A House for Keeping

by Matteson Wynn

  I shook my head. “Just out of curiosity, are you going to whip out a wand and a pointy hat for effect? Ooh, and a broom. You should definitely have a broom.”

  Sarah gave me a long look. I glared right back at her.

  Sarah said, “This isn’t Harry Potter, and I’m not Dumbledore.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “And as you’ve seen, I don’t need a wand.”

  She had me there.

  Sarah resumed pacing back and forth in front of me and assumed a lecturing tone. “You like science, Finn, so let’s think about this scientifically. What you think of as magic is really just a way to manipulate energy. Some people have a natural gift for working with the energies given off by different types of materials. People in the Foster bloodline, for example, have a talent for working with earth-related elements, like plants and minerals.

  “Other families have other strengths. You encountered the family who can manipulate water this morning. Your father’s family is adept at working with animals. Actually, he was a hybrid, like your mother—and you, for that matter—but you get the idea.”

  “You make it sound like there’s all these magical people running around.”

  “We’re a small percentage of the population, but there are more than a few of us.”

  “If there was really that much magic in the world, then people would know.”

  “Would they? People see what they want to see. And generally speaking, people are so absorbed in their own little lives that they don’t really focus on anything outside what they know.”

  The little voice in the back of my brain was wondering if maybe what she was saying could be true. But she’d done nothing but mess with me since I’d met her, and I wasn’t inclined to believe something so outrageous without some serious proof.

  My gaze roamed as I thought, and it landed on the house. That made me pause. The house was alive, there was no denying that. I’d been thinking of the house like a rare animal, sort of like finding a bird you’d thought was extinct. But maybe it was more like finding a dragon. If the house was not just a one-of-a-kind animal, but more of a magical being, well, that would go a long way toward explaining why so many people were all hot and bothered to gain access to it.

  And if the house were magical, then it was possible other magic existed as well.

  Holy crap.

  I needed to get out of there so I could think all this through. Alone. Arguing with Sarah seemed to be a good way to remain stuck, so I figured my best bet was to go along with her enough that she’d set me free.

  “Say I believe you,” I said. “So what?”

  “So being housekeeper gives you access to a kind of magic that only exists one place in the entire world. Think of the research you could do. Think of the skills you could develop.”

  “I need to think a minute.”

  My head was spinning. Magic. Actual magic in the world. I couldn’t decide if it was really possible, or this was yet another game.

  For a moment, I let myself entertain the idea that Sarah was finally telling the truth. My inner scientist poked her head up and suddenly I was brimming with questions. If it was true, it’d be so exciting! So much to discover. So many new things to learn about.

  If it was true.

  I shook my head. No way was I going to give Sarah what she wanted and get all excited right here in front of her. On the other hand, I needed to play along a little until I got out of this. So I said, “Well, I have to say, that all sounds nice.”

  “Nice?”

  I tried to sound more positive. “No really, it does. But I don’t have any special skills. There’s nothing to develop. So you know, thanks, but still no thanks.”

  She pursed her lips. After a long moment she said, “It was my understanding that you want to be an explorer. Go off and investigate and discover new things.”

  I wasn’t sure where she was going with this, so I gave her a tentative, “That’s why I’m going to school.”

  She nodded. “But your curiosity is limited to the ocean? You’re not interested in pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge unless you’re on the water?”

  When she put it that way, it sounded ridiculous. I shrugged.

  “As housekeeper, you have the opportunity to interact with a truly unique entity. You also have the opportunity to learn to harness and manipulate energies you didn’t even know existed five minutes ago. But you’re going to turn that down without even giving it serious consideration?”

  Well hell. She had a point. I hated it, but she had a point. “Fine, I’ll think about it.”

  “Excellent. Then we can proceed.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Finn, I didn’t make the rules of selection, but I’m bound by them. And so are you. Once you’ve started testing, you must continue until you either fail or get to the final round. Then, you have a choice.”

  “I’d like to state for the record that I object. I was never given the choice about being involved in any of this in the first place. I shouldn’t be forced to continue now. This isn’t fair!” I yanked at my feet but I was still stuck. I let out a growl and tugged a bit more until I finally gave up.

  Sarah waited a minute. “Are you finished?”

  “Yes.” My fists were clenched and if she’d stepped closer, I would’ve shoved her just to have the satisfaction of seeing her sprawled in the dirt.

  “Good. While I have your undivided attention, we might as well move on to the next section of the test.”

  I huffed out a sigh and shrugged, crossing my arms. “Lemme guess. I have to find another pair of glasses.”

  Sarah looked down at the glasses, still lying on the ground between us. “Ah, yes, I’d forgotten about those. I’m done with them now.”

  She stepped on them. She took her time, crushing them under her foot. When she was done, the ground gulped down the broken remains.

  I swallowed hard.

  She asked, “What’s your favorite flower?”

  “What?” I was still staring at the empty spot on the ground.

  “Your favorite flower?”

  “Uh….”

  I tried to think how this could backfire on me, but I didn’t know enough even to be able to hazard a guess.

  “It’s the bloom from the saguaro cactus,” I said, just to be difficult. I mean, I loved the saguaro blooms, but mostly I chose it to be a pain in the ass. The tall cactus only grew in the desert, so I wasn’t sure if she even knew what I was talking about.

  Sarah’s smile just widened. “And are you still fond of mazes?”

  I went cold, and my arms dropped to my sides in shock. I’d loved mazes as a kid. I used to sit on a stool in the diner and do them while Mom and Dad worked. That way, I was entertained, and they could keep an eye on me, but I wasn’t underfoot.

  The only way she’d have known that was…“You were in the diner,” I said. “You, or your minions. You guys were keeping tabs on me? On us?” Meg had said they kept track of the family, but this felt way more invasive than that, like being spied on.

  Sarah’s smile widened so much that I was starting to wonder if she could unhinge her jaw.

  My stomach churned, and my hands curled into tense little fists.

  She winked at me and said, “Watch this.”

  Sarah crouched down and touched the ground again.

  The ground under us trembled, and I pinwheeled my arms for balance. I broke out in a sweat. The quiet vibrations sounded and felt a lot like what had happened the night of the sinkhole. And just like then, the noise and vibrations increased. But instead of a hole opening up, the section of ground we stood on flowed upward. When it stopped, we were on a hill, overlooking the lawn.

  Sarah looked up at me. “So you can really enjoy the view,” she said. Then she turned her back on me. As she turned, I thought I saw her lips moving, but if she was saying anything, I couldn’t hear it. She placed both hands on the ground th
is time. The low rumbling started again.

  In front of me, saguaro cacti began springing from the ground, fully grown. It can take 10 years for a saguaro to grow an inch and about 100 years for it to grow its first arm. These guys were taller than I was and were sporting multiple arms each.

  When the rumbling stopped, the lawn between me and the house was filled with cacti.

  Sarah surveyed her work.

  “Oh yes,” she said and stomped her foot.

  In unison, all the cacti flowered.

  I hugged myself with my arms while I gaped at the field.

  Sarah sauntered over closer to me. “Notice anything special?”

  Besides a zillion flowering cacti in the middle of a New England forest? Er…I looked closer. I started to speak, cleared my throat, tried again. “It’s…it’s a hedge maze. Made of cacti.”

  Sarah smiled. “Not my personal choice, but I give you points for originality.”

  I could see the porch of the house. Tango was still standing there, keeping watch. Unlike me, he didn’t look surprised at all. In fact, he look bored.

  Sarah turned her back on the maze, and then studied me closely. “Now,” she said. She raised her hand, did a little wave, and our hill sank back to its original level. A ring of saguaros popped up around us, the ones behind me so close that I yelped and cringed away when they flowed out of the ground. When they stopped growing, the sharp-needled cacti formed an impenetrable horseshoe around us. The only way out was the entrance to the maze.

  I wanted to back away, but I was still stuck in the ground, and there was nowhere to go anyway. It occurred to me that I was basically a human saguaro, feet rooted, arms in the air. All I needed was a flower, and I’d be all matchy-matchy with my cohorts around me.

  Sarah turned from me and faced the maze. My jaw dropped again. They were moving! The saguaros shuffled themselves around, opening a straight lane between us and the house.

  “Your job,” said Sarah as she began strolling down the lane, “is to use your innate earth magic to safely navigate the maze and make it back to the house.”

  I gaped at her. Then I started struggling again and sputtered, “But I don’t have any magic!”

  She reached the edge of the house at the other end of the lawn. She didn’t turn around. Instead, she gave me a little finger wave over her shoulder.

  My feet came loose. I was tugging so hard that when they suddenly popped free, I stumbled backwards, stabbing my flailing arm on a cactus. I yowled and jerked forward so fast that I fell over on my face. As I toppled over, the maze closed up, and the straight, wide path across the lawn disappeared.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When I scrambled to my feet, I spent a few moments stomping around my small enclosure, rubbing my arm, and swearing. Finally, I calmed down enough to really look around me.

  It didn’t look good. I was surrounded by cacti. Beautiful flowering cacti, sure. But Sarah had grown them extra big—really tall, lots of long arms, and so many wicked-looking thorns that it looked like the cacti had fur. Evil, stabby fur.

  She’d packed the cacti close enough that their arms intertwined. Any remaining space between them was filled in with abnormally long thorns that looked more like small spears. If I tried to squeeze between the cacti, I’d wind up as saguaro shish-kebab.

  The only opening past the cacti was the opening to the maze.

  I flopped down on the ground, pulled my knees up to my chest, and put my forehead on my knees.

  Okay, so Sarah was a dick. I’d been raised to be respectful of my elders, but a girl has limits. I peered around me for a second and put my head back down with a groan. I needed some stronger words to describe Sarah.

  I spent a few minutes coming up with colorful names for Sarah, then forced myself to concentrate and review my situation.

  Well, with one day still left to go, I felt fairly comfortable in saying that this reunion sucked, my extended family sucked, and I should’ve just gone straight to the ocean.

  But then I wouldn’t have met Fuzzy. Or the house.

  I sighed.

  Well, on the plus side: magic. Looking around me, I felt pretty sure that magic existed.

  Actual magic.

  I smiled, despite myself, as a little spark of sheer delight tickled its way through me. It made me want to stand up and do a little dance around the clearing.

  I didn’t think I, personally, had any kind of magic skills. And I’d never seen my parents do anything I’d consider magical, but then, it was looking like they’d taken great pains to shelter me from all this. Given the amount of crazy that seemed to be going along with all the magic stuff, I couldn’t say as I blamed them.

  And speaking of crazy, I sat up a little straighter and examined the hedge maze in front of me.

  If I understood Sarah correctly, the idea was to force me to use some kind of earth magic to make my way through the maze. I wasn’t entirely clear on why I’d need magic to do that.

  I climbed to my feet and stepped cautiously forward into the entrance of the maze. I barely had enough room to walk without touching the thorns. The entrance path was only a few feet long. Then the path reached a T intersection that branched left and right.

  I reached the T and glanced left to see that the path in that direction branched again almost immediately. I looked right, and while I was looking, the cacti shifted and changed the configuration of the path. My mouth dropped open. Some of them just moved their arms around. But two actually tottered across the path to new spots. What had been another T intersection was now a right angle bending to the left.

  Wow.

  I stood there staring for a moment before I realized I should get out of there before my exit closed up behind me.

  I backed out of the maze and returned to my little holding area.

  Well, now I knew why I’d need magic to navigate the maze. It wasn’t just a matter of solving a regular maze. I’d need the magic to find a way through the shifting paths or to force a path through like Sarah had done. Otherwise, the maze would keep moving around me. At best, I’d be stuck in there until they decided to let me out. At worst, I’d get really hurt by those thorns. And I’d already found out that these people didn’t really care about inflicting damage on the way to getting what they wanted, so I found it likely that I wouldn’t come out of this unscathed.

  The thought of being hurt made me realize that my stitches were starting to twinge again. I needed to get to the house, get something to eat, and have some more painkiller soon, before my headache came rip-roaring back, and I couldn’t think at all.

  This was…argh! So. Not. Fair.

  I stomped around the clearing some more. Sarah knew I was injured. How dare she leave me out here! And how dare she make the challenge so potentially harmful! Sure, I’d picked the saguaros, but I was betting it wouldn’t have mattered what flower I’d picked. Sarah would’ve found a way to make the challenge suck hard.

  I wondered if Meg had done this test yet, and if so, what flower she’d picked. Maybe her test had been different, but I was really hoping it was the same as mine and that she’d picked roses. The thought of the thorns snagging on Meg made me stop stomping. I got a visual of Meg yelling at a rose bush. I knew it wasn’t nice of me, but the mental image of Meg, her silk blouse half-untucked, dirty, and wrinkled, her perfect hair sticking up in 80 directions in a snarled mess, well that image made me smile.

  Bringing out my mean side helped me to stop feeling sorry for myself and to turn my attention to fixing the mess I was in.

  So. Magic. I had to do some magic.

  Okay, fine. I just had to experiment a bit till I found something that worked. Kind of like trying different ingredients until I came up with a great new recipe.

  I knelt down and touched the ground the way I’d seen Sarah do. I focused on the way the ground felt under my fingers and searched for any kind of weird feeling—some kind of tingling or zinging or something.

  I didn’t feel anything. Neithe
r did the saguaros, apparently, because they kept on doing their thing.

  I tried to concentrate on what I wanted. I visualized a path opening up across the lawn, like the one Sarah had made. Then I tried visualizing the cacti freezing in place. I even tried imagining a glowing line showing me the path through the maze.

  Nothing happened.

  For the next hour, I ran through every magical word I could remember from Harry Potter, every bit of elvish from Lord of the Rings, and any kind of spell I could remember Giles or Willow saying on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I even said “Abracadabra.”

  Still nothing.

  By then, my headache had moved from twinging to low-level throbbing. I flopped down on my back on the grass. I felt like Gandalf giving up in disgust in front of the Mines of Moria. But I didn’t have Frodo to figure this out for me. I was on my own.

  As I lay on the grass, I wondered how long Sarah would leave me out in cactus jail before she’d decided I’d failed. I wouldn’t put it past her and Meg to leave me trapped until the whole selection thing was over tomorrow. They’d finally send the saguaros back wherever they came from, revealing my blue corpse, curled into a ball right where I was now, dead of hypothermia. Awesome.

  I stared up at the sky. Well, if I had to be stuck in a weirdo magic cactus cell, at least it was a beautiful day for it. My saguaro prison was right at the entrance to the house’s clearing, so I was under the canopy of one of the two giant oaks. One of the tree’s gnarled roots was poking through the grass near me, and I rested my hand on it. The combination of the strength in the root under my hand and the way the sunlight played with the swaying leaves overhead soothed me.

  I sighed. “You’re lovely, you know,” I told the tree. “Both you and your husband over there. We don’t have trees like you back where I grew up.” I shot a nervous glance at the saguaros. “Er, not that there’s anything wrong with having a bunch of cactus around.”