The Lost

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “Maybe I should be.” He jumps off the table beside me. I have to look at him again. His eyes are like the night sky, dark with light in them.

  He’s standing close to me. We aren’t touching, but we are only centimeters apart. I feel as though my skin is vibrating from being so close to him. “You have to find lost people,” I say. Every day he goes into the void to search for lost people. Once he was sure Claire and I were safe enough, he didn’t shirk his responsibility. I admire that about him. Misunderstood hero.

  “True.” He stares at me, too, as if he wants to drink me in, and I stare back, caught in his gaze. Then he cocks his head and grins. “You know, sometimes I don’t know whether to shake you or kiss you.”

  My eyes fix on his lips, and my lungs feel tight. “Me, neither.” There’s an awkward pause. Neither of us moves. My eyes slide toward the kitchen. “We should make sure they aren’t planning on poisoning us.”

  He nods, and we go into the kitchen, side by side but not touching.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sean has taken over the kitchen. Nearly all of our kitchen implements are spread out on the counter. He has all four stove burners on, and our collection of herbs and spices is spread out next to the sink. Claire is stacking the containers by height and color into a fortress of dried leaves, while Sean mixes a little of this and a little of that into our odd assortment of pots and pans, using a fondue pot as one saucepan and a double-boiler as another. I don’t think either Peter or I have ever used either. Our meals tend to be simple. Vegetables, fruits, snacks. Lots of leftover sandwiches and burgers that I slice to avoid bits with obvious bite marks. Easy, quick meals.

  As pots clatter against each other, Sean hums to himself. He stirs, splattering sauces onto the floor, and then tosses the utensils into the sink. He pours his mixtures into the pans. Drops land on the burners and sizzle.

  I lean against the kitchen doorway and watch. It’s like a dance. He lunges here, he extends his arms, he twirls and spins. For a tall, broad man, he’s surprisingly graceful.

  “I feel as though I should applaud,” Peter murmurs in my ear. He’s standing close behind me, still mostly in the hallway. I notice he’s positioned himself so he could bolt if he wants, and it makes me want to protect him. He’s afraid of people, I think. He spends his life saving them, yet faced with them... I feel as though I have peeked underneath his skin. I want to step back against him and let him fold his arms around me, if he wants to...but I don’t move. Not in front of Victoria and Sean.

  I wonder if Claire and I are the only ones he’s close to. He’s never mentioned others. The few times I’ve tried to ask about his past, he’s steered the conversation away, and I haven’t pushed. I can understand not wanting to talk about the past. It hurts too much.

  “Best part about it is the surprise,” Victoria says. She’s leaning against the wall near the refrigerator. She was so quiet that I hadn’t noticed her in contrast to the whirling swirl that is her fiancé. “I don’t think even he knows what he’s making.”

  “There’s a plan!” he calls out. “There’s always a plan!”

  “But do you stick to it?”

  “All plans change in the heat of battle. Or the heat of the kitchen.” He dances to the sink and adds more water into a sizzling skillet. He swirls it around as he sashays back to the stove. He winks at Victoria, and it occurs to me that the dance is mostly for her benefit. She’s smiling broadly, fondly, proprietarily at him. For an instant, I imagine what it would feel like to look at Peter like that.

  “Were you a cook before you came here?” I ask.

  For an instant, he pauses, the rhythm of the dance broken. Victoria glares at me and says, “It’s not considered good manners to ask about life before Lost.”

  “Oh.” I think of her revelation upstairs.

  “Most people know that.”

  “Well, if most people weren’t trying to kill me, maybe I’d have had a chance to learn the local culture. As it is...consider me rude, but I’m not going to pretend my life before here didn’t exist. I have every intention of returning to it as soon as possible.” I feel Peter tense beside me, and I realize it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned returning home. I wonder if I’ve hurt him. Glancing at him, I can’t read his expression. He’s watching Sean cook.

  “Bully for you,” Victoria says. “Not all of us had such happy times before. When I...when we return, we’ll start fresh.” She glares at me as if daring me to ask more about what she said upstairs. I wish I dared ask, but she holds herself so straight and still and has such a controlled face that I’m afraid to crack that facade. Besides, I don’t want to antagonize these people. The whole point of this meal is to make peace.

  I take a deep breath. “Sorry. It’s just... Sorry.” I say it as much to Peter as to Victoria. He must know that I still want to return to my mother. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about him.

  Victoria studies me for a minute. I squirm under her stare. It feels like the evaluating stare of my European History teacher, who we used to say could dissolve flesh with her eyes. “You talk, if you’re so keen on sharing. What’s your story?”

  Faced with the same question I wanted to ask them, I don’t want to answer it, either. Not to these...friends, allies, whatever they are. “Not much of a story. Had a job. Lived in an apartment in L.A. Mom moved in with me a year or two ago when her bills got too high.”

  Victoria taps her lips with her finger. Her nails are perfectly manicured a deep red. “That doesn’t sound like enough to lead you here. Or anything so salacious that it would make the Missing Man run from you.”

  “I don’t know why he ran.” I manage to keep my voice even, though I want to shout or climb on the counter or throw the pots and pans that Sean is casually flinging food into. I feel Peter’s hand on my shoulder. It calms me. “I’d never met him before. I’d never even heard of him.”

  As if Sean senses the awkwardness—of course he does, how could he miss it? —he interrupts in a cheerful voice, “Lucky you have a working fridge. Not every house is hooked up.”

  “It was like that when we found it.” I don’t mention how Peter knew it was here, how he guided us here, or how he keeps me safe every day. He could have left at any time, but he didn’t.

  The air feels as thick with tension as it is with smells, and my stomach growls, which surprises me, considering it’s also clenched. I have an urge to put things back in the cabinets, to clean the pots, to tell Sean to be more careful. But I don’t. I listen to the sizzles and the clanks and the clinks and the clatter and try not to feel as though my bones are cracking inside me from holding myself so still.

  “Most people guessed you’re not dead,” Victoria says conversationally.

  “You swore not to kill her,” Peter says. His hand tightens on my shoulder. “And that means you can’t do anything that will get her killed. You can’t tell anyone she’s here or that you saw her or where this house is or that she’s alive.”

  “I didn’t set the mob on her,” Victoria says.

  Peter scowls at her. “You didn’t stop them.”

  “That’s part of the definition of mob. Unstoppable.”

  “Claire stopped them,” I say, and then I clamp my mouth shut. Peace, I remind myself.

  “Claire’s adorable. I lack that quality.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Victoria was stunning, gorgeous even, but she wasn’t cute.

  “You didn’t try,” Peter says. I cover his hand with mine, cautioning him. We don’t want to fight with these people.

  Victoria scowls at us. “The Missing Man is gone, the void is encroaching, and the only difference in town is her arrival—”

  “I helped you!” I point to her hand, the one with the star sapphire ring. “I’m not the enemy here. The void is the enemy!” Peter’s hand is still on my s
houlder, soft, warm, bolstering me. On the counter, Claire has quit stacking spices and is waiting, tense. She’s in a crouch. Her hand is on her pocket near her knife.

  Sean pauses in his cooking. “It was oddly peaceful in the void. I felt...strangely safe.”

  With that change of topic, the moment diffuses. Victoria leans back against the wall. Claire lowers her hand. Peter says in a conversational tone, “It lulls you. It draws out your melancholy. It makes you think about what pains you. It wants you to give up trying.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “It’s hungry. Always hungry. It has an insatiable need to grow. It wants to destroy all the lost places and subsume the souls within.” He says it so matter-of-factly, as if this soul-destroying substance weren’t just half a mile outside my house, as if it hadn’t been capable of delivering the ocean I was dreaming about to nearly my doorstep.

  “It seems to be succeeding,” Victoria says.

  “It’s simply following its nature. Misery likes company. You can’t blame it. Or Lauren,” Peter says. “But you can blame the Missing Man. After all, he’s done this before.” He darts forward and takes a stack of plates. “Claire, help me set the table.” He whisks them into the dining room.

  “You can’t make a statement like that and leave the room,” Victoria says.

  “Can and did.” Peter’s voice floats singsong into the dining room.

  Victoria marches after him. I’m torn between wanting to tell Victoria to back the hell off and wanting to know what Peter meant. I follow her.

  “Vic, go easy,” Sean calls after her. “He did find me.”

  “And he brought a train!” Claire says, chasing us into the dining room. “I love my train! I’m going to be an engineer. A princess engineer who rules the tracks!”

  Skidding the plates across the table, Peter sends each plate into position. Claire fetches napkins, all mismatched linen napkins that I found and scooped up once so we could be civilized while we ate. She sets with mismatched (but silver) utensils. He looks like an ordinary older brother performing tricks to entertain his babysitter, unconcerned with the irate dinner guests. I am certain he’s doing it to infuriate Victoria, and I stifle a smile.

  Victoria scowls at Peter. She has an impressive scowl. On the opposite side of the table, Peter looks as if he wants to hop out of the window and run into the desert, and I don’t blame him. I suddenly feel as protective as I did when I defended Claire from the dogs, except there’s no trash can lid to fling at Victoria. “Leave him alone.”

  Victoria crosses her arms. “He said it’s happened before. What happened? The Missing Man leaving? The void encroaching?”

  I don’t expect Peter to answer, but he does. “Both.”

  “What did you do to stop it?”

  “Nothing. Couldn’t.”

  I feel cold and suddenly want to change the topic. The look in Peter’s eyes...he looks as if he’s seen too much, knows too much, as if the weight of his memories has aged him. But Victoria doesn’t care or doesn’t see. She taps her foot, overtly impatient. “What happened? Spill, Finder.”

  He shrugs. “It destroyed the town.”

  “Not comforting,” Victoria says. “What are we supposed to do?”

  “Hope. Just hope.” There’s a deadness to his voice. Without thinking about it, I cross to him and put my arms around him. I feel the tension in his muscles, as if his limbs were ropes of rock. I step away, and he tries to smile at me—I see him try and think it is the sweetest smile I have ever seen. For an instant, it feels as if he and I are the only ones in the room.

  Sean appears in the doorway. “Lunch is served!” He carries bowl after mismatched bowl into the dining room: rice mixed with a variety of spices, a soup that I can’t recognize, a meatloaf served with thick toast. It all smells amazing. We all sit down. I spread a napkin on my lap. It’s white with daisies on it. The edges have burn marks on it, but otherwise it’s fine.

  We eat in silence.

  Victoria puts down her spoon and opens her mouth to speak.

  “Eat, drink, be merry.” Peter starts to sing what sounds like a drinking song at the top of his lungs. He leaps to his feet and holds out his hand toward Claire. She leaps up, too, and the two of them cavort around the table. Claire’s laughing. Peter’s smiling, albeit stiffly. If it were just us, I would have danced, too. Instead, I watch them, while my brain helpfully supplies the rest of the saying: For tomorrow we die.

  “You hate the Missing Man because this happened before,” I say suddenly. I’m sure of it as soon as the words are out of my mouth. I know that he and the Missing Man have a history. And the look in his eyes when he talked about it... This was what caused the antagonism between them.

  Peter spins Claire in a circle. “Lost needs both its Finder and its Missing Man. Without the Missing Man sending people home, hope dies, despair wins, and the void grows...‘With silver bells and cockleshells / And pretty maids all in a row.’”

  I stare at him for a moment. Hope dies, despair wins. “If we clap, then Tinker Bell lives?”

  “Exactly. More or less.” He grins at me, just at me, and I grin back, even though we’re talking about the destruction of this town. I revel in the way he smiles so directly at me, as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist and I’m the only one he sees. The sadness has receded from his eyes like the ocean tide.

  Victoria snorts. “That’s ridiculous. It can’t be that...childish.”

  “Can. Is.” He spins Claire again. She giggles. “‘Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul,’ that can save us.”

  “Fine. So we all need to think happy thoughts and click our heels three times and whatever bullshit.” Victoria taps the table with her fork. She looks as if she’s thinking not-so-happy thoughts. “Is there something else we can hope for, since Lauren scared away everyone’s hope?”

  Peter halts Claire midspin. Both he and Claire glare at Victoria. I’m grateful for that solidarity. At least they don’t blame me. I feel a surge of fondness for both of them and want to throw my arms around them.

  Sean covers Victoria’s hand with his. “Or we all thought she did,” he amends.

  I smile brightly at Victoria and Sean. “Good thing we’re friends now and don’t think that anymore.”

  Victoria smiles back, just as falsely, and then switches her attention immediately back to Peter. “Is there another way to send people on?”

  My smile dies. She’s asked it, the question that I’ve danced around for weeks, the one I’m afraid to ask directly for fear there is no answer, the question that matters most. Peter plops down in his chair and scoops another spoonful of soup into his mouth. As we stare at him, waiting, he continues to eat. He blots his mouth with the napkin.

  I think of my mother, waiting for me, waiting for this answer.

  Victoria glares. “Answer me, Finder.”

  Peter stands up in a swirl of coat, shadowed and forbidding. All trace of the man who’d danced with a little girl is gone. I think he’s going to shout. Or leave. Or flip the table. He doesn’t. He sits down again and takes another bite of meatloaf.

  Softly, Sean says, “You don’t want to answer because you don’t want us to stop hoping. If we give up hope, we’re dead, right? And the void wins.”

  Peter taps his nose. “Bingo.”

  “But not answering is an answer!” Victoria leaps to her feet and slams down her spoon. “It’s ‘no.’ It’s hopeless. If we can’t leave without the Missing Man, people will give up, the void will come, and everything will be destroyed.”

  Standing, Sean clasps her hands to his chest. “It won’t. It can’t. Not now. Because I’m not giving you up.” His voice throbs with sincerity, and Victoria returns his intensity with her own melting regard. My eyes slide to Peter, but he isn’t looking at me.

  “Aw
w.” Peter props his chin on his hands and flutters his eyelashes. “Young love. Or middle-aged love. So Hallmark-card sweet.”

  Victoria pivots and opens her mouth as if to yell at Peter.

  I step in front of him. “Enough.”

  Victoria switches her anger to me, but Sean stops her with a touch. “Do you have an idea?” he asks me.

  Taking a deep breath, I say, “Yes. Lie to them—the townspeople, I mean. Tell them it’s all okay. Tell them he’s coming back. Claim that you know why he left and it’s not a big deal and it will just take time and people need to be patient.”

  Claire points at me. “See. You’re clever.” She smiles proprietarily at Peter, as if she discovered me, which in a way she did.

  Victoria frowns. “I can’t lie about something that important.”

  “Even to save lives?” I ask. “Even to save him?” I point at Sean.

  Victoria opens her mouth and shuts it.

  I lean forward eagerly, enamored with my shiny new idea. “They’ll listen to you! To both of you! We need a lie. A plausible lie.”

  Sean is nodding. He’s with me, I can tell.

  “Tell them the Missing Man had to...I don’t know...”

  “Visit someone,” Peter volunteers. “Someone he suddenly remembered, thanks to Little Red here. He’s helping that person and it’s delayed his return. But he has every intention of coming back when he’s done.”

  “Yes!” I pound the table. “He’s taking some personal time. How often does he have a vacation? He’s using the vacation time that he’s accumulated over...”

  “Centuries,” Peter puts in.

  I pause and look at Peter. “How old are you?” It’s not a question I’ve ever asked him before. Some moments he seems eternally young, as if he’s tapped directly into an innocence more childlike than even Claire, and other times he seems as timeless as an ancient wizard, or a shaman who has seen things beyond this world.