Beyond the Door

by Maureen Doyle McQuerry

  He sat on the side of his mother’s bed, not even sure if she was aware he was there. As soon as the nurse left the room, he drew out the ceramic jar and took off the lid. Just as he had been warned, the smell was pungent. The cream inside was yellow and thick, and it smelled a little like pine needles mixed with something old and moldy.

  “Mom, it’s me—Timothy. I’ve got something to help you.” Then he dipped two fingers into the jar and scooped out some ointment. He pulled back his mother’s covers, searching for the rat bite on her calf. The leg was still swollen, the affected area green and black. He rubbed the salve in gently. Her skin was very hot, but she didn’t flinch.

  The ointment disappeared on her skin as he rubbed, and soon only the faint smell of pine needles was left. Despite the Greenman’s words, Timothy still worried. What if it didn’t help? In fact, what if it was the very wrong thing? His mouth dry, Timothy fumbled the jar back into the pouch.

  He heard footsteps outside the door.

  “Timothy! What are you doing here?” His father stood in the doorway. Pouches drooped under his eyes, and there were lines on his face Timothy had never noticed before. “I saw the note that you and Sarah were with Jessica, but I knew you’d have a hard time not worrying about your mom.”

  His father’s voice, Timothy noticed, held that false note of heartiness that his parents used around him and Sarah when they were trying to cover something up. “But don’t you worry. I’ve got a new prescription here that should be just the ticket! Fix her right up! Eh, Lizzie?”

  Timothy’s mother sighed and stirred under the blankets.

  The nurse crept back into the room. “Oh, you’ve got it!” she exclaimed, reaching for the prescription sack. “It really is supposed to be a miracle drug for fighting infection. Something none of the bacteria are resistant to yet.” She opened the bag and took out several ampoules of medicine. “I’ll just add these to the IV.” She wrinkled her nose. “Goodness, what’s that peculiar odor?”

  “Uh, just some cologne Sarah and Jessica made me try on,” Timothy said quickly.

  His father looked at him sharply. “Now, give your mother a kiss and run back to Jessica’s. I’ll call you later with an update.”

  “I want to stay here,” Timothy said, trying to think fast. He knew he needed to be near his mother. “It’s just girls over there, and I’ll be quiet and helpful here.”

  “Just girls!” His father snorted. “Someday you might not mind that. But, yes, stay if you want. You’ll have to take care of yourself, and no loud goings-on.” His father spoke distractedly, as if he didn’t even know what he was saying.

  “I’ll make us some sandwiches,” Timothy said, hoping that if he disappeared into the kitchen they might forget all about him.

  “Good idea, son … I guess I am a bit hungry.”

  The nurse had already finished putting the medication into the IV. “There, now. We’ll soon see some improvement, I suspect.” And she settled back in her chair.

  Later that evening, Timothy was lying on the living room floor, trying to read, when his father came to find him.

  “It’s the strangest thing … The fever’s broken! She’s resting peacefully.” He came over and grabbed up Timothy in a bear hug. “Wow,” he added, tears welling in his eyes, “that must be some antibiotic!”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Well, just for a minute won’t hurt, I guess.”

  But Timothy was already on his way to the bedroom. His mother was still propped up by pillows, but a slight flush of color had returned to her skin. When he entered, she turned her head a little and smiled.

  “Mom?” Timothy heard his voice catch.

  She didn’t say anything, just smiled.

  The nurse looked up. She was smiling, too. Then she went back to her magazine.

  Timothy snuggled against the side of the bed. “You look better,” he told his mother.

  She reached out one thin hand and patted his arm. “I’m feeling better.” Her voice was thin, too, and hoarse, barely more than a whisper.

  Timothy kissed her on the forehead, and his mother closed her eyes, already drifting back to sleep. Seizing the opportunity, and making sure to screen the pouch from the nurse’s view, Timothy again took out the blue jar, scooped out some ointment, and rubbed it on his mother’s leg.

  “You certainly put on a lot of that cologne!” the nurse’s voice sounded behind him. “Did they tell you it would make you more attractive to the girls?” She laughed at her own comment.

  “Something like that,” Timothy muttered.

  “She’s ready to sleep, and you should, too. Off with you now!”

  Timothy found his father in the kitchen, eating a piece of cold pie.

  “Can I stay home from school tomorrow?”

  Looking exhausted, his father set aside the pie plate, rubbed his nose, and looked at the clock. “Why not?” he said with a weary shrug. “After what we’ve been through, we can all probably use the rest.” Then he looked up quickly. “Is all your homework done?”

  “Yes, sir.” Timothy could hardly conceal his smile. He had things to work out, and tomorrow would be his chance.

  Timothy climbed the stairs to his room and lay down on his bed, fully dressed. The ointment from the Market seemed to be working. But what about Sarah? He tried to stay awake and make a plan, but he was too tired to wrestle with that puzzle now—it was almost midnight. Puzzle—two z’s would be twenty points in one play, but everyone knows each game of Scrabble has only one Z. Puzzle is a word that could never be played.

  By using the key provided here, you can decipher the Ogham script that appears in this chapter. Zoom in or increase font size to see code more clearly.

  THE MAN IN THE WOODS

  HE FIRST THING Timothy did when he awoke the next morning was run down to his mother’s room. To his amazement, the blinds were raised and she was sitting upright, eating from a tray balanced on her lap.

  He stood quietly in the doorway, watching her eat and thinking how much better she looked in the morning light. She was thinner and paler than before her illness, of course, but a long way from the waxen figure consumed by fever he had seen just last night. He felt for the ceramic jar in the pouch at his side.

  Glancing up from her tray, his mother smiled and motioned for him to come in.

  “Oh, Timothy, I’m so glad to see you!” She stretched out her arms for a hug. Bending over the bed, Timothy buried his face in her hair. “I hope you weren’t too worried about me. Dad tells me you were here watching over me last night. And it’s amazing, I feel so much better today. Just a little tired, really.” She took a sip of her orange juice.

  Timothy found it surprisingly hard to speak. “You look lots better, too,” he said, suddenly wondering how he was going to apply more salve now that she was wide awake and aware of what was going on. “Um … I’ve got something for you. From Sarah. It’s a new lotion she and Jessica made up. I think it smells nasty, but she and Jessica think it smells great and it’s supposed to be good for your skin.”

  His mother smiled. “Then of course I’ll have to try it, no matter what it smells like. Rub a little on my wrist, right here. And tell me what you two have been up to. I suppose Sarah is at school?”

  Timothy busied himself with taking out the jar so he wouldn’t have to answer her question. He scooped some salve on his fingers and rubbed it on her wrist. His mother wrinkled her nose. “Well, it’s certainly an interesting fragrance,” she said.

  “It’s supposed to keep your skin smooth and it’s good for cuts and maybe bites, too,” he added quickly. “I, um, cut my finger yesterday and it healed it right up!”

  “Oh, is that so. Well, then, let’s see what it can do.” His mother laughed and let Timothy rub some on her calf.

  Just then the nurse bustled into the room.

  “It’s time you rested,” she ordered Timothy’s mother. She checked the IV and then picked up the breakfast tray. “Oh, and your father had to go in
for a meeting with the doctor,” she said to Timothy. “He said you’re not to tire your mother out and that he’d be home around noon.”

  “You can fill me in on everything later,” Timothy’s mother said. She kissed the top of his head, and Timothy gave a small sigh of relief. Truth was, he wasn’t ready to say much yet. Besides, he needed to find out what was happening with Sarah and Jessica.

  Timothy quietly shut the bedroom door behind him, thinking that when it came to finding out things, the library was usually the best place to start. Especially if it turned out that Julian—the reference librarian Julian of this world—could be in two places, two different worlds, at the same time.

  It was strange to be at the public library on a school morning, and stranger still to be out and about town. Timothy kept waiting for someone to question why he wasn’t in school, but no one did. When he arrived at the library, it wasn’t Julian’s long face he saw behind the reference desk. Mrs. Torres was back in her usual place.

  “I’m looking for Julian,” Timothy said.

  She looked up from the computer screen and smiled at the interruption. “Oh, Timothy! How good to see you. Julian’s on vacation,” she said, “but is there anything I can help you with?”

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?” Timothy said, unable to suppress a note of panic in his voice. Julian, he had suddenly realized, was his only link to the other world, to the Market.

  “Two weeks, I think. Has he been helping you with some research?”

  “Sort of … I just wanted to talk to him,” he stammered.

  She looked disappointed. “If you change your mind, I’m here.”

  Timothy nodded his thanks.

  He sat on the bench in front of the library and thought. He didn’t have a backup plan. He’d done what he needed to do, but now he had to get back to the Market and help Sarah, and he didn’t know the way. Worse, Fiona had said he could never return. But he had to try.

  He jumped to his feet. Perhaps he could go back to the track through the woods and find the portway. Why hadn’t he thought of that sooner? Perhaps the Old Way would take him back!

  He stopped by home to get his mountain bike, and headed straight to the trails on the edge of town. This would be easy; after all, he knew the right path. But when he got to the trailhead, it looked no different than it had a hundred times before: a muddy, well-worn track through the woods. He rode several hundred yards down the path, but nothing happened. Thinking that perhaps he needed to be off his bike to find the portway, he stowed it in some bushes off to the side, then stood in the middle of the path, willing something to happen.

  But nothing did. The path was nothing but dirt. In frustration, he grabbed the closest rock and hurled it into the trees with all his might.

  There was a loud cry. It was followed by a number of unintelligible words, and for the briefest moment, Timothy thought he was hearing the voice of a tree. The bushes parted, and the red face of an obviously angry man appeared before him. And not just any man. He had hit Mr. Twig.

  The professor was wearing a safari hat and had a very large gunnysack draped over one shoulder. In his right hand was a walking stick. And once again, his clothes were all variations of the same color: green this time, from his jungle-green vest to his many-pocketed sage-green hiking pants. Little bits of leaf and twig stuck to his sleeves and pants. They even bristled from his eyebrows, as if he’d been crawling through the bracken on hands and knees.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Mr. Twig said with a sniff. “You know, if you wanted to get my attention, there are many other, more pleasant, ways.” He rubbed at his cheek where a nasty red welt was forming. “You could have taken out my eye!”

  “I—I’m so sorry!” Timothy said, suppressing a smile and trying not to show how happy he was to see the man. “I didn’t know you were in there at all.”

  “Then why were you throwing stones at me?”

  “It wasn’t at you. I was just—well, frustrated, and …” Timothy’s voice trailed off.

  “Well, no permanent harm done, I suppose,” Mr. Twig said, offering Timothy one last glower before his face relaxed. “I’ve been out collecting,” he explained, gesturing at the bag over his shoulder.

  “What do you collect?” Timothy said politely, not the least bit interested.

  “Oh, juniper berries, laurel branches, pinecones … the odd specimen. Some are good in cooking, some have other purposes.” Mr. Twig sat down on a nearby log and took out a canteen of water. “And the woods here give me a place to practice my pipes.”

  “Pipes?”

  “Uilleann pipes,” Mr. Twig added. After swallowing a drink from the canteen, he opened his oversized pack and drew out a strange-looking instrument. It had a red velvet bag with a small bellows attached, and something that looked like a flute on one end. “It’s my practice set, a bit smaller than my regular one, since it’s missing the drones and regulators.” He slid the bellows under one elbow and pumped his arm in and out as his fingers danced over the holes carved into the flute. The sound was deep and sweet, not at all like the loud, wailing bagpipe music Timothy had expected to hear.

  After playing a few lines of music, Mr. Twig put the pipes down by his feet. “But now, what are you doing on one of the Old Ways, throwing stones?”

  “You know about the Old Ways?” Timothy gasped.

  “I know some of them. This path, for instance, was once part of the Green Road, an old mail route from the early 1800s. Why do you ask?”

  “Because last night I was on this path. It took me from somewhere else to here.”

  “Did it?” Mr. Twig chuckled and pulled a lime-green handkerchief from his vest pocket to wipe his mouth. “Yes, indeed, that’s what roads do. Take us from one place to another. Usually we decide where we want to go. But every now and then the roads wake up. It can cause all kinds of havoc.” He patted the empty section of log beside him. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me what you’ve been up to.”

  Timothy went over and sat down, wondering just how much to tell Mr. Twig and afraid that explaining everything might take too long. “Can there be more than one world at the same time?” he asked instead. “More than one world, but in different places?”

  Mr. Twig waggled his eyebrows. “The physicists and philosophers certainly seem to think so. My specialty, as you know, is mythology, but I assure you, mythology would not disagree.” He took another drink from the canteen and held it out to Timothy. “Would you care for some water?”

  Timothy shook his head.

  “For instance, there was a physicist, a Dr. Everett, who suggested we could better understand quantum theory—you have heard of quantum theory, haven’t you?—by envisioning parallel universes.”

  This time Timothy nodded; he’d read about quantum theory on his own last spring. It had been difficult to understand but fascinating.

  “He believed that there exist a number of these universes, and that there can even be communication between them. In fact, he believed that what happens in one universe can affect what happens in another.”

  “But is Dr. Everett right?”

  “I assume you mean, is his theory correct? If you find evidence of it, then it’s at least probable and worth considering, wouldn’t you say?” Mr. Twig blew his nose in the lime-green square of hankie and then folded it up like an envelope and stuffed it back in his pocket. “Mythologies, on the other hand, are stories of the way the world came to be and why things are the way they are. Yet they, too, all say that there is more to the universe than what we perceive with our senses. I expect your own experiences confirm that?”

  Timothy squirmed and pushed some dead leaves about with his toe.

  “Just as I thought. I also think there must be some particular and perhaps important reason for these questions?”

  “There are a lot of things I just can’t explain,” Timothy admitted with a sigh. “But right now my main problem is that my sister needs help, and she’s somewhere else, in a place I can’t get to a
gain.”

  To his credit, Mr. Twig didn’t laugh. In fact, he looked at Timothy very seriously. “And do you have a way to help your sister, if you were able to get to her again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is there anyone else there who can?”

  “Maybe. But I should be there. I should be the one to do it.”

  “Then why did you come back here?”

  “I had to come home first. My mother needed help, too.”

  “And were you able to help your mother?”

  “I think so. I brought her a special cream, a healing cream from the other place. But, then, it might just have been the new antibiotic they gave her. I can’t be sure.”

  Mr. Twig nodded and waited for Timothy to go on. When he didn’t say anything else, Mr. Twig commented, “Sometimes a task is not ours, no matter how much we want it to be.”

  Timothy was feeling more and more miserable. This conversation was not going the way he had hoped. “I thought you might be able to tell me how to get back to Sarah,” he mumbled finally.

  “Timothy, do you believe that you’re the one ultimately responsible for your sister’s safety? Oh, I’m sure you can help, but that’s too large a burden to carry alone for any one of us.” When Timothy didn’t answer right away, Mr. Twig stood up abruptly and looked at his watch. “You know where to find me. I’d be interested in hearing how this adventure progresses.”

  Timothy still didn’t say anything. He was too disappointed to talk, and here Mr. Twig was leaving him! He watched as the professor lifted the large gunnysack over his shoulder, turned, and, with his walking stick firmly in hand, strode toward the direction of town.

  Suddenly, Timothy called out, “What about time, Mr. Twig? If there are other universes or dimensions, would time be the same as it is here?”

  Mr. Twig turned back to face Timothy, looking, Timothy thought, like a gangly Santa Claus with a sack over one shoulder. “I believe that things might be able to happen simultaneously,” he said. “Our own view of time is rather limited, don’t you think? As you’ve probably read, time is not a straight line.” And with a flap of his bony hand, he was off.