Not much though.
Path make flame alive and orange.
Path make—
“Rrrr,” groaned Sparkbolt.
“What’s that?” said Falcon.
“Orange,” growled Sparkbolt. “No rhyme!”
“No,” said Falcon. “I guess not.” He opened up a small bag of things he’d collected over the summer—books, seashells, a prize he’d won at the Carousel of Disintegration—and arranged them on his desk. “Hey, Sparkbolt,” said Falcon. “Does Twisty still have control of Vonda’s body?”
“Borange,” Sparkbolt muttered. “Forange . . . what?”
“Remember when we were on Monster Island and we found that amulet?”
Sparkbolt groaned softly. A large tarantula was slowly crawling across Falcon’s desk. “Amulet bad,” he said.
“I was just wondering if Twisty was still, you know . . . stuck.”
“Vonda bad,” said Sparkbolt. “Twisty stuck good.”
“Don’t you think we should—talk to somebody about that?” said Falcon. “It’s not right for Twisty to take over Vonda’s body. Even if Vonda was kind of—you know. Annoying.”
“Vonda bad!” said Sparkbolt more angrily. “Her make fun of monster talk.”
“I know,” said Falcon. “I hate her too. But she doesn’t deserve to have Twisty controlling her body for the rest of her life. Does she?”
“Falcon good,” said Sparkbolt, turning in his chair to look at his friend. “Falcon care even Vonda. Falcon care enemy!”
“Oh, Vonda’s not my enemy,” said Falcon.
“Amulet bad,” said Sparkbolt. “But good. It both.”
“How was it good?” Falcon said.
“Monster turn smoke,” said Sparkbolt thoughtfully. “Summer. On beach. Monster stuck in Twisty brain! Before Falcon put amulet Twisty. And Twisty—turn smoke.”
Falcon was having a little difficulty following this, but he thought Sparkbolt was talking about the time when Max had, briefly, been stuck in his brain and then later when he had, briefly, been stuck in Twisty’s.
“Monster escape Twisty brain,” said Sparkbolt. “Escape good. But monster—” Sparkbolt was thinking hard, trying to express an idea that seemed beyond his Frankenstein tongue. “Monster learn Twisty. When monster in Twisty brain. Monster feel sorry Twisty. Her ugly. Hunchback. Vonda slave bad! Her feel bad. Monster not understand bad Twisty feel. Until monster stuck. In brain.” He rubbed his head as if even making these words was making his brain hurt. “It teach lesson,” said Sparkbolt. “About other heart. Other brain. So amulet bad. But amulet good! Lesson good. Smoke bad.”
Falcon listened, thinking carefully about what Sparkbolt was saying.
“Falcon—understand?”
“Falcon understand,” said Falcon.
Sparkbolt smiled. “Friend good,” he said. “Monster tired. Now sleep.”
“Okay,” said Falcon. Sparkbolt stood up to put on his Frankenstein pajamas. Then he got into bed and blew out his candle. For a while, there was silence in the boys’ room. Falcon turned on his side, but this was no more comfortable than lying on his back. One thing about being an angel: it was hard to sleep comfortably with wings.
“What like?” said Sparkbolt softly.
“What’s—what like?”
Sparkbolt groaned. “Have parents.”
Falcon didn’t know what to tell Sparkbolt. He wished he had more for him.
“I don’t know, Sparkbolt,” said Falcon. “My father lives up in a tower. My mother’s—well, you know. Sometimes I think I might as well have been an orphan.”
“Falcon not orphan,” said Sparkbolt. “Falcon know.” He groaned. “Sparkbolt not know. Sparkbolt sewn out of—pieces. Sparkbolt given life by—mad scientist. Scientist—look at baby Sparkbolt. Father—abandon. Sparkbolt—cast out! Alone!”
The Frankenstein moaned in the dark.
Falcon said, “I feel like that sometimes, alone I mean. I think about Megan and Jonny Frankenstein. I miss them a lot.”
Sparkbolt groaned again. “Jonny good,” he said. “Him like brother.”
“Jonny said something to me once kind of like what you just said. About growing up in an orphanage. How bad it was.”
“Bad. Jonny right.” There was a long silence. “Where Jonny—now?”
“I don’t know,” said Falcon. “The last time I saw him he was up in the Tower of Souls with my father. The Crow was going to punish him for being a spy for the guardians. But he let him go when he saw how Jonny had changed.”
“Sparkbolt miss Jonny too. Him friend.”
“I don’t know where he went. The Crow wouldn’t let him stay here. And the guardians wouldn’t let him come back, I bet. So I don’t know what happened to Jonny. He’s kind of stuck between worlds, I guess.”
“Stuck,” said Sparkbolt dramatically. “Between worlds!”
“That’s another reason I miss Jonny,” said Falcon. “He was the only other person who really knew what it was like not to fit in anywhere.”
Sparkbolt growled softly. Then he said, “Falcon Quinn—friend. Falcon Quinn—family. Monster not have family—until come. To Academy. Meet Falcon. Others. Monster finally—have home! Falcon stop worry. Home good.”
Falcon nodded. “Home good,” he said.
Sparkbolt sighed happily. “Home,” he said, his voice growing drowsy. “Love . . . Friend . . .”
A moment later, the Frankenstein was asleep.
Falcon lay in the dark for a while, listening to his roommate breathe his Frankenstein breaths. Falcon not orphan, he thought. Falcon know.
Sparkbolt began to snore. As he inhaled, he made a sound like rrrrr. On the exhale, he made a sound like eee bee bee bee. Falcon opened his eyes and walked over to the window. The moon shone down on the campus. There was a harsh sound from the direction of Castle Gruesombe, like caww—caww-ca-cawww, and Falcon looked over to see the castle’s ravens perched at the top of the broken turret.
He opened the sash. Wind from the ocean, smelling of salt and sand, blew into the room. Sparkbolt muttered in sleep. “Friend,” he said. “Friend.”
Falcon crept out the window onto the roof of Dustbin Hall. Then he closed the window behind him. He turned to face Castle Grisleigh and spread his wings.
The young angel stepped off the roof. He fell for a few seconds before he was uplifted on a thermal current. He pulsed his wings. Falcon looked down upon the campus, at the ancient buildings and the long stone wall that separated the Upper School from the Lower. There, on top of the gates, was the stone statue of Scratchy Weezums, his mouth frozen open in midscream. Beyond this were the grounds of the Lower School he had first seen last spring—with the cinder-block Wellness Center and the old gymnasium in which he and the others had celebrated the Zombie Jamboree. He saw the four dormitory towers of Castle Grisleigh—the towers of Science, and Blood, and Moonlight, and Aberrations. It was the Tower of Aberrations that Mrs. Redflint had first brought him to and shown him his dorm room with its coffins and lab equipment, and the chains upon the wall. He smiled as he remembered the night that Lincoln Pugh had arrived. It was funny now, Falcon thought. But it had been scary at the time.
There, in the center of the castle, was the Tower of Souls, lit by what appeared to be the soft light of candles. There was an arched window on each side of the tower, and Falcon flew through one of these and stepped onto the stone floor. The room was full of turning gears and ticking machinery.
“Ah,” said the Crow. “It’s you.” The tall, thin creature was sitting in a chair wearing a jeweler’s loupe, holding a tiny gear with a pair of tweezers.
“I couldn’t sleep,” said Falcon.
“Are you restlessss?” asked the Crow.
“You could say that,” said Falcon.
“And what is the sssource of this restlessnesss?”
“There’s something I want to ask you,” said Falcon, although now he felt more than a little self-conscious.
“Assk,” said the Crow. “Very well.�
�� He took the magnifying eyepiece from his face. The creature rose from his chair and went over to Falcon. “Assk.”
“Why did you and Mom—get married?”
“Why—”
“Why did you get married, in the first place? If you were a demon, and she was a guardian. That’s what I don’t understand. Why?”
“We—” The Crow looked uncertain. He shrugged his wings. “Thisss . . . was long ago,” he said.
“You got married, and you had me. And now you want to murder each other. How is that possible?”
“I don’t want to murder her,” said the Crow.
“She wants to murder you,” said Falcon.
“Yess, well, that,” said the Crow, “is different.”
“What did you do to her?”
“Do?” said the Crow, and now his wings rose angrily in the air again, and a small blue flame ignited above his head. “I? I did nothing to her. She knew what I was. From the very beginning, she knew.”
“Did you know that she was their queen? That she was the leader of the creatures whose only purpose is to kill us?”
The Crow lowered his wings, and the blue flame died down slightly. There was a stopwatch that hung from a chain around his neck, and for a moment the Crow looked at it. The hands were not moving. “I notice you said us. As if you are one of us.”
“You think I’m not?”
“Perhapsss . . . I am mistaken. But I thought that in the wake of your time within the Black Mirror last spring, you had decided to choose your own path. To live as neither monster nor guardian. Or as both.”
“I did,” said Falcon.
“Then—why are you here, Falcon? If you are not one of us?”
“I—I don’t know,” said Falcon. “Because—”
“Because here on Shadow Island, you are among those you love. Yess? The Chupakabra. The Sasquatch. You love them not because they are monsters. But for their spirit. Yess?” He nodded, and the flame went out. “It was something like this with your mother, and with me, once. We knew what we were. But we wished to live apart. To defy the rules of the world, with which we disagreed.”
“Rules?” said Falcon. “There aren’t any rules!”
“Ah,” said the Crow. “But in this—you are mistaken.”
“Mistaken how?”
The Crow looked sad. “The world is not forgiving,” he said.
“What do you mean? You had each other. You had me. Why couldn’t you just live the lives you wanted?”
The Crow walked over to the window and looked out at the night for a long time. “The world catches us in the end,” he said.
Falcon went to his father and took him by the elbow so that the Crow turned from the window and looked his son in the eye. “What happened?” said Falcon. “Why did she change her mind about you?”
“What happened,” the Crow repeated softly. “A storm. One morning. In Cold River. There was ice on the lake. I heard something—a voice. I walked out on the ice. There was a hole. I remember looking at the water, thinking how cold it must be. That was when I felt her behind me. Pushing me in. The cold of that water, like knives! When I awoke, I was here. In this tower. Back in the world of monsters and demons. And everything in the world, back in its assigned place.”
“But why did she push you in?” said Falcon. “Why?”
“That,” said the Crow, “is a question I should like to ask her myself.” His wings pulsed softly now, like those of a butterfly just emerging from its cocoon. “I have wondered about this for many years now, from this tower. What it was that made her decide to go back. And live the life I thought she had renounced.”
Falcon felt a rising anger. “So you have no idea,” he said. “You and Mom were together, and then one day she just decided to kill you. Is that it?”
The Crow nodded. “I sssuppose,” he said.
“You suppose,” said Falcon.
“It may be that she changed her mind, once—”
“Once what?”
“Once she . . . had a child, Falcon.”
“Wait. It’s my fault?”
“I recall coming back to our trailer one day that winter. She was sitting in a rocking chair. You were six months old, perhaps. She was looking at you with such an expression. Well. You have seen the blue of those eyes. And then she looked from you to me. And her face changed, from that look of love to a look of—something else.”
“Didn’t you ask her what was wrong? Did you ask her to explain?”
“I did not,” said the Crow. “I went outside and stood by the lake and listened to the sound the ice made as the water moved beneath it. A week later—well. That was when I went through.”
The Crow went back to his desk and picked up the tweezers again. “And so I stay up here, fixing clocks. I have become very talented at fixing things.” The Crow’s voice crackled with bitterness and regret. “So, do bring me a clock, Falcon, if you ever have one that is broken.”
“That stopwatch around your neck—,” said Falcon.
“Begins to tick if I leave the tower,” said the Crow. “And measures the time subtracted from your mother’s life—and from yours—while I am away.” He looked at the stopwatch. “And so I protect her—I protect you both—by remaining here. It is the one thing I can do, to save you both.”
“I don’t understand why you’re being punished,” said Falcon. “It was Mom who tried to kill you. Why are you the one sent into exile?”
“Falcon,” said the Crow, and his eyes shone. “Don’t you see? She is being punished as well.”
“How is she being punished? She’s their queen! She lives in a castle!”
“The world is full of people who live in castles, Falcon. Most of them are not free.”
“She’s free. Isn’t she?”
The Crow looked at his deformed right hand, with its thin bones protruding through the translucent, leathery skin. “If you return to them,” said the Crow softly, “beware of Cygnus. He will tell you he is your friend, that he wishes to serve you, and call you prince. But he despises you most of all, Falcon. Do not trust him.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not going back there, all right?”
“So you say. But I suspect, Falcon, that you will not remain here for long either. You said as much yourself, when you looked into the Black Mirror. You chose a separate path.”
“I did,” said Falcon. “But that doesn’t mean I’m joining up with them. With Mom. The guardians are crazy.”
“We are all crazy, Falcon,” said the Crow.
“I’m not,” said Falcon.
“No?” said the Crow, looking at his son thoughtfully. “Well. Perhaps not. But life is not easy for those who are not crazy. It is a difficult path, the path—of sanity. Choosing it can drive a creature . . . insane.”
Falcon nodded. “I have to get back to Dustbin,” he said.
“Indeed,” said the Crow. Falcon walked over to the arched window. “Falcon—”
Falcon turned back to face his father.
“I . . . am glad you came, and spoke. I don’t suppose I am much . . . of a father.”
“Well, I don’t have much practice being . . . a son,” said Falcon.
The two stared awkwardly at each other for a moment.
“Perhaps we might learn?” said the Crow.
Falcon nodded. “Perhaps,” he said, and jumped out the window. His wings spread and he floated across the campus toward Dustbin Hall.
The Crow stood in his window for a long time and, watching the angel descend, felt a heaviness in his heart. He raised his hand to the side of his face. Then he lowered his hand and looked at it, remembering what it had been like, long ago, when he had disguised himself as a human and lived out in the Reality Stream with his wife, away from this world. He had had fingers then.
He thought about the words he had spoken to his son—The world catches us in the end—and wondered whether it made any difference whether the world caught him or not. He remembered coming home,
that day long ago, and finding Vega in her chair, with their son in her lap, and the expression that had crossed her face when she looked upon her husband.
Didn’t you ask her what was wrong? Did you ask her to explain?
The Crow looked through the west window, out at the Sea of Dragons. The moonlight shone upon the waves. He thought about the distant island where his wife lived. He wondered what she looked like now, whether her hair had gone gray.
The Crow raised his suction cup hand again. The blue flame ignited above his head, softly at first and then with greater luminescence. “Vega,” he said aloud.
Then he stepped out of the Tower of Souls. The Crow spread his wings and flew west toward the sea.
As he flew, the stopwatch that hung around his neck began to tick.
Chapter 9
The Properties of Scorpion Blood
The school year began to fall into a routine. Sparkbolt and Falcon woke up in their room in Dustbin each morning, headed over to the cafeteria for breakfast, then began the morning’s classes: Literature and Fabrications, Mad Science, Mutant History, and First-year Egyptian. After lunch there was Numberology with the moth man, who as always, refused to teach the young monsters any actual math. “It uses the calculators,” said the moth man with his silvery voice. “It pushes the buttons. Writes down the answer. Math is pointless. Enough horror in world without math too.” The moth man made the students uncomfortable, what with his long dun wings and obsession with lightbulbs, but one thing was true enough: his class was very popular.
In the afternoons, Falcon did homework or watched the Monster Croquet team or practiced the godzooka. He saw a lot less of his friends than he would have liked—both Ankh-hoptet and Lincoln Pugh were on the Monster Croquet team, and Sparkbolt was frequently busy with Crackthunder and the other editors of the literary magazine. Even Max and Pearl frequently seemed occupied, and when they weren’t, they were with each other. Falcon noted that they had occasionally begun to bicker, particularly over the issue of Pearl’s friend el Boco, who was the only other Chupakabra at the Academy and with whom Pearl occasionally flew around the Academy grounds speaking Spanish.
One night after dinner, Falcon took a walk by himself along the beach, to look at the ocean and watch the rising moon. He stood there for a while with his wings raised behind his back, feeling the force of the ocean breeze blowing through them. It lifted him off his feet for a moment before gently lowering him back to the sand. He thought about Megan, the wind elemental.
Falcon Quinn and the Crimson Vapor Page 10
