Liesl & Po (24 page)

PO HAD SEEN THE NEED FOR A DISTRACTION EVEN
before Will had suggested it. And so at the first opportunity, the ghost had slipped back to the Other Side.

Plan, Bundle
, the ghost had thought to its companion.
What we need is a plan.

Mwark
, Bundle thought back, even more emphatically than usual.

They were in a place of towering skyscrapers built out of sheer black rock. Souls drifted around them, a dark mist. Po saw a line of the newly dead approaching from a distance: dozens of them, looking bewildered, speaking out loud in grating, almost human voices.

“Where are we?”

“I don’t understand. I just went out to the store to get some butter.”

“Aunt Carol always
said
that cities were dangerous. . . .”

Poor, lost new souls. As Po watched them get closer, it was filled with a sensation that felt like dispersing but was emptier and bigger, somehow: as though its Essence was evaporating into nothing.

Po knew what Liesl would call it. She would call it sadness. The voices, the new souls, came closer.

“This isn’t like any place I’ve ever seen. Maybe it’s New York? I hear they have big buildings in New York.”

All those new ghosts: All they wanted was to go back to the Living Side, and back, too, in time—back to health and happiness, or even pain and sickness and poverty, so long as they were
alive
.

Then, suddenly, Po had an idea.

It had opened a door for Liesl, so that she could cross to the Other Side.

It would open one now, so that the ghosts could cross back.

Po focused its thoughts into sound.

“Hello!” it called out, against the black expanse of space. “Hello! You there!”

The new ghosts stopped marching. They squinted at Po, confused, and their voices became low murmurs.

“Now who is that, do you think?”

“I can’t seem to make him out. Or is it a her?”

“Everything looks a bit fuzzy. Does it look fuzzy to you? My doctor
did
say my eyes were going. . . .”

The Living Side was folded up against the place where Po was standing, separated by only a very thin membrane of existence, and from it Po could feel Liesl’s pulsing desperation, her need for escape. From it, too, he could hear a distant chanting, and see a glowing warm ball of light—no, of fire—which grew larger and larger, and filled Po’s Essence with a sense of heat and urgency.

Po did not know how many laws of the universe it was about to break, but the ghost put the thought out of its mind.

“Here,” Po said. “The path you are looking for is this way.”

The new souls murmured and rustled, repeating the word
path
to themselves in confusion. Po thought for a moment it would not be able to go through with the dishonesty, with the tearing—but then Liesl’s need came pulsing through the tissue-thin layers between worlds again, and the ball of fire burned like a beacon.

For the second time in the long, long course of its death, Po lied.

“This way,” the ghost said, “will take you home.”

And on the final word, he pulled. He strained and dug and stretched, and the space between the Other Side and the Living Side became a huge, yawning hole.

And the ghosts, responding to the promise of that simple word
home
—which carried inside of it as much magic, certainly, as the Lady Premiere could ever wish for—began streaming and tumbling out.

Because the ghosts were very new ghosts, they had not started to blend yet, and so were quite visible. And yet they were very clearly ghosts: Some had holes in their faces, or were missing arms or legs, where their physical selves had begun to dissipate and merge with the rest of the universe. As Will watched in wonder and horror, an old man came apart in front of his very eyes, like a drawing of a person being smudged into an indistinct blob of color.

It was not clear who was more confused, the ghosts or the living people. Already, they were not used to the Living Side, and its confusion of light and color and heavy smells and textures and
feelings
, and they found themselves even more disoriented than they had been a moment before. They were like wild animals pushed into a pen; they whirled and bumped one another and shrieked.

The old woman began screaming, which brought on another sneezing fit. The policeman tried to climb out a window, which was unfortunately stuck. Augusta toppled out of her chair and lay on her back, pedaling the air with her legs and beating at the ghosts with her hands and crying, “Mercy! Have mercy on us!”

Only the Lady Premiere stood stock-still in the middle of the room, her hands pressed to her sides, her face glowing with emotion. “It works,” she whispered. “The magic works.”

The alchemist was so startled he lost control of the fire. Whipped from his hands by the tremendous tumult of moving ghosts, it shot across the room and exploded. Suddenly one whole wall was covered in flames. Fire tore up the old wallpaper toward the ceiling; flames raced down toward the wooden floor, hungry, burning higher and higher, fed by the rush of air and motion. Ghosts became flame and then people again. Then they were merely shapes.

The heat made Liesl’s eyes water, and her mouth was filled with the taste of ash.

“We have to get out of here!” she screamed to Will, bouncing her chair closer to his. “We’ll be cooked like dumplings!”

Will rattled his handcuffs in frustration and kicked as hard as he could, trying to detach his ankles from the chair legs to which they had been bound. The chair teetered and fell over, and Will lay coughing and choking on the floor, as flames raced along the wooden boards toward his face. Already, he could hardly see. The room was full of dark, thick, roiling smoke, and smoky shapes moving within it.

“Will!” Liesl screamed. Her voice sounded very distant.

Then there was another voice, closer, and the feeling of something pulling at his legs.

“Hang on a second,” the voice was saying. “Just a few little snips and you’ll be all right.” It was the Lady Premiere’s guard; Will looked down and saw him sawing with a pocketknife at the ropes binding Will’s ankles. Then, just like that, the ropes snapped and Will was free. Or at least, he could walk. The handcuffs were still cutting into his wrists.

The guard helped Will to his feet, then knelt and freed Liesl’s ankles with a few slashes of his knife. Her head was slumped forward on her chest. The whole room was consumed with flame.

Will could no longer see the alchemist or the Lady Premiere or Augusta or the policeman—all he saw was burning, burning, burning. The fire was out of control. It was in the cellar, and racing into the second floor, and licking into the attic.

“No time to stand around gaping,” Mo said, and Will felt himself roughly dragged forward by the collar. “Too hot for my tastes.”

Mo swung Liesl out of her chair with his free hand, and pressed her to his chest. Then, keeping Will, Liesl, and Lefty protected, he crashed back-first through the dining room windows and, amid an explosion of shattering glass, charged into the cool air outside.

Chapter Thirty-One

ONCE LIESL WAS OUTSIDE AND AWAY FROM THE
smoke, she revived.

“Po,” she said, with her first intake of breath.

“It’s all right,” the ghost said. “I’m right here.” Po was still very weak and its voice sounded faint, but Liesl was comforted.

“Where’s Bundle?” Liesl asked.

A shaggy shape flickered momentarily in the air. Bundle was tired too. It had herded the ghosts back through the opening and returned them to the Other Side, and Po had closed up the door.

“I’m all right too,” Will said, somewhat annoyed that the ghosts had been Liesl’s first concern.

“Everybody’s in tip-top shape,” Mo said cheerfully. He ignored the fact that their clothes were black with smoke, their faces streaked with ash, and their wrists cuffed behind their backs. “Even Lefty here is happy as a clam. Though she might be happier
with
a clam.” Mo laughed at his own joke as the cat in the sling looked up at him—disapprovingly, Will thought. Then Mo leaned down to Will and whispered conspiratorially, “I only wanted to give you the hat, so’s you wouldn’t be cold.”

“The house!” Liesl cried out. They were sitting at the edge of the pond, by the old willow tree, where Mo had felt they would be safe, and Liesl had looked behind her for the first time. “The whole house is burning!”

The fire, driven now by that strange and unfamiliar wind, which had blown the real magic all across the countryside, had reached the very top of the peaked roof.

“I’m afraid so,” Mo said. “From the crown to the cellar. There won’t be nothing to it but ash.”

“The cellar . . .” Something had just occurred to Liesl, and she turned to Will, eyes shining. “Augusta buried my father’s ashes behind a wall. Remember? She said so. But now even the walls are burning.”

Will nodded solemnly. “It looks like he’ll make it to the willow tree after all, Liesl.”

Liesl squeezed her fists tightly. “Let it burn,” she whispered. “Let the whole thing burn down to the last piece of wood.”

At exactly that moment—as the Lady Premiere and the alchemist were staggering toward them, leaning on each other, and Augusta was running toward the pond with her shoelaces on fire, screaming, and the old woman was riding the policeman’s back as though he were a pony, and beating him with her cane to make him go faster—the house gave an enormous shudder, and with a tremendous rolling crack collapsed in on itself.

The walls came down. Wood turned to smoke and ash. The contents of the little wooden box were released, and drifted upward on tendrils of wind and air—upward and outward, over the sloping hill, and down toward the slate-gray water of the pond—and to the velvet-soft ground beneath the willow tree, where they should have been all along.

Somehow, Liesl
knew
. She felt that the ashes had been returned, and as the last recognizable part of her old home was consumed in flame, she began to cry. But she was not sad; she was filled with joy and relief.

After all that, she had done what she had set out to do. She had brought her father home so he could rest.

Po and Will looked at each other helplessly. The single tear Liesl had shed in the hills had been bad enough, they both thought. This display of emotion was quite beyond the both of them.

It was Mo who squatted down beside Liesl and began to comfort her. “There, there.” He patted her shoulder heavily. “It’s going to be okay.”

Liesl could not explain that she was crying mostly out of happiness, so instead she just nodded.

Augusta charged into the shallows of the pond, skirts hitched up to her knees, where her shoelaces were at last extinguished. She let out a loud howl of satisfaction and sloshed back up to the grass, where she collapsed ungracefully onto her rump. The sight of the ghosts had so unnerved her that she had temporarily forgotten about her stepdaughter. She whipped out a handkerchief and began mopping her face, repeatedly muttering, “Mercy. Mercy.”

The old woman and the policeman had reached the pond as well, and the old woman had dismounted. Now that the fire was smoldering far behind them, and the house no more than a black, smoking pile of soot, the old woman felt able to express her outrage.

“Well, I never!” She gesticulated wildly in the air with her cane. “In all my life! It ought to be illegal! I’ll take it up with the judge!” Without saying so directly, she made it clear that she was referring to magic; and fire; and ghosts; and the whole business.

The Lady Premiere’s head was filled with visions of power. She imagined an army of ghosts; with it she could take over the whole world!

“Again,” she croaked to the alchemist. “I want to see them again. I want you to call up the ghosts!”

“H-here?” the alchemist stammered. Nobody had been more staggered by the ghosts’ appearance than he. Was it possible—conceivable—that he had, in fact, performed the Great Magic? It must be so! And yet he had done nothing out of the ordinary but wish for the magic to occur and the ghosts to appear.

An idea, a pleasurable thought, began winking in the alchemist’s brain. Perhaps he was even more powerful than he had ever known.

“Here and now.” The Lady Premiere was very pale, but her eyes glowed like stars. She looked like someone in the grip of a very high fever. “I must know. I must be sure.”

“You can’t!” the old woman spluttered. “You won’t! It’s an outrage!”

Nobody bothered to answer her. An uneasy hush fell over the assembled group. Liesl and Will knew that the ghosts had come through the door Po had opened—Po had told them so—but still, they couldn’t help but feel as though something great was about to occur. Unconsciously, they leaned forward, keeping their eyes locked on the alchemist.

And indeed, there did seem to be some kind of magical, shifting quality to the air. Even the alchemist felt it: a power growing and swelling around him.

Of course, what he could not know—what none of them knew—was that the magic
was
there. It was everywhere, unseen, shimmering, waiting to be called up. It was floating on the wind and skimming over the hard, dry earth; it was hanging like a curtain just beyond the visible world.