The Last Present

by Wendy Mass

“Maybe. I’m not sure I followed it, though.”

  “Me, neither. But from what I could piece together, Angelina has some kind of responsibility to help people, but tonight she just wants to be a teenager. I think she was trying to tell the woman she’d come after the party, but I’m not sure.”

  “I don’t know how any of this is helping us cure Grace,” Leo says. “Maybe we’re on a wild-goose chase here. Speaking of goose, do you think anyone would notice if we had some dinner? That food smells good!”

  Keeping Leo from food is an impossible task. “Just lay low. More of our relatives might be lurking nearby.”

  That’s apparently all the permission he needs. “I’ll get you something, too,” he calls over his shoulder.

  I lean back against the tree trunk. Although ablaze with stars, the sky is quiet, too. No planes, no satellites in orbit, no space station. Just other stars and other planets. Right now, in this very spot, Tara and Ray and Rory are looking up at the same stars, though they can’t guess how many are really out there, hidden by decades of light and pollution.

  “Have you fallen, miss?” a deep voice asks from above. I look up, hoping to find Leo with a plate of food. Instead, a young man in a very high collar that looks uncomfortable in the heat, is kneeling beside me, concern in his eyes.

  “I … I’m fine, thanks. I mean, thank you.” I guess young ladies aren’t supposed to sit on the grass and lean against trees at fancy parties.

  He tilts his head at me. “Are you one of the D’Angelos’ relatives from upstate? I cannot quite place your accent.”

  I glance around for Leo to rescue me, but don’t see him. “Um, I live pretty far away, I mean, not far from Willow Falls in terms of miles, but still, um, far.” I’m rambling, but I can’t help it. I didn’t expect to have to talk to anyone.

  “Willow Falls?” he asks, scratching his head. “Is that the name Smithy landed upon? I thought he was championing for Willow Hills. Although now that I think on it, there are no hills here to speak of, now, are there?”

  I stare at him, realizing what I said. “I … I’m just confused about the name.” I wave my hand in front of my face. “It must be the heat. I feel a bit woozy.”

  “You must let me get you some water. I shall be right back.” He strides off toward one of the tables before I can stop him.

  “I leave for five minutes and you’ve found a new boyfriend?”

  I don’t need to turn around to know that this time it’s Leo. “Who said I have an old boyfriend to replace?”

  He grins and kneels beside me. “A pretty girl like yourself? I’m sure the boys are all fighting over you.” He places a large plate on my lap. The edge is rimmed with what looks like gold. It is quite beautiful. I can’t say the same for the brown chunk of meat sliding around in what I think are mashed potatoes. “What is it?”

  Leo already has his first piece in his mouth. “I think it’s mutton,” he replies between chews. “Or wild boar?”

  “Mutton or wild boar? We’re not in medieval times!”

  He shrugs. “Probably steak, then. It’s good. Aren’t you gonna try it?”

  I push the food around with my fork, wishing I’d thought to stuff my pockets with Emily’s candy mixture. My new friend returns and hands me the water. “I apologize,” he says, tipping his hat at Leo. “I did not know you were here with someone.” He backs away, bowing as he goes.

  “He was sweet,” I say.

  Leo grunts and spears my chunk of nameless meat with his fork. I lay my fork on my plate, not hungry anymore. I don’t think we’re going to figure out anything here. Maybe we shouldn’t have let Bucky and what he did at the last party distract us. Maybe we should just finish what we started with Angelina and leave this all behind us.

  I’m about to share my thoughts with Leo when he reaches for the glass of water my suitor had brought me, and brings it to his lips. I grab it back. “You shouldn’t drink that. They don’t have the same water-filtering processes that we have. Didn’t you learn anything on all those school trips to the reservoir? There could be all sorts of things living in there. You’ll thank me later when a tapeworm doesn’t crawl out of your —”

  “Hey!” he says. “I just thought of something! The two people we most want to speak to are right there.” He points around the tree. “Not even thirty feet away!”

  “Don’t even think it, Leo Fitzpatrick! If you’re worried about my plastic water bottle messing up the time line, imagine what confronting Bucky and Angelina would do!”

  “I know, I know. Man, it’s frustrating. I wish Bucky would just tell us what he meant about Angelina changing and why he was pretending to be related to Grace and Connor.” He digs back into his food again, or rather my food. The tempo of the music changes to something much faster. At the same time, the chattering voices and the sounds of silverware clinking against bowls and plates abruptly cease.

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I suggest.

  “Huh? But you said we can’t.”

  “Not young Bucky … old Bucky. Look. We’re back!”

  He looks up from his food and follows where I’m pointing. A familiar white-haired man ambles toward us, using a long walking stick for support. Gone are the gas lamps and almost all the stars. The lights from the mall parking lot are on, which makes it much brighter than it should be for this time of night. We scramble to our feet, holding the fancy plates, which apparently have made it through time with us. Looks like we’re thieves after all!

  Tara catches sight of us. “They’re back!” she shouts, shutting off the music coming from her iPod. The others jump up from their places around the campfire and stop short when they see Bucky. We meet in the middle, by the fountain. It’s jarring to see it crumbly and broken again.

  We all start talking at once and no one can figure out what anyone’s saying. Ray puts his fingers in his mouth and lets out a shrill whistle. “Respect your elders,” he commands. “Mr. Whitehead, you go first.”

  “Please, ladies first,” Bucky says, gesturing to me. He’s still charming a hundred years later.

  I have so many questions for him, I don’t even know where to start. The easiest first, I guess. “What are you doing here?”

  “Let’s sit down, if you don’t mind. We’ve got a lot to talk about and these bones are old.”

  Ray sets up a beach chair for him and Bucky sinks gratefully into it. The rest of us pull up logs around the fire. Tara shows Bucky the bags of snacks. “In case you need to eat first.”

  He holds up his hand. “I’m fine.” To me and Leo he says, “I saw you disappear at the beach a few days ago.”

  I turn to Rory and Tara. “I thought you said no one saw us?”

  “Hey,” Tara says with a shrug, “we were busy dealing with a movie star in shock.”

  “Following you to the beach was just a test to see if my theory was right,” Bucky says. “When Grace was rushed to the hospital last weekend, I knew Angelina would follow her there. And with Leonard and Rex’s curse and your blackboards, well, I started putting the pieces together.”

  Leo and I share a surprised look. Leo asks, “You know about our great-great-grandfathers’ curse? I mean, enchantment?”

  Bucky nods. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you anything sooner. Whatever my issues with Angelina, I respect the need to stay out of the way of one of her ‘projects.’ Everyone is on their own path, as she is so fond of pointing out.”

  “But you didn’t stay out of the way this time,” I say. “In fact, you seem very much in the way, Great-uncle Bill! You locked us in a bathroom!”

  The lights in the mall parking lot switch off all at once, and in the firelight I can see all the lines crisscrossing Bucky’s face. Now that I know how old he really is, it’s amazing that he looks as good as he does. There is a weariness in his eyes, though, probably caused by a lifetime of holding in secrets.

  “I promise to explain, but I need to start much earlier.” He takes a deep breath and his words tumble ou
t like a dam has been broken. “Angelina came into her powers at ten years of age. Her family had no idea how to help her. She described seeing things no one else could. Histories and secrets she could not have known. She could make things happen. It was overwhelming. Then a few weeks later, an old woman showed up on their doorstep who said that only she could help. She taught Angelina all she knew, with the understanding that when she turned eighteen, she would be expected to take over the woman’s responsibilities. Angelina didn’t know what those would be exactly, and mostly she did not want to know. She did not embrace these powers. In fact, she rebelled quite often. Her parents tried to keep word of their daughter’s abilities quiet, but of course people found out. Still, they did their best to keep her happy and wanting for nothing. Her eighteenth birthday was to be a grand party, the last time Angelina could be a girl, carefree and surrounded by people who wanted nothing more from her than her company.” He turns to me and Leo. With hope in his voice, he asks, “Did you see her? Did you get back there?”

  With the sounds and smells from the party still fresh in my head, I tell everyone what we saw and what we heard. Tara and Rory keep interrupting to ask for more details about what Angelina looked like, or what she was wearing. I can’t blame them for wanting to be able to picture her as a girl not much older than ourselves. Bucky blushes when I relay the conversation Angelina’s friends were having about him being so handsome and charming. Well, maybe they only said charming, but I didn’t want to tell them it was me who thought he was so good-looking. Ray says, “Way to go, mate!” and tries to high-five Bucky when I get to the part about the marriage proposal. Bucky’s too busy twisting his hat in his hands to oblige. I finish by telling them about the woman, Sarah, rushing into the party.

  “She was too late,” Bucky says, staring into the fire.

  “Too late for what?” I ask.

  A faraway look settles into his eyes as he speaks. “Angelina went to see Sarah’s little boy later that night, after the guests had all gone home. But she could not cure him. She used all the spells she knew, and even tried mixing herbs and applying salves as a last resort, but nothing could make the boy’s muscles work anymore. He did not get worse, but he did not improve. Angelina blamed herself for not getting to him sooner, for not being strong enough to help him. After that, she kept to herself, studied, and turned down every invitation that came her way.”

  “Including yours,” Tara says.

  “Yes, including mine. She gave me my ring back, although I never stopped trying to get her to change her mind.” He sits quiet for a moment, and we all inch forward, hanging on his every word.

  “She spent the next year working ceaselessly to come up with a way to protect the children in the area of what would, by year’s end, become the town of Willow Falls. She finally figured out the correct spell, or benediction, as she called it. As a penance, to make up for her selfishness, she was determined that every child born in town would be kept healthy. She insisted that she be called within the first hour of a child’s birth, so that she could impart this benediction of hers. This became much easier in later years, when people began having babies in hospitals and she could just show up, without being invited. She never told anyone what she was doing; only myself and her parents ever knew. Her family is long gone now, of course. All these years later, she is still serving her penance. I have tried to tell her that her debt has been repaid, many, many times over again, but she cannot see it. Or will not.”

  “Why is Angelina able to do all this stuff?” Leo asks. “Her mother said it was a birthright? What’s a birthright?”

  “It usually means some rights you are born with,” he explains, “like an inheritance. But in this case, Angelina wasn’t born into a line of powerful women. Oh, her mother could mix a tincture to soothe an upset stomach or rid you of warts, but this was different. There is a vortex of power in this town, not far from this very spot, actually —”

  “A vortex of power?” Leo repeats. “That sounds made up.”

  “I assure you, it is not.”

  Rory pinches Leo on the arm. “Ow!”

  “Go on, Bucky,” I urge. “What does this vortex do?”

  “Mostly it just sits there, soaking up the energy of the world around it and funneling it back into the earth. But once every century or so, the power surges on one particular day. One baby born that day will have the ability to see the lines connecting us to one another, tethering us to our pasts, propelling us into our futures. Not only to see these lines — these streams of energy — but to control them, and to protect the people within their boundaries. Angelina was that baby.” He takes a deep breath. “And as you’ve likely figured out by now, so is Grace.”

  We all stare across the fire at him, our mouths gaping open. Rory is the first one to find her voice. “If Grace can do all of that, why did she wind up in the hospital, not even able to move?”

  I run Bucky’s story back in my head and think of Grace and what’s been happening to her all week and suddenly I know the answer. I jump up from my log. “Angelina did it! She put her in that frozen state!”

  Bucky closes his eyes while the others turn to me, mouths open in surprise. “No way,” Leo says. “Why would she do that only to send us back to fix it? That doesn’t make sense.”

  I start walking in circles around the campfire. “I know it sounds crazy, but think about it. Angelina never tells anyone the whole story. She knew it was Grace’s tenth birthday, and that she would come into her powers on that day. Maybe she wanted to keep Grace silent. To keep her from revealing all the town’s secrets, and Angelina’s secrets, in particular.”

  “That does sound like something Angelina would do,” Rory admits.

  “But then what were we doing at these parties?” Leo asks. “Each time we fixed one of them, Grace got a little better.”

  Tara shakes her head. “We spent a lot of time with her while you guys were in the past. Each time you came back with a check mark in your notebook, Grace changed, but I don’t know if it was for the better.”

  “She grew four inches!” Leo argues. “She doesn’t look so much like a stiff breeze could blow her away as she used to. That’s definitely for the better, right?”

  Bucky finally speaks up. “Grace’s health did improve when Amanda and Leo unlocked the first two of the necessary three benedictions, that is true. But Angelina had altered the benediction she gave Grace — or tried to give her — on the day of her birth. It was not only intended to keep her healthy like the rest of the children in town, but it would block her from receiving her powers on her tenth birthday. Each time Amanda and Leo were successful in changing the past, Grace’s body improved, but her powers dimmed. One more time and she would no longer have been able to access them at all.”

  “But why would Angelina want to keep Grace from getting her powers?” Tara asks.

  Bucky continues. “Mostly she did it to protect Grace. She remembered what it was like for her all those years before and did not want to put Grace through that. Life was quieter back when Angelina was young. You could hide, and the whispers didn’t travel too far. Today, if everyone knew that a young girl could see the past, weave the present, and change the future, well, you can imagine how quickly word would spread. She wanted Grace to have a normal life, one she herself was denied.”

  No one says anything as his words sink in. “But why did you get involved?” Leo finally asks. “You went to all of Grace’s parties to make sure Angelina’s plans failed, right? And did you use some kind of magic, too? To make yourself look so different?”

  “It’s true that I’ve learned a few tricks over the years — like the barrier that kept Angelina at a distance, and getting poor Connor to ruin the parties with little memory of it — but as for my disguise, I simply had a good makeup lady. That Bettie works wonders with a tub of cream and a tin of powder,” Bucky says. “The red wig was my idea.”

  “But why would you do that if you loved her?” Rory asks. “Angelina, I mean.
”

  Bucky rubs his hand across his face. At this point he looks every one of his years. But his voice is strong when he says, “That’s exactly why I did it. I did love her. I still do. And believe it or not, I love Grace, too. So, yes, I made certain each year that Angelina’s benediction didn’t work. She never seemed to figure out I was behind it. It is time for her to let go of her guilt and move forward in her life. She deserves it. And the only way it will happen is if she lets Grace have her birthright.”

  He turns to me and Leo. “When Angelina realized on Grace’s ninth birthday that she’d lost her last chance, she got you two involved. I couldn’t figure out what she was planning, although I knew it would happen on Grace’s tenth birthday. Angelina had tried returning to the past many times, the last being about thirty-five years ago, but she could never change it in the ways she wanted. I never thought she’d try again by sending the two of you. Clearly I was wrong. Unless you two were not disguised as cows at Grace’s fourth birthday party?”

  “Cows?” Tara and Rory shout.

  I redden. “We may have left out that part of the story due to its embarrassing nature.”

  “Moo,” Leo mumbles.

  “I didn’t know who you were at the time, of course,” Bucky tells us. “We hadn’t even met yet. All I knew was that my plan was about to be ruined. I had to step in and stop you. I didn’t mean to deceive Connor or his family, and we have become close over the years. I know I will have to explain all this to them, a conversation I do not relish having. And I know it was taking a chance that Grace would get sick without Angelina’s benediction, but outside of Willow Falls, every other child in the world faces those same risks every day. I had to weigh that against the fact that she would be robbed of what she had coming to her. We don’t know why the vortex selects the people that it does, or anything else about it. But it’s a gift, not a curse. Although Angelina doesn’t always look at it that way, she has experienced great joy in helping people and has an understanding of the world that the rest of us never get. She can weave individual strands of energy and connect people to each other.”