The Keepers (25 page)

“Indeed,” Mrs. Hapsteade replied, weaving through the crates toward another curving wall deep inside. “We got them out just in time, as it turned out.” Horace realized there was sort of a room within a room here. The boxes from the House of Answers occupied the outer ring. An open door led into the inner circle, which was made of wood. A shadowy red light poured out from inside.

“One moment,” Mrs. Hapsteade said, and she disappeared through the open door. Voices spilled out. They heard Mr. Meister's laugh. Mrs. Hapsteade reappeared and nodded, gesturing inside. “I'll wait outside. I'm not meant for this conversation.”

They passed through, Horace somewhat cautiously and Chloe with her usual sureness. Mrs. Hapsteade closed the door behind them.

Mr. Meister's office, if it could be called an office, was a riot of red—bloodred, apple red. It was twenty feet across and completely round. A workbench ran around half of the room, while a wooden couch curved around the rest, piled high with pillows. The red wall rose high overhead, ending in a smooth red dome. A glowing white crystal hung from the peak.

Beneath the dome—and this was what made the place remarkable—every last inch of the red wall was covered with a dazzling assortment of compartments, no two quite the same: cubbies and drawers and holes and tiny gates and panes of glass. Even the inside of the thick door turned out to be a bizarre assortment of compartments, in every conceivable shape and size. The doorknob itself was tucked away in a round pocket of its own. It looked almost as if some crazed colony of cliff-dwelling birds had come in and built a head-spinning assortment of fantastic nests in the walls. And Horace let out a little “Oh!” of surprise—some of the holes actually did have birds in them. Small, black, bright-eyed birds, hopping and peeking. One fluttered across the room, darting into a hole shaped like an eye.

Most of the compartments did not contain birds, however. They held Tanu. Horace had no doubt that was what they were—dozens upon dozens of them, tubes and boxes and figures and crescents and sticks and rolls of paper and stacks of
cubes and chunks of glass and slabs of stone. Horace could almost feel the energy collected here in these objects, like he was standing in a power station. The collection at the House of Answers had nothing on this.

In the middle of it all, Mr. Meister sat behind a cluttered, crescent-shaped desk, watching them take it in. His many-pocketed red vest gleamed. His gray eyes swam hugely behind his glasses, like he was looking at them through the wall of a fish tank. His left eye loomed.

Chloe scratched her nose, squinting. “Hoard much?”

Mr. Meister laughed. “Not nearly enough, I sometimes think.”

“These are Tanu,” Horace said. “You collected all these? Where did they come from?”

“Where
didn't
they come from?”

Mr. Meister's desk was covered with Tanu as well. There was a raven statue—a leestone, obviously. Another bird sculpture, an owl with a single, glittering yellow eye, was smaller but far creepier. There was an object the size of a small chest but bound like a book, with pages as thick as fingers. A gold compass with no markings, just a blank white face, featured a red needle that pointed directly at Mr. Meister. Horace also caught sight of two more objects he recognized—the smooth mask of a woman's face and the miraculous tiny earth, spinning and alive. Horace desperately wanted to know what everything did.

“Do you use all these?” Chloe asked the old man.

“Certainly not. Many of them I am unable to use; they are instruments still in search of Keepers. But even if I could use them all, it would be most unwise to do so.”

Horace perked up, pulling his attention away from the miniature earth. “Why?”

Mr. Meister seemed to measure his words. “Tanu stake a claim on their users. And not just our Tan'ji. Even the merest Tan'kindi takes a small toll—ravens' eyes, dumindars, passkeys.” He glanced around the room. “What lies within these walls would be far too much for any one person to wield, even with the most extensive precautions.”

Horace thought of Mrs. Hapsteade's seemingly endless supply of necklaces, all those Tanu she used. How much of a toll had they taken on her?

“I remember you,” Chloe told the old man abruptly. She said it like a challenge.

“Do you now?” said Mr. Meister. “I'm flattered. It's been some time since last we spoke.”

“You told me the dragonfly would help me. That it would keep me safe.”

“And has it?”

“I don't know,” said Chloe. “It keeps me safe from the dangers it brings. Would you call that helping?”

Mr. Meister's eyes squinted with pleasure. “My dear, you astonish me. But under the circumstances, yes, I would call that helping. Understand, please: you would be in danger even if the dragonfly were not in your possession. The words
you wrote with the Vora tell us as much.” He cocked his head, peering closely at the dragonfly and then back at her face. “You passed through the dumin. You were within the body of the golem.”

Chloe shrugged.

“Have you any idea of the difficulty of these feats?”

“Now that I've done them I do.”

Mr. Meister nodded, beaming. “As ever, the Vora speaks truly,” he murmured. “And you, Horace, you have come through the Find with haste. You have opened yourself to the many possibilities of the box.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Just so. I suspected it would be swift, but you have exceeded my expectations. Sit, please, sit.”

Chloe and Horace sank into the big red couch, into the sea of pillows, which smelled vaguely musty. Horace fussed with the pillows, trying to get comfortable; Chloe perched on one and folded her legs beneath herself like a cat.

The old man continued. “I already know how I wish this conversation to end. Therefore I leave it up to you to decide how it will begin.” He watched them, his face full of anticipation.

After a moment Horace said, “Mrs. Hapsteade told us you were chief taxonomer.”

“Oh, my.” Mr. Meister shook his head. His glasses glinted rosily. “Well. I am the doer of what I do. And I did these things long before anyone thought to attach a title to them.”

“You catalog the Tanu. You give them names.”

“Never give. Rather, I unearth them when I can. These are not natural beasts; they are creations. And I study them. I am an historian, a researcher, a collector, an appraiser, a curator, a steward. And yes, a taxonomer. I am not the chief of anything, but I suppose I am what you would call an expert.” He squeezed the fingers of one hand with the other. “Indeed, if you will allow me the immodesty these times demand, I am perhaps
the
expert.”

“Does that mean you'll answer my questions now?” Horace asked.

Mr. Meister spread his hands. “I will answer what I am able. I promised as much, did I not? You have come through the Find and discovered the power of your Tan'ji. I am now free to share what I know. With you as well, Chloe. Understand first, though, that there are limits to what I know.”

“There are limits to what
we
know,” Horace said.

“Let us enlighten each other, then. I will answer your questions, and then perhaps you will answer one of mine. Certainly there is no path that would not benefit from a little enlightenment, yes?”

“Yes,” said Horace.

The old man settled forward in his chair. “Very well. We proceed. Now—who will go first?”

“T
HE
F
EL
'D
AERA
. T
HE
B
OX OF
P
ROMISES
,” M
R
. M
EISTER
said to Horace, pressing his glasses tight against the bridge of his nose. “Unique even among the rare.”

Horace looked down at the box gleaming in his lap. “The Box of Promises? Why is it called that?”

“A rough translation. But also a bit of a joke—the Box of Promises makes no promises.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You have already learned what the box allows you to do.” Mr. Meister straightened a single knobby finger. “First, you can send objects forward, into the future.” He uncurled another finger. “Second, you can open the box and observe the future directly. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“And when you observe the future, do your visions always come true?”

“Sometimes the box is wrong about the future, if that's what you're saying.”

“I would not say
wrong
. Better to say that sometimes events do not follow the path suggested by the Fel'Daera.”

“That's right, they don't. Is that a problem?”

Mr. Meister shrugged innocently. “Is it?”

Horace considered. “Sometimes the future I see in the box is fuzzy, blurry—those things are less likely to happen the way I saw them. But sometimes even when it's really clear, the box turns out to be wrong. Or at least, I can make it be wrong.”

“You mean you can change later events so that they do not match what the box revealed.”

“Yeah.” Horace rearranged his pillows, frowning. “But it feels . . . bad.” He told Mr. Meister about the sandwich he'd chosen not to eat.

Mr. Meister listened intently to the sandwich story, then dug into a pocket and pulled out his little notebook. He wrote a few words hastily and tucked it away. He sat silent for a few moments, brow furrowed with concentration, and then spoke cautiously. “Do you know why the Box of Promises makes no promises, Horace? Why we can never be one hundred percent sure of the future it reveals?”

Horace thought it over. He thought back again to the day he chose not to eat the sandwich, and the nagging urge that had made him try the experiment in the first place. If the box was never “wrong,” then it meant no one had a choice about anything—the future was already set. But the future
wasn't
set. It could be changed. “Because of free will,” Horace said. “If the box was never wrong, that would mean we had to do whatever the box revealed. We would have no free will.”

“Excellent. If the box shows you eating a sandwich in the future, do you then have to eat that sandwich? Or let me put it into different terms. If the box shows you stepping into the path of an oncoming train, do you then need to do so?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not. As you have already discovered, you are always free to make whatever choices you like, no matter what the box has revealed. Choose to eat the sandwich, or do not. Choose to step in front of the train, or do not. But consider this possibility: perhaps, long before that future arrives,
the truly important choice has already been made
.” He said this slowly, stressing each beat with a gesture like he was throwing darts.

“What choice?”

“You know the answer to that. Think, my friend. The future always depends upon a sequence of prior events—one event leads to another, and another, and so on. But when we are talking about the future you witness through the box, of course, one of those prior events is . . .”

“Looking through the box in the first place,” Horace finished.

“Just so. Looking through the box is an extremely important event, because choosing to observe the future has a dramatic effect on how the future turns out. Let us consider
the name again—the Box of Promises. Do you know what it means, to promise?”

“To promise? I guess to . . . say you will do something.”

“An adequate description. But the root of the word, quite literally, means—”

Chloe, listening silently so far, suddenly piped up. “To send forward.”

“Quite right,” said Mr. Meister. “Wonderful. To
send forward
. The Fel'Daera is, of course, able to send objects forward through time. But what you must understand is that even when you merely look through the box, you are also sending something forward. Do you have any idea what that something might be?”

“I'm not sure,” Horace said slowly. “But I guess . . . my awareness? My observation?”

“Very good. And this is what you must understand, Horace: until the moment you observe it, the future could be anything. In fact, it is
everything
—every possibility. But the moment you look into the Fel'Daera, that changes.”

“You're saying when I look into the box . . . I . . . make the future what it is?”

Mr. Meister lifted a contrary finger. “Not quite. You create a future you believe in.”

Chloe stirred again. “The marker,” she murmured at Horace. “The message I wrote on your wall.”

“Right,” Horace said, concentrating furiously, remembering how Chloe's blurry message had become clearer once
Horace convinced himself not to clean it off. His belief had changed the future. The realization made him feel heavy all of a sudden, burdened by the weight of the power the box gave him. “A future I believe in. But what if I believe . . . I don't know . . . that everyone will die?” His voice cracked a little.