The Last Stand of Daronwy (10 page)

A black spell erupted from nowhere, hurtling toward both Rathian and Lightningbolt. Rathian deflected the spell, and it missed Lightningbolt, incinerating the rock next to him. Two of the demons charged, lunging forward with glittering axes of flames. One of the Edenkiri warriors moved to stop them, another of them lunged at Eaglewing.

“The jump cloth!” Lightningbolt yelled over the coarse language of demons, the shrieks of the Edenkiri, and the explosions of magic. He dodged an Edenkiri staff and ran across the room toward his brother. Eaglewing sprinted toward him, throwing the cloth to the ground between them and saying the spell he had already prepared as Lightningbolt added his strength to it. Without checking whether the portal had connected to its ending cloth, Lightningbolt vanished into it. Eaglewing followed as the glowing staff of an Edenkiri hurtled through the air after his disappearing form. He grabbed the edge of the cloth as he fell through, pulling it with him.

A burning light streamed through Eaglewing's eyelids even though he squeezed them shut. His skin felt like it was on fire, and the light changed colors from white to blue to orange. He couldn't breathe. His throat was closed up, even though he wasn't sure he still had a throat. His lungs were about to burst when the light seared back to white and he felt his body sliding along tile. He hit a piece of wood, knocking it over. Glass shattered.

“By the Stones!” The Midnight Wizard appeared in view.

Lightningbolt pointed at the cloth in his brother's hand where a violet tear opened between the worlds. The wizard scooped it up and saw the yellow eyes of the Edenkiri staring at him.

“Destroy it!” screamed Lightningbolt.

The wizard threw the cloth out of the open windows while his lips worked a quick spell. The explosion rocked his tower, throwing him into the wall and tumbling bookcases.

“Let's say there's brick dust hanging in the air too, and the Midnight Wizard looks at you, then at me. I'm lying on the floor, bleeding from where the Edenkiri staff got through my mail.”

Daniel nodded, deepening his voice to play the Midnight Wizard. “You have it, I know. But who—or what—did you steal it from?”

Chapter Ten

They had spent the day scouring through Twin Hills, two archaeologists amid a modern dump, teasing out the story of the Old Man. “What do you think of this?” Jeremy held up a thick, brown glass bottle with a full ecosystem tucked inside it: mud, bugs, shoots, and water. “Maybe this is some old kind of Coke that he likes?”

“No. It's just a bottle full of mud. Don't be silly,” said Mira.

As they left the Trash Clearing, Jeremy stopped next to an old dishwasher that was missing one square metal panel. They had found no clues. Everything he pointed out, she squashed, saying it wasn't a clue. He didn't know what they were looking for, and wondered if she did.

“Do you think if we found the missing panel of this dishwasher we might figure something out?”

Mira had almost left the Trash Clearing. She walked back and stared at the rusted metal hulk of the dishwasher, arms crossed. “Maybe. I don't know.”

“This is harder than I thought it would be.”

She didn't respond, and started to walk away toward the bike trails and home. He sighed, wishing they had found at least one clue. He followed her past the pond, through the bike trails, his head down, hands in the pockets of his jeans. When she stopped, he bumped into her.

“That's it.”

The hair on his neck rose. “What is?” He looked around. She was staring at the old green trailer. Created from the bed of a pickup truck, it had been quietly rusting away between Mr. Black's house and the dense shadows of Helter Skelter for many months. A pile of broken plywood lay next to it. Mira went to it, picking up the shattered planks that had been cut into wild jigsaw shapes. She pointed at the black marks on the wood.

“See? The trailer has no floor, so if we put this back into the trailer the right way, these marks will be a message. It's like a puzzle.” Her glittering eyes caught his. “It's our first clue. Come on, help me put them together.”

With that, she was in the trailer, extending her hands for a piece of wood. Why hadn't he thought of it? The markings swam across the wood, disappearing into the shadows. The wood didn't fit together cleanly. They tried several combinations for each piece until the sun started to set and the sky blushed a dark bluish orange. They had half the trailer pieced together, but it was too dark to see what might be on the wood. She said, “We should quit for tonight, but we're halfway there. Tomorrow we can finish it, and then we'll have our first clue!”

He nodded, listening to the silence of the night. It was warm. The mosquitoes weren't awake yet from their winter hibernation, and the mosquito trucks weren't spraying. Twin Hills held a pensive thought, pursing its shoeblack lips, reticent, waiting for him to guess its shadowed desire. But Jeremy could only grasp at the outline of it, not the substance.

Mira took his hand and they bounded out of the trailer, running across the intersection of Nevada and Vermont into her yard. “I have something to show you.” She squeezed his hand.

Mira ran inside, leaving him standing in the grass just outside the yellow circle of light from the tiny concrete front porch of her house. Shuffling from foot to foot, he waited. She probably wasn't going to come back. He breathed deep, inhaling the thick, humid night air. It didn't matter if she didn't come back. He walked to his dad's truck, unhitched the tailgate, and felt the weight of it on his arms. Careful to make no noise, he lowered it. He jumped up onto the bed and sat down, swinging his feet and waiting for the first stars to appear. A door closed. He sat straight. Her slender form slipped into the shadows, momentarily disappearing before reappearing next to him without breaking her gazelle stride. She hopped onto the tailgate, sliding into position next to him. Their legs touched through their jeans. The warmth felt good, but he couldn't say why. It wasn't cold out.

”What do you have?”

She held aloft a plastic tape player. “Listen to this.” The play button clicked down, its metallic spring ringing through the night like a clash of swords. After a few static-filled moments, an alien music began to softly play. They bent over the player, listening.

No steel guitar, no twanging accent in the voice of the woman singing; this was different. The sounds brought pastel colors to his mind. The chords of the keyboard and the woman's voice shimmered like hammered silver in the night. He had never heard anything like it. His parents only listened to country music. He didn't know what this was, but he knew this was not country music.

“What is that?”

“It's Cyndi Lauper,” she said with a wide smile, white teeth glittering in the shadows. “Isn't she wonderful?”

“She is.” He listened harder, trying to make out the words. Like the puzzle in the trailer, they materialized, coalescing into something recognizable.

“Girls just want to have fun. That's all they really want, some fun,” belted out of the tinny speaker into the infinite origami of the Texas sky as it folded into progressive shades of blue and purple and black. The first stars began to peek through the tree branches, playing hide-and-seek. When the song finished, Mira carefully rewound the tape and started it again. Her small hand nuzzled into Jeremy's, her slender fingers working their way through his. Their parents should have called them in by now; someone should have stopped them. But no one had, and here they were, and girls just wanted to have fun.

“I think we can finish the trailer tomorrow.”

“Yeah. What do you think it'll say?”

She shrugged. “It'll probably tell us where his house is.”

Jeremy thought of Indiana Jones, standing over the model city with his staff and the crystal, trying to locate the Ark. “Maybe it will be a map to the part of Twin Hills where it is, and then we'll know where to go look.”

“Yeah. I bet so.”

They fell silent again. Crickets began to scratch the air, their metallic noises blending well with the music. Frogs answered with a range of songs from steel-on-glass tinks to rumbling yodels. The only movement on the street was their legs, swinging.

Jeremy didn't know what to say. He didn't want the moment to end. He wanted to sit with her all night long. He wanted to listen to Cyndi Lauper and watch the night darken; to think about the Old Man and the shadows that moved inside Helter Skelter. He thought maybe he should tell her about those shadows; about the way that things could follow you in there, but weren't ever there, and left no prints. Did she think that it was the Old Man, doing something crafty to cover his prints? Did she think it was a way out, a way to a place like Narnia where they would not have to go to school, a world where adventure was only a breath away? Bolstering his courage to finally say something, he opened his mouth, but she spoke first, pulling him back into the moment.

“I can't believe my mom hasn't called me in yet.”

“Yeah, me either. Usually, my dad would have come out by now.”

Mira stared into Twin Hills, distant, as though she did not see the trees, but rather penetrated through the trees to some deeper reality. Maybe she felt it too. As though it were as fragile as a dragonfly, he squeezed her hand.

“What do you see?”

She turned to face him. “Hmm?”

“What do you see?”

“I dunno. Nothing. Just thinking, that's all.” She punched his shoulder softly with her free left hand. “You know back when Travis was chasing you with that gun?”

Jeremy nodded.

“I'm glad he didn't shoot you.”

“Thanks. Me too.”

She laughed. “I better go inside now. I can't believe they didn't call me.”

She jumped down from the tailgate, and he followed. They shut it. Then standing together, facing one another, they hesitated. Something was supposed to happen now. He knew it. Was this when he was supposed to kiss her? How did he do that? What if he did it wrong?

Eventually she said, “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, for sure.” He smiled, relieved as the unusual, uncertain tension dissipated into the night.

She grinned, taking his hand once more and squeezing it.

He returned the squeeze and watched her walk back inside.

Jeremy sat cross-legged on the driveway, cupping his left hand as though he could prevent Mira's captured warmth from leaking out into the night.

Armed with a notebook, a pencil, and the Rambo knife, Jeremy set out to resolve the mystery of the tar pit. Hands on his hips, he stared at the black muck in the spring sun with the jumble of half-burned planks protruding from the ground like fingers clutching at the sky. What cataclysm had created this? Hopefully the markings on these boards would combine with the markings on the boards in the trailer. He knew the tar pit held the second clue. Mira would be impressed that he'd found it.

Careful not to stand in the tar, he walked from plank to plank, drawing each one and noting its location in the pit along with its shape and its marking. The burned planks looked random, as though they had been caught in some fire. Had this once been an oil derrick? Perhaps it had caught fire and burned, and then the ruins had been forgotten as Twin Hills grew up around them. How could he determine if there was enough wood here to build an oil derrick? He could dig down and see what might be under the first few feet of tar. He scratched at the muck with a solid stick.

When he managed to excavate a few inches of ooze, sulfur water bubbled up from the hole he made, burning his nose and his eyes. He left the hole alone. It was probably tar all the way down, anyway. The pond's water lapped against the tar pit. He strained to see if there might be more planks underwater, but he couldn't penetrate the muddy murk beneath those dancing oil slicks.

When the shadows grew long and his dad's piercing whistle cut through the stillness of the forest, he'd only drawn half the boards. It might be enough. As he ran home along the trails, he wondered what Mira would say about them, if she might see a clue in all this.

Mira turned the paper sideways, then upside down, then right side up. “It looks like spots on a cheetah,” she said finally, handing him back the paper.

Jeremy's shoulders slumped. “You don't think it's a clue?”

“No, I don't think so.” Her eyes glanced to him, and she shrugged. “Well, maybe it is, and I just don't understand it.”

He nodded, folding the page and shoving it in his pocket.

“Come on, let's go see about the trailer,” she said.

It had happened again. Just like yesterday when they had returned to finish the puzzle, all the wood was taken out and piled next to the trailer. Someone or something didn't want them to figure out what the boards meant.

“Again!” she said.

“I can't believe it.”

“Did you see anyone messing with it?”

“No, you?”

“We just did it yesterday!”

She turned to him, pointing her finger convincingly. “This is proof that it's a clue. They don't want us to figure out what's written on the boards. Come on, let's finish it tonight and see what it says.”

She climbed up in the back of the trailer, and Jeremy started handing the wood back to her. It was the third time that they had done it, and she moved quickly, piecing the puzzle together. Jeremy watched with a grin as the trailer's floor reappeared piece by piece, offering his opinion on where each plank should go. Tonight they would finally read what it said. An old Ford pulled into the driveway of Mr. Black's house. He got out, slamming the door of his truck.

“Dadgum kids! What're you doin'? I keep pulling all that damn wood out of that trailer! Why are you damn kids putting it back in? I want to refinish that floor so I can help my son haul his hay. Get out of there right this minute.”

Mira stood up. “We're—” she began.

He hobbled toward them, brandishing his cane. “Git out of here! Out of my yard, out of my trailer, and don't you come back. Git out of here ‘fore I tan your hides! Git! Git!”

Leaping from the trailer, they ran up the street and toward their houses, leaving the old man to stand in his yard and scowl after them. They sprinted down Nevada Street, not slowing until they gained the top of the canal embankment. Jeremy and Mira dropped to the ground, hidden among the cattails near the scummy water, invisible to any passersby. Jeremy wished his ears would stop burning, and wondered if Mr. Black would tell his parents. Would they get into trouble?