by Patricia Bow
Music tinkled at them as they trotted into the square. More people were here, mostly parents and young kids, skating on a rink in the middle of the square. The sound system was playing the Skater’s Waltz. Amelia dropped onto a concrete bench and watched the skaters whiz and wobble past.
“You skate?” Simon asked.
“No. You?”
“A bit.”
“Huh!” Ike snickered. “Simon’s hopeless on skates. I’m good, though.” He uncased his camera and walked over to the edge of the rink.
“Is he always like that?” she asked Simon.
“Yup, pretty much. He’s, um...” Simon thought about it. “Playful.”
She looked up at the town hall tower, with its carved parapet and red and green lights. You’d think they’d try different colours, like purple, or turquoise, or...
“Hey. I thought you said people can’t go up there.”
“I don’t think they can. Why?”
“Oh ... it’s nothing.” Her hands were shaking. She hid them in a fold of her scarf. “I saw something up there again, that’s all. Above the lights. A — a face. A strange face.” She heard the quaver in her voice and was angry with herself. “No, don’t bother looking, it’s gone.”
“Somebody fixing the lights, maybe.”
“Yeah, probably.” Weird face, though, in that half-second. Too long, shaped wrong, you’d almost think it was one of those carvings, only it moved, and it looked right at her, and...
I must be really, really tired.
“Um, there’s a coffee shop.” Simon pointed across the square. “D’you want —”
“No! I’m perfectly fine.”
He looked at her hands wrapped in her scarf, then took off his mitts and held them out.
“I said I’m fine!”
“You sure?”
“Yes!”
“Okay.” He put his mitts back on.
Ike plopped down on the bench beside her.
“Ammy, can I see that ring?”
She fished it out of her pocket and handed it over.
“Be careful with it.”
“You bet.” He held it up sideways to his eye and looked at one of the streetlights through the curve of the stone, which rose a quarter-inch above the band. “Cool!”
“Let me see.” Simon got it away from him and squinted through it with one eye. He panned the ring slowly across the square. “Neat! Everything’s red. And it’s all changed, all towers and mountains and things.”
“Just as I suspected!” Ike hissed. “It’s an alien artifact!”
Spare me! Amelia was suddenly too angry to be scared. That felt good. She gazed up at the black sky. “Please tell me, why, oh why am I hanging out with two geeky little boys?”
“Little?” Simon threw the ring into her hand. He looked as close to mad as she’d ever seen him. “I’m bigger than you!”
“Yes, but it’s not size that counts, is it?”
“I’m older than you, too.”
“Two months! Big deal!”
“Yeah, and look at you trying to look like a teenager! You —” He bit off whatever he’d been about to say and stared straight ahead. She’d swear he was counting to ten. Ike had scuttled away to the edge of the rink again.
“You see, Simon,” she said in her kindest, most adult voice, “in the last two years I’ve matured, while you —” She looked him over, an outsized kid in parka and mittens and sensible boots, with his hair falling into his eyes. “I bet you still play with Lego.”
“I do not!”
“Bet you do! Ha! You’re turning red!”
He got up and stamped away a dozen steps, then stamped back. “Let’s go home.”
“Go home without me.” She waved an airy hand.
“No. I promised Celeste. I’ll stick with you if it kills me.”
§
“Why can’t she make her own supper?” Simon spread mustard on one half of a whole-wheat kaiser roll, lined it with lettuce, added a slice of tomato, and centred a piece of salami on it.
“Because she’s far from home and tired and lonely. And she’ll be getting hungry about now,” Celeste said. “She didn’t eat a crumb when I took her to lunch in Toronto. Nerves.” She was sitting at the kitchen table wearing her black Indian caftan with the little mirrors bordered in silver embroidery, her long grey hair in a single braid. She nursed a cup of chai and watched him make his supper. Celeste never cooked, but she made sure he ate.
Simon cut cheese slices and slapped them down on the salami. “I still don’t get why she has to stay with us. Wouldn’t it be better for her to stay with that friend of hers in Vancouver?”
“Not while she’s got us. It wouldn’t be right. Family is family.”
“Tell her that. I don’t know what’s the matter with her.” He slashed another kaiser roll in half and stabbed his knife into the mustard jar. “She hates Dunstone. She hates me!”
“She doesn’t hate you at all. She’s just at a funny age. Probably isn’t sure who or what she is, half the time.”
“I’m the same age and I’m not like that!” He hacked at the block of cheese.
“Everyone’s different.” She tapped him on the wrist. “Go easy on her, okay?”
“Me go easy on her?”
Before he knew it his sandwich was ready, and so was Ammy’s. He glanced at Celeste. “Will you call her?”
“No, you call her. Better yet, take it to her.”
“But she —”
“Simon.”
He knew that tone of voice. While Celeste poured out a glass of milk, he cut one sandwich in half and put it on a plate. Then he carried the glass and plate out of the kitchen and along the hall to Ammy’s room.
The door was closed. He knocked. “Ammy? It’s me. You want a sandwich?” He hoped she would say no, or, better yet, throw a shoe or something at the door, so he could go away and say he’d done his best.
No such luck.
CHAPTER THREE
THE RUBY RING
As soon as they got back to the apartment, Amelia went to her room and unpacked. As she shoved sweaters into drawers and lined up CDs on her desk, she thought about what to do.
It ain’t over till it’s over, she thought. That was one of her dad’s favourite sayings. Stick to it, girl — that was something her mother liked to tell her.
Okay, I’ll stick to it. I won’t give up yet.
Her laptop was almost the first thing she’d unpacked. She sat down cross-legged on the bed, pulled the laptop close, and opened her mail. Nothing from her parents yet, but they’d given her the email address where they could be reached, once they got to their destination. She addressed a new message.
Dear Mom and Dad, I hope you get to Huaculamba soon so you can read this. Remember how you said you didn’t want my education interrupted? Well, I have seen the school here and it is tiny! You probably didn’t know that when you sent me here. So I am sure I can get just as good an education in Peru. I can bring textbooks and take online classes. Please let me know as soon as possible when I can come. Love, Ammy.
Then she backspaced over Ammy and typed in AMELIA, all in capitals. Her mother remembered to call her that now, most of the time, but her father still insisted on calling her Ammy. Usually Ammy the Something. Ammy the Great. Ammy the Terrible. Ammy the Barbarian, that was his latest.
“I am not a barbarian!” She scowled hideously at the computer screen and attacked the keys again. btw, don’t get kidnapped or anything and be careful driving on the mountain roads. And please write back soon!! I miss you!!! Lots of love, AMELIA.
She clicked “Send,” then started a new message.
Hi Silken! So here I am in an apartment in downtown Dunstone, Ontario. All my worst fears have come true. This place is dire. Luckily I won’t be here long, I’ll be in Peru soon if I can get my parents to see reason.
The one cool thing is our apartment building. It’s old and only three floors high, with stores and a bank and a newspaper offi
ce on the ground floor and apartments on the top two floors. But nobody lives on the top floor right now, because people keep leaving Dunstone instead of coming here (big surprise) so Granny uses one of the top apartments for storage.
She stopped, deleted Granny, and typed in Grandmother.
So, what’s cool, you ask? For one thing, my grandmother owns the building. It even has our name in a stone block over the front door. The Hammer Block, 1922. Also, it has these black iron fire escapes down the sides, just like Audrey Hepburn’s building in that movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, remember? And it has a marble lobby and this really slow, creaky brass elevator, like a cage with a criss-cross gate that you pull across.
The reason Grandmother needs all that storage is she has this store on the ground floor. It’s called Boomer Heaven. She says it’s a pun on her name, Celeste. (Celestial, get it?) It has all kinds of real sixties and seventies junk. She’s really retro herself, she wears these little gold-rimmed glasses like John Lennon’s.
But guess what! Something weird happened right away. I was out walking with my cousin Simon, and there was this blue flash, and I
“And I what?” she said aloud. She shook her head, typed in found, then slipped her hand under the pillow for the ring.
What beautiful colour, now that she could see it. In this light the stone gleamed richly red. It was about half an inch across and smooth, not faceted. All the same, it looked precious. Could it be a ruby?
It was scratched, though. Too bad. She brought it close to her eyes. Wait a minute, these weren’t random scratches. This was a picture. Or a logo. An oval — she closed one eye — no, an almond shape, with a line across the narrow part, like a cat’s eye. At each pointed end a thin crescent, like a moon or a claw, continued the line of the eye, curving down and under on the left and up and over on the right.
Oddly enough, the setting and the band were plain and dull and looked like they’d been carved out of some brown old bone. Or maybe ivory, although ivory was illegal, she thought. She slid the ring onto the middle finger of her right hand, where it swung loose. Made for a man, then. A man with very thick fingers.
She wondered if he was sorry to lose it. “Well, too bad,” she said crossly — crossly because she felt she was doing something wrong, somehow, and didn’t like the feeling. “Finders keepers, losers weepers.”
She held the ring to her eye and looked up at the overhead light through the curve of the stone. Inside there were branching lines that turned everything strange. She turned the ring to and fro and the square light shade forked like coral in a crimson sea.
She panned it across the room. The closet door and the dresser with its mirror and the open suitcase on it, clothes spilling, turned into a fantastic mountain landscape, volcanic, lava-draped, pocked with caves and crowned with spires. All ruby-coloured, alive, changing. You could almost see people at the cave mouths. Strange, long faces looking out.
She lowered the ring. Now, that was funny. Just for a second she was back in the town hall square, looking up at the tower. That glimpse of face had been just like ... Funny.
Amelia put the ring to her eye again and scanned it slowly across the room. Ridges, peaks, deep ravines. Shapes raced across the mountainside, leaped into the air as the ring moved. Vanished in explosions of ruby light, like flame.
Wow, this was so —
A face that was all jaws swooped at her out of a blaze of red fire. She dropped the ring with a gasp, then grabbed it and shoved it under her pillow. Enough of that kid stuff!
The laptop went into screensaver mode. She revived it. Silken, did you ever think you might be going crazy? If you ever did I wish you would tell me. I don’t want to be the only one.
A knock on the door. “Ammy? It’s me. You want a sandwich?”
She was tempted to say no, except she was really hungry. And sooner or later she would have to speak to Simon again. Poor Simon, she thought. Maybe I haven’t been really ... I guess I ought to ... The adult thing would be...
To apologize. She hated apologizing.
“Just a sec!” She typed gtg. l8r. amelia, clicked “Send,” and shut down the laptop. When she opened the door a minute later he was still there, plate in one hand, glass of milk in the other. A wonderful smell came from the kitchen.
Simon held out the plate and glass. Amelia took them. “Thanks,” she said. As he turned away she cleared her throat. “Um, and back in the square. When I called you a geeky little boy. That was ... I mean ... I’m sorry.”
He gazed at the doorframe beside her head, then at her, as if he wasn’t sure exactly what he’d heard. “Huh.” Then he smiled. “Well, that’s —”
“I mean, it may be true, but that’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have said it.”
Simon didn’t look as pleased as she thought he should have, but Amelia felt much better. She carried the glass and plate along the hallway to the kitchen. Grandmother was sitting at the table, sipping from a steaming cup. A platter of chocolate chip cookies sat in front of her.
“Oh, you baked. That’s nice,” Amelia said, politely. They did smell good.
“No, Schnarr’s Bakery baked. Have some. After your sandwich.”
Amelia set down her plate, slid into a chair across from Simon, and started eating. The moment her teeth sank into the sharp cheddar she realized she was famished. By the time the second half of the sandwich and most of the milk were gone, she was ready to look around and notice things outside herself.
The fridge bristled with sticky notes scribbled over with phone numbers and cryptic messages. “Velma S has stovepipes, gd cond.” “Heart-shape rose-col glasses, yes!!”
In among the notes were photos held on with advertising magnets. Most of them were photos of her and Simon. There was Amelia — no, it was Ammy then — in that dorky ponytail, hands on hips, putting on attitude for the camera. An even younger Ammy showing off a gap in her front teeth. Ammy on a tricycle, zooming past the camera, out of focus. Ammys of all sizes, back to the year she was born. It was embarrassing.
Photos of Simon, too, from this Christmas back to practically the day of his birth. In most of them, no matter what age, he wore the same patient expression. As if he was waiting for life to make sense. Only the earliest ones showed him with his parents, who were killed in a car accident when he was still a baby. Simon’s father looked a lot like Amelia’s, which wasn’t surprising, since they were brothers. She wondered if it hurt Simon to look at those pictures. Could you could miss someone you’d never known? She hoped not.
She reached for a cookie. “Grandmother, if I got a picture of me with my hair like this, would you put it on the fridge?”
“Front and centre!”
Maybe it wouldn’t be so dire after all, living here.
The cookies were awfully good. The three of them finished off the platter in the living room while watching The Wizard of Oz on TV. Later, Amelia wasn’t sure what was to blame for the dream — the movie, all those cookies, or the ruby ring. She dreamed, and knew she was dreaming. She was soaring in an ocean of sky. Far below lay a landscape of ruby-coloured pinnacles and deep black canyons steaming under a crimson sun.
She’d dreamed of flying before, but this was better. This was freedom! Nothing could scare her now, nothing could catch her. She wheeled and circled till her head spun. She soared towards the sun till her eyes were dazzled. Then dived at the ground, faster, faster, nearer.... Banked at the last possible moment. The world turned sideways; the pinnacles tilted and sank.
And then she saw that the land was not empty. Shapes were leaping from the ruby spires and arrowing towards her. She whirled in mid-air and flew, flew for her life, but something screamed in triumph right behind her and something sharp closed on her heel.
Amelia jerked awake and for a moment thought she was still dreaming. She wasn’t in her bed. She was sitting on something hard in a dusty-smelling darkness. No, not darkness — solid blackness, with no vague window shapes in it. No hint of light anywhere. Sitting on
... it felt like wood, rough and grimy. And leaning against a ... it felt like a wooden wall.
Her hands groped out and felt wood on both sides, close. Too close. Like a coffin.
I’ve been buried alive!
CHAPTER FOUR
UP ON THE ROOF
Amelia’s breath came quick and shallow. Her head started to buzz. Don’t panic! snapped a sensible voice in the back of her head. Not a coffin, that’s silly. You lie down in a coffin, you don’t sit up.
A cellar, then. A sealed room in a cellar. That was almost as bad.
No, not a cellar. She sniffed. The smell was wrong. This place smelled of dust and old dry wood, not stone or cement or — oh, horror — earth.
So she was shut in somewhere, but not in a cellar. Where, then?
Don’t just sit there, nagged the sensible voice. Move! Find clues!
She caught her breath with a gulp. The voice had arrived in her head about a year ago, when life had started to get so complicated. She wasn’t sure what it meant. Crazy people heard voices. Only, the advice this voice urged on her was always sensible. Amelia had a suspicion it might even be her own voice, speaking up out of the chaos. If that was so, she was saner than she knew. Maybe there was hope after all.
Clues. Okay. Her heart quieted. But what clues? She couldn’t even see!
She could feel, though. The wood against her shoulder was cold. A thin stream of freezing air needled at her hands. Close to the outdoors, then, she thought, and felt proud of the deduction. It showed she was using her head.
She moved her feet — they were bare — and traced a rounded edge with a drop below it. Felt downward: found more wood. A step. So this was a stairwell. But it wasn’t the stairs she’d seen in the apartment building, because those were sheathed in marble.
How, she wondered, did I get here — wherever this is — in my pyjamas and dressing gown? It seemed she’d got up out of bed and put on her dressing gown and tied the sash, all in a sound sleep, before wandering away into the night. That was more bizarre than anything.
Where now? Down the stairs or up? A little more groping around showed that there was no more up. This was the top of the stairs. And the thing she was sitting against was a door, with a round metal handle and a metal bolt the length of her hand. A door! A way out! Yes!