Dandelion Fire (8 page)

I'm normal,
Henry thought.
Normal. Normal as a dandelion.

There were three options, as far as Henry could tell. He could explore the cupboards blind and probably die or at least get permanently lost. Which didn't sound too terrible right now. Or he could wait for his parents, or one of his parents, or one of their lawyers, to come get him. He could leave the raggant behind and never mention his dandelion insanity again. If his eyesight returned, he could come back to Kansas when he was eighteen. If it didn't, then his parents would have him spending a lot of time with therapists. Or he could ask Henrietta to help him find where he was from. But he wasn't sure how any of this would help him. He wanted to see. In Kansas or Boston or Badon Hill, he just wanted his eyes to work. And there was no one he could talk to about that.

Henry sighed. He wished he had read through his grandfather's journal. He'd skimmed through most of it, looking for his name, but he hadn't been in any hurry to read the whole thing. He didn't like the cupboards, and from what he'd read, he didn't much care for his grandfather, either. He would have read it before doing any exploring. But he hadn't even wanted to explore. He'd wanted to go to Badon Hill.

He couldn't read the journal now. He could ask Anastasia to read it to him, but that would be pure torture. Penelope would insist that they tell her parents everything. Henry didn't think Uncle Frank would mind that he'd kept the journal, but Aunt Dotty would. And she could put a stop to anyone reading it. Henrietta was too much to deal with right now.

The journal wouldn't help him, anyway. He needed someone who would know what was happening, someone who could tell him why he could see his burn floating through the air like a living word and nothing else. Or, if they didn't know why, at least someone who could tell him what to do next, someone who could mix him something nasty and vomitous to drink and dance around and shake some bones in a monkey's skull.

He needed someone magic. Not some goofy voodooist, like the people in his parents' travel videos who dressed up in yellow feathers and papier-mâché for the tourists' cameras. Real magic, magic like, he didn't know what. Like the wind. Like the storm and the colors and the dandelion. Magic that could change you, that could turn caterpillars into butterflies and tadpoles into frogs and wood into coal into diamonds. He needed someone who could … make wood stronger than a chain saw.

Henry sat up, and the raggant tumbled off his lap and onto the floor like a sack of mud. It groaned and sputtered, snorted twice, and began snoring.

Eli. The little old man's magic had kept Grandfather's door shut for two years. And he had known
Grandfather. He might even know how Henry had come into Kansas or which cupboard he'd come through. If Henrietta hadn't chased him away through FitzFaeren, Henry might already know all the answers. He wouldn't be blind in an attic with less than two weeks before he lost his chance to find out who he really was and where he was from.

He shouldn't explore the cupboards. He should look for Eli in FitzFaeren. And he should read Grandfather's journal before he did. Someone should read it to him.

Henry stood up and felt for his doors. When he'd found them, he stepped out into the attic.

“Richard!” he yelled, and while he waited for an answer, he lifted his hand up and watched. Dandelion soul floated through space.

Henrietta slouched on the floor beside the muted television as it worked its way through commercials. Her mother stood behind the couch, wearing yellow rubber gloves still wet from the sink. Her father was sitting in the middle of the couch, separating Richard and Anastasia, and Penny was also on the floor. She was reading. She was always reading.

“I think I should take some food up,” Dotty said. “He needs to eat. Someone should be sitting with him. He shouldn't be alone.”

“I'll sit with him,” Richard said.

Frank slapped a hand on Richard's knee. He was wearing tight pink sweatpants, castoffs from Anastasia.

“Stay here for now,” Frank said. He tipped his head back and looked at his wife behind him. “Dots, we spent the whole day touchin' him and breathin' on him while people he couldn't see stuck him for blood, ran him through tubes, had him pee in a cup, and prodded around his eyeballs. If he wants his space right now, I can't blame him. We can offer him some grub in a bit.”

“Do you think he's okay?” Dotty asked.

Frank looked back down. “No,” he said. “I don't. He'll need to see other doctors, and keep seeing other doctors until one finally says that he's not nuts and that it's just that there's a little beetle that's hatched in his head, and it's put its foot in just the wrong spot. Henry's got a lot more prodding ahead of him. But it doesn't have to start till tomorrow.”

“Can that happen?” Anastasia asked. “A beetle inside your head?”

“No,” Dotty said. “It can't.”

Frank nodded. “It happens.”

“You'd have to inhale an egg or something,” Penelope said. “When it hatched, it'd just crawl the wrong way in your sinus cavity and get into your brain.” She put down her book. “Dad, I could go read to Henry. I wouldn't be crowding him.”

Frank shook his head.

“Frank, I'm really worried about him.” Dotty lifted a yellow hand to her forehead. “But there's not a beetle in his brain.”

“Something's in it,” Frank said. He reached back and found his wife's hand. “I'll check on him in a bit.”

“Richard!” Henry's voice found its way into the room.

Richard jumped up off the couch and looked at Frank. Frank smiled and nodded, and the skinny, pink-legged boy hopped over Henrietta and ran for the stairs. After a minute, when the television's sound was back on and her mother had left the room, Henrietta rolled onto her knees, crawled to the door, stood up, and walked quietly after him.

Henrietta didn't have to climb the attic stairs. She could hear perfectly well from the bottom.

“No,” Henry said. “We're not going for good. I just want to look around. Well, I want you to look around for me.”

“What if we see him tonight?” Richard asked. “Will we chase him like Henrietta did?”

“No. We won't chase him like Henrietta did. I just want to talk to him. And I don't think we'll see him, anyway.”

“Then why are we looking?”

“Listen, Richard. I want to find Eli. But I don't just want to rush off into a strange world. We need to check it out first, get a feel for the place, is it night, day, all that stuff. We are not going to hunt around in the dark. Not there.”

“We should talk to Henrietta,” Richard said. “Seeing as she's been there.”

“So have I. I had to save her when she got stuck. You know the story.”

“And I saved you when you got stuck.”

“Right,” Henry said. “Sort of.”

“So why don't you ask her to help?”

“Because,” Henry said, “I need someone who will do what I say. I'm blind, Richard. She'd leave me standing in the dark and rush off to look at anything that made her curious. Which would be everything. That's why.”

“Right,” Richard said. “And you want me to snitch a flashlamp.”

“A flashlight, yes. And batteries. Can you do that without anyone noticing?”

“At home, I kept a pet hare in my shirt for four days without anyone noticing.”

“A hair? Like, from your head?”

“No. A hare, as in hoppity-hop. They did find the hare, though. And they made Cook put it in my stew.”

“Oh,” Henry said. “Sorry. I have something for you to read to me. Now, hurry and get the flashlight and come back.”

Henrietta heard Richard come out of the attic room. She scooted across the landing and into her own bedroom before Richard was on the stairs. She could grab him and threaten him into silence so she could come along. Henry was blind. He might never know. But it might be more fun to catch them in the act and watch
Henry try to be all righteous about leaving her out. Or she could just tell her dad and let him catch them. But then she wouldn't get to see FitzFaeren again. That's where they were going. That's where she'd been stuck. That's where Eli had escaped. They wouldn't find him. He'd be long gone by now. But even if he was standing right in the ruined hall, waiting to bump into them, they didn't have a chance of catching him. Not if Eli had gotten away from her.

Richard walked by, and Henrietta let him go. She would follow them in.

Richard's voice was extremely annoying. He was incapable of reading aloud without sending his pitch up to the ceiling and buzzing his vowels in his nose. Henry tried to be interested in how the cupboards worked, but he just wasn't. And his grandfather's writing, at least when Richard read it, never seemed to breathe.

He'd fallen asleep twice, before he finally rolled over toward Richard's voice and put out his hand.

“Thanks,” he said. “You can go to bed now. I'll wake you up later.”

Richard gave him the journal and whispered his excitement about the upcoming exploration.

“Yeah,” Henry said. “Shut the door tight, please.”

The doors clicked shut, and Henry slid the journal into a backpack empty of everything but one flashlight. The key was still tucked under his pillow. He wouldn't take that into FitzFaeren. If something bad happened,
which it wouldn't, Uncle Frank would need to be able to get into Grandfather's room.

Lying on his back, he crossed his arms over the backpack and lay still. He'd already had Richard set the combination on the compass locks and put his shoes beside the bed. Everything was ready. He felt as good as he had since Uncle Frank had handed him the lawyer's letter. He was actually going to do something. It might not help. It might not accomplish anything at all, but it was something.

Uncle Frank had come upstairs, and Henry had been practically cheerful. He'd told his uncle that he'd seen something blurry—true enough—and Frank had sounded happy when he'd slapped Henry's shoulder and said good night.

Realizing that his light was probably on, Henry rolled onto his side and felt for his lamp, tracing the heat in the air with his fingertips until he found the switch. Nothing changed when it clicked off.

In the darkness, he lifted up his hand. The brand was still there, bright and curling, closing in on itself and expanding.

Henry watched the colors until his pulse was drumming inside his skull. Then he put his arm down and shut his eyes.

The dream started in Henry's toes. They were bare, and they were wet. Henry curled them, felt them dig through something cool and spongy, felt water seep up between them.

Wind stroked his face, strong but not violent. Constant. He pulled in a deep breath, a lungful, a headful of his imagining. It was sweet, with salt around its rim.

The soft applause of a thousand rustling trees surrounded him, and he ached to see them, to shake off his blindness and watch the silver-bellied leaves flick and twist on the wind's wake.

Why couldn't he? He was dreaming. He knew he was. So his eyes could work.

He blinked, but something was in the way. Not on the outside of his eyes, something back behind them, between his eyes and his soul, a curtain of darkness.

He ripped at it with his mind. He put his hands on his head and imagined himself digging with his fingers, prodding the inside of his skull with a stick, hoping to weaken, burst, whatever seal was in place.

His right hand was hot on his temple. He pulled it away and looked at it. His burn flamed up bright, and by its moving light, he could just see the outline of his hand.

Henry lifted his hand and plunged the fiery word into his eye. The pain seared and he opened his mouth to yell, but there was no air in his throat. He gargled agony, but the itch behind his eye was scratched, and the relief overwhelmed the pain. He pulled his hand away, breathed, and moved it to his other eye.

Henry's legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees, but he wouldn't move his hand, he couldn't. Not until
his block, the itching membrane, the brain scab that closed off his eyes had been burned away. He ground the palm of his hand against his eye, twisted the heat it held into his head, and fell gasping onto his back. His hands dropped to his sides.

Lying there, with moisture crawling through his clothes and soaking his scalp, he opened his eyes on Badon Hill.

The thick-bellied trees towered above him, groping into the sky with their distant leaves. On one side of him, they climbed even higher where the ground rose steeply. Above him, the canopy was not as dense, and as he turned his head to the other side, he saw only blue, scattered with fast-roving clouds. He was at the base of the hill, on the edge of the island, where the trees met the sea.

“Boldly done,” a man said. “Though madness outside, a dreaming.”

Henry sat up quickly and climbed to his feet. He had been lying on a dense bed of moss. The hill, almost a mountain, rose up quickly on one side; on the other, the moss led to a cliffs edge. Below it, in the water, Henry could see a dock with a small boat tied to it. In front of him, with legs spread and arms tucked behind his back, stood an enormous man.

He wore black boots up to his knees and a long black coat. Blue trousers stretched to bursting around his thighs. His nose was large and hooked, but it still seemed
small above his protruding jaw and between his thick, curling sideburns. He was tall already, half a head taller than Frank, but he was made even more so by his hat, with a flat, round brim around a tapering chimney. A silver buckle was set on the front. The man was smiling.

“Are you a Pilgrim?” Henry asked.

“Pilgrim,” the man said, feeling the word with his tongue. “I seek, yes. Even the hard ways. Entering your dream was uneasy. I am called Darius.”

Henry took a step back. “Why are you here?”

“I come,” Darius said slowly. “As you are a seventh, a pauper son, a lastborn. I would help you.”

“Other people have said that.” Henry shifted his bare feet nervously. “What does it even mean? A seventh?”

“To many ones, nothing. It means they were the seventh-begotten son, that when their father is put to grave-sleep, they shall receive the last heritage, the pauper's portion, a rag's nothing. To others, to you, to me, it is potens. It is the twain sight, the second seeing.” Darius brought his right hand around from behind his back and held it out toward Henry. “It is this.” On his broad palm, there was a scar, almost a brand. As Henry stared, he could see that it was moving, writhing like a slug in pain, brown and slow. A dark whisper stood out in the air above it.