The Unseen

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  “Xandra,” Clara was saying. “Wake up. The taxi will be here in twenty minutes and you have to get ready.” And twenty minutes later Xandra, in an only slightly wrinkled linen dress, and Gussie, looking even more than ever like an expensive windup doll, were being put into a taxi and sent off to the fancy new restaurant across the street from the Civic Auditorium.

  In the New Age Grill Helen was at the head of the table, of course. All by herself at the moment, since Henry had a late meeting and would have to join them later. To look at her, at her sensible hairdo and business suit, you might think she didn't look very momlike. But when Gussie ran to her skipping and jumping and yelling “Hi, Mommy,” all the people in the restaurant, including the waiters, got that sappy “isn't that too cute” look on their faces. Xandra sat down quickly and buried her nose in the menu.

  Quincy, who was sitting next to Xandra, seemed uncomfortable in a sport coat and tie and smelled slightly sulfurous, as he often did after an afternoon in the science lab. He grinned at Xandra when she sat down, but she didn't grin back.

  The twins were across the table, Greek-god handsome and major-league cool as usual, and next to them was Victoria, the guest of honor, looking supersophisticated in her new evening dress. But not so sophisticated that someone who knew her as well as Xandra did, or as well as Xandra used to before Victoria became so perfect, wouldn't notice that her face was pale and her smile looked a little stiff. Leaning forward, Xandra whispered, “Hey, Tory. Do you remember that time we dressed up in ragbag stuff and pretended we were the Lost Boys?”

  Tory stared at Xandra zombielike for a second before she started a shaky smile. “Yes, I remember. The Ragbag Game. Whatever reminded you of that?” Her smile became a little less shaky as she looked down at her new dress and said, “I hope it wasn't this dress?”

  Xandra couldn't help giggling. “No, it wasn't your dress that reminded me. I just saw something today that made me remember the ragbag thing.” The rest of the family were watching. Watching and smiling approvingly as if they were glad that someone had been able to make Victoria loosen up a little. Turning her face away, Xandra reached down to scratch her ankle before she realized it had stopped itching. At least for the moment.

  The recital was a bore, of course, but maybe not quite as much of a bore as Xandra had been expecting. All the soloists were, like Victoria, people who had just won awards at a young musicians' contest, and most of them looked scared to death. Xandra got a little bit interested in imagining what they must have been feeling when they walked onstage and saw all those people staring at them. She was pretty good at that kind of imagining and she really got into the feel of it when Tory came onstage.

  And then it was all over and all the Hobsons were back at home and Xandra was back in her own room, curled up in bed under a pile of her animals, and once again thinking about the things the grandfather and Belinda had told her. Thinking and feeing terribly impatient that there would be another whole day before she could see Belinda at school and ask her for more and better explanations and answers. Better answers to the questions she'd already asked, and new answers to some questions that had recently come to mind.

  Monday morning finally arrived and Xandra, who had caught an early bus, was sitting on the front steps of the school anxiously waiting for Belinda to show up. And then there she was walking up the sidewalk, wearing the same ratty old jacket with its rolled up sleeves and raveled-out lining. Xandra jumped to her feet and ran to meet her.

  “Well, at last,” Xandra said. “Was your bus late or something?”

  “No, I don't think so.” Belinda's surprised expression changed to a worried frown. “Why? What's happened?”

  Xandra shook her head. “Nothing. At least not about …” Looking around, she lowered her voice. “Nothing about the Key, anyway. I didn't try to use it. But there are a bunch of things I need to know about.”

  “What kind of things?” Belinda stopped walking and seemed to pull away. “I thought we …That is, I thought all your questions got answered.”

  “Not all of them.” Xandra looked around. They were partway up the steps to the front entrance of the school, and arriving students were everywhere. “Come on. Let's go over there. Under the tree.” Grabbing Belinda's arm, she pulled her away from the crowd and across the lawn. When they were safely out of earshot, if not out of sight, she jerked Belinda to a stop.

  Belinda looked nervous and uneasy. “I don't know what to tell you,” she began, and then, “Look. Look over there.” Looking in the direction Belinda was pointing, Xandra saw Marcie and a couple of her friends getting out of a big black Cadillac and starting across the street toward the school. “Maybe you want to go see your friends,” Belinda suggested. “We could talk later.”

  Xandra shrugged impatiently. “No,” she said. “I don't want to see them. What I want is for you to tell me why your grandfather showed you how to use the Key. Why would he want to do a thing like that? Didn't he know what would happen to you? To me, I mean.”

  “No, he didn't,” Belinda said, “and it was my fault. I didn't tell him enough about you. I just told him how old you are, and how you happened to get the Key, and all the things you said about animals, and how you used to take care of so many of them. Because of what I told him, he didn't think the Unseen would be like it was for you.” She paused and then went on. “You remember how it was at first. When we were back there behind the furnace where you kept all your animals? Remember the one you said was like your skunk?”

  Xandra couldn't help smiling. “Yeah. And smelled like him too.”

  “I guess Grandfather thought there would be more things like that. Friendly things.”

  “Then why weren't there?” Xandra was feeling frustrated again. “Why were some of them monsters?”

  Belinda stared down at her feet and then turned toward the steps, where lots of students were still milling around. It was as if she was hoping someone would come to her rescue by interrupting the conversation.

  “Well, why wasn't it?” Xandra persisted. “Why wasn't it like your grandfather expected?”

  At last Belinda took a deep breath and raised her eyes. “All right,” she said, “I'll tell you. Remember when Grandfather told you the creatures were sometimes called reflejos or spiegels?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Xandra said.

  “Well, those are words that mean reflections or mirrors. Like my grandfather told you, those creatures are everywhere, all the time, but they're like an invisible stream of energy that can take on different shapes and forms. And not always the same ones. Mirrors reflect whatever is around them. And if a person has a Key, the Unseen reflects …” She paused and then went on, “It reflects things about that person.”

  Xandra stared at Belinda. At last, narrow-eyed, she began to say, “What you mean is …” Long pause. “You mean that those monsters came from me? Were a reflection of me?”

  Belinda shook her head. “No, not you. Just something about the way you are made them be the way they were.”

  “Oh yeah?” Xandra was angry now, and getting angrier. “Well, I don't believe you. Or your weird grandfather either. I mean, I may not be as gorgeous as some people, but those ugly things …” Whirling around, she ran across the lawn, and went on running.

  XANDRA DIDN'T BELIEVE what Belinda had said about mirrors and reflections.

  She went on telling herself how much she didn't believe it as she hurried across the lawn and up the front steps of the school. She didn't believe it for one minute, and she was just going to forget all about it. And when she caught up with Marcie and her pals, she really did put it right out of her mind—or thought she did.

  For once, in spite of having just seen her talking to Belinda again, most of the Mob were pretty friendly. At least they were after Lisa started sneering about seeing Xandra visiting with her “special friend,” and Xandra shut her up by saying, “Yeah, I was talking to Belinda and you'll never guess all the things she was telling me about you.”
>
  That really got Lisa's attention. “About me? What sort of things about me?”

  Xandra shrugged and said, “Oh, a lot of personal stuff. She has these special powers. Ways to find out about other people's secrets.”

  The whole bunch of them, all the girls in Marcie's group, were listening now, leaning close in a tight circle, asking questions and begging her to tell them more. So she did. More stuff about how Belinda had a grandfather who was a kind of wizard who was teaching her how to work all kinds of magic spells and find out things about everyone she met. She was still talking when they got to language arts class.

  The hours went by quickly that day, with lots to think over as well as talk about. But Xandra was not having any more talks with Belinda. Feeling that she'd heard enough about ugly monsters who were like mirrors, Xandra made it a point to catch the early bus that went directly to Heritage Avenue. And then she was home again, back at the Hobson Habitat, and there she did have a rather unusual talk, but not of course with Belinda.

  She was walking down the front hall on her way to the stairs when it happened. As she walked past the door to what was sometimes called the music room, she was hearing but not really listening to what sounded like a rerun of “the perfect one's” recital. But as she passed the door, the music stopped and someone called her name.

  “Hey, Xandra,” Victoria was calling. “Come in here. I want to talk to you.”

  Xandra was surprised. It wasn't very often that any of the siblings wanted to talk to her enough to stop whatever they were doing. Particularly not if it was something as important as Mozart.

  “Yeah?” she said, sticking her head in the door. “You want to talk to me right now? You look pretty busy.”

  Victoria got up from the piano bench. “Not really,” she said, shrugging. “I'm just going over the mistakes I made.”

  “Mistakes? I didn't hear any mistakes.” She considered going on to say, I didn't think you ever made a mistake, but decided against it.

  “Really?” Victoria looked pleased and hopeful. “That's good. I thought everyone heard them.”

  Shaking her head, Xandra said, “I'll bet no one heard any mistakes except you and maybe Mr. Randolph.” Mr. Randolph was the piano teacher who had started all the Hobson siblings on the piano and given up quickly on most of them. Especially quickly on Xandra.

  Victoria sat down on the music room couch and patted the place beside her. “I hope you're right. Come on in here. I want to talk to you.”

  “About what, for instance?” Reminding herself that it was usually bad news when any of the siblings wanted to talk to her, Xandra was expecting the worst as she stopped just inside the door. But it turned out that all Victoria wanted to talk about was the dressing-up game she and Xandra used to play. The game that Xandra had reminded her of the night before in the restaurant.

  “We called it playing the Ragbag Game, didn't we?” Tory said. “I'd sort of forgotten about it but I really remembered when you mentioned it. I wonder if all those ragbags are still there.”

  “Probably,” Xandra said. “Who knows.” There had been an awful lot of ragbags in the attic of the Habitat. Some of them were full of things that Clara saved for housecleaning or silver polishing, but some others held great stuff like Helen's old furs and formals and even some things left over from Halloweens and fancy costume parties.

  “Do you remember the time we made up a crazy play and I was Cleopatra and you were Tarzan?” Tory said, beginning to giggle. “And my Egyptian wig kept sliding down over my eyes just when I was supposed to do one of my speeches?”

  “Yeah, I remember.” Xandra tried and failed to hold back a smile. “Yeah, and I kept losing my loincloth.” They went on remembering things and Tory went on giggling until Quincy went past the door. When he peeked in to see what all the laughing was about, Tory jumped up and ran to ask him something about what you had to do to get into the driver education class. Xandra started to leave, thinking, “Well, so much for the good old Ragbag days.” But before she turned the corner, Tory called after her, “Let's talk about it some more later. Okay, Xandra?”

  Back in her own room, Xandra didn't get back to thinking about Belinda and the mirror thing right away, and when she did she was surer than ever that it wasn't true. None of those crazy lies about how the monsters reflected things about the person who owned the Key could possibly be true.

  And that stuff about the Unseen creatures being everywhere, all the time. That was even more ridiculous. Suddenly remembering how she had imagined seeing, or maybe really did see, some shadowy shapes right there in her own room, she quickly climbed up on her bed and dug her way down into the bottom of her pile of animals. Clutching some of her favorites against her chest, she squinted and began once again to glance quickly from side to side.

  But this time nothing happened, at least not at first. No dark shapes lurked at the edges of bookcases or in the corners of the room. She tried it again, squinting even more, but still no cloudy shapes or flickering shadows. But then, as she was cuddling down into a more comfortable position, rearranging dogs and teddy bears, a dolphin, two plush tigers and then a plaid elephant, she suddenly felt something strange. A squirming, snuggling movement, near her right arm at first, and then against her left leg. A shifting snuggle and then a warm, damp, breathy touch on her wrist. Warm and damp and friendly like the nose of a kitten, or perhaps of a baby skunk. Even though Xandra quickly dug down through all the animals, running her hands over one muzzle after another, she couldn't find a single one that felt the least bit warm or damp.

  So perhaps that was the end of it. And if it was, maybe the enchanted feather was a gift after all, instead of an evil charm that created a swarm of flesh-eating monsters. What if the appearance of the sharp-fanged creatures had only been some kind of mistake that would never happen again?

  Pulling the feather out from under her blouse, Xandra turned it from side to side, thinking about how at first she had imagined it to be a wonderful thank-you gift from the enchanted bird she had rescued from the hunters and their dog. A gift like an Aladdin's lamp that would grant wonderful wishes and answer all kinds of secret questions. While she was still lying there among her animal buddies, Xandra found she was beginning to think about other magical possibilities that might begin with …Perhaps with another visit to the basement? To the secret place behind the furnace where all her animals had lived and where she had first seen the enchanted feather.

  During the next few days Xandra continued to think about the things that had happened in the basement. Mostly about what had happened after she had used the Key, but before the sinister clumps of darkness began to appear. She thought particularly about the fuzzy little shape that had looked and acted a lot like Stinky. Would he come back again if she went back to her basement hideout? As time went by she became more and more sure that some of her other basement orphans might turn up again if she was brave enough to go looking for them.

  She didn't, however, do anything right away. At home and at school she went on doing ordinary things, which, as usual, included a lot of reading and daydreaming. And although she did see Belinda every day, she didn't make any special effort to talk to her. After the day Belinda had told her that the monsters were her own reflection, Xandra had quit riding the downtown bus. Belinda, she told herself, must have wanted it that way since she didn't even bother to ask Xandra why she'd stopped riding with her. So that was it, and everyone seemed to be happy, except that once in a while Xandra found herself thinking of something she'd like to say about a book or an idea, the kind of thing she wouldn't be able to discuss with most of the people she knew. At those times she wished that—that things could be different.

  And every evening, back in her own room, Xandra climbed onto her bed and snuggled down among her animals and waited to see if anything would happen. But nothing did. So that's that, she told herself. It's all over. But the truth was, she didn't want to believe it. To believe that the whole enchanted feather thing was over
, or else that it had never really happened in the first place.

  It wasn't until Saturday morning that she finally made up her mind to go back to her basement hideout in spite of what had happened, or what she thought had happened, the last time she was there. “Just to look around,” she whispered, imagining that she was talking to Belinda. “I won't try to use the Key. I just want to go back to where I took care of the animals. What would be wrong with that?”

  So it was that early on a Saturday morning, while most of the Hobsons were still asleep, Xandra crept down the back stairs and around the house until she came to the steps that led down to the basement. On the bottom stair she stopped for a moment, for one last aboveground, daylight moment, before she took a deep breath and opened the door.

  INSIDE THE BASEMENT everything looked pretty much the same as ever. Even in the dim light it was possible to see that the boxes, trunks and barrels were right where they'd always been, as well as all the stacks of bicycles, skateboards, scooters and vacuum cleaners. Taking one careful step at a time, Xandra moved forward, stopping again and again to check all the dark corners and crevices behind the boxes and between the stacks. Crevices where the dusty light barely penetrated, and where, if she looked too long and hard, she could imagine thickening pools of darkness. But where, if she shook her head hard and blinked, there seemed to be only normal shadows. Shaking and blinking every few steps, Xandra moved toward the furnace and around behind it to her own secret hideout.