by J. S. Bailey
One of the men let out a whimper. She guessed it was Max.
Something clicked, and the air seemed to vibrate.
Then someone gasped. “Max? Max!” No reply. “Rochelle, where did Max go?”
“Probably back through the portal. Now if you’ll excuse me…” She tried to look for a way out but could still see nothing in the darkness, but before she could proceed any further a hand latched onto her arm and dragged her back a few feet.
The click and vibration came back for an encore performance.
More static. More light.
Then a white-faced Adalbert Wang was standing over her wearing a scowl.
“Hi, Adalbert,” she said as she pulled herself to her feet. Max stood off to one side in the clearing, shaking as if he’d seen a ghost. “Did you miss me?”
He made no reply. To the guards, he said, “Stay here and make sure no one else attempts to do what Miss Peltier just did. And I advise you not to try it again yourself.”
ADALBERT took her to the tavern—a dim little building filled with booth-style seating and a counter behind which sat Earl, the elderly bartender, who was deafer than a brick—and led her into a back room that housed a table, four chairs, and a shelf overflowing with papers that probably kept track of the tavern’s income and expenses.
“Please sit down,” he said while taking one of the chairs for himself.
Rochelle obeyed and glanced out the wide window, which provided her with a view of the back side of the carpentry shop one street over.
“Would you mind telling me why you, the Owenses’ own housekeeper, would so blatantly break the law? That family has faced enough scandal already. I’m surprised you would find a way to create another one.”
“To be honest, Adalbert, I just wanted a pizza.”
His brows knit together. “This pizza is something that exists where you came from?”
Her mouth watered at the thought of sinking her teeth into Colonnade Pizza’s finest. “Boy, does it. It’s the best food in the world. It’s like this round, flat piece of bread covered in tomato sauce, cheese, and meat.”
“We have these things here. Make your own pizza.”
“But it isn’t the same. Can’t you give a girl a break for being hungry?”
A look of uncertainty flickered into Adalbert’s eyes. “Wait right here. If you leave before I come back, you will be put into prison.”
“Leaving the tavern isn’t breaking the law.”
He threw her such a disgusted look that she decided it was probably best to keep her mouth closed.
He left the room and slammed the door behind him.
Rochelle sighed. She knew who Adalbert would bring back with him: Andrew Walker. Because Andrew was the chief of police who had reluctantly taken Adalbert on as an assistant when Mark Ericson and some of his friends decided to go on an expedition in search of other villages that might exist far beyond Sparkling Falls.
Little did Adalbert know that Andrew had unofficially encouraged her to bribe Max and Henry in the first place.
What Adalbert didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
After fifteen minutes of drumming her fingers on the tabletop and contemplating escape through the window, footsteps approached and the door swung open. “You deal with her,” she heard Adalbert say. “I have important things to do.”
Andrew laughed as he came through the door. “I’m sure you do.” He quietly latched the door and faced Rochelle. “I suppose things didn’t go quite as you’d planned,” he said in a low voice as he took the chair Adalbert abandoned.
“Not exactly. Short of knocking out the guards, it looks like I’ll be stuck here.”
“You never minded before.”
She looked him right in the eye and laid her palms on the table. “That’s because I didn’t have anything to go back to! My family’s gone. I didn’t see any point in looking for a way back when I would have ended up on my own again. At least here I have all of you people.” She swallowed an unexpected lump that had formed in her throat. “Besides, I think it’s 2005 right now on the other end of Laura’s portal. If I went through there and went back to Ottawa, I might end up running into my five-year-old self, and that just ties my brain into a knot when I think about it.” She shivered.
Andrew gave a nod of understanding. “I know you really want to go see Laura again. I do, too.”
“Those little sisters of hers were cute, too. They tried to style my hair and it took half an hour to get the brush unstuck from it.”
His gaze took on a faraway look. “I tell you what. Be patient. I can find someone to bring up the portal issue at the next council meeting. We can’t say outright that we want to enable portal travel, though.”
“Mention how it’s a waste of resources. There’s work to be done around town that can’t get done if able-bodied folks are sitting out in the woods all day twiddling their thumbs.”
“You’ve just read my—”
The door flew open and Adalbert’s wife Louise strode in, the color high in her cheeks. “Adalbert is out of his mind if he thinks leaving the two of you alone is a good idea!”
Rochelle made a point of not glancing Andrew’s way. Louise was a severe woman with inky black hair that was currently tied back into a bun, and while she wasn’t quite as nasty to Rochelle and the Owenses as she used to be, Rochelle still did not consider her a friend. “Oh?”
Louise crossed her arms over her chest. Today she wore a brown dress covered in splotches of flour as if she’d been in the middle of baking something when she heard Rochelle and Andrew were here. “Listen. We didn’t come up with the measure because we don’t like you. We did it because we don’t want any of our children or grandchildren to stumble into one of the portals and be lost to us forever. You should be one of the first people to understand this. I see you never went back to your home.”
Rochelle opened her mouth to object but found she had nothing to say.
Louise narrowed her eyes and smiled. “So you do understand. I thought you would. Now do you promise you won’t try anything foolish like this again? If word gets out about this some of the younger people might get some ideas in their impressionable little heads, and the next thing we’ll know, they’ll be gone.”
“Louise, I’m the police chief here,” Andrew said, his face darkening. “I can handle this.”
“Can you, Andrew? Because I know—”
This time Adalbert was the one to barge through the door with a flushed face. “Andrew, it seems we have a problem. Frank Yelton says Eliza Matarna just came into his shop and started flinging everything off the shelves while shouting at the top of her lungs.”
Andrew rose, looking resigned. “What’s she shouting?”
“Litchie stinks.”
“Good grief. I pray she doesn’t break anything.”
Rochelle clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Eliza was a year older than she but had the mental capacity of a young child. She was friendly in general but prone to tantrums like any toddler who didn’t get her way.
If Rochelle guessed right, Eliza had seen Litchfield scraping horse dung off the streets and went ballistic at the sight of him.
“Rochelle,” Andrew said, “I’m afraid this meeting is concluded. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
Then he and Adalbert were gone.
Rochelle and Louise looked at each other, and Louise’s shoulders gave a slight slump. “One day I think we’ve finally gotten this town in order and the next day it’s chaos. Please try not to do anything that will add to it.” With that, Louise turned on her heel and disappeared through the door in a swirl of brown skirts.
Rochelle counted off a minute before rising and entering the main part of the tavern. Earl, the bartender, held up a piece of slate and tapped it with a nub of chalk, his white eyebrows raised in a wordless question.
She shook her head as she passed him by. “Not today, Earl. I need to have a clear head if I’m going to think of what to do.”
The chaos Louise had mentioned was well underway when Rochelle emerged into the bright afternoon sunlight. A crowd of twenty or so people had gathered around the front of the general store to watch the spectacle unfold; some of them laughing, some biting their nails in nervous anticipation.
Eliza’s brown hair was a tangled mess as usual, and her mint green dress was fraying around the cuffs and collar. “Litchie is a bad man!” she shouted as she swung a punch at Frank Yelton in the doorway of the shop. Beyond it Rochelle could see baskets and clothing tossed all over the floor that had previously been neatly arranged in racks and on shelves.
“Eliza, please!” Frank pleaded as he dodged the blow. “Calm down! I’m not Litchfield!”
So intense was Eliza in her fury that she seemed not to understand him—and with as simple-minded as she was, maybe she didn’t.
Andrew nudged his way through the crowd and tried to grab hold of Eliza’s shoulders to pull her away from Frank, but she gave a sudden turn and planted a fist squarely in his right eye. Andrew staggered backward, clapping a hand over it, and someone shouted, “Catch the freak before she kills someone!”
“No!” someone else piped up. “She’s just like a child! You can’t hurt her!”
“But look what she did to the inside of Frank’s shop!”
“Never knew she had so much fight in her.”
“I say let’s pit her and Litchfield against each other in a fight. I’d love to see him with a black eye. Where is he?”
“No, don’t! He’s not like he used to be! The Book says we should love our neighbors as ourselves!”
“Your Book be cursed! Litchfield’s no neighbor of mine! He’s a liar and a fraud, and a murderer!”
“But he’s changed!”
The continued shouting drew more people out of other shops and houses like moths drawn to the light of a glow stone. Rochelle could feel the tension in the air grow so thick she could have cut it up with a knife.
They’re insane, she thought. Most days went by in a dull monotony of waking and rising and doing chores all day and then going back to bed, so at the first sign of excitement people tended to lose their heads, but thankfully only in a figurative way.
“There he is!” a man shouted.
Rochelle blinked. The man had turned away from the rest of the crowd and was pointing at her.
No, not at her. She instinctively twisted around and saw Litchfield leaning on his shovel in the dirt roadway a scant four yards behind her, his eyes filled with wicked glee at the fray he’d unintentionally incited.
Yeah right, he’d changed. He looked like a child who’d awakened to a room full of presents Christmas morning.
Half the crowd broke away and surged toward him, and, since she was in the way, Rochelle.
Uh-oh.
She broke into a run and dashed around the former deity, making a beeline up the hill toward the House of Owens. Maybe she should just hole up inside for the rest of the day and not open the door for anyone unless they happened to live there. Because for all she knew, some of the crazier villagers would think she’d been standing in front of Litchfield to block him from view and come after her for trying to protect him.
She burst through the front door a minute later and stood on the mat panting for a moment. To think that just a short while ago she’d been wrapping up a perfectly ordinary Woodland Youth meeting! With all that had ensued since then, it felt like it had occurred ages ago.
Rochelle popped into the living room to see Tabitha sitting on the couch bouncing baby Regulus on her knee.
“Tabitha?” she said. “Where is your mother?”
The teenager shrugged. “Out.”
“Where?”
“In the woods, I think. She said something about checking on the guards, but I don’t know why she would do that.”
A sinking feeling filled Rochelle’s gut. Lady, I sure hope you know what you’re doing.
Without explaining her actions to the Owenses’ daughter, Rochelle rushed outside once more and jogged up the dwindling dirt path toward the clearing.
Grunts and cries of pain met her ears seconds before the clearing came into view.
The board on which Max and Henry had conducted their game of poker had been knocked off its barrel, and playing cards had fluttered away and caught in the grass here and there like colorful scraps of litter. Rotanev Owens, Lord Arcturus and Lady Capella’s eldest son, had Henry in a headlock and was straining to force him to the ground; and Lady Capella herself had brought her father’s old hunting spear along for the fun and had its tip pointed an inch away from Max’s face.
Rochelle couldn’t have been more surprised.
“Well?” Lady Capella huffed. “Don’t just stand there. Do what you must.”
Rochelle stepped forward with utmost caution, wondering if she’d hit her head and was dreaming. “What are you doing? They’ll put you in prison for this.”
“Not permanently. Now hurry before Adalbert and Andrew sort out their little problem in town and come back to stop you.”
“How do you know about that?”
A spark of dark humor flashed through Lady Capella’s eyes for a moment.
Rochelle gaped at her. “You mean you told Eliza to cause a diversion?” Lady Capella must have seen Adalbert practically dragging her past the house a short time ago and decided to take matters into her own hands.
“Rochelle, please hurry.”
Shaking her head in wonder, Rochelle made her way over to where she remembered the portal to be, but as she did Max dashed toward her and latched onto her arm. “Not again!” she grunted, trying to pull him off of her so she wouldn’t bring him with her a second time. “I’ve had my fair share of men touching me today.”
In the corner of her eye she saw that Rotanev had forced Henry facedown on the ground and was binding rope around his wrists.
The prison was going to be quite full this week. Hopefully Lady Capella and her son wouldn’t mind the smell.
Before Max could muster a reply, Lady Capella walked up behind him and cracked the handle of the spear across the back of his head. His fingers unlatched themselves from Rochelle’s arm as he sank into the grass and brought his hands to the back of his head as if to ascertain whether or not it was intact. “Ow!” he whimpered. “You’re crazy! All of you!”
“That’s right, Mr. Marsh,” Lady Capella said in a soothing tone. “I am crazy. And I’m sure the whole village will be buzzing about it by sundown. And Rochelle? I do suggest you hurry so you don’t have to accompany us to prison today.”
Rochelle nodded. “Whatever my lady commands.” She turned toward the place where the butterfly had vanished and reappeared earlier and stepped forward into dazzling light.
ROCHELLE sat across from Laura Owens in one of the booths along Old Burg Pizza’s front wall in East Millersburg, West Virginia near the end of February 2005, shoveling her fifth slice of meat-lover’s pizza into her mouth and trying not to think about the fact that right now, at that very moment, a soon-to-be-six-year-old Rochelle Peltier lived with her still-living parents seven hundred miles away in Canada’s capitol, probably playing with Barbie dolls or something like that. 2005 was too long ago for her to remember clearly. And maybe that was a good thing.
Flurries drifted down from the gray sky with the gracefulness of flakes in a snow globe. It was a nice view, but the sight of cars and trucks passing by on Main Street was so jarring that Rochelle did her best to keep her attention focused on that which lay inside the restaurant.
Such as Laura, whom she befriended when the girl had first stumbled through the portal into Sparkling Falls two years before. Due to a head injury, Laura had been unable to remember her identity until she’d lived in Sparkling Falls for two months. Rochelle couldn’t even imagine how traumatizing it must have been for her, but it seemed not to have caused any lasting damage because Laura had grown into a striking young woman of eighteen. Her sleek brown hair fell well past her shoulders, and he
r warm hazel eyes pierced Rochelle’s with an intensity Rochelle did not remember.
“So what’s on your mind?” Laura asked. “Aside from pizza, of course.” She grinned, and the tiny silver cross pendant on her necklace gleamed against her pale purple sweater.
Rochelle dabbed at her lips with a napkin. “I’m sorry I scared your grandmother. I had no idea someone would be down there when I came through.” Rochelle emerged into Laura’s grandparents’ basement at precisely the moment Laura’s grandmother was stashing a box of mason jars on a shelf. Fortunately no heart attacks ensued, though Rochelle did feel somewhat guilty that she didn’t have any money with which to replace all the jars that had broken when Grandma Berger dropped the box on the concrete floor.
Laura laughed. “I think she was happier to see you than she was upset about the jars. All she’s done these past two years is talk about how much she missed visiting Sparkling Falls. She said it was like being a girl again and visiting Wonderland.”
“Luckily for her we don’t have any Mad Hatters or Queens of Hearts to complicate things.”
“You do have Litchfield, though.” Laura’s eyes flashed. “How is he doing, anyway? I feel kind of bad that he has to clean the streets now. Did Spica ever force-feed him a plate of asparagus?”
“No, but I think she and Tabitha dropped a basket of it off at the tavern for him. Cute kids. Well, Tabitha isn’t much of a kid anymore, but you know what I mean. So how have you been? I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Laura tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned back into the red vinyl cushion with a smile. “I still have a few holes in my memory. Just little things, though, and I try not to let them bother me too much. Like my Sweet Sixteen party. I know I had one because Mom has pictures, but the only thing I remember about it is getting an Orlando Bloom poster and hanging it on my wall.” She shrugged. “Oh well, right?”