by Rucker Moses
It sounds good. Too good. I want to believe she can help me. I want to believe that giving her the box would solve everything. But I have this nagging feeling. I remember my uncle’s warning. That fish out of water I was talking about? Imagine it’s more like a shark. And you’re just chum.
“My uncle has the box, Miss Tan. If you can help us get my dad back, I’m sure he’ll let you hold the box,” I say, though I’m not exactly sure of anything my uncle will or won’t do. “I can ask him,” I offer.
This doesn’t seem to satisfy Urma.
“But how can you be sure he’ll be reasonable? Maybe,” she says like the idea just occurred to her, “you can sneak it for me?”
“Are you asking me to swipe it from my uncle, to give to you?”
“We’re not stealing from my father for you, lady,” says Veronica.
“Of course. Of course, I understand,” Urma says. “Could you do me one favor, then?”
She removes the crystal from around her neck by its chain and dangles it in front of us.
My eyes are drawn to the light in the center that looks like a tiny star.
“Look at the light.”
The crystal swings.
Back . . .
And forth . . .
“Look at the light,” she repeats.
And I’m so, so sleepy.
Eyelids so heavy they fall shut.
Wait for your father . . .
Wait for your father . . .
Wait for your father to go to sleep. Search his workshop for the Magician’s Lost and Found. Bring the box and the Watch of 13 to me. Wait for your father to go to sleep. Search his workshop for the Magician’s Lost and Found. Bring the box and the Watch of 13 to me. Wait for your father to go to sleep . . .
My eyes open. I have to resist the urge to sleep. It’s hard. I want to sleep very badly. But I can’t. I know I can’t. This isn’t right at all.
I’m on the beige couch next to Veronica and Too Tall. Too Tall is fast asleep against the armchair next to the couch. We’re surrounded by Mint and the boys from the theater. Urma Tan is in front of them, standing over us. She’s dangling the crystal in front of Veronica. It’s rocking back and forth, back and forth. My cousin is in some kind of trance. Urma is speaking to her.
“ . . . bring the box and the Watch of 13 to me.”
“He’s awake!” Mint shouts.
It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about me.
“What?” says Urma.
“Kingston—he’s awake!” Mint repeats, pointing at me. I’ve never heard him sound so surprised.
Urma’s pale eyes turn to me. “How in the world?” she says, almost to herself.
“His hand’s glowing,” growls Mint.
“Indeed,” says Urma.
“You said he’s not strong enough to resist yet—” says Mint.
Strong enough . . . yet? I look down, a step behind their conversation. My hand is glowing.
I get a jolt of awareness as everything that’s going on around me clicks. Too Tall is asleep, Veronica is in a trance, I’m groggy, just waking up . . .
The crystal catches my eye. The chain sways and the light from inside the shard winks at me. It’s like a star trapped in ice. I realize my hand is reaching for the light. My fingers are glowing blue beneath the glove. I feel like I’m in some sort of trance, but not the trance Urma was trying to put me in. The opposite of that. I can sense what she wants from me, but all this energy coming from my hand is resisting her. Power is gathering to my fingertips. I can detect the faintest shifts of breath on the air. It’s like I can touch anything I want in the room without moving. Like I can touch the crystal . . .
It leaps from Urma’s grasp and whips across the coffee table. I catch it as though I called it straight to my hand.
I stare at diamond-shaped crystal. I thought it would be cold, but it’s warm to the touch.
I look up. Urma and the crew are as stunned as I am.
As I hold the crystal in my hand, away from Urma, she gasps and changes color. Her flesh turns that construction-paper gray. It happens as quick as if a rain cloud blocked the sun. Suddenly, she looks like she’s not made of flesh and blood. You can see the edges of her skull beneath her skin like she’s peeling. The strength leaves her body, and Mint catches her before she falls.
“V, Tall!” I shout as loud as I can. “Wake up! Run!”
They both snap to, shaking off the trance, blinking really fast.
“Wha—?” says Tall.
“What’s going on?” says V.
“Run!” I shout again. I’m on my feet now.
They don’t need to be told twice.
We break for the door. The crew is too stunned and confused to do anything about it.
“Kingston.” I hear Urma’s weak voice.
I stop at the entrance.
V and Tall burn past me, out into the yard.
I know I probably shouldn’t, but I look back.
Mint and one of his boys hold Urma up beneath her arms. She looks so weak, a strong breeze could crush her.
“Please. Help me,” she says. “And I can help you save him.”
I look down at the crystal in my hand.
My thoughts collide in my mind.
King, you can’t trust her. She tried to hypnotize you.
But she needs it to live . . .
Can she really open a portal?
Like the one my dad sacrificed himself to close?
But can I really save him?
The thoughts come too fast and I’m stuck not knowing what to do.
“King!” Veronica shouts from outside. “Come on, let’s go!”
I take one more look at Urma, and I can see that she’s suffering. That part is real.
I drop the crystal at my feet by the door and I’m gone.
* * *
Once I catch up to Tall and my cousin, we all jog together like we’re fleeing a crime scene. I can tell everyone is really shaken up, because no one wants to be the first to talk about what just happened. I don’t know how we decided where to go, or whether we even decided at all, or if the smell of comfort food, of baking crust and cheese drew us to Not Not Ray’s on its own.
We don’t even say a word until we’re all sitting down with hot pizza.
“I mean, what’s she even doing with children there?” Veronica blurts as she takes a bite out of her sausage-and-peppers slice.
“I don’t know. It was so strange,” I say, relieved to be able to talk about it.
“Too strange for me,” says Tall. “King, you want to tell us what went down back there? I can’t remember much. Only that it got very weird, very quickly.”
“She held out that crystal,” I say. “Next thing I knew, we were all asleep.”
Then my hand was glowing. That’s what woke me up.
It stopped glowing when we hit Thurston Avenue, about when we were out of range of Urma.
“What was she doing to us?” Veronica asks, and she sounds concerned.
“She was telling you, over and over, to steal the box from your dad and bring it to her,” I say. “The box, and the Watch of 13.”
“Are you serious?” Veronica scowls in outrage. “So that nutty lady put programs inside my mind? King, that is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
“But maybe I stopped it? I mean, I think I stopped it,” I say.
“How can you know?” she asks.
“Yeah, did they program me, too, King?” asks Tall.
“I honestly don’t know. I was out cold. They seemed really surprised when I woke up, even,” I say. “I think my Realm hand, like, snapped me out of it.”
“Maybe she’s hypnotizing those kids,” says Tall. “I mean, why would they hang around her like that? What’s she doing for
them?”
It hadn’t occurred to me. But he’s got a point.
“But why?” asks V. “What does she get out of it?”
“And if she’s such a master hypnotist, then why try and talk to me at all? Why tell us all that about the Realm and being a copy? Why not just start with the hypnosis?”
“It’s not that easy,” says V. “Hypnotists—they have to make you drop your guard. You can’t just walk into a room with a crystal on a chain.”
“Did you guys see what happened when the crystal flew to me?” I ask. “I mean, can we talk about that for a sec?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t sure if I dreamed that. It’s very hazy,” says Tall.
“What, like, it came to you?” asks V.
“Yeah, guys, this hand is, like, breaking all kinds of laws of physics. I guess you were in a trance at the time. The crystal popped right out of her hand and into mine. And did you see what happened next? She collapsed. She turned gray. Like, grayer than Mint, her whole body. I thought her face was going to fall off.”
“Yeah,” says V. “So what?”
“Maybe she was telling the truth?”
“The truth about what, now?” asks Tall.
“About needing the energy from the crystals to survive. About the Realm. About . . . creating a portal to bring Dad back,” I say. “I think she was maybe telling the truth, is all.”
“King, you sound kinda desperate,” says V.
“What? I don’t mean I’m going to give her the box. I just mean, maybe she’s telling the truth. That we can make a portal.”
“We can make a portal?”
“Well, whoever. I mean, doesn’t it make sense? If Maestro could do it, why can’t we? That’s the part where I feel like she was telling the truth. And it’s just the kind of thing your father wouldn’t want to tell me, thinking I’ll do something stupid.”
“Well, in fairness to my dad, you are doing stupid things. Maestro was a master magician. He studied for a lifetime in order to be able to make that Mirror.” Veronica releases a breath. “Should we tell my dad about all this?”
“I don’t know, V.”
“Not that I’m saying we should—but why not?” she asks.
“Because he won’t let me do it. He probably thinks something bad will happen if I try to get Pop back, just ’cause I’m a kid.”
“So you want to do this on your own? Without Urma’s help or my dad’s help?”
“You think I should trust Urma Tan?”
“Well, it seems like you sorta kinda are, if you don’t want to talk to my dad about it. You’re taking her word at face value.”
“Not at face value. Not exactly. I don’t want to give her the box.”
“But you think the rest of what she said was true? What if she made all that up just to get this box from you?”
“It’s possible. Of course it’s possible. I just wish we knew more.”
“What about those murals?” says Tall. “I mean, whoever’s painting those can, like, see the Realm somehow. We’ve got to find them. ’Cause, Urma? Urma Tan is lying,” says Tall.
“Right,” says Veronica.
“Well, like we said, since we don’t know exactly what she’s lying about, it’s a good idea. I mean, even she says those murals show the Realm,” I say.
“Is there proof, though?” asks Tall. “Is there any other proof that these murals are of the Realm, other than Urma ‘Suspect’ Tan’s word?”
I shrug. “My dad’s hat?”
“You mentioned that before,” says V. “Why do you think it’s in the Realm?”
“He wore that hat when he performed at the Mercury. Remember? When he jumped through the Mirror.”
“Okay,” says Tall. “So, Operation Find Us a Muralist is officially in effect.”
“Great,” I say.
“Matteo!” Too Tall calls.
“Yes, my friend?” Matteo is knuckles deep in a round heap of dough.
“You know who’s been doing those murals around town?”
“Murals . . . Like the one of the graveyard over by the Dead End?”
“Yeah,” says Tall with a quick wink to us. “That’s the one.” Though I’m pretty sure he’s just playing along.
“That mural is incredible. My son almost turned and walked into it! Spooky,” he says.
“You know who does those?”
He shrugs. “No clue,” he says, and goes back to his dough.
“Okay,” says Veronica. “So what’s our first stop?”
“Let me ask you guys this. Is there an art supply store in Echo City?” I suggest. “I’m saying, whoever this muralist is, they go through a ton of paint. Something tells me it’s local.”
Cleopatra’s Art Supplies is a makeshift storefront on the ground floor of a warehouse. A little bell chimes when we open the door, but for now, we’re the only ones in the store. Too Tall, Veronica, and I walk the aisles, scanning the drafting pencils, different sizes and types of paper, and all the spray cans of paint. Everything feels half done. A stack of sketch pads separates two aisles. The back of the store is just a hanging tarp.
“Wow, they just leave the spray paint cans out like that?” observes Too Tall. “Maybe our muralist just swipes them.”
Veronica asks, “What makes you say that?”
“Well, it’s like King said. Those murals we saw? That’s a lot of paint to go through. Paint costs money. Unless it don’t, you feel me?”
The art store smells like plaster dust, warehouse debris, and pencil shavings.
“Look back here!” Too Tall holds one of the hanging tarps in the back aside. “You’re going to want to see this, I think.”
I duck through the opening. There’s another tarped-off area, but this space has paintings hung up on the walls. They’re all of street scenes from Echo City, with the same sort of strong outlines and colors as the murals. It’s the old nightlife from years ago, people out and about in cuff links and jazzman hats and frilly dresses and pearls and silver heels in front of bright storefronts and neon signs splashing color into each frame. As I’m looking at each painting, the storefront signs begin to feel familiar . . . The Red Room, The Double Rainbow, The Flourish, Lemur Leftovers, The Sawed Lady Salon . . . I quickly pull the old map out of my shorts pocket and match the names.
I gaze at the paintings some more as it hits me that this is the Thurston Avenue from my map.
“Um, can I help you?” a voice intrudes.
We’re all caught off guard. I turn to see a bald, serious-looking Black girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen, staring at us like she’s caught us all shoplifting.
“We were just admiring your artwork,” says Veronica, the first of us to recover.
“This isn’t my work. And this area is private.”
“Right. Er, sorry,” says Veronica.
“The art supplies are all out front,” says the girl.
I take one last look at the paintings as we file back out through the tarp.
Too Tall clears his throat and puts on a smile so big it’s like an instant light show. “We were wondering if you knew the person doing these incredibly fly murals around the neighborhood,” he says in a smooth delivery.
“Can’t say I do,” the girl says in a bored voice. “Can I help you find some supplies?”
“Do you know the murals we’re talking about?” I ask. “They’re kind of amazing.”
“Lots of murals in Brooklyn,” she says.
I smell something funny about her reaction. Like she isn’t even asking which murals or where they are or anything. Like she just wants us to go away.
“Well, could you tell us who did those paintings of Thurston Avenue back there?” I ask, with a little more firmness in my voice.
She looks at me then, as if for the first time, and something about my face
seems to startle her. She lets out a tiny gasp and her eyes twitch wide for a second.
She recovers fast, but her reaction was obvious.
“What? Did you paint those?” I ask.
“N-no,” she says. “The owner paints those.” Her mouth opens like she wants to ask me something, and then she changes her mind.
“Can we talk to him?” I ask.
“Or her?” Veronica says, darting a look at me before winking at the girl.
But she isn’t feeling the love from V, either. “No. You can’t.”
“Listen. I know this may sound silly, but it’s really important that we talk to whoever is doing these paintings,” I say in my best pleading voice.
Veronica chimes in. “We have reason—I mean, good reason—to think that the person who does these paintings can help us figure out some really tough stuff that we can’t figure out any other way.”
She’s listening. She’s not bought in, but she’s listening. And I like her face when she’s listening to us.
“It’s about my father,” I say. “He’s gone now. But I need to know if he’s safe.”
“Who’s your father?” she asks.
“Preston James. I’m Kingston, this is my cousin Veronica. That there is Too Tall.”
“Howdy,” says Tall.
She nods to each of us. “I’m Sula. Preston was your father?”
“He is my father.”
“Huh,” Sula says, still with that good hard look at me. “And that’s your face,” she says, almost to herself.
I shrug. “Only face I got.”
Sula sighs like she’s about to do something she will regret. “I think you’d better follow me.”
She turns on a dime and heads toward the back.
Veronica, Too Tall, and I all hesitate.
“You coming?” asks Sula.
She holds the tarp open, and waves.
We follow her down a hallway and up a temporary staircase to a platform. I notice her arms are muscular and she moves like an athlete. We turn another corner and enter a big room, lit by a lone bulb.
There’s a wall with a just-finished mural.
Everyone is speechless.
There, painted on the wall, is me.
