by Garth Nix
She wrote:
One of Joe’s stepdaughters, Lottie, is listed among the missing and feared dead. The other, , is suffering smoke inhalation injuries and being treated in Portland Hospital. She is being attended by her husband, Giles, and is expected to recover fully. Mayor Green called for a whip-round to send flowers. All contributed.
Jack scratched at the inkblot that covered the name, but Rodeo Dave lightly slapped his hand away.
“Don’t damage it!”
“I want to see what’s under the ink.”
“Well, there are other ways.” From his other pocket, Dave produced a small flashlight. He lifted the page and held it vertical so he could shine the beam of white light through from one side while they looked from the other.
All they saw was the inkblot.
“Hmmmm,” said Rodeo Dave again. “We’re not done yet.”
He spread the page flat again, and this time shone the light along the surface of the page, so any bump or crease stood out. By this method Jack could faintly make out some letters. There appeared to be eight of them, although one of them might have been a space.
“What does that say?” said Tara, squinting. “I can’t quite make it out. Is than an L?”
“I’m not sure,” said Dave, moving his magnifying glass back and forth. “It could be an I.”
Jack took the flashlight from Dave and swiveled it back and forth. “I think it is an L,” he said. “And that’s an M. I’m pretty sure. And —”
Jack stopped as a sudden pain shot through his right eye. He jerked backward, bumping into Dave, who almost dropped his magnifying glass on Tara’s head.
“What is it?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, rubbing his eye. It was fine now. “Just a weird feeling, like I was reading something I wasn’t supposed to.”
“That is weird,” said Tara.
“Some books aren’t supposed to be read,” said Dave in hollow tones. “I guess some words are like that, too.”
“So what’s the point of writing them down?” Tara asked him.
“To keep them safe … to lock them up …”
“Are you okay?” Jack asked him. Rodeo Dave suddenly seemed not himself. Perhaps he was remembering. “Is it something to do with Lottie?”
Dave suddenly shook himself, as though emerging from slumber.
“With who?” he said, brushing his mustache and smiling at the two of them. “Oh, yes, most likely something to do with the missing girl. This woman was her sister, after all. I hope she liked the flowers.”
Dave flicked through the subsequent pages, which contained very little information at all. Joe Henschke was buried elsewhere, cause of death not recorded. Neither was the cause of the accident. Ownership of the damaged property passed to the injured sister, but there was no record of her repairing it.
When it was clear the records weren’t going to tell them anything else useful, Jack and Tara thanked Rodeo Dave and left him deep in an account of the building of Founder’s Garden, which had been partly funded by his recently deceased friend, Old Master Rourke. He barely looked up as they left, although he did wave.
“Now what?” asked Tara.
“We check the house.”
“Where the accident took place?”
He nodded. “We’ve already found one interesting thing there this week. Why not another?”
“All right,” she said, checking her watch. “Dad will be there at five o’clock. He comes by then most days to see how things are going. I’ll text to let him know I’m with you. I’ll tell him soccer practice was boring, which was probably true, unless you were playing.”
Jack felt a tiny pang at the fun his sister was having at that very moment. If only he had cheated just a little bit. Maybe then he wouldn’t be sleuthing for clues concerning an accident two generations past with a girl whose only real involvement in the Wardens was that she couldn’t talk about them.
But he did enjoy Tara’s company, and he would rather have her with him than be on his own, particularly while sneaking around an empty house that was still spooky, even though it had been cleaned up a bit.
And cheating was wrong, of course.
Jaide captured the ball with her left foot and kicked it ahead of her. She had a clear run for the goal. Two more steps and she’d take the shot.
Someone cut across her, moving fast from the blind spot on her right side to take the ball and kick it at the goal. The kick was a good one, curving low and shallow across the grass, past Kyle’s clutching hands and into the net.
Everyone on the team cheered, except for Jaide.
“Hey,” she said. “That was my shot.”
Stefano grinned at her as someone high-fived him.
“I didn’t see you making any shot,” he said.
“I was about to.”
“You weren’t quick enough, then.”
“But I’m the striker. I had the ball.”
“It’s not the ball that matters; it’s what you do with it.”
“Positions, everyone!” called Mr. Carver from the boundary.
“Stupid show-off boys,” Jaide muttered to herself. The scrimmage had been going for half an hour, and Stefano had stolen her ball three times already. It was becoming worse than annoying.
“I’ll show you quick,” she said as the teams reformed across the oval. Stefano winked at her from midfield, although she didn’t think he had heard her.
There was the usual scramble for the ball when Mr. Carver blew on his flute. Jaide held back patiently as the center midfielders jostled for control, feet and elbows lashing out in moves that were more or less legal, or kept carefully out of Mr. Carver’s sight if they weren’t. Occasionally the ball would pop free, only to be rounded back in and tangled up once more. Stefano dodged and weaved with easy grace, toying with the ball just as he toyed with his erstwhile teammates.
Not this time, thought Jaide as he gained control and made a dash for empty ground, long, curly hair dancing, grin wide and triumphant.
Jaide was a dozen paces ahead of him. She concentrated, calling up her Gift and sending a brisk, eager breeze back to keep pace with him. Remembering what Alfred the Examiner had told her about the Gift not belonging to her, she talked to it as she would talk to Ari when he didn’t want to do something. She guided it, cajoled it, encouraged it to bide its time when it wanted to lash out in full force. There would be time, she told it. Just be patient.
Stefano looked over his shoulder at the kids following him, unable to match his pace, and that moment, Jaide let her Gift strike.
One powerful puff was all it took to push the ball away from Stefano’s right foot. To the casual glance it looked as though he had kicked it much harder than he had intended, but Jaide knew the truth. It was actually the wind, suddenly rocketing the ball forward to where she was standing, ready to accept it. She gathered it up, wrapping the jubilant breeze around her, and ran toward the goal.
Stefano knew what had happened.
“Hey!” he shouted after her, but she ignored him. Kyle could see her coming. That was what she needed to concentrate on now.
As she lined up the shot, feinting with her left foot in order to throw a defender off, she felt her Gift suddenly rise up around her.
“No,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Not now!”
But it wasn’t going to listen. And she knew why. It wasn’t her fault. This happened sometimes, when she and Jack were practicing at home. It was hard enough keeping one Gift in check, but two in tandem were almost impossible. Only this time it wasn’t Jack’s Gift interfering with hers. It was another troubletwister’s, one she had never had to deal with before.
The sky grew dark above the field as she shot for goal, and a tiny purple line flashed between her cleat and the ball just before they made contact. The wind whined in her ears. With a high-pitched whizzing noise, the ball shot forward, trailing feathery sparks. Kyle took one look at it and dived for the turf.
&
nbsp; A resounding boom shook the goal. Light flashed. Jaide’s Gifts recoiled, as though shocked by the sudden overreaction. When her eyes cleared, the ball was spinning in the air, smoking. With a sad deflating sound, it dropped to the earth, just outside the goal line. Both her and Stefano’s Gifts died with it.
“Inside, everyone!” called Mr. Carver, running onto the field and gathering his students like sheep. “I don’t know where that storm came from, but it’s time we called it quits anyway. Nice pass, Stefano. Excellent teamwork. And good shot, Jaide. Bad luck the lightning got in the way.”
Stefano shot Jaide a withering look, which she returned.
“What’re you doing?” Kyle hissed to her as they hurried for shelter. “I didn’t think using your … you know … was allowed.”
Jaide’s indignation ebbed.
“I know, but he just makes me so mad.”
“Have you got a crush on him?”
“What?”
“That’s how it works in movies. Whenever a boy and a girl are mad at each other, they’re destined to fall in love.”
“Absolutely not,” she said with one hundred percent certainty. She wasn’t interested in falling in love with anyone, and if she had been, it wouldn’t have been him. “We just don’t like each other.”
“Good,” Kyle said with surprising force. “It would help, though, if you tried not to blow me up by accident.”
She noticed his singed hair and T-shirt and felt shamefaced, even though Stefano shared part of the blame. “I’m sorry. That was an accident.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Next time I’m trying to light a fire at Scouts, I want you there to help me out.”
They slapped hands. “Deal.”
* * *
Jack and Tara were waiting for Jaide when she returned home early from soccer practice. Stefano had walked separately and silently, glowering at her back. They didn’t talk. The storm clouds had vanished as quickly as they had come, but Mr. Carver wasn’t taking any chances. He didn’t go so far as to say that he had taken the weird weather as an omen, but she knew he was thinking it. People in Portland ignored such signs at their peril.
“What’ve you two been up to?” Jaide asked Jack and Tara in their bedroom while Stefano made himself a snack downstairs. She could tell just by looking at them that they hadn’t been sitting idle while she had been busy dealing with Stefano.
Jack explained what they had found at the house first, since that was the freshest in his mind. There had been only two construction workers on site when they arrived, and both of them had been noisily expanding the hole that would one day be a parking lot, chugging backward and forward with diggers and earthmovers. They were easy to sneak past. Tara had shown Jack how the back door had been removed and replaced with nothing but a blue plastic sheet to keep the weather out. It was useless against two determined twelve-year-olds.
In less than half an hour, they had scoured the house from top to bottom. It had taken so little time because it was immediately clear that there was nothing to find: no dropped items of significance to Wardens, no notes or scrawled messages on the walls, no hints of the house’s tragic past. There was no sign of anything they knew had been there, such as the Monster of Portland, actually the former Living Ward, which Grandma X had healed in the old house when The Evil had tried to poison it. The house had been thoroughly cleaned out — in preparation, presumably, for its renovation.
That was disappointing, but the search of the house hadn’t been in vain. While the construction workers had been out front, waiting for Tara’s dad, Jack and Tara had sneaked into the future parking lot in order to hunt for any more buried clues. While peering intently at the rough-hewn walls, Jack had felt a strange, new sensation.
He found it hard to put into words.
“It was weird,” he said. “I could see through the dirt like it was air, only I wasn’t really seeing, not in the usual way. I could just tell what was in there.”
“Was something doing it to you?” asked Jaide. “Something in the earth, wanting you to find it?”
He shook his head. “It didn’t feel weird, and that was the weirdest thing of all. It felt normal. Like when I dug Stefano out of the ground when he first arrived. Remember? I didn’t think about what I was doing. I just did it, and it felt right.”
“I reckon it’s his second Gift,” said Tara.
“You know, like Grandma X’s father’s?” Jack said. “He had some kind of architectural Gift. Maybe that’s what this is. You have Dad’s, and I have his.”
Jaide nodded. That did make sense. For now, though, she just wanted to know what he had seen in the earth.
“So what did you find?”
“Lots of rocks and roots, of course,” he said. “An old spoon, two forks, some broken pottery and rusty coins, a belt buckle, the tip of an umbrella —”
“Anything interesting?” she cut him off, sensing that he could go on for a while.
“Not a thing.” Some of the excitement ebbed from him, which she felt bad about even if she was a bit jealous. While she had been putting up with Stefano, he had been having fun with Tara.
“At least you know what your second Gift is now,” she made an effort to say. “That’s good.”
“I guess so,” he replied. Even though it wasn’t as exciting as lightning, he was quietly pleased to have something that connected him to the great-grandfather he had never met, the man who had built the twin houses right next door to each other. Maybe, he thought, that was why his second Gift had come to him there, where Joe had died. That thought gave him little joy, but it did seem fitting.
“That wasn’t the only thing we learned,” said Tara, and she told Jaide about the article they had found in Rodeo Dave’s shop.
When she reached the part about Grandma X’s blotted name, however, Tara suddenly stopped, looked into the distance as though trying to hear something far away, and said in a hollow voice, “It’s time for me to go.”
“Not yet,” said Jaide. “Your dad won’t be coming for another half an hour.”
“It’s time for me to go,” Tara repeated. She climbed to her feet and started walking for the door.
“Wait.” Jaide followed her down the stairs, with Jack at her heels. “What’s going on?”
“It’s time for me to go,” said Tara a third time, at the front door.
Without stopping to wave or even look behind her, Tara went through the door, across the garden, and out the gate.
“That was weird,” said Jack. “Do you think we should let her just go off like that?”
“You have to,” said a voice from behind them. “Apparently it was time for her to go.”
Stefano was standing in the hallway.
“Did you do that?” asked Jaide, rounding on him with her fists on her hips.
“No,” he said. “I don’t know how to.”
“Well, what’s going on, then?”
Jack looked around him, realizing only then just how quiet the house was.
“Did you see Mom and Grandma when you came in?” he asked Jaide.
“No. I thought they might be out shopping.”
“What about Ari and Kleo?”
“I didn’t see them, either.”
“Nor me,” said Stefano, going pale.
Jaide looked behind her, as though expecting to see someone standing there. Jack, too, suddenly felt as though he was being watched.
“Where is he?” he asked.
“Who?” asked Jaide, although she knew very well who Jack meant.
“The Examiner. He must be here somewhere. That’s why everyone is gone. Do you know, Stefano?”
Stefano shook his head.
“But you know what’s going to happen,” said Jaide. “You’ve done this before, right?”
“Some of it.” For the first time she heard an accent in his voice. It made him sound much younger. “I haven’t done all of it.”
“Why is that?” said Jack. “What stopped you from going al
l the way?”
Again, he just shook his head.
“Were you afraid?” asked Jaide.
Stefano’s eyes flashed. “No, of course not. I —”
Between one word and the next, Stefano vanished. There was no puff of smoke or flash of light. No sound. One second he was there and the next he wasn’t.
Jaide instinctively reached out and took Jack’s hand. She was sure it wouldn’t make any difference to what happened to them. She just needed the comfort of being with him while she could get it.
“Good luck,” she said. “See you on the other —”
Then she was gone, too, and Jack was left alone.
Oldest first, thought Jack, the heel of his right foot restlessly tapping the floor. His nervousness was hard to contain. I’m ready, he wanted to shout. Get it over with!
The light suddenly went out, and he was lying down. The change happened so quickly he was dizzy for a second. He went to raise his hands to touch his face, but they stopped hard against something wooden and solid just inches away from them. He tried to sit up and banged his head.
He tried kicking his feet. The same.
It was either so dark that his Gift couldn’t work or his Gift had stopped working entirely. The surface in front of him felt like wood but he couldn’t see it to make sure. A box of some kind. He didn’t want to think coffin.
“Help!” he shouted. His voice echoed back at him, deafeningly loud.
He tried again, this time with his mental voice.
++Help!++
There was no reply.
He imagined the earth pressing in all around him, heavy and dense, smothering his every attempt to call Jaide.
His heart was racing. This time there was no escaping the fear of being buried alive, because it looked very much as though he had been.
* * *
Jaide was falling. But she wasn’t falling down. She was falling sideways.
Tumbled and tossed by the wind, she had trouble working out exactly what was going on. She still had her arms and legs, so they hadn’t been transformed in any particular way. She appeared simply to have been moved, but where, and why? It took her several minutes to realize that she was spinning in a circle, as though in the heart of a giant hurricane. She tried reaching out to it with her Gift, but either this storm wasn’t talking to her or her Gift had been temporarily muted somehow.