“And, of course, I’d never, ever talk to anybody I didn’t have my eye on.”
Everybody laughed. “That’s closer to true for you than for a lot of people,” said Alma.
“Brent talks to me because he thinks he’s not a real boy and I’m not a real girl. It’s not romantic.”
“It sounds terribly romantic to me,” said Steph.
“That’s because you believe in soulmates.”
“I guess Jane Goodall wasn’t a real girl either,” said Gentian. “Define your terms,” said Becky, sitting up suddenly. Everybody groaned again.
“No, I mean it.”
“You always mean it,” said Erin.
“What I meant,” said Gentian, “was that story you told me about how she disappeared for a whole day when she was six, because somebody had told her eggs came from hens, and she didn’t know where on a hen was an opening big enough for an egg to come out, so she just sat in the henhouse and watched until a hen laid an egg, and then she knew. Most girls wouldn’t do that. Of course,” she added, and finished in chorus with Erin’s impatient, “most people wouldn’t do that.”
“Yes, exactly,” said Becky. “It’s the scientific temperament, that’s all, and most people haven’t got it.”
“What I like about that story,” said Alma, “is her mother. She didn’t yell at her, she told her she was smart.”
There was a pause, in which a number of conversations about everybody’s mother’s shortcomings hung in the air, but nobody felt obliged to repeat any of them. Gentian thought about her own mother, who valued intelligence, individuality, interest of almost any kind in almost anything. The best of the bunch, certainly. Which didn’t mean she couldn’t be terribly exasperating.
“Let’s sing rounds,” said Alma.
They did, and when they ran out of the ones they knew Alma taught them some new ones her study group was working with. Gentian’s favorites were “Rose, rose, rose, rose, will I ever see thee wed, I will marry at thy will, sir, at thy will,” even though she deplored its sentiments, and Julian of Norwich’s, which ended, “All shall be well again, I know.”
Gentian’s parents came inside again when they were all getting silly with the tune to Frère Jacques. Steph had just made them sing, “Are you eating, are you eating, Brother John, Brother John? Pancakes in the oven, pancakes in the oven, all dried up, all dried up.”
“Quite a nest of singing birds,” said Gentian’s father, hanging his coat up in the entry closet.
“And one croaking one,” said Gentian, who was not musical.
“Oh, you make a nice background sound, like the drone on a bagpipe.”
“She’s perfectly fine when she doesn’t let herself get distracted,” said Steph indignantly.
“So are we all,” said Gentian’s father. “Genny, given how cold it is, I think we’d better give everybody a ride home. You’ve got about an hour.”
Everybody protested; Gentian’s mother said, “It’s a school night, even if nobody at school cares what time you get there.”
“Let’s go up to Gentian’s room and tell ghost stories,” said Alma.
“Hey, I have to sleep there afterwards,” said Gentian.
“You can tell them down here,” said Gentian’s mother. “We ancients of days will retire to the TV room.”
“Well, and you have to live down here,” said Alma to Gentian after her parents had taken Pounce into the sunroom and shut the door. “Would you rather do something else?”
“Let’s have a seance,” said Steph.
Gentian and Becky looked at each other. The question was always whether to indulge Steph in these mundane ambitions, or not. Gentian still felt guilty for snapping earlier, and Steph was her guest, after all. She knew perfectly well that the movement of the planchette was caused by the people whose hands were resting on it, caused unconsciously or consciously depending on what anybody had in mind at the time. She had moved it herself on occasion, and she and Becky had engineered a session a few years ago so successful that Rosemary still believed they had spoken to the ghost of Elizabeth Blackwell. Becky and Gentian had intended to dissuade her of the notion that the ouija board worked at all, but Rosemary refused to believe them. The thought made Gentian a little queasy now, but she could always just not make any attempt to direct matters and see what happened.
“What do you guys think?” she said.
“I guess ghosts are better than ghost stories,” said Alma.
“Sure,” said Erin; Becky nodded.
Gentian got the board out of the cupboard beside the fireplace, patting the Scrabble box regretfully as she did so.
They cleared all the art books, photography books, comic books, Christmas catalogs, cat-food coupons, old bus passes, stray buttons, pens, crayons, home-repair books, computer manuals, scouting manuals, and one stray ice skate off the big marble coffee table, and put the board in the middle of it. It was low enough that they could all sit around it and reach the planchette easily. Gentian built the fire up and then turned most of the lights off.
Gentian had never understood how Alma and Steph could do this kind of thing. She had tried to discuss it with them once, and they had kindly informed her that it was a good thing she was not religious, because if she were she would be a fundamentalist and they would find her hard to put up with. Gentian was somewhat disappointed that they did not find atheism and skepticism hard to put up with, but on the whole it was just as well.
“All right,” said Steph when they were all settled and had determined that Erin would write down what was spelled out to them, if anything. “Shut your eyes, clear your minds, think sensible thoughts.”
Gentian smiled and tucked the smile back in before it became a laugh. Steph’s brand of mysticism was wholesome, like Steph. She caught Becky’s eye, but Becky did not look amused.
It was tricky to keep your fingertips lightly on the planchette, so it could move around the board easily; it made your arm hurt. Gentian was just going to suggest that they take a break to stretch when a log in the fire cracked and fell in a flurry of sparks, and the planchette jerked under their hands and began moving with such force that they all gasped.
“Geez, you guys,” said Gentian under her breath.
Steph was calling out letters and Erin was writing them down. Gentian concentrated on discovering who was moving the planchette; she was not even trying to move it herself. She could not make it out; the force seemed to come now from one direction, now from another, and Steph, Alma, and Becky all continued to look startled whenever it veered suddenly and headed for the next letter.
It went on for what seemed like a very long time. The room got colder and colder, and Gentian began to feel as if the walls of the house were dense and prickling with presences that could not get in. She did not like it; it did not even make sense under the hypothesis that something supernatural was moving the planchette, because in that case, something had got in.
There was a tiny, distinct crack, and the planchette broke under her fingers and showered in a handful of plastic shards over the alphabet of the ouija board. Nobody said anything; they all looked at each other. The fire had died to a dim muttering glow. Gentian stood up carefully, got the poker, stirred up the fire, and piled on more wood. While she was doing that, Erin got up and turned on every light she could find.
“Good thing that wasn’t glass,” said Alma, shaking her fingers.
“What on earth did it say?” said Becky.
Erin sat back down in the armchair and gathered up her notes. The pages rattled a little, but her voice was firm. “I think I got the hang of it after a while,” she said. “It did little pauses between words and longer ones between phrases, but sometimes it got in a hurry. Here’s how I think it’s divided up. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but you could probably publish it in Tesseract. Midday chiron.”
“What?” said Alma.
“Chiron’s a centaur,” said Gentian.
“Oh.” Alma thought. “I think my
remark stands,” she said. “But go on, Erin.”
“Dim hydra icon.”
“Ditto,” said Alma.
“A hydra’s a —”
“I know what a hydra is, Genny, I’m not a total illiterate.”
“Sorry.”
“Damn icy rid cry hid domain.”
“Wow, a verb!” said Becky.
“Monarchy did I.”
“Another one!”
“Day choir mind. Ro did my chain.”
“It rhymes,” said Becky. “It even kind of scans.”
“As I said,” said Erin. “Tesseract.”
Everybody except Steph laughed. Gentian looked at her. She was as pale as somebody so olive of complexion could get, and she had tears in her eyes. “I want to apologize,” she said. “This was a really bad idea.”
Alma put her arm around her.
“Why?” said Erin.
“None of us moved that planchette, and certainly none of us broke it. And it got so cold. Didn’t the rest of you feel anything?”
“It got cold because the fire was low,” said Gentian. “But I did feel something, something, I don’t know—”
“Crowded,” said Becky. “As if the air were full of people, you just couldn’t see them.”
“I wouldn’t mind if it were people,” said Steph, and burst into tears.
Alma patted her on the back and everybody else looked helpless. Gentian got up after a moment, went into the kitchen, poured some tea into Steph’s favorite cup with the roses, and brought it to Alma. Steph was blowing her nose by then, and she smiled when she saw the tea. “When in doubt, make tea,” she said. She took the cup from Alma and drank some. “Sorry, everybody.”
“I know what you mean,” said Gentian, “but it just didn’t take me that way.”
“It felt evil,” said Steph.
“It felt cold and dark,” said Alma.
“So’s my room when I do astronomy,” said Gentian. “And the room was cold, but the feeling wasn’t.”
“I just felt the crowding,” said Becky. “It was urgent, yes, but I don’t know about evil.”
Everybody looked at Erin.
“I was writing,” said Erin.
“I think I want to go home,” said Steph.
Gentian went and told her parents that Steph wasn’t feeling well—“Did you girls give her chocolate again?” said Gentian’s mother—and her father packed them all into the van and drove them away. Gentian patted Steph’s shoulder as they all went out the front door, but her eyes were for Becky.
“I’ll call you,” said Becky.
The door shut. Gentian turned back into the living room, where every light blazed, the fire burned hugely, and Amelia Bloomer’s straw hat lay forgotten on the hearth.
Chapter 11
Gentian often skipped morning school on a Monday, but the day after the seance she got up early, partly to try to find Mercury with the binoculars—no luck, there was a haze on the horizon—and partly because she wanted to make sure Steph was all right. Steph was at assembly, looking much as usual, though subdued, with Alma hovering over her like an anxious guardian angel. Alma had a bit of orange Tigger paint in her hair, and Steph’s hair was still frizzed and tied back. Gentian caught her afterwards in the hall and said, “Are you okay?”
“Much better,” said Steph. “I’d say we have to talk, but I don’t think you’d listen.”
“If you want to tell me not to do any more seances, I don’t think I’d object.”
“Well, that’s a start.”
Gentian made a serious effort and managed not to point out that the whole thing had been Steph’s idea. She said, “I’m sorry the party ended that way.”
“It’ll give us something to talk about when we’re old and sedate,” said Alma.
Gentian, Becky, and Erin had lunch together; Alma needed to buy her mother a birthday present and Steph’s study group was going to walk the Mississippi Mile and learn about river travel.
The three of them sat inside the Burger King—it was too cold to use the courtyard—and discussed the seance.
“Has Steph been at you yet?” asked Erin, who shared a study period with Steph in the morning.
“She said she didn’t see any use in talking to me,” said Gentian, and realized that she sounded smug.
“She thinks we really did call up an evil presence and now we need to banish it.”
“That’s not how it felt,” said Becky. “Erin, what did you feel?”
“I really was concentrating on writing stuff down, you know,” said Erin, “but I had to watch Steph, to catch what she said, and what it looked like to me was a kind of pressure from all sides, as if something was trying to get in and something else was trying to keep it out.”
“As if something were trying to keep the planchette from moving?”
“No, not exactly. I can’t describe it any better and I might have imagined it anyway.”
“I wonder what happened,” said Becky. “I know Gentian and I have faked messages before, but truly, I didn’t do anything.”
“Neither did I,” said Gentian.
“Well, I didn’t have a chance to,” said Erin.
“It’s not Alma’s style at all,” said Becky, “and Steph was scared out of her wits.”
“The Giant Ants have a powerful subconscious mind,” said Gentian.
When Gentian got home from school, her telescope was back where it belonged. Gentian flung her books on the floor and ran to it. She did not quite hug it. She picked up the sleepy, purring Maria Mitchell from off the bed and hugged her instead. Then she sat down, crunching Murr up in her lap, and looked through the telescope, before she could think. The rosy sky of the late autumn afternoon greeted her. Not a shingle or corner of the house next door obtruded itself. Gentian danced around the room with Maria Mitchell until Murr became annoyed and hissed at her. She put her down and lay across the bed, calculating.
It got dark much earlier now than it had when the telescope was taken away, but that didn’t help much because the most interesting stars rose when they rose, not because it had gotten dark, and with the buildings on the western horizon, that was still effectually at about nine in the evening. Saturn would rise in the south, where because of a park there was mostly flat open country, an hour after sunset; that was something. She had better try to get the temperature equalized in the meantime.
She turned off the radiator and opened all the windows. The wind was from the south but brisk and cold just the same. Murr leapt into the smallest window, crouched for a few minutes, and came down again, shaking her head vigorously.
“I know,” Gentian told her, piling her books on her desk with an eye to starting her homework so she could devote herself to the telescope later. “Astronomers should really have long-haired cats or live in more temperate climes. We’ll go to the desert one day. Or to the moon.”
She took a moment to unearth the electric blanket from the back of her closet, spread it on the bed, and switch it on. Murr settled down in the middle of it, looking not much mollified.
Gentian went back to the closet, extracted her fingerless gloves, put them on, and did her homework fast before the room chilled too much. Then she turned out all the lights and left. Maria Mitchell followed her and took up residence under the bathroom radiator, and Gentian went downstairs to see if anybody had cooked supper tonight.
Everybody was off somewhere. Gentian’s mother had left a note detailing who was where and when they would all be back. Her father had left a bowl of tuna salad, a bowl of hummus, and a bowl of curried rice, which interested her much more. She put together a plate and ate in the dining room with her nose in Julius Caesar, which her study group was still struggling through. English literature was not their strong point; then again, if she really needed help with English literature, she had Becky, so it didn’t much matter.
She finished Antony’s vow to let slip the dogs of war and the last of the tuna salad at the same time, and sat for a whil
e playing with leftover grains of rice and pondering the play. It was history, so she supposed it must have happened more or less like that, but it seemed a dim-witted way to go on. All these people could talk about Rome all they liked, but they clearly had personal ends in view, and yet they did not settle things personally, they dragged a lot of other people in. Antony was supposed to be so noble, such a great character, but when he wanted to avenge his friend he said that domestic fury and fierce civil strife should cumber all the parts of Italy, and blood and destruction should be so familiar that mothers would only smile to see their babies quartered, all pity choked with custom of fell deeds.
“Bah,” said Gentian, left the book lying on the table, and banged her dishes into the dishwasher. “Get a life, Antony.”
As she turned to put the leftover rice away, the note caught her eye again, and she looked to see when Junie would be home. Ten o’clock. There would be time to look in Junie’s diary and maybe to visit the teen romance and culture echoes and see if her own message had garnered any more notice, or any at all from her sister.
She went upstairs, accompanied by Pounce. Junie’s door was shut. Gentian knocked lengthily and vigorously, just in case Junie had suffered a fit of pique and decided to stay home. Nobody answered, or moved, or threw anything at the door, so she opened it and went in, turning on the overhead light as she did so. Behind her Pounce hissed, and from under the bed somebody else made a noise halfway between a scream and a growl.
Gentian shoved the bristling Pounce gently back into the hall and shut the door. Then she got Junie’s flashlight out of the drawer of the bedside table and looked under the bed. The black-and-white cat she had last seen in her father’s office opened its pink mouth and made a noise that would not have disgraced a cobra.
“Sorry, kitty,” said Gentian. She pulled a length of the bedspread over the place she had been looking, and stood up. The cat hissed again, somewhat less dreadfully. Gentian put the flashlight back and went into the sunroom to find the diary.
Juniper’s entries were somewhat hurried and erratic. She did write almost four pages about her date with the person from the chat echo, but to Gentian’s disappointment she referred to him throughout as Mr. X. Juniper was breathlessly taken with how good-looking he was, and erudite, and how gentlemanly and courtly. They had gone to a coffeehouse, eaten soup and sandwiches and scones, and heard a local folk band play. Then they had walked home slowly in the moonlight. Junie rhapsodized about the moonlight and the leaves and the wind for several, paragraphs. They had talked about The Princess and Curdie and about other people on the chat echo, and about how some of the conversations were going. From a couple of amusing and snarky remarks of Mr. X’s recorded verbatim by Juniper, Gentian deduced that Juniper’s date was not Mutant Boy or Hot Dud. It really must be somebody who didn’t post many messages but read them all; that would demonstrate his good sense, certainly.