Watcher in the Woods (6 page)

“Maybe we'll find Mom right away.”

“You think so?” David asked.

Xander didn't answer. He didn't have to.

They heard the SUV's engine and its tires crunching over the dirt road, and turned their heads to wait for its appearance around the bend. The sun flashed brightly off its hood and windshield, reminding David that it was a sunny world away from the woods in which they lived. The 4Runner swung around and stopped at the end of the road.

Toria climbed out and waved. She waited for Dad to come around from the other side. She took one of three heavy-looking plastic bags from him, and the two of them trudged into the forest toward the boys.

“Been out here the whole time?” Dad asked.

“You told us to,” Xander said, a little whine in his voice.

Dad's eyes roamed the front of the house as he approached. It seemed to David that he was expecting to see something he hoped he wouldn't. When Dad was close enough, David tossed him the ball.

Dad grabbed for it, but the bags hindered his dexterity, and he knocked the ball into the trees. He shrugged and hefted the bags. “I'll feel better once we have these locks on the doors.” He looked from David to Xander and frowned.

David thought he was going to comment on the mopey expression on Xander's face, which he was sure matched his own. But Dad simply shared their sadness. How could they feel any other way?

He set the bags at the base of the stairs and sighed. He said, “Come on, all of you. I want to show you something.”

“What?” David said.

Dad began walking toward the side of the house. “You'll see.”

The kids threw puzzled looks at each other. Then Xander pushed off the steps to follow. Toria dropped her bag with the others and fell in behind him. David considered staying right where he was. He'd seen enough for that day . . . for that
year
. But curiosity got the better of him. He jumped down to the ground and hustled to catch up.

CHAPTER eleven

SUNDAY, 3 : 50 P . M .

Dad led David, Xander, and Toria to the clearing. It was way behind the house, through an especially dense area of forest. David and Xander had been there before, and its strangeness came back to David as soon as he stepped into it. It was an almost perfect oval carved out of the woods. The ground here was flat and grassy. The tall trees around it bent in, forming what looked to him like a naturally domed arena. Stranger than its physical appearance was the way it affected people: it made David's stomach feel funny, like plunging a long way down in an elevator; it seemed to allow them to run slightly faster than normal; and it caused their voices to be higher pitched, as though they were talking with their lungs filled with helium.

Everyone but David stopped at the edge of the clearing. He continued toward its center. He said, “Dad, we already know about this place. Remember, you found us here the other day?”

As he walked farther into the clearing, his voice rose in pitch until “the other day” was as squeaky as Mickey Mouse's. Despite the sour mood he had carried with him from the porch steps to the clearing, he laughed. It came out like a little girl's giggle. That got him laughing harder, which made his voice seem even more distorted and ridiculous.

The others began laughing as well, but at the edge of the clearing their voices sounded normal. Xander laughed so hard, tears streamed down his face, and he fell to his knees.

Toria managed to say, “Why are you . . . why are you talking like that?”

David beckoned her to him. “Come here!” he squeaked.

When she was near, she said, “What?”—as high-pitched as a rusty hinge. Her eyes went wide, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth.

David cracked up again.

“Was that me?” Toria squealed.

Xander rose and walked into the clearing, wiping at his face. “Dad,” he said. The last part of the word was higher pitched than the first. “Dad. What's this about? Do you know?”

Dad shook his head and joined them. “I know what this clearing
does
, but not why.” Even his deep voice was no match for the squeakifying power of the clearing.

“Is this why you brought us here?” Xander asked. “For a . . . I don't know, a
break
from the doom and gloom?”

“It worked,” David said. “I've been frowning so much, my face hurts.”

It was about four in the afternoon. He could not believe that his mother had been gone for only twelve hours. He knew he shouldn't feel as lighthearted as he did, but he couldn't help it. He wondered if the laughing gas some dentists used had the same effect: making you feel like laughing when you should be crying.

David smiled at Toria. She was holding her arms out from her body and rising up on her tiptoes and down again, rising up . . . she was feeling the lightness, the
bounciness
David and Xander had noticed the first time they were here.

Dad said, “This isn't the half of it, guys. Watch.” He moved deeper into the clearing and stopped near its center. He faced them, but his attention was on something they couldn't see. He looked around as though tracking a flying insect. Holding his hands out, seemingly for balance, he rocked up onto his toes. He took a step, rocked up again.

Xander and David exchanged a look of complete bafflement.

“Hold on!” Dad squeaked. His foot rose high, but instead of coming back down, the rest of him rose up to its level.

David gasped. Toria made a noise that might have been a startled scream. Xander spat out a word: “
What
?”

It was as though their father was standing on an invisible platform—an unstable platform. His feet wobbled around beneath him. He kept shifting his knees, his weight whipping his arms this way and that, apparently to keep from falling. Instead of coming down, he slid sideways and rose higher. Still wobbling, his eyes came off his feet to take in his startled children. A wide grin stretched across his face. His hair rose and fell as though blown by a breeze. He said, “What do you think?” The act of speaking seemed to distract him from whatever concentration he needed to—

To what?
David thought.
Fly? Float?
The way Dad was balancing himself, David would say Dad was grinding a rail on a skateboard.

Dad wobbled and went higher.

“You've got to be kidding me!” Xander said, stepping forward. “Are you . . . are you
flying
?”

“I don't know what it is,” Dad said. He shifted his hips, moved sideways and up.

Correction,
David thought.
Not grinding a rail—more like riding
an escalator. An invisible escalator that isn't very stable.

The smile never left Dad's face. He said, “We discovered this when I was a kid. There are like . . . air currents or something. But more than air. If you find them, you can kind of step on them,
ride
them.” He suddenly sailed thirty feet through the air, going sideways, straight up, then plunging down a little. His body wobbled as he tried to stay balanced. He let out a long, high “Aaaah!” and laughed. “Not so much a ride as it is like
surfing
on whatever currents are moving through this clearing.”

David stuck out his foot, feeling for something he could not see, hoping to feel it. Nothing, just that same lightness everywhere. He called, “How? Can we do it too?”

“Sure you can!” Dad said. He zipped higher and came closer to the kids. He hovered over them, smiling down at David.

David could see the bottoms of his shoes, a spot of gum stuck on one of them. For some reason, this more than anything drove the point home: his dad was flying. And he seemed to be getting more comfortable in the air, less wobbly, more in control.

Their father shot backwards and stopped. He was still looking down at David, but not between his feet. He said, “It has something to do with attitude, with
wanting
to do it. It's like flexing a muscle to find the currents. I'm not saying you're willing yourself to do it—more like you're
allowing
yourself to do it.”

David lifted his foot again, tapping his toe in the air. He
did
feel something, a kind of resistance. He moved his whole foot. The air felt spongy, as though he were stepping on a balloon. He heaved himself up onto it and came straight down. He lost his balance and fell back onto the ground.

Xander and Toria laughed.

From high above, Dad called, “That's it, Dae! You can do it. It takes some getting used to.”

David leaned back on his arms to look up at Dad, and he realized something. “You did this before,” he said to his father. “I mean recently. When you found Xander and me here the other day, you'd been doing this, huh?” He remembered that Dad had been out of breath, his hair all messed up.

Dad shrugged. He zipped around in a tight circle, rose even higher, close to the level of the treetops now. “I confess,” he said, and laughed. “I wondered if the clearing still allowed it and if I could do it. After you guys found the portals, and Xander went to the Colosseum, I needed a break. This place takes your mind off everything.”

David lay back, feeling the soft grass under him, tickling the back of his neck. The trees arched over the edges of the clearing, leaving an oval of blue sky directly above. Nothing indicated that the imaginary dome created by mentally extending the treetops to the center of the opening was the highest you could go, but he suspected that was true. His father was just below this upper limit, weaving around. Instead of standing straight, he was starting to lean over. This made what he was doing appear even more like flying.

“Whoa! David, look!”

It was Xander. When David looked, his brother was standing four feet above the grass.

CHAPTER twelve

SUNDAY, 4 : 12 P . M .

Xander laughed. His feet, well off the ground, were slipping and sliding around under him, but he somehow stayed up.

“Check it out!” Xander yelled.

“Oh, man,” David said, getting to his feet. If Xander could do it, he'd better be able to. He walked to the center of the clearing, thinking that the currents, whatever they were, would be stronger there. Toria was closer to the edge. She was lifting her feet and hopping, but not getting any air.

She'd better not do it before me
, David thought.

He closed his eyes and patted the air around him. After a moment he felt the resistance he had noticed earlier. Again, he lifted his foot and moved it around, as though feeling for a stair. More resistance, but nothing else.

Come on, come on!
he thought.
Fly!

Sponginess under his feet, under his hands. Squeezing his eyelids tighter, he imagined the air holding him, lifting him.

“David!” Xander called.

David looked.

Xander was
way
above ground now, grinning like a madman. “Yeah, man!”

David felt his feet almost slip out from under him, as though he were standing on ice. At the same time, he realized he was not looking up at Xander. He dropped his gaze straight down and saw the grass ten feet below his shoes. His stomach rolled. His muscles tightened. His feet
did
slip out from under him. He fell back, his arms pinwheeling, his legs shooting up over his head. But he didn't drop. He saw the ground below him and then Xander again as he came back around. He had done a backward somersault in midair.

“Way to go, Dae!” Xander said. He threw himself backward. He spun his arms and kicked his feet until he had executed a similar move.

David watched with amazement. He felt pressure under his feet and arms, as though invisible hands were keeping him afloat.

He brought his arms down and kicked as he would underwater. And what would happen underwater happened here: he rose higher. As frightening as it was to watch the ground get farther away, David felt a lightness that went deeper than his skin and muscles. It reached his spirit. It was like he was free of more than the laws of gravity; all the garbage that had been dumped on him recently didn't seem so heavy.

He was still aware of his mother's absence and how awful it was. But at this moment, he felt able to deal with it. He was sure it was temporary, as though she had gone to the store and would return soon. He laughed at that, kicked his legs, and shot higher. Bending at the waist, he leaned diagonally over the ground. This—staring directly at a forty-foot plunge—was even more exhilarating. His heart raced faster. His mouth twitched from a joyful smile to a worried frown and back again. His father called to him, and when he turned to look, his body rotated with his head.

Dad was standing—if that's what you called it, when there was nothing to stand on—as high as David thought he could go, at the center of the opening to the wide blue sky.

“What do you think?” Dad said and laughed.

David meant to answer, but only an excited breath came out. He swallowed and tried again. “Great!”

Just under the arcing canopy of leaves, Xander hovered. He was reaching up to touch the branches. He was being careful, as though any connection with reality would send him crashing back down.

“I can't do it!”

Toria's voice reached David, sounding thin and far away. He looked to see her jumping in place on the grass.

Dad said, “I think you're trying too hard, honey.” He moved his arms and legs and began descending toward her.

David swiveled away and “swam” toward the canopy at the edge of the clearing. How cool would it be to get a leaf from up here and save it as a memento of his first time flying? He still had trouble thinking of it as
flying
. It wasn't like
Peter Pan
: hadn't Wendy, John, and Michael Darling needed fairy dust? And they had flown away to Neverland.

David, Xander, and Dad weren't flying, and they would never go anywhere this way. But that was all right. This was enough.

He was near the edge of the clearing and reaching up to a leaf bigger than his hand, when something outside the clearing caught his eye. His eyes widened, and his heart felt squeezed into a tight knot. Through the trees, on the ground, a man stood looking at him. He was in shadows, but David could tell the man's expression was grim. He had long hair that was blowing around his head. He wore a dark overcoat, and his hands were stuffed into his pockets. The whites of his eyes seemed to glow in the darkness of the woods.