The Amber Amulet

by Craig Silvey;

  “No, I did not.”

  “It is. But that’s the thing. There is so much energy around us and we don’t know how to use it properly. It gets wasted. That’s why there are so many fat people. They take in so much energy but their bodies don’t use it, and so it just sits there. That’s what fat is. It’s energy that doesn’t get used up. It’s potential energy. Same as fossils and gems and metals. And humans. It’s all just energy waiting to happen.”

  She suddenly rears back at this, flinching like he’s just struck at her unexpectedly. That giddy smile is gone and she stares at him in a way that makes him slightly uneasy. He supposes she must be in awe. Her eyes are wide. Probably with wonder. She is marveling. Because he is marvelous.

  “Anyway,” he smoothes his sheencape, “that’s all a secret. I’ve never told anyone all of that before.”

  “It’s okay. I won’t tell.”

  “I hope not, Joan. If my enemies came to know this, it could be a monumental calamity.”

  “You can trust me. I promise. But how about I give you a secret in return? That way you’ll have something on me if I tell.”

  “That’s fair.” He nods.

  “Well,” she holds her hands up for a moment and drops them on her thighs. “What would you like to know?”

  The Masked Avenger pauses for a moment. Then he points a finger at his eye.

  “How did I get my black eye?” she asks.

  He nods once.

  “Actually—” She sighs. “The truth is very embarrassing. I popped a champagne cork into my eye. Can you believe it? It was terrible. It was at a lunch event at my work. And the worst thing is that my boss was struggling to loosen the cork, so I snatched it off him. But I couldn’t open it, either. I did something really idiotic. I actually brought the bottle up to my face to inspect it, like I was looking through a telescope. And then pow! Out came the cork, right into my eye. I shot myself in the face trying to be the hero. It was the most profoundly stupid thing I have ever done in my life.”

  The Masked Avenger can’t help it. His nose twitches trying to stifle his smile, but it spreads anyway.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, and giggles. She smiles, too.

  “Hey, it’s not funny! It really hurt! So there I was, staggering backward because I’d just been shot in the eye, and I was soaked through, and the most humiliating thing is that the shock of it all made me cry. I started sobbing in front of all my colleagues. It was horrible. And now I have a black eye.”

  “Oh no! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed. That was unprofessional.”

  “It was but I’ll forgive you. You’re not the first. Anyway, that’s my secret.”

  “I won’t tell,” promises the Masked Avenger, who then quietly adds, “I thought . . .”

  “It was my husband?”

  He nods.

  “You and everyone else on this street, most likely. But I understand. We don’t do ourselves any favors. But no. He would never, ever hit me.” She knits her brow and shakes her head quickly, as though the notion is absurd to her.

  Joan looks out across the lawn.

  “We do argue a lot, but it’s just . . .” she pauses again, fumbling for words. “Frustration. Fear, maybe. I think we both realize that, you know . . . but we’re both too terrified to do anything about it, and so yelling at each other and feeling miserable seem easier.”

  She trails off. When she emerges from her thoughts, she smiles and shakes her head.

  “Why on earth am I telling you all this?”

  The Masked Avenger shrugs. After a while, he says, “Maybe you both fell out of love.”

  She tilts her head to the side, the same way Richie does when he doesn’t understand a command.

  “That’s an interesting way to put it.”

  “That’s what happened to my parents. Well, it’s how my mom explained it. They fell out of love. When I was really young, my dad just left without telling anybody, but she tracked him down. He sees me every other weekend, but I can tell his heart’s not really in it. He has a whole other family and everything. Maybe he fell out of love with me, too.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “You don’t really know him.”

  “That’s true. I’m sorry.”

  “So why did you love your husband?”

  Joan inhales a deep awkward breath with her eyebrows high. She thinks.

  “That’s hard. I think in the beginning it was because he loved me, so I loved him back because I was grateful. I didn’t like myself much back then, and so I was attracted to the fact that he saw something in me worth loving. It’s a real thrill being loved by someone who doesn’t have to do it. And so I think I got married because I thought that a ring would lock that love in forever, because it’s very scary when it is just your feelings holding you together.”

  “So how come people fall out of love, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. It’s true that people change. Or people don’t change when you’d hoped they might. Or they find somebody else they like better. Or people just grow apart, they lose interest in one another’s lives. Maybe they realize they made a mistake. There are lots of reasons.”

  “What’s yours?”

  Joan laughs softly and shakes her head. She should scold him for his impertinence, maybe even send him home. But this strange boy is so genuine and innocently direct that it pins her. And something about that mask and uniform makes it all right, gives this the air of a confessional. She’s suddenly hearing the questions she’s routinely avoided for years and it stuns her. No. Sit here and face it, she thinks. This is what you deserve.

  “Well, I’m not sure. The problem is, I got what I thought I wanted. I locked it all in by getting married, and now we both just feel trapped, like this little spider in the amber. But I always worked so hard to keep it going anyway, because I thought that having someone to love, having someone love me back, made me a stronger person. But it was the opposite. It made me weaker because it led me to believe that I couldn’t survive without those things. And I spent so long afraid of being alone that I never did anything for myself. I never did anything with myself, which made it all the easier to believe I wasn’t capable. I don’t know. Somewhere along the line we just stopped being kind to each other. I think most of the time when I’m yelling at my husband, I’m just yelling at myself.”

  Joan is picking at the amulet and talking into her lap. The Masked Avenger isn’t particularly clear on her testimony, but he thinks he knows what to do. He unclasps his grand-father’s service medal.

  “If you need courage, I can give you this. It’s bronze, which has incredibly strong properties. You just have to wear it, same as the amber.”

  “You really would give that to me, wouldn’t you?”

  He shrugs and nods.

  “Sacrifice, Joan. That’s what makes a Hero.”

  “Maybe it’s better if you keep it. But thank you. It’s very kind.”

  Her smile looks sad. He frowns. Her con-stant fiddling with the amber must have interrupted its flow of energy. He still has no idea how to get it back. He can’t ask for it now, not with the way her shoulders have fallen forward. He’s in a tight bind.

  “You must be tired,” says Joan.

  “Actually, I don’t sleep all that much. Nikola Tesla had the same problem.”

  “Too much energy?” She smiles.

  “Something like that. I can’t really switch off my brain like other people can, because I have access to all the bits that normal citizens don’t use. But that’s all right. It works out fine. I mostly save people nocturnally anyway.”

  The quiet descends. The Masked Avenger chews his lip and racks his brain for a last ditch opportunity to wrest back control of the Amber Amulet. He desperately tries to summon the powers of telekinesis. No good. He closes his eyes and tries to conjure a storm, a hurricane, a bolt of lightning through the roof of this house. Zap! Whoosh!

  Nothing works.

  They sit for a l
ong while until Joan turns with her eyebrows high.

  “Well, I might call it a night. It’s very late.”

  “I should go,” he cuts in. Richie is dolefully slow to rise. The Masked Avenger lingers slightly, seeing the amulet in her hand.

  “Joan?”

  “Yes?”

  He shakes his head quickly.

  “It’s okay.”

  They walk through the house. The Masked Avenger pays careful attention, lest he needs to break in later. She opens the front door.

  “It was nice talking to you, Joan. Things will be all right. You’ll be happy again soon. You can believe in me.”

  The Masked Avenger isn’t sure how reassuring that was because she looks as though she might cry.

  “You want to know another secret?” she asks.

  “Sure.”

  “I didn’t realize how unhappy I was until you asked. Thank you for listening.”

  The Masked Avenger isn’t sure what to say, so he nods once and moves on. Richie trots alongside. Joan watches as he trudges toward the front gate.

  He turns quickly, snapping his fingers.

  “Try rubbing an emerald around your eye. It should take care of the pain and the swelling.”

  “All right. I will do that.”

  “Good night, Joan.” He salutes.

  “Good night.” She smiles and waves.

  She leans against the architrave and wonders what just happened, and why her eyes are glazing. Her bruised socket feels hot and tender. Emerald! She smiles. And she recalls that moment when he had her rearing back and opening up: that one clear sentence amid his beautiful admirable nonsense that had perfectly described the restlessness she’d felt all her life.

  The Masked Avenger races home, scolding himself for his predicament. He climbs inside his secret lair a failure, a charlatan. He has returned without the amulet. He is in deep trouble. He thinks about Joan, about the way she looked at the amber in her lap as she spoke, and knows he could never summon the insensitivity to ask for it back or even muster the boldness to deceitfully reacquire it. But that, in turn, leaves him severely in his mother’s debt. He stole her heirloom and gave it away. He sits on his bed and rubs Richie’s head.

  “Richie, I think I shot myself in the foot trying to be the Hero.”

  The Masked Avenger looks at his reference books, his blackboard, his desk. He takes in the stack of pre-monogrammed pages next to his typewriter. He thinks about the amethyst buried in his drawer right next to his Hero Log. And with a curdling jolt of dread, he understands what he has to do.

  WO DAYS LATER, AS dawn creeps in, Liam McKenzie walks to his own mailbox on behalf of the Masked Avenger. There is dew on the lawn, and all is quiet, save for the occasional magpie warble. He surveys his peaceful street with a sad pride. He has plans. Big plans. One day, he hopes to find the right combination of precious materials to allow himself to emit enough energy to project a giant forcefield, an enormous invisible shell that repels all Evil and traps tranquility. Everyone in its shade will be protected and safe, and he’ll be able to walk the streets as their silent guardian.

  But all of that is imperiled by the letter he’s about to deliver. It’s a full confession and unconditional apology made out to the rightful owner of the Amber Amulet.

  He hopes she might understand the reason behind its disappearance, maybe find some solace in the fact that it was all in aid of a citizen in need. The letter asks for her forgiveness, but understands why it might be withheld.

  He knows it is likely he will be forced into retirement, or at the very least, a protracted hiatus, during which time he can only imagine what kind of Evil might emerge from the shadows, emboldened by his absence.

  He knows that leaving this letter is like throwing a grenade and running after it, but he has no choice. In his left fist, he grips a piece of amethyst, hoping it will guide him toward the right course of action. He takes a deep breath and lifts the metal flap.

  That breath remains buried, because the mailbox reveals a bulky envelope addressed to the Masked Avenger. He glances around the street, then carefully pinches it out. His heart skips, and nearly bursts through his chest when he feels a small lump hidden inside the package. Still, a Hero needs to be careful. It could be a bomb. A ruse. A trap.

  He bolts back to the secret lair and rips it open. Two very precious items fall free.

  And there is a letter:

  Liam McKenzie wipes his eyes and nose and holds the amulet. His whole body feels slack and loose. He could collapse and lay spread-eagle and grin, he’s so happy. He grabs Richie by the cheeks and nuzzles him so passionately his glasses come loose. Of course! It wasn’t amber she needed, it was amethyst all along!

  Shaking, he holds that honey-brown amulet up to the morning sun and its trapped spider sparkles like the diamond on the ring he’s just been given.