“So if we find anything to eat in the kitchen, we can replace it. And the coffee.”
“Right. Or I could take you out to breakfast.”
Matt shook her head. “That could get complicated. There’s, like, fourteen people here, and I bet a lot of them left home without their wallets.”
“There’s always plastic. But …” Deirdre leaned close to Matt and whispered, “Most of them are still asleep. If we leave now …”
“Woof!” The Pekingese bounced up to them and sat on the floor, stared up with bulging dark eyes.
“Terry said that spell would wear off after half an hour,” Matt muttered.
One of the other people lying on a couch sat up. The glowing man, Fern, but he wasn’t glowing this morning; he just looked ice-pale, his wealth of hair the opaque white of ivory rather than blond, his skin as pale as milk. His eyes were yellow-orange as owl’s eyes. “He likes that shape,” he murmured. “I, too, am hungry.”
“I’ll go see what I can find.” Matt went into the kitchen and consulted with the house. It told her that it had some supplies, but nothing perishable. A five-pound can of coffee in the fridge; sugar, spices, tea, hot chocolate in foil packets.
—My family always shops before they come to me. They haven’t visited in months.—
—Oh, well. Thanks for helping, and thanks for the hospitality.—
—I like having people inside me.—
Matt went back to the living room. “Drinks is what we’ve got here,” she told the others. She glanced over the couches. The only person still lying down was Cross. Fern had folded his own shimmering blanket, and the blanket on the couch where the Pwca probably slept, and Beth had wrapped hers around her shoulders. Deirdre sat beside Beth on the conch. “Guess we should either go shopping or go out for breakfast.”
Beth rose and went to Cross. She leaned down and touched his shoulder. “Dominic?” she said gently.
Fern and the Pwca drew back.
Cross opened his eyes. Matt joined Beth and looked down at Cross. He blinked. “Who? Where?”
“Do you want to sleep some more?” Beth asked.
“Sleep,” he said. He closed his eyes and turned on his side, his face away from them.
Beth straightened his blanket so it covered his shoulders, then stood. She turned to the others. “I guess he’s not interested in breakfast yet. So did we all sleep in our clothes?”
Everyone looked down at themselves. “I got undressed,” Deirdre said. “But I didn’t have anything clean to change into.”
“I can fix that.” Tasha came into the room from the staircase to the lower floor. “Everybody, spread your feet apart, hold out your arms, close your eyes, and stand still for a minute.”
“What the hell,” said Deirdre, and followed instructions.
Matt did too. Warm wind wrapped around her, curling around her arms and legs. It smelled like spring. She heard wind moving through the room.—Edmund?—she thought.
—What?—
—Tasha’s cleaning our clothes. We’re going out for breakfast. Want to come?—
—Still too sleepy,—he thought.
—Okay.—
“Done,” Tasha said. “You can open your eyes now.”
Matt looked down at her clothes. All the creases, wrinkles, and dirt were gone. She lifted her arm and sniffed near her armpit. A fresh smell, like poplars leafing out. “Wow. Totally cool, Tasha. Thanks.”
She glanced around. Fern and Beth both wore green dress-things that covered almost their entire bodies, and their thick, wild hair flowed free around their shoulders. Fern’s kimono-like robe had jewelry banding the more flowing parts, and was belted at the waist with gold mesh; Beth’s gown looked like a big comfortable muumuu patterned with different shapes and colors of leaves. She had draped the bright turquoise blanket around her shoulders like a shawl.
Tasha wore a yellow shirt that looked stylish enough to belong to Terry and probably did, black stirrup pants, and toe shoes. Dee had on her same sweatshirt and jeans, and Matt was wearing her everyday clothes, jeans and a flannel shirt over a long-underwear top and briefs. Oh, and riding boots. The Pwca wore fur. Nobody but Dee looked normal, but everybody looked clean.
Everybody else thanked Tasha.
“You’re welcome. Can I come with you?”
“Of course,” said Beth.
As they left the house, Deirdre helped Fern braid his hair. “It might be good if we could lower the weirdness quotient a couple notches,” she muttered, “though, I dunno. There’s no dress code on the coast. They’ll just think you guys are from California. Where are we going?”
“Catch of the Day,” said Matt. “They might not let Pwca in.”
“Woof!”
“Right,” said Deirdre. “We’ll just say he’s starving, and I’ll hold him up, and they’ll see how cute he is. I bet that’ll work. Fern, you have a hair tie?” She had braided his hair into a single braid as thick as her arm that flowed down his back to his knees. She held the end up in front of him. He grasped it for a moment and let go; a ring of sapphires circled the end and kept it from unraveling.
“Fern, now that you’re free, can you get home from here?” Matt asked.
“Home? I’m not ready to go home. I still have exploring to do.” He smiled. “I just have to be more careful whom I talk to. For now, I want to go to the desert with Deirdre.”
“What?” said Deirdre. “News to me.”
Fern’s braid flipped forward and wrapped around Deirdre’s wrist. “Have you not been speaking to me, inviting me? Maybe this is a language problem,” he said.
She stared down at the braid around her wrist, then frowned up at him. “You talk with your hair?”
“Sometimes.” The braid unwound from her wrist, flowed up over her shoulder to wrap around her own braid, then let go. “What you just did is like a marriage proposal where I come from.”
“Whoa, Buster, it totally means nothing around here!”
“I apologize. Do you want me not to follow you home?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Matt walked down the street with the sun on her back, smiling at the ocean.
after breakfast, they went to a Circle K minimart. Deirdre bought two dozen assorted Danishes, two boxes of cereal, three quarts of milk, some prepackaged filters with coffee grounds in them, butter, two dozen eggs, two loaves of bread, some bananas, and a box of sugar.
At the house, everyone else was awake. They fell on the food and made most of it disappear.
After breakfast, Galen came to Terry. “Please,” he said. “Will you help me now?”
“Let’s give it a shot. Everybody who’s interested, let’s go out on the balcony,” Terry said.
Edmund, Matt, and Tasha followed Terry and Galen outside.
Galen pulled the silk-wrapped crystal heart from his pocket. “After all, I found I was not comfortable without it,” he said in his flat, considering voice. “When I left it with you, that was the first time since it was made that I let it out of my hands.”
“Galen, is that guy Cross still your master?” Matt asked.
The boy glanced up at her. “Tasha says he isn’t. I can’t work it out, myself. I asked him for two things when I apprenticed myself to him: that the children would be taken care of and wouldn’t feel hunger, cold, or shame, and that he wouldn’t ask more from me than I could manage. In exchange I promised to bind myself to him, learn what he taught, give what he asked, and follow his instructions.” Gently he unwrapped the silk around the heart, cradled the crystal in both hands. “Here they are, safe from hunger, cold, and shame. I have managed everything he asked. How can I break these bonds?”
“Hunger,” Matt said. “Hunger? They just said safe and warm.”
Galen leaned toward her. “They said?”
“I asked them how to get them out of there. They said, ‘Where’s Galen?’ They said they were stuck inside this heart forever so they’d be safe and warm, and you gave your heart to
make it happen. They didn’t say anything about hunger.”
“You can speak to them?”
“Yes. There’s more than one kind of hunger,” Matt said.
“That’s it, Matt,” Tasha said, her voice vibrant. “Ask the children if they’re hungry.”
“What are their names?”
“Basil and Lexa,” Galen said.
—Basil? Lexa?—
—Galen! Galen? Who’s talking to us?—
—My name is Matt. I need to know if you’re hungry for anything.—
—We don’t need food.—
—What about other things? Wind on your face? Stars in the sky? Road underfoot, someone to talk with, the taste of chocolate, crickets, fireflies?—
—Fireflies,—moaned the girl.
—Mother,—cried the boy.
—Sunsets.—
—Carousels. Cotton candy. Stone lions in front of the library. Steam coming up from the vents on the street when it’s snowing.—
—Books.—
—School!—
—Someone to hold my hand.—
“They’re hungry for all kinds of things,” Matt said, and repeated what the children longed for.
“I told you the words were broken,” Tasha said.
“Now I understand.” Galen stood up straight, shook his shoulders. “My apprenticeship is over, and Dominic Cross is no longer my master. There were two bargains struck, though. The first was the one that made Cross my master, and that was between us. The second was the one I made with Monument. I gave him my heart so that the children would be safe forever.’”
“Does this Monument guy have anything to do with the fact that you change personalities when you touch statues?” Terry asked.
“Yes. He lets me feel my heart when I touch shaped stone. It’s a strange sensation. I used to dislike it; it’s much easier to live without that pain. But I keep going back to it.”
Matt dug down into a pocket and unearthed the small stone monk she had taken from Tasha’s room ten years before. She held it out to Galen.
He hesitated. Then he took the monk from her. His face lit up. “Yes,” he said, his voice alive.
“We couldn’t figure out how to open the heart,” Terry said.
“My master built it. He built strong spells into it. Monument put the children inside.” Galen sounded completely different. Emotion shaped his voice.
“Is Monument in this rock? Let’s ask Monument how to get them out,” Matt said. She touched the monk in Galen’s hand.
—Monument?—
—Matt?—
She jerked her hand off the stone. How did Galen’s god know her name?
Galen stared at her, eyebrows almost to his hairline. “What are you doing?”
“Talking, just talking.” Matt edged her hand forward and touched the monk again.
—Monument? You’re in my monk?—
—Matt, I am in all shaped stone. We have spoken many times.—
She jerked her hand away again, sucked breath in through her teeth. A third time she reached out to touch the stone monk.—But I always thought I was talking to the things. The stone bench, the street, the car. Are you in cars too? Have I always only been talking to you?—
—No. Of course, you are talking to beings. I am the spirit beyond the beings, and I found and adopted you long ago.—
“Matt, are you all right?” Edmund asked.
Her breathing deepened. She looked up, unseeing. She stared into the past, to the morning she woke up and heard what the park bench she had slept on said to her. That day her relationship with the world changed. She found caring friends everywhere: not human, but in many ways better than human. That day she also found her dream-eyes.
“Matt!” Edmund cupped her face in his hands. “Are you all right?”
She blinked and looked up at him, then smiled as wide as she could. “Oh yeah. I’m good. I think I can work this out now.”
—Monument,—she thought.
—Matt.—
—Thank you for everything.—
—You are welcome in all ways.
—You’re the best parent I ever had.
—You are a wonderful child.—
For a moment she stood and thought about that. Then she thought,—What about this Galen guy? What do you need with his heart?—
—I am keeping it safe for him. Does he want it back now?—
—He wants it back, and he wants the children out of the glass heart. Is that something we can do?—
—If I give him his heart back, our bargain is over.—
She thought about that for a little while too. “Galen, if Monument gives you back your heart, then I think the kids will come out of the crystal heart. Is that what you want?”
“Yes. Yes!”
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
—Let’s do it—
Wind picked up on the deck. Something gathered beside them, gray particles swirling out of the air, collecting into a shape, coalescing slowly until something square and stone and huge stood beside them. The porch groaned under its weight. It smelled of earth and dust, and radiated age. Its face looked human. Its eyes were blank mother-of-pearl almonds. It had the tusks of a boar.
It reached out to Galen, put its fist against his chest, then pushed farther. Its hand vanished inside Galen. After a moment it pulled its hand out again, open now.
Wind rose again and weathered the statue away. Before it vanished completely, it touched Matt’s cheek. Warmth streaked through her. She turned her head and kissed the last tatters of stone.
A crystal crack rang out. The heart in Galen’s hand shattered. Twin streams of smoke rose from it, ghosted a little ways away, then spun above the porch. Two children formed from the smoke, dressed in beautiful antique clothes.
“Ooo, Galen, I’m going to kill you!” yelled the girl.
“How could you?” the boy cried. “Don’t you ever do that to us again!” They rushed Galen, pummeling his stomach and his back, and he just gasped and laughed.
He dropped the little monk statue, and Matt caught it and pocketed it.
Then Galen was crying. He stooped and put his arms around the children. They punched him a couple times, then subsided, pressed their faces against his. “Now we can start over,” he said, his voice thick and light with tears.
later in the day, Nathan, Beth, Suki, Edmund, Deirdre, Lia, and Matt walked back up Lee Street to where the haunted house used to stand.
The yard felt dead. The blackberry bushes were static.
Suki’s furniture was where they had left it, warded by Terry so that dew hadn’t even touched it.
The house looked like a skeleton; its boards had contracted, withered, twisted. As they stood watching it, a breeze came up and rattled more shingles loose.
“I don’t think it’s going to come alive again,” Beth said. “Now it’s just a hazard.”
“Shall I—shall I make it a pyre?” Lia asked.
“Maybe that would be best. It’s just a shed skin. Not safe for children or anyone to go near.”
Lia held her hands out, pointed fingers in the air, and spun herself a fiddle out of fire, then a bow.
“Wait,” said Suki. “What happens when Nathan’s twenty-four hours are up tonight? What if he has to come back here? How can he come back to a burned-out shell?”
“What’s there to worry about?” Nathan said. “Weather won’t bother me. Why should I care if I have a house or not?”
“When this house is gone, we can build another,” said Beth. “When Nathan’s twenty-four hours are gone, we can have another séance. We’ll be all right, my daughter. Now, play me a grand dirge, child.”
Matt ran back to the street, leaned against a telephone pole, asked the phone line not to let the neighbors call 911 just then.
Lia lifted her bow and struck a symphony full of the joyous cries of well-fed fire out of her violin. The house burned, and it burned well.
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Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Past the Size of Dreaming
Past the Size of Dreaming Page 29