by Kaleb Nation
Bran obliged, and she stepped to the door, placing her fingers around the lock, as if to feel its inner workings. Bran listened closely for anyone who might be coming.
“Onpe likoca,” Astara whispered. She obviously had the spell down, because the lock clicked on command.
“See, you can do it,” Bran said encouragingly. “As long as the lock is old and feeble and easy, of course.”
“Don’t even start,” Astara hissed at him, and she took the handle and pushed the door open.
The room was dark save for the long lines of sunlight poking through broken slats in the wooden blinds. There was furniture all about, couches and chairs and tables, all made of wood and expensive upholstery, the seats of many covered with dirty white sheets. Littered across the floor were various scraps and notes, and, stepping inside, Bran’s foot brushed against a piece of paper, the sound of which made them both jump.
“Sorry,” he said in a whisper. The floor was dusty, the walls decorated with drab paintings that seemed like the artificial pieces of art found in dentist offices—and banks. On some of the tables sat sad looking vases, each holding a single, nearly dead flower drooping over the side. If the room had been a person, it was now a corpse.
“What is this place?” Astara whispered, her eyes sweeping the mess. Bran slowly pushed the door closed behind them, so that only a crack was left for them to hear if anyone was coming. He surveyed it all.
“I have absolutely no clue,” he finally said. “It’s all strange. More like a storage room than an apartment.”
“Maybe your mother left something here, years ago?” Astara said. Bran wasn’t sure. He still hadn’t seen any evidence that anyone might be living there, so he started to step farther from the door. He came to one of the couches that didn’t have a sheet over it, and he saw that there was something sitting on the cushion. It was a copy of the Daily Duncelander, opened to a certain page. “Astara,” Bran said lowly. “Come look at this.”
He gently picked the newspaper up so she could see.
“A newspaper?” she said.
“Look at the date.”
“This week,” she whispered. “Someone has been here recently.”
Bran nodded, letting his eyes dart around the room, into the corners he had not checked before. He noticed something then: a long table on which were scattered papers and pens and discs. There was a television screen as well, next to a bed with tattered sheets, but Bran’s attention had been caught by something else—
He dropped the newspaper into Astara’s hands and started to it.
“There’s no way…” Bran said in a low voice, hardly believing it.
The pile of papers was a mixture of colors and shapes, some torn and others bound by staples. There were charts and maps, ink markings and notes spread across them all, pressed down in places by strange mechanical devices and tiny surveillance camera lenses used as paperweights. There were many photographs in the pile as well, but the one that caught Bran’s attention was sitting on the top.
The face in the picture was his own.
Chapter 8
The Music Box
In the photograph, Bran could have been no older than thirteen. He was outside their house on Bolton Road, holding a trash bag tightly in one hand and obviously in the process of taking out the garbage. He was in motion, but the photographer had captured his face with extreme clarity, even in the dim evening light. Bran felt like he had looked out a window and seen himself staring back.
“Astara, look at this,” Bran hissed, waving her over. As he felt his hands begin to shake slightly, he knew that he was onto something much larger than he had thought.
“What is it?” she asked but then needed no answer. She looked from it to him.
“That’s me for sure,” he said, meeting her eyes. She looked as frightened as he was.
“Someone’s been watching you,” she said. She looked down at the pile of papers and slid them around, uncovering more documents. Her fingers stopped on a large, folded map, and she pulled it to the top. Bolton Road was circled.
“Whoever-it-is knows where I live,” Bran said.
They leaned over it. There was a thin ink marking that started at Bolton Road, pulling from it onto the main street. The line went on down the street, and Astara quickly turned the map, unfolding and laying it out on the table.
“Look, it starts there,” she said, and both of them pressed their fingers on it, sliding across, trying to see the faint line in the dimness of the room. Bran’s heart pounded furiously, following the line, moving down the table to the end until they had to unfold the map more. The line led straight into a side of Dunce Bran had been to before; seeing it again stirred a memory he didn’t wish to recall.
“The warehouse,” he hissed, stopping his finger.
Astara looked at him quickly.
“See, that’s where it’s leading,” Bran said. “The warehouse where Joris and his men took you.”
“You think it’s related?”Astara asked. Bran was about to speak, but the line didn’t stop there. It started up again, making a corner and weaving down the streets. He followed it down until it came to another familiar location: Third Street. It circled an address.
“He’s got the bank, too,” Bran said. The line made a cut across the street, through the buildings, and onto the next street over.
“The alley,” Astara observed, following the line as it came out the other side. The map didn’t have the alleys marked so the line seemed to cut through the street itself and then make a quick turn on the next road, heading off in the opposite direction.
“Over here, it’s going through the city,” Bran said, moving to the other side of Astara and anxiously following the line. It took a sharp turn and then another, getting onto the highway and off again, then making a sudden turn and reaching the edge of the map. It stopped there, where another address was circled: Border Gates of Dunce.
“That’s it!” Bran said, snapping his fingers. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”
He tapped the final marking. “Look, it goes straight from my house, to the warehouse, then to the bank, and out of the city. Just like what happened months ago, when they kidnapped you and took us to Farfield!”
“Do you think it’s them?” Astara asked.
Bran quickly shook his head. “They had us both here.” He pointed to the bank. “They wouldn’t have gone on tracking me.”
“Someone else?” Astara said.
The thought sent a chill down Bran’s back. It was very strange, but at that moment he recalled something from a conversation he had tried hard to let go—one he had with Baslyn, the man behind the Farfield Curse. Though the man was dead, Baslyn’s words seemed to resound in Bran’s head, words he could never forgot, and he remembered something Baslyn had told him the night he had died, about Shambles, who had tried to kidnap Bran: “He wasn’t the only one who knew where you were, either. Someone else did, and he knew the house.”
Is this that person? Bran wondered, throwing the idea about in his mind and trying to find an answer. It had to be. But who was it?
He found that in his concentration, his blank stare had come to rest on something sitting on the edge of the bed, mostly out of view because of the table. It was a wooden box, and it caught his attention immediately because it had metal all along the edges, just like the box he had found in the bank vault.
He slid toward it, and Astara didn’t notice because she was digging through the stack of documents. Gently picking it up, he saw to his disappointment that there was no marking of a moon at the top and no keyhole on the front. The design was similar, though, despite the fact that this one was more of a boxy cube, and as he turned to look for the lock he noticed a little metal arm sticking out of the side.
A music box, he realized.
He looked up, hesitant for the sound it would make, but
at that moment he almost didn’t care if someone did come—perhaps it would reveal who had been following him. So he gently took the handle and started to turn it.
The sound that came forth was sweet and like no other he had heard before, mellow and soothing. It brought Astara’s head up sharply, but she said nothing as he went on turning it. He had started off fast, hoping to get the box open as quickly as he could, but the song was slow, and his motions slowed to match. Each chime of the instrument seemed tiny but perfect, muffled inside the box. Bran felt disappointed when it came to the end, though the click of the lock jarred his senses back to reality. He gripped the lid and opened it.
The inside was hollow, the instrument lifting up with the lid and the handle. He could see where it connected to the locking mechanism, the wood thick and strong even on the inside. There was nothing inside save for one object: a small, withered flower with yellow petals, sitting at the bottom.
“Anything in there?” Astara asked. He shook his head sadly.
“Just a flower,” he said, about to close the box.
Suddenly, the flower gave a jerk. He looked back down into the box quickly, the motion catching his eye. It had gone still. He reached to close the lid again, watching the flower. Again, it gave another jerk and flipped over.
He opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. The flower leapt a third time, and part of it burst out like new stems, the leaves folding backward and the flower petal folding inward. The sides contorted into legs and the stems into arms, the flower blossom into a head, until in less than a second, it was no longer a flower but a tiny figure of a person.
The leaves had folded behind her back into tiny wings, though they were green and dull like the leaves they had been before. She was mossy almost, no more than three inches tall, colored in dry, leafy hues, like a living plant more than a living creature. Bran’s eyes were held captive by the transformation so much that even when she shook her pale head and blinked her eyes, he almost could not make himself speak.
“H-hello there,” Bran finally stammered. The creature’s eyes shifted up and met with his. She blinked, her eyes tiny and bright, crystalline green. Her wings were so thin they were slightly translucent at the edges, and they twitched as she took a startled step backward upon seeing his face.
Astara hurried over and looked down into the box. The creature looked from one face to the other, fear in her eyes as she fell against the wall of the box.
“A fairy?” Astara whispered.
“I think she’s scared of us,” Bran said, gently setting the box down on the table. He stared at her for a moment.
“Maybe she’s hurt?” Astara said.
Bran gently poked his finger into the box, trying to see if he could lift her out. In a flash of motion, the creature leapt forward, striking his finger with her teeth. It stung like a needle stab, and Bran jerked his hand back out.
“Obviously not hurt too badly,” Bran said, scowl. The fairy’s teeth had drawn a tiny droplet of blood so he held his finger in his fist. The fairy backed farther into the corner of the box, breathing hard with fear. She wiped the edges of her lips with her tiny hands, licking the bits of Bran’s blood that had stained her teeth.
“Look, we don’t want to hurt you,” Bran said. “I’m trying to get you out of the box. Can’t you see that?”
He gave the music box one half-turn, the first few notes of the song playing again. The fairy searched with her eyes for the noise.
“See?” Bran said. “I opened it. You can come out if you want or just stay in there.”
But his words were not needed. Before he even finished speaking the fairy leapt out of the box, darting through the air and over Bran’s shoulder. He spun around as she dashed across the room, like a very large fly. She knocked some papers off the table and jarred the hanging pulls of the lamps as she circled. Bran almost couldn’t keep his eyes on her.
“What’s she doing?” Astara said, fearful of the noise. At that moment, the fairy dashed straight at Bran’s head. He didn’t have a second to move clear, but he felt her run into his face, grabbing hold of his nose: the impact was hardly stronger than a falling leaf.
He blinked. Her face was so small that when she came close, he could see it clearly. She tilted her head, looking into his other eye. Bran was very still, unsure of what to do.
“Hello again,” he said. “Who put you in that box?”
She blinked at him, as if she couldn’t understand. There was a clicking noise that came as she folded her wings behind her back, almost like a cricket.
“You can’t talk?” Astara said in a low voice, coming up beside Bran. The fairy shook her head somewhat remorsefully, putting one hand on her throat.
“But you can understand us?” Bran tried.
She nodded quickly.
“That’s good,” he said, glancing at Astara. The fairy crawled a bit down his nose, getting a better look at his face.
“You think she knows anything about who’s in this room?” Bran said in a whisper to Astara as the fairy studied his face.
“She’s got to,” Astara said back. “He’s probably put her in there until he gets back. But I don’t understand why she—”
Astara stopped because the fairy had started to crawl across Bran’s shirt, down to his hand, where she had bitten him. Bran stiffened as her feet and hands clattered across him, unsure of what to do, until she came to the wound. She circled the spot with the dried blood and then suddenly bit again.
“Hey!” Bran hissed, knocking the fairy away.
She leapt into the air, hissing at him through her teeth, leaping back at his hand and diving at the tiny droplet of blood. He swatted her away again.
“What in the world are you doing?” Bran said, his finger stinging again. “That hurts!” he hissed angrily, but the fairy was furiously wiping her lips, licking up every bit of his blood she could get.
“She’s hungry,” Astara realized. “She needs blood.”
“But does it have to be mine?” Bran protested. The fairy darted around, shaking her head, and finally landing on his face again. He was about to hit her in case she was going for his nose this time, but she simply crawled up his cheek. She looked into his eyes again, as if they were mirrors. Bran was very tense, but he couldn’t bring himself to brush her off.
“Don’t bite me again. Understand?” Bran said, lifting his finger. The bleeding had stopped, but it still throbbed slightly.
“That hurts me,” he said. It felt pointless trying to communicate with the creature, but he thought he saw her face change to remorse.
“You don’t have to worry now,” Astara said, looking closer. “A couple drops of blood could sustain her all week. Blood-fairies usually get it from animals, so she must be starving. I can’t believe there’s a fairy here, given how rare they are outside the woods.”
“If she could talk, maybe she could tell us who’s been snapping the photos,” Bran pointed out.
“Perhaps if she could write it—” Astara began, but then the fairy opened her tiny mouth.
“Nim,” the fairy said suddenly, and it made Bran jump. It was such a tiny voice: soft as a whisper, but perfectly clear.
“Nim?” Bran repeated.
She nodded, scampering onto his nose again.
“You can talk,” Bran said quickly. “C-can you say anything else?”
“Nim,” she said again.
“Is that who put you in the box?” Astara asked. The fairy shook her head.
“Nim,” she insisted, looking at Bran and insisting with her eyes. Bran knew it then.
“Is that your name: Nim?” he tried, and at that she nodded again quickly, leaping away from his nose and hovering an inch from his face. Her features were green and blue in places, a mottled color against the paleness of her skin. She didn’t have to flap her wings more then once every few seconds, as if h
er body was lighter than air. Neither Bran nor Astara really knew what to say. Nim wasn’t something they had expected to find at all in ten.
Bran heard a scrape from down the hall.
“He’s coming!” Astara hissed, and both of them dove to the floor, jumping behind one of the couches. Nim moved as well, and as Bran fell she flew up next to him, clinging to the back of the upholstery. All three were very still. Bran held his breath as the door pushed open slightly, the soft creak like a scream. Bran could hear Nim’s breathing. He held his hand up quickly, and she closed her mouth, biting her lip as she did. The door creaked open another inch.
“Ten, hm,” a voice said. Bran recognized it: the old man at the counter. He closed his eyes and let his breath out softly.
“What a mess they’ve made of the place,” the old man said grumpily, and Bran heard the key rattling. “Hucksters. Hucksters, the lot of them…” He went on cursing as he struggled with the lock, then he slammed the door closed behind him. Bran let his head fall against the back of the couch when they were alone again, and they heard the man continue down the hall.
“That was close,” Astara said.
Nim began to breathe quickly. Bran got to his feet.
“He probably came to and went looking for the key to eleven,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here before he comes back.”
“But we haven’t even come close to finding out who lives here,” Astara said. “You saw it: he’s been following you for months, maybe more.”
“I know,” Bran said. “But if we’re caught in here it’s over. I’ve seen enough.”
Nim slid up around the back of him and stepped on his shoulder. He stopped.
“But we can’t leave her here,” Astara said strongly.
“He’ll notice she’s gone,” Bran replied, looking at Nim up and down and thinking hard.
“She was trapped in a box,” Astara pointed out. “He couldn’t have cared much.”
Bran took a deep breath. He knew Astara was right. Nim looked back at him imploringly.