We al moved out of the tent, back into the courtyard, Irwin branching off to the mess tent and Marlene, Ted, and me in single file to the office. I sat down at the table, the surface forever littered with paperwork, and Ted folowed suit, sitting opposite me.
Marlene perched on the smal couch perpendicular to the table, as if she would be the referee if our discussion got out of control.
“So, what’s up? Why are you out of school so early today?” he said.
“Funny thing happened. Henry seems to have had a run of bad luck with Lucian—showed up at school with a black eye yesterday and was absent today. He texted me to meet him in the parking lot after class. I was in photo, so I got a hal pass and went out to Henry’s car to see what was going on,” I said.
“You left class to go see Henry?” Ted asked, disapproval registering in his wrinkled forehead.
“That doesn’t matter. What does matter is the interesting little chat Henry and I had.” I paused, watching Ted’s face for evidence that he knew what was coming next. He was stoic, his expression teetering on annoyed. “First and foremost, I met his dead mother.
That was realy awesome,” I said, heavy on the sarcasm. Ted straightened in his seat. “Second, Henry tels me that Lucian hates my guts, doesn’t want me hanging out with his son, and that you have some crucial information you might want to share with me about why we’re really here in Eaglefern. Something about a book?”
“Wow…this, I didn’t expect. At least not yet.” Ted ran his fingers through his hair, the prior stoicism replaced with unease.
“Wel, apparently Henry thinks it’s important enough for you to tel me sooner rather than later, like, life-and-death important, to use his exact words, and I have to say that I agree with him. I’m pretty pissed off, in fact, that I’ve been duped into thinking we were stuck in this podunk shithole for the good of the circus,” I hissed.
“Thanks, so much, for trusting me.”
“Gemma, calm down. It’s not that I don’t trust you, for crimony’s sake,” he said, patting his chest pocket. “I just didn’t want to pul you into this any more than necessary, at least not yet. I was going to tel you—”
“When! When were you going to tel me? Don’t you think that I deserve to know the truth? Why are we here, for real? What is this book?”
“The answer to both questions is the same thing: we’re here because I had something that Lucian wants. A book. The book. It’s the AVRAKEDAVRA.”
“The what?”
“The AVRAKEDAVRA, or AVRA-K. It’s a magic book. I had it, and he wants it back,” Ted said. He puffed hard on a newly lit cigarette.
“That’s it? Al of this over some sily book?” Ted chuckled under his breath. “Yes, Gemma, al this over some sily book.”
“Fine. Give it to him so we can get back to our normal life. If you give it to him, wil we be able to go back on the road?” I said.
A flicker of hope.
“We’re not going back on the road. We’re grounded until the book is returned to Lucian.” Ted snubbed the half-finished butt in the ashtray and stared at the swirl of smoke as it dissipated. He took a deep breath, as if to calculate his next move. “And I don’t have it. If I did, I would’ve given it to him a long time ago, and this whole mess would’ve been avoided,” he said.
“What’s the big deal about this book? Where is it?” I said.
“The AVRA-K is important to Lucian. It’s very old. There are only seven of them, and it is powerful in the hands of people who know how to use it. It was given to me as a gift, and I wasn’t supposed to part with it, ever,” Ted paused, “but then I returned it to its rightful owners.”
“Who are…?”
“The Delacroixs—Thibeault and Eléne. Henry’s mother, Alicia
—the book belonged to her parents. I gave it to them after she died,” he said, looking down at the table.
“So cal the Delacroixs and get it back. Give it to Lucian. Tear down the big top,” I begged.
“You make it sound so simple.” He sounded tired.
“It should be. It is. Isn’t it?” I looked back and forth between Ted and Marlene, wishing I could understand why this had al become so complicated, so quickly. “Please, Uncle Ted…I’m scared. I’m afraid of Lucian.”
“I can’t give the book back because it didn’t belong to Lucian to begin with. He stole it, from the Delacroixs, years ago. Lucian’s father, Marku, he gave it to me as sort of a back-up plan, to try to keep Lucian in check. He thought his son was getting too powerful for his own good. But Lucian wasn’t happy with his father’s actions.
He was even less happy with mine,” he said.
“I don’t get it. Why is Lucian funneling thousands of dolars of his own money into Cinzio if you went behind his back and returned the book to the Delacroixs?”
“He wants to make sure the book is returned. And this is his way of winning the favor of the people around him,” he said.
“Certain individuals are less apt to stand with me if they’ve been led to believe that I have somehow wronged a very generous man.” Ted picked up his coffee cup, inspected the dredges, and pointed to the carafe on the counter. Marlene stood and handed it to him.
“Gemma, you mentioned Henry and Lucian had a fight, and that Henry has a black eye?” Marlene said.
“Yeah, apparently Lucian’s pissed that Henry and I are hanging out.”
“Lucian hit him in the face?” Marlene said, shocked. Ted was grinding his teeth.
“Yeah. It’s pretty bad,” I looked down at the toe of my shoe.
Henry’s damaged face flashed in my head; it made my stomach twist. “I’ve been seeing this…woman…I’ve seen her here, too, the day the Dmitris came for dinner. She’s at school. She folows Henry around. I didn’t know, until today, that the woman was his mom.” Marlene slid down on the bench next to me. Ted was so gray, I was afraid he might pass out.
“You can see…Alicia?” he asked. I nodded.
“Henry says that Lucian knows about the shades, how I can see them.” I looked Ted square in the face, my eyes unwavering. “Did you tel him?”
“No, I swear to you, I didn’t tel Lucian, or anyone for that matter. We’ve always done everything we could to protect you.” He fiddled with a pencil. “We wouldn’t tel anyone, especialy with the trouble these—things—gave to your mom.”
“Henry said that Lucian can see the shades, too.”
“Yes, he can,” Ted said.
“I heard Alicia—her voice. I heard it in my head today. She was in the mirror, in Henry’s car. It was beyond weird. They…the shades…they’ve never talked to me before.”
“Maybe you haven’t been listening, Gemma,” Marlene added.
“We were sitting there, and Henry took my hands, and I heard her voice in my head. He has this thing he can do with his hands—”
“It’s warm when he touches you. Unless he’s scared or angry, and then it’s bitterly cold, almost electric.” Marlene and I fixed on Ted, though he stared into nothingness, lost in some distant memory percolating into present time.
“Yeah. So you know about that, too?” I said.
“Alicia…she passed on the gift to her son.” Ted’s voice broke and he looked down at his interlocked fingers, twirling one thumb around the other to tamp down his unexpected emotion.
“Give him the book back.”
“I can’t. I told you, I don’t have it. And once a family is reunited with their book, it’s virtualy impossible to convince them to give it up.”
That unknown, blinding light that typicaly represents an uncharted future abruptly dimmed. The Delacroixs had their precious book back, thanks to Ted, though it seemed a lousy condolence prize in exchange for the loss of their beautiful daughter.
The chances of Ted retrieving it from them, just to hand it over to Lucian Dmitri, grew from slim to nonexistent in the time we inhaled and filed our lungs with the oxygen that would see us through the next second.
“So where
does that leave us? Stuck in Eaglefern forever, locked in a stalemate?” I waited for someone, either of them, to give me an answer. “Lucian apparently doesn’t want me hanging around with Henry, but I’l be damned if I’m going to stay away from him. Please, don’t you ask me to do that, too.”
“We’re not asking you to stop seeing Henry. Just lay low until I get this figured out,” he said. “I can only ask for your patience and understanding right now. You know I don’t ask for a lot from you.
If you can just do this for me, I promise I wil give you answers, as soon as I can find them,” Ted said, his tone burdened by the weight of his request. He was begging me to help him, as much as I was begging him to help me. The dark shadows under his eyes said it al.
This debt, this secret, was going to be the death of him.
:17:
One crow for sorrow,
Two crows for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five crows for silver,
Six crows for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told.
—English nursery rhyme, c. 1780
Al of this over some magical book far away in some unforeseen land, held by people who’d rather die than part with it. A dead woman speaking directly into my head. Lucian Dmitri angry at my budding role in his son’s life. My uncle, my role model, my protector, had kept vital information from me, information that would change the course of my immediate future in a big, big way.
My whole life felt like one big stupid lie.
A run. I needed to get some air, stretch my legs, have space to think. My head was spinning, the questions piling one atop another.
How could one book be so important? What was going to happen if Ted couldn’t get the book back? And why the cloak-and-dagger routine? How did Lucian know about my ability to see the shades?
I went into the trailer and changed into track pants and T-shirt. I puled on my running shoes and a nylon windbreaker and tucked my iPod into my pocket. From the bench as I tightened my fraying laces, I noticed that Delia’s box was stil on the floor next to my bunk, even though I’d asked Marlene to take care of it. I decided to move it myself after I’d exorcised a few demons with a good pulse-pounding run around the fairground property.
The cloud cover hadn’t committed to ful-on rain but compromised with a pathetic, insidious drizzle that soaked everything it touched. It would be enough to keep me cooled down as I moved across the landscape. After a few cursory warm-up stretches, I set off around the edge of the parking lot, toward the vast fields of ungraded land and back around in a loop where the acreage met a stand of poplars. It was quiet, save the sound of my feet on the gravel, the squish of my shoes once I hit weedy grass, and the steady inhale and exhale as I puled in each breath.
I’d made it to the opposite side of the expanse before stopping to tighten the laces on my right shoe. The worn cotton string snapped when I tugged at it.
“Shit.” The only thing that heard me was a crow on the overhead power lines. He cawed loudly, in four sharp bursts, alerting the local wildlife of an intruder in their midst. As I knelt trying to tie a knot in my broken shoelace, another crow arrived. Then another. Within a half a minute, at least twenty black birds had gathered above, al of them shouting in my direction, their wings flapping as they shifted themselves, modified their order on the sagging wire.
I abandoned the lace repair and stood, watching as more birds emerged from the dense poplars, each taking his or her place in the hierarchy. Their cries were deafening, the slap of their wings unsettling as they bumped into one another while stil aloft, some using their black beaks to keep order and coerce other birds to step aside, move down the line.
Something told me I needed to move.
I took a few slow steps backward before turning around, afraid if I broke into a sprint, the birds would give chase. They’re crows, Gemma, not dragons. Stil, there were so many of them.
I pivoted on my heel, my head stil craned to watch their movements, when the lot exploded from the power line, a changeable mass of black speeding straight for me. I moved my legs as fast as I could, covering my head with my arms so the birds wouldn’t have such an easy target in my skul. Instead of attacking me, they sailed within inches of my body, on al sides, the flap of their wings creating a whirlwind as they surrounded and surpassed me.
In an instant, it stopped. I stopped. Slammed ful force into an unseen wal of light. I was hurled backwards, landing hard on my ass in a patch of the greenest grass I’d ever seen. I scrambled onto my knees and craned my neck looking for the birds. The ashen sky had been replaced by an endless blue, not a cloud in sight. No crows. The field, no longer dead and drab. Just flowers, sunlight, and grass the color of emeralds.
Then I saw her. Delia. Across the huge field, laughing about some random thing the woman next to her was doing or saying. She was with Alicia. I watched from afar, these two women, both stunning and happy, as they talked, laughed, and wove daisy chains like a couple of schoolgirls. My chest felt ful, radiant. I’d swear I was glowing like a morning sunrise. Alicia saw me and waved. Delia folowed suit and the two of them ran toward me.
Without warning, the sky darkened and Alicia disappeared.
Delia stood alone, her face no longer bright but heavy with worry and fear, a look I was far more accustomed to seeing on my mother. I sprang to my feet and started sprinting in her direction but my limbs felt too heavy to move, as if I were trying to run through waist-deep, hardening concrete.
Without warning, a dark figure stood arm’s length from her, a man dressed in a long cloak of a medieval fashion. I couldn’t make out his face as I struggled to move closer, but my sides ached from lack of air and my voice was nothing but an inaudible whisper, despite my efforts to scream my mother’s name.
The man raised his arms out to his sides, his black cloak expansive in its layers of fabric. His gaze left Delia and shot across the field, slamming me hard in the face. I recoiled from the impact, and dropped to my knees, landing hard on the gravel. Pain surged through my thighs and I knew when I stood, if I stood, my knees would be shredded and bloodied. My arms flew from my sides to create a horizon of agony, my hands turned upward, elbows locked, shoulders taut, the involuntary positioning of my body freezing me in place.
In an instant, the man was directly in front of me, puling back on my hair. I had no choice but to look toward the tempestuous sky, the crows, screeching and clawing at one another, reassembled in a tornado swirling not ten feet above my head. I felt his rancid breath on my cheek but could not turn my head to look at him. My peripheral vision registered only the shadow of a face in his heavy hood.
And then the pain came.
In bolts, igniting every last nerve ending, blasting through the synapse checkpoints in my brain, my joints drawing apart, new space introduced between the bones where before had been only cartilage. My voice was mute, though not for a lack of straining to scream. Tears streamed down the sides of my head, past my temples, and dripped into my ear canals. My neck would snap if he puled any harder.
He moved behind me, his face looking over mine, maintaining the tension on my hair so I couldn’t right myself. Stars accumulated at the edges of my vision, and my body quaked from the continuous stream of physical torment. The hood concealed every feature of my assailant’s face except the glow of his cold eyes, his hatred boring a hole through my core, leaving in its wake an incalculable sense of loss.
Then he let go. My head snapped forward and I fel onto my chest, landing hard on dry, cracked earth where just a few moments prior had been soft grass. My muscles seized and spasmed, my neck cramped, and I felt bilious. But I wasn’t yet alone. The cloaked man circled me, a lion before his kil.
“Please…please, no,” I whispered, drained of strength, my body failing me.
He laughed. The crows mimicked him.
Then I saw her. Delia. She was crouched into a bal not a hundred feet from where I was sprawled. Ignoring
the man, I dragged myself onto al fours and crawled toward Delia’s falen figure. Everything hurt, the excruciating pain renewing itself with every inch of progress.
The cloaked man stood in my way but I could see through him, through the vapor that was his body, his legs. Delia was growing closer. I was moving forward.
Within feet of reaching her, however, the form of my mother became only a dead shel of a tree. Scattered about the ground were Delia’s half-finished drawings, more scribbles than decipherable figures, the ones she’d done of the man she insisted was my father.
I fel onto my back. There was nothing I could do if the cloaked man wanted me dead.
“Do it! What are you waiting for?” I screamed. The impact of my voice broke the crows from their eddy. They regrouped, circled above, and without warning, shot off in the opposite direction, away from me. With them, they took the black of the sky, the angry wind, and the cloaked man.
I was again alone.
:18:
The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The fairgrounds were the usual buzz of activity, and no one took notice of me as I slipped back into the trailer, even though the fronts of my calves were covered in stripes of fresh blood, my ankle socks and running shoes soaked and stained. My eyes were swolen from crying, my sleeve gross from wiping my face and nose during my limp back toward civilization.
That vision, or whatever it was…that was new. I’d never experienced anything like that before, not in my awake life.
Nightmares were one thing, but those happen when a body is asleep. And my body was very much awake. I had the wounds to prove it. How could I tel Marlene about this? She’d have me committed. Hel, I’d have me committed.
I shuffled to the kitchenette bench, examining the cuts levied by my slam into the rocky ground. I’d be bruised, but the cuts weren’t deep. Nothing a shower and some Neosporin couldn’t clean up.
I heard people speaking in the courtyard and pushed the thin curtain aside. Irina, a stack of mail in her hands fresh from her daily run to the post office, handed Marlene a large manila envelope. As Marlene flipped it over, I saw my name plastered across its front in big, black, distinctive block letters.
Sleight: Book One of the AVRA-K Page 11