Justin tiptoed behind me with Emily taking her familiar and seemingly predictable spot at the rear. The music grew louder as we climbed each step of the curving stairway. As we approached the top step we stopped, pausing to hear in which direction the music would call us. Instead it seemed to have faded.
“That’s weird,” said Justin. “It sounds like the music is coming from downstairs now.”
“You’re right,” I agreed.
We stood quietly, turning our heads and ears to listen, trying to figure out where the music was coming from. After some time we all agreed that we must have made an error; that the music was coming from a room below. I lead our trio back down the stairs, keeping our descent as silent as possible on the creaky stairs.
The music swelled again, confirming our suspicions that it was louder below. We tiptoed down and stepped back on to the cool tile floor.
“Oookay, am I going crazy?” sighed Justin. “Or does it not sound like the music is coming from upstairs again?”
“What if it’s some sort of magic that has the music moving throughout the house?” said Emily. “Like in the ice castle.”
“She might be right Tali,” whispered Justin. “What if Ludo lives here?”
“Oh my gosh!” cried Emily. “We should get out of here, before we get caught up in her spell.”
But without warning, a section of the curved stairway wall above us opened and an old, white-haired man stepped out holding a glass flask filled with a purple liquid. He didn’t seem to notice us, as he shuffled up to the floor above, all the while humming to himself.
Justin’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head, as he looked back at me without saying a word. Emily had the same awestruck look, and I couldn’t help but let out a giggle. Justin quickly covered his mouth to hold back his own laughter. Music bellowed from the open door and filled the foyer with the sounds of Mozart.
“So that’s why it kept sounding up when we were down or down when we were up,” said Justin.
“Shhh, he might hear us,” Emily whispered.
I stepped up again on the creaky second step.
“Where are you going?”
“There’s no magic spell, so I’m just taking a quick look,” I whispered, and then continued to climb up towards the open doorway.
“Are you out of your mind?” she whispered sharply. “You do know this is considered breaking and entering a stranger’s home, do you not?”
But, I had already scaled half the stairs with Justin following me.
“Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?” sighed Emily, who quickly tiptoed up to catch us.
The doorway led to a small room that resembled a chemistry lab with a large round window on the far side. The music bellowed from an old record player in the corner and next to it was a chalkboard on an easel with a string of letters, numbers and symbols drafted on to it. In the centre of the room sat a table completely covered with an assortment of beakers, flasks and winding tubes, bubbling with steaming fluids.
We moved in closer where a beaker full of clear liquid was boiling above a Bunsen burner and emitting a greenish steam.
“Ah!” came a snort from behind us. All three of us spun around to face the white-haired man in the doorway.
“I should have known today was going to be the day,” he said. Then he looked at Justin and said, “You’ve shrunk!”
It was as though we had been caught red-handed, and not one of us knew what to say. At the same time, any explanation seemed unnecessary as he simply shuffled past us with a flask in one hand and a small wooden box in the other.
“I should have been counting the days,” he sighed, “but it is evident that the days continue on whether I count them or not. Got to get this mixture just right before I add it.” He placed the flask on top of a small, lit Bunsen burner and opened the box. Taking a pinch of brown powder from the box, he dropped it into the flask, causing the purple liquid to foam half-way up the neck before quickly settling back down again.
“Sweet!” said Justin.
“It’s actually quite bitter, but I’d suggest against tasting it, as even a small amount could give a boy your size a terrible stomach ache.” He squinted his eyes and sized up Justin. “You really have shrunk, or I’ve gotten taller, that is for certain,” he said, and then picked up the beaker with his tongs, and gently poured its clear liquid contents into the now bubbling purple liquid.
Justin looked down at himself.
He didn’t seem any shorter, but I could tell the comment bothered Justin who had always been on the lesser side of average height and was often called ‘Littler’ because of it.
“Shorter than when?” I whispered. “Have you even met him before?”
“Don’t think so,” he said, as we watched the two liquids swirl together and change from a murky purple to clear green. The transformation followed through the various pipes and vessels until it came to the last tube where it steamed and formed a drop of green fluid at the open end. The drop grew until gravity finally grabbed hold of it and pulled it off the end. It landed in a clay flowerpot that contained a small fern.
“Quickly now, take the pot away,” said the old man motioning for Emily to replace the pot with a glass bottle to catch the remaining drops.
“Yes, now some water ought to do the trick,” he said. “The watering can should be down below the sink there.” He waved Justin in the direction of the sink and surprisingly Justin followed his lead without saying a word. Justin handed him the watering can. “Not too much now, nor too little,” the man said as he watered the fern.
We watched and waited for something magical to happen to the plant.
“Light!” he exclaimed, as he took the potted plant and shuffled to the back of the room, placing the pot on a small stand near the window. We followed him, filing in around the plant to see what would happen.
“The wind has its eye on you now,” he said to the plant.
“What’s supposed to happen?” I asked.
“The plant will now grow,” he said doddering back to the table where he began cleaning up some items.
“When?” I asked not taking my eyes off the plant for fear I’d miss the action.
“When it is ready,” he snuffed out the burner.
“Ready as in a few minutes, or a few days?”
“I don’t know. When it’s ready, it’s ready.”
“Geesh, I could have told you a plant would grow if it had water, soil and sunlight,” I huffed.
“Then why did you ask?” he said.
Emily shot her hand up as though having a question, but the man was too preoccupied fumbling in his vest pocket to notice.
“Excuse me sir,” she finally spoke up. “What was the drop you put in the soil for?”
“Fertilizer,” he said, as he pulled a pocket book and pen out of his vest. “It helps the plant to grow. Last batch lacked nitrate though.” He began writing something in his pocket book. “One pinch of...”
“So aren’t you wondering why we’re here?” I interrupted, now bored by the chemistry class.
“... and two teaspoons nitrate,” he mumbled impassively.
I glanced at Justin and Emily and then back to the old man who continued to write. Figuring he might not have heard me, I asked again. “Don’t you want to know why we’re in your home?”
“No,” he sighed without looking up.
“Why not?” I blurted out.
He stopped writing and looked up at me. “Because I already know why you are here.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Winds Eye
“Wait, what?” I asked, confused by his response.
“I already know why you are here!” the old man repeated, in a louder voice.
“Who are you? Have we met before?” I was still puzzled.
“Oh
yes, of course you wouldn’t remember me. After all, how could you?” he chuckled and held his hand out towards me. “Alfred Krieger” he said with a smile and shook my hand enthusiastically.
The name didn’t sound familiar at all. I looked at Emily and then Justin, who just shrugged.
“Well,” said Alfred, as he sniffed and pinched his nose. “Although it is the goodbyes I hate the most, hadn’t we better get you on your way?”
‘How could he know that we were trying to get back home?’ The thought rattled me, and left me speechless, which was just as well as he didn’t seem to be expecting a response. He turned and shuffled over to the window. I stared at the back of him, trying to recollect some forgotten memory of this strange man, but nothing came to mind. ‘Maybe he’s mistaken us for someone else?’ I wondered before a simpler explanation came to mind.
“He’s the madman!” I whispered to Emily and Justin.
“The rumours are true,” snickered Justin.
“You think?” whispered Emily.
“Remember how I said we must have traveled back in time? Well this Alex guy...”
“Alfred,” interjected Justin.
“Yeah, he’s THE guy! You know... the madman, cuckoo, lost his mind guy!” I crossed my eyes and drew circles in the air beside my ear. My friends nodded in slow affirmation.
“Hey Albert!” I said.
“Alfred,” he corrected without turning around.
“Oh yeah, sorry Alfred. I have a question.”
“Of course Lady Tali, and what question is that?” Alfred turned to face me and I swallowed my smug smile back into my face.
“How do you know my name?”
“Naphtali,” he paused, “I prefer how it sounds in its entirety, but you insist on being called Tali and so there you are. How I’ve missed your company,” he sighed. “But alas, you’ve barely arrived and already I’m having to send you off.”
I was thoroughly confused now. Mad or not, he seemed to know who we were and why we were there, but how? I thought back to Demoror Ari and how our names had been carved into the ice thrones, and the letter I had first read on the book that day in the cellar. Perhaps it was me who was going mad.
Alfred turned again towards the round window that resembled a large porthole of a ship, and removed a small pin from what appeared to be a metal track that lined the window’s round brass frame. Then he began muttering a childlike rhyme:
For every thousand twist it right,
Right a notch for every night,
Twist left for every hundred spent,
The word should find the right moment,
The sand will shift and change the day,
Let the wind’s eye take you away.
“Excuse me,” said Emily with her hand raised again. “Should I be writing this down?”
“They’re instructions for some sort of time machine, aren’t they?” asked Justin.
“Yes Justin, precisely!” smiled Alfred.
“I knew it!” grinned Justin, not seeming to notice the alarming fact that Alfred knew his name as well.
“Now let me see... you’ll need the word.” Alfred rummaged through a tall stack of papers on his desk.
I watched him as he fingered through the pages with his white hair so out of sorts and his manners so hurried. How could I not remember him?
“So we’ve met before?” I asked, still reeling with questions.
“Yes, yes, things will be clear to you soon enough. Now if I could just remember what I said when you first arrived,” he said. Alfred’s hand flipped through some papers, bobbing up and down as he licked his middle finger after every other page.
“Something about - you should have known today was the day?” said Emily.
“Hmm?” Alfred glanced up. “Oh, no not today. I mean the day we first met; over forty-two thousand suns ago.” He pulled out a piece of paper from the stack.
“That’s over a hundred years ago,” said Justin.
“We weren’t even born,” I said.
“Let’s see now. This should do the trick!” said Alfred. His attention seemed occupied by the piece of paper he was reading.
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” I continued trying to get his attention. “We’ve somehow fallen back in time to this place, and you’ve got a time machine to send us forward so we can return to our time?”
“Forward?” Alfred looked at me.
“To send us home,” I reaffirmed.
“Home?” he chuckled, as though the thought of it were preposterous.
“Look Albert....”
“Alfred,” he corrected.
“Alfred, I may seem clueless in this weird world of yours, but it’s quite clear that we somehow ended up going back in time by accident and arrived here somehow. So to get us back home, I just figured you’d have to send us forward in time.”
“Hmm,” Alfred pinched his nose. “I’m really not sure how you got here, never thought to ask, but it can’t possibly matter right now.”
“Not matter! What do you mean not matter? It’s ALL that matters!” I blurted out.
“Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully. I did not mean to imply that your coming or going doesn’t matter, only that it seems less significant than what you are about to do.”
“And what would that be?”
“Why, to go back to the day that Henry disappeared of course.” said Alfred. “The day we first met.”
“Hold on” I said while trying to untangle the twisted mess my mind had become. “Who’s Henry?”
“You don’t remember Henry? The Maker?”
“The Maker?” I repeated.
“Yes, it’s rather a clumsy title, but it seems to have stuck. I would have thought some residual memory would have pervaded regardless of the time continuum, but alas, it appears that you really don’t remember him.”
I shook my head.
“Ahh,” he sighed. “He’d be so disappointed. Especially after fussing over that first date.”
“How can I... wait, what do you mean first date?”
“Henry was so worried you weren’t going to be impressed unless he arranged something spectacular,” he chuckled. “I must admit, I enjoyed watching him for once being completely flummoxed. He had always been such a natural at getting a woman’s attention when it didn’t seem to matter, and then you came along and well, it was a funny thing!”
‘This is crazy talk!’ my brain rejected every word of nonsense that Alfred was saying.
“Why on earth would I agree to go on a date with some old friend of yours? Especially with someone who’s got a God complex?” I asked.
“I think what Tali is trying to say is that you’ve mistaken her for someone else,” Emily said calmly.
I hated her for being so calm. “Are you blind? Can’t you see we’re here by mistake?” I exclaimed.
“I can see quite well thank you, but you should know that nothing happens by mistake,” said Alfred. “It does appear that way at times, but eventually its purpose is revealed. No, I have not mistaken any of you. You all must go, and you all will go. It is written as such. In fact, it has already happened.”
“But we have to go home!” said Emily.
“We really do,” said Justin. “But I’m curious, what’s this word you were searching for? Why do we need it?”
“Oh yes, now there’s a good question,” nodded Alfred. Scrap of paper in hand, he began to fold and rip it as he continued to explain. “The word is a very fiddly thing. You must figure out exactly the best moment for one to pop in on a different time. The words you choose help to hone in on that exact moment. You wouldn’t want to travel to the time of twenty thousand suns and find out you’ll have to wait six hundred more for Henry to disappear, now would you?”
“All these suns are confusing
,” said Emily.
“But how does the word help?” asked Justin.
“Well it is actually more a string of words. A sentence if you will.” Alfred smiled as he unfolded the small piece of paper he had ripped from the larger piece. “This sentence contains the words dictating the precise time you travel to. It was written by Henry himself.”
“How would he already know the details before we’ve gone?” asked Emily.
“Well,” Alfred pinched his nose. “Technically since you’re going back in time, it’s already occurred.”
“How crazy is that?” said Justin turning back to me, clearly impressed. I didn’t share his enthusiasm.
“Okay...” I sighed. “It’s been nice chatting with you Albert,”
“Alfred,” said Alfred.
“Alfred, whatever. Enough of these words and sentences and people who we’ve already met, had tea with and dated only to find out they disappeared. A bit much to believe if you know what I mean.”
Alfred didn’t say anything.
“Allow me to summarize my thoughts for you,” I continued clearly. “We have to go home!”
“She’s right,’ pleaded Emily. “Our parents will be so worried about us.”
“But your purpose here is not yet fulfilled,” said Alfred. “You must go and find out what happened to Henry.”
“Here’s an idea,” I said. “Why doesn’t someone else fulfill it?”
“But it is already written; it can be no other way,” he insisted.
“Written or not written, in my world, none of this ever happened. I’ve never met you or dated this friend of yours. Faeries don’t exist, and people don’t just disappear! So maybe you and your pal Henry should try sorting out the mess you’ve made yourselves,” I said with resolve.
Alfred’s enthusiasm drained and he seemed lost for words. It was sad to see his excitement suddenly turn to disappointment, and my frustration dissipated.
“Listen Albe... Alfred,” I corrected myself. “I feel badly for you, I really do, but honestly I just can’t follow all this stuff you’re talking about. Sure, it’s a great trick that you know our names, and I may never understand how we got here, but I think you have me confused with someone else,” I said. “Besides I don’t know how you expect us to help, even if we wanted to.” Then, feeling horrible for his disappointment I continued, “I’ll tell you what, if you could help us get back home, I promise to ask my parents to help figure out what happened to Henry. Maybe they can do something? My mom is great at doing research and my dad even knows the Mayor! Well, sort of. Anyway, I’m sure they’ll know what to do.”
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