Pandora's Key

by Nancy Richardson Fischer

  Stepping through the open door of the bathroom, Evangeline watched her mom brushing her teeth. Olivia Theopolis, dressed in a paint-splattered T-shirt and worn Levis, had probably already been working for hours on the new painting she’d refused to show her daughter. Evangeline couldn’t help noticing that her white-blonde hair was perfectly smooth and straight compared to her own shoulder-length locks that always curled out of control. Self-conscious, she tried to press her hair down and her mom noticed her rumpled reflection in the mirror.

  “H-phy-b-fdy,” she said, before spitting out a mouthful of toothpaste. “Evangel—” Suddenly, her mom’s knees buckled and she grabbed the edge of the pedestal sink to keep from falling. She leaned forward, peering into the porcelain bowl.

  “Blood,” she whispered, confused. And then she looked into the mirror, mouth open wide, shaking fingers running over her teeth. “My teeth—”

  The back of Evangeline’s neck prickled. “Mom?”

  Her mother turned—her flawless skin pale. “I don’t understand. My teeth are falling out and there’s blood in the sink.”

  A chill slithered down Evangeline’s spine as she walked to the sink and peered nervously into it. The porcelain was pure white with a few rivulets of the aqua-colored toothpaste her mom had spit out moments ago. No blood—no blood anywhere. What is she talking about?

  Evangeline released the breath she’d been holding. “Mom, I don’t understand—there’s nothing in the sink but toothpaste.” She looked at her mom’s frightened face and suddenly she was scared. “Your teeth are all there,” Evangeline said and gently turned her mother around to look.

  Slowly the color came back to the woman’s cheeks and she was again Evangeline’s beautiful, young mother. The mom all the boys in her class stared at when she picked up E from school. The one who made them all whisper about how the apple had fallen so far from the tree. And it had. Olivia had bowed pink lips, stunning sky-blue eyes, the body of a gazelle. Evangeline was a giraffe—long neck, gangly limbs, eerie blue-black eyes, and an impossibly wide mouth.

  “E, I’m sorry,” her mom said. “I must’ve still been half-asleep.”

  Evangeline tried to shake off the sticky residue of fear. “It’s okay, but I think—I mean, I don’t want to bum you out, but it’s not the first—”

  “I’m fine,” her mom interrupted. “Really, I just need more sleep.” She smiled and took her daughter’s hand, leading her out of the bathroom.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Your room.” Her mom flashed a secretive smile. “Check under your pillow.”

  Evangeline ran down the hallway. She raced to her bed and tossed one of her pillows onto the floor—nothing. Beneath the second pillow, which was still indented from her head, was a gift-wrapped box.

  “Happy sixteenth birthday, Evangeline, my not-so-little-girl.”

  Grinning, Evangeline picked up the package, which was wrapped in hand-painted purple-flowered paper that must’ve taken her mom hours to make. For a moment, as she ripped open the paper, she thought she smelled floral perfume, but neither of them wore perfume, preferring the fresh scent of soap. Evangeline hoped that this gift was the iPad she’d been wanting so badly. Inside the box was a second box, also wrapped in hand-crafted paper decorated with small white and yellow daisies. The cloying sweetness of torn stems seemed to fill the air as Evangeline tore open the paper. Maybe, she thought, your sense of imagination gets better with age. Or maybe mom and I are both losing it.

  Not that her mom was crazy or anything. It was just that, for the past month some weird stuff had been happening. As far as Evangeline could recall, her mom had never had a cold, let alone a headache. But lately she’d been having migraines that made her too nauseated to eat. And then there were the dreams that punctuated some nights with screams so loud Evangeline had to rush to her mom’s bed to wake her. Her mom never remembered the nightmares, which seemed weird considering how violently she reacted to them. Two nights ago Evangeline had found her mom sitting on the bedroom floor holding her hairbrush.

  “What’re you doing, mom?”

  “I can’t brush my hair. It keeps falling out.” Olivia had stared up at her daughter like a little kid, eyes brimming with tears. And then she’d pointed to what she’d said were bare spots on her scalp.

  Evangeline had helped her mom to her feet and led her to the mirror where they’d examined her mom’s hair together. It still fell in a perfect sheet of platinum to the edge of her square jaw. Her mom had smiled and said she must’ve fallen asleep getting ready for bed and had a bad dream. “At least this time I remembered it,” Olivia said with a brittle laugh.

  “Yeah, that’s something,” Evangeline had replied, but what she’d really wanted to say was: Please stop freaking me out. This woman who’d never been sick couldn’t imagine that something might be wrong with her. Evangeline didn’t think it was anything serious, but the idea of her mother losing it in any way made her feel off-balance, like the world was threatening to start spinning in the wrong direction.

  Evangeline tossed the daisy wrapping paper only to find a still smaller box covered in paper dotted with hand-painted orange, yellow, and red trees. For a brief moment, their leaves fluttered in an invisible breeze. Evangeline quickly looked away and tore off the wrapping, opening the box. Inside was a violet-colored silk bag. The bag gave Evangeline a strange sense of déjà vu even though she’d never seen it before. Easing open the drawstring, she spilled the contents onto her palm. It was a necklace. The delicate silver chain gave off a soft glow. Dangling from it was a small black key carved from some luminous stone. Evangeline again felt a sense of déjà vu.

  “Mom?” she asked, glancing at her mother’s bare neck and then meeting her eyes.

  “It’s a tradition in our family, E. I don’t know who started it, but my mother, and her mother before her and on and on gave this necklace to each of their daughters on their sixteenth birthday—or so the story goes.”

  “I’ve never seen you take it off.” Evangeline traced the outline of the key in her palm.

  “I never have.”

  “But you love this necklace.”

  Her mom smiled. “That’s why I want you to have it.” She took the necklace from Evangeline, undid the clasp, and placed it around her neck.

  “Do you know what the key was made to unlock?”

  “I asked my mother the same thing, but she had no idea. Maybe it was just meant to be pretty.”

  Evangeline looked down at the key resting between her collarbones. Heat seemed to emanate from it and the feeling washed over her skin like warm water, along with a tingling sensation and a strange shift—a feeling of total comfort that she could only describe as her body finally fitting into its own skin. Stop imagining things. But there was no question that the key somehow belonged around her neck, along with the accompanying sense of warmth.

  Evangeline looked into the mirror above her dresser. When she was younger, she’d dress in her mom’s clothes, blur her eyes, and pretend she was the glamorous Olivia. And suddenly now with the key her mother had always worn resting around her own neck, it somehow made her feel like she looked different, better—well, less like Big Bird. At least her eyes didn’t seem quite so enormous and she could differentiate the gloomy-blue of her irises from her black pupils, which looked iridescent. Is this possible? The smooth black key appeared almost liquid against her pale skin—fluid and incandescent.

  “Thanks so much mom—I really, really love it.”

  Her mother pulled Evangeline into a hug, holding on for a few seconds too long. “Good. You deserve it.”

  Pulling free from the embrace, Evangeline headed toward the hall. “How about I make us waffles,” she offered, because when they’d hugged, she’d felt her mother’s sharp shoulder blades and couldn’t help but notice that her mom’s jeans hung off jutting hipbones. When did she lose so much weight?

  They made breakfast together in the cozy kitchen of the bungalow they shared with
their orange and white cat, Jasmine. They moved through their tasks, making coffee, pouring OJ, cutting grapefruit—in the seamless rhythm of two people who had forever shared their lives.

  “Yuck,” Evangeline said, pointing to the sliding glass door that led out into their backyard. It was splattered with what looked like dried blood.

  “Must’ve been a bird,” her mother said, frowning, because she was a freak about loving animals, even mice. She pulled the slider open and looked down in the grass. No bird. “Well, either Jasmine got the poor thing or it flew away.” She turned to the tabby, scratching behind her ears. “Which is it, Jas?”

  Jasmine looked over at Evangeline without blinking. “If she knows, she’s not telling,” Evangeline said. She gave her mother the first waffle, poured batter on the griddle to make another, and then bent down to look at the bottom of her foot because it was stinging. “Huh.”

  “What?”

  Evangeline peered closer. “I just have something in my heel…got it.” She pulled out a rough, wood splinter—which was weird because the floors in their house were polished bamboo.

  Chapter Three

  Malledy shifted on the crinkly white paper-covered exam table so he could see Mount Hood out of the tenth floor window. It wasn’t awe-inspiring like the mountains around his home, but it was a jagged symbol, at least to him, of hope.

  Malledy had come to Portland, Oregon, for two reasons. The first and most important reason was to meet with Dr. Aali. One of the leaders in his field, Dr. Aali was extremely busy, so even after countless scans, blood draws and myriad tests, Malledy had been forced to nervously wait seven weeks for a face-to-face meeting.

  The second reason Malledy had come to Portland was to acquire an artifact for a client. He’d not yet told Juliette about the assignment nor that he was getting close to finding the ancient talisman. This acquisition might be his last success and he wanted to surprise Juliette—give her a moment of joy and pride, should Dr. Aali prove to be a literal dead-end.

  “Que penses-tu?” Juliette asked.

  Malledy turned to face his mentor, trying not to notice how the past four months had aged her. There were gray strands in her auburn hair and deep lines around her intelligent lime-green eyes. She was only forty-four, but today she looked sixty—and scared. For a split-second Malledy was annoyed that he needed to worry about Juliette when he was the one truly suffering. “I was thinking about home,” Malledy said, trying to smile reassuringly because none of this was Juliette’s fault.

  “We can go back there soon.”

  “Do you think my mother knew that I’d get sick?”

  “Non, mon cher. I think she left you because she could not be a mother.” Juliette had long ago told Malledy that he should accept that he would never know anything about his biological parents. There simply was no information—no leads to follow—because Malledy had been abandoned as an infant on the doorstep of Castle Aertz, high in the mountains of northeast Italy.

  For a brief time when he was nine, Malledy had sought to learn more about his birth mother. He’d questioned people living in the mountain villages closest to the castle, and searched hundreds of parish records for leads. In addition he’d badgered every occupant of Castle Aertz for memories of his arrival but found that a baby abandoned on a doorstep had left little impression and was seen only as a momentary distraction. It became clear that the trail leading to his birth mother was ice cold and Malledy had been forced to swallow his desire and move on.

  Malledy looked down at his right hand—it was flopping on his thigh like a weak fish. The current diagnosis for his tremors was “chorea,” which basically meant uncontrolled, involuntary movement. He was taking Paroxetine—a tranquilizer to quell the spasms. It was obvious that whatever was wrong with him was getting worse and he needed a higher dose of the drug. In the meantime, if he gripped something when the spasms hit, or crammed his hands into his pockets, he could still the tremors, which so far were the only outward signs of his illness.

  “Would you have wanted a different life?” Juliette asked, holding tightly to Malledy’s right hand until the spasm relented.

  Malledy gave the answer he knew Juliette wanted to hear. “Of course not.” The voice in his head said something different: I would’ve liked a choice. Malledy had grown up the only child within the castle. The original owner of the castle, Baron Aertz, had been a scholar in the 1600’s who was obsessed with uncovering the mysteries of the world. He’d bought the remote castle and created a clandestine Order called the “Archivists.” Those men and women worked in secret for patrons who included a King, a handful of Popes, and other nameless powerful men and women all of whom had three things in common: great wealth, the ability to locate the well-hidden Archivists, and the intelligence to keep the Archivists’ secret. Telling tales about the Order meant certain death no matter how rich or important the client might have believed himself to be.

  Archivists were recruited for their brilliance and not allowed to have children, who would both distract them and make them soft. They worshipped the God of Knowledge and there were no rules save that the end always justified whatever means necessary to acquire a priceless morsel of information or talisman. Malledy had been the only exception to the Archivists’ policy of no children and he was grateful that for some reason they’d decided to allow him to stay at the castle until his tenth birthday. If he’d not proven himself worthy to become one of them by then, he would have been removed.

  No one ever defined “removed” for Malledy. But given the secrecy surrounding the Archivists, he’d come to understand that it meant not leaving a young boy alive to talk about a hidden castle high in the Dolomite Mountains containing discoveries powerful enough to topple governments, religions and the very definition of Gods.

  Most of his life, Malledy now realized, he’d felt like he was part of a giant chess game, moved around at random by the Archivists. For brief moments, he was allowed to be the player—the hand that shifted certain pieces—instead of a pawn. But those moments were mostly an illusion because the Archivists ultimately made the rules that governed the game and his only choice was to either play by them or be knocked off the board. And now? Now an even more potent force had taken charge of his life and he was at its mercy.

  “Thank you, Juliette,” Malledy said softly.

  “For what?” she asked, shifting her lithe frame to a more comfortable position on the vinyl chair.

  “For being my mentor.” Juliette had raised Malledy, taught him six languages, and instilled in him the desire to learn more on his own. She’s made certain he could debate in ancient Greek, grasp advanced physics, navigate philosophy, and understand complex scientific principles. She had shown him how to dig into any field and parse through thousands of pages of research that might include paintings on cave walls, stolen diaries, and symbols thousands of years old burned into animal hides. She’d been a surrogate mother, tucking him into bed each night and comforting him when he was afraid. Most importantly, Juliette had given Malledy the skills to ultimately find and acquire artifacts for clients so that he might be able to save his own life when his tenth birthday tolled—six long years ago now.

  There was a knock on the exam room door. “Entrée,” Juliette called, and Dr. Aali walked in carrying Malledy’s thick medical chart.

  Dr. Aali was a skinny man with rectangular glasses too wide for his narrow face. He was only five-foot-four and with his wiry gray-hair looked like a wise, old man in a child’s body. He shook Juliette’s hand and then patted Malledy on the shoulder. “Nice to see you,” he said, sitting down on a stool and rolling forward until he was perched in the space between Malledy and Juliette.

  “You’ve reviewed my MRIs and the new tests?” Malledy asked.

  Dr. Aali nodded and opened Malledy’s file, scanning it quickly. “Your original physician, Dr. Cantori, diagnosed you with Huntington’s disease four months ago based on a genetic test combined with emerging symptoms. But your own research led y
ou to believe you’re too young to contract the disease so you came to me for a second opinion.”

  “That’s right.” Malledy nodded. “Symptoms usually occur after age thirty-five. In addition, I’ve had none of the typical warning signs that usually accompany the disease.” His heart was beating so hard against his chest that the sensation was painful. This is what hope feels like.

  “Yes,” Dr. Aali said, momentarily distracted as he flipped through his notes. “It’s always important to get another opinion—especially when facing this sort of diagnosis.”

  “Has there been some mistake?” Juliette asked, leaning forward, her hands gripping the edge of the chair. Again Malledy felt irritated. Juliette’s fear and need to help both embarrassed him and made him feel guilty. She cares, Malledy reminded himself. She’s the only one who ever has.

  Dr. Aali met Malledy’s gaze with compassionate brown eyes. “I’m very sorry,” he said.

  Malledy’s stomach cramped violently, and then dropped. His body felt unbearably heavy, weighed down by those three words: I’m very sorry. Malledy had known, hadn’t he? Of course he had. After all, his fellow Archivists considered him a genius, and they, themselves, had staggering IQs. Strange, Malledy thought, how he’d spent his entire life unemotionally evaluating facts but when they were personal he’d lost all perspective. Why did Juliette allow me on this wild goose chase? Because she didn’t want to see clearly either.

  “The original diagnosis was correct,” Dr. Aali continued. “You have early onset Huntington’s disease. While it’s rare in a teenager, it’s not unheard of. And it progresses much more rapidly in the young. Unfortunately, despite my own and others’ research, we still have no cure for the disease.”