“Good pick, Hugo, I like that one,” Kendra complimented.
“Great,” Seth said. “You’re very sensitive and artistic. Now, how about we have some fun? Want to go jump in the pool? I bet you could make the best cannonballs!”
Hugo crossed and uncrossed his hands, indicating that he did not like the idea.
“He’s made of dirt,” Kendra said. “Use your brain.”
“And rock and clay… I thought it would just make him sort of muddy.”
“And clog up the filter. You should have Hugo throw you in the pool.”
The golem turned his head toward Seth, who shrugged. “Sure, that would be fun.”
Hugo nodded, grabbed Seth, and, with a motion like a hook shot, flung him skyward. Kendra gasped. They were still thirty or forty feet away from the edge of the pool. She had pictured the golem carrying Seth much closer before tossing him. Her brother sailed nearly as high as the roof of the house before plummeting down and landing in the center of the deep end with an impressive splash.
Kendra ran to the side of the pool. By the time she arrived, Seth was boosting himself out of the water, hair and clothes dripping. “That was the freakiest, awesomest moment of my life!” Seth declared. “But next time, let me take off my shoes.”
CHAPTER NINE
The Sphinx
Kendra stared out the window at a huge, derelict factory as the SUV idled at a stoplight. Rotting boards crisscrossed the lower windows. The yawning upper windows were nearly devoid of glass. Wrappers, broken bottles, crushed soda cans, and weather-worn newspapers littered the sidewalk. Cryptic graffiti decorated the walls. Most of the spray-painted words looked sloppy, but a few had been expertly rendered with gleaming metallic letters.
“Can I take off my seat belt yet?” Seth complained, squirming.
“One more block,” Grandma said.
“The Sphinx isn’t staying in a very nice part of town,” Kendra said.
“He has to keep a low profile,” Grandma said. “Often that translates to less than ideal accommodations.”
The light turned green, and they drove through the intersection. Kendra, Seth, and Grandma had been on the road quite a while in order to reach the coastal city of Bridgeport. Grandma took a much more leisurely approach to driving than Vanessa, but despite the gentle pace and pleasant scenery, the prospect of meeting the Sphinx had kept Kendra on edge for the entire ride.
“Here we are,” Grandma announced, activating the left blinker and turning into the parking lot of King of the Road Auto Repair. The run-down auto shop looked abandoned. There were no cars in the small lot, and all the shop windows were obscured by dust and grime. Grandma avoided a lone, rusty hubcap lying on the asphalt.
“What a dump!” Seth said. “You sure this is the place?” The SUV was just coming to a stop when one of the three doors to the garage slid upwards. A tall Asian man in a black suit waved them inside. He was lean, with wide shoulders and a humorless face. Grandma pulled into the garage, and the man yanked the door down behind them.
Grandma opened her door. “You must be Mr. Lich,” she said. The man lowered his chin briefly, a motion halfway between a nod and a bow. Mr. Lich gestured for them to exit the vehicle.
“Come along,” Grandma said, descending from the SUV. Kendra and Seth got out as well. Mr. Lich was walking away. They hurried to follow him. He led them out a door into an alley where a black sedan was waiting. Bland features neutral, Mr. Lich opened the back door. Grandma, Kendra, and Seth ducked inside. Mr. Lich got up front and started the car.
“Do you speak English?” Seth asked.
Mr. Lich fixed him with a steady stare in the rearview mirror, put the car in drive, and started down the alley. None of them made further efforts at conversation. They followed a disorienting series of alleys and side streets before finally reaching a main road. After a U-turn, they were back on side streets, until Mr. Lich brought the sedan to a stop in a dirty alley beside a row of dented garbage cans.
He got out and opened the door for them. The alley smelled like taco sauce and rancid oil. Mr. Lich escorted them to a grimy door that read Employees Only. He opened it and followed them inside. They passed through a kitchen into a dimly lit bar. Blinds covered the windows. There were not many patrons. Two guys with long hair were playing pool. A fat man with a beard sat at the bar next to a skinny blonde with a pockmarked face and frizzy curls. Wispy strands of cigarette smoke twisted in the air.
Grandma, Seth, and Kendra entered the room first. The bartender was shaking his head. “No patrons under twenty-one,” he said. Then Mr. Lich appeared and pointed toward a stairway in the corner. The demeanor of the bartender changed instantly. “My mistake.” He turned away.
Mr. Lich ushered them up the carpeted stairs. At the top, they pushed through a beaded curtain into a room with shaggy calico carpet, a pair of brown sofas, and four suede beanbag chairs. A heavy ceiling fan spun slowly. A large, old-fashioned radio stood in the corner, softly playing big band music, as if tuned to a station broadcasting out of the past.
Placing a hand on Grandma’s shoulder, Mr. Lich motioned toward the couches. He did the same for Seth. Turning to Kendra, he gestured toward a door on the other side of the room. Kendra glanced at Grandma, who nodded. Seth flung himself onto a beanbag.
After crossing to the door, Kendra hesitated. The silent car ride and unusual environment had already made her uncomfortable. The prospect of facing the Sphinx by herself was unsettling. She looked over her shoulder. Both Grandma and Mr. Lich motioned for her to enter. Kendra knocked softly. “Come inside,” said a deep voice, barely loud enough to be heard.
She opened the door. A red curtain fringed with gold tassels and embroidery blocked her view. She pushed through the velvet curtain into the room beyond. The door closed behind her.
A black man with short, beaded dreadlocks stood beside a Foosball table. His skin was not merely a shade of brown — it was as close to truly black as Kendra had ever seen. He was of average height and build, and wore a loose gray shirt, cargo pants, and sandals. His handsome face had an ageless quality — he could have been in his thirties or his fifties.
Kendra glanced around the spacious room. A large aquarium held a vibrant collection of tropical fish. Numerous delicate, metallic mobiles dangled from the ceiling. She counted at least ten clocks of eccentric designs on the walls, tables, and shelves. A sculpture made of garbage stood beside a life-sized wooden carving of a grizzly bear. Near the window was an elaborate model of the solar system, intricate planets and moons held in place by wire orbits.
“Would you join me in a game of Foosball?” His accent made Kendra think of the Caribbean, although that was not quite right.
“Are you the Sphinx?” Kendra asked, bewildered by the unusual request.
“I am.”
Kendra approached the table. “Okay, sure.”
“Would you prefer cowboys or Indians?”
Spitted on rods were four rows of Indians and four rows of cowboys. The cowboys were all the same, as were the Indians. The cowboy had a white hat and a mustache. His hands rested on his holstered six-guns. The Indian had a feathered headdress, and his reddish-brown arms were folded across his bare chest. The feet of each cowboy and Indian were fused together to better strike the ball.
“I’ll be Indians,” Kendra said. She had played some Foosball at the rec center back home. Seth usually beat her two out of three games.
“Let me forewarn you,” the Sphinx said, “I am not very good.” There was a mellow quality to his voice that evoked images of old-time jazz clubs.
“Neither am I,” Kendra admitted. “My little brother usually beats me.”
“Would you like to serve the ball?”
“Sure.”
He gave her the bright yellow ball. She put her left hand on the handle that controlled the goalie, dropped the ball into the slot with her right, and started wildly spinning her nearest Indians as it rolled across the center of the table. The Sphinx controlled
his cowboys with more calm, using quick, precise jabs to counter Kendra’s reckless spinning. It was not long before Kendra scored the first goal.
“Well done,” he said.
Kendra marked the goal by sliding a bead along a bar at her end of the table. The Sphinx took the ball out of his goal and served it through the slot. The ball rolled to his men. He passed it up to his front row of cowboys, but the Indian goalie blocked the shot. The Indians spun madly, mercilessly pounding the ball at the cowboys until they scored a second goal.
The Sphinx slid the ball into the slot. Her confidence boosted, Kendra attacked even more aggressively with her Indians, and ended up winning the game five goals to two.
“I feel like General Custer,” the Sphinx said. “Well played. Can I offer you something to drink? Apple juice? Cream soda? Chocolate milk, perhaps?”
“Cream soda sounds good,” Kendra said. She was feeling more at ease after trouncing him.
“Excellent choice,” the Sphinx said. He opened a freezer and withdrew a frosty mug with ice in it. From a small refrigerator he removed a brown bottle, uncapped it with a little tool, and poured the yellow soda into the mug. It was surprisingly foamy. “Please, sit down.” He nodded to a pair of chairs facing each other with a low table in between.
Kendra took a seat and the Sphinx handed her the mug. Her first few sips were all froth. When she finally reached the soda, it was a perfect mix of sweet, creamy, cool, and bubbly. “Thanks, this is delicious,” she said.
“The pleasure is mine.” A miniature gong sat on the table between them. The Sphinx tapped it with a small hammer. “While the gong vibrates, none can overhear our conversation. I have at least part of the answer you came here seeking. You are fairykind.”
“I am very kind?”
“Fairy… kind,” he said, enunciating carefully. “It is written all over your countenance, woven into your speech.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you are unique in all the world, Kendra. In my long years and many travels, I have never met anyone who was fairykind, though I am familiar with the signs and see them expressed plainly in you. Tell me, did you sample the elixir you prepared for the fairies?”
There was a hypnotic gravity to his voice. Kendra felt like she had to snap out of a trance in order to answer the question. “Yes, actually, I did. I was trying to convince them to try it.”
The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, showing dimples in his cheeks. “Then perhaps you gave them an incentive,” he said. “They had to either make you fairykind or watch you die.”
“Die?”
“The elixir you ingested is fatal to mortals. You would have eventually suffered a torturous death had the fairies not chosen to share their magic with you.”
“The fairies cured me?”
“They changed you, so that you no longer required curing.”
Kendra stared at him. “People have said I was fairystruck.”
“I have met individuals who were fairystruck. It is a rare and extraordinary occurrence. This is much more rare, and much more extraordinary. You have been made fairykind. I do not believe it has happened in more than a thousand years.”
“I still don’t understand what it means,” Kendra said.
“Neither do I, not entirely. The fairies have changed you, adopted you, infused you with their magic. A semblance of the magical energy that naturally dwells in them now dwells in you. The diverse effects that could flow from this are difficult to anticipate.”
“That’s why I don’t need the milk to see anymore?”
“And why Warren found himself drawn to you. And why you understand Goblush, along with, I imagine, the other tongues derived from Silvian, the language of the fairies. Your grandfather has been in touch with me regarding the new abilities you have been manifesting.” The Sphinx leaned forward and tapped the little gong with the hammer again.
Kendra took another sip from her mug. “This morning, Coulter was showing us a ball protected by a distracter spell. Seth couldn’t pick it up; he kept losing focus and getting redirected someplace else. But it didn’t work on me. I could grab it just fine.”
“You have apparently developed resistance to mind control.”
Kendra wrinkled her brow. “Tanu gave me a potion that made me feel ashamed, and it worked just fine.”
“The potion would have been manipulating your emotions. Mind control functions differently. Pay close attention to all the new abilities you discover. Report them to your grandfather. Unless I am mistaken, you are only beginning to scratch the surface.”
The thought was thrilling and terrifying. “I’m still a human, right?”
“You are something more than human,” the Sphinx said. “But your humanity and your mortality remain intact.”
“Are you a human?”
He smiled, his teeth shockingly white in contrast to his black skin. “I am an anachronism. A holdover from long-forgotten times. I have seen learning come and go, empires rise and fall. Consider me your guardian angel. I would like to conduct a simple experiment. Do you mind?”
“Is it safe?”
“Completely. But if I am right, it could provide the answer to why the Society of the Evening Star has shown such interest in you.”
“Okay.”
A pair of short copper rods rested on the table. The Sphinx picked up one and handed it to Kendra. “Hand me the other one,” the Sphinx said. After Kendra complied, he held his rod in both hands, one at each end of the rod. “Hold your rod like me,” he instructed.
Kendra had been holding the slender rod in one hand. The instant her other hand touched it, she felt a sensation like she was falling backwards through the chair. And then it passed. And she was inexplicably sitting where the Sphinx had been sitting, and he was seated in her chair. They had instantaneously switched places.
The Sphinx released one hand from the rod and then grabbed it again. The moment his hand came back into contact with the rod, Kendra felt her insides lurch again, and suddenly she was sitting back in her former chair.
The Sphinx set the rod down on the table, and Kendra did likewise. “We teleported?” Kendra asked.
“The rods enable users to trade locations over short distances. But that is not what makes what happened unusual. Those rods have been dead for decades, useless, drained of all energy. Your touch recharged them.”
“Really?”
“Fairykind are known to radiate magical energy in a unique way. The world is full of burned-out magical tools. Your touch would revitalize them. This amazing ability alone would make you tremendously valuable to the Society of the Evening Star. I wonder how they know. An educated guess, perhaps?”
“Do they have a lot of things that need recharging?”
The Sphinx tapped the gong again. “No doubt, but I refer more directly to the five hidden artifacts your grandparents told you about. The ones on the five secret preserves. If any of them lie dormant, as is likely, your touch would reactivate them. All five would have to be functional in order for the Society to achieve their goal of opening Zzyzx and freeing the demons. Without your gift, reactivating talismans of such monumental power would be most difficult.”
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Kendra said. “Why have keys to the prison? Why not make a demon prison without keys?”
The Sphinx nodded as if he approved of the question. “There is a fundamental principle of magic that applies to many other things as well: Everything with a beginning has an ending. Any magic that can be done, can be undone. Anything you can make, can be unmade. In other words, any prison you can create, can be destroyed. Any lock can be broken. To construct an impenetrable prison is impossible. Those who have tried have invariably failed. The magic becomes unstable and unravels. If it has a beginning, it must have an end.
“The wise learned that rather than attempting to make a prison impenetrable, they should focus on making it extraordinarily complicated to open. The strongest prisons, like Zzy
zx, were crafted by those who understood that the goal was to make them nearly impenetrable, as close to perfect as possible without crossing the line. Because there is a way to open Zzyzx, the magic that holds the demons bound remains potent. The principle sounds simple, although the details become quite complicated.”
Kendra shifted in her seat. “So if the Society just destroyed the keys, would that unravel the magic and open the prison?”
“Nimble thinking,” the Sphinx said, dark eyes twinkling. “Three problems. First, the keys are virtually indestructible — note that I say virtually; they were made by the same experts who created the prison. Second, if my research is correct, a fail-safe would cause any destroyed key to be reconstituted in a different form in an unpredictable location, and that process could go on almost indefinitely. And third, if the Society were somehow to free the demons by permanently destroying an artifact, they would become victims like the rest of humanity. The Society must parley with the demons before their release in order to obtain any measure of security, which means they must open the prison properly rather than simply undermine the magic that upholds it.”
Kendra drank the last of her cream soda, ice tumbling against her lips. “So they can’t succeed without the artifacts.”
“Therefore we must keep the artifacts from them. Which is easier said than done. One of the great virtues of the Society is patience. They make no rash moves. They research and plan and prepare. They wait for the ideal opportunities. They understand that they have an unlimited amount of time in which to succeed. To them, it is the same to achieve their aims in a thousand years as it would be to triumph tomorrow. Patience mimics the power of infinity. And nobody can win a staring contest with infinity. No matter how long you last, infinity is just getting started.”
“But they aren’t infinity,” Kendra said.
The Sphinx blinked. “True. And so we attempt to equal their patience and diligence. We do our best to stay far ahead of them. Part of that means moving an artifact once they learn its location, as we fear has happened with the artifact at Fablehaven. Otherwise, somehow, sometime, they will exploit a mistake and lay hands on it.”
[Fablehaven 02] - Rise of the Evening Star Page 13