After that it simply became a nightmare journey of crawling and kneeling and choking, pulling Isobel with her all the time. Meredith thought it would never end, as each inch forward became harder and harder. The stave was an unbearable weight to heave along with her, but she refused to let go of it.
It’s precious, her mind said, but is it worth your life?
No, Meredith thought. Not my life, but who knows what else will be out there if I get Isobel into the cool darkness?
You’ll never get her there if you die because of — an object.
It’s not an object! Painfully Meredith used the stave to clear some smoldering debris from her path. It belonged to Grandpa in the time when he was sane. It fits my hand. It’s not just a thing!
Have it your own way, the voice said, and disappeared.
Meredith was beginning to run into more debris now. Despite the cramping in her lungs, she was sure that she could make it out of the back door. She knew there should be a laundry room on her right. They should be able to feel a space there.
And then suddenly in the dark something reared up and struck her a blow on the head. It took her dimming mind a long time to come up with a name for the thing that had hurt her. Armchair.
Somehow they’d crawled too far. This was the living room.
Meredith was flooded with horror. They’d gone too far — and they couldn’t go out the front door into the midst of magical battle. They would have to backtrack, and this time make sure to find the laundry room, their gate to freedom.
Meredith turned around, pulling Isobel with her, hoping the younger girl would understand what they had to do.
She left the stave on the burning living room floor.
Elena sobbed to get her breath, even though she was allowing Stefan to help her now. He ran, holding Bonnie by one hand and Elena by the other. Damon was somewhere in front — scouting.
It can’t be far now, she kept thinking. Bonnie and I both saw the brightness — we both did. Just then, like a lantern put into a window, Elena saw it again.
It’s big, that’s the problem. I keep thinking we should reach it because I have the wrong idea of what size it is in my mind. The closer we get, the bigger it gets.
And that’s good for us. We’ll need a lot of Power. But we need to get there soon, or it could be all the Power in the universe and it won’t matter. We’ll be too late.
Shinichi had indicated that they would be too late — but Shinichi had been born a liar. Still, surely just beyond that low branch was…
Oh, dear God, she thought. It’s a star ball.
37
Then Meredith saw something that was not smoke or fire. Just a glimpse of a door frame — and a tiny breath of cool air. With this hope to sustain her, she scuttled straight for the door to the backyard, dragging Isobel behind her.
As she passed the threshold, she felt blessedly cold water somehow showering down onto her body. When she pulled Isobel into the spray, the younger girl made the first voluntary sound she had during the entire journey: a wordless sob of thanks.
Matt’s hands were helping her along, were taking away the burden of Isobel.
Meredith got up to her feet and staggered in a circle, then dropped to her knees.
Her hair was on fire! She was just recalling her childhood rehearsal of stop, drop, and roll, when she felt the cold water turned on it. The hose water went up and down her body and she turned around, basking in the feeling of coolness, until she heard Matt’s voice say, “The flames are out. You’re good now.”
“Thank you, Matt. Thank you.” Her voice was hoarse.
“Hey, you were the one who had to go all the way to the bedrooms and back.
Getting Mrs. Saitou out was pretty easy — there was the kitchen sink full of water, so as soon as I cut her free from the kitchen chair we just got all wet and dashed outside.”
Meredith smiled and looked around quickly. Isobel had become her responsibility now. To her relief, she saw that the girl was being hugged by her mother.
And all it had taken was the nonsense choice between a thing — however precious it was — and a life. Meredith gazed at the mother and daughter and was glad. She could have another stave made. But nothing could replace Isobel.
“Isobel said to give this to you,” Matt was saying.
Meredith turned toward him, the fiery light making the world crazy, and for one moment didn’t believe her eyes. Matt was holding the fighting stave out to her.
“She must have dragged it with her free hand — oh, Matt, and she was almost dead before we started…”
Matt said, “She’s stubborn. Like someone else I know.”
Meredith wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but she knew one thing. “We’d all better get to the front yard. I doubt the volunteer fire department is going to come. Besides — Theo—”
“I’ll get them moving. You scout the gate side,” Matt said.
Meredith plunged into the backyard, which was hideously illuminated by the house, now fully engulfed in flames. Fortunately, the side yard was not. Meredith flicked the gate open with the stave. Matt was right behind her, helping Mrs. Saitou and Isobel along.
Meredith quickly ran by the flaming garage and then stopped. From behind her she heard a cry of horror. There was no time to try to soothe whoever had cried, no time to think.
The two fighting women were too busy to notice her — and Theo was in need of help. Inari was truly like a fiery Medusa, with her hair writhing around her in flaming, smoking snakes. Only the crimson part burned, and it was that part that she was using like a whip, using one snake to wrest away the silver bullwhip from Theo’s hand, and then another to wrap around Theo’s throat and choke her. Theo was desperately trying to pull the blazing noose from her neck.
Inari was laughing. “Are you suffering, petty witch? It will all be over in secondsfor you and for your entire little town! The Last Midnight has finally come!”
Meredith glanced back at Matt — and that was all it took. He ran forward, passing her, all the way up to the space below the fighting women. Then he bent slightly, cupping his hands.
And then Meredith sprinted, putting everything she had left into the short run, leaving her just enough energy to leap and place one foot into Matt’s cupped hands, and then she felt herself soaring aloft, just within distance for the stave to slice cleanly through the snake of hair that was choking Theo.
After that Meredith was in free fall, with Matt trying to catch her from below. She landed more or less on top of him and they both saw what happened next.
Theo, who was bruised and bleeding, slapped out a part of her gown that was smoldering. She held out a hand for the silver bullwhip and it flew to meet her outstretched fingers. But Inari wasn’t attacking. She was waving her arms wildly, as if in terror, and then suddenly she shrieked: a sound so anguished that Meredith drew in her breath sharply. It was a death-scream.
Before their eyes she was turning back into Obaasan, into the shrunken, helpless, doll-like woman Matt and Meredith knew. But by the time this shriveled body hit the ground it was already stiff and dead, her expression one of such unrepentant malice that it was frightening.
It was Isobel and Mrs. Saitou then who came forward to stand over the body, sobbing with relief. Meredith looked at them and then up at Theo, who slowly floated to the ground.
“Thank you,” Theo said with the faintest of smiles. “You have saved me — yet again.”
“But what do you think happened to her?” Matt asked. “And why didn’t Shinichi or Misao come to help her?”
“I think they all must be dead, don’t you?” Theo’s voice was soft over the roar of the flames. “As for Inari — I think that perhaps someone destroyed her star ball. I’m afraid I was not strong enough to defeat her myself.”
“What time is it?” Meredith abruptly cried, remembering. She ran to the old SUV, which was still running. Its clock showed 12:00 midnight exactly.
“Did we save the people?
” Matt asked desperately.
Theo turned her face outward toward the center of the town. For nearly a minute she was still, as if listening for something. At last, when Meredith felt that she might shatter from tension, she turned back and said quietly, “Dear Mama, Grandmama, and I are one, now. I sense children who are finding themselves holding knivesand some with guns. I sense them standing in their sleeping parents’ rooms, unable to remember how they got there. And I sense parents, hiding in closets, a moment ago frightened for their very lives, who are seeing weapons dropped and children falling onto master bedroom floors, sobbing and bewildered.”
“We did it, then. You did it. You held her off,” Matt panted.
Still gentle and sober, Theo said, “Someone else — far away — did much more. I know that the town needs healing. But Grandmama and Mama agree. Because of them, no child has killed a parent this night, and no parent has killed a child. The long nightmare of Inari and her Last Midnight is over.”
Meredith, grimy and bedraggled as she was, felt something rise and swell inside her, bigger and bigger, until, for all her training, she couldn’t contain herself any longer. It exploded out of her in a yell of exultation.
She found that Matt was shouting too. He was as grubby and unkempt as she was, but he seized her by the hands and whirled her around in a barbarian victory dance.
And it was fun, whirling around and yelling like a kid. Maybe — maybe in trying to be calm, in always being the most grown-up, she had missed out on the essence of fun, which always felt as if it had some childlike quality to it.
Matt had no trouble in expressing his feelings, whatever they were: childlike, mature, stubborn, happy. Meredith found herself admiring this, and also thinking that it had been a long time since she’d really looked at Matt. But now she felt a sudden wave of feeling for him. And she could see that Matt felt the same way about her. As if he’d never really looked at her properly before.
This was the moment…when they were meant to kiss. Meredith had seen it so often in movies, and read about it in books, that it was almost a given.
But this was life, it wasn’t a story. And when the moment came, Meredith found herself holding Matt’s shoulders while he held hers, and she could see that he was thinking exactly the same thing about the kiss.
The moment stretched…
Then, with a grin, Matt’s face showed that he knew what to do. Meredith did too.
They both moved in, and hugged each other. When they drew back, they were both grinning. They knew who they were. They were very different, very close friends.
Meredith hoped that they always would be.
They both turned to look at Theo, and Meredith felt a pang in her heart, the first since she had heard they’d saved the town. Theo was changing. It was the look on her face as she watched them that gave Meredith the pang.
After being young, and while watching youth at its peak, she was once again aging, wrinkling, her hair going white instead of moonlit silver. At last, she was an old woman wearing a raincoat covered with bits of paper.
“Mrs. Flowers!” This person, it was perfectly safe and right to kiss. Meredith flung her arms about the frail old woman, lifting her off her feet in excitement. Matt joined them, and they boosted her above their heads. They carried her like this to the Saitous, mother and daughter, who were watching the fire.
There, sobered, they put her down.
“Isobel,” Meredith said. “God! I’m so sorry — your home…”
“Thank you,” Isobel said in her soft, slurred voice. Then she turned away.
Meredith felt chilled. She was even beginning to regret the celebration, when Mrs.
Saitou said, “Do you know, this is the greatest moment in the history of our family?
For hundreds of years, that ancient kitsune — oh, yes, I’ve always known what she was — has been forcing herself upon innocent humans. And for the last three centuries it has been my family line of samurai mikos that she has terrorized. Now my husband can come home at last.”
Meredith looked at her, startled. Mrs. Saitou nodded.
“He tried to defy her and she banished him from the house. Ever since Isobel was born, I have feared for her. And now, please forgive her. She has trouble expressing what she feels.”
“I know about that,” Meredith said quietly. “I’ll go have a little talk with her, if it’s all right.”
If ever in her life she could explain to a fellow traveler what fun having fun was, she thought, it was now.
38
Damon had stopped and was kneeling behind an enormous broken tree branch.
Stefan pulled both girls to him and caught them so that they all three landed just behind his brother.
Elena found herself staring at a very large tree trunk. Still as big as it was, it was nowhere near as large as she had been expecting. It was true; the four of them certainly couldn’t have held hands around it. But in the back of her mind had been lurking images of moons and trees and trunks that were as tall as skyscrapers, in which a star ball could be hidden on any “floor,” in any “room.”
This was simply a grand oak tree trunk sitting in a sort of fairy circle — perhaps twenty feet in diameter on which no dead leaf had strayed. It was a paler color than the loam they had been running on, and even sparkled in a few places. Overall, Elena was relieved.
More, she could even see the star ball. She’d feared — among other things — that it might be up too high to climb, that it might be so entangled with roots or branches that today, certainly after hundreds or even thousands of years, it would be impossible to chop out. But there it was, the greatest star ball that had ever been, fully the size of a beach ball, and it nestled freely in the first crutch of the tree.
Her mind was racing ahead. They’d done it; they’d found the star ball. But how much time would it take to get it back to where Sage was? Automatically, she glanced at her compass and saw to her surprise that the needle now pointed southwest — in other words, back to the Gatehouse. That was a thoughtful touch of Sage’s. And perhaps they didn’t have to go through the trials backward; they could simply use their Master Key to go back to Fell’s Church, and then…well, Mrs.
Flowers would know what to do with it.
If it came to that, maybe they could just blackmail Her, whoever She was, to go away forever in exchange for the star ball. Although — could they live with the thought that she might do this again — and again — and again to other towns?
Even as she planned, Elena watched the expressions of her comrades: the childlike wonder on Bonnie’s heart-shaped face; the keen assessment in Stefan’s eyes; Damon’s dangerous smile.
They were viewing their hard-won reward, at last.
But she couldn’t look for too long. Things had to be done. Even as they watched, the star ball brightened, showing such brilliant, incandescent colors that Elena was half-blinded. She shielded her eyes just as she heard Bonnie inhaling sharply.
“What?” Stefan asked, a hand in front of his eyes, which, of course were much more sensitive to light than human eyes.
“Someone’s using it right now!” Bonnie replied. “When it went bright like that, it sent out Power! A long, long way out!”
“Things are heating up in what’s left of poor old Fell’s Church,” said Damon, who was staring intently upward at the branches above him.
“Don’t talk about it like that!” Bonnie exclaimed. “It’s our home. And now we can finally defend it!” Elena could practically see what Bonnie was thinking: families embracing; neighbors smiling at neighbors again; the entire town working to fix the destruction.
This is how great tragedies sometimes happen. People with a single goal, yet who are not in sync. Assumptions. Presumptions. And, maybe, most important of all, the failure to sit down and talk.
Stefan tried, even though Elena could see that he was still blind from the brilliance of the star ball. He said quietly, “Let’s talk this over for a while and brainstorm ways to ge
t it—” But Bonnie was laughing at him, though not unkindly. She said, “I can get up there as fast as a squirrel. All I need is someone strong to catch it when I knock it down. I know I can’t climb down with it; I’m not that silly. Come on, you guys, let’s go!”
That’s how it happened. Different personalities, different modes of thinking. And one laughing, light-headed girl, who didn’t have a precognition when it was needed.
Elena, who was envying Meredith the fighting stave, didn’t even see the beginning. She was watching Stefan, who was blinking rapidly to get his eyesight back.
And Bonnie was scrambling as lightly as she had boasted, up on top of the dead tree branch that sheltered them. She even gave them a little laughing salute just before she leaped into the barren, sparkling circle around the tree.
Then microseconds stretched infinitely. Elena felt her eyes slowly getting wider, even though she knew they were flying open. She saw Stefan leisurely reach across her to try to twine his fingers around Bonnie’s leg, even though she knew that what she was seeing was a lightning-fast grab for the petite girl’s ankle. She even heard Damon’s instantaneous telepathy: No, little fool! as if he were speaking the words in his accustomed lazy tones of superiority.
Then, still in slow motion, Bonnie’s knees bent and she launched into the air above the circle.
But she never touched the ground. Somehow, a black streak, stunningly fast even in the slow-motion horror film that Elena was watching, landed where Bonnie would have landed. And then Bonnie was being thrown, being hurled too fast for Elena’s eyes to track, outside of the barren circle and then there was a dull thudtoo fast for Elena’s mind to track as being Bonnie’s landing.
Quite clearly, she heard Stefan cry “Damon!” in a terrible voice. And then Elena saw the thin dark objects — like curving lances — that were already shooting downward. Another thing her eyes couldn’t follow. When her vision adjusted, she saw that they were long, curved black branches, spaced evenly around the tree like thirty spider legs, thirty long spears that were meant to either imprison someone inside them like the bars of a cell, or to — pin them into the strange sand beneath her feet.
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