Secret of Light
Page 19
The heat on her face was terrible — so intense that she felt her skin might melt. And there was nothing left to breathe; the fire greedily swallowed the air and left only ash that filled her mouth and adhered to her tongue. She closed her eyes and waited to be consumed.
Instead she felt a yank on her arm and she fell to the side, barking her shin painfully. The shock of the pain in her leg cleared her thoughts enough to stumble forward. Her arm felt like it was being pulled out of the socket and her groping hand found a scrap of fabric and clutched at it like she was drowning. Something impossibly cold touched her cheek and she fell forward as any last hope of breath was taken by a wind that whirled her away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Darrell sat on a log half-buried in sand and stared out at the water, thinking. It felt like this was the first moment she had been alone and quiet for months. Delaney gave his open-mouthed, tongue-lolling smile, and she ruffled the rich fur at his neck, as golden as if it had always been that way.
At the far end of the beach to the north, a group of boulders stood like ancient fallen soldiers tumbled into the surf. Behind them was a crevice in the rock face of the cliff curving out to meet the sea. And inside the crevice was the cave where everything had started. But she couldn’t think of that now.
“We need a little time to ourselves, right buddy?”
His tail thumped once, and he lay his heavy head on her knee. Her fingers curling in the fur at his neck, she turned to look at the charred remains of the lighthouse. She still felt stunned when she looked at it — the physical evidence of how badly she had managed to mess up so many lives, most especially her own.
Kate was finally asleep, after spending the night plagued by nightmares. Brodie was blue along one side of his rib cage from being kicked. And Conrad?
Where was Conrad?
Was he alive? Was he dead? She would never know, because the only way to get him back was closed, burned to the ground, gone forever. The old lighthouse was gone, no longer a portal to anyone but rats sheltering from the sea spray. At the very tip of the rock promontory, a brand new light on a high cement pillar towered above the jumble of charred wood and shattered concrete.
Gravel crunched behind her, and she looked around to see Brodie making his way across the rocky shore. Delaney stretched and yawned, and then strolled over to escort Brodie to her spot on the sand.
“Mind if I pull up a piece of log?”
“Hey, if you’re crazy enough to come out here in the cold, you’re welcome to sit down.”
He winced a little as he sat next to her on the damp wood.
“Are you okay?” she asked anxiously. The chill of the misty air seemed to wrap itself around her heart.
“It’s just a bruise,” he replied, and changed the subject. “Feels like it’s going to snow soon,” he said, “but it’ll probably be raining again here when we get back in January.”
“Yep,” said Darrell, but the thought of coming back to the school and trying to resume a normal life was too much. She put her face into her hands.
He touched her wrist gently. “How are you feeling?”
She lifted her head abruptly and looked him straight in the eyes. “I just dragged my friends through an inferno,” she said bitterly. “One can’t sleep for screaming nightmares and the other looks like he broke a rib. And on top of that, I managed to burn someone else up in a fire that actually took place around five hundred years ago.”
She clenched her hands so tightly that her fingernails dug into the flesh of her palms. “But me? Not even a scratch. I can’t believe you want to have anything to do with me after all that’s happened, Brodie.” Her eyes stung with unshed tears.
He squeezed her hand gently and glanced up at the new beacon, hard to see in the misty afternoon light.
“They sure got that thing up fast,” he said.
Darrell didn’t reply, but sat and stared at the blackened ruins of the old lighthouse. “D’you think he could be there, under all the rubble?” she asked, her voice a bare whisper above the sound of the surf.
“If he is, it’s for the best,” Brodie said, his tone hard. “He tried to sell us out, Darrell. He wanted to leave us behind and make a little cash in the process. He nearly killed us all.”
“Instead, we’ve lost him. He’s gone. And the portal is gone — closed forever.”
“He deserved it.” A little awkwardly, he reached over and patted her arm. “Professor Tooth thinks he ran away.”
Darrell gave a short, humourless laugh. “Yeah. Just a little further away than anyone expected.”
Brodie shrugged. “He did. He made his own choices, Darrell.”
She sighed. “He was so much like Leonardo, you know.”
“Conrad? You can’t be serious.”
Darrell traced a pattern in the sand with a bit of stick. “Neither of them had very loving families. I think they both just needed a little more attention.”
Brodie laughed. “That just sounds like pop psychology, Darrell. Leonardo was one of the greatest artists of all time. Conrad was just a loser.”
“Paris didn’t think so. He told me that Conrad was only awful to me because that’s how I behaved to him.”
“He had a chance to change. Professor Tooth brought him here to give him a second chance. And what did he do with it? He threatened to hurt Delaney and he tried to sell us all to save himself.”
“I know.” She paused and tucked her feet in as a wave crept up to wash away part of her sand drawing. “I just want to talk to Paris again.” She tossed her stick into the tide. “He made friends with Conrad. He’s going to feel bad that Conrad’s gone.”
“Yeah, that’s true. But things happen for a reason.”
“Brodie...” Darrell’s voice dropped to a whisper, and he ducked his head to hear. “I can’t remember all of it.” She looked at his face, serious and kind. He looks so old. Not like a kid at all, anymore.
“What do you remember?” he asked. “Do you remember the fire?”
She nodded. “Yeah — both of them. I remember waking up on the floor of the lighthouse and feeling hot. I remember pulling Kate to her feet and grabbing your arm.”
“The smoke was so thick by then, I could hardly see.” Brodie reached down to Delaney. “I followed you out, dog.” He looked at Darrell again. “Do you remember the coast guard boat?”
“Spraying water at the lighthouse?”
“Yeah. It was too late by the time they got here, though. All they could do was contain the fire. Not that there was anything else out here that would burn. The new beacon is solid concrete.”
“Brodie — do you think we brought the fire with us somehow?”
He chuckled. “No. The word is that the fire department is still investigating, but they think that someone shot a flare off inside the lighthouse and some of the old rags and debris inside ignited.”
Darrell looked horrified. “What if they find out it was us?”
“They’re not going to find out. We were back at school almost a full hour before the fire department made it out here. They have no idea we were even there. And that lighthouse was so old, it was like a giant candle waiting to burn.”
“But what about the flare gun?”
Brodie grinned. “Boris Meirz was talking to one of the firefighters and they told him they had found an old flare gun. It was pretty charred, but I’m sure they’ll find it registered to Conrad’s dad.” He picked up a rock and tossed it into the surf. “Boris said they think it belonged to a poacher or a smuggler who had been using the lighthouse as a place to hide. It’ll just confirm their theory if it turns out to be registered to Conrad’s father.”
“And what if it’s not? I can’t imagine Conrad’s dad doing something as legal as registering a flare gun.”
Brodie looked out over the water. “It doesn’t matter who the gun is registered to, Darrell. The only person who touched it was Conrad, and there is no evidence we were anywhere near the lighthouse.” He paused.
“Kate’s going to be okay, y’know. I just looked in on her in your room.”
Darrell nodded, but even though her friends were safe, she felt a lump the size of a boulder bloom in her throat. She had always hated and feared Conrad, but now he was lost forever and it was her fault. She felt like crying tears enough to fill the ocean lapping at her feet.
“Is he just gone — as if he’d never been here? Is he lost forever?”
“Darrell — there’s nothing you can do. It’s over.”
She felt tiredness wash through her again like a wave and stood up, almost staggering.
“You’d better take your girl to get some sleep, Delaney,” Brodie said, patting the dog as he got to his feet. They walked back to the path, Darrell leaning heavily on Brodie’s arm for support.
“Leg still a bit sore?”
“Yeah, but it’s not too bad. My prosthesis feels wonderful after the wooden piano leg.” Delaney ran ahead on the beach, sniffing. “You know, it’s funny how things happen,” she said as they turned onto the path to the school.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the Renaissance was supposed to be a time of light — a time when mankind awoke from the darkness of ignorance and poverty.”
Brodie looked surprised. “Well, what I saw of it was amazing. Look at the work done by Leonardo — and the awesome cathedral. Pretty different from the bleak times we saw during the Black Plague.”
“I know. It’s — well, there were a lot of black shadows during the Renaissance, too. All the weapons Leonardo had to design, and the wars that never stopped being fought.”
“I guess so. It was an incredible era.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “It’s too bad we saw only such a little bit of it.”
Brodie laughed as they walked into the back garden of the school and past the old arbutus tree. “Well, this is Eagle Glen, Darrell. You never know what is going to happen next. Maybe you will get to see more of Leonardo and his time.”
She shook her head and sighed. “I doubt that. Let’s talk about something else. What are you planning for Christmastime?”
“My dad has rented us a house near Drumheller for the holidays,” Brodie said, as they walked up the front steps of the school. “I think I’ll go see if I can find me a dino bone or two at the Tyrell Museum.”
“Knowing you, it’ll be a whole T. Rex,” Darrell tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. “My mom is going back to Europe over Christmas with Doctors Without Borders,” she said. “She has fewer meetings this time, so she said I could go with her to sketch some of the sights.”
Brodie chuckled. “Any place in particular?” he asked.
“Well, she is going to Italy,” Darrell said, “but she also said something about sunny Spain. It might be nice to get out of the rain for awhile.”
“Send me a postcard, okay?”
She nodded and waved goodbye to Brodie before turning to drag herself up the stairs behind Delaney. Lily had gone home already, and Kate’s bed was tousled but empty, so she sat alone in her room and began to remove her prosthesis. She felt like falling back into her marshmallow pillows and sleeping for days, but before she could lie down she heard a quiet knock.
“May I come in?”
Darrell nodded. “Would you like to sit down?”
Professor Myrtle Tooth waved Darrell back to her bed and pulled Kate’s chair out from beside her desk.
Darrell sat down on the bed, left leg tucked underneath her, and waited for Professor Tooth to speak.
“I suspect you may already know what I am going to say.” Professor Tooth looked at Darrell, her voice calm. “Conrad Kennedy is missing. He appears to have run away from school.”
Darrell nodded again. “Mrs. Follett told me he had been sent to another school.”
“I’m afraid Mrs. Follett was misled. The telephone call she received during my absence was not from another school. The police are trying to trace the number, but as it appears to have originated from a stolen cellular telephone, I suspect they will not have much luck.”
Despair swept through Darrell and threatened to swallow her whole. She dropped her face into her hands and thought of the shattered lighthouse, reduced to rubble on the shore.
“I have a question for you Darrell, and I would appreciate it if you would look at me.”
She lifted her head from her hands and looked at Professor Tooth, into eyes clear and green as bottomless pools.
“Do you know where Conrad is right now?”
She couldn’t believe it. The principal had asked her the one question to which she could reply with complete honesty.
“I’m sorry, Professor Tooth. I have no idea,” Darrell answered.
And that was that.
Professor Tooth stood up. At the door she turned. “A very clever man I once met told me something interesting a long time ago. Now, how did he put it? ‘One cannot turn back when one is bound to a star.’ Or words to that effect, I believe.”
Darrell gaped, unable to speak.
“You have now spent your first full term at Eagle Glen, Darrell. Look to the stars, my dear. I’m afraid that, for you, there is no turning back.”
The last rays of the setting sun shone in through the large, curving window.
“Winter solstice,” Myrtle Tooth said quietly. “The days will grow longer again beginning tomorrow. Perhaps it may interest you,” she remarked thoughtfully, “to hear of the special class I have in mind for the new term. Reformation and Inquisition, I believe I’ll call it.”
Darrell swallowed. “It sounds — interesting, Professor Tooth.”
“I hope so,” she said. “It will not be for the faint of heart, but I do believe it will be well suited for those — seasoned — travellers who like to take a very close look at that which has come before.”
She closed the door quietly and was gone.
Darrell pulled the notebook from the table beside her bed and spent a few quiet moments tracing her finger along the first words she had copied from Leonardo’s notes.
He turns not back who is bound to a star.
The door opened again and she looked up, not sure which of the million or so questions she should ask first. But instead of Professor Tooth, Kate stood in the doorway, looking tired but grinning a crooked little smile.
“I’ve just had the weirdest conversation with Professor Tooth,” she said, as she sat on Darrell’s bed.
“Me too,” replied Darrell, not having a clue where to begin. “Are you okay, Katie?”
“Yep.” Kate nodded and her hair blazed in the light of the setting sun. “I think it’s safe to say we have an interesting term ahead of us. Oh — and Professor Tooth asked me to give you this. She said she thought you might need a new one.” She flipped a clean notebook into her friend’s lap.
For the first time in that very long day, Darrell found herself able to smile.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
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