by Неизвестный
“I just liked the name,” the barman said gruffly. “That one's J. Edgar Hoover. He don't bother people, like I said.”
Opal pulled her feet all the way up to the seat of her bar stool. Hoover, who was a good five feet long if he was an inch, slithered underneath the stool, flicking his tongue out a few times before moving on.
The barman said, “If you think he's a beauty, there's a big one, too, and that one's name is Mittens.”
Opal fought the panicky urge to jump up on the bar counter. “There's a bigger one?”
“A-yup. Don't come when they're called, though. Not much point in namin' a snake, but we do what we do.”
Waleah raised her glass. “We do what we do.”
Hoover slithered off to parts unknown, so Opal let her feet down to rest on the metal bar of the stool. She watched her great-aunt sip her wine and wondered how long they'd be in the bar, but didn't want to ask.
While periodically checking for snakes below, she looked around at her surroundings. How long had it been since she'd been home, in her own apartment? Nearly two days. Two days without talking to her friends, or being near a phone or computer. She imagined all the messages that would be piled up waiting for her when she got back home. Would Katy even believe her about all the things she'd seen on the island? Probably not without photos. Katy was fond of the expression, “Pics or it didn't happen!”
Behind the bar were rows of bottles, which wasn't that surprising, for a pub. Because of her age, she'd never been inside an actual bar, but she'd been to pub-like family restaurants, and they always had a bar with a mirrored back and some brooding hot guy behind the counter, pretending to look busy. This barman was on the old side, but Opal guessed he'd been hot in his day. She wondered, based on the way they seemed so comfortable with each other, exactly what was the deal between him and Waleah? Were they more than friends, or was Waleah simply one of the regulars, in here daily, drinking wine before lunch time?
“Mind if I wander around?” Opal asked the barman.
“Fill your boots,” he said.
Careful to avoid Hoover or the larger one, Mittens, she wandered over to a tucked-away spot with a cold fireplace to examine the bookshelves. What she really wanted was a guidebook to the island, or those kids' books Flora Fritz wrote, even if the stories were only half-truths. Instead, she found the same selection of dog-eared paperbacks you get everywhere free books are found. Many of them were authors she recognized, like Stephen King, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts, which made sense, since a place as small as Ystad wouldn't have its own publishing industry.
Opal returned to the bar stool and sat quietly, trying to make a good first impression. She asked the barman for the time and he said it was a quarter past eleven. An eternity passed. She asked again, and he said, “Ten minutes since the last time I told ya.”
Waleah turned to her and said, “I think time passes at different rates, depending on your age. It's been a long time since I was a child, so I hardly remember.”
“Do you have kids?”
Waleah smiled and said, “No, because the second reason is I'm physically unable to.”
The barman chuckled and said, “And what did you say the first reason was?”
“Never wanted any!” She finished her wine and said to Opal, “No offense to you, my dear, because you're practically an adult, so it's not the same. In a few months, you'll be all set up and on your own, and we can meet for lunch, with the other ladies. How old are you now, eighteen? Almost nineteen? You can apply for some apartments on the way out of town today.”
“My birthday was two days ago,” Opal said. “But I only just turned fifteen.”
The barman coughed.
“Chowder!” Waleah cried.
The barman coughed again, then poured Waleah another glass of wine.
* * *
Opal was in a glowering mood as she followed her great-aunt home. Home. The place she'd never seen, but that Peter had called creepy. She did not have a good feeling about any of this. Though she'd been abandoned by her mother, her grandfather had been so happy to raise her, and he'd kept her from feeling unwanted or unloved.
When she'd first met his sister that morning in the jail cell, she'd felt a touch of that same bond between them. In retrospect, that had been more wishful thinking than truth. After a few glasses of wine at the pub—four that Opal counted, plus who knows how many before she got to the pub—the truth had come out, and kids were not wanted. Opal was not wanted. She grasped for her searing anger to keep the tears at bay.
The walk was long, and once they left the outskirts of the town, the scenery changed to farm fields. Tall stalks of corn grew on one side of the cobblestone path, and on the other side grew even taller stalks of something she didn't recognize, covered in purple and red flowers that smelled like grape jelly and hibiscus.
Waleah's walking had straightened out somewhat, so Opal decided to test the woman's patience and sobriety by asking what the unusual plants were called.
“Vegetables,” Waleah said.
“I gathered that. But what kind?”
Waleah looked down and gave her a blank look, but Opal was growing accustomed to getting blank looks in response to her questions about the island. “Warren didn't tell you anything in preparation?”
“Apparently not.”
Waleah stopped and reached under a big green leaf on the flowered plant, then pulled out a red, cherry-sized tomato, plus a green pepper of the same size. “Vegetables,” she said, handing them to Opal. “Take a bite.”
The tomato was firm and sweet, and the green pepper had a hint of spice to it. “These plants, are they magic? Or genetically engineered? How are they growing different type of vegetables? And… and… furthermore, tomatoes are technically fruit, not vegetables.”
Waleah glanced around, then picked a handful of the little tomatoes. “Truth is, I don't know. Hargrove Farms owns the fields and the patents on the plants. They had a big crop failure a few years back when they tried to blend the corn into these plants. Big disaster. We had to import, shook up the entire economy. People went bankrupt, but I guess it was a good thing, because it led to banking reform, and… am I boring you with this?”
“No, not at all. It's just… a lot to take in at once.”
Something rustled in the corn field side. Waleah's eyes opened wide, and she took a quick turn for the sober.
Opal said, “What is it?”
Waleah grabbed Opal by the hand and started to run. She ran fast for a lady her age, but Opal had no problem keeping up, fueled by the fear of whatever was trampling through the corn, breaking stalks.
They didn't stop until they reached a set of iron gates, where Waleah cursed her shaking hands as she opened the latch, which wasn't locked, but was more complicated than a simple handle.
Opal peered back over her shoulder, her pulse racing. The stalks of the fields on both sides of the road were swaying, though she still couldn't see what large person or thing lurked in the fields.
The gates swung open with a mighty wail of a creak, and the two rushed through and closed the gate behind them.
Opal said, “What's in the fields? Bears? Cougars? Bear-cougar hybrids?”
“Shh,” Waleah said, then whispered, “It's better not to find out. They guard the fields, and we shouldn't have taken these.” She held out the tomatoes, which were a little bruised from the run. “Still, stolen fruit tastes sweeter, doesn't it?” She grinned and popped a few into her mouth, then offered the rest to Opal.
Opal considered her options quickly, then accepted some of the stolen fruit to eat, so her great-aunt wouldn't think she was judging her.
They smiled at each other, eating the tomatoes.
“Fifteen years old,” Waleah said. “I'm sixty, which makes me a nice, round forty-five years older than you, and it's been forty-five years or more since I stole anything.”
“I may be a bad influence on you.”
“Let's hope you are.”
Chapter Seven
Opal gawked up at the granite wall before her, stunned to find what appeared to be window frames higher up.
She said to her great-aunt, “This is your house?”
“This is your house too now.”
“But it's a cave.”
Waleah laughed. “Not really. Appearances can be deceiving. Here, look.” She pointed up to what had looked at first like cracks in the side of a mountain. “There's the roof line. The house is made of wood, but it's nestled into a hollow, a crease in the side of the mountain, and the whole thing is faced with the same stone from the mountainside, instead of wood or stucco.” She pointed to some trees off to the side. “The edge of the house is there, behind the landscaping.”
“I guess I can't believe my own eyes around here, can I?”
“Is that so much different from your previous home?”
Waleah pushed open the front door, which was unlocked.
They entered a mudroom, with hooks along the wall and benches below. One wall held a piece of furniture with neat little cubbyholes for shoes, gloves, umbrellas, and other things.
Waleah tapped on the wall hook before hanging up her purse. “You like?”
“Looks like IKEA,” Opal said.
Waleah beamed. “Thanks! It's not. Well, the design is from IKEA, from a catalog I have, and I paid to have these things custom-made. Cost me an absolute fortune, but I just fall in love with their designs. Oh, IKEA. I can spend hours looking at the catalogs.”
“The stores are really fun,” Opal said.
Waleah sighed. “You're so lucky you've been. I'll never go. Are the meatballs in the cafeteria as good as they say?”
Opal wrinkled her nose and lied, “Not really.”
Waleah was removing her shoes—white runners—so Opal also removed her shoes, guessing her new home, like her former apartment, was a shoes-off zone.
Opal said, “I can't believe you have magic vegetable plants. Those tomatoes were yummy.”
Waleah picked up the bag of clothes Opal had purchased and daintily rifled through the garments, her face creasing with displeasure. With her lilac-colored track suit and orange purse, surely she wasn't sniffing at Opal's fashion taste, was she?
“Did the little witches help pick these clothes?”
“Yes. Why? Are they bad?”
“The clothes are fine,” she said.
“Thanks again for the new wardrobe.”
“Come on.” Waleah beckoned Opal to follow her into the house, down a hallway. The layout wasn't open, as Peter's little house had been, but separated into a bunch of rooms, none of them small. Waleah named off the rooms, which all looked like kid-free zones to Opal, with formal furniture and doilies on everything.
They entered a banquet-sized room with a long table and two dozen chairs.
Waleah said, “When I was little, the family was much larger, and we'd fill this room regularly, not just for special occasions.” She looked around at the art on the burgundy-colored walls—prints of people on horseback, the horses jumping over things. “The house has grown quiet in recent years.”
“How old was my grandfather when he moved to the mainland?”
Waleah's lips puckered, as though tasting something sour. “Not much older than you are. Too young to make such a decision, if you ask me.”
“Do people come back?”
“No.”
“So, I'll never be able to visit my old home again? I'll never see my friends or my grandfather?”
“Let's not have this conversation.”
Waleah led her out of the dining room and stopped at a stairwell.
“I do want to fit in here,” Opal said.
“Enough talk of politics,” Waleah said. “Nothing's sure or finite. I don't want to raise your hopes, nor do I wish to dash them.”
“So I may be able to return home?”
“You got here, didn't you? People aren't supposed to show up unannounced, without paperwork, but you did. Completely unexpected and unannounced.”
“I'm sorry.” Opal looked down at her socked feet and felt guilty.
“Enough sad talk. Why don't you run upstairs and pick a bedroom. You can have whichever…”
Opal didn't hear the rest of the sentence, because she was already tearing up the stairs.
* * *
The bedroom Opal chose for herself was the least luxurious. It was the smallest room of the upstairs options, and the cracking plaster walls appeared to be held up by unappealing floral wallpaper, peeling off in sections. The bed was narrower than her old bed, not much bigger than the prison cot she'd spent the previous night on, and the closet was tiny, maybe three feet wide—not that she needed much more for her six outfits.
What drew Opal to the room was the window, which was a circle. She'd never realized how much she'd always wanted a room with a circle window until she saw this one. After just minutes in the room, the quiet space already felt familiar, as though somewhere in her mind she'd always known of this place.
She sat on the wooden chair—the only other furnishing besides the bed and a side table with a lamp—and looked out the round window, at the stone wall and the iron gate below. This was a familiar view. But how?
The books.
The Broken Shell Island books had illustrations between some of the chapters, and one of the boys in the stories had a room with a circle window and a view of an iron gate. His name escaped her memory, but the name in the book didn't matter, because Opal knew now that the boy was really Warren, her grandfather. This room had been his room.
“I miss you, Grampa,” she said to the window.
Now that she wasn't moving, walking, or meeting new people, now that she was still and silent, the loss caught up with her.
Whether he got better or not, she'd never see him again. Accepting this in her heart made her miss him more than she could bear, and she lay on the bed and pressed her face into the pillow to muffle the sobs.
* * *
When Opal woke up, she was certain hours had passed. Her limbs felt stiff and her mouth had the sour taste of a two-hour nap.
She could have sworn she'd heard a tiny POP in the room, like a bubble of gum being popped.
POP.
There it was again.
She sat up. Because the sun was still shining and the room was bright, she knew the vision before her wasn't a shadow or a trick her eyes were playing in low light. Shimmering bubbles floated in the middle of the room, like glass baubles or sun catchers. She reached out to touch one with her fingertip, and the floating bubble popped, setting off a chain of explosions.
She shielded her face with her arms, expecting to be struck with glass shrapnel, but there was just sound, and the scent of soap and freshly-mowed lawn. Something tapped against the window just then, and she nearly peed a little.
Nobody was at the window, but something tapped once more—something like a pebble being tossed from below.
Peter.
Opal remembered how she'd invited Peter to come by, promising to tell him stories from the mainland. She'd had zero intention of singing songs for him, but she was game to summarize a few favorite movies.
She ran to the window and fumbled around for a moment before finding the latch for the circular frame. The pane pivoted from the middle. She stuck her head out the half-circle opening on one side and looked down, expecting to see Peter in front of the house, perhaps in his furry-looking coat, but instead, she saw three girls.
The witches she'd met at the clothing store waved up at her. They wore matching ballet-style dresses in blue, with fluffy tulle skirts, and… hiking boots?
The sturdy-looking blond girl, Carly, called up, “We have something for you. Come out and play!”
“I don't know if I'm allowed.”
“Then let us in, and we'll give you your gift inside the house.”
&nb
sp; Opal thought back to her great-aunt's reaction to encountering the witches in the clothing store.
“I'll come out. Give me a minute,” she called down.
Listening for her great-aunt, she came down the stairs quietly. Opal knew that sometimes it was easier to beg for forgiveness than ask permission. As she tiptoed through the downstairs, she realized Waleah was there in one of the three sitting rooms, on the longest of the formal sofas, the one that looked almost comfortable. Her nose pointed at the ceiling, and she was snoring steadily.
Opal whispered, “Say, Aunt Waleah, I'm going to go for a little walk outside to explore the grounds. You don't mind, do you? No? Okay, see you later.”
In the mudroom, she pulled on her shoes and slipped quietly out the door, where she pressed a finger to her lips and motioned for the girls to retreat back out the gate.
Carly linked arms with her and said in a hushed voice, “You're going to love your surprise.”
“How did you do the bubbles in my room? Was that magic?”
Carly winked. “It wasn't science, that's for sure.”
Zara smoothed down her shining black hair and said, “We could show you how to do the bubbles, but—”
The quiet redhead, Delilah, smacked Zara on the arm. “No we can't, stupid. Don't even talk like that.”
As the three of them quibbled over what they could or couldn't tell Opal, she peered over her shoulder at the house. She'd been inside the house and seen the normal-looking rooms, but the thing still looked like the side of a mountain. The side of a mountain!
After they passed through the iron gates, Opal saw the surprise awaiting her and gasped, her hand going up to her mouth.
“Your grandfather sent it,” Carly said.