“You describe it boringly,” Eva muttered as the eight ball ran over one of Megan’s green vapor people.
“Eva!” Bloom barked at her so loudly that Tala woke up for a second.
Annie made eye contact with Jamie and then turned to SalGoud. “It’s not boring.”
The boy cleared his throat again nervously and paced away before he began talking again. “Magical races lived in constant fear of being found out and tortured or killed. They needed somewhere safe, somewhere new, somewhere they could live together.”
“Somewhere they could hide,” Megan interrupted as all the magical tiny people scurried into the holes at the corners and sides of the pool table and popped in one by one, disappearing.
“That’s right,” SalGoud continued. “Thomas Fylbrigg arrived here in 1602 with a group of magics who had been traveling through the new world for weeks, searching for the perfect place to settle, a place that could be hidden and remote, but also close to the growing communities of settlers. There are mountains behind us and a cove in front of us, with forests on all sides. It was the perfect place. After six months, the magical community sent John Rafeal to lead the settlement.”
Megan shuddered and stepped closer to Bloom. In the center of the table, a man of green vapor formed, standing there in Puritan clothes, scowling.
“Fylbrigg was given the rights to build a congregation and house of worship. Rafeal became mayor. Fylbrigg continued with his shipbuilding. He was a shipbuilder and merchant. Both men were Stoppers. Rafeal built the first mansion upon a hill and the library. Fylbrigg built the town’s meeting house and tower. The two combined powers to safeguard the town from interlopers, casting a protection spell on an item—the garden gnome—which must be within the town borders to work.”
“And now the gnome is gone,” Megan said. She leaned the upper part of her back against the wall. Her head was next to a rotating dartboard. “And now we are all in danger.”
“In danger of what?” Annie asked. Her voice was tiny. It sounded how Jamie felt.
Megan didn’t respond for some reason.
“What danger?” Jamie said.
“The biggest danger of all,” Megan answered him. “Death. Destruction. For all of this to just be—poof!—gone.”
Everything on the pool table vanished: the green man, the balls, even the pool sticks.
The room was silent.
“But she’s supposed to save us.” Megan pointed at Annie and laughed scornfully. “So, basically, yeah, we’re doomed.”
16
The Woman in White
“Why?” Annie demanded. “Why am I supposed to save you? What does that even mean?”
Megan’s grin grew triumphant. “How stupid is she? How can she not even know?”
“Annie’s not stupid,” Bloom interrupted and moved to stand in front of her.
“Yeah, and ‘stupid’ is a hate word. I should know. People who hate me say it all the time.” Eva moved next to Bloom, and Annie couldn’t see past either of them.
“Children!” Miss Cornelia’s voice suddenly echoed throughout the game room. “I cannot believe you are all still lollygagging about, although I cannot say I blame you. But these are treacherous times indeed. Now off to bed, all of you. SalGoud, Eva, and Megan: Ned will accompany you back to your homes. Bloom, Annie, and Jamie: off to bed now.”
There was no arguing with that sort of voice. They scurried off to their bedrooms. Annie and Jamie stood in the hallway for a moment together, darkness hushing their voices.
“Do you like it here?” Annie asked quickly. She was worried about lollygagging more and breaking other, unknown rules.
Jamie glanced up at her. “Yeah … it’s … it’s …”
“Weird?” Annie offered.
“Yeah. But it feels safer than home.”
Annie squinted through the darkness. Her heart ached for Jamie. His voice was so sad.
“But at least I sort of had a home,” he added. “You’ve just bounced around everywhere, right?”
Annie nodded and then realized he probably couldn’t see her because it was so dark. “Yeah.”
“I think it would stink,” he said slowly, as if afraid to say the wrong thing, “to never feel wanted, but that’s not because you aren’t special, Annie. It’s just that they couldn’t see how special you are.”
Annie’s heart seemed to turn into a big ache. Tears edged to her eyes. She would not cry. She would … not … cry …
Jamie’s hand reached out through the darkness and grabbed hers. For a moment they didn’t say anything. The world felt so still around them.
Annie swallowed hard and then said, “I think it must have been really hard always worrying about being eaten.”
“Well, I didn’t know, you know, until recently.”
“But they were mean …”
“Yeah. They were mean.”
Annie felt like that was a pretty massive understatement. She squeezed his hand and then let go, grabbing for the handle of her door, fumbling around for it in the darkness. She wished someone had turned on a light switch.
When she thought about it, she and Jamie were so alike in so many ways. They both were never loved, not really. But they were also so different. Jamie was trapped in his house, in that one place his whole life, paralyzed by fear, taught to be powerless, and Annie—her brain hurt from thinking so hard about this—had been trapped by circumstances, instability, never having roots in one place, always afraid to even like a place, because she never stayed, never stayed anywhere long, not really.
“I want to stay here,” she said to Jamie as she twisted the cold doorknob. “I want us to both stay here and live happily ever after.”
“Happily ever after.”
She laughed. “I know. Corny.”
“No,” Jamie said. “I like it. I like it. It’s good.”
After seeing all the fantastic stuff downstairs, Annie wasn’t at all surprised when she opened the door to her bedroom. The canopied bed had large flowers growing all around its frame. The ceiling resembled the night sky with all its constellations. On the ceiling’s edge, a small painted dragon with two riders on its back seemed to move. Miss Cornelia fluttered in behind her, Tala at her heels.
“Do you like it?” Miss Cornelia asked as Annie bounced on the bed.
“It’s the nicest room I have ever seen. Ever!” Annie announced, heart thudding a million times a minute. “Thank you so much for letting me stay here. Do I have to share it?”
“Not even with the pixies.” Miss Cornelia laughed.
“And Tala?” Annie rubbed the dog’s soft side. He leaned against her, sighing, and then flopped down onto the floor, resting his chin on Annie’s foot.
“Tala stays with you. Aurora is your home now if you want it to be,” Miss Cornelia said softly. “It’s a place of refuge for those who don’t quite fit in anywhere else and no longer want to be where they don’t fit.”
Annie sighed. She knew what that was about. She had never fit in anywhere, not ever. Annie Nobody. She’s so weird. Annie Nobody, what a loser.
As if she could hear Annie’s thoughts, Miss Cornelia said, “There’s nothing wrong with not fitting in, Annie. Sometimes not fitting in is exceptionally good. In books, heroes never fit in.”
“Life is not a book.” Annie picked up a pillow and hugged it to her. Often she wished it were, because then she would have a chance at a happy ending.
Miss Cornelia’s eyes twinkled. “Quite true. Sometimes it’s better.”
Above them, stars shot across Annie’s ceiling.
“I am extremely excited that you’re here with us, Annie.” Miss Cornelia snapped her fingers, and a glass of warm milk appeared on the table. Annie gasped.
“Oh, it’s nothing much, really.” Miss Cornelia waved her hand, and then her tone grew serious. “Annie, you have things you’re meant to do for us. You have a place here, and we won’t let anything horrific ever happen to you again.”
A place. A
nnie had always wanted a place to belong. Heart warm and full of acceptance, Annie patted Tala, who began to snore. His feet twitched as he dreamed.
“He’s chasing trolls.” Miss Cornelia wiggled her eyebrows at Annie, then stroked the dog’s fur while he slept. “He does that every night, poor thing. Yes … Well … I hope you’ll be happy here with us, Annie.”
Annie beamed. She couldn’t stop herself. Putting the pillow back down, she leaned across the little table and hugged Miss Cornelia, who felt like a mixture of softness and bones beneath all of her sweaters.
“I’ve never been so happy. Never. Jamie and I, well, we’ve decided to stay,” Annie said and then blushed. She wasn’t the type of girl who hugged people randomly anymore. She used to when she was young, but there had been so many people who didn’t hug her back that it made her scared to hug at all. Nothing felt worse than wrapping her arms around someone and not being hugged in return. But Miss Cornelia, no matter how old she was or how peculiar her house, was not one of those people. She always hugged back.
“Wonderful news,” Miss Cornelia said quietly in a rush of breath that Annie didn’t realize she had been holding.
Miss Cornelia gave Annie a long look before showing her a nightstand drawer where she could store the phurba, and how to turn the lights off and on. You had to say “dawn” or “dusk” or “midday” to get the brightness you wanted. Then she spoke a quick good night and briskly left the room, all business, skirts swirling around her feet, pixies darting around her hair.
Annie swallowed hard, too overcome with happiness to actually get any words out. Except for losing her drawing pastels, life was so amazingly excellent.
She sighed and gazed across the room at a lilac bookcase that rose from the floor in a swirling ascent to the ceiling. The bookcase frame was made up of a series of boxes, each filled with books, and the pattern twisted as the frame went up.
“It’s like a staircase,” Annie said out loud, tiptoeing over to touch Dwarf Girls Versus the Dragon.
“Me, first!” something shouted from the top of the bookcase by the ceiling.
“Me!” said another voice.
“Me!”
“No, me!”
“I long to be read. Me!”
“Please choose me.”
“Me!”
The books were talking! Some were loud. Some were much quieter. Some were grumbly. Some sort of sang.
“I would very much like to be read,” one said primly.
Annie liked that the book was polite. She pulled it out from the box, which was at eye level. It was a slim volume, Magic Mistakes by Alia Aquarius.
“There,” Annie said.
“Thank you,” the book whispered and then went still and quiet in Annie’s hands.
The rest of the books seemed to sigh in a disappointed way.
Annie reassured them, “I am a really fast reader so I’ll get to all of you in no time. Thank you so much for wanting to be read.”
She climbed under her fluffy covers and read Magic Mistakes. Once she’d made it to the final page, she shut it, but still couldn’t sleep. People kept mentioning Stoppers. She was supposed to be one. Miss Cornelia was one. She needed to figure out exactly what Stoppers were, and the best way to find things out was always a book. She searched her brain trying to remember what book Eva had mentioned when they were on the snowmobile. The Magical Encyclopedia of the Fae? Was that it?
She cleared her throat and whispered into the room, “Excuse me. Books? Um, do any of you have any factual information about the nature of Stoppers?”
There was a massive rustling of pages and covers and then a silence. Into the silence came a deep voice with a Malian accent. “I am here. I do.”
A thick book of yellowing pages floated from the shelves and landed in her hand.
“Page twenty-two,” it said, opening there, revealing letters and images that Annie had never seen before. “It is Arabic. I will translate as you read.”
As Annie stared at the page, the letters re-formed to words she was familiar with. The Stopper is a magical human, capable of great power. Sorrow and overuse of magic makes them weak. To understand the Stopper …
“Thank you,” Annie whispered, and then read about herself until she drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, Annie woke with a gasp, rubbing her eyes and snuggling against her pillow. I wonder what Gramma Doris is cook—
“Hello.”
Annie shrieked and clutched her blankets.
A woman in a white wedding dress floated above her bed. Every part of the woman was see-through, except for the engagement ring on her finger, which glowed and shot off rainbows when the light from the sun that now appeared in the ceiling hit it just right. The woman rubbed her ring with a vanishing hand.
“Yes, it’s pretty, isn’t it? The Captain gave it to me before he went out to sea.” The woman’s voice floated about her, and the words caught on their own resonance and clung there, making her sound like a piano whose foot pedal has been pressed down and all the notes have fallen into each other, echoing.
She reached her hand out toward Annie.
“Would you like to touch it?”
“No … no, thank you.” Annie started to pull the covers over her head and thought better of it. She needed to be brave. She wasn’t going to disappoint everybody already.
Annie hauled the covers off but then lost her courage completely. She was speaking to a ghost. A ghost!
She squished her eyes shut tight and pushed her back against the bed’s headboard. The invisible hand brushed her hair, she thought, or at least something happened to the hairs on the tippy-top of her head because they now stood on end as if electricity had shot through them, a terribly cold sort of electricity.
“No, no. Mustn’t be scared. We’re all friends here,” the ghost said. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”
Annie peeked open one eye. She could see right through the misty-white woman and across the room at Tala. His back nestled against the shut door and the wall. He snored. His feet ran around in midair, caught in some doggy dream.
The ghost put her engagement ring in front of Annie’s face again, showing it off.
“I—I—I—”
“Don’t know what’s happening?” The lady laughed. It sounded like sleigh bells. “Of course you don’t. You were gone so long, how could you know much of anything? I can’t believe the time it took to find you, and you were right under everyone’s noses.”
“Um …” Annie pulled her knees to her chest. The nightstand clock read eight fifteen. She’d slept late. Maybe she was still sleeping. She could be. In Aurora, it seemed, anything was possible. She cleared her throat.
The woman hovered a good three inches off the floor, twirling around like a little girl until her skirts billowed out. She admired her twisting garments. “It’s a lovely, lovely dress, isn’t it? I couldn’t bear to part with it. It’s the only one I wear now, you know. Despite what he did.”
Annie gulped. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are.”
“Who I am?” The ghost stopped her twirling and came right up to Annie, nose to nose. “Who I am? You don’t know!”
The woman’s lower lip trembled as if she might cry. Annie felt the same way. She shirked away. The tip of her nose was ice cold now, just like the ghost’s.
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t,” she said. “No offense or anything. I don’t know a lot of things. I’m sorry.”
The ghost flitted to the window and moved the curtain so the natural sunlight came into the room. Annie wondered for a moment how she could do that with hands that weren’t really there. The lady seemed so forlorn that Annie couldn’t help but go to her. She knew how it felt to be horribly sad and lonely. It felt like you were the least loved person in the universe.
She stood by the ghost for a moment but wasn’t quite sure how to comfort her. She couldn’t pat her on the back or put her arm around the shoulders of something that wasn’t really there. Could s
he? From the very back portion of her brain something bubbled forward, and suddenly she knew.
“You’re the Woman in White,” Annie said slowly. She tried to make it sound like a title a queen would have: the Woman in White.
The ghost did a happy little jig, lifting up her skirts, prancing her feet about in midair while her upper torso remained straight and rigid. “That’s right! That’s right! You remember!”
Annie reached out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“And you, too. How do you do? I’m fine, thank you. Fine now. Quite fine.”
The ghost’s hand in hers felt like a cool can of soda on a summer’s day—startling but in a good, crisp way. It was solid for a moment and then gone.
“I’m Annie.”
“I know that. Of course I know. And it’s time you start your life, wouldn’t you say, Miss Annie? Time to begin. Mine’s over, thank goodness, but yours is just on the cusp.”
Annie bit her lip. It had been a confusing twenty-four hours, and she wasn’t completely sure what to expect next.
“Begin what?”
The Woman in White rolled her eyes. “I am no good at questions. No good at all. I’m supposed to tell you that Miss Cornelia is holding a Council meeting at town hall and must not be disturbed for a bit. She gave me an apple for you.”
Annie twisted her hands together and her shoulders sank. She’d probably done something wrong during dinner, or maybe Miss Cornelia had realized how un-special Annie was. She knew it would happen. It always happened. But so soon?
Annie closed her eyes. Her chest shook as she breathed in. She wanted so badly to stay, to be hugged again, to sleep in a warm bed in a house full of magic. She wanted so badly to be loved.
“Now where is that apple?” the Woman in White said, not noticing Annie’s distress. “Oh, yes, here it is.”
The apple appeared out of midair.
“And a banana. We didn’t know which you would prefer,” the ghost said.