At another count of three from Vita, the children jumped off with a handle in each hand and glided across their zip lines to the treehouse’s wraparound porch. Vita let out a triumphant whoop as she and Melina zoomed over the marble floor. Yes, this was much more fun than any old ladder.
Once they all stood on the porch, Rosie raced around to Vita’s corner to give her a hug. “That was great!”
Surprised by the embrace, Vita awkwardly patted Rosie’s back.
Jasmine followed along behind Rosie. “That looked so fun it almost made me wish I couldn’t just fly up here. Almost.”
The other children joined them inside the treehouse and just as they had outside, Rosie and Grover offered compliments while Wile just stared at the walls through narrowed eyes.
Or, rather, he stared at the absence of walls. Where walls should have been were books, a few hundred of them at least. A mix of dog-eared paperbacks and prized hardcovers rested on robin’s egg blue shelves that towered from floor to ceiling. Vita’s very favorites were all in attendance—all seven of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, six Harry Potter paperbacks and one hulking hardcover purchased at midnight on the night it published, over a dozen Roald Dahl titles, and a copy of J.M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan which Vita had read so many times that its binding was falling apart and it was downright generous to call it a “book” any longer. Several of the other titles Vita had read, but some were books she’d simply been meaning to read.
“Books, huh?” Wile said in a hard voice.
“Yes, books,” Vita replied shortly. “I like to read.”
“Got all those books memorized, do you?” he asked. “Know each and every word by heart?”
She furrowed her brow at him. “What are you talking about?”
Wile plucked a book off the shelf—The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson—and handed it to her. “Here. See for yourself.”
The cover looked the same as always—a little old wizard with a white beard led a one-eyed giant, a fairy with a hat covered in vegetables, and a plain, sweet little hag named Odge up to the enchanted train platform. But inside the book, the pages were blank.
Now Wile’s words made sense to her; all the books on the walls were as blank as this one. They only would have had words in them if Vita had each book memorized.
Her shoulders slumped. Her treehouse had a little nook of an attic that would have been perfect for reading. What would she do there now?
Rosie patted Vita’s arm in sympathy. “The books still look neat, though. And it’s probably been a while since you read that one, right? I bet there’ll be more words in the ones you remember better.”
Vita replaced The Secret of Platform 13 on the shelf. She saw Little Women beside it, which she had only finished a few weeks earlier. She felt tempted to test Rosie’s theory but couldn’t stand the thought of seeing the pages of another book she loved wiped clean.
She looked over at Wile, expecting him to be congratulating himself on upsetting her. But his eyes had caught on the piano in the corner. It wasn’t a fancy grand piano—just a modest upright of pale pine. Vita didn’t know how to play but she still had always wished her family had one. Her grandmother had a piano just like that one at her house in Ohio. Sometimes at Thanksgiving her aunt would play the piano and Vita’s mother and father would sing. Now it had been so long since her mother had felt well enough to sing that Vita could barely remember it—only that it was the most beautiful sound in the world.
Wile’s face was the softest she’d ever seen it and he took a few hesitant steps toward the piano before he seemed to remember himself and shoved his hands in his pockets.
After a trip up to the attic, the children zipped back out to their respective corners of the castle. Harper and Rafe built up some Base so Vita could replace the staircase in her corner, and patched up the other staircases as well. As much as she had enjoyed running up the falling-apart staircases with Jen, she didn’t want her new friends or even Wile to get hurt because of them.
Rosie called over that she and Jasmine were going to climb up into their turret to look at the view, so Vita took the opportunity to do the same. She entered the dark doorway in the corner—there had perhaps been a door there at some point but now all that remained was a set of rusty hinges. A stone spiral staircase wove upward through the brick tower and ended in a small landing with a large arched window. Vita and Melina had a wonderful view of the rainbow trees of Nayera Jungle and the clear blue, cloudless sky around the Dream Chamber’s entrance.
While Vita was looking out the window, she saw Pish flying toward them. “You want a ride down, Vita? The stairs aren’t much fun now that you fixed ‘em.”
Vita happily accepted and was already waiting outside when everyone else emerged from the castle. “Whoa, how’d you get out here so fast?” Grover asked.
“What can I say, it pays to have a pigeon at my beck and call,” Vita said with a fake-sweet smile in Wile’s direction.
“What are you building over there?” Rosie asked, pointing to their right. There was little more than an enormous patch of Base there, but Vita had started to build the canals that would crisscross the city much like the train tracks did in Railstown.
“Oh, that’s Landora,” Vita said. She led them toward the patch of Base as she explained, “It’s going to be this city where there are a bunch of cafes, and jazz clubs, and—”
“Canals?” Wile cut in. He stepped forward to look into the water beneath a half-finished bridge and seemed very unimpressed. “Because that’s all I see.”
Vita blushed. She’d started on Landora but realized the detail of the buildings and cobblestone streets were more than she had time to handle. So she’d switched to working on Railstown instead.
“Well, it’s not like we can all build as fast as you, Coyote,” Rosie said. “Not everyone can do your music thing.”
Two things had the power to crack Wile’s usual stone-faced expression: pianos and Rosie. Rosie and Wile seemed to be friends, though Vita couldn’t figure out why Rosie would want anything to do with the antagonistic boy.
Grover and Rafe were looking down at the lone patch of cobblestone street that Vita had finished a few yards away, and she adjusted Melina around her neck and walked over to them.
“You’re good at making the scenery look old,” Grover observed when she reached them. “Not easy to do. The temptation is to make it look new and dirty.”
“Thanks. Are there a lot of old buildings and stuff in your Chamber?” She put a hand to her mouth. “Sorry—I didn’t mean to pry about it.”
Grover shook his head. “Not prying. Yeah, there are a lot of old buildings in Tardorian. I think you’ll like them.”
“You’ll adore Tardorian, Vita,” Rafe said. “We have the loveliest suppers, and parties. And the joust! Vita hasn’t seen me joust!” He said this as though it were the greatest of tragedies.
Vita grinned at the robot knight. “Are you any good?” she asked him.
He drew his gold sword and wove it through the air. “I’m the best—at fencing as well as the joust.”
Vita laughed. She looked over at Rosie and Wile. They still stood by the half-finished bridge, talking. “Grover, do you have any idea what Wile’s ‘music thing’ is? Rosie mentioned it.”
His watery eyes followed her gaze and he frowned. “No, sorry. Wile lets Rosie into his Chamber, but not me.” He put his hands in his pockets and kicked at the Base-covered ground. “I don’t know what his problem is with me, I really don’t.”
“Hey, Jackie Frost, you got anywhere that’s, you know, more than two percent done?” Wile called over to Vita.
Vita smirked. Jackie Frost. It was more creative than Q-Tip, she’d give him that.
Next she took them to Railstown. They wandered over sidewalks and train platforms, and Grover and Rafe commented on the architecture of the brownstones while the formally dressed gophers and squirrels delighted Rosie and Jasmine. A few of the travelers and rail workers
seemed just as intrigued by Vita and her friends but most of them just moved quickly around the group and hurried on toward their destinations.
Wile remained silent throughout Vita’s tour. She thought maybe his lack of snarky comments meant he actually liked Railstown, but she could feel the weight of his glare when they stopped at the Central station café for croissants and hot chocolate. Vita led them out to the largest table on the patio and put down their tray of croissants and mugs.
“I thought after this we could take a ride on the train,” she told the others. “That’s all anyone does in Railstown, either work the train or ride it.”
Vita hadn’t even had a chance to ride any of the trains herself yet. She would have been terrified to share such new creations with these near-strangers only a few hours earlier, but now the idea of taking her first train ride with them sounded far nicer than going it alone, or even with Melina and her other Whirlyton friends. There was something just so exhilarating about sharing Whirlyton with people who weren’t Whirlyton natives or Jen. People who were brand new to it.
But while Rosie, Grover, and Rafe all joined Vita and Melina at the table, Wile remained standing. He still hadn’t said a word since they’d entered Railstown and for a moment he just stared at something behind Vita’s back in silence. Vita turned and saw the golden train whiz by, off to the next station only fifty yards away.
“I knew it,” Vita heard Wile’s voice say while her back was still turned. “I knew you were nothing but a thief.” She felt the weight of his dark eyes before she met them with her own.
She blinked at him. “What?”
“You stole his ideas for yourself!” he yelled. He put his hands on the table and leaned toward her so his face was only inches from hers. “Where is he?” he demanded. “I know you know!”
Grover and Rosie stood and each took an arm to pull Wile away from Vita. Wile took his arm away from Grover but allowed Rosie to stay close beside him. “Who are you talking about?” Rosie asked Wile.
Wile looked at her for a few moments and then it was like a light went out. His fiery eyes went cold and he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Forget it,” he said. He took another look around—back toward the train station, at the gold train from before and a blue one that ran on the other side of a stone fountain. “You stole it, I know you did,” he muttered.
Then he walked across the patio floor, over the train tracks, and out of town in the direction of the Dream Chamber’s entrance.
Vita looked between Grover and Rosie. “You really don’t know who he was talking about?”
They both shook their heads. “The guy’s just nuts,” Grover said.
“He’s going through a tough time,” Jasmine said. She looked on enviously while Melina drank from a saucer of hot chocolate.
“Should we…?” Vita let the question hang in the air. The last thing she wanted to do was convince Wile to come back—she hadn’t even invited him in the first place.
So she was relieved when Rosie waved the suggestion off. “It’s best to leave Coyote alone when he’s like this.”
While they decided where they would want to stop on their train ride, Vita thought she heard the doorbell again, but again no one else reacted. She would have to check and make sure the thing was working properly. Though this time what she heard didn’t sound so much like wind chimes.
It sounded like a piano.
CHAPTER TEN
SOME KIND OF THIEF
“Quick, Jasmine, get back on my shoulder!” Rosie called up to the fairy flying near the ceiling of their train compartment.
For the fifth time in the past hour Jasmine failed to heed Rosie’s warning. The motion of the train smacked the fairy’s tiny body into the compartment’s deep blue embossed wallpaper, and Jasmine fell down right into Vita’s lap. The fairy was so insubstantial the girl couldn’t feel her sitting there.
Rosie groaned. “How many times do I have to tell you, Jazz? You need to stay on my shoulder while the train’s moving.”
Jasmine lay on her back in Vita’s lap, her flame-red hair fanned out around her, and crossed her arms over her chest. “I get restless,” she whined.
Rafe shifted on the scarlet cushion beside Vita to look down at Jasmine. “You could sit on my shoulder, if you like,” he proposed. “There’s a lot more room on mine than Rosie’s.” It was true—the gigantic robot had to hunch down to be able to fit in the compartment.
“My knight in shining armor,” Jasmine said with a flutter of her lashes.
Vita helped Jasmine up onto the robot’s shoulder, though it felt as if she held no more than air. Then she leaned back against the cushion and grinned at the feel of a purring Melina around her neck. Pish had stayed back at the café in order to get to know more of the Railstown locals.
On the opposite side of the compartment, Rosie and Grover both looked out the window. This train ran along the southern edge of Railstown so the only view the window afforded was one of an endless checkered plane.
“A forest would look great right there, wouldn’t it, Pres?” Rosie asked Grover.
He nodded. “Definitely. Especially if the leaves on the trees weren’t green. Not like you did with the jungle up front, Vita, but more like leaves look in autumn, you know? But maybe it could be that way all the time?” He pulled a tiny black notebook out of his pocket, flipped to a blank page, and began to sketch out the tracks and a few trees. He labeled the trees as “orange,” “red,” and “yellow,” and Vita recognized his cramped writing from one of the desks in the boys’ hall.
Vita thought again of the look she’d seen on Wile’s face when he’d noticed the piano in her bedroom. She couldn’t get the sweet expression out of her head, even now that he’d called her a thief and stormed off for no good reason. Perhaps especially because of that. “So what’s Wile’s problem, anyway?” she asked aloud.
“Like I said, he’s crazy,” Grover said.
Rosie didn’t look so sure. “He wasn’t always that way…” The little girl trailed off and looked to Grover for confirmation. “Was he?”
Instead of insisting on Wile’s insanity once again, Grover looked pensive, as though he were really considering Rosie’s question. Then he shrugged. “I don’t even know anymore,” he muttered, probing his temples.
An even longer, more awkward silence followed and it extended all the way to the next station. There was a feel in the air as if something Vita had said had struck some kind of nerve in Rosie and Grover, but she couldn’t figure out what had set them off.
Grover seemed mostly recovered by the time they got off the train at the edge of town and began walking back toward the Dream Chamber’s entrance. The children discussed Vita’s model and Rosie and Grover were bursting with helpful suggestions. Rosie gave Vita a hug goodbye at the entrance and Vita impulsively hugged Grover as well. She even hugged around Rafe’s big metal leg, as Rosie had done with Harper earlier.
“Thanks for coming by, you guys,” she said, surprised by how much she meant it. At first she’d mainly been letting them in to satisfy Grover’s rule and to get some advice on her model. But now Vita didn’t care if she ever got to see Grover’s model. It had just been so nice to have some other kids to share Whirlyton with.
“Thanks for having us,” Grover replied. “You’re welcome at Tardorian any time.”
“I’d like that,” Vita replied. The visit would be especially enjoyable since there was no chance Wile would be there.
The sun was beginning to set as the children and their imaginary friends left the Dream Chamber. Vita considered climbing up into a tree in the jungle to watch the sun go down, but her nerves still jangled with the excitement of the children’s visit. So instead she woke Harper from a nap and he helped her to create the fleet of green jays Grover had suggested. With so many birds shooting wads of Base out of canons, Vita was able to build acres and acres of land in mere hours.
The moon was high and the stars shone brightly against a pitch black sky whe
n Vita opened the door to her Dream Chamber. Melina had seemed so tired after the long day they’d had that Vita had left her in Nayera Jungle with Pish, Posh, and all their new green jay friends. Now Vita’s stomach rumbled in not just hunger, but nervousness. She hadn’t once left her Dream Chamber without Melina, and hadn’t braved the dim hallway alone since she’d arrived at Moorhouse.
To minimize her time alone in the creepy hallway, Vita raced the few steps it took to reach the washroom at the end of the hall. It was one of the most normal rooms in the school—just a toilet, shower, claw-footed tub, and a sink beneath a mirror that hung on the white wall.
She expected to find her cheeks still covered in soot but all that decorated her face was a thin layer of dirt. She splashed her face with water and found that beneath the dirt, the two pink circles of sunburn on her cheeks looked just as fresh as when she’d arrived at the school.
Vita straightened her wrinkled blue shirt and frowned down at the glowing satchel around her waist. Why was she allowed to take the satchel out of her Dream Chamber, but never any of her beautiful gowns? She felt she would never understand Moorhouse and its strange ways.
She had hoped the Mess Hall would be clear of monsters and that Rosie and Grover would be there so they could plan Vita’s first visit to each of their Chambers. Half her wish came true—there weren’t any monsters in the Mess Hall, but Rosie and Grover weren’t there either. The only person there aside from tentacled Fidoreekio was Wile. He sat at a long table in the back and stirred his bowl of brown around with seemingly no interest in actually eating it.
Tonight the gramophone filled the room with bluesy guitar music. It started out simple but climbed a ladder of electrifying complexity. Banging piano grooved along. Every so often the music hit a hard-edged sort of dissonance, but somehow this made it more thrilling to hear rather than less so.
Vita bopped her head a little to the beat of the song. She was so grateful for the music in here. It made the windowless cement triangle seem less lonely.
Once she had a bowl of white, Vita stood hesitantly at the edge of cafeteria. She picked out a table near the front for herself and made a plan to eat as quickly as she could and ignore Wile with all her might.
Vita and the Monsters of Moorhouse Page 10
