standing. It was dangerous the last time he crossed. This time it would be fatal.
Molly slips her fingers between his. “We don’t have to go.”
“I know.”
But she wants to go. And she’s not afraid, he can tell. She’s not shivering, not like he is.
One step at a time.
But this isn’t the staircase, these aren’t just scary sounds. Not this time. Fall and bad things happen.
Oliver leads her through the maze of branches and up the stone steps. He stands on solid ground, an icy breeze rushing past him. The tree bridge is solid and the footing tacky with moss. He’s afraid, though, that his knees will lock up halfway across and his legs, now numb from his knees up, will fold.
Molly squeezes his hand and walks onto the bridge first. She stops halfway and, with plenty of room on both sides, reaches for him. He takes a step.
Another.
Together, they cross.
“The door’s in there.”
They enter the dark hollow, hand in hand, with phones guiding them to the gnarly handle. The door opens as easily as it did the first time. Musty odor, like wet blankets, greets them. The room hasn’t changed. Firewood is stacked by the hearth, charred logs inside the fireplace.
“Someone lives here,” Molly says.
“I don’t think so. My cousins come out here for the service.” His phone signals new messages. “The only place on the property. Look.” He steps outside, only a few feet from the threshold. “A signal in there, but not here. Weird, right?”
“I can smell the weird. It’s got like a…” She makes a swirling motion with her hand. “A smell of alloy, like metal beneath the mold. Can you smell it?”
He thought she was kidding, but she’s taking deep breaths. He’s not smelling it.
“Who do you think built it?” she asks.
“I don’t know. It was just here.”
She strokes the rough stubble of the plaster walls. Her fingers follow a crack running behind the table. She puts her ear to the wall and knocks, then moves the table and taps the floor.
“What are you doing?”
“Maybe there’s a secret door somewhere. You know, push on the right spot and find a tunnel. The electronics are somewhere. You don’t get cell p
hone service through a tree. If you ask me, this place is too empty. Who do you think stacked the wood?”
“My cousins, I guess.”
“Someone lives here. They just don’t want anyone to know.”
“Maybe we should go.”
She pulls the mesh screen on the fireplace and throws a log inside. “I say we stoke a fire and stay a while.”
A lump is rising in his throat. Crossing the river was one thing; making themselves at home in the hobbit house had other consequences. If Henry finds out.
Molly finds matches in the table drawer. Before long, the room is warm enough to take off their coats. She pulls off her boots and socks, stretching in the chair. They listen to the wood pop. Oliver fishes through his backpack and pulls out the journal.
“You read my mind,” she says.
Oliver sets his alarm so they have plenty of time to return. He can’t make that mistake for a lot of reasons. He turns to the first page and begins to read aloud.
August 6, 1882
A decision has been reached.
The elven elders have debated my fate for far too long. Despite my protests, they urge for my patience. I suppose they saved my life, they have that right. But my patience has reached an inglorious end. It has been tested for an Arctic summer. So it is with great pleasure that I received the news that a decision has been made.
It has been several months since I woke in the ice. I’m afraid you would not recognize me. I am as round as a sow and hairy as a grizzly. This very morning, when Nog told me the news, I was on the ice with nothing more than a sweater. To avoid dwelling on the pace of life with the elven, I have dedicated myself to helping wherever I can. I discover something shocking every day. They know so much, my love, yet I feel I’ve learned little.
This morning, I was releasing solar dust. These are tiny particles, no larger than pollen, that hover hundreds of feet above the ice, absorbing the sun’s heat and transferring it back to the colony in the form of energy. Can you believe this? They don’t burn wood or fuel; they transfer it directly from the sun.
In fact, Nog let me use the magic glove. He still hates it when I call it that, and he shouldn’t let me use it, but he, more than anyone, knows how difficult this is for me. He said he trusts me, and that is a sign the news of the elders’ decision will be good. Or perhaps he was just trying to cheer me up.
I must say, the glove is more magical than scientific, I don’t care what Nog says. It is made to fit an elven hand—not a full-grown man’s hand—but when I slipped my fingers inside the small opening, it expanded in a way that swallowed my hand. The metal links squirmed across my palm, shifting and settling. There was a slight stinging, and then, just like that, I couldn’t feel it anymore, as if it became a second layer of skin.
Nog taught me how to visualize what I wanted, to reach into the bag and find it. Energy cannot be destroyed, he said. The bag simply reorganizes it. On my first attempt, I retrieved a canister to store a batch of dead solar dust. Next, he showed me how to retrieve an abominable sphere. These metallic orbs do more than just allow a snowman to build a body, they store the memories of past elven. He described it as a computer, something that stores data. Then he tried to describe a computer, and I’m afraid I still don’t understand. Nonetheless, the snowman orb can be dangerous. Elven can touch them without a glove, but humans he’s not so sure. He thinks that one might absorb the memories out of me. I wasn’t willing to test his theory, so I put on the glove.
Nog tossed one of the metallic spheres into the snow, and just as the body began forming around it, I opened my hand and the orb slapped into the palm like the glove was a super magnet. It was quite empowering.
“That would explain your grandmother’s mystery power,” Molly says. “Maybe your great-grandfather brought back solar dust. And if he didn’t, maybe there’s something else even more futuristic. You ever see a strange cloud hovering over the house?”
“No.”
He had searched for a basement door, and there is none—none that he can see. Would we even see solar dust?
“What about a bag?” Molly asks. “Ever see anything like that?”
Oliver shakes his head. “I’ve only seen her wearing the glove. She might’ve had a bag under her coat or in her pocket, but I don’t know.”
Molly throws another log on the fire.
“Let’s assume she’s wearing the same glove,” she says. “I understand why she’d keep it secret. I mean, you can’t let everyone have a magic glove, but why would she wear it outside?”
Oliver reminds her how she pointed at the snowman clearing the road. She was wearing the glove. Maybe she was controlling it.
“But why the other times?” Molly says. “It’s like she’s using it for something other than pulling sleds out of magic bags.”
Maybe it’s a weapon.
Malcolm Toye pulled the sphere out of the forming body. Maybe Grandmother could do the same thing if she saw a snowman, or one of those things at the river.
Oliver flips past more drawings. The last one is of a gloved hand beautifully rendered to highlight the metal gleam.
September 24, 1882
It has been a month.
It has taken me that long to record my thoughts. I’m afraid these words will never reach you.
I have not eaten. Food is tasteless. Even when I force it into my mouth, my stomach curdles it like spoiled milk. I have lost so much weight that I’ve had to wear heavy coats to keep warm. Even bundled up, the cold never really leaves.
To be honest, I have avoided this journal. To write the words will make their meaning real. I wake each morning hoping I dreamed the event, that my imagination is a magic bag that can rewrite history if I just visualize it. But each morning, I am still here.
You are still so far away.
I think Nog knew the decision. I should’ve known. The morning he led me to the elven elders, I sensed a change in the colony. We passed through the commons, where many elven come to eat. That morning, few were there.
Naively, I had assumed they were preparing for a celebration, that we would soon climb to the ice to welcome a new era where elven and humans walked the same sidewalks and lived as neighbors, that I would lead them out of the cold and introduce them like family.
My delusions were reinforced when I entered the great hall—a circular room with seats filled with elven. In the center was a raised dais, where the elders were seated along with Jessica and Nicholas Santa.
“Did you just say ‘Santa’?” Molly sits up. “As in St. Nick? As in Santa Claus?”
Oliver reads the paragraph again. “It says ‘Nicholas Santa.’”
“Why didn’t I see this coming? Did you see it?”
Oliver shakes his head. He hasn’t seen anything.
“Elven on the North Pole, flying reindeer, and now Santa Claus?”
“It…it doesn’t say Santa Claus.”
“Is there another Santa?” She has a point.
“You want to hear more?”
She closes her eyes with a fixed grin. “Absolutely.”
Nicholas delivered the message like he was cauterizing a wound. It was swift and clean. “We will not merge with the human race,” he said. “It has been decided that the world is best served if the elven continue to exist anonymously. Humanity is still in its infancy. Elven technology would only thwart human growth.”
The fat man said ‘we’ like he was one of them. He is still human, like me. He still stands so much taller than the elven, but he speaks as if he’s been one of them all his life. I, for one, don’t wish for such delusion. I am human, and their attempts to mollify my pain are patronizing.
He continued to explain that the decision was difficult, that he knows I am lonely, that I yearn for home, for my love, but it is best for me, for the elven and humanity that I stay at the North Pole. Perhaps, he said, the decision will change in the near future. Does he realize dangling that temptation before me is dripping lemons into the wound? A wound
that’s been open for so long that it will never heal.
I have waited too long, my love. And while the jolly spirit has returned to the elven colony, it is not contagious. Rather, it mocks my pain.
I would rather die in your arms than live long in the ice.
The fire pops, and the logs settle.
Silence between Oliver and Molly hangs for a minute. Then two.
“Oh, my God,” Molly says. “Your great-grandfather may be wacked-out of his gourd on crazy berries, but this story is breaking my heart.”
Oliver closes the journal. “It feels…real.”
“I know what you mean. The emotion is right there, on the pages. And those sketches are raw suffering.”
“And the science behind solar harvesting, he wouldn’t know about that in the late 1800s.”
“Assuming the journals are authentic. I mean, your grandmother could’ve made those up before you got here.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know. I’m just putting it out there.” She begins pacing, her bare feet quiet on the wood floor. “It’s just the whole Santa Claus thing is throwing me.”
“It didn’t say Santa Claus.”
“For some reason, the elven evolving during the Ice Age and the magic glove had me believing. But Santa Claus?”
“He said ‘Nicholas Santa.’”
“What’s the difference?”
She pinches her lower lip, walking back and forth, deciding whether to believe this or not. Her eyes have the intensity of a hungry owl. He can feel the doubts grinding in her head, this fantastic story colliding with reality. He’s been there, too. He survived. Or it altered me, and now I can’t tell the difference between real and fantasy.
The smell of weird is all over the property, but the mention of Santa somehow short-circuited everything.
Even the snowman.
“Do you still believe me?” Oliver asks.
“Yes, Oliver. I believe you.”
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