Dandelion Fire (4 page)

It didn't. Henry could smell nothing but the sour closeness of his attic room. He placed his hand in the mouth of the cupboard, but the air was still and warm. He reached through and his knuckles scraped against a rough board at the back. There was no moss, no soft earth or confused worms. Not the slightest breeze. The cupboard had been cleaned and sealed from the other side. Henry put his hand on the back and pushed. The board didn't move, but his fingertips brushed against a thick piece of paper tacked onto the wood. He tore it free, leaned his back against the cupboard wall, and stared at it. His eyes went in and out of focus, and he blinked quickly to keep them from clouding over.

There was a crest at the top, the same green man that had sealed both the warning letters that had come through this cupboard before. But this time there was a slight difference. The bearded man's head was still set in the middle of the circle, and vines wrapped around his head and climbed out of his nose, ears, and mouth, but in the middle of all the leaves draped over his chin, there was something else. Henry widened his eyes and blinked more tears down his cheeks. The man was sticking out his tongue.

Like the others, the message was typed, but it was
much shorter, and it looked like a form letter with blanks filled in. And it was signed thoroughly, with an extra little handwritten note at the bottom.

Henry read the note once. He tried to read it through again, but no amount of blinking could clear his eyes.
He left the Badon Hill cupboard open and crawled slowly back onto his bed, wincing and beginning to feel extremely sorry for himself.

He turned off his lamp and settled his face into his pillow.

He did not see the beam of yellow light shining out of the small post-office box below Badon Hill. And if he had, he wouldn't have cared.

smelled fire.

His lamp was not on, but his attic room flicked with orange light. He sat up on his bed. Everything was wrong. His space was narrower, and his doorway was wider. His nightstand was missing entirely. So was the end of his room.

He slid up onto his pillow and put his back against the wall. The cupboards beside him, doors he didn't recognize, stretched across the room and stopped where they always had. But instead of another wall, there was another place.

A low fire burned under a stone mantel, providing the only light. A high-backed chair crouched on either side of the fire, and in one of them, there sat an enormous man. His face was hidden.

Henry inhaled slowly. He was dreaming. He had to be.

The man leaned forward, pressing his fingertips together, half of his long, sideburned face still shrouded in shadow. “No,” he said, and his voice gave Henry chills.
“The dream is mine. I come to give you gratulations. Your morphosis begins.”

Henry said nothing. He didn't understand.

“This change,” the man continued. “What power set flame to your flesh?”

Henry looked around his imitation room and then squinted at the man beside the fire. Dream or not, he didn't want to be here.

The big man slid forward in his seat. His voice quickened. “What did your eyes ken?” he asked, and he sounded greedy. “You have seen natura's mage, and your body revolts. It shall die or be changed. What did you see?”

“I was struck by lightning,” Henry said. He stood up and stepped toward his bedroom doorway.

“Henry?” He could hear his cousin's voice on the other side.

“You will stay, yet.” The man's voice deepened. He rose from his chair, filling the little room. The fire dimmed behind him. “The walls are of my imagine. They will not breach.”

Henry's hand was on a knob. The doorway was trying to disappear. Instead it flickered and narrowed back to its usual self.

Henry stepped into nothingness, and he closed the door behind him.

Henrietta knew her parents wouldn't want her to wake Henry, so she hadn't asked. She'd left Richard and Anastasia bickering over their breakfast and hurried up to
the attic. She tapped lightly on Henry's door, and when she didn't hear any response, she went in.

“Henry?” she asked.

Henry was facedown on his bed. His arms were tight against his sides. Henrietta dropped onto the bed beside him and poked his shoulder. “Henry? Wake up.” She stood, slid her hands beneath him, and rolled him onto his side. “Are you feeling better?” she asked. “Up now! We've got places to see.”

Henry's eyes were swollen shut and sealed with crusted grime.

Henrietta backed into the doorway, but she couldn't leave, and she couldn't look away from Henry's face. Blue webs of veins stood out behind his lifeless skin, and his dry lips were swollen and splitting.

“Henry?” she asked again. His eyes were the worst part. The eyelashes that were still visible beneath the inflated lids were glued to his cheekbones, tangled in gunk that his tear ducts had pumped down the sides of his nose, around the corners of his mouth, and even across his temples and into his hair. Patches of the flesh-toned eye glue had hardened on his pillow.

Henry's body stiffened. One leg rose an inch off the bed, and a moist groan rattled in his throat.

“Are you awake?” Henrietta asked.

“No,” Henry slurred. “I'm dead.”

Henrietta moved back to the bed. “Um, Henry, can you open your eyes?”

The skin of his bulging eyelids quaked briefly.
They looked like they'd been stretched around plums. “No,” he said. “I can't.” He licked his lips and winced, then put his hands up to his eyes and felt gently around the sockets.

“They're huge,” he said. He started scratching carefully at the crust, and Henrietta grimaced and turned around.

“I'm gonna get you a rag or something,” she said. “I'll be right back.”

Downstairs, Henrietta ran hot water over a washcloth and looked at her own eyes in the mirror above the sink. She felt worse now, for thinking that Henry had been faking. But she had seen the lightning strike, and if any had hit him, it had to have been some invisible strand. And she'd never heard of lightning giving anyone puffed-up, goopy eyes. Usually they just died or went deaf or had troughs plowed in their skin that made it look like the bark on some old lightning tree out in the fields. It had been the troughs and the charred, split skin that had made her realize she didn't really want to get struck by lightning. She'd checked a book out from the library, and the first picture was all it had taken. Under the right circumstances, she was still willing to consider being sucked up by a tornado.

Maybe Henry had allergies. She smiled. Maybe he was allergic to pollen, he had hay fever, or something. Allergic to pollen and lightning.

She was spending more time in the bathroom than she needed to, but she wasn't exactly in a hurry to look at Henry's face again.

Upstairs, Henry heard her climbing back to the attic. He had managed to sit up on his bed, and he'd scraped his eyelids mostly clear. Pinching the soft flesh, he lifted, leaving eyelashes stuck to his cheeks. Then he lifted higher. He blinked, lifted his lids up again, and rolled his eyes. He saw nothing. Not darkness. Nothing. Exactly the same thing that he saw with his elbow or the back of his knee. He felt his throat constricting in panic. He tried to swallow his fear back down, but it was rising too fast, moving into terror.

“Henry, that's disgusting,” Henrietta said. “Put your eyelids down. Your eyeballs will dry out.”

Henry pulled them up higher. He could feel his eyes moving, ricocheting around. “I can't see,” he said simply. “I can't see. Henrietta, I can't see.” His knee started bouncing wildly. He tugged hard on his eyelids, tugged against the stretching pain.

“Stop it!” Henrietta yelled. “You'll make it worse!” Henry felt her hands on his, the pain in his eyelids stopped, and he knew his eyes were shut. Warm wetness swallowed his face. “They looked fine,” Henrietta said. “They weren't even bloodshot. I thought they'd be pretty nasty, but it's just your eyelids. Give ‘em a minute.”

“I'm blind,” Henry said. “God, no. I want to see. I want to see. Open my eyes. Henrietta, open them.”

“Shhh,” Henrietta said. “Hold on. Does this feel good? I'm just wiping some of this stuff off your face, then we'll try again.”

“Now!” Henry yelled. “Now! Get your hands off my face!” Henry swiped at Henrietta's arms and pushed her as hard as he could. He heard her stagger and hit the floor. Grabbing at his eyes, he tried to stand up. “I want to see,” he whispered. “I want to see, I want to see. Right now. I'm going to see.”

Henrietta was crying somewhere, and he could hear people running up the stairs. He lifted his lids, but he knew that he couldn't have. There was nothing there. Then, suddenly, he realized that he must have more eyelids. Another pair. His old eyelids must be underneath. They were still shut. He dug into his eyes with his fingers, pinching, feeling for more skin.

“There they are,” he muttered. “There they are, there they are. They'll open.” He tripped and staggered forward. His elbow hit something hard, and his head followed.

Strong hands gripped his wrists and pulled them away from his face.

“Henry,” Uncle Frank said. “Enough. Breathe. Now. Breathe.”

He was lowered to his back on the hard floor, and his arms were pinned to his chest. Frank's rough hand ran over his forehead. His thumb scraped over Henry's
eyebrows and then the surface of his eyelids and cheekbones. Henry felt one eyelid open.

“Henry?” Frank said softly. “What do you see?” “Nothing,” Henry said, and his breath spasmed in his chest. “There's another eyelid inside. You have to open it.

Please. Can you?”

His eye shut, and he was lifted to his feet. Frank wrapped him up from behind, pinning his arms to his sides.

“Girls,” Frank's voice said. “You're on your own. We'll call from the hospital. Dots, find a number for Phil and Ursula.”

“I'll come,” Richard said. “I won't be any trouble.” “Fine,” Frank said. “Hurry. But you'll be in the back.”

Henrietta hated crying. Nothing was stupider than crying. The old brown truck had left an hour ago. Her mother had been in the driver's seat while her father held Henry tight, the washcloth over his eyes. Richard had been on his back, rattling around in the rusted-out bed.

Penelope and Anastasia had followed her up to the attic. She'd cried because she was mad, because Henry had hurt her, because she'd been terrified, because she had to. Anastasia, pale, had watched silently and hadn't been rude once. Penny had hugged Henrietta, held her, and Henrietta hadn't pushed her away. Not at first.

They were both gone now. She'd asked them to leave, politely, and they had. She was by herself, sitting on the end of Henry's bed, and she was still a little shaky.

Everything inside her wanted to say that Henry would be fine, that if he'd just sucked it up and stopped freaking out, his eyes would have been normal. But she knew that probably wasn't true. Maybe. Either way, she hated it when people lost control. It made everything worse. So did crying.

Henrietta flopped back onto Henry's bed, but jerked up at the touch of the wet pillowcase. She picked the pillow up to flip it over, and froze. There was a piece of paper on the bed, stamped with the same green man seal that had been on the faeren letters. She read the “A Lert” quickly, and then slowly, and then she stared at the signature and the note.