by J. G. Kemp
Edwin continued to stare at Mary. “Yes, I have it.”
“Is the picture there… and the plans?” he asked.
“Yes,” Edwin replied.
“Then it’s time to leave.”
Edwin glanced at Cassie and then back at Mary and frowned, as if he were pretending to be sad, and said in a calm, sarcastic voice, “Goodbye Maria. Goodbye Cassiopeia. The last six years have been… unfortunate.”
“Wait,” said Cassie, puzzled, “you’re just going to leave us here?”
“Well I’m certainly not going to kill you, and you’re certainly not coming back with me, so yes, I’m just going to leave you here.”
“But—” Cassie began, and then saw the expression on Mary’s face. The expression of total defeat. The expression of utter hopelessness. The expression of a beautiful princess, shackled to a rock, and left for dead by everyone that should have loved her. Mary’s head hung down, and her glasses slipped off her nose and fell to the floor. She didn’t bother to pick them up, she just sat there, hunched over, staring vacantly at the ground.
As Edwin walked towards the door, Henry stood and followed behind. “Goodbye new-kids,” he scoffed. “It’s been… unfortunate.” Edwin slipped out of the cave, and Henry followed, and the deep voice spoke again.
“What are you doing, Boy?”
“I’m coming with you, Father,” answered Henry. “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”
“Did you open the door, or was it the girl?” asked the voice.
“It was the girl, Father,” answered Henry.
“So did you succeed, or did you fail?”
“I helped her… and I doubted her… just like you told me… to make her angry… so that she would want to prove me wrong. It was easy. She played right into it, just like you said. We got the box didn’t we?”
“We…?” Isaac Kelvin laughed. “What did you do that was your idea, that didn’t come from me first? What are you worth Henry? Do you have original thoughts… original plans? You build robotic luggage, and tinker with things that other, much greater minds have made. When I was your age…”
There was a long pause, and Mary heard footsteps on the gravel outside.
“But Father—”
The footsteps stopped. “Give me your phone, boy. If you can get off this island alive, then perhaps you will be worthy… worthy of your family name.”
The footsteps continued again and were soon followed by the tremendous roar of an engine which quickly trailed away into the sky.
“Mary!” shouted Cassie as she ran to her sister, “are you okay? What happened to you?” She knelt down and threw her arms around Mary’s neck. Something about Cassie’s voice, and her touch, and her smell, made Mary burst into tears.
“Oh Cassie.” Mary cried… and cried… and Cassie cried too. Tears streamed down Mary’s face and she sobbed, cradled in Cassiopeia’s arms, for a long time. “Oh Cassie, I missed you.” She sat upright and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Mary, your eyes are so pretty,” Cassie said, smiling. She picked Mary’s glasses off the floor and gently put them over Mary’s ears, and Mary pushed them farther up her nose.
“I’m sorry Cassie, I don’t know where Mom is, I don’t know anything. It’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, Mary. Here, let me help you up.” Cassie grabbed Mary under the arm and helped her stand. “What happened to you anyway?”
“Oh… I tripped… and fell… again.” Mary limped towards the chairs at the computer table. Ben was standing there, with Julee and Elliot.
“Mary!” they shouted together, and hugged her, and Julee helped her sit down.
“Ben told us about the dam, and the hidden box, and the explosion, and Henry’s father,” said Elliot.
“Did he tell you we were cousins?” asked Mary.
Elliot’s jaw dropped and Julee shook her head slowly.
“Henry’s father is my uncle.” She glanced at Cassie. “Our uncle. Our dad’s last name was Kelvin. He was the youngest of four brothers. They grew up here too, like Mom.”
“Mom grew up here?” asked Cassie, puzzled.
Mary nodded and grabbed Cassie’s hand—she had so much to tell her. “Hey everyone, this is my little sister, Cassie. Cassie, this is Elliot, Julee, and Ben.” Mary pointed out each of them, and while they were all shaking hands and greeting each other, something caught Mary’s eye in the doorway. It was Henry, peeking in through the crack in the massive doors. She was angry at him… but she wasn’t… she didn’t know how she felt. “You called him, didn’t you?” she shouted across the room. “Your phone worked this whole time, you were just waiting for me to open those bars. You knew this whole time.”
Henry slowly stepped in, his head hung down. He slumped back against the wall of the cave, next to the door. He didn’t reply, he just stared at the ground.
“Your father caused it,” said Mary, bitterly. “Your father caused the accident. It was an explosion, and it killed my dad, and my mom’s sisters. And it was your father that caused it and—”
“We’re cousins?” interrupted Henry.
Mary looked away. “Yes.”
“The great Albert Kelvin was your father?”
Mary looked back at Henry. His eyes were wide open, like he was impressed.
“Yes.”
“I know everything about him. I’ve read all his papers. He’s one of the greatest scientists that… you think my father caused his death? He’s not dead, he only disappeared, eight years ago.”
“No,” Mary argued, “he died in an explosion, here on Evergreen Isle, we saw the newspaper article. Your dad and someone else, Alfred Watt, were making explosives, and they caused it. That’s what was in that box, Henry, evidence. Evidence against them, evidence that proved they did it.”
“I don’t believe you. President Watt and my father would not have killed Albert Kelvin. You’re jumping to conclusions.”
Mary scowled. “President Watt is it? Maybe that’s just what they want you to believe at the Institute.”
“Your father could be alive,” continued Henry. “No one ever saw his body. Believe me, there is no evidence that he is dead for certain.”
“What is this, just doubting me so that I want to prove you wrong? I don’t care what you think, Henry. You can stay down here and—arrrrr!” She grabbed a piece of paper from the desk, crumpled it up, and threw it at him. It fell short. “Come on, Cassie,” she said and struggled out of the chair. Julee helped her stand, and Mary put her arm around Julee’s shoulders and limped towards the door. Cassie and Elliot followed.
“Mary…” said Ben. “Um… I’m gonna stay down here… I’ll come up to the house later.”
Mary spun around. “Oh don’t you feel sorry for him,” she snapped. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
Ben looked away, and Mary hobbled out of the cave, out into the fresh air of the island, where they were now stranded for certain, where there was a blue sky, and a gentle breeze, and light from the glorious sun shining down upon them.
Chapter 20
The First Journal
As Mary slowly limped back up the hill, with Julee, Elliot, and Cassie beside her, Cassie told them her story:
She had been locked in her room for the past four days, ever since Mary had been sent away, when just an hour ago, Uncle Edwin had burst in and dragged her by the hand to the back lawn, where there was some kind of rocket-plane, a kind she had never seen before, waiting for them. Along with Uncle Edwin, and the man they now knew was Isaac Kelvin, Henry’s father, there were two other passengers, a man and a women, both with straight black hair, that didn’t speak and that looked nervous.
The rocket-plane took off and flew for no more than ten minutes, Cassie thought, at an incredible speed, before landing just outside the cave doors, beside the stone tower. Uncle Edwin and Isaac Kelvin got out and pushed Cassie into the cave and Julee and Elliot were made to sit against
the wall, and Cassie was made to call for help.
“So, what is this place?” asked Cassie. “And why are you here? And why aren’t you at the Institute? And Mom grew up here? And that boy is our cousin? And what about that other boy, what was his name again, the one with the blond hair? And what’s that journal that Uncle Edwin was talking about, from Caroline’s Corner? And what was in that box? And is anyone else here? And… where are we going?”
Mary smiled. It felt so good to hear Cassie’s voice—her innocent curiosity and her cheerful spirit. As she was listening to the barrage of questions, Mary realized something—she realized how calm she felt, now that she and Cassie were together again, despite what had just happened, despite her uncle setting up the whole thing, despite being tricked into finding the box.
“We’re going home, Cassie,” Mary answered. “We’re going home.” And she told her sister everything, with Julee and Elliot’s help, as they walked slowly through the ancient forest, and collected apples in the orchard, and stood in the sundial—it was two in the afternoon—and stared up at the towering snow-capped peak which was ever guarding over them.
They all gave Cassie a tour of the Andromeda house, and Mary told Elliot about the man from the accident, Richard Ki, but Elliot didn’t recognize the name. At one point, Elliot looked nervous and asked, “Mary, how are we going to get home now? I miss my parents,” but there was a hint of doubt in her voice, as if part of her didn’t want to leave, and before Mary had a chance to reply, Elliot had been distracted by more of Cassie’s questions.
In fact, as night approached, while they stood in the kitchen looking at the small pile of food that remained, Mary was surprised herself at how unconcerned she was of their situation: stranded, for certain, with seemingly no hope of rescue or a way off the island.
She imagined her Grandmother Caroline, cooking something on the stove, and her mother, cutting vegetables from the garden, and her Aunt Annie, washing the dishes, and her Aunt Cecelia, sweeping the floor. She imagined her mother looking out the window and seeing Mary’s father, Albert Kelvin, running up the path to visit her. She remembered the document about the Royal Fellowship Society, how the founders agreed to keep the estates secret and self-sufficient.
Soon, Julee had made a stack of peanut-butter crackers which she carried to the couches in the great room, and they all ate together. There were so many unanswered questions, Mary thought, like: were there four more houses on the island, and where was the explosion, and what is the Union of Power doing anyway? She even wondered, to her surprise, who, if anyone, was really dead? She thought about what Henry had said, about no one ever seeing her dad’s body. Maybe he was right. She knew that she couldn’t believe anything her Uncle Edwin had ever said, and if a journal from her grandmother could be fake, then a newspaper article about the accident could be fake too, or maybe incorrect.
She didn’t know what to believe. She felt like she was hardly closer to solving the mystery of her mother’s departure, or the accident, then she was four days ago. She needed to know more. She needed to explore. It’s time you learned the truth, she thought. And then she realized that the truth was, that she didn’t know what the truth was, but that was okay, somehow. She remembered the look in Ben’s eyes when he wanted to explore the island, to search for other houses, as if the mystery was the most exciting thing in the world.
“What is it Mary?” said Cassie. “What are you thinking about? You have that look that you get sometimes.”
“Oh, I was just thinking about something in the box,” Mary said, “a letter, from our grandpa to Mom. It said the truth will set you free. I was thinking, I don’t know the truth… about where Mom is, about what really happened on this island… not yet… but I feel free here, much more than I ever felt at Uncle Edwin’s, and I’m glad he left us. I’m glad I’m here, with you all, on Evergreen Isle.”
“You’re un-chained, girl, I’m tellin’ you,” said Julee. “It started when you came out of that observatory, on the first night. You had a look in your eyes like… like you found something… something… free-ing. It’s the same look that Wild gets sometimes.”
“Yeah, you really did.” Elliot nodded. “You get that look every time you go in there.”
Mary smiled and took a deep breath. She knew it also. “I wish I hadn’t broken the camera though,” she sighed. “There has to be hundreds of objects up there… hiding… like the Andromeda galaxy. I want to see them all. I want to learn everything about them.” Mary remembered the piles of journals in the Forbidden Room: journals about Evergreen Isle, journals by her mom and her aunts and her grandma. She remembered the journal from Caroline’s Corner. It was still sitting in her violin case by the front door of the house. “Hold on a second, there’s something I have to do.” She hopped on one foot to the front door and hopped back to the couches, holding the case.
“Hey, it’s your violin,” exclaimed Cassie. “Oh, I wish I had mine.”
Mary opened the side pocket and pulled out the journal.
“Is that the one that Uncle Edwin planted? The one you thought was from grandma?” asked Cassie.
“Yeah,” Mary said and opened it to the first page. “Mary, it’s time you learned the truth. Follow the clues. Caroline,” she read aloud. “Ya know, I kind of like that, even though it wasn’t grandma who wrote it.” She shrugged. “Because I am going to learn the truth… about everything… about the whole universe… and I think grandma would like that.”
“Girl, you know she would,” said Julee.
Mary smiled from ear to ear. She reached over the side of the couch and picked up a pen from the side table and uncapped it. “And, I think I’ll keep the note there for another reason… to remind me,” said Mary.
“To remind you of what?” asked Elliot.
“Not to get fooled again,” grinned Mary. In her mind flashed the image of a lioness, roaming freely through her uncle’s mansion and through dark tunnels and on beaches and over grass-covered hills and inside the observatory. Her observatory. She looked down at the journal and wrote, just below the forged message from her uncle:
The Journal of Mary Andromeda
“Ya know, we have all these rooms, and beds,” Mary said as she closed the journal and set it on the side table. “We could each have a bedroom ya know.”
The others thought for a moment.
“I kinda like sleeping here,” said Elliot.
“Yeah, me too,” said Julee. “It makes this whole place less… creepy at night.”
“This place isn’t creepy,” said Mary. “We’ve cleaned it all up. There’s just that broken window in my Aunt Annie’s turret, and… well… I guess there are still those bugs in the flour.” And she followed with a mysterious, “ooohhhhh,” sound.
“Girl, don’t bring up stuff like that,” said Julee, with her fist raised, like when she would punch Ben in the shoulder. “That Wild boy is a bad influence.” She stared at Mary seriously, and Mary stared back, and then they both burst into laughter.
That night, the girls stayed up late, talking and laughing and wondering, about what to do next, and where to explore, and what to do about Henry. They decided that if Henry’s father would leave him here, there must be a way off the island, somehow, they just needed to figure it out. This thought reassured Elliot especially.
Mary showed Cassie the telescope and together they stared into the night sky for hours, and Cassie was, naturally, amazed. When they finally agreed to go to sleep, and were lying on the couches, tucked under the covers, waiting in silence, Elliot spoke:
“Hey, have you guys been imagining things lately. I feel like, ever since we got here I’ve been imagining all these things, just like, little scenes flashing in my mind. Is that weird?”
“Yeah, me too,” agreed Julee, “and I’ve been havin’ some funky dreams the past few nights.”
Mary smiled to herself. She listened to the ocean surf, and the gentle notes of the wind-chimes, and the so
und of her heartbeat, and of her friends’ breathing, and slowly, she slipped into a dream…
✧ ✧ ✧
She was lying on her back and floating through the heavens. Countless stars spun around her and passed through her—glowing specks of dust, billions of them, dancing weightless in space. She looked at her wrists and there were chains around them, but she didn’t care. She pulled against them gently, and they dissolved away—in a puff of wind—and became stars themselves. She looked in her hand and saw that she was holding a tiny serpent, no bigger than her palm. She inspected it closely, and smiled, and then softly brushed it away, into the beautiful night.
Epilogue
The Boy Genius
“Hey Henry, do you really think Mary’s dad could be alive,” asked Ben. He was sitting in the cave, at the long computer table, with a pencil in hand, and he was drawing a map.