The Finders Keepers
Page 38
Alex felt his senses, eyes closed. There was a husking, rumbling noise that was regurgitating from the outside. People were talking in low voices with flavors of excitement and there were eager footsteps that were running. He could feel the wet breezes damping on his skin, yet he chose to remain still hidden behind the consciousness of his closed eyelids.
“Alex, come on, wake up!” said a joyful voice from his left side.
Someone was shaking him off his own private unwinding, but for a moment he realized that he wasn’t tired. Alex just smiled, taking a deep soothing breath.
“Yeah, uncle, stop it,” he murmured. The boy had not understood what he said so he kept shaking him. “Godfrey, stop it!”
The boy had halted; Godfrey opened his eyes.
Zeejay Sanders was standing on the aisle of the bus. Alex was sitting on a passenger’s seat beside a widely-drawn window. He could not determine whether it was morning or afternoon because the atmosphere was gray and gloomy. The road outside was wet as it had just rained.
“Godfrey – what are you talking about?” Zeejay asked.
Alex was confused. “What happened?”
Zeejay shook his head and hesitated.
“John was faking you last night, and he said you tripped down of a short cliff and fell on a mound of sand. He called out Mrs. Sandra and you were immediately heaved here in the bus – are you okay?”
Godfrey was not listening anymore. So it was all just a dream? It could not be, he thought. But there was nothing left to worry had it not turned out into a dream; Alfrendo was finished anyway. Even so it seemed wrong as though he was craving for more adventure.
“Are you okay?” Zeejay repeated.
“Er, yeah,” he answered, which was a lie.
There was a continuous rapping on the bus steps, and John hurried beside Zeejay saying, “Is he awake?” His eyes fell upon him,
“Why, anything wrong?” Alex asked.
“Nothing,” said John curtly. He drew out from the inside of his jacket a roughly cared, softbound, brown-paged, and coverless notepad. He passed it to Alex at once. “A guy named Jether who was living in front of the cliff said I should give it to you. He said something like you need this importantly. There is a letter he slipped there – I swear I didn’t read it.”
“Me, either,” said Zeejay.
“How could you know there’s a letter?” asked Alex suspiciously.
“Well, he said it,” said John. “But we checked if it was true but found nothing, so we thought he was just faking. Demented, if I would call him. Okay, see you around.”
John and Zeejay moved out of the bus. As soon as they were gone, Alex opened the travelling notebook. And there was a small piece of yellowing card with limited words. It read:
No surprises, please, it’s your dad or papa – whatever you’ll call me. I couldn’t tell as much now, though I eagerly wanted to. I have arranged things with the king – he was impressed on how you performed with his daughter and son. The Leviota was found, it was Godfrey’s sword, actually. You will return here shortly after the king decided the best immediate action to it – your next mission obviously.
Till we meet,
Jether Louis Jacob
Alex felt the paper with his hands and questions after questioned burst into his mind. There was no one to ask them, he was reserving it for his next arrival there. Then sighing out his excitement, he placed it in his bag and stormed happily out of the bus into the other orphans who were chasing each other in the backyard.
_________
The rainy shower of July had gently crept over the shabby labyrinth of brick houses. The continuous downpour of water had permitted the chance for the sky to burn gray. Two figures stepped out of the house into the wet, sparkling road under two separate umbrellas.
Xhynia was neither hesitating nor complaining about their purpose as she walked with her pinkish hat fluffing out behind her. The man following at her back was gazing at his own broken reflection upon the wet pavement. She was walking briskly with a crispy red bag over her right shoulder. She was wearing tight dark blue jeans topped with a long coat so that she looked rather wealthy than she had once been.
Xhynia had gone through slight change over the year that passed since the Turpin House foreclosure drama. She was, if anything, franker and happier still.
“Irvin, stop telling me it’s a scornful idea!” she wailed softly. “Haven’t we gone through this all last night?”
“We did,” said Irvin, without looking at her but at his reflection. “May I just remind you, Xhynia, of the fact that what we’re doing is going to make total embarrassment!”
“No,” she finally said. “We’re still getting Alexander Abercrombe back, but this time, as our son.”
It was all too well.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eucraick Belgica Viteño has always been fascinated by folklore and magic. He has written fiction since he was a child and always wanted to be an author. In fact, his first book written when he was seven – a love story about dragons called Dinagma!
Writing a story had been his best form of coping from depression and emptiness. Due to his unsuccessful journey through his early teenage years, he wrote a lot of stories like The Sinister Swine, Lorcan and Lysander, The Order of Ziphook, and the Potion of Life.
The idea of The Finders Keepers came to him after a hard fall from his imperfect love life, where he says, “My nerve simply insisted to write a story that is far from what has really happened – and in that case, I think it pays off so much than I expected because I had been able to live in a different world for a year through writing the The Finders Keepers.”
Eucraick Belgica Viteño lives in the Philippines with his parents and three siblings.