Each time Meelie came to a butterfly, she tugged on the netting and stood back, allowing them to regain their bearings and fly off. Every one of the butterflies headed in the same direction, along the path Meelie was following. She quickened her pace until she was jogging through the cave. She tripped several times, but paid no mind to the pain or the blood dripping from her shin. She would have time to tend to the wounds later. First, she had to see what Aimee had found, what all the butterflies were drawn to. She knew that she was getting close because she heard some of the children giggling and shouting at one another. In an instant, everything went dark. She had released the last butterfly, but couldn’t keep up as the creature darted through the cave. Unsure of where to turn, Meelie stood as still as she could. She held her breath and listened for the children. Once her eyes adjusted, she could see a hint of orange radiating in the same direction from which the voices had come. She lowered herself to the ground, putting one hand in front of her and the other against the cave wall. Moving through the space was slow, but she inched toward the light until she found a curve in the pathway. Beyond the curve, she saw an immense cavern lit with hundreds of heart flowers. Aimee was sitting in the center of the expanse next to Quinn’s body.
Meelie swallowed the lump in her throat, then entered the room. She didn’t speak; she didn’t know if she even could. The children saw her first and ran toward her with glee before enveloping her in hugs. She admired the way the children had held onto their youth despite their age, and she was grateful for the embrace. Aimee must have noticed the commotion because she stood and waved to Meelie, beckoning her over. Meelie steeled herself for the sight, then stepped away from the children. She could already feel the tears welling over in her eyes, but she refused to break down. Quinn died saving her sister; she wouldn’t have wanted Meelie to mourn her sacrifice. Meelie’s eyes were playing tricks on her, making her believe that Quinn was moving each time the light flickered. Except Aimee hadn’t lit a fire. The light came from the heart flowers, and they weren’t flickering at all.
“I don’t understand,” Meelie whispered as she approached Quinn’s body. “I saw her move. How could that be when I felt her die in my hands?”
“After you left,” Aimee explained, “one of the children ran off. I sent the others to go find her. When they came back, each of them was holding a butterfly. We both know that’s what drove us here in the first place, so I fashioned a net and let the little things guide us. Before long, we came to this room. I told the children that Quinn was gone and that heart flowers couldn’t save her, but they insisted we try. So, we picked a bulb and made our way back to Quinn. I set the heart flower exactly where the last one had been. Then, strange as this sounds, we watched the bulb sink into Quinn. Her chest glowed, then faded. She started to cough. I rushed over to help sit her up. She was confused, but breathing on her own. I tell you, this one’s a fighter.”
“But what about the cut on her chest?” Meelie asked, running her fingers along the place where she had split her friend open. The skin was smooth and flawless except for a jagged, red line.
Aimee told Meelie how one of the children had cut her finger while they were walking through the caves, yet the wound had healed by the time they got back to Quinn. All the children had scales from the butterfly wings. They thought that maybe the butterflies themselves were magic, since they seem to look after the heart flowers, so the children rounded up as many as she could in the net, then brought them over to Quinn. As the butterflies tried to escape, scales rained down onto Quinn’s chest. Everywhere the scales landed, the skin closed up. Before long, the cut from Meelie had healed until the only remnant was the red scar.
Meelie could hardly believe what Aimee was telling her, but she couldn’t deny that the wound had disappeared and Quinn appeared to be sleeping. Her chest rose and fell. Her eyelids twitched. She even had a grin on her face. Meelie had to suppress her desire to wake Quinn, but she couldn’t resist lying beside Quinn and putting an arm around her. Aimee draped a blanket she had been weaving over the two, then ushered the children to a far corner and quickly let loose several bed pallets and blankets. Handy to have a friend who spontaneously produces all our woven needs, Meelie thought to herself, before closing her eyes and succumbing to sleep.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Quinn jerked awake, confused by her surroundings. Instinctively, she touched her chest, which was tender, as if she had been stricken or bruised. She felt a firm line of tissue running down her torso. How long had she been asleep? Scars took time to form, but her scar didn’t make sense because her clothes were still damp from the ocean. She shifted to see Meelie sleeping beside her. Meelie’s clothes, too, appeared damp. Hearing several voices nearby, she pushed herself to a sitting position and looked around. She saw several people sleeping in a far corner of the cavern, as well as two children playing amongst a patch of heart flowers.
She stood up and walked toward the children, who she now knew were the missing Sodder kids she had read about. She wanted to say something, to ask them about the fire and how they had come to the other realm, but she also felt strangely uncomfortable having researched the children, almost as though she had violated some unspoken trust by digging into their past. Quinn couldn’t be sure they had shared anything about their previous life with Meelie or Aimee. She decided to keep her newfound knowledge to herself, at least for the immediate future. She wanted to build trust with them. The five children accounted for more than two-thirds of the people she knew in the other realm. Calling attention to what she knew might jeopardize any attempt to form friendships with them.
“Quinn, you’re awake!” Betty shouted as Quinn approached.
“Am I? So this isn’t a dream?” she joked half-heartedly.
The little girl giggled. Betty, the youngest among the children, was just five years old when she disappeared. Quinn knew that the children had disappeared in 1945, which meant that while Betty looked very young, she was actually more than seventy years old. Like Meelie, she spoke with a wisdom that belied her age, though the effect was much more pronounced coming from such a small child.
Martha scolded Betty for making too much noise while the others were sleeping.
“How did you all find the cave?” Quinn asked Martha.
“Aimee came to us and asked for our help when you went under,” she explained. “Most of the people in the World of Forgotten—that’s what I call this place—are loners, folks who chose to stay because they would rather live by themselves than return to a world that hadn’t really seen them to begin with. Not us, though. We came to this world together after our house caught fire, so we latched onto Meelie pretty quickly. She’s got a real mothering instinct, that one. Anyway, Aimee knew we’d be on board for a makeshift search party, so she gathered us up to help search this island. Even with the lot of us, we spent the better part of two days hunting you down.”
Martha went on to describe Quinn tumbling out of the ocean, how she had stopped breathing, and Meelie’s decision to pull the heart flower from her chest.
“I don’t know much about what happened to Meelie while she was gone. She’ll have to tell you that for herself.” She continued, telling Quinn about running through the caves, finding this room full of magical bulbs, and placing one in Quinn’s chest. By the time Meelie had returned, Quinn had healed almost completely.
“Thank you,” Quinn responded, her voice quivering. “Sounds like I owe you my life.”
“That’s what family is for, right?”
Quinn could feel her face flush with sadness.
“Oh, fiddlesticks. That wasn’t very couth of me. I just meant—”
“You don’t need to apologize. I suppose I could use some family right about now.”
Martha asked Quinn if she could give her a hug, to which Quinn consented. She felt odd hugging a stranger, but Martha put her at ease with her tender eyes and easy smile. The two of them held each other for several minutes before Betty wriggled between the
m and chirped about being hungry.
“Some things never change,” Quinn whispered, already grateful for Betty’s exuberance. Perhaps adjusting to the other realm wouldn’t be as difficult as she had thought. She still had some questions, like why Quinn’s mother hadn’t recognized her, and why Riley appeared to be the only one whose memory wasn’t affected by her trips to the other realm, but she reasoned that she would get more complete answers if she waited for Aimee to wake up, too.
* * *
While Quinn waited for Aimee to wake up, she pressed Betty and Martha for details about their life before the other realm, but they were very guarded. Quinn considered telling her new friends about the posters and conflicting accounts of the fire, about how their parents died believing that the children were still alive. She wondered, though, if that would only bring them sadness.
“Oh, you’re awake,” Aimee muttered, stretching her limbs.
Betty nodded toward her, gleefully relaying their morning conversation.
“Sounds like we have a lot to teach you,” Aimee said, sleep still weighing on her eyes and tongue.
“I have so many questions,” Quinn started, reaching for her notebook. “How do we get toothpaste? Does anybody have a washboard? What sort of—”
Aimee held up her hand.
“Give me a minute, will you? I can’t even see straight yet.”
“You know, I haven’t seen any coffee, here. And what if you need glasses?” Quinn continued.
Martha put a finger to her lips, emphasizing the gesture with raised eyebrows. This time, Quinn complied. The longer she sat waiting, though, the sicker she felt. She still hadn’t had a chance to talk to Meelie about her sister. Had she been able to get the heart flower to Riley on time? Quinn assumed that everything was okay; otherwise, Meelie would have woken her up, or not come back at all. Right? She hated the way uncertainty fed on silence, filling the void with unanswerable questions. She didn’t want to wake Meelie, but she also couldn’t just sit there chewing her fingernails and panicking over possibilities.
“Do we have anything to eat?” she asked, even though Martha had already told her that they didn’t think to bring any food in the frenzy to find her.
Betty shook her head.
“I’m going to go see what I can find,” Quinn declared, rising and walking toward the nearest mouth of the chamber. She knew that she wasn’t likely to find much in the caves, but at least she could distract herself. If nothing else, she imagined that fish passed by the caves often enough; she could figure out a way to snag one. Of course, then she would need to find a way to cook the meat. No matter—the important part was the search. She had spent so much of the last few months looking for things that she had become addicted to the pursuit.
Quinn wandered through the passages, kneeling to inspect groundwater for plants and edible fish. She was grateful for the ever-present glow of heart flowers, which made navigating the cave much more manageable. She usually could see fissures in enough time to avoid them. The farther she went, however, the darker the space around her became. Lost in thought, she wandered into a dark zone. Her right foot slipped, and Quinn tumbled from the path she had been following. She grasped at hard, slimy knobs as her body slid down an incline. She could feel the skin tearing, then a fingernail catching on the rocky slope. Quinn screamed. The echo reverberated for a full thirty seconds. Panic set in. She couldn’t slow her fall, and judging from the distant trill of her scream, she was nowhere near the bottom of the pit.
* * *
“Where is Quinn?” Meelie asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“She went to look for food,” Betty answered, not bothering to turn around.
“By herself?”
“Yep.”
Meelie shook her head, then gestured for Aimee to follow her. When they were out of earshot, she told Aimee everything that had happened during her visit to Earth. Aimee was relieved to hear that Riley’s body had accepted the heart flower, and hopeful about her prediction about the healing process remaining stable if Quinn remained in the other realm. The two women agreed that they needed to find Quinn as soon as possible before her temerity got the best of her. They didn’t want to alarm the others, though. Despite having been in the other realm for nearly a century, they had retained quite a lot of their youthfulness and could quickly descend into panic if the women weren’t careful with their words. They decided not to share that they were worried and instead make a game of the search, calling the rescue mission the Quest for Quinn.
“Whoever finds Quinn first,” Meelie explained, “will get to captain the ship with Aimee on the way back.”
The children cheered, turning and taunting one another, each one proclaiming that they would win the challenge. Aimee gathered the netting and blankets she had woven while Meelie lined the children up and started the countdown. Every one of the kids was off and running before she finished the word go. The women chased after them. The two girls went left while the three boys headed right. Aimee veered to the left, tossing her hand up and ushering Meelie after the boys.
Meelie tried to gain ground, but her body was still taxed from her trip through the portal. Before long, the boys were beyond her field of vision, and she was forced to use their taunts as a guide. The tunnels were growing dimmer as she ran after the children, until she could see only a few feet in front of her. She heard a faint scream and tried to stop, but her boots couldn’t find traction on the wet rock and she barreled into the boys, who were huddled in the middle of the path. The three of them sprawled out on the rock, collecting nicks and scrapes on every limb.
“Is everyone all right?” Meelie heaved, struggling to bring in oxygen.
The boys nodded. Together, they pointed to their ears, then farther down the path. Meelie indicated that she had heard the scream, too. They rose, careful not to make too much sound, and listened in the direction of the first scream.
* * *
“Can anyone hear me?” Quinn shouted. “Meelie! Aimee!”
She clung to the side of the hill, her bloody fingers locked onto a large piece of cave coral. Her forearms were beginning to cramp. She felt the slope beneath her for footing, but the surface was smooth and wet. Her legs hung loosely, already going numb. Terrified, she willed her eyes to adjust to the darkness so that she could better assess her position on the slope. She estimated that she was at least forty or fifty feet below the path, with another two or three hundred feet looming beneath her if she had done the math correctly. For once, her physics homework was proving useful. Of course, she didn’t have a stopwatch to measure the echo of her pleas precisely, so she could be off by a dozen or so yards.
“Quinn?” a small voice called.
“Betty! Is that you?”
“Where are you?”
“Down here! I slid off the path, and I’m stuck on the side of this slope.”
“Get back!” another, very stern voice shouted.
Moments later, Quinn heard something slap the rock. Aimee’s voice cut through the darkness. She was trying to get a rope down to Quinn, but she was working blindly. Quinn could hear the friction of the heavy braid swinging back and forth on the slope. She thrust a hand above her head, clinging to the cave coral with her other. Her grip was waning. If she couldn’t get hold of the rope soon, she would plummet to the bottom.
Quinn heard the scrape of boots and someone breathing heavily. As she flailed for the rope, she swore that the sounds were getting closer. She felt her fingers giving out and tried to switch hands, but she missed the cave coral and began to fall. Her screams felt eerily disembodied, as though the cave walls were wailing. Her only thought as her body bounced farther into the expanse was that she would never know if Meelie had been able to heal her sister.
“More slack!” a familiar voice ordered. “She’s falling fast!”
Meelie must have been the one who had tried to reach her with the rope. Now she was throwing herself down the side of a cave cliff with only the hands of thos
e above to keep her anchored. Quinn felt sick. Once again, her headstrong foolishness had put someone she cherished in danger. She pushed herself away from the slope, giving herself to the emptiness.
“Grab my waist!” Meelie instructed, slamming into Quinn and locking both arms around Quinn in a vice grip.
Above them, Aimee grunted under the sudden increase in weight. She barked for Martha and Jennie to help them haul the dangling duo up the slope. Meelie planted her feet against the rock and elbowed Quinn to do the same. Together, they walked the incline, using the momentum from each tug to gain ground. The approach seemed to alleviate some of the exertion for Aimee and others, who showed a collective surge of energy. Quinn was practically jogging along the rope just to keep pace with Meelie and the intermittent heave from the invisible rescue team. They were moving so fast that she tripped when her feet cleared the slope, causing her to roll headfirst onto the path.
“I smell blood,” a voice that Quinn assumed was Jennie said, breaking through the chorus of shallow breathing.
“I don’t have any shoes,” Quinn answered. “I cut my feet a few times on the climb.”
“Let me help,” Aimee said, putting her hands on Quinn’s feet.
Quinn could feel the tickle of thread forming around her mangled toes and heels. Aimee may have only picked up the one trick, but she sure put that skill to good use—who knew that sprouting rope would be such a valuable bit of magic? Quinn had underestimated how frequently she would have a need for something strong and fibrous.
“Damn it if you aren’t the most stubborn girl I ever met, bunny,” Meelie scolded, untying the rope from her waist. “What’s in your head, anyway? Taking off through the caves alone and with no light. You don’t have a lick of sense. And don’t give me that drivel about being hungry, either.”
The Kaleidoscope Sisters Page 21