Weave a Circle Round

by Kari Maaren

  “Oh, hello,” said Cuerva Lachance dreamily when she emerged. “There’s a pipe organ in my house.”

  “That’s nice,” said Freddy. “You’d better answer the door.”

  Cuerva Lachance floated down the stairs; everybody else crept after her. Freddy and Josiah stood in the shadows near the door to the living room as Cuerva Lachance and Josiah 2 had their conversation with Freddy’s family. Freddy felt oddly left out. She knew there still wasn’t a place for her back home, but she kept wanting to join the discussion.

  “Stop fidgeting,” said Josiah. “You know they don’t notice us.”

  “That’s not why I’m fidgeting,” said Freddy, who remembered that Mel had, in fact, heard voices inside the house. It wasn’t something Josiah needed to know.

  This time, the conversation between Cuerva Lachance and Josiah 2 after the family had gone was completely audible. “I hope you’re happy,” said Josiah 2, his hands on his hips. “You’ve turned the entire household against us, which will make it so very much easier for us to do our jobs.”

  “But Josie,” said Cuerva Lachance, “there’s a pipe organ in my house.”

  “Shut up,” said Josiah 2. “It’s just like you to intimidate their parents. You know we have to find out which of them is Three. How are we supposed to do that if we alienate the whole family?”

  “It’s unusual that we can’t figure out which one it is,” said Cuerva Lachance. “I don’t suppose you have any thoughts? They’re all possibilities, but at the same time, they don’t really fit. It’s very exciting.”

  “You are the most infuriating person in the history of infuriating people,” said Josiah 2. “Playing a pipe organ in the wee hours! Not understanding why this is a bad thing! You complete moron.”

  “We’ll find out about Three eventually,” she replied. “We know only that it’s not going to happen before you go wandering. So that’s after September twenty-seventh, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” said Josiah 2, “but there’s no guarantee. Why did you have to play the stupid organ? We need to wrap this up quickly after the twenty-seventh.”

  “It was pretty and made interesting sounds.”

  “You make my brain melt.”

  “That’s what I’m here for. Have you two finished eavesdropping?”

  “We’re standing six feet away from you, in plain sight,” said Josiah, but Freddy felt a chill run through her as she thought of Freddy 2 and Mel crouching behind the rhododendron. Did Cuerva Lachance know? She sometimes did just know things, and she noticed a lot more than she let on.

  “Even so,” said Cuerva Lachance. “Well, I think I’ll go to bed. Don’t stay up too late complaining about me.” She shut the back door and meandered off towards the stairs.

  The Josiahs looked at each other. Freddy was pretty sure they were going to spend most of the night complaining about Cuerva Lachance. Since neither of them ever slept, it was possible they did this every night. I don’t belong here, she thought. She knew the thought was futile. At the moment, she didn’t belong anywhere else, either.

  17

  Just over a week later, on Monday, Freddy got lost in the house on Grosvenor Street again. It was different this time.

  The intervening week had not been a fantastic one. Freddy was feeling increasingly hemmed in. She hadn’t been back to her own house since that first time; it had been too much like trying to stuff herself into a closed slot. She just needed to wait for the slot to open up again. In the meantime, she had little to do except deal with the weirdness of living with Cuerva Lachance and Josiah. She couldn’t really go outside much in case someone saw her. Even standing at a window was a risk. She had been confined occasionally during the time travel—the Sumerian temple being a case in point—but never like this. This was the first time in her life she had truly understood the meaning of the word “cabin fever.” It had not been a good idea for her to watch The Shining on Josiah’s laptop last week.

  Luckily, or unluckily, the house itself helped by morphing constantly. It was different every day. Since she’d also lived through these weeks as a largely oblivious next-door neighbour, she knew that the changes didn’t show on the outside. The house reminded her of the TARDIS from Doctor Who; it was bigger on the inside. Freddy had long since grown used to ignoring the rules of physics where Cuerva Lachance was concerned, so this didn’t bother her. What did bother her was that she would so frequently have to deal with the implications.

  The day all the living room furniture ended up on the ceiling wasn’t so bad. The fictional characters were a little more problematic. As she’d noticed during the time travel, people who clearly weren’t real tended to spring into existence around Cuerva Lachance, though they rarely lasted for long. Many of them were out of books. A white rabbit carrying a pocket watch had woken Freddy up one morning by bemoaning his tardiness, and just yesterday, four children had turned up looking for a magic lion. Freddy had learned to deal with these figments as kindly and firmly as possible. They were obviously not really here, and they sometimes faded and dissolved into colours as she watched. Some of them were capable of interacting with her, but some just acted out the same scenes endlessly, blind to the presence of anyone else.

  She asked Josiah about them. It was one of their most awkward conversations. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said coldly.

  “The fictional people,” said Freddy. “I noticed a few when we were time travelling, but they’re everywhere here.”

  “I keep telling you that living in a house with Cuerva Lachance isn’t the same thing as running into her in third-century Rome,” said Josiah. “But I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “White rabbit?” said Freddy. “Oliver Twist? Big hairy wild man who goes around calling himself Merlin? They keep turning up and wanting to talk to me.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “They absolutely don’t.”

  “And there was the supervillain in the asteroid belt.”

  “I don’t remember any supervillain.”

  “You remember everything,” said Freddy, “except when you’re avoiding an issue.”

  “So maybe I’m avoiding an issue,” said Josiah, “though I couldn’t say, since I don’t know what it is.”

  She knew he knew about the figments. It was impossible to live in this house and not know about the figments. He just didn’t want to talk about them.

  Cuerva Lachance was more matter-of-fact when Freddy asked her about the figments, but because she was Cuerva Lachance, the conversation wasn’t any more satisfying than the one with Josiah had been. “Oh, yes, they’re there,” she said. “I need to paint something blue tomorrow, I think.”

  “But why are they there?” said Freddy.

  Cuerva Lachance peered out from under her hat. “Why are who where?”

  “The figments,” said Freddy patiently. Discussions with Cuerva Lachance often went like this.

  “I don’t know,” said Cuerva Lachance. “Did you ask them?”

  “I don’t think they’re real enough to answer questions like that.”

  “Who aren’t?”

  “The figments.”

  “What figments?”

  Freddy lay awake that night wondering if Cuerva Lachance had genuinely been having short-term-memory difficulties or had instead been indulging in obfuscating stupidity. It could easily have been either.

  But even the figments were relatively ordinary next to what kept happening to the geography of the house.

  It was never the same … not in a quirky wizard-school oh-look-the-corridors-have-shifted-again-ha-ha sort of way but in a bowel-twisting, anxiety-producing roller coaster of terror that often made Freddy want to lock herself in her room until September twenty-seventh. Unfortunately, her room was not immune. One day, she woke up and discovered that most of her floor had turned into quicksand. She only escaped because her futon was close to the window, and she was able to climb onto the
sill and from there out onto the gable below. The third floor was forever morphing into something unexpected. More than once, she heard the sounds of a carnival coming from it. The carnival always ended with terrified screams and crunching noises. She could only hope whatever was happening up there wasn’t real.

  Josiah said it was all to be expected. “I try to stop her,” he said wearily as they climbed the enormous tree in the basement rec room to escape the river of snakes. “Honestly, half the time, she doesn’t mean to do it. Things just become less possible wherever she goes.”

  “Where’s the top of this tree?” asked Freddy. It seemed to go right through the ceiling.

  “Lord knows,” said Josiah.

  “I’m surprised it isn’t a beanstalk,” said Freddy.

  The sound of the organ briefly transformed the second floor into the Paris Opera House. The spider plants moved when no one was watching them. Freddy would look away for a moment and glance back to see their tendrils arranged in subtly different patterns. The chairs in the living room shifted form and appearance, and sometimes Freddy would walk into a room and find that the walls had gone. The house was everywhere and nowhere all at once.

  * * *

  Today, Freddy made sure she had her water bottle and boots before she set out for the kitchen. Finding the main floor of the house was not always easy.

  But she rarely got this lost. On her second full day in the house, she had ended up wandering through a series of identical corridors. This trip started out similarly but soon changed. The corridor she was in began to plunge downward. She paused and looked behind her, planning to retrace her steps. The corridor behind her was now also plunging downward.

  She went downward. The corridor darkened and changed; the bright ceiling lights gradually gave way to flickering torches set into rough stone alcoves. Hoping desperately that she hadn’t accidentally gone back in time again, Freddy walked on. When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw darkness. The lights had been going out behind her.

  It was cold and dank and lonely. Her feet echoed on the damp stone and occasionally splashed in a puddle. The corridor branched, and branched again.

  There was something making sounds behind her. She stopped to listen. The noises were heavy, slithering, dragging ones. She couldn’t tell whether they were moving towards her or away.

  Freddy quickened her steps, darting through the corridors, which grew darker and darker as the lights winked out behind her. She could hear the slithering noises even through her own footsteps and rapid panting breathing. Whatever it was was tracking her. When she moved faster, it moved faster. Soon she would tire, and it would catch up.

  And it was all just stupid.

  Freddy stopped in place.

  She didn’t want to be doing this. I’m a twenty-first-century Canadian. I live in Metro Vancouver. I go to school and worry about math and English and the fact that my stepbrother hates me. There’s no reason for me to be lost in a medieval dungeon right now. Freddy picked up one of the torches. Her hands were trembling; she willed them to stop. If they’re going to force me to do this, I’ll do it my way. I won’t be herded any more.

  The slithering noises were very close now. She turned around and plunged back into the blackness.

  She was in a square white room. Ban was standing in a corner, looking at her. “Well done,” she said.

  Freddy threw down the torch. She wasn’t sure she had ever been quite this angry. It was real anger that made her little smouldering tantrums at Roland feel like nothing more than petulance. “Were you testing me?”

  “I? No,” said Ban. “Were you testing you?”

  “I did not trap myself in a dungeon with a monster!” snarled Freddy, shaking.

  Ban shrugged. “If you say so. At any rate, I liked the way you handled it. Realistically, of course, your decision was suicidal,” she said thoughtfully, “but metaphorically, it worked very well.”

  Freddy stood there with her mouth open and somehow avoided screaming.

  “You interest me.” Ban tapped her fingernails against her teeth. “You aren’t as insignificant as you seem.”

  “Thanks so much,” said Freddy when her voice came back.

  Ban held out a hand to her. “Come on. There’s something happening now that you should see.”

  Freddy didn’t want to take Ban’s hand. She didn’t trust Ban. Trusting any version of Cuerva Lachance was roughly equivalent to trusting a suspension bridge in a windstorm. On the other hand, this room had no doors or windows, so if she didn’t go with Ban, she could be here forever. Freddy sighed and extended her own hand. Ban grinned.

  They were in the living room. So were Roland and one of the Josiahs; it was hard to tell which when they weren’t together in a room. Freddy stared. It was well before it was time for school to start, but she still had no idea why Roland would be here.

  “They can’t see us,” said Ban. “Just watch.”

  At almost the same time, Roland said, “I don’t care how late you’ll be. I need you to listen—”

  You want me to stay away from your sisters, signed Josiah. It’s none of your business.

  Freddy looked away, instinctually. But … well, that wasn’t true, was it? She always told herself she was looking away from the signing, but she never really was. She’d learned far more ASL than she’d ever admitted, even to herself. She’d even noticed the way Roland and his friends used different facial expressions while they were signing. And she’d practised in front of the mirror once or twice when she knew nobody was looking. She was good at languages; this one she’d just picked up by accident. Maybe some of it had been on purpose. Maybe she’d looked in Mel’s ASL book a few times. Maybe it had been more than a few times.

  “You can’t sign,” said Roland.

  Josiah shook his head. I can.

  “There’s no reason you should,” said Roland. “Nothing about you makes sense.”

  Is that really the problem? signed Josiah. Can’t the girls look after themselves?

  “No.” Roland turned abruptly away from Josiah. “They think they can, but they don’t know what they’re getting into. You’re not … right. I don’t know exactly how yet, but there’s something wrong with you.”

  Josiah moved around into Roland’s line of sight again and signed something Freddy didn’t understand. There were signs in there she didn’t know. She thought he was asking a question.

  “Because I know,” said Roland sharply. “It isn’t as if you hide it. Not from me, anyway. Stop signing.”

  I like signing, signed Josiah.

  “No, stop signing now,” said Roland, looming over Josiah. “You have no right to … to take … you don’t even know…”

  He raised his hands to his forehead and, again, turned away.

  Freddy glanced at Ban, but she was staring raptly at Roland and didn’t seem to notice. Freddy wasn’t sure what to think. She’d known Roland didn’t like Josiah, and she’d known the two of them had to have had a confrontation while Freddy wasn’t around, but this was just confusing. As far as anyone had ever told her, all Roland had seen so far was Josiah’s sudden ponytail and his argument with an invisible person in the courtyard. If Mel had witnessed these things, she would have made notes in her little notebook and constructed some sort of mystery out of it all. If Freddy—the old Freddy—had witnessed them, she would have convinced herself they had never happened. There didn’t seem to be any reason for Roland to be so hostile.

  Josiah waited until Roland looked back at him. Then he signed, You need to calm down.

  “How am I supposed to do that?” Roland demanded. “I have this … feeling about you, and I can’t even tell anyone why because I don’t know why! I just know I need to keep you away from Freddy and Mel. They don’t understand.”

  Do you? signed Josiah.

  “No,” said Roland, “but I can tell you’re not right. They just think you’re exciting and new. Mel’s always making everything into a mystery. She’s trying to solve you
. Freddy’s lonely. She … wants a friend.”

  Freddy blinked. She hadn’t known he’d seen that. She hadn’t known he’d noticed anything about her at all.

  Is that so bad? signed Josiah. You aren’t friends with her.

  “She’s so difficult,” snarled Roland. “How can I be friends with her? She wants to be the most boring person in the world.”

  Josiah shrugged.

  “You’re not-boring in the wrong way. You keep away from her,” said Roland.

  Make friends with her and keep me away yourself, signed Josiah.

  “I…” After what seemed to be a long struggle, Roland finished the sentence: “… don’t know how.”

  Freddy looked at Ban again. This time, Ban returned her gaze. “He seems nice,” she remarked. Freddy shook her head, but it wasn’t really a denial. This stiff, tormented version of Roland did seem nice. She thought maybe he didn’t know how to be nice in an ordinary way.

  “You know,” said Josiah aloud, “I’m very pleased you’re working through your issues and coming to realisations about yourself, but do you have to do it here? You seem to be blaming me for your own emotional hang-ups because I’m new. ‘I feel there’s something wrong about you, but I have no idea what’ is not the best possible reason for this little confrontation. Perhaps you should find out what your own problem is before you dump everything on me.”

  Roland stared at him, and Josiah stared back. Cuerva Lachance walked through the wall.

  She did have a habit of treating physical objects as if they weren’t there. Freddy had grown used to it, but Roland hadn’t. He staggered back three steps. “Oh dear,” said Cuerva Lachance. “This is completely accidental in every way.”

  “Cuerva Lachance,” said Josiah. “For crying out loud.”

  The blood had drained from Roland’s face. “You…”

  “It’s okay. You didn’t really see that,” said Josiah wearily. “You fell asleep briefly and dreamed it. There was an atmospheric disturbance. We discovered a secret passageway built into that wall. Are any of these working?”

  “I knew you were wrong,” said Roland. “You keep away from us!”