by Nina Hoffman
“When was the crash?”
“A year ago.”
“Great-aunt Elia died about a year and a half ago,” said Benjamin, “and I guess your oma didn’t connect much to anyone else at Janus House. Great-uncle Harper must have known her—Elia was his favorite sister and they spent a lot of time together—but he didn’t sponsor her to come back after Elia died. I don’t know what that’s about. There are two other giri at Janus House now. One of them, Miss Delia, was chosen by Cousin Columba, and she’s friends with several other people now, and does errands for all of them. She’s about sixty. The other one, Morgan Fetters, is really old, and was recruited by Istar Jerusalah, the one who used to be in charge of everything before Harper took over. He’s too old to do much for us. Some of the cousins stop by and check on him and take him places if he needs help.”
“Uh . . . was I supposed to get chosen by somebody?” Travis asked. “If I was, who is it?”
Benjamin laughed. “That’s right,” he said. “Somebody has to pick you! I’ll do it.”
“Does that mean we’re best friends?”
Benjamin looked sideways at Travis, still grinning. “Works for me.”
“Okay,” said Travis. “Maybe we should, you know, like, get to know each other better. What would happen if you sat with my other buddies at lunch sometime, instead of at the Janus House table? Would the universe implode?”
“I don’t know,” said Benjamin. “Let’s try it and see.”
“Benjamin, we’re not supposed to—” Gwenda said.
“It’s different if the person is giri,” Benjamin said.
They walked in silence for a little while, and then Gwenda said, “Maybe I can get a giri, too.”
“Or you could go sit at a different table with me and Rimi,” Maya said. “What do you think about Helen Halloran?”
“She’s always nice,” Gwenda said. “Nicer than most. You know? We have a rep at school. Most people just ignore us. Helen has lots of friends, but she still says hi to us once in a while.”
“What about Sibyl Katsaros?”
Gwenda frowned.
“There’s something off about her,” Travis said.
“Yes,” Gwenda said. “She has music on her, only some of the pitches are tuned differently. There’s something.... Something.”
“So it’s not just me,” Maya said.
“She noticed Rimi,” Benjamin said. “Usually if people see something strange, like pencils moving by themselves, their brains make up some kind of excuse for it, and they forget it. She watched. I think she saw.”
“We’re here,” Travis said. He stopped at a house with a low rock wall in front of it. Some of the rocks were huge chunks of agate, and some were black-and-white streaked granite, with gleaming mica. The wall was just the right height and width to sit on comfortably, and between it and the sidewalk was a little strip of garden that hosted a lot of bushy chrysanthemums, most blooming in colors of rust and fire. An opening in the middle of the wall gave onto a flagstone pathway that ran between flanks of overgrown garden to the front porch of the house. Two steps led to the front porch with a wheelchair ramp beside them.
A cardboard skeleton was tacked to the door. It was smiling.
Travis crossed the porch, unlocked the front door, and stood back, revealing a wide hallway with dark walls. Framed art hung against the dark paneling. A runner carpet with a pattern of autumn leaves led toward the far end of the hall. Light came from the doorway to a room on the right side.
“Oma? Artemis? I’m home,” Travis called as he followed the others into the hall.
“Well, thank goodness, that,” said a woman who came out of the room with light leaking from it. She was skinny and had brown, bushy hair and sandy brown skin. She pulled a beige jacket on over her orange dress, grabbed a messenger bag, and slung it over her shoulder. “You tend to her right now. She needs to go to the bathroom.” The woman rushed past them and out the front door.
Travis slid out of his pack and ran to the room. “Oma?”
“Yes, dear,” said a strong voice. “If you could—Artemis didn’t even want to start, and we were waiting—”
“Sure.”
Maya stood in the hallway with Benjamin and Gwenda. She thought it would be better to wait until Travis and his grandmother had sorted themselves out. Rimi wasn’t so patient. She sent out a snaky arm and peeked around the corner, just as Travis said, “I brought company home, Oma.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear.”
“We’ll be a little while, guys,” Travis called.
“Sure,” Benjamin said. “We’ll wait out here till you’re ready.”
Maya studied the artwork on the walls, and so did Gwenda and Benjamin. Several pencil sketches of people in the midst of farm activities, with strong strokes that gave a sense of large, muscular people working hard with wheat and grain and cattle. Two watercolor landscapes, the colors more vivid than watercolors usually were—a lake below steep, snow-topped mountains, and a beach during a storm.
“Do you like them?” Gwenda murmured under cover of wheelchair noises, a door shutting gently, and soft shuffles and murmurs from the room ahead.
“Yes,” said Maya. “This one especially.” Spare outlines sketched a barefoot boy in white shirt and pants with suspenders, his hand on the headstall of an ox taller than he was.
Or was it an ox? Did it have three horns?
Returning, Rimi brushed her cheek.
What did you find? Maya thought, or do I even want to know?
The old one has many different kinds of pain. She is sad like my other Other just before he died.
Maya hugged herself. Is she dying right now?
No. No, thought Rimi. She has the colors of someone with the death sadness, but she has other colors, too. She has the broken webs in her, but the colors around her head are strong and interesting. Travis makes the true colors brighter.
Huh.
“Maya? You okay?” Benjamin asked. Maya’s gaze was fixed on the lake and mountain watercolor, on a spot of yellow and orange she realized now was a tiny campfire against the wilderness.
“Just talking to Rimi,” Maya said.
“Ah,” said Benjamin.
“What about this one?” Gwenda asked. She pointed to a picture on the opposite wall that Maya hadn’t noticed before. It showed the silhouette of a woman against a sunset, but the colors in the clouds were a little off, a little too purple and green. The woman had a spear in her right hand, its butt resting against the outside of her foot. The hair flared from her head, indicating wind, and she stood on a cliff above a stormy sea. Green light glowed under the sea’s surface of pale froth, and there were . . . shadows of things in the water.
“Good technique,” Maya said. “Scary picture. What do you think?”
“This is a Litachi spearhead,” said Gwenda, pointing to the spear, which ended in a head shaped with a broad base and a short blade, almost an equilateral triangle, with two small wings at the bottom. “They use those on Fillistrana.”
“Where’s that?”
“Through a portal.”
“Oh. Whoa.”
“Wild,” said Benjamin. “I think I’ve seen that cliff, too.” He traced the irregular bulge at the lip of the cliff with a finger, not quite touching the surface of the picture. “Fillistrana. That might be a good world for you to visit on your first field trip.”
“That’s not good for a first stop,” Gwenda said. “Too many hostile others. Maya, I bet you’d like Troana. They have flowers there as big as your head, in all kinds of colors we never see here, and the fairies come from there.”
“Troana,” Maya whispered. “I’d like to go there.”
“I think we have a field trip scheduled there next week,” said Benjamin. “We collect a lot of pollen there. People we barter with use it for spice. I bet Aunt Sarutha would let you go.”
No! Rimi thought. We are not going through a portal to anywhere!
Kachik-Vati went through a p
ortal. Ara-Kita went through a portal. What are you scared of? Maya thought
Portaling is bad. It hurts, and people can mess with you. I don’t want us going through any portals.
Rimi, Maya began, but she was also afraid at the thought of going through a portal. She wished she had asked Vati or Kachik what it was like. She could ask Benjamin and Gwenda, but they were used to it.
“Okay, folks,” Travis called from the other room. “You can join us now.”
Maya followed Gwenda into the room, trailed by Benjamin.
It was a pleasant sitting room with big windows. The floor was hardwood. A crafts table was set up in front of the windows, with several works in progress on it. Some involved paints and canvas. Maya wanted to go check them out, but she held herself back.
A hospital bed stood against the wall nearest the door. In the center of the room was a dining room table with three chairs around it and a gap on the remaining side where a wheelchair could fit. A door in the right wall was ajar, with the sound of water running beyond it, and a door in the left wall was open, revealing a slice of kitchen.
Travis stood beside a small woman in a wheelchair near the dining table. She had waves of silver-blonde hair and bright black eyes. She had gently sagging folds around her eyes and mouth. Her skin looked as soft as peach fuzz. She wore red lipstick and a fluffy mint-green bathrobe. She had furry brown monster slippers with three toe-claws on each foot. “Sorry about that,” she said in a robust voice. “Plumbing’s an issue for me, and for everybody who takes care of me. I’ve tried to move beyond embarrassment about it and just get practical, so I hope you children can, too. Who do we have here?”
Travis said, “Oma, this is Maya, Benjamin, and Gwenda. Gwenda, Maya, Benjamin, my grandma. I call her Oma. Oma, what should they call you?”
“You children may call me Oma as well, or if you prefer, you could call me Mrs. Orgelbauer. I’m so pleased to meet Travis’s friends.” She held out her hand, which looked somehow askew. It was so strange Maya wanted to draw it, even though she thought no one would believe the picture was of a real person’s hand. The fingers were swollen and twisted, and Maya wondered if Oma hurt when people touched them.
Benjamin stepped up and gently gripped Oma’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Nola.”
“Pleased to meet—what did you call me, young man?”
“Nola, I’m Benjamin Porta, and this is my cousin, Gwenda Janus. Maya’s an adopted member of our family, and Travis is in training to be a giri, though he can’t talk about that.”
“Oh!” Oma put both hands to her cheeks. “Oh! Oh, my.”
“Oma?” Travis said, bending to look her in the face. “Are you okay?”
“All these years. My secret life. I couldn’t—I couldn’t tell you, Travis.” She smiled. “Benjamin. Gwenda. Yes, I believe I’ve seen you at Janus House.”
Benjamin smiled. “Now that I see you, I know I’ve met you before, too, Oma. Only, when Great-aunt Elia introduced us, she called you something else, didn’t she?”
“Of course, of course. Heidi is my first name, but the children all called me Nola.” She sat back in her chair and smiled. “Oh, to open my mouth and have words come freely for the first time in ages. I have to appreciate the silence—I might have slipped otherwise, who knows? But it’s been hard, too.”
Travis said, “Uncle Dude put silence on me, too, and I couldn’t talk about it at all—well, hey, now, listen here to what’s coming out of my mouth. Did the silence wear off?” He looked at Gwenda.
She shook her head. “Not until he takes it off,” she said. “But it has side rules. Maybe, now that Benjamin started talking about Janus House things to your oma, the silence relaxes.”
I wonder if I could take the silence off of Travis, Rimi thought. I bet he has the same squizzles in the sides of his airtube as you did.
Can you fix other people the way you fix me?
That’s part of what Vati taught me. I can do things for you and I can do them for other people, too. It’s a different way, but I know how now. She sent an arm toward Travis, then drew it back. Ask him first.
Oma sniffed. “I’m so happy for you, Travis. I know you’re having a tough time because of me. I’m glad you found magic.”
He leaned over and hugged her. Oma couldn’t see what Maya saw, the doubt that clouded Travis’s brow. He managed to smile before he released his grandmother. “I’m glad I know more about who you are,” he said. “Some of the things that have puzzled me for a long time are clearer now. The magic wand? The Doowah Box?”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “The Seeker and the Doowah! Elia put a silence on me, but I guess parts of it were permeable. I wasn’t supposed to show you those things, but I managed it somehow, I guess by playing pretend.” She patted his arm and smiled up at him. “I suppose you could inherit all my tools . . . and my secret room.”
“I don’t want to inherit anything, Oma. Uh—what secret room?”
Oma smiled. “I don’t have to die to pass on my knowledge and skills, let alone my tools. I’ll tell you how to get to the room. It’s upstairs, and I haven’t been able to get there since the crash. Benjamin said you’re training with someone at Janus House?”
“Yeah, a couple people, actually. Some of what they’re teaching me is flat-out weird, and some is way near to normal, like, I’m supposed to study currency exchange. When I ask them why, they smile and shrug.”
“A lot of what I did was shopping,” said Oma. “They popped me through a portal to Egypt, and then I had to go out and haggle with people at the markets for herbs, or jewelry, or bits of stone or artifacts. Sometimes I had to find a guide who would take me by camel to some specific place to get special sand. Sometimes I had to travel to other parts of Africa and buy things. Sometimes—” She laughed. “I drove up to Canada for something or other—they don’t have a portal there. Once I even flew to Mexico City. That was for some special earth. They can do a lot of that by Internet now, but sometimes it takes a known and trusted person to go get it.
“You need to learn exchange rates and local customs and a bit of the language to make those shopping expeditions work out right. And that’s where the Doowah Box comes in handy. It’s portable protection, a bottomless shopping bag, and it’s got a translator in it, too. Oh, my, I’m talking about all these things I’ve known for ages and couldn’t share with anybody, even your opa. It feels so good!
“But where are my manners? Children, please sit. Travis, perhaps our guests would like some tea?” Oma gripped the wheels of her chair and moved it over to the dining table. “Benjamin, the extra chair is against the wall by the bed, if you would be so kind as to fetch it.”
Benjamin got the chair and brought it to the table, and everyone sat except Travis, who went through the open door into the kitchen and set a teakettle on a burner, then returned.
“Oh, this is so—” Oma smiled at each of them. “Such a relief.”
Then her face fell. She stared at the floor. Her hand opened and closed on the arm of her wheelchair. When she looked up, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “When Elia died, Harper barred me from Janus house.”
FIFTEEN
“Oh, Oma!” Travis jumped up and hugged her again.
“Did he tell you why?” Gwenda asked.
Oma sniffled and shook her head. “But he never did like me. When Elia proposed me for giri, Harper objected. This was years ago, and he wasn’t in charge back then—that was old Jerusalah Janus, Harper’s daddy. Jerusalah and the Gates sisters voted me in over Harper’s objections. I think part of it was that I was a girl, and it was easier for male giri to get things done in those days. Some people in other countries wouldn’t even talk to me because I was a woman. Elia helped me dress up as a man sometimes. I had such adventures!”
“Was that before you met Opa?” Travis asked.
“Before and after. Poor man, he never knew where I went or why, but he trusted me, and that’s a rare thing, I understand. Elia and I made friends wi
th each other in grade school. Harper was a few years older, but he kept trying to talk Elia into breaking off our friendship. Then as now, Janus House folk were not supposed to connect with the community very much. In it, but not of it, they would say. The children were taught that. When I married Isaac, Elia and I had already been friends for years, and all he knew was that I had to go off with her on women’s retreats periodically.”
The kettle whistled, and Travis went to the kitchen and returned presently with a pot of tea on a tray and five cups. Also a plate of molasses cookies, some napkins, a pitcher of milk, and a sugar bowl. He set it on the table in front of his grandmother and sat down again.
“Thank you, dear.” Oma poured tea and passed cups to everyone.
“Oma, I don’t think it’s right, that Great-uncle Harper banned you from the house,” Benjamin said. “Even if he doesn’t like you. Did you ever betray us? Did you ever give away our secrets or cause us danger?”
“No,” said Oma. “I kept my silence, except when I played with Travis, and that was a different kind of silence. He never knew my Doowah Box had anything to do with Janus House, did you, honey?”
“Not a ca-lue,” said Travis.
Benjamin said, “You should be among our honored.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Oma.
“It’s not right.” Benjamin frowned. “I want to talk to Ma about this. Someone should bring it up at the next general meeting. We take care of our own. That’s what the adults always tell us, anyway.”
Oma smiled at him. “I appreciate your fire, Benjamin. I have let go of it all now. No way I could be a help to you in my current state.”
“That’s not the point,” said Benjamin. “The adults say we should take the long view. We study our own history, and try to use the past to guide us. You are part of our history, and we should respect and honor you. Great-uncle Harper—he—” Benjamin shook his head. “It’s not right.”
“Well,” Oma said. She paused. She stared out the window with a faint smile. “I saw so many wonders and went so many places. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I have no regrets, my dears, except that I’ve lost the magic now that I’m trapped in this chair.”