by Dale Peck
But President Wilson had recovered from the first shock, and now he hopped down to the very branch on which Charles sat.
“I’ll take my chances with you, Charles.” He glanced at the closed backpack. “Something tells me we’ll be fine.”
The water rose right up to the bottom of the branch the two were sitting on—and there it stopped. Charles could hear the tiniest gurgle as it lapped against the bark. The water’s surface was eerily calm, no more disturbed than a bath after you’ve slipped in. And clean too. Charles could look down and see the branches of the tree beneath him, swaying lightly in the current. They swayed toward the hillcrest, then swayed back toward the bay.
“President Wilson! The water’s reversing direction!”
“Hmph.” The bird did not seem surprised.
The water receded almost as rapidly as it had come, as if some enormous—great—drain had been opened. The trees emerged, then the hillside and the garden. Not a single branch seemed to have been broken, not one of Mr. Zenubian’s tender shoots uprooted. Aside from the puddles and rivulets that stood everywhere, everything was exactly as it had been before the wave washed over the land.
Except one thing, that is.
Drift House was gone.
PART TWO
Separated at Birth
EIGHT
Into the Woods, or the Second Solo Expedition of Charles Oakenfeld, Esq.
“Patience, Charles Oakenfeld,” President Wilson panted, hopping from branch to branch as his human charge scrambled down the hillside toward the Bay of Eternity. The backpack containing the mysterious book bounced from one of the boy’s shoulders to the other.
“Patience? Did you see that wave? That was no ordinary wave. That wave came from the Sea of Time!”
“Undoubtedly,” President Wilson agreed. “From the Sea of Time it came, and from the Sea of Time it is likely to return, bearing Drift House with it. And you do not want to be standing in the foundation when that happens.”
“Oh, uh, right.” Charles looked down at his feet, even though the foundation was still some distance away. “You think it’ll just come back? To, like, the very moment it left?”
“It always has before.”
“It didn’t that once,” Charles said, almost as if he hoped his sister and uncle wouldn’t come back. “When you and Uncle Farley went out the first time, and Frejo had to push you back. You were gone for a whole week.”
“That was before Pierre Marin fixed the antenna. Now I suggest we find a shady spot and sit down. Perhaps we could continue inspecting your book.”
“Yeah!” But even as Charles reached for his backpack, the images came flooding back to his mind’s eye, as clear as if they were laid out before him like a deck of cards. He glanced suspiciously at President Wilson. Clearly, Mario’s book hadn’t made quite the same impression on the parrot, or he wouldn’t have requested to see it again. “You know, I think I’ll wait. Till, um, Susan and Uncle Farley get back.”
“Suit yourself.” The parrot settled atop a low wall built of gray stone, eyes already closed.
Some minutes passed.
“It’s not back yet,” Charles announced.
“Hmmm? What?”
“The house isn’t back yet.” And, shouldering his backpack, Charles set off across the lawn.
President Wilson scrambled and hopped along the wall, feeling like a peewit or sandpiper, or some equally common bird.
“Really, Charles, I see no need to get agitated—”
“There are puddles and pools all over the place. They’ve got to be from the wave.”
“That would be the, ah, logical conclusion,” President Wilson panted.
“And there’s that,” Charles said.
“What are you—oh.”
A thin silver stream flowed into the lawn, flooding the flower bed that Mr. Zenubian had worked yesterday. The rivulet was only a few feet wide and a few inches deep, but it caught the rising sun and sparkled all the way up the hillside.
“That wasn’t there before, was it?” Charles said.
“I don’t believe it was,” President Wilson said quietly. Despite its tininess, there was something eerie about the stream, like a great silver snake lying in ambush.
“Well, if the wave really was made of water from the Sea of Time, then this stream probably is too.”
“What’s your point, Charles?”
“I’m going to follow it.”
“Really? And where do you expect it to lead you?”
“If my theory is correct, to Susan and Uncle Farley.”
By now Charles had come to the edge of the stream. It flowed smoothly, without a sound.
“Really, Charles,” President Wilson said. “Your ‘theory,’ such as it is, relies on so many guesses I hardly know where to begin.”
“How about”—there was a lurch and a splash—“here.”
Charles had jumped into the stream.
“President Wilson—look!”
“At?”
“My feet! My feet!” Charles’s voice was filled with excitement. President Wilson had to hop to the right to see the boy’s feet. Or, rather, not see them, for they weren’t there. Charles’s thin legs and even thinner ankles descended straight into the shallow water, but beneath them there was just grass, drifting ever so slightly in the clear water’s current.
Suddenly Charles started running. President Wilson launched himself into the sky. It is very hard for a parrot to keep pace with running humans—not because they’re too fast, but because they’re too slow. The parrot had to fly rather wobbly loops around Charles to keep his charge in earshot.
“Really, Charles, if you would just—”
“How do you think it works? Do you think there’ll be like a poof! and then suddenly we’ll be somewhere else?”
Charles’s voice was broken up with pants and then gasps for air. He was running uphill, after all, and in four inches of water, and he couldn’t see his feet besides. Finally he had to catch his breath. The stream was more or less gone now, but everything was pretty much as it had been: trees all around, blue sky above.
“Nothing… happened?” he panted. “But…I was…so sure!”
“Hmph,” President Wilson snorted. As the trees had thickened he had been forced to weave in and out of branches, and then finally to alight and hop from one to another. He took a moment (well, several moments actually) to catch his breath, then said, “I tried to tell you: there were any number of unsound points to your theory.”
“I guess you’re right.” Charles peered at the trees, half hoping they might start talking and moving like the trees in The Wizard of Oz (or The Lord of the Rings, which was way cooler). But all they did was rustle in a breeze that was cold against Charles’s wet legs. “Well, I guess we’d better head back and wait for Susan and Uncle Farley.” His head hung from his neck like a half-deflated balloon, and he stared at his sneakers, which were depressingly visible now, not to mention caked with mud.
“Ahem, Charles.”
“Look, I said I was going back, okay?”
“I think you’d better look where you’re going.”
“What do you—oh.”
Charles looked up, expecting to see Drift House’s broad lawns and the Bay of Eternity beyond. But all he saw was an incredibly thick knot of tree trunks. The trunks were fat and dark and piled one on top of each other, and Charles could see nothing through them.
“President Wilson?”
President Wilson’s voice sounded remarkably droll. “Yes, Charles?”
“What just happened?”
“What do you mean? You wanted to go back in time. It would seem your wish came true.”
“But… how ?” Charles turned away from the place Drift House was supposed to be. Everywhere he looked he could see nothing but trees.
“Not everything is dramatic, Charles. There don’t have to be sparks or smoke for something astounding to happen. You just have to pay attention.”
; Charles wanted to point out that President Wilson hadn’t believed they would go back in time at all. But, unlike the parrot, he didn’t feel the need to gloat. And besides, there were bigger questions now. Like, where was he? When was he? And most important: how was he going to get back?
With sudden resolve, Charles reached for a limb of the nearest tree. It was a pine tree, and his hand was immediately covered in sticky pitch, but he pulled himself up anyway.
President Wilson flapped to a nearby branch. “Charles? What are you doing?”
“I need to take a look around,” Charles grunted, pulling himself to the next limb.
The parrot flapped to a limb a few feet higher than Charles. “Er, Charles? I am a bird?”
“Yes, well, I’m a boy. And I need to look around myself.”
“This is silly,” President Wilson said, following Charles up the tree. “You’re endangering yourself needlessly.”
“It was you who said I needed to pay attention.”
“I didn’t say you had to risk your life doing it.”
“Pshaw,” Charles said, using one of President Wilson’s favorite expressions. “Climbing trees is perfectly safe. I can’t believe I never did it before today.”
President Wilson followed Charles ever higher up the pine tree. It was slow going, but eventually they emerged above the canopy of the shorter deciduous trees. Charles didn’t sit down as he had before, but stood, holding on to a thin branch for balance.
“Well, let’s see what we can see.”
He turned toward where he thought the water should be. An uninterrupted growth of trees ran all the way down the hill, but beyond that Charles could just make out a glittering rim.
“I see the bay!” he said excitedly.
President Wilson hopped up four feet higher than Charles could go. “Yes, I do think that’s it.”
“Do you think we’re in the same place? Just farther back in time?”
“It seems logical,” President Wilson said, although his voice sounded unsure. “There’s no reason to assume we shifted position—the stream wasn’t big enough to move us, as the wave appeared to do with Drift House.”
At the mention of Drift House, Charles grew silent. Then: “How are we ever going to find them, President Wilson? How are they going to find us?”
President Wilson had turned to survey the opposite direction. Now he pointed with his wing. “Well, we might want to start there.”
At first all Charles saw was an expanse of rolling forest capped by a cloudless blue sky. Then, finally, a single thin column of black became visible. It seamed the horizon into left and right halves, as if the sky were an open book with pages that could be turned forward and back. At the thought of that image, Charles checked the security of Mario’s book in his backpack. He had the sneaking suspicion that the book had gotten him into this situation, and he figured it was probably the only thing that would get him out.
He cleared his throat. “Is that… smoke?”
“I believe it is,” President Wilson answered. “And where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“And where there’s fire?” Charles said. He looked at President Wilson.
President Wilson looked very thoughtful.
“That,” he said finally, “is a very good question.”
NINE
Say Hello to Bjarki
At first it seemed like Drift House turned upside down.
Then it seemed like Drift House turned inside out.
And then everything seemed to straighten out, save that Susan felt the familiar sensation of rocking floorboards beneath her feet.
Drift House was afloat.
“Um, Uncle Farley?”
“I don’t know, Susan.”
“I didn’t ask a question yet, Uncle Farley.”
Uncle Farley sighed. “Ask away.”
“Um… what just happened?”
“I don’t know, Susan.”
“Oh. Okay.”
There was another long silence. Susan looked around the room. Though it had felt like an angry giant had picked up the house and shaken it, nothing was out of place. There was a teacup in its saucer on the table. The metronome on the harpsichord was as still as it had been a moment ago. Uncle Farley had been standing; now he sat in a chair, but Susan didn’t think he’d been knocked down.
“Do you,” Susan began quietly, not wanting to startle her glazed-looking uncle, “do you think Mr. Zenubian had something to do with this?”
Uncle Farley sighed heavily. “Mr. Zenubian took the little radio.”
Susan was confused for a moment. “Mr. Zenubian took the—” Suddenly she got it. “He took the little tombstone radio?”
The last time she had been here, Susan—along with her uncle and everyone else in Drift House—had learned that the house’s time-traveling abilities were controlled by a pair of radios, which, because of their arched shape, were referred to as tombstones: a large one in the drawing room, and a smaller one Uncle Farley kept in his bedroom. But:
“Once I figured out how to work the radios,” Uncle Farley said, “I moved the smaller one to my study. After Mr. Zenubian stormed off, it occurred to me that I should make the rounds to see if he’d taken anything. As far as I could tell, the radio was the only thing missing.”
“But could he…I mean, can the radios control Drift House if they’re not in it?”
“I keep meaning to ask Bjarki that very question, but always forget.”
“Bjarki?”
“Bjarki Skaldisson. You heard his voice once, on the big radio. ‘Echo Island to Drift House…’”
“You’ve talked to him?”
A slightly mischievous smile crept onto Uncle Farley’s face. “A few times, yes.”
Susan was a respectful preteen, but she felt herself get the teensiest bit impatient with her uncle. “Do you think perhaps we could talk to him now?”
Uncle Farley bopped himself on the forehead. Springing from the chair, he grabbed his niece’s arm and headed toward the hall.
“Susan, my dear, you are ten times the tactician I will ever be.
Sometimes I think I would lose my beard if it weren’t attached to my cheeks.”
The drawing room walls were still dark, and Uncle Farley had to throw the curtains wide to let in light. Susan glanced at the expanse of blue beyond the glass, then followed her uncle to the cabinet-sized radio on the opposite side of the room. The peak of the radio’s arch was a few inches taller than she was, but its knobs were situated close to the base, just above the fretwork that covered its single large speaker. Uncle Farley squatted down and turned the left knob, and immediately a voice barked into the room.
“—land broadcast, to any and all transtemporal vessels within range. I repeat, this is Echo Island. Drift House, Chronos, Equus, do you copy, over.”
“Uncle Farley, it’s working!”
Before her uncle could answer, the voice on the radio said, “Farley, is that you? Confirm receipt of signal, over.”
“Bjarki, it’s me. I’m here with my niece, Susan Oakenfeld, over. Er, Susan, say hello to Bjarki.”
“Hello, Bjarki!” Susan said, in the kind of voice you use to talk to deaf people. “This is Susan, over!”
Bjarki’s wince was almost audible. “No need to shout, Ms. Oakenfeld. I can hear you just fine. Confirm Drift House on Sea of Time with two passengers aboard, over. Hello, ma’am,” Bjarki added, then paused. “Where’s … the bird?”
Uncle Farley chuckled at what was apparently a private joke between him and the voice in the radio. “President Wilson and my nephew Charles weren’t in the house when we, that is, well, what did happen?”
“Something extraordinary, Farley. A temporal squall of a magnitude I’ve never seen.”
“What’s a temporal squall?” Susan said.
“Well now, ma’am.” Susan heard a squeak, and had a vision of a bearish man settling back in a reclining chair. “‘Squall’ is a convenient term we use to describe certain
events on and around the Sea of Time. It’s a disruption in the regular temporal flow, a bit like a storm breaks up the normal weather.”
It made sense that if there was a Sea of Time there should be storms on it. Still, Susan wondered: “Do you know what caused this squall, Bjarki?”
“Well, now, I’ll come clean and tell you, ma’am: no I don’t. This storm is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s a regular temporal hurricane.”
“Bjarki,” Uncle Farley cut in, “are you saying it’s still going on?”
“Raging from the conquest of Egypt in the eighth century right up to the Gulf War in 1990. And spreading.”
Susan, who had never thought to measure the weather—even temporal weather—concentrated on the obvious.
“But it’s quite calm where we are.”
“I assumed as much. You’re in the eye. We both are, or else I doubt you’d be receiving this transmission.”
“Bjarki,” Uncle Farley interjected, “I’m quite concerned about my nephew. How exactly do we get out of the, um, eye?”
“There’ll be no sailing through this squall. There are warps in time and space. You’re as likely to end up green as end up on the Bay of Eternity.”
Uncle Farley glanced at Susan. “We’re stuck here?”
“For the duration. And there’s no telling how long that’ll last.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Susan said.
“Actually,” Bjarki said, then hesitated. “Pardon my forwardness, ma’am, but you’re just a girl, yes?”
Despite the fact that Bjarki couldn’t see her (well, she assumed he couldn’t see her) Susan stood up straight.
“I’ll be thirteen in August.”
“Mmmm, yes, Farley told me you were young.”
“Mr. Skaldisson,” Susan said in the sternest British accent she could muster, “if you are refraining from saying something because you think I am too inexperienced or delicate to handle it, I should inform you that I am quite capable of taking care of myself.”
“Susan,” Uncle Farley said, “it would be remiss of me to put you in danger. After what happened last time—”