by Dale Peck
“I shall fly ahead and alert Farley and Susan to our arrival. Perhaps Applethwaite will prepare something more substantial than dried meat and berries,” he added, looking at Tankort. And, flapping his wings, he lumbered into the air and wheeled in the direction of Drift House.
It took almost another hour for the canoe to reach the house. The swells had increased again, and the current pushed toward the shore. The boys had to row against it, and it was obvious from the sound of Tankort’s labored breathing that he was as tired as Charles was. For the first time since they’d set out, Charles’s shoulders began to hurt. And his upper arms. And his forearms. And his hands, and his fingers too. But Charles didn’t care. The solarium glowed in the morning light like a warm fire, calling him home.
But when, finally, he reached the house, only a grim-faced Uncle Farley reached a hand to help him from the canoe.
“Where’s Susan?” Charles said immediately.
“Come inside,” Uncle Farley said nervously. “I’m sure Miss Applethwaite can whip you up—”
“WHERE—IS—SUSAN?!”
Uncle Farley cringed at the volume of Charles’s voice, even as his nephew pushed into the house. Charles had, without realizing it, unslung his backpack, and now, despite the preciousness of its cargo, and the lengths he had gone to in order to get it, he dropped the bag to the floor.
For the elegant entrance hall of his uncle’s home had been destroyed. Not a single table remained in one piece, their splintery remains stacked under the staircase in a forlorn pile of jagged sticks of wood from which poked a brass handle or a bit of gilt. The white marble bust (Charles had learned it was Herodotus, although he’d been too shy to ask who “Herodotus” was) had been overturned and lost its nose and one ear, and the giant portrait of Pierre Marin had been slashed twice, once through the treasure chest and again through the chest of his purple velvet frock coat. The scarred canvas had wrinkled, causing the body of Drift House’s founder to wilt as though with age, and the eyes that had once seemed to follow everyone who walked through his hallway now stared in slightly different directions.
But most disconcerting of all was the blood.
It had splashed and splattered more or less everywhere. The walls were misted reddish brown, and one of the rugs had a dark stain on it the size of a bath mat. There was a big handprint on the doorframe to the drawing room, and the broken lattice of the door was covered with dark smears, as though a careless painter had failed to wipe the excess liquid from his brush.
“Uncle Farley!”
“No, no, Charles,” Uncle Farley said immediately. He pulled Charles to him and ran his hand soothingly through the boy’s mop of hair. “It’s okay, Charles. She’s okay. She’s just, um, been kidnapped.”
Charles pushed back. “Just! Been! Kidnapped!” He shook his head incredulously. “We’ve got to do something!”
Uncle Farley smiled softly at the creature before him, half little boy, half wild beast. “Yes, yes, we’re making a plan. But, ah, your friend? In the boat? I think he wants to speak to you.”
“Tankort!” Charles had forgotten all about him in the confusion. He ran back to the doorway.
The young Wendat had pushed the canoe back a little ways from Drift House—just far enough to prevent anyone in the house from boarding it.
“Tankort,” Charles said in a quieter voice. “You’re not leaving?”
“Yes, Charzo.” Tankort shrugged, as if he would say more if he could, but off the Sea of Time his English had become limited again.
“But…but…” Charles didn’t really know what his “but” was. He just knew he didn’t want Tankort to leave. “I wanted you to meet my sister.”
Tankort looked in the direction of land, then turned back to Charles. “You find her.”
“But how?” Charles said, knowing his question was pointless.
Tankort only nodded again. “You find her,” he repeated. With deft movements of his paddle, Tankort began rowing the canoe backward.
Charles realized the Wendat would not be stopped from going. And so, standing up straighter, he said, “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I would have liked to get to know you better. I think we could have been friends.”
Tankort shrugged, and Charles wasn’t sure if he’d understood. “Friends,” he echoed, then smiled. “Yes. Friends.”
The canoe glided away from Drift House. “Thank you,” Charles called across the widening body of dark water between them, “for bringing me back to my family.”
The gap between house and canoe had grown quite large by then. Charles could hardly see Tankort’s face, but he continued to stare at the canoe. The Wendat’s last words were oddly articulate, as if the canoe were in the real world and on the Sea of Time simultaneously.
“Thank you for showing me that not all English are the same.” Tankort’s voice floated to Charles, and then the canoe sank into a hollow between two waves and disappeared. After a moment, Charles realized it was gone. He stared at the empty sea for one more moment, then headed inside to find out what had happened to Susan, and how they were going to rescue her. He retrieved his backpack from the top step and walked through the door, only to stop short when the first person he saw was—
“Mur—Mario?”
“Got it in one,” Mario said with a grin. “One and a half. Nice war paint,” he added. “And I love what you’ve done with your glasses.”
Rubbing at his cheeks, Charles rushed forward to embrace his brother, but Mario stepped rapidly backward in the wrecked hall, almost as if Charles had pushed him. He held up his hands.
“The, um, things in your backpack.”
“The mirror books?”
“Can’t get too close to ‘em. They’re a bit like Kryptonite to me.”
“But… but didn’t you give us one?”
Mario took a long time before answering. “If I did, it wasn’t a whole one. You resourceful guy, you.”
Charles wasn’t entirely sure what this meant, but he couldn’t quite hold back a smile. “It’s been a pretty eventful few days.”
Throughout this exchange Uncle Farley had stood silently in the shattered, blood-spattered doorway of the drawing room, giving the brothers their moment. But now he cleared his throat.
“Mirror book? Is that the thing you so jealously guarded right before we were separated?”
Charles turned to his uncle, nodding sheepishly. “I’m sorry I ran off.”
“I shall have to ground you for the rest of the summer,” Uncle Farley said, but he had a grin on his face as he said it. “An explanation will suffice.”
“They’re, I don’t know, magic or something. Apparently they can do all sorts of things, but we need them to close the temporal jetty.”
“Jetty?” Uncle Farley said. “Is this related to the squall?”
“Squall?” Charles said. “The Wanderer didn’t mention a squall. He only told me about—”
“Who is this Wanderer? The boy in the canoe?”
“No. That was Tankort. He’s a Wendat—a Huron. Like the lake. But their real name is Wendat.”
“And this Wanderer is one of them?”
“Not exactly,” Mario said now. “He’s more like …” He shrugged beneath the gaze of his brother and uncle. “Well, their god. But a god they don’t particularly trust. He knows more about time than, well, anyone. He’s been pretty much every place a human being can get to, and a few they weren’t supposed to. He has a long, um, association with the Wendat”—Mario flashed a knowing look at Charles—“that ended late in the seventeenth century, shortly after Pierre Marin encountered them. I guess Charles has been there too, now.”
The sound of footsteps on the stairs disturbed them. A moment later a small blond-haired man appeared at the upper landing and barked something in a language Charles didn’t understand. Uncle Farley answered the man in English, telling him that he would be right up. Glancing briefly at Charles, the man ran back upstairs.
“Charles, I ha
ve to attend to the wounded. Mario, perhaps you could get Charles something to eat, and fill him in.”
As Uncle Farley ran up the stairs, Mario turned to his big brother—who was about an inch shorter than he was.
“Charles, could you? I mean, your bag?”
“Oh, right.” Charles stashed his bag on the bottom shelf of a dresser in the music room while Mario went to get him something from Miss Applethwaite. The tray from the dumbwaiter bore a large soup tureen and a covered pie plate, but Charles’s nose immediately told him what was in the two dishes.
“Consommé and apple pie!”
“Our first meal here.”
Charles sipped the first delectable bite of broth. “That seems like a long time ago.”
“And it’s only five hundred years in the future!” Mario said. “Give or take a decade.”
The two brothers looked at each other for a moment and then simultaneously burst out laughing.
“Oh, Charles, I’ve missed you and Susan so much. Even more than Mum and Dad, I hate to say. But you seem different. Older. Tougher.”
Charles blushed, and took a few quick bites of soup to cover it. He continued to eat while Mario told him about the squall and everything that had happened on Greenland, finishing up with his and Uncle Farley’s conjecture that Susan and Marie-Antoinette must have hidden in the radio when Karl Olafson’s men came aboard, and so were carried off when the raiders stole Drift House’s last remaining transtemporal navigating device. Charles was well into his apple pie by then, but he stopped chewing long enough to say, “Wait a minute! If Mr. Zenubian has the little radio, and Karl Olafson has the big one, does that mean Drift House is—stuck here?”
Mario nodded. “We’ve got to get one of them back somehow. Since Mr. Zenubian is presumably still in the twenty-first century, and Karl Olafson is only on that island, he’s obviously our best bet.”
Charles gulped down the last of his pie. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
Mario grinned at his older brother’s enthusiasm. “Karl Olafson’s men outnumber us two to one, and they have the advantage of a fortified position. With Drift House essentially engineless, we can only bring men to shore three at a time in my punt.”
“Which is very dangerous,” Charles said, immediately understanding. “Karl Olafson can just pick us off as we come. So if we can’t attack him outright, we need to try”—a twinkle glittered behind Charles’s bent glasses—“subterfuge.”
Mario’s eyes widened in surprise. “Charles Oakenfeld! When did you become such a strategist?”
Charles blushed a little. “After I saw the Trojan Horse on the Island of the Past, I went home and read the Iliad and the Odyssey.”
“Homer! I love Homer!”
Charles paused. His little brother had said he loved Homer in the way you say you love an uncle you don’t get to see often enough, rather than a writer who had lived almost three millennia ago.
“Yes, so, I read Homer. And, um, we need some kind of plan like that—something sneaky. Something they won’t expect, or know how to deal with.”
Just then a loud crash came from above them, followed by protracted yelling. A moment later, Uncle Farley’s voice echoed down the stairs.
“Charles! We need you up here!”
Charles and Mario followed the sound of yelling to the third floor. A throng of strange and slightly smelly men made it hard for Charles to see the floor in their midst, but then he realized the yelling man was not, in fact, on the floor. He was on the ceiling.
He was, more accurately, pinned to the ceiling by the flying carpet, which he must have stepped on and activated by accident. His lumpy form could be seen writhing through the thick cloth of the carpet, which the tiny strangers were unable to reach and pull back.
“Coming through, coming through.” Uncle Farley’s voice cut in now. He appeared in the hallway with a stepladder. “Make way, please.” As he set the ladder up, Uncle Farley said to Charles, “You do know how to work this, yes?”
Charles nodded. He climbed to the top rung of the ladder, standing on the step labeled NOT A STEP, and tapped the
underside of the moon on the carpet lightly. The carpet descended slowly, and the trapped Greenlander rolled immediately to one side and fell to the floor, knocking over three of his companions like bowling pins.
Uncle Farley turned to Charles. “Perhaps we should put this out of the way to avoid another mishap.”
“My room?” Charles said hopefully. A plan was hatching in Charles’s head, and he snuck a glance at Mario, who nodded in understanding.
Uncle Farley saw the look that passed between the Oakenfeld boys and shook his head.
“I think perhaps Susan’s room is best. We don’t want any more mishaps.”
They rolled the carpet up and carried it downstairs. Charles was surprised to see his sister’s bed unmade, her dresser drawers hanging open and clothes strewn about. He kicked a pair of jeans to one side with his moccasinned foot before unrolling the carpet.
“Uncle Farley!” Mario exclaimed. “Susan left her translation charm.” He was pointing to a small vial on a string on her bedside table.
“Is that how you can understand the Vikings?” Charles said.
“They prefer to be called Greenlanders,” Uncle Farley answered, “but yes.” He pulled his own vial from his shirt and told Charles how it worked. “I suppose you should wear it now.”
Charles slipped the cord over his head, unstopped the vial, and tentatively touched his finger to the liquid inside.
“It’s okay, Charles, it’s quite safe. I’ve done it several times now.”
Charles nodded and touched his finger to his ears first, then his tongue. The clear spot of damp had no taste, and he felt no different. As they exited Susan’s room Uncle Farley stopped and pulled a roll of keys from his pocket. He locked Susan’s door, securing the carpet from “any more accidents,” and he looked significantly at Charles and Mario.
Charles was disappointed—he’d thought the carpet was the perfect thing for a nighttime rescue operation. But when he glanced at Mario, his brother surprised him by winking conspiratorially. He held back a step behind Uncle Farley, and whispered, “Don’t worry about that. I’ve learned a thing or two about picking locks in my time.”
Charles wanted to pull his little brother aside to ask him if he had a plan, but they were interrupted by shouts yet again—this time from below. Immediately, Charles knew the potion was working, for he heard an unfamiliar voice shout:
“Traitor!”
Charles and Mario and Uncle Farley ran for the stairs. Charles could feel a draft as he descended, and as soon as they rounded the bottom of the stairs, he saw why: the back door stood wide open, and a single red-haired Greenlander was standing in it.
“Stop, traitor! You won’t get away!”
Charles pressed into the doorway, where he saw a small flat-bottomed boat being rowed by a boy about Susan’s age. The boy wore an expression of grim determination beneath dark, unkempt hair, and he didn’t respond to the calls from Drift House until Uncle Farley called,
“Iacob, please! We won’t hurt you or your father. Just come back.”
The boy in the boat stopped rowing and looked at the crowd gathered in the doorway.
“I am sorry, Mr. Farley. But only I can get through my father’s defenses. Only I can stop him.”
“Stop him?” Uncle Farley said. “But how?”
But Charles understood. He ran to the music room where he’d stashed his bag.
It was gone.
“Nooooooo!”
As he ran out of the room he ran smack into Mario.
“He’s got the mirror books!”
Charles hadn’t really thought about how Mario would react when he said this, but in his wildest dreams he never would have guessed what his little brother said next.
“Maybe it’s better this way.”
Charles stared at his little brother, dumbfounded. It was only when Mario p
ulled on a string that was tied around his neck that he understood.
“The Amulet of Babel. It—it’s your locket, isn’t it? It’s what you need to get back to our time? To be five years old again.”
In answer, Mario only shrugged. He had started to rub the empty cord around his neck.
Charles grabbed his brother’s hands. “We can still get it back! We can take the carpet and—”
Mario shrugged again. “Perhaps we can get it back. Perhaps we can stop Karl Olafson from opening the jetty. But don’t you see? You can use the amulet to end the temporal squall, which will allow Drift House to get back to the twenty-first century, or I can use it to become a little boy again, which will allow me to finally go home. But we can’t do both.”
Charles wanted to protest, but the look on Mario’s face told him it was pointless. Mario squeezed his big brother’s hands now and said, “We’ll go tonight. When everyone’s sleeping. It’ll be fun,” he said. But there was no fun in his voice.
At the door, a group of Greenlanders were apparently trying to lasso the fleeing boy—to no avail, judging from their groans and curses. Uncle Farley stepped away from them now and approached Charles and Mario. He looked back and forth between their serious faces.
“I hope you two aren’t planning any shenanigans. It’s bad enough that Susan’s in trouble. I don’t need you two in danger as well.”
Charles looked at his brother, who met his eyes with a happy-sad expression that was old beyond his years. Charles couldn’t believe that it had to be this way—that the amulet could only save Mario, or save Drift House and its occupants. It seemed like a cosmic prank.
As if reading his mind, Mario half grinned, then shrugged it away. Turning to their uncle with a bright, false smile on his face, he said, “Of course not, Uncle Farley. We wouldn’t dream of such a thing.”
NINETEEN
Karl Olafson
Susan lay in the dark for a long time with her eyes closed, because she didn’t realize she was awake. The world was nothing but sounds: the strange chant of men-at-arms, the creak of their paddles as they turned in the oarlocks, the obsequious voices of servants (as well as the occasional roar of a displeased ruler). And then, strangest of all, Iacob’s voice.