Secrets of the Guardian (Waldgrave Book 3) (33 page)

Ember smiled at his friendly confidence. The stranger smiled back.

“Hello.”  Ember said, intrigued with the turn of events.  She quickly turned around to be sure Thalia wasn’t going to ruin her fun.  She wasn’t even in sight.  “Is this yours?”  Ember asked, turning back and holding out the bit of ribbon. It seemed rather a melancholy treasure without its balloon, frayed at one end and clipped straight at the other.

“Yes.”
 The stranger smiled more broadly, revealing starkly white teeth.  “But I am giving it to you.  Do you like red?”

Ember stared back down at the red ribbon, and suddenly realized that she liked the color red very much, though she had never considered it before. She was also oddly pleased that the stranger would find the bit of ribbon of enough value to give to someone like it was a gift.  Her mother would have called it a piece of trash.
 “Yes, I like red.  Red is my favorite color.”

“Mine too.”
 The stranger said with another grin that never touched his eyes. “What is your name?”

“Ember Gillespie.” Ember said wistfully, rubbing her head against her shoulder to push a stray bit of hair back behind her ear.

“Ember Gillespie.” The stranger repeated back to her without blinking. “May I come into the yard, Ember?”

With a pleased smile, Ember nodded. “Yes. You can come down.”

He dropped from the top of the wall to kneel down on ground before her.  He had black hair and a handsome face, like a prince from a storybook. He brought his hand to touch the part of the ribbon that hung from Ember’s hands. “I like red, too…though I believe I like a different red than you. Red is the color of life, and a very special color besides, if it’s your favorite.”

“What's your name?”
 She asked, trying to stifle a laugh.  He was a very handsome young man, with all of the wit of the Mad Hatter, and he must have liked her if he thought her favorite color was special just for that fact.

His expression twisted into a smirk and he raised his eyebrows as he stared at her, shaking his head; this time, the smile came through his eyes instead of his mouth. Suddenly, his face contorted and he raised his arm defensively.

Ember frowned, wondering what she had done to displease him. “What’s wrong?”

The stranger lowered his arm and smiled, though his nose was wrinkled in disgust. “Someone inside is cooking. That’s all.”

“Ember!”

She turned around to see her mother running toward her in long, graceful, gazelle-like strides, her bare feet crunching on the leaves. She reached Ember and scooped her
 up; Ember saw the kitchen knife in Gina’s hand.  As Gina passed her daughter off to Nan, Ember turned in time to see Gina strike the knife one quick time across the stranger’s face. It made a sound like nails on a chalkboard, and the stranger reached up to grab at the dark, bleeding cut in shock.  

Gina pointed the knife at his chest.
 “Stay away from her.”

“Why?”
 He replied with a hiss, pulling his hand away from his face and rubbing the dark blood between his fingers in disgust.  “I didn’t hurt her.”

Gina shook her head, once again raising the knife to gesture at his face.
 “You know why.”

In her grandmother's arms, Ember disappeared around the corner, clutching her gift ribbon in her hand.
 The next day, they put her on a plane to the contiguous states, where she went to a private boarding school and received a first-rate education.  Ember didn't see the stranger again for many years afterward, and when she finally did, she didn't recognize him.  

She only knew he was someone important to her—the first person to value her as a personal treasure, and not a damaged item.

Chapter 1

Ember held on to the ribbon long after it had lost its childish charm, using it as a bookmark. In her school dormitory room, there were paperback novels hidden in every drawer and tucked away behind her textbooks on the shelves. Amidst her uniforms and shoes and jackets in the closet, there were even more.

She kept her desk neat and clean, with a stack of college-ruled paper and a cup of pens and pencils for homework. There was a window opposite the door, closest to Ember’s little bed, and in the morning the light cut a straight wedge in the middle of the desk. She liked to think that someday, she would get a plant to sit in the wedge of sun, and it would do well. Of course, Ember was eleven then, and she would be moving to the junior-high dorms in a few years—long before ‘someday’ was ever likely to come, and her imaginary plant would never bask in that wedge on the desk.

At such times, Ember wondered if she had a gift for growing plants; her mother was a fantastic gardener. She had drawn a picture in crayons and watercolor in art class two years ago of her mother’s garden; the assignment had been to draw a memory of home. The fruit trees and the vegetables in the garden had been the only image she could muster; that, and the bookstore. Her teacher had said that the bookstore didn’t count, and that she had drawn Alaska wrong—gardens like that didn’t grow so far in the north.

When she closed her eyes and thought hard, she could still see the strawberries and the mint patch. It might have been a figment of her imagination, like the notion that her mother gardened, and in that case getting a plant might have been riskier than she wanted to believe.

“What are you looking at?” Tiffany asked, turning over in her bed and rubbing her eyes.

Tiffany was the same age as Ember, and had short, blond hair. When they had met at the start of the year, Ember had told her that she was an orphan in the care of a nun who had sent her to the school. Her last roommate had asked incessant questions about Ember’s home, and her parents, and her sister, and Ember hadn’t been able to answer any of them. Luckily, Tiffany believed just about everything she was told.

“Nothing.” Ember shrugged. “Do you think they’ll have pancakes today?”

Tiffany shrugged, turning over to hug her pillow. “Maybe. I like pancakes.”

“Me too.” Ember agreed.

Tiffany was simple, and easy to please, and Ember liked her. When there were pancakes, they would take great ceremony in properly buttering and drenching each in the stack with more than enough syrup. Eggs were made to be eaten on toast, and bacon was eaten last so that the taste lingered on the tongue. They agreed that the apple juice in the cafeteria was too sweet, their English teacher was so old he was likely to die at his desk one day, Jason in Social Studies was the cutest boy in their grade, and having any more than one piercing on each ear meant something
bad
.

They stayed roommates until just after the sixth grade, when Tiffany had gone searching for her history book in Ember’s closet, thinking that she must have put it away by mistake, and found the offhand birthday card that her mother had sent her. There, beneath a stack of old papers and on top of the box that held Ember’s patent leather shoes that were only for recitals and special occasions, their friendship had ended.

As Ember stood in the doorway, with her hair braided down her back just as Tiffany had left it that morning, she had stared at the card in Tiffany’s hand. It was signed, not just by her mother, but by her sister and grandmother as well.
Sincerely, Mom, Thalia, & Nan
. Tiffany had stared in betrayal as Ember turned bright red; there was nothing to say.

No one believed that a mother could do what Gina Gillespie had done, and Ember hadn’t seen her since she was a little girl. She had chosen one daughter to keep and love, and given the other away to be raised by the ever-shifting tide of teachers and mentors that came and went over the years. Ember wasn’t even allowed home for the holidays, breaks, or the summer.  No one believed that a mother could hate her child that much, unless there was something wrong. 

That was the look that Tiffany had in her eyes then, asking Ember why she would hide such things. They accused her of being a freak, or a pathological liar, and at the very least, not a true friend.

Ember had snatched the card from Tiffany’s hand, running from the room to lock herself in the janitor’s closet on the second floor, where she had ripped it up into pieces no bigger than quarters, and stared at the bright bits of paper on the floor around her. Sinking to her knees, she had pushed them back into a little pile and collected them, wishing she hadn’t done it; those signatures might have been the last she would ever see of her family.

She cried for herself, for the card, and then for Tiffany. They never spoke to each other again.

After that day, Ember decided that she didn’t need friends who were close enough to go through her closet. For good measure, she properly disposed of everything her mother sent her, using the trashcans in the common areas and never the ones belonging to her personal room. It was easy, because she only sent a total of two cards each year. One came on Ember’s birthday, and the other around halfway through December; they only ever said “Happy Holidays”, causing Ember to worry during her early teenage years that she was supposed to be either a non-practicing Catholic or a protestant.

She joined every club and organization she could, less out of interest than to prove to the other students that she wasn’t a freak. She cooked and served for the homeless, visited with the elderly, and did science projects for the city fairs. She kept her hair and her clothes clean, and once wrote to her caretaker to ask after getting braces to straighten her teeth. The only true part of the story she had told Tiffany years ago concerned the nun who looked after her.  Sister Helen managed the trust fund that had been arranged to cover Ember’s expenses, and would continue to do so until Ember turned eighteen.

Keeping her appearance and behavior strictly groomed, Ember had gained the respect of the other students and her teachers. People remarked at what a wonderfully mature young woman she was becoming, and how bright her future was.

When she was fourteen, Ember decided that someday, she would go back to her mother’s home to prove herself worthy. Whatever Thalia had been up to, it would pale in comparison to Ember’s achievements, and then her mother would be forced to allow her to come back. They would work in the garden together, and Ember would finally have a family, and a home that she could tell people about.

When she was fifteen, Ember finally got up the courage to ask Sister Helen about the address of her mother’s house. She wanted to send a letter.

The nun had kindly told Ember that she would send the letters on for her, and realizing that she had no other recourse, Ember had agreed.

The letters went, one after another, one every week. Week after week, Ember waited for a reply that never came; she stood at her door, looking hopefully at the floor advisor as she walked down the hall handing out letters or tucking them under doors. The woman smiled kindly at Ember every day as she walked by with nothing to put in her small, anxious hands.  Ember turned and went back into her room, frowning slightly, and looked at herself in the mirror.

Her new roommate, an awkward, quiet girl who went by Heather, had started an insect club that she attended every afternoon; this spared Ember the embarrassment of having to wait in nervous excitement and then trudge in embarrassment in front of anyone but her own reflection.

She stared at herself, wondering if her mother would write back if she sent a picture. Somewhere, years ago in a psychology book, she had read that people were more likely to respond to faces than to flat text, regardless of the emotional pleas within. Ember had a build that was still more athletic and girlish than womanly, but she had a pretty face—perhaps, she thought, it should only be a face shot.

She wondered if she still looked like Thalia. She wondered if that fact would make her mother take her back.

Carefully pulling her hair back into a ponytail, she wondered how Thalia wore hers these days, or if Thalia had pierced ears. She made a note that she would have to ask her nun if she could pierce hers, because most girls her age did have them, and then she could wear some modest gem studs to accentuate the blue in her eyes.

Grabbing a paperback and setting back onto her bed, she tried to figure out who she could ask to take her picture. Heather was the closest thing she had to a friend at school, and perhaps she could do it. Heather, at least, would take the picture without asking what it was for.

Heather had started the bug club that she attended. Heather, as of yet, was the only attendee, but she was happy enough to go sneaking through the underbrush, sticking her hands into dark holes, alone.  The girl wasn’t afraid of mysterious things, which made Ember unendingly grateful for her company. When they had first met, she had asked Ember where she came from.

“Alaska.” Ember had replied, knowing what would come next.
Is that where your family lives?

But Heather had only stared at her with a disinterested expression, and said, “Oh. I’m from Vermont.”

And that was the end of it. Heather wasn’t a girl who needed, or even liked, to talk about things; things were just as they were, and that was good enough for her. They respected each other’s space, didn’t borrow clothes or books or school supplies from each other, and generally got by on small talk and niceties.

However, outside of their dorm room, Heather and Ember couldn’t have been more different. Heather didn’t care what people thought of her quiet eccentricities, but Ember always put on a smile and tried to be nice to people. She volunteered for a wide range of clubs herself, mostly because she didn’t like saying ‘no’ to the people who asked her.  She hadn’t joined Heather’s bug club because she knew Heather liked to be alone, even if she didn’t know why. She had only named it a club to give teachers an excuse as to why she needed an hour every day to chase her creepy-crawlies in the fields and barn.

Sometime later, Heather came back, happily toting a jar filled with grass, sticks, and a large hairy spider. She set it on the nightstand that divided their beds and grinned at Ember from under long, brown hair that constantly hung in her face.

“You need bangs and a headband.” Ember said to her, not for the first time. “Good haul today?”

“Wolf spider.” Heather replied, with a flourish toward the glass. “Second biggest spider I’ve ever caught. One time in Florida I caught a huntsman spider, though, and that one was the biggest.”

“Do huntsmen spiders kill wolf spiders?” Ember mused.

“What?” Heather’s brow furrowed.

“Never mind.” Ember shook her head, grabbing the bit of red ribbon from the nightstand and shoving it into her book. She sat up properly on the edge of the bed. “Do you think you could use your camera to take a picture of me?”

Heather looked down at the digital camera she kept clipped to her belt; normally, it was exclusively reserved for taking pictures of bugs too delicate, dangerous, or difficult to collect and document. “Sure, I guess. What am I going to do with a picture of you?”

“It’s not for you.” Ember tried to give her a winning smile. “I just need one to send…home…to my family.”

Heather shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.”

She plopped onto her bed and pulled the spider jar over to sit on the pillow next to her head. Ember grinned inwardly as she grabbed her nightclothes and her toiletries and walked down the hall to the bathroom area. She changed, and brushed her teeth, and then wandered down to the kitchen.  The students each had a water bottle with their name written on it in the refrigerator, and Ember liked to collect hers for the night in case she got thirsty.

She wandered back up to her bedroom, and found Heather already dressed and ready for the lights out check. She sat on the edge of her bed, slowly turning the spider jar in front of her face; Ember folded back her comforter and slipped off her shoes. When she sat down and picked up her brush, she saw that Heather had put the spider down, and was watching her.

“What?” She asked, trying not to be too forceful.

Heather raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “Nothing! Just…you said you wanted to send a picture to your family?”

Ember stared warily at the spider on the desk, tasting the bile creeping up her throat. “Yes.”

“Why are you sending them a picture?”

Ember smiled; Heather was just being her usual odd self—she didn’t understand that families liked having pictures. Or at least, normal families did. “I think my mother would like one, is all. She could look at it and think of me.”

“Oh.” She picked up the spider jar again, shaking it lightly. “Does it bother you having a spider in the room? It would bother most people, I think.”

Ember shrugged. “No.”

“Not at all?” Heather pressed.

Ember looked up sharply, staring first at Heather, and then at the spider. She looked Heather in the eye. “It’s a spider. It’s in a jar.”

“What if it wasn’t in the jar?”

Ember swung her legs into the bed and between the sheets, wondering where Heather’s sudden curiosity had come from. It wasn’t a bad thing, but it certainly wasn’t her typical behavior. “I guess it would find a corner and do what it does, and eventually one of us would catch it and shoo it out a window.”