Jasper’s sense of the whole situation took a huge leap sideways. He set Tim on the floor, right in the center of the chalk circle, and kept him hidden behind his hand.
“Get help,” he whispered. “Rosa pulled her sword through here. Go back the same way. Try not to set her room on fire when you get there.”
The fiery ghost flickered once and then disappeared.
Rosa’s father, Ferdinand Díaz, approached them slowly. His cane made echoing taps against the cafeteria floor. “I have your mother to thank for the limp. She stabbed my leg right before my library fell around us both. A gifted duelist, your mother.” He sounded very proud.
Rosa felt utterly cold. The molten center of her world solidified and stopped moving. “I saw you die. I saw your library fall. And I saw you today. At the Talcott house. Right before that building came down, too. Buildings keep falling on you. And nothing survives inside a banishment circle. Not when it breaks. Not ever.”
Her father smiled a sad and embarrassed sort of smile. “Letheans do. How could we improve our art if we extinguished ourselves every time anything went wrong?”
Rosa stepped out of her useless circle, pushed Jasper behind her, and picked up her sword. The edge had gashed the floor where she had dropped it.
Crap, she thought. I damaged the cafeteria floor. With a sword. I brought a sword to school and scratched up the floor with it. Swords are bigger than pocketknives. Principal Ahmed is going to have some very angry words with me about this—or at least he will if he ever gets his voice back, the voice that he lost because Lethean things are scribbled all over the inside of the water fountain right next to the classroom where my father has been quizzing us about ancient Roman history for months.
“Why did you steal all those voices?” In her head the words sounded like a formal challenge. In her own ears they were plaintive, like the cry of a wounded animal cub. Why? Why? Why?
“I only really meant to take yours, Rosa.” He stood right outside the farthest reach of her sword. “Yours and Jasper’s. The two of you undid the most splendid, shining, long-lasting banishment that the modern age has ever seen. I’ve spent most of my life studying Ingot. You made those studies much more difficult, my dear. So I needed to shut you up—temporarily—while I tracked down the ghost of Franz Talcott. But I missed you. I silenced many other people instead. Mea culpa. But all of that collateral damage did keep you busy, at least. And by keeping the voices away from their owners I have stoked more resentment between the living and the dead—which is as it should be.”
Rosa held her sword higher and shifted her stance.
Her father watched with a critical eye. His voice became lower, slower, and more of a chant. “I see you have forgotten how to fight.”
“No I haven’t,” Rosa insisted.
“Is that a strong position?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.”
“Are you sure?”
She wasn’t.
He twisted the handle of his cane and drew out a narrow blade. “How well do you remember swordsmanship? You seem so cute when you pretend to fight.”
Rosa’s muscle memories grew fuzzy. The weight of the sword felt ungainly and uncertain to her. And then her father reached out with his own, caught the two blades in a bind, and took her weapon away, gently, as though confiscating a sharp pair of scissors from a very small child.
Rosa stared at her hand like she couldn’t remember how it came to be empty.
Jasper grabbed that hand and pulled. “You know how to run!” he shouted at her, trying to break whatever spell her father’s voice had cast. “You still remember how to run!”
They bolted for the exit, but the heavy door refused to open when they got there.
“Thresholds are mine,” said Mr. Díaz in a kindly and apologetic sort of way. “Appeasement specialists tend to ask politely, but Letheans have more authority. Much more. That door will only remember how to open when I allow it.”
Jasper gave up on kicking the door. “Help is coming,” he whispered. “We just have to keep away from him until it gets here.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Rosa’s voice sounded just as cold, flat, and transparent as a new sheet of ice over a shallow pond. “Nobody else can get in. Not if every door and threshold only listens to him.”
“She’s right,” her father called from the center of the room. He hadn’t bothered to chase after them. He knew that they had nowhere to go.
“ ‘Keep fire and iron flowing through your blood,’ ” Jasper said quietly. “ ‘Speak to danger in its language, or offer it your own. Understand yourself as dangerous.’ ”
“That’s from Dialogues of the Skill,” said Rosa.
“Yes.”
“You’re quoting my patron librarian at me.”
“Yes. Is it working?”
“Maybe.”
“Good. Come on. Let’s get somewhere out of reach.” He took her hand and ran for the far corner of the cafeteria. Thick gym ropes dangled there.
Rosa looked up. “This is the worst possible escape plan. Those ropes don’t go anywhere except the ceiling.”
“Your dad is on the floor,” Jasper said. “I’d rather be on the ceiling. All we have to do is stall.”
“Help isn’t coming,” she said.
“ ‘Make time by moving!’ ” he told her.
Ferdinand Díaz continued the quote. “ ‘The quick create time itself by their motion.’ ”
Rosa and Jasper each grabbed a rope. Empty space opened up below them as they climbed.
“I loathe heights,” she confessed.
“You’re kidding,” he said.
“Nope.”
“But we climbed several dozen trees over the summer.”
“I know,” Rosa said. “It was terrifying. But I needed to prove that I could do it anyway.”
“Of course you did,” said Jasper. “Don’t look down.”
She looked down. The floor was already very far away. Her father stood on it, directly below. He looked worried about her.
“Are you sure that you remember how to climb?” he asked, his voice full of concern.
Rosa was no longer sure. Her hands slipped.
She fell.
29
ROSA’S FATHER DROPPED HIS CANE and caught her. The impact drove him down to one knee, but he made sure that Rosa didn’t hit the floor.
“I’ve got you,” he said gently.
She felt safe. Then she didn’t. All feelings of safety died. He got her. He caught her. She was caught.
A patron medallion hung from a chain around his neck, right beside her face. It showed a man wearing a toga and standing in front of a very big wall. The inscription read, LUCIUS DOMITIUS AURELIANUS AUGUSTUS.
“Emperor Aurelian,” she said.
“Yes,” Dad said, clearly pleased.
“He burned down the Library of Alexandria.”
Dad shook his head. “He helped the world free itself from the nightmares of our history. Think of it.” He reached into his pocket and produced a clear vial of liquid. “Although I also need you to stop thinking about it, because I’m going to expel myself from your memory. It breaks my heart to do this. You will be happier afterward, however.”
Jasper shouted something from the ceiling, but Rosa couldn’t make out what he said.
“Stay where you are,” Dad answered him. “I’d rather not kill you. I would also prefer not to permanently strip away every single memory that you have, excepting the memory of how to breathe. I only mean to confiscate a necessary few from you both.”
Jasper started to climb down anyway. Rosa stopped him with a look. Don’t. Don’t die. Don’t you dare. I’ll make sure that your memorial inscription says ridiculous things about you if you die.
Her father opened the vial.
“What is that?” she asked him.
“Distilled amnesia,” he said. “My own special recipe. You won’t remember that I was ever here, that we ever spoke, or th
at I ever uttered these words. And your voice will be gone. I do promise to keep it safe, and to give it back as soon as I find what I’m looking for. I’ll return all of the confiscated voices, and allow the school to reopen, just as soon as I have what I need. Then you’ll be able to live your life and light small candles in vague remembrance of your dear, departed dad.”
Rosa saw swirls and eddies of chalk dust in the air around them. Her father did not notice.
“Remember me fondly,” he said. “Forget that I’m still alive. Forget that I’m close, so very close to learning how to banish the dead permanently. We’ll be able to expel them from living memory. We’ll make walled cities safe from every painful echo of our past, just as Aurelian restored Rome with the walls that he built.”
The medallion caught the light with a coppery glint.
Rosa grabbed it and pulled. The chain broke.
“Now,” she said to the ghosts who surrounded them. “You can touch him now.”
Hands made of chalk dust pulled at her father’s hair. He opened his mouth wide in surprise.
Rosa plucked the vial of distilled amnesia from his hand and poured it down his throat.
“Goodbye, Dad,” she whispered. “I’m sorry that you won’t remember this moment. But I always will.”
* * *
After that, several things happened at once.
Jasper slid down the gym rope so fast he burned his hands from the friction.
Athena Díaz knocked the door down. She wore heavy boots and a bathrobe. Her hair was wet and dusted with snow. In her right hand she held an Elizabethan broadsword, and in her left she carried a lantern with Tim blazing bright inside.
Chalk dust spun in a delighted whirlwind around Rosa’s father, who sat down bewildered and stared at the floor.
Rosa’s mother charged at him. “Get away from her!” she roared, broadsword held high.
“Shush,” Rosa said to everyone, and then everyone was still—though Mom still looked like a river spirit intent on drowning absolutely everyone except for her own child.
“What happened?” she asked. “What did he do? Why is he breathing?”
“He’s alive,” Rosa told her. “And he’s free of his own history now, so he got what he wanted. Sort of. Why are you in a bathrobe?”
“I was taking a shower,” Mom said. “Your friend almost put himself out trying to get my attention.” She held up the lantern. Tim waved. Rosa waved back. “That was alarming for everyone involved. Risky thing, setting a ghost made of fire running loose in a library. He left burn marks on the laundry scattered all over your bedroom floor.”
“Oops,” Jasper said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Her voice was light, but her gaze was heavy. She watched Ferdinand Díaz and did not look away. “Please don’t be.”
Ghosts made chalky shapes and then scattered again. Hands tugged at Rosa and Jasper, beckoning.
Mom noticed. “You’ve got work to do.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone with him,” Rosa told her.
“Go. I’ll mind your father.” She loomed over him and peered at his face in the flickering Tim-light. “Don’t worry about us. This is the same blade that I used to outmatch him the last time he tried to pick a fight. But I don’t think he’s going to pick any fights now.”
Rosa didn’t think so either. Her father seemed peaceful, content, and barely there. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“We’ll give him to the archivists,” Mom said, and that was all that she would say about it. “Now get to work, both of you. This place is itching with unfinished business. You’re the specialists here. Finish it.”
“Okay.” Rosa kissed the top of her mother’s head, which tasted like shampoo.
Jasper opened the briefcase that Rosa’s dad had left beside the door. Rows of tiny glass vials rested inside. Each one contained a smoky liquid and was labeled with a name. “Tracey, Mike, Chetna, River, Genevieve, Lex . . . these are voices, all of the stolen voices. Including the ones he took today. We can give them all back!”
Students made out of chalk took shape around the briefcase.
“I think someone else needs to borrow them first,” Rosa said.
* * *
They took the voices to the haunted water fountain. Rosa used an old coin to scratch the Lethean inscriptions off of all the plumbing. Jasper turned the knob inside to restore the flow of water.
Chalky figures watched them work.
Rosa felt relieved to be working.
“You okay there, librarian?” Jasper asked her.
“Don’t ask,” she said. “If we just keep busy then I won’t have to find out.”
She put the access panel back into place. He tore away the OUT OF ORDER sign. Both of them turned to address the surrounding ghosts.
“You may borrow these voices,” Rosa said. “But tomorrow you have to return them. Agreed?”
Each ghostly student raised a hand.
“Good.”
Rosa and Jasper emptied the vials into the fountain, one at a time.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Jasper whispered. He held the one marked TRACEY, which he really didn’t want to pour down the drain.
“I’m never completely sure of anything,” Rosa admitted. “But I think so. Maybe? Probably.”
“Sometimes I wish you’d pretend to be sure,” Jasper said. He poured out Tracey’s voice. “Okay. That’s all of them.”
The ghosts lined up in front of the fountain. They took turns, and took sips. The water made it difficult to hold their chalky shapes together.
“They need more raw material,” Rosa said. She went into the classroom and clapped erasers. Clouds of chalk dust that used to be written words billowed across the room. Chalky students took shape behind every desk.
One boy stood apart from the others. When he spoke he sounded just like Principal Ahmed. “They need you to know their names. No one else remembers their names.”
“Tell us,” said Rosa.
The students tried to speak all at once, but it came out in a jumbled chorus of whispers.
“Write them,” Jasper suggested.
One ghost stood up from her desk, walked to the chalkboard, and wrote her name in cursive script with the tip of one finger. The rest followed. They took turns. Some spit dust at the board in the shapes of their names. Others smacked the slate until it took on their names. Some passed right through the chalkboard and returned, leaving their names behind them.
Rosa wrote every one on the back of a history quiz.
“We’ll take attendance from now on,” she promised. “Every morning a living teacher will name you, here in this room. We won’t forget.”
“Thank you,” said the boy who stood apart.
“What’s your name?” Jasper asked him, though he had suspicions already.
“Franz Talcott,” he said. “The first mayor of Ingot. I already wrote it. I tried to tell you who I was.”
“You seem younger now than you were when you died.” Jasper said.
“Yes. At this age I believe that I was at my best.”
“Probably true,” Rosa said. “As a grown-up you poisoned every other ghost in this room.”
“Yes,” he said simply. “It was an accident.”
“And after that you banished them all.”
“Then I died,” Franz Talcott said. “The boss banished me along with all the rest.”
“Now they protect you,” said Rosa. “They made the circle around the Lump to keep prying Letheans like my father away from you.”
“They did,” said the ghost. “They sing old circle games to make a ring of safety around my haunted place. Ashes, ashes, a ring around the roses.”
“I would have been less forgiving,” Rosa said.
Jasper cleared his throat in a very obvious attempt to say Stop that. We’re supposed to settle old grudges, not rile them up.
Fine, she said in the way that she crossed her arms.
“Wh
at do you need?” Rosa asked out loud. “What sort of memorial does the first mayor of Ingot require?”
“None,” he told her. “I have the tree, and the hill, and the well that I made. Nothing else should be remembered as mine.”
“Agreed,” Rosa said, but then her voice softened. “My dad can’t find you there. Not now. He can’t seek out your secrets or use them to hurt anyone else. Thanks. To all of you. I’d be voiceless right now without your help.”
Franz Talcott nodded once before he faded away.
The other chalky figures collapsed at their desks.
Outside, in the playground, the circle that surrounded the Lump broke apart. Fallen ice and frozen leaves took on the shapes of children. They held hands to make a ring and processed in a slow circle, singing to themselves.
The song ended.
They all fell down.
* * *
School opened again on the following day.
Everyone squeezed into the hallway outside the history classroom. All of the silenced students and teachers lined up at the water fountain. Tracey, Mike, Chetna, River, Genevieve, Lex, and Principal Ahmed had been bereft of their voices for weeks, so the seven of them stood at the front of the line.
“Just drink,” Rosa told them. “That’s all you have to do.”
“The ghosts of this place didn’t take your voices away,” Jasper added, “but they did help us find them. Now they’re going to give them back.”
Maybe, Rosa thought, but managed not to say.
Gladys-Marie stood right nearby and watched her twin with a fierce, fragile hope that was painful to see. Rosa looked away. She locked eyes with Bobbie Talcott, who wore a new, loose scarf to cover dark bruises. But this scarf did not twitch, make itself into fingers, or make new bruises over the old. Those potted tulips were working so far. Nell was hard at work making a memorial plaque, which should be done by the end of the day. Gran would get her due, and nothing else.
Bobbie nodded to Rosa. Rosa nodded back. She didn’t know if that exchange of nods meant that they were friends now, or enemies bound by new and mutual respect. She felt good about it either way.
The principal was brave enough to take the first sip from the haunted fountain.
A Festival of Ghosts Page 14