by Laura Ruby
“I think that might call a little attention to us, Aunt Esther,” Tess said.
“You might be right. Well, I have this army uniform from our production of Hurricane Hall.”
“Hurricane Hall? What’s Hurricane Hall?” Not that Theo really cared, but he hated not knowing things.
“You don’t know Hurricane Hall? A novel published in 1848. A comedy of manners in the style of Jane Austen. A young black heroine is taken in by her rich, white New York City relatives when her white father dies. You really should know this, Theo.”
“It sounds familiar,” Theo grumbled. It didn’t.
“Oh, never mind. You’ll probably read it in high school. We set our production during World War II. Though I suppose this might call too much attention as well.” She set the uniform aside and pulled out a white satin shirt with big blue pom-poms down the front. “Hmmm . . . a clown? Perhaps too frightening. How about a woodland sprite? No, the leaf crown is far too itchy. No, not this. Not this, either.” She pawed through the costumes in one trunk and moved to the next. “I don’t suppose you want to dress as members of a chain gang? No, that wouldn’t be appropriate. I do have a giant ham sandwich costume around here somewhere.”
Just when Theo was certain that Aunt Esther would insist they dress up as candy bars with nougat, she said, “Aha! How about this?” She unrolled a nondescript set of slate-gray coveralls, shook them out. On the front pocket were the words ACME REPAIR CO.
“That could work,” Jaime said. “No one notices repair people.”
“Exactly,” said Aunt Esther. “And if you tuck your hair under a cap and put on a pair of these”—she held up a pair of mirrored sunglasses—“then no one will recognize you. I’ve got coveralls for the three of you.” She gave each of them a pair, plus glasses and a matching baseball cap. “And for your little friend, I have this!” She handed something diaphanous and crumpled to Jaime.
Jaime unfolded the rumpled item. “What . . . what is this?”
“It’s a Tinker Bell costume! Onstage, we put it on a parakeet, complete with this red wig. Oh, dear, I think the moths got to the wings. They’re looking a little chewed up.”
“Oh no,” said the robot.
“Uh, I think we might be okay if I just put Ono in my pocket,” Jaime said. He slipped on the coveralls and zipped up, and tucked his hair into the cap as he slid the glasses on. Then he gently slid the robot into the pocket on the front of his shirt.
“How do I look?”
“About twenty-five,” said Tess, impressed.
“Eighteen, tops,” Theo said.
Jaime grinned. “Not sure the hat is going to fit over your hair, Theo.”
“Maybe Theo could wear Tinker Bell’s wig,” Tess said.
“It would just float on top of his hair like a cherry on a sundae,” said Jaime.
“Maybe we could all dress as ghosts instead,” said Theo.
Tess pulled on the coveralls. “It’s not Halloween. Besides, everyone knew the ghost was you.”
“They did not.”
“Yes, they did,” said Jaime. “The whole block knew.”
“Even when I went as the nerdy ghost?”
“Especially then.”
Aunt Esther patted Theo on the shoulder. “Next time, I’ll lend you the giant ham sandwich.”
Aunt Esther loaded them up with real sandwiches for lunch and then waved good-bye as they sneaked out the back door, just in case anyone was, in Tess’s words, “casing the joint.” Once they were out on the street, no one seemed to give them a second glance.
Jaime patted his front pocket and whispered, “Okay, Ono, do your thing.”
“To the Land of Kings?” the robot said.
“That’s right.”
The robot reached one arm out of Jaime’s pocket and pointed. They started walking.
“Let’s hope the Land of Kings isn’t in Canada,” Theo said.
“What do you have against Canada?” Tess said, but she said it absently, as if she weren’t the one making the joke, as if the answer didn’t matter in the least. Her mirrored gaze swept side to side. As they walked, she would occasionally turn around and walk backward, scanning the street behind them. Maybe she was looking for blondes in red dresses. But more likely she was looking for one ginormous Cat.
When they reached the bus stop, the robot pointed at it and said, “To the Land of Kings!” They got on the Q19.
“Maybe it’s not in Colorado or Canada,” Jaime said.
“Maybe it’s on the Canary Islands,” Theo said.
“The Q-19 is going to drop us off on the Canary Islands?”
“No, but maybe your friend will walk us right into the Atlantic Ocean,” Theo said.
“So it’s my friend now.”
“Oh, shut up,” Tess said. “You two are bickering like, like . . .”
We normally do? Theo thought, but didn’t say it. Jaime didn’t say it, either, just watched the landscape outside shift from the tightly packed houses and delis and shops of Astoria to Sunnyside Gardens, through Woodside and Jackson Heights. When they reached Flushing, the robot pointed again. “To the Land of Kings!” it said.
“I think this is our stop,” said Jaime.
They got off the bus. Wherever the robot pointed, they walked, until they reached Bowne Street and a sign that said KINGSLAND HOMESTEAD.
“Well! The Land of Kings,” Jaime said.
The robot’s jeweled eyes flashed, and it beeped with primitive robot joy. Jaime tucked it down into his pocket and buttoned the flap over its head.
“Oh no,” it said, its voice small and muffled.
The trees surrounding the homestead were spectacular, but the homestead itself was not. It was a rather plain yellow house, smallish and modest.
“Built around 1785,” said Jaime.
“You know about this house?” Theo asked.
“No, I’m reading the plaque,” Jaime said, pointing to the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the property.
Tess swore.
“Language,” Theo said.
“Look at the porch,” Tess said.
On the porch was a sign that said OPEN TUES, SAT, SUN. 2:30–4:30.
“Considering the fact that it’s not Tuesday, Saturday, or Sunday, and it’s not between two thirty and four thirty, I think we made the trip for nothing.”
“To the Land of Kings,” mumbled the robot.
“Your pocket is talking,” Theo said.
Jaime unbuttoned his pocket, and spoke into it. “Kingsland isn’t open.”
“To the Land of Kings!”
“Sorry, little buddy. Not today.”
Theo couldn’t be sure, but the robot sounded just the slightest bit ticked off when it said, “Land. Of. Kings.”
“You can keep saying that, but it’s not going to change the fact that it’s noon on Wednesday,” Jaime said.
Theo’s stomach rumbled. “Speaking of noon, maybe we should have those sandwiches before we go back. Plus it’s hot in these coveralls. I need to sit down.”
They found a bench in the park surrounding the homestead and laid out their food. Sandwiches, apples, and Fig Newtons (of course). As they ate, Jaime read about the house on his phone.
“Built around 1785 by a dude named Charles Doughty. It’s called ‘Kingsland’ because of Doughty’s son-in-law, British sea captain Joseph King, who bought the home in 1801,” he read. “And it’s been moved a few times before ending up here.”
“Land of Kings!” said his pocket.
“Uh-huh,” Jaime said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
Theo popped a cookie into his mouth, chewed, swallowed. “We could come back on Saturday, though it might be more crowded then.”
“Do you think a lot of people come to some old house in Queens on a Saturday?” Tess said.
“More than there are now,” said Jaime. “It would really be better if we could get in the house when it’s closed.”
“LAND OF KINGS,” the robot i
nsisted.
“I think your robot is cranky,” said Tess.
“It’s not my robot,” Jaime said.
“He likes you,” Theo said.
Jaime stood and brushed the crumbs from his lap. “Let’s just try the door to see if it’s locked.”
“Of course it’s locked.”
Jaime shrugged. “Let’s try anyway. We can look through the windows. Maybe it will prompt the robot to give us another clue.”
They circled the house and stepped up onto the porch. Jaime opened the screen door and tried the knob.
“Locked, like I said.”
“You really love being right,” Jaime said.
“I do,” Theo said. He did. Didn’t everyone?
Jaime cupped his hands around his face and peered into one of the darkened windows.
“See anything?” Tess asked, though she wasn’t even facing the right way. She was scanning the surrounding grounds as if Nine were going to suddenly appear any moment.
“LAND OF KINGS,” the robot squawked.
Jaime hooked a finger in his pocket. “I told you, the house is closed and the door is locked. We don’t have a key.”
“LAND OF KINGS LAND OF KINGS LAND OF KINGS.”
The robot was so loud that Jaime slapped a hand over his pocket, glanced all around to make sure no one was watching them. No one was. There were no cars in the small parking lot, no kids in the nearby playground.
Tess fixed her mirrors onto Jaime, her brows creasing. “I think he might be trying to tell us something.”
“What?”
“That we might have the key.”
“But we don’t,” Theo said.
Jaime patted his various pockets. Then, he unbuttoned the top button of the coveralls, reached inside. He pulled out the overlarge silver jack and showed it to the robot. “You mean this?”
“LAND OF KINGS LAND OF KINGS LAND OF KINGS.”
“I think that’s a yes,” said Tess.
Theo tried not to feel bad about being wrong. Again. Grandpa Ben would have noticed, would have reminded him that being right was not the point. The process of discovery was the point. The journey was the point. And journeys don’t always feel comfortable. Sometimes, Grandpa Ben would say, journeys are downright painful, like Frodo’s long trip to Mordor to destroy the ring in The Lord of the Rings. Theo hated those books. All that talking and fighting and dying, when the eagles could have flown them to Mordor all along.
Where were the eagles when you needed them?
Lazy eagles.
They returned to their bench, balled up the paper bag that had contained their lunch, and went back to the homestead. Jaime pulled off the mirrored glasses and replaced them with his own pair. “That’s better. I couldn’t see anything.” He took one more look around, then inserted the jack into the lock.
The inner door swung open.
By this point, they weren’t even surprised.
Inside the house, it was gloomy and dark, but a little cooler than it was outside in the sun. The bottom floor was arranged like a museum, with historical displays and racks of postcards. Jaime pulled Ono from his pocket and set it on the floor. The robot marched across the room as fast as it could, which was not fast at all. Still, it seemed to know where it was going. When it reached the bottom step of the staircase, it said, “Oh no!” It backed up and hit the step again. “Oh no!” And again, “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!”
Jaime scooped up the robot, and they climbed the steps. Upstairs was much different from downstairs. Instead of museum displays and postcards, the rooms up here were decorated with Victorian furniture, as if a family still lived here, a family stuck somewhere in the 1850s. The fancy parlor had pinkish-red drapes, a fireplace, gold wallpaper everywhere.
“What do you think, Ono?” Jaime said. “A little gaudy?”
“THE LAND OF KINGS,” Ono said.
“That’s where we are, all right,” Jaime said. “Do you know what the next clue is, or what?”
“LAND OF KINGS, LAND OF KINGS.”
Jaime sighed. “I’ll have to teach you some new words.”
“What if he can’t learn any new words?” Tess said, as she ran her hand across the fireplace mantel.
Theo went to the writing desk between the two windows and leafed through the ledger that was open there. Columns of handwritten figures filled the pages. Just as he was turning away from the ledger, Ono yelled, “OH NO, LAND OF KINGS, OH NO, LAND OF KINGS.”
“What’s he going on about?” Theo asked Jaime.
“No idea,” Jaime said.
“Maybe he’s saying that you’re close to the next clue, Theo,” Tess said. She was still wearing the mirrored sunglasses that Aunt Esther had given them, and it gave her an inscrutable look. As if she were an FBI agent or a spy or something. As if she were someone completely different, a girl who had never lost anything.
Theo turned back to the desk. It had a couple of ledgers on it, some books and papers on a shelf above. He put his hand on the ledger. Ono said, “LAND OF KINGS.” Theo took his hand away. Ono said, “OH NO.”
Tess took off the glasses and came to stand next to him. She shut the ledger. There were no words on the cover. She turned to the front page. On the top, someone had written, “Land of the Kings.”
“Is it this book, Ono?” Tess asked the robot.
“LAND OF KINGS, LAND OF KINGS,” the robot said.
“The clue must be in here somewhere,” Tess said. She paged through the book.
“There are a lot of numbers,” Jaime said, joining them. “Some kind of code?”
“Could be,” Theo said. “The whole book could be one elaborate cipher.”
“Well, we can’t stay here all night trying to figure it out,” Tess said. When Tess picked up the ledger and tucked it into her coveralls, the robot beeped and squealed. It almost sounded happy.
Theo was not happy. “We can’t take the ledger.”
“Sure we can,” said Tess. “We’ll borrow it.”
“We ‘borrowed’ the silver puzzle from the 2nd City Reliquary and look what happened. Now he talks. Sort of.”
“I like this robot,” said Jaime. “He’s kind of cute.”
“What I’m saying is that the ledger could be valuable.”
Tess said, “It could be. Or it could only be valuable to us. Besides, we’ll return anything we take.”
“We’re going to have to start keeping a list,” Theo grumbled. He moved the other book to the center of the desk and rearranged an inkpot and a feather pen so it didn’t seem as if anything was missing from the display.
But this was a museum, so someone would notice at some point. And when they did, who would they call? Theo closed his eyes and imagined his mother fingerprinting this whole room, only to discover that her children were the thieves. What if the 2nd City Reliquary also called the police? What if his mother got that call, too? What if she thought the three of them were some kind of artifact-stealing gang or something? What if she was forced to arrest them and put them in jail because she couldn’t appear to be playing favorites?
Tess slipped her hand in his. “Theo? Are you okay?”
Her eyes were still red from crying over Nine. He wondered if that’s what his eyes looked like, too. But then he remembered the mirrored glasses he still wore and knew she would see her own red eyes reflected there.
He squeezed her hand. He didn’t know which one of them it was for.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jaime
The twins were abnormally quiet on the bus back to their aunt’s house, not that Jaime blamed them. He’d be furious if someone had come into his house and pretended that Tyrone bit her. Tyrone wouldn’t bite anyone! Well, unless they deserved it. And some people deserved it, didn’t they?
But Nine hadn’t bitten that blond woman in the red dress. So what was her deal? Why did she look so much like the other blond woman, the one they saw at the library? Was it a uniform? A disguise? Even now, wearing his own disguise, the
cap pulled low, he felt conspicuous, watched. Stupid, because this was a New York City bus and the passengers were making it a point not to make eye contact with anyone else. Besides, what would he do if the blond woman were sitting behind him? Yell at her? Accuse her of faking or lying or spying? Tess told him that he looked twenty-five. He’d be the one to get in trouble. And then what would happen? Would Mrs. Biedermann arrest him? Have him taken away?
He slid down in his seat, trying to shrink. Which wasn’t fair. Why should he be the one to make himself smaller?
To distract himself, he rummaged inside the coveralls and pulled out his sketchbook and a pencil. He turned to a fresh page and started to sketch without thinking too much about what he was doing. Sometimes, he liked to let his hand figure out what he was drawing before his head could catch up.
Jaime had a friend named Adam whose mother was also from Trinidad, like Jaime’s mother was. Adam’s mother, Ms. Tracey, told Adam stories about the strange spirits and creatures called jumbies that lived alongside the people there, and had even written some books about them. Once, when Jaime stayed over at Adam’s house for a birthday party, Ms. Tracey turned out the lights and told all the boys there about the spirits of Trinidad. Ghosts that roam the island at night. Mermaids who can lure men to their deaths in the blue water of the sea. Douens, the souls of lost children, spirits who have no faces and their feet on backward, spirits who like to take other children into the forest where they can be lost, too.
Not one boy slept that night.
It was the best birthday party Jaime had ever been to.
Now, in his sketchbook, Jaime drew ghosts, mermaids, douens. In one sketch, a lovely woman appeared at the edge of a frothy shore. Not the superhero he usually drew, but someone taller and paler, wearing a tight dress. Her feet were bare. He turned the page and drew the woman unzipping her skin and slipping out of it headfirst. She had the face of a wild boar. She reminded him a bit of another Trini spirit Ms. Tracey had talked about, the soucouyant, a woman who made a pact with the devil so that she could shed her skin and become anything she wanted, from a wild boar to a monkey to a ball of fire. The drawing made him both scared and sad. Scared because he had to wonder if his hand knew something about the blond woman that his brain didn’t, and sad because his own mother wasn’t around to tell him scary stories, or nice ones. That Adam couldn’t stay over at his own house, call his mother “Ms. Renée,” and listen to her stories. How many stories get lost when a single person is lost?