by Melissa Kuch
loud crash of thunder was the prelude to an onslaught of raindrops. Otus screeched to a halt, and Aurora ordered him to help her down from his pocket. His fingers picked her up gently and planted her down on the grass. She recognized that they were in the wooded picnic area of Candlewick Park, where she had come with her parents for a family picnic every summer since she was eight years old. She didn’t care to reminisce on those innocent days as she trudged through thick mud up to her ankles. All she wanted to do was go home.
“Where are you going?” Boreas shouted after her.
“Everyone knows the worst place in a thunderstorm is under trees, which is exactly where we’re standing right now.”
Otus chased Aurora and put his foot out in front of her, but she continued under his legs like a tunnel.
“We can go somewhere else,” Otus offered, wiping the raindrops out of his eyes. A lightning bolt illuminated the sky over his head, and Aurora looked up momentarily but then kept walking. Like playing a game, Otus charged in front of her, blocking her passage of escape.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She tried to run around him, but he cut her off at every turn, his calf muscles playing the part of walls blocking her escape; it was as if he was dancing the mambo around her.
“I won’t let you pass until you answer me.”
“Answer him, Aurora,” Boreas cried out, turning a shade of green. “Or I’m going to get sick.”
Aurora glared up at the gargantuan face nearly hidden by the gray clouds hovering overhead. Another flash of lightning struck nearby, and she wished it had struck his head, being the tallest point in that space.
“You want to know what’s wrong? Fine. Where the hell were you, Otus?”
Otus stared back at her, confounded. “I came back.”
“Exactly. Came back. Why did you leave us in the first place? Boreas was nearly arrested, and I commandeered a Common Good vehicle. And now they probably have every soldier in the Common Good Army looking for us and especially you right now. You are not inconspicuous. You’re a giant!”
“Aurora,” Boreas whispered, “he did rescue us.”
“After the fact! After he was off gallivanting or wherever he was. Now I am a fugitive, and this fugitive wants to get far away from you and your ridiculous mission, and from you too, Boreas. I never want to see either of you again.”
The blistering wind stung her face as she made a mad dash past Otus’s thick ankle and dodged through the slight gap that had opened up between his feet. The park exit was only a few more feet away, and she ran against the wind, fighting the warm wet pellets exploding against her skin. Her indigo dress was now smeared with mud and unrecognizable from that morning. The block party itself felt like a lifetime ago, and she pictured her bed and her sanctuary away from this madness. She wanted to close herself away from the world again and not let a conch shell drive her away from who she was. She was Fatty Alvarez! That was all she ever was going to be.
She reached the exit and nearly collapsed under the gazebo, catching her breath as the roof took the brunt of the raindrops. She heard Boreas calling out to her, but she ignored him and wished herself invisible under that safety net. No such luck, as Boreas bounded into the gazebo, tracking mud and dripping wet. He took a moment to catch his breath and noticed her huddled in the corner. He kept his eye on her in the event she bounced to her feet and took off again.
“You can’t just run away from this,” he finally spit out. His fingers combed through his wet black strands, and his intense eyes focused only on her. The rain ricocheted off the wooden beam like a musical symphony overhead.
“He abandoned us, Boreas.”
“Because he was scared! Anyone could see that, but he won’t admit it! I don’t have to be a genius like you to see that.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m the big fat genius. That’s what you and your brother and Hattie Pearlton and all the other kids say, isn’t it?”
“Aurora, that’s not what I—”
“Whatever! Our whole circle is messed up. You, me, Otus. Why should we help him?”
“Because we have to.” Boreas was pacing the floor, taking giant steps as he walked back and forth like a pendulum.
Aurora sat up and screamed, “No, Boreas. No! We are nothing to each other. Why should we care what happens to him?”
He froze and his face was beat red, veins bulging out of his neck as he stood over her like a towering inferno.
“Because he has had everyone out to get him, misjudge him, scream at him, and all he wants to do is help. That’s all he ever wants, but no one will give him a chance because they can’t see the real him. They just ignore him or get mad because he’s not what they wanted. Not like his brother. Can never be like his brother. Just a stupid failure!”
Boreas kicked the side of the gazebo and stood there, his mind crawling with inner demons as he slowly backed up until he banged against the cold marble. His body slithered downward until he was directly parallel to Aurora, his left leg twitching and he had turned pale, nearly as white as a ghost. The restless rain pitter pattered against the roof like beating drums. Aurora watched uneasily as his face clouded with pain, yet she slid over to his side of the gazebo, slowly and stealthily dragging her bare legs against the floor until she was beside him, his body warm and his chest heaving up and down. She put her head on his shoulder until their breaths were in unison.
“I am sorry,” she said, her voice echoed throughout the marble gazebo, the rain slowing down and in rhythm with their heart beats.
He stared down into her eyes and then immediately shifted his weight to the right so that there was a gap between them.
“Yeah, well, you should be apologizing to someone else.”
She stood up as she watched him tying his shoelace, his face pointing downward, and he didn’t say anything else as she headed toward the Romanesque doorway. She faced outward, smelling the early morning dew, the raindrops glistening on the blades of grass. A hint of sunlight was starting to stream through the gray clouds, fighting to break through and start a new day. It was past the Sacred Hour. They had lived straight through it, and she took a deep breath, welcoming the dawn. It was almost as if her tears had covered the Earth as dew.
“Funny,” she said, speaking more to herself than to Boreas. “This time yesterday I didn’t believe in giants.”
She treaded outwards without daring to look back, not even sure if he had heard her. Nearly halfway through the park she turned around, still feeling Boreas’ presence lingering on her skin. She only turned around once to make sure he wasn’t still there.
Otus was playing with a tree branch that had been struck by lightning, and when he heard her approaching he turned to face her and offered the tree branch as a peace offering.
“It’s still burnt where it got struck. Do you see?” He knelt down onto one knee and held out the branch to her. She took it and observed the singed edge that was still smoking from where it had been struck by electricity and detached from the living organism.
“It just takes a second for your life to change,” she said, gazing from the tree branch to Otus, who was fidgeting with his hands now that he didn’t have the branch to distract him.
He shook a tree so that green leaves showered down around them. “I thought I needed to run away like I always did before when I saw the red flickering light and the loud siren noise. So I did. But I heard you. I heard you ask for help. And I found my way back. Just a little late.”
“I was a little late too, in coming around,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’m so sorry for running off and saying what I said. But I promise, Otus, I won’t run off on you again.”
She spoke solemnly sitting, like a soaked and tired ragdoll on his knee, but stared up into his eyes with conviction in her words. She was staring into the face of the only person she had ever made a promise to, and it felt right.
“I won’t run off on you again either,” Otus agreed.
She took hi
s pinky finger and shook it up and down in a handshake motion. “This means that we shook on it, that we made a promise to each other.”
His rosy pinky fingernail was as large as her entire hand, but this simple gesture caused a bond between human and giant, one that neither had ever experienced before.
urora quickly slid the note onto the top of her father’s history magazines as she glanced down at her watch. It was nearly the time of the Awakened Hour, and she felt her heart cringe as she glanced around at the pigsty that was her house. Everything was still in its proper place, exactly where she had left it the day before; the magazines still piled high, the beanie babies and stamp collection still towering like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Soon everyone would be off to work and school, following their early morning routines, listening to the same satellite radio disc jockeys reporting on the weather and traffic jams. Aurora saw her reflection through the microwave glass. The dirt had been showered away, and her indigo dress was on the floor of her room. She’d torn it to shreds since there was no way she was going to be able to unzip herself out of that harness by herself. She was now more comfortably dressed in jeans and a black short-sleeved shirt with her horoscope sign embroidered on the front in pink stitches. She was an Aquarius and bore the symbol of the water bearer. She always thought it was ironic that her sign was bearing water, though the element was air. Two squiggly lowercase M’s were depicted on the cotton fabric of her shirt.
The Common Good approved of astrology and had voted that it was more on the same line as psychology, giving the people an inside glance at themselves and the inner workings of their personality. The stars were balls of gas and had been proven as such. They were not molded by the hands of a god or goddess, spinning them through the atmosphere and dictating a human’s life through a crystal ball.
Otus was hiding in the Candlewick Park cave, which was right on the coastline of the south shore where the waves from the Atlantic Ocean crashed their foamy hands against the solid brown rock that had formed after thousands of years of erosion. This cave was closed off to park dwellers due to some kids being found smoking in the dwelling. To prevent trespassers, a large sturdy wooden plank had been built to completely cover and seal the mouth of the cave. It hadn’t anticipated a giant. In one fluid motion, Otus ripped the wooden door off its hinges and managed to keep the barrier intact but allow passage for them to enter the hiding place. They had asked Otus to replace the barrier while they were away. When they returned, the teenagers would knock on it three times. Boreas had told him that if someone else tried to enter then Otus was to eat them.
“I don’t eat people,” Otus replied, horrified. “I’m not a cannibal.”
“Oh, I guess I watched too much Jack and the Beanstalk growing up,” Boreas laughed. He instead instructed Otus to impersonate a ghost and holler so loud that its sound would reverberate off its hollow walls and sound so frightening that the trespassers would flee for their life. The cave’s notorious legend of being haunted would help in that matter too.
Aurora closed the door to her house quietly behind her, careful to not awaken her parents. Once they received her letter they wouldn’t be so worried. She doubted her parents would believe the story she made up about going to try to find Mary Fray in Iowa, but at least they could rationalize it once they saw wanted pictures of herself around town (five of which she had noticed on her way back to Wishbone Avenue). She flung her backpack over her shoulder, having packed some necessities; extra pairs of underwear, clothes, sweatshirt, gloves, boots, flashlight and some food provisions that she had borrowed from her parent’s pantry. If they were to travel toward the northern lights, she couldn’t dress in only t-shirts and tank tops.
Boreas was sitting on the curb at the corner stop sign, and she stopped short for a second, remembering when she would meet Mary at this same spot so many times before school. This same corner stop sign was where they had shared so many fun memories. Aurora stood looking at that red octagonal stop sign and wished she had known Otus earlier. Then maybe they could have saved Mary. Now she was somewhere in Iowa or wherever the Inspector had forced her and her family to go. She pictured Mary’s owl eyes smiling at Aurora and knew that Mary would be proud that Aurora was chosen for this quest. Mary would know she was doing what she thought was right, and doing what was right was helping Otus.
Boreas stood up. He had also showered and changed into a blue t-shirt, black jeans and a large brimmed newsy styled peddler hat. He was stepping on a used firecracker with the balls of his foot as he noticed Aurora approaching.
“What took you so long? I had to dodge two Common Good vehicles coming down the avenue. I think they are doing a barricade up by the library. Did you leave a note?”
She nodded, looking back at her house where her parents were still sleeping soundly, unaware that their daughter wouldn’t be home once they awakened.
“Yeah. You?”
“They won’t even know I’m missing.”
Aurora shook her head at Boreas. “You don’t mean that.”
“You should know that my relationship with my father is not the greatest,” Boreas snickered. “You heard our father-son talk yesterday at the barbeque.”
Aurora bit her lip. He had not forgotten that she had eavesdropped on their conversation when his father was berating him about the burned hamburgers.
“Ever since my mom died when I was five he has never treated me the same. Everything is about Jonathan, who can do no wrong. I’m just an afterthought to him, a failure to the family name.”
He kicked the used firecracker so that it went flying to the other side of the street.
“Boreas,” Aurora sat down on the curb and tied her shoe for the tenth time, “why did you quit the tennis team before the playoffs?”
Boreas swung his backpack over his right shoulder and muttered, “Why do you care?”
“You were the best player on the team. If you had something to prove to your father, why quit?”
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and said, “I quit when I realized I have nothing to prove to my father. I shouldn’t have to prove anything to him or anyone in that stupid school. But they all expect me to be something or someone I’m not. So I ran away from home, and that was when I got caught outside during the Sacred Hour.”
She took a deep breath and looked down Wishbone Avenue at the brimstone cottage that had been the Fray residence. She remembered that Mary wanted to know how Boreas got out of Candlewick Prison alive.
“How did you do it?”
He fixed his backpack, half-listening. “How did I do what?”
“How did you escape from Candlewick Prison?”
Boreas looked at her curiously, and then the cold front that he had mastered for so many years melted from the corners of his eyes.
“Inspector Herald can’t win all the time, Aurora.” He dug into his pocket, pulled out a pair of sunglasses, and smiled mischievously as he put them on. “Now come on. We have to coerce Mrs. Xiomy to come with us to meet Otus at the caves. And we’ll need more than my charm to convince her.”
“This is not going to be easy,” she thought as they raced down to the cul-de-sac at the end of Wishbone Avenue.
Mrs. Xiomy lived in a Victorian-style house that was surrounded by indigo and orange rhododendron bushes that blocked the house from view on the street. Monstrous weeping willow trees drooped down and danced wistfully to the sound of Tchaikovsky, which was blasting from the first floor window. The ballerina-like movements caused Aurora and Boreas to dance around their entangling tresses. The front yard resembled an ostentatious botanical garden, with every plant and flower labeled with its Latin origin nomenclature. There was the Leucospermum nutans, which resembled pink jellyfish tentacles on a stem, and another read Phalaenopsis amabilis, or butterfly orchids, which were ivory in color and blended in with the white snowball hydrangea bushes. Though inviting in color and flowers, the giant “X” on the door foretold all visitors to beware.
“If I did
n’t know a beautiful teacher lived here, I would say this is the home of the witch from Hansel and Gretel,” Boreas mumbled under his breath.
Aurora grabbed hold of the brass horseshoe shaped door knocker and banged it twice against the door. The Tchaikovsky waltz continued to blast throughout the house, and they pressed their ears directly against the door to try to make out any footprints or voices. None were heard as the waltz continued to crescendo for the grand finale.
“Maybe she’s not home.”
“Maybe we should come back later.”
As they were speaking out loud, the door heaved open, lurching their bodies forward, and they landed on their sides on a pasty white rug. A woman’s figure stood between them.
“Aurora! Boreas! What on earth are you doing here?”
They picked themselves up off the rug and were face to face with Mrs. Xiomy. Her golden hair was braided and tied back in a low bun, and she wore thin purple glasses that covered her amethyst eyes.
“Hi, Mrs. Xiomy,” Aurora blurted out. The waltz was skipping, and the same four notes were playing over and over again in an eerie pattern and Mrs. Xiomy quickly walked over to a phonograph machine, where she scratched the needle off the vinyl record.
“Is that a record machine?” Aurora asked, eyeing the contraption that she had only heard her father speak of.
“Shouldn’t you both be headed to class?” she asked suspiciously, eyeing the two visitors while proceeding to tidy up the room. A big chow dog with a bear face, little ears, and a thick coat of fur came dashing into the room and started licking Boreas, who was knocked onto the floor by the furry brown pet. The dog licked him over and over again on the cheek and Boreas’s peddler hat nearly flew off his head.