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One morning, while I was making breakfast, I had a sense of something's being wrong in the house. When I went to the barn, the Colonel wasn't there. Thinking that he might just have stepped out a moment, I called him and searched the grounds around the barn; then I recalled what was wrong. In my sleep, I hadn't heard his footsteps go downstairs from his bedroom.
I found him lying in bed. As I sank to my knees and let out a long, wordless moan, I had an irrelevant thought: A man like him shouldn't die in bed.
I recalled his telling me to call Dr. Ventnor before I did anything else, but I was unready to act on that order. Although the Colonel was cold, I thought that, maybe this time, I'd come soon enough to save a loved one. Maybe, my gift had grown since I'd tried to recall Mom.
I took the Colonel's left hand in my left and lay my right on his forehead. I sent my crystal-shaping gift into him --
-- and stopped, too stunned for words. I'd healed Dala and Kuma, and I'd tried to revive Mom. I knew the feel both of Tan and of earth-human.
The Colonel had been neither.
Filled with grief mingled with bewilderment, I called Dr. Ventnor at his home. When I heard his voice, I said, "Dr. Ventnor, this is Belle. I'm calling with bad news. The Colonel died in his sleep sometime last night. He --"
Dr. Ventnor broke in with words that made a kind of sense to me under the circumstances. "Are you alone, Belle?"
"Yes, Doctor. I --"
He went on with words that made no sense to me. "Listen carefully, Belle. The combination to the Colonel's safe is right thirty-two, left ten, right twenty-seven." He repeated the combination. "In the safe's top compartment is a cell phone decorated with an American flag. Speed-dial one on it."
As I gaped, Dr. Ventnor hung up. Hating myself for irreverence, I began to giggle. This is more like what the Colonel's death should be, I thought.
It was the work of a moment to go to the safe, open it, and press star one on the phone. Dr. Ventnor's voice answered. "Hello, Belle, I'm sorry for your --"
"This is a secure line, I take it."
"Yes, Belle. The Colonel's body will need special handling --"
"Because he isn't human, and we don't dare let him be autopsied?"
Long silence came from the phone's far end. "Did he tell you so before he died?"
"After." I told Dr. Ventnor what my crystal-shaping gift had shown me of the Colonel.
"I should've known that your gift would tell you his nature. Your knowing it simplifies things. You must delay the finding of the Colonel's body till I get there. Dress him for a walk in the woods, hide him there, and call your neighbors and ask them whether they've seen him. Take your secure phone with you while you're searching the woods. I'll call Camille and ask her to meet me secretly just outside Paducah. The two of us will call you when we're ready to deal with the Colonel. Have you understood me?"
"Dress, hide, call, search."
"Good. I'm sorry, Belle, for our having to do things oddly. Although you can't yet know why, I grieve for the Colonel as deeply as you grieve. Both of us must hold in our grief awhile, till we can safely deal with it. I'll call you back when Camille and I have reached Paducah."
Thus, I did the most ghoulish thing that I've done in my short life so far: I dressed my dead adoptive father for a walk in the woods and hid him where only a skilled woodsman could find him. I doubt that Miss Cindy would approve of how I used my Girl Scout training.
Afterwards, I called my neighbors and told them of my fear that the Colonel had wandered off. I felt ghoulish again as some of them assured me of his safe return, and hypocritical accepting sympathy and offers of help. The sympathy, though, wasn't misplaced, just misdirected.
Several, including Kendra and Millie, volunteered to help look for him. I sent my two old friends where they'd have no chance to find him. As Girl Scouts, they knew the woods well. I didn't want them to have a bad memory.
At one point, I had to go off to cry. Thinking of a private place where I hadn't been for years, I ran there.
The shelter that held my crystal-ship was overgrown with shrubs and lianas. The ship, though, gleamed in deep gloom as if time had not passed for it. It was somehow both larger and smaller than I'd recalled it was. Its transparent hull was flawless, but the crystals within still bore the webwork of cracks that had stilled their function.
Kneeling by the ship, I lay my head on my crossed arms atop its hull and wept. With my tears, my crystal-shaping gift must've flowed out of me, for I felt one of the crystals within the ship change as crystals changed when I made them into light-crystals and heat-crystals. A dry, quiet voice spoke in my head. Orders?
My heart pounded within me. What orders could I give a ship that'd never again fly?
Or would it? Run an internal diagnostic of the extent of your damage and go to standby till further notice.
Understood.
I felt the ship hum softly as I backed away from it into daylight. So far the day was the second strangest through which I'd lived. It'd just get stranger.
Towards dark, Dr. Ventnor called me from a motel just outside Paducah. Kuma, he told me, was with him.
"You can arrange for the body to be found now, Belle. In view of what's going to happen, it'd be best for you not to find the body yourself. As the Colonel's death occurred under unknown circumstances, his body will likely be taken to a coroner's office. As soon as you learn which one, call me and let me know."
Feeling ghoulish again, I moved the Colonel's body and put it into the path of a hunter who'd boasted of his experience as a medical corpsman in the Army. As things turned out, I was cruel to him. He was less brave over the Colonel's death than he'd been over deaths of which he'd told.
Still, he set in motion what had to be. I was nowhere near the body when it was found, or when police officers brought me news of its being found. The officers were kind to me, as were my friends and neighbors who tried to console me. I felt like a hypocrite, receiving their condolences. The death was real; the circumstances around it, anything but.
As soon as I learned where the Colonel's body would be taken, I called Dr. Ventnor. He made me repeat what I'd told him; then he was silent a long moment.
"Listen, Belle, you can't help Camille and me keep the Colonel's and your secret. Stay at the house and have friends with you who can, if need be, testify to where you were. Camille and I are going to substitute a body for the Colonel's. Once his body is secure, I'll show up at your house, as I have a public role, as well as my private one, to play in this matter. After the public funeral, you and I can have a private service appropriate for who he was."
Like much that I was hearing, Dr. Ventnor's words made scant sense to me, but I trusted him and Kuma. Thus, I stayed at the house and received calls and visits of consolation, along with food. Kendra and Millie came to keep me company and were present when a long-faced policeman showed up.
"Miss Gordon, there's been an accident with your father's body. There was an explosion and fire at the coroner's. Your father's body was badly burned."
I'll omit stressful details of how the undertaker came by and told me that my father's service would have to be closed casket. An explosion and fire sounded like Kuma's work. I guessed that some John Doe had been substituted for the Colonel. Just then, my mind was working poorly.
As friends and neighbors were stressing me out with arrangements for a closed-casket funeral and for "what'll become of poor, little Belle," Dr. Ventnor showed up at my front door. As I led him into the common room, all eyes got big at him. Millie, I suspect, spoke for everyone else when she asked him, "Are you the Colonel's brother?"
I had to choke back both laughter and tears at recalling my having asked Dr. Ventnor the same question.
He gave her his best professional smile. "No, I'm the specialist to whom he and Mrs. Gordon took Belle. Her parents arranged for me to become her legal guardian if they died. I'm here to ensure that Belle can stay to do her last year of high school here."
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When Dr. Ventnor had said his piece, everyone took to him at once, as he'd solved the problem of "poor, little Belle." He was a tower of strength to me through the service in the church and the service at the graveside.
As veterans were folding a flag and firing a salute there, my mind, which had been fuzzy, clicked into gear. How, if the Colonel's body had to be stolen to prevent its being autopsied, had he ever had a distinguished military career?
I'll have many questions for Dr. Ventnor after the funeral, I thought.
Before everyone dispersed, there was a reception at the house now mine. Amid the reception, Dr. Ventnor said to my friends and neighbors, "I'm taking Belle to Columbus with me a few days. I want to see how this stressful experience has affected her health. Besides, a change of scene will do her good."
A change of scene, I thought, will give me a chance to ask you those questions.