by N. D. Wilson
“I’ll look for her with you.” Richard reached up and pulled nervously at his thick lower lip.
Henry shook his head. “You have to go back.”
“I don’t see why,” Richard said, and went over and sat on the bed. “Who sleeps in here?”
“Nobody asked you to come,” Henry said.
“Nobody asked you to come into my clock. I could have left you in there, you know. Who sleeps in here?”
“It was my grandfather’s room.” Henry crossed his arms. “He’s dead. Nobody sleeps in here now.”
“Then I’ll stay in here.” Richard smiled. “You don’t have to tell your parents.”
“It’s my aunt and uncle’s house.”
“You don’t have to tell them.”
“No,” said Henry.
Richard sniffed. “Well, at least let me look for your cousin,” he said. “I’ll go back at the end of the night.”
Henry stared at the boy’s pasty face.
“I don’t get to do anything,” Richard said. “And I’m staying even if you say I can’t.”
Henry sighed. “Okay.” He pointed at the skinny boy. “But you have to do what I say.”
“Fine,” Richard said, and grinned. Henry didn’t like his teeth.
“Okay. C’mon, then,” Henry said. “We have to go upstairs and pick our next place. Be quiet. Everyone else is asleep. And don’t close the door.” Henry left the room and went to the stairs without looking back. He heard Richard trip slightly on the torn carpet, but he ignored it. In his room, he pulled the journal out of his backpack and looked for the next close combination. When he found it, he almost laughed. He hoped he would find Henrietta there, and if he did, he knew he would have trouble bringing her back. He was going to take Richard to Badon Hill.
Henry set the combination and told Richard not to ask any questions, and not to touch the doors, and not to make so much noise with his feet.
Richard tried very hard not to ask any questions as he stood in the strange bedroom and watched Henry crawl through the cupboard. And he did very well, though he followed much closer than Henry had told him to and kept reaching out to make sure that Henry’s feet were still there.
At the back of the cupboard, Henry felt himself going up. He felt earth under his closed fists, and then he felt grass. He dragged the rope along with him and squeezed out of the tree and into the air. The sky was enormous and lower than any sky he had seen. He looked back at the tree. The trunk hulked, but the crack didn’t look large enough to crawl through. Then he saw Richard’s head and blinking eyes emerge from the wood, and he laughed. He was actually on Badon Hill. The sun was bright, though low, and the breeze-blown grass stroked the sides of the tall gray stone and just hid the bones that Henry knew were there. Then something jumped up and scrambled onto the rock, in front of the sun. Henry had to squint to make it out.
“Blake!” he said, and laughed even more. “Richard, she’s here. She has to be. Come on!”
Richard was still blinking, but he could see the cat and the sky and the grass and the tops of huge, wind-lazy trees, and it was all beautiful. Henry was bigger than he was, so he didn’t want to cry in front of him. He stood up and closed his eyes. “I like it here,” he said.
Henry was standing on the stone, holding Blake. Richard tried to climb up beside him but couldn’t quite make it. Henry reached down and gave him a pull.
The two of them stood and looked out over the woods.
“There’s a lot more of the mountain than I thought,” Henry said. “And a funny smell.”
Blake jumped out of his arms and off the rock.
“It’s the sea,” Richard said. He pointed to a blue expanse partially hidden by the treetops. “I’ve smelled it once before. You can see the water over there. We’re very high. Is it an island?”
“I don’t know,” Henry said. “But we should go. Henrietta’s got a head start on us.”
Henry got off the rock and almost tripped on the cat. Blake stood at his feet and stared blankly at him. Then the cat ran, as much as Blake ever ran, over to the crack in the tree and disappeared, only to reemerge and stare at Henry again. Then he ran back to the crack.
“The cat wants to go back,” Richard said.
“We’ll go back in a bit, Blake. We’ve got to find Henrietta first.” Henry turned and began walking down the slope to an old broken wall. Richard followed him. Blake passed them both, leapt onto the rubble of the wall, and arched his back, hissing at Henry.
“Stop it, Blake,” Henry said. He put his hand on the wall to jump over but pulled it back quickly, bleeding. Blake crouched, quietly now, but he had left four deep claw tracks across the back of Henry’s hand.
“Blake!” Henry yelled. “Fine! Shoo! Go home or whatever, but we’ve got to find Henrietta.” He pressed his cut hand to his lips.
Richard shifted nervously next to Henry. “Perhaps she’s not here,” he said.
“If the cat’s here, she’s here,” Henry said. “Easy enough.”
“Is it possible that the cat may have followed us?” Richard asked.
Henry sighed. He couldn’t be irritated. Frustration turned to despair. Richard could be right, and if Richard was right, then Henrietta might be lost forever. He turned to Blake. “I wish you were a dog,” he said. “Where’s Henrietta?” He whistled. “Find Henrietta!”
Blake looked insulted, but he hopped off the wall with his gray tail in the air and began walking back to the tree.
Henry pulled in as much of the Badon air as he could manage and listened to the breeze roll and toss too many leaves to count. The air moved gently, but the sound of its leaf passage was strong and constant, like many waters. It felt right on his face. He could smell the moss and the soft earth and sunshine. His bones tingled with—with—he didn’t know what. Magic? Memory? He couldn’t keep his eyes in one place. They kept chasing motion—motion they couldn’t quite catch. They were trying to watch the wind.
This is where I want to be, Henry thought. Why can’t you be here, Henrietta? I’m sure you’re someplace awful.
Henry turned and saw Richard’s skinny legs kicking their way through the crack in the tree. Blake was already gone. He sighed again and dragged his toes as he walked.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Henrietta had hurried down the attic stairs but did not find her father on the landing. The light was not on beneath the bathroom door. Grandfather’s door was still open, and its light was still on. Either her father had thumped in her parents’ bedroom and not yet come out, had thumped in her parents’ bedroom and wasn’t coming out at all, or had already come out, seen the light on in Grandfather’s bedroom, and gone in to look around for an explanation.
Henrietta ran on tiptoe across the landing to the partially open door. She looked through the crack and saw him step out of view. Her heart sank. She knew that her chances of ever being allowed to keep Grandfather’s journals and key had just disappeared. But she was a bold girl, so she braced herself for the necessary conversation. Putting a smile on her face and squaring her shoulders, she stepped into the room.
She didn’t say anything. Her mouth fell open, but not in any useful way. She was looking at the back of a small, old—if the white hair drifting out over his ears told the truth—mostly bald man. He was wearing the type of jacket she associated with old men. It was brown plaid and had badly sewn patches on the elbows. He was looking at the bookshelf, fiddling with the spines of the older-looking books, and muttering something under his breath.
There is no known protocol for how young girls ought to behave when discovering small older men puttering around in an already mysterious bedroom. Henrietta did her best.
“Excuse me,” she said softly.
Knocking several books to the floor, the old man spun around. His face was small for his head, and he was holding one lens of a broken pair of glasses up to his left eye. He stared at Henrietta for a moment. She tried to smile. Then he dove to the floor more quickly than Henrietta w
ould have thought possible. Henrietta started to ask him if he was all right, but he opened the cupboard door at the base of the bookshelf and began slithering in.
“Hey, wait,” she said. “I just want to talk to you.” She jumped over and grabbed his foot. He kicked her in the stomach, and she pulled his shoe off. She gulped air and sat down hard on the floor, watching the old man’s feet disappear into the cupboard.
Henrietta hesitated. Another magic cupboard, and in her grandfather’s room. An old man. Her chance for answers had crawled away. Henrietta dropped to the floor and felt her way into the darkness. As her feet disappeared, Blake entered the room. He, more than Henrietta, was aware of the risks he took, though his cat-mind did not assess them. He ran straight into the cupboard at a speed only one of the local coyotes had seen and Dotty wouldn’t have thought possible. He could see Henrietta’s feet, and then he could not. The wooden back of the cupboard flicked into place, then disappeared again. Blake hit the darkness and felt the ground rise before emerging into long grass and sunshine. He did not need to look around to know that Henrietta was somewhere else. He turned and tried to push himself back down through the crack in the tree to the cupboard.
The way had shut behind him.
Blake was a wise cat, and he did not waste time worrying. He didn’t know how. He walked to the stone, leapt onto it, and stretched out in the sun.
Henrietta froze. The music of violins, cellos, and a strange-sounding piano—like its strings were being plucked rather than hammered—came through the walls around her, filling the small, dark space where she crouched. And voices, laughing voices.
She was still in a cupboard, a cupboard wider and deeper than Grandfather’s. She sneezed. A cupboard full of dust and cobwebs and, if she could believe her hands, lots of dry mouse droppings. She pulled her knees up under her, hunching over with her back against the low ceiling, and felt around for the door. Two feet in front of her and a little to one side, she found it.
Henrietta only meant to open it a crack, but the door swung open easily when she touched it and left her blinking at all the light and the noise.
She looked out into an enormous ballroom with black-beamed vaulted ceilings more than fifty feet above a gleaming floor of inlaid wood. Huge paned windows arched nearly to the ceiling between smooth columns and bright frescoes. A small orchestra played from a balcony at one end of the hall, and the floor swirled with dancers. Full dresses of every one of the world’s colors spun on beautiful women no taller than Henrietta. The hair on the women was piled high and wrapped with strands of bright beads. The men all wore their hair, which was almost universally black, pulled tight and braided down their backs. They wore trousers with wide legs down to the ankles and short coats with sleeves that flared and stopped at the elbow.
Henrietta forgot the little man. She forgot Kansas. She sat, unable to move, with her mouth open and her eyes wide. She watched older men and women walk alongside the walls, eating and laughing. She watched the musicians. She stared at the ceiling and floor, at the columns and windows and frescoes.
It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
As her eyes ran over the dancers one more time, they stopped on one figure, a figure that she recognized. His back was to her, he was bald, and he was wearing a plaid jacket with big patches on the elbows. He was walking carefully through the dancers with only one shoe, watching his feet and setting each one down gently before he put his weight on it. None of the dancers seemed to notice him at all.
Henrietta pulled herself forward and stuck her head out the small door to see if anyone was near her. As she did, the color faded and the music stopped. The people disappeared. Only one figure remained, that of the strange old man in the jacket, picking his way carefully across a floor pocked with holes and rot.
Henrietta squeezed through the door, fell off a small ledge, and landed on the rough floor. Above her were the burnt and charred timbers of collapsed vaults, and a gray sky. The walls were black and gray with soot, the frescoes hidden, and the windows gaped shattered mouths.
“What happened?” Henrietta yelled. “Where did everything go?”
“Ha!” the little man laughed bitterly. Wood cracked beneath his foot and he pulled back.
Henrietta stood up to follow him. “Please tell me,” she said. The floor was solid near the wall. She started walking carefully and quickly. It was like climbing through the lofts of some of the older barns, the ones that leaned sideways and were missing roofs or walls. “Tell me,” she said again.
The little man turned around. “Look what you’ve done already—you’ve mussed everything. I’m no better off now than I was.”
Henrietta stopped. “I didn’t do this. I can’t have. I just followed you.”
The man glared at her. “If you mean destroying one of the world’s great palaces, one of the world’s great cities, then no. That was done by bigger fools than you. You made me lose my glasses.”
“I’m sorry,” Henrietta said. “I just wanted to talk to you. We could go back through and get them.”
“Not likely,” the man said. But he turned around and began walking back. “And you took my shoe.”
“Well, you were trying to run off.”
When the man reached her, he stopped and looked her up and down.
“I’m Henrietta,” she said.
“I know.” He walked past her, back toward the cupboard, which was built into an enormous hutch, and he slid in with his legs sticking out. After a moment, he slid back out.
“Fate is no lady,” the old man said. “It’s closed right back up, and here we both are. You’ll want to sit in that cupboard, never leave even for a moment, and wait for it to open. Likely take me a year, but now I’ll be leaving to find what home I may still have.” He bent over, took off his one shoe, and stuck it in his jacket pocket. He wasn’t wearing any socks. Then he turned to walk off.
“Do you mean I’m stuck?” Henrietta asked. “Wait. Hold on. I want to talk to you.”
The man faced her. “Are you going to pull on my leg?”
“Are you going to kick me?” she asked.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Do you know how the cupboards work?”
The man shrugged. “Why do you need to know? Just fiddle about with them and see what happens. It will be good for everyone.”
Henrietta took a deep breath, trying not to be annoyed. “Just tell me enough to get back when I need to.”
“You’ll not get back unless whoever’s been spinning those knobs notices you’re gone and is somehow able to locate where his norths were when you rode through on my feet. There’s nothing you can do except spend your days leaning on the back of that cupboard, waiting. Oh, I’ve spent weeks doing just that in much nastier places, and the last few days as well—thanks to your meddling. When it opens, it won’t be for long. You won’t want to miss it. And get all your limbs through quickly. Now, I don’t want to keep you. Goodbye.”
Henrietta grabbed his coat and pulled him back. His caterpillar eyebrows came together, and he sputtered before he spoke.
“Never,” he said, “have I encountered a small girl so inclined to grab an old man. Now, little girl, unhand.”
“I’m as tall as you are,” Henrietta said.
The old man’s face turned red and his ears purple. He stepped toward Henrietta, looking straight into her eyes. She let go of his coat.
“Could you just tell me what happened to everything?” she asked. “What is this place? Where did everyone go?”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Don’t you know?” Henrietta asked.
“Of course I know. It was a lifetime ago, but if you climb back in that hutch you can see me dancing, though I mostly ate sausages that night.” He turned and pointed to the far end of the empty hall. “Over there. You wouldn’t recognize me. I was a bit of a devil.”
“A devil?”
“Apollonian. Handsome. Extremely good
-looking.”
Henrietta laughed. “What happened?”
“The stars fell, the moon went out, the earth shook—however you want to put it. Everything ended for the FitzFaeren in one night. But this hutch remembers. Wood remembers most things.”
Henrietta looked back at the cupboard. “Where did all the people go?”
“Well,” the little man said, “most died. I traveled and became a librarian.”
“Why were you in my grandfather’s room? What were you doing? My cousin saw you, didn’t he?”
“Your cousin! The little weakling boy? Yes, he has eyes that can see. But I’ve had enough questions. The sun is setting, and I want to be far from this place before the light fades. In the dark, this place that was once alive tries to wake its memories. I have seen it try before, and I do not want to see it again.”
“You mean it’s haunted?” Henrietta asked. “I don’t want to stay if it’s haunted.”
The man laughed. “If you ever want to see your home again, you will stay and wait. Do you have the second sight?”
Henrietta shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Then it may not be as bad for you.”
The little man moved down the long hutch, opening the larger doors until he found the one he wanted.
“What are you doing?” Henrietta asked.
“Leaving.”
“How? Is that another magic cupboard?”
The man laughed and climbed through the small door, curling up to fit. “This is a dumbwaiter. From the middle of the room, I could see that the stairs have collapsed in the years since my last visit. Now goodbye to you and your questions.”
Henrietta watched him pull a tight little rope from the back corner and then, accompanied by the high-pitched squealing of ancient pulleys, he descended out of view. She leaned in to watch him go, but he was already hidden from any light.
“You didn’t tell me your name!” she yelled down the shaft.
“Ack! Don’t shout! It’s loud in here.”