by Obert Skye
Winter turned and headed in the direction of Leven’s house.
“You might want to hurry,” Geth said.
Winter looked worried.
“But don’t fret about it,” Geth added. “Optimism is our best ally.”
Winter tried to smile. It’s not that easy, however, to be optimistic, when you are taking directions from a toothpick.
Chapter Nineteen
Lift, Huck, and Listen
LLeven was disgusted with himself. He had turned his back on the two people—well, one person and one whatever Clover was—who believed in him. No matter how he looked at it, he had left Winter and Clover high and dry. He couldn’t help it. His head was so clouded with confused thoughts and self-doubt he could hardly stand straight. And now, thanks to the rainstorm that had just ended, he was soaked. His dark bangs were matted against his forehead, covering his right eye.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said to himself. “There’s nothing I can do about any of this.” The empty words didn’t make him feel any better about giving up. He tried to walk tall, but it felt like the entire world was pushing down on his shoulders.
He rounded the turn in the road and spotted his house in the distance.
The first thing he noticed was the missing tree. The stump sat there like an ugly bone jutting out from the surface of the earth. He noticed Addy’s car was not in the driveway and that the house looked askew and a bit more beat up than he remembered. One corner of the roof in the back was crumpled as if it had been crushed. And there were wood chips everywhere.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he whispered to himself.
Leven did not want to return home, but he had nothing else. He hated wandering the streets and having to sleep on the ground. Defeated, he sat down on the tree stump. The grass around it was long, and a few birds off to the south were chattering at each other.
His mind cleared and his eyes burned gold. His gift was flaring up. He could see Winter in his head. Lights and shadows swirled through his brain. Winter was walking swiftly and with purpose. She said something to someone and smiled. Leven couldn’t remember if he had ever seen her smile that widely when he had been with her. She looked different, too: her green eyes were beautiful and her blonde hair wasn’t as wild as he remembered it.
Leven’s thoughts suddenly darkened.
Winter appeared much happier without him. He was not surprised. Leven knew he was a problem, not an answer. That had been the pattern of his life. He had just seen the future and he now knew that Winter and Clover could get along just fine. They didn’t need him. Leven rubbed his eyes and sighed loudly as if expelling air from his toes.
“Who’s there?” Terry yelled from inside Leven’s old house.
“It’s me,” Leven said with little enthusiasm.
“Where have you been?” Terry demanded. He stuck his head out one of the trailer’s open windows. It was obvious he had just gotten up.
“I got lost?” Leven tried.
“Lost? How dumb do you think I am?”
Leven prayed Terry wouldn’t make him answer that.
“Your aunt spent an entire afternoon looking for you. She missed over three hours of work. Set us back something fierce.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We’re all perfectly aware of that,” Terry whined. “Now get in here and clean this place up.”
Leven stood and walked up to the front door. He stepped inside and almost gasped at how messy everything was. It was as if they had done nothing but eat and litter during the two days he had been gone. A strong, unpleasant odor was coming from the kitchen, and trash was everywhere. Half-eaten plates of food littered the living room. Though he had been forced to sleep on the porch, Leven had always been the one in charge of cleaning the inside of the house. Terry pushed through the trash to stand right in front of Leven.
“See this mess?” Terry pointed, his ugly mouth drawn down into a sneer. “You did it. How do you expect us to teach you anything if we do your chores for you? Well, I’m sick of it. You have fifteen minutes to clean it up.”
“Fifteen minutes?” Leven asked incredulously. The mess he saw in front of him would take a lot longer to fix than that.
“Fifteen minutes, or I’ll make sure you regret showing your face around here again.”
“So you cut the tree down?” Leven asked forcefully.
“Excuse me?” Terry said sarcastically. “Did I say it was special question time? Fifteen minutes! I’m going out for a drink.” Terry pulled his dirty baseball cap over his greasy hair and left the trailer house, slamming the door as he went out.
ii
Leven was still cleaning two hours later when Addy came home. Terry hadn’t returned yet. Addy came in the door, threw her keys and purse down, and started complaining about the weather. Then she noticed Leven.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just cleaning up.”
“Well, hurry, the place is a mess.”
That was it. No “Hello.” No “We’ve missed you.” No “Good to see you.” Just, “Hurry, the place is a mess.”
Addy noticed Leven was wearing his Wonder Wipe shirt inside out. She began to bark at him. “Embarrassed about what I do? Too good to promote what feeds us? Maybe you would like a shirt made of gold?”
“I don’t want a gold shirt,” Leven insisted. “I just put it on wrong.”
“I work all day to support . . .”
Addy stopped yelling to listen to the slurred singing of Terry as he made his way home. He fumbled with the door handle and stumbled into the house. He looked around at the filth that was much less than when he had left, but still quite a mess.
“What have you been doing?” he demanded. “I can barely see the carpet.”
“I’m cleaning as fast as I can,” Leven defended. “It’s just—”
“Well, it’s not fast enough,” Terry interrupted, spitting flecks of saliva into the air. “Come here,” he slurred. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, and with his scraggly beard and dirty clothes he looked like a bum.
“I’ll keep going,” Leven promised, picking up even faster.
“Don’t you back talk to him,” Addy snarled. “You take a vacation and come back with a smart mouth.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Come here,” Terry stormed.
Leven had made a gigantic mistake. He should never have returned. He had been a fool to think he could just step back into the awful life he had always had. Now as Terry raged and Addy helped, Leven knew he was in trouble. He looked toward the front door, trying to gauge if he could make it out or not. Terry noticed.
“Going to make a run for it?” Terry mocked, his beady eyes red and hateful. “You’ll never make it, Skuuuunk.”
Addy stepped next to the back door, blocking any escape.
“Come here,” Terry muttered fiercely. “I’m going to scare the rest of your hair white.”
Leven began to back away.
“You should have stayed lost,” Terry spat. “I think it’s time to teach you the lesson your aunt never let me.”
“I’m not his aunt,” Addy said disgustedly.
Addy wasn’t a compassionate woman, but she was less likely than Terry to hurt someone. There had been many times during Leven’s childhood when Addy had stopped Terry from striking Leven or imposing his strength on him. At the moment, however, it didn’t seem as though Addy had any intention of holding Terry back. She had experienced a difficult week. The hand-folded napkin market was soft at the moment, and the company she worked for had laid off one of the fastest and most expensive folders they had, leaving Addy with over three times her normal workload. Her wrists would swell to the size of cantaloupes every afternoon from all the repetitive movement, and her carpal tunnel pain was killing her. She had come home each day a monster. She was tired of her job, tired of Terry, and tired of not being pampered and taken care of like some of those ladies she saw on TV. In short, she was spent, spoiled, and selfish, and had no
more will to control Terry or feel for Leven.
“I’m his mother’s half sister,” she grumped.
Terry moved closer. Leven tried to clear his mind to see if by some chance he couldn’t manipulate himself out of this. He couldn’t see anything except the image of Winter walking and smiling.
Leven was sick about the mistake he had made in thinking he could come home.
iii
Winter was feeling better. She was still not completely confident that a toothpick was the answer to all her woes, but for the moment they had direction. That direction was north toward Leven’s old house. Clover was so excited about going to get Leven that every few seconds he would materialize on a different place on Winter, shiver happily, smile, and disappear again.
Geth rested in Winter’s shirt pocket as they traveled. The city wasn’t huge, and they had only been five or so miles from Leven’s old neighborhood, but it was slow going thanks to there being no straight shot there. They had to make their way across the river, through neighborhoods, over fences, and around businesses. Just at dusk they reached the entrance of the Rolling Greens Deluxe Mobile Home Park.
Clover materialized. “I can’t wait to see Lev.”
“We just saw him earlier today,” Winter said.
“Seems longer,” Clover sighed.
“Are all sycophants as dedicated as you?” Winter asked.
Clover smiled, shook his whole body, and disappeared again.
The Rolling Greens Deluxe Mobile Home Park had over forty-five streetlights, but only nineteen of them worked. It took time and effort to change the bulbs, so when they went out they stayed that way. That left the area pretty dark at night. A few homes were lit up, and the occasional working streetlight helped to give outlines but no real detail to the scenery.
“I’m not sure how to say this,” Winter began. “But I’m not terribly confident Lev will even want to come with us.”
“He’ll come,” Geth said confidently.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s fate.” Geth was as wide-eyed and smiley as a toothpick can get.
Winter had never met anyone so self-assured as the little toothpick. She knew she could pick him up and snap him in half with minor effort. Or she could toss him into a fire and he would have no way to save himself. Still, he pushed forward and talked as though he had every capability and advantage at hand.
“I hope you’re right,” Winter said.
They turned the corner and Winter could see Leven’s home. The curtains were closed and glowing over the windows. Winter had never met Leven’s family, but the things Leven had said about them made it perfectly clear what kind of people they were.
As they got closer to the house they could hear yelling coming from inside. Terry was shouting at Leven. Winter hurried to the window and peeked through a gap in the curtain. Leven had his back to the opposite wall, and Terry was standing in front of him, shouting and rolling up his own sleeves. From where Geth was pocketed, he too could see clearly what was about to happen.
“We’ve got to stop it,” Geth whispered, looking around quickly. He spotted the tree stump he had been severed from less than a week before. “If I remember Antsel right,” Geth said to Winter, “he told me you were a nit.”
“I think I am,” Winter said, unsure.
“What’s your gift?” Geth asked.
“I can freeze things.”
“Perfect,” Geth said. “I’m going to need your help. Set me down on that stump. I want to see if I can still work my old roots.”
Winter took three giant steps and placed Geth on top of the tree stump. He lay down, face up, and oozed slowly into the wood.
Inside the house, Terry was screaming even louder.
iv
Leven had never seen Terry this bad. He was cursing and ranting and coming toward him with fire in his red-veined eyes. He spit as he spoke, rage dripping from him like sweat. All the events and tragedies and disappointment and failures of Terry’s life had come to a heavy boil. He rolled his sleeves farther up, his mind focused on nothing but teaching this brat a lesson he would never forget.
Leven tried to open the window behind him, but the cheap clasp broke off in his hand. Terry smiled a wicked, lazy smile. He drew back his fist and swung, stumbling under the forward motion and missing Leven completely. He righted himself and tried again, but the house rocked, and Terry lost his balance and had to grab onto a nearby chair to keep from falling.
“What the . . .” he muttered.
The house rocked again. Leven was as frightened as Terry. Addy grabbed the kitchen bar and hung on. The house shook, tilting to the west at a steep angle, and Terry flew into the wall. Leven dropped to the floor and tried to crawl upward toward the door. The house leveled out and began rising. It twisted and shook as it rose, tossing everything inside around like bingo balls in a bin. The mess that had been there before was nothing compared to how things looked now, with cupboards and cabinets bursting open and expelling their contents all over the rooms.
The front door blew inward and a thick root shot through and toward Leven. It wrapped itself around his waist and yanked him outside, all while the home rising higher and higher. Addy wasn’t just screaming anymore, she was exploding with noise. The fear on her face would have elicited mercy from Jack the Ripper. Terry was still bouncing off walls and trying to right himself somehow. Two more roots shot into the home and twisted around both his and Addy’s ankles. The frantic couple clawed and scratched at the floor, fighting to keep from being pulled out, but it was no use: Geth had them.
With all three of them extracted from the trailer, Geth kept the house suspended high above its foundation. Winter looked over at the stump where Geth lay. He looked back at Winter. She wasn’t certain, but she could have sworn Geth’s little wood hole was smiling.
“Freeze the house!” he commanded her.
Winter looked at the house hovering high above her and panicked.
“The whole thing?”
“The whole thing!”
Winter closed her green eyes and concentrated. She saw the house as ice and it was that simple. She looked up to witness the entire mobile home as one shiny block of ice. Terry and Addy, who were still being dangled by their ankles up in the air, screamed in fear and disbelief.
Geth looked up at Winter. “You might want to plug your ears,” he said, “but I happen to like the sound of breaking ice.”
Geth retracted some of his roots and the entire home plummeted swiftly to the ground. A fabulous rushing noise was followed by the complete destruction of the house Leven had lived in. The single-wide shattered into a million frozen pieces. Ice flew everywhere. A few shards blew out two of the neighbor’s windows, and a dog across the street got a massive surprise welt as he was sneaking up on a cat. Geth was right, the sound was spectacular, like the explosion of a blimp full of fine china. Winter reached down and touched one of the bigger chunks. The ice instantly began to thaw.
Geth lowered Terry and Addy none too gently onto the very spot where their house had once stood. He also set Leven down and retracted all the roots completely back into the earth. Then he pushed himself up and out of the tree stump and Winter put him back in her pocket.
“Amazing,” Winter whispered. “Absolutely amazing.”
Winter walked over to Leven, who was standing in complete shock. The house was shattered into a million tiny pieces. He scuffed some of the frozen debris with his toe.
“I think that was my bed.” Leven tried to smile.
Terry and Addy cowered on the ground in fear, as neighbors cautiously approached to investigate what had happened.
Leven looked at Winter. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Saving you,” she answered. “Are you ready to go now?”
Leven looked at Addy and Terry. She was bawling and he was sniveling. They were both trembling. Leven wanted to say something nice, but all that came out was, “I’m done cleaning.”
Addy gl
ared in horror.
As Winter turned and began to walk off into the dark night, Leven paused for a moment, looking at the two people who had been most rotten to him. He wasn’t quite ready to leave. He gazed at his shivering guardians and the ring of concerned neighbors who had gathered.
“What happened to your house?” Mrs. Pendle asked, holding her tattered bathrobe closed at the neck.
“The tree . . .” Addy began.
“It lifted up . . .” Terry stammered. “And then . . . my house.”
They went blubbering on as Leven slipped back behind the crowd of people and off toward Winter. She was a few hundred feet ahead, whispering to the toothpick in her pocket.
“Should I introduce myself to him now?” Geth whispered to her.
“I think maybe you should wait until morning,” she whispered back.
“Fine by me,” Geth said, slipping down farther into her pocket.
“How did you do that?” Leven asked, as he caught up to her. “I mean with the tree and the—”
“I’ll tell you later,” Winter said quickly. “Right now we need to find a place to sleep. We have to leave early in the morning.”
“That was amazing! I’ve never heard a sound like . . . leave to go where?” Leven asked.
“The gateway,” Winter replied.
“Gateway to where?”
“To Foo.”
“You know where it is?” Leven asked.
“Geth does,” Clover said, materializing with his arms around Leven’s head.
“Clover!” Leven smiled. “I can’t believe you both came back for me. Especially after what I said.”
“It’s forgotten,” Clover waved.
“Good,” Leven said. “Because I am so happy to see you guys.”
“Let’s hope you feel that way after you get some sleep,” Winter said seriously. “You have a tendency to change your mind in the night.”
“So you know where Geth is?” Leven asked, remembering how awful his dreams had been and wanting to think about anything else.
“Sure, he’s—” Clover tried to say.
“We’ll see him tomorrow,” Winter interrupted, giving Clover the eye.