by Jude Watson
“Let’s see the bonds first,” Oscar said. “Ten million’s worth, transferable.”
Carlotta signaled behind her. “I brought someone to authenticate the stones.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“Too bad. I’m rich, not stupid.”
Hamish Tarscher got out of the car.
“Well, hey, Ham,” Oscar said. “Whose side are you on?”
“The one with the checkbook,” Hamish said. “Relax, Oscar. I’m just here to make sure everybody gets what they deserve.”
“Show him the stones,” Carlotta said eagerly.
Blue handed a pouch to Hamish, and he shook out the stones into his hand.
Even from yards away, March could see the floating glow.
“Extraordinary,” Carlotta breathed. She moved closer.
Hamish put a lens over one eye. He stared, one by one, at the stones, holding them up and then dropping them back into a pouch when he was done.
“They’re fake,” he said.
Hamish shrugged. “These are not the seven magic moonstones,” he said. “They are depressingly ordinary.”
“Cheaters!” Carlotta screeched.
Blue and Oscar both looked at each other.
“You did it,” they said together.
“I don’t care who did it,” Carlotta said. “The deal is off.”
Hamish moved out from the glow of the headlights into the shadows. The pouch swung behind his back.
“You’re up, Izzy,” March said softly.
She melted into the shadows and inched toward Hamish.
“Now wait a minute,” Blue said. “We can still make a deal. Just let me talk to my partner. You want Thailand, Oscar? I’ll go. You’re punishing me, right?”
“What are you talking about? You’re the one who can’t be trusted!”
The sound of sirens invaded the soft sounds of the night. Alarmed, March glanced at Jules. This was not part of the plan.
“What’s that?” Carlotta asked in surprise. “Police?”
“If you think they’re not real, give the stones back,” Blue ordered quickly.
“Sure.” Hamish flipped the pouch in the air.
The sirens grew louder, and suddenly the trees flashed red.
“Mr. Tarscher, get me out of here!” Carlotta shrieked.
March could see Izzy on the other side of the Hummer. The sirens were getting closer. She could get caught in the headlights if she didn’t get out of there. Hamish had already flipped her the moonstones. Why was she still there?
“She froze,” Darius said. “Scared. I’ll go.”
Darius was gone in a moment, sneaking through the bushes toward the car.
Suddenly Carlotta let out a shrill scream. “Where are my BONDS?”
A green Audi shot out onto the road. March had a quick glimpse of Oscar driving.
“OSCAR!” Blue screamed in fury.
Two police cars roared up.
“What should we do?” Jules asked.
“I don’t know!” March hissed, panicked. “I’ve run out of ideas!”
The police got out of the car. A blue Subaru drove up and, with a screech of brakes, slid onto the shoulder. Mike Shannon tumbled out. He held a small camera in front of his face.
“I’m here at the midnight transfer of the moonstones,” he intoned. “Desperate heiress Carlotta Grimstone has struck the deal of her life with ruthless criminals —”
“Turn off that camera, you imbecile! Do you know who I am?” Carlotta sneered. She turned to the cop. “Officer, do you know how much I give to the police every year?”
A flashlight swung toward Carlotta, and she threw up her arm to shade her face. “Turn that thing off! Ten million in bonds has been stolen! Somebody search somebody!”
“I’m just the chauffeur,” Hamish said in a friendly way to a young cop.
“There!” Blue shouted, pointing. “There’s the thief!”
The beam of the cop’s flashlight landed on a surprised Izzy.
“It’s a kid gang!” Blue cried. “That’s who you want to question! And there’s more of them in the woods!”
In the glow of the lights, a panicked Izzy wound up for a sidewinder pitch. The pouch sailed in the air, above the Hummer, above Carlotta, above the police and Mike Shannon. Like a bridal bouquet with unerring aim for a maid of honor, it landed in March’s outstretched hands.
“SCATTER!” Darius shouted. He grabbed Izzy and took off through the woods.
March looked at Jules. They ran.
They cut right through the woods, scratched by branches and tripping over roots. They ran blindly, not remembering exactly where the path had been. Panic had taken over, and they forgot everything in a rush to safety.
They burst out onto a small beach. The lake lapped and gurgled against the shore. The water was black and rippled with the breeze. Distant thunder rumbled. “What now?” Jules asked, panting. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out what happened. I hope Darius and Izzy are okay.”
“If I had to bet on anyone getting away, it would be Darius and Izzy.”
“At least we have the moonstones,” March said. “The real ones.”
Jules spun around. “Which way is the town? Where’s the trail? Which way should we go?”
March squinted. Off in the distance, there was a dock. A white boat with a red light began to chug away from it. The light began to revolve as the boat picked up speed.
“Police boat,” March said.
“Who do you think they’re chasing? Oscar?”
“Us.”
* * *
With the lake at their backs and the police in the woods, they were surrounded. They leaped over the boulders and stumbled onto a narrow trail. They ran, hearing the call of the police over the water. They ran, hoping to intersect to a wider road, a road to town and safety. A light, misty rain began to fall.
Instead, they dead-ended at a cliff.
They looked up at the face of it. The cliff of their nightmares.
“Jules …”
“I know.”
He put his hand out just to make sure it was real. It was as though he knew every fissure, every bump.
The police boat’s searchlight swept the beach they’d stopped on only minutes before.
“Maybe this is the way to break the curse,” Jules said. “Defy it.”
March felt his pocket. The seven moonstones were stuffed inside. He remembered the feeling in the tunnel, how the stones were forcing him to fall.
And now, forcing him to climb. He felt the compulsion take him over.
“Come on,” Jules said. Her eyes glittered with a strange, avid light. “There’s lots of handholds; I can see them from here.” She hauled herself up a few feet.
The moon seemed to yank him upward, calling him. After a few yards March risked a look down. The police boat searchlight was moving clockwise. It would be here soon, spotlighting a boy and a girl on a cliff face at midnight.
Jules was so much higher than he was. March felt dizzy. He paused for a moment. Sweat stung his eyes. He tried to wipe his forehead on his sleeve. His fingers slipped on the wet rock, and a roar of terror ripped through him.
“March … you have to go faster,” Jules called down to him. “It will all be over in a minute. We can do it.”
Why did he feel so … heavy? March wished he could wipe away the sweat on his forehead. He leaned his head against his sleeve, trying to wipe it. Then he reached up and found another handhold.
Jules looked down. “Only a few more yards to the top from here! Almost there!”
The boat moved down the shore. March reached for the next handhold and moved his right foot along the ledge above. He found the foothold and pushed off. He pulled himself up to what he saw, with relief, was a narrow ledge. Big enough to balance, just wide enough to even let go with both hands. He didn’t have the courage for that, but he let go with one hand to wipe his forehead. If
he leaned in against the rock, he felt solid.
But strange. What was this heavy feeling? Fear? Was that why he was finding it so hard to move? He could feel the pouch of stones in his pocket, weighing him down.
Stones in your pocket. You don’t want to be hanging over water with stones in your pocket.
“Almost there,” Jules called.
She’s moving so fast.
She’s moving too fast.
Alarm suddenly clanged inside March. “Jules!” he called. “Don’t …”
Time slowed down. The agony of Alfie’s fall repeated. Jules’s hand, grabbing the next hold, the loose rock coming off, her foot sliding, and then Jules, falling.
Time stopped.
He had one chance.
And he saw the two of you, holding hands and falling.
He had all the time in the world.
Here’s a C grip. Wrist to wrist. It’s a catch grip.
Her arm out, her eyes wide, and he was there, he was! His hand shot out, and, with all his energy, he pressed against the rock, knowing the shock of the catch might send him flying backward into space with her. She made the catch; he had her wrist; she had his wrist; he was still on the rock, hideously unbalanced, but hanging on.
For now.
He didn’t have the strength to pull her up. She was in midair, her legs windmilling.
“Stop. Moving.” He had to force the words out; he was concentrating so hard on holding her.
She looked up at him, her eyes wide with fear.
“Let go,” she said.
“What?”
“If you don’t, you’ll fall, too.” Jules’s face was strained with effort. “You’ll … break the curse. You’ll survive.”
“Not … letting … go.” March got the words out through gritted teeth. “Remember?”
The police boat was almost at the cliff. The searchlight coming.
His hand was slick with sweat. Sweat pouring down his neck. His hand was going numb.
He saw the reverse curse in a flash in his head.
Fortune’s wheel reverses,
Thus fortune’s child must bide
Till the night of rare moon rising.
The portal opens, eventide.
Time reverses by your hand.
The captured lights returning,
Fate’s wheel stops — then begins anew,
Your fate annulled, your future earning.
He leaned hard against the rock. Straining, he reached the string of the pouch. Grunting with the effort, planting his feet, he withdrew the pouch. With his face against the rock and holding Jules with one hand, he could only get a limited range of motion. With the tips of his fingers, he began to swing the pouch in a circle.
Because suddenly it was all so clear.
Time reverses by your hand …
Swing the stones counterclockwise.
The captured lights returning.
Captured moonlight. Let the stones fly into the air. Return the captured moonlight to the sky.
Fate’s wheel stops —
The motion of the swing sent the moonstones high over their heads, spilling like a constellation of stars out into the black night air. All seven, beautiful and pure. So bright, they matched the moonlight. They seemed to hang for the longest of moments….
Then begins anew.
And then dropped, all together, clustered in a mass. Disappeared into darkness. Would he hear the splash when they hit the lake?
Instead, a faint tinkle. The searchlight went out.
The moonstones had smashed the light!
The heaviness left his legs and arms. The dread unspooled like a thread. He felt strength and purpose fill his muscles, and he smiled against the rock, tasting grit and sweat. He was here, and Jules was here, and there was not one doubt in his mind that it was now midnight, and they were both thirteen years old.
Your fate annulled, your future earning.
And suddenly it seemed impossibly easy to swing his sister gently forward, bringing her against the rock, and steady, steady, steady, hold her until she found a place to rest.
They got to the top and looked down. The police boat looked small from here. It chugged along the shore, but without the searchlight, it would be impossible to spot two small shadows on top of a cliff. Men were moving along the shore, sweeping the brush with flashlights.
March and Jules followed a narrow path. Soon they saw the fissure in the rocks. When they walked inside, the temperature dropped immediately. The ice was thick along the walls, but after their adventure on the cliff, it was a pleasure to walk carefully and slowly, enjoying the cold air.
“Listen,” Jules said, and he stopped.
Water flowing, rushing. “The waterfall.”
The blue moonlight penetrated even here, illuminating the wall.
“Look,” Jules said. “There’s a fissure there. At the bottom.”
They had to lie flat on the ground to really see it, then chip away at a scrim of ice that covered it, reflecting like a mirror. When March put his eye to the opening, he saw a sandy chamber, and beyond it, the falls.
They were able to lie flat and slither inside. They stood in a tall chamber, hit from the spray of the waterfall. They walked forward, and there it was, now a rushing fall of water over the rocks, spilling into the lake below.
“That night it would have been a torrent,” Jules said. “These rocks would have been wet. Maybe there was black ice. And here is where she slipped and went over.”
March tried to imagine Alfie at that moment. Watching her body go backward. Did he see her face? Did he see her astonishment, her fear? Sadness invaded him as he thought of Alfie, watching the love of his life fall away.
Alfie had hiked down again, Ham had said, risking his own life and his capture. He’d searched and searched; he had made his way back to their car and to where he and Maggie had been living. He had picked up his children and made the decision to run.
He had protected them by separating them. Whether the plan had been right or wrong, it had worked.
Now standing up here, March understood it all. Follow the falls to day. Well, it was night, but had he done everything Alfie had wanted him to?
Alfie, ever practical, would probably say, Good, you’re not dead. But couldn’t you manage to keep the moonstones?
“Was it all real?” March asked. “The moonstones, the curse?”
“We’ll never know,” Jules said. “I only know what I felt. That I had to climb. That I couldn’t hold on anymore. And then I could.”
“I felt it, too. And the moonstones hit the searchlight. What are the odds of that?”
“I wouldn’t take the bet.”
“We lost the fortune.”
“Yeah. Stinks.”
“And Mike Shannon will want revenge. And Oscar. And Blue.”
“Yeah,” Jules agreed. “And we have no leverage. No money. No gemstones.”
“Things aren’t so great.”
She grinned. “Couldn’t be worse.”
“Look,” March said. “It’s clearing.”
The clouds had thinned, and the moon was full and round and luminous. They were high above the lake and could see its full expanse, even glimpse the shadowy outlines of Carlotta’s grand mansion.
Had Alfie sat up here as a kid, gazing at a life he couldn’t have?
On the other side they could now make out the lights of the town.
“Let’s go down,” March said.
The trail wound down the gentler side of the mountain. A well-used hiking trail, it was easy to follow, even in the dark.
They hit an overlook halfway down and paused to check their progress. They were close to the town now, to the glowing lights.
Below was a small roadhouse with a blinking, red neon light.
DANO
And, underneath that:
JAZZ AND SPAGHETTI
March felt something rise in him, a bubble of air and laughter.
“Dano!” he cried.
Jules turned to him. “You know that place?”
He shook his head. “No. But Alfie did. His last words — he said, ‘Day,’ and I said, ‘Don’t die,’ but he was already trying to get out the word, and he said, ‘No,’ and I thought he was saying to me that he had to die, but he was just saying the word. Dano. Follow the falls to Dano.”
He pointed. “And there it is.”
They walked across a pitted and poorly maintained parking lot jammed with cars. They could hear a guitar and piano playing a funky riff. Pushing open the green door, they were hit with a wave of warmth and light and laughter.
They stood uncertainly in the entrance. Waitstaff in jeans and black T-shirts threaded through the tables, holding trays with plates and glasses high over the heads of diners. The bar to their left was packed with customers, most of whom seemed to be consuming burgers and beers and exchanging jokes with the bartender.
“Do you think normal will ever feel normal again?” March asked.
Jules grinned. “Look at who you’re talking to. What’s normal?”
March grinned back. “Turn left, every time.”
A smiling woman with red curly hair walked forward. “Good evening. You two looking for your parents?”
The question stymied them.
There were no parents to look for. Not anymore.
Just an innocent question could open up a whole cavern of empty. They would have it every day of their lives.
“No,” March said. “We …”
He stopped. A woman customer stood at the coat check, a tiny room with a half door. She handed the girl a playing card ripped in half. The girl handed her a raincoat. The woman put a dollar in the jar and joined her companions and walked out into the night.
March dug into his pocket and took out the ripped joker. He swallowed. “I need to pick something up. For my dad.”
The red-haired woman took the card. “I’ll take this to Sarah for you.” Then she looked at the card more closely. There was just a beat, enough to put March’s nerves on alert. But she handed the card to the girl at the coat check, said a few words, smiled briefly at March and Jules, and moved off.
“Should we go?” Jules muttered. “I don’t like this. Did you see how she hesitated?”