The Forbidden Lock

by Liesl Shurtliff

  Matt dissolved himself again. He traveled to the moment just before he and Jia returned to the house from their time with the emperor at his observatory. He entered the house and saw Belamie and Albert sitting together, whispering. Matt knew they were conspiring to get the compass from him, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. His mission was only to get Gaga and Haha and Uncle Chuck. He knew now that it hadn’t been Captain Vincent who made them disappear. Matt had done it. It hadn’t made sense to him at the time, but it did now. He could see the bigger picture. He had fit together more pieces of the puzzle.

  Gaga was sitting in a chair, drinking tea. Haha and Uncle Chuck were playing chess. He gave a silent apology for the scare he was about to give them.

  Matt spread his cells between his grandparents and uncle and began the process of atomically disassembling them all. He could feel he was low on energy. It would take him longer this time, and then he worried, even when he got them all disassembled, would he be able to pull them all back together?

  Gaga noticed first. “My face is tingling,” she said, patting at her cheeks. “I think that treatment they gave me is irritating my skin.”

  “Funny,” Haha said. “My face is tingling too.” He rubbed at his jaw.

  “My foot’s asleep,” Uncle Chuck said as he tapped his foot.

  Haha turned and looked at Gaga. “Gloria!” He stood and knocked over the chess table.

  “Oh, Henry!” Gaga cried. “Your face is melting!”

  Belamie and Albert rushed over. “What’s happening?” Belamie asked.

  “Help!” Haha cried, holding up his fading hand. “I’m disappearing!”

  “Albert, hold on to them!” Belamie grabbed Gaga and Haha while Albert grasped on to Uncle Chuck’s fading leg. He crashed into a table, knocked over a porcelain pitcher, and the rush of movement further drained Matt’s energy. He didn’t know how he was going to be able to finish this.

  And then Matt came in. The past Matt. Present-Matt could feel his presence. It gave him an odd boost of energy, like his past cells were recharging his present cells.

  “No!” past-Matt shouted while the invisible Matt started to work more quickly.

  “Oh!” Gaga said. “I feel so strange!” Matt disassembled all of Gaga and went on to Haha.

  “I guess this is really it this time,” Haha said.

  “Uncle Chuck!” past-Matt called. “Don’t go!”

  “It’s okay, Matty,” Uncle Chuck said calmly. “I’m just going to the next adventure. You gotta stay and finish this one.” He dissolved and disappeared.

  Matt watched his past self clutch at his head and start to shake. He saw the flickering, like a lightbulb, just like Jia said. He felt a bit sorry for himself but also knew this was necessary. He had to hit rock bottom before he could fully fall apart.

  Matt carried his grandparents and uncle with him back to Blossom. He touched down and released them from his hold. Their cells spilled onto the floor and reformed. All three of them gasped and fell to their hands and knees.

  “Whoa,” Corey said as Matt appeared next to him. “That really was no time at all. You were gone for, like, less than a minute.”

  “What just happened?” Haha said, getting to his feet.

  “Did we die?” Gaga asked.

  “Matty, is that you?” Uncle Chuck said.

  “Oh, Mateo!” Gaga said. “How did you get here? I thought you and Jia were having some secret meeting with the emperor?”

  “We did,” Jia said.

  “Fast meeting,” Haha said. “Did you learn any secrets?”

  “A few,” Matt said.

  “I feel like I’m missing something,” Uncle Chuck said. “What am I missing?”

  “Who are all these children?” Gaga said, looking at Corey and Ruby and Marta. And then her eyes widened. Matt could see the fog lifting from her memory as she took in Corey and Ruby.

  Gaga gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh . . . oh!” She swept Corey and Ruby into a hug. “Corey! Ruby! You’re okay! You’re here!” She grabbed each of them by the face, kissed their cheeks, and crushed them with more hugs.

  “Urgh!” Corey grunted. “Not so tight, Gaga!”

  “I’m sorry,” Gaga said, releasing the twins. “But how . . .”

  “Matt brought us back,” Ruby said.

  “By blowing himself up,” Corey said.

  “What?” the three grown-ups said at once.

  Matt did not have the energy to explain one more thing to anyone. Luckily, Corey was eager to tell the tale. He made a few embellishments that made the whole thing sound like a comic book adventure, but Matt didn’t mind. It wasn’t far off the mark.

  “Is that why you’re so blurry?” Uncle Chuck asked. “Parts of you are still in outer space or something?”

  Matt shrugged. “More or less.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I thought my eyesight might be going.”

  “So what are we doing now?” Haha asked. “Have you figured out how to beat that maniac yet?”

  “Almost,” Matt said.

  “We need to go to Colombia,” Ruby said. “We need to find Matt as a baby and keep Vincent from adopting him, because if he does, he’ll make him his own son.”

  “And then we’ll really be in deep doo-doo,” Corey said.

  “We won’t be at all, actually,” Ruby said.

  “So . . . we’re going to fight?” Haha said, looking a little uneasy. Uncle Chuck and Gaga did too.

  “You don’t have to come with us,” Matt said. “I can take you someplace safe, and you can wait until it’s all over.”

  “And let you children go off on your own to fight Captain Vincent?” Gaga said. “Are you kidding? That maniac messed with my family. I’m not going to hide when I’ve got the chance to mess with him. Right, Henry?”

  Haha smiled at his wife with glowing admiration. He took her hand. “Right, Gloria. I’ll fight with you and for you, all the way to the end.”

  Gaga blushed a little, but she patted Haha’s hand in appreciation.

  “Me too,” Uncle Chuck said resolutely. “Nobody messes with the Hudsons and gets away with it. It’s time to take this maniac down.”

  Matt felt an overwhelming love for all his family right now, but at the same time, a pang of sadness that they weren’t all here. His parents . . . he needed them. He didn’t care what state they were in, if they remembered them or not. They needed to be together.

  “We need to get Dad back,” Matt said. “I think Mom needs to see him, to remember, or foremember, at least. I think that’s important.”

  Ruby nodded. “We can help her remember too. If all of us are together, she’ll have to feel it somehow.”

  “Yeah,” Corey said. “It’s, like, destiny.”

  But Matt still wasn’t sure. Captain Vincent had the Aeternum. The lock was broken, and Matt still did not know how to fix it, where it was, or even what it looked like. But they had to move forward. He had to believe that answers would reveal themselves along the way.

  “All right, bro,” Corey said, “Let’s get out of here. Work your magic.”

  “It’s not magic,” Matt said. “It’s science, cellular manipulation.”

  “Tomato-potato,” Corey said. “Just do it.”

  Matt dissolved himself.

  “So freaking cool,” Corey said.

  Matt spread his cells throughout Blossom, breaking it all down, pulling it all into himself and into the web of space and time. Somehow it was easier to carry an entire vehicle full of people than it was to carry a bunch of individual people, just like with the compass. It was like mass-time-travel transit. He was the driver, the captain, and they were on their way to war. He just needed to pick up one last passenger before they reached their final destination.

  As they traveled through the web, he felt for those other cells still hovering in that state between existence and nonexistence, clinging to those other threads. He connected the rest of his cells to them, pulling them along for the
ride. It didn’t feel as hard this time. Maybe because he was getting better at it, or maybe having the rest of the family with him somehow helped, like the collective energy of all their cells was somehow helping him gather and hold on. This time Matt didn’t have to wait to weave the threads together. Marta was ready. Even though he couldn’t see her, he could feel her weaving those threads, pulling them back into existence as they traveled.

  30

  The Undoing of Santiago

  1880

  Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria, Germany

  Santiago was hiding in a chest, gnawing on a bag of peanut butter–filled pretzels. He was getting dangerously close to the end. Soon he would have to venture out to find something else to eat. He dreaded it. He did not want to cross paths with her. That woman, the one Captain Vincent had obsessed over for the past twenty years.

  The Hudsons were no more. The captain had unraveled the father and thereby the two children, leaving only the mother and the boy Mateo (who wasn’t really Mateo). Captain Vincent said they would soon forget the life they’d had. They’d forget that they’d ever been Hudsons or had any other life. Everything would be as it always should have been. For the captain, anyway. Santiago wasn’t so sure about himself.

  The Hudson woman hadn’t appeared to them right away. Captain Vincent started to worry. Santiago could feel it. Perhaps they’d made a mistake. Perhaps they’d done things wrong and erased the woman too. But then she appeared, quite out of nowhere, with Albert in tow. Albert, of all people! He had been the one to bring her back to them. Apparently she had gotten stuck somewhere in China. It was all very confusing, but the captain didn’t seem to care so much about all that. His Bonbon was back! There was such happiness and celebration! The captain embraced his Bonbon and she embraced him, and Santiago was feeling all the happy feelings between them until the Hudson woman laid eyes on him sitting on the captain’s shoulder. She screamed so high and loud it pierced his ears and vibrated through all his fur.

  “There’s a rat on you!” she screamed. Before Santiago knew what was happening, she shoved him off the captain’s shoulder. He fell to the floor, feet up. The woman looked down at him with pure disgust.

  “Oh, poor Santiago,” the captain said, though he made no move to help him.

  “Don’t tell me you have a name for that creature.”

  “Don’t be cross, Bonbon. He really is an intelligent fellow. Very helpful. He cleans, you know.”

  “I don’t care if he’s a ballerina. I’ll have no rats on my ship!”

  “Of course not, Bonbon, whatever you wish.” And unbelievably the captain kicked Santiago out of the room. Actually kicked him with the toe of his ugly red shoes!

  Santiago rolled and landed on his feet. He turned around and hissed.

  The woman pulled out a dagger and threw it at Santiago. It didn’t hit him, but it shaved one side of his whiskers.

  Captain’s Bonbon evil! Ugly! Poop! Stink! Santiago screeched all the ugly human words he could think of.

  The captain only laughed. “Off with you, Santiago. Go and find something to eat.”

  Santiago obeyed. Angry feelings aside, he was still the captain’s most loyal companion. And so here he was, hiding in a dark chest, gorging himself on peanut butter pretzels. Only a few left.

  Santiago had been banished. Replaced. The captain might as well have discarded him.

  He reached the end of the peanut butter pretzels. He swished his tail back and forth, tried to stay hidden, but that bottomless pit of hunger overwhelmed him. He needed more food.

  He crawled out of the chest, climbed up the wall and scurried between the rafters. He heard the voices of the captain and Bonbon.

  “I don’t like this crew,” Bonbon said. “Only Albert will follow my orders, and even then, he defers to you. Am I no longer captain of this ship? Where is Demetria? Where’s Neeti and Tui?”

  Santiago could feel the captain’s thoughts spinning. He’d been so focused on finding the Aeternum, destroying the Hudsons, getting back his Bonbon, he had not prepared for the questions she might have upon returning. “They were traitors,” the captain lied smoothly.

  Bonbon gasped. “Traitors? Impossible!”

  “It’s true. They mutinied against you, stole your compass, and had you discarded. But I fought for you. I discarded them. I found my own loyal crew, and then I found the Aeternum in order to bring you back to me.”

  Santiago could feel the captain was expecting gratitude from his Bonbon, for a sweeping romantic gesture and for his gallantry, but none came. “Traitors,” she said again. “I don’t believe it.”

  “We will forget them,” the captain said. “We don’t need anyone but us. Now come, I have a surprise for you.”

  “You know I don’t like surprises.”

  “You’ll like this one. I promise.”

  Santiago scurried away. He didn’t like surprises either. But just as he got to the pantry, he heard the bell for travel. Santiago felt the walls of the Vermillion start to shift. He clung to one of the rafters as the Vermillion turned into a boat, sailing along a winding river between green mountains. Ahead, a castle stood high on a mountaintop, its many towers and turrets sparkling silver in the sunlight.

  “Neuschwanstein Castle,” Captain Vincent said, placing his arm about his Bonbon’s waist.

  “It looks just like a fairy tale,” she said.

  “And we shall live there happily ever after. As king and queen.”

  Bonbon smiled, but it faltered. “Doesn’t this kingdom already have a king and queen?”

  “No,” the captain said. “We’re king and queen now. All this is our kingdom.”

  And his word made it true. The captain claimed the castle and the kingdom within hours of their arrival. They only needed to pull a few time tapestries, shift a few things around, and the deed was done. The captain was King Vincent now, and his queen, Queen Belamie. No one questioned it, not the servants and advisers or lords or ladies or peasants.

  Santiago questioned it, however. He hated the castle. The instant he entered he was attacked by a flock of swans! They came honking and flapping right at him. One even bit at his tail! He overheard Wiley say something about how the former king had loved the birds and kept them in the castle. Santiago tried to complain to the captain-now-king, tell him to banish the evil birds, or better yet, make them not exist at all, but the captain was preoccupied with his Bonbon. He didn’t even seem to hear Santiago anymore.

  He found the castle food stores. He gnawed through the bags of flour and the sugar and ate and ate and ate, trying to fill that bottomless pit he knew could not be filled, all while the captain was occupied with his Bonbon who really shouldn’t have been his Bonbon at all, and the kingdom that really wasn’t his.

  Only a week after their arrival at the palace the king and queen held a ball. Guests arrived in great swarms, dressed in their silks and furs and jewels, but it was the new queen everyone admired, dressed in a glittering gown and crown. Santiago overheard Brocco boasting to Wiley that her dress was his finest achievement. “Finally, we got a dress-wearing female on board the Vermillion. She’s fabulous, isn’t she?”

  Wiley shrugged. “She doesn’t seem too happy to be here,” he said, looking at the queen as another guest bowed to her.

  “Probably just the shock of everything that’s happened,” Brocco said. “She’ll adjust.”

  “Maybe,” Wiley said, but Santiago thought perhaps Wiley was right. The new queen didn’t seem happy. She didn’t smile at any of her new subjects. She pressed a hand to her head as though it ached.

  There was a feast, and then there was music and dancing. Santiago stayed well-hidden, but in a place where he could see most everything and be in close proximity to the food. He feasted on a meat pie while he watched. The king smiled and laughed all night long, but the queen didn’t so much. She kept looking around like she was looking for someone, or maybe lost something, like a glove or a hairpin. She wandered out of the ballroom, and th
en Santiago noticed the king was looking for her. Santiago saw this as an opportunity to show his loyalty and usefulness, so he went to the king and pointed him in the right direction.

  “Thank you, Santiago,” the king said and went after the queen.

  They found her wandering the castle corridors like she was lost. She had her fingers pressed to her head, her brow knit in pain. She was humming to herself, and every now and then she muttered the words of a song, something about stars.

  “Bonbon, what are you doing?” the king asked. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Come back to the party.”

  “I was only away for a day or so, wasn’t I?” she said, frowning. “But in some ways it feels longer than that. It feels like so much has happened that I can’t remember.”

  “I told you. Much has happened,” the king said. “You were lost to me. I had to go to the ends of the earth to bring you back.”

  “With the Aeternum,” she said, glancing at the place where the glowing stone now resided in the king’s chest. “You changed things?”

  “Of course I did,” the king said. “Wouldn’t you do the same for me?”

  She nodded. “Of course. Of course I would,” but she continued to frown. “My parents . . . can we save them? Bring them back?”

  Santiago felt possessiveness flare up inside the king. She had been asking this every day since she’d come back, but the king was not keen on the idea. He had his own plans, and he was not eager to share his Bonbon with her parents.

  But he smiled. “Of course, Bonbon,” he lied. “We will save them very soon, just as we’d always planned. But first, we must attend to other things. We can’t think only about those we want to save from the past. We must also think of those we must save in our future.”

  “The boy, the one I saw on the ship?”

  “Yes, our son.”

  “Annie said he was my son. He said he was my son, but he said you weren’t his father. He said he had another father.”

  The king stiffened. Santiago felt his self-assurance diminish ever so slightly. He raised one eyebrow. “Do you want him to have another father?”