Giles nodded.
“Good. Very good. The world will be yours soon enough. Whenever there is something that troubles you, whenever you find something in your way, don’t panic. There are ways to overcome. There is nothing simpler.”
Slowly, he turned his attention to Juniper. “And now for you, Juniper. What would you like, hmm? I have made actors and dancers, politicians and athletes, scientists and philosophers. What do you want, what does your soul ache for?”
“I’m happy the way I am.”
Skeksyl’s laugh sounded like a banshee’s shriek. “Noble, indeed, but I have yet to meet a person happy with what they were given. Even the most adored and idolized have their desires. As you grow you will see how quickly the world can leave a person behind. It can beat you down. It can be brutal. There is no easy path in life. None at all. Except . . .”
The walls flashed their images, and Juniper found herself staring into them. A single image blazed through her head, the same jubilant scene she had witnessed in that empty room just moments ago. She was with her parents and they were happy. The three of them laughed and smiled like the family they had once been. A lump grew in her throat.
Averting her gaze, Juniper clenched her hands together. “It’s . . . it’s nothing like Giles’s wish.”
“It doesn’t have to be. You and Giles are different. Each person’s dream is their own glorious universe. Dreams do come true, but only for those who know how to seize them. That’s why it is so rare. Most can’t do it without help, without certain assistance and manipulation. I can show you the way.”
She knew she should keep her mouth closed, but the temptation had already crept in. Her parents might not ever return to being the mother and father she remembered. In the end, even her own life might not become what she wanted it to be. Just eleven years into it and already it wasn’t what she hoped for. No friends, no family. She wanted someone to share her stories with; she wanted to feel how she believed a child should feel. None of that had happened, and she couldn’t be sure this would ever change.
Yet, this promise, this was something. It was too late to change the past, but her future was wide open. There was still a chance to bring her family back together the way it was when they put on her plays, and perhaps this was it. And so she spoke.
“I want to be a writer.”
Skeksyl jumped up. “Read all over the world! Your words recited and lived by! Your name remembered for lifetimes! My dear, the worlds Giles visits you will see just as clearly. They will live in your head. This locked-up world will come alive for you. And, unlike Giles, we can start you out young, this very day. With such a head start you can become the youngest writer to ever pen a film, your name up in lights. Surely your parents couldn’t ignore that, could they?”
The shadows danced more wildly now. Skeksyl turned, taking them in. When he faced Juniper again, he was smiling with understanding. “The family business. You can create roles for both your mother and father. You can be the one responsible for their next awards. How proud they will be of you. A true family, inseparable. They will return to you because you will finally be what they always wanted you to be. Soon people all over the world will love you for what you will give them. And with power like that, you can live whatever life you desire. You want to be a writer? I can help you become the greatest to ever live.”
Juniper now knew the truth. Skeksyl had given her parents exactly what they wanted; they achieved all their dreams. There was no going back for them; Juniper knew this. But now there was a way she might be able to come along as well.
But was that why she was here? She could hardly remember anymore.
Skeksyl folded his hands atop one another as if to keep them still. “Do we have a deal? Is this what you want? Tell me and I’ll make it so.”
There was no doubt the temptation was great. It was all she ever wanted. She could reunite with her parents and, as long as she could breathe, the wishes would be granted. Suddenly she saw it all before her, all her dreams, everything she could ever want, carried in a balloon.
But if her parents made their deals, why didn’t they seem happy? Or maybe they actually were happy, maybe their happiness was different from hers, like what she witnessed in that room floating past the stars, whether they were real or fake: It’s all relative; it’s perspective. Happiness is happiness. If she didn’t have her binoculars, there would have been no signs that they weren’t really in space. She could have made herself believe it, couldn’t she? What was real? What was truth? What was happiness? She wasn’t sure anymore. Could it be different for everybody?
She glanced at the balloon Giles clutched so tightly. What was in those balloons anyway? What was floating around in that magical air? She had seen what such a gift did going down her parents’ throats, and it frightened her, even if they returned to the tree for more. It was doing something to them, something horrible. That was real, that was the truth.
“No,” she said in an unwavering voice.
“No? What do you mean, ‘no’? I’m offering you a future of dreams. Do you know how many people would do anything to be in the position you are in right now?” Skeksyl’s hands shook once more.
“I said, ‘No.’” She sounded strong, but inside she was coming apart. Was she giving up on her parents? The thought terrified her.
Skeksyl sat back, calming. “I see. You’re not convinced. Not yet. How about another venture into that room, hmm? It can show you anything, everything.”
“It wouldn’t matter.” Juniper shook her head and glanced down at her binoculars. When I look through them I see the truth, she had told Giles, and she believed that. Going back in, she knew she would only see an empty room.
Skeksyl followed her gaze. In a flash, his staff shot out, hooked her binoculars, and lifted them from around her neck. The strap slid down the staff and the binoculars fell into his opened hands. “Oh, Juniper, you think this is the answer?” he asked, holding them up. “You think spying through this will tell you everything you need to know about life, about people? The only truth is the one we create. It’s the rest that is a dream. You can break everything down, analyze it all you want, inspect, investigate; it doesn’t matter. You won’t belong. Wake up, Juniper! The facts are fiction, the truth is fantasy. You think your binoculars bring the world to you? You foolish girl. They keep you out. Like a spectator, you watch from a distance, and as long as you watch you’ll never participate. Give up trying to make sense of it all. It isn’t what lies deep down that matters but, rather, what you show to the world. Don’t you understand, the world wants to be fooled. Flash the colors! Make a fuss! Puff your chest! Give them the show, Juniper. It’s all they want, and they’ll eat it up ravenously. There’s nothing beneath the surface, nothing hidden or out of sight; everything you need to know is all right before you. What is there to understand but how much you’re missing? That is all you can learn from such devices. Nothing more. This . . .” He held the binoculars high. “This is your weakness.” He gave the binoculars back to Juniper, and already they looked foolish in her little hands.
“You’ll return. Of that I am sure.” He smiled at Juniper, then at Giles. “Both of you will. Come back anytime, as you are always welcome here. Where else can that be said of the two of you?” He waved them toward the hall. “Go now, I’ll be waiting.”
And with that he walked out of the room, down the other hallway. The thick darkness enveloped him instantly, the bright red balloon he carried the last thing to fade.
Chapter 10
IF WE ARE DOOMED to repeat history,” Mrs. Maybelline said, “then we might as well make it fun.”
“Fun?” Juniper asked, her voice lost in a haze. She could not follow her day’s lesson adequately, as her mind constantly drifted to Giles. She had not seen him since they emerged from beneath the tree four days ago, and now she missed him greatly. For hours she waited outside, monocular outstretched, searching the distance for her friend. But he still hadn’t appeared.
“Yes, fun!” Mrs. Maybelline shouted. Her girth swallowed the edge of the desk, and a pudgy hand opened Juniper’s laptop computer. With a strike of a swollen index finger, she turned it on—the sudden hum matched Mrs. Maybelline’s own. Spittle rested on her lips and a slug of a tongue reached out, absorbed it, and retreated. Her body rocked back and forth in anticipation as the oceanic background appeared and then gave way to diagnostic pop-ups and alerts. Giddy, she clapped her hands together nearly two dozen times in a mere moment. “Now open that new program I uploaded. Hurry up; it’s absolutely fabulous!”
Obeying, although somewhat distractedly, Juniper closed the pop-ups and clicked on the newly installed polka-dotted icon. Soon the program “History: Your Way” was blaring a series of horns in announcement of its arrival to the screen. An animated Thomas Jefferson popped into existence and danced about the monitor, from one corner to another, bouncing off the edges, limbs swaying madly, jaw unhinging to produce the words “We the people . . . give you history: your way!”
“See?” Mrs. Maybelline said through her chuckles while nudging Juniper with her sunken elbows. “Fun already. Makes you want to live in the past with him, doesn’t it? Fun, fun, fun.”
“Fun,” Juniper repeated in a monotone. Her mind was thousands of miles away or, more accurately, in the woods outside her home, which, as of right now, seemed just as far. For what might have been the hundredth time since she and Giles emerged from the underground, Juniper pictured their quiet walk back through the woods that day.
The hole in the tree had closed and Juniper’s mind was reeling. “I don’t know what to think. Should I have taken a balloon?” she asked Giles. But he wasn’t listening. He had pulled the balloon down directly before his eyes. Enthralled, he gazed into it as if it were a crystal ball.
Juniper looked at her friend’s face, distorted through the swollen latex. “Giles . . .”
“I can’t wait any longer. I want to open it now. Are you ready?” he asked, hands set to untie the string.
Juniper shook her head. “I don’t want to watch. Not again.” She scanned the woods. “I’ll be right over there,” she said, pointing to a large tree she could easily hide behind. “Wait until I’m out of sight.”
His excitement deflated, but not by much. “Okay, okay.”
“Just get it over with,” she called out as she made her way to the safe place behind the tree.
He wasted no time.
Juniper heard the scratching pull of the latex, Giles’s deep inhalation, and the sudden rush of air screaming down his throat. She covered her ears, then closed her eyes. But regardless of how much pressure she put over her eardrums, she could never drown out her mother’s harrowing wail. Even with her eyes sealed tight as could be, nothing but blackness before her, the gruesome visage of her parents succumbing to those balloons still somehow surfaced. There was no escape from it.
And now Giles . . .
A hand grabbed her arm just above the elbow, slightly too hard, and her eyes snapped open. Giles was staring at her, beaming a broad smile. Juniper slowly lowered her hands from her ears. She eyed him suspiciously.
“It . . . it didn’t . . . do things to you? To your body?” She saw her father slumped over the dining room table, twitching.
“Of course it did. I feel great!” And he looked great, too, just like her parents had that morning. “I’m not kidding. June, you should have given it a try.”
Juniper opened her mouth to tell him that he was wrong, except she wasn’t so sure anymore that he was.
Not long after, Giles left for the day. It wasn’t very late, but he gave a hasty good-bye and went racing home at a speed Juniper feared she could no longer match.
“Head out of the clouds,” Mrs. Maybelline lectured, directing Juniper’s eyes to the computer screen with a pudgy digit, “and back to real life. Just click on the Industrial Revolution icon and it will carry you straight on through it, highlighting all the fun and interesting stuff in no time at all. Then, at the end, there are games for every time period. Isn’t that wonderful? Go ahead. Pull it up.” Which Juniper did while trying to keep her thoughts from roaming yet again. She was scared of where they’d take her.
“What a great time it was to be an American!” Mrs. Maybelline went on. “You’ll feel like you’re actually there! By the time you’re done, you’ll know everything you need to know. I even learned stuff I had no idea about. Who knew what a cotton gin was? Ah, technology. I’m telling you, Juniper, quick and easy! It’s the way to go. You won’t even feel like you’re learning! In the meantime I’ve got a few phone calls to make and the restroom to use,” and off Mrs. Maybelline went, muttering the rest of her errands until Juniper, much to her delight, could not hear them anymore; “e-mail to read, I have to update my mood and status, blog then vlog, check the gossip sites . . .”
Left alone, Juniper clicked the mouse, the screen flashed, and a bright, shiny world of more than a hundred years ago emerged in pixilated perfection. The music mellowed into a peaceful birdsong and the sun shined over a series of pristine factories being built at an alarming pace. Thomas Jefferson walked gaily down the streets explaining this part of America’s history in goofy, rhymed stanzas to a bleary-eyed Juniper.
It didn’t take long for her to realize “History: Your Way” wasn’t fun at all, and it certainly wasn’t history her way. She just couldn’t relate to what she saw and heard. Everything on the screen left her utterly disconnected. All the details were glossed over, dates and definitions were emphasized more than events and content—there was no how or why—and the games had nothing to do with the lesson. (She couldn’t see how a first-person shooter was educational just because you fired a musket.) The program portrayed everybody in town as cheerful drones, and the children brought home shining coins from their jobs and lived in huge, lively houses and the country grew at an astounding rate, covering the land with its newfound technology, bringing peace and love everywhere it spread. Everything on-screen was all so clean and simple and perfect. Toward the end, her animated guide said the Industrial Revolution was what made the country great, but she never really figured out how.
Something, Juniper believed, was missing, and she wanted to know what.
She let the program run its course, taking in what she thought was interesting or important, and, as usual, she decided that when Mrs. Maybelline left for the day she would run down to her father’s study, grab a few books on the subject, and educate herself—as well as keep her mind busy and away from her parents, Giles, the tree, and those balloons. She could lose herself in her books, her spyglasses.
But was this complicating things? Where did it ever get her? Perhaps she should have just accepted what the computer told her. After all, Skeksyl’s words still stubbornly lingered in her head. Maybe she really was wasting her time with her books and spyglasses and her pursuit for truth. There were far easier ways to get to the same exact places. The more she thought about it, the more Skeksyl’s words took hold.
She never went to the study that day, but she did come upon something else.
After Mrs. Maybelline left, Juniper was making her way back to her room. Passing one of the mansion’s numerous bathrooms (there were nine, in fact), she heard her father’s voice escaping into the hallway. “I don’t understand,” he said. He had been known to practice lines in there, and Juniper went to get a closer look. She put her back up against the hallway wall and slid closer until she could see his face reflected in the bathroom mirror. He stared into the looking glass with his mouth gaping wide open, his tongue hanging out and wiggling. His hands prodded about, at times pulling his jaw in opposite directions. He seemed to be attempting to peer down his throat. His head bobbed and weaved, trying for a better view. But of what?
Frustrated, he slammed his hands against the sink and leaned forward, bulging his eyes and spreading the lids with his fingers, one after another. He gazed deeply into each eye, again searching for something. “I don’t understand,” he said o
nce more. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.” Then the words quickened. “Idon’tunderstandIdon’tunderstandIdon’tunderstand.”
Juniper stepped in front of the door. “Dad? Dad, are you doing lines? You’re doing lines, right?”
Mr. Berry turned and looked at her. No, through her—she very well might have been fading away. His hand reached out and slowly closed the door. He didn’t say a word.
This is what it has come to, Juniper thought. Closed doors.
Then, as if on cue, the front door slammed. The sound typically accompanied Mrs. Berry’s arrival, and Juniper ran down the stairs and to the grand hallway to find her mother tossing her jacket on a long wooden bench. “Mom!”
“Not now.” Without so much as a glance, Mrs. Berry stuck a hand in Juniper’s face and walked on by. Climbing the stairs, she said, “I just talked with my agent. He wants your father and me to star in a film together. The public is clamoring for it. He has a pile of scripts for us to go through. But we have to do this right; the material has to be flawless, stunning. Now, make sure to leave us alone. We can’t be bothered.”
Tears welling in her eyes, Juniper stared at her mother’s back. Her chest began to rise and fall as she desperately tried to think of something to say. “I wrote a screenplay,” she called out, finally, with all her heart. “It’s perfect for you and Dad, I know it. Will you look at it?”
Mrs. Berry didn’t stop climbing the stairs, didn’t even turn around.
Juniper chased after her. “Mom! Mom, please!”
Closing her eyes, Mrs. Berry stood on the top step and brought her hands to her temples. “Juniper . . .” She rocked back and forth. Outside, through an open window, the raven screeched. Mrs. Berry’s eyes opened. “Juniper, don’t waste our time.”
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