All through the meal, Jaide ran the details of the plan over and over in her mind to make sure she knew exactly what she had to do. One of the reasons she wasn’t more excited about passing the Examination, besides being so tired, was that Jack was still missing, and would be until she rescued him. But behind that, there was another reason, a question boiling inside her that simply had to be asked.
“Grandma,” she finally said, “what’s the Warden of Last Resort, and what does it have to do with the end of the world?”
Grandma X studied her with curious gray eyes.
“What did Alfred tell you?”
“Nothing,” Jaide said, which was almost the entire truth. “He told me that I’d learn about it one day, if I worked hard enough, or something like that. Why can’t I know now?”
“Well, some knowledge is dangerous when given at the wrong time. You know that, Jaide — you remember what happened when you first came here.”
Jaide nodded. She did remember. But at the same time, she didn’t want to take the word of grown-ups that what she didn’t know wasn’t good for her. Couldn’t she make that decision for herself?
“What’s to stop me looking it up in the Compendium?” she said, acutely conscious of Stefano watching their battle of wills. “Why can’t you just tell me now?”
“For the simple reason that it’s a secret. Not a mystery, a secret. Ask the Compendium, and it won’t tell you anything, because it can’t. Only two people know about the Warden of Last Resort, and that’s the Warden himself or herself, and the Examiner, who outranks even the Great Steward in this matter. There is always a Warden of Last Resort, but they don’t last forever. They must be replaced, and the Examiner is entrusted with that duty. With it comes knowledge and a great responsibility. That’s as much as anyone knows.”
Jaide nodded, although she was far from satisfied. Grandma X had a clever knack of supplying information that seemed like an answer, but was actually a means of misdirection. Jaide was getting better at spotting it, and was learning how to be more direct in return.
“Do you know who the Warden of Last Resort is?” she asked.
“Yes. All full Wardens know.”
“Is it you?”
There was just a tiny flicker of hesitation, a moment in which Grandma X perhaps considered lying, and in her eyes Jaide saw a sudden flash of sadness, as though the answer would change everything, whichever one she chose to give.
“You are not a full Warden” was what she finally said.
Jaide put down her spoon. “I know, but you’re my grandma and I have a right to know.”
“You have a right to know what you need to know, and you have an obligation to use that knowledge well.”
“Are you saying I won’t use it well?”
“I’m saying there’s a risk. I’m not willing to put you in danger.”
“But I’m always in danger.”
“There are degrees of danger, Jaide. And there is danger to others if I make the wrong decision.”
“Alfred says it’s okay to make mistakes. So why can’t you take a chance and trust me for once?”
“It’s not remotely about trust. It’s about you being twelve and still a troubletwister —”
“Almost thirteen! And I’ve passed three Examinations!”
“But you are not yet a Warden, and definitely still too young. When you’re older, I’ll tell you, I promise. When you’re older, there is much I’d like to share with you. But for now, Jaide, you must be patient. You must trust me in this as you do so many other things.”
Jaide glanced at Stefano, who had a wondering look on his face. She knew he was thinking, Is this part of the plan? She had started off not thinking that, but now she decided it might as well be.
“If you’re not going to trust me, then I don’t trust you, either,” Jaide shouted, pushing back from the chair in a manufactured huff. “Do your own dishes for once. I want to be alone.”
With that, she stomped up the stairs and into her bedroom, putting all her effort into slamming the door and throwing some carefully chosen nonbreakables around for good effect. When she was done, she collapsed onto her bed, feeling a weird mixture of genuine upset and excitement. She loved Grandma X and didn’t want her feelings to be hurt, but at the same time, Jaide had to take matters into her own hands. If no one else would rescue Jack, Tara, and Kyle, she would have to do it.
The room felt quiet and empty without Jack in it.
Somehow she nodded off, only waking when Stefano opened the door and slipped through the gap, looking behind him to make sure he wasn’t being watched. She sat bolt upright from a dream about Jack battling giant wasps and caterpillars and stared wildly around the room, reminding herself who and where she was.
“Great tantrum,” he whispered. “Kleo said something about human hormones, which made Ari hide under a chair. It was put on, wasn’t it?”
“Mostly,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “You’ll keep the cats busy and make sure Grandma doesn’t come in here for one of those talks?”
He grinned and nodded.
“I will keep her very busy,” he said. “That won’t be hard. She is supposed to be teaching me, after all, whether she’s the Warden of Last Resort or not.”
“Thank you,” she said, then remembered that she was just as curious about Stefano’s lessons as she was about the Warden of Last Resort. “What is she teaching you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
He blushed and looked down at the floor.
“It’s hard,” he said, “when your twin is good at everything. You and Jack aren’t like that. I could tell straightaway that there are things he’s better at and things you’re better at, and it all evens out. But Santino … well, he’s always been the best. So the only way I’ve ever stood out is by being bad at things.”
“Yeah, like soccer,” Jaide said sarcastically.
“Santino is better.”
“What about cooking? Dinner was amazing.”
“Santino is better.” He shrugged. “Here I had the chance to be someone different, someone who wasn’t in his shadow. And I like that. Then I let The Evil get the better of me, and it turns out I really am not very good at being a troubletwister. That’s what your grandmother has been teaching me. Failing the second Examination might have been me not liking my Gift and being unable to control it. But there’s more to it than that. I think I have to learn to like myself first, before I do anything else.”
Jaide didn’t know what to say to that. She hadn’t expected such a long and heartfelt explanation — from a boy, or from Stefano especially, even though he had been very talkative lately around her. She didn’t know what to say in response. Something profound, probably. She certainly wasn’t going to give him a hug.
“Anyway,” he said, sparing her the indecision, “the plan! I’ll play my part so you can play yours. Wait half an hour to be sure. Teep me when you get back so I know when to give it up.”
She nodded. “Thanks, Stefano.”
“It’s all right. Until Jack is back, I owe you.”
The door closed behind him and Jaide slipped off the bed and crossed to her wooden chest. Rummaging through old clothes, throwing them over her shoulder in her determination to get to the very bottom of the pile, she fished out a pair of black tights from a musical at her old school, some black shoes she once wore at a funeral, a black hand-me-down sweater from her mother, and a dark blue beanie (the closest she had to black). She put them on and stared at herself in the mirror. Black was a look that felt wrong on her. It was more Jack’s thing, so it seemed fitting that she was wearing it now, in order to get him back.
Waiting was hard, but she forced herself to. At the end of half an hour, she made a pile of pillows under her bedclothes that might at a cursory glance look like her in bed asleep, turned out the bedroom light, and opened the door a crack.
No cats. No Grandma X.
From the blue room came a series of loud crackles and crashes, as though a miniatur
e power generator was having a tantrum.
Jaide pulled the beanie down low over her forehead and tucked her hair up inside. Taking a deep breath, she slipped through the door and tiptoed down the stairs.
It was time to visit an old friend.
Jack, Tara, and Kyle made it safely to the tree without being ambushed by The Evil, thanks in part to Cornelia’s eagle-eyed scouting from above. It seemed safe to assume that anything moving on the sand below was an Evil spy; they hadn’t yet seen a single living thing on the planet that wasn’t Evil. When she squawked and turned off the path leading to their destination, they knew they had to change course, too, in order to go around the creature ahead.
They were helped by a sudden shift in the weather. Clouds rolled in from their right (Jack couldn’t tell if that was north, south, east, west, or some other direction he didn’t have a word for), bringing a brief but intense squall of icy rain with it. They huddled around one another with Cornelia tucked safely between them, riding out the pummeling hail and deafening winds until, just as suddenly as it had started, it was over. The clouds swept on across the desert. The two bright suns and yellow skies returned, over a desert smoothed flat by wind and rain. All trace of their footsteps had been erased.
Before the hail completely melted, they stuffed their mouths full of ice and sucked greedily at the moisture. Jack dreamt of Grandma X’s hot chocolate, but this would do for now. They pressed on, Cornelia watching from above as before. Behind them, the curved walls of the anthill city faded into the blurry horizon, and their immediate fears of ambush were put to rest. Step by step, mile by mile, the tree Cornelia was leading them to grew steadily closer.
* * *
Two things became apparent as they neared it. The first was that the tree was huge. Its rippling, many-limbed trunk was as wide across as a city block, and its uppermost boughs were higher than most buildings. Jack had thought the tree in Grandma X’s backyard was big, but it was dwarfed by this one. Portland would easily fit in its shadow. Scarborough, too, probably.
The second thing was that it was dead — very, very dead — and had been for a long time. Its branches were bare of leaves, and in numerous places great rents and tears in the bark were visible where branches had come crashing down through those below, and now lay in drifts of sand around the trunk. Those fallen branches reminded Jack of the bones they had seen all over the desert, only much larger, and black rather than white. It was as though the tree was little more than a skeleton now, one slowly falling in on itself.
“This is where your great-aunt is hiding?” asked Kyle, fanning himself with his hat. His curly black hair lay plastered across his scalp, slick with sweat. The earlier rain had entirely evaporated, leaving the air thick and humid.
“I don’t know,” said Jack. It did seem unlikely that anyone lived here, let alone for so many years. “But this is where Cornelia is taking us, and it’s not as if we have anywhere else to go.”
Tara marched on, not wasting energy on doubts or uncertainties. The boys trailed in her wake, eagerly anticipating the shade. They didn’t know how long they had been walking. Hours and hours, it felt like. Jack’s stomach had given up telling him he was hungry long ago, but that didn’t stop him from thinking about food.
Cornelia swooped in and took a perch on one of the outermost branches, so she could watch their approach. When they finally stepped into shadow, Jack breathed a huge sigh of relief. This was where he belonged. It was instantly ten degrees cooler.
Tara waved and Cornelia swooped down to land on her forearm.
“Where to now?” she asked the bird. “Where’s Lottie — I mean, Charlie?”
Cornelia swiveled her head nearly all the way around in one direction, then just as far the other way.
“Does that mean you don’t know?” asked Jack.
Cornelia bobbed her plumed head.
“But she was here?” asked Kyle.
The head bobbed again.
“So I guess we’ll just have to look around,” said Jack, taking in the enormity of the space before them. From a distance, the fallen branches had looked insignificant, but now, close up, they were big enough to hide whole families.
“We should split up to save time,” said Tara.
Jack was loath to agree with that. The deathly silence under the tree was already beginning to creep him out.
“Why don’t you just call her, using that telepathy thing of yours?” said Kyle. “If she’s here, she’ll hear you.”
“The Evil might hear me, too,” Jack said.
“And it might not.”
Jack looked at Tara, who nodded. He got the impression she hadn’t been looking forward to splitting up, either. Her brave face was a good one, but it was wearing thin.
“All right,” Jack said. “Let’s just go in a little farther and I’ll give it a try.”
They wound their way through fallen dead branches until they found one just the right height for them to sit on. Gray dust puffed up when they did so, making Kyle sneeze. Cornelia took to the branches above, where she sat grooming her feathers and staring at the shadows with her black eyes.
“Okay.” Jack closed his eyes and concentrated on what he knew about Lottie. She had looked exactly like Grandma X when she was young and presumably looked just like her now. He had never met her, but they were related by blood, which had to count for something.
++Hello?++
His mental voice vanished into the thick shadows under the long-dead tree.
++You don’t know me, but my name is Jack Shield and I’m your great-nephew. My sister and I got your living mail. Are you here somewhere? Can you tell me where you are?++
“Have you started yet?” asked Kyle.
“Shhhh,” said Tara. “Don’t distract him.”
Jack listened a full minute, and when no reply came tried again.
++I want to go home, and I want to take you with me. But we’re running out of time. Are you there? Can you answer me? It would really help if you would say something.++
From above came a squawk and a flutter of wings.
“Charlie!”
“Jack,” said Kyle. “Open your eyes.”
He did and saw standing before them a ghostly green image of the woman he was trying to contact.
“She’s trying to say something,” said Tara. “Can you hear her?”
Lottie’s lips were moving, but no sound was coming out. Jack couldn’t hear anything with his mind, either.
“Maybe it’s slugs again,” said Tara, poking the image with her sword. The blade went right through the image, unhindered.
Cornelia landed on Jack’s shoulder. “Charlie?”
The ghostly woman smiled as though she had heard, and reached out one hand to touch Cornelia’s gleaming feathers. Her fingers passed right through them, however, and Lottie’s face fell.
++Lottie!++ Jack cried with all his strength. ++Tell us where you are and we’ll come to you!++
Lottie’s lips moved soundlessly again, and she shook her head with frustration. Her image flickered.
“Wait,” said Kyle. “Don’t go!”
The ghostly image of Lottie disappeared as though it had never been there.
“That really was her this time, wasn’t it?” said Tara.
Jack nodded. “I think so, but I couldn’t hear her, no matter how hard I tried.”
“Well, that means she’s here somewhere. All we have to do is find her.”
“Cornelia, do you know where to go next?”
The bird managed a very humanlike shrug in answer to Jack’s question.
“Great,” said Kyle. “What if she’s on the other side of the planet?”
“I don’t think so,” said Tara. “She didn’t come to us in the city, but she did just now, which I think means we’re getting closer. We just need to know which direction to go.”
“Not that way,” said Kyle, pointing back the way they had come.
All three stared at a gray cloud that hadn’
t been there before. It was noticeably growing larger.
“Uh-oh,” said Jack. “It heard.”
“What do we do now?” said Tara.
“We hide,” said Kyle. “Before it sees us.”
* * *
Kyle led them deeper under the lifeless canopy, leapfrogging over fallen branches or crawling under them where space allowed. They left a wide trail of footprints behind in the dust, which Cornelia tried to brush away with her wings, but Kyle stopped her.
“We’re going to create a false trail,” he said. “Let’s make it look like we climbed the trunk, then we’ll double back and take cover … there.”
He indicated a triangular hollow formed by two fallen limbs, one of them forked in a wide V. Tara kept a worried eye out for The Evil’s approach, and suggested every minute or so that it was time to turn back. But Kyle was adamant that they had time to do it properly, if they hurried.
They reached the trunk, where they put some handprints on the rough bark, and then began walking back on their own footprints. It was harder than it looked, and much slower than any of them liked. Already they could hear the humming and clicking of insect wings as The Evil approached. It was growing louder by the second.
Finally, they reached the hollow.
“Okay, you first,” Kyle said, pushing Jack ahead of him. “Burrow down deep, and cover yourself with as many twigs as you can find. Don’t smother yourself, though. Leave an air hole. Now you.” Tara went next, then Kyle, sweeping the trail behind him with a crooked stick.
The light from the suns outside was turning a deep brown as The Evil encircled the tree. Cornelia landed next to Jack and burrowed down with him. The sound of their rustling seemed terribly loud to him. Surely The Evil would hear and descend on them like a horrible hammerblow? Hopefully the brooch-charms would help. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and kept a tight grip on Cornelia, who was quivering with fear.