“Which Izzy stole for you . . . Listen,” I said. “This is taking too long. The short of it. We picked up lovely Izzy, the stray, who threatened her way onto this quest . . . Just nod if you follow.”
Nod.
“The Other One fancies our quest as a re-creation of the story of Orion, and in a strange twist, that has brought us here, where we met Laudia, who lives next door. She might still think we are moving into this home, but this narrative is so sufficiently messed up that you can’t make an error. All you need to know is that now Izzy and you and I are siblings moving in to this mansion. Our dad is to arrive next week; Mum is dead.”
Nod.
“David is the name of your dad. We are meeting the neighbours in an hour. Peter, the man of that house, knows David, so we will be discovered . . .” I paused. “Finally, my actual dad wants me to come home. I guess things are falling apart, and I couldn’t live with myself if more tragedy happened.”
Elias squinted and took a deep breath. “Is that part true?”
My turn to nod.
Elias walked over to me. “You, you need to go home. Right? I mean, that’s your dad.”
I took his hand and led him to the top of the tower. The floor was splintered hardboard, and there was not a scrap of furniture. I sat down in the middle of the room, pulling him toward me.
His face was so unsure. He lay down beside me, and I turned toward him, pressed into him. “I made a contract with myself. We are going to see you through to the end. We are going to find this Keeper and scrape together your shared memories, and then you will be you and never leave me again.”
“I told you, that isn’t how it —”
I kissed his neck, once, and felt his heart beat faster.
“It is. It has to be. And in the meantime, do not ever suggest that I leave you again.”
I kissed him again, and he squirmed. I drew him near and kissed him long and full and deep. His mouth tensed, and I pulled back, placed my fingers on his lips. “Relax here. Let me lead. After all, I am your guide.”
Five minutes later, I was lost in this boy. My mind had been given over.
He opened his eyes wide. “Clara, where are we going?”
“I think you’ll enjoy it when we arrive.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t doubt that, it’s just there’s so little of me.” He rolled over and sat up, turning from me. “It’s like I’m never home. I’m a sailor, and I come home after long trips but the rest of the time . . .”
“The rest of the time I get to look for you, and look at you.” I wrapped my arms around him from behind and rested my chin on his shoulder. “I know who you are. I know who I am.”
I kissed his ear and sat back. “Help me, Elias.” I lifted my shirt and raised my arms. “Elias?”
“Yeah?” He turned and froze. He reached for my shirt and quickly pulled it back into place.
“This isn’t what you want?” I asked.
“I’m not sure what’s safe to have.”
I threw back my hair. “You know, the Other One told me he loved me.”
“He did?”
“He did.” I crept nearer and pushed Elias onto his back, laying on top of him. “What does this one say?”
His movements became more fluid, patterned. “This one. This one . . .”
“Yes?” My lips moved gently over his face, his neck, his upper chest.
The door flew open, and a man strode in. “Hello, neigh —” He walked straight up to me, still perched over Elias, and stretched out his hand. The most awkward handshake I’d ever given. “Thought I’d come get you. Izzy’s already at our table. Food’s nearly cold. I told Laudia I’d come and get David’s kids, but I see now food really wasn’t on your mind.”
I turned and flattened my top.
“Is this typical sibling behavior in your household?”
“No, sir.” Elias swallowed hard.
He took a deep breath. “I know David and his wife were not able to have children — it’s been a source of some pain for him over the years, and one that we have discussed at length. But I also don’t believe in throwing strangers out on the street, however deserving. The history of this house, especially, would not stand for that. But know this: I will not accept lying. Or using this space for this type of . . . recreation.”
“It was my doing,” I said.
“No. It was both of your doing, and for what it’s worth, I place the lion’s share of responsibility on you.” His finger met Elias on the nose.
I stood. “But you don’t understand. He doesn’t even know what’s going on half the time. If he was normal, maybe, fine, make your judgments, but he’s not. He’s no protector. He’s vulnerable.”
“So that’s it.” Elias also rose. “A charity case. Maybe it would be best if you went home. Your work here is done.”
“But that’s not what I meant.”
“Sir, if you would take me to Izzy, I would appreciate it. I can straighten this out,” Elias said.
Peter Vanderpool nodded. “You are welcome to come.” He turned to me. “As are you.”
They left me standing alone in the top of the tower.
Idiot, Clara. What were you thinking?
I trudged down, and paused at my bag. I lifted my laptop and logged on to my blog.
I stared at the blinking cursor. Dad waited on the other end, blinking back.
My hands started over the keyboard, paused, and started again.
What do you do when you’ve destroyed someone you love? Again.
Send.
I slammed shut the top and stuffed the laptop into my bag. I didn’t want to hear his answer.
It just really mattered that he heard my question.
CHAPTER 21
I called this meeting to give you one last chance to come clean.”
Peter positioned us on the couch, with Elias in the middle. Laudia sat in a Lazy-Boy, engaged in a furious knit.
My stomach growled. I’d missed dinner. My hosts didn’t seem to show much sympathy.
“So, let’s start at the beginning.” Peter pulled a chair directly in front of Elias. “Are you connected in any way to these young ladies?”
“Yes.”
It was in the way he said it. My Elias was gone, and I slumped into the couch.
“And would you be willing to describe that connection?”
“Guard and guide. Beyond that, everything is privileged information.”
“But clearly not sisters and brother?”
“What really makes a family these days?” Izzy forced a smile, and quickly fell silent.
“Guard and guide,” Elias repeated. “That’s all you need to know about Clarita and Izzy. And don’t assume those are their real names. Don’t think I’m that foolish.”
Elias sounded smug. He also seemed to be digging a deeper hole with every word.
Peter winced. “Were you not just . . . in a compromised position with Clarita?”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.” Izzy glared at me, and I shrugged.
“I was not, and I never have been in any compromising position with Clarita. That would be disrespectful.”
Peter sat back and scratched his head, peeking toward Laudia. “I just saw those two all pressed together.”
Laudia gasped, and Elias shot to his feet.
“Apologise to Clarita immediately! Do you know who she is?”
Peter said nothing.
“Do you not see the resemblance between her and your queen?”
“My queen?” Peter rubbed his eyes. “I tell you, I know what I saw.”
“Very well.” Elias folded his arms. “Then we need to leave. We will move on. If lies are going to be told in this place . . . Izzy? Clarita? Let’s go.”
“But what about your . . . parents?” Peter asked.
“Clarita has none, I don’t either. Elias has half a pair.” Izzy smiled. “We are family. I don’t care what you saw or thought you saw. We’re family. They’re all I have. Thanks f
or the meal.”
“Wait!” Laudia exhaled. “Just wait. Please. We have a son. I told you about him. Kenton, he’s . . . he’s lost. He rarely answers us anymore. Would you, could you talk to him, Elias?”
“It would be my pleasure, but I need to take Clarita.”
Peter took hold of his wife’s arm. “I don’t trust that girl with our son.”
Laudia broke free. “With Kenton? Don’t be ridiculous.”
She led the two of us toward the back room on the main level. “He’s in there. Don’t bother knocking. He won’t respond. I miss him so much.”
Laudia opened the door to a darkened room. “Thanks for this. If you get through to him, I don’t care what Peter saw. I want my son back more than you know.” She gestured us in and closed the door behind us.
The room was bathed in the eerie glow of several computer screens. Electronic gadgets and caving gear littered the floor, and beneath the covers of the bed, a young-man-sized lump.
“Kenton. My name is Elias.” The Other One approached. “I’m here with Clarita. I want to talk to you.”
No movement.
“He’s dead,” I hissed.
“No.” Elias bent down, picked a brick off the floor, and hurled it at the head end of the lump. Still, Kenton didn’t move.
“He’s not there. See the shape? Asymmetrically impossible for a human.” He strode forward and pulled off the comforter. Several pillows, but no boy.
“So now what?” I asked.
“Now, we wait.”
Elias pulled a chair to one of the computer screens. A battle raged. Bloody awful.
“It’s running by itself, looping over and over.” I plunked down on the bed. “So we are going to wait for what, exactly?”
“We’ll wait for Kenton. This family needs our help. This is the Lightkeeper’s doing.”
I lay down, suddenly knackered. “All the evils in the world cannot be the result of one person’s life.”
Elias breathed deeply. “Tell me more about your dad, my king.”
He had me.
“My dad, the king, is unique in his ability to destroy things.”
“Is he? Or did some of that get passed down to you?”
“I’ve never destroyed any . . . I’ve never . . .” I started to hyperventilate, and the room spun. “Maybe I could tell you a story from my travels. From the manual.”
Elias shook his head. “No, I want to hear about this hideous man.”
The hideous man . . . right.
He loved to fly. Planes, balloons, helicopters. I, on the other hand, possessed a childhood fear of any place too high or buried too deep. The surface seemed a perfectly respectable place to live.
But his laugh, it was — it probably still is — infectious. It used to wash away all fear. When he laughed, I was safe, and willing to try anything, including helicopter travel. I may have been five, perhaps six. And he took me to the fair. “Helicopter rides, ten pounds!” the man cried out. It did not appear much of a helicopter. It was small — not the large transport helicopters of today, but the small, zippy ones. The glass ones.
The ones with no doors.
It was meant for two. Two seats. Two seat belts. The pilot climbed in. My father climbed in.
“Have a nice trip, Daddy.”
He laughed, and soon I was caught up in his arms. The helicopter lifted up, and the pilot was manic — first angry, then joyful, and then angry again. The helicopter was manic as well. Flying, soaring, dipping, stalling . . . only to regain momentum.
The whole time I looked out into the blue of the sky. There was no door. There was no belt. There was only my dad’s arms. His strong arms, and his laugh.
I was so afraid, but all I could do was laugh, and press back into Dad’s chest, and when all was done, ask for another.
I peeked at Elias.
“He doesn’t sound like a rotten man,” Elias said.
“No,” I whispered. “He doesn’t.”
He isn’t.
From inside the closet, a crumbling, and then a grunting and a scratching. I jumped to my feet, but Elias sat as stone, calm and fixed, and slowly I lowered myself down.
A muffled voice forced itself from behind the door.
“So it’s the seventeenth left and then a right. Seventeenth left and then a right.” The closet door flew open and a boy tumbled out, the light from his miner’s hat temporarily blinding me.
I blinked away the light spot. The boy was short and stocky and filthy, his cheeks covered with either soot or dirt. He seemed unaffected by the presence of two strangers.
“Two people in my room. Two people I don’t know in my room.” He paused. “But the seventeenth left and then the right.” He ran to his desk, reached over Elias, and grabbed a piece of paper and began a frantic scribble. “Done.” He slowly turned.
“I have some questions for the two of you.” He took off his helmet, and his gaze fell on me. Stuck on me. Traveled me. I had felt those eyes wandering many times before, and I quickly rose from his bed.
“I’m Kenton,” he said.
“Yes, I shall say you are. That is Elias, and I am Clara — Clarita. My name is Clarita.”
“Nice name. You are in my personal, private, very unvisited bedroom, where I keep my personal, private, very unvisited things. Did Mom let you in here?”
“We’re temporary neighbours. We moved in next door for a few days.”
A huge smile crossed Kenton’s face. “Down and the first left and up.”
“It was not intentional,” Elias said. “We had planned on staying in town, but your mom was kind.”
“Downtown. That’s the challenge, but very possible.” Kenton turned to a computer, clicked a key, and typed furiously. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.”
Elias wandered the room, staring at Star Wars posters on the wall. “You’re in trouble, Kenton. I see it. And I’m here to help.”
“Trouble?” He scoffed and glanced at me. “Who is this guy?”
A wonderful question.
Elias flipped on the light, and we all squinted. “We aren’t here by chance, or simply your mother’s request. We followed my star map, as well as Clarita’s interpretation manual. And Izzy’s with us too.”
“Star map?” Kenton slowed on the computer and glanced over his shoulder.
I rolled my eyes. “I know it’s a little strange. It must seem a little strange, unbelievable, really. Ridiculous. Bizarre. Ludicrous —”
“Clarita . . .” interrupted Elias.
“Right. Well, Izzy and some mythical story about a constellation brought us to this town. You must think us completely blasted or crazed or —”
“Brilliant. Not brilliant like me, but . . .” Kenton rummaged for his miner’s helmet and carbide lamp. He held them up. “Find one of these, and one of these in your size. There are plenty around. You are not going to believe what the stars can do.” He did a little jig, which for this chunky lad proved quite the sight.
We strapped on helmets and followed him into his closet, the door of which he shut behind me. “Okay, now where is it?” His meaty hand grabbed my ankle, and remained.
“That is not what you are looking for.”
“No, that’s right.” He released me. “Here, it’s here. Now scoot back against the door. It’s a drop.”
The floor creaked, and the closet filled with dank and cool. I looked down, and my light illumined not carpet but dirt ten feet down.
“Tunnel,” Elias said.
“Railroad.” Kenton slapped him on the shoulder and descended thin brick stairs. “Someone to show. Finally, someone to show!” His voice sing-songed into darkness.
“Go ahead, Elias.” I slapped his shoulder as Kenton had done.
“No, you’re my guide.”
Your guide to unreachable places.
I carefully descended a rough-hewn ladder until I stood on the earth.
The air in the underground cavern was still, and an unnatural heav
iness pressed in around me. Up. Out. I wanted out. I looked up, but my beam illuminated little beyond the hole. The real world was hidden from view.
Panic took hold, and I reached for the ladder.
“No, wait!” Kenton said.
I scampered back up until my head poked back into the closet. I took a deep breath and my stomach sank.
Because I had just climbed out. I was afraid and it was dark so I just climbed the ladder. I turned my beam toward Elias, watched as he looked about. My Elias, the half who trusted me; I broke his ladder. His medicine, imperfect as it was, likely provided him an occasional escape from his darkness. But I would not let him have it. I tried to keep him in his panic so I could rid myself of my own.
Shame swept over, and hideous me descended the steps once again, to be with the Other One. To know what my lost Elias was feeling trapped beneath his brain’s surface. Though I hated it below, I owed him that much.
Kenton stretched out his arms. “Are you okay?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “Good. Now behold the Underground Railroad!”
Elias turned toward me, and blinded my eyes.
Kenton clicked his tongue. “You aren’t responding with the right amount of awe. In school, weren’t we taught that the railroad was underground in name only? That it meant ‘secret’? And that’s mostly true. Slaves moved from the south to the north, stopping at ‘safe stations,’ which were really homes or farms of sympathetic people along the way. Mostly under cover of darkness. But here in Salem, one of the northernmost stops on the railroad, the town took the underground part seriously.”
“We’re in the underground railroad?” I asked.
“Slave families hurried through right where you’re standing. Some of the unfortunate ones are still down here, but those were the ones who got lost.”
Kenton turned and walked, soon coming to a fork, and another fork.
I quickened my steps and glanced back. “If it’s such a labyrinth . . .”
“Don’t worry. I practically live down here,” Kenton said. “Let me continue the story. See, everyone in Salem knows of a few stations in town. Six or seven entry points to underground passages are marked. The Quakers who once lived in these ‘stations’ hid hundreds of slaves, but they’re all private homes now and people don’t realise what’s beneath.” He stopped walking. “Nobody knows that the entire town is connected by a crazy tunnel system, and not just the homes. This maze stretches the length of Salem. That offshoot there ends up beneath the present-day school.”