Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire

by John August

  “You didn’t hit your head? Nothing feels cut or broken?”

  “I think I’m fine.” He looked around as best he could, only then realizing their predicament: how were they going to get out? His door was pinned to the ground, and the driver’s-side door was now the ceiling.

  His mom unrolled her window. She tried to crane her head up to look through it, but it was impossible from this angle.

  “Honk the horn,” he suggested.

  “There aren’t a lot of people on this road. I think we’re going to have to get out by ourselves.”

  “Try. Please?”

  His mom forced a smile. Arlo could see she was about to cry, but she held it in. “Okay. We’ll try.” She pressed her hand on the horn. The blare was muffled by all the snow around the hood, but Arlo was sure someone would hear it.

  “Three in a row, with space between them. It’s the universal distress call.” He could remember the pictures on the page of the Field Book where he had read about signaling. Three lights, three whistles, three anything was the sign you needed help.

  She followed his instructions, pressing the horn in three solid blasts. Arlo could imagine the sound traveling through the valley to the sheriff’s station down in Pine Mountain. His mom repeated the pattern.

  Suddenly, the car was moving again, sliding further down the mountainside. Arlo screamed. It was just a few inches, but it was terrifying.

  They were done waiting for help. “Do you think you can climb up?” she asked. Arlo nodded. “Okay, you’re going to have to go first.” Anticipating his question: “If I take off my seat belt, I’m going to fall on you. You need to go first. You can do it. I can help you.”

  Loyal, brave, kind and true … Arlo heard the Vow in his head. He needed to be brave.

  Reaching up, he found the release button for his seat belt. It was hard to press it from this angle, but by using both thumbs he got it to click. The belt retracted normally. He was free.

  He twisted around, trying to find a way to climb up. “Don’t stand on the window,” his mom said. “Stay on the frame part.” That was easy enough to do. The hard part was figuring out the first foothold. “You see where the seat connects there?” She pointed to a steel slider. “Maybe use that. And you can hold on to the shifter.”

  Arlo carefully put his weight on the door, nervous that any large movement would send the car sliding again.

  “You’re good,” she said. “Now just climb right over me.” She reached down to snag the belt loop of his jeans, helping to hoist him up. He grabbed on to the steering wheel. It twisted as he pulled. Something creaked—the car’s wheels were turning. “Don’t worry about it. Keep going.” He wedged a foot on the center console and took hold of the window frame. As he pulled himself up, he felt his mom pushing his butt.

  Arlo’s head poked out the window. He looked around like a prairie dog peeking out of its hole.

  They weren’t that far off the road—it was no more than three feet above him. Arlo could see the slash in the snow where the car had gone over the edge.

  “Can you get out?”

  “I think so.” He braced his right foot on the steering wheel, squeezing up through the window. He got his left knee up on the frame. The driver’s-side door was clear of snow, so it was easy enough to move across it, inching closer to the road. The metal crinkled in places. He worried he was making dents.

  His mom couldn’t see him from this angle. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. I’m going to jump.”

  “Is it safe?”

  Arlo wanted to sound confident. “It’s easy.” It wasn’t. Before he could psych himself out, he did a quick three-count and leaped for the road.

  He didn’t make it.

  He landed facedown in two feet of fine powder. It went up his nose and stuck in his eyelashes. He could feel it melting on the back of his neck.

  But he was okay. And he was close. He crawled forward a few feet until he was firmly on the road. He stood up on the packed snow and brushed himself off. His face was flush. His heart was racing.

  “Arlo?!” His mom sounded so far away.

  “I’m fine! You can climb up now!” From where he was standing, it was hard to see the station wagon. Another car driving by might never have spotted them. They could have been there until spring when the snow melted.

  “Okay! I’m coming.”

  All Arlo could do was wait. He heard various noises from the car, what he presumed was his mom getting out of her seat belt and repositioning herself. Then he saw his backpack fly out of the window, landing on the door of the station wagon. His mom popped up after it. He had never been so happy to see her.

  “Take your bag.” She tossed it to him, then continued to climb out, sitting on the door frame. She paused, catching her breath. Her legs were still dangling in the car, like she was sitting on the edge of a swimming pool.

  “Mom?” She looked back at him. “What happened?”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes the roads are just slick. And these tires aren’t great. This isn’t a great car, to be honest. I’m amazed it’s lasted as long as it has.”

  “Can we fix it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how we’ll afford it. But we’ll figure it out.”

  “The important thing is we’re okay,” said Arlo.

  “Exactly.” She brushed at the corners of her eyes. Suddenly, a new thought—she patted down her parka, finding her phone. “Here, catch.” She tossed him the phone. He caught it, pressing it to his chest.

  “Who do you want me to call?”

  “No one. Take a picture.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ll want to remember this,” she said. “Plus, without the photo, who’s going to believe it?”

  Arlo pulled off his gloves. Unlocking her phone, he switched it to camera. He framed the shot, waiting for his mom to fix her hair. “Okay, ready.” She smiled broadly, looking directly at him.

  He took the photo.

  His mom was right. It helped him remember the moment, and what happened next.

  16

  THE ROAD

  ARLO’S MOM WAS FINISHING HER PHONE CALL. “Exactly. About halfway between Wirt Road and Main Street. Okay. Mitch, thank you so much.” She hung up. “The tow truck will be here in half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes.”

  Arlo peered over the edge at the station wagon. It looked like a discarded toy. “How will they even get it out?”

  “I don’t know. But they’ll have a way. Cars go off the road all the time here.” She checked her watch. “Do you think you can walk the rest of the way to school? It’s only about a mile. Straight ahead, then left on Main. You know the way.”

  He nodded. He knew the way, but he wasn’t sure it was a good idea. A lot could happen in a mile.

  “You have a test in math, right? You don’t want to miss that.”

  In fact, he would have been happy to miss the test, but that wasn’t why he was stalling. He didn’t want to leave his mom alone here. What if the tow truck never showed up? What if her phone battery died? What if a bear came out of the woods? She hadn’t read the Field Book. She wouldn’t know how to tell a black bear from a grizzly, whether to back away slowly or shout and make noise. If Arlo left, she was as good as—

  “Go. You’ll be fine. I used to walk to school.”

  “In the winter?”

  “No. But I already got you halfway there. It evens out.” She pulled him in for a tight hug and kissed the top of his hat. “Go. I love you.”

  “Love you.” Arlo put on his backpack.

  “And hey, if anyone doubts you, remember,” she said, holding up her phone. “We have photographic evidence.”

  Arlo forced a smile.

  * * *

  The road was quiet. All he could hear was the squeaky crunch of his boots.

  At least one car had been down this road today. Arlo walked between the tire tracks, noticing the diamond patterns in the tread. Here and there, a clump of dirty sno
w would obscure the design. He decided these were likely accumulated blobs that stuck to the wheel well and fell off when they got too big.

  He had only been walking a few minutes when it began to snow. The flakes were fine and crystalline, almost like sand. They didn’t stick to his gloves or parka, but they wiggled in beneath his collar. He put up his hood for protection.

  Crunch crunch, crunch crunch. He kept walking.

  Main Street had to be close, maybe just around the next bend.

  But it was strange: he didn’t seem to be getting any closer to the curve. He was walking towards it, but it seemed to be receding at the same pace, as if the road were somehow stretching in the middle.

  Arlo stopped. The bend in the road was exactly where it should be. This was puzzling.

  Then he heard a whispering voice, so faint it might have been the wind. It seemed to be calling out to him: “Too-ble!”

  He scanned the forest, looking for the source. He spotted crows in the trees. They appeared to be watching him. Could he have mistaken their caws?

  “Too-ble!” It was an old woman’s voice, low and raspy. It seemed to emanate from the dark woods on his left.

  Arlo started walking again. Almost imperceptibly, the bend moved away from him.

  “Tooble!” Louder. Closer. He could hear a smile in the woman’s voice.

  He started jogging, then running, his backpack swinging from side to side. He was definitely moving forward. It wasn’t like he was on a treadmill—he was passing trees to his right and left. But the bend was always just as far ahead, no matter how much he ran.

  He stopped. His lungs were aching. He could feel his pulse in his ears.

  That’s when he noticed something else strange. He had been so focused on what was ahead of him that he’d missed what was right at his feet: the tire tracks had disappeared.

  On a road with nowhere to turn, where had they gone?

  Arlo turned to look back. That’s when he saw her.

  A girl about his age was standing in the road, twenty feet away, her back to him. Her hair was done up in complicated braids with tiny flowers and sparkling gems. She wore a dress with intricate red-and-gold patterns, but no shoes. She was barefoot in the snow.

  Arlo couldn’t see her face, but he was pretty sure he knew who she was. “Hello?”

  Her head cocked to the side, as if she was confused where the sound was coming from.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer, but her left hand went up beside her, feeling the air. She had rings on her fingers, with golden jewels.

  Arlo took a few steps towards her. She didn’t react. She didn’t seem to hear his footsteps. He ultimately ended up right behind her, close enough that he could have touched her.

  Her hand went down. Finally, she spoke. “Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Arlo Finch.” Her voice seemed to be coming from all directions. But it was definitely a girl’s voice, not the raspy whisper from the forest.

  Arlo started to circle her, but no matter which way he moved, her back was always to him. It was like an optical illusion, except he was in the middle of it. He stopped, a little dizzy.

  “Are you Katie Cunningham?”

  The question seemed to annoy her. “That hasn’t been my name for a long time.”

  “What’s your name now?”

  “Rielle.” Faint music played as she spoke it, as if her name wasn’t made of letters but of notes, plucked on strings and played on tiny bells.

  “I know your cousin, Connor. We’re in Rangers together. He’s my patrol leader.” She didn’t answer. “Do you remember him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you kidnapped?”

  Another pause. She shook her head. “No. I didn’t belong in your world. My place is in the Realm.”

  “What’s the Realm?”

  “The eldritch lands. The other side of the Long Woods.”

  Arlo was confused. He thought the Long Woods was the other world. Was she saying that there was a third place? And if that was called the Realm … “Then what are the Long Woods?”

  “Where the two lands meet.” The way she moved her arms, Arlo suspected she was trying to show the intersection with her hands.

  “Is that where we are now? The Long Woods?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s different.”

  “I’m on a road in the forest. In Pine Mountain. It’s snowing here.” It seemed odd to have to tell her that, considering she was standing barefoot in the snow.

  “It’s autumn here,” she said. “It’s always autumn.”

  Arlo tried to picture what she meant. People said it was always summer in Phoenix or Mexico because it was warm and never snowed. But how could it always be autumn? Once trees lose their leaves, they don’t grow them again until spring.

  She continued: “I was walking in the garden, and the path kept shifting. Then I heard a voice. An old woman.”

  “I heard it, too!”

  “She’s dangerous. You have to stay away from her.”

  “Why? What does she want?”

  “She wants you.”

  Suddenly, Arlo felt dizzy again, the world swirling around him. Rielle was walking and he was caught in her wake. He rushed to catch up with her, but each footstep was heavy. “Wait! Why does she want me?”

  She stopped. As she turned, she was suddenly behind him. She held his arm tightly as she whispered into his ear: “Because you don’t belong in this world either.”

  As he turned to face her, she was gone.

  Arlo Finch was standing alone on the road, the real road, between two tire tracks in the snow. The only footprints were his own.

  17

  9:45 A.M.

  ARLO DECIDED TO TELL WU AND INDRA EVERYTHING.

  During morning recess, the trio huddled beside the snowy monkey bars. Indra listened carefully, mentally taking notes, while Wu paced and broke off icicles. He was paying attention but couldn’t focus unless he was doing something with his hands.

  Arlo started by recounting his first brief conversation with the girl’s reflection in the window, and her vague warning that he was in danger.

  Indra stopped him. “You think the wisps were after you, not Connor.”

  “I guess. But Connor is definitely part of it, too. I’m pretty sure the girl is Connor’s cousin, the one who disappeared when they were little.” Wu let out a soft “whoa,” his mind blown. Arlo explained how he had looked up photos of young Katie Cunningham on his sister’s phone. While he couldn’t be certain it was the same girl he had seen in the reflection, she had his same mismatched eyes.

  Indra stopped him again, as if only she could put the pieces together. “So little Connor and little Katie disappear. They end up in the Long Woods. Connor makes it out somehow, but Katie stays behind. And she’s been there the whole time.”

  Wu held up an icicle like a sword. “We have to rescue her.”

  “No,” said Arlo. “She’s not in the Long Woods. She’s in the Realm.”

  “What’s the Realm?”

  “I’m going to tell you, but you keep interrupting.”

  Indra huffed. “Fine. Explain faster.”

  Arlo talked through the events of that morning, starting with the car accident. The details of the crash were so vivid and exciting that he wanted to spend more time on them—he could have died, after all—but those ultimately weren’t as important as what had happened on the road. He described the crystalline snow, the voice in the woods, the disappearing tire tracks and how he could never quite reach the bend in the distance.

  “That’s how it happens,” said Indra, interrupting again. “I’ve read stories about it, people who accidentally cross into the Long Woods…”

  “He said she wasn’t in the Long Woods,” said Wu.

  Arlo tried to clarify. “Wherever we were, she got there by accident, too. She lives in the Realm.”

  “You still haven’t explained what tha
t is.”

  “Because you keep interrupting me.”

  “You need to stop letting me interrupt you!” Indra crossed her arms, annoyed.

  Arlo continued, describing the dizziness he felt when he tried to approach the girl on the road. He couldn’t remember exactly what each of them had said, but he summarized as best he could. Indra fought her urge to jump in for clarification on each little point, but it was clearly a strain. “I asked her if she was Katie Cunningham. She said her name wasn’t Katie anymore. It was Rielle.”

  “How do you spell—”

  Wu shushed her. Indra grimaced, filing the question away for later.

  Finally, Arlo explained the Realm to the degree he understood it. “I think there’s our world,” he said, holding out his left hand. “And there’s the Realm.” He put his right hand next to it. “And where they touch, that’s the Long Woods. It’s like the border between the two worlds.”

  The recess bell rang. They needed to go in soon.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Wu. “We have to tell Connor, right?”

  Arlo wasn’t so sure. “She didn’t really react when I said his name. It was like she knew who he was but wasn’t all that worried about him.”

  “Yeah, because Connor’s fine,” said Wu. “She’s the one in trouble.”

  Indra shook her head. “She could have told Arlo to pass along a message. Like that she’s alive. It’s weird that she didn’t.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t!” said Wu. “Maybe she didn’t want Connor to be in danger. They were both kidnapped, after all.”

  Indra held up a finger to correct him. “She said she wasn’t kidnapped.”

  “Like she knows! She was a stupid little kid when it happened. This girl Katie—or Rielle, whatever—she is trapped in this other world, the Realm. Someone has to go save her.”