The Power of Un

by Nancy Etchemendy

  “Roxy, hurry up and finish. It’s almost time to go,” I said with my mouth full.

  Roxy crossed her arms and slouched in her chair. She’d hardly eaten anything. “I don’t wanna go,” she said.

  “Wha-a-t?” I stopped with a piece of bread halfway between the table and my face. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. I was beginning to think this might be the worst day of my life. “What’s the matter now? You love the carnival. It’s going to be lots of fun!”

  “No it won’t. You and Ash’ll make me go on the scary rides.”

  I sighed. That settled one question. We were going to spend the night on the baby rides. “No we won’t,” I said.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?”

  “All right, already! I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  She smiled, picked up her spoon, and started eating.

  While she finished dinner, I phoned Ash and broke the news to him. He wasn’t happy, but what could he do? It was either put up with Roxy or go to the carnival by himself. He agreed to meet us at the edge of the woods.

  I got my baseball jacket and a sweater for Roxy. Then I grabbed a flashlight and a house key from the kitchen drawer, took Roxy by the hand, and locked up behind us.

  The farther we got from the friendly glow of the porch light, the tighter Roxy held on to me. “How come we’re meeting Ash by the woods instead of at his house?” she said in a small, shaky voice.

  “I just want to spend a few minutes looking for something I dropped there this afternoon,” I said. “It’s perfectly safe.”

  “Nuh-uh! What about that creepy guy? What if he gets us?”

  I gave her hand a little tug. My patience was getting threadbare. “Will you stop being such a worrywart? First of all, that guy wasn’t creepy. He was actually kind of nice. And second, he’s not there anymore!”

  As the woods came into sight, she said, “I wish we had a dog. A big dog, like Old Yeller or Lassie. With big, fat teeth. A dog that’d scare that creepy guy so bad he’d have to wear diapers.”

  I almost laughed. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m bigger than Lassie.” I did my imitation of a growling, barking dog, and Roxy giggled, which I took as a good sign.

  When we got to the woods, Ash wasn’t there yet. I told Roxy she could either wait for him out by the street or come with me into the woods. Instead of answering, she started to cry and latched on to my jacket with both hands.

  “Will you please stop being such a scaredy-cat? There’s nothing here now that isn’t here in the daytime.”

  “How do you know?” she said.

  I rolled my eyes again and gave up trying to reason with her. I took a step toward the dark trees—or, to be more accurate, I tried to take a step. Roxy clung to my jacket like a forty-pound monkey and screamed as loudly as she could.

  “Gripes!” I said. “Be quiet! Everybody in town can hear you.”

  “I don’t like this place,” she wailed. “I wanna get out of here.”

  “Roxy, how am I supposed to do anything? You’re such a little dork!” I probably should have been more patient with her, but so many things had gone wrong since that morning, I felt crabby at the whole world.

  Roxy switched from screams to pitiful moans. “How come you’re being so mean to me? You … you dumb meanball!” She scrubbed at her eyes. Her hands had stew on them, because I’d forgotten to clean her up after dinner. “Ow! Owowow, I got something in my eye, it hurts, it hurts …” she howled. “I hate it here! I wanna go home!”

  I felt like kicking trees again. First Rainy Frogner, now Roxy. How come girls always thought I was mean?

  “Look, I’m sorry I called you a dork, O.K.? Don’t cry.” I tugged some of my T-shirt out from under my jacket and used it to brush her face off. “Is that better?”

  Before she could answer, we heard the crackle of leaves under something’s footsteps. Roxy’s spine-freezing scream sliced the darkness like a knife.

  4

  MADAM ISIS

  I grabbed Roxy and covered her mouth as the nearby woods came alive with the scuttlings and flutterings of unseen creatures. My own heart banged against my ribs. There’s nothing like the sound of pure terror to get your blood fizzing with adrenaline.

  “Who’s there?” I said, trying hard to keep my voice steady.

  “Gib? It’s just me. Ash!”

  I let the breath out of my lungs in a long, deep rush. It wasn’t all relief. Some of it was embarrassment. My flashlight beam came to rest on Ash’s familiar freckled face and well-worn Giants baseball cap. He was laughing.

  “Hey, it’s not funny, all right?” I said. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people in the dark.” Then, realizing how wimpy that sounded, I went on in a hurry, “I mean, not me. Little kids like Roxy. You could give her nightmares doing that kind of stuff.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t think I was being that scary.” He clamped his hands over his mouth to muffle a laugh. He could hide the smile on his mouth, but he couldn’t hide it on the other parts of his face. It kept sneaking out and making his eyes squinch up and his eyebrows go crazy.

  Ash’s frantic efforts to control himself were so funny—and Roxy and I were so glad he wasn’t a bear, a ghost, or a serial killer—that pretty soon all three of us were laughing.

  “Oh, man, I’m really sorry,” he said, catching his breath at last. “But anyway, I’m here now, so let’s get going. Carnival ahead!” He turned, ready to lead the way up the street, but I stopped him.

  “Wait a second. Um … first would you mind if we take a quick look for something I dropped in the woods this afternoon?”

  “Are you serious?”

  I nodded.

  “Aw, Gib, come on! Every minute we spend here is a minute we lose at the carnival. What could be so important?”

  “Yeah!” said Roxy.

  I shrugged, aware that anything I told Ash I would also be telling Roxy, and I’d never known her to keep a secret. Not even the time i promised her a whole bag of Jelly Bellies not to tell Mom and Dad I had four live cockroaches in a jar under my bed.

  A pained frown replaced Ash’s smile. “You’ll never find anything in the dark in all those leaves. Unless it’s tickets to go on the next space shuttle or something, it’s a waste of time to try. Come on. I’ll help you look in the morning.”

  “Yeah!” Roxy said again, still looking scared. “Let’s get outta here.”

  If the unner could really do what the old man said, it was better than tickets to go on the next space shuttle. Part of me worried that it might get stepped on or carried off by animals if we left it lying in the woods all night. But some other part of me knew it wasn’t safe to let myself believe in the unner yet. After all, I hadn’t been able to make it work when I’d tried it earlier. It would be pretty embarrassing if I delayed us for something that turned out to be a handful of useless junk. Besides, I, too, was anxious to get to the carnival.

  Ash waved his fingers in front of my eyes like a hypnotist. “Think about it: cotton candy, rides, hot dogs, Madam Isis tells your fortune. I see in your future a big prize at the coin-toss booth!”

  “Yeah! Yeah!” cried Roxy, jumping up and down with her hands clasped under her chin. “Could you win me a stuffed dog? Please, please, please?”

  I shook my head and managed a tiny smile. Dad says a good sport always smiles in defeat.

  So the three of us headed for Lafferty Park and the carnival a few blocks away. The chilly autumn air carried the faint screams of people on the Tilt-a-Whirl, or maybe the Devil’s Elevator, rising and falling like waves. And every now and then a whiff of popcorn and roasted peanuts beckoned. They filled me with such anticipation that the old man and the unner began to fade from my thoughts. In my excitement, I even stopped caring about Rainy Frogner and her effort to spoil things. I was headed for a carnival with Ash Jensen, and it was going to take more than a dumb, vengefu
l girl, more than an annoying kid sister, more than a lost dream machine, to keep me from having a good time!

  Soon we drifted happily among moving lights, clowns on stilts, and the guys with tattooed arms who ran the rides and the booths. We’d been saving up for weeks, and Mom and Dad had given me extra money for Roxy, so we bought a whole bunch of tickets for games and rides. Roxy wanted us to go straight to the coin toss, where a big blue-and-brown stuffed animal that might have been a dog gazed down balefully on the players. But Ash and I had other ideas. We went to the Freaks of Nature show and filed slowly past glass jars where two-headed lambs, spiders the size of dinner plates, and the brain of a genius floated in colored liquids. Then we went to the House of Illusions, which made us feel as if we were giants or mice or couldn’t stand up straight. Roxy said it made her feel like barfing, so we got her a lemon-lime soda, Mom’s favorite medicine for upset stomachs.

  While she drank it and Ash and I decided what we wanted to do next, a flea-bitten brown dog ran past. It wasn’t any particular type of dog, just a mutt whose fur ranged from scruffy to completely absent. Its ribs showed, and it had no collar. Roxy shrieked, “Poor doggy!” She dropped her drink on the ground and ran after the stray, looking totally delighted.

  It took us five minutes to catch up with her. The dog kept scooting under tables and behind counters, weaving its way in and out of off-limits areas. Roxy was small and agile enough to follow it almost anywhere. Every time we thought we had her, she disappeared between somebody’s feet. A carny with big muscles and a cigar grabbed her by the collar just as she was about to dart into the machinery of the Ferris wheel. The dog threaded its way through to the other side and disappeared before anybody could catch it.

  Roxy cried and swung her fists, a long way from connecting with any part of the carny, while he held her at arm’s length.

  “Leave me alone, you big bully! You made me lose my dog!”

  He looked at us sourly and said, “This yours?”

  We nodded.

  “Well, keep hold of her, or all three of you are outta here. We can’t have kids running around in the machinery. Good way to lose a body part.” He pushed Roxy in our direction with a snaggle-toothed leer. If he was trying to scare the living daylights out of us, it worked.

  I grabbed Roxy’s hand, and we ran away as fast as we could. We didn’t stop until we reached the midway.

  “Roxy!” I said. “You know better than that. Don’t ever run off again.”

  “But I have to help that doggy!” She was already swiveling her head around, looking for the stray, and I knew if she saw it she’d run after it again without a second thought.

  I put my hands on either side of her face and forced her to look at me.

  “Hey! Lemme go!” she said, wiggling.

  “Listen to me! Don’t ever run away like that again, you hear me? If you do, I’ll tell Mom and Dad, and you’ll be in big, big trouble.” I tried to keep my voice down but I couldn’t quite manage it.

  She twisted out of my grasp and stamped her foot on the dusty ground. “Tattletale, tattletale! You’re not the boss of me! I can help a dog if I want to.”

  A tide of something hot as fire rushed through my blood. I couldn’t remember ever being so angry before. It was the whole thing—the fact that she was here at all, ruining my plans and Ash’s; that she was being such a gigantic pain; that she was calling me names on top of it. At that moment, if there’d been any way for me to become an only child, I would have done it. I wanted to get back at her any way I could.

  I shouted, “You think I’m an idiot or something? Why don’t you just say what you mean? You want to take that stupid mutt home. Well, you can’t. Mom and Dad don’t want a dog. You’re never gonna have one, so just forget it!” All of this was true. They just hadn’t told her yet.

  Tears started in Roxy’s eyes. “That’s a lie! Take it back, take it back!” She leaped at me, her small fists flying.

  Too mad to think about what I was doing, I got ready to give her a shove. It’s a good thing Ash was there.

  He touched my shoulder lightly. He was smiling, and the lights of the carnival danced in his eyes. “Look where we are!” he said. “Madam Isis!” It was almost a whisper.

  “Huh?”

  He gave me a little punch in the arm and pointed. At first the look on his face made me wonder if he’d found a twenty-dollar bill on the ground or something. Roxy and I both gazed along the line of his straightened finger toward a small tent just a few steps away. It was draped in purple-and-yellow satin. The sign on the front said, “Fortunes Told. Learn Your Future. Madam Isis Knows All. (Five tickets).”

  Roxy tried to sound it out. “For-toon-us … what does it say?”

  “It’s a fortuneteller,” said Ash. “Hey, you could ask her if you’re ever going to get a dog.”

  “Can she tell me? Really?” Roxy looked enthralled, her anger forgotten. My own was evaporating fast, too. Madam Isis was one of the things I’d been looking forward to most. Kids at school who’d seen her said she was really good. Not that I believed in fortunetellers, exactly. I’d never heard one say anything I regarded as proof positive of strange powers, though I confess I hoped I would. Mostly I just loved the shivery atmosphere they created.

  We ducked into the tent. Inside there was so little light that at first we couldn’t see anything at all. From some distant corner, a soft tinkle of wind chimes floated, even though the air was deathly still. A strange scent hung invisible before us, so thick I wondered whether I could touch it if I reached out. Madam Isis’s tent smelled like smoke and spice, with a very faint undercurrent of something else: lightning. I was sure of it. It was the same smell that had surrounded the old man in the woods!

  As our eyes adjusted, the outlines of the fortuneteller emerged from the darkness. She was sitting very straight with one hand to her heart as if we’d surprised her, though I knew that couldn’t be the case. Why should she be surprised to see customers? I squinted, trying to see if steam or vapor was rising from her clothing as it had from the old man’s. But there didn’t seem to be any.

  Ash eagerly handed over five tickets. Madam Isis, her face hidden in the shadows of a velvet cloak and long, crow-black hair, moved clawlike hands above a crystal ball. Her nails were long, and each finger had a tiny tattoo of an Egyptian scarab on it. I’d never seen a fortuneteller this convincing before.

  She looked up at Ash. I caught the gleam of greenish light in a dark eye. “I see you flying.” Her voice was rough as canvas, and she had a foreign accent. “No … not flying. Floating. In a small, bright place within a huge darkness.” She stared into the ball. “Wait. Not darkness—a sky filled with stars.”

  “A spaceship?” said Ash. I could hear the awe in his voice. For as long as I’d known him, he’d dreamed of becoming an astronaut.

  Roxy pushed in front of him, holding her tickets out eagerly. “My turn! I want to know if I’m getting a dog.”

  Madam Isis gave Roxy a long look that I knew meant something, though I wasn’t sure what. She seemed worried or sad or maybe a little of each. She bent over the crystal ball once more, her scarab fingers circling the air above it.

  “It’s difficult,” she said. She wiped the ball with the generous sleeve of her dark gown, then moved her face closer to it. After a few seconds she stared straight into Roxy’s eyes and said, “Yes, I see you with a dog.”

  Roxy jumped up and down, squealing, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  “But there is more, child. Listen to me. This is very important.” Something in her voice stopped Roxy cold. Madam Isis seemed almost to have forgotten about her crystal ball. While she pinned Roxy with her intense stare, I finally got a glimpse of her face. It wasn’t what I expected. She didn’t look haughty or mysterious. She looked kind and a little tired, like somebody’s grandmother. But that wasn’t all. Her eyes shimmered with what might have been held-back tears.

  Ash saw them, too. “What’s the matter?” he asked in a hushed voice.
>
  Madam Isis showed no sign of having heard him. Her whole attention seemed focused on Roxy. “You will only get this dog if you are very, very good tonight. You must stay with your brother and his friend. You will see a dog, but you must not run after it. Not under any circumstances. If you ever want to have a dog, you must not run after the stray tonight. Do you understand?”

  Roxy nodded solemnly.

  My mouth dropped open. How did she know I was Roxy’s brother and Ash was just a friend? How did she know about the stray? Had she been spying on us earlier, or … I hardly dared to think it … did she really have supernatural powers?

  “Very well,” said Madam Isis.

  Before I could even say awesome, Roxy became her usual self again. “I’m getting a dog! See, Gib? You were so wrong. Dog! Dog! Dog! Dog!” she shouted. She looked like she was riding an invisible pogo stick as she propelled herself toward the tent flap.

  The fortuneteller frowned at Ash and made a scooting motion with her hands. “Go after her, boy,” she commanded. “Don’t let her out of your sight. You can’t imagine how important it is.”

  Ash raised an eyebrow I could see he wasn’t ready to leave. I could also see that Madam Isis had spooked him. She had definitely spooked me.

  Ash shook his head and ducked out after Roxy. I started to follow, but Madam Isis said, “Gib,” and touched my hand. A thrill ran through me like electricity. Maybe it was just the shock of hearing her say my name, but at that moment I felt certain of her power.

  “H-How do you know my name?”

  Madam Isis pressed her fingertips together and touched them to her lips while she contemplated me in silence. Finally she said, “I have been visited by a messenger, an old man. Where he is from, who sent him, and why, I cannot tell you. All I will say is that he did not seem entirely of this world. He appeared in an instant, as spirits often will, and he left the same way. He described you, your friend, and your sister perfectly. He told me your name. He said that a terrible cross-roads lies before you tonight—a moment when you will make a decision that may have terrible consequences. His warning to you is this: He sees a dog. He sees your sister running after it. If you let her, all is lost.”