Dandelion Fire

by N. D. Wilson

  Henry was home.

  “No,” she heard him say. “You're not helping me. I can do it by myself. I'm fine.”

  Her father said something she couldn't make out, and the house was silent of everything but slow footsteps on the stairs.

  Henrietta waited. Even if Henry was in a bad mood, she wanted to talk to him. His feet found the attic stairs, and she listened to them complain as he climbed.

  After a minute, his doors swung open and Henry stepped in. He looked much better. His eyelids were only a little heavy. She smiled at him and immediately felt guilty for it. His eyes were wide open, but they rolled around the room, groping for images they couldn't find. She swallowed, wondering what to say. Maybe she should cough.

  Henry felt his way to the end of his bed, and then the cupboard wall. Running his hands over the cupboards, he crouched slowly, until he'd found the door to Endor. His fingertips sought out each screw and felt all around the edges of the door. He seemed satisfied and straightened up, breathing heavily, and groped for the door to Badon Hill. He levered it open and stuck his hand inside. Suddenly, gritting his teeth, he punched, hard, and Henrietta heard the crack.

  Henry pulled his fist out and sucked on his knuckles.

  “Hey, Henry,” Henrietta said.

  Henry jolted and nearly tripped.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asked quietly.

  “I was—I was reading Grandfather's journal. I went through a cupboard today. While you were gone. It was really stupid, I know. I almost died. I thought we should read the journal before we did anything else.”

  She waited for him to ask for the story, or repeat her own insult, or at least get angry that she'd looked through his drawers. He didn't. Instead, he sniffed.

  “You're definitely not from number 18,” she said, and tried to laugh. “It's a sea battle. Listen,” Henrietta continued, “with your whole blind thing …”

  “I don't want to talk about it.”

  “Well, we'll have to figure something out.”

  “You going to get me a guide dog? I already have Richard. Just leave. I want to lie down.”

  Henrietta stood up quickly and backed out of his way. “Sure,” she said. She tucked the journal under his pillow, and then she dug in her pocket.

  Henry crawled onto his bed and sprawled out, facedown.

  “I'm really sorry,” Henrietta said.

  Henry snorted. “You didn't do it.”

  “No,” Henrietta said. “I'm not sorry you're blind. I mean, I am. But I meant that I'm sorry for lying. About the key.”

  Henry didn't say anything. Henrietta waited, but she didn't think he wanted to hear anything else. She would talk to him again later. Tonight, maybe. But probably tomorrow. She stepped out of his room.

  “Your stuffs under your pillow,” she said, and she shut the doors.

  Henry thought he'd done well. She might think he was weak, but he hadn't acted weak. He had acted tired. He hadn't acted. He was tired. And he had no idea what time it was. He hoped the dinner hour was past so he wouldn't have to refuse to go sit at the table.

  He slid his hand under his pillow. There were Grandfather's rubber-banded journals, but something else was on top of it, something cold.

  His fingers closed around the key.

  rolled onto his back, clenching the key. He couldn't believe Henrietta had actually given it to him. Of course, she wouldn't be too worried about him using it. He was blind. She could afford to give it to him now.

  Without thinking, he lifted the key up to look at it. Frustrated, and more insulted by his blindness because he'd forgotten about it, he dropped his arm back to the bed. But as it fell, he saw something move. His eyes had captured motion. He waved his arm and caught the faintest blur where he knew his hand had to be. Dropping the key, he held his hand still in front of his face. It was his burned hand. He couldn't see his arm. He couldn't see his wrist or hand or the room. In the nothingness in front of him floated his burn. Only it wasn't just a burn. It was a symbol, and it was moving.

  Henry couldn't have taken his eyes off of it if he'd wanted to. There was nothing else to see, nowhere else to focus. The symbol held colors, every color, and they slipped out as it moved, not quickly, from shape to shape, crawling and morphing like a glowing snake spelling out some strange alphabet. But somehow, while changing, the symbol was never really changed. It was always itself, traveling through moods, and ages and times—speaking a life cycle, a patterned history of greens and golds and grays.

  Henry knew what it was. His head throbbed as he looked at it, and he remembered the pain. This was a picture, a word, a name, the life of a dandelion, and he was looking at it, seeing it in a way that he had never seen anything. Knowing it.

  Suddenly, in a burst of fear, Henry put his hand down and tucked it beneath his leg. His whole body ached from the pain of looking at it, and his hand throbbed. But more frightening than the pain was the sheer incomprehensibility of what had happened to him.

  He remembered everything. He remembered Henrietta digging for the key and the storm and the wind and the sun-gilded fields. He remembered seeing a flicker in a dandelion. He had stared and throbbed and seen, and then he had touched. And Henrietta had shaken him awake. And he'd gone blind.

  Henry had seen magic before. He slept beside little doors that couldn't be very well explained by anything else. He'd seen his uncle Frank's ax beaten back by magic. The blood of a witch had burned its way into his jaw. He'd watched a mailman's pant legs through his attic wall, and he'd smelled Badon Hill. But still, in Henry's mind, magic was something wrong, something bent, dangerous, something that could be kept someplace else if you remembered to screw the door shut.

  Dandelions were not magic. They couldn't be. They were here. They were normal. You couldn't shut them up someplace or even keep them out of your lawn. If they were magic, well, then everything was.

  Henry shivered, choked, and then crawled onto the floor. He was going to throw up. He'd done that in this room before, terrified by a world unlike anything he'd ever been told. He was going crazy, or the world was. There were no other options. And he didn't like either.

  Crazy or not, he didn't want to puke. He sat up on his knees and tried to breathe like a sane person—long, slow, even breaths. It helped. Maybe he should see a therapist. He probably was mental. What kind of blind person could only see one burn? A dandelion burn.

  His door creaked open, and he looked up.

  “Henrietta?” he asked. “Richard?”

  Something snorted, and he relaxed. “C'mere,” he said, and put out his good hand, waiting for the raggant's sagging side. Instead, something hard and blunt and a little frayed butted into his palm. He pulled on the creature's horn, slid his hand up its head, and scratched behind its twitching ears.

  Fur brushed against his other hand, and he knew that Blake the cat had come upstairs as well. Blind, crazy, and with knots in his stomach, Henry still smiled. He scooped up the two animals, held them tight like charms against panic, and lay back on his bed to think.

  With one hand, Henry kneaded the raggant's back. Blake licked the other. The world was the crazy one. He hadn't given a miniature rhino wings, or cats sandpaper tongues.

  I'm normal, Henry thought. Normal. Normal as a dandelion.

  There were three options, as far as Henry could tell. He could explore the cupboards blind and probably die or at least get permanently lost. Which didn't sound too terrible right now. Or he could wait for his parents, or one of his parents, or one of their lawyers, to come get him. He could leave the raggant behind and never mention his dandelion insanity again. If his eyesight returned, he could come back to Kansas when he was eighteen. If it didn't, then his parents would have him spending a lot of time with therapists. Or he could ask Henrietta to help him find where he was from. But he wasn't sure how any of this would help him. He wanted to see. In Kansas or Boston or Badon Hill, he just wanted his eyes to work. And there was no one he could talk to about that. />
  Henry sighed. He wished he had read through his grandfather's journal. He'd skimmed through most of it, looking for his name, but he hadn't been in any hurry to read the whole thing. He didn't like the cupboards, and from what he'd read, he didn't much care for his grandfather, either. He would have read it before doing any exploring. But he hadn't even wanted to explore. He'd wanted to go to Badon Hill.

  He couldn't read the journal now. He could ask Anastasia to read it to him, but that would be pure torture. Penelope would insist that they tell her parents everything. Henry didn't think Uncle Frank would mind that he'd kept the journal, but Aunt Dotty would. And she could put a stop to anyone reading it. Henrietta was too much to deal with right now.

  The journal wouldn't help him, anyway. He needed someone who would know what was happening, someone who could tell him why he could see his burn floating through the air like a living word and nothing else. Or, if they didn't know why, at least someone who could tell him what to do next, someone who could mix him something nasty and vomitous to drink and dance around and shake some bones in a monkey's skull.

  He needed someone magic. Not some goofy voodooist, like the people in his parents' travel videos who dressed up in yellow feathers and papier-mâché for the tourists' cameras. Real magic, magic like, he didn't know what. Like the wind. Like the storm and the colors and the dandelion. Magic that could change you, that could turn caterpillars into butterflies and tadpoles into frogs and wood into coal into diamonds. He needed someone who could … make wood stronger than a chain saw.

  Henry sat up, and the raggant tumbled off his lap and onto the floor like a sack of mud. It groaned and sputtered, snorted twice, and began snoring.

  Eli. The little old man's magic had kept Grandfather's door shut for two years. And he had known Grandfather. He might even know how Henry had come into Kansas or which cupboard he'd come through. If Henrietta hadn't chased him away through FitzFaeren, Henry might already know all the answers. He wouldn't be blind in an attic with less than two weeks before he lost his chance to find out who he really was and where he was from.

  He shouldn't explore the cupboards. He should look for Eli in FitzFaeren. And he should read Grandfather's journal before he did. Someone should read it to him.

  Henry stood up and felt for his doors. When he'd found them, he stepped out into the attic.

  “Richard!” he yelled, and while he waited for an answer, he lifted his hand up and watched. Dandelion soul floated through space.

  Henrietta slouched on the floor beside the muted television as it worked its way through commercials. Her mother stood behind the couch, wearing yellow rubber gloves still wet from the sink. Her father was sitting in the middle of the couch, separating Richard and Anastasia, and Penny was also on the floor. She was reading. She was always reading.

  “I think I should take some food up,” Dotty said. “He needs to eat. Someone should be sitting with him. He shouldn't be alone.”

  “I'll sit with him,” Richard said.

  Frank slapped a hand on Richard's knee. He was wearing tight pink sweatpants, castoffs from Anastasia.

  “Stay here for now,” Frank said. He tipped his head back and looked at his wife behind him. “Dots, we spent the whole day touchin' him and breathin' on him while people he couldn't see stuck him for blood, ran him through tubes, had him pee in a cup, and prodded around his eyeballs. If he wants his space right now, I can't blame him. We can offer him some grub in a bit.”

  “Do you think he's okay?” Dotty asked.

  Frank looked back down. “No,” he said. “I don't. He'll need to see other doctors, and keep seeing other doctors until one finally says that he's not nuts and that it's just that there's a little beetle that's hatched in his head, and it's put its foot in just the wrong spot. Henry's got a lot more prodding ahead of him. But it doesn't have to start till tomorrow.”

  “Can that happen?” Anastasia asked. “A beetle inside your head?”

  “No,” Dotty said. “It can't.”

  Frank nodded. “It happens.”

  “You'd have to inhale an egg or something,” Penelope said. “When it hatched, it'd just crawl the wrong way in your sinus cavity and get into your brain.” She put down her book. “Dad, I could go read to Henry. I wouldn't be crowding him.”

  Frank shook his head.

  “Frank, I'm really worried about him.” Dotty lifted a yellow hand to her forehead. “But there's not a beetle in his brain.”

  “Something's in it,” Frank said. He reached back and found his wife's hand. “I'll check on him in a bit.”

  “Richard!” Henry's voice found its way into the room.

  Richard jumped up off the couch and looked at Frank. Frank smiled and nodded, and the skinny, pink-legged boy hopped over Henrietta and ran for the stairs. After a minute, when the television's sound was back on and her mother had left the room, Henrietta rolled onto her knees, crawled to the door, stood up, and walked quietly after him.

  Henrietta didn't have to climb the attic stairs. She could hear perfectly well from the bottom.

  “No,” Henry said. “We're not going for good. I just want to look around. Well, I want you to look around for me.”

  “What if we see him tonight?” Richard asked. “Will we chase him like Henrietta did?”

  “No. We won't chase him like Henrietta did. I just want to talk to him. And I don't think we'll see him, anyway.”

  “Then why are we looking?”

  “Listen, Richard. I want to find Eli. But I don't just want to rush off into a strange world. We need to check it out first, get a feel for the place, is it night, day, all that stuff. We are not going to hunt around in the dark. Not there.”

  “We should talk to Henrietta,” Richard said. “Seeing as she's been there.”

  “So have I. I had to save her when she got stuck. You know the story.”

  “And I saved you when you got stuck.”

  “Right,” Henry said. “Sort of.”

  “So why don't you ask her to help?”

  “Because,” Henry said, “I need someone who will do what I say. I'm blind, Richard. She'd leave me standing in the dark and rush off to look at anything that made her curious. Which would be everything. That's why.”

  “Right,” Richard said. “And you want me to snitch a flashlamp.”

  “A flashlight, yes. And batteries. Can you do that without anyone noticing?”

  “At home, I kept a pet hare in my shirt for four days without anyone noticing.”

  “A hair? Like, from your head?”

  “No. A hare, as in hoppity-hop. They did find the hare, though. And they made Cook put it in my stew.”

  “Oh,” Henry said. “Sorry. I have something for you to read to me. Now, hurry and get the flashlight and come back.”

  Henrietta heard Richard come out of the attic room. She scooted across the landing and into her own bedroom before Richard was on the stairs. She could grab him and threaten him into silence so she could come along. Henry was blind. He might never know. But it might be more fun to catch them in the act and watch Henry try to be all righteous about leaving her out. Or she could just tell her dad and let him catch them. But then she wouldn't get to see FitzFaeren again. That's where they were going. That's where she'd been stuck. That's where Eli had escaped. They wouldn't find him. He'd be long gone by now. But even if he was standing right in the ruined hall, waiting to bump into them, they didn't have a chance of catching him. Not if Eli had gotten away from her.

  Richard walked by, and Henrietta let him go. She would follow them in.

  Richard's voice was extremely annoying. He was incapable of reading aloud without sending his pitch up to the ceiling and buzzing his vowels in his nose. Henry tried to be interested in how the cupboards worked, but he just wasn't. And his grandfather's writing, at least when Richard read it, never seemed to breathe.

  He'd fallen asleep twice, before he finally rolled over toward Richard's voice and put out his hand.


  “Thanks,” he said. “You can go to bed now. I'll wake you up later.”

  Richard gave him the journal and whispered his excitement about the upcoming exploration.

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “Shut the door tight, please.”

  The doors clicked shut, and Henry slid the journal into a backpack empty of everything but one flashlight. The key was still tucked under his pillow. He wouldn't take that into FitzFaeren. If something bad happened, which it wouldn't, Uncle Frank would need to be able to get into Grandfather's room.

  Lying on his back, he crossed his arms over the backpack and lay still. He'd already had Richard set the combination on the compass locks and put his shoes beside the bed. Everything was ready. He felt as good as he had since Uncle Frank had handed him the lawyer's letter. He was actually going to do something. It might not help. It might not accomplish anything at all, but it was something.

  Uncle Frank had come upstairs, and Henry had been practically cheerful. He'd told his uncle that he'd seen something blurry—true enough—and Frank had sounded happy when he'd slapped Henry's shoulder and said good night.

  Realizing that his light was probably on, Henry rolled onto his side and felt for his lamp, tracing the heat in the air with his fingertips until he found the switch. Nothing changed when it clicked off.

  In the darkness, he lifted up his hand. The brand was still there, bright and curling, closing in on itself and expanding.

  Henry watched the colors until his pulse was drumming inside his skull. Then he put his arm down and shut his eyes.

  The dream started in Henry's toes. They were bare, and they were wet. Henry curled them, felt them dig through something cool and spongy, felt water seep up between them.

  Wind stroked his face, strong but not violent. Constant. He pulled in a deep breath, a lungful, a headful of his imagining. It was sweet, with salt around its rim.

  The soft applause of a thousand rustling trees surrounded him, and he ached to see them, to shake off his blindness and watch the silver-bellied leaves flick and twist on the wind's wake.